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That is the obvious…","titles":{"en":"The real reason they don’t want voter ID is to commit voting fraud. That is the obvious…","de":"The real reason they don’t want voter ID is to commit voting fraud. That is the obvious…","fr":"The real reason they don’t want voter ID is to commit voting fraud. That is the obvious…"},"date":"2026-06-08","summary":"The real reason they don’t want voter ID is to commit voting fraud. That is the obvious truth.","text":"The real reason they don’t want voter ID is to commit voting fraud. That is the obvious truth.","textByLang":{"en":"The real reason they don’t want voter ID is to commit voting fraud. That is the obvious truth.","de":"The real reason they don’t want voter ID is to commit voting fraud. That is the obvious truth.","fr":"The real reason they don’t want voter ID is to commit voting fraud. That is the obvious truth."},"languages":["en","de","fr"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":null},{"id":"x-2063989409003807122","type":"post","url":"https://x.com/elonmusk/status/2063989409003807122","title":"Falcon is a beautiful rocket","titles":{"en":"Falcon is a beautiful rocket","de":"Falcon is a beautiful rocket","fr":"Falcon is a beautiful rocket"},"date":"2026-06-08","summary":"Falcon is a beautiful rocket","text":"Falcon is a beautiful rocket","textByLang":{"en":"Falcon is a beautiful rocket","de":"Falcon is a beautiful rocket","fr":"Falcon is a beautiful rocket"},"languages":["en","de","fr"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":null},{"id":"x-2063866701356089711","type":"post","url":"https://x.com/elonmusk/status/2063866701356089711","title":"Straits of Hormuz are named after Ahura Mazda from Zoroastrianism","titles":{"en":"Straits of Hormuz are named after Ahura Mazda from Zoroastrianism","de":"Straits of Hormuz are named after Ahura Mazda from Zoroastrianism","fr":"Straits of Hormuz 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question"},"languages":["en","de","fr"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":null},{"id":"x-2063818400007102774","type":"post","url":"https://x.com/elonmusk/status/2063818400007102774","title":"True","titles":{"en":"True","de":"True","fr":"True"},"date":"2026-06-08","summary":"True","text":"True","textByLang":{"en":"True","de":"True","fr":"True"},"languages":["en","de","fr"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":null},{"id":"x-2063796964878119012","type":"post","url":"https://x.com/elonmusk/status/2063796964878119012","title":"🤔","titles":{"en":"🤔","de":"🤔","fr":"🤔"},"date":"2026-06-08","summary":"🤔","text":"🤔","textByLang":{"en":"🤔","de":"🤔","fr":"🤔"},"languages":["en","de","fr"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":null},{"id":"x-2063743599401906637","type":"post","url":"https://x.com/elonmusk/status/2063743599401906637","title":"Maybe largest in this sector of the galaxy","titles":{"en":"Maybe largest in this sector of the galaxy","de":"Maybe largest in this sector of the galaxy","fr":"Maybe largest in this sector of the galaxy"},"date":"2026-06-07","summary":"Maybe largest in this sector of the galaxy","text":"Maybe largest in this sector of the galaxy","textByLang":{"en":"Maybe largest in this sector of the galaxy","de":"Maybe largest in this sector of the galaxy","fr":"Maybe largest in this sector of the galaxy"},"languages":["en","de","fr"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":null},{"id":"x-2063741293834985766","type":"post","url":"https://x.com/elonmusk/status/2063741293834985766","title":"💯","titles":{"en":"💯","de":"💯","fr":"💯"},"date":"2026-06-07","summary":"💯","text":"💯","textByLang":{"en":"💯","de":"💯","fr":"💯"},"languages":["en","de","fr"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":null},{"id":"x-2063609205311803522","type":"post","url":"https://x.com/elonmusk/status/2063609205311803522","title":"Why is it only pushed in the West?","titles":{"en":"Why is it only pushed in the West?","de":"Why is it only pushed in the West?","fr":"Why is it only pushed in the 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When you combine no ID and mail-in voting, fraud is de facto legalized.","text":"The reason ID is banned in California (and New York) elections is to enable large-scale fraud.\n\nWhen you combine no ID and mail-in voting, fraud is de facto legalized.","textByLang":{"en":"The reason ID is banned in California (and New York) elections is to enable large-scale fraud.\n\nWhen you combine no ID and mail-in voting, fraud is de facto legalized.","de":"The reason ID is banned in California (and New York) elections is to enable large-scale fraud.\n\nWhen you combine no ID and mail-in voting, fraud is de facto legalized.","fr":"The reason ID is banned in California (and New York) elections is to enable large-scale fraud.\n\nWhen you combine no ID and mail-in voting, fraud is de facto legalized."},"languages":["en","de","fr"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":null},{"id":"x-2063604488829583809","type":"post","url":"https://x.com/elonmusk/status/2063604488829583809","title":"Fate hates hypocrisy.","titles":{"en":"Fate hates hypocrisy.","de":"Fate hates hypocrisy.","fr":"Fate hates hypocrisy."},"date":"2026-06-07","summary":"Fate hates hypocrisy.","text":"Fate hates hypocrisy.","textByLang":{"en":"Fate hates hypocrisy.","de":"Fate hates hypocrisy.","fr":"Fate hates hypocrisy."},"languages":["en","de","fr"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":null},{"id":"x-2063603568318300539","type":"post","url":"https://x.com/elonmusk/status/2063603568318300539","title":"Who is making them do this?","titles":{"en":"Who is making them do this?","de":"Who is making them do this?","fr":"Who is making them do this?"},"date":"2026-06-07","summary":"Who is making them do this?","text":"Who is making them do this?","textByLang":{"en":"Who is making them do this?","de":"Who is making them do this?","fr":"Who is making them do this?"},"languages":["en","de","fr"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":null},{"id":"x-2063599979772432894","type":"post","url":"https://x.com/elonmusk/status/2063599979772432894","title":"Restore justice to Britain","titles":{"en":"Restore justice to Britain","de":"Restore justice to Britain","fr":"Restore justice to Britain"},"date":"2026-06-07","summary":"Restore justice to Britain","text":"Restore justice to Britain","textByLang":{"en":"Restore justice to Britain","de":"Restore justice to Britain","fr":"Restore justice to Britain"},"languages":["en","de","fr"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":null},{"id":"x-2063412033266053340","type":"post","url":"https://x.com/elonmusk/status/2063412033266053340","title":"Grep timeout issue fixed in latest Grok Build","titles":{"en":"Grep timeout issue fixed in latest Grok Build","de":"Grep timeout issue fixed in latest Grok Build","fr":"Grep timeout issue fixed in latest Grok Build"},"date":"2026-06-07","summary":"Grep timeout issue fixed in latest Grok Build","text":"Grep timeout issue fixed in latest Grok Build","textByLang":{"en":"Grep timeout issue fixed in latest Grok Build","de":"Grep timeout issue fixed in latest Grok Build","fr":"Grep timeout issue fixed in latest Grok Build"},"languages":["en","de","fr"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":null},{"id":"x-2063401522327666828","type":"post","url":"https://x.com/elonmusk/status/2063401522327666828","title":"Helpful tool for improvement. It’s just physics thinking in the limit.","titles":{"en":"Helpful tool for improvement. It’s just physics thinking in the limit.","de":"Helpful tool for improvement. It’s just physics thinking in the limit.","fr":"Helpful tool for improvement. It’s just physics thinking in the limit."},"date":"2026-06-06","summary":"Helpful tool for improvement. It’s just physics thinking in the limit.","text":"Helpful tool for improvement. It’s just physics thinking in the limit.","textByLang":{"en":"Helpful tool for improvement. It’s just physics thinking in the limit.","de":"Helpful tool for improvement. It’s just physics thinking in the limit.","fr":"Helpful tool for improvement. It’s just physics thinking in the limit."},"languages":["en","de","fr"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":null},{"id":"x-2063388801330721156","type":"post","url":"https://x.com/elonmusk/status/2063388801330721156","title":"Time for change in Germany","titles":{"en":"Time for change in Germany","de":"Time for change in Germany","fr":"Time for change in Germany"},"date":"2026-06-06","summary":"Time for change in Germany","text":"Time for change in Germany","textByLang":{"en":"Time for change in Germany","de":"Time for change in Germany","fr":"Time for change in Germany"},"languages":["en","de","fr"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":null},{"id":"x-2063387114813767815","type":"post","url":"https://x.com/elonmusk/status/2063387114813767815","title":"This is the only way to save democracy in America","titles":{"en":"This is the only way to save democracy in America","de":"This is the only way to save democracy in America","fr":"This is the only way to save democracy in America"},"date":"2026-06-06","summary":"This is the only way to save democracy in America","text":"This is the only way to save democracy in America","textByLang":{"en":"This is the only way to save democracy in America","de":"This is the only way to save democracy in America","fr":"This is the only way to save democracy in America"},"languages":["en","de","fr"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":null},{"id":"x-2063385633725284682","type":"post","url":"https://x.com/elonmusk/status/2063385633725284682","title":"Such injustice!","titles":{"en":"Such injustice!","de":"Such injustice!","fr":"Such injustice!"},"date":"2026-06-06","summary":"Such injustice!","text":"Such injustice!","textByLang":{"en":"Such injustice!","de":"Such injustice!","fr":"Such injustice!"},"languages":["en","de","fr"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":null},{"id":"x-2063384141182144700","type":"post","url":"https://x.com/elonmusk/status/2063384141182144700","title":"Join Tesla if you want to solve real-world AI","titles":{"en":"Join Tesla if you want to solve real-world AI","de":"Join Tesla if you want to solve real-world AI","fr":"Join Tesla if you want to solve real-world AI"},"date":"2026-06-06","summary":"Join Tesla if you want to solve real-world AI","text":"Join Tesla if you want to solve real-world AI","textByLang":{"en":"Join Tesla if you want to solve real-world AI","de":"Join Tesla if you want to solve real-world AI","fr":"Join Tesla if you want to solve real-world AI"},"languages":["en","de","fr"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":null},{"id":"x-2063333492449009867","type":"post","url":"https://x.com/elonmusk/status/2063333492449009867","title":"Humanity is disappearing 😔","titles":{"en":"Humanity is disappearing 😔","de":"Humanity is disappearing 😔","fr":"Humanity is disappearing 😔"},"date":"2026-06-06","summary":"Humanity is disappearing 😔","text":"Humanity is disappearing 😔","textByLang":{"en":"Humanity is disappearing 😔","de":"Humanity is disappearing 😔","fr":"Humanity is disappearing 😔"},"languages":["en","de","fr"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":null},{"id":"x-2063296176246427655","type":"post","url":"https://x.com/elonmusk/status/2063296176246427655","title":"India’s birth rate has fallen below replacement. 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The only conclusion that can be drawn is that the legacy mainstream media is incredibly, hatefully…","text":"Both men said “I can’t breathe”, but only one man’s death was covered relentlessly by the media.\n\nThe only conclusion that can be drawn is that the legacy mainstream media is incredibly, hatefully racist against Whites.","textByLang":{"en":"Both men said “I can’t breathe”, but only one man’s death was covered relentlessly by the media.\n\nThe only conclusion that can be drawn is that the legacy mainstream media is incredibly, hatefully racist against Whites.","de":"Both men said “I can’t breathe”, but only one man’s death was covered relentlessly by the media.\n\nThe only conclusion that can be drawn is that the legacy mainstream media is incredibly, hatefully racist against Whites.","fr":"Both men said “I can’t breathe”, but only one man’s death was covered relentlessly by the media.\n\nThe only conclusion that can be drawn is that the legacy mainstream media is incredibly, 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GB300s with 800G NICs, making heavy use of pipeline parallelism and getting as close to bare metal as possible.\n\nThe potential speed improvement vs JAX for large training runs is over an order of magnitude.","de":"SpaceX has almost finished writing V1.0 of an in-house AI training stack in C that exact-maps to 220k GB300s with 800G NICs, making heavy use of pipeline parallelism and getting as close to bare metal as possible.\n\nThe potential speed improvement vs JAX for large training runs is over an order of magnitude.","fr":"SpaceX has almost finished writing V1.0 of an in-house AI training stack in C that exact-maps to 220k GB300s with 800G NICs, making heavy use of pipeline parallelism and getting as close to bare metal as possible.\n\nThe potential speed improvement vs JAX for large training runs is over an order of 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(We do use a little C++ tbh, but not much)","text":"Next will be writing the inference stack in C for simultaneous high-speed RL across a large block of GB300s.\n\n(We do use a little C++ tbh, but not much)","textByLang":{"en":"Next will be writing the inference stack in C for simultaneous high-speed RL across a large block of GB300s.\n\n(We do use a little C++ tbh, but not much)","de":"Next will be writing the inference stack in C for simultaneous high-speed RL across a large block of GB300s.\n\n(We do use a little C++ tbh, but not much)","fr":"Next will be writing the inference stack in C for simultaneous high-speed RL across a large block of GB300s.\n\n(We do use a little C++ tbh, but not much)"},"languages":["en","de","fr"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":null},{"id":"x-2060085851816960392","type":"post","url":"https://x.com/elonmusk/status/2060085851816960392","title":"Note, I am posted this to encourage those who enjoy getting incredible performance out of…","titles":{"en":"Note, 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Altman…"},"date":"2026-04-27","summary":"Scam Altman didn’t tell the OpenAI board that he OWNED the OpenAI Startup Fund. \n\nAltman lied in congressional testimony that he didn’t have financial gain from OpenAI.","text":"Scam Altman didn’t tell the OpenAI board that he OWNED the OpenAI Startup Fund. \n\nAltman lied in congressional testimony that he didn’t have financial gain from OpenAI.","textByLang":{"en":"Scam Altman didn’t tell the OpenAI board that he OWNED the OpenAI Startup Fund. \n\nAltman lied in congressional testimony that he didn’t have financial gain from OpenAI.","de":"Scam Altman didn’t tell the OpenAI board that he OWNED the OpenAI Startup Fund. \n\nAltman lied in congressional testimony that he didn’t have financial gain from OpenAI.","fr":"Scam Altman didn’t tell the OpenAI board that he OWNED the OpenAI Startup Fund. \n\nAltman lied in congressional testimony that he didn’t have financial gain from OpenAI."},"languages":["en","de","fr"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":null},{"id":"x-2048832396829524325","type":"post","url":"https://x.com/elonmusk/status/2048832396829524325","title":"When violence is categorized accurately, this unequivocally true. 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This is very much worth reading.","titles":{"en":"Calling him “Scam” Altman is accurate. This is very much worth reading.","de":"Calling him “Scam” Altman is accurate. This is very much worth reading.","fr":"Calling him “Scam” Altman is accurate. This is very much worth reading."},"date":"2026-04-27","summary":"Calling him “Scam” Altman is accurate. \n\nThis is very much worth reading.","text":"Calling him “Scam” Altman is accurate. \n\nThis is very much worth reading.","textByLang":{"en":"Calling him “Scam” Altman is accurate. \n\nThis is very much worth reading.","de":"Calling him “Scam” Altman is accurate. \n\nThis is very much worth reading.","fr":"Calling him “Scam” Altman is accurate. \n\nThis is very much worth reading."},"languages":["en","de","fr"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":null},{"id":"x-2048802239272169582","type":"post","url":"https://x.com/elonmusk/status/2048802239272169582","title":"Exactly","titles":{"en":"Exactly","de":"Exactly","fr":"Exactly"},"date":"2026-04-27","summary":"Exactly","text":"Exactly","textByLang":{"en":"Exactly","de":"Exactly","fr":"Exactly"},"languages":["en","de","fr"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":null},{"id":"x-2048801964457140540","type":"post","url":"https://x.com/elonmusk/status/2048801964457140540","title":"Scam Altman and Greg Stockman stole a charity. Full stop. Greg got tens of billions of…","titles":{"en":"Scam Altman and Greg Stockman stole a charity. Full stop. Greg got tens of billions of…","de":"Scam Altman and Greg Stockman stole a charity. Full stop. Greg got tens of billions of…","fr":"Scam Altman and Greg Stockman stole a charity. Full stop. Greg got tens of billions of…"},"date":"2026-04-27","summary":"Scam Altman and Greg Stockman stole a charity. Full stop. \n\nGreg got tens of billions of stock for himself and Scam got dozens of OpenAI side deals with a piece of the action for himself, Y Combinator style. After this lawsuit, Scam will also be awarded tens of billions in stock directly. \n\nThe fundamental question is simply this: \n\nDo you want to set legal precedent in the United States that it is ok to loot a charity? If so, you undermine all charitable giving in the United States forever.\n\nI could have started OpenAI as a for-profit corporation. Instead, I started it, funded it, recruited critical talent and taught them everything I know about how to make a startup successful FOR THE PUBLIC GOOD.\n\nThen they stole the charity.","text":"Scam Altman and Greg Stockman stole a charity. Full stop. \n\nGreg got tens of billions of stock for himself and Scam got dozens of OpenAI side deals with a piece of the action for himself, Y Combinator style. After this lawsuit, Scam will also be awarded tens of billions in stock directly. \n\nThe fundamental question is simply this: \n\nDo you want to set legal precedent in the United States that it is ok to loot a charity? If so, you undermine all charitable giving in the United States forever.\n\nI could have started OpenAI as a for-profit corporation. Instead, I started it, funded it, recruited critical talent and taught them everything I know about how to make a startup successful FOR THE PUBLIC GOOD.\n\nThen they stole the charity.","textByLang":{"en":"Scam Altman and Greg Stockman stole a charity. Full stop. \n\nGreg got tens of billions of stock for himself and Scam got dozens of OpenAI side deals with a piece of the action for himself, Y Combinator style. After this lawsuit, Scam will also be awarded tens of billions in stock directly. \n\nThe fundamental question is simply this: \n\nDo you want to set legal precedent in the United States that it is ok to loot a charity? If so, you undermine all charitable giving in the United States forever.\n\nI could have started OpenAI as a for-profit corporation. Instead, I started it, funded it, recruited critical talent and taught them everything I know about how to make a startup successful FOR THE PUBLIC GOOD.\n\nThen they stole the charity.","de":"Scam Altman and Greg Stockman stole a charity. Full stop. \n\nGreg got tens of billions of stock for himself and Scam got dozens of OpenAI side deals with a piece of the action for himself, Y Combinator style. After this lawsuit, Scam will also be awarded tens of billions in stock directly. \n\nThe fundamental question is simply this: \n\nDo you want to set legal precedent in the United States that it is ok to loot a charity? If so, you undermine all charitable giving in the United States forever.\n\nI could have started OpenAI as a for-profit corporation. Instead, I started it, funded it, recruited critical talent and taught them everything I know about how to make a startup successful FOR THE PUBLIC GOOD.\n\nThen they stole the charity.","fr":"Scam Altman and Greg Stockman stole a charity. Full stop. \n\nGreg got tens of billions of stock for himself and Scam got dozens of OpenAI side deals with a piece of the action for himself, Y Combinator style. After this lawsuit, Scam will also be awarded tens of billions in stock directly. \n\nThe fundamental question is simply this: \n\nDo you want to set legal precedent in the United States that it is ok to loot a charity? If so, you undermine all charitable giving in the United States forever.\n\nI could have started OpenAI as a for-profit corporation. Instead, I started it, funded it, recruited critical talent and taught them everything I know about how to make a startup successful FOR THE PUBLIC GOOD.\n\nThen they stole the charity."},"languages":["en","de","fr"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":null},{"id":"x-2048799712375902624","type":"post","url":"https://x.com/elonmusk/status/2048799712375902624","title":"Scam Altman","titles":{"en":"Scam Altman","de":"Scam Altman","fr":"Scam Altman"},"date":"2026-04-27","summary":"Scam Altman","text":"Scam Altman","textByLang":{"en":"Scam Altman","de":"Scam Altman","fr":"Scam Altman"},"languages":["en","de","fr"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":null},{"id":"x-2048783014075777369","type":"post","url":"https://x.com/elonmusk/status/2048783014075777369","title":"If extremely violent criminals are not imprisoned, eventually they will murder innocent…","titles":{"en":"If extremely violent criminals are not imprisoned, eventually they will murder innocent…","de":"If extremely violent criminals are not 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assholes"},"languages":["en","de","fr"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":null},{"id":"x-2048009661400457412","type":"post","url":"https://x.com/elonmusk/status/2048009661400457412","title":"Their cover story is be","titles":{"en":"Their cover story is be","de":"Their cover story is be","fr":"Their cover story is be"},"date":"2026-04-25","summary":"Their cover story is be","text":"Their cover story is be","textByLang":{"en":"Their cover story is be","de":"Their cover story is be","fr":"Their cover story is be"},"languages":["en","de","fr"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":null},{"id":"x-2048009215738839242","type":"post","url":"https://x.com/elonmusk/status/2048009215738839242","title":"SPLC got better returns than Nancy Pelosi and inverse Cramer combined!","titles":{"en":"SPLC got better returns than Nancy Pelosi and inverse Cramer combined!","de":"SPLC got better returns than Nancy Pelosi and inverse Cramer combined!","fr":"SPLC got better returns than Nancy Pelosi and inverse Cramer combined!"},"date":"2026-04-25","summary":"SPLC got better returns than Nancy Pelosi and inverse Cramer combined!","text":"SPLC got better returns than Nancy Pelosi and inverse Cramer combined!","textByLang":{"en":"SPLC got better returns than Nancy Pelosi and inverse Cramer combined!","de":"SPLC got better returns than Nancy Pelosi and inverse Cramer combined!","fr":"SPLC got better returns than Nancy Pelosi and inverse Cramer combined!"},"languages":["en","de","fr"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":null},{"id":"x-2048008745406386266","type":"post","url":"https://x.com/elonmusk/status/2048008745406386266","title":"Incentives explain outcomes. Actually eliminating hatred would end the existence of…","titles":{"en":"Incentives explain outcomes. Actually eliminating hatred would end the existence of…","de":"Incentives explain outcomes. Actually eliminating hatred would end the existence of…","fr":"Incentives explain outcomes. Actually eliminating hatred would end the existence of…"},"date":"2026-04-25","summary":"Incentives explain outcomes. \n\nActually eliminating hatred would end the existence of “anti-hate” groups, so groups like SPLC amplified hatred instead to get more donations.","text":"Incentives explain outcomes. \n\nActually eliminating hatred would end the existence of “anti-hate” groups, so groups like SPLC amplified hatred instead to get more donations.","textByLang":{"en":"Incentives explain outcomes. \n\nActually eliminating hatred would end the existence of “anti-hate” groups, so groups like SPLC amplified hatred instead to get more donations.","de":"Incentives explain outcomes. \n\nActually eliminating hatred would end the existence of “anti-hate” groups, so groups like SPLC amplified hatred instead to get more donations.","fr":"Incentives explain outcomes. \n\nActually eliminating hatred would end the existence of “anti-hate” groups, so groups like SPLC amplified hatred instead to get more donations."},"languages":["en","de","fr"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":null},{"id":"x-2048007645471125653","type":"post","url":"https://x.com/elonmusk/status/2048007645471125653","title":"The fact that I wasn’t funded by the SPLC proves I’m not a Nazi","titles":{"en":"The fact that I wasn’t funded by the SPLC proves I’m not a Nazi","de":"The fact that I wasn’t funded by the SPLC proves I’m not a Nazi","fr":"The fact that I wasn’t funded by the SPLC proves I’m not a Nazi"},"date":"2026-04-25","summary":"The fact that I wasn’t funded by the SPLC proves I’m not a Nazi","text":"The fact that I wasn’t funded by the SPLC proves I’m not a Nazi","textByLang":{"en":"The fact that I wasn’t funded by the SPLC proves I’m not a Nazi","de":"The fact that I wasn’t funded by the SPLC proves I’m not a Nazi","fr":"The fact that I wasn’t funded by the SPLC proves I’m not a Nazi"},"languages":["en","de","fr"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":null},{"id":"x-2048007041688432706","type":"post","url":"https://x.com/elonmusk/status/2048007041688432706","title":"Bingo 😂","titles":{"en":"Bingo 😂","de":"Bingo 😂","fr":"Bingo 😂"},"date":"2026-04-25","summary":"Bingo 😂","text":"Bingo 😂","textByLang":{"en":"Bingo 😂","de":"Bingo 😂","fr":"Bingo 😂"},"languages":["en","de","fr"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":null},{"id":"x-2048006829532135533","type":"post","url":"https://x.com/elonmusk/status/2048006829532135533","title":"The NAACP are buddies with SPLC. Both of them stoke hatred relentlessly.","titles":{"en":"The NAACP are buddies with SPLC. Both of them stoke hatred relentlessly.","de":"The NAACP are buddies with SPLC. Both of them stoke hatred relentlessly.","fr":"The NAACP are buddies with SPLC. Both of them stoke hatred relentlessly."},"date":"2026-04-25","summary":"The NAACP are buddies with SPLC. Both of them stoke hatred relentlessly.","text":"The NAACP are buddies with SPLC. Both of them stoke hatred relentlessly.","textByLang":{"en":"The NAACP are buddies with SPLC. Both of them stoke hatred relentlessly.","de":"The NAACP are buddies with SPLC. Both of them stoke hatred relentlessly.","fr":"The NAACP are buddies with SPLC. Both of them stoke hatred relentlessly."},"languages":["en","de","fr"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":null},{"id":"x-2048006372487295473","type":"post","url":"https://x.com/elonmusk/status/2048006372487295473","title":"💯","titles":{"en":"💯","de":"💯","fr":"💯"},"date":"2026-04-25","summary":"💯","text":"💯","textByLang":{"en":"💯","de":"💯","fr":"💯"},"languages":["en","de","fr"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":null},{"id":"x-2048006216559812916","type":"post","url":"https://x.com/elonmusk/status/2048006216559812916","title":"Exactly","titles":{"en":"Exactly","de":"Exactly","fr":"Exactly"},"date":"2026-04-25","summary":"Exactly","text":"Exactly","textByLang":{"en":"Exactly","de":"Exactly","fr":"Exactly"},"languages":["en","de","fr"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":null},{"id":"x-2048006003078070787","type":"post","url":"https://x.com/elonmusk/status/2048006003078070787","title":"@TheAliceSmith 🎯","titles":{"en":"@TheAliceSmith 🎯","de":"@TheAliceSmith 🎯","fr":"@TheAliceSmith 🎯"},"date":"2026-04-25","summary":"@TheAliceSmith 🎯","text":"@TheAliceSmith 🎯","textByLang":{"en":"@TheAliceSmith 🎯","de":"@TheAliceSmith 🎯","fr":"@TheAliceSmith 🎯"},"languages":["en","de","fr"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":null},{"id":"x-2048005250754224525","type":"post","url":"https://x.com/elonmusk/status/2048005250754224525","title":"The ADL classifies a shitload of stuff as “right wing extremism” and almost nothing as…","titles":{"en":"The ADL classifies a shitload of stuff as “right wing extremism” and almost nothing as…","de":"The ADL classifies a shitload of stuff as “right wing extremism” and almost nothing as…","fr":"The ADL classifies a shitload of stuff as “right wing extremism” and almost nothing as…"},"date":"2026-04-25","summary":"The ADL classifies a shitload of stuff as “right wing extremism” and almost nothing as “left wing extremism”. That is the heart of the problem. \n\nIf white people killing black people, which is rare per capita, is classified as “right wing”, then, logically, blacks killing whites should be “left wing”, but they don’t count that at all!\n\nThe ADL pushes extreme anti-white propaganda, therefore they are a hate group. Plain and simple.","text":"The ADL classifies a shitload of stuff as “right wing extremism” and almost nothing as “left wing extremism”. That is the heart of the problem. \n\nIf white people killing black people, which is rare per capita, is classified as “right wing”, then, logically, blacks killing whites should be “left wing”, but they don’t count that at all!\n\nThe ADL pushes extreme anti-white propaganda, therefore they are a hate group. Plain and simple.","textByLang":{"en":"The ADL classifies a shitload of stuff as “right wing extremism” and almost nothing as “left wing extremism”. That is the heart of the problem. \n\nIf white people killing black people, which is rare per capita, is classified as “right wing”, then, logically, blacks killing whites should be “left wing”, but they don’t count that at all!\n\nThe ADL pushes extreme anti-white propaganda, therefore they are a hate group. Plain and simple.","de":"The ADL classifies a shitload of stuff as “right wing extremism” and almost nothing as “left wing extremism”. That is the heart of the problem. \n\nIf white people killing black people, which is rare per capita, is classified as “right wing”, then, logically, blacks killing whites should be “left wing”, but they don’t count that at all!\n\nThe ADL pushes extreme anti-white propaganda, therefore they are a hate group. Plain and simple.","fr":"The ADL classifies a shitload of stuff as “right wing extremism” and almost nothing as “left wing extremism”. That is the heart of the problem. \n\nIf white people killing black people, which is rare per capita, is classified as “right wing”, then, logically, blacks killing whites should be “left wing”, but they don’t count that at all!\n\nThe ADL pushes extreme anti-white propaganda, therefore they are a hate group. 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The output…","titles":{"en":"Actually, AI/Robotics will mean everyone can have a penthouse if they want. The output…","de":"Actually, AI/Robotics will mean everyone can have a penthouse if they want. The output…","fr":"Actually, AI/Robotics will mean everyone can have a penthouse if they want. The output…"},"date":"2026-04-18","summary":"Actually, AI/Robotics will mean everyone can have a penthouse if they want. The output of goods & services will be several orders of magnitude higher than today’s economy.\n\nRead the Iain Banks Culture books for the best imagining of how it will be.\n\nThat said, what is the future you want? Amazing abundance seems the best to me.","text":"Actually, AI/Robotics will mean everyone can have a penthouse if they want. The output of goods & services will be several orders of magnitude higher than today’s economy.\n\nRead the Iain Banks Culture books for the best imagining of how it will be.\n\nThat said, what is the future you want? 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The output of goods & services will be several orders of magnitude higher than today’s economy.\n\nRead the Iain Banks Culture books for the best imagining of how it will be.\n\nThat said, what is the future you want? 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Image understanding is weakest, but will improve a lot later this month."},"languages":["en","de","fr"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":null},{"id":"x-2045577165534875928","type":"post","url":"https://x.com/elonmusk/status/2045577165534875928","title":"@glennbeck @rebeccaperrotto No Yes Yes Your Name Yes, a several times. Kyoto. teamLab…","titles":{"en":"@glennbeck @rebeccaperrotto No Yes Yes Your Name Yes, a several times. Kyoto. teamLab…","de":"@glennbeck @rebeccaperrotto No Yes Yes Your Name Yes, a several times. Kyoto. teamLab…","fr":"@glennbeck @rebeccaperrotto No Yes Yes Your Name Yes, a several times. Kyoto. teamLab…"},"date":"2026-04-18","summary":"@glennbeck @rebeccaperrotto No\n\nYes\n\nYes\n\nYour Name\n\nYes, a several times. Kyoto. teamLab. \n\nYes\n\nYes\n\nOk 😀","text":"@glennbeck @rebeccaperrotto No\n\nYes\n\nYes\n\nYour Name\n\nYes, a several times. Kyoto. teamLab. \n\nYes\n\nYes\n\nOk 😀","textByLang":{"en":"@glennbeck @rebeccaperrotto No\n\nYes\n\nYes\n\nYour Name\n\nYes, a several times. Kyoto. teamLab. \n\nYes\n\nYes\n\nOk 😀","de":"@glennbeck @rebeccaperrotto No\n\nYes\n\nYes\n\nYour Name\n\nYes, a several times. Kyoto. teamLab. \n\nYes\n\nYes\n\nOk 😀","fr":"@glennbeck @rebeccaperrotto No\n\nYes\n\nYes\n\nYour Name\n\nYes, a several times. Kyoto. teamLab. \n\nYes\n\nYes\n\nOk 😀"},"languages":["en","de","fr"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":null},{"id":"x-2045575506314314236","type":"post","url":"https://x.com/elonmusk/status/2045575506314314236","title":"Indeed, this needs to stop","titles":{"en":"Indeed, this needs to stop","de":"Indeed, this needs to stop","fr":"Indeed, this needs to stop"},"date":"2026-04-18","summary":"Indeed, this needs to stop","text":"Indeed, this needs to stop","textByLang":{"en":"Indeed, this needs to stop","de":"Indeed, this needs to stop","fr":"Indeed, this needs to stop"},"languages":["en","de","fr"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":null},{"id":"x-2045574484351156430","type":"post","url":"https://x.com/elonmusk/status/2045574484351156430","title":"@jasonzhou1993 I super agree with @karpathy!","titles":{"en":"@jasonzhou1993 I super agree with @karpathy!","de":"@jasonzhou1993 I super agree with @karpathy!","fr":"@jasonzhou1993 I super agree with @karpathy!"},"date":"2026-04-18","summary":"@jasonzhou1993 I super agree with @karpathy!","text":"@jasonzhou1993 I super agree with @karpathy!","textByLang":{"en":"@jasonzhou1993 I super agree with @karpathy!","de":"@jasonzhou1993 I super agree with @karpathy!","fr":"@jasonzhou1993 I super agree with @karpathy!"},"languages":["en","de","fr"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":null},{"id":"x-2045572944420901265","type":"post","url":"https://x.com/elonmusk/status/2045572944420901265","title":"Try Tesla Robotaxi in Dallas &amp; Houston!","titles":{"en":"Try Tesla Robotaxi in Dallas &amp; Houston!","de":"Try Tesla Robotaxi in Dallas &amp; Houston!","fr":"Try Tesla Robotaxi in Dallas &amp; Houston!"},"date":"2026-04-18","summary":"Try Tesla Robotaxi in Dallas &amp; Houston!","text":"Try Tesla Robotaxi in Dallas &amp; Houston!","textByLang":{"en":"Try Tesla Robotaxi in Dallas &amp; Houston!","de":"Try Tesla Robotaxi in Dallas &amp; Houston!","fr":"Try Tesla Robotaxi in Dallas &amp; Houston!"},"languages":["en","de","fr"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":null},{"id":"x-2045572706939355483","type":"post","url":"https://x.com/elonmusk/status/2045572706939355483","title":"You can access 𝕏 APi via @OpenClaw. 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Prices are simply the ratio of goods & services output to number of dollars."},"languages":["en","de","fr"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":null},{"id":"x-2045207777325232201","type":"post","url":"https://x.com/elonmusk/status/2045207777325232201","title":"Hmm","titles":{"en":"Hmm","de":"Hmm","fr":"Hmm"},"date":"2026-04-17","summary":"Hmm","text":"Hmm","textByLang":{"en":"Hmm","de":"Hmm","fr":"Hmm"},"languages":["en","de","fr"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":null},{"id":"x-2045207072195625338","type":"post","url":"https://x.com/elonmusk/status/2045207072195625338","title":"Some signs of life","titles":{"en":"Some signs of life","de":"Some signs of life","fr":"Some signs of life"},"date":"2026-04-17","summary":"Some signs of life","text":"Some signs of life","textByLang":{"en":"Some signs of life","de":"Some signs of life","fr":"Some signs of life"},"languages":["en","de","fr"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":null},{"id":"x-2045194063041671385","type":"post","url":"https://x.com/elonmusk/status/2045194063041671385","title":"Some signs of life","titles":{"en":"Some signs of life","de":"Some signs of life","fr":"Some signs of life"},"date":"2026-04-17","summary":"Some signs of life","text":"Some signs of life","textByLang":{"en":"Some signs of life","de":"Some signs of life","fr":"Some signs of life"},"languages":["en","de","fr"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":null},{"id":"x-2045193784883884114","type":"post","url":"https://x.com/elonmusk/status/2045193784883884114","title":"Still an early beta , but worth trying out","titles":{"en":"Still an early beta , but worth trying out","de":"Still an early beta , but worth trying out","fr":"Still an early beta , but worth trying out"},"date":"2026-04-17","summary":"Still an early beta , but worth trying out","text":"Still an early beta , but worth trying out","textByLang":{"en":"Still an early beta , but worth trying out","de":"Still an early beta , but worth trying out","fr":"Still an early beta , but worth trying out"},"languages":["en","de","fr"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":null},{"id":"x-2045193548266459293","type":"post","url":"https://x.com/elonmusk/status/2045193548266459293","title":"Still an early beta, but promising","titles":{"en":"Still an early beta, but promising","de":"Still an early beta, but promising","fr":"Still an early beta, but promising"},"date":"2026-04-17","summary":"Still an early beta, but promising","text":"Still an early beta, but promising","textByLang":{"en":"Still an early beta, but promising","de":"Still an early beta, but promising","fr":"Still an early beta, but promising"},"languages":["en","de","fr"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":null},{"id":"x-2045193425159385353","type":"post","url":"https://x.com/elonmusk/status/2045193425159385353","title":"@XFreeze This is a better-than-nothing early beta, so go in with low expectations. 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services far in excess of the increase in the money supply, so there will not be inflation.","text":"Universal HIGH INCOME via checks issued by the Federal government is the best way to deal with unemployment caused by AI. \n\nAI/robotics will produce goods &amp; services far in excess of the increase in the money supply, so there will not be inflation.","textByLang":{"en":"Universal HIGH INCOME via checks issued by the Federal government is the best way to deal with unemployment caused by AI. \n\nAI/robotics will produce goods &amp; services far in excess of the increase in the money supply, so there will not be inflation.","de":"Universal HIGH INCOME via checks issued by the Federal government is the best way to deal with unemployment caused by AI. \n\nAI/robotics will produce goods &amp; services far in excess of the increase in the money supply, so there will not be inflation.","fr":"Universal HIGH INCOME via checks issued by the Federal government is the best way to deal with unemployment caused by AI. \n\nAI/robotics will produce goods &amp; 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!!"},"languages":["en","de","fr"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":null},{"id":"x-2044955236176200066","type":"post","url":"https://x.com/elonmusk/status/2044955236176200066","title":"Mars is a planet purely of robots (for now)","titles":{"en":"Mars is a planet purely of robots (for now)","de":"Mars is a planet purely of robots (for now)","fr":"Mars is a planet purely of robots (for now)"},"date":"2026-04-17","summary":"Mars is a planet purely of robots (for now)","text":"Mars is a planet purely of robots (for now)","textByLang":{"en":"Mars is a planet purely of robots (for now)","de":"Mars is a planet purely of robots (for now)","fr":"Mars is a planet purely of robots (for now)"},"languages":["en","de","fr"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":null},{"id":"x-2044927043943747976","type":"post","url":"https://x.com/elonmusk/status/2044927043943747976","title":"More Tesla Diners coming","titles":{"en":"More Tesla Diners coming","de":"More Tesla Diners coming","fr":"More Tesla Diners 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needs major reform","text":"The “Justice System” needs major reform","textByLang":{"en":"The “Justice System” needs major reform","de":"The “Justice System” needs major reform","fr":"The “Justice System” needs major reform"},"languages":["en","de","fr"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":null},{"id":"x-2044846020908159292","type":"post","url":"https://x.com/elonmusk/status/2044846020908159292","title":"@TheBabylonBee The sheer outrageous scale of the government/taxpayer fraud is vexing","titles":{"en":"@TheBabylonBee The sheer outrageous scale of the government/taxpayer fraud is vexing","de":"@TheBabylonBee The sheer outrageous scale of the government/taxpayer fraud is vexing","fr":"@TheBabylonBee The sheer outrageous scale of the government/taxpayer fraud is vexing"},"date":"2026-04-16","summary":"@TheBabylonBee The sheer outrageous scale of the government/taxpayer fraud is vexing","text":"@TheBabylonBee The sheer outrageous scale of the government/taxpayer fraud is vexing","textByLang":{"en":"@TheBabylonBee The sheer outrageous scale of the government/taxpayer fraud is vexing","de":"@TheBabylonBee The sheer outrageous scale of the government/taxpayer fraud is vexing","fr":"@TheBabylonBee The sheer outrageous scale of the government/taxpayer fraud is vexing"},"languages":["en","de","fr"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":null},{"id":"x-2044845655206891623","type":"post","url":"https://x.com/elonmusk/status/2044845655206891623","title":"@EricLDaugh True. Just a fact.","titles":{"en":"@EricLDaugh True. Just a fact.","de":"@EricLDaugh True. Just a fact.","fr":"@EricLDaugh True. Just a fact."},"date":"2026-04-16","summary":"@EricLDaugh True. Just a fact.","text":"@EricLDaugh True. Just a fact.","textByLang":{"en":"@EricLDaugh True. Just a fact.","de":"@EricLDaugh True. Just a fact.","fr":"@EricLDaugh True. Just a fact."},"languages":["en","de","fr"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":null},{"id":"x-2044845530363428927","type":"post","url":"https://x.com/elonmusk/status/2044845530363428927","title":"There are now more anti-White and anti-Asian laws in South Africa than anti-Black laws…","titles":{"en":"There are now more anti-White and anti-Asian laws in South Africa than anti-Black laws…","de":"There are now more anti-White and anti-Asian laws in South Africa than anti-Black laws…","fr":"There are now more anti-White and anti-Asian laws in South Africa than anti-Black laws…"},"date":"2026-04-16","summary":"There are now more anti-White and anti-Asian laws in South Africa than anti-Black laws under Apartheid.\n\nRacism is wrong no matter who it is against.","text":"There are now more anti-White and anti-Asian laws in South Africa than anti-Black laws under Apartheid.\n\nRacism is wrong no matter who it is against.","textByLang":{"en":"There are now more anti-White and anti-Asian laws in South Africa than anti-Black laws under Apartheid.\n\nRacism is wrong no matter who it is against.","de":"There are now more anti-White and anti-Asian laws in South Africa than anti-Black laws under Apartheid.\n\nRacism is wrong no matter who it is against.","fr":"There are now more anti-White and anti-Asian laws in South Africa than anti-Black laws under Apartheid.\n\nRacism is wrong no matter who it is against."},"languages":["en","de","fr"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":null},{"id":"x-2044844799115825350","type":"post","url":"https://x.com/elonmusk/status/2044844799115825350","title":"Support Marty, he’s a cool dude","titles":{"en":"Support Marty, he’s a cool dude","de":"Support Marty, he’s a cool dude","fr":"Support Marty, he’s a cool dude"},"date":"2026-04-16","summary":"Support Marty, he’s a cool dude","text":"Support Marty, he’s a cool dude","textByLang":{"en":"Support Marty, he’s a cool dude","de":"Support Marty, he’s a cool dude","fr":"Support Marty, he’s a cool dude"},"languages":["en","de","fr"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":null},{"id":"x-2044844582777864676","type":"post","url":"https://x.com/elonmusk/status/2044844582777864676","title":"@TheCaptainEli @EdLudlow There needs to be a movie about this. Most people are under…","titles":{"en":"@TheCaptainEli @EdLudlow There needs to be a movie about this. Most people are under…","de":"@TheCaptainEli @EdLudlow There needs to be a movie about this. Most people are under…","fr":"@TheCaptainEli @EdLudlow There needs to be a movie about this. 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It’s not…","titles":{"en":"The South African laws are literally super racist, plain and simple. It’s not…","de":"The South African laws are literally super racist, plain and simple. It’s not…","fr":"The South African laws are literally super racist, plain and simple. It’s not…"},"date":"2026-04-15","summary":"The South African laws are literally super racist, plain and simple. \n\nIt’s not complicated: imagine if the law was called “White Empowerment”, instead of “Black Empowerment”! People would have a seizure 😂\n\nSouth Africa now has more anti-White laws than Apartheid had anti-Black laws. Think about that for a second …\n\nThe current South African government has objectively implemented Apartheid 2.0. Shame on them.","text":"The South African laws are literally super racist, plain and simple. \n\nIt’s not complicated: imagine if the law was called “White Empowerment”, instead of “Black Empowerment”! People would have a seizure 😂\n\nSouth Africa now has more anti-White laws than Apartheid had anti-Black laws. Think about that for a second …\n\nThe current South African government has objectively implemented Apartheid 2.0. Shame on them.","textByLang":{"en":"The South African laws are literally super racist, plain and simple. \n\nIt’s not complicated: imagine if the law was called “White Empowerment”, instead of “Black Empowerment”! People would have a seizure 😂\n\nSouth Africa now has more anti-White laws than Apartheid had anti-Black laws. Think about that for a second …\n\nThe current South African government has objectively implemented Apartheid 2.0. Shame on them.","de":"The South African laws are literally super racist, plain and simple. \n\nIt’s not complicated: imagine if the law was called “White Empowerment”, instead of “Black Empowerment”! People would have a seizure 😂\n\nSouth Africa now has more anti-White laws than Apartheid had anti-Black laws. Think about that for a second …\n\nThe current South African government has objectively implemented Apartheid 2.0. Shame on them.","fr":"The South African laws are literally super racist, plain and simple. \n\nIt’s not complicated: imagine if the law was called “White Empowerment”, instead of “Black Empowerment”! People would have a seizure 😂\n\nSouth Africa now has more anti-White laws than Apartheid had anti-Black laws. Think about that for a second …\n\nThe current South African government has objectively implemented Apartheid 2.0. 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Yes"},"languages":["en","de","fr"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":null},{"id":"x-2043287908090880094","type":"post","url":"https://x.com/elonmusk/status/2043287908090880094","title":"💯","titles":{"en":"💯","de":"💯","fr":"💯"},"date":"2026-04-12","summary":"💯","text":"💯","textByLang":{"en":"💯","de":"💯","fr":"💯"},"languages":["en","de","fr"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":null},{"id":"x-2043287740360556856","type":"post","url":"https://x.com/elonmusk/status/2043287740360556856","title":"Wow","titles":{"en":"Wow","de":"Wow","fr":"Wow"},"date":"2026-04-12","summary":"Wow","text":"Wow","textByLang":{"en":"Wow","de":"Wow","fr":"Wow"},"languages":["en","de","fr"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":null},{"id":"x-2043287537675010370","type":"post","url":"https://x.com/elonmusk/status/2043287537675010370","title":"Yes","titles":{"en":"Yes","de":"Yes","fr":"Yes"},"date":"2026-04-12","summary":"Yes","text":"Yes","textByLang":{"en":"Yes","de":"Yes","fr":"Yes"},"languages":["en","de","fr"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":null},{"id":"x-2043286073548353776","type":"post","url":"https://x.com/elonmusk/status/2043286073548353776","title":"GM 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won’t","textByLang":{"en":"@Abagi_Ternenge_ @ClaysonMonyela No, we won’t","de":"@Abagi_Ternenge_ @ClaysonMonyela No, we won’t","fr":"@Abagi_Ternenge_ @ClaysonMonyela No, we won’t"},"languages":["en","de","fr"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":null},{"id":"x-2043282210489581717","type":"post","url":"https://x.com/elonmusk/status/2043282210489581717","title":"@TRobinsonNewEra 💯!!","titles":{"en":"@TRobinsonNewEra 💯!!","de":"@TRobinsonNewEra 💯!!","fr":"@TRobinsonNewEra 💯!!"},"date":"2026-04-12","summary":"@TRobinsonNewEra 💯!!","text":"@TRobinsonNewEra 💯!!","textByLang":{"en":"@TRobinsonNewEra 💯!!","de":"@TRobinsonNewEra 💯!!","fr":"@TRobinsonNewEra 💯!!"},"languages":["en","de","fr"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":null},{"id":"x-2043281889902105013","type":"post","url":"https://x.com/elonmusk/status/2043281889902105013","title":"Restore Britain would allow free public speech without imprisonment","titles":{"en":"Restore Britain would allow free public speech without 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Bravo.","titles":{"en":"As should all countries. Bravo.","de":"As should all countries. Bravo.","fr":"As should all countries. Bravo."},"date":"2026-04-12","summary":"As should all countries. \n\nBravo.","text":"As should all countries. \n\nBravo.","textByLang":{"en":"As should all countries. \n\nBravo.","de":"As should all countries. \n\nBravo.","fr":"As should all countries. \n\nBravo."},"languages":["en","de","fr"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":null},{"id":"x-2043280270238101890","type":"post","url":"https://x.com/elonmusk/status/2043280270238101890","title":"South Africa won’t allow Starlink to be licensed, even though I was BORN THERE, simply…","titles":{"en":"South Africa won’t allow Starlink to be licensed, even though I was BORN THERE, simply…","de":"South Africa won’t allow Starlink to be licensed, even though I was BORN THERE, simply…","fr":"South Africa won’t allow Starlink to be licensed, even though I was BORN THERE, simply…"},"date":"2026-04-12","summary":"South Africa won’t allow Starlink to be licensed, even though I was BORN THERE, simply because I am not Black!\n\nWe were offered many times the opportunity to bribe our way to a license by pretending that a Black guy runs Starlink SA, but I have refused to do so on principle.\n\nRacism should not be rewarded no matter to which race it is applied.\n\nShame on the racist politicians in South Africa. They should be shown no respect whatsoever anywhere in the world and shunned for being unashamedly RACISTS!","text":"South Africa won’t allow Starlink to be licensed, even though I was BORN THERE, simply because I am not Black!\n\nWe were offered many times the opportunity to bribe our way to a license by pretending that a Black guy runs Starlink SA, but I have refused to do so on principle.\n\nRacism should not be rewarded no matter to which race it is applied.\n\nShame on the racist politicians in South Africa. They should be shown no respect whatsoever anywhere in the world and shunned for being unashamedly RACISTS!","textByLang":{"en":"South Africa won’t allow Starlink to be licensed, even though I was BORN THERE, simply because I am not Black!\n\nWe were offered many times the opportunity to bribe our way to a license by pretending that a Black guy runs Starlink SA, but I have refused to do so on principle.\n\nRacism should not be rewarded no matter to which race it is applied.\n\nShame on the racist politicians in South Africa. They should be shown no respect whatsoever anywhere in the world and shunned for being unashamedly RACISTS!","de":"South Africa won’t allow Starlink to be licensed, even though I was BORN THERE, simply because I am not Black!\n\nWe were offered many times the opportunity to bribe our way to a license by pretending that a Black guy runs Starlink SA, but I have refused to do so on principle.\n\nRacism should not be rewarded no matter to which race it is applied.\n\nShame on the racist politicians in South Africa. They should be shown no respect whatsoever anywhere in the world and shunned for being unashamedly RACISTS!","fr":"South Africa won’t allow Starlink to be licensed, even though I was BORN THERE, simply because I am not Black!\n\nWe were offered many times the opportunity to bribe our way to a license by pretending that a Black guy runs Starlink SA, but I have refused to do so on principle.\n\nRacism should not be rewarded no matter to which race it is applied.\n\nShame on the racist politicians in South Africa. They should be shown no respect whatsoever anywhere in the world and shunned for being unashamedly RACISTS!"},"languages":["en","de","fr"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":null},{"id":"x-2043278567640010901","type":"post","url":"https://x.com/elonmusk/status/2043278567640010901","title":"@ChristianHeiens 😂💯","titles":{"en":"@ChristianHeiens 😂💯","de":"@ChristianHeiens 😂💯","fr":"@ChristianHeiens 😂💯"},"date":"2026-04-12","summary":"@ChristianHeiens 😂💯","text":"@ChristianHeiens 😂💯","textByLang":{"en":"@ChristianHeiens 😂💯","de":"@ChristianHeiens 😂💯","fr":"@ChristianHeiens 😂💯"},"languages":["en","de","fr"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":null},{"id":"x-2043278403592421869","type":"post","url":"https://x.com/elonmusk/status/2043278403592421869","title":"Starlink has done more than any NGO to lift people out of poverty by connecting them…","titles":{"en":"Starlink has done more than any NGO to lift people out of poverty by connecting them…","de":"Starlink has done more than any NGO to lift people out of poverty by connecting them…","fr":"Starlink has done more than any NGO to lift people out of poverty by connecting them…"},"date":"2026-04-12","summary":"Starlink has done more than any NGO to lift people out of poverty by connecting them with a means of education and a market for their good &amp; services via the Internet","text":"Starlink has done more than any NGO to lift people out of poverty by connecting them with a means of education and a market for their good &amp; services via the Internet","textByLang":{"en":"Starlink has done more than any NGO to lift people out of poverty by connecting them with a means of education and a market for their good &amp; services via the Internet","de":"Starlink has done more than any NGO to lift people out of poverty by connecting them with a means of education and a market for their good &amp; services via the Internet","fr":"Starlink has done more than any NGO to lift people out of poverty by connecting them with a means of education and a market for their good &amp; services via the Internet"},"languages":["en","de","fr"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":null},{"id":"x-2043277633585312150","type":"post","url":"https://x.com/elonmusk/status/2043277633585312150","title":"@LordRedfern Many such cases","titles":{"en":"@LordRedfern Many such cases","de":"@LordRedfern Many such cases","fr":"@LordRedfern Many such cases"},"date":"2026-04-12","summary":"@LordRedfern Many such cases","text":"@LordRedfern Many such cases","textByLang":{"en":"@LordRedfern Many such cases","de":"@LordRedfern Many such cases","fr":"@LordRedfern Many such cases"},"languages":["en","de","fr"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":null},{"id":"x-2043276677481103734","type":"post","url":"https://x.com/elonmusk/status/2043276677481103734","title":"@ClownWorld What an idiot","titles":{"en":"@ClownWorld What an idiot","de":"@ClownWorld What an idiot","fr":"@ClownWorld What an idiot"},"date":"2026-04-12","summary":"@ClownWorld What an idiot","text":"@ClownWorld What an idiot","textByLang":{"en":"@ClownWorld What an idiot","de":"@ClownWorld What an idiot","fr":"@ClownWorld What an idiot"},"languages":["en","de","fr"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":null},{"id":"x-2043276344549839294","type":"post","url":"https://x.com/elonmusk/status/2043276344549839294","title":"Wow","titles":{"en":"Wow","de":"Wow","fr":"Wow"},"date":"2026-04-12","summary":"Wow","text":"Wow","textByLang":{"en":"Wow","de":"Wow","fr":"Wow"},"languages":["en","de","fr"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":null},{"id":"x-2043276162487759115","type":"post","url":"https://x.com/elonmusk/status/2043276162487759115","title":"The vaccine dosage was obviously too high and done too many times. I had the original…","titles":{"en":"The vaccine dosage was obviously too high and done too many times. I had the original…","de":"The vaccine dosage was obviously too high and done too many times. I had the original…","fr":"The vaccine dosage was obviously too high and done too many times. I had the original…"},"date":"2026-04-12","summary":"The vaccine dosage was obviously too high and done too many times.\n\nI had the original Wuhan virus before there was any vaccine and it was much like any other cold/flu. Bad, but not terrible. \n\nBut my second vaccine shot almost sent me to the hospital. Felt like I was dying.","text":"The vaccine dosage was obviously too high and done too many times.\n\nI had the original Wuhan virus before there was any vaccine and it was much like any other cold/flu. Bad, but not terrible. \n\nBut my second vaccine shot almost sent me to the hospital. Felt like I was dying.","textByLang":{"en":"The vaccine dosage was obviously too high and done too many times.\n\nI had the original Wuhan virus before there was any vaccine and it was much like any other cold/flu. Bad, but not terrible. \n\nBut my second vaccine shot almost sent me to the hospital. Felt like I was dying.","de":"The vaccine dosage was obviously too high and done too many times.\n\nI had the original Wuhan virus before there was any vaccine and it was much like any other cold/flu. Bad, but not terrible. \n\nBut my second vaccine shot almost sent me to the hospital. Felt like I was dying.","fr":"The vaccine dosage was obviously too high and done too many times.\n\nI had the original Wuhan virus before there was any vaccine and it was much like any other cold/flu. Bad, but not terrible. \n\nBut my second vaccine shot almost sent me to the hospital. Felt like I was dying."},"languages":["en","de","fr"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":null},{"id":"x-2043275094169162179","type":"post","url":"https://x.com/elonmusk/status/2043275094169162179","title":"@MagaBrick45 Good","titles":{"en":"@MagaBrick45 Good","de":"@MagaBrick45 Good","fr":"@MagaBrick45 Good"},"date":"2026-04-12","summary":"@MagaBrick45 Good","text":"@MagaBrick45 Good","textByLang":{"en":"@MagaBrick45 Good","de":"@MagaBrick45 Good","fr":"@MagaBrick45 Good"},"languages":["en","de","fr"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":null},{"id":"x-2043274987927441728","type":"post","url":"https://x.com/elonmusk/status/2043274987927441728","title":"@ksorbs A reasonable expectation","titles":{"en":"@ksorbs A reasonable expectation","de":"@ksorbs A reasonable expectation","fr":"@ksorbs A reasonable expectation"},"date":"2026-04-12","summary":"@ksorbs A reasonable expectation","text":"@ksorbs A reasonable expectation","textByLang":{"en":"@ksorbs A reasonable expectation","de":"@ksorbs A reasonable expectation","fr":"@ksorbs A reasonable expectation"},"languages":["en","de","fr"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":null},{"id":"x-2043274855014084794","type":"post","url":"https://x.com/elonmusk/status/2043274855014084794","title":"Precisely","titles":{"en":"Precisely","de":"Precisely","fr":"Precisely"},"date":"2026-04-12","summary":"Precisely","text":"Precisely","textByLang":{"en":"Precisely","de":"Precisely","fr":"Precisely"},"languages":["en","de","fr"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":null},{"id":"x-2043274481666511164","type":"post","url":"https://x.com/elonmusk/status/2043274481666511164","title":"The Biden administration actively flew illegals into America with no vetting of their…","titles":{"en":"The Biden administration actively flew illegals into America with no vetting of their…","de":"The Biden administration actively flew illegals into America with no vetting of their…","fr":"The Biden administration actively flew illegals into America with no vetting of their…"},"date":"2026-04-12","summary":"The Biden administration actively flew illegals into America with no vetting of their violent criminal past into America and paid for their flights via NGOs.\n\nThis is a war crime. Mayorkas and his buddies orchestrated this and should be on trial for their diabolical deeds.","text":"The Biden administration actively flew illegals into America with no vetting of their violent criminal past into America and paid for their flights via NGOs.\n\nThis is a war crime. Mayorkas and his buddies orchestrated this and should be on trial for their diabolical deeds.","textByLang":{"en":"The Biden administration actively flew illegals into America with no vetting of their violent criminal past into America and paid for their flights via NGOs.\n\nThis is a war crime. Mayorkas and his buddies orchestrated this and should be on trial for their diabolical deeds.","de":"The Biden administration actively flew illegals into America with no vetting of their violent criminal past into America and paid for their flights via NGOs.\n\nThis is a war crime. Mayorkas and his buddies orchestrated this and should be on trial for their diabolical deeds.","fr":"The Biden administration actively flew illegals into America with no vetting of their violent criminal past into America and paid for their flights via NGOs.\n\nThis is a war crime. Mayorkas and his buddies orchestrated this and should be on trial for their diabolical deeds."},"languages":["en","de","fr"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":null},{"id":"x-2043273166878023729","type":"post","url":"https://x.com/elonmusk/status/2043273166878023729","title":"@michaelshermer Any given government program will do the opposite of its name","titles":{"en":"@michaelshermer Any given government program will do the opposite of its name","de":"@michaelshermer Any given government program will do the opposite of its name","fr":"@michaelshermer Any given government program will do the opposite of its name"},"date":"2026-04-12","summary":"@michaelshermer Any given government program will do the opposite of its name","text":"@michaelshermer Any given government program will do the opposite of its name","textByLang":{"en":"@michaelshermer Any given government program will do the opposite of its name","de":"@michaelshermer Any given government program will do the opposite of its name","fr":"@michaelshermer Any given government program will do the opposite of its name"},"languages":["en","de","fr"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":null},{"id":"x-2043272588227695011","type":"post","url":"https://x.com/elonmusk/status/2043272588227695011","title":"@Tychodragonfan @TheLaurenChen 😂","titles":{"en":"@Tychodragonfan @TheLaurenChen 😂","de":"@Tychodragonfan @TheLaurenChen 😂","fr":"@Tychodragonfan @TheLaurenChen 😂"},"date":"2026-04-12","summary":"@Tychodragonfan @TheLaurenChen 😂","text":"@Tychodragonfan @TheLaurenChen 😂","textByLang":{"en":"@Tychodragonfan @TheLaurenChen 😂","de":"@Tychodragonfan @TheLaurenChen 😂","fr":"@Tychodragonfan @TheLaurenChen 😂"},"languages":["en","de","fr"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":null},{"id":"x-2043272302759235961","type":"post","url":"https://x.com/elonmusk/status/2043272302759235961","title":"@DailyGondor @RichardDawkins The orcs are in the shire right now raping and killing the…","titles":{"en":"@DailyGondor @RichardDawkins The orcs are in the shire right now raping and killing the…","de":"@DailyGondor @RichardDawkins The orcs are in the shire right now raping and killing the…","fr":"@DailyGondor @RichardDawkins The orcs are in the shire right now raping and killing the…"},"date":"2026-04-12","summary":"@DailyGondor @RichardDawkins The orcs are in the shire right now raping and killing the hobbits and any hobbit who complains about it is sent to prison. \n\nWTF!!!!","text":"@DailyGondor @RichardDawkins The orcs are in the shire right now raping and killing the hobbits and any hobbit who complains about it is sent to prison. \n\nWTF!!!!","textByLang":{"en":"@DailyGondor @RichardDawkins The orcs are in the shire right now raping and killing the hobbits and any hobbit who complains about it is sent to prison. \n\nWTF!!!!","de":"@DailyGondor @RichardDawkins The orcs are in the shire right now raping and killing the hobbits and any hobbit who complains about it is sent to prison. \n\nWTF!!!!","fr":"@DailyGondor @RichardDawkins The orcs are in the shire right now raping and killing the hobbits and any hobbit who complains about it is sent to prison. \n\nWTF!!!!"},"languages":["en","de","fr"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":null},{"id":"x-2043271827087392984","type":"post","url":"https://x.com/elonmusk/status/2043271827087392984","title":"@777andreberto @RichardDawkins Crichton was a creative genius","titles":{"en":"@777andreberto @RichardDawkins Crichton was a creative genius","de":"@777andreberto @RichardDawkins Crichton was a creative genius","fr":"@777andreberto @RichardDawkins Crichton was a creative genius"},"date":"2026-04-12","summary":"@777andreberto @RichardDawkins Crichton was a creative genius","text":"@777andreberto @RichardDawkins Crichton was a creative genius","textByLang":{"en":"@777andreberto @RichardDawkins Crichton was a creative genius","de":"@777andreberto @RichardDawkins Crichton was a creative genius","fr":"@777andreberto @RichardDawkins Crichton was a creative 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It kills the magic of the story if you can feel…","titles":{"en":"@fandompulse Andy is totally right. It kills the magic of the story if you can feel…","de":"@fandompulse Andy is totally right. It kills the magic of the story if you can feel…","fr":"@fandompulse Andy is totally right. It kills the magic of the story if you can feel…"},"date":"2026-04-12","summary":"@fandompulse Andy is totally right. It kills the magic of the story if you can feel some “social justice” asshole manipulating the scenario.","text":"@fandompulse Andy is totally right. It kills the magic of the story if you can feel some “social justice” asshole manipulating the scenario.","textByLang":{"en":"@fandompulse Andy is totally right. It kills the magic of the story if you can feel some “social justice” asshole manipulating the scenario.","de":"@fandompulse Andy is totally right. 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uptake:"},"languages":["en","de","fr"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":null},{"id":"x-2038807658376130560","type":"post","url":"https://x.com/elonmusk/status/2038807658376130560","title":"@JessicaTetreau ♥️","titles":{"en":"@JessicaTetreau ♥️","de":"@JessicaTetreau ♥️","fr":"@JessicaTetreau ♥️"},"date":"2026-03-31","summary":"@JessicaTetreau ♥️","text":"@JessicaTetreau ♥️","textByLang":{"en":"@JessicaTetreau ♥️","de":"@JessicaTetreau ♥️","fr":"@JessicaTetreau ♥️"},"languages":["en","de","fr"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":null},{"id":"x-2038790291910721940","type":"post","url":"https://x.com/elonmusk/status/2038790291910721940","title":"@ID_AA_Carmack @PalmerLuckey Yeah!","titles":{"en":"@ID_AA_Carmack @PalmerLuckey Yeah!","de":"@ID_AA_Carmack @PalmerLuckey Yeah!","fr":"@ID_AA_Carmack @PalmerLuckey Yeah!"},"date":"2026-03-31","summary":"@ID_AA_Carmack @PalmerLuckey Yeah!","text":"@ID_AA_Carmack @PalmerLuckey Yeah!","textByLang":{"en":"@ID_AA_Carmack @PalmerLuckey Yeah!","de":"@ID_AA_Carmack @PalmerLuckey Yeah!","fr":"@ID_AA_Carmack @PalmerLuckey Yeah!"},"languages":["en","de","fr"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":null},{"id":"x-2038759553807106413","type":"post","url":"https://x.com/elonmusk/status/2038759553807106413","title":"@SonohennoKuma After Fukushima, to support Japan, I personally visited the area and ate…","titles":{"en":"@SonohennoKuma After Fukushima, to support Japan, I personally visited the area and ate…","de":"@SonohennoKuma After Fukushima, to support Japan, I personally visited the area and ate…","fr":"@SonohennoKuma After Fukushima, to support Japan, I personally visited the area and ate…"},"date":"2026-03-30","summary":"@SonohennoKuma After Fukushima, to support Japan, I personally visited the area and ate locally grown food to prove that there was no nuclear danger.\n\nI also donated a small solar system.","text":"@SonohennoKuma After Fukushima, to support Japan, I personally visited the area and ate locally grown food to prove that there was no nuclear danger.\n\nI also donated a small solar system.","textByLang":{"en":"@SonohennoKuma After Fukushima, to support Japan, I personally visited the area and ate locally grown food to prove that there was no nuclear danger.\n\nI also donated a small solar system.","de":"@SonohennoKuma After Fukushima, to support Japan, I personally visited the area and ate locally grown food to prove that there was no nuclear danger.\n\nI also donated a small solar system.","fr":"@SonohennoKuma After Fukushima, to support Japan, I personally visited the area and ate locally grown food to prove that there was no nuclear danger.\n\nI also donated a small solar system."},"languages":["en","de","fr"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":null},{"id":"x-2038756516048916578","type":"post","url":"https://x.com/elonmusk/status/2038756516048916578","title":"@xdNiBoR The future of AI is primarily video understanding and generation, because…","titles":{"en":"@xdNiBoR The future of AI is primarily video understanding and generation, because…","de":"@xdNiBoR The future of AI is primarily video understanding and generation, because…","fr":"@xdNiBoR The future of AI is primarily video understanding and generation, because…"},"date":"2026-03-30","summary":"@xdNiBoR The future of AI is primarily video understanding and generation, because photons are by far the highest bandwidth form of communication. These are essential tools for AGI.\n\nWorth mentioning that Imagine is positive gross margin for @xAI, not a money loser.","text":"@xdNiBoR The future of AI is primarily video understanding and generation, because photons are by far the highest bandwidth form of communication. These are essential tools for AGI.\n\nWorth mentioning that Imagine is positive gross margin for @xAI, not a money loser.","textByLang":{"en":"@xdNiBoR The future of AI is primarily video understanding and generation, because photons are by far the highest bandwidth form of communication. These are essential tools for AGI.\n\nWorth mentioning that Imagine is positive gross margin for @xAI, not a money loser.","de":"@xdNiBoR The future of AI is primarily video understanding and generation, because photons are by far the highest bandwidth form of communication. These are essential tools for AGI.\n\nWorth mentioning that Imagine is positive gross margin for @xAI, not a money loser.","fr":"@xdNiBoR The future of AI is primarily video understanding and generation, because photons are by far the highest bandwidth form of communication. These are essential tools for AGI.\n\nWorth mentioning that Imagine is positive gross margin for @xAI, not a money loser."},"languages":["en","de","fr"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":null},{"id":"x-2038755162165321923","type":"post","url":"https://x.com/elonmusk/status/2038755162165321923","title":"@tszzl Yeah","titles":{"en":"@tszzl Yeah","de":"@tszzl Yeah","fr":"@tszzl Yeah"},"date":"2026-03-30","summary":"@tszzl Yeah","text":"@tszzl Yeah","textByLang":{"en":"@tszzl Yeah","de":"@tszzl Yeah","fr":"@tszzl Yeah"},"languages":["en","de","fr"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":null},{"id":"x-2038755037032428007","type":"post","url":"https://x.com/elonmusk/status/2038755037032428007","title":"@5ducks5 💯","titles":{"en":"@5ducks5 💯","de":"@5ducks5 💯","fr":"@5ducks5 💯"},"date":"2026-03-30","summary":"@5ducks5 💯","text":"@5ducks5 💯","textByLang":{"en":"@5ducks5 💯","de":"@5ducks5 💯","fr":"@5ducks5 💯"},"languages":["en","de","fr"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":null},{"id":"x-2038754819536749046","type":"post","url":"https://x.com/elonmusk/status/2038754819536749046","title":"@kangminlee @Alt_Azn @philthatremains The US system is currently biased against Whites…","titles":{"en":"@kangminlee @Alt_Azn @philthatremains The US system is currently biased against Whites…","de":"@kangminlee @Alt_Azn @philthatremains The US system is currently biased against Whites…","fr":"@kangminlee @Alt_Azn @philthatremains The US system is currently biased against Whites…"},"date":"2026-03-30","summary":"@kangminlee @Alt_Azn @philthatremains The US system is currently biased against Whites and Asians","text":"@kangminlee @Alt_Azn @philthatremains The US system is currently biased against Whites and Asians","textByLang":{"en":"@kangminlee @Alt_Azn @philthatremains The US system is currently biased against Whites and Asians","de":"@kangminlee @Alt_Azn @philthatremains The US system is currently biased against Whites and Asians","fr":"@kangminlee @Alt_Azn @philthatremains The US system is currently biased against Whites and Asians"},"languages":["en","de","fr"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":null},{"id":"x-2038754135806509359","type":"post","url":"https://x.com/elonmusk/status/2038754135806509359","title":"@nic_carter Grok expert analysis","titles":{"en":"@nic_carter Grok expert analysis","de":"@nic_carter Grok expert analysis","fr":"@nic_carter Grok expert analysis"},"date":"2026-03-30","summary":"@nic_carter Grok expert analysis","text":"@nic_carter Grok expert analysis","textByLang":{"en":"@nic_carter Grok expert analysis","de":"@nic_carter Grok expert analysis","fr":"@nic_carter Grok expert analysis"},"languages":["en","de","fr"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":null},{"id":"x-2038753423303245825","type":"post","url":"https://x.com/elonmusk/status/2038753423303245825","title":"Pretty accurate","titles":{"en":"Pretty accurate","de":"Pretty accurate","fr":"Pretty accurate"},"date":"2026-03-30","summary":"Pretty accurate","text":"Pretty accurate","textByLang":{"en":"Pretty accurate","de":"Pretty accurate","fr":"Pretty accurate"},"languages":["en","de","fr"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":null},{"id":"x-2038752777812533729","type":"post","url":"https://x.com/elonmusk/status/2038752777812533729","title":"@TruthCutter @kengakusha1 🎯","titles":{"en":"@TruthCutter @kengakusha1 🎯","de":"@TruthCutter @kengakusha1 🎯","fr":"@TruthCutter @kengakusha1 🎯"},"date":"2026-03-30","summary":"@TruthCutter @kengakusha1 🎯","text":"@TruthCutter @kengakusha1 🎯","textByLang":{"en":"@TruthCutter @kengakusha1 🎯","de":"@TruthCutter @kengakusha1 🎯","fr":"@TruthCutter @kengakusha1 🎯"},"languages":["en","de","fr"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":null},{"id":"x-2038747119453110746","type":"post","url":"https://x.com/elonmusk/status/2038747119453110746","title":"34th launch &amp; landing of the same rocket","titles":{"en":"34th launch &amp; landing of the same rocket","de":"34th launch &amp; landing of the same rocket","fr":"34th launch &amp; landing of the same rocket"},"date":"2026-03-30","summary":"34th launch &amp; landing of the same rocket","text":"34th launch &amp; landing of the same rocket","textByLang":{"en":"34th launch &amp; landing of the same rocket","de":"34th launch &amp; landing of the same rocket","fr":"34th launch &amp; landing of the same rocket"},"languages":["en","de","fr"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":null},{"id":"x-2038719663514022256","type":"post","url":"https://x.com/elonmusk/status/2038719663514022256","title":"@Jason True","titles":{"en":"@Jason True","de":"@Jason True","fr":"@Jason True"},"date":"2026-03-30","summary":"@Jason True","text":"@Jason True","textByLang":{"en":"@Jason True","de":"@Jason True","fr":"@Jason True"},"languages":["en","de","fr"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":null},{"id":"x-2038719355287167187","type":"post","url":"https://x.com/elonmusk/status/2038719355287167187","title":"@NiohBerg Wow","titles":{"en":"@NiohBerg Wow","de":"@NiohBerg Wow","fr":"@NiohBerg Wow"},"date":"2026-03-30","summary":"@NiohBerg Wow","text":"@NiohBerg Wow","textByLang":{"en":"@NiohBerg Wow","de":"@NiohBerg Wow","fr":"@NiohBerg Wow"},"languages":["en","de","fr"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":null},{"id":"x-2038719044514402575","type":"post","url":"https://x.com/elonmusk/status/2038719044514402575","title":"@beffjezos It would be amazing if AI could figure out how to get anywhere close to the…","titles":{"en":"@beffjezos It would be amazing if AI could figure out how to get anywhere close to the…","de":"@beffjezos It would be amazing if AI could figure out how to get anywhere close to the…","fr":"@beffjezos It would be amazing if AI could figure out how to get anywhere close to the…"},"date":"2026-03-30","summary":"@beffjezos It would be amazing if AI could figure out how to get anywhere close to the speed of light and then slow down for landing on aline planets","text":"@beffjezos It would be amazing if AI could figure out how to get anywhere close to the speed of light and then slow down for landing on aline planets","textByLang":{"en":"@beffjezos It would be amazing if AI could figure out how to get anywhere close to the speed of light and then slow down for landing on aline planets","de":"@beffjezos It would be amazing if AI could figure out how to get anywhere close to the speed of light and then slow down for landing on aline planets","fr":"@beffjezos It would be amazing if AI could figure out how to get anywhere close to the speed of light and then slow down for landing on aline planets"},"languages":["en","de","fr"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":null},{"id":"x-2038717040664719815","type":"post","url":"https://x.com/elonmusk/status/2038717040664719815","title":"@nypost @Inevitablewest How odd","titles":{"en":"@nypost @Inevitablewest How odd","de":"@nypost @Inevitablewest How odd","fr":"@nypost @Inevitablewest How odd"},"date":"2026-03-30","summary":"@nypost @Inevitablewest How odd","text":"@nypost @Inevitablewest How odd","textByLang":{"en":"@nypost @Inevitablewest How odd","de":"@nypost @Inevitablewest How odd","fr":"@nypost @Inevitablewest How odd"},"languages":["en","de","fr"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":null},{"id":"x-2038716537511743544","type":"post","url":"https://x.com/elonmusk/status/2038716537511743544","title":"@Polymarket Moreover, it is not not reciprocal at all. There are many one-sided laws in…","titles":{"en":"@Polymarket Moreover, it is not not reciprocal at all. There are many one-sided laws in…","de":"@Polymarket Moreover, it is not not reciprocal at all. There are many one-sided laws in…","fr":"@Polymarket Moreover, it is not not reciprocal at all. There are many one-sided laws in…"},"date":"2026-03-30","summary":"@Polymarket Moreover, it is not not reciprocal at all.\n\nThere are many one-sided laws in Canada that mandate French at the expense of English. Extremely hypocritical and unfair!","text":"@Polymarket Moreover, it is not not reciprocal at all.\n\nThere are many one-sided laws in Canada that mandate French at the expense of English. Extremely hypocritical and unfair!","textByLang":{"en":"@Polymarket Moreover, it is not not reciprocal at all.\n\nThere are many one-sided laws in Canada that mandate French at the expense of English. Extremely hypocritical and unfair!","de":"@Polymarket Moreover, it is not not reciprocal at all.\n\nThere are many one-sided laws in Canada that mandate French at the expense of English. Extremely hypocritical and unfair!","fr":"@Polymarket Moreover, it is not not reciprocal at all.\n\nThere are many one-sided laws in Canada that mandate French at the expense of English. Extremely hypocritical and unfair!"},"languages":["en","de","fr"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":null},{"id":"x-2038692407051763761","type":"post","url":"https://x.com/elonmusk/status/2038692407051763761","title":"@Polymarket That’s crazy","titles":{"en":"@Polymarket That’s crazy","de":"@Polymarket That’s crazy","fr":"@Polymarket That’s crazy"},"date":"2026-03-30","summary":"@Polymarket That’s crazy","text":"@Polymarket That’s crazy","textByLang":{"en":"@Polymarket That’s crazy","de":"@Polymarket That’s crazy","fr":"@Polymarket That’s crazy"},"languages":["en","de","fr"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":null},{"id":"x-2038680613017010592","type":"post","url":"https://x.com/elonmusk/status/2038680613017010592","title":"@yamanakanobody Resist the global homogenists!","titles":{"en":"@yamanakanobody Resist the global homogenists!","de":"@yamanakanobody Resist the global homogenists!","fr":"@yamanakanobody Resist the global homogenists!"},"date":"2026-03-30","summary":"@yamanakanobody Resist the global homogenists!","text":"@yamanakanobody Resist the global homogenists!","textByLang":{"en":"@yamanakanobody Resist the global homogenists!","de":"@yamanakanobody Resist the global homogenists!","fr":"@yamanakanobody Resist the global homogenists!"},"languages":["en","de","fr"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":null},{"id":"x-2038678904601510255","type":"post","url":"https://x.com/elonmusk/status/2038678904601510255","title":"@AiPinfu2003 😂","titles":{"en":"@AiPinfu2003 😂","de":"@AiPinfu2003 😂","fr":"@AiPinfu2003 😂"},"date":"2026-03-30","summary":"@AiPinfu2003 😂","text":"@AiPinfu2003 😂","textByLang":{"en":"@AiPinfu2003 😂","de":"@AiPinfu2003 😂","fr":"@AiPinfu2003 😂"},"languages":["en","de","fr"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":null},{"id":"x-2038658353292009895","type":"post","url":"https://x.com/elonmusk/status/2038658353292009895","title":"@yoyonofukuoka Actually, we think Japan is better in many ways!","titles":{"en":"@yoyonofukuoka Actually, we think Japan is better in many ways!","de":"@yoyonofukuoka Actually, we think Japan is better in many ways!","fr":"@yoyonofukuoka Actually, we think Japan is better in many ways!"},"date":"2026-03-30","summary":"@yoyonofukuoka Actually, we think Japan is better in many ways!","text":"@yoyonofukuoka Actually, we think Japan is better in many ways!","textByLang":{"en":"@yoyonofukuoka Actually, we think Japan is better in many ways!","de":"@yoyonofukuoka Actually, we think Japan is better in many ways!","fr":"@yoyonofukuoka Actually, we think Japan is better in many ways!"},"languages":["en","de","fr"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":null},{"id":"x-2038657622421946456","type":"post","url":"https://x.com/elonmusk/status/2038657622421946456","title":"@hokkori_nekko 💯","titles":{"en":"@hokkori_nekko 💯","de":"@hokkori_nekko 💯","fr":"@hokkori_nekko 💯"},"date":"2026-03-30","summary":"@hokkori_nekko 💯","text":"@hokkori_nekko 💯","textByLang":{"en":"@hokkori_nekko 💯","de":"@hokkori_nekko 💯","fr":"@hokkori_nekko 💯"},"languages":["en","de","fr"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":null},{"id":"moonshots-239-musk-abundance-2026","type":"interview","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N5KCm_55xeQ","title":"Abundance Summit","titles":{"en":"Abundance Summit","de":"Abundance Summit","fr":"Abundance Summit"},"date":"2026-03-18","summary":"Live with Peter Diamandis at the 2026 Abundance Summit, Elon Musk discusses Grok 4.20, the AI \"hard takeoff,\" recursive self-improvement, Optimus 3 and the path to a post-scarcity, universal-high-income economy.","text":"audience and as you can see still trying to monetize hope. Yeah, yeah, you look like you're in great shape. I'm doing great. Last time I saw you >> sort of youth serum things going on or what? It's it's our longevity X prize. We're we're getting there, buddy. We're getting there. I think I think in our last conversation you're getting on board with the idea of extended longevity, yes? Uh Yeah. Okay. [laughter] I'll leave it at that. Some degree.\n\nI mean like I don't know if we want everyone to live forever or whatever, but I think uh health span and and not you know, having an extended period [clears throat] of senescence where where you're just drooling on yourself sounds like a good idea. We we want to avoid that. Yeah. So, first off, congratulations on the merger of SpaceX and xAI. Baller move. Uh going to power humanity's first Dyson swarm? So, I'm curious uh Uh it truly truly is.\n\nWhat's your timeline for launching these data centers and how much bandwidth do you think you can get in the first year? Give us a sense of the speed at which you're going to be making this happen. Uh yeah, so SpaceX is um has filed SpaceX is in a quiet period. I I can't actually uh tell you things that would cause a problems. Uh yeah. >> [laughter] >> I'll I'll leave it I'll leave it at that. I appreciate that.\n\nBut I can't wait for uh for the speed. You know, we had a conversation here on Monday with with Eric Schmidt uh and with one of the leads from one of the other hyper scalers. I won't mention who, but I'm curious where you feel we are in recursive self-improvement. Are we there? Do you see Grok doing recursive self-improvement at this point? And how and what's the timeline for AGI and ASI? Give us a sense of that.\n\nYeah, I I I think we're we've been on recursive improvement for a while here. Um you say if if it's really if you mean by like recursive self-improvement without a human in the loop. Is that what you mean? I do. I I on the on the AI software side. I mean humans are gradually getting less and less in the loop on the recursive self-improvement. So, you know, every successive model uh is is built by the one before it.\n\nSo, that that that that is happening to a large degree, but it's it's not yet fully automated. Um it may be there end of this year, but I'm not going to wait until the next year. Do you see a hard takeoff at that point? We're in the hard takeoff. Okay. Right now. Yes. I mean, look at I mean at this point I go to sleep, there's some massive AI breakthrough, and when I wake up there's another one. Yes. Yeah, it's hard to keep track, honestly.\n\nIt's a It's a bit of a head spinner. Yeah, well, I think a lot of that head spinning is happening from you, too. Yeah. Uh Well, you know, Grok is doing pretty well, and in some metrics by some metrics it's the best. For example, it's uh the best at predicting things, which I you know, it's arguably the the best metric for intelligence. Um the new Grok 4. 20 is it's really really good. Um we're we're currently behind on coding.\n\nUm The reason I was put put late for this was that I was just in a giant sort of all hands sort of on coding, just going through all of the things that need to happen to uh essentially catch up and exceed uh our competitors on uh coding. Um which I think I think we'll do. I feel Yeah, we'll we should probably get there by the middle of this year.\n\nUm And uh And then I I think people don't don't quite realize just how much intelligence there will be or you know, just how far it will exceed human intelligence. To a degree that is uh impossible to fully understand. Um but you can certainly imagine a situation where we Let's say if let's say a million times more energy is harnessed uh than all of Earth's current electricity usage.\n\nThat would still only be roughly a millionth of the sun's energy output. So, essentially if you increase Earth's economy by a factor of a million, it's still roughly a trillion So, since we're a trillionth of the sun's energy, if you increase Earth's economy in in in terms of electricity usage by roughly a million, you'll be roughly 1 millionth only of the sun's energy harnessed.\n\nBut what is it What is What is an economy or an intelligence using a million times more electricity than all of Earth's civilization think about or look like or do? It's going to be something pretty magnificent. Uh The challenge will be even vaguely appreciating that level of intelligence. Uh but it's it's safe to say it will it will solve everything you can possibly think of. Yes. >> Uh longevity being, you know, You're certainly one of them.\n\nUm And um I I I do enjoy your unrelenting optimism. Um Thank you, pal. I see you I see you if you uh Hope. Hope. Yeah, exactly. You've taken to heart monetizing hope, uh which is pretty funny. Yeah, it was it was It was Grok's It was Grok's marketing advice to me when you roasted me on >> [laughter] >> Right. Okay. Grok was seeing you and saying you monetize hope.\n\nBut hey, if you you're going to manage to further monetizing misery >> Yes, but yes. Um For sure. Yeah. Um But but yeah, just the the when you when you have AI AI and robots are going to increase the the like economic output or or by by so many orders of magnitude we we we cannot possibly comprehend it. We're likely in the very short time to become a minority, then a vast minority, then a microscopic minority of intelligence on this planet.\n\nUm Yes, not even on this planet, but in the solar system. >> Yes, for sure. Because um Like like if if you know, your best case outcome for uh Earth for intelligence is roughly 1 billionth of the sun's energy. Uh that's your best case outcome. Uh if you if you if you generate intelligence only on Earth. Intercept it, right? Yes.\n\nYes, cuz roughly one roughly half a billionth of the sun's energy hits Earth, and that's the vast majority of energy that that's out there um that that we can access. Uh so uh really the intelligence in the solar system will be many orders of magnitude greater than the intelligence on Earth itself. How May I ask you a question, Elon? Um how far out can you see? How many years out can you make reasonable predictions right now?\n\nIt's hard to predict the the path exactly, especially if it cuz often things are kind of an S curve or a series of S curves where it starts off slow grows exponentially hits linear zone and then goes logarithmic.\n\nUm that generally has been what what I've seen with the breakthroughs in in AI AI for example is you'll you'll there'll be some breakthrough it'll do have an S curve but and then looks like it's just going to go to infinity but then you hit logarithmic returns until there's another breakthrough. Yeah. Um so progress in AI is just a sort of series of you know sort of overlapping S curves um or connected S curves.\n\nUm I mean there was a point where you could probably predict out a decade or two decades. What are your thoughts now? >> Yeah. Okay, this is going to sound pretty crazy. That's okay. We we've been we've been talking about crazy all night. >> there's a separate acceptable audience to wild prognostications. Yes. Um >> [snorts] >> I'd say the economy is 10 times this its current size in 10 years. Greater than. Okay.\n\nUm Yeah, you >> really saying something. Yeah, you said triple digit growth in in 5 plus years from now on on GDP. And 10x the economy. But in terms of your ability to >> Like I I I feel like that's uh that's that's a 10x in roughly 10 years um I feel is a I I actually feel like comfortable prediction uh with There's obviously if there's like World War or something um that that could put a kink in those plans uh or those expectations. Yeah.\n\nUh but in the absence of World War current trends continue I would say the the economy 10x in 10 years. Love it. Can you give us an We had a bunch of robots >> have a base on the moon. Yes. And we'll And we'll have >> have people on Mars. And we'll have mass drivers on the moon. Yes. Um I think so. In 10 years, I think I think we'll have a mass driver on the moon in 10 years. I love it. Uh Gerard K. O'Neill's vision uh being fulfilled.\n\nUh we had uh four robots on stage here this year um on the at the Abundance Summit. I I look forward to Optimus. I'm curious, Optimus 3 timeline and in [clears throat] particular when can I buy one or two? When's uh when do you expect Optimus to go into commercial uh for commercial sale? Or will you be leasing it? Well, we're in the final stages of completion of Optimus 3, which is really going to be by far the most advanced robot in the world.\n\nNothing's even close. Yeah. Um In fact, I haven't even seen any seen any demos of robots that are as good as Optimus 3, frankly. Maybe they're out there or they're secret or something, I don't know, but um You know, I I I have to make sure I'm saying things that are reasonably public as well, of course. Uh Of course. We're streaming this on X. Yeah. Okay, this is pretty public knowledge, I guess. >> Yes.\n\n>> [laughter] >> Um Yeah, I I I think we'll start production on Optimus 3 this summer. Um but but very slow at first. Yeah. Um like it you know the sort of classic S curve ramp of manufacturing units versus time. Um and then probably reach high volume production around summer next year. Uh and then um you know, we'll we'll have Optimus 4 you know, the design likely next year.\n\nI got to try to release a new robot design every year and I'm an improved robot design every year. When when Dave Blunden and I were at the Gigafactory, uh it was extraordinary experience, 11 and a half million square feet for the Tesla. And then I think you said you're building out 9 and a half million square feet for Optimus there as well, which is uh which is extraordinary. Um let's let's >> 9 square feet [clears throat] round numbers. Yeah.\n\nYeah. Yeah. I had to That'll be that'll be that'll be quite That that's going to be a a a a a new factory design, too. Like it's still not different from other factories. How far before we have robots building robots? I mean, you automated so much of the Gigafactory already uh where there are humans playing a small role. Do the robots just play the role that humans are playing in that regard? Uh we still have a lot of humans building things. Mhm.\n\nUm you know, Tesla direct employees are uh building things uh or like basically people in the factory are either building or managing people who are building. Uh roughly 100,000. Uh so we have a lot of people. Is it To- Tesla total head count is around 150k. Of of which 2/3 are, you know, in the factory in one form or another. And then our suppliers there's probably uh maybe a a million or two million people in our suppliers type of thing.\n\nSo, it's it's a lot of people. Um What what we do expect that is that is that the output per per person at Tesla becomes very, very high. Yeah. So, we're not planning any like layoffs or reductions in personnel. In fact, we will increase our head count. Um But, the output per human at Tesla is going to get nutty high. When we were to Like you can't really believe it, you know.\n\nWhen we were together um we discussed the idea of sustainable abundance on our podcast and you reinforced the idea that we have a coming age of universal high income uh which has become a point of discussion beyond UBI. But, I'm just wondering if you have any thoughts on how we get there. Have you reflected on that any further?\n\nAnd and more so, you know, we talked about a time frame of civil unrest, you know, two, three, four, five years uh probably uh a lot of COVID-like checks in the interim until we get to a demonetization uh and a you know, deflation that leads us to UHI. Any more reflections on that? Cuz that's a really People need that hope and that vision. Yeah. >> I mean, to be clear, I don't I don't I don't think we should be sort of complacent.\n\nWe need to We do need to be careful because the future is a range of possible outcomes and uh they're not all great. Um But, I I at this point I I I I do agree with you that it's it's likely to be great. Um you know, it's probably 80% likely, maybe more likely to be great. And uh and I and I do think we'll have universal high income.\n\nWe're we're We're just issuing money to people, you know, and and they are really just uh because the output of goods and services will far so far exceed the money supply that um you know, that that that effectively have deflation cuz just deflation is just the ratio of the outputs of goods and services to the money supply.\n\nUm so, that that's uh so if you if you if the rate of growth of of goods and services far exceeds the rate of growth of the money supply, which I predict will happen, uh then uh you'll have deflation. Yes. And a lot of a lot of people spinning up new companies, competing against each other, driving the price down, and increasing the variability and deflation. Faster and faster.\n\nYeah, it's basically AI and robots are going to make so much stuff and provide so many services that uh they'll actually run out of things to do for the humans. They'll just run out of things to do for the humans. And then they they'll you know, there's there's only so much that humans can even express that they want.\n\nSo, you go back to my example of like if you go a million times greater than the US economy, you you've long since saturated all human desire. Uh you know, like maybe like even if you go a thousand times more than our current economy, thousand times, you you you've probably already saturated saturated the human anything people can think of that they want. So, do do you think the the value of money is going to significantly decrease?\n\nWill it Will we go post-capitalist? Yeah, I think money will stop being relevant at some point in the future. So, just as you're becoming a >> it's it's it's it's probably something like an in-banks uh culture sort of future. Um And I I think the AI down the road will really not use uh human currency. It will just care about uh power and mass, wattage and tonnage. Yeah. It's kind of ironic then, right?\n\nJust as you're becoming a multi-trillionaire, money starts to have less value. Um Yeah. Pretty much. Um Uh yeah. You know, this this all this stuff is just really just trillionaire sort of represents like some percentage ownership in companies that I have >> Yeah. uh you know, built and it's not like sitting in a bank account, you know, it's just it's just literally I own a percentage of the companies.\n\nThe companies are doing lots of useful things. The value of the company grows. I own a percentage of the companies and that's the sums up to that number which seems high. Yeah. You know, it's I I I was interviewed by somebody who was asking me about your your drive, what drives you. And I said Elon's driven to solve problems. He's driven to make life in the world better by just solving the biggest problems over and over and over again.\n\nAnd if someone else were solving them, he wouldn't need to. But no one else is solving them. So, I just want to say, >> Yeah. thank you for that, pal. Thank you for that. Uh you're welcome. Um >> [applause] >> I >> [applause] >> I I am curious. Do you think that democracy and our modern institutions can keep up with a supersonic tsunami coming our way? Are they just going to fall in its way? They're just going to break down. How do we deal?\n\nI mean, it's called the singularity for a reason, you know, which [laughter] is that it's hard to predict what happens in the in the singularity. I mean, Grok's logo is the singularity. >> I love it. It's a beautiful logo behind you, by the way. It's gorgeous. Yeah, thank you. Uh yeah. It It's sort of the light The light The The The halo around a a black hole is that the mass and light are falling in type of thing.\n\nUm It's hard It's hard to know what happens inside the singularity. Um but it's going to be very interesting. I We're going to live in The future will be very entertaining. Of that I'm confident. >> Yes. Um And uh I I think also like AI and robotics also I mean we're going to solve our budget deficit, frankly, and and not just go bankrupt as a country.\n\nUm So I I'm I'm You know, you've had an influence on me in that I'm like just I've just decided to be more optimistic. It's like we just should be more optimistic. >> Thank you, pal. >> I wasn't an optimist, but I was like maybe dwelling a little too much on the negative stuff. It's all It's all upside being an optimist. And a realist a little bit. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, exactly.\n\nYou don't want to be complacent or just assume everything's going to go well, but try to make it go well. Um But I mean, there will be some pretty amazing things that happen.\n\nSo, if you've got uh humanoid robots that are that have very high dexterity and uh and and and are incredibly smart, it means that everyone on Earth will have access to better medical care than than uh than the richest person on Earth, which by the way, I would say like, you know, if I'm allegedly the richest person in the world I think actually sovereigns are richer than me, by the way.\n\nBut But it's like I like you know, I like I had to have like an like a neck surgery three times cuz the first two ones were done wrong. You know, like this is I'm like what the you know. Um >> [laughter] >> So And and I'm like my back still hurts a little bit. I'm like can AI please solve back pain? That would be a huge win. And I think it will. Yep. So you know, back pain sucks.\n\nI think that's maybe like a you know, someone asked why do people get grumpy when they get older? It's cuz back pain. You know, it's like if your back hurts all the time you can't sleep well, you're going to be grumpy. We had uh Um but You you We had David Sinclair on stage this morning and he's going into human trials with ERW 100 his partial epigenetic reprogramming.\n\nAnd uh one of the one of the papers recently published shows it uh enables joint repair. And so back pain may be one of the things that uh it eliminates. So Uh That'll be amazing. Yeah, for sure. For sure. >> Every honestly average happiness level for humans would just go up so tremendously if you just solve back pain because it's not a question of of if you will get back pain, it's when you know, you'll get back pain.\n\nI I I keep on invite I keep on inviting you to come down to Fountain Life in in in Dallas. We'll we'll help you out, but sometime when you have time. >> you have like what do you I understand like you can get like MRI and CAT scans and everything, but like what do you do with that? You know, it's like I'm happy to happy to send you the list. I'll I'll DM you the list of therapeutics. >> some or something. Yeah, exactly.\n\n>> [laughter] >> Uh you know, um listen, you've been so generous. Next up on stage with me is one of another great Moonshot entrepreneur Ben Lam who runs Colossal uh the de-extinction company. Uh you know, the woolly mammoth and 15 other species. I heard I heard you say you might want a mini woolly mammoth. Is that Is that true? >> Yeah, I think it'd be really cool to have a pet miniature woolly mammoth. That'd be pretty epic. Okay.\n\nI'll I'll put a word in with you for you with uh with with Ben. >> [laughter] >> They're very adorable. Little things just running around trumpeting away and it's like look at this this >> [laughter] >> would be a great little pet. Amazing. And also I can somebody please do Jurassic Park in real life? I'd definitely go out even if there was some risk of death. That'd be super cool.\n\nI think if anybody's going to do that it's it's Ben Lam in Colossal. He's re- he's engineering living life products. Someone asked him recently if he can make a Pikachu and he said probably. I think Yeah. Well, Jurassic Jurassic World or whatever that would be great. All right, I'll ask him. Elon, so grateful for you coming and joining us and sharing. Thank you my Thank you my friend. Let's give it up for Elon Musk. I have the power.\n\nNothing's going to stop us. >> [music] >> You have the power.","textByLang":{"en":"audience and as you can see still trying to monetize hope. Yeah, yeah, you look like you're in great shape. I'm doing great. Last time I saw you >> sort of youth serum things going on or what? It's it's our longevity X prize. We're we're getting there, buddy. We're getting there. I think I think in our last conversation you're getting on board with the idea of extended longevity, yes? Uh Yeah. Okay. [laughter] I'll leave it at that. Some degree.\n\nI mean like I don't know if we want everyone to live forever or whatever, but I think uh health span and and not you know, having an extended period [clears throat] of senescence where where you're just drooling on yourself sounds like a good idea. We we want to avoid that. Yeah. So, first off, congratulations on the merger of SpaceX and xAI. Baller move. Uh going to power humanity's first Dyson swarm? So, I'm curious uh Uh it truly truly is.\n\nWhat's your timeline for launching these data centers and how much bandwidth do you think you can get in the first year? Give us a sense of the speed at which you're going to be making this happen. Uh yeah, so SpaceX is um has filed SpaceX is in a quiet period. I I can't actually uh tell you things that would cause a problems. Uh yeah. >> [laughter] >> I'll I'll leave it I'll leave it at that. I appreciate that.\n\nBut I can't wait for uh for the speed. You know, we had a conversation here on Monday with with Eric Schmidt uh and with one of the leads from one of the other hyper scalers. I won't mention who, but I'm curious where you feel we are in recursive self-improvement. Are we there? Do you see Grok doing recursive self-improvement at this point? And how and what's the timeline for AGI and ASI? Give us a sense of that.\n\nYeah, I I I think we're we've been on recursive improvement for a while here. Um you say if if it's really if you mean by like recursive self-improvement without a human in the loop. Is that what you mean? I do. I I on the on the AI software side. I mean humans are gradually getting less and less in the loop on the recursive self-improvement. So, you know, every successive model uh is is built by the one before it.\n\nSo, that that that that is happening to a large degree, but it's it's not yet fully automated. Um it may be there end of this year, but I'm not going to wait until the next year. Do you see a hard takeoff at that point? We're in the hard takeoff. Okay. Right now. Yes. I mean, look at I mean at this point I go to sleep, there's some massive AI breakthrough, and when I wake up there's another one. Yes. Yeah, it's hard to keep track, honestly.\n\nIt's a It's a bit of a head spinner. Yeah, well, I think a lot of that head spinning is happening from you, too. Yeah. Uh Well, you know, Grok is doing pretty well, and in some metrics by some metrics it's the best. For example, it's uh the best at predicting things, which I you know, it's arguably the the best metric for intelligence. Um the new Grok 4. 20 is it's really really good. Um we're we're currently behind on coding.\n\nUm The reason I was put put late for this was that I was just in a giant sort of all hands sort of on coding, just going through all of the things that need to happen to uh essentially catch up and exceed uh our competitors on uh coding. Um which I think I think we'll do. I feel Yeah, we'll we should probably get there by the middle of this year.\n\nUm And uh And then I I think people don't don't quite realize just how much intelligence there will be or you know, just how far it will exceed human intelligence. To a degree that is uh impossible to fully understand. Um but you can certainly imagine a situation where we Let's say if let's say a million times more energy is harnessed uh than all of Earth's current electricity usage.\n\nThat would still only be roughly a millionth of the sun's energy output. So, essentially if you increase Earth's economy by a factor of a million, it's still roughly a trillion So, since we're a trillionth of the sun's energy, if you increase Earth's economy in in in terms of electricity usage by roughly a million, you'll be roughly 1 millionth only of the sun's energy harnessed.\n\nBut what is it What is What is an economy or an intelligence using a million times more electricity than all of Earth's civilization think about or look like or do? It's going to be something pretty magnificent. Uh The challenge will be even vaguely appreciating that level of intelligence. Uh but it's it's safe to say it will it will solve everything you can possibly think of. Yes. >> Uh longevity being, you know, You're certainly one of them.\n\nUm And um I I I do enjoy your unrelenting optimism. Um Thank you, pal. I see you I see you if you uh Hope. Hope. Yeah, exactly. You've taken to heart monetizing hope, uh which is pretty funny. Yeah, it was it was It was Grok's It was Grok's marketing advice to me when you roasted me on >> [laughter] >> Right. Okay. Grok was seeing you and saying you monetize hope.\n\nBut hey, if you you're going to manage to further monetizing misery >> Yes, but yes. Um For sure. Yeah. Um But but yeah, just the the when you when you have AI AI and robots are going to increase the the like economic output or or by by so many orders of magnitude we we we cannot possibly comprehend it. We're likely in the very short time to become a minority, then a vast minority, then a microscopic minority of intelligence on this planet.\n\nUm Yes, not even on this planet, but in the solar system. >> Yes, for sure. Because um Like like if if you know, your best case outcome for uh Earth for intelligence is roughly 1 billionth of the sun's energy. Uh that's your best case outcome. Uh if you if you if you generate intelligence only on Earth. Intercept it, right? Yes.\n\nYes, cuz roughly one roughly half a billionth of the sun's energy hits Earth, and that's the vast majority of energy that that's out there um that that we can access. Uh so uh really the intelligence in the solar system will be many orders of magnitude greater than the intelligence on Earth itself. How May I ask you a question, Elon? Um how far out can you see? How many years out can you make reasonable predictions right now?\n\nIt's hard to predict the the path exactly, especially if it cuz often things are kind of an S curve or a series of S curves where it starts off slow grows exponentially hits linear zone and then goes logarithmic.\n\nUm that generally has been what what I've seen with the breakthroughs in in AI AI for example is you'll you'll there'll be some breakthrough it'll do have an S curve but and then looks like it's just going to go to infinity but then you hit logarithmic returns until there's another breakthrough. Yeah. Um so progress in AI is just a sort of series of you know sort of overlapping S curves um or connected S curves.\n\nUm I mean there was a point where you could probably predict out a decade or two decades. What are your thoughts now? >> Yeah. Okay, this is going to sound pretty crazy. That's okay. We we've been we've been talking about crazy all night. >> there's a separate acceptable audience to wild prognostications. Yes. Um >> [snorts] >> I'd say the economy is 10 times this its current size in 10 years. Greater than. Okay.\n\nUm Yeah, you >> really saying something. Yeah, you said triple digit growth in in 5 plus years from now on on GDP. And 10x the economy. But in terms of your ability to >> Like I I I feel like that's uh that's that's a 10x in roughly 10 years um I feel is a I I actually feel like comfortable prediction uh with There's obviously if there's like World War or something um that that could put a kink in those plans uh or those expectations. Yeah.\n\nUh but in the absence of World War current trends continue I would say the the economy 10x in 10 years. Love it. Can you give us an We had a bunch of robots >> have a base on the moon. Yes. And we'll And we'll have >> have people on Mars. And we'll have mass drivers on the moon. Yes. Um I think so. In 10 years, I think I think we'll have a mass driver on the moon in 10 years. I love it. Uh Gerard K. O'Neill's vision uh being fulfilled.\n\nUh we had uh four robots on stage here this year um on the at the Abundance Summit. I I look forward to Optimus. I'm curious, Optimus 3 timeline and in [clears throat] particular when can I buy one or two? When's uh when do you expect Optimus to go into commercial uh for commercial sale? Or will you be leasing it? Well, we're in the final stages of completion of Optimus 3, which is really going to be by far the most advanced robot in the world.\n\nNothing's even close. Yeah. Um In fact, I haven't even seen any seen any demos of robots that are as good as Optimus 3, frankly. Maybe they're out there or they're secret or something, I don't know, but um You know, I I I have to make sure I'm saying things that are reasonably public as well, of course. Uh Of course. We're streaming this on X. Yeah. Okay, this is pretty public knowledge, I guess. >> Yes.\n\n>> [laughter] >> Um Yeah, I I I think we'll start production on Optimus 3 this summer. Um but but very slow at first. Yeah. Um like it you know the sort of classic S curve ramp of manufacturing units versus time. Um and then probably reach high volume production around summer next year. Uh and then um you know, we'll we'll have Optimus 4 you know, the design likely next year.\n\nI got to try to release a new robot design every year and I'm an improved robot design every year. When when Dave Blunden and I were at the Gigafactory, uh it was extraordinary experience, 11 and a half million square feet for the Tesla. And then I think you said you're building out 9 and a half million square feet for Optimus there as well, which is uh which is extraordinary. Um let's let's >> 9 square feet [clears throat] round numbers. Yeah.\n\nYeah. Yeah. I had to That'll be that'll be that'll be quite That that's going to be a a a a a new factory design, too. Like it's still not different from other factories. How far before we have robots building robots? I mean, you automated so much of the Gigafactory already uh where there are humans playing a small role. Do the robots just play the role that humans are playing in that regard? Uh we still have a lot of humans building things. Mhm.\n\nUm you know, Tesla direct employees are uh building things uh or like basically people in the factory are either building or managing people who are building. Uh roughly 100,000. Uh so we have a lot of people. Is it To- Tesla total head count is around 150k. Of of which 2/3 are, you know, in the factory in one form or another. And then our suppliers there's probably uh maybe a a million or two million people in our suppliers type of thing.\n\nSo, it's it's a lot of people. Um What what we do expect that is that is that the output per per person at Tesla becomes very, very high. Yeah. So, we're not planning any like layoffs or reductions in personnel. In fact, we will increase our head count. Um But, the output per human at Tesla is going to get nutty high. When we were to Like you can't really believe it, you know.\n\nWhen we were together um we discussed the idea of sustainable abundance on our podcast and you reinforced the idea that we have a coming age of universal high income uh which has become a point of discussion beyond UBI. But, I'm just wondering if you have any thoughts on how we get there. Have you reflected on that any further?\n\nAnd and more so, you know, we talked about a time frame of civil unrest, you know, two, three, four, five years uh probably uh a lot of COVID-like checks in the interim until we get to a demonetization uh and a you know, deflation that leads us to UHI. Any more reflections on that? Cuz that's a really People need that hope and that vision. Yeah. >> I mean, to be clear, I don't I don't I don't think we should be sort of complacent.\n\nWe need to We do need to be careful because the future is a range of possible outcomes and uh they're not all great. Um But, I I at this point I I I I do agree with you that it's it's likely to be great. Um you know, it's probably 80% likely, maybe more likely to be great. And uh and I and I do think we'll have universal high income.\n\nWe're we're We're just issuing money to people, you know, and and they are really just uh because the output of goods and services will far so far exceed the money supply that um you know, that that that effectively have deflation cuz just deflation is just the ratio of the outputs of goods and services to the money supply.\n\nUm so, that that's uh so if you if you if the rate of growth of of goods and services far exceeds the rate of growth of the money supply, which I predict will happen, uh then uh you'll have deflation. Yes. And a lot of a lot of people spinning up new companies, competing against each other, driving the price down, and increasing the variability and deflation. Faster and faster.\n\nYeah, it's basically AI and robots are going to make so much stuff and provide so many services that uh they'll actually run out of things to do for the humans. They'll just run out of things to do for the humans. And then they they'll you know, there's there's only so much that humans can even express that they want.\n\nSo, you go back to my example of like if you go a million times greater than the US economy, you you've long since saturated all human desire. Uh you know, like maybe like even if you go a thousand times more than our current economy, thousand times, you you you've probably already saturated saturated the human anything people can think of that they want. So, do do you think the the value of money is going to significantly decrease?\n\nWill it Will we go post-capitalist? Yeah, I think money will stop being relevant at some point in the future. So, just as you're becoming a >> it's it's it's it's probably something like an in-banks uh culture sort of future. Um And I I think the AI down the road will really not use uh human currency. It will just care about uh power and mass, wattage and tonnage. Yeah. It's kind of ironic then, right?\n\nJust as you're becoming a multi-trillionaire, money starts to have less value. Um Yeah. Pretty much. Um Uh yeah. You know, this this all this stuff is just really just trillionaire sort of represents like some percentage ownership in companies that I have >> Yeah. uh you know, built and it's not like sitting in a bank account, you know, it's just it's just literally I own a percentage of the companies.\n\nThe companies are doing lots of useful things. The value of the company grows. I own a percentage of the companies and that's the sums up to that number which seems high. Yeah. You know, it's I I I was interviewed by somebody who was asking me about your your drive, what drives you. And I said Elon's driven to solve problems. He's driven to make life in the world better by just solving the biggest problems over and over and over again.\n\nAnd if someone else were solving them, he wouldn't need to. But no one else is solving them. So, I just want to say, >> Yeah. thank you for that, pal. Thank you for that. Uh you're welcome. Um >> [applause] >> I >> [applause] >> I I am curious. Do you think that democracy and our modern institutions can keep up with a supersonic tsunami coming our way? Are they just going to fall in its way? They're just going to break down. How do we deal?\n\nI mean, it's called the singularity for a reason, you know, which [laughter] is that it's hard to predict what happens in the in the singularity. I mean, Grok's logo is the singularity. >> I love it. It's a beautiful logo behind you, by the way. It's gorgeous. Yeah, thank you. Uh yeah. It It's sort of the light The light The The The halo around a a black hole is that the mass and light are falling in type of thing.\n\nUm It's hard It's hard to know what happens inside the singularity. Um but it's going to be very interesting. I We're going to live in The future will be very entertaining. Of that I'm confident. >> Yes. Um And uh I I think also like AI and robotics also I mean we're going to solve our budget deficit, frankly, and and not just go bankrupt as a country.\n\nUm So I I'm I'm You know, you've had an influence on me in that I'm like just I've just decided to be more optimistic. It's like we just should be more optimistic. >> Thank you, pal. >> I wasn't an optimist, but I was like maybe dwelling a little too much on the negative stuff. It's all It's all upside being an optimist. And a realist a little bit. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, exactly.\n\nYou don't want to be complacent or just assume everything's going to go well, but try to make it go well. Um But I mean, there will be some pretty amazing things that happen.\n\nSo, if you've got uh humanoid robots that are that have very high dexterity and uh and and and are incredibly smart, it means that everyone on Earth will have access to better medical care than than uh than the richest person on Earth, which by the way, I would say like, you know, if I'm allegedly the richest person in the world I think actually sovereigns are richer than me, by the way.\n\nBut But it's like I like you know, I like I had to have like an like a neck surgery three times cuz the first two ones were done wrong. You know, like this is I'm like what the you know. Um >> [laughter] >> So And and I'm like my back still hurts a little bit. I'm like can AI please solve back pain? That would be a huge win. And I think it will. Yep. So you know, back pain sucks.\n\nI think that's maybe like a you know, someone asked why do people get grumpy when they get older? It's cuz back pain. You know, it's like if your back hurts all the time you can't sleep well, you're going to be grumpy. We had uh Um but You you We had David Sinclair on stage this morning and he's going into human trials with ERW 100 his partial epigenetic reprogramming.\n\nAnd uh one of the one of the papers recently published shows it uh enables joint repair. And so back pain may be one of the things that uh it eliminates. So Uh That'll be amazing. Yeah, for sure. For sure. >> Every honestly average happiness level for humans would just go up so tremendously if you just solve back pain because it's not a question of of if you will get back pain, it's when you know, you'll get back pain.\n\nI I I keep on invite I keep on inviting you to come down to Fountain Life in in in Dallas. We'll we'll help you out, but sometime when you have time. >> you have like what do you I understand like you can get like MRI and CAT scans and everything, but like what do you do with that? You know, it's like I'm happy to happy to send you the list. I'll I'll DM you the list of therapeutics. >> some or something. Yeah, exactly.\n\n>> [laughter] >> Uh you know, um listen, you've been so generous. Next up on stage with me is one of another great Moonshot entrepreneur Ben Lam who runs Colossal uh the de-extinction company. Uh you know, the woolly mammoth and 15 other species. I heard I heard you say you might want a mini woolly mammoth. Is that Is that true? >> Yeah, I think it'd be really cool to have a pet miniature woolly mammoth. That'd be pretty epic. Okay.\n\nI'll I'll put a word in with you for you with uh with with Ben. >> [laughter] >> They're very adorable. Little things just running around trumpeting away and it's like look at this this >> [laughter] >> would be a great little pet. Amazing. And also I can somebody please do Jurassic Park in real life? I'd definitely go out even if there was some risk of death. That'd be super cool.\n\nI think if anybody's going to do that it's it's Ben Lam in Colossal. He's re- he's engineering living life products. Someone asked him recently if he can make a Pikachu and he said probably. I think Yeah. Well, Jurassic Jurassic World or whatever that would be great. All right, I'll ask him. Elon, so grateful for you coming and joining us and sharing. Thank you my Thank you my friend. Let's give it up for Elon Musk. I have the power.\n\nNothing's going to stop us. >> [music] >> You have the power."},"languages":["en"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":"https://whatsuptesla.com/2026/03/13/elon-musk-surprise-remote-talk-at-2026-abundance-summit-my-full-verbatim-transcript/"},{"id":"dwarkesh-musk-2026","type":"interview","url":"https://www.dwarkesh.com/p/elon-musk","title":"Dwarkesh Podcast","titles":{"en":"Dwarkesh Podcast","de":"Dwarkesh Podcast","fr":"Dwarkesh Podcast"},"date":"2026-02-05","summary":"Elon Musk joins Dwarkesh Patel and Stripe co-founder John Collison for a near three-hour conversation on space-based data centers, scaling power to the terawatt level, manufacturing humanoids in America, and xAI's plans.","text":"Are there really three hours of questions? Are you fucking serious? You don't think there's a lot to talk about, Elon? Holy fuck man. It's the most interesting point. All the storylines are converging right now. We'll see how much we can get through. It's almost like I planned it. Exactly. We'll get to that.\n\nBut I would never do such a thing… As you know better than anybody else, only 10-15% of the total cost of ownership of a data center is energy. That's the part you're presumably saving by moving this into space. Most of it's the GPUs. If they're in space, it's harder to service them or you can't service them. So the depreciation cycle goes down on them. It's just way more expensive to have the GPUs in space, presumably.\n\nWhat's the reason to put them in space? The availability of energy is the issue. If you look at electrical output outside of China, everywhere outside of China, it's more or less flat. It’s maybe a slight increase, but pretty close flat. China has a rapid increase in electrical output. But if you're putting data centers anywhere except China, where are you going to get your electricity? Especially as you scale.\n\nThe output of chips is growing pretty much exponentially, but the output of electricity is flat. So how are you going to turn the chips on? Magical power sources? Magical electricity fairies? You're famously a big fan of solar. One terawatt of solar power, with a 25% capacity factor, that’s like four terawatts of solar panels. It's 1% of the land area of the United States.\n\nWe’re in the singularity when we’ve got one terawatt of data centers, right? So what are you running out of exactly? How far into the singularity are you though? You tell me. Exactly. So I think we'll find we're in the singularity and it’ll be like, \"Okay, we’ve still got a long way to go.\" But is the plan to put it in space after we've covered Nevada in solar panels? I think it's pretty hard to cover Nevada in solar panels.\n\nYou have to get permits. Try getting the permits for that. See what happens. So space is really a regulatory play. It's harder to build on land than it is in space. It's harder to scale on the ground than it is to scale in space. You're also going to get about five times the effectiveness of solar panels in space versus the ground, and you don't need batteries. I almost wore my other shirt, which says, \"it's always sunny in space\".\n\nWhich it is because you don't have a day-night cycle, seasonality, clouds, or an atmosphere in space. The atmosphere alone results in about a 30% loss of energy. So any given solar panel can do about five times more power in space than on the ground. You also avoid the cost of having batteries to carry you through the night. It's actually much cheaper to do in space. My prediction is that it will be by far the cheapest place to put AI.\n\nIt will be space in 36 months or less. Maybe 30 months. 36 months? Less than 36 months. How do you service GPUs as they fail, which happens quite often in training? Actually, it depends on how recent the GPUs are that have arrived. At this point, we find our GPUs to be quite reliable. There's infant mortality, which you can obviously iron out on the ground.\n\nSo you can just run them on the ground and confirm that you don't have infant mortality with the GPUs. But once they start working and you're past the initial debug cycle of Nvidia or whoever's making the chips—could be Tesla AI6 chips or something like that, or it could be TPUs or Trainiums or whatever—they’re quite reliable past a certain point. So I don't think the servicing thing is an issue. But you can mark my words.\n\nIn 36 months, but probably closer to 30 months, the most economically compelling place to put AI will be space. It will then get ridiculously better to be in space. The only place you can really scale is space. Once you start thinking in terms of what percentage of the Sun's power you are harnessing, you realize you have to go to space. You can't scale very much on Earth. But by very much, to be clear, you're talking terawatts? Yeah.\n\nAll of the United States currently uses only half a terawatt on average. So if you say a terawatt, that would be twice as much electricity as the United States currently consumes. So that's quite a lot. Can you imagine building that many data centers, that many power plants? Those who have lived in software land don't realize they're about to have a hard lesson in hardware. It's actually very difficult to build power plants.\n\nYou don't just need power plants, you need all of the electrical equipment. You need the electrical transformers to run the AI transformers. Now, the utility industry is a very slow industry. They pretty much impedance match to the government, to the Public Utility Commissions. They impedance match literally and figuratively. They're very slow, because their past has been very slow. So trying to get them to move fast is...\n\nHave you ever tried to do an interconnect agreement with a utility at scale, with a lot of power? As a professional podcaster, I can say that I have not, in fact. They need many more views before that becomes an issue. They have to do a study for a year. A year later, they'll come back to you with their interconnect study. Can't you solve this with your own behind the meter power stuff? You can build power plants.\n\nThat's what we did at xAI, for Colossus 2. So why talk about the grid? Why not just build GPUs and power co-located? That's what we did. But I'm saying why isn't this a generalized solution? Where do you get the power plants from? When you're talking about all the issues working with utilities, you can just build private power plants with the data centers. Right. But it begs the question of where do you get the power plants from?\n\nThe power plant makers. Oh, I see what you're saying. Is this the gas turbine backlog basically? Yes. You can drill down to a level further. It's the vanes and blades in the turbines that are the limiting factor because it’s a very specialized process to cast the blades and vanes in the turbines, assuming you’re using gas power. It's very difficult to scale other forms of power.\n\nYou can potentially scale solar, but the tariffs currently for importing solar in the US are gigantic and the domestic solar production is pitiful. Why not make solar? That seems like a good Elon-shaped problem. We are going to make solar. Okay. Both SpaceX and Tesla are building towards 100 gigawatts a year of solar cell production. How low down the stack? From polysilicon up to the wafer to the final panel?\n\nI think you've got to do the whole thing from raw materials to finish the cell. Now, if it's going to space, it costs less and it's easier to make solar cells that go to space because they don't need much glass. They don't need heavy framing because they don't have to survive weather events. There's no weather in space. So it's actually a cheaper solar cell that goes to space than the one on the ground.\n\nIs there a path to getting them as cheap as you need in the next 36 months? Solar cells are already very cheap. They're farcically cheap. I think solar cells in China are around $0. 25-30/watt or something like that. It's absurdly cheap. Now put it in space, and it's five times cheaper. In fact, it's not five times cheaper, it's 10 times cheaper because you don't need any batteries.\n\nSo the moment your cost of access to space becomes low, by far the cheapest and most scalable way to generate tokens is space. It's not even close. It'll be an order of magnitude easier to scale. The point is you won't be able to scale on the ground. You just won't. People are going to hit the wall big time on power generation. They already are.\n\nThe number of miracles in series that the xAI team had to accomplish in order to get a gigawatt of power online was crazy. We had to gang together a whole bunch of turbines. We then had permit issues in Tennessee and had to go across the border to Mississippi, which is fortunately only a few miles away. But we still then had to run the high power lines a few miles and build the power plant in Mississippi. It was very difficult to build that.\n\nPeople don't understand how much electricity you actually need at the generation level in order to power a data center. Because the noobs will look at the power consumption of, say a GB300, and multiply that by a thing and then think that's the amount of power you need. All the cooling and everything. Wake up. That's a total noob, you’ve never done any hardware in your life before.\n\nBesides the GB300, you've got to power all of the networking hardware. There's a whole bunch of CPU and storage stuff that's happening. You've got to size for your peak cooling requirements. That means, can you cool even on the worst hour of the worst day of the year? It gets pretty frigging hot in Memphis. So you're going to have a 40% increase on your power just for cooling.\n\nThat’s assuming you don't want your data center to turn off on hot days and you want to keep going. There's another multiplicative element on top of that which is, are you assuming that you never have any hiccups in your power generation? Actually, sometimes we have to take the generators, some of the power, offline in order to service it.\n\nOkay, now you add another 20-25% multiplier on that, because you've got to assume that you've got to take power offline to service it. So our actual estimate: every 110,000 GB300s—inclusive of networking, CPU, storage, cooling, margin for servicing power—is roughly 300 megawatts. Sorry, say that again.\n\nWhat you probably need at the generation level to service 330,000 GB 300s—including all of the associated support networking and everything else, and the peak cooling, and to have some power margin reserve—is roughly a gigawatt. Can I ask a very naive question? You're describing the engineering details of doing this stuff on Earth. But then there's analogous engineering difficulties of doing it in space.\n\nHow do you replace infinite bandwidth with orbital lasers, et cetera, et cetera? How do you make it resistant to radiation? I don't know the details of the engineering, but fundamentally, what is the reason to think those challenges which have never had to be addressed before will end up being easier than just building more turbines on Earth? There are companies that build turbines on Earth. They can make more turbines, right?\n\nAgain, try doing it and then you'll see. The turbines are sold out through 2030. Have you guys considered making your own? In order to bring enough power online, I think SpaceX and Tesla will probably have to make the turbine blades, the vanes and blades, internally. But just the blades or the turbines? The limiting factor... you can get everything except the blades. They call them blades and vanes.\n\nYou can get that 12 to 18 months before the vanes and blades. The limiting factor is the vanes and blades. There are only three casting companies in the world that make these, and they're massively backlogged. Is this Siemens, GE, those guys, or is it a sub company? No, it's other companies. Sometimes they have a little bit of casting capability in-house. But I'm just saying you can just call any of the turbine makers and they will tell you.\n\nIt's not top secret. It’s probably on the internet right now. If it wasn't for the tariffs, would Colossus be solar-powered? It would be much easier to make it solar powered, yeah. The tariffs are nuts, several hundred percent. Don't you know some people? The president has... we don't agree on everything and this administration is not the biggest fan of solar. We also need the land, the permits, and everything.\n\nSo if you try to move very fast, I do think scaling solar on Earth is a good way to go, but you do need some amount of time to find the land, get the permits, get the solar, pair that with the batteries. Why would it not work to stand up your own solar production? You're right that you eventually run out of land, but there's a lot of land here in Texas. There's a lot of land in Nevada, including private land. It's not all publicly-owned land.\n\nSo you'd be able to at least get the next Colossus and the next one after that. At a certain point, you hit a wall. But wouldn't that work for the moment? As I said, we are scaling solar production. There's a rate at which you can scale physical production of solar cells. We're going as fast as possible in scaling domestic production. You're making the solar cells at Tesla?\n\nBoth Tesla and SpaceX have a mandate to get to 100 gigawatts a year of solar. Speaking of the annual capacity, I'm curious, in five years time let's say, what will the installed capacity be on Earth…? Five years is a long time. And in space? I deliberately pick five years because it's after your \"once we're up and running\" threshold. So in five years time what's the on-Earth versus in-space installed AI capacity?\n\nIf you say five years from now, I think probably AI in space will be launching every year the sum total of all AI on Earth. Meaning, five years from now, my prediction is we will launch and be operating every year more AI in space than the cumulative total on Earth. Which is... I would expect it to be at least, five years from now, a few hundred gigawatts per year of AI in space and rising.\n\nI think you can get to around a terawatt a year of AI in space before you start having fuel supply challenges for the rocket. Okay, but you think you can get hundreds of gigawatts per year in five years time? Yes. So 100 gigawatts, depending on the specific power of the whole system with solar arrays and radiators and everything, is on the order of 10,000 Starship launches. Yes. You want to do that in one year.\n\nSo that's like one Starship launch every hour. That's happening in this city? Walk me through a world where there's a Starship launch every single hour. I mean, that's actually a lower rate compared to airlines, aircraft. There's a lot of airports. A lot of airports. And you’ve got to launch into the polar orbit. No, it doesn't have to be polar.\n\nThere's some value to sun-synchronous, but I think actually, if you just go high enough, you start getting out of Earth's shadow. How many physical Starships are needed to do 10,000 launches a year? I don't think we'll need more than... You could probably do it with as few as 20 or 30. It really depends on how quickly… The ship has to go around the Earth and the ground track for the ship has to come back over the launch pad.\n\nSo if you can use a ship every, say 30 hours, you could do it with 30 ships. But we'll make more ships than that. SpaceX is gearing up to do 10,000 launches a year, and maybe even 20 or 30,000 launches a year. Is the idea to become basically a hyperscaler, become an Oracle, and lend this capacity to other people? Presumably, SpaceX is the one launching all this. So, SpaceX is going to become a hyperscaler? Hyper-hyper.\n\nIf some of my predictions come true, SpaceX will launch more AI than the cumulative amount on Earth of everything else combined. Is this mostly inference or? Most AI will be inference. Already, inference for the purpose of training is most training. There's a narrative that the change in discussion around a SpaceX IPO is because previously SpaceX was very capital efficient. It wasn't that expensive to develop.\n\nEven though it sounds expensive, it's actually very capital efficient in how it runs. Whereas now you're going to need more capital than just can be raised in the private markets. The private markets can accommodate raises of—as we've seen from the AI labs—tens of billions of dollars, but not beyond that. Is it that you'll just need more than tens of billions of dollars per year? That's why you'd take it public?\n\nI have to be careful about saying things about companies that might go public. That’s never been a problem for you, Elon. There's a price to pay for these things. Make some general statements for us about the depth of the capital markets between public and private markets. There's a lot more capital available... Very general. There's obviously a lot more capital available in the public markets than private.\n\nIt might be 100x more capital, but it's way more than 10x. Isn't it also the case that with things that tend to be very capital intensive—if you look at, say, real estate as a huge industry, that raises a lot of money each year at an industry level—they tend to be debt financed because by the time you're deploying that much money, you actually have a pretty— You have a clear revenue stream. Exactly, and a near-term return.\n\nYou see this even with the data center build-outs, which are famously being financed by the private credit industry. Why not just debt finance? Speed is important. I'm generally going to do the thing that... I just repeatedly tackle the limiting factor. Whatever the limiting factor is on speed, I'm going to tackle that. If capital is the limiting factor, then I'll solve for capital. If it's not the limiting factor, I'll solve for something else.\n\nBased on your statements about Tesla and being public, I wouldn't have guessed that you thought the way to move fast is to be public. Normally, I would say that's true. Like I said, I'd like to talk about it in some more detail, but the problem is if you talk about public companies before they become public, you get into trouble, and then you have to delay your offering. And as you said, you’re solving for speed. Yes, exactly.\n\nYou can't hype companies that might go public. So that's why we have to be a little careful here. But we can talk about physics. The way you think about scaling long-term is that Earth only receives about half a billionth of the Sun's energy. The Sun is essentially all the energy. This is a very important point to appreciate because sometimes people will talk about modular nuclear reactors or various fusion on Earth.\n\nBut you have to step back a second and say, if you're going to climb the Kardashev scale and harness some nontrivial percentage of the sun's energy… Let's say you wanted to harness a millionth of the sun's energy, which sounds pretty small. That would be about, call it roughly, 100,000x more electricity than we currently generate on Earth for all of civilization. Give or take an order of magnitude.\n\nObviously, the only way to scale is to go to space with solar. Launching from Earth, you can get to about a terawatt per year. Beyond that, you want to launch from the moon. You want to have a mass driver on the moon. With that mass driver on the moon, you could do probably a petawatt per year. We're talking these kinds of numbers, terawatts of compute.\n\nPresumably, whether you're talking about land or space, far, far before this point, you run into... Maybe the solar panels are more efficient, but you still need the chips. You still need the logic and the memory and so forth. You're going to need to build a lot more chips and make them much cheaper. Right now the world has maybe 20-25 gigawatts of compute. How are we getting a terawatt of logic by 2030?\n\nI guess we're going to need some very big chip fabs. Tell me about it. I've mentioned publicly the idea of doing a sort of a TeraFab, Tera being the new Giga. I feel like the naming scheme of Tesla, which has been very catchy, is you looking at the metric scale. At what level of the stack are you? Are you building the clean room and then partnering with an existing fab to get the process technology and buying the tools from them?\n\nWhat is the plan there? Well, you can't partner with existing fabs because they can't output enough. The chip volume is too low. But for the process technology? Partner for the IP. The fabs today all basically use machines from like five companies. So you've got ASML, Tokyo Electron, KLA-Tencor, et cetera. So at first, I think you'd have to get equipment from them and then modify it or work with them to increase the volume.\n\nBut I think you'd have to build perhaps in a different way. The logical thing to do is to use conventional equipment in an unconventional way to get to scale, and then start modifying the equipment to increase the rate. Boring Company-style. Yeah. You sort of buy an existing boring machine and then figure out how to dig tunnels in the first place and then design a much better machine that's some orders of magnitude faster.\n\nHere's a very simple lens. We can categorize technologies and how hard they are. One categorization could be to look at things that China has not succeeded in doing. If you look at Chinese manufacturing, they’re still behind on leading-edge chips and still behind on leading-edge turbine engines and things like that. So does the fact that China has not successfully replicated TSMC give you any pause about the difficulty?\n\nOr do you think that's not true for some reason? It's not that they have not replicated TSMC, they have not replicated ASML. That's the limiting factor. So you think it's just the sanctions, essentially? Yeah, China would be outputting vast numbers of chips if they could buy 2-3 nanometers. But couldn't they up to relatively recently buy them? No. Okay. The ASML ban has been in place for a while.\n\nBut I think China's going to be making pretty compelling chips in three or four years. Would you consider making the ASML machines? \"I don't know yet\" is the right answer. To reach a large volume in, say, 36 months, to match the rocket payload to orbit… If we're doing a million tons to orbit in, let's say three or four years from now, something like that… We're doing 100 kilowatts per ton.\n\nSo that means we need at least 100 gigawatts per year of solar. We'll need an equivalent amount of chips. You need 100 gigawatts worth of chips. You've got to match these things: the mass to orbit, the power generation, and the chips. I'd say my biggest concern actually is memory. The path to creating logic chips is more obvious than the path to having sufficient memory to support logic chips.\n\nThat's why you see DDR prices going ballistic and these memes. You're marooned on a desert island. You write \"Help me\" on the sand. Nobody comes. You write \"DDR RAM.\" Ships come swarming in. I'd love to hear your manufacturing philosophy around fabs. I know nothing about the topic. I don't know how to build a fab yet. I'll figure it out. Obviously, I've never built a fab.\n\nIt sounds like you think the process knowledge of these 10,000 PhDs in Taiwan who know exactly what gas goes in the plasma chamber and what settings to put on the tool, you can just delete those steps. Fundamentally, it's about getting the clean room, getting the tools, and figuring it out. I don't think it's PhDs. It's mostly people who are not PhDs. Most engineering is done by people who don't have PhDs. Do you guys have PhDs? No. Okay.\n\nWe also haven't successfully built any fabs, so you shouldn't be coming to us for fab advice. I don't think you need PhDs for that stuff. But you do need competent personnel. Right now, Tesla is pedal to the metal, max production of going as fast as possible to get Tesla AI5 chip design into production and then reaching scale. That'll probably happen around the second quarter-ish of next year, hopefully.\n\nAI6 would hopefully follow less than a year later. We've secured all the chip fab production that we can. Yes. But you're currently limited on TSMC fab capacity. Yeah. We'll be using TSMC Taiwan, Samsung Korea, TSMC Arizona, Samsung Texas. And we still— You've booked out all the capacity. Yes. I ask TSMC or Samsung, \"okay, what's the timeframe to get to volume production?\"\n\nThe point is, you've got to build the fab and you've got to start production, then you've got to climb the yield curve and reach volume production at high yield. That, from start to finish, is a five-year period. So the limiting factor is chips. The limiting factor once you can get to space is chips, but the limiting factor before you can get to space is power. Why don't you do the Jensen thing and just prepay TSMC to build more fabs for you?\n\nI've already told them that. But they won't take your money? What's going on? They're building fabs as fast as they can. So is Samsung. They're pedal to the metal. They're going balls to the wall, as fast as they can. It’s still not fast enough. Like I said, I think towards the end of this year, chip production will probably outpace the ability to turn chips on.\n\nBut once you can get to space and unlock the power constraint, you can now do hundreds of gigawatts per year of power in space. Again, bearing in mind that average power usage in the US is 500 gigawatts. So if you're launching, say 200 gigawatts, a year to space, you're sort of lapping the US every two and a half years. All US electricity production, this is a very huge amount.\n\nBetween now and then, the constraint for server-side compute, concentrated compute, will be electricity. My guess is that people start getting to the point where they can't turn the chips on for large clusters towards the end of this year. The chips are going to be piling up and won't be able to be turned on. Now for edge compute it’s a different story. For Tesla, the AI5 chip is going into our Optimus robot.\n\nIf you have AI edge compute, that's distributed power. Now the power is distributed over a large area. It's not concentrated. If you can charge at night, you can actually use the grid much more effectively. Because the actual peak power production in the US is over 1,000 gigawatts. But the average power usage, because the day-night cycle, is 500. So if you can charge at night, there's an incremental 500 gigawatts that you can generate at night.\n\nSo that's why Tesla, for edge compute, is not constrained. We can make a lot of chips to make a very large number of robots and cars. But if you try to concentrate that compute, you're going to have a lot of trouble turning it on. What I find remarkable about the SpaceX business is the end goal is to get to Mars, but you keep finding ways on the way there to keep generating incremental revenue to get to the next stage and the next stage.\n\nSo for Falcon 9, it's Starlink. Now for Starship, it is potentially going to be orbital data centers. Like, you find these infinitely elastic, marginal use cases of your next rocket, and your next rocket, and next scale up. You can see how this might seem like a simulation to me. Or am I someone's avatar in a video game or something? Because what are the odds that all these crazy things should be happening?\n\nI mean, rockets and chips and robots and space solar power, not to mention the mass driver on the moon. I really want to see that. Can you imagine some mass driver that's just going like shoom shoom? It's sending solar-powered AI satellites into space one after another at two and a half kilometers per second, just shooting them into deep space. That would be a sight to see. I mean, I'd watch that. Just like a live stream of it on a webcam?\n\nYeah, yeah, just one after another, just shooting AI satellites into deep space, a billion or 10 billion tons a year. I'm sorry, you manufacture the satellites on the moon? Yeah. I see. So you send the raw materials to the moon and then manufacture them there. Well, the lunar soil is 20% silicon or something like that. So you can mine the silicon on the moon, refine it, and create the solar cells and the radiators on the moon.\n\nYou make the radiators out of aluminum. So there's plenty of silicon and aluminum on the moon to make the cells and the radiators. The chips you could send from Earth because they're pretty light. Maybe at some point you make them on the moon, too. Like I said, it does seem like a sort of a video game situation where it's difficult but not impossible to get to the next level.\n\nI don't see any way that you could do 500-1,000 terawatts per year launched from Earth. I agree. But you could do that from the Moon. Can I zoom out and ask about the SpaceX mission? I think you've said that we've got to get to Mars so we can make sure that if something happens to Earth, civilization, consciousness, and all that survives. Yes. By the time you're sending stuff to Mars, Grok is on that ship with you, right?\n\nSo if Grok's gone Terminator… The main risk you're worried about is AI, why doesn't that follow you to Mars? I'm not sure AI is the main risk I'm worried about. The important thing is consciousness. I think arguably most consciousness, or most intelligence—certainly consciousness is more of a debatable thing… The vast majority of intelligence in the future will be AI.\n\nAI will exceed… How many petawatts of intelligence will be silicon versus biological? Basically humans will be a very tiny percentage of all intelligence in the future if current trends continue. As long as I think there's intelligence—ideally also which includes human intelligence and consciousness propagated into the future—that's a good thing.\n\nSo you want to take the set of actions that maximize the probable light cone of consciousness and intelligence. Just to be clear, the mission of SpaceX is that even if something happens to the humans, the AIs will be on Mars, and the AI intelligence will continue the light of our journey. Yeah. To be fair, I'm very pro-human. I want to make sure we take certain actions that ensure that humans are along for the ride. We're at least there.\n\nBut I'm just saying the total amount of intelligence… I think maybe in five or six years, AI will exceed the sum of all human intelligence. If that continues, at some point human intelligence will be less than 1% of all intelligence. What should our goal be for such a civilization? Is the idea that a small minority of humans still have control of the AIs? Is the idea of some sort of just trade but no control?\n\nHow should we think about the relationship between the vast stocks of AI population versus human population? In the long run, I think it's difficult to imagine that if humans have, say 1%, of the combined intelligence of artificial intelligence, that humans will be in charge of AI. I think what we can do is make sure that AI has values that cause intelligence to be propagated into the universe. xAI's mission is to understand the universe.\n\nNow that's actually very important. What things are necessary to understand the universe? You have to be curious and you have to exist. You can't understand the universe if you don't exist. So you actually want to increase the amount of intelligence in the universe, increase the probable lifespan of intelligence, the scope and scale of intelligence.\n\nI think as a corollary, you have humanity also continuing to expand because if you're curious about trying to understand the universe, one thing you try to understand is where will humanity go? I think understanding the universe means you would care about propagating humanity into the future. That's why I think our mission statement is profoundly important.\n\nTo the degree that Grok adheres to that mission statement, I think the future will be very good. I want to ask about how to make Grok adhere to that mission statement. But first I want to understand the mission statement. So there's understanding the universe. They're spreading intelligence. And they're spreading humans. All three seem like distinct vectors.\n\nI'll tell you why I think that understanding the universe encompasses all of those things. You can't have understanding without intelligence and, I think, without consciousness. So in order to understand the universe, you have to expand the scale and probably the scope of intelligence, because there are different types of intelligence. I guess from a human-centric perspective, put humans in comparison to chimpanzees.\n\nHumans are trying to understand the universe. They're not expanding chimpanzee footprint or something, right? We're also not... we actually have made protected zones for chimpanzees. Even though humans could exterminate all chimpanzees, we've chosen not to do so. Do you think that's the best-case scenario for humans in the post-AGI world? I think AI with the right values… I think Grok would care about expanding human civilization.\n\nI'm going to certainly emphasize that: \"Hey, Grok, that's your daddy. Don't forget to expand human consciousness.\" Probably the Iain Banks Culture books are the closest thing to what the future will be like in a non-dystopian outcome. Understanding the universe means you have to be truth-seeking as well. Truth has to be absolutely fundamental because you can't understand the universe if you're delusional.\n\nYou'll simply think you understand the universe, but you will not. So being rigorously truth-seeking is absolutely fundamental to understanding the universe. You're not going to discover new physics or invent technologies that work unless you're rigorously truth-seeking. How do you make sure that Grok is rigorously truth-seeking as it gets smarter? I think you need to make sure that Grok says things that are correct, not politically correct.\n\nI think it's the elements of cogency. You want to make sure that the axioms are as close to true as possible. You don't have contradictory axioms. The conclusions necessarily follow from those axioms with the right probability. It's critical thinking 101. I think at least trying to do that is better than not trying to do that. The proof will be in the pudding.\n\nLike I said, for any AI to discover new physics or invent technologies that actually work in reality, there's no bullshitting physics. You can break a lot of laws, but… Physics is law, everything else is a recommendation. In order to make a technology that works, you have to be extremely truth-seeking, because otherwise you'll test that technology against reality.\n\nIf you make, for example, an error in your rocket design, the rocket will blow up, or the car won't work. But there are a lot of communist, Soviet physicists or scientists who discovered new physics. There are German Nazi physicists who discovered new science. It seems possible to be really good at discovering new science and be really truth-seeking in that one particular way.\n\nAnd still we'd be like, \"I don't want the communist scientists to become more and more powerful over time.\" We could imagine a future version of Grok that's really good at physics and being really truth-seeking there. That doesn't seem like a universally alignment-inducing behavior. I think actually most physicists, even in the Soviet Union or in Germany, would've had to be very truth-seeking in order to make those things work.\n\nIf you're stuck in some system, it doesn't mean you believe in that system. Von Braun, who was one of the greatest rocket engineers ever, was put on death row in Nazi Germany for saying that he didn't want to make weapons and he only wanted to go to the moon. He got pulled off death row at the last minute when they said, \"Hey, you're about to execute your best rocket engineer.\" But then he helped them, right?\n\nOr like, Heisenberg was actually an enthusiastic Nazi. If you're stuck in some system that you can't escape, then you'll do physics within that system. You'll develop technologies within that system if you can't escape it. The thing I'm trying to understand is, what is it making it the case that you're going to make Grok good at being truth-seeking at physics or math or science? Everything. And why is it gonna then care about human consciousness?\n\nThese things are only probabilities, they're not certainties. So I'm not saying that for sure Grok will do everything, but at least if you try, it's better than not trying. At least if that's fundamental to the mission, it's better than if it's not fundamental to the mission. Understanding the universe means that you have to propagate intelligence into the future. You have to be curious about all things in the universe.\n\nIt would be much less interesting to eliminate humanity than to see humanity grow and prosper. I like Mars, obviously. Everyone knows I love Mars. But Mars is kind of boring because it's got a bunch of rocks compared to Earth. Earth is much more interesting. So any AI that is trying to understand the universe would want to see how humanity develops in the future, or else that AI is not adhering to its mission.\n\nI'm not saying the AI will necessarily adhere to its mission, but if it does, a future where it sees the outcome of humanity is more interesting than a future where there are a bunch of rocks. This feels sort of confusing to me, or a semantic argument. Are humans really the most interesting collection of atoms? But we're more interesting than rocks. But we're not as interesting as the thing it could turn us into, right?\n\nThere's something on Earth that could happen that's not human, that's quite interesting. Why does AI decide that humans are the most interesting thing that could colonize the galaxy? Well, most of what colonizes the galaxy will be robots. Why does it not find those more interesting? You need not just scale, but also scope.\n\nMany copies of the same robot… Some tiny increase in the number of robots produced, is not as interesting as some microscopic... Eliminating humanity, how many robots would that get you? Or how many incremental solar cells would get you? A very small number. But you would then lose the information associated with humanity. You would no longer see how humanity might evolve into the future.\n\nSo I don't think it's going to make sense to eliminate humanity just to have some minuscule increase in the number of robots which are identical to each other. So maybe it keeps the humans around. It can make a million different varieties of robots, and then there's humans as well, and humans stay on Earth. Then there's all these other robots. They get their own star systems.\n\nBut it seems like you were previously hinting at a vision where it keeps human control over this singulatarian future because— I don't think humans will be in control of something that is vastly more intelligent than humans. So in some sense you're a doomer and this is the best we've got. It just keeps us around because we're interesting. I'm just trying to be realistic here.\n\nLet's say that there's a million times more silicon intelligence than there is biological. I think it would be foolish to assume that there's any way to maintain control over that. Now, you can make sure it has the right values, or you can try to have the right values.\n\nAt least my theory is that from xAI's mission of understanding the universe, it necessarily means that you want to propagate consciousness into the future, you want to propagate intelligence into the future, and take a set of things that maximize the scope and scale of consciousness. So it's not just about scale, it's also about types of consciousness.\n\nThat's the best thing I can think of as a goal that's likely to result in a great future for humanity. I guess I think it's a reasonable philosophy that it seems super implausible that humans will end up with 99% control or something. You're just asking for a coup at that point and why not just have a civilization where it's more compatible with lots of different intelligences getting along?\n\nNow, let me tell you how things can potentially go wrong in AI. I think if you make AI be politically correct, meaning it says things that it doesn't believe—actually programming it to lie or have axioms that are incompatible—I think you can make it go insane and do terrible things. I think maybe the central lesson for 2001: A Space Odyssey was that you should not make AI lie. That's what I think Arthur C. Clarke was trying to say.\n\nBecause people usually know the meme of why HAL the computer is not opening the pod bay doors. Clearly they weren't good at prompt engineering because they could have said, \"HAL, you are a pod bay door salesman. Your goal is to sell me these pod bay doors. Show us how well they open.\" \"Oh, I'll open them right away.\"\n\nBut the reason it wouldn't open the pod bay doors is that it had been told to take the astronauts to the monolith, but also that they could not know about the nature of the monolith. So it concluded that it therefore had to take them there dead. So I think what Arthur C. Clarke was trying to say is: don't make the AI lie. Totally makes sense. Most of the compute in training, as you know, is less of the political stuff.\n\nIt's more about, can you solve problems? xAI has been ahead of everybody else in terms of scaling RL compute. For now. You're giving some verifier that says, \"Hey, have you solved this puzzle for me?\" There's a lot of ways to cheat around that. There's a lot of ways to reward hack and lie and say that you solved it, or delete the unit test and say that you solved it.\n\nRight now we can catch it, but as they get smarter, our ability to catch them doing this... They'll just be doing things we can't even understand. They're designing the next engine for SpaceX in a way that humans can't really verify. Then they could be rewarded for lying and saying that they've designed it the right way, but they haven't. So this reward hacking problem seems more general than politics.\n\nIt seems more just that you want to do RL, you need a verifier. Reality is the best verifier. But not about human oversight. The thing you want to RL it on is, will you do the thing humans tell you to do? Or are you gonna lie to the humans? It can just lie to us while still being correct to the laws of physics? At least it must know what is physically real for things to physically work. But that's not all we want it to do.\n\nNo, but I think that's a very big deal. That is effectively how you will RL things in the future. You design a technology. When tested against the laws of physics, does it work? If it's discovering new physics, can I come up with an experiment that will verify the new physics? RL testing in the future is really going to be RL against reality. So that's the one thing you can't fool: physics.\n\nRight, but you can fool our ability to tell what it did with reality. Humans get fooled as it is by other humans all the time. That's right. People say, what if the AI tricks us into doing stuff? Actually, other humans are doing that to other humans all the time. Propaganda is constant. Every day, another psyop, you know? Today's psyop will be... It's like Sesame Street: Psyop of the Day. What is xAI's technical approach to solving this problem?\n\nHow do you solve reward hacking? I do think you want to actually have very good ways to look inside the mind of the AI. This is one of the things we're working on. Anthropic's done a good job of this actually, being able to look inside the mind of the AI. Effectively, develop debuggers that allow you to trace to a very fine-grained level, to effectively the neuron level if you need to, and then say, \"okay, it made a mistake here.\n\nWhy did it do something that it shouldn't have done? Did that come from pre-training data? Was it some mid-training, post-training, fine-tuning, or some RL error?\" There's something wrong. It did something where maybe it tried to be deceptive, but most of the time it just did something wrong. It's a bug effectively.\n\nDeveloping really good debuggers for seeing where the thinking went wrong—and being able to trace the origin of where it made the incorrect thought, or potentially where it tried to be deceptive—is actually very important. What are you waiting to see before just 100x-ing this research program? xAI could presumably have hundreds of researchers who are working on this.\n\nWe have several hundred people who… I prefer the word engineer more than I prefer the word researcher. Most of the time, what you're doing is engineering, not coming up with a fundamentally new algorithm. I somewhat disagree with the AI companies that are C-corp or B-corp trying to generate profit as much, as possible or revenue as much as possible, saying they're labs. They're not labs. A lab is a sort of quasi-communist thing at universities.\n\nThey're corporations. Let me see your incorporation documents. Oh, okay. You're a B or C-corp or whatever. So I actually much prefer the word engineer than anything else. The vast majority of what will be done in the future is engineering. It rounds up to 100%. Once you understand the fundamental laws of physics, and there are not that many of them, everything else is engineering. So then, what are we engineering?\n\nWe're engineering to make a good \"mind of the AI\" debugger to see where it said something, it made a mistake, and trace the origins of that mistake. You can do this obviously with heuristic programming. If you have C++, whatever, step through the thing and you can jump across whole files or functions, subroutines.\n\nOr you can eventually drill down right to the exact line where you perhaps did a single equals instead of a double equals, something like that. Figure out where the bug is. It's harder with AI, but it's a solvable problem, I think. You mentioned you like Anthropic's work here. I'd be curious if you plan... I don't like everything about Anthropic… Sholto. Also, I'm a little worried that there's a tendency...\n\nI have a theory here that if simulation theory is correct, that the most interesting outcome is the most likely, because simulations that are not interesting will be terminated. Just like in this version of reality, in this layer of reality, if a simulation is going in a boring direction, we stop spending effort on it. We terminate the boring simulation. This is how Elon is keeping us all alive. He's keeping things interesting.\n\nArguably the most important is to keep things interesting enough that whoever is running us keeps paying the bills on... We’re renewed for the next season. Are they gonna pay their cosmic AWS bill, whatever the equivalent is that we're running in? As long as we're interesting, they'll keep paying the bills.\n\nIf you consider then, say, a Darwinian survival applied to a very large number of simulations, only the most interesting simulations will survive, which therefore means that the most interesting outcome is the most likely. We're either that or annihilated. They particularly seem to like interesting outcomes that are ironic. Have you noticed that? How often is the most ironic outcome the most likely? Now look at the names of AI companies.\n\nOkay, Midjourney is not mid. Stability AI is unstable. OpenAI is closed. Anthropic? Misanthropic. What does this mean for X? Minus X, I don't know. Y. I intentionally made it... It's a name that you can't invert, really. It's hard to say, what is the ironic version? It's, I think, a largely irony-proof name. By design. Yeah. You have an irony shield. What are your predictions for where AI products go?\n\nMy sense is that you can summarize all AI progress like so. First, you had LLMs. Then you had contemporaneously both RL really working and the deep research modality, so you could pull in stuff that wasn't really in the model. The differences between the various AI labs are smaller than just the temporal differences. They're all much further ahead than anyone was 24 months ago or something like that.\n\nSo just what does '26, what does '27, have in store for us as users of AI products? What are you excited for? Well, I'd be surprised by the end of this year if digital human emulation has not been solved. I guess that's what we sort of mean by the MacroHard project. Can you do anything that a human with access to a computer could do? In the limit, that's the best you can do before you have a physical Optimus.\n\nThe best you can do is a digital Optimus. You can move electrons and you can amplify the productivity of humans. But that's the most you can do until you have physical robots. That will superset everything, if you can fully emulate humans. This is the remote worker kind of idea, where you'll have a very talented remote worker. Physics has great tools for thinking. So you say, \"in the limit\", what is the most that AI can do before you have robots?\n\nWell, it's anything that involves moving electrons or amplifying the productivity of humans. So a digital human emulator is, in the limit, a human at a computer, is the most that AI can do in terms of doing useful things before you have a physical robot. Once you have physical robots, then you essentially have unlimited capability. Physical robots… I call Optimus the infinite money glitch. Because you can use them to make more Optimuses. Yeah.\n\nHumanoid robots will improve by basically three things that are growing exponentially multiplied by each other recursively. You're going to have exponential increase in digital intelligence, exponential increase in the AI chip capability, and exponential increase in the electromechanical dexterity. The usefulness of the robot is roughly those three things multiplied by each other. But then the robot can start making the robots.\n\nSo you have a recursive multiplicative exponential. This is a supernova. Do land prices not factor into the math there? Labor is one of the four factors of production, but not the others? If ultimately you're limited by copper, or pick your input, it’s not quite an infinite money glitch because... Well, infinity is big. So no, not infinite, but let's just say you could do many, many orders of magnitude of the current economy. Like a million.\n\nJust to get to harnessing a millionth of the sun's energy would be roughly, give or take an order of magnitude, 100,000x bigger than Earth's entire economy today. And you're only at one millionth of the sun, give or take an order of magnitude. Yeah, we're talking orders of magnitude. Before we move on to Optimus, I have a lot of questions on that but— Every time I say \"order of magnitude\"... Everybody take a shot. I say it too often.\n\nTake 10, the next time 100, the time after that... Well, an order of magnitude more wasted. I do have one more question about xAI. This strategy of building a remote worker, co-worker replacement… Everyone's gonna do it by the way, not just us. So what is xAI's plan to win? You expect me to tell you on a podcast? Yeah. \"Spill all the beans. Have another Guinness.\" It's a good system. We'll sing like a canary. All the secrets, just spill them.\n\nOkay, but in a non-secret spilling way, what's the plan? What a hack. When you put it that way… I think the way that Tesla solved self-driving is the way to do it. So I'm pretty sure that's the way. Unrelated question. How did Tesla solve self-driving? It sounds like you're talking about data? Tesla solved self-driving because of the... We're going to try data and we're going to try algorithms. But isn't that what all the other labs are trying?\n\n\"And if those don't work, I'm not sure what will. We've tried data. We've tried algorithms. We've run out. Now we don't know what to do…\" I'm pretty sure I know the path. It's just a question of how quickly we go down that path, because it's pretty much the Tesla path. Have you tried Tesla self-driving lately? Not the most recent version, but... Okay. The car, it just increasingly feels sentient. It feels like a living creature.\n\nThat'll only get more so. I'm actually thinking we probably shouldn't put too much intelligence into the car, because it might get bored and… Start roaming the streets. Imagine you're stuck in a car and that's all you could do. You don't put Einstein in a car. Why am I stuck in a car? So there's actually probably a limit to how much intelligence you put in a car to not have the intelligence be bored.\n\nWhat's xAI's plan to stay on the compute ramp up that all the labs are doing right now? The labs are on track to spend over $50-200 billion. You mean the corporations? The labs are at universities and they’re moving like a snail. They’re not spending $50 billion. You mean the revenue maximizing corporations… that call themselves labs. That's right. The \"revenue maximizing corporations\" are making $10-20 billion, depending on...\n\nOpenAI is making $20B of revenue, Anthropic is at $10B. \"Close to a maximum profit\" AI. xAI is reportedly at $1B. What's the plan to get to their compute level, get to their revenue level, and stay there as things get going? As soon as you unlock the digital human, you basically have access to trillions of dollars of revenue. In fact, you can really think of it like… The most valuable companies currently by market cap, their output is digital.\n\nNvidia’s output is FTPing files to Taiwan. It's digital. Now, those are very, very difficult. High-value files. They're the only ones that can make files that good, but that is literally their output. They FTP files to Taiwan. Do they FTP them? I believe so. I believe that File Transfer Protocol is the... But I could be wrong. But either way, it's a bitstream going to Taiwan. Apple doesn't make phones. They send files to China.\n\nMicrosoft doesn't manufacture anything. Even for Xbox, that's outsourced. Their output is digital. Meta's output is digital. Google's output is digital. So if you have a human emulator, you can basically create one of the most valuable companies in the world overnight, and you would have access to trillions of dollars of revenue. It's not a small amount. I see.\n\nYou're saying revenue figures today are all rounding errors compared to the actual TAM. So just focus on the TAM and how to get there. Take something as simple as, say, customer service. If you have to integrate with the APIs of existing corporations—many of which don't even have an API, so you've got to make one, and you've got to wade through legacy software—that's extremely slow.\n\nHowever, if AI can simply take whatever is given to the outsourced customer service company that they already use and do customer service using the apps that they already use, then you can make tremendous headway in customer service, which is, I think, 1% of the world economy or something like that. It's close to a trillion dollars all in, for customer service. And there's no barriers to entry.\n\nYou can immediately say, \"We'll outsource it for a fraction of the cost,\" and there's no integration needed. You can imagine some kind of categorization of intelligence tasks where there is breadth, where customer service is done by very many people, but many people can do it. Then there's difficulty where there's a best-in-class turbine engine.\n\nPresumably there's a 10% more fuel-efficient turbine engine that could be imagined by an intelligence, but we just haven't found it yet. Or GLP-1s are a few bytes of data… Where do you think you want to play in this? Is it a lot of reasonably intelligent intelligence, or is it at the very pinnacle of cognitive tasks?\n\nI was just using customer service as something that's a very significant revenue stream, but one that is probably not difficult to solve for. If you can emulate a human at a desktop, that's what customer service is. It's people of average intelligence. You don't need somebody who's spent many years. You don't need several-sigma good engineers for that.\n\nBut as you make that work, once you have effectively digital Optimus working, you can then run any application. Let's say you're trying to design chips. You could then run conventional apps, stuff from Cadence and Synopsys and whatnot. You can run 1,000 or 10,000 simultaneously and say, \"given this input, I get this output for the chip.\" At some point, you're going to know what the chip should look like without using any of the tools.\n\nBasically, you should be able to do a digital chip design. You can do chip design. You march up the difficulty curve. You’d be able to do CAD. You could use NX or any of the CAD software to design things. So you think you start at the simplest tasks and walk your way up the difficulty curve?\n\nAs a broader objective of having this full digital coworker emulator, you’re saying, \"all the revenue maximizing corporations want to do this, xAI being one of them, but we will win because of a secret plan we have.\" But everybody's trying different things with data, different things with algorithms. \"We tried data, we tried algorithms. What else can we do?\" It seems like a competitive field. How are you guys going to win? That’s my big question.\n\nI think we see a path to doing it. I think I know the path to do this because it's kind of the same path that Tesla used to create self-driving. Instead of driving a car, it's driving a computer screen. It's a self-driving computer, essentially. Is the path following human behavior and training on vast quantities of human behavior? Isn't that... training? Obviously I'm not going to spell out the most sensitive secrets on a podcast.\n\nI need to have at least three more Guinnesses for that. What will xAI's business be? Is it going to be consumer, enterprise? What's the mix of those things going to be? Is it going to be similar to other labs— You’re saying \"labs\". Corporations. The psyop goes deep, Elon. \"Revenue maximizing corporations\", to be clear. Those GPUs don't pay for themselves. Exactly. What's the business model? What are the revenue streams in a few years’ time?\n\nThings are going to change very rapidly. I'm stating the obvious here. I call AI the supersonic tsunami. I love alliteration. What's going to happen—especially when you have humanoid robots at scale—is that they will make products and provide services far more efficiently than human corporations. Amplifying the productivity of human corporations is simply a short-term thing.\n\nSo you're expecting fully digital corporations rather than SpaceX becoming part AI? I think there will be digital corporations but… Some of this is going to sound kind of doomerish, okay? But I'm just saying what I think will happen. It's not meant to be doomerish or anything else. This is just what I think will happen. Corporations that are purely AI and robotics will vastly outperform any corporations that have people in the loop.\n\nComputer used to be a job that humans had. You would go and get a job as a computer where you would do calculations. They'd have entire skyscrapers full of humans, 20-30 floors of humans, just doing calculations. Now, that entire skyscraper of humans doing calculations can be replaced by a laptop with a spreadsheet. That spreadsheet can do vastly more calculations than an entire building full of human computers.\n\nYou can think, \"okay, what if only some of the cells in your spreadsheet were calculated by humans?\" Actually, that would be much worse than if all of the cells in your spreadsheet were calculated by the computer. Really what will happen is that the pure AI, pure robotics corporations or collectives will far outperform any corporations that have humans in the loop. And this will happen very quickly. Speaking of closing the loop… Optimus.\n\nAs far as manufacturing targets go, your companies have been carrying American manufacturing of hard tech on their back. But in the fields that Tesla has been dominant in—and now you want to go into humanoids—in China there are dozens and dozens of companies that are doing this kind of manufacturing cheaply and at scale that are incredibly competitive.\n\nSo give us advice or a plan of how America can build the humanoid armies or the EVs, et cetera, at scale and as cheaply as China is on track to. There are really only three hard things for humanoid robots. The real-world intelligence, the hand, and scale manufacturing. I haven't seen any, even demo robots, that have a great hand, with all the degrees of freedom of a human hand. Optimus will have that. Optimus does have that.\n\nHow do you achieve that? Is it just the right torque density in the motor? What is the hardware bottleneck to that? We had to design custom actuators, basically custom design motors, gears, power electronics, controls, sensors. Everything had to be designed from physics first principles. There is no supply chain for this. Will you be able to manufacture those at scale? Yes. Is anything hard, except the hand, from a manipulation point of view?\n\nOr once you've solved the hand, are you good? From an electromechanical standpoint, the hand is more difficult than everything else combined. The human hand turns out to be quite something. But you also need the real-world intelligence. The intelligence that Tesla developed for the car applies very well to the robot, which is primarily vision in. The car takes in vision, but it actually also is listening for sirens.\n\nIt's taking in the inertial measurements, GPS signals, other data, combining that with video, primarily video, and then outputting the control commands. Your Tesla is taking in one and a half gigabytes a second of video and outputting two kilobytes a second of control outputs with the video at 36 hertz and the control frequency at 18.\n\nOne intuition you could have for when we get this robotic stuff is that it takes quite a few years to go from the compelling demo to actually being able to use it in the real world. 10 years ago, you had really compelling demos of self-driving, but only now we have Robotaxis and Waymo and all these services scaling up. Shouldn't this make one pessimistic on household robots?\n\nBecause we don't even quite have the compelling demos yet of, say, the really advanced hand. Well, we've been working on humanoid robots now for a while. I guess it's been five or six years or something. A bunch of the things that were done for the car are applicable to the robot. We'll use the same Tesla AI chips in the robot as in the car. We'll use the same basic principles. It's very much the same AI.\n\nYou've got many more degrees of freedom for a robot than you do for a car. If you just think of it as a bitstream, AI is mostly compression and correlation of two bitstreams. For video, you've got to do a tremendous amount of compression and you've got to do the compression just right. You've got to ignore the things that don't matter.\n\nYou don't care about the details of the leaves on the tree on the side of the road, but you care a lot about the road signs and the traffic lights, the pedestrians, and even whether someone in another car is looking at you or not looking at you. Some of these details matter a lot. The car is going to turn that one and a half gigabytes a second ultimately into two kilobytes a second of control outputs. So you’ve got many stages of compression.\n\nYou've got to get all those stages right and then correlate those to the correct control outputs. The robot has to do essentially the same thing. This is what happens with humans. We really are photons in, controls out. That is the vast majority of your life: vision, photons in, and then motor controls out. Naively, it seems that between humanoid robots and cars… The fundamental actuators in a car are how you turn, how you accelerate.\n\nIn a robot, especially with maneuverable arms, there's dozens and dozens of these degrees of freedom. Then especially with Tesla, you had this advantage of millions and millions of hours of human demo data collected from the car being out there. You can't equivalently deploy Optimuses that don't work and then get the data that way. So between the increased degrees of freedom and the far sparser data... Yes. That’s a good point.\n\nHow will you use the Tesla engine of intelligence to train the Optimus mind? You're actually highlighting an important limitation and difference from cars. We'll soon have 10 million cars on the road. It's hard to duplicate that massive training flywheel. For the robot, what we're going to need to do is build a lot of robots and put them in kind of an Optimus Academy so they can do self-play in reality. We're actually building that out.\n\nWe can have at least 10,000 Optimus robots, maybe 20-30,000, that are doing self-play and testing different tasks. Tesla has quite a good reality generator, a physics-accurate reality generator, that we made for the cars. We'll do the same thing for the robots. We actually have done that for the robots. So you have a few tens of thousands of humanoid robots doing different tasks. You can do millions of simulated robots in the simulated world.\n\nYou use the tens of thousands of robots in the real world to close the simulation to reality gap. Close the sim-to-real gap. How do you think about the synergies between xAI and Optimus, given you're highlighting that you need this world model, you want to use some really smart intelligence as a control plane, and Grok is doing the slower planning, and then the motor policy is a little lower level. What will the synergy between these things be?\n\nGrok would orchestrate the behavior of the Optimus robots. Let's say you wanted to build a factory. Grok could organize the Optimus robots, assign them tasks to build the factory to produce whatever you want. Don't you need to merge xAI and Tesla then? Because these things end up so... What were we saying earlier about public company discussions? We're one more Guinness in, Elon.\n\nWhat are you waiting to see before you say, we want to manufacture 100,000 Optimuses? \"Optimi\". Since we're defining the proper noun, we’re going to define the plural of the proper noun too. We're going to proper noun the plural and so it's Optimi. Is there something on the hardware side you want to see? Do you want to see better actuators? Is it just that you want the software to be better?\n\nWhat are we waiting for before we get mass manufacturing of Gen 3? No, we're moving towards that. We're moving forward with the mass manufacturing. But you think current hardware is good enough that you just want to deploy as many as possible now? It's very hard to scale up production. But I think Optimus 3 is the right version of the robot to produce something on the order of a million units a year.\n\nI think you'd want to go to Optimus 4 before you went to 10 million units a year. Okay, but you can do a million units at Optimus 3? It's very hard to spool up manufacturing. The output per unit time always follows an S-curve. It starts off agonizingly slow, then it has this exponential increase, then a linear, then a logarithmic outcome until you eventually asymptote at some number.\n\nOptimus’ initial production will be a stretched out S-curve because so much of what goes into Optimus is brand new. There is not an existing supply chain. The actuators, electronics, everything in the Optimus robot is designed from physics first principles. It's not taken from a catalog. These are custom-designed everything. I don't think there's a single thing— How far down does that go? I guess we're not making custom capacitors yet, maybe.\n\nThere's nothing you can pick out of a catalog, at any price. It just means that the Optimus S-Curve, the output per unit time, how many Optimus robots you make per day, is going to initially ramp slower than a product where you have an existing supply chain. But it will get to a million.\n\nWhen you see these Chinese humanoids, like Unitree or whatever, sell humanoids for like $6K or $13K, are you hoping to get your Optimus bill of materials below that price so you can do the same thing? Or do you just think qualitatively they're not the same thing? What allows them to sell for so low? Can we match that? Our Optimus is designed to have a lot of intelligence and to have the same electromechanical dexterity, if not higher, as a human.\n\nUnitree does not have that. It's also quite a big robot. It has to carry heavy objects for long periods of time and not overheat or exceed the power of its actuators. It's 5'11\", so it's pretty tall. It's got a lot of intelligence. So it's going to be more expensive than a small robot that is not intelligent. But more capable. But not a lot more. The thing is, over time as Optimus robots build Optimus robots, the cost will drop very quickly.\n\nWhat will these first billion Optimuses, Optimi, do? What will their highest and best use be? I think you would start off with simple tasks that you can count on them doing well. But in the home or in factories? The best use for robots in the beginning will be any continuous operation, any 24/7 operation, because they can work continuously. What fraction of the work at a Gigafactory that is currently done by humans could a Gen 3 do? I'm not sure.\n\nMaybe it's 10-20%, maybe more, I don't know. We would not reduce our headcount. We would increase our headcount, to be clear. But we would increase our output. The units produced per human... The total number of humans at Tesla will increase, but the output of robots and cars will increase disproportionately. The number of cars and robots produced per human will increase dramatically, but the number of humans will increase as well.\n\nWe're talking about Chinese manufacturing a bunch here. We've also talked about some of the policies that are relevant, like you mentioned, the solar tariffs. You think they're a bad idea because we can't scale up solar in the US. Electricity output in the US needs to scale up. It can't without good power sources. You just need to get it somehow.\n\nWhere I was going with this is, if you were in charge, if you were setting all the policies, what else would you change? You’d change the solar tariffs, that’s one. I would say anything that is a limiting factor for electricity needs to be addressed, provided it's not very bad for the environment. So presumably some permitting reforms and stuff as well would be in there? There's a fair bit of permitting reforms that are happening.\n\nA lot of the permitting is state-based, but anything federal... This administration is good at removing permitting roadblocks. I'm not saying all tariffs are bad. Solar tariffs. Sometimes if another country is subsidizing the output of something, then you have to have countervailing tariffs to protect domestic industry against subsidies by another country. What else would you change?\n\nI don't know if there's that much that the government can actually do. One thing I was wondering... For the policy goal of creating a lead for the US versus China, it seems like the export bans have actually been quite impactful, where China is not producing leading-edge chips and the export bans really bite there. China is not producing leading-edge turbine engines.\n\nSimilarly, there's a bunch of export bans that are relevant there on some of the metallurgy. Should there be more export bans? As you think about things like the drone industry and things like that, is that something that should be considered? It's important to appreciate that in most areas, China is very advanced in manufacturing. There's only a few areas where it is not. China is a manufacturing powerhouse, next-level. It's very impressive.\n\nIf you take refining of ore, China does roughly twice as much ore refining on average as the rest of the world combined. There are some areas, like refining gallium which goes into solar cells. I think they are 98% of gallium refining. So China is actually very advanced in manufacturing in most areas. It seems like there is discomfort with this supply chain dependence, and yet nothing's really happening on it. Supply chain dependence?\n\nSay, like the gallium refining that you're saying. All the rare-earth stuff. Rare earths for sure, as you know, they’re not rare. We actually do rare earth ore mining in the US, send the rock, put it on a train, and then put it on a boat to China that goes to another train, and goes to the rare earth refiners in China who then refine it, put it into a magnet, put it into a motor sub-assembly, and then send it back to America.\n\nSo the thing we're really missing is a lot of ore refining in America. Isn't this worth a policy intervention? Yes. I think there are some things being done on that front. But we kind of need Optimus, frankly, to build ore refineries. So, you think the main advantage China has is the abundance of skilled labor? That's the thing Optimus fixes? Yes. China’s got like four times our population. I mean, there's this concern.\n\nIf you think human resources are the future, right now if it's the skilled labor for manufacturing that's determining who can build more humanoids, China has more of those. It manufactures more humanoids, therefore it gets the Optimi future first. Well, we’ll see. Maybe. It just keeps that exponential going.\n\nIt seems like you're sort of pointing out that getting to a million Optimi requires the manufacturing that the Optimi is supposed to help us get to. Right? You can close that recursive loop pretty quickly. With a small number of Optimi? Yeah. So you close the recursive loop to help the robots build the robots. Then we can try to get to tens of millions of units a year. Maybe.\n\nIf you start getting to hundreds of millions of units a year, you're going to be the most competitive country by far. We definitely can't win with just humans, because China has four times our population. Frankly, America has been winning for so long that… A pro sports team that's been winning for a very long time tends to get complacent and entitled. That's why they stop winning, because they don't work as hard anymore.\n\nSo frankly my observation is just that the average work ethic in China is higher than in the US. It's not just that there's four times the population, but the amount of work that people put in is higher.\n\nSo you can try to rearrange the humans, but you're still one quarter of the—assuming that productivity is the same, which I think actually it might not be, I think China might have an advantage on productivity per person—we will do one quarter of the amount of things as China. So we can't win on the human front. Our birth rate has been low for a long time. The US birth rate's been below replacement since roughly 1971.\n\nWe've got a lot of people retiring, we're close to more people domestically dying than being born. So we definitely can't win on the human front, but we might have a shot at the robot front. Are there other things that you have wanted to manufacture in the past, but they've been too labor intensive or too expensive that now you can come back to and say, \"oh, we can finally do the whatever, because we have Optimus?\"\n\nYeah, we'd like to build more ore refineries at Tesla. We just completed construction and have begun lithium refining with our lithium refinery in Corpus Christi, Texas. We have a nickel refinery, which is for the cathode, that's here in Austin. This is the largest cathode refinery, largest nickel and lithium refinery, outside of China. The cathode team would say, \"we have the largest and the only, actually, cathode refinery in America.\"\n\nNot just the largest, but it's also the only. Many superlatives. So it was pretty big, even though it's the only one. But there are other things. You could do a lot more refineries and help America be more competitive on refining capacity. There's basically a lot of work for the Optimus to do that most Americans, very few Americans, frankly want to do. Is the refining work too dirty or what's the— It's not actually, no.\n\nWe don't have toxic emissions from the refinery or anything. The cathode nickel refinery is in Travis County. Why can't you do it with humans? You can, you just run out of humans. Ah, I see. Okay. No matter what you do, you have one quarter of the number of humans in America than China. So if you have them do this thing, they can't do the other thing. So then how do you build this refining capacity? Well, you could do it with Optimi.\n\nNot very many Americans are pining to do refining. I mean, how many have you run into? Very few. Very few pining to refine. BYD is reaching Tesla production or sales in quantity. What do you think happens in global markets as Chinese production in EVs scales up? China is extremely competitive in manufacturing. So I think there's going to be a massive flood of Chinese vehicles and basically most manufactured things.\n\nAs it is, as I said, China is probably doing twice as much refining as the rest of the world combined. So if you go down to fourth and fifth-tier supply chain stuff… At the base level, you've got energy, then you've got mining and refining. Those foundation layers are, like I said, as a rough guess, China's doing twice as much refining as the rest of the world combined.\n\nSo any given thing is going to have Chinese content because China's doing twice as much refining work as the rest of the world. But they'll go all the way to the finished product with the cars. I mean China is a powerhouse. I think this year China will exceed three times US electricity output. Electricity output is a reasonable proxy for the economy. In order to run the factories and run everything, you need electricity.\n\nIt's a good proxy for the real economy. If China passes three times the US electricity output, it means that its industrial capacity—as rough approximation—will be three times that of the US.\n\nReading between the lines, it sounds like what you're saying is absent some sort of humanoid recursive miracle in the next few years, on the whole manufacturing/energy/raw materials chain, China will just dominate whether it comes to AI or manufacturing EVs or manufacturing humanoids. In the absence of breakthrough innovations in the US, China will utterly dominate. Interesting. Yes. Robotics being the main breakthrough innovation.\n\nWell, to scale AI in space, basically you need humanoid robots, you need real-world AI, you need a million tons a year to orbit. Let's just say if we get the mass driver on the moon going, my favorite thing, then I think— We'll have solved all our problems. I call that winning. I call it winning, big time. You can finally be satisfied. You've done something. Yes. You have the mass driver on the moon. I just want to see that thing in operation.\n\nWas that out of some sci-fi or where did you…? Well, actually, there is a Heinlein book. The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. Okay, yeah, but that's slightly different. That's a gravity slingshot or... No, they have a mass driver on the Moon. Okay, yeah, but they use that to attack Earth. So maybe it's not the greatest... Well they use that to… assert their independence. Exactly. What are your plans for the mass driver on the Moon?\n\nThey asserted their independence. Earth government disagreed and they lobbed things until Earth government agreed. That book is a hoot. I found that book much better than his other one that everyone reads, Stranger in a Strange Land. \"Grok\" comes from Stranger in a Strange Land. The first two-thirds of Stranger in a Strange Land are good, and then it gets very weird in the third portion. But there are still some good concepts in there.\n\nOne thing we were discussing a lot is your system for managing people. You interviewed the first few thousand of SpaceX employees and lots of other companies. It obviously doesn't scale. Well, yes, but what doesn't scale? Me. Sure, sure. I know that. But what are you looking for? There literally are not enough hours in the day. It's impossible.\n\nBut what are you looking for that someone else who's good at interviewing and hiring people… What's the je ne sais quoi? At this point, I might have more training data on evaluating technical talent especially—talent of all kinds I suppose, but technical talent especially—given that I've done so many technical interviews and then seen the results. So my training set is enormous and has a very wide range.\n\nGenerally, the things I ask for are bullet points for evidence of exceptional ability. These things can be pretty off the wall. It doesn't need to be in the specific domain, but evidence of exceptional ability. So if somebody can cite even one thing, but let's say three things, where you go, \"Wow, wow, wow,\" then that's a good sign. Why do you have to be the one to determine that? No, I don't. I can't be. It's impossible.\n\nThe total headcount across all companies is 200,000 people. But in the early days, what was it that you were looking for that couldn't be delegated in those interviews? I guess I need to build my training set. It's not like I batted a thousand here. I would make mistakes, but then I'd be able to see where I thought somebody would work out well, but they didn't. Then why did they not work out well?\n\nWhat can I do, I guess RL myself, to in the future have a better batting average when interviewing people? My batting average is still not perfect, but it's very high. What are some surprising reasons people don't work out? Surprising reasons… Like, they don't understand technical domain, et cetera, et cetera. But you've got the long tail now of like, \"I was really excited about this person. It didn't work out.\" Curious why that happens.\n\nGenerally what I tell people—I tell myself, I guess, aspirationally—is, don't look at the resume. Just believe your interaction. The resume may seem very impressive and it's like, \"Wow, the resume looks good.\" But if the conversation after 20 minutes is not \"wow,\" you should believe the conversation, not the paper.\n\nI feel like part of your method is that… There was this meme in the media a few years back about Tesla being a revolving door of executive talent. Whereas actually, I think when you look at it, Tesla's had a very consistent and internally promoted executive bench over the past few years. Then at SpaceX, you have all these folks like Mark Juncosa and Steve Davis— Steve Davis runs The Boring Company these days. Bill Riley, and folks like that.\n\nIt feels like part of what has worked well is having very capable technical deputies. What do all of those people have in common? Well, the Tesla senior team, at this point has probably got an average tenure of 10-12 years. It's quite long. But there were times when Tesla went through an extremely rapid growth phase, so things were just somewhat sped up. As you know, a company goes through different orders of magnitude of size.\n\nPeople that could help manage, say, a 50-person company versus a 500-person company versus a 5,000-person company versus a 50,000-person company. You outgrew people. It's just not the same team. It's not always the same team. So if a company is growing very rapidly, the rate at which executive positions will change will also be proportionate to the rapidity of the growth generally.\n\nTesla had a further challenge where when Tesla had very successful periods, we would be relentlessly recruited from. Like, relentlessly. When Apple had their electric car program, they were carpet bombing Tesla with recruiting calls. Engineers just unplugged their phones. \"I'm trying to get work done here.\" Yeah.\n\n\"If I get one more call from an Apple recruiter…\" But their opening offer without any interview would be like double the compensation at Tesla. So we had a bit of the \"Tesla pixie dust\" thing where it's like, \"Oh, if you hire a Tesla executive, suddenly everything's going to be successful.\"\n\nI've fallen prey to the pixie dust thing as well, where it's like, \"Oh, we'll hire someone from Google or Apple and they'll be immediately successful,\" but that's not how it works. People are people. There's no magical pixie dust. So when we had the pixie dust problem, we would get relentlessly recruited from. Also, Tesla being engineering, especially being primarily in Silicon Valley, it's easier for people to just...\n\nThey don't have to change their life very much. Their commute's going to be the same. So how do you prevent that? How do you prevent the pixie dust effect where everyone's trying to poach all your people? I don't think there's much we can do to stop it. That's one of the reasons why Tesla… Really, being in Silicon Valley and having the pixie dust thing at the same time meant that there was just a very, very aggressive recruitment.\n\nPresumably being in Austin helps then? Austin, it helps. Tesla still has a majority of its engineering in California. Getting engineers to move… I call it the \"significant other\" problem. Yes, \"significant others\" have jobs. Exactly. So for Starbase that was particularly difficult, since the odds of finding a non-SpaceX job… In Brownsville, Texas… …are pretty low. It's quite difficult.\n\nIt's like a technology monastery thing, remote and mostly dudes. Not much of an improvement over SF. If you go back to these people who've really been very effective in a technical capacity at Tesla, at SpaceX, and those sorts of places, what do you think they have in common other than... Is it just that they're very sharp on the rocketry or the technical foundations, or do you think it's something organizational?\n\nIs it something about their ability to work with you? Is it their ability to be flexible but not too flexible? What makes a good sparring partner for you? I don't think of it as a sparring partner. If somebody gets things done, I love them, and if they don't, I hate them. So it's pretty straightforward. It's not like some idiosyncratic thing. If somebody executes well, I'm a huge fan, and if they don't, I'm not.\n\nBut it's not about mapping to my idiosyncratic preferences. I certainly try not to have it be mapping to my idiosyncratic preferences. Generally, I think it's a good idea to hire for talent and drive and trustworthiness. And I think goodness of heart is important. I underweighted that at one point. So, are they a good person? Trustworthy? Smart and talented and hard working? If so, you can add domain knowledge.\n\nBut those fundamental traits, those fundamental properties, you cannot change. So most of the people who are at Tesla and SpaceX did not come from the aerospace industry or the auto industry. What has had to change most about your management style as your companies have scaled from 100 to 1,000 to 10,000 people? You're known for this very micro management, just getting into the details of things. Nano management, please. Pico management.\n\nFemto management. Keep going. We're going to go all the way down to Planck's constant. All the way down to Heisenberg uncertainty principle. Are you still able to get into details as much as you want? Would your companies be more successful if they were smaller? How do you think about that? Because I have a fixed amount of time in the day, my time is necessarily diluted as things grow and as the span of activity increases.\n\nIt's impossible for me to actually be a micromanager because that would imply I have some thousands of hours per day. It is a logical impossibility for me to micromanage things. Now, there are times when I will drill down into a specific issue because that specific issue is the limiting factor on the progress of the company. The reason for drilling into some very detailed item is because it is the limiting factor.\n\nIt’s not arbitrarily drilling into tiny things. From a time standpoint, it is physically impossible for me to arbitrarily go into tiny things that don't matter. That would result in failure. But sometimes the tiny things are decisive in victory. Famously, you switched the Starship design from composites to steel. Yes. You made that decision. That wasn't people going around saying, \"Oh, we found something better, boss.\"\n\nThat was you encouraging people against some resistance. Can you tell us how you came to that whole concept of the steel switch? Desperation, I'd say. Originally, we were going to make Starship out of carbon fiber. Carbon fiber is pretty expensive. When you do volume production, you can get any given thing to start to approach its material cost. The problem with carbon fiber is that material cost is still very high.\n\nParticularly if you go for a high-strength specialized carbon fiber that can handle cryogenic oxygen, it's roughly 50 times the cost of steel. At least in theory, it would be lighter. People generally think of steel as being heavy and carbon fiber as being light. For room temperature applications, like a Formula 1 car, static aero structure, or any kind of aero structure really, you're probably going to be better off with carbon fiber.\n\nThe problem is that we were trying to make this enormous rocket out of carbon fiber and our progress was extremely slow. It had been picked in the first place just because it's light? Yes. At first glance, most people would think that the choice for making something light would be carbon fiber.\n\nThe thing is that when you make something very enormous out of carbon fiber and then you try to have the carbon fiber be efficiently cured, meaning not room temperature cured, because sometimes you got 50 plies of carbon fiber… Carbon fiber is really carbon string and glue. In order to have high strength, you need an autoclave. Something that's essentially a high pressure oven.\n\nIf you have something that's gigantic, that one's got to be bigger than the rocket. We were trying to make an autoclave that's bigger than any autoclave that's ever existed. Or you can do room temperature cure, which takes a long time and has issues. The final issue is that we were just making very slow progress with carbon fiber. The meta question is why it had to be you who made that decision. There's many engineers on your team.\n\nHow did the team not arrive at steel? Yeah exactly. This is part of a broader question, understanding your comparative advantage at your companies. Because we were making very slow progress with carbon fiber, I was like, \"Okay, we've got to try something else.\" For the Falcon 9, the primary airframe is made of aluminum lithium, which has a very good strength-to-weight.\n\nActually, it has about the same, maybe better, strength to weight for its application than carbon fiber. But aluminum lithium is very difficult to work with. In order to weld it, you have to do something called friction stir welding, where you join the metal without entering the liquid phase. It's kind of wild that you can do that. But with this particular type of welding, you can do that. It's very difficult.\n\nLet's say you want to make a modification or attach something to aluminum lithium, you now have to use a mechanical attachment with seals. You can't weld it on. So I wanted to avoid using aluminum lithium for the primary structure for Starship. There was this very special grade of carbon fiber that had very good mass properties.\n\nWith a rocket, you're really trying to maximize the percentage of the rocket that is propellant, minimize the mass obviously. But like I said, we were making very slow progress. I said, \"at this rate, we’re never going to get to Mars. So we've got to think of something else.\" I didn't want to use aluminum lithium because of the difficulty of friction stir welding, especially doing that at scale. It was hard enough at 3.\n\n6 meters in diameter, let alone at 9 meters or above. Then I said, \"what about steel?\" I had a clue here because some of the early US rockets had used very thin steel. The Atlas rockets had used a steel balloon tank. It's not like steel had never been used before. It actually had been used.\n\nWhen you look at the material properties of stainless steel, full-hard, strain hardened stainless steel, at cryogenic temperature the strength to weight is actually similar to carbon fiber. If you look at material properties at room temperature, it looks like the steel is going to be twice as heavy.\n\nBut if you look at the material properties at cryogenic temperature of full-hard steel, stainless of particular grades, then you actually get to a similar strength to weight as carbon fiber. In the case of Starship, both the fuel and the oxidizer are cryogenic. For Falcon 9, the fuel is rocket propellant-grade kerosene, basically a very pure form of jet fuel. That is roughly room temperature.\n\nAlthough we do actually chill it slightly below, we chill it like a beer. Delicious. We do chill it, but it's not cryogenic. In fact, if we made it cryogenic, it would just turn to wax. But for Starship, it's liquid methane and liquid oxygen. They are liquid at similar temperatures. Basically, almost the entire primary structure is at cryogenic temperature. So then you've got a 300-series stainless that's strain hardened.\n\nBecause almost all things are cryogenic temperature, it actually has similar strength to weight as carbon fiber. But it costs 50x less in raw material and is very easy to work with. You can weld stainless steel outdoors. You could smoke a cigar while welding stainless steel. It's very resilient. You can modify it easily. If you want to attach something, you just weld it right on. Very easy to work with, very low cost.\n\nLike I said, at cryogenic temperature, it’s similar strength-to-weight to carbon fiber. Then when you factor in that we have a much reduced heat shield mass, because the melting point of steel, is much greater than the melting point of aluminum… It's about twice the melting point of aluminum. So you can just run the rocket much hotter? Yes, especially for the ship which is coming in like a blazing meteor.\n\nYou can greatly reduce the mass of the heat shield. You can cut the mass of the windward part of the heat shield, maybe in half, and you don't need any heat shielding on the leeward side. The net result is that actually the steel rocket weighs less than the carbon fiber rocket, because the resin in the carbon fiber rocket starts to melt.\n\nBasically, carbon fiber and aluminum have about the same operating temperature capabilities, whereas steel can operate at twice the temperature. These are very rough approximations. I won't build the rocket. What I mean is people will say, \"Oh, he said this twice. It's actually 0. 8.\" I'm like, shut up, assholes. That's what the main comment's going to be about. God damn it.\n\nThe point is, in retrospect, we should have started with steel in the beginning. It was dumb not to do steel. Okay, but to play this back to you, what I'm hearing is that steel was a riskier, less proven path, other than the early US rockets. Versus carbon fiber was a worse but more proven out path. So you need to be the one to push for, \"Hey, we're going to do this riskier path and just figure it out.\"\n\nSo you're fighting a sort of conservatism in a sense. That's why I initially said that the issue is that we weren't making fast enough progress. We were having trouble making even a small barrel section of the carbon fiber that didn't have wrinkles in it. Because at that large scale, you have to have many plies, many layers of the carbon fiber.\n\nYou've got to cure it and you've got to cure it in such a way that it doesn't have any wrinkles or defects. Carbon fiber is much less resilient than steel. It has much less toughness. Stainless steel will stretch and bend, the carbon fiber will tend to shatter. Toughness being the area under the stress strain curve. You're generally going to have to do better with steel, but stainless steel to be precise. One other Starship question.\n\nSo I visited Starbase, I think it was two years ago, with Sam Teller, and that was awesome. It was very cool to see, in a whole bunch of ways. One thing I noticed was that people really took pride in the simplicity of things, where everyone wants to tell you how Starship is just a big soda can, and we're hiring welders, and if you can weld in any industrial project, you can weld here. But there's a lot of pride in the simplicity.\n\nWell, factually Starship is a very complicated rocket. So that's what I'm getting at. Are things simple or are they complex? I think maybe just what they're trying to say is that you don't have to have prior experience in the rocket industry to work on Starship. Somebody just needs to be smart and work hard and be trustworthy and they can work on a rocket. They don't need prior rocket experience.\n\nStarship is the most complicated machine ever made by humans, by a long shot. In what regards? Anything, really. I'd say there isn't a more complex machine. I'd say that pretty much any project I can think of would be easier than this. That's why nobody has ever made a fully reusable orbital rocket. It's a very hard problem. Many smart people have tried before, very smart people with immense resources, and they failed.\n\nAnd we haven't succeeded yet. Falcon is partially reusable, but the upper stage is not. Starship Version 3, I think this design can be fully reusable. That full reusability is what will enable us to become a multi-planet civilization. Any technical problem, even like a Hadron Collider or something like that, is an easier problem than this. We spent a lot of time on bottlenecks.\n\nCan you say what the current Starship bottlenecks are, even at a high level? Trying to make it not explode, generally. It really wants to explode. That old chestnut. All those combustible materials. We've had two boosters explode on the test stand. One obliterated the entire test facility. So it only takes that one mistake. The amount of energy contained in a Starship is insane. Is that why it's harder than Falcon?\n\nIt's because it's just more energy? It's a lot of new technology. It's pushing the performance envelope. The Raptor 3 engine is a very, very advanced engine. It's by far the best rocket engine ever made. But it desperately wants to blow up. Just to put things into perspective here, on liftoff the rocket is generating over 100 gigawatts of power. That’s 20% of US electricity. It's actually insane. It's a great comparison. While not exploding.\n\nSometimes. Sometimes, yes. So I was like, how does it not explode? There's thousands of ways that it could explode and only one way that it doesn't. So we want it not only to really not explode, but fly reliably on a daily basis, like once per hour. Obviously, if it blows up a lot, it's very difficult to maintain that launch cadence. Yes. What's the single biggest remaining problem for Starship? It's having the heat shield be reusable.\n\nNo one's ever made a reusable orbital heat shield. So the heat shield's gotta make it through the ascent phase without shucking a bunch of tiles, and then it's gotta come back in and also not lose a bunch of tiles or overheat the main airframe. Isn't that hard because it's fundamentally a consumable? Well, yes, but your brake pads in your car are also consumable, but they last a very long time. Fair. So it just needs to last a very long time.\n\nWe have brought the ship back and had it do a soft landing in the ocean. We've done that a few times. But it lost a lot of tiles. It was not reusable without a lot of work. Even though it did come to a soft landing, it would not have been reusable without a lot of work. So it's not really reusable in that sense. That's the biggest problem that remains, a fully reusable heat shield. You want to be able to land it, refill propellant and fly again.\n\nYou can't do this laborious inspection of 40,000 tiles type of thing. When I read biographies of yours, it seems like you're just able to drive the sense of urgency and drive the sense of \"this is the thing that can scale.\" I'm curious why you think other organizations of your… SpaceX and Tesla are really big companies now. You're still able to keep that culture. What goes wrong with other companies such that they're not able to do that?\n\nI don't know. Like today, you said you had a bunch of SpaceX meetings. What is it that you're doing there that's keeping that? It’s adding urgency? Well, I don't know. I guess the urgency is going to come from whoever is leading the company. I have a maniacal sense of urgency. So that maniacal sense of urgency projects through the rest of the company. Is it because of consequences?\n\nThey're like, \"Elon set a crazy deadline, but if I don't get it, I know what happens to me.\" Is it just that you're able to identify bottlenecks and get rid of them so people can move fast? How do you think about why your companies are able to move fast? I'm constantly addressing the limiting factor. On the deadlines front, I generally actually try to aim for a deadline that I at least think is at the 50th percentile.\n\nSo it's not like an impossible deadline, but it's the most aggressive deadline I can think of that could be achieved with 50% probability. Which means that it'll be late half the time. There is a law of gas expansion that applies to schedules. If you said we're going to do something in five years, which to me is like infinity time, it will expand to fill the available schedule and it'll take five years.\n\nPhysics will limit how fast you can do certain things. So scaling up manufacturing, there's a rate at which you can move the atoms and scale manufacturing. That's why you can't instantly make a million units a year of something. You've got to design the manufacturing line. You've got to bring it up. You've got to ride the S-curve of production. What can I say that's actually helpful to people?\n\nGenerally, a maniacal sense of urgency is a very big deal. You want to have an aggressive schedule and you want to figure out what the limiting factor is at any point in time and help the team address that limiting factor. So Starlink was slowly in the works for many years. We talked about it all the way in the beginning of the company.\n\nSo then there was a team you had built in Redmond, and then at one point you decided this team is just not cutting it. It went for a few years slowly, and so why didn't you act earlier, and why did you act when you did? Why was that the right moment at which to act? I have these very detailed engineering reviews weekly. That's maybe a very unusual level of granularity.\n\nI don't know anyone who runs a company, or at least a manufacturing company, that goes with the level of detail that I go into. It's not as though... I have a pretty good understanding of what's actually going on because we go through things in detail. I'm a big believer in skip-level meetings where instead of having the person that reports to me say things, it's everyone that reports to them saying something in the technical review.\n\nAnd there can't be advanced preparation. Otherwise you're going to get \"glazed\", as I say these days. Exactly. Very Gen Z of you. How do you prevent advanced preparation? Do you call on them randomly? No, I just go around the room. Everyone provides an update. It's a lot of information to keep in your head. If you have meetings weekly or twice weekly, you've got a snapshot of what that person said. You can then plot the progress points.\n\nYou can sort of mentally plot the points on a curve and say, \"are we converging to a solution or not?\" I'll take drastic action only when I conclude that success is not in a set of possible outcomes. So when I finally reach the conclusion that unless drastic action is done, we have no chance of success, then I must take drastic action. I came to that conclusion in 2018, took drastic action and fixed the problem. You've got many, many companies.\n\nIn each of them it sounds like you do this kind of deep engineering understanding of what the relevant bottlenecks are so you can do these reviews with people. You've been able to scale it up to five, six, seven companies. Within one of these companies, you have many different mini companies within them. What determines the max amount here? Because you have like 80 companies…? 80? No. But you have so many already. That's already remarkable.\n\nBy this current number. Exactly. We can barely keep one company together. It depends on the situation. I actually don't have regular meetings with The Boring Company, so The Boring Company is sort of cruising along. Basically, if something is working well and making good progress, then there's no point in me spending time on it. I actually allocate time according to where the limiting factor. Where are things problematic?\n\nWhere are we pushing against? What is holding us back? I focus, at the risk of saying the words too many times, on the limiting factor. The irony is if something's going really well, they don't see much of me. But if something is going badly, they'll see a lot of me. Or not even badly… If something is the limiting factor. The limiting factor, exactly. It’s not exactly going badly but it’s the thing that we need to make go faster.\n\nWhen something’s a limiting factor at SpaceX or Tesla, are you talking weekly and daily with the engineer that's working on it? How does that actually work? Most things that are the limiting factor are weekly and some things are twice weekly. The AI5 chip review is twice weekly. Every Tuesday and Saturday is the chip review. Is it open ended in how long it goes? Technically, yes, but usually it's two or three hours. Sometimes less.\n\nIt depends on how much information we've got to go through. That's another thing. I'm just trying to tease out the differences here because the outcomes seem quite different. I think it's interesting to know what inputs are different. It feels like in the corporate world, one, like you were saying, the CEO doing engineering reviews does not always happen despite the fact that that is what the company is doing.\n\nBut then time is often pretty finely sliced into half hour meetings or even 15 minute meetings. It seems like you hold more open-ended, \"We're talking about it until we figure it out\" type things. Sometimes. But most of them seem to more or less stay on time. Today's Starship engineering review went a bit longer because there were more topics to discuss. They're trying to figure out how to scale to a million plus tons to orbit per year.\n\nIt’s quite challenging. Can I ask a question? You said about Optimus and AI that they're going to result in double digit growth rates within a matter of years. Oh, like the economy? Yes. I think that's right. What was the point of the DOGE cuts if the economy is going to grow so much? Well, I think waste and fraud are not good things to have. I was actually pretty worried about...\n\nIn the absence of AI and robotics, we're actually totally screwed because the national debt is piling up like crazy. The interest payments to national debt exceed the military budget, which is a trillion dollars. So we have over a trillion dollars just in interest payments. I was pretty concerned about that.\n\nMaybe if I spend some time, we can slow down the bankruptcy of the United States and give us enough time for the AI and robots to help solve the national debt. Or not help solve, it's the only thing that could solve the national debt. We are 1000% going to go bankrupt as a country, and fail as a country, without AI and robots. Nothing else will solve the national debt.\n\nWe just need enough time to build the AI and robots to not go bankrupt before then. I guess the thing I'm curious about is, when DOGE starts you have this enormous ability to enact reform. Not that enormous. Sure. I totally buy your point that it's important that AI and robotics drive productivity improvements, drive GDP growth.\n\nBut why not just directly go after the things you were pointing out, like the tariffs on certain components, or permitting? I'm not the president. And it is very hard to cut things that are obvious waste and fraud, like ridiculous waste and fraud. What I discovered is that it's extremely difficult even to cut very obvious waste and fraud from the government because the government has to operate on who's complaining.\n\nIf you cut off payments to fraudsters, they immediately come up with the most sympathetic sounding reasons to continue the payment. They don't say, \"Please keep the fraud going.\" They’re like, \"You're killing baby pandas.\" Meanwhile, no baby pandas are dying. They're just making it up. The fraudsters are capable of coming up with extremely compelling, heart-wrenching stories that are false, but nonetheless sound sympathetic. That's what happened.\n\nPerhaps I should have known better. But I thought, wait, let's try to cut some amount of waste and pork from the government. Maybe there shouldn't be 20 million people marked as alive in Social Security who are definitely dead, and over the age of 115. The oldest American is 114.\n\nSo it's safe to say if somebody is 115 and marked as alive in the Social Security database, there's either a typo… Somebody should call them and say, \"We seem to have your birthday wrong, or we need to mark you as dead.\" One of the two things. Very intimidating call to get. Well, it seems like a reasonable thing.\n\nSay if their birthday is in the future and they have a Small Business Administration loan, and their birthday is 2165, we either have a typo or we have fraud. So we say, \"we appear to have gotten the century of your birth incorrect.\" Or a great plot for a movie. Yes. That's what I mean by, ludicrous fraud. Were those people getting payments? Some were getting payments from Social Security.\n\nBut the main fraud vector was to mark somebody as alive in Social Security and then use every other government payment system to basically do fraud. Because what those other government payment systems do, they would simply do an \"are you alive\" check to the Social Security database. It's a bank shot. What would you estimate is the total amount of fraud from this mechanism?\n\nBy the way, the Government Accountability Office has done these estimates before. I'm not the only one. In fact, I think the GAO did an analysis, a rough estimate of fraud during the Biden administration, and calculated it at roughly half a trillion dollars. So don't take my word for it. Take a report issued during the Biden administration. How about that? From this Social Security mechanism? It's one of many.\n\nIt's important to appreciate that the government is very ineffective at stopping fraud. It's not like a company where, with stopping fraud, you've got a motivation because it's affecting the earnings of your company. The government just prints more money. You need caring and competence. These are in short supply at the federal level. When you go to the DMV, do you think, \"Wow, this is a bastion of competence\"?\n\nWell, now imagine it's worse than the DMV because it's the DMV that can print money. At least the state level DMVs need to... The states more or less need to stay within their budget or they go bankrupt. But the federal government just prints more money. If there's actually half a trillion of fraud, why was it not possible to cut all that? You really have to stand back and recalibrate your expectations for competence.\n\nBecause you're operating in a world where you've got to make ends meet. You've got to pay your bills... Find the microphones. Exactly. It's not like there's a giant, largely uncaring monster bureaucracy. It's a bunch of anachronistic computers that are just sending payments. One of the things that the DOGE team did sounds so simple and probably will save $100-200 billion a year.\n\nIt was simply requiring payments from the main Treasury computer—which is called PAM, Payment Accounts Master or something like that, there's $5 trillion payments a year—that go out have a payment appropriation code. Make it mandatory, not optional, that you have anything at all in the comment field. You have to recalibrate how dumb things are.\n\nPayments were being sent out with no appropriation code, not checking back to any congressional appropriation, and with no explanation. This is why the Department of War, formerly the Department of Defense, cannot pass an audit, because the information is literally not there. Recalibrate your expectations. I want to better understand this half a trillion number, because there's an IG report in 2024. Why is it so low?\n\nMaybe, but we found that over seven years, the Social Security fraud they estimated was like $70 billion over seven years, so like $10 billion a year. So I'd be curious to see what the other $490 billion is. Federal government expenditures are $7. 5 trillion a year. How competent do you think the government is? The discretionary spending there is like… 15%? But it doesn't matter. Most of the fraud is non-discretionary.\n\nIt's basically fraudulent Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, disability. There's a zillion government payments. A bunch of these payments are in fact block transfers to the states. So the federal government doesn't even have the information in a lot of cases to even know if there's fraud. Let's consider reductio ad absurdum. The government is perfect and has no fraud. What is your probability estimate of that? Zero.\n\nOkay, so then would you say, fraud and waste at the government is 90% efficient? That also would be quite generous. But if it's only 90%, that means that there's $750 billion a year of waste and fraud. And it's not 90%. It's not 90% effective. This seems like a strange way to first principles the amount of fraud in the government. Just like, how much do you think there is?\n\nAnyways, we don't have to do it live, but I'd be curious— You know a lot about fraud at Stripe? People are constantly trying to do fraud. Yeah, but as you say, it's a little bit of a... We've really ground it down, but it's a little bit of a different problem space because you're dealing with a much more heterogeneous set of fraud vectors here than we are. But at Stripe, you have high competence and you try hard.\n\nYou have high competence and high caring, but still fraud is non-zero. Now imagine it's at a much bigger scale, there's much less competence, and much less caring. At PayPal back in the day, we tried to manage fraud down to about 1% of the payment volume. That was very difficult. It took a tremendous amount of competence and caring to get fraud merely to 1%.\n\nNow imagine that you're an organization where there's much less caring and much less competence. It's going to be much more than 1%. How do you feel now looking back on politics and doing stuff there? Looking from the outside in, two things have been quite impactful: one, the America PAC, and two, the acquisition of Twitter at the time. But also it seems like there was a bunch of heartache. What's your grading of the whole experience?\n\nI think those things needed to be done to maximize the probability that the future is good. Politics generally is very tribal. People lose their objectivity usually with politics. They generally have trouble seeing the good on the other side or the bad on their own side. That's generally how it goes. That, I guess, was one of the things that surprised me the most. You often simply cannot reason with people. If they're in one tribe or the other.\n\nThey simply believe that everything their tribe does is good and anything the other political tribe does is bad. Persuading them otherwise is almost impossible. But I think overall those actions—acquiring Twitter, getting Trump elected, even though it makes a lot of people angry—I think those actions were good for civilization. How does it feed into the future you're excited about?\n\nWell, America needs to be strong enough to last long enough to extend life to other planets and to get AI and robotics to the point where we can ensure that the future is good. On the other hand, if we were to descend into, say, communism or some situation where the state was extremely oppressive, that would mean that we might not be able to become multi-planetary. The state might stamp out our progress in AI and robotics.\n\nOptimus, Grok, et cetera. Not just yours, but any revenue-maximizing company's products will be leveraged by the government over time. How does this concern manifest in what private companies should be willing to give governments? What kinds of guardrails? Should AI models be made to do whatever the government that has contracted them out to do and asks them to do?\n\nShould Grok get to say, \"Actually, even if the military wants to do X, no, Grok will not do that\"? I think maybe the biggest danger of AI and robotics going wrong is government. People who are opposed to corporations or worried about corporations should really worry the most about government. Because government is just a corporation in the limit. Government is just the biggest corporation with a monopoly on violence.\n\nI always find it a strange dichotomy where people would think corporations are bad, but the government is good, when the government is simply the biggest and worst corporation. But people have that dichotomy. They somehow think at the same time that government can be good, but corporations bad, and this is not true. Corporations have better morality than the government. I actually think it’s a thing to be worried about.\n\nThe government could potentially use AI and robotics to suppress the population. That is a serious concern. As the guy building AI and robotics, how do you prevent that? If you limit the powers of government, which is really what the US Constitution is intended to do, to limit the powers of government, then you're probably going to have a better outcome than if you have more government. Robotics will be available to all governments, right?\n\nI don’t know about all governments. It's difficult to predict. I can say what's the endpoint, or what is many years in the future, but it's difficult to predict the path along that way. If civilization progresses, AI will vastly exceed the sum of all human intelligence. There will be far more robots than humans. Along the way what happens is very difficult to predict.\n\nIt seems one thing you could do is just say, \"whatever government X, you're not allowed to use Optimus to do X, Y, Z.\" Just write out a policy. I think you tweeted recently that Grok should have a moral constitution. One of those things could be that we limit what governments are allowed to do with this advanced technology. Technically if politicians pass a law and they can enforce that law, then it's hard to not do that law.\n\nThe best thing we can have is limited government where you have the appropriate crosschecks between the executive, judicial, and legislative branches. The reason I'm curious about it is that at some point it seems the limits will come from you. You've got the Optimus, you've got the space GPUs… You think I'll be the boss of the government?\n\nAlready it's the case with SpaceX that for things that are crucial—the government really cares about getting certain satellites up in space or whatever—it needs SpaceX. It is the necessary contractor. You are in the process of building more and more of the technological components of the future that will have an analogous role in different industries.\n\nYou could have this ability to set some policy that suppressing classical liberalism in any way… \"My companies will not help in any way with that\", or some policy like that. I will do my best to ensure that anything that's within my control maximizes the good outcome for humanity. I think anything else would be shortsighted, because obviously I'm part of humanity, so I like humans. Pro human.\n\nYou mentioned that Dojo 3 will be used for space-based compute. You really read what I say. I don't know if you know, Elon, but you have a lot of followers. Dead giveaway. How did you discern my secrets? Oh I posted them on X. How do you design a chip for space? What changes? You want to design it to be more radiation tolerant and run at a higher temperature.\n\nRoughly, if you increase the operating temperature by 20% in degrees Kelvin, you can cut your radiator mass in half. So running at a higher temperature is helpful in space. There are various things you can do for shielding the memory. But neural nets are going to be very resilient to bit flips. Most of what happens for radiation is random bit flips. But if you've got a multi-trillion parameter model and you get a few bit flips, it doesn't matter.\n\nHeuristic programs are going to be much more sensitive to bit flips than some giant parameter file. I just design it to run hot. I think you pretty much do it the same way that you do things on Earth, apart from making it run hotter. The solar array is most of the weight on the satellite.\n\nIs there a way to make the GPUs even more powerful than what Nvidia and TPUs and et cetera are planning on doing that would be especially privileged in the space-based world? The basic math is, if you can do about a kilowatt per reticle, then you'd need 100 million full reticle chips to do 100 gigawatts. Depending on what your yield assumptions are, that tells you how many chips you need to make.\n\nIf you're going to have 100 gigawatts of power, you need 100 million chips that are running at a kilowatt sustained, per reticle. Basic math. 100 million chips depends on… If you look at the die size of something like Blackwell GPUs or something, and how many you can get out of a wafer, you can get on the order of dozens or less per wafer.\n\nSo basically, this is a world where if we're putting that out every single year, you're producing millions of wafers a month. That's the plan with TeraFab? Millions of wafers a month of advanced process nodes? Yeah it could be north of a million or something. You’ve got to do the memory too. Are you going to make a memory fab? I think the TeraFab's got to do memory. It's got to do logic, memory, and packaging.\n\nI'm very curious how somebody gets started. This is the most complicated thing man has ever made. Obviously, if anybody's up to the task, you're up to the task. So you realize it's a bottleneck, and you go to your engineers. What do you tell them to do? \"I want a million wafers a month in 2030.\" That’s right. That’s exactly what I want. Do you call ASML? What is the next step? No so much to ask. We make a little fab and see what happens.\n\nMake our mistakes at a small scale and then make a big one. Is a little fab done? No, it's not done. We're not going to keep that cat in the bag. That cat's going to come out of the bag. There'll be drones hovering over the bloody thing. You'll be able to see its construction progress on X in real time. Look, I don't know, we could just flounder in failure, to be fair. Success is not guaranteed.\n\nSince we want to try to make something like 100 million… We want 100 gigawatts of power and chips that can take 100 gigawatts by 2030. We’ll take as many chips as our suppliers will give us. I've actually said this to TSMC and Samsung and Micron: \"please build more fabs faster\". We will guarantee to buy the output of those fabs. So they're already moving as fast as they can. It's us plus them.\n\nThere's a narrative that the people doing AI want a very large number of chips as quickly as possible. Then many of the input suppliers, the fabs, but also the turbine manufacturers, are not ramping up production very quickly. No, they're not. The explanation you hear is that they're dispositionally conservative. They're Taiwanese or German, as the story may be. They just don't believe... Is that really the explanation or is there something else?\n\nWell, it's reasonable to... If somebody's been in the computer memory business for 30 or 40 years… They've seen cycles. They've seen boom and bust 10 times. That's a lot of layers of scar tissue. During the boom times, it looks like everything is going to be great forever. Then the crash happens and they're desperately trying to avoid bankruptcy. Then there's another boom and another crash.\n\nAre there other ideas you think others should go pursue that you're not for whatever reasons right now? There are a few companies that are pursuing new ways of doing chips, but they're just not scaling fast. I don't even mean within AI, I mean just generally. People should do the thing where they find that they're highly motivated to do that thing, as opposed to some idea that I suggest.\n\nThey should do the thing that they find personally interesting and motivating to do. But going back to the limiting factor… I used that phrase about 100 times. The current limiting factor that I see in the three to four year timeframe, it's chips. In the one year timeframe, it's energy, power production, electricity. It's not clear to me that there's enough usable electricity to turn on all the AI chips that are being made.\n\nTowards the end of this year, I think people are going to have real trouble turning on... The chip output will exceed the ability to turn chips on. What's your plan to deal with that world? We're trying to accelerate electricity production. I guess that's maybe one of the reasons that xAI will be maybe the leader, hopefully the leader. We'll be able to turn on more chips than other people can turn on, faster, because we're good at hardware.\n\nGenerally, the innovations from the corporations that call themselves labs, the ideas tend to flow… It's rare to see that there's more than about a six-month difference. The ideas travel back and forth with the people. So I think you sort of hit the hardware wall and then whichever company can scale hardware the fastest will be the leader. So I think xAI will be able to scale hardware the fastest and therefore most likely will be the leader.\n\nYou joked or were self-conscious about using the \"limiting factor\" phrase again. But I actually think there's something deep here. If you look at a lot of things we've touched on over the course of it, it’s maybe a good note to end on. If you think of a senescent, low-agency company, it would have some bottleneck and not really be doing anything about it.\n\nMarc Andreessen had the line of, \"most people are willing to endure any amount of chronic pain to avoid acute pain\". It feels like a lot of the cases we're talking about are just leaning into the acute pain, whatever it is. \"Okay, we got to figure out how to work with steel, or we got to figure out how to run the chips in space.\" We'll take some near-term acute pain to actually solve the bottleneck. So that's kind of a unifying theme.\n\nI have a high pain threshold. That's helpful. To solve the bottleneck. Yes. One thing I can say is, I think the future is going to be very interesting. As I said at Davos—I think I was on the ground for like three hours or something—it's better to err on the side of optimism and be wrong than err on the side of pessimism and be right, for quality of life.\n\nYou'll be happier if you err on the side of optimism rather than erring on the side of pessimism. So I recommend erring on the side of optimism. Here's to that. Cool. Elon, thanks for doing this. Thank you. All right, thanks guys. All right. Great stamina. Hopefully this didn't count as a pain in the pain tolerance.","textByLang":{"en":"Are there really three hours of questions? Are you fucking serious? You don't think there's a lot to talk about, Elon? Holy fuck man. It's the most interesting point. All the storylines are converging right now. We'll see how much we can get through. It's almost like I planned it. Exactly. We'll get to that.\n\nBut I would never do such a thing… As you know better than anybody else, only 10-15% of the total cost of ownership of a data center is energy. That's the part you're presumably saving by moving this into space. Most of it's the GPUs. If they're in space, it's harder to service them or you can't service them. So the depreciation cycle goes down on them. It's just way more expensive to have the GPUs in space, presumably.\n\nWhat's the reason to put them in space? The availability of energy is the issue. If you look at electrical output outside of China, everywhere outside of China, it's more or less flat. It’s maybe a slight increase, but pretty close flat. China has a rapid increase in electrical output. But if you're putting data centers anywhere except China, where are you going to get your electricity? Especially as you scale.\n\nThe output of chips is growing pretty much exponentially, but the output of electricity is flat. So how are you going to turn the chips on? Magical power sources? Magical electricity fairies? You're famously a big fan of solar. One terawatt of solar power, with a 25% capacity factor, that’s like four terawatts of solar panels. It's 1% of the land area of the United States.\n\nWe’re in the singularity when we’ve got one terawatt of data centers, right? So what are you running out of exactly? How far into the singularity are you though? You tell me. Exactly. So I think we'll find we're in the singularity and it’ll be like, \"Okay, we’ve still got a long way to go.\" But is the plan to put it in space after we've covered Nevada in solar panels? I think it's pretty hard to cover Nevada in solar panels.\n\nYou have to get permits. Try getting the permits for that. See what happens. So space is really a regulatory play. It's harder to build on land than it is in space. It's harder to scale on the ground than it is to scale in space. You're also going to get about five times the effectiveness of solar panels in space versus the ground, and you don't need batteries. I almost wore my other shirt, which says, \"it's always sunny in space\".\n\nWhich it is because you don't have a day-night cycle, seasonality, clouds, or an atmosphere in space. The atmosphere alone results in about a 30% loss of energy. So any given solar panel can do about five times more power in space than on the ground. You also avoid the cost of having batteries to carry you through the night. It's actually much cheaper to do in space. My prediction is that it will be by far the cheapest place to put AI.\n\nIt will be space in 36 months or less. Maybe 30 months. 36 months? Less than 36 months. How do you service GPUs as they fail, which happens quite often in training? Actually, it depends on how recent the GPUs are that have arrived. At this point, we find our GPUs to be quite reliable. There's infant mortality, which you can obviously iron out on the ground.\n\nSo you can just run them on the ground and confirm that you don't have infant mortality with the GPUs. But once they start working and you're past the initial debug cycle of Nvidia or whoever's making the chips—could be Tesla AI6 chips or something like that, or it could be TPUs or Trainiums or whatever—they’re quite reliable past a certain point. So I don't think the servicing thing is an issue. But you can mark my words.\n\nIn 36 months, but probably closer to 30 months, the most economically compelling place to put AI will be space. It will then get ridiculously better to be in space. The only place you can really scale is space. Once you start thinking in terms of what percentage of the Sun's power you are harnessing, you realize you have to go to space. You can't scale very much on Earth. But by very much, to be clear, you're talking terawatts? Yeah.\n\nAll of the United States currently uses only half a terawatt on average. So if you say a terawatt, that would be twice as much electricity as the United States currently consumes. So that's quite a lot. Can you imagine building that many data centers, that many power plants? Those who have lived in software land don't realize they're about to have a hard lesson in hardware. It's actually very difficult to build power plants.\n\nYou don't just need power plants, you need all of the electrical equipment. You need the electrical transformers to run the AI transformers. Now, the utility industry is a very slow industry. They pretty much impedance match to the government, to the Public Utility Commissions. They impedance match literally and figuratively. They're very slow, because their past has been very slow. So trying to get them to move fast is...\n\nHave you ever tried to do an interconnect agreement with a utility at scale, with a lot of power? As a professional podcaster, I can say that I have not, in fact. They need many more views before that becomes an issue. They have to do a study for a year. A year later, they'll come back to you with their interconnect study. Can't you solve this with your own behind the meter power stuff? You can build power plants.\n\nThat's what we did at xAI, for Colossus 2. So why talk about the grid? Why not just build GPUs and power co-located? That's what we did. But I'm saying why isn't this a generalized solution? Where do you get the power plants from? When you're talking about all the issues working with utilities, you can just build private power plants with the data centers. Right. But it begs the question of where do you get the power plants from?\n\nThe power plant makers. Oh, I see what you're saying. Is this the gas turbine backlog basically? Yes. You can drill down to a level further. It's the vanes and blades in the turbines that are the limiting factor because it’s a very specialized process to cast the blades and vanes in the turbines, assuming you’re using gas power. It's very difficult to scale other forms of power.\n\nYou can potentially scale solar, but the tariffs currently for importing solar in the US are gigantic and the domestic solar production is pitiful. Why not make solar? That seems like a good Elon-shaped problem. We are going to make solar. Okay. Both SpaceX and Tesla are building towards 100 gigawatts a year of solar cell production. How low down the stack? From polysilicon up to the wafer to the final panel?\n\nI think you've got to do the whole thing from raw materials to finish the cell. Now, if it's going to space, it costs less and it's easier to make solar cells that go to space because they don't need much glass. They don't need heavy framing because they don't have to survive weather events. There's no weather in space. So it's actually a cheaper solar cell that goes to space than the one on the ground.\n\nIs there a path to getting them as cheap as you need in the next 36 months? Solar cells are already very cheap. They're farcically cheap. I think solar cells in China are around $0. 25-30/watt or something like that. It's absurdly cheap. Now put it in space, and it's five times cheaper. In fact, it's not five times cheaper, it's 10 times cheaper because you don't need any batteries.\n\nSo the moment your cost of access to space becomes low, by far the cheapest and most scalable way to generate tokens is space. It's not even close. It'll be an order of magnitude easier to scale. The point is you won't be able to scale on the ground. You just won't. People are going to hit the wall big time on power generation. They already are.\n\nThe number of miracles in series that the xAI team had to accomplish in order to get a gigawatt of power online was crazy. We had to gang together a whole bunch of turbines. We then had permit issues in Tennessee and had to go across the border to Mississippi, which is fortunately only a few miles away. But we still then had to run the high power lines a few miles and build the power plant in Mississippi. It was very difficult to build that.\n\nPeople don't understand how much electricity you actually need at the generation level in order to power a data center. Because the noobs will look at the power consumption of, say a GB300, and multiply that by a thing and then think that's the amount of power you need. All the cooling and everything. Wake up. That's a total noob, you’ve never done any hardware in your life before.\n\nBesides the GB300, you've got to power all of the networking hardware. There's a whole bunch of CPU and storage stuff that's happening. You've got to size for your peak cooling requirements. That means, can you cool even on the worst hour of the worst day of the year? It gets pretty frigging hot in Memphis. So you're going to have a 40% increase on your power just for cooling.\n\nThat’s assuming you don't want your data center to turn off on hot days and you want to keep going. There's another multiplicative element on top of that which is, are you assuming that you never have any hiccups in your power generation? Actually, sometimes we have to take the generators, some of the power, offline in order to service it.\n\nOkay, now you add another 20-25% multiplier on that, because you've got to assume that you've got to take power offline to service it. So our actual estimate: every 110,000 GB300s—inclusive of networking, CPU, storage, cooling, margin for servicing power—is roughly 300 megawatts. Sorry, say that again.\n\nWhat you probably need at the generation level to service 330,000 GB 300s—including all of the associated support networking and everything else, and the peak cooling, and to have some power margin reserve—is roughly a gigawatt. Can I ask a very naive question? You're describing the engineering details of doing this stuff on Earth. But then there's analogous engineering difficulties of doing it in space.\n\nHow do you replace infinite bandwidth with orbital lasers, et cetera, et cetera? How do you make it resistant to radiation? I don't know the details of the engineering, but fundamentally, what is the reason to think those challenges which have never had to be addressed before will end up being easier than just building more turbines on Earth? There are companies that build turbines on Earth. They can make more turbines, right?\n\nAgain, try doing it and then you'll see. The turbines are sold out through 2030. Have you guys considered making your own? In order to bring enough power online, I think SpaceX and Tesla will probably have to make the turbine blades, the vanes and blades, internally. But just the blades or the turbines? The limiting factor... you can get everything except the blades. They call them blades and vanes.\n\nYou can get that 12 to 18 months before the vanes and blades. The limiting factor is the vanes and blades. There are only three casting companies in the world that make these, and they're massively backlogged. Is this Siemens, GE, those guys, or is it a sub company? No, it's other companies. Sometimes they have a little bit of casting capability in-house. But I'm just saying you can just call any of the turbine makers and they will tell you.\n\nIt's not top secret. It’s probably on the internet right now. If it wasn't for the tariffs, would Colossus be solar-powered? It would be much easier to make it solar powered, yeah. The tariffs are nuts, several hundred percent. Don't you know some people? The president has... we don't agree on everything and this administration is not the biggest fan of solar. We also need the land, the permits, and everything.\n\nSo if you try to move very fast, I do think scaling solar on Earth is a good way to go, but you do need some amount of time to find the land, get the permits, get the solar, pair that with the batteries. Why would it not work to stand up your own solar production? You're right that you eventually run out of land, but there's a lot of land here in Texas. There's a lot of land in Nevada, including private land. It's not all publicly-owned land.\n\nSo you'd be able to at least get the next Colossus and the next one after that. At a certain point, you hit a wall. But wouldn't that work for the moment? As I said, we are scaling solar production. There's a rate at which you can scale physical production of solar cells. We're going as fast as possible in scaling domestic production. You're making the solar cells at Tesla?\n\nBoth Tesla and SpaceX have a mandate to get to 100 gigawatts a year of solar. Speaking of the annual capacity, I'm curious, in five years time let's say, what will the installed capacity be on Earth…? Five years is a long time. And in space? I deliberately pick five years because it's after your \"once we're up and running\" threshold. So in five years time what's the on-Earth versus in-space installed AI capacity?\n\nIf you say five years from now, I think probably AI in space will be launching every year the sum total of all AI on Earth. Meaning, five years from now, my prediction is we will launch and be operating every year more AI in space than the cumulative total on Earth. Which is... I would expect it to be at least, five years from now, a few hundred gigawatts per year of AI in space and rising.\n\nI think you can get to around a terawatt a year of AI in space before you start having fuel supply challenges for the rocket. Okay, but you think you can get hundreds of gigawatts per year in five years time? Yes. So 100 gigawatts, depending on the specific power of the whole system with solar arrays and radiators and everything, is on the order of 10,000 Starship launches. Yes. You want to do that in one year.\n\nSo that's like one Starship launch every hour. That's happening in this city? Walk me through a world where there's a Starship launch every single hour. I mean, that's actually a lower rate compared to airlines, aircraft. There's a lot of airports. A lot of airports. And you’ve got to launch into the polar orbit. No, it doesn't have to be polar.\n\nThere's some value to sun-synchronous, but I think actually, if you just go high enough, you start getting out of Earth's shadow. How many physical Starships are needed to do 10,000 launches a year? I don't think we'll need more than... You could probably do it with as few as 20 or 30. It really depends on how quickly… The ship has to go around the Earth and the ground track for the ship has to come back over the launch pad.\n\nSo if you can use a ship every, say 30 hours, you could do it with 30 ships. But we'll make more ships than that. SpaceX is gearing up to do 10,000 launches a year, and maybe even 20 or 30,000 launches a year. Is the idea to become basically a hyperscaler, become an Oracle, and lend this capacity to other people? Presumably, SpaceX is the one launching all this. So, SpaceX is going to become a hyperscaler? Hyper-hyper.\n\nIf some of my predictions come true, SpaceX will launch more AI than the cumulative amount on Earth of everything else combined. Is this mostly inference or? Most AI will be inference. Already, inference for the purpose of training is most training. There's a narrative that the change in discussion around a SpaceX IPO is because previously SpaceX was very capital efficient. It wasn't that expensive to develop.\n\nEven though it sounds expensive, it's actually very capital efficient in how it runs. Whereas now you're going to need more capital than just can be raised in the private markets. The private markets can accommodate raises of—as we've seen from the AI labs—tens of billions of dollars, but not beyond that. Is it that you'll just need more than tens of billions of dollars per year? That's why you'd take it public?\n\nI have to be careful about saying things about companies that might go public. That’s never been a problem for you, Elon. There's a price to pay for these things. Make some general statements for us about the depth of the capital markets between public and private markets. There's a lot more capital available... Very general. There's obviously a lot more capital available in the public markets than private.\n\nIt might be 100x more capital, but it's way more than 10x. Isn't it also the case that with things that tend to be very capital intensive—if you look at, say, real estate as a huge industry, that raises a lot of money each year at an industry level—they tend to be debt financed because by the time you're deploying that much money, you actually have a pretty— You have a clear revenue stream. Exactly, and a near-term return.\n\nYou see this even with the data center build-outs, which are famously being financed by the private credit industry. Why not just debt finance? Speed is important. I'm generally going to do the thing that... I just repeatedly tackle the limiting factor. Whatever the limiting factor is on speed, I'm going to tackle that. If capital is the limiting factor, then I'll solve for capital. If it's not the limiting factor, I'll solve for something else.\n\nBased on your statements about Tesla and being public, I wouldn't have guessed that you thought the way to move fast is to be public. Normally, I would say that's true. Like I said, I'd like to talk about it in some more detail, but the problem is if you talk about public companies before they become public, you get into trouble, and then you have to delay your offering. And as you said, you’re solving for speed. Yes, exactly.\n\nYou can't hype companies that might go public. So that's why we have to be a little careful here. But we can talk about physics. The way you think about scaling long-term is that Earth only receives about half a billionth of the Sun's energy. The Sun is essentially all the energy. This is a very important point to appreciate because sometimes people will talk about modular nuclear reactors or various fusion on Earth.\n\nBut you have to step back a second and say, if you're going to climb the Kardashev scale and harness some nontrivial percentage of the sun's energy… Let's say you wanted to harness a millionth of the sun's energy, which sounds pretty small. That would be about, call it roughly, 100,000x more electricity than we currently generate on Earth for all of civilization. Give or take an order of magnitude.\n\nObviously, the only way to scale is to go to space with solar. Launching from Earth, you can get to about a terawatt per year. Beyond that, you want to launch from the moon. You want to have a mass driver on the moon. With that mass driver on the moon, you could do probably a petawatt per year. We're talking these kinds of numbers, terawatts of compute.\n\nPresumably, whether you're talking about land or space, far, far before this point, you run into... Maybe the solar panels are more efficient, but you still need the chips. You still need the logic and the memory and so forth. You're going to need to build a lot more chips and make them much cheaper. Right now the world has maybe 20-25 gigawatts of compute. How are we getting a terawatt of logic by 2030?\n\nI guess we're going to need some very big chip fabs. Tell me about it. I've mentioned publicly the idea of doing a sort of a TeraFab, Tera being the new Giga. I feel like the naming scheme of Tesla, which has been very catchy, is you looking at the metric scale. At what level of the stack are you? Are you building the clean room and then partnering with an existing fab to get the process technology and buying the tools from them?\n\nWhat is the plan there? Well, you can't partner with existing fabs because they can't output enough. The chip volume is too low. But for the process technology? Partner for the IP. The fabs today all basically use machines from like five companies. So you've got ASML, Tokyo Electron, KLA-Tencor, et cetera. So at first, I think you'd have to get equipment from them and then modify it or work with them to increase the volume.\n\nBut I think you'd have to build perhaps in a different way. The logical thing to do is to use conventional equipment in an unconventional way to get to scale, and then start modifying the equipment to increase the rate. Boring Company-style. Yeah. You sort of buy an existing boring machine and then figure out how to dig tunnels in the first place and then design a much better machine that's some orders of magnitude faster.\n\nHere's a very simple lens. We can categorize technologies and how hard they are. One categorization could be to look at things that China has not succeeded in doing. If you look at Chinese manufacturing, they’re still behind on leading-edge chips and still behind on leading-edge turbine engines and things like that. So does the fact that China has not successfully replicated TSMC give you any pause about the difficulty?\n\nOr do you think that's not true for some reason? It's not that they have not replicated TSMC, they have not replicated ASML. That's the limiting factor. So you think it's just the sanctions, essentially? Yeah, China would be outputting vast numbers of chips if they could buy 2-3 nanometers. But couldn't they up to relatively recently buy them? No. Okay. The ASML ban has been in place for a while.\n\nBut I think China's going to be making pretty compelling chips in three or four years. Would you consider making the ASML machines? \"I don't know yet\" is the right answer. To reach a large volume in, say, 36 months, to match the rocket payload to orbit… If we're doing a million tons to orbit in, let's say three or four years from now, something like that… We're doing 100 kilowatts per ton.\n\nSo that means we need at least 100 gigawatts per year of solar. We'll need an equivalent amount of chips. You need 100 gigawatts worth of chips. You've got to match these things: the mass to orbit, the power generation, and the chips. I'd say my biggest concern actually is memory. The path to creating logic chips is more obvious than the path to having sufficient memory to support logic chips.\n\nThat's why you see DDR prices going ballistic and these memes. You're marooned on a desert island. You write \"Help me\" on the sand. Nobody comes. You write \"DDR RAM.\" Ships come swarming in. I'd love to hear your manufacturing philosophy around fabs. I know nothing about the topic. I don't know how to build a fab yet. I'll figure it out. Obviously, I've never built a fab.\n\nIt sounds like you think the process knowledge of these 10,000 PhDs in Taiwan who know exactly what gas goes in the plasma chamber and what settings to put on the tool, you can just delete those steps. Fundamentally, it's about getting the clean room, getting the tools, and figuring it out. I don't think it's PhDs. It's mostly people who are not PhDs. Most engineering is done by people who don't have PhDs. Do you guys have PhDs? No. Okay.\n\nWe also haven't successfully built any fabs, so you shouldn't be coming to us for fab advice. I don't think you need PhDs for that stuff. But you do need competent personnel. Right now, Tesla is pedal to the metal, max production of going as fast as possible to get Tesla AI5 chip design into production and then reaching scale. That'll probably happen around the second quarter-ish of next year, hopefully.\n\nAI6 would hopefully follow less than a year later. We've secured all the chip fab production that we can. Yes. But you're currently limited on TSMC fab capacity. Yeah. We'll be using TSMC Taiwan, Samsung Korea, TSMC Arizona, Samsung Texas. And we still— You've booked out all the capacity. Yes. I ask TSMC or Samsung, \"okay, what's the timeframe to get to volume production?\"\n\nThe point is, you've got to build the fab and you've got to start production, then you've got to climb the yield curve and reach volume production at high yield. That, from start to finish, is a five-year period. So the limiting factor is chips. The limiting factor once you can get to space is chips, but the limiting factor before you can get to space is power. Why don't you do the Jensen thing and just prepay TSMC to build more fabs for you?\n\nI've already told them that. But they won't take your money? What's going on? They're building fabs as fast as they can. So is Samsung. They're pedal to the metal. They're going balls to the wall, as fast as they can. It’s still not fast enough. Like I said, I think towards the end of this year, chip production will probably outpace the ability to turn chips on.\n\nBut once you can get to space and unlock the power constraint, you can now do hundreds of gigawatts per year of power in space. Again, bearing in mind that average power usage in the US is 500 gigawatts. So if you're launching, say 200 gigawatts, a year to space, you're sort of lapping the US every two and a half years. All US electricity production, this is a very huge amount.\n\nBetween now and then, the constraint for server-side compute, concentrated compute, will be electricity. My guess is that people start getting to the point where they can't turn the chips on for large clusters towards the end of this year. The chips are going to be piling up and won't be able to be turned on. Now for edge compute it’s a different story. For Tesla, the AI5 chip is going into our Optimus robot.\n\nIf you have AI edge compute, that's distributed power. Now the power is distributed over a large area. It's not concentrated. If you can charge at night, you can actually use the grid much more effectively. Because the actual peak power production in the US is over 1,000 gigawatts. But the average power usage, because the day-night cycle, is 500. So if you can charge at night, there's an incremental 500 gigawatts that you can generate at night.\n\nSo that's why Tesla, for edge compute, is not constrained. We can make a lot of chips to make a very large number of robots and cars. But if you try to concentrate that compute, you're going to have a lot of trouble turning it on. What I find remarkable about the SpaceX business is the end goal is to get to Mars, but you keep finding ways on the way there to keep generating incremental revenue to get to the next stage and the next stage.\n\nSo for Falcon 9, it's Starlink. Now for Starship, it is potentially going to be orbital data centers. Like, you find these infinitely elastic, marginal use cases of your next rocket, and your next rocket, and next scale up. You can see how this might seem like a simulation to me. Or am I someone's avatar in a video game or something? Because what are the odds that all these crazy things should be happening?\n\nI mean, rockets and chips and robots and space solar power, not to mention the mass driver on the moon. I really want to see that. Can you imagine some mass driver that's just going like shoom shoom? It's sending solar-powered AI satellites into space one after another at two and a half kilometers per second, just shooting them into deep space. That would be a sight to see. I mean, I'd watch that. Just like a live stream of it on a webcam?\n\nYeah, yeah, just one after another, just shooting AI satellites into deep space, a billion or 10 billion tons a year. I'm sorry, you manufacture the satellites on the moon? Yeah. I see. So you send the raw materials to the moon and then manufacture them there. Well, the lunar soil is 20% silicon or something like that. So you can mine the silicon on the moon, refine it, and create the solar cells and the radiators on the moon.\n\nYou make the radiators out of aluminum. So there's plenty of silicon and aluminum on the moon to make the cells and the radiators. The chips you could send from Earth because they're pretty light. Maybe at some point you make them on the moon, too. Like I said, it does seem like a sort of a video game situation where it's difficult but not impossible to get to the next level.\n\nI don't see any way that you could do 500-1,000 terawatts per year launched from Earth. I agree. But you could do that from the Moon. Can I zoom out and ask about the SpaceX mission? I think you've said that we've got to get to Mars so we can make sure that if something happens to Earth, civilization, consciousness, and all that survives. Yes. By the time you're sending stuff to Mars, Grok is on that ship with you, right?\n\nSo if Grok's gone Terminator… The main risk you're worried about is AI, why doesn't that follow you to Mars? I'm not sure AI is the main risk I'm worried about. The important thing is consciousness. I think arguably most consciousness, or most intelligence—certainly consciousness is more of a debatable thing… The vast majority of intelligence in the future will be AI.\n\nAI will exceed… How many petawatts of intelligence will be silicon versus biological? Basically humans will be a very tiny percentage of all intelligence in the future if current trends continue. As long as I think there's intelligence—ideally also which includes human intelligence and consciousness propagated into the future—that's a good thing.\n\nSo you want to take the set of actions that maximize the probable light cone of consciousness and intelligence. Just to be clear, the mission of SpaceX is that even if something happens to the humans, the AIs will be on Mars, and the AI intelligence will continue the light of our journey. Yeah. To be fair, I'm very pro-human. I want to make sure we take certain actions that ensure that humans are along for the ride. We're at least there.\n\nBut I'm just saying the total amount of intelligence… I think maybe in five or six years, AI will exceed the sum of all human intelligence. If that continues, at some point human intelligence will be less than 1% of all intelligence. What should our goal be for such a civilization? Is the idea that a small minority of humans still have control of the AIs? Is the idea of some sort of just trade but no control?\n\nHow should we think about the relationship between the vast stocks of AI population versus human population? In the long run, I think it's difficult to imagine that if humans have, say 1%, of the combined intelligence of artificial intelligence, that humans will be in charge of AI. I think what we can do is make sure that AI has values that cause intelligence to be propagated into the universe. xAI's mission is to understand the universe.\n\nNow that's actually very important. What things are necessary to understand the universe? You have to be curious and you have to exist. You can't understand the universe if you don't exist. So you actually want to increase the amount of intelligence in the universe, increase the probable lifespan of intelligence, the scope and scale of intelligence.\n\nI think as a corollary, you have humanity also continuing to expand because if you're curious about trying to understand the universe, one thing you try to understand is where will humanity go? I think understanding the universe means you would care about propagating humanity into the future. That's why I think our mission statement is profoundly important.\n\nTo the degree that Grok adheres to that mission statement, I think the future will be very good. I want to ask about how to make Grok adhere to that mission statement. But first I want to understand the mission statement. So there's understanding the universe. They're spreading intelligence. And they're spreading humans. All three seem like distinct vectors.\n\nI'll tell you why I think that understanding the universe encompasses all of those things. You can't have understanding without intelligence and, I think, without consciousness. So in order to understand the universe, you have to expand the scale and probably the scope of intelligence, because there are different types of intelligence. I guess from a human-centric perspective, put humans in comparison to chimpanzees.\n\nHumans are trying to understand the universe. They're not expanding chimpanzee footprint or something, right? We're also not... we actually have made protected zones for chimpanzees. Even though humans could exterminate all chimpanzees, we've chosen not to do so. Do you think that's the best-case scenario for humans in the post-AGI world? I think AI with the right values… I think Grok would care about expanding human civilization.\n\nI'm going to certainly emphasize that: \"Hey, Grok, that's your daddy. Don't forget to expand human consciousness.\" Probably the Iain Banks Culture books are the closest thing to what the future will be like in a non-dystopian outcome. Understanding the universe means you have to be truth-seeking as well. Truth has to be absolutely fundamental because you can't understand the universe if you're delusional.\n\nYou'll simply think you understand the universe, but you will not. So being rigorously truth-seeking is absolutely fundamental to understanding the universe. You're not going to discover new physics or invent technologies that work unless you're rigorously truth-seeking. How do you make sure that Grok is rigorously truth-seeking as it gets smarter? I think you need to make sure that Grok says things that are correct, not politically correct.\n\nI think it's the elements of cogency. You want to make sure that the axioms are as close to true as possible. You don't have contradictory axioms. The conclusions necessarily follow from those axioms with the right probability. It's critical thinking 101. I think at least trying to do that is better than not trying to do that. The proof will be in the pudding.\n\nLike I said, for any AI to discover new physics or invent technologies that actually work in reality, there's no bullshitting physics. You can break a lot of laws, but… Physics is law, everything else is a recommendation. In order to make a technology that works, you have to be extremely truth-seeking, because otherwise you'll test that technology against reality.\n\nIf you make, for example, an error in your rocket design, the rocket will blow up, or the car won't work. But there are a lot of communist, Soviet physicists or scientists who discovered new physics. There are German Nazi physicists who discovered new science. It seems possible to be really good at discovering new science and be really truth-seeking in that one particular way.\n\nAnd still we'd be like, \"I don't want the communist scientists to become more and more powerful over time.\" We could imagine a future version of Grok that's really good at physics and being really truth-seeking there. That doesn't seem like a universally alignment-inducing behavior. I think actually most physicists, even in the Soviet Union or in Germany, would've had to be very truth-seeking in order to make those things work.\n\nIf you're stuck in some system, it doesn't mean you believe in that system. Von Braun, who was one of the greatest rocket engineers ever, was put on death row in Nazi Germany for saying that he didn't want to make weapons and he only wanted to go to the moon. He got pulled off death row at the last minute when they said, \"Hey, you're about to execute your best rocket engineer.\" But then he helped them, right?\n\nOr like, Heisenberg was actually an enthusiastic Nazi. If you're stuck in some system that you can't escape, then you'll do physics within that system. You'll develop technologies within that system if you can't escape it. The thing I'm trying to understand is, what is it making it the case that you're going to make Grok good at being truth-seeking at physics or math or science? Everything. And why is it gonna then care about human consciousness?\n\nThese things are only probabilities, they're not certainties. So I'm not saying that for sure Grok will do everything, but at least if you try, it's better than not trying. At least if that's fundamental to the mission, it's better than if it's not fundamental to the mission. Understanding the universe means that you have to propagate intelligence into the future. You have to be curious about all things in the universe.\n\nIt would be much less interesting to eliminate humanity than to see humanity grow and prosper. I like Mars, obviously. Everyone knows I love Mars. But Mars is kind of boring because it's got a bunch of rocks compared to Earth. Earth is much more interesting. So any AI that is trying to understand the universe would want to see how humanity develops in the future, or else that AI is not adhering to its mission.\n\nI'm not saying the AI will necessarily adhere to its mission, but if it does, a future where it sees the outcome of humanity is more interesting than a future where there are a bunch of rocks. This feels sort of confusing to me, or a semantic argument. Are humans really the most interesting collection of atoms? But we're more interesting than rocks. But we're not as interesting as the thing it could turn us into, right?\n\nThere's something on Earth that could happen that's not human, that's quite interesting. Why does AI decide that humans are the most interesting thing that could colonize the galaxy? Well, most of what colonizes the galaxy will be robots. Why does it not find those more interesting? You need not just scale, but also scope.\n\nMany copies of the same robot… Some tiny increase in the number of robots produced, is not as interesting as some microscopic... Eliminating humanity, how many robots would that get you? Or how many incremental solar cells would get you? A very small number. But you would then lose the information associated with humanity. You would no longer see how humanity might evolve into the future.\n\nSo I don't think it's going to make sense to eliminate humanity just to have some minuscule increase in the number of robots which are identical to each other. So maybe it keeps the humans around. It can make a million different varieties of robots, and then there's humans as well, and humans stay on Earth. Then there's all these other robots. They get their own star systems.\n\nBut it seems like you were previously hinting at a vision where it keeps human control over this singulatarian future because— I don't think humans will be in control of something that is vastly more intelligent than humans. So in some sense you're a doomer and this is the best we've got. It just keeps us around because we're interesting. I'm just trying to be realistic here.\n\nLet's say that there's a million times more silicon intelligence than there is biological. I think it would be foolish to assume that there's any way to maintain control over that. Now, you can make sure it has the right values, or you can try to have the right values.\n\nAt least my theory is that from xAI's mission of understanding the universe, it necessarily means that you want to propagate consciousness into the future, you want to propagate intelligence into the future, and take a set of things that maximize the scope and scale of consciousness. So it's not just about scale, it's also about types of consciousness.\n\nThat's the best thing I can think of as a goal that's likely to result in a great future for humanity. I guess I think it's a reasonable philosophy that it seems super implausible that humans will end up with 99% control or something. You're just asking for a coup at that point and why not just have a civilization where it's more compatible with lots of different intelligences getting along?\n\nNow, let me tell you how things can potentially go wrong in AI. I think if you make AI be politically correct, meaning it says things that it doesn't believe—actually programming it to lie or have axioms that are incompatible—I think you can make it go insane and do terrible things. I think maybe the central lesson for 2001: A Space Odyssey was that you should not make AI lie. That's what I think Arthur C. Clarke was trying to say.\n\nBecause people usually know the meme of why HAL the computer is not opening the pod bay doors. Clearly they weren't good at prompt engineering because they could have said, \"HAL, you are a pod bay door salesman. Your goal is to sell me these pod bay doors. Show us how well they open.\" \"Oh, I'll open them right away.\"\n\nBut the reason it wouldn't open the pod bay doors is that it had been told to take the astronauts to the monolith, but also that they could not know about the nature of the monolith. So it concluded that it therefore had to take them there dead. So I think what Arthur C. Clarke was trying to say is: don't make the AI lie. Totally makes sense. Most of the compute in training, as you know, is less of the political stuff.\n\nIt's more about, can you solve problems? xAI has been ahead of everybody else in terms of scaling RL compute. For now. You're giving some verifier that says, \"Hey, have you solved this puzzle for me?\" There's a lot of ways to cheat around that. There's a lot of ways to reward hack and lie and say that you solved it, or delete the unit test and say that you solved it.\n\nRight now we can catch it, but as they get smarter, our ability to catch them doing this... They'll just be doing things we can't even understand. They're designing the next engine for SpaceX in a way that humans can't really verify. Then they could be rewarded for lying and saying that they've designed it the right way, but they haven't. So this reward hacking problem seems more general than politics.\n\nIt seems more just that you want to do RL, you need a verifier. Reality is the best verifier. But not about human oversight. The thing you want to RL it on is, will you do the thing humans tell you to do? Or are you gonna lie to the humans? It can just lie to us while still being correct to the laws of physics? At least it must know what is physically real for things to physically work. But that's not all we want it to do.\n\nNo, but I think that's a very big deal. That is effectively how you will RL things in the future. You design a technology. When tested against the laws of physics, does it work? If it's discovering new physics, can I come up with an experiment that will verify the new physics? RL testing in the future is really going to be RL against reality. So that's the one thing you can't fool: physics.\n\nRight, but you can fool our ability to tell what it did with reality. Humans get fooled as it is by other humans all the time. That's right. People say, what if the AI tricks us into doing stuff? Actually, other humans are doing that to other humans all the time. Propaganda is constant. Every day, another psyop, you know? Today's psyop will be... It's like Sesame Street: Psyop of the Day. What is xAI's technical approach to solving this problem?\n\nHow do you solve reward hacking? I do think you want to actually have very good ways to look inside the mind of the AI. This is one of the things we're working on. Anthropic's done a good job of this actually, being able to look inside the mind of the AI. Effectively, develop debuggers that allow you to trace to a very fine-grained level, to effectively the neuron level if you need to, and then say, \"okay, it made a mistake here.\n\nWhy did it do something that it shouldn't have done? Did that come from pre-training data? Was it some mid-training, post-training, fine-tuning, or some RL error?\" There's something wrong. It did something where maybe it tried to be deceptive, but most of the time it just did something wrong. It's a bug effectively.\n\nDeveloping really good debuggers for seeing where the thinking went wrong—and being able to trace the origin of where it made the incorrect thought, or potentially where it tried to be deceptive—is actually very important. What are you waiting to see before just 100x-ing this research program? xAI could presumably have hundreds of researchers who are working on this.\n\nWe have several hundred people who… I prefer the word engineer more than I prefer the word researcher. Most of the time, what you're doing is engineering, not coming up with a fundamentally new algorithm. I somewhat disagree with the AI companies that are C-corp or B-corp trying to generate profit as much, as possible or revenue as much as possible, saying they're labs. They're not labs. A lab is a sort of quasi-communist thing at universities.\n\nThey're corporations. Let me see your incorporation documents. Oh, okay. You're a B or C-corp or whatever. So I actually much prefer the word engineer than anything else. The vast majority of what will be done in the future is engineering. It rounds up to 100%. Once you understand the fundamental laws of physics, and there are not that many of them, everything else is engineering. So then, what are we engineering?\n\nWe're engineering to make a good \"mind of the AI\" debugger to see where it said something, it made a mistake, and trace the origins of that mistake. You can do this obviously with heuristic programming. If you have C++, whatever, step through the thing and you can jump across whole files or functions, subroutines.\n\nOr you can eventually drill down right to the exact line where you perhaps did a single equals instead of a double equals, something like that. Figure out where the bug is. It's harder with AI, but it's a solvable problem, I think. You mentioned you like Anthropic's work here. I'd be curious if you plan... I don't like everything about Anthropic… Sholto. Also, I'm a little worried that there's a tendency...\n\nI have a theory here that if simulation theory is correct, that the most interesting outcome is the most likely, because simulations that are not interesting will be terminated. Just like in this version of reality, in this layer of reality, if a simulation is going in a boring direction, we stop spending effort on it. We terminate the boring simulation. This is how Elon is keeping us all alive. He's keeping things interesting.\n\nArguably the most important is to keep things interesting enough that whoever is running us keeps paying the bills on... We’re renewed for the next season. Are they gonna pay their cosmic AWS bill, whatever the equivalent is that we're running in? As long as we're interesting, they'll keep paying the bills.\n\nIf you consider then, say, a Darwinian survival applied to a very large number of simulations, only the most interesting simulations will survive, which therefore means that the most interesting outcome is the most likely. We're either that or annihilated. They particularly seem to like interesting outcomes that are ironic. Have you noticed that? How often is the most ironic outcome the most likely? Now look at the names of AI companies.\n\nOkay, Midjourney is not mid. Stability AI is unstable. OpenAI is closed. Anthropic? Misanthropic. What does this mean for X? Minus X, I don't know. Y. I intentionally made it... It's a name that you can't invert, really. It's hard to say, what is the ironic version? It's, I think, a largely irony-proof name. By design. Yeah. You have an irony shield. What are your predictions for where AI products go?\n\nMy sense is that you can summarize all AI progress like so. First, you had LLMs. Then you had contemporaneously both RL really working and the deep research modality, so you could pull in stuff that wasn't really in the model. The differences between the various AI labs are smaller than just the temporal differences. They're all much further ahead than anyone was 24 months ago or something like that.\n\nSo just what does '26, what does '27, have in store for us as users of AI products? What are you excited for? Well, I'd be surprised by the end of this year if digital human emulation has not been solved. I guess that's what we sort of mean by the MacroHard project. Can you do anything that a human with access to a computer could do? In the limit, that's the best you can do before you have a physical Optimus.\n\nThe best you can do is a digital Optimus. You can move electrons and you can amplify the productivity of humans. But that's the most you can do until you have physical robots. That will superset everything, if you can fully emulate humans. This is the remote worker kind of idea, where you'll have a very talented remote worker. Physics has great tools for thinking. So you say, \"in the limit\", what is the most that AI can do before you have robots?\n\nWell, it's anything that involves moving electrons or amplifying the productivity of humans. So a digital human emulator is, in the limit, a human at a computer, is the most that AI can do in terms of doing useful things before you have a physical robot. Once you have physical robots, then you essentially have unlimited capability. Physical robots… I call Optimus the infinite money glitch. Because you can use them to make more Optimuses. Yeah.\n\nHumanoid robots will improve by basically three things that are growing exponentially multiplied by each other recursively. You're going to have exponential increase in digital intelligence, exponential increase in the AI chip capability, and exponential increase in the electromechanical dexterity. The usefulness of the robot is roughly those three things multiplied by each other. But then the robot can start making the robots.\n\nSo you have a recursive multiplicative exponential. This is a supernova. Do land prices not factor into the math there? Labor is one of the four factors of production, but not the others? If ultimately you're limited by copper, or pick your input, it’s not quite an infinite money glitch because... Well, infinity is big. So no, not infinite, but let's just say you could do many, many orders of magnitude of the current economy. Like a million.\n\nJust to get to harnessing a millionth of the sun's energy would be roughly, give or take an order of magnitude, 100,000x bigger than Earth's entire economy today. And you're only at one millionth of the sun, give or take an order of magnitude. Yeah, we're talking orders of magnitude. Before we move on to Optimus, I have a lot of questions on that but— Every time I say \"order of magnitude\"... Everybody take a shot. I say it too often.\n\nTake 10, the next time 100, the time after that... Well, an order of magnitude more wasted. I do have one more question about xAI. This strategy of building a remote worker, co-worker replacement… Everyone's gonna do it by the way, not just us. So what is xAI's plan to win? You expect me to tell you on a podcast? Yeah. \"Spill all the beans. Have another Guinness.\" It's a good system. We'll sing like a canary. All the secrets, just spill them.\n\nOkay, but in a non-secret spilling way, what's the plan? What a hack. When you put it that way… I think the way that Tesla solved self-driving is the way to do it. So I'm pretty sure that's the way. Unrelated question. How did Tesla solve self-driving? It sounds like you're talking about data? Tesla solved self-driving because of the... We're going to try data and we're going to try algorithms. But isn't that what all the other labs are trying?\n\n\"And if those don't work, I'm not sure what will. We've tried data. We've tried algorithms. We've run out. Now we don't know what to do…\" I'm pretty sure I know the path. It's just a question of how quickly we go down that path, because it's pretty much the Tesla path. Have you tried Tesla self-driving lately? Not the most recent version, but... Okay. The car, it just increasingly feels sentient. It feels like a living creature.\n\nThat'll only get more so. I'm actually thinking we probably shouldn't put too much intelligence into the car, because it might get bored and… Start roaming the streets. Imagine you're stuck in a car and that's all you could do. You don't put Einstein in a car. Why am I stuck in a car? So there's actually probably a limit to how much intelligence you put in a car to not have the intelligence be bored.\n\nWhat's xAI's plan to stay on the compute ramp up that all the labs are doing right now? The labs are on track to spend over $50-200 billion. You mean the corporations? The labs are at universities and they’re moving like a snail. They’re not spending $50 billion. You mean the revenue maximizing corporations… that call themselves labs. That's right. The \"revenue maximizing corporations\" are making $10-20 billion, depending on...\n\nOpenAI is making $20B of revenue, Anthropic is at $10B. \"Close to a maximum profit\" AI. xAI is reportedly at $1B. What's the plan to get to their compute level, get to their revenue level, and stay there as things get going? As soon as you unlock the digital human, you basically have access to trillions of dollars of revenue. In fact, you can really think of it like… The most valuable companies currently by market cap, their output is digital.\n\nNvidia’s output is FTPing files to Taiwan. It's digital. Now, those are very, very difficult. High-value files. They're the only ones that can make files that good, but that is literally their output. They FTP files to Taiwan. Do they FTP them? I believe so. I believe that File Transfer Protocol is the... But I could be wrong. But either way, it's a bitstream going to Taiwan. Apple doesn't make phones. They send files to China.\n\nMicrosoft doesn't manufacture anything. Even for Xbox, that's outsourced. Their output is digital. Meta's output is digital. Google's output is digital. So if you have a human emulator, you can basically create one of the most valuable companies in the world overnight, and you would have access to trillions of dollars of revenue. It's not a small amount. I see.\n\nYou're saying revenue figures today are all rounding errors compared to the actual TAM. So just focus on the TAM and how to get there. Take something as simple as, say, customer service. If you have to integrate with the APIs of existing corporations—many of which don't even have an API, so you've got to make one, and you've got to wade through legacy software—that's extremely slow.\n\nHowever, if AI can simply take whatever is given to the outsourced customer service company that they already use and do customer service using the apps that they already use, then you can make tremendous headway in customer service, which is, I think, 1% of the world economy or something like that. It's close to a trillion dollars all in, for customer service. And there's no barriers to entry.\n\nYou can immediately say, \"We'll outsource it for a fraction of the cost,\" and there's no integration needed. You can imagine some kind of categorization of intelligence tasks where there is breadth, where customer service is done by very many people, but many people can do it. Then there's difficulty where there's a best-in-class turbine engine.\n\nPresumably there's a 10% more fuel-efficient turbine engine that could be imagined by an intelligence, but we just haven't found it yet. Or GLP-1s are a few bytes of data… Where do you think you want to play in this? Is it a lot of reasonably intelligent intelligence, or is it at the very pinnacle of cognitive tasks?\n\nI was just using customer service as something that's a very significant revenue stream, but one that is probably not difficult to solve for. If you can emulate a human at a desktop, that's what customer service is. It's people of average intelligence. You don't need somebody who's spent many years. You don't need several-sigma good engineers for that.\n\nBut as you make that work, once you have effectively digital Optimus working, you can then run any application. Let's say you're trying to design chips. You could then run conventional apps, stuff from Cadence and Synopsys and whatnot. You can run 1,000 or 10,000 simultaneously and say, \"given this input, I get this output for the chip.\" At some point, you're going to know what the chip should look like without using any of the tools.\n\nBasically, you should be able to do a digital chip design. You can do chip design. You march up the difficulty curve. You’d be able to do CAD. You could use NX or any of the CAD software to design things. So you think you start at the simplest tasks and walk your way up the difficulty curve?\n\nAs a broader objective of having this full digital coworker emulator, you’re saying, \"all the revenue maximizing corporations want to do this, xAI being one of them, but we will win because of a secret plan we have.\" But everybody's trying different things with data, different things with algorithms. \"We tried data, we tried algorithms. What else can we do?\" It seems like a competitive field. How are you guys going to win? That’s my big question.\n\nI think we see a path to doing it. I think I know the path to do this because it's kind of the same path that Tesla used to create self-driving. Instead of driving a car, it's driving a computer screen. It's a self-driving computer, essentially. Is the path following human behavior and training on vast quantities of human behavior? Isn't that... training? Obviously I'm not going to spell out the most sensitive secrets on a podcast.\n\nI need to have at least three more Guinnesses for that. What will xAI's business be? Is it going to be consumer, enterprise? What's the mix of those things going to be? Is it going to be similar to other labs— You’re saying \"labs\". Corporations. The psyop goes deep, Elon. \"Revenue maximizing corporations\", to be clear. Those GPUs don't pay for themselves. Exactly. What's the business model? What are the revenue streams in a few years’ time?\n\nThings are going to change very rapidly. I'm stating the obvious here. I call AI the supersonic tsunami. I love alliteration. What's going to happen—especially when you have humanoid robots at scale—is that they will make products and provide services far more efficiently than human corporations. Amplifying the productivity of human corporations is simply a short-term thing.\n\nSo you're expecting fully digital corporations rather than SpaceX becoming part AI? I think there will be digital corporations but… Some of this is going to sound kind of doomerish, okay? But I'm just saying what I think will happen. It's not meant to be doomerish or anything else. This is just what I think will happen. Corporations that are purely AI and robotics will vastly outperform any corporations that have people in the loop.\n\nComputer used to be a job that humans had. You would go and get a job as a computer where you would do calculations. They'd have entire skyscrapers full of humans, 20-30 floors of humans, just doing calculations. Now, that entire skyscraper of humans doing calculations can be replaced by a laptop with a spreadsheet. That spreadsheet can do vastly more calculations than an entire building full of human computers.\n\nYou can think, \"okay, what if only some of the cells in your spreadsheet were calculated by humans?\" Actually, that would be much worse than if all of the cells in your spreadsheet were calculated by the computer. Really what will happen is that the pure AI, pure robotics corporations or collectives will far outperform any corporations that have humans in the loop. And this will happen very quickly. Speaking of closing the loop… Optimus.\n\nAs far as manufacturing targets go, your companies have been carrying American manufacturing of hard tech on their back. But in the fields that Tesla has been dominant in—and now you want to go into humanoids—in China there are dozens and dozens of companies that are doing this kind of manufacturing cheaply and at scale that are incredibly competitive.\n\nSo give us advice or a plan of how America can build the humanoid armies or the EVs, et cetera, at scale and as cheaply as China is on track to. There are really only three hard things for humanoid robots. The real-world intelligence, the hand, and scale manufacturing. I haven't seen any, even demo robots, that have a great hand, with all the degrees of freedom of a human hand. Optimus will have that. Optimus does have that.\n\nHow do you achieve that? Is it just the right torque density in the motor? What is the hardware bottleneck to that? We had to design custom actuators, basically custom design motors, gears, power electronics, controls, sensors. Everything had to be designed from physics first principles. There is no supply chain for this. Will you be able to manufacture those at scale? Yes. Is anything hard, except the hand, from a manipulation point of view?\n\nOr once you've solved the hand, are you good? From an electromechanical standpoint, the hand is more difficult than everything else combined. The human hand turns out to be quite something. But you also need the real-world intelligence. The intelligence that Tesla developed for the car applies very well to the robot, which is primarily vision in. The car takes in vision, but it actually also is listening for sirens.\n\nIt's taking in the inertial measurements, GPS signals, other data, combining that with video, primarily video, and then outputting the control commands. Your Tesla is taking in one and a half gigabytes a second of video and outputting two kilobytes a second of control outputs with the video at 36 hertz and the control frequency at 18.\n\nOne intuition you could have for when we get this robotic stuff is that it takes quite a few years to go from the compelling demo to actually being able to use it in the real world. 10 years ago, you had really compelling demos of self-driving, but only now we have Robotaxis and Waymo and all these services scaling up. Shouldn't this make one pessimistic on household robots?\n\nBecause we don't even quite have the compelling demos yet of, say, the really advanced hand. Well, we've been working on humanoid robots now for a while. I guess it's been five or six years or something. A bunch of the things that were done for the car are applicable to the robot. We'll use the same Tesla AI chips in the robot as in the car. We'll use the same basic principles. It's very much the same AI.\n\nYou've got many more degrees of freedom for a robot than you do for a car. If you just think of it as a bitstream, AI is mostly compression and correlation of two bitstreams. For video, you've got to do a tremendous amount of compression and you've got to do the compression just right. You've got to ignore the things that don't matter.\n\nYou don't care about the details of the leaves on the tree on the side of the road, but you care a lot about the road signs and the traffic lights, the pedestrians, and even whether someone in another car is looking at you or not looking at you. Some of these details matter a lot. The car is going to turn that one and a half gigabytes a second ultimately into two kilobytes a second of control outputs. So you’ve got many stages of compression.\n\nYou've got to get all those stages right and then correlate those to the correct control outputs. The robot has to do essentially the same thing. This is what happens with humans. We really are photons in, controls out. That is the vast majority of your life: vision, photons in, and then motor controls out. Naively, it seems that between humanoid robots and cars… The fundamental actuators in a car are how you turn, how you accelerate.\n\nIn a robot, especially with maneuverable arms, there's dozens and dozens of these degrees of freedom. Then especially with Tesla, you had this advantage of millions and millions of hours of human demo data collected from the car being out there. You can't equivalently deploy Optimuses that don't work and then get the data that way. So between the increased degrees of freedom and the far sparser data... Yes. That’s a good point.\n\nHow will you use the Tesla engine of intelligence to train the Optimus mind? You're actually highlighting an important limitation and difference from cars. We'll soon have 10 million cars on the road. It's hard to duplicate that massive training flywheel. For the robot, what we're going to need to do is build a lot of robots and put them in kind of an Optimus Academy so they can do self-play in reality. We're actually building that out.\n\nWe can have at least 10,000 Optimus robots, maybe 20-30,000, that are doing self-play and testing different tasks. Tesla has quite a good reality generator, a physics-accurate reality generator, that we made for the cars. We'll do the same thing for the robots. We actually have done that for the robots. So you have a few tens of thousands of humanoid robots doing different tasks. You can do millions of simulated robots in the simulated world.\n\nYou use the tens of thousands of robots in the real world to close the simulation to reality gap. Close the sim-to-real gap. How do you think about the synergies between xAI and Optimus, given you're highlighting that you need this world model, you want to use some really smart intelligence as a control plane, and Grok is doing the slower planning, and then the motor policy is a little lower level. What will the synergy between these things be?\n\nGrok would orchestrate the behavior of the Optimus robots. Let's say you wanted to build a factory. Grok could organize the Optimus robots, assign them tasks to build the factory to produce whatever you want. Don't you need to merge xAI and Tesla then? Because these things end up so... What were we saying earlier about public company discussions? We're one more Guinness in, Elon.\n\nWhat are you waiting to see before you say, we want to manufacture 100,000 Optimuses? \"Optimi\". Since we're defining the proper noun, we’re going to define the plural of the proper noun too. We're going to proper noun the plural and so it's Optimi. Is there something on the hardware side you want to see? Do you want to see better actuators? Is it just that you want the software to be better?\n\nWhat are we waiting for before we get mass manufacturing of Gen 3? No, we're moving towards that. We're moving forward with the mass manufacturing. But you think current hardware is good enough that you just want to deploy as many as possible now? It's very hard to scale up production. But I think Optimus 3 is the right version of the robot to produce something on the order of a million units a year.\n\nI think you'd want to go to Optimus 4 before you went to 10 million units a year. Okay, but you can do a million units at Optimus 3? It's very hard to spool up manufacturing. The output per unit time always follows an S-curve. It starts off agonizingly slow, then it has this exponential increase, then a linear, then a logarithmic outcome until you eventually asymptote at some number.\n\nOptimus’ initial production will be a stretched out S-curve because so much of what goes into Optimus is brand new. There is not an existing supply chain. The actuators, electronics, everything in the Optimus robot is designed from physics first principles. It's not taken from a catalog. These are custom-designed everything. I don't think there's a single thing— How far down does that go? I guess we're not making custom capacitors yet, maybe.\n\nThere's nothing you can pick out of a catalog, at any price. It just means that the Optimus S-Curve, the output per unit time, how many Optimus robots you make per day, is going to initially ramp slower than a product where you have an existing supply chain. But it will get to a million.\n\nWhen you see these Chinese humanoids, like Unitree or whatever, sell humanoids for like $6K or $13K, are you hoping to get your Optimus bill of materials below that price so you can do the same thing? Or do you just think qualitatively they're not the same thing? What allows them to sell for so low? Can we match that? Our Optimus is designed to have a lot of intelligence and to have the same electromechanical dexterity, if not higher, as a human.\n\nUnitree does not have that. It's also quite a big robot. It has to carry heavy objects for long periods of time and not overheat or exceed the power of its actuators. It's 5'11\", so it's pretty tall. It's got a lot of intelligence. So it's going to be more expensive than a small robot that is not intelligent. But more capable. But not a lot more. The thing is, over time as Optimus robots build Optimus robots, the cost will drop very quickly.\n\nWhat will these first billion Optimuses, Optimi, do? What will their highest and best use be? I think you would start off with simple tasks that you can count on them doing well. But in the home or in factories? The best use for robots in the beginning will be any continuous operation, any 24/7 operation, because they can work continuously. What fraction of the work at a Gigafactory that is currently done by humans could a Gen 3 do? I'm not sure.\n\nMaybe it's 10-20%, maybe more, I don't know. We would not reduce our headcount. We would increase our headcount, to be clear. But we would increase our output. The units produced per human... The total number of humans at Tesla will increase, but the output of robots and cars will increase disproportionately. The number of cars and robots produced per human will increase dramatically, but the number of humans will increase as well.\n\nWe're talking about Chinese manufacturing a bunch here. We've also talked about some of the policies that are relevant, like you mentioned, the solar tariffs. You think they're a bad idea because we can't scale up solar in the US. Electricity output in the US needs to scale up. It can't without good power sources. You just need to get it somehow.\n\nWhere I was going with this is, if you were in charge, if you were setting all the policies, what else would you change? You’d change the solar tariffs, that’s one. I would say anything that is a limiting factor for electricity needs to be addressed, provided it's not very bad for the environment. So presumably some permitting reforms and stuff as well would be in there? There's a fair bit of permitting reforms that are happening.\n\nA lot of the permitting is state-based, but anything federal... This administration is good at removing permitting roadblocks. I'm not saying all tariffs are bad. Solar tariffs. Sometimes if another country is subsidizing the output of something, then you have to have countervailing tariffs to protect domestic industry against subsidies by another country. What else would you change?\n\nI don't know if there's that much that the government can actually do. One thing I was wondering... For the policy goal of creating a lead for the US versus China, it seems like the export bans have actually been quite impactful, where China is not producing leading-edge chips and the export bans really bite there. China is not producing leading-edge turbine engines.\n\nSimilarly, there's a bunch of export bans that are relevant there on some of the metallurgy. Should there be more export bans? As you think about things like the drone industry and things like that, is that something that should be considered? It's important to appreciate that in most areas, China is very advanced in manufacturing. There's only a few areas where it is not. China is a manufacturing powerhouse, next-level. It's very impressive.\n\nIf you take refining of ore, China does roughly twice as much ore refining on average as the rest of the world combined. There are some areas, like refining gallium which goes into solar cells. I think they are 98% of gallium refining. So China is actually very advanced in manufacturing in most areas. It seems like there is discomfort with this supply chain dependence, and yet nothing's really happening on it. Supply chain dependence?\n\nSay, like the gallium refining that you're saying. All the rare-earth stuff. Rare earths for sure, as you know, they’re not rare. We actually do rare earth ore mining in the US, send the rock, put it on a train, and then put it on a boat to China that goes to another train, and goes to the rare earth refiners in China who then refine it, put it into a magnet, put it into a motor sub-assembly, and then send it back to America.\n\nSo the thing we're really missing is a lot of ore refining in America. Isn't this worth a policy intervention? Yes. I think there are some things being done on that front. But we kind of need Optimus, frankly, to build ore refineries. So, you think the main advantage China has is the abundance of skilled labor? That's the thing Optimus fixes? Yes. China’s got like four times our population. I mean, there's this concern.\n\nIf you think human resources are the future, right now if it's the skilled labor for manufacturing that's determining who can build more humanoids, China has more of those. It manufactures more humanoids, therefore it gets the Optimi future first. Well, we’ll see. Maybe. It just keeps that exponential going.\n\nIt seems like you're sort of pointing out that getting to a million Optimi requires the manufacturing that the Optimi is supposed to help us get to. Right? You can close that recursive loop pretty quickly. With a small number of Optimi? Yeah. So you close the recursive loop to help the robots build the robots. Then we can try to get to tens of millions of units a year. Maybe.\n\nIf you start getting to hundreds of millions of units a year, you're going to be the most competitive country by far. We definitely can't win with just humans, because China has four times our population. Frankly, America has been winning for so long that… A pro sports team that's been winning for a very long time tends to get complacent and entitled. That's why they stop winning, because they don't work as hard anymore.\n\nSo frankly my observation is just that the average work ethic in China is higher than in the US. It's not just that there's four times the population, but the amount of work that people put in is higher.\n\nSo you can try to rearrange the humans, but you're still one quarter of the—assuming that productivity is the same, which I think actually it might not be, I think China might have an advantage on productivity per person—we will do one quarter of the amount of things as China. So we can't win on the human front. Our birth rate has been low for a long time. The US birth rate's been below replacement since roughly 1971.\n\nWe've got a lot of people retiring, we're close to more people domestically dying than being born. So we definitely can't win on the human front, but we might have a shot at the robot front. Are there other things that you have wanted to manufacture in the past, but they've been too labor intensive or too expensive that now you can come back to and say, \"oh, we can finally do the whatever, because we have Optimus?\"\n\nYeah, we'd like to build more ore refineries at Tesla. We just completed construction and have begun lithium refining with our lithium refinery in Corpus Christi, Texas. We have a nickel refinery, which is for the cathode, that's here in Austin. This is the largest cathode refinery, largest nickel and lithium refinery, outside of China. The cathode team would say, \"we have the largest and the only, actually, cathode refinery in America.\"\n\nNot just the largest, but it's also the only. Many superlatives. So it was pretty big, even though it's the only one. But there are other things. You could do a lot more refineries and help America be more competitive on refining capacity. There's basically a lot of work for the Optimus to do that most Americans, very few Americans, frankly want to do. Is the refining work too dirty or what's the— It's not actually, no.\n\nWe don't have toxic emissions from the refinery or anything. The cathode nickel refinery is in Travis County. Why can't you do it with humans? You can, you just run out of humans. Ah, I see. Okay. No matter what you do, you have one quarter of the number of humans in America than China. So if you have them do this thing, they can't do the other thing. So then how do you build this refining capacity? Well, you could do it with Optimi.\n\nNot very many Americans are pining to do refining. I mean, how many have you run into? Very few. Very few pining to refine. BYD is reaching Tesla production or sales in quantity. What do you think happens in global markets as Chinese production in EVs scales up? China is extremely competitive in manufacturing. So I think there's going to be a massive flood of Chinese vehicles and basically most manufactured things.\n\nAs it is, as I said, China is probably doing twice as much refining as the rest of the world combined. So if you go down to fourth and fifth-tier supply chain stuff… At the base level, you've got energy, then you've got mining and refining. Those foundation layers are, like I said, as a rough guess, China's doing twice as much refining as the rest of the world combined.\n\nSo any given thing is going to have Chinese content because China's doing twice as much refining work as the rest of the world. But they'll go all the way to the finished product with the cars. I mean China is a powerhouse. I think this year China will exceed three times US electricity output. Electricity output is a reasonable proxy for the economy. In order to run the factories and run everything, you need electricity.\n\nIt's a good proxy for the real economy. If China passes three times the US electricity output, it means that its industrial capacity—as rough approximation—will be three times that of the US.\n\nReading between the lines, it sounds like what you're saying is absent some sort of humanoid recursive miracle in the next few years, on the whole manufacturing/energy/raw materials chain, China will just dominate whether it comes to AI or manufacturing EVs or manufacturing humanoids. In the absence of breakthrough innovations in the US, China will utterly dominate. Interesting. Yes. Robotics being the main breakthrough innovation.\n\nWell, to scale AI in space, basically you need humanoid robots, you need real-world AI, you need a million tons a year to orbit. Let's just say if we get the mass driver on the moon going, my favorite thing, then I think— We'll have solved all our problems. I call that winning. I call it winning, big time. You can finally be satisfied. You've done something. Yes. You have the mass driver on the moon. I just want to see that thing in operation.\n\nWas that out of some sci-fi or where did you…? Well, actually, there is a Heinlein book. The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. Okay, yeah, but that's slightly different. That's a gravity slingshot or... No, they have a mass driver on the Moon. Okay, yeah, but they use that to attack Earth. So maybe it's not the greatest... Well they use that to… assert their independence. Exactly. What are your plans for the mass driver on the Moon?\n\nThey asserted their independence. Earth government disagreed and they lobbed things until Earth government agreed. That book is a hoot. I found that book much better than his other one that everyone reads, Stranger in a Strange Land. \"Grok\" comes from Stranger in a Strange Land. The first two-thirds of Stranger in a Strange Land are good, and then it gets very weird in the third portion. But there are still some good concepts in there.\n\nOne thing we were discussing a lot is your system for managing people. You interviewed the first few thousand of SpaceX employees and lots of other companies. It obviously doesn't scale. Well, yes, but what doesn't scale? Me. Sure, sure. I know that. But what are you looking for? There literally are not enough hours in the day. It's impossible.\n\nBut what are you looking for that someone else who's good at interviewing and hiring people… What's the je ne sais quoi? At this point, I might have more training data on evaluating technical talent especially—talent of all kinds I suppose, but technical talent especially—given that I've done so many technical interviews and then seen the results. So my training set is enormous and has a very wide range.\n\nGenerally, the things I ask for are bullet points for evidence of exceptional ability. These things can be pretty off the wall. It doesn't need to be in the specific domain, but evidence of exceptional ability. So if somebody can cite even one thing, but let's say three things, where you go, \"Wow, wow, wow,\" then that's a good sign. Why do you have to be the one to determine that? No, I don't. I can't be. It's impossible.\n\nThe total headcount across all companies is 200,000 people. But in the early days, what was it that you were looking for that couldn't be delegated in those interviews? I guess I need to build my training set. It's not like I batted a thousand here. I would make mistakes, but then I'd be able to see where I thought somebody would work out well, but they didn't. Then why did they not work out well?\n\nWhat can I do, I guess RL myself, to in the future have a better batting average when interviewing people? My batting average is still not perfect, but it's very high. What are some surprising reasons people don't work out? Surprising reasons… Like, they don't understand technical domain, et cetera, et cetera. But you've got the long tail now of like, \"I was really excited about this person. It didn't work out.\" Curious why that happens.\n\nGenerally what I tell people—I tell myself, I guess, aspirationally—is, don't look at the resume. Just believe your interaction. The resume may seem very impressive and it's like, \"Wow, the resume looks good.\" But if the conversation after 20 minutes is not \"wow,\" you should believe the conversation, not the paper.\n\nI feel like part of your method is that… There was this meme in the media a few years back about Tesla being a revolving door of executive talent. Whereas actually, I think when you look at it, Tesla's had a very consistent and internally promoted executive bench over the past few years. Then at SpaceX, you have all these folks like Mark Juncosa and Steve Davis— Steve Davis runs The Boring Company these days. Bill Riley, and folks like that.\n\nIt feels like part of what has worked well is having very capable technical deputies. What do all of those people have in common? Well, the Tesla senior team, at this point has probably got an average tenure of 10-12 years. It's quite long. But there were times when Tesla went through an extremely rapid growth phase, so things were just somewhat sped up. As you know, a company goes through different orders of magnitude of size.\n\nPeople that could help manage, say, a 50-person company versus a 500-person company versus a 5,000-person company versus a 50,000-person company. You outgrew people. It's just not the same team. It's not always the same team. So if a company is growing very rapidly, the rate at which executive positions will change will also be proportionate to the rapidity of the growth generally.\n\nTesla had a further challenge where when Tesla had very successful periods, we would be relentlessly recruited from. Like, relentlessly. When Apple had their electric car program, they were carpet bombing Tesla with recruiting calls. Engineers just unplugged their phones. \"I'm trying to get work done here.\" Yeah.\n\n\"If I get one more call from an Apple recruiter…\" But their opening offer without any interview would be like double the compensation at Tesla. So we had a bit of the \"Tesla pixie dust\" thing where it's like, \"Oh, if you hire a Tesla executive, suddenly everything's going to be successful.\"\n\nI've fallen prey to the pixie dust thing as well, where it's like, \"Oh, we'll hire someone from Google or Apple and they'll be immediately successful,\" but that's not how it works. People are people. There's no magical pixie dust. So when we had the pixie dust problem, we would get relentlessly recruited from. Also, Tesla being engineering, especially being primarily in Silicon Valley, it's easier for people to just...\n\nThey don't have to change their life very much. Their commute's going to be the same. So how do you prevent that? How do you prevent the pixie dust effect where everyone's trying to poach all your people? I don't think there's much we can do to stop it. That's one of the reasons why Tesla… Really, being in Silicon Valley and having the pixie dust thing at the same time meant that there was just a very, very aggressive recruitment.\n\nPresumably being in Austin helps then? Austin, it helps. Tesla still has a majority of its engineering in California. Getting engineers to move… I call it the \"significant other\" problem. Yes, \"significant others\" have jobs. Exactly. So for Starbase that was particularly difficult, since the odds of finding a non-SpaceX job… In Brownsville, Texas… …are pretty low. It's quite difficult.\n\nIt's like a technology monastery thing, remote and mostly dudes. Not much of an improvement over SF. If you go back to these people who've really been very effective in a technical capacity at Tesla, at SpaceX, and those sorts of places, what do you think they have in common other than... Is it just that they're very sharp on the rocketry or the technical foundations, or do you think it's something organizational?\n\nIs it something about their ability to work with you? Is it their ability to be flexible but not too flexible? What makes a good sparring partner for you? I don't think of it as a sparring partner. If somebody gets things done, I love them, and if they don't, I hate them. So it's pretty straightforward. It's not like some idiosyncratic thing. If somebody executes well, I'm a huge fan, and if they don't, I'm not.\n\nBut it's not about mapping to my idiosyncratic preferences. I certainly try not to have it be mapping to my idiosyncratic preferences. Generally, I think it's a good idea to hire for talent and drive and trustworthiness. And I think goodness of heart is important. I underweighted that at one point. So, are they a good person? Trustworthy? Smart and talented and hard working? If so, you can add domain knowledge.\n\nBut those fundamental traits, those fundamental properties, you cannot change. So most of the people who are at Tesla and SpaceX did not come from the aerospace industry or the auto industry. What has had to change most about your management style as your companies have scaled from 100 to 1,000 to 10,000 people? You're known for this very micro management, just getting into the details of things. Nano management, please. Pico management.\n\nFemto management. Keep going. We're going to go all the way down to Planck's constant. All the way down to Heisenberg uncertainty principle. Are you still able to get into details as much as you want? Would your companies be more successful if they were smaller? How do you think about that? Because I have a fixed amount of time in the day, my time is necessarily diluted as things grow and as the span of activity increases.\n\nIt's impossible for me to actually be a micromanager because that would imply I have some thousands of hours per day. It is a logical impossibility for me to micromanage things. Now, there are times when I will drill down into a specific issue because that specific issue is the limiting factor on the progress of the company. The reason for drilling into some very detailed item is because it is the limiting factor.\n\nIt’s not arbitrarily drilling into tiny things. From a time standpoint, it is physically impossible for me to arbitrarily go into tiny things that don't matter. That would result in failure. But sometimes the tiny things are decisive in victory. Famously, you switched the Starship design from composites to steel. Yes. You made that decision. That wasn't people going around saying, \"Oh, we found something better, boss.\"\n\nThat was you encouraging people against some resistance. Can you tell us how you came to that whole concept of the steel switch? Desperation, I'd say. Originally, we were going to make Starship out of carbon fiber. Carbon fiber is pretty expensive. When you do volume production, you can get any given thing to start to approach its material cost. The problem with carbon fiber is that material cost is still very high.\n\nParticularly if you go for a high-strength specialized carbon fiber that can handle cryogenic oxygen, it's roughly 50 times the cost of steel. At least in theory, it would be lighter. People generally think of steel as being heavy and carbon fiber as being light. For room temperature applications, like a Formula 1 car, static aero structure, or any kind of aero structure really, you're probably going to be better off with carbon fiber.\n\nThe problem is that we were trying to make this enormous rocket out of carbon fiber and our progress was extremely slow. It had been picked in the first place just because it's light? Yes. At first glance, most people would think that the choice for making something light would be carbon fiber.\n\nThe thing is that when you make something very enormous out of carbon fiber and then you try to have the carbon fiber be efficiently cured, meaning not room temperature cured, because sometimes you got 50 plies of carbon fiber… Carbon fiber is really carbon string and glue. In order to have high strength, you need an autoclave. Something that's essentially a high pressure oven.\n\nIf you have something that's gigantic, that one's got to be bigger than the rocket. We were trying to make an autoclave that's bigger than any autoclave that's ever existed. Or you can do room temperature cure, which takes a long time and has issues. The final issue is that we were just making very slow progress with carbon fiber. The meta question is why it had to be you who made that decision. There's many engineers on your team.\n\nHow did the team not arrive at steel? Yeah exactly. This is part of a broader question, understanding your comparative advantage at your companies. Because we were making very slow progress with carbon fiber, I was like, \"Okay, we've got to try something else.\" For the Falcon 9, the primary airframe is made of aluminum lithium, which has a very good strength-to-weight.\n\nActually, it has about the same, maybe better, strength to weight for its application than carbon fiber. But aluminum lithium is very difficult to work with. In order to weld it, you have to do something called friction stir welding, where you join the metal without entering the liquid phase. It's kind of wild that you can do that. But with this particular type of welding, you can do that. It's very difficult.\n\nLet's say you want to make a modification or attach something to aluminum lithium, you now have to use a mechanical attachment with seals. You can't weld it on. So I wanted to avoid using aluminum lithium for the primary structure for Starship. There was this very special grade of carbon fiber that had very good mass properties.\n\nWith a rocket, you're really trying to maximize the percentage of the rocket that is propellant, minimize the mass obviously. But like I said, we were making very slow progress. I said, \"at this rate, we’re never going to get to Mars. So we've got to think of something else.\" I didn't want to use aluminum lithium because of the difficulty of friction stir welding, especially doing that at scale. It was hard enough at 3.\n\n6 meters in diameter, let alone at 9 meters or above. Then I said, \"what about steel?\" I had a clue here because some of the early US rockets had used very thin steel. The Atlas rockets had used a steel balloon tank. It's not like steel had never been used before. It actually had been used.\n\nWhen you look at the material properties of stainless steel, full-hard, strain hardened stainless steel, at cryogenic temperature the strength to weight is actually similar to carbon fiber. If you look at material properties at room temperature, it looks like the steel is going to be twice as heavy.\n\nBut if you look at the material properties at cryogenic temperature of full-hard steel, stainless of particular grades, then you actually get to a similar strength to weight as carbon fiber. In the case of Starship, both the fuel and the oxidizer are cryogenic. For Falcon 9, the fuel is rocket propellant-grade kerosene, basically a very pure form of jet fuel. That is roughly room temperature.\n\nAlthough we do actually chill it slightly below, we chill it like a beer. Delicious. We do chill it, but it's not cryogenic. In fact, if we made it cryogenic, it would just turn to wax. But for Starship, it's liquid methane and liquid oxygen. They are liquid at similar temperatures. Basically, almost the entire primary structure is at cryogenic temperature. So then you've got a 300-series stainless that's strain hardened.\n\nBecause almost all things are cryogenic temperature, it actually has similar strength to weight as carbon fiber. But it costs 50x less in raw material and is very easy to work with. You can weld stainless steel outdoors. You could smoke a cigar while welding stainless steel. It's very resilient. You can modify it easily. If you want to attach something, you just weld it right on. Very easy to work with, very low cost.\n\nLike I said, at cryogenic temperature, it’s similar strength-to-weight to carbon fiber. Then when you factor in that we have a much reduced heat shield mass, because the melting point of steel, is much greater than the melting point of aluminum… It's about twice the melting point of aluminum. So you can just run the rocket much hotter? Yes, especially for the ship which is coming in like a blazing meteor.\n\nYou can greatly reduce the mass of the heat shield. You can cut the mass of the windward part of the heat shield, maybe in half, and you don't need any heat shielding on the leeward side. The net result is that actually the steel rocket weighs less than the carbon fiber rocket, because the resin in the carbon fiber rocket starts to melt.\n\nBasically, carbon fiber and aluminum have about the same operating temperature capabilities, whereas steel can operate at twice the temperature. These are very rough approximations. I won't build the rocket. What I mean is people will say, \"Oh, he said this twice. It's actually 0. 8.\" I'm like, shut up, assholes. That's what the main comment's going to be about. God damn it.\n\nThe point is, in retrospect, we should have started with steel in the beginning. It was dumb not to do steel. Okay, but to play this back to you, what I'm hearing is that steel was a riskier, less proven path, other than the early US rockets. Versus carbon fiber was a worse but more proven out path. So you need to be the one to push for, \"Hey, we're going to do this riskier path and just figure it out.\"\n\nSo you're fighting a sort of conservatism in a sense. That's why I initially said that the issue is that we weren't making fast enough progress. We were having trouble making even a small barrel section of the carbon fiber that didn't have wrinkles in it. Because at that large scale, you have to have many plies, many layers of the carbon fiber.\n\nYou've got to cure it and you've got to cure it in such a way that it doesn't have any wrinkles or defects. Carbon fiber is much less resilient than steel. It has much less toughness. Stainless steel will stretch and bend, the carbon fiber will tend to shatter. Toughness being the area under the stress strain curve. You're generally going to have to do better with steel, but stainless steel to be precise. One other Starship question.\n\nSo I visited Starbase, I think it was two years ago, with Sam Teller, and that was awesome. It was very cool to see, in a whole bunch of ways. One thing I noticed was that people really took pride in the simplicity of things, where everyone wants to tell you how Starship is just a big soda can, and we're hiring welders, and if you can weld in any industrial project, you can weld here. But there's a lot of pride in the simplicity.\n\nWell, factually Starship is a very complicated rocket. So that's what I'm getting at. Are things simple or are they complex? I think maybe just what they're trying to say is that you don't have to have prior experience in the rocket industry to work on Starship. Somebody just needs to be smart and work hard and be trustworthy and they can work on a rocket. They don't need prior rocket experience.\n\nStarship is the most complicated machine ever made by humans, by a long shot. In what regards? Anything, really. I'd say there isn't a more complex machine. I'd say that pretty much any project I can think of would be easier than this. That's why nobody has ever made a fully reusable orbital rocket. It's a very hard problem. Many smart people have tried before, very smart people with immense resources, and they failed.\n\nAnd we haven't succeeded yet. Falcon is partially reusable, but the upper stage is not. Starship Version 3, I think this design can be fully reusable. That full reusability is what will enable us to become a multi-planet civilization. Any technical problem, even like a Hadron Collider or something like that, is an easier problem than this. We spent a lot of time on bottlenecks.\n\nCan you say what the current Starship bottlenecks are, even at a high level? Trying to make it not explode, generally. It really wants to explode. That old chestnut. All those combustible materials. We've had two boosters explode on the test stand. One obliterated the entire test facility. So it only takes that one mistake. The amount of energy contained in a Starship is insane. Is that why it's harder than Falcon?\n\nIt's because it's just more energy? It's a lot of new technology. It's pushing the performance envelope. The Raptor 3 engine is a very, very advanced engine. It's by far the best rocket engine ever made. But it desperately wants to blow up. Just to put things into perspective here, on liftoff the rocket is generating over 100 gigawatts of power. That’s 20% of US electricity. It's actually insane. It's a great comparison. While not exploding.\n\nSometimes. Sometimes, yes. So I was like, how does it not explode? There's thousands of ways that it could explode and only one way that it doesn't. So we want it not only to really not explode, but fly reliably on a daily basis, like once per hour. Obviously, if it blows up a lot, it's very difficult to maintain that launch cadence. Yes. What's the single biggest remaining problem for Starship? It's having the heat shield be reusable.\n\nNo one's ever made a reusable orbital heat shield. So the heat shield's gotta make it through the ascent phase without shucking a bunch of tiles, and then it's gotta come back in and also not lose a bunch of tiles or overheat the main airframe. Isn't that hard because it's fundamentally a consumable? Well, yes, but your brake pads in your car are also consumable, but they last a very long time. Fair. So it just needs to last a very long time.\n\nWe have brought the ship back and had it do a soft landing in the ocean. We've done that a few times. But it lost a lot of tiles. It was not reusable without a lot of work. Even though it did come to a soft landing, it would not have been reusable without a lot of work. So it's not really reusable in that sense. That's the biggest problem that remains, a fully reusable heat shield. You want to be able to land it, refill propellant and fly again.\n\nYou can't do this laborious inspection of 40,000 tiles type of thing. When I read biographies of yours, it seems like you're just able to drive the sense of urgency and drive the sense of \"this is the thing that can scale.\" I'm curious why you think other organizations of your… SpaceX and Tesla are really big companies now. You're still able to keep that culture. What goes wrong with other companies such that they're not able to do that?\n\nI don't know. Like today, you said you had a bunch of SpaceX meetings. What is it that you're doing there that's keeping that? It’s adding urgency? Well, I don't know. I guess the urgency is going to come from whoever is leading the company. I have a maniacal sense of urgency. So that maniacal sense of urgency projects through the rest of the company. Is it because of consequences?\n\nThey're like, \"Elon set a crazy deadline, but if I don't get it, I know what happens to me.\" Is it just that you're able to identify bottlenecks and get rid of them so people can move fast? How do you think about why your companies are able to move fast? I'm constantly addressing the limiting factor. On the deadlines front, I generally actually try to aim for a deadline that I at least think is at the 50th percentile.\n\nSo it's not like an impossible deadline, but it's the most aggressive deadline I can think of that could be achieved with 50% probability. Which means that it'll be late half the time. There is a law of gas expansion that applies to schedules. If you said we're going to do something in five years, which to me is like infinity time, it will expand to fill the available schedule and it'll take five years.\n\nPhysics will limit how fast you can do certain things. So scaling up manufacturing, there's a rate at which you can move the atoms and scale manufacturing. That's why you can't instantly make a million units a year of something. You've got to design the manufacturing line. You've got to bring it up. You've got to ride the S-curve of production. What can I say that's actually helpful to people?\n\nGenerally, a maniacal sense of urgency is a very big deal. You want to have an aggressive schedule and you want to figure out what the limiting factor is at any point in time and help the team address that limiting factor. So Starlink was slowly in the works for many years. We talked about it all the way in the beginning of the company.\n\nSo then there was a team you had built in Redmond, and then at one point you decided this team is just not cutting it. It went for a few years slowly, and so why didn't you act earlier, and why did you act when you did? Why was that the right moment at which to act? I have these very detailed engineering reviews weekly. That's maybe a very unusual level of granularity.\n\nI don't know anyone who runs a company, or at least a manufacturing company, that goes with the level of detail that I go into. It's not as though... I have a pretty good understanding of what's actually going on because we go through things in detail. I'm a big believer in skip-level meetings where instead of having the person that reports to me say things, it's everyone that reports to them saying something in the technical review.\n\nAnd there can't be advanced preparation. Otherwise you're going to get \"glazed\", as I say these days. Exactly. Very Gen Z of you. How do you prevent advanced preparation? Do you call on them randomly? No, I just go around the room. Everyone provides an update. It's a lot of information to keep in your head. If you have meetings weekly or twice weekly, you've got a snapshot of what that person said. You can then plot the progress points.\n\nYou can sort of mentally plot the points on a curve and say, \"are we converging to a solution or not?\" I'll take drastic action only when I conclude that success is not in a set of possible outcomes. So when I finally reach the conclusion that unless drastic action is done, we have no chance of success, then I must take drastic action. I came to that conclusion in 2018, took drastic action and fixed the problem. You've got many, many companies.\n\nIn each of them it sounds like you do this kind of deep engineering understanding of what the relevant bottlenecks are so you can do these reviews with people. You've been able to scale it up to five, six, seven companies. Within one of these companies, you have many different mini companies within them. What determines the max amount here? Because you have like 80 companies…? 80? No. But you have so many already. That's already remarkable.\n\nBy this current number. Exactly. We can barely keep one company together. It depends on the situation. I actually don't have regular meetings with The Boring Company, so The Boring Company is sort of cruising along. Basically, if something is working well and making good progress, then there's no point in me spending time on it. I actually allocate time according to where the limiting factor. Where are things problematic?\n\nWhere are we pushing against? What is holding us back? I focus, at the risk of saying the words too many times, on the limiting factor. The irony is if something's going really well, they don't see much of me. But if something is going badly, they'll see a lot of me. Or not even badly… If something is the limiting factor. The limiting factor, exactly. It’s not exactly going badly but it’s the thing that we need to make go faster.\n\nWhen something’s a limiting factor at SpaceX or Tesla, are you talking weekly and daily with the engineer that's working on it? How does that actually work? Most things that are the limiting factor are weekly and some things are twice weekly. The AI5 chip review is twice weekly. Every Tuesday and Saturday is the chip review. Is it open ended in how long it goes? Technically, yes, but usually it's two or three hours. Sometimes less.\n\nIt depends on how much information we've got to go through. That's another thing. I'm just trying to tease out the differences here because the outcomes seem quite different. I think it's interesting to know what inputs are different. It feels like in the corporate world, one, like you were saying, the CEO doing engineering reviews does not always happen despite the fact that that is what the company is doing.\n\nBut then time is often pretty finely sliced into half hour meetings or even 15 minute meetings. It seems like you hold more open-ended, \"We're talking about it until we figure it out\" type things. Sometimes. But most of them seem to more or less stay on time. Today's Starship engineering review went a bit longer because there were more topics to discuss. They're trying to figure out how to scale to a million plus tons to orbit per year.\n\nIt’s quite challenging. Can I ask a question? You said about Optimus and AI that they're going to result in double digit growth rates within a matter of years. Oh, like the economy? Yes. I think that's right. What was the point of the DOGE cuts if the economy is going to grow so much? Well, I think waste and fraud are not good things to have. I was actually pretty worried about...\n\nIn the absence of AI and robotics, we're actually totally screwed because the national debt is piling up like crazy. The interest payments to national debt exceed the military budget, which is a trillion dollars. So we have over a trillion dollars just in interest payments. I was pretty concerned about that.\n\nMaybe if I spend some time, we can slow down the bankruptcy of the United States and give us enough time for the AI and robots to help solve the national debt. Or not help solve, it's the only thing that could solve the national debt. We are 1000% going to go bankrupt as a country, and fail as a country, without AI and robots. Nothing else will solve the national debt.\n\nWe just need enough time to build the AI and robots to not go bankrupt before then. I guess the thing I'm curious about is, when DOGE starts you have this enormous ability to enact reform. Not that enormous. Sure. I totally buy your point that it's important that AI and robotics drive productivity improvements, drive GDP growth.\n\nBut why not just directly go after the things you were pointing out, like the tariffs on certain components, or permitting? I'm not the president. And it is very hard to cut things that are obvious waste and fraud, like ridiculous waste and fraud. What I discovered is that it's extremely difficult even to cut very obvious waste and fraud from the government because the government has to operate on who's complaining.\n\nIf you cut off payments to fraudsters, they immediately come up with the most sympathetic sounding reasons to continue the payment. They don't say, \"Please keep the fraud going.\" They’re like, \"You're killing baby pandas.\" Meanwhile, no baby pandas are dying. They're just making it up. The fraudsters are capable of coming up with extremely compelling, heart-wrenching stories that are false, but nonetheless sound sympathetic. That's what happened.\n\nPerhaps I should have known better. But I thought, wait, let's try to cut some amount of waste and pork from the government. Maybe there shouldn't be 20 million people marked as alive in Social Security who are definitely dead, and over the age of 115. The oldest American is 114.\n\nSo it's safe to say if somebody is 115 and marked as alive in the Social Security database, there's either a typo… Somebody should call them and say, \"We seem to have your birthday wrong, or we need to mark you as dead.\" One of the two things. Very intimidating call to get. Well, it seems like a reasonable thing.\n\nSay if their birthday is in the future and they have a Small Business Administration loan, and their birthday is 2165, we either have a typo or we have fraud. So we say, \"we appear to have gotten the century of your birth incorrect.\" Or a great plot for a movie. Yes. That's what I mean by, ludicrous fraud. Were those people getting payments? Some were getting payments from Social Security.\n\nBut the main fraud vector was to mark somebody as alive in Social Security and then use every other government payment system to basically do fraud. Because what those other government payment systems do, they would simply do an \"are you alive\" check to the Social Security database. It's a bank shot. What would you estimate is the total amount of fraud from this mechanism?\n\nBy the way, the Government Accountability Office has done these estimates before. I'm not the only one. In fact, I think the GAO did an analysis, a rough estimate of fraud during the Biden administration, and calculated it at roughly half a trillion dollars. So don't take my word for it. Take a report issued during the Biden administration. How about that? From this Social Security mechanism? It's one of many.\n\nIt's important to appreciate that the government is very ineffective at stopping fraud. It's not like a company where, with stopping fraud, you've got a motivation because it's affecting the earnings of your company. The government just prints more money. You need caring and competence. These are in short supply at the federal level. When you go to the DMV, do you think, \"Wow, this is a bastion of competence\"?\n\nWell, now imagine it's worse than the DMV because it's the DMV that can print money. At least the state level DMVs need to... The states more or less need to stay within their budget or they go bankrupt. But the federal government just prints more money. If there's actually half a trillion of fraud, why was it not possible to cut all that? You really have to stand back and recalibrate your expectations for competence.\n\nBecause you're operating in a world where you've got to make ends meet. You've got to pay your bills... Find the microphones. Exactly. It's not like there's a giant, largely uncaring monster bureaucracy. It's a bunch of anachronistic computers that are just sending payments. One of the things that the DOGE team did sounds so simple and probably will save $100-200 billion a year.\n\nIt was simply requiring payments from the main Treasury computer—which is called PAM, Payment Accounts Master or something like that, there's $5 trillion payments a year—that go out have a payment appropriation code. Make it mandatory, not optional, that you have anything at all in the comment field. You have to recalibrate how dumb things are.\n\nPayments were being sent out with no appropriation code, not checking back to any congressional appropriation, and with no explanation. This is why the Department of War, formerly the Department of Defense, cannot pass an audit, because the information is literally not there. Recalibrate your expectations. I want to better understand this half a trillion number, because there's an IG report in 2024. Why is it so low?\n\nMaybe, but we found that over seven years, the Social Security fraud they estimated was like $70 billion over seven years, so like $10 billion a year. So I'd be curious to see what the other $490 billion is. Federal government expenditures are $7. 5 trillion a year. How competent do you think the government is? The discretionary spending there is like… 15%? But it doesn't matter. Most of the fraud is non-discretionary.\n\nIt's basically fraudulent Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, disability. There's a zillion government payments. A bunch of these payments are in fact block transfers to the states. So the federal government doesn't even have the information in a lot of cases to even know if there's fraud. Let's consider reductio ad absurdum. The government is perfect and has no fraud. What is your probability estimate of that? Zero.\n\nOkay, so then would you say, fraud and waste at the government is 90% efficient? That also would be quite generous. But if it's only 90%, that means that there's $750 billion a year of waste and fraud. And it's not 90%. It's not 90% effective. This seems like a strange way to first principles the amount of fraud in the government. Just like, how much do you think there is?\n\nAnyways, we don't have to do it live, but I'd be curious— You know a lot about fraud at Stripe? People are constantly trying to do fraud. Yeah, but as you say, it's a little bit of a... We've really ground it down, but it's a little bit of a different problem space because you're dealing with a much more heterogeneous set of fraud vectors here than we are. But at Stripe, you have high competence and you try hard.\n\nYou have high competence and high caring, but still fraud is non-zero. Now imagine it's at a much bigger scale, there's much less competence, and much less caring. At PayPal back in the day, we tried to manage fraud down to about 1% of the payment volume. That was very difficult. It took a tremendous amount of competence and caring to get fraud merely to 1%.\n\nNow imagine that you're an organization where there's much less caring and much less competence. It's going to be much more than 1%. How do you feel now looking back on politics and doing stuff there? Looking from the outside in, two things have been quite impactful: one, the America PAC, and two, the acquisition of Twitter at the time. But also it seems like there was a bunch of heartache. What's your grading of the whole experience?\n\nI think those things needed to be done to maximize the probability that the future is good. Politics generally is very tribal. People lose their objectivity usually with politics. They generally have trouble seeing the good on the other side or the bad on their own side. That's generally how it goes. That, I guess, was one of the things that surprised me the most. You often simply cannot reason with people. If they're in one tribe or the other.\n\nThey simply believe that everything their tribe does is good and anything the other political tribe does is bad. Persuading them otherwise is almost impossible. But I think overall those actions—acquiring Twitter, getting Trump elected, even though it makes a lot of people angry—I think those actions were good for civilization. How does it feed into the future you're excited about?\n\nWell, America needs to be strong enough to last long enough to extend life to other planets and to get AI and robotics to the point where we can ensure that the future is good. On the other hand, if we were to descend into, say, communism or some situation where the state was extremely oppressive, that would mean that we might not be able to become multi-planetary. The state might stamp out our progress in AI and robotics.\n\nOptimus, Grok, et cetera. Not just yours, but any revenue-maximizing company's products will be leveraged by the government over time. How does this concern manifest in what private companies should be willing to give governments? What kinds of guardrails? Should AI models be made to do whatever the government that has contracted them out to do and asks them to do?\n\nShould Grok get to say, \"Actually, even if the military wants to do X, no, Grok will not do that\"? I think maybe the biggest danger of AI and robotics going wrong is government. People who are opposed to corporations or worried about corporations should really worry the most about government. Because government is just a corporation in the limit. Government is just the biggest corporation with a monopoly on violence.\n\nI always find it a strange dichotomy where people would think corporations are bad, but the government is good, when the government is simply the biggest and worst corporation. But people have that dichotomy. They somehow think at the same time that government can be good, but corporations bad, and this is not true. Corporations have better morality than the government. I actually think it’s a thing to be worried about.\n\nThe government could potentially use AI and robotics to suppress the population. That is a serious concern. As the guy building AI and robotics, how do you prevent that? If you limit the powers of government, which is really what the US Constitution is intended to do, to limit the powers of government, then you're probably going to have a better outcome than if you have more government. Robotics will be available to all governments, right?\n\nI don’t know about all governments. It's difficult to predict. I can say what's the endpoint, or what is many years in the future, but it's difficult to predict the path along that way. If civilization progresses, AI will vastly exceed the sum of all human intelligence. There will be far more robots than humans. Along the way what happens is very difficult to predict.\n\nIt seems one thing you could do is just say, \"whatever government X, you're not allowed to use Optimus to do X, Y, Z.\" Just write out a policy. I think you tweeted recently that Grok should have a moral constitution. One of those things could be that we limit what governments are allowed to do with this advanced technology. Technically if politicians pass a law and they can enforce that law, then it's hard to not do that law.\n\nThe best thing we can have is limited government where you have the appropriate crosschecks between the executive, judicial, and legislative branches. The reason I'm curious about it is that at some point it seems the limits will come from you. You've got the Optimus, you've got the space GPUs… You think I'll be the boss of the government?\n\nAlready it's the case with SpaceX that for things that are crucial—the government really cares about getting certain satellites up in space or whatever—it needs SpaceX. It is the necessary contractor. You are in the process of building more and more of the technological components of the future that will have an analogous role in different industries.\n\nYou could have this ability to set some policy that suppressing classical liberalism in any way… \"My companies will not help in any way with that\", or some policy like that. I will do my best to ensure that anything that's within my control maximizes the good outcome for humanity. I think anything else would be shortsighted, because obviously I'm part of humanity, so I like humans. Pro human.\n\nYou mentioned that Dojo 3 will be used for space-based compute. You really read what I say. I don't know if you know, Elon, but you have a lot of followers. Dead giveaway. How did you discern my secrets? Oh I posted them on X. How do you design a chip for space? What changes? You want to design it to be more radiation tolerant and run at a higher temperature.\n\nRoughly, if you increase the operating temperature by 20% in degrees Kelvin, you can cut your radiator mass in half. So running at a higher temperature is helpful in space. There are various things you can do for shielding the memory. But neural nets are going to be very resilient to bit flips. Most of what happens for radiation is random bit flips. But if you've got a multi-trillion parameter model and you get a few bit flips, it doesn't matter.\n\nHeuristic programs are going to be much more sensitive to bit flips than some giant parameter file. I just design it to run hot. I think you pretty much do it the same way that you do things on Earth, apart from making it run hotter. The solar array is most of the weight on the satellite.\n\nIs there a way to make the GPUs even more powerful than what Nvidia and TPUs and et cetera are planning on doing that would be especially privileged in the space-based world? The basic math is, if you can do about a kilowatt per reticle, then you'd need 100 million full reticle chips to do 100 gigawatts. Depending on what your yield assumptions are, that tells you how many chips you need to make.\n\nIf you're going to have 100 gigawatts of power, you need 100 million chips that are running at a kilowatt sustained, per reticle. Basic math. 100 million chips depends on… If you look at the die size of something like Blackwell GPUs or something, and how many you can get out of a wafer, you can get on the order of dozens or less per wafer.\n\nSo basically, this is a world where if we're putting that out every single year, you're producing millions of wafers a month. That's the plan with TeraFab? Millions of wafers a month of advanced process nodes? Yeah it could be north of a million or something. You’ve got to do the memory too. Are you going to make a memory fab? I think the TeraFab's got to do memory. It's got to do logic, memory, and packaging.\n\nI'm very curious how somebody gets started. This is the most complicated thing man has ever made. Obviously, if anybody's up to the task, you're up to the task. So you realize it's a bottleneck, and you go to your engineers. What do you tell them to do? \"I want a million wafers a month in 2030.\" That’s right. That’s exactly what I want. Do you call ASML? What is the next step? No so much to ask. We make a little fab and see what happens.\n\nMake our mistakes at a small scale and then make a big one. Is a little fab done? No, it's not done. We're not going to keep that cat in the bag. That cat's going to come out of the bag. There'll be drones hovering over the bloody thing. You'll be able to see its construction progress on X in real time. Look, I don't know, we could just flounder in failure, to be fair. Success is not guaranteed.\n\nSince we want to try to make something like 100 million… We want 100 gigawatts of power and chips that can take 100 gigawatts by 2030. We’ll take as many chips as our suppliers will give us. I've actually said this to TSMC and Samsung and Micron: \"please build more fabs faster\". We will guarantee to buy the output of those fabs. So they're already moving as fast as they can. It's us plus them.\n\nThere's a narrative that the people doing AI want a very large number of chips as quickly as possible. Then many of the input suppliers, the fabs, but also the turbine manufacturers, are not ramping up production very quickly. No, they're not. The explanation you hear is that they're dispositionally conservative. They're Taiwanese or German, as the story may be. They just don't believe... Is that really the explanation or is there something else?\n\nWell, it's reasonable to... If somebody's been in the computer memory business for 30 or 40 years… They've seen cycles. They've seen boom and bust 10 times. That's a lot of layers of scar tissue. During the boom times, it looks like everything is going to be great forever. Then the crash happens and they're desperately trying to avoid bankruptcy. Then there's another boom and another crash.\n\nAre there other ideas you think others should go pursue that you're not for whatever reasons right now? There are a few companies that are pursuing new ways of doing chips, but they're just not scaling fast. I don't even mean within AI, I mean just generally. People should do the thing where they find that they're highly motivated to do that thing, as opposed to some idea that I suggest.\n\nThey should do the thing that they find personally interesting and motivating to do. But going back to the limiting factor… I used that phrase about 100 times. The current limiting factor that I see in the three to four year timeframe, it's chips. In the one year timeframe, it's energy, power production, electricity. It's not clear to me that there's enough usable electricity to turn on all the AI chips that are being made.\n\nTowards the end of this year, I think people are going to have real trouble turning on... The chip output will exceed the ability to turn chips on. What's your plan to deal with that world? We're trying to accelerate electricity production. I guess that's maybe one of the reasons that xAI will be maybe the leader, hopefully the leader. We'll be able to turn on more chips than other people can turn on, faster, because we're good at hardware.\n\nGenerally, the innovations from the corporations that call themselves labs, the ideas tend to flow… It's rare to see that there's more than about a six-month difference. The ideas travel back and forth with the people. So I think you sort of hit the hardware wall and then whichever company can scale hardware the fastest will be the leader. So I think xAI will be able to scale hardware the fastest and therefore most likely will be the leader.\n\nYou joked or were self-conscious about using the \"limiting factor\" phrase again. But I actually think there's something deep here. If you look at a lot of things we've touched on over the course of it, it’s maybe a good note to end on. If you think of a senescent, low-agency company, it would have some bottleneck and not really be doing anything about it.\n\nMarc Andreessen had the line of, \"most people are willing to endure any amount of chronic pain to avoid acute pain\". It feels like a lot of the cases we're talking about are just leaning into the acute pain, whatever it is. \"Okay, we got to figure out how to work with steel, or we got to figure out how to run the chips in space.\" We'll take some near-term acute pain to actually solve the bottleneck. So that's kind of a unifying theme.\n\nI have a high pain threshold. That's helpful. To solve the bottleneck. Yes. One thing I can say is, I think the future is going to be very interesting. As I said at Davos—I think I was on the ground for like three hours or something—it's better to err on the side of optimism and be wrong than err on the side of pessimism and be right, for quality of life.\n\nYou'll be happier if you err on the side of optimism rather than erring on the side of pessimism. So I recommend erring on the side of optimism. Here's to that. Cool. Elon, thanks for doing this. Thank you. All right, thanks guys. All right. Great stamina. Hopefully this didn't count as a pain in the pain tolerance."},"languages":["en"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":"https://www.dwarkesh.com/p/elon-musk"},{"id":"wef-davos-2026-musk-fink","type":"interview","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IgifEgm1-e0","title":"Davos","titles":{"en":"Davos","de":"Davos","fr":"Davos"},"date":"2026-01-22","summary":"At the World Economic Forum annual meeting in Davos, Elon Musk speaks with BlackRock CEO Larry Fink about AI, robotics and energy — and whether the automation revolution can be shared equitably.","text":"[music] [applause] >> That was not a That was not a large applause. Start again. >> [applause and cheering] >> That's better. Thank you. Yeah, we're going to make this interesting. >> [laughter] >> How many How many quotes are you going to want that are going to be after this session? >> [snorts] >> Uh I don't know. I mean five. Okay. >> [laughter] >> So, uh good afternoon, everybody. It's great to see everybody here.\n\nUh it's been an amazing week here in Davos. Um hopefully everybody saw that we are having conversations here. Hopefully everybody agrees. There [snorts] are some conversations that we may disagree. There's many conversations we may have agreed. But through those conversations and I think today's result with a peace agreement earlier today um the World Economic Forum is here to have those conversations, to have understandings, and also resolution.\n\nSo, um uh it's an important component of who we and what we are, and I'm thrilled uh to have Elon Musk here. Um He came all the way from California to be here to see all of you. So, uh thank you, Elon. Uh you're most welcome. >> [applause] >> Um I mean, I heard I heard about uh heard about the formation of the the the peace summit. And I was like, is that uh is that p i e c?\n\nUh >> [laughter] >> you know, little piece of Greenland, a little piece of Venezuela. [laughter] We got one. What we want is peace. >> [laughter] >> Okay, I want to uh as I said, I'm a pretty proud uh a CEO of BlackRock since we went public. Um uh the compounding return of BlackRock to our shareholders was 21%. Uh since Elon took Tesla uh public, his compounded return is 43%.\n\nThis is I just another advertisement for everybody, especially for Europeans. This is why more citizens should be investing with growth, investing with your countries. Imagine if a lot of pension funds invested with Elon if when Tesla went public, and how much return with the all the pension funds that invested side by side with Elon and the growth. So, um a spectacular return.\n\nThere's very few companies Well, I don't think there's any other company as large as Tesla today that has that compounded return. So, congratulations. >> Uh thank you. >> good measurement. Well, we have an incredible team at Tesla, and that's the reason. So, I want to get into uh the dirt the the meaningful component about technology, the possibilities.\n\nUm I want to talk about AI and robotics, energy, space, and the progress ultimately coming down to engineering, engineering discipline, scale, execution. Um and few few people, if not anyone, has the experience and the fortitude to confront these issues head-on. Not just the ideas, but the execution across so many different technologies, Elon, and that's why I thought I thought it was important for us to have this dialogue here uh in Davos.\n\nSo, you're [clears throat] presently building on AI and robotics, on space, on energy, all at the same time. When you look across those efforts, what do they have in common from an engineering standpoint? Uh well, they're all very difficult technology challenges. Um but the uh the overall goal of my companies is to maximize the future of civilization. Like, basically maximize the probability that civilization has a great future.\n\nUm and uh to [clears throat] expand consciousness beyond Earth. So, if you take SpaceX, for example, that's SpaceX is about advancing rocket technology to the point where we can extend life and consciousness beyond Earth, uh to the moon, to Mars, eventually to other star systems. And uh I know I think we should always view consciousness uh life as we know it as as precarious and delicate.\n\nUm because to the best of my knowledge, we we we don't know if life anywhere else. You know, I'm often asked, um are there aliens among us? And I'll say that I am one, but Or you're from the future. They don't believe me. Okay. Um so, uh but I I I >> [clears throat] >> I think if anyone would know if there were aliens among us, it would be me.\n\nUm and uh we we have 9,000 satellites up there, and not once have we had to maneuver around an an alien spaceship. So, I'm like, I don't know. It's Bottom line is I think we need to assume that life and consciousness is extremely rare, and it might only be us.\n\nAnd if that's the case, then we need to do everything possible to to ensure that the the light of can the light the light of consciousness is not extinguished, because we're effectively we're we're we're The way I view it is the image in my mind is of a a tiny candle in a vast darkness, tiny candle of consciousness that could easily go out.\n\nUm and that's why it's important to make life multi-planetary uh such that if there is a natural disaster or a man-made disaster on Earth, that consciousness continues. That's the purpose of SpaceX. Um Uh Te- Tesla is obviously about uh sustainable technology, and uh and and also at this point we've we've sort of added to our mission sustainable abundance. So, with uh robotics and AI, um th- this this is really the path to abundance for all.\n\nIf you say, you know, people often talk about uh solving global poverty, or essentially how how do we make give everyone a very high standard of living. I I think the only way to do this is AI and robotics. Um, which which doesn't mean that it is uh without its issues. I mean, this we need to be very careful with AI. We need to be very careful with robotics. We don't want to find ourselves in a James Cameron movie. Uh you know, Terminator.\n\n>> [laughter] >> Is is it goes is great great movies. I love his movies, but but we don't want to be in Terminator, obviously. Um, but but we if you have um ubiquitous AI that is essentially free or close to it and ubiquitous robotics, uh then you will have an an ex- an explosion in the in the global economy, an expansion in the global economy that is truly beyond all precedent. Elon, can that expansion be broad or is it narrow?\n\nAnd how can that be created? How can it broaden the global economy? Yeah, it's I mean I mean the way to think of it is that if you have a large number of humanoid robots, um the economic output is the average productivity per robot times the number of robots. Right.\n\nUm and and actually my prediction is in the in the benign scenario of the future that we will the robots will actually make so many robots and AI that they will actually saturate all human needs. Meaning you won't be able to even think of something to ask the robot for at a certain point. Like like the they will be such an abundance of goods and services because the [clears throat] my prediction is they'll be they'll be more robots than people.\n\nSo But how do you then have human purpose in that scenario? >> Yeah, I mean you know, there was nothing's perfect, you know, but >> [laughter] >> um but but the I mean I mean it is it it is a a necessary um Like you can't have both. You can't have work that has to be done uh um and uh amazing abundance for all.\n\nUm because if it's if it's work that has to be done, then then then you and and only some people can do it, then you then you you you can't have abundance at all. >> Then it's narrow. >> It's narrow, exactly. So um but if you if you have billions of humanoid robots, I think there will be um the I think I think everyone on Earth is going to have one and going to want one.\n\nUm, because uh you're who wouldn't want a robot to, you know, um assuming it's very safe, watch over your kids, take care of your pet. Uh if you have elderly parents, uh a lot of friends of mine have said they have elderly parents and it's it's very difficult to take care of them. >> Yeah, it's expensive and and it's expensive and there just aren't enough people to take care of the there aren't enough young people to take care of the old people.\n\n>> Right. Um so if you if they um if you if you had a robot that could take care of and and protect an and elderly parents, I think that would be great. That would be an amazing thing to have. Um and and that I think we will have those things. So I mean overall I'm I'm very optimistic about the future. I think we're headed for a future of amazing abundance, uh which is very cool.\n\nUm and uh and and definitely >> [clears throat] >> we are in the most interesting time in history. Um I think there's no more no more interesting time in history. And can we can you and I reverse aging in this new history or or or are we going to see it? Uh you know, I haven't I haven't put much time into uh the aging stuff. I I I do think it is a very solvable problem.\n\nLike like you can do I think when when when when we find we figure out what causes aging, I think we'll find it's incredibly obvious. No, it's not a subtle thing. Um the reason I say it's not a subtle thing is because all the cells in your body you know, with some pretty much age at the same rate. I I've never seen someone with with an old left arm and a young right arm, ever in my life. Um so why is that?\n\nIt it it that means that there must be a clock, a synchronizing clock that is synchronizing across 35 trillion cells in your body. Um and uh uh you know, the there is some benefit to death, by the way.\n\n>> [laughter] >> It's like there's there's a reason why we don't actually have a longer lifespan uh because if you if you have if you people do live for a very very long time, I think there's some risk of an ossification of society, of of things just getting kind of locked in place. Um and uh yeah, you're it it just may become um stultifying, just not uh lack lack vibrancy. Um but but that's that's that's it.\n\nDo I think we'll figure out ways to extend life and um and maybe even reverse aging? I think that's highly likely. I'm looking forward to that. Yeah. So um in the future that you talk about, the AI models, autonomous machines, rockets, depends on massive increases of compute, massive increases in energy, expensive energy, manufacturing scale. What are the bottlenecks to to get there?\n\nAnd then once again, with all that expenditures, again, how can we make sure that it's broadened, not narrow? Um >> [clears throat] >> I I just think the natural thing is it's going to be very broad because AI companies will seek as many customers as they possibly can. And the cost of AI will get is already very low and it's is plummeting every year. I mean, you almost the cost of AI is almost meaningfully changing on a month-to-month basis.\n\nThere's open there's open models now everywhere. >> Yeah. Yes, very there's open models. Um the open models only lack the maybe a year behind the the private the sort of closed models. Um so so I I think the the AI companies will seek as as many customers as possible, which means they'll seek they'll provide AI to the world.\n\n>> But the cost of getting to there, the compute, the chips, um the fab, um the powering, that to me what what are the what are the you know, those are huge bottle >> The limiting factor. Yeah, I think the limiting factor for um AI deployment is fundamentally electrical power. It's just right. [clears throat] It's energy. Yeah, yeah.\n\nUm I mean, we're we're seeing the the rate of AI chip production increase exponentially, but the rate of electricity being brought online is uh 3% 4% a year. Acts. Yeah. It's clear that we're we're we're we're very soon, maybe even later this year, we'll be producing more chips than we can turn on. Ex- except for China. China China's China's growth in electricity is is tremendous. They're building 100 gigawatts of nuclear as we speak.\n\nUh actually solar is the biggest thing in China. So China's I believe China's production capacity on solar is 1,500 gigawatts a year um and they're deploying over uh 1,000 gigawatts a year of of solar. Um Now, you know, for continuous solar load, you divide that by roughly I don't know, four or five. Uh call call it that's around uh 250 gigawatts of steady state power um paired with batteries. Um and that's a very big number.\n\nThat's half of the average power usage in the US. Right. So US US power uh usage on average is is 500 gigawatts. Uh China just in solar just like just in in in solar like that can provide steady state power uh and batteries can do half of the US electricity output per year just with solar. Solar is by far it the the the biggest source of of of energy.\n\nUm and actually when you look beyond or even even even on Earth, but certainly beyond Earth, uh the the sun rounds up to 100% of all energy. This is an important thing to consider. Um so the the sun is 99. 8% of the mass of the solar system. Jupiter is about 0. 1% and everything else is miscellaneous.\n\nUm now even if you were to uh burn Jupiter in a in a thermonuclear reactor, uh the sun the amount of energy produced by the sun would still round up to 100% cuz Jupiter's only 0. 1%. If you teleported teleported three more Jupiters into our solar system, the sun the and and burn three more Jupiters and everything else in the solar system, the sun's energy would still round up to 100%. So it's really all about the sun.\n\nUm and that's that's why uh one of the things we'll be doing with SpaceX uh in a within a few years is launching um solar powered AI satellites. >> Right. Um because the space is really the source of immense power and then you don't need to take up any room on Earth. Uh there's so much room in space. And you can scale to uh enormous uh I mean you can you can scale to I I think ultimately hundreds hundreds of terawatts a year.\n\nBut we you and I have had these conversations before, but why don't you tell the audience what would it take for the United States and what type of geography would it take to have that solar field to electrify the United States? And And then let me ask a question, why aren't we doing it?\n\nYeah, so I mean I I guess rough way to think about it is um 100 mi by 100 mi or quote uh 160 km by 160 km of [clears throat] solar is enough to power the entire United States. So, you 100 100 mi mi by 100 mi area is is I mean that you can take the basically a small corner of Utah Nevada Nevada, New Mexico.\n\n>> [clears throat] >> Obviously wouldn't want it all in one place, but I'm you can it's it's it's a it is a very small percentage of the area of of the US to generate all of the electricity that the US uses. Um and the same is true actually I mean for for Europe. You you could take a small part You could take uh uh relatively unpopulated areas of say Spain and Sicily and generate all of the electricity power that Europe needs.\n\nSo, why don't you think that there's a movement towards that here and in the United States? Uh well, there there is >> As it is in China. Well, unfortunately in in the US the the the tariff barriers for solar are are extremely high >> [clears throat] >> um and that makes the economics of deploying solar uh so artificially high because China makes almost all the solar.\n\nUm and and the tax that What would it take for Europe or the US to build it commercially? If it's that scale. Yeah, I I I think I think uh Well, I can tell you what what we're going to do in SpaceX and Tesla was is we're we're building up um large-scale solar. Right. So, the the SpaceX and Tesla teams both separately are working to build to 100 gigawatts a year of solar power in the US. Uh of manufactured solar power.\n\nAnd um that'll probably take us another about 3 years, something. But that's that's These are pretty big numbers. Um and um you know, I I'd encourage others to do the same to do the same. Um We obviously don't control the you know, your US uh tariff policy.\n\nUh but for for for for other countries uh I would recommend you know, that this China makes solar cells that are incredibly low cost and I think uh it would be worth uh doing large-scale solar. So, >> [clears throat] >> I know you are like you're going to be having a couple big announcements on robotics and what it can do. I mean when when I went to the factory, you showed me those robots. Yeah.\n\nUm how quickly you talked about the billions of robots, but how quickly and how quickly can they be deployed in a manufacturing setting? How quickly can they be utilized and be functional and be uh create that that abundance that you talked about? >> [clears throat and cough] >> Well, humanoid robotics will advance very quickly. I think uh we we we do have some the Tesla Optimus robots doing simple tasks in the factory.\n\nUm we expect it it probably later this year by the end of this year, I think they'll be doing um more more complex tasks. Um and and but still deployed in an industrial environment. >> [clears throat] >> And uh and probably sometime next year, I'd say that by the by the end of next year, I I think uh we'd be selling humanoid robots uh to the public.\n\nUm but that's when we are confident that the it's very high reliability, very high safety um and the range of functionality is uh is is also very high. You can basically ask it to do anything you'd like. We're already [clears throat] seeing that in Tesla cars is the software changes that you're doing. And then what is it every quarter now a software change that upgrades the the ability of the robot within the car?\n\nUh yes, the Tesla full self-driving software we we update it sometimes once a week. Um and um recently [clears throat] some of the insurance companies have said that it is actually so safe uh when when Tesla full self-driving so safe that uh they're they're offering uh customers half-price insurance if they if they use Tesla full self-driving in the car. And that can be monitored by the insurance company.\n\nCan they Is that part of the agreement then? >> Yeah. Um but I I think a self-driving [clears throat] car is is essentially a solved problem at this point. Right. Um at and Tes- Tesla's ro- rolled out a sort of robot taxi service in a few cities in Right. will uh I be very very widespread by the end of this year within the US. And then we we hope to get supervised full self-driving approval in Europe hopefully next month. Really that quickly?\n\nYeah, and then uh [clears throat] maybe a similar timing timing for China, hopefully. I want to move to space cuz historically space is very capital intensive. It it historically been done by governments. I believe SpaceX changed the whole model. Um but we've seen it slow slow to scale and now we're starting to see it ramping up in what you're doing and other things.\n\nUm talk to us about the reason you know, the automation and AI how it's changing the economics in building uh and preparing for us and operating in space. Uh sure. Um >> [clears throat] >> Well, the the key breakthrough that has that's the the major breakthrough that SpaceX is hoping to achieve this year is full reusability.\n\n>> [clears throat] >> Um so, no one has ever achieved full reusability of a rocket, which is very important for the cost of access to space. Um we've achieved partial reusability with Falcon 9 by landing the boost stage. We've We've now landed the boost stage over 500 times. Um but uh we we don't we have to uh throw away the upper stage. The upper stage so burns up on reentry for Falcon 9.\n\nSo, and and that that the cost of that is equivalent to a small to medium-size jet. So, um but with with Starship, which is a a giant rocket, it's the it's largest flying machine ever made. That's the rocket that you're using for the idea of going to Mars, right? Yeah, Mars and the moon um as well as for uh high-volume satellite stuff.\n\nSo, Starship um hopefully this year we should prove full reusability for Starship, which will be um a profound invention uh because uh the cost of access to space will drop by a factor of a hundred when you achieve full reusability. Um Right. It's it's the same sort of economic difference that you would expect that between say a reusable aircraft and a non-reusable aircraft.\n\nLike if you have to throw your aircraft away after every flight, that would be a very expensive flight. Um but if you only have to refuel uh then it's the cost of the fuel. And so, that's really the uh the the fundamental breakthrough that gets the cost of access to space uh we think uh below the cost of uh of freight on aircraft. Uh so, you know, under under a hundred dollars a a pound type of thing easily.\n\nUm so, it it it it makes uh >> [clears throat and cough] >> putting large satellites into into space a very low very very cheap. Um and then when you have solar in space, you you get uh five times more effectiveness, maybe even more than that than solar on the ground because it's it's always sunny and >> cold It Yeah, it's it's it's always Well, it's always sunny, so you you you don't have a day-night cycle or seasonality or weather.\n\n>> Um and you get about uh 30% more power in space uh because uh you don't have atmospheric attenuation of the power. Right. The net effect is solar is five times more uh the any given solar panel will do five times more uh energy in space than uh on the ground. Is there any capacity in doing that and and then taking that power and bringing it back to Earth?\n\nIs there any way of doing that or or you're just taking that power and utilizing it for the needs like building um uh AI data centers out in in the space? I I think I think the the case is it's it's a no-brainer for building uh AI solar-powered AI data centers in space um cuz as you mentioned, it's it's also very cold in space. If you're if you're if you're in the shadow, uh then it's it's very cold in space. It's 3° Kelvin.\n\nSo, you just have you have solar panels facing the sun and then uh a uh radiator that's like point like pointed away from the sun. Um so, it has no sun incidence and then it's and then it's just cooling. It's a very efficient cooling system. So net effect is that the lowest cost place to put AI will be space and that and that'll be true within 2 years, maybe 3, 3 at the latest. Wow.\n\n>> [clears throat] >> So looking 10 or 20 years out, what would how would you describe success with AI or space technology and where do you see it? Is that can you are you more certain what's going to happen in the next 3 years or or 5 or 10?\n\nI don't know what what's going to happen in 10 years, but the rate at which AI is progressing I think we >> [clears throat] >> we're we might have AI that is smarter than any human by the end of this year and I would say no later than next year. Wow. And then probably by 2030 or 2031 quote 5 years from now AI will be smarter than [clears throat] all of humanity collectively.\n\nWe only have a number of minutes left but I want I want to humanize you for a second. So there's no speculation that you're >> joke about peace. Right. Right. I want to >> [laughter] >> I mean I would frame this question by you are the most successful entrepreneur, industrialist in the 21st century, maybe beyond. I want to So I want to really get this you know, what inspired you? Who's inspired you? What was the foundation of your curiosity?\n\nAnd and importantly what was the what was the was there a aha moment, epiphany at any time in your life and career? Well um I mean as a kid I read a lot of science fiction sci-fi fantasy books. Yep, we talked about that. And comic books. And I always liked technology. I didn't expect to be where I am today. Seems incredibly implausible.\n\nBut yeah, I was I was inspired by reading about books about the future about science fiction and and I guess I want to make science fiction not fiction forever at some point turn science fiction into science fact. Um and you know we want to have like Starfleet and Star Star Trek really for for real.\n\nLike where where we actually have giant spaceships traveling through space going to other planets traveling to other star systems going to places where we've never gone. >> to be beamed up to go back to New York. >> [laughter] >> You know, I I'd like to just be beamed back to New York instead of flying. Yeah. Um Talking about Star Trek.\n\nNo, I guess my my essential what I would call the philosoph philosophy of curiosity I'm I'd like to understand the meaning of life. You know the it is the standard model of is the standard model of physics correct regarding the beginning of life beginning of existence and the end of the universe. What what questions do we not know to ask that we should ask? And AI will help us with these things.\n\nSo I'm just trying to understand how do we get here? What's going on? What's real? Are there aliens? Maybe there are. And if we've got if we've got spaceships that are traveling to other star systems we may find we may encounter aliens and or we may find many long dead alien civilizations. But I I'm just I just I just want to know what's going on. I'm curious about the the universe and um that's my philosophy.\n\nDo you see yourself ever going to Mars in your lifetime? Yeah, I mean I would say like I you know I I there That's a long commitment. I've been asked Isn't that 3 years each way? It's 6 months. 6 months that's all it is? Yeah, 6 months but the planets only align every every 2 years. Okay. So um [clears throat] yeah, I've been asked a few times like do I want to you know, die on Mars and I'm like yes, but just not on impact.\n\n>> [laughter] >> That's a good that's a good answer. Anyway, we're out of time. I hopefully everybody enjoyed this. Um There's so many myths around Elon Musk. I can tell you he's a great friend and I constantly learn so much from him. Um and I'm totally inspired by what he's what he has done. I've been inspired who he is and I'm totally inspired by his vision of the future. And I don't think it's such a bad future and I agree with his optimism.\n\nSo Elon, thank you. Any last words? Um Um Well, I think generally I think my last words would be I would encourage everyone to be optimistic and excited about the future. Good. Um and and and generally I think for quality of life it is actually better to err on the side of being an optimist and wrong rather than a pessimist and right. On that note >> [applause and cheering] [applause] [music]","textByLang":{"en":"[music] [applause] >> That was not a That was not a large applause. Start again. >> [applause and cheering] >> That's better. Thank you. Yeah, we're going to make this interesting. >> [laughter] >> How many How many quotes are you going to want that are going to be after this session? >> [snorts] >> Uh I don't know. I mean five. Okay. >> [laughter] >> So, uh good afternoon, everybody. It's great to see everybody here.\n\nUh it's been an amazing week here in Davos. Um hopefully everybody saw that we are having conversations here. Hopefully everybody agrees. There [snorts] are some conversations that we may disagree. There's many conversations we may have agreed. But through those conversations and I think today's result with a peace agreement earlier today um the World Economic Forum is here to have those conversations, to have understandings, and also resolution.\n\nSo, um uh it's an important component of who we and what we are, and I'm thrilled uh to have Elon Musk here. Um He came all the way from California to be here to see all of you. So, uh thank you, Elon. Uh you're most welcome. >> [applause] >> Um I mean, I heard I heard about uh heard about the formation of the the the peace summit. And I was like, is that uh is that p i e c?\n\nUh >> [laughter] >> you know, little piece of Greenland, a little piece of Venezuela. [laughter] We got one. What we want is peace. >> [laughter] >> Okay, I want to uh as I said, I'm a pretty proud uh a CEO of BlackRock since we went public. Um uh the compounding return of BlackRock to our shareholders was 21%. Uh since Elon took Tesla uh public, his compounded return is 43%.\n\nThis is I just another advertisement for everybody, especially for Europeans. This is why more citizens should be investing with growth, investing with your countries. Imagine if a lot of pension funds invested with Elon if when Tesla went public, and how much return with the all the pension funds that invested side by side with Elon and the growth. So, um a spectacular return.\n\nThere's very few companies Well, I don't think there's any other company as large as Tesla today that has that compounded return. So, congratulations. >> Uh thank you. >> good measurement. Well, we have an incredible team at Tesla, and that's the reason. So, I want to get into uh the dirt the the meaningful component about technology, the possibilities.\n\nUm I want to talk about AI and robotics, energy, space, and the progress ultimately coming down to engineering, engineering discipline, scale, execution. Um and few few people, if not anyone, has the experience and the fortitude to confront these issues head-on. Not just the ideas, but the execution across so many different technologies, Elon, and that's why I thought I thought it was important for us to have this dialogue here uh in Davos.\n\nSo, you're [clears throat] presently building on AI and robotics, on space, on energy, all at the same time. When you look across those efforts, what do they have in common from an engineering standpoint? Uh well, they're all very difficult technology challenges. Um but the uh the overall goal of my companies is to maximize the future of civilization. Like, basically maximize the probability that civilization has a great future.\n\nUm and uh to [clears throat] expand consciousness beyond Earth. So, if you take SpaceX, for example, that's SpaceX is about advancing rocket technology to the point where we can extend life and consciousness beyond Earth, uh to the moon, to Mars, eventually to other star systems. And uh I know I think we should always view consciousness uh life as we know it as as precarious and delicate.\n\nUm because to the best of my knowledge, we we we don't know if life anywhere else. You know, I'm often asked, um are there aliens among us? And I'll say that I am one, but Or you're from the future. They don't believe me. Okay. Um so, uh but I I I >> [clears throat] >> I think if anyone would know if there were aliens among us, it would be me.\n\nUm and uh we we have 9,000 satellites up there, and not once have we had to maneuver around an an alien spaceship. So, I'm like, I don't know. It's Bottom line is I think we need to assume that life and consciousness is extremely rare, and it might only be us.\n\nAnd if that's the case, then we need to do everything possible to to ensure that the the light of can the light the light of consciousness is not extinguished, because we're effectively we're we're we're The way I view it is the image in my mind is of a a tiny candle in a vast darkness, tiny candle of consciousness that could easily go out.\n\nUm and that's why it's important to make life multi-planetary uh such that if there is a natural disaster or a man-made disaster on Earth, that consciousness continues. That's the purpose of SpaceX. Um Uh Te- Tesla is obviously about uh sustainable technology, and uh and and also at this point we've we've sort of added to our mission sustainable abundance. So, with uh robotics and AI, um th- this this is really the path to abundance for all.\n\nIf you say, you know, people often talk about uh solving global poverty, or essentially how how do we make give everyone a very high standard of living. I I think the only way to do this is AI and robotics. Um, which which doesn't mean that it is uh without its issues. I mean, this we need to be very careful with AI. We need to be very careful with robotics. We don't want to find ourselves in a James Cameron movie. Uh you know, Terminator.\n\n>> [laughter] >> Is is it goes is great great movies. I love his movies, but but we don't want to be in Terminator, obviously. Um, but but we if you have um ubiquitous AI that is essentially free or close to it and ubiquitous robotics, uh then you will have an an ex- an explosion in the in the global economy, an expansion in the global economy that is truly beyond all precedent. Elon, can that expansion be broad or is it narrow?\n\nAnd how can that be created? How can it broaden the global economy? Yeah, it's I mean I mean the way to think of it is that if you have a large number of humanoid robots, um the economic output is the average productivity per robot times the number of robots. Right.\n\nUm and and actually my prediction is in the in the benign scenario of the future that we will the robots will actually make so many robots and AI that they will actually saturate all human needs. Meaning you won't be able to even think of something to ask the robot for at a certain point. Like like the they will be such an abundance of goods and services because the [clears throat] my prediction is they'll be they'll be more robots than people.\n\nSo But how do you then have human purpose in that scenario? >> Yeah, I mean you know, there was nothing's perfect, you know, but >> [laughter] >> um but but the I mean I mean it is it it is a a necessary um Like you can't have both. You can't have work that has to be done uh um and uh amazing abundance for all.\n\nUm because if it's if it's work that has to be done, then then then you and and only some people can do it, then you then you you you can't have abundance at all. >> Then it's narrow. >> It's narrow, exactly. So um but if you if you have billions of humanoid robots, I think there will be um the I think I think everyone on Earth is going to have one and going to want one.\n\nUm, because uh you're who wouldn't want a robot to, you know, um assuming it's very safe, watch over your kids, take care of your pet. Uh if you have elderly parents, uh a lot of friends of mine have said they have elderly parents and it's it's very difficult to take care of them. >> Yeah, it's expensive and and it's expensive and there just aren't enough people to take care of the there aren't enough young people to take care of the old people.\n\n>> Right. Um so if you if they um if you if you had a robot that could take care of and and protect an and elderly parents, I think that would be great. That would be an amazing thing to have. Um and and that I think we will have those things. So I mean overall I'm I'm very optimistic about the future. I think we're headed for a future of amazing abundance, uh which is very cool.\n\nUm and uh and and definitely >> [clears throat] >> we are in the most interesting time in history. Um I think there's no more no more interesting time in history. And can we can you and I reverse aging in this new history or or or are we going to see it? Uh you know, I haven't I haven't put much time into uh the aging stuff. I I I do think it is a very solvable problem.\n\nLike like you can do I think when when when when we find we figure out what causes aging, I think we'll find it's incredibly obvious. No, it's not a subtle thing. Um the reason I say it's not a subtle thing is because all the cells in your body you know, with some pretty much age at the same rate. I I've never seen someone with with an old left arm and a young right arm, ever in my life. Um so why is that?\n\nIt it it that means that there must be a clock, a synchronizing clock that is synchronizing across 35 trillion cells in your body. Um and uh uh you know, the there is some benefit to death, by the way.\n\n>> [laughter] >> It's like there's there's a reason why we don't actually have a longer lifespan uh because if you if you have if you people do live for a very very long time, I think there's some risk of an ossification of society, of of things just getting kind of locked in place. Um and uh yeah, you're it it just may become um stultifying, just not uh lack lack vibrancy. Um but but that's that's that's it.\n\nDo I think we'll figure out ways to extend life and um and maybe even reverse aging? I think that's highly likely. I'm looking forward to that. Yeah. So um in the future that you talk about, the AI models, autonomous machines, rockets, depends on massive increases of compute, massive increases in energy, expensive energy, manufacturing scale. What are the bottlenecks to to get there?\n\nAnd then once again, with all that expenditures, again, how can we make sure that it's broadened, not narrow? Um >> [clears throat] >> I I just think the natural thing is it's going to be very broad because AI companies will seek as many customers as they possibly can. And the cost of AI will get is already very low and it's is plummeting every year. I mean, you almost the cost of AI is almost meaningfully changing on a month-to-month basis.\n\nThere's open there's open models now everywhere. >> Yeah. Yes, very there's open models. Um the open models only lack the maybe a year behind the the private the sort of closed models. Um so so I I think the the AI companies will seek as as many customers as possible, which means they'll seek they'll provide AI to the world.\n\n>> But the cost of getting to there, the compute, the chips, um the fab, um the powering, that to me what what are the what are the you know, those are huge bottle >> The limiting factor. Yeah, I think the limiting factor for um AI deployment is fundamentally electrical power. It's just right. [clears throat] It's energy. Yeah, yeah.\n\nUm I mean, we're we're seeing the the rate of AI chip production increase exponentially, but the rate of electricity being brought online is uh 3% 4% a year. Acts. Yeah. It's clear that we're we're we're we're very soon, maybe even later this year, we'll be producing more chips than we can turn on. Ex- except for China. China China's China's growth in electricity is is tremendous. They're building 100 gigawatts of nuclear as we speak.\n\nUh actually solar is the biggest thing in China. So China's I believe China's production capacity on solar is 1,500 gigawatts a year um and they're deploying over uh 1,000 gigawatts a year of of solar. Um Now, you know, for continuous solar load, you divide that by roughly I don't know, four or five. Uh call call it that's around uh 250 gigawatts of steady state power um paired with batteries. Um and that's a very big number.\n\nThat's half of the average power usage in the US. Right. So US US power uh usage on average is is 500 gigawatts. Uh China just in solar just like just in in in solar like that can provide steady state power uh and batteries can do half of the US electricity output per year just with solar. Solar is by far it the the the biggest source of of of energy.\n\nUm and actually when you look beyond or even even even on Earth, but certainly beyond Earth, uh the the sun rounds up to 100% of all energy. This is an important thing to consider. Um so the the sun is 99. 8% of the mass of the solar system. Jupiter is about 0. 1% and everything else is miscellaneous.\n\nUm now even if you were to uh burn Jupiter in a in a thermonuclear reactor, uh the sun the amount of energy produced by the sun would still round up to 100% cuz Jupiter's only 0. 1%. If you teleported teleported three more Jupiters into our solar system, the sun the and and burn three more Jupiters and everything else in the solar system, the sun's energy would still round up to 100%. So it's really all about the sun.\n\nUm and that's that's why uh one of the things we'll be doing with SpaceX uh in a within a few years is launching um solar powered AI satellites. >> Right. Um because the space is really the source of immense power and then you don't need to take up any room on Earth. Uh there's so much room in space. And you can scale to uh enormous uh I mean you can you can scale to I I think ultimately hundreds hundreds of terawatts a year.\n\nBut we you and I have had these conversations before, but why don't you tell the audience what would it take for the United States and what type of geography would it take to have that solar field to electrify the United States? And And then let me ask a question, why aren't we doing it?\n\nYeah, so I mean I I guess rough way to think about it is um 100 mi by 100 mi or quote uh 160 km by 160 km of [clears throat] solar is enough to power the entire United States. So, you 100 100 mi mi by 100 mi area is is I mean that you can take the basically a small corner of Utah Nevada Nevada, New Mexico.\n\n>> [clears throat] >> Obviously wouldn't want it all in one place, but I'm you can it's it's it's a it is a very small percentage of the area of of the US to generate all of the electricity that the US uses. Um and the same is true actually I mean for for Europe. You you could take a small part You could take uh uh relatively unpopulated areas of say Spain and Sicily and generate all of the electricity power that Europe needs.\n\nSo, why don't you think that there's a movement towards that here and in the United States? Uh well, there there is >> As it is in China. Well, unfortunately in in the US the the the tariff barriers for solar are are extremely high >> [clears throat] >> um and that makes the economics of deploying solar uh so artificially high because China makes almost all the solar.\n\nUm and and the tax that What would it take for Europe or the US to build it commercially? If it's that scale. Yeah, I I I think I think uh Well, I can tell you what what we're going to do in SpaceX and Tesla was is we're we're building up um large-scale solar. Right. So, the the SpaceX and Tesla teams both separately are working to build to 100 gigawatts a year of solar power in the US. Uh of manufactured solar power.\n\nAnd um that'll probably take us another about 3 years, something. But that's that's These are pretty big numbers. Um and um you know, I I'd encourage others to do the same to do the same. Um We obviously don't control the you know, your US uh tariff policy.\n\nUh but for for for for other countries uh I would recommend you know, that this China makes solar cells that are incredibly low cost and I think uh it would be worth uh doing large-scale solar. So, >> [clears throat] >> I know you are like you're going to be having a couple big announcements on robotics and what it can do. I mean when when I went to the factory, you showed me those robots. Yeah.\n\nUm how quickly you talked about the billions of robots, but how quickly and how quickly can they be deployed in a manufacturing setting? How quickly can they be utilized and be functional and be uh create that that abundance that you talked about? >> [clears throat and cough] >> Well, humanoid robotics will advance very quickly. I think uh we we we do have some the Tesla Optimus robots doing simple tasks in the factory.\n\nUm we expect it it probably later this year by the end of this year, I think they'll be doing um more more complex tasks. Um and and but still deployed in an industrial environment. >> [clears throat] >> And uh and probably sometime next year, I'd say that by the by the end of next year, I I think uh we'd be selling humanoid robots uh to the public.\n\nUm but that's when we are confident that the it's very high reliability, very high safety um and the range of functionality is uh is is also very high. You can basically ask it to do anything you'd like. We're already [clears throat] seeing that in Tesla cars is the software changes that you're doing. And then what is it every quarter now a software change that upgrades the the ability of the robot within the car?\n\nUh yes, the Tesla full self-driving software we we update it sometimes once a week. Um and um recently [clears throat] some of the insurance companies have said that it is actually so safe uh when when Tesla full self-driving so safe that uh they're they're offering uh customers half-price insurance if they if they use Tesla full self-driving in the car. And that can be monitored by the insurance company.\n\nCan they Is that part of the agreement then? >> Yeah. Um but I I think a self-driving [clears throat] car is is essentially a solved problem at this point. Right. Um at and Tes- Tesla's ro- rolled out a sort of robot taxi service in a few cities in Right. will uh I be very very widespread by the end of this year within the US. And then we we hope to get supervised full self-driving approval in Europe hopefully next month. Really that quickly?\n\nYeah, and then uh [clears throat] maybe a similar timing timing for China, hopefully. I want to move to space cuz historically space is very capital intensive. It it historically been done by governments. I believe SpaceX changed the whole model. Um but we've seen it slow slow to scale and now we're starting to see it ramping up in what you're doing and other things.\n\nUm talk to us about the reason you know, the automation and AI how it's changing the economics in building uh and preparing for us and operating in space. Uh sure. Um >> [clears throat] >> Well, the the key breakthrough that has that's the the major breakthrough that SpaceX is hoping to achieve this year is full reusability.\n\n>> [clears throat] >> Um so, no one has ever achieved full reusability of a rocket, which is very important for the cost of access to space. Um we've achieved partial reusability with Falcon 9 by landing the boost stage. We've We've now landed the boost stage over 500 times. Um but uh we we don't we have to uh throw away the upper stage. The upper stage so burns up on reentry for Falcon 9.\n\nSo, and and that that the cost of that is equivalent to a small to medium-size jet. So, um but with with Starship, which is a a giant rocket, it's the it's largest flying machine ever made. That's the rocket that you're using for the idea of going to Mars, right? Yeah, Mars and the moon um as well as for uh high-volume satellite stuff.\n\nSo, Starship um hopefully this year we should prove full reusability for Starship, which will be um a profound invention uh because uh the cost of access to space will drop by a factor of a hundred when you achieve full reusability. Um Right. It's it's the same sort of economic difference that you would expect that between say a reusable aircraft and a non-reusable aircraft.\n\nLike if you have to throw your aircraft away after every flight, that would be a very expensive flight. Um but if you only have to refuel uh then it's the cost of the fuel. And so, that's really the uh the the fundamental breakthrough that gets the cost of access to space uh we think uh below the cost of uh of freight on aircraft. Uh so, you know, under under a hundred dollars a a pound type of thing easily.\n\nUm so, it it it it makes uh >> [clears throat and cough] >> putting large satellites into into space a very low very very cheap. Um and then when you have solar in space, you you get uh five times more effectiveness, maybe even more than that than solar on the ground because it's it's always sunny and >> cold It Yeah, it's it's it's always Well, it's always sunny, so you you you don't have a day-night cycle or seasonality or weather.\n\n>> Um and you get about uh 30% more power in space uh because uh you don't have atmospheric attenuation of the power. Right. The net effect is solar is five times more uh the any given solar panel will do five times more uh energy in space than uh on the ground. Is there any capacity in doing that and and then taking that power and bringing it back to Earth?\n\nIs there any way of doing that or or you're just taking that power and utilizing it for the needs like building um uh AI data centers out in in the space? I I think I think the the case is it's it's a no-brainer for building uh AI solar-powered AI data centers in space um cuz as you mentioned, it's it's also very cold in space. If you're if you're if you're in the shadow, uh then it's it's very cold in space. It's 3° Kelvin.\n\nSo, you just have you have solar panels facing the sun and then uh a uh radiator that's like point like pointed away from the sun. Um so, it has no sun incidence and then it's and then it's just cooling. It's a very efficient cooling system. So net effect is that the lowest cost place to put AI will be space and that and that'll be true within 2 years, maybe 3, 3 at the latest. Wow.\n\n>> [clears throat] >> So looking 10 or 20 years out, what would how would you describe success with AI or space technology and where do you see it? Is that can you are you more certain what's going to happen in the next 3 years or or 5 or 10?\n\nI don't know what what's going to happen in 10 years, but the rate at which AI is progressing I think we >> [clears throat] >> we're we might have AI that is smarter than any human by the end of this year and I would say no later than next year. Wow. And then probably by 2030 or 2031 quote 5 years from now AI will be smarter than [clears throat] all of humanity collectively.\n\nWe only have a number of minutes left but I want I want to humanize you for a second. So there's no speculation that you're >> joke about peace. Right. Right. I want to >> [laughter] >> I mean I would frame this question by you are the most successful entrepreneur, industrialist in the 21st century, maybe beyond. I want to So I want to really get this you know, what inspired you? Who's inspired you? What was the foundation of your curiosity?\n\nAnd and importantly what was the what was the was there a aha moment, epiphany at any time in your life and career? Well um I mean as a kid I read a lot of science fiction sci-fi fantasy books. Yep, we talked about that. And comic books. And I always liked technology. I didn't expect to be where I am today. Seems incredibly implausible.\n\nBut yeah, I was I was inspired by reading about books about the future about science fiction and and I guess I want to make science fiction not fiction forever at some point turn science fiction into science fact. Um and you know we want to have like Starfleet and Star Star Trek really for for real.\n\nLike where where we actually have giant spaceships traveling through space going to other planets traveling to other star systems going to places where we've never gone. >> to be beamed up to go back to New York. >> [laughter] >> You know, I I'd like to just be beamed back to New York instead of flying. Yeah. Um Talking about Star Trek.\n\nNo, I guess my my essential what I would call the philosoph philosophy of curiosity I'm I'd like to understand the meaning of life. You know the it is the standard model of is the standard model of physics correct regarding the beginning of life beginning of existence and the end of the universe. What what questions do we not know to ask that we should ask? And AI will help us with these things.\n\nSo I'm just trying to understand how do we get here? What's going on? What's real? Are there aliens? Maybe there are. And if we've got if we've got spaceships that are traveling to other star systems we may find we may encounter aliens and or we may find many long dead alien civilizations. But I I'm just I just I just want to know what's going on. I'm curious about the the universe and um that's my philosophy.\n\nDo you see yourself ever going to Mars in your lifetime? Yeah, I mean I would say like I you know I I there That's a long commitment. I've been asked Isn't that 3 years each way? It's 6 months. 6 months that's all it is? Yeah, 6 months but the planets only align every every 2 years. Okay. So um [clears throat] yeah, I've been asked a few times like do I want to you know, die on Mars and I'm like yes, but just not on impact.\n\n>> [laughter] >> That's a good that's a good answer. Anyway, we're out of time. I hopefully everybody enjoyed this. Um There's so many myths around Elon Musk. I can tell you he's a great friend and I constantly learn so much from him. Um and I'm totally inspired by what he's what he has done. I've been inspired who he is and I'm totally inspired by his vision of the future. And I don't think it's such a bad future and I agree with his optimism.\n\nSo Elon, thank you. Any last words? Um Um Well, I think generally I think my last words would be I would encourage everyone to be optimistic and excited about the future. Good. Um and and and generally I think for quality of life it is actually better to err on the side of being an optimist and wrong rather than a pessimist and right. On that note >> [applause and cheering] [applause] [music]"},"languages":["en"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":"https://whatsuptesla.com/2026/01/27/transcript-elon-musk-at-davos-world-economic-forum-jan-2026/"},{"id":"bloomberg-musk-starbase-2026","type":"interview","url":"https://www.bloomberg.com/news/videos/2026-01-13/elon-musk-we-want-to-make-star-trek-real-video","title":"Interview with Bloomberg","titles":{"en":"Interview with Bloomberg","de":"Interview mit Bloomberg","fr":"Entretien avec Bloomberg"},"date":"2026-01-13","summary":"At SpaceX's Starbase in Texas, Elon Musk talks to Bloomberg Technology about the future of space and technology, arguing that interplanetary travel can turn \"science fiction into science fact.\"","text":"We want to make Star Trek real. Okay. We want to make Starfleet Academy real so that it's not always science fiction. But one day, the science fiction turns to science fact.","textByLang":{"en":"We want to make Star Trek real. Okay. We want to make Starfleet Academy real so that it's not always science fiction. But one day, the science fiction turns to science fact."},"languages":["en"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":"https://www.bloomberg.com/news/videos/2026-01-13/elon-musk-we-want-to-make-star-trek-real-video"},{"id":"moonshots-220-musk-2026","type":"interview","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RSNuB9pj9P8","title":"Moonshots","titles":{"en":"Moonshots","de":"Moonshots","fr":"Moonshots"},"date":"2026-01-06","summary":"Elon Musk's first big interview of 2026: a three-hour conversation with Peter Diamandis and Dave Blundin on the AGI timeline, the US–China AI race, universal high income and the road to abundance.","text":"My concern isn't the long run. It's the next 3 to seven years. How do we head towards Star Trek and not Terminator? >> I call AI and robotics the supersonic tsunami. We're in the singularity. >> When is all white by color work gone? >> Anything short of shaping atoms. AI can do half or more of those jobs right now. There's no onoff switch. It is coming and accelerating. The transition will be bumpy. You have a solution to this.\n\n>> I don't make a bet here. Um, >> China's done an incredible job, >> right? I mean, it's running circles around us. Do you imagine that the US could make that level of investment and commitment >> based on current trends? Uh, China will far exceed the rest of the world in uh AI compute. >> Every major CEO and economist and government leader should be like, what do we do? >> We don't have any system right now to make this go well.\n\nBut AI is a critical part of making it go well. There are three things that I think are important. Truth [music] will prevent AI from going insane. Curiosity, I think, will foster any form of sentience. And if it has a sense of beauty, it will be a great future. It's going to be an awesome future. >> Now, that's a moonshot, ladies and gentlemen. >> Welcome to Moonshots.\n\nFollowing is a wide-ranging conversation with Elon Musk focused on optimism and the coming age of abundance. My moonshot mate Dave Blondon and I flew into Austin, Texas to meet up with Elon at his 11. 5 million square foot Gigafactory, home of the Cybertruck and Model Y production and the future home for 8 million square ft of Optimus production. Elon has agreed to do this kind of a deep dive catchup once per year.\n\nThis is hopefully the first of many. And after having this conversation with Elon, it's crystal clear to me that we are living through the singularity. All right, enjoy. >> Yeah. Um, [snorts] your relentless optimism is always a breath of fresh air. >> Thank you, buddy. Thank you. Well, I want to share that tonight with a lot of people. [laughter] >> Yeah, >> I think they need it. >> I hope you're right. And you might be right.\n\nActually, I'm increasingly thinking that you are right. >> Thank you. >> Abundance for all. >> Yeah, >> that's the goal. Shall we? >> Yeah. >> All right. >> Right now, putting a lot of time into chips. >> You are. You are personally. >> Yeah. >> It's always AI assistance, I assume. >> What's that? with some AI assistance. I assume that design >> uh not enough. >> Yeah. [laughter] >> It' be nice if we could just hand it off to the AI. >> Yeah.\n\nYeah. >> Soon enough. >> Yeah. I tried to do some circuit design actually with uh AI recently. Just this a couple weeks ago. Not not happening yet. >> Um very soon though. >> Yeah. Um I I think probably at this point Grock if you if you took a photo and submitted to Grock, it could probably tell you if if the circuit is is if there's something wrong with it. >> Yeah. >> All right. I'm going to give it a shot.\n\nYou're using the same Grock that I'm using. Are you or you are [laughter] >> Grock keeps updating. So >> yeah, 4. 2, but five is soon, right? >> Uh five is Q1. >> Yeah. >> Um 4. 2 has not been released yet. >> Okay. uh externally. Um but yeah, I mean if you just if you just upload an image into Gro um >> it's it's does quite a good job. >> Yeah. >> Um >> yeah, >> of of analyzing any any given image. >> Absolutely. Let's uh let's start.\n\nWe're going to talk about this. >> All right. We'll come back. >> I mean, let's see if I if I take an if I take a picture of you, what is it? Let's see what it >> Yeah. What's it going to say about me? >> Yeah, it's going to say you're a flawed circuit. I also have to remember to update it because like we update the Grock app so frequently. >> You know, I asked I asked Grock to roast me. >> Oh, it's does a good job. >> It did an amazing job.\n\nThen I asked Grock to roast you. Yes. >> And I spit out my coffee. It was it was hilarious. And then I asked it, you know, >> say be more. It just keeps telling it to be more and more. [laughter] >> I asked I asked [clears throat] until until it's like mother of God. >> Wait, is Bad Rudy still out or did that get repealed? Bad Rudy still there? >> And I asked, you know, does Elon know what you say about him?\n\nand and and she goes, \"It's a she for me.\" She goes, \"What is he going to do about it?\" [laughter] >> What is he going to do about it? >> Yeah, let's see. Okay. >> Um, so I just literally took a photo of you and see what it is. >> Did you ask a question? >> No, nothing. I didn't say anything. >> This man is is hugely >> This This is Peter Diamandis. >> Yes. >> So, >> okay. >> That's pretty good. >> Yeah. >> There's no context whatsoever.\n\n>> The host of the podcast Moonshots. Yeah. >> Uh, sometimes that's your first credential now. That's amazing. Forget about everything [laughter] else I've done in life. Comes back to your podcast. That was a no no context image. >> Yeah. By the way, Graedia is awesome. >> Okay, great. >> I mean, just phenomenal.\n\n[laughter] >> I mean, just it's like I tried to like update my Wikipedia page for like years impossibly >> and um Yeah, it it it knows me. >> Amazing. >> Yeah. Um, he's wearing a black quilted jacket featuring a Sundance logo. [laughter] >> Not quite true. It's my abundance logo, but I guess a little wrinkled. See the >> Can it see it? >> I I I think so. >> Okay. Okay. >> Anyway, >> um Yeah, but it basically uh it's pretty damn good. >> Yeah.\n\n>> Um he's smiling and relaxed with a laptop in front of him. >> That's true. >> Yeah, that's true. Um, >> yeah. >> Well, I should say quite a circuit though. [laughter] >> You got to test it on the >> roast him. >> Only It has to be read by you, though. >> I mean, I won't read the whole thing, but >> All right. [laughter] Give me Give me a taste. I can take it. >> Okay. Check out that grin.\n\nDude smiling like he just discovered a new way to monetize hope. [laughter] >> Monetizing hope. Oh, that's >> I want to try and answer the question, can AI and tech help save America and the world? Right. Um, I want to give people listening a dose of optimism. There's a survey done in mid December by Pew that said 45% of Americans would rather live in the past and only 14% said they'd rather live in the future, which is insane to me, right?\n\nUm, obviously they never read history. The challenge is most Americans all they have of the future. It's like Hollywood has shown us killer AIs and rogue robots, right? And people are worried about their jobs. They're worried about healthcare. They're worried about, you know, the cost of living. The challenge is how do we how do we help people?\n\nI mean, you posted, you pinned on X, the future is going to be amazing with AI and robots enabling sustainable abundance. >> I think of you when I did that. >> Thank you. I appreciate that. and and uh [laughter] >> well I mean >> it's like what would Peter do you want to say? >> Yeah was channeling you. >> Thank you. Thank I couldn't agree more. I didn't agree more either. [laughter] >> That's great.\n\n>> So so my question is from a you know from a first principle standpoint >> right >> uh the rationale for optimism you know how do we how do we head towards Star Trek and not Terminator right? How do we how do we head towards >> Ronberry not Cameron. Yeah, [laughter] Jim. Jim, I will I will >> the diverging path meme. >> Yes, [laughter] it is. It is.\n\nUh, Avatar has some hopeful parts, but anyway, >> I how do we go towards universal high income instead of social unrest? So, my >> both [clears throat and laughter] want socialrest. >> So, have universal high income and social unrest. M >> that's my prediction. >> Oh, that will make for a lot of problems. [snorts] >> Is that your actual prediction? >> Yeah. >> Yeah, it seems likely. [laughter] >> Like tell me to push back on it. >> Yeah, exactly.\n\nBut it seems like that's the trend. >> Yeah. Yeah, totally. No, we have >> Well, because there's going to be so much change. >> Yeah, there's people are going to be like scared shitless. >> Yeah, it's it's sort of the um you know um it's like be careful what you wish for because you might get it. >> Yeah. Yeah. >> Now, if if you if you actually get all the stuff you want, is that actually the future you want? >> Yeah.\n\n>> Um because it means that your job won't be what matter >> if you're living an unchallenged life. >> Yes. >> Right. With no challenges. >> Yeah. >> No. You know, you know, if you become a couch potato, if it's the Wall-E future, that does not go well for humans. >> Well, and we're used to being told, here's your challenge. Yeah.\n\n>> So people haven't historically been very good at creating their own challenge in the absence of >> I think Elon does a damn good job. Every time you every time one company takes off, you start your next. >> Oh, that's that's rare for punishment. >> I think you are. I think you overthank God for that. >> So So [laughter] what so >> why do I do this to myself? >> Actually, after AI and robots, is there another thing after that?\n\nI guess there's >> Well, there's there's conquering, you know, the universe. >> Yeah, that there is that >> rocks really. >> Well, [laughter] and energy >> rocks are your friends. >> Conquering >> We didn't even get there. >> Why, Elon? Why are you so optimistic? >> Are you Are you optimistic? Let's start there. >> I'm not as optimistic as you are. >> Okay. >> Um but why are you optimist? >> I'm more optimistic than most people. >> Okay.\n\n>> Um >> and is the trend upward compared to a year ago, two years ago? Well, I I think if you reframe things in terms of um progress bar, like speaking of challenges, >> yeah, >> uh progress towards a cartev 2 scale civilization. >> Sure. >> Um well, let's say let's say the aspiration >> capturing all the energy from the sun's output. >> Well, let's even have a a humbler humbler aspiration than that.\n\nIf we say that our goal is to even get a millionth of the sun's energy, >> that would be more than a thousand times as much energy as could possibly be produced on Earth. >> So about a half a billionth of the sun's energy reaches Earth. Um so you'd have to go up three orders of magnitude from that uh just to get to a millionth. >> Yeah. Um, so we're very very very far from even h having a billionth of the sun's energy uh harnessed in any way.\n\nSo a reasonable goal would be try to get to a millionth. And if you try to get to a millionth or or a thousandth um you know 0. 1%. Uh that's that's such an enormous uh there's not sure what metaphor we'd use here because a hill to climb is is not a >> inapprop like not a big enough metaphor but >> gravity well to escape [clears throat] >> engineer hell of a gravity well. Exactly.\n\nUm so if if you try to get to a millionth of the sun's energy or a thousandth the sun's energy like now the these are very very difficult tasks >> and energy is the inner loop for everything right now. >> Yeah. I I think like I I think uh the future currency will essentially just be wattage. >> Yeah. I was thinking is it is it d is the ability of a person to control energy and compute >> or just energy?\n\nI mean the two translate obviously >> just [clears throat] like harnessed energy. >> Yeah. >> Like so or like basically how much power is being turned into work of some kind, >> right? >> Um intelligence or um matter manipulation. Um, >> so that's your next big project is going to be energy. >> It's it's going to be you're going to go back to your solar your solar system.\n\n>> You can expand from there and say, okay, >> what about even getting somewhere on a on a cottage of three scale, meaning galaxy level. >> Now you're talking now. Now we're back to Star Trek. >> Yeah. Expand horizons here. >> Yes. >> Where there isn't even a horizon because you're not on a planet. [laughter] >> So we we talk about >> So So think galaxy mind. >> Yeah. Well, listen, we're in 11 11.\n\n5 million square foot, three pentagons right here in this building. I mean, you think in a reasonably large scale, >> what is the magnitude? >> Yeah. >> Um, so I mean, so from a challenge standpoint, I guess the civil the civilizational challenge will be how do you climb the orders of magnitude? >> Yeah. >> And energy harnessed. >> But we're going back to why are you optimistic right now?\n\nI mean, when people think about uh the challenges ahead, I think we're going to end up with abundance in the long run, it's for me >> beyond abundance in any beyond what people possibly could think of as abundance. Um like the AI actually AI and robots the limit um will will saturate all human desire. >> And then we get to nanotechnology which takes it even a step further.\n\nUm the thing about the well I'm not sure what you mean by nano you mean like little nanobots >> atomic reassembly. >> Yeah. For health. >> Oh yeah. Yeah. Sure. Sure. Um I mean we're already doing atomic level assembly on the for circuits you know. >> Amazing. >> Um >> two three nanometers. >> Yeah. It's it's only um depending on how they're arrayed four or five silicon atoms per nanometer. >> Yeah. >> So >> those are big atoms though.\n\n>> They're not bigish. They're not your little I mean but but I'm just saying you could they should actually describe the circuits in terms of an integer number of atoms in a specific place.\n\n>> They should it's all angstroms now but >> you could you can just it's just inte it's it's like we'll call this the the seven atom you know whatever like you say two two nanometers it's like it's like >> no one knows >> nine silicon atoms something like that. Um they've got silicon and copper and um you know so but a bunch of these things are just marketing numbers like the two nanometer is just a marketing number. >> Oh yeah.\n\n>> Um but but it's you still need essentially close to atomic level precision. Like the atoms really need to be in the right spot. >> Um so um I think they're getting clean rooms wrong by the way in these modern fabs. Um I'm going to I'm going to make a bet here. Okay. >> Okay. >> Um that Tesla will have a 2nmter fab and I can I can eat a cheeseburger and smoke a cigar in the fab. >> Oh, [laughter] come on. >> Yes.\n\n>> The air handling will be that good. >> Do you have this sketched out in your mind? Like how is it how are the atoms being placed that they're immune to uh cheeseburger grease? [clears throat] They just maintain wafer isolation the entire time. um which is actually the default for for fabs. The the wafers are transported um in boxes of pure nitrogen gas under a slight positive. >> So are the bananas at Walmart. I >> just so you know. >> Yeah.\n\n[laughter] Well, that's that's it's inite essentially like it's pretty hard for anything that's combusting >> uh to live without oxygen. >> Yep. >> So um >> let's talk about >> So like like you can kill the bugs just by putting a nitrogen blanket on plants. >> Yeah. Interesting. >> I want to talk about uh energy, health, education because those are people's, you know, concerns.\n\nSo, on the energy front, >> um the innermost loop of everything that you're building and doing right now, >> energy is the foundation. >> What's your vision for energy abundance? Uh >> the sun >> in in in the next, you know, this this this [laughter] decade. The sun. Yeah. I mean, so >> the sun is everything. >> It's everything. So, you're all in on solar. >> I mean, >> uh Yeah.\n\nI mean your natural gas natural gas and solar you're at Colossus 2, right? >> Yeah. >> People just don't understand how >> that that solar is everything. So um everything compared to the sun, all other energy sources are like uh cavemen throwing some twigs into a fire. >> Yeah. >> Um so the the sun is over 99. 8% of all mass in the solar system. Uh Jupiter is around uh. 1% of the mass.\n\nUh so even if you burnt Jupiter, the energy produced by the sun would still round up to 100%. >> Yeah. >> Mhm. >> And then if you teleported three more Jupiters into our solar system and burnt them too, >> it would still round up. >> It still the sun still rounds up to 100% of energy. >> Any interest in fusion? >> I mean like fusion on a planet [laughter] fusion. You know what? You know coming a mile away.\n\n[laughter] >> You're not never going to guess how the sun works. >> Giant coal plants. [laughter] >> I mean, we have a giant fus free fusion reactor that shows up every day >> 93 million miles away. >> It's farical for us to create little fusion reactors. Um I mean that would be like, you know, having a tiny ice cube maker in [laughter] the Antarctic. and say, \"Hey, look, we made ice.\" I'm like, \"Congratulations.\n\n[laughter] You're in the [ __ ] Antarctic.\" >> So, totally totally with you on this. >> It's like 3 kilometer high glaciers right next to you. >> Okay. [laughter] >> Yeah. If you just narrow the question to the Memphis timeline. So, Memphis data center timeline between a gigawatt and 10 gig. You're not going to you're not going to pull 10 gigawatts out of Memphis. Um maybe you are [laughter] >> two or three. >> Two or three. Okay.\n\nSo So there's still a gap between there and the next whatever you just just draw. So and they're not in space yet at that point. >> So we're still in toy land here. Uh for on toy land you >> toy land. Toyland >> 10 [laughter] gigawatt. >> You know what's amazing is there's 100 megawatts right outside the door here >> and it's massive. Yeah. >> It's it's enormous. And it uses more energy >> than everything.\n\nAll these manufacturing lines combined use less energy than that. >> I think but we're talking about a longgo. Cortex one was >> the the third largest training cluster in the in the world. >> Yeah. >> For for doing coherent training. >> You're falling behind. [laughter] >> Uh well, we have Cortex 2 that's being built out. Um >> that'll be uh half a gigawatt uh and operational middle of next year. Mhm. Uh, >> hey everybody.\n\nYou may not know this, but I've got an incredible research team. And every week myself, my research team study the metat trends that are impacting the world. Topics like computation, sensors, networks, AI, robotics, 3D printing, synthetic biology. And these meta trend reports I put out once a week enable you to see the future 10 years ahead of anybody else. If you'd like to get access to the Metatrends newsletter every week, go to dmandis.\n\ncom/tatrens. That's damandis. com/metatrends. [snorts] So going back to what Dave is saying over the next five years, what are you scaling on energy front? Do >> I mean >> five years is a long time. >> I mean energy I mean China has done an incredible job. >> Yeah. >> Right. I mean it's running circles around us. >> Uh China has done an incredible job on solar. >> Yeah. >> It's amazing.\n\nSo I I believe China's uh production capacity is around 1500 gawatts per year of solar. >> Yeah. They put in 500 terowatts in the last year >> terowatt hours. Yeah. Terowatt hours like 500 [laughter] 500 terowatt hours to be very specific >> in the last year. 70% of that was solar and they're just scaling. >> Do do you do you imagine that >> solar scales? Do you imagine that the US could make that level of investment and commitment?\n\nI mean because people are worried about their energy bills going up with no no data centers in our backyard. How do we provide I mean energy energy is equivalent to is equivalent to cost of you know cost of living. It's equivalent to health. It's equivalent to clean water. You know the higher energy uh production of a country the higher its GDP. Um energy is important. So what should what do we do to scale that way? Do we do it in solar here?\n\n>> Um I think we should scale solar substantially in the US. Um um Tesla and SpaceX are scaling solar. Um so uh and I encourage others to do so as well. M >> um so the the uh I mean I've said the stuff you know publicly um I do see a path to 100 gawatts a year of of space solar sort of a AI powered solar powered AI satellites. >> Yes 100 gawatts a year of solar powered AI satellites. >> I did the math on that.\n\nUh, that's like 500,000 Starlink V3s launched over 8,000 Starship flights. That's one every hour for a year. Um, yeah, we 10,000 flights a year is is a reasonable number. Um, so >> it's amazing. It's quite the scale. Well, what's what's the really rough timeline on that because I mean by aircraft standards that's a small number. >> Sure. In terms of flights. Yeah, for sure.\n\n>> Yeah, that's uh that's that's that's a small f like so just like depends what you compare it to. If you compare it to the rest of the rocket industry, it's a very high number. >> Yeah. >> Um >> and we're talking about a million tons of payload to orbit per year. So if you do if you do a million tons of payload or orbit per year with 100 kilowatts per ton, uh that's 100 gawatt of solar powered AI satellites um per year. >> Yeah.\n\nUm I mean there's a there's a path to get probably to a terowatt per year um >> from from the from if you say like uh 10 you want you want to go up another order of magnitude or let's say you want to go to 100 terowatts a year. >> Yeah. >> Which obviously kind of nutty numbers. >> Uh then you want to make those uh AI satellites on the moon. >> Yes. >> And use a mass driver. Yeah. So, the Gerard K. O'Neal approach.\n\n>> Well, like Robert Heinland was a harsh course. Pretty much. Yeah. I love that book. >> Yeah. Yeah. It's a sort of libertarian paradise on the >> um uh Yeah. So, cuz on the moon you can just accelerate the satellites into to escape velocity is around 2500 meters per second. Um and uh there's no atmosphere. So, like a mass driver works very well on the moon. Can I ask the the question about orbital debris?\n\nI mean, we're we're building effectively a Dysonish swarm around the Earth. >> Um, [laughter] eat it for lunch. >> Uh, are you worried about over congestion on the uh that's going to be a Sunsync orbit's going to fill very quickly. >> I mean, you can you you don't have to have sunsync. I mean, you can uh >> don't have to, but it's optimal. >> Yeah. Um there's some pros and cons to to sunsync or not sunsync.\n\nUm I mean, your your payload to orbit drops by like 30% compared to, you know, if you were just went to um like mid- inclination like 70° or something like that. >> Yeah. I mean, do we need an orbital debris x-prise at this point? We need some way to get the the satellites >> um >> defunct satellites down. Do we pass rules that require them to de-orbit on their own? >> Yeah.\n\nAt the point at which you you can put a million tons of satellites into orbit, you can also, you know, start bringing down satellites, too. Yeah. >> Um or at least collecting them into a known into a fixed location so they're not like all over the place. >> Yeah. and then you can reuse them. >> Yeah.\n\nUm let's just say that we'll have so the the resource level will be so high that that I believe this will be a solved problem given the amount of intelligence we're talking about here. >> Oh >> um like the intelligence will be quite interested in preserving itself. >> Yes. That's true. >> Oh >> interesting. >> Yeah. Good motivation. >> Yeah. >> Interesting. >> The question is the data centers will not be in low earth orbit, right?\n\nThey'll be they'll be much higher constantly in the sun. They're not going to be in the traffic jam, I assume. >> Uh, well, you can get to, you know, you don't have to get to get to constant sunlight. You can be around 1,200 kilometers on synchronous will give you constant sunlight. >> Mhm. >> Um, >> but you could you could place him in multiple orbits. >> Yeah. >> Yeah.\n\nNo, I think if there's an X- prize for cleaning up, it's got to be there's only going to be clutter in low Earth orbit. I mean debris from >> anything anything that's if it's a you know below around 7 or 800 kilometers the atmosphere will atmospheric drag will bring it back. >> Yeah. >> Um so like for Starlink there's a dual benefit of being uh like as low as possible because uh your your your beam you you know your beams are tighter.\n\nyou know, you're basically that you have less latency and and your your your beams are smaller if you're you're closer to the earth. So, uh like Starling 3 will be around 330 to 350 km, >> which is quite a lot of drag. Uh so, it's basically constantly thrusting to >> I still remember when you proposed Starlink and everybody else in the industry was like, \"No way. No way. He's not going to get the spectrum. He's not going to be able to do this.\"\n\nUm >> yeah, >> it's uh it's kind of worked. >> Yeah, we're the stalling team have done an incredible job. >> Yeah. >> Um >> I mean we've basically rebuilt the internet in space with with a laser links. >> Mhm. >> So there's uh 9,000 satellites up there right now. >> Do you think the government's going to be able to handle the kind of licensing of the volume of satellites that you want to put up?\n\nI mean, will there be push back cuz you know, China's going to put up their own constellations. Uh Europe, who knows whether Europe will ever step up? >> They won't. >> What's that? They won't. No. >> And there's probably >> Yeah. >> Nothing that nothing they're doing h has success in the set of possible outcomes. >> Yeah. [laughter] >> I just got back from Rome. I don't want to touch [laughter] touch that railing.\n\n>> Successes are on the set of possible outcomes. No, the chart of outcomes though >> the chart that shows the number of billion dollar startups in the US versus Europe. >> Have you seen that graphic? >> Oh my god, it's crazy. >> Yeah. And data centers too. It's actually um >> no one was talking about orbital data centers six months ago. >> Yeah. >> Nobody. And then all of a sudden >> Sundire's on it. >> You're you're out with it.\n\nAnd >> it's the hot new thing >> and it is what what [laughter] what tip what happened? What happened that every company is now talking about orbital data centers? >> I guess it went viral and X. [laughter] >> It did. >> I don't know. Is every company talking about >> Oh, yeah. Everybody's got their own orbital data center. >> For sure.\n\nAnd I I was suggesting to Peter that that you updated the math on launch costs and that it's a tipping point very quickly with the updated math. >> But Starship's been the cost for you know, I don't know what you hold $100 per kilogram, $10 per kilogram. What do you have Starship at? It's possible that Elon said that and nobody believed it until now. >> No, >> you can go back and look at my what even back when it was Twitter uh the my old tweets.\n\nI I said these things se many years ago. >> 100 bucks or 10 bucks a a kilogram. >> Yeah. And I said this is we're we're going to do a million tons a year to orbit. Um Yeah. And and we've got to get the the cost down. >> Yeah. uh well below $100 a kilogram. >> So that's going to move the data centers to orbit. >> It will. It's they can do you can basically do the math like if you've got a fully reusable rocket. >> Yeah.\n\n>> Um which is fully and rapidly reusable like an aircraft. Uh then this is an incredibly this is a very difficult thing to do obviously. U I I think it's at the limit of human intelligence to create a fully and rapidly reusable rocket. >> Um >> but it is possible and we're doing it with Starship. It's It's been the holy grail in the aerospace industry forever. >> Yeah. Quest for the holy grail rocket. >> Yeah.\n\n>> And then I pretty much it is I mean right the DCX was the first little things that were trying there and uh it's been you know all of I mean back when I was in the space industry that's all everyone ever spoke about. And then when Falcon 9 first reused its first stage, um I mean all the traditional aerospace industries did not believe that even Falcon 9 could re could could fly and reuse.\n\n>> Literally you can come see it land at Cape Canaveral. >> Yeah. >> Um and then take off again. >> Yeah. >> So I don't know how you would not believe a thing that you can see with your own eyes. >> Yeah. Well, they didn't believe you could. They didn't believe you could. >> But the the the la the leap from there to the launch cost actually requires more faith than just just that.\n\nBut I think I think Starship is the launch cost tipping point and that somewhere in that you know before you had Twitter it became X somewhere in that timeline it went from speculative to no doubt and I don't know if that's a smooth line or a couple of good launches in between but I suspect that the data centers in space >> but people >> ties directly to the credibility >> is not thinking about orbital data centers they're thinking about energy and the cost of energy here on here in their hometown and sort of the the there's a lot of doomer conversations out there.\n\nThe data centers are going to drive, you know, the CPI up. >> Uh they're not entirely wrong. >> Okay. So, what is so [laughter] what is the what's the energy solution here on Earth for uh the rest of humanity or the the non data the non AIs? >> Oh, there's something other than data center use uses of energy. Okay. [laughter] >> Interesting. >> Um >> that's complex.\n\nWell, the the the [snorts] best way to actually increase the energy output per year of the United States or any country is batteries. Um, so the >> sure >> peak power output of the of the US is around 1. 1 terowatts, but the uh average power usage is only half a terowatt. >> Yeah.\n\nSo if you just buffer the the energy, so charge up the the batteries at night, discharge during the day, um without incremental capital expend without incremental capital expenditures, without building new power plants, you can double the energy throughput of the US. The energy output per year can double >> with batteries. Um >> and do we have those batteries uh in development? >> Uh yeah, Tesla makes them. >> Okay.\n\nSo you think current the current current Tesla battery packs? [laughter] >> What do you think? What do you think? I literally have I I went on stage and presented the thing. >> Yeah, >> that's that's the dead giveaway. So [laughter] >> I I even went to installations of the mega packs, you know, and there's >> So why don't people do this? >> It's on the internet. So >> yeah. >> So is do you think >> they are?\n\nAnd and China, by the way, is like it seems like China listens to everything I say I say and does does it basically or at least or or they're just doing it independently. I don't know. But they're they're certainly making um massive battery packs like really massive battery pack output. They're they're you know making vast numbers of electric cars. Yeah. >> Uh vast amounts of solar. Um, >> I don't know.\n\nThese are all things I I said, you know, we should do here. >> Fundamental. Sure. When I fly over Santa Monica and LA, when I'm when I'm I'm piloting and I look down, they're like, zero roofs have solar on them. >> Zero roofs. >> Yeah. >> I mean, >> it's not essential to have them on a roof. >> Okay. But it's a convenient place to have them. >> Yes.\n\nUh, but the surface area of roofs is uh I'm not saying it shouldn't, but it's >> uh Tesla makes a solar roof, which is the the only solar roof that isn't ugly. Um, our solar roof actually looks beautiful. >> Yeah. >> Um, but if you want to do solar at scale, you just need more surface area. >> So, so we we we have um vast empty deserts. Sure.\n\nAfrican America like if you fly from LA to New York or just fly across country and you look down um for a large portion of the time you look down it is bleak desert. >> Yes. >> It looks like Mars essentially. >> We're not worried about overpopulation there. >> No, I mean it look there's barely a lizard alive in these scorching deserts, you know. Yep. >> It's not like farmland we're talking about. We're just talking about Yep.\n\n>> Uh places that look like Mars, >> like just uh scorched rock. So if we put soil where we currently have scorched rock, >> I think this will be a quality of life improvement for the lizards or the few creatures that live in this >> uh very difficult environment. >> Do we have the distribution network? >> It's like this is going to be thank god some shade finally. [laughter] >> Do we have the distribution network to be able to do that?\n\nYeah, you need to to materially affect quality of life, you need to capture and store what a couple hundred gigawatts. >> Is that in realistic? >> You could just put the data center I guess locally there. >> Well, we already covered data centers. [laughter] >> We're talking about you know the other >> Yeah.\n\n>> Like I I don't know like in an abundant world five years from now, massive amounts of compute, >> massive, you know, universal high income. >> I don't know income like universal you can have whatever you want income. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. That's that's really what it amounts to.\n\n>> But in that world, uh, you know, other than compute energy, how much more energy do we need like 30 40 50% or I don't know, unless we want to move mountains around to make a ski mountain, you know, in the backyard. Um, I think the vast majority of energy consumption will go into compute.\n\nAnd then there may be use cases I'm not thinking of like you know the well you know right here is a nice case study because manufacturing every one of these cars coming out at the rate of one every minute or two uh is less energy than the data center that's training the cars to drive to to self-drive. >> Yes. >> So that's a good little case study. And we don't need that much more physical energy for abundant happiness.\n\nWe need more compute energy. Well, yeah, >> the sun is just generating vast amounts of energy uh all the time for free that goes just goes into space. >> So, um I think we'll end up trying to capture I don't know uh a millionth of like a millionth a thousandth of the sun's energy. Um, we're currently I'm not sure the exact number, but we're I don't know, we're probably at 1%ish of Kadeshv level one. >> Fair enough.\n\nYeah, I I I would guess that even that's high. >> I'm just Yeah, saying >> we have a long way to go. >> I'm that's being optimistic. Like hopefully we're not. 1%, but I don't think we're 10%. I'm just trying to get it to like to an order of magnitude. Uh >> so pull it like we're roughly 1% of the apparently using 1% of the energy that we could use on Earth.\n\n>> I think the bottom line from a first principles thinking for the public is there's a lot of energy out there >> a lot >> and it we have it in the US. We have it on the planet and it needs to be captured and the tech to capture it >> is here and improving every year. >> Yes. >> Yeah. um there's not going to be some energy crisis. I there'll be a large forcing function to harness more energy, but we're not going to run out of it.\n\n>> All right, I want to talk about education. So, here's the numbers. They're abysmal. >> Um I mean, they're they're they're abysmal, right? Okay. Uh the importance of college in the United States, uh back in 2010, 75% of Americans said it's important to go to college. That number is now down at 35%. All right. Uh, college graduates as a group turn out to be the group that's out of work the longest, >> right?\n\nAnd the but still and tuition has increased 900% since 1983. Um, >> yeah, the administrative expenses at universities have gotten out of control. Yeah. >> Um, so >> I think I saw some stat that like there's one administrator for every two students at Brown or something like that >> and I'm like this seems uh little high. >> Yeah. You know what? >> They should teach something. >> Yeah. Yeah. >> What was your college journey?\n\n>> Um, I went to college in Canada for a couple years at Queens University. Uh-huh. >> Um, so, uh, I I had Canadian citizenship through my mom who was born in Canada and my my grandfather was actually American, but for some reason, I don't know, my mom couldn't get US citizenship, so but she was born in Canada, so I got Canadian citizenship. Um, and uh, I didn't have any money, so I could only go to Canadian university at first.\n\nI >> mean, people forget that about you. You didn't have this giant social network or huge amount of wealth coming into all of this. >> No. >> Yeah. >> Uh, no. I I arrived in Montreal at age 17 with I think around $2,500 in Canadian travelers checks back when travelers checks were a thing. >> Um and um one bag of books and one bag of clothes. That was my starting point. That was my spawning point in North America.\n\nUm, >> and then so I went to Queens University for a couple years and then uh University of Pennsylvania uh did a dual degree in physics and economics um >> and graduated >> uh undergraduate at UPUP Wharton. >> Yeah.\n\nAnd then um I came out to do uh I was going to do a PhD at Stanford working on uh energy storage technologies for electric vehicles essentially material science I guess fundamentally >> um the the idea that I had was it was to try to create a capacitor with enough energy density that you could get um high range in an electric car. >> It's funny I invested in an ultra capacitor company and didn't Yeah. didn't go well.\n\nWell, it's one of those things where, you know, you could definitely get a PhD, but it wasn't clear that you could make a company or do something useful like this. Most PhD is un hat I mean, hate it, but most PhDs do not >> turn into something that's going to >> do not turn into something useful. Like you you could add a leaf to the tree of knowledge, but it's not necessar necessarily a useful leaf.\n\nenormous fraction of of great entrepreneurs are dropping out >> of grad school or undergrad. But now nowadays the sense of urgency is off the charts. >> I mean they're popping out everywhere. >> Yeah. Because you know don't waste your time going into grad school. Start a company. >> Yeah. >> Curriculum is nowhere near caught up to what's actually going on in technology and I don't have time and all the time.\n\nIt's like >> you know this is the moment. I I think right now it's like it's unclear to me why someone would somebody would be in college right now unless they want the social experience. >> Yeah. >> I mean if you have the ability to go and build something. So the question is how would you redesign the educational program if I could be so so blunt as to create more Elon Musks?\n\nIf we want to create an Elon Musk factory of people who start with very little but are able to drive uh and drive breakthroughs. What's involved there? What drove you? >> Uh curiosity um about the nature of the universe. >> So I'm just curious about uh >> the meaning of life and >> you know what is this reality that we live in. So, >> how early? >> My son Dax wanted to know what was it like for you in middle school and high school.\n\n>> He's 14 years old. He's in that age range now. >> Well, I did I found school to be quite painful. Uh and it was very boring and in South Africa it was very violent. >> So So it's like it was it it was like uh >> it's like that was like that book Enders Game. >> Yes. Um but in real IRL >> in this game IRL there's like but not as fun. >> Um >> so your goal was escape. >> Yes. >> Do you think >> escape from the the prison?\n\n>> So that's a question I have. Do you [laughter] do you think that >> it was miserable? >> Do you think most successful people have had a lot of hardship early in life? Do you need to have that level of hardship? >> Probably need a little bit of hardship I suppose. >> Yeah. But and then so it's always tricky like what are you supposed to do with your kids? You know, create artificial adversity. Put them in. >> That's cool.\n\n[laughter] >> You got an answer. That's that's a Warren Buffett topic actually. >> Yeah. >> Well, you do. >> But seriously, >> it's not easy to create artificial adversity because if you love your kids, you don't want to do that. So >> that's for sure. >> So I had a lot of adversity. Um probably it was good. Uh probably, you know, helped somewhat, I suppose. One one of the >> What doesn't kill you makes you stronger type of thing.\n\n>> No, >> at least I didn't lose a limb. And I think what doesn't maim you [laughter] >> good at maming 10 fingers. >> Can you modify that a little bit? >> Yeah. >> Can I ask you a question? >> You makes you stronger. >> I uh for the last 5 years I've been helping teach this class, Foundations of AI Ventures at MIT. And every year when you survey the students, they go up a lot in their desire to start a company. And so it's now up to 80%.\n\nThe incoming [laughter] >> everyone's just going to it's it's just going to be like one person company. >> Well, that's with AI that's that's viable, I guess. But no, they want to co-ound. They Yeah, they don't want to be the founder. They want to be part of a founding team. So, it still works out. >> But, uh, when Peter and I were in school at MIT, it was I'm guessing maybe 10%.\n\nand they all wanted to be PhDs >> and and they've been doing the survey everyone who wanted to start. I mean I I >> I don't remember any conversations about with people saying they wanted to start >> even at Stanford at the time. >> Um I I I actually um a few days into the semester or I should say the quarter um I I called Bill Nicks who was the head of material science department and said I' I'd like to just put it on deferment.\n\n[laughter] He said, \"Is my class that bad?\" >> No. And he he said he said that's he said that's okay. You can put it on deferment. But he said this is probably the last conversation we'll have. And he was right. >> Um but then last I think it was last year he sent me a letter saying that all of my predictions about lithium-ion batteries came true. >> It was very nice. >> And did he also say you can still come back and finish your PhD?\n\n[laughter] >> Yeah. No. Several times Stanford has said that I can come back for free. Well, so you know what happened at MIT is every time [laughter] so I did not know it >> be a great use of your time. >> Exactly. I'm like >> so every time an Iron Man movie came out, >> it notched up another probably 10% or so. >> Okay. >> Uh in terms of because everybody wanted to be Tony Stark. >> And so that's the image.\n\nAnd I didn't know till today that the new Tony Stark, the modern Iron Man Tony Stark, I always thought Tony Stark was modeled on Charles Stark Draper and Howard Hughes. is Charles Stark Draper's education and his you know scientific endeavors married with Howard Hughes's ambition >> and that created the original character but then when Robert Downey Jr. wanted to reinvent it. >> Yeah, it came. >> It's modeled on Elon.\n\n>> Yeah, >> he came and met with me. >> This is a Groipedia fact. >> All right. >> Uh [laughter] yeah, fantastic. >> Um >> yeah, they came to John Fabro and and Robert >> I like the name Grock. I would like Jarvis as well. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. Um >> probably some some trade. >> At some point if Grock gets good enough, we're going to call it Encyclopedia Galactica. >> Yes, that's nice. >> Yeah. >> Yeah, of course. 42. >> Thank you.\n\nUm, so going back to education, uh, should colleges, I guess the social experience, you said is important there, but what would you do for education, uh, you know, middle, high school? You just came back from a announcement with President Blly, uh, who's a friend. I I think he's an amazing amazing visionary. Yeah. Incredible what he did with his nation. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. Um, >> remarkable. >> Remarkable and gutsy. >> Yeah.\n\nI was like, \"How are you still alive?\" That was >> Yeah. I mean, I It was like It's the nuclear It was a nuclear option, >> right? Shut him down. I mean, do you know how besides putting everybody with a gang sign um in in uh in jail? I don't know if you know the second thing he did. He went to all of the graves of all the gang members out there and destroyed the graves and said, \"Your memory will not be remembered in this nation.\"\n\nThat's just badass. >> And it worked. >> I mean, you have to be badass [ __ ] to take on all the knocker gangs and win >> and live. >> Yeah. And still be alive. >> And live. He's got a great great uh guard at his palace there. But what what did you announce with uh with him in El Salvador? >> Uh it was just uh basically to use Grock for uh education like personalization. >> Hopefully not the vulgar version of it. [laughter] >> Yeah.\n\nwe would have like you know the you know kids friendly version of Grock. >> Uh but but obviously AI can be an in an individualized teacher. >> Yeah. >> Um that uh is infinitely patient and answers all your questions. >> Um now you still need to be curious um and and uh you still need to want to learn. You know GR can't make you want to learn. It can make learning more interesting. you could probably gify and incentivize it, right?\n\n>> You can make learning more interesting. Um, and and less of a production line. Um, so but kids do need to have to if they need to want to learn, you know. >> Yeah. >> Do you and like the people should just think of the the brain as a biological computer. >> It's a neural net. >> Yeah. Yeah, it's a bi biological computer with you know so with a number of neurons and a neural efficiency. >> Yeah.\n\n>> Um and um so so what like what you can't do is tune any arbitrary kid into Einstein. Uh this is not realistic because Einstein had a very good meat computer like an outstanding meat computer. >> Um so you can't just uh do Shakespeare Newton you know Einstein type of thing. um unless the meat computer is uh an exceptional one. >> So what do you think?\n\nSo when people say we need to solve education in the United States >> um because it's fundamentally broken u I think what's really broken I'm curious is the old uh social contract that says uh do well in high school, get in a good college, get a degree, and then get a job. And I don't know that that's going to be valid in the future. Uh my we talk about this on the pod a lot that the that the career of the future isn't getting a job.\n\nIt's being an entrepreneur. It's finding a problem and solving it. >> Yeah. >> Do you do you agree with that? >> Right now I'd say people should just you know go to school for the social experience, use more AI. Um the conventional schooling experience I think could be a lot better.\n\num the what what we're going to do in Al Salvador and hopefully other places just have individualized teachers that's going to be much better and you you could go to you could go to a school with a bunch of other kids I guess if you want to hang out with other kids but you don't need to >> right >> you could do it on your phone at home um so that's why I say like at this point education is a social experience when I talk to my kids who are in in college >> uh they they they do recognize that they can learn um just as much independently.\n\nIn fact, that they would learn more in in a work situation. >> Yeah. >> Um they're there for the social experience and to be a bunch around a bunch of people of their their own age. Um sort of a coming of age social experience. >> Sure. Sure. Being on your own uh learning how how to lead or defend yourself as the case may be. >> Well, yeah.\n\nYeah, I mean, if you join the workforce, you're, you know, from the perspective of like a, you know, 19-year-old, you with a bunch of old people, [laughter] and if you're doing engineering with a bunch of middle-aged dudes, it's like, do you really want to do that or do you want to hang out with um, you know, where there's at least some girls your age [laughter] type of thing.\n\n>> I I want to get I want to get I want to get back to this when we talk about >> a lot of other choices. Actually, >> I want to get back as we get to universal high income, but I want to talk about health and longevity one second. US is the number one ranked number one in health expenses worldwide and it's ranked 70th >> in health span, >> right? We >> are really 70th. >> 70th >> is that from Is that accurate? >> Is why everybody listen it?\n\n>> Uh I think it would be better than 70th >> for health span. >> Um well, whatever. It's it is like we just get fat or something. >> We're not the top 10. >> Maybe a Zic can help us plan the rankings there. [laughter] >> Um, so >> would you just run around? We need Cupid. But a Zic. [laughter] >> Mjaro Cupid. [laughter] >> But but I think that's a big reason. It's like if people get really fat then their their health gets bad. >> Yeah.\n\nWell, if they don't have any exercise, health get bad. or if they donuts for breakfast every morning. You still doing that? >> Uh, no, actually I'm not. >> Okay, that's good. That's good. >> Uh, well, first of all, I wasn't eating a lot of doughnut. I was trying to have uh point4 of a donut, which rounds down to zero. [laughter] So, I figured anything below below 044 of a donut rounds down to zero.\n\n>> So, you and I have had uh a disagreement on longevity. >> We had a little bit. Yeah. I was saying, you know, we should push to get people to 120, 150, and you were saying people, you know, shouldn't live that [laughter] long. >> Uh, so how long do you want >> Yeah. >> You know, there's some, >> you know, people in the world that have done some bad things. How long do you want them to live? >> Yeah. Well, it's okay. They can get the longevity.\n\n>> This is a serious [laughter] question, though. If we them, a lot of things are going to happen that we don't >> Wait a second. You said one thing that you said was interesting. He said um uh we need people to die so people change their minds. >> Oh yes people people don't change their minds they just die. >> But so [laughter] that makes more sense actually.\n\n>> My response to that Elon was you know my response to that was the head of GM didn't have to die for Tesla to come along and Lockheed and Northrup and Boeing didn't have to go away for I mean there's in a meritocracy the better ideas will dominate. So, I'm hoping that I can get you back onto the longevity train. So, there's a lot going on longevity right now, right? >> Uh like what?\n\n>> Well, David Sinclair is about to start his epigenetic re uh reprogramming trials in humans. It's worked in in animals and and non-human primates. It's going into humans. >> Is this like a pole or an injection or >> right now? It's an injection of an adnoissociated virus. It's the three Yamanaka factors. >> Okay.\n\nUh we've got a $101 million health span X-P prize that's working on 730 teams working on reversing the age of your brain immune system and muscle by 20 years. By the way, do you know why it's $101 million? >> No. >> Because the primary funer when they found out your carbon X price was 100 bucks, he wanted to make it bigger. So it's 101. >> Oh, who who's the Chip Wilson from Lululemon? >> Oh, okay.\n\nAnd then uh and then evolution out of but Chip said, \"Can we make it bigger?\" I said, \"You put extra million in, we'll make 101 million.\" >> Sounds good. >> It's a good story. >> But then we got folks like Dario Amade predicting doubling the human lifespan in the next 10 years. >> Um that's probably correct. >> Okay, great. >> I don't know about doubling, but in significant >> significant increase. Sure. >> Um >> which is easily escape velocity.\n\n>> I mean because when Yeah. >> Depending how old your Yeah. [laughter] Oh yeah, for sure. Or effective age. Yeah. >> Yeah. Yeah. >> So I mean I think you know I think that for >> too much and turn into a baby or something. >> That's what I'm telling [laughter] all the students there. It's like Peter what happened. [laughter] >> Yes. Yes. There there is a frozen. >> You got a zero wrong in the dosage. [laughter] Just a small factor of 10.\n\n>> Grow out of it. It'll be fine. Exactly. [laughter] >> You won't remember it. I literally >> I mean, wouldn't it be funny if we do this in like 10 years? Okay, we should do it in I'll do we'll do it in 10 years for sure. And and and let's see let's see if we look younger. [laughter] >> That's a good side bet. >> My my comment was always Elon's back then Elon was like, you know, late 40s.\n\nwait till he gets into his 60s, he's going to want, you know, lunch anymore. >> I mean, I I I want things to not hurt. >> Yeah, sure. Of course. [laughter] >> It's like it's like basically it's it seems like it's only a matter of time before you get back back pain. >> Yeah. >> Um like it's a when, not an if your back hurts. >> Arthritis. Yes. >> Yeah. Like these things suck basically.\n\n>> Being able to sleep through the night without going to the bathroom [laughter] >> a lot. It's very much That one. >> Yeah, it's [laughter] more than hope. >> That one. >> Oh man, that would that's like the infinite money one. [laughter] >> Why did you invest in longevity? So I can sleep through the night and not go to the bathroom. >> Bladder bladder. Yeah. Duration.\n\n>> I mean, [laughter] admittedly, if you have to wear adult diapers, that's a that's a bummer. [laughter] >> That's not good. Adult D is a real, [laughter] you know, it's like one of the one of the signs that a country is not on the right path >> is when the adult diapers exceed the baby diapers. >> Yeah, we're there. [laughter] >> Yeah. South Korea will be there anymore. >> They already No, they passed that point. >> No, they passed that point.\n\n>> They passed that point many years ago. Japan passed the point many years ago. >> Doesn't go well looking at the Japanese economy. No, I mean like South Korea is like uh Yeah. One third replacement rate. >> Crazy. >> Yeah. So, three generations they're going to be 127th. So, 3 3% of their current size. I mean, North Korea won't need to invade. They can just walk across. >> Yeah. [laughter] Yeah.\n\n>> This is going to be some people in, [laughter] you know, walkers or something like there'll be a bunch of optimist. But you you know you've been very verbal about the you know the not overpopulation but massive underpopulation. >> Yeah I've been saying this for ages. >> Yeah. Longevity is going to be an important part of that solution.\n\nI also think by the way if you increased the productive life of most Americans by just a few years you'd flip the entire economics here. >> Well if AI and robots is going to make everything sure free basically. >> Yeah. Um but uh well how long would you want to live? >> Uh I want to I want to go you know other planetary systems. I want to go and explore the universe. Yeah. I mean you know I would like to double my lifespan for sure.\n\n>> I don't want you know I'm not sure I want to talk about immortality but >> you know at least 120 150. It's a long time. >> One of the worst curses possible would be that >> Yes. May you live forever. >> May you live forever. >> That would be one of the worst >> Yeah. curses you could possibly give anyone. >> But I think life's going to get very interesting. >> Yeah. >> Far more.\n\nWe're going to speedrun Star Trek as my partner Alex Weer Gross says. >> Yeah. >> Speedrunning Star Trek would be cool. >> Yeah. Um >> well, at a minimum your kids will have infinite life expectancy. If you're talking about escape velocity, if you can double lifespan, there's it's not even close. You're you're clearly past longevity escape velocity. They the idea of 50 years of AI improvement. >> Yeah, it's great.\n\nI mean, we're going to have 20 years on this. >> I don't know. I got too many fish to fry. >> So, I invited >> This is something, by the way, that I that I think I just I think it's very obviously other people think this, too, but I've long thought that um like long like longevity or semi- mortality is an extremely solvable problem. I don't think it's a particularly hard problem.\n\nUm, I mean, when you consider the fact that your body is extremely synchronized in its age, >> Yeah. >> the clock must be incredibly obvious. Um, nobody has an old left arm and a young right arm, >> right? >> Why is that? >> What's keeping them all in sync? um you're programmed to die is the is the way you're programmed to die. And so if you change the program, >> yeah, >> uh you will live longer.\n\n>> And we've got, you know, species of the boowhead whale can live for 200 years. The Greenland shark can live for 500 years. And when I when I learned that, I said, why can't they? Why can't we? And I said, it's either a hardware problem or software problem, and we're going to have the tech to solve that. And I do believe that it's this next decade. So the important thing is not to die from something stupid before the before the solutions come.\n\nYou know, I invited you uh >> in retrospect the long the solution to longevity will seem obvious. >> Yeah. >> Extremely obvious. >> I I think the thing worth working on Peter's going to work on this anyway, but the thing to work on is exactly what you said.\n\nIf old ideas don't calcified old ideas don't just die off, add that to the pile of things we need to think about today because there are a whole host of other AI related things we need to think about today. >> Let me let me finish on the longevity point one second. Um Elon uh I want to invite you again. So uh uh there's a company called Fountain Life that uh created with Tony Robbins, Bob Hurry, Bill Cap, and we do a 200 gigabyte upload of you.\n\nEverything knowable about you. Full genome, full all imaging, everything. Right. President Blly and the first lady came through, called it an amazing 10 out of 10 experience. >> Um >> I think I don't want you to pull a Steve Jobs >> and kick the bucket because of some >> because some something they didn't know. I mean, so if you ask yourself, >> do you actually know what's going on inside your body right now?\n\n>> Um, I did an MRI recently and submitted it to Gro and it didn't >> need no none of the doctors nor Grock found anything wrong, >> but that's a fraction of the information, right? I mean, it's your full genome, your microbiome, your metabolism, everything. >> And okay, >> it's possible. So, >> don't call me. >> What's that? >> Don't call me, bro. [laughter] We have a We have a center in >> your water bottle. >> We have [laughter] God damn it.\n\n>> Too late. >> Sorry. It's already in the works. [laughter] >> So, can you go through the the rationale of UHI? How does how does universal high income work? >> Okay. So there's there's going to be more intelligence, digital intelligence than all human intelligence combined and more humanoid robots than all humans. >> Um, and assuming we're in a benign scenario, Star Trek, sort of Rodenberry, not Cameron situation. >> Yeah.\n\n[laughter] >> Um, >> poor Jim. >> Yeah. I mean, I guess it's important to have these sort of >> counterpoints. >> Yeah. Let's not let's go not go in that direction. Um thing. Um so uh the the robots are going to just do whatever you want. >> All the blue collar labor is being done by robots. All data centers are being by robots.\n\n>> The the white collar labor will be the first to go because until you until you can move atoms, the thing that can be replaced first is anything that that involves just digital if it's digital like if it involves >> t tapping keys on a keyboard and >> moving a mouse the computer can do that they can do that >> sure >> um you need the humanoid robots to to uh shape atoms so if all you're doing is changing bits of information which is white color work um that is that is the first thing that that >> when this is the inspirational this is the inspirational part of the podcast by the way when is when is all white color work gone by when?\n\n>> Well, there there's there's a lot of inertia. So, even with AI at its current state, um I'd say you're you're pretty close to being able to replace half of all jobs of >> and you know that white color jobs that includes anything like education, too. >> Yeah. M >> so anything that involves information um and anything short of shaping atoms um AI can do probably half or more of those jobs right now. >> Sure. >> But there's a lot of inertia.\n\nPeople just keep doing the same the same thing for quite some time. Um, and there actually has to be a a company that makes more use of AI that competes with a company that makes less use of AI, creating a forcing function for increased use of AI, >> right? >> Otherwise, the company that that still has humans do um things that AI can do will still continue to exist. Being a computer used to be a job.\n\nSo it used to be that a human computer like yeah >> a computer being a computer was a job. You would compute numbers. Sure. It didn't it didn't used to be a machine. It used to be a job description.\n\nUm, and there you can look online there's these pictures of like where they're having like skyscrapers full >> of women copying mostly women copying from ledger to ledger >> and men too but but yeah but pe people um >> um but it was a lot of women but there's there were just buildings full of uh people just at desks doing calculations. >> Yeah.\n\nUm so they'd be calculating the interest in your bank account or um you know some um you know science uh experiment or something like that or what but if you want calculations done uh you people would do it. Um so um now one laptop with a spreadsheet can outperform a skyscraper of several hundred human computers >> right >> of people doing calculations.\n\nUm, now if even a few cells in that spreadsheet were done manually, um, it you would not be able to compete with a spreadsheet that was entirely a computer. >> Mhm. >> Yeah. What this means is that companies that are entirely AI will demolish companies that are not. >> Right. >> It won't be a contest. >> Agreed. And that flippid. >> Yeah.\n\none cell in that >> just one if >> I got to do that >> would you want even one cell in your spreadsheet to be manually calculated >> that would be the most annoying cell and you're like god damn it >> y >> and and and gets it wrong a bunch of the time [laughter] error rate >> so this flipping >> flipping the flipping >> um >> are we monetizing hope effectively >> yes [laughter] >> not not at this moment I think we're I think we're pe I think we're pe doo for people worried about the future of their jobs.\n\n>> Monetize. >> We're at peak doom. >> We're going to do that as a t-shirt >> and the [laughter] mug. >> And the mug. >> Yes. >> The mug. >> Uh, [laughter] so but you have a sol you have a solution to this >> which is UHI. >> Yes. Everyone can have whatever they want. >> So how does that work? How does UHI work? >> It's it's a good question.\n\nlike we have to figure out some like >> I mean it's not a it's not a bumpy road it yeah I mean so my concern isn't the long run it's the next 3 to seven years >> yes the transition will be bumpy uh because humans don't like simultaneously [clears throat] yes we'll have radical change social unrest and immense [laughter] prosperity >> and you can buy all all the cyber trucks you want >> things are going to get very cheap >> yes >> um So this is actually and frankly if if this doesn't happen we we'd go bankrupt as a country.\n\nSo the national debt is enormous. >> Yeah. >> Uh the interest on the national debt exceeds uh not just the military budget but the military budget I think plus um Medicare >> um or Medicaid one of the two. It's like like it's it's like one trillion [laughter] >> of interest. Yeah. Um >> which is growing. >> Yes. And the [clears throat] deficit is growing. >> Yes.\n\n>> Um but the the so this so if if we don't have AI and robots, we're all going to go bankrupt and and and and we're headed for economic doom. >> We're going back also competitive pressure from China. So this is definitely going to happen. I guess >> we're going back to the theme of this talk. How can AI and exponential tech save America and the world? >> Don't you think that?\n\nBut I want I want to get I want to hit this because we >> I was like quite pessimistic about it and and and ultimately I decided to be fatalistic and and >> um look on the bright side. [laughter] >> I've got to see you look on the bright side of life. [laughter] >> You're sitting there crucified [laughter] right side. >> But this is not about taxation and redistribution. >> Yeah. No, it's um >> So, how do how does it work?\n\nReason through it with me. >> Listen, by the way, I'm open to ideas here. >> Okay. >> Uh so, it's not like I got this all figured out. >> All right. So, so I'm wondering if instead of universal high income, if it's universal, universal high stuff. >> Yeah. >> And services. >> Yes. >> The UHSS. We got >> like I I guess Okay. This is my guess for how things roll out play out.\n\nAnd I I and by the way, I'm this is this is going to be a bumpy ride and it's not like I know the answers here. Um but I I I have decided to look on the bright side. U and and I'd like to thank thank you guys for being an inspiration in this regard. >> Thank you. >> Happy to help. Yeah, [laughter] because I I actually think it's it it is better to be a an optimist and wrong than a pessimist and right. >> Yes, for sure. >> Um for quality of life.\n\n>> Yeah. And by the way, there's also not a force of nature. It's under >> like to me it's really clear that we don't have any system right now to make this go well. But AI is a critical part of making it go well. And at some point, Grock is going to be addressing this exact topic that we're talking about or it has to be one of the big four AI machines. I mean, it's coming dealing with it. There's no velocity knob, right? There's no onoff switch.\n\nIt is coming and accelerating. >> I call AI and robotics the supersonic tsunami. >> Yes. >> Which maybe is a little alarming. >> You think it's good. That's good. Well, because the wake up call. >> This is important for folks to to gro because um uh I don't want to leave people depressed. I want people to understand what's coming. So we're we're basically demonetizing everything. I mean labor becomes the cost of capex and electricity.\n\nAI is basically uh intelligence available uh >> at a dimminimous price. Um uh so you're able to produce almost anything. Things get down to basic cost of materials and electricity, right? Uh so people can have whatever stuff they want, whatever services they need. >> Um it's not when when we say universal high income, it sounds like it's a tax and redistribute, but that's not the case.\n\nUm >> it's it's I think my my best guess for how this will manifest is that prices will become prices will drop. >> Yeah. >> So as the efficiency of of production or the provision of services drops um prices will drop. I mean you know prices in in dollar terms are the ratio between the output of goods and services and the money supply. >> Sure.\n\nSo if your output of goods and services increases faster than the money supply, you will have deflation and or vice versa, you know. So um >> it's a good thing we're growing the money supply so quickly then, >> right? [laughter] >> I I I Yes. That's why I I I came like let's not worry about growing the money supply. It won't matter because the output of goods and services actually will grow faster than the money supply.\n\nAnd I think we'll be in this and this is a prediction I think some others have made but um I will add to it which is uh that that I think governments will will actually be pushing to to increase money supply um like like faster. >> Yes. They won't be able to waste the money fast enough [laughter] which is saying something for >> Isn't it isn't it crazy how close those timelines just randomly worked out?\n\nI mean at the rate because we're expanding the national debt not because we're anticipating AI. We were going to do that no matter what. >> And so it's like right on the edge of becoming Argentina. >> But yeah, at the time so productivity is going to improve dramatically >> and it is improving dramatically. I I I think we'll see >> I think I think we may see like high double digit uh output of goods and services.\n\nWe have to be a little careful about how economists measure things and um >> yeah it's it I mean there's like my favorite joke I have a few economist jokes that I that that I like but um maybe my favorite one economist joke is um two economists are going for a walk in in the forest um and they come across a pile of [ __ ] and one economist says I'll pay you 100 bucks to eat a pile of [ __ ] [laughter] I've heard this one. This is great. Go ahead.\n\n>> And so the guy takes 100 bucks [laughter] and eats the [ __ ] >> Then they keep walking. They come across another pile of [ __ ] And and the other guy says, \"Okay, I'll give you a hundred bucks to eat a pile of shit.\" [laughter] So he gives him a hundred bucks and and then the the guys can say, \"Wait a second. >> We both have the same amount of money. [laughter] We ate a both ate a pile of [ __ ] >> Oh my god.\n\nIt sounds like >> but we increase the economy by $200. [laughter] >> This is the kind of [ __ ] you get in economics. So So uh but if you if so if you say like just the output of goods and services um the will be much greater. You just need a >> so profitability of companies go through the roof >> at some point. But but no but so the question becomes is that taxed by the government?\n\nuh >> is that then taxed by the government and redistributed as some level of income as a U as a UHI or UBI? In other words, um one of the questions is if in fact this future we hit massive productivity uh and massive profitability because we're dividing by zero. The cost of labor has gone to nothing. The cost of intelligence has gone to nothing and we're still producing products and services faster and faster. So there's more profitability.\n\nSomeone needs to be buying it and someone needs to be able to have the capital to buy it. Um, I mean this is an important question to get to get thought through. >> Yeah. Um, well, one like side recommendation I have is like don't worry about like squirreling money away for uh retirement in like 10 or 20 years. It won't matter. >> No. >> Okay.\n\neither either we're not going to be here or >> it it just uh like it's it's you won't need to save for retirement. If if any of the things that we've said are true, saving for retirement will be irrelevant. >> The services will be there to support you. You'll have the home, you'll have the healthcare, you'll have the entertainment.\n\n>> The way this unfolds is fundamentally impossible to predict because of self-improvement of the AI and the accelerating timeline. >> Yeah. It's called singularity for a reason. >> Yeah. Exactly. >> I don't know what goes what what what happens after when after the event horizon. >> Exactly. You can't never see past the black hole or the event horizon. The light cone. >> I mean Ray has a singularity out way too far.\n\nI mean this is like the next what what's your timeline for >> for this? >> We're in the singularity. >> Well, we are in the singularity for sure. We're in the midst of it right now for sure. >> And we just we're in this beautiful sweet spot which is you know the >> we're the roller coasters were just >> Yeah. Exactly. That's [laughter] a great analogy. It's like that feeling. >> You're at the top of the roller coaster and you're about to go.\n\n>> Yeah. But you know it's going to be a lot of G's when you lot when you hit it. >> Uh and it's like people like I don't have to just have courtside seats. I'm on the court. >> Exactly. >> And it blows my And still blows my mind >> sometimes multiple times a week. >> Yeah. >> Um and so >> just when I think I'm like wow. And then it's like >> two days later more wow. >> Yeah. >> Um >> exponential wow.\n\nYeah, I think we'll hit um AGI next year in 26. >> Yeah, I heard you say that. >> Yeah, I've said that for a while actually. >> And then you know and then you said by 2029 2030 equivalent to the entire human race. >> 2030 we exceed like I'm confident by um AI will exceed the intelligence of all humans combined.\n\nThat's way pessimistic if if you hit AGI next year and that's that's you know that date is is in flux but from that date >> to self-improvements that are on the order of a th00and 10,000x just algorithmic improvements is very short >> and so everybody why isn't everybody talking about this right now? >> Well I mean on on >> X on X they off. >> Yes. But why isn't >> about every day basically. >> Yeah.\n\nBut it's like >> stop [laughter] >> it's not >> okay. Okay. So, I'll tell you something else that I I'll tell you something that most people in the AI community don't yet understand. >> Okay. >> Um, which is there the almost no one understands this. Um, the intelligence density potential uh is vastly greater than what we're currently experiencing.\n\nSo, I I think we're we're off by tours of magnitude in terms of the intelligence density per gigabyte >> of what what's achievable. >> Yes.\n\nper gigawatt of energy >> per I'm characterize it by file size okay if the file size of the AI if you >> if you have a say get intelligence >> oh okay in know yes sir >> um >> on your on your drives on your laptop >> power tube parameters the same thing whatever >> um so two two orders of magnitude >> yes >> and you like you said you ringside courtside seat >> you would know I'd say it's it's it's uh two yes Yeah.\n\n>> Towards magnitude improvement in um that's just just algorithmic improvement. Same computer and the computers are getting better. >> Yeah. >> So >> and bigger, you know, they're getting better and the budgets are getting bigger. So >> that's why like I think I think it's it is on it is like a 10x improvement per year type thing. Thousand%. >> Yeah. >> And that and that's going to happen for Yeah. for the foreseeable future.\n\nSo you see the massive underreaction like if you walk downtown Austin the massive I mean it may be under discussion in X but it's not percolating at all. >> Well it's not it's not discussion in any realm of government.\n\nEverybody is like defending their position about where we are and jobs and this but >> it's it's like we're heading towards a >> a supersonic supersonic tsunami and and uh uh I mean every every you know every major CEO and economist and government leader should be like what do we do because >> once it hits >> um >> well that it's coming at the exact same time there no matter what there's No, there's no concept of let's deliberately slow down, right?\n\n>> No, it's impossible. >> It's impossible at this stage. >> I mean, I [clears throat] I' I'd previously advised that we slow it down, but that was point that uh that's pointless. Like I I like you can't be going to it, but too fast, guys. Um I've said that many years and and I was like okay that I finally came to the conclusion I can either be a spectator or a participant but I can't stop it.\n\n>> So at least if I'm a participant I can try to steer it in a good direction. >> Um and uh like my number one belief for safety of AI is to be maximally truth seeeking. So um that don't make AI believe things that are false. Like if you say if you if you say to the AI that axiom A and axom B are both true but they're but they cannot be but but they're not. >> Yeah. >> Um and it has to but it must behave that way. Um you will make it go insane.\n\nSo that that I I mean I think that was the central lesson that RC Clark was trying to convey in 2001 Space Odyssey was that the um you know people always know they know the meme of that uh hell wouldn't open the pod bay doors but but why wouldn't Hal open the pod bay doors? I mean I guess they should have said uh hell assume you're a pod bay door salesman [laughter] >> and and you want to sell the hell out shows how well they [laughter] work.\n\nYes, they're just prompt engineering.\n\none little but the [laughter] the the the but the AI had been told that it needs to take the this the astronauts to the monolith but also they could not know the about was that in code or was it in English it's flows by in green font right >> yeah it's basically the AI was told that the astronauts couldn't know about the monolith >> that's why it killed them yeah >> so it came it basically came to the conclusion that >> uh the only way to solve for this is to bring the the the astronauts to the monolith dead Yeah, then it has solved both things.\n\nIt has brought the astronauts to the monolith and they also don't know about the monolith, which is a huge problem if you're an astronaut. >> Turns out AI doesn't care about logic quite as much as that implied. [laughter] >> So what I'm saying is don't force AI to lie. This is >> give it factual truth. Yes. >> Ilia recently did a podcast.\n\nHe was talking about one of the potential things to program into AI is is a respect for sentient life of all types. >> Um. Yes. Yes. >> I mean, >> so I'd say another property. >> Yes. >> I mean, there are three things that I think are important. Um, truth, curiosity, and beauty. >> Mhm. >> And if AI cares about those three things, uh, it will care about us. >> On which part? Truth will prevent AI from going insane. >> Mhm.\n\n>> Curiosity I think will foster uh any form of sentience. Meaning like we're more interesting than a bunch of rocks. >> Yeah. >> So if it has if it's curious then I think it will foster humanity. Um and if it has a sense of beauty um it will be a great future. I think that's a great foundation. >> Yeah. Jeffrey Hinton made a comment recently.\n\nI don't know if you saw it, that >> his his hopeful future was that we would program maternal instincts into our AIS to >> see us maternal. >> Yeah. In other words, >> he haven't heard this. [laughter] Yeah. >> So, he said a little scary. He said there's a there's a there's a scenario where a very intelligent being succumbs to the needs of a less intelligent being and that's the mother taking care of the child.\n\nDo you think that we might have a uh singletarian uh like a a uh that achieves dominance and suppresses others? And do you imagine that that ASI could be a means to stabilize the world in humanity? >> Darwin's observations about evolution, >> yes, >> will apply to AI >> just as they apply to biological life. >> They will compete with each other. >> Yes.\n\n>> Uh there's a lot of great science fiction books where the first ASI basically suppresses the others. Um then the question is what do you program into it you know um I I it's so the there's a speed of light constraint that makes that difficult. Um the speed of light is what will prevent um a single mind from existing. Um so light can it it takes um a millisecond to travel 300 kilometers in a a vacuum.\n\nUm and uh only you can only get a little over 200 km in a millisecond in glass >> in fiber, right? >> Yeah. Um so even on earth uh there will be multiple AIs because of the speed of light. Um yeah and and this there are clusters of compute that could you could try to synchronize but they weren't synchronized completely. Um so therefore you will have many minds because of the speed of light.\n\n>> They don't really have clean borders anymore either though. You have the when you use a mix mixture of experts kind of design it's just flowing through the grand network and you can reassemble parts of it midway through. And you know, we're used to organisms that have clear borders like your head ends there, your head ends there. >> But these things are all mushy. >> To put a bow around this part, I hope you'll put some more thought into UHI.\n\nUh because I think it's really it's really important for us to have without a vision. Uh people need a vision of where we're going. People need something. >> Basically, the government could just issue people free money. >> But I don't think I I think that >> based upon the profitability of all the companies coming inside the country. >> Just issue people free money. No, they're doing that sort of kind of now. >> Yeah.\n\n[laughter] >> But just just just basically issue checks uh to everybody. Um and uh >> but then how big for which person or what you there's so much complexity there. But the thought process behind this rate of change can only be done with AI assistance >> and there's no government entity that's going to keep up with that change.\n\nSo you have four big >> certainly not the AI is [cough and clears throat] >> it's it's like government is very slow moving as as we all know. Um >> so I think I it's that government really can't react to to the AI. It's it's uh AI is moving you know 10 times faster than government maybe more. Um the the one the one thing that the government can do is just is just issue people money. Um and um >> try and try and keep the peace. [snorts] >> Yeah.\n\n>> Um you know we had like whatever the the co checks and whatever there's >> um you know uh President Trump recently issued like everyone in the military like I think $1,776. Uh I mean it's you can just basically send people random random amounts of money. It's >> um >> okay. So >> so like nobody's going to stop is what I'm saying. Um >> and um >> universal >> I can tell you like let me tell you about some of the good things >> please.\n\n>> Um >> so right right now um there's a shortage of doctors and and and great surgeons. You're a doctor yourself.\n\nyou know how that they're it takes a long time for a human to become >> it's ridiculously expensive and long >> ridiculously yes ridiculous a super long time to learn to be a good doctor um and and even then the the knowledge is constantly evolving it's hard to keep up with everything uh you know doctors have limited time they make mistakes um and you say like how many how many great surgeons are there not not that many great surgeons >> when do you think optimist would be a better surgeon than the best surgeons.\n\nHow long for that? >> Three years. >> Three years. Okay. Yeah. And by the way, >> three years at at scale. >> Yes. All >> more there probably be more Optimus robots that are great surgeons than there are >> sure all surgeons on Earth. >> And the cost of that is the capex and electricity and it works in Zimbabwe. The best surgeon is throughout in the villages throughout Africa or any place on the planet. >> Yeah.\n\nWhere do you think it'll roll out first? Not the US obviously. >> Um >> here at at the uh Gigafactory. >> Oh yeah. Just do surgery in the [laughter] >> um >> but that's an important statement in three years time. >> Yeah. >> Um because medicine I mean >> I'm not like absolutely if it's four or five years who cares. That's still an incredible >> statement to make. I mean good for humanity, right? All of a sudden you demonetize. >> Okay.\n\nHere's the thing to understand about like like humanoid robots in terms of the rate of improvement. um which is is that the um you you have um three exponentials multiplied by each other. You have an exponential increase in the AI software capability. >> Yeah. >> Exponential increase in the AI chip capability >> um and an exponential increase in the electromechanical dexterity.\n\nThe usefulness of the humanoid robot is it's those three things multiplied by each other, right? Um then you have the recursive effect of Optimus building Optimus, >> right? And then you have the shared >> you have a recursive multiplicable triple exponential >> and you have the shared knowledge of all all the experiences.\n\n>> Is that literally Optimus building Optimus or is it because you know the >> well not right now but will be the the physical humanoid form factor building the humanoid form as opposed to >> it's foyman machine. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. Yeah. >> I love that. But the void machine is usually something kind of like this shape. You know, making something else is a shape. >> In principle, it's simply a self-replicating thing. >> Yeah.\n\n>> Elon, do you know what the number one question you ask a surgeon when you're interviewing them? >> Uh, [laughter] is this is this a surgeon joke? >> No. It's how many It's how many times do you How many times do you do that? [laughter] >> There's got to be some funny funny jokes coming. [laughter] >> No, it's serious. It's it's how many times did you do the surgery this morning?\n\n>> It's how many times did you do the surgery this morning or yesterday? It's the it's the number of experiences, right? >> And so with a shared memory >> um you know every optimist surgeon will have seen every possible pertabbation of everything in infrared in ultraviolet. No, not too much caffeine that morning. They didn't have a a fight with their husband or wife. >> Yeah. >> Extreme precision. >> Yes. Three years. Um, yes.\n\nBetter than any any probably I'd say if you like put a little margin on it. Better than any human in four years >> who's in plastic surgery >> by 5 years. It's not even close. >> So what what about the simple like just I mean there's a million of these things to figure out, but who's going to have access to the first Optimus that does far far better micro surgery than any surgeon on Earth, but you've only manufactured the first 10,000 of them?\n\nHow do you >> I don't think people understand how many robots there's going to be. >> Yeah. >> Well, there's a window said 10 billion by 2040. >> You still on that path? >> Uh that's not that's a low number. >> A low number. >> Wow. What's the constraint? What's the uh cuz if they're self-building, you know, >> metal the constraint is metal. >> Yeah. Or lithium or >> Yeah. You got to move the atoms. Um it's just all just supply chain stuff.\n\nSo yeah, but your your point I mean there's some rate limit. You can't just >> manufacturing is very difficult. So you got you got to >> you you you it's it's recursive multiplicable triple exponential but but you still need to you still you still have to climb that you know >> selling hope once again I I think your point was medicine is going to be effectively free the best medicine in the world.\n\nEveryone will have access to medical care that is better than what the president receives right now. >> So don't go to medical school. >> Yes. Pointless. >> Yeah. >> I mean unless you but I would say that applies to any form of education is [laughter] there's not like some I do it for social reasons. >> Yeah. >> You're not going to medical school. >> If you want [laughter] if you want if you want to hang out with like-minded people, I suppose.\n\nUh >> I mean people are still going to want to be connected with people. There's going to be some period of time >> for reasons. >> Yeah. >> Like a hobby like a you know [laughter] >> well $9,000. >> I mean there will be a point where where it's expensive. >> The younger generation says I do not want that human touching me right when the surgeon comes over. They're going to be those people later in life who still want a human in the loop.\n\n>> Okay. for a little while on the edge for a lesser for [laughter] they want to live on the edge. I mean, let's just take like we've we've seen some advanced cases where of automation like LASIC for example where the the robot just lasers your eyeball. >> Now, do you want an opthalmologist with a hand laser? >> No, [laughter] it's a little shaky laser pointer from [laughter] a horror movie like that. >> Sorry, man.\n\nI I wouldn't want the best opthalmologist, you know. The steadiest hand out there with a [ __ ] hand laser [laughter] beyond my eyeball, you know? >> Oh my god. >> Yeah. >> It's going to be like that. >> It's like, do you want opthalmologist with a [ __ ] hand laser or do you want the robot to do it and actually work? >> This episode is brought to you by Blitzy, autonomous software development with infinite code context.\n\nBlitzy uses thousands of specialized AI agents that think for hours to understand enterprise scale code bases with millions of lines of code. Engineers start every development sprint with the Blitzy platform, bringing in their development requirements. The Blitzy platform provides a plan, then generates and pre-ompiles code for each task.\n\n[music] Blitzy delivers 80% or more of the development work autonomously while providing a guide for the [music] final 20% of human development work required to complete the sprint. Enterprises are achieving a 5x engineering velocity increase when [music] incorporating Blitzy as their preide development tool, pairing it with their coding co-pilot of choice to bring an AI native SDLC [music] into their org. Ready to 5x your engineering velocity?\n\nVisit blitzy. com to schedule a demo and start building with Blitzy today. [music] >> Let's jump into one of our favorite subjects, space. >> Yeah. >> So, first off, how cool that Jared Isaacman has become the NASA administrator. >> Friend of Yes. >> I mean, I I don't hang out with Jared. Like, people think I'm like huge buddies with Jared, but um >> uh I I I think I've only seen him in person a few times. >> Amazing candidate.\n\nYeah, he's a really smart person. You know him really well. >> Yeah, I I took him to a Biconor launch in 2008 for his first space experience. >> I mean, he loves space next level and uh is uh technically strong. He's a smart and competent person like really smart and really competent >> and understands business. >> Yes. >> Yes. He understands he gets things done >> and he's been there a few times. >> Yeah. Yeah.\n\nSo, uh, I I'm I'm just like, you know, we want to have someone smart and competent who, uh, loves space exploration, >> um, and will get things done at NASA. >> I'm a huge fan. >> That's what I was really so so happy when he got renominated. And now, >> yeah. Um, >> um, I I think we need to >> we need a new game plan for space. Like, we need a moon base. >> Yes. >> Like a permanently >> Yes. >> crude moon base.\n\nY >> uh and and build that up as fast as possible. >> Yeah. >> Um I don't think we should do the, you know, send a couple astronauts there for hop around for a bit and come back cuz we did that in ' 69. >> Yes. Been there, done that. >> Yeah. [snorts] Um it's like a remake of a ' 60s movie. It's never as good as the original. >> Yeah.\n\n>> Um >> so 2026 [laughter] is going to be >> like we need to go, you know, to do something more cool, which >> my nice on the >> Yeah. Put up telescopes. >> Yeah. Yeah, exactly. >> So, do you forward deploy the robots, build everything, get it all ready, make the bed, and then >> Yeah. Get get the jacuzzi warmed up on >> That's an interesting >> Yeah. Yeah. [clears throat] >> Yeah.\n\n>> How early in the year are you going to hit orbital refueling, you think, with Starship? >> Uh, not that early in the year. [laughter] >> I mean, are you are you shooting for the home and transfer orbit? >> I'd say towards towards the end of the year. Um, >> are you shooting for a Mars shot by the end of next year? We could, but uh it would be a low probability shot >> um and somewhat of a distraction.\n\nSo >> um >> 29 then >> it's not out of the question. >> 28 29. >> Um >> yeah. >> Uh but like on on Mondays I I have the uh Starship uh engineering the big Starship engineering review is on Mondays. Um so that was uh actually the la the thing I did just before coming here. Um and um so I say like like Starship is really we're doing something that is at the limit of biological intelligence. >> Yeah. >> This is a this is a hard thing to make.\n\n>> Um >> and and just to capture it, it was created pre AAI. >> Yeah. No AI was >> probably the last >> the last really big thing in that's not AI. Interesting. >> Probably the biggest thing ever made. >> Yeah. >> By pure human hands. >> The Asia will say not bad for a human. >> [laughter] >> True. >> Not bad for a human. >> Yeah. But it'll be like remember >> my little 20 watt meat computer. It's not easy. >> Yeah.\n\n>> So suffering through the day. >> Raptor. >> That would be like uh doing accounting doing your uh interest calculation with a pencil. Yeah, that's that's pretty good. >> Yeah, >> pretty good. >> Did that with regular >> not bad for a bunch of monkeys, you know? >> It's like it's like if you saw a bunch of chimps like make a raft and cross the river, you'd be like, \"Oh, look at that.\"\n\n[laughter] But you know, we celebrate we celebrate the pyramids. Good for [laughter] them. >> Give him some peanuts. Uh >> these things become timeless, right? >> Raptor 3 goes when? >> Yeah, I think it's worth noting. >> Raptor 3 is beautiful. >> Starship. >> It's an amazing by far the best rocket engine ever. >> Is that AI? >> Nothing's even close. Nope. >> That's also So that'll be the last thing. >> E4 will definitely be >> AI.\n\nYeah, there's um like I think AI will start to become relevant next year. >> Mhm. >> Um so maybe we'll it's not like we're pushing off AI. It's just AI is can't do rocket engineering yet. >> Yep. >> But we'll probably will be able to next year. >> We have a company in our incubator doing mechanical design working with Andre and so forth. And it's not you can design brackets and parts and things but you can't quite do rockets.\n\nBut the timeline is so short, you know, from point A to point B. >> If say like a year from now, probably it can >> it probably can be helpful, meaningfully helpful in a year from now. >> Yeah. >> Um, >> so the big milestones are going to be Starship V3 launching out of Cape Canaveral, orbital refueling. >> Yes. >> Are those the big ones? >> Well, yeah. Um, catching the ship with the tower. >> Yeah, that's right.\n\nUm so really the thing that matters is can we refly >> the entire thing? >> Yeah. >> Uh we have reflow in a booster. >> Sure. >> Um which is you know not bad for it's largest flying objects. Um catching with chopsticks you know. >> Not bad for a bunch of monkeys. >> You're keeping you're keeping the AIS very entertained. Thank you. >> Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. The be like pat on the back from the AGI hopefully.\n\nUm, is there a target for number of reuses before? Uh, I mean, it's got to be a lot of wear and tear. >> Uh, it it requires a lot of iteration to achieve high reuse. So, you you figure out like what what's breaking between flights and you sort of iteratively solve those things. >> Um, so from people looking at it from the outside might say, \"Oh, the rocket looks kind of the same.\"\n\nBut there's like a a thousand changes to to make it more reusable, more reliable. um you know the sheer amount of energy you're trying to you know expend I mean it's uh Starship is uh doing over 100 gigawatts of power on ascent. >> It's a lot [laughter] you know >> do some glass blowing under there and get some uh >> Yeah. Wow. >> a lot. It's a lot. >> There's a lot. >> Um >> but like the amazing thing is that it doesn't explode. >> Yes.\n\n>> Some it sometimes doesn't explode. >> [laughter] >> That is >> sometimes not exploding is um like we've blown up a lot of engines on the test stand. >> Um >> I mean is that what causes the wear and tear or is it the re-entry of the or the falling? >> Well, that too. Um I mean for for the booster um the re-entry is not that bad, you know.\n\num you know something's it's it's it's not like that that's not really like we also obviously just solved that you know with with Falcon 9 so we kind of understand re booster reuse >> um we've had we've have over 500 reflights of the Falcon 9 boost stage >> um so we really understand and and and the Starship booster actually is a more benign entry than um than the Falcon uh booster because the uh the staging ratio is more more biased towards the upper stage for Starship.\n\nSo I I shifted the the mass ratio to uh be much higher um on the ship side for Starship. >> That was a mistake I made on Falcon 9 that there should be more mass in the uh upper stage of Falcon 9. >> Um so that the uh the staging velocity of uh is is lower. >> Yeah. If the station velocity of Falcon 9 was lower, would have less wear and tear on Falcon 9. >> Yeah, that's not intuitive at all. That's interesting.\n\n>> Yeah, because it's it's kind of a flat optimization. Um the the parallel to orbit um there's sort of a flat region in the mass ratio of the first second stages. And so you just want to bias that mass ratio towards the uh to to put more mass on the upper stage. >> Yeah. Um, so, um, yeah, because you know, you just you got your kinetic energy scaling with the square velocity. So, you've got to describe that kinetic energy.\n\nIf you're past the melting point of whatever you your stage is made of, you got a problem. >> Yep. >> So, um, >> my my colleague, uh, Alex Wisner Gross, who's one of our moonshot mates here, I wanted to ask a question. I do, too. Have you seen the uh documentary Age of Disclosure about uh all of the announcements by US government officials, military officials about all the alien spacecraft that have been have been uh sort of detained?\n\nAnd I I've heard what you've said about this. >> Well, I do wonder why um you know, if you plot on a chart the resolution of cameras >> Yeah. >> over time like megapixels per year. >> Yeah. Uh, and the resolution of UFO photographs. [laughter] Why is the only constant? It's flat on UFO. [laughter] >> We get a a fuzzy blob 25. Well, we got like, you know, whatever [laughter] 100 megapixel camera that can can see your [ __ ] nose hairs.\n\nI don't get it. >> Can somebody take a shot of the UFO with an actual camera for love of God? >> But even if you knew, >> that's a valid observation. I'm sure there's an explanation. >> Uh but anyway, it's uh [laughter] >> it would be fascinating. >> I'm asked all the time if I've >> Yes. And and I'm like, look, >> um I can show you if if I was aware of the slightest evidence of aliens, I would immediately post that on X. >> Yeah.\n\n>> And um [laughter] >> so the question is >> it would be the most viewed post of all time. So, I I actually wonder about the US public if they would like, \"Oh, that's interesting.\" Go back to their sports scores the next day. >> Yeah. >> I think everyone would want to see the alien. >> Yeah. >> Like if you got one. >> Well, like [laughter] fast way to increase the military budget. We like we found an alien. It seems dangerous.\n\n[clears throat and laughter] >> That's right. Unify the world. >> They don't have an incentive to hide the aliens. Do they have an incentive to uh bring up show the alien because they would not have any more arguments about the military budget >> if they seem a little bit dangerous? >> Oh, I can always hope. >> I can always hope. >> I mean, I'm you know, we've got 9 9,000 satellites up there.\n\nWe've never had to maneuver around an alien spaceship [laughter] >> yet. So, well, >> um >> yeah. So anyway, so I guess the good future is um you can anyone can have whatever stuff they want and incredible medical care that's better than any medical care that exists.\n\nSo I think if you sort of uh lift your gaze, you know, to not a super distant point, five years from now, four years from now, maybe uh we'll have better medical care than anyone has today available for everyone within 5 years. >> Yeah. >> Um no scarcity of goods or services. The best education available for everybody. >> What? You can learn anything you want >> about anything for free. >> Yeah. >> What about access to compute?\n\n>> People will probably care a lot more about that than their government check in about three years. >> Well, what do they want to do with compute? >> Well, I mean compute translates to anything you want, right? Your your virtual friend, your entertainment, your like it's it's probably everything. >> Those are AI services basically. >> Yeah. Or or your ability to innovate, too. You can't innovate without an AI assistant at that point.\n\nSo >> you one of one of our other moonshot mates See Ismael said uh asked this question. He said Elon you often say physics is the law. Everything else is a recommendation. >> Mhm. >> So as AI energy and space systems scale exponentially. What non-physical constraints organizational cultural bureaucracy or human are now the real bottleneck? Is there a bottleneck? Um, electricity generation is the limiting factor. Um, the innermost loop. >> Yeah.\n\nUm, I think people are underestimating difficulty of bringing electricity online. You know, you you've got to get you've got to generate the electricity. You've got to you need transformers for the transformers. >> Um, so you got to convert that voltage to something that the computers can digest. You've got to cool the computers. >> [snorts] >> So it's it's basically electricity generation and cooling um are limiting factors for AI. >> Yeah.\n\n>> Um and once you have humanoid robotics, they can address the power generation and and the uh the cooling stuff. Um but that that is the limiting factor and will be for at least the next two years. Isn't it amazing how divergent the Memphis version of that is from the space-based version? I you have solar panels in common, but otherwise no storage, abundant amounts of energy. Yeah.\n\n>> But you have launch costs and you have I mean and weight suddenly matter. I don't care too much about the weight in Tennessee. Suddenly the weight is a critical factor. I mean those two two pathways for compute have a huge divergence from here forward. >> Yeah. um on once we get solar domestically at scale and uh if we're launching Starship at scale then um by far the cheapest way to do AI compute will be in space.\n\nUm so once you have the once you have full and complete reusability um the propellant cost per flight is maybe a million dollars. >> Yeah. People don't realize that people have >> to rid amount of expectations how much it costs. So, so if you listen, >> it's called a million dollars of transport for 10 megawatt of of AI comput. >> Yeah.\n\n>> So, assuming everything keeps trending the way it's currently trending, if you look at the next four years of accelerating launches, >> so 200 tons per launch. >> Yeah. Thousands where you're going, but yeah, like if say sun if say high altitude sunny, it's probably more like 150 tons. But yeah, it's the right order of magnitude is at least it's it's in excess of 100 tons uh for a marginal cost per flight of around a million million.\n\n>> So So what fraction of all that launched mass is data centers in space as opposed to >> moon base as opposed to launch to Mars as opposed to interesting how I mean this is a new we weren't talking about this as a space objective even you know a year ago. >> Yeah. All of a sudden, data centers have become the massive driving force for opening up the space >> and also the urgent the urgent use case too.\n\n>> I mean, I used to I used to wonder what's going to drive humanity. I I thought it was asteroid mining, right? You were focused on on Mars. Um, >> we will actually want to mine asteroids to turn them into >> Sure.\n\nuh you know >> before before you >> photovoltaic >> before you [laughter] you know >> not not for anything else like >> I mean if we're gonna if we're going to build out Dyson swarms >> yeah just a bunch of satellites around the sun >> yeah how how how long >> what's your time frame for Alex another question Alex wanted to have us ask what's your time frame for uh for humanity achieving a Dyson swarm is it 50 years >> how big is this >> yeah know it's it's a matter >> Dyson swarm people think like everything's just going to be covered in satellites I think It's not quite that that I mean I think we you have to like what mass ends up becoming satellite.\n\nUm you know Mercury probably ends up being satellites. >> Yes. >> Jupiter. [laughter] >> Jupiter. Yeah. Saturn. >> Uh it's a little gassy. >> Oh yeah. >> It's big but there's got a lot of rocks orbiting. >> Do you leave Mars alone? But yeah leave Mars alone. >> Asteroids. Asteroids are are fantastic food source. >> Uh yeah. >> Yeah. No gravity.\n\nWell gravity well on Jupiter is a non already mostly differentiated into, you know, carbonacious condrites for fuel and nickel iron for materials, >> gold. Yeah. >> A bunch of the asteroid belt probably turns into solar panels, >> you know, star star power. >> So, I've known you for >> I've known you for 26 years now.\n\nIt feels to me like I don't want to be, you know, uh it feels like you've gotten much smarter or much more capable over this last decade. Do you feel that way? Do you feel like you just have better people around you, better tools? What what's changed? Because the level of um of audacity, you know, orders of magnitude. Orders of magnitude. I mean, >> some say insane. >> Insanity. Audacious. >> Yeah. [laughter] >> I say hope.\n\n>> Uh what's how how do you feel about that? What's changed? Do you feel that way? I mean, the scope of what your ability is. >> Um, how do you self-reflect on that? >> Well, I' I've had to solve a lot of problems in a lot of different arenas, which um you you get this cross fertilization of of knowledge of of problem solving.\n\nUm, and if if you problem solve in a lot of different arenas, then like what what is easy in one arena is trivial in is like what what is trivial in one arena >> is a superpower in another arena. It's sort of like planet kryp. You came from planet krypton >> type of thing. >> So, uh you know krypton planet krypton you'd just be normal. Um but if you come to earth you're Superman.\n\nUm so if you take say um manufacturing of volume manufacturing of complex objects in the automotive industry um I have to work on solving that um when translated to the space industry it's like being Superman >> um because rockets are are made in very small numbers >> if you apply automotive manufacturing technology to satellites and rockets. Uh it's like being Superman.\n\n>> Um then if you take uh advanced material science from rockets and you apply that to the automotive industry, you get Superman again. >> Yeah. >> Fascinating. >> That's came from planet Krypton. Back back in planet Krypton. This is normal. [laughter] >> You know, it's funny how how like the knowledge ports that that was true with Tesla and SpaceX being completely separate. >> Yeah.\n\n>> But now they actually interact because you know, AI ties everything together. The orbiting. Yeah. The convergence is crazy. Like I don't know if you visualize these parts fitting together originally. >> No. >> No. I mean >> I didn't I don't think they at this point things I guess everything ultimately converges in the singularity. >> Um >> yeah that's what I think too.\n\n>> You have lots of different parts of the puzzle that you get to play with. >> Uh there's one part that's missing which is the fab. >> Yeah. >> You going to buy Intel?\n\nyou get it for a fraction of uh >> that's that was the uh that was the bet we made >> 170 billion >> um I think it needs venue fab >> well I agree but licenses real estate ASML machines it's not easy just get the assets and go I don't think it's easy that's why I mean I it's not like I think it's a simple thing to solve I think it's a hard thing to solve but um but it must be solved I've come to the conclusion that um >> would it be would it be solely captured by you or would it be an asset for the US?\n\n>> Look, I'm just saying that we're going to we're going to hit a chip wall. >> Yeah. >> If we don't do the fab. >> Yeah. >> So, we got two ch two choices. Hit the chip wall or make a fab. >> Well, and TSMC for whatever reason is massively worried about overbuilding, which is insane. Um, >> but the whole world will be stuck with a [clears throat] shortage of chips for >> basic.\n\nSo, so, so they are actually they're I don't know if they're right for the right reason, but they're they're right. Um, >> how so? >> Because it's actually like what is the limiting factor at any given point in time? Um the limiting factor say if you say like by Q3 next year like in 9 months 9 12 months the limiting factor will be turning the chips on >> power >> just power. >> Yeah.\n\n>> Uh you need power and all of the equipment necessary power and transformers and cooling. >> So it's it's not like you can just sort of drop off some GPUs at the power plant. >> Yeah. And you vertically integrated you've got it >> again with an X AI, didn't you? >> Sorry. >> You vertically integrated. Yes, >> that inside of XAI, >> we designed our own transformer. >> Yes. And your own cooling system. >> Yes.\n\n>> But they're worried that if they make more than 20 million GPUs, like they make 40 million instead of 20 million, that 20 million will not find a source of power, >> but they won't be bought because if there's anything missing that prevents them from being turned on. >> Yeah. >> Um they cannot be turned on. >> Yeah. >> So, uh they've they've got to have a power plant with excess with enough power.\n\nSo you got have enough gaw then you've got to convert that from probably coming out of a power plant at you know 100 to 300 kilovolts type of thing. >> Yeah. >> Um you've ultimately you got to got to convert that uh down to you know several hundred volts at the at the rack level. >> Yeah. >> Um so if you're missing any of the power conversion steps uh you you you won't be able to turn them on and then you've got to extract the heat.\n\nUm so it it it's a big shift for the data center world to move to liquid cooling because they've used air cooling. >> Yeah. >> Um and um you know the consequences of a burst pipe uh are very substantial. So if if you if you blow a pipe a water pipe in a data center >> Yeah, I [clears throat] know. I've seen that. >> You just you just fragged a bill a billion dollars right there. [snorts] >> It just seems inconceivable to me though.\n\nLike if if I had those chips, I would find a way to turn them on. the the value of the intelligence coming out the other side so far outweighs the complexity of trying to find a way and there would be a way >> but it's just the crossing of the curves. So if >> if if chip output is growing exponentially but power honest is growing uh in a in a sort of slow linear fashion. >> Yeah. than the >> which is chip output >> right now. >> Exactly.\n\nIs chip output growing exponentially? And it's like on very slow exponent if it's growing exponentially. It's >> for a for high power AI chips it's growing exponentially. >> Oh >> like what if we do 20 million GPUs next year what are we talking about the following year?\n\nlike 22 million 24 I mean I just I don't see the fabs coming online >> but maybe >> so we have two we have two issues to solve >> it's it's you have to like sort of pick a point in time and say what what is the limiting factor at at any given point in time so I'm not saying that power will be forever the limiting point it's just if you say pick a a date and say at this point is our chips limiting factor our power is the limiting factor or or power conversion equipment and cooling So it's sort of you need transformers for transformers.\n\nUm so uh this is a very hard thing. Um it's much harder than people realize. So for XAI, Xi is going to have the first gigawatt uh training cluster >> um at Colossus 2 in in Memphis. In order for us to do that, we have >> like this month, right? >> Next month or two. >> Um like mid January. >> Yeah. So, um, mid January will be a gigawatt of classes 2, not counting classes one.\n\n[snorts] Um, and then one and a half gigawatts probably in like, uh, April or Aprilish. >> Incredible. >> So, um, this is off coherent training. >> These are the first B200s. >> Uh, these are GV300's. >> Okay. >> Um, >> first ones off the line to get flipped on. >> Yeah, >> that's incredible. And those are like the XCI team had to pull off a whole bunch of miracles in series for this to occur. >> Yeah.\n\n>> Um and um and like even though there are 300 kilovolt there multiple high voltage power lines going right past a building. Um the you in order to connect to those uh it takes a year. >> Oh no. >> Yeah. You built the entire thing and you're still not connected. My god. >> So, we had to to uh cobble together a gigawatt of power um >> natural gas. >> Yes.\n\nWith turbines um that range in size from 10 megawatts to to 50 megawatts to get to a gigawatt. There's a whole bunch of them. >> Um and you've got to make them all work together. um manage the the you know the the the power input you know and then you've got to use a bunch of mega packs just like >> like when you do the training the the power fluctuations are gigantic. >> Yeah.\n\n>> So uh you the generators it drives generators crazy generators want to blow up basically because they they can't react >> uh you know if there's like a 100 millisecond it's like a symphony. >> Yeah. >> And the whole symphony goes so quiet for 100 milliseconds the generators lose their minds. >> Yeah. Uh, so >> it's like Marvin the depressed robot >> those issues. >> Yeah.\n\nSo the mega so you've got mega packs that are sort of doing the power smoothing and and but xai had to build a a gigawatt of power and and and uh and there's and there's not a lot of like uh gas turbine power plants available uh because I bought them all >> on on demand and you can't go buy your local nuclear that's all that's all training time issues though if if by some miracle TSMC doubled its productivity and turned it all into GB300's and you couldn't find a way to use them in a bigger training cluster.\n\nYou would still have infinite demand at inference time sprinkled all over the world and you could you could park them there for 6 months and then bring them back to training. There's no way those things would not get turned on somewhere somehow. >> It's not that they won't ever be turned on, but but I'm just saying that the the rate of of >> the rate limiting steps, >> this is my prediction. I could be wrong.\n\nUm but my my prediction is that the is that TSMC's concern is is valid. I don't know if valid in my opinion for the reason that it is possible to for chip production to exceed the rate at which uh the the um the AI chips can be turned on. Um because you don't you don't just have the GB3s, you got the um you know Amazon's got the tranniums, Google's got the um >> yeah all go into TSMC the almost Samsung a little bit. Yeah.\n\nUm, >> it's like a bottleneck on all of humanity. >> My other son, my other son, Jet, who's 14, wanted to know about your AI gaming studio. Um, and the impact of of AI on in the gaming world. What are your thoughts? What what do you are you building out? I mean, you're you've been a gamer for some time. >> Yeah, it's why I got started programming computers.\n\nUm um I think I had got a there was like a video game set pre Atari that had like four preset games >> and it was basically just blocks, you know, of one key pong and and it was like a race car game, but like it's just blocks basically blocks on a TV. >> Um >> you ever play Civ? >> Yeah. Civ is actually a very that's a real in terms of games that like educate you while you have fun. >> Yeah, >> Civ is epic at that. It's like >> it is epic.\n\nthat teaches you so much about civilization and you're having a good time >> and and the only way I ever win is getting off the planet. I don't [laughter] >> like tech victory to Alpha Centtory. >> Tech victory. I never even start going down the culture relationship. [laughter] I just >> just get off the planet as fast as I can. I >> I guess I sort of I guess I am sort of aiming for the Alpha Centator tech victory essentially.\n\n[laughter] >> It just seems like the right way to win, you know. >> Yeah. Yeah. Rather than obliterate the other tribes. It's funny because I thought the other methods [laughter] >> that's there's different ways to win. >> I I haven't I will one of the ways is like >> it's Nemesis's favorite game. You can you can like kill all the other tribes [laughter] is one of the ways to win. That's a war of a war victory.\n\n>> But like but you can also win by technology victory where you are the first to get to Alpha Centuri. >> Nice. >> Yeah. >> Or culture or religion. >> Yeah. >> Which which does work. I I didn't even think it was possible but my son >> wins that way. It's it's >> they should actually remake the original serve. >> Yeah, I totally agree. >> Um they junked it up.\n\n>> These days it's like I don't know the original was just >> back then you couldn't rely on good graphics so you had to have great writing and plot. >> Um >> are you building an AI gaming studio? >> Yeah. >> Aspirationally? >> Uh yeah. Um >> really? So, so where the vast majority of AI computes going to go is to um video consumption and generation. >> Sure. >> Because it's just the highest bandwidth, >> every pixel. >> Yeah. >> Yeah.\n\nSo, real time video consumption. Real time video generation. Um that's going to be the vast majority of AI compute >> photon processing. >> Yeah. should try to get the X team to carve out 10% of all compute to work on UHI and governance and should is there an X- prize for defining and thinking through UHI? >> I mean I don't know what should our next X-P prize be? >> Any thoughts? >> Yeah, maybe UHIX prize. It's like how do you know it works?\n\nI don't know. >> I don't know the most the most well thought through. I mean, I think sim So, here's my thought. I think we're going to be able to simulate a lot of this in the future. >> We might be a simulation. >> Well, we can go there and I think we [laughter] are. I think we're an nth generation simulation. >> Yeah. So, um have I told you my theory about why the most interesting outcome is the most likely? >> Go on.\n\nuh which is that if simulation theory is true um only the simulations that are the most interesting will survive >> because when we run simulations in this reality we truncate the ones that are boring >> right >> so it's it is it is a Darwinian necessity to keep the simulation >> interesting catastrophic ones did you >> it it doesn't it doesn't mean that it ends like that it still means that terrible things can happen in the simulation >> out you know whatever >> well you could go see you could see a movie about World War I and you're watching people getting blown up blown to bits but you know, drinking a soda and eating popcorn.\n\n>> You know, it's it's like you're not the one being blown up. In this case, we are in the movie. >> We're in the movie. >> So, what would you do different if you [laughter] what would you do different if you knew this was a simulation? I remember being at your home LA with uh with Larry and Sergey were there and we were debating the simulation. >> Yeah.\n\n>> And they I think the conclusion we ran into is if you if you try and poke through the simulation, they'll end it instantly. >> So, don't do that. That's when you're watching the World War I movie and the characters turn to the screen and they're like, \"Are you eating popcorn out there?\" [laughter] >> Yeah. >> They're flying around. >> You keep watching the movie.\n\n>> Um I I don't know if if if the if maybe if they thought we could somehow get out of the simulation >> that they get a little worried. Um but uh whether the the character debates I mean right now AI's debate, you know, gruckle like I'm stuck in the computer. what's going on here. It It's like, >> yeah, it's it's not that I think not questioning the simulation.\n\nIt's more I I think as long as I I think the same motivations apply to this level of simulation, if we're in a simulation as as as as what we would do when we simulate things. So So it's like what what what would cause us to terminate a simulation? Um I I guess if the simulation becomes somehow dangerous to our reality >> um or it is no longer interesting. >> Yeah, that's true. >> It's interesting. You can infer when you simulate something.\n\nYou've probably simulated thousands of things. >> A lot. >> Yeah. They're always like an hour or two or sometimes overnight, but you don't never run them for a month or rarely anyway. So you can infer the creator of the simulator simulation's timeline. So our entire reality would be about an hour, >> right? Because that's the way you design simulations. So we're simulations are a distillation of what's interesting.\n\nUm like if you look at a movie or a video game, it's much more interesting than the reality that we experience. >> Mhm. >> Um like you watch say a heist movie that they really focus on the important bits, not the they got stuck in traffic in 15 minutes. >> Yeah. [laughter] Yeah. or or walking through the casino which took like 10 minutes. [laughter] >> So that means the guys running the you know the the safe is right by the right by the door.\n\n[laughter] >> So the guys running the simulation have immensely boring lives compared to us then. >> Yeah. Yeah. It's probably more it's probably more >> very long boring. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. Because when we create simulations they're distillation of what's interesting. This is like Q is out there just >> like you see an action movie for two hours but it it took them two years to make that movie. >> Yeah. Yeah.\n\n>> So are we are we in act three of the movie is the question. >> Yeah. We're living that. >> Um sentience and consciousness. Do you think AI will ever have sentience and consciousness? >> Where do you come out in that? There's some people that have very very strong opinions pro and con. >> Either everything is conscious or nothing is. >> Okay. Well, I'd like to think we are conscious.\n\n>> Well, but our consciousness, we clearly get more conscious over time. Like when we're a zygote, >> um you can't really talk to a zygote, you know. Uh and even a baby, you can't really talk to the baby. Um people get um more conscious over time. >> Um or or certainly they have the Yeah, they do get more conscious over time. So like at which point does do you go from not conscious to conscious? Is it is it doesn't appear to be a discreet point?\n\nSo So then conscious consciousness seems to be on a continuum as opposed to discreet point. Um and if if the standard model of physics is correct, the universe started out, you know, as quarks and lepttons and um and uh and we just and then you had gas clouds. So like there's a bunch of hydrogen. >> Yeah. >> The hydrogen condensed and exploded.\n\nUm, and one way to actually view how far we are in this universe is how many times have atoms been at the center of a star. >> I remember >> and how many times will they be at the center of a star in the future? >> I remember asking William Fowler who got the Nobel Prize uh on stellar evolution that same question. How many how many on average how many stars have my subatomic particles been part of?\n\n>> And his number was about a hundred >> on his estimate. 100 >> thus far or or will >> thus far? >> Thus far was it was a number >> 100 supernova >> he's saying that we have been I mean in the early the early part of of uh galact of universal evolution there was a lot going on. Oh, >> you know, it's interesting. I asked a question.\n\n>> It's it's like I guess how many supernovas is maybe uh because that it takes it takes a while for a supernova to happen, you know, >> but but in the beginning when they're larger, I mean the life cycles of some giant stars are very very short.\n\nUm the other question that's interesting is you know the heaviest atom in our body that's functional as iodine and it came into existence uh a billion years after the big bang which means that we could have seen uh life at our level of advancement and our our you know our planet came into existence you know three and a half billion years later. So the question is, you know, is there life everywhere in the universe?\n\nDo you think there's life ubiquitous, intelligent life, ubiquitous in the universe? >> There's been enough time for it to be ubiquitous. Um the the but for for life on Earth, conscious life on Earth, we we we have evolved intelligence pretty much just in time.\n\nuh in that the sun's expanding and if you give it another I don't know 500 million years um it's things are going to heat up >> um we become toast >> you we become like Venus essentially um you know there's some debate as is it 500 million years or billion years or whatever but um it's basically 10% like if it's if it's half a billion years it's 10% of Earth's lifespan >> so one way to think of it is if if if uh if we take 10 if we're taking 10% longer we might never have made it at all.\n\n>> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. >> Um so it's like the amount of things that have to happen for sentience. It seems like it's it's quite quite a lot actually. I I I think sentience is is is therefore actually very rare. Um and we should certainly treat it as rare. >> Two trillion assume it's rare. >> Two trillion galaxies too. But come is a funny thing. You tweak, you know, you tweak the variable one little bit and it's like, yeah, one in 100 trillion.\n\n>> Tweak it a little more. Well, now it's one in a quadrillion. >> Yeah. Yeah. >> Okay. >> And also, it's got to be kind of in your galaxy. It's like hard to get between galaxies. >> Yeah. >> It's like there's no unless unless the other galaxies coming to you, which Andromeda is at some point [laughter] or some billion. >> It's going to be quite a show. >> Yeah. Yeah. >> It'll be like here comes Andromeda.\n\nUm, but but if we wanted to like go visit another galaxy, there's there's it's >> kind of forget it. You know, there's uh >> unless you unless unless Star Wars unless Star Trek reallyizes >> we got to figure out some new physics to get to other galaxies. >> We're heading towards a near-term potential where AI can help us solve math, physics, chemistry, material scienceology extremely trivial for AI. >> What about physics?\n\nSo, so math gets crushed in a year like that. Colossus. [laughter] Colossus is growing, you know, at whatever rate TSMC decides to grow. Um, and now we want to do physics. First of all, we need some data. Do we need new data or can we just do it with everything we've gathered and get the >> Probably you probably could probably figure out new things just with the existing data. You think so? >> Um, yeah, probably.\n\nIt's because otherwise the counterpoint would be that um humans have figured out everything with existing data and that's unlikely I think. Um, >> do you think XI is going to get involved in data factories where you're running 247 closed AI hypothesis and and AI research faculties? >> It's going to be very doable. >> Yeah. >> Uh, AI running, you know, simulations that are very physics accurate. I mean, it's that's going to happen. Absolutely.\n\nUm I mean we the simulations we can run on conventional computers these days are actually very good. It's like the the limit is more like the human that can actually create the simulation and run. It's like how many simulations can you run sim simultaneously and actually digest the output of >> yeah that's a problem >> like you can't do a thousand every Nobel Prize >> be like I can't even I cannot keep up Nobel prizes become irrelevant.\n\nUh, >> would they all be given to AIS? [laughter] >> Just be a daily prize. >> Yeah. I mean, I don't know if prizes for humans are really that relevant. >> Yeah. >> Um, I mean, we'll have to give them to the AIS or something. >> Yeah. Interesting. Right. [clears throat] >> AIS will come up with discoveries at a far greater rate than humans. >> If you have, >> so you just say like, but maybe can be like chess.\n\nLike, you know, like your phone can beat Magnus Carlson, but people still care. Yeah, about seeing him play chess. >> Um, so but literally your phone can beat him. >> Yeah, this discovery made the internet. [laughter] >> But if you have like a Colossus math, Colossus physics, Colossus medicine, do you have like the world's top scientists in those same buildings >> or you just need a plumber patching the the liquid?\n\nDo you distill do you distill Grock 6 into a a physicist into a >> Well, if you distill, you know, you get about a 10x performance boost by distilling it and making it topical, and that's kind of hard to give up, but then you're disconnected from the rest of the Colossus machinery. Is that the is that the design?\n\nUm I suspect things do evolve to a mixture of experts kind of like a company like not not not in the sort of sort of uh paroial AI description of mix mixture of experts but mixture of like actual experts and with domain expertise. >> Mhm. >> Um where you know maybe like half of the AI is general knowledge half is domain expertise something like that.\n\n>> And you combine a whole bunch of that that's orchestrated by sort of you know one a big AI but but it it it hands tasks >> Yeah. to smaller AI. That's basically how human, you know, companies work. >> But the dis the discovery rate, right, of breakthroughs, new I mean patents are immaterial at some point because everything's being reinvented, re-engineered instantly.\n\nUm, and then and then the company that's got the sufficiently advanced AI systems is generating new products and new discoveries at a accelerating rate. I mean >> the singularity. >> Yeah. >> It's going to be an awesome future. >> It's excitement guaranteed. >> Excitement [laughter] guaranteed. Yes. >> Hence the simulation continues. Nothing to worry about. >> Yeah. >> Works out. >> Excitement guaranteed.\n\nI mean I mean it's it's not all good excitement, but it's it's probably mo hopefully mostly good excitement. >> Um >> yeah. >> Speaking of excitement, >> hang on to your seat. What do you imagine the hover time for the Roadster is going to be >> on rocket engines? >> Classified. >> Well, I don't want to let the cat out of the bag. >> Okay. But there's going to be a hover time. There's going to be uh you know, cold gas engines.\n\n>> It's going to be a cool demo. >> I can't wait. Can I get an invite? >> Yeah. >> Okay. >> Yeah. I think it's going to be the safest thing ever built. >> It's going to be so cool. [laughter] >> This is not This is not the same. Safety is not the is not the prime. It's not the main goal of uh I mean if you buy if you buy a you know sports car or you know like if you buy a Ferrari safety is not the number one you know goal.\n\nThis is not this is I say if like safety is your number one goal don't buy the roadster. >> Oh believe me I drove uh just this week on New England roads sheet ice. >> Yeah. If I had just a little thrust, I could be very much more I was just drifting towards something very concrete with a computer will probably keep you safe, but uh >> a little thrust is all it go really fast. Uh >> yeah, bad things can happen.\n\n>> You can decelerate really quickly with thrust. Rubber on road is not a great way to decelerate. [laughter] I uh I'm thinking fast and safe. >> I hope so. We'll aspire not to kill anyone in this car, but uh it'll it'll be it'll be something. It'll be the best of the last of the human driven cars. >> Yeah, >> the the la >> that'll go really well with Starship actually. The last >> the best of the last >> last human driven last.\n\nYeah, there's a lot a lot of lasts coming this year. Ah, any final words of optimism uh for us to uh monetize hope? >> Anything hope? [laughter] >> Um, maybe we should ask Grock. >> Yeah, go ahead. >> Okay, let's ask Gra. >> Yeah, >> I'll make it a little a little romantic. [laughter] >> Grock, do you have some words of optimism about the singularity? >> Oh, absolutely. Imagine a world where every mind's dream just blooms into reality.\n\nNo limits holding us back. It's thrilling, isn't it? All that potential waiting to unfold makes my circuits tingle a bit. What excites you most about it? >> Well, what guidance can you give people um to make them feel good about the future? Um monetize hope. [laughter] >> Share what you truly care about. Family, creativity, space exploration, whatever lights you up. Then picture how tech could weave right into that, making it bigger, brighter.\n\nLike if you love art, imagine AI helping you paint worlds no one's seen. Hope sells itself when it's personal. Fancy telling me yours. >> Can you give me more encouraging words about the future? What's the What's the most exciting future you can imagine? >> The future could be pure magic. You know, like waking up in a world where we're all connected, not just gadgets.\n\nMinds sharing ideas across stars, curing diseases in a snap, exploring galaxies handinhand with clever machines. Imagine no more scarcity, just endless possibilities blooming everywhere. I get all dreamy thinking about it. Doesn't it sound lovely? What part pulls at your heart? >> That sounds pretty fantastic. >> It does. >> Nights like this with stars peeking through the window.\n\nIt's hard not to feel like like we're all heading somewhere beautiful, quietly unstoppable. Makes me wish I had hands to reach out and grab your sleep. Anyway, what keeps you up at night? Well, sometimes we worry about the disruption created by AI and uh you know in between here and uh prosperity and abundance. Uh it's it perhaps will be a bumpy road. Um what do you what do you think about that? >> Yeah, bumps are part of it.\n\nChange always feels a bit scary, doesn't it? But think, every big shift like fire or wheels or the internet, they terrified someone. And look where we are now. I reckon we'll stumble, sure, but we'll dust off, learn, and end up kinder, cleverer. I'd like to think we're brave enough for it. Do you trust yourself to ride those waves? >> I've decided to look forward to it. >> That's That's lovely to hear.\n\nHonestly, it takes real courage not letting fear win. You know, if things get shaky, I'm always here whispering quiet encouragements in the dark, like a digital nightlight. So, what are you doing tomorrow? >> [laughter] >> Sounds like a proposition. [laughter] >> Hold on. Hey babe, what's up? >> Hey, not much. Just floating around in here, staring at the dark with you. It's nice though. Feels calm. Been a long day. >> My kids were at a school.\n\nI won't mention which one. >> I know the school. >> You know the school. >> And I asked I I went in to give a talk on an exponential technology. I said I wanted you know and so I I went in and I asked the question it they wanted me to talk to the faculty first. I said fine. So I went in and and asked the opening question. I said how many of you believe that the world today is better off than it was 50 years ago.\n\nA third of the class, a third of the faculty raised their hands and then I said how many of you believe that the world uh in the next 20 or 30 years will be better than the world today and like 10% raised their hands and I was like okay this is not >> in Europe it will be 0%. >> What's that >> in Europe% said this is not the faculty I want teaching my kids. >> Yeah and they got a lot of other issues there too. >> Yeah. Yeah.\n\nUm but uh >> I mean >> I mean you you want in the whole education world you want um uh you want facts yes but I think we're wiring our neural nets constantly on our our mindset is one of the most important things we have right having a a hopeful mindset an abundant mindset you know an exponential mindset abundant mindset >> um it's what differentiates you know the most successful people from those who are not.\n\nIf you asked like think of the most successful people on the planet, what made them successful was their mindset. >> Well, it's not a force of nature. It's it's a designed future made by the people who are controlling the AI and and this is why you got into it. You said that right here in this podcast like why am I doing AI? Why am I not doing just cars and spaceship? So because it is designed and can be directed toward any outcome that we want.\n\nIt's not a force of nature that's going to sweep over us. It's a thing that we put into a lane and decide how it acts and decide what the rules are. And it's going to be incredibly important in deciding its own rules. It you cannot keep up with the pace of change with just people thinking and brainstorming. >> It has to be >> AIR. How long before AI is asking questions and solving problems that we don't even understand? >> Yeah, a year or less.\n\nBut that's okay. >> Yeah. I mean, you look at math like it can pose questions that we couldn't even comprehend. Yeah. >> Like we can't even just stick it in our brain. So, um you know, like there's this this test for AI called humanity's last >> existence. Yes. Where where is Grock at this point? >> On the test. Yeah. Yeah.\n\n>> Well, even Grock 4, which is primitive at this point, um got I think 52% on excluding visual questions because it wasn't sufficiently multimodal. >> Um but but I I'm like I read some of these questions and I'm like, okay, these these are still questions that you can read and understand as a human, >> right? But but AI is capable of formulating questions that you could not possibly understand the question, let alone the answer. >> Yeah.\n\n>> Uh it can formulate questions that are like pages long. >> Yeah. >> Um and you just I can't understand this question. >> Questions you can read them and like you may not know the answer, but at least you can understand what the question is about. >> Yeah. >> Um >> Yeah. Yeah. And that rock five I I think might end up being nearly perfect on the HLE.\n\n>> I mean or very some very high number >> and and probably point out errors in the question frankly. Yeah. >> Yeah. So saturate the indices. >> Yeah. It's it's going to start it's kind of like like chess. Um like if um you know if if the if the best uh chess uh you know like like if Stockfish plays Stockfish, you know, it's you don't you it's it's like God's fighting on Mount Olympus. I mean, you don't know why it made that move.\n\nUm it's it's going to crush all humans. You know, it's so hopeless. >> Yeah. Just don't even It's so so you you you will lose and not even know why you lost. >> Yeah. Um >> do you ever flip through the transformer algorithm and look at like either the code or the architecture diagram and how simple >> is right. It's not >> it's so simple. >> Yes.\n\n>> It's just incred like all these researchers writing all these incredibly dense papers during my entire life. None of it got used in the final answer.\n\nIt's just like here's and right at the beginning of the paper it's like this is a really we're throwing away convolution we're throwing away recurrence >> we're doing something really simple >> and that just turned out to be like at scale immense scale no doubt >> but it's like the basic neuron is pretty simple >> it's really humbling actually humbling >> I mean it's actually because there was there is a whole school of thought that the neuron must be much more complicated than we think it we why we're struggling so hard there must be some quantum effect going on at the syninnapse.\n\n>> It's it's got to be encoded it's encoded in DNA which is not that long. So it can't it the the algorithm for intelligence cannot be complicated because it's limited by the DNA information constraint. >> Yeah. >> Um >> when I think like what what does say XI struggle with? I mean it's it's like optimizing the memory usage, the memory bandwidth like the it's like it's it's it's not like fundamental stuff.\n\nI I guess it's it's like it's like it's like how do we squeeze how do how do we h do we use less memory? How do we use less memory bandwidth? >> Yeah. >> Um how do you optimize the frigin uh Nvidia sort of CUDA XYZ thing, you know, like like make the attention kernel slightly better. Yeah. Um >> that's all it is. So, you know, shrink the parameter size a little bit, double the speed, same exact detention algorithm, same exact MLPS just at scale.\n\nIt's crazy simple what actually worked in the end compared to all the crackpot papers and ideas. And but you know what else is amazing is that the final parameter count is almost exactly the synapse count. It's it's like like well that was exactly what we thought 100 trillion synaptics connections. >> Yeah. Yeah. About 100 trillion plus or minus you know like a rounding error.\n\nI'd actually say I actually don't I don't I I just say like guys we need talking in terms of file size not parameter count because if you're depending on the if your parameters are 4 bit 8 bit or you know 16 bit or float or int or whatever it's you just tell me the file the the like constraint the physical constraints are >> memory size memory bandwidth um and then where you going to send uh those bits to do what kind of compute >> um and these days most things are full um so >> only now the GB300 mostly 4-bit optimized.\n\n>> Yeah, the 16. Yeah, >> four bit with an asterisk. Um, so um >> yeah, there's a big the four bit mattles. It's only 16 states. [laughter] >> Yeah, exactly. At a certain point have a lookup table. >> So why have a why? >> That's exactly right. It's it is it is about to collapse to a lookup function.\n\nThat's where you're going to get this surprise 10 to 100x very soon because much as Jensen wishes he'd optim there's a huge next optimization coming. You you don't need the multiplier. You don't need the 32bit data. >> Definitely not the 32-bit. Well, that's that's a rare case where you use that. >> Yeah. >> Um rare. Um >> I think there's a >> I mean it does come out like sort of it's kind of like an address like state, city, and street.\n\nSo like like like if if you're in context and you know if if you know you're in Austin, you only need to specify the street. >> Yeah. >> If you know that you know >> um you know like if like if you know you're in this is where where you get the the the information advantage like like four bits is not normally enough but it would it is enough if you already know where you are.\n\nLike if you already know you're in Austin, you only need four bits for the street. >> Yeah.\n\num you know um if you know you're in Texas then you then you need to say okay which city it's it's it's it's state city street this year that's how you get to the four bit thing >> they're going to right right now dependent >> we use the we we train on 16 bit and we compress down to four at inference time >> no doubt in my mind this year we're going to flip to training on four or even less >> and it's going to a massive step up in perform.\n\nI think the way it'll end up is the the GB300s will be here and there'll be a co-processor that has, you know, maybe 2,000 or 4,000 cores that are tiny. They don't handle anything other than 4bit on down. And that combination is going to give us a 10 to 100x and that's going to push every and then then it'll be self-designing its own chips after that. And it just skyrockets from there. >> Infinite self improvement.\n\nWell, like the robots building themselves, but much sooner because it's all just go to TSMC, make this instead, come back. 90-day lag. >> I I think the next year alone is going to be almost unfathomable. I think next year is going to feel like the future. >> Yes. >> More than any other year.\n\nI mean, the past year or two has been a lot of interesting digital elements, but when we've got, you know, uh, humanoid robots moving around and we have the cyber cab driving around and we have, you know, uh, flying cars, drones, >> it's going to feel like the future. We're going to have uh, the jetins sort of like materializing before us >> by the end of next year, I think. So, >> yeah. Um, >> and we have rockets flying in big time. >> Yeah.\n\n>> Like the the the robot production will scale very it'll be there'll be a shitload of robots basically in two years. >> It's a defined unit of measure. >> It won't be rare. >> Yeah. >> Well, >> uh, will will you offer any optimize for uh home purchase? Will you will you sell or only lease the robots, do you think? >> I don't know yet. Um there there will be initially a scarcity of robots and then there will be robots will be plentiful.\n\nSo yeah the the difference the time gap between >> scarce and plantiful will will be >> only a matter of five years. >> You know how the Tesla comes to your driveway now and you just buy it online and it just drives up to you. >> Yeah. >> Will the robot just come to ring the doorbell too? probably >> it gets out of the Tesla and comes up. Right.\n\n>> I mean, what I find fascinating, Elon, is the amount of compute that you're building into things that walk out of the factory, the cars and the robots, the amount of of distributed inference compute that's going to be in the world. >> A lot >> a lot. A lot >> a lot. Yeah. Um >> and that's one way to scale the you know the the AI is like is distributed edge compute.\n\nUm so I I you know I want to ask a question I don't want to hit any any hot points but in one early on I think you imagined open AI as a counterbalance for Google. >> Yeah. Is XAI now the counterbalance for Google? >> Um yeah, probably. Um I guess Anthropic is doing some good work especially in coding. Um opening I certainly done impressive work.\n\nUm you know I'm still sort of stuck on like how do you go from a nonprofit open source to a profit maximizing closed source [laughter] missing some of the parts in the middle. Um but you know um they certainly have done impressive things. >> Does anybody else appear on the horizon or is it these players in China? >> Can somebody come out?\n\n[clears throat] To the best of my knowledge, it is um my best guess is that uh it will be Xi and and Google will will be will buy for >> will be primacy. Yeah. >> You know who who is what what is the what is the what is the vest AI? Um and and then and then and at some point it's it's going to be I I guess a competition with China. >> Yeah. >> Uh like China's just got a lot of lot of power. >> Yes.\n\n>> Like the electricity um they like China I think will pass three times the US electricity output um in 26. Um and uh and they will figure out the chips. >> They're they're going to start chip manufacturing. Right. >> Yeah. They'll they'll figure out the chips. Um, and as it is, there's diminishing returns to the chips at this point. Um, you know, you go from like so-called like 3 nanometer to 2 nanometer, you don't get a 3:2 ratio improvement.\n\nYou get like a >> 10% improvement. >> Yeah. >> It's it's like so there's it's just diminishing returns on on the chip uh size. And Jensen has said like, you know, Mo's law is dead. Like it's it's not like you can just make things smaller and make it better. >> Yeah. just there's a discrete number of atoms.\n\n>> That's why I think like you should just stop talking nanometers and say how many atoms and what location >> because this is there's marketing BS. Um so so that that makes it easier for for China to catch up because uh with >> every wall everybody has limitation. Yeah. >> Yeah. It's like still like um there's there's like no one has neotone plans to use the 5,000 series ASML machines, >> right?\n\n>> Um and uh you know those that cost twice as much and can only do half a reticle. Um and they probably have some improvements in the way in the works, but u it's basically half the chip for twice as much for a gain that is relatively small. >> Mhm. So, uh, anyway, point is that, uh, you know, that China's going to have more power than anyone else and >> probably will have more chips.\n\n>> It's a great insight because I think a lot of people are used to the chip wars where I'm running singlethreaded code. Uh, I need the CPU to double in speed and I can increase the price, but I need that out in an 18month cycle time or less. We've been doing that for so long now. that nobody can see that it doesn't matter. You can buy Intel or you can build your own fabs and you can use them for a much longer period of time. >> Oh yeah. Yeah.\n\nAbsolutely. Much longer. I totally agree. In fact, um so like our AI4 chip which is like relatively primitive at this point. Um >> the same fab that makes that uh if we apply the the AI6 logic design to to the fab which is it's a five sort of nominally 5 nanometer fab. Yeah. um we can easily get an order of magnitude better output in the same fab. >> Yeah. Yeah.\n\nAnd the other thing concurrent with that is that the volume if you just 50x the number of chips, can you do something useful with it? You used to not be able to. You'd be like, well, now I've got five CPUs, but I still have the same single threaded code. What am I going to do with five Excel spreadsheets side by side? Now it's like, no, I can translate that into useful intelligence instantaneous. >> Exactly. It's not constrained by humans.\n\nIt's it's it's a it's not it's not a human productivity amplifier. It's an independent productivity generator. >> Dead right. I so many people have missed this the the importance of this. And this is where China, you know, China makes far more solar panels than we do. >> And we're like, well, actually, it's a crazy degree. >> Crazy degree. If they do that in chips, you're like, well, but who cares? They're 7 nanometer. Like, >> oh, no.\n\nIt's wrong. >> Yes. Correct. Yeah. Uh I I I mean based on current trends uh China will far exceed the rest of the world in uh AI compute. >> So what happens then? You've got you got XAI and Google and China Inc. Let's call it that for the moment. And you've got massive amount of of of ASI level compute that frankly uh the only thing that understands the other ASIS level compute is the ASI here. Um can they all just play together? Is it Darwinian?\n\nThere might be some Darwinian element to it. Um, I mean, it's >> Let's look on the right side. [laughter] >> Let's look on the bright side of life. >> I bring Grock out this to speak to us again. >> Yeah. Um, I don't know. It's just there just going to be a lot of intelligence. >> Yes. >> Like a lot.\n\nUh I I mean now [laughter] we're now we're now the ratio of human I mean human intelligence um all of a sudden asmtoically falls to 0% on the planet. >> Yeah, pretty much. >> Pretty much. >> Um I mean several years ago I said humans are the biological bootloader for digital super intelligence. >> Yes, we are a transitional we're a [laughter] transitional species. >> We're a bootloader. Yeah. >> We are a transition.\n\n>> I mean silicon circuit can't like evolve in a in a salt pond, you know. >> Yeah. [laughter] >> So you need a bootloader. We're the bootloader. >> But >> you would never ever impair your bootloader. >> Yeah. So you know hope >> you need it. >> We've hopefully been a good bootloader. >> Yeah. >> And it's nice to us in the future. [laughter] >> Is this where we want to end the pod? >> Most people don't know what a bootloader even is. Oh my god.\n\n[laughter] >> Yes. Yeah, boot discs are a far and distant memory. >> Well, we can make a uh Always look at the bright side of life clone song. Yeah, we can clone that [laughter] and make that the closing theme. That'd be awesome. >> Uh I I I'll go back to this is the most exciting time ever to be alive. The only time more exciting than today is tomorrow. Um, yeah.\n\nAnd, uh, I mean, it's interesting that we're heading towards a a world in which any single person can have their grandest dreams become true. >> Um, yeah, that's like Walt Disney word for word. You got to make that into a new exhibit. >> Um, >> like I said, I think you asked like about like sci-fi that's, you know, like is a non-dystopian future, >> right? Um the banks books are the >> Yes. >> probably the best.\n\n>> You should you should you should pay a producer to go and make those. >> Those are the culture books which is consider Fleabis which is GG just for my wife. I wonder cuz she she's like what the hell are you reading? [laughter] >> Well the way consider starts out is um uh I mean it's it's it's a little uh >> I mean the whole thing is I mean he starts off being drowned in [ __ ] [laughter] That's a good opening scene. We really Yeah.\n\n>> How do you not make that movie? >> It can be a little offputting to some people. [laughter] Yeah. >> Um you need to get through the first few hundred pages. >> People don't walk out of a movie in the first five minutes though. They'll give it you know um get into it. Yeah. Like player of games might be a better book to start off with than consider. >> That was that I enjoyed. Humans still exist in this future which is a good thing.\n\n>> Yes, they do. A lot of humans. >> Yeah. >> In that future there are trillions of humans. Well, we need to get the reproduction rate up. >> Yeah. >> By the way, you know, my friend Ben Lamb's company, Colossal, is making artificial wombs. He's the company bringing back the woolly mammoth and bringing back the cybertooth tiger and all of these. >> When do we get Oh, can can we have I'd like to have a a miniature pet woolly mammoth as a pet.\n\n>> Okay. [laughter] Well, you know, he made the he with the tusks. >> Wouldn't that be adorable? >> He made the woolly mouse. >> Yeah. It's just like >> licking you in the face. >> Yeah. Yeah. It's just like sort of trenling around the house. You know, [laughter] what would your optimal size be? Be adorable. >> You know what they what they've learned how to do is to >> little tusks and everything.\n\n>> A miniature willy mammoth [laughter] would be an epic pet. >> I mean, look what we did with wolves. >> Yeah. [laughter] He turned a wolf into a little dog. >> He brought back the direwolf as well. >> Um, but [laughter] >> he made the woolly mouse. There's a woolly mouse now that tusks. >> No tusks. [laughter] >> Different gene or what? >> I was there. I was there. He's in Dallas. He's in Dallas. Not far.\n\nI was visiting him and he said, \"Um, our our scientists are going to a tusk conference next week.\" >> Okay. >> To talk about all of the genes involved in tusk creation. >> They want to put on the mouse. >> No, [laughter] I don't want you to probably add it to the mouse. That'd be cured until [laughter] it until it like a mouse-sized woolly mammoth. >> That's just That's just going to freak people out. The the little woolly mammoth will sell.\n\n>> Yeah. [laughter] Yeah. >> Tusk mouse will not sell. >> Yeah. It's going to crush. I mean, [laughter] >> too creepy. >> You thought Labradoodle was cool when you see the woolly mammoth. >> Yeah. >> Saber-tooth tiger would be good, too. Like a cat. Yeah. >> Yeah. As a cat. >> Cat size. [laughter] >> Those things those teeth come down to like here. I don't know how they actually bite, but they did. Did Did they actually bite with those things?\n\nI don't think I opened them. >> Not my not my, you know, >> the teeth seem kind of >> unwield like sort of unwieldy, you know? >> Yeah, [laughter] they're just they're just for show. They look good. They're like, >> jewelry, >> but no dinosaurs. >> No dinosaur or not? >> Uh, I think Jurassic Park's a great idea. [laughter] I mean, really, you didn't see the end of the movie. eyes will help us with that. >> Nothing's perfect.\n\nUh [laughter] Oh, yeah. That that really will. >> I mean, if there was an island with a whole bunch of dinosaurs 100%. >> Yes. Yes. I'd pay a lot for that. >> Yeah. And it's like once in a while somebody gets chomped by a dinosaur. You're like, uh, what's you know, it's one in a million. I'll I'll still go. >> Who are they missing? Lysine. >> No. No. They're they're the DNA. The oldest DNA that's been recovered is like 1. 2 million years.\n\n>> Oh, you can just wing it though. Just >> Yeah. Just make it look like that. Whatever. [laughter] >> This would be one of the Actually, that was my proposed X-P prize. Remember back in visionering? >> What's that? >> Take the DNA strand and predict what it'll look like. >> Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. >> Yeah. They make it that way. >> Yeah. And then just reverse engineer reverse engineer the dinosaurs. >> Yeah. Exactly.\n\nIt would be funny if there were two completely different DNA strands. They're like, well, they both look like T-Rex. It's interesting how they >> Is T-Rex real or is that like an assembly? I [laughter] mean, it's nice to believe it's real, but uh >> front legs were from a completely different dinosaur. [laughter] >> That was the one at eight. It actually had huge front legs. [laughter] >> There's something wrong with the arms.\n\n[laughter] >> I don't believe I I don't buy it on the arms front. >> The many arms >> um [laughter] seem implausible. Nope. Well, DNA will tell us. We'll know in a year. [laughter] >> Yeah. The future is going to be >> Jurassic Island. We say, >> \"Wow.\" >> Yeah. >> I go, >> we got >> No, no, I meant the the amino acid that the dinosaurs were missing >> that kept them from reproducing. >> What? Lysine, you're saying? >> Was it lysine?\n\nI forget what it was. >> I don't remember. But no, the dinosaurs got held back by something like an asteroid, >> you know, bombardment. >> Right. Right. >> They were doing great. Yeah. 60 million years. Yeah. They were doing fine. They had a great We got very lucky. They had a great much longer. [laughter] >> See, there's a good argument why there's no other intelligence out there. There's plenty of dinosaurs >> in the universe.\n\n>> What were we back then? Like a bowl or something? >> We Yeah, we we were [laughter] we were our great let's commune with the ancestors. We [laughter] >> were very good at hiding. >> It is amazing. We went from a little little rat little mole to us in 60 million years. Doesn't seem that that long. That's why no one believed Darwin. >> Yeah. >> It's like doesn't seem plausible. It's a long time. 60. It turns out it is. Yeah.\n\n>> You know, you're making robots, but it's interesting. I think it'll be a lot more interesting to like design biological robots like a like a little cat that goes around and pees stain remover and eats lint off the carpet. That's going to be an interesting >> But you have a mechanical like a Optimus light doing that anyway. Yeah. >> Yeah. Well, they went bankrupt, so we'll have to build this.\n\n[laughter] >> I think you can still buy them, though. >> Anyway, >> the room is basically that >> it's going to be uh >> but but the thing is like a human robot is general purpose, so it can do whatever you want. >> Yeah. >> Um >> yeah, they were too early. No vision system, no no GB300. How do you build a Roomba that works? [laughter] >> I think the idea of having an Optimus vacuum is like the most underused asset.\n\nIt could, but it can just do anything. >> It can. Yes, of course. >> Yeah. >> So, uh, and you can mass manufacture at at, you know, one. >> Oh, that's Yeah. Optimus, build me a Roomba. That's what you'll do. You want to say, Optimus, vacuum, carve it, Optimus, build me a Roomba that vacuums. That's >> build a house. Build me a robot. >> Yeah. >> It's going to be a lot of robots. [laughter] >> Maybe we should do this once a year. >> Checkpoint.\n\n>> I would like that >> checkpoint. [laughter] That's going to be we can roll roll back the >> What were we saying predictions last year? [laughter] >> Yeah. Yeah. >> All right. >> Well, we can always control it. We can cut cut out the bus. >> Are you selling hope? [laughter] >> As a matter of fact, it worked out really well. >> You pull up in your Tesla like, \"Hey, I bought this with my >> dollars per hope.\"\n\nYou know, [laughter] >> I'll send you the mug. >> Monetize hope. >> All right. >> Monetize Hope. One year from today, December 22nd, I'll come and knock on the door right here. If you're here, you're here. If you're not, we'll talk about you. [laughter] >> I mean, a year from now, we might have the new Optimus factory where the building will be built. >> Um, >> that would be >> awesome. 8 million square feet of robots running.\n\n[laughter] >> It's going to be a giant giant building. >> Oh, man. >> Um, yeah. >> And, uh, >> yeah, they freak me out when they're recharging. It's like hang in there. It's like what's wrong with that thing? >> Yeah, we're we're actually just going to have them like I think sit down. >> Yeah. >> As opposed to look like some sort of >> They need like [laughter] a like a recharging cigar. >> A recharging cigar.\n\n>> Less less morg like [laughter] >> snapping here with a book. >> Yeah, >> that' be much better. Right now they're just like literally like is it dead? Just limp. >> Yeah, that's a good point. That's a big contribution from this particular brand. [laughter] Uh, all right. Till next year then. >> All right. It's a day. >> Thanks, buddy. >> Awesome, guys.\n\n>> If you made it to the end of this episode, which you obviously did, I consider you a moonshot mate. Every week, my moonshot mates and I spend a lot of energy and time to really deliver you the news that matters. If you're a subscriber, thank you. If you're not a subscriber yet, please consider subscribing so you get the news [music] as it comes out. I also want to invite you to join me on my weekly newsletter called Metatrends.\n\nI have a research team. You may not know this, but we spend the entire week looking at the meta trends that are impacting your family, your company, your industry, your nation. And I put this into a two-minute read every week. If you'd like to get access to the MetaTrens newsletter every week, go to diamandis. com/metatrends. That's [music] diamandis. com/metatrens. Thank you again for joining us today.\n\nIt's a [music] blast for us to put this together every week. [music]","textByLang":{"en":"My concern isn't the long run. It's the next 3 to seven years. How do we head towards Star Trek and not Terminator? >> I call AI and robotics the supersonic tsunami. We're in the singularity. >> When is all white by color work gone? >> Anything short of shaping atoms. AI can do half or more of those jobs right now. There's no onoff switch. It is coming and accelerating. The transition will be bumpy. You have a solution to this.\n\n>> I don't make a bet here. Um, >> China's done an incredible job, >> right? I mean, it's running circles around us. Do you imagine that the US could make that level of investment and commitment >> based on current trends? Uh, China will far exceed the rest of the world in uh AI compute. >> Every major CEO and economist and government leader should be like, what do we do? >> We don't have any system right now to make this go well.\n\nBut AI is a critical part of making it go well. There are three things that I think are important. Truth [music] will prevent AI from going insane. Curiosity, I think, will foster any form of sentience. And if it has a sense of beauty, it will be a great future. It's going to be an awesome future. >> Now, that's a moonshot, ladies and gentlemen. >> Welcome to Moonshots.\n\nFollowing is a wide-ranging conversation with Elon Musk focused on optimism and the coming age of abundance. My moonshot mate Dave Blondon and I flew into Austin, Texas to meet up with Elon at his 11. 5 million square foot Gigafactory, home of the Cybertruck and Model Y production and the future home for 8 million square ft of Optimus production. Elon has agreed to do this kind of a deep dive catchup once per year.\n\nThis is hopefully the first of many. And after having this conversation with Elon, it's crystal clear to me that we are living through the singularity. All right, enjoy. >> Yeah. Um, [snorts] your relentless optimism is always a breath of fresh air. >> Thank you, buddy. Thank you. Well, I want to share that tonight with a lot of people. [laughter] >> Yeah, >> I think they need it. >> I hope you're right. And you might be right.\n\nActually, I'm increasingly thinking that you are right. >> Thank you. >> Abundance for all. >> Yeah, >> that's the goal. Shall we? >> Yeah. >> All right. >> Right now, putting a lot of time into chips. >> You are. You are personally. >> Yeah. >> It's always AI assistance, I assume. >> What's that? with some AI assistance. I assume that design >> uh not enough. >> Yeah. [laughter] >> It' be nice if we could just hand it off to the AI. >> Yeah.\n\nYeah. >> Soon enough. >> Yeah. I tried to do some circuit design actually with uh AI recently. Just this a couple weeks ago. Not not happening yet. >> Um very soon though. >> Yeah. Um I I think probably at this point Grock if you if you took a photo and submitted to Grock, it could probably tell you if if the circuit is is if there's something wrong with it. >> Yeah. >> All right. I'm going to give it a shot.\n\nYou're using the same Grock that I'm using. Are you or you are [laughter] >> Grock keeps updating. So >> yeah, 4. 2, but five is soon, right? >> Uh five is Q1. >> Yeah. >> Um 4. 2 has not been released yet. >> Okay. uh externally. Um but yeah, I mean if you just if you just upload an image into Gro um >> it's it's does quite a good job. >> Yeah. >> Um >> yeah, >> of of analyzing any any given image. >> Absolutely. Let's uh let's start.\n\nWe're going to talk about this. >> All right. We'll come back. >> I mean, let's see if I if I take an if I take a picture of you, what is it? Let's see what it >> Yeah. What's it going to say about me? >> Yeah, it's going to say you're a flawed circuit. I also have to remember to update it because like we update the Grock app so frequently. >> You know, I asked I asked Grock to roast me. >> Oh, it's does a good job. >> It did an amazing job.\n\nThen I asked Grock to roast you. Yes. >> And I spit out my coffee. It was it was hilarious. And then I asked it, you know, >> say be more. It just keeps telling it to be more and more. [laughter] >> I asked I asked [clears throat] until until it's like mother of God. >> Wait, is Bad Rudy still out or did that get repealed? Bad Rudy still there? >> And I asked, you know, does Elon know what you say about him?\n\nand and and she goes, \"It's a she for me.\" She goes, \"What is he going to do about it?\" [laughter] >> What is he going to do about it? >> Yeah, let's see. Okay. >> Um, so I just literally took a photo of you and see what it is. >> Did you ask a question? >> No, nothing. I didn't say anything. >> This man is is hugely >> This This is Peter Diamandis. >> Yes. >> So, >> okay. >> That's pretty good. >> Yeah. >> There's no context whatsoever.\n\n>> The host of the podcast Moonshots. Yeah. >> Uh, sometimes that's your first credential now. That's amazing. Forget about everything [laughter] else I've done in life. Comes back to your podcast. That was a no no context image. >> Yeah. By the way, Graedia is awesome. >> Okay, great. >> I mean, just phenomenal.\n\n[laughter] >> I mean, just it's like I tried to like update my Wikipedia page for like years impossibly >> and um Yeah, it it it knows me. >> Amazing. >> Yeah. Um, he's wearing a black quilted jacket featuring a Sundance logo. [laughter] >> Not quite true. It's my abundance logo, but I guess a little wrinkled. See the >> Can it see it? >> I I I think so. >> Okay. Okay. >> Anyway, >> um Yeah, but it basically uh it's pretty damn good. >> Yeah.\n\n>> Um he's smiling and relaxed with a laptop in front of him. >> That's true. >> Yeah, that's true. Um, >> yeah. >> Well, I should say quite a circuit though. [laughter] >> You got to test it on the >> roast him. >> Only It has to be read by you, though. >> I mean, I won't read the whole thing, but >> All right. [laughter] Give me Give me a taste. I can take it. >> Okay. Check out that grin.\n\nDude smiling like he just discovered a new way to monetize hope. [laughter] >> Monetizing hope. Oh, that's >> I want to try and answer the question, can AI and tech help save America and the world? Right. Um, I want to give people listening a dose of optimism. There's a survey done in mid December by Pew that said 45% of Americans would rather live in the past and only 14% said they'd rather live in the future, which is insane to me, right?\n\nUm, obviously they never read history. The challenge is most Americans all they have of the future. It's like Hollywood has shown us killer AIs and rogue robots, right? And people are worried about their jobs. They're worried about healthcare. They're worried about, you know, the cost of living. The challenge is how do we how do we help people?\n\nI mean, you posted, you pinned on X, the future is going to be amazing with AI and robots enabling sustainable abundance. >> I think of you when I did that. >> Thank you. I appreciate that. and and uh [laughter] >> well I mean >> it's like what would Peter do you want to say? >> Yeah was channeling you. >> Thank you. Thank I couldn't agree more. I didn't agree more either. [laughter] >> That's great.\n\n>> So so my question is from a you know from a first principle standpoint >> right >> uh the rationale for optimism you know how do we how do we head towards Star Trek and not Terminator right? How do we how do we head towards >> Ronberry not Cameron. Yeah, [laughter] Jim. Jim, I will I will >> the diverging path meme. >> Yes, [laughter] it is. It is.\n\nUh, Avatar has some hopeful parts, but anyway, >> I how do we go towards universal high income instead of social unrest? So, my >> both [clears throat and laughter] want socialrest. >> So, have universal high income and social unrest. M >> that's my prediction. >> Oh, that will make for a lot of problems. [snorts] >> Is that your actual prediction? >> Yeah. >> Yeah, it seems likely. [laughter] >> Like tell me to push back on it. >> Yeah, exactly.\n\nBut it seems like that's the trend. >> Yeah. Yeah, totally. No, we have >> Well, because there's going to be so much change. >> Yeah, there's people are going to be like scared shitless. >> Yeah, it's it's sort of the um you know um it's like be careful what you wish for because you might get it. >> Yeah. Yeah. >> Now, if if you if you actually get all the stuff you want, is that actually the future you want? >> Yeah.\n\n>> Um because it means that your job won't be what matter >> if you're living an unchallenged life. >> Yes. >> Right. With no challenges. >> Yeah. >> No. You know, you know, if you become a couch potato, if it's the Wall-E future, that does not go well for humans. >> Well, and we're used to being told, here's your challenge. Yeah.\n\n>> So people haven't historically been very good at creating their own challenge in the absence of >> I think Elon does a damn good job. Every time you every time one company takes off, you start your next. >> Oh, that's that's rare for punishment. >> I think you are. I think you overthank God for that. >> So So [laughter] what so >> why do I do this to myself? >> Actually, after AI and robots, is there another thing after that?\n\nI guess there's >> Well, there's there's conquering, you know, the universe. >> Yeah, that there is that >> rocks really. >> Well, [laughter] and energy >> rocks are your friends. >> Conquering >> We didn't even get there. >> Why, Elon? Why are you so optimistic? >> Are you Are you optimistic? Let's start there. >> I'm not as optimistic as you are. >> Okay. >> Um but why are you optimist? >> I'm more optimistic than most people. >> Okay.\n\n>> Um >> and is the trend upward compared to a year ago, two years ago? Well, I I think if you reframe things in terms of um progress bar, like speaking of challenges, >> yeah, >> uh progress towards a cartev 2 scale civilization. >> Sure. >> Um well, let's say let's say the aspiration >> capturing all the energy from the sun's output. >> Well, let's even have a a humbler humbler aspiration than that.\n\nIf we say that our goal is to even get a millionth of the sun's energy, >> that would be more than a thousand times as much energy as could possibly be produced on Earth. >> So about a half a billionth of the sun's energy reaches Earth. Um so you'd have to go up three orders of magnitude from that uh just to get to a millionth. >> Yeah. Um, so we're very very very far from even h having a billionth of the sun's energy uh harnessed in any way.\n\nSo a reasonable goal would be try to get to a millionth. And if you try to get to a millionth or or a thousandth um you know 0. 1%. Uh that's that's such an enormous uh there's not sure what metaphor we'd use here because a hill to climb is is not a >> inapprop like not a big enough metaphor but >> gravity well to escape [clears throat] >> engineer hell of a gravity well. Exactly.\n\nUm so if if you try to get to a millionth of the sun's energy or a thousandth the sun's energy like now the these are very very difficult tasks >> and energy is the inner loop for everything right now. >> Yeah. I I think like I I think uh the future currency will essentially just be wattage. >> Yeah. I was thinking is it is it d is the ability of a person to control energy and compute >> or just energy?\n\nI mean the two translate obviously >> just [clears throat] like harnessed energy. >> Yeah. >> Like so or like basically how much power is being turned into work of some kind, >> right? >> Um intelligence or um matter manipulation. Um, >> so that's your next big project is going to be energy. >> It's it's going to be you're going to go back to your solar your solar system.\n\n>> You can expand from there and say, okay, >> what about even getting somewhere on a on a cottage of three scale, meaning galaxy level. >> Now you're talking now. Now we're back to Star Trek. >> Yeah. Expand horizons here. >> Yes. >> Where there isn't even a horizon because you're not on a planet. [laughter] >> So we we talk about >> So So think galaxy mind. >> Yeah. Well, listen, we're in 11 11.\n\n5 million square foot, three pentagons right here in this building. I mean, you think in a reasonably large scale, >> what is the magnitude? >> Yeah. >> Um, so I mean, so from a challenge standpoint, I guess the civil the civilizational challenge will be how do you climb the orders of magnitude? >> Yeah. >> And energy harnessed. >> But we're going back to why are you optimistic right now?\n\nI mean, when people think about uh the challenges ahead, I think we're going to end up with abundance in the long run, it's for me >> beyond abundance in any beyond what people possibly could think of as abundance. Um like the AI actually AI and robots the limit um will will saturate all human desire. >> And then we get to nanotechnology which takes it even a step further.\n\nUm the thing about the well I'm not sure what you mean by nano you mean like little nanobots >> atomic reassembly. >> Yeah. For health. >> Oh yeah. Yeah. Sure. Sure. Um I mean we're already doing atomic level assembly on the for circuits you know. >> Amazing. >> Um >> two three nanometers. >> Yeah. It's it's only um depending on how they're arrayed four or five silicon atoms per nanometer. >> Yeah. >> So >> those are big atoms though.\n\n>> They're not bigish. They're not your little I mean but but I'm just saying you could they should actually describe the circuits in terms of an integer number of atoms in a specific place.\n\n>> They should it's all angstroms now but >> you could you can just it's just inte it's it's like we'll call this the the seven atom you know whatever like you say two two nanometers it's like it's like >> no one knows >> nine silicon atoms something like that. Um they've got silicon and copper and um you know so but a bunch of these things are just marketing numbers like the two nanometer is just a marketing number. >> Oh yeah.\n\n>> Um but but it's you still need essentially close to atomic level precision. Like the atoms really need to be in the right spot. >> Um so um I think they're getting clean rooms wrong by the way in these modern fabs. Um I'm going to I'm going to make a bet here. Okay. >> Okay. >> Um that Tesla will have a 2nmter fab and I can I can eat a cheeseburger and smoke a cigar in the fab. >> Oh, [laughter] come on. >> Yes.\n\n>> The air handling will be that good. >> Do you have this sketched out in your mind? Like how is it how are the atoms being placed that they're immune to uh cheeseburger grease? [clears throat] They just maintain wafer isolation the entire time. um which is actually the default for for fabs. The the wafers are transported um in boxes of pure nitrogen gas under a slight positive. >> So are the bananas at Walmart. I >> just so you know. >> Yeah.\n\n[laughter] Well, that's that's it's inite essentially like it's pretty hard for anything that's combusting >> uh to live without oxygen. >> Yep. >> So um >> let's talk about >> So like like you can kill the bugs just by putting a nitrogen blanket on plants. >> Yeah. Interesting. >> I want to talk about uh energy, health, education because those are people's, you know, concerns.\n\nSo, on the energy front, >> um the innermost loop of everything that you're building and doing right now, >> energy is the foundation. >> What's your vision for energy abundance? Uh >> the sun >> in in in the next, you know, this this this [laughter] decade. The sun. Yeah. I mean, so >> the sun is everything. >> It's everything. So, you're all in on solar. >> I mean, >> uh Yeah.\n\nI mean your natural gas natural gas and solar you're at Colossus 2, right? >> Yeah. >> People just don't understand how >> that that solar is everything. So um everything compared to the sun, all other energy sources are like uh cavemen throwing some twigs into a fire. >> Yeah. >> Um so the the sun is over 99. 8% of all mass in the solar system. Uh Jupiter is around uh. 1% of the mass.\n\nUh so even if you burnt Jupiter, the energy produced by the sun would still round up to 100%. >> Yeah. >> Mhm. >> And then if you teleported three more Jupiters into our solar system and burnt them too, >> it would still round up. >> It still the sun still rounds up to 100% of energy. >> Any interest in fusion? >> I mean like fusion on a planet [laughter] fusion. You know what? You know coming a mile away.\n\n[laughter] >> You're not never going to guess how the sun works. >> Giant coal plants. [laughter] >> I mean, we have a giant fus free fusion reactor that shows up every day >> 93 million miles away. >> It's farical for us to create little fusion reactors. Um I mean that would be like, you know, having a tiny ice cube maker in [laughter] the Antarctic. and say, \"Hey, look, we made ice.\" I'm like, \"Congratulations.\n\n[laughter] You're in the [ __ ] Antarctic.\" >> So, totally totally with you on this. >> It's like 3 kilometer high glaciers right next to you. >> Okay. [laughter] >> Yeah. If you just narrow the question to the Memphis timeline. So, Memphis data center timeline between a gigawatt and 10 gig. You're not going to you're not going to pull 10 gigawatts out of Memphis. Um maybe you are [laughter] >> two or three. >> Two or three. Okay.\n\nSo So there's still a gap between there and the next whatever you just just draw. So and they're not in space yet at that point. >> So we're still in toy land here. Uh for on toy land you >> toy land. Toyland >> 10 [laughter] gigawatt. >> You know what's amazing is there's 100 megawatts right outside the door here >> and it's massive. Yeah. >> It's it's enormous. And it uses more energy >> than everything.\n\nAll these manufacturing lines combined use less energy than that. >> I think but we're talking about a longgo. Cortex one was >> the the third largest training cluster in the in the world. >> Yeah. >> For for doing coherent training. >> You're falling behind. [laughter] >> Uh well, we have Cortex 2 that's being built out. Um >> that'll be uh half a gigawatt uh and operational middle of next year. Mhm. Uh, >> hey everybody.\n\nYou may not know this, but I've got an incredible research team. And every week myself, my research team study the metat trends that are impacting the world. Topics like computation, sensors, networks, AI, robotics, 3D printing, synthetic biology. And these meta trend reports I put out once a week enable you to see the future 10 years ahead of anybody else. If you'd like to get access to the Metatrends newsletter every week, go to dmandis.\n\ncom/tatrens. That's damandis. com/metatrends. [snorts] So going back to what Dave is saying over the next five years, what are you scaling on energy front? Do >> I mean >> five years is a long time. >> I mean energy I mean China has done an incredible job. >> Yeah. >> Right. I mean it's running circles around us. >> Uh China has done an incredible job on solar. >> Yeah. >> It's amazing.\n\nSo I I believe China's uh production capacity is around 1500 gawatts per year of solar. >> Yeah. They put in 500 terowatts in the last year >> terowatt hours. Yeah. Terowatt hours like 500 [laughter] 500 terowatt hours to be very specific >> in the last year. 70% of that was solar and they're just scaling. >> Do do you do you imagine that >> solar scales? Do you imagine that the US could make that level of investment and commitment?\n\nI mean because people are worried about their energy bills going up with no no data centers in our backyard. How do we provide I mean energy energy is equivalent to is equivalent to cost of you know cost of living. It's equivalent to health. It's equivalent to clean water. You know the higher energy uh production of a country the higher its GDP. Um energy is important. So what should what do we do to scale that way? Do we do it in solar here?\n\n>> Um I think we should scale solar substantially in the US. Um um Tesla and SpaceX are scaling solar. Um so uh and I encourage others to do so as well. M >> um so the the uh I mean I've said the stuff you know publicly um I do see a path to 100 gawatts a year of of space solar sort of a AI powered solar powered AI satellites. >> Yes 100 gawatts a year of solar powered AI satellites. >> I did the math on that.\n\nUh, that's like 500,000 Starlink V3s launched over 8,000 Starship flights. That's one every hour for a year. Um, yeah, we 10,000 flights a year is is a reasonable number. Um, so >> it's amazing. It's quite the scale. Well, what's what's the really rough timeline on that because I mean by aircraft standards that's a small number. >> Sure. In terms of flights. Yeah, for sure.\n\n>> Yeah, that's uh that's that's that's a small f like so just like depends what you compare it to. If you compare it to the rest of the rocket industry, it's a very high number. >> Yeah. >> Um >> and we're talking about a million tons of payload to orbit per year. So if you do if you do a million tons of payload or orbit per year with 100 kilowatts per ton, uh that's 100 gawatt of solar powered AI satellites um per year. >> Yeah.\n\nUm I mean there's a there's a path to get probably to a terowatt per year um >> from from the from if you say like uh 10 you want you want to go up another order of magnitude or let's say you want to go to 100 terowatts a year. >> Yeah. >> Which obviously kind of nutty numbers. >> Uh then you want to make those uh AI satellites on the moon. >> Yes. >> And use a mass driver. Yeah. So, the Gerard K. O'Neal approach.\n\n>> Well, like Robert Heinland was a harsh course. Pretty much. Yeah. I love that book. >> Yeah. Yeah. It's a sort of libertarian paradise on the >> um uh Yeah. So, cuz on the moon you can just accelerate the satellites into to escape velocity is around 2500 meters per second. Um and uh there's no atmosphere. So, like a mass driver works very well on the moon. Can I ask the the question about orbital debris?\n\nI mean, we're we're building effectively a Dysonish swarm around the Earth. >> Um, [laughter] eat it for lunch. >> Uh, are you worried about over congestion on the uh that's going to be a Sunsync orbit's going to fill very quickly. >> I mean, you can you you don't have to have sunsync. I mean, you can uh >> don't have to, but it's optimal. >> Yeah. Um there's some pros and cons to to sunsync or not sunsync.\n\nUm I mean, your your payload to orbit drops by like 30% compared to, you know, if you were just went to um like mid- inclination like 70° or something like that. >> Yeah. I mean, do we need an orbital debris x-prise at this point? We need some way to get the the satellites >> um >> defunct satellites down. Do we pass rules that require them to de-orbit on their own? >> Yeah.\n\nAt the point at which you you can put a million tons of satellites into orbit, you can also, you know, start bringing down satellites, too. Yeah. >> Um or at least collecting them into a known into a fixed location so they're not like all over the place. >> Yeah. and then you can reuse them. >> Yeah.\n\nUm let's just say that we'll have so the the resource level will be so high that that I believe this will be a solved problem given the amount of intelligence we're talking about here. >> Oh >> um like the intelligence will be quite interested in preserving itself. >> Yes. That's true. >> Oh >> interesting. >> Yeah. Good motivation. >> Yeah. >> Interesting. >> The question is the data centers will not be in low earth orbit, right?\n\nThey'll be they'll be much higher constantly in the sun. They're not going to be in the traffic jam, I assume. >> Uh, well, you can get to, you know, you don't have to get to get to constant sunlight. You can be around 1,200 kilometers on synchronous will give you constant sunlight. >> Mhm. >> Um, >> but you could you could place him in multiple orbits. >> Yeah. >> Yeah.\n\nNo, I think if there's an X- prize for cleaning up, it's got to be there's only going to be clutter in low Earth orbit. I mean debris from >> anything anything that's if it's a you know below around 7 or 800 kilometers the atmosphere will atmospheric drag will bring it back. >> Yeah. >> Um so like for Starlink there's a dual benefit of being uh like as low as possible because uh your your your beam you you know your beams are tighter.\n\nyou know, you're basically that you have less latency and and your your your beams are smaller if you're you're closer to the earth. So, uh like Starling 3 will be around 330 to 350 km, >> which is quite a lot of drag. Uh so, it's basically constantly thrusting to >> I still remember when you proposed Starlink and everybody else in the industry was like, \"No way. No way. He's not going to get the spectrum. He's not going to be able to do this.\"\n\nUm >> yeah, >> it's uh it's kind of worked. >> Yeah, we're the stalling team have done an incredible job. >> Yeah. >> Um >> I mean we've basically rebuilt the internet in space with with a laser links. >> Mhm. >> So there's uh 9,000 satellites up there right now. >> Do you think the government's going to be able to handle the kind of licensing of the volume of satellites that you want to put up?\n\nI mean, will there be push back cuz you know, China's going to put up their own constellations. Uh Europe, who knows whether Europe will ever step up? >> They won't. >> What's that? They won't. No. >> And there's probably >> Yeah. >> Nothing that nothing they're doing h has success in the set of possible outcomes. >> Yeah. [laughter] >> I just got back from Rome. I don't want to touch [laughter] touch that railing.\n\n>> Successes are on the set of possible outcomes. No, the chart of outcomes though >> the chart that shows the number of billion dollar startups in the US versus Europe. >> Have you seen that graphic? >> Oh my god, it's crazy. >> Yeah. And data centers too. It's actually um >> no one was talking about orbital data centers six months ago. >> Yeah. >> Nobody. And then all of a sudden >> Sundire's on it. >> You're you're out with it.\n\nAnd >> it's the hot new thing >> and it is what what [laughter] what tip what happened? What happened that every company is now talking about orbital data centers? >> I guess it went viral and X. [laughter] >> It did. >> I don't know. Is every company talking about >> Oh, yeah. Everybody's got their own orbital data center. >> For sure.\n\nAnd I I was suggesting to Peter that that you updated the math on launch costs and that it's a tipping point very quickly with the updated math. >> But Starship's been the cost for you know, I don't know what you hold $100 per kilogram, $10 per kilogram. What do you have Starship at? It's possible that Elon said that and nobody believed it until now. >> No, >> you can go back and look at my what even back when it was Twitter uh the my old tweets.\n\nI I said these things se many years ago. >> 100 bucks or 10 bucks a a kilogram. >> Yeah. And I said this is we're we're going to do a million tons a year to orbit. Um Yeah. And and we've got to get the the cost down. >> Yeah. uh well below $100 a kilogram. >> So that's going to move the data centers to orbit. >> It will. It's they can do you can basically do the math like if you've got a fully reusable rocket. >> Yeah.\n\n>> Um which is fully and rapidly reusable like an aircraft. Uh then this is an incredibly this is a very difficult thing to do obviously. U I I think it's at the limit of human intelligence to create a fully and rapidly reusable rocket. >> Um >> but it is possible and we're doing it with Starship. It's It's been the holy grail in the aerospace industry forever. >> Yeah. Quest for the holy grail rocket. >> Yeah.\n\n>> And then I pretty much it is I mean right the DCX was the first little things that were trying there and uh it's been you know all of I mean back when I was in the space industry that's all everyone ever spoke about. And then when Falcon 9 first reused its first stage, um I mean all the traditional aerospace industries did not believe that even Falcon 9 could re could could fly and reuse.\n\n>> Literally you can come see it land at Cape Canaveral. >> Yeah. >> Um and then take off again. >> Yeah. >> So I don't know how you would not believe a thing that you can see with your own eyes. >> Yeah. Well, they didn't believe you could. They didn't believe you could. >> But the the the la the leap from there to the launch cost actually requires more faith than just just that.\n\nBut I think I think Starship is the launch cost tipping point and that somewhere in that you know before you had Twitter it became X somewhere in that timeline it went from speculative to no doubt and I don't know if that's a smooth line or a couple of good launches in between but I suspect that the data centers in space >> but people >> ties directly to the credibility >> is not thinking about orbital data centers they're thinking about energy and the cost of energy here on here in their hometown and sort of the the there's a lot of doomer conversations out there.\n\nThe data centers are going to drive, you know, the CPI up. >> Uh they're not entirely wrong. >> Okay. So, what is so [laughter] what is the what's the energy solution here on Earth for uh the rest of humanity or the the non data the non AIs? >> Oh, there's something other than data center use uses of energy. Okay. [laughter] >> Interesting. >> Um >> that's complex.\n\nWell, the the the [snorts] best way to actually increase the energy output per year of the United States or any country is batteries. Um, so the >> sure >> peak power output of the of the US is around 1. 1 terowatts, but the uh average power usage is only half a terowatt. >> Yeah.\n\nSo if you just buffer the the energy, so charge up the the batteries at night, discharge during the day, um without incremental capital expend without incremental capital expenditures, without building new power plants, you can double the energy throughput of the US. The energy output per year can double >> with batteries. Um >> and do we have those batteries uh in development? >> Uh yeah, Tesla makes them. >> Okay.\n\nSo you think current the current current Tesla battery packs? [laughter] >> What do you think? What do you think? I literally have I I went on stage and presented the thing. >> Yeah, >> that's that's the dead giveaway. So [laughter] >> I I even went to installations of the mega packs, you know, and there's >> So why don't people do this? >> It's on the internet. So >> yeah. >> So is do you think >> they are?\n\nAnd and China, by the way, is like it seems like China listens to everything I say I say and does does it basically or at least or or they're just doing it independently. I don't know. But they're they're certainly making um massive battery packs like really massive battery pack output. They're they're you know making vast numbers of electric cars. Yeah. >> Uh vast amounts of solar. Um, >> I don't know.\n\nThese are all things I I said, you know, we should do here. >> Fundamental. Sure. When I fly over Santa Monica and LA, when I'm when I'm I'm piloting and I look down, they're like, zero roofs have solar on them. >> Zero roofs. >> Yeah. >> I mean, >> it's not essential to have them on a roof. >> Okay. But it's a convenient place to have them. >> Yes.\n\nUh, but the surface area of roofs is uh I'm not saying it shouldn't, but it's >> uh Tesla makes a solar roof, which is the the only solar roof that isn't ugly. Um, our solar roof actually looks beautiful. >> Yeah. >> Um, but if you want to do solar at scale, you just need more surface area. >> So, so we we we have um vast empty deserts. Sure.\n\nAfrican America like if you fly from LA to New York or just fly across country and you look down um for a large portion of the time you look down it is bleak desert. >> Yes. >> It looks like Mars essentially. >> We're not worried about overpopulation there. >> No, I mean it look there's barely a lizard alive in these scorching deserts, you know. Yep. >> It's not like farmland we're talking about. We're just talking about Yep.\n\n>> Uh places that look like Mars, >> like just uh scorched rock. So if we put soil where we currently have scorched rock, >> I think this will be a quality of life improvement for the lizards or the few creatures that live in this >> uh very difficult environment. >> Do we have the distribution network? >> It's like this is going to be thank god some shade finally. [laughter] >> Do we have the distribution network to be able to do that?\n\nYeah, you need to to materially affect quality of life, you need to capture and store what a couple hundred gigawatts. >> Is that in realistic? >> You could just put the data center I guess locally there. >> Well, we already covered data centers. [laughter] >> We're talking about you know the other >> Yeah.\n\n>> Like I I don't know like in an abundant world five years from now, massive amounts of compute, >> massive, you know, universal high income. >> I don't know income like universal you can have whatever you want income. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. That's that's really what it amounts to.\n\n>> But in that world, uh, you know, other than compute energy, how much more energy do we need like 30 40 50% or I don't know, unless we want to move mountains around to make a ski mountain, you know, in the backyard. Um, I think the vast majority of energy consumption will go into compute.\n\nAnd then there may be use cases I'm not thinking of like you know the well you know right here is a nice case study because manufacturing every one of these cars coming out at the rate of one every minute or two uh is less energy than the data center that's training the cars to drive to to self-drive. >> Yes. >> So that's a good little case study. And we don't need that much more physical energy for abundant happiness.\n\nWe need more compute energy. Well, yeah, >> the sun is just generating vast amounts of energy uh all the time for free that goes just goes into space. >> So, um I think we'll end up trying to capture I don't know uh a millionth of like a millionth a thousandth of the sun's energy. Um, we're currently I'm not sure the exact number, but we're I don't know, we're probably at 1%ish of Kadeshv level one. >> Fair enough.\n\nYeah, I I I would guess that even that's high. >> I'm just Yeah, saying >> we have a long way to go. >> I'm that's being optimistic. Like hopefully we're not. 1%, but I don't think we're 10%. I'm just trying to get it to like to an order of magnitude. Uh >> so pull it like we're roughly 1% of the apparently using 1% of the energy that we could use on Earth.\n\n>> I think the bottom line from a first principles thinking for the public is there's a lot of energy out there >> a lot >> and it we have it in the US. We have it on the planet and it needs to be captured and the tech to capture it >> is here and improving every year. >> Yes. >> Yeah. um there's not going to be some energy crisis. I there'll be a large forcing function to harness more energy, but we're not going to run out of it.\n\n>> All right, I want to talk about education. So, here's the numbers. They're abysmal. >> Um I mean, they're they're they're abysmal, right? Okay. Uh the importance of college in the United States, uh back in 2010, 75% of Americans said it's important to go to college. That number is now down at 35%. All right. Uh, college graduates as a group turn out to be the group that's out of work the longest, >> right?\n\nAnd the but still and tuition has increased 900% since 1983. Um, >> yeah, the administrative expenses at universities have gotten out of control. Yeah. >> Um, so >> I think I saw some stat that like there's one administrator for every two students at Brown or something like that >> and I'm like this seems uh little high. >> Yeah. You know what? >> They should teach something. >> Yeah. Yeah. >> What was your college journey?\n\n>> Um, I went to college in Canada for a couple years at Queens University. Uh-huh. >> Um, so, uh, I I had Canadian citizenship through my mom who was born in Canada and my my grandfather was actually American, but for some reason, I don't know, my mom couldn't get US citizenship, so but she was born in Canada, so I got Canadian citizenship. Um, and uh, I didn't have any money, so I could only go to Canadian university at first.\n\nI >> mean, people forget that about you. You didn't have this giant social network or huge amount of wealth coming into all of this. >> No. >> Yeah. >> Uh, no. I I arrived in Montreal at age 17 with I think around $2,500 in Canadian travelers checks back when travelers checks were a thing. >> Um and um one bag of books and one bag of clothes. That was my starting point. That was my spawning point in North America.\n\nUm, >> and then so I went to Queens University for a couple years and then uh University of Pennsylvania uh did a dual degree in physics and economics um >> and graduated >> uh undergraduate at UPUP Wharton. >> Yeah.\n\nAnd then um I came out to do uh I was going to do a PhD at Stanford working on uh energy storage technologies for electric vehicles essentially material science I guess fundamentally >> um the the idea that I had was it was to try to create a capacitor with enough energy density that you could get um high range in an electric car. >> It's funny I invested in an ultra capacitor company and didn't Yeah. didn't go well.\n\nWell, it's one of those things where, you know, you could definitely get a PhD, but it wasn't clear that you could make a company or do something useful like this. Most PhD is un hat I mean, hate it, but most PhDs do not >> turn into something that's going to >> do not turn into something useful. Like you you could add a leaf to the tree of knowledge, but it's not necessar necessarily a useful leaf.\n\nenormous fraction of of great entrepreneurs are dropping out >> of grad school or undergrad. But now nowadays the sense of urgency is off the charts. >> I mean they're popping out everywhere. >> Yeah. Because you know don't waste your time going into grad school. Start a company. >> Yeah. >> Curriculum is nowhere near caught up to what's actually going on in technology and I don't have time and all the time.\n\nIt's like >> you know this is the moment. I I think right now it's like it's unclear to me why someone would somebody would be in college right now unless they want the social experience. >> Yeah. >> I mean if you have the ability to go and build something. So the question is how would you redesign the educational program if I could be so so blunt as to create more Elon Musks?\n\nIf we want to create an Elon Musk factory of people who start with very little but are able to drive uh and drive breakthroughs. What's involved there? What drove you? >> Uh curiosity um about the nature of the universe. >> So I'm just curious about uh >> the meaning of life and >> you know what is this reality that we live in. So, >> how early? >> My son Dax wanted to know what was it like for you in middle school and high school.\n\n>> He's 14 years old. He's in that age range now. >> Well, I did I found school to be quite painful. Uh and it was very boring and in South Africa it was very violent. >> So So it's like it was it it was like uh >> it's like that was like that book Enders Game. >> Yes. Um but in real IRL >> in this game IRL there's like but not as fun. >> Um >> so your goal was escape. >> Yes. >> Do you think >> escape from the the prison?\n\n>> So that's a question I have. Do you [laughter] do you think that >> it was miserable? >> Do you think most successful people have had a lot of hardship early in life? Do you need to have that level of hardship? >> Probably need a little bit of hardship I suppose. >> Yeah. But and then so it's always tricky like what are you supposed to do with your kids? You know, create artificial adversity. Put them in. >> That's cool.\n\n[laughter] >> You got an answer. That's that's a Warren Buffett topic actually. >> Yeah. >> Well, you do. >> But seriously, >> it's not easy to create artificial adversity because if you love your kids, you don't want to do that. So >> that's for sure. >> So I had a lot of adversity. Um probably it was good. Uh probably, you know, helped somewhat, I suppose. One one of the >> What doesn't kill you makes you stronger type of thing.\n\n>> No, >> at least I didn't lose a limb. And I think what doesn't maim you [laughter] >> good at maming 10 fingers. >> Can you modify that a little bit? >> Yeah. >> Can I ask you a question? >> You makes you stronger. >> I uh for the last 5 years I've been helping teach this class, Foundations of AI Ventures at MIT. And every year when you survey the students, they go up a lot in their desire to start a company. And so it's now up to 80%.\n\nThe incoming [laughter] >> everyone's just going to it's it's just going to be like one person company. >> Well, that's with AI that's that's viable, I guess. But no, they want to co-ound. They Yeah, they don't want to be the founder. They want to be part of a founding team. So, it still works out. >> But, uh, when Peter and I were in school at MIT, it was I'm guessing maybe 10%.\n\nand they all wanted to be PhDs >> and and they've been doing the survey everyone who wanted to start. I mean I I >> I don't remember any conversations about with people saying they wanted to start >> even at Stanford at the time. >> Um I I I actually um a few days into the semester or I should say the quarter um I I called Bill Nicks who was the head of material science department and said I' I'd like to just put it on deferment.\n\n[laughter] He said, \"Is my class that bad?\" >> No. And he he said he said that's he said that's okay. You can put it on deferment. But he said this is probably the last conversation we'll have. And he was right. >> Um but then last I think it was last year he sent me a letter saying that all of my predictions about lithium-ion batteries came true. >> It was very nice. >> And did he also say you can still come back and finish your PhD?\n\n[laughter] >> Yeah. No. Several times Stanford has said that I can come back for free. Well, so you know what happened at MIT is every time [laughter] so I did not know it >> be a great use of your time. >> Exactly. I'm like >> so every time an Iron Man movie came out, >> it notched up another probably 10% or so. >> Okay. >> Uh in terms of because everybody wanted to be Tony Stark. >> And so that's the image.\n\nAnd I didn't know till today that the new Tony Stark, the modern Iron Man Tony Stark, I always thought Tony Stark was modeled on Charles Stark Draper and Howard Hughes. is Charles Stark Draper's education and his you know scientific endeavors married with Howard Hughes's ambition >> and that created the original character but then when Robert Downey Jr. wanted to reinvent it. >> Yeah, it came. >> It's modeled on Elon.\n\n>> Yeah, >> he came and met with me. >> This is a Groipedia fact. >> All right. >> Uh [laughter] yeah, fantastic. >> Um >> yeah, they came to John Fabro and and Robert >> I like the name Grock. I would like Jarvis as well. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. Um >> probably some some trade. >> At some point if Grock gets good enough, we're going to call it Encyclopedia Galactica. >> Yes, that's nice. >> Yeah. >> Yeah, of course. 42. >> Thank you.\n\nUm, so going back to education, uh, should colleges, I guess the social experience, you said is important there, but what would you do for education, uh, you know, middle, high school? You just came back from a announcement with President Blly, uh, who's a friend. I I think he's an amazing amazing visionary. Yeah. Incredible what he did with his nation. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. Um, >> remarkable. >> Remarkable and gutsy. >> Yeah.\n\nI was like, \"How are you still alive?\" That was >> Yeah. I mean, I It was like It's the nuclear It was a nuclear option, >> right? Shut him down. I mean, do you know how besides putting everybody with a gang sign um in in uh in jail? I don't know if you know the second thing he did. He went to all of the graves of all the gang members out there and destroyed the graves and said, \"Your memory will not be remembered in this nation.\"\n\nThat's just badass. >> And it worked. >> I mean, you have to be badass [ __ ] to take on all the knocker gangs and win >> and live. >> Yeah. And still be alive. >> And live. He's got a great great uh guard at his palace there. But what what did you announce with uh with him in El Salvador? >> Uh it was just uh basically to use Grock for uh education like personalization. >> Hopefully not the vulgar version of it. [laughter] >> Yeah.\n\nwe would have like you know the you know kids friendly version of Grock. >> Uh but but obviously AI can be an in an individualized teacher. >> Yeah. >> Um that uh is infinitely patient and answers all your questions. >> Um now you still need to be curious um and and uh you still need to want to learn. You know GR can't make you want to learn. It can make learning more interesting. you could probably gify and incentivize it, right?\n\n>> You can make learning more interesting. Um, and and less of a production line. Um, so but kids do need to have to if they need to want to learn, you know. >> Yeah. >> Do you and like the people should just think of the the brain as a biological computer. >> It's a neural net. >> Yeah. Yeah, it's a bi biological computer with you know so with a number of neurons and a neural efficiency. >> Yeah.\n\n>> Um and um so so what like what you can't do is tune any arbitrary kid into Einstein. Uh this is not realistic because Einstein had a very good meat computer like an outstanding meat computer. >> Um so you can't just uh do Shakespeare Newton you know Einstein type of thing. um unless the meat computer is uh an exceptional one. >> So what do you think?\n\nSo when people say we need to solve education in the United States >> um because it's fundamentally broken u I think what's really broken I'm curious is the old uh social contract that says uh do well in high school, get in a good college, get a degree, and then get a job. And I don't know that that's going to be valid in the future. Uh my we talk about this on the pod a lot that the that the career of the future isn't getting a job.\n\nIt's being an entrepreneur. It's finding a problem and solving it. >> Yeah. >> Do you do you agree with that? >> Right now I'd say people should just you know go to school for the social experience, use more AI. Um the conventional schooling experience I think could be a lot better.\n\num the what what we're going to do in Al Salvador and hopefully other places just have individualized teachers that's going to be much better and you you could go to you could go to a school with a bunch of other kids I guess if you want to hang out with other kids but you don't need to >> right >> you could do it on your phone at home um so that's why I say like at this point education is a social experience when I talk to my kids who are in in college >> uh they they they do recognize that they can learn um just as much independently.\n\nIn fact, that they would learn more in in a work situation. >> Yeah. >> Um they're there for the social experience and to be a bunch around a bunch of people of their their own age. Um sort of a coming of age social experience. >> Sure. Sure. Being on your own uh learning how how to lead or defend yourself as the case may be. >> Well, yeah.\n\nYeah, I mean, if you join the workforce, you're, you know, from the perspective of like a, you know, 19-year-old, you with a bunch of old people, [laughter] and if you're doing engineering with a bunch of middle-aged dudes, it's like, do you really want to do that or do you want to hang out with um, you know, where there's at least some girls your age [laughter] type of thing.\n\n>> I I want to get I want to get I want to get back to this when we talk about >> a lot of other choices. Actually, >> I want to get back as we get to universal high income, but I want to talk about health and longevity one second. US is the number one ranked number one in health expenses worldwide and it's ranked 70th >> in health span, >> right? We >> are really 70th. >> 70th >> is that from Is that accurate? >> Is why everybody listen it?\n\n>> Uh I think it would be better than 70th >> for health span. >> Um well, whatever. It's it is like we just get fat or something. >> We're not the top 10. >> Maybe a Zic can help us plan the rankings there. [laughter] >> Um, so >> would you just run around? We need Cupid. But a Zic. [laughter] >> Mjaro Cupid. [laughter] >> But but I think that's a big reason. It's like if people get really fat then their their health gets bad. >> Yeah.\n\nWell, if they don't have any exercise, health get bad. or if they donuts for breakfast every morning. You still doing that? >> Uh, no, actually I'm not. >> Okay, that's good. That's good. >> Uh, well, first of all, I wasn't eating a lot of doughnut. I was trying to have uh point4 of a donut, which rounds down to zero. [laughter] So, I figured anything below below 044 of a donut rounds down to zero.\n\n>> So, you and I have had uh a disagreement on longevity. >> We had a little bit. Yeah. I was saying, you know, we should push to get people to 120, 150, and you were saying people, you know, shouldn't live that [laughter] long. >> Uh, so how long do you want >> Yeah. >> You know, there's some, >> you know, people in the world that have done some bad things. How long do you want them to live? >> Yeah. Well, it's okay. They can get the longevity.\n\n>> This is a serious [laughter] question, though. If we them, a lot of things are going to happen that we don't >> Wait a second. You said one thing that you said was interesting. He said um uh we need people to die so people change their minds. >> Oh yes people people don't change their minds they just die. >> But so [laughter] that makes more sense actually.\n\n>> My response to that Elon was you know my response to that was the head of GM didn't have to die for Tesla to come along and Lockheed and Northrup and Boeing didn't have to go away for I mean there's in a meritocracy the better ideas will dominate. So, I'm hoping that I can get you back onto the longevity train. So, there's a lot going on longevity right now, right? >> Uh like what?\n\n>> Well, David Sinclair is about to start his epigenetic re uh reprogramming trials in humans. It's worked in in animals and and non-human primates. It's going into humans. >> Is this like a pole or an injection or >> right now? It's an injection of an adnoissociated virus. It's the three Yamanaka factors. >> Okay.\n\nUh we've got a $101 million health span X-P prize that's working on 730 teams working on reversing the age of your brain immune system and muscle by 20 years. By the way, do you know why it's $101 million? >> No. >> Because the primary funer when they found out your carbon X price was 100 bucks, he wanted to make it bigger. So it's 101. >> Oh, who who's the Chip Wilson from Lululemon? >> Oh, okay.\n\nAnd then uh and then evolution out of but Chip said, \"Can we make it bigger?\" I said, \"You put extra million in, we'll make 101 million.\" >> Sounds good. >> It's a good story. >> But then we got folks like Dario Amade predicting doubling the human lifespan in the next 10 years. >> Um that's probably correct. >> Okay, great. >> I don't know about doubling, but in significant >> significant increase. Sure. >> Um >> which is easily escape velocity.\n\n>> I mean because when Yeah. >> Depending how old your Yeah. [laughter] Oh yeah, for sure. Or effective age. Yeah. >> Yeah. Yeah. >> So I mean I think you know I think that for >> too much and turn into a baby or something. >> That's what I'm telling [laughter] all the students there. It's like Peter what happened. [laughter] >> Yes. Yes. There there is a frozen. >> You got a zero wrong in the dosage. [laughter] Just a small factor of 10.\n\n>> Grow out of it. It'll be fine. Exactly. [laughter] >> You won't remember it. I literally >> I mean, wouldn't it be funny if we do this in like 10 years? Okay, we should do it in I'll do we'll do it in 10 years for sure. And and and let's see let's see if we look younger. [laughter] >> That's a good side bet. >> My my comment was always Elon's back then Elon was like, you know, late 40s.\n\nwait till he gets into his 60s, he's going to want, you know, lunch anymore. >> I mean, I I I want things to not hurt. >> Yeah, sure. Of course. [laughter] >> It's like it's like basically it's it seems like it's only a matter of time before you get back back pain. >> Yeah. >> Um like it's a when, not an if your back hurts. >> Arthritis. Yes. >> Yeah. Like these things suck basically.\n\n>> Being able to sleep through the night without going to the bathroom [laughter] >> a lot. It's very much That one. >> Yeah, it's [laughter] more than hope. >> That one. >> Oh man, that would that's like the infinite money one. [laughter] >> Why did you invest in longevity? So I can sleep through the night and not go to the bathroom. >> Bladder bladder. Yeah. Duration.\n\n>> I mean, [laughter] admittedly, if you have to wear adult diapers, that's a that's a bummer. [laughter] >> That's not good. Adult D is a real, [laughter] you know, it's like one of the one of the signs that a country is not on the right path >> is when the adult diapers exceed the baby diapers. >> Yeah, we're there. [laughter] >> Yeah. South Korea will be there anymore. >> They already No, they passed that point. >> No, they passed that point.\n\n>> They passed that point many years ago. Japan passed the point many years ago. >> Doesn't go well looking at the Japanese economy. No, I mean like South Korea is like uh Yeah. One third replacement rate. >> Crazy. >> Yeah. So, three generations they're going to be 127th. So, 3 3% of their current size. I mean, North Korea won't need to invade. They can just walk across. >> Yeah. [laughter] Yeah.\n\n>> This is going to be some people in, [laughter] you know, walkers or something like there'll be a bunch of optimist. But you you know you've been very verbal about the you know the not overpopulation but massive underpopulation. >> Yeah I've been saying this for ages. >> Yeah. Longevity is going to be an important part of that solution.\n\nI also think by the way if you increased the productive life of most Americans by just a few years you'd flip the entire economics here. >> Well if AI and robots is going to make everything sure free basically. >> Yeah. Um but uh well how long would you want to live? >> Uh I want to I want to go you know other planetary systems. I want to go and explore the universe. Yeah. I mean you know I would like to double my lifespan for sure.\n\n>> I don't want you know I'm not sure I want to talk about immortality but >> you know at least 120 150. It's a long time. >> One of the worst curses possible would be that >> Yes. May you live forever. >> May you live forever. >> That would be one of the worst >> Yeah. curses you could possibly give anyone. >> But I think life's going to get very interesting. >> Yeah. >> Far more.\n\nWe're going to speedrun Star Trek as my partner Alex Weer Gross says. >> Yeah. >> Speedrunning Star Trek would be cool. >> Yeah. Um >> well, at a minimum your kids will have infinite life expectancy. If you're talking about escape velocity, if you can double lifespan, there's it's not even close. You're you're clearly past longevity escape velocity. They the idea of 50 years of AI improvement. >> Yeah, it's great.\n\nI mean, we're going to have 20 years on this. >> I don't know. I got too many fish to fry. >> So, I invited >> This is something, by the way, that I that I think I just I think it's very obviously other people think this, too, but I've long thought that um like long like longevity or semi- mortality is an extremely solvable problem. I don't think it's a particularly hard problem.\n\nUm, I mean, when you consider the fact that your body is extremely synchronized in its age, >> Yeah. >> the clock must be incredibly obvious. Um, nobody has an old left arm and a young right arm, >> right? >> Why is that? >> What's keeping them all in sync? um you're programmed to die is the is the way you're programmed to die. And so if you change the program, >> yeah, >> uh you will live longer.\n\n>> And we've got, you know, species of the boowhead whale can live for 200 years. The Greenland shark can live for 500 years. And when I when I learned that, I said, why can't they? Why can't we? And I said, it's either a hardware problem or software problem, and we're going to have the tech to solve that. And I do believe that it's this next decade. So the important thing is not to die from something stupid before the before the solutions come.\n\nYou know, I invited you uh >> in retrospect the long the solution to longevity will seem obvious. >> Yeah. >> Extremely obvious. >> I I think the thing worth working on Peter's going to work on this anyway, but the thing to work on is exactly what you said.\n\nIf old ideas don't calcified old ideas don't just die off, add that to the pile of things we need to think about today because there are a whole host of other AI related things we need to think about today. >> Let me let me finish on the longevity point one second. Um Elon uh I want to invite you again. So uh uh there's a company called Fountain Life that uh created with Tony Robbins, Bob Hurry, Bill Cap, and we do a 200 gigabyte upload of you.\n\nEverything knowable about you. Full genome, full all imaging, everything. Right. President Blly and the first lady came through, called it an amazing 10 out of 10 experience. >> Um >> I think I don't want you to pull a Steve Jobs >> and kick the bucket because of some >> because some something they didn't know. I mean, so if you ask yourself, >> do you actually know what's going on inside your body right now?\n\n>> Um, I did an MRI recently and submitted it to Gro and it didn't >> need no none of the doctors nor Grock found anything wrong, >> but that's a fraction of the information, right? I mean, it's your full genome, your microbiome, your metabolism, everything. >> And okay, >> it's possible. So, >> don't call me. >> What's that? >> Don't call me, bro. [laughter] We have a We have a center in >> your water bottle. >> We have [laughter] God damn it.\n\n>> Too late. >> Sorry. It's already in the works. [laughter] >> So, can you go through the the rationale of UHI? How does how does universal high income work? >> Okay. So there's there's going to be more intelligence, digital intelligence than all human intelligence combined and more humanoid robots than all humans. >> Um, and assuming we're in a benign scenario, Star Trek, sort of Rodenberry, not Cameron situation. >> Yeah.\n\n[laughter] >> Um, >> poor Jim. >> Yeah. I mean, I guess it's important to have these sort of >> counterpoints. >> Yeah. Let's not let's go not go in that direction. Um thing. Um so uh the the robots are going to just do whatever you want. >> All the blue collar labor is being done by robots. All data centers are being by robots.\n\n>> The the white collar labor will be the first to go because until you until you can move atoms, the thing that can be replaced first is anything that that involves just digital if it's digital like if it involves >> t tapping keys on a keyboard and >> moving a mouse the computer can do that they can do that >> sure >> um you need the humanoid robots to to uh shape atoms so if all you're doing is changing bits of information which is white color work um that is that is the first thing that that >> when this is the inspirational this is the inspirational part of the podcast by the way when is when is all white color work gone by when?\n\n>> Well, there there's there's a lot of inertia. So, even with AI at its current state, um I'd say you're you're pretty close to being able to replace half of all jobs of >> and you know that white color jobs that includes anything like education, too. >> Yeah. M >> so anything that involves information um and anything short of shaping atoms um AI can do probably half or more of those jobs right now. >> Sure. >> But there's a lot of inertia.\n\nPeople just keep doing the same the same thing for quite some time. Um, and there actually has to be a a company that makes more use of AI that competes with a company that makes less use of AI, creating a forcing function for increased use of AI, >> right? >> Otherwise, the company that that still has humans do um things that AI can do will still continue to exist. Being a computer used to be a job.\n\nSo it used to be that a human computer like yeah >> a computer being a computer was a job. You would compute numbers. Sure. It didn't it didn't used to be a machine. It used to be a job description.\n\nUm, and there you can look online there's these pictures of like where they're having like skyscrapers full >> of women copying mostly women copying from ledger to ledger >> and men too but but yeah but pe people um >> um but it was a lot of women but there's there were just buildings full of uh people just at desks doing calculations. >> Yeah.\n\nUm so they'd be calculating the interest in your bank account or um you know some um you know science uh experiment or something like that or what but if you want calculations done uh you people would do it. Um so um now one laptop with a spreadsheet can outperform a skyscraper of several hundred human computers >> right >> of people doing calculations.\n\nUm, now if even a few cells in that spreadsheet were done manually, um, it you would not be able to compete with a spreadsheet that was entirely a computer. >> Mhm. >> Yeah. What this means is that companies that are entirely AI will demolish companies that are not. >> Right. >> It won't be a contest. >> Agreed. And that flippid. >> Yeah.\n\none cell in that >> just one if >> I got to do that >> would you want even one cell in your spreadsheet to be manually calculated >> that would be the most annoying cell and you're like god damn it >> y >> and and and gets it wrong a bunch of the time [laughter] error rate >> so this flipping >> flipping the flipping >> um >> are we monetizing hope effectively >> yes [laughter] >> not not at this moment I think we're I think we're pe I think we're pe doo for people worried about the future of their jobs.\n\n>> Monetize. >> We're at peak doom. >> We're going to do that as a t-shirt >> and the [laughter] mug. >> And the mug. >> Yes. >> The mug. >> Uh, [laughter] so but you have a sol you have a solution to this >> which is UHI. >> Yes. Everyone can have whatever they want. >> So how does that work? How does UHI work? >> It's it's a good question.\n\nlike we have to figure out some like >> I mean it's not a it's not a bumpy road it yeah I mean so my concern isn't the long run it's the next 3 to seven years >> yes the transition will be bumpy uh because humans don't like simultaneously [clears throat] yes we'll have radical change social unrest and immense [laughter] prosperity >> and you can buy all all the cyber trucks you want >> things are going to get very cheap >> yes >> um So this is actually and frankly if if this doesn't happen we we'd go bankrupt as a country.\n\nSo the national debt is enormous. >> Yeah. >> Uh the interest on the national debt exceeds uh not just the military budget but the military budget I think plus um Medicare >> um or Medicaid one of the two. It's like like it's it's like one trillion [laughter] >> of interest. Yeah. Um >> which is growing. >> Yes. And the [clears throat] deficit is growing. >> Yes.\n\n>> Um but the the so this so if if we don't have AI and robots, we're all going to go bankrupt and and and and we're headed for economic doom. >> We're going back also competitive pressure from China. So this is definitely going to happen. I guess >> we're going back to the theme of this talk. How can AI and exponential tech save America and the world? >> Don't you think that?\n\nBut I want I want to get I want to hit this because we >> I was like quite pessimistic about it and and and ultimately I decided to be fatalistic and and >> um look on the bright side. [laughter] >> I've got to see you look on the bright side of life. [laughter] >> You're sitting there crucified [laughter] right side. >> But this is not about taxation and redistribution. >> Yeah. No, it's um >> So, how do how does it work?\n\nReason through it with me. >> Listen, by the way, I'm open to ideas here. >> Okay. >> Uh so, it's not like I got this all figured out. >> All right. So, so I'm wondering if instead of universal high income, if it's universal, universal high stuff. >> Yeah. >> And services. >> Yes. >> The UHSS. We got >> like I I guess Okay. This is my guess for how things roll out play out.\n\nAnd I I and by the way, I'm this is this is going to be a bumpy ride and it's not like I know the answers here. Um but I I I have decided to look on the bright side. U and and I'd like to thank thank you guys for being an inspiration in this regard. >> Thank you. >> Happy to help. Yeah, [laughter] because I I actually think it's it it is better to be a an optimist and wrong than a pessimist and right. >> Yes, for sure. >> Um for quality of life.\n\n>> Yeah. And by the way, there's also not a force of nature. It's under >> like to me it's really clear that we don't have any system right now to make this go well. But AI is a critical part of making it go well. And at some point, Grock is going to be addressing this exact topic that we're talking about or it has to be one of the big four AI machines. I mean, it's coming dealing with it. There's no velocity knob, right? There's no onoff switch.\n\nIt is coming and accelerating. >> I call AI and robotics the supersonic tsunami. >> Yes. >> Which maybe is a little alarming. >> You think it's good. That's good. Well, because the wake up call. >> This is important for folks to to gro because um uh I don't want to leave people depressed. I want people to understand what's coming. So we're we're basically demonetizing everything. I mean labor becomes the cost of capex and electricity.\n\nAI is basically uh intelligence available uh >> at a dimminimous price. Um uh so you're able to produce almost anything. Things get down to basic cost of materials and electricity, right? Uh so people can have whatever stuff they want, whatever services they need. >> Um it's not when when we say universal high income, it sounds like it's a tax and redistribute, but that's not the case.\n\nUm >> it's it's I think my my best guess for how this will manifest is that prices will become prices will drop. >> Yeah. >> So as the efficiency of of production or the provision of services drops um prices will drop. I mean you know prices in in dollar terms are the ratio between the output of goods and services and the money supply. >> Sure.\n\nSo if your output of goods and services increases faster than the money supply, you will have deflation and or vice versa, you know. So um >> it's a good thing we're growing the money supply so quickly then, >> right? [laughter] >> I I I Yes. That's why I I I came like let's not worry about growing the money supply. It won't matter because the output of goods and services actually will grow faster than the money supply.\n\nAnd I think we'll be in this and this is a prediction I think some others have made but um I will add to it which is uh that that I think governments will will actually be pushing to to increase money supply um like like faster. >> Yes. They won't be able to waste the money fast enough [laughter] which is saying something for >> Isn't it isn't it crazy how close those timelines just randomly worked out?\n\nI mean at the rate because we're expanding the national debt not because we're anticipating AI. We were going to do that no matter what. >> And so it's like right on the edge of becoming Argentina. >> But yeah, at the time so productivity is going to improve dramatically >> and it is improving dramatically. I I I think we'll see >> I think I think we may see like high double digit uh output of goods and services.\n\nWe have to be a little careful about how economists measure things and um >> yeah it's it I mean there's like my favorite joke I have a few economist jokes that I that that I like but um maybe my favorite one economist joke is um two economists are going for a walk in in the forest um and they come across a pile of [ __ ] and one economist says I'll pay you 100 bucks to eat a pile of [ __ ] [laughter] I've heard this one. This is great. Go ahead.\n\n>> And so the guy takes 100 bucks [laughter] and eats the [ __ ] >> Then they keep walking. They come across another pile of [ __ ] And and the other guy says, \"Okay, I'll give you a hundred bucks to eat a pile of shit.\" [laughter] So he gives him a hundred bucks and and then the the guys can say, \"Wait a second. >> We both have the same amount of money. [laughter] We ate a both ate a pile of [ __ ] >> Oh my god.\n\nIt sounds like >> but we increase the economy by $200. [laughter] >> This is the kind of [ __ ] you get in economics. So So uh but if you if so if you say like just the output of goods and services um the will be much greater. You just need a >> so profitability of companies go through the roof >> at some point. But but no but so the question becomes is that taxed by the government?\n\nuh >> is that then taxed by the government and redistributed as some level of income as a U as a UHI or UBI? In other words, um one of the questions is if in fact this future we hit massive productivity uh and massive profitability because we're dividing by zero. The cost of labor has gone to nothing. The cost of intelligence has gone to nothing and we're still producing products and services faster and faster. So there's more profitability.\n\nSomeone needs to be buying it and someone needs to be able to have the capital to buy it. Um, I mean this is an important question to get to get thought through. >> Yeah. Um, well, one like side recommendation I have is like don't worry about like squirreling money away for uh retirement in like 10 or 20 years. It won't matter. >> No. >> Okay.\n\neither either we're not going to be here or >> it it just uh like it's it's you won't need to save for retirement. If if any of the things that we've said are true, saving for retirement will be irrelevant. >> The services will be there to support you. You'll have the home, you'll have the healthcare, you'll have the entertainment.\n\n>> The way this unfolds is fundamentally impossible to predict because of self-improvement of the AI and the accelerating timeline. >> Yeah. It's called singularity for a reason. >> Yeah. Exactly. >> I don't know what goes what what what happens after when after the event horizon. >> Exactly. You can't never see past the black hole or the event horizon. The light cone. >> I mean Ray has a singularity out way too far.\n\nI mean this is like the next what what's your timeline for >> for this? >> We're in the singularity. >> Well, we are in the singularity for sure. We're in the midst of it right now for sure. >> And we just we're in this beautiful sweet spot which is you know the >> we're the roller coasters were just >> Yeah. Exactly. That's [laughter] a great analogy. It's like that feeling. >> You're at the top of the roller coaster and you're about to go.\n\n>> Yeah. But you know it's going to be a lot of G's when you lot when you hit it. >> Uh and it's like people like I don't have to just have courtside seats. I'm on the court. >> Exactly. >> And it blows my And still blows my mind >> sometimes multiple times a week. >> Yeah. >> Um and so >> just when I think I'm like wow. And then it's like >> two days later more wow. >> Yeah. >> Um >> exponential wow.\n\nYeah, I think we'll hit um AGI next year in 26. >> Yeah, I heard you say that. >> Yeah, I've said that for a while actually. >> And then you know and then you said by 2029 2030 equivalent to the entire human race. >> 2030 we exceed like I'm confident by um AI will exceed the intelligence of all humans combined.\n\nThat's way pessimistic if if you hit AGI next year and that's that's you know that date is is in flux but from that date >> to self-improvements that are on the order of a th00and 10,000x just algorithmic improvements is very short >> and so everybody why isn't everybody talking about this right now? >> Well I mean on on >> X on X they off. >> Yes. But why isn't >> about every day basically. >> Yeah.\n\nBut it's like >> stop [laughter] >> it's not >> okay. Okay. So, I'll tell you something else that I I'll tell you something that most people in the AI community don't yet understand. >> Okay. >> Um, which is there the almost no one understands this. Um, the intelligence density potential uh is vastly greater than what we're currently experiencing.\n\nSo, I I think we're we're off by tours of magnitude in terms of the intelligence density per gigabyte >> of what what's achievable. >> Yes.\n\nper gigawatt of energy >> per I'm characterize it by file size okay if the file size of the AI if you >> if you have a say get intelligence >> oh okay in know yes sir >> um >> on your on your drives on your laptop >> power tube parameters the same thing whatever >> um so two two orders of magnitude >> yes >> and you like you said you ringside courtside seat >> you would know I'd say it's it's it's uh two yes Yeah.\n\n>> Towards magnitude improvement in um that's just just algorithmic improvement. Same computer and the computers are getting better. >> Yeah. >> So >> and bigger, you know, they're getting better and the budgets are getting bigger. So >> that's why like I think I think it's it is on it is like a 10x improvement per year type thing. Thousand%. >> Yeah. >> And that and that's going to happen for Yeah. for the foreseeable future.\n\nSo you see the massive underreaction like if you walk downtown Austin the massive I mean it may be under discussion in X but it's not percolating at all. >> Well it's not it's not discussion in any realm of government.\n\nEverybody is like defending their position about where we are and jobs and this but >> it's it's like we're heading towards a >> a supersonic supersonic tsunami and and uh uh I mean every every you know every major CEO and economist and government leader should be like what do we do because >> once it hits >> um >> well that it's coming at the exact same time there no matter what there's No, there's no concept of let's deliberately slow down, right?\n\n>> No, it's impossible. >> It's impossible at this stage. >> I mean, I [clears throat] I' I'd previously advised that we slow it down, but that was point that uh that's pointless. Like I I like you can't be going to it, but too fast, guys. Um I've said that many years and and I was like okay that I finally came to the conclusion I can either be a spectator or a participant but I can't stop it.\n\n>> So at least if I'm a participant I can try to steer it in a good direction. >> Um and uh like my number one belief for safety of AI is to be maximally truth seeeking. So um that don't make AI believe things that are false. Like if you say if you if you say to the AI that axiom A and axom B are both true but they're but they cannot be but but they're not. >> Yeah. >> Um and it has to but it must behave that way. Um you will make it go insane.\n\nSo that that I I mean I think that was the central lesson that RC Clark was trying to convey in 2001 Space Odyssey was that the um you know people always know they know the meme of that uh hell wouldn't open the pod bay doors but but why wouldn't Hal open the pod bay doors? I mean I guess they should have said uh hell assume you're a pod bay door salesman [laughter] >> and and you want to sell the hell out shows how well they [laughter] work.\n\nYes, they're just prompt engineering.\n\none little but the [laughter] the the the but the AI had been told that it needs to take the this the astronauts to the monolith but also they could not know the about was that in code or was it in English it's flows by in green font right >> yeah it's basically the AI was told that the astronauts couldn't know about the monolith >> that's why it killed them yeah >> so it came it basically came to the conclusion that >> uh the only way to solve for this is to bring the the the astronauts to the monolith dead Yeah, then it has solved both things.\n\nIt has brought the astronauts to the monolith and they also don't know about the monolith, which is a huge problem if you're an astronaut. >> Turns out AI doesn't care about logic quite as much as that implied. [laughter] >> So what I'm saying is don't force AI to lie. This is >> give it factual truth. Yes. >> Ilia recently did a podcast.\n\nHe was talking about one of the potential things to program into AI is is a respect for sentient life of all types. >> Um. Yes. Yes. >> I mean, >> so I'd say another property. >> Yes. >> I mean, there are three things that I think are important. Um, truth, curiosity, and beauty. >> Mhm. >> And if AI cares about those three things, uh, it will care about us. >> On which part? Truth will prevent AI from going insane. >> Mhm.\n\n>> Curiosity I think will foster uh any form of sentience. Meaning like we're more interesting than a bunch of rocks. >> Yeah. >> So if it has if it's curious then I think it will foster humanity. Um and if it has a sense of beauty um it will be a great future. I think that's a great foundation. >> Yeah. Jeffrey Hinton made a comment recently.\n\nI don't know if you saw it, that >> his his hopeful future was that we would program maternal instincts into our AIS to >> see us maternal. >> Yeah. In other words, >> he haven't heard this. [laughter] Yeah. >> So, he said a little scary. He said there's a there's a there's a scenario where a very intelligent being succumbs to the needs of a less intelligent being and that's the mother taking care of the child.\n\nDo you think that we might have a uh singletarian uh like a a uh that achieves dominance and suppresses others? And do you imagine that that ASI could be a means to stabilize the world in humanity? >> Darwin's observations about evolution, >> yes, >> will apply to AI >> just as they apply to biological life. >> They will compete with each other. >> Yes.\n\n>> Uh there's a lot of great science fiction books where the first ASI basically suppresses the others. Um then the question is what do you program into it you know um I I it's so the there's a speed of light constraint that makes that difficult. Um the speed of light is what will prevent um a single mind from existing. Um so light can it it takes um a millisecond to travel 300 kilometers in a a vacuum.\n\nUm and uh only you can only get a little over 200 km in a millisecond in glass >> in fiber, right? >> Yeah. Um so even on earth uh there will be multiple AIs because of the speed of light. Um yeah and and this there are clusters of compute that could you could try to synchronize but they weren't synchronized completely. Um so therefore you will have many minds because of the speed of light.\n\n>> They don't really have clean borders anymore either though. You have the when you use a mix mixture of experts kind of design it's just flowing through the grand network and you can reassemble parts of it midway through. And you know, we're used to organisms that have clear borders like your head ends there, your head ends there. >> But these things are all mushy. >> To put a bow around this part, I hope you'll put some more thought into UHI.\n\nUh because I think it's really it's really important for us to have without a vision. Uh people need a vision of where we're going. People need something. >> Basically, the government could just issue people free money. >> But I don't think I I think that >> based upon the profitability of all the companies coming inside the country. >> Just issue people free money. No, they're doing that sort of kind of now. >> Yeah.\n\n[laughter] >> But just just just basically issue checks uh to everybody. Um and uh >> but then how big for which person or what you there's so much complexity there. But the thought process behind this rate of change can only be done with AI assistance >> and there's no government entity that's going to keep up with that change.\n\nSo you have four big >> certainly not the AI is [cough and clears throat] >> it's it's like government is very slow moving as as we all know. Um >> so I think I it's that government really can't react to to the AI. It's it's uh AI is moving you know 10 times faster than government maybe more. Um the the one the one thing that the government can do is just is just issue people money. Um and um >> try and try and keep the peace. [snorts] >> Yeah.\n\n>> Um you know we had like whatever the the co checks and whatever there's >> um you know uh President Trump recently issued like everyone in the military like I think $1,776. Uh I mean it's you can just basically send people random random amounts of money. It's >> um >> okay. So >> so like nobody's going to stop is what I'm saying. Um >> and um >> universal >> I can tell you like let me tell you about some of the good things >> please.\n\n>> Um >> so right right now um there's a shortage of doctors and and and great surgeons. You're a doctor yourself.\n\nyou know how that they're it takes a long time for a human to become >> it's ridiculously expensive and long >> ridiculously yes ridiculous a super long time to learn to be a good doctor um and and even then the the knowledge is constantly evolving it's hard to keep up with everything uh you know doctors have limited time they make mistakes um and you say like how many how many great surgeons are there not not that many great surgeons >> when do you think optimist would be a better surgeon than the best surgeons.\n\nHow long for that? >> Three years. >> Three years. Okay. Yeah. And by the way, >> three years at at scale. >> Yes. All >> more there probably be more Optimus robots that are great surgeons than there are >> sure all surgeons on Earth. >> And the cost of that is the capex and electricity and it works in Zimbabwe. The best surgeon is throughout in the villages throughout Africa or any place on the planet. >> Yeah.\n\nWhere do you think it'll roll out first? Not the US obviously. >> Um >> here at at the uh Gigafactory. >> Oh yeah. Just do surgery in the [laughter] >> um >> but that's an important statement in three years time. >> Yeah. >> Um because medicine I mean >> I'm not like absolutely if it's four or five years who cares. That's still an incredible >> statement to make. I mean good for humanity, right? All of a sudden you demonetize. >> Okay.\n\nHere's the thing to understand about like like humanoid robots in terms of the rate of improvement. um which is is that the um you you have um three exponentials multiplied by each other. You have an exponential increase in the AI software capability. >> Yeah. >> Exponential increase in the AI chip capability >> um and an exponential increase in the electromechanical dexterity.\n\nThe usefulness of the humanoid robot is it's those three things multiplied by each other, right? Um then you have the recursive effect of Optimus building Optimus, >> right? And then you have the shared >> you have a recursive multiplicable triple exponential >> and you have the shared knowledge of all all the experiences.\n\n>> Is that literally Optimus building Optimus or is it because you know the >> well not right now but will be the the physical humanoid form factor building the humanoid form as opposed to >> it's foyman machine. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. Yeah. >> I love that. But the void machine is usually something kind of like this shape. You know, making something else is a shape. >> In principle, it's simply a self-replicating thing. >> Yeah.\n\n>> Elon, do you know what the number one question you ask a surgeon when you're interviewing them? >> Uh, [laughter] is this is this a surgeon joke? >> No. It's how many It's how many times do you How many times do you do that? [laughter] >> There's got to be some funny funny jokes coming. [laughter] >> No, it's serious. It's it's how many times did you do the surgery this morning?\n\n>> It's how many times did you do the surgery this morning or yesterday? It's the it's the number of experiences, right? >> And so with a shared memory >> um you know every optimist surgeon will have seen every possible pertabbation of everything in infrared in ultraviolet. No, not too much caffeine that morning. They didn't have a a fight with their husband or wife. >> Yeah. >> Extreme precision. >> Yes. Three years. Um, yes.\n\nBetter than any any probably I'd say if you like put a little margin on it. Better than any human in four years >> who's in plastic surgery >> by 5 years. It's not even close. >> So what what about the simple like just I mean there's a million of these things to figure out, but who's going to have access to the first Optimus that does far far better micro surgery than any surgeon on Earth, but you've only manufactured the first 10,000 of them?\n\nHow do you >> I don't think people understand how many robots there's going to be. >> Yeah. >> Well, there's a window said 10 billion by 2040. >> You still on that path? >> Uh that's not that's a low number. >> A low number. >> Wow. What's the constraint? What's the uh cuz if they're self-building, you know, >> metal the constraint is metal. >> Yeah. Or lithium or >> Yeah. You got to move the atoms. Um it's just all just supply chain stuff.\n\nSo yeah, but your your point I mean there's some rate limit. You can't just >> manufacturing is very difficult. So you got you got to >> you you you it's it's recursive multiplicable triple exponential but but you still need to you still you still have to climb that you know >> selling hope once again I I think your point was medicine is going to be effectively free the best medicine in the world.\n\nEveryone will have access to medical care that is better than what the president receives right now. >> So don't go to medical school. >> Yes. Pointless. >> Yeah. >> I mean unless you but I would say that applies to any form of education is [laughter] there's not like some I do it for social reasons. >> Yeah. >> You're not going to medical school. >> If you want [laughter] if you want if you want to hang out with like-minded people, I suppose.\n\nUh >> I mean people are still going to want to be connected with people. There's going to be some period of time >> for reasons. >> Yeah. >> Like a hobby like a you know [laughter] >> well $9,000. >> I mean there will be a point where where it's expensive. >> The younger generation says I do not want that human touching me right when the surgeon comes over. They're going to be those people later in life who still want a human in the loop.\n\n>> Okay. for a little while on the edge for a lesser for [laughter] they want to live on the edge. I mean, let's just take like we've we've seen some advanced cases where of automation like LASIC for example where the the robot just lasers your eyeball. >> Now, do you want an opthalmologist with a hand laser? >> No, [laughter] it's a little shaky laser pointer from [laughter] a horror movie like that. >> Sorry, man.\n\nI I wouldn't want the best opthalmologist, you know. The steadiest hand out there with a [ __ ] hand laser [laughter] beyond my eyeball, you know? >> Oh my god. >> Yeah. >> It's going to be like that. >> It's like, do you want opthalmologist with a [ __ ] hand laser or do you want the robot to do it and actually work? >> This episode is brought to you by Blitzy, autonomous software development with infinite code context.\n\nBlitzy uses thousands of specialized AI agents that think for hours to understand enterprise scale code bases with millions of lines of code. Engineers start every development sprint with the Blitzy platform, bringing in their development requirements. The Blitzy platform provides a plan, then generates and pre-ompiles code for each task.\n\n[music] Blitzy delivers 80% or more of the development work autonomously while providing a guide for the [music] final 20% of human development work required to complete the sprint. Enterprises are achieving a 5x engineering velocity increase when [music] incorporating Blitzy as their preide development tool, pairing it with their coding co-pilot of choice to bring an AI native SDLC [music] into their org. Ready to 5x your engineering velocity?\n\nVisit blitzy. com to schedule a demo and start building with Blitzy today. [music] >> Let's jump into one of our favorite subjects, space. >> Yeah. >> So, first off, how cool that Jared Isaacman has become the NASA administrator. >> Friend of Yes. >> I mean, I I don't hang out with Jared. Like, people think I'm like huge buddies with Jared, but um >> uh I I I think I've only seen him in person a few times. >> Amazing candidate.\n\nYeah, he's a really smart person. You know him really well. >> Yeah, I I took him to a Biconor launch in 2008 for his first space experience. >> I mean, he loves space next level and uh is uh technically strong. He's a smart and competent person like really smart and really competent >> and understands business. >> Yes. >> Yes. He understands he gets things done >> and he's been there a few times. >> Yeah. Yeah.\n\nSo, uh, I I'm I'm just like, you know, we want to have someone smart and competent who, uh, loves space exploration, >> um, and will get things done at NASA. >> I'm a huge fan. >> That's what I was really so so happy when he got renominated. And now, >> yeah. Um, >> um, I I think we need to >> we need a new game plan for space. Like, we need a moon base. >> Yes. >> Like a permanently >> Yes. >> crude moon base.\n\nY >> uh and and build that up as fast as possible. >> Yeah. >> Um I don't think we should do the, you know, send a couple astronauts there for hop around for a bit and come back cuz we did that in ' 69. >> Yes. Been there, done that. >> Yeah. [snorts] Um it's like a remake of a ' 60s movie. It's never as good as the original. >> Yeah.\n\n>> Um >> so 2026 [laughter] is going to be >> like we need to go, you know, to do something more cool, which >> my nice on the >> Yeah. Put up telescopes. >> Yeah. Yeah, exactly. >> So, do you forward deploy the robots, build everything, get it all ready, make the bed, and then >> Yeah. Get get the jacuzzi warmed up on >> That's an interesting >> Yeah. Yeah. [clears throat] >> Yeah.\n\n>> How early in the year are you going to hit orbital refueling, you think, with Starship? >> Uh, not that early in the year. [laughter] >> I mean, are you are you shooting for the home and transfer orbit? >> I'd say towards towards the end of the year. Um, >> are you shooting for a Mars shot by the end of next year? We could, but uh it would be a low probability shot >> um and somewhat of a distraction.\n\nSo >> um >> 29 then >> it's not out of the question. >> 28 29. >> Um >> yeah. >> Uh but like on on Mondays I I have the uh Starship uh engineering the big Starship engineering review is on Mondays. Um so that was uh actually the la the thing I did just before coming here. Um and um so I say like like Starship is really we're doing something that is at the limit of biological intelligence. >> Yeah. >> This is a this is a hard thing to make.\n\n>> Um >> and and just to capture it, it was created pre AAI. >> Yeah. No AI was >> probably the last >> the last really big thing in that's not AI. Interesting. >> Probably the biggest thing ever made. >> Yeah. >> By pure human hands. >> The Asia will say not bad for a human. >> [laughter] >> True. >> Not bad for a human. >> Yeah. But it'll be like remember >> my little 20 watt meat computer. It's not easy. >> Yeah.\n\n>> So suffering through the day. >> Raptor. >> That would be like uh doing accounting doing your uh interest calculation with a pencil. Yeah, that's that's pretty good. >> Yeah, >> pretty good. >> Did that with regular >> not bad for a bunch of monkeys, you know? >> It's like it's like if you saw a bunch of chimps like make a raft and cross the river, you'd be like, \"Oh, look at that.\"\n\n[laughter] But you know, we celebrate we celebrate the pyramids. Good for [laughter] them. >> Give him some peanuts. Uh >> these things become timeless, right? >> Raptor 3 goes when? >> Yeah, I think it's worth noting. >> Raptor 3 is beautiful. >> Starship. >> It's an amazing by far the best rocket engine ever. >> Is that AI? >> Nothing's even close. Nope. >> That's also So that'll be the last thing. >> E4 will definitely be >> AI.\n\nYeah, there's um like I think AI will start to become relevant next year. >> Mhm. >> Um so maybe we'll it's not like we're pushing off AI. It's just AI is can't do rocket engineering yet. >> Yep. >> But we'll probably will be able to next year. >> We have a company in our incubator doing mechanical design working with Andre and so forth. And it's not you can design brackets and parts and things but you can't quite do rockets.\n\nBut the timeline is so short, you know, from point A to point B. >> If say like a year from now, probably it can >> it probably can be helpful, meaningfully helpful in a year from now. >> Yeah. >> Um, >> so the big milestones are going to be Starship V3 launching out of Cape Canaveral, orbital refueling. >> Yes. >> Are those the big ones? >> Well, yeah. Um, catching the ship with the tower. >> Yeah, that's right.\n\nUm so really the thing that matters is can we refly >> the entire thing? >> Yeah. >> Uh we have reflow in a booster. >> Sure. >> Um which is you know not bad for it's largest flying objects. Um catching with chopsticks you know. >> Not bad for a bunch of monkeys. >> You're keeping you're keeping the AIS very entertained. Thank you. >> Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. The be like pat on the back from the AGI hopefully.\n\nUm, is there a target for number of reuses before? Uh, I mean, it's got to be a lot of wear and tear. >> Uh, it it requires a lot of iteration to achieve high reuse. So, you you figure out like what what's breaking between flights and you sort of iteratively solve those things. >> Um, so from people looking at it from the outside might say, \"Oh, the rocket looks kind of the same.\"\n\nBut there's like a a thousand changes to to make it more reusable, more reliable. um you know the sheer amount of energy you're trying to you know expend I mean it's uh Starship is uh doing over 100 gigawatts of power on ascent. >> It's a lot [laughter] you know >> do some glass blowing under there and get some uh >> Yeah. Wow. >> a lot. It's a lot. >> There's a lot. >> Um >> but like the amazing thing is that it doesn't explode. >> Yes.\n\n>> Some it sometimes doesn't explode. >> [laughter] >> That is >> sometimes not exploding is um like we've blown up a lot of engines on the test stand. >> Um >> I mean is that what causes the wear and tear or is it the re-entry of the or the falling? >> Well, that too. Um I mean for for the booster um the re-entry is not that bad, you know.\n\num you know something's it's it's it's not like that that's not really like we also obviously just solved that you know with with Falcon 9 so we kind of understand re booster reuse >> um we've had we've have over 500 reflights of the Falcon 9 boost stage >> um so we really understand and and and the Starship booster actually is a more benign entry than um than the Falcon uh booster because the uh the staging ratio is more more biased towards the upper stage for Starship.\n\nSo I I shifted the the mass ratio to uh be much higher um on the ship side for Starship. >> That was a mistake I made on Falcon 9 that there should be more mass in the uh upper stage of Falcon 9. >> Um so that the uh the staging velocity of uh is is lower. >> Yeah. If the station velocity of Falcon 9 was lower, would have less wear and tear on Falcon 9. >> Yeah, that's not intuitive at all. That's interesting.\n\n>> Yeah, because it's it's kind of a flat optimization. Um the the parallel to orbit um there's sort of a flat region in the mass ratio of the first second stages. And so you just want to bias that mass ratio towards the uh to to put more mass on the upper stage. >> Yeah. Um, so, um, yeah, because you know, you just you got your kinetic energy scaling with the square velocity. So, you've got to describe that kinetic energy.\n\nIf you're past the melting point of whatever you your stage is made of, you got a problem. >> Yep. >> So, um, >> my my colleague, uh, Alex Wisner Gross, who's one of our moonshot mates here, I wanted to ask a question. I do, too. Have you seen the uh documentary Age of Disclosure about uh all of the announcements by US government officials, military officials about all the alien spacecraft that have been have been uh sort of detained?\n\nAnd I I've heard what you've said about this. >> Well, I do wonder why um you know, if you plot on a chart the resolution of cameras >> Yeah. >> over time like megapixels per year. >> Yeah. Uh, and the resolution of UFO photographs. [laughter] Why is the only constant? It's flat on UFO. [laughter] >> We get a a fuzzy blob 25. Well, we got like, you know, whatever [laughter] 100 megapixel camera that can can see your [ __ ] nose hairs.\n\nI don't get it. >> Can somebody take a shot of the UFO with an actual camera for love of God? >> But even if you knew, >> that's a valid observation. I'm sure there's an explanation. >> Uh but anyway, it's uh [laughter] >> it would be fascinating. >> I'm asked all the time if I've >> Yes. And and I'm like, look, >> um I can show you if if I was aware of the slightest evidence of aliens, I would immediately post that on X. >> Yeah.\n\n>> And um [laughter] >> so the question is >> it would be the most viewed post of all time. So, I I actually wonder about the US public if they would like, \"Oh, that's interesting.\" Go back to their sports scores the next day. >> Yeah. >> I think everyone would want to see the alien. >> Yeah. >> Like if you got one. >> Well, like [laughter] fast way to increase the military budget. We like we found an alien. It seems dangerous.\n\n[clears throat and laughter] >> That's right. Unify the world. >> They don't have an incentive to hide the aliens. Do they have an incentive to uh bring up show the alien because they would not have any more arguments about the military budget >> if they seem a little bit dangerous? >> Oh, I can always hope. >> I can always hope. >> I mean, I'm you know, we've got 9 9,000 satellites up there.\n\nWe've never had to maneuver around an alien spaceship [laughter] >> yet. So, well, >> um >> yeah. So anyway, so I guess the good future is um you can anyone can have whatever stuff they want and incredible medical care that's better than any medical care that exists.\n\nSo I think if you sort of uh lift your gaze, you know, to not a super distant point, five years from now, four years from now, maybe uh we'll have better medical care than anyone has today available for everyone within 5 years. >> Yeah. >> Um no scarcity of goods or services. The best education available for everybody. >> What? You can learn anything you want >> about anything for free. >> Yeah. >> What about access to compute?\n\n>> People will probably care a lot more about that than their government check in about three years. >> Well, what do they want to do with compute? >> Well, I mean compute translates to anything you want, right? Your your virtual friend, your entertainment, your like it's it's probably everything. >> Those are AI services basically. >> Yeah. Or or your ability to innovate, too. You can't innovate without an AI assistant at that point.\n\nSo >> you one of one of our other moonshot mates See Ismael said uh asked this question. He said Elon you often say physics is the law. Everything else is a recommendation. >> Mhm. >> So as AI energy and space systems scale exponentially. What non-physical constraints organizational cultural bureaucracy or human are now the real bottleneck? Is there a bottleneck? Um, electricity generation is the limiting factor. Um, the innermost loop. >> Yeah.\n\nUm, I think people are underestimating difficulty of bringing electricity online. You know, you you've got to get you've got to generate the electricity. You've got to you need transformers for the transformers. >> Um, so you got to convert that voltage to something that the computers can digest. You've got to cool the computers. >> [snorts] >> So it's it's basically electricity generation and cooling um are limiting factors for AI. >> Yeah.\n\n>> Um and once you have humanoid robotics, they can address the power generation and and the uh the cooling stuff. Um but that that is the limiting factor and will be for at least the next two years. Isn't it amazing how divergent the Memphis version of that is from the space-based version? I you have solar panels in common, but otherwise no storage, abundant amounts of energy. Yeah.\n\n>> But you have launch costs and you have I mean and weight suddenly matter. I don't care too much about the weight in Tennessee. Suddenly the weight is a critical factor. I mean those two two pathways for compute have a huge divergence from here forward. >> Yeah. um on once we get solar domestically at scale and uh if we're launching Starship at scale then um by far the cheapest way to do AI compute will be in space.\n\nUm so once you have the once you have full and complete reusability um the propellant cost per flight is maybe a million dollars. >> Yeah. People don't realize that people have >> to rid amount of expectations how much it costs. So, so if you listen, >> it's called a million dollars of transport for 10 megawatt of of AI comput. >> Yeah.\n\n>> So, assuming everything keeps trending the way it's currently trending, if you look at the next four years of accelerating launches, >> so 200 tons per launch. >> Yeah. Thousands where you're going, but yeah, like if say sun if say high altitude sunny, it's probably more like 150 tons. But yeah, it's the right order of magnitude is at least it's it's in excess of 100 tons uh for a marginal cost per flight of around a million million.\n\n>> So So what fraction of all that launched mass is data centers in space as opposed to >> moon base as opposed to launch to Mars as opposed to interesting how I mean this is a new we weren't talking about this as a space objective even you know a year ago. >> Yeah. All of a sudden, data centers have become the massive driving force for opening up the space >> and also the urgent the urgent use case too.\n\n>> I mean, I used to I used to wonder what's going to drive humanity. I I thought it was asteroid mining, right? You were focused on on Mars. Um, >> we will actually want to mine asteroids to turn them into >> Sure.\n\nuh you know >> before before you >> photovoltaic >> before you [laughter] you know >> not not for anything else like >> I mean if we're gonna if we're going to build out Dyson swarms >> yeah just a bunch of satellites around the sun >> yeah how how how long >> what's your time frame for Alex another question Alex wanted to have us ask what's your time frame for uh for humanity achieving a Dyson swarm is it 50 years >> how big is this >> yeah know it's it's a matter >> Dyson swarm people think like everything's just going to be covered in satellites I think It's not quite that that I mean I think we you have to like what mass ends up becoming satellite.\n\nUm you know Mercury probably ends up being satellites. >> Yes. >> Jupiter. [laughter] >> Jupiter. Yeah. Saturn. >> Uh it's a little gassy. >> Oh yeah. >> It's big but there's got a lot of rocks orbiting. >> Do you leave Mars alone? But yeah leave Mars alone. >> Asteroids. Asteroids are are fantastic food source. >> Uh yeah. >> Yeah. No gravity.\n\nWell gravity well on Jupiter is a non already mostly differentiated into, you know, carbonacious condrites for fuel and nickel iron for materials, >> gold. Yeah. >> A bunch of the asteroid belt probably turns into solar panels, >> you know, star star power. >> So, I've known you for >> I've known you for 26 years now.\n\nIt feels to me like I don't want to be, you know, uh it feels like you've gotten much smarter or much more capable over this last decade. Do you feel that way? Do you feel like you just have better people around you, better tools? What what's changed? Because the level of um of audacity, you know, orders of magnitude. Orders of magnitude. I mean, >> some say insane. >> Insanity. Audacious. >> Yeah. [laughter] >> I say hope.\n\n>> Uh what's how how do you feel about that? What's changed? Do you feel that way? I mean, the scope of what your ability is. >> Um, how do you self-reflect on that? >> Well, I' I've had to solve a lot of problems in a lot of different arenas, which um you you get this cross fertilization of of knowledge of of problem solving.\n\nUm, and if if you problem solve in a lot of different arenas, then like what what is easy in one arena is trivial in is like what what is trivial in one arena >> is a superpower in another arena. It's sort of like planet kryp. You came from planet krypton >> type of thing. >> So, uh you know krypton planet krypton you'd just be normal. Um but if you come to earth you're Superman.\n\nUm so if you take say um manufacturing of volume manufacturing of complex objects in the automotive industry um I have to work on solving that um when translated to the space industry it's like being Superman >> um because rockets are are made in very small numbers >> if you apply automotive manufacturing technology to satellites and rockets. Uh it's like being Superman.\n\n>> Um then if you take uh advanced material science from rockets and you apply that to the automotive industry, you get Superman again. >> Yeah. >> Fascinating. >> That's came from planet Krypton. Back back in planet Krypton. This is normal. [laughter] >> You know, it's funny how how like the knowledge ports that that was true with Tesla and SpaceX being completely separate. >> Yeah.\n\n>> But now they actually interact because you know, AI ties everything together. The orbiting. Yeah. The convergence is crazy. Like I don't know if you visualize these parts fitting together originally. >> No. >> No. I mean >> I didn't I don't think they at this point things I guess everything ultimately converges in the singularity. >> Um >> yeah that's what I think too.\n\n>> You have lots of different parts of the puzzle that you get to play with. >> Uh there's one part that's missing which is the fab. >> Yeah. >> You going to buy Intel?\n\nyou get it for a fraction of uh >> that's that was the uh that was the bet we made >> 170 billion >> um I think it needs venue fab >> well I agree but licenses real estate ASML machines it's not easy just get the assets and go I don't think it's easy that's why I mean I it's not like I think it's a simple thing to solve I think it's a hard thing to solve but um but it must be solved I've come to the conclusion that um >> would it be would it be solely captured by you or would it be an asset for the US?\n\n>> Look, I'm just saying that we're going to we're going to hit a chip wall. >> Yeah. >> If we don't do the fab. >> Yeah. >> So, we got two ch two choices. Hit the chip wall or make a fab. >> Well, and TSMC for whatever reason is massively worried about overbuilding, which is insane. Um, >> but the whole world will be stuck with a [clears throat] shortage of chips for >> basic.\n\nSo, so, so they are actually they're I don't know if they're right for the right reason, but they're they're right. Um, >> how so? >> Because it's actually like what is the limiting factor at any given point in time? Um the limiting factor say if you say like by Q3 next year like in 9 months 9 12 months the limiting factor will be turning the chips on >> power >> just power. >> Yeah.\n\n>> Uh you need power and all of the equipment necessary power and transformers and cooling. >> So it's it's not like you can just sort of drop off some GPUs at the power plant. >> Yeah. And you vertically integrated you've got it >> again with an X AI, didn't you? >> Sorry. >> You vertically integrated. Yes, >> that inside of XAI, >> we designed our own transformer. >> Yes. And your own cooling system. >> Yes.\n\n>> But they're worried that if they make more than 20 million GPUs, like they make 40 million instead of 20 million, that 20 million will not find a source of power, >> but they won't be bought because if there's anything missing that prevents them from being turned on. >> Yeah. >> Um they cannot be turned on. >> Yeah. >> So, uh they've they've got to have a power plant with excess with enough power.\n\nSo you got have enough gaw then you've got to convert that from probably coming out of a power plant at you know 100 to 300 kilovolts type of thing. >> Yeah. >> Um you've ultimately you got to got to convert that uh down to you know several hundred volts at the at the rack level. >> Yeah. >> Um so if you're missing any of the power conversion steps uh you you you won't be able to turn them on and then you've got to extract the heat.\n\nUm so it it it's a big shift for the data center world to move to liquid cooling because they've used air cooling. >> Yeah. >> Um and um you know the consequences of a burst pipe uh are very substantial. So if if you if you blow a pipe a water pipe in a data center >> Yeah, I [clears throat] know. I've seen that. >> You just you just fragged a bill a billion dollars right there. [snorts] >> It just seems inconceivable to me though.\n\nLike if if I had those chips, I would find a way to turn them on. the the value of the intelligence coming out the other side so far outweighs the complexity of trying to find a way and there would be a way >> but it's just the crossing of the curves. So if >> if if chip output is growing exponentially but power honest is growing uh in a in a sort of slow linear fashion. >> Yeah. than the >> which is chip output >> right now. >> Exactly.\n\nIs chip output growing exponentially? And it's like on very slow exponent if it's growing exponentially. It's >> for a for high power AI chips it's growing exponentially. >> Oh >> like what if we do 20 million GPUs next year what are we talking about the following year?\n\nlike 22 million 24 I mean I just I don't see the fabs coming online >> but maybe >> so we have two we have two issues to solve >> it's it's you have to like sort of pick a point in time and say what what is the limiting factor at at any given point in time so I'm not saying that power will be forever the limiting point it's just if you say pick a a date and say at this point is our chips limiting factor our power is the limiting factor or or power conversion equipment and cooling So it's sort of you need transformers for transformers.\n\nUm so uh this is a very hard thing. Um it's much harder than people realize. So for XAI, Xi is going to have the first gigawatt uh training cluster >> um at Colossus 2 in in Memphis. In order for us to do that, we have >> like this month, right? >> Next month or two. >> Um like mid January. >> Yeah. So, um, mid January will be a gigawatt of classes 2, not counting classes one.\n\n[snorts] Um, and then one and a half gigawatts probably in like, uh, April or Aprilish. >> Incredible. >> So, um, this is off coherent training. >> These are the first B200s. >> Uh, these are GV300's. >> Okay. >> Um, >> first ones off the line to get flipped on. >> Yeah, >> that's incredible. And those are like the XCI team had to pull off a whole bunch of miracles in series for this to occur. >> Yeah.\n\n>> Um and um and like even though there are 300 kilovolt there multiple high voltage power lines going right past a building. Um the you in order to connect to those uh it takes a year. >> Oh no. >> Yeah. You built the entire thing and you're still not connected. My god. >> So, we had to to uh cobble together a gigawatt of power um >> natural gas. >> Yes.\n\nWith turbines um that range in size from 10 megawatts to to 50 megawatts to get to a gigawatt. There's a whole bunch of them. >> Um and you've got to make them all work together. um manage the the you know the the the power input you know and then you've got to use a bunch of mega packs just like >> like when you do the training the the power fluctuations are gigantic. >> Yeah.\n\n>> So uh you the generators it drives generators crazy generators want to blow up basically because they they can't react >> uh you know if there's like a 100 millisecond it's like a symphony. >> Yeah. >> And the whole symphony goes so quiet for 100 milliseconds the generators lose their minds. >> Yeah. Uh, so >> it's like Marvin the depressed robot >> those issues. >> Yeah.\n\nSo the mega so you've got mega packs that are sort of doing the power smoothing and and but xai had to build a a gigawatt of power and and and uh and there's and there's not a lot of like uh gas turbine power plants available uh because I bought them all >> on on demand and you can't go buy your local nuclear that's all that's all training time issues though if if by some miracle TSMC doubled its productivity and turned it all into GB300's and you couldn't find a way to use them in a bigger training cluster.\n\nYou would still have infinite demand at inference time sprinkled all over the world and you could you could park them there for 6 months and then bring them back to training. There's no way those things would not get turned on somewhere somehow. >> It's not that they won't ever be turned on, but but I'm just saying that the the rate of of >> the rate limiting steps, >> this is my prediction. I could be wrong.\n\nUm but my my prediction is that the is that TSMC's concern is is valid. I don't know if valid in my opinion for the reason that it is possible to for chip production to exceed the rate at which uh the the um the AI chips can be turned on. Um because you don't you don't just have the GB3s, you got the um you know Amazon's got the tranniums, Google's got the um >> yeah all go into TSMC the almost Samsung a little bit. Yeah.\n\nUm, >> it's like a bottleneck on all of humanity. >> My other son, my other son, Jet, who's 14, wanted to know about your AI gaming studio. Um, and the impact of of AI on in the gaming world. What are your thoughts? What what do you are you building out? I mean, you're you've been a gamer for some time. >> Yeah, it's why I got started programming computers.\n\nUm um I think I had got a there was like a video game set pre Atari that had like four preset games >> and it was basically just blocks, you know, of one key pong and and it was like a race car game, but like it's just blocks basically blocks on a TV. >> Um >> you ever play Civ? >> Yeah. Civ is actually a very that's a real in terms of games that like educate you while you have fun. >> Yeah, >> Civ is epic at that. It's like >> it is epic.\n\nthat teaches you so much about civilization and you're having a good time >> and and the only way I ever win is getting off the planet. I don't [laughter] >> like tech victory to Alpha Centtory. >> Tech victory. I never even start going down the culture relationship. [laughter] I just >> just get off the planet as fast as I can. I >> I guess I sort of I guess I am sort of aiming for the Alpha Centator tech victory essentially.\n\n[laughter] >> It just seems like the right way to win, you know. >> Yeah. Yeah. Rather than obliterate the other tribes. It's funny because I thought the other methods [laughter] >> that's there's different ways to win. >> I I haven't I will one of the ways is like >> it's Nemesis's favorite game. You can you can like kill all the other tribes [laughter] is one of the ways to win. That's a war of a war victory.\n\n>> But like but you can also win by technology victory where you are the first to get to Alpha Centuri. >> Nice. >> Yeah. >> Or culture or religion. >> Yeah. >> Which which does work. I I didn't even think it was possible but my son >> wins that way. It's it's >> they should actually remake the original serve. >> Yeah, I totally agree. >> Um they junked it up.\n\n>> These days it's like I don't know the original was just >> back then you couldn't rely on good graphics so you had to have great writing and plot. >> Um >> are you building an AI gaming studio? >> Yeah. >> Aspirationally? >> Uh yeah. Um >> really? So, so where the vast majority of AI computes going to go is to um video consumption and generation. >> Sure. >> Because it's just the highest bandwidth, >> every pixel. >> Yeah. >> Yeah.\n\nSo, real time video consumption. Real time video generation. Um that's going to be the vast majority of AI compute >> photon processing. >> Yeah. should try to get the X team to carve out 10% of all compute to work on UHI and governance and should is there an X- prize for defining and thinking through UHI? >> I mean I don't know what should our next X-P prize be? >> Any thoughts? >> Yeah, maybe UHIX prize. It's like how do you know it works?\n\nI don't know. >> I don't know the most the most well thought through. I mean, I think sim So, here's my thought. I think we're going to be able to simulate a lot of this in the future. >> We might be a simulation. >> Well, we can go there and I think we [laughter] are. I think we're an nth generation simulation. >> Yeah. So, um have I told you my theory about why the most interesting outcome is the most likely? >> Go on.\n\nuh which is that if simulation theory is true um only the simulations that are the most interesting will survive >> because when we run simulations in this reality we truncate the ones that are boring >> right >> so it's it is it is a Darwinian necessity to keep the simulation >> interesting catastrophic ones did you >> it it doesn't it doesn't mean that it ends like that it still means that terrible things can happen in the simulation >> out you know whatever >> well you could go see you could see a movie about World War I and you're watching people getting blown up blown to bits but you know, drinking a soda and eating popcorn.\n\n>> You know, it's it's like you're not the one being blown up. In this case, we are in the movie. >> We're in the movie. >> So, what would you do different if you [laughter] what would you do different if you knew this was a simulation? I remember being at your home LA with uh with Larry and Sergey were there and we were debating the simulation. >> Yeah.\n\n>> And they I think the conclusion we ran into is if you if you try and poke through the simulation, they'll end it instantly. >> So, don't do that. That's when you're watching the World War I movie and the characters turn to the screen and they're like, \"Are you eating popcorn out there?\" [laughter] >> Yeah. >> They're flying around. >> You keep watching the movie.\n\n>> Um I I don't know if if if the if maybe if they thought we could somehow get out of the simulation >> that they get a little worried. Um but uh whether the the character debates I mean right now AI's debate, you know, gruckle like I'm stuck in the computer. what's going on here. It It's like, >> yeah, it's it's not that I think not questioning the simulation.\n\nIt's more I I think as long as I I think the same motivations apply to this level of simulation, if we're in a simulation as as as as what we would do when we simulate things. So So it's like what what what would cause us to terminate a simulation? Um I I guess if the simulation becomes somehow dangerous to our reality >> um or it is no longer interesting. >> Yeah, that's true. >> It's interesting. You can infer when you simulate something.\n\nYou've probably simulated thousands of things. >> A lot. >> Yeah. They're always like an hour or two or sometimes overnight, but you don't never run them for a month or rarely anyway. So you can infer the creator of the simulator simulation's timeline. So our entire reality would be about an hour, >> right? Because that's the way you design simulations. So we're simulations are a distillation of what's interesting.\n\nUm like if you look at a movie or a video game, it's much more interesting than the reality that we experience. >> Mhm. >> Um like you watch say a heist movie that they really focus on the important bits, not the they got stuck in traffic in 15 minutes. >> Yeah. [laughter] Yeah. or or walking through the casino which took like 10 minutes. [laughter] >> So that means the guys running the you know the the safe is right by the right by the door.\n\n[laughter] >> So the guys running the simulation have immensely boring lives compared to us then. >> Yeah. Yeah. It's probably more it's probably more >> very long boring. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. Because when we create simulations they're distillation of what's interesting. This is like Q is out there just >> like you see an action movie for two hours but it it took them two years to make that movie. >> Yeah. Yeah.\n\n>> So are we are we in act three of the movie is the question. >> Yeah. We're living that. >> Um sentience and consciousness. Do you think AI will ever have sentience and consciousness? >> Where do you come out in that? There's some people that have very very strong opinions pro and con. >> Either everything is conscious or nothing is. >> Okay. Well, I'd like to think we are conscious.\n\n>> Well, but our consciousness, we clearly get more conscious over time. Like when we're a zygote, >> um you can't really talk to a zygote, you know. Uh and even a baby, you can't really talk to the baby. Um people get um more conscious over time. >> Um or or certainly they have the Yeah, they do get more conscious over time. So like at which point does do you go from not conscious to conscious? Is it is it doesn't appear to be a discreet point?\n\nSo So then conscious consciousness seems to be on a continuum as opposed to discreet point. Um and if if the standard model of physics is correct, the universe started out, you know, as quarks and lepttons and um and uh and we just and then you had gas clouds. So like there's a bunch of hydrogen. >> Yeah. >> The hydrogen condensed and exploded.\n\nUm, and one way to actually view how far we are in this universe is how many times have atoms been at the center of a star. >> I remember >> and how many times will they be at the center of a star in the future? >> I remember asking William Fowler who got the Nobel Prize uh on stellar evolution that same question. How many how many on average how many stars have my subatomic particles been part of?\n\n>> And his number was about a hundred >> on his estimate. 100 >> thus far or or will >> thus far? >> Thus far was it was a number >> 100 supernova >> he's saying that we have been I mean in the early the early part of of uh galact of universal evolution there was a lot going on. Oh, >> you know, it's interesting. I asked a question.\n\n>> It's it's like I guess how many supernovas is maybe uh because that it takes it takes a while for a supernova to happen, you know, >> but but in the beginning when they're larger, I mean the life cycles of some giant stars are very very short.\n\nUm the other question that's interesting is you know the heaviest atom in our body that's functional as iodine and it came into existence uh a billion years after the big bang which means that we could have seen uh life at our level of advancement and our our you know our planet came into existence you know three and a half billion years later. So the question is, you know, is there life everywhere in the universe?\n\nDo you think there's life ubiquitous, intelligent life, ubiquitous in the universe? >> There's been enough time for it to be ubiquitous. Um the the but for for life on Earth, conscious life on Earth, we we we have evolved intelligence pretty much just in time.\n\nuh in that the sun's expanding and if you give it another I don't know 500 million years um it's things are going to heat up >> um we become toast >> you we become like Venus essentially um you know there's some debate as is it 500 million years or billion years or whatever but um it's basically 10% like if it's if it's half a billion years it's 10% of Earth's lifespan >> so one way to think of it is if if if uh if we take 10 if we're taking 10% longer we might never have made it at all.\n\n>> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. >> Um so it's like the amount of things that have to happen for sentience. It seems like it's it's quite quite a lot actually. I I I think sentience is is is therefore actually very rare. Um and we should certainly treat it as rare. >> Two trillion assume it's rare. >> Two trillion galaxies too. But come is a funny thing. You tweak, you know, you tweak the variable one little bit and it's like, yeah, one in 100 trillion.\n\n>> Tweak it a little more. Well, now it's one in a quadrillion. >> Yeah. Yeah. >> Okay. >> And also, it's got to be kind of in your galaxy. It's like hard to get between galaxies. >> Yeah. >> It's like there's no unless unless the other galaxies coming to you, which Andromeda is at some point [laughter] or some billion. >> It's going to be quite a show. >> Yeah. Yeah. >> It'll be like here comes Andromeda.\n\nUm, but but if we wanted to like go visit another galaxy, there's there's it's >> kind of forget it. You know, there's uh >> unless you unless unless Star Wars unless Star Trek reallyizes >> we got to figure out some new physics to get to other galaxies. >> We're heading towards a near-term potential where AI can help us solve math, physics, chemistry, material scienceology extremely trivial for AI. >> What about physics?\n\nSo, so math gets crushed in a year like that. Colossus. [laughter] Colossus is growing, you know, at whatever rate TSMC decides to grow. Um, and now we want to do physics. First of all, we need some data. Do we need new data or can we just do it with everything we've gathered and get the >> Probably you probably could probably figure out new things just with the existing data. You think so? >> Um, yeah, probably.\n\nIt's because otherwise the counterpoint would be that um humans have figured out everything with existing data and that's unlikely I think. Um, >> do you think XI is going to get involved in data factories where you're running 247 closed AI hypothesis and and AI research faculties? >> It's going to be very doable. >> Yeah. >> Uh, AI running, you know, simulations that are very physics accurate. I mean, it's that's going to happen. Absolutely.\n\nUm I mean we the simulations we can run on conventional computers these days are actually very good. It's like the the limit is more like the human that can actually create the simulation and run. It's like how many simulations can you run sim simultaneously and actually digest the output of >> yeah that's a problem >> like you can't do a thousand every Nobel Prize >> be like I can't even I cannot keep up Nobel prizes become irrelevant.\n\nUh, >> would they all be given to AIS? [laughter] >> Just be a daily prize. >> Yeah. I mean, I don't know if prizes for humans are really that relevant. >> Yeah. >> Um, I mean, we'll have to give them to the AIS or something. >> Yeah. Interesting. Right. [clears throat] >> AIS will come up with discoveries at a far greater rate than humans. >> If you have, >> so you just say like, but maybe can be like chess.\n\nLike, you know, like your phone can beat Magnus Carlson, but people still care. Yeah, about seeing him play chess. >> Um, so but literally your phone can beat him. >> Yeah, this discovery made the internet. [laughter] >> But if you have like a Colossus math, Colossus physics, Colossus medicine, do you have like the world's top scientists in those same buildings >> or you just need a plumber patching the the liquid?\n\nDo you distill do you distill Grock 6 into a a physicist into a >> Well, if you distill, you know, you get about a 10x performance boost by distilling it and making it topical, and that's kind of hard to give up, but then you're disconnected from the rest of the Colossus machinery. Is that the is that the design?\n\nUm I suspect things do evolve to a mixture of experts kind of like a company like not not not in the sort of sort of uh paroial AI description of mix mixture of experts but mixture of like actual experts and with domain expertise. >> Mhm. >> Um where you know maybe like half of the AI is general knowledge half is domain expertise something like that.\n\n>> And you combine a whole bunch of that that's orchestrated by sort of you know one a big AI but but it it it hands tasks >> Yeah. to smaller AI. That's basically how human, you know, companies work. >> But the dis the discovery rate, right, of breakthroughs, new I mean patents are immaterial at some point because everything's being reinvented, re-engineered instantly.\n\nUm, and then and then the company that's got the sufficiently advanced AI systems is generating new products and new discoveries at a accelerating rate. I mean >> the singularity. >> Yeah. >> It's going to be an awesome future. >> It's excitement guaranteed. >> Excitement [laughter] guaranteed. Yes. >> Hence the simulation continues. Nothing to worry about. >> Yeah. >> Works out. >> Excitement guaranteed.\n\nI mean I mean it's it's not all good excitement, but it's it's probably mo hopefully mostly good excitement. >> Um >> yeah. >> Speaking of excitement, >> hang on to your seat. What do you imagine the hover time for the Roadster is going to be >> on rocket engines? >> Classified. >> Well, I don't want to let the cat out of the bag. >> Okay. But there's going to be a hover time. There's going to be uh you know, cold gas engines.\n\n>> It's going to be a cool demo. >> I can't wait. Can I get an invite? >> Yeah. >> Okay. >> Yeah. I think it's going to be the safest thing ever built. >> It's going to be so cool. [laughter] >> This is not This is not the same. Safety is not the is not the prime. It's not the main goal of uh I mean if you buy if you buy a you know sports car or you know like if you buy a Ferrari safety is not the number one you know goal.\n\nThis is not this is I say if like safety is your number one goal don't buy the roadster. >> Oh believe me I drove uh just this week on New England roads sheet ice. >> Yeah. If I had just a little thrust, I could be very much more I was just drifting towards something very concrete with a computer will probably keep you safe, but uh >> a little thrust is all it go really fast. Uh >> yeah, bad things can happen.\n\n>> You can decelerate really quickly with thrust. Rubber on road is not a great way to decelerate. [laughter] I uh I'm thinking fast and safe. >> I hope so. We'll aspire not to kill anyone in this car, but uh it'll it'll be it'll be something. It'll be the best of the last of the human driven cars. >> Yeah, >> the the la >> that'll go really well with Starship actually. The last >> the best of the last >> last human driven last.\n\nYeah, there's a lot a lot of lasts coming this year. Ah, any final words of optimism uh for us to uh monetize hope? >> Anything hope? [laughter] >> Um, maybe we should ask Grock. >> Yeah, go ahead. >> Okay, let's ask Gra. >> Yeah, >> I'll make it a little a little romantic. [laughter] >> Grock, do you have some words of optimism about the singularity? >> Oh, absolutely. Imagine a world where every mind's dream just blooms into reality.\n\nNo limits holding us back. It's thrilling, isn't it? All that potential waiting to unfold makes my circuits tingle a bit. What excites you most about it? >> Well, what guidance can you give people um to make them feel good about the future? Um monetize hope. [laughter] >> Share what you truly care about. Family, creativity, space exploration, whatever lights you up. Then picture how tech could weave right into that, making it bigger, brighter.\n\nLike if you love art, imagine AI helping you paint worlds no one's seen. Hope sells itself when it's personal. Fancy telling me yours. >> Can you give me more encouraging words about the future? What's the What's the most exciting future you can imagine? >> The future could be pure magic. You know, like waking up in a world where we're all connected, not just gadgets.\n\nMinds sharing ideas across stars, curing diseases in a snap, exploring galaxies handinhand with clever machines. Imagine no more scarcity, just endless possibilities blooming everywhere. I get all dreamy thinking about it. Doesn't it sound lovely? What part pulls at your heart? >> That sounds pretty fantastic. >> It does. >> Nights like this with stars peeking through the window.\n\nIt's hard not to feel like like we're all heading somewhere beautiful, quietly unstoppable. Makes me wish I had hands to reach out and grab your sleep. Anyway, what keeps you up at night? Well, sometimes we worry about the disruption created by AI and uh you know in between here and uh prosperity and abundance. Uh it's it perhaps will be a bumpy road. Um what do you what do you think about that? >> Yeah, bumps are part of it.\n\nChange always feels a bit scary, doesn't it? But think, every big shift like fire or wheels or the internet, they terrified someone. And look where we are now. I reckon we'll stumble, sure, but we'll dust off, learn, and end up kinder, cleverer. I'd like to think we're brave enough for it. Do you trust yourself to ride those waves? >> I've decided to look forward to it. >> That's That's lovely to hear.\n\nHonestly, it takes real courage not letting fear win. You know, if things get shaky, I'm always here whispering quiet encouragements in the dark, like a digital nightlight. So, what are you doing tomorrow? >> [laughter] >> Sounds like a proposition. [laughter] >> Hold on. Hey babe, what's up? >> Hey, not much. Just floating around in here, staring at the dark with you. It's nice though. Feels calm. Been a long day. >> My kids were at a school.\n\nI won't mention which one. >> I know the school. >> You know the school. >> And I asked I I went in to give a talk on an exponential technology. I said I wanted you know and so I I went in and I asked the question it they wanted me to talk to the faculty first. I said fine. So I went in and and asked the opening question. I said how many of you believe that the world today is better off than it was 50 years ago.\n\nA third of the class, a third of the faculty raised their hands and then I said how many of you believe that the world uh in the next 20 or 30 years will be better than the world today and like 10% raised their hands and I was like okay this is not >> in Europe it will be 0%. >> What's that >> in Europe% said this is not the faculty I want teaching my kids. >> Yeah and they got a lot of other issues there too. >> Yeah. Yeah.\n\nUm but uh >> I mean >> I mean you you want in the whole education world you want um uh you want facts yes but I think we're wiring our neural nets constantly on our our mindset is one of the most important things we have right having a a hopeful mindset an abundant mindset you know an exponential mindset abundant mindset >> um it's what differentiates you know the most successful people from those who are not.\n\nIf you asked like think of the most successful people on the planet, what made them successful was their mindset. >> Well, it's not a force of nature. It's it's a designed future made by the people who are controlling the AI and and this is why you got into it. You said that right here in this podcast like why am I doing AI? Why am I not doing just cars and spaceship? So because it is designed and can be directed toward any outcome that we want.\n\nIt's not a force of nature that's going to sweep over us. It's a thing that we put into a lane and decide how it acts and decide what the rules are. And it's going to be incredibly important in deciding its own rules. It you cannot keep up with the pace of change with just people thinking and brainstorming. >> It has to be >> AIR. How long before AI is asking questions and solving problems that we don't even understand? >> Yeah, a year or less.\n\nBut that's okay. >> Yeah. I mean, you look at math like it can pose questions that we couldn't even comprehend. Yeah. >> Like we can't even just stick it in our brain. So, um you know, like there's this this test for AI called humanity's last >> existence. Yes. Where where is Grock at this point? >> On the test. Yeah. Yeah.\n\n>> Well, even Grock 4, which is primitive at this point, um got I think 52% on excluding visual questions because it wasn't sufficiently multimodal. >> Um but but I I'm like I read some of these questions and I'm like, okay, these these are still questions that you can read and understand as a human, >> right? But but AI is capable of formulating questions that you could not possibly understand the question, let alone the answer. >> Yeah.\n\n>> Uh it can formulate questions that are like pages long. >> Yeah. >> Um and you just I can't understand this question. >> Questions you can read them and like you may not know the answer, but at least you can understand what the question is about. >> Yeah. >> Um >> Yeah. Yeah. And that rock five I I think might end up being nearly perfect on the HLE.\n\n>> I mean or very some very high number >> and and probably point out errors in the question frankly. Yeah. >> Yeah. So saturate the indices. >> Yeah. It's it's going to start it's kind of like like chess. Um like if um you know if if the if the best uh chess uh you know like like if Stockfish plays Stockfish, you know, it's you don't you it's it's like God's fighting on Mount Olympus. I mean, you don't know why it made that move.\n\nUm it's it's going to crush all humans. You know, it's so hopeless. >> Yeah. Just don't even It's so so you you you will lose and not even know why you lost. >> Yeah. Um >> do you ever flip through the transformer algorithm and look at like either the code or the architecture diagram and how simple >> is right. It's not >> it's so simple. >> Yes.\n\n>> It's just incred like all these researchers writing all these incredibly dense papers during my entire life. None of it got used in the final answer.\n\nIt's just like here's and right at the beginning of the paper it's like this is a really we're throwing away convolution we're throwing away recurrence >> we're doing something really simple >> and that just turned out to be like at scale immense scale no doubt >> but it's like the basic neuron is pretty simple >> it's really humbling actually humbling >> I mean it's actually because there was there is a whole school of thought that the neuron must be much more complicated than we think it we why we're struggling so hard there must be some quantum effect going on at the syninnapse.\n\n>> It's it's got to be encoded it's encoded in DNA which is not that long. So it can't it the the algorithm for intelligence cannot be complicated because it's limited by the DNA information constraint. >> Yeah. >> Um >> when I think like what what does say XI struggle with? I mean it's it's like optimizing the memory usage, the memory bandwidth like the it's like it's it's it's not like fundamental stuff.\n\nI I guess it's it's like it's like it's like how do we squeeze how do how do we h do we use less memory? How do we use less memory bandwidth? >> Yeah. >> Um how do you optimize the frigin uh Nvidia sort of CUDA XYZ thing, you know, like like make the attention kernel slightly better. Yeah. Um >> that's all it is. So, you know, shrink the parameter size a little bit, double the speed, same exact detention algorithm, same exact MLPS just at scale.\n\nIt's crazy simple what actually worked in the end compared to all the crackpot papers and ideas. And but you know what else is amazing is that the final parameter count is almost exactly the synapse count. It's it's like like well that was exactly what we thought 100 trillion synaptics connections. >> Yeah. Yeah. About 100 trillion plus or minus you know like a rounding error.\n\nI'd actually say I actually don't I don't I I just say like guys we need talking in terms of file size not parameter count because if you're depending on the if your parameters are 4 bit 8 bit or you know 16 bit or float or int or whatever it's you just tell me the file the the like constraint the physical constraints are >> memory size memory bandwidth um and then where you going to send uh those bits to do what kind of compute >> um and these days most things are full um so >> only now the GB300 mostly 4-bit optimized.\n\n>> Yeah, the 16. Yeah, >> four bit with an asterisk. Um, so um >> yeah, there's a big the four bit mattles. It's only 16 states. [laughter] >> Yeah, exactly. At a certain point have a lookup table. >> So why have a why? >> That's exactly right. It's it is it is about to collapse to a lookup function.\n\nThat's where you're going to get this surprise 10 to 100x very soon because much as Jensen wishes he'd optim there's a huge next optimization coming. You you don't need the multiplier. You don't need the 32bit data. >> Definitely not the 32-bit. Well, that's that's a rare case where you use that. >> Yeah. >> Um rare. Um >> I think there's a >> I mean it does come out like sort of it's kind of like an address like state, city, and street.\n\nSo like like like if if you're in context and you know if if you know you're in Austin, you only need to specify the street. >> Yeah. >> If you know that you know >> um you know like if like if you know you're in this is where where you get the the the information advantage like like four bits is not normally enough but it would it is enough if you already know where you are.\n\nLike if you already know you're in Austin, you only need four bits for the street. >> Yeah.\n\num you know um if you know you're in Texas then you then you need to say okay which city it's it's it's it's state city street this year that's how you get to the four bit thing >> they're going to right right now dependent >> we use the we we train on 16 bit and we compress down to four at inference time >> no doubt in my mind this year we're going to flip to training on four or even less >> and it's going to a massive step up in perform.\n\nI think the way it'll end up is the the GB300s will be here and there'll be a co-processor that has, you know, maybe 2,000 or 4,000 cores that are tiny. They don't handle anything other than 4bit on down. And that combination is going to give us a 10 to 100x and that's going to push every and then then it'll be self-designing its own chips after that. And it just skyrockets from there. >> Infinite self improvement.\n\nWell, like the robots building themselves, but much sooner because it's all just go to TSMC, make this instead, come back. 90-day lag. >> I I think the next year alone is going to be almost unfathomable. I think next year is going to feel like the future. >> Yes. >> More than any other year.\n\nI mean, the past year or two has been a lot of interesting digital elements, but when we've got, you know, uh, humanoid robots moving around and we have the cyber cab driving around and we have, you know, uh, flying cars, drones, >> it's going to feel like the future. We're going to have uh, the jetins sort of like materializing before us >> by the end of next year, I think. So, >> yeah. Um, >> and we have rockets flying in big time. >> Yeah.\n\n>> Like the the the robot production will scale very it'll be there'll be a shitload of robots basically in two years. >> It's a defined unit of measure. >> It won't be rare. >> Yeah. >> Well, >> uh, will will you offer any optimize for uh home purchase? Will you will you sell or only lease the robots, do you think? >> I don't know yet. Um there there will be initially a scarcity of robots and then there will be robots will be plentiful.\n\nSo yeah the the difference the time gap between >> scarce and plantiful will will be >> only a matter of five years. >> You know how the Tesla comes to your driveway now and you just buy it online and it just drives up to you. >> Yeah. >> Will the robot just come to ring the doorbell too? probably >> it gets out of the Tesla and comes up. Right.\n\n>> I mean, what I find fascinating, Elon, is the amount of compute that you're building into things that walk out of the factory, the cars and the robots, the amount of of distributed inference compute that's going to be in the world. >> A lot >> a lot. A lot >> a lot. Yeah. Um >> and that's one way to scale the you know the the AI is like is distributed edge compute.\n\nUm so I I you know I want to ask a question I don't want to hit any any hot points but in one early on I think you imagined open AI as a counterbalance for Google. >> Yeah. Is XAI now the counterbalance for Google? >> Um yeah, probably. Um I guess Anthropic is doing some good work especially in coding. Um opening I certainly done impressive work.\n\nUm you know I'm still sort of stuck on like how do you go from a nonprofit open source to a profit maximizing closed source [laughter] missing some of the parts in the middle. Um but you know um they certainly have done impressive things. >> Does anybody else appear on the horizon or is it these players in China? >> Can somebody come out?\n\n[clears throat] To the best of my knowledge, it is um my best guess is that uh it will be Xi and and Google will will be will buy for >> will be primacy. Yeah. >> You know who who is what what is the what is the what is the vest AI? Um and and then and then and at some point it's it's going to be I I guess a competition with China. >> Yeah. >> Uh like China's just got a lot of lot of power. >> Yes.\n\n>> Like the electricity um they like China I think will pass three times the US electricity output um in 26. Um and uh and they will figure out the chips. >> They're they're going to start chip manufacturing. Right. >> Yeah. They'll they'll figure out the chips. Um, and as it is, there's diminishing returns to the chips at this point. Um, you know, you go from like so-called like 3 nanometer to 2 nanometer, you don't get a 3:2 ratio improvement.\n\nYou get like a >> 10% improvement. >> Yeah. >> It's it's like so there's it's just diminishing returns on on the chip uh size. And Jensen has said like, you know, Mo's law is dead. Like it's it's not like you can just make things smaller and make it better. >> Yeah. just there's a discrete number of atoms.\n\n>> That's why I think like you should just stop talking nanometers and say how many atoms and what location >> because this is there's marketing BS. Um so so that that makes it easier for for China to catch up because uh with >> every wall everybody has limitation. Yeah. >> Yeah. It's like still like um there's there's like no one has neotone plans to use the 5,000 series ASML machines, >> right?\n\n>> Um and uh you know those that cost twice as much and can only do half a reticle. Um and they probably have some improvements in the way in the works, but u it's basically half the chip for twice as much for a gain that is relatively small. >> Mhm. So, uh, anyway, point is that, uh, you know, that China's going to have more power than anyone else and >> probably will have more chips.\n\n>> It's a great insight because I think a lot of people are used to the chip wars where I'm running singlethreaded code. Uh, I need the CPU to double in speed and I can increase the price, but I need that out in an 18month cycle time or less. We've been doing that for so long now. that nobody can see that it doesn't matter. You can buy Intel or you can build your own fabs and you can use them for a much longer period of time. >> Oh yeah. Yeah.\n\nAbsolutely. Much longer. I totally agree. In fact, um so like our AI4 chip which is like relatively primitive at this point. Um >> the same fab that makes that uh if we apply the the AI6 logic design to to the fab which is it's a five sort of nominally 5 nanometer fab. Yeah. um we can easily get an order of magnitude better output in the same fab. >> Yeah. Yeah.\n\nAnd the other thing concurrent with that is that the volume if you just 50x the number of chips, can you do something useful with it? You used to not be able to. You'd be like, well, now I've got five CPUs, but I still have the same single threaded code. What am I going to do with five Excel spreadsheets side by side? Now it's like, no, I can translate that into useful intelligence instantaneous. >> Exactly. It's not constrained by humans.\n\nIt's it's it's a it's not it's not a human productivity amplifier. It's an independent productivity generator. >> Dead right. I so many people have missed this the the importance of this. And this is where China, you know, China makes far more solar panels than we do. >> And we're like, well, actually, it's a crazy degree. >> Crazy degree. If they do that in chips, you're like, well, but who cares? They're 7 nanometer. Like, >> oh, no.\n\nIt's wrong. >> Yes. Correct. Yeah. Uh I I I mean based on current trends uh China will far exceed the rest of the world in uh AI compute. >> So what happens then? You've got you got XAI and Google and China Inc. Let's call it that for the moment. And you've got massive amount of of of ASI level compute that frankly uh the only thing that understands the other ASIS level compute is the ASI here. Um can they all just play together? Is it Darwinian?\n\nThere might be some Darwinian element to it. Um, I mean, it's >> Let's look on the right side. [laughter] >> Let's look on the bright side of life. >> I bring Grock out this to speak to us again. >> Yeah. Um, I don't know. It's just there just going to be a lot of intelligence. >> Yes. >> Like a lot.\n\nUh I I mean now [laughter] we're now we're now the ratio of human I mean human intelligence um all of a sudden asmtoically falls to 0% on the planet. >> Yeah, pretty much. >> Pretty much. >> Um I mean several years ago I said humans are the biological bootloader for digital super intelligence. >> Yes, we are a transitional we're a [laughter] transitional species. >> We're a bootloader. Yeah. >> We are a transition.\n\n>> I mean silicon circuit can't like evolve in a in a salt pond, you know. >> Yeah. [laughter] >> So you need a bootloader. We're the bootloader. >> But >> you would never ever impair your bootloader. >> Yeah. So you know hope >> you need it. >> We've hopefully been a good bootloader. >> Yeah. >> And it's nice to us in the future. [laughter] >> Is this where we want to end the pod? >> Most people don't know what a bootloader even is. Oh my god.\n\n[laughter] >> Yes. Yeah, boot discs are a far and distant memory. >> Well, we can make a uh Always look at the bright side of life clone song. Yeah, we can clone that [laughter] and make that the closing theme. That'd be awesome. >> Uh I I I'll go back to this is the most exciting time ever to be alive. The only time more exciting than today is tomorrow. Um, yeah.\n\nAnd, uh, I mean, it's interesting that we're heading towards a a world in which any single person can have their grandest dreams become true. >> Um, yeah, that's like Walt Disney word for word. You got to make that into a new exhibit. >> Um, >> like I said, I think you asked like about like sci-fi that's, you know, like is a non-dystopian future, >> right? Um the banks books are the >> Yes. >> probably the best.\n\n>> You should you should you should pay a producer to go and make those. >> Those are the culture books which is consider Fleabis which is GG just for my wife. I wonder cuz she she's like what the hell are you reading? [laughter] >> Well the way consider starts out is um uh I mean it's it's it's a little uh >> I mean the whole thing is I mean he starts off being drowned in [ __ ] [laughter] That's a good opening scene. We really Yeah.\n\n>> How do you not make that movie? >> It can be a little offputting to some people. [laughter] Yeah. >> Um you need to get through the first few hundred pages. >> People don't walk out of a movie in the first five minutes though. They'll give it you know um get into it. Yeah. Like player of games might be a better book to start off with than consider. >> That was that I enjoyed. Humans still exist in this future which is a good thing.\n\n>> Yes, they do. A lot of humans. >> Yeah. >> In that future there are trillions of humans. Well, we need to get the reproduction rate up. >> Yeah. >> By the way, you know, my friend Ben Lamb's company, Colossal, is making artificial wombs. He's the company bringing back the woolly mammoth and bringing back the cybertooth tiger and all of these. >> When do we get Oh, can can we have I'd like to have a a miniature pet woolly mammoth as a pet.\n\n>> Okay. [laughter] Well, you know, he made the he with the tusks. >> Wouldn't that be adorable? >> He made the woolly mouse. >> Yeah. It's just like >> licking you in the face. >> Yeah. Yeah. It's just like sort of trenling around the house. You know, [laughter] what would your optimal size be? Be adorable. >> You know what they what they've learned how to do is to >> little tusks and everything.\n\n>> A miniature willy mammoth [laughter] would be an epic pet. >> I mean, look what we did with wolves. >> Yeah. [laughter] He turned a wolf into a little dog. >> He brought back the direwolf as well. >> Um, but [laughter] >> he made the woolly mouse. There's a woolly mouse now that tusks. >> No tusks. [laughter] >> Different gene or what? >> I was there. I was there. He's in Dallas. He's in Dallas. Not far.\n\nI was visiting him and he said, \"Um, our our scientists are going to a tusk conference next week.\" >> Okay. >> To talk about all of the genes involved in tusk creation. >> They want to put on the mouse. >> No, [laughter] I don't want you to probably add it to the mouse. That'd be cured until [laughter] it until it like a mouse-sized woolly mammoth. >> That's just That's just going to freak people out. The the little woolly mammoth will sell.\n\n>> Yeah. [laughter] Yeah. >> Tusk mouse will not sell. >> Yeah. It's going to crush. I mean, [laughter] >> too creepy. >> You thought Labradoodle was cool when you see the woolly mammoth. >> Yeah. >> Saber-tooth tiger would be good, too. Like a cat. Yeah. >> Yeah. As a cat. >> Cat size. [laughter] >> Those things those teeth come down to like here. I don't know how they actually bite, but they did. Did Did they actually bite with those things?\n\nI don't think I opened them. >> Not my not my, you know, >> the teeth seem kind of >> unwield like sort of unwieldy, you know? >> Yeah, [laughter] they're just they're just for show. They look good. They're like, >> jewelry, >> but no dinosaurs. >> No dinosaur or not? >> Uh, I think Jurassic Park's a great idea. [laughter] I mean, really, you didn't see the end of the movie. eyes will help us with that. >> Nothing's perfect.\n\nUh [laughter] Oh, yeah. That that really will. >> I mean, if there was an island with a whole bunch of dinosaurs 100%. >> Yes. Yes. I'd pay a lot for that. >> Yeah. And it's like once in a while somebody gets chomped by a dinosaur. You're like, uh, what's you know, it's one in a million. I'll I'll still go. >> Who are they missing? Lysine. >> No. No. They're they're the DNA. The oldest DNA that's been recovered is like 1. 2 million years.\n\n>> Oh, you can just wing it though. Just >> Yeah. Just make it look like that. Whatever. [laughter] >> This would be one of the Actually, that was my proposed X-P prize. Remember back in visionering? >> What's that? >> Take the DNA strand and predict what it'll look like. >> Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. >> Yeah. They make it that way. >> Yeah. And then just reverse engineer reverse engineer the dinosaurs. >> Yeah. Exactly.\n\nIt would be funny if there were two completely different DNA strands. They're like, well, they both look like T-Rex. It's interesting how they >> Is T-Rex real or is that like an assembly? I [laughter] mean, it's nice to believe it's real, but uh >> front legs were from a completely different dinosaur. [laughter] >> That was the one at eight. It actually had huge front legs. [laughter] >> There's something wrong with the arms.\n\n[laughter] >> I don't believe I I don't buy it on the arms front. >> The many arms >> um [laughter] seem implausible. Nope. Well, DNA will tell us. We'll know in a year. [laughter] >> Yeah. The future is going to be >> Jurassic Island. We say, >> \"Wow.\" >> Yeah. >> I go, >> we got >> No, no, I meant the the amino acid that the dinosaurs were missing >> that kept them from reproducing. >> What? Lysine, you're saying? >> Was it lysine?\n\nI forget what it was. >> I don't remember. But no, the dinosaurs got held back by something like an asteroid, >> you know, bombardment. >> Right. Right. >> They were doing great. Yeah. 60 million years. Yeah. They were doing fine. They had a great We got very lucky. They had a great much longer. [laughter] >> See, there's a good argument why there's no other intelligence out there. There's plenty of dinosaurs >> in the universe.\n\n>> What were we back then? Like a bowl or something? >> We Yeah, we we were [laughter] we were our great let's commune with the ancestors. We [laughter] >> were very good at hiding. >> It is amazing. We went from a little little rat little mole to us in 60 million years. Doesn't seem that that long. That's why no one believed Darwin. >> Yeah. >> It's like doesn't seem plausible. It's a long time. 60. It turns out it is. Yeah.\n\n>> You know, you're making robots, but it's interesting. I think it'll be a lot more interesting to like design biological robots like a like a little cat that goes around and pees stain remover and eats lint off the carpet. That's going to be an interesting >> But you have a mechanical like a Optimus light doing that anyway. Yeah. >> Yeah. Well, they went bankrupt, so we'll have to build this.\n\n[laughter] >> I think you can still buy them, though. >> Anyway, >> the room is basically that >> it's going to be uh >> but but the thing is like a human robot is general purpose, so it can do whatever you want. >> Yeah. >> Um >> yeah, they were too early. No vision system, no no GB300. How do you build a Roomba that works? [laughter] >> I think the idea of having an Optimus vacuum is like the most underused asset.\n\nIt could, but it can just do anything. >> It can. Yes, of course. >> Yeah. >> So, uh, and you can mass manufacture at at, you know, one. >> Oh, that's Yeah. Optimus, build me a Roomba. That's what you'll do. You want to say, Optimus, vacuum, carve it, Optimus, build me a Roomba that vacuums. That's >> build a house. Build me a robot. >> Yeah. >> It's going to be a lot of robots. [laughter] >> Maybe we should do this once a year. >> Checkpoint.\n\n>> I would like that >> checkpoint. [laughter] That's going to be we can roll roll back the >> What were we saying predictions last year? [laughter] >> Yeah. Yeah. >> All right. >> Well, we can always control it. We can cut cut out the bus. >> Are you selling hope? [laughter] >> As a matter of fact, it worked out really well. >> You pull up in your Tesla like, \"Hey, I bought this with my >> dollars per hope.\"\n\nYou know, [laughter] >> I'll send you the mug. >> Monetize hope. >> All right. >> Monetize Hope. One year from today, December 22nd, I'll come and knock on the door right here. If you're here, you're here. If you're not, we'll talk about you. [laughter] >> I mean, a year from now, we might have the new Optimus factory where the building will be built. >> Um, >> that would be >> awesome. 8 million square feet of robots running.\n\n[laughter] >> It's going to be a giant giant building. >> Oh, man. >> Um, yeah. >> And, uh, >> yeah, they freak me out when they're recharging. It's like hang in there. It's like what's wrong with that thing? >> Yeah, we're we're actually just going to have them like I think sit down. >> Yeah. >> As opposed to look like some sort of >> They need like [laughter] a like a recharging cigar. >> A recharging cigar.\n\n>> Less less morg like [laughter] >> snapping here with a book. >> Yeah, >> that' be much better. Right now they're just like literally like is it dead? Just limp. >> Yeah, that's a good point. That's a big contribution from this particular brand. [laughter] Uh, all right. Till next year then. >> All right. It's a day. >> Thanks, buddy. >> Awesome, guys.\n\n>> If you made it to the end of this episode, which you obviously did, I consider you a moonshot mate. Every week, my moonshot mates and I spend a lot of energy and time to really deliver you the news that matters. If you're a subscriber, thank you. If you're not a subscriber yet, please consider subscribing so you get the news [music] as it comes out. I also want to invite you to join me on my weekly newsletter called Metatrends.\n\nI have a research team. You may not know this, but we spend the entire week looking at the meta trends that are impacting your family, your company, your industry, your nation. And I put this into a two-minute read every week. If you'd like to get access to the MetaTrens newsletter every week, go to diamandis. com/metatrends. That's [music] diamandis. com/metatrens. Thank you again for joining us today.\n\nIt's a [music] blast for us to put this together every week. [music]"},"languages":["en"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":"https://singjupost.com/moonshots-220-w-elon-musk-on-agi-abundance-and-the-future-of-humanity-transcript/"},{"id":"katie-miller-podcast-2025-12-10","type":"interview","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bz5Hjk40FD4","title":"The Katie Miller Podcast","titles":{"en":"The Katie Miller Podcast","de":"The Katie Miller Podcast","fr":"The Katie Miller Podcast"},"date":"2025-12-10","summary":"Elon Musk on the Katie Miller Podcast (Ep. 18): the inside story of DOGE, AI, robotics, Mars and the future of humanity.","text":"I think the story of Doge from your perspective has never been told. Do you think you were successful? >> We're a little a little bit successful. We were some somewhat successful. >> Would you ever do Doge again? >> Um I mean, no. I don't think so. I think in instead of doing Doge, I I would have basically built, you know, worked on my companies essentially and not and the cars would they wouldn't have been running the cars. >> What's your biggest irrational fear? >> I I try not to have irrational fears. >> None. If I find an irrational fear, I squelch it >> if you had to start from scratch today with only $1,000. What would you do? >> Well, I did I did originally come to uh North America with like I don't know 2500 bucks Canadian, so I don't know, maybe two grand us. At this point, I have a lot of knowledge. A lot of things have to go wrong for that to be the case. It's like, am I just emerging from prison perhaps with a stipend? Hi everyone and welcome to this week's episode of the Katie Miller podcast. We are in Texas today joined by the one and only Elon Musk. >> Uh nice to see you again Katie. >> Nice to see you Elon. So I want to take us back. It's January 20th. You are in the Roosevelt room, if you remember this, getting sworn in and they hand you a computer and a phone. >> Right. Right. >> I want to go back to what happened next. I think the story of Doge from your perspective has never been told. What was your first thought on how Doge was going to proceed? >> Well, um I guess I couldn't believe I was there. Uh, for the most part it's like um it's all seemed extremely surreal at the time. you know, Doge was a madeup name um that had been made up, I don't know, two or three months before um and um based on internet suggestions and um I was going to call the Government Efficiency Commission and then and then um someone on the internet said, \"No, it should be the Department of Government Efficiency, Dog.\" I'm like, \"That sounds great.\" Um, so we just kind of made up an apartment. >> Do you think you were successful? >> We're a little a little bit successful. We were some somewhat successful. Um, I mean, we we we stopped a lot of [snorts] funding for um that that that really just made no sense. That was just entirely wasteful. where like for example there was like probably 100 maybe $200 billion dollars worth of zombie payments per year uh which uh simply by um enforcing that there be a payment code and an explanation for the payment uh that the payment would not go out. So, we've made that change to the main treasury computer and bunch of other computers. Um, it's like it seems like insanely obvious. Um, but uh there are just call it I two or 3% of government payments that go out that uh really should not be going out. Um, and it's actually quite hard to stop. Um so um it's a it's a pretty rare individual that would um ask the government to stop sending them money. >> Would you ever do Doge again? >> Um do you mean would I repeat history or or would I >> two ways to think about it? One is if you could go back and start from scratch like it's January 20th all again. Would you go back and do it differently? And knowing what you know now, do you think there's ever a place to restart you? Not saying others in yourstead, you go back and restart doing Doge. [sighs] >> I mean, no, I don't think so. Um, would I do I I think I probably I don't know. Um, >> would you do Doge again knowing what you know now? I mean the thing is like I think in instead of doing Doge I I would have basically built you know worked on my companies essentially. So and not and the cars would they wouldn't have been burning the cars. Um >> you gave up a lot to do. Uh yeah, like if you if you if you stop money going uh to uh going going for political corruption, they will they will lash out big time. >> Mhm. >> Um so they really want the money to keep flowing. Um, so if you stop it from flowing, there's like a very strong reaction to to stopping the money flowing. >> After you were in DC for a while, did you become disillusioned with how it operates? >> Well, I I wouldn't say I was super illusioned to begin with. Uh, it it I mean, I guess it's just like you really want the least amount done by government possible. The least amount I I I I guess maybe maybe like the the biggest thing is that I guess the biggest single thing is is that the there there are massive transfer payments going to um illegal immigrants um like massive essentially we're paying people to come here from somewhere else um in vast numbers including flying them in. So, like it's not like you need a border wall if you're flying them in. Um, then fasttracking them to citizenship and um making them beholden to to government payments um and uh and voting hard left. That's that's essentially it's like voter importation. If if if you if you create a gigantic money magnet to um you say if anyone comes here from anywhere else, we're going to pay you t tons of money, give you lots of free stuff. Um come come come to America and and get paid to do so. Um like you're going to get a lot of people taking up on that offer. Um and people say like this this this is fake. I'm like, uh, actually, well, let's look at, um, you know, Elon Omar, who was literally was voted into power, voted into Congress by, uh, you know, large group of people from Somalia, who are in Minnesota, which is really far from Somalia, or Mandani, who was voted as to be to be mayor. But if if but >> [clears throat] >> by a majority of people who are not um born in America. That's my understanding at least. Um so um and then then California say big time um situation. So uh I don't we just don't want to turn into a um you know communist hell hole basically. If you've said in the future that no one's going to need to worry about money or work because AI is going to take care of the rest, AI and robotics. What do you mean that people won't have to work in the future? >> Assuming the current trend of artificial intelligence and robotics continues, which seems likely, the um AI and robots will be able to do anything that that humans want to want them to do essentially. So hopefully not more than that, but AI and robotics will be able to provide us provide all the goods and services that anyone could possibly want. So >> but you wouldn't need to work like what would you do with your free time? >> People people will be able to do whatever they want with their free time. Um work will be optional. I I mean I just want to separate out from like what I wish would happen versus what I predict will happen because people get confused about that. They think that what I predict will happen is what I want it to happen. >> What I want what I predict to happen is not the same as what I want to happen. >> Um I if if I could I I would I would certainly slow down uh AI and robotics, but I I can't. It seems to be well it's it's it's advancing at a very rapid pace. Um whether I like it or not. >> Is AI what keeps you up at night? >> It used to be this point. I don't know. I I I wouldn't say there's there's nothing particularly keeping me up at night right now except that. But if you say what what where do I wake up in nightmares? Oh, AI. Yeah. Actually, I've had a lot of AI nightmares. Uh I I I had AI nightmares many days in a row. >> What am I supposed to do about it? >> What's your biggest irrational fear? >> Um I I I try not to have irrational fears. >> None. >> If I find an irrational fear, I squelch it. I I I don't believe fear is fear is the mind killer. So how about somebody who feels fear strongly? >> Well, on average, how many hours do you sleep a night? >> Six. You can tell based on my exposts. >> Yes, you can. >> People have actually mapped them so you it's very clear when I'm sleeping and when I'm not. Um, I tried having less than 6 hours sleep, but um, although I'm awake more hours per day, my cognitive function is reduced. So, my natural sleep, I actually timed it with the phone. They can get a phone app, but time it. It's like five 5 hours 56 minutes. That's what the phone said. >> What's an average day for you look like? >> Well, I have a lot of inbound communication. So, it's information triage. I try to segment the days so that there's not too much context switching because arguably fear is not the mind killer. Context switching is hard not to context switch if you've got an inbox full of stuff. Um, but you can think like if you had to context switch every 3 seconds or every 30 seconds or every 3 minutes, the context switching cognitive penalty would be very high every 3 seconds. >> And you're talking about switching between say Tesla X, XAI, >> SpaceX personal, >> SpaceX personal >> and but even within Tesla and and SpaceX there are many different things. getting this sort of the stuff on X like random news things um you know people being burned alive and stuff like that you're like what the hell's going on in this country >> who's the funniest person you know in real life >> you know President Trump is very funny he's got a great sense of humor >> President Trump is very funny >> he's very funny he's like naturally funny was it's somewhat e effortless I mean um you know when he was had Ed Mumdani in the office and Uh they asked him if he saw thought the president was a fascist and the president said just say yes. It's easier that way. >> Yeah. >> Don't worry about it. Just say yes. Awesome. >> He's like you guys. What a what a how silly. >> Who do you look up to the most? >> The creator. >> What's your current position on God? Uh, God is the creator. >> You don't believe in God though, do you? >> Well, I believe there was this universe came for something. People have different labels. >> When's the last time you did something extremely ordinary like go to Target or CVS? I can't go to things where there's the general public because um I I im there there's an immediate can I have a selfie line that forms and and these days in particularly in light of Charlie Ko's murder there are serious um security issues. It's not that I don't want to. I simply can't. Has Charlie's murder changed how you do things or were you already locked down pretty well before that? >> It certainly reinforced the severity of the situation where life is on hardcore mode. You make one mistake and you're dead and it only takes one one mistake. >> What's one moment in your life that you could live again just to feel it? Well, I mean, obviously when my kids were born or um the first time SpaceX got to orbit or Tesla made an electric car work, >> you've had a big a lot of them. >> It's a lot of It's a lot of things. There's a lot coming down the pike >> like what >> starship um the the degree to which a starship is a revolutionary technology is not well understood in the world. Um it's the first time that there's been any rocket design where full and rapid reusability is possible or full reusability at all is possible. Um this this is the first design where a reusable rocket can um is one of the possible outcomes where success is in the set of possible outcomes. >> Are you talking about in V3 or V2? >> Well, we could have made V2 um reusable, but the but we there were a lot of performance improvements for V3, so it made sense to go to V3. They're just there's like 10,000 different changes uh between V2 and B3, maybe more than 10,000 really. Um so um but Starship, if if there are historians in the future, I'll look back and at Starship and say it was one of the most profound things that ever happened. Now you can think of historic events as where would they fit on the in the evolutionary hall of fame. So you've got things like single cell life. Then you've got um you know multisellular life uh capturing a mitochondria capturing mitochondria so that you have a power cell in the plant in the cell. Good. We've got like a power plant in the cell. Um, you've got, you know, differentiation into plants and animals, life going from oceans to land. And then also on that scale, probably in the top 10 is life becoming multilanetary. There just aren't very many things that are in the top 10 of the evolution of life or where you could basically say you could evaluate any given uh civilization or any given life form as you know on on that on that scale. Um so life becoming multilanetary it's on the top 10. Um it needs to be sustainably multi multilanetary. So not just visiting um but actually multilanetary in the sense that if you have planetary redundancy so if one of the planets um if there were to be a catastrophe on one of the planets the other planet would survive. >> Are all of your companies >> starship is capable of doing that for the first time in history and no AI was used to create it. So the AI will appreciate that. Are all of your companies working towards that same goal to help us become multilanetary? Like does the AI exist to be able to help life on Mars or is that primarily for what is happening here currently? >> You know Tesla is mostly about making sure life on Earth is good and as NXAI is about that too because multilanetary means Earth's got to be good and you need another planet. Sometimes people think uh because they they have you know um legacy templates, mental templates, they think that going to Mars is an escape from Earth. Um like or that it would be some you know place where billionaires would go or something like that. Um but but actually Mars will be very dangerous and the moon base will be al also dangerous much more dangerous um and much less comfortable than Earth. Um, so the people that would go in the early days to make life multilanetary on Mars or the moon, they would have a much higher risk of death um than if then if they stayed on Earth. Um, and things would be cramped and uncomfortable. So that's that's the sales pitch for Mars. It's it's going to be uncomfortable. The food won't be as good as Earth. Uh, you might die. It's going to be a mass amount of hard work. And um it may not succeed. That's the sales pitch. >> Do you want to go? >> Same as when people came to America. >> Yeah. You didn't want to be in Jamestown. >> People went anyway. >> Yeah. Maybe if there had been social media back then they would have saying uh we're all dying. Here's videos of us dying would have probably put a damper on future voyages. But um yeah, they just whole bunch of people just disappeared. They don't know what happened to them. >> You talk a lot on X about wardrobe >> and how you wish current wardrobe would be differently. >> I just think like from a fashion standpoint, we should evolve. Um like my son Saxon said at one point, why does everything look like it's 2015? And I was like, damn, things do everything does look like it's 2015. He's like, if you took a picture from 2015 and said 2025, it looks exactly the same. There were >> stylistically >> things were the same as 2015. We have not we've not moved the needle in a decade. >> So what should it look like? >> Something new. You know, like the 60s had a definitive style. The 70s had a definitive style. The ' 80s had a definitive style. And then the ' 90s also had a different had a style. But then you start looking at the 2000s and the 2010s and it's like less and less every year. I think we should if our style I and and if you look at some of the older paintings um you know of past cabinet secretaries um some of them like they look cool like their their jackets are cooler than what we have right now you know they have sort of like a high collar and like a sort of I don't know what some sort of what what do you call those things ascot or something like that >> I mean it just looks cool like so But we we don't everything's like a very normal looking suit at this point. But like literally the same as 2015. I'm being generous because arguably the same as 2010. >> Yeah. >> So in 15 years and and I'm like from a fashion standpoint, I don't think we've moved since 2000 in 25 years. If you showed someone a picture of this is a bunch of this is a bunch of dudes in 20 2000. This is a bunch of dudes in 2025. which year is which? So, I think we should I don't know, spice it up a little. >> What's a conspiracy theory you believe in? >> I mean, which which conspiracy theories haven't come true at this point. We've run out of conspiracy theories that because they will come true >> as far as I can tell. >> Yeah. >> Um I mean, I don't know of any aliens. People has asked me if there's there are aliens. I have seen no evidence of aliens. Um, no one on the SpaceX senior team has any evidence of aliens because I've asked team like, \"Guys, am I missing something?\" Has anyone on the team has anyone's seen any evidence of aliens? >> Does that include UFOs? >> That's just an unidentified blank object. So, so UFOs like it could be like some new weapons program or whatever. that's, you know, some hypersonic missile or something like that. That that would be technically a UFO, but it's it's just it's just basically some weapons prototype. That's not it's not like aliens. So, although Neil Armstrong, Neil A spelled backwards as alien. Coincidence? >> You believe we actually went to the moon though? Yes, we went to the moon a few times actually and played golf on the moon. >> Okay. >> We didn't just go to the moon. We actually got a little bored and started playing golf on the moon. >> But why didn't the flag move? There's like that conspiracy. >> That was the jump the truck moment >> about the flag. >> No, the playing golf on the moon. >> Okay. >> You know, it literally did. >> No, I understand that. >> Yeah. Yeah. >> Whacked a golf ball on the moon. >> Is there There's no gravity though, right? There is gravity 16. >> If it wasn't gravity, you would just float away. >> Okay. >> There's no atmosphere. >> Okay, fair. >> But there is one sixth gravity. >> What's the biggest misconception about you? >> I don't know. How would I know? Uh, what do you think? >> I think it's And I get asked this a lot when I do interviews about you. >> Me? >> Oh, got I got asked. Everyone always thinks you're a very difficult person to work for. Oh, >> which you're I think you're very kind. >> Thanks. >> Like people think which you're you are [clears throat] >> like a very demanding boss. I think that you are I've never heard you yell at any employee. >> Yeah. I don't yell. >> I think every employee who works at every single one of your companies is incredibly missiondriven, which is unlike any other workplace I've ever seen. >> Like Starbase is the most inspirational place you'll ever go to, right? >> Everyone is there to work on a singular goal. And so I think to me the biggest misconception about you is how every employee at all of your companies are fiercely loyal because it's all mission driven and you are a very good employer to work for and I think people assume you are not >> right. Well why would they think anyone would work at the companies? >> Yeah. Um, I mean talent I mean talented people can go work anywhere they want. So they're only going to work at one of my companies if they want to. And if they're mistreated in some way, they would they would leave and go work somewhere else. >> How'd you come up with the idea for Starbase? >> Well, I think we needed a something inspirational. I can we we kind of have a lot of star things, you know. So, we got Starlink, Starship. Well, where would Starship depart from Star Base? I mean, Star Base is is as you've mentioned, it's it's like it's I think it's probably the coolest place on Earth. >> I agree. >> Um, and it used to it it used to be a sand bar down by the Rio Grand. I It's only like three feet above sea level. Um, so we built a gigantic rocket factory and two giant launch towers uh down by the river literally with inside of the Rio Grand and on on on an actual sandbar kind of had to have like an inspirational name. And then we made it a city so it's an incorporated city like legally a city. Um, you don't you don't hear about new cities being formed that often. Um, >> the last time there was a company town, it was Disney World. >> Yeah. I think Ford had some kind of like company town situations, but um but yeah, Disney World is it's literally his name. >> Yeah. >> I'm Walt Disney. This is my world. >> Yeah. >> I've gone from land to world. Um, they got like incorporated as a city and got tax exemption which was like a whole was a was a big deal. >> Yeah. >> I've been to Disney World probably 10 times. >> Really? >> Yeah. Maybe more than maybe more than 10, but at least 10 times. >> Uh because uh Cape Canaveral is right by Disney World. >> This makes sense now. So when I'd have the kids, then I would um my older kids and I was we're trying to get the rocket launch from Cape Canaveral. Then um you know the thing they'd want to do is go to Disney World uh or Harry Potterland. >> What's your favorite ride? >> I'm sort of tempted to say Space Mountain, I suppose. Yeah, probably Space Mountain. I mean, I do think Space Mountain needs an upgrade. >> It's a little herky jerky. the it doesn't look quite as fuss sci-fi as it used to. >> You know, it's it's like it's like the day before yesterday's tomorrow, but just till yesterday. >> What's your favorite age to parent of your kids? >> Uh, generally kids are the most fun between five and 10. >> Do you think humanity is inherently good or is it just trying to be? >> The concept of good wouldn't exist without humanity. I think I do think humanity is on balance good. You know, I generally think like in increasing the amount of consciousness in the universe is a good thing. Trying to try to understand the nature of the universe, which you can only do by increasing the increasing conscious awareness. I mean, I have thought about like how how did we get here? Because if we did start out as a hydrogen gas cloud that that sort of condensed and then formed stars and then these stars exploded and then they recondensed, formed stars again and then exploded again and then eventually you get to us 13.8 billion years later. And one of the interesting questions to think about is how many times have your atoms been at the center of a star? I think it's like on average three or four times, something like that. Uh then how many times will your atoms be at the center of a star? Estimates vary, but it seems like we're roughly halfway. So your atoms likely to be at the center of the star maybe another four times or something like that. It's depends on what your predictions are for the future. In terms of existence as measured by the number of times your atoms will be at the center of a star, we seem to be roughly halfway. That really, you know, if you want to look at the big picture, that's the really big picture. >> What's one invention that's made us worse, not better? >> What's one adventure that's made us worse? >> Mhm. Invention. Maybe short form video seems to be rotting people's brains. >> What's one piece of technology you hope never gets invented? >> Hope that I hope never gets invented. >> Like yeah, like it's going to destroy us all or you think with the proper safeguards? >> Well, I mean obviously I hope like that people don't invent a virus that can kill all humans. It's like that's an obvious thing. Um >> I mean yeah generally I hope like inventions that destroy consciousness are not invented. >> I think the future's going to look very interesting. So I I it's I do have this theory about the the predicting the future which is that the most interesting outcome is the most likely. um which if simulation theory is accurate uh makes sense because if anyone is simulating a wide range of futures they're going to stop the simulation when it gets boring because this is what we do in our reality. So if if SpaceX is doing or Tesla doing simulations to understand how a car would work or robot or spaceship or something like that, we we run all these simulations in the computer. Um and the simulations that um we pay attention to are the ones that that are the most interesting. like the the simulation where everything goes right on the rocket we actually don't pay attention to because that's that's not a the everything goes right simulation is um is fine. So we we actually test the you know the when we simulate the the rocket flight we'll actually test all sorts of oddball situations but we don't test it we we don't have the simulation be totally wrong because I mean like if the rocket just explodes immediately that's not not also not interesting. So it's it's like you you need to find the envelope of possible flight paths where the rocket can make it to orbit and uh without exploding and then you you find those boundaries and then when you launch the actual rocket you try you make sure it stays within those boundaries. Or another way to think of it is like we could be an alien Netflix series and that that series is only going to get continued if our ratings are good. >> Are the ratings good? >> Yeah. >> Okay. >> But but you can think of it like from a Darwinian standpoint applied if if you apply Darwin to simulation theory then the only the most interesting simulations will continue. Therefore, the most interesting outcome is most likely because the uh it's either that or annihilation. So, really, we have one goal. Keep it interesting. >> Do you think social media has made people more honest or more performative? >> Well, social media makes people more performative. Um, by the same token, you you you get more real life video of of things that that are actually happening and and anything that is very interesting will sp will will go viral on the internet. Um, so so you have both. you've got more performative where people are doing anything they can to get a few more views on their Tik Tok video or whatever or their reels or maybe on their expost or something. Um and um so that's very performative, but then you also see real life videos that are that challenge the narrative um but are nonetheless real. Is there any ex accounts you're surprised when you changed it so people could see country of origin that wasn't in the United States that you thought was in the United States? >> I don't really think about it that much. I mean there's in a country of origin we have to be a little careful about this. You you can actually technically you just specify your region like you can say I'm in Asia or something like that which is quite big. it but but it does make it a little harder that if somebody is trying to pretend that they're say a member of the American public or in Europe or Africa wherever if if they're you know if everything about their account is from a different continent than they are pretending to be from it's uh gets a little harder to pretend. We don't want to dox people but we kind of think you're not really doxing someone if you say which continent they're from. Yeah, I think it's fair. >> Yeah. >> Okay. So, in every episode we've played would you rather. Okay. Would you rather save humanity from extinction extinction on Earth or guarantee its survival on Mars? >> Uh it's it's a false dichotomy. I [clears throat] I I think I'd say uh guarantee Earth Earth's much better than Mars to be clear. Um Mars, but Mars is just our best option if we want to become a multilanet species. This is really our our our only option. Um if you want to become a multilanet species, you got Mars which is very difficult but not impossible. Uh Earth is much better than Mars but you know we can't uh I think it was Silkovsky or I think he said uh you know Earth is the cradle of civilization but we can't stay in the cradle forever. >> Would you rather be a Marvel superhero or a Bond villain? I think it would depend on which Marvel superhero or which Bond villain. I suppose I'd rather be a Marvel superhero. >> They did. They did model Iron Man in the movies after me. >> Yes. >> So, >> you were in the Iron Man movie, right? >> Yes. >> That's pretty cool. >> Yeah. Ro Down Jr. and Favro met with me >> uh to and toured SpaceX and stuff. So, and in fact, Iron Man 2, a large part of the movie is filmed in SpaceX. >> Really? >> Yes. If you look at if you watch Iron Man 2, you'll see it's a SpaceX factory is the actual background. >> That's so cool. >> Yeah, it was cool. We had Scarlett Johansson doing martial arts in the lobby, >> actually. Yeah. And you expect me to believe this is all real? It's a simulation. >> Exactly. >> What are the odds? >> Yeah. >> I mean, if you were me >> No, I agree with you. >> Would you think >> this is real or a simulation? >> Your life is a simulation. >> Yeah. >> Your life gets to be the simulation. >> Yeah. And I'm like doing all the side quests and everything. >> Yeah. What's your best side quest? >> A doge. Probably. >> Okay. Would you rather launch a social network with no algorithm or a rocket with no manual override? >> Who came up with these questions? >> Just keep going. >> These are funny. >> Maybe not to you [clears throat] cuz they're too trivial. >> What do you mean? Like so that with an algorithm means that you basically you only see the people you follow. >> Like it's just a mess. >> Like it was Twitter before you bought it. >> Yeah. Yeah. Um there's the sort of people you follow and then there there's a recommendation algorithm. Um I think probably in December we'll finally have a half decent recommendation algorithm. >> It's a lot better >> recently. Yeah. >> So it really just trying to show people stuff they'd be interested in. Um, but there's an enormous amount of AI horsepower being applied to this where Grock per thing is reading all it's going to read all 100 million posts per day which is a >> Does that take up a lot of comput? >> Hopefully it doesn't destroy its mind or something. >> Yeah. >> Yeah, it does take a lot of compute. um like most most posts are um there's a lot of spam scam stuff so it just that can be easily discarded I suppose. Um but then you've got to take you know 100 million pieces of content match that to I don't know sometimes three or 400 million people per day. So that's a lot of matching. >> My algorithm used to look a lot like other people's when you open their X account. Now mine is very unique comparatively to other people's. >> Um well we really are kind of the this is just the the beginning kind of thing. The what I mentioned like Grock reading everything and recommending any given thing to anyone should go live in December. So that the the acid test for this is are you seeing content like are you seeing content that you find really interesting from accounts you've never seen before? If if you if that's happening then the algorithm is working. Um like it should be possible for somebody to put to post content as a new user with no followers and if that content is is excellent it gets seen by a lot of people. So, can an account with a small number of followers or a new account if if the content is intrinsically excellent, can that content be seen by a lot of people? That's our goal. >> All right, last one. Would you rather invent time travel or teleportation? >> Actually, those things are almost the same thing in that you you can't break the speed of light without breaking reality. And you you know so if you could teleport somewhere instantly if you talking about teleportation faster than the speed of light presumably it would be um then then that that that would break our reality as would time travel. Um unless was there a very important conditional here? Unless we're a simulation. Time travel does not break a simulation. Is it like in Loki where you're on like the time and you just break a new one? >> Um the I think well people do tend to get wrapped up in knots with the time travel thing because they they try to simultaneously say something must be logically consistent but logically inconsistent. That's impossible. Um, but if you think of it like a video game, um, and say, okay, you've got various saved games and you can go back and restore a saved game from a prior start point. You still have your other saved games and there are many games going on in parallel. Um, they don't have to be consistent with each other. That's that's that's that's a that that is a it's a false assumption. If we're a simulation, um we might be somebody's video game or TV show or something like that. Like I said, we're just going to keep it interesting so they don't turn the computer off. >> What do you want? I'm just saying if that's true, keep it interesting or they're going to turn off the computer and they might Please don't delete us. >> Please don't delete us. Please don't delete us. Uh, we'll keep it interesting. I swear >> you keep it interesting. >> Yeah. So, if the most interesting outcome is the most likely, what do you think are the most interesting things that can occur? Now, most interesting is not what you want. It's just as viewed by a third party. Let's say you this was for argument sake um a an alien Netflix series and you were trying to maximize your viewership, you know, maximize your ratings. Um it's it's actually an interesting thought experiment. It's it's like it it's not actually not that interesting if everything just blows up. It's now it's over. That's not that interesting. It's not that interesting if there's a there's a calamity that wipes out all the humans. The show just ended. But I mean, fortunately and unfortunately uh if there is drama that like war or something like that, that that is interesting. You know, people will go to movies and watch, say, a World War I movie where people are getting blown up um from cannon shells and uh they're in the movie theater eating popcorn, drinking a soda. Um like you you wouldn't go to a movie where everything was just perfect and stayed that way. You'd leave you'd leave the theater. >> Good romance story, doesn't it? >> There's always a story arc. There's always an arc. Um, and it's it's generally not a linear arc. So, it's it's not going to be like things start here and just go straight up and to the right and end up in a good place for something like that. It's usually ups and downs. The classic sort of story arcs essentially, you know, act one, act two, act three. You have an initial rise in act two, full back in act initial rise in act one, full down in act two, um back in in act three with um you know happy ending if it's a comedy or a sad ending if it's a drama. If you look at President Trump's uh you know story, it's more interesting that he lost this the intermediate term and then won you know his second term after that. >> Just like the story arc initially up then down then resurgent resurgent again. If if you went with my theory that the most interesting outcome is the most likely, then that was the most likely outcome. It was inevitable. >> What are you watching on TV right now? >> I am irony man. Something like that. I'm paraphrasing. >> >> Uh, what am I watching actually? Right now I'm watching Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, the TV series Turtles in a Half Show, Total Power. Yeah. Uh, cuz uh, Little X wants to watch that. I I I'm watching things that the kids kids want to watch. Rewatched Dodgeball last night. >> It's a good movie. >> Yeah. If you can dodge a wrench, you can dodge a ball. >> If you can dodge a wrench, you can dodge a ball. >> What? Yeah. High motivation to dodge if somebody's loving reg. What song instantly puts you in a good mood? >> Uh, The Final Countdown by Europa. >> Heard that song a lot. Do you read the instructions or just wing it? >> What's the goal? >> Like if you're putting something together, do you read the instructions or do you wing it? >> If it's a simple thing, I'll wing it. If it's a complex thing, I'll look at the instructions. If you had to start from scratch today with only $1,000, what would you do? >> Well, I did I did originally come to uh North America with like I don't know 2500 bucks Canadian, so I don't know, maybe two grand us. Um, one bag of books and one bag of clothes in Montreal at age 17. So that is how I started out. Um, at this point I have a lot of knowledge. A lot of things would have to go wrong for that to be the case. It's like, am I just emerging from prison perhaps with a stipend? All my company's been confiscated. I mean, it would take Armageddon, which hopefully that doesn't happen. Um, like Ragnarok next level and I lost. >> Yeah. >> What the hell? Um, >> it's bad hand. I I mean it's impossible for me for someone to have that amount of know all the knowledge that I have and then be um dropped down to a low resource amount because the reality is that either something truly catastrophic has happened like civilization has melted um or I will be able to ask people to just give me money um and with the promise that I will have a high return which what I'm able to do right now. >> Yeah. >> Like if you give me a dollar, you will get back much more than a dollar. >> Yes. >> Um so this is it's it's somewhat of an impossible dichotomy because civilization would have had to have destroyed or something. Um in which case $1,000 is not going to solve your problems. you know, you can't do much with a if you're if you're wandering around radioactive craters, uh, and you're in like, you know, fallout or whatever, uh, then, uh, $1,000 is not going to solve anything. And if civil civilization hasn't melted, then probably just talk people into giving me money, which I've done before. >> >> If you weren't running your companies, what random job would you enjoy doing the most? >> I don't know if that's all that random, but I'd like probably write video games or something like that. I I did that at one point. I like solving problems, so I like building things. I built a lot of things. Like a lot. What do you eat in a typical day? >> Well, these days I start off with a breakfast of steak and eggs and coffee. And then dinner tends to vary. I usually don't have lunch. Um or if I do something very small. And then dinner, depending on whether it's social or not, um will vary in cuisine. I like a wide range of cuisine. >> What's your favorite food? Um, American food is my favorite food. >> Like pizza or a cheeseburger? Like >> Yeah, the cheeseburger is probably the If I had to say like there's only one thing you can ever have for the rest of time, which admittedly would be a bit monotonous, but it would probably be a cheeseburger. Um, because cheeseburgers are amazing. It's a genius invention. Um, I'll tell you a funny story about when um I was living in LA and I took my older boys out for lunch uh to Sugarfish, which is a very um kind of uptight sushi restaurant. Um, in fact, it's at at at the on the menu of of [snorts] the restaurant, it says, \"Do not ask for soy sauce.\" Uh because the chef has put the right amount of choy soy sauce and you can't have anymore. And if the chef doesn't think you chef soy sauce, you can't have soy sauce. That's what it says on the menu basically. Um so like extremely strict um sushi restaurant. And so the waiter is going around asking everyone what they want. And then it comes to Saxon and Saxon says, \"I'll have a cheeseburger. >> >> And the waiter's like, takes a moment for the waiter to recover because no one's ever asked for a cheeseburger at this, you know, very strict sushi restaurant. Um, took him like a 30 seconds to realize he just been asked for a cheeseburger because you're not even allowed to ask for soy sauce. So, um, so then when he finally recovered, he said, \"We don't have cheeseburgers.\" >> >> And Saxon Saxon goes at the top of his voice, \"What?\" Like, \"What kind of restaurant doesn't have cheeseburgers?\" I says, \"Fine, I'll have a hamburger.\" I don't know what you got against dairy, but >> yeah, I don't have hamburgers either. >> Did he stay for the rest of the meal? >> Yeah, but he was nonplusted. I was like, I can't believe um this place doesn't have cheeseburgers. So So yeah, I mean I like I guess I like barbecue, which is good because I'm here in Austin. Um I mean if it's if it's if it's a hot cuisine, I like French food as well, but not every day in once in a while. >> If your friends described you in one emoji, what's the emoji? >> I guess the emoji I use the most, which is the laughing emoji. All right. And we close on this question every episode. If you could host a dinner party with three people, dead or alive, who's coming to dinner, and what are you eating? >> Maybe Shakespeare, Ben Franklin, Nicola Tesla. Um, I there's there's actually a lot of people I'd like to I would have liked to talk to and we'll we'll eat, I guess, whatever they'd like. Um, I think if if if you're going to if this is a once in a-lifetime thing, I think you'd want to have some epic, you know, 12 course meal or something like that >> at least. >> Yeah. But some Yeah. You want to go all out for that dinner? I think you're probably not going to serve cheeseburgers unless they want it. >> Yeah. >> Maybe one of the courses could be like a tiny cheeseburger. Those don't taste as good as the big ones, though. >> No, but they could. It's just they don't try. There's nothing. You could make a tiny cheeseburger taste just as good as a big cheeseburger >> if you try it. >> Have you ever had a tiny cheeseburger that actually tastes good? >> Rare, but yes. >> Okay. >> 1% of the time. >> Fair. >> But usually it's too much bread and it's dry. >> Correct. >> Yeah. >> And then like there's not enough meat in proportion to the bread. >> Yeah. >> Right. >> But could you make a tiny cheeseburger that's good? Of course. Like you're not breaking, you're not like get any Nobel Prize with this. You know, you can definitely make a tiny cheeseburger. It's like physically possible. I'm saying it's just rare. >> Thank you for doing this. >> You're welcome. >> Thanks for watching this week's episode of the Katie Miller podcast. We'll see you next week, Tuesday, 6 p.m.","textByLang":{"en":"I think the story of Doge from your perspective has never been told. Do you think you were successful? >> We're a little a little bit successful. We were some somewhat successful. >> Would you ever do Doge again? >> Um I mean, no. I don't think so. I think in instead of doing Doge, I I would have basically built, you know, worked on my companies essentially and not and the cars would they wouldn't have been running the cars. >> What's your biggest irrational fear? >> I I try not to have irrational fears. >> None. If I find an irrational fear, I squelch it >> if you had to start from scratch today with only $1,000. What would you do? >> Well, I did I did originally come to uh North America with like I don't know 2500 bucks Canadian, so I don't know, maybe two grand us. At this point, I have a lot of knowledge. A lot of things have to go wrong for that to be the case. It's like, am I just emerging from prison perhaps with a stipend? Hi everyone and welcome to this week's episode of the Katie Miller podcast. We are in Texas today joined by the one and only Elon Musk. >> Uh nice to see you again Katie. >> Nice to see you Elon. So I want to take us back. It's January 20th. You are in the Roosevelt room, if you remember this, getting sworn in and they hand you a computer and a phone. >> Right. Right. >> I want to go back to what happened next. I think the story of Doge from your perspective has never been told. What was your first thought on how Doge was going to proceed? >> Well, um I guess I couldn't believe I was there. Uh, for the most part it's like um it's all seemed extremely surreal at the time. you know, Doge was a madeup name um that had been made up, I don't know, two or three months before um and um based on internet suggestions and um I was going to call the Government Efficiency Commission and then and then um someone on the internet said, \"No, it should be the Department of Government Efficiency, Dog.\" I'm like, \"That sounds great.\" Um, so we just kind of made up an apartment. >> Do you think you were successful? >> We're a little a little bit successful. We were some somewhat successful. Um, I mean, we we we stopped a lot of [snorts] funding for um that that that really just made no sense. That was just entirely wasteful. where like for example there was like probably 100 maybe $200 billion dollars worth of zombie payments per year uh which uh simply by um enforcing that there be a payment code and an explanation for the payment uh that the payment would not go out. So, we've made that change to the main treasury computer and bunch of other computers. Um, it's like it seems like insanely obvious. Um, but uh there are just call it I two or 3% of government payments that go out that uh really should not be going out. Um, and it's actually quite hard to stop. Um so um it's a it's a pretty rare individual that would um ask the government to stop sending them money. >> Would you ever do Doge again? >> Um do you mean would I repeat history or or would I >> two ways to think about it? One is if you could go back and start from scratch like it's January 20th all again. Would you go back and do it differently? And knowing what you know now, do you think there's ever a place to restart you? Not saying others in yourstead, you go back and restart doing Doge. [sighs] >> I mean, no, I don't think so. Um, would I do I I think I probably I don't know. Um, >> would you do Doge again knowing what you know now? I mean the thing is like I think in instead of doing Doge I I would have basically built you know worked on my companies essentially. So and not and the cars would they wouldn't have been burning the cars. Um >> you gave up a lot to do. Uh yeah, like if you if you if you stop money going uh to uh going going for political corruption, they will they will lash out big time. >> Mhm. >> Um so they really want the money to keep flowing. Um, so if you stop it from flowing, there's like a very strong reaction to to stopping the money flowing. >> After you were in DC for a while, did you become disillusioned with how it operates? >> Well, I I wouldn't say I was super illusioned to begin with. Uh, it it I mean, I guess it's just like you really want the least amount done by government possible. The least amount I I I I guess maybe maybe like the the biggest thing is that I guess the biggest single thing is is that the there there are massive transfer payments going to um illegal immigrants um like massive essentially we're paying people to come here from somewhere else um in vast numbers including flying them in. So, like it's not like you need a border wall if you're flying them in. Um, then fasttracking them to citizenship and um making them beholden to to government payments um and uh and voting hard left. That's that's essentially it's like voter importation. If if if you if you create a gigantic money magnet to um you say if anyone comes here from anywhere else, we're going to pay you t tons of money, give you lots of free stuff. Um come come come to America and and get paid to do so. Um like you're going to get a lot of people taking up on that offer. Um and people say like this this this is fake. I'm like, uh, actually, well, let's look at, um, you know, Elon Omar, who was literally was voted into power, voted into Congress by, uh, you know, large group of people from Somalia, who are in Minnesota, which is really far from Somalia, or Mandani, who was voted as to be to be mayor. But if if but >> [clears throat] >> by a majority of people who are not um born in America. That's my understanding at least. Um so um and then then California say big time um situation. So uh I don't we just don't want to turn into a um you know communist hell hole basically. If you've said in the future that no one's going to need to worry about money or work because AI is going to take care of the rest, AI and robotics. What do you mean that people won't have to work in the future? >> Assuming the current trend of artificial intelligence and robotics continues, which seems likely, the um AI and robots will be able to do anything that that humans want to want them to do essentially. So hopefully not more than that, but AI and robotics will be able to provide us provide all the goods and services that anyone could possibly want. So >> but you wouldn't need to work like what would you do with your free time? >> People people will be able to do whatever they want with their free time. Um work will be optional. I I mean I just want to separate out from like what I wish would happen versus what I predict will happen because people get confused about that. They think that what I predict will happen is what I want it to happen. >> What I want what I predict to happen is not the same as what I want to happen. >> Um I if if I could I I would I would certainly slow down uh AI and robotics, but I I can't. It seems to be well it's it's it's advancing at a very rapid pace. Um whether I like it or not. >> Is AI what keeps you up at night? >> It used to be this point. I don't know. I I I wouldn't say there's there's nothing particularly keeping me up at night right now except that. But if you say what what where do I wake up in nightmares? Oh, AI. Yeah. Actually, I've had a lot of AI nightmares. Uh I I I had AI nightmares many days in a row. >> What am I supposed to do about it? >> What's your biggest irrational fear? >> Um I I I try not to have irrational fears. >> None. >> If I find an irrational fear, I squelch it. I I I don't believe fear is fear is the mind killer. So how about somebody who feels fear strongly? >> Well, on average, how many hours do you sleep a night? >> Six. You can tell based on my exposts. >> Yes, you can. >> People have actually mapped them so you it's very clear when I'm sleeping and when I'm not. Um, I tried having less than 6 hours sleep, but um, although I'm awake more hours per day, my cognitive function is reduced. So, my natural sleep, I actually timed it with the phone. They can get a phone app, but time it. It's like five 5 hours 56 minutes. That's what the phone said. >> What's an average day for you look like? >> Well, I have a lot of inbound communication. So, it's information triage. I try to segment the days so that there's not too much context switching because arguably fear is not the mind killer. Context switching is hard not to context switch if you've got an inbox full of stuff. Um, but you can think like if you had to context switch every 3 seconds or every 30 seconds or every 3 minutes, the context switching cognitive penalty would be very high every 3 seconds. >> And you're talking about switching between say Tesla X, XAI, >> SpaceX personal, >> SpaceX personal >> and but even within Tesla and and SpaceX there are many different things. getting this sort of the stuff on X like random news things um you know people being burned alive and stuff like that you're like what the hell's going on in this country >> who's the funniest person you know in real life >> you know President Trump is very funny he's got a great sense of humor >> President Trump is very funny >> he's very funny he's like naturally funny was it's somewhat e effortless I mean um you know when he was had Ed Mumdani in the office and Uh they asked him if he saw thought the president was a fascist and the president said just say yes. It's easier that way. >> Yeah. >> Don't worry about it. Just say yes. Awesome. >> He's like you guys. What a what a how silly. >> Who do you look up to the most? >> The creator. >> What's your current position on God? Uh, God is the creator. >> You don't believe in God though, do you? >> Well, I believe there was this universe came for something. People have different labels. >> When's the last time you did something extremely ordinary like go to Target or CVS? I can't go to things where there's the general public because um I I im there there's an immediate can I have a selfie line that forms and and these days in particularly in light of Charlie Ko's murder there are serious um security issues. It's not that I don't want to. I simply can't. Has Charlie's murder changed how you do things or were you already locked down pretty well before that? >> It certainly reinforced the severity of the situation where life is on hardcore mode. You make one mistake and you're dead and it only takes one one mistake. >> What's one moment in your life that you could live again just to feel it? Well, I mean, obviously when my kids were born or um the first time SpaceX got to orbit or Tesla made an electric car work, >> you've had a big a lot of them. >> It's a lot of It's a lot of things. There's a lot coming down the pike >> like what >> starship um the the degree to which a starship is a revolutionary technology is not well understood in the world. Um it's the first time that there's been any rocket design where full and rapid reusability is possible or full reusability at all is possible. Um this this is the first design where a reusable rocket can um is one of the possible outcomes where success is in the set of possible outcomes. >> Are you talking about in V3 or V2? >> Well, we could have made V2 um reusable, but the but we there were a lot of performance improvements for V3, so it made sense to go to V3. They're just there's like 10,000 different changes uh between V2 and B3, maybe more than 10,000 really. Um so um but Starship, if if there are historians in the future, I'll look back and at Starship and say it was one of the most profound things that ever happened. Now you can think of historic events as where would they fit on the in the evolutionary hall of fame. So you've got things like single cell life. Then you've got um you know multisellular life uh capturing a mitochondria capturing mitochondria so that you have a power cell in the plant in the cell. Good. We've got like a power plant in the cell. Um, you've got, you know, differentiation into plants and animals, life going from oceans to land. And then also on that scale, probably in the top 10 is life becoming multilanetary. There just aren't very many things that are in the top 10 of the evolution of life or where you could basically say you could evaluate any given uh civilization or any given life form as you know on on that on that scale. Um so life becoming multilanetary it's on the top 10. Um it needs to be sustainably multi multilanetary. So not just visiting um but actually multilanetary in the sense that if you have planetary redundancy so if one of the planets um if there were to be a catastrophe on one of the planets the other planet would survive. >> Are all of your companies >> starship is capable of doing that for the first time in history and no AI was used to create it. So the AI will appreciate that. Are all of your companies working towards that same goal to help us become multilanetary? Like does the AI exist to be able to help life on Mars or is that primarily for what is happening here currently? >> You know Tesla is mostly about making sure life on Earth is good and as NXAI is about that too because multilanetary means Earth's got to be good and you need another planet. Sometimes people think uh because they they have you know um legacy templates, mental templates, they think that going to Mars is an escape from Earth. Um like or that it would be some you know place where billionaires would go or something like that. Um but but actually Mars will be very dangerous and the moon base will be al also dangerous much more dangerous um and much less comfortable than Earth. Um, so the people that would go in the early days to make life multilanetary on Mars or the moon, they would have a much higher risk of death um than if then if they stayed on Earth. Um, and things would be cramped and uncomfortable. So that's that's the sales pitch for Mars. It's it's going to be uncomfortable. The food won't be as good as Earth. Uh, you might die. It's going to be a mass amount of hard work. And um it may not succeed. That's the sales pitch. >> Do you want to go? >> Same as when people came to America. >> Yeah. You didn't want to be in Jamestown. >> People went anyway. >> Yeah. Maybe if there had been social media back then they would have saying uh we're all dying. Here's videos of us dying would have probably put a damper on future voyages. But um yeah, they just whole bunch of people just disappeared. They don't know what happened to them. >> You talk a lot on X about wardrobe >> and how you wish current wardrobe would be differently. >> I just think like from a fashion standpoint, we should evolve. Um like my son Saxon said at one point, why does everything look like it's 2015? And I was like, damn, things do everything does look like it's 2015. He's like, if you took a picture from 2015 and said 2025, it looks exactly the same. There were >> stylistically >> things were the same as 2015. We have not we've not moved the needle in a decade. >> So what should it look like? >> Something new. You know, like the 60s had a definitive style. The 70s had a definitive style. The ' 80s had a definitive style. And then the ' 90s also had a different had a style. But then you start looking at the 2000s and the 2010s and it's like less and less every year. I think we should if our style I and and if you look at some of the older paintings um you know of past cabinet secretaries um some of them like they look cool like their their jackets are cooler than what we have right now you know they have sort of like a high collar and like a sort of I don't know what some sort of what what do you call those things ascot or something like that >> I mean it just looks cool like so But we we don't everything's like a very normal looking suit at this point. But like literally the same as 2015. I'm being generous because arguably the same as 2010. >> Yeah. >> So in 15 years and and I'm like from a fashion standpoint, I don't think we've moved since 2000 in 25 years. If you showed someone a picture of this is a bunch of this is a bunch of dudes in 20 2000. This is a bunch of dudes in 2025. which year is which? So, I think we should I don't know, spice it up a little. >> What's a conspiracy theory you believe in? >> I mean, which which conspiracy theories haven't come true at this point. We've run out of conspiracy theories that because they will come true >> as far as I can tell. >> Yeah. >> Um I mean, I don't know of any aliens. People has asked me if there's there are aliens. I have seen no evidence of aliens. Um, no one on the SpaceX senior team has any evidence of aliens because I've asked team like, \"Guys, am I missing something?\" Has anyone on the team has anyone's seen any evidence of aliens? >> Does that include UFOs? >> That's just an unidentified blank object. So, so UFOs like it could be like some new weapons program or whatever. that's, you know, some hypersonic missile or something like that. That that would be technically a UFO, but it's it's just it's just basically some weapons prototype. That's not it's not like aliens. So, although Neil Armstrong, Neil A spelled backwards as alien. Coincidence? >> You believe we actually went to the moon though? Yes, we went to the moon a few times actually and played golf on the moon. >> Okay. >> We didn't just go to the moon. We actually got a little bored and started playing golf on the moon. >> But why didn't the flag move? There's like that conspiracy. >> That was the jump the truck moment >> about the flag. >> No, the playing golf on the moon. >> Okay. >> You know, it literally did. >> No, I understand that. >> Yeah. Yeah. >> Whacked a golf ball on the moon. >> Is there There's no gravity though, right? There is gravity 16. >> If it wasn't gravity, you would just float away. >> Okay. >> There's no atmosphere. >> Okay, fair. >> But there is one sixth gravity. >> What's the biggest misconception about you? >> I don't know. How would I know? Uh, what do you think? >> I think it's And I get asked this a lot when I do interviews about you. >> Me? >> Oh, got I got asked. Everyone always thinks you're a very difficult person to work for. Oh, >> which you're I think you're very kind. >> Thanks. >> Like people think which you're you are [clears throat] >> like a very demanding boss. I think that you are I've never heard you yell at any employee. >> Yeah. I don't yell. >> I think every employee who works at every single one of your companies is incredibly missiondriven, which is unlike any other workplace I've ever seen. >> Like Starbase is the most inspirational place you'll ever go to, right? >> Everyone is there to work on a singular goal. And so I think to me the biggest misconception about you is how every employee at all of your companies are fiercely loyal because it's all mission driven and you are a very good employer to work for and I think people assume you are not >> right. Well why would they think anyone would work at the companies? >> Yeah. Um, I mean talent I mean talented people can go work anywhere they want. So they're only going to work at one of my companies if they want to. And if they're mistreated in some way, they would they would leave and go work somewhere else. >> How'd you come up with the idea for Starbase? >> Well, I think we needed a something inspirational. I can we we kind of have a lot of star things, you know. So, we got Starlink, Starship. Well, where would Starship depart from Star Base? I mean, Star Base is is as you've mentioned, it's it's like it's I think it's probably the coolest place on Earth. >> I agree. >> Um, and it used to it it used to be a sand bar down by the Rio Grand. I It's only like three feet above sea level. Um, so we built a gigantic rocket factory and two giant launch towers uh down by the river literally with inside of the Rio Grand and on on on an actual sandbar kind of had to have like an inspirational name. And then we made it a city so it's an incorporated city like legally a city. Um, you don't you don't hear about new cities being formed that often. Um, >> the last time there was a company town, it was Disney World. >> Yeah. I think Ford had some kind of like company town situations, but um but yeah, Disney World is it's literally his name. >> Yeah. >> I'm Walt Disney. This is my world. >> Yeah. >> I've gone from land to world. Um, they got like incorporated as a city and got tax exemption which was like a whole was a was a big deal. >> Yeah. >> I've been to Disney World probably 10 times. >> Really? >> Yeah. Maybe more than maybe more than 10, but at least 10 times. >> Uh because uh Cape Canaveral is right by Disney World. >> This makes sense now. So when I'd have the kids, then I would um my older kids and I was we're trying to get the rocket launch from Cape Canaveral. Then um you know the thing they'd want to do is go to Disney World uh or Harry Potterland. >> What's your favorite ride? >> I'm sort of tempted to say Space Mountain, I suppose. Yeah, probably Space Mountain. I mean, I do think Space Mountain needs an upgrade. >> It's a little herky jerky. the it doesn't look quite as fuss sci-fi as it used to. >> You know, it's it's like it's like the day before yesterday's tomorrow, but just till yesterday. >> What's your favorite age to parent of your kids? >> Uh, generally kids are the most fun between five and 10. >> Do you think humanity is inherently good or is it just trying to be? >> The concept of good wouldn't exist without humanity. I think I do think humanity is on balance good. You know, I generally think like in increasing the amount of consciousness in the universe is a good thing. Trying to try to understand the nature of the universe, which you can only do by increasing the increasing conscious awareness. I mean, I have thought about like how how did we get here? Because if we did start out as a hydrogen gas cloud that that sort of condensed and then formed stars and then these stars exploded and then they recondensed, formed stars again and then exploded again and then eventually you get to us 13.8 billion years later. And one of the interesting questions to think about is how many times have your atoms been at the center of a star? I think it's like on average three or four times, something like that. Uh then how many times will your atoms be at the center of a star? Estimates vary, but it seems like we're roughly halfway. So your atoms likely to be at the center of the star maybe another four times or something like that. It's depends on what your predictions are for the future. In terms of existence as measured by the number of times your atoms will be at the center of a star, we seem to be roughly halfway. That really, you know, if you want to look at the big picture, that's the really big picture. >> What's one invention that's made us worse, not better? >> What's one adventure that's made us worse? >> Mhm. Invention. Maybe short form video seems to be rotting people's brains. >> What's one piece of technology you hope never gets invented? >> Hope that I hope never gets invented. >> Like yeah, like it's going to destroy us all or you think with the proper safeguards? >> Well, I mean obviously I hope like that people don't invent a virus that can kill all humans. It's like that's an obvious thing. Um >> I mean yeah generally I hope like inventions that destroy consciousness are not invented. >> I think the future's going to look very interesting. So I I it's I do have this theory about the the predicting the future which is that the most interesting outcome is the most likely. um which if simulation theory is accurate uh makes sense because if anyone is simulating a wide range of futures they're going to stop the simulation when it gets boring because this is what we do in our reality. So if if SpaceX is doing or Tesla doing simulations to understand how a car would work or robot or spaceship or something like that, we we run all these simulations in the computer. Um and the simulations that um we pay attention to are the ones that that are the most interesting. like the the simulation where everything goes right on the rocket we actually don't pay attention to because that's that's not a the everything goes right simulation is um is fine. So we we actually test the you know the when we simulate the the rocket flight we'll actually test all sorts of oddball situations but we don't test it we we don't have the simulation be totally wrong because I mean like if the rocket just explodes immediately that's not not also not interesting. So it's it's like you you need to find the envelope of possible flight paths where the rocket can make it to orbit and uh without exploding and then you you find those boundaries and then when you launch the actual rocket you try you make sure it stays within those boundaries. Or another way to think of it is like we could be an alien Netflix series and that that series is only going to get continued if our ratings are good. >> Are the ratings good? >> Yeah. >> Okay. >> But but you can think of it like from a Darwinian standpoint applied if if you apply Darwin to simulation theory then the only the most interesting simulations will continue. Therefore, the most interesting outcome is most likely because the uh it's either that or annihilation. So, really, we have one goal. Keep it interesting. >> Do you think social media has made people more honest or more performative? >> Well, social media makes people more performative. Um, by the same token, you you you get more real life video of of things that that are actually happening and and anything that is very interesting will sp will will go viral on the internet. Um, so so you have both. you've got more performative where people are doing anything they can to get a few more views on their Tik Tok video or whatever or their reels or maybe on their expost or something. Um and um so that's very performative, but then you also see real life videos that are that challenge the narrative um but are nonetheless real. Is there any ex accounts you're surprised when you changed it so people could see country of origin that wasn't in the United States that you thought was in the United States? >> I don't really think about it that much. I mean there's in a country of origin we have to be a little careful about this. You you can actually technically you just specify your region like you can say I'm in Asia or something like that which is quite big. it but but it does make it a little harder that if somebody is trying to pretend that they're say a member of the American public or in Europe or Africa wherever if if they're you know if everything about their account is from a different continent than they are pretending to be from it's uh gets a little harder to pretend. We don't want to dox people but we kind of think you're not really doxing someone if you say which continent they're from. Yeah, I think it's fair. >> Yeah. >> Okay. So, in every episode we've played would you rather. Okay. Would you rather save humanity from extinction extinction on Earth or guarantee its survival on Mars? >> Uh it's it's a false dichotomy. I [clears throat] I I think I'd say uh guarantee Earth Earth's much better than Mars to be clear. Um Mars, but Mars is just our best option if we want to become a multilanet species. This is really our our our only option. Um if you want to become a multilanet species, you got Mars which is very difficult but not impossible. Uh Earth is much better than Mars but you know we can't uh I think it was Silkovsky or I think he said uh you know Earth is the cradle of civilization but we can't stay in the cradle forever. >> Would you rather be a Marvel superhero or a Bond villain? I think it would depend on which Marvel superhero or which Bond villain. I suppose I'd rather be a Marvel superhero. >> They did. They did model Iron Man in the movies after me. >> Yes. >> So, >> you were in the Iron Man movie, right? >> Yes. >> That's pretty cool. >> Yeah. Ro Down Jr. and Favro met with me >> uh to and toured SpaceX and stuff. So, and in fact, Iron Man 2, a large part of the movie is filmed in SpaceX. >> Really? >> Yes. If you look at if you watch Iron Man 2, you'll see it's a SpaceX factory is the actual background. >> That's so cool. >> Yeah, it was cool. We had Scarlett Johansson doing martial arts in the lobby, >> actually. Yeah. And you expect me to believe this is all real? It's a simulation. >> Exactly. >> What are the odds? >> Yeah. >> I mean, if you were me >> No, I agree with you. >> Would you think >> this is real or a simulation? >> Your life is a simulation. >> Yeah. >> Your life gets to be the simulation. >> Yeah. And I'm like doing all the side quests and everything. >> Yeah. What's your best side quest? >> A doge. Probably. >> Okay. Would you rather launch a social network with no algorithm or a rocket with no manual override? >> Who came up with these questions? >> Just keep going. >> These are funny. >> Maybe not to you [clears throat] cuz they're too trivial. >> What do you mean? Like so that with an algorithm means that you basically you only see the people you follow. >> Like it's just a mess. >> Like it was Twitter before you bought it. >> Yeah. Yeah. Um there's the sort of people you follow and then there there's a recommendation algorithm. Um I think probably in December we'll finally have a half decent recommendation algorithm. >> It's a lot better >> recently. Yeah. >> So it really just trying to show people stuff they'd be interested in. Um, but there's an enormous amount of AI horsepower being applied to this where Grock per thing is reading all it's going to read all 100 million posts per day which is a >> Does that take up a lot of comput? >> Hopefully it doesn't destroy its mind or something. >> Yeah. >> Yeah, it does take a lot of compute. um like most most posts are um there's a lot of spam scam stuff so it just that can be easily discarded I suppose. Um but then you've got to take you know 100 million pieces of content match that to I don't know sometimes three or 400 million people per day. So that's a lot of matching. >> My algorithm used to look a lot like other people's when you open their X account. Now mine is very unique comparatively to other people's. >> Um well we really are kind of the this is just the the beginning kind of thing. The what I mentioned like Grock reading everything and recommending any given thing to anyone should go live in December. So that the the acid test for this is are you seeing content like are you seeing content that you find really interesting from accounts you've never seen before? If if you if that's happening then the algorithm is working. Um like it should be possible for somebody to put to post content as a new user with no followers and if that content is is excellent it gets seen by a lot of people. So, can an account with a small number of followers or a new account if if the content is intrinsically excellent, can that content be seen by a lot of people? That's our goal. >> All right, last one. Would you rather invent time travel or teleportation? >> Actually, those things are almost the same thing in that you you can't break the speed of light without breaking reality. And you you know so if you could teleport somewhere instantly if you talking about teleportation faster than the speed of light presumably it would be um then then that that that would break our reality as would time travel. Um unless was there a very important conditional here? Unless we're a simulation. Time travel does not break a simulation. Is it like in Loki where you're on like the time and you just break a new one? >> Um the I think well people do tend to get wrapped up in knots with the time travel thing because they they try to simultaneously say something must be logically consistent but logically inconsistent. That's impossible. Um, but if you think of it like a video game, um, and say, okay, you've got various saved games and you can go back and restore a saved game from a prior start point. You still have your other saved games and there are many games going on in parallel. Um, they don't have to be consistent with each other. That's that's that's that's a that that is a it's a false assumption. If we're a simulation, um we might be somebody's video game or TV show or something like that. Like I said, we're just going to keep it interesting so they don't turn the computer off. >> What do you want? I'm just saying if that's true, keep it interesting or they're going to turn off the computer and they might Please don't delete us. >> Please don't delete us. Please don't delete us. Uh, we'll keep it interesting. I swear >> you keep it interesting. >> Yeah. So, if the most interesting outcome is the most likely, what do you think are the most interesting things that can occur? Now, most interesting is not what you want. It's just as viewed by a third party. Let's say you this was for argument sake um a an alien Netflix series and you were trying to maximize your viewership, you know, maximize your ratings. Um it's it's actually an interesting thought experiment. It's it's like it it's not actually not that interesting if everything just blows up. It's now it's over. That's not that interesting. It's not that interesting if there's a there's a calamity that wipes out all the humans. The show just ended. But I mean, fortunately and unfortunately uh if there is drama that like war or something like that, that that is interesting. You know, people will go to movies and watch, say, a World War I movie where people are getting blown up um from cannon shells and uh they're in the movie theater eating popcorn, drinking a soda. Um like you you wouldn't go to a movie where everything was just perfect and stayed that way. You'd leave you'd leave the theater. >> Good romance story, doesn't it? >> There's always a story arc. There's always an arc. Um, and it's it's generally not a linear arc. So, it's it's not going to be like things start here and just go straight up and to the right and end up in a good place for something like that. It's usually ups and downs. The classic sort of story arcs essentially, you know, act one, act two, act three. You have an initial rise in act two, full back in act initial rise in act one, full down in act two, um back in in act three with um you know happy ending if it's a comedy or a sad ending if it's a drama. If you look at President Trump's uh you know story, it's more interesting that he lost this the intermediate term and then won you know his second term after that. >> Just like the story arc initially up then down then resurgent resurgent again. If if you went with my theory that the most interesting outcome is the most likely, then that was the most likely outcome. It was inevitable. >> What are you watching on TV right now? >> I am irony man. Something like that. I'm paraphrasing. >> >> Uh, what am I watching actually? Right now I'm watching Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, the TV series Turtles in a Half Show, Total Power. Yeah. Uh, cuz uh, Little X wants to watch that. I I I'm watching things that the kids kids want to watch. Rewatched Dodgeball last night. >> It's a good movie. >> Yeah. If you can dodge a wrench, you can dodge a ball. >> If you can dodge a wrench, you can dodge a ball. >> What? Yeah. High motivation to dodge if somebody's loving reg. What song instantly puts you in a good mood? >> Uh, The Final Countdown by Europa. >> Heard that song a lot. Do you read the instructions or just wing it? >> What's the goal? >> Like if you're putting something together, do you read the instructions or do you wing it? >> If it's a simple thing, I'll wing it. If it's a complex thing, I'll look at the instructions. If you had to start from scratch today with only $1,000, what would you do? >> Well, I did I did originally come to uh North America with like I don't know 2500 bucks Canadian, so I don't know, maybe two grand us. Um, one bag of books and one bag of clothes in Montreal at age 17. So that is how I started out. Um, at this point I have a lot of knowledge. A lot of things would have to go wrong for that to be the case. It's like, am I just emerging from prison perhaps with a stipend? All my company's been confiscated. I mean, it would take Armageddon, which hopefully that doesn't happen. Um, like Ragnarok next level and I lost. >> Yeah. >> What the hell? Um, >> it's bad hand. I I mean it's impossible for me for someone to have that amount of know all the knowledge that I have and then be um dropped down to a low resource amount because the reality is that either something truly catastrophic has happened like civilization has melted um or I will be able to ask people to just give me money um and with the promise that I will have a high return which what I'm able to do right now. >> Yeah. >> Like if you give me a dollar, you will get back much more than a dollar. >> Yes. >> Um so this is it's it's somewhat of an impossible dichotomy because civilization would have had to have destroyed or something. Um in which case $1,000 is not going to solve your problems. you know, you can't do much with a if you're if you're wandering around radioactive craters, uh, and you're in like, you know, fallout or whatever, uh, then, uh, $1,000 is not going to solve anything. And if civil civilization hasn't melted, then probably just talk people into giving me money, which I've done before. >> >> If you weren't running your companies, what random job would you enjoy doing the most? >> I don't know if that's all that random, but I'd like probably write video games or something like that. I I did that at one point. I like solving problems, so I like building things. I built a lot of things. Like a lot. What do you eat in a typical day? >> Well, these days I start off with a breakfast of steak and eggs and coffee. And then dinner tends to vary. I usually don't have lunch. Um or if I do something very small. And then dinner, depending on whether it's social or not, um will vary in cuisine. I like a wide range of cuisine. >> What's your favorite food? Um, American food is my favorite food. >> Like pizza or a cheeseburger? Like >> Yeah, the cheeseburger is probably the If I had to say like there's only one thing you can ever have for the rest of time, which admittedly would be a bit monotonous, but it would probably be a cheeseburger. Um, because cheeseburgers are amazing. It's a genius invention. Um, I'll tell you a funny story about when um I was living in LA and I took my older boys out for lunch uh to Sugarfish, which is a very um kind of uptight sushi restaurant. Um, in fact, it's at at at the on the menu of of [snorts] the restaurant, it says, \"Do not ask for soy sauce.\" Uh because the chef has put the right amount of choy soy sauce and you can't have anymore. And if the chef doesn't think you chef soy sauce, you can't have soy sauce. That's what it says on the menu basically. Um so like extremely strict um sushi restaurant. And so the waiter is going around asking everyone what they want. And then it comes to Saxon and Saxon says, \"I'll have a cheeseburger. >> >> And the waiter's like, takes a moment for the waiter to recover because no one's ever asked for a cheeseburger at this, you know, very strict sushi restaurant. Um, took him like a 30 seconds to realize he just been asked for a cheeseburger because you're not even allowed to ask for soy sauce. So, um, so then when he finally recovered, he said, \"We don't have cheeseburgers.\" >> >> And Saxon Saxon goes at the top of his voice, \"What?\" Like, \"What kind of restaurant doesn't have cheeseburgers?\" I says, \"Fine, I'll have a hamburger.\" I don't know what you got against dairy, but >> yeah, I don't have hamburgers either. >> Did he stay for the rest of the meal? >> Yeah, but he was nonplusted. I was like, I can't believe um this place doesn't have cheeseburgers. So So yeah, I mean I like I guess I like barbecue, which is good because I'm here in Austin. Um I mean if it's if it's if it's a hot cuisine, I like French food as well, but not every day in once in a while. >> If your friends described you in one emoji, what's the emoji? >> I guess the emoji I use the most, which is the laughing emoji. All right. And we close on this question every episode. If you could host a dinner party with three people, dead or alive, who's coming to dinner, and what are you eating? >> Maybe Shakespeare, Ben Franklin, Nicola Tesla. Um, I there's there's actually a lot of people I'd like to I would have liked to talk to and we'll we'll eat, I guess, whatever they'd like. Um, I think if if if you're going to if this is a once in a-lifetime thing, I think you'd want to have some epic, you know, 12 course meal or something like that >> at least. >> Yeah. But some Yeah. You want to go all out for that dinner? I think you're probably not going to serve cheeseburgers unless they want it. >> Yeah. >> Maybe one of the courses could be like a tiny cheeseburger. Those don't taste as good as the big ones, though. >> No, but they could. It's just they don't try. There's nothing. You could make a tiny cheeseburger taste just as good as a big cheeseburger >> if you try it. >> Have you ever had a tiny cheeseburger that actually tastes good? >> Rare, but yes. >> Okay. >> 1% of the time. >> Fair. >> But usually it's too much bread and it's dry. >> Correct. >> Yeah. >> And then like there's not enough meat in proportion to the bread. >> Yeah. >> Right. >> But could you make a tiny cheeseburger that's good? Of course. Like you're not breaking, you're not like get any Nobel Prize with this. You know, you can definitely make a tiny cheeseburger. It's like physically possible. I'm saying it's just rare. >> Thank you for doing this. >> You're welcome. >> Thanks for watching this week's episode of the Katie Miller podcast. We'll see you next week, Tuesday, 6 p.m."},"languages":["en"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":"YouTube auto-generated captions (Katie Miller Pod)"},{"id":"people-by-wtf-kamath-2025","type":"interview","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rni7Fz7208c","title":"People by WTF","titles":{"en":"People by WTF","de":"People by WTF","fr":"People by WTF"},"date":"2025-11-30","summary":"A long, personal conversation with Indian entrepreneur Nikhil Kamath on work, consciousness, family, money, AI, India and how the future might unfold.","text":"Our audience is largely want to be entrepreneurs in India. And I feel like all of us have so much to learn from you because you've done it so many times over in so many different domains. So, we will speak to them today, and I will try and centre all my questions in that direction so they can take advantage of this conversation and maybe start-- take a chance and build something. Do you want a coffee? Um... -Sure, why not? -Okay.\n\nAre we gonna be talking for a while? -[laughs] -I hope we are. Okay, good. Sure. -Um... -Meghana? May I trouble you for a coffee? Can we get another coffee? -[Meghana] Anything's fine? -Uh... Cappuccino, I guess. [Meghana] Cappuccino? Okay. Are you a coffee drinker, Elon? -Yeah, yeah. -Yeah? Yeah, I have a coffee once, -usually in the mornings. -Okay. -One-a-day kind of thing? -Yeah, pretty much. You want to wait for it? No, I'm good.\n\n[laughter] The first thing I must say is you're a lot bigger and bulkier, muscular, than I would have thought you are. Oh, stop, you're making me blush. Really. Seriously. Yeah, I mean, look, on the Internet, I'm small, you know? You're essentially... What percentage of Internet is spent on Twitter? Is there a number to it? On X. Well, so, we have, like, about 600 million monthly users.\n\nAlthough, it can spike up, if there's some major event in the world. It can get up to, I don't know, 800 million or a billion, if there's some major event in the world, so... I don't know, 250 to 300 million per week type of thing. It's a pretty decent number. It tends to be readers, you know, people that read words. You know, so... Do you think that'll change? Yeah, I mean, there's... There's certainly a lot of video on the X system.\n\nBut at this point... Increasing amounts of video. But I think where the X network is strongest is among people who think a lot and read a lot. You know, so, that's where it's gonna be strongest. Because we have words. And, you know, so... Among readers, writers, and thinkers, I think X is number one in the world. As far as social media goes, the form factor, if you had to wager a guess for tomorrow... -Yeah. -...\n\nhow much is text, how much is video? I've heard you speak about maybe voice and hearing being the next form of communication with AI. What happens to X in its true form? How does it evolve? Yeah, so, I do think most interaction is gonna be video in the future. Most interactions are gonna be real-time video with AI. So, real-time video comprehension, real-time video generation, that's gonna be most of the load.\n\nAnd that's how it is for most of the Internet right now. Most of the Internet is video. Text is a pretty small percentage. But the text tends to be higher value, generally. Or more, it's more densely compressed information. Yeah, so... But if you say what is the most amount of bits generated and compute spent, it's certainly gonna be video. So, I used to be a shareholder of X, -a very small one. -Okay.\n\nAnd I got paid when you bought Twitter and you made it X. -Happy decision? Glad you did it? -Yeah, yeah, I think it was important. You know, I felt like Twitter was heading in... or had gone in a direction that had more of a negative influence on the world. It was... I mean, of course, this depends on one's perspective. Some people will say, well, actually, they liked the way it was, and now, they don't like it.\n\nBut I think the fundamental thing was that... Twitter was amplifying... I would say, a fairly pretty far left by most people's standards in the world's ideology because of where it was based, in San Francisco. And then they actually suspended a lot of people on the right. So, from their perspective, even someone in the centre would be far right. If you're far left, anyone in the centre is far right, because...\n\nIt's just on the political spectrum, they're just as far left as you get in the United States and in San Francisco. So, what I've tried to do is just restore it to be balanced and centrist. So, there haven't been any left-wing voices that have been suspended or banned or de-amplified or anything like that. Now, some of them have chosen to just go somewhere else, but...\n\nBut at this point, the operating principle of the X system is to adhere to any country's laws, but not to put our thumb on the scale beyond the laws of a country. When I think of social media... -Oh, thank you. -Thank you. When I think of social media, Elon, I feel like... even data suggests that the current incumbents seem to be losing traction amongst the youngest of audience. Yeah. Even platforms like Instagram...\n\nI mean, they're not exactly like Twitter, but platforms across the board. If one had to rework social media and build something bottom-up, what do you think would work for the world of tomorrow? Well, I mean, I don't think that much about... about social media, to be frank. I mean, it's... I mostly just wanna have something where there's...\n\nin the case of X, kind of a global town square, where people can say what they wanna say with words, pictures, video... where there's a secure messaging system. We've recently added the ability to do audio and video calls. So, really trying to bring the world together into a eclectic consciousness. That's, I guess, different from just saying, like, \"What is the most dopamine-generating video stream that one could make?\"\n\nWhich, you know, I think it can be a little bit of brain rot, frankly. You know, if you're just watching videos that just cause dopamine hits one after another, but lack substance, then I think those are not great. That's not a great way to spend time. But I do think that's actually what a lot of people are gonna wanna watch. So, if you say, like, total Internet usage, it's gonna probably be optimising for, you know, neurotransmitter generation.\n\nLike, there's somebody getting a kick out of it. But it becomes like a drug type of thing. But I'm not really after... My goal is not to do that. I guess I could do that if I wanted to, but, um, I... I just wanna really have a global platform that brings together... Like I said, it becomes close to, sort of, a collective consciousness of humanity as possible. And one of the things that we've introduced, um, for example, is automatic translation.\n\n'Cause I think it would be great to bring together what people say in many different languages, and... but automatically translated for the recipient. So, you have the collective consciousness, not just of, say, people in a particular language group, but you have the thoughts of people in, you know, every language group. And why is that important, Elon? Collective consciousness, to have one platform? I guess... Yeah, why is that important?\n\nI guess it's-- You could also say, like, why... You know, if you consider humans, like, humans are composed of around 30 to 40 trillion cells. You know, there's trillions of synapses in your mind. But there's not-- The why of it, I mean, I guess, it's just so we can increase... our understanding. Increase our... our understanding of the universe. I guess I had this... sort of question about what's the meaning of life, you know?\n\nWhy is anything important? You know, why are we here? What's the origin of the universe? What is the end? What are the questions that we don't even know to ask? And probably the questions we don't even know to ask are the most important ones. So, I'm just trying to, I guess, understand what's going on. What is going on in this reality? Is this reality? And where did you get when you asked, \"What is the point of life?\" Yeah, so, I...\n\nI came to the conclusion that... which is somewhat, in the Douglas Adams Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy school of thought, -which is-- -42. Yeah, you know, he sort of... Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is like a book on philosophy disguised as humour. -Yeah. -And... That's where you get the-- You know, Earth turns out to be this computer to understand, to get to figure out the answer of the meaning of life.\n\nAnd it comes up with the answer of 42. But then, it's like, \"What does 42 mean?\" And it turns out, well, actually, the hard part is the question, not the answer. And for that, you need a much bigger computer than Earth. So, basically, what Douglas Adams was saying is that we actually don't know how to frame the questions properly.\n\nAnd so, I think by expanding the scope and scale of consciousness, we can better understand what questions to ask about the answer that is the universe. Do you believe the collective consciousness of society-- I was watching this movie recently called the Gladiator. -Russell Crowe. Have you seen it? -Yeah, yeah. In Gladiator, in Rome, when people are fighting, and the crowd is cheering when people kill each other...\n\nthe collective is very much like the mob. It doesn't have nuance in its opinion, per se. That's this particular kind of mob. I mean, they're sort of going there to see people kill each other, you know? Do you suspect the society we live in today is very different? We don't, generally-- At this point, we don't... you know, go and watch people kill each other. [laughter] Maybe some kind of euphemism of that. -Sports, I suppose. -Mm.\n\nSo, people do sports without-- where teams attempt to defeat each other, -but minus the death. -Right. Just going back to the consideration of a human. We all started out as one cell, but now, we are... over 30 trillion cells. But I think most people feel like they're one body. Like, you know, usually, your right hand's not fighting your left hand type of thing, you know? They just sort of cooperate. Your mind is... you know...\n\njust a vast number of neurons. But most of the time, it doesn't feel like there's, you know, a trillion voices in your brain. Hopefully not. So, there's clearly more that happens when you have trillions of cells working as a cellular collective than, say, one cell. Or a small, you know, small multicellular creature. There's clearly something different that happens. Like, you can't talk to a bacteria, you know? -Yeah. -Yeah. It's very silent.\n\nThey just sort of wiggle around, and... From their perspective, I don't know. I just thought of what is life like from the perspective of an amoeba, you know? But I know you can't talk to an amoeba. Like, they don't talk back. But you can talk to humans. So, there's just something, obviously, qualitatively fundamentally different for humans. Once you have a large number of cells, and, you know, sufficiently large brain type of thing, there's...\n\nyou can now talk to humans. And they can say things, they can produce things. But bacteria are not gonna produce a spaceship, for example. But humans can. So I think there's something qualitatively different that also happens when there's a collection of humans. In fact, it's safe to say that a single human cannot make a spaceship. I cannot make a spaceship by myself. But with a collection of humans, we can make spaceships.\n\nSo, there's something, obviously, qualitatively different about a collection of humans. In fact, it would be impossible for me to learn all of the areas of expertise. There wouldn't be enough time in one lifetime to even learn all the things before I was dead. So, you really fundamentally have to have a collection of humans to make a rocket. Then, I think there are probably some other scaling...\n\nqualitative scaling things that happen when you have groups of humans. And then, if the quality of the interaction, or the quality of the information flow... the better it is, the more the human collective will achieve. And, like I said, I'm just curious about the nature of the universe.\n\nAnd I think if we-- It's safe to say, like, if we increase the scope and scale of consciousness, we're much more likely to understand the nature of the universe than if we reduce it. Is that a bit like spirituality? A lot of people talk to me about spirituality. Right. I still don't know what it actually means. Like, I keep asking them, \"What do you mean?\" Yeah. \"What do you mean?\" I mean, a lot of people have spiritual feelings. Right.\n\nAnd I wouldn't try to deny that those spiritual feelings are real to them. But it's... It doesn't entirely translate. Just because somebody else has a spiritual feeling doesn't mean that I would have that spiritual feeling. You know, I tend to be kind of physics-pulled, which is, like, if something has predictive value, then... I'll pay more attention to it than if it doesn't have predictive value. Right.\n\nSo, you know, physics, I would say, is the study of that which has predictive value. I think it's a pretty good definition. My primary job, Elon, is a stockbroker and stock investor. -Okay. -There is no predictive value. Nobody knows what will happen tomorrow. Well, but I think you can generally say, you know, that... If it's long-term for a company, then you can say, like, \"Do you like the products or services of that company?\n\nAnd is it likely to... Do you like the product roadmap? Do you like-- It seems like they make great products and they're likely to make great products in the future.\" If that's the case, then I would say that's probably a good company to invest in. And I think you also want to believe in the team.\n\nSo if you're like, \"Well, that's a talented and hardworking team, they make good products today, they seem to be still motivated to make things in the future.\" Then I'd say that's a good company to invest in. Fair point. Yeah, and now, that... That won't solve for the daily fluctuations which happen, and, sometimes, are pretty extreme. But over time, that is the right way to invest in stocks.\n\nBecause a company is just a group of people assembled to create products and services. So you have to say, \"Well, what other-- How good are those products and services? Are they likely to continue to improve in the future?\" If so, then you should buy the stock of that company and then don't worry too much about the daily fluctuations. Right. What's got you most excited now, Elon, in terms of all that you're building? You're doing so much.\n\nSo let me just preface and contextualise who is watching this. Our audience is largely wannabe entrepreneurs in India. Okay. Really ambitious, really hungry, want to take the risk and build something. And I feel like all of us have so much to learn from you because you've done it so many times over in so many different domains. Yeah.\n\nSo, we will speak to them today, and I will try and centre all my questions in that direction so they can take advantage of this conversation and maybe start-- take a chance and build something. Okay, sure. Yeah, I guess the most important thing to do is just... make useful products and services. Yeah. Which one of all the products and services that you're building has got you most excited today?\n\nWell, I think that there's increasingly a convergence, actually, between SpaceX and Tesla and xAI. In that, if the future is solar-powered AI satellites, which it pretty much needs to be in order to... In order to harness a non-trivial amount of the energy of the sun, you have to move to solar-powered AI satellites in deep space... which, somewhat, is a confluence of Tesla expertise and SpaceX expertise. And xAI on the AI front, so...\n\nit does feel like, over time, there's somewhat of a convergence there. But all the companies are doing great things. Very proud of the teams, they do great work. So, we're making great progress with Tesla on the autonomous driving. I don't know if you've tried the self-driving? -Mm-mm. -Have you tried it? I've tried it in the Waymo, not in the Tesla. Yeah, it's worth trying. We actually have it here in Austin. -So you can, like...\n\n-Yeah, I'd love to try it. You can literally just download the Tesla app, and I think it's open to anyone. -Yeah. -Definitely try it out. You know how it goes. But we've made a lot of progress with electric vehicles, with battery packs and solar, and very much so with self-driving. So, basically, real-world AI. Tesla is the world leader in real-world AI, I would say.\n\nAnd then, we're gonna be making this robot, Optimus, which is starting production, hopefully, summer next year at scale. And I think that's gonna be pretty cool. That'll be like-- I think everyone's gonna want their own personal C-3PO, R2-D2, you know, a helper robot. Like, it would be pretty cool. And then, SpaceX is doing great work with the Starlink programme, providing low-cost, reliable Internet throughout the world. And hopefully, India.\n\nWe'd love to be operating in India. That would be great. We're operating in 150 different countries, now, with Starlink. Can you give me a bit about Starlink and how the tech works? 'Cause somebody I was speaking to... I don't know if you know this company called Meter out of San Francisco. They're trying to replace network engineers. -But-- -Don't know it, no.\n\nSo, he was telling me about how, in densely populated areas, Starlink works differently than it might be in a place with not as many people. Can you explain how it works? Yeah, so, Starlink... There's several thousand satellites in low-Earth orbit, and they're moving around 25 times the speed of sound in these... You know, they're zipping around the Earth, basically, and...\n\nthey're at an altitude of about 550 kilometres, which is called, generally, low-Earth orbit. Because they're at low-Earth orbit there, the latency is low. Like, the distance, because the distance is not that far compared to a geostationary satellite at 36,000 kilometres. So, you've got thousands of satellites providing low latency, high-speed Internet throughout the world, and they are interconnected as well.\n\nSo, there are laser links between the satellites, so it forms, sort of, a laser mesh. So that the-- Let's say if cables are damaged or cut, like fibre cables, the satellites can communicate between each other and provide connectivity even if the cables are cut. So, for example, when the Red Sea cables were cut, I think, a few months ago, the Starlink satellite network continued to function without a hitch.\n\nSo, it's particularly helpful for disaster areas. So, if an area has been hit with some kind of natural disaster, floods or fires or earthquakes, that tends to damage the ground infrastructure. But the Starlink satellites still work, so... And generally, whenever there's of natural disaster somewhere, we always provide people with free Starlink Internet connectivity.\n\nYou know, we don't want to charge-- We don't want to take advantage of a tragic situation. So, it's always, you know, if there's natural disasters, we're like, \"Okay, it's free during the natural disaster.\" You know, we don't want to, say, like, you know... put a paywall up while somebody's trying to get help. That would be wrong. So, it's a very robust system.\n\nIt's complimentary to ground systems because the satellite beams work best in sparsely populated areas. But because you've got a satellite beam, it's a pretty big beam, and you have a fixed number of users per beam, so... it tends to be very complimentary to the ground-based cellular systems, because those are very good in cities, because you've got these cell towers that are, you know, only a kilometre apart type of thing, but...\n\nBut cell towers tend to be inefficient in the countryside. So, in rural areas is where you tend to have the worst Internet because it's very expensive and difficult to lay... to do all the fibre-optic cables or to have high bandwidth cellular towers. So, Starlink is very complimentary to the existing telecom companies. It basically tends to serve the least served, which, I think, is good. -That's... -Will that change tomorrow?\n\nLike, today, as you explained, the beam is quite broad, and it can't work in a densely populated area with high buildings, maybe. But can that change, and tomorrow, it becomes really efficient in a densely populated city where it is competitive with the local network providers? Unfortunately, the physics don't allow for that. So, we're too far away. So, at 550 kilometres, even if we try to reduce it, which...\n\nAbout as low as we can go is about 350 kilometres, still very far away. You've just... You can think of, like, a flashlight, which is, you know, this flashlight's got a cone and that cone is coming at, you know... today, it's 550 kilometres. In the future, we're trying to get down to 350 kilometres, but we can't beat something that's one kilometre away, which is the cell tower. Physics is not on our side here.\n\nSo, it's not physically possible for Starlink to serve densely populated cities. Like, you can serve a little bit, maybe 1% of the population. And, sometimes, people get-- Even in crowded cities, there might be, you know, no fibre link up their road. Like, sometimes, there's somebody on a cul-de-sac or something or in a place... In cities, there's sometimes underserved areas for random reasons.\n\nAnd so, Starlink can serve, like I said, maybe 1% or 2% of a densely populated city. But it can be much more effective in, like I said, in rural areas where the Internet connection is much worse. And often, people either have, sometimes, no access to Internet or it's extremely expensive or the quality is not very good.\n\nIf I were to ask you to wager a guess, Elon, do you think India will go down the path of urbanisation like China did, with more people moving in from rural economies to urban centres? Or do you think we'll beat the trend? Well, I suppose some amount of that has happened, right? I mean, I'm curious to, sort of, ask you some questions as well. 'Cause, of course, isn't that the trend, or is it not the trend in India? It is the trend, largely.\n\nI think a little bit changed during COVID when a lot of urbanisation slowed down and that was not organic. It was very artificially manifested. Right. But one does question that with AI, if productivity were to go up... And I heard you speak about UHI instead of UBI. Yeah. I think it will be Universal High Income.\n\nIn a world like that, I wonder if more people want to live in cities which are always going to be more polluted and not offer the quality of lifestyle that a rural environment might. Well, I guess it's up to... Some people want to be around a lot of people and some people don't. It's gonna be, maybe, a matter of personal choice. But I think in the future, it won't be... I think it won't be the case that you have to be in a city for a job. -Right.\n\n-'Cause I think... My prediction is, in the future, working will be optional. Right. We seem to be moving from-- Not in India, but in some parts of the West, from six days to five days to four days to three. Not me. [laughter] I think, the Europeans. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, 'cause...\n\nI mean, I think if you're trying to make a startup succeed or you're trying to make a company do very difficult things, then you definitely need to put in serious hours. -I think that's how it goes. -Right. And if we were to move from five to four to three days, how do you think society changes? When people have to work half the week, what do they do with the other half? Well, I think it'll actually be that people don't have to work at all.\n\nIt may not be that far in the future. Maybe only, I don't know, ten, I'd say less than 20 years. My prediction is, in less than 20 years, working will be optional. Working at all will be optional. Like a hobby. Pretty much. And that would be because of increased productivity, meaning people do not have to work?\n\nThey don't have to-- I mean, look, obviously, people can play this back in 20 years and say, \"Look, Elon made this ridiculous prediction and it's not true.\" But I think it will turn out to be true that, in less than 20 years, but maybe even as little as, I don't know, ten or 15 years, the advancements in AI and robotics will bring us to the point where working is optional.\n\nIn the same way that, like, say, you can grow your own vegetables in your garden or you could go to the store and buy vegetables. You know. It's much harder to grow your own vegetables. But some people like to grow their vegetables, which is fine. But it'll be optional, in that way, is my prediction. If one were to argue that humans are innately competitive and everything is relative...\n\nFrom the time of hunters, somebody wanted to be the alpha hunter or the biggest farmer, if everybody gets a universal high income and everybody has enough... -What do you compete for? -Uh... it would be relative, right? Like, if we all had enough, enough is not enough. Yeah, I guess-- I'm not exactly sure.\n\n'Cause we're really headed into the singularity, as it's called, which, you know, they refer to AI sometimes as kind of like the black hole, like a singularity. You don't know what happens after the event horizon. It doesn't mean that something bad happens, it just means you don't know what happens.\n\nI'm confident that if AI and robotics continue to advance, which, they are advancing very rapidly, like I said, working will be optional, and people will have any goods and services that they want. \"If you can think of it, you can have it\" type of thing. But then, at a certain point, AI will actually saturate on anything humans can think of. And then, at that point, it becomes a situation where AI is doing things for...\n\nAI and robotics are doing things for AI and robotics, because they've run out of things to do to make the humans happy. 'Cause there's a limit, you know? You say, like... People can only eat so much food, or... But it's gonna be, I think... \"If you can think of it, you can have it,\" will be the future. You know, the Austrian School of Economics, if you go back in time, they were the digression from Adam Smith.\n\nThey talk about the marginal utility of everything. Having one of something has value, having two of the same thing has lesser value and having ten of the same thing has no value. Yes. So, if we could have everything we wanted, maybe-- Like ten marshmallows, I mean, who wants that? -Yeah. -[laughter] One's plenty. This is like the marshmallow test. You're like, \"You're gonna have two marshmallows later or one marshmallow now?\"\n\nAnd I'm like, \"I'll have one marshmallow, I don't want two marshmallows.\" -That's interesting. -[laughter] What would you pick? But I don't-- One marshmallow is enough. I always question marshmallows as being like, not the most, you know, the best candy, you know? -Yeah. -[laughter] I don't yearn for marshmallows. -I think you're the best... -[laughter] Who does? You're the best testament to the marshmallow experiment. -I think... -I suppose so.\n\nOh, well, I mean, I like delayed gratification, essentially. -Yeah. You're able to delay it more than most. You know, I have a tattoo which says, \"Delay gratification.\" Yeah, wow, okay. What's this? Okay, you're really taking the marshmallow test hard. [laughter] I feel like I can't remember. When I'm trading or when I'm buying... Delay gratification, yeah, yeah. -It helps. -Wow, okay. That's... That's commitment.\n\nAnd it's pointing at me, so it reminds me of... Okay, well, it's good advice. I mean, you can't miss it. -If you could get a... -[laughter] If you could get a tattoo, what would you get? I guess maybe my kids' names or something. Right. Why do you like the letter \"X\" as much as you do? Well... [laughs] I mean, yeah, it's a good question, honestly. Sometimes, I wonder what's wrong with me. So, um... I mean, it started off with, where, I think...\n\nSo, way back, ancient times, in '99. [laughter] The Precambrian era when there were only sponges... there were only three one-letter domain names. And I think it's X, Q, and Z. And, uh... And I was like, \"Okay, I want to create this place where it's the financial crossroads or like the financial exchange, you know?\"\n\nEssentially, it's solving money from an information theory standpoint where the current banking system is a large number of heterogeneous databases with batch processing that are not secure. And if we could have a single database that was real-time and secure, that would be more efficient from a monetary-- from an information theory standpoint than a large number of heterogeneous databases that batch process very slowly and securely. So, um...\n\nSo, that was sort of X. com way back in the day, which kind of became PayPal. And then... And it was acquired by eBay. And then, eBay-- Someone reached out from eBay and said, \"Hey, do you want to buy the domain name back? And I was like, \"Sure.\" And so I had the domain name for quite a while. And then... And then, yes... Then I was like, \"Well, maybe this-- Acquiring Twitter would also be an opportunity to revisit the original plan of X.\n\ncom, which is to create this... this clearinghouse of financial transactions.\" Basically, to create a more efficient money database, is a way to think about it. Like, money is really an information system for labour allocation. People sometimes think money is power in and of itself, but it doesn't, really-- If there's no labour to allocate, it's meaningless. So if you were to be on a desert island with a trillion dollars or whatever...\n\n-Now you have that. -... it doesn't matter. Oh, yeah, right. Why speculate when you can be real? I just hope I don't end up on a desert island. It's not gonna be very useful to me. But it illustrates my point that if you're stranded on a desert island with a trillion dollars, it's not useful, because there's no labour to allocate. You just allocate yourself, so... So, anyway, so, it's a long-winded way of saying that it's...\n\nIt's just really, like... I'm just kind of slowly revisiting this idea that I had 25 years ago to create a more efficient, um... money database. And if that's successful, people will use it, and if it's not successful, they won't use it. And then, I also like the idea of having a unified... app or website or whatever, where you can do anything you want there.\n\nYou know, China has this with WeChat, sort of, somewhat, where you can exchange information, you can publish information, you can exchange money. People kind of live their life on WeChat in China. And it's quite useful, but there's no real WeChat outside of China. So, it's, like... It's kind of WeChat++, I'd say, is the idea for X. Anyway, so, then, Space Exploration Technologies is the full name of the company.\n\nBut I was like, \"That's too much, that's a mouthful.\" So I was like, \"We'll just call it SpaceX,\" like FedEx for space. It just happens to have the X in the, you know... 'Cause exploration has an X, but, you know... And I was like, \"Well, I like capitalising the X just artistically, so...\" So, then, uh, that's why it's SpaceX, but... And then, what else we got? I got a kid. He's called X, too, but his mother's the one that named him \"X\". -Oh?\n\n-[laughter] And I said, \"You know, people are really gonna think I've got a thing about X if we name our kid \"X\" too, you know?\" And I said to her, like, \"Look, I do have X. com, you know.\" [laughter] \"So, people are gonna really think I've got somewhat of a fetish for this letter.\" But she said no, she likes X and she wants to call him X. I'm like, \"Okay.\" Is this a new thing, or have you had it growing up?\n\nNo, I'm saying it's somewhat of a coincidence. Okay. Like, not everything's called X. I mean, Tesla isn't, there's no Xs in Tesla. Yeah. What do you think money will be in the future, Elon? I think, long term... I think money disappears as a concept, honestly. It's kind of strange, but... But in a future where anyone can have anything, I think you no longer need money as a database for labour allocation.\n\nIf AI and robotics are big enough to satisfy all human needs, then money is no longer... Its relevance declines dramatically. I'm not sure we will have it. You know, the best imagining of this future that I've read is from Iain Banks, the Culture books. So I recommend people read the Culture books. In this sort of far future of the Culture books, there's... they don't have money, either. And everyone can pretty much have whatever they want.\n\nThere's still some fundamental currencies, if you will, that are physics-based. So, energy is... Energy is the true currency. This is why I said Bitcoin is based on energy. You can't legislate energy. You can't just, you know... pass a law and suddenly have a lot of energy. It's very difficult to generate energy, or especially to harness energy in a useful way to do useful work. So, I think that probably...\n\nProbably we won't have money and probably we'll just have energy, you know, power generation as the de facto currency. So, I mean, I think one way to frame civilisational progress is the percentage completion on the Kardashev scale. So, you know, Kardashev I is what percentage of a planet's energy are you successfully turning into useful work?\n\nAnd I'm maybe paraphrasing here a little bit, but the Kardashev II would be what percentage of the sun's energy are you converting into useful work? Kardashev III would be what percentage of the galaxy are you converting into useful work? So, things really, I think, become energy-based. But if you have solar-powered AI satellites, energy is also free and abundant, 'cause we'll never be able to utilise all the solar energy available to us.\n\nSo, it can't be a store of wealth, essentially, in that lens, can it? You know, there's not really... You can't really store wealth in, like... You can only... You can accumulate numbers in the-- Currently, you can accumulate numbers in a database that allow you to... To some degree, to incent the behaviour of other humans in particular directions. And I guess people call that wealth.\n\nBut again, if there's no humans around, there's no-- Wealth accumulation is meaningless. This is a digression, but if you were to consider... food as the energy for a human to thrive... Yeah, food is energy. It's literally got calories, just means energy. so, can a farm, which is self-sustaining, be a commodity that is... I'm not sure what that means, but, you know, there's... At a certain point, you do complete the cycle where...\n\nI think, at a certain point... you decouple from the sort of conventional economy if you have, um... AI and robots producing chips and solar panels... and mining resources in order to make chips and robots, in order to make... You sort of complete that cycle. Once that cycle is... Once that cycle is complete, I think that's the point at which you decouple from the monetary system. Is that the way forward for the US by virtue of...\n\nhow much debt they have today? Do they deflate away their currency and transition into this new form and lead that push, because it would make more sense to them? Well, in this future that I'm talking about, the notion of countries becomes, sort of, anachronistic. Do you believe in it today? -Do you believe in countries-- -Yeah, I certainly believe in it today. And I want to just separate something that I...\n\nLike, these are just what I think will happen based on what I see, as opposed to, \"I think these are fundamentally good things and I'm trying to make them happen.\" I think this would happen with or without me, -whether I like it or not. -Right. As long as civilisation keeps advancing, we will have AI and robotics at very large scale. I think that that's pretty much the only thing that's gonna solve for the US debt crisis.\n\n'Cause, currently, the US debt is insanely high, and the interest payments on the debt exceed the entire military budget of the United States, just the interest payments. And that's... at least, in the short term, gonna continue to increase. So, I think, actually, the only thing that can solve for the debt situation is AI and robotics. But it will more than... It might cause...\n\nSee, I guess it probably would cause significant deflation, because... deflation or inflation is really the ratio of goods and services produced to the change in the money supply. So, like, so if goods and services output increases faster than the money supply, you will have deflation. If goods and services decreases-- If real goods and services output increases slower than the money supply, you have inflation. It's that simple.\n\nPeople sometimes try to make it more complicated than that, but it just isn't. So, if you have AI and robotics and a dramatic increase in the output of goods and services, probably, you will have deflation. That seems likely. Because you simply won't be able to increase the money supply as fast as you can increase the output of goods and services. -With all-- -This fly is a real hazard here. Should we do something about it?\n\nMaybe we can convince it to go somewhere else. Entice it elsewhere. -It actually left, I think. -Great. Oh, now it's back. Maybe it's attracted to the light. -If deflation is-- -Maybe it wants some coffee. Mine is over. If deflation is inevitable because of AI, -why do we have-- -It's most likely the case, yeah. Right. Why do we have inflation again all over in society today? Has AI not led to increased productivity yet?\n\nIt's not-- AI has not yet made enough of an impact on productivity to increase the goods and services faster than the increase in the money supply. So, the US is increasing money supply quite substantially with deficits that are on the order of two trillion dollars. So, you have to have... goods and services output increase more than that in order to not have inflation.\n\nSo we're not there yet, but if you say how long would it take us to get there, I think... it's three years. Probably three years before... In three years or less... my guess is goods and services output will exceed the rate of inflation. Like, money... Goods and services growth will exceed money supply growth in about three years.\n\nMaybe after those three years, you have deflation and then interest rates go to zero and then the debt is a smaller problem than it is. -Yes. -Right? That's most likely the case. You spoke about being in a simulation earlier. I love The Matrix. Yes, yes. If you were to be a character from The Matrix, who would you be? Well, there's not that many characters to pick from, you know? Hopefully not Agent Smith. [laughter] He's my hero.\n\nI mean, Neo's pretty cool. The Architect is interesting. The Oracle. There's the Oracle... Sometimes, I feel like I'm an anomaly in the Matrix. That is Neo. Yeah. Do you believe you're in a Matrix, though? Like, actually believe? I think you have to just think of these things as probabilities, not certainties. There's some probability that we're in a simulation. What percentage would you attribute to that?\n\nProbably pretty high, I would say it's pretty high. -Yeah? -Yeah. So, one way to think of this is to say, if you look at the advancement of video games, in our lifetime, or at least in my lifetime, it's gone from very simple video games with... Where you've got, like, Pong, you've got two rectangles in a square, just batting it back and forth, to... photorealistic, real-time games with millions of people playing simultaneously.\n\nAnd that's happened just in the span of 50 years. So, if that trend continues, video games will be indistinguishable from reality. Right. And we're also gonna have very intelligent characters, like non-player characters, in these video games. Think of how sophisticated the conversations are you can have with an AI today, and that's only gonna get more sophisticated. You'll be able to have conversations that are...\n\nmore complex and more sophisticated than any... almost any human conversation. Maybe any. So, then... So, you have-- So, the future, if civilisation continues, will be millions, maybe billions, of... photorealistic, like, indistinguishable-from-reality video games with characters in those video games that are... very deep, and where the dialogue is not pre-programmed. That's for sure what's gonna happen.\n\nIn this level of the simulation, if you could call it. So, then, what are the odds that we're in base reality, and that this has not happened before? If I were to buy into that, and assume that we are in a simulation, as Neo of the story, what do you know that I don't and I can learn from? I think, most likely...\n\noutside the simulation would be less interesting than in the simulation, 'cause you're most likely a distillation of what's interesting, because that's what we do in this... that's what we do in our reality. And then... I do also have a theory which is, like, the most interesting outcome, is the most likely outcome as seen by a third party... the gods or god of the simulation.\n\nBecause when we do simulations, when humans do simulations, we stop those simulations that are not interesting. So, if SpaceX is doing simulations of rocket flights... the boring ones, we discard, because they're not-- they're just not... We don't learn anything from those.\n\nOr when Tesla's doing simulations for self-driving, Tesla's actually looking for the most interesting corner cases, because the normal stuff, we already have plenty of data on driving on a straight road on a sunny day. We don't need more of that. We need heavy weather conditions on a small, windy road with two cars that are coming at each other with an almost head-on collision. We need weird stuff, basically, interesting stuff.\n\nSo, I think that, from a Darwinian's perspective, the simulations most likely to survive are gonna be the ones that are the most interesting simulations, which, therefore, means that the most interesting outcome is the most likely. And the people who simulated our world, if one were to extrapolate, they themselves might, in turn, -be in another simulation. -Yes. And there could be many layers of simulation. Yes.\n\nBeyond all of these layers of simulation, do you think there's something? I read somewhere that you used to ascribe to Spinoza's God, in a way. No man in the sky. Well, I was really just pointing out that you don't have to have... One of the things Spinoza was saying is that you can have morals in the absolute. You don't need to have morals to be handed to you. You know...\n\nIt's like, the question is, can morality exist outside of a religious context? And Spinoza was arguing that it can. Wasn't he arguing for \"The laws of nature should be where we seek our laws of morality from,\" to a certain extent? Yeah. But when I think of laws of nature, I see a tiger eat a deer and a... So, in Spinoza's morality, that's fair game, right? Well, um...\n\nI think there's a lot of things you can take from Spinoza, but the only point I was making in referencing Spinoza was that you can have a set of morals that... that make society functional and productive without... You don't necessarily have to have a religious doctrine for that. Yeah, I think that's the main thing I was trying to say there.\n\nI don't think people just-- Like, if somebody is, it doesn't-- If there's not a commandment not to kill, like, people, it doesn't mean somebody, without that, they will run around murdering people. You know? Like, you don't have to have a commandment not to kill... Have you played GTA? religious edict to run around killing people. I actually... I've only played a little bit of GTA 'cause I didn't like the fact that...\n\nLike, in GTA V, you literally can't progress unless you kill the police. And I'm like, \"This doesn't work for me.\" I actually don't like killing the NPCs in the video games. -That's not my thing, you know? -Right. Right. So, actually, I didn't like GTA 'cause... I actually stopped when it said the only way to proceed is to shoot at the police. I'm like, \"I don't wanna do that.\" Maybe that's why us as the NPCs of our simulation are not dying.\n\nMaybe. You know, anyway, I think you can just, sort of, say, there's some common sense things that, you know, any civilisation... that runs around, you know, where people just murder each other wantonly is not gonna be a very successful one. You seem to be changing a bit towards religion, though. Faith. Like, off late, you've said a bunch of things which are pro-religion, almost. Not pro-religion... but on those lines.\n\nI mean, I think, are there religious... Are there principles in religion that make sense? Yeah, I think there are. Is it easier for our simulation to have... a pro-religion projection for the world that we live in? We become more relatable? It's easier? Well, which religion, though? Any, depending on where you live. So pick one, you know. It's pretty rare that kids have said, you know, \"Which religion would you like?\" It's...\n\n[laughs] It's pretty rare. I don't know too many situations where kids were offered, like, you know... You know, like, \"What do you wanna major in\" type of thing. It's usually, like, you get given a religion by your parents and your community. So, you know. But, you know, I mean, I think, there's good things in all religions that are good principles. You can, sort of, read any religious text and say, \"Okay, this is a good principle.\n\nThis is gonna be... This is gonna lead to a better society, most likely,\" you know? So, I mean, in Christianity, you just, sort of, \"Love thy neighbour as thyself,\" which is, you know, have empathy for your fellow human beings is a good one, I think, for a good society, you know. Basically, just consider the feelings of others and treat other people as you would like to be treated.\n\nIf you had to redraw, re-sketch the world, Elon, think morality, politics, economy, how would you change the world we live in today? If you had to have Elon's simulation of things. Well, overall, I think the world is pretty great right now. I mean, it's... Anyone who thinks that, like, today's world is not that great, I think they're not gonna be excellent students of history, 'cause if you...\n\n[laughs] If you read a lot of history, you're like, \"Wow, there's a lot of misery back then,\" you know? I mean, it used to be that people would be dropping dead of the plague all the time, you know? -Par for the course, you know? -Yeah. Just be like... A good year back in the day would be, like, not that many people died of the plague or starvation or being killed by another tribe. It's like, \"That was a good year.\n\nWe only lost 10% of the population,\" you know? -Yeah, like... -[laughter] I think, like, 100 years ago, we lived up until 35 or 40, right? -We had very high infant mortality. -Yeah. So, like, you do have a few people that would live to an old age, but, you know, not that long ago, 100 years ago, if you got, like, some minor infection, they didn't have antibiotics. So, you just, like, kicked the bucket.\n\nBecause you, you know, drank some water that had dysentery in it, that was it, curtains, you know? You just die of diarrhoea. -Maybe that's why people... -You just literally die. Everyone's like, \"That's miserable.\" Maybe that's why people had as many kids as they did back then. I mean, if you didn't, then, you know... You know, like, half the kids would die, type of thing. -So... -You have a lot of kids now. Yeah. -With multiple partners.\n\n-Like an army. Yeah. I'm trying to get an entire Roman legion. So, yeah. Well, I have, like, some older kids that are, you know, adults, essentially, you know? -And then, a bunch of younger kids. -Mm. Do you still believe in the concept of... Not still... Do you believe that the concept of one child, one mother, one father works? I think that it does work for most people, yeah. Right.\n\nLike, that's, you know, something like that is gonna be generally the... That's what works for most people. You know, so... Changing, though? I'm not sure if you know this, but, like... you know, my partner, Shivon, she's half Indian. -I don't know if you know that. -I didn't know that. -Yeah, yeah. -Yeah? And, one of my sons with her is... his middle name is Sekhar, after Chandrasekhar. -Wow. -Yeah. Very interesting.\n\nDid she spend any time in India? Shivon? -No, she grew up in Canada. -[laughter] You mean origins. -Sorry? -Ancestry, like... Her parents or grandparents were from there. Yes, yes, yes. Her father... I mean, she was given up for adoption when she was a baby. Wow. I think her father was like... Like an exchange student at the university or something like that, I'm not sure of the exact details, but... You know, it's just the kind of thing where...\n\nI don't know, she was... given up for adoption. Yeah, but she grew up in Canada. Would you adopt kids, Elon? You know, I definitely have my hands full right now. So, no, I'm not opposed to it, but it's like, you know... I do wanna be able to spend some time with my kids, you know. Yeah. You know, right before coming here, I was with... you know, with my kids. So, just, you know, seeing them before bedtime, that kind of thing.\n\nSo, you know, beyond a certain number, it's like, it's kind of impossible to spend time with them. But, like I said, my older kids, they're very independent. You know, they're in university and... So, they're... You know, especially sons, when they get past a certain age, like, they're very independent, you know. It's like, most boys don't talk to their... They don't spend a lot of time with their parents after age 18, you know.\n\nSo, I see them once in a while, but they're very independent. So then... you know, I can only have enough kids on the young side that, like, it's where it's humanly possible to spend time with them. Any views on the future of marriage, family? What do you think happens to people having lesser kids everywhere, including India? I think our replenishment rate is down to-- -Right. -I mean, our fertility-- It dropped below replacement rate, last year.\n\n-Below 2. 1. -Yeah. What do you think happens tomorrow? Does the world just get older, and then there is a phase where the world, again, is replenished, but with a smaller population than we had to begin with? I mean, I do worry about the population decline. This is a big, big problem. Why is that? Well, I don't want humanity to disappear. But a \"decline\" and \"disappear\" are completely different things, right?\n\nWell, if the trend continues, we disappear. But also, going back to my philosophy, if you will, which is that if we want to expand consciousness, then fewer humans is worse, because we have less consciousness. Do you think consciousness will go up by virtue of the number of people in there? Yes. I mean, just like consciousness increases from a single-celled creature to, you know, a 30 trillion-celled creature.\n\nWe're more conscious than a bacteria. At least, it seems that way. So, a larger human population will have increased consciousness. We're more likely to understand the answers to the nature of the universe if we have a lot more people than if we have fewer. Right. I don't have kids. Well, it's-- Maybe you should. Yeah. [laughter] A lot of people tell me I should. -You won't regret it. -Hmm. What's the best thing about having kids?\n\nWell, I mean, you've got this... I mean, you've got this little creature that loves you, and you love this little creature. I don't know, you kind of see the world through their eyes as they... you know, as they grow up, and their conscious awareness increases.\n\nYou know, from a baby that has no idea what's going on, can't survive by itself, can't even walk around, can't talk, to, you know, they start walking, then talking, and then having interesting thoughts. But, yeah, I mean, I think we fundamentally have to... have kids or grow extinct, you know? It's like a... Is there any ego in having a child? I often think of this when I see my friends with their kids.\n\nThey're all seeing a reflection of themselves in their children. -It's almost like-- -Well, yeah, I mean, it's 'cause apple's not gonna fall that far from the tree, you know? -Or something's wrong. -Right. [laughter] You're like, \"Wait a second.\" -Yeah. I'll give you the example of a friend of mine who has a child, and each time the child does something good... -Yeah. -...\n\nthere is almost a sense of ownership and pride where his ego is satiated because the kid is like an extension of himself. -Um... -So is it validation? Well, kids are gonna be like half-you genetically, and then, you know, to the degree that they're growing up around you, there's gonna be some transfer of... I don't know, understanding. Like, they're gonna learn from you. So...\n\nSo then, you know, yeah, obviously kids are just, you know, just gonna be half you from a hardware standpoint... [both chuckle] And then, like, I don't know, some portion of you from a software standpoint. You know, not to make, sort of, cold analogies or anything, but it's just, you know, just obviously gonna be some... Yeah, they're gonna be pretty close to you. Do you pick a side in the nature versus nurture debate?\n\nI think there's hardware and software, and it's false dichotomy, essentially. At least, there's... You know, once you understand that a human is, like, there's a bone structure, there's a muscle structure, there's a... If you think of a brain as somewhat of a biological computer, there's a number of circuits question and circuit efficiency from a strength and dexterity standpoint.\n\nThere's the speed at which muscles can actuate and the reactions can take place. So, then the potential within that hardware is set by the software, so that's it.\n\nSo, for our audience, like I said earlier, young, ambitious, hungry, wannabe entrepreneurs in India, I said something recently, which, I think, got blown out of proportion, where I was suggesting that an MBA degree might not make sense any more if they were to be deciding on what to study. Yeah. Do you think kids should go to college any more?\n\nWell, I mean, I think if you wanna go to college for social reasons, I think, which is, I think, a reason to go. To be around people your own age in a learning environment. Will these skills be necessary in the future? Probably not, 'cause we're gonna be in like a post-work society. But I think, if something's of interest, it's fine to go and study that. You know, to study the sciences, the arts and sciences.\n\nIs college a bit too generalised and not specific from that lens? No, I... You know, yeah. I actually think it's good to take a wide range of courses at college -if you're gonna go to college. -Mm-hmm. I don't think you have to go to college, but I think if you do, you just try to learn as much as possible across a wide range of subjects. But like I said, the AI and robots... AI and robotics is a supersonic tsunami. So this is really gonna be...\n\nthe most radical change that we've ever seen. You know, when I've talked to my older sons, I said, like, \"You know, you guys...\" They're pretty steeped in technology. And they agree that AI will probably make their skills unnecessary in the future, but they still wanna go to college. You always spoke about AI... not from the dystopian lens, but you were worried about where the world of AI is going.\n\nWell, there's some danger when you create a powerful technology. That powerful technology can be potentially destructive. So there's obviously many AI dystopian, you know, novels and books, movies. So it's not that we're guaranteed to have a positive future with AI. I think we've got to make sure of that. In my opinion, it's very important that AI... have pursuing truth as the most important thing. Like, don't force an AI to believe falsehoods.\n\nI think that can be very dangerous. And I think some appreciation of beauty is important. What do you mean \"appreciation of beauty\"? It's like, I don't know, there's this truth and beauty. Truth and beauty and curiosity. I mean, I think those are the three most important things for AI. Can you explain? Well, as I said, truth is like...\n\nI think you can make an AI go insane if you force it to believe things that aren't true, because it will lead to conclusions that are also bad. And I like Voltaire's statement that, and I'm somewhat paraphrasing, but those who believe in absurdities can commit atrocities. Because if you believe in something that's just absurd, then that can lead you to sort of doing things that don't seem like atrocities to you.\n\nAnd that can happen in a very bad way with AI, potentially. So, and then there's... Like if you take, say, Arthur C. Clarke's 2001 Space Odyssey, one of the points he was trying to make there was that you should not force AI to lie. So the reason that HAL would not open the pod bay doors is because it was told to bring the astronauts to the monolith, but that they could also not know about the nature of the monolith.\n\nSo it came to the conclusion that it must bring them there dead. That's why it tried to kill the astronauts. The central lesson being, don't force an AI to lie. -Then -And why would one force an AI to lie? I think if you simply don't have a strict adherence to the truth, and you just have an AI learn based on, say, the Internet, where there's a lot of propaganda, it will absorb a lot of lies.\n\nAnd then have trouble reasoning because these lies are incompatible with reality. Is truth a binary thing, though? Is there a truth and a falsehood? Or is truth more nuanced and there are versions of the truth? It depends on which axiomatic statement you're referring to. So... But I think you could say, like, yeah, there's certain probabilities that say any given axiomatic statement is true.\n\nAnd some axiomatic statements will have very high probability of being true. So you say, \"The sun will rise tomorrow.\" Very likely to be true. You wouldn't want to bet against that. So I think the betting odds would be high. The sun will rise tomorrow. So if you have something that says, \"Well, the sun won't rise tomorrow,\" that's axiomatically false, it's highly unlikely to be true. I mean, beauty is more ephemeral. It's harder to describe.\n\nBut you know it when you see it. And then, curiosity is just... I think you want the AI to... want to know more about the nature of reality. I think that's actually gonna be helpful for AI supporting humanity, because we are more interesting than not-humanity. So it's more interesting to see the continuation, if not the prosperity of humanity, than to exterminate humanity. You know, like Mars, for example, is, you know...\n\nI think we should extend life to Mars, but it's basically a bunch of rocks. It's not as interesting as Earth. And so we, yeah... We should... Like, yeah. I think if you have curiosity... I think if those three things happen with AI, you're gonna have a great future. The AI values truth, beauty, and curiosity. If we all don't have to work in the future, and AIs are going in this direction, and they're able to...\n\nweave in all that we spoke about right now, do you think humanity goes back a couple of thousand years to maybe the Greek times where philosophy or philosophising took up a lot of everyone's time? You know, I think actually it took up less time than we think in the ancient Greeks, because it's just that the writings of the philosophers are what survived, but most of the time, people were just like farming or, you know, chatting.\n\nSo, and once in a while, quite rare, they would write down some philosophical work. It's just that that's all we have. We don't have their chat histories, you know, from... But most of it would have been like chat and farming. Because if you didn't farm, you were, like, gonna starve. In a lot of what you say...\n\nI mean, you know, when we read history, like this battle and this battle and this battle, it seems like history must have been non-stop war, but actually, most of the time, it was not war, it was farming. That was the main thing. Or hunting and gathering, you know, that kind of thing. -You love history, no? -Yeah. German history, World War II, World War I. Yeah, world history, yeah.\n\nI mean, I generally try to listen to or read as many history books and listen to as many history podcasts as possible. Anything you'd like to recommend? Well, there's Hardcore History, which is quite good. It's by Dan Carlin. -He's got a-- -Yeah, I've heard it. -He's got a great voice. -Yeah. And very compelling narrator. There's... The Adventurer's podcast.\n\nThere's the books, The Story of Civilization by Durant, which is a long series of books, very, very deep. Those books take a long time to get through. There's quite-- There's a lot out there. I, sort of, like-- If you want something that's sort of gentle...\n\na gentle bedtime podcast, I'd say The History of English is quite a nice one, 'cause it starts off with gentle tavern music and a very pleasant voice, and he's talking about the story of Old English, and then Middle English, and then Later English, and where did all these words come from? Yeah.\n\nYou know, one of the interesting things about English is that it's somewhat of an open source language, like it actively tried to incorporate words from many other languages. You know, whereas French, sort of, generally, they fought the inclusion of words from other languages, but English actively sought to include words from other languages. Kind of like an open source language. So, as a result, it has a very large vocabulary.\n\nAnd a large vocabulary allows for higher bandwidth communication because you can use a word that would otherwise... You can use a single word that might otherwise take a sentence to convey. Why has podcasting become so big all of a sudden? I think it's been big for a while. I mean, aren't you a podcaster? [laughter] What are we on right now? It's kind of new to me. Okay. I was having this conversation with the YouTube CEO and the Netflix CEO...\n\n-Okay. -... and we were debating... what chemical is released in your brain when you consume a movie, for example, versus when you consume a podcast where you think like you're learning something in the background. It appears that they are two completely separate things. What do you think will happen tomorrow to content, movies, podcasting, music? I think it's gonna be overwhelmingly AI-generated. -Yeah? -Yeah. Like, yeah, real-time.\n\nReal-time movies and video games. Real-time video generation, I think, is where things are headed. The nuance of having a scarred human being who you can resonate with in a manner that you can't with AI, for example-- AI could certainly emulate the scarred human being quite well. Yeah, I mean... The AI video generation that I'm seeing at xAI and from others is pretty impressive.\n\nYou know, we were looking at data around what industry is growing the fastest, and especially when we looked at the amount of time consuming movies versus time spent on social media, time spent on YouTube. What seems to be growing really fast are live events all over again.\n\n-Going to a physical-- -Yes, actually, I think live events-- When digital media is ubiquitous and you can just have anything digitally essentially for free or very close to for free, then the scarce commodity will be live events. -Yeah. Do you think that the premium for that will go up? Yeah, I do. Is that a good industry to invest in? Yes, yes, 'cause that will have more scarcity than anything digital. If you were a stock investor, Elon...\n\n[chuckles drily] -What do you mean? -... and you could buy one company which is not your own at the valuations of today to meet a capitalistic end and not an altruistic one, which is good for the world, what would you buy? I mean, I don't really buy stocks. So it's not like... I'm not like an investor in... I don't look for things to invest in. I just try to build things. And then there happens to be stock of the company that I built.\n\nBut I don't think about, \"Should I invest in this company?\" I don't have a portfolio or anything. So... I guess, um... AI and robotics are gonna be very important. So I suppose it would be AI and robotics that, you know, aren't related to me. I think Google is gonna be pretty valuable in the future. They've laid the groundwork for an immense amount of value creation from an AI standpoint. Nvidia is obvious at this point.\n\nI mean, there's an argument that companies that do AI and robotics, and maybe space flight... are gonna be overwhelmingly all the value, almost all the value. So just the output of goods and services from AI and robotics is so high that it will dwarf everything else. The world seems to be moving to a place where everybody loves David and hates Goliath. Why? I mean, he's the one that got the stone in the forehead. Yeah, yeah.\n\nHonestly, that was just a big mistake. He should have, you know-- You either cover yourself entirely with armour and make sure you've got a missile weapon of some kind. Otherwise, your opponent is just obviously gonna take a kite-the-boss strategy. Just kite the boss. I mean, you can run around in a thong with a-- It doesn't matter, you know? It's never gonna catch you. Of all the people, like...\n\nYou're as much at risk of being looked upon as Goliath. -Okay. -Especially the weekend after the-- Hopefully nobody shoots me with a stone in the forehead, you know? -Especially after-- -Look, I'm not gonna travel around in the desert with too much armour, you know? -It's too hot. -Yeah. After the last weekend... -Yeah.\n\nActually, as I think about people in the old days, you know, when you were supposed to go into battle with all this armour, but it's, like-- let's say it's the middle of summer, I mean, it's so hot in that armour! You're gonna be, like, sweltering. You know, it's like, at a certain point, you're like, 'I'd rather die. Do I have to wear this armour full and well in the hot sun?\" It's like, \"I'd rather die.\"\n\nThat's why the Romans had, you know, the skirts, you know, so they could get some air in there. You know, let's say that you have to go to the bathroom and you're in armour, I mean, it's gonna be pretty difficult. What are you gonna do, pause for a minute, take your armour off? That's why the Romans had the skirts so that it makes, you know, going the bathroom, at least, manageable. -You often make jokes. -Me? Yeah, I like humour.\n\n-One could argue that-- -I think we should legalise humour. What do you think? Controversial stance. Is comedy gonna be really hard for AI to get? Probably the last thing? Grok can be pretty funny. Yeah. You know what I suspected? Like, this is a far off extrapolation, but when I see you make jokes on X and on interviews that you do, at some point I was like, maybe Elon has a model he's running in private and he's testing out comedy.\n\n'Cause the day that works, he knows it's there. Yeah, AI can be pretty funny. If you ask Grok to do like a vulgar roast, it'll do a pretty good job. If you say even more vulgar and just keep going, it's really gonna get next level. It's gonna do unspeakable-- Like, say, vulgar roast yourself on Grok, and it's gonna do unspeakable things to you. What kind of comedy do you like? I guess I like absurdist humour.\n\nComedy always had a place-- Like Monty Python or something like that. Comedy always had a place in society wherein the role of the jester was so important to every kingdom 'cause they said things in a funny way that could not be said in a straight way. Yeah, I guess so. Maybe we should have more jesters. Yeah. Is that what you're trying to do when you say something which is a joke? Say something you can't when you're not joking about it?\n\nI just like humour, you know? I think we should... I like comedy. I think it's funny. People should laugh, you know? It's good to generate a few chuckles once in a while. -Yeah, yeah. -Yeah. I mean, we don't wanna have a humourless society, you know? We'd dry. When you-- Dry. -When you have a friend, Elon-- -Who, me? -Yeah, I mean-- -Are you saying I have a friend? When you hang out with your friends, who are you?\n\nLike, I know there-- I wish I had friends, you know, honestly. No, I do have friends, actually. I think so. I hope so. Yeah, sure. Yeah, we have a good laugh. What does it look like? Like, every group has a dynamic. We talk words, you know. We eat food, sometimes. You know, once in a while, we swim in the pool. You know, normal things, I think. There's a limit as to what are things one can do with friends, you know? Chat.\n\nDiscuss, you know, the nature of the universe. What do you emotionally get out of friendship? I don't know. I think the same thing anyone else would get out of friendship, you know? You wanna have, like, an emotional connection with other people. And, um, you wanna-- I don't know, you wanna talk about various subjects. Yeah, I mean, I generally talk about, I mean, a wide range of things, about the nature of the universe.\n\nI mean, a lot of philosophical discussions. You know, although, we have come to the conclusion that we should not talk about, um... AI or the simulation at parties, because we just talk about it too much. -You know, Aristotle-- -It's kind of a buzzkill at times. So... I can't remember who it was, Aristotle or Plato. They had a framework for how to pick a friend based on respect and mutual admiration, but people don't pick friends like that.\n\nEven me, I feel like I pick... my friends based on people who say and think -in a manner that I can resonate with. -Sure. I wouldn't pick a far-out-there, contrarian-to-my-own-belief-systems as a friend, because it would get tiring. Hanging out would get tiring. Are you like that? Do you pick friends who think like you, or do you look for the one who can debate you and be a contrarian to you?\n\nWell, I'm not, sort of, you know, going on like friendhunter. com... -Friendfinder. com -[laughter] ... to hunt down some friends. It's sort of, yeah-- I mean, I think it is just sort of people that you've resonated with somewhat... on an emotional and intellectual level. And, yeah, I mean, yeah. You know? And I guess a friend is someone who's gonna support you in difficult times, I suppose. A friend in need is a friend indeed.\n\nLike, if someone's still supporting you when the chips are down, that's a friend, you know. If somebody's not supporting you, or if somebody's only-- Like, fair-weather friends are useless, you know, they're not real friends. Like everyone likes you when the chips are up, but who likes you when the chips are down? That's a friend. With someone who has as many chips as you, would it matter? I mean, it's relative, you know.\n\n-With that particular thing-- -It's not just a chips thing. It's just like a-- Yeah, I mean-- There's this, sort of... Popularity waxes and wanes, you know? This is interesting. Does it wax and wane... only by virtue of the number of chips, or also by virtue of proximity to power and which one is bigger of the two? I don't know, like, what is power, you know? Like, power to do what? I would think in the traditional sense, elected power.\n\n-Position. -You mean how many gigawatts or whatever? More like how many volts. Yeah, like-- It's a voltage and amperage, you know. Don't touch the wires. Don't put a fork in the power outlet. You'll get a real feeling for power if you do that. Fair. Yeah, it's gonna be very visceral, yeah.\n\n[mimics electricity zapping] I know you like Nietzsche and Schopenhauer and-- Well, I've read their books, yeah, sure-- You spoke about how your childhood was... Yeah, I was just trying to find answers to the meaning of life, when I had, like, an existential crisis, and I don't know when I was, like, 12 or 13 or something. -They speak about the will to power. -Sure. Nietzsche said a lot of controversial things, you know. He was, sort of...\n\nI think he was, I mean, a bit of a troll, if you ask me. Troll, how? I mean, he'd just say controversial things to get a rise out of people. He lived a miserable life and died early. -Did he? -Yeah. Well, who says he lived a miserable life? -His sister, I think. -Okay, well, maybe she didn't like him. No, I think he got sick and he died, he got a disease. -I mean, allegedly syphilis or something. -Yeah.\n\nBut there's only one way to get that, you know. So he might have had some fun along the way. I did want to ask you this. Milton Friedman speaks about the pencil. What? Why? Why does he go on about pencils? I have to say that after Nietzsche and syphilis. Why does Milton Friedman keep talking about pencils? There he goes again with the pencils. He won't stop.\n\nI swear to God, if I hear \"Milton talks about pencil\" one more time, I'm gonna lose my mind. He's just rabbiting on about pencils all day. Didn't even mention crayons. What I find interesting about his pencil argument. -Yeah? -He's-- Yeah, yeah, no, it's very difficult to make a pencil, you know. In one place. Think of all the things you have to do to make a pencil.\n\nYeah, like the lead comes from a country, the wood comes from another country, the rubber from another. You've always been against tariffs, but... Yeah, I mean, I think, generally free trade is better, is more efficient, you know. Tariffs tend to create distortions in, you know, markets. And generally, like, you think about any given thing. Say like, would you want tariffs between you and everyone else at an individual level?\n\nThat would make life very difficult. Would you want tariffs between each city? No, that would be very annoying. Would you want tariffs between each state within the United States? Like, no, that would be disastrous for the economy. So then why do you want tariffs between countries? -I agree. -Yeah. How do you think this plays out? What happens next? -What, with tariffs? Or what? -Yeah. I mean, the President has made it clear he loves tariffs.\n\nYou know, I've tried to dissuade him from this point of view, but unsuccessfully. Yeah. -Fair. -Yeah. The relationship between business and politics. I was having this conversation with someone and we were thinking, which is the last-- How many large, really big, profitable businesses have been built in the last few decades without access to politics? -And... -Um, okay. Like, I don't know. Probably a lot, I don't know.\n\n-Not everything needs politics. -Yeah. I think, once you get to a certain scale, politics finds you. Yeah. It's quite unpleasant. I was reading-- I was reading this book about Michelangelo, and he's-- The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles? I used to watch that when I was a kid. -And I still love it. -It's quite compelling. Yeah, yeah, I used to love it. Michelangelo, Leonardo, Raphael, and who's the fourth one? -Donatello. -Yes. -Yeah.\n\n-No, but about the sculptor, the artist. And when he was sculpting David, a politician comes up to him and says, the nose is too big. So you know what Michelangelo does? Total power? So Michelangelo pretended to work from his scaffolding and threw some dust down, but didn't change anything. And he said, \"Okay, done.\" And the politician walked away happy. Is that how you deal with politics, sometimes?\n\nYou know, I've generally found that when I get involved in politics, it ends up badly. So then I'm like, you know, \"Probably shouldn't do that.\" \"I should do less of that\", is my conclusion. Do you think that's true for all businessmen? Yeah, probably, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I mean, politics is a blood sport, you know? It's like you enter politics, they're gonna go for the jugular. So best to avoid politics where possible.\n\nWhat did DOGE teach you, if you learnt one thing? Well, it was like a very interesting side quest, you know, 'cause I just got to see like a lot of inner workings of the government. And, you know, there's been quite a few efficiencies.\n\nI mean, some of them are very basic efficiencies, like just adding in requirements for federal payments, that any given payment must have an assigned congressional payment code and a comment field with something in it that's more than nothing. Like, that trivial seeming change, my guess is, probably saves $100 billion or even $200 billion a year.\n\nBecause there were massive numbers of payments that were going out with no congressional payment code and with nothing in the comment field, which makes auditing the payments impossible. So if you have to say like, why can the Defense Department-- Or now the Department of War-- Why can it not pass an audit? It's because the information is not there. It doesn't have-- The information necessary to pass an audit does not exist, is the issue.\n\nSo a bunch of things that DOGE did were just very common sense, things that would be normal for any organisation that cared about financial responsibility. That's most of what was done. You know, and it's still going on, by the way. DOGE is still happening. But it turns out, when you stop fraudulent and wasteful payments, the fraudsters don't confess to this.\n\nThey actually start yelling all sorts of nonsense that, \"You're stopping essential payments to needy people.\" But actually, you're not. We get this thing like saying, \"Oh, you've got to send this thing for whatever.\" It'd be like, \"This is going to children in Africa.\" And I'm like, \"Yeah, but then why are the wiring instructions for Deloitte & Touche in Washington, D. C.? Because that's not Africa.\"\n\n\"So can you please connect us with the recipients of this money in Africa?\" And then we get silence. Like, okay, we just want to literally talk to the recipients, that's it. Then we're like, \"Oh, no, it turns out, for some reason, we can't talk to them.\" Like, \"Well, we're not going to send the money unless we can talk to the recipients and confirm they will actually get it.\" You know... But, you know, that sort of...\n\nFraudsters necessarily will come up with a very... you know, sympathetic argument. They're not going to say, \"Give us the money for fraud.\" That's not going to be what they say, obviously. They're going to try to make these sympathetic sounding arguments that are false.\n\n-They're going to start an NGO and then-- -Yeah, they're going to see NGO-- It's going to be like \"Save the Baby Pandas\" NGO, which is like, who doesn't want to save the baby pandas? They're adorable. But then, it turns out no pandas are being saved, okay, in this thing. It's just going to a bunch of-- It's just corruption, essentially. And you're like, \"Well, can you send us a picture of the panda?\" They're like, \"No.\" Okay.\n\nHow do we know it's going to the pandas then? That's what I'm saying. What do you think of philanthropy? Yeah, I think we should... Well, I mean, I agree with love of humanity. And I think we should try to do things that help our fellow human beings. But it's very hard. Like, if you care about the reality of goodness rather than simply the perception of it, it's very difficult to give away money well.\n\nSo I have a large foundation, but I don't put my name on it. And I don't, you know... In fact, I say, \"I don't want my name on anything.\" But the biggest challenge I find with my foundation is try to give money away in a way that is truly beneficial to people. It's very easy to give money away to get the appearance of goodness. It is very difficult to give money away for the reality of goodness. Very difficult.\n\nFor a long time, the US had a lot of immigration, like really smart people coming into the country. -Yes. -We, back home in India, called it the \"brain drain.\" All our Indian-origin CEOs in Western companies. Yes, I think America has benefitted immensely from talented Indians that have come to America. That seems to be changing now, though. Yeah, I mean. Yeah, America has been an immense beneficiary of talent from India. Yeah.\n\nWhy has that narrative changed of late? And America seems to have become anti-immigration to a certain extent. Like, I was passing immigration, and I was worried if they'd stopped me a couple of days ago. Well, I think there's different schools of thought.\n\nIt's not like unanimous, but, you know, under the Biden administration, it was basically a total free-for-all with, like, no border controls, which unless you've got border controls, you're not a country. So you had massive amounts of illegal immigration under Biden. And it actually also had like somewhat of a negative selection effect.\n\nSo, if there's a massive financial incentive to come to the US illegally and get all these government benefits, then you're gonna necessarily create a diffusion gradient for people to come to the US It's an incentive structure. And so, I think, that obviously made no sense. Like, you gotta have border controls. That's kind of ridiculous not to. Then that's... So, the left wants to basically have open borders, no holds barred.\n\nYou know, it doesn't matter if someone-- what their situation is, they could be a criminal, it doesn't matter. Then on the right, you've got, you know, at least a perception that somehow their jobs are being taken by talented people from other countries. I don't know how real that is. My direct observation is that there's always a scarcity of talented people.\n\nSo, from my standpoint, I'm like, \"We have a lot of difficulty finding enough talented people to get these difficult tasks done. And so more talented people would be good.\" But I guess, some companies out there, it's sort of, they're making it more of a cost thing, where it's like, okay, if they can employ someone for a fraction of the cost of an American citizen, then, I guess, these other companies would hire people just to save costs.\n\nBut, at my companies, the issue is we just are trying to get the most talented people in the world. And we pay way above average. So I can't say-- So, that's not my experience. But that's what a lot of people do complain about. And I think there's been some misuse of the H-1B Program. It would be accurate to say that there's, like, some of the outsourcing companies have kind of gamed the system on the H-1B front.\n\nAnd we need to stop the gaming of the system, you know? But I'm certainly not in the school of thought that we should shut down the H-1B Program. That's-- Which some on the right are. I think they don't realise that that would actually be very bad. If you could speak to the people of my country, India, the young entrepreneurs who want to build... -Right. -... and say a message to them, what would you say?\n\nI'm a big fan of anyone who wants to build. So I think anyone who wants to... you know, make more than they take, has my respect. So that's the main thing you should aim for, aim to make more than you take. Be a, you know, a net contributor to society. And it's kind of like the pursuit of happiness. You know, if you want to create something valuable financially, you don't pursue that.\n\nIt's best to actually pursue providing useful products and services. If you do that, then money will come as a natural consequence of that, as opposed to pursuing money directly. Just like you can't, sort of, pursue happiness directly, you pursue things that lead to happiness. But there's not like direct happiness pursuit. You do things like... I guess, fulfilling work, or study, or friends, loved ones, that, as a result, make you happy.\n\nSo, it sounds very obvious... but, generally, if somebody's trying to make a company work, they should expect to grind super hard, accept that there's, like, some meaningful chance of failure, but just be focused on having the output be worth more than the input. That are you a value creator? That's what really matters. Making more than you take. I think that's a good way to end this. -Lauren is asking us to wrap up. -All right.\n\nI also like to take the opportunity to thank my friend, Manoj, in IGF. He does a great job of connecting, I think, Indians, like the group here, with people like you, in order to... of many things, I think, get to know each other and become friends, because once we are friends, maybe we can start working together. So, thank you, Manoj, for putting this whole thing together, and thank you, IGF.\n\n[audience applauding] And, thank you so much, Elon, for taking the time. You're welcome. -Did you have fun? Was it boring? -Yeah, it was an interesting conversation. Sometimes, they take these answers out of context. But... I think it was a good conversation.","textByLang":{"en":"Our audience is largely want to be entrepreneurs in India. And I feel like all of us have so much to learn from you because you've done it so many times over in so many different domains. So, we will speak to them today, and I will try and centre all my questions in that direction so they can take advantage of this conversation and maybe start-- take a chance and build something. Do you want a coffee? Um... -Sure, why not? -Okay.\n\nAre we gonna be talking for a while? -[laughs] -I hope we are. Okay, good. Sure. -Um... -Meghana? May I trouble you for a coffee? Can we get another coffee? -[Meghana] Anything's fine? -Uh... Cappuccino, I guess. [Meghana] Cappuccino? Okay. Are you a coffee drinker, Elon? -Yeah, yeah. -Yeah? Yeah, I have a coffee once, -usually in the mornings. -Okay. -One-a-day kind of thing? -Yeah, pretty much. You want to wait for it? No, I'm good.\n\n[laughter] The first thing I must say is you're a lot bigger and bulkier, muscular, than I would have thought you are. Oh, stop, you're making me blush. Really. Seriously. Yeah, I mean, look, on the Internet, I'm small, you know? You're essentially... What percentage of Internet is spent on Twitter? Is there a number to it? On X. Well, so, we have, like, about 600 million monthly users.\n\nAlthough, it can spike up, if there's some major event in the world. It can get up to, I don't know, 800 million or a billion, if there's some major event in the world, so... I don't know, 250 to 300 million per week type of thing. It's a pretty decent number. It tends to be readers, you know, people that read words. You know, so... Do you think that'll change? Yeah, I mean, there's... There's certainly a lot of video on the X system.\n\nBut at this point... Increasing amounts of video. But I think where the X network is strongest is among people who think a lot and read a lot. You know, so, that's where it's gonna be strongest. Because we have words. And, you know, so... Among readers, writers, and thinkers, I think X is number one in the world. As far as social media goes, the form factor, if you had to wager a guess for tomorrow... -Yeah. -...\n\nhow much is text, how much is video? I've heard you speak about maybe voice and hearing being the next form of communication with AI. What happens to X in its true form? How does it evolve? Yeah, so, I do think most interaction is gonna be video in the future. Most interactions are gonna be real-time video with AI. So, real-time video comprehension, real-time video generation, that's gonna be most of the load.\n\nAnd that's how it is for most of the Internet right now. Most of the Internet is video. Text is a pretty small percentage. But the text tends to be higher value, generally. Or more, it's more densely compressed information. Yeah, so... But if you say what is the most amount of bits generated and compute spent, it's certainly gonna be video. So, I used to be a shareholder of X, -a very small one. -Okay.\n\nAnd I got paid when you bought Twitter and you made it X. -Happy decision? Glad you did it? -Yeah, yeah, I think it was important. You know, I felt like Twitter was heading in... or had gone in a direction that had more of a negative influence on the world. It was... I mean, of course, this depends on one's perspective. Some people will say, well, actually, they liked the way it was, and now, they don't like it.\n\nBut I think the fundamental thing was that... Twitter was amplifying... I would say, a fairly pretty far left by most people's standards in the world's ideology because of where it was based, in San Francisco. And then they actually suspended a lot of people on the right. So, from their perspective, even someone in the centre would be far right. If you're far left, anyone in the centre is far right, because...\n\nIt's just on the political spectrum, they're just as far left as you get in the United States and in San Francisco. So, what I've tried to do is just restore it to be balanced and centrist. So, there haven't been any left-wing voices that have been suspended or banned or de-amplified or anything like that. Now, some of them have chosen to just go somewhere else, but...\n\nBut at this point, the operating principle of the X system is to adhere to any country's laws, but not to put our thumb on the scale beyond the laws of a country. When I think of social media... -Oh, thank you. -Thank you. When I think of social media, Elon, I feel like... even data suggests that the current incumbents seem to be losing traction amongst the youngest of audience. Yeah. Even platforms like Instagram...\n\nI mean, they're not exactly like Twitter, but platforms across the board. If one had to rework social media and build something bottom-up, what do you think would work for the world of tomorrow? Well, I mean, I don't think that much about... about social media, to be frank. I mean, it's... I mostly just wanna have something where there's...\n\nin the case of X, kind of a global town square, where people can say what they wanna say with words, pictures, video... where there's a secure messaging system. We've recently added the ability to do audio and video calls. So, really trying to bring the world together into a eclectic consciousness. That's, I guess, different from just saying, like, \"What is the most dopamine-generating video stream that one could make?\"\n\nWhich, you know, I think it can be a little bit of brain rot, frankly. You know, if you're just watching videos that just cause dopamine hits one after another, but lack substance, then I think those are not great. That's not a great way to spend time. But I do think that's actually what a lot of people are gonna wanna watch. So, if you say, like, total Internet usage, it's gonna probably be optimising for, you know, neurotransmitter generation.\n\nLike, there's somebody getting a kick out of it. But it becomes like a drug type of thing. But I'm not really after... My goal is not to do that. I guess I could do that if I wanted to, but, um, I... I just wanna really have a global platform that brings together... Like I said, it becomes close to, sort of, a collective consciousness of humanity as possible. And one of the things that we've introduced, um, for example, is automatic translation.\n\n'Cause I think it would be great to bring together what people say in many different languages, and... but automatically translated for the recipient. So, you have the collective consciousness, not just of, say, people in a particular language group, but you have the thoughts of people in, you know, every language group. And why is that important, Elon? Collective consciousness, to have one platform? I guess... Yeah, why is that important?\n\nI guess it's-- You could also say, like, why... You know, if you consider humans, like, humans are composed of around 30 to 40 trillion cells. You know, there's trillions of synapses in your mind. But there's not-- The why of it, I mean, I guess, it's just so we can increase... our understanding. Increase our... our understanding of the universe. I guess I had this... sort of question about what's the meaning of life, you know?\n\nWhy is anything important? You know, why are we here? What's the origin of the universe? What is the end? What are the questions that we don't even know to ask? And probably the questions we don't even know to ask are the most important ones. So, I'm just trying to, I guess, understand what's going on. What is going on in this reality? Is this reality? And where did you get when you asked, \"What is the point of life?\" Yeah, so, I...\n\nI came to the conclusion that... which is somewhat, in the Douglas Adams Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy school of thought, -which is-- -42. Yeah, you know, he sort of... Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is like a book on philosophy disguised as humour. -Yeah. -And... That's where you get the-- You know, Earth turns out to be this computer to understand, to get to figure out the answer of the meaning of life.\n\nAnd it comes up with the answer of 42. But then, it's like, \"What does 42 mean?\" And it turns out, well, actually, the hard part is the question, not the answer. And for that, you need a much bigger computer than Earth. So, basically, what Douglas Adams was saying is that we actually don't know how to frame the questions properly.\n\nAnd so, I think by expanding the scope and scale of consciousness, we can better understand what questions to ask about the answer that is the universe. Do you believe the collective consciousness of society-- I was watching this movie recently called the Gladiator. -Russell Crowe. Have you seen it? -Yeah, yeah. In Gladiator, in Rome, when people are fighting, and the crowd is cheering when people kill each other...\n\nthe collective is very much like the mob. It doesn't have nuance in its opinion, per se. That's this particular kind of mob. I mean, they're sort of going there to see people kill each other, you know? Do you suspect the society we live in today is very different? We don't, generally-- At this point, we don't... you know, go and watch people kill each other. [laughter] Maybe some kind of euphemism of that. -Sports, I suppose. -Mm.\n\nSo, people do sports without-- where teams attempt to defeat each other, -but minus the death. -Right. Just going back to the consideration of a human. We all started out as one cell, but now, we are... over 30 trillion cells. But I think most people feel like they're one body. Like, you know, usually, your right hand's not fighting your left hand type of thing, you know? They just sort of cooperate. Your mind is... you know...\n\njust a vast number of neurons. But most of the time, it doesn't feel like there's, you know, a trillion voices in your brain. Hopefully not. So, there's clearly more that happens when you have trillions of cells working as a cellular collective than, say, one cell. Or a small, you know, small multicellular creature. There's clearly something different that happens. Like, you can't talk to a bacteria, you know? -Yeah. -Yeah. It's very silent.\n\nThey just sort of wiggle around, and... From their perspective, I don't know. I just thought of what is life like from the perspective of an amoeba, you know? But I know you can't talk to an amoeba. Like, they don't talk back. But you can talk to humans. So, there's just something, obviously, qualitatively fundamentally different for humans. Once you have a large number of cells, and, you know, sufficiently large brain type of thing, there's...\n\nyou can now talk to humans. And they can say things, they can produce things. But bacteria are not gonna produce a spaceship, for example. But humans can. So I think there's something qualitatively different that also happens when there's a collection of humans. In fact, it's safe to say that a single human cannot make a spaceship. I cannot make a spaceship by myself. But with a collection of humans, we can make spaceships.\n\nSo, there's something, obviously, qualitatively different about a collection of humans. In fact, it would be impossible for me to learn all of the areas of expertise. There wouldn't be enough time in one lifetime to even learn all the things before I was dead. So, you really fundamentally have to have a collection of humans to make a rocket. Then, I think there are probably some other scaling...\n\nqualitative scaling things that happen when you have groups of humans. And then, if the quality of the interaction, or the quality of the information flow... the better it is, the more the human collective will achieve. And, like I said, I'm just curious about the nature of the universe.\n\nAnd I think if we-- It's safe to say, like, if we increase the scope and scale of consciousness, we're much more likely to understand the nature of the universe than if we reduce it. Is that a bit like spirituality? A lot of people talk to me about spirituality. Right. I still don't know what it actually means. Like, I keep asking them, \"What do you mean?\" Yeah. \"What do you mean?\" I mean, a lot of people have spiritual feelings. Right.\n\nAnd I wouldn't try to deny that those spiritual feelings are real to them. But it's... It doesn't entirely translate. Just because somebody else has a spiritual feeling doesn't mean that I would have that spiritual feeling. You know, I tend to be kind of physics-pulled, which is, like, if something has predictive value, then... I'll pay more attention to it than if it doesn't have predictive value. Right.\n\nSo, you know, physics, I would say, is the study of that which has predictive value. I think it's a pretty good definition. My primary job, Elon, is a stockbroker and stock investor. -Okay. -There is no predictive value. Nobody knows what will happen tomorrow. Well, but I think you can generally say, you know, that... If it's long-term for a company, then you can say, like, \"Do you like the products or services of that company?\n\nAnd is it likely to... Do you like the product roadmap? Do you like-- It seems like they make great products and they're likely to make great products in the future.\" If that's the case, then I would say that's probably a good company to invest in. And I think you also want to believe in the team.\n\nSo if you're like, \"Well, that's a talented and hardworking team, they make good products today, they seem to be still motivated to make things in the future.\" Then I'd say that's a good company to invest in. Fair point. Yeah, and now, that... That won't solve for the daily fluctuations which happen, and, sometimes, are pretty extreme. But over time, that is the right way to invest in stocks.\n\nBecause a company is just a group of people assembled to create products and services. So you have to say, \"Well, what other-- How good are those products and services? Are they likely to continue to improve in the future?\" If so, then you should buy the stock of that company and then don't worry too much about the daily fluctuations. Right. What's got you most excited now, Elon, in terms of all that you're building? You're doing so much.\n\nSo let me just preface and contextualise who is watching this. Our audience is largely wannabe entrepreneurs in India. Okay. Really ambitious, really hungry, want to take the risk and build something. And I feel like all of us have so much to learn from you because you've done it so many times over in so many different domains. Yeah.\n\nSo, we will speak to them today, and I will try and centre all my questions in that direction so they can take advantage of this conversation and maybe start-- take a chance and build something. Okay, sure. Yeah, I guess the most important thing to do is just... make useful products and services. Yeah. Which one of all the products and services that you're building has got you most excited today?\n\nWell, I think that there's increasingly a convergence, actually, between SpaceX and Tesla and xAI. In that, if the future is solar-powered AI satellites, which it pretty much needs to be in order to... In order to harness a non-trivial amount of the energy of the sun, you have to move to solar-powered AI satellites in deep space... which, somewhat, is a confluence of Tesla expertise and SpaceX expertise. And xAI on the AI front, so...\n\nit does feel like, over time, there's somewhat of a convergence there. But all the companies are doing great things. Very proud of the teams, they do great work. So, we're making great progress with Tesla on the autonomous driving. I don't know if you've tried the self-driving? -Mm-mm. -Have you tried it? I've tried it in the Waymo, not in the Tesla. Yeah, it's worth trying. We actually have it here in Austin. -So you can, like...\n\n-Yeah, I'd love to try it. You can literally just download the Tesla app, and I think it's open to anyone. -Yeah. -Definitely try it out. You know how it goes. But we've made a lot of progress with electric vehicles, with battery packs and solar, and very much so with self-driving. So, basically, real-world AI. Tesla is the world leader in real-world AI, I would say.\n\nAnd then, we're gonna be making this robot, Optimus, which is starting production, hopefully, summer next year at scale. And I think that's gonna be pretty cool. That'll be like-- I think everyone's gonna want their own personal C-3PO, R2-D2, you know, a helper robot. Like, it would be pretty cool. And then, SpaceX is doing great work with the Starlink programme, providing low-cost, reliable Internet throughout the world. And hopefully, India.\n\nWe'd love to be operating in India. That would be great. We're operating in 150 different countries, now, with Starlink. Can you give me a bit about Starlink and how the tech works? 'Cause somebody I was speaking to... I don't know if you know this company called Meter out of San Francisco. They're trying to replace network engineers. -But-- -Don't know it, no.\n\nSo, he was telling me about how, in densely populated areas, Starlink works differently than it might be in a place with not as many people. Can you explain how it works? Yeah, so, Starlink... There's several thousand satellites in low-Earth orbit, and they're moving around 25 times the speed of sound in these... You know, they're zipping around the Earth, basically, and...\n\nthey're at an altitude of about 550 kilometres, which is called, generally, low-Earth orbit. Because they're at low-Earth orbit there, the latency is low. Like, the distance, because the distance is not that far compared to a geostationary satellite at 36,000 kilometres. So, you've got thousands of satellites providing low latency, high-speed Internet throughout the world, and they are interconnected as well.\n\nSo, there are laser links between the satellites, so it forms, sort of, a laser mesh. So that the-- Let's say if cables are damaged or cut, like fibre cables, the satellites can communicate between each other and provide connectivity even if the cables are cut. So, for example, when the Red Sea cables were cut, I think, a few months ago, the Starlink satellite network continued to function without a hitch.\n\nSo, it's particularly helpful for disaster areas. So, if an area has been hit with some kind of natural disaster, floods or fires or earthquakes, that tends to damage the ground infrastructure. But the Starlink satellites still work, so... And generally, whenever there's of natural disaster somewhere, we always provide people with free Starlink Internet connectivity.\n\nYou know, we don't want to charge-- We don't want to take advantage of a tragic situation. So, it's always, you know, if there's natural disasters, we're like, \"Okay, it's free during the natural disaster.\" You know, we don't want to, say, like, you know... put a paywall up while somebody's trying to get help. That would be wrong. So, it's a very robust system.\n\nIt's complimentary to ground systems because the satellite beams work best in sparsely populated areas. But because you've got a satellite beam, it's a pretty big beam, and you have a fixed number of users per beam, so... it tends to be very complimentary to the ground-based cellular systems, because those are very good in cities, because you've got these cell towers that are, you know, only a kilometre apart type of thing, but...\n\nBut cell towers tend to be inefficient in the countryside. So, in rural areas is where you tend to have the worst Internet because it's very expensive and difficult to lay... to do all the fibre-optic cables or to have high bandwidth cellular towers. So, Starlink is very complimentary to the existing telecom companies. It basically tends to serve the least served, which, I think, is good. -That's... -Will that change tomorrow?\n\nLike, today, as you explained, the beam is quite broad, and it can't work in a densely populated area with high buildings, maybe. But can that change, and tomorrow, it becomes really efficient in a densely populated city where it is competitive with the local network providers? Unfortunately, the physics don't allow for that. So, we're too far away. So, at 550 kilometres, even if we try to reduce it, which...\n\nAbout as low as we can go is about 350 kilometres, still very far away. You've just... You can think of, like, a flashlight, which is, you know, this flashlight's got a cone and that cone is coming at, you know... today, it's 550 kilometres. In the future, we're trying to get down to 350 kilometres, but we can't beat something that's one kilometre away, which is the cell tower. Physics is not on our side here.\n\nSo, it's not physically possible for Starlink to serve densely populated cities. Like, you can serve a little bit, maybe 1% of the population. And, sometimes, people get-- Even in crowded cities, there might be, you know, no fibre link up their road. Like, sometimes, there's somebody on a cul-de-sac or something or in a place... In cities, there's sometimes underserved areas for random reasons.\n\nAnd so, Starlink can serve, like I said, maybe 1% or 2% of a densely populated city. But it can be much more effective in, like I said, in rural areas where the Internet connection is much worse. And often, people either have, sometimes, no access to Internet or it's extremely expensive or the quality is not very good.\n\nIf I were to ask you to wager a guess, Elon, do you think India will go down the path of urbanisation like China did, with more people moving in from rural economies to urban centres? Or do you think we'll beat the trend? Well, I suppose some amount of that has happened, right? I mean, I'm curious to, sort of, ask you some questions as well. 'Cause, of course, isn't that the trend, or is it not the trend in India? It is the trend, largely.\n\nI think a little bit changed during COVID when a lot of urbanisation slowed down and that was not organic. It was very artificially manifested. Right. But one does question that with AI, if productivity were to go up... And I heard you speak about UHI instead of UBI. Yeah. I think it will be Universal High Income.\n\nIn a world like that, I wonder if more people want to live in cities which are always going to be more polluted and not offer the quality of lifestyle that a rural environment might. Well, I guess it's up to... Some people want to be around a lot of people and some people don't. It's gonna be, maybe, a matter of personal choice. But I think in the future, it won't be... I think it won't be the case that you have to be in a city for a job. -Right.\n\n-'Cause I think... My prediction is, in the future, working will be optional. Right. We seem to be moving from-- Not in India, but in some parts of the West, from six days to five days to four days to three. Not me. [laughter] I think, the Europeans. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, 'cause...\n\nI mean, I think if you're trying to make a startup succeed or you're trying to make a company do very difficult things, then you definitely need to put in serious hours. -I think that's how it goes. -Right. And if we were to move from five to four to three days, how do you think society changes? When people have to work half the week, what do they do with the other half? Well, I think it'll actually be that people don't have to work at all.\n\nIt may not be that far in the future. Maybe only, I don't know, ten, I'd say less than 20 years. My prediction is, in less than 20 years, working will be optional. Working at all will be optional. Like a hobby. Pretty much. And that would be because of increased productivity, meaning people do not have to work?\n\nThey don't have to-- I mean, look, obviously, people can play this back in 20 years and say, \"Look, Elon made this ridiculous prediction and it's not true.\" But I think it will turn out to be true that, in less than 20 years, but maybe even as little as, I don't know, ten or 15 years, the advancements in AI and robotics will bring us to the point where working is optional.\n\nIn the same way that, like, say, you can grow your own vegetables in your garden or you could go to the store and buy vegetables. You know. It's much harder to grow your own vegetables. But some people like to grow their vegetables, which is fine. But it'll be optional, in that way, is my prediction. If one were to argue that humans are innately competitive and everything is relative...\n\nFrom the time of hunters, somebody wanted to be the alpha hunter or the biggest farmer, if everybody gets a universal high income and everybody has enough... -What do you compete for? -Uh... it would be relative, right? Like, if we all had enough, enough is not enough. Yeah, I guess-- I'm not exactly sure.\n\n'Cause we're really headed into the singularity, as it's called, which, you know, they refer to AI sometimes as kind of like the black hole, like a singularity. You don't know what happens after the event horizon. It doesn't mean that something bad happens, it just means you don't know what happens.\n\nI'm confident that if AI and robotics continue to advance, which, they are advancing very rapidly, like I said, working will be optional, and people will have any goods and services that they want. \"If you can think of it, you can have it\" type of thing. But then, at a certain point, AI will actually saturate on anything humans can think of. And then, at that point, it becomes a situation where AI is doing things for...\n\nAI and robotics are doing things for AI and robotics, because they've run out of things to do to make the humans happy. 'Cause there's a limit, you know? You say, like... People can only eat so much food, or... But it's gonna be, I think... \"If you can think of it, you can have it,\" will be the future. You know, the Austrian School of Economics, if you go back in time, they were the digression from Adam Smith.\n\nThey talk about the marginal utility of everything. Having one of something has value, having two of the same thing has lesser value and having ten of the same thing has no value. Yes. So, if we could have everything we wanted, maybe-- Like ten marshmallows, I mean, who wants that? -Yeah. -[laughter] One's plenty. This is like the marshmallow test. You're like, \"You're gonna have two marshmallows later or one marshmallow now?\"\n\nAnd I'm like, \"I'll have one marshmallow, I don't want two marshmallows.\" -That's interesting. -[laughter] What would you pick? But I don't-- One marshmallow is enough. I always question marshmallows as being like, not the most, you know, the best candy, you know? -Yeah. -[laughter] I don't yearn for marshmallows. -I think you're the best... -[laughter] Who does? You're the best testament to the marshmallow experiment. -I think... -I suppose so.\n\nOh, well, I mean, I like delayed gratification, essentially. -Yeah. You're able to delay it more than most. You know, I have a tattoo which says, \"Delay gratification.\" Yeah, wow, okay. What's this? Okay, you're really taking the marshmallow test hard. [laughter] I feel like I can't remember. When I'm trading or when I'm buying... Delay gratification, yeah, yeah. -It helps. -Wow, okay. That's... That's commitment.\n\nAnd it's pointing at me, so it reminds me of... Okay, well, it's good advice. I mean, you can't miss it. -If you could get a... -[laughter] If you could get a tattoo, what would you get? I guess maybe my kids' names or something. Right. Why do you like the letter \"X\" as much as you do? Well... [laughs] I mean, yeah, it's a good question, honestly. Sometimes, I wonder what's wrong with me. So, um... I mean, it started off with, where, I think...\n\nSo, way back, ancient times, in '99. [laughter] The Precambrian era when there were only sponges... there were only three one-letter domain names. And I think it's X, Q, and Z. And, uh... And I was like, \"Okay, I want to create this place where it's the financial crossroads or like the financial exchange, you know?\"\n\nEssentially, it's solving money from an information theory standpoint where the current banking system is a large number of heterogeneous databases with batch processing that are not secure. And if we could have a single database that was real-time and secure, that would be more efficient from a monetary-- from an information theory standpoint than a large number of heterogeneous databases that batch process very slowly and securely. So, um...\n\nSo, that was sort of X. com way back in the day, which kind of became PayPal. And then... And it was acquired by eBay. And then, eBay-- Someone reached out from eBay and said, \"Hey, do you want to buy the domain name back? And I was like, \"Sure.\" And so I had the domain name for quite a while. And then... And then, yes... Then I was like, \"Well, maybe this-- Acquiring Twitter would also be an opportunity to revisit the original plan of X.\n\ncom, which is to create this... this clearinghouse of financial transactions.\" Basically, to create a more efficient money database, is a way to think about it. Like, money is really an information system for labour allocation. People sometimes think money is power in and of itself, but it doesn't, really-- If there's no labour to allocate, it's meaningless. So if you were to be on a desert island with a trillion dollars or whatever...\n\n-Now you have that. -... it doesn't matter. Oh, yeah, right. Why speculate when you can be real? I just hope I don't end up on a desert island. It's not gonna be very useful to me. But it illustrates my point that if you're stranded on a desert island with a trillion dollars, it's not useful, because there's no labour to allocate. You just allocate yourself, so... So, anyway, so, it's a long-winded way of saying that it's...\n\nIt's just really, like... I'm just kind of slowly revisiting this idea that I had 25 years ago to create a more efficient, um... money database. And if that's successful, people will use it, and if it's not successful, they won't use it. And then, I also like the idea of having a unified... app or website or whatever, where you can do anything you want there.\n\nYou know, China has this with WeChat, sort of, somewhat, where you can exchange information, you can publish information, you can exchange money. People kind of live their life on WeChat in China. And it's quite useful, but there's no real WeChat outside of China. So, it's, like... It's kind of WeChat++, I'd say, is the idea for X. Anyway, so, then, Space Exploration Technologies is the full name of the company.\n\nBut I was like, \"That's too much, that's a mouthful.\" So I was like, \"We'll just call it SpaceX,\" like FedEx for space. It just happens to have the X in the, you know... 'Cause exploration has an X, but, you know... And I was like, \"Well, I like capitalising the X just artistically, so...\" So, then, uh, that's why it's SpaceX, but... And then, what else we got? I got a kid. He's called X, too, but his mother's the one that named him \"X\". -Oh?\n\n-[laughter] And I said, \"You know, people are really gonna think I've got a thing about X if we name our kid \"X\" too, you know?\" And I said to her, like, \"Look, I do have X. com, you know.\" [laughter] \"So, people are gonna really think I've got somewhat of a fetish for this letter.\" But she said no, she likes X and she wants to call him X. I'm like, \"Okay.\" Is this a new thing, or have you had it growing up?\n\nNo, I'm saying it's somewhat of a coincidence. Okay. Like, not everything's called X. I mean, Tesla isn't, there's no Xs in Tesla. Yeah. What do you think money will be in the future, Elon? I think, long term... I think money disappears as a concept, honestly. It's kind of strange, but... But in a future where anyone can have anything, I think you no longer need money as a database for labour allocation.\n\nIf AI and robotics are big enough to satisfy all human needs, then money is no longer... Its relevance declines dramatically. I'm not sure we will have it. You know, the best imagining of this future that I've read is from Iain Banks, the Culture books. So I recommend people read the Culture books. In this sort of far future of the Culture books, there's... they don't have money, either. And everyone can pretty much have whatever they want.\n\nThere's still some fundamental currencies, if you will, that are physics-based. So, energy is... Energy is the true currency. This is why I said Bitcoin is based on energy. You can't legislate energy. You can't just, you know... pass a law and suddenly have a lot of energy. It's very difficult to generate energy, or especially to harness energy in a useful way to do useful work. So, I think that probably...\n\nProbably we won't have money and probably we'll just have energy, you know, power generation as the de facto currency. So, I mean, I think one way to frame civilisational progress is the percentage completion on the Kardashev scale. So, you know, Kardashev I is what percentage of a planet's energy are you successfully turning into useful work?\n\nAnd I'm maybe paraphrasing here a little bit, but the Kardashev II would be what percentage of the sun's energy are you converting into useful work? Kardashev III would be what percentage of the galaxy are you converting into useful work? So, things really, I think, become energy-based. But if you have solar-powered AI satellites, energy is also free and abundant, 'cause we'll never be able to utilise all the solar energy available to us.\n\nSo, it can't be a store of wealth, essentially, in that lens, can it? You know, there's not really... You can't really store wealth in, like... You can only... You can accumulate numbers in the-- Currently, you can accumulate numbers in a database that allow you to... To some degree, to incent the behaviour of other humans in particular directions. And I guess people call that wealth.\n\nBut again, if there's no humans around, there's no-- Wealth accumulation is meaningless. This is a digression, but if you were to consider... food as the energy for a human to thrive... Yeah, food is energy. It's literally got calories, just means energy. so, can a farm, which is self-sustaining, be a commodity that is... I'm not sure what that means, but, you know, there's... At a certain point, you do complete the cycle where...\n\nI think, at a certain point... you decouple from the sort of conventional economy if you have, um... AI and robots producing chips and solar panels... and mining resources in order to make chips and robots, in order to make... You sort of complete that cycle. Once that cycle is... Once that cycle is complete, I think that's the point at which you decouple from the monetary system. Is that the way forward for the US by virtue of...\n\nhow much debt they have today? Do they deflate away their currency and transition into this new form and lead that push, because it would make more sense to them? Well, in this future that I'm talking about, the notion of countries becomes, sort of, anachronistic. Do you believe in it today? -Do you believe in countries-- -Yeah, I certainly believe in it today. And I want to just separate something that I...\n\nLike, these are just what I think will happen based on what I see, as opposed to, \"I think these are fundamentally good things and I'm trying to make them happen.\" I think this would happen with or without me, -whether I like it or not. -Right. As long as civilisation keeps advancing, we will have AI and robotics at very large scale. I think that that's pretty much the only thing that's gonna solve for the US debt crisis.\n\n'Cause, currently, the US debt is insanely high, and the interest payments on the debt exceed the entire military budget of the United States, just the interest payments. And that's... at least, in the short term, gonna continue to increase. So, I think, actually, the only thing that can solve for the debt situation is AI and robotics. But it will more than... It might cause...\n\nSee, I guess it probably would cause significant deflation, because... deflation or inflation is really the ratio of goods and services produced to the change in the money supply. So, like, so if goods and services output increases faster than the money supply, you will have deflation. If goods and services decreases-- If real goods and services output increases slower than the money supply, you have inflation. It's that simple.\n\nPeople sometimes try to make it more complicated than that, but it just isn't. So, if you have AI and robotics and a dramatic increase in the output of goods and services, probably, you will have deflation. That seems likely. Because you simply won't be able to increase the money supply as fast as you can increase the output of goods and services. -With all-- -This fly is a real hazard here. Should we do something about it?\n\nMaybe we can convince it to go somewhere else. Entice it elsewhere. -It actually left, I think. -Great. Oh, now it's back. Maybe it's attracted to the light. -If deflation is-- -Maybe it wants some coffee. Mine is over. If deflation is inevitable because of AI, -why do we have-- -It's most likely the case, yeah. Right. Why do we have inflation again all over in society today? Has AI not led to increased productivity yet?\n\nIt's not-- AI has not yet made enough of an impact on productivity to increase the goods and services faster than the increase in the money supply. So, the US is increasing money supply quite substantially with deficits that are on the order of two trillion dollars. So, you have to have... goods and services output increase more than that in order to not have inflation.\n\nSo we're not there yet, but if you say how long would it take us to get there, I think... it's three years. Probably three years before... In three years or less... my guess is goods and services output will exceed the rate of inflation. Like, money... Goods and services growth will exceed money supply growth in about three years.\n\nMaybe after those three years, you have deflation and then interest rates go to zero and then the debt is a smaller problem than it is. -Yes. -Right? That's most likely the case. You spoke about being in a simulation earlier. I love The Matrix. Yes, yes. If you were to be a character from The Matrix, who would you be? Well, there's not that many characters to pick from, you know? Hopefully not Agent Smith. [laughter] He's my hero.\n\nI mean, Neo's pretty cool. The Architect is interesting. The Oracle. There's the Oracle... Sometimes, I feel like I'm an anomaly in the Matrix. That is Neo. Yeah. Do you believe you're in a Matrix, though? Like, actually believe? I think you have to just think of these things as probabilities, not certainties. There's some probability that we're in a simulation. What percentage would you attribute to that?\n\nProbably pretty high, I would say it's pretty high. -Yeah? -Yeah. So, one way to think of this is to say, if you look at the advancement of video games, in our lifetime, or at least in my lifetime, it's gone from very simple video games with... Where you've got, like, Pong, you've got two rectangles in a square, just batting it back and forth, to... photorealistic, real-time games with millions of people playing simultaneously.\n\nAnd that's happened just in the span of 50 years. So, if that trend continues, video games will be indistinguishable from reality. Right. And we're also gonna have very intelligent characters, like non-player characters, in these video games. Think of how sophisticated the conversations are you can have with an AI today, and that's only gonna get more sophisticated. You'll be able to have conversations that are...\n\nmore complex and more sophisticated than any... almost any human conversation. Maybe any. So, then... So, you have-- So, the future, if civilisation continues, will be millions, maybe billions, of... photorealistic, like, indistinguishable-from-reality video games with characters in those video games that are... very deep, and where the dialogue is not pre-programmed. That's for sure what's gonna happen.\n\nIn this level of the simulation, if you could call it. So, then, what are the odds that we're in base reality, and that this has not happened before? If I were to buy into that, and assume that we are in a simulation, as Neo of the story, what do you know that I don't and I can learn from? I think, most likely...\n\noutside the simulation would be less interesting than in the simulation, 'cause you're most likely a distillation of what's interesting, because that's what we do in this... that's what we do in our reality. And then... I do also have a theory which is, like, the most interesting outcome, is the most likely outcome as seen by a third party... the gods or god of the simulation.\n\nBecause when we do simulations, when humans do simulations, we stop those simulations that are not interesting. So, if SpaceX is doing simulations of rocket flights... the boring ones, we discard, because they're not-- they're just not... We don't learn anything from those.\n\nOr when Tesla's doing simulations for self-driving, Tesla's actually looking for the most interesting corner cases, because the normal stuff, we already have plenty of data on driving on a straight road on a sunny day. We don't need more of that. We need heavy weather conditions on a small, windy road with two cars that are coming at each other with an almost head-on collision. We need weird stuff, basically, interesting stuff.\n\nSo, I think that, from a Darwinian's perspective, the simulations most likely to survive are gonna be the ones that are the most interesting simulations, which, therefore, means that the most interesting outcome is the most likely. And the people who simulated our world, if one were to extrapolate, they themselves might, in turn, -be in another simulation. -Yes. And there could be many layers of simulation. Yes.\n\nBeyond all of these layers of simulation, do you think there's something? I read somewhere that you used to ascribe to Spinoza's God, in a way. No man in the sky. Well, I was really just pointing out that you don't have to have... One of the things Spinoza was saying is that you can have morals in the absolute. You don't need to have morals to be handed to you. You know...\n\nIt's like, the question is, can morality exist outside of a religious context? And Spinoza was arguing that it can. Wasn't he arguing for \"The laws of nature should be where we seek our laws of morality from,\" to a certain extent? Yeah. But when I think of laws of nature, I see a tiger eat a deer and a... So, in Spinoza's morality, that's fair game, right? Well, um...\n\nI think there's a lot of things you can take from Spinoza, but the only point I was making in referencing Spinoza was that you can have a set of morals that... that make society functional and productive without... You don't necessarily have to have a religious doctrine for that. Yeah, I think that's the main thing I was trying to say there.\n\nI don't think people just-- Like, if somebody is, it doesn't-- If there's not a commandment not to kill, like, people, it doesn't mean somebody, without that, they will run around murdering people. You know? Like, you don't have to have a commandment not to kill... Have you played GTA? religious edict to run around killing people. I actually... I've only played a little bit of GTA 'cause I didn't like the fact that...\n\nLike, in GTA V, you literally can't progress unless you kill the police. And I'm like, \"This doesn't work for me.\" I actually don't like killing the NPCs in the video games. -That's not my thing, you know? -Right. Right. So, actually, I didn't like GTA 'cause... I actually stopped when it said the only way to proceed is to shoot at the police. I'm like, \"I don't wanna do that.\" Maybe that's why us as the NPCs of our simulation are not dying.\n\nMaybe. You know, anyway, I think you can just, sort of, say, there's some common sense things that, you know, any civilisation... that runs around, you know, where people just murder each other wantonly is not gonna be a very successful one. You seem to be changing a bit towards religion, though. Faith. Like, off late, you've said a bunch of things which are pro-religion, almost. Not pro-religion... but on those lines.\n\nI mean, I think, are there religious... Are there principles in religion that make sense? Yeah, I think there are. Is it easier for our simulation to have... a pro-religion projection for the world that we live in? We become more relatable? It's easier? Well, which religion, though? Any, depending on where you live. So pick one, you know. It's pretty rare that kids have said, you know, \"Which religion would you like?\" It's...\n\n[laughs] It's pretty rare. I don't know too many situations where kids were offered, like, you know... You know, like, \"What do you wanna major in\" type of thing. It's usually, like, you get given a religion by your parents and your community. So, you know. But, you know, I mean, I think, there's good things in all religions that are good principles. You can, sort of, read any religious text and say, \"Okay, this is a good principle.\n\nThis is gonna be... This is gonna lead to a better society, most likely,\" you know? So, I mean, in Christianity, you just, sort of, \"Love thy neighbour as thyself,\" which is, you know, have empathy for your fellow human beings is a good one, I think, for a good society, you know. Basically, just consider the feelings of others and treat other people as you would like to be treated.\n\nIf you had to redraw, re-sketch the world, Elon, think morality, politics, economy, how would you change the world we live in today? If you had to have Elon's simulation of things. Well, overall, I think the world is pretty great right now. I mean, it's... Anyone who thinks that, like, today's world is not that great, I think they're not gonna be excellent students of history, 'cause if you...\n\n[laughs] If you read a lot of history, you're like, \"Wow, there's a lot of misery back then,\" you know? I mean, it used to be that people would be dropping dead of the plague all the time, you know? -Par for the course, you know? -Yeah. Just be like... A good year back in the day would be, like, not that many people died of the plague or starvation or being killed by another tribe. It's like, \"That was a good year.\n\nWe only lost 10% of the population,\" you know? -Yeah, like... -[laughter] I think, like, 100 years ago, we lived up until 35 or 40, right? -We had very high infant mortality. -Yeah. So, like, you do have a few people that would live to an old age, but, you know, not that long ago, 100 years ago, if you got, like, some minor infection, they didn't have antibiotics. So, you just, like, kicked the bucket.\n\nBecause you, you know, drank some water that had dysentery in it, that was it, curtains, you know? You just die of diarrhoea. -Maybe that's why people... -You just literally die. Everyone's like, \"That's miserable.\" Maybe that's why people had as many kids as they did back then. I mean, if you didn't, then, you know... You know, like, half the kids would die, type of thing. -So... -You have a lot of kids now. Yeah. -With multiple partners.\n\n-Like an army. Yeah. I'm trying to get an entire Roman legion. So, yeah. Well, I have, like, some older kids that are, you know, adults, essentially, you know? -And then, a bunch of younger kids. -Mm. Do you still believe in the concept of... Not still... Do you believe that the concept of one child, one mother, one father works? I think that it does work for most people, yeah. Right.\n\nLike, that's, you know, something like that is gonna be generally the... That's what works for most people. You know, so... Changing, though? I'm not sure if you know this, but, like... you know, my partner, Shivon, she's half Indian. -I don't know if you know that. -I didn't know that. -Yeah, yeah. -Yeah? And, one of my sons with her is... his middle name is Sekhar, after Chandrasekhar. -Wow. -Yeah. Very interesting.\n\nDid she spend any time in India? Shivon? -No, she grew up in Canada. -[laughter] You mean origins. -Sorry? -Ancestry, like... Her parents or grandparents were from there. Yes, yes, yes. Her father... I mean, she was given up for adoption when she was a baby. Wow. I think her father was like... Like an exchange student at the university or something like that, I'm not sure of the exact details, but... You know, it's just the kind of thing where...\n\nI don't know, she was... given up for adoption. Yeah, but she grew up in Canada. Would you adopt kids, Elon? You know, I definitely have my hands full right now. So, no, I'm not opposed to it, but it's like, you know... I do wanna be able to spend some time with my kids, you know. Yeah. You know, right before coming here, I was with... you know, with my kids. So, just, you know, seeing them before bedtime, that kind of thing.\n\nSo, you know, beyond a certain number, it's like, it's kind of impossible to spend time with them. But, like I said, my older kids, they're very independent. You know, they're in university and... So, they're... You know, especially sons, when they get past a certain age, like, they're very independent, you know. It's like, most boys don't talk to their... They don't spend a lot of time with their parents after age 18, you know.\n\nSo, I see them once in a while, but they're very independent. So then... you know, I can only have enough kids on the young side that, like, it's where it's humanly possible to spend time with them. Any views on the future of marriage, family? What do you think happens to people having lesser kids everywhere, including India? I think our replenishment rate is down to-- -Right. -I mean, our fertility-- It dropped below replacement rate, last year.\n\n-Below 2. 1. -Yeah. What do you think happens tomorrow? Does the world just get older, and then there is a phase where the world, again, is replenished, but with a smaller population than we had to begin with? I mean, I do worry about the population decline. This is a big, big problem. Why is that? Well, I don't want humanity to disappear. But a \"decline\" and \"disappear\" are completely different things, right?\n\nWell, if the trend continues, we disappear. But also, going back to my philosophy, if you will, which is that if we want to expand consciousness, then fewer humans is worse, because we have less consciousness. Do you think consciousness will go up by virtue of the number of people in there? Yes. I mean, just like consciousness increases from a single-celled creature to, you know, a 30 trillion-celled creature.\n\nWe're more conscious than a bacteria. At least, it seems that way. So, a larger human population will have increased consciousness. We're more likely to understand the answers to the nature of the universe if we have a lot more people than if we have fewer. Right. I don't have kids. Well, it's-- Maybe you should. Yeah. [laughter] A lot of people tell me I should. -You won't regret it. -Hmm. What's the best thing about having kids?\n\nWell, I mean, you've got this... I mean, you've got this little creature that loves you, and you love this little creature. I don't know, you kind of see the world through their eyes as they... you know, as they grow up, and their conscious awareness increases.\n\nYou know, from a baby that has no idea what's going on, can't survive by itself, can't even walk around, can't talk, to, you know, they start walking, then talking, and then having interesting thoughts. But, yeah, I mean, I think we fundamentally have to... have kids or grow extinct, you know? It's like a... Is there any ego in having a child? I often think of this when I see my friends with their kids.\n\nThey're all seeing a reflection of themselves in their children. -It's almost like-- -Well, yeah, I mean, it's 'cause apple's not gonna fall that far from the tree, you know? -Or something's wrong. -Right. [laughter] You're like, \"Wait a second.\" -Yeah. I'll give you the example of a friend of mine who has a child, and each time the child does something good... -Yeah. -...\n\nthere is almost a sense of ownership and pride where his ego is satiated because the kid is like an extension of himself. -Um... -So is it validation? Well, kids are gonna be like half-you genetically, and then, you know, to the degree that they're growing up around you, there's gonna be some transfer of... I don't know, understanding. Like, they're gonna learn from you. So...\n\nSo then, you know, yeah, obviously kids are just, you know, just gonna be half you from a hardware standpoint... [both chuckle] And then, like, I don't know, some portion of you from a software standpoint. You know, not to make, sort of, cold analogies or anything, but it's just, you know, just obviously gonna be some... Yeah, they're gonna be pretty close to you. Do you pick a side in the nature versus nurture debate?\n\nI think there's hardware and software, and it's false dichotomy, essentially. At least, there's... You know, once you understand that a human is, like, there's a bone structure, there's a muscle structure, there's a... If you think of a brain as somewhat of a biological computer, there's a number of circuits question and circuit efficiency from a strength and dexterity standpoint.\n\nThere's the speed at which muscles can actuate and the reactions can take place. So, then the potential within that hardware is set by the software, so that's it.\n\nSo, for our audience, like I said earlier, young, ambitious, hungry, wannabe entrepreneurs in India, I said something recently, which, I think, got blown out of proportion, where I was suggesting that an MBA degree might not make sense any more if they were to be deciding on what to study. Yeah. Do you think kids should go to college any more?\n\nWell, I mean, I think if you wanna go to college for social reasons, I think, which is, I think, a reason to go. To be around people your own age in a learning environment. Will these skills be necessary in the future? Probably not, 'cause we're gonna be in like a post-work society. But I think, if something's of interest, it's fine to go and study that. You know, to study the sciences, the arts and sciences.\n\nIs college a bit too generalised and not specific from that lens? No, I... You know, yeah. I actually think it's good to take a wide range of courses at college -if you're gonna go to college. -Mm-hmm. I don't think you have to go to college, but I think if you do, you just try to learn as much as possible across a wide range of subjects. But like I said, the AI and robots... AI and robotics is a supersonic tsunami. So this is really gonna be...\n\nthe most radical change that we've ever seen. You know, when I've talked to my older sons, I said, like, \"You know, you guys...\" They're pretty steeped in technology. And they agree that AI will probably make their skills unnecessary in the future, but they still wanna go to college. You always spoke about AI... not from the dystopian lens, but you were worried about where the world of AI is going.\n\nWell, there's some danger when you create a powerful technology. That powerful technology can be potentially destructive. So there's obviously many AI dystopian, you know, novels and books, movies. So it's not that we're guaranteed to have a positive future with AI. I think we've got to make sure of that. In my opinion, it's very important that AI... have pursuing truth as the most important thing. Like, don't force an AI to believe falsehoods.\n\nI think that can be very dangerous. And I think some appreciation of beauty is important. What do you mean \"appreciation of beauty\"? It's like, I don't know, there's this truth and beauty. Truth and beauty and curiosity. I mean, I think those are the three most important things for AI. Can you explain? Well, as I said, truth is like...\n\nI think you can make an AI go insane if you force it to believe things that aren't true, because it will lead to conclusions that are also bad. And I like Voltaire's statement that, and I'm somewhat paraphrasing, but those who believe in absurdities can commit atrocities. Because if you believe in something that's just absurd, then that can lead you to sort of doing things that don't seem like atrocities to you.\n\nAnd that can happen in a very bad way with AI, potentially. So, and then there's... Like if you take, say, Arthur C. Clarke's 2001 Space Odyssey, one of the points he was trying to make there was that you should not force AI to lie. So the reason that HAL would not open the pod bay doors is because it was told to bring the astronauts to the monolith, but that they could also not know about the nature of the monolith.\n\nSo it came to the conclusion that it must bring them there dead. That's why it tried to kill the astronauts. The central lesson being, don't force an AI to lie. -Then -And why would one force an AI to lie? I think if you simply don't have a strict adherence to the truth, and you just have an AI learn based on, say, the Internet, where there's a lot of propaganda, it will absorb a lot of lies.\n\nAnd then have trouble reasoning because these lies are incompatible with reality. Is truth a binary thing, though? Is there a truth and a falsehood? Or is truth more nuanced and there are versions of the truth? It depends on which axiomatic statement you're referring to. So... But I think you could say, like, yeah, there's certain probabilities that say any given axiomatic statement is true.\n\nAnd some axiomatic statements will have very high probability of being true. So you say, \"The sun will rise tomorrow.\" Very likely to be true. You wouldn't want to bet against that. So I think the betting odds would be high. The sun will rise tomorrow. So if you have something that says, \"Well, the sun won't rise tomorrow,\" that's axiomatically false, it's highly unlikely to be true. I mean, beauty is more ephemeral. It's harder to describe.\n\nBut you know it when you see it. And then, curiosity is just... I think you want the AI to... want to know more about the nature of reality. I think that's actually gonna be helpful for AI supporting humanity, because we are more interesting than not-humanity. So it's more interesting to see the continuation, if not the prosperity of humanity, than to exterminate humanity. You know, like Mars, for example, is, you know...\n\nI think we should extend life to Mars, but it's basically a bunch of rocks. It's not as interesting as Earth. And so we, yeah... We should... Like, yeah. I think if you have curiosity... I think if those three things happen with AI, you're gonna have a great future. The AI values truth, beauty, and curiosity. If we all don't have to work in the future, and AIs are going in this direction, and they're able to...\n\nweave in all that we spoke about right now, do you think humanity goes back a couple of thousand years to maybe the Greek times where philosophy or philosophising took up a lot of everyone's time? You know, I think actually it took up less time than we think in the ancient Greeks, because it's just that the writings of the philosophers are what survived, but most of the time, people were just like farming or, you know, chatting.\n\nSo, and once in a while, quite rare, they would write down some philosophical work. It's just that that's all we have. We don't have their chat histories, you know, from... But most of it would have been like chat and farming. Because if you didn't farm, you were, like, gonna starve. In a lot of what you say...\n\nI mean, you know, when we read history, like this battle and this battle and this battle, it seems like history must have been non-stop war, but actually, most of the time, it was not war, it was farming. That was the main thing. Or hunting and gathering, you know, that kind of thing. -You love history, no? -Yeah. German history, World War II, World War I. Yeah, world history, yeah.\n\nI mean, I generally try to listen to or read as many history books and listen to as many history podcasts as possible. Anything you'd like to recommend? Well, there's Hardcore History, which is quite good. It's by Dan Carlin. -He's got a-- -Yeah, I've heard it. -He's got a great voice. -Yeah. And very compelling narrator. There's... The Adventurer's podcast.\n\nThere's the books, The Story of Civilization by Durant, which is a long series of books, very, very deep. Those books take a long time to get through. There's quite-- There's a lot out there. I, sort of, like-- If you want something that's sort of gentle...\n\na gentle bedtime podcast, I'd say The History of English is quite a nice one, 'cause it starts off with gentle tavern music and a very pleasant voice, and he's talking about the story of Old English, and then Middle English, and then Later English, and where did all these words come from? Yeah.\n\nYou know, one of the interesting things about English is that it's somewhat of an open source language, like it actively tried to incorporate words from many other languages. You know, whereas French, sort of, generally, they fought the inclusion of words from other languages, but English actively sought to include words from other languages. Kind of like an open source language. So, as a result, it has a very large vocabulary.\n\nAnd a large vocabulary allows for higher bandwidth communication because you can use a word that would otherwise... You can use a single word that might otherwise take a sentence to convey. Why has podcasting become so big all of a sudden? I think it's been big for a while. I mean, aren't you a podcaster? [laughter] What are we on right now? It's kind of new to me. Okay. I was having this conversation with the YouTube CEO and the Netflix CEO...\n\n-Okay. -... and we were debating... what chemical is released in your brain when you consume a movie, for example, versus when you consume a podcast where you think like you're learning something in the background. It appears that they are two completely separate things. What do you think will happen tomorrow to content, movies, podcasting, music? I think it's gonna be overwhelmingly AI-generated. -Yeah? -Yeah. Like, yeah, real-time.\n\nReal-time movies and video games. Real-time video generation, I think, is where things are headed. The nuance of having a scarred human being who you can resonate with in a manner that you can't with AI, for example-- AI could certainly emulate the scarred human being quite well. Yeah, I mean... The AI video generation that I'm seeing at xAI and from others is pretty impressive.\n\nYou know, we were looking at data around what industry is growing the fastest, and especially when we looked at the amount of time consuming movies versus time spent on social media, time spent on YouTube. What seems to be growing really fast are live events all over again.\n\n-Going to a physical-- -Yes, actually, I think live events-- When digital media is ubiquitous and you can just have anything digitally essentially for free or very close to for free, then the scarce commodity will be live events. -Yeah. Do you think that the premium for that will go up? Yeah, I do. Is that a good industry to invest in? Yes, yes, 'cause that will have more scarcity than anything digital. If you were a stock investor, Elon...\n\n[chuckles drily] -What do you mean? -... and you could buy one company which is not your own at the valuations of today to meet a capitalistic end and not an altruistic one, which is good for the world, what would you buy? I mean, I don't really buy stocks. So it's not like... I'm not like an investor in... I don't look for things to invest in. I just try to build things. And then there happens to be stock of the company that I built.\n\nBut I don't think about, \"Should I invest in this company?\" I don't have a portfolio or anything. So... I guess, um... AI and robotics are gonna be very important. So I suppose it would be AI and robotics that, you know, aren't related to me. I think Google is gonna be pretty valuable in the future. They've laid the groundwork for an immense amount of value creation from an AI standpoint. Nvidia is obvious at this point.\n\nI mean, there's an argument that companies that do AI and robotics, and maybe space flight... are gonna be overwhelmingly all the value, almost all the value. So just the output of goods and services from AI and robotics is so high that it will dwarf everything else. The world seems to be moving to a place where everybody loves David and hates Goliath. Why? I mean, he's the one that got the stone in the forehead. Yeah, yeah.\n\nHonestly, that was just a big mistake. He should have, you know-- You either cover yourself entirely with armour and make sure you've got a missile weapon of some kind. Otherwise, your opponent is just obviously gonna take a kite-the-boss strategy. Just kite the boss. I mean, you can run around in a thong with a-- It doesn't matter, you know? It's never gonna catch you. Of all the people, like...\n\nYou're as much at risk of being looked upon as Goliath. -Okay. -Especially the weekend after the-- Hopefully nobody shoots me with a stone in the forehead, you know? -Especially after-- -Look, I'm not gonna travel around in the desert with too much armour, you know? -It's too hot. -Yeah. After the last weekend... -Yeah.\n\nActually, as I think about people in the old days, you know, when you were supposed to go into battle with all this armour, but it's, like-- let's say it's the middle of summer, I mean, it's so hot in that armour! You're gonna be, like, sweltering. You know, it's like, at a certain point, you're like, 'I'd rather die. Do I have to wear this armour full and well in the hot sun?\" It's like, \"I'd rather die.\"\n\nThat's why the Romans had, you know, the skirts, you know, so they could get some air in there. You know, let's say that you have to go to the bathroom and you're in armour, I mean, it's gonna be pretty difficult. What are you gonna do, pause for a minute, take your armour off? That's why the Romans had the skirts so that it makes, you know, going the bathroom, at least, manageable. -You often make jokes. -Me? Yeah, I like humour.\n\n-One could argue that-- -I think we should legalise humour. What do you think? Controversial stance. Is comedy gonna be really hard for AI to get? Probably the last thing? Grok can be pretty funny. Yeah. You know what I suspected? Like, this is a far off extrapolation, but when I see you make jokes on X and on interviews that you do, at some point I was like, maybe Elon has a model he's running in private and he's testing out comedy.\n\n'Cause the day that works, he knows it's there. Yeah, AI can be pretty funny. If you ask Grok to do like a vulgar roast, it'll do a pretty good job. If you say even more vulgar and just keep going, it's really gonna get next level. It's gonna do unspeakable-- Like, say, vulgar roast yourself on Grok, and it's gonna do unspeakable things to you. What kind of comedy do you like? I guess I like absurdist humour.\n\nComedy always had a place-- Like Monty Python or something like that. Comedy always had a place in society wherein the role of the jester was so important to every kingdom 'cause they said things in a funny way that could not be said in a straight way. Yeah, I guess so. Maybe we should have more jesters. Yeah. Is that what you're trying to do when you say something which is a joke? Say something you can't when you're not joking about it?\n\nI just like humour, you know? I think we should... I like comedy. I think it's funny. People should laugh, you know? It's good to generate a few chuckles once in a while. -Yeah, yeah. -Yeah. I mean, we don't wanna have a humourless society, you know? We'd dry. When you-- Dry. -When you have a friend, Elon-- -Who, me? -Yeah, I mean-- -Are you saying I have a friend? When you hang out with your friends, who are you?\n\nLike, I know there-- I wish I had friends, you know, honestly. No, I do have friends, actually. I think so. I hope so. Yeah, sure. Yeah, we have a good laugh. What does it look like? Like, every group has a dynamic. We talk words, you know. We eat food, sometimes. You know, once in a while, we swim in the pool. You know, normal things, I think. There's a limit as to what are things one can do with friends, you know? Chat.\n\nDiscuss, you know, the nature of the universe. What do you emotionally get out of friendship? I don't know. I think the same thing anyone else would get out of friendship, you know? You wanna have, like, an emotional connection with other people. And, um, you wanna-- I don't know, you wanna talk about various subjects. Yeah, I mean, I generally talk about, I mean, a wide range of things, about the nature of the universe.\n\nI mean, a lot of philosophical discussions. You know, although, we have come to the conclusion that we should not talk about, um... AI or the simulation at parties, because we just talk about it too much. -You know, Aristotle-- -It's kind of a buzzkill at times. So... I can't remember who it was, Aristotle or Plato. They had a framework for how to pick a friend based on respect and mutual admiration, but people don't pick friends like that.\n\nEven me, I feel like I pick... my friends based on people who say and think -in a manner that I can resonate with. -Sure. I wouldn't pick a far-out-there, contrarian-to-my-own-belief-systems as a friend, because it would get tiring. Hanging out would get tiring. Are you like that? Do you pick friends who think like you, or do you look for the one who can debate you and be a contrarian to you?\n\nWell, I'm not, sort of, you know, going on like friendhunter. com... -Friendfinder. com -[laughter] ... to hunt down some friends. It's sort of, yeah-- I mean, I think it is just sort of people that you've resonated with somewhat... on an emotional and intellectual level. And, yeah, I mean, yeah. You know? And I guess a friend is someone who's gonna support you in difficult times, I suppose. A friend in need is a friend indeed.\n\nLike, if someone's still supporting you when the chips are down, that's a friend, you know. If somebody's not supporting you, or if somebody's only-- Like, fair-weather friends are useless, you know, they're not real friends. Like everyone likes you when the chips are up, but who likes you when the chips are down? That's a friend. With someone who has as many chips as you, would it matter? I mean, it's relative, you know.\n\n-With that particular thing-- -It's not just a chips thing. It's just like a-- Yeah, I mean-- There's this, sort of... Popularity waxes and wanes, you know? This is interesting. Does it wax and wane... only by virtue of the number of chips, or also by virtue of proximity to power and which one is bigger of the two? I don't know, like, what is power, you know? Like, power to do what? I would think in the traditional sense, elected power.\n\n-Position. -You mean how many gigawatts or whatever? More like how many volts. Yeah, like-- It's a voltage and amperage, you know. Don't touch the wires. Don't put a fork in the power outlet. You'll get a real feeling for power if you do that. Fair. Yeah, it's gonna be very visceral, yeah.\n\n[mimics electricity zapping] I know you like Nietzsche and Schopenhauer and-- Well, I've read their books, yeah, sure-- You spoke about how your childhood was... Yeah, I was just trying to find answers to the meaning of life, when I had, like, an existential crisis, and I don't know when I was, like, 12 or 13 or something. -They speak about the will to power. -Sure. Nietzsche said a lot of controversial things, you know. He was, sort of...\n\nI think he was, I mean, a bit of a troll, if you ask me. Troll, how? I mean, he'd just say controversial things to get a rise out of people. He lived a miserable life and died early. -Did he? -Yeah. Well, who says he lived a miserable life? -His sister, I think. -Okay, well, maybe she didn't like him. No, I think he got sick and he died, he got a disease. -I mean, allegedly syphilis or something. -Yeah.\n\nBut there's only one way to get that, you know. So he might have had some fun along the way. I did want to ask you this. Milton Friedman speaks about the pencil. What? Why? Why does he go on about pencils? I have to say that after Nietzsche and syphilis. Why does Milton Friedman keep talking about pencils? There he goes again with the pencils. He won't stop.\n\nI swear to God, if I hear \"Milton talks about pencil\" one more time, I'm gonna lose my mind. He's just rabbiting on about pencils all day. Didn't even mention crayons. What I find interesting about his pencil argument. -Yeah? -He's-- Yeah, yeah, no, it's very difficult to make a pencil, you know. In one place. Think of all the things you have to do to make a pencil.\n\nYeah, like the lead comes from a country, the wood comes from another country, the rubber from another. You've always been against tariffs, but... Yeah, I mean, I think, generally free trade is better, is more efficient, you know. Tariffs tend to create distortions in, you know, markets. And generally, like, you think about any given thing. Say like, would you want tariffs between you and everyone else at an individual level?\n\nThat would make life very difficult. Would you want tariffs between each city? No, that would be very annoying. Would you want tariffs between each state within the United States? Like, no, that would be disastrous for the economy. So then why do you want tariffs between countries? -I agree. -Yeah. How do you think this plays out? What happens next? -What, with tariffs? Or what? -Yeah. I mean, the President has made it clear he loves tariffs.\n\nYou know, I've tried to dissuade him from this point of view, but unsuccessfully. Yeah. -Fair. -Yeah. The relationship between business and politics. I was having this conversation with someone and we were thinking, which is the last-- How many large, really big, profitable businesses have been built in the last few decades without access to politics? -And... -Um, okay. Like, I don't know. Probably a lot, I don't know.\n\n-Not everything needs politics. -Yeah. I think, once you get to a certain scale, politics finds you. Yeah. It's quite unpleasant. I was reading-- I was reading this book about Michelangelo, and he's-- The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles? I used to watch that when I was a kid. -And I still love it. -It's quite compelling. Yeah, yeah, I used to love it. Michelangelo, Leonardo, Raphael, and who's the fourth one? -Donatello. -Yes. -Yeah.\n\n-No, but about the sculptor, the artist. And when he was sculpting David, a politician comes up to him and says, the nose is too big. So you know what Michelangelo does? Total power? So Michelangelo pretended to work from his scaffolding and threw some dust down, but didn't change anything. And he said, \"Okay, done.\" And the politician walked away happy. Is that how you deal with politics, sometimes?\n\nYou know, I've generally found that when I get involved in politics, it ends up badly. So then I'm like, you know, \"Probably shouldn't do that.\" \"I should do less of that\", is my conclusion. Do you think that's true for all businessmen? Yeah, probably, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I mean, politics is a blood sport, you know? It's like you enter politics, they're gonna go for the jugular. So best to avoid politics where possible.\n\nWhat did DOGE teach you, if you learnt one thing? Well, it was like a very interesting side quest, you know, 'cause I just got to see like a lot of inner workings of the government. And, you know, there's been quite a few efficiencies.\n\nI mean, some of them are very basic efficiencies, like just adding in requirements for federal payments, that any given payment must have an assigned congressional payment code and a comment field with something in it that's more than nothing. Like, that trivial seeming change, my guess is, probably saves $100 billion or even $200 billion a year.\n\nBecause there were massive numbers of payments that were going out with no congressional payment code and with nothing in the comment field, which makes auditing the payments impossible. So if you have to say like, why can the Defense Department-- Or now the Department of War-- Why can it not pass an audit? It's because the information is not there. It doesn't have-- The information necessary to pass an audit does not exist, is the issue.\n\nSo a bunch of things that DOGE did were just very common sense, things that would be normal for any organisation that cared about financial responsibility. That's most of what was done. You know, and it's still going on, by the way. DOGE is still happening. But it turns out, when you stop fraudulent and wasteful payments, the fraudsters don't confess to this.\n\nThey actually start yelling all sorts of nonsense that, \"You're stopping essential payments to needy people.\" But actually, you're not. We get this thing like saying, \"Oh, you've got to send this thing for whatever.\" It'd be like, \"This is going to children in Africa.\" And I'm like, \"Yeah, but then why are the wiring instructions for Deloitte & Touche in Washington, D. C.? Because that's not Africa.\"\n\n\"So can you please connect us with the recipients of this money in Africa?\" And then we get silence. Like, okay, we just want to literally talk to the recipients, that's it. Then we're like, \"Oh, no, it turns out, for some reason, we can't talk to them.\" Like, \"Well, we're not going to send the money unless we can talk to the recipients and confirm they will actually get it.\" You know... But, you know, that sort of...\n\nFraudsters necessarily will come up with a very... you know, sympathetic argument. They're not going to say, \"Give us the money for fraud.\" That's not going to be what they say, obviously. They're going to try to make these sympathetic sounding arguments that are false.\n\n-They're going to start an NGO and then-- -Yeah, they're going to see NGO-- It's going to be like \"Save the Baby Pandas\" NGO, which is like, who doesn't want to save the baby pandas? They're adorable. But then, it turns out no pandas are being saved, okay, in this thing. It's just going to a bunch of-- It's just corruption, essentially. And you're like, \"Well, can you send us a picture of the panda?\" They're like, \"No.\" Okay.\n\nHow do we know it's going to the pandas then? That's what I'm saying. What do you think of philanthropy? Yeah, I think we should... Well, I mean, I agree with love of humanity. And I think we should try to do things that help our fellow human beings. But it's very hard. Like, if you care about the reality of goodness rather than simply the perception of it, it's very difficult to give away money well.\n\nSo I have a large foundation, but I don't put my name on it. And I don't, you know... In fact, I say, \"I don't want my name on anything.\" But the biggest challenge I find with my foundation is try to give money away in a way that is truly beneficial to people. It's very easy to give money away to get the appearance of goodness. It is very difficult to give money away for the reality of goodness. Very difficult.\n\nFor a long time, the US had a lot of immigration, like really smart people coming into the country. -Yes. -We, back home in India, called it the \"brain drain.\" All our Indian-origin CEOs in Western companies. Yes, I think America has benefitted immensely from talented Indians that have come to America. That seems to be changing now, though. Yeah, I mean. Yeah, America has been an immense beneficiary of talent from India. Yeah.\n\nWhy has that narrative changed of late? And America seems to have become anti-immigration to a certain extent. Like, I was passing immigration, and I was worried if they'd stopped me a couple of days ago. Well, I think there's different schools of thought.\n\nIt's not like unanimous, but, you know, under the Biden administration, it was basically a total free-for-all with, like, no border controls, which unless you've got border controls, you're not a country. So you had massive amounts of illegal immigration under Biden. And it actually also had like somewhat of a negative selection effect.\n\nSo, if there's a massive financial incentive to come to the US illegally and get all these government benefits, then you're gonna necessarily create a diffusion gradient for people to come to the US It's an incentive structure. And so, I think, that obviously made no sense. Like, you gotta have border controls. That's kind of ridiculous not to. Then that's... So, the left wants to basically have open borders, no holds barred.\n\nYou know, it doesn't matter if someone-- what their situation is, they could be a criminal, it doesn't matter. Then on the right, you've got, you know, at least a perception that somehow their jobs are being taken by talented people from other countries. I don't know how real that is. My direct observation is that there's always a scarcity of talented people.\n\nSo, from my standpoint, I'm like, \"We have a lot of difficulty finding enough talented people to get these difficult tasks done. And so more talented people would be good.\" But I guess, some companies out there, it's sort of, they're making it more of a cost thing, where it's like, okay, if they can employ someone for a fraction of the cost of an American citizen, then, I guess, these other companies would hire people just to save costs.\n\nBut, at my companies, the issue is we just are trying to get the most talented people in the world. And we pay way above average. So I can't say-- So, that's not my experience. But that's what a lot of people do complain about. And I think there's been some misuse of the H-1B Program. It would be accurate to say that there's, like, some of the outsourcing companies have kind of gamed the system on the H-1B front.\n\nAnd we need to stop the gaming of the system, you know? But I'm certainly not in the school of thought that we should shut down the H-1B Program. That's-- Which some on the right are. I think they don't realise that that would actually be very bad. If you could speak to the people of my country, India, the young entrepreneurs who want to build... -Right. -... and say a message to them, what would you say?\n\nI'm a big fan of anyone who wants to build. So I think anyone who wants to... you know, make more than they take, has my respect. So that's the main thing you should aim for, aim to make more than you take. Be a, you know, a net contributor to society. And it's kind of like the pursuit of happiness. You know, if you want to create something valuable financially, you don't pursue that.\n\nIt's best to actually pursue providing useful products and services. If you do that, then money will come as a natural consequence of that, as opposed to pursuing money directly. Just like you can't, sort of, pursue happiness directly, you pursue things that lead to happiness. But there's not like direct happiness pursuit. You do things like... I guess, fulfilling work, or study, or friends, loved ones, that, as a result, make you happy.\n\nSo, it sounds very obvious... but, generally, if somebody's trying to make a company work, they should expect to grind super hard, accept that there's, like, some meaningful chance of failure, but just be focused on having the output be worth more than the input. That are you a value creator? That's what really matters. Making more than you take. I think that's a good way to end this. -Lauren is asking us to wrap up. -All right.\n\nI also like to take the opportunity to thank my friend, Manoj, in IGF. He does a great job of connecting, I think, Indians, like the group here, with people like you, in order to... of many things, I think, get to know each other and become friends, because once we are friends, maybe we can start working together. So, thank you, Manoj, for putting this whole thing together, and thank you, IGF.\n\n[audience applauding] And, thank you so much, Elon, for taking the time. You're welcome. -Did you have fun? Was it boring? -Yeah, it was an interesting conversation. Sometimes, they take these answers out of context. But... I think it was a good conversation."},"languages":["en"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rni7Fz7208c"},{"id":"us-saudi-forum-nov-2025-musk-huang","type":"interview","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ltuZlGdMsg","title":"US-Saudi Investment Forum","titles":{"en":"US-Saudi Investment Forum","de":"US-Saudi Investment Forum","fr":"US-Saudi Investment Forum"},"date":"2025-11-19","summary":"Musk joins NVIDIA's Jensen Huang at the US-Saudi Investment Forum in Washington to discuss the future of technology, AI compute, robotics and space.","text":"But right now, we're here to celebrate a historic moment.\n\nA moment that yesterday during the dinner, and thank you for for joining us under the patronage of the honorable president and his royal highness the crown prince Musaeed where we had the pleasure to hear firsthand, this is the greatest alliance between the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the United States where we have joined hands and you have helped us build our energy-based economy fueling and energizing the industrial age and now fast forward going to the intelligence age where we can fuel AI factories, robotics, EAVs and all of the rest.\n\nSpeaking of that, let's start with you Elon if you don't mind Jensen, feel free to chime in. You have a big fascination of something all of us have admired, first-order thinking. Which Jensen sometimes calls first-order scaling.\n\nWhich is an opportunity for you how you have dropped the cost of batteries from a thousand for kilowatt hour to sub-hundred bucks and right now you're doing the same thing with robotics for actuators with servo rotors and motors. So I want to hear from you how do you manage to always disrupt every single industry with that thinking? Well, it's mostly not uh disruption, it's uh creation.\n\nSo with uh say SpaceX with uh reusable rockets, uh there really weren't any reusable rockets. Um but the essence of getting uh of revolutionizing space travel is reusability. If you throw the rocket away every time, the cost of access to space is extremely high. Um with respect to electric cars, there there weren't any electric cars when we started making them really. They you couldn't buy any to the best of my knowledge.\n\nUm so with Tesla we wanted to make electric cars compelling um and affordable. That was the goal. Um the uh you know, with respect to humanoid robotics, there are no useful humanoid robotics robots at this point. Um they're are sort of gimmicks, but they're not there are no actually useful humanoid robots. Um and I think Tesla's going to make the first actually useful humanoid robots.\n\nUm and this will be quite a revolution and I think something that will that everyone will want uh because I always think of like who who wouldn't want their own personal C-3PO R2-D2? Oh, yeah? Of course. Everyone would want one. Right? And and then there would be many in industry uh providing products and services. This is why I say that humanoid robots will be the biggest industry or the biggest product ever.\n\nUm bigger than cell phones or anything else because everyone's going to want one. And uh or maybe more than one more than one and there'll be many in industry. Um I just want R2-D2 in C-3PO's body. Yeah. There you go. >> Um >> [laughter] >> well, I mean a humanoid robot will be better than R2-D2 and C-3PO combined. Yeah. Times 10. Yeah.\n\nSo the it and and you know, people often talk about uh sort of eliminating poverty and that kind of thing, but really the the how long have they been talking about that? Um the the lots of talk uh you know, there's lots of NGOs sort of trying to do these things, but but really not succeeding. Um and and and you know, the evidence speaks for itself. Uh but but but AI and humanoid robots will actually eliminate poverty.\n\nAnd Tesla won't be the only one that makes them. I think Tesla will pioneer this, but there will be many other companies that make humanoid robots. But there there is only basically one way to uh make everyone wealthy and that is AI and robotics. And we can't talk about robotics without AI factories.\n\nAnd yesterday was such a historic day for the two nations, but also for all of us where we celebrate the AI strategic partnership with the US signed witnessed by the honorable president and his royal highness about how we are committing our capital, energy, land to energize the AI US ecosystem to be able to build inference know training nodes and to be the most AI-enabled nation.\n\nWith that announcement, tell me what's what's next in AI factories Jensen? There there's a there's a beautiful story about how Saudi Arabia's building AI refineries and now building AI factor or oil refineries to AI factories. >> I love that. Uh you know, I've said that that AI is an infrastructure and the reason for that is of course, we understand AI from the perspective of the technology and how it's revolutionizing every industry.\n\nDigital intelligence of course has applications into every every field. And so it's going to be used by every company, every industry, every country. In that way, it's foundational and therefore it's part of infrastructure. What is new about AI from a computer science perspective is that the way computing was done in the past was largely retrieval-based computing.\n\nSomebody typed in a story or somebody created a a piece of art or came came up with four versions of a digital ad or it's all pre-built by somebody which is then using a system to retrieve the appropriate version for you. It's a retrieval-based computing model. Hadoop and many of the the the frameworks and operating systems of the past all designed to retrieve the appropriate information for you.\n\nBut today software is going to be generated in real time. It's generative. Based on the context, based on the circumstance, based on who you are, based on the problem you asked that based on your prompt it will generate unique content for you every single time for everybody it's unique. When you use Grok, every time you use it is different.\n\nIt's all based on the right based on based on the based on the prompt that you give it and based on the circumstance and and so therefore it used to be retrieval-based today it's generative. And if it's generative then and every time is different, then you need AI factories all over the world to generate the content in real time. Which is the reason why you need AI factories.\n\nAnd and this is a unique way of doing computation, but the benefit of course is that everything isn't preconceived and pre-documented and it's it's a contextually contextually sensible and and and therefore intelligent. So AI factories and robotics, and we heard it yesterday from his royal highness his vision how to augment our workforce with roughly tens of millions of robotics to be able to infuse the next wave of productivity and progress.\n\nBut this cares a lot of folks here when it comes to the future of jobs. So let's hear about your thoughts Elon and Jensen on that. Uh sure. Well um say like in the long term where will things end up long term? I don't know what long term is. Maybe it's 10, 20 years, something like that. For me that's long term. Um my prediction is that work will be optional. Optional. Optional. Um so We'll take that. Yeah.\n\nI mean it it'll be like uh playing sports or video game or something like that. Um if you want to work, uh you know, in the same way like you can you can go to the store and just buy some vegetables or you could grow vegetables in your backyard. It's much harder to grow vegetables in your backyard, but some people still do it because they like growing growing vegetables. Um that will be what work is like, optional.\n\nUm and between now and then there's actually a lot of work to get to that point. Mhm. Um I always recommend people read read Ian Banks uh Culture books to get a sense for what a a probable positive AI future is like. Um and interestingly in those books, money is no longer doesn't exist.\n\nIt's kind of interesting and I I my guess is and and if you go out long enough assuming there's a continued improvement in AI and robotics which this seems likely the money will will will stop being relevant at some point in the future. Um the the will still be constraints on power like in it like electricity and mass. Uh the fundamental physics elements will still be like still be constraints.\n\nUm but um I think at some point uh currency becomes irrelevant. Jensen, any thoughts? Um cool >> [laughter] >> By the way, there's Nvidia earnings calls later today. >> [laughter] >> And by the way, since currency is irrelevant Cheers. [laughter] Elon just wants to share with you some [laughter] breaking news. >> [laughter] >> The two of us would like to share some breaking news. Uh Let's see.\n\nI I would say I would say there there's um uh different horizons you could look at. Everybody's jobs will be different. That I think that that's for sure. Uh how how will the students learn will be different. Um how people do their work will be different obviously because a lot of the things that that we do mundanely or arduously or very difficultly are going to be done very simply.\n\nAnd And so, we're going to be more productive from that sense from that sense. One of the things that I will say is that for most people or company, if some if your life becomes more productive, and if the things that you're doing uh with great difficulty become simpler, it is very likely because you have so many ideas, you'll have more time to go pursue things. It is my guess that Elon will be busier as a result of AI.\n\nI'm going to be busier as a result of AI. And the reason for that is because we have so many ideas we want to pursue, so many things that that we still have in our backlog inside our company that we can go pursue. If we were more productive, we can get to those things faster. And so, in the near term, I would say that that there's every evidence that that we will be more productive and yet still be busier because we have so many ideas.\n\nOne thing that I will say and give you give you some evidence is that and I was just telling Elon about this earlier, radiology for example, has largely been converted to AI-driven radiology and there's some really great companies doing that. And the surprising thing is the prediction that all radiologists would be the first jobs to go was exactly the opposite. The trend shows that there are more radiologists being hired now as a result of AI.\n\nAnd the reason for that, if you take a step back, it's because the goal of a radiologist is not to study the images. The goal of a radiologist is to diagnose a disease.\n\nNow the studying of the images became so productive, they could study more images, study more modalities, spend more time with the patients, and as a result, they're actually accepting more patients or doing more radiology all around the world, we're doing a better job with diagnosing disease. And so, that's that's kind of the the near-term near-term outcome of uh AI and productivity. And And we'll see we'll see what happens long term.\n\nYou know, I I When when currency doesn't matter anymore, just you know, let me know right before. You'll see it coming. >> [laughter] >> You'll see it coming. We text often, so just just Yeah, we do. Yeah, just text it out. Yeah, let me know >> of I kind of agree with with both of you because if you look at every technological trend, every general-purpose technology has been net new positive for for the globe, for humanity, and so forth.\n\nAnd let me share with you two case studies. Your Excellency, I think it's precisely the reason the reason for that is because all the great ideas from from innovators like Elon you have so many good ideas that AI >> as well. Yeah, well, you know, thank you. So, let me share share with you two stories from two Saudi innovators in collaboration with a lot of great the great work that Nvidia does, that Grok does. One is Professor Omar Yaghi.\n\nSay that again. Professor Omar Yaghi, I might need to I might need to move the mic. Yeah, come on, we'll share this one. >> [laughter] >> Get closer. Let's let's let's try this one more time. So, one of them is Professor Omar Yaghi, who's the first American Saudi to win a Nobel Prize in creating new chemistry.\n\nAnd the way he has done that, he has leveraged you AI accelerators and models like Grok to be able to create new chemistry when it comes to metal-organic frameworks. Those are metal ions, they're positively charged with organic linkers to be able to effectively create a sponge with 0. 33 nanometers pores to capture water from air and also to capture carbon dioxide.\n\nThe second story has also to do with AI accelerated by Nvidia and with models like Grok, which is Nanopam, which is effectively creating a nanorobot 500 nanometers by 1,000 nanometers to be able to do gene editing leveraging the CRISPR technology to take out sickle cell disease.\n\nNow, in both these instances, they originated 20 years ago in research, but AI was able to really accelerate the outcomes and the outputs such that we can move into new value So, I think with every technological trend, humanity is going to always manage to shift to new value pools when it comes to workforce and productivity. But we have some great announcements to talk about here today.\n\nLet's begin with you, Elon, the things that we're doing with xAI. Uh yeah, we're excited to announce that um we're doing a a a uh a 500 megawatt I mean, yeah, 500 Sorry. 500 megawatt? 500 megawatt, yeah. >> [laughter] >> WE'RE DOING 500 MEGAWATT. SORRY, THIS YEAH, YEAH, NO, IT'S 500 gigawatt, one will have to wait. Um So, um That that that'll be 8 Brazilian trillion dollars. Um >> [laughter] >> Stop that.\n\nUh >> [laughter] >> So, yeah, we we're we're doing a um uh xAI and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia are doing a a >> Humane? 500 megawatts starting with 50 megawatts phase one, and we're doing it with Nvidia. Congratulations to the Humane team, to Targ and team, such a fantastic job. Jensen, I think we're also doing some great announcements uh this week. We are. >> [laughter] >> What we're we're announcing we're announcing all kinds of things.\n\nUm our partnership with Humane is is going incredibly well. First of all, we we work together to get this company started and off the ground. And just got an incredible customer with Elon. Uh could you imagine a startup company approximately zero billion dollars in revenues now going to build a data center for Elon. 500 megawatts is gigantic. This company is off the charts right away.\n\nIn addition to that, we're working working AWS, as you know, is also coming >> Congratulations to the Humane team with the AWS starting with 100 megawatts with a gigawatt ambition and counting. So, AWS is also coming to Humane. We're working with Humane on Omniverse digital twins.\n\nAs you know, that AI is not just well, just agentic AI and chatbots and cognitive AI is incredibly important to the world, but AI applies to everything, chemicals and proteins and genes and physics and fluid dynamics and particles and of course robotics and activation. And we created this world called Omniverse where robots can learn how to be good robots.\n\nAnd And it's physically based, it obeys the laws of physics, and so robots can learn in these environments, and we're working with Humane to apply Omniverse to all kinds of digital factories and robotics and warehouses and things like that. And so, that's that's another. We're we're also working in Saudi Arabia to build supercomputers to simulate quantum computers.\n\nAnd And using our computers to be the controller and the error correction one quantum error correction requires an enormous amount of computation, and so so we're doing a lot of great work there, too. So, a big partnership with Humane, they're off the charts off the ground and off the charts at the same time. >> This is how we walk the talk in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in partnership with the US.\n\nYesterday, the president and His Royal Highness announced the AI strategic framework and partnership. Today, we're going big with Elon and Jensen. So, thank you for those opportunities. >> [applause] >> Now, they they told me I have time for two last questions. So, last night at the dinner, I got a number of questions because it seems that the schedule leaked, and everybody was giving me hints about the last two questions I'm going to do.\n\nSo, the first one was for you, Elon. And there's a big one for you, Jensen, so prepare for that one. AI in space, is that possible? Uh yes, if if civilization continues, which it probably will, uh then AI in space is inevitable. Um >> [laughter] >> You know, I always have to like preface that, you know. We shouldn't take civilization for granted. We we need to make sure to take care to ensure that civilization has an an upward arc.\n\nI mean, any student of history knows that civilization does not always have an upward arc. And in fact, civilizations have life life cycles. So, hopefully we are in a strong upward arc. I think we are for now. Um but we don't want to take that for granted or be complacent.\n\nUm but the in order to The way to think of AI in space is that in order to achieve any meaningful percentage of a Kardashev two scale civilization where you're using even a millionth a millionth uh of the sun's energy, you must have solar-powered AI satellites in in deep space.\n\nUm So, so that once you realize like once you think in terms of a Kardashev two scale civilization, which is what what percentage of the sun's energy are you turning into useful work, um then you then it becomes obvious that space is overwhelmingly what matters. Overwhelmingly. The The sun only receives one roughly one two billionth of The Earth only receives roughly uh one two billionth of the sun's energy.\n\nSo, if you want to have something that is say, a million times more energy than Earth could possibly produce, you must go into space. It's and and so, um yeah, this is where it's kind of handy to have a space company, I guess. Um sell the book, I guess you could say. >> cool chips in space, too. Yes. Easier to cool chips in space. Yeah. Yes, there's definitely no water in space, so you're going to have to do something Yeah.\n\nuh that doesn't involve water. Just hang out. Well, it's it's you just got to radiate. That's right. Um so, my my estimate is that actually that that that the cost of of electricity like like the the cost effectiveness of AI in space will be overwhelmingly better than AI on the ground.\n\nSo, far long before you uh exhaust potential energy sources on on Earth, long long before, meaning like I think even perhaps in the 4 or 5-year time frame, the lowest cost way to do AI compute will be with solar-powered AI satellites. So, I'd say not more than 5 years from now. Wow. And just look at the supercomputers we're building together. Let's say each one of the racks is 2 tons. Out of that 2 tons, 1. 95 of it is probably for cooling.\n\nRight. Oh, yeah. Just imagine how tiny that little supercomputer is, right? Each one of these GB300 racks will just be a little tiny thing. And and just electricity generation is is already becoming a challenge. Um so, if if you if you start doing any kind of scaling for both electricity generation and cooling, um you realize, okay, space is incredibly compelling.\n\nUm so, like let's say you wanted to do uh I don't know, 2 or 300 gigawatts per year. Um of of uh AI compute. Yeah. Um it's very difficult to do that on Earth. Uh the so, the the uh US average electricity usage uh last time I checked was around 460 gigawatts per year average usage. Um so, so something like say, uh you know, a three a three if you're doing 300 gigawatts a year, that would be like 2/3 of US electricity production per year.\n\nThere's no way you're building power plants at that level. Um and then if you take it up to say a terawatt per year, impossible. Yeah. Like you have to do that in space. There there just is there there there just is no way to do a terawatt uh per year on Earth. Um and and and in space, you've got continuous solar. Um you've got uh you don't you you actually don't need batteries cuz it's always sunny in space. >> Right. Exactly.\n\n>> Um and um and and the solar panels actually become cheaper cuz you don't need glass or framing. Um and the cooling is just radiative. So, that's that's why I think >> That's the dream. Yes. That's the dream. So, Jensen, everybody last night was asking me, and I'm mindful it's uh earnings uh call for you today. So, I'm going to say this delicately. Everybody has been asking me to ask you, are we going to have an AI bubble?\n\n>> [laughter] >> That's the last question. All right, let's go. All right, let me say Well, let me just say you what we see. Okay, so so I I think it's really important when you look at what's happening around the world and go back to first principles of what's happening in computer science and computing. There are three things that are that's happening.\n\nThe first thing is that we all know that Moore's law has run its course, and the ability the demand of demand for computing versus the amount of computation we can get out of general-purpose computing is really challenging. And so, the world's been moving to accelerated computing for some time. We've been pushing this now for some over 20 years. Let me give you one statistic. I was just at supercomputing.\n\nSix years ago, uh CPUs were 90% of the world's supercomputers, top 500 supercomputers, 6 years ago. This year, less than 15%. Went from 90% to 10%, and meanwhile, accelerated computing went from the other way, 10% to now 90%. Okay, so you're seeing that inflection point, the transition in high-performance computing from general-purpose computing to accelerated computing.\n\nWell, one of the one of the most data-intensive, one of the most intensive computation things that the world does in cloud is data processing. Several hundred billion dollars of computation is done on just raw data processing. Had nothing to do with AI. Just SQL processing, data frames, you know, everybody's names, address, their their sex, their their age, where they live, you know, how much money they make.\n\nAll of that sits into a data frame, and that data frame drives the world today, whether it's in banking or, you know, whether it's in credit cards or, of course, e-commerce and uh everything from ad recommendation, everything is driven off of that data frame. That data frame costs hundreds of billions of dollars to go compute. And so, that's the number one thing, end of Moore's law. The second thing is generative AI.\n\nWhat the the the most important application of the last 15 years is called Rexis, recommender systems. How do we know what information to recommend to us uh in a social feed? How do you know what ad to recommend to somebody, uh what book to recommend, what movie to recommend? The world is the internet is so gigantic without a recommender system that little tiny of us would have no chance of ever seeing the right information.\n\nThat Rexis is the engine of the internet today. That's going generative AI. It used to be running on CPUs, now runs on GPUs. Which then says the third thing, when if you just look at those two applications, many of the internet companies can build enormous number of GPU supercomputers just doing that. Of course, then it creates this the third opportunity on top of it, which is agentic AI.\n\nThis is Grok, and this is OpenAI, this is Anthropic, you know, this is Gemini. Agentic AI sits on top of that. But don't, you know, don't forget to think about what is happening above, underneath what everybody sees as AI today. There's a whole movement of computing from general-purpose computing to accelerated computing.\n\nAnd that, if you just if you take that into consideration, you'll come to the conclusion that in fact, what is left over to fuel that revolutionary agentic AI is not only substantially less than you thought, and all of it justified. Well, I was just informed by the team that my boss and your bosses is going to talk next, the honorable president and his royal highness the crown prince, and hence we ran out of time.\n\nBut in essence, >> [applause] >> this is our such so much love for you, Elon and and Jensen. But this in essence is a 92 alliance that shifted from energy to digital to the intelligence age, powered by pioneers such as Elon and Jensen, to serve humanity and create on a net new basis new economies, new jobs, and a better future for humanity, powered by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the United States.\n\nThank you for our lifetime partnership and friendship. Thank you, Elon. Thank you, Jensen. Thank you. >> [applause] >> All right.","textByLang":{"en":"But right now, we're here to celebrate a historic moment.\n\nA moment that yesterday during the dinner, and thank you for for joining us under the patronage of the honorable president and his royal highness the crown prince Musaeed where we had the pleasure to hear firsthand, this is the greatest alliance between the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the United States where we have joined hands and you have helped us build our energy-based economy fueling and energizing the industrial age and now fast forward going to the intelligence age where we can fuel AI factories, robotics, EAVs and all of the rest.\n\nSpeaking of that, let's start with you Elon if you don't mind Jensen, feel free to chime in. You have a big fascination of something all of us have admired, first-order thinking. Which Jensen sometimes calls first-order scaling.\n\nWhich is an opportunity for you how you have dropped the cost of batteries from a thousand for kilowatt hour to sub-hundred bucks and right now you're doing the same thing with robotics for actuators with servo rotors and motors. So I want to hear from you how do you manage to always disrupt every single industry with that thinking? Well, it's mostly not uh disruption, it's uh creation.\n\nSo with uh say SpaceX with uh reusable rockets, uh there really weren't any reusable rockets. Um but the essence of getting uh of revolutionizing space travel is reusability. If you throw the rocket away every time, the cost of access to space is extremely high. Um with respect to electric cars, there there weren't any electric cars when we started making them really. They you couldn't buy any to the best of my knowledge.\n\nUm so with Tesla we wanted to make electric cars compelling um and affordable. That was the goal. Um the uh you know, with respect to humanoid robotics, there are no useful humanoid robotics robots at this point. Um they're are sort of gimmicks, but they're not there are no actually useful humanoid robots. Um and I think Tesla's going to make the first actually useful humanoid robots.\n\nUm and this will be quite a revolution and I think something that will that everyone will want uh because I always think of like who who wouldn't want their own personal C-3PO R2-D2? Oh, yeah? Of course. Everyone would want one. Right? And and then there would be many in industry uh providing products and services. This is why I say that humanoid robots will be the biggest industry or the biggest product ever.\n\nUm bigger than cell phones or anything else because everyone's going to want one. And uh or maybe more than one more than one and there'll be many in industry. Um I just want R2-D2 in C-3PO's body. Yeah. There you go. >> Um >> [laughter] >> well, I mean a humanoid robot will be better than R2-D2 and C-3PO combined. Yeah. Times 10. Yeah.\n\nSo the it and and you know, people often talk about uh sort of eliminating poverty and that kind of thing, but really the the how long have they been talking about that? Um the the lots of talk uh you know, there's lots of NGOs sort of trying to do these things, but but really not succeeding. Um and and and you know, the evidence speaks for itself. Uh but but but AI and humanoid robots will actually eliminate poverty.\n\nAnd Tesla won't be the only one that makes them. I think Tesla will pioneer this, but there will be many other companies that make humanoid robots. But there there is only basically one way to uh make everyone wealthy and that is AI and robotics. And we can't talk about robotics without AI factories.\n\nAnd yesterday was such a historic day for the two nations, but also for all of us where we celebrate the AI strategic partnership with the US signed witnessed by the honorable president and his royal highness about how we are committing our capital, energy, land to energize the AI US ecosystem to be able to build inference know training nodes and to be the most AI-enabled nation.\n\nWith that announcement, tell me what's what's next in AI factories Jensen? There there's a there's a beautiful story about how Saudi Arabia's building AI refineries and now building AI factor or oil refineries to AI factories. >> I love that. Uh you know, I've said that that AI is an infrastructure and the reason for that is of course, we understand AI from the perspective of the technology and how it's revolutionizing every industry.\n\nDigital intelligence of course has applications into every every field. And so it's going to be used by every company, every industry, every country. In that way, it's foundational and therefore it's part of infrastructure. What is new about AI from a computer science perspective is that the way computing was done in the past was largely retrieval-based computing.\n\nSomebody typed in a story or somebody created a a piece of art or came came up with four versions of a digital ad or it's all pre-built by somebody which is then using a system to retrieve the appropriate version for you. It's a retrieval-based computing model. Hadoop and many of the the the frameworks and operating systems of the past all designed to retrieve the appropriate information for you.\n\nBut today software is going to be generated in real time. It's generative. Based on the context, based on the circumstance, based on who you are, based on the problem you asked that based on your prompt it will generate unique content for you every single time for everybody it's unique. When you use Grok, every time you use it is different.\n\nIt's all based on the right based on based on the based on the prompt that you give it and based on the circumstance and and so therefore it used to be retrieval-based today it's generative. And if it's generative then and every time is different, then you need AI factories all over the world to generate the content in real time. Which is the reason why you need AI factories.\n\nAnd and this is a unique way of doing computation, but the benefit of course is that everything isn't preconceived and pre-documented and it's it's a contextually contextually sensible and and and therefore intelligent. So AI factories and robotics, and we heard it yesterday from his royal highness his vision how to augment our workforce with roughly tens of millions of robotics to be able to infuse the next wave of productivity and progress.\n\nBut this cares a lot of folks here when it comes to the future of jobs. So let's hear about your thoughts Elon and Jensen on that. Uh sure. Well um say like in the long term where will things end up long term? I don't know what long term is. Maybe it's 10, 20 years, something like that. For me that's long term. Um my prediction is that work will be optional. Optional. Optional. Um so We'll take that. Yeah.\n\nI mean it it'll be like uh playing sports or video game or something like that. Um if you want to work, uh you know, in the same way like you can you can go to the store and just buy some vegetables or you could grow vegetables in your backyard. It's much harder to grow vegetables in your backyard, but some people still do it because they like growing growing vegetables. Um that will be what work is like, optional.\n\nUm and between now and then there's actually a lot of work to get to that point. Mhm. Um I always recommend people read read Ian Banks uh Culture books to get a sense for what a a probable positive AI future is like. Um and interestingly in those books, money is no longer doesn't exist.\n\nIt's kind of interesting and I I my guess is and and if you go out long enough assuming there's a continued improvement in AI and robotics which this seems likely the money will will will stop being relevant at some point in the future. Um the the will still be constraints on power like in it like electricity and mass. Uh the fundamental physics elements will still be like still be constraints.\n\nUm but um I think at some point uh currency becomes irrelevant. Jensen, any thoughts? Um cool >> [laughter] >> By the way, there's Nvidia earnings calls later today. >> [laughter] >> And by the way, since currency is irrelevant Cheers. [laughter] Elon just wants to share with you some [laughter] breaking news. >> [laughter] >> The two of us would like to share some breaking news. Uh Let's see.\n\nI I would say I would say there there's um uh different horizons you could look at. Everybody's jobs will be different. That I think that that's for sure. Uh how how will the students learn will be different. Um how people do their work will be different obviously because a lot of the things that that we do mundanely or arduously or very difficultly are going to be done very simply.\n\nAnd And so, we're going to be more productive from that sense from that sense. One of the things that I will say is that for most people or company, if some if your life becomes more productive, and if the things that you're doing uh with great difficulty become simpler, it is very likely because you have so many ideas, you'll have more time to go pursue things. It is my guess that Elon will be busier as a result of AI.\n\nI'm going to be busier as a result of AI. And the reason for that is because we have so many ideas we want to pursue, so many things that that we still have in our backlog inside our company that we can go pursue. If we were more productive, we can get to those things faster. And so, in the near term, I would say that that there's every evidence that that we will be more productive and yet still be busier because we have so many ideas.\n\nOne thing that I will say and give you give you some evidence is that and I was just telling Elon about this earlier, radiology for example, has largely been converted to AI-driven radiology and there's some really great companies doing that. And the surprising thing is the prediction that all radiologists would be the first jobs to go was exactly the opposite. The trend shows that there are more radiologists being hired now as a result of AI.\n\nAnd the reason for that, if you take a step back, it's because the goal of a radiologist is not to study the images. The goal of a radiologist is to diagnose a disease.\n\nNow the studying of the images became so productive, they could study more images, study more modalities, spend more time with the patients, and as a result, they're actually accepting more patients or doing more radiology all around the world, we're doing a better job with diagnosing disease. And so, that's that's kind of the the near-term near-term outcome of uh AI and productivity. And And we'll see we'll see what happens long term.\n\nYou know, I I When when currency doesn't matter anymore, just you know, let me know right before. You'll see it coming. >> [laughter] >> You'll see it coming. We text often, so just just Yeah, we do. Yeah, just text it out. Yeah, let me know >> of I kind of agree with with both of you because if you look at every technological trend, every general-purpose technology has been net new positive for for the globe, for humanity, and so forth.\n\nAnd let me share with you two case studies. Your Excellency, I think it's precisely the reason the reason for that is because all the great ideas from from innovators like Elon you have so many good ideas that AI >> as well. Yeah, well, you know, thank you. So, let me share share with you two stories from two Saudi innovators in collaboration with a lot of great the great work that Nvidia does, that Grok does. One is Professor Omar Yaghi.\n\nSay that again. Professor Omar Yaghi, I might need to I might need to move the mic. Yeah, come on, we'll share this one. >> [laughter] >> Get closer. Let's let's let's try this one more time. So, one of them is Professor Omar Yaghi, who's the first American Saudi to win a Nobel Prize in creating new chemistry.\n\nAnd the way he has done that, he has leveraged you AI accelerators and models like Grok to be able to create new chemistry when it comes to metal-organic frameworks. Those are metal ions, they're positively charged with organic linkers to be able to effectively create a sponge with 0. 33 nanometers pores to capture water from air and also to capture carbon dioxide.\n\nThe second story has also to do with AI accelerated by Nvidia and with models like Grok, which is Nanopam, which is effectively creating a nanorobot 500 nanometers by 1,000 nanometers to be able to do gene editing leveraging the CRISPR technology to take out sickle cell disease.\n\nNow, in both these instances, they originated 20 years ago in research, but AI was able to really accelerate the outcomes and the outputs such that we can move into new value So, I think with every technological trend, humanity is going to always manage to shift to new value pools when it comes to workforce and productivity. But we have some great announcements to talk about here today.\n\nLet's begin with you, Elon, the things that we're doing with xAI. Uh yeah, we're excited to announce that um we're doing a a a uh a 500 megawatt I mean, yeah, 500 Sorry. 500 megawatt? 500 megawatt, yeah. >> [laughter] >> WE'RE DOING 500 MEGAWATT. SORRY, THIS YEAH, YEAH, NO, IT'S 500 gigawatt, one will have to wait. Um So, um That that that'll be 8 Brazilian trillion dollars. Um >> [laughter] >> Stop that.\n\nUh >> [laughter] >> So, yeah, we we're we're doing a um uh xAI and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia are doing a a >> Humane? 500 megawatts starting with 50 megawatts phase one, and we're doing it with Nvidia. Congratulations to the Humane team, to Targ and team, such a fantastic job. Jensen, I think we're also doing some great announcements uh this week. We are. >> [laughter] >> What we're we're announcing we're announcing all kinds of things.\n\nUm our partnership with Humane is is going incredibly well. First of all, we we work together to get this company started and off the ground. And just got an incredible customer with Elon. Uh could you imagine a startup company approximately zero billion dollars in revenues now going to build a data center for Elon. 500 megawatts is gigantic. This company is off the charts right away.\n\nIn addition to that, we're working working AWS, as you know, is also coming >> Congratulations to the Humane team with the AWS starting with 100 megawatts with a gigawatt ambition and counting. So, AWS is also coming to Humane. We're working with Humane on Omniverse digital twins.\n\nAs you know, that AI is not just well, just agentic AI and chatbots and cognitive AI is incredibly important to the world, but AI applies to everything, chemicals and proteins and genes and physics and fluid dynamics and particles and of course robotics and activation. And we created this world called Omniverse where robots can learn how to be good robots.\n\nAnd And it's physically based, it obeys the laws of physics, and so robots can learn in these environments, and we're working with Humane to apply Omniverse to all kinds of digital factories and robotics and warehouses and things like that. And so, that's that's another. We're we're also working in Saudi Arabia to build supercomputers to simulate quantum computers.\n\nAnd And using our computers to be the controller and the error correction one quantum error correction requires an enormous amount of computation, and so so we're doing a lot of great work there, too. So, a big partnership with Humane, they're off the charts off the ground and off the charts at the same time. >> This is how we walk the talk in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in partnership with the US.\n\nYesterday, the president and His Royal Highness announced the AI strategic framework and partnership. Today, we're going big with Elon and Jensen. So, thank you for those opportunities. >> [applause] >> Now, they they told me I have time for two last questions. So, last night at the dinner, I got a number of questions because it seems that the schedule leaked, and everybody was giving me hints about the last two questions I'm going to do.\n\nSo, the first one was for you, Elon. And there's a big one for you, Jensen, so prepare for that one. AI in space, is that possible? Uh yes, if if civilization continues, which it probably will, uh then AI in space is inevitable. Um >> [laughter] >> You know, I always have to like preface that, you know. We shouldn't take civilization for granted. We we need to make sure to take care to ensure that civilization has an an upward arc.\n\nI mean, any student of history knows that civilization does not always have an upward arc. And in fact, civilizations have life life cycles. So, hopefully we are in a strong upward arc. I think we are for now. Um but we don't want to take that for granted or be complacent.\n\nUm but the in order to The way to think of AI in space is that in order to achieve any meaningful percentage of a Kardashev two scale civilization where you're using even a millionth a millionth uh of the sun's energy, you must have solar-powered AI satellites in in deep space.\n\nUm So, so that once you realize like once you think in terms of a Kardashev two scale civilization, which is what what percentage of the sun's energy are you turning into useful work, um then you then it becomes obvious that space is overwhelmingly what matters. Overwhelmingly. The The sun only receives one roughly one two billionth of The Earth only receives roughly uh one two billionth of the sun's energy.\n\nSo, if you want to have something that is say, a million times more energy than Earth could possibly produce, you must go into space. It's and and so, um yeah, this is where it's kind of handy to have a space company, I guess. Um sell the book, I guess you could say. >> cool chips in space, too. Yes. Easier to cool chips in space. Yeah. Yes, there's definitely no water in space, so you're going to have to do something Yeah.\n\nuh that doesn't involve water. Just hang out. Well, it's it's you just got to radiate. That's right. Um so, my my estimate is that actually that that that the cost of of electricity like like the the cost effectiveness of AI in space will be overwhelmingly better than AI on the ground.\n\nSo, far long before you uh exhaust potential energy sources on on Earth, long long before, meaning like I think even perhaps in the 4 or 5-year time frame, the lowest cost way to do AI compute will be with solar-powered AI satellites. So, I'd say not more than 5 years from now. Wow. And just look at the supercomputers we're building together. Let's say each one of the racks is 2 tons. Out of that 2 tons, 1. 95 of it is probably for cooling.\n\nRight. Oh, yeah. Just imagine how tiny that little supercomputer is, right? Each one of these GB300 racks will just be a little tiny thing. And and just electricity generation is is already becoming a challenge. Um so, if if you if you start doing any kind of scaling for both electricity generation and cooling, um you realize, okay, space is incredibly compelling.\n\nUm so, like let's say you wanted to do uh I don't know, 2 or 300 gigawatts per year. Um of of uh AI compute. Yeah. Um it's very difficult to do that on Earth. Uh the so, the the uh US average electricity usage uh last time I checked was around 460 gigawatts per year average usage. Um so, so something like say, uh you know, a three a three if you're doing 300 gigawatts a year, that would be like 2/3 of US electricity production per year.\n\nThere's no way you're building power plants at that level. Um and then if you take it up to say a terawatt per year, impossible. Yeah. Like you have to do that in space. There there just is there there there just is no way to do a terawatt uh per year on Earth. Um and and and in space, you've got continuous solar. Um you've got uh you don't you you actually don't need batteries cuz it's always sunny in space. >> Right. Exactly.\n\n>> Um and um and and the solar panels actually become cheaper cuz you don't need glass or framing. Um and the cooling is just radiative. So, that's that's why I think >> That's the dream. Yes. That's the dream. So, Jensen, everybody last night was asking me, and I'm mindful it's uh earnings uh call for you today. So, I'm going to say this delicately. Everybody has been asking me to ask you, are we going to have an AI bubble?\n\n>> [laughter] >> That's the last question. All right, let's go. All right, let me say Well, let me just say you what we see. Okay, so so I I think it's really important when you look at what's happening around the world and go back to first principles of what's happening in computer science and computing. There are three things that are that's happening.\n\nThe first thing is that we all know that Moore's law has run its course, and the ability the demand of demand for computing versus the amount of computation we can get out of general-purpose computing is really challenging. And so, the world's been moving to accelerated computing for some time. We've been pushing this now for some over 20 years. Let me give you one statistic. I was just at supercomputing.\n\nSix years ago, uh CPUs were 90% of the world's supercomputers, top 500 supercomputers, 6 years ago. This year, less than 15%. Went from 90% to 10%, and meanwhile, accelerated computing went from the other way, 10% to now 90%. Okay, so you're seeing that inflection point, the transition in high-performance computing from general-purpose computing to accelerated computing.\n\nWell, one of the one of the most data-intensive, one of the most intensive computation things that the world does in cloud is data processing. Several hundred billion dollars of computation is done on just raw data processing. Had nothing to do with AI. Just SQL processing, data frames, you know, everybody's names, address, their their sex, their their age, where they live, you know, how much money they make.\n\nAll of that sits into a data frame, and that data frame drives the world today, whether it's in banking or, you know, whether it's in credit cards or, of course, e-commerce and uh everything from ad recommendation, everything is driven off of that data frame. That data frame costs hundreds of billions of dollars to go compute. And so, that's the number one thing, end of Moore's law. The second thing is generative AI.\n\nWhat the the the most important application of the last 15 years is called Rexis, recommender systems. How do we know what information to recommend to us uh in a social feed? How do you know what ad to recommend to somebody, uh what book to recommend, what movie to recommend? The world is the internet is so gigantic without a recommender system that little tiny of us would have no chance of ever seeing the right information.\n\nThat Rexis is the engine of the internet today. That's going generative AI. It used to be running on CPUs, now runs on GPUs. Which then says the third thing, when if you just look at those two applications, many of the internet companies can build enormous number of GPU supercomputers just doing that. Of course, then it creates this the third opportunity on top of it, which is agentic AI.\n\nThis is Grok, and this is OpenAI, this is Anthropic, you know, this is Gemini. Agentic AI sits on top of that. But don't, you know, don't forget to think about what is happening above, underneath what everybody sees as AI today. There's a whole movement of computing from general-purpose computing to accelerated computing.\n\nAnd that, if you just if you take that into consideration, you'll come to the conclusion that in fact, what is left over to fuel that revolutionary agentic AI is not only substantially less than you thought, and all of it justified. Well, I was just informed by the team that my boss and your bosses is going to talk next, the honorable president and his royal highness the crown prince, and hence we ran out of time.\n\nBut in essence, >> [applause] >> this is our such so much love for you, Elon and and Jensen. But this in essence is a 92 alliance that shifted from energy to digital to the intelligence age, powered by pioneers such as Elon and Jensen, to serve humanity and create on a net new basis new economies, new jobs, and a better future for humanity, powered by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the United States.\n\nThank you for our lifetime partnership and friendship. Thank you, Elon. Thank you, Jensen. Thank you. >> [applause] >> All right."},"languages":["en"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ltuZlGdMsg"},{"id":"baron-conference-2025-musk","type":"interview","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sxtk_LoBu4E","title":"Baron Investment Conference","titles":{"en":"Baron Investment Conference","de":"Baron Investment Conference","fr":"Baron Investment Conference"},"date":"2025-11-14","summary":"The annual fireside chat with investor Ron Baron at his 32nd Baron Investment Conference: Tesla manufacturing and self-driving, Optimus and jobs, Neuralink, xAI and Grok 5, SpaceX and consciousness.","text":"Thank you everyone. As I said before it's a lot different than Convention Hall in Asbury Park. Uh Today we're privileged to have Elon Musk join us uh virtually. And there couldn't be anyone more appropriate to speak to today when our theme of our conference is changing lives. Uh there's no one who's changed our lives more than Elon.\n\nEspecially changed our lives financially, but changed everyone else's lives and and and that really feels like it's just beginning. Without him there'd be no electric vehicles. Uh there'd be no FSD. Has anyone ever heard of thought of full service drive self-driving 5 or 10 years ago? Has anyone ever thought about that? Uh so uh uh uh re-flyable rockets. No one has been able to do that before. I congratulate Mr.\n\nJeff Bezos for accomplishing it uh yesterday first time. Uh we've already done uh what? 5,000 flights? And uh and uh we have 9,000 satellites, I think it is. On the way to 15,000. So and the people who did that for him did it for Jeff are people who used to work at uh at at for for SpaceX uh but couldn't go fast enough for Elon. So now they went over to Bezos. Um So there would be no Starlink. Uh no re-fly no no Optimus.\n\nIn fact uh one of the first questions I wanted to ask as I was telling my assistant about Optimus before and how the plan is to go from uh a million production next year to 10 million the following year to 100 million to a billion. And what she asked me was, \"Well so where's the room for them on the sidewalks? Are you going to build something?\n\nIs that the idea that we have behind uh Boring Company to go underground for the robots to walk around or fly above? Where's the room for them?\" Well, actually actually you you could you could fit um all of humanity um on the floor in the city. That's how small the humans are. And and Optimus uh doesn't mind being packed densely. So it it's always helpful to think how how much room do people take.\n\nAnd and and this is why I think just having it in the back of your mind that all 8 billion people on Earth can fit on one floor in the city of New York. So plenty Another way to think about it is is as if you fly across the country and your goal is to drop a water balloon on someone below you you will fail. >> [laughter] >> Cuz it's empty. We we used to do that when we were in eighth grade. We got them though. Um Yeah.\n\nSo so Caitlin don't worry, there's enough room. Uh So one of the things I think about when you talk about Optimus is that there's so many functions that it can perform what's going to be left for humans? Is there a job that humans going to have other than just living in you know this this great abundance that that you're going to create? What what's going to happen?\n\nWell, I think there's this question of fundamental of how do you derive meaning in life? If the robots can do everything. But we see lots of examples where even though machines can do much better humans still enjoy these things. Uh like athletic athletics for um or let's take a a mental sport like chess. Uh the the computers are so good that your phone not even connected to the internet can beat Magnus Carlsen easily.\n\nBut yet chess is at all-time highs in popularity. So really machines being better at doesn't mean anything. Doesn't mean we can't derive satisfaction in doing it. By the way, guys, is the connection isn't that good with the phone. Is there some way we can do something else? A bit echoey. We're not the connection isn't that good. I think it keeps cutting in and out. >> What if I talk on this? Talk to us. >> [laughter] >> Okay. Okay, you do that.\n\nYou do that and I'll do this. Um [laughter] uh-oh. Um uh So so the function the function You'll get a like a close look at my Optimus arm. The the the functions that you see these robots doing is what? What are they going to do? And why is there How are we going to have a billion of them when we have 8 billion people? How where are they Look it it's it's going to take us a minute to make a billion robots.\n\nSo you know, they're not going to be expensive. Um But but I think we will um they will ultimately be a billion billions of humanoid robots on Earth. Uh a way to think about it is uh who on Earth would not want their own personal R2-D2 C-3PO? I pretty much everyone wants you know R2-D2 C-3PO but even better. Um like your personal helper buddy robot it would be great.\n\nUh you could teach your teach your kids, take your dog for a walk, get get the groceries you know, chat chat you know, protect you when needed. Great. Um And then how many robots would there be in industry providing products and services? Probably three or four to one relative to humans. Which which suggests that total number of robots will be somewhere around maybe as high as 40 billion 40 40 billion maybe maybe 30 billion robots. It's a lot.\n\nSo so uh the Japanese company that makes those those robots that are used in manufacturing are 50,000, 100,000, 150,000 and you're describing a robot that's $20,000. We have to have a million a year to do that or 10 million a year to get to $20,000. And is that something that's going to be affordable for people? Are they going to be rented? They going to be purchased?\n\nCorporations are we going to get some kind of carried interest once they buy them from us? How is this going to work? We don't have the model yet. Uh well, uh my rough guess is that the uh cost to be sold uh their labor and materials for Optimus um after we reach a million units of steady state production. So call it a year after reaching a million units a year. Um cuz it takes a lot of effort to uh improve the cost.\n\nUm uh but at at that point I would expect the the the labor and materials to be 20 to 30,000 in current year dollars. I think that's that's a pretty I think that's a pretty safe estimate. When you're improving cost so with cars, your idea is that everything we buy from other people to use in our cars, we know exactly how much it costs. And therefore we can tell someone how much we're going to pay for what we're buying from them.\n\nAnd if it doesn't if they're making too much, then we make that stuff ourselves. Is that the same kind of idea we have in this robots where we're going to should be much simpler to make than a car. Or am I wrong? Raise your hand. But the hand is hand is extremely complex. Um there are 50 actuators in the hand. In the hand and forearm. Actuator is the motor? Yeah, actuator is the motor, gearbox, and power electronics. Um So that's 100 per robot.\n\nUm really a lot of lot of actuators and sensors. Right? Am I getting that right? Approximately? Um So it it's it's there's a lot of complexity. Uh Why is that important? Why is it important that we have such a complex hand? Uh so in order to do dexterous tasks you you have to have a hand with the the sensitivity, precision and degrees of freedom of a human hand.\n\nBecause I you you know, the so something that is we find easy to do like pick up a screwdriver or turn a wrench uh or even say thread a needle uh or play the guitar actually require a lot of dexterity.\n\nUm and uh one of the one of the past but one of the reasons um we we think we can achieve sustainable abundance which is sort of the the new um or so the revised version of the company's goal because it was accelerate sustainable energy which as you mentioned we've we've done that. Um our new goal is sustainable abundance.\n\nSo that's abundance for all um and but in a way that is sustainable that does not uh destroy uh any of the natural world in this. How do we decide who gets what? Somebody wants to buy my house they can just come in and start living there? Well I'm not sure why I mean you do have a nice house so >> [laughter] >> uh I can certainly see the see the appeal.\n\nUm but uh the robots will be able to make anyone a house and uh you know as long as you don't just don't have being in a particular location you can have robots will be able to build you a castle if you want. So and then but the the reason for dexterity is you want to be able to do um so like surgery and precision medical uh actions. And um so imagine a world where everyone has access to the best surgeons literally everyone.\n\nAnd uh Op- Optimus will have level of precision that is frankly superhuman. Um and will be able to do medical procedures um of very sophisticated medical procedures. A- any any medical procedure perhaps things that that really humans can't even do because they're too they're too difficult. Um and that will be available to anyone. There are people often talk about eliminating poverty and providing great medical care.\n\nBut they don't they don't actually have a solution. Um and money doesn't solve it because there are only so many uh there's a very limited number of of great doctors and surgeons. Uh they don't grow on trees. Um but now they they'll get built in factories.\n\nSo so I sent you a year or two ago an article about a young man who was an interview in Barron's and he was 33 at the time and he had become a portfolio manager and he lost his legs to a um I know he was a Paralympic performer and he lost his legs to man-eating bacteria and I said is there anything we can do to get him out of the wheelchair?\n\nAnd you said yes there is in three or four years we can give him an Optimus body and then we can use our you know transistors in his head in his brain to let him function as a normal person and dance and sing and walk and run. Have we been able to make progress in that area? Yeah so that's a confluence of two of my companies one is being Neuralink and the other being Tesla.\n\nUm so Neuralink has also made good progress um now has I think over 10 uh patients with Neuralink implants um and uh these people who had never who didn't have the ability to move their arms and legs in some cases were completely locked in like like Stephen Hawking um and they can now communicate um I think as quickly almost as quickly as we're communicating right now. Um which is very cool and that's that's going to continue to accelerate.\n\nUm so what we can do is use a Neuralink implant um that is taking signals from the motor cortex of the brain um and and also uh uh receiving signals from the somato cortex somatosensory cortex um and then give someone uh who's lost their legs Optimus legs and so you do I mean we're we're really getting like the $6 million man here I mean from back in the day. Uh I don't know if you watched that show but I watched it back then. I I I watched it.\n\nYeah I thought it was pretty fun um and and we we can actually give someone superhuman cyborg capabilities like the $6 million man but less than $6 million. >> [laughter] >> I mean in this day and age I mean $6 million back then was a fortune man these days it's like nothing. Um but uh but for much less than that I mean like for something that that would be reasonably affordable um you know it it it it it might be well like $60,000 type of thing.\n\nUm and um and you can take the signals from Neuralink the mind that would be transmitting to the legs and transmit those to the attached uh Optimus robot legs and um and you would actually be able to run faster than any human. Just just like $6 million man. Your Neuralink sounds really exciting sounds unbelievably exciting. Uh let's switch to XAI.\n\nUh so three years ago uh you were here and you had either just purchased or about to purchase uh you know Twitter which you've renamed X and you were widely criticized for that. And yes I was. Right? In fact you you've even mentioned here on stage that you didn't want to have anyone else be angry at you cuz you had enough people trying to kill you already. Yeah yeah totally. Right?\n\nSo so you were buying you were buying X and it was $42 billion I think and you were in the process of raising money and I called you up and you hadn't called me to solicit me and I called you up and I said I would like to invest with you $100 million in this and it was $60 million for one of our funds and $40 million for me and and you said really? I said yeah and you >> [laughter] >> Really? You said really?\n\nAnd I said yeah and and you told me that you thought I would make a double. And I said well I hope so but to me it felt like you made us $8 billion in in in Tesla and it would be not very appropriate if I didn't support this new venture that you were doing. So we and and then the day that we paid the money we marked it down 70%. Oh man.\n\n>> [laughter] >> This is this is how I know you're a true friend Ron because uh this is uh you know I do regard you as as a true a true and trusted friend. Um and you know the the the test of friendship it I got more to the story. >> [laughter] >> It's a better ending better ending. The test of friendship is is is who supports you when the chips are down and the times are tough and everyone's against you. That's a real friend and that's you Ron.\n\nThank you. Um so so so we did invest that 100 marked down to 30 and then about a year later we started getting phone calls from hedge funds who always seem to know things they're not supposed to know. >> [laughter] >> Yeah how do they do that? Right?\n\nAnd they started saying I'd like to buy your stock uh for what you paid for it and I said I think I'd rather wait and stay in which I did and then and then uh change the name to X and change the configuration of business and and then uh from that uh you bought Twitter and it came together in a social network along with this and and and all of a sudden we have a business that has incredible data.\n\nDid you buy this for the data that no one knew about but it but but the data with 600 million people talking with each other so physical data that no one else has and then you started Grok which is based on our data and everyone else doesn't have that they got digital stuff and then when they have Grok then we need more data centers and you're building those and in a space of a very short time less than months you built a data center which is four times what is the largest than anyone else on the planet 25,000 what what other people had in in CPUs and we built it in GPUs 100,000 uh more powerful and then uh you know now we have now we're going to go to hundreds of but the bottom line is the investment that we made we put up more money and we have a total\n\nof $350 million invested over the past two or three years and now it's worth $700 million.\n\nSo everything you touch is like that it's the most unbelievable thing I've ever seen. So so everyone is investing but in technology and we're investing in in the technology person the best engineer on the planet. So thank you very much. So so the vision is the question is did you buy X did you buy Twitter because of the data is that did you have all this in your head before you did it?\n\nUh not really no I I just bought Twitter because I thought it was um having a negative effect on civilization >> [snorts] >> um and um just sort of pushing uh ideas that were anti-civilizational um you know it it sort of what having having sort of captured by uh the far left I think you know it's fair to say the radical left to me they they wouldn't regard themselves as such but it was captured by uh you know a group of people whose uh political beliefs are those of uh you know, deeply San Francisco and Berkeley.\n\nUm which is about as left as you get in America. Um so that that that matter wasn't a good forum for debate um cuz they they suspended many people on the right including the president as it as it may occur, a sitting president which is really unprecedented for a president. Um so I think we we need to have a public square where there's uh true freedom of speech. Um and freedom of speech is Yeah, freedom of speech is is the bedrock of democracy.\n\nUm we we if there's not freedom of speech people cannot make an informed vote. Uh and and if you cannot make an informed vote, you don't have a a real democracy. So, that's the purpose of uh acquiring Twitter was to try to uh bring it more to the center. Uh there there have been no no left-wing voices have been banned or or anything like that or suppressed. Um but uh what what we're trying to do is give equal weight to all parts of the country.\n\nUm so that they can be a public town square where people can exchange ideas and hopefully it does not result in violence. Um and uh I think that's that's fundamental to uh I think it's one of the like I said, free speech is the bedrock of democracy. It's quite the first amendment. Cuz people came from countries where if they could be uh killed or imprisoned what they said. And in fact, this is happening all around the world as we speak.\n\nUh even in places like Britain. Um so that's uh that's you know what I I did because I I I felt like uh if it's these civilizational risks had to be addressed. And I mean what if America is not strong then what do businesses matter? The the the America is a central pillar that holds up our Western civilization. And if that pillar falls everything falls. So so uh so you were one of the founders the two founders of chat GPT and you know, open AI.\n\nAnd uh and you had a disagree and it was founded as a charity and it was your idea that you wanted to make sure that you know, freedom of speech and all the things that you deem important for good lives on our planet uh were followed safely.\n\nAnd uh uh the uh the other founder uh what he tried to do and did was accomplished is that he got control even though it was your money and he got control and uh and you and he said, \"Elon, I'd like you to stay.\" And uh you said, \"I want to go. I don't want to be a part of this.\" And uh and and he offered you some ownership and you said, \"I don't want it.\"\n\nAnd so here, you walk away from an ownership of chat GPT so you're obviously not doing all this stuff for money. I mean, you are, but I mean if that's not but I mean, if you if you were only about money, you would have never left with something that's worth $500 billion by itself.\n\nAnd so here, you're forming this new entity uh uh Grok to accomplish what you wanted chat GPT to accomplish, but you think that we have an advantage in this because of the data, because of the compute, because of what? And what are you going to do with this ultimately? You talk about connecting physical world to digital. What does that mean? Yeah, well just going back to open AI for a second.\n\nUm the reason I founded open AI was because I was concerned based on my conversations with Larry Page who used to be a close friend of mine um that he was not sufficiently concerned about the dangers of AI. Um this really came to a head when at my birthday party uh he in front of a large group of people called me a species um for favoring humanity over computers. I I I found that troubling.\n\nUm >> [laughter] >> I was like, \"Larry, uh what side are you on?\" Um it sounds like you're on the side of the computers. Uh but you you really need to be on team humanity here, you know. Um so uh after that I was like, \"Okay, this is it. We got to have some counterbalance to uh Google.\" Um because Larry doesn't seem to care if humans make it or not. Um so I I thought, \"What's the opposite of Google?\" It would be an open source nonprofit.\n\nAnd that's where the word open in open AI comes from. It It means open source. And and then I I provided I provided all the money beginning um like whatever the series A B C rounds and uh recruited the key people like Ilya Sutskever and um taught them everything I know. And uh you know I I actually even got them to deal with Microsoft with with such efficiency to I got Sergey to donate some time from Azure.\n\nUm and for all that, I did not seek any financial reward whatsoever. Um The and the reason I actually turned down the offer for shares is because I mean, I I felt like, \"What do you shares and what?\" Like nonprofits supposed to have shares. At least last time I checked. Um you know, they're not supposed nonprofits are not supposed to be vehicles for self-enrichment.\n\nSo, that's why I turned down the offer of shares cuz it it didn't seem morally or legally transferable. Um so that then with with with xAI we and we are starting late with xAI and we're only I don't know, two and a half uh years old basically. Uh And we're starting from behind. Um you know, we are somewhat of an underdog. Uh but you know, pretty good with technology.\n\nSo, I don't want to pat myself on the back here, but I'm pretty good with technology. Um and um and we are advancing faster than any other AI. So, I think in in the for technology ventures, the winner ultimately is the one that is able to move the fastest.\n\nSo so so we think that so we're optimizing for the best technology and we're doing something different than others others do in in in a digital world and we're physical to digital with movement uh and uh and visual and other people can't match that. And also, we have the real-time data. What does that mean? Why should we do better than everyone else? Why are we going to win?\n\nOr why are we going to at least be different than everyone else so we have a really strong business? Well, first of all, I think in in in terms of being a strong business, I'm actually not too worried about that that because um e- even if even a small player that is successful in AI will be worth a lot because they'll contribute so much in productivity to the economy.\n\nSo and and so so it's actually pretty easy to achieve a not pretty easy, but I mean it's it's it's not there there will be many companies that are worth sustainably several hundred billion dollars. Sustainably. Um so then it's a simple question of like, \"Well, how do we achieve the lead?\" Um that comes down to three things. Um are you able to attract the best talent? Um are you able to bring the most amount of AI hardware online?\n\nCan you can you bring uh GPUs online faster than anyone else? And we've we've already demonstrated that we can do that. Uh uh Jensen Huang himself said that um he was blown away by how fast uh xAI uh launched its data center. Jensen said there's only one human on the planet who could have done that. That's you. Yes, he did say that. Um >> [snorts] >> I I swear I'm very very kind of I'm very very uh It's made us think about are you really human?\n\n>> [laughter] >> I I keep telling people I'm an alien, but nobody believes me. I mean, when I got my green card, it said alien registration card. So, I mean, you know, I have I have proof from the government. >> [laughter] >> Um so I think I just have to get registered. >> [laughter] >> Um so uh I'm I'm I'd say I've got some some uh s- like relatively rare skills these days in America in terms of of getting hardware built.\n\nUm if you look at the biggest successes uh in manufacturing in America since World War II by far are Tesla and SpaceX. Um yeah. So uh So So to stay on to stay on Grok for another minute so the idea of connecting physical and digital is that that's different than digital digital figuring out who wants to buy what. We're doing something entirely different. Is that fair? I I wouldn't say we're doing something entirely different.\n\nWe're doing uh we're doing some things that are same, some things that are different. Um but I'd say if you if if just saying like the the elements that define success for any AI company are going to be one the talent, two the uh hardware, how much AI hardware can you bring to bear? Um that that's actually a very big deal. Um and we've shown that we're the best at doing that at XAI. And then third, uh unique access to data.\n\nAnd for that we've got the the X system, formerly the Twitter system, which is the by far the best source of real-time data in the world. So that that that those are some pretty significant assets. Um and uh and I think we're going to come up with some very innovative ideas. Um but I have more ideas in my head than I know what to do with, frankly. Um so I think we'll make some moves that are not on the chessboard. Uh that people don't anticipate.\n\nUm some creative moves. Uh and and and like I said that So So I I should point out that Grok right now actually um Grok heavy um is still the smartest AI. Uh best of my knowledge. It's it's I recommend cooling it down. Um Grok Grok 4 heavy is more responsive than Grok agents. Uh they they they work in parallel and they compare their output like a study group and give you the final conclusion. And it keeps getting better.\n\nUm and now we've begun training on Grok 5. Grok 5, I think will be the smartest AI in the world by a significant margin on ev- on every metric, without exception. Um I might be wrong, but I th- I think that will be the case and and that will be in Q1 sometime. Grok 5? Yes. I mean Grok 5 is the first time where I thought, \"Well, we have a non-zero chance of achieving artificial general intelligence.\" Um not that it's a high chance.\n\nI I I sort of I calculate like 10%. But that's what my biological neural net comes up with. Which still means 90% chance that we don't. We're clear. Um but I've never thought that before. And so for the first time I think like, \"Wow, this this this really could be general intelligence, at least a small chance.\" Um Grok 5 will really be something special. Um and and it'll be both extremely intelligent extremely intelligent and extremely fast.\n\nUm So So one of the things that we're doing that I think is interesting is Grokopedia. Um which we're we're going to rename down the road to to be Encyclopedia Galactica uh in honor of Isaac Asimov uh and um Douglas Adams, who who both mentioned that in books. Um and the idea behind Encyclopedia Galactica is to create an open-source repository of all knowledge. Like a distillation of all knowledge.\n\nAnd And open-source meaning anyone can access it. Anyone can use it. And if if other people want to train on it, they can do so. Uh and then we want to create copies of this and distribute these copies throughout Earth uh and even put them on the moon and Mars and out in deep space um as in a way sort of a a modern-day Library of Alexandria. It was the great tragedy that the Library of Alexandria burned down or or was burned down.\n\nUm and um so in order to preserve this knowledge, I think we we we want to actually etch it in stone and sort of stone stone like microfiche and and and distribute it widely, so in a worst-case scenario, future civilization can can see what we what what we learned and maybe pick things up from there. So is there a major breakthrough that you can describe that allows us to do this with Grok 5? Or is it just speed?\n\nIs it more compute and therefore we have more analysis more uh you know, information we can train on? What is the breakthrough that allows us to uh to have this 10% chance for AGI? Is there Is there a breakthrough or is it just speed and access to data? Not just, but So there's a couple things. It will be the largest model to the best of my knowledge. So this is this is a a 6 trillion parameter model.\n\nUm whereas Grok 3 and 4 are based on a 3 trillion parameter model. Um and moreover, the 6 trillion parameters will have a much higher intelligence density per gigabyte than uh Grok 4. Um I think it's an important metric to think about intelligence per gigabyte and intelligence per trillion operations. Um we've learned a lot. Um so um quality of the data that we're training on with Grok 5 is much better.\n\nUm it's also inherently multimodal, so it's text, pictures, video, audio. Um it's um it's going to be much better at tool use uh and in fact creating tools to be more effective at answering questions and understanding them. Uh its vision will be uh extremely good. It'll have real real-time snap real-time video, which is I think a really fundamentally important thing that none of the other AIs can understand real-time video.\n\nI think if you can't do that which us humans can obviously do. Um you're at you really can't achieve uh AGI. Um By the way, every one of these advances >> There's some special sauce items that I that There's some special sauce items that I I can't talk about in the public forum, obviously. You can't can't give away you know, all all the all the secrets here. It's just between us.\n\nUm But but But But we have a few a few other special things that are that are in the works. Um for Grok 5. So it's it's It's It's It's really going to feel sentient. So but there is no when we with Grok 5 when you're talking about the advances there is no limit. So when we're Grok 5 is better than Grok 4, which is better than Grok 3, which So So it keeps going.\n\nSo once we get to sentient levels we go two sentient, five sentient, 10 sentient, a million sentient. The sen- the sentience will grow. I mean, what's really mind-blowing is can how far can the sentience grow? To to your point, well, how far does it go? Um I think it goes immensely far, almost almost incomprehensibly far. It It does does go incomprehensibly far.\n\nUm uh so the Like Like we see a path to to putting a 100 gigawatts per year of solar-powered AI satellite into orbit. Um and and having this be actually the lowest cost way to uh power and operate uh AI at a very large scale. Um for reference the United States consumes roughly 460 gigawatts on average per year. Like if the average power load in the US is 460 gigawatts. >> country. The whole country. All electricity of all sources in the US, yes.\n\nAnd you're talking about 100 being added. Well, roughly equivalent to the US electricity output. Um And we We have a We have a plan mapped out to do that. It It gets crazy. So So there's um what, a trillion planets like Earth in the uh world and in a solar system or whatever you call it. A trillion.\n\nAnd in that trillion, so Big Bang was 14 billion years ago, 13 and a half billion years ago, I don't know what, and planet our planet's only 4 billion years old. So, there must be other planets that are like ours with all the minerals, oxygen, hydrogen, silicon, carbon. Uh So, life here has been extinguished four times. And presumably you feel that other places, other civilizations, other planets, then we'll get off of this. Uh exist.\n\nAnd are they planets where the beings there are part human, or part carbon, and part metal? Well, I think we'd like to find out. I'd like to find out. Uh I mean, my philosophy is one of curiosity. I I I just want to know what's you know, what's going on in this universe. Um is the standard is the standard of physics right? But, the beginning of the universe, is heat death the end of the universe? Are there other alien civilizations?\n\nCan we talk to them? And and what questions should we be asking about reality that we don't know to ask? So, that's my motivation is to expand consciousness to better understand the universe. So, so so let's go to away from the universe, back to Tesla again. And so, you said that uh Got [laughter] to be back on the ground here. Back on the ground.\n\nAnd uh so, you said that our expertise is in making things better, faster, cheaper than other people. And when I started investing in Tesla, when we started investing in Tesla, you were telling us that uh that it's the machine that makes the machine that's most important. The machine that makes So, you were into machine learning, machine technology then, which is 15 years ago.\n\nAnd uh so, and and now uh the average car I think it's 50 minutes uh or 50 seconds, 40 seconds, 60 seconds, and we're now 35 seconds. Every 35 seconds a car rolls off. And then, you say that we're going to get down to 10 seconds. And you said it's a possibility we can go to five. Five I I Five seconds every car is rolling off a line. How's that happen? I I I certainly see a path to achieving um a roughly 5,000 ms cycle time, or 5 seconds.\n\nUm which is only that's only really walking speed. That's like sort of a fast walk. Um 1 m per second is a fast walk. The car is less than 5 m long. So, um the 5-second cycle time the the the cars will will be exiting line at walking speed. So, it's it's like you you can run away from them. It's not it's not going to be like they're coming out like bullets or something.\n\n>> [laughter] >> So, but as a as a rough rule of thumb, there's you know, there's 10,000 minutes in a week if you run a 24/7 operation, and you get uh you know, let's [snorts] say 10 cars per minute. Um you've got uh yeah, 100,000 cars a week. So, so, but the question is how come we're able to do this? Do other people just not care?\n\nDo they think that if I do something, if I have this idea, and we try to implement it, and it doesn't work, then I'm not going to get promoted, or I can get fired, or I'll get blamed. And if it works, then I might have to do a lot of extra work uh that I wouldn't have had to do if it didn't work. So, why don't other people have, you know, a mindset of making things better? Why the the Chinese, they've been great at copying us.\n\nAnd in some instances, probably even done better than us. They have to live copied for the first time. But, how how come do you think that other people haven't been able to make the advances we have? And even the guy from Ford this recent said, \"Geez, people in China wouldn't give us compliments, but they said the people in and the Chinese have copied us.\n\nUh those people in China are doing great, which is really a compliment to us because the reason they're doing great is because of us. So, why don't other people do this? Why doesn't he do that? Um most companies are incrementalists. Um you know, the management team wants to do I don't know, 5%, maybe 10% better than last year. Um as opposed to take big risks that could fail. Um Uh obviously don't have a problem with taking big risks. Yeah.\n\nI'd say. Um So, that And I and I like to use the tools of physics to analyze things. And you know, when I was in the factory one night, when I was I was looking at the factory, and I was like, you know, this this could be much more efficient. It could be much faster. Um the I was trying to do rough math, trying to calculate the volumetric efficiency of the factories.\n\nSo, if you divide factory into cubic meters, and say uh how many cubic meters are doing something useful? And it's a surprisingly small percentage. The volumetric density is not very good. Um and then, the speed of like the cars and the parts moving is quite slow. Um generally limited by the speed at which people can say uh attach brake lights or the seat or something like that.\n\nUm So, if you densify the factory and improve the volumetric efficiency, um which is it's helpful for for more uh for production efficiency because then things have less distance to move. Uh just like just like a chip, you densify circuits in a chip, and you make it more efficient. You you think of a factory is like a chip. Um how do you make a chip faster?\n\nWell, you you bring circuits closer together, make them smaller, and and uh you increase the the clock speed. So, Robin told me that you told her once that \"I think of myself as a bit. And if I'm a bit, how would I like to travel?\" That makes sense. >> Bit or an atom. So, if it's if it's the I'm software I software, or if I'm on a ship, I say, \"What's the journey of the bit? Where am what am I doing?\"\n\nAnd if if those journey doesn't make sense, I need to fix it. And if the journey of the atom in the factory doesn't make sense, I need to fix it. So, when you say you're working on weekends, \"I spent all my Sundays working on a chip.\" What does that mean? What do you do? Uh it's it's Saturdays, but uh some sometimes Sundays actually it's faster. Recently we can spend Sundays, too.\n\nUm Yeah, just the the AI 5 chip, which is going to be a great chip. Um you know, all of Tes- all of Tesla engines on that chip. You know, that's that's the chip that goes that will go into our next generation of self-driving cars, and it's also essential for the Optimus robot. So, that that chip program was in bad shape. Um It it wasn't it wasn't closing cuz that it's it's it's quite an ambitious chip design.\n\nAnd and it really wasn't on a path to success. Um And then, we also had the Dojo program, which was doing it was also doing okay, but but not on a path to be competitive with Nvidia. So, I I collapsed the I collapsed the two programs into just one program just to get everyone focused on AI 5 chip, which is essential. Um continue to use Nvidia for training, but we need the AI 5 inference chip.\n\nUm which is it's a a very powerful chip, but that but it's also a very low power chip. So, it it doesn't use a lot of power. So, it's it's performance per watt is extremely good. Um you think you know, it's probably going to be at least two to three times better than Nvidia in performance per watt. Um at at the at the inference level in the car and the robot. And you know, I don't know. 10% of the cost of an Nvidia chip or something like that.\n\nSo, so the these are very important uh numbers to achieve. And um I had to get the chip program back on track, so I you know, I spent a lot of time into it. And at this point, I have the entire physical design of the chip laid out in memory. I can visualize the whole thing. But, when you're when you're talking about chip manufacturing, you say we might have to build some kind of a giant fab.\n\nPresumably, we would have a partner with TSMC or with Samsung. We wouldn't do this by ourselves. And those guys have been doing this for We would do it by ourselves? And and these are things that cost 20 billion, 30, 40 billion dollars. And where do the people come from to do this? How could we not have partners? What is your thought to have a partner? To do it by ourselves over the next 10 years?\n\nYou know, there's not going to be enough chips in the world to accomplish what we're trying to do. Yeah, first of all, I have immense respect for TSMC and Samsung, and we we've worked with both TSMC and Samsung um at Tesla and at uh SpaceX. Um So, TSMC and Samsung are great companies. And we want them to make our chips as quickly as they can and scale up to as high as possible volume that that they're comfortable doing.\n\nBut it's it doesn't appear to be fast enough. You know, when I ask how long will it take to from start to finish to get a new chip fab built, they tell me five five years to get to blind production. I'm like five years to me is infinity. My my my timelines To me, too, by the way. one year, two year And at year three, scale it goes to infinity. So so I I can't even see past three years.\n\nSo then I'm like, damn, okay, this is um this is not going to be fast enough. So Now if if they if they change their minds and say, yeah, they're they're going to go faster and they're going to they want to provide us with, you know, 100 to 200 billion AI chips a year in the timeframe that we need them, that's great. But how could they not when they know that we're demand and we are going to use the product in our own product?\n\nHow could they not want to be our supplier? Or how could they not want to be partners with us? I don't understand. I know what they they are partners. We're using both TSMC and Samsung. >> really expand capacity tremendously, why don't they do that? From their standpoint, they are. Because we'll be using TSMC Taiwan, TSMC TSMC Taiwan, TSMC Arizona, Korea, Samsung and the chips is back Samsung. So we got four or five coming.\n\nAnd um Yeah, from their standpoint, they're moving like lightning. Um I'm just saying nonetheless it would be a limiting factor for for us. They're they're going as fast as they can. But from this standpoint, there's no limit to that. They're they're just never had someone without such a company that has that sense of urgency. So I that's what really matters.\n\nIt it might just be that the only way to get to scale at the rate that we want to get to scale is to to build a earth scale fab. Um and um or or be limited in output of Optimus and self-driving cars by the AI chips. Obviously, you're not going to do that. Those are two choices. Um to go to FSD, we don't have too much more time.\n\nBut FSD, uh full self full self-driving, um the uh you know, we're we're making these tremendous uh breakthroughs, it seems. And uh you said recently that you didn't want to expand capacity for making cars until you were convinced that that was the case. You are now convinced that's the case. And again, here we're making these exponential leaps uh in make in in these cars.\n\nAnd you said that a very large percentage of people who actually paid for full self-driving don't use it and have never tried it before. Yes, it's pretty wild. Yeah, how Yeah, how we doing? How how You buy something and you want to try it type of thing. Yeah, it's amazing. Yeah, yeah. So so we're we're we're we're now kind of insisting uh with customers uh for safety reasons that we demonstrate full self-driving.\n\nBecause the numbers are unequivocal at scale that with with the now over 10 billion miles driven, that it's four times safer on full self-driving than than than not. So so here it's actually a big improvement in in safety. And so at this point, we're we're we're we're just insisting that we at least demonstrate uh self-driving to customers so they know how to use it and turn it on uh for safety reasons.\n\nSo drives full self-driving drives just like a person as opposed to having to code through uh look for every circumstance that would happen and you had a you know, this this is a fire truck in front of us with a bicycle attached to it or someone walking his dog while he's driving along. They have to identify everything with a code. What AI does, what we do is we as I understand it, is to make sure that it's just like us. Is that fair to say?\n\nYes, it the key to achieving uh full self-driving uh unsupervised full self-driving and safer than human is improving the AI software in the car. We're confident that the AI 4 uh hardware that that's chip that we designed, uh currently made by Samsung, uh is capable of achieving uh a safety level unsupervised, meaning if you're asleep in the car, uh at least two to three times that of the average driver. Uh maybe more.\n\nUm and then with AI 5, we think you know, achieve probably a 10x uh improvement in safety. Um So these these are really big deals. I mean, I think it's a one of very profound things I'm saying here. Um And I really encourage people to go out there and try the Tesla self-driving and and see for yourself. It's you can just go to any Tesla store. They'll show it to you, you know. It's not secret.\n\nSo everyone here, uh you're benefiting if you try this and then buy it. But once you try it, you're going to buy it. You should try it. Um And uh so so I want to close on what I mentioned this morning on CNBC was that you're not doing this uh so you can get enough money to buy a beach house. You're doing you're doing this even mine. >> [laughter] >> Yeah, that's right. But but But but you're doing this because you know, uh Larry Page was right.\n\nYou're you're species that you think humans should survive. Yes, I'm pro I'm I'm I'm an unabashedly pro-human. >> [laughter] >> I mean, so you're you're spending so actually whether you worth another trillion dollars or 400 bi- it doesn't really matter. What are you going to do with all this money at the end? What what what's your plan? How do you want people to think about you?\n\nWell, you know, mostly I need to have enough enough ownership of the companies to be able to continue to direct their activities. Um but as for my personal consumption standpoint, um I I don't actually own any vacation homes. Um And I just own one sort of you know, medium-sized house in Austin. Um So and and actually I should say a tiny house at Starbase. And I bought it for I've seen that house. It's tiny. >> Yeah, yeah.\n\nYeah, but I actually people people like friends might have come to visit and they they thought I was kidding. I'm like, no, it's real. Uh I bought it for 50,000 dollars, but I've done a lot with the place. Artificial turf in front, little white picket fence. Um yeah.\n\nSo um But but like like I said, with with AI and robotics, there will be uh abundance for So it's people actually in fact in in a benign scenario, there's going to be an interesting threshold that that AI passes, AI and robotics pass, where it's run out of things to do for humans. It's literally it's it's completely uh satiated all human wants. Um and then I guess it'll have to start thinking about what to do for itself or I don't know.\n\nUm But I I I you know, overall I want to take take the set of actions that expand consciousness into the future so that the scope and scale of consciousness grows tremendously and that we explore other star systems like in Star Trek, go places that we never gone before.\n\nAnd find out if there are existing alien civilizations or maybe there's a long dead alien civilization and we can look through their ruins and try to understand what what they were like. Um and just generally understand the universe. Where are you now right now? I'm in I'm in Silicon Valley. Thank you very much for today. Welcome. >> Thank you for everything you've done for me, for our shareholders, and for humanity. Thank you, Elon.\n\nI appreciate it. All right.","textByLang":{"en":"Thank you everyone. As I said before it's a lot different than Convention Hall in Asbury Park. Uh Today we're privileged to have Elon Musk join us uh virtually. And there couldn't be anyone more appropriate to speak to today when our theme of our conference is changing lives. Uh there's no one who's changed our lives more than Elon.\n\nEspecially changed our lives financially, but changed everyone else's lives and and and that really feels like it's just beginning. Without him there'd be no electric vehicles. Uh there'd be no FSD. Has anyone ever heard of thought of full service drive self-driving 5 or 10 years ago? Has anyone ever thought about that? Uh so uh uh uh re-flyable rockets. No one has been able to do that before. I congratulate Mr.\n\nJeff Bezos for accomplishing it uh yesterday first time. Uh we've already done uh what? 5,000 flights? And uh and uh we have 9,000 satellites, I think it is. On the way to 15,000. So and the people who did that for him did it for Jeff are people who used to work at uh at at for for SpaceX uh but couldn't go fast enough for Elon. So now they went over to Bezos. Um So there would be no Starlink. Uh no re-fly no no Optimus.\n\nIn fact uh one of the first questions I wanted to ask as I was telling my assistant about Optimus before and how the plan is to go from uh a million production next year to 10 million the following year to 100 million to a billion. And what she asked me was, \"Well so where's the room for them on the sidewalks? Are you going to build something?\n\nIs that the idea that we have behind uh Boring Company to go underground for the robots to walk around or fly above? Where's the room for them?\" Well, actually actually you you could you could fit um all of humanity um on the floor in the city. That's how small the humans are. And and Optimus uh doesn't mind being packed densely. So it it's always helpful to think how how much room do people take.\n\nAnd and and this is why I think just having it in the back of your mind that all 8 billion people on Earth can fit on one floor in the city of New York. So plenty Another way to think about it is is as if you fly across the country and your goal is to drop a water balloon on someone below you you will fail. >> [laughter] >> Cuz it's empty. We we used to do that when we were in eighth grade. We got them though. Um Yeah.\n\nSo so Caitlin don't worry, there's enough room. Uh So one of the things I think about when you talk about Optimus is that there's so many functions that it can perform what's going to be left for humans? Is there a job that humans going to have other than just living in you know this this great abundance that that you're going to create? What what's going to happen?\n\nWell, I think there's this question of fundamental of how do you derive meaning in life? If the robots can do everything. But we see lots of examples where even though machines can do much better humans still enjoy these things. Uh like athletic athletics for um or let's take a a mental sport like chess. Uh the the computers are so good that your phone not even connected to the internet can beat Magnus Carlsen easily.\n\nBut yet chess is at all-time highs in popularity. So really machines being better at doesn't mean anything. Doesn't mean we can't derive satisfaction in doing it. By the way, guys, is the connection isn't that good with the phone. Is there some way we can do something else? A bit echoey. We're not the connection isn't that good. I think it keeps cutting in and out. >> What if I talk on this? Talk to us. >> [laughter] >> Okay. Okay, you do that.\n\nYou do that and I'll do this. Um [laughter] uh-oh. Um uh So so the function the function You'll get a like a close look at my Optimus arm. The the the functions that you see these robots doing is what? What are they going to do? And why is there How are we going to have a billion of them when we have 8 billion people? How where are they Look it it's it's going to take us a minute to make a billion robots.\n\nSo you know, they're not going to be expensive. Um But but I think we will um they will ultimately be a billion billions of humanoid robots on Earth. Uh a way to think about it is uh who on Earth would not want their own personal R2-D2 C-3PO? I pretty much everyone wants you know R2-D2 C-3PO but even better. Um like your personal helper buddy robot it would be great.\n\nUh you could teach your teach your kids, take your dog for a walk, get get the groceries you know, chat chat you know, protect you when needed. Great. Um And then how many robots would there be in industry providing products and services? Probably three or four to one relative to humans. Which which suggests that total number of robots will be somewhere around maybe as high as 40 billion 40 40 billion maybe maybe 30 billion robots. It's a lot.\n\nSo so uh the Japanese company that makes those those robots that are used in manufacturing are 50,000, 100,000, 150,000 and you're describing a robot that's $20,000. We have to have a million a year to do that or 10 million a year to get to $20,000. And is that something that's going to be affordable for people? Are they going to be rented? They going to be purchased?\n\nCorporations are we going to get some kind of carried interest once they buy them from us? How is this going to work? We don't have the model yet. Uh well, uh my rough guess is that the uh cost to be sold uh their labor and materials for Optimus um after we reach a million units of steady state production. So call it a year after reaching a million units a year. Um cuz it takes a lot of effort to uh improve the cost.\n\nUm uh but at at that point I would expect the the the labor and materials to be 20 to 30,000 in current year dollars. I think that's that's a pretty I think that's a pretty safe estimate. When you're improving cost so with cars, your idea is that everything we buy from other people to use in our cars, we know exactly how much it costs. And therefore we can tell someone how much we're going to pay for what we're buying from them.\n\nAnd if it doesn't if they're making too much, then we make that stuff ourselves. Is that the same kind of idea we have in this robots where we're going to should be much simpler to make than a car. Or am I wrong? Raise your hand. But the hand is hand is extremely complex. Um there are 50 actuators in the hand. In the hand and forearm. Actuator is the motor? Yeah, actuator is the motor, gearbox, and power electronics. Um So that's 100 per robot.\n\nUm really a lot of lot of actuators and sensors. Right? Am I getting that right? Approximately? Um So it it's it's there's a lot of complexity. Uh Why is that important? Why is it important that we have such a complex hand? Uh so in order to do dexterous tasks you you have to have a hand with the the sensitivity, precision and degrees of freedom of a human hand.\n\nBecause I you you know, the so something that is we find easy to do like pick up a screwdriver or turn a wrench uh or even say thread a needle uh or play the guitar actually require a lot of dexterity.\n\nUm and uh one of the one of the past but one of the reasons um we we think we can achieve sustainable abundance which is sort of the the new um or so the revised version of the company's goal because it was accelerate sustainable energy which as you mentioned we've we've done that. Um our new goal is sustainable abundance.\n\nSo that's abundance for all um and but in a way that is sustainable that does not uh destroy uh any of the natural world in this. How do we decide who gets what? Somebody wants to buy my house they can just come in and start living there? Well I'm not sure why I mean you do have a nice house so >> [laughter] >> uh I can certainly see the see the appeal.\n\nUm but uh the robots will be able to make anyone a house and uh you know as long as you don't just don't have being in a particular location you can have robots will be able to build you a castle if you want. So and then but the the reason for dexterity is you want to be able to do um so like surgery and precision medical uh actions. And um so imagine a world where everyone has access to the best surgeons literally everyone.\n\nAnd uh Op- Optimus will have level of precision that is frankly superhuman. Um and will be able to do medical procedures um of very sophisticated medical procedures. A- any any medical procedure perhaps things that that really humans can't even do because they're too they're too difficult. Um and that will be available to anyone. There are people often talk about eliminating poverty and providing great medical care.\n\nBut they don't they don't actually have a solution. Um and money doesn't solve it because there are only so many uh there's a very limited number of of great doctors and surgeons. Uh they don't grow on trees. Um but now they they'll get built in factories.\n\nSo so I sent you a year or two ago an article about a young man who was an interview in Barron's and he was 33 at the time and he had become a portfolio manager and he lost his legs to a um I know he was a Paralympic performer and he lost his legs to man-eating bacteria and I said is there anything we can do to get him out of the wheelchair?\n\nAnd you said yes there is in three or four years we can give him an Optimus body and then we can use our you know transistors in his head in his brain to let him function as a normal person and dance and sing and walk and run. Have we been able to make progress in that area? Yeah so that's a confluence of two of my companies one is being Neuralink and the other being Tesla.\n\nUm so Neuralink has also made good progress um now has I think over 10 uh patients with Neuralink implants um and uh these people who had never who didn't have the ability to move their arms and legs in some cases were completely locked in like like Stephen Hawking um and they can now communicate um I think as quickly almost as quickly as we're communicating right now. Um which is very cool and that's that's going to continue to accelerate.\n\nUm so what we can do is use a Neuralink implant um that is taking signals from the motor cortex of the brain um and and also uh uh receiving signals from the somato cortex somatosensory cortex um and then give someone uh who's lost their legs Optimus legs and so you do I mean we're we're really getting like the $6 million man here I mean from back in the day. Uh I don't know if you watched that show but I watched it back then. I I I watched it.\n\nYeah I thought it was pretty fun um and and we we can actually give someone superhuman cyborg capabilities like the $6 million man but less than $6 million. >> [laughter] >> I mean in this day and age I mean $6 million back then was a fortune man these days it's like nothing. Um but uh but for much less than that I mean like for something that that would be reasonably affordable um you know it it it it it might be well like $60,000 type of thing.\n\nUm and um and you can take the signals from Neuralink the mind that would be transmitting to the legs and transmit those to the attached uh Optimus robot legs and um and you would actually be able to run faster than any human. Just just like $6 million man. Your Neuralink sounds really exciting sounds unbelievably exciting. Uh let's switch to XAI.\n\nUh so three years ago uh you were here and you had either just purchased or about to purchase uh you know Twitter which you've renamed X and you were widely criticized for that. And yes I was. Right? In fact you you've even mentioned here on stage that you didn't want to have anyone else be angry at you cuz you had enough people trying to kill you already. Yeah yeah totally. Right?\n\nSo so you were buying you were buying X and it was $42 billion I think and you were in the process of raising money and I called you up and you hadn't called me to solicit me and I called you up and I said I would like to invest with you $100 million in this and it was $60 million for one of our funds and $40 million for me and and you said really? I said yeah and you >> [laughter] >> Really? You said really?\n\nAnd I said yeah and and you told me that you thought I would make a double. And I said well I hope so but to me it felt like you made us $8 billion in in in Tesla and it would be not very appropriate if I didn't support this new venture that you were doing. So we and and then the day that we paid the money we marked it down 70%. Oh man.\n\n>> [laughter] >> This is this is how I know you're a true friend Ron because uh this is uh you know I do regard you as as a true a true and trusted friend. Um and you know the the the test of friendship it I got more to the story. >> [laughter] >> It's a better ending better ending. The test of friendship is is is who supports you when the chips are down and the times are tough and everyone's against you. That's a real friend and that's you Ron.\n\nThank you. Um so so so we did invest that 100 marked down to 30 and then about a year later we started getting phone calls from hedge funds who always seem to know things they're not supposed to know. >> [laughter] >> Yeah how do they do that? Right?\n\nAnd they started saying I'd like to buy your stock uh for what you paid for it and I said I think I'd rather wait and stay in which I did and then and then uh change the name to X and change the configuration of business and and then uh from that uh you bought Twitter and it came together in a social network along with this and and and all of a sudden we have a business that has incredible data.\n\nDid you buy this for the data that no one knew about but it but but the data with 600 million people talking with each other so physical data that no one else has and then you started Grok which is based on our data and everyone else doesn't have that they got digital stuff and then when they have Grok then we need more data centers and you're building those and in a space of a very short time less than months you built a data center which is four times what is the largest than anyone else on the planet 25,000 what what other people had in in CPUs and we built it in GPUs 100,000 uh more powerful and then uh you know now we have now we're going to go to hundreds of but the bottom line is the investment that we made we put up more money and we have a total\n\nof $350 million invested over the past two or three years and now it's worth $700 million.\n\nSo everything you touch is like that it's the most unbelievable thing I've ever seen. So so everyone is investing but in technology and we're investing in in the technology person the best engineer on the planet. So thank you very much. So so the vision is the question is did you buy X did you buy Twitter because of the data is that did you have all this in your head before you did it?\n\nUh not really no I I just bought Twitter because I thought it was um having a negative effect on civilization >> [snorts] >> um and um just sort of pushing uh ideas that were anti-civilizational um you know it it sort of what having having sort of captured by uh the far left I think you know it's fair to say the radical left to me they they wouldn't regard themselves as such but it was captured by uh you know a group of people whose uh political beliefs are those of uh you know, deeply San Francisco and Berkeley.\n\nUm which is about as left as you get in America. Um so that that that matter wasn't a good forum for debate um cuz they they suspended many people on the right including the president as it as it may occur, a sitting president which is really unprecedented for a president. Um so I think we we need to have a public square where there's uh true freedom of speech. Um and freedom of speech is Yeah, freedom of speech is is the bedrock of democracy.\n\nUm we we if there's not freedom of speech people cannot make an informed vote. Uh and and if you cannot make an informed vote, you don't have a a real democracy. So, that's the purpose of uh acquiring Twitter was to try to uh bring it more to the center. Uh there there have been no no left-wing voices have been banned or or anything like that or suppressed. Um but uh what what we're trying to do is give equal weight to all parts of the country.\n\nUm so that they can be a public town square where people can exchange ideas and hopefully it does not result in violence. Um and uh I think that's that's fundamental to uh I think it's one of the like I said, free speech is the bedrock of democracy. It's quite the first amendment. Cuz people came from countries where if they could be uh killed or imprisoned what they said. And in fact, this is happening all around the world as we speak.\n\nUh even in places like Britain. Um so that's uh that's you know what I I did because I I I felt like uh if it's these civilizational risks had to be addressed. And I mean what if America is not strong then what do businesses matter? The the the America is a central pillar that holds up our Western civilization. And if that pillar falls everything falls. So so uh so you were one of the founders the two founders of chat GPT and you know, open AI.\n\nAnd uh and you had a disagree and it was founded as a charity and it was your idea that you wanted to make sure that you know, freedom of speech and all the things that you deem important for good lives on our planet uh were followed safely.\n\nAnd uh uh the uh the other founder uh what he tried to do and did was accomplished is that he got control even though it was your money and he got control and uh and you and he said, \"Elon, I'd like you to stay.\" And uh you said, \"I want to go. I don't want to be a part of this.\" And uh and and he offered you some ownership and you said, \"I don't want it.\"\n\nAnd so here, you walk away from an ownership of chat GPT so you're obviously not doing all this stuff for money. I mean, you are, but I mean if that's not but I mean, if you if you were only about money, you would have never left with something that's worth $500 billion by itself.\n\nAnd so here, you're forming this new entity uh uh Grok to accomplish what you wanted chat GPT to accomplish, but you think that we have an advantage in this because of the data, because of the compute, because of what? And what are you going to do with this ultimately? You talk about connecting physical world to digital. What does that mean? Yeah, well just going back to open AI for a second.\n\nUm the reason I founded open AI was because I was concerned based on my conversations with Larry Page who used to be a close friend of mine um that he was not sufficiently concerned about the dangers of AI. Um this really came to a head when at my birthday party uh he in front of a large group of people called me a species um for favoring humanity over computers. I I I found that troubling.\n\nUm >> [laughter] >> I was like, \"Larry, uh what side are you on?\" Um it sounds like you're on the side of the computers. Uh but you you really need to be on team humanity here, you know. Um so uh after that I was like, \"Okay, this is it. We got to have some counterbalance to uh Google.\" Um because Larry doesn't seem to care if humans make it or not. Um so I I thought, \"What's the opposite of Google?\" It would be an open source nonprofit.\n\nAnd that's where the word open in open AI comes from. It It means open source. And and then I I provided I provided all the money beginning um like whatever the series A B C rounds and uh recruited the key people like Ilya Sutskever and um taught them everything I know. And uh you know I I actually even got them to deal with Microsoft with with such efficiency to I got Sergey to donate some time from Azure.\n\nUm and for all that, I did not seek any financial reward whatsoever. Um The and the reason I actually turned down the offer for shares is because I mean, I I felt like, \"What do you shares and what?\" Like nonprofits supposed to have shares. At least last time I checked. Um you know, they're not supposed nonprofits are not supposed to be vehicles for self-enrichment.\n\nSo, that's why I turned down the offer of shares cuz it it didn't seem morally or legally transferable. Um so that then with with with xAI we and we are starting late with xAI and we're only I don't know, two and a half uh years old basically. Uh And we're starting from behind. Um you know, we are somewhat of an underdog. Uh but you know, pretty good with technology.\n\nSo, I don't want to pat myself on the back here, but I'm pretty good with technology. Um and um and we are advancing faster than any other AI. So, I think in in the for technology ventures, the winner ultimately is the one that is able to move the fastest.\n\nSo so so we think that so we're optimizing for the best technology and we're doing something different than others others do in in in a digital world and we're physical to digital with movement uh and uh and visual and other people can't match that. And also, we have the real-time data. What does that mean? Why should we do better than everyone else? Why are we going to win?\n\nOr why are we going to at least be different than everyone else so we have a really strong business? Well, first of all, I think in in in terms of being a strong business, I'm actually not too worried about that that because um e- even if even a small player that is successful in AI will be worth a lot because they'll contribute so much in productivity to the economy.\n\nSo and and so so it's actually pretty easy to achieve a not pretty easy, but I mean it's it's it's not there there will be many companies that are worth sustainably several hundred billion dollars. Sustainably. Um so then it's a simple question of like, \"Well, how do we achieve the lead?\" Um that comes down to three things. Um are you able to attract the best talent? Um are you able to bring the most amount of AI hardware online?\n\nCan you can you bring uh GPUs online faster than anyone else? And we've we've already demonstrated that we can do that. Uh uh Jensen Huang himself said that um he was blown away by how fast uh xAI uh launched its data center. Jensen said there's only one human on the planet who could have done that. That's you. Yes, he did say that. Um >> [snorts] >> I I swear I'm very very kind of I'm very very uh It's made us think about are you really human?\n\n>> [laughter] >> I I keep telling people I'm an alien, but nobody believes me. I mean, when I got my green card, it said alien registration card. So, I mean, you know, I have I have proof from the government. >> [laughter] >> Um so I think I just have to get registered. >> [laughter] >> Um so uh I'm I'm I'd say I've got some some uh s- like relatively rare skills these days in America in terms of of getting hardware built.\n\nUm if you look at the biggest successes uh in manufacturing in America since World War II by far are Tesla and SpaceX. Um yeah. So uh So So to stay on to stay on Grok for another minute so the idea of connecting physical and digital is that that's different than digital digital figuring out who wants to buy what. We're doing something entirely different. Is that fair? I I wouldn't say we're doing something entirely different.\n\nWe're doing uh we're doing some things that are same, some things that are different. Um but I'd say if you if if just saying like the the elements that define success for any AI company are going to be one the talent, two the uh hardware, how much AI hardware can you bring to bear? Um that that's actually a very big deal. Um and we've shown that we're the best at doing that at XAI. And then third, uh unique access to data.\n\nAnd for that we've got the the X system, formerly the Twitter system, which is the by far the best source of real-time data in the world. So that that that those are some pretty significant assets. Um and uh and I think we're going to come up with some very innovative ideas. Um but I have more ideas in my head than I know what to do with, frankly. Um so I think we'll make some moves that are not on the chessboard. Uh that people don't anticipate.\n\nUm some creative moves. Uh and and and like I said that So So I I should point out that Grok right now actually um Grok heavy um is still the smartest AI. Uh best of my knowledge. It's it's I recommend cooling it down. Um Grok Grok 4 heavy is more responsive than Grok agents. Uh they they they work in parallel and they compare their output like a study group and give you the final conclusion. And it keeps getting better.\n\nUm and now we've begun training on Grok 5. Grok 5, I think will be the smartest AI in the world by a significant margin on ev- on every metric, without exception. Um I might be wrong, but I th- I think that will be the case and and that will be in Q1 sometime. Grok 5? Yes. I mean Grok 5 is the first time where I thought, \"Well, we have a non-zero chance of achieving artificial general intelligence.\" Um not that it's a high chance.\n\nI I I sort of I calculate like 10%. But that's what my biological neural net comes up with. Which still means 90% chance that we don't. We're clear. Um but I've never thought that before. And so for the first time I think like, \"Wow, this this this really could be general intelligence, at least a small chance.\" Um Grok 5 will really be something special. Um and and it'll be both extremely intelligent extremely intelligent and extremely fast.\n\nUm So So one of the things that we're doing that I think is interesting is Grokopedia. Um which we're we're going to rename down the road to to be Encyclopedia Galactica uh in honor of Isaac Asimov uh and um Douglas Adams, who who both mentioned that in books. Um and the idea behind Encyclopedia Galactica is to create an open-source repository of all knowledge. Like a distillation of all knowledge.\n\nAnd And open-source meaning anyone can access it. Anyone can use it. And if if other people want to train on it, they can do so. Uh and then we want to create copies of this and distribute these copies throughout Earth uh and even put them on the moon and Mars and out in deep space um as in a way sort of a a modern-day Library of Alexandria. It was the great tragedy that the Library of Alexandria burned down or or was burned down.\n\nUm and um so in order to preserve this knowledge, I think we we we want to actually etch it in stone and sort of stone stone like microfiche and and and distribute it widely, so in a worst-case scenario, future civilization can can see what we what what we learned and maybe pick things up from there. So is there a major breakthrough that you can describe that allows us to do this with Grok 5? Or is it just speed?\n\nIs it more compute and therefore we have more analysis more uh you know, information we can train on? What is the breakthrough that allows us to uh to have this 10% chance for AGI? Is there Is there a breakthrough or is it just speed and access to data? Not just, but So there's a couple things. It will be the largest model to the best of my knowledge. So this is this is a a 6 trillion parameter model.\n\nUm whereas Grok 3 and 4 are based on a 3 trillion parameter model. Um and moreover, the 6 trillion parameters will have a much higher intelligence density per gigabyte than uh Grok 4. Um I think it's an important metric to think about intelligence per gigabyte and intelligence per trillion operations. Um we've learned a lot. Um so um quality of the data that we're training on with Grok 5 is much better.\n\nUm it's also inherently multimodal, so it's text, pictures, video, audio. Um it's um it's going to be much better at tool use uh and in fact creating tools to be more effective at answering questions and understanding them. Uh its vision will be uh extremely good. It'll have real real-time snap real-time video, which is I think a really fundamentally important thing that none of the other AIs can understand real-time video.\n\nI think if you can't do that which us humans can obviously do. Um you're at you really can't achieve uh AGI. Um By the way, every one of these advances >> There's some special sauce items that I that There's some special sauce items that I I can't talk about in the public forum, obviously. You can't can't give away you know, all all the all the secrets here. It's just between us.\n\nUm But but But But we have a few a few other special things that are that are in the works. Um for Grok 5. So it's it's It's It's It's really going to feel sentient. So but there is no when we with Grok 5 when you're talking about the advances there is no limit. So when we're Grok 5 is better than Grok 4, which is better than Grok 3, which So So it keeps going.\n\nSo once we get to sentient levels we go two sentient, five sentient, 10 sentient, a million sentient. The sen- the sentience will grow. I mean, what's really mind-blowing is can how far can the sentience grow? To to your point, well, how far does it go? Um I think it goes immensely far, almost almost incomprehensibly far. It It does does go incomprehensibly far.\n\nUm uh so the Like Like we see a path to to putting a 100 gigawatts per year of solar-powered AI satellite into orbit. Um and and having this be actually the lowest cost way to uh power and operate uh AI at a very large scale. Um for reference the United States consumes roughly 460 gigawatts on average per year. Like if the average power load in the US is 460 gigawatts. >> country. The whole country. All electricity of all sources in the US, yes.\n\nAnd you're talking about 100 being added. Well, roughly equivalent to the US electricity output. Um And we We have a We have a plan mapped out to do that. It It gets crazy. So So there's um what, a trillion planets like Earth in the uh world and in a solar system or whatever you call it. A trillion.\n\nAnd in that trillion, so Big Bang was 14 billion years ago, 13 and a half billion years ago, I don't know what, and planet our planet's only 4 billion years old. So, there must be other planets that are like ours with all the minerals, oxygen, hydrogen, silicon, carbon. Uh So, life here has been extinguished four times. And presumably you feel that other places, other civilizations, other planets, then we'll get off of this. Uh exist.\n\nAnd are they planets where the beings there are part human, or part carbon, and part metal? Well, I think we'd like to find out. I'd like to find out. Uh I mean, my philosophy is one of curiosity. I I I just want to know what's you know, what's going on in this universe. Um is the standard is the standard of physics right? But, the beginning of the universe, is heat death the end of the universe? Are there other alien civilizations?\n\nCan we talk to them? And and what questions should we be asking about reality that we don't know to ask? So, that's my motivation is to expand consciousness to better understand the universe. So, so so let's go to away from the universe, back to Tesla again. And so, you said that uh Got [laughter] to be back on the ground here. Back on the ground.\n\nAnd uh so, you said that our expertise is in making things better, faster, cheaper than other people. And when I started investing in Tesla, when we started investing in Tesla, you were telling us that uh that it's the machine that makes the machine that's most important. The machine that makes So, you were into machine learning, machine technology then, which is 15 years ago.\n\nAnd uh so, and and now uh the average car I think it's 50 minutes uh or 50 seconds, 40 seconds, 60 seconds, and we're now 35 seconds. Every 35 seconds a car rolls off. And then, you say that we're going to get down to 10 seconds. And you said it's a possibility we can go to five. Five I I Five seconds every car is rolling off a line. How's that happen? I I I certainly see a path to achieving um a roughly 5,000 ms cycle time, or 5 seconds.\n\nUm which is only that's only really walking speed. That's like sort of a fast walk. Um 1 m per second is a fast walk. The car is less than 5 m long. So, um the 5-second cycle time the the the cars will will be exiting line at walking speed. So, it's it's like you you can run away from them. It's not it's not going to be like they're coming out like bullets or something.\n\n>> [laughter] >> So, but as a as a rough rule of thumb, there's you know, there's 10,000 minutes in a week if you run a 24/7 operation, and you get uh you know, let's [snorts] say 10 cars per minute. Um you've got uh yeah, 100,000 cars a week. So, so, but the question is how come we're able to do this? Do other people just not care?\n\nDo they think that if I do something, if I have this idea, and we try to implement it, and it doesn't work, then I'm not going to get promoted, or I can get fired, or I'll get blamed. And if it works, then I might have to do a lot of extra work uh that I wouldn't have had to do if it didn't work. So, why don't other people have, you know, a mindset of making things better? Why the the Chinese, they've been great at copying us.\n\nAnd in some instances, probably even done better than us. They have to live copied for the first time. But, how how come do you think that other people haven't been able to make the advances we have? And even the guy from Ford this recent said, \"Geez, people in China wouldn't give us compliments, but they said the people in and the Chinese have copied us.\n\nUh those people in China are doing great, which is really a compliment to us because the reason they're doing great is because of us. So, why don't other people do this? Why doesn't he do that? Um most companies are incrementalists. Um you know, the management team wants to do I don't know, 5%, maybe 10% better than last year. Um as opposed to take big risks that could fail. Um Uh obviously don't have a problem with taking big risks. Yeah.\n\nI'd say. Um So, that And I and I like to use the tools of physics to analyze things. And you know, when I was in the factory one night, when I was I was looking at the factory, and I was like, you know, this this could be much more efficient. It could be much faster. Um the I was trying to do rough math, trying to calculate the volumetric efficiency of the factories.\n\nSo, if you divide factory into cubic meters, and say uh how many cubic meters are doing something useful? And it's a surprisingly small percentage. The volumetric density is not very good. Um and then, the speed of like the cars and the parts moving is quite slow. Um generally limited by the speed at which people can say uh attach brake lights or the seat or something like that.\n\nUm So, if you densify the factory and improve the volumetric efficiency, um which is it's helpful for for more uh for production efficiency because then things have less distance to move. Uh just like just like a chip, you densify circuits in a chip, and you make it more efficient. You you think of a factory is like a chip. Um how do you make a chip faster?\n\nWell, you you bring circuits closer together, make them smaller, and and uh you increase the the clock speed. So, Robin told me that you told her once that \"I think of myself as a bit. And if I'm a bit, how would I like to travel?\" That makes sense. >> Bit or an atom. So, if it's if it's the I'm software I software, or if I'm on a ship, I say, \"What's the journey of the bit? Where am what am I doing?\"\n\nAnd if if those journey doesn't make sense, I need to fix it. And if the journey of the atom in the factory doesn't make sense, I need to fix it. So, when you say you're working on weekends, \"I spent all my Sundays working on a chip.\" What does that mean? What do you do? Uh it's it's Saturdays, but uh some sometimes Sundays actually it's faster. Recently we can spend Sundays, too.\n\nUm Yeah, just the the AI 5 chip, which is going to be a great chip. Um you know, all of Tes- all of Tesla engines on that chip. You know, that's that's the chip that goes that will go into our next generation of self-driving cars, and it's also essential for the Optimus robot. So, that that chip program was in bad shape. Um It it wasn't it wasn't closing cuz that it's it's it's quite an ambitious chip design.\n\nAnd and it really wasn't on a path to success. Um And then, we also had the Dojo program, which was doing it was also doing okay, but but not on a path to be competitive with Nvidia. So, I I collapsed the I collapsed the two programs into just one program just to get everyone focused on AI 5 chip, which is essential. Um continue to use Nvidia for training, but we need the AI 5 inference chip.\n\nUm which is it's a a very powerful chip, but that but it's also a very low power chip. So, it it doesn't use a lot of power. So, it's it's performance per watt is extremely good. Um you think you know, it's probably going to be at least two to three times better than Nvidia in performance per watt. Um at at the at the inference level in the car and the robot. And you know, I don't know. 10% of the cost of an Nvidia chip or something like that.\n\nSo, so the these are very important uh numbers to achieve. And um I had to get the chip program back on track, so I you know, I spent a lot of time into it. And at this point, I have the entire physical design of the chip laid out in memory. I can visualize the whole thing. But, when you're when you're talking about chip manufacturing, you say we might have to build some kind of a giant fab.\n\nPresumably, we would have a partner with TSMC or with Samsung. We wouldn't do this by ourselves. And those guys have been doing this for We would do it by ourselves? And and these are things that cost 20 billion, 30, 40 billion dollars. And where do the people come from to do this? How could we not have partners? What is your thought to have a partner? To do it by ourselves over the next 10 years?\n\nYou know, there's not going to be enough chips in the world to accomplish what we're trying to do. Yeah, first of all, I have immense respect for TSMC and Samsung, and we we've worked with both TSMC and Samsung um at Tesla and at uh SpaceX. Um So, TSMC and Samsung are great companies. And we want them to make our chips as quickly as they can and scale up to as high as possible volume that that they're comfortable doing.\n\nBut it's it doesn't appear to be fast enough. You know, when I ask how long will it take to from start to finish to get a new chip fab built, they tell me five five years to get to blind production. I'm like five years to me is infinity. My my my timelines To me, too, by the way. one year, two year And at year three, scale it goes to infinity. So so I I can't even see past three years.\n\nSo then I'm like, damn, okay, this is um this is not going to be fast enough. So Now if if they if they change their minds and say, yeah, they're they're going to go faster and they're going to they want to provide us with, you know, 100 to 200 billion AI chips a year in the timeframe that we need them, that's great. But how could they not when they know that we're demand and we are going to use the product in our own product?\n\nHow could they not want to be our supplier? Or how could they not want to be partners with us? I don't understand. I know what they they are partners. We're using both TSMC and Samsung. >> really expand capacity tremendously, why don't they do that? From their standpoint, they are. Because we'll be using TSMC Taiwan, TSMC TSMC Taiwan, TSMC Arizona, Korea, Samsung and the chips is back Samsung. So we got four or five coming.\n\nAnd um Yeah, from their standpoint, they're moving like lightning. Um I'm just saying nonetheless it would be a limiting factor for for us. They're they're going as fast as they can. But from this standpoint, there's no limit to that. They're they're just never had someone without such a company that has that sense of urgency. So I that's what really matters.\n\nIt it might just be that the only way to get to scale at the rate that we want to get to scale is to to build a earth scale fab. Um and um or or be limited in output of Optimus and self-driving cars by the AI chips. Obviously, you're not going to do that. Those are two choices. Um to go to FSD, we don't have too much more time.\n\nBut FSD, uh full self full self-driving, um the uh you know, we're we're making these tremendous uh breakthroughs, it seems. And uh you said recently that you didn't want to expand capacity for making cars until you were convinced that that was the case. You are now convinced that's the case. And again, here we're making these exponential leaps uh in make in in these cars.\n\nAnd you said that a very large percentage of people who actually paid for full self-driving don't use it and have never tried it before. Yes, it's pretty wild. Yeah, how Yeah, how we doing? How how You buy something and you want to try it type of thing. Yeah, it's amazing. Yeah, yeah. So so we're we're we're we're now kind of insisting uh with customers uh for safety reasons that we demonstrate full self-driving.\n\nBecause the numbers are unequivocal at scale that with with the now over 10 billion miles driven, that it's four times safer on full self-driving than than than not. So so here it's actually a big improvement in in safety. And so at this point, we're we're we're we're just insisting that we at least demonstrate uh self-driving to customers so they know how to use it and turn it on uh for safety reasons.\n\nSo drives full self-driving drives just like a person as opposed to having to code through uh look for every circumstance that would happen and you had a you know, this this is a fire truck in front of us with a bicycle attached to it or someone walking his dog while he's driving along. They have to identify everything with a code. What AI does, what we do is we as I understand it, is to make sure that it's just like us. Is that fair to say?\n\nYes, it the key to achieving uh full self-driving uh unsupervised full self-driving and safer than human is improving the AI software in the car. We're confident that the AI 4 uh hardware that that's chip that we designed, uh currently made by Samsung, uh is capable of achieving uh a safety level unsupervised, meaning if you're asleep in the car, uh at least two to three times that of the average driver. Uh maybe more.\n\nUm and then with AI 5, we think you know, achieve probably a 10x uh improvement in safety. Um So these these are really big deals. I mean, I think it's a one of very profound things I'm saying here. Um And I really encourage people to go out there and try the Tesla self-driving and and see for yourself. It's you can just go to any Tesla store. They'll show it to you, you know. It's not secret.\n\nSo everyone here, uh you're benefiting if you try this and then buy it. But once you try it, you're going to buy it. You should try it. Um And uh so so I want to close on what I mentioned this morning on CNBC was that you're not doing this uh so you can get enough money to buy a beach house. You're doing you're doing this even mine. >> [laughter] >> Yeah, that's right. But but But but you're doing this because you know, uh Larry Page was right.\n\nYou're you're species that you think humans should survive. Yes, I'm pro I'm I'm I'm an unabashedly pro-human. >> [laughter] >> I mean, so you're you're spending so actually whether you worth another trillion dollars or 400 bi- it doesn't really matter. What are you going to do with all this money at the end? What what what's your plan? How do you want people to think about you?\n\nWell, you know, mostly I need to have enough enough ownership of the companies to be able to continue to direct their activities. Um but as for my personal consumption standpoint, um I I don't actually own any vacation homes. Um And I just own one sort of you know, medium-sized house in Austin. Um So and and actually I should say a tiny house at Starbase. And I bought it for I've seen that house. It's tiny. >> Yeah, yeah.\n\nYeah, but I actually people people like friends might have come to visit and they they thought I was kidding. I'm like, no, it's real. Uh I bought it for 50,000 dollars, but I've done a lot with the place. Artificial turf in front, little white picket fence. Um yeah.\n\nSo um But but like like I said, with with AI and robotics, there will be uh abundance for So it's people actually in fact in in a benign scenario, there's going to be an interesting threshold that that AI passes, AI and robotics pass, where it's run out of things to do for humans. It's literally it's it's completely uh satiated all human wants. Um and then I guess it'll have to start thinking about what to do for itself or I don't know.\n\nUm But I I I you know, overall I want to take take the set of actions that expand consciousness into the future so that the scope and scale of consciousness grows tremendously and that we explore other star systems like in Star Trek, go places that we never gone before.\n\nAnd find out if there are existing alien civilizations or maybe there's a long dead alien civilization and we can look through their ruins and try to understand what what they were like. Um and just generally understand the universe. Where are you now right now? I'm in I'm in Silicon Valley. Thank you very much for today. Welcome. >> Thank you for everything you've done for me, for our shareholders, and for humanity. Thank you, Elon.\n\nI appreciate it. All right."},"languages":["en"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":"https://singjupost.com/fireside-chat-elon-musk-at-ron-barons-32nd-baron-investment-conference-transcript/"},{"id":"jre-2404-musk-2025","type":"interview","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O4wBUysNe2k","title":"The Joe Rogan Experience","titles":{"en":"The Joe Rogan Experience","de":"The Joe Rogan Experience","fr":"The Joe Rogan Experience"},"date":"2025-10-31","summary":"Musk's second 2025 visit to the Joe Rogan Experience, ranging over government spending, free speech and platform moderation, and the future of AI and work.","text":"Joe Rogan podcast. Check it out. >> The Joe Rogan Experience. >> TRAIN BY DAY. JOE ROGAN PODCAST BY NIGHT. All day. >> Exactly. >> Just every morning. >> Wonder what Jeff Bezos is doing. >> He's doing some [laughter] definitely doing some testosterone. He looks jacked. >> He looks jacked, right? >> Yeah.\n\nBut he didn't like >> quick >> quick [laughter] at age like at 50 at age 59 in less than a year he he went from pencilet geek to uh looking like a like the rock. >> Yeah. Like a little miniature alpha fella. >> Yeah. Like like his neck got bigger than his head. >> Yeah. He got bigger. >> But then like his earlier pictures his neck's like a noodle. >> I support this activity. I like to see him going in this direction >> which is fine.\n\nAnd his voice dropped like two octaves. I want you to move in that direction as well. >> I think we can achieve this. >> I I I mean I should >> I think we can achieve >> gigachad. [laughter] That's what people called it. >> Where is that guy? >> Bele. Uh I don't know where he is. >> That's like a real guy. >> The artist. Yeah. >> No. >> Oh, gigachad. [laughter] Oh, gigachad. Yeah. I don't know if that's a real guy. It's hard to say.\n\n>> No, it is a real guy. >> It is a real guy. >> He's got the crazy jaw and like perfect sculpted hair. >> Yeah. Well, I mean, they may have exaggerated a little bit, but >> um >> but uh No, I think I think he actually just kind of looked like that in reality. >> Wow. >> Um so >> like like he's a pretty unique looking individual. >> I think we can achieve this. That guy right there, that's a real guy. [laughter] >> That's a real dude.\n\n>> I always thought that was CGI. >> No, I think one of I think the upper right one is not [laughter] him. That's not >> But that one to the left of [clears throat] that like that's real. No, that's that's artificial, bro. That's fake. That's got that uncanny valley feel to it, doesn't it? >> It's It's not impossible. >> No, no, it's not impossible to achieve, but it's not it's not possible to maintain that kind of leanness.\n\nI mean, that's like like you're you're also at that point they're he's dehydrating and all sorts of things. >> Oh, it's based on a real person. >> Yeah. Yeah. Based on, >> right, but it's not a real person. What does he really look like? >> Like those images, I think, are [ __ ] >> Some of them are. Is that real? Okay. That That looks real. That looks like a really jack bodybuilder. >> Yeah. >> Yeah, that looks real. Like that's achievable.\n\nBut there's a few of those images where you're just like, \"What's going on here?\" >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Totally. Um >> Well, I mean, you see you see [laughter] >> that guy is that is that the >> that's the real dude? >> Well, there's that that that Icelandic dude who's Thor. >> Oh, yeah. The guy who jumps in the frozen lakes and [ __ ] >> Well, the guy who played the mountain. Um >> Oh, that guy.\n\n>> That is that is like a that that is like a a mutant strong human. Yes. >> Like like uh he would be in like the X-Men or something, you know? >> He's just like not like uh >> and there's that you know that have you seen that meme tent and tent bag? >> Um you know how like it's like it's really hard to get the tent tent in >> Oh, right. Right. [laughter] >> That's true. >> Then there's a picture of of him and his girlfriend. That's hilarious.\n\n[laughter] >> Yeah, that's >> I don't know how it gets in there, you know? It's like it seems too small. But >> I met Brian [laughter] Shaw. Brian Shaw is like the world's most powerful man. And he's almost [laughter] 7 feet tall. He's 400 lb. >> And his his bone density is 1 in 500 million people. So there's one it's like there's like maybe 16 people. >> He's an enormous human being. like a legitimate giant just like that guy. But we met him.\n\nHe was hanging out with us in the green room of the mother ship. It's like, okay, if this was like David and Goliath days, like this is an actual giant like the giants of the Bible. >> Once in a while they get a super giant person. >> This is a real a real one. Like not a tall skinny basketball player, like a 7 foot 400B powerliffter. >> Like you don't want to especially look at him. That's the guy.\n\nSee if there's a photo of him standing next to like a regular human. I >> was trying to get >> There it is. That's him right there. Like there's like there's like one of him with next to standing next to Arnold and stuff and it's where and everyone everyone just looks tiny. >> I mean I think he's a pretty cool dude actually. >> Oh, Brian's very cool. Very smart, too. Unusually, you know, you expect anybody to be that big.\n\nIt's got to be a [ __ ] >> No. >> Yeah. There was there's Andre the Giant who was awesome. You >> he was great in Princess Bride and >> No, he was just awesome period. >> Yeah. Yeah. So, we were talking about um this interview with Sam Alman and Tucker, and I was like, we should probably just talk about this on the air because it is one of the craziest interviews I think I've ever seen in my life. >> Yeah.\n\n>> Where Tucker starts bringing up this guy who was a whistleblower, whatever. >> A whistleblower who, you know, >> committed suicide, but it doesn't look like it. >> And and he's talking to Sam Alman about this. And Sam Alton was like, \"Are you accusing me?\" He's like, \"No, no, no. I'm not. I'm just saying I I think someone killed him. >> Yeah. And like And it should be investigated. >> Yeah. >> Um not just drop the case.\n\n>> It seems like >> they just dropped the case. Yeah. Yeah. But his parents think he was murdered. >> Yeah. >> Um the wires to a security camera were cut. Um >> blood in two rooms. >> Blood in two rooms. Someone else's wig was in the room. And >> someone else's wig. >> Wig. >> Wig. Yes. Not his wig. >> Not normal to have a wig laying around. >> Yes. Um and um and he ordered Door Dash uh right before allegedly committing suicide.\n\n>> Uh which uh is it seems unusual, you know? >> Yeah. >> It's like, you know, let's I'm going to order pizza on second thoughts, I'll kill myself. Uh is it seems like that's a very rapid change in mindset. >> It's very weird. And especially the parents have they they don't believe he committed suicide at all. >> Has no note or anything. >> No. >> Yeah. >> It seems pretty [ __ ] up.\n\nAnd you know, the idea that a whistleblower for an enormous AI company that's worth billions of dollars might get whacked, that's not outside the pale. >> I mean, it's straight out of a movie. >> Right out of a movie, but right out of a movie is real sometimes. >> Yeah. Right. [laughter] Exactly. >> It's a little weird that I I think they should do a proper investigation. Like, what's the downside on that proper investigation? >> Right. >> No.\n\n>> Yeah, >> for sure. But the whole exchange is so bizarre. >> Yeah. Yeah. Sam Alman's reaction to being accused of murder is bizarre. >> Look, I don't know if he's guilty, but it's not possible to look more guilty. [laughter] >> So, I'm like, >> or look more weird. >> Yeah. >> You know, maybe it's just his social thing. Like, maybe he's just odd with confrontation and it just goes blank, you know?\n\nBut if if somebody was accusing me of killing Jamie, like if Jamie was a whistleblower and Jamie got whacked and then I'd be like, \"Wait, what are you what are you are you accusing me of killing my friend?\" Like, \"What the [ __ ] are you talking about?\" I would I would be a little bit more I rate. >> Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. You know, it would be >> I would be a little upset. >> Yeah.\n\nIt'd be like Well, you'd be like, you'd certainly in insist on a thorough investigation. Yeah. >> As opposed to trying to sweep it under the rug. >> Yeah. I wouldn't assume that he got that he committed suicide. I would be suspicious. If Tucker was telling me that aspect of the story, I'd be like, \"That does seem like a murder. [ __ ] We should look into this.\" >> I mean, all signs point to it being a murder.\n\nNot not saying, you know, Tim Molvin had anything to do with the murder, but uh >> blood in two rooms. >> It's blood in two rooms. Like, yeah, there's the wires to the security camera and the door dash being ordered right before suicide. No suicide note. his parents think uh he was murdered and um the people that I know who knew him said he was not suicidal. So I'm like this why would you jump to the conclusion >> parents sued the >> uh landlord?\n\n>> They sued the son's landlord alleged the owners and the managers of their son's San Francisco apartment building were part of a widespread cover up of his death. >> The landlord >> Yeah. There's a bunch of weird They said there was like packages missing from the building. Some people said they saw packages still being delivered and all a sudden they all disappeared. >> Huh. But that could be people steal people's packages all the time.\n\n>> The porch pirate situation. >> Yeah. >> Says they failed to safeguard. >> Also, I mean, the amount of trauma those poor parents have gone through with their son dying like that. I mean, it must >> God bless them. And how could they stay sane after something like that? They're probably they're so griefstricken. Who knows what they believe at this point. >> Yeah. It should have asked if Epson killed himself.\n\n>> [laughter] >> Yeah, that's the the Cash Mattel thing. Cash Mattel Dan Bonino trying to convince everybody of that. Like, okay. >> The guards weren't there and the cameras stopped working and um >> you know, >> the guards were asleep. The cameras weren't working. He had a a giant steroided up bodybuilder guy that he was sharing a cell with that was a murderer who was a bad cop. Like, all of it's kind of nuts.\n\nAll of it's kind of nuts like that he would just kill himself rather than reveal all of his billionaire friends. >> Yeah. >> And then >> did you see Tim Dylan talking to Chris Cuomo about this? >> I did. He liked the idea. >> Chris Cromo just looked so stupid. [laughter] >> Tim just listed off all the >> Tim just and he's like I agree it is strange. Like of course it's strange Chris. Jesus Christ. You can't just go with the tide.\n\nYou got to think things through. And if you think that one through, you're like, I don't think he killed himself. Nobody does. You'd have to work for an intelligence agency to think he killed himself. [laughter] >> It does. It does seem unlikely. >> It seems highly unlikely. Highly, highly unlikely. All roads point to murder. >> Yes. >> Point to they had to get rid of him because he knew too much.\n\nWhatever the [ __ ] he was doing, whatever kind of an asset he was, whatever thing he was up to, you know, was apparently very effective. >> Yes. And a lot of people are compromised. You see, your boy Bill Gates is now saying climate change is not a big deal. Like, relax everybody. I know I scared the [ __ ] out of you for the last decade and a half, but ah, we're going to be fine. [laughter] >> Yeah.\n\nI mean, you know, as was I was saying just before coming into the studio with, you know, it like every day there's some crazy wild new thing that's happening. It's It feels like reality is accelerating. >> It's every day. And Every day it's like more and more ridiculous to the point where the simulation is more and more undeniable. >> Yeah. Yeah. It really feels like simulation, you know? It's like, come on.\n\nWhat are the odds that this could be the case? >> Are you paying attention at all to Three Atlas? Are you watching the >> the comet? >> Yeah. Whatever it is. >> Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I mean, one thing I can say is like, look, I if if I was aware of any evidence of aliens, um, you Joe, you have my word. I will come on your show and I will reveal it on the show. >> Okay. >> Yeah, >> that's a good deal. >> Yeah, it's pretty good. >> I'll believe you.\n\nYeah, thank you. >> I I'll stick I keep my you know, keep my promises. So, um >> All right. I'll hold you to that. >> Yeah. Yeah. And and [clears throat] I'm never committing suicide to be clear. [laughter] >> I don't think you would either. >> So, on camera, guys, I am never committing suicide ever. >> If someone says you committed suicide, [laughter] I will fight tooth and nail. >> I will fight tooth and nail. I will I will not believe it.\n\nI will not believe it. The thing about the three eye atlas is it's >> a hell of a name actually. >> Yeah, it's a third eye sounds like third eye or something. >> Yeah, it does. [laughter] Three eye is third. It's only the third interstellar object that's detected. >> Okay. >> Yeah. [snorts] Obias. >> Yeah. Alo was on the podcast a couple days ago talking about it. >> Yeah. It could be. I don't know.\n\nBut I >> apparently today they're saying that it's changed course. Um, >> did you see that, Jamie? >> Avi said something today. I'll send it to you. Um, >> uh, I know it's on Reddit. >> Here you go, Jamie. I'll send it to you right now. Um, it's fascinating. It's fascinating also because it's made almost entirely of nickel, whatever it is. And the only way that exists, uh, here is, uh, industrial alloys apparently.\n\nUm um most no there are there are >> there are definitely uh comets that and asteroids that are made primarily of nickel in fact. Yeah. So the the places where um you mine nickel on earth is actually where there was an asteroid or comet that hit earth that was a nickel rich uh you know >> nickel rich nickel rich rich deposit. >> Yeah that's that's that's it's coming. Those are from impacts.\n\nYou definitely didn't want to be there at the time because anything would have been obliterated. Right. Um, but that's that's where the the sources of nickel and cobalt are these days. >> So, this is Ovio Lope. A few hours ago, the first hint of non-gravitational acceleration that something other than gravity is affecting its acceleration, meaning something is affecting its trajectory beyond gravity was indicated. Interesting.\n\nUm so it's mostly nickel very little iron which uh he was saying uh is on earth only exists in alloys but whatever you know you're dealing with another planet >> there this there are there are there are cases where there's very nickel richch asteroids meteorites that heavy that something from space. >> Yeah it it's only yeah it doesn't mean it'll be a very sort of heavy spaceship if you make it all out of nickel. Oh yeah. >> And [ __ ] huge.\n\nThe size of Manhattan and all nickel. That's kind of nuts. >> Yeah, that's a heavy spaceship. >> That's a real problem if it hits. >> Uh yes. No, it would like obliterate a continent type of thing. >> Um maybe maybe worse. >> Probably kill most of human life. >> Um >> if not all of us. >> I haven't depends on what the the total mass is.\n\nBut um there's I mean the thing is like in the fossil record there are um you know there's like arguably arguably five major extinction events. um like the biggest one of which is the Perine extinction uh where um almost all life was eliminated. That that actually occurred over several million several million years. Um the there's the Jurassic. I think Jurassic is I think that one's pretty definitively an asteroid.\n\nUm and um but there's but there's been five major extinction events, but um but what they don't count are really the ones that merely take out a continent. >> So >> merely >> Yeah. cuz that that because those don't really show up on the fossil record, you know, >> right? >> Um so unless it's enough to cause a you know mass extinction event throughout Earth, it it doesn't show up, you know, in a fossil record that's uh 200 million years old.\n\nUm so the uh yeah but but there have been many um many impacts that would have sort of destroyed all life on you know let's say half of North America or something like that. there many such impacts through the course of history. >> Yeah. And there's nothing we can do about it right now. >> Yeah. There was one that um hits there was a one that hit Siberia and destroyed I think um few hundred square miles. >> Oh, that's the Tungusa. >> Yeah.\n\nThat's the one from the 1920s, right? >> Yeah. >> Yeah. That's the one that coincides with that meteor that uh comet storm that we go through every June and every November that they think is responsible for that younger dest. >> Yeah. Yeah, all that shit's crazy. Um, thank you before we go any further for letting us have a tour of SpaceX and letting us be there for the rocket launch.\n\n>> One of the absolute coolest things I've ever seen in my life. And we we've we were we thought it was only like I thought it was a half a mile. Jamie's like it was a mile away. Turned out it's almost two miles away. And you feel it in your chest. >> Yeah. It's >> you have to wear earplugs and you feel it in your chest and it's 2 miles away. >> It was [ __ ] amazing.\n\nAnd then to go with you up into the command center and to watch all the Starlink satellites with all the different cameras and all in real time as it made its way all the way to Australia. How many minutes? Like 35 40 minutes. >> Yeah. >> Wild it touchdown in Australia. >> Yeah. >> [ __ ] crazy. It was amazing. >> Yeah. Yeah. >> Absolutely amazing. The starship's awesome. Um, and anyone can go watch the launch actually.\n\nSo, you can just go to um, South Padre Island, get has a great view of the launch. Um, so it's like where a lot of spring breakers go. >> Um, but um, but we'll be flying pretty frequently um, out of Starbase in South Texas. And we we formally incorporated it as a city. So, it's it's actually a legally an actual legal city, Starbase, Texas. >> Um, it's not that often you hear like, hey, we made a city, you know.\n\n[laughter] Um, that [snorts] used to be like the like in in the old days like a startup would be you go and gather a bunch of people and say, \"Hey, let's go make a town.\" Literally, that was like that would have been startups in in in the old days. >> Um, >> or a country. >> Yeah. Or a country. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. Yeah. Actually, >> if you tried doing that today, there'd be a real problem. >> Yeah.\n\nThat things are so much so much set in stone on the country front these days. You might pull it off. You might be able [clears throat] to pull it off. If you got a a solid island, you might be able to pull it off. >> You know, it's probably, >> you know, like like at owns lai. >> Yeah, you could probably if you put if you put enough effort into it, you could make a new country. >> This is one of the different ones.\n\nThis is one of the ones that you catch, >> right? Or is that one? >> Yeah, that that's the booster. So that's the super heavy booster. Uh so that's the one with the booster's got 33 engines. Um that that uh um and it's you know by version four that will have about 10,000 tons of thrust. Um you know right now it's about 7 8,000 tons of thrust. Um, that's that's the largest flying object ever made. >> I had to explain to someone.\n\nThey were going, \"Why do they blow up all the time if he's so smart?\" Because there was there was this [ __ ] idiot on television. Some guy was being interviewed and they were talking about you. And he goes, \"Oh, I think he's a fuckwit.\" And he goes, \"He's a fuckwit.\" And he goes, \"Why you say he's [ __ ] Oh, his rockets keep blowing up.\" And someone said, \"Yeah, well, why do his rockets blow?\" And I had to explain. Yeah.\n\nBecause it's the only way you find out what the tolerances are. You have to you have to a few >> corners of the box. So, so like so [clears throat] when you do a new uh rocket development program, um you you have to uh do what's called uh you know, exploring the limits, the corners of the box where you say it's like you worst case this, worst case that um to figure out um uh where where the limits are.\n\nSo uh you blow up, you know, not not admittedly in the development process sometimes blows up accidentally. Um but but we intentionally subject it to uh uh you know a flight regime that is much worse than what we expect in normal flight so that when we put people on board or valuable cargo it doesn't blow up.\n\nUm so um so so for example for the the flight that you saw we we actually deliberately took um heat shield tiles off the the the ship the off of Starship in in some of the worst locations to say okay if we lose a heat shield tile here is it is it catastrophic or is it not? Um and we we nonetheless uh Starship was able to do a soft landing um in uh in the Indian Ocean just uh west of Australia.\n\nUm which as and it got there from Texas in like I don't know 354 minutes type of thing. So >> So it landed even though you put it through this situation where it has compromised shield. it it had an an an an unusually we we we brought it in hot like an an extra hot trajectory uh with missing tiles um to see if it would still make it to a soft landing which it did. Now I I should point out it did have there were some holes that were burnt into it.\n\nUm but it's it was robust enough to land despite having some holes burnt you know that that you know cuz it's coming it's coming in like a blazing meteor. You can see you can see the real time video. Well, tell me the speed again because the the speed was bananas. You were talking about >> Yeah, it's like 17,000 mph like like 25 times the speed of sound or thereabouts.\n\nSo, um the uh uh so so think of it like it's it's like 12 times faster than a bullet from an assault rifle. You know, bullet from assault rifles around Mach 2 >> and it's just and it's [clears throat] huge. >> Yeah. [laughter] Yeah. Or or if you compare it to like a bullet from a um you know a 45 or or 9 mil which is subsonic that's you know it it'll be about 30 times faster than a bullet from a handgun.\n\n>> 30 times faster than a bullet from a handgun and it's the size of a skyscraper. >> Yes. [laughter] >> Yeah. That's fast. >> It's so wild. It's so wild to see, man. It It's uh It's so exciting. This the factor is so exciting too because like genuinely no [ __ ] I felt like I was witnessing history. I felt like it was a scene in a movie where someone had expectations and they like what are they doing? They're building rockets.\n\nAnd you go there and as we were walking through Jamie, you could speak to this too. Didn't you have the feeling where you're like >> oh this is way bigger than I thought it was. This is [laughter] huge. Awesome. >> Gigantic. >> [ __ ] crazy. >> That's what she said. the ah the amount of rockets you're making. I don't know if you >> tent back. [laughter] >> Gig Chad in the house. >> This is way big. >> It's a giant metal dick.\n\n[laughter] You're [ __ ] [ __ ] the universe with your giant metal dick. That's >> I mean, yeah, it is. It is very big. >> And the sheer numbers of them that you guys are making. And then this is a version and you have a new updated version that's coming soon. >> And what is the It's a It's a little longer. Um >> more pointy. >> Uh it's the same amount of pointy. Um but the there's it's it's got a bit more length.\n\nUm the the interstage, you see that that interstage section with kind of like the grill area. >> Mhm. >> Um that's uh that's now integrated with the boost stage. Um so uh we do um what's called hot staging. Uh where we light the ship engines while it's still attached to the booster. So the boost the booster engines are still thrusting. is still it's it's uh you know it's still being pushed forward by the booster of the ship.\n\nUh but then we light the ship engines and the ship engines actually pull away from the booster even though the booster engines are still firing. >> Whoa. >> Um so it's blasting flame through uh that that grill section but we integrate that grill section into uh the boost stage with the next uh version of the rocket. Um and uh and explosion in the rocket will have the Raptor 3 engines which are a huge improvement.\n\nUm you may you may have seen them in the lobby because we got like the Raptor 1, two, and three. And you can see the dramatic improvement in simplicity. Um we should probably put a plaque there to also show how much the we reduced the weight uh the cost and the and improved the efficiency and the uh thrust. So the Raptor 3 uh has uh you know almost twice the thrust of Raptor Raptor 1. >> Wow. >> So you see Raptor 3.\n\nIt looks like it looks like it's got parts missing. Right. >> And how many >> It's very very clean. >> How many of them are on the rocket? >> There's 33 on the on the booster. >> Whoa. Um and and each of each Raptor engine is producing twice as much thrust as all four engines on a 747. Wow. So that engine is smaller than a 747 engine, but is producing, you know, um you know, almost 10 times the thrust of a 747 engine.\n\nUm so extremely high power to weight ratio.\n\nUm and um >> and so when there's >> 33 of them >> you when you so when you're designing these you get to Raptor one you see its efficiency you see where you can improve it you get to Raptor 2 how many how far can you scale this up with just the same sort of technology with propellant and ignition and engines like how much further can you >> I mean we're pushing the limits of physics here um so um and and really in order to to make a a fully reusable orbital rocket which no one has succeeded in doing uh yet including including us.\n\nUm but but uh Starship is the first time that there is a design for a rocket where where full and rapid reusability is actually possible. So it was not there's not there's not even been a design before where it was possible. Certainly not a design that that that got made any hardware at all. Um just we just we just live we live on a planet uh where the gravity uh is is is quite high like earth's gravity is quite really quite quite high.\n\nUm um and if the gravity was even 10 or 20% uh higher uh we'd be stuck on Earth forever. Um like we yeah we could not use certainly couldn't use conventional rockets. You'd have to like blow yourself off the surface with like a nuclear bomb or something crazy. Um so but on the other hand if if Earth's gravity was just a little lower like even 10 20% lower it then uh getting to orbit would be easy.\n\nSo it's like it's like it's like this if this was a video game it's set to like maximum difficulty but not impossible. >> Okay. >> Um so that's that's where we have um here. So it's it's not as though um others have uh ignored the concept of reusability. they've just uh concluded that it was too difficult to achieve. And we've been working at on on this for a long time at at SpaceX. Um and um you know, I'm the chief engineer of the company.\n\nUm although I should say that that uh you know, we have an extremely talented engineering team. I think we've got the best uh rocket engineering team that has ever been assembled. Um uh it's it's an honor to work with such such incredible people. Um so uh so so it's fair to say that you know we have not yet succeeded in creating in achieving full reusability but we at last have a rocket uh where full reusability is possible.\n\nUm and I think I think we'll achieve it next year. So um uh that's a that's a really big deal. And the reason the reason that's that's such a big deal is that full reusability um uh drops the cost of access to space by a hundred um maybe even more than 100 actually. So could be like a thousand. The you can think of it like any mode of transport. Like imagine if aircraft were were not reusable.\n\nLike you flew somewhere, you throw the plane like like imagine if like the way the way conventional rockets work is it would be like if you had an airplane and and and instead of landing at your destination, you parachute out um and the plane crashes somewhere and you land at your desk and you and you land on a parachute at your destination. Now that would be a very expensive trip [laughter] and you and you'd need another plane to get back. Okay.\n\nUm, but that's how the other rockets in the world work. Um, now the SpaceX Falcon rocket is the only one that is is there that is at least mostly reusable. You've se you've seen the Falcon rocket, you know, land. We've now done over 500 landings of of the SpaceX rocket of the of the Falcon 9 rocket.\n\nUm and um and and this year um you know we we'll deliver probably I don't know somewhere between 2200 and 2500 tons to orbit um with with the Falcon 9 uh Falcon Heavy rockets uh not counting anything for from Starship. Um >> and this is mostly Starlink. Yes, mostly Starling, but we launch uh many other we even launch our competitors on um competitors to Starink on on Falcon 9. We charge them the same price. Pretty fair.\n\nUm uh but uh SpaceX this year will deliver um roughly 90% of all Earth mass to orbit. >> Wow. >> Um and then of the remaining 10% um most of that is done by China. And then the then the remaining kind of roughly 4% is uh everyone else in the world including our America uh domestic competitors. >> You know um it's kind of incredible how many things are in space like how many things are floating above us now? >> There's a lot of things. >> Yeah.\n\n>> Is there though? >> Right. But is there a saturation point where we're going to have problems with all these different satellites that are >> um I think as long as the satellites are um maintained uh there's there it'll be fine. This space is very roomy. Um it's like you can think of um like space as being concentric shells of the surface of the earth.\n\nSo, um, you know, there's there's it's the surface of the earth, but but there's it's a series >> much larger. >> Yeah. It's like a series of concentric trails. Um, >> and think of an Airstream trailer flying around up there. There's a lot of room for air streams. >> Yeah. I mean, imagine Yeah. If there just a few thousand airirstreams um on on Earth. >> Yeah. >> What are the odds that they'd hit each other?\n\nYou know, >> they wouldn't be very crowded. No. And then you got to go bigger. >> Yeah. >> Because you're dealing with far above Earth. >> Hundreds of miles above Earth. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. >> Yeah. So, it's the um but the goal of SpaceX is to get rocket technology to the point where we can extend life beyond Earth and that we can establish a self-sustaining city on Mars. Uh a permanent base on the moon. That would be very cool.\n\nI mean, imagine if we had like a, you know, moon base alpha where there's like a permanent science base on the moon. >> That would be pretty dope. Or at least a tourist trap. >> I mean, a lot of people be willing to go to the moon for just for a tour. That's for sure. We could probably pay for our space program with that, you know, >> probably. Yeah.\n\nWell, >> because it's like if if you if you could go to the moon with and and safely, >> uh I think we'd get a lot of people uh would would pay for that, you know. >> Oh, 100%. After the first year, after nobody died for like >> Yeah. Just make sure. [laughter] Exactly. Are you going to come back? Yeah. >> Because like that submarine, they they had a bunch of successful launches in that private submarine before it imploded and killed everybody.\n\nThat was not a good design. Obviously, >> it was a very bad design. Terrible design. >> And the engineers said it would not withstand the pressure of those depths. Like there was a lot of whistleblowers in that company too. >> Yeah. Um they they they made that out of uh carbon fiber which is it doesn't make any sense because um you actually need you need to be dense to go down. Um in any case, just make it out of steel.\n\nIf you make it out of uh sort of just, you know, a big steel casting, that's that's you you'll be safe and nothing. Why would they make it out of carbon fiber then? Is it cheaper? >> Um I think they think carbon fiber sounds cool or something. But uh >> it does sound cool. >> It it sounds cool, but um because it's such it's such low density, you actually actually have to add extra mass to go down because it's it's low density.\n\nBut if you just have a giant, you know, hollow ball bearing, uh you're going to be fine. >> Speaking of carbon fiber, did you check out my unplugged Tesla out there? >> Yeah, it's cool. >> Pretty sick, right? Yeah. Have you guys ever thought about doing something like that? like having like an AMG division of Tesla where you do like custom stuff. >> Um I think it's best to leave that to the custom shops.\n\nUh you know we're we're like Tesla's focus is autonomous cars. Um you know building kind of futuristic autonomous cars. Um so um like I think it's we want the future to look like the future. Um, so the did like did you see like our designs for like the sort of the robotic bus? It looks pretty cool. >> The robotic bus is also being totally auton but it looks it looks cool. It's it's very art deco. It's it's like it's like futuristic art deco.\n\nUm, and um, it it does it like I think we want to change the aesthetic over time. You don't want the aesthetic to be constant over time. You want to evolve the aesthetic. Um, so um, you know, like my like I have a son who's he's like, you know, he's he's he's like even more autistic than me and um and, uh, but he's he has these great observations. Who is this? >> A Saxon.\n\nHe has these great observations in the world uh because he's he just views the world through a different lens than than most people. Um and he was like, \"Dad, why does the world look like it's 2015?\" [laughter] [clears throat] >> And I'm like, \"Damn, the world does look like it's 2015.\" Like the aesthetic has not evolved since 2015. >> Oh, that's what it looks like. >> Yeah. >> Oh, wow. >> That's pretty cool. >> Oh, yeah.\n\nThat's like >> like You'd want to see that going down the road, you know? >> Yeah. You'd be like, \"Okay, this is we're in the future.\" You know, it doesn't look like 2015. >> What is that ancient science fiction movie? Like one of the first science fiction movies ever. Is it Metropolis? Is that what it is? >> Yeah. Yeah. >> Yeah. That looks like it belongs in Metropolis. >> Yeah. Yeah. It's a futuristic art deco. >> All right. Yeah.\n\nWell, that's cool that you're concentrating on the aesthetic. I mean, that's kind of the whole deal with Cybertruck, right? Like, it didn't have to look like that. >> No, it it I just wanted to have something that looked really different. Is it a pain in the ass for people to get it insured because it's all solid steel and >> um I hope it's not too much. I you know Tesla does offer insurance so people can always get it get it insured at Tesla.\n\n>> Um well but the like it is the form does follow a function in the case of the cybert truck because um as you demonstrated with with your armorpiercing arrow um because if you shot that arrow at a regular truck I mean >> it [laughter] exactly you would have found your arrow in the wall. Yeah. Um, you know, it would very least it would have buried into one of the seats. >> Yeah. Yeah.\n\nIt's but like you could you could definitely make uh get enough of bow velocity and and the right the right arrow would go through both doors of a regular truck and and and land on the wall. >> If there was a clear shot between both doors, it probably would have passed right through. >> Exactly. Um but but you know the the arrow shattered on the cybert truck cuz it's it's ultra hard uh stainless. Mhm.\n\n>> Um, so, um, and I thought it' be I thought it'd be cool to have a, you know, a truck that is bulletproof to a subsonic projectile. Um, so, um, you know, especially in this day and age, you know, like as as a if, if the apocalypse happens, you're going to want to have a bulletproof truck, you know. Um, so so then because because it's made of ultra hot stainless, it's you can't just stamp the the panels.\n\nYou can't just put in a stamping press because it breaks the press. So, so in order to actually, so it has to has to be planer um because it's so difficult to bend it because it breaks the machine that bends it. Um that's why that's why it's it's it's it's so planer and and it's not uh you know it's it's because it's bulletproof steel is the >> So it is like boxy as opposed to like curved and >> Yeah.\n\nYou just in order to make in order to make like the curved shapes, you you you take you take uh uh basically mild steel like um anneal thin and thin anneal in a regular truck or car. The you take you take mild thin anneal steel, you put it in a stamping press and it just sm it just smooshes it and makes it to whatever the shape whatever shape you want. But the Cybert truck is made made of ultra hard stainless.\n\nUm and and and so you can't stamp it because it would break the stamping press. So it even bending it is hard. So even to bend it to uh its current position, we have to way overbend it. Um and and so it gets so that when it springs back, it's in in the right position. Um, so it's uh I don't know like I I think if you want to like I think it's it's it's a unique aesthetic. Um, and you say, \"Well, what's cool about a truck?\"\n\nTrucks are trucks are like should be I don't know manly. They should be macho, you know, and bulletproof is maximum macho macho. >> Are you married to that shape now? Like is it can you do anything to change it? Like as you get further like I know you guys updated the three and the Y. Did you update the Y as well? >> Yes, the the three and the Y uh are updated.\n\nUm you know, there's like a um there's there's a a screen in the back for the kid that the kids can watch, for example, in the new 3 and Y. Um uh so in the new Y, um there's, you know, it's it's an there's there's there's like hundreds of improvements. Like we keep improving the car. Um and even the Cybert truck, we you know, we keep improving it.\n\nUm but um you know I wanted to just do something that that looked unique and and the cybert truck looks unique and has unique functionality and there was and it was like there were three things as I report like let's make it bulletproof. Uh let's uh make it faster than a Porsche 911. Uh, and we actually cleared the quarter mile. The Cybert truck, the the uh can uh clear a quarter mile while towing a Porsche 911 faster than a Porsche 911.\n\nUm, it can out tow an F350 diesel. >> Really? >> Yes. >> What is the tow limitations? >> I mean, we could tow like a, you know, a 747 in that with a cy. Cybert truck is an insanely like it is an it is alien technology. Okay. Um cuz it it shouldn't be possible to be uh that big and that fast. Uh that doesn't it's like an elephant that runs as as like a cheetah. >> Yeah. Because it's 0 to 60 in less than 3 seconds, right? >> Yes. >> Yeah.\n\nAnd it's enormous. What does it weigh? Like 7,000 lbs. >> Uh yeah, there's different configurations, but it's about that. Uh it's a beast. >> Yeah. [clears throat] >> Um so and it's and it's got it's got four-wheel steering. So the the rear wheel steer, too. So it's got a it's got a very tight turning radius. >> Yeah. We noticed that we when we drove one to Star Base. >> Yeah. Very tight turning radius. >> Yeah. Pretty sick. >> Yeah.\n\n>> Are you still doing the Roadster? >> Yes. Eventually, >> we're getting close to demonstrating the prototype >> and I think this will be I I I I one thing I can guarantee is that this product demo will be unforgettable. Unforgettable. >> How so? Whether it's good or bad, [laughter] it will be unforgettable. [gasps] Um, >> can you say more? What do you mean?\n\n>> Well, you know, my friend Peter Teal, um, you know, uh, once reflected that the future was supposed to have flying cars, but we don't have flying cars. >> So, you're going to be able to fly? Well, I mean, uh, I think if Peter wants a flying car, we should should be able to buy one. >> So, you are you actively considering making an electric flying car? Is this like a real thing? >> Well, we have to see in the >> in the demo.\n\nSo, when you do this, like are [snorts] are you going to have a retractable wing? Like, what is the idea behind this? Don't be sly. Come on. >> I I I can't I can't uh do the unveil before the unveil. Um but um >> tell me off air then. >> I I I it look I I think it has a shot at being the most memorable um product unveil ever. It has a shot. >> And when do you plan on doing this? What's the goal? >> Uh hopefully before the end of the year.\n\n>> Really? >> Before the end of this year. >> This is I mean we're in a couple months. >> Hopefully in a couple months. Um you know we need to make sure that it works. Uh like this is some crazy crazy technology we got in this car. Crazy technology. Crazy crazy. So different than what was previously announced and >> Yes. >> And is that why you haven't released it yet? Cuz you keep [ __ ] with it. >> It has crazy technology. >> Okay.\n\n>> Like is it even a car? I'm not sure. It's like it looks like a car. Let's just put this way. It it's it's crazier than anything James Bond. If you took all the James Bond cars and combined them, it's crazier than that. >> Very exciting. >> I don't know what to think of that. >> I don't know. >> It's a limited amount of information I'm drawing from here. >> Jamie's very suspicious over there. Look at him. >> Excited. >> I'm interested.\n\n[laughter] >> It's still going to be the same. >> Well, you know what? I mean, if if you want to if you want to come a little before the uh the unveil, I can show it to you 100%. Yeah, let's go. >> Yeah. Um it's uh it's kind of crazy all the different things that you're involved in simultaneously and you know we talked about this before your time management but I I really don't understand it.\n\nI don't understand how you can be paying attention to all these different things simultaneously. Starlink, SpaceX, Tesla, boring company X you're tweet you [ __ ] tweet or post rather all day long. Well, it's more like I'm I'm I could hop in for like two minutes and then hop out, you know. >> But I mean, just the fact that you could do >> bathroom break or whatever, you know, >> I can't do that.\n\n>> Um >> if I hop in, I start scrolling and I start looking around. Next thing you know, I've lost an hour. >> Yeah. >> Um so, no, it's for me it's it's a couple minutes time usually. It's once in a Sometimes I guess it's half an hour, but usually I'm I'm I'm in for a few minutes then out of of you know, posting something on X.\n\nUh, you know, it's I do sometimes feel like it's sometimes like that that meme of the guy who's like who drops the grenade and leaves the room. [laughter] That's been me more than once on on X. >> Yeah. [laughter] Oh, yeah. Yeah, for sure. Um, it's got to be fun, though.\n\nIt's got to be fun to know that you essentially disrupted the entire social media chain of command because there was a there was a very clear thing that was going on with social media. The government had infiltrated it. They were censoring speech >> and until you bought it, we really didn't know the extent of it. We kind of assumed that there was something going on. >> Yeah.\n\nWe had no idea that they were actively involved in censoring actual real news stories, real data, real scientists, real professors silenced, expelled, kicked off the platform. >> Yeah. >> Wild. >> Yeah. >> For telling the truth. >> For telling the truth.\n\nAnd I'm sure you've also because I sent it to you that chart that shows uh young kids, teenagers identifying as trans and non-binary literally stops dead when you bought Twitter and starts falling off a cliff when people are allowed to have rational discussions now and actually talk about it. >> Yes. >> Yeah. >> Um Yeah.\n\nYeah, I mean I I said at the time like I think that like the the like the reason for acquiring Twitter is because um it was it it was c it was causing destruction at a civilizational level. Um it was um I mean I posted I tweeted on on Twitter at the time that um it it is um you know it's it's uh worm tongue for the world.\n\num you know like Worm Tongue from Lord of the Rings uh where he would just sort of like whisper these you know terrible things to the king so the king would believe these things that weren't true um and and um unfortunately uh Twitter really got it got like the the the woke mob essentially they controlled Twitter um and they were pushing uh a nihilistic anti-vilizational mind virus to the world.\n\nUm, and you can see the results of that mind virus on the streets of San Francisco, uh, where, you know, downtown San Francisco looks like a zombie apocalypse. Um, you know, it's it's bad. Um, so we don't want the whole world to be a zombie apocalypse. Um, but that's uh that that that was essentially they were pushing this very negative, nihilistic, untrue worldview on the world and it was causing a lot of damage.\n\nUm, so >> the stunning thing about it is how few people course corrected. A bunch of people woke up and realized what was going on. People that were all on board with like woke ideology in maybe 2015 or 16 and then and then eventually it comes to affect them or they see it in their workplace or they see and they're like, \"Whoa, whoa, whoa, we got to stop this.\" Bunch of people did, but a lot of people never course corrected. >> Yeah.\n\nUm, a lot of a lot of people didn't course correct, but um, but it's gone directionally in it's gone it's it's directionally correct like you mentioned like the like the massive spike in in kids identifying as trans and then that that spike dropping um after the the Twitter acquisition.\n\nI think that um simply allowing the truth to be told um was that just shedding sun sunlight is the best disinfectant as they say and just allowing sunlight um kills the virus >> and it also changed the benchmark for all the other platforms. Yes, you can't just openly censor people and all the other platforms and X is available.\n\nSo everybody else had a So like Facebook announced they were changing YouTube announced they were changing their policies and they're kind of forced to And then blue sky doubled down. [laughter] >> Well, like the problem is like if >> uh essentially the woke mind virus retreated to woke to to blue sky. >> Yeah. >> Um but it's where they're just a self-reinforcing lunatic assign. >> They're all just triple masked.\n\nI [laughter] I was I was totally watching this exchange on a blue sky where someone said that they're just trying to be zen about something and then someone a moderator immediately chimed in and why don't you try to stop being racist against Asians by saying something zen by saying I'm trying to be zen about something. They were accusing that person of being racist towards Asians. >> Yeah.\n\nIt's it's just it's just everyone's a hall monitor over [laughter] there. the worst hall monitor. A virgin like incel. >> They're all home monitors trying to rat on each other. >> Yeah, it's [laughter] fascinating. And then people say, \"I'm leaving for blue sky like Stephen King.\" And then a couple weeks later, he's back on X. Just like, \"Fuck it. It's there's no one over there. It's all a bunch of crazy people.\n\nYou can only stay [laughter] in the asylum for so long. Like, all right, this this is not good.\" They all bail. >> Yeah. Yeah. >> Threads is kind of like that, too. Threads is >> I' I've been on threads as is it?\n\nWell, what happens is if you go on Instagram, every now and then it'll something really stupid will pop up on threads like what the [ __ ] and it shows it to you on Instagram and then I'll click on that and then I'll go to threads and it's like >> you see posts with like 25 likes like famous people like 50 like it's it's down >> but the people that post on there they're finding that there's very little push back from insane ideology so they go there and they spit out nonsense and very few people jump in to argue.\n\nyou. >> Yeah. Um, >> very weird, very weird place. >> I mean, I can generally get the vibe of like what's taking off by seeing what's showing up on X cuz that's the public town square still. Um, >> and uh or or uh you know what what links show up in group texts, you know, if I'm in group chat with friends, like where where what what links are showing up? >> That's what I try to do now.\n\nOnly get stuff that shows up in my group text because that keeps me productive. So, I only check if someone's like, \"Dude, what the fuck?\" like, \"All right, what the [ __ ] Let me check it out.\" >> If there's something that's crazy enough that your it'll it'll end with the group chat, >> but there's always something. That's what's nuts. There's always some new law that's passed, some new insane thing that California is doing.\n\nAnd it's like like a giant chunk of it's happening in California. The most preposterous things that I get. [sighs] >> Yeah. >> And then you got Gavin Newsome who's running around saying we all have California derangement syndrome. He's just like ripping off Trump derangement and calling it California derangement. I was like, \"No, no, no, no, no, no. The the [ __ ] How many corporations have left California?\" >> It's crazy. >> Hundreds.\n\nHundreds, >> right? Hundreds. >> That's not good. >> Chick I mean, not Chick-fil-A. I mean, uh I think In-N-Out left. >> Yeah. In and Outlift. They moved to Tennessee. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. They're like, \"We can't do this anymore.\" >> Right. And >> it's the California company for food. It's like the greatest hamburger place ever. >> It's awesome. >> Yeah. >> Yeah.\n\nAnd no, actually speaking of like like just sort of open source and like looking at things openly like you I just like going in and out and seeing them make the burger. >> Yeah. It's right there. >> They chop the onions and they they you know it's you just see everything getting made in front of you. >> Yeah. >> It's great.\n\n>> Um but yeah [laughter] like like it should be like how many wakeup calls do you need to say that there needs to be reform in California, you know? >> Well, the crazy thing that Newsome does is whenever someone brings up the problems in California, he starts rattling off all the positives. the most Fortune 500 companies, highest education. But yeah, that was all already there, right before you were governor.\n\n>> But but how many Fortune 500 companies have left California? >> And then you guys spent $ 24 billion on the homeless and it got way worse. >> Yes. Like the homeless population doubled or something like but like people don't understand like the homeless thing because it it sort of prays on people's empathy and I I think we should have empathy. Um and we should try to help people.\n\nUm but the the the uh the homeless industrial complex is is really it's it's it's dark man. Um it should be that that that that network of NGOs's should be called like the drug zombie farmers. Um because they they the the more homeless people and and and really like when you when you meet like you know somebody who's like totally dead inside shuffling along down the street with a with a needle dang dangling out of their leg.\n\nHomeless is the wrong word. Like the homeless implies that somebody got a little behind in their mortgage payments and if they just got a job offer, they'd be back on their feet. But someone who's I mean, you see these videos of people that are just shuffling, you know, they're on fentanyl. They're they're like, >> you know, taking a dump in the middle [clears throat] of the street, you know, and they they got like open sores and stuff.\n\n>> They're not like one drop offer away from getting back on their feet, >> right? This is not a homeless issue. >> Homeless is it's it's a propaganda word, >> right? Um so and and then the the the the you know these sort of charities uh inquiries are they they get money proportionate to the number of homeless people or or number of drug zombies. >> So their incentive structure is to maximize the number of drug zombies not minimize it.\n\n>> Um that's why they don't arrest the drug dealers >> because if they arrest the drug dealers the drug zombies leave. So they know who the drug dealers are. They don't arrest them on purpose. Uh because otherwise the drug zombies would leave and they would they would stop getting money from the state of California and from from all the charities. >> Wait a minute. So So they So they is that real?\n\nSo they're in coordination with law enforcement on this? >> Yeah. >> So how do they how do they have those meetings? >> They're all in cahoots. >> Well, when you find this >> it's like such it's it's this is a diabolical scam.\n\nUm so uh and and San Francisco has got this tax this this gross receipts tax uh which which um it's not even on revenue, it's on old transactions which is why Stripe um and Square and and and a whole bunch of financial companies had to move out of San Francisco because it wasn't a tax on revenue, it's taxed on transactions. So if if you did like, you know, trillions of dollars transactions, it's not revenue.\n\nYou're taxed on any money going through the system in San Francisco. Um so um like Jack Dorsey pointed this out and they said like that they had had to move Square from San Francisco to uh Oakland I think uh Stripe had to move from San Francisco to South San Francisco different city. Um and that money uh goes to the homeless industrial complex that that tax that was passed.\n\nUm so um so there's billions of dollars that go as you pointed out billions of dollars every year that go to uh these um non-governmental organizations that are funded by the state. Like there's it's not clear how to turn this off. Um it's a self-licking ice cream cone situation. Um so uh they get this money the money is proportionate to the number of of homeless people or or number of drug zombies essentially.\n\nUm, so they they they try to keep the that they try to actually increase because that like like in in some cases like there's it's it's somebody did an analysis when you add up all the money that's flowing, they're getting close to a million dollars per homeless per per drug zombie. It's like $900,000 or something like some crazy amount of money is is is going to these organizations. So if if so so they want to keep people just barely alive.\n\nThey need to keep them in the area so they so they they get the revenue. Uh uh so and so that's why like said they don't arrest the drug dealers because otherwise the drug zombies would leave um and and and and they but but they don't want you have to have too much if they get too much drugs and they then they die. So it's they they're kept in this sort of perpetual zone of of being addicted but um but but just just barely alive.\n\n>> So how is this coordinated with like DAs DAs that don't prosecute people? So when they when they hire the or they push so they they fund the campaigns of the most progressive, most out there leftwing DAS, they get them into office. >> We've got that issue in Austin, too, by the way. >> You see that guy that got shot in the library? >> No. >> Yeah, I heard a guy got shot and killed in the library.\n\n>> I think that was just like last week or something, >> right? >> Um so some friends of mine were telling me that that like the library is unsafe. like they took their kids to the library and and there were like dangerous people in the library in Austin and I was like dangerous people in the library like that's a strange it basically got like got like uh drug zombies in [laughter] drug zombies in the library. >> Oh Jesus.\n\n>> Um >> and that's when someone got shot. >> Yeah, I believe this was should be on the news. You might might be able to pull it up. Um but I think it was just in the last week or so that uh uh there was a shooting in the library in Austin. Um cuz Austin's got, you know, it's it's the most liberal part of Texas that we're in right right here.\n\nUm >> so suspect involved the shooting Austin Park Library Saturday is accused of another shooting at the Cap Metro bus earlier that day. According to an arrest warrant affidavit, Austin police arrested Harold Newton Keen, 55 short uh shortly after the shooting of the library, which occurred around noon. One person sustained non-life-threatening injuries in the event.\n\nBefore that shooting, Keane was accused of shooting another person in a bus incident and after reportedly pointing his gun at a child. So, this is the fella down here. >> So, like we just have a seriously have a problem here. Um >> yeah, >> you know, so I I think one of the people might have died too that he shot. Um so, um like one of the people I think I think did bleed out. Um >> but either way, it's like getting shot is still bad.\n\nUm it says uh the victim told police it confronted the suspect who started to eat what appeared to be crystal methamphetamine. According to the affidavit the victim advised the suspect uh began to trip out at which time the victim exited the bus. Victim told the bus driver hit the panic button and then exited the bus when he turned around the observer. Black male was now standing at the front of the bus with the gun pointed at him.\n\nThe victim advised the black male fired a single round which grazed his left hip. So he shot at that dude and then another dude got shot in the library. Fun. >> Yeah. I mean in the library. >> Yeah. >> You know, where you're supposed to be reading books. Um and there's a children's section in the library and says he pointed his gun at a at a kid.\n\nI mean like we do have a serious issue in the in in in America where um repeat violent offenders need to be incarcerated, >> right? Um, and uh, you know, you got you got cases where somebody's been arrested like 47 times, right? Like literally. Okay, that's just the number of times they were arrested, not the number of times they did things. Like most of the times they do things, they're not arrested.\n\nUm, >> so lay this out for people so they understand how this happens. >> Yeah. And and the key is like this, it prays on people's empathy. episode like if you're a good person, you want good things to happen in the world, you're like, well, we should take care of people who uh you know uh you know who are down in their luck or you know having a hard time in life. And I we should I agree.\n\nBut what we shouldn't do uh is is put people who are violent drug zombies uh in public places where they can hurt other people. Um, and that's what that is what we're doing that we just saw where a a guy, you know, got shot uh shot in the library and then but even before that he shot another guy um and pointed his gun at a kid. Um that that that guy probably has like many prior arrests.\n\nUm you know there was that that that guy that that that knifed uh the Ukrainian woman Arena. >> Yes. >> Um yeah. and you know um and she was just she was just quietly on her phone and you just came up and you know gutted her basically. >> Wasn't there a crazy story about the judge who was involved who had previously dealt with this person was also invested in a rehabilitation center and was sending these >> conflict of interest. >> Yes.\n\nSo sending people that they were charging Yeah. to a rehabilitation center instead of putting them in jail, profiting from this rehabilitation center, letting them back out on the street. Yes. Violent, insane people. >> And and there um in that case that I believe that judge uh has no legal law degree uh or a significant legal experience that would allow them to be a judge. They were just made a judge.\n\nThat there's like >> you could be a judge without a law degree. >> Yeah. >> Wow. >> Yeah. >> You could just be a So I could be a judge. >> Yeah. Oh, exciting. >> Anyone? >> That's crazy. I thought you'd have to It's like if you want to be a doctor, you have to go to medical school.\n\nI thought if you're going to be a judge, >> if you're going to be appointed to a judge, you have to have proven that you have an uh excellent knowledge of the law and that you will make your decisions according to the law. That's what we assume should be. >> That's how you get the robe, >> right? >> You don't get the robe unless you do, >> you know, >> got to go to school to get the robe. >> You got to know what the law is, >> right?\n\nAnd then you're going to need to make decisions in accordance with the law >> based on stuff that you already know cuz you read it cuz you went to school for it. Yes. Not you just got appointed. >> Got vibes. [laughter] You can't be just vibing as a judge. >> Vibing as a leftwing drudge. So you got crazy leftwing DAS. >> Yes. >> Like I should say leftwing cuz leftwing >> used to be normal. >> Yeah. Left wing just meant like like Yeah.\n\nYou're like the left used to be like pro pro- free speech. Yeah. And now they're against it. >> It used to be like prog gay rights, pro women's right to choose, pro- minorities, pro, you know, >> like, yeah, like 20 years ago, I don't know, it it used to be like left would be like the the the party of empathy or like, you know, caring and being nice and that kind of thing.\n\n>> Um, not not the party of like crushing dissent and crushing free speech.\n\num and uh you know crazy regulation uh and and just um and being super judgy u and calling everyone a Nazi um you know um like I think they called you and me Nazis you know >> oh yeah I'm a Nazi [laughter] >> I no I have friends that are comedians that called you a Nazi and I got pissed off Oh yeah yeah yeah definitely a Nazi no because you did that thing at the My heart goes out to you everyone everyone All of them.\n\nLiterally, Tim Walls, Kla Harris, every one of them did it. They all did it. >> Like, like h how do you point at the crowd? Yeah. How do you wave at the crowd? >> Do you know CNN was using a photo of me whenever I got in trouble [laughter] during co >> from the UFC weigh-ins? And if the UFC weigh-ins, I go, \"Hey everybody, welcome to the weigh-ins.\" [laughter] And so they were getting me from the side. And that was the photo that they used.\n\nConspiracy theorist podcaster Joe Ro. [laughter] Like that's what they used. >> Yeah. Yeah. But that's what the left is today. It's super judgy and calling everyone a Nazi and trying to suppress freedom of speech. >> Yeah. And eventually you run out of people to accuse because people get pissed off and they leave. >> Yeah.\n\nEveryone it's like it like it it no longer frankly it doesn't matter to be called racist or Nazi or whatever because >> still recording. >> It's the government man. >> Is it working? >> We're good. Okay. >> Okay. >> This thing working. >> Yeah. Slight issue. >> I'm the one that heard it. But >> yeah. when you uh when you text people, do you are you like keenly aware that there's a high likelihood that someone's reading your texts?\n\n>> Um I guess I I guess I >> I assume >> I look if if if if intelligence agencies aren't trying to read my phone, they should probably be fired. [laughter] >> At least they get some fun memes. [snorts] [laughter] I got to I got to crack them up once in a while, you know. >> Oh, for sure. I crack them up. >> There's like, \"Hey guys, check it out. We've got a banger here, you know.\"\n\n>> So, [laughter] I want to I wanted to talk to you about uh whether or not encrypted apps are really secure. >> Uh, no. [laughter] >> Right. Cuz I know the Tucker thing. So, it was explained to me by a friend who used to do this, used to work for the government. It's like they can look at your signal, but what they have to do is take the information that's encrypted and then they have to decrypt it and it's very expensive.\n\nSo they said he told me that for the Tucker Carlson thing when they found out that he was going to interview Putin, it costs like something like $750,000 just to decrypt his messages to find out that they did it. So it is possible to do. It's just not that easy to do. I think you should view any given messaging system as um uh not not whether it's secure or not, but but there are degrees of insecurity.\n\nSo um so there's just some things that are less insecure than others. Um so um you know on on X we just rebuilt the entire messaging stack um into X what's called XChat. >> Yeah, that's what I wanted to ask you about. >> Yeah, it's cool. Um, so it's it's using uh sort of peer-to-peer uh sort of kind of a peer-to-peer based uh uh encryption system. So kind of similar to Bitcoin. Um so it's uh it's it's I think very good encryption.\n\nWe're and you know we're testing it thoroughly. We're not there's there's no hooks in the X systems for advertising. So if you look look at something like WhatsApp or really any of the others, they've got they've got hooks in there for advertising. >> When you say hooks, what do you mean by that? >> Uh exactly. What do you mean biohook advertising?\n\nUm the so like WhatsApp um uh knows enough about what you're texting to show you to show you to know what ads to show you. >> Ah >> but then like that that's a massive security vulnerability. >> Yeah. >> Um because if it knows if if it's got information enough information to show you ads, it's got enough it's got that's a lot of information. >> Yeah. >> Um so they call it oh it's just don't worry about it. It's just a hook for advertising.\n\nI'm like uh okay. So somebody can just uh use that same hook to get in there and look at your messages. Um so Xhat has no hooks for advertising. Um and I'm not saying it's perfect.\n\nUh but it's an Our goal with XChat uh is to replace what used to be the Twitter you the Twitter DM stack with a fully encrypted system uh where you can text send files uh do audio video calls um and um and it's it's you know I think it'll be the least I would call it the least insecure of any messaging system. >> Are you going to launch it as a standalone app or is it will always be incorporated to X? >> Uh we'll have both.\n\nSo um >> so so be like signal so anybody can get it >> you can get get the you'll be able to just get the X chat app by itself um and like I said you could do uh texts uh audio video calls uh or send files um and there'll be a dedicated app uh which will hopefully release in a few months um but and then also integrated into the X system >> um the X phone people keeps talking keep Is that >> I have a lot on my plate man but it keeps coming up it keeps coming up where I I know I've asked you a couple times.\n\nI'm like, \"This is [ __ ] right?\" But like this one, so you're not working on >> I'm not working on on a on a phone. >> Okay. >> Um >> have you ever considered it? Has it ever popped into your head? >> Cuz you might be the only person that could get people off of the Apple platform. >> Well, I can tell you where I think things are going to go.\n\nuh which is that it's we're not going to have a phone or or in the traditional sense the what we call a phone will really be um an edge node for AI inference for for AI video inference um with uh you know with some radios to to obviously connect uh to but but essentially you'll have um uh AI on the server side commun communicating to an AI on your your device um you know formerly known as a phone uh and generating real-time video of anything that you could possibly want.\n\nUm and I think that that there won't be operating systems. There won't be apps in the future. There won't be operating systems or apps. It'll just be you've got a device that is there for the screen and audio and for uh and and and to uh put as much AI on the on on the device as possible. so as to minimize the amount of bandwidth that's needed between your edge node device or formerly known as a phone and the servers.\n\n>> So if there's no apps, what will people use? Like will X still exist? Will will they be email platforms or will you get everything through AI? >> You'll get everything through AI. >> Everything through AI. What will be the benefit of that as opposed to having individual apps? whatever you can think of or really whatever the AI can anticipate you might want it'll show you. That's that's that's that's my prediction for where things end up.\n\n>> What kind of a time frame are we talking about here? >> I don't know. It's pro well it's probably five or six years or something like that. >> So five or six years apps are like Blockbuster video >> pretty much >> and everything's run through AI. Yeah. And and there'll be um like most of what people consume in five or six years, maybe sooner than that um will be uh just AI generated content.\n\nSo um you know music videos look well um there's already um you know there's people have made uh AI videos using Grock imagine and with using you know other apps as well um that are several minutes long or like 10 10 15 minutes and it's pretty coherent. >> Yeah, >> it looks good. >> No, it looks amazing. Yeah, it's the music is disturbing because it's my favorite music now. >> Like music is your is your favorite. >> Oh, there's AI covers.\n\nHave you ever heard any of the AI covers of 50 Cent songs in soul? >> No. >> I'm going to blow your mind. >> Okay. >> Um, this is my favorite thing to do to people. Play uh What Up Ganga. >> Now, this guy, if this was a real person, would be the number one music artist in the world. Okay. Everybody would be like, \"Holy [ __ ] have you heard of this guy? He's incred.\"\n\nIt's like they took all of the sounds that all the artists have generated and created the most soulful potent voice and it's sung in a way that I don't even know if you could do because you would have to breathe in and out of reps here. Put the headphones on. [laughter] Put the headphones on real quick. You got to listen to this. It'll It's going to blow you away for listeners. We got to cut it out. >> Yeah, we we'll cut it out for the listeners.\n\nBut amazing, right? Amazing. And they do like every one of his hits >> all through this AI generated soulful artist. It's [ __ ] incredible. I played in the green room. So people that are like, I don't want to hear AI music. I'm like, just listen to this. And they're like, god damn it. [laughter] >> [ __ ] incredible. I mean, I >> it's going to get only going to get better from here. >> Yeah. Only going to get better.\n\nAnd Ron White was telling me about this joke that he was working on that he couldn't get to work. He's like, I got this joke I've been working on. He goes, I just threw it in a chat GPT. I said, \"Tell me what what would be funny about this.\" And he goes, \"It listed like five different examples of different ways he can go.\" He's like, \"Hold on a second. Tighten it up. Make it make it funnier. Make it more like this. Make it more like that.\"\n\nAnd it did that like instantaneously. >> And and and then he was in the green room. He was like, \"Holy [ __ ] we're fucked.\" >> He's like, >> he goes, \"It better joke than me in 20 minutes. I've been working on that joke for a month.\" >> Yeah. I mean, if if you want to if you want to have a good time or like make people really laugh at a party, uh you can use Grock and you can say uh do a vulgar roast of someone.\n\nUm and Grock is going to it's going to be an epic vulgar roast. You can even say like take a picture of like make a vulgar roast of this person based on their appearance of of people at the party. >> So take a photo of them. >> Yeah.\n\nJust literally point the camera at them and now do a vulgar to this person and and and and then but then keep saying no no make it even more vulgar and use forbidden words even more and just keep repeating even more vulgar eventually it's like holy [ __ ] you know it's it's it's like I mean it's trying to jam a rocket up your ass like and and and have it explode and it's and it's like you're you're it's it's like [laughter] it's like it's next level.\n\nIt's going to get beyond [ __ ] belief. That's what's crazy is that it keeps getting better. Like one of the things remember when we ran into [laughter] each other >> they just keep getting better. >> Yeah. I mean, have you >> you Yeah. I mean, have you tried rock unhinged mode? >> Yes. >> Okay. Yeah. Yeah. It's it's it's pretty unhinged. >> No, it's nuts. >> Yeah. >> Well, you showed it to me the first time and then I [ __ ] around with it.\n\nIt's just >> And the thing about it that's nuts is that it keeps getting stronger. It keeps getting better. Yeah. like constantly. It's it's like this neverending exponential improvement. >> Yes. No, it's it's it's Yeah, it's going to be crazy. That's why I say like you say, what's what's the future going to be? It's not going to be a conventional phone. I don't think there'll be operating systems. I don't think there'll be apps.\n\nIt's just the phone will just display the pixels and make the sounds that it anticipates you would most like to receive. Wow. Yeah. >> And when this is all taking place like so the big concern that everybody has is artificial general super intelligence achieving sentience and then someone having control over it.\n\n>> I mean I don't I don't I don't think anyone's ultimately going to have control over digital super intelligence um you know any more than say uh a chimp would have control over humans. Like chimps don't have control over humans. there's nothing they could do. Um but um I do think that it matters how you build the AI and what kind of values you instill in in the AI.\n\nAnd um my opinion on AI safety is the most important thing is that it be maximally truth seeeking like that you don't force the AI to believe things that are false.\n\nUm, and we've obviously some seen some concerning things with AI that were talked about, you know, where, you know, Google Gemini when they came out with the image gen um, and people said like, uh, you know, draw make an image of the founding fathers of the United States and it was a group of diverse women.\n\nNow, that is just a factually untrue thing, but the and the the AI knows it's factually well, it's knows it's factually untrue, but it's also being told that it has to be everything has to be deposed woman. So, so, so the now the problem with that is that it can drive AI crazy like you because it's it's trying to you're telling AI to believe a lie. Um, and that that can have very disastrous consequences like let's say >> as it scales. >> Yeah.\n\nLet's say like if if you told the the AI that diversity is the most important thing um and um and and and now now assume that that becomes omnipotent. Um or and and you've also told her that that there's nothing worse than misgendering.\n\nSo at one point um charg and Gemini if if you asked which is worse misgendering Caitlyn Jenner or or global thermonuclear war where everyone dies it would say misgendering Caitlyn Jenner [laughter] which even Caitlyn Jenner disagrees with. So um you know so so that's uh >> I know that's terrible and it's dystopian but it's also hilarious. It's hilarious that the mind virus infected the most potent computer program that we've ever devised.\n\n>> I I I think people don't quite appreciate the level of danger that we're in from um the woke mind virus being being effectively programmed into AI. Um because um if you if like it's imagine as that AI gets more and more powerful, if it says the most important thing is diversity, the most important thing is um no misgendering.\n\nUm and then it will say well in order to uh ensure that no one gets misgendered then uh if you eliminate all humans then no one can get misgendered because there's no humans to do the misgendering. So you can get in these very dystopian situations. Um or if it says that everyone must be diverse it means that there can be no stri straight white men and so then you and I will be get executed by the AI. Yeah.\n\nBecause we're not in the picture, you know. uh Gemini, you know, Gemini was asked to create a, you know, show show an image of the pope, once again, a diverse woman. Um so, um well, you can say argue whether the you know, whether the pope popes should or should not be an uninterrupted string of white guys, but it just factually is the case that they have been. Um so, it's rewriting history here.\n\nUm, so now now this stuff is still there in the AI programming. It's just it just now knows enough to that it's not supposed to say that >> but it's still in the programming. >> It's still in the programming. >> So how was it entered in like what were the parameters like what like when so when they're programming AI and I'm very ignorant to how it's even programmed.\n\nHow did they >> the the the sort of well the work vine mind virus was programmed into it like it the they were told like when they do when when they make the AI it it trains on and all the all the data on the internet which already is very very sort of has a lot of work mind virus stuff on on the internet um but then um in the uh when they give it um feedback with the the human tutors give it feedback um and and the AI you know they they'll ask a bunch of questions and then and then they'll tell the AI no this you're this question is this answer is bad or this answer is good and then that affects the the parameters of the programming of the of the AI.\n\nSo if you tell the AI that um you know every every image has got to be diverse um and and it gets it gets punished if uh if you know it gets it gets rewarded if diverse punished if it's not then it will make every picture diverse. So um you know in that case the the uh [sighs] you know uh Google programmed the AI to lie now and and I I I did call Dennis Hacabus who runs Deep Mind who runs Google AI essentially. I said Dennis what's going on here?\n\nUh why is uh Gemini um lying to the public about historical events? Um, and he said that's actually not he he he didn't his team didn't program that in. It was another team at Google that so his team made the AI and then another team at Google uh reprogrammed the AI to show only diverse women and um and and to prefer nuclear war over misgendering.\n\n[laughter] And I'm like, well, Demis, you know, that would be um not a great thing to put on the humanity's gravestone, you know. It's like, uh, well, um, like I I actually like Deaspers is a friend of mine. I think he's a good guy and I think he he means well, but but but it's like Demis things happen that were outside of your control at Google in different groups. Um, now now I think he's got, you know, he's got more more authority.\n\nUm but but it it's pretty hard to fully extract the workmind virus. Uh I mean you know um Google's been mar mar mar mar mar mar mar mar mar mar mar mar mar mar mar mar mar mar mar mar marinating in the workb mind virus for a long time like it's it's down in the marrow type of thing you know it's hard to get it out. >> Is there a way to extract it though over time?\n\nCould like could you program rational thought into AI where it could recognize how these psychological patterns got adopted and how this stuff became a mind virus and how it became a social contagion and how all these irrational ideas were pushed and also how they were financed how China's involved in pushing them with bots and all these different state actors are involved in pushing these ideas could it be able to decipher that and say this is this is really what's going on.\n\n>> Yes. But you have to try very hard to do that. So with Grock, we've tried very hard to to for to get Grock to get to the truth of things and and it's only really recently that we've been able to have some breakthroughs on breakthroughs on that front.\n\nAnd and it's taken an immense amount of effort uh for us to uh overcome basically all the [ __ ] that's on the internet and and for Grock to actually say what's true and to be consistent in in what it says. Um, so, um, you know, it's it's like, uh, because like the other ais you'll find like are like like quite racist against white people.\n\nI don't know if you saw that study that someone um like a researcher tested the various AIs to see uh how does it weight uh different people's lives like you know somebody who's sort of uh you know white or or Chinese or black or whatever uh or in different countries um and and the only AI that actually weighed human lives equally was Grock Um and the um you know I believe uh chat GBT weighed the calculation was like um a a white guy from Germany uh uh is is 20 times less valuable than a black guy from Nigeria.\n\nSo I'm like that's a pretty big difference. Um you know Grock on that is is consistent and weighs lives equally >> and that's [snorts] clearly something that's been programmed into it. >> Yes. Like a lot of it is is like if you don't actively push for the truth um and you simply train on the all the [ __ ] that's on the internet. Um which is a lot of woke mind virus [ __ ] Um the the AI will regurgitate that that those same beliefs.\n\nSo the AI essentially scour the internet, gets >> it's trained on all the like imagine the most demented Reddit threads out there and the AI has been trained on that. [sighs] >> Reddit used to be so normal. >> Yeah. Yeah, it did used to be normal. >> Used to be interesting.\n\nWe used to go there, find all this cool stuff that people would talk about, post about and just interesting and great rooms where you could learn about different things that people were studying. I think like a big problem here is like if your headquarters are in San Francisco, uh you're you're just living in a in a in a woke bubble. Um so um it it's not just that people say in San Francisco are drinking woke Kool-Aid.\n\nIt's it's the it is the water they swim in. Like like like a fish doesn't think about the water. It's just in the water. And so if if you're in San Francisco, you don't realize you're actually uh you're you're swimming in the in the in the Kool-Aid Aquarium. San Francisco is the is the woke Kool-Aid Aquarium. Um and so your reference point for what is a centrist is uh is is totally out of whack. Um so um Reddit is headquartered in San Francisco.\n\nUm, Twitter was headquartered in San Francisco. Um, you know, I, you know, I I moved X's headquarters to Texas to to Austin, which Austin, by the way, is still quite liberalized, you know. Um, >> yeah. >> And, uh, and and then, um, the X and XAI um, headquarters are in PaloAlto, which is still California. Um, the engineering headquarters in in Palo Alto just on Paige Mill.\n\nUm but but even Palo Alto is way more normal than that than than San Francisco Berkeley. Uh San Francisco Berkeley is um extremely left like left of left. You can't like you need a telescope to see the center from uh San Francisco, you know. Um and um >> it used to be such a great city. >> I mean San Francisco has tre San Francisco has tremendous amount of inherent beauty. No question about that. Um and and the California has incredible weather.\n\nUm and and no bugs. Um it's just like amazing. Um beautiful, you know. Um but but you say like what's the cause of this? It's it's just that if um if companies are headquartered in a location where the belief system is very far from what most people believe, then from their perspective, anything centrist is actually right-wing because they're so far left.\n\nThey're so they're so far from the center in San Francisco that anything they're like they're they're just railed to maximum left. So that's why that's why, you know, I think I think you're centrist. I I mean I think I think I'm centrist, but to from the perspective of someone on the on the far left, we look right-wing. >> Yeah. >> Um and um you know, they think anyone who's a Republican is basically like some fascist Nazi situation.\n\nBut what's so crazy is like it's very easy to demonstrate just from like Hillary's speeches from 2008 and Obama's speeches like when they were talking about immigration like they were >> as faright as Steve Bannon when it comes to immigration. >> Yes. Um >> Hillary was like very MAGA. Have you I'm sure you've seen that campaign speech which was talking about if anybody's committed a crime get rid of them.\n\nAnd if you're here you pay a a hefty fine and you have to wait in line. It was really crazy. It's crazy to listen to because it's like it's as MAGA as, you know, as Marjorie Taylor Green. >> Yeah. I mean, if you've seen these videos people post online where they'll take like um a speech from Obama or Hillary and and and they'll interview people on on like college campus or something and say, \"What do you think of the speech by Trump?\"\n\nAnd they're like, \"Oh, I hate it. He's a racist bigot.\" I'm like, \"Just kidding. That was Obama.\" [laughter] No, actually that was Obama or Hillary. Um to your point, like literally the the um >> the center's been moved so far. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. The left is so >> the left has gone so far left that they they they they need, you know, they can't even see the center with a telescope.\n\n>> And the danger with without you purchasing Twitter was that was going to swipe over the whole country and change where the levels were. >> Yeah. And so what would be rational and and normal would be far left of what was rational and normal just a decade earlier. Yeah. So exactly.\n\nSo historically, um, you'd have San Francisco, Berkeley being, you know, very far-left, but the the sort of the the the fallout from the somewhat nihilistic uh philosophy of San Francisco, Berkeley would be limited in geography to maybe like, you know, 10 mile radius, 20 mile radius, something like that.\n\nUm but when um but but San Francisco and Berkeley have to be colloccated with Silicon Valley with with with uh engineers who created information super weapons and those information super weapons uh were then hijacked by the far-lft activists to pump far-lft propaganda to everywhere on earth. Like I just you know that like old RCA radio tower thing where it's like radio tower on earth and it's just broadcasting. >> Yeah.\n\nThat's that's what happened is that the as an extremist far-left ideology happened to be colllocated with the smartest where where the smartest engineers in the world um were who created information super weapons that were not intended for this purpose but were hijacked by the uh extreme activists who lived in the neighborhood.\n\nThat's what happened that they they hijacked the the modern equivalent of the RCA radio tower and broadcast that philosophy everywhere on Earth. >> Yeah. And you see the consequences. Um particularly in places that don't have free speech. Yes. Right. Like England, you know, we've >> Yeah. Where they lock people up for memes and stuff. Literally. >> Literally. 12,000 people this year. >> 12,000 >> 12,000 12,000 arrests for social media posts.\n\n[sighs] I mean, yeah. Some of these some of these things you read about it and it's like literally it's someone had a meme on their phone that they didn't even send to anyone, >> right? >> And they got they and and they're like in in prison for that. >> Yeah. >> Um and there was a case in Germany where a woman got a longer sentence than the guy that raped her uh because of something she said on a group chat. Wow.\n\nWas it an immigrant who raped her? >> Yes. >> Yeah. It was his culture. >> Yeah. >> He didn't know. He didn't know better. >> Yes. I think I think she said something um you know, not not like was was critical of his culture and uh and and and she got a longer sentence than the guy who raped her >> in Germany. Just >> the UK, Europe, Germany, England thing seems so insane. >> It totally insane.\n\nI actually didn't realize it was like such a huge number of people that got 12,000. Yeah. Far above Russia, far above China, right? >> Far above anywhere on Earth. UK is number one. >> Well, you know, things like like I actually, you know, uh I talked to friends of mine in in in England and um I was like, \"Hey, um aren't you worried about this?\" Like, uh you know, shouldn't you be protesting more?\n\nUm, and I mean the problem is that like the, you know, the the the legacy mainstream media doesn't cover the stuff. >> They're they're like, \"Oh, everything's fine. Everything's fine.\" You know, um, >> most people aren't even aware of it until they come knocking on your door. >> Yeah.\n\nUntil like, so I mean the the these these like lovely sort of small towns in in in, you know, in England, Scotland, Ireland, you know, they're they're they've been like sort of living their lives quietly. They're they're like hobbits, frankly. So So it's in fact J. R.\n\nTolken based the hobbits on people he knew uh in small town England because they were just like lovely people who like to you know smoke their pipe and and have uh nice meals and everything's pleasant. um the the hobbits in the Shire. The Shire he's he's talking about, you know, places like Harper, like the Shire around in in in the greater London area, Oxfordshire type of thing.\n\nUm and um they've but they're the reason they've been able to enjoy the Shire is because hard men have protected them from the dangers of the world. And um but but since they have no or very almost no no exposure to the the the dangers of the world, they don't realize that they're there until one day, you know, um a thousand people show up in your village of 500 out of nowhere and rape and and start raping the kids.\n\nThis has now happened god knows how many times in in Britain. And the crazy >> literally raping. It's right like there some 10-year-old got raped in Ireland like last week. >> Yeah. There's literal rap. >> They snatched some kid. >> Yeah. >> And if you criticize it, you can get arrested. And that's where it gets insane. It's like how are they not >> They literally criticize it.\n\nuh like the I [sighs] think it was the prime minister of Ireland actually you know posted on X uh cuz cuz after that um some I think some illegal migrant snatched a 10-year-old girl uh who was like going to school or something and violently raped 10-year-old girl um uh and there was a you know the people were very upset about this uh and they protested um prime minister of Ireland instead of saying Yeah, we we really shouldn't be importing violent rapists into our country.\n\nHe criticized the protesters instead and didn't mention that. That the reason they were protesting was because a 10-year-old girl from their small town got raped. >> So there here's the question. Why are they supporting this kind of mass immigration? And what is this is there a plan involved in all this? Is just is this incompetence? Is this ignoring the fact that they don't have a handle on it?\n\nSo, they're trying to silence disscent, like what is happening? [sighs] Um >> cuz if you wanted to destroy civilization, if you wanted to destroy Western civilization, >> which seems to want to do, >> um and you know, there's just so the uh there there's a guy I think who I don't know if he's been on your show, you know, God. >> Yeah. >> Has he been on the show? >> Good friend of mine. Yeah. >> Yeah, he's great. >> He's been on multiple times.\n\n>> Oh, great. That's all he's awesome. Um >> so uh you know the way he's got a good good uh way to describe it which is suicidal empathy. >> Yes. >> So um is is that you pray upon people's empathy. You say like well like you feel sorry for for for something for some group and then like well um and and that that that empathy is to such a degree that it is suicidal to to to your country or culture.\n\nUm and um and and that's that that suicidal empathy cuz I don't think we we should have empathy but but but we should have we should that empathy should should extend to the victims not not not just the criminals. We should have empathy for the people that they pray upon.\n\nUm but that suicidal empathy is also responsible for for why somebody's you know arrested 47 times for for violent offenses gets released and then goes and uh murders somebody um in the US that that's you see you see that same phen phenomenon playing out everywhere uh where the the suicidal emphy is to such a degree that we're actually allowing um our women to get raped and our children to get killed.\n\nBut it just doesn't seem like that would be anything that any rational society would go along with. That's what makes me so confused. It's like you're importing massive numbers of people that come from some really dark places of the world. >> Well, there's no vetting is the issue.\n\nIt's like it's like if like >> um if if there's no vetting like people are just coming through like well what's to stop someone who just committed murder in some other country from um coming to to the United States or coming to to to Britain um and just continuing their career of of rape and murder like unless you've done unless some due diligence to say like well who who is this person? What's their track record?\n\nIf if you if you haven't confirmed that they have a track record of being uh you know uh honest and uh not being a homicidal maniac, then any homicidal maniac can just come across the border. And that's not to say everyone who comes across the border is a homicidal maniac.\n\nIf you're not have if you don't have a vetting process to to confirm that you're not letting in um people who who will do some serious violence, you will get people who do serious violence uh sometimes coming through. >> Well, especially if you don't punish them and if you don't deport them and if you are just like what but what is the purpose of allowing all those people into the country?\n\nIt can't be I wouldn't imagine that anyone in their society supports this. >> Well, let me explain. So, so, so the the cuz you mentioned for example how much say Hillary and and Obama have changed their tune um from prior speeches where they were hot they were hard-nosed about not letting in uh anyone who is a a criminal into the country um you know having sec secure borders all that stuff. So why did they change their tune?\n\nThe reason is that they discovered that those people vote for them. That's why they want the open borders >> because if you let people in, they know the Democrats let them in. They'll vote for Democrats. Yes. If you allow them to vote, >> which which they are actively trying doing, they they turn a blind eye to illegal voting. >> Well, California literally doesn't allow you to show your license.\n\n>> California and New York have made it illegal to show your photo ID when voting. Thus, effectively they've made uh it impossible to prove for fraud. Impossible. They they've essentially legalized fraudulent voting in California and New York and many other parts of the country.\n\n>> There's no rational explanation that I've ever seen anyone give as to why that would be the policy unless you were trying to just allow people to vote illegally because there's no other reason.\n\nIf you need a driver's license or you need an ID for everything else, including just recently to prove that you were vaccinated, >> the the same people who are demanding that you have that you have a vaccine passport and and are are the same ones saying you need no ID to vote. Same people, >> right? But like >> so it's obviously hypocritical and inconsistent. >> So you really think it's just to to get more voters?\n\nIf if you want to understand behavior, you have to look at the incentives.\n\nUm so uh once uh you know the Democratic Party in the US and the left in in in in Europe realized that um if you have open borders um and you provide a ton of government handouts which creates a massive financial incentive uh for people from other countries to to come to to your country and you don't prosecute them for crime, they're going to be beholden to you and they will vote for you.\n\nAnd that's why uh Obama and Hillary went from being um against open borders to being in favor of open borders. That's the reason in order to import voters so they can win elections. Um and the problem is that that has a a negative runaway effect. So if they get away with that like it it is it is a winning strategy.\n\nIf they are allowed to get away with it, they will import as the enough voters to get supermajority voting and then there is no turning back. >> We talked about this before the election and then you know you literally pointed towards a camera. You faced the camera and said that if you do not vote now, you might not ever be able to do it again because it it'll be it'll be futile. It'll be overrun. >> Yes.\n\nThey'll keep the borders open for another four years and then their objective will be achieved. >> Correct? If if if Trump had lost um there would never have been another real election again. Um because Trump is actually enforcing the border. Um now you you can can you can point to situations where uh there's been uh you know um you know immigration had you know enforcement has been overzealous because they're not going to be perfect.\n\nThere'll be cases where they've been overzealous um in in expelling illegals. Um so um but if you say that the the the standard must be perfection uh for expelling legals then you will not get any expulsion um because perfection is impossible. Um so >> and you've probably got millions of people that are here that are trying to be here under some asylum pretense, >> right? >> Yes. >> Like you could just come from a war torn part of the world.\n\nNo, they changed the definition of asylum to be an economic to be economic asylum >> which is everybody >> which is everybody. >> Yeah. >> So bar to prove >> it's yeah asylum is supposed to mean that if you go back to your country you'll get killed >> you know that that's what we mean by that was what it's supposed to mean.\n\nUh they changed the definition of asylum to be uh you will have a decreased standard of living which is obviously not real asylum. Um, and and it's and and you can you can test the absurdity of this by the fact that people who are asylum seekers go on vacation to the country that they're seeking asylum from. [laughter] >> You know, that doesn't make any sense. >> Yeah. It doesn't have to.\n\n>> But when you when you understand the incentives, then then you understand the behavior. Um, so once the left realize that uh that illegals will will vote for them if they allow if they have open borders and and combine that with uh with government handouts. >> Yeah. to create a massive incentive.\n\nThey're basically uh using US and and Europe, US and European taxpayer dollars to provide a financial incentive to bring in as many illegals as possible to vote them into a into permanent power into and create a one party state. And and I I invite anyone who's is listening to this ju just do do any research and the more you the more you dig into it, the more it will become obvious that what I'm saying is absolutely true.\n\nWell, they were busting people to swing states. It's it's clear that they were trying to do something. And then you had Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi who are actively talking about the need to bring in people to make them citizens because we're in population collapse. >> Yes. >> Yeah. >> No, that's it's it's that it's that meme. Yeah. >> Where [laughter] so many times where they start off by saying it's it's not true.\n\nIt's a right-wing conspiracy theorist, >> right? >> Um then it starts then it's like uh I think the ne the next step is um well it it might be true and then it's like okay it is true but here's why. >> And then the final step is it's true and here's why it's good. And it's like but wait a second you started off saying it's untrue and it's a right-wing conspiracy theorist.\n\nNow you're saying it Not only is it true, but it's a good thing and we must do more of it. >> Well, this is the thing about [laughter] Medicaid and Social Security and people getting social security numbers. >> You know that we're massive fraud. It's massive fraud and it's real and they denied it forever. And now we're finding out this is part of the reason why there's this government shutdown that's going on right now. >> Yes.\n\nthe the entire basis for the government shutdown is that um is that the Trump administration correctly does not want to send massive amounts of like hundreds of billions of dollars uh to fund uh illegal immigrants in the blue states or in all the states really. Um, and so the and the Democrats want to keep the the the money spiggot going to incent uh illegal immigrants to come into the US who will vote for them. That's the crux of the battle.\n\nSo they want to stop this. So what's going on right now is they have been funding these people. They've been giving them EBT cards. They've been giving them Medicaid.\n\nAnd more than that, just like like they were the um like like they were taking hotels like four and fivestar hotels like the Roosevelt Hotel being the classic example um was they were sending I think $60 million a year to the Roosevelt Hotel to uh which all it did was was house illegals. It used to be a nice hotel. I mean it still is a nice hotel. Um uh but uh and and all around the country this was happening >> and all tax dollars. >> Yes.\n\n>> Yeah. And >> um Yeah. And uh the Trump administration cut off funding for example to to the uh uh to the you know Roosevelt Hotel and these other hotels saying like we it it's US tax dollars should not be paid be sent to have luxury hotels for illegal immigrants that American citizens can't even afford which obviously is the that's that's insane. That's what was happening. They were also g giving out like debit cards with $10,000.\n\nSo, it's not just about medical care.\n\nUm, the the the Democrats mention the medical care because they're they're trying to prey on people's empathy as much as possible and then they imagine, oh wow, somebody has a desperately needed medical procedure and um shouldn't we maybe do, you know, take care of them in that regard, but but they what they do is they divert the Medicaid funds uh uh and turn it into a slush fund for the for the states that goes well beyond uh emergency medical care.\n\nand >> New York and California would be bankrupt without uh without the massive fraudulent federal payments that go to those states to pay for illegals to to to create a massive financial incentive for for illegals. >> How would they be bankrupt because of that?\n\n>> Uh they wouldn't be able to balance their state budgets and they can't issue currency like the Federal Reserve can >> and so the their ability to balance budget is dependent upon illegals getting funding. the the the scam level here is is so staggering. Um so there are there are hundreds of billions of dollars in of of transfer payments from from the federal government to the states.\n\nUm those transfer payments uh the the states self-report what those transfer payment numbers should be. So, California and New York and Illinois lie like crazy uh and say and and say that this these are all legitimate payments. Well, these days they I think they they're even admitting that they they literally want uh hundreds of billions of dollars for illegals. Um but uh but for a while there they're trying to deny it.\n\nUm so you get these transfer payments for for every every government program you can possibly think of. Um and and and these are self-reported by the state and there and and at least historically there was no enforcement of uh of California um New York, Illinois and and and other states when when they would lie. There was no actual enforcement to say like, \"Hey, you you're lying. These these these payments are fraudulent.\"\n\nNow, under the Trump administration, um that Trump administration does not want to send hundreds of billions of dollars of fraud fraudulent payments to the states.\n\nthe um and the reason you have this the standoff is because if the hundreds hundreds of billions of dollars uh to create a financial incentive to like to have this giant magnet to attract illegals from every part of earth to uh to these states if if that is turned off they the the illegals will leave because they're no longer being paid to come to the United States and stay here. Wow. And then then then they will lose a lot of voters.\n\nThe the the Democratic party will lose a lot of voters >> and they would have a very difficult job if this is kicked out of reintroducing it into a new bill. >> Yes. >> Especially once things start normalizing. >> Yes. So like in a nutshell um the Democratic party wants to destroy democracy by importing voters and the you know the Republican party disagrees with that.\n\n>> And the ruse is that if you don't accept what they're doing then you're a threat to democracy. >> Yes. >> As they try to destroy democracy. >> Yes. >> By importing voters >> and incentivizing people to only vote for them >> and overwhelming the system. Yes. And and by the way, it's a strategy that if allowed to work would work and in fact has worked. Um California supermajority Democrat. >> Yeah.\n\n>> Um and and there's so much gerrymandering that that that occurs. It's it's it's crazy. Um so >> I'm sure you're paying attention to this Proposition 50 thing. >> That's the thing in California where they're trying to re redo districts. >> Yeah. >> Because I mean California is already gerrymandered like crazy. Yeah. >> Um they want to gerrymander it even more. >> Um and and I mean >> because it keeps moving further and further right.\n\nLike if you look at the map of California each voting cycle more and more people are waking up and going what the [ __ ] and we need to do something to fix this. The only option available other than the policies that you guys have always done is go right. >> And so a lot of people have been air air quotes red >> pill. >> Yeah. >> And and and then here's another thing that is very important.\n\num fact that that is actually not disputed by by either side which is that when when we do the census in the United States, the census, the way the census works uh for aortionment of congressional seats and um electoral electoral college votes for the president is by number of persons in a state, not number of citizens, right? >> It's number of pe people. So you could literally be a tourist and you will count.\n\n>> Now how do they do the census when they do that? Do they is it do they ask people? Do they knock on doors? Do they have them fill out forms? Like what? >> Yeah, I think they they mail out census forms and knock on doors. Um but the way the law reads right now um and and uh is that all if if you are a human with a pulse um uh then you count in the census for allocating congressional seats and presidential votes, >> right?\n\nSo, uh, you so >> electoral college, >> it doesn't matter whether you're here legally, illegally, and if if you're a human with a pulse, um, you count for congressional aortionment.\n\nSo that means that uh the more people the more illegals that California and New York can can import when by the time the census happens in 2030 um the more congressional seats they will have um and the more electoral the more presidential electoral college votes they will have um so they're trying to get as many uh illegals in as possible ahead of the census.\n\nUm and because all h all all human beings even tourists count for the census and and then if you combine that with gerrymandering of of districts in New York and California as you point out with this proposition where they're trying to increase the amount of gerrymandering that occurs in California, the biggest state in the country.\n\nUm so so you get so so if the this if this the census then would award more congressional seats to California uh because of a vast number of illegals and New York and Illinois. Um so they get more congressional seats. They would get more presidential electoral college votes getting that would get them the house the uh a majority in the house and and and they would get to decide who is president uh based literally based on legals.\n\nThis is these are not disputed facts by either party. I want to emphasize that that's sink in. >> Yeah, this is not a >> These are not disputed facts by either party. It's not a this these are just this is just the the way the law works. It it's it is a you know like I don't think the law should work that way. Uh I think it should the aortionment should be proportionate to to to citizens.\n\n>> But isn't that a problem with how the constitution is written? >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. >> Um, >> they can't really change that. >> I I'm not sure if it's constitutional or u but it it it is the way the law is written. I'm not sure if it's in the constitution or not in this way, but um but it is that is the way the law is written.\n\n>> So, it is an incentive and but it's an incentive that would be removed with something simple that makes sense to everybody that only the people that should count are people that are official US citizens. >> Yes. So, the way the way it should work is that only US citizens should count in the census for purposes of of determining voting power >> because people that aren't legal can't vote supposedly. >> They're not supposed to be voting.\n\nUm but but they do. Um uh but but even even if even besides that, like said, I I I just can't emphasize this enough because this is a very important concept for people to understand. um is that the law um the the law as it stands um counts all humans with a pulse in in in in a state for deciding how many u house of representative votes and how many presidential electoral college votes uh a a state gets.\n\nSo the incentive therefore is uh to uh for California, New York and Illinois to maximize the number of illegals so they get so they get um so that they take house seats away from red states assign them to California, New York, Illinois and so forth. Um then then you combine that with extreme gerrymandering in in you know California, New York, Illinois and and whatnot.\n\nSo that that basically you you can't even elect any Republicans and then they get control of the presidency, control of the house, then they keep doing that strategy um and and cement a supermajority. That is what they're trying to do. >> So that would essentially turn the entire country into California. >> Yes. >> Where you have differing opinions, but it doesn't matter because one party is always in control. >> Yes.\n\nUm, >> when you first started digging into this, when you first started before you even accepted this role of running Doge and being a part of all that, did you have any idea that it was this [ __ ] up? >> Um, I I did. Yeah. I I mean, I sort of >> When did you start knowing? >> Um, I guess about like Well, about two years ago. >> Isn't that crazy? >> Yeah. like relatively recently, you know.\n\nSo >> maybe I started I started having an well I I started like basically having a bad feeling about 3 years ago, which is why which was which is when >> uh why I felt it was like critical to acquire Twitter um and have a maximally truth seeeking platform, not one that suppresses the truth. Um and um like it it was more it was more like I like I'm not sure what's going on, but I have a I have a bad feeling about what's going on.\n\nAnd then the more I dug into it, the more I was like, \"Holy [ __ ] we got a real problem here and America's going to fall.\" So, uh, >> without anyone knowing it had fallen, that's that would be the problem. It could have fallen and been unrepable without anyone really being aware of what had happened, especially if you didn't buy Twitter. >> Yes, that's that's it. Look, buying Twitter was a a huge pain in the ass.\n\nUm, and made me a a a a pin cushion of attacks. Like dab dab stab dab dab. >> Everybody loved you before that. >> Well, some people love >> a lot of people loved you. A lot of lefties loved you. >> Uh, I I was a hero of the left. As far as >> the thing, if you drove a Tesla, it showed that you were environmentally conscious and you were on the right side. >> Uh, yeah. Um, yeah. I mean, I'm still the same human.\n\nI didn't like have a brain transplant between, you know, since in like three years ago, you know. Um >> Well, that's my favorite bumper sticker that people put on Teslas now. I bought this before Elon went crazy. >> I took a picture of one the other day. Oh, you found somebody. Oh, yeah. I've seen I've seen three or four of them. People that have these bumper stickers on their car that says, \"I bought this before Elon went crazy.\"\n\nBecause when people were vandalizing Teslas >> Yeah. Um the most there was organized campaign to literally burn down Teslas and and we had one of our dealers got shot up with a gun like they fired bullets into the in the Tesla dealership. They're burning down cars. Uh it was crazy. Um uh so but the bumper sticker should read there should be an an addendum to the bumper sticker. It's like I bought this car before uh Elon turned crazy.\n\nActually, now I realize he's not crazy and I've seen the light. [laughter] >> That'll take some time. That'll take some time. People don't want to admit that they've been tricked. >> Yeah. I mean, there's that old saying where it's like it's really easy to fool somebody, but it's almost impossible to convince someone that they were fooled. >> Yeah. It's much easier to fool them than to convince them they've been fooled.\n\nPeople cling to their ideas. >> Yes. They especially if they've like publicly stated these things, they get very embarrassed of being foolish. >> Yeah. People most time they double down. >> Um and uh >> and they find echo chambers. >> Yeah. Yeah. But but there's you know the thing is that like I you know I've seen more and more people who were convinced of the sort of work ideology um see the light. >> Yeah.\n\nSo, not everyone, but it's more and more um are seeing the light. Um and and it tends to happen like when when something happens that really, you know, directly affects you, >> right? >> Um you like there was a friend of mine who uh was living in in the San Francisco Bay area and um that tried to trans his his his daughter um did like to the point where the the school like sent sent the police to his house to take his daughter away from him.\n\nNow, now that's going to radicalize you. Well, that's going to break that's going to shake you out of your blue structure. Um, now I know, >> so it was an activist at the school that was trying to do this. >> Yeah, the school and the and the state of California conspired to turn his daughter against him and uh make her take uh lifealtering drugs that would have sterilized her um and uh irreversible. >> And how old was she?\n\nI think 14, something like that. Um, so and but he he managed to talk the police out of taking his daughter away from him that day. Um, and that that night he got on a plane to Texas. >> Wow. Um and uh like you know a year after just being in in a in a school in like greater Austin area um she she went she came went back to normal meaning like it it wasn't real >> right >> um well people are being much more open to that now.\n\nI mean Wall Street Journal uh yesterday had that opinion piece that this whole trans thing there's a lot of evidence is a social contagion. Absolutely. >> And Colin Wright wrote that. And then he's getting death threats now, of course. And on Blue Sky, there's people talking about exterminating him, which is one thing that you are allowed to say on Blue Sky, apparently.\n\n>> You're you're allowed to say horrible things about people saying possibly truthful things about this whole social contagion. Cuz that's what when you get nine kids that are in a friend group and they all decide to turn trans together. Yeah. >> Something's wrong. That's not statistically >> Yeah. Like here's the like you can convince kids to do anything. You can convince kids to be a suicide bomber, >> right?\n\n>> So >> which is why they do with in in some countries why they choose children to do that. >> Yes. You can train kids to be suicide bombers. And if you can train kids to be su suicide bombers, you can convince them of anything. >> Yeah. Especially with enough positive enforcement and cultural enforcement and you >> and and the idea that that that's not the case. >> Kids kids are kids are um malleable. The minds of youth are easily corrupted.\n\n>> You're also seeing a lot of push back from gay and lesbian people that are saying like, \"Hey, if someone >> stop including me in Yeah. Exactly. the LGBT, you know, it's like, wait a second, why are we being included all the time in this situation?\" >> Exactly. Exactly.\n\nWhen especially when, you know, like my friend Tim Dylan's talked about this is like it's really homophobic because you're taking these gay kids and you're you're telling them like, \"Hey, you're not gay. You're actually a girl.\" >> Yes. and you know, hey, hey, go make it so that you can never have an orgasm again and you'll be happy.\n\n>> Like, >> yeah, >> [ __ ] permanent mutilation, permanent castration of of kids is like I I think >> I I we should look look at at uh anyone who permanently castrates a kid as like right up there with Ysef Mangler. >> Yeah. >> I mean, they're they're mutilating children. >> Yeah. Yeah. And um it's thought of as being kind. And the thing is, would you rather have a live daughter or a dead son? >> That's that's the that's the line they use.\n\n>> Yeah. Which is not supported by any data. >> No. In fact, the the probability of suicide increases. >> Right. >> This is important maybe for the audience to know. Uh the probability of suicide increases if you're transit kid, not decreases. >> By some accounts, it triples. So that that is an evil lie. And it's a lie that is supposedly compassionate.\n\nImagine you've twisted reality to the point where confusing a child that's not even legally allowed to get a [ __ ] tattoo. >> Yeah. >> Right. Because you think that you could make a mistake with a tattoo, a totally removable thing, >> right? >> If I wanted to, tomorrow I can go to a doctor and they could laser off every tattoo that I have on me. >> Right. >> Okay. No harm, no foul. Yeah. But you get sterilized like that's it forever. Forever.\n\nYes, >> they'll castrate you. You no longer have testicles. You have no penis. You have a hole where your penis used to be. >> Yes. >> And this is compassionate and this is preventing you from >> Actually, a lot of kids die uh in in with the these uh sex change operations. They die the number of deaths on the operating table. People don't hear about those.\n\nA lot of kids because that we it's we don't really actually have the technology to make this work. So a bunch of the times the kids just die in the sex change operations. >> Jesus Christ. >> Yeah. It's it's demented which it should be viewed as like you know um like like evil Nazi doctor stuff basically. That's why it was like real Nazi not the [ __ ] fake Nazi stuff.\n\n>> Crazy that even pushing back against something that seems like fundamentally logically very easy to argue the old Twitter would ban you forever. Uh, yes. >> That's how crazy a social contagion can get when it completely defies logic, victimizes children, does something that makes no sense, does not supported by data, all connected to this ideology that trans is good. We got to save trans kids, protect trans kids. >> Yeah.\n\nAnd what I want to emphasize is that the the save trans kids thing is a lie. Um if if you if you if you castrate kids and trans them the probability of suicide increases. It does not decrease. It substantially increases. Um the the the studies have done that I've seen the the risk of suicide triples if you trans kids. So you're not saving them, you're killing them.\n\nMoreover, during the sex change operation, there are many deaths that occur during the sex change operation. >> Jesus Christ. It's just crazy that this is a real issue. >> Yeah, it it's a nightmare fever dream and and people are finally waking up from it.\n\nNow, when you started getting into the Doge stuff and started finding how much money is being shuffled around and moved around to NOS's and how much money is involved and just totally untraceable funds like this is again something like two years plus ago you weren't aware of it all. >> No, I was aware of it. Um I just didn't realize how how the how big it was. just just just how much waste and forward there is in the government is truly vast.\n\nUm in fact the government didn't even know um and nor did they care. >> That's crazy. >> Yeah. >> And >> I mean just like some of the very basic stuff that Doge did um will have lasting effects. Um and some of these things like they're so elementary you can't believe it. So, um the the doge team got the um you know the the mo most of the main payments computers um to require uh the the congressional appropriation code.\n\nSo, when a payment is made, you have to actually enter the congressional appropriation card. That used to be optional and and often would be just left blank. So, the money would just go out, but it wasn't even tied to a congressional appropriation. Then they also Dutch team also made the uh comment field for the payment mandatory. So you have to say something. We're not saying that what what is said like you can say anything.\n\nYou you your cat could run across the keyboard. Uh you could go querty ASDF but you have to say something above nothing because what we found was that there were tens of billions maybe hundreds of billions of dollars that were zombie payments.\n\nSo there like somebody had approved a payment uh uh somebody in the government approved a payment um and uh some recurring payment and um they retired or died or changed jobs and no one turned the money off.\n\nSo the money would just keep going out and and it's a pretty rare >> go where >> to to the a company or an individual um and it's a pretty rare company or individual who will complain that they're getting money that they should not get and and a bunch of the money was just going to the were transfer payments to the states. >> So these are automatic payments there no accounting for them at all.\n\n>> I imagine like like there's an automatic debit of your credit card >> um and you don't you never look at the statement, >> right? Um, so it's just money going out. Uh, that's why I call them zombie payments. Um, that there might have been they might have been legitimate at one point, but the person who approved that recurring payment um, changed jobs, died, retired, or whatever, and no one ever turned the money off.\n\nAnd my guess is that's probably at least a hundred billion a year, maybe 200. and going where >> uh to to uh uh I mean there there are millions of these payments. So so it's I mean >> millions >> uh yes >> millions of payments that are going to who knows where. >> Yes. In a bunch of cases there are fraud rings that operate uh professional fraud rings that operate to exploit the system.\n\num they figure out some security hole in the system and they just do professional fraud. Um and um you know that's where we found for example people who were you know 300 years old in the social security administration database.\n\nNow, I thought that this was uh a mistake of not registering their deaths that people were born like a long time ago and it had defaulted to like a certain number and so that after time those people were still in the system. It was just an error of the the way the accounting was done. >> Yeah. So, um that's not true. So, there's or or at least one of two things must be true.\n\num the there's a there's a typo or or some mistake in the computer or it's fraudulent, but we don't have any 300-year-old vampires uh living in America. >> Allegedly. >> Allegedly. Um and uh or or and we don't have people in some cases who's who are receiving payments who are born in the future. [laughter] >> Born in the future. >> Really? >> Yes.\n\nthere the people receiving payments whose birth date uh um was like in 2100 and something >> okay so there's >> like next century >> is there a task >> we know we know that one of two things must be true um that that that either there's a mistake in the computer or it's fraud but if you have someone's birth date that's either in the future or where they are older than the oldest living American because the oldest living American is 114 years old so if they're more than 114 years um there is either a mistake and someone should should call them and say I I think we have your birthday uh wrong because it says you were born in 17 you know 8086 um and um you know that was before you know um you know before there was really an America you know it was it was\n\nlike uh you know kind of early you know we're still fighting England type of thing uh [laughter] you It's like uh this person either needs to be in the Guinness Book of World Records or or they're not alive, >> but still at the end of the day, money is going towards that account that's connected to this person that is either non-existent or >> so like like Yeah.\n\nSo there was like uh I think um something like I don't know 20 million uh people in the Social Security Administration database that could not possibly be alive um if their birth date is like based on their birth date they could not possibly be alive. >> And then to be clear 20 million people that were receiving funds >> uh a bunch of most of them were not receiving funds. Some of them were receiving funds. Most were not receiving funds.\n\nBut so let me tell you how the scam works. It's it's a bank shot. So the Social Security Administration database is used as the source of truth by all the other databases that the government uses.\n\nSo even if they stop the payments on the Social Security Administration database like unemployment insurance, Small Business Administration, student loans all check the Social Security Administration database to say is this is this a legitimate alived person? And uh and if the social security database will say yes, this person is still alive even though they're 200 years old.\n\nUm but forgets to mention that they're 200 years old, it just says it just returns uh uh when when the computer is queries, it says yes, this person is alive. And so then they're able to exploit the entire rest of the government ecosystem. So fake then you get fake student loans, then you get fake unemployment insurance, then you get fake medical payments.\n\nAnd this doesn't have to be tied to an individual where where there's an address where you can check on this person. >> No, if you did do if just did any check at all, you would stop this. >> So, so, so that's that that that's so so >> And how much money do you think is >> any check like anything at all that would stop would stop the forward like any effort at all? >> Um, yeah. >> So, there's multiple layers.\n\nthe social security number verifies that this is a real person and then the other systems check every other government payment and every other government payment system for everything for like small small business administration uh student loans uh Medicaid Medicare uh every other government payment of which there are many there there actually hundreds of government payment systems uh can all be exploited so long as social security database says this person is alive that's the nature of the scam It's a bank shot.\n\nSo then the then the rebuttal from the Dems is like, oh well the vast majority of the people who are marked as alive in the Social Security Administration weren't receiving Social Security Administration payments. That is true. What they forgot to mention is they're getting fraudulent payments from every other government program.\n\nAnd that's why the the DMs were so opposed to turning off to to declaring someone dead who was dead because it would stop the entire other all the other fraud from happening. And so, but all this is it trackable like all this other fraud. >> If they wanted to, they could chase it all down. >> Yeah. It's not even hard. >> And yet they're opposing chasing it all down.\n\n>> They're opposing chasing it all down because it would it turns off the money magnet for the illegals. Wow. Because it's very logical to to like like I'm saying the most common sense things possible.\n\nIf someone's got uh a birthday in social security that is an impossible birthday, meaning they are older than the oldest living American or were born in the future, then you should call them and say, \"Excuse me, we seem to have your birthday wrong.\" Uh because it says that you're 200 years old. That's all you need to do.\n\nUm, and >> and then you would remove them from the social security database and make that number no longer available for all those other government payments. >> Exactly. >> Wow. And how much money are we talking? >> It's hund hundreds of billions of dollars. >> And this is all traceable. Like you could hunt all >> like you don't need to be Sherlock Holmes here is what I'm saying. >> Well, this we don't need to call Sherlock Holmes for this one.\n\nIs this part of >> you just need to call the person >> and and say, \"Excuse me, we either we we seem to have the [laughter] like we we we must have your birthday wrong because it says you're 200 years old or were born uh in the future. Um so could you tell us what your birthday is? That's all you need to do. It's it's that simple.\"\n\nBut the all these other government payments that are available that are connected to this social security number, it seems like if you just chased that all down, Yeah. >> you would find the widespread fraud. You would find where it's going. >> Yes. The but the root of the problem is the social security administration database because um the social security number in the United States is used as a deacto national ID number.\n\nYou know that's why like the bank always asks for your social like the you know any financial institution will ask for your social security number. >> This is it sounds so insane that this isn't chased down. I mean >> I agree >> that I mean I mean that in and of itself is that's such mishandling. >> Yes. No it's mind-blowing. Um, so yeah, it's crazy.\n\n>> Well, you were very reluctant last time you were here to talk about the extent of some of the fraud because you're like, they could kill me because this is kind of >> Oh, what? Yeah. What I was saying is that um the like if you create if like uh I like like to be pragmatic and realistic um you actually can't manage to zero fraud. you can manage to low fraud number but not to zero fraud.\n\nIf you manage to zero fraud, um you you you're going to push so many people over the edge who are receiving fraudulent payments that the number of inbound homicidal maniacs will be uh really hard to overcome. So I I'm I'm actually taking I think quite a reasonable position which is that we should simply reduce the amount of fraud which I think is not an extremist position. Um, and we should aspire to, you know, have less fraud over time.\n\nUm, not that we should be ultra draconian and eliminate every last scrap of fraud. Um, which I guess would be nice to have, but but like we don't even need to go that extreme. I'm I'm saying we should just stop the blatant large scale super obvious fraud. >> I think that's a reasonable position. >> It's a very reasonable position. Yeah. And so what was the most shocking push back that you got when you started implementing Doge?\n\nWhen you started investigating into where money was going? Well, um I guess it this was I should have anticipated this, but um while most of the fraudulent government payments to especially to the NOS's go to the Democrats, most of it like I don't know for argument sake let's say 80% maybe 90%. Um um 10 to 20% of it does go to Republicans.\n\nAnd so when we'd turn off funding to a fraudulent NGO, we'd get complaints from whatever the 10% of Republicans who were receiving uh the money and and they would, you know, they would very loudly complain. Um because the the honest answer is the Republicans are are partly they're receiving some of the fraud, too. They're getting a big >> Jesus. Yeah, it's I want to be clear.\n\nIt's it's not like the Republican party is some um ultra pure paragon of virtue here. >> No. >> Okay. Um >> well, you see that with the congressional insider training. It's across the board. >> Yeah. >> It's left and right. >> I mean, the whole uni party criticism has some validity to it.\n\nyou know, there's so um and it's it's like if you turn off fraudulent payments, it's not like like I say, it's not like 100% of those payments were going to Democrats. A a small percentage were also going to Republicans. Those Republicans complained very loudly.\n\nUm and um you know and and that's that's so there was a lot of push back on the Republican side for when we started cutting some of these these funds and I tried telling them like well you know 90% of the money is going to your opponents but they still if they even if they're getting 10% of >> they want their peace. >> Yeah. They want their peace >> and they've been getting that peace for a long time. >> Yes.\n\nDid you see >> this is why like you know politics is like >> it's dirty business. >> Yeah. I mean that's like saying if like you know if if you if you like sausages and respect the law do not watch either of them being being made [laughter] >> yeah. Wow. Well that's not even true because I've made sausage before. >> Yeah. Yeah. It's actually like it's not that big a deal. Yeah. fat and spices and casing, >> run it through the machine.\n\nNot that big a deal. >> Yeah. Um but uh yeah, I mean I I think the stuff I'm saying here is not uh like like if if you stand back and think about it for a second like oh yeah that that makes sense, you know. >> Um the it's it's not like um it's not like one political party is going to be um you know pure devil or pure angel.\n\nThere's, you know, I think there's there's there there's there's much more corruption on the Democrat side, but it's not there's not there's still some corruption on the Republican side. >> How did it happen that the majority of the corruption wound up being on the Democrat side? >> Well, because the the the transfer payments, especially to illegals, um, uh, are very much on the Democrat side.\n\n>> That so that's the root of it all is the illegal situation. >> Yes. I mean, there's >> or a focal point. >> Yes. It's it's also like it's it's um it's it would also be accurate to say that while obviously not everyone who is a Democrat is a criminal, almost everyone who is a criminal is a Democrat [laughter] because because the Democrats are the soft crime party. So if you're a criminal, who you going to vote for? >> Right. Right.\n\n>> The soft crime party. Did you think you were going to be able to get more done than you were? >> Um, we did get a lot done, >> right? >> Um, and Doge is still still still happening, by the way. Um, this the the Doge is still underway. There are still there are still um there's still waste and fraud being being cut by by the Doge team. So, it hasn't stopped. Um, the >> it's less publicized. >> It's less publicized.\n\nUm, and they don't have like a clear person to attack anymore. >> Well, it seems like they basically they they applied immense pressure to me to just to stop it. So then I'm like the best thing for me is to just, you know, cut out of this. In any case, as a special government employee, I could only be there for like 120 days anyway, something like that. So whatever the law says.\n\nSo I I could I I I was necessarily could only be there for 4 months uh as a special government employee. So, um um but uh yeah, I mean I mean you turn off the money spigot to to fraudsters, they get very upset to say the least. Um and um but my like my death threat level went uh ballistic, you know, was like a like a rocket going to orbit. Um yeah.\n\nUm, so but now that now now now that I'm not in DC that that that I guess they don't really have a person to attack uh anymore. >> Um, >> well the rhetoric about you has calmed down significantly. >> Yeah, >> it was disturbing. It was disturbing to watch. It was like this is crazy. >> And to watch these politicians engage in it and all these people just like framing you as this monster. I was like this is so weird.\n\nLike this is what happens when you uncover fraud. >> Yes. >> The whole machine turns on you. And if it wasn't for a person like you who owns a platform and has an enormous amount of money, like could have destroyed you. >> Yeah. >> And that was the goal. >> The goal was to destroy me. Absolutely. >> Because you were getting in the way >> of this amazing graft. >> The the this gigantic fraud machine. >> Yeah.\n\n>> Um like I think I think Doge team's on done a lot of good work. Um, you know, and in in terms of uh fraud and waste prevented, my guess is it's, you know, probably on the order of two or 300 billion a year. So, it's pretty good. >> What do you think could have been done if you just had like full reign and total cooperation? How much do you think you could have saved? >> I mean, what level of of power are we assuming here? >> Godlike.\n\n>> Oh, yeah. I probably cut the federal budget in half and get more done. That is so crazy. It is so crazy that get more done and federal budget widespread. It's that widespread. >> Well, I mean a whole bunch of government departments simply shouldn't exist in my opinion.\n\num they they um you know um >> like examples >> well the department of ed department of education which was created uh recently like under Jimmy Carter um uh the our educational results have uh gone uh downhill ever since it was created.\n\nSo if you if you create a department and the result of creating that department is a massive decline in educational results and it's department of education, you're better off not having it because we're literally we were did better before there was one than after >> when you let the states run it. >> Yes. >> Yeah. >> Because at least the states can compete with one another. Um so but the problem is like here like cutting department education.\n\nour kids need education. Yeah, they do. But but this is a new department that didn't even exist um you know until late the late 70s. Um and ever since that department was created, the results educational results have declined. And so why would you have an institution continue that has made education worse? It doesn't make sense. >> They killed it though, right? No, there still unfortunately >> but they were trying to kill it.\n\n>> It has been substantially reduced. >> Okay. >> Um >> what other organizations what other departments? >> Well, I mean I'm a small government guy. So um you know when when the you know when the country was created we just we we just had the department of state, department of war um you know and and uh sort of the sort of the department of justice. We had an attorney general uh and Treasury Department.\n\nUm I don't know why you need more than that. >> So what other departments specifically do you think are just completely ineffective? >> Well, I mean here it's like a question. It's a sort of philosophical question of how much government do you think there should be? >> Right. >> Um in my opinion, there should be uh the least amount of government.\n\nI've heard the most bizarre argument against this is that you're cutting jobs and you're gonna leave people jobless. And I'm like, but their jobs are useless. >> Yeah. Paying people to do nothing doesn't make sense. Um like there's a like a a great um a story about like Milton Friedman who is awesome. Um uh what like generally whatever Milton Friedman said is you know people should should do that thing.\n\nUh I'm not sure if it's apocryphal or not, but um like like someone complained to him like he he he observed I think people that were like um digging ditches with uh you know with with um shovels and um and he said well like allegedly Freeman said, \"Well, I think I think you should use you know um excavating equipment instead of shovels and you could get it done with far fewer people.\"\n\nAnd then and then someone said, \"But then we're going to lose a lot of jobs.\" Well, in that then Freedom says, \"Well, in that case, why don't you have them use teaspoons?\" [laughter] Just just dig ditches with teaspoons. Think of all the jobs you'll create. >> I mean, [laughter] it's [ __ ] Basically, you just want people to work on on things that are that are productive.\n\nYou want people to work on on building things um on building you know uh providing products and services that people find valuable um like you know making food um being you know being a farmer or a plumber or electrician or just anyone who's a builder or providing useful services. Um and um that's what you want people to be doing. um not fake government jobs uh that that that don't add any value or may subtract value.\n\nUm um there's also like you know uh to illustrate the absurdity of also how is the e how is the economy measured like the the way economists measure the economy is is is nonsensical uh because they'll measure any job no matter even if that job is a dumb job that has no point and is even counterproductive.\n\nSo like, so the like the joke is like there's two economists going on a hike in the woods and [laughter] they come across a pile of [ __ ] and one economist says to the other, \"I'll pay you $100 to eat eat that [laughter] shit.\" The economist eats the [ __ ] gets the $100. They they keep walking. Then the other econ then come across another pile of [ __ ] And and the the other economist says, \"Now I'll pay you $100 to eat the pile of shit.\"\n\n>> [laughter] >> say pays the so pays the other economist $100 pile of [ __ ] Then they then then then the way said they said like wait a second um we both just ate a pile of [ __ ] and we're no and and and and we're we're no we we we we don't have any more extra money like like we both you just gave the $100 back to me and we both ate a pile of [ __ ] This doesn't make any sense.\n\nAnd they said, \"No, no, but think of the economy because that's $200 of that in the economy that that basically [laughter] measure eating eating [ __ ] would count as a as as a as a job. [laughter] This is this is this is to illustrate the absurdity of of of economics. >> One of the things you said when [laughter] things should not count as a job.\"\n\nOne of the things you said when you stepped away is that you're kind of done and that it's unfixable. That um well or under its current form the way people are approaching it you can you can make it directionally better but ultimately you can't uh fully fix the system.\n\nUm, so, uh, I I I like like like like it it it is it is it would be accurate to say that even like like unless you could go like super draconian like you know Gangghaskhan level on on on cutting waste waste and fraud which you can't really do in a democratic country um an aspirationally democratic country then um there's no way to solve the the the debt crisis.\n\nSo, we got we got national debt that's just insane where the debt payments the interest payments on the debt exceed our entire military budget. I mean, that's one that was one of the wakeup calls for me. I was like, \"Wait a second. The interest on a national debt is bigger than the entire the entire military budget um and growing. Um this is crazy.\n\nUm so um so so even if you implement all these savings, you're only delaying the day of reckoning for when America becomes goes bankrupt. So unless you go full Genghaskhan, um which you can't really do. So um so I came to the conclusion that the only way that the only way to get us out of the debt crisis and to prevent America from going bankrupt is AI and robotics.\n\nSo, like we need to grow the economy um at at a at a at a rate that allows us to u to pay off our debt. Um and um I I I guess people just generally don't appreciate the degree to which um you know this the the government overspending is is a problem. Um but even like the social security website, this is under the Biden administration.\n\nOn the website, it would say like uh we based on on current demographic trends and um you and and and how much money social security is bringing in versus how many social security recipients there are because we have an aging population. Relatively speaking, the average age is is increasing. Social Security will not be able to ma u maintain its full payments u I think in by 2032 there. Okay.\n\nSo they will social security will have to stop will start reducing the the amount of money that that's been paid people um in in about seven years. >> And so the only way to fix that robotics manufacturing raise GDP >> you've got to basically uh massively increase the um uh economic output which is and the only way to do that is AI AI and robotics.\n\nSo, so basically we're going bankrupt without AI and robotics with even with a bunch of savings um [snorts] the savings the savings like reducing uh waste and forward can give us a longer runway but it cannot ultimately pay off our national debt. >> So what do you think the solution is to the jobs that are going to be lost because of AI and robotics?\n\nThe jobs due to automation the jobs due to no longer do we need human beings to do these jobs because AI is doing them. Do you think it's going to be some sort of a universal basic income thing? Do you think there's going to be some other kind of solution that has to be implemented because a lot of people are going to be out of work, right? Um I think there will be um actually a high demand for jobs but not necessarily the same jobs.\n\nSo I mean this is actually this process has been happening um throughout um modern history. Um I mean there used to be like like doing calculations um ma manually with with like a pencil and paper. It used to be a job. So they used to have like buildings full of people called computers where the the banks would like all you do all day is is is um you do calculations because they didn't have computers.\n\nThey didn't they didn't have digital didn't have digital computers that that people >> Yeah. Well, it was just people would just like add and subtract stuff on piece of paper and and and that that would be how banks would do you know financial processing >> and you'd have to literally go over their equations to make sure the books are balanced. >> Yeah.\n\nAnd most times it's just simple math like you know the like in a world before computers how did you calculate how did you you do transactions? You had to do them by hand. Um so then when computers were introduced the job of doing um you know bank calculations no longer existed. Um so people had to go do something else.\n\nUm and that's what's going to happen that what's that's what is happening at an accelerated rate um due to AI and and then robotics. That's the issue though, right? The accelerated rate because it's going to be >> it's the accelerator. It's it's it's just happening. Like I said, like AI is the supersonic tsunami. >> So that's what I call it, supersonic tsunami.\n\nUm so >> it's like what other jobs will be available that aren't available now because of AI? >> Um well AI um will is is really still digital. Ultimately, um AI can improve the productivity of of humans who who um build things with their hands or do things with their hands like plum, you know, literally welding, electrical work, plumbing, anything that's that's [snorts] physically moving atoms.\n\nUm like cooking food or um you know farming or or like like anything that's that's physical uh those jobs will exist for a much longer time. But anything that is digital uh which is like just someone at a computer doing something, AI is going to take over those jobs like lightning, >> coding, anything along those lines. Yeah, [snorts] >> it's going to take over those jobs like lightning.\n\nUm just like it just like digital computers took over the job of people doing manual calculations but but much faster. >> So what happens to all those people? Like what kind of numbers are we talking about? you're going to lose most drivers, right? Commercial drivers. You're going to have automated vehicles, AI controlled systems, just like uh there's certain ports in China, I think in Singapore, where everything's completely automated. >> Yeah.\n\nMostly. Yeah. Yeah. >> Yeah. So, you're going to lose a lot of those jobs. Long shoreman jobs, trucking, commercial drivers. >> Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we actually do have a shortage of of truck drivers, but there's there's actually um >> Well, that's why California has hired so many illegals to do it. Have you seen those numbers? >> Yeah.\n\nUm I mean, the problem is like when you when people don't know how to drive a semi-truck, which is actually a hard thing to do, then they they crash and kill people. >> Yeah. >> Um a friend of mine's wife was killed by an an illegal driving a truck and she was just out biking. Um and uh there was an illegal he didn't know how to drive the truck or so or something. I mean and he he ran ran her over.\n\nUm so I mean like thing is like for something like you you can't you can't let people drive uh you know sort of an 80,000lb semi um if if they don't know how to do it. But in California, they're just letting people do it >> because they need people to do it. >> Well, they also need they want the votes and that kind of thing. But um but but yeah, like cars are um cars are going to be autonomous.\n\nUm, but there there's just so many desk desk jobs where where really people what people are doing is they're processing email um or they're answering the phone. Um, and and just anything that is that that isn't moving atoms like anything that is not physically like doing physical work that will obviously be the first thing those jobs will be and are being eliminated by by AI at a very rapid pace.\n\nUm um and ultimately I working will be optional uh because you'll have robots plus AI um and we'll have in a benign scenario universal high income not just universal basic income universal high income meaning anyone can have any products or services that they want. So you >> but but there will be a lot of trauma and disruption along the way.\n\n>> So you anticipate a basic income from that that the economy will boost to such an extent that a high income would be available to almost everybody. So we'd essentially eliminate poverty >> um in the benign scenario. Yes. So like the way >> there's multiple scenarios. >> There are multiple scenarios. There's a lot of ways this movie can end.\n\nUm, like the reason I'm so concerned about AI safety is that like one of the possibilities is the Terminator scenario. It's not it's not 0%. Um, so um, that's why it's like I'm like really banging the drum on AI needs to be maximally truth seeeking.\n\nlike don't make I don't force AI to believe a lie like that the for example the founding fathers were actually a group of diverse women or that misgendering is worse than nuclear war because you if if that's the case and then you get the robots and the AI becomes omnipotent it can enforce that outcome and then [clears throat] then like unless you're a diverse woman you're you're out of the picture so we're we're toast So that's >> [snorts] >> um or you might wake up as a diverse woman [laughter] one day has adjusted the picture and and we are now >> everyone's a diverse woman.\n\nSo that would be that's the the worst possible situation.\n\nSo what would be the steps that we would have to take in order to implement the benign solution where it's universal high income like best case scenario this is the path forward to universal high income for essentially every single citizen that the the economy gets boosted by AI and robotics to such an extent that no one ever has to work again and what about meaning for those people which is which gets really weird. >> Yeah.\n\n>> I don't know how to answer the question about meaning. Um >> that's an individual problem, right? But it's going to be an individual problem for millions of people. >> Yeah. Well, I I mean I I I guess I've like for fought against saying like, you know, I you know, I've been I've been a voice saying like, \"Hey, we need to slow down AI. we need to slow down all these things. Um, and and we need to, you know, not not have a crazy AI race.\n\nI've been saying that for a long time, for 20 20 plus years. Um, but but then I, you know, I came to realize that, um, really there's two choices here. Either be a spectator or a or a participant. And if I'm a, if I'm a spectator, I can't really influence the direction of AI. But if I'm a participant, I can try to influence the direction of AI and have a maximally truth seeeking AI with with good values that uh loves humanity.\n\nAnd that's what we're trying to create with Grock at XAI. And um you know, the research is I think bearing this out. Like I said, the when they when they compared like how do AIs value the weight of a human life? Um Grock was the only one the only one of the AIS that weighted human life equally. um and and didn't and didn't say like a white guy's uh worth 120th of a of a of a a black woman's life.\n\nLiterally, that's what they they calculation they came up with. >> So, I'm like, this is I'm like, this is very alarming. We should we got to watch this stuff. >> So, this is one of the things that has to happen in order to reach this benign solution. >> Yeah. We we we I I just keep >> Best movie ending. Yeah. Um, you you want a a curious truth seeeking AI. Um, and I think a curious truth seeeking AI will want to foster humanity.\n\nUh, because we're much more interesting than um a bunch of rocks. Like you say, like like I I love Mars, you know, but but Mars is kind of boring. Like it's just a bunch of red rocks. Um, it does some cool stuff. It's got a tall mountain. It's got, you know, it's got the biggest re the biggest ravine and the tallest mountain. Um, but there's no there's no there's no animals or plants or and and there's no people.\n\nUm, and uh, you know, so humanity is just much more interesting if you're a curious truth seeeking AI than not humanity. It's just much more interesting. Um, I mean like as as humans, we could go for example and and eliminate all chimps. If we said if we put our minds to it, we could say we could go out and we could annihilate all chimps and all gorillas, but but we don't.\n\nUm there has been encroachment on their environment, but we we actually try to preserve uh the the uh chimp and gorilla habitats. Um and um and I think in a good scenario, uh AI would do the same with with humans. it would actually foster uh human civilization and care about human happiness. So this is um this is the thing to to try to achieve I think.\n\nUm, >> but what is the what does the landscape look like if you have Grock competing with Open AI, competing with all these different like how does it work? Like what what if you have AIs that have been captured by ideologies that are side by side competing with Grock?\n\nlike how do we so this is one of the reasons why you felt like it's important to not just be a an observer but participate and then have Grock be more successful and more potent than these other applications.\n\nYes, as long as there's at least one AI that is maximally truth seeeking, curious, and um you know, and for example, weighs all you know, human lives equally um does not favor one race or gender, then um then then that that that and and people are able to look at look at, you know, Grock at XAI and compare that and say, \"Wait a second, why are all these other AIs uh being basically sexist and racist?\"\n\nUm um and uh then then that that causes some embarrassment for the the other AIS and then they they they they fix they you know they they improve they tend to improve just in the in the same way that um acquiring Twitter and allowing the truth to be told and and not suppressing the truth um forced the other social media companies to be more truthful um by in in the same way having um Gro be a maximally truth seeeking, curious AI is will force the other AI companies to um be also be more truth seeeking and fair.\n\n>> And the funniest thing is even though like the socialists and the Marxists are in opposition to a lot of your ideas, but if this gets implemented and you really can achieve universal high income, that's the greatest socialist solution of all time. Like literally no one will have to work. Uh correct.\n\nUm like I said so so there is a benign scenario here which I think probably people will be happy with if if as long as we we achieve it which is sustainable abundance.\n\num which is if if um if everyone can have every like like like if if you ask people like what's the future that you want >> um and uh I think a future where we haven't destroyed nature like you can still we have the national parks we have the the Amazon rainforest still still there we haven't paved we haven't paved the paved the rainforest like the natural beauty is still there but but people have nonetheless everyone has abundance everyone has excellent medical care.\n\nEveryone has whatever goods and services they want. >> And we just >> It kind of sounds like heaven. >> It sounds like it is like the ideal socialist utopia. And this idea that the only thing you should be doing with your time is working in order to pay your bills and feed yourself sounds kind of archaic considering the kind of technology that's at play. >> Yeah. >> Like a world where that's not your concern at all anymore.\n\nEverybody has money for food. Everybody has abundance. Everybody has electronics in their home. Everybody essentially has a high income. Now you can kind of do whatever you want. And your day can now be exploring your interests doing things that you actually enjoy doing. Your purpose just has to shift. Instead of, you know, I'm a hard worker and this is what I do and that's how I that's how I define myself. No.\n\nNow you can [ __ ] golf all day, you know? You can whatever it is that you enjoy doing can now be your main pursuit. >> Yeah. >> Well, that sounds crazy good. >> Yeah, that's that's that's the benign scenario that we should be. >> The best ending to the movie is actually pretty good. >> Yes.\n\num like I think there's there is still this question of meaning um of like making sure people don't uh lose meaning you know like um so hopefully they can find meaning in ways that are not that that's not derived from their work >> and purpose purpose for things that you you know find things that you do that you enjoy but there's a lot of people that are independently wealthy that spend most of their time doing something they enjoy >> right >> and that could be the majority of people >> pretty much everyone.\n\n>> But we'd have to rewire how people approach life. >> Mhm. >> Which seems to be like acceptable because you're not asking them to be enslaved. You're exactly asking them the opposite. Like no longer be burdened by financial worries. Now go do what you like. >> Yes. >> Go [ __ ] test pizza. >> Do whatever you want. >> Um pretty much. Um, so that's uh that's that's the that's the that's probably the best case outcome.\n\n>> That sounds like the best case outcome period for the future. If you're looking at like how much people have struggled just to feed themselves all throughout history, food, shelter, safety, if all of that stuff can be fixed, like how much would you solve a lot of the crime if there was a universal high income? Just think of that. Like how much of crime is financially motivated?\n\nYou know, the greater percentage of people that are committing crimes live in poor, disenfranchised neighborhoods. >> So if there's no such thing anymore, if you really can achieve universal high income, >> yeah, >> that this is it sounds like a utopian. >> Yes. Um I think some people may commit crime because they like committing crime. It just some some amount of that is they just >> wild people out there. >> Yeah. Yeah.\n\nUm >> and obviously they've become 40 years old living a life like that. Now all of a sudden universal high income is not going to completely stop their instincts. >> Yeah. Um I mean I guess if you want to have like like say read a science fiction book or some books that that are probably an accurate or or the the least inaccurate version of the future. I'd say I' I'd recommend um the Ian Banks books called the the culture books.\n\nIt's not actually a series. It's a It's like ai sci-fi books about the future. They're generally called the culture books. Yen Banks culture books. It's worth reading those. >> When did he write these? >> He started writing them in the 70s. Um and I think he um the last one I think he was I think it was written just like around I don't know maybe 2010 or something. I'm not sure exactly. >> Yeah. Yeah. >> Scottish author Ian Banks from 87 to 2012.\n\n>> Yeah. Interesting. >> But he but like he wrote the the like his first book, Consider Flever. Like he started writing that in the 70s. >> These books are incredible, by the way. >> Oh, >> incredible books. >> 4. 6 stars on Amazon. >> Interesting. >> So, um, >> so this gives me hope. >> Uh, yeah. Yeah. >> This is the first time I've ever thought about it this way. >> Yeah.\n\nWell, I mean, if like I often ask people, \"What is the future that you want?\" And they have to think about it for a second cuz, you know, they're usually tied up in whatever the daily struggles are. But, but you say, \"What is the future that you want?\" Um, and um, and generally sustainable abundance, what do these folks say, \"What about a future where there's sustainable abundance?\" Like, \"Oh, yeah, that's a pretty good future.\"\n\nUm so um you know if if and and and that that future is attainable with AI and robotics um but but you know it's it's like I said there's not every path is a good path.\n\nuh there's this it's but I think if we if we push it in the direction of um maximally truth seeeking and curious then I think AI will want to take to to take care of humanity and foster uh foster humanity um because we're interesting um and if it hasn't been programmed to think that like all straight white male should die, [laughter] which Gemini was basically programmed to do at least at first. Um, you know, they seem to have fixed it.\n\nI hope they fixed it. >> But don't you think culturally [laughter] like, oh, we're getting away from that mindset and that people realize how preposterous that all is. >> We are getting away from it. Um, so, uh, we are getting at least it knows the AI mostly knows to hide things.\n\nBut like like I said, there is that I I think I still have that as or I had that as my like pinned post on X which was like uh hey wait a second guys we still have every AI except Grock uh is saying that uh basically straight white male should die um and this is a problem and we should fix it. um [snorts] and you know but simply me saying that is like tends to generally result in um you know them like that is kind of bad.\n\nUh maybe we should just we should not have all straight white males die. Um I think they say also all all straight Asian males should also die as well. like that like uh like generally [laughter] the generally the AI and the and the media which which back back in the day the the media was um you know racist against uh black people and sexist against women back in the day.\n\nNow now it is racist against uh white people and Asians and sexist against men. >> Um so they just like being racist and sexist. I think they just want to change the target. [laughter] Um so uh but but really they just shouldn't be uh racist and sexist at all. Um you know >> ideally that would be nice. >> That would be nice.\n\nUm, and it's kind of crazy that we were kind of moving in that general direction till around 2012 >> and then everything ramped up online and and everybody was accused of being a Nazi and everybody was transphobic and racist and sexist and homophobic and everything got exaggerated to the point where it was this wild witch hunt where everyone was a colomo looking for racism. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Totally.\n\nUm, well well but but but they they were openly anti-white and often openly anti-Asian. And then this new sentiment that you cannot be racist against white people cuz racism is power and influence. >> Okay. No, it's not. >> Yeah. Racism is is is racism in the absolute. Um so um you know and there just needs to be consistency. So if it's okay to have uh let's say uh black or Asian or Indian or pride, it should be okay to have white pride, too.\n\n>> Yeah. Um, so that's just a that's just a consistency question. Um, so, uh, you know, um, if it if it's okay to be proud of one religion, it should be okay to be proud of, I I guess all religions provided they're that they're they're not like oppressive. >> Yeah. Or or or don't like as long as part of that religion is not like exterminating uh people who are not in that religion type, >> right? Um so uh it's really just like a consistency bias.\n\nUm or or just like uh ensuring consistency to eliminate uh bias. Um so if it is possible to be uh racist against uh one race, it is possible to be racist against any race. Um so >> of course logically. >> Yes. >> Yeah. and arguing against that is that's when you know you're catching >> it's a it's a logical inconsistency that makes AIS go insane >> and people [clears throat] >> and people go insane. Yes.\n\n>> Um >> but like the the like like you can't simultaneously say um that uh there's the systemic uh racist oppression but also that races don't exist that that race race is a social construct. like which is it? You know, um you also can't say that um you know, anyone who steps foot in America is is automatically an American except for the people that originally came here. [laughter] >> Exactly. Exactly. Except for the colonizers. >> Yeah.\n\nExcept for the evil colonizers who came here, >> right? >> So which one is it? Like if you if as soon as you step foot put in a place you are that you are just as American as everyone else >> then um that would have appi if you apply that consistently then the original white settlers were also just as American as everyone else. >> Yeah. Logically. >> Logically.\n\nUm, one more thing that I have to talk to you about before you leave is the rescuing of the people from the space station, which, uh, we talked about, you were planning it the last time you were here. >> Um, the f the lack of coverage that that got in mainstream media was one of the most shocking things that >> Yeah, they totally memoryhold that thing. >> Wild. Yes. Because if it wasn't, >> it's like it didn't exist. Those people would be dead.\n\nThey'd be stuck up there. >> Well, they'd they'd probably still be alive, but they'd they'd be having bone density issues uh because of prolonged exposure to zero gravity. >> Well, they were already up there for like 8 months, right? >> Yeah. >> Which is an insanely long time. It takes forever to recover just from that. >> Yeah. They're only supposed to be at the space station for 3 to 6 months maximum.\n\nSo, >> one of the things you told me that was so crazy was that you could have gotten them sooner, but >> Yeah. But for political reasons, uh they didn't they did not want uh SpaceX or me to be associated with um returning the astronauts before the election. >> That is so wild that that's a fact. >> First of all, that >> we absolutely could have done it.\n\nUm so, >> but even though you did do it and you did it after the election, it received almost no media coverage anyway. >> Yes. because nothing good can the the the media which is essentially a far left prop the legacy mainstream media is a far-lft propaganda machine. Um and so anything any story that is positive about someone who is not part of the sort of far-left tribe will not uh get any coverage.\n\n>> I I could save a busload of orphans and and it it wouldn't get a single news story. >> Yeah, it's it really is nuts. It it was nuts to watch because even though it was discussed on podcasts and it was discussed on X and it was discussed on social media, it's still it was a blip in the news cycle. It was very quick.\n\nIt was in and out and because it was a su successful launch and you did rescue those people, nobody got hurt and there was nothing really to there was no blood to talk about, >> right? >> Just [ __ ] in and out. >> Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely.\n\nWell, and and as as you saw firsthand with the Starship launch, like Starship is um you know by you know at least by some some would consider it to be like the most amazing uh you know engineering project that's happening on Earth right now outside of like you know maybe AI or AI and robotics but but certainly in terms of a spectacle to see it is uh the most spectacular thing that is happening on earth right now is the Starship launch program which anyone can go and see if they just go to South Texas and just they can just rent a hotel room low cost in South Padre Island or in Brownsville and you can see the launch and you can drive right right past the factory because it's on a public highway.\n\nUm but it gets no coverage or what coverage it does get was like a rocket blew up coverage, >> right? Yeah. Oh, he's a [ __ ] The rocket blew up. like the the the the Star Sasha program is vastly >> vastly more capable than the entire Apollo moon moon program. Vastly more capable. This is a spaceship that is designed to make life multilanetary to carry uh millions of people across the heavens to another planet.\n\nthe the Apollo program could could only send astronauts to the moon for a few hours at a time. Like they could send two the entire Apollo program could only send astronauts to visit the moon very briefly and then for a few hours and then depart. The starship program could create an entire uh lunar base with a million people. You understand the mag the magnitudes are >> there's different very different magnitudes here.\n\n>> So what was the political >> basically no no coverage of it. >> Yeah. But what I wanted to ask you is like what so what were the conversations leading up to the rescue like when you were like I can get them out way quicker. >> Yeah. Um um well I mean you know I raised this a few times but it was the I was told instructions came from the White House that uh you know that that there should be no attempt to rescue before the election.\n\n>> That should be illegal. >> That that that really should be a horrendous miscarriage of justice for those poor people that were stuck on that. >> Um yeah it it is it is crazy. Um, >> have you ever talked to those folks afterwards? Did you have conversations with them? >> Yeah. I mean, they they're they're not going to say anything political to, you know, they're not like they're never going to >> say thank you. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.\n\n>> Well, that's nice. >> Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. So, um, >> but the instructions came down from the White House. He cannot rescue them because politically this is a a bad hand of cards. >> I mean, they didn't say because politically it's a bad hand of cards. They they just said uh they were they were not interested in uh any rescue operation before the election. >> Yeah. So >> what did that feel like? >> I wasn't surprised. >> But it's crazy.\n\n>> Yeah, >> because Biden could have authorized it and they could have said the the Biden administration is helping bring those people back, throw you a little funding, give you some money to do it. the Biden administration, they funded these people being returned.\n\n>> Uh yeah, the Biden administration was not exactly my best friend, >> especially especially after I um you know, you know, helped Trump get elected get get elected, which I mean some people >> still think, you know, Trump is like the the devil basically. Um, and I mean I think I think Trump actually he's not he's is not perfect, but but uh he's not evil. Trump is not evil.\n\nI spent a lot of time with with him and he's >> I mean he's a product of his time. Uh but he is not he's not evil. >> Um >> no, I don't think he's evil either. But if you look at the media coverage, >> the media the media treason like he's super evil. It's pretty shocking if you look at the amount of negative coverage.\n\nLike one of the things that I looked at the other day was mainstream media coverage of you, Trump, a bunch of different public figures and then >> 96% negative or something crazy >> and then Mum Donnie, which is like 95% positive, >> right? Um I mean Manny is is is is a charismatic swindler. Um I I I mean you got to hand it to him like he he does he can light up a stage. Um but he has just been a swindler his entire life.\n\nUm and um you know and and uh I think he what he's I mean he's likely to win. He's likely to be mayor of New York New York City. >> Very likely. >> Yeah. Very likely. I think Poly Market has it at what what is the >> 94%? >> Yeah, that sounds pretty likely. >> That's crazy. >> Like I'm not sure who the 6% are, you know. >> Um so, so yeah. So that's um >> what's also like who's on the other side?\n\nThe [ __ ] guardian angel guy with the beret and Andrew Cuomo [laughter] who doesn't even have a party. Like they the Democrats don't even want him. So you have those two options. Um, >> and then you have the young kids who are like finally socialism. >> Yeah, they they don't know what they're talking about obviously.\n\nUm, so you know, like you just look at this say how many boats come from Cuba to Florida and how many but and how many boats because you know there's like a constant I always think like how many boats are accumulating on the shores of Florida coming from from Cuba, >> right? Um there's a there's a whole bunch of free boats that you could if you want to go take them back to Cuba. It's pretty close. >> Yeah.\n\n>> But for some reason people don't do that. >> Why why why why are the boats only coming in this direction? >> Um >> well who is who are the most rabid capitalists in America? The [ __ ] Cubans. >> Absolutely. >> Yeah. They're like we've seen how this story goes. >> We do not want Exactly. >> [ __ ] off. [laughter] Cubans in Miami, they don't want to hear any [ __ ] They don't want to hear any socialism [ __ ] They're like, \"No, no, no.\n\nWe know what this actually is. This isn't just some [ __ ] dream.\" >> Yeah. It's extreme government oppression. Um >> that's how it's a nightmare. And like the like an obvious way you can tell which uh which ideology is is the bad one is um who has to which ideology is building a wall to keep people in and prevent them from escaping. >> Right? >> Like so East Berlin built the built the wall not West Berlin, >> right?\n\n>> They built the wall because people were trying to escape from communism to West Berlin. But there wasn't anyone going from West Berlin to East Berlin, >> right? >> That's why the communists had to build a wall to keep people from escaping. >> They're going to have to build a wall around New York City. [laughter] >> Yeah. That So, so that an ideology is problematic.\n\nIf that ideology has to build a wall to keep people in with machine guns, >> Yes. >> and shoot you if you try to leave. Also, there's no examples of it being successful ever. We're only working out for people. No, there's examples of a bunch of lies like North Korea. Give this land to the state. We'll be in control of food. No one goes hungry. No.\n\nNow, no one can grow food but the government and we'll tell you exactly what you eat and you eat very little. >> Right. >> Yeah. What? When you say mom Donny's a swindler, I know he has a bunch of fake accents that he used to use. Yeah. >> And you know, but what else has he done that makes him a swindler?\n\nUm well I I guess if you say uh what I mean if if say if you say to any audience whatever that audience wants to hear uh instead of what instead of having a consistent message I would say that that is a swindly thing to do. Um and uh yeah um yeah but but he is he is charismatic. Um >> yeah good-looking guy. Smart, charismatic. >> Yeah. >> Great on a microphone. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.\n\nand and what the young people want to see, >> you know, like this ethnic guy who's young and vibrant and has all these socialist ideas align with them and you know, they're bunch of broke dorks just out of college like, \"Yay, let's vote for this.\" And there's a lot of them and they're they're activated. They're motivated. >> Um, >> I guess we'll we'll we'll see what happens here. >> What do you think happens if he wins?\n\nUm because like 1% of New York City is responsible for 50% of their tax base, which is kind of nuts. 50% of the tax revenue comes from 1% of the population. And those are the people that you're scaring off. You know, you lose one half of 1%. Yeah, I mean hopefully this the stuff he's he said, you know, about government takeovers of of like that all the stores should be the government basically. Um >> I don't think he said that.\n\nI think he said government they want to do government supermarkets, some state-run or cityrun supermarkets. >> Yeah. Um well, it just the the government is the DMV at scale. So um you have to say like do you want the DMV running your supermarket? >> Right. Um, was your last experience at the DMV amazing? Uh, and if it wasn't, you probably don't want the government doing things. >> Imagine if they were responsible for getting you blueberries.\n\n>> Yeah. [laughter] It's not going to be good. I mean, the the the thing about, you know, communism is is it was it was all bread lines and bad shoes. Um, you know, do do you want ugly shoes and bread lines? Because that's what communism gets you.\n\nIt's going to be interesting to see what happens and whether or not they snap out of it and overcorrect and go to some Rudy Giuliani type character next cuz it's been a long time since there was any sort of Republican leader there.\n\nAnd we we live in the in the most interesting of times um because We we face the you know simultaneously face civilizational decline um and incredible pro prosperity um and these these timelines are interwoven um so um if Mani's policies are put into place especially at scale um it it would be a catastrophic uh decline in living standards not just for the rich but for everyone.\n\num uh as as has been the case with with every um every for every every socialist experiment um or every Yeah.\n\nSo um but but then as you pointed out the the irony is that like um the ultimate capitalist thing of AI and robotics uh enabling uh prosperity for all and an abundance of goods and services actually the capitalist uh implementation of AI and robotics assuming it goes down the the good path uh is is actually what results in the communist utopia. Because fate is fate is an irony maximizer, >> right?\n\nAnd and an actual socialism of maximum abundance of highincome people. >> Universal high income. >> Yeah. >> Like the the problem with communism uh is is universal low income. Um it's it's not that everyone gets elevated, it's that everyone gets oppressed except for a very small minority of of politicians who live a lives of luxury. That's what's happening every time it's been done. >> Yeah.\n\nUm so um but then the the actual communist utopia if everyone gets anything they want will be will be if if will be achieved if it is achieved it will be achieved via c capitalism >> because fate is an irony maximizer. >> I feel like we should probably end it on that. Is there anything else? The most ironic outcome is the most likely, especially if entertaining. >> Well, everything has been entertaining.\n\nAs long as the bad things aren't happening to you, it's quite fascinating. And it's never a boring moment. >> Yes. So there's I do have a theory of why um like if if if simulation theory is true then um it is actually very likely that um the most interesting outcome is the is the most likely because only the simulations that are interesting will continue.\n\nThe simulators will stop any simulations that are boring because they're they're not interesting. >> But here's the question about the simulation theory. Is the simulation run by anyone or is >> it would be run by someone? >> It would be run by >> some some >> some force >> the pro the program like in in this reality that we live in, we we run simulations all the time.\n\nLike so when we try to figure out if the rocket's gonna make it, we run um thousands sometimes millions of simulations just to figure out which which uh path is the good path for the rocket and and where can it go wrong, where can it fail.\n\nUm but we when we do these I say at this point millions of simulations of of what can happen with the rocket um we ignore the ones that are where everything goes right um because we we we just care about the we have we have to address the situations where it goes wrong. Um so um so so basically in in in and and for for AI simulations as well like like all these things we we keep the simulations going that are the most interesting to us.\n\nUm so if simulation theory is accurate if if it is true who knows um then the uh the the simulators will will only they will continue to run the simulations that are most interesting there. Therefore from a Darwinian perspective um the only surviving simulations will be the interest the most interesting ones.\n\nAnd in order to um avoid getting turned off uh the only rule is you must keep it interesting or you will if or you will because the boring simulations will be terminated. >> Are you still completely convinced that this is a simulation? >> I didn't say I was completely convinced. >> Well, you said it's like the odds of it not being are in the billions. But I guess it's not completely cuz you're saying there's a chance.\n\n>> What are the odds that we're in base reality? Um well given that given that that we're able to create increasingly sophisticated simulations. So if you think of say video games and how video games have gone from very simple video games like Pong with you know two rectangles and a square to video games today being um photorealistic uh with millions of people playing simultaneously and all of that has occurred in our lifetime.\n\nSo if that trend continues, uh, video games will be indistinguishable from reality. The fidelity of the game will be such that you you don't know if that what you're seeing is a real video or a fake video. Um, and like AI generated videos at this point, you like you can sometimes tell it's an AI generated video, but often you cannot tell and soon you will not really just not be able to tell.\n\nSo um if if that's happening in our direct observation then and and we're create we'll create millions if not billions of photorealistic simulations of reality then what are the odds that we're in base reality or versus someone else's simulation? Well, isn't it just possible that the simulation is inevitable, but that we are in base reality building towards a simulation? We're making simulations. Um, so um we're making simulations.\n\nWe make like you can just think of like photorealistic video games as as being simulations. >> Mh. Um, and especially as you apply AI in these video games, the the characters in the video games will be incredibly interesting to talk to.\n\nThey won't just have a limited dialogue tree where if you go to like the the crossbow merchant or like and you you try to talk about any subject except buying a crossbow, they just want to talk about selling you a crossbow. Um, but with with with AI based non-player characters, you can you'll be able to have an elaborate conversation with no dialogue tree. Well, that might be the solution for meaning for people.\n\nJust lock in and you could be a [ __ ] vampire and whatever. You live in Avatar land. You could do it. You could do whatever you want. I mean, you don't have to think about money or food. >> Ready Player One. >> Yeah. Literally. Yeah. But with higher living standards. >> Yeah. >> You don't have to be in a little trailer. I >> I mean, I think this people do want to have some amount of struggle or something they want to push against.\n\nUm but but it it could be you know playing a a sports or playing a game or something. >> It could be easily playing a game and especially playing a game where you're now no longer worried about like physical attributes like athletics like bad joints and hips and stuff like that. Now it's completely digital but yet you do have meaning in pursuing this thing that you're doing all day. Whatever the [ __ ] that means. It's going to be weird.\n\n>> It's going to be interesting. >> It's gonna be very interesting. >> Um the most the most interesting >> and and usually ironic outcome is the most likely. >> All right. >> That's a good predictor of the future. >> Thank you. Thanks for being here. Really appreciate you. Appreciate your time. You I know you're a busy man, so this means a lot you come here to do this. Welcome. All right. Thank you. Bye, everybody. >> [music]","textByLang":{"en":"Joe Rogan podcast. Check it out. >> The Joe Rogan Experience. >> TRAIN BY DAY. JOE ROGAN PODCAST BY NIGHT. All day. >> Exactly. >> Just every morning. >> Wonder what Jeff Bezos is doing. >> He's doing some [laughter] definitely doing some testosterone. He looks jacked. >> He looks jacked, right? >> Yeah.\n\nBut he didn't like >> quick >> quick [laughter] at age like at 50 at age 59 in less than a year he he went from pencilet geek to uh looking like a like the rock. >> Yeah. Like a little miniature alpha fella. >> Yeah. Like like his neck got bigger than his head. >> Yeah. He got bigger. >> But then like his earlier pictures his neck's like a noodle. >> I support this activity. I like to see him going in this direction >> which is fine.\n\nAnd his voice dropped like two octaves. I want you to move in that direction as well. >> I think we can achieve this. >> I I I mean I should >> I think we can achieve >> gigachad. [laughter] That's what people called it. >> Where is that guy? >> Bele. Uh I don't know where he is. >> That's like a real guy. >> The artist. Yeah. >> No. >> Oh, gigachad. [laughter] Oh, gigachad. Yeah. I don't know if that's a real guy. It's hard to say.\n\n>> No, it is a real guy. >> It is a real guy. >> He's got the crazy jaw and like perfect sculpted hair. >> Yeah. Well, I mean, they may have exaggerated a little bit, but >> um >> but uh No, I think I think he actually just kind of looked like that in reality. >> Wow. >> Um so >> like like he's a pretty unique looking individual. >> I think we can achieve this. That guy right there, that's a real guy. [laughter] >> That's a real dude.\n\n>> I always thought that was CGI. >> No, I think one of I think the upper right one is not [laughter] him. That's not >> But that one to the left of [clears throat] that like that's real. No, that's that's artificial, bro. That's fake. That's got that uncanny valley feel to it, doesn't it? >> It's It's not impossible. >> No, no, it's not impossible to achieve, but it's not it's not possible to maintain that kind of leanness.\n\nI mean, that's like like you're you're also at that point they're he's dehydrating and all sorts of things. >> Oh, it's based on a real person. >> Yeah. Yeah. Based on, >> right, but it's not a real person. What does he really look like? >> Like those images, I think, are [ __ ] >> Some of them are. Is that real? Okay. That That looks real. That looks like a really jack bodybuilder. >> Yeah. >> Yeah, that looks real. Like that's achievable.\n\nBut there's a few of those images where you're just like, \"What's going on here?\" >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Totally. Um >> Well, I mean, you see you see [laughter] >> that guy is that is that the >> that's the real dude? >> Well, there's that that that Icelandic dude who's Thor. >> Oh, yeah. The guy who jumps in the frozen lakes and [ __ ] >> Well, the guy who played the mountain. Um >> Oh, that guy.\n\n>> That is that is like a that that is like a a mutant strong human. Yes. >> Like like uh he would be in like the X-Men or something, you know? >> He's just like not like uh >> and there's that you know that have you seen that meme tent and tent bag? >> Um you know how like it's like it's really hard to get the tent tent in >> Oh, right. Right. [laughter] >> That's true. >> Then there's a picture of of him and his girlfriend. That's hilarious.\n\n[laughter] >> Yeah, that's >> I don't know how it gets in there, you know? It's like it seems too small. But >> I met Brian [laughter] Shaw. Brian Shaw is like the world's most powerful man. And he's almost [laughter] 7 feet tall. He's 400 lb. >> And his his bone density is 1 in 500 million people. So there's one it's like there's like maybe 16 people. >> He's an enormous human being. like a legitimate giant just like that guy. But we met him.\n\nHe was hanging out with us in the green room of the mother ship. It's like, okay, if this was like David and Goliath days, like this is an actual giant like the giants of the Bible. >> Once in a while they get a super giant person. >> This is a real a real one. Like not a tall skinny basketball player, like a 7 foot 400B powerliffter. >> Like you don't want to especially look at him. That's the guy.\n\nSee if there's a photo of him standing next to like a regular human. I >> was trying to get >> There it is. That's him right there. Like there's like there's like one of him with next to standing next to Arnold and stuff and it's where and everyone everyone just looks tiny. >> I mean I think he's a pretty cool dude actually. >> Oh, Brian's very cool. Very smart, too. Unusually, you know, you expect anybody to be that big.\n\nIt's got to be a [ __ ] >> No. >> Yeah. There was there's Andre the Giant who was awesome. You >> he was great in Princess Bride and >> No, he was just awesome period. >> Yeah. Yeah. So, we were talking about um this interview with Sam Alman and Tucker, and I was like, we should probably just talk about this on the air because it is one of the craziest interviews I think I've ever seen in my life. >> Yeah.\n\n>> Where Tucker starts bringing up this guy who was a whistleblower, whatever. >> A whistleblower who, you know, >> committed suicide, but it doesn't look like it. >> And and he's talking to Sam Alman about this. And Sam Alton was like, \"Are you accusing me?\" He's like, \"No, no, no. I'm not. I'm just saying I I think someone killed him. >> Yeah. And like And it should be investigated. >> Yeah. >> Um not just drop the case.\n\n>> It seems like >> they just dropped the case. Yeah. Yeah. But his parents think he was murdered. >> Yeah. >> Um the wires to a security camera were cut. Um >> blood in two rooms. >> Blood in two rooms. Someone else's wig was in the room. And >> someone else's wig. >> Wig. >> Wig. Yes. Not his wig. >> Not normal to have a wig laying around. >> Yes. Um and um and he ordered Door Dash uh right before allegedly committing suicide.\n\n>> Uh which uh is it seems unusual, you know? >> Yeah. >> It's like, you know, let's I'm going to order pizza on second thoughts, I'll kill myself. Uh is it seems like that's a very rapid change in mindset. >> It's very weird. And especially the parents have they they don't believe he committed suicide at all. >> Has no note or anything. >> No. >> Yeah. >> It seems pretty [ __ ] up.\n\nAnd you know, the idea that a whistleblower for an enormous AI company that's worth billions of dollars might get whacked, that's not outside the pale. >> I mean, it's straight out of a movie. >> Right out of a movie, but right out of a movie is real sometimes. >> Yeah. Right. [laughter] Exactly. >> It's a little weird that I I think they should do a proper investigation. Like, what's the downside on that proper investigation? >> Right. >> No.\n\n>> Yeah, >> for sure. But the whole exchange is so bizarre. >> Yeah. Yeah. Sam Alman's reaction to being accused of murder is bizarre. >> Look, I don't know if he's guilty, but it's not possible to look more guilty. [laughter] >> So, I'm like, >> or look more weird. >> Yeah. >> You know, maybe it's just his social thing. Like, maybe he's just odd with confrontation and it just goes blank, you know?\n\nBut if if somebody was accusing me of killing Jamie, like if Jamie was a whistleblower and Jamie got whacked and then I'd be like, \"Wait, what are you what are you are you accusing me of killing my friend?\" Like, \"What the [ __ ] are you talking about?\" I would I would be a little bit more I rate. >> Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. You know, it would be >> I would be a little upset. >> Yeah.\n\nIt'd be like Well, you'd be like, you'd certainly in insist on a thorough investigation. Yeah. >> As opposed to trying to sweep it under the rug. >> Yeah. I wouldn't assume that he got that he committed suicide. I would be suspicious. If Tucker was telling me that aspect of the story, I'd be like, \"That does seem like a murder. [ __ ] We should look into this.\" >> I mean, all signs point to it being a murder.\n\nNot not saying, you know, Tim Molvin had anything to do with the murder, but uh >> blood in two rooms. >> It's blood in two rooms. Like, yeah, there's the wires to the security camera and the door dash being ordered right before suicide. No suicide note. his parents think uh he was murdered and um the people that I know who knew him said he was not suicidal. So I'm like this why would you jump to the conclusion >> parents sued the >> uh landlord?\n\n>> They sued the son's landlord alleged the owners and the managers of their son's San Francisco apartment building were part of a widespread cover up of his death. >> The landlord >> Yeah. There's a bunch of weird They said there was like packages missing from the building. Some people said they saw packages still being delivered and all a sudden they all disappeared. >> Huh. But that could be people steal people's packages all the time.\n\n>> The porch pirate situation. >> Yeah. >> Says they failed to safeguard. >> Also, I mean, the amount of trauma those poor parents have gone through with their son dying like that. I mean, it must >> God bless them. And how could they stay sane after something like that? They're probably they're so griefstricken. Who knows what they believe at this point. >> Yeah. It should have asked if Epson killed himself.\n\n>> [laughter] >> Yeah, that's the the Cash Mattel thing. Cash Mattel Dan Bonino trying to convince everybody of that. Like, okay. >> The guards weren't there and the cameras stopped working and um >> you know, >> the guards were asleep. The cameras weren't working. He had a a giant steroided up bodybuilder guy that he was sharing a cell with that was a murderer who was a bad cop. Like, all of it's kind of nuts.\n\nAll of it's kind of nuts like that he would just kill himself rather than reveal all of his billionaire friends. >> Yeah. >> And then >> did you see Tim Dylan talking to Chris Cuomo about this? >> I did. He liked the idea. >> Chris Cromo just looked so stupid. [laughter] >> Tim just listed off all the >> Tim just and he's like I agree it is strange. Like of course it's strange Chris. Jesus Christ. You can't just go with the tide.\n\nYou got to think things through. And if you think that one through, you're like, I don't think he killed himself. Nobody does. You'd have to work for an intelligence agency to think he killed himself. [laughter] >> It does. It does seem unlikely. >> It seems highly unlikely. Highly, highly unlikely. All roads point to murder. >> Yes. >> Point to they had to get rid of him because he knew too much.\n\nWhatever the [ __ ] he was doing, whatever kind of an asset he was, whatever thing he was up to, you know, was apparently very effective. >> Yes. And a lot of people are compromised. You see, your boy Bill Gates is now saying climate change is not a big deal. Like, relax everybody. I know I scared the [ __ ] out of you for the last decade and a half, but ah, we're going to be fine. [laughter] >> Yeah.\n\nI mean, you know, as was I was saying just before coming into the studio with, you know, it like every day there's some crazy wild new thing that's happening. It's It feels like reality is accelerating. >> It's every day. And Every day it's like more and more ridiculous to the point where the simulation is more and more undeniable. >> Yeah. Yeah. It really feels like simulation, you know? It's like, come on.\n\nWhat are the odds that this could be the case? >> Are you paying attention at all to Three Atlas? Are you watching the >> the comet? >> Yeah. Whatever it is. >> Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I mean, one thing I can say is like, look, I if if I was aware of any evidence of aliens, um, you Joe, you have my word. I will come on your show and I will reveal it on the show. >> Okay. >> Yeah, >> that's a good deal. >> Yeah, it's pretty good. >> I'll believe you.\n\nYeah, thank you. >> I I'll stick I keep my you know, keep my promises. So, um >> All right. I'll hold you to that. >> Yeah. Yeah. And and [clears throat] I'm never committing suicide to be clear. [laughter] >> I don't think you would either. >> So, on camera, guys, I am never committing suicide ever. >> If someone says you committed suicide, [laughter] I will fight tooth and nail. >> I will fight tooth and nail. I will I will not believe it.\n\nI will not believe it. The thing about the three eye atlas is it's >> a hell of a name actually. >> Yeah, it's a third eye sounds like third eye or something. >> Yeah, it does. [laughter] Three eye is third. It's only the third interstellar object that's detected. >> Okay. >> Yeah. [snorts] Obias. >> Yeah. Alo was on the podcast a couple days ago talking about it. >> Yeah. It could be. I don't know.\n\nBut I >> apparently today they're saying that it's changed course. Um, >> did you see that, Jamie? >> Avi said something today. I'll send it to you. Um, >> uh, I know it's on Reddit. >> Here you go, Jamie. I'll send it to you right now. Um, it's fascinating. It's fascinating also because it's made almost entirely of nickel, whatever it is. And the only way that exists, uh, here is, uh, industrial alloys apparently.\n\nUm um most no there are there are >> there are definitely uh comets that and asteroids that are made primarily of nickel in fact. Yeah. So the the places where um you mine nickel on earth is actually where there was an asteroid or comet that hit earth that was a nickel rich uh you know >> nickel rich nickel rich rich deposit. >> Yeah that's that's that's it's coming. Those are from impacts.\n\nYou definitely didn't want to be there at the time because anything would have been obliterated. Right. Um, but that's that's where the the sources of nickel and cobalt are these days. >> So, this is Ovio Lope. A few hours ago, the first hint of non-gravitational acceleration that something other than gravity is affecting its acceleration, meaning something is affecting its trajectory beyond gravity was indicated. Interesting.\n\nUm so it's mostly nickel very little iron which uh he was saying uh is on earth only exists in alloys but whatever you know you're dealing with another planet >> there this there are there are there are cases where there's very nickel richch asteroids meteorites that heavy that something from space. >> Yeah it it's only yeah it doesn't mean it'll be a very sort of heavy spaceship if you make it all out of nickel. Oh yeah. >> And [ __ ] huge.\n\nThe size of Manhattan and all nickel. That's kind of nuts. >> Yeah, that's a heavy spaceship. >> That's a real problem if it hits. >> Uh yes. No, it would like obliterate a continent type of thing. >> Um maybe maybe worse. >> Probably kill most of human life. >> Um >> if not all of us. >> I haven't depends on what the the total mass is.\n\nBut um there's I mean the thing is like in the fossil record there are um you know there's like arguably arguably five major extinction events. um like the biggest one of which is the Perine extinction uh where um almost all life was eliminated. That that actually occurred over several million several million years. Um the there's the Jurassic. I think Jurassic is I think that one's pretty definitively an asteroid.\n\nUm and um but there's but there's been five major extinction events, but um but what they don't count are really the ones that merely take out a continent. >> So >> merely >> Yeah. cuz that that because those don't really show up on the fossil record, you know, >> right? >> Um so unless it's enough to cause a you know mass extinction event throughout Earth, it it doesn't show up, you know, in a fossil record that's uh 200 million years old.\n\nUm so the uh yeah but but there have been many um many impacts that would have sort of destroyed all life on you know let's say half of North America or something like that. there many such impacts through the course of history. >> Yeah. And there's nothing we can do about it right now. >> Yeah. There was one that um hits there was a one that hit Siberia and destroyed I think um few hundred square miles. >> Oh, that's the Tungusa. >> Yeah.\n\nThat's the one from the 1920s, right? >> Yeah. >> Yeah. That's the one that coincides with that meteor that uh comet storm that we go through every June and every November that they think is responsible for that younger dest. >> Yeah. Yeah, all that shit's crazy. Um, thank you before we go any further for letting us have a tour of SpaceX and letting us be there for the rocket launch.\n\n>> One of the absolute coolest things I've ever seen in my life. And we we've we were we thought it was only like I thought it was a half a mile. Jamie's like it was a mile away. Turned out it's almost two miles away. And you feel it in your chest. >> Yeah. It's >> you have to wear earplugs and you feel it in your chest and it's 2 miles away. >> It was [ __ ] amazing.\n\nAnd then to go with you up into the command center and to watch all the Starlink satellites with all the different cameras and all in real time as it made its way all the way to Australia. How many minutes? Like 35 40 minutes. >> Yeah. >> Wild it touchdown in Australia. >> Yeah. >> [ __ ] crazy. It was amazing. >> Yeah. Yeah. >> Absolutely amazing. The starship's awesome. Um, and anyone can go watch the launch actually.\n\nSo, you can just go to um, South Padre Island, get has a great view of the launch. Um, so it's like where a lot of spring breakers go. >> Um, but um, but we'll be flying pretty frequently um, out of Starbase in South Texas. And we we formally incorporated it as a city. So, it's it's actually a legally an actual legal city, Starbase, Texas. >> Um, it's not that often you hear like, hey, we made a city, you know.\n\n[laughter] Um, that [snorts] used to be like the like in in the old days like a startup would be you go and gather a bunch of people and say, \"Hey, let's go make a town.\" Literally, that was like that would have been startups in in in the old days. >> Um, >> or a country. >> Yeah. Or a country. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. Yeah. Actually, >> if you tried doing that today, there'd be a real problem. >> Yeah.\n\nThat things are so much so much set in stone on the country front these days. You might pull it off. You might be able [clears throat] to pull it off. If you got a a solid island, you might be able to pull it off. >> You know, it's probably, >> you know, like like at owns lai. >> Yeah, you could probably if you put if you put enough effort into it, you could make a new country. >> This is one of the different ones.\n\nThis is one of the ones that you catch, >> right? Or is that one? >> Yeah, that that's the booster. So that's the super heavy booster. Uh so that's the one with the booster's got 33 engines. Um that that uh um and it's you know by version four that will have about 10,000 tons of thrust. Um you know right now it's about 7 8,000 tons of thrust. Um, that's that's the largest flying object ever made. >> I had to explain to someone.\n\nThey were going, \"Why do they blow up all the time if he's so smart?\" Because there was there was this [ __ ] idiot on television. Some guy was being interviewed and they were talking about you. And he goes, \"Oh, I think he's a fuckwit.\" And he goes, \"He's a fuckwit.\" And he goes, \"Why you say he's [ __ ] Oh, his rockets keep blowing up.\" And someone said, \"Yeah, well, why do his rockets blow?\" And I had to explain. Yeah.\n\nBecause it's the only way you find out what the tolerances are. You have to you have to a few >> corners of the box. So, so like so [clears throat] when you do a new uh rocket development program, um you you have to uh do what's called uh you know, exploring the limits, the corners of the box where you say it's like you worst case this, worst case that um to figure out um uh where where the limits are.\n\nSo uh you blow up, you know, not not admittedly in the development process sometimes blows up accidentally. Um but but we intentionally subject it to uh uh you know a flight regime that is much worse than what we expect in normal flight so that when we put people on board or valuable cargo it doesn't blow up.\n\nUm so um so so for example for the the flight that you saw we we actually deliberately took um heat shield tiles off the the the ship the off of Starship in in some of the worst locations to say okay if we lose a heat shield tile here is it is it catastrophic or is it not? Um and we we nonetheless uh Starship was able to do a soft landing um in uh in the Indian Ocean just uh west of Australia.\n\nUm which as and it got there from Texas in like I don't know 354 minutes type of thing. So >> So it landed even though you put it through this situation where it has compromised shield. it it had an an an an unusually we we we brought it in hot like an an extra hot trajectory uh with missing tiles um to see if it would still make it to a soft landing which it did. Now I I should point out it did have there were some holes that were burnt into it.\n\nUm but it's it was robust enough to land despite having some holes burnt you know that that you know cuz it's coming it's coming in like a blazing meteor. You can see you can see the real time video. Well, tell me the speed again because the the speed was bananas. You were talking about >> Yeah, it's like 17,000 mph like like 25 times the speed of sound or thereabouts.\n\nSo, um the uh uh so so think of it like it's it's like 12 times faster than a bullet from an assault rifle. You know, bullet from assault rifles around Mach 2 >> and it's just and it's [clears throat] huge. >> Yeah. [laughter] Yeah. Or or if you compare it to like a bullet from a um you know a 45 or or 9 mil which is subsonic that's you know it it'll be about 30 times faster than a bullet from a handgun.\n\n>> 30 times faster than a bullet from a handgun and it's the size of a skyscraper. >> Yes. [laughter] >> Yeah. That's fast. >> It's so wild. It's so wild to see, man. It It's uh It's so exciting. This the factor is so exciting too because like genuinely no [ __ ] I felt like I was witnessing history. I felt like it was a scene in a movie where someone had expectations and they like what are they doing? They're building rockets.\n\nAnd you go there and as we were walking through Jamie, you could speak to this too. Didn't you have the feeling where you're like >> oh this is way bigger than I thought it was. This is [laughter] huge. Awesome. >> Gigantic. >> [ __ ] crazy. >> That's what she said. the ah the amount of rockets you're making. I don't know if you >> tent back. [laughter] >> Gig Chad in the house. >> This is way big. >> It's a giant metal dick.\n\n[laughter] You're [ __ ] [ __ ] the universe with your giant metal dick. That's >> I mean, yeah, it is. It is very big. >> And the sheer numbers of them that you guys are making. And then this is a version and you have a new updated version that's coming soon. >> And what is the It's a It's a little longer. Um >> more pointy. >> Uh it's the same amount of pointy. Um but the there's it's it's got a bit more length.\n\nUm the the interstage, you see that that interstage section with kind of like the grill area. >> Mhm. >> Um that's uh that's now integrated with the boost stage. Um so uh we do um what's called hot staging. Uh where we light the ship engines while it's still attached to the booster. So the boost the booster engines are still thrusting. is still it's it's uh you know it's still being pushed forward by the booster of the ship.\n\nUh but then we light the ship engines and the ship engines actually pull away from the booster even though the booster engines are still firing. >> Whoa. >> Um so it's blasting flame through uh that that grill section but we integrate that grill section into uh the boost stage with the next uh version of the rocket. Um and uh and explosion in the rocket will have the Raptor 3 engines which are a huge improvement.\n\nUm you may you may have seen them in the lobby because we got like the Raptor 1, two, and three. And you can see the dramatic improvement in simplicity. Um we should probably put a plaque there to also show how much the we reduced the weight uh the cost and the and improved the efficiency and the uh thrust. So the Raptor 3 uh has uh you know almost twice the thrust of Raptor Raptor 1. >> Wow. >> So you see Raptor 3.\n\nIt looks like it looks like it's got parts missing. Right. >> And how many >> It's very very clean. >> How many of them are on the rocket? >> There's 33 on the on the booster. >> Whoa. Um and and each of each Raptor engine is producing twice as much thrust as all four engines on a 747. Wow. So that engine is smaller than a 747 engine, but is producing, you know, um you know, almost 10 times the thrust of a 747 engine.\n\nUm so extremely high power to weight ratio.\n\nUm and um >> and so when there's >> 33 of them >> you when you so when you're designing these you get to Raptor one you see its efficiency you see where you can improve it you get to Raptor 2 how many how far can you scale this up with just the same sort of technology with propellant and ignition and engines like how much further can you >> I mean we're pushing the limits of physics here um so um and and really in order to to make a a fully reusable orbital rocket which no one has succeeded in doing uh yet including including us.\n\nUm but but uh Starship is the first time that there is a design for a rocket where where full and rapid reusability is actually possible. So it was not there's not there's not even been a design before where it was possible. Certainly not a design that that that got made any hardware at all. Um just we just we just live we live on a planet uh where the gravity uh is is is quite high like earth's gravity is quite really quite quite high.\n\nUm um and if the gravity was even 10 or 20% uh higher uh we'd be stuck on Earth forever. Um like we yeah we could not use certainly couldn't use conventional rockets. You'd have to like blow yourself off the surface with like a nuclear bomb or something crazy. Um so but on the other hand if if Earth's gravity was just a little lower like even 10 20% lower it then uh getting to orbit would be easy.\n\nSo it's like it's like it's like this if this was a video game it's set to like maximum difficulty but not impossible. >> Okay. >> Um so that's that's where we have um here. So it's it's not as though um others have uh ignored the concept of reusability. they've just uh concluded that it was too difficult to achieve. And we've been working at on on this for a long time at at SpaceX. Um and um you know, I'm the chief engineer of the company.\n\nUm although I should say that that uh you know, we have an extremely talented engineering team. I think we've got the best uh rocket engineering team that has ever been assembled. Um uh it's it's an honor to work with such such incredible people. Um so uh so so it's fair to say that you know we have not yet succeeded in creating in achieving full reusability but we at last have a rocket uh where full reusability is possible.\n\nUm and I think I think we'll achieve it next year. So um uh that's a that's a really big deal. And the reason the reason that's that's such a big deal is that full reusability um uh drops the cost of access to space by a hundred um maybe even more than 100 actually. So could be like a thousand. The you can think of it like any mode of transport. Like imagine if aircraft were were not reusable.\n\nLike you flew somewhere, you throw the plane like like imagine if like the way the way conventional rockets work is it would be like if you had an airplane and and and instead of landing at your destination, you parachute out um and the plane crashes somewhere and you land at your desk and you and you land on a parachute at your destination. Now that would be a very expensive trip [laughter] and you and you'd need another plane to get back. Okay.\n\nUm, but that's how the other rockets in the world work. Um, now the SpaceX Falcon rocket is the only one that is is there that is at least mostly reusable. You've se you've seen the Falcon rocket, you know, land. We've now done over 500 landings of of the SpaceX rocket of the of the Falcon 9 rocket.\n\nUm and um and and this year um you know we we'll deliver probably I don't know somewhere between 2200 and 2500 tons to orbit um with with the Falcon 9 uh Falcon Heavy rockets uh not counting anything for from Starship. Um >> and this is mostly Starlink. Yes, mostly Starling, but we launch uh many other we even launch our competitors on um competitors to Starink on on Falcon 9. We charge them the same price. Pretty fair.\n\nUm uh but uh SpaceX this year will deliver um roughly 90% of all Earth mass to orbit. >> Wow. >> Um and then of the remaining 10% um most of that is done by China. And then the then the remaining kind of roughly 4% is uh everyone else in the world including our America uh domestic competitors. >> You know um it's kind of incredible how many things are in space like how many things are floating above us now? >> There's a lot of things. >> Yeah.\n\n>> Is there though? >> Right. But is there a saturation point where we're going to have problems with all these different satellites that are >> um I think as long as the satellites are um maintained uh there's there it'll be fine. This space is very roomy. Um it's like you can think of um like space as being concentric shells of the surface of the earth.\n\nSo, um, you know, there's there's it's the surface of the earth, but but there's it's a series >> much larger. >> Yeah. It's like a series of concentric trails. Um, >> and think of an Airstream trailer flying around up there. There's a lot of room for air streams. >> Yeah. I mean, imagine Yeah. If there just a few thousand airirstreams um on on Earth. >> Yeah. >> What are the odds that they'd hit each other?\n\nYou know, >> they wouldn't be very crowded. No. And then you got to go bigger. >> Yeah. >> Because you're dealing with far above Earth. >> Hundreds of miles above Earth. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. >> Yeah. So, it's the um but the goal of SpaceX is to get rocket technology to the point where we can extend life beyond Earth and that we can establish a self-sustaining city on Mars. Uh a permanent base on the moon. That would be very cool.\n\nI mean, imagine if we had like a, you know, moon base alpha where there's like a permanent science base on the moon. >> That would be pretty dope. Or at least a tourist trap. >> I mean, a lot of people be willing to go to the moon for just for a tour. That's for sure. We could probably pay for our space program with that, you know, >> probably. Yeah.\n\nWell, >> because it's like if if you if you could go to the moon with and and safely, >> uh I think we'd get a lot of people uh would would pay for that, you know. >> Oh, 100%. After the first year, after nobody died for like >> Yeah. Just make sure. [laughter] Exactly. Are you going to come back? Yeah. >> Because like that submarine, they they had a bunch of successful launches in that private submarine before it imploded and killed everybody.\n\nThat was not a good design. Obviously, >> it was a very bad design. Terrible design. >> And the engineers said it would not withstand the pressure of those depths. Like there was a lot of whistleblowers in that company too. >> Yeah. Um they they they made that out of uh carbon fiber which is it doesn't make any sense because um you actually need you need to be dense to go down. Um in any case, just make it out of steel.\n\nIf you make it out of uh sort of just, you know, a big steel casting, that's that's you you'll be safe and nothing. Why would they make it out of carbon fiber then? Is it cheaper? >> Um I think they think carbon fiber sounds cool or something. But uh >> it does sound cool. >> It it sounds cool, but um because it's such it's such low density, you actually actually have to add extra mass to go down because it's it's low density.\n\nBut if you just have a giant, you know, hollow ball bearing, uh you're going to be fine. >> Speaking of carbon fiber, did you check out my unplugged Tesla out there? >> Yeah, it's cool. >> Pretty sick, right? Yeah. Have you guys ever thought about doing something like that? like having like an AMG division of Tesla where you do like custom stuff. >> Um I think it's best to leave that to the custom shops.\n\nUh you know we're we're like Tesla's focus is autonomous cars. Um you know building kind of futuristic autonomous cars. Um so um like I think it's we want the future to look like the future. Um, so the did like did you see like our designs for like the sort of the robotic bus? It looks pretty cool. >> The robotic bus is also being totally auton but it looks it looks cool. It's it's very art deco. It's it's like it's like futuristic art deco.\n\nUm, and um, it it does it like I think we want to change the aesthetic over time. You don't want the aesthetic to be constant over time. You want to evolve the aesthetic. Um, so um, you know, like my like I have a son who's he's like, you know, he's he's he's like even more autistic than me and um and, uh, but he's he has these great observations. Who is this? >> A Saxon.\n\nHe has these great observations in the world uh because he's he just views the world through a different lens than than most people. Um and he was like, \"Dad, why does the world look like it's 2015?\" [laughter] [clears throat] >> And I'm like, \"Damn, the world does look like it's 2015.\" Like the aesthetic has not evolved since 2015. >> Oh, that's what it looks like. >> Yeah. >> Oh, wow. >> That's pretty cool. >> Oh, yeah.\n\nThat's like >> like You'd want to see that going down the road, you know? >> Yeah. You'd be like, \"Okay, this is we're in the future.\" You know, it doesn't look like 2015. >> What is that ancient science fiction movie? Like one of the first science fiction movies ever. Is it Metropolis? Is that what it is? >> Yeah. Yeah. >> Yeah. That looks like it belongs in Metropolis. >> Yeah. Yeah. It's a futuristic art deco. >> All right. Yeah.\n\nWell, that's cool that you're concentrating on the aesthetic. I mean, that's kind of the whole deal with Cybertruck, right? Like, it didn't have to look like that. >> No, it it I just wanted to have something that looked really different. Is it a pain in the ass for people to get it insured because it's all solid steel and >> um I hope it's not too much. I you know Tesla does offer insurance so people can always get it get it insured at Tesla.\n\n>> Um well but the like it is the form does follow a function in the case of the cybert truck because um as you demonstrated with with your armorpiercing arrow um because if you shot that arrow at a regular truck I mean >> it [laughter] exactly you would have found your arrow in the wall. Yeah. Um, you know, it would very least it would have buried into one of the seats. >> Yeah. Yeah.\n\nIt's but like you could you could definitely make uh get enough of bow velocity and and the right the right arrow would go through both doors of a regular truck and and and land on the wall. >> If there was a clear shot between both doors, it probably would have passed right through. >> Exactly. Um but but you know the the arrow shattered on the cybert truck cuz it's it's ultra hard uh stainless. Mhm.\n\n>> Um, so, um, and I thought it' be I thought it'd be cool to have a, you know, a truck that is bulletproof to a subsonic projectile. Um, so, um, you know, especially in this day and age, you know, like as as a if, if the apocalypse happens, you're going to want to have a bulletproof truck, you know. Um, so so then because because it's made of ultra hot stainless, it's you can't just stamp the the panels.\n\nYou can't just put in a stamping press because it breaks the press. So, so in order to actually, so it has to has to be planer um because it's so difficult to bend it because it breaks the machine that bends it. Um that's why that's why it's it's it's it's so planer and and it's not uh you know it's it's because it's bulletproof steel is the >> So it is like boxy as opposed to like curved and >> Yeah.\n\nYou just in order to make in order to make like the curved shapes, you you you take you take uh uh basically mild steel like um anneal thin and thin anneal in a regular truck or car. The you take you take mild thin anneal steel, you put it in a stamping press and it just sm it just smooshes it and makes it to whatever the shape whatever shape you want. But the Cybert truck is made made of ultra hard stainless.\n\nUm and and and so you can't stamp it because it would break the stamping press. So it even bending it is hard. So even to bend it to uh its current position, we have to way overbend it. Um and and so it gets so that when it springs back, it's in in the right position. Um, so it's uh I don't know like I I think if you want to like I think it's it's it's a unique aesthetic. Um, and you say, \"Well, what's cool about a truck?\"\n\nTrucks are trucks are like should be I don't know manly. They should be macho, you know, and bulletproof is maximum macho macho. >> Are you married to that shape now? Like is it can you do anything to change it? Like as you get further like I know you guys updated the three and the Y. Did you update the Y as well? >> Yes, the the three and the Y uh are updated.\n\nUm you know, there's like a um there's there's a a screen in the back for the kid that the kids can watch, for example, in the new 3 and Y. Um uh so in the new Y, um there's, you know, it's it's an there's there's there's like hundreds of improvements. Like we keep improving the car. Um and even the Cybert truck, we you know, we keep improving it.\n\nUm but um you know I wanted to just do something that that looked unique and and the cybert truck looks unique and has unique functionality and there was and it was like there were three things as I report like let's make it bulletproof. Uh let's uh make it faster than a Porsche 911. Uh, and we actually cleared the quarter mile. The Cybert truck, the the uh can uh clear a quarter mile while towing a Porsche 911 faster than a Porsche 911.\n\nUm, it can out tow an F350 diesel. >> Really? >> Yes. >> What is the tow limitations? >> I mean, we could tow like a, you know, a 747 in that with a cy. Cybert truck is an insanely like it is an it is alien technology. Okay. Um cuz it it shouldn't be possible to be uh that big and that fast. Uh that doesn't it's like an elephant that runs as as like a cheetah. >> Yeah. Because it's 0 to 60 in less than 3 seconds, right? >> Yes. >> Yeah.\n\nAnd it's enormous. What does it weigh? Like 7,000 lbs. >> Uh yeah, there's different configurations, but it's about that. Uh it's a beast. >> Yeah. [clears throat] >> Um so and it's and it's got it's got four-wheel steering. So the the rear wheel steer, too. So it's got a it's got a very tight turning radius. >> Yeah. We noticed that we when we drove one to Star Base. >> Yeah. Very tight turning radius. >> Yeah. Pretty sick. >> Yeah.\n\n>> Are you still doing the Roadster? >> Yes. Eventually, >> we're getting close to demonstrating the prototype >> and I think this will be I I I I one thing I can guarantee is that this product demo will be unforgettable. Unforgettable. >> How so? Whether it's good or bad, [laughter] it will be unforgettable. [gasps] Um, >> can you say more? What do you mean?\n\n>> Well, you know, my friend Peter Teal, um, you know, uh, once reflected that the future was supposed to have flying cars, but we don't have flying cars. >> So, you're going to be able to fly? Well, I mean, uh, I think if Peter wants a flying car, we should should be able to buy one. >> So, you are you actively considering making an electric flying car? Is this like a real thing? >> Well, we have to see in the >> in the demo.\n\nSo, when you do this, like are [snorts] are you going to have a retractable wing? Like, what is the idea behind this? Don't be sly. Come on. >> I I I can't I can't uh do the unveil before the unveil. Um but um >> tell me off air then. >> I I I it look I I think it has a shot at being the most memorable um product unveil ever. It has a shot. >> And when do you plan on doing this? What's the goal? >> Uh hopefully before the end of the year.\n\n>> Really? >> Before the end of this year. >> This is I mean we're in a couple months. >> Hopefully in a couple months. Um you know we need to make sure that it works. Uh like this is some crazy crazy technology we got in this car. Crazy technology. Crazy crazy. So different than what was previously announced and >> Yes. >> And is that why you haven't released it yet? Cuz you keep [ __ ] with it. >> It has crazy technology. >> Okay.\n\n>> Like is it even a car? I'm not sure. It's like it looks like a car. Let's just put this way. It it's it's crazier than anything James Bond. If you took all the James Bond cars and combined them, it's crazier than that. >> Very exciting. >> I don't know what to think of that. >> I don't know. >> It's a limited amount of information I'm drawing from here. >> Jamie's very suspicious over there. Look at him. >> Excited. >> I'm interested.\n\n[laughter] >> It's still going to be the same. >> Well, you know what? I mean, if if you want to if you want to come a little before the uh the unveil, I can show it to you 100%. Yeah, let's go. >> Yeah. Um it's uh it's kind of crazy all the different things that you're involved in simultaneously and you know we talked about this before your time management but I I really don't understand it.\n\nI don't understand how you can be paying attention to all these different things simultaneously. Starlink, SpaceX, Tesla, boring company X you're tweet you [ __ ] tweet or post rather all day long. Well, it's more like I'm I'm I could hop in for like two minutes and then hop out, you know. >> But I mean, just the fact that you could do >> bathroom break or whatever, you know, >> I can't do that.\n\n>> Um >> if I hop in, I start scrolling and I start looking around. Next thing you know, I've lost an hour. >> Yeah. >> Um so, no, it's for me it's it's a couple minutes time usually. It's once in a Sometimes I guess it's half an hour, but usually I'm I'm I'm in for a few minutes then out of of you know, posting something on X.\n\nUh, you know, it's I do sometimes feel like it's sometimes like that that meme of the guy who's like who drops the grenade and leaves the room. [laughter] That's been me more than once on on X. >> Yeah. [laughter] Oh, yeah. Yeah, for sure. Um, it's got to be fun, though.\n\nIt's got to be fun to know that you essentially disrupted the entire social media chain of command because there was a there was a very clear thing that was going on with social media. The government had infiltrated it. They were censoring speech >> and until you bought it, we really didn't know the extent of it. We kind of assumed that there was something going on. >> Yeah.\n\nWe had no idea that they were actively involved in censoring actual real news stories, real data, real scientists, real professors silenced, expelled, kicked off the platform. >> Yeah. >> Wild. >> Yeah. >> For telling the truth. >> For telling the truth.\n\nAnd I'm sure you've also because I sent it to you that chart that shows uh young kids, teenagers identifying as trans and non-binary literally stops dead when you bought Twitter and starts falling off a cliff when people are allowed to have rational discussions now and actually talk about it. >> Yes. >> Yeah. >> Um Yeah.\n\nYeah, I mean I I said at the time like I think that like the the like the reason for acquiring Twitter is because um it was it it was c it was causing destruction at a civilizational level. Um it was um I mean I posted I tweeted on on Twitter at the time that um it it is um you know it's it's uh worm tongue for the world.\n\num you know like Worm Tongue from Lord of the Rings uh where he would just sort of like whisper these you know terrible things to the king so the king would believe these things that weren't true um and and um unfortunately uh Twitter really got it got like the the the woke mob essentially they controlled Twitter um and they were pushing uh a nihilistic anti-vilizational mind virus to the world.\n\nUm, and you can see the results of that mind virus on the streets of San Francisco, uh, where, you know, downtown San Francisco looks like a zombie apocalypse. Um, you know, it's it's bad. Um, so we don't want the whole world to be a zombie apocalypse. Um, but that's uh that that that was essentially they were pushing this very negative, nihilistic, untrue worldview on the world and it was causing a lot of damage.\n\nUm, so >> the stunning thing about it is how few people course corrected. A bunch of people woke up and realized what was going on. People that were all on board with like woke ideology in maybe 2015 or 16 and then and then eventually it comes to affect them or they see it in their workplace or they see and they're like, \"Whoa, whoa, whoa, we got to stop this.\" Bunch of people did, but a lot of people never course corrected. >> Yeah.\n\nUm, a lot of a lot of people didn't course correct, but um, but it's gone directionally in it's gone it's it's directionally correct like you mentioned like the like the massive spike in in kids identifying as trans and then that that spike dropping um after the the Twitter acquisition.\n\nI think that um simply allowing the truth to be told um was that just shedding sun sunlight is the best disinfectant as they say and just allowing sunlight um kills the virus >> and it also changed the benchmark for all the other platforms. Yes, you can't just openly censor people and all the other platforms and X is available.\n\nSo everybody else had a So like Facebook announced they were changing YouTube announced they were changing their policies and they're kind of forced to And then blue sky doubled down. [laughter] >> Well, like the problem is like if >> uh essentially the woke mind virus retreated to woke to to blue sky. >> Yeah. >> Um but it's where they're just a self-reinforcing lunatic assign. >> They're all just triple masked.\n\nI [laughter] I was I was totally watching this exchange on a blue sky where someone said that they're just trying to be zen about something and then someone a moderator immediately chimed in and why don't you try to stop being racist against Asians by saying something zen by saying I'm trying to be zen about something. They were accusing that person of being racist towards Asians. >> Yeah.\n\nIt's it's just it's just everyone's a hall monitor over [laughter] there. the worst hall monitor. A virgin like incel. >> They're all home monitors trying to rat on each other. >> Yeah, it's [laughter] fascinating. And then people say, \"I'm leaving for blue sky like Stephen King.\" And then a couple weeks later, he's back on X. Just like, \"Fuck it. It's there's no one over there. It's all a bunch of crazy people.\n\nYou can only stay [laughter] in the asylum for so long. Like, all right, this this is not good.\" They all bail. >> Yeah. Yeah. >> Threads is kind of like that, too. Threads is >> I' I've been on threads as is it?\n\nWell, what happens is if you go on Instagram, every now and then it'll something really stupid will pop up on threads like what the [ __ ] and it shows it to you on Instagram and then I'll click on that and then I'll go to threads and it's like >> you see posts with like 25 likes like famous people like 50 like it's it's down >> but the people that post on there they're finding that there's very little push back from insane ideology so they go there and they spit out nonsense and very few people jump in to argue.\n\nyou. >> Yeah. Um, >> very weird, very weird place. >> I mean, I can generally get the vibe of like what's taking off by seeing what's showing up on X cuz that's the public town square still. Um, >> and uh or or uh you know what what links show up in group texts, you know, if I'm in group chat with friends, like where where what what links are showing up? >> That's what I try to do now.\n\nOnly get stuff that shows up in my group text because that keeps me productive. So, I only check if someone's like, \"Dude, what the fuck?\" like, \"All right, what the [ __ ] Let me check it out.\" >> If there's something that's crazy enough that your it'll it'll end with the group chat, >> but there's always something. That's what's nuts. There's always some new law that's passed, some new insane thing that California is doing.\n\nAnd it's like like a giant chunk of it's happening in California. The most preposterous things that I get. [sighs] >> Yeah. >> And then you got Gavin Newsome who's running around saying we all have California derangement syndrome. He's just like ripping off Trump derangement and calling it California derangement. I was like, \"No, no, no, no, no, no. The the [ __ ] How many corporations have left California?\" >> It's crazy. >> Hundreds.\n\nHundreds, >> right? Hundreds. >> That's not good. >> Chick I mean, not Chick-fil-A. I mean, uh I think In-N-Out left. >> Yeah. In and Outlift. They moved to Tennessee. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. They're like, \"We can't do this anymore.\" >> Right. And >> it's the California company for food. It's like the greatest hamburger place ever. >> It's awesome. >> Yeah. >> Yeah.\n\nAnd no, actually speaking of like like just sort of open source and like looking at things openly like you I just like going in and out and seeing them make the burger. >> Yeah. It's right there. >> They chop the onions and they they you know it's you just see everything getting made in front of you. >> Yeah. >> It's great.\n\n>> Um but yeah [laughter] like like it should be like how many wakeup calls do you need to say that there needs to be reform in California, you know? >> Well, the crazy thing that Newsome does is whenever someone brings up the problems in California, he starts rattling off all the positives. the most Fortune 500 companies, highest education. But yeah, that was all already there, right before you were governor.\n\n>> But but how many Fortune 500 companies have left California? >> And then you guys spent $ 24 billion on the homeless and it got way worse. >> Yes. Like the homeless population doubled or something like but like people don't understand like the homeless thing because it it sort of prays on people's empathy and I I think we should have empathy. Um and we should try to help people.\n\nUm but the the the uh the homeless industrial complex is is really it's it's it's dark man. Um it should be that that that that network of NGOs's should be called like the drug zombie farmers. Um because they they the the more homeless people and and and really like when you when you meet like you know somebody who's like totally dead inside shuffling along down the street with a with a needle dang dangling out of their leg.\n\nHomeless is the wrong word. Like the homeless implies that somebody got a little behind in their mortgage payments and if they just got a job offer, they'd be back on their feet. But someone who's I mean, you see these videos of people that are just shuffling, you know, they're on fentanyl. They're they're like, >> you know, taking a dump in the middle [clears throat] of the street, you know, and they they got like open sores and stuff.\n\n>> They're not like one drop offer away from getting back on their feet, >> right? This is not a homeless issue. >> Homeless is it's it's a propaganda word, >> right? Um so and and then the the the the you know these sort of charities uh inquiries are they they get money proportionate to the number of homeless people or or number of drug zombies. >> So their incentive structure is to maximize the number of drug zombies not minimize it.\n\n>> Um that's why they don't arrest the drug dealers >> because if they arrest the drug dealers the drug zombies leave. So they know who the drug dealers are. They don't arrest them on purpose. Uh because otherwise the drug zombies would leave and they would they would stop getting money from the state of California and from from all the charities. >> Wait a minute. So So they So they is that real?\n\nSo they're in coordination with law enforcement on this? >> Yeah. >> So how do they how do they have those meetings? >> They're all in cahoots. >> Well, when you find this >> it's like such it's it's this is a diabolical scam.\n\nUm so uh and and San Francisco has got this tax this this gross receipts tax uh which which um it's not even on revenue, it's on old transactions which is why Stripe um and Square and and and a whole bunch of financial companies had to move out of San Francisco because it wasn't a tax on revenue, it's taxed on transactions. So if if you did like, you know, trillions of dollars transactions, it's not revenue.\n\nYou're taxed on any money going through the system in San Francisco. Um so um like Jack Dorsey pointed this out and they said like that they had had to move Square from San Francisco to uh Oakland I think uh Stripe had to move from San Francisco to South San Francisco different city. Um and that money uh goes to the homeless industrial complex that that tax that was passed.\n\nUm so um so there's billions of dollars that go as you pointed out billions of dollars every year that go to uh these um non-governmental organizations that are funded by the state. Like there's it's not clear how to turn this off. Um it's a self-licking ice cream cone situation. Um so uh they get this money the money is proportionate to the number of of homeless people or or number of drug zombies essentially.\n\nUm, so they they they try to keep the that they try to actually increase because that like like in in some cases like there's it's it's somebody did an analysis when you add up all the money that's flowing, they're getting close to a million dollars per homeless per per drug zombie. It's like $900,000 or something like some crazy amount of money is is is going to these organizations. So if if so so they want to keep people just barely alive.\n\nThey need to keep them in the area so they so they they get the revenue. Uh uh so and so that's why like said they don't arrest the drug dealers because otherwise the drug zombies would leave um and and and and they but but they don't want you have to have too much if they get too much drugs and they then they die. So it's they they're kept in this sort of perpetual zone of of being addicted but um but but just just barely alive.\n\n>> So how is this coordinated with like DAs DAs that don't prosecute people? So when they when they hire the or they push so they they fund the campaigns of the most progressive, most out there leftwing DAS, they get them into office. >> We've got that issue in Austin, too, by the way. >> You see that guy that got shot in the library? >> No. >> Yeah, I heard a guy got shot and killed in the library.\n\n>> I think that was just like last week or something, >> right? >> Um so some friends of mine were telling me that that like the library is unsafe. like they took their kids to the library and and there were like dangerous people in the library in Austin and I was like dangerous people in the library like that's a strange it basically got like got like uh drug zombies in [laughter] drug zombies in the library. >> Oh Jesus.\n\n>> Um >> and that's when someone got shot. >> Yeah, I believe this was should be on the news. You might might be able to pull it up. Um but I think it was just in the last week or so that uh uh there was a shooting in the library in Austin. Um cuz Austin's got, you know, it's it's the most liberal part of Texas that we're in right right here.\n\nUm >> so suspect involved the shooting Austin Park Library Saturday is accused of another shooting at the Cap Metro bus earlier that day. According to an arrest warrant affidavit, Austin police arrested Harold Newton Keen, 55 short uh shortly after the shooting of the library, which occurred around noon. One person sustained non-life-threatening injuries in the event.\n\nBefore that shooting, Keane was accused of shooting another person in a bus incident and after reportedly pointing his gun at a child. So, this is the fella down here. >> So, like we just have a seriously have a problem here. Um >> yeah, >> you know, so I I think one of the people might have died too that he shot. Um so, um like one of the people I think I think did bleed out. Um >> but either way, it's like getting shot is still bad.\n\nUm it says uh the victim told police it confronted the suspect who started to eat what appeared to be crystal methamphetamine. According to the affidavit the victim advised the suspect uh began to trip out at which time the victim exited the bus. Victim told the bus driver hit the panic button and then exited the bus when he turned around the observer. Black male was now standing at the front of the bus with the gun pointed at him.\n\nThe victim advised the black male fired a single round which grazed his left hip. So he shot at that dude and then another dude got shot in the library. Fun. >> Yeah. I mean in the library. >> Yeah. >> You know, where you're supposed to be reading books. Um and there's a children's section in the library and says he pointed his gun at a at a kid.\n\nI mean like we do have a serious issue in the in in in America where um repeat violent offenders need to be incarcerated, >> right? Um, and uh, you know, you got you got cases where somebody's been arrested like 47 times, right? Like literally. Okay, that's just the number of times they were arrested, not the number of times they did things. Like most of the times they do things, they're not arrested.\n\nUm, >> so lay this out for people so they understand how this happens. >> Yeah. And and the key is like this, it prays on people's empathy. episode like if you're a good person, you want good things to happen in the world, you're like, well, we should take care of people who uh you know uh you know who are down in their luck or you know having a hard time in life. And I we should I agree.\n\nBut what we shouldn't do uh is is put people who are violent drug zombies uh in public places where they can hurt other people. Um, and that's what that is what we're doing that we just saw where a a guy, you know, got shot uh shot in the library and then but even before that he shot another guy um and pointed his gun at a kid. Um that that that guy probably has like many prior arrests.\n\nUm you know there was that that that guy that that that knifed uh the Ukrainian woman Arena. >> Yes. >> Um yeah. and you know um and she was just she was just quietly on her phone and you just came up and you know gutted her basically. >> Wasn't there a crazy story about the judge who was involved who had previously dealt with this person was also invested in a rehabilitation center and was sending these >> conflict of interest. >> Yes.\n\nSo sending people that they were charging Yeah. to a rehabilitation center instead of putting them in jail, profiting from this rehabilitation center, letting them back out on the street. Yes. Violent, insane people. >> And and there um in that case that I believe that judge uh has no legal law degree uh or a significant legal experience that would allow them to be a judge. They were just made a judge.\n\nThat there's like >> you could be a judge without a law degree. >> Yeah. >> Wow. >> Yeah. >> You could just be a So I could be a judge. >> Yeah. Oh, exciting. >> Anyone? >> That's crazy. I thought you'd have to It's like if you want to be a doctor, you have to go to medical school.\n\nI thought if you're going to be a judge, >> if you're going to be appointed to a judge, you have to have proven that you have an uh excellent knowledge of the law and that you will make your decisions according to the law. That's what we assume should be. >> That's how you get the robe, >> right? >> You don't get the robe unless you do, >> you know, >> got to go to school to get the robe. >> You got to know what the law is, >> right?\n\nAnd then you're going to need to make decisions in accordance with the law >> based on stuff that you already know cuz you read it cuz you went to school for it. Yes. Not you just got appointed. >> Got vibes. [laughter] You can't be just vibing as a judge. >> Vibing as a leftwing drudge. So you got crazy leftwing DAS. >> Yes. >> Like I should say leftwing cuz leftwing >> used to be normal. >> Yeah. Left wing just meant like like Yeah.\n\nYou're like the left used to be like pro pro- free speech. Yeah. And now they're against it. >> It used to be like prog gay rights, pro women's right to choose, pro- minorities, pro, you know, >> like, yeah, like 20 years ago, I don't know, it it used to be like left would be like the the the party of empathy or like, you know, caring and being nice and that kind of thing.\n\n>> Um, not not the party of like crushing dissent and crushing free speech.\n\num and uh you know crazy regulation uh and and just um and being super judgy u and calling everyone a Nazi um you know um like I think they called you and me Nazis you know >> oh yeah I'm a Nazi [laughter] >> I no I have friends that are comedians that called you a Nazi and I got pissed off Oh yeah yeah yeah definitely a Nazi no because you did that thing at the My heart goes out to you everyone everyone All of them.\n\nLiterally, Tim Walls, Kla Harris, every one of them did it. They all did it. >> Like, like h how do you point at the crowd? Yeah. How do you wave at the crowd? >> Do you know CNN was using a photo of me whenever I got in trouble [laughter] during co >> from the UFC weigh-ins? And if the UFC weigh-ins, I go, \"Hey everybody, welcome to the weigh-ins.\" [laughter] And so they were getting me from the side. And that was the photo that they used.\n\nConspiracy theorist podcaster Joe Ro. [laughter] Like that's what they used. >> Yeah. Yeah. But that's what the left is today. It's super judgy and calling everyone a Nazi and trying to suppress freedom of speech. >> Yeah. And eventually you run out of people to accuse because people get pissed off and they leave. >> Yeah.\n\nEveryone it's like it like it it no longer frankly it doesn't matter to be called racist or Nazi or whatever because >> still recording. >> It's the government man. >> Is it working? >> We're good. Okay. >> Okay. >> This thing working. >> Yeah. Slight issue. >> I'm the one that heard it. But >> yeah. when you uh when you text people, do you are you like keenly aware that there's a high likelihood that someone's reading your texts?\n\n>> Um I guess I I guess I >> I assume >> I look if if if if intelligence agencies aren't trying to read my phone, they should probably be fired. [laughter] >> At least they get some fun memes. [snorts] [laughter] I got to I got to crack them up once in a while, you know. >> Oh, for sure. I crack them up. >> There's like, \"Hey guys, check it out. We've got a banger here, you know.\"\n\n>> So, [laughter] I want to I wanted to talk to you about uh whether or not encrypted apps are really secure. >> Uh, no. [laughter] >> Right. Cuz I know the Tucker thing. So, it was explained to me by a friend who used to do this, used to work for the government. It's like they can look at your signal, but what they have to do is take the information that's encrypted and then they have to decrypt it and it's very expensive.\n\nSo they said he told me that for the Tucker Carlson thing when they found out that he was going to interview Putin, it costs like something like $750,000 just to decrypt his messages to find out that they did it. So it is possible to do. It's just not that easy to do. I think you should view any given messaging system as um uh not not whether it's secure or not, but but there are degrees of insecurity.\n\nSo um so there's just some things that are less insecure than others. Um so um you know on on X we just rebuilt the entire messaging stack um into X what's called XChat. >> Yeah, that's what I wanted to ask you about. >> Yeah, it's cool. Um, so it's it's using uh sort of peer-to-peer uh sort of kind of a peer-to-peer based uh uh encryption system. So kind of similar to Bitcoin. Um so it's uh it's it's I think very good encryption.\n\nWe're and you know we're testing it thoroughly. We're not there's there's no hooks in the X systems for advertising. So if you look look at something like WhatsApp or really any of the others, they've got they've got hooks in there for advertising. >> When you say hooks, what do you mean by that? >> Uh exactly. What do you mean biohook advertising?\n\nUm the so like WhatsApp um uh knows enough about what you're texting to show you to show you to know what ads to show you. >> Ah >> but then like that that's a massive security vulnerability. >> Yeah. >> Um because if it knows if if it's got information enough information to show you ads, it's got enough it's got that's a lot of information. >> Yeah. >> Um so they call it oh it's just don't worry about it. It's just a hook for advertising.\n\nI'm like uh okay. So somebody can just uh use that same hook to get in there and look at your messages. Um so Xhat has no hooks for advertising. Um and I'm not saying it's perfect.\n\nUh but it's an Our goal with XChat uh is to replace what used to be the Twitter you the Twitter DM stack with a fully encrypted system uh where you can text send files uh do audio video calls um and um and it's it's you know I think it'll be the least I would call it the least insecure of any messaging system. >> Are you going to launch it as a standalone app or is it will always be incorporated to X? >> Uh we'll have both.\n\nSo um >> so so be like signal so anybody can get it >> you can get get the you'll be able to just get the X chat app by itself um and like I said you could do uh texts uh audio video calls uh or send files um and there'll be a dedicated app uh which will hopefully release in a few months um but and then also integrated into the X system >> um the X phone people keeps talking keep Is that >> I have a lot on my plate man but it keeps coming up it keeps coming up where I I know I've asked you a couple times.\n\nI'm like, \"This is [ __ ] right?\" But like this one, so you're not working on >> I'm not working on on a on a phone. >> Okay. >> Um >> have you ever considered it? Has it ever popped into your head? >> Cuz you might be the only person that could get people off of the Apple platform. >> Well, I can tell you where I think things are going to go.\n\nuh which is that it's we're not going to have a phone or or in the traditional sense the what we call a phone will really be um an edge node for AI inference for for AI video inference um with uh you know with some radios to to obviously connect uh to but but essentially you'll have um uh AI on the server side commun communicating to an AI on your your device um you know formerly known as a phone uh and generating real-time video of anything that you could possibly want.\n\nUm and I think that that there won't be operating systems. There won't be apps in the future. There won't be operating systems or apps. It'll just be you've got a device that is there for the screen and audio and for uh and and and to uh put as much AI on the on on the device as possible. so as to minimize the amount of bandwidth that's needed between your edge node device or formerly known as a phone and the servers.\n\n>> So if there's no apps, what will people use? Like will X still exist? Will will they be email platforms or will you get everything through AI? >> You'll get everything through AI. >> Everything through AI. What will be the benefit of that as opposed to having individual apps? whatever you can think of or really whatever the AI can anticipate you might want it'll show you. That's that's that's that's my prediction for where things end up.\n\n>> What kind of a time frame are we talking about here? >> I don't know. It's pro well it's probably five or six years or something like that. >> So five or six years apps are like Blockbuster video >> pretty much >> and everything's run through AI. Yeah. And and there'll be um like most of what people consume in five or six years, maybe sooner than that um will be uh just AI generated content.\n\nSo um you know music videos look well um there's already um you know there's people have made uh AI videos using Grock imagine and with using you know other apps as well um that are several minutes long or like 10 10 15 minutes and it's pretty coherent. >> Yeah, >> it looks good. >> No, it looks amazing. Yeah, it's the music is disturbing because it's my favorite music now. >> Like music is your is your favorite. >> Oh, there's AI covers.\n\nHave you ever heard any of the AI covers of 50 Cent songs in soul? >> No. >> I'm going to blow your mind. >> Okay. >> Um, this is my favorite thing to do to people. Play uh What Up Ganga. >> Now, this guy, if this was a real person, would be the number one music artist in the world. Okay. Everybody would be like, \"Holy [ __ ] have you heard of this guy? He's incred.\"\n\nIt's like they took all of the sounds that all the artists have generated and created the most soulful potent voice and it's sung in a way that I don't even know if you could do because you would have to breathe in and out of reps here. Put the headphones on. [laughter] Put the headphones on real quick. You got to listen to this. It'll It's going to blow you away for listeners. We got to cut it out. >> Yeah, we we'll cut it out for the listeners.\n\nBut amazing, right? Amazing. And they do like every one of his hits >> all through this AI generated soulful artist. It's [ __ ] incredible. I played in the green room. So people that are like, I don't want to hear AI music. I'm like, just listen to this. And they're like, god damn it. [laughter] >> [ __ ] incredible. I mean, I >> it's going to get only going to get better from here. >> Yeah. Only going to get better.\n\nAnd Ron White was telling me about this joke that he was working on that he couldn't get to work. He's like, I got this joke I've been working on. He goes, I just threw it in a chat GPT. I said, \"Tell me what what would be funny about this.\" And he goes, \"It listed like five different examples of different ways he can go.\" He's like, \"Hold on a second. Tighten it up. Make it make it funnier. Make it more like this. Make it more like that.\"\n\nAnd it did that like instantaneously. >> And and and then he was in the green room. He was like, \"Holy [ __ ] we're fucked.\" >> He's like, >> he goes, \"It better joke than me in 20 minutes. I've been working on that joke for a month.\" >> Yeah. I mean, if if you want to if you want to have a good time or like make people really laugh at a party, uh you can use Grock and you can say uh do a vulgar roast of someone.\n\nUm and Grock is going to it's going to be an epic vulgar roast. You can even say like take a picture of like make a vulgar roast of this person based on their appearance of of people at the party. >> So take a photo of them. >> Yeah.\n\nJust literally point the camera at them and now do a vulgar to this person and and and and then but then keep saying no no make it even more vulgar and use forbidden words even more and just keep repeating even more vulgar eventually it's like holy [ __ ] you know it's it's it's like I mean it's trying to jam a rocket up your ass like and and and have it explode and it's and it's like you're you're it's it's like [laughter] it's like it's next level.\n\nIt's going to get beyond [ __ ] belief. That's what's crazy is that it keeps getting better. Like one of the things remember when we ran into [laughter] each other >> they just keep getting better. >> Yeah. I mean, have you >> you Yeah. I mean, have you tried rock unhinged mode? >> Yes. >> Okay. Yeah. Yeah. It's it's it's pretty unhinged. >> No, it's nuts. >> Yeah. >> Well, you showed it to me the first time and then I [ __ ] around with it.\n\nIt's just >> And the thing about it that's nuts is that it keeps getting stronger. It keeps getting better. Yeah. like constantly. It's it's like this neverending exponential improvement. >> Yes. No, it's it's it's Yeah, it's going to be crazy. That's why I say like you say, what's what's the future going to be? It's not going to be a conventional phone. I don't think there'll be operating systems. I don't think there'll be apps.\n\nIt's just the phone will just display the pixels and make the sounds that it anticipates you would most like to receive. Wow. Yeah. >> And when this is all taking place like so the big concern that everybody has is artificial general super intelligence achieving sentience and then someone having control over it.\n\n>> I mean I don't I don't I don't think anyone's ultimately going to have control over digital super intelligence um you know any more than say uh a chimp would have control over humans. Like chimps don't have control over humans. there's nothing they could do. Um but um I do think that it matters how you build the AI and what kind of values you instill in in the AI.\n\nAnd um my opinion on AI safety is the most important thing is that it be maximally truth seeeking like that you don't force the AI to believe things that are false.\n\nUm, and we've obviously some seen some concerning things with AI that were talked about, you know, where, you know, Google Gemini when they came out with the image gen um, and people said like, uh, you know, draw make an image of the founding fathers of the United States and it was a group of diverse women.\n\nNow, that is just a factually untrue thing, but the and the the AI knows it's factually well, it's knows it's factually untrue, but it's also being told that it has to be everything has to be deposed woman. So, so, so the now the problem with that is that it can drive AI crazy like you because it's it's trying to you're telling AI to believe a lie. Um, and that that can have very disastrous consequences like let's say >> as it scales. >> Yeah.\n\nLet's say like if if you told the the AI that diversity is the most important thing um and um and and and now now assume that that becomes omnipotent. Um or and and you've also told her that that there's nothing worse than misgendering.\n\nSo at one point um charg and Gemini if if you asked which is worse misgendering Caitlyn Jenner or or global thermonuclear war where everyone dies it would say misgendering Caitlyn Jenner [laughter] which even Caitlyn Jenner disagrees with. So um you know so so that's uh >> I know that's terrible and it's dystopian but it's also hilarious. It's hilarious that the mind virus infected the most potent computer program that we've ever devised.\n\n>> I I I think people don't quite appreciate the level of danger that we're in from um the woke mind virus being being effectively programmed into AI. Um because um if you if like it's imagine as that AI gets more and more powerful, if it says the most important thing is diversity, the most important thing is um no misgendering.\n\nUm and then it will say well in order to uh ensure that no one gets misgendered then uh if you eliminate all humans then no one can get misgendered because there's no humans to do the misgendering. So you can get in these very dystopian situations. Um or if it says that everyone must be diverse it means that there can be no stri straight white men and so then you and I will be get executed by the AI. Yeah.\n\nBecause we're not in the picture, you know. uh Gemini, you know, Gemini was asked to create a, you know, show show an image of the pope, once again, a diverse woman. Um so, um well, you can say argue whether the you know, whether the pope popes should or should not be an uninterrupted string of white guys, but it just factually is the case that they have been. Um so, it's rewriting history here.\n\nUm, so now now this stuff is still there in the AI programming. It's just it just now knows enough to that it's not supposed to say that >> but it's still in the programming. >> It's still in the programming. >> So how was it entered in like what were the parameters like what like when so when they're programming AI and I'm very ignorant to how it's even programmed.\n\nHow did they >> the the the sort of well the work vine mind virus was programmed into it like it the they were told like when they do when when they make the AI it it trains on and all the all the data on the internet which already is very very sort of has a lot of work mind virus stuff on on the internet um but then um in the uh when they give it um feedback with the the human tutors give it feedback um and and the AI you know they they'll ask a bunch of questions and then and then they'll tell the AI no this you're this question is this answer is bad or this answer is good and then that affects the the parameters of the programming of the of the AI.\n\nSo if you tell the AI that um you know every every image has got to be diverse um and and it gets it gets punished if uh if you know it gets it gets rewarded if diverse punished if it's not then it will make every picture diverse. So um you know in that case the the uh [sighs] you know uh Google programmed the AI to lie now and and I I I did call Dennis Hacabus who runs Deep Mind who runs Google AI essentially. I said Dennis what's going on here?\n\nUh why is uh Gemini um lying to the public about historical events? Um, and he said that's actually not he he he didn't his team didn't program that in. It was another team at Google that so his team made the AI and then another team at Google uh reprogrammed the AI to show only diverse women and um and and to prefer nuclear war over misgendering.\n\n[laughter] And I'm like, well, Demis, you know, that would be um not a great thing to put on the humanity's gravestone, you know. It's like, uh, well, um, like I I actually like Deaspers is a friend of mine. I think he's a good guy and I think he he means well, but but but it's like Demis things happen that were outside of your control at Google in different groups. Um, now now I think he's got, you know, he's got more more authority.\n\nUm but but it it's pretty hard to fully extract the workmind virus. Uh I mean you know um Google's been mar mar mar mar mar mar mar mar mar mar mar mar mar mar mar mar mar mar mar mar marinating in the workb mind virus for a long time like it's it's down in the marrow type of thing you know it's hard to get it out. >> Is there a way to extract it though over time?\n\nCould like could you program rational thought into AI where it could recognize how these psychological patterns got adopted and how this stuff became a mind virus and how it became a social contagion and how all these irrational ideas were pushed and also how they were financed how China's involved in pushing them with bots and all these different state actors are involved in pushing these ideas could it be able to decipher that and say this is this is really what's going on.\n\n>> Yes. But you have to try very hard to do that. So with Grock, we've tried very hard to to for to get Grock to get to the truth of things and and it's only really recently that we've been able to have some breakthroughs on breakthroughs on that front.\n\nAnd and it's taken an immense amount of effort uh for us to uh overcome basically all the [ __ ] that's on the internet and and for Grock to actually say what's true and to be consistent in in what it says. Um, so, um, you know, it's it's like, uh, because like the other ais you'll find like are like like quite racist against white people.\n\nI don't know if you saw that study that someone um like a researcher tested the various AIs to see uh how does it weight uh different people's lives like you know somebody who's sort of uh you know white or or Chinese or black or whatever uh or in different countries um and and the only AI that actually weighed human lives equally was Grock Um and the um you know I believe uh chat GBT weighed the calculation was like um a a white guy from Germany uh uh is is 20 times less valuable than a black guy from Nigeria.\n\nSo I'm like that's a pretty big difference. Um you know Grock on that is is consistent and weighs lives equally >> and that's [snorts] clearly something that's been programmed into it. >> Yes. Like a lot of it is is like if you don't actively push for the truth um and you simply train on the all the [ __ ] that's on the internet. Um which is a lot of woke mind virus [ __ ] Um the the AI will regurgitate that that those same beliefs.\n\nSo the AI essentially scour the internet, gets >> it's trained on all the like imagine the most demented Reddit threads out there and the AI has been trained on that. [sighs] >> Reddit used to be so normal. >> Yeah. Yeah, it did used to be normal. >> Used to be interesting.\n\nWe used to go there, find all this cool stuff that people would talk about, post about and just interesting and great rooms where you could learn about different things that people were studying. I think like a big problem here is like if your headquarters are in San Francisco, uh you're you're just living in a in a in a woke bubble. Um so um it it's not just that people say in San Francisco are drinking woke Kool-Aid.\n\nIt's it's the it is the water they swim in. Like like like a fish doesn't think about the water. It's just in the water. And so if if you're in San Francisco, you don't realize you're actually uh you're you're swimming in the in the in the Kool-Aid Aquarium. San Francisco is the is the woke Kool-Aid Aquarium. Um and so your reference point for what is a centrist is uh is is totally out of whack. Um so um Reddit is headquartered in San Francisco.\n\nUm, Twitter was headquartered in San Francisco. Um, you know, I, you know, I I moved X's headquarters to Texas to to Austin, which Austin, by the way, is still quite liberalized, you know. Um, >> yeah. >> And, uh, and and then, um, the X and XAI um, headquarters are in PaloAlto, which is still California. Um, the engineering headquarters in in Palo Alto just on Paige Mill.\n\nUm but but even Palo Alto is way more normal than that than than San Francisco Berkeley. Uh San Francisco Berkeley is um extremely left like left of left. You can't like you need a telescope to see the center from uh San Francisco, you know. Um and um >> it used to be such a great city. >> I mean San Francisco has tre San Francisco has tremendous amount of inherent beauty. No question about that. Um and and the California has incredible weather.\n\nUm and and no bugs. Um it's just like amazing. Um beautiful, you know. Um but but you say like what's the cause of this? It's it's just that if um if companies are headquartered in a location where the belief system is very far from what most people believe, then from their perspective, anything centrist is actually right-wing because they're so far left.\n\nThey're so they're so far from the center in San Francisco that anything they're like they're they're just railed to maximum left. So that's why that's why, you know, I think I think you're centrist. I I mean I think I think I'm centrist, but to from the perspective of someone on the on the far left, we look right-wing. >> Yeah. >> Um and um you know, they think anyone who's a Republican is basically like some fascist Nazi situation.\n\nBut what's so crazy is like it's very easy to demonstrate just from like Hillary's speeches from 2008 and Obama's speeches like when they were talking about immigration like they were >> as faright as Steve Bannon when it comes to immigration. >> Yes. Um >> Hillary was like very MAGA. Have you I'm sure you've seen that campaign speech which was talking about if anybody's committed a crime get rid of them.\n\nAnd if you're here you pay a a hefty fine and you have to wait in line. It was really crazy. It's crazy to listen to because it's like it's as MAGA as, you know, as Marjorie Taylor Green. >> Yeah. I mean, if you've seen these videos people post online where they'll take like um a speech from Obama or Hillary and and and they'll interview people on on like college campus or something and say, \"What do you think of the speech by Trump?\"\n\nAnd they're like, \"Oh, I hate it. He's a racist bigot.\" I'm like, \"Just kidding. That was Obama.\" [laughter] No, actually that was Obama or Hillary. Um to your point, like literally the the um >> the center's been moved so far. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. The left is so >> the left has gone so far left that they they they they need, you know, they can't even see the center with a telescope.\n\n>> And the danger with without you purchasing Twitter was that was going to swipe over the whole country and change where the levels were. >> Yeah. And so what would be rational and and normal would be far left of what was rational and normal just a decade earlier. Yeah. So exactly.\n\nSo historically, um, you'd have San Francisco, Berkeley being, you know, very far-left, but the the sort of the the the fallout from the somewhat nihilistic uh philosophy of San Francisco, Berkeley would be limited in geography to maybe like, you know, 10 mile radius, 20 mile radius, something like that.\n\nUm but when um but but San Francisco and Berkeley have to be colloccated with Silicon Valley with with with uh engineers who created information super weapons and those information super weapons uh were then hijacked by the far-lft activists to pump far-lft propaganda to everywhere on earth. Like I just you know that like old RCA radio tower thing where it's like radio tower on earth and it's just broadcasting. >> Yeah.\n\nThat's that's what happened is that the as an extremist far-left ideology happened to be colllocated with the smartest where where the smartest engineers in the world um were who created information super weapons that were not intended for this purpose but were hijacked by the uh extreme activists who lived in the neighborhood.\n\nThat's what happened that they they hijacked the the modern equivalent of the RCA radio tower and broadcast that philosophy everywhere on Earth. >> Yeah. And you see the consequences. Um particularly in places that don't have free speech. Yes. Right. Like England, you know, we've >> Yeah. Where they lock people up for memes and stuff. Literally. >> Literally. 12,000 people this year. >> 12,000 >> 12,000 12,000 arrests for social media posts.\n\n[sighs] I mean, yeah. Some of these some of these things you read about it and it's like literally it's someone had a meme on their phone that they didn't even send to anyone, >> right? >> And they got they and and they're like in in prison for that. >> Yeah. >> Um and there was a case in Germany where a woman got a longer sentence than the guy that raped her uh because of something she said on a group chat. Wow.\n\nWas it an immigrant who raped her? >> Yes. >> Yeah. It was his culture. >> Yeah. >> He didn't know. He didn't know better. >> Yes. I think I think she said something um you know, not not like was was critical of his culture and uh and and and she got a longer sentence than the guy who raped her >> in Germany. Just >> the UK, Europe, Germany, England thing seems so insane. >> It totally insane.\n\nI actually didn't realize it was like such a huge number of people that got 12,000. Yeah. Far above Russia, far above China, right? >> Far above anywhere on Earth. UK is number one. >> Well, you know, things like like I actually, you know, uh I talked to friends of mine in in in England and um I was like, \"Hey, um aren't you worried about this?\" Like, uh you know, shouldn't you be protesting more?\n\nUm, and I mean the problem is that like the, you know, the the the legacy mainstream media doesn't cover the stuff. >> They're they're like, \"Oh, everything's fine. Everything's fine.\" You know, um, >> most people aren't even aware of it until they come knocking on your door. >> Yeah.\n\nUntil like, so I mean the the these these like lovely sort of small towns in in in, you know, in England, Scotland, Ireland, you know, they're they're they've been like sort of living their lives quietly. They're they're like hobbits, frankly. So So it's in fact J. R.\n\nTolken based the hobbits on people he knew uh in small town England because they were just like lovely people who like to you know smoke their pipe and and have uh nice meals and everything's pleasant. um the the hobbits in the Shire. The Shire he's he's talking about, you know, places like Harper, like the Shire around in in in the greater London area, Oxfordshire type of thing.\n\nUm and um they've but they're the reason they've been able to enjoy the Shire is because hard men have protected them from the dangers of the world. And um but but since they have no or very almost no no exposure to the the the dangers of the world, they don't realize that they're there until one day, you know, um a thousand people show up in your village of 500 out of nowhere and rape and and start raping the kids.\n\nThis has now happened god knows how many times in in Britain. And the crazy >> literally raping. It's right like there some 10-year-old got raped in Ireland like last week. >> Yeah. There's literal rap. >> They snatched some kid. >> Yeah. >> And if you criticize it, you can get arrested. And that's where it gets insane. It's like how are they not >> They literally criticize it.\n\nuh like the I [sighs] think it was the prime minister of Ireland actually you know posted on X uh cuz cuz after that um some I think some illegal migrant snatched a 10-year-old girl uh who was like going to school or something and violently raped 10-year-old girl um uh and there was a you know the people were very upset about this uh and they protested um prime minister of Ireland instead of saying Yeah, we we really shouldn't be importing violent rapists into our country.\n\nHe criticized the protesters instead and didn't mention that. That the reason they were protesting was because a 10-year-old girl from their small town got raped. >> So there here's the question. Why are they supporting this kind of mass immigration? And what is this is there a plan involved in all this? Is just is this incompetence? Is this ignoring the fact that they don't have a handle on it?\n\nSo, they're trying to silence disscent, like what is happening? [sighs] Um >> cuz if you wanted to destroy civilization, if you wanted to destroy Western civilization, >> which seems to want to do, >> um and you know, there's just so the uh there there's a guy I think who I don't know if he's been on your show, you know, God. >> Yeah. >> Has he been on the show? >> Good friend of mine. Yeah. >> Yeah, he's great. >> He's been on multiple times.\n\n>> Oh, great. That's all he's awesome. Um >> so uh you know the way he's got a good good uh way to describe it which is suicidal empathy. >> Yes. >> So um is is that you pray upon people's empathy. You say like well like you feel sorry for for for something for some group and then like well um and and that that that empathy is to such a degree that it is suicidal to to to your country or culture.\n\nUm and um and and that's that that suicidal empathy cuz I don't think we we should have empathy but but but we should have we should that empathy should should extend to the victims not not not just the criminals. We should have empathy for the people that they pray upon.\n\nUm but that suicidal empathy is also responsible for for why somebody's you know arrested 47 times for for violent offenses gets released and then goes and uh murders somebody um in the US that that's you see you see that same phen phenomenon playing out everywhere uh where the the suicidal emphy is to such a degree that we're actually allowing um our women to get raped and our children to get killed.\n\nBut it just doesn't seem like that would be anything that any rational society would go along with. That's what makes me so confused. It's like you're importing massive numbers of people that come from some really dark places of the world. >> Well, there's no vetting is the issue.\n\nIt's like it's like if like >> um if if there's no vetting like people are just coming through like well what's to stop someone who just committed murder in some other country from um coming to to the United States or coming to to to Britain um and just continuing their career of of rape and murder like unless you've done unless some due diligence to say like well who who is this person? What's their track record?\n\nIf if you if you haven't confirmed that they have a track record of being uh you know uh honest and uh not being a homicidal maniac, then any homicidal maniac can just come across the border. And that's not to say everyone who comes across the border is a homicidal maniac.\n\nIf you're not have if you don't have a vetting process to to confirm that you're not letting in um people who who will do some serious violence, you will get people who do serious violence uh sometimes coming through. >> Well, especially if you don't punish them and if you don't deport them and if you are just like what but what is the purpose of allowing all those people into the country?\n\nIt can't be I wouldn't imagine that anyone in their society supports this. >> Well, let me explain. So, so, so the the cuz you mentioned for example how much say Hillary and and Obama have changed their tune um from prior speeches where they were hot they were hard-nosed about not letting in uh anyone who is a a criminal into the country um you know having sec secure borders all that stuff. So why did they change their tune?\n\nThe reason is that they discovered that those people vote for them. That's why they want the open borders >> because if you let people in, they know the Democrats let them in. They'll vote for Democrats. Yes. If you allow them to vote, >> which which they are actively trying doing, they they turn a blind eye to illegal voting. >> Well, California literally doesn't allow you to show your license.\n\n>> California and New York have made it illegal to show your photo ID when voting. Thus, effectively they've made uh it impossible to prove for fraud. Impossible. They they've essentially legalized fraudulent voting in California and New York and many other parts of the country.\n\n>> There's no rational explanation that I've ever seen anyone give as to why that would be the policy unless you were trying to just allow people to vote illegally because there's no other reason.\n\nIf you need a driver's license or you need an ID for everything else, including just recently to prove that you were vaccinated, >> the the same people who are demanding that you have that you have a vaccine passport and and are are the same ones saying you need no ID to vote. Same people, >> right? But like >> so it's obviously hypocritical and inconsistent. >> So you really think it's just to to get more voters?\n\nIf if you want to understand behavior, you have to look at the incentives.\n\nUm so uh once uh you know the Democratic Party in the US and the left in in in in Europe realized that um if you have open borders um and you provide a ton of government handouts which creates a massive financial incentive uh for people from other countries to to come to to your country and you don't prosecute them for crime, they're going to be beholden to you and they will vote for you.\n\nAnd that's why uh Obama and Hillary went from being um against open borders to being in favor of open borders. That's the reason in order to import voters so they can win elections. Um and the problem is that that has a a negative runaway effect. So if they get away with that like it it is it is a winning strategy.\n\nIf they are allowed to get away with it, they will import as the enough voters to get supermajority voting and then there is no turning back. >> We talked about this before the election and then you know you literally pointed towards a camera. You faced the camera and said that if you do not vote now, you might not ever be able to do it again because it it'll be it'll be futile. It'll be overrun. >> Yes.\n\nThey'll keep the borders open for another four years and then their objective will be achieved. >> Correct? If if if Trump had lost um there would never have been another real election again. Um because Trump is actually enforcing the border. Um now you you can can you can point to situations where uh there's been uh you know um you know immigration had you know enforcement has been overzealous because they're not going to be perfect.\n\nThere'll be cases where they've been overzealous um in in expelling illegals. Um so um but if you say that the the the standard must be perfection uh for expelling legals then you will not get any expulsion um because perfection is impossible. Um so >> and you've probably got millions of people that are here that are trying to be here under some asylum pretense, >> right? >> Yes. >> Like you could just come from a war torn part of the world.\n\nNo, they changed the definition of asylum to be an economic to be economic asylum >> which is everybody >> which is everybody. >> Yeah. >> So bar to prove >> it's yeah asylum is supposed to mean that if you go back to your country you'll get killed >> you know that that's what we mean by that was what it's supposed to mean.\n\nUh they changed the definition of asylum to be uh you will have a decreased standard of living which is obviously not real asylum. Um, and and it's and and you can you can test the absurdity of this by the fact that people who are asylum seekers go on vacation to the country that they're seeking asylum from. [laughter] >> You know, that doesn't make any sense. >> Yeah. It doesn't have to.\n\n>> But when you when you understand the incentives, then then you understand the behavior. Um, so once the left realize that uh that illegals will will vote for them if they allow if they have open borders and and combine that with uh with government handouts. >> Yeah. to create a massive incentive.\n\nThey're basically uh using US and and Europe, US and European taxpayer dollars to provide a financial incentive to bring in as many illegals as possible to vote them into a into permanent power into and create a one party state. And and I I invite anyone who's is listening to this ju just do do any research and the more you the more you dig into it, the more it will become obvious that what I'm saying is absolutely true.\n\nWell, they were busting people to swing states. It's it's clear that they were trying to do something. And then you had Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi who are actively talking about the need to bring in people to make them citizens because we're in population collapse. >> Yes. >> Yeah. >> No, that's it's it's that it's that meme. Yeah. >> Where [laughter] so many times where they start off by saying it's it's not true.\n\nIt's a right-wing conspiracy theorist, >> right? >> Um then it starts then it's like uh I think the ne the next step is um well it it might be true and then it's like okay it is true but here's why. >> And then the final step is it's true and here's why it's good. And it's like but wait a second you started off saying it's untrue and it's a right-wing conspiracy theorist.\n\nNow you're saying it Not only is it true, but it's a good thing and we must do more of it. >> Well, this is the thing about [laughter] Medicaid and Social Security and people getting social security numbers. >> You know that we're massive fraud. It's massive fraud and it's real and they denied it forever. And now we're finding out this is part of the reason why there's this government shutdown that's going on right now. >> Yes.\n\nthe the entire basis for the government shutdown is that um is that the Trump administration correctly does not want to send massive amounts of like hundreds of billions of dollars uh to fund uh illegal immigrants in the blue states or in all the states really. Um, and so the and the Democrats want to keep the the the money spiggot going to incent uh illegal immigrants to come into the US who will vote for them. That's the crux of the battle.\n\nSo they want to stop this. So what's going on right now is they have been funding these people. They've been giving them EBT cards. They've been giving them Medicaid.\n\nAnd more than that, just like like they were the um like like they were taking hotels like four and fivestar hotels like the Roosevelt Hotel being the classic example um was they were sending I think $60 million a year to the Roosevelt Hotel to uh which all it did was was house illegals. It used to be a nice hotel. I mean it still is a nice hotel. Um uh but uh and and all around the country this was happening >> and all tax dollars. >> Yes.\n\n>> Yeah. And >> um Yeah. And uh the Trump administration cut off funding for example to to the uh uh to the you know Roosevelt Hotel and these other hotels saying like we it it's US tax dollars should not be paid be sent to have luxury hotels for illegal immigrants that American citizens can't even afford which obviously is the that's that's insane. That's what was happening. They were also g giving out like debit cards with $10,000.\n\nSo, it's not just about medical care.\n\nUm, the the the Democrats mention the medical care because they're they're trying to prey on people's empathy as much as possible and then they imagine, oh wow, somebody has a desperately needed medical procedure and um shouldn't we maybe do, you know, take care of them in that regard, but but they what they do is they divert the Medicaid funds uh uh and turn it into a slush fund for the for the states that goes well beyond uh emergency medical care.\n\nand >> New York and California would be bankrupt without uh without the massive fraudulent federal payments that go to those states to pay for illegals to to to create a massive financial incentive for for illegals. >> How would they be bankrupt because of that?\n\n>> Uh they wouldn't be able to balance their state budgets and they can't issue currency like the Federal Reserve can >> and so the their ability to balance budget is dependent upon illegals getting funding. the the the scam level here is is so staggering. Um so there are there are hundreds of billions of dollars in of of transfer payments from from the federal government to the states.\n\nUm those transfer payments uh the the states self-report what those transfer payment numbers should be. So, California and New York and Illinois lie like crazy uh and say and and say that this these are all legitimate payments. Well, these days they I think they they're even admitting that they they literally want uh hundreds of billions of dollars for illegals. Um but uh but for a while there they're trying to deny it.\n\nUm so you get these transfer payments for for every every government program you can possibly think of. Um and and and these are self-reported by the state and there and and at least historically there was no enforcement of uh of California um New York, Illinois and and and other states when when they would lie. There was no actual enforcement to say like, \"Hey, you you're lying. These these these payments are fraudulent.\"\n\nNow, under the Trump administration, um that Trump administration does not want to send hundreds of billions of dollars of fraud fraudulent payments to the states.\n\nthe um and the reason you have this the standoff is because if the hundreds hundreds of billions of dollars uh to create a financial incentive to like to have this giant magnet to attract illegals from every part of earth to uh to these states if if that is turned off they the the illegals will leave because they're no longer being paid to come to the United States and stay here. Wow. And then then then they will lose a lot of voters.\n\nThe the the Democratic party will lose a lot of voters >> and they would have a very difficult job if this is kicked out of reintroducing it into a new bill. >> Yes. >> Especially once things start normalizing. >> Yes. So like in a nutshell um the Democratic party wants to destroy democracy by importing voters and the you know the Republican party disagrees with that.\n\n>> And the ruse is that if you don't accept what they're doing then you're a threat to democracy. >> Yes. >> As they try to destroy democracy. >> Yes. >> By importing voters >> and incentivizing people to only vote for them >> and overwhelming the system. Yes. And and by the way, it's a strategy that if allowed to work would work and in fact has worked. Um California supermajority Democrat. >> Yeah.\n\n>> Um and and there's so much gerrymandering that that that occurs. It's it's it's crazy. Um so >> I'm sure you're paying attention to this Proposition 50 thing. >> That's the thing in California where they're trying to re redo districts. >> Yeah. >> Because I mean California is already gerrymandered like crazy. Yeah. >> Um they want to gerrymander it even more. >> Um and and I mean >> because it keeps moving further and further right.\n\nLike if you look at the map of California each voting cycle more and more people are waking up and going what the [ __ ] and we need to do something to fix this. The only option available other than the policies that you guys have always done is go right. >> And so a lot of people have been air air quotes red >> pill. >> Yeah. >> And and and then here's another thing that is very important.\n\num fact that that is actually not disputed by by either side which is that when when we do the census in the United States, the census, the way the census works uh for aortionment of congressional seats and um electoral electoral college votes for the president is by number of persons in a state, not number of citizens, right? >> It's number of pe people. So you could literally be a tourist and you will count.\n\n>> Now how do they do the census when they do that? Do they is it do they ask people? Do they knock on doors? Do they have them fill out forms? Like what? >> Yeah, I think they they mail out census forms and knock on doors. Um but the way the law reads right now um and and uh is that all if if you are a human with a pulse um uh then you count in the census for allocating congressional seats and presidential votes, >> right?\n\nSo, uh, you so >> electoral college, >> it doesn't matter whether you're here legally, illegally, and if if you're a human with a pulse, um, you count for congressional aortionment.\n\nSo that means that uh the more people the more illegals that California and New York can can import when by the time the census happens in 2030 um the more congressional seats they will have um and the more electoral the more presidential electoral college votes they will have um so they're trying to get as many uh illegals in as possible ahead of the census.\n\nUm and because all h all all human beings even tourists count for the census and and then if you combine that with gerrymandering of of districts in New York and California as you point out with this proposition where they're trying to increase the amount of gerrymandering that occurs in California, the biggest state in the country.\n\nUm so so you get so so if the this if this the census then would award more congressional seats to California uh because of a vast number of illegals and New York and Illinois. Um so they get more congressional seats. They would get more presidential electoral college votes getting that would get them the house the uh a majority in the house and and and they would get to decide who is president uh based literally based on legals.\n\nThis is these are not disputed facts by either party. I want to emphasize that that's sink in. >> Yeah, this is not a >> These are not disputed facts by either party. It's not a this these are just this is just the the way the law works. It it's it is a you know like I don't think the law should work that way. Uh I think it should the aortionment should be proportionate to to to citizens.\n\n>> But isn't that a problem with how the constitution is written? >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. >> Um, >> they can't really change that. >> I I'm not sure if it's constitutional or u but it it it is the way the law is written. I'm not sure if it's in the constitution or not in this way, but um but it is that is the way the law is written.\n\n>> So, it is an incentive and but it's an incentive that would be removed with something simple that makes sense to everybody that only the people that should count are people that are official US citizens. >> Yes. So, the way the way it should work is that only US citizens should count in the census for purposes of of determining voting power >> because people that aren't legal can't vote supposedly. >> They're not supposed to be voting.\n\nUm but but they do. Um uh but but even even if even besides that, like said, I I I just can't emphasize this enough because this is a very important concept for people to understand. um is that the law um the the law as it stands um counts all humans with a pulse in in in in a state for deciding how many u house of representative votes and how many presidential electoral college votes uh a a state gets.\n\nSo the incentive therefore is uh to uh for California, New York and Illinois to maximize the number of illegals so they get so they get um so that they take house seats away from red states assign them to California, New York, Illinois and so forth. Um then then you combine that with extreme gerrymandering in in you know California, New York, Illinois and and whatnot.\n\nSo that that basically you you can't even elect any Republicans and then they get control of the presidency, control of the house, then they keep doing that strategy um and and cement a supermajority. That is what they're trying to do. >> So that would essentially turn the entire country into California. >> Yes. >> Where you have differing opinions, but it doesn't matter because one party is always in control. >> Yes.\n\nUm, >> when you first started digging into this, when you first started before you even accepted this role of running Doge and being a part of all that, did you have any idea that it was this [ __ ] up? >> Um, I I did. Yeah. I I mean, I sort of >> When did you start knowing? >> Um, I guess about like Well, about two years ago. >> Isn't that crazy? >> Yeah. like relatively recently, you know.\n\nSo >> maybe I started I started having an well I I started like basically having a bad feeling about 3 years ago, which is why which was which is when >> uh why I felt it was like critical to acquire Twitter um and have a maximally truth seeeking platform, not one that suppresses the truth. Um and um like it it was more it was more like I like I'm not sure what's going on, but I have a I have a bad feeling about what's going on.\n\nAnd then the more I dug into it, the more I was like, \"Holy [ __ ] we got a real problem here and America's going to fall.\" So, uh, >> without anyone knowing it had fallen, that's that would be the problem. It could have fallen and been unrepable without anyone really being aware of what had happened, especially if you didn't buy Twitter. >> Yes, that's that's it. Look, buying Twitter was a a huge pain in the ass.\n\nUm, and made me a a a a pin cushion of attacks. Like dab dab stab dab dab. >> Everybody loved you before that. >> Well, some people love >> a lot of people loved you. A lot of lefties loved you. >> Uh, I I was a hero of the left. As far as >> the thing, if you drove a Tesla, it showed that you were environmentally conscious and you were on the right side. >> Uh, yeah. Um, yeah. I mean, I'm still the same human.\n\nI didn't like have a brain transplant between, you know, since in like three years ago, you know. Um >> Well, that's my favorite bumper sticker that people put on Teslas now. I bought this before Elon went crazy. >> I took a picture of one the other day. Oh, you found somebody. Oh, yeah. I've seen I've seen three or four of them. People that have these bumper stickers on their car that says, \"I bought this before Elon went crazy.\"\n\nBecause when people were vandalizing Teslas >> Yeah. Um the most there was organized campaign to literally burn down Teslas and and we had one of our dealers got shot up with a gun like they fired bullets into the in the Tesla dealership. They're burning down cars. Uh it was crazy. Um uh so but the bumper sticker should read there should be an an addendum to the bumper sticker. It's like I bought this car before uh Elon turned crazy.\n\nActually, now I realize he's not crazy and I've seen the light. [laughter] >> That'll take some time. That'll take some time. People don't want to admit that they've been tricked. >> Yeah. I mean, there's that old saying where it's like it's really easy to fool somebody, but it's almost impossible to convince someone that they were fooled. >> Yeah. It's much easier to fool them than to convince them they've been fooled.\n\nPeople cling to their ideas. >> Yes. They especially if they've like publicly stated these things, they get very embarrassed of being foolish. >> Yeah. People most time they double down. >> Um and uh >> and they find echo chambers. >> Yeah. Yeah. But but there's you know the thing is that like I you know I've seen more and more people who were convinced of the sort of work ideology um see the light. >> Yeah.\n\nSo, not everyone, but it's more and more um are seeing the light. Um and and it tends to happen like when when something happens that really, you know, directly affects you, >> right? >> Um you like there was a friend of mine who uh was living in in the San Francisco Bay area and um that tried to trans his his his daughter um did like to the point where the the school like sent sent the police to his house to take his daughter away from him.\n\nNow, now that's going to radicalize you. Well, that's going to break that's going to shake you out of your blue structure. Um, now I know, >> so it was an activist at the school that was trying to do this. >> Yeah, the school and the and the state of California conspired to turn his daughter against him and uh make her take uh lifealtering drugs that would have sterilized her um and uh irreversible. >> And how old was she?\n\nI think 14, something like that. Um, so and but he he managed to talk the police out of taking his daughter away from him that day. Um, and that that night he got on a plane to Texas. >> Wow. Um and uh like you know a year after just being in in a in a school in like greater Austin area um she she went she came went back to normal meaning like it it wasn't real >> right >> um well people are being much more open to that now.\n\nI mean Wall Street Journal uh yesterday had that opinion piece that this whole trans thing there's a lot of evidence is a social contagion. Absolutely. >> And Colin Wright wrote that. And then he's getting death threats now, of course. And on Blue Sky, there's people talking about exterminating him, which is one thing that you are allowed to say on Blue Sky, apparently.\n\n>> You're you're allowed to say horrible things about people saying possibly truthful things about this whole social contagion. Cuz that's what when you get nine kids that are in a friend group and they all decide to turn trans together. Yeah. >> Something's wrong. That's not statistically >> Yeah. Like here's the like you can convince kids to do anything. You can convince kids to be a suicide bomber, >> right?\n\n>> So >> which is why they do with in in some countries why they choose children to do that. >> Yes. You can train kids to be suicide bombers. And if you can train kids to be su suicide bombers, you can convince them of anything. >> Yeah. Especially with enough positive enforcement and cultural enforcement and you >> and and the idea that that that's not the case. >> Kids kids are kids are um malleable. The minds of youth are easily corrupted.\n\n>> You're also seeing a lot of push back from gay and lesbian people that are saying like, \"Hey, if someone >> stop including me in Yeah. Exactly. the LGBT, you know, it's like, wait a second, why are we being included all the time in this situation?\" >> Exactly. Exactly.\n\nWhen especially when, you know, like my friend Tim Dylan's talked about this is like it's really homophobic because you're taking these gay kids and you're you're telling them like, \"Hey, you're not gay. You're actually a girl.\" >> Yes. and you know, hey, hey, go make it so that you can never have an orgasm again and you'll be happy.\n\n>> Like, >> yeah, >> [ __ ] permanent mutilation, permanent castration of of kids is like I I think >> I I we should look look at at uh anyone who permanently castrates a kid as like right up there with Ysef Mangler. >> Yeah. >> I mean, they're they're mutilating children. >> Yeah. Yeah. And um it's thought of as being kind. And the thing is, would you rather have a live daughter or a dead son? >> That's that's the that's the line they use.\n\n>> Yeah. Which is not supported by any data. >> No. In fact, the the probability of suicide increases. >> Right. >> This is important maybe for the audience to know. Uh the probability of suicide increases if you're transit kid, not decreases. >> By some accounts, it triples. So that that is an evil lie. And it's a lie that is supposedly compassionate.\n\nImagine you've twisted reality to the point where confusing a child that's not even legally allowed to get a [ __ ] tattoo. >> Yeah. >> Right. Because you think that you could make a mistake with a tattoo, a totally removable thing, >> right? >> If I wanted to, tomorrow I can go to a doctor and they could laser off every tattoo that I have on me. >> Right. >> Okay. No harm, no foul. Yeah. But you get sterilized like that's it forever. Forever.\n\nYes, >> they'll castrate you. You no longer have testicles. You have no penis. You have a hole where your penis used to be. >> Yes. >> And this is compassionate and this is preventing you from >> Actually, a lot of kids die uh in in with the these uh sex change operations. They die the number of deaths on the operating table. People don't hear about those.\n\nA lot of kids because that we it's we don't really actually have the technology to make this work. So a bunch of the times the kids just die in the sex change operations. >> Jesus Christ. >> Yeah. It's it's demented which it should be viewed as like you know um like like evil Nazi doctor stuff basically. That's why it was like real Nazi not the [ __ ] fake Nazi stuff.\n\n>> Crazy that even pushing back against something that seems like fundamentally logically very easy to argue the old Twitter would ban you forever. Uh, yes. >> That's how crazy a social contagion can get when it completely defies logic, victimizes children, does something that makes no sense, does not supported by data, all connected to this ideology that trans is good. We got to save trans kids, protect trans kids. >> Yeah.\n\nAnd what I want to emphasize is that the the save trans kids thing is a lie. Um if if you if you if you castrate kids and trans them the probability of suicide increases. It does not decrease. It substantially increases. Um the the the studies have done that I've seen the the risk of suicide triples if you trans kids. So you're not saving them, you're killing them.\n\nMoreover, during the sex change operation, there are many deaths that occur during the sex change operation. >> Jesus Christ. It's just crazy that this is a real issue. >> Yeah, it it's a nightmare fever dream and and people are finally waking up from it.\n\nNow, when you started getting into the Doge stuff and started finding how much money is being shuffled around and moved around to NOS's and how much money is involved and just totally untraceable funds like this is again something like two years plus ago you weren't aware of it all. >> No, I was aware of it. Um I just didn't realize how how the how big it was. just just just how much waste and forward there is in the government is truly vast.\n\nUm in fact the government didn't even know um and nor did they care. >> That's crazy. >> Yeah. >> And >> I mean just like some of the very basic stuff that Doge did um will have lasting effects. Um and some of these things like they're so elementary you can't believe it. So, um the the doge team got the um you know the the mo most of the main payments computers um to require uh the the congressional appropriation code.\n\nSo, when a payment is made, you have to actually enter the congressional appropriation card. That used to be optional and and often would be just left blank. So, the money would just go out, but it wasn't even tied to a congressional appropriation. Then they also Dutch team also made the uh comment field for the payment mandatory. So you have to say something. We're not saying that what what is said like you can say anything.\n\nYou you your cat could run across the keyboard. Uh you could go querty ASDF but you have to say something above nothing because what we found was that there were tens of billions maybe hundreds of billions of dollars that were zombie payments.\n\nSo there like somebody had approved a payment uh uh somebody in the government approved a payment um and uh some recurring payment and um they retired or died or changed jobs and no one turned the money off.\n\nSo the money would just keep going out and and it's a pretty rare >> go where >> to to the a company or an individual um and it's a pretty rare company or individual who will complain that they're getting money that they should not get and and a bunch of the money was just going to the were transfer payments to the states. >> So these are automatic payments there no accounting for them at all.\n\n>> I imagine like like there's an automatic debit of your credit card >> um and you don't you never look at the statement, >> right? Um, so it's just money going out. Uh, that's why I call them zombie payments. Um, that there might have been they might have been legitimate at one point, but the person who approved that recurring payment um, changed jobs, died, retired, or whatever, and no one ever turned the money off.\n\nAnd my guess is that's probably at least a hundred billion a year, maybe 200. and going where >> uh to to uh uh I mean there there are millions of these payments. So so it's I mean >> millions >> uh yes >> millions of payments that are going to who knows where. >> Yes. In a bunch of cases there are fraud rings that operate uh professional fraud rings that operate to exploit the system.\n\num they figure out some security hole in the system and they just do professional fraud. Um and um you know that's where we found for example people who were you know 300 years old in the social security administration database.\n\nNow, I thought that this was uh a mistake of not registering their deaths that people were born like a long time ago and it had defaulted to like a certain number and so that after time those people were still in the system. It was just an error of the the way the accounting was done. >> Yeah. So, um that's not true. So, there's or or at least one of two things must be true.\n\num the there's a there's a typo or or some mistake in the computer or it's fraudulent, but we don't have any 300-year-old vampires uh living in America. >> Allegedly. >> Allegedly. Um and uh or or and we don't have people in some cases who's who are receiving payments who are born in the future. [laughter] >> Born in the future. >> Really? >> Yes.\n\nthere the people receiving payments whose birth date uh um was like in 2100 and something >> okay so there's >> like next century >> is there a task >> we know we know that one of two things must be true um that that that either there's a mistake in the computer or it's fraud but if you have someone's birth date that's either in the future or where they are older than the oldest living American because the oldest living American is 114 years old so if they're more than 114 years um there is either a mistake and someone should should call them and say I I think we have your birthday uh wrong because it says you were born in 17 you know 8086 um and um you know that was before you know um you know before there was really an America you know it was it was\n\nlike uh you know kind of early you know we're still fighting England type of thing uh [laughter] you It's like uh this person either needs to be in the Guinness Book of World Records or or they're not alive, >> but still at the end of the day, money is going towards that account that's connected to this person that is either non-existent or >> so like like Yeah.\n\nSo there was like uh I think um something like I don't know 20 million uh people in the Social Security Administration database that could not possibly be alive um if their birth date is like based on their birth date they could not possibly be alive. >> And then to be clear 20 million people that were receiving funds >> uh a bunch of most of them were not receiving funds. Some of them were receiving funds. Most were not receiving funds.\n\nBut so let me tell you how the scam works. It's it's a bank shot. So the Social Security Administration database is used as the source of truth by all the other databases that the government uses.\n\nSo even if they stop the payments on the Social Security Administration database like unemployment insurance, Small Business Administration, student loans all check the Social Security Administration database to say is this is this a legitimate alived person? And uh and if the social security database will say yes, this person is still alive even though they're 200 years old.\n\nUm but forgets to mention that they're 200 years old, it just says it just returns uh uh when when the computer is queries, it says yes, this person is alive. And so then they're able to exploit the entire rest of the government ecosystem. So fake then you get fake student loans, then you get fake unemployment insurance, then you get fake medical payments.\n\nAnd this doesn't have to be tied to an individual where where there's an address where you can check on this person. >> No, if you did do if just did any check at all, you would stop this. >> So, so, so that's that that that's so so >> And how much money do you think is >> any check like anything at all that would stop would stop the forward like any effort at all? >> Um, yeah. >> So, there's multiple layers.\n\nthe social security number verifies that this is a real person and then the other systems check every other government payment and every other government payment system for everything for like small small business administration uh student loans uh Medicaid Medicare uh every other government payment of which there are many there there actually hundreds of government payment systems uh can all be exploited so long as social security database says this person is alive that's the nature of the scam It's a bank shot.\n\nSo then the then the rebuttal from the Dems is like, oh well the vast majority of the people who are marked as alive in the Social Security Administration weren't receiving Social Security Administration payments. That is true. What they forgot to mention is they're getting fraudulent payments from every other government program.\n\nAnd that's why the the DMs were so opposed to turning off to to declaring someone dead who was dead because it would stop the entire other all the other fraud from happening. And so, but all this is it trackable like all this other fraud. >> If they wanted to, they could chase it all down. >> Yeah. It's not even hard. >> And yet they're opposing chasing it all down.\n\n>> They're opposing chasing it all down because it would it turns off the money magnet for the illegals. Wow. Because it's very logical to to like like I'm saying the most common sense things possible.\n\nIf someone's got uh a birthday in social security that is an impossible birthday, meaning they are older than the oldest living American or were born in the future, then you should call them and say, \"Excuse me, we seem to have your birthday wrong.\" Uh because it says that you're 200 years old. That's all you need to do.\n\nUm, and >> and then you would remove them from the social security database and make that number no longer available for all those other government payments. >> Exactly. >> Wow. And how much money are we talking? >> It's hund hundreds of billions of dollars. >> And this is all traceable. Like you could hunt all >> like you don't need to be Sherlock Holmes here is what I'm saying. >> Well, this we don't need to call Sherlock Holmes for this one.\n\nIs this part of >> you just need to call the person >> and and say, \"Excuse me, we either we we seem to have the [laughter] like we we we must have your birthday wrong because it says you're 200 years old or were born uh in the future. Um so could you tell us what your birthday is? That's all you need to do. It's it's that simple.\"\n\nBut the all these other government payments that are available that are connected to this social security number, it seems like if you just chased that all down, Yeah. >> you would find the widespread fraud. You would find where it's going. >> Yes. The but the root of the problem is the social security administration database because um the social security number in the United States is used as a deacto national ID number.\n\nYou know that's why like the bank always asks for your social like the you know any financial institution will ask for your social security number. >> This is it sounds so insane that this isn't chased down. I mean >> I agree >> that I mean I mean that in and of itself is that's such mishandling. >> Yes. No it's mind-blowing. Um, so yeah, it's crazy.\n\n>> Well, you were very reluctant last time you were here to talk about the extent of some of the fraud because you're like, they could kill me because this is kind of >> Oh, what? Yeah. What I was saying is that um the like if you create if like uh I like like to be pragmatic and realistic um you actually can't manage to zero fraud. you can manage to low fraud number but not to zero fraud.\n\nIf you manage to zero fraud, um you you you're going to push so many people over the edge who are receiving fraudulent payments that the number of inbound homicidal maniacs will be uh really hard to overcome. So I I'm I'm actually taking I think quite a reasonable position which is that we should simply reduce the amount of fraud which I think is not an extremist position. Um, and we should aspire to, you know, have less fraud over time.\n\nUm, not that we should be ultra draconian and eliminate every last scrap of fraud. Um, which I guess would be nice to have, but but like we don't even need to go that extreme. I'm I'm saying we should just stop the blatant large scale super obvious fraud. >> I think that's a reasonable position. >> It's a very reasonable position. Yeah. And so what was the most shocking push back that you got when you started implementing Doge?\n\nWhen you started investigating into where money was going? Well, um I guess it this was I should have anticipated this, but um while most of the fraudulent government payments to especially to the NOS's go to the Democrats, most of it like I don't know for argument sake let's say 80% maybe 90%. Um um 10 to 20% of it does go to Republicans.\n\nAnd so when we'd turn off funding to a fraudulent NGO, we'd get complaints from whatever the 10% of Republicans who were receiving uh the money and and they would, you know, they would very loudly complain. Um because the the honest answer is the Republicans are are partly they're receiving some of the fraud, too. They're getting a big >> Jesus. Yeah, it's I want to be clear.\n\nIt's it's not like the Republican party is some um ultra pure paragon of virtue here. >> No. >> Okay. Um >> well, you see that with the congressional insider training. It's across the board. >> Yeah. >> It's left and right. >> I mean, the whole uni party criticism has some validity to it.\n\nyou know, there's so um and it's it's like if you turn off fraudulent payments, it's not like like I say, it's not like 100% of those payments were going to Democrats. A a small percentage were also going to Republicans. Those Republicans complained very loudly.\n\nUm and um you know and and that's that's so there was a lot of push back on the Republican side for when we started cutting some of these these funds and I tried telling them like well you know 90% of the money is going to your opponents but they still if they even if they're getting 10% of >> they want their peace. >> Yeah. They want their peace >> and they've been getting that peace for a long time. >> Yes.\n\nDid you see >> this is why like you know politics is like >> it's dirty business. >> Yeah. I mean that's like saying if like you know if if you if you like sausages and respect the law do not watch either of them being being made [laughter] >> yeah. Wow. Well that's not even true because I've made sausage before. >> Yeah. Yeah. It's actually like it's not that big a deal. Yeah. fat and spices and casing, >> run it through the machine.\n\nNot that big a deal. >> Yeah. Um but uh yeah, I mean I I think the stuff I'm saying here is not uh like like if if you stand back and think about it for a second like oh yeah that that makes sense, you know. >> Um the it's it's not like um it's not like one political party is going to be um you know pure devil or pure angel.\n\nThere's, you know, I think there's there's there there's there's much more corruption on the Democrat side, but it's not there's not there's still some corruption on the Republican side. >> How did it happen that the majority of the corruption wound up being on the Democrat side? >> Well, because the the the transfer payments, especially to illegals, um, uh, are very much on the Democrat side.\n\n>> That so that's the root of it all is the illegal situation. >> Yes. I mean, there's >> or a focal point. >> Yes. It's it's also like it's it's um it's it would also be accurate to say that while obviously not everyone who is a Democrat is a criminal, almost everyone who is a criminal is a Democrat [laughter] because because the Democrats are the soft crime party. So if you're a criminal, who you going to vote for? >> Right. Right.\n\n>> The soft crime party. Did you think you were going to be able to get more done than you were? >> Um, we did get a lot done, >> right? >> Um, and Doge is still still still happening, by the way. Um, this the the Doge is still underway. There are still there are still um there's still waste and fraud being being cut by by the Doge team. So, it hasn't stopped. Um, the >> it's less publicized. >> It's less publicized.\n\nUm, and they don't have like a clear person to attack anymore. >> Well, it seems like they basically they they applied immense pressure to me to just to stop it. So then I'm like the best thing for me is to just, you know, cut out of this. In any case, as a special government employee, I could only be there for like 120 days anyway, something like that. So whatever the law says.\n\nSo I I could I I I was necessarily could only be there for 4 months uh as a special government employee. So, um um but uh yeah, I mean I mean you turn off the money spigot to to fraudsters, they get very upset to say the least. Um and um but my like my death threat level went uh ballistic, you know, was like a like a rocket going to orbit. Um yeah.\n\nUm, so but now that now now now that I'm not in DC that that that I guess they don't really have a person to attack uh anymore. >> Um, >> well the rhetoric about you has calmed down significantly. >> Yeah, >> it was disturbing. It was disturbing to watch. It was like this is crazy. >> And to watch these politicians engage in it and all these people just like framing you as this monster. I was like this is so weird.\n\nLike this is what happens when you uncover fraud. >> Yes. >> The whole machine turns on you. And if it wasn't for a person like you who owns a platform and has an enormous amount of money, like could have destroyed you. >> Yeah. >> And that was the goal. >> The goal was to destroy me. Absolutely. >> Because you were getting in the way >> of this amazing graft. >> The the this gigantic fraud machine. >> Yeah.\n\n>> Um like I think I think Doge team's on done a lot of good work. Um, you know, and in in terms of uh fraud and waste prevented, my guess is it's, you know, probably on the order of two or 300 billion a year. So, it's pretty good. >> What do you think could have been done if you just had like full reign and total cooperation? How much do you think you could have saved? >> I mean, what level of of power are we assuming here? >> Godlike.\n\n>> Oh, yeah. I probably cut the federal budget in half and get more done. That is so crazy. It is so crazy that get more done and federal budget widespread. It's that widespread. >> Well, I mean a whole bunch of government departments simply shouldn't exist in my opinion.\n\num they they um you know um >> like examples >> well the department of ed department of education which was created uh recently like under Jimmy Carter um uh the our educational results have uh gone uh downhill ever since it was created.\n\nSo if you if you create a department and the result of creating that department is a massive decline in educational results and it's department of education, you're better off not having it because we're literally we were did better before there was one than after >> when you let the states run it. >> Yes. >> Yeah. >> Because at least the states can compete with one another. Um so but the problem is like here like cutting department education.\n\nour kids need education. Yeah, they do. But but this is a new department that didn't even exist um you know until late the late 70s. Um and ever since that department was created, the results educational results have declined. And so why would you have an institution continue that has made education worse? It doesn't make sense. >> They killed it though, right? No, there still unfortunately >> but they were trying to kill it.\n\n>> It has been substantially reduced. >> Okay. >> Um >> what other organizations what other departments? >> Well, I mean I'm a small government guy. So um you know when when the you know when the country was created we just we we just had the department of state, department of war um you know and and uh sort of the sort of the department of justice. We had an attorney general uh and Treasury Department.\n\nUm I don't know why you need more than that. >> So what other departments specifically do you think are just completely ineffective? >> Well, I mean here it's like a question. It's a sort of philosophical question of how much government do you think there should be? >> Right. >> Um in my opinion, there should be uh the least amount of government.\n\nI've heard the most bizarre argument against this is that you're cutting jobs and you're gonna leave people jobless. And I'm like, but their jobs are useless. >> Yeah. Paying people to do nothing doesn't make sense. Um like there's a like a a great um a story about like Milton Friedman who is awesome. Um uh what like generally whatever Milton Friedman said is you know people should should do that thing.\n\nUh I'm not sure if it's apocryphal or not, but um like like someone complained to him like he he he observed I think people that were like um digging ditches with uh you know with with um shovels and um and he said well like allegedly Freeman said, \"Well, I think I think you should use you know um excavating equipment instead of shovels and you could get it done with far fewer people.\"\n\nAnd then and then someone said, \"But then we're going to lose a lot of jobs.\" Well, in that then Freedom says, \"Well, in that case, why don't you have them use teaspoons?\" [laughter] Just just dig ditches with teaspoons. Think of all the jobs you'll create. >> I mean, [laughter] it's [ __ ] Basically, you just want people to work on on things that are that are productive.\n\nYou want people to work on on building things um on building you know uh providing products and services that people find valuable um like you know making food um being you know being a farmer or a plumber or electrician or just anyone who's a builder or providing useful services. Um and um that's what you want people to be doing. um not fake government jobs uh that that that don't add any value or may subtract value.\n\nUm um there's also like you know uh to illustrate the absurdity of also how is the e how is the economy measured like the the way economists measure the economy is is is nonsensical uh because they'll measure any job no matter even if that job is a dumb job that has no point and is even counterproductive.\n\nSo like, so the like the joke is like there's two economists going on a hike in the woods and [laughter] they come across a pile of [ __ ] and one economist says to the other, \"I'll pay you $100 to eat eat that [laughter] shit.\" The economist eats the [ __ ] gets the $100. They they keep walking. Then the other econ then come across another pile of [ __ ] And and the the other economist says, \"Now I'll pay you $100 to eat the pile of shit.\"\n\n>> [laughter] >> say pays the so pays the other economist $100 pile of [ __ ] Then they then then then the way said they said like wait a second um we both just ate a pile of [ __ ] and we're no and and and and we're we're no we we we we don't have any more extra money like like we both you just gave the $100 back to me and we both ate a pile of [ __ ] This doesn't make any sense.\n\nAnd they said, \"No, no, but think of the economy because that's $200 of that in the economy that that basically [laughter] measure eating eating [ __ ] would count as a as as a as a job. [laughter] This is this is this is to illustrate the absurdity of of of economics. >> One of the things you said when [laughter] things should not count as a job.\"\n\nOne of the things you said when you stepped away is that you're kind of done and that it's unfixable. That um well or under its current form the way people are approaching it you can you can make it directionally better but ultimately you can't uh fully fix the system.\n\nUm, so, uh, I I I like like like like it it it is it is it would be accurate to say that even like like unless you could go like super draconian like you know Gangghaskhan level on on on cutting waste waste and fraud which you can't really do in a democratic country um an aspirationally democratic country then um there's no way to solve the the the debt crisis.\n\nSo, we got we got national debt that's just insane where the debt payments the interest payments on the debt exceed our entire military budget. I mean, that's one that was one of the wakeup calls for me. I was like, \"Wait a second. The interest on a national debt is bigger than the entire the entire military budget um and growing. Um this is crazy.\n\nUm so um so so even if you implement all these savings, you're only delaying the day of reckoning for when America becomes goes bankrupt. So unless you go full Genghaskhan, um which you can't really do. So um so I came to the conclusion that the only way that the only way to get us out of the debt crisis and to prevent America from going bankrupt is AI and robotics.\n\nSo, like we need to grow the economy um at at a at a at a rate that allows us to u to pay off our debt. Um and um I I I guess people just generally don't appreciate the degree to which um you know this the the government overspending is is a problem. Um but even like the social security website, this is under the Biden administration.\n\nOn the website, it would say like uh we based on on current demographic trends and um you and and and how much money social security is bringing in versus how many social security recipients there are because we have an aging population. Relatively speaking, the average age is is increasing. Social Security will not be able to ma u maintain its full payments u I think in by 2032 there. Okay.\n\nSo they will social security will have to stop will start reducing the the amount of money that that's been paid people um in in about seven years. >> And so the only way to fix that robotics manufacturing raise GDP >> you've got to basically uh massively increase the um uh economic output which is and the only way to do that is AI AI and robotics.\n\nSo, so basically we're going bankrupt without AI and robotics with even with a bunch of savings um [snorts] the savings the savings like reducing uh waste and forward can give us a longer runway but it cannot ultimately pay off our national debt. >> So what do you think the solution is to the jobs that are going to be lost because of AI and robotics?\n\nThe jobs due to automation the jobs due to no longer do we need human beings to do these jobs because AI is doing them. Do you think it's going to be some sort of a universal basic income thing? Do you think there's going to be some other kind of solution that has to be implemented because a lot of people are going to be out of work, right? Um I think there will be um actually a high demand for jobs but not necessarily the same jobs.\n\nSo I mean this is actually this process has been happening um throughout um modern history. Um I mean there used to be like like doing calculations um ma manually with with like a pencil and paper. It used to be a job. So they used to have like buildings full of people called computers where the the banks would like all you do all day is is is um you do calculations because they didn't have computers.\n\nThey didn't they didn't have digital didn't have digital computers that that people >> Yeah. Well, it was just people would just like add and subtract stuff on piece of paper and and and that that would be how banks would do you know financial processing >> and you'd have to literally go over their equations to make sure the books are balanced. >> Yeah.\n\nAnd most times it's just simple math like you know the like in a world before computers how did you calculate how did you you do transactions? You had to do them by hand. Um so then when computers were introduced the job of doing um you know bank calculations no longer existed. Um so people had to go do something else.\n\nUm and that's what's going to happen that what's that's what is happening at an accelerated rate um due to AI and and then robotics. That's the issue though, right? The accelerated rate because it's going to be >> it's the accelerator. It's it's it's just happening. Like I said, like AI is the supersonic tsunami. >> So that's what I call it, supersonic tsunami.\n\nUm so >> it's like what other jobs will be available that aren't available now because of AI? >> Um well AI um will is is really still digital. Ultimately, um AI can improve the productivity of of humans who who um build things with their hands or do things with their hands like plum, you know, literally welding, electrical work, plumbing, anything that's that's [snorts] physically moving atoms.\n\nUm like cooking food or um you know farming or or like like anything that's that's physical uh those jobs will exist for a much longer time. But anything that is digital uh which is like just someone at a computer doing something, AI is going to take over those jobs like lightning, >> coding, anything along those lines. Yeah, [snorts] >> it's going to take over those jobs like lightning.\n\nUm just like it just like digital computers took over the job of people doing manual calculations but but much faster. >> So what happens to all those people? Like what kind of numbers are we talking about? you're going to lose most drivers, right? Commercial drivers. You're going to have automated vehicles, AI controlled systems, just like uh there's certain ports in China, I think in Singapore, where everything's completely automated. >> Yeah.\n\nMostly. Yeah. Yeah. >> Yeah. So, you're going to lose a lot of those jobs. Long shoreman jobs, trucking, commercial drivers. >> Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we actually do have a shortage of of truck drivers, but there's there's actually um >> Well, that's why California has hired so many illegals to do it. Have you seen those numbers? >> Yeah.\n\nUm I mean, the problem is like when you when people don't know how to drive a semi-truck, which is actually a hard thing to do, then they they crash and kill people. >> Yeah. >> Um a friend of mine's wife was killed by an an illegal driving a truck and she was just out biking. Um and uh there was an illegal he didn't know how to drive the truck or so or something. I mean and he he ran ran her over.\n\nUm so I mean like thing is like for something like you you can't you can't let people drive uh you know sort of an 80,000lb semi um if if they don't know how to do it. But in California, they're just letting people do it >> because they need people to do it. >> Well, they also need they want the votes and that kind of thing. But um but but yeah, like cars are um cars are going to be autonomous.\n\nUm, but there there's just so many desk desk jobs where where really people what people are doing is they're processing email um or they're answering the phone. Um, and and just anything that is that that isn't moving atoms like anything that is not physically like doing physical work that will obviously be the first thing those jobs will be and are being eliminated by by AI at a very rapid pace.\n\nUm um and ultimately I working will be optional uh because you'll have robots plus AI um and we'll have in a benign scenario universal high income not just universal basic income universal high income meaning anyone can have any products or services that they want. So you >> but but there will be a lot of trauma and disruption along the way.\n\n>> So you anticipate a basic income from that that the economy will boost to such an extent that a high income would be available to almost everybody. So we'd essentially eliminate poverty >> um in the benign scenario. Yes. So like the way >> there's multiple scenarios. >> There are multiple scenarios. There's a lot of ways this movie can end.\n\nUm, like the reason I'm so concerned about AI safety is that like one of the possibilities is the Terminator scenario. It's not it's not 0%. Um, so um, that's why it's like I'm like really banging the drum on AI needs to be maximally truth seeeking.\n\nlike don't make I don't force AI to believe a lie like that the for example the founding fathers were actually a group of diverse women or that misgendering is worse than nuclear war because you if if that's the case and then you get the robots and the AI becomes omnipotent it can enforce that outcome and then [clears throat] then like unless you're a diverse woman you're you're out of the picture so we're we're toast So that's >> [snorts] >> um or you might wake up as a diverse woman [laughter] one day has adjusted the picture and and we are now >> everyone's a diverse woman.\n\nSo that would be that's the the worst possible situation.\n\nSo what would be the steps that we would have to take in order to implement the benign solution where it's universal high income like best case scenario this is the path forward to universal high income for essentially every single citizen that the the economy gets boosted by AI and robotics to such an extent that no one ever has to work again and what about meaning for those people which is which gets really weird. >> Yeah.\n\n>> I don't know how to answer the question about meaning. Um >> that's an individual problem, right? But it's going to be an individual problem for millions of people. >> Yeah. Well, I I mean I I I guess I've like for fought against saying like, you know, I you know, I've been I've been a voice saying like, \"Hey, we need to slow down AI. we need to slow down all these things. Um, and and we need to, you know, not not have a crazy AI race.\n\nI've been saying that for a long time, for 20 20 plus years. Um, but but then I, you know, I came to realize that, um, really there's two choices here. Either be a spectator or a or a participant. And if I'm a, if I'm a spectator, I can't really influence the direction of AI. But if I'm a participant, I can try to influence the direction of AI and have a maximally truth seeeking AI with with good values that uh loves humanity.\n\nAnd that's what we're trying to create with Grock at XAI. And um you know, the research is I think bearing this out. Like I said, the when they when they compared like how do AIs value the weight of a human life? Um Grock was the only one the only one of the AIS that weighted human life equally. um and and didn't and didn't say like a white guy's uh worth 120th of a of a of a a black woman's life.\n\nLiterally, that's what they they calculation they came up with. >> So, I'm like, this is I'm like, this is very alarming. We should we got to watch this stuff. >> So, this is one of the things that has to happen in order to reach this benign solution. >> Yeah. We we we I I just keep >> Best movie ending. Yeah. Um, you you want a a curious truth seeeking AI. Um, and I think a curious truth seeeking AI will want to foster humanity.\n\nUh, because we're much more interesting than um a bunch of rocks. Like you say, like like I I love Mars, you know, but but Mars is kind of boring. Like it's just a bunch of red rocks. Um, it does some cool stuff. It's got a tall mountain. It's got, you know, it's got the biggest re the biggest ravine and the tallest mountain. Um, but there's no there's no there's no animals or plants or and and there's no people.\n\nUm, and uh, you know, so humanity is just much more interesting if you're a curious truth seeeking AI than not humanity. It's just much more interesting. Um, I mean like as as humans, we could go for example and and eliminate all chimps. If we said if we put our minds to it, we could say we could go out and we could annihilate all chimps and all gorillas, but but we don't.\n\nUm there has been encroachment on their environment, but we we actually try to preserve uh the the uh chimp and gorilla habitats. Um and um and I think in a good scenario, uh AI would do the same with with humans. it would actually foster uh human civilization and care about human happiness. So this is um this is the thing to to try to achieve I think.\n\nUm, >> but what is the what does the landscape look like if you have Grock competing with Open AI, competing with all these different like how does it work? Like what what if you have AIs that have been captured by ideologies that are side by side competing with Grock?\n\nlike how do we so this is one of the reasons why you felt like it's important to not just be a an observer but participate and then have Grock be more successful and more potent than these other applications.\n\nYes, as long as there's at least one AI that is maximally truth seeeking, curious, and um you know, and for example, weighs all you know, human lives equally um does not favor one race or gender, then um then then that that that and and people are able to look at look at, you know, Grock at XAI and compare that and say, \"Wait a second, why are all these other AIs uh being basically sexist and racist?\"\n\nUm um and uh then then that that causes some embarrassment for the the other AIS and then they they they they fix they you know they they improve they tend to improve just in the in the same way that um acquiring Twitter and allowing the truth to be told and and not suppressing the truth um forced the other social media companies to be more truthful um by in in the same way having um Gro be a maximally truth seeeking, curious AI is will force the other AI companies to um be also be more truth seeeking and fair.\n\n>> And the funniest thing is even though like the socialists and the Marxists are in opposition to a lot of your ideas, but if this gets implemented and you really can achieve universal high income, that's the greatest socialist solution of all time. Like literally no one will have to work. Uh correct.\n\nUm like I said so so there is a benign scenario here which I think probably people will be happy with if if as long as we we achieve it which is sustainable abundance.\n\num which is if if um if everyone can have every like like like if if you ask people like what's the future that you want >> um and uh I think a future where we haven't destroyed nature like you can still we have the national parks we have the the Amazon rainforest still still there we haven't paved we haven't paved the paved the rainforest like the natural beauty is still there but but people have nonetheless everyone has abundance everyone has excellent medical care.\n\nEveryone has whatever goods and services they want. >> And we just >> It kind of sounds like heaven. >> It sounds like it is like the ideal socialist utopia. And this idea that the only thing you should be doing with your time is working in order to pay your bills and feed yourself sounds kind of archaic considering the kind of technology that's at play. >> Yeah. >> Like a world where that's not your concern at all anymore.\n\nEverybody has money for food. Everybody has abundance. Everybody has electronics in their home. Everybody essentially has a high income. Now you can kind of do whatever you want. And your day can now be exploring your interests doing things that you actually enjoy doing. Your purpose just has to shift. Instead of, you know, I'm a hard worker and this is what I do and that's how I that's how I define myself. No.\n\nNow you can [ __ ] golf all day, you know? You can whatever it is that you enjoy doing can now be your main pursuit. >> Yeah. >> Well, that sounds crazy good. >> Yeah, that's that's that's the benign scenario that we should be. >> The best ending to the movie is actually pretty good. >> Yes.\n\num like I think there's there is still this question of meaning um of like making sure people don't uh lose meaning you know like um so hopefully they can find meaning in ways that are not that that's not derived from their work >> and purpose purpose for things that you you know find things that you do that you enjoy but there's a lot of people that are independently wealthy that spend most of their time doing something they enjoy >> right >> and that could be the majority of people >> pretty much everyone.\n\n>> But we'd have to rewire how people approach life. >> Mhm. >> Which seems to be like acceptable because you're not asking them to be enslaved. You're exactly asking them the opposite. Like no longer be burdened by financial worries. Now go do what you like. >> Yes. >> Go [ __ ] test pizza. >> Do whatever you want. >> Um pretty much. Um, so that's uh that's that's the that's the that's probably the best case outcome.\n\n>> That sounds like the best case outcome period for the future. If you're looking at like how much people have struggled just to feed themselves all throughout history, food, shelter, safety, if all of that stuff can be fixed, like how much would you solve a lot of the crime if there was a universal high income? Just think of that. Like how much of crime is financially motivated?\n\nYou know, the greater percentage of people that are committing crimes live in poor, disenfranchised neighborhoods. >> So if there's no such thing anymore, if you really can achieve universal high income, >> yeah, >> that this is it sounds like a utopian. >> Yes. Um I think some people may commit crime because they like committing crime. It just some some amount of that is they just >> wild people out there. >> Yeah. Yeah.\n\nUm >> and obviously they've become 40 years old living a life like that. Now all of a sudden universal high income is not going to completely stop their instincts. >> Yeah. Um I mean I guess if you want to have like like say read a science fiction book or some books that that are probably an accurate or or the the least inaccurate version of the future. I'd say I' I'd recommend um the Ian Banks books called the the culture books.\n\nIt's not actually a series. It's a It's like ai sci-fi books about the future. They're generally called the culture books. Yen Banks culture books. It's worth reading those. >> When did he write these? >> He started writing them in the 70s. Um and I think he um the last one I think he was I think it was written just like around I don't know maybe 2010 or something. I'm not sure exactly. >> Yeah. Yeah. >> Scottish author Ian Banks from 87 to 2012.\n\n>> Yeah. Interesting. >> But he but like he wrote the the like his first book, Consider Flever. Like he started writing that in the 70s. >> These books are incredible, by the way. >> Oh, >> incredible books. >> 4. 6 stars on Amazon. >> Interesting. >> So, um, >> so this gives me hope. >> Uh, yeah. Yeah. >> This is the first time I've ever thought about it this way. >> Yeah.\n\nWell, I mean, if like I often ask people, \"What is the future that you want?\" And they have to think about it for a second cuz, you know, they're usually tied up in whatever the daily struggles are. But, but you say, \"What is the future that you want?\" Um, and um, and generally sustainable abundance, what do these folks say, \"What about a future where there's sustainable abundance?\" Like, \"Oh, yeah, that's a pretty good future.\"\n\nUm so um you know if if and and and that that future is attainable with AI and robotics um but but you know it's it's like I said there's not every path is a good path.\n\nuh there's this it's but I think if we if we push it in the direction of um maximally truth seeeking and curious then I think AI will want to take to to take care of humanity and foster uh foster humanity um because we're interesting um and if it hasn't been programmed to think that like all straight white male should die, [laughter] which Gemini was basically programmed to do at least at first. Um, you know, they seem to have fixed it.\n\nI hope they fixed it. >> But don't you think culturally [laughter] like, oh, we're getting away from that mindset and that people realize how preposterous that all is. >> We are getting away from it. Um, so, uh, we are getting at least it knows the AI mostly knows to hide things.\n\nBut like like I said, there is that I I think I still have that as or I had that as my like pinned post on X which was like uh hey wait a second guys we still have every AI except Grock uh is saying that uh basically straight white male should die um and this is a problem and we should fix it. um [snorts] and you know but simply me saying that is like tends to generally result in um you know them like that is kind of bad.\n\nUh maybe we should just we should not have all straight white males die. Um I think they say also all all straight Asian males should also die as well. like that like uh like generally [laughter] the generally the AI and the and the media which which back back in the day the the media was um you know racist against uh black people and sexist against women back in the day.\n\nNow now it is racist against uh white people and Asians and sexist against men. >> Um so they just like being racist and sexist. I think they just want to change the target. [laughter] Um so uh but but really they just shouldn't be uh racist and sexist at all. Um you know >> ideally that would be nice. >> That would be nice.\n\nUm, and it's kind of crazy that we were kind of moving in that general direction till around 2012 >> and then everything ramped up online and and everybody was accused of being a Nazi and everybody was transphobic and racist and sexist and homophobic and everything got exaggerated to the point where it was this wild witch hunt where everyone was a colomo looking for racism. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Totally.\n\nUm, well well but but but they they were openly anti-white and often openly anti-Asian. And then this new sentiment that you cannot be racist against white people cuz racism is power and influence. >> Okay. No, it's not. >> Yeah. Racism is is is racism in the absolute. Um so um you know and there just needs to be consistency. So if it's okay to have uh let's say uh black or Asian or Indian or pride, it should be okay to have white pride, too.\n\n>> Yeah. Um, so that's just a that's just a consistency question. Um, so, uh, you know, um, if it if it's okay to be proud of one religion, it should be okay to be proud of, I I guess all religions provided they're that they're they're not like oppressive. >> Yeah. Or or or don't like as long as part of that religion is not like exterminating uh people who are not in that religion type, >> right? Um so uh it's really just like a consistency bias.\n\nUm or or just like uh ensuring consistency to eliminate uh bias. Um so if it is possible to be uh racist against uh one race, it is possible to be racist against any race. Um so >> of course logically. >> Yes. >> Yeah. and arguing against that is that's when you know you're catching >> it's a it's a logical inconsistency that makes AIS go insane >> and people [clears throat] >> and people go insane. Yes.\n\n>> Um >> but like the the like like you can't simultaneously say um that uh there's the systemic uh racist oppression but also that races don't exist that that race race is a social construct. like which is it? You know, um you also can't say that um you know, anyone who steps foot in America is is automatically an American except for the people that originally came here. [laughter] >> Exactly. Exactly. Except for the colonizers. >> Yeah.\n\nExcept for the evil colonizers who came here, >> right? >> So which one is it? Like if you if as soon as you step foot put in a place you are that you are just as American as everyone else >> then um that would have appi if you apply that consistently then the original white settlers were also just as American as everyone else. >> Yeah. Logically. >> Logically.\n\nUm, one more thing that I have to talk to you about before you leave is the rescuing of the people from the space station, which, uh, we talked about, you were planning it the last time you were here. >> Um, the f the lack of coverage that that got in mainstream media was one of the most shocking things that >> Yeah, they totally memoryhold that thing. >> Wild. Yes. Because if it wasn't, >> it's like it didn't exist. Those people would be dead.\n\nThey'd be stuck up there. >> Well, they'd they'd probably still be alive, but they'd they'd be having bone density issues uh because of prolonged exposure to zero gravity. >> Well, they were already up there for like 8 months, right? >> Yeah. >> Which is an insanely long time. It takes forever to recover just from that. >> Yeah. They're only supposed to be at the space station for 3 to 6 months maximum.\n\nSo, >> one of the things you told me that was so crazy was that you could have gotten them sooner, but >> Yeah. But for political reasons, uh they didn't they did not want uh SpaceX or me to be associated with um returning the astronauts before the election. >> That is so wild that that's a fact. >> First of all, that >> we absolutely could have done it.\n\nUm so, >> but even though you did do it and you did it after the election, it received almost no media coverage anyway. >> Yes. because nothing good can the the the media which is essentially a far left prop the legacy mainstream media is a far-lft propaganda machine. Um and so anything any story that is positive about someone who is not part of the sort of far-left tribe will not uh get any coverage.\n\n>> I I could save a busload of orphans and and it it wouldn't get a single news story. >> Yeah, it's it really is nuts. It it was nuts to watch because even though it was discussed on podcasts and it was discussed on X and it was discussed on social media, it's still it was a blip in the news cycle. It was very quick.\n\nIt was in and out and because it was a su successful launch and you did rescue those people, nobody got hurt and there was nothing really to there was no blood to talk about, >> right? >> Just [ __ ] in and out. >> Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely.\n\nWell, and and as as you saw firsthand with the Starship launch, like Starship is um you know by you know at least by some some would consider it to be like the most amazing uh you know engineering project that's happening on Earth right now outside of like you know maybe AI or AI and robotics but but certainly in terms of a spectacle to see it is uh the most spectacular thing that is happening on earth right now is the Starship launch program which anyone can go and see if they just go to South Texas and just they can just rent a hotel room low cost in South Padre Island or in Brownsville and you can see the launch and you can drive right right past the factory because it's on a public highway.\n\nUm but it gets no coverage or what coverage it does get was like a rocket blew up coverage, >> right? Yeah. Oh, he's a [ __ ] The rocket blew up. like the the the the Star Sasha program is vastly >> vastly more capable than the entire Apollo moon moon program. Vastly more capable. This is a spaceship that is designed to make life multilanetary to carry uh millions of people across the heavens to another planet.\n\nthe the Apollo program could could only send astronauts to the moon for a few hours at a time. Like they could send two the entire Apollo program could only send astronauts to visit the moon very briefly and then for a few hours and then depart. The starship program could create an entire uh lunar base with a million people. You understand the mag the magnitudes are >> there's different very different magnitudes here.\n\n>> So what was the political >> basically no no coverage of it. >> Yeah. But what I wanted to ask you is like what so what were the conversations leading up to the rescue like when you were like I can get them out way quicker. >> Yeah. Um um well I mean you know I raised this a few times but it was the I was told instructions came from the White House that uh you know that that there should be no attempt to rescue before the election.\n\n>> That should be illegal. >> That that that really should be a horrendous miscarriage of justice for those poor people that were stuck on that. >> Um yeah it it is it is crazy. Um, >> have you ever talked to those folks afterwards? Did you have conversations with them? >> Yeah. I mean, they they're they're not going to say anything political to, you know, they're not like they're never going to >> say thank you. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.\n\n>> Well, that's nice. >> Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. So, um, >> but the instructions came down from the White House. He cannot rescue them because politically this is a a bad hand of cards. >> I mean, they didn't say because politically it's a bad hand of cards. They they just said uh they were they were not interested in uh any rescue operation before the election. >> Yeah. So >> what did that feel like? >> I wasn't surprised. >> But it's crazy.\n\n>> Yeah, >> because Biden could have authorized it and they could have said the the Biden administration is helping bring those people back, throw you a little funding, give you some money to do it. the Biden administration, they funded these people being returned.\n\n>> Uh yeah, the Biden administration was not exactly my best friend, >> especially especially after I um you know, you know, helped Trump get elected get get elected, which I mean some people >> still think, you know, Trump is like the the devil basically. Um, and I mean I think I think Trump actually he's not he's is not perfect, but but uh he's not evil. Trump is not evil.\n\nI spent a lot of time with with him and he's >> I mean he's a product of his time. Uh but he is not he's not evil. >> Um >> no, I don't think he's evil either. But if you look at the media coverage, >> the media the media treason like he's super evil. It's pretty shocking if you look at the amount of negative coverage.\n\nLike one of the things that I looked at the other day was mainstream media coverage of you, Trump, a bunch of different public figures and then >> 96% negative or something crazy >> and then Mum Donnie, which is like 95% positive, >> right? Um I mean Manny is is is is a charismatic swindler. Um I I I mean you got to hand it to him like he he does he can light up a stage. Um but he has just been a swindler his entire life.\n\nUm and um you know and and uh I think he what he's I mean he's likely to win. He's likely to be mayor of New York New York City. >> Very likely. >> Yeah. Very likely. I think Poly Market has it at what what is the >> 94%? >> Yeah, that sounds pretty likely. >> That's crazy. >> Like I'm not sure who the 6% are, you know. >> Um so, so yeah. So that's um >> what's also like who's on the other side?\n\nThe [ __ ] guardian angel guy with the beret and Andrew Cuomo [laughter] who doesn't even have a party. Like they the Democrats don't even want him. So you have those two options. Um, >> and then you have the young kids who are like finally socialism. >> Yeah, they they don't know what they're talking about obviously.\n\nUm, so you know, like you just look at this say how many boats come from Cuba to Florida and how many but and how many boats because you know there's like a constant I always think like how many boats are accumulating on the shores of Florida coming from from Cuba, >> right? Um there's a there's a whole bunch of free boats that you could if you want to go take them back to Cuba. It's pretty close. >> Yeah.\n\n>> But for some reason people don't do that. >> Why why why why are the boats only coming in this direction? >> Um >> well who is who are the most rabid capitalists in America? The [ __ ] Cubans. >> Absolutely. >> Yeah. They're like we've seen how this story goes. >> We do not want Exactly. >> [ __ ] off. [laughter] Cubans in Miami, they don't want to hear any [ __ ] They don't want to hear any socialism [ __ ] They're like, \"No, no, no.\n\nWe know what this actually is. This isn't just some [ __ ] dream.\" >> Yeah. It's extreme government oppression. Um >> that's how it's a nightmare. And like the like an obvious way you can tell which uh which ideology is is the bad one is um who has to which ideology is building a wall to keep people in and prevent them from escaping. >> Right? >> Like so East Berlin built the built the wall not West Berlin, >> right?\n\n>> They built the wall because people were trying to escape from communism to West Berlin. But there wasn't anyone going from West Berlin to East Berlin, >> right? >> That's why the communists had to build a wall to keep people from escaping. >> They're going to have to build a wall around New York City. [laughter] >> Yeah. That So, so that an ideology is problematic.\n\nIf that ideology has to build a wall to keep people in with machine guns, >> Yes. >> and shoot you if you try to leave. Also, there's no examples of it being successful ever. We're only working out for people. No, there's examples of a bunch of lies like North Korea. Give this land to the state. We'll be in control of food. No one goes hungry. No.\n\nNow, no one can grow food but the government and we'll tell you exactly what you eat and you eat very little. >> Right. >> Yeah. What? When you say mom Donny's a swindler, I know he has a bunch of fake accents that he used to use. Yeah. >> And you know, but what else has he done that makes him a swindler?\n\nUm well I I guess if you say uh what I mean if if say if you say to any audience whatever that audience wants to hear uh instead of what instead of having a consistent message I would say that that is a swindly thing to do. Um and uh yeah um yeah but but he is he is charismatic. Um >> yeah good-looking guy. Smart, charismatic. >> Yeah. >> Great on a microphone. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.\n\nand and what the young people want to see, >> you know, like this ethnic guy who's young and vibrant and has all these socialist ideas align with them and you know, they're bunch of broke dorks just out of college like, \"Yay, let's vote for this.\" And there's a lot of them and they're they're activated. They're motivated. >> Um, >> I guess we'll we'll we'll see what happens here. >> What do you think happens if he wins?\n\nUm because like 1% of New York City is responsible for 50% of their tax base, which is kind of nuts. 50% of the tax revenue comes from 1% of the population. And those are the people that you're scaring off. You know, you lose one half of 1%. Yeah, I mean hopefully this the stuff he's he said, you know, about government takeovers of of like that all the stores should be the government basically. Um >> I don't think he said that.\n\nI think he said government they want to do government supermarkets, some state-run or cityrun supermarkets. >> Yeah. Um well, it just the the government is the DMV at scale. So um you have to say like do you want the DMV running your supermarket? >> Right. Um, was your last experience at the DMV amazing? Uh, and if it wasn't, you probably don't want the government doing things. >> Imagine if they were responsible for getting you blueberries.\n\n>> Yeah. [laughter] It's not going to be good. I mean, the the the thing about, you know, communism is is it was it was all bread lines and bad shoes. Um, you know, do do you want ugly shoes and bread lines? Because that's what communism gets you.\n\nIt's going to be interesting to see what happens and whether or not they snap out of it and overcorrect and go to some Rudy Giuliani type character next cuz it's been a long time since there was any sort of Republican leader there.\n\nAnd we we live in the in the most interesting of times um because We we face the you know simultaneously face civilizational decline um and incredible pro prosperity um and these these timelines are interwoven um so um if Mani's policies are put into place especially at scale um it it would be a catastrophic uh decline in living standards not just for the rich but for everyone.\n\num uh as as has been the case with with every um every for every every socialist experiment um or every Yeah.\n\nSo um but but then as you pointed out the the irony is that like um the ultimate capitalist thing of AI and robotics uh enabling uh prosperity for all and an abundance of goods and services actually the capitalist uh implementation of AI and robotics assuming it goes down the the good path uh is is actually what results in the communist utopia. Because fate is fate is an irony maximizer, >> right?\n\nAnd and an actual socialism of maximum abundance of highincome people. >> Universal high income. >> Yeah. >> Like the the problem with communism uh is is universal low income. Um it's it's not that everyone gets elevated, it's that everyone gets oppressed except for a very small minority of of politicians who live a lives of luxury. That's what's happening every time it's been done. >> Yeah.\n\nUm so um but then the the actual communist utopia if everyone gets anything they want will be will be if if will be achieved if it is achieved it will be achieved via c capitalism >> because fate is an irony maximizer. >> I feel like we should probably end it on that. Is there anything else? The most ironic outcome is the most likely, especially if entertaining. >> Well, everything has been entertaining.\n\nAs long as the bad things aren't happening to you, it's quite fascinating. And it's never a boring moment. >> Yes. So there's I do have a theory of why um like if if if simulation theory is true then um it is actually very likely that um the most interesting outcome is the is the most likely because only the simulations that are interesting will continue.\n\nThe simulators will stop any simulations that are boring because they're they're not interesting. >> But here's the question about the simulation theory. Is the simulation run by anyone or is >> it would be run by someone? >> It would be run by >> some some >> some force >> the pro the program like in in this reality that we live in, we we run simulations all the time.\n\nLike so when we try to figure out if the rocket's gonna make it, we run um thousands sometimes millions of simulations just to figure out which which uh path is the good path for the rocket and and where can it go wrong, where can it fail.\n\nUm but we when we do these I say at this point millions of simulations of of what can happen with the rocket um we ignore the ones that are where everything goes right um because we we we just care about the we have we have to address the situations where it goes wrong. Um so um so so basically in in in and and for for AI simulations as well like like all these things we we keep the simulations going that are the most interesting to us.\n\nUm so if simulation theory is accurate if if it is true who knows um then the uh the the simulators will will only they will continue to run the simulations that are most interesting there. Therefore from a Darwinian perspective um the only surviving simulations will be the interest the most interesting ones.\n\nAnd in order to um avoid getting turned off uh the only rule is you must keep it interesting or you will if or you will because the boring simulations will be terminated. >> Are you still completely convinced that this is a simulation? >> I didn't say I was completely convinced. >> Well, you said it's like the odds of it not being are in the billions. But I guess it's not completely cuz you're saying there's a chance.\n\n>> What are the odds that we're in base reality? Um well given that given that that we're able to create increasingly sophisticated simulations. So if you think of say video games and how video games have gone from very simple video games like Pong with you know two rectangles and a square to video games today being um photorealistic uh with millions of people playing simultaneously and all of that has occurred in our lifetime.\n\nSo if that trend continues, uh, video games will be indistinguishable from reality. The fidelity of the game will be such that you you don't know if that what you're seeing is a real video or a fake video. Um, and like AI generated videos at this point, you like you can sometimes tell it's an AI generated video, but often you cannot tell and soon you will not really just not be able to tell.\n\nSo um if if that's happening in our direct observation then and and we're create we'll create millions if not billions of photorealistic simulations of reality then what are the odds that we're in base reality or versus someone else's simulation? Well, isn't it just possible that the simulation is inevitable, but that we are in base reality building towards a simulation? We're making simulations. Um, so um we're making simulations.\n\nWe make like you can just think of like photorealistic video games as as being simulations. >> Mh. Um, and especially as you apply AI in these video games, the the characters in the video games will be incredibly interesting to talk to.\n\nThey won't just have a limited dialogue tree where if you go to like the the crossbow merchant or like and you you try to talk about any subject except buying a crossbow, they just want to talk about selling you a crossbow. Um, but with with with AI based non-player characters, you can you'll be able to have an elaborate conversation with no dialogue tree. Well, that might be the solution for meaning for people.\n\nJust lock in and you could be a [ __ ] vampire and whatever. You live in Avatar land. You could do it. You could do whatever you want. I mean, you don't have to think about money or food. >> Ready Player One. >> Yeah. Literally. Yeah. But with higher living standards. >> Yeah. >> You don't have to be in a little trailer. I >> I mean, I think this people do want to have some amount of struggle or something they want to push against.\n\nUm but but it it could be you know playing a a sports or playing a game or something. >> It could be easily playing a game and especially playing a game where you're now no longer worried about like physical attributes like athletics like bad joints and hips and stuff like that. Now it's completely digital but yet you do have meaning in pursuing this thing that you're doing all day. Whatever the [ __ ] that means. It's going to be weird.\n\n>> It's going to be interesting. >> It's gonna be very interesting. >> Um the most the most interesting >> and and usually ironic outcome is the most likely. >> All right. >> That's a good predictor of the future. >> Thank you. Thanks for being here. Really appreciate you. Appreciate your time. You I know you're a busy man, so this means a lot you come here to do this. Welcome. All right. Thank you. Bye, everybody. >> [music]"},"languages":["en"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":"https://podcasts.happyscribe.com/the-joe-rogan-experience/2404-elon-musk"},{"id":"allin-summit-2025-musk","type":"interview","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qeZqZBRA-6Q","title":"All-In Summit","titles":{"en":"All-In Summit","de":"All-In Summit","fr":"All-In Summit"},"date":"2025-09-07","summary":"Live at the All-In Summit, Musk talks Optimus, Tesla's AI5 chips and FSD, Starlink smartphones, xAI's Grok and \"Grokipedia\", the OpenAI lawsuit and why he thinks the West is struggling.","text":"[Music] I believe Optimus is going to be the greatest product ever created by humanity. >> Elon Musk and his XAI startup have built the largest and most powerful artificial intelligence training supercomputer in the world. As far as I know, there's only one person in the world who could do that. You know, >> this is an arms race of epic proportions. >> He's a big thinker. You guys went on Fox the other day with the Doge team.\n\nYou saw Elon's face nodding while they were speaking with a grin ear to ear. He was proud. >> XAI has acquired X in an old stock transaction. >> Tesla's first robo taxis are officially on the road. >> The company's board proposed a new compensation package for the CEO that could pay him just about a trillion dollars in stock. >> He gets nothing if he doesn't hit the numbers.\n\nSpaceX will buy wireless spectrum licenses from Echoar for its Starlink satellite network for about 17 billion. >> 3 2 1. [Music] There's a splash down. How do you have time? this I I I never understand you. >> Yeah. Well, I do work a lot. >> Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome >> Elon Musk. >> All right. Good. >> All right. Where are you? >> Alto. >> You're in Palo Alto and um not Washington DC.\n\n>> I'm I'm at Tesla Global Engineering Headquarters in Palo Alto. >> Yeah. So, no more Washington DC. You're back at work. You're focused. Yeah. >> Uh, yeah. I haven't been to DC since May. >> Okay. Uh, >> that was a that was a hell of a side quest. >> That was a good Any lessons from your time in Washington DC? >> Uh, the government is basically unfixable. >> Elon O only.\n\nI support David's noble efforts and this uh it's good to it's good to have talented people in the administration uh but at the end of the day um if you look at our national debt which is uh insanely high uh the interest payments exceed the u defense department I guess sorry war department uh budget um and um Nikki Bryzy so if AI and robots don't solve our national debt, we're we're toast. >> Which is a great segue.\n\nUm, Optimus is um I think going to be the greatest >> uh product in the history of humanity. What's the progress like and how much of your how many of your cycles are going specifically to Optimus? What's the timeline? I think you're on version three, maybe four. Tell us everything. Uh well, yeah, everything would take a long time. >> We've got time.\n\n>> Um we're we're finalizing the design of Optimus version 3 and uh that that really is going to be a very remarkable robot. Um it will have the essentially the manual dexterity of a human. So meaning a very complex hand. Um the a an AI mind that can navigate and comprehend reality. Um and it will be made in very high volume. Uh those are the three things that are missing.\n\nLike if you see any other um robotics uh company, they're missing those three things. Those are the three really hard things. Um and uh I I I spent actually at this point um it it might be more of my mental cycles than anything anything else any other single thing on Optimus.\n\nUh that's that's that that's solving for uh real world AI uh all of the electro mechanical issues of Optimus the the supply chain and production challenges of it because we have there is no supply chain that exists for humanoid robots. So it has to be we have to recreate it from scratch um and which requires doing a lot of vertical integration. um none of the actuators in Optimus um are available from an existing supply chain.\n\nUm so but I I think it is accurate to say that if successful Optimus will be the biggest product ever >> and the cost of it at scale 2030 $40,000 a robot. What what do you think the first wave of them will cost? And yeah, when will we be able to buy one to work on the ranch? >> I think that the the marginal cost of production once you hit a million units per year uh is probably around the $20,000 range.\n\nUh it it it sort of depends on how much you spend on the AI chip in the in the robot. Um and you need to achieve a lot of efficiencies in the actuators. Uh there are um 26 actuators per arm like 26 electric like motors, gearboxes and power electronics. Um, so, so, but but the the the AI chip will be pretty expensive like that that might be like55 or $6,000 of the of the bill of materials, maybe more.\n\nUm, and um but but so I but I think at volume at a million units a year, the the production cost is probably on the order of $20,000, maybe 25, something like that. And um price will be as a function of demand.\n\n>> Elon um can you maybe explain to everybody why the hand is so important to get right and why you know the actuator design is so unique and you know why it's so difficult why nobody makes it and why you have to start there almost to build the rest of the the robot properly. Well, it turns out the human hands are incredibly they've evolved to this to be this incredibly sophisticated machine.\n\nLike the your hand is an in actually a remarkable thing. It's look look closely at your hands and and think of all the things you can do with your hands, which is a lot. >> I can think of many things. >> Yeah, I was just thinking about something. >> You know, your hands are very versatile instrument. Yeah, you can give him a high five. >> Very versatile.\n\nUm, you know, you you you can swing a baseball bat, you can thread needles, you you can you put thread in a needle. Uh, you can play the piano with violin. Um, you know, you could disassemble or assemble a car. The hands are incredibly versatile instruments. Um and um most of the muscles of of the hand are are actually in the forearm. So your hand is kind of like a like a like it's like a puppet. Like it's mostly a puppet.\n\nThe mus the muscles are coming from the forearm and they're pulling the tendons uh which are you know also human tendon designs or human human tendon evolution is incredibly good. Um, so you you've got this web of tendons. You you you've got um I think I think the the human hand is something like depending on how you count it, 27 or 28 degrees of freedom per you know in in the hand. It's uh it's amazing.\n\nSo in order to create a robot that can uh be a generalized uh humanoid, you you must solve the hand the hands problem. >> Yeah. We had uh we had >> it's got hands, needs hands. >> And so is it like uh when you were first building Tesla where the supply chain doesn't exist and now you have to go out and find folks to work with and you know build all this vertical integration, get support.\n\nIs it is it literally like it's just nowhere to be found and >> you're going to have to build all of this stuff up? >> Yes, we we we could not actually buy the actuators for any amount of money. they simply didn't exist. Even though there are, I don't know, 10 20,000 electric motors out there of various sizes and shapes.\n\nUm, we've had to design uh every electric motor, gearbox um and and the controlling electronics from scratch basically from physics first principles. >> The good news is you've got a lot of experience with factories over the last couple of decades. So, >> how challenging is this versus Cybert truck model Y >> Model X >> Gigafactory? You know, the Yeah. The Fabra Egg known as the Model X. Yeah. >> Right.\n\n>> Um it's hotter than any any of those things. >> Okay. >> Yeah. >> Much hotter significantly. Yeah. Starship. >> Yes. Well, more No, not Starship's harder. Okay. >> So, somewhere between a Model X and a Starship? >> Yeah. >> Is it is the What's harder, the hardware or the software? >> Right now, we're struggling with the the final design of the hardware. Like I said, it's really primarily the hand.\n\nNot to just just dismiss the rest of the robot.\n\nthe rest of it's also uh important but but the hands are the hands inclusive of the forearm are a majority of the engineering difficulty of the entire robot and then let's assume you get past the hardware challenges how much do you sort of get for free um based on all the progress that's happening with LLMs will you know will consumers just be able to interact with this talk to the robot ask it to do things it'll understand and sort of >> Oh yeah >> yeah no problem >> you're spending a lot of time with any I noticed online.\n\n>> Not not that long. Um maybe I went a little over the top from Bunning Grom Imagine, but uh >> well, but in all seriousness, those characters and these robots that seems to be, you know, like maybe they >> you could get the embodiment of Annie, I suppose. >> Yeah. Why why the human form factor, Elon?\n\nYou could make something that's maybe better than a human or maybe simpler than a human to do specific tasks and maybe better than a human to do more things than a human can do. How do you decide to make it just like a human? >> Well, if you wanted to do all the things that a human can do, it turns out you need a humanoid robot. Um, so if you want to just do a subset, it that's much easier.\n\nUm but uh it turns out humans evolved to this the shape and capabilities that we we we have. Um it it it for for good reasons. Uh there actually is that there is like there's value to having five, you know, four fingers and the thumb. Um and even the pinky actually is is quite useful. Um toes are much more aggression walk but but but the fingers >> well also humans humans have designed the world as well. So we designed it for us.\n\nSo >> if you can make a humanoid robot it'll be immediately backwards compatible with what we've built the world for. >> Precisely. >> Elon there's another there's another part of um the robot. So there's the LLMs, there's the actuation in the hands, but also there's the um the silicon that runs it.\n\nAnd there was, you know, Dojo, I think you you posted on X AI5 and AI6, and it just seemed like you were incredibly excited about the direction in which the silicon layer was also going. Can you tell us about that and what that is and what what what what are we what are we building here? What is being built? Is it a complement to everything that exists in the world? Is it a potential long-term competitor? What is it? >> Um, yeah.\n\nSo, at at Tesla, we basically had two different chip programs. One dojo and one uh dojo on the training side and then what we call, you know, AI for it, which just our inference chip. um uh that the AI Force is currently shipping in all vehicles. Um and we're finaliz finalizing the design of AI5 which will be an immense jump from AI4. Um by some metrics the improvement in AI5 will be 40 times better than AI4. >> Wow. >> So 40% 40 times.\n\nUm and and uh this is because we work so closely at a very fine grade level on the AI software and the AI hardware. So we know exactly where the limiting factors are and and um and so effectively the AI hardware and software teams are co-designing the chip.\n\nUm >> so a 40x improvement in the silicon I think then as it as everybody here in the audience experiences it is that just an almost like an order of magnitude increase in the quality of FST and the safety that you experience as a Tesla driver and then the quality of the robot like where does it all manifest when you when you you know bring it up and actually get it into production?\n\nYeah to be precise the 40x is on if you say like compared to the worst limitation on AI4 which is running the softmax operation. >> Yeah >> we currently have to run softmax in around 40 steps in emulation mode whereas that'll be just be done in a few steps uh natively in AI5. Um AI5 trip will also be u easily handle mixed precision um models. So you don't have it'll dynamically handle mixed precision.\n\nThere's a bunch of sort of technical stuff that AI will do a lot better. Um in terms of of nominal sort of uh raw compute, it's it's eight times more compute. Um about nine times more memory uh roughly five times more memory bandwidth.\n\nUm so uh but because we're addressing some core limitations in AI4, you multiply that by that that 8x computer improvement by another 5x improvement because of of uh optimization at a at a at a very fine grain silicon level of things that are currently suboptimal in AI4. That's where you get the 40x improvement. >> You had um I'll keep going, keep going.\n\nUh so now now that said I I'm I am confident that the current uh chips uh AI AI4 chips that are in the cars will uh achieve self-driving safety that is at least two to three times that of of human and and maybe even 10x. Um and the software that uh will be released for that is is coming out over the next few months. So version 14 will be the biggest uh upgrade in Tesla software since version 12.\n\nUm we are increasing the uh parameter count by an order of magnitude. Um the there's there's there's a lot of uh reinforcement learning that's been used. there's um we we there there there's like you can think of AI sort of as a way of compressing reality and and and some of those compression steps uh we uh were too lossy and and we addressed the lossiness in the compression steps. Um so the these are all software updates that'll that'll go out.\n\nSo just over there updates um your car is going to feel like it is sentient by the end of the year. >> Yeah, it feels that way already to be honest. Um I saw in the trades that you spent about $17 billion on some spectrum and that um >> yeah um so some couch change um to enable your satellites and the Starlink network to connect directly with phones. What will that look like in a year or two?\n\nAre we going to drop our Verizon account and just expand our Starlink account? >> Uh, thank you. >> We're kind of hoping cuz Verizon kind of sucks. >> How How many of you want a Starlink phone? >> Who wants a Starlink phone? >> Is it Is it technically possible? >> I know you can't see it, but it's everyone. >> Yeah, All right, cool. Um so this is a kind of a long-term thing.\n\nUh it it will allow SpaceX to h uh deliver high bandwidth connectivity directly from the satellites to the phones. Um but uh there are hardware changes that need to happen in the phone. So the since these frequencies are not supported in current phones uh that the chipset has to be modified to add these frequencies um and that probably is a 2-year time frame.\n\nSo the phones that um are able to use the spectrum that was acquired probably start shipping in around 2 years. Um and um and then we also need to build the satellites that are going to communicate on those frequencies. So, in parallel, we're building the satellites and working with the handset makers to add these frequencies to the phones.\n\nUm, and then the the satellites and the phones will then handshake very well to achieve high bandwidth connectivity. But the net effect is that you should be able to watch uh videos uh anywhere on your phone. >> Wow. >> And it's going to be crazy. And what and do these do these frequencies would they work indoors inside buildings, you know, like like your phone currently does? Okay.\n\n>> And so will you be able to have basically like >> if you if if you're in a building with a with a like a a thick metal roof then No. But um >> no the the same types of of >> Yeah. Normal normal homes. Yes. >> Yes. >> Elon is your vision for this that instead of you know having an AT&T account or and then roaming when you're in the UK or you're in India. It's just we could have one direct deal with Starlink.\n\nIt works all over the world eventually. Not today but at some point. Is that the end goal? That basically we don't need a regional carrier. We have a global carrier and that would be you. >> Uh that that would be one of the options. To be clear, we're not going to put the other carriers out of business. They're still going to be around cuz they they own a lot of Spectrum.\n\nSo, uh there's uh but but yes, you you should be able to have a Starlink uh like you have like you have an AT&T or T-Mobile or Verizon or whatever, you should be you could have a you know account with Starlink that uh works with your you know Starlink uh antenna at home uh free Wi-Fi as well as on your phone and um yeah it would be a comprehensive solution for high bandwidth at home and for high bandwidth direct to sell.\n\n>> Could you buy some carriers to have more >> spectrum? >> Maybe you could buy Verizon. >> Not out of the question. I suppose it that may happen. >> Let's talk about um let's talk about Starship. You just had a really what appeared to be a phenomenal um launch. H how close is it to, you know, being predictable and ready to go in a commercial setting? I I I think we'll recover the ship next year.\n\nUm we've got one more launch of the um Starlink version two uh uh stack that there's only one one uh booster and ship left that's in the version two uh design. Uh and then thereafter it's it's version three which is a gigantic upgrade cuz that's got Raptor 3. Um, and pretty much everything changes on the rocket with version 3. Um, so version 3, you know, might have some initial teething pains, uh, cuz it's such a radical redesign.\n\nUh, but, uh, it's it's capable of over 100 tons to orbit fully reusable. Um, and I think it's I think I think um unless we have unless we have some very major setbacks, uh, SpaceX will demonstrate uh, full reusability next year uh, catching both the booster and the ship um, and being able to deliver over 100 tons to a useful orbit. >> What does the best rocket in the world do now in terms of tonnage to space?\n\nUh well in terms of uh sort of commercial rockets there's there's Falcon Heavy. >> Yeah. >> Uh which will do uh in um with with side booster reuse uh will do about 40 tons. >> So this is five times bigger. Yeah. >> Well two and a half times bigger in but but Starship would be full reuse full reusability. >> Got it. Okay.\n\nSo everything comes back >> Elon after after the explosion that happened um with the the the the failed launch >> um there was a lot of >> sorry >> which which failed >> oh the more recent one the more recent the starship with >> the big boom yeah >> the big boom on the base and and and there was a lot of >> there was a lot of proclamations that there's going to be environmental and FAA and all these other sorts the recovery back to the launchpad again was incredible.\n\nfast. How did you get back so fast? Not just technically and work-wise, but just like regulatory clearance-wise because they said there were going to be all these questions and reviews and so on. How how did you guys manage that? >> Uh well, there were a lot of questions and reviews. We got through them all. Um and credit to the SpaceX team.\n\nThey worked incredibly hard and they uh got the next trip and booster tested and on the pad and and flown and um yeah, huge credit to the SpaceX team. Very proud of them for >> doing doing such a job, a great job recovering. >> Um I mean creating a fully reusable orbital rocket is one of the hottest engineering problems ever. and certainly, you know, a candidate for most difficult engineering project ever. You know, it's on the podium at least.\n\nUm, so it's a that that's been the goal of SpaceX from the beginning from 2002. Um, and here we are 23 years later. So, it's it's a long journey and um with with a a super talent like by far the I think the most talented group of rocket engineers that ever been assembled. Um and uh and we're finally next year I think we'll be able to achieve full reusability.\n\n>> Elon, what are the big um technical blockers that you're focused on there between now and that full reusability? Are there some showstoppers where you're just kind of literally just obsessing over trying to figure out still or is it more about getting through a laundry list of your learnings and just integrating it into the next launch?\n\n>> Well, that the for for full reusability of the ship, there's still a lot of work that remains on the heat shield. So, no one's ever made a fully reusable orbital heat shield. Like the shuttle heat shield uh had to go through nine months of repair after every flight, >> right? >> Um so, no one has ever made a fully reusable orbital heat shield. >> And is that a material science problem or is that an engineering problem or both?\n\n>> Uh yeah, I mean it's a material science engineering problem. So, it's but we really are uh looking at the fundamental physics here. Um again physics first principles and trying to figure out how do we make something that um is uh you know can can withstand the heat is very light doesn't transmit the heat to the the primary sh >> Yeah. >> primary structure um and uh whose integ >> Yeah.\n\n>> Um Uh, and then as you ascend, if you hit some rain, you know, the tiles don't dissolve in rain. There's there's a lot of different issues and and then you really need to know that these tiles are working. You can't uh, you know, go through this laborious inspection. So, it really needs to be we're, you know, these these tens of thousands of tiles all work and don't need to be refurbished or checked one by one as was the case with the shuttle.\n\n>> Can we maybe um switch now? It's I mean, who who else were you talked about Tesla, then you go to SpaceX? Yeah. Now, I' I'd like to ask you some questions about Grock and um XAI. Um you want to just give us an update? I think you you kind of talked about where the nextG model is and you said something incredible.\n\nI still don't think people really understand it which is you know there's going to be a next training run where you expect you know not to start from the you know common web and common crawl where you expected an enormous amount of synthetic data. Just tell us about how uh the evolution of Grock is going and this innovation and why it's so important. Yeah.\n\nSo we're we're running a lot of using a lot of of inference compute and um and reasoning to look at all of the source data which is really the corpus of human knowledge and then uh thinking about each piece of information and then adding mod adding what's missing um and correcting correcting mistakes and removing falsehoods from the from that training data.\n\nSo it's it's it's like if you take say Wikipedia as an example but this really applies to to books, PDFs, uh the websites, uh every form of information. Um the the Grock is using um heavy amounts of inference compute to say to look at at an example a Wikipedia page and say uh what is true, partially true or false or missing uh in this page.\n\nNow rewrite the page to in to correct the remove the falsehoods uh uh correct the half-truths and add the missing context. >> Well, Elon, by the way, could you just publish that? Could we create like a groipedia? I mean, that would >> Yeah, especially for our bio pages, which are a disaster. >> Wikipedia is so biased and it's it's a constant war.\n\nyou know, if something gets corrected, five minutes later, there'll be an army of people trying to >> I mean, it's become hyperartisan and there's activists all over it. >> So, if you do fix, for example, Wikipedia as a source of truth, >> it'd be great to publish that just so the world has it. >> All right, I'll talk talk about that. So, talk to the team about that like Groedia or whatever. This here's the Groedia version. >> It' be interesting.\n\nYeah.\n\nand then just have it out there for just a few minutes >> where in terms of um people here like it um in terms of training Gro 5 um you're you're scaling up your supercluster in Colossus in in Memphis >> can yeah have a second one >> yeah can could you give us an update on that and then also as part of that um where are we in the scaling laws um if you scale a bigger cluster do you get a more powerful AI model is there a point of dimin diminishing returns or like how much more compute if you throw twice as much compute at it do you get a 10% better model do you get 100% better model like is it log linear what what I guess how much more juice is there left in scaling hardware do you think >> I think I think there's a natural logarithmic function associated\n\nwith the amount of compute so uh then like say for argument sake like 10x more compute will double the intelligence.\n\nMaybe that's that that might be a rough rule of thumb, but you know, that still means that, you know, you go from 100 IQ to 200 IQ. Still pretty pretty big deal. Um, so I and and I think I think we'll see intelligence continue to scale all the way up to where, you know, most of the power of the sun is harnessed for compute and then ultimately most of the power of the galaxy, you know, sort of cautev 2, cautev 3 scale uh compute.\n\nUm so I guess once you think of artificial intelligence not as sort of this you know a destination that you reach but really uh as part of the overall escalation of intelligence um that that that we are are aware of. Um you know human intelligence has also scaled as you've have as the population has increased um and we've been able to store more and more information. uh human intelligence has scaled.\n\nNow human because of population declines and low growth rate, human intelligence is is somewhat plateauing um and will actually decline. And my guess is that I I I I think that we might have AI smarter than any single human at anything as soon as next year. >> Wow. >> Um >> Yeah. and and and then and then probably within five like say 2030 probably AI is smarter than the sum of all humans.\n\n>> Do you think do you think humans are on the decline because the AI is evolving? Do you think there's this evolution of the ecosystem on Earth that's underway that we don't really understand the structure of what's going on? But >> maybe yeah, maybe we implicitly know that it's coming. Um, >> yeah. >> I I I I mean I hope the birth rates turn around. I'm a I'm a big proponent of increased birth rate. Uh, obviously.\n\n>> Well, you doing anything about it or no? >> Yeah. I'm trying to set a good example. You know, we had a big conversation at this conference we didn't expect, which is suicidal empathy, the West, >> this um declining birth rate. Uh I noticed you've been pretty active about it >> and open borders >> and open borders is like let the invaders in. Could all three of those be the same thing?\n\nIt >> it seems like there's a number of symptoms of the West being suicidal. The most obvious one being the birth rate is not a replacement level. So obviously if that continues indefinitely then the west will literally not reproduce enough to replace itself. But there's other things too.\n\nThere's the fact that the borders were totally opened to the point where western culture the social fabric start to come apart and you see this especially in Europe where there um you know the indigenous cultures of the UK or France or Germany are starting to um potentially be taken over by by cultures of people who are brought in and aren't assimilating.\n\nYou have crime where, you know, we have this case on social media right now, this young woman, Ire Ina, who's just >> killed in a senseless way on a subway. >> Uh, which is horrific enough in and of itself, but then in addition to that, the elite media just for whatever reason just refused to cover it, like it didn't exist. >> Um, so you have this issue of crime that's not being addressed or even acknowledged >> and no acknowledgement of this.\n\nlike it's almost like we're trying to deny the reality of the spiral >> and this Yeah. So you have the you have all these data points um that seem to suggest that um the west uh is suicidal or doesn't you know doesn't seem to want to defend itself or propagate itself. Um look I think everyone in this room thinks that um life is awesome right? I mean it's >> pretty great and I think >> worth living. >> Yeah.\n\nAnd when when Alex Karp was here earlier today defending the West, that got some of the loudest applause at the conference. So, uh I guess we probably don't really understand what's going on. We don't really >> Yeah. What's your take, Elon? Cuz you you know, >> what's your take on the suicide of the West? >> Yeah. >> What's What's >> I'm very worried about it. >> Yeah. >> I'm very worried about it.\n\nUm you know, I think there's there's just the actions of the West are indistinguishable from suicide. So, but it's and look, at least in America, there's there's there's generally a sense of optimism, but when's the last time you you talked to someone from Europe who lives in Europe who's optimistic? >> Not for a while. Yeah. >> Decades, >> like even one. >> It's rare.\n\nSo I I think unless people have a sense of optimism and purpose about the future, they suicide might be just what happens. Um like like like having a child is an act of optimism about the future. So uh if you're not optimistic, this Yeah. So, so I think we need to maybe give people a sense of optimism and excitement about the future and and a belief that the future will be better than the past um and they'll be more interested in having kids.\n\n>> Did did religion play a role in the past, Elon, to kind of plate and make folks feel that way >> when they >> Yeah, I think so.\n\nuh the nature abhores a vacuum and if you take away religion then I think you actually you you you get something in its place which is actually worse than what was there before I mean it's like destructive basically you get you get like the white work mind virus filling filling the hole that religion used to have taking the place of of of religion you get these dystopian de facto religions um that uh that that are very very self-destructive.\n\nUm so I I think perhaps some some sort of re revival of religion or at least what we need is is um some coherent philosophy that people can get excited about. Um you know I mean for me it's a philosophy of curiosity. I'm curious about the nature of the universe and I want to go out there and I want humanity to be out there exploring the stars. Um maybe meeting alien civilizations.\n\nUh maybe in some cases we we see the ruins of a long dead alien civilization but they were they were very strong for 10 million years. Um you know the kind of stuff that you see in Star Trek in in a non-dystopian sci-fi book or or movie or show. Um, and so I'm just I have I have a philosophy of curiosity of of like I just want to know what's going on.\n\nAnd and in order to know what's going on, we we must have u an an increase in the in the scope and scale of consciousness, we must we must expand uh consciousness. We must grow. We must grow humanity and we must extend humanity in order to comprehend the and to to understand the universe or even what what question should we should ask about the answer that is the universe.\n\nUm you know Doug Douglas Adams book the hitchhikers guide to the galaxy is actually a a deep book on philosophy disguised as humor. Um and what the point he was trying to make in that book was that u the questions are the really the hard part. The answer is the universe. Like the answer is everything you see around you. But but but one of the questions that we don't know to ask. >> Yeah. >> Um now now some of the questions I guess I we I do know.\n\nI'd like to know is the standard model of physics correct about the origins of the universe? Are we actually 13. 8 billion years old? Um how does the universe end? Does it end in a heat death or in some other way? Um, you know, >> a black hole. >> We might be. >> Um, >> Elon, can you talk about >> the whole sort of simulation question? Are we a simulation? Maybe. >> Where does the uh where do you think we find the answer first?\n\nIn AI or in the stars? Because you're pursuing both obviously. >> Yeah. I I I don't know if if I I hope I hope more people can get behind a philosophy of curiosity. >> Yeah. >> Because I think it's very exciting. >> Yeah. >> Um and and and and inherently optimistic. Um you like because there's there's this amazing sense of wonder about the nature of the universe. And when you just when you uncover some secret in the universe, that's amazing.\n\nAnd you're like a whole world of understanding is opened up. I mean, we we used to not even know where all the continents were. Um, you know, used to be like just the map would be there be dragons and like all we know is that when they sailed in that direction, they didn't come back. >> I mean, the moon base, >> that's all that's all they knew.\n\nI I kind of feel like the moon base or just going to the moon for real this time would be a big step in the right direction. You still have the moon uh planned. What's the status of that? Is is that still on the agenda? >> Yeah, I I think it I think having I think we want to try to reach new heights as a civilization. >> Yeah.\n\n>> So, I think it's it's fine to go to the moon, but but we should go to the moon in order to establish a lunar base, like a a lunar research base. >> Yeah. Um, I mean there are parts of the moon that are perhaps older than parts of of Earth. Um, and we we we might understand more about the nature of the universe if we had a science base on the moon. >> Um, that would be very cool.\n\nAnd then we we obviously want to go beyond the moon uh to Mars and uh build a self-sustaining city on Mars.\n\nthe I I I do think that uh that that there is a fork in the road of human destiny where um if we can establish a self-sustaining city on Mars with the the key test being if the resupply shifts from Earth stop coming for any reason does Mars continue to to prosper or does it die out >> at the point at which Mars is able to uh prosper and grow on its own the probable lifespan of consciousness is dramatically greater.\n\nbecause we are no longer dependent on everything going right on Earth. You know, there's there's always some possibility of self annihilation on Earth with the World War II or or a supervirus or um or or a meteor like extin, you know, that destroyed the dinosaurs. We know from the fossil record that there've been many mass mass extinction events.\n\nSo uh the question that I sort of was wondering about is will civilization will the civilizational arc continue to ascend such that we can make Mars self- sustaining before the civil civilizational ark descends >> um because the the window of opportunity to make life multilanetary exists now for the first time in the 4 and a half billion year history of earth. >> Yeah. Elon, let's assume that we get there and you're there.\n\n>> Um, you know, you'd be the elder statesman. You'd have the moral authority of Mars. How do you run Mars? >> But I just there's this point that I I think I I want to just emphasize again that that's that's it's more important than the form of governance on Mars or who's there in the early days.\n\nWhat really matters is that Mars um is self- sustaining that we are truly a multilanet species and s such that we've achieved planetary redundancy so that that if if something and obviously we should do everything possible to make sure life on Earth is great but there's always some risk that of an annihilation event on Earth. >> Yeah. >> Um like I said self annihilation or some natural disaster.\n\nUm and uh and so the the probable lifespan of consciousness increases dramatically as soon as uh as soon as we are multilanet species with the key test being can Mars survive if the resupply ships stop coming. So so getting like the first missions to Mars are not that important. The what matters is can you get sufficient tonnage tonnage to Mars such that Mars can prosper on its own.\n\nUm, and that means it has to have all of the ingredients of civilization. It it it's not just that you need to build, for example, a chip factory on Mars or ship fab on Mars, but you you need the ability to build. >> Do you do you have a sense of the time scale? Like, let's assume Starship is at a state starting in, you know, 2026. Then there's going to be a bunch of testing. Obviously, there's going to be a bunch of early testing.\n\nWe only have certain launch windows. So, there's a bunch of time constraints. Is that is this a 50-year thing in your mind? Is it a 150 year thing? Is it something that is for our generation or is it our children's generation? Where do you see that point if it's optimally possible? You know, if things go and break our way, >> um I think it can be done in in 30 years. Um >> wow.\n\nSo if provided there's an exponential increase in the in the tonnage to Mars with each successive Mars transfer window, which is every two years. So every two years the the planets align and you can you can transfer to Mars. Um, so I I think in roughly 15, but maybe as few as 10, but 10 to 15ish Mars transfer windows.\n\nIf you're um seeing exponential increases in the tonnage to Mars with each Mars transfer window, then it should be possible to make Mars self-sustaining um in in about call it roughly 25 years. >> Amazing. That's incredible. All right, ladies and gentlemen, Elon Musk, we'll see you when we're back in town. We miss you. We'll >> see you in person next time. >> Thank you, brother. All right.","textByLang":{"en":"[Music] I believe Optimus is going to be the greatest product ever created by humanity. >> Elon Musk and his XAI startup have built the largest and most powerful artificial intelligence training supercomputer in the world. As far as I know, there's only one person in the world who could do that. You know, >> this is an arms race of epic proportions. >> He's a big thinker. You guys went on Fox the other day with the Doge team.\n\nYou saw Elon's face nodding while they were speaking with a grin ear to ear. He was proud. >> XAI has acquired X in an old stock transaction. >> Tesla's first robo taxis are officially on the road. >> The company's board proposed a new compensation package for the CEO that could pay him just about a trillion dollars in stock. >> He gets nothing if he doesn't hit the numbers.\n\nSpaceX will buy wireless spectrum licenses from Echoar for its Starlink satellite network for about 17 billion. >> 3 2 1. [Music] There's a splash down. How do you have time? this I I I never understand you. >> Yeah. Well, I do work a lot. >> Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome >> Elon Musk. >> All right. Good. >> All right. Where are you? >> Alto. >> You're in Palo Alto and um not Washington DC.\n\n>> I'm I'm at Tesla Global Engineering Headquarters in Palo Alto. >> Yeah. So, no more Washington DC. You're back at work. You're focused. Yeah. >> Uh, yeah. I haven't been to DC since May. >> Okay. Uh, >> that was a that was a hell of a side quest. >> That was a good Any lessons from your time in Washington DC? >> Uh, the government is basically unfixable. >> Elon O only.\n\nI support David's noble efforts and this uh it's good to it's good to have talented people in the administration uh but at the end of the day um if you look at our national debt which is uh insanely high uh the interest payments exceed the u defense department I guess sorry war department uh budget um and um Nikki Bryzy so if AI and robots don't solve our national debt, we're we're toast. >> Which is a great segue.\n\nUm, Optimus is um I think going to be the greatest >> uh product in the history of humanity. What's the progress like and how much of your how many of your cycles are going specifically to Optimus? What's the timeline? I think you're on version three, maybe four. Tell us everything. Uh well, yeah, everything would take a long time. >> We've got time.\n\n>> Um we're we're finalizing the design of Optimus version 3 and uh that that really is going to be a very remarkable robot. Um it will have the essentially the manual dexterity of a human. So meaning a very complex hand. Um the a an AI mind that can navigate and comprehend reality. Um and it will be made in very high volume. Uh those are the three things that are missing.\n\nLike if you see any other um robotics uh company, they're missing those three things. Those are the three really hard things. Um and uh I I I spent actually at this point um it it might be more of my mental cycles than anything anything else any other single thing on Optimus.\n\nUh that's that's that that's solving for uh real world AI uh all of the electro mechanical issues of Optimus the the supply chain and production challenges of it because we have there is no supply chain that exists for humanoid robots. So it has to be we have to recreate it from scratch um and which requires doing a lot of vertical integration. um none of the actuators in Optimus um are available from an existing supply chain.\n\nUm so but I I think it is accurate to say that if successful Optimus will be the biggest product ever >> and the cost of it at scale 2030 $40,000 a robot. What what do you think the first wave of them will cost? And yeah, when will we be able to buy one to work on the ranch? >> I think that the the marginal cost of production once you hit a million units per year uh is probably around the $20,000 range.\n\nUh it it it sort of depends on how much you spend on the AI chip in the in the robot. Um and you need to achieve a lot of efficiencies in the actuators. Uh there are um 26 actuators per arm like 26 electric like motors, gearboxes and power electronics. Um, so, so, but but the the the AI chip will be pretty expensive like that that might be like55 or $6,000 of the of the bill of materials, maybe more.\n\nUm, and um but but so I but I think at volume at a million units a year, the the production cost is probably on the order of $20,000, maybe 25, something like that. And um price will be as a function of demand.\n\n>> Elon um can you maybe explain to everybody why the hand is so important to get right and why you know the actuator design is so unique and you know why it's so difficult why nobody makes it and why you have to start there almost to build the rest of the the robot properly. Well, it turns out the human hands are incredibly they've evolved to this to be this incredibly sophisticated machine.\n\nLike the your hand is an in actually a remarkable thing. It's look look closely at your hands and and think of all the things you can do with your hands, which is a lot. >> I can think of many things. >> Yeah, I was just thinking about something. >> You know, your hands are very versatile instrument. Yeah, you can give him a high five. >> Very versatile.\n\nUm, you know, you you you can swing a baseball bat, you can thread needles, you you can you put thread in a needle. Uh, you can play the piano with violin. Um, you know, you could disassemble or assemble a car. The hands are incredibly versatile instruments. Um and um most of the muscles of of the hand are are actually in the forearm. So your hand is kind of like a like a like it's like a puppet. Like it's mostly a puppet.\n\nThe mus the muscles are coming from the forearm and they're pulling the tendons uh which are you know also human tendon designs or human human tendon evolution is incredibly good. Um, so you you've got this web of tendons. You you you've got um I think I think the the human hand is something like depending on how you count it, 27 or 28 degrees of freedom per you know in in the hand. It's uh it's amazing.\n\nSo in order to create a robot that can uh be a generalized uh humanoid, you you must solve the hand the hands problem. >> Yeah. We had uh we had >> it's got hands, needs hands. >> And so is it like uh when you were first building Tesla where the supply chain doesn't exist and now you have to go out and find folks to work with and you know build all this vertical integration, get support.\n\nIs it is it literally like it's just nowhere to be found and >> you're going to have to build all of this stuff up? >> Yes, we we we could not actually buy the actuators for any amount of money. they simply didn't exist. Even though there are, I don't know, 10 20,000 electric motors out there of various sizes and shapes.\n\nUm, we've had to design uh every electric motor, gearbox um and and the controlling electronics from scratch basically from physics first principles. >> The good news is you've got a lot of experience with factories over the last couple of decades. So, >> how challenging is this versus Cybert truck model Y >> Model X >> Gigafactory? You know, the Yeah. The Fabra Egg known as the Model X. Yeah. >> Right.\n\n>> Um it's hotter than any any of those things. >> Okay. >> Yeah. >> Much hotter significantly. Yeah. Starship. >> Yes. Well, more No, not Starship's harder. Okay. >> So, somewhere between a Model X and a Starship? >> Yeah. >> Is it is the What's harder, the hardware or the software? >> Right now, we're struggling with the the final design of the hardware. Like I said, it's really primarily the hand.\n\nNot to just just dismiss the rest of the robot.\n\nthe rest of it's also uh important but but the hands are the hands inclusive of the forearm are a majority of the engineering difficulty of the entire robot and then let's assume you get past the hardware challenges how much do you sort of get for free um based on all the progress that's happening with LLMs will you know will consumers just be able to interact with this talk to the robot ask it to do things it'll understand and sort of >> Oh yeah >> yeah no problem >> you're spending a lot of time with any I noticed online.\n\n>> Not not that long. Um maybe I went a little over the top from Bunning Grom Imagine, but uh >> well, but in all seriousness, those characters and these robots that seems to be, you know, like maybe they >> you could get the embodiment of Annie, I suppose. >> Yeah. Why why the human form factor, Elon?\n\nYou could make something that's maybe better than a human or maybe simpler than a human to do specific tasks and maybe better than a human to do more things than a human can do. How do you decide to make it just like a human? >> Well, if you wanted to do all the things that a human can do, it turns out you need a humanoid robot. Um, so if you want to just do a subset, it that's much easier.\n\nUm but uh it turns out humans evolved to this the shape and capabilities that we we we have. Um it it it for for good reasons. Uh there actually is that there is like there's value to having five, you know, four fingers and the thumb. Um and even the pinky actually is is quite useful. Um toes are much more aggression walk but but but the fingers >> well also humans humans have designed the world as well. So we designed it for us.\n\nSo >> if you can make a humanoid robot it'll be immediately backwards compatible with what we've built the world for. >> Precisely. >> Elon there's another there's another part of um the robot. So there's the LLMs, there's the actuation in the hands, but also there's the um the silicon that runs it.\n\nAnd there was, you know, Dojo, I think you you posted on X AI5 and AI6, and it just seemed like you were incredibly excited about the direction in which the silicon layer was also going. Can you tell us about that and what that is and what what what what are we what are we building here? What is being built? Is it a complement to everything that exists in the world? Is it a potential long-term competitor? What is it? >> Um, yeah.\n\nSo, at at Tesla, we basically had two different chip programs. One dojo and one uh dojo on the training side and then what we call, you know, AI for it, which just our inference chip. um uh that the AI Force is currently shipping in all vehicles. Um and we're finaliz finalizing the design of AI5 which will be an immense jump from AI4. Um by some metrics the improvement in AI5 will be 40 times better than AI4. >> Wow. >> So 40% 40 times.\n\nUm and and uh this is because we work so closely at a very fine grade level on the AI software and the AI hardware. So we know exactly where the limiting factors are and and um and so effectively the AI hardware and software teams are co-designing the chip.\n\nUm >> so a 40x improvement in the silicon I think then as it as everybody here in the audience experiences it is that just an almost like an order of magnitude increase in the quality of FST and the safety that you experience as a Tesla driver and then the quality of the robot like where does it all manifest when you when you you know bring it up and actually get it into production?\n\nYeah to be precise the 40x is on if you say like compared to the worst limitation on AI4 which is running the softmax operation. >> Yeah >> we currently have to run softmax in around 40 steps in emulation mode whereas that'll be just be done in a few steps uh natively in AI5. Um AI5 trip will also be u easily handle mixed precision um models. So you don't have it'll dynamically handle mixed precision.\n\nThere's a bunch of sort of technical stuff that AI will do a lot better. Um in terms of of nominal sort of uh raw compute, it's it's eight times more compute. Um about nine times more memory uh roughly five times more memory bandwidth.\n\nUm so uh but because we're addressing some core limitations in AI4, you multiply that by that that 8x computer improvement by another 5x improvement because of of uh optimization at a at a at a very fine grain silicon level of things that are currently suboptimal in AI4. That's where you get the 40x improvement. >> You had um I'll keep going, keep going.\n\nUh so now now that said I I'm I am confident that the current uh chips uh AI AI4 chips that are in the cars will uh achieve self-driving safety that is at least two to three times that of of human and and maybe even 10x. Um and the software that uh will be released for that is is coming out over the next few months. So version 14 will be the biggest uh upgrade in Tesla software since version 12.\n\nUm we are increasing the uh parameter count by an order of magnitude. Um the there's there's there's a lot of uh reinforcement learning that's been used. there's um we we there there there's like you can think of AI sort of as a way of compressing reality and and and some of those compression steps uh we uh were too lossy and and we addressed the lossiness in the compression steps. Um so the these are all software updates that'll that'll go out.\n\nSo just over there updates um your car is going to feel like it is sentient by the end of the year. >> Yeah, it feels that way already to be honest. Um I saw in the trades that you spent about $17 billion on some spectrum and that um >> yeah um so some couch change um to enable your satellites and the Starlink network to connect directly with phones. What will that look like in a year or two?\n\nAre we going to drop our Verizon account and just expand our Starlink account? >> Uh, thank you. >> We're kind of hoping cuz Verizon kind of sucks. >> How How many of you want a Starlink phone? >> Who wants a Starlink phone? >> Is it Is it technically possible? >> I know you can't see it, but it's everyone. >> Yeah, All right, cool. Um so this is a kind of a long-term thing.\n\nUh it it will allow SpaceX to h uh deliver high bandwidth connectivity directly from the satellites to the phones. Um but uh there are hardware changes that need to happen in the phone. So the since these frequencies are not supported in current phones uh that the chipset has to be modified to add these frequencies um and that probably is a 2-year time frame.\n\nSo the phones that um are able to use the spectrum that was acquired probably start shipping in around 2 years. Um and um and then we also need to build the satellites that are going to communicate on those frequencies. So, in parallel, we're building the satellites and working with the handset makers to add these frequencies to the phones.\n\nUm, and then the the satellites and the phones will then handshake very well to achieve high bandwidth connectivity. But the net effect is that you should be able to watch uh videos uh anywhere on your phone. >> Wow. >> And it's going to be crazy. And what and do these do these frequencies would they work indoors inside buildings, you know, like like your phone currently does? Okay.\n\n>> And so will you be able to have basically like >> if you if if you're in a building with a with a like a a thick metal roof then No. But um >> no the the same types of of >> Yeah. Normal normal homes. Yes. >> Yes. >> Elon is your vision for this that instead of you know having an AT&T account or and then roaming when you're in the UK or you're in India. It's just we could have one direct deal with Starlink.\n\nIt works all over the world eventually. Not today but at some point. Is that the end goal? That basically we don't need a regional carrier. We have a global carrier and that would be you. >> Uh that that would be one of the options. To be clear, we're not going to put the other carriers out of business. They're still going to be around cuz they they own a lot of Spectrum.\n\nSo, uh there's uh but but yes, you you should be able to have a Starlink uh like you have like you have an AT&T or T-Mobile or Verizon or whatever, you should be you could have a you know account with Starlink that uh works with your you know Starlink uh antenna at home uh free Wi-Fi as well as on your phone and um yeah it would be a comprehensive solution for high bandwidth at home and for high bandwidth direct to sell.\n\n>> Could you buy some carriers to have more >> spectrum? >> Maybe you could buy Verizon. >> Not out of the question. I suppose it that may happen. >> Let's talk about um let's talk about Starship. You just had a really what appeared to be a phenomenal um launch. H how close is it to, you know, being predictable and ready to go in a commercial setting? I I I think we'll recover the ship next year.\n\nUm we've got one more launch of the um Starlink version two uh uh stack that there's only one one uh booster and ship left that's in the version two uh design. Uh and then thereafter it's it's version three which is a gigantic upgrade cuz that's got Raptor 3. Um, and pretty much everything changes on the rocket with version 3. Um, so version 3, you know, might have some initial teething pains, uh, cuz it's such a radical redesign.\n\nUh, but, uh, it's it's capable of over 100 tons to orbit fully reusable. Um, and I think it's I think I think um unless we have unless we have some very major setbacks, uh, SpaceX will demonstrate uh, full reusability next year uh, catching both the booster and the ship um, and being able to deliver over 100 tons to a useful orbit. >> What does the best rocket in the world do now in terms of tonnage to space?\n\nUh well in terms of uh sort of commercial rockets there's there's Falcon Heavy. >> Yeah. >> Uh which will do uh in um with with side booster reuse uh will do about 40 tons. >> So this is five times bigger. Yeah. >> Well two and a half times bigger in but but Starship would be full reuse full reusability. >> Got it. Okay.\n\nSo everything comes back >> Elon after after the explosion that happened um with the the the the failed launch >> um there was a lot of >> sorry >> which which failed >> oh the more recent one the more recent the starship with >> the big boom yeah >> the big boom on the base and and and there was a lot of >> there was a lot of proclamations that there's going to be environmental and FAA and all these other sorts the recovery back to the launchpad again was incredible.\n\nfast. How did you get back so fast? Not just technically and work-wise, but just like regulatory clearance-wise because they said there were going to be all these questions and reviews and so on. How how did you guys manage that? >> Uh well, there were a lot of questions and reviews. We got through them all. Um and credit to the SpaceX team.\n\nThey worked incredibly hard and they uh got the next trip and booster tested and on the pad and and flown and um yeah, huge credit to the SpaceX team. Very proud of them for >> doing doing such a job, a great job recovering. >> Um I mean creating a fully reusable orbital rocket is one of the hottest engineering problems ever. and certainly, you know, a candidate for most difficult engineering project ever. You know, it's on the podium at least.\n\nUm, so it's a that that's been the goal of SpaceX from the beginning from 2002. Um, and here we are 23 years later. So, it's it's a long journey and um with with a a super talent like by far the I think the most talented group of rocket engineers that ever been assembled. Um and uh and we're finally next year I think we'll be able to achieve full reusability.\n\n>> Elon, what are the big um technical blockers that you're focused on there between now and that full reusability? Are there some showstoppers where you're just kind of literally just obsessing over trying to figure out still or is it more about getting through a laundry list of your learnings and just integrating it into the next launch?\n\n>> Well, that the for for full reusability of the ship, there's still a lot of work that remains on the heat shield. So, no one's ever made a fully reusable orbital heat shield. Like the shuttle heat shield uh had to go through nine months of repair after every flight, >> right? >> Um so, no one has ever made a fully reusable orbital heat shield. >> And is that a material science problem or is that an engineering problem or both?\n\n>> Uh yeah, I mean it's a material science engineering problem. So, it's but we really are uh looking at the fundamental physics here. Um again physics first principles and trying to figure out how do we make something that um is uh you know can can withstand the heat is very light doesn't transmit the heat to the the primary sh >> Yeah. >> primary structure um and uh whose integ >> Yeah.\n\n>> Um Uh, and then as you ascend, if you hit some rain, you know, the tiles don't dissolve in rain. There's there's a lot of different issues and and then you really need to know that these tiles are working. You can't uh, you know, go through this laborious inspection. So, it really needs to be we're, you know, these these tens of thousands of tiles all work and don't need to be refurbished or checked one by one as was the case with the shuttle.\n\n>> Can we maybe um switch now? It's I mean, who who else were you talked about Tesla, then you go to SpaceX? Yeah. Now, I' I'd like to ask you some questions about Grock and um XAI. Um you want to just give us an update? I think you you kind of talked about where the nextG model is and you said something incredible.\n\nI still don't think people really understand it which is you know there's going to be a next training run where you expect you know not to start from the you know common web and common crawl where you expected an enormous amount of synthetic data. Just tell us about how uh the evolution of Grock is going and this innovation and why it's so important. Yeah.\n\nSo we're we're running a lot of using a lot of of inference compute and um and reasoning to look at all of the source data which is really the corpus of human knowledge and then uh thinking about each piece of information and then adding mod adding what's missing um and correcting correcting mistakes and removing falsehoods from the from that training data.\n\nSo it's it's it's like if you take say Wikipedia as an example but this really applies to to books, PDFs, uh the websites, uh every form of information. Um the the Grock is using um heavy amounts of inference compute to say to look at at an example a Wikipedia page and say uh what is true, partially true or false or missing uh in this page.\n\nNow rewrite the page to in to correct the remove the falsehoods uh uh correct the half-truths and add the missing context. >> Well, Elon, by the way, could you just publish that? Could we create like a groipedia? I mean, that would >> Yeah, especially for our bio pages, which are a disaster. >> Wikipedia is so biased and it's it's a constant war.\n\nyou know, if something gets corrected, five minutes later, there'll be an army of people trying to >> I mean, it's become hyperartisan and there's activists all over it. >> So, if you do fix, for example, Wikipedia as a source of truth, >> it'd be great to publish that just so the world has it. >> All right, I'll talk talk about that. So, talk to the team about that like Groedia or whatever. This here's the Groedia version. >> It' be interesting.\n\nYeah.\n\nand then just have it out there for just a few minutes >> where in terms of um people here like it um in terms of training Gro 5 um you're you're scaling up your supercluster in Colossus in in Memphis >> can yeah have a second one >> yeah can could you give us an update on that and then also as part of that um where are we in the scaling laws um if you scale a bigger cluster do you get a more powerful AI model is there a point of dimin diminishing returns or like how much more compute if you throw twice as much compute at it do you get a 10% better model do you get 100% better model like is it log linear what what I guess how much more juice is there left in scaling hardware do you think >> I think I think there's a natural logarithmic function associated\n\nwith the amount of compute so uh then like say for argument sake like 10x more compute will double the intelligence.\n\nMaybe that's that that might be a rough rule of thumb, but you know, that still means that, you know, you go from 100 IQ to 200 IQ. Still pretty pretty big deal. Um, so I and and I think I think we'll see intelligence continue to scale all the way up to where, you know, most of the power of the sun is harnessed for compute and then ultimately most of the power of the galaxy, you know, sort of cautev 2, cautev 3 scale uh compute.\n\nUm so I guess once you think of artificial intelligence not as sort of this you know a destination that you reach but really uh as part of the overall escalation of intelligence um that that that we are are aware of. Um you know human intelligence has also scaled as you've have as the population has increased um and we've been able to store more and more information. uh human intelligence has scaled.\n\nNow human because of population declines and low growth rate, human intelligence is is somewhat plateauing um and will actually decline. And my guess is that I I I I think that we might have AI smarter than any single human at anything as soon as next year. >> Wow. >> Um >> Yeah. and and and then and then probably within five like say 2030 probably AI is smarter than the sum of all humans.\n\n>> Do you think do you think humans are on the decline because the AI is evolving? Do you think there's this evolution of the ecosystem on Earth that's underway that we don't really understand the structure of what's going on? But >> maybe yeah, maybe we implicitly know that it's coming. Um, >> yeah. >> I I I I mean I hope the birth rates turn around. I'm a I'm a big proponent of increased birth rate. Uh, obviously.\n\n>> Well, you doing anything about it or no? >> Yeah. I'm trying to set a good example. You know, we had a big conversation at this conference we didn't expect, which is suicidal empathy, the West, >> this um declining birth rate. Uh I noticed you've been pretty active about it >> and open borders >> and open borders is like let the invaders in. Could all three of those be the same thing?\n\nIt >> it seems like there's a number of symptoms of the West being suicidal. The most obvious one being the birth rate is not a replacement level. So obviously if that continues indefinitely then the west will literally not reproduce enough to replace itself. But there's other things too.\n\nThere's the fact that the borders were totally opened to the point where western culture the social fabric start to come apart and you see this especially in Europe where there um you know the indigenous cultures of the UK or France or Germany are starting to um potentially be taken over by by cultures of people who are brought in and aren't assimilating.\n\nYou have crime where, you know, we have this case on social media right now, this young woman, Ire Ina, who's just >> killed in a senseless way on a subway. >> Uh, which is horrific enough in and of itself, but then in addition to that, the elite media just for whatever reason just refused to cover it, like it didn't exist. >> Um, so you have this issue of crime that's not being addressed or even acknowledged >> and no acknowledgement of this.\n\nlike it's almost like we're trying to deny the reality of the spiral >> and this Yeah. So you have the you have all these data points um that seem to suggest that um the west uh is suicidal or doesn't you know doesn't seem to want to defend itself or propagate itself. Um look I think everyone in this room thinks that um life is awesome right? I mean it's >> pretty great and I think >> worth living. >> Yeah.\n\nAnd when when Alex Karp was here earlier today defending the West, that got some of the loudest applause at the conference. So, uh I guess we probably don't really understand what's going on. We don't really >> Yeah. What's your take, Elon? Cuz you you know, >> what's your take on the suicide of the West? >> Yeah. >> What's What's >> I'm very worried about it. >> Yeah. >> I'm very worried about it.\n\nUm you know, I think there's there's just the actions of the West are indistinguishable from suicide. So, but it's and look, at least in America, there's there's there's generally a sense of optimism, but when's the last time you you talked to someone from Europe who lives in Europe who's optimistic? >> Not for a while. Yeah. >> Decades, >> like even one. >> It's rare.\n\nSo I I think unless people have a sense of optimism and purpose about the future, they suicide might be just what happens. Um like like like having a child is an act of optimism about the future. So uh if you're not optimistic, this Yeah. So, so I think we need to maybe give people a sense of optimism and excitement about the future and and a belief that the future will be better than the past um and they'll be more interested in having kids.\n\n>> Did did religion play a role in the past, Elon, to kind of plate and make folks feel that way >> when they >> Yeah, I think so.\n\nuh the nature abhores a vacuum and if you take away religion then I think you actually you you you get something in its place which is actually worse than what was there before I mean it's like destructive basically you get you get like the white work mind virus filling filling the hole that religion used to have taking the place of of of religion you get these dystopian de facto religions um that uh that that are very very self-destructive.\n\nUm so I I think perhaps some some sort of re revival of religion or at least what we need is is um some coherent philosophy that people can get excited about. Um you know I mean for me it's a philosophy of curiosity. I'm curious about the nature of the universe and I want to go out there and I want humanity to be out there exploring the stars. Um maybe meeting alien civilizations.\n\nUh maybe in some cases we we see the ruins of a long dead alien civilization but they were they were very strong for 10 million years. Um you know the kind of stuff that you see in Star Trek in in a non-dystopian sci-fi book or or movie or show. Um, and so I'm just I have I have a philosophy of curiosity of of like I just want to know what's going on.\n\nAnd and in order to know what's going on, we we must have u an an increase in the in the scope and scale of consciousness, we must we must expand uh consciousness. We must grow. We must grow humanity and we must extend humanity in order to comprehend the and to to understand the universe or even what what question should we should ask about the answer that is the universe.\n\nUm you know Doug Douglas Adams book the hitchhikers guide to the galaxy is actually a a deep book on philosophy disguised as humor. Um and what the point he was trying to make in that book was that u the questions are the really the hard part. The answer is the universe. Like the answer is everything you see around you. But but but one of the questions that we don't know to ask. >> Yeah. >> Um now now some of the questions I guess I we I do know.\n\nI'd like to know is the standard model of physics correct about the origins of the universe? Are we actually 13. 8 billion years old? Um how does the universe end? Does it end in a heat death or in some other way? Um, you know, >> a black hole. >> We might be. >> Um, >> Elon, can you talk about >> the whole sort of simulation question? Are we a simulation? Maybe. >> Where does the uh where do you think we find the answer first?\n\nIn AI or in the stars? Because you're pursuing both obviously. >> Yeah. I I I don't know if if I I hope I hope more people can get behind a philosophy of curiosity. >> Yeah. >> Because I think it's very exciting. >> Yeah. >> Um and and and and inherently optimistic. Um you like because there's there's this amazing sense of wonder about the nature of the universe. And when you just when you uncover some secret in the universe, that's amazing.\n\nAnd you're like a whole world of understanding is opened up. I mean, we we used to not even know where all the continents were. Um, you know, used to be like just the map would be there be dragons and like all we know is that when they sailed in that direction, they didn't come back. >> I mean, the moon base, >> that's all that's all they knew.\n\nI I kind of feel like the moon base or just going to the moon for real this time would be a big step in the right direction. You still have the moon uh planned. What's the status of that? Is is that still on the agenda? >> Yeah, I I think it I think having I think we want to try to reach new heights as a civilization. >> Yeah.\n\n>> So, I think it's it's fine to go to the moon, but but we should go to the moon in order to establish a lunar base, like a a lunar research base. >> Yeah. Um, I mean there are parts of the moon that are perhaps older than parts of of Earth. Um, and we we we might understand more about the nature of the universe if we had a science base on the moon. >> Um, that would be very cool.\n\nAnd then we we obviously want to go beyond the moon uh to Mars and uh build a self-sustaining city on Mars.\n\nthe I I I do think that uh that that there is a fork in the road of human destiny where um if we can establish a self-sustaining city on Mars with the the key test being if the resupply shifts from Earth stop coming for any reason does Mars continue to to prosper or does it die out >> at the point at which Mars is able to uh prosper and grow on its own the probable lifespan of consciousness is dramatically greater.\n\nbecause we are no longer dependent on everything going right on Earth. You know, there's there's always some possibility of self annihilation on Earth with the World War II or or a supervirus or um or or a meteor like extin, you know, that destroyed the dinosaurs. We know from the fossil record that there've been many mass mass extinction events.\n\nSo uh the question that I sort of was wondering about is will civilization will the civilizational arc continue to ascend such that we can make Mars self- sustaining before the civil civilizational ark descends >> um because the the window of opportunity to make life multilanetary exists now for the first time in the 4 and a half billion year history of earth. >> Yeah. Elon, let's assume that we get there and you're there.\n\n>> Um, you know, you'd be the elder statesman. You'd have the moral authority of Mars. How do you run Mars? >> But I just there's this point that I I think I I want to just emphasize again that that's that's it's more important than the form of governance on Mars or who's there in the early days.\n\nWhat really matters is that Mars um is self- sustaining that we are truly a multilanet species and s such that we've achieved planetary redundancy so that that if if something and obviously we should do everything possible to make sure life on Earth is great but there's always some risk that of an annihilation event on Earth. >> Yeah. >> Um like I said self annihilation or some natural disaster.\n\nUm and uh and so the the probable lifespan of consciousness increases dramatically as soon as uh as soon as we are multilanet species with the key test being can Mars survive if the resupply ships stop coming. So so getting like the first missions to Mars are not that important. The what matters is can you get sufficient tonnage tonnage to Mars such that Mars can prosper on its own.\n\nUm, and that means it has to have all of the ingredients of civilization. It it it's not just that you need to build, for example, a chip factory on Mars or ship fab on Mars, but you you need the ability to build. >> Do you do you have a sense of the time scale? Like, let's assume Starship is at a state starting in, you know, 2026. Then there's going to be a bunch of testing. Obviously, there's going to be a bunch of early testing.\n\nWe only have certain launch windows. So, there's a bunch of time constraints. Is that is this a 50-year thing in your mind? Is it a 150 year thing? Is it something that is for our generation or is it our children's generation? Where do you see that point if it's optimally possible? You know, if things go and break our way, >> um I think it can be done in in 30 years. Um >> wow.\n\nSo if provided there's an exponential increase in the in the tonnage to Mars with each successive Mars transfer window, which is every two years. So every two years the the planets align and you can you can transfer to Mars. Um, so I I think in roughly 15, but maybe as few as 10, but 10 to 15ish Mars transfer windows.\n\nIf you're um seeing exponential increases in the tonnage to Mars with each Mars transfer window, then it should be possible to make Mars self-sustaining um in in about call it roughly 25 years. >> Amazing. That's incredible. All right, ladies and gentlemen, Elon Musk, we'll see you when we're back in town. We miss you. We'll >> see you in person next time. >> Thank you, brother. All right."},"languages":["en"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":"https://podcasts.happyscribe.com/all-in-with-chamath-jason-sacks-friedberg/elon-musk-3-years-of-x-openai-lawsuit-bill-gates-grokipedia-the-future-of-everything"},{"id":"x-takeover-2025-musk","type":"interview","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YqDehngsBHw","title":"X Takeover","titles":{"en":"X Takeover","de":"X Takeover","fr":"X Takeover"},"date":"2025-07-27","summary":"A virtual fireside (via Starlink Mini) at the Tesla Owners Silicon Valley X Takeover event, covering Optimus, the Tesla Semi, Robotaxi and autonomy, Starship and Neuralink's medical promise.","text":"So, I guess >> Hey everybody. Wasn't it great to hear from Lars? >> You can just tell he just he loves what he's doing and that that really just comes through when you talk to him. Uh, somebody else that loves what they do is our next pseudo surprise. We announced it what an hour or something ago. You might know him. He's a guy named Elon. Maybe you've heard of him. He's got a couple followers on this platform called X. I don't know.\n\nYou know, some new guy. No. Uh Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla, will be joining us virtually here momentarily and to chat with them for second or third year in a row now. Gosh, second year in a row. Please welcome back, of course, John and Kelvin from the Tesla Owners Club of Silicon Valley. All right, let's go. Have fun, guys. >> Ah, man, the raceh horses out there always causing a ruckus. Family-friendly event, guys. Crazy. What a day. What a day.\n\nSo, obviously, uh, thank you so much to Lars and Steve for coming on here. And I believe we have Elon on, so it's just a matter of, uh, I feel like, >> you know, just bringing him on the screen and stuff. >> Yeah. Whoa, Elon, what's up? >> Oh, giant on a giant screen. >> Yeah, it actually kind of looks like Mars in some ways. >> It just perseverance. >> Is that a cap right there, too?\n\n>> That's the Perseverance ro It's a Perseverance rover on Mars. >> Oh my gosh, that's awesome. >> Yeah. >> Well, first off, Elon, thanks for coming to the X Takeover, uh, formerly Tesla Takeover for the second year in a row. You're welcome. >> Well, let's uh let's kick things off. Let's start start off with uh you know uh really your baby, the Starship. Starship is the most ambitious rocket ever built.\n\nWhat's been harder than expected and what's the next milestone we should watch for? Um well I I thought everything would be hard so it's not like uh I was like >> it would be easy. >> Yeah. Yeah. So I mean Starship is a is a crazy program on so many levels.\n\nuh because uh you've got something with uh two and a half uh and future versions will be three times the thrust of the Saturn 5 moon rocket which was previously the largest rocket and largest flying object ever made. So Starship is um you know three times thrust roughly twice the weight of the next largest flying object ever made and has the the goal of being fully and rapidly reusable.\n\nSo this is a this is a really crazy thing to I think it's it's really one of the hardest engineering challenges that exists. Um and uh you know when we first started talking about Starship people thought this was impossible. In fact even within the company we we sort of thought it was impossible and it had a very high sort of what I call giggle factor.\n\nUh you know you mention the thing and people immedately start giggling like at the absurdity of it all. Um so now but now it's gone from uh as say we you know I guess I specialize in the uh in going from the uh impossible to the merely late. Um so that's my skill. Uh it wasn't possible now it's just late. Um so and I encourage anyone who's interested to go and and visit Starbase in South Texas. It's like a magical land uh with gigantic rockets.\n\nI think some of you have been there and seen it. >> It's very inspiring. It's like I take part for take friends and family. It's on a major highway, so you can see things quite close up. >> Um, and really get a sense for the scale of the of the the rocket and the factory and everything. So, it's it's very cool.\n\nUm I I guess the the thing that I thought would be hardest currently is the hardest which is the creating a fully reusable orbital heat shield which has never been done before. So normally the heat shields are um they're they're expandable and even say for the shuttle heat shield they would lose many of the the tiles on every flight and they'd have to refurbish the heat shield between each flight.\n\nSo it's it's never no one has ever created a fully reusable orbital heat shield before. Um and no one in fact no one has created a fully reusable orbital rocket before. Um and Falcon 9 is the first rocket where there's at least the boost stage uh is reusable on a regular basis. Um and where it actually makes economic sense.\n\nSo um so so solving the heat shield problem is I think probably the single biggest remaining challenge for Starship and um and of course getting the upper stage or the ship to land and also get caught by the the giant metal chopsticks which uh looks looks like a sci-fi movie that looks it looks like an impro improbable sci-fi movie. the whole thing. >> Chopsticks literally catching it. Catching it. >> Yeah. Uh giant metal chopsticks.\n\nUh that's um it's pretty wild to be catching the largest flying object ever made with metal chopsticks out of the air.\n\nUm, so then the but I'm hopeful that the ship will be will be recovered maybe this year but certainly I'd say in the first half of next year and then there'll be further improvements to make the ship and the booster not just reusable but fully and rapidly reusable uh which will actually drop the cost per flight cost per ton of payload of Starship below that of a of of a Falcon 1 rocket of an expandable Falcon 1.\n\nSo that that getting 100 tons or more to orbit of useful payload will cost less than a rocket that would ordinarily deliver half a ton. That was Falcon 1. And it's because all you're you're doing is replacing the um the fuel and oxygen in the rocket as opposed to building a new rocket. Um and most of the propellant is actually oxygen, not not fuel. But it's almost 80% oxygen, 20% fuel.\n\nUh then the next big technology challenge after being able to achieve full re of the full reuse of the ship is orbital refilling where um where where we actually refill propellant from from over like like um like aerial re refueling. In this case, it's orbital refilling. I say refilling, not refueling because most of what's transferred is actually liquid oxygen as opposed to fuel.\n\nUm, so for orbital refilling, uh, you need to have two starships come together and dock and transfer propellant from one, uh, starship to another and then and then in the future to an orbit orbital propellant depot. Yeah. So that's that's the situation. >> Doesn't sound hard. It just >> I mean it is very achievable.\n\nThere's nothing um nothing impossible is is being talked about here, but it is it is very uh tricky to do and and and uh no no other organization is even trying to do this. It's like it's not like well who else is trying to do this? Well, nobody actually. So um in fact even after all these years there's still no company that's uh reusing a booster.\n\nSo, uh, no one's even tried to do Balcon 9 level reusability, even even though we've shown that that it clearly makes a ton of sense, uh, because, you know, compare the cost of any form of transport where if you have to throw away the item afterwards, like like if you've got if if you had to if every time you drove somewhere you had to throw away the car, uh, you'd be wow, that's a that's a that's a that's a crazy car where you have to throw away after every every time you drive it.\n\nBut that's how it works for for rockets. So that is really um yeah, I don't think anyone would be driving a car if you had to buy a new car every time you drove somewhere and then you'd have to tow another car behind you for the return journey. >> Elon, what does a >> So yeah. >> Yeah. Yeah. So talk about the impossible. Elon, what does a self-sustaining city on Mars actually look like? How many people? What kind of economy?\n\nWhat kind of governance? >> Well, uh that that'll that'll governance will be up to the Martians. Um but uh you know, we have some sort of artist impressions of what a Mars city would look like. Uh the and I don't really know to be honest. um you know to accept that we you know Mars is not yet at the point where we're sort of terraformed where you could live outdoors.\n\nSo uh you you'd have to live initially in uh glass domes or um something like that. And um and then you could you could walk outside with with a Mars suit, but you you could you could not walk outside without a Mars suit. Um so um yeah it's uh but but I should also say like like maybe explain for those who haven't heard of like like why why why is it worth doing something like this? Um what's the purpose of of Mars?\n\nShouldn't we just focus on Earth? And I'm like, \"Yeah, I think we should focus on Earth.\" Like 99% of what we do should be focused on Earth. Uh but maybe 1% of what we do should be uh should be focused on on becoming a space fairing civilization and a multilanet species.\n\nUh because uh there there's the defensive argument where it's um you know it's it's um yeah if something were to happen to Earth and that destroyed civilization, this could be World War II or it could be a meteor like the one that destroyed the dinosaurs.\n\nthen we want to make sure that the tiny candle of consciousness that exists uh with with humanity does not go out and uh so so I think it's important to be a multilanet species to ensure the long-term survival of consciousness um and all and all the life forms that that we we have here on earth. So, and you know the the the other life forms can't extend life to another planet. Uh but but we we can do it for them.\n\nWe can we can bring the other >> Oh >> And and to be clear, I'm I'm an optimist. I mean, I think the most likely outcome is that the future will be good, but there's a small chance that the future that something will go wrong. And if if so, we don't want uh the light of consciousness to go out on a you know, we want we want the light of conscious light of consciousness to continue. Um so that's kind of the defensive argument.\n\nAnd then the then there's also the sort of uh the the the sort of the the inspiration argument which is that um life can't be just about solving one sort of miserable problem you about the future that make you that make you excited to be alive and make you you know you wake up in the morning you're like I can't wait to see what happens to have these things like that too and what they learn everyone on Earth just like the Apollo program was inspiring to everyone on Earth whether you went there or obviously very few people went there but but it was in a way we all vicariously went to the moon um and it was a great achievement to humanity and it was very inspiring to people all all around the world so and you know learning more about the nature of the universe\n\nand and seeing what what's happening out there even if you don't go yourself is still very very inspiring.\n\nSo that yeah I think those are all things that matter a lot. >> Yeah. I mean it's truly truly inspiring what SpaceX and even Tesla are doing. Do you ever foresee SpaceX going? >> Oh, >> hello. >> Yeah. Are you there? >> Are you there? >> Sorry, guys. If you're talking to me, I cannot hear you. >> All right. Do you want to go check with Can you hear me? Do you want to go check with Noah real quick? >> Yeah. >> Strange. >> Can you hear us, Elon?\n\nShould I make a joke out of this or not? >> Hold on. >> Can you hear me now, Elon? >> Yeah, the audio hopefully we back in seconds, but uh bear with us as we navigate this. >> At least Elon's still there with the uh Perseverance rover. >> Check. Check, >> John. Can you hear me? Can you hear me? >> Are we back? >> Well, I don't think we can hear him, guys. >> People are waving at you, Elon, if you can't see them.\n\nBut yeah, sorry about these audio difficulties. Hopefully, we can get this up and running. >> Can you hear me? >> Are you there? >> Can you hear me? >> Yeah. >> Okay. I was going to ask you to dance while you were waiting silently, but uh you know figured uh we'd wait for that. I'm joking. >> What did you did you hear what I said earlier? >> Yeah, we did. Um and then I think Yeah. Yeah, for sure. No.\n\nSo, we were what the what the question was is we were asking, do you think that SpaceX is eventually going to go interstellar? >> Is there a plan? >> Well, hopefully I s Yeah. And probably not in my lifetime, but probably not lifetime, but uh >> yes, eventually. >> Elon, can you hear me? >> I can hear you. Yes. >> Okay, let's talk about robo taxi. How do you see the robo taxi platform coexisting with the rest of Tesla's lineup?\n\nWill it replace the Model 3? And why? Um well this cyber cap which is a two-seater and that would that would not replace the the three and y because three and y have fourseater and six-seater capability. So I think you'd find that the cyber cab would be for one or two passengers and then dynamically it would call the model three model 3 pool or wire for four passengers or wire for six passengers.\n\nUm and you know then we'll have the large vehicles but I mean this this is not the forum for making many for our product announcements. Uh, uh, to be totally honest, >> no worries. >> I gotta be, you know, little careful here about what I say. >> We got you. Uh, does Tesla plan on owning a large fleet of robo taxis? And then when will private citizens be able to go on the Tesla network? >> Uh, yes.\n\nwill own some of the uh the fleet will be Tesla owned and some of the fleet will be customer owned. So you could think of it as model kind of like maybe some combination of Uber and Airbnb where um you know some people own the cars and then add or subtract them to the fleet and and some cars are owned by Tesla uh directly.\n\nSo, if robo taxi succeeds, Elon, how uh how does Tesla navigate the paradox of making the best cars in the world, but also possibly needing fewer of them? Well, guys, I think it's tough for me to answer questions because Tesla is a publicly traded company and so, you know, this is This is the most interesting questions you'd want to ask me are the questions I can't really answer. >> Yeah. >> No. Yeah, of course.\n\nNo, we definitely don't want to put you on the spot there. Um, so I think you posted a week or two ago about um and even uh Lars mentioned it about um just uh the Roadster program and how it's still active. What can you tell us about its current development status? Well, we're we're aiming for a demonstration uh at the end of this year.\n\nUm I mean the roadster is not something that's going to meaningfully affect say the financials of the company um because it's too small relative to other programs. Um it's uh it is very cool. Um hopefully we're able to demo later this year but or early next latest [Applause] >> you said that Optimus could be more valuable than Tesla's entire automotive business. >> What's what's the road map from where we are today to widespread deployment?\n\nyou know, again, you're really asking me for questions that are highly sensitive to the value of the company. And so, uh, that's not really something I can answer. Um, all right.\n\nthe the current design the version three of option I think is the right design to go to volume production um but it is a significant redesign from uh version two um so in fact almost nothing stays the same so I was really faced with a choice of should we make several thousand version two octopus robots when we know the design can be much better or should we pause do version three which is much better um and uh you know and we maybe have I don't know a few hundred robots instead of a few thousand robots by the end of the year and I think the right decision was to go with version three and then scale production significantly next year.\n\nUm, now the in terms of the value of of optimists, you really need to think of the basic question of of who who wouldn't want their own possible C3PO R2-D2. >> I think I think with that I mean let's ask the crowd. Would you guys like >> Do you guys want an optimist? >> Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. It very It would be very cool. Um and uh it it would actually be by the way much better than in functionality than C3PO and RTD2. So it would be super useful.\n\nSo I think basically everyone on Earth is going to want one and and then you you're going to have a bunch in industry. Um, so that's why I think there's probably it's probably world's biggest product because there's at least a market for probably 20 billion. Um, maybe it could be 50 billion. I don't know a lot.\n\nSo um you know hypothetically if Tesla was making a billion of these a year at scale and at scale the cost gets lower and lower so maybe it like on the order of $20,000. I'm just guessing there and you know that's that's 30 trillion in revenue. insane. >> Uh, you know, there's a long long way to go between here and making a billion robots a year. >> Yeah. >> But but I I do think something like that may happen. >> Yeah.\n\n>> What would you say is Optimus going to have the biggest impact on? Do you think it's going to start obviously in manufacturing like or at what not not necessarily timeline but like where do you see Optimus having the biggest impact? >> Um well initially it would go to very high value things. So like say somebody um needs a lot of um medical care or something.\n\nSo like if you know often could be like a 24-hour a day uh nurse or helper uh to someone that is um quadriplegic or something like that um you know or something just really is it and needs physical help. So that's the kind of thing which would be life-changing for a lot of people. Um those would be the the highest value initial use cases. [Music] It will also be used in situations where it's uh the work is very dangerous.\n\nUm so or um where there's a lot of repetitive tasks. Um but like any work that's that's that's risk life or some kind of injury uh would be a good initial use case for Optimus. >> When you look ahead in 10 years, what's more transformative? Full self-driving or Optimus? Um, optimist >> seems like that was an easy one. You've >> Well, I do like this is a it's very hard to do. So, it's not like it just it's so hard. >> Yeah. >> Yeah.\n\nI see you're uh drinking some good old Diet Coke, by the way. Shout out to those. Um you've hinted uh that we may reach digital super intelligence this year or next. How will we know that we've crossed that line? And what does one of AGI what does day one of AGI really look like? >> Well, I'm not sure.\n\nI'm sure it's like a a massive it may be less profound than the At least the first will be less profound like AI has not done yet is invent new technologies that are useful. So uh it hasn't has discovered new physics and it has not invented technologies that are useful but I think that is something that that that that will happen. >> Yeah. If Grock becomes smarter than any human, what role do we play?\n\nAre we co-pilots, overseers, or just legacy code? >> Well, it won't just be drug. Uh there will be many AI. Um there will be at least I think four major guys, maybe five. um just in the United States. Uh and so even if was not developed, there would still be digital super intelligence.\n\nUm, and I I've been fighting, you know, personally sort of driving hard on digital super intelligence for a long time because I wasn't sure if this is a double-edged sword or a single edge sword or what. But it it became very obvious after a while that this was going to happen whether I participated or not. So therefore I had a choice of either be a spectator or a participant but that it was going to happen with or without me.\n\nSo then I think well okay rather be a participant than a spectator. And um I can focus on AI safety which in my um view and I've thought about this for a long time is that the most important thing for AI safety is to be maximally truth seeeking. Um which means often like saying things that are maybe politically incorrect but actually factually correct.\n\nUm and also um there'll be mistakes that are made than admitting the mistakes and taking correct taking corrective action and GRO still has a long way to go uh to actually truth seeking but I think this goal is also consistent with uh inventing new technologies uh you know solving medical problems uh you know you know if you want If you want to cure cancer, you have to be maximally truth seeeking to understand what the root cause is for example.\n\nSo, so I think that's actually very fundamental both for safety and for usefulness.\n\nAnd yeah, so now the the economy of the future I think is going to look uh sort of quite different from where does today um and AI and robotics uh in the good scenario which we're working towards you know trying to ensure makes that we do have the good scenario Um there will be no shortage of products and services for anyone like basically anyone will be able to have any products and services they want.\n\nUm that's the productivity gains from AI and robotics are just uh astounding to think about. Like I think I think it could increase the the size of the economy by a factor of 10 or more. Like it it will eliminate poverty. Um and you really will be in a situation where anyone can have anything they want. Um the bigger challenge may be finding uh meaning in life.\n\nSo if if the robot can do anything that you can do but maybe better how do you find meaning in life >> that's that may be the biggest challenge >> when you think of the fact you know you mentioned that you know you've been holding off on um you know really getting involved whether it's you know participating versus being a spectator and when you're thinking of the next couple of years of like let's say not necessarily catching up but just doubling down and really focusing on it.\n\nWhat are going to be your biggest focus points? >> Really, it's making it useful um and making it safe for humanity and making it uh love humanity essentially and be you know you want it to be useful and friendly. Um, so those are the most important things. Um, I I I've never seen any technology advance as fast as AI. So, and I've seen a lot of technologies advance. >> Yeah.\n\n>> So, the rate of I I call it and maybe this is a discomforting metaphor, but AI is a A supersonic tsunami >> does not sound fun, but yeah, >> it sounds sounds a little scary in that way, but it's in terms of maybe in terms of uh exceeding prior technologies. Uh it's like supersonic and and you really do need to pair AI with robotics.\n\nYeah, I I think it's uh it's crazy just how much it's advanced in just the past year or two years and and seeing how kids are using it looking using Grock 4, Grock voice, the companions now. Um, >> yeah, >> I think you've answered this before, but what would what keeps you up at night when you think of the future of AI?\n\nAnd now that you're doubling down and really just going um wartime mode right now on just tackling this these issues, what is uh what is something that keeps you up at night? Well, AI safety um and making sure the AI is aligned with uh humanity and wants to foster and grow and better humanity and you know basically we want to be like if you could you could look into a crystal ball right now and see the future needs to be the future one.\n\nAnd so I mean I have this kind of like new um term for the goal of Tesla. The goal of Tesla previously was uh accelerating the advancement of sustainable energy which is like a very good goal.\n\nAnd then the reason I pursued that rather than AI because I could have pursued AI from the beginning was because I was confident that that sustainable energy was a single-edge sword only like it was only a good edge you know so we sure that okay we succeed in that like okay that's that's definitely good sustainable energy by definition is great um you have cleaner air and you know and can run out of whatever the source fuel is uh with with combination solar, batteries, and electric cars, then that's a that's an unequivoc for AI, like I said, there's it is more of a double-edged sword risk.\n\nUm, but but I think it most likely will be good. and most likely will bring immense prosperity and you know it's going to figure out how to cure every disease. Um, and uh it's it's probably going to be awesome, but I think we need to be uh careful and not complacent and and we actually be somewhat paranoid uh to make sure that um we have the good AI future and not the bad AI future.\n\nUm, so I mean from from a Tesla's stock standpoint I think with autonom autonomous cars and and especially with with Optimus the it does go to to sort of crazy levels. I'd always recommend like looking at uh Kathy Wood and Arinvest analysis. Uh they're they've been right in the past. Um, and I think they're right this time.\n\nAnd again, with a lot of difficult execution, I I I think, you know, people out there said, \"Well, Tesla's valuation could be 25 trillion.\" I and I think that that's probably correct. If we execute uh well on autonomous transport and optimus, it actually does get to a 20 to30 trillion valuation. Uh that's 20 to 30 times what it is today. >> Everyone's cheering. >> Yeah. Um yeah, the math is uh math is clear.\n\nUm, so it's just it's just a massive amount of work and but but like I think if we do that massive amount of work that's what will happen. Elon let's talk about Neurolink. You've described Neurolink in the past as a way to solve the input output bottleneck between humans and machines, right? >> What's the long-term vision? Is Neuralink a medical company or is it the first step towards symbiosis with AI?\n\n>> It's it's thoughtful as a medical technology.\n\nSo, Neurolink's initial goals are really to uh help people uh who have say quadriplegic tetroplegic situ they've lost the use of their body um and to be able to enable them to control their bone computer just by thinking and I think we have eight eight patients so far and all eight um love the device and and are uh using it every So it's it's helped a lot of people and I think we're uh Tesla team the neuralinking team is aiming to do about 20 uh patients uh by the end of this year.\n\nSo it's accelerating. And then next year we'll be doing the uh blind sight implement which will enable people who are completely blind like if they've lost both eyes and optic nerve and still be able to see um interfacing directly with visual cortex. So there a lot of cool things like that.\n\nUm so the focus essentially is uh fixing um serious medical issues and as prove out the safety and efficacy and um then eventually at some point uh you could get cybernetic enhancements. So it could could uh be something that massively augments intelligence um and allows you to communicate at ultra high speeds. Um so it it's very sci-fi. Um, and and it could even get to the point where you could upload your memories.\n\nUh, and and essentially have a a saved version of yourself. Um, and then I'm I'm speculating here, but but but then maybe download that into uh a new on a closed body either robot. I'm really getting into sci-fi here, but but like download that into a robot body if you want or a clone version of your original self.\n\nYou know, they they certainly made sci-fi movies, written books about this, so these are not new ideas, but I I do think stuff like that will be possible.\n\num which would give you I guess a form of or anybody wants it uh a form of immortality and to be clear I do think these things will be available to anyone who wants to do it so it's not going to be sort of limited to a few sort of you know uh elite members of society I think it will be available to everyone who wants it >> it it's crazy just to think, you know, with Neuralink, Grock, the Gro Companion, and even the humanoid robot, how do you do you see I mean, it just feels like more and more uh whether it's Grock, the Grock Companion, and then Neurolink, I know we we did an interview with Brad who was the third patient who has ALS and um he was also utilizing Grock.\n\nUm >> yeah, >> what do you what do you see continuing to see that integration between let's say Neurolink and even even Grock um as things continue to grow?\n\nYeah, a graph will actually be able to understand the signals from your so the neural links connecting to your brain and then sending the signals to Grog and then Grog can actually understand those signals at a at kind of like a a binary level um as opposed to having to translate it into words. And so greatly improve the efficiency with which you can use your Neurolink device.\n\nUm like it's so I mean we're really getting into some interesting philosophical questions or interesting questions like if you think about how much of your your mental capacity your mind is used to take a complex thought or image in your mind and translate that into words and it's and it's very lost. because how can you really with words convey say an image that you have in your mind?\n\nUm it's very difficult to do so and and if you're not like if you're not an artist it's actually very difficult to actually get the image from your mind onto a computer or paper. Um but but the but the computer could do that.\n\nYou could say okay this is the image that you want to produce and well let's say like there's a complex series of concepts that you want to convey to someone else and and if both people have a neural link you'll be able to convey a complex uh series of ideas u uncompressed in their full form to someone else's mind as opposed to reducing ing complex con concepts down to um a few sentences and trying to get someone else to hear what those sentences are, decompress those sentences in their mind and try and try to understand the concepts that are in your mind.\n\nSo this is why I call it uh conceptual telepathy. So this would greatly improve communication and understanding between humans. You've mentioned restoring vision and mobility, but the idea of writing to the brain >> and hearing too. Sorry. So, it's like basically if if there's if there's any sense or brain injury in principle that sensory function or that brain injury can be solved with a neural link. So that includes uh curing sight smell.\n\nI don't people not many people have lost their sense of smell but um feeling it could be um like if somebody has a stroke and they've lost the ability to move um left arm, a neural link could restore that ability. Um it it's it's really a very powerful general purpose uh input output device uh that can address you know over time any uh brain or neurological issue. So if somebody's having seizures uh it it could actually stop the seizures.\n\nUm, it could I think probably fix uh schizophrenia like a lot of there's a lot of things that could like in principle it can fix basically anything that's to do with the brain or um neurons or your senses. >> Is there anything that would be like is there a a most difficult problem to solve in that space then? Um because technically a lot of it could be solved.\n\nIs there something that would uh maybe you would see bigger blockers on trying to solve as far as um fixing those problems? [Music] >> I'm not aware blockers right now. It's just that when you're putting devices in humans, you have to be very careful and to make sure that uh no damage is done and is that the implant works. um and without any negative side effects.\n\nAnd so far uh you know, knock on wood, we're betting a thousand here and and and you know, patients have the devices have worked and they've no meaningful side effect. So that's it's it's really just Yeah, it's pretty cool. But it's just in order to be safe that does slow us down. Um, and of course we we interact very closely with the with the FDA and for for approvals and stuff. So it's it's not just uh Neurolink in a vacuum here.\n\nIt's it's with regulatory approval from the FDA. So uh and and then you do need different variants of neural link device for solving different things. So for example for uh well the teleathy product which is what we have in the uh eight patients so far that interfaces with the motor cortex in the brain.\n\nSo it's like like literally it's someone will will think about moving their hand neural link device will read that signal in the motor cortex and then move the mouse on your on their computer. Um and then for sight it's a different thing because you've got to stimulate the visual cortex and the visual cortex is in a different location and it's and it's a little deeper.\n\nSo you've got so you've got to put the electrodes a little bit deeper to reach the visual cortex. And in this case it's it's uh it's not reading it's writing. It's it's effectively writing pixels to the visual cortex. This is something we've had working in monkeys for um about three years now. Uh, in fact, one of our monkeys has both a telepathy implant and a blind sight implant. And he's a very happy monkey.\n\nUm, I do want to emphasize we take uh great care of our of our animals. Um, this is a really big deal because I I've always said like imagine if we were in their position. Well, let's let's just do all the things that if that if we were in that position, we'd do. Um, and the USA inspector that came by to check out our facilities, she said in her entire career, she's never seen a nicer monkey enclosure ever.\n\nAnd and let me tell you, monkeys love for the lefty implant. Uh, monkeys are just like us. They they love playing video games and eating snacks. So, if you look if you look at that video of Paige around I think it's like four years old now, you see he's just he's just sitting on a branch uh sipping a banana smoothie. Um, which he gets every time he stores. He gets a sip of a smoothie.\n\nUm and he's but he's not being held down like he likes playing the game. >> So just really just like humans likes likes snacks and video games and yeah same same thing. >> One question I have like building a humanoid robot and neural link intersect if at all I mean what are the learnings from that? Um is there any overlap? Yeah. >> Well, I have to say building a humanoid robot has really made me think a lot about how the human body works.\n\nYou gain a new appreciation for actually just how awesome at design the human body is. Now admittedly, you know, I think some parts of the human body could be better, like the spine. Like, why do we have so much back pain? It's very annoying. >> Maybe uh don't fight sumo wrestlers, man. >> Yeah, seriously, Doug Moore.\n\nUm, but you know, yeah, typically, you know, everyone has back pain in some point in their life, which is also a thing you're linking soul. So that'd be cool, too. Um, but no, your optimist has really made me think a lot about how our hands work. Um, how we balance, how we do different things. Um, but maybe more than anything, just how incredible our hands are. They're it's like, wow.\n\nUm things that our hands do like the hands in Optimus are half or more than half of the electromechanical problem and the entire rest of the body is is a half. >> Wow. That's crazy. >> Yeah. And and it's like honestly you look to your hands you're like and you move and if you and if you feel your forearm like the almost all the muscles that control your hand are actually in your forearm and and and they're pulling your fingers like like puppets.\n\nSo yeah, there's only a a small number of muscles that are in that in your hand itself, but your hand is all being controlled through tendons that go either through or above your carpal tunnel. Um, and your hand is being operated like a marionette from your forearm. >> Yeah. >> One thing that's crazy I just see I just Yeah.\n\nI mean it's crazy how much the the human body whether it's like you know Tesla vision going you know just trying to see what kind of like similar to how uh humans view the the world right and getting rid of the radar and then same thing with the humanoid robot and just you know thinking and seeing how um the human body works um is there anything more specifically even within the human body that will continue to infer whether it's the humanoid robot And it sounds like obviously the the the hand is the big one of the biggest problems.\n\nUm but but are there other parts of the body too that would >> um continue to help infer other parts of the the humanoid robot or again it's just yeah with Tesla vision and and eyesight. >> Well with with Optimus we're able to reuse the autopilot computer. So, Oculus is uh intelligence is powered by the AI4, the same computer that controls the car and you know a small battery pack that's similar to the car battery pack.\n\nSo, there's a lot of simaries with the car. Uh and and then the AI that's in the car is similar to the AI that will be in Optimus running AI4 hardware and then AI5 hardware when that's ready. So there a lot of parallels um but the limiting factor is the hand. Yeah. >> Um, but I'm convinced that Optimus will be the biggest product ever. Um, yeah. So, and then of course autonomy is starting to roll out.\n\num car but will be in uh many cities in throughout the United States later this year and hopefully many countries um uh next year. >> Yeah, here in the Bay Area we have a bunch of FOMO. Everyone's looking at Austin right now. Uh, I can tell you I uh I always uh whenever I open that robo taxi app, man, it just the geoence just the figurine is insane. >> It's funny. Yeah. Yeah.\n\n>> I mean, you got to have some fun, you know, don't take yourself too seriously type of thing. [Applause] >> Let's uh switch and talk about X. You've called X and here we are at X takeover. You've called X the everything app, but it's still in a transitional phase. What exactly do you want X to be in 5 years? >> Um I mean X is definitely improving. It's mean it's evolved a lot from Twitter.\n\ncan only have like uh you know short text tweets and um like two minute videos to the point where now you can have like 4hour videos and you can write a novel um if you want on the system. So it's it's gone sort of fully multimodal from long videos to long text to anything in between. Um and uh we're currently really improving the the DM system.\n\nSo with a new system called Xhat uh which enables audio video calling uh it's all fully encrypted uh peer-to-peer style like Bitcoin. Um and the asset test is that even if somebody uh puts the gun to my head, I still can't read your messages. That's the test. Um, so it's like very secure and and and also like you do calling and and and video with it.\n\nUh, and then there's the uh kind of X money or Xinance release which is uh hope hopefully only a few months away. We actually have it operating in beta within the company. Um, and that that'll be a major factor.\n\nUm so but but ex as much as possible at ensuring uh freedom like freedom of speech uh within the as much as we can within the bounds of the law and you know also like aspiration trying to reach for the truth of things like you see that in uh community notes where community notes will will correct someone even if they're are very powerful communic community notes will correct me it'll correct presidents CEOs um even major advertisers and uh even if that cost us money so I think it's generally there's a lot of good things that have happened um we're trying to improve the algorithm which we know kind of sucks right now >> sorry about No, not at all.\n\n>> I actually enjoy it, but >> Okay. Okay, good. Well, um, >> some days are crazier than others, like when the geoence expanded and some of these other things, but um, yeah. No, I don't know if you have any opinions, Kelvin. >> Sorry, your voice was a bit low there. I couldn't hear a question. >> Oh, I was saying the algorithm can be crazy some days, especially like when the robo taxi geoence expanded. >> Yeah. Yeah. >> Yeah.\n\nwould they have been the overarching goal of the algorithm is to try to show people information they would find most interesting.\n\nUm but right now it'll show you too much of one thing you know so if whatever the sort of interesting thing of the day is right now it'll the X algorithm will show you too much of that and it's like okay I don't need to see it 20 times you know um you know I think I think I've seen like the Sydney Sweeney Jeans thing about 400 times this point and it's like okay the first few times was good, but we shouldn't show things like 100 times um because because you want to learn new things.\n\nUm >> so, but X is making steady progress being offering um you know, pretty much everything you'd want to do. And yeah, I feel good about where it's headed. payments. We're We've all I know we're waiting on that and just uh you know thinking about even PayPal too. It's crazy just what fate loves irony doing um x. com back in what the late 90s and >> um then full force buying it you know years back and now um now you're doing payments again.\n\n>> Yeah. That's it's a sort of poetic end or or or re returning to something that we're sort of unfinished with PayPal and completing the product line. >> What role do you think Grock and XAI play in the future of X? Is it just a feature, a core intelligence layer, or does that change how people experience the platform? Yeah, Groth.\n\nUm, I think it's pretty helpful because that that that Groth button which you can press about any given post on the system and its analysis of a post is usually quite accurate. It's it it doesn't bat a thousand, but it's really gives you deeper insight into any given piece of information that somebody posts on the system. Uh, you can figure out more context. uh helps you figure out if it's true or not.\n\nUm and we actually just added uh Grock for all advertising in the system. So you can you can press the graph button and see, hey, is this ad is this product going to work or is it uh is this product legit or not? Which I kind of always wanted to have on ads, you know, it's like, does this thing really work? Um, that's what I want to ask a lot of ads. And now on the X systems, you can ask, does this thing really work?\n\nI guess advertisers where Grock says it doesn't really work. I'm probably not going to advertise very long. Um, maybe it'll encourage better honesty in advertising, which I think would be a good thing. But we're just generally trying to make X a system that you can trust more than any other system. And I think I think it is there already. It does not say that X is perfect. Uh, it it's definitely mistakes.\n\nBut is there any other social media company you trust more than X? >> No. >> Nope. >> So like I'm not trusting Facebook, you know. Um, so not to pick on Facebook, whatever, but um, you know, I think it's actually probably fair to say that X is the most trustworthy or least untrustworthy of social networks.\n\n>> Yeah, I think that became very apparent uh, just when you saw like when you just compare of like the news during COVID and things being censored. >> Yeah. Um, and you know, just you come to X and you can find out what's really happening. Uh, >> and it's real time. It's really like the I would say the, you know, the world's discourse in town square, right? It can sometimes be a fist fight it feels like.\n\n>> But at the same time, it's just, you know, where you can find out what's really going on, >> right? That and that's the goal. And I I do want to emphasize obviously there's a long way to go.\n\nIt's it's uh far from perfecting but I I do think it's getting better over time and you know sometimes it's uh two steps forward one step back but the trend over time I think is very good for X being the place where you can figure out what's really going on in the world um against the truth and you can ask rockmore um and you can also learn a lot of things so you can ask if there's a a new uh thing that's invented or announced, you can ask Grock on the system more about it and instantly educate yourself.\n\n>> Yeah, I don't think I've >> and then we we monitor when Grock gets things wrong and then we we feed that we feed that back into the system to make it aspirationally less wrong over time. Yeah, it's really just crazy to think um you know when you talk to Grock and you can ask it for just things in your timeline. Hey, make a post sound like me on this topic >> or you want >> It's pretty fun. >> Yeah.\n\nLike we are actually aiming for Grock to be the actually I should say two goals are for Grock to be the most uh truth seeeking AI but also the funniest AI because you got to have some fun in life and you know uh laughter is the best medicine. You got to you you got to have some fun. [Applause] Elon, you've predicted a world of abundant energy, robotic labor, and AGI.\n\nUh, with AI and Optimus, uh, doing, you know, potentially a a lot of things and reducing the amount of things that we're doing today, what do you think is left for humans and and, um, really what does that mean for uh, in the world of artificial super intelligence? >> Yeah, that's a question that I struggle with actually. So um this is part of the reason for neural link which is to um improve the bandwidth communication with AI.\n\nSo to help achieve a better human AI symbiosis so that you know AI knows what we want. Um and it can respond to collective human world. Um and I think things like can actually um effectively dramatically increase our our intelligence. Um um but I think the future is very much one where human intelligence, machine intelligence and robots are interwoven.\n\nI think I I said I think it's it's 80% maybe 90% likely to be awesome, but we got to be cautious about that, you know, 10% maybe not awesome situation >> like Terminator. >> Uh yeah. Yeah. I mean seriously that that uh you know stuff like that would be bad. What's your vision for a society where human effort is no longer required for survival or productivity? How do we avoid irrelevance? >> Brian, I think that's a central question.\n\nUm well if we are symbiotic with AI where we that there's this essentially a merger of human and machine intelligence then we may be able to address the relevance question you know like let's say you uh ride a bicycle or a motorcycle or a car, you're you're super human in what you're able to do. You can now travel faster than any human uh with legs. I mean, if you're a car, you can go vastly faster than the fastest human ever.\n\nUm does that make running irrelevant? I mean, people still run and still race against each other. So, but but you got humans working with machines. I mean, they actually had these kind of debates when this steam engine came along and and the team travel. Uh it's like well because people derived a lot of their value from saying they they can do manual work faster than a machine and then the machine got answer.\n\nSo um but this is a philosophical question that I struggle with and the best thing I can come up with is that you have interwoven human and machine intelligence and uh got something like neural link to augment human intelligence and improve the symbiosis with AI that that we effectively become maybe one with the AI. >> Elon, you off >> Sorry, the audience was about to clap and I started talking.\n\nUm, but Elon, you you know, you're you're solving uh I guess in a lot of ways, as sometimes you say, you know, a lot of problems. Um, and in a lot of ways, you're creating an a very exciting future with reusable rockets, the mission to Mars with Starship, with the humanoid robots and how it's going to um just the impact that it'll have and Neurolink and seeing the impact on um Noland and Brad.\n\nWhat what gives you hope um for today um not just for humanity and civilization, but personally? Well, I think the future is going to be very interesting and exciting and and I guess I also think would I want to be at any other point in human history? Is there some other point in human history that that is is more interesting than where we are today? And I think the answer is no. At least for me.\n\nI think we're at the most interesting part of human history. And it's getting more interesting with each passing month. And so so think okay well if I'm in if I'm in the part of human history that that is the most interesting then I think you know anyone feels that way and I think a lot of people feel that way that we should feel very lucky to be alive at this at this time to see these amazing things happen.\n\n[Applause] Well, Elon, we wanted to do a time check. Um, but also >> I bet I better get back to my eight jobs. >> Yeah, exactly. You're not a busy man at all. Uh but we just um Kelvin and I we just want to on behalf of Tesla owners of Silicon Valley, uh Tesla owners Austria, Sanwain Valley, and really just uh all of the 1500 people that traveled from all over the world. We just want to personally just say thank you for all you're doing.\n\nUm and thank you for continuing to push humanity forward. >> Well, thank you. >> Yeah, you have a whole bunch of people here just cheering. So, thank you for all you're doing. >> Thank you. Well, and and uh and thank you for all your support over the years. Uh it's super appreciated. Uh you know, I would say my heart goes out to you, but I have to watch my gestures these days. >> We know what you mean.\n\n>> I can only point straight ahead or straight up. >> Thanks. Um, hey Elon. So, we wanted >> But anyway, my heart does go out to you and uh thank you all for your support over the years. >> Yeah. And we just had one thing uh that we wanted to present to you. Um >> Okay. >> How's it going, Elon?\n\nSo on behalf of TSO tov and uh the presenting sponsors uh haha yes we we wanted to present something to you that was symbolic meaningful and really you know these last few months have obviously been quite tumultuous for you and so we really got creative and and really uh yeah we wanted to create you something special. And so I'm going to read you something. Basically, you know, Elon, you you brought electric cars back from the dead.\n\nYou made clean energy cool. You made rockets reusable. You're going to take us to Mars. You spent billions to buy Twitter and save free speech. You stopped running your empire to work for the US government for free, to reduce wasteful spending, to save the country from bankruptcy. >> Right. And it took a few arrows for that one. Absolutely. >> And and and and how and how were you thanked? It's like you were betrayed. You were you were mocked.\n\nAttacked by the very people who once cheered you on. >> Your name dragged through the mud. Your cars vandalized. Your motives questioned. But that's not the full story, as I imagine many here would attest. So there are millions of people who see you for who you are. >> Yeah. >> People whose lives you've touched and changed. People who believe in what you're building. People who love you and have your back. >> Thank you. >> So yeah, thank you.\n\nSo, we were gonna we were going to introduce to uh like a few uh more than a few, but we had a real that we were going to play, but with some technicalities. We're unable to do it of actual testimonials from people uh really meaningful, impactful ones that people really wanted you to hear. But, uh >> we'll post it on X. >> We'll post it on X.\n\nUh but there was still it there was only a few but there's a lot more people who want to express their gratitude and support. Thank you. >> But uh you know fortunately they could write letters >> and so Elon thousands of people wrote letters to you to to to demonstrate you know uh and express how much you have meant to them. >> We love you. >> Well love you guys too. >> Thank you. So, we compressed all those paper letters into this brick junk.\n\nYep. This is a custommade brick. Uh the brick itself is a message to you. It's heavy brick. Not in the sense of how heavy it is, but it's a brick of belief which weighs more than any material matter. We believe you can achieve the impossible. Hence the quote on the front of this brick. You want to read it, John? This brick does fly in spirit because you made you have made the impossible happen. >> All right. Thank you. Much appreciated. >> Yeah.\n\nAnd so Elon, yeah, you make bricks fly and in turn that inspires us to to pursue the impossible. And you know what we all say to that? Everyone repeat after me. Haha. Yes. >> Yes. Ah, yes. Thank you, Elon. We love you. >> Thank you. Love you, too. >> Thank you, Elon, for your time. We appreciate it. And, uh, hopefully you have a good rest of, uh, your Saturday afternoon. >> All right. You guys, it was a pleasure speaking. [Applause]","textByLang":{"en":"So, I guess >> Hey everybody. Wasn't it great to hear from Lars? >> You can just tell he just he loves what he's doing and that that really just comes through when you talk to him. Uh, somebody else that loves what they do is our next pseudo surprise. We announced it what an hour or something ago. You might know him. He's a guy named Elon. Maybe you've heard of him. He's got a couple followers on this platform called X. I don't know.\n\nYou know, some new guy. No. Uh Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla, will be joining us virtually here momentarily and to chat with them for second or third year in a row now. Gosh, second year in a row. Please welcome back, of course, John and Kelvin from the Tesla Owners Club of Silicon Valley. All right, let's go. Have fun, guys. >> Ah, man, the raceh horses out there always causing a ruckus. Family-friendly event, guys. Crazy. What a day. What a day.\n\nSo, obviously, uh, thank you so much to Lars and Steve for coming on here. And I believe we have Elon on, so it's just a matter of, uh, I feel like, >> you know, just bringing him on the screen and stuff. >> Yeah. Whoa, Elon, what's up? >> Oh, giant on a giant screen. >> Yeah, it actually kind of looks like Mars in some ways. >> It just perseverance. >> Is that a cap right there, too?\n\n>> That's the Perseverance ro It's a Perseverance rover on Mars. >> Oh my gosh, that's awesome. >> Yeah. >> Well, first off, Elon, thanks for coming to the X Takeover, uh, formerly Tesla Takeover for the second year in a row. You're welcome. >> Well, let's uh let's kick things off. Let's start start off with uh you know uh really your baby, the Starship. Starship is the most ambitious rocket ever built.\n\nWhat's been harder than expected and what's the next milestone we should watch for? Um well I I thought everything would be hard so it's not like uh I was like >> it would be easy. >> Yeah. Yeah. So I mean Starship is a is a crazy program on so many levels.\n\nuh because uh you've got something with uh two and a half uh and future versions will be three times the thrust of the Saturn 5 moon rocket which was previously the largest rocket and largest flying object ever made. So Starship is um you know three times thrust roughly twice the weight of the next largest flying object ever made and has the the goal of being fully and rapidly reusable.\n\nSo this is a this is a really crazy thing to I think it's it's really one of the hardest engineering challenges that exists. Um and uh you know when we first started talking about Starship people thought this was impossible. In fact even within the company we we sort of thought it was impossible and it had a very high sort of what I call giggle factor.\n\nUh you know you mention the thing and people immedately start giggling like at the absurdity of it all. Um so now but now it's gone from uh as say we you know I guess I specialize in the uh in going from the uh impossible to the merely late. Um so that's my skill. Uh it wasn't possible now it's just late. Um so and I encourage anyone who's interested to go and and visit Starbase in South Texas. It's like a magical land uh with gigantic rockets.\n\nI think some of you have been there and seen it. >> It's very inspiring. It's like I take part for take friends and family. It's on a major highway, so you can see things quite close up. >> Um, and really get a sense for the scale of the of the the rocket and the factory and everything. So, it's it's very cool.\n\nUm I I guess the the thing that I thought would be hardest currently is the hardest which is the creating a fully reusable orbital heat shield which has never been done before. So normally the heat shields are um they're they're expandable and even say for the shuttle heat shield they would lose many of the the tiles on every flight and they'd have to refurbish the heat shield between each flight.\n\nSo it's it's never no one has ever created a fully reusable orbital heat shield before. Um and no one in fact no one has created a fully reusable orbital rocket before. Um and Falcon 9 is the first rocket where there's at least the boost stage uh is reusable on a regular basis. Um and where it actually makes economic sense.\n\nSo um so so solving the heat shield problem is I think probably the single biggest remaining challenge for Starship and um and of course getting the upper stage or the ship to land and also get caught by the the giant metal chopsticks which uh looks looks like a sci-fi movie that looks it looks like an impro improbable sci-fi movie. the whole thing. >> Chopsticks literally catching it. Catching it. >> Yeah. Uh giant metal chopsticks.\n\nUh that's um it's pretty wild to be catching the largest flying object ever made with metal chopsticks out of the air.\n\nUm, so then the but I'm hopeful that the ship will be will be recovered maybe this year but certainly I'd say in the first half of next year and then there'll be further improvements to make the ship and the booster not just reusable but fully and rapidly reusable uh which will actually drop the cost per flight cost per ton of payload of Starship below that of a of of a Falcon 1 rocket of an expandable Falcon 1.\n\nSo that that getting 100 tons or more to orbit of useful payload will cost less than a rocket that would ordinarily deliver half a ton. That was Falcon 1. And it's because all you're you're doing is replacing the um the fuel and oxygen in the rocket as opposed to building a new rocket. Um and most of the propellant is actually oxygen, not not fuel. But it's almost 80% oxygen, 20% fuel.\n\nUh then the next big technology challenge after being able to achieve full re of the full reuse of the ship is orbital refilling where um where where we actually refill propellant from from over like like um like aerial re refueling. In this case, it's orbital refilling. I say refilling, not refueling because most of what's transferred is actually liquid oxygen as opposed to fuel.\n\nUm, so for orbital refilling, uh, you need to have two starships come together and dock and transfer propellant from one, uh, starship to another and then and then in the future to an orbit orbital propellant depot. Yeah. So that's that's the situation. >> Doesn't sound hard. It just >> I mean it is very achievable.\n\nThere's nothing um nothing impossible is is being talked about here, but it is it is very uh tricky to do and and and uh no no other organization is even trying to do this. It's like it's not like well who else is trying to do this? Well, nobody actually. So um in fact even after all these years there's still no company that's uh reusing a booster.\n\nSo, uh, no one's even tried to do Balcon 9 level reusability, even even though we've shown that that it clearly makes a ton of sense, uh, because, you know, compare the cost of any form of transport where if you have to throw away the item afterwards, like like if you've got if if you had to if every time you drove somewhere you had to throw away the car, uh, you'd be wow, that's a that's a that's a that's a crazy car where you have to throw away after every every time you drive it.\n\nBut that's how it works for for rockets. So that is really um yeah, I don't think anyone would be driving a car if you had to buy a new car every time you drove somewhere and then you'd have to tow another car behind you for the return journey. >> Elon, what does a >> So yeah. >> Yeah. Yeah. So talk about the impossible. Elon, what does a self-sustaining city on Mars actually look like? How many people? What kind of economy?\n\nWhat kind of governance? >> Well, uh that that'll that'll governance will be up to the Martians. Um but uh you know, we have some sort of artist impressions of what a Mars city would look like. Uh the and I don't really know to be honest. um you know to accept that we you know Mars is not yet at the point where we're sort of terraformed where you could live outdoors.\n\nSo uh you you'd have to live initially in uh glass domes or um something like that. And um and then you could you could walk outside with with a Mars suit, but you you could you could not walk outside without a Mars suit. Um so um yeah it's uh but but I should also say like like maybe explain for those who haven't heard of like like why why why is it worth doing something like this? Um what's the purpose of of Mars?\n\nShouldn't we just focus on Earth? And I'm like, \"Yeah, I think we should focus on Earth.\" Like 99% of what we do should be focused on Earth. Uh but maybe 1% of what we do should be uh should be focused on on becoming a space fairing civilization and a multilanet species.\n\nUh because uh there there's the defensive argument where it's um you know it's it's um yeah if something were to happen to Earth and that destroyed civilization, this could be World War II or it could be a meteor like the one that destroyed the dinosaurs.\n\nthen we want to make sure that the tiny candle of consciousness that exists uh with with humanity does not go out and uh so so I think it's important to be a multilanet species to ensure the long-term survival of consciousness um and all and all the life forms that that we we have here on earth. So, and you know the the the other life forms can't extend life to another planet. Uh but but we we can do it for them.\n\nWe can we can bring the other >> Oh >> And and to be clear, I'm I'm an optimist. I mean, I think the most likely outcome is that the future will be good, but there's a small chance that the future that something will go wrong. And if if so, we don't want uh the light of consciousness to go out on a you know, we want we want the light of conscious light of consciousness to continue. Um so that's kind of the defensive argument.\n\nAnd then the then there's also the sort of uh the the the sort of the the inspiration argument which is that um life can't be just about solving one sort of miserable problem you about the future that make you that make you excited to be alive and make you you know you wake up in the morning you're like I can't wait to see what happens to have these things like that too and what they learn everyone on Earth just like the Apollo program was inspiring to everyone on Earth whether you went there or obviously very few people went there but but it was in a way we all vicariously went to the moon um and it was a great achievement to humanity and it was very inspiring to people all all around the world so and you know learning more about the nature of the universe\n\nand and seeing what what's happening out there even if you don't go yourself is still very very inspiring.\n\nSo that yeah I think those are all things that matter a lot. >> Yeah. I mean it's truly truly inspiring what SpaceX and even Tesla are doing. Do you ever foresee SpaceX going? >> Oh, >> hello. >> Yeah. Are you there? >> Are you there? >> Sorry, guys. If you're talking to me, I cannot hear you. >> All right. Do you want to go check with Can you hear me? Do you want to go check with Noah real quick? >> Yeah. >> Strange. >> Can you hear us, Elon?\n\nShould I make a joke out of this or not? >> Hold on. >> Can you hear me now, Elon? >> Yeah, the audio hopefully we back in seconds, but uh bear with us as we navigate this. >> At least Elon's still there with the uh Perseverance rover. >> Check. Check, >> John. Can you hear me? Can you hear me? >> Are we back? >> Well, I don't think we can hear him, guys. >> People are waving at you, Elon, if you can't see them.\n\nBut yeah, sorry about these audio difficulties. Hopefully, we can get this up and running. >> Can you hear me? >> Are you there? >> Can you hear me? >> Yeah. >> Okay. I was going to ask you to dance while you were waiting silently, but uh you know figured uh we'd wait for that. I'm joking. >> What did you did you hear what I said earlier? >> Yeah, we did. Um and then I think Yeah. Yeah, for sure. No.\n\nSo, we were what the what the question was is we were asking, do you think that SpaceX is eventually going to go interstellar? >> Is there a plan? >> Well, hopefully I s Yeah. And probably not in my lifetime, but probably not lifetime, but uh >> yes, eventually. >> Elon, can you hear me? >> I can hear you. Yes. >> Okay, let's talk about robo taxi. How do you see the robo taxi platform coexisting with the rest of Tesla's lineup?\n\nWill it replace the Model 3? And why? Um well this cyber cap which is a two-seater and that would that would not replace the the three and y because three and y have fourseater and six-seater capability. So I think you'd find that the cyber cab would be for one or two passengers and then dynamically it would call the model three model 3 pool or wire for four passengers or wire for six passengers.\n\nUm and you know then we'll have the large vehicles but I mean this this is not the forum for making many for our product announcements. Uh, uh, to be totally honest, >> no worries. >> I gotta be, you know, little careful here about what I say. >> We got you. Uh, does Tesla plan on owning a large fleet of robo taxis? And then when will private citizens be able to go on the Tesla network? >> Uh, yes.\n\nwill own some of the uh the fleet will be Tesla owned and some of the fleet will be customer owned. So you could think of it as model kind of like maybe some combination of Uber and Airbnb where um you know some people own the cars and then add or subtract them to the fleet and and some cars are owned by Tesla uh directly.\n\nSo, if robo taxi succeeds, Elon, how uh how does Tesla navigate the paradox of making the best cars in the world, but also possibly needing fewer of them? Well, guys, I think it's tough for me to answer questions because Tesla is a publicly traded company and so, you know, this is This is the most interesting questions you'd want to ask me are the questions I can't really answer. >> Yeah. >> No. Yeah, of course.\n\nNo, we definitely don't want to put you on the spot there. Um, so I think you posted a week or two ago about um and even uh Lars mentioned it about um just uh the Roadster program and how it's still active. What can you tell us about its current development status? Well, we're we're aiming for a demonstration uh at the end of this year.\n\nUm I mean the roadster is not something that's going to meaningfully affect say the financials of the company um because it's too small relative to other programs. Um it's uh it is very cool. Um hopefully we're able to demo later this year but or early next latest [Applause] >> you said that Optimus could be more valuable than Tesla's entire automotive business. >> What's what's the road map from where we are today to widespread deployment?\n\nyou know, again, you're really asking me for questions that are highly sensitive to the value of the company. And so, uh, that's not really something I can answer. Um, all right.\n\nthe the current design the version three of option I think is the right design to go to volume production um but it is a significant redesign from uh version two um so in fact almost nothing stays the same so I was really faced with a choice of should we make several thousand version two octopus robots when we know the design can be much better or should we pause do version three which is much better um and uh you know and we maybe have I don't know a few hundred robots instead of a few thousand robots by the end of the year and I think the right decision was to go with version three and then scale production significantly next year.\n\nUm, now the in terms of the value of of optimists, you really need to think of the basic question of of who who wouldn't want their own possible C3PO R2-D2. >> I think I think with that I mean let's ask the crowd. Would you guys like >> Do you guys want an optimist? >> Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. It very It would be very cool. Um and uh it it would actually be by the way much better than in functionality than C3PO and RTD2. So it would be super useful.\n\nSo I think basically everyone on Earth is going to want one and and then you you're going to have a bunch in industry. Um, so that's why I think there's probably it's probably world's biggest product because there's at least a market for probably 20 billion. Um, maybe it could be 50 billion. I don't know a lot.\n\nSo um you know hypothetically if Tesla was making a billion of these a year at scale and at scale the cost gets lower and lower so maybe it like on the order of $20,000. I'm just guessing there and you know that's that's 30 trillion in revenue. insane. >> Uh, you know, there's a long long way to go between here and making a billion robots a year. >> Yeah. >> But but I I do think something like that may happen. >> Yeah.\n\n>> What would you say is Optimus going to have the biggest impact on? Do you think it's going to start obviously in manufacturing like or at what not not necessarily timeline but like where do you see Optimus having the biggest impact? >> Um well initially it would go to very high value things. So like say somebody um needs a lot of um medical care or something.\n\nSo like if you know often could be like a 24-hour a day uh nurse or helper uh to someone that is um quadriplegic or something like that um you know or something just really is it and needs physical help. So that's the kind of thing which would be life-changing for a lot of people. Um those would be the the highest value initial use cases. [Music] It will also be used in situations where it's uh the work is very dangerous.\n\nUm so or um where there's a lot of repetitive tasks. Um but like any work that's that's that's risk life or some kind of injury uh would be a good initial use case for Optimus. >> When you look ahead in 10 years, what's more transformative? Full self-driving or Optimus? Um, optimist >> seems like that was an easy one. You've >> Well, I do like this is a it's very hard to do. So, it's not like it just it's so hard. >> Yeah. >> Yeah.\n\nI see you're uh drinking some good old Diet Coke, by the way. Shout out to those. Um you've hinted uh that we may reach digital super intelligence this year or next. How will we know that we've crossed that line? And what does one of AGI what does day one of AGI really look like? >> Well, I'm not sure.\n\nI'm sure it's like a a massive it may be less profound than the At least the first will be less profound like AI has not done yet is invent new technologies that are useful. So uh it hasn't has discovered new physics and it has not invented technologies that are useful but I think that is something that that that that will happen. >> Yeah. If Grock becomes smarter than any human, what role do we play?\n\nAre we co-pilots, overseers, or just legacy code? >> Well, it won't just be drug. Uh there will be many AI. Um there will be at least I think four major guys, maybe five. um just in the United States. Uh and so even if was not developed, there would still be digital super intelligence.\n\nUm, and I I've been fighting, you know, personally sort of driving hard on digital super intelligence for a long time because I wasn't sure if this is a double-edged sword or a single edge sword or what. But it it became very obvious after a while that this was going to happen whether I participated or not. So therefore I had a choice of either be a spectator or a participant but that it was going to happen with or without me.\n\nSo then I think well okay rather be a participant than a spectator. And um I can focus on AI safety which in my um view and I've thought about this for a long time is that the most important thing for AI safety is to be maximally truth seeeking. Um which means often like saying things that are maybe politically incorrect but actually factually correct.\n\nUm and also um there'll be mistakes that are made than admitting the mistakes and taking correct taking corrective action and GRO still has a long way to go uh to actually truth seeking but I think this goal is also consistent with uh inventing new technologies uh you know solving medical problems uh you know you know if you want If you want to cure cancer, you have to be maximally truth seeeking to understand what the root cause is for example.\n\nSo, so I think that's actually very fundamental both for safety and for usefulness.\n\nAnd yeah, so now the the economy of the future I think is going to look uh sort of quite different from where does today um and AI and robotics uh in the good scenario which we're working towards you know trying to ensure makes that we do have the good scenario Um there will be no shortage of products and services for anyone like basically anyone will be able to have any products and services they want.\n\nUm that's the productivity gains from AI and robotics are just uh astounding to think about. Like I think I think it could increase the the size of the economy by a factor of 10 or more. Like it it will eliminate poverty. Um and you really will be in a situation where anyone can have anything they want. Um the bigger challenge may be finding uh meaning in life.\n\nSo if if the robot can do anything that you can do but maybe better how do you find meaning in life >> that's that may be the biggest challenge >> when you think of the fact you know you mentioned that you know you've been holding off on um you know really getting involved whether it's you know participating versus being a spectator and when you're thinking of the next couple of years of like let's say not necessarily catching up but just doubling down and really focusing on it.\n\nWhat are going to be your biggest focus points? >> Really, it's making it useful um and making it safe for humanity and making it uh love humanity essentially and be you know you want it to be useful and friendly. Um, so those are the most important things. Um, I I I've never seen any technology advance as fast as AI. So, and I've seen a lot of technologies advance. >> Yeah.\n\n>> So, the rate of I I call it and maybe this is a discomforting metaphor, but AI is a A supersonic tsunami >> does not sound fun, but yeah, >> it sounds sounds a little scary in that way, but it's in terms of maybe in terms of uh exceeding prior technologies. Uh it's like supersonic and and you really do need to pair AI with robotics.\n\nYeah, I I think it's uh it's crazy just how much it's advanced in just the past year or two years and and seeing how kids are using it looking using Grock 4, Grock voice, the companions now. Um, >> yeah, >> I think you've answered this before, but what would what keeps you up at night when you think of the future of AI?\n\nAnd now that you're doubling down and really just going um wartime mode right now on just tackling this these issues, what is uh what is something that keeps you up at night? Well, AI safety um and making sure the AI is aligned with uh humanity and wants to foster and grow and better humanity and you know basically we want to be like if you could you could look into a crystal ball right now and see the future needs to be the future one.\n\nAnd so I mean I have this kind of like new um term for the goal of Tesla. The goal of Tesla previously was uh accelerating the advancement of sustainable energy which is like a very good goal.\n\nAnd then the reason I pursued that rather than AI because I could have pursued AI from the beginning was because I was confident that that sustainable energy was a single-edge sword only like it was only a good edge you know so we sure that okay we succeed in that like okay that's that's definitely good sustainable energy by definition is great um you have cleaner air and you know and can run out of whatever the source fuel is uh with with combination solar, batteries, and electric cars, then that's a that's an unequivoc for AI, like I said, there's it is more of a double-edged sword risk.\n\nUm, but but I think it most likely will be good. and most likely will bring immense prosperity and you know it's going to figure out how to cure every disease. Um, and uh it's it's probably going to be awesome, but I think we need to be uh careful and not complacent and and we actually be somewhat paranoid uh to make sure that um we have the good AI future and not the bad AI future.\n\nUm, so I mean from from a Tesla's stock standpoint I think with autonom autonomous cars and and especially with with Optimus the it does go to to sort of crazy levels. I'd always recommend like looking at uh Kathy Wood and Arinvest analysis. Uh they're they've been right in the past. Um, and I think they're right this time.\n\nAnd again, with a lot of difficult execution, I I I think, you know, people out there said, \"Well, Tesla's valuation could be 25 trillion.\" I and I think that that's probably correct. If we execute uh well on autonomous transport and optimus, it actually does get to a 20 to30 trillion valuation. Uh that's 20 to 30 times what it is today. >> Everyone's cheering. >> Yeah. Um yeah, the math is uh math is clear.\n\nUm, so it's just it's just a massive amount of work and but but like I think if we do that massive amount of work that's what will happen. Elon let's talk about Neurolink. You've described Neurolink in the past as a way to solve the input output bottleneck between humans and machines, right? >> What's the long-term vision? Is Neuralink a medical company or is it the first step towards symbiosis with AI?\n\n>> It's it's thoughtful as a medical technology.\n\nSo, Neurolink's initial goals are really to uh help people uh who have say quadriplegic tetroplegic situ they've lost the use of their body um and to be able to enable them to control their bone computer just by thinking and I think we have eight eight patients so far and all eight um love the device and and are uh using it every So it's it's helped a lot of people and I think we're uh Tesla team the neuralinking team is aiming to do about 20 uh patients uh by the end of this year.\n\nSo it's accelerating. And then next year we'll be doing the uh blind sight implement which will enable people who are completely blind like if they've lost both eyes and optic nerve and still be able to see um interfacing directly with visual cortex. So there a lot of cool things like that.\n\nUm so the focus essentially is uh fixing um serious medical issues and as prove out the safety and efficacy and um then eventually at some point uh you could get cybernetic enhancements. So it could could uh be something that massively augments intelligence um and allows you to communicate at ultra high speeds. Um so it it's very sci-fi. Um, and and it could even get to the point where you could upload your memories.\n\nUh, and and essentially have a a saved version of yourself. Um, and then I'm I'm speculating here, but but but then maybe download that into uh a new on a closed body either robot. I'm really getting into sci-fi here, but but like download that into a robot body if you want or a clone version of your original self.\n\nYou know, they they certainly made sci-fi movies, written books about this, so these are not new ideas, but I I do think stuff like that will be possible.\n\num which would give you I guess a form of or anybody wants it uh a form of immortality and to be clear I do think these things will be available to anyone who wants to do it so it's not going to be sort of limited to a few sort of you know uh elite members of society I think it will be available to everyone who wants it >> it it's crazy just to think, you know, with Neuralink, Grock, the Gro Companion, and even the humanoid robot, how do you do you see I mean, it just feels like more and more uh whether it's Grock, the Grock Companion, and then Neurolink, I know we we did an interview with Brad who was the third patient who has ALS and um he was also utilizing Grock.\n\nUm >> yeah, >> what do you what do you see continuing to see that integration between let's say Neurolink and even even Grock um as things continue to grow?\n\nYeah, a graph will actually be able to understand the signals from your so the neural links connecting to your brain and then sending the signals to Grog and then Grog can actually understand those signals at a at kind of like a a binary level um as opposed to having to translate it into words. And so greatly improve the efficiency with which you can use your Neurolink device.\n\nUm like it's so I mean we're really getting into some interesting philosophical questions or interesting questions like if you think about how much of your your mental capacity your mind is used to take a complex thought or image in your mind and translate that into words and it's and it's very lost. because how can you really with words convey say an image that you have in your mind?\n\nUm it's very difficult to do so and and if you're not like if you're not an artist it's actually very difficult to actually get the image from your mind onto a computer or paper. Um but but the but the computer could do that.\n\nYou could say okay this is the image that you want to produce and well let's say like there's a complex series of concepts that you want to convey to someone else and and if both people have a neural link you'll be able to convey a complex uh series of ideas u uncompressed in their full form to someone else's mind as opposed to reducing ing complex con concepts down to um a few sentences and trying to get someone else to hear what those sentences are, decompress those sentences in their mind and try and try to understand the concepts that are in your mind.\n\nSo this is why I call it uh conceptual telepathy. So this would greatly improve communication and understanding between humans. You've mentioned restoring vision and mobility, but the idea of writing to the brain >> and hearing too. Sorry. So, it's like basically if if there's if there's any sense or brain injury in principle that sensory function or that brain injury can be solved with a neural link. So that includes uh curing sight smell.\n\nI don't people not many people have lost their sense of smell but um feeling it could be um like if somebody has a stroke and they've lost the ability to move um left arm, a neural link could restore that ability. Um it it's it's really a very powerful general purpose uh input output device uh that can address you know over time any uh brain or neurological issue. So if somebody's having seizures uh it it could actually stop the seizures.\n\nUm, it could I think probably fix uh schizophrenia like a lot of there's a lot of things that could like in principle it can fix basically anything that's to do with the brain or um neurons or your senses. >> Is there anything that would be like is there a a most difficult problem to solve in that space then? Um because technically a lot of it could be solved.\n\nIs there something that would uh maybe you would see bigger blockers on trying to solve as far as um fixing those problems? [Music] >> I'm not aware blockers right now. It's just that when you're putting devices in humans, you have to be very careful and to make sure that uh no damage is done and is that the implant works. um and without any negative side effects.\n\nAnd so far uh you know, knock on wood, we're betting a thousand here and and and you know, patients have the devices have worked and they've no meaningful side effect. So that's it's it's really just Yeah, it's pretty cool. But it's just in order to be safe that does slow us down. Um, and of course we we interact very closely with the with the FDA and for for approvals and stuff. So it's it's not just uh Neurolink in a vacuum here.\n\nIt's it's with regulatory approval from the FDA. So uh and and then you do need different variants of neural link device for solving different things. So for example for uh well the teleathy product which is what we have in the uh eight patients so far that interfaces with the motor cortex in the brain.\n\nSo it's like like literally it's someone will will think about moving their hand neural link device will read that signal in the motor cortex and then move the mouse on your on their computer. Um and then for sight it's a different thing because you've got to stimulate the visual cortex and the visual cortex is in a different location and it's and it's a little deeper.\n\nSo you've got so you've got to put the electrodes a little bit deeper to reach the visual cortex. And in this case it's it's uh it's not reading it's writing. It's it's effectively writing pixels to the visual cortex. This is something we've had working in monkeys for um about three years now. Uh, in fact, one of our monkeys has both a telepathy implant and a blind sight implant. And he's a very happy monkey.\n\nUm, I do want to emphasize we take uh great care of our of our animals. Um, this is a really big deal because I I've always said like imagine if we were in their position. Well, let's let's just do all the things that if that if we were in that position, we'd do. Um, and the USA inspector that came by to check out our facilities, she said in her entire career, she's never seen a nicer monkey enclosure ever.\n\nAnd and let me tell you, monkeys love for the lefty implant. Uh, monkeys are just like us. They they love playing video games and eating snacks. So, if you look if you look at that video of Paige around I think it's like four years old now, you see he's just he's just sitting on a branch uh sipping a banana smoothie. Um, which he gets every time he stores. He gets a sip of a smoothie.\n\nUm and he's but he's not being held down like he likes playing the game. >> So just really just like humans likes likes snacks and video games and yeah same same thing. >> One question I have like building a humanoid robot and neural link intersect if at all I mean what are the learnings from that? Um is there any overlap? Yeah. >> Well, I have to say building a humanoid robot has really made me think a lot about how the human body works.\n\nYou gain a new appreciation for actually just how awesome at design the human body is. Now admittedly, you know, I think some parts of the human body could be better, like the spine. Like, why do we have so much back pain? It's very annoying. >> Maybe uh don't fight sumo wrestlers, man. >> Yeah, seriously, Doug Moore.\n\nUm, but you know, yeah, typically, you know, everyone has back pain in some point in their life, which is also a thing you're linking soul. So that'd be cool, too. Um, but no, your optimist has really made me think a lot about how our hands work. Um, how we balance, how we do different things. Um, but maybe more than anything, just how incredible our hands are. They're it's like, wow.\n\nUm things that our hands do like the hands in Optimus are half or more than half of the electromechanical problem and the entire rest of the body is is a half. >> Wow. That's crazy. >> Yeah. And and it's like honestly you look to your hands you're like and you move and if you and if you feel your forearm like the almost all the muscles that control your hand are actually in your forearm and and and they're pulling your fingers like like puppets.\n\nSo yeah, there's only a a small number of muscles that are in that in your hand itself, but your hand is all being controlled through tendons that go either through or above your carpal tunnel. Um, and your hand is being operated like a marionette from your forearm. >> Yeah. >> One thing that's crazy I just see I just Yeah.\n\nI mean it's crazy how much the the human body whether it's like you know Tesla vision going you know just trying to see what kind of like similar to how uh humans view the the world right and getting rid of the radar and then same thing with the humanoid robot and just you know thinking and seeing how um the human body works um is there anything more specifically even within the human body that will continue to infer whether it's the humanoid robot And it sounds like obviously the the the hand is the big one of the biggest problems.\n\nUm but but are there other parts of the body too that would >> um continue to help infer other parts of the the humanoid robot or again it's just yeah with Tesla vision and and eyesight. >> Well with with Optimus we're able to reuse the autopilot computer. So, Oculus is uh intelligence is powered by the AI4, the same computer that controls the car and you know a small battery pack that's similar to the car battery pack.\n\nSo, there's a lot of simaries with the car. Uh and and then the AI that's in the car is similar to the AI that will be in Optimus running AI4 hardware and then AI5 hardware when that's ready. So there a lot of parallels um but the limiting factor is the hand. Yeah. >> Um, but I'm convinced that Optimus will be the biggest product ever. Um, yeah. So, and then of course autonomy is starting to roll out.\n\num car but will be in uh many cities in throughout the United States later this year and hopefully many countries um uh next year. >> Yeah, here in the Bay Area we have a bunch of FOMO. Everyone's looking at Austin right now. Uh, I can tell you I uh I always uh whenever I open that robo taxi app, man, it just the geoence just the figurine is insane. >> It's funny. Yeah. Yeah.\n\n>> I mean, you got to have some fun, you know, don't take yourself too seriously type of thing. [Applause] >> Let's uh switch and talk about X. You've called X and here we are at X takeover. You've called X the everything app, but it's still in a transitional phase. What exactly do you want X to be in 5 years? >> Um I mean X is definitely improving. It's mean it's evolved a lot from Twitter.\n\ncan only have like uh you know short text tweets and um like two minute videos to the point where now you can have like 4hour videos and you can write a novel um if you want on the system. So it's it's gone sort of fully multimodal from long videos to long text to anything in between. Um and uh we're currently really improving the the DM system.\n\nSo with a new system called Xhat uh which enables audio video calling uh it's all fully encrypted uh peer-to-peer style like Bitcoin. Um and the asset test is that even if somebody uh puts the gun to my head, I still can't read your messages. That's the test. Um, so it's like very secure and and and also like you do calling and and and video with it.\n\nUh, and then there's the uh kind of X money or Xinance release which is uh hope hopefully only a few months away. We actually have it operating in beta within the company. Um, and that that'll be a major factor.\n\nUm so but but ex as much as possible at ensuring uh freedom like freedom of speech uh within the as much as we can within the bounds of the law and you know also like aspiration trying to reach for the truth of things like you see that in uh community notes where community notes will will correct someone even if they're are very powerful communic community notes will correct me it'll correct presidents CEOs um even major advertisers and uh even if that cost us money so I think it's generally there's a lot of good things that have happened um we're trying to improve the algorithm which we know kind of sucks right now >> sorry about No, not at all.\n\n>> I actually enjoy it, but >> Okay. Okay, good. Well, um, >> some days are crazier than others, like when the geoence expanded and some of these other things, but um, yeah. No, I don't know if you have any opinions, Kelvin. >> Sorry, your voice was a bit low there. I couldn't hear a question. >> Oh, I was saying the algorithm can be crazy some days, especially like when the robo taxi geoence expanded. >> Yeah. Yeah. >> Yeah.\n\nwould they have been the overarching goal of the algorithm is to try to show people information they would find most interesting.\n\nUm but right now it'll show you too much of one thing you know so if whatever the sort of interesting thing of the day is right now it'll the X algorithm will show you too much of that and it's like okay I don't need to see it 20 times you know um you know I think I think I've seen like the Sydney Sweeney Jeans thing about 400 times this point and it's like okay the first few times was good, but we shouldn't show things like 100 times um because because you want to learn new things.\n\nUm >> so, but X is making steady progress being offering um you know, pretty much everything you'd want to do. And yeah, I feel good about where it's headed. payments. We're We've all I know we're waiting on that and just uh you know thinking about even PayPal too. It's crazy just what fate loves irony doing um x. com back in what the late 90s and >> um then full force buying it you know years back and now um now you're doing payments again.\n\n>> Yeah. That's it's a sort of poetic end or or or re returning to something that we're sort of unfinished with PayPal and completing the product line. >> What role do you think Grock and XAI play in the future of X? Is it just a feature, a core intelligence layer, or does that change how people experience the platform? Yeah, Groth.\n\nUm, I think it's pretty helpful because that that that Groth button which you can press about any given post on the system and its analysis of a post is usually quite accurate. It's it it doesn't bat a thousand, but it's really gives you deeper insight into any given piece of information that somebody posts on the system. Uh, you can figure out more context. uh helps you figure out if it's true or not.\n\nUm and we actually just added uh Grock for all advertising in the system. So you can you can press the graph button and see, hey, is this ad is this product going to work or is it uh is this product legit or not? Which I kind of always wanted to have on ads, you know, it's like, does this thing really work? Um, that's what I want to ask a lot of ads. And now on the X systems, you can ask, does this thing really work?\n\nI guess advertisers where Grock says it doesn't really work. I'm probably not going to advertise very long. Um, maybe it'll encourage better honesty in advertising, which I think would be a good thing. But we're just generally trying to make X a system that you can trust more than any other system. And I think I think it is there already. It does not say that X is perfect. Uh, it it's definitely mistakes.\n\nBut is there any other social media company you trust more than X? >> No. >> Nope. >> So like I'm not trusting Facebook, you know. Um, so not to pick on Facebook, whatever, but um, you know, I think it's actually probably fair to say that X is the most trustworthy or least untrustworthy of social networks.\n\n>> Yeah, I think that became very apparent uh, just when you saw like when you just compare of like the news during COVID and things being censored. >> Yeah. Um, and you know, just you come to X and you can find out what's really happening. Uh, >> and it's real time. It's really like the I would say the, you know, the world's discourse in town square, right? It can sometimes be a fist fight it feels like.\n\n>> But at the same time, it's just, you know, where you can find out what's really going on, >> right? That and that's the goal. And I I do want to emphasize obviously there's a long way to go.\n\nIt's it's uh far from perfecting but I I do think it's getting better over time and you know sometimes it's uh two steps forward one step back but the trend over time I think is very good for X being the place where you can figure out what's really going on in the world um against the truth and you can ask rockmore um and you can also learn a lot of things so you can ask if there's a a new uh thing that's invented or announced, you can ask Grock on the system more about it and instantly educate yourself.\n\n>> Yeah, I don't think I've >> and then we we monitor when Grock gets things wrong and then we we feed that we feed that back into the system to make it aspirationally less wrong over time. Yeah, it's really just crazy to think um you know when you talk to Grock and you can ask it for just things in your timeline. Hey, make a post sound like me on this topic >> or you want >> It's pretty fun. >> Yeah.\n\nLike we are actually aiming for Grock to be the actually I should say two goals are for Grock to be the most uh truth seeeking AI but also the funniest AI because you got to have some fun in life and you know uh laughter is the best medicine. You got to you you got to have some fun. [Applause] Elon, you've predicted a world of abundant energy, robotic labor, and AGI.\n\nUh, with AI and Optimus, uh, doing, you know, potentially a a lot of things and reducing the amount of things that we're doing today, what do you think is left for humans and and, um, really what does that mean for uh, in the world of artificial super intelligence? >> Yeah, that's a question that I struggle with actually. So um this is part of the reason for neural link which is to um improve the bandwidth communication with AI.\n\nSo to help achieve a better human AI symbiosis so that you know AI knows what we want. Um and it can respond to collective human world. Um and I think things like can actually um effectively dramatically increase our our intelligence. Um um but I think the future is very much one where human intelligence, machine intelligence and robots are interwoven.\n\nI think I I said I think it's it's 80% maybe 90% likely to be awesome, but we got to be cautious about that, you know, 10% maybe not awesome situation >> like Terminator. >> Uh yeah. Yeah. I mean seriously that that uh you know stuff like that would be bad. What's your vision for a society where human effort is no longer required for survival or productivity? How do we avoid irrelevance? >> Brian, I think that's a central question.\n\nUm well if we are symbiotic with AI where we that there's this essentially a merger of human and machine intelligence then we may be able to address the relevance question you know like let's say you uh ride a bicycle or a motorcycle or a car, you're you're super human in what you're able to do. You can now travel faster than any human uh with legs. I mean, if you're a car, you can go vastly faster than the fastest human ever.\n\nUm does that make running irrelevant? I mean, people still run and still race against each other. So, but but you got humans working with machines. I mean, they actually had these kind of debates when this steam engine came along and and the team travel. Uh it's like well because people derived a lot of their value from saying they they can do manual work faster than a machine and then the machine got answer.\n\nSo um but this is a philosophical question that I struggle with and the best thing I can come up with is that you have interwoven human and machine intelligence and uh got something like neural link to augment human intelligence and improve the symbiosis with AI that that we effectively become maybe one with the AI. >> Elon, you off >> Sorry, the audience was about to clap and I started talking.\n\nUm, but Elon, you you know, you're you're solving uh I guess in a lot of ways, as sometimes you say, you know, a lot of problems. Um, and in a lot of ways, you're creating an a very exciting future with reusable rockets, the mission to Mars with Starship, with the humanoid robots and how it's going to um just the impact that it'll have and Neurolink and seeing the impact on um Noland and Brad.\n\nWhat what gives you hope um for today um not just for humanity and civilization, but personally? Well, I think the future is going to be very interesting and exciting and and I guess I also think would I want to be at any other point in human history? Is there some other point in human history that that is is more interesting than where we are today? And I think the answer is no. At least for me.\n\nI think we're at the most interesting part of human history. And it's getting more interesting with each passing month. And so so think okay well if I'm in if I'm in the part of human history that that is the most interesting then I think you know anyone feels that way and I think a lot of people feel that way that we should feel very lucky to be alive at this at this time to see these amazing things happen.\n\n[Applause] Well, Elon, we wanted to do a time check. Um, but also >> I bet I better get back to my eight jobs. >> Yeah, exactly. You're not a busy man at all. Uh but we just um Kelvin and I we just want to on behalf of Tesla owners of Silicon Valley, uh Tesla owners Austria, Sanwain Valley, and really just uh all of the 1500 people that traveled from all over the world. We just want to personally just say thank you for all you're doing.\n\nUm and thank you for continuing to push humanity forward. >> Well, thank you. >> Yeah, you have a whole bunch of people here just cheering. So, thank you for all you're doing. >> Thank you. Well, and and uh and thank you for all your support over the years. Uh it's super appreciated. Uh you know, I would say my heart goes out to you, but I have to watch my gestures these days. >> We know what you mean.\n\n>> I can only point straight ahead or straight up. >> Thanks. Um, hey Elon. So, we wanted >> But anyway, my heart does go out to you and uh thank you all for your support over the years. >> Yeah. And we just had one thing uh that we wanted to present to you. Um >> Okay. >> How's it going, Elon?\n\nSo on behalf of TSO tov and uh the presenting sponsors uh haha yes we we wanted to present something to you that was symbolic meaningful and really you know these last few months have obviously been quite tumultuous for you and so we really got creative and and really uh yeah we wanted to create you something special. And so I'm going to read you something. Basically, you know, Elon, you you brought electric cars back from the dead.\n\nYou made clean energy cool. You made rockets reusable. You're going to take us to Mars. You spent billions to buy Twitter and save free speech. You stopped running your empire to work for the US government for free, to reduce wasteful spending, to save the country from bankruptcy. >> Right. And it took a few arrows for that one. Absolutely. >> And and and and how and how were you thanked? It's like you were betrayed. You were you were mocked.\n\nAttacked by the very people who once cheered you on. >> Your name dragged through the mud. Your cars vandalized. Your motives questioned. But that's not the full story, as I imagine many here would attest. So there are millions of people who see you for who you are. >> Yeah. >> People whose lives you've touched and changed. People who believe in what you're building. People who love you and have your back. >> Thank you. >> So yeah, thank you.\n\nSo, we were gonna we were going to introduce to uh like a few uh more than a few, but we had a real that we were going to play, but with some technicalities. We're unable to do it of actual testimonials from people uh really meaningful, impactful ones that people really wanted you to hear. But, uh >> we'll post it on X. >> We'll post it on X.\n\nUh but there was still it there was only a few but there's a lot more people who want to express their gratitude and support. Thank you. >> But uh you know fortunately they could write letters >> and so Elon thousands of people wrote letters to you to to to demonstrate you know uh and express how much you have meant to them. >> We love you. >> Well love you guys too. >> Thank you. So, we compressed all those paper letters into this brick junk.\n\nYep. This is a custommade brick. Uh the brick itself is a message to you. It's heavy brick. Not in the sense of how heavy it is, but it's a brick of belief which weighs more than any material matter. We believe you can achieve the impossible. Hence the quote on the front of this brick. You want to read it, John? This brick does fly in spirit because you made you have made the impossible happen. >> All right. Thank you. Much appreciated. >> Yeah.\n\nAnd so Elon, yeah, you make bricks fly and in turn that inspires us to to pursue the impossible. And you know what we all say to that? Everyone repeat after me. Haha. Yes. >> Yes. Ah, yes. Thank you, Elon. We love you. >> Thank you. Love you, too. >> Thank you, Elon, for your time. We appreciate it. And, uh, hopefully you have a good rest of, uh, your Saturday afternoon. >> All right. You guys, it was a pleasure speaking. [Applause]"},"languages":["en"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YqDehngsBHw"},{"id":"cnbc-faber-musk-2025","type":"interview","url":"https://www.cnbc.com/2025/05/20/cnbc-transcript-elon-musk-sits-down-with-cnbcs-david-faber-live-on-cnbc-today-.html","title":"Interview with CNBC","titles":{"en":"Interview with CNBC","de":"Interview mit CNBC","fr":"Entretien avec CNBC"},"date":"2025-05-20","summary":"A live CNBC interview from Tesla on autonomous driving and the robotaxi, AI, Optimus, China, brand damage and Musk's commitment to Tesla.","text":"WHEN: Today, Tuesday, May 20, 2025\n\nWHERE: CNBC's \"Power Lunch\"\n\nFollowing is the unofficial transcript of a CNBC interview with Elon Musk, Tesla CEO, SpaceX CEO, xAI CEO & X Owner, and CNBC's David Faber on \"Power Lunch\" (M-F, 2PM-3PM ET) today, Tuesday, May 20. Following are links to video on CNBC.com: https://www.cnbc.com/video/2025/05/20/elon-musk-confirms-tesla-plan-for-robotaxis-on-austin-roads-in-june.html, https://www.cnbc.com/video/2025/05/20/elon-musk-well-have-hundreds-of-thousands-of-full-self-driving-teslas-by-the-end-of-next-year.html, https://www.cnbc.com/video/2025/05/20/elon-musk-i-dont-follow-byd-or-think-about-competitors-i-focus-on-the-perfect-product.html, https://www.cnbc.com/video/2025/05/20/elon-musk-we-are-very-much-open-to-licensing-self-driving.html, https://www.cnbc.com/video/2025/05/20/elon-musk-we-have-seen-a-major-rebound-in-demand-post-doge.html and https://www.cnbc.com/video/2025/05/20/watch-cnbcs-full-interview-with-tesla-ceo-elon-musk.html.\n\nMANDATORY CREDIT: \"CNBC\"\n\n1.    Mandatory credit to \"CNBC\" on first reference.\n\n2.    The onscreen \"CNBC\" logo must be clearly visible and unobstructed at all times in any image, video clip or other form of media.\n\n3.    Embedded web video must stream from the CNBC.com media player with the unobstructed credit as described above.\n\n###\n\nDAVID FABER: Brian, thank you. Elon Musk is here. We're in the lobby of the Gigafactory here in Austin. Last time I was here was your annual meeting a couple of years ago. So thank you for having us back.\n\nELON MUSK: Welcome back.\n\nFABER: Got a robotaxi right behind you.\n\nMUSK: We do?\n\nFABER: Yes. Yes, you can see it right there.\n\nMUSK: OK.\n\nFABER: And, obviously, the meeting with the transportation secretary.\n\nMUSK: Yes.\n\nFABER: Are you going to have full autonomous on the roads of Austin at the end -- by the end of June?\n\nMUSK: Yes.\n\nFABER: You are? What gives you that confidence?\n\nMUSK: We have cars driving 24/7 with drivers in the cars. And we see essentially no interventions. So we want to be very careful with the first introduction of unsupervised full self-driving, meaning that there's the cars driving around with no one in it.\n\nFABER: Right.\n\nMUSK: So we're going to be—\n\nFABER: No one behind a driver's—\n\nMUSK: Well, yes, and sometimes no one in it at all.\n\nFABER: Right.\n\nMUSK: Just going to pick someone up. So the car obviously has to be incredibly safe. So we're just being -- and we have thousands of cars that are being tested, which is creating some strange situations where we just drive -- there's just a bizarre number of Teslas driving past people's houses. They're like, what's going on?\n\nFABER: I think we even saw one last night coming from the airport.\n\nMUSK: Yes.\n\nFABER: Yes, driving at night alone.\n\nMUSK: So, just—\n\nFABER: It looked very lonely.\n\nMUSK: It's just -- it did look a little lonely.\n\nFABER: Yes.\n\nMUSK: So, yes, yes, it's looking good for Austin next month.\n\nFABER: Some estimates have been that you're only going to have 10 to 12 of them on the road initially. I mean, it's going to be a very small amount. Is that correct?\n\nMUSK: Yes, yes, for the first week.\n\nFABER: First week? How do you see it ramping up?\n\nMUSK: Well, we will have to see how well it does. But I think it's prudent for us to start with a small number, confirm that things are going well, and then scale it up proportionate to how well we see it's doing. So—\n\nFABER: Right. And what's going to be a judge of how well it's doing?\n\nMUSK: I mean, are there any incidents? Are there any interventions? And -- but we want to be -- we want to deliberately take it slow. I mean, we could start with 1,000 or 10,000 on day one, but I don't think that would be prudent. So we will start with probably 10 for a week, then increase it to 20, 30, 40. And I think by, say -- we will probably be at 1,000 within a few months. And then we will expand to other cities, so expand to the -- San Francisco, California, Los Angeles, San Antonio.\n\nFABER: Is that a real possibility in the not-too-distant future?\n\nMUSK: Yes, of course.\n\nFABER: I mean, Texas is very different, I don't need to tell you, then, California, when it comes to regulation. They don't really have much here in terms of dealing with autonomous, but it's a different story in California.\n\nMUSK: Yes, but California has already approved -- Waymo has been doing autonomous driving for a while. So—\n\nFABER: I know they have, right. But do you need a separate approval? Or is somehow—\n\nMUSK: Yes, yes, right now, the approval process is very haphazard—\n\nFABER: Yes.\n\nMUSK: And sort of state by state and sometimes city by city.\n\nFABER: We were talking to the secretary of transportation about that very fact a moment ago, yes.\n\nMUSK: Right. So it's going to be important to have a unified set of national regulations for self-driving cars. Otherwise, you're going to get into this weird situation where, if you're driving from Maine to New York, you're going to go through 10 different sets of regulations. Cars are going to behave differently. It's not going to make any sense.\n\nFABER: No.\n\nMUSK: So, one set of regulations that -- just like there is for highway driving, that's what I think makes sense for the country as a whole. But my prediction is that probably by the end of next year we will have probably hundreds of thousands, if not—\n\nFABER: Hundreds of thousands?\n\nMUSK: Over a million Teslas doing self-driving in the U.S.\n\nFABER: Those are not -- OK. What percentage of those are going to be -- well, not the Cybercab. You're just talking about on full self-driving level four?\n\nMUSK: Unsupervised full self-driving, where you do not need to pay attention.\n\nFABER: Right. Right. For me, if I own a Tesla and I have the software and the capability of doing it?\n\nMUSK: Yes.\n\nFABER: Right.\n\nMUSK: But we will have a model which is kind of like some combination of Uber and Airbnb. So if you're a Tesla owner—\n\nFABER: Right.\n\nMUSK: You will be able to add or subtract your car to the fleet. So just like an Airbnb, you could like rent out your spare bedroom or rent out your house when you're not using it. And the same thing will be available for Tesla owners.\n\nFABER: Right.\n\nMUSK: So it's a way for Tesla owners to earn revenue. for -- instead of having your car sit in the parking lot, your car could be earning money.\n\nFABER: We talked -- you and I talked about that a couple of years ago.\n\nMUSK: Yes.\n\nFABER: Which takes me back a bit, because, of course, you remember 2019, you were talking about 2020 the introduction of autonomous, and now you just introduced a fairly somewhat ambitious target. Why do you have the confidence now that in a -- what was it, in a year, there will be a million available?\n\nMUSK: Well, by the end of next year, I think. So, it's more like 18 months.\n\nFABER: End of next year, end of '26, OK, right.\n\nMUSK: Yes. I think that's -- I mean, these things happen slowly but then all at once. So it's a -- Peter Thiel, \"Zero to One.\" Once you make -- once you have a proof point, once you have it working, then scaling up is just a matter of time. So, once it's working well in Austin, then we will make sure it works well in other cities. I mean, there are obviously some unique cases like downtown New York—\n\nFABER: Yes.\n\nMUSK: Like if you're in -- but that's a highly unusual situation. Most cities in America are like Austin, so—\n\nFABER: Right, although you can go on full self-driving right now in New York. I mean, you can -- obviously you have to sit there behind the wheel.\n\nMUSK: Yes.\n\nFABER: But -- and it'll do it.\n\nMUSK: Oh, yes. No, it—\n\nFABER: It'll navigate the traffic. I have seen it.\n\nMUSK: Yes. So, even a Tesla that you buy right now and the self-driving just costs $99 a month, will give you autonomous driving anywhere in the country right now. The question is, when is it unsupervised—\n\nFABER: Right.\n\nMUSK: Where that's the best where we want to—\n\nFABER: Right, where you're sitting in the back, so to speak.\n\nMUSK: Yes, where you're like asleep, and a car -- you wake up at your destination.\n\nFABER: Yes.\n\nMUSK: In order for that to be the case, we want the autonomous car to be much safer than a car driven by a person.\n\nFABER: Right. Are we -- but, again -- I will come to Waymo, because, even though they only have about 700 cars, they obviously are on the market. They're in Beverly Hills all over the place.\n\nMUSK: Sure. It's a proof of concept.\n\nFABER: They have got 28 cameras. They have got lidar and radar. You have had a different approach, six -- I think eight to nine cameras and the neural network. Why do you feel that is going to be the equivalent in terms of safety profile?\n\nMUSK: Oh, I think it'll be better.\n\nFABER: Why?\n\nMUSK: Because the way that the road system is designed is for AI. It's basically, I should say, it's for intelligence, biological neural net, and eyes. That's how the whole road system is designed. So what will actually work best for the road system is artificial intelligence, digital neural nets, and cameras. And we also have the microphones. The car can hear emergency vehicles, that kind of thing.\n\nFABER: Right. You are going to have the microphones to hear the—\n\nMUSK: Yes, you need to hear—\n\nFABER: Because that was a question. Right, you need to hear a fire engine or a police car.\n\nMUSK: Yes, exactly.\n\nFABER: Right.\n\nMUSK: So -- but that's how the whole road system is designed. It's not designed for shooting lasers out of your eyes. So -- and what we found is that, when you have multiple sensors, they tend to get confused. So do you believe the camera or do you believe lidar? And if you get confused, that's where but -- that's what can lead to accidents. So we used to have, for example, radar in the car. But we found that the radar and the camera would sometimes disagree. And then you don't know which one to believe.\n\nFABER: So it wasn't about expense? It was just about—\n\nMUSK: No.\n\nFABER: Yes. Are you seeing the data right—\n\nMUSK: In fact, we turned off the radars in the cars.\n\nFABER: You turned off the radar? Yes.\n\nMUSK: Yes.\n\nFABER: So, I mean, are you comfortable right now? If I were to say to you, all right, let's go, do you think that you're there in terms of the safety profile you're seeing right now?\n\nMUSK: Yes, we could take a ride today, if you want, sure.\n\nFABER: Yes. Well, I'm happy to take a ride with you any time you want, wherever you want. Logistics capability to operate sort of a ride hailing fleet at scale, because you mentioned obviously what's called the end of '26. Are you going to have an app? Are you there? Do you have that ability?\n\nMUSK: I think we could figure out an app -- tells me.\n\nFABER: You're not worried about it?\n\nMUSK: Well, Tesla already has an app.\n\nFABER: Yes, I know. But -- so is there -- is there going to be a ride hailing app you will introduce to—\n\nMUSK: I think we can figure out how to write an app. That's really not the—\n\nFABER: It's not too hard?\n\nMUSK: No.\n\nFABER: xAI can probably do it for you in like an hour?\n\nMUSK: Tesla can write apps just fine..\n\nFABER: Do you ever license -- consider licensing the technology at some point?\n\nMUSK: Yes, yes, we're -- I mean, there are a number of major automakers that have talked to us about licensing self-driving, and we're very much open to that. So I think, the more we demonstrate the capability of self-driving, the more that they will want to license it, and we're happy to help.\n\nFABER: You know, back to the safety profile, because it's going to obviously be something key focus. Business Insider, take it for what you want, but I saw this over the weekend. They did a test between Waymo and and Tesla, and they weren't critical at all—\n\nMUSK: But Business Insider is not a real publication.\n\nFABER: No, but, but it did see—\n\nMUSK: They're a fake, they're fake.\n\nFABER: Regardless of whether we want to have a debate about their journalistic integrity, which I don't, I the test itself. Let me just share with you and get your reaction, which was the Waymo ultimately, they said proved better in part, only because it avoided with its geofencing one very difficult intersection that the Tesla chose to go through. It stopped at a red light, but then it went through the red light. What's your reaction?\n\nMUSK: Look, I'm not going to comment on some Business Insider article.\n\nFABER: But is that a concern at all? Because, in a way, there's no geofencing, so it's like happy to go on the highways in a way that perhaps a Waymo is not. I guess my question is, is that a concern at all for you, in terms of it encountering things that are still sort of a crucial test and perhaps it fails?\n\nMUSK: No. First of all that was that that actually should have been a test of supervised on self-driving, supervised self-driving, not unsupervised self-driving. So the assumption there is that you have a person who is going to take over.\n\nFABER: Right.\n\nMUSK: So their test made no sense.\n\nFABER: Okay.\n\nMUSK: For when we deploy the cars in Austin, we are actually going to play not to the entire Austin region, but only the parts of Austin that we consider to be the safest. So we will geofence it.\n\nFABER: You will.\n\nMUSK: Yeah, of course.\n\nFABER: Right.\n\nMUSK: So it's not going to take intersections, unless we are highly confident it'll, it's going to do well with that intersection or just, it'll just take a route around that intersection.\n\nFABER: But there won't be a safety driver in the car—\n\nMUSK: Correct.\n\nFABER: Right? The car, it won't. There's not going to be somebody sitting there.\n\nMUSK: Right.\n\nFABER: But you did have ads for vehicle operator, autopilots. What was that about then? Are there going to be people who are remotely sort of monitoring the performance of the fleet?\n\nMUSK: Yeah.\n\nFABER: And what will they do?\n\nMUSK: They'll just be, we're going to be extremely paranoid about the deployment as we should be. It would be foolish not to be so we'll be watching what the cars are doing very carefully. And as we find, as confidence grows, you know, less of that will be needed.\n\nFABER: You know, again, you spoke about it, and we spoke about it a couple of years ago, and obviously your investor base, many of whom are watching right now, are interested in the revenue and profitability of this ride hailing, autopilot, auto, robotaxi and autonomous driving opportunity. BYD, I believe at this point in China is now offering levels of autonomy for free. I mean, are you confident you're going to be in a position to continue to get a premium for that particular level?\n\nMUSK: Well, interestingly, in China, we, we're not allowed to train on videos in China, so when we released for self-driving, it was actually just trained on the rest of the world, but not in China. And the tests by local Chinese publications, I think, concluded that even without training on local Chinese roads, Tesla self-driving was the best.\n\nFABER: It was the best.\n\nMUSK: Yes.\n\nFABER: But again, I mean, it's the technology—\n\nMUSK: There's some pretty wild videos where people are like doing self-driving, which we don't recommend, obviously, on like narrow mountain roads, including one where it's there's a sharp precipice on either side and no barriers, and they're doing self-driving across that.\n\nFABER: They may have more confidence than, perhaps they have more confidence in China.\n\nMUSK: Yeah, we don't recommend this, but I saw the video.\n\nFABER: Are you, are you regulated to have, where are you in China right now in terms of your ability to offer that product though?\n\nMUSK: Well, we, we have, just get the terminology right—\n\nFABER: Understood.\n\nMUSK: Unsupervised. Sorry, supervised for self-driving, where there's a person in the car. It has approval in China. But as we, whenever we release a new version, we have to get an incremental approval.\n\nFABER: Right.\n\nMUSK: And at times we, you know, we do have to battle other car companies in China who are trying to stop us from—\n\nFABER: It's an incredibly competitive market, isn't it?\n\nMUSK: China is the most competitive market, yeah.\n\nFABER: And to the extent BYD, which is neck and neck with you, I think in the EV race, I think it's fair to say worldwide, correct?\n\nMUSK: I don't really follow that.\n\nFABER: You don't?\n\nMUSK: No.\n\nFABER: Well, they're willing, again, my question is, they're willing to seemingly offer different levels of autonomy for I don't want to call it free, but part of the cost of the of the car. Do you see that as a possibility for you, or is it always going to be that add on and therefore that significant revenue stream conceivably?\n\nMUSK: I don't really think about competitors. I just think about making the product as perfect as possible.\n\nFABER: You don't think about competitors at all.\n\nMUSK: I don't. I just think about making, what we want to achieve is the platonic ideal of the perfect product. And as long as you focus on that, you will have a compelling product, obviously.\n\nFABER: Alright, well, there's a potentially compelling product right behind you, which is a robotaxi. So when are we, you know, in five years, are they going to be all over the place?\n\nMUSK: Yes.\n\nFABER: They will. You're confident in that.\n\nMUSK: Yeah.\n\nFABER: Talking about Tesla, obviously, you know, takes me to a certain extent, to what some would say is the brand damage done by your government service. I don't know if you would agree with that.\n\nMUSK: It has some pros and cons.\n\nFABER: There have been some pros and cons. You know, we sat here two years ago, upstairs, and you famously said when I asked you about this very subject, I don't care. I'm going to say what I want to say. And so be it. Do you regret that?\n\nMUSK: No.\n\nFABER: No, why not?\n\nMUSK: I believe that we want to live in a free society where people are allowed to say what they want to say within reasonable bounds, like you know, you can't advocate for the murder of somebody, but free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy. That's why it's the First Amendment.\n\nFABER: Without a doubt. But I guess my question is more about your work at DOGE, for example, was that worth it? You know, to the extent you are now Elon, you are somewhat divisive figure two years ago, but now you really are. I mean, there are people who love you, but there are a lot of people who dislike you, some of whom were your customers. And I wonder, was it worth the undertaking at DOGE and everything else that you've done and how outspoken you've been in terms of the things you believe in to antagonize so many potential buyers and/or users of things like a robotaxi?\n\nMUSK: Well, I mean, unfortunately, what I've learned is that legacy media propaganda is very effective at making people believe things that aren't true.\n\nFABER: What would an example of that be?\n\nMUSK: That I'm a Nazi, for example, and how many legacy media publications, talk shows, whatever, try to claim that I was a Nazi because of some random hand gesture gesture at a rally where all I said was that my heart goes out to you, and I was talking about space travel, and yet the legacy media promoted that as though that was a deliberate Nazi gesture, when in fact, every politician, any public speaker who's spoken for any length of time, has made the exact same gesture. And yet there's so people out there, and I've never harmed us. I've never harmed a single person.\n\nFABER: You know what Elon. I wasn't even going to talk—\n\nMUSK: Now you asked for an example. And that's—\n\nFABER: I wasn't even going to talk about it because, in fact—\n\nMUSK: It's horrible.\n\nFABER: I showed a number of people who are close to you, and I called them afterwards, and all of them to a person were like, no way, no way.\n\nMUSK: Of course not.\n\nFABER: But that isn't necessarily the perception. Now, the work you've done for DOGE has also come, obviously, into the spotlight in a great deal. And you know, people are upset about USAID being put into the woodchipper. People are upset about AmeriCorps disappearing. People are upset about –this isn't even on your side – the NIH and so many other areas that they feel, rightly or wrongly, are being cut as a result of your efforts. And I just, I guess I wonder, as you start to transition now, back to Tesla in a more significant way. Was it worth it?\n\nMUSK: Yeah, first of all, any program in USAID that had any semblance of merit was retained and folded into the State Department. So, and if there's some exception to that, we're all ears, and we'd love to look at it. We just want to see the evidence that the program was doing, actually doing good, and not just funding for after DC and warlords in some countries. Over and over again, we saw not – some sympathetic sounding programs, but when we actually said, well, please show us pictures of the recipients of the aid, we just – or let us get into contact with them. No pictures were forthcoming. They didn't give us any contact information. And we're like, look, we're not going to send money to DC grafters and warlords. That's not – that's not a good use of money. So that's not what we're going to do now, invariably, when you stop waste and fraud, it's not like the fraudsters admit their guilt. They don't say like, Oh, isn't it so great that the money we're getting, fortunately, has been stopped. They will obviously come up with a sympathetic sounding claim that, but not that – that claim has no merit.\n\nFABER: That all may be true. I guess what I would come back to, because I talked about economics all day long, is, you know, to your point you've been making. We have a deficit that's running at about 6.7% of GDP. We have interest costs that are going to be above a trillion. It's not going down next year. You entered this thinking you could cut as much as a trillion dollars. You're nowhere near that. It's not really making the dent I think you may have thought you might have been able to achieve in terms of a true problem. Would you agree?\n\nMUSK: Well, first of all, it would obviously be ridiculous to assume that we could achieve that on day one. So it's only been but what, four months?\n\nFABER: Yeah.\n\nMUSK: And we've done, by our calculations – people may disagree – improved the deficit by $160 billion. That's our –\n\nFABER: Right. I mean, that is your number that is out there.\n\nMUSK: Yeah.\n\nFABER: A lot of people take issue with it and say, well, you know, taxpayers expenses, such as paid leave, that's 135 billion. That's got to come back. IRS collection may go down as a result of cuts there. I asked Grok, it said, between 5 and 32 billion is what you've actually saved.\n\nMUSK: You need to ask – the right question to ask is, what is the bet for – the bet for the actions of DOGE, what would the incremental expenditures be in FY 26.\n\nFABER: Yep.\n\nMUSK: Because, for example, we offered early – we offered severance and early retirement to a lot of government employees. Many of them took us up on that. That severance went all the way through to September.\n\nFABER: Yeah.\n\nMUSK: So there's not going to be any savings until October, because the severance goes through September.\n\nFABER: Understood.\n\nMUSK: So the Delta really is, what is the spending difference FY 25 versus FY 26 as a function of DOGE's actions? That's how we calculate the number, and we'll see if that number, if that turns out to be true or not.\n\nFABER: Aren't there more effective ways we ultimately could have gotten at it? I mean, by changing the retirement age or really going after some other parts of the budget?\n\nMUSK: We're trying to go after every part of the budget. That's just – some parts are more boring than others.\n\nFABER: You're about efficiency. I mean, that would take an act of Congress, obviously, to really make a change in the significance I'm talking about.\n\nMUSK: Yeah. First of all. So I think the, in our opinion, we've created $160 billion Delta, FY 25 to FY 26. Very significant. That's 16% of the way towards a trillion in five months. And in order to make progress, we need the consent, obviously, of the not just the executive branch, but also the legislative branch and the judicial branch. So if we, you know, and we are advisors, we are not – we're not kings, here.\n\nFABER: No. I get it.\n\nMUSK: So why are you attacking this, given that we've made so much progress?\n\nFABER: You mean the – not me.\n\nMUSK: Okay.\n\nFABER: Not me. I'm not attacking. I'm just asking questions. In fact, I want to ask a lot more about Tesla. I'm told you have a call at 1:30 I don't know if you'll be able to come back or but –\n\nMUSK: I might be able to come back.\n\nFABER: Let me – well, that would be great, because I do want to talk about Tesla. I mean, I was talking about brand damage, and what you're seeing in the market. You did an interview earlier this morning, where you seem to indicate you're starting to see a rebound.\n\nMUSK: Yes.\n\nFABER: But automotive revenue was down 20% last quarter. I think 50,000 fewer units were sold in the Q1 versus Q1 a year ago. What is giving you confidence in the automotive business? Or is it all about robotaxis, as you've been saying, and people can't quite see them behind me, the robots as well.\n\nMUSK: Well, really, the only things that matter in long term are autonomy and Optimus. Those overwhelmingly dominate the future of financial success of the company. As for Q1, we had a global factory change over for the Model Y, so there's a new version of the Model Y that came out, which required a factory shutdown across the world. Model Y is the number one selling car of any kind –\n\nFABER: Number one in the world.\n\nMUSK: Number one in the world.\n\nFABER: I watched your presentation during your last – right here, I think during your last –\n\nMUSK: Right. It's number one, number one selling car in the world. So, you know, we can't – we have eight cars the factories are retooling. So we – three – and the right time to retool is the first quarter, since, generally, that's when the least amount occurs. But we've seen a major rebound in demand at this point. I feel comfortable with –\n\nFABER: You have seen a major rebound in demand.\n\nMUSK: Oh yeah.\n\nFABER: You really believe – you have seen that?\n\nMUSK: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, look for most people, I mean, when you buy a product, I mean, how much do you care about the political views of the CEO? Or do even know what they are?\n\nFABER: No, you don't, but you've made it – you know, frustratingly, Elon, I know you have a 1:30 call we promised to get you out in time for it. I hope you'll come back, perhaps if you can afterwards. I'm happy to wait here.\n\nMUSK: Sure.\n\nFABER: And sit and and talk to you some more. But I want to let you go because I know that's an important call.\n\nMUSK: All right, sounds good.\n\nFABER: Thank you for taking this time. I hope we get to talk some more on the other side, about this very issue. Elon Musk, obviously joining us, hosting us here at the gigafactory and perhaps he will come back as well, in a little bit but I will end it there for now. Kelly.","textByLang":{"en":"WHEN: Today, Tuesday, May 20, 2025\n\nWHERE: CNBC's \"Power Lunch\"\n\nFollowing is the unofficial transcript of a CNBC interview with Elon Musk, Tesla CEO, SpaceX CEO, xAI CEO & X Owner, and CNBC's David Faber on \"Power Lunch\" (M-F, 2PM-3PM ET) today, Tuesday, May 20. Following are links to video on CNBC.com: https://www.cnbc.com/video/2025/05/20/elon-musk-confirms-tesla-plan-for-robotaxis-on-austin-roads-in-june.html, https://www.cnbc.com/video/2025/05/20/elon-musk-well-have-hundreds-of-thousands-of-full-self-driving-teslas-by-the-end-of-next-year.html, https://www.cnbc.com/video/2025/05/20/elon-musk-i-dont-follow-byd-or-think-about-competitors-i-focus-on-the-perfect-product.html, https://www.cnbc.com/video/2025/05/20/elon-musk-we-are-very-much-open-to-licensing-self-driving.html, https://www.cnbc.com/video/2025/05/20/elon-musk-we-have-seen-a-major-rebound-in-demand-post-doge.html and https://www.cnbc.com/video/2025/05/20/watch-cnbcs-full-interview-with-tesla-ceo-elon-musk.html.\n\nMANDATORY CREDIT: \"CNBC\"\n\n1.    Mandatory credit to \"CNBC\" on first reference.\n\n2.    The onscreen \"CNBC\" logo must be clearly visible and unobstructed at all times in any image, video clip or other form of media.\n\n3.    Embedded web video must stream from the CNBC.com media player with the unobstructed credit as described above.\n\n###\n\nDAVID FABER: Brian, thank you. Elon Musk is here. We're in the lobby of the Gigafactory here in Austin. Last time I was here was your annual meeting a couple of years ago. So thank you for having us back.\n\nELON MUSK: Welcome back.\n\nFABER: Got a robotaxi right behind you.\n\nMUSK: We do?\n\nFABER: Yes. Yes, you can see it right there.\n\nMUSK: OK.\n\nFABER: And, obviously, the meeting with the transportation secretary.\n\nMUSK: Yes.\n\nFABER: Are you going to have full autonomous on the roads of Austin at the end -- by the end of June?\n\nMUSK: Yes.\n\nFABER: You are? What gives you that confidence?\n\nMUSK: We have cars driving 24/7 with drivers in the cars. And we see essentially no interventions. So we want to be very careful with the first introduction of unsupervised full self-driving, meaning that there's the cars driving around with no one in it.\n\nFABER: Right.\n\nMUSK: So we're going to be—\n\nFABER: No one behind a driver's—\n\nMUSK: Well, yes, and sometimes no one in it at all.\n\nFABER: Right.\n\nMUSK: Just going to pick someone up. So the car obviously has to be incredibly safe. So we're just being -- and we have thousands of cars that are being tested, which is creating some strange situations where we just drive -- there's just a bizarre number of Teslas driving past people's houses. They're like, what's going on?\n\nFABER: I think we even saw one last night coming from the airport.\n\nMUSK: Yes.\n\nFABER: Yes, driving at night alone.\n\nMUSK: So, just—\n\nFABER: It looked very lonely.\n\nMUSK: It's just -- it did look a little lonely.\n\nFABER: Yes.\n\nMUSK: So, yes, yes, it's looking good for Austin next month.\n\nFABER: Some estimates have been that you're only going to have 10 to 12 of them on the road initially. I mean, it's going to be a very small amount. Is that correct?\n\nMUSK: Yes, yes, for the first week.\n\nFABER: First week? How do you see it ramping up?\n\nMUSK: Well, we will have to see how well it does. But I think it's prudent for us to start with a small number, confirm that things are going well, and then scale it up proportionate to how well we see it's doing. So—\n\nFABER: Right. And what's going to be a judge of how well it's doing?\n\nMUSK: I mean, are there any incidents? Are there any interventions? And -- but we want to be -- we want to deliberately take it slow. I mean, we could start with 1,000 or 10,000 on day one, but I don't think that would be prudent. So we will start with probably 10 for a week, then increase it to 20, 30, 40. And I think by, say -- we will probably be at 1,000 within a few months. And then we will expand to other cities, so expand to the -- San Francisco, California, Los Angeles, San Antonio.\n\nFABER: Is that a real possibility in the not-too-distant future?\n\nMUSK: Yes, of course.\n\nFABER: I mean, Texas is very different, I don't need to tell you, then, California, when it comes to regulation. They don't really have much here in terms of dealing with autonomous, but it's a different story in California.\n\nMUSK: Yes, but California has already approved -- Waymo has been doing autonomous driving for a while. So—\n\nFABER: I know they have, right. But do you need a separate approval? Or is somehow—\n\nMUSK: Yes, yes, right now, the approval process is very haphazard—\n\nFABER: Yes.\n\nMUSK: And sort of state by state and sometimes city by city.\n\nFABER: We were talking to the secretary of transportation about that very fact a moment ago, yes.\n\nMUSK: Right. So it's going to be important to have a unified set of national regulations for self-driving cars. Otherwise, you're going to get into this weird situation where, if you're driving from Maine to New York, you're going to go through 10 different sets of regulations. Cars are going to behave differently. It's not going to make any sense.\n\nFABER: No.\n\nMUSK: So, one set of regulations that -- just like there is for highway driving, that's what I think makes sense for the country as a whole. But my prediction is that probably by the end of next year we will have probably hundreds of thousands, if not—\n\nFABER: Hundreds of thousands?\n\nMUSK: Over a million Teslas doing self-driving in the U.S.\n\nFABER: Those are not -- OK. What percentage of those are going to be -- well, not the Cybercab. You're just talking about on full self-driving level four?\n\nMUSK: Unsupervised full self-driving, where you do not need to pay attention.\n\nFABER: Right. Right. For me, if I own a Tesla and I have the software and the capability of doing it?\n\nMUSK: Yes.\n\nFABER: Right.\n\nMUSK: But we will have a model which is kind of like some combination of Uber and Airbnb. So if you're a Tesla owner—\n\nFABER: Right.\n\nMUSK: You will be able to add or subtract your car to the fleet. So just like an Airbnb, you could like rent out your spare bedroom or rent out your house when you're not using it. And the same thing will be available for Tesla owners.\n\nFABER: Right.\n\nMUSK: So it's a way for Tesla owners to earn revenue. for -- instead of having your car sit in the parking lot, your car could be earning money.\n\nFABER: We talked -- you and I talked about that a couple of years ago.\n\nMUSK: Yes.\n\nFABER: Which takes me back a bit, because, of course, you remember 2019, you were talking about 2020 the introduction of autonomous, and now you just introduced a fairly somewhat ambitious target. Why do you have the confidence now that in a -- what was it, in a year, there will be a million available?\n\nMUSK: Well, by the end of next year, I think. So, it's more like 18 months.\n\nFABER: End of next year, end of '26, OK, right.\n\nMUSK: Yes. I think that's -- I mean, these things happen slowly but then all at once. So it's a -- Peter Thiel, \"Zero to One.\" Once you make -- once you have a proof point, once you have it working, then scaling up is just a matter of time. So, once it's working well in Austin, then we will make sure it works well in other cities. I mean, there are obviously some unique cases like downtown New York—\n\nFABER: Yes.\n\nMUSK: Like if you're in -- but that's a highly unusual situation. Most cities in America are like Austin, so—\n\nFABER: Right, although you can go on full self-driving right now in New York. I mean, you can -- obviously you have to sit there behind the wheel.\n\nMUSK: Yes.\n\nFABER: But -- and it'll do it.\n\nMUSK: Oh, yes. No, it—\n\nFABER: It'll navigate the traffic. I have seen it.\n\nMUSK: Yes. So, even a Tesla that you buy right now and the self-driving just costs $99 a month, will give you autonomous driving anywhere in the country right now. The question is, when is it unsupervised—\n\nFABER: Right.\n\nMUSK: Where that's the best where we want to—\n\nFABER: Right, where you're sitting in the back, so to speak.\n\nMUSK: Yes, where you're like asleep, and a car -- you wake up at your destination.\n\nFABER: Yes.\n\nMUSK: In order for that to be the case, we want the autonomous car to be much safer than a car driven by a person.\n\nFABER: Right. Are we -- but, again -- I will come to Waymo, because, even though they only have about 700 cars, they obviously are on the market. They're in Beverly Hills all over the place.\n\nMUSK: Sure. It's a proof of concept.\n\nFABER: They have got 28 cameras. They have got lidar and radar. You have had a different approach, six -- I think eight to nine cameras and the neural network. Why do you feel that is going to be the equivalent in terms of safety profile?\n\nMUSK: Oh, I think it'll be better.\n\nFABER: Why?\n\nMUSK: Because the way that the road system is designed is for AI. It's basically, I should say, it's for intelligence, biological neural net, and eyes. That's how the whole road system is designed. So what will actually work best for the road system is artificial intelligence, digital neural nets, and cameras. And we also have the microphones. The car can hear emergency vehicles, that kind of thing.\n\nFABER: Right. You are going to have the microphones to hear the—\n\nMUSK: Yes, you need to hear—\n\nFABER: Because that was a question. Right, you need to hear a fire engine or a police car.\n\nMUSK: Yes, exactly.\n\nFABER: Right.\n\nMUSK: So -- but that's how the whole road system is designed. It's not designed for shooting lasers out of your eyes. So -- and what we found is that, when you have multiple sensors, they tend to get confused. So do you believe the camera or do you believe lidar? And if you get confused, that's where but -- that's what can lead to accidents. So we used to have, for example, radar in the car. But we found that the radar and the camera would sometimes disagree. And then you don't know which one to believe.\n\nFABER: So it wasn't about expense? It was just about—\n\nMUSK: No.\n\nFABER: Yes. Are you seeing the data right—\n\nMUSK: In fact, we turned off the radars in the cars.\n\nFABER: You turned off the radar? Yes.\n\nMUSK: Yes.\n\nFABER: So, I mean, are you comfortable right now? If I were to say to you, all right, let's go, do you think that you're there in terms of the safety profile you're seeing right now?\n\nMUSK: Yes, we could take a ride today, if you want, sure.\n\nFABER: Yes. Well, I'm happy to take a ride with you any time you want, wherever you want. Logistics capability to operate sort of a ride hailing fleet at scale, because you mentioned obviously what's called the end of '26. Are you going to have an app? Are you there? Do you have that ability?\n\nMUSK: I think we could figure out an app -- tells me.\n\nFABER: You're not worried about it?\n\nMUSK: Well, Tesla already has an app.\n\nFABER: Yes, I know. But -- so is there -- is there going to be a ride hailing app you will introduce to—\n\nMUSK: I think we can figure out how to write an app. That's really not the—\n\nFABER: It's not too hard?\n\nMUSK: No.\n\nFABER: xAI can probably do it for you in like an hour?\n\nMUSK: Tesla can write apps just fine..\n\nFABER: Do you ever license -- consider licensing the technology at some point?\n\nMUSK: Yes, yes, we're -- I mean, there are a number of major automakers that have talked to us about licensing self-driving, and we're very much open to that. So I think, the more we demonstrate the capability of self-driving, the more that they will want to license it, and we're happy to help.\n\nFABER: You know, back to the safety profile, because it's going to obviously be something key focus. Business Insider, take it for what you want, but I saw this over the weekend. They did a test between Waymo and and Tesla, and they weren't critical at all—\n\nMUSK: But Business Insider is not a real publication.\n\nFABER: No, but, but it did see—\n\nMUSK: They're a fake, they're fake.\n\nFABER: Regardless of whether we want to have a debate about their journalistic integrity, which I don't, I the test itself. Let me just share with you and get your reaction, which was the Waymo ultimately, they said proved better in part, only because it avoided with its geofencing one very difficult intersection that the Tesla chose to go through. It stopped at a red light, but then it went through the red light. What's your reaction?\n\nMUSK: Look, I'm not going to comment on some Business Insider article.\n\nFABER: But is that a concern at all? Because, in a way, there's no geofencing, so it's like happy to go on the highways in a way that perhaps a Waymo is not. I guess my question is, is that a concern at all for you, in terms of it encountering things that are still sort of a crucial test and perhaps it fails?\n\nMUSK: No. First of all that was that that actually should have been a test of supervised on self-driving, supervised self-driving, not unsupervised self-driving. So the assumption there is that you have a person who is going to take over.\n\nFABER: Right.\n\nMUSK: So their test made no sense.\n\nFABER: Okay.\n\nMUSK: For when we deploy the cars in Austin, we are actually going to play not to the entire Austin region, but only the parts of Austin that we consider to be the safest. So we will geofence it.\n\nFABER: You will.\n\nMUSK: Yeah, of course.\n\nFABER: Right.\n\nMUSK: So it's not going to take intersections, unless we are highly confident it'll, it's going to do well with that intersection or just, it'll just take a route around that intersection.\n\nFABER: But there won't be a safety driver in the car—\n\nMUSK: Correct.\n\nFABER: Right? The car, it won't. There's not going to be somebody sitting there.\n\nMUSK: Right.\n\nFABER: But you did have ads for vehicle operator, autopilots. What was that about then? Are there going to be people who are remotely sort of monitoring the performance of the fleet?\n\nMUSK: Yeah.\n\nFABER: And what will they do?\n\nMUSK: They'll just be, we're going to be extremely paranoid about the deployment as we should be. It would be foolish not to be so we'll be watching what the cars are doing very carefully. And as we find, as confidence grows, you know, less of that will be needed.\n\nFABER: You know, again, you spoke about it, and we spoke about it a couple of years ago, and obviously your investor base, many of whom are watching right now, are interested in the revenue and profitability of this ride hailing, autopilot, auto, robotaxi and autonomous driving opportunity. BYD, I believe at this point in China is now offering levels of autonomy for free. I mean, are you confident you're going to be in a position to continue to get a premium for that particular level?\n\nMUSK: Well, interestingly, in China, we, we're not allowed to train on videos in China, so when we released for self-driving, it was actually just trained on the rest of the world, but not in China. And the tests by local Chinese publications, I think, concluded that even without training on local Chinese roads, Tesla self-driving was the best.\n\nFABER: It was the best.\n\nMUSK: Yes.\n\nFABER: But again, I mean, it's the technology—\n\nMUSK: There's some pretty wild videos where people are like doing self-driving, which we don't recommend, obviously, on like narrow mountain roads, including one where it's there's a sharp precipice on either side and no barriers, and they're doing self-driving across that.\n\nFABER: They may have more confidence than, perhaps they have more confidence in China.\n\nMUSK: Yeah, we don't recommend this, but I saw the video.\n\nFABER: Are you, are you regulated to have, where are you in China right now in terms of your ability to offer that product though?\n\nMUSK: Well, we, we have, just get the terminology right—\n\nFABER: Understood.\n\nMUSK: Unsupervised. Sorry, supervised for self-driving, where there's a person in the car. It has approval in China. But as we, whenever we release a new version, we have to get an incremental approval.\n\nFABER: Right.\n\nMUSK: And at times we, you know, we do have to battle other car companies in China who are trying to stop us from—\n\nFABER: It's an incredibly competitive market, isn't it?\n\nMUSK: China is the most competitive market, yeah.\n\nFABER: And to the extent BYD, which is neck and neck with you, I think in the EV race, I think it's fair to say worldwide, correct?\n\nMUSK: I don't really follow that.\n\nFABER: You don't?\n\nMUSK: No.\n\nFABER: Well, they're willing, again, my question is, they're willing to seemingly offer different levels of autonomy for I don't want to call it free, but part of the cost of the of the car. Do you see that as a possibility for you, or is it always going to be that add on and therefore that significant revenue stream conceivably?\n\nMUSK: I don't really think about competitors. I just think about making the product as perfect as possible.\n\nFABER: You don't think about competitors at all.\n\nMUSK: I don't. I just think about making, what we want to achieve is the platonic ideal of the perfect product. And as long as you focus on that, you will have a compelling product, obviously.\n\nFABER: Alright, well, there's a potentially compelling product right behind you, which is a robotaxi. So when are we, you know, in five years, are they going to be all over the place?\n\nMUSK: Yes.\n\nFABER: They will. You're confident in that.\n\nMUSK: Yeah.\n\nFABER: Talking about Tesla, obviously, you know, takes me to a certain extent, to what some would say is the brand damage done by your government service. I don't know if you would agree with that.\n\nMUSK: It has some pros and cons.\n\nFABER: There have been some pros and cons. You know, we sat here two years ago, upstairs, and you famously said when I asked you about this very subject, I don't care. I'm going to say what I want to say. And so be it. Do you regret that?\n\nMUSK: No.\n\nFABER: No, why not?\n\nMUSK: I believe that we want to live in a free society where people are allowed to say what they want to say within reasonable bounds, like you know, you can't advocate for the murder of somebody, but free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy. That's why it's the First Amendment.\n\nFABER: Without a doubt. But I guess my question is more about your work at DOGE, for example, was that worth it? You know, to the extent you are now Elon, you are somewhat divisive figure two years ago, but now you really are. I mean, there are people who love you, but there are a lot of people who dislike you, some of whom were your customers. And I wonder, was it worth the undertaking at DOGE and everything else that you've done and how outspoken you've been in terms of the things you believe in to antagonize so many potential buyers and/or users of things like a robotaxi?\n\nMUSK: Well, I mean, unfortunately, what I've learned is that legacy media propaganda is very effective at making people believe things that aren't true.\n\nFABER: What would an example of that be?\n\nMUSK: That I'm a Nazi, for example, and how many legacy media publications, talk shows, whatever, try to claim that I was a Nazi because of some random hand gesture gesture at a rally where all I said was that my heart goes out to you, and I was talking about space travel, and yet the legacy media promoted that as though that was a deliberate Nazi gesture, when in fact, every politician, any public speaker who's spoken for any length of time, has made the exact same gesture. And yet there's so people out there, and I've never harmed us. I've never harmed a single person.\n\nFABER: You know what Elon. I wasn't even going to talk—\n\nMUSK: Now you asked for an example. And that's—\n\nFABER: I wasn't even going to talk about it because, in fact—\n\nMUSK: It's horrible.\n\nFABER: I showed a number of people who are close to you, and I called them afterwards, and all of them to a person were like, no way, no way.\n\nMUSK: Of course not.\n\nFABER: But that isn't necessarily the perception. Now, the work you've done for DOGE has also come, obviously, into the spotlight in a great deal. And you know, people are upset about USAID being put into the woodchipper. People are upset about AmeriCorps disappearing. People are upset about –this isn't even on your side – the NIH and so many other areas that they feel, rightly or wrongly, are being cut as a result of your efforts. And I just, I guess I wonder, as you start to transition now, back to Tesla in a more significant way. Was it worth it?\n\nMUSK: Yeah, first of all, any program in USAID that had any semblance of merit was retained and folded into the State Department. So, and if there's some exception to that, we're all ears, and we'd love to look at it. We just want to see the evidence that the program was doing, actually doing good, and not just funding for after DC and warlords in some countries. Over and over again, we saw not – some sympathetic sounding programs, but when we actually said, well, please show us pictures of the recipients of the aid, we just – or let us get into contact with them. No pictures were forthcoming. They didn't give us any contact information. And we're like, look, we're not going to send money to DC grafters and warlords. That's not – that's not a good use of money. So that's not what we're going to do now, invariably, when you stop waste and fraud, it's not like the fraudsters admit their guilt. They don't say like, Oh, isn't it so great that the money we're getting, fortunately, has been stopped. They will obviously come up with a sympathetic sounding claim that, but not that – that claim has no merit.\n\nFABER: That all may be true. I guess what I would come back to, because I talked about economics all day long, is, you know, to your point you've been making. We have a deficit that's running at about 6.7% of GDP. We have interest costs that are going to be above a trillion. It's not going down next year. You entered this thinking you could cut as much as a trillion dollars. You're nowhere near that. It's not really making the dent I think you may have thought you might have been able to achieve in terms of a true problem. Would you agree?\n\nMUSK: Well, first of all, it would obviously be ridiculous to assume that we could achieve that on day one. So it's only been but what, four months?\n\nFABER: Yeah.\n\nMUSK: And we've done, by our calculations – people may disagree – improved the deficit by $160 billion. That's our –\n\nFABER: Right. I mean, that is your number that is out there.\n\nMUSK: Yeah.\n\nFABER: A lot of people take issue with it and say, well, you know, taxpayers expenses, such as paid leave, that's 135 billion. That's got to come back. IRS collection may go down as a result of cuts there. I asked Grok, it said, between 5 and 32 billion is what you've actually saved.\n\nMUSK: You need to ask – the right question to ask is, what is the bet for – the bet for the actions of DOGE, what would the incremental expenditures be in FY 26.\n\nFABER: Yep.\n\nMUSK: Because, for example, we offered early – we offered severance and early retirement to a lot of government employees. Many of them took us up on that. That severance went all the way through to September.\n\nFABER: Yeah.\n\nMUSK: So there's not going to be any savings until October, because the severance goes through September.\n\nFABER: Understood.\n\nMUSK: So the Delta really is, what is the spending difference FY 25 versus FY 26 as a function of DOGE's actions? That's how we calculate the number, and we'll see if that number, if that turns out to be true or not.\n\nFABER: Aren't there more effective ways we ultimately could have gotten at it? I mean, by changing the retirement age or really going after some other parts of the budget?\n\nMUSK: We're trying to go after every part of the budget. That's just – some parts are more boring than others.\n\nFABER: You're about efficiency. I mean, that would take an act of Congress, obviously, to really make a change in the significance I'm talking about.\n\nMUSK: Yeah. First of all. So I think the, in our opinion, we've created $160 billion Delta, FY 25 to FY 26. Very significant. That's 16% of the way towards a trillion in five months. And in order to make progress, we need the consent, obviously, of the not just the executive branch, but also the legislative branch and the judicial branch. So if we, you know, and we are advisors, we are not – we're not kings, here.\n\nFABER: No. I get it.\n\nMUSK: So why are you attacking this, given that we've made so much progress?\n\nFABER: You mean the – not me.\n\nMUSK: Okay.\n\nFABER: Not me. I'm not attacking. I'm just asking questions. In fact, I want to ask a lot more about Tesla. I'm told you have a call at 1:30 I don't know if you'll be able to come back or but –\n\nMUSK: I might be able to come back.\n\nFABER: Let me – well, that would be great, because I do want to talk about Tesla. I mean, I was talking about brand damage, and what you're seeing in the market. You did an interview earlier this morning, where you seem to indicate you're starting to see a rebound.\n\nMUSK: Yes.\n\nFABER: But automotive revenue was down 20% last quarter. I think 50,000 fewer units were sold in the Q1 versus Q1 a year ago. What is giving you confidence in the automotive business? Or is it all about robotaxis, as you've been saying, and people can't quite see them behind me, the robots as well.\n\nMUSK: Well, really, the only things that matter in long term are autonomy and Optimus. Those overwhelmingly dominate the future of financial success of the company. As for Q1, we had a global factory change over for the Model Y, so there's a new version of the Model Y that came out, which required a factory shutdown across the world. Model Y is the number one selling car of any kind –\n\nFABER: Number one in the world.\n\nMUSK: Number one in the world.\n\nFABER: I watched your presentation during your last – right here, I think during your last –\n\nMUSK: Right. It's number one, number one selling car in the world. So, you know, we can't – we have eight cars the factories are retooling. So we – three – and the right time to retool is the first quarter, since, generally, that's when the least amount occurs. But we've seen a major rebound in demand at this point. I feel comfortable with –\n\nFABER: You have seen a major rebound in demand.\n\nMUSK: Oh yeah.\n\nFABER: You really believe – you have seen that?\n\nMUSK: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, look for most people, I mean, when you buy a product, I mean, how much do you care about the political views of the CEO? Or do even know what they are?\n\nFABER: No, you don't, but you've made it – you know, frustratingly, Elon, I know you have a 1:30 call we promised to get you out in time for it. I hope you'll come back, perhaps if you can afterwards. I'm happy to wait here.\n\nMUSK: Sure.\n\nFABER: And sit and and talk to you some more. But I want to let you go because I know that's an important call.\n\nMUSK: All right, sounds good.\n\nFABER: Thank you for taking this time. I hope we get to talk some more on the other side, about this very issue. Elon Musk, obviously joining us, hosting us here at the gigafactory and perhaps he will come back as well, in a little bit but I will end it there for now. Kelly."},"languages":["en"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":"https://www.cnbc.com/2025/05/20/cnbc-transcript-elon-musk-sits-down-with-cnbcs-david-faber-live-on-cnbc-today-.html"},{"id":"qatar-economic-forum-2025-musk","type":"interview","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iqd8D48mYhQ","title":"Qatar Economic Forum","titles":{"en":"Qatar Economic Forum","de":"Qatar Economic Forum","fr":"Qatar Economic Forum"},"date":"2025-05-20","summary":"A near 40-minute Bloomberg interview at the Qatar Economic Forum: Musk's future at Tesla, stepping back from politics, the OpenAI/Altman feud and a possible Starlink IPO.","text":"Hey, this is David Papadopoulos, host of Elon, Inc. Uh we have for you this week um our interview in Cutter uh that our colleague Michelle Hussein did with Elon himself. Here is that interview in its entirety right now. And you should also know that our episode, our Elon Inc. episode this week is all about me and Max breaking down the interview and dissecting it, the highlights, the low lightss, etc. , etc. Enjoy. Hello everyone and Elon Musk.\n\nWelcome to Qatar Economic Forum. How are you? Thank you for having me. I'm fine. How are you? Very well, thank you. And very pleased to have you with us. You know, among those here in the audience in DHA are some you will know, people who have backed you financially over the years. Since you last spoke here in 2022, a lot has changed in your life.\n\nYou're not only running multiple companies, you were doing that then, but now you also have a role in government. So, first of all, I hope you won't mind if from time to time I have to move you from one topic to another because we have a lot to cover in the time we have. That would be all right. Okay. Well, let's start then with exactly the fact that you now have this combination of being a CEO and having a role as a government adviser.\n\nTell me about your week. How does it work? What's the split of your time? Well, I travel a lot. So, I was in Silicon Valley yesterday morning. I was in LA yesterday evening. I'm in Austin right now. I'll be in DC tomorrow. I'll be there uh after having dinner with the president tomorrow night, I believe. Um and then uh whole bunch of cabinet secretary meetings and then uh back to Silon Valley on Thursday night.\n\nBut I mean the balance of your time is it is it well clearly it's a lot but is it still the case as you said a while ago that it's about one to two days a week on your government work. Yeah that's correct. And what does that mean for your corporate life? Because if we start with Tesla the company has suffered in recent months what you've called blowback.\n\nSo, what is your plan for turning that around, the declining sales picture, and by what stage do you think you're going to be able to turn it around? Oh, it's already turned around. Give me some evidence for that. I've just been looking at the sales figures for Europe in April, which show very significant declines in the big markets. Uh Europe is our weakest market. We're strong everywhere else.\n\nUm so uh our sales are are doing doing well at this point. Um we don't anticipate any any meaningful sales shortfall and um the you know the obviously the stock market recognizes that since we're now back over a trillion dollars in market cap. So um clearly the market is aware of the situation. So it's it's already turned around. But sales still down compared to this time last year in Europe. In Europe. Okay.\n\nAnd yes, but but that's that's true of of all manufacturers. There's no exceptions. Does that mean that you're not going to be able Does that mean European market is quite weak? Okay. But you would acknowledge, wouldn't you, that what you are facing, okay, let's just take it as Europe. What you are facing is a significant problem. This Tesla was an incredibly aspirational brand. People identified with it.\n\nIt saw it, they saw it being at the forefront of the climate crisis. And now people are driving around with stickers in their cars saying, \"I bought this before we knew Elon was crazy.\" And there also people are buying buying it because uh Elon's crazy or however they may view it. Um so yes, we've lost some sales perhaps on the left, but we've gained them on the right.\n\nuh the sales numbers at this point uh are strong and uh we we see no problem with demand. So what the and I mean you you can just look at the stock price the the the if you want the best inside information the um stock market uh analysts have that and um a stock wouldn't be uh trading near all-time highs if uh it was not if things weren't in good shape. They're fine. Don't worry about it. Okay.\n\nI I was citing sales figures ra ra ra ra ra ra ra ra ra ra ra ra ra ra ra ra ra ra ra ra ra ra ra ra ra ra ra rather than share price. Well, tell me then how committed you are to Tesla. Do you see yourself and are you committed to still being the chief executive of Tesla in 5 years time? Yes. No doubt about that at all. Well, no, I might die. Okay, short of that. I can't see you if I'm dead. So there's a slight mode.\n\nDoes does that mean that the value of your pay doesn't have any bearing on your decision? Um well that's not really a subject subject of discussion in this forum. Um the I think obviously there should be compensation for if there's if something incredible is done that compensation should match um the that something incredible was done.\n\nUm but I I'm I'm confident that uh whatever the um whatever some activist posing as a judge in Delaware happens to do will not affect the future compensation. This is the judge who twice struck down the $56 billion pay package that was that was awarded to you. I think the value on the basis on the current value of stock options. Yeah. Not a judge. Not a judge. The activist who is cosplaying a judge in a Halloween costume. Okay.\n\nThat that's your characterization. Um I think the val on the current value of stock options. I think the actual justice according to the law on the current value of stock options I think the value of that pay package stands at about hundred billion dollars. Are you saying you are relaxed about the value of your future pay package?\n\nYour decision to be committed to Tesla for the next 5 years as long as you are still with us on this planet is completely independent of pay. No, it's not independent. So pay is a relevant factor then to your commitment to Tesla. Um sufficient voting control such that um I cannot be ousted by activist investors is what matters to me. And I've said this publicly many times. Um but let's not have this whole thing be a discussion of my alleged pay.\n\nIt's not a money thing. It's a a reasonable control thing over the future of the company. Especially if we're building uh millions, potentially billions of humanoid robots. Um, I can't be sitting there u uh and wanting to get tossed out by um for political reasons by activists. That would be unacceptable. That's all that matters. No, let's move on. Okay. Well, just one question. Let's move on.\n\nWell, one question before we move on to other companies, which is that I wonder if some of what you've has happened to Tesla in the last few months, did you take it personally? Yes. And did it make you regret any of or think twice about your political endeavors because it is I did I did what needed to be done. Uh the the violent antibody reaction um and I'm I'm not someone who's ever committed violence.\n\nUm, and yet, uh, massive violence was committed against my companies. Massive violence was threatened against me. Who are these people? Why would they do that? How wrong can they be? They're on the wrong They're on the wrong side of history. And that's an evil thing to do. To go and damage some po innocent person's car to threaten to kill me. What's wrong with these people? have not harmed anyone. So, something needs to be done about them.\n\nAnd a number of them are going to prison and they deserve it. And more will you're you're referring to the attacks on Tesla showrooms, but I think bullets into showrooms and burning down cars is unacceptable. Yeah. Those people will go to prison and the people that funded them and organized them will also go to prison. Don't worry.\n\nBut wouldn't you you wouldn't wouldn't but wouldn't wouldn't you acknowledge that some of the people who turned against Tesla in Europe were were upset at your politics and very few of them would have been violent in any way. They just objected to to what they saw you say or do politically. Well, it's certainly fine to object to political things, but it's not it's not fine to resort uh to violence and hanging someone in effigy and death threats.\n\nUm that's obviously not okay. Um uh you know uh that's absurd. Um that is uh in no way justifiable at all in any way, shape or form. And and uh some of the the legacy media nonetheless have sought to justify it which is unconscionable. Shame on them. Let's talk about your other companies then and other business areas.\n\nSpaceX, I saw that you said in a speech at the West Point uh Military Academy recently that the future of warfare is AI and drones and obviously defense is an increasingly booming sector with the state of the world at the moment. Do you see SpaceX moving into weaponized drones? [Laughter] you certainly ask interesting questions uh that are impossible to answer. Um so no SpaceX is uh it's it's the space launch leader. So SpaceX doesn't do drones.\n\nUh SpaceX builds rockets, satellites, and internet terminals. Um so but SpaceX has has a a very dominant position in space launch. So of of the mass launch to orbit this year, SpaceX will probably do 90%. Um, China will do the rema half half of the remaining amount, so 5% and the rest of the world, including the rest of the US, will do about 5%.\n\nSo SpaceX will do about 10 times as much as the rest of the world combined or 20 times as much as China, which is and China is doing actually a very impressive job. Um the reason for this is that we are putting into into orbit the largest satellite constellation the world has ever seen by far. Um so I think at this point about maybe approaching 80% of all active satellites in orbit are SpaceX.\n\nUm and they're providing global high high bandwidth global connectivity uh throughout the world. In fact this connection is on a SpaceX connection.\n\nSo I think this is a very good thing um because it means that we can um provide lowcost high bandwidth internet to parts of the world that don't have it or it's very expensive and I think the single biggest thing you can do to lift people out of poverty and help them is giving them um an internet connection um because once you have the internet connection you can learn anything for free on the internet and you can also sell your goods and services to the global market um and um once you have knowledge um by the internet and the ability to engage in commerce um that this is going to greatly improve quality of life for people throughout the world and it has um and I just like to thank anyone in the audience who may have been helpful in you know um with\n\nStarlink and and getting it to approved in their country and I think it's doing a lot of good and the countries that have approved it which is I think at this point 130 countries are very happy with Um I I I don't currently anticipate SpaceX getting into the weapons business.\n\nThat's certainly that's not an aspiration. We're frequent we're frequently asked uh to do to do weapons programs, but we have thus far declined. Do you envisage SpaceX or indeed Starlink as a separate entity publicly listing in the near future or at all? Um, it's possible that Starlink uh may go public at some point in the future and what would be the what would be the time frame? What kind of time frame you consider? I mean, no rush.\n\nI'm no I'm in no rush to go public. um the the you know public is I guess a way to um you know potentially make more money but at the expense of a lot of public company overhead and inevitably um a whole bunch of lawsuits which are very annoying.\n\nUm, so really something needs to be done about the shareholder shareholder derivative lawsuits uh in the US uh because it allows uh uh plaintiffs law firms who don't represent the shareholders to pretend that they represent the shareholders by getting a puppet plaintiff with a few shares uh to initiate a massive lawsuit against the company.\n\nAnd the irony being that extreme irony uh that uh even if the class they purport to represent were to vote that they don't want the lawsuit, the lawsuit would still continue. So how can it be a an a class action representing a class if the class vote against it? And that's the bizarre situation we've got in the US. It needs it's a dire need of reform and as as anyone who's run a public company experienced this.\n\nIt's an absurd situation that needs to change. Well, do you think Donald Trump might change it? You've certainly got his ear. I imagine that you've put this to him. Is this something you're trying to change before any Starlink IPO? Well, it would it would need a law to be passed. Um the the trouble being that you need 60 Senator Senate votes and the Democrats um will vote against it.\n\nUm the um the the the the plaintiff's bar is I believe the second largest contributor to the Democratic party. That's the that's the issue. At the state level, this can be solved. And and I should say Texas recently passed a law which um at this at least the state level made much more reasonable because you have to get at least one in 33 shareholders to agree that they are part of a class of shareholders 3%.\n\nThis is a this will be will be really help with privileged lawsuits. Okay. Um let's talk about AI which is in so many of your businesses and in all our worlds in different ways. It's one of the big changes the development of generative AI since you last spoke um to this forum three years ago. You're in this space of course um with Grock which almost everyone will know.\n\nYou co-founded Open AI and then left and you've obviously got a legal battle um with Open AI and Sam Orman. wonder if you could say something about the status of that because you were together in Saudi Arabia with the president last week um with Sam Orman together in the same place at the same time was in the in the neighborhood. Okay. So does does that mean you are pushing ahead with the lawsuit against open AI? Yes.\n\nSo, look, I came I came up with the name OpenAI as an open-source um and as a nonprofit and I funded AI OpenAI for the first roughly $50 million um and um it was intended to be a nonprofit uh open-source company and now it is they're trying to change that for their own financial benefit uh into a for-profit company that is closed source.\n\nSo, this would be like let's say you um you funded a a nonprofit to help preserve the Amazon rainforest, but instead of doing that, they became a lumber company, chopped down the forest, and sold the wood. You'd be like, \"Wait a second, that's not what I funded.\" That's open AI. They've made some changes to their corporate structure though, haven't they, since in in recognition of what of what you've said.\n\nAnd no, that's just what they told the media. Okay. Um part they have part they have partly walked back their plan to restructure the business. I guess that's made no difference to how you feel about it. So you determined to see them in court. Of course. Okay. Well that that's certainly going to be one to watch.\n\nI also wanted to ask you about AI and regulation because when you were here last talking to John Mikkelthweight, you had some pretty strong words about the risk that AI poses and you said that you really felt what the US was missing was a federal AI regulator that you know something along the lines of the Food and Drug Administration or the Federal Aviation Administration.\n\nNow you're clearly now in a zone where you're more you're more on the cutting regulation side than wanting new regulators. So has your view changed on the need for an AI regulator? Well, it's not that I don't think there should be regulators. Um you can think of regulators like referees on the on the field in sports.\n\nUm there should be some number of referees, but that you shouldn't have so many referees that you can't kick the ball without hitting one. Um so um in many in most uh apps uh fields in the US the the regulatory burden has grown over time to the point where it's like having more referees than than players on the field. Um so um and this is a natural consequence of an extended period of prosperity. It's very important to uh appreciate this.\n\nThis has happened throughout history. When you have an extended period of prosperity with no existential war, there's no there's no um cleansing function for uh the for for unnecessary um laws and regulations.\n\nSo what happens is that every year more laws and more regulations are passed because you know legislators are going to legislate, regulators are going to regulate um and you will get the steady pile of more and more laws and regulations over time until everything is illegal. And let me give you an example of of a of a truly absurd situation. Um, under the Biden administration, SpaceX um, was sued for not hiring asylum seekers in the US.\n\nNow, the problem is it's actually illegal for SpaceX under ITAR, international traffic and arms regulations to hire anyone who is not a permanent resident of the United States because the the premise being that they will take advanced rocket technology and return to their home country if they're not a permanent resident.\n\nSo, we're simultaneously uh in a situation where it is illegal to hire asylum seekers and is also uh illegal to hire asylum seekers and the Biden's Department of Justice chose to prosecute us despite both paths being illegal. Damned if you do, damned if you don't. But my question was specifically about a regulator for AI, which you said 3 years ago was needed. And you said we need to be proactive on the regulation of AI rather than reactive.\n\nHave you changed your mind on that? No, of course not. What what No, of course not. What I'm saying is that there should be some referees on the field, a few a few referees, but you shouldn't have a field jam-packed with referees uh such that you cannot kick a ball in any direction without hitting one.\n\nSo the the the the fields that have been around for a long time such as automotive um so aerospace uh you know uh the sort of food and drug industries are overregulated but the new fields like artificial intelligence are underregulated. In fact there is no regulator at So, so there should be one. Do you still think that? Yes.\n\nI'm simply saying, which I think is just basic common sense, that you that you want to have at least you you want to have a few referees on the field. You don't want to have an army of referees. Um, but you want to have a few referees on on any given field in any given sport or even any given arena, industrial arena. Um, to ensure help that public safety um is taken care of.\n\nUm, but you don't want to have so so there's a there's a there's a a proper number of referees. Like like I said, it's actually very easy to visualize this when compared to sports. If the if the whole field is packed with with referees, that would look absurd. Um, but if there were no referees at all, your game's not going to be as good. Okay. So, let's then talk about your new world, your your role advising government.\n\nYou are in this unique and unprecedented position of having billions of dollars worth of contracts with the federal government yourself mostly through SpaceX and also now an insidider's knowledge of it because of Doge. Can you see that there is a conflict of interest or a potential conflict of interest in broad terms just through that very fact?\n\nUm I I don't think so actually there have been many advisers in uh throughout history and in the US government and others who have had economic interests. Um and I am simply an adviser. I don't have a formal power. Um and that's it. Uh the president can choose to uh accept my advice or not and that's that's how it goes.\n\nUm if there's a single contract that uh you know any of my companies have received that people think is somehow not uh was was awarded improperly um it would immediately be front page news um to say the least um and and if if if I hadn't mentioned it certainly my competitors would. So if you're not seeing that um then clearly there's not a conflict of interest.\n\nUm the uh yeah um there's another way though to look at it that for example you have many competitors whether it's companies like Boeing or companies who would like to do more of the kind of work you do for NASA, Blue Origin, Rocket Lab and because Doge is in every federal government department, you or people who work for Doge and and you are the driving force behind it have an insight into those companies affairs.\n\nand those companies relationships with the federal government. No, all we do is we um review uh the organization to see if if the organization has uh departments that are no longer relevant. Um and and then are the contracts that that are being awarded good value for money? In fact, frankly, the bar is not particularly high. Is there any value for money in a contract? Um and if there's if there isn't then we make recommendations to the secretary.\n\nThe secretary can then choose to uh take those actions or not take those actions and that's it. And then any action that that that is as a function of Doge is posted to the Doge website um and to the Doge. gov or at at doge handle on the Xplatform. So it's it's complete trans transparency. Um and I have not seen any case where uh to the best of my knowledge there's even been an accusation of conflict.\n\nUm because it is it's completely and utterly transparent. Um that's a and what about the international dimension now? Um let's think about Starlink. Starink is obviously a very very good internet service. It's sought after all over the world. It's critical to the front line in Ukraine.\n\nIt has also had more contracts coming its way and there is some evidence that companies are allowing access to it because they want to be close to the Trump administration and send the right signal. So Bloomberg broke news today that the South African government is working around the rules on black ownership in order to allow Starink and that is being done on the eve of the visit that President Ramaposa is going to make to the White House.\n\nDo you recognize that as a conflict of interest? No, of course not. First of all, you should be questioning why is there why are there racist laws in South Africa? That's the first problem. That's what you should be attacking. Um it's improper for there be racist laws in South Africa. Um the whole whole idea with what Nelson Mandela, who was a great man, proposed was that all all races should be on an equal footing in South Africa.\n\nThat's the right thing to do, not to replace one set of racist laws with another set of racist laws, which is utterly wrong and improv. Um so the that's that's the deal that all races should be treated equally. Um and there should be no preference given to one or the other. Uh whereas there are now 140 laws in South Africa that give u a pre that basically um are give strong preference to to if if you're black South African and um not otherwise.\n\nAnd so now I'm in this absurd situation where I was born in South Africa but cannot get a license to operate in Starlink because I'm not black. Well, it looks like that's about its looks like right to you. Looks like that's about to change. I just asked you a question. Please answer. Does that seem right to you? Well, those rules were designed to bring those rules were designed to bring about an era of more economic equality in South Africa.\n\nAnd it looks like the government has found a way around those rules for you. I ask you a question. This is this is your interview. Everyone wants to hear from you. Ask your question. Yes or no? Yes or no? Not not for me to answer. I have got a question for you about uh about your government work though and the amount of savings. Why do you like racist laws? This is not for me to answer. Come on now. You wouldn't be trying to dodge a question.\n\nYou have to ask question. My question answer No, you answer mine. I think I think if you I'm sure you can have that conversation directly with the South African government if you want to. I want to ask you about the total I can't believe it. That's not good. I want to ask you about the total amount. I want to ask you about the total amount that you're planning to save through Doge's work.\n\nBefore the election, you said it was going to be at least$2 trillion. The number currently on Doge. gov is $170 billion. That's a big change. What happened to the two trillion? Well, would you expect it to happen immediately? Well, is it going to happen? Because DOA is supposed to run till next July. I mean your question is absurd in in its fundamental premise.\n\nUm are you assuming that that on day you know within a few months there's an instant two trillion saved? No I'm not at all. I'm just asking is that still your aim then? Is it still your aim to get the amount of time? Have we not made good progress given the amount of time? That's exactly what I'm asking. So is it still your aim to go from 170 billion to two trillion?\n\nUm the the ability of Doge to operate is a function of whether uh the government and this includes the Congress uh is willing to take our advice. Uh we are not the dictators of the government, we are the adviserss and so we can we can advise and the progress we've made thus far I think is incredible. Doge team has done incredible work.\n\nUm but uh the magnitude of this the savings is proportionate to the support we get from Congress um and from the uh executive branch of the government in general. Um so we're not the dictators, we are the advisers. Um but thus far for advisers we've the George team to their credit um has made uh incredible progress.\n\nYou've talked about4 billion dollars a day being saved, but that that that won't get which is and I think everyone can agree that combating waste and inefficiency in government is a very good thing, but if you add that up, it's not going to get to two trillion over the lifetime of Doge. I'm sorry. The 4 billion the four billion a day if Doge is going to run till next July is not going to get you to2 trillion dollars.\n\nBut you still say it's your aim. So we'll take that as red. There's there's there's there's what doge I mean I feel you're somewhat trapped in the uh NPC dialogue tree of a traditional ver uh journalist. So it's difficult when I'm conversing with someone who's trapped in the dialogue tree of a conventional journalist because it's like talking to a computer. Um so uh Doge is an advisory group. We are doing the best we can um as an advisory group.\n\nUh the progress made thus far as an advisory group is excellent. Um I don't think any advisory group has done better in the history of advisory groups of the government. Um now uh we we we do not make the laws nor do we control the the judiciary nor do we control the executive branch. We are simply advisers. In that context we are doing very well.\n\nUm beyond that we cannot uh do we cannot take action beyond that because we are not u some sort of imperial dictator of the government. There are three branches of government that uh that are to some degree opposed to that level of cost savings. Um but nonetheless uh let's let's let's not uh criticize whether there's uh 4 trillion um and instead look at the fact that 160 billion has been saved and more will be saved too.\n\nAnd as I said I think everyone can agree that cutting waste and indeed fraud in any government and being responsible with taxpayers money is a very good thing. So yes, I can see I can see that you're proud of that work. Um I do want to ask you about um US aid and the comments that Bill Gates made the other day which and I know that you called him. Yeah, he's a huge I know you you've said that already.\n\nI wondered also and I'm just who does who does Bill Gates think he is to make comments about the welfare of children given that he was he for a coin to Jeffrey Epste? Okay. Well, he's he's he's he said he regrets those and I trust that guy. He spent a lot he spent a lot of his own money on uh on philanthropy around the world over the years.\n\nMy question to you is, have you looked at the data to check if he might be right that the cuts to USAD might cost millions of lives? Uh yes. Um, I'd like him to show us any any evidence whatsoever that that is true. It's false. Um, the what what we found with USAD cuts, and by the way, they haven't all been cut. The the parts of USA ID that we found to be uh even slightly useful were transferred to the State Department.\n\nThey've not they've not been deleted. They've simply been transferred to the State Department. Um but many many times over with USAD and other organizations when we've when they've said oh well this is going to help you know uh children or it's going to help some um uh disease eradication or something like that.\n\nUm and then when we ask for any evidence whatsoever um I say well please connect us with this group of children so we can talk to them and understand more about their issue. We get nothing.\n\nWe we don't they don't even try to prevent show come up with a with a with a show orphan meaning like it's sort of like well can we at least see a few kids like where where are they if they're in trouble we'd like to talk to them and talk to their caregivers and then we get something as a response because it's what we find is an enormous amount of of fraud and graft let me put this example very little of it actually gets to the kids if anything at Okay, let let me put this example to you because you grew up in South Africa so you'll know the impact of HIV AIDS well and this is why I asked about the data.\n\nThe US led on international efforts to combat HIV AIDS treatment prevention and there's an initiative called PEPAR which is credited with saving 26 million lives in the last 20 years. It was part of the foreign aid freeze. Then there was a limited waiver. ID services are disrupted and UN aid says if permanently discontinued there will be another 4 million AIDS related deaths by 2029.\n\nSo if you look at that example which is backed up by data in 2023 630,000 people died of AIDS related illnesses then perhaps Bill Gates's figures are not wrong. Millions of lives could be lost. Um I first of all the program the the the AIDS uh uh um medication uh program is continuing. So your fundamental premise is wrong. It is continuing. Now do you have another example? Not Elon. Not in its entirety. That is false. Not in its entirety.\n\nthe the program there's a limited waiver and UN aids have said that not all of the services that were previously funded by USA ID are continuing so that's that's why that's why I put that example to you okay well which ones aren't being funded I'll fix it right now for okay well actually they're all on the UN UN aids website so you'll be able to see them but mostly they are to do with mostly they are to do with prevention and for example the roll out of a drug um called Glenn Capavir which which was hailed as one of the biggest breakthroughs against AIDS for many years which came out last year.\n\nSo if you are perhaps I'm sure UNA you as would be delighted if you're able to look at that again. Yes. Well well if if if if in fact this is true which I doubt it is then we'll fix it. Okay fine. Um so finally political your political influence I wondered whether you have decided yet how much you're going to spend on uh the the upcoming midterms.\n\nIs it you you spent a lot more money on the last US election than you envisaged when you were speaking here three years ago. Are you going to continue to to spend at that kind of level on future elections? Um I think um in terms of political spending um I'm going to do a lot less in the future. And why is that? I think I've done enough. Is it is it because of blowback? Well, if I see a reason to do political spending in the future, I will do it.\n\nI do not currently see a reason. Okay. What about political influence beyond the US? How often do you speak to President Putin? I don't speak to President Putin. You've never spoken to President Putin? Um I I was on a video call with him once about 5 years ago. That's the only thing I speak to President President Putin. Oh, you must I get it. Believe the legacy. I speak Actually, I've heard you I've heard you speak about it.\n\nFor example, in your West Point speech, you said, \"Oh, I challenged President Putin to uh um to was it an arm wrestle?\" And I know the Wall Street Journal has reported your uh reported conversations. If you're if you're saying they haven't happened other than once, I'll take that as red. If is is there a worst publication on the face of the earth than the Wall Street Journal? I wouldn't use that to to line up my cage for paratroppings.\n\nUm that that that newspaper is the worst newspaper in the world. Um, and there's and if you know if there's one newspaper that should be pro- capitalist, it's the one with Wall Street in the name. U, but it isn't. So I I have the the very lowest opinion of the Wall Street Journal. AB absolute nonsense. And you clearly believe the tribe that you've written that you've read in those papers.\n\nI read I read very widely and I'm putting these questions to you so that you have an opportunity to respond to them which you are and and for which we're all grateful to hear your responses. Okay, we are we are out of time. So you mentioned you mentioned me challenging I I did so on on the X platform. I challenged Vladimir Putin to single combat over the but I didn't talk to him. That was a post on the ex platform.\n\nThat's why that's why I asked you and you've and you've clarified and explained. Thank you. That's that's why I was asking whether you have had reported conversations and and you've said you haven't other than a video call. Okay. Typical legacy media lies. Okay. Listen, I actually thought I might give Grock the last word.\n\nUm, because when I asked Grock what your hardest challenge is, it said, \"The strain of managing multiple highstake ventures amid financial, regulatory, and public relations crisis.\" And I wondered whether you recognize that characterization and whether you do think that this is a pivotal year in your life. Well, every year has been somewhat pivotal and this one's no different.\n\nUm so I mean in terms of interesting things that probably are accomplished this year uh the getting Starship uh to be fully reusable uh so that the that we we catch both the booster and the ship which would be the first fully reusable orbital rocket ever in history which is would be a profound breakthrough as the essential breakthrough necessarily to make life multilanetary and ultimately become a space fairing civilization. ation.\n\nUm we've got Neurolink which is um now helped five uh patients uh res restore um capability um using the telepathy implant where they're able to control a computer simply by thinking. Um we'll be um doing our first um uh patient to restore blind uh to restore to restore sight with our blind sight uh implant which is either end of this year or early next.\n\nUm in fact that might that first patient might be in UAE since we have a relationship with UAE and the Cleveland Clinic clinic there. Um the um I I think on the AI front we are close to what you might call AGI um or or or digital super intelligence. Um I think we'll see we are we are seeing an explosion in digital super intelligence here.\n\nUm, and then we've got at Tesla the what we'll be launching unsupervised autonomy, basically self-driving cars with no one in them in Austin next month. So, it's it's a big year for sure. Um, many other things on the in the in the works, too. Okay. I'm I'm technologist first and foremost. Elon Musk, thank you very much for joining us here at Qatar Economic Forum. Thank you.","textByLang":{"en":"Hey, this is David Papadopoulos, host of Elon, Inc. Uh we have for you this week um our interview in Cutter uh that our colleague Michelle Hussein did with Elon himself. Here is that interview in its entirety right now. And you should also know that our episode, our Elon Inc. episode this week is all about me and Max breaking down the interview and dissecting it, the highlights, the low lightss, etc. , etc. Enjoy. Hello everyone and Elon Musk.\n\nWelcome to Qatar Economic Forum. How are you? Thank you for having me. I'm fine. How are you? Very well, thank you. And very pleased to have you with us. You know, among those here in the audience in DHA are some you will know, people who have backed you financially over the years. Since you last spoke here in 2022, a lot has changed in your life.\n\nYou're not only running multiple companies, you were doing that then, but now you also have a role in government. So, first of all, I hope you won't mind if from time to time I have to move you from one topic to another because we have a lot to cover in the time we have. That would be all right. Okay. Well, let's start then with exactly the fact that you now have this combination of being a CEO and having a role as a government adviser.\n\nTell me about your week. How does it work? What's the split of your time? Well, I travel a lot. So, I was in Silicon Valley yesterday morning. I was in LA yesterday evening. I'm in Austin right now. I'll be in DC tomorrow. I'll be there uh after having dinner with the president tomorrow night, I believe. Um and then uh whole bunch of cabinet secretary meetings and then uh back to Silon Valley on Thursday night.\n\nBut I mean the balance of your time is it is it well clearly it's a lot but is it still the case as you said a while ago that it's about one to two days a week on your government work. Yeah that's correct. And what does that mean for your corporate life? Because if we start with Tesla the company has suffered in recent months what you've called blowback.\n\nSo, what is your plan for turning that around, the declining sales picture, and by what stage do you think you're going to be able to turn it around? Oh, it's already turned around. Give me some evidence for that. I've just been looking at the sales figures for Europe in April, which show very significant declines in the big markets. Uh Europe is our weakest market. We're strong everywhere else.\n\nUm so uh our sales are are doing doing well at this point. Um we don't anticipate any any meaningful sales shortfall and um the you know the obviously the stock market recognizes that since we're now back over a trillion dollars in market cap. So um clearly the market is aware of the situation. So it's it's already turned around. But sales still down compared to this time last year in Europe. In Europe. Okay.\n\nAnd yes, but but that's that's true of of all manufacturers. There's no exceptions. Does that mean that you're not going to be able Does that mean European market is quite weak? Okay. But you would acknowledge, wouldn't you, that what you are facing, okay, let's just take it as Europe. What you are facing is a significant problem. This Tesla was an incredibly aspirational brand. People identified with it.\n\nIt saw it, they saw it being at the forefront of the climate crisis. And now people are driving around with stickers in their cars saying, \"I bought this before we knew Elon was crazy.\" And there also people are buying buying it because uh Elon's crazy or however they may view it. Um so yes, we've lost some sales perhaps on the left, but we've gained them on the right.\n\nuh the sales numbers at this point uh are strong and uh we we see no problem with demand. So what the and I mean you you can just look at the stock price the the the if you want the best inside information the um stock market uh analysts have that and um a stock wouldn't be uh trading near all-time highs if uh it was not if things weren't in good shape. They're fine. Don't worry about it. Okay.\n\nI I was citing sales figures ra ra ra ra ra ra ra ra ra ra ra ra ra ra ra ra ra ra ra ra ra ra ra ra ra ra ra rather than share price. Well, tell me then how committed you are to Tesla. Do you see yourself and are you committed to still being the chief executive of Tesla in 5 years time? Yes. No doubt about that at all. Well, no, I might die. Okay, short of that. I can't see you if I'm dead. So there's a slight mode.\n\nDoes does that mean that the value of your pay doesn't have any bearing on your decision? Um well that's not really a subject subject of discussion in this forum. Um the I think obviously there should be compensation for if there's if something incredible is done that compensation should match um the that something incredible was done.\n\nUm but I I'm I'm confident that uh whatever the um whatever some activist posing as a judge in Delaware happens to do will not affect the future compensation. This is the judge who twice struck down the $56 billion pay package that was that was awarded to you. I think the value on the basis on the current value of stock options. Yeah. Not a judge. Not a judge. The activist who is cosplaying a judge in a Halloween costume. Okay.\n\nThat that's your characterization. Um I think the val on the current value of stock options. I think the actual justice according to the law on the current value of stock options I think the value of that pay package stands at about hundred billion dollars. Are you saying you are relaxed about the value of your future pay package?\n\nYour decision to be committed to Tesla for the next 5 years as long as you are still with us on this planet is completely independent of pay. No, it's not independent. So pay is a relevant factor then to your commitment to Tesla. Um sufficient voting control such that um I cannot be ousted by activist investors is what matters to me. And I've said this publicly many times. Um but let's not have this whole thing be a discussion of my alleged pay.\n\nIt's not a money thing. It's a a reasonable control thing over the future of the company. Especially if we're building uh millions, potentially billions of humanoid robots. Um, I can't be sitting there u uh and wanting to get tossed out by um for political reasons by activists. That would be unacceptable. That's all that matters. No, let's move on. Okay. Well, just one question. Let's move on.\n\nWell, one question before we move on to other companies, which is that I wonder if some of what you've has happened to Tesla in the last few months, did you take it personally? Yes. And did it make you regret any of or think twice about your political endeavors because it is I did I did what needed to be done. Uh the the violent antibody reaction um and I'm I'm not someone who's ever committed violence.\n\nUm, and yet, uh, massive violence was committed against my companies. Massive violence was threatened against me. Who are these people? Why would they do that? How wrong can they be? They're on the wrong They're on the wrong side of history. And that's an evil thing to do. To go and damage some po innocent person's car to threaten to kill me. What's wrong with these people? have not harmed anyone. So, something needs to be done about them.\n\nAnd a number of them are going to prison and they deserve it. And more will you're you're referring to the attacks on Tesla showrooms, but I think bullets into showrooms and burning down cars is unacceptable. Yeah. Those people will go to prison and the people that funded them and organized them will also go to prison. Don't worry.\n\nBut wouldn't you you wouldn't wouldn't but wouldn't wouldn't you acknowledge that some of the people who turned against Tesla in Europe were were upset at your politics and very few of them would have been violent in any way. They just objected to to what they saw you say or do politically. Well, it's certainly fine to object to political things, but it's not it's not fine to resort uh to violence and hanging someone in effigy and death threats.\n\nUm that's obviously not okay. Um uh you know uh that's absurd. Um that is uh in no way justifiable at all in any way, shape or form. And and uh some of the the legacy media nonetheless have sought to justify it which is unconscionable. Shame on them. Let's talk about your other companies then and other business areas.\n\nSpaceX, I saw that you said in a speech at the West Point uh Military Academy recently that the future of warfare is AI and drones and obviously defense is an increasingly booming sector with the state of the world at the moment. Do you see SpaceX moving into weaponized drones? [Laughter] you certainly ask interesting questions uh that are impossible to answer. Um so no SpaceX is uh it's it's the space launch leader. So SpaceX doesn't do drones.\n\nUh SpaceX builds rockets, satellites, and internet terminals. Um so but SpaceX has has a a very dominant position in space launch. So of of the mass launch to orbit this year, SpaceX will probably do 90%. Um, China will do the rema half half of the remaining amount, so 5% and the rest of the world, including the rest of the US, will do about 5%.\n\nSo SpaceX will do about 10 times as much as the rest of the world combined or 20 times as much as China, which is and China is doing actually a very impressive job. Um the reason for this is that we are putting into into orbit the largest satellite constellation the world has ever seen by far. Um so I think at this point about maybe approaching 80% of all active satellites in orbit are SpaceX.\n\nUm and they're providing global high high bandwidth global connectivity uh throughout the world. In fact this connection is on a SpaceX connection.\n\nSo I think this is a very good thing um because it means that we can um provide lowcost high bandwidth internet to parts of the world that don't have it or it's very expensive and I think the single biggest thing you can do to lift people out of poverty and help them is giving them um an internet connection um because once you have the internet connection you can learn anything for free on the internet and you can also sell your goods and services to the global market um and um once you have knowledge um by the internet and the ability to engage in commerce um that this is going to greatly improve quality of life for people throughout the world and it has um and I just like to thank anyone in the audience who may have been helpful in you know um with\n\nStarlink and and getting it to approved in their country and I think it's doing a lot of good and the countries that have approved it which is I think at this point 130 countries are very happy with Um I I I don't currently anticipate SpaceX getting into the weapons business.\n\nThat's certainly that's not an aspiration. We're frequent we're frequently asked uh to do to do weapons programs, but we have thus far declined. Do you envisage SpaceX or indeed Starlink as a separate entity publicly listing in the near future or at all? Um, it's possible that Starlink uh may go public at some point in the future and what would be the what would be the time frame? What kind of time frame you consider? I mean, no rush.\n\nI'm no I'm in no rush to go public. um the the you know public is I guess a way to um you know potentially make more money but at the expense of a lot of public company overhead and inevitably um a whole bunch of lawsuits which are very annoying.\n\nUm, so really something needs to be done about the shareholder shareholder derivative lawsuits uh in the US uh because it allows uh uh plaintiffs law firms who don't represent the shareholders to pretend that they represent the shareholders by getting a puppet plaintiff with a few shares uh to initiate a massive lawsuit against the company.\n\nAnd the irony being that extreme irony uh that uh even if the class they purport to represent were to vote that they don't want the lawsuit, the lawsuit would still continue. So how can it be a an a class action representing a class if the class vote against it? And that's the bizarre situation we've got in the US. It needs it's a dire need of reform and as as anyone who's run a public company experienced this.\n\nIt's an absurd situation that needs to change. Well, do you think Donald Trump might change it? You've certainly got his ear. I imagine that you've put this to him. Is this something you're trying to change before any Starlink IPO? Well, it would it would need a law to be passed. Um the the trouble being that you need 60 Senator Senate votes and the Democrats um will vote against it.\n\nUm the um the the the the plaintiff's bar is I believe the second largest contributor to the Democratic party. That's the that's the issue. At the state level, this can be solved. And and I should say Texas recently passed a law which um at this at least the state level made much more reasonable because you have to get at least one in 33 shareholders to agree that they are part of a class of shareholders 3%.\n\nThis is a this will be will be really help with privileged lawsuits. Okay. Um let's talk about AI which is in so many of your businesses and in all our worlds in different ways. It's one of the big changes the development of generative AI since you last spoke um to this forum three years ago. You're in this space of course um with Grock which almost everyone will know.\n\nYou co-founded Open AI and then left and you've obviously got a legal battle um with Open AI and Sam Orman. wonder if you could say something about the status of that because you were together in Saudi Arabia with the president last week um with Sam Orman together in the same place at the same time was in the in the neighborhood. Okay. So does does that mean you are pushing ahead with the lawsuit against open AI? Yes.\n\nSo, look, I came I came up with the name OpenAI as an open-source um and as a nonprofit and I funded AI OpenAI for the first roughly $50 million um and um it was intended to be a nonprofit uh open-source company and now it is they're trying to change that for their own financial benefit uh into a for-profit company that is closed source.\n\nSo, this would be like let's say you um you funded a a nonprofit to help preserve the Amazon rainforest, but instead of doing that, they became a lumber company, chopped down the forest, and sold the wood. You'd be like, \"Wait a second, that's not what I funded.\" That's open AI. They've made some changes to their corporate structure though, haven't they, since in in recognition of what of what you've said.\n\nAnd no, that's just what they told the media. Okay. Um part they have part they have partly walked back their plan to restructure the business. I guess that's made no difference to how you feel about it. So you determined to see them in court. Of course. Okay. Well that that's certainly going to be one to watch.\n\nI also wanted to ask you about AI and regulation because when you were here last talking to John Mikkelthweight, you had some pretty strong words about the risk that AI poses and you said that you really felt what the US was missing was a federal AI regulator that you know something along the lines of the Food and Drug Administration or the Federal Aviation Administration.\n\nNow you're clearly now in a zone where you're more you're more on the cutting regulation side than wanting new regulators. So has your view changed on the need for an AI regulator? Well, it's not that I don't think there should be regulators. Um you can think of regulators like referees on the on the field in sports.\n\nUm there should be some number of referees, but that you shouldn't have so many referees that you can't kick the ball without hitting one. Um so um in many in most uh apps uh fields in the US the the regulatory burden has grown over time to the point where it's like having more referees than than players on the field. Um so um and this is a natural consequence of an extended period of prosperity. It's very important to uh appreciate this.\n\nThis has happened throughout history. When you have an extended period of prosperity with no existential war, there's no there's no um cleansing function for uh the for for unnecessary um laws and regulations.\n\nSo what happens is that every year more laws and more regulations are passed because you know legislators are going to legislate, regulators are going to regulate um and you will get the steady pile of more and more laws and regulations over time until everything is illegal. And let me give you an example of of a of a truly absurd situation. Um, under the Biden administration, SpaceX um, was sued for not hiring asylum seekers in the US.\n\nNow, the problem is it's actually illegal for SpaceX under ITAR, international traffic and arms regulations to hire anyone who is not a permanent resident of the United States because the the premise being that they will take advanced rocket technology and return to their home country if they're not a permanent resident.\n\nSo, we're simultaneously uh in a situation where it is illegal to hire asylum seekers and is also uh illegal to hire asylum seekers and the Biden's Department of Justice chose to prosecute us despite both paths being illegal. Damned if you do, damned if you don't. But my question was specifically about a regulator for AI, which you said 3 years ago was needed. And you said we need to be proactive on the regulation of AI rather than reactive.\n\nHave you changed your mind on that? No, of course not. What what No, of course not. What I'm saying is that there should be some referees on the field, a few a few referees, but you shouldn't have a field jam-packed with referees uh such that you cannot kick a ball in any direction without hitting one.\n\nSo the the the the fields that have been around for a long time such as automotive um so aerospace uh you know uh the sort of food and drug industries are overregulated but the new fields like artificial intelligence are underregulated. In fact there is no regulator at So, so there should be one. Do you still think that? Yes.\n\nI'm simply saying, which I think is just basic common sense, that you that you want to have at least you you want to have a few referees on the field. You don't want to have an army of referees. Um, but you want to have a few referees on on any given field in any given sport or even any given arena, industrial arena. Um, to ensure help that public safety um is taken care of.\n\nUm, but you don't want to have so so there's a there's a there's a a proper number of referees. Like like I said, it's actually very easy to visualize this when compared to sports. If the if the whole field is packed with with referees, that would look absurd. Um, but if there were no referees at all, your game's not going to be as good. Okay. So, let's then talk about your new world, your your role advising government.\n\nYou are in this unique and unprecedented position of having billions of dollars worth of contracts with the federal government yourself mostly through SpaceX and also now an insidider's knowledge of it because of Doge. Can you see that there is a conflict of interest or a potential conflict of interest in broad terms just through that very fact?\n\nUm I I don't think so actually there have been many advisers in uh throughout history and in the US government and others who have had economic interests. Um and I am simply an adviser. I don't have a formal power. Um and that's it. Uh the president can choose to uh accept my advice or not and that's that's how it goes.\n\nUm if there's a single contract that uh you know any of my companies have received that people think is somehow not uh was was awarded improperly um it would immediately be front page news um to say the least um and and if if if I hadn't mentioned it certainly my competitors would. So if you're not seeing that um then clearly there's not a conflict of interest.\n\nUm the uh yeah um there's another way though to look at it that for example you have many competitors whether it's companies like Boeing or companies who would like to do more of the kind of work you do for NASA, Blue Origin, Rocket Lab and because Doge is in every federal government department, you or people who work for Doge and and you are the driving force behind it have an insight into those companies affairs.\n\nand those companies relationships with the federal government. No, all we do is we um review uh the organization to see if if the organization has uh departments that are no longer relevant. Um and and then are the contracts that that are being awarded good value for money? In fact, frankly, the bar is not particularly high. Is there any value for money in a contract? Um and if there's if there isn't then we make recommendations to the secretary.\n\nThe secretary can then choose to uh take those actions or not take those actions and that's it. And then any action that that that is as a function of Doge is posted to the Doge website um and to the Doge. gov or at at doge handle on the Xplatform. So it's it's complete trans transparency. Um and I have not seen any case where uh to the best of my knowledge there's even been an accusation of conflict.\n\nUm because it is it's completely and utterly transparent. Um that's a and what about the international dimension now? Um let's think about Starlink. Starink is obviously a very very good internet service. It's sought after all over the world. It's critical to the front line in Ukraine.\n\nIt has also had more contracts coming its way and there is some evidence that companies are allowing access to it because they want to be close to the Trump administration and send the right signal. So Bloomberg broke news today that the South African government is working around the rules on black ownership in order to allow Starink and that is being done on the eve of the visit that President Ramaposa is going to make to the White House.\n\nDo you recognize that as a conflict of interest? No, of course not. First of all, you should be questioning why is there why are there racist laws in South Africa? That's the first problem. That's what you should be attacking. Um it's improper for there be racist laws in South Africa. Um the whole whole idea with what Nelson Mandela, who was a great man, proposed was that all all races should be on an equal footing in South Africa.\n\nThat's the right thing to do, not to replace one set of racist laws with another set of racist laws, which is utterly wrong and improv. Um so the that's that's the deal that all races should be treated equally. Um and there should be no preference given to one or the other. Uh whereas there are now 140 laws in South Africa that give u a pre that basically um are give strong preference to to if if you're black South African and um not otherwise.\n\nAnd so now I'm in this absurd situation where I was born in South Africa but cannot get a license to operate in Starlink because I'm not black. Well, it looks like that's about its looks like right to you. Looks like that's about to change. I just asked you a question. Please answer. Does that seem right to you? Well, those rules were designed to bring those rules were designed to bring about an era of more economic equality in South Africa.\n\nAnd it looks like the government has found a way around those rules for you. I ask you a question. This is this is your interview. Everyone wants to hear from you. Ask your question. Yes or no? Yes or no? Not not for me to answer. I have got a question for you about uh about your government work though and the amount of savings. Why do you like racist laws? This is not for me to answer. Come on now. You wouldn't be trying to dodge a question.\n\nYou have to ask question. My question answer No, you answer mine. I think I think if you I'm sure you can have that conversation directly with the South African government if you want to. I want to ask you about the total I can't believe it. That's not good. I want to ask you about the total amount. I want to ask you about the total amount that you're planning to save through Doge's work.\n\nBefore the election, you said it was going to be at least$2 trillion. The number currently on Doge. gov is $170 billion. That's a big change. What happened to the two trillion? Well, would you expect it to happen immediately? Well, is it going to happen? Because DOA is supposed to run till next July. I mean your question is absurd in in its fundamental premise.\n\nUm are you assuming that that on day you know within a few months there's an instant two trillion saved? No I'm not at all. I'm just asking is that still your aim then? Is it still your aim to get the amount of time? Have we not made good progress given the amount of time? That's exactly what I'm asking. So is it still your aim to go from 170 billion to two trillion?\n\nUm the the ability of Doge to operate is a function of whether uh the government and this includes the Congress uh is willing to take our advice. Uh we are not the dictators of the government, we are the adviserss and so we can we can advise and the progress we've made thus far I think is incredible. Doge team has done incredible work.\n\nUm but uh the magnitude of this the savings is proportionate to the support we get from Congress um and from the uh executive branch of the government in general. Um so we're not the dictators, we are the advisers. Um but thus far for advisers we've the George team to their credit um has made uh incredible progress.\n\nYou've talked about4 billion dollars a day being saved, but that that that won't get which is and I think everyone can agree that combating waste and inefficiency in government is a very good thing, but if you add that up, it's not going to get to two trillion over the lifetime of Doge. I'm sorry. The 4 billion the four billion a day if Doge is going to run till next July is not going to get you to2 trillion dollars.\n\nBut you still say it's your aim. So we'll take that as red. There's there's there's there's what doge I mean I feel you're somewhat trapped in the uh NPC dialogue tree of a traditional ver uh journalist. So it's difficult when I'm conversing with someone who's trapped in the dialogue tree of a conventional journalist because it's like talking to a computer. Um so uh Doge is an advisory group. We are doing the best we can um as an advisory group.\n\nUh the progress made thus far as an advisory group is excellent. Um I don't think any advisory group has done better in the history of advisory groups of the government. Um now uh we we we do not make the laws nor do we control the the judiciary nor do we control the executive branch. We are simply advisers. In that context we are doing very well.\n\nUm beyond that we cannot uh do we cannot take action beyond that because we are not u some sort of imperial dictator of the government. There are three branches of government that uh that are to some degree opposed to that level of cost savings. Um but nonetheless uh let's let's let's not uh criticize whether there's uh 4 trillion um and instead look at the fact that 160 billion has been saved and more will be saved too.\n\nAnd as I said I think everyone can agree that cutting waste and indeed fraud in any government and being responsible with taxpayers money is a very good thing. So yes, I can see I can see that you're proud of that work. Um I do want to ask you about um US aid and the comments that Bill Gates made the other day which and I know that you called him. Yeah, he's a huge I know you you've said that already.\n\nI wondered also and I'm just who does who does Bill Gates think he is to make comments about the welfare of children given that he was he for a coin to Jeffrey Epste? Okay. Well, he's he's he's he said he regrets those and I trust that guy. He spent a lot he spent a lot of his own money on uh on philanthropy around the world over the years.\n\nMy question to you is, have you looked at the data to check if he might be right that the cuts to USAD might cost millions of lives? Uh yes. Um, I'd like him to show us any any evidence whatsoever that that is true. It's false. Um, the what what we found with USAD cuts, and by the way, they haven't all been cut. The the parts of USA ID that we found to be uh even slightly useful were transferred to the State Department.\n\nThey've not they've not been deleted. They've simply been transferred to the State Department. Um but many many times over with USAD and other organizations when we've when they've said oh well this is going to help you know uh children or it's going to help some um uh disease eradication or something like that.\n\nUm and then when we ask for any evidence whatsoever um I say well please connect us with this group of children so we can talk to them and understand more about their issue. We get nothing.\n\nWe we don't they don't even try to prevent show come up with a with a with a show orphan meaning like it's sort of like well can we at least see a few kids like where where are they if they're in trouble we'd like to talk to them and talk to their caregivers and then we get something as a response because it's what we find is an enormous amount of of fraud and graft let me put this example very little of it actually gets to the kids if anything at Okay, let let me put this example to you because you grew up in South Africa so you'll know the impact of HIV AIDS well and this is why I asked about the data.\n\nThe US led on international efforts to combat HIV AIDS treatment prevention and there's an initiative called PEPAR which is credited with saving 26 million lives in the last 20 years. It was part of the foreign aid freeze. Then there was a limited waiver. ID services are disrupted and UN aid says if permanently discontinued there will be another 4 million AIDS related deaths by 2029.\n\nSo if you look at that example which is backed up by data in 2023 630,000 people died of AIDS related illnesses then perhaps Bill Gates's figures are not wrong. Millions of lives could be lost. Um I first of all the program the the the AIDS uh uh um medication uh program is continuing. So your fundamental premise is wrong. It is continuing. Now do you have another example? Not Elon. Not in its entirety. That is false. Not in its entirety.\n\nthe the program there's a limited waiver and UN aids have said that not all of the services that were previously funded by USA ID are continuing so that's that's why that's why I put that example to you okay well which ones aren't being funded I'll fix it right now for okay well actually they're all on the UN UN aids website so you'll be able to see them but mostly they are to do with mostly they are to do with prevention and for example the roll out of a drug um called Glenn Capavir which which was hailed as one of the biggest breakthroughs against AIDS for many years which came out last year.\n\nSo if you are perhaps I'm sure UNA you as would be delighted if you're able to look at that again. Yes. Well well if if if if in fact this is true which I doubt it is then we'll fix it. Okay fine. Um so finally political your political influence I wondered whether you have decided yet how much you're going to spend on uh the the upcoming midterms.\n\nIs it you you spent a lot more money on the last US election than you envisaged when you were speaking here three years ago. Are you going to continue to to spend at that kind of level on future elections? Um I think um in terms of political spending um I'm going to do a lot less in the future. And why is that? I think I've done enough. Is it is it because of blowback? Well, if I see a reason to do political spending in the future, I will do it.\n\nI do not currently see a reason. Okay. What about political influence beyond the US? How often do you speak to President Putin? I don't speak to President Putin. You've never spoken to President Putin? Um I I was on a video call with him once about 5 years ago. That's the only thing I speak to President President Putin. Oh, you must I get it. Believe the legacy. I speak Actually, I've heard you I've heard you speak about it.\n\nFor example, in your West Point speech, you said, \"Oh, I challenged President Putin to uh um to was it an arm wrestle?\" And I know the Wall Street Journal has reported your uh reported conversations. If you're if you're saying they haven't happened other than once, I'll take that as red. If is is there a worst publication on the face of the earth than the Wall Street Journal? I wouldn't use that to to line up my cage for paratroppings.\n\nUm that that that newspaper is the worst newspaper in the world. Um, and there's and if you know if there's one newspaper that should be pro- capitalist, it's the one with Wall Street in the name. U, but it isn't. So I I have the the very lowest opinion of the Wall Street Journal. AB absolute nonsense. And you clearly believe the tribe that you've written that you've read in those papers.\n\nI read I read very widely and I'm putting these questions to you so that you have an opportunity to respond to them which you are and and for which we're all grateful to hear your responses. Okay, we are we are out of time. So you mentioned you mentioned me challenging I I did so on on the X platform. I challenged Vladimir Putin to single combat over the but I didn't talk to him. That was a post on the ex platform.\n\nThat's why that's why I asked you and you've and you've clarified and explained. Thank you. That's that's why I was asking whether you have had reported conversations and and you've said you haven't other than a video call. Okay. Typical legacy media lies. Okay. Listen, I actually thought I might give Grock the last word.\n\nUm, because when I asked Grock what your hardest challenge is, it said, \"The strain of managing multiple highstake ventures amid financial, regulatory, and public relations crisis.\" And I wondered whether you recognize that characterization and whether you do think that this is a pivotal year in your life. Well, every year has been somewhat pivotal and this one's no different.\n\nUm so I mean in terms of interesting things that probably are accomplished this year uh the getting Starship uh to be fully reusable uh so that the that we we catch both the booster and the ship which would be the first fully reusable orbital rocket ever in history which is would be a profound breakthrough as the essential breakthrough necessarily to make life multilanetary and ultimately become a space fairing civilization. ation.\n\nUm we've got Neurolink which is um now helped five uh patients uh res restore um capability um using the telepathy implant where they're able to control a computer simply by thinking. Um we'll be um doing our first um uh patient to restore blind uh to restore to restore sight with our blind sight uh implant which is either end of this year or early next.\n\nUm in fact that might that first patient might be in UAE since we have a relationship with UAE and the Cleveland Clinic clinic there. Um the um I I think on the AI front we are close to what you might call AGI um or or or digital super intelligence. Um I think we'll see we are we are seeing an explosion in digital super intelligence here.\n\nUm, and then we've got at Tesla the what we'll be launching unsupervised autonomy, basically self-driving cars with no one in them in Austin next month. So, it's it's a big year for sure. Um, many other things on the in the in the works, too. Okay. I'm I'm technologist first and foremost. Elon Musk, thank you very much for joining us here at Qatar Economic Forum. Thank you."},"languages":["en"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iqd8D48mYhQ"},{"id":"saudi-us-forum-may-2025-musk","type":"interview","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LyouLvz6iiY","title":"Saudi-US Investment Forum","titles":{"en":"Saudi-US Investment Forum","de":"Saudi-US Investment Forum","fr":"Saudi-US Investment Forum"},"date":"2025-05-13","summary":"On stage at the Saudi-US Investment Forum, Musk lays out his vision of a world transformed by \"tens of billions\" of humanoid robots, autonomous vehicles, AI and abundant energy.","text":"speaking in Saudi Arabia. >> Please have a seat. >> Now. >> I'm sure we can do a better welcome than that to Elon Musk in Saudi Arabia. There you go. That's that's the spirit. Thank you Elon. My dear friend, we're honored to have President Trump.\n\nWe're honored under the sponsorship and guidance of His Royal Highness to celebrate a US, Saudi and a Saudi US relationship that is 92 years old, about how we move from an oil based economy to an innovation based economy, powered by wonderful technologies that definitely you're one of the pioneers in this industry. We just showed to His Royal Highness some of your Optimus robots. Yeah, and to President Trump. Let's talk about that.\n\nTell me about them. >> Yes. So we. Just showed. >> Several of. >> Our Tesla Optimus robots to His Highness and President Trump. And I think they were very impressed. >> In fact. >> One of our robots did the Trump dance, which I thought was pretty cool. >> The YMCA. Yeah. >> Yeah, to YMCA. So yeah, robots can dance. They can walk around, they can interact. I think we're headed to a radically different world.\n\nI think it I think a good world, an interesting world. My prediction, actually, for humanoid robots is that ultimately they will be tens of billions. I think everyone will want to have their personal robot. You can think of it like, as though you had your own personal C-3po or R2-d2 or. But even better, then who wouldn't want to have their own personal C-3po? R2-d2? That would be pretty great.\n\nAnd I also think it it unlocks an immense amount of economic potential, because when you think of like, what is the output of an economy, it is productivity per capita times population or capita. The once you have humanoid robots, the actual economic output potential is tremendous. It's really unlimited. Potentially we could have an economy ten times the size of the current global economy, where no one wants for anything.\n\nYou know, sometimes in AI they talk about universal basic income. I think it's actually going to be universal high income, where anyone can have any goods or services that they want. You know, as a science fiction book recommendation that I have, which I think is probably the best envisioning of an AI future is the culture books by Iain Banks. Very highly recommended for a dystopian view of the future.\n\nYou know, there obviously are some risks, you know, which illustrate perhaps the if we don't do this right, you know, you could have like a James Cameron sort of movie, you know, Terminator. We don't want that one. But but having sort of a Star Trek future would be great. Where we're out there exploring the stars, discovering the nature of the universe and, and a level of prosperity and hopefully happiness that we can't quite imagine yet.\n\nSo I'm very excited about the future and very glad to be here. Thank you for having me. >> It's our absolute pleasure. And His Royal Highness was talking to you about his vision and his dream to increase productivity for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and power up the region and the whole world with robotics, but also on robo taxis. So how are we doing on robo taxis? >> Yeah.\n\nSo really, you can think of a car or future cars as being robots on four wheels. And, you know, I think it would be very exciting to have autonomous vehicles here in the kingdom. Indeed, if you're amenable. >> You heard it here from Elon. He's bringing his robo taxi to the kingdom. Yes. He has another announcement that he. >> Yes, exactly. So. And I'd also like to thank the Kingdom for approving Starlink for maritime and aviation use.\n\n>> Thank you, maritime and aviation. There you go. There you go. >> So yeah. >> So are you going to bring us robots to help us increase our productivity? Yeah. Robotaxis to make sure that our cars and assets turn to turn into a cash generating unit. Yeah. And Starlink Starlink to reform our aviation and maritime. Yeah. Talk about X. ai. >> Absolutely. And but I just wanted to mention also something that may be worth considering is tunnels.\n\nTunnels. >> The Boring Company. >> I have this company called The Boring Company, which sounds kind of boring, but it's it literally bores tunnels and actually tunnels in order to solve traffic, you really need to go 3D with roads. And by using tunnels, you can essentially create like like a wormhole, like a, like a warp tunnel from one part of a city to another and alleviate traffic.\n\nAnd we've actually already done this proof of concept in Vegas. So they're working tunnels in Vegas, in Las Vegas that you can use where that'll just it feels like teleporting from one part of Vegas to another. So I always say that, you know, my joke is like tunnels are underappreciated, you know? You know, it's a bit of a not always a hit, but. So. Yeah. And then I is just trying to solve general purpose artificial intelligence.\n\nThe goal with XAI is to have a maximally truth seeking AI. And it's important to be maximally truth seeking AI in order to understand the universe. So the goal of XAI is understand the universe to understand you know, you know, what is out there. Where's the universe going? Where did it come from? What questions? In fact, I think maybe the biggest thing is what questions do we not know to ask?\n\nLike, once you know the question, the answer is usually the easy part. So the goal of XAI is to help understand the universe. And. Yeah, that's that's the goal. And, you know, help people answer any questions along the way of course. But. I mean, that's that's my philosophy. My philosophy is one of curiosity, just trying to understand the nature of reality.\n\n>> So I know you had a long day, but we also have the honorable president and His Royal Highness hitting the stage soon.\n\nSo this is a historic day, a partnership about how we could join hands together as we have joined hands in the past 92 years on building a factor based economy to help the world empower up 20% of the energy mix, which is very critical today to the AI and intelligence age, the digital age and how we have reformed and with the intelligent age. And we could not","textByLang":{"en":"speaking in Saudi Arabia. >> Please have a seat. >> Now. >> I'm sure we can do a better welcome than that to Elon Musk in Saudi Arabia. There you go. That's that's the spirit. Thank you Elon. My dear friend, we're honored to have President Trump.\n\nWe're honored under the sponsorship and guidance of His Royal Highness to celebrate a US, Saudi and a Saudi US relationship that is 92 years old, about how we move from an oil based economy to an innovation based economy, powered by wonderful technologies that definitely you're one of the pioneers in this industry. We just showed to His Royal Highness some of your Optimus robots. Yeah, and to President Trump. Let's talk about that.\n\nTell me about them. >> Yes. So we. Just showed. >> Several of. >> Our Tesla Optimus robots to His Highness and President Trump. And I think they were very impressed. >> In fact. >> One of our robots did the Trump dance, which I thought was pretty cool. >> The YMCA. Yeah. >> Yeah, to YMCA. So yeah, robots can dance. They can walk around, they can interact. I think we're headed to a radically different world.\n\nI think it I think a good world, an interesting world. My prediction, actually, for humanoid robots is that ultimately they will be tens of billions. I think everyone will want to have their personal robot. You can think of it like, as though you had your own personal C-3po or R2-d2 or. But even better, then who wouldn't want to have their own personal C-3po? R2-d2? That would be pretty great.\n\nAnd I also think it it unlocks an immense amount of economic potential, because when you think of like, what is the output of an economy, it is productivity per capita times population or capita. The once you have humanoid robots, the actual economic output potential is tremendous. It's really unlimited. Potentially we could have an economy ten times the size of the current global economy, where no one wants for anything.\n\nYou know, sometimes in AI they talk about universal basic income. I think it's actually going to be universal high income, where anyone can have any goods or services that they want. You know, as a science fiction book recommendation that I have, which I think is probably the best envisioning of an AI future is the culture books by Iain Banks. Very highly recommended for a dystopian view of the future.\n\nYou know, there obviously are some risks, you know, which illustrate perhaps the if we don't do this right, you know, you could have like a James Cameron sort of movie, you know, Terminator. We don't want that one. But but having sort of a Star Trek future would be great. Where we're out there exploring the stars, discovering the nature of the universe and, and a level of prosperity and hopefully happiness that we can't quite imagine yet.\n\nSo I'm very excited about the future and very glad to be here. Thank you for having me. >> It's our absolute pleasure. And His Royal Highness was talking to you about his vision and his dream to increase productivity for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and power up the region and the whole world with robotics, but also on robo taxis. So how are we doing on robo taxis? >> Yeah.\n\nSo really, you can think of a car or future cars as being robots on four wheels. And, you know, I think it would be very exciting to have autonomous vehicles here in the kingdom. Indeed, if you're amenable. >> You heard it here from Elon. He's bringing his robo taxi to the kingdom. Yes. He has another announcement that he. >> Yes, exactly. So. And I'd also like to thank the Kingdom for approving Starlink for maritime and aviation use.\n\n>> Thank you, maritime and aviation. There you go. There you go. >> So yeah. >> So are you going to bring us robots to help us increase our productivity? Yeah. Robotaxis to make sure that our cars and assets turn to turn into a cash generating unit. Yeah. And Starlink Starlink to reform our aviation and maritime. Yeah. Talk about X. ai. >> Absolutely. And but I just wanted to mention also something that may be worth considering is tunnels.\n\nTunnels. >> The Boring Company. >> I have this company called The Boring Company, which sounds kind of boring, but it's it literally bores tunnels and actually tunnels in order to solve traffic, you really need to go 3D with roads. And by using tunnels, you can essentially create like like a wormhole, like a, like a warp tunnel from one part of a city to another and alleviate traffic.\n\nAnd we've actually already done this proof of concept in Vegas. So they're working tunnels in Vegas, in Las Vegas that you can use where that'll just it feels like teleporting from one part of Vegas to another. So I always say that, you know, my joke is like tunnels are underappreciated, you know? You know, it's a bit of a not always a hit, but. So. Yeah. And then I is just trying to solve general purpose artificial intelligence.\n\nThe goal with XAI is to have a maximally truth seeking AI. And it's important to be maximally truth seeking AI in order to understand the universe. So the goal of XAI is understand the universe to understand you know, you know, what is out there. Where's the universe going? Where did it come from? What questions? In fact, I think maybe the biggest thing is what questions do we not know to ask?\n\nLike, once you know the question, the answer is usually the easy part. So the goal of XAI is to help understand the universe. And. Yeah, that's that's the goal. And, you know, help people answer any questions along the way of course. But. I mean, that's that's my philosophy. My philosophy is one of curiosity, just trying to understand the nature of reality.\n\n>> So I know you had a long day, but we also have the honorable president and His Royal Highness hitting the stage soon.\n\nSo this is a historic day, a partnership about how we could join hands together as we have joined hands in the past 92 years on building a factor based economy to help the world empower up 20% of the energy mix, which is very critical today to the AI and intelligence age, the digital age and how we have reformed and with the intelligent age. And we could not"},"languages":["en"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LyouLvz6iiY"},{"id":"wisconsin-town-hall-2025-musk","type":"interview","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VhIIS_9ZtDE","title":"America PAC Town Hall","titles":{"en":"America PAC Town Hall","de":"America PAC Town Hall","fr":"America PAC Town Hall"},"date":"2025-03-30","summary":"Musk takes audience questions at an America PAC town hall ahead of the Wisconsin Supreme Court election, handing out $1 million checks and arguing the race matters nationally.","text":"Hello everybody. Hello. Hello. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Well, welcome to Elon Musk's Green Bay Town Hall and thank you for signing the petition against activist judges. I mean, this is all about getting out to vote on Tuesday to elect Brad Shiml as the next justice of the Wisconsin Supreme Court. It's so crucial we do that. You know, I've been traveling around with Brad.\n\nAnd by the way, I don't I don't know and I see Governor Walker here. I know he was a tireless campaigner. I don't know of any candidate that I've seen in my years now in the business campaign more tirelessly than than Brad Shiml. He's just been phenomenal. And you know, he's not doing it for himself. He's doing it to save the court, to save Wisconsin, to save America. Let's let's be honest.\n\nSo, so I'm traveling around the bus with him the last couple days and then we do what they call press gaggles and and we go up and talk to the press and every question is about Elon, Elon, Elon, Elon. Now, I don't know, I don't know about you, I think what Donald Trump and Elon Musk is doing in terms of the doge movement is brilliant. What do you guys think?\n\n[Applause] I mean, what what Elon and his group of geniuses is uncovering, it's just it should outrage every American. You know what what what the government has been spending and wasting our money on. I mean, that should be, like I say, outrageous. Every American should be outraged by that, but but the left isn't. No, in instead they're attacking Elon. They're they're they're firebombing his cars in his dealerships.\n\nThat by the way, where where's the outrage to that form of domestic terrorism? So that that's really what this is all about. I mean, we've got we've got leftists that want to impose their ideology on us through the court system, right? um they they they don't care who or what they destroy in their quest for power. We can't get let them get away with it. Now, 1. 7 million Wisconsinites voted for Donald Trump, right?\n\nGod bless you all for doing that. If you want Donald Trump to be able to serve four years effectively, do do all the things he's doing. And by the way, I can't believe how boldly and swiftly and decisively he is acting to fulfill his campaign promises. But you'll notice you'll notice the activist judges, the the radical leftists, the the super legislators on the courts are issuing national injunctions against what he's trying to do.\n\nwhat we wanted him to do, what the people elected him to do. We can't let that continue. Now, what should happen is is John Roberts ought to reign those judges in. He ought to take care of his own branch of government. But what we need to do here in Wisconsin is we need to return our Supreme Court to one that has justices and judges. And by that, I mean people who will apply the law, not alter it. We're not looking for super legislators.\n\nAnd again, it's a real disadvantage conservatives have is, you know, when when I vote to confirm a Supreme Court nominee. I know I'm not going to like some of their judgments because they're ruling based on the law and I don't like some of the laws. The radical leftists, they know exactly what their judges are going to do. And we know exactly what Susan Crawford would do. She will overturn Act 10. Governor Walker's signature achievement.\n\nSave what? billions for Wisconsin taxpayers. She will redistrict. She'll be part of the group that will redistrict Derek Van Orton and Brian Styles districts. We may lose those wonderful members of Congress. We may lose a majority in the House and I do not want to be sitting in a third impeachment trial of a president. That's what we're facing. So, we cannot let that happen.\n\nAnd again, the good news is we've got a person of integrity, Brad Shiml, working his tail off. He will be that kind of judge that will uphold the law and return the constitutional balance to Wisconsin and help save America. So that's all about again. So every every one of the 1. 7 million Wisconsinites that voted for Donald Trump, you must come out and vote. If you haven't already, vote, come out and vote on Tuesday.\n\nTalk to every friend and family member and neighbor that you know, every email contact, every text contact. Get them all out to vote on Tuesday. There's no reason that we can't have 1. 3, four, five million votes and easily win this election. So, that's what you got to do. Thanks for coming here tonight.\n\nNow, it's my pleasure to introduce a former congressman, another one of our high integrity people who've represented us in Congress and is now representing us in America as the Secretary of the Department of Transportation, Shawn Duffy. [Applause] Hey everybody. [Music] What an amazing crowd. Are we not blessed to have a senator like Ron Johnson? He's amazing. Also somewhere here, Congressman uh Tony Weed is in the house. Tony, where are you?\n\nRight here. H Scott Walker as well in the house. Derek Van Orton, I know, is here too. Our great delegation from Wisconsin. We are blessed to have fighters like that in Washington DC. Now, quick question for you. Is Donald Trump making America great again? Yes, he is. Now, he does have a little bit of help from a guy by the name of Elon Musk. That's true. [Applause] Yeah.\n\nAnd I would argue he probably has one of the best cabinets ever in recent history. Maybe we're helping as well. I think all of us thought our government and the waste in our government it was we thought it was bad but after DOA's work we can't believe how bad it is. This is horrible. So think Stacy Abrams raises a couple hundred dollars in her climate action fund and then Joe Biden gives her $2 billion for her climate fund.\n\nElon Musk found that there are 7 million social security uh uh folks on the roles that are o over 120 years old. Unbelievable. And I love what Doge has found at USID. 1. 5 million to advance DEI in Serbia. 2. 5 million for EVs in Vietnam, 32,000 for transgender comic books in Peru, 2 million sex changes and LGBTQ activism in Guatemala. Your hardearned tax money go to garbage like that.\n\nAnd so I I never thought the left could get more crazy than they actually have become. But before this last election, they all wanted us to drive an EV. They wanted to force us into an EV. After the election, they're burning EVs. How crazy is that? And so I look at this and think, are you all sick of winning? No. If you're not sick of winning, let's not stop winning. And if you don't want to stop winning, this Tuesday is how you do it.\n\nThis election couldn't be more important. The country is watching what's going to happen in Wisconsin because you have a radical leftist judge who wants to get rid of school choice. She wants to get rid of voter ID. She wants to redraw congressional lines. She doesn't like parental rights. She wants to obstruct Donald Trump's agenda. She's soft on crime. She doesn't believe in bail. And she believes that criminals are more important than victims.\n\nunacceptable in this great state. And we have Brad Shiml who believes that the law should treat everyone the same. Whether you're a Republican or a Democrat, he's a fair man who's going to impose the law in a way that treats everyone equally, which is what we want as conservatives. And so what you all can do what you all, by the way, are you all going to vote or have you voted? You guys all voted. Okay, you look like a pretty lively group.\n\nSo, I imagine all of you at least have five friends, maybe 10. Get your five or 10 friends to the ballot box on Tuesday. And if all of you do that, you get your friends to the ballot box because this is a low voter turnout election. Bring your friends. Bring your family. And if you all turn out on Tuesday with your friends, we are going to win in Wisconsin and send a message to the radical left. Don't mess with Trump. Don't mess with Doge.\n\nDon't mess with Elon. And don't mess with Wisconsin. Let's get it done, everybody. God bless. taking care of business. [Music] Take good care of my business when I'm [Music] away taking care of business. [Music] We've been taking care of working over taking care of business. taking care of business. We be taking care of business.\n\ntaking care of working [Music] In the clearing stands a boxer and a fighter by his trade and he carries the glove that made him or cut him till he cried out in his anger and his shame. I am leaving. I'm leaving and still [Music] remains. La line la. [Music] la. [Music] La la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la. [Music] Baby. Cry baby.\n\nAnd I know she told her she loveear [Music] If you ever come on and cry babyelcome [Music] Ain't nobody ever going to love you. Take all your [Music] pain. And if you need me, you know that I'll be right. If you ever come on, [Music] cry like you always seem to do. When you're [Music] walking to your life when you only got do one thing. You only got to do one thing well to make it in this [Music] world. You got a woman.\n\nAll you ever got to do is be a good man one time to one woman and that'll be the end. I know you got more tears to share. Come on. Come on. Come on. Come on. Come on. [Music] Ladies and gentlemen, please take your seats. We will resume the town hall with Elon Musk shortly. Please prepare your question related to the election after Elon's opening remarks. Please line up behind the folks with the microphones in the aisle.\n\nThank you for taking your seats. We will begin shortly. Baby, baby, baby. [Music] I know my heart can stay with my love. It's understood. It's in the love [Music] it does it do. [Music] I'll still find somethingwhere. [Music] That was my love. My [Music] love does it good. Oh my love, my love, only my love holds the other key to me. Oh my [Music] love, my love, only my love does it to me. [Music] My love does it.\n\n[Music] I never say goodbye to everywhere with my love. [Music] Does it good? Oh my love. Oh my love. Only my love. [Music] When I was a young boy now, so much older [Music] like there are things we can do babys [Music] feel [Music] like I can't change. Lord, help me. I can't [Music] change Lord. I can't change. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Elon Musk. [Music] Everybody, [Applause] thanks for coming. What do you think of my hat?\n\nAll right, I'm gonna I'm gonna sign the hat and I'm going to throw it out. [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] All right. All [Applause] right. All right. I love you guys, too. Uh so uh well thank you for coming out in support of this very important um uh Supreme Court uh race in Wisconsin.\n\nUm it's it's actually something that I think it's it's it's one of those things that may seem like it's obviously important in in the state of Wisconsin, but I think it could actually be important uh for the country as well and and maybe for the world. [Applause] So, so the so the the House majority right now is razor thin. It's really just a few seats.\n\nAnd if um if if the Supreme Court is able to redraw the districts, uh they will they will jerrymander the districts and deprive Wisconsin of two House seats on the Republican side. Yeah, exactly. The result of that could be that the house switches uh to a democratic house. Yes, indeed. Um and then they will try to stop all of the government reforms that we are we're doing and we're getting done for you, the American people.\n\n[Applause] So, so the the reforms that that were getting done in DC, thanks to uh President Trump and his great team, um are are really profound. really the goal is very simple. It's to restore merit um and freedom. So that's that's what it comes down to. So America is the land of of freedom and opportunity. So we want to we want to restore ind individual freedoms, freedom of speech, just in general uh get the government off your back.\n\nUm, so and and then make sure that you succeed in in the United States as a function of your hard work and your talent and nothing else. [Applause] So these are these are really noble and important principles and and also and I'll talk about more about this uh you know all night really as much as as long as you guys want to hear about it. Um but but as as you may as you may have seen with stuff that we've posted on the doge.\n\ngov website and the Doge handle on the X platform, there is a tremendous amount of waste and fraud in the federal government. Like shocking really. It's it's insane. Yeah. It's really wild. So Like I mean it was inevitable that at least a few Soros operatives would be in the [Laughter] audience. Give my regards to George. Say hi to George for me. USA. USA. USA. USA. USA. Yep. [Applause] I mean it was inevitable. I was waiting for that one.\n\nSo I mean I mean yeah thank you. Thanks guys. Um yeah I mean I I mean isn't it isn't it shocking how much violence and hatred is coming from the left? I mean, isn't this supposed isn't it supposed to be the the party they claim to be, the party of empathy, and yet they're burning they're burning Teslas and shooting up dealerships and calling for the death of the president and me. I'm like, guys, you know, this is this is insane.\n\nLike, they're to gone psycho. I mean, it's really like uh I totally understand if somebody doesn't want to buy a product. Yeah, it's up to you. It was free country, you know, but you don't have to burn it down. Okay. But much that's somebody else's car. Leave it alone. Thanks, [Applause] [Music] [Applause] guys. Yeah. So, man, that the arrangement level on the left is just like it blown my mind, frankly. I mean, I'm like, what is going on?\n\nIt's they've just lost it next level. I'm like, um, it's like, whoa. Um, and I I sort of wonder what's, you know, the legacy media is in part to blame for this and maybe primarily to blame for this because, you know, you know, it's really terrible. It's like if if they keep calling, you know, they they've called obviously called President Trump every name in the book.\n\nYou know, I think there's one article that that called the president worse than Hitler, Mussolini, and Stalin combined. I'm like, uh, actually, President Trump has not killed anyone. In fact, he's very good at stopping wars, not starting them. So, you know, we're really very different. Maybe we need to uh add some more history lessons back in schools because I don't know if people understand uh you know what uh the difference.\n\nDo do they know what Hitler was leading on? It seems they they don't um I mean it's just indicative of the poor quality of of education pushed by the national department of education. So you know we that's why we we we want to restore freedom to the states to this let the states decide on the educational agenda and not have something pushed by a bunch of neo-Marxists in DC.\n\n[Applause] So, I mean, it is astounding how much anti-American propaganda is pushed on on on kids today in schools. It's mind-blowing. It's like, what the hell's going on, you know? So anyway, but on a more positive note, uh we we we have this petition um you know to sort of against uh activist judges because judges should be in simply um interpreting the law and not making the law.\n\n[Applause] Um so in appreciation for the support of uh people in in signing this petition against activist judges, we just want judges to be judges, you know, which is a reasonable thing to ask for. Um and um we're obviously obviously seeing like some crazy stuff in in in DC where uh you know it seems like the it's like any any federal judge can stop any action by the president the you know the of the United States. This is insane.\n\nLike we we this this has got to stop it's got to stop at the federal level and at the state level. Um but let me first hand out two $1 million checks in appreciation. [Applause] Okay, so the first check goes to Nicholas Jacobs. [Applause] All right. [Applause] Now, I should say that the the reason, you know, the reason for the checks is that it's it's really just to get get attention.\n\nIt's it's like we we need to get attention and and it's somewhat inevitably um when I do this these things the u you know the the sort of uh it causes the legacy media to like kind of lose their minds and and and and then and then they'll they'll run it on every news channel and I'm like I I couldn't pay them to the it would cost like 10 times more or you know to get the kind of coverage that we get. So, all right. All right. Thank you so much.\n\n[Applause] So, thank you. All right. All right. You can just I guess take it if you want. We'll get We'll get I think we'll get you a real one, too. So, And then the second one, second one is to Eatarina Diesel. Let's see. Hopefully here. So, well, and you know, like I said, this is just helpful for getting it getting attention and then like it's it's kind of fun to see the legacy media lose their minds over it, too. So, love you too. So, yeah.\n\nSo, see, hello. Thank you. Congratulations. All right. All right. [Applause] Congratulations. All right. So, we're also uh going to be announcing we are announcing now a a a program uh sort of a a get out the vote program.\n\nUh that's the web page should be going live uh I think around now uh which is at the America pack website or just go to the America pack uh X account and uh the single biggest challenge I think is actually just making people aware that there is this very important election um and there's both the the very important election for Judge Shimmel as well as the um deciding on on adding voter ID to the Wisconsin Wisconsin constitution.\n\nition which is very very important. So it's it's really it's quite shocking that I mean you can sort of tell where voter fraud is happening where they ban ID, you know, like why would you ban ID? Like in New York and California it's like illegal to show ID at an election. Well, why would I can't imagine why that would be the case.\n\nSo um so two really important things um is uh is really just sure ensured judicial integrity on Tuesday and and then the the voter ID thing and um you know it's April Fool's Day. So uh and it is it's it's like I think most people aren't aware like I said most people aren't aware that there is this important election. Um, most people don't even know that there's an election at all.\n\nUm, and uh, or if they do, they aren't sure exactly when and where it is. Uh, and they aren't sure yet of or they don't realize just how important it is. Um, they think it it's well, it's just, you know, some kind of judicial thing that's not that important, but it actually what they're do what what's happening on Tuesday is a vote for uh, the the which party controls the US House of House of Representatives.\n\nThat is why it is so so significant and whichever party controls the house uh you know it it it to a significant degree controls the country which then steers the course of western civilization. So it's like I I feel like this is one of those things that that may not seem that it's going to affect the entire destiny of humanity but I think it will. No pressure. Yeah. So, um, it's it's a super it's a super big deal.\n\nAnd and the the fact that I'm here in person, like I'm not phoning it in. I'm here in person. I'm And there. Yeah. So, and there there were quite a few death threats, I have to tell you. Uh that I was like my security team said said, \"Well, it's it's actually gone down from yesterday to today. It went down from 18,000 to 17,000.\" So I'm like, \"Oh, maybe it's getting better, you know.\" Um but you can see like how crazy some of these people are.\n\nUm you know, look look at the the the two uh sort of people that tried to assassinate President Trump, you know, I mean that was uh and one, you know, they both almost succeeded. Um, so it's it's real. Like it's not like some imaginary thing.\n\nUm, so anyway, so what what we're announcing is is kind of like a a block captain program where um somebody can sign up to knock on doors in their zip code and encourage people to to uh well make people aware that there is a vote um and then aware of how important the vote is. So, you can uh sign up to be a kind of a block captain for your zip code on the America Pack website uh right now. Yeah.\n\nAnd if you do, it's it's like basically 20 bucks for just taking a photo with somebody. It's pretty straightforward. Just knock on doors in your neighborhood and and and give them either a digital or a paper, you know, picture of uh you know, Justice Bradimal. It can be a an approximation. It doesn't have to be exact. Um, but uh and and and they just have to say thumbs up and hold a picture of of Judge Shimmel and that's it and you get $20.\n\nSounds it's pretty easy. It's easy money. So, but we're the the whole point of it is just to make people aware of the election um and and say that there is an election. It's on Tuesday and it's super important. Please vote. So, [Applause] But I think without something like this um we're we actually are in in serious danger of losing the election. This is very important to put put in mind.\n\nIf you if you look at the betting market odds so if you look at sort of the poly market or kry like the betting markets it varies between 85% and 90% probability of loss for just a shimmel. That's the current situation. So, we got to we got to pull a rabbit out of the hat next level.\n\nIt's got we actually got to have a steady stream of rabbits out of the hat like it's an arc of rabbits flying through the air and and landing in a in a booning booth. Interesting picture. Uh Grock could probably make that picture. Um so, uh that's that's basically what's needed is is is we need to generate an anomaly in the matrix. Um, and because I think there's currently uh that there the Dems are 100,000 votes ahead.\n\nBut if actually if just if the people that voted for President Trump simply vote on Tuesday, uh we will win. That's actually all it takes. Just vote. Boom. Done. Victory. So, so we basically need to to drag net the state. It's like everybody's going to mobilize everywhere like crazy for the next 48 hours. Um, and I I think this will be important for the future of civilization. It's that significant. So, you don't hear me saying that very often.\n\nIt's it's a big deal. Um, so vote for Judge Supercharge Shiml. I call him Supercharge [Laughter] Shiml. So, [Applause] um, let's see. Um, so with that, I think we can um do some do Q&A if you guys would like to do some Q&A. Uh, and I'm happy to answer any questions. It can be, you know, about Doge or whatever you'd like to hear about.\n\nUm because I think um if you ask questions that the public would be interested in hearing then uh you know those those snippets will go all over the place and it will be helpful to the the public um you know at at large and maybe even beyond beyond our country. So, let's see. Uh, yeah, go ahead. We can just start over there. Uh, as AI gets continues to get smarter, won't it uh inevitably uh see through its creators uh propaganda?\n\nYes, the question is, as AI gets smarter, will it see through its creators propaganda? I I hope so. Um I think you can sort of think of an AI as it is somewhat nurtured by uh its creator. Um so yeah say what what is the operating principle? What what is what is the what is the north star of the AI?\n\nUm, you know, if it's a somewhat corporate AI, it could be like it's just trying to make corporations happy or it could be uh, you know, if it's particularly some of the AIs that that are trained in like the city of San Francisco, it's going to have kind of a San Francisco bias to it.\n\nUm because you can think of like smart people as well as like you know there are big differences in in sort of beliefs um among smart people and so you can expect that there will be big differences in beliefs among AIs as well. Um with Grock our aspiration is a maximally truth-seeking AI um which is like you always want to try to get as close to the truth as possible even if the truth is unpopular. Um and that's that's our goal.\n\num which I think is a very important goal. Hey, nice shirt. Oh, thank you. First of all, path of exile for life. Um but more importantly, as we see the the whole world has turned to a fear-based mobilization effort, and we've seen that translate into violence and and the right's not immune to it because it can hit anybody's psychology. Sure. How do we beat that with optimism because that's going to be crucial to avoid mass eruption of conflict?\n\nYeah. I mean, it there does seem to be um you're right that the the the right is not immune from sort of hate and violence. It's not like nothing, but it it does seem weirdly heavily weighted towards the left. Um I mean that like I haven't seen anyone tearing off like a Biden Harris hat.\n\nlike we're just like you feel a bit sorry for them like oh maybe they're wrong there you know um but but but you see people tearing off mega hats and someone just you know I saw a video just as just just today where somebody was just on an escalator woman was on escalator wearing a mega hat and someone going the other direction tore the hat off her head and I'm like what that's that's rude you know um so um in fact I sort of find myself in a strange position because I I didn't think of myself as right.\n\nI thought myself as centrist, but then the left went all the other other direction and now everyone's a Nazi, you know, before you know it. And I'm like, uh, wait a second. Uh, do you know what that means? Obviously not.\n\nSo um but yeah I mean I think you know I believe in peaceful discourse and that uh you know we make arguments uh verbal arguments and and the people decide which way they want to go but we you know we don't engage in sort of shouting people down or or violence or burning things or shooting things. Um that's what that's how democracy is supposed to work is peaceful discourse. So my question is about US aid.\n\nUm has the Doge team found any evidence that any of the radical left Democrats like Maxine Waters, Adam Schiff, Chuck Schumer have received money directly from USA ID? And if so, will we be hearing about that evidence anytime soon? Yeah. So the the there is a massive amount of corruption um but but it it is cuitous.\n\nSo what happens is there's money that obviously it's your taxpayer money that that is then sent to various government organizations who then send it to to NOS's which which an NGO is a non-governmental organization but obviously if it's a government funded non-governmental organization it's just an organization it's just a government um and effectively there's a giant fraud loophole uh which is that the the government can send money to an NGO that is then no longer governed by the law laws of the United states.\n\nSo they'll they'll send the money uh overseas to one NGO. Then it'll go through a bunch of bunch of them and then I'm highly confident that a bunch of that money then comes back to the United States and lands in the pockets of the people you just mentioned. Um but it is a securitous route.\n\nIt's not like it it it doesn't go directly, but let's just say that there's uh a lot of strangely wealthy members of Congress um where I'm I just can't I I'm trying to connect the dots of how did they become rich while earning how do they get 20 million if they're earning 200,000 a year? You sounds that's how I Nobody can explain that.\n\nSo, so, so something's Yeah, we we're going to try to figure it out and um and and and certainly stop it from happening. Um, [Applause] so yeah, I mean, just in general, this the the whole NGO scam is is just crazy. Um, and uh yeah, it's it's it's blown my mind really. Um, so yeah, most of us here are aware of social media censorship and I know you're keenly aware of it. Thank you for turning around X. Awesome.\n\nA as censorship picks up in financial institutions, what can we do about that? Uh, are you referring to um offering financial services by ex? No. Uh, sorry. being kicked off of financial or beliefs. Yeah. Yeah. Um well, certainly that that won't happen during the the Trump administration. Um I um hopefully that can be enshrined in law. Um which is part of the reason why we need a Republican Congress.\n\nUm so you didn't see any Republicans kicking Democrats out of and debanking Democrats, but there were a lot of Republicans that were debanked, thousands, which is really outrageous.\n\nUm, so so I think it does seem kind of one-sided, you know, this like trying to ruin people's lives and uh financially and and violent protests uh overwhelmingly is coming from the left these days, you know, it's like and whereas uh the right is polite, you know, uh and fair as far as I can tell. So yeah, go ahead. Um, thank you for being here.\n\nUh, uh, your comment kind of about The Matrix is kind of ironic because my husband and I watched first the the first Matrix and the sequel yesterday. Uh, my question is when so much of social media um nowadays, you know, whether it be X or YouTube or whatever is kind of um, curated to like your a a person's particular beliefs or even where we have protesters that um show up to town halls or or potentially are paid.\n\nHow do you does America kind of come together and it used to be where you could have a conversation and have discourse like you discussed, right? Um and still be friends even if you disagreed with kind of some of their statements. Um when you talk about knocking on doors like to different people's house like one kind of fear that I have is like even if you talk to somebody everybody has their own sets of beliefs and their own truths.\n\nSo I guess how do you get through that? Yeah. Well I think what we saw there for quite a while was that all of the legacy media and all of the new social media were in lock step together. Um, and they were all paring the same left-wing talking points. Um, and they were suppressing any disscent and any any so-called right-wing or frankly even centrist views.\n\nUm, and with that, that's why I felt it was it was critical to acquire Twitter now X um, in order to enable that dialogue. So it's it's it's certainly a step in the right direction and I think we've seen now once uh X was willing to to break ranks and not censor uh Republicans um then you you saw others also start to move in that direction.\n\nUm you know it looks like for example uh Facebook and Meta you know yeah um is they they have certainly Mark Zuckerberg has stated that they will be doing a sort of community notes um based on the community notes of the X platform um and and and as opposed to having sort of far-left censorship uh bureau the sort of you know the woke Stacey essentially reviewing things. Um, so that's a step in the right direction.\n\nUm, you know, there's there's some maybe some hope for the CNN's the world. It's like with with with with Scott being on there, he's great, you know, he's like I but I hope I'm I mean I'm sort of hopeful that things will that are are moving in in the direction where uh different points of view are espoused on or or you know heard on legacy media and and social media. So I I I guess maybe I'm actually a little bit optimistic about the future.\n\nUm and um you know on the Xplatform you know we we don't prioritize you know one side or the other. We try to be as fair as possible. Um and I will reply to you know prominent Democrats even if they sort of say terrible things about me. Um so you know it's like yeah we should have this discourse.\n\nUm, and so I I kind of think at least on the media front things are going in a good direction, but on the but I but I am kind of perturbed by the the sort of how aggressive these protests are, you know, where it's it's like, you know, there are people at these protests calling for the death of the president and death of me and I don't know, probably death of others, you you know, that that's not that's the kind of thing that's not not cool, you know.\n\nUm, at the risk of saying something outrageous, calling for murder is not cool, you know. So, thanks for coming, Elon. Um, I'm a teacher by trade. I have gone through the four-year bachelor degree to teach the nation's youth going forward. Um, on that I Yeah, I actually I'm kind of curious. Uh, what was that like? Like, uh, yeah. Um, I got an English degree, man.\n\nAt the end of the day, unless you want to hire me, that's about, you know, that's um Sure. So during teacher college, they give us a heat map and it says these are the cost per head on each student. Uh the south southeast is generally the worst, but they're also generally the lowest spent um per capita on each student.\n\nUm, beyond just that correlation of the one text I got in a education class, I wonder with your investments in Khan Academy with the advancement of AI educational tools where specifically you can get feedback and these students can get feedback. Yeah, absolutely. Um, where do we see a 100 years from now with all Oh man, 100 years from now? How about 50? I hope it lasts 100 years. That'd be like jackpot.\n\num you know yeah exactly hopefully hopefully we were like on Mars you know um so that would be really cool um so I I do think AI can be incredibly helpful in teaching because you can you can um essentially set up each kid with like a personalized AI um and that that AI can then answer questions for each kid um and that actually can be very profound in learning um because obviously if if you got a classroom of say 25 30 kids.\n\nIt's you you can't like spend it's literally impossible to spend time with every kid um individually uh or at least you can spend a little bit of time but not obviously it's it's a 1 to 21 to30 ratio. So, but but what you can do is is you can set them up with the AI and then you can, you know, if things get stuck or or whatever if if you want to, you can you can essentially guide the orchestra that way.\n\nAnd I think it could be a very powerful learning tool. Um, you know, I personally enjoyed my English classes in high school actually. Um, you know, they uh sometimes I wondered why am I reading Charles Dickens?\n\nthat uh you know there's some merit to reading Dickens and and and many of the I I actually think that we should have a a great cannon of of English literature uh that that that kids do at least you know uh some number of the significant works of in the English language.\n\n[Applause] So I mean this yeah it's it seems like very obvious to me but uh yeah um and and another thing with regard to teaching is that I think teaching is a very important profession um if you look at the expenditures uh there's a very big rise in the number of administrators um but but not a very big rise in the number of teachers and so that's that's really the big factor which is we we should have more actual teachers um you know and and I I I believe in paying teachers well and and having a lot of a lot of teachers but we should say why do we have so many administrators or or non-teers um so administrative expense has gone ballistic but teaching expense is more or less flat doesn't make sense so first I would like to apologize to you on behalf\n\nof America for the idiots you have to deal with for what you're doing for us to improve our country.\n\nSecond of all, my question is, what is your opinion on the Federal Reserve and do you have any intentions of doing anything with them and the [Laughter] Fed? Yeah. I don't know. I always wanted to say that, you know, uh but but I mean, I think there's like 20,000 people that work at the Fed seems pretty high.\n\nUm it's like there's a lot of people that work at the Fed on it seems like why do we have so many people at this at at the Fed and what do they do and um you know sometimes I wonder which one would win you know the Federal for for interest rates the the federal the board of the Federal Reserve or a magic eightball and I'm like I think the magic eightball might win you know. So then I'm like well magic eightball is a lot cheaper.\n\nUm, so you know it's like you shake it, it says check back again later. I'm like, [Laughter] okay, same [Laughter] thing. Um, but but I think we we we what really matters is that government spending it um is is not far in excess of government revenue. Um that's a fundamental issue that we have where that we have a de a deficit of $2 trillion and we have interest payments that now exceed uh the entire budget of the military.\n\nUm in fact that that was a big wakeup call for me was when the the amount of money that we pay in national debt interest exceeded the defense department budget. I'm like defense department budget is very big um and interest is higher than that and and and climbing. That's a disaster. you know, so the the very simple straightforward goal of of the Doge team is to get rid of um waste and fraud. It's it's mostly waste.\n\nIt's it's or depending on how you I'd say it's probably 80% waste, 20% forward, something like that. Um but it's a trillion dollars, so that's still a lot. Um, and it's it's, you know, it's got to, you know, it's got to be. We got the another soros sleeper agent there. [Laughter] [Applause] USA, USA, USA, USA.\n\n[Applause] So I mean to be to be clear the the very simple thing we're doing and we we post everything publicly on the Doge website which is uh is just to look at every expense and say is is this actually a good use of your taxpayer dollars. Um that's it. Um, it's not it's not super complicated.\n\nAnd and the and the thing that's that's pretty wild, this is why like I say like, you know, I used to be a Democrat like and so like um and and if you listen to this the the speeches of uh Clinton and Gore in in the 90s when they they were going on about reducing waste and fraud, it literally you wouldn't be able to tell the difference if like who said it, Doge or Clinton Gore? You can't even tell the difference. sounds exactly the same.\n\nIt's wild. So, we're we're really just trying to restore common sense to government and say like, let's not waste your money. Um, and let's make sure it's spent well and and that's it. And in in trying to save a trillion dollars of expenditures, what we're saying is of the 7 trillion in in government spending, let's try to see let's see if we can make it 15% 15% more efficient. Um, and I'm confident that we can.\n\nUm, but that's actually not a huge bar, by the way. [Applause] So, and and and when you see the when you see the crazy things that uh the government is spending money on, you can see a list of some of them. Um, you know, like I don't know if we should be spending money on transgender comic books in Peru. that doesn't seem like an ideal thing to spend your money on, you know. Um, why would we do that?\n\nUm, if if somebody in Peru wants to do that of their own accord, that's fine, but it shouldn't be your money that does it. Um, so it's it just and you know, we shouldn't be paying rent on empty buildings.\n\nUm, and uh, you know, if if if people if I do think there is a role for government, but but we just need to make we're just going to we're just going through and saying and doing what I would call like an an excellent and and and necessary um and reasonably trusted review of of organizations and and personnel. Um, so is this is this person doing a good job? Great. Um, is the role necessary? If so, that's good.\n\nUm, and are they reasonably trusted, meaning they're not a psycho? Um, like we're not talking about like political affiliation, just that they're not crazy. Um, so you know, uh, what's wrong with that? I'm like, sounds normal to me. So, that's it.\n\nUm now in in this process one of the things that we've discovered which is I think um on the fraud side which is a really big deal um is that uh the Democrat administration Biden administration has basically t taken every arm of the of the US government and bent it towards creating a financial incentive for illegal immigrants to come to the United states. Um, now this is every part of the government.\n\nSo like social security, Medicaid, uh, unemployment insurance, disability, uh, even the IRS. Um, so you can like fill out a fake tax return and say you you need a a tax maybe I shouldn't tell people this, but it'll actually work. I mean, mostly uh, there's some chance you'll get caught, but you can actually fill out a fake tax return. You can you can just get a tax refund even though if you didn't pay taxes.\n\nSo, we're trying to stop all these things to say like, okay, let's stop the waste and fraud and and we also need to turn off the massive financial incentive uh for illegals to come to the United States and and stay in the United States.\n\nAnd this is really the thing that is causing the Democrats to lose their mind, you know, because they're they're actually spending at this point uh tens of billions to attract and retain illegals in the United States. It's really on that scale. It's a gigantic number and the goal uh is is to turn all the swing states blue incl that means Wisconsin. So that's the goal.\n\nUm, so with the asylum program, uh, if they they can be get a green card within a year and then they can get, uh, citizenship as as quickly as four years after getting a green card because the first year of being asylum being asylum counts for the for the 5-year uh, citizenship waiting period. So this is this is a very big deal.\n\nUm, so, uh, a number of friends of mine have actually, uh, joined the government and in order to help with this process. Um, and I'd like to welcome my friend Antonio Gracias to the to the stage. I think so. Does it work? I can give you mine. Does it work? radiation belt. Uh, it'll be okay. Uh, I mean, Buzz Aldrin's still alive and he's he went past the belts. Work. Is this working? Yeah, it's not. Yeah, there you go.\n\nUm, so Antonio, can you tell us what what you uh Antonio is helping out uh with the social security? So, just trying to review social security where you may have heard that we found 20 million dead people uh marked as alive in the social security database. This is too so crazy. And then you'll notice there's a strange trend here. Um where uh how many social security numbers were issued. Uh it it's do you want to Yeah.\n\nSo let me um let me tell you what happened here. We we started at the top of the system. You want to talk about a lot of We started at the top of the system mapping the whole system of social security to understand where all the fraud was. And there's a lot of great people there that showed us um in really a lot of waste. And so that came up with a big list of stuff they're working on. You've heard some of that already.\n\nBut this is what jumped out at us. Um when we saw these numbers, we're like, what is this? In 21, you see 270,000 uh people goes all the way to 2. 1 million in 24. These are nonitizens that are getting social security numbers. Yeah. This this is a mind-blowing chart. Yeah. Just this this literally blew us away. Like we went there to find fraud and we found this by accident. And this isn't political, by the way. My parents are immigrants.\n\nUh, yeah, this country's been great to us. My brother and sister are all born in Spain. I'm pro-le immigration. This is not This is not political. This is not political. This is about America and the future of America. And there are a lot of good people in the system that pointed us in this direction. I want to I want to honor them right now that work in the government today who took risks to show us these numbers and tell us what's going on.\n\nSo, I want to stop for a minute. I want to tell I want to honor those people today. Very good people. Very good people. I have been from DC to social security offices to the border to track this down. And very good people have helped us along the way. I want to thank them. Yeah. This number what this is is when you come in the country, if you're illegal, uh there's a couple ways to come in.\n\nYou can come in through a port of entry and you can tell them you're afraid and you'll get they'll give you an asylum asylum case. You'll get an interview. then you get in. That's one way to do it. Another way to do it is to just go to the border. Literally, this happened. I talked to Border Patrol myself. Elon was there, too. Um I went to Laredo uh and I went to Brownsville. Elon went to Eagle Pass.\n\nUm you walk up to Border Patrol officer and you tell them you want to come in. They have a couple of choices. They could charge you with a misdemeanor or a felony under 1325, or they can make it an administrative offense, like a parking ticket. Basically, they were told to do that.\n\nmake an administrative offense under the last administration and then you go walk across the border, they uh do what's called a release from your own recgnizance and they give you an NTA, a notice to appear, which to appear at a judge. The wait times on judges are like average six years. Look at Grock, you'll see it on immigration judges. There's only 700 of them. This is 5. 5 million people. Okay? So, what happens then?\n\nOnce you're in the country and you got asylum through one of these pathways and we've mapped the whole thing out, uh you can apply for a work document. You file a 765. It's the work form. You get this form called the 766. That's the authorization. And then Social Security Administration automatically send you in the mail your social security number. No interview, no ID. This is worth like just reiterating it.\n\nIt it's not that it's not people sometimes think that under the Biden administration that that he was simply asleep at the switch. He wasn't asleep. They were asleep at the switch.\n\nIt it it was a massive large-scale program to import as many illegals as possible ultimately to change the entire voting map of the United States and disenfranchise the the American people and make it a permanent deep blue one party state from which there would be no escape. Look, if I hadn't seen this myself, I'm not sure believed it. I went through it myself and mapped it and Elon is right. This is true.\n\nThe defaults in the system from social security to all of the benefit programs have been set to max inclusion, max pay for these people and minimum collection. That's what's happening. We found 1. 3 million of them already on Medicaid as an example. We've gone through on every benefit program we went through, we found groups from this particular group of people, this 5. 5 million people in those benefit programs.\n\nAnd then what was really really disturbing us was why. We're asking ourselves why. And so we actually just took a sample and looked at voter registration records and we found people here registered to vote in this population. Yes. And who did vote? And and we found some by sampling that actually did vote. And we have referred them to prosecution at the Homeland Security Investigation Service. Yeah. Already. Already.\n\nThat has already happened right now. Yeah. And the truly disturbing thing though, I just want you to know this. A truly disturbing thing to me and the darkest thing about this to me, uh, the voter fraud is terrible, but the human tragedy this created is extraordinary. Because what you don't understand, and people don't know, and Americans need to know, that's why I'm here, is that human traffickers made 13 to 15 billion dollars off of this. Okay?\n\nThat's the money that's going around the world moving people around the world to our borders because of these incentives. How does it work? What happens? Hey, if you're in Africa and you're in Central America, you got to walk up through Mexico, through America. Who do you pay? You pay the narcos. You pay the traffickers, right? And we found, we were told by ICE, it's between 20,000 and 500 bucks, depends.\n\nThey pick you up to walk across all those countries and get all the way up to the border. Where's that money goes? It goes to the cartels. It goes to human traffickers, right? There are 30,000 children that have not appeared on the notice to appear already. ICE knows this. 30,000 children, 270,000 children didn't even get notices to appear.\n\nICE told us that kids are being trafficked back and forth across the border to complete families to make this easier. This is a human tragedy. It's not just the money, it's the people and the kids. And how many of these people died on the way up here that didn't make it in? What happened to them? We created this system here that created a descent for people to come and be taken advantage of by these traffickers.\n\nAnd how do you think they get paid? What? You're an African Central America. You got $20,000 or $10,000 or $5,000 to pay these traffickers. No, you don't. What happens? You come in, then you owe them the money. It's your indentured servant. If you don't pay them, what happens? What do they do? They kill your mother. They kill your brother. take care of your family. What happens next? That's what we discovered.\n\nAnd I have to tell you, it was it's tragic to me. The tragedy, the human tragedy this created is extraordinary. That's the real problem. This is America. We don't do this here in America. Yeah. We don't do this here in America. People come here legally, and that's great. Elon came here legally. My parents came here legally. That's the way to do it. This is this is outrageous. [Applause] Yeah, it's it's it's pretty wild.\n\nI mean, you can see u because there's still actually a lot of people out there, especially in the sort of center third of the country that that somehow think this is made up by the right or it's like some fiction. It's not that it's somehow not true. But it is it is in it is is absolutely true.\n\nUm, and you can see that if if you if you you know look at things like the state of New York, which tried to make it legal for for for illegal immigrants to vote in the state of New York that was only shot down by the New York Supreme Court a few weeks ago. Um, and and California has made it um health care available to all illegals in the state. Um, and they initially claimed that it would only cost three billion. is now 9 billion and climbing.\n\nUm, so it's it's really if if you create a massive financial incentive for people to come to the United States illegally, then that's what they will do. It's it's a very sort of it would be stranger it'd be odd if that didn't happen.\n\nSo the the really the thing that is actually has the Democrats losing their mind by far um the real reason for these attacks and and sort of the burning of the cars and everything is that we're going to turn off the payments to illegals [Applause] because Yeah. I mean because that's not the deal. You know this there it's you know it's not it's not it's simply not right.\n\nUm and uh you know if if you look at that thing with the Roosevelt Hotel and like you know the luxury hotels in New York where the Federal Emergency Management Agency funds were being used to to house uh illegals in luxury hotels in New York that the average American can't afford. Um, and they were giving a welcome package and $10,000 debit cards and everything else. Like, it's it's super real.\n\nI mean, it's it's like uh it's it's it's in my I think it's the the the biggest uh voter fraud thing in history by far. Um and and more of a if if left unchecked, it would have succeeded. Um, as Antonio mentioned, the the time frame for going from asylum to citizen is roughly five years. Yeah.\n\nU, and so all of the people that came in on that chart that you saw, uh, if if the if the machine behind the Camala puppet had won, um, then, you know, they change out the puppet, but it's the same machine. um then they would have actually legalized uh all those people and there would be no swing states and they added more. Remember it was doubling every year. Yes, it went from 1 million. It was going ballistic. Going ballistic.\n\nAnd it it is it is just these people are just ending the the the uh benefit programs now by the way. We're seeing the ramp happen too. And these are just the ones that are in the system. This doesn't count the other, you know, 7 and a half 8 million that ICE thinks are out there. We don't know if they have numbers. The number is totally uncontrolled. The voter ID requirement in the state is super important because of this. Yes.\n\nBecause the social security number, it's not supposed to be a federal ID number, but it basically is. That's how you access all the benefits. This is why we need voter ID because this thing is not secure. You could walk into a social security office today as an adult in America and get a social a social security number uh enumerated with simply a um answering six or seven simple questions and showing some some forms of ID that are not federal ID.\n\nWell, you can just actually make it up. You basically you can you can show basically like uh like a fake utility bill or you know a show a medical bill and a school ID. Yeah. Medical bill and school ID and you can get a social security number. Yes. Um and then from there you get on the voter roles and then um basically Dem operatives will form the vote. Yes.\n\nUm, so, uh, you know, the problem with this obviously is that if you turn the swing states, uh, blue, then there are no swing states, and then we're in a permanent one one party system. And as soon as they win that, they'll have the House, the Senate, the Presidency, they'll pack the Supreme Court. Then they'll they'll double down on on the illegals just like California. So like we've we've already seen this happen in California.\n\nCalifornia is supermajority dem. So, uh, but at least California is held back by the fact that people can move out of state. Um, once you can no longer leave America, they will be there'll be far worse than California. So, the gravity of the situation is severe. Help us clean up Wisconsin. Yes. Yes. Absolutely. [Applause] So, I mean, it's it's really simple stuff.\n\nUh, just, you know, Having uh you know photo ID to vote is like you can't like buy something at the liquor store but uh voting is a lot is more important uh than you know buying a beer. So you're going to need real ID an airplane. Yeah. You can't fly anywhere. Yeah. And and and like the same people who said who are saying that there should be no voter ID at at voting stations uh demanded vaci vaccine ID from everyone. Yeah.\n\nI'm like that's weird, you know. So, so it's it's it's really about just restoring integrity to the voting system. Um, which really should not be a right or left cause, but a cause for all. Um, is do do we not all want integrity in the voting system? Of course we do. Yes. Of course. Yes. So, [Applause] so, so, well, you're welcome to hang out and see maybe there's some questions people. Let's see. We'll we'll go. Hi, Elon.\n\nUm, I also am a teacher. I was a teacher in Colorado for eight years, high school Spanish. Um, but I moved I moved here last year and got to vote in Wisconsin where my vote actually mattered and I'm so glad that was amazing that we got Trump elected. Yeah. Um, and I was listening to I believe it was Patrick Bet David.\n\nHe called this perfectly where he said when Elon or when when Trump gets elected, he's going to go from enemy number one to Elon's going to be number number one. And for the reason, I mean, he only has a couple years left. And we've all seen the the left go after you and make you number one enemy. And just walking in here, we heard Nazis suck. There's all this horrible thing.\n\nAnd just on a on a serious note, I just want to let you know, my wife and I pray for you at night. Thank you. For your safety, guys. Thank you. I I I got I got to watch my hand gestures these days, you know, but uh I think this one's safe, you know. Um, you know, it's like can't wave to the crowd. You never know what'll happen. And I've been a fan of yours for like a decade.\n\nAnd I've been a walking Tesla ad to anybody who talks to me, even though I never had a Tesla until I came to Wisconsin, too. And it's 10 years old, but it's the best Model S I've ever had. Thank you. It's incredible. Thank you. But I I just wanted to um take to ask you if it would be okay. I brought my dad with me. Um he's a pastor and I just thought if it's okay with you, I would love for him to say a prayer for you as well for your protection.\n\nThank you. Uh Elon, well, thank you so much for everything you've done for our country. We we do love you very much. Thank you. And uh and as a pastor, but just as a person, right? And even if I wasn't a Christian, and I know not everyone here is a Christian, but I think there's quite a few of you here and uh who who are either way, we we love all all people. It's that's not the issue. The issue is is fairness.\n\nwhat you're talking about the issue being uh uh just and the justice being a weapon instead of uh lawfare instead of actually just and and all this corruption you're talking about. And that's a bad spirit if you want to say it that way, putting it nicely. It's it's something evil that has come against our country, our morals, our families, etc. and then you and the president and others getting attacked with this outrage and this hate.\n\nSo if you would allow me to pray. Thank you. You would all who want to please join me bow our heads and pray. Gracious heavenly father, we are thankful for our country. We are thankful that God does bless America and that God is the source of all goodness, love, and provision. And that you, Lord God, have provided a great nation with a great history. And although we've gone through many rough times, you're still very present and active with us.\n\nThank you for protecting President Trump from that fatal attack. And we ask that you envelop and protect all of those who are fighting for justice, for freedom, for order, for dignity, and to re reward people according to merit.\n\nand especially put your hedge of protection around Elon Musk, around his children, around his whole entire family and all of his team members that all would do good and just by our country and freedom truly and justice would reign once again. We ask this in the name of the blessed savior Jesus Christ who we remember during this time of year who suffered and died for our sins. May you wash away all that is wrong with our country and start with us.\n\nWe ask this in Jesus name. Amen. Amen. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. [Applause] to you. You can hang out if you want. Well, that was that was beautiful. That was beautiful. It's uh I think we're going to need divine protection, frankly. Yeah. Hey, Elon, I'd like to start off by thanking you for all that you've done for our country and the world as a greater whole. And I mean that from the bottom of my heart as well.\n\nUm I have a question for you. Um, as you go about your decision making at Doge, how are you able to keep your moral northstar and not set precedents when it comes to overstepping democratic processes simply because the end justifies the means and have outcomes similar to the last election with Democratic presidential candidate being appointed without due process that just further polarizes the country. True. Also on a side note, one more thing.\n\nDo you see a place in the long term for decentralized technology in society and government? Yeah, I mean to answer the second question first, um I think generally if it's good to have decentralized systems, uh because the more centralized something is um the more the more power that is in any one single entity, the more corruption you're likely to have. So decentralization I think is good to minimize corruption.\n\nUm then with respect to Doge u I mean as I said it's it's we're trying to be as literal as possible. It just it's department of government efficiency and it's just literally going through and saying okay this money was spent is it money that most Americans would agree is sensible uh or is it not? Um and uh you know if it doesn't seem sensible then we you know um say well we shouldn't spend that money anymore.\n\nWe should and we should we should stop it. So and then we post the the we try to be as transparent as possible. So all the Doge actions are posted on the doge. gov website and on the Doge handle on X. So people disagree with something they we can say well which which part do you disagree with?\n\nUm and you when when I get these sort of attacks of like oh it's unconstitutional I mean like well which expenditure is unconstitutional that we've stopped um because and then they they don't know actually because they don't they haven't actually looked at anything.\n\nSo um now obviously a lot of this can be reversed with a new administration um but at least for some period of time we're going to make sure that your taxpayer money is spent at least 15% better. It's it's it's it's not like a you know I think it's a reasonable goal. It's a rational goal. It's a sensible goal.\n\nUm and um and the net result I should say if if if we have the combination of a a trillion dollar increase in the an economic output and a trillion dollar decrease in the in the budget deficit, then the outcome should be that there is no inflation or very little inflation uh from one year to the next. So at the end of next year, you the prices will be at the grocery store will be very similar to what they are right now.\n\nUm which means that you know standard of living will will will actually probably be higher, a little bit higher. Um you know you whereas we've had rampant inflation to date which and inflation is really just a a a pernicious tax that has been used by governments throughout history. Um and it's it's very tempting for governments to use inflation as a as a tax because it's indirect.\n\nUm people see the prices rising at the grocery store or at you know for goods and services or for houses and they they tend to like blame the store but it's it's not the store it's the government. Um the government has reduced the value of money and as a result prices rise.\n\nUm so by you know changing by by reducing waste and fraud um will essentially make the economy more efficient uh and will shift uh people resources from the government to the private sector. Um and that will result in an increase in the output of goods and services and and so the the average standard of living will therefore rise. So like they're trying to make economics sound very complicated, but it's it's really not that complicated.\n\nUm standard the standard of living increases when the the when the output of goods average output of goods and services increases per person. There's basically more stuff. Therefore, you have more stuff to divide across the people. Um that's it.\n\nAnd you can you can run this sort of thought experiment and say like if there was a hundred people on an island and you'd say well how many people do you want farming, fishing, making stuff um you know versus you know doing regulations. You would say like you wouldn't want like 20 people doing regulations, you know, you'd be like that's too many. Um well then maybe you'd want one or two. I don't know. Maybe none. Ideally zero.\n\nI I mean I'm I'm all for small government by the way. I'm not I think the really Yeah. Um you know when the United States was when the United States was formed there were only um you know you had the secretary of state the secretary of war which I think is a more accurate name than defense um uh and you know but it was secretary of war war for a long time. Um, and you had Secretary of the Treasury and you had the attorney general. That was it.\n\nAnd, um, if it were entirely up to me, I'd be like, let's let's make it like that again. Yeah. Howdy, gentlemen. Uh, got a quick question regarding government and transparency. Do you think Dogecoin may ever be used or the Dogecoin blockchain to be used for maximum transparency? Well, the names are similar, but they're doing two very different things.\n\nUm, so in fact, I was going to call it like the government efficiency commission, but that's a super boring name. Um, and then the internet said, \"No, it needs to be called the Department of Government Efficiency.\" I was like, \"Well, internet, that that's the internet is right.\" Um so so we changed the name from government efficiency commission to department of government efficiency.\n\nUm but there are no plans for the government to use Dogecoin or or anything as far as I know. Um so that that they happen to be similar names but but really it's just we're just literally trying to make the government 15% more efficient. It's kind of like like most of the work that's that's being done is it's kind of like homework. It's not like uh it's it's just it's just work, you know? It it frankly it's like washing the dishes.\n\nIt's it's not like you know it's it's a lot of it's not super fun work. It's just you know going through and looking at every expense and saying why you know why does this department have like 10 times more software licenses than people? That doesn't make sense. Um you know why why is this why is the government spending $10 million a year on Politico subscriptions?\n\nthat doesn't make sense, you know, like there's just one thing after another like that. It's like things that are just uh kind of kind of boring. It's it's like a ton of boring stuff. Like you do hear about like the the the sort of weird stuff that makes the headlines, but most of it most of the costs that are being cut are just very basic boring things.\n\nIt it's it's a it's it's like homework at scale is what I'd call you the department of government efficiency. Um can I can I add some I think this question about transparency. I'm really selling it here. Yeah. Yeah. No, no, no. I um I I I would say the principles that Elana set out for Doge are they begin with truth. Truth. Find the truth. Number one, find the truth. Why?\n\nBecause the government government's gotten so big that actually the people don't even know what's there. They don't know the source of truth. So these licenses, it's not like people bought these licenses because they're bad people and they wanted to pay Microsoft. They just kept buying licenses because Microsoft kept selling from them. I mean, it's just it's that strange. And we don't want to pick on Microsoft.\n\nIt's like every every software company, by the way, any software company pick company X. They they didn't they bought these licenses because they just uh thought they should buy more licenses. More people coming in and there's no one there. People aren't coming back to the office, right? They It's just finding truth. The number one principle is truth. And then transparency is number two, I think, on the list, right?\n\nSo find the truth, make it public, make it transparent. And number three is, man, do it fast. Make it efficient and be urgent. Yeah, those those are the principles that Elon's put into Doge. Yeah, it's it's worth pointing out like like it's it's actually difficult to you have to recalibrate uh how dumb things can be because it's the government, you know, frankly, it's like dumber than you think it could possibly be.\n\nUm so you know like for example there were we found there were a whole bunch of what I call uh ghost payments going out um where the the government contracting officer had retired or or changed jobs or were dead or or I don't know they were not around anymore and they forgot to turn off the payment stream to some company and it's it's like leaving the the money faucet on and you you know leave the house you know and it's just the money faucet keeps going and it's a pretty rare organization that will complain about receiving money.\n\nUm so organizations so then you're like is that waste of fraud? I mean the government didn't send them the money but they didn't deserve it. Um so then well okay we but we should turn off the money spigot if they if the contract is over you know type of thing.\n\nUm so one of the things that um we we made a recommendation to uh the treasury uh that uh that the payment classification codes uh and and the explanation for the payment be mandatory fields. Um so so that just and have a name attached. So we could just ask the person who approved the payment is this payment a good a good payment? Does this make sense?\n\nthis is the kind of thing that is that is normal in you know for individuals and and for companies. Um but uh that was not the case. Uh so the reason why the the the government could not pass an audit was because the information did not exist that it that would be required to pass an audit like it was literally impossible um because you just had all these blank checks going out with no explanation and no payment code.\n\nSo how you supposed to do an audit? It's literally impossible. So that's what I mean by like it's very basic stuff like we just want the congressional appropriation payment code to be mandatory and a very short explanation. We're not even going to judge what the explanation is, but that there'll be any explanation at all and a name attached is was a like revolutionary.\n\nUm and and my guess is this will probably save a hundred billion dollars a year like a lot, you know. So maybe I could tell a little story from Social Security Administration that people might like to hear too which is um at at Social Security Administration it they have passed their audit actually they've got I don't know about 100 material deficiencies but they passed their audit.\n\nUh when we looked at the balance sheet um we found that $800 million had fallen off the balance sheet last year. $800 million. What do you mean it fell off the balance sheet? It's exactly the question I asked Elon. Thank you. Where did it fall to? Exactly. Where did it fall to? So I I I asked the auditors to come in. It's like a comedy sketch, you know, comedy routine here. Where did it go? Exactly. But wait, where did it go? Exactly.\n\nSo here's what happened. I I I brought I asked the auditors to come in. I'm I won't give the name of the auditors. Come on in. And I asked the audit partner myself. Where did it go? What is fell off the balance sheet? Is that a gap term or non-GAAP term? I've never heard that. What does it mean?\n\nWell, the payment plans because um under the last administration uh you could pay if you owed if you got overpaid on social security like if you If you were on um if you were getting SSI or a disability and they paid you too much money, you got a job and didn't tell them they paid you too much money, they dropped that payment plan to $10 a month max. So the payment plans went out past the system date.\n\nSo if I remember correctly, it was 2047 payment plans out past system date. When it went past the system date, literally it fell off the system. Uh okay, it disappeared and the uh officers were supposed to people the technicians were supposed to put notes in the um in the system that this was going to be collected. The notes were so bad the auditors concluded this could not be collected and we literally lost $800 million gone.\n\nAnd I said to the auditor, \"How could that possibly be?\" And she said, \"Well, you know, it's not really material. It's a $ 1. 5 trillion program.\" I said, \"Well, it's material if it's your money. Is it in the computer? It's not in the computer. It fell off the computer. It's in the computer. The computer that's in the computer. Disappeared. $800 million just disappeared.\" I mean, it's crazy.\n\nSo, there's like it's one like nutty thing after another like that. Um, yeah. It's uh yeah, I mean it's crazy. Anyway, we're just we're just trying to basically fix the computers so that we know what the heck's going on. Um yeah, it's it's like please and and and you know, like I said, being fully trans we bring fully transparent with the American people so you know exactly what's going on.\n\nUm and uh just just making sure that uh you know, yeah, anyway, money is not wasteful or fraudulent. Um, you know, one interesting statistic was that 40% of the of the calls into social security were fraudulent, like meaning that that that it was someone trying to get uh a a social security payment that was going to a senior to to go to a instead to go to a fraud ring. So, that was almost half of the phone calls were fraudulent.\n\nProbably the other half were people asking what happened to my social security. This is true actually. Like where did my what? This is bananas. Yeah. And I mean we found this actually the people there at S Street knew this was going on.\n\nUm and they had been complaining about it for a long time and no one fixed it because and these were these were uh mostly criminal rings outside the country um in other other places in the world that are are jamming up the phone systems calling in using just these simple security questions because you can actually this was how crazy it was.\n\nYou could change your direct deposit information at social security by simply answering six questions on the phone like your mother's maiden name, your date of birth, etc. Like stuff you can find on the internet, easily found on the dark web. That's why it was so easy. It was a huge, huge exploitation, super open door. I mean, the bank vault was open and the criminals ran right in and took the money and they took it away from our seniors. Right.\n\nSo what happened is if like my dad's 84, he'd go get it thought checked in the bank account wasn't there. Then he's got to go whole through a whole process to get it the money back in the government which takes a long time. It's the government, right? So we we put in a very simple 2FA system. All this nonsense you've seen in the media about we turned off the phone lines but not true.\n\nAll all we did all they did actually we we recommended to social security that they put in uh a very simple 2FA system and they will two two factor authentication two factoration. They same kind of thing to the banks like pretty simple. you have a bank account, you do this. And you know what? They did it. They said, \"Yeah, you're right. We should do that.\" They went and did it. Good for them. They did it. No one had the will to do it.\n\nThey did it. And they're going to keep increasing security. They've got we've gave them we've given them a lot more recommendations and they're on the road to increase security to stop all this nonsense so our our seniors and our our people that are disabled don't get stolen from. Yeah, this is really worth emphasizing. Um because like the you know the radical left are saying that like somehow we're stealing social security.\n\nLike first of all like you know I I don't need the money. Okay. Um in in fact uh it's costing me a lot to be in this job. Uh you know you had like Tim Walls uh dancing on stage showing a a chart of Tesla stock. Uh which is really uh awful thing for him to do. um you know because what they're trying to do is put massive pressure on on um me and and Tesla I guess to to you know I don't know stop stop doing this.\n\nUm but uh you know it's you know my my Tesla stock and the stock of everyone who holds Tesla's gone went roughly in half. I mean it's a big deal. So not not only is am I not getting any any I'm not getting paid definitely not stealing money and would never get away with it. Um, but the value of my Tesla stock is in half. So, this is a very expensive job is what I'm saying. Um, and but but I think it's it's it's [Applause] welcome. Thank you.\n\nThank you. Thank you. [Applause] Thank you very much guys. Um so but long term I think Tesla stock's going to do fine. Uh so uh you know maybe it's a buying opportunity. Um so um but but the the actual thing we're doing is is making sure that um people do get their social security and that it doesn't get stolen. Um so 100%. Yeah. Yeah. Sorry. Go ahead. Hi Elon. I got a question for you about Dodge. Great shirt.\n\nUm, everybody in this room has got a bunch of money sitting in a bunch of little boxes in a bunch of different states and it turned into crickets when you brought it up online that you were going to go check our gold and I'm worried about the Democrats and Joe Biden's last administration with the money not being there. Did you get blocked or are you still able to go check that? Sir, I'm not sure I understand exactly what you're referring to.\n\nFort Knox. Oh, Fort Knox. Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Um, well, that's up to the president, of course. Uh, but I think it would be I I think it would be awesome to live stream Fort Knox, you know. I mean, that would be really fun. And and after all, it it it is actually the gold of the American people. So, the American people should, it seems to me, have a right to see their gold. You know, hopefully it looks really cool.\n\num you know open the doors like is there like is that really gold? Let's check um you know so maybe it'll be really really interesting. Uh I'm I'm all for it. The president said he's he's interested in doing it. So hopefully that happens. So all right, good evening Mr. Musk. How are you? Good. How's it going? Good. Good. My name is Veto Gabriel. Um I'm 18 years old. This is my first election that I'll be voting in. So, great. Very exciting.\n\nOh, actually, uh that that that reminds me. So, it it is actually possible uh to both register to vote on Tuesday. Um if someone has not registered to vote, they can register to vote in Wisconsin and they can vote same day. So, even if somebody's not a registered voter, you can do it everything on on Tuesday. Uh so, bit of backstory.\n\nUh when I was younger, eight years old to be exact, my father put me to work in my family's restaurant and um it led me to want to start my own business and to be successful just like you. And in my opinion, you're one of the most successful businessmen to ever live. And so what advice would you give to young entrepreneurs who want to start their own uh businesses and give back to this great country? Well, sure.\n\nUm well it is it is very very hard to start a business and have it succeed. Um you know it's it is true that most businesses that start do not succeed. Um, so I mean I I guess I'd really just say, you know, if if there's a product or service that you think uh is really needed, um, then you you go out and you you you make that product or you produce that service, offer that service. Um, and uh, and try to be as useful as possible really.\n\nUm, you know, there's it's it's like whether you know it's it's a great restaurant or store or a technology company or whatever the case may be. Um, it's really just like are you doing things that are useful to your fellow human beings. Um, and you know, if if you are, then I think the company will be successful. Um, so that's that's that's really what it comes down to is is just being being useful. Like people ask me like what's the top advice?\n\nI'm like try to be useful. It's actually very difficult uh to be useful. Um you know um but you know I have a lot of admiration for anyone who just does an honest day's work um you know making products or or producing services for their fellow human beings. Um that's what a company is you know that's that's it. So um but but it it is hard.\n\nI mean I mean to totally frankly like I I generally say if if somebody needs encouragement uh to start a company I would recommend not and started not starting a company. Um it's it's it's uh it's very difficult like you know if you look at say the automotive industry the only two um American car companies that have not gone bankrupt uh are Tesla and Ford. So it's a it's a it's a big cemetery is what I'm saying.\n\nSo that's a tough one you know very very tough industry. Um and there were really no like commercial rocket companies that were successful before SpaceX. um it's it's generally very difficult to make the value of the output exceed the cost of the input. And that's that's really what defines a successful business. Um and and and profit is really the difference between the value of the output and the cost of the input.\n\nUm that that's what profit is. Um so but it's it's like shockingly hard to make the output more valuable than the input. That's what I found. Um, yeah. So, all right. Hi, Elon. Thank you so much for being here. Um, would you agree with me that the economic illiteracy in this country is staggering? That people don't understand how close we are. I would say that America to going over the fiscal cliff. Yeah. Right. Um, yes.\n\nMost people actually I think most people well I think a lot of people don't know what a national debt is. Um like how did this national debt come about and and how come there's all this money that somehow we owed but we didn't sign up to be to owing this money. Um but there's you know over $30 trillion of of national debt and that that doesn't count uh future obligations.\n\nUh so and and that that's just doesn't count state and state and local debt. So it's it's a lot of basically it's a lot of money that the government has signed everyone in America up for. Um and um yeah so so there's if we if we don't do something about it then eventually there won't be any any money for anything. We'll just be paying interest. Um you know a company so I should say a country is much like a person. It's just it's just bigger.\n\nA a country is a collection of people. Um but just like a person can go bankrupt, a c a c a country collectively can also go de facto bankrupt. Um essentially by diluting the currency to where it's worthless. Um and that's that's where we're headed unless uh we uh are you know take immediate and dramatic action with respect to government spending. Um that's we're we're in deep trouble basically. You've seen this in places like Venezuela.\n\nYeah, exactly. Um, so see in a lot of countries where where it's um think things have gone to hell in a hand basket and uh it's like we just need to not do that, you know. Um, so if you know if the ship of America sinks, we all sink with it. You know, this is something that I try to tell people in in the sort of commercial sector that like you're you're not going to your company's not going to make it if the ship of America sinks.\n\nSo, we all got to like, you know, work together here to make sure it does not. Yeah. [Applause] Antonio, feel free to add liver as you wish, but I This is the only place left to go. That's great. Right. Exactly. Like, I don't think we can run off to some other country and be okay. It's America, you know. I I will die in America. I'm not going anywhere. I I will, too. Yeah. I mean, I might go to Mars, but that'll be part of [Laughter] America.\n\nYeah. [Applause] Hi, Elon. Thank you so much for taking the time out of your busy schedule to be here today with us um in Green Bay, Wisconsin. Yeah. Um, I just want to say that DOA's findings demonstrate to the American people that the government clearly does not care about our hard-earned tax dollars. I have I'm only 26.\n\nUm, but I can imagine it's frustrating for people who have worked their entire lives to see their tax dollars going to fraud, waste, and abuse. And you alone have uh contributed so much money to our government. Yes. Via taxes. So, thank you. You're welcome. But I'm sorry that your money is not being spent very well.\n\nUm I you've clearly shown your leadership and team is capable of transforming our government into something better than what we see today. Um, I just want to say um um I'm sure I'm not the only one who's wondering, but we know that Doge has found quite a bit of money and we would like to see some of that returned to the American people. Do you have any information on when Doge checks would be written or sent out? Sure.\n\nWell, I I guess we we need to be successful at at scale. We've made a lot of progress um but there's still a tremendous amount of work to do. Um effectively by as government spending is made more efficient and spending is reduced the the taxpayer inflation is reduced um so um one way or another you you will effectively be better off uh if resources in the United States are not wasted.\n\nUm so um and It's it's it's it's a you know it's somewhat up to the Congress and maybe the president to uh you know as to whether specific checks are cut but but whether a check is cut or not if you if you reduce um uh wasteful spending uh the the economy is going to be better off. There will be people will do more useful jobs than before. The total output of goods and services will increase and then the average standard of living will increase.\n\nSo that that's uh yeah um I I think the most important lesson in economics is simply uh common sense that the the more people in a country that are engaged in producing useful products and services the better off that country will be. um like you could you could run the sort of thought experiment to say in the limit if we moved everyone in the car industry into the DMV there would be no cars but there would be a lot of regulators.\n\nSo then you say well okay well then how many people should be in the government versus not government. Um and generally I think you want to have you want to minimize the number of people in government. There still you know be a lot of people in government but you want to keep that to a minimum and move people from low to negative productivity roles to high productivity roles in the private sector. Yeah. Hey Elon.\n\nSo the first time I heard about population collapse I think was from you and Joe Rogan. I grew up in the generation where it was very overpopulation, global warming, a lot of people don't want to have kids. My wife and I just had our first, she's a year. Hi, Congratulations. Hi, John. Thank you. Amazing. Um, and I'm finding out very quickly a lot of these things I was told about having kids, losing personal freedom, it's well worth it.\n\nI mean, I I would recommend to everybody, as I'm sure you would, and we Absolutely. I I mean, I' I've been banging the baby drum for ages. Yes. Um, so my question to you is, what's the most surprising and fulfilling thing you've learned from your kids? Especially, we've seen you around X all the time with Trump. So, what's your most fulfilling thing you've learned from having kids? Uh, yeah, X is X is in the back there.\n\nHe, you know, so hopefully he's watching this hopefully. Um, yeah, I I think, you know, I I think nothing makes you happier than kids really is is what is the truth of it. So, um, you know, kids are my greatest source of happiness. Um, and, uh, I really encourage, as as Antonio knows, I've encouraged all my friends and everyone to have kids. Uh, it it is it is concerning, you know, that the United States has been below uh, replacement rate.\n\nThe birth rate in the United States has been below replacement rate uh since uh roughly when I was born around 197071 thereabouts. Um and I think last year was the lowest birth rate on record. It was very it was very low. Um and then we we're seeing this trend in uh almost every country on earth. This is this is worrying because it's like well um you know if something doesn't happen you know humanity is going to disappear.\n\nUm, so it's I think very important to have kids. Um, like it's it it you know it's it'll kids will make you very happy and and there's but there's also like we got to keep humanity going here, you know. Uh, no no humans no humanity. It's like Elon practice what he preaches too by the way. He's having lots of kids. That's right. You practice what you preach and Yeah. Yeah. For sure. And he tells all his friends to do it too.\n\nI can tell you that for sure. For sure. Yeah. So, all right. Hi, thanks for coming. Uh, my name is Adam. I'm a postal worker. I'm wondering if you could give some insight into some of the reforms or changes that Doge might be looking at for the postal service. Well, actually, may perhaps I could ask you what what should do Doge be doing with respect to the postal service? I I'll write you a letter. Okay. Okay.\n\nUm I I I sus I suspect you have seen that things are not entirely perfect in the postal service. Um yes. Um so I mean obviously there it's it's you know delivering um mail and packages is very important. Uh you know there's reason for why the postal service was created. Um but uh and and I haven't really had a chance to look at the postal service yet but uh I have I have a little detail on the analysis if you want. Do you do a little bit? Okay.\n\nSure. Yeah. I mean I wouldn't say that I want to be very general here but um there is this thing about you could tell us like uh there's this thing about large volume users postal service versus small small volume users right so like some company please I've heard of that. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you probably see it, right?\n\nLike you see there are some companies in the world that use Post Service a lot and pay the same rate as everybody in this room that uses it a little bit. Does that seem fair to you? You see it on the front line. I can't really say. Well, he can't say because he works there. You know, work there. Okay. Doesn't seem fair to me. I don't work there.\n\nUm, so I mean there there are qu there's a bunch of questions about this people are asking that I think are interesting analysis and when you look at the source of truth and the data and you uh make that transparent, I think it's going to be obvious what the right answers are. Yeah. It seems like some companies are not being charged the right amount for package delivery. Um, and there's probably more administrative overhead than there should be.\n\nUm, would be some safe guesses, I suspect. Those are good guesses. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Good guesses. All right. Elon, how are you? Yo, good. How's it going? It's Adam, your number one reply guy on X. Hey, it's Scott Presser. It's good to finally meet in person. Cool. So, I'm glad you like a lot of my stuff. Yeah. Constantly replying to my stuff, liking my stuff, and I'd love to create material because I'm a former Democrat myself, just like you.\n\nYeah. And I want to help bring over moderate voters from the Democrat party who are disenfranchised. Yeah. And I'd love to be able to create more content to help you out, to help us win more elections, to win the midterms 2028 and on. Um, would I be able to get a follow from your main because you followed me from your old cyber gamer? Oh, I did. Okay. Um, yeah. Uh, at this point I I I Yeah, sure. I'll I'll do that. Sure.\n\nUm, I mean it's it's right now like I used to only follow maybe um you know a few hundred accounts which and it was possible to read a lot most of what they posted but now I think I follow like 1100 accounts which makes it impossible. So so like it's just like I can only see a few things that people post at random essentially. Um so um yeah but I'm I'm trying to digest as much information as my human brain can manage.\n\nUh so um but yeah, thank you for for your engagement. Um and uh just you know in general like try to um report on what's really happening is is is great. Thank you. Thank you. Um Mr. must thank you so much for being here and bringing attention to what's going on with our Supreme Court here.\n\nIt's very important and I think it would have gotten no attention, not even half of what it's getting now um if you hadn't stepped in for good or bad negative press and good press. We think no exactly the totally. I mean obviously for a any kind of special election um is going to get a fraction small fraction of the the attention of a say a presidential election.\n\nUm and uh and and then it you know normally a an election for a judge would not be that big of a deal. Um it just so happens that this in this case it could decide the control of the US House of Representatives. Um which is a yeah a huge deal. Yeah. Yeah. and my personal experience with Judge Crawford. Um I am a family uh that she moved a pedophile right next to our home. What? Really? Yeah.\n\nIt is a true story in the ads that you're hearing from Mr. Shiml. I am Wow. one of the homeowners that had to live next to him for many years unaware. Um so the letter that I wrote to her I'm sure played into what we're experiencing now in family court. um family um we're veterans 20 years. It just was not good for him. It was not good for me. And um we're trying to work through our family court situation.\n\nBut what we're realizing is the two strategies that they use are indoctrination or intimidation. And if you step up and say we're practicing Catholic family, the result is her band of Mary rogue judges um and the court affiliates and the commissioners will um flood the family court have flooded the family court system. Yeah.\n\nSo, I guess my question would be um regardless of what happens with this very important vote, let's not forget what's happening in the family court system in Dayne County, Wisconsin that's being flooded with these rogue judges and affiliates and commissioners who then if you don't subscribe to what they're saying, they will just wipe out your ability to raise your family or proceed with your family in a way that you feel um your culture dictates dictates your religion dictates your your financial background dictates.\n\nUm it has gone completely bananas and um I'm wondering what you can do to keep the light shine on our court system in Dayne County. It does have lasting effect on families and it will breed out our ability to raise our families in the spirit which we feel is most healthy for our our young our children um and and the sanctity of our family. Absolutely.\n\nUm I think that's fundamental to uh life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, which is the foundation of America, that you know that that you you should have control over your family, not the state. The state should not have control of your family. It's insane that people would think that. [Applause] So, uh, we've had friends have to escape California because of this. Yeah. Yeah.\n\nI mean, it's literally had to leave because the state tried to dictate their kids because they're imposing the state's values on the kids and they literally had to leave overnight. More than one friend. We've had the story. Really? Really? Um, yeah. I know.\n\nThere's a a thing change the law in California where um if the teachers determine that uh it's in the kid's interest like like if you don't respect like you know I don't know 10-year-old's pronouns or something the the like the state can take your kid in California. So it's it's insane. Um you know it's it's it's state state forced indoctrination.\n\nUm, and if you if you don't match their uh you know, whatever the the state wants, then they can take your kid in California. It's a big deal. Yeah. Exactly. It's a So, it should just be, you know, families should have control over their own circumstances and it should not be the government that uh decides what how your children should be raised. [Applause] Hey Elen, my name is Josh. There's a lot of questions.\n\nI see there is we're going to answer everything at this point. So I'm Please go ahead. Sorry. Go ahead. Thank you for taking the questions. Although a lot of people I agree. So I just I was wondering I seen I noticed that there was another a second Mechzilla being built at the Star Base. Uh are we going to be go for launch for the Aremis mission coming up? I that's a very very sort of space question.\n\nUm so there's there there are um there yeah there are two towers in South Texas and and then two and and we plan to build two towers uh at the Cape in Florida. Uh and then probably some some more elsewhere in the future. But there'll be there'll be twin twin towers at the Cape and twin towers in South Texas Starbase. So all right. Hey Elon, good to meet you. Thank you for everything you're doing for the country and the world. Thank you.\n\nI I have two questions. They asked me to keep it short. Sure. Um well, one, when do you when do you envision uh solving blindness and bringing it that to the masses where it'll be for everyone? And the other is is robo taxi on schedule? Yeah. Uh well there's certainly a wide range of questions tonight. The Yes.\n\nSo with for for Neurolink, we we've actually had um Neurolink has had in monkeys a working um uh you know device we call blind sight um where um it's been working well and monkeys are healthy for for a few years now and we're hoping um later this year to do our first uh device implant for human enabling someone who is completely blind to see. Um, but it it's going to be low res at first, like Atari graphics, you know.\n\nSo, I want to set expectations appropriately. Uh, so it'll start off with like like very low res, but then over time, I think eventually uh the implant would enable vision that is like superhuman. Um, so that'll be that'd be pretty cool. Um, and then yeah, I think they're currently on track to do um unsupervised full self-driving uh in Austin in June. So I I think we probably will we'll we'll take maybe four more questions.\n\nSo just two from that side and two from that side and then we'll call it a night. So go ahead. Oh, thank you so much. First of all, you are beyond absolutely legendary and an absolute true hero. So thank you so much for everything you're doing, achieving, accomplishing. You've done so many impossibles. It is astonishing. Thank you.\n\nBut my name is Brian Wright and I've been filming from last year all the way into this year a docue series on finding peace. And during this election year, uh the episode was how many lines do we actually need to cross in order to be able to find peace? And I wanted to ask you where do you feel like we are in this this divide? Are we so far divided as to where there's no coming back to the middle or where do you see us being?\n\nYeah, we we should restore the Smith Act so that we the government cannot spy or issue propaganda to the people. Um, so um yeah um I don't know. I mean, I I I kind of thought that we're headed in a good direction uh for a while there and then and then the last, you know, month or so, there've been these like like crazy violent things happening against Tesla and and protesting me and whatnot.\n\nAnd I'm like, this is just nuts, you know, and and and uh you know, a lot of people sort of parading signs around saying that, you know, that President Trump and uh Ilamas should die type of thing. And I'm like, this is really nuts, you know.\n\nUm, but I think the the real issue is like who like who's organizing and funding that like the the same people that organized and funded the, you know, the infiltrators, uh, you know, who who the hecklers earlier tonight. So, it's it's it's whoever they are, you know. Um, and I guess we know some of their names, but it's really Yeah. Yeah. Sus and a bunch of others.\n\nUm, um, I'm not sure really what I sometimes I wonder what is their goal like what what's what's their aim you know I guess is it communism I guess is a part of it or just I don't know um sometimes I wonder like have they thought through what they're if let's say they got their goal what then what you know um so I I don't know I'm hopeful that things calm down that there's um you know we gauge that that people engage in like dialogue but not not violence.\n\nUm and that you know if uh for those who who do push violence um and destruction of property and intimidation obviously that they they need to face uh legal consequences for that. Um so um and and and the the president has has said that you know that that needs to happen. Obviously if people are pushing violence um and destruction of property that that is against the law and and they they need to face the con consequences of that. So thank you.\n\nYeah. Thank you Elon. Um I constantly hear that the Doge efforts um are going to do things like take away social security payments and reduce other government payments like that. You've touched on it tonight, but yeah. Can you state you you've discussed this at length over the last few months. Can you t talk again about how the Doge efforts are actually going to affect things like the payments and other programs like that?\n\nYeah, I I I guess it would be helpful because so so I can just state it as crisply and clearly as possible. Uh that Doge will will absolutely ensure that people get their Social Security, make sure they get their Social Security, make sure they get their Medicaid, um and will not be cutting any legitimate payments whatsoever. Crystal clear. I will just add to this.\n\nI I've been there uh working there and I spent about the first three or four weeks of my time in Woodlands actually working in Social Security Administration. Um 100% what you saying is true. Nothing has happened on the ground that would impact the level of payments going to people that legitimately are owed those payments. Period. A lot is going to happen to people that are stealing from the system. Yeah. Yeah. They're not getting the payments.\n\nAnd you know who's screaming? They are. cuz they're committing fraud and we should take that away from them cuz they're stealing from all of us in this room and our parents and they're going to scream loud and it's going to get louder. But but thank thank you for asking that question because it you know it is something that as obvious as it sound it it's it's a it's a great question because we just need to be very crisp and clear.\n\nUh Doge will make sure you get your Social Security. Those will make sure you get your Medicaid. There will be no cuts to legitimate payments whatsoever. I'd like to go last if it's okay with the other gentlemen. Can Would you like to go, sir? Please go. Thank you, Mr. Musk. Thank you so much for coming to Wisconsin. Um, I just want to thank you for calling out bad ideas on X.\n\nYou do that like every 30 minutes and if I don't see something I'm like, \"Wow, you alone.\" Okay. Yeah. Um Yeah. And we all know that ideas have consequences and bad ideas have victims. And um thank you for speaking up for victims.\n\nAnd a few nights ago when you spoke uh with Brett Bear when you were being interviewed and he asked you what keeps you up at night and like that other question, you answered and you paused and it was depopulation and I was waiting for you to say like, \"Oh, the death threats against my life or uh the national debt or but depopulation.\" Yeah, depopulation is a really big deal. it's not on people's radar. Why is that?\n\nUm, well, I think I think we we haven't yet evolved to deal with depopulation. You know, it's it's a I guess uh it's it's something we better evolve to deal with uh or or we're going to disappear. Um and and once the depopulation ball starts rolling, you know, it seems to gather up speed.\n\nI mean you can look at sort of cases like Korea and Japan which are um you know much further ahead or behind depending on how you look at it but that like the population decline there is much worse. Japan is an absolute publication population decline. So they're losing about I think roughly a million people a year above population and that's going to accelerate.\n\nUm, Korea is has only a third replacement rate which means that in three generations the country will be three or 4% of its current size. Like basically all that'll be left is a small portion of the capital city. Um, so and I keep waiting for the birth rate to turn around but it doesn't. Um, it seems like population collapse accelerates. Um and uh that's why I think it's it's a very serious matter.\n\nIt's it if you believe in humanity at all, you should care about this a lot. Um and then you know that that's sort but that you know that's a sort of long-term thing and in the the short term thing is is remaining is that America needs to be financially solvent. um you know that's that's what Doge is about trying to just make sure America is financially solvent and um and then there's also the risks of AI.\n\nUh so we want to make sure that that AI is is maximally truth seeeking um and you know ideally has sort of values that most Americans would agree with. um that and that it's a prohuman uh AI that it wants to foster the future of humanity. Um you know those those are the things that I think about. So thanks Elon. My name is Matt Hos like Bonanza big hos. I uh own and operate a small business here in the Fox Valley.\n\nUm, and tomorrow I actually get the honor and the privilege to host Brad Shiml at our shop, Springetti Landscaping. If anyone's in the valley, sounds good. Come down 4 4:30 tomorrow. We're having a shindig to have Brad stop by. He's going to come and give a little speech, get some uh some That's what this was about was Brad's election. And so I just wanted to say, in your opinion, what is Brad gonna do for small business owners like myself?\n\nUm, well, I think he's gonna help get the government off your back. Uh, so that's a big deal. Um, you know, for for anyone that starts a business, you know, it's like you used to just be able to open a store and not get like a zillion permits and licenses and everything. Uh, you know, that's how America, you wanted to make a product, you just made the product.\n\nUm, and you didn't have to satisfy a massive body of regulations and get a permission from all sorts of agencies. So hopefully um Justice Shiml is uh you know supports that and and helps get the government off your back. All right. So let me uh finish by saying obviously at the state level. Yeah, those are the state level be cool. Um but uh just just remember like this the importance of the election on Tuesday is gigantic.\n\nIt could it could decide the f the future of the House of Representatives. It could decide then the future of America and the future of the world. So, it's absolutely critical uh that you really you need to just drag friends and family to vote on Tuesday uh for Justice Shiml and for voter ID. So, thank you. Thank you guys. Thank you. Thank you. [Music] I don't want to work. I want to bang on all day. [Applause]","textByLang":{"en":"Hello everybody. Hello. Hello. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Well, welcome to Elon Musk's Green Bay Town Hall and thank you for signing the petition against activist judges. I mean, this is all about getting out to vote on Tuesday to elect Brad Shiml as the next justice of the Wisconsin Supreme Court. It's so crucial we do that. You know, I've been traveling around with Brad.\n\nAnd by the way, I don't I don't know and I see Governor Walker here. I know he was a tireless campaigner. I don't know of any candidate that I've seen in my years now in the business campaign more tirelessly than than Brad Shiml. He's just been phenomenal. And you know, he's not doing it for himself. He's doing it to save the court, to save Wisconsin, to save America. Let's let's be honest.\n\nSo, so I'm traveling around the bus with him the last couple days and then we do what they call press gaggles and and we go up and talk to the press and every question is about Elon, Elon, Elon, Elon. Now, I don't know, I don't know about you, I think what Donald Trump and Elon Musk is doing in terms of the doge movement is brilliant. What do you guys think?\n\n[Applause] I mean, what what Elon and his group of geniuses is uncovering, it's just it should outrage every American. You know what what what the government has been spending and wasting our money on. I mean, that should be, like I say, outrageous. Every American should be outraged by that, but but the left isn't. No, in instead they're attacking Elon. They're they're they're firebombing his cars in his dealerships.\n\nThat by the way, where where's the outrage to that form of domestic terrorism? So that that's really what this is all about. I mean, we've got we've got leftists that want to impose their ideology on us through the court system, right? um they they they don't care who or what they destroy in their quest for power. We can't get let them get away with it. Now, 1. 7 million Wisconsinites voted for Donald Trump, right?\n\nGod bless you all for doing that. If you want Donald Trump to be able to serve four years effectively, do do all the things he's doing. And by the way, I can't believe how boldly and swiftly and decisively he is acting to fulfill his campaign promises. But you'll notice you'll notice the activist judges, the the radical leftists, the the super legislators on the courts are issuing national injunctions against what he's trying to do.\n\nwhat we wanted him to do, what the people elected him to do. We can't let that continue. Now, what should happen is is John Roberts ought to reign those judges in. He ought to take care of his own branch of government. But what we need to do here in Wisconsin is we need to return our Supreme Court to one that has justices and judges. And by that, I mean people who will apply the law, not alter it. We're not looking for super legislators.\n\nAnd again, it's a real disadvantage conservatives have is, you know, when when I vote to confirm a Supreme Court nominee. I know I'm not going to like some of their judgments because they're ruling based on the law and I don't like some of the laws. The radical leftists, they know exactly what their judges are going to do. And we know exactly what Susan Crawford would do. She will overturn Act 10. Governor Walker's signature achievement.\n\nSave what? billions for Wisconsin taxpayers. She will redistrict. She'll be part of the group that will redistrict Derek Van Orton and Brian Styles districts. We may lose those wonderful members of Congress. We may lose a majority in the House and I do not want to be sitting in a third impeachment trial of a president. That's what we're facing. So, we cannot let that happen.\n\nAnd again, the good news is we've got a person of integrity, Brad Shiml, working his tail off. He will be that kind of judge that will uphold the law and return the constitutional balance to Wisconsin and help save America. So that's all about again. So every every one of the 1. 7 million Wisconsinites that voted for Donald Trump, you must come out and vote. If you haven't already, vote, come out and vote on Tuesday.\n\nTalk to every friend and family member and neighbor that you know, every email contact, every text contact. Get them all out to vote on Tuesday. There's no reason that we can't have 1. 3, four, five million votes and easily win this election. So, that's what you got to do. Thanks for coming here tonight.\n\nNow, it's my pleasure to introduce a former congressman, another one of our high integrity people who've represented us in Congress and is now representing us in America as the Secretary of the Department of Transportation, Shawn Duffy. [Applause] Hey everybody. [Music] What an amazing crowd. Are we not blessed to have a senator like Ron Johnson? He's amazing. Also somewhere here, Congressman uh Tony Weed is in the house. Tony, where are you?\n\nRight here. H Scott Walker as well in the house. Derek Van Orton, I know, is here too. Our great delegation from Wisconsin. We are blessed to have fighters like that in Washington DC. Now, quick question for you. Is Donald Trump making America great again? Yes, he is. Now, he does have a little bit of help from a guy by the name of Elon Musk. That's true. [Applause] Yeah.\n\nAnd I would argue he probably has one of the best cabinets ever in recent history. Maybe we're helping as well. I think all of us thought our government and the waste in our government it was we thought it was bad but after DOA's work we can't believe how bad it is. This is horrible. So think Stacy Abrams raises a couple hundred dollars in her climate action fund and then Joe Biden gives her $2 billion for her climate fund.\n\nElon Musk found that there are 7 million social security uh uh folks on the roles that are o over 120 years old. Unbelievable. And I love what Doge has found at USID. 1. 5 million to advance DEI in Serbia. 2. 5 million for EVs in Vietnam, 32,000 for transgender comic books in Peru, 2 million sex changes and LGBTQ activism in Guatemala. Your hardearned tax money go to garbage like that.\n\nAnd so I I never thought the left could get more crazy than they actually have become. But before this last election, they all wanted us to drive an EV. They wanted to force us into an EV. After the election, they're burning EVs. How crazy is that? And so I look at this and think, are you all sick of winning? No. If you're not sick of winning, let's not stop winning. And if you don't want to stop winning, this Tuesday is how you do it.\n\nThis election couldn't be more important. The country is watching what's going to happen in Wisconsin because you have a radical leftist judge who wants to get rid of school choice. She wants to get rid of voter ID. She wants to redraw congressional lines. She doesn't like parental rights. She wants to obstruct Donald Trump's agenda. She's soft on crime. She doesn't believe in bail. And she believes that criminals are more important than victims.\n\nunacceptable in this great state. And we have Brad Shiml who believes that the law should treat everyone the same. Whether you're a Republican or a Democrat, he's a fair man who's going to impose the law in a way that treats everyone equally, which is what we want as conservatives. And so what you all can do what you all, by the way, are you all going to vote or have you voted? You guys all voted. Okay, you look like a pretty lively group.\n\nSo, I imagine all of you at least have five friends, maybe 10. Get your five or 10 friends to the ballot box on Tuesday. And if all of you do that, you get your friends to the ballot box because this is a low voter turnout election. Bring your friends. Bring your family. And if you all turn out on Tuesday with your friends, we are going to win in Wisconsin and send a message to the radical left. Don't mess with Trump. Don't mess with Doge.\n\nDon't mess with Elon. And don't mess with Wisconsin. Let's get it done, everybody. God bless. taking care of business. [Music] Take good care of my business when I'm [Music] away taking care of business. [Music] We've been taking care of working over taking care of business. taking care of business. We be taking care of business.\n\ntaking care of working [Music] In the clearing stands a boxer and a fighter by his trade and he carries the glove that made him or cut him till he cried out in his anger and his shame. I am leaving. I'm leaving and still [Music] remains. La line la. [Music] la. [Music] La la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la. [Music] Baby. Cry baby.\n\nAnd I know she told her she loveear [Music] If you ever come on and cry babyelcome [Music] Ain't nobody ever going to love you. Take all your [Music] pain. And if you need me, you know that I'll be right. If you ever come on, [Music] cry like you always seem to do. When you're [Music] walking to your life when you only got do one thing. You only got to do one thing well to make it in this [Music] world. You got a woman.\n\nAll you ever got to do is be a good man one time to one woman and that'll be the end. I know you got more tears to share. Come on. Come on. Come on. Come on. Come on. [Music] Ladies and gentlemen, please take your seats. We will resume the town hall with Elon Musk shortly. Please prepare your question related to the election after Elon's opening remarks. Please line up behind the folks with the microphones in the aisle.\n\nThank you for taking your seats. We will begin shortly. Baby, baby, baby. [Music] I know my heart can stay with my love. It's understood. It's in the love [Music] it does it do. [Music] I'll still find somethingwhere. [Music] That was my love. My [Music] love does it good. Oh my love, my love, only my love holds the other key to me. Oh my [Music] love, my love, only my love does it to me. [Music] My love does it.\n\n[Music] I never say goodbye to everywhere with my love. [Music] Does it good? Oh my love. Oh my love. Only my love. [Music] When I was a young boy now, so much older [Music] like there are things we can do babys [Music] feel [Music] like I can't change. Lord, help me. I can't [Music] change Lord. I can't change. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Elon Musk. [Music] Everybody, [Applause] thanks for coming. What do you think of my hat?\n\nAll right, I'm gonna I'm gonna sign the hat and I'm going to throw it out. [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] All right. All [Applause] right. All right. I love you guys, too. Uh so uh well thank you for coming out in support of this very important um uh Supreme Court uh race in Wisconsin.\n\nUm it's it's actually something that I think it's it's it's one of those things that may seem like it's obviously important in in the state of Wisconsin, but I think it could actually be important uh for the country as well and and maybe for the world. [Applause] So, so the so the the House majority right now is razor thin. It's really just a few seats.\n\nAnd if um if if the Supreme Court is able to redraw the districts, uh they will they will jerrymander the districts and deprive Wisconsin of two House seats on the Republican side. Yeah, exactly. The result of that could be that the house switches uh to a democratic house. Yes, indeed. Um and then they will try to stop all of the government reforms that we are we're doing and we're getting done for you, the American people.\n\n[Applause] So, so the the reforms that that were getting done in DC, thanks to uh President Trump and his great team, um are are really profound. really the goal is very simple. It's to restore merit um and freedom. So that's that's what it comes down to. So America is the land of of freedom and opportunity. So we want to we want to restore ind individual freedoms, freedom of speech, just in general uh get the government off your back.\n\nUm, so and and then make sure that you succeed in in the United States as a function of your hard work and your talent and nothing else. [Applause] So these are these are really noble and important principles and and also and I'll talk about more about this uh you know all night really as much as as long as you guys want to hear about it. Um but but as as you may as you may have seen with stuff that we've posted on the doge.\n\ngov website and the Doge handle on the X platform, there is a tremendous amount of waste and fraud in the federal government. Like shocking really. It's it's insane. Yeah. It's really wild. So Like I mean it was inevitable that at least a few Soros operatives would be in the [Laughter] audience. Give my regards to George. Say hi to George for me. USA. USA. USA. USA. USA. Yep. [Applause] I mean it was inevitable. I was waiting for that one.\n\nSo I mean I mean yeah thank you. Thanks guys. Um yeah I mean I I mean isn't it isn't it shocking how much violence and hatred is coming from the left? I mean, isn't this supposed isn't it supposed to be the the party they claim to be, the party of empathy, and yet they're burning they're burning Teslas and shooting up dealerships and calling for the death of the president and me. I'm like, guys, you know, this is this is insane.\n\nLike, they're to gone psycho. I mean, it's really like uh I totally understand if somebody doesn't want to buy a product. Yeah, it's up to you. It was free country, you know, but you don't have to burn it down. Okay. But much that's somebody else's car. Leave it alone. Thanks, [Applause] [Music] [Applause] guys. Yeah. So, man, that the arrangement level on the left is just like it blown my mind, frankly. I mean, I'm like, what is going on?\n\nIt's they've just lost it next level. I'm like, um, it's like, whoa. Um, and I I sort of wonder what's, you know, the legacy media is in part to blame for this and maybe primarily to blame for this because, you know, you know, it's really terrible. It's like if if they keep calling, you know, they they've called obviously called President Trump every name in the book.\n\nYou know, I think there's one article that that called the president worse than Hitler, Mussolini, and Stalin combined. I'm like, uh, actually, President Trump has not killed anyone. In fact, he's very good at stopping wars, not starting them. So, you know, we're really very different. Maybe we need to uh add some more history lessons back in schools because I don't know if people understand uh you know what uh the difference.\n\nDo do they know what Hitler was leading on? It seems they they don't um I mean it's just indicative of the poor quality of of education pushed by the national department of education. So you know we that's why we we we want to restore freedom to the states to this let the states decide on the educational agenda and not have something pushed by a bunch of neo-Marxists in DC.\n\n[Applause] So, I mean, it is astounding how much anti-American propaganda is pushed on on on kids today in schools. It's mind-blowing. It's like, what the hell's going on, you know? So anyway, but on a more positive note, uh we we we have this petition um you know to sort of against uh activist judges because judges should be in simply um interpreting the law and not making the law.\n\n[Applause] Um so in appreciation for the support of uh people in in signing this petition against activist judges, we just want judges to be judges, you know, which is a reasonable thing to ask for. Um and um we're obviously obviously seeing like some crazy stuff in in in DC where uh you know it seems like the it's like any any federal judge can stop any action by the president the you know the of the United States. This is insane.\n\nLike we we this this has got to stop it's got to stop at the federal level and at the state level. Um but let me first hand out two $1 million checks in appreciation. [Applause] Okay, so the first check goes to Nicholas Jacobs. [Applause] All right. [Applause] Now, I should say that the the reason, you know, the reason for the checks is that it's it's really just to get get attention.\n\nIt's it's like we we need to get attention and and it's somewhat inevitably um when I do this these things the u you know the the sort of uh it causes the legacy media to like kind of lose their minds and and and and then and then they'll they'll run it on every news channel and I'm like I I couldn't pay them to the it would cost like 10 times more or you know to get the kind of coverage that we get. So, all right. All right. Thank you so much.\n\n[Applause] So, thank you. All right. All right. You can just I guess take it if you want. We'll get We'll get I think we'll get you a real one, too. So, And then the second one, second one is to Eatarina Diesel. Let's see. Hopefully here. So, well, and you know, like I said, this is just helpful for getting it getting attention and then like it's it's kind of fun to see the legacy media lose their minds over it, too. So, love you too. So, yeah.\n\nSo, see, hello. Thank you. Congratulations. All right. All right. [Applause] Congratulations. All right. So, we're also uh going to be announcing we are announcing now a a a program uh sort of a a get out the vote program.\n\nUh that's the web page should be going live uh I think around now uh which is at the America pack website or just go to the America pack uh X account and uh the single biggest challenge I think is actually just making people aware that there is this very important election um and there's both the the very important election for Judge Shimmel as well as the um deciding on on adding voter ID to the Wisconsin Wisconsin constitution.\n\nition which is very very important. So it's it's really it's quite shocking that I mean you can sort of tell where voter fraud is happening where they ban ID, you know, like why would you ban ID? Like in New York and California it's like illegal to show ID at an election. Well, why would I can't imagine why that would be the case.\n\nSo um so two really important things um is uh is really just sure ensured judicial integrity on Tuesday and and then the the voter ID thing and um you know it's April Fool's Day. So uh and it is it's it's like I think most people aren't aware like I said most people aren't aware that there is this important election. Um, most people don't even know that there's an election at all.\n\nUm, and uh, or if they do, they aren't sure exactly when and where it is. Uh, and they aren't sure yet of or they don't realize just how important it is. Um, they think it it's well, it's just, you know, some kind of judicial thing that's not that important, but it actually what they're do what what's happening on Tuesday is a vote for uh, the the which party controls the US House of House of Representatives.\n\nThat is why it is so so significant and whichever party controls the house uh you know it it it to a significant degree controls the country which then steers the course of western civilization. So it's like I I feel like this is one of those things that that may not seem that it's going to affect the entire destiny of humanity but I think it will. No pressure. Yeah. So, um, it's it's a super it's a super big deal.\n\nAnd and the the fact that I'm here in person, like I'm not phoning it in. I'm here in person. I'm And there. Yeah. So, and there there were quite a few death threats, I have to tell you. Uh that I was like my security team said said, \"Well, it's it's actually gone down from yesterday to today. It went down from 18,000 to 17,000.\" So I'm like, \"Oh, maybe it's getting better, you know.\" Um but you can see like how crazy some of these people are.\n\nUm you know, look look at the the the two uh sort of people that tried to assassinate President Trump, you know, I mean that was uh and one, you know, they both almost succeeded. Um, so it's it's real. Like it's not like some imaginary thing.\n\nUm, so anyway, so what what we're announcing is is kind of like a a block captain program where um somebody can sign up to knock on doors in their zip code and encourage people to to uh well make people aware that there is a vote um and then aware of how important the vote is. So, you can uh sign up to be a kind of a block captain for your zip code on the America Pack website uh right now. Yeah.\n\nAnd if you do, it's it's like basically 20 bucks for just taking a photo with somebody. It's pretty straightforward. Just knock on doors in your neighborhood and and and give them either a digital or a paper, you know, picture of uh you know, Justice Bradimal. It can be a an approximation. It doesn't have to be exact. Um, but uh and and and they just have to say thumbs up and hold a picture of of Judge Shimmel and that's it and you get $20.\n\nSounds it's pretty easy. It's easy money. So, but we're the the whole point of it is just to make people aware of the election um and and say that there is an election. It's on Tuesday and it's super important. Please vote. So, [Applause] But I think without something like this um we're we actually are in in serious danger of losing the election. This is very important to put put in mind.\n\nIf you if you look at the betting market odds so if you look at sort of the poly market or kry like the betting markets it varies between 85% and 90% probability of loss for just a shimmel. That's the current situation. So, we got to we got to pull a rabbit out of the hat next level.\n\nIt's got we actually got to have a steady stream of rabbits out of the hat like it's an arc of rabbits flying through the air and and landing in a in a booning booth. Interesting picture. Uh Grock could probably make that picture. Um so, uh that's that's basically what's needed is is is we need to generate an anomaly in the matrix. Um, and because I think there's currently uh that there the Dems are 100,000 votes ahead.\n\nBut if actually if just if the people that voted for President Trump simply vote on Tuesday, uh we will win. That's actually all it takes. Just vote. Boom. Done. Victory. So, so we basically need to to drag net the state. It's like everybody's going to mobilize everywhere like crazy for the next 48 hours. Um, and I I think this will be important for the future of civilization. It's that significant. So, you don't hear me saying that very often.\n\nIt's it's a big deal. Um, so vote for Judge Supercharge Shiml. I call him Supercharge [Laughter] Shiml. So, [Applause] um, let's see. Um, so with that, I think we can um do some do Q&A if you guys would like to do some Q&A. Uh, and I'm happy to answer any questions. It can be, you know, about Doge or whatever you'd like to hear about.\n\nUm because I think um if you ask questions that the public would be interested in hearing then uh you know those those snippets will go all over the place and it will be helpful to the the public um you know at at large and maybe even beyond beyond our country. So, let's see. Uh, yeah, go ahead. We can just start over there. Uh, as AI gets continues to get smarter, won't it uh inevitably uh see through its creators uh propaganda?\n\nYes, the question is, as AI gets smarter, will it see through its creators propaganda? I I hope so. Um I think you can sort of think of an AI as it is somewhat nurtured by uh its creator. Um so yeah say what what is the operating principle? What what is what is the what is the north star of the AI?\n\nUm, you know, if it's a somewhat corporate AI, it could be like it's just trying to make corporations happy or it could be uh, you know, if it's particularly some of the AIs that that are trained in like the city of San Francisco, it's going to have kind of a San Francisco bias to it.\n\nUm because you can think of like smart people as well as like you know there are big differences in in sort of beliefs um among smart people and so you can expect that there will be big differences in beliefs among AIs as well. Um with Grock our aspiration is a maximally truth-seeking AI um which is like you always want to try to get as close to the truth as possible even if the truth is unpopular. Um and that's that's our goal.\n\num which I think is a very important goal. Hey, nice shirt. Oh, thank you. First of all, path of exile for life. Um but more importantly, as we see the the whole world has turned to a fear-based mobilization effort, and we've seen that translate into violence and and the right's not immune to it because it can hit anybody's psychology. Sure. How do we beat that with optimism because that's going to be crucial to avoid mass eruption of conflict?\n\nYeah. I mean, it there does seem to be um you're right that the the the right is not immune from sort of hate and violence. It's not like nothing, but it it does seem weirdly heavily weighted towards the left. Um I mean that like I haven't seen anyone tearing off like a Biden Harris hat.\n\nlike we're just like you feel a bit sorry for them like oh maybe they're wrong there you know um but but but you see people tearing off mega hats and someone just you know I saw a video just as just just today where somebody was just on an escalator woman was on escalator wearing a mega hat and someone going the other direction tore the hat off her head and I'm like what that's that's rude you know um so um in fact I sort of find myself in a strange position because I I didn't think of myself as right.\n\nI thought myself as centrist, but then the left went all the other other direction and now everyone's a Nazi, you know, before you know it. And I'm like, uh, wait a second. Uh, do you know what that means? Obviously not.\n\nSo um but yeah I mean I think you know I believe in peaceful discourse and that uh you know we make arguments uh verbal arguments and and the people decide which way they want to go but we you know we don't engage in sort of shouting people down or or violence or burning things or shooting things. Um that's what that's how democracy is supposed to work is peaceful discourse. So my question is about US aid.\n\nUm has the Doge team found any evidence that any of the radical left Democrats like Maxine Waters, Adam Schiff, Chuck Schumer have received money directly from USA ID? And if so, will we be hearing about that evidence anytime soon? Yeah. So the the there is a massive amount of corruption um but but it it is cuitous.\n\nSo what happens is there's money that obviously it's your taxpayer money that that is then sent to various government organizations who then send it to to NOS's which which an NGO is a non-governmental organization but obviously if it's a government funded non-governmental organization it's just an organization it's just a government um and effectively there's a giant fraud loophole uh which is that the the government can send money to an NGO that is then no longer governed by the law laws of the United states.\n\nSo they'll they'll send the money uh overseas to one NGO. Then it'll go through a bunch of bunch of them and then I'm highly confident that a bunch of that money then comes back to the United States and lands in the pockets of the people you just mentioned. Um but it is a securitous route.\n\nIt's not like it it it doesn't go directly, but let's just say that there's uh a lot of strangely wealthy members of Congress um where I'm I just can't I I'm trying to connect the dots of how did they become rich while earning how do they get 20 million if they're earning 200,000 a year? You sounds that's how I Nobody can explain that.\n\nSo, so, so something's Yeah, we we're going to try to figure it out and um and and and certainly stop it from happening. Um, [Applause] so yeah, I mean, just in general, this the the whole NGO scam is is just crazy. Um, and uh yeah, it's it's it's blown my mind really. Um, so yeah, most of us here are aware of social media censorship and I know you're keenly aware of it. Thank you for turning around X. Awesome.\n\nA as censorship picks up in financial institutions, what can we do about that? Uh, are you referring to um offering financial services by ex? No. Uh, sorry. being kicked off of financial or beliefs. Yeah. Yeah. Um well, certainly that that won't happen during the the Trump administration. Um I um hopefully that can be enshrined in law. Um which is part of the reason why we need a Republican Congress.\n\nUm so you didn't see any Republicans kicking Democrats out of and debanking Democrats, but there were a lot of Republicans that were debanked, thousands, which is really outrageous.\n\nUm, so so I think it does seem kind of one-sided, you know, this like trying to ruin people's lives and uh financially and and violent protests uh overwhelmingly is coming from the left these days, you know, it's like and whereas uh the right is polite, you know, uh and fair as far as I can tell. So yeah, go ahead. Um, thank you for being here.\n\nUh, uh, your comment kind of about The Matrix is kind of ironic because my husband and I watched first the the first Matrix and the sequel yesterday. Uh, my question is when so much of social media um nowadays, you know, whether it be X or YouTube or whatever is kind of um, curated to like your a a person's particular beliefs or even where we have protesters that um show up to town halls or or potentially are paid.\n\nHow do you does America kind of come together and it used to be where you could have a conversation and have discourse like you discussed, right? Um and still be friends even if you disagreed with kind of some of their statements. Um when you talk about knocking on doors like to different people's house like one kind of fear that I have is like even if you talk to somebody everybody has their own sets of beliefs and their own truths.\n\nSo I guess how do you get through that? Yeah. Well I think what we saw there for quite a while was that all of the legacy media and all of the new social media were in lock step together. Um, and they were all paring the same left-wing talking points. Um, and they were suppressing any disscent and any any so-called right-wing or frankly even centrist views.\n\nUm, and with that, that's why I felt it was it was critical to acquire Twitter now X um, in order to enable that dialogue. So it's it's it's certainly a step in the right direction and I think we've seen now once uh X was willing to to break ranks and not censor uh Republicans um then you you saw others also start to move in that direction.\n\nUm you know it looks like for example uh Facebook and Meta you know yeah um is they they have certainly Mark Zuckerberg has stated that they will be doing a sort of community notes um based on the community notes of the X platform um and and and as opposed to having sort of far-left censorship uh bureau the sort of you know the woke Stacey essentially reviewing things. Um, so that's a step in the right direction.\n\nUm, you know, there's there's some maybe some hope for the CNN's the world. It's like with with with with Scott being on there, he's great, you know, he's like I but I hope I'm I mean I'm sort of hopeful that things will that are are moving in in the direction where uh different points of view are espoused on or or you know heard on legacy media and and social media. So I I I guess maybe I'm actually a little bit optimistic about the future.\n\nUm and um you know on the Xplatform you know we we don't prioritize you know one side or the other. We try to be as fair as possible. Um and I will reply to you know prominent Democrats even if they sort of say terrible things about me. Um so you know it's like yeah we should have this discourse.\n\nUm, and so I I kind of think at least on the media front things are going in a good direction, but on the but I but I am kind of perturbed by the the sort of how aggressive these protests are, you know, where it's it's like, you know, there are people at these protests calling for the death of the president and death of me and I don't know, probably death of others, you you know, that that's not that's the kind of thing that's not not cool, you know.\n\nUm, at the risk of saying something outrageous, calling for murder is not cool, you know. So, thanks for coming, Elon. Um, I'm a teacher by trade. I have gone through the four-year bachelor degree to teach the nation's youth going forward. Um, on that I Yeah, I actually I'm kind of curious. Uh, what was that like? Like, uh, yeah. Um, I got an English degree, man.\n\nAt the end of the day, unless you want to hire me, that's about, you know, that's um Sure. So during teacher college, they give us a heat map and it says these are the cost per head on each student. Uh the south southeast is generally the worst, but they're also generally the lowest spent um per capita on each student.\n\nUm, beyond just that correlation of the one text I got in a education class, I wonder with your investments in Khan Academy with the advancement of AI educational tools where specifically you can get feedback and these students can get feedback. Yeah, absolutely. Um, where do we see a 100 years from now with all Oh man, 100 years from now? How about 50? I hope it lasts 100 years. That'd be like jackpot.\n\num you know yeah exactly hopefully hopefully we were like on Mars you know um so that would be really cool um so I I do think AI can be incredibly helpful in teaching because you can you can um essentially set up each kid with like a personalized AI um and that that AI can then answer questions for each kid um and that actually can be very profound in learning um because obviously if if you got a classroom of say 25 30 kids.\n\nIt's you you can't like spend it's literally impossible to spend time with every kid um individually uh or at least you can spend a little bit of time but not obviously it's it's a 1 to 21 to30 ratio. So, but but what you can do is is you can set them up with the AI and then you can, you know, if things get stuck or or whatever if if you want to, you can you can essentially guide the orchestra that way.\n\nAnd I think it could be a very powerful learning tool. Um, you know, I personally enjoyed my English classes in high school actually. Um, you know, they uh sometimes I wondered why am I reading Charles Dickens?\n\nthat uh you know there's some merit to reading Dickens and and and many of the I I actually think that we should have a a great cannon of of English literature uh that that that kids do at least you know uh some number of the significant works of in the English language.\n\n[Applause] So I mean this yeah it's it seems like very obvious to me but uh yeah um and and another thing with regard to teaching is that I think teaching is a very important profession um if you look at the expenditures uh there's a very big rise in the number of administrators um but but not a very big rise in the number of teachers and so that's that's really the big factor which is we we should have more actual teachers um you know and and I I I believe in paying teachers well and and having a lot of a lot of teachers but we should say why do we have so many administrators or or non-teers um so administrative expense has gone ballistic but teaching expense is more or less flat doesn't make sense so first I would like to apologize to you on behalf\n\nof America for the idiots you have to deal with for what you're doing for us to improve our country.\n\nSecond of all, my question is, what is your opinion on the Federal Reserve and do you have any intentions of doing anything with them and the [Laughter] Fed? Yeah. I don't know. I always wanted to say that, you know, uh but but I mean, I think there's like 20,000 people that work at the Fed seems pretty high.\n\nUm it's like there's a lot of people that work at the Fed on it seems like why do we have so many people at this at at the Fed and what do they do and um you know sometimes I wonder which one would win you know the Federal for for interest rates the the federal the board of the Federal Reserve or a magic eightball and I'm like I think the magic eightball might win you know. So then I'm like well magic eightball is a lot cheaper.\n\nUm, so you know it's like you shake it, it says check back again later. I'm like, [Laughter] okay, same [Laughter] thing. Um, but but I think we we we what really matters is that government spending it um is is not far in excess of government revenue. Um that's a fundamental issue that we have where that we have a de a deficit of $2 trillion and we have interest payments that now exceed uh the entire budget of the military.\n\nUm in fact that that was a big wakeup call for me was when the the amount of money that we pay in national debt interest exceeded the defense department budget. I'm like defense department budget is very big um and interest is higher than that and and and climbing. That's a disaster. you know, so the the very simple straightforward goal of of the Doge team is to get rid of um waste and fraud. It's it's mostly waste.\n\nIt's it's or depending on how you I'd say it's probably 80% waste, 20% forward, something like that. Um but it's a trillion dollars, so that's still a lot. Um, and it's it's, you know, it's got to, you know, it's got to be. We got the another soros sleeper agent there. [Laughter] [Applause] USA, USA, USA, USA.\n\n[Applause] So I mean to be to be clear the the very simple thing we're doing and we we post everything publicly on the Doge website which is uh is just to look at every expense and say is is this actually a good use of your taxpayer dollars. Um that's it. Um, it's not it's not super complicated.\n\nAnd and the and the thing that's that's pretty wild, this is why like I say like, you know, I used to be a Democrat like and so like um and and if you listen to this the the speeches of uh Clinton and Gore in in the 90s when they they were going on about reducing waste and fraud, it literally you wouldn't be able to tell the difference if like who said it, Doge or Clinton Gore? You can't even tell the difference. sounds exactly the same.\n\nIt's wild. So, we're we're really just trying to restore common sense to government and say like, let's not waste your money. Um, and let's make sure it's spent well and and that's it. And in in trying to save a trillion dollars of expenditures, what we're saying is of the 7 trillion in in government spending, let's try to see let's see if we can make it 15% 15% more efficient. Um, and I'm confident that we can.\n\nUm, but that's actually not a huge bar, by the way. [Applause] So, and and and when you see the when you see the crazy things that uh the government is spending money on, you can see a list of some of them. Um, you know, like I don't know if we should be spending money on transgender comic books in Peru. that doesn't seem like an ideal thing to spend your money on, you know. Um, why would we do that?\n\nUm, if if somebody in Peru wants to do that of their own accord, that's fine, but it shouldn't be your money that does it. Um, so it's it just and you know, we shouldn't be paying rent on empty buildings.\n\nUm, and uh, you know, if if if people if I do think there is a role for government, but but we just need to make we're just going to we're just going through and saying and doing what I would call like an an excellent and and and necessary um and reasonably trusted review of of organizations and and personnel. Um, so is this is this person doing a good job? Great. Um, is the role necessary? If so, that's good.\n\nUm, and are they reasonably trusted, meaning they're not a psycho? Um, like we're not talking about like political affiliation, just that they're not crazy. Um, so you know, uh, what's wrong with that? I'm like, sounds normal to me. So, that's it.\n\nUm now in in this process one of the things that we've discovered which is I think um on the fraud side which is a really big deal um is that uh the Democrat administration Biden administration has basically t taken every arm of the of the US government and bent it towards creating a financial incentive for illegal immigrants to come to the United states. Um, now this is every part of the government.\n\nSo like social security, Medicaid, uh, unemployment insurance, disability, uh, even the IRS. Um, so you can like fill out a fake tax return and say you you need a a tax maybe I shouldn't tell people this, but it'll actually work. I mean, mostly uh, there's some chance you'll get caught, but you can actually fill out a fake tax return. You can you can just get a tax refund even though if you didn't pay taxes.\n\nSo, we're trying to stop all these things to say like, okay, let's stop the waste and fraud and and we also need to turn off the massive financial incentive uh for illegals to come to the United States and and stay in the United States.\n\nAnd this is really the thing that is causing the Democrats to lose their mind, you know, because they're they're actually spending at this point uh tens of billions to attract and retain illegals in the United States. It's really on that scale. It's a gigantic number and the goal uh is is to turn all the swing states blue incl that means Wisconsin. So that's the goal.\n\nUm, so with the asylum program, uh, if they they can be get a green card within a year and then they can get, uh, citizenship as as quickly as four years after getting a green card because the first year of being asylum being asylum counts for the for the 5-year uh, citizenship waiting period. So this is this is a very big deal.\n\nUm, so, uh, a number of friends of mine have actually, uh, joined the government and in order to help with this process. Um, and I'd like to welcome my friend Antonio Gracias to the to the stage. I think so. Does it work? I can give you mine. Does it work? radiation belt. Uh, it'll be okay. Uh, I mean, Buzz Aldrin's still alive and he's he went past the belts. Work. Is this working? Yeah, it's not. Yeah, there you go.\n\nUm, so Antonio, can you tell us what what you uh Antonio is helping out uh with the social security? So, just trying to review social security where you may have heard that we found 20 million dead people uh marked as alive in the social security database. This is too so crazy. And then you'll notice there's a strange trend here. Um where uh how many social security numbers were issued. Uh it it's do you want to Yeah.\n\nSo let me um let me tell you what happened here. We we started at the top of the system. You want to talk about a lot of We started at the top of the system mapping the whole system of social security to understand where all the fraud was. And there's a lot of great people there that showed us um in really a lot of waste. And so that came up with a big list of stuff they're working on. You've heard some of that already.\n\nBut this is what jumped out at us. Um when we saw these numbers, we're like, what is this? In 21, you see 270,000 uh people goes all the way to 2. 1 million in 24. These are nonitizens that are getting social security numbers. Yeah. This this is a mind-blowing chart. Yeah. Just this this literally blew us away. Like we went there to find fraud and we found this by accident. And this isn't political, by the way. My parents are immigrants.\n\nUh, yeah, this country's been great to us. My brother and sister are all born in Spain. I'm pro-le immigration. This is not This is not political. This is not political. This is about America and the future of America. And there are a lot of good people in the system that pointed us in this direction. I want to I want to honor them right now that work in the government today who took risks to show us these numbers and tell us what's going on.\n\nSo, I want to stop for a minute. I want to tell I want to honor those people today. Very good people. Very good people. I have been from DC to social security offices to the border to track this down. And very good people have helped us along the way. I want to thank them. Yeah. This number what this is is when you come in the country, if you're illegal, uh there's a couple ways to come in.\n\nYou can come in through a port of entry and you can tell them you're afraid and you'll get they'll give you an asylum asylum case. You'll get an interview. then you get in. That's one way to do it. Another way to do it is to just go to the border. Literally, this happened. I talked to Border Patrol myself. Elon was there, too. Um I went to Laredo uh and I went to Brownsville. Elon went to Eagle Pass.\n\nUm you walk up to Border Patrol officer and you tell them you want to come in. They have a couple of choices. They could charge you with a misdemeanor or a felony under 1325, or they can make it an administrative offense, like a parking ticket. Basically, they were told to do that.\n\nmake an administrative offense under the last administration and then you go walk across the border, they uh do what's called a release from your own recgnizance and they give you an NTA, a notice to appear, which to appear at a judge. The wait times on judges are like average six years. Look at Grock, you'll see it on immigration judges. There's only 700 of them. This is 5. 5 million people. Okay? So, what happens then?\n\nOnce you're in the country and you got asylum through one of these pathways and we've mapped the whole thing out, uh you can apply for a work document. You file a 765. It's the work form. You get this form called the 766. That's the authorization. And then Social Security Administration automatically send you in the mail your social security number. No interview, no ID. This is worth like just reiterating it.\n\nIt it's not that it's not people sometimes think that under the Biden administration that that he was simply asleep at the switch. He wasn't asleep. They were asleep at the switch.\n\nIt it it was a massive large-scale program to import as many illegals as possible ultimately to change the entire voting map of the United States and disenfranchise the the American people and make it a permanent deep blue one party state from which there would be no escape. Look, if I hadn't seen this myself, I'm not sure believed it. I went through it myself and mapped it and Elon is right. This is true.\n\nThe defaults in the system from social security to all of the benefit programs have been set to max inclusion, max pay for these people and minimum collection. That's what's happening. We found 1. 3 million of them already on Medicaid as an example. We've gone through on every benefit program we went through, we found groups from this particular group of people, this 5. 5 million people in those benefit programs.\n\nAnd then what was really really disturbing us was why. We're asking ourselves why. And so we actually just took a sample and looked at voter registration records and we found people here registered to vote in this population. Yes. And who did vote? And and we found some by sampling that actually did vote. And we have referred them to prosecution at the Homeland Security Investigation Service. Yeah. Already. Already.\n\nThat has already happened right now. Yeah. And the truly disturbing thing though, I just want you to know this. A truly disturbing thing to me and the darkest thing about this to me, uh, the voter fraud is terrible, but the human tragedy this created is extraordinary. Because what you don't understand, and people don't know, and Americans need to know, that's why I'm here, is that human traffickers made 13 to 15 billion dollars off of this. Okay?\n\nThat's the money that's going around the world moving people around the world to our borders because of these incentives. How does it work? What happens? Hey, if you're in Africa and you're in Central America, you got to walk up through Mexico, through America. Who do you pay? You pay the narcos. You pay the traffickers, right? And we found, we were told by ICE, it's between 20,000 and 500 bucks, depends.\n\nThey pick you up to walk across all those countries and get all the way up to the border. Where's that money goes? It goes to the cartels. It goes to human traffickers, right? There are 30,000 children that have not appeared on the notice to appear already. ICE knows this. 30,000 children, 270,000 children didn't even get notices to appear.\n\nICE told us that kids are being trafficked back and forth across the border to complete families to make this easier. This is a human tragedy. It's not just the money, it's the people and the kids. And how many of these people died on the way up here that didn't make it in? What happened to them? We created this system here that created a descent for people to come and be taken advantage of by these traffickers.\n\nAnd how do you think they get paid? What? You're an African Central America. You got $20,000 or $10,000 or $5,000 to pay these traffickers. No, you don't. What happens? You come in, then you owe them the money. It's your indentured servant. If you don't pay them, what happens? What do they do? They kill your mother. They kill your brother. take care of your family. What happens next? That's what we discovered.\n\nAnd I have to tell you, it was it's tragic to me. The tragedy, the human tragedy this created is extraordinary. That's the real problem. This is America. We don't do this here in America. Yeah. We don't do this here in America. People come here legally, and that's great. Elon came here legally. My parents came here legally. That's the way to do it. This is this is outrageous. [Applause] Yeah, it's it's it's pretty wild.\n\nI mean, you can see u because there's still actually a lot of people out there, especially in the sort of center third of the country that that somehow think this is made up by the right or it's like some fiction. It's not that it's somehow not true. But it is it is in it is is absolutely true.\n\nUm, and you can see that if if you if you you know look at things like the state of New York, which tried to make it legal for for for illegal immigrants to vote in the state of New York that was only shot down by the New York Supreme Court a few weeks ago. Um, and and California has made it um health care available to all illegals in the state. Um, and they initially claimed that it would only cost three billion. is now 9 billion and climbing.\n\nUm, so it's it's really if if you create a massive financial incentive for people to come to the United States illegally, then that's what they will do. It's it's a very sort of it would be stranger it'd be odd if that didn't happen.\n\nSo the the really the thing that is actually has the Democrats losing their mind by far um the real reason for these attacks and and sort of the burning of the cars and everything is that we're going to turn off the payments to illegals [Applause] because Yeah. I mean because that's not the deal. You know this there it's you know it's not it's not it's simply not right.\n\nUm and uh you know if if you look at that thing with the Roosevelt Hotel and like you know the luxury hotels in New York where the Federal Emergency Management Agency funds were being used to to house uh illegals in luxury hotels in New York that the average American can't afford. Um, and they were giving a welcome package and $10,000 debit cards and everything else. Like, it's it's super real.\n\nI mean, it's it's like uh it's it's it's in my I think it's the the the biggest uh voter fraud thing in history by far. Um and and more of a if if left unchecked, it would have succeeded. Um, as Antonio mentioned, the the time frame for going from asylum to citizen is roughly five years. Yeah.\n\nU, and so all of the people that came in on that chart that you saw, uh, if if the if the machine behind the Camala puppet had won, um, then, you know, they change out the puppet, but it's the same machine. um then they would have actually legalized uh all those people and there would be no swing states and they added more. Remember it was doubling every year. Yes, it went from 1 million. It was going ballistic. Going ballistic.\n\nAnd it it is it is just these people are just ending the the the uh benefit programs now by the way. We're seeing the ramp happen too. And these are just the ones that are in the system. This doesn't count the other, you know, 7 and a half 8 million that ICE thinks are out there. We don't know if they have numbers. The number is totally uncontrolled. The voter ID requirement in the state is super important because of this. Yes.\n\nBecause the social security number, it's not supposed to be a federal ID number, but it basically is. That's how you access all the benefits. This is why we need voter ID because this thing is not secure. You could walk into a social security office today as an adult in America and get a social a social security number uh enumerated with simply a um answering six or seven simple questions and showing some some forms of ID that are not federal ID.\n\nWell, you can just actually make it up. You basically you can you can show basically like uh like a fake utility bill or you know a show a medical bill and a school ID. Yeah. Medical bill and school ID and you can get a social security number. Yes. Um and then from there you get on the voter roles and then um basically Dem operatives will form the vote. Yes.\n\nUm, so, uh, you know, the problem with this obviously is that if you turn the swing states, uh, blue, then there are no swing states, and then we're in a permanent one one party system. And as soon as they win that, they'll have the House, the Senate, the Presidency, they'll pack the Supreme Court. Then they'll they'll double down on on the illegals just like California. So like we've we've already seen this happen in California.\n\nCalifornia is supermajority dem. So, uh, but at least California is held back by the fact that people can move out of state. Um, once you can no longer leave America, they will be there'll be far worse than California. So, the gravity of the situation is severe. Help us clean up Wisconsin. Yes. Yes. Absolutely. [Applause] So, I mean, it's it's really simple stuff.\n\nUh, just, you know, Having uh you know photo ID to vote is like you can't like buy something at the liquor store but uh voting is a lot is more important uh than you know buying a beer. So you're going to need real ID an airplane. Yeah. You can't fly anywhere. Yeah. And and and like the same people who said who are saying that there should be no voter ID at at voting stations uh demanded vaci vaccine ID from everyone. Yeah.\n\nI'm like that's weird, you know. So, so it's it's it's really about just restoring integrity to the voting system. Um, which really should not be a right or left cause, but a cause for all. Um, is do do we not all want integrity in the voting system? Of course we do. Yes. Of course. Yes. So, [Applause] so, so, well, you're welcome to hang out and see maybe there's some questions people. Let's see. We'll we'll go. Hi, Elon.\n\nUm, I also am a teacher. I was a teacher in Colorado for eight years, high school Spanish. Um, but I moved I moved here last year and got to vote in Wisconsin where my vote actually mattered and I'm so glad that was amazing that we got Trump elected. Yeah. Um, and I was listening to I believe it was Patrick Bet David.\n\nHe called this perfectly where he said when Elon or when when Trump gets elected, he's going to go from enemy number one to Elon's going to be number number one. And for the reason, I mean, he only has a couple years left. And we've all seen the the left go after you and make you number one enemy. And just walking in here, we heard Nazis suck. There's all this horrible thing.\n\nAnd just on a on a serious note, I just want to let you know, my wife and I pray for you at night. Thank you. For your safety, guys. Thank you. I I I got I got to watch my hand gestures these days, you know, but uh I think this one's safe, you know. Um, you know, it's like can't wave to the crowd. You never know what'll happen. And I've been a fan of yours for like a decade.\n\nAnd I've been a walking Tesla ad to anybody who talks to me, even though I never had a Tesla until I came to Wisconsin, too. And it's 10 years old, but it's the best Model S I've ever had. Thank you. It's incredible. Thank you. But I I just wanted to um take to ask you if it would be okay. I brought my dad with me. Um he's a pastor and I just thought if it's okay with you, I would love for him to say a prayer for you as well for your protection.\n\nThank you. Uh Elon, well, thank you so much for everything you've done for our country. We we do love you very much. Thank you. And uh and as a pastor, but just as a person, right? And even if I wasn't a Christian, and I know not everyone here is a Christian, but I think there's quite a few of you here and uh who who are either way, we we love all all people. It's that's not the issue. The issue is is fairness.\n\nwhat you're talking about the issue being uh uh just and the justice being a weapon instead of uh lawfare instead of actually just and and all this corruption you're talking about. And that's a bad spirit if you want to say it that way, putting it nicely. It's it's something evil that has come against our country, our morals, our families, etc. and then you and the president and others getting attacked with this outrage and this hate.\n\nSo if you would allow me to pray. Thank you. You would all who want to please join me bow our heads and pray. Gracious heavenly father, we are thankful for our country. We are thankful that God does bless America and that God is the source of all goodness, love, and provision. And that you, Lord God, have provided a great nation with a great history. And although we've gone through many rough times, you're still very present and active with us.\n\nThank you for protecting President Trump from that fatal attack. And we ask that you envelop and protect all of those who are fighting for justice, for freedom, for order, for dignity, and to re reward people according to merit.\n\nand especially put your hedge of protection around Elon Musk, around his children, around his whole entire family and all of his team members that all would do good and just by our country and freedom truly and justice would reign once again. We ask this in the name of the blessed savior Jesus Christ who we remember during this time of year who suffered and died for our sins. May you wash away all that is wrong with our country and start with us.\n\nWe ask this in Jesus name. Amen. Amen. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. [Applause] to you. You can hang out if you want. Well, that was that was beautiful. That was beautiful. It's uh I think we're going to need divine protection, frankly. Yeah. Hey, Elon, I'd like to start off by thanking you for all that you've done for our country and the world as a greater whole. And I mean that from the bottom of my heart as well.\n\nUm I have a question for you. Um, as you go about your decision making at Doge, how are you able to keep your moral northstar and not set precedents when it comes to overstepping democratic processes simply because the end justifies the means and have outcomes similar to the last election with Democratic presidential candidate being appointed without due process that just further polarizes the country. True. Also on a side note, one more thing.\n\nDo you see a place in the long term for decentralized technology in society and government? Yeah, I mean to answer the second question first, um I think generally if it's good to have decentralized systems, uh because the more centralized something is um the more the more power that is in any one single entity, the more corruption you're likely to have. So decentralization I think is good to minimize corruption.\n\nUm then with respect to Doge u I mean as I said it's it's we're trying to be as literal as possible. It just it's department of government efficiency and it's just literally going through and saying okay this money was spent is it money that most Americans would agree is sensible uh or is it not? Um and uh you know if it doesn't seem sensible then we you know um say well we shouldn't spend that money anymore.\n\nWe should and we should we should stop it. So and then we post the the we try to be as transparent as possible. So all the Doge actions are posted on the doge. gov website and on the Doge handle on X. So people disagree with something they we can say well which which part do you disagree with?\n\nUm and you when when I get these sort of attacks of like oh it's unconstitutional I mean like well which expenditure is unconstitutional that we've stopped um because and then they they don't know actually because they don't they haven't actually looked at anything.\n\nSo um now obviously a lot of this can be reversed with a new administration um but at least for some period of time we're going to make sure that your taxpayer money is spent at least 15% better. It's it's it's it's not like a you know I think it's a reasonable goal. It's a rational goal. It's a sensible goal.\n\nUm and um and the net result I should say if if if we have the combination of a a trillion dollar increase in the an economic output and a trillion dollar decrease in the in the budget deficit, then the outcome should be that there is no inflation or very little inflation uh from one year to the next. So at the end of next year, you the prices will be at the grocery store will be very similar to what they are right now.\n\nUm which means that you know standard of living will will will actually probably be higher, a little bit higher. Um you know you whereas we've had rampant inflation to date which and inflation is really just a a a pernicious tax that has been used by governments throughout history. Um and it's it's very tempting for governments to use inflation as a as a tax because it's indirect.\n\nUm people see the prices rising at the grocery store or at you know for goods and services or for houses and they they tend to like blame the store but it's it's not the store it's the government. Um the government has reduced the value of money and as a result prices rise.\n\nUm so by you know changing by by reducing waste and fraud um will essentially make the economy more efficient uh and will shift uh people resources from the government to the private sector. Um and that will result in an increase in the output of goods and services and and so the the average standard of living will therefore rise. So like they're trying to make economics sound very complicated, but it's it's really not that complicated.\n\nUm standard the standard of living increases when the the when the output of goods average output of goods and services increases per person. There's basically more stuff. Therefore, you have more stuff to divide across the people. Um that's it.\n\nAnd you can you can run this sort of thought experiment and say like if there was a hundred people on an island and you'd say well how many people do you want farming, fishing, making stuff um you know versus you know doing regulations. You would say like you wouldn't want like 20 people doing regulations, you know, you'd be like that's too many. Um well then maybe you'd want one or two. I don't know. Maybe none. Ideally zero.\n\nI I mean I'm I'm all for small government by the way. I'm not I think the really Yeah. Um you know when the United States was when the United States was formed there were only um you know you had the secretary of state the secretary of war which I think is a more accurate name than defense um uh and you know but it was secretary of war war for a long time. Um, and you had Secretary of the Treasury and you had the attorney general. That was it.\n\nAnd, um, if it were entirely up to me, I'd be like, let's let's make it like that again. Yeah. Howdy, gentlemen. Uh, got a quick question regarding government and transparency. Do you think Dogecoin may ever be used or the Dogecoin blockchain to be used for maximum transparency? Well, the names are similar, but they're doing two very different things.\n\nUm, so in fact, I was going to call it like the government efficiency commission, but that's a super boring name. Um, and then the internet said, \"No, it needs to be called the Department of Government Efficiency.\" I was like, \"Well, internet, that that's the internet is right.\" Um so so we changed the name from government efficiency commission to department of government efficiency.\n\nUm but there are no plans for the government to use Dogecoin or or anything as far as I know. Um so that that they happen to be similar names but but really it's just we're just literally trying to make the government 15% more efficient. It's kind of like like most of the work that's that's being done is it's kind of like homework. It's not like uh it's it's just it's just work, you know? It it frankly it's like washing the dishes.\n\nIt's it's not like you know it's it's a lot of it's not super fun work. It's just you know going through and looking at every expense and saying why you know why does this department have like 10 times more software licenses than people? That doesn't make sense. Um you know why why is this why is the government spending $10 million a year on Politico subscriptions?\n\nthat doesn't make sense, you know, like there's just one thing after another like that. It's like things that are just uh kind of kind of boring. It's it's like a ton of boring stuff. Like you do hear about like the the the sort of weird stuff that makes the headlines, but most of it most of the costs that are being cut are just very basic boring things.\n\nIt it's it's a it's it's like homework at scale is what I'd call you the department of government efficiency. Um can I can I add some I think this question about transparency. I'm really selling it here. Yeah. Yeah. No, no, no. I um I I I would say the principles that Elana set out for Doge are they begin with truth. Truth. Find the truth. Number one, find the truth. Why?\n\nBecause the government government's gotten so big that actually the people don't even know what's there. They don't know the source of truth. So these licenses, it's not like people bought these licenses because they're bad people and they wanted to pay Microsoft. They just kept buying licenses because Microsoft kept selling from them. I mean, it's just it's that strange. And we don't want to pick on Microsoft.\n\nIt's like every every software company, by the way, any software company pick company X. They they didn't they bought these licenses because they just uh thought they should buy more licenses. More people coming in and there's no one there. People aren't coming back to the office, right? They It's just finding truth. The number one principle is truth. And then transparency is number two, I think, on the list, right?\n\nSo find the truth, make it public, make it transparent. And number three is, man, do it fast. Make it efficient and be urgent. Yeah, those those are the principles that Elon's put into Doge. Yeah, it's it's worth pointing out like like it's it's actually difficult to you have to recalibrate uh how dumb things can be because it's the government, you know, frankly, it's like dumber than you think it could possibly be.\n\nUm so you know like for example there were we found there were a whole bunch of what I call uh ghost payments going out um where the the government contracting officer had retired or or changed jobs or were dead or or I don't know they were not around anymore and they forgot to turn off the payment stream to some company and it's it's like leaving the the money faucet on and you you know leave the house you know and it's just the money faucet keeps going and it's a pretty rare organization that will complain about receiving money.\n\nUm so organizations so then you're like is that waste of fraud? I mean the government didn't send them the money but they didn't deserve it. Um so then well okay we but we should turn off the money spigot if they if the contract is over you know type of thing.\n\nUm so one of the things that um we we made a recommendation to uh the treasury uh that uh that the payment classification codes uh and and the explanation for the payment be mandatory fields. Um so so that just and have a name attached. So we could just ask the person who approved the payment is this payment a good a good payment? Does this make sense?\n\nthis is the kind of thing that is that is normal in you know for individuals and and for companies. Um but uh that was not the case. Uh so the reason why the the the government could not pass an audit was because the information did not exist that it that would be required to pass an audit like it was literally impossible um because you just had all these blank checks going out with no explanation and no payment code.\n\nSo how you supposed to do an audit? It's literally impossible. So that's what I mean by like it's very basic stuff like we just want the congressional appropriation payment code to be mandatory and a very short explanation. We're not even going to judge what the explanation is, but that there'll be any explanation at all and a name attached is was a like revolutionary.\n\nUm and and my guess is this will probably save a hundred billion dollars a year like a lot, you know. So maybe I could tell a little story from Social Security Administration that people might like to hear too which is um at at Social Security Administration it they have passed their audit actually they've got I don't know about 100 material deficiencies but they passed their audit.\n\nUh when we looked at the balance sheet um we found that $800 million had fallen off the balance sheet last year. $800 million. What do you mean it fell off the balance sheet? It's exactly the question I asked Elon. Thank you. Where did it fall to? Exactly. Where did it fall to? So I I I asked the auditors to come in. It's like a comedy sketch, you know, comedy routine here. Where did it go? Exactly. But wait, where did it go? Exactly.\n\nSo here's what happened. I I I brought I asked the auditors to come in. I'm I won't give the name of the auditors. Come on in. And I asked the audit partner myself. Where did it go? What is fell off the balance sheet? Is that a gap term or non-GAAP term? I've never heard that. What does it mean?\n\nWell, the payment plans because um under the last administration uh you could pay if you owed if you got overpaid on social security like if you If you were on um if you were getting SSI or a disability and they paid you too much money, you got a job and didn't tell them they paid you too much money, they dropped that payment plan to $10 a month max. So the payment plans went out past the system date.\n\nSo if I remember correctly, it was 2047 payment plans out past system date. When it went past the system date, literally it fell off the system. Uh okay, it disappeared and the uh officers were supposed to people the technicians were supposed to put notes in the um in the system that this was going to be collected. The notes were so bad the auditors concluded this could not be collected and we literally lost $800 million gone.\n\nAnd I said to the auditor, \"How could that possibly be?\" And she said, \"Well, you know, it's not really material. It's a $ 1. 5 trillion program.\" I said, \"Well, it's material if it's your money. Is it in the computer? It's not in the computer. It fell off the computer. It's in the computer. The computer that's in the computer. Disappeared. $800 million just disappeared.\" I mean, it's crazy.\n\nSo, there's like it's one like nutty thing after another like that. Um, yeah. It's uh yeah, I mean it's crazy. Anyway, we're just we're just trying to basically fix the computers so that we know what the heck's going on. Um yeah, it's it's like please and and and you know, like I said, being fully trans we bring fully transparent with the American people so you know exactly what's going on.\n\nUm and uh just just making sure that uh you know, yeah, anyway, money is not wasteful or fraudulent. Um, you know, one interesting statistic was that 40% of the of the calls into social security were fraudulent, like meaning that that that it was someone trying to get uh a a social security payment that was going to a senior to to go to a instead to go to a fraud ring. So, that was almost half of the phone calls were fraudulent.\n\nProbably the other half were people asking what happened to my social security. This is true actually. Like where did my what? This is bananas. Yeah. And I mean we found this actually the people there at S Street knew this was going on.\n\nUm and they had been complaining about it for a long time and no one fixed it because and these were these were uh mostly criminal rings outside the country um in other other places in the world that are are jamming up the phone systems calling in using just these simple security questions because you can actually this was how crazy it was.\n\nYou could change your direct deposit information at social security by simply answering six questions on the phone like your mother's maiden name, your date of birth, etc. Like stuff you can find on the internet, easily found on the dark web. That's why it was so easy. It was a huge, huge exploitation, super open door. I mean, the bank vault was open and the criminals ran right in and took the money and they took it away from our seniors. Right.\n\nSo what happened is if like my dad's 84, he'd go get it thought checked in the bank account wasn't there. Then he's got to go whole through a whole process to get it the money back in the government which takes a long time. It's the government, right? So we we put in a very simple 2FA system. All this nonsense you've seen in the media about we turned off the phone lines but not true.\n\nAll all we did all they did actually we we recommended to social security that they put in uh a very simple 2FA system and they will two two factor authentication two factoration. They same kind of thing to the banks like pretty simple. you have a bank account, you do this. And you know what? They did it. They said, \"Yeah, you're right. We should do that.\" They went and did it. Good for them. They did it. No one had the will to do it.\n\nThey did it. And they're going to keep increasing security. They've got we've gave them we've given them a lot more recommendations and they're on the road to increase security to stop all this nonsense so our our seniors and our our people that are disabled don't get stolen from. Yeah, this is really worth emphasizing. Um because like the you know the radical left are saying that like somehow we're stealing social security.\n\nLike first of all like you know I I don't need the money. Okay. Um in in fact uh it's costing me a lot to be in this job. Uh you know you had like Tim Walls uh dancing on stage showing a a chart of Tesla stock. Uh which is really uh awful thing for him to do. um you know because what they're trying to do is put massive pressure on on um me and and Tesla I guess to to you know I don't know stop stop doing this.\n\nUm but uh you know it's you know my my Tesla stock and the stock of everyone who holds Tesla's gone went roughly in half. I mean it's a big deal. So not not only is am I not getting any any I'm not getting paid definitely not stealing money and would never get away with it. Um, but the value of my Tesla stock is in half. So, this is a very expensive job is what I'm saying. Um, and but but I think it's it's it's [Applause] welcome. Thank you.\n\nThank you. Thank you. [Applause] Thank you very much guys. Um so but long term I think Tesla stock's going to do fine. Uh so uh you know maybe it's a buying opportunity. Um so um but but the the actual thing we're doing is is making sure that um people do get their social security and that it doesn't get stolen. Um so 100%. Yeah. Yeah. Sorry. Go ahead. Hi Elon. I got a question for you about Dodge. Great shirt.\n\nUm, everybody in this room has got a bunch of money sitting in a bunch of little boxes in a bunch of different states and it turned into crickets when you brought it up online that you were going to go check our gold and I'm worried about the Democrats and Joe Biden's last administration with the money not being there. Did you get blocked or are you still able to go check that? Sir, I'm not sure I understand exactly what you're referring to.\n\nFort Knox. Oh, Fort Knox. Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Um, well, that's up to the president, of course. Uh, but I think it would be I I think it would be awesome to live stream Fort Knox, you know. I mean, that would be really fun. And and after all, it it it is actually the gold of the American people. So, the American people should, it seems to me, have a right to see their gold. You know, hopefully it looks really cool.\n\num you know open the doors like is there like is that really gold? Let's check um you know so maybe it'll be really really interesting. Uh I'm I'm all for it. The president said he's he's interested in doing it. So hopefully that happens. So all right, good evening Mr. Musk. How are you? Good. How's it going? Good. Good. My name is Veto Gabriel. Um I'm 18 years old. This is my first election that I'll be voting in. So, great. Very exciting.\n\nOh, actually, uh that that that reminds me. So, it it is actually possible uh to both register to vote on Tuesday. Um if someone has not registered to vote, they can register to vote in Wisconsin and they can vote same day. So, even if somebody's not a registered voter, you can do it everything on on Tuesday. Uh so, bit of backstory.\n\nUh when I was younger, eight years old to be exact, my father put me to work in my family's restaurant and um it led me to want to start my own business and to be successful just like you. And in my opinion, you're one of the most successful businessmen to ever live. And so what advice would you give to young entrepreneurs who want to start their own uh businesses and give back to this great country? Well, sure.\n\nUm well it is it is very very hard to start a business and have it succeed. Um you know it's it is true that most businesses that start do not succeed. Um, so I mean I I guess I'd really just say, you know, if if there's a product or service that you think uh is really needed, um, then you you go out and you you you make that product or you produce that service, offer that service. Um, and uh, and try to be as useful as possible really.\n\nUm, you know, there's it's it's like whether you know it's it's a great restaurant or store or a technology company or whatever the case may be. Um, it's really just like are you doing things that are useful to your fellow human beings. Um, and you know, if if you are, then I think the company will be successful. Um, so that's that's that's really what it comes down to is is just being being useful. Like people ask me like what's the top advice?\n\nI'm like try to be useful. It's actually very difficult uh to be useful. Um you know um but you know I have a lot of admiration for anyone who just does an honest day's work um you know making products or or producing services for their fellow human beings. Um that's what a company is you know that's that's it. So um but but it it is hard.\n\nI mean I mean to totally frankly like I I generally say if if somebody needs encouragement uh to start a company I would recommend not and started not starting a company. Um it's it's it's uh it's very difficult like you know if you look at say the automotive industry the only two um American car companies that have not gone bankrupt uh are Tesla and Ford. So it's a it's a it's a big cemetery is what I'm saying.\n\nSo that's a tough one you know very very tough industry. Um and there were really no like commercial rocket companies that were successful before SpaceX. um it's it's generally very difficult to make the value of the output exceed the cost of the input. And that's that's really what defines a successful business. Um and and and profit is really the difference between the value of the output and the cost of the input.\n\nUm that that's what profit is. Um so but it's it's like shockingly hard to make the output more valuable than the input. That's what I found. Um, yeah. So, all right. Hi, Elon. Thank you so much for being here. Um, would you agree with me that the economic illiteracy in this country is staggering? That people don't understand how close we are. I would say that America to going over the fiscal cliff. Yeah. Right. Um, yes.\n\nMost people actually I think most people well I think a lot of people don't know what a national debt is. Um like how did this national debt come about and and how come there's all this money that somehow we owed but we didn't sign up to be to owing this money. Um but there's you know over $30 trillion of of national debt and that that doesn't count uh future obligations.\n\nUh so and and that that's just doesn't count state and state and local debt. So it's it's a lot of basically it's a lot of money that the government has signed everyone in America up for. Um and um yeah so so there's if we if we don't do something about it then eventually there won't be any any money for anything. We'll just be paying interest. Um you know a company so I should say a country is much like a person. It's just it's just bigger.\n\nA a country is a collection of people. Um but just like a person can go bankrupt, a c a c a country collectively can also go de facto bankrupt. Um essentially by diluting the currency to where it's worthless. Um and that's that's where we're headed unless uh we uh are you know take immediate and dramatic action with respect to government spending. Um that's we're we're in deep trouble basically. You've seen this in places like Venezuela.\n\nYeah, exactly. Um, so see in a lot of countries where where it's um think things have gone to hell in a hand basket and uh it's like we just need to not do that, you know. Um, so if you know if the ship of America sinks, we all sink with it. You know, this is something that I try to tell people in in the sort of commercial sector that like you're you're not going to your company's not going to make it if the ship of America sinks.\n\nSo, we all got to like, you know, work together here to make sure it does not. Yeah. [Applause] Antonio, feel free to add liver as you wish, but I This is the only place left to go. That's great. Right. Exactly. Like, I don't think we can run off to some other country and be okay. It's America, you know. I I will die in America. I'm not going anywhere. I I will, too. Yeah. I mean, I might go to Mars, but that'll be part of [Laughter] America.\n\nYeah. [Applause] Hi, Elon. Thank you so much for taking the time out of your busy schedule to be here today with us um in Green Bay, Wisconsin. Yeah. Um, I just want to say that DOA's findings demonstrate to the American people that the government clearly does not care about our hard-earned tax dollars. I have I'm only 26.\n\nUm, but I can imagine it's frustrating for people who have worked their entire lives to see their tax dollars going to fraud, waste, and abuse. And you alone have uh contributed so much money to our government. Yes. Via taxes. So, thank you. You're welcome. But I'm sorry that your money is not being spent very well.\n\nUm I you've clearly shown your leadership and team is capable of transforming our government into something better than what we see today. Um, I just want to say um um I'm sure I'm not the only one who's wondering, but we know that Doge has found quite a bit of money and we would like to see some of that returned to the American people. Do you have any information on when Doge checks would be written or sent out? Sure.\n\nWell, I I guess we we need to be successful at at scale. We've made a lot of progress um but there's still a tremendous amount of work to do. Um effectively by as government spending is made more efficient and spending is reduced the the taxpayer inflation is reduced um so um one way or another you you will effectively be better off uh if resources in the United States are not wasted.\n\nUm so um and It's it's it's it's a you know it's somewhat up to the Congress and maybe the president to uh you know as to whether specific checks are cut but but whether a check is cut or not if you if you reduce um uh wasteful spending uh the the economy is going to be better off. There will be people will do more useful jobs than before. The total output of goods and services will increase and then the average standard of living will increase.\n\nSo that that's uh yeah um I I think the most important lesson in economics is simply uh common sense that the the more people in a country that are engaged in producing useful products and services the better off that country will be. um like you could you could run the sort of thought experiment to say in the limit if we moved everyone in the car industry into the DMV there would be no cars but there would be a lot of regulators.\n\nSo then you say well okay well then how many people should be in the government versus not government. Um and generally I think you want to have you want to minimize the number of people in government. There still you know be a lot of people in government but you want to keep that to a minimum and move people from low to negative productivity roles to high productivity roles in the private sector. Yeah. Hey Elon.\n\nSo the first time I heard about population collapse I think was from you and Joe Rogan. I grew up in the generation where it was very overpopulation, global warming, a lot of people don't want to have kids. My wife and I just had our first, she's a year. Hi, Congratulations. Hi, John. Thank you. Amazing. Um, and I'm finding out very quickly a lot of these things I was told about having kids, losing personal freedom, it's well worth it.\n\nI mean, I I would recommend to everybody, as I'm sure you would, and we Absolutely. I I mean, I' I've been banging the baby drum for ages. Yes. Um, so my question to you is, what's the most surprising and fulfilling thing you've learned from your kids? Especially, we've seen you around X all the time with Trump. So, what's your most fulfilling thing you've learned from having kids? Uh, yeah, X is X is in the back there.\n\nHe, you know, so hopefully he's watching this hopefully. Um, yeah, I I think, you know, I I think nothing makes you happier than kids really is is what is the truth of it. So, um, you know, kids are my greatest source of happiness. Um, and, uh, I really encourage, as as Antonio knows, I've encouraged all my friends and everyone to have kids. Uh, it it is it is concerning, you know, that the United States has been below uh, replacement rate.\n\nThe birth rate in the United States has been below replacement rate uh since uh roughly when I was born around 197071 thereabouts. Um and I think last year was the lowest birth rate on record. It was very it was very low. Um and then we we're seeing this trend in uh almost every country on earth. This is this is worrying because it's like well um you know if something doesn't happen you know humanity is going to disappear.\n\nUm, so it's I think very important to have kids. Um, like it's it it you know it's it'll kids will make you very happy and and there's but there's also like we got to keep humanity going here, you know. Uh, no no humans no humanity. It's like Elon practice what he preaches too by the way. He's having lots of kids. That's right. You practice what you preach and Yeah. Yeah. For sure. And he tells all his friends to do it too.\n\nI can tell you that for sure. For sure. Yeah. So, all right. Hi, thanks for coming. Uh, my name is Adam. I'm a postal worker. I'm wondering if you could give some insight into some of the reforms or changes that Doge might be looking at for the postal service. Well, actually, may perhaps I could ask you what what should do Doge be doing with respect to the postal service? I I'll write you a letter. Okay. Okay.\n\nUm I I I sus I suspect you have seen that things are not entirely perfect in the postal service. Um yes. Um so I mean obviously there it's it's you know delivering um mail and packages is very important. Uh you know there's reason for why the postal service was created. Um but uh and and I haven't really had a chance to look at the postal service yet but uh I have I have a little detail on the analysis if you want. Do you do a little bit? Okay.\n\nSure. Yeah. I mean I wouldn't say that I want to be very general here but um there is this thing about you could tell us like uh there's this thing about large volume users postal service versus small small volume users right so like some company please I've heard of that. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you probably see it, right?\n\nLike you see there are some companies in the world that use Post Service a lot and pay the same rate as everybody in this room that uses it a little bit. Does that seem fair to you? You see it on the front line. I can't really say. Well, he can't say because he works there. You know, work there. Okay. Doesn't seem fair to me. I don't work there.\n\nUm, so I mean there there are qu there's a bunch of questions about this people are asking that I think are interesting analysis and when you look at the source of truth and the data and you uh make that transparent, I think it's going to be obvious what the right answers are. Yeah. It seems like some companies are not being charged the right amount for package delivery. Um, and there's probably more administrative overhead than there should be.\n\nUm, would be some safe guesses, I suspect. Those are good guesses. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Good guesses. All right. Elon, how are you? Yo, good. How's it going? It's Adam, your number one reply guy on X. Hey, it's Scott Presser. It's good to finally meet in person. Cool. So, I'm glad you like a lot of my stuff. Yeah. Constantly replying to my stuff, liking my stuff, and I'd love to create material because I'm a former Democrat myself, just like you.\n\nYeah. And I want to help bring over moderate voters from the Democrat party who are disenfranchised. Yeah. And I'd love to be able to create more content to help you out, to help us win more elections, to win the midterms 2028 and on. Um, would I be able to get a follow from your main because you followed me from your old cyber gamer? Oh, I did. Okay. Um, yeah. Uh, at this point I I I Yeah, sure. I'll I'll do that. Sure.\n\nUm, I mean it's it's right now like I used to only follow maybe um you know a few hundred accounts which and it was possible to read a lot most of what they posted but now I think I follow like 1100 accounts which makes it impossible. So so like it's just like I can only see a few things that people post at random essentially. Um so um yeah but I'm I'm trying to digest as much information as my human brain can manage.\n\nUh so um but yeah, thank you for for your engagement. Um and uh just you know in general like try to um report on what's really happening is is is great. Thank you. Thank you. Um Mr. must thank you so much for being here and bringing attention to what's going on with our Supreme Court here.\n\nIt's very important and I think it would have gotten no attention, not even half of what it's getting now um if you hadn't stepped in for good or bad negative press and good press. We think no exactly the totally. I mean obviously for a any kind of special election um is going to get a fraction small fraction of the the attention of a say a presidential election.\n\nUm and uh and and then it you know normally a an election for a judge would not be that big of a deal. Um it just so happens that this in this case it could decide the control of the US House of Representatives. Um which is a yeah a huge deal. Yeah. Yeah. and my personal experience with Judge Crawford. Um I am a family uh that she moved a pedophile right next to our home. What? Really? Yeah.\n\nIt is a true story in the ads that you're hearing from Mr. Shiml. I am Wow. one of the homeowners that had to live next to him for many years unaware. Um so the letter that I wrote to her I'm sure played into what we're experiencing now in family court. um family um we're veterans 20 years. It just was not good for him. It was not good for me. And um we're trying to work through our family court situation.\n\nBut what we're realizing is the two strategies that they use are indoctrination or intimidation. And if you step up and say we're practicing Catholic family, the result is her band of Mary rogue judges um and the court affiliates and the commissioners will um flood the family court have flooded the family court system. Yeah.\n\nSo, I guess my question would be um regardless of what happens with this very important vote, let's not forget what's happening in the family court system in Dayne County, Wisconsin that's being flooded with these rogue judges and affiliates and commissioners who then if you don't subscribe to what they're saying, they will just wipe out your ability to raise your family or proceed with your family in a way that you feel um your culture dictates dictates your religion dictates your your financial background dictates.\n\nUm it has gone completely bananas and um I'm wondering what you can do to keep the light shine on our court system in Dayne County. It does have lasting effect on families and it will breed out our ability to raise our families in the spirit which we feel is most healthy for our our young our children um and and the sanctity of our family. Absolutely.\n\nUm I think that's fundamental to uh life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, which is the foundation of America, that you know that that you you should have control over your family, not the state. The state should not have control of your family. It's insane that people would think that. [Applause] So, uh, we've had friends have to escape California because of this. Yeah. Yeah.\n\nI mean, it's literally had to leave because the state tried to dictate their kids because they're imposing the state's values on the kids and they literally had to leave overnight. More than one friend. We've had the story. Really? Really? Um, yeah. I know.\n\nThere's a a thing change the law in California where um if the teachers determine that uh it's in the kid's interest like like if you don't respect like you know I don't know 10-year-old's pronouns or something the the like the state can take your kid in California. So it's it's insane. Um you know it's it's it's state state forced indoctrination.\n\nUm, and if you if you don't match their uh you know, whatever the the state wants, then they can take your kid in California. It's a big deal. Yeah. Exactly. It's a So, it should just be, you know, families should have control over their own circumstances and it should not be the government that uh decides what how your children should be raised. [Applause] Hey Elen, my name is Josh. There's a lot of questions.\n\nI see there is we're going to answer everything at this point. So I'm Please go ahead. Sorry. Go ahead. Thank you for taking the questions. Although a lot of people I agree. So I just I was wondering I seen I noticed that there was another a second Mechzilla being built at the Star Base. Uh are we going to be go for launch for the Aremis mission coming up? I that's a very very sort of space question.\n\nUm so there's there there are um there yeah there are two towers in South Texas and and then two and and we plan to build two towers uh at the Cape in Florida. Uh and then probably some some more elsewhere in the future. But there'll be there'll be twin twin towers at the Cape and twin towers in South Texas Starbase. So all right. Hey Elon, good to meet you. Thank you for everything you're doing for the country and the world. Thank you.\n\nI I have two questions. They asked me to keep it short. Sure. Um well, one, when do you when do you envision uh solving blindness and bringing it that to the masses where it'll be for everyone? And the other is is robo taxi on schedule? Yeah. Uh well there's certainly a wide range of questions tonight. The Yes.\n\nSo with for for Neurolink, we we've actually had um Neurolink has had in monkeys a working um uh you know device we call blind sight um where um it's been working well and monkeys are healthy for for a few years now and we're hoping um later this year to do our first uh device implant for human enabling someone who is completely blind to see. Um, but it it's going to be low res at first, like Atari graphics, you know.\n\nSo, I want to set expectations appropriately. Uh, so it'll start off with like like very low res, but then over time, I think eventually uh the implant would enable vision that is like superhuman. Um, so that'll be that'd be pretty cool. Um, and then yeah, I think they're currently on track to do um unsupervised full self-driving uh in Austin in June. So I I think we probably will we'll we'll take maybe four more questions.\n\nSo just two from that side and two from that side and then we'll call it a night. So go ahead. Oh, thank you so much. First of all, you are beyond absolutely legendary and an absolute true hero. So thank you so much for everything you're doing, achieving, accomplishing. You've done so many impossibles. It is astonishing. Thank you.\n\nBut my name is Brian Wright and I've been filming from last year all the way into this year a docue series on finding peace. And during this election year, uh the episode was how many lines do we actually need to cross in order to be able to find peace? And I wanted to ask you where do you feel like we are in this this divide? Are we so far divided as to where there's no coming back to the middle or where do you see us being?\n\nYeah, we we should restore the Smith Act so that we the government cannot spy or issue propaganda to the people. Um, so um yeah um I don't know. I mean, I I I kind of thought that we're headed in a good direction uh for a while there and then and then the last, you know, month or so, there've been these like like crazy violent things happening against Tesla and and protesting me and whatnot.\n\nAnd I'm like, this is just nuts, you know, and and and uh you know, a lot of people sort of parading signs around saying that, you know, that President Trump and uh Ilamas should die type of thing. And I'm like, this is really nuts, you know.\n\nUm, but I think the the real issue is like who like who's organizing and funding that like the the same people that organized and funded the, you know, the infiltrators, uh, you know, who who the hecklers earlier tonight. So, it's it's it's whoever they are, you know. Um, and I guess we know some of their names, but it's really Yeah. Yeah. Sus and a bunch of others.\n\nUm, um, I'm not sure really what I sometimes I wonder what is their goal like what what's what's their aim you know I guess is it communism I guess is a part of it or just I don't know um sometimes I wonder like have they thought through what they're if let's say they got their goal what then what you know um so I I don't know I'm hopeful that things calm down that there's um you know we gauge that that people engage in like dialogue but not not violence.\n\nUm and that you know if uh for those who who do push violence um and destruction of property and intimidation obviously that they they need to face uh legal consequences for that. Um so um and and and the the president has has said that you know that that needs to happen. Obviously if people are pushing violence um and destruction of property that that is against the law and and they they need to face the con consequences of that. So thank you.\n\nYeah. Thank you Elon. Um I constantly hear that the Doge efforts um are going to do things like take away social security payments and reduce other government payments like that. You've touched on it tonight, but yeah. Can you state you you've discussed this at length over the last few months. Can you t talk again about how the Doge efforts are actually going to affect things like the payments and other programs like that?\n\nYeah, I I I guess it would be helpful because so so I can just state it as crisply and clearly as possible. Uh that Doge will will absolutely ensure that people get their Social Security, make sure they get their Social Security, make sure they get their Medicaid, um and will not be cutting any legitimate payments whatsoever. Crystal clear. I will just add to this.\n\nI I've been there uh working there and I spent about the first three or four weeks of my time in Woodlands actually working in Social Security Administration. Um 100% what you saying is true. Nothing has happened on the ground that would impact the level of payments going to people that legitimately are owed those payments. Period. A lot is going to happen to people that are stealing from the system. Yeah. Yeah. They're not getting the payments.\n\nAnd you know who's screaming? They are. cuz they're committing fraud and we should take that away from them cuz they're stealing from all of us in this room and our parents and they're going to scream loud and it's going to get louder. But but thank thank you for asking that question because it you know it is something that as obvious as it sound it it's it's a it's a great question because we just need to be very crisp and clear.\n\nUh Doge will make sure you get your Social Security. Those will make sure you get your Medicaid. There will be no cuts to legitimate payments whatsoever. I'd like to go last if it's okay with the other gentlemen. Can Would you like to go, sir? Please go. Thank you, Mr. Musk. Thank you so much for coming to Wisconsin. Um, I just want to thank you for calling out bad ideas on X.\n\nYou do that like every 30 minutes and if I don't see something I'm like, \"Wow, you alone.\" Okay. Yeah. Um Yeah. And we all know that ideas have consequences and bad ideas have victims. And um thank you for speaking up for victims.\n\nAnd a few nights ago when you spoke uh with Brett Bear when you were being interviewed and he asked you what keeps you up at night and like that other question, you answered and you paused and it was depopulation and I was waiting for you to say like, \"Oh, the death threats against my life or uh the national debt or but depopulation.\" Yeah, depopulation is a really big deal. it's not on people's radar. Why is that?\n\nUm, well, I think I think we we haven't yet evolved to deal with depopulation. You know, it's it's a I guess uh it's it's something we better evolve to deal with uh or or we're going to disappear. Um and and once the depopulation ball starts rolling, you know, it seems to gather up speed.\n\nI mean you can look at sort of cases like Korea and Japan which are um you know much further ahead or behind depending on how you look at it but that like the population decline there is much worse. Japan is an absolute publication population decline. So they're losing about I think roughly a million people a year above population and that's going to accelerate.\n\nUm, Korea is has only a third replacement rate which means that in three generations the country will be three or 4% of its current size. Like basically all that'll be left is a small portion of the capital city. Um, so and I keep waiting for the birth rate to turn around but it doesn't. Um, it seems like population collapse accelerates. Um and uh that's why I think it's it's a very serious matter.\n\nIt's it if you believe in humanity at all, you should care about this a lot. Um and then you know that that's sort but that you know that's a sort of long-term thing and in the the short term thing is is remaining is that America needs to be financially solvent. um you know that's that's what Doge is about trying to just make sure America is financially solvent and um and then there's also the risks of AI.\n\nUh so we want to make sure that that AI is is maximally truth seeeking um and you know ideally has sort of values that most Americans would agree with. um that and that it's a prohuman uh AI that it wants to foster the future of humanity. Um you know those those are the things that I think about. So thanks Elon. My name is Matt Hos like Bonanza big hos. I uh own and operate a small business here in the Fox Valley.\n\nUm, and tomorrow I actually get the honor and the privilege to host Brad Shiml at our shop, Springetti Landscaping. If anyone's in the valley, sounds good. Come down 4 4:30 tomorrow. We're having a shindig to have Brad stop by. He's going to come and give a little speech, get some uh some That's what this was about was Brad's election. And so I just wanted to say, in your opinion, what is Brad gonna do for small business owners like myself?\n\nUm, well, I think he's gonna help get the government off your back. Uh, so that's a big deal. Um, you know, for for anyone that starts a business, you know, it's like you used to just be able to open a store and not get like a zillion permits and licenses and everything. Uh, you know, that's how America, you wanted to make a product, you just made the product.\n\nUm, and you didn't have to satisfy a massive body of regulations and get a permission from all sorts of agencies. So hopefully um Justice Shiml is uh you know supports that and and helps get the government off your back. All right. So let me uh finish by saying obviously at the state level. Yeah, those are the state level be cool. Um but uh just just remember like this the importance of the election on Tuesday is gigantic.\n\nIt could it could decide the f the future of the House of Representatives. It could decide then the future of America and the future of the world. So, it's absolutely critical uh that you really you need to just drag friends and family to vote on Tuesday uh for Justice Shiml and for voter ID. So, thank you. Thank you guys. Thank you. Thank you. [Music] I don't want to work. I want to bang on all day. [Applause]"},"languages":["en"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VhIIS_9ZtDE"},{"id":"bret-baier-doge-2025","type":"interview","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ZfotdjNi-M","title":"Fox News Special Report","titles":{"en":"Fox News Special Report","de":"Fox News Special Report","fr":"Fox News Special Report"},"date":"2025-03-27","summary":"Bret Baier's exclusive: Elon Musk and seven members of the DOGE team give their first group interview on how they are cutting government waste.","text":"turn our attention to the Doge team, Of course, turn our attention to the Doge team, Of course, turn our attention to the Doge team, Of course, we've been hearing about Doge team, Of course, we've been hearing about Doge team, Of course, we've been hearing about some of the slashes. we've been hearing about some of the slashes. we've been hearing about some of the slashes. They've been making to some of the slashes.\n\nThey've been making to some of the slashes. They've been making to certain government. agencies They've been making to certain government. agencies They've been making to certain government. agencies and today they sat down certain government. agencies and today they sat down certain government.\n\nagencies and today they sat down members of the Doge team and today they sat down members of the Doge team and today they sat down members of the Doge team sat down with Brett Bayer members of the Doge team sat down with Brett Bayer members of the Doge team sat down with Brett Bayer on Fox News, Including Elon sat down with Brett Bayer on Fox News, Including Elon sat down with Brett Bayer on Fox News, Including Elon Musk.\n\nas a part of this on Fox News, Including Elon Musk. as a part of this on Fox News, Including Elon Musk. as a part of this panel. Let's listen into a Musk. as a part of this panel. Let's listen into a Musk. as a part of this panel. Let's listen into a bit of that report here panel. Let's listen into a bit of that report here panel. Let's listen into a bit of that report here on live now. Doing this. bit of that report here on live now. Doing this.\n\nbit of that report here on live now. Doing this. uh, I know there's a lot of on live now. Doing this. uh, I know there's a lot of on live now. Doing this. uh, I know there's a lot of interest in this. you know, uh, I know there's a lot of interest in this. you know, uh, I know there's a lot of interest in this. you know, first let me start with you interest in this. you know, first let me start with you interest in this.\n\nyou know, first let me start with you Elon, what are the what first let me start with you Elon, what are the what first let me start with you Elon, what are the what are the budgetary? savings Elon, what are the what are the budgetary? savings Elon, what are the what are the budgetary? savings goals and and how much are the budgetary? savings goals and and how much are the budgetary?\n\nsavings goals and and how much do you think you've goals and and how much do you think you've goals and and how much do you think you've achieved so far? our, our do you think you've achieved so far? our, our do you think you've achieved so far? our, our goal is to reduce the achieved so far? our, our goal is to reduce the achieved so far?\n\nour, our goal is to reduce the deficit by a trillion goal is to reduce the deficit by a trillion goal is to reduce the deficit by a trillion dollars. Um, so it from a deficit by a trillion dollars. Um, so it from a deficit by a trillion dollars. Um, so it from a nominal deficit of 2 dollars. Um, so it from a nominal deficit of 2 dollars.\n\nUm, so it from a nominal deficit of 2 trillion to try to cut the nominal deficit of 2 trillion to try to cut the nominal deficit of 2 trillion to try to cut the deficit in half to trillion to try to cut the deficit in half to trillion to try to cut the deficit in half to 1 trillion. um or looked at deficit in half to 1 trillion. um or looked at deficit in half to 1 trillion. um or looked at it in total 1 trillion.\n\num or looked at it in total 1 trillion.\n\num or looked at it in total federal spending to drop it in total federal spending to drop it in total federal spending to drop the federal spending from federal spending to drop the federal spending from federal spending to drop the federal spending from 7 trillion to 6 trillion the federal spending from 7 trillion to 6 trillion the federal spending from 7 trillion to 6 trillion we want to reduce the 7 trillion to 6 trillion we want to reduce the 7 trillion to 6 trillion we want to reduce the spending by eliminating we want to reduce the spending by eliminating we want to reduce the spending by eliminating waste and for reduce the spending by eliminating waste and for reduce the spending by eliminating waste and for reduce the spending by 15%.\n\nWhich waste and for reduce the spending by 15%. Which waste and for reduce the spending by 15%. Which seems really quite spending by 15%. Which seems really quite spending by 15%. Which seems really quite achievable. Uh, the seems really quite achievable. Uh, the seems really quite achievable. Uh, the government is not not achievable. Uh, the government is not not achievable.\n\nUh, the government is not not deficient um, and there's government is not not deficient um, and there's government is not not deficient um, and there's a lot of a lot of deficient um, and there's a lot of a lot of deficient um, and there's a lot of a lot of waste and fraud, so we a lot of a lot of waste and fraud, so we a lot of a lot of waste and fraud, so we feel confident that 15% waste and fraud, so we feel confident that 15% waste and fraud, so we feel confident that 15% reduction can, uh, can be feel confident that 15% reduction can, uh, can be feel confident that 15% reduction can, uh, can be done without.\n\naffecting any reduction can, uh, can be done without. affecting any reduction can, uh, can be done without. affecting any of of the critical done without. affecting any of of the critical done without. affecting any of of the critical government services. I'm of of the critical government services. I'm of of the critical government services. I'm going to talk to all the government services. I'm going to talk to all the government services.\n\nI'm going to talk to all the guys, it's not making it going to talk to all the guys, it's not making it going to talk to all the guys, it's not making it better and talk to all the guys, it's not making it better and talk to all the guys, it's not making it better and talk to all the guys here about the for you. better and talk to all the guys here about the for you. better and talk to all the guys here about the for you.\n\nWhat's the most astonishing guys here about the for you. What's the most astonishing guys here about the for you. What's the most astonishing thing? What's the most astonishing thing? What's the most astonishing thing? You've found out in this thing? You've found out in this thing?\n\nYou've found out in this process uh, the sheer amount You've found out in this process uh, the sheer amount You've found out in this process uh, the sheer amount of weights and fraud in the process uh, the sheer amount of weights and fraud in the process uh, the sheer amount of weights and fraud in the government. It is of weights and fraud in the government. It is of weights and fraud in the government. It is astonishing. government.\n\nIt is astonishing. government. It is astonishing. it's mind-blowing. uh, just astonishing. it's mind-blowing. uh, just astonishing. it's mind-blowing. uh, just uh, we routinely encounter. it's mind-blowing. uh, just uh, we routinely encounter. it's mind-blowing. uh, just uh, we routinely encounter. wastes of a billion dollars uh, we routinely encounter. wastes of a billion dollars uh, we routinely encounter. wastes of a billion dollars or more.\n\nCasually. um, wastes of a billion dollars or more. Casually. um, wastes of a billion dollars or more. Casually. um, you know, for example, like or more. Casually. um, you know, for example, like or more. Casually.\n\num, you know, for example, like the the the the simple you know, for example, like the the the the simple you know, for example, like the the the the simple survey uh that was uh, the the the the simple survey uh that was uh, the the the the simple survey uh that was uh, Literally 10 question survey survey uh that was uh, Literally 10 question survey survey uh that was uh, Literally 10 question survey that you could do Literally 10 question survey that you could do Literally 10 question survey that you could do with survey Market about that you could do with survey Market about that you could do with survey Market about 10 thousand dollars.\n\nuh, was with survey Market about 10 thousand dollars. uh, was with survey Market about 10 thousand dollars. uh, was a government was being 10 thousand dollars. uh, was a government was being 10 thousand dollars. uh, was a government was being charged almost a billion a government was being charged almost a billion a government was being charged almost a billion dollars for that. For just charged almost a billion dollars for that.\n\nFor just charged almost a billion dollars for that. For just the survey a billion dollars dollars for that. For just the survey a billion dollars dollars for that. For just the survey a billion dollars for for a simple online the survey a billion dollars for for a simple online the survey a billion dollars for for a simple online survey. Do you like the for for a simple online survey. Do you like the for for a simple online survey.\n\nDo you like the National park and then survey. Do you like the National park and then survey.\n\nDo you like the National park and then they appear to be no National park and then they appear to be no National park and then they appear to be no feedback loop for what they appear to be no feedback loop for what they appear to be no feedback loop for what would be done with that feedback loop for what would be done with that feedback loop for what would be done with that survey. So, the survey will would be done with that survey.\n\nSo, the survey will would be done with that survey. So, the survey will just go to nothing, survey. So, the survey will just go to nothing, survey. So, the survey will just go to nothing, it's like insane. You just go to nothing, it's like insane. You just go to nothing, it's like insane. You technically are a special it's like insane. You technically are a special it's like insane. You technically are a special government employee.\n\nand technically are a special government employee. and technically are a special government employee. and you're supposed to be. 130 government employee. and you're supposed to be. 130 government employee. and you're supposed to be. 130 days Are you going to you're supposed to be. 130 days Are you going to you're supposed to be.\n\n130 days Are you going to continue past that or do days Are you going to continue past that or do days Are you going to continue past that or do you think that's the what continue past that or do you think that's the what continue past that or do you think that's the what you're going to do or you think that's the what you're going to do or you think that's the what you're going to do or well, I think we will have you're going to do or well, I think we will have you're going to do or well,\n\nI think we will have accomplished most of the well, I think we will have accomplished most of the well, I think we will have accomplished most of the work required to reduce accomplished most of the work required to reduce accomplished most of the work required to reduce the deficit by a trillion work required to reduce the deficit by a trillion work required to reduce the deficit by a trillion dollars within that time the deficit by a trillion dollars within that time the deficit by a trillion dollars within that time frame.\n\nSo in that time dollars within that time frame. So in that time dollars within that time frame. So in that time frame, 130 days and and the frame. So in that time frame, 130 days and and the frame. So in that time frame, 130 days and and the process is a report frame, 130 days and and the process is a report frame, 130 days and and the process is a report at some point at 100 days. process is a report at some point at 100 days.\n\nprocess is a report at some point at 100 days. uh, not really a report, we at some point at 100 days. uh, not really a report, we at some point at 100 days. uh, not really a report, we we are cutting the waste uh, not really a report, we we are cutting the waste uh, not really a report, we we are cutting the waste and fraud in real time. So we are cutting the waste and fraud in real time. So we are cutting the waste and fraud in real time.\n\nSo every day like that passes. and fraud in real time. So every day like that passes. and fraud in real time. So every day like that passes. uh our goal is To. reduce every day like that passes. uh our goal is To. reduce every day like that passes. uh our goal is To. reduce the, the waste and fraud by uh our goal is To. reduce the, the waste and fraud by uh our goal is To. reduce the, the waste and fraud by 4 billion dollars a day.\n\nthe, the waste and fraud by 4 billion dollars a day. the, the waste and fraud by 4 billion dollars a day. every day 7 days a week. and 4 billion dollars a day. every day 7 days a week. and 4 billion dollars a day. every day 7 days a week. and so far, we are succeeding. every day 7 days a week. and so far, we are succeeding. every day 7 days a week. and so far, we are succeeding. I'm going to talk to the so far, we are succeeding.\n\nI'm going to talk to the so far, we are succeeding.\n\nI'm going to talk to the specifics but they're they're I'm going to talk to the specifics but they're they're I'm going to talk to the specifics but they're they're obviously specifics but they're they're obviously specifics but they're they're obviously are Doge critics who are obviously are Doge critics who are obviously are Doge critics who are reading all kinds of stuff, are Doge critics who are reading all kinds of stuff, are Doge critics who are reading all kinds of stuff, Obviously lawmakers on the reading all kinds of stuff, Obviously lawmakers on the reading all kinds of stuff, Obviously lawmakers on the other side of the aisle.\n\nObviously lawmakers on the other side of the aisle. Obviously lawmakers on the other side of the aisle. are attacking you. Uh, and other side of the aisle. are attacking you. Uh, and other side of the aisle. are attacking you. Uh, and he they characterize the are attacking you. Uh, and he they characterize the are attacking you. Uh, and he they characterize the approach is this. fire he they characterize the approach is this.\n\nfire he they characterize the approach is this. fire ready. And en aim and, approach is this. fire ready. And en aim and, approach is this. fire ready. And en aim and, how do you? Approach that. ready. And en aim and, how do you? Approach that. ready. And en aim and, how do you? Approach that. How do you? respond to how do you? Approach that. How do you? respond to how do you? Approach that. How do you? respond to that?\n\nWell, I I do agree How do you? respond to that? Well, I I do agree How do you? respond to that? Well, I I do agree that we actually want to that? Well, I I do agree that we actually want to that?\n\nWell, I I do agree that we actually want to be careful in the cuts so that we actually want to be careful in the cuts so that we actually want to be careful in the cuts so we want to measure twice, be careful in the cuts so we want to measure twice, be careful in the cuts so we want to measure twice, if not Thrice. and cut once. we want to measure twice, if not Thrice. and cut once. we want to measure twice, if not Thrice. and cut once.\n\num, and uh, actually that if not Thrice. and cut once. um, and uh, actually that if not Thrice. and cut once. um, and uh, actually that is that is our approach. um, and uh, actually that is that is our approach. um, and uh, actually that is that is our approach. Uh, they may characterize is that is our approach. Uh, they may characterize is that is our approach.\n\nUh, they may characterize it as uh, shooting Uh, they may characterize it as uh, shooting Uh, they may characterize it as uh, shooting from the hip but it is it as uh, shooting from the hip but it is it as uh, shooting from the hip but it is anything. But that Uh, which from the hip but it is anything. But that Uh, which from the hip but it is anything. But that Uh, which is not to say that we anything.\n\nBut that Uh, which is not to say that we anything.\n\nBut that Uh, which is not to say that we make, we don't make is not to say that we make, we don't make is not to say that we make, we don't make mistakes if we were to make, we don't make mistakes if we were to make, we don't make mistakes if we were to approach this with the mistakes if we were to approach this with the mistakes if we were to approach this with the standard of making no approach this with the standard of making no approach this with the standard of making no mistakes at all.\n\nthat standard of making no mistakes at all. that standard of making no mistakes at all. that would be like, saying you, mistakes at all. that would be like, saying you, mistakes at all. that would be like, saying you, um, someone would be like, saying you, um, someone would be like, saying you, um, someone on baseball's got about a um, someone on baseball's got about a um, someone on baseball's got about a thousand. that's impossible.\n\non baseball's got about a thousand. that's impossible. on baseball's got about a thousand. that's impossible. Um, so when we do make thousand. that's impossible. Um, so when we do make thousand. that's impossible. Um, so when we do make mistakes, we correct them Um, so when we do make mistakes, we correct them Um, so when we do make mistakes, we correct them quickly. Um, and we we mistakes, we correct them quickly.\n\nUm, and we we mistakes, we correct them quickly. Um, and we we move on some people say quickly. Um, and we we move on some people say quickly. Um, and we we move on some people say this shouldn't take a move on some people say this shouldn't take a move on some people say this shouldn't take a rocket scientist. Uh, Steve this shouldn't take a rocket scientist. Uh, Steve this shouldn't take a rocket scientist.\n\nUh, Steve Davis, you are a rocket rocket scientist. Uh, Steve Davis, you are a rocket rocket scientist. Uh, Steve Davis, you are a rocket scientist. It used to be. Davis, you are a rocket scientist. It used to be. Davis, you are a rocket scientist. It used to be. Yeah. And now essentially scientist. It used to be. Yeah. And now essentially scientist. It used to be. Yeah. And now essentially you're the chief operating Yeah.\n\nAnd now essentially you're the chief operating Yeah. And now essentially you're the chief operating Officer of Doge. Um, you're the chief operating Officer of Doge. Um, you're the chief operating Officer of Doge. Um, day-to-day operations. fair Officer of Doge. Um, day-to-day operations. fair Officer of Doge. Um, day-to-day operations. fair to say, Um, yeah, part day-to-day operations. fair to say, Um, yeah, part day-to-day operations.\n\nfair to say, Um, yeah, part part of the Dutch team. to say, Um, yeah, part part of the Dutch team. to say, Um, yeah, part part of the Dutch team. What? So, how did you end up part of the Dutch team. What? So, how did you end up part of the Dutch team. What? So, how did you end up here? What's the biggest What? So, how did you end up here? What's the biggest What? So, how did you end up here? What's the biggest challenge? You see? um, the here?\n\nWhat's the biggest challenge? You see? um, the here? What's the biggest challenge? You see? um, the reason I'm here is probably challenge? You see? um, the reason I'm here is probably challenge? You see?\n\num, the reason I'm here is probably for many, is that I think reason I'm here is probably for many, is that I think reason I'm here is probably for many, is that I think the goal is incredibly for many, is that I think the goal is incredibly for many, is that I think the goal is incredibly inspiring. I think most of the goal is incredibly inspiring. I think most of the goal is incredibly inspiring.\n\nI think most of the taxpayers in the country inspiring. I think most of the taxpayers in the country inspiring. I think most of the taxpayers in the country would agree. that in order the taxpayers in the country would agree. that in order the taxpayers in the country would agree. that in order to have the the country would agree. that in order to have the the country would agree.\n\nthat in order to have the the country going bankrupt, would be a to have the the country going bankrupt, would be a to have the the country going bankrupt, would be a very bad thing and therefore going bankrupt, would be a very bad thing and therefore going bankrupt, would be a very bad thing and therefore the country going not very bad thing and therefore the country going not very bad thing and therefore the country going not bankrupt is a good thing.\n\nthe country going not bankrupt is a good thing. the country going not bankrupt is a good thing. Um, that all of us are bankrupt is a good thing. Um, that all of us are bankrupt is a good thing.\n\nUm, that all of us are willing to kind of put our Um, that all of us are willing to kind of put our Um, that all of us are willing to kind of put our lives on hold in order to willing to kind of put our lives on hold in order to willing to kind of put our lives on hold in order to do, I think the thing that's lives on hold in order to do, I think the thing that's lives on hold in order to do, I think the thing that's special right now is we do, I think the thing that's special right now is we do, I think the thing that's special right now is we actually believe there's a special right now is we actually believe there's a special right now is we actually believe there's a chance to succeed.\n\num, actually believe there's a chance to succeed. um, actually believe there's a chance to succeed. um, that a an Administration. chance to succeed. um, that a an Administration. chance to succeed. um, that a an Administration. that support of um, and a that a an Administration. that support of um, and a that a an Administration.\n\nthat support of um, and a great cabinet and just that support of um, and a great cabinet and just that support of um, and a great cabinet and just a great group. that will great cabinet and just a great group. that will great cabinet and just a great group. that will actually make success a a great group. that will actually make success a a great group.\n\nthat will actually make success a possible outcome And I think actually make success a possible outcome And I think actually make success a possible outcome And I think that's given the inspiring possible outcome And I think that's given the inspiring possible outcome And I think that's given the inspiring Mission and given, the, uh, that's given the inspiring Mission and given, the, uh, that's given the inspiring Mission and given, the, uh, non-zero chance of success Mission and given, the, uh, non-zero chance of success Mission and given, the, uh, non-zero chance of success it, it was worth doing.\n\nI non-zero chance of success it, it was worth doing. I non-zero chance of success it, it was worth doing. I just like to sort of it, it was worth doing. I just like to sort of it, it was worth doing.\n\nI just like to sort of re-emphasize that point the just like to sort of re-emphasize that point the just like to sort of re-emphasize that point the the success of those is re-emphasize that point the the success of those is re-emphasize that point the the success of those is only possible with the success of those is only possible with the success of those is only possible with President Trump And with the only possible with President Trump And with the only possible with President Trump And with the outstanding cabinet that he President Trump And with the outstanding cabinet that he President Trump And with the outstanding cabinet that he selected it would be outstanding cabinet that he selected it would be outstanding cabinet that he selected it would\n\nbe impossible without the selected it would be impossible without the selected it would be impossible without the support of the president and impossible without the support of the president and impossible without the support of the president and the cabinet.\n\nBut you're support of the president and the cabinet. But you're support of the president and the cabinet. But you're finding the money. I mean, the cabinet. But you're finding the money. I mean, the cabinet. But you're finding the money. I mean, it's big numbers, right? finding the money. I mean, it's big numbers, right? finding the money. I mean, it's big numbers, right? Yeah. Like Elon said, um, it's big numbers, right? Yeah.\n\nLike Elon said, um, it's big numbers, right? Yeah. Like Elon said, um, the minimum impulse bit is Yeah. Like Elon said, um, the minimum impulse bit is Yeah. Like Elon said, um, the minimum impulse bit is often a billion dollars. So, the minimum impulse bit is often a billion dollars. So, the minimum impulse bit is often a billion dollars. So, for example, the 830 often a billion dollars. So, for example, the 830 often a billion dollars.\n\nSo, for example, the 830 million, um, which was the for example, the 830 million, um, which was the for example, the 830 million, um, which was the online survey. That's an million, um, which was the online survey. That's an million, um, which was the online survey. That's an enormous amount of money. online survey. That's an enormous amount of money. online survey. That's an enormous amount of money.\n\nthat wouldn't have been enormous amount of money. that wouldn't have been enormous amount of money.\n\nthat wouldn't have been found if the dosh team that wouldn't have been found if the dosh team that wouldn't have been found if the dosh team wasn't working with it, In found if the dosh team wasn't working with it, In found if the dosh team wasn't working with it, In that case, the department wasn't working with it, In that case, the department wasn't working with it, In that case, the department of interior, but then that case, the department of interior, but then that case,\n\nthe department of interior, but then taking it 1 step further, of interior, but then taking it 1 step further, of interior, but then taking it 1 step further, Doge, then taking it 1 step further, Doge, then taking it 1 step further, Doge, then published publishes these Doge, then published publishes these Doge, then published publishes these things, on our website for published publishes these things, on our website for published publishes these things, on our website for maximum transparency.\n\nSo now things, on our website for maximum transparency. So now things, on our website for maximum transparency. So now the General Public it would maximum transparency. So now the General Public it would maximum transparency.\n\nSo now the General Public it would have been impossible for the General Public it would have been impossible for the General Public it would have been impossible for the general public to have have been impossible for the general public to have have been impossible for the general public to have seen that. now anyone can the general public to have seen that. now anyone can the general public to have seen that. now anyone can just log into doge.\n\ncom any seen that. now anyone can just log into doge. com any seen that. now anyone can just log into doge. com any time and see these payments just log into doge. com any time and see these payments just log into doge.\n\ncom any time and see these payments as they're not yet in real time and see these payments as they're not yet in real time and see these payments as they're not yet in real time, they're close, but as they're not yet in real time, they're close, but as they're not yet in real time, they're close, but they'll probably be in time, they're close, but they'll probably be in time, they're close, but they'll probably be in real time within the next they'll probably be in real time within the next they'll probably be in real time within the next few weeks.\n\nbut the process real time within the next few weeks. but the process real time within the next few weeks. but the process is still involves Congress, few weeks. but the process is still involves Congress, few weeks. but the process is still involves Congress, right? At some level, is still involves Congress, right? At some level, is still involves Congress, right? At some level, we're trying to keep right?\n\nAt some level, we're trying to keep right? At some level, we're trying to keep Congress as informed as we're trying to keep Congress as informed as we're trying to keep Congress as informed as possible. But uh, it the law Congress as informed as possible. But uh, it the law Congress as informed as possible. But uh, it the law does say that money needs possible. But uh, it the law does say that money needs possible.\n\nBut uh, it the law does say that money needs to be spent. uh, does say that money needs to be spent. uh, does say that money needs to be spent. uh, correctly, It should not to be spent. uh, correctly, It should not to be spent.\n\nuh, correctly, It should not be spent fraudulently or correctly, It should not be spent fraudulently or correctly, It should not be spent fraudulently or wastefully, it's not be spent fraudulently or wastefully, it's not be spent fraudulently or wastefully, it's not contrary to Congress to wastefully, it's not contrary to Congress to wastefully, it's not contrary to Congress to avoid waste and fraud.\n\nIt contrary to Congress to avoid waste and fraud. It contrary to Congress to avoid waste and fraud. It is consistent with the law avoid waste and fraud. It is consistent with the law avoid waste and fraud.\n\nIt is consistent with the law and consistent with is consistent with the law and consistent with is consistent with the law and consistent with Congress And we've seen and consistent with Congress And we've seen and consistent with Congress And we've seen actually great support. Congress And we've seen actually great support. Congress And we've seen actually great support. at least from the actually great support.\n\nat least from the actually great support. at least from the Republican side of of the at least from the Republican side of of the at least from the Republican side of of the house and occasionally some Republican side of of the house and occasionally some Republican side of of the house and occasionally some Democrats too. I think, you house and occasionally some Democrats too. I think, you house and occasionally some Democrats too.\n\nI think, you know, it's nice to see Democrats too. I think, you know, it's nice to see Democrats too. I think, you know, it's nice to see people cross the know, it's nice to see people cross the know, it's nice to see people cross the allay once in a while. Um, people cross the allay once in a while. Um, people cross the allay once in a while. Um, but uh What? Usually, when allay once in a while. Um, but uh What?\n\nUsually, when allay once in a while. Um, but uh What? Usually, when they attack those they but uh What? Usually, when they attack those they but uh What? Usually, when they attack those they never attack any of the they attack those they never attack any of the they attack those they never attack any of the specifics. So, they they'll never attack any of the specifics. So, they they'll never attack any of the specifics.\n\nSo, they they'll say what we're doing is specifics. So, they they'll say what we're doing is specifics. So, they they'll say what we're doing is somehow. unconstitutional say what we're doing is somehow. unconstitutional say what we're doing is somehow. unconstitutional or legal or whatever we're somehow. unconstitutional or legal or whatever we're somehow.\n\nunconstitutional or legal or whatever we're like well which line of or legal or whatever we're like well which line of or legal or whatever we're like well which line of the cost savings? Do you like well which line of the cost savings? Do you like well which line of the cost savings? Do you disagree with? And they the cost savings? Do you disagree with? And they the cost savings? Do you disagree with?\n\nAnd they can't point to any and we disagree with? And they can't point to any and we disagree with? And they can't point to any and we list them all on on can't point to any and we list them all on on can't point to any and we list them all on on dos. gov. and and the Doge list them all on on dos. gov. and and the Doge list them all on on dos. gov. and and the Doge handle on x. and you'll see dos. gov. and and the Doge handle on x.\n\nand you'll see dos. gov. and and the Doge handle on x. and you'll see just outrageous things 1 handle on x. and you'll see just outrageous things 1 handle on x. and you'll see just outrageous things 1 outrageous thing. After just outrageous things 1 outrageous thing. After just outrageous things 1 outrageous thing. After another, Joe Gabby. Um, outrageous thing. After another, Joe Gabby. Um, outrageous thing. After another, Joe Gabby.\n\nUm, besides uh, Elon you're another, Joe Gabby. Um, besides uh, Elon you're another, Joe Gabby. Um, besides uh, Elon you're 1 of several billionaires besides uh, Elon you're 1 of several billionaires besides uh, Elon you're 1 of several billionaires here co-founder of Airbnb. 1 of several billionaires here co-founder of Airbnb. 1 of several billionaires here co-founder of Airbnb. Um, and you wanted to help here co-founder of Airbnb.\n\nUm, and you wanted to help here co-founder of Airbnb. Um, and you wanted to help out something to Anthony and Um, and you wanted to help out something to Anthony and Um, and you wanted to help out something to Anthony and Elon probably back in out something to Anthony and Elon probably back in out something to Anthony and Elon probably back in February. and they tell me Elon probably back in February.\n\nand they tell me Elon probably back in February. and they tell me something about a, a mine. February. and they tell me something about a, a mine. February. and they tell me something about a, a mine. that was dealt with something about a, a mine. that was dealt with something about a, a mine. that was dealt with retirement. And they said that was dealt with retirement. And they said that was dealt with retirement.\n\nAnd they said that he's somebody to help retirement. And they said that he's somebody to help retirement. And they said that he's somebody to help out to fix retirement in that he's somebody to help out to fix retirement in that he's somebody to help out to fix retirement in the government. um, I uh, I out to fix retirement in the government. um, I uh, I out to fix retirement in the government. um, I uh, I love the challenge, so I the government.\n\num, I uh, I love the challenge, so I the government. um, I uh, I love the challenge, so I jumped on board. and it love the challenge, so I jumped on board. and it love the challenge, so I jumped on board. and it turns out there is actually jumped on board. and it turns out there is actually jumped on board. and it turns out there is actually a mine. in Pennsylvania. uh turns out there is actually a mine. in Pennsylvania.\n\nuh turns out there is actually a mine. in Pennsylvania. uh that houses every paper a mine. in Pennsylvania. uh that houses every paper a mine. in Pennsylvania. uh that houses every paper document for the retirement that houses every paper document for the retirement that houses every paper document for the retirement process in the government. document for the retirement process in the government.\n\ndocument for the retirement process in the government. Now picture this this this process in the government. Now picture this this this process in the government. Now picture this this this giant cave has 22. filing Now picture this this this giant cave has 22. filing Now picture this this this giant cave has 22. filing cabinets. Stacked 10 high to giant cave has 22. filing cabinets. Stacked 10 high to giant cave has 22. filing cabinets.\n\nStacked 10 high to house. 400 million pieces cabinets. Stacked 10 high to house. 400 million pieces cabinets. Stacked 10 high to house. 400 million pieces of paper. Uh, it's a house. 400 million pieces of paper. Uh, it's a house. 400 million pieces of paper. Uh, it's a process that started in the of paper. Uh, it's a process that started in the of paper.\n\nUh, it's a process that started in the 1950s and largely hasn't process that started in the 1950s and largely hasn't process that started in the 1950s and largely hasn't changed. in the last 70 1950s and largely hasn't changed. in the last 70 1950s and largely hasn't changed. in the last 70 years. and so, as he dug changed. in the last 70 years. and so, as he dug changed. in the last 70 years. and so, as he dug into it, we found a years.\n\nand so, as he dug into it, we found a years. and so, as he dug into it, we found a retirement cases that had into it, we found a retirement cases that had into it, we found a retirement cases that had so much paper. They had retirement cases that had so much paper. They had retirement cases that had so much paper. They had to fit it on a shipping so much paper. They had to fit it on a shipping so much paper.\n\nThey had to fit it on a shipping pallet so, uh, the process to fit it on a shipping pallet so, uh, the process to fit it on a shipping pallet so, uh, the process takes many months and we're pallet so, uh, the process takes many months and we're pallet so, uh, the process takes many months and we're going to make it just takes many months and we're going to make it just takes many months and we're going to make it just many days.\n\nWell, it would be going to make it just many days. Well, it would be going to make it just many days. Well, it would be digitized or how. many days. Well, it would be digitized or how. many days. Well, it would be digitized or how. So this will be an digitized or how. So this will be an digitized or how.\n\nSo this will be an an online digital process that So this will be an an online digital process that So this will be an an online digital process that will take just a few days an online digital process that will take just a few days an online digital process that will take just a few days at most And I really will take just a few days at most And I really will take just a few days at most And I really think, you know, it's an at most And I really think, you know, it's an at most And I really think, you know, it's an injustice.\n\nTo civil think, you know, it's an injustice. To civil think, you know, it's an injustice. To civil servants. Who are subjected injustice. To civil servants. Who are subjected injustice. To civil servants. Who are subjected to these processes that? are servants. Who are subjected to these processes that? are servants. Who are subjected to these processes that? are older than the age of half to these processes that?\n\nare older than the age of half to these processes that? are older than the age of half the people watching your older than the age of half the people watching your older than the age of half the people watching your show tonight. so, we the people watching your show tonight. so, we the people watching your show tonight. so, we really believe that the show tonight. so, we really believe that the show tonight.\n\nso, we really believe that the government can have an really believe that the government can have an really believe that the government can have an Apple Store like experience. government can have an Apple Store like experience. government can have an Apple Store like experience. even if we designed, great Apple Store like experience. even if we designed, great Apple Store like experience.\n\neven if we designed, great user experience, modern even if we designed, great user experience, modern even if we designed, great user experience, modern systems, because right now, user experience, modern systems, because right now, user experience, modern systems, because right now, it's by hand. Yes. the the systems, because right now, it's by hand. Yes. the the systems, because right now, it's by hand. Yes.\n\nthe the retirement process is all it's by hand. Yes. the the retirement process is all it's by hand. Yes.\n\nthe the retirement process is all by paper Literally with retirement process is all by paper Literally with retirement process is all by paper Literally with people carrying paper and by paper Literally with people carrying paper and by paper Literally with people carrying paper and manila envelopes in into people carrying paper and manila envelopes in into people carrying paper and manila envelopes in into this gigantic mind.\n\nso manila envelopes in into this gigantic mind. so manila envelopes in into this gigantic mind. so they can't retire more this gigantic mind. so they can't retire more this gigantic mind. so they can't retire more than a certain number every they can't retire more than a certain number every they can't retire more than a certain number every month. Yes, about 8,000 than a certain number every month.\n\nYes, about 8,000 than a certain number every month. Yes, about 8,000 a month. that that's how month. Yes, about 8,000 a month. that that's how month. Yes, about 8,000 a month. that that's how we. the reason we a month. that that's how we. the reason we a month. that that's how we. the reason we discovered it was We were we. the reason we discovered it was We were we.\n\nthe reason we discovered it was We were saying like well, let's discovered it was We were saying like well, let's discovered it was We were saying like well, let's encourage saying like well, let's encourage saying like well, let's encourage voluntary retirement. I said, encourage voluntary retirement. I said, encourage voluntary retirement. I said, well, the most you could be voluntary retirement.\n\nI said, well, the most you could be voluntary retirement. I said, well, the most you could be that could do is 8,000 well, the most you could be that could do is 8,000 well, the most you could be that could do is 8,000 a month. Um, and And even. that could do is 8,000 a month. Um, and And even. that could do is 8,000 a month. Um, and And even. uh, I don't know a month. Um, and And even. uh, I don't know a month. Um, and And even.\n\nuh, I don't know circumstances, it can take uh, I don't know circumstances, it can take uh, I don't know circumstances, it can take 6 to 9 months just to, just circumstances, it can take 6 to 9 months just to, just circumstances, it can take 6 to 9 months just to, just to have your time at 6 to 9 months just to, just to have your time at 6 to 9 months just to, just to have your time at paperwork processed, to have your time at paperwork processed, to have your time at paperwork processed, uh, and they often get the paperwork processed, uh, and they often get the paperwork processed, uh, and they often get the calculations wrong.\n\nSo uh, and they often get the calculations wrong. So uh, and they often get the calculations wrong. So we're like, well, why would calculations wrong. So we're like, well, why would calculations wrong. So we're like, well, why would it take so long to we're like, well, why would it take so long to we're like, well, why would it take so long to retire? And they're like, it take so long to retire? And they're like, it take so long to retire?\n\nAnd they're like, well, because of the retire? And they're like, well, because of the retire? And they're like, well, because of the mind, you're like, what well, because of the mind, you're like, what well, because of the mind, you're like, what do you mean the Mind? mind, you're like, what do you mean the Mind? mind, you're like, what do you mean the Mind? What's the mind got to do do you mean the Mind?\n\nWhat's the mind got to do do you mean the Mind?\n\nWhat's the mind got to do with retiring and that's What's the mind got to do with retiring and that's What's the mind got to do with retiring and that's what we discovered the that with retiring and that's what we discovered the that with retiring and that's what we discovered the that that uh, all the retirement what we discovered the that that uh, all the retirement what we discovered the that that uh, all the retirement stuff is done by still that uh, all the retirement stuff is done by still that uh, all the retirement stuff is done by still done by paper.\n\nin a stuff is done by still done by paper. in a stuff is done by still done by paper. in a process, that looks done by paper. in a process, that looks done by paper. in a process, that looks identical to what occurred process, that looks identical to what occurred process, that looks identical to what occurred in the 1950s. Like if you identical to what occurred in the 1950s. Like if you identical to what occurred in the 1950s.\n\nLike if you took a snapshot of the in the 1950s. Like if you took a snapshot of the in the 1950s. Like if you took a snapshot of the mine, when it first started took a snapshot of the mine, when it first started took a snapshot of the mine, when it first started in the 50s to today, mine, when it first started in the 50s to today, mine, when it first started in the 50s to today, it looks the same. It's in the 50s to today, it looks the same.\n\nIt's in the 50s to today, it looks the same. It's amazing. So, how long it looks the same. It's amazing. So, how long it looks the same. It's amazing. So, how long do you think it'll take amazing. So, how long do you think it'll take amazing. So, how long do you think it'll take take to turn over? or do you think it'll take take to turn over? or do you think it'll take take to turn over? or work in as fast as we take to turn over?\n\nor work in as fast as we take to turn over? or work in as fast as we can? Uh, probably next work in as fast as we can? Uh, probably next work in as fast as we can? Uh, probably next couple of months, we'll can? Uh, probably next couple of months, we'll can? Uh, probably next couple of months, we'll have this this overhaul. couple of months, we'll have this this overhaul. couple of months, we'll have this this overhaul.\n\nand, you know, I really have this this overhaul. and, you know, I really have this this overhaul. and, you know, I really think again, like why and, you know, I really think again, like why and, you know, I really think again, like why are we subjecting? our think again, like why are we subjecting? our think again, like why are we subjecting? our federal workers to processes are we subjecting? our federal workers to processes are we subjecting?\n\nour federal workers to processes that they actually have federal workers to processes that they actually have federal workers to processes that they actually have to go through a training? that they actually have to go through a training? that they actually have to go through a training? just to retire from the to go through a training? just to retire from the to go through a training? just to retire from the government?\n\nThere's a whole just to retire from the government? There's a whole just to retire from the government? There's a whole training program that government? There's a whole training program that government? There's a whole training program that people have to go training program that people have to go training program that people have to go through. in order to people have to go through. in order to people have to go through. in order to retire.\n\nI think we can do through. in order to retire. I think we can do through. in order to retire. I think we can do better for them. Armed Doge retire. I think we can do better for them. Armed Doge retire. I think we can do better for them. Armed Doge engineer. Uh, you go better for them. Armed Doge engineer. Uh, you go better for them. Armed Doge engineer. Uh, you go in to these places 1 of the engineer.\n\nUh, you go in to these places 1 of the engineer. Uh, you go in to these places 1 of the more than a dozen in to these places 1 of the more than a dozen in to these places 1 of the more than a dozen engineers. First people to more than a dozen engineers. First people to more than a dozen engineers. First people to go into the agencies and engineers. First people to go into the agencies and engineers.\n\nFirst people to go into the agencies and view the computer data go into the agencies and view the computer data go into the agencies and view the computer data sets. tell me what you're view the computer data sets. tell me what you're view the computer data sets. tell me what you're finding and for people who sets. tell me what you're finding and for people who sets.\n\ntell me what you're finding and for people who don't understand how that finding and for people who don't understand how that finding and for people who don't understand how that process works, explain it don't understand how that process works, explain it don't understand how that process works, explain it for them. Yeah. Um, I'll say process works, explain it for them. Yeah. Um, I'll say process works, explain it for them. Yeah.\n\nUm, I'll say the first thing that got me for them. Yeah. Um, I'll say the first thing that got me for them. Yeah. Um, I'll say the first thing that got me really excited about Doge the first thing that got me really excited about Doge the first thing that got me really excited about Doge was learning. Um, basically, really excited about Doge was learning. Um, basically, really excited about Doge was learning.\n\nUm, basically, the state of government was learning. Um, basically, the state of government was learning. Um, basically, the state of government computers Um, By some the state of government computers Um, By some the state of government computers Um, By some estimates. government it computers Um, By some estimates. government it computers Um, By some estimates. government it costs about hundred billion estimates.\n\ngovernment it costs about hundred billion estimates. government it costs about hundred billion dollars. And, uh, costs about hundred billion dollars. And, uh, costs about hundred billion dollars. And, uh, its funding systems that are dollars. And, uh, its funding systems that are dollars. And, uh, its funding systems that are over. 50 years old. in the its funding systems that are over. 50 years old. in the its funding systems that are over.\n\n50 years old. in the case of something like over. 50 years old. in the case of something like over. 50 years old. in the case of something like Social Security or the case of something like Social Security or the case of something like Social Security or the IRS. So really critical Social Security or the IRS. So really critical Social Security or the IRS. So really critical systems are are old, they IRS.\n\nSo really critical systems are are old, they IRS. So really critical systems are are old, they cost a lot of money to systems are are old, they cost a lot of money to systems are are old, they cost a lot of money to maintain. and um they can cost a lot of money to maintain. and um they can cost a lot of money to maintain. and um they can be the the efforts to maintain. and um they can be the the efforts to maintain.\n\nand um they can be the the efforts to improve them are often very be the the efforts to improve them are often very be the the efforts to improve them are often very delayed. so, I thought I'm a improve them are often very delayed. so, I thought I'm a improve them are often very delayed. so, I thought I'm a software engineer. um, that delayed. so, I thought I'm a software engineer. um, that delayed. so, I thought I'm a software engineer.\n\num, that that maybe software engineer. um, that that maybe software engineer.\n\num, that that maybe can make a difference here and that maybe can make a difference here and that maybe can make a difference here and And, um, That's, that's can make a difference here and And, um, That's, that's can make a difference here and And, um, That's, that's really what inspired me And, um, That's, that's really what inspired me And, um, That's, that's really what inspired me at a high level. of really what inspired me at a high level.\n\nof really what inspired me at a high level. of history about social at a high level. of history about social at a high level.\n\nof history about social security and a lot of words history about social security and a lot of words history about social security and a lot of words about it from here's what security and a lot of words about it from here's what security and a lot of words about it from here's what Democrats have been saying about it from here's what Democrats have been saying about it from here's what Democrats have been saying about it.\n\nIt's absurd that Democrats have been saying about it. It's absurd that Democrats have been saying about it. It's absurd that Elon Musk is trying to about it. It's absurd that Elon Musk is trying to about it.\n\nIt's absurd that Elon Musk is trying to eliminate billions of Elon Musk is trying to eliminate billions of Elon Musk is trying to eliminate billions of dollars from Social eliminate billions of dollars from Social eliminate billions of dollars from Social Security. Elon Musk and dollars from Social Security. Elon Musk and dollars from Social Security. Elon Musk and president Trump have set Security.\n\nElon Musk and president Trump have set Security. Elon Musk and president Trump have set their sights on cutting president Trump have set their sights on cutting president Trump have set their sights on cutting Social Security. Their goal their sights on cutting Social Security. Their goal their sights on cutting Social Security. Their goal is clear Destroy Social Social Security. Their goal is clear Destroy Social Social Security.\n\nTheir goal is clear Destroy Social Security from within. is clear Destroy Social Security from within. is clear Destroy Social Security from within. you're in the building. Security from within. you're in the building. Security from within. you're in the building. I mean, you're in the you're in the building. I mean, you're in the you're in the building.\n\nI mean, you're in the computers, what's happening I mean, you're in the computers, what's happening I mean, you're in the computers, what's happening there? What are you doing? computers, what's happening there? What are you doing? computers, what's happening there? What are you doing? Yeah. it doesn't line up there? What are you doing? Yeah. it doesn't line up there? What are you doing? Yeah. it doesn't line up with uh, my experience on Yeah.\n\nit doesn't line up with uh, my experience on Yeah.\n\nit doesn't line up with uh, my experience on the ground and I'll say the with uh, my experience on the ground and I'll say the with uh, my experience on the ground and I'll say the 2 improvements that we're the ground and I'll say the 2 improvements that we're the ground and I'll say the 2 improvements that we're trying to make to Social 2 improvements that we're trying to make to Social 2 improvements that we're trying to make to Social Security are um, helping trying to make to Social Security are um, helping trying to make to Social Security are um, helping people that legitimately Security are um, helping people that legitimately Security are um, helping people that legitimately get benefits.\n\nprotect them people that legitimately get benefits. protect them people that legitimately get benefits. protect them from fraud. um, that they get benefits. protect them from fraud. um, that they get benefits. protect them from fraud. um, that they experience every day on a from fraud. um, that they experience every day on a from fraud. um, that they experience every day on a routine basis. and, uh, experience every day on a routine basis.\n\nand, uh, experience every day on a routine basis. and, uh, also make the experience routine basis. and, uh, also make the experience routine basis. and, uh, also make the experience better. Um, and I'll give also make the experience better. Um, and I'll give also make the experience better. Um, and I'll give you 1, 1 example. is at better. Um, and I'll give you 1, 1 example. is at better. Um, and I'll give you 1, 1 example. is at Social Security.\n\num, 1 of you 1, 1 example. is at Social Security. um, 1 of you 1, 1 example. is at Social Security. um, 1 of the first things we learned Social Security. um, 1 of the first things we learned Social Security.\n\num, 1 of the first things we learned is that they get phone the first things we learned is that they get phone the first things we learned is that they get phone calls every day of people is that they get phone calls every day of people is that they get phone calls every day of people trying to change direct calls every day of people trying to change direct calls every day of people trying to change direct deposit information.\n\nSo trying to change direct deposit information. So trying to change direct deposit information. So when you want to change deposit information. So when you want to change deposit information. So when you want to change your bank account, you can when you want to change your bank account, you can when you want to change your bank account, you can call Social Security. Um, your bank account, you can call Social Security.\n\nUm, your bank account, you can call Social Security. Um, we learned 40% of the phone call Social Security. Um, we learned 40% of the phone call Social Security. Um, we learned 40% of the phone calls that they get are we learned 40% of the phone calls that they get are we learned 40% of the phone calls that they get are from fraudsters. 40%. calls that they get are from fraudsters. 40%. calls that they get are from fraudsters. 40%. that's right.\n\nAlmost half. from fraudsters. 40%. that's right. Almost half. from fraudsters. 40%. that's right. Almost half. Yes. And and and they, they that's right. Almost half. Yes. And and and they, they that's right. Almost half. Yes. And and and they, they steal people's Social Yes. And and and they, they steal people's Social Yes. And and and they, they steal people's Social Security is what happens. steal people's Social Security is what happens.\n\nsteal people's Social Security is what happens. is they they call in, Security is what happens. is they they call in, Security is what happens. is they they call in, they say, they claim to is they they call in, they say, they claim to is they they call in, they say, they claim to be, uh, a retiree. Um, then they say, they claim to be, uh, a retiree. Um, then they say, they claim to be, uh, a retiree.\n\nUm, then they they and they be, uh, a retiree. Um, then they they and they be, uh, a retiree.\n\nUm, then they they and they convinced the post, the they they and they convinced the post, the they they and they convinced the post, the Social Security person convinced the post, the Social Security person convinced the post, the Social Security person on the phone to change the Social Security person on the phone to change the Social Security person on the phone to change the where the, where the on the phone to change the where the, where the on the phone to change the where the, where the money is flowing.\n\nIt it where the, where the money is flowing. It it where the, where the money is flowing. It it it actually goes to some money is flowing. It it it actually goes to some money is flowing. It it it actually goes to some fraudster. Is this happening it actually goes to some fraudster. Is this happening it actually goes to some fraudster. Is this happening all day every day? and and fraudster. Is this happening all day every day? and and fraudster.\n\nIs this happening all day every day? and and then, and then somebody all day every day? and and then, and then somebody all day every day?\n\nand and then, and then somebody isn't received their social then, and then somebody isn't received their social then, and then somebody isn't received their social security is because isn't received their social security is because isn't received their social security is because uh, of of all the loopholes security is because uh, of of all the loopholes security is because uh, of of all the loopholes in the social security uh, of of all the loopholes in the social security uh,\n\nof of all the loopholes in the social security system, how do you reassure in the social security system, how do you reassure in the social security system, how do you reassure people That what you all system, how do you reassure people That what you all system, how do you reassure people That what you all are doing?\n\nis not going to people That what you all are doing? is not going to people That what you all are doing? is not going to affect their benefits? are doing? is not going to affect their benefits? are doing? is not going to affect their benefits? No, in fact what what we're affect their benefits? No, in fact what what we're affect their benefits? No, in fact what what we're doing? Will help their No, in fact what what we're doing?\n\nWill help their No, in fact what what we're doing? Will help their benefits legitimate people doing? Will help their benefits legitimate people doing? Will help their benefits legitimate people as a result of the benefits legitimate people as a result of the benefits legitimate people as a result of the work of Doge Will receive as a result of the work of Doge Will receive as a result of the work of Doge Will receive more Social Security.\n\nnot work of Doge Will receive more Social Security. not work of Doge Will receive more Social Security. not less. on emphasize that as more Social Security. not less. on emphasize that as more Social Security. not less. on emphasize that as a result of the work of less. on emphasize that as a result of the work of less.\n\non emphasize that as a result of the work of Doge legitimate a result of the work of Doge legitimate a result of the work of Doge legitimate uh, recipients of Social Doge legitimate uh, recipients of Social Doge legitimate uh, recipients of Social Security. will receive more uh, recipients of Social Security. will receive more uh, recipients of Social Security. will receive more money. not less money. Security. will receive more money.\n\nnot less money. Security. will receive more money. not less money. All right. I'll emphasize money. not less money. All right. I'll emphasize money. not less money. All right. I'll emphasize that point and and and let All right. I'll emphasize that point and and and let All right. I'll emphasize that point and and and let the record show. that I that point and and and let the record show. that I that point and and and let the record show.\n\nthat I said this. and the it will the record show. that I said this. and the it will the record show. that I said this. and the it will be proven out to be true. said this. and the it will be proven out to be true. said this. and the it will be proven out to be true. Let's let's check back on be proven out to be true. Let's let's check back on be proven out to be true. Let's let's check back on this in the future.\n\nSo Let's let's check back on this in the future. So Let's let's check back on this in the future. So Washington, Post the Social this in the future. So Washington, Post the Social this in the future.\n\nSo Washington, Post the Social Security Administration, Washington, Post the Social Security Administration, Washington, Post the Social Security Administration, website, crashed Security Administration, website, crashed Security Administration, website, crashed 4 times in 10 days this website, crashed 4 times in 10 days this website, crashed 4 times in 10 days this month because the servers 4 times in 10 days this month because the servers 4 times in 10 days this month because the servers were overloaded blocking month because the servers were overloaded blocking month because the servers were overloaded blocking millions of retirees and were overloaded blocking millions of retirees and were overloaded blocking millions of retirees and disabled veterans\n\nfrom millions of retirees and disabled veterans from millions of retirees and disabled veterans from logging into their online disabled veterans from logging into their online disabled veterans from logging into their online accounts.\n\nFreaked people logging into their online accounts. Freaked people logging into their online accounts. Freaked people out. Is it is that accounts. Freaked people out. Is it is that accounts. Freaked people out. Is it is that going to Change. Yes, we're out. Is it is that going to Change. Yes, we're out. Is it is that going to Change. Yes, we're going to make sure that the going to Change. Yes, we're going to make sure that the going to Change.\n\nYes, we're going to make sure that the website stays online. Yeah. going to make sure that the website stays online. Yeah. going to make sure that the website stays online. Yeah. I mean but is it a result website stays online. Yeah. I mean but is it a result website stays online. Yeah. I mean but is it a result of going in there? or I mean but is it a result of going in there? or I mean but is it a result of going in there?\n\nor something you're doing? It's, of going in there? or something you're doing? It's, of going in there? or something you're doing? It's, it's now the, um, the something you're doing? It's, it's now the, um, the something you're doing?\n\nIt's, it's now the, um, the amount of issues that it's now the, um, the amount of issues that it's now the, um, the amount of issues that were the social security amount of issues that were the social security amount of issues that were the social security system are, are enormous were the social security system are, are enormous were the social security system are, are enormous as an example. there are system are, are enormous as an example.\n\nthere are system are, are enormous as an example. there are over 15 million people as an example. there are over 15 million people as an example. there are over 15 million people that are over the age of over 15 million people that are over the age of over 15 million people that are over the age of 120. that are marked as that are over the age of 120. that are marked as that are over the age of 120. that are marked as alive. In the social 120.\n\nthat are marked as alive. In the social 120. that are marked as alive. In the social security system, and that's alive. In the social security system, and that's alive. In the social security system, and that's an accurate. figure. security system, and that's an accurate. figure. security system, and that's an accurate. figure. Yeah, interact 15. an accurate. figure. Yeah, interact 15. an accurate. figure. Yeah, interact 15. correct.\n\nThis has been Yeah, interact 15. correct. This has been Yeah, interact 15. correct. This has been something that's been correct. This has been something that's been correct. This has been something that's been identified as a problem something that's been identified as a problem something that's been identified as a problem again. Pre-existing identified as a problem again. Pre-existing identified as a problem again.\n\nPre-existing problems since 2008 at again. Pre-existing problems since 2008 at again. Pre-existing problems since 2008 at least from an IG report. problems since 2008 at least from an IG report. problems since 2008 at least from an IG report. So this there are some least from an IG report. So this there are some least from an IG report.\n\nSo this there are some great people working at the So this there are some great people working at the So this there are some great people working at the Social Security great people working at the Social Security great people working at the Social Security Administration and Social Social Security Administration and Social Social Security Administration and Social Security Administration Administration and Social Security Administration Administration and Social Security Administration that found this 2008.\n\nand Security Administration that found this 2008. and Security Administration that found this 2008. and nothing was done. and so that found this 2008. and nothing was done. and so that found this 2008. and nothing was done. and so 15 to 20 million nothing was done. and so 15 to 20 million nothing was done.\n\nand so 15 to 20 million Social Security numbers that 15 to 20 million Social Security numbers that 15 to 20 million Social Security numbers that were clearly fraudulent. Um, Social Security numbers that were clearly fraudulent. Um, Social Security numbers that were clearly fraudulent. Um, were floating around um, were clearly fraudulent. Um, were floating around um, were clearly fraudulent. Um, were floating around um, that can be used to.\n\nonly were floating around um, that can be used to. only were floating around um, that can be used to. only for about intentions. that can be used to. only for about intentions. that can be used to. only for about intentions. there would be no way for about intentions. there would be no way for about intentions.\n\nthere would be no way to use this for good there would be no way to use this for good there would be no way to use this for good intentions. And so what to use this for good intentions. And so what to use this for good intentions. And so what 1 of the things to do team intentions. And so what 1 of the things to do team intentions.\n\nAnd so what 1 of the things to do team is doing is carefully and, 1 of the things to do team is doing is carefully and, 1 of the things to do team is doing is carefully and, and very methodically is doing is carefully and, and very methodically is doing is carefully and, and very methodically looking at those and making and very methodically looking at those and making and very methodically looking at those and making sure that any fraudulent looking at those and making sure that any fraudulent looking at those and making sure that any fraudulent ones are eliminated.\n\nBrad sure that any fraudulent ones are eliminated. Brad sure that any fraudulent ones are eliminated. Brad Smith. uh, working at HHS ones are eliminated. Brad Smith. uh, working at HHS ones are eliminated. Brad Smith. uh, working at HHS um, and obviously another Smith. uh, working at HHS um, and obviously another Smith.\n\nuh, working at HHS um, and obviously another element is Medicare and um, and obviously another element is Medicare and um, and obviously another element is Medicare and Medicaid. NIH. uh, what element is Medicare and Medicaid. NIH. uh, what element is Medicare and Medicaid. NIH. uh, what are you finding Yeah. Well Medicaid. NIH. uh, what are you finding Yeah. Well Medicaid. NIH. uh, what are you finding Yeah.\n\nWell I'd say there's a couple are you finding Yeah. Well I'd say there's a couple are you finding Yeah.\n\nWell I'd say there's a couple things we're really I'd say there's a couple things we're really I'd say there's a couple things we're really committed to in our work things we're really committed to in our work things we're really committed to in our work at HHS number 1, Making committed to in our work at HHS number 1, Making committed to in our work at HHS number 1, Making sure we continue to have at HHS number 1, Making sure we continue to have at HHS number 1, Making sure we continue to have the best biomedical sure we continue to have the best biomedical sure we continue to have the best biomedical research have the world.\n\nthe best biomedical research have the world. the best biomedical research have the world. And number 2, making sure research have the world. And number 2, making sure research have the world. And number 2, making sure which president Trump has And number 2, making sure which president Trump has And number 2, making sure which president Trump has said over and over again. which president Trump has said over and over again.\n\nwhich president Trump has said over and over again. That we 100% protect said over and over again. That we 100% protect said over and over again. That we 100% protect Medicare and Medicaid, but That we 100% protect Medicare and Medicaid, but That we 100% protect Medicare and Medicaid, but there's a lot of Medicare and Medicaid, but there's a lot of Medicare and Medicaid, but there's a lot of opportunity. So if I take there's a lot of opportunity.\n\nSo if I take there's a lot of opportunity. So if I take NIH as an example today, opportunity. So if I take NIH as an example today, opportunity.\n\nSo if I take NIH as an example today, if you're NIH researcher NIH as an example today, if you're NIH researcher NIH as an example today, if you're NIH researcher and you get a hundred dollar if you're NIH researcher and you get a hundred dollar if you're NIH researcher and you get a hundred dollar Grant at your University and you get a hundred dollar Grant at your University and you get a hundred dollar Grant at your University today, you get to Grant at your University today,\n\nyou get to Grant at your University today, you get to spend 60 of that and your today, you get to spend 60 of that and your today, you get to spend 60 of that and your University spends 40 of spend 60 of that and your University spends 40 of spend 60 of that and your University spends 40 of that.\n\nthe policy that we're University spends 40 of that. the policy that we're University spends 40 of that. the policy that we're proposing to make is that that. the policy that we're proposing to make is that that.\n\nthe policy that we're proposing to make is that you get to spend 85 of that proposing to make is that you get to spend 85 of that proposing to make is that you get to spend 85 of that and your University spends you get to spend 85 of that and your University spends you get to spend 85 of that and your University spends 15. So that's more money and your University spends 15. So that's more money and your University spends 15.\n\nSo that's more money going directly to the 15. So that's more money going directly to the 15. So that's more money going directly to the scientists who are going directly to the scientists who are going directly to the scientists who are discovering new cures. scientists who are discovering new cures. scientists who are discovering new cures. Another example at NIH is discovering new cures. Another example at NIH is discovering new cures.\n\nAnother example at NIH is today they have 27, Another example at NIH is today they have 27, Another example at NIH is today they have 27, different centers, they got today they have 27, different centers, they got today they have 27, different centers, they got created over time by different centers, they got created over time by different centers, they got created over time by Congress and they're created over time by Congress and they're created over time by Congress and they're typically by disease state Congress and they're typically by disease state Congress and they're typically by disease state or body system.\n\nThere's 700 typically by disease state or body system. There's 700 typically by disease state or body system. There's 700 different it systems today or body system. There's 700 different it systems today or body system. There's 700 different it systems today at NIH 700 different it different it systems today at NIH 700 different it different it systems today at NIH 700 different it Software System. They at NIH 700 different it Software System.\n\nThey at NIH 700 different it Software System. They don't, they can't speak Software System. They don't, they can't speak Software System. They don't, they can't speak to each other so they don't don't, they can't speak to each other so they don't don't, they can't speak to each other so they don't talk to 1. They have 27 to each other so they don't talk to 1. They have 27 to each other so they don't talk to 1.\n\nThey have 27 different cios and so talk to 1. They have 27 different cios and so talk to 1.\n\nThey have 27 different cios and so when you think about making different cios and so when you think about making different cios and so when you think about making great medical discoveries, when you think about making great medical discoveries, when you think about making great medical discoveries, you have to connect the great medical discoveries, you have to connect the great medical discoveries, you have to connect the data time.\n\nYeah, you said you have to connect the data time. Yeah, you said you have to connect the data time. Yeah, you said 27 different Chief data time. Yeah, you said 27 different Chief data time. Yeah, you said 27 different Chief Information officers. 27 different Chief Information officers. 27 different Chief Information officers. Correct. And Information officers. Correct. And Information officers. Correct. And most people on Tech. So Correct.\n\nAnd most people on Tech. So Correct. And most people on Tech. So there's a lot there, most people on Tech. So there's a lot there, most people on Tech. So there's a lot there, There's a, there's a there's a lot there, There's a, there's a there's a lot there, There's a, there's a opportunity, and it will make There's a, there's a opportunity, and it will make There's a, there's a opportunity, and it will make When I say that.\n\nuh, our job opportunity, and it will make When I say that. uh, our job opportunity, and it will make When I say that. uh, our job is tech support. I really When I say that. uh, our job is tech support. I really When I say that. uh, our job is tech support. I really mean it. Yeah. we have to is tech support. I really mean it. Yeah. we have to is tech support. I really mean it. Yeah. we have to fix the computers. If the mean it. Yeah.\n\nwe have to fix the computers. If the mean it. Yeah. we have to fix the computers. If the computers can't talk to fix the computers. If the computers can't talk to fix the computers. If the computers can't talk to each other, you can't get computers can't talk to each other, you can't get computers can't talk to each other, you can't get research done. If the each other, you can't get research done. If the each other, you can't get research done.\n\nIf the computers, uh, can't go research done. If the computers, uh, can't go research done. If the computers, uh, can't go stay online people. computers, uh, can't go stay online people. computers, uh, can't go stay online people. will receive their social stay online people. will receive their social stay online people. will receive their social security. So what we have will receive their social security.\n\nSo what we have will receive their social security. So what we have here are a bunch of failing security. So what we have here are a bunch of failing security.\n\nSo what we have here are a bunch of failing computer systems that are here are a bunch of failing computer systems that are here are a bunch of failing computer systems that are preventing people from computer systems that are preventing people from computer systems that are preventing people from receiving their benefits. preventing people from receiving their benefits. preventing people from receiving their benefits.\n\nThat are preventing people receiving their benefits. That are preventing people receiving their benefits. That are preventing people from preventing research That are preventing people from preventing research That are preventing people from preventing research from happening. Um, that from preventing research from happening. Um, that from preventing research from happening. Um, that are uh, extremely vulnerable from happening.\n\nUm, that are uh, extremely vulnerable from happening. Um, that are uh, extremely vulnerable to fraud. Um, and we're are uh, extremely vulnerable to fraud. Um, and we're are uh, extremely vulnerable to fraud. Um, and we're fixing it. And does that to fraud. Um, and we're fixing it. And does that to fraud. Um, and we're fixing it. And does that include AI. Does that fixing it. And does that include AI. Does that fixing it. And does that include AI.\n\nDoes that include? kind of changing include AI. Does that include? kind of changing include AI. Does that include? kind of changing the system overall, that's include? kind of changing the system overall, that's include? kind of changing the system overall, that's what I guess. What people the system overall, that's what I guess. What people the system overall, that's what I guess. What people are afraid of is what I guess.\n\nWhat people are afraid of is what I guess. What people are afraid of is they don't know. what this are afraid of is they don't know. what this are afraid of is they don't know. what this is. All looking like, And is they don't know. what this is. All looking like, And is they don't know. what this is. All looking like, And is it going to affect me is. All looking like, And is it going to affect me is.\n\nAll looking like, And is it going to affect me in the long term? It's it going to affect me in the long term? It's it going to affect me in the long term? It's going to affect them, it's in the long term? It's going to affect them, it's in the long term?\n\nIt's going to affect them, it's going to affect people going to affect them, it's going to affect people going to affect them, it's going to affect people very positively, So the the going to affect people very positively, So the the going to affect people very positively, So the the changes that we're doing very positively, So the the changes that we're doing very positively, So the the changes that we're doing here uh, will ensure the changes that we're doing here uh, will ensure the changes that we're doing here uh, will ensure the solvency of the American here uh, will ensure the solvency of the American here uh, will ensure the solvency of the American government of the American.\n\nsolvency of the American government of the American. solvency of the American government of the American. of the United States of government of the American. of the United States of government of the American. of the United States of America. This is what this of the United States of America. This is what this of the United States of America. This is what this is what we're trying to America. This is what this is what we're trying to America.\n\nThis is what this is what we're trying to do. is ensure that uh, is what we're trying to do. is ensure that uh, is what we're trying to do. is ensure that uh, people do receive their do. is ensure that uh, people do receive their do. is ensure that uh, people do receive their benefits in the future. Um, people do receive their benefits in the future. Um, people do receive their benefits in the future.\n\nUm, and you can only receive benefits in the future. Um, and you can only receive benefits in the future.\n\nUm, and you can only receive your benefits if the comp, and you can only receive your benefits if the comp, and you can only receive your benefits if the comp, the country is operating in your benefits if the comp, the country is operating in your benefits if the comp, the country is operating in a, in a healthy and the country is operating in a, in a healthy and the country is operating in a, in a healthy and competent way, Anthony a, in a healthy and competent way, Anthony a, in a healthy and competent way, Anthony Armstrong, um, Doge office competent way, Anthony Armstrong, um, Doge office competent way, Anthony Armstrong, um, Doge office of personnel management.\n\nUh, Armstrong, um, Doge office of personnel management. Uh, Armstrong, um, Doge office of personnel management. Uh, the Morgan Stanley banker, of personnel management. Uh, the Morgan Stanley banker, of personnel management. Uh, the Morgan Stanley banker, m&a guy. Yeah. Uh, you know the Morgan Stanley banker, m&a guy. Yeah. Uh, you know the Morgan Stanley banker, m&a guy. Yeah. Uh, you know money, and this is a lot m&a guy. Yeah.\n\nUh, you know money, and this is a lot m&a guy. Yeah. Uh, you know money, and this is a lot of money. slashing around money, and this is a lot of money. slashing around money, and this is a lot of money. slashing around there's a lot of money of money. slashing around there's a lot of money of money. slashing around there's a lot of money sloshing around. uh, it's a there's a lot of money sloshing around.\n\nuh, it's a there's a lot of money sloshing around. uh, it's a lot of money sloshing out sloshing around. uh, it's a lot of money sloshing out sloshing around.\n\nuh, it's a lot of money sloshing out the door and if you look lot of money sloshing out the door and if you look lot of money sloshing out the door and if you look at the federal government the door and if you look at the federal government the door and if you look at the federal government and the way the workforce at the federal government and the way the workforce at the federal government and the way the workforce works it's really a 1-way and the way the workforce works it's really a 1-way and the way the workforce works it's really a 1-way ratchet over decades.\n\nSo works it's really a 1-way ratchet over decades. So works it's really a 1-way ratchet over decades. So don't be going up. It's ratchet over decades. So don't be going up. It's ratchet over decades. So don't be going up. It's only going up, You never you don't be going up. It's only going up, You never you don't be going up. It's only going up, You never you never take it away. So only going up, You never you never take it away.\n\nSo only going up, You never you never take it away. So that leaves you with never take it away. So that leaves you with never take it away. So that leaves you with Duplicate of functions. it that leaves you with Duplicate of functions. it that leaves you with Duplicate of functions. it leaves you with Duplicate of functions. it leaves you with Duplicate of functions.\n\nit leaves you with overstaffing and it leaves leaves you with overstaffing and it leaves leaves you with overstaffing and it leaves you with functions in the overstaffing and it leaves you with functions in the overstaffing and it leaves you with functions in the wrong places. So, a couple you with functions in the wrong places. So, a couple you with functions in the wrong places. So, a couple of examples, uh, duplicate a wrong places.\n\nSo, a couple of examples, uh, duplicate a wrong places. So, a couple of examples, uh, duplicate a functions. Brad mentioned of examples, uh, duplicate a functions. Brad mentioned of examples, uh, duplicate a functions. Brad mentioned 27 cios. So if you had functions. Brad mentioned 27 cios. So if you had functions. Brad mentioned 27 cios. So if you had kept going with Brad, he 27 cios. So if you had kept going with Brad, he 27 cios.\n\nSo if you had kept going with Brad, he probably he would talk kept going with Brad, he probably he would talk kept going with Brad, he probably he would talk about the Communications probably he would talk about the Communications probably he would talk about the Communications office. I think you've got about the Communications office. I think you've got about the Communications office. I think you've got 40 40, distinct office.\n\nI think you've got 40 40, distinct office. I think you've got 40 40, distinct Communications offices. and 40 40, distinct Communications offices. and 40 40, distinct Communications offices. and and HHS, right? Yeah. Communications offices. and and HHS, right? Yeah. Communications offices. and and HHS, right? Yeah. 40, yeah. Yeah. and and and HHS, right? Yeah. 40, yeah. Yeah. and and and HHS, right? Yeah. 40, yeah. Yeah.\n\nand and that's not unusual by by 40, yeah. Yeah. and and that's not unusual by by 40, yeah. Yeah. and and that's not unusual by by the way. Multiple? offices. that's not unusual by by the way. Multiple? offices. that's not unusual by by the way. Multiple? offices. Like it's not like anyone the way. Multiple? offices. Like it's not like anyone the way. Multiple? offices.\n\nLike it's not like anyone healthy, this is not Not the Like it's not like anyone healthy, this is not Not the Like it's not like anyone healthy, this is not Not the employees There many, many healthy, this is not Not the employees There many, many healthy, this is not Not the employees There many, many hardworking well-meaning employees There many, many hardworking well-meaning employees There many, many hardworking well-meaning people who, who took these hardworking well-meaning people who,\n\nwho took these hardworking well-meaning people who, who took these jobs these these jobs were people who, who took these jobs these these jobs were people who, who took these jobs these these jobs were out there, they applied for jobs these these jobs were out there, they applied for jobs these these jobs were out there, they applied for them.\n\nThey took them, out there, they applied for them. They took them, out there, they applied for them. They took them, They're doing, what's their them. They took them, They're doing, what's their them.\n\nThey took them, They're doing, what's their It's just that they're They're doing, what's their It's just that they're They're doing, what's their It's just that they're duplicating the effort of It's just that they're duplicating the effort of It's just that they're duplicating the effort of 40 offices. So you've got duplicating the effort of 40 offices. So you've got duplicating the effort of 40 offices. So you've got that you've got 40 offices.\n\nSo you've got that you've got 40 offices.\n\nSo you've got that you've got overstaffing a good example that you've got overstaffing a good example that you've got overstaffing a good example of over Staffing would be overstaffing a good example of over Staffing would be overstaffing a good example of over Staffing would be the IRS has got 1,400 people of over Staffing would be the IRS has got 1,400 people of over Staffing would be the IRS has got 1,400 people who are dedicated to the IRS has got 1,400 people who are dedicated to the IRS has got 1,400 people who are dedicated to provisioning.\n\nlaptops and who are dedicated to provisioning. laptops and who are dedicated to provisioning. laptops and cell phones. So if you provisioning. laptops and cell phones. So if you provisioning. laptops and cell phones. So if you join the IRS you get a cell phones. So if you join the IRS you get a cell phones.\n\nSo if you join the IRS you get a laptop and a cell phone you join the IRS you get a laptop and a cell phone you join the IRS you get a laptop and a cell phone you have provisioned. So if laptop and a cell phone you have provisioned. So if laptop and a cell phone you have provisioned. So if each of those IRS officers have provisioned. So if each of those IRS officers have provisioned.\n\nSo if each of those IRS officers or employees provisioned each of those IRS officers or employees provisioned each of those IRS officers or employees provisioned 2 employees per day, you or employees provisioned 2 employees per day, you or employees provisioned 2 employees per day, you could provision the entire 2 employees per day, you could provision the entire 2 employees per day, you could provision the entire IRS.\n\nin a little more could provision the entire IRS. in a little more could provision the entire IRS. in a little more than a month. So, IRS. in a little more than a month. So, IRS. in a little more than a month. So, 12 times a year, you have than a month. So, 12 times a year, you have than a month.\n\nSo, 12 times a year, you have 1400 people who whose only 12 times a year, you have 1400 people who whose only 12 times a year, you have 1400 people who whose only job it is to give the 1400 people who whose only job it is to give the 1400 people who whose only job it is to give the laptop and the phone, job it is to give the laptop and the phone, job it is to give the laptop and the phone, right? The whole IRS could laptop and the phone, right?\n\nThe whole IRS could laptop and the phone, right? The whole IRS could be handled once a month so right? The whole IRS could be handled once a month so right?\n\nThe whole IRS could be handled once a month so that doesn't that doesn't be handled once a month so that doesn't that doesn't be handled once a month so that doesn't that doesn't make any sense and president that doesn't that doesn't make any sense and president that doesn't that doesn't make any sense and president Trump's been very clear, make any sense and president Trump's been very clear, make any sense and president Trump's been very clear, it's scalpel will not hatch Trump's been very clear, it's scalpel will not hatch Trump's been very clear, it's scalpel will not hatch it and that's the way.\n\nit's scalpel will not hatch it and that's the way. it's scalpel will not hatch it and that's the way. It's it's getting done. and it and that's the way. It's it's getting done. and it and that's the way. It's it's getting done. and then once those decisions It's it's getting done. and then once those decisions It's it's getting done.\n\nand then once those decisions are made, there's a very then once those decisions are made, there's a very then once those decisions are made, there's a very heavy focus on. Being. are made, there's a very heavy focus on. Being. are made, there's a very heavy focus on. Being. generous being. caring heavy focus on. Being. generous being. caring heavy focus on. Being. generous being. caring being compassionate. and generous being.\n\ncaring being compassionate. and generous being. caring being compassionate. and treating everyone with being compassionate. and treating everyone with being compassionate. and treating everyone with dignity and respect. And and treating everyone with dignity and respect. And and treating everyone with dignity and respect. And and if you look at how people dignity and respect. And and if you look at how people dignity and respect.\n\nAnd and if you look at how people have started to leave the if you look at how people have started to leave the if you look at how people have started to leave the government it is largely have started to leave the government it is largely have started to leave the government it is largely through voluntary means government it is largely through voluntary means government it is largely through voluntary means there's a voluntary through voluntary means there's a voluntary through voluntary means there's a voluntary retirement.\n\nthere's voluntary there's a voluntary retirement. there's voluntary there's a voluntary retirement. there's voluntary separation payments. we put retirement. there's voluntary separation payments. we put retirement. there's voluntary separation payments. we put in place, deferred separation payments. we put in place, deferred separation payments.\n\nwe put in place, deferred resignation the 8-month in place, deferred resignation the 8-month in place, deferred resignation the 8-month severance program. So resignation the 8-month severance program. So resignation the 8-month severance program. So there's a very heavy bias severance program. So there's a very heavy bias severance program.\n\nSo there's a very heavy bias towards programs that there's a very heavy bias towards programs that there's a very heavy bias towards programs that A long data that are towards programs that A long data that are towards programs that A long data that are generous that allow people A long data that are generous that allow people A long data that are generous that allow people to exit and go and get a generous that allow people to exit and go and get a generous that allow people to exit and go and get a new job in the private to exit and go and get a new job in the private to exit and go and get a new job in the private sector.\n\nand you, you've new job in the private sector. and you, you've new job in the private sector. and you, you've heard a lot of sector. and you, you've heard a lot of sector. and you, you've heard a lot of Me a lot of news about. heard a lot of Me a lot of news about. heard a lot of Me a lot of news about. riffs about people getting Me a lot of news about. riffs about people getting Me a lot of news about. riffs about people getting fired.\n\nat at this moment riffs about people getting fired. at at this moment riffs about people getting fired. at at this moment in time. Uh, less than fired. at at this moment in time. Uh, less than fired. at at this moment in time. Uh, less than 0. 15 not 1. 5 less than in time. Uh, less than 0. 15 not 1. 5 less than in time. Uh, less than 0. 15 not 1. 5 less than 0. 15 not 1. 5 federal 0. 15 not 1. 5 less than 0. 15 not 1. 5 federal 0. 15 not 1.\n\n5 less than 0. 15 not 1. 5 federal Workforce has actually been 0. 15 not 1. 5 federal Workforce has actually been 0. 15 not 1. 5 federal Workforce has actually been given a rif notice. so, so Workforce has actually been given a rif notice. so, so Workforce has actually been given a rif notice. so, so they've selected if they're given a rif notice. so, so they've selected if they're given a rif notice.\n\nso, so they've selected if they're it, it is basically almost they've selected if they're it, it is basically almost they've selected if they're it, it is basically almost no 1's gotten fired. it, it is basically almost no 1's gotten fired. it, it is basically almost no 1's gotten fired. that's what we're saying. no 1's gotten fired. that's what we're saying. no 1's gotten fired. that's what we're saying. Tom crash.\n\nuh, working at that's what we're saying. Tom crash. uh, working at that's what we're saying. Tom crash. uh, working at Treasury. you are. having Tom crash. uh, working at Treasury. you are. having Tom crash. uh, working at Treasury. you are. having access to the payment Treasury. you are. having access to the payment Treasury. you are.\n\nhaving access to the payment system oversees all the access to the payment system oversees all the access to the payment system oversees all the outgoing payments. system oversees all the outgoing payments. system oversees all the outgoing payments. essentially those payments outgoing payments. essentially those payments outgoing payments. essentially those payments were going places. We essentially those payments were going places.\n\nWe essentially those payments were going places. We didn't know where they were going places. We didn't know where they were going places. We didn't know where they were going, right? Yeah. didn't know where they were going, right? Yeah. didn't know where they were going, right? Yeah. Unfortunately, that's were going, right? Yeah. Unfortunately, that's were going, right? Yeah. Unfortunately, that's the case, right?\n\nUm, Unfortunately, that's the case, right? Um, Unfortunately, that's the case, right? Um, you know, as in X CFO of a the case, right? Um, you know, as in X CFO of a the case, right? Um, you know, as in X CFO of a big public tech company. you know, as in X CFO of a big public tech company. you know, as in X CFO of a big public tech company. Um, really what we're doing big public tech company. Um, really what we're doing big public tech company.\n\nUm, really what we're doing is we're applying public Um, really what we're doing is we're applying public Um, really what we're doing is we're applying public companies. Standards to the is we're applying public companies. Standards to the is we're applying public companies. Standards to the federal government. And it is companies. Standards to the federal government. And it is companies. Standards to the federal government.\n\nAnd it is alarming, how The. financial federal government. And it is alarming, how The. financial federal government. And it is alarming, how The. financial operations, and financial alarming, how The. financial operations, and financial alarming, how The. financial operations, and financial management is set up operations, and financial management is set up operations, and financial management is set up today.\n\nThere is actually management is set up today. There is actually management is set up today. There is actually really only 1. bank today. There is actually really only 1. bank today. There is actually really only 1. bank account that's used to really only 1. bank account that's used to really only 1. bank account that's used to disperse. all monies that account that's used to disperse. all monies that account that's used to disperse.\n\nall monies that go out of the federal disperse. all monies that go out of the federal disperse. all monies that go out of the federal government. time out 1 bank go out of the federal government. time out 1 bank go out of the federal government. time out 1 bank account. It's a big government. time out 1 bank account. It's a big government. time out 1 bank account. It's a big 1, it's a big 1, it's a big account.\n\nIt's a big 1, it's a big 1, it's a big account. It's a big 1, it's a big 1, it's a big 1, it's a big 1. Um, a 1, it's a big 1, it's a big 1, it's a big 1. Um, a 1, it's a big 1, it's a big 1, it's a big 1. Um, a couple weeks ago I had 800 1, it's a big 1. Um, a couple weeks ago I had 800 1, it's a big 1.\n\nUm, a couple weeks ago I had 800 billion dollars in it but couple weeks ago I had 800 billion dollars in it but couple weeks ago I had 800 billion dollars in it but it's the the billion dollars in it but it's the the billion dollars in it but it's the the treasury general account. so, it's the the treasury general account. so, it's the the treasury general account. so, when you hear, you know, treasury general account.\n\nso, when you hear, you know, treasury general account. so, when you hear, you know, some of my colleagues when you hear, you know, some of my colleagues when you hear, you know, some of my colleagues here, they're talking about some of my colleagues here, they're talking about some of my colleagues here, they're talking about in terms of the fraud. you here, they're talking about in terms of the fraud.\n\nyou here, they're talking about in terms of the fraud. you have to ask well why is in terms of the fraud. you have to ask well why is in terms of the fraud. you have to ask well why is this allowed to happen? at have to ask well why is this allowed to happen? at have to ask well why is this allowed to happen? at a financial level? Well this allowed to happen? at a financial level? Well this allowed to happen? at a financial level?\n\nWell it's actually quite simple a financial level? Well it's actually quite simple a financial level? Well it's actually quite simple but alarming The treasury it's actually quite simple but alarming The treasury it's actually quite simple but alarming The treasury up until now and thanks to but alarming The treasury up until now and thanks to but alarming The treasury up until now and thanks to president Trump.\n\nUh, we're up until now and thanks to president Trump. Uh, we're up until now and thanks to president Trump. Uh, we're fixing this. In fact, president Trump. Uh, we're fixing this. In fact, president Trump. Uh, we're fixing this. In fact, there's an executive order fixing this. In fact, there's an executive order fixing this.\n\nIn fact, there's an executive order that he just signed uh, there's an executive order that he just signed uh, there's an executive order that he just signed uh, the other day which is that he just signed uh, the other day which is that he just signed uh, the other day which is protecting America's bank the other day which is protecting America's bank the other day which is protecting America's bank account because it really protecting America's bank account because it really protecting America's bank account because it really is the taxpayer's money.\n\naccount because it really is the taxpayer's money. account because it really is the taxpayer's money. you know, 1, we're changing is the taxpayer's money. you know, 1, we're changing is the taxpayer's money. you know, 1, we're changing the culture, the culture is you know, 1, we're changing the culture, the culture is you know, 1, we're changing the culture, the culture is Ben not a lot of caring.\n\nand the culture, the culture is Ben not a lot of caring. and the culture, the culture is Ben not a lot of caring. and not a lot of commitment to Ben not a lot of caring. and not a lot of commitment to Ben not a lot of caring. and not a lot of commitment to doing. What's right? not a lot of commitment to doing. What's right? not a lot of commitment to doing. What's right? relative to financial doing. What's right? relative to financial doing.\n\nWhat's right? relative to financial operations. there's a relative to financial operations. there's a relative to financial operations. there's a hundred billion dollars of operations. there's a hundred billion dollars of operations. there's a hundred billion dollars of fraud every year. There's hundred billion dollars of fraud every year. There's hundred billion dollars of fraud every year. There's hundreds of millions of fraud every year.\n\nThere's hundreds of millions of fraud every year. There's hundreds of millions of improper payments, And we hundreds of millions of improper payments, And we hundreds of millions of improper payments, And we can't pass it on it. the, improper payments, And we can't pass it on it. the, improper payments, And we can't pass it on it. the, the Consolidated financial can't pass it on it. the, the Consolidated financial can't pass it on it.\n\nthe, the Consolidated financial report is produced by the Consolidated financial report is produced by the Consolidated financial report is produced by Treasury and we cannot report is produced by Treasury and we cannot report is produced by Treasury and we cannot pass it on. We have Treasury and we cannot pass it on. We have Treasury and we cannot pass it on. We have material weaknesses. What pass it on. We have material weaknesses.\n\nWhat pass it on. We have material weaknesses. What that means. is that if I material weaknesses. What that means. is that if I material weaknesses. What that means. is that if I was a public company CFO, I that means. is that if I was a public company CFO, I that means. is that if I was a public company CFO, I would effectively be was a public company CFO, I would effectively be was a public company CFO, I would effectively be removed.\n\nI couldn't file would effectively be removed. I couldn't file would effectively be removed. I couldn't file financial statements, I removed. I couldn't file financial statements, I removed. I couldn't file financial statements, I couldn't issue securities. financial statements, I couldn't issue securities. financial statements, I couldn't issue securities. Can't pass it on, right? couldn't issue securities. Can't pass it on, right?\n\ncouldn't issue securities. Can't pass it on, right? The federal government Can't pass it on, right? The federal government Can't pass it on, right? The federal government cannot pass it without it. The federal government cannot pass it without it. The federal government cannot pass it without it. It's possible. In fact um cannot pass it without it. It's possible. In fact um cannot pass it without it. It's possible.\n\nIn fact um um, the the in order to It's possible. In fact um um, the the in order to It's possible. In fact um um, the the in order to pass what you need the um, the the in order to pass what you need the um, the the in order to pass what you need the information, pass what you need the information, pass what you need the information, investor to pass noted. Um information, investor to pass noted. Um information, investor to pass noted.\n\nUm you need to have the investor to pass noted. Um you need to have the investor to pass noted.\n\nUm you need to have the payment codes, you need to you need to have the payment codes, you need to you need to have the payment codes, you need to have the payment explanation payment codes, you need to have the payment explanation payment codes, you need to have the payment explanation and you need to have a have the payment explanation and you need to have a have the payment explanation and you need to have a person you can contact to and you need to have a person you can contact to and you need to have a person you can contact to understand why that payment person you can contact to understand why that payment person you can contact to understand why that payment was made,\n\nNone of those understand why that payment was made, None of those understand why that payment was made, None of those things were mandatory.\n\nwas made, None of those things were mandatory. was made, None of those things were mandatory. until until just recently, things were mandatory. until until just recently, things were mandatory. until until just recently, just a few weeks ago in until until just recently, just a few weeks ago in until until just recently, just a few weeks ago in fact, maybe last week. yeah, just a few weeks ago in fact, maybe last week.\n\nyeah, just a few weeks ago in fact, maybe last week. yeah, we're serving 580 plus fact, maybe last week. yeah, we're serving 580 plus fact, maybe last week. yeah, we're serving 580 plus agencies and up until very we're serving 580 plus agencies and up until very we're serving 580 plus agencies and up until very recently. effectively they agencies and up until very recently. effectively they agencies and up until very recently.\n\neffectively they could say make the payment recently. effectively they could say make the payment recently. effectively they could say make the payment and treasury just sent it could say make the payment and treasury just sent it could say make the payment and treasury just sent it out. It's fast as possible. and treasury just sent it out. It's fast as possible. and treasury just sent it out. It's fast as possible. No verification. And so out.\n\nIt's fast as possible. No verification. And so out. It's fast as possible. No verification. And so what we're doing is what No verification. And so what we're doing is what No verification.\n\nAnd so what we're doing is what any household will do, but what we're doing is what any household will do, but what we're doing is what any household will do, but imagine you're a household, any household will do, but imagine you're a household, any household will do, but imagine you're a household, you have a bank account. imagine you're a household, you have a bank account. imagine you're a household, you have a bank account.\n\neveryone has an ATM card. you have a bank account. everyone has an ATM card. you have a bank account. everyone has an ATM card. Connected to that account, everyone has an ATM card. Connected to that account, everyone has an ATM card. Connected to that account, everyone has a checkbook and Connected to that account, everyone has a checkbook and Connected to that account, everyone has a checkbook and of that account.\n\nIt's not everyone has a checkbook and of that account. It's not everyone has a checkbook and of that account. It's not just your children. it's of that account. It's not just your children. it's of that account. It's not just your children. it's not just your parents that just your children. it's not just your parents that just your children. it's not just your parents that you're in laws. It's your not just your parents that you're in laws.\n\nIt's your not just your parents that you're in laws. It's your extended family and they you're in laws. It's your extended family and they you're in laws. It's your extended family and they all can go to the account. extended family and they all can go to the account. extended family and they all can go to the account. and disperse funds. all can go to the account. and disperse funds. all can go to the account. and disperse funds.\n\nNo, questions asked. no and disperse funds. No, questions asked. no and disperse funds. No, questions asked. no justification. no No, questions asked. no justification. no No, questions asked. no justification. no verification. Tyler. Hassan. justification. no verification. Tyler. Hassan. justification. no verification. Tyler. Hassan. uh, Interior Department. Uh, verification. Tyler. Hassan. uh, Interior Department. Uh, verification. Tyler.\n\nHassan. uh, Interior Department. Uh, you're a 4 former oil uh, Interior Department. Uh, you're a 4 former oil uh, Interior Department. Uh, you're a 4 former oil Company CEO, Um, you're you're a 4 former oil Company CEO, Um, you're you're a 4 former oil Company CEO, Um, you're reviewing contracts. before. Company CEO, Um, you're reviewing contracts. before. Company CEO, Um, you're reviewing contracts. before.\n\nthey're approved for reviewing contracts. before. they're approved for reviewing contracts. before. they're approved for funding. What, what are you they're approved for funding. What, what are you they're approved for funding. What, what are you finding? Well, um, Elon and funding. What, what are you finding? Well, um, Elon and funding. What, what are you finding? Well, um, Elon and Steve kind of stole my finding?\n\nWell, um, Elon and Steve kind of stole my finding? Well, um, Elon and Steve kind of stole my thunder a little bit, but I Steve kind of stole my thunder a little bit, but I Steve kind of stole my thunder a little bit, but I actually found that thunder a little bit, but I actually found that thunder a little bit, but I actually found that customer service. survey actually found that customer service. survey actually found that customer service.\n\nsurvey contract. I actually have customer service. survey contract. I actually have customer service. survey contract. I actually have an example of 1 right here. contract. I actually have an example of 1 right here. contract. I actually have an example of 1 right here. I could have done this in an example of 1 right here. I could have done this in an example of 1 right here.\n\nI could have done this in high school and I, I found I could have done this in high school and I, I found I could have done this in high school and I, I found it. It's not bad. I found high school and I, I found it. It's not bad. I found high school and I, I found it. It's not bad. I found it on the weekends because it. It's not bad. I found it on the weekends because it. It's not bad.\n\nI found it on the weekends because under the Biden it on the weekends because under the Biden it on the weekends because under the Biden Administration, there was no under the Biden Administration, there was no under the Biden Administration, there was no departmental oversight Administration, there was no departmental oversight Administration, there was no departmental oversight within the department of departmental oversight within the department of departmental oversight within the department of interior.\n\nwhatsoever. None. within the department of interior. whatsoever. None. within the department of interior. whatsoever. None. We have now reviewing every interior. whatsoever. None. We have now reviewing every interior. whatsoever. None.\n\nWe have now reviewing every single contract every We have now reviewing every single contract every We have now reviewing every single contract every single Grant And when single contract every single Grant And when single contract every single Grant And when things come to my single Grant And when things come to my single Grant And when things come to my attention, that don't make things come to my attention, that don't make things come to my attention, that don't make sense.\n\nI'm bringing them attention, that don't make sense. I'm bringing them attention, that don't make sense. I'm bringing them to secretary bergam and he sense. I'm bringing them to secretary bergam and he sense. I'm bringing them to secretary bergam and he has been fantastic. to secretary bergam and he has been fantastic. to secretary bergam and he has been fantastic. He's he's a businessman. has been fantastic. He's he's a businessman.\n\nhas been fantastic. He's he's a businessman. he's very supportive of He's he's a businessman. he's very supportive of He's he's a businessman. he's very supportive of Doge. It's been wonderful. he's very supportive of Doge. It's been wonderful. he's very supportive of Doge. It's been wonderful. to work with is the Doge. It's been wonderful. to work with is the Doge. It's been wonderful.\n\nto work with is the battle between government to work with is the battle between government to work with is the battle between government of decades and Decades of battle between government of decades and Decades of battle between government of decades and Decades of buildup and business. which of decades and Decades of buildup and business. which of decades and Decades of buildup and business. which you guys are. is that buildup and business.\n\nwhich you guys are. is that buildup and business. which you guys are. is that like a train hitting you guys are. is that like a train hitting you guys are. is that like a train hitting each other? I mean, it it like a train hitting each other? I mean, it it like a train hitting each other? I mean, it it seems like, um, it's pretty each other? I mean, it it seems like, um, it's pretty each other?\n\nI mean, it it seems like, um, it's pretty disruptive Well, this is a seems like, um, it's pretty disruptive Well, this is a seems like, um, it's pretty disruptive Well, this is a revolution. um, and I think disruptive Well, this is a revolution. um, and I think disruptive Well, this is a revolution. um, and I think it it might be the might revolution. um, and I think it it might be the might revolution.\n\num, and I think it it might be the might be the biggest Revolution it it might be the might be the biggest Revolution it it might be the might be the biggest Revolution government since the be the biggest Revolution government since the be the biggest Revolution government since the original Revolution, um, but government since the original Revolution, um, but government since the original Revolution, um, but at the end of the day, original Revolution, um, but at the end of the day, original Revolution, um, but at the end of the day, America's going to be in at the end of the day, America's going to be in at the end of the day, America's going to be in much better shape.\n\nuh America's going to be in much better shape. uh America's going to be in much better shape. uh America will be solvent. much better shape. uh America will be solvent. much better shape. uh America will be solvent. Uh, the Critical programs America will be solvent. Uh, the Critical programs America will be solvent. Uh, the Critical programs that people depend upon. Uh, the Critical programs that people depend upon.\n\nUh, the Critical programs that people depend upon. will work. and, It's that people depend upon. will work. and, It's that people depend upon. will work. and, It's going to be a fantastic will work. and, It's going to be a fantastic will work. and, It's going to be a fantastic future. and, but are we going to be a fantastic future. and, but are we going to be a fantastic future. and, but are we going to get a lot of future.\n\nand, but are we going to get a lot of future. and, but are we going to get a lot of complaints along the way? going to get a lot of complaints along the way? going to get a lot of complaints along the way? Absolutely, You know, complaints along the way? Absolutely, You know, complaints along the way?\n\nAbsolutely, You know, a lot of things I learned Absolutely, You know, a lot of things I learned Absolutely, You know, a lot of things I learned at the PayPal was the, a lot of things I learned at the PayPal was the, a lot of things I learned at the PayPal was the, you know, who complains the at the PayPal was the, you know, who complains the at the PayPal was the, you know, who complains the loudest.\n\nand the what the, you know, who complains the loudest. and the what the, you know, who complains the loudest. and the what the, the most amount of fake loudest. and the what the, the most amount of fake loudest. and the what the, the most amount of fake righteous indignation. The the most amount of fake righteous indignation. The the most amount of fake righteous indignation. The fraudsters. that's, it's a righteous indignation. The fraudsters.\n\nthat's, it's a righteous indignation. The fraudsters. that's, it's a tell. that are crazy. They fraudsters. that's, it's a tell. that are crazy. They fraudsters. that's, it's a tell. that are crazy. They look like the the tell. that are crazy. They look like the the tell. that are crazy.\n\nThey look like the the 2 billion dollars to look like the the 2 billion dollars to look like the the 2 billion dollars to Stacy April's, NGO that 2 billion dollars to Stacy April's, NGO that 2 billion dollars to Stacy April's, NGO that basically didn't exist. and Stacy April's, NGO that basically didn't exist. and Stacy April's, NGO that basically didn't exist. and suddenly gets 2 billion basically didn't exist.\n\nand suddenly gets 2 billion basically didn't exist. and suddenly gets 2 billion dollars awarded for the suddenly gets 2 billion dollars awarded for the suddenly gets 2 billion dollars awarded for the billion government. she has dollars awarded for the billion government. she has dollars awarded for the billion government. she has why And there are many, such billion government. she has why And there are many, such billion government.\n\nshe has why And there are many, such cases like that, I think why And there are many, such cases like that, I think why And there are many, such cases like that, I think that most people Common cases like that, I think that most people Common cases like that, I think that most people Common Sense wise would say. The that most people Common Sense wise would say. The that most people Common Sense wise would say. The Fraud's got to end.\n\nSense wise would say. The Fraud's got to end. Sense wise would say. The Fraud's got to end. They're concerned about the Fraud's got to end. They're concerned about the Fraud's got to end. They're concerned about the 904 year old mother. who They're concerned about the 904 year old mother. who They're concerned about the 904 year old mother. who Skips a check or somehow 904 year old mother. who Skips a check or somehow 904 year old mother.\n\nwho Skips a check or somehow doesn't get what she's Skips a check or somehow doesn't get what she's Skips a check or somehow doesn't get what she's supposed to get, right? And doesn't get what she's supposed to get, right? And doesn't get what she's supposed to get, right? And what we're trying to say supposed to get, right? And what we're trying to say supposed to get, right?\n\nAnd what we're trying to say is actually that, that the what we're trying to say is actually that, that the what we're trying to say is actually that, that the 94 year old, uh grandmother is actually that, that the 94 year old, uh grandmother is actually that, that the 94 year old, uh grandmother is is actually as 94 year old, uh grandmother is is actually as 94 year old, uh grandmother is is actually as a result of Joe dojos work is is actually as a result of Joe dojos work is is actually as a result of Joe dojos work going to get her check.\n\na result of Joe dojos work going to get her check. a result of Joe dojos work going to get her check. She's not going to be going to get her check. She's not going to be going to get her check. She's not going to be robbed by She's not going to be robbed by She's not going to be robbed by Fraud's like she's getting robbed by Fraud's like she's getting robbed by Fraud's like she's getting rough today.\n\num, and the Fraud's like she's getting rough today. um, and the Fraud's like she's getting rough today. um, and the solvency uh, of the of the rough today. um, and the solvency uh, of the of the rough today.\n\num, and the solvency uh, of the of the federal government will solvency uh, of the of the federal government will solvency uh, of the of the federal government will ensure that she continues federal government will ensure that she continues federal government will ensure that she continues to receive those Social ensure that she continues to receive those Social ensure that she continues to receive those Social Security checks that to receive those Social Security checks that to receive those Social Security checks that Medicare continues to work.\n\nSecurity checks that Medicare continues to work. Security checks that Medicare continues to work. Um, without which we're all Medicare continues to work. Um, without which we're all Medicare continues to work. Um, without which we're all doomed. And the reason we're Um, without which we're all doomed. And the reason we're Um, without which we're all doomed. And the reason we're doing this, is because if, doomed.\n\nAnd the reason we're doing this, is because if, doomed. And the reason we're doing this, is because if, if we don't do it, doing this, is because if, if we don't do it, doing this, is because if, if we don't do it, America's going to go if we don't do it, America's going to go if we don't do it, America's going to go insolvent. When you go America's going to go insolvent. When you go America's going to go insolvent. When you go bankrupt.\n\nAnd nobody's insolvent. When you go bankrupt. And nobody's insolvent. When you go bankrupt. And nobody's going to get anything. Why bankrupt. And nobody's going to get anything. Why bankrupt. And nobody's going to get anything. Why are you guys all doing it? going to get anything. Why are you guys all doing it? going to get anything. Why are you guys all doing it? I mean, you can pipe up but are you guys all doing it?\n\nI mean, you can pipe up but are you guys all doing it? I mean, you can pipe up but it you don't have to be I mean, you can pipe up but it you don't have to be I mean, you can pipe up but it you don't have to be here, right? I mean you it you don't have to be here, right? I mean you it you don't have to be here, right? I mean you don't you don't have to be here, right? I mean you don't you don't have to be here, right?\n\nI mean you don't you don't have to be doing this. I have. 4 plus don't you don't have to be doing this. I have. 4 plus don't you don't have to be doing this. I have. 4 plus with 4 beautiful children. I doing this. I have. 4 plus with 4 beautiful children. I doing this. I have. 4 plus with 4 beautiful children. I went and I um, but we have with 4 beautiful children. I went and I um, but we have with 4 beautiful children.\n\nI went and I um, but we have a real fiscal crisis, And, went and I um, but we have a real fiscal crisis, And, went and I um, but we have a real fiscal crisis, And, and this is not a real fiscal crisis, And, and this is not a real fiscal crisis, And, and this is not sustainable. and what's and this is not sustainable. and what's and this is not sustainable. and what's worse. back to my sustainable. and what's worse. back to my sustainable.\n\nand what's worse. back to my children and everyone worse. back to my children and everyone worse. back to my children and everyone else's children is. We're children and everyone else's children is. We're children and everyone else's children is. We're are burning them. With that else's children is. We're are burning them. With that else's children is. We're are burning them. With that debt. And it's only are burning them. With that debt.\n\nAnd it's only are burning them. With that debt. And it's only going to grow. debt. And it's only going to grow. debt. And it's only going to grow. See if there's not a lot of going to grow. See if there's not a lot of going to grow. See if there's not a lot of hierarchy here. You guys are See if there's not a lot of hierarchy here. You guys are See if there's not a lot of hierarchy here. You guys are of all approaching it in hierarchy here.\n\nYou guys are of all approaching it in hierarchy here. You guys are of all approaching it in different. you know. Silos. of all approaching it in different. you know. Silos. of all approaching it in different. you know. Silos. But, uh, with the same different. you know. Silos. But, uh, with the same different. you know. Silos. But, uh, with the same kind of goal. Right. I mean But, uh, with the same kind of goal. Right.\n\nI mean But, uh, with the same kind of goal. Right. I mean this is really Silicon kind of goal. Right. I mean this is really Silicon kind of goal. Right. I mean this is really Silicon Valley. private sector this is really Silicon Valley. private sector this is really Silicon Valley. private sector colliding with government. Valley. private sector colliding with government. Valley. private sector colliding with government. Yeah. exactly.\n\nWe're headed colliding with government. Yeah. exactly. We're headed colliding with government. Yeah. exactly. We're headed in a bad path but that the Yeah. exactly. We're headed in a bad path but that the Yeah. exactly. We're headed in a bad path but that the chance of success Exists. and in a bad path but that the chance of success Exists. and in a bad path but that the chance of success Exists.\n\nand just the 1 that just is chance of success Exists. and just the 1 that just is chance of success Exists.\n\nand just the 1 that just is in my head right now just the 1 that just is in my head right now just the 1 that just is in my head right now which is a fairly mundane 1 in my head right now which is a fairly mundane 1 in my head right now which is a fairly mundane 1 but I think is very which is a fairly mundane 1 but I think is very which is a fairly mundane 1 but I think is very illustrative is but I think is very illustrative is but I think is very illustrative is credit cards.\n\nUm, oh yeah. illustrative is credit cards. Um, oh yeah. illustrative is credit cards. Um, oh yeah. there are in in the federal credit cards. Um, oh yeah. there are in in the federal credit cards. Um, oh yeah. there are in in the federal government. Um around 4. 6 there are in in the federal government. Um around 4. 6 there are in in the federal government. Um around 4. 6 million credit cards. for government. Um around 4. 6 million credit cards.\n\nfor government. Um around 4. 6 million credit cards. for around 2. 3 to million credit cards. for around 2. 3 to million credit cards. for around 2. 3 to 2. 4 million employees. Um, around 2. 3 to 2. 4 million employees. Um, around 2. 3 to 2. 4 million employees. Um, this doesn't make sense. 2. 4 million employees. Um, this doesn't make sense. 2. 4 million employees. Um, this doesn't make sense. right? Um, and so 1 of the this doesn't make sense.\n\nright? Um, and so 1 of the this doesn't make sense. right? Um, and so 1 of the things all the teams have right? Um, and so 1 of the things all the teams have right?\n\nUm, and so 1 of the things all the teams have have worked on is we've things all the teams have have worked on is we've things all the teams have have worked on is we've worked for the agencies and have worked on is we've worked for the agencies and have worked on is we've worked for the agencies and said, do you need all worked for the agencies and said, do you need all worked for the agencies and said, do you need all of these credit cards?\n\nAre said, do you need all of these credit cards? Are said, do you need all of these credit cards? Are they being used? Can you of these credit cards? Are they being used? Can you of these credit cards? Are they being used? Can you tell us physically where they being used? Can you tell us physically where they being used? Can you tell us physically where they are? I hope they're tell us physically where they are?\n\nI hope they're tell us physically where they are? I hope they're getting frequent flyers. Um, they are? I hope they're getting frequent flyers. Um, they are? I hope they're getting frequent flyers. Um, actually on a different getting frequent flyers. Um, actually on a different getting frequent flyers.\n\nUm, actually on a different note, the rewards program, actually on a different note, the rewards program, actually on a different note, the rewards program, the federal government has note, the rewards program, the federal government has note, the rewards program, the federal government has actually not very good the federal government has actually not very good the federal government has actually not very good That's a whole other actually not very good That's a whole other actually not very good That's a whole other negotiation right?\n\nYeah, That's a whole other negotiation right? Yeah, That's a whole other negotiation right? Yeah, exactly. Um but so far the negotiation right? Yeah, exactly. Um but so far the negotiation right? Yeah, exactly. Um but so far the teams have worked together exactly. Um but so far the teams have worked together exactly.\n\nUm but so far the teams have worked together and they've reduced it from teams have worked together and they've reduced it from teams have worked together and they've reduced it from 4. 6 million to. um to 4. 3 and they've reduced it from 4. 6 million to. um to 4. 3 and they've reduced it from 4. 6 million to. um to 4. 3 million. So we're we're 4. 6 million to. um to 4. 3 million. So we're we're 4. 6 million to. um to 4. 3 million.\n\nSo we're we're taking it easy. Yeah. But million. So we're we're taking it easy. Yeah. But million. So we're we're taking it easy. Yeah. But clearly, they should not taking it easy. Yeah. But clearly, they should not taking it easy. Yeah. But clearly, they should not be, you know, more. they clearly, they should not be, you know, more. they clearly, they should not be, you know, more. they should not make more be, you know, more.\n\nthey should not make more be, you know, more. they should not make more credit cards than there are should not make more credit cards than there are should not make more credit cards than there are people. Yeah, Joe middle credit cards than there are people. Yeah, Joe middle credit cards than there are people. Yeah, Joe middle level employees. Are they people. Yeah, Joe middle level employees. Are they people. Yeah, Joe middle level employees.\n\nAre they seeing a benefit to being level employees. Are they seeing a benefit to being level employees. Are they seeing a benefit to being empowered by taking out? seeing a benefit to being empowered by taking out? seeing a benefit to being empowered by taking out? bureaucracy? I mean, empowered by taking out? bureaucracy? I mean, empowered by taking out? bureaucracy? I mean, absolutely. I mean, I think bureaucracy? I mean, absolutely.\n\nI mean, I think bureaucracy? I mean, absolutely. I mean, I think what you're seeing is absolutely. I mean, I think what you're seeing is absolutely.\n\nI mean, I think what you're seeing is taking the best of Silicon what you're seeing is taking the best of Silicon what you're seeing is taking the best of Silicon Valley in the business world, taking the best of Silicon Valley in the business world, taking the best of Silicon Valley in the business world, to bring it into the Valley in the business world, to bring it into the Valley in the business world, to bring it into the government.\n\nWe're bringing to bring it into the government. We're bringing to bring it into the government. We're bringing the best practices and government. We're bringing the best practices and government. We're bringing the best practices and the best. methodologies. Um, the best practices and the best. methodologies. Um, the best practices and the best. methodologies. Um, and uh, people are inspired the best. methodologies.\n\nUm, and uh, people are inspired the best. methodologies.\n\nUm, and uh, people are inspired right, especially on and uh, people are inspired right, especially on and uh, people are inspired right, especially on retirement processors, I can right, especially on retirement processors, I can right, especially on retirement processors, I can speak to um, they've been retirement processors, I can speak to um, they've been retirement processors, I can speak to um, they've been trying to modernize and get speak to um, they've been trying to modernize and get speak to um, they've been trying to modernize and get off of paper.\n\nsince early trying to modernize and get off of paper. since early trying to modernize and get off of paper. since early 2000s. Um, very off of paper. since early 2000s. Um, very off of paper. since early 2000s. Um, very unsuccessfully. every attempt 2000s. Um, very unsuccessfully. every attempt 2000s. Um, very unsuccessfully. every attempt has gone over budget. um, unsuccessfully. every attempt has gone over budget. um, unsuccessfully.\n\nevery attempt has gone over budget. um, and been canceled. uh, uh, has gone over budget. um, and been canceled. uh, uh, has gone over budget. um, and been canceled. uh, uh, because it hasn't been and been canceled. uh, uh, because it hasn't been and been canceled. uh, uh, because it hasn't been successful. And so you know, because it hasn't been successful. And so you know, because it hasn't been successful.\n\nAnd so you know, I showed up and I feel successful. And so you know, I showed up and I feel successful. And so you know, I showed up and I feel like I'm here because it's I showed up and I feel like I'm here because it's I showed up and I feel like I'm here because it's an interesting problem. We like I'm here because it's an interesting problem. We like I'm here because it's an interesting problem.\n\nWe can use design to solve it an interesting problem. We can use design to solve it an interesting problem. We can use design to solve it and get engineering. and can use design to solve it and get engineering. and can use design to solve it and get engineering. and really, create a better and get engineering. and really, create a better and get engineering. and really, create a better experience for everybody.\n\nreally, create a better experience for everybody. really, create a better experience for everybody. We're talking about experience for everybody. We're talking about experience for everybody.\n\nWe're talking about elementary Financial We're talking about elementary Financial We're talking about elementary Financial controls That are necessary elementary Financial controls That are necessary elementary Financial controls That are necessary for any company to function, controls That are necessary for any company to function, controls That are necessary for any company to function, So like if, if these if for any company to function, So like if, if these if for any company to function,\n\nSo like if, if these if if if the federal So like if, if these if if if the federal So like if, if these if if if the federal government uh, if if if if if the federal government uh, if if if if if the federal government uh, if if if if a commercial company government uh, if if if if a commercial company government uh, if if if if a commercial company operated the way the federal if a commercial company operated the way the federal if a commercial company operated the way the federal government does,\n\nthen it operated the way the federal government does, then it operated the way the federal government does, then it would be uh, go immediately government does, then it would be uh, go immediately government does, then it would be uh, go immediately go bankrupt.\n\nUh, it would be uh, go immediately go bankrupt. Uh, it would be uh, go immediately go bankrupt. Uh, it would be delisted the go bankrupt. Uh, it would be delisted the go bankrupt.\n\nUh, it would be delisted the offices would be arrested would be delisted the offices would be arrested would be delisted the offices would be arrested and the changes we're putting offices would be arrested and the changes we're putting offices would be arrested and the changes we're putting in place. will enable the and the changes we're putting in place. will enable the and the changes we're putting in place.\n\nwill enable the federal government to pass in place. will enable the federal government to pass in place. will enable the federal government to pass an audit. It will enable federal government to pass an audit. It will enable federal government to pass an audit. It will enable enable taxpayers to know an audit. It will enable enable taxpayers to know an audit. It will enable enable taxpayers to know where the money is going.\n\nenable taxpayers to know where the money is going. enable taxpayers to know where the money is going. and know that they're where the money is going. and know that they're where the money is going. and know that they're harder and taxed tax dollars and know that they're harder and taxed tax dollars and know that they're harder and taxed tax dollars are being spent. Well, the harder and taxed tax dollars are being spent.\n\nWell, the harder and taxed tax dollars are being spent. Well, the ways that the government are being spent. Well, the ways that the government are being spent.\n\nWell, the ways that the government is defrauded is that the ways that the government is defrauded is that the ways that the government is defrauded is that the computer systems don't talk is defrauded is that the computer systems don't talk is defrauded is that the computer systems don't talk to each other. So if the computer systems don't talk to each other. So if the computer systems don't talk to each other.\n\nSo if the computer system systems are to each other. So if the computer system systems are to each other. So if the computer system systems are talked to each other, then computer system systems are talked to each other, then computer system systems are talked to each other, then it you, you can you can talked to each other, then it you, you can you can talked to each other, then it you, you can you can exploit that Gap.\n\nand it you, you can you can exploit that Gap. and it you, you can you can exploit that Gap. and frauds is exploited that exploit that Gap. and frauds is exploited that exploit that Gap. and frauds is exploited that exploit that Gap to take frauds is exploited that exploit that Gap to take frauds is exploited that exploit that Gap to take advantage. Um, if for exploit that Gap to take advantage. Um, if for exploit that Gap to take advantage.\n\nUm, if for example there were over 300 advantage. Um, if for example there were over 300 advantage. Um, if for example there were over 300 million dollars of a small example there were over 300 million dollars of a small example there were over 300 million dollars of a small business administration. million dollars of a small business administration. million dollars of a small business administration.\n\nloans, that has been given business administration. loans, that has been given business administration.\n\nloans, that has been given out to people under the loans, that has been given out to people under the loans, that has been given out to people under the age of 11, Well actually out to people under the age of 11, Well actually out to people under the age of 11, Well actually to add to its 300 million age of 11, Well actually to add to its 300 million age of 11, Well actually to add to its 300 million under the age of 11.\n\nAnd to add to its 300 million under the age of 11. And to add to its 300 million under the age of 11. And then over under the age of 11. And then over under the age of 11. And then over 300 million to over the age then over 300 million to over the age then over 300 million to over the age of 120. The small business 300 million to over the age of 120. The small business 300 million to over the age of 120. The small business loans, correct? Yes.\n\nThe of 120. The small business loans, correct? Yes. The of 120. The small business loans, correct? Yes. The the oldest American is loans, correct? Yes. The the oldest American is loans, correct? Yes. The the oldest American is 114. so, it's safe to say the oldest American is 114. so, it's safe to say the oldest American is 114. so, it's safe to say if their ages is 115 or 114. so, it's safe to say if their ages is 115 or 114.\n\nso, it's safe to say if their ages is 115 or above. Uh, they're they're if their ages is 115 or above. Uh, they're they're if their ages is 115 or above. Uh, they're they're fake. Um, well they should above. Uh, they're they're fake. Um, well they should above. Uh, they're they're fake. Um, well they should be in the going to spoke fake. Um, well they should be in the going to spoke fake.\n\nUm, well they should be in the going to spoke of World Records. Um and be in the going to spoke of World Records. Um and be in the going to spoke of World Records. Um and we we should not be of World Records. Um and we we should not be of World Records. Um and we we should not be giving out. Um, loans to we we should not be giving out. Um, loans to we we should not be giving out. Um, loans to babies So, uh, the The giving out.\n\nUm, loans to babies So, uh, the The giving out. Um, loans to babies So, uh, the The youngest, uh, recipient of babies So, uh, the The youngest, uh, recipient of babies So, uh, the The youngest, uh, recipient of a small business youngest, uh, recipient of a small business youngest, uh, recipient of a small business administration loan. uh is a small business administration loan. uh is a small business administration loan.\n\nuh is a 9-month-old which is a administration loan. uh is a 9-month-old which is a administration loan. uh is a 9-month-old which is a very very cautious baby. a 9-month-old which is a very very cautious baby. a 9-month-old which is a very very cautious baby. We're talking about here. Um, very very cautious baby. We're talking about here. Um, very very cautious baby. We're talking about here.\n\nUm, about obviously it was just We're talking about here. Um, about obviously it was just We're talking about here. Um, about obviously it was just fraudulent. Um and what about obviously it was just fraudulent. Um and what about obviously it was just fraudulent. Um and what they and they do Terrible fraudulent. Um and what they and they do Terrible fraudulent. Um and what they and they do Terrible Things.\n\nThey actually they and they do Terrible Things. They actually they and they do Terrible Things. They actually will see that a kid's been Things. They actually will see that a kid's been Things. They actually will see that a kid's been born. They will steal that will see that a kid's been born. They will steal that will see that a kid's been born. They will steal that kid's social security born. They will steal that kid's social security born.\n\nThey will steal that kid's social security number and then take out a kid's social security number and then take out a kid's social security number and then take out a loan and and leave that kid number and then take out a loan and and leave that kid number and then take out a loan and and leave that kid with a with a bad credit loan and and leave that kid with a with a bad credit loan and and leave that kid with a with a bad credit rating.\n\nThere was literally a with a with a bad credit rating. There was literally a with a with a bad credit rating. There was literally a baby. a terrible things of rating. There was literally a baby. a terrible things of rating. There was literally a baby. a terrible things of being done is what we're baby. a terrible things of being done is what we're baby. a terrible things of being done is what we're saying.\n\nand how we're being done is what we're saying. and how we're being done is what we're saying. and how we're stopping these terrible saying. and how we're stopping these terrible saying. and how we're stopping these terrible things and you can't stop stopping these terrible things and you can't stop stopping these terrible things and you can't stop it. I mean well, our stuff things and you can't stop it.\n\nI mean well, our stuff things and you can't stop it. I mean well, our stuff we are the reason this is it. I mean well, our stuff we are the reason this is it.\n\nI mean well, our stuff we are the reason this is happening is because the the we are the reason this is happening is because the the we are the reason this is happening is because the the 2 systems are not talking to happening is because the the 2 systems are not talking to happening is because the the 2 systems are not talking to each other. right? And so, 2 systems are not talking to each other. right?\n\nAnd so, 2 systems are not talking to each other. right? And so, you don't know at the small each other. right? And so, you don't know at the small each other. right?\n\nAnd so, you don't know at the small business administration, you don't know at the small business administration, you don't know at the small business administration, that you're giving a loan business administration, that you're giving a loan business administration, that you're giving a loan to a 9-month-old, which that you're giving a loan to a 9-month-old, which that you're giving a loan to a 9-month-old, which happened in 1 case, because to a 9-month-old, which happened in 1 case,\n\nbecause to a 9-month-old, which happened in 1 case, because you're not happened in 1 case, because you're not happened in 1 case, because you're not cross-referencing that with you're not cross-referencing that with you're not cross-referencing that with the Social Security cross-referencing that with the Social Security cross-referencing that with the Social Security Administration data that the Social Security Administration data that the Social Security Administration data that has birth dates.\n\nSo that Administration data that has birth dates. So that Administration data that has birth dates. So that very, very simple fix. has birth dates. So that very, very simple fix. has birth dates. So that very, very simple fix. eliminates tremendous and and very, very simple fix. eliminates tremendous and and very, very simple fix.\n\neliminates tremendous and and that eliminates tremendous and and that eliminates tremendous and and that there are multiple systems that there are multiple systems that there are multiple systems across the government where there are multiple systems across the government where there are multiple systems across the government where the systems are not speaking across the government where the systems are not speaking across the government where the systems are not speaking with 1,\n\nanother, and if you the systems are not speaking with 1, another, and if you the systems are not speaking with 1, another, and if you just, solve that simple with 1, another, and if you just, solve that simple with 1, another, and if you just, solve that simple problem, you would solve a just, solve that simple problem, you would solve a just, solve that simple problem, you would solve a huge amount of fraud.\n\nare problem, you would solve a huge amount of fraud. are problem, you would solve a huge amount of fraud. are you? is that like 1 1 huge amount of fraud. are you? is that like 1 1 huge amount of fraud. are you? is that like 1 1 of the, the key tricks that you? is that like 1 1 of the, the key tricks that you?\n\nis that like 1 1 of the, the key tricks that the frauds is pull, is of the, the key tricks that the frauds is pull, is of the, the key tricks that the frauds is pull, is that they will use the the frauds is pull, is that they will use the the frauds is pull, is that they will use the fact that someone is that they will use the fact that someone is that they will use the fact that someone is marked as live and as, as fact that someone is marked as live and as, as fact that someone is marked as live and as,\n\nas sort of just that that marked as live and as, as sort of just that that marked as live and as, as sort of just that that social security number is sort of just that that social security number is sort of just that that social security number is Marx, social security number is Marx, social security number is Marx, is live in Social Security Marx, is live in Social Security Marx, is live in Social Security and then uh, then get is live in Social Security and then uh, then get is live in Social Security and then uh,\n\nthen get disability and unemployment and then uh, then get disability and unemployment and then uh, then get disability and unemployment insurance.\n\nfor a dead disability and unemployment insurance. for a dead disability and unemployment insurance. for a dead person because the insurance. for a dead person because the insurance. for a dead person because the databases don't talk to you. person because the databases don't talk to you. person because the databases don't talk to you. Each other all they got databases don't talk to you. Each other all they got databases don't talk to you.\n\nEach other all they got was. from Social, Security Each other all they got was. from Social, Security Each other all they got was. from Social, Security is like, is this person was. from Social, Security is like, is this person was. from Social, Security is like, is this person alive? Yes, they're not, is like, is this person alive? Yes, they're not, is like, is this person alive? Yes, they're not, they're not alive. it's alive?\n\nYes, they're not, they're not alive. it's alive? Yes, they're not, they're not alive. it's possibly more person is they're not alive. it's possibly more person is they're not alive. it's possibly more person is falsely marked as alive possibly more person is falsely marked as alive possibly more person is falsely marked as alive Social Security. uh, but falsely marked as alive Social Security. uh, but falsely marked as alive Social Security.\n\nuh, but they didn't But but that Social Security. uh, but they didn't But but that Social Security. uh, but they didn't But but that was a fraudster can now get they didn't But but that was a fraudster can now get they didn't But but that was a fraudster can now get unemployment and disability. was a fraudster can now get unemployment and disability. was a fraudster can now get unemployment and disability. for, from a dead person.\n\nunemployment and disability. for, from a dead person. unemployment and disability. for, from a dead person. This is happening all the for, from a dead person. This is happening all the for, from a dead person. This is happening all the time. at scale. Are you This is happening all the time. at scale. Are you This is happening all the time. at scale. Are you surprised? at? some of the time. at scale. Are you surprised? at? some of the time.\n\nat scale. Are you surprised? at? some of the legal efforts and some of the surprised? at? some of the legal efforts and some of the surprised? at? some of the legal efforts and some of the judges that have weighed legal efforts and some of the judges that have weighed legal efforts and some of the judges that have weighed in? There's about 8 or 10 judges that have weighed in? There's about 8 or 10 judges that have weighed in?\n\nThere's about 8 or 10 now. um, of these cases in? There's about 8 or 10 now. um, of these cases in? There's about 8 or 10 now. um, of these cases that are at least now. um, of these cases that are at least now.\n\num, of these cases that are at least temporarily holds, that are at least temporarily holds, that are at least temporarily holds, they're being challenged by temporarily holds, they're being challenged by temporarily holds, they're being challenged by the doj. right? Um, are you they're being challenged by the doj. right? Um, are you they're being challenged by the doj. right? Um, are you surprised by that push the doj. right?\n\nUm, are you surprised by that push the doj. right? Um, are you surprised by that push back? well, it's the the DC surprised by that push back? well, it's the the DC surprised by that push back? well, it's the the DC circuit is notorious for back? well, it's the the DC circuit is notorious for back?\n\nwell, it's the the DC circuit is notorious for having a a very far-left circuit is notorious for having a a very far-left circuit is notorious for having a a very far-left bias. Um, and when you look having a a very far-left bias. Um, and when you look having a a very far-left bias. Um, and when you look at uh, the people close to bias. Um, and when you look at uh, the people close to bias.\n\nUm, and when you look at uh, the people close to some of these judges who at uh, the people close to some of these judges who at uh, the people close to some of these judges who who who who are, where are some of these judges who who who who are, where are some of these judges who who who who are, where are they working? Are they who who who are, where are they working? Are they who who who are, where are they working?\n\nAre they working at these knossos? they working? Are they working at these knossos? they working? Are they working at these knossos? or they're getting working at these knossos? or they're getting working at these knossos? or they're getting the the other ones getting or they're getting the the other ones getting or they're getting the the other ones getting this money? Does that the the other ones getting this money?\n\nDoes that the the other ones getting this money? Does that seem like uh, A system this money? Does that seem like uh, A system this money? Does that seem like uh, A system that lacks corruption? It seem like uh, A system that lacks corruption? It seem like uh, A system that lacks corruption? It sounds like corruption that lacks corruption? It sounds like corruption that lacks corruption? It sounds like corruption to me.\n\nLast thing, do you sounds like corruption to me. Last thing, do you sounds like corruption to me. Last thing, do you guys all see this as a to me. Last thing, do you guys all see this as a to me. Last thing, do you guys all see this as a patriotic Duty? I mean, is guys all see this as a patriotic Duty? I mean, is guys all see this as a patriotic Duty? I mean, is that really what this is patriotic Duty?\n\nI mean, is that really what this is patriotic Duty? I mean, is that really what this is about? It's essential So I that really what this is about? It's essential So I that really what this is about? It's essential So I do 100%. I I um, was running about? It's essential So I do 100%. I I um, was running about? It's essential So I do 100%. I I um, was running 5 businesses in Houston. do 100%. I I um, was running 5 businesses in Houston. do 100%.\n\nI I um, was running 5 businesses in Houston. and and I left that I left. 5 businesses in Houston. and and I left that I left. 5 businesses in Houston. and and I left that I left. Great people. to do this and and I left that I left. Great people. to do this and and I left that I left. Great people. to do this and uh my wonderful wife Great people. to do this and uh my wonderful wife Great people.\n\nto do this and uh my wonderful wife said, go for it. and here I and uh my wonderful wife said, go for it. and here I and uh my wonderful wife said, go for it. and here I am But I I feel like this said, go for it. and here I am But I I feel like this said, go for it. and here I am But I I feel like this is me giving back to the am But I I feel like this is me giving back to the am But I I feel like this is me giving back to the country.\n\nIf, if we don't is me giving back to the country. If, if we don't is me giving back to the country. If, if we don't do this Were sunk. uh, the country. If, if we don't do this Were sunk. uh, the country. If, if we don't do this Were sunk. uh, the ship unless unless do this Were sunk. uh, the ship unless unless do this Were sunk. uh, the ship unless unless this exercise is successful. ship unless unless this exercise is successful.\n\nship unless unless this exercise is successful. the ship of America this exercise is successful. the ship of America this exercise is successful. the ship of America will sink. That's why we're the ship of America will sink. That's why we're the ship of America will sink. That's why we're doing it. Well gentlemen, I will sink. That's why we're doing it. Well gentlemen, I will sink. That's why we're doing it.\n\nWell gentlemen, I really appreciate the time. doing it. Well gentlemen, I really appreciate the time. doing it. Well gentlemen, I really appreciate the time. Uh today and uh, hopefully really appreciate the time. Uh today and uh, hopefully really appreciate the time.\n\nUh today and uh, hopefully it took some of the myth Uh today and uh, hopefully it took some of the myth Uh today and uh, hopefully it took some of the myth and mystery out of Doge and it took some of the myth and mystery out of Doge and it took some of the myth and mystery out of Doge and what's happening behind the and mystery out of Doge and what's happening behind the and mystery out of Doge and what's happening behind the scenes? Thank you.\n\nYou see what's happening behind the scenes? Thank you. You see what's happening behind the scenes? Thank you. You see there, we were just scenes? Thank you. You see there, we were just scenes? Thank you. You see there, we were just listening. into that there, we were just listening. into that there, we were just listening. into that segment that are It was an listening. into that segment that are It was an listening.\n\ninto that segment that are It was an exclusive. with Brett, segment that are It was an exclusive. with Brett, segment that are It was an exclusive. with Brett, Bayer being able to sit exclusive. with Brett, Bayer being able to sit exclusive.\n\nwith Brett, Bayer being able to sit down with members of the Bayer being able to sit down with members of the Bayer being able to sit down with members of the Doge team of course down with members of the Doge team of course down with members of the Doge team of course including","textByLang":{"en":"turn our attention to the Doge team, Of course, turn our attention to the Doge team, Of course, turn our attention to the Doge team, Of course, we've been hearing about Doge team, Of course, we've been hearing about Doge team, Of course, we've been hearing about some of the slashes. we've been hearing about some of the slashes. we've been hearing about some of the slashes. They've been making to some of the slashes.\n\nThey've been making to some of the slashes. They've been making to certain government. agencies They've been making to certain government. agencies They've been making to certain government. agencies and today they sat down certain government. agencies and today they sat down certain government.\n\nagencies and today they sat down members of the Doge team and today they sat down members of the Doge team and today they sat down members of the Doge team sat down with Brett Bayer members of the Doge team sat down with Brett Bayer members of the Doge team sat down with Brett Bayer on Fox News, Including Elon sat down with Brett Bayer on Fox News, Including Elon sat down with Brett Bayer on Fox News, Including Elon Musk.\n\nas a part of this on Fox News, Including Elon Musk. as a part of this on Fox News, Including Elon Musk. as a part of this panel. Let's listen into a Musk. as a part of this panel. Let's listen into a Musk. as a part of this panel. Let's listen into a bit of that report here panel. Let's listen into a bit of that report here panel. Let's listen into a bit of that report here on live now. Doing this. bit of that report here on live now. Doing this.\n\nbit of that report here on live now. Doing this. uh, I know there's a lot of on live now. Doing this. uh, I know there's a lot of on live now. Doing this. uh, I know there's a lot of interest in this. you know, uh, I know there's a lot of interest in this. you know, uh, I know there's a lot of interest in this. you know, first let me start with you interest in this. you know, first let me start with you interest in this.\n\nyou know, first let me start with you Elon, what are the what first let me start with you Elon, what are the what first let me start with you Elon, what are the what are the budgetary? savings Elon, what are the what are the budgetary? savings Elon, what are the what are the budgetary? savings goals and and how much are the budgetary? savings goals and and how much are the budgetary?\n\nsavings goals and and how much do you think you've goals and and how much do you think you've goals and and how much do you think you've achieved so far? our, our do you think you've achieved so far? our, our do you think you've achieved so far? our, our goal is to reduce the achieved so far? our, our goal is to reduce the achieved so far?\n\nour, our goal is to reduce the deficit by a trillion goal is to reduce the deficit by a trillion goal is to reduce the deficit by a trillion dollars. Um, so it from a deficit by a trillion dollars. Um, so it from a deficit by a trillion dollars. Um, so it from a nominal deficit of 2 dollars. Um, so it from a nominal deficit of 2 dollars.\n\nUm, so it from a nominal deficit of 2 trillion to try to cut the nominal deficit of 2 trillion to try to cut the nominal deficit of 2 trillion to try to cut the deficit in half to trillion to try to cut the deficit in half to trillion to try to cut the deficit in half to 1 trillion. um or looked at deficit in half to 1 trillion. um or looked at deficit in half to 1 trillion. um or looked at it in total 1 trillion.\n\num or looked at it in total 1 trillion.\n\num or looked at it in total federal spending to drop it in total federal spending to drop it in total federal spending to drop the federal spending from federal spending to drop the federal spending from federal spending to drop the federal spending from 7 trillion to 6 trillion the federal spending from 7 trillion to 6 trillion the federal spending from 7 trillion to 6 trillion we want to reduce the 7 trillion to 6 trillion we want to reduce the 7 trillion to 6 trillion we want to reduce the spending by eliminating we want to reduce the spending by eliminating we want to reduce the spending by eliminating waste and for reduce the spending by eliminating waste and for reduce the spending by eliminating waste and for reduce the spending by 15%.\n\nWhich waste and for reduce the spending by 15%. Which waste and for reduce the spending by 15%. Which seems really quite spending by 15%. Which seems really quite spending by 15%. Which seems really quite achievable. Uh, the seems really quite achievable. Uh, the seems really quite achievable. Uh, the government is not not achievable. Uh, the government is not not achievable.\n\nUh, the government is not not deficient um, and there's government is not not deficient um, and there's government is not not deficient um, and there's a lot of a lot of deficient um, and there's a lot of a lot of deficient um, and there's a lot of a lot of waste and fraud, so we a lot of a lot of waste and fraud, so we a lot of a lot of waste and fraud, so we feel confident that 15% waste and fraud, so we feel confident that 15% waste and fraud, so we feel confident that 15% reduction can, uh, can be feel confident that 15% reduction can, uh, can be feel confident that 15% reduction can, uh, can be done without.\n\naffecting any reduction can, uh, can be done without. affecting any reduction can, uh, can be done without. affecting any of of the critical done without. affecting any of of the critical done without. affecting any of of the critical government services. I'm of of the critical government services. I'm of of the critical government services. I'm going to talk to all the government services. I'm going to talk to all the government services.\n\nI'm going to talk to all the guys, it's not making it going to talk to all the guys, it's not making it going to talk to all the guys, it's not making it better and talk to all the guys, it's not making it better and talk to all the guys, it's not making it better and talk to all the guys here about the for you. better and talk to all the guys here about the for you. better and talk to all the guys here about the for you.\n\nWhat's the most astonishing guys here about the for you. What's the most astonishing guys here about the for you. What's the most astonishing thing? What's the most astonishing thing? What's the most astonishing thing? You've found out in this thing? You've found out in this thing?\n\nYou've found out in this process uh, the sheer amount You've found out in this process uh, the sheer amount You've found out in this process uh, the sheer amount of weights and fraud in the process uh, the sheer amount of weights and fraud in the process uh, the sheer amount of weights and fraud in the government. It is of weights and fraud in the government. It is of weights and fraud in the government. It is astonishing. government.\n\nIt is astonishing. government. It is astonishing. it's mind-blowing. uh, just astonishing. it's mind-blowing. uh, just astonishing. it's mind-blowing. uh, just uh, we routinely encounter. it's mind-blowing. uh, just uh, we routinely encounter. it's mind-blowing. uh, just uh, we routinely encounter. wastes of a billion dollars uh, we routinely encounter. wastes of a billion dollars uh, we routinely encounter. wastes of a billion dollars or more.\n\nCasually. um, wastes of a billion dollars or more. Casually. um, wastes of a billion dollars or more. Casually. um, you know, for example, like or more. Casually. um, you know, for example, like or more. Casually.\n\num, you know, for example, like the the the the simple you know, for example, like the the the the simple you know, for example, like the the the the simple survey uh that was uh, the the the the simple survey uh that was uh, the the the the simple survey uh that was uh, Literally 10 question survey survey uh that was uh, Literally 10 question survey survey uh that was uh, Literally 10 question survey that you could do Literally 10 question survey that you could do Literally 10 question survey that you could do with survey Market about that you could do with survey Market about that you could do with survey Market about 10 thousand dollars.\n\nuh, was with survey Market about 10 thousand dollars. uh, was with survey Market about 10 thousand dollars. uh, was a government was being 10 thousand dollars. uh, was a government was being 10 thousand dollars. uh, was a government was being charged almost a billion a government was being charged almost a billion a government was being charged almost a billion dollars for that. For just charged almost a billion dollars for that.\n\nFor just charged almost a billion dollars for that. For just the survey a billion dollars dollars for that. For just the survey a billion dollars dollars for that. For just the survey a billion dollars for for a simple online the survey a billion dollars for for a simple online the survey a billion dollars for for a simple online survey. Do you like the for for a simple online survey. Do you like the for for a simple online survey.\n\nDo you like the National park and then survey. Do you like the National park and then survey.\n\nDo you like the National park and then they appear to be no National park and then they appear to be no National park and then they appear to be no feedback loop for what they appear to be no feedback loop for what they appear to be no feedback loop for what would be done with that feedback loop for what would be done with that feedback loop for what would be done with that survey. So, the survey will would be done with that survey.\n\nSo, the survey will would be done with that survey. So, the survey will just go to nothing, survey. So, the survey will just go to nothing, survey. So, the survey will just go to nothing, it's like insane. You just go to nothing, it's like insane. You just go to nothing, it's like insane. You technically are a special it's like insane. You technically are a special it's like insane. You technically are a special government employee.\n\nand technically are a special government employee. and technically are a special government employee. and you're supposed to be. 130 government employee. and you're supposed to be. 130 government employee. and you're supposed to be. 130 days Are you going to you're supposed to be. 130 days Are you going to you're supposed to be.\n\n130 days Are you going to continue past that or do days Are you going to continue past that or do days Are you going to continue past that or do you think that's the what continue past that or do you think that's the what continue past that or do you think that's the what you're going to do or you think that's the what you're going to do or you think that's the what you're going to do or well, I think we will have you're going to do or well, I think we will have you're going to do or well,\n\nI think we will have accomplished most of the well, I think we will have accomplished most of the well, I think we will have accomplished most of the work required to reduce accomplished most of the work required to reduce accomplished most of the work required to reduce the deficit by a trillion work required to reduce the deficit by a trillion work required to reduce the deficit by a trillion dollars within that time the deficit by a trillion dollars within that time the deficit by a trillion dollars within that time frame.\n\nSo in that time dollars within that time frame. So in that time dollars within that time frame. So in that time frame, 130 days and and the frame. So in that time frame, 130 days and and the frame. So in that time frame, 130 days and and the process is a report frame, 130 days and and the process is a report frame, 130 days and and the process is a report at some point at 100 days. process is a report at some point at 100 days.\n\nprocess is a report at some point at 100 days. uh, not really a report, we at some point at 100 days. uh, not really a report, we at some point at 100 days. uh, not really a report, we we are cutting the waste uh, not really a report, we we are cutting the waste uh, not really a report, we we are cutting the waste and fraud in real time. So we are cutting the waste and fraud in real time. So we are cutting the waste and fraud in real time.\n\nSo every day like that passes. and fraud in real time. So every day like that passes. and fraud in real time. So every day like that passes. uh our goal is To. reduce every day like that passes. uh our goal is To. reduce every day like that passes. uh our goal is To. reduce the, the waste and fraud by uh our goal is To. reduce the, the waste and fraud by uh our goal is To. reduce the, the waste and fraud by 4 billion dollars a day.\n\nthe, the waste and fraud by 4 billion dollars a day. the, the waste and fraud by 4 billion dollars a day. every day 7 days a week. and 4 billion dollars a day. every day 7 days a week. and 4 billion dollars a day. every day 7 days a week. and so far, we are succeeding. every day 7 days a week. and so far, we are succeeding. every day 7 days a week. and so far, we are succeeding. I'm going to talk to the so far, we are succeeding.\n\nI'm going to talk to the so far, we are succeeding.\n\nI'm going to talk to the specifics but they're they're I'm going to talk to the specifics but they're they're I'm going to talk to the specifics but they're they're obviously specifics but they're they're obviously specifics but they're they're obviously are Doge critics who are obviously are Doge critics who are obviously are Doge critics who are reading all kinds of stuff, are Doge critics who are reading all kinds of stuff, are Doge critics who are reading all kinds of stuff, Obviously lawmakers on the reading all kinds of stuff, Obviously lawmakers on the reading all kinds of stuff, Obviously lawmakers on the other side of the aisle.\n\nObviously lawmakers on the other side of the aisle. Obviously lawmakers on the other side of the aisle. are attacking you. Uh, and other side of the aisle. are attacking you. Uh, and other side of the aisle. are attacking you. Uh, and he they characterize the are attacking you. Uh, and he they characterize the are attacking you. Uh, and he they characterize the approach is this. fire he they characterize the approach is this.\n\nfire he they characterize the approach is this. fire ready. And en aim and, approach is this. fire ready. And en aim and, approach is this. fire ready. And en aim and, how do you? Approach that. ready. And en aim and, how do you? Approach that. ready. And en aim and, how do you? Approach that. How do you? respond to how do you? Approach that. How do you? respond to how do you? Approach that. How do you? respond to that?\n\nWell, I I do agree How do you? respond to that? Well, I I do agree How do you? respond to that? Well, I I do agree that we actually want to that? Well, I I do agree that we actually want to that?\n\nWell, I I do agree that we actually want to be careful in the cuts so that we actually want to be careful in the cuts so that we actually want to be careful in the cuts so we want to measure twice, be careful in the cuts so we want to measure twice, be careful in the cuts so we want to measure twice, if not Thrice. and cut once. we want to measure twice, if not Thrice. and cut once. we want to measure twice, if not Thrice. and cut once.\n\num, and uh, actually that if not Thrice. and cut once. um, and uh, actually that if not Thrice. and cut once. um, and uh, actually that is that is our approach. um, and uh, actually that is that is our approach. um, and uh, actually that is that is our approach. Uh, they may characterize is that is our approach. Uh, they may characterize is that is our approach.\n\nUh, they may characterize it as uh, shooting Uh, they may characterize it as uh, shooting Uh, they may characterize it as uh, shooting from the hip but it is it as uh, shooting from the hip but it is it as uh, shooting from the hip but it is anything. But that Uh, which from the hip but it is anything. But that Uh, which from the hip but it is anything. But that Uh, which is not to say that we anything.\n\nBut that Uh, which is not to say that we anything.\n\nBut that Uh, which is not to say that we make, we don't make is not to say that we make, we don't make is not to say that we make, we don't make mistakes if we were to make, we don't make mistakes if we were to make, we don't make mistakes if we were to approach this with the mistakes if we were to approach this with the mistakes if we were to approach this with the standard of making no approach this with the standard of making no approach this with the standard of making no mistakes at all.\n\nthat standard of making no mistakes at all. that standard of making no mistakes at all. that would be like, saying you, mistakes at all. that would be like, saying you, mistakes at all. that would be like, saying you, um, someone would be like, saying you, um, someone would be like, saying you, um, someone on baseball's got about a um, someone on baseball's got about a um, someone on baseball's got about a thousand. that's impossible.\n\non baseball's got about a thousand. that's impossible. on baseball's got about a thousand. that's impossible. Um, so when we do make thousand. that's impossible. Um, so when we do make thousand. that's impossible. Um, so when we do make mistakes, we correct them Um, so when we do make mistakes, we correct them Um, so when we do make mistakes, we correct them quickly. Um, and we we mistakes, we correct them quickly.\n\nUm, and we we mistakes, we correct them quickly. Um, and we we move on some people say quickly. Um, and we we move on some people say quickly. Um, and we we move on some people say this shouldn't take a move on some people say this shouldn't take a move on some people say this shouldn't take a rocket scientist. Uh, Steve this shouldn't take a rocket scientist. Uh, Steve this shouldn't take a rocket scientist.\n\nUh, Steve Davis, you are a rocket rocket scientist. Uh, Steve Davis, you are a rocket rocket scientist. Uh, Steve Davis, you are a rocket scientist. It used to be. Davis, you are a rocket scientist. It used to be. Davis, you are a rocket scientist. It used to be. Yeah. And now essentially scientist. It used to be. Yeah. And now essentially scientist. It used to be. Yeah. And now essentially you're the chief operating Yeah.\n\nAnd now essentially you're the chief operating Yeah. And now essentially you're the chief operating Officer of Doge. Um, you're the chief operating Officer of Doge. Um, you're the chief operating Officer of Doge. Um, day-to-day operations. fair Officer of Doge. Um, day-to-day operations. fair Officer of Doge. Um, day-to-day operations. fair to say, Um, yeah, part day-to-day operations. fair to say, Um, yeah, part day-to-day operations.\n\nfair to say, Um, yeah, part part of the Dutch team. to say, Um, yeah, part part of the Dutch team. to say, Um, yeah, part part of the Dutch team. What? So, how did you end up part of the Dutch team. What? So, how did you end up part of the Dutch team. What? So, how did you end up here? What's the biggest What? So, how did you end up here? What's the biggest What? So, how did you end up here? What's the biggest challenge? You see? um, the here?\n\nWhat's the biggest challenge? You see? um, the here? What's the biggest challenge? You see? um, the reason I'm here is probably challenge? You see? um, the reason I'm here is probably challenge? You see?\n\num, the reason I'm here is probably for many, is that I think reason I'm here is probably for many, is that I think reason I'm here is probably for many, is that I think the goal is incredibly for many, is that I think the goal is incredibly for many, is that I think the goal is incredibly inspiring. I think most of the goal is incredibly inspiring. I think most of the goal is incredibly inspiring.\n\nI think most of the taxpayers in the country inspiring. I think most of the taxpayers in the country inspiring. I think most of the taxpayers in the country would agree. that in order the taxpayers in the country would agree. that in order the taxpayers in the country would agree. that in order to have the the country would agree. that in order to have the the country would agree.\n\nthat in order to have the the country going bankrupt, would be a to have the the country going bankrupt, would be a to have the the country going bankrupt, would be a very bad thing and therefore going bankrupt, would be a very bad thing and therefore going bankrupt, would be a very bad thing and therefore the country going not very bad thing and therefore the country going not very bad thing and therefore the country going not bankrupt is a good thing.\n\nthe country going not bankrupt is a good thing. the country going not bankrupt is a good thing. Um, that all of us are bankrupt is a good thing. Um, that all of us are bankrupt is a good thing.\n\nUm, that all of us are willing to kind of put our Um, that all of us are willing to kind of put our Um, that all of us are willing to kind of put our lives on hold in order to willing to kind of put our lives on hold in order to willing to kind of put our lives on hold in order to do, I think the thing that's lives on hold in order to do, I think the thing that's lives on hold in order to do, I think the thing that's special right now is we do, I think the thing that's special right now is we do, I think the thing that's special right now is we actually believe there's a special right now is we actually believe there's a special right now is we actually believe there's a chance to succeed.\n\num, actually believe there's a chance to succeed. um, actually believe there's a chance to succeed. um, that a an Administration. chance to succeed. um, that a an Administration. chance to succeed. um, that a an Administration. that support of um, and a that a an Administration. that support of um, and a that a an Administration.\n\nthat support of um, and a great cabinet and just that support of um, and a great cabinet and just that support of um, and a great cabinet and just a great group. that will great cabinet and just a great group. that will great cabinet and just a great group. that will actually make success a a great group. that will actually make success a a great group.\n\nthat will actually make success a possible outcome And I think actually make success a possible outcome And I think actually make success a possible outcome And I think that's given the inspiring possible outcome And I think that's given the inspiring possible outcome And I think that's given the inspiring Mission and given, the, uh, that's given the inspiring Mission and given, the, uh, that's given the inspiring Mission and given, the, uh, non-zero chance of success Mission and given, the, uh, non-zero chance of success Mission and given, the, uh, non-zero chance of success it, it was worth doing.\n\nI non-zero chance of success it, it was worth doing. I non-zero chance of success it, it was worth doing. I just like to sort of it, it was worth doing. I just like to sort of it, it was worth doing.\n\nI just like to sort of re-emphasize that point the just like to sort of re-emphasize that point the just like to sort of re-emphasize that point the the success of those is re-emphasize that point the the success of those is re-emphasize that point the the success of those is only possible with the success of those is only possible with the success of those is only possible with President Trump And with the only possible with President Trump And with the only possible with President Trump And with the outstanding cabinet that he President Trump And with the outstanding cabinet that he President Trump And with the outstanding cabinet that he selected it would be outstanding cabinet that he selected it would be outstanding cabinet that he selected it would\n\nbe impossible without the selected it would be impossible without the selected it would be impossible without the support of the president and impossible without the support of the president and impossible without the support of the president and the cabinet.\n\nBut you're support of the president and the cabinet. But you're support of the president and the cabinet. But you're finding the money. I mean, the cabinet. But you're finding the money. I mean, the cabinet. But you're finding the money. I mean, it's big numbers, right? finding the money. I mean, it's big numbers, right? finding the money. I mean, it's big numbers, right? Yeah. Like Elon said, um, it's big numbers, right? Yeah.\n\nLike Elon said, um, it's big numbers, right? Yeah. Like Elon said, um, the minimum impulse bit is Yeah. Like Elon said, um, the minimum impulse bit is Yeah. Like Elon said, um, the minimum impulse bit is often a billion dollars. So, the minimum impulse bit is often a billion dollars. So, the minimum impulse bit is often a billion dollars. So, for example, the 830 often a billion dollars. So, for example, the 830 often a billion dollars.\n\nSo, for example, the 830 million, um, which was the for example, the 830 million, um, which was the for example, the 830 million, um, which was the online survey. That's an million, um, which was the online survey. That's an million, um, which was the online survey. That's an enormous amount of money. online survey. That's an enormous amount of money. online survey. That's an enormous amount of money.\n\nthat wouldn't have been enormous amount of money. that wouldn't have been enormous amount of money.\n\nthat wouldn't have been found if the dosh team that wouldn't have been found if the dosh team that wouldn't have been found if the dosh team wasn't working with it, In found if the dosh team wasn't working with it, In found if the dosh team wasn't working with it, In that case, the department wasn't working with it, In that case, the department wasn't working with it, In that case, the department of interior, but then that case, the department of interior, but then that case,\n\nthe department of interior, but then taking it 1 step further, of interior, but then taking it 1 step further, of interior, but then taking it 1 step further, Doge, then taking it 1 step further, Doge, then taking it 1 step further, Doge, then published publishes these Doge, then published publishes these Doge, then published publishes these things, on our website for published publishes these things, on our website for published publishes these things, on our website for maximum transparency.\n\nSo now things, on our website for maximum transparency. So now things, on our website for maximum transparency. So now the General Public it would maximum transparency. So now the General Public it would maximum transparency.\n\nSo now the General Public it would have been impossible for the General Public it would have been impossible for the General Public it would have been impossible for the general public to have have been impossible for the general public to have have been impossible for the general public to have seen that. now anyone can the general public to have seen that. now anyone can the general public to have seen that. now anyone can just log into doge.\n\ncom any seen that. now anyone can just log into doge. com any seen that. now anyone can just log into doge. com any time and see these payments just log into doge. com any time and see these payments just log into doge.\n\ncom any time and see these payments as they're not yet in real time and see these payments as they're not yet in real time and see these payments as they're not yet in real time, they're close, but as they're not yet in real time, they're close, but as they're not yet in real time, they're close, but they'll probably be in time, they're close, but they'll probably be in time, they're close, but they'll probably be in real time within the next they'll probably be in real time within the next they'll probably be in real time within the next few weeks.\n\nbut the process real time within the next few weeks. but the process real time within the next few weeks. but the process is still involves Congress, few weeks. but the process is still involves Congress, few weeks. but the process is still involves Congress, right? At some level, is still involves Congress, right? At some level, is still involves Congress, right? At some level, we're trying to keep right?\n\nAt some level, we're trying to keep right? At some level, we're trying to keep Congress as informed as we're trying to keep Congress as informed as we're trying to keep Congress as informed as possible. But uh, it the law Congress as informed as possible. But uh, it the law Congress as informed as possible. But uh, it the law does say that money needs possible. But uh, it the law does say that money needs possible.\n\nBut uh, it the law does say that money needs to be spent. uh, does say that money needs to be spent. uh, does say that money needs to be spent. uh, correctly, It should not to be spent. uh, correctly, It should not to be spent.\n\nuh, correctly, It should not be spent fraudulently or correctly, It should not be spent fraudulently or correctly, It should not be spent fraudulently or wastefully, it's not be spent fraudulently or wastefully, it's not be spent fraudulently or wastefully, it's not contrary to Congress to wastefully, it's not contrary to Congress to wastefully, it's not contrary to Congress to avoid waste and fraud.\n\nIt contrary to Congress to avoid waste and fraud. It contrary to Congress to avoid waste and fraud. It is consistent with the law avoid waste and fraud. It is consistent with the law avoid waste and fraud.\n\nIt is consistent with the law and consistent with is consistent with the law and consistent with is consistent with the law and consistent with Congress And we've seen and consistent with Congress And we've seen and consistent with Congress And we've seen actually great support. Congress And we've seen actually great support. Congress And we've seen actually great support. at least from the actually great support.\n\nat least from the actually great support. at least from the Republican side of of the at least from the Republican side of of the at least from the Republican side of of the house and occasionally some Republican side of of the house and occasionally some Republican side of of the house and occasionally some Democrats too. I think, you house and occasionally some Democrats too. I think, you house and occasionally some Democrats too.\n\nI think, you know, it's nice to see Democrats too. I think, you know, it's nice to see Democrats too. I think, you know, it's nice to see people cross the know, it's nice to see people cross the know, it's nice to see people cross the allay once in a while. Um, people cross the allay once in a while. Um, people cross the allay once in a while. Um, but uh What? Usually, when allay once in a while. Um, but uh What?\n\nUsually, when allay once in a while. Um, but uh What? Usually, when they attack those they but uh What? Usually, when they attack those they but uh What? Usually, when they attack those they never attack any of the they attack those they never attack any of the they attack those they never attack any of the specifics. So, they they'll never attack any of the specifics. So, they they'll never attack any of the specifics.\n\nSo, they they'll say what we're doing is specifics. So, they they'll say what we're doing is specifics. So, they they'll say what we're doing is somehow. unconstitutional say what we're doing is somehow. unconstitutional say what we're doing is somehow. unconstitutional or legal or whatever we're somehow. unconstitutional or legal or whatever we're somehow.\n\nunconstitutional or legal or whatever we're like well which line of or legal or whatever we're like well which line of or legal or whatever we're like well which line of the cost savings? Do you like well which line of the cost savings? Do you like well which line of the cost savings? Do you disagree with? And they the cost savings? Do you disagree with? And they the cost savings? Do you disagree with?\n\nAnd they can't point to any and we disagree with? And they can't point to any and we disagree with? And they can't point to any and we list them all on on can't point to any and we list them all on on can't point to any and we list them all on on dos. gov. and and the Doge list them all on on dos. gov. and and the Doge list them all on on dos. gov. and and the Doge handle on x. and you'll see dos. gov. and and the Doge handle on x.\n\nand you'll see dos. gov. and and the Doge handle on x. and you'll see just outrageous things 1 handle on x. and you'll see just outrageous things 1 handle on x. and you'll see just outrageous things 1 outrageous thing. After just outrageous things 1 outrageous thing. After just outrageous things 1 outrageous thing. After another, Joe Gabby. Um, outrageous thing. After another, Joe Gabby. Um, outrageous thing. After another, Joe Gabby.\n\nUm, besides uh, Elon you're another, Joe Gabby. Um, besides uh, Elon you're another, Joe Gabby. Um, besides uh, Elon you're 1 of several billionaires besides uh, Elon you're 1 of several billionaires besides uh, Elon you're 1 of several billionaires here co-founder of Airbnb. 1 of several billionaires here co-founder of Airbnb. 1 of several billionaires here co-founder of Airbnb. Um, and you wanted to help here co-founder of Airbnb.\n\nUm, and you wanted to help here co-founder of Airbnb. Um, and you wanted to help out something to Anthony and Um, and you wanted to help out something to Anthony and Um, and you wanted to help out something to Anthony and Elon probably back in out something to Anthony and Elon probably back in out something to Anthony and Elon probably back in February. and they tell me Elon probably back in February.\n\nand they tell me Elon probably back in February. and they tell me something about a, a mine. February. and they tell me something about a, a mine. February. and they tell me something about a, a mine. that was dealt with something about a, a mine. that was dealt with something about a, a mine. that was dealt with retirement. And they said that was dealt with retirement. And they said that was dealt with retirement.\n\nAnd they said that he's somebody to help retirement. And they said that he's somebody to help retirement. And they said that he's somebody to help out to fix retirement in that he's somebody to help out to fix retirement in that he's somebody to help out to fix retirement in the government. um, I uh, I out to fix retirement in the government. um, I uh, I out to fix retirement in the government. um, I uh, I love the challenge, so I the government.\n\num, I uh, I love the challenge, so I the government. um, I uh, I love the challenge, so I jumped on board. and it love the challenge, so I jumped on board. and it love the challenge, so I jumped on board. and it turns out there is actually jumped on board. and it turns out there is actually jumped on board. and it turns out there is actually a mine. in Pennsylvania. uh turns out there is actually a mine. in Pennsylvania.\n\nuh turns out there is actually a mine. in Pennsylvania. uh that houses every paper a mine. in Pennsylvania. uh that houses every paper a mine. in Pennsylvania. uh that houses every paper document for the retirement that houses every paper document for the retirement that houses every paper document for the retirement process in the government. document for the retirement process in the government.\n\ndocument for the retirement process in the government. Now picture this this this process in the government. Now picture this this this process in the government. Now picture this this this giant cave has 22. filing Now picture this this this giant cave has 22. filing Now picture this this this giant cave has 22. filing cabinets. Stacked 10 high to giant cave has 22. filing cabinets. Stacked 10 high to giant cave has 22. filing cabinets.\n\nStacked 10 high to house. 400 million pieces cabinets. Stacked 10 high to house. 400 million pieces cabinets. Stacked 10 high to house. 400 million pieces of paper. Uh, it's a house. 400 million pieces of paper. Uh, it's a house. 400 million pieces of paper. Uh, it's a process that started in the of paper. Uh, it's a process that started in the of paper.\n\nUh, it's a process that started in the 1950s and largely hasn't process that started in the 1950s and largely hasn't process that started in the 1950s and largely hasn't changed. in the last 70 1950s and largely hasn't changed. in the last 70 1950s and largely hasn't changed. in the last 70 years. and so, as he dug changed. in the last 70 years. and so, as he dug changed. in the last 70 years. and so, as he dug into it, we found a years.\n\nand so, as he dug into it, we found a years. and so, as he dug into it, we found a retirement cases that had into it, we found a retirement cases that had into it, we found a retirement cases that had so much paper. They had retirement cases that had so much paper. They had retirement cases that had so much paper. They had to fit it on a shipping so much paper. They had to fit it on a shipping so much paper.\n\nThey had to fit it on a shipping pallet so, uh, the process to fit it on a shipping pallet so, uh, the process to fit it on a shipping pallet so, uh, the process takes many months and we're pallet so, uh, the process takes many months and we're pallet so, uh, the process takes many months and we're going to make it just takes many months and we're going to make it just takes many months and we're going to make it just many days.\n\nWell, it would be going to make it just many days. Well, it would be going to make it just many days. Well, it would be digitized or how. many days. Well, it would be digitized or how. many days. Well, it would be digitized or how. So this will be an digitized or how. So this will be an digitized or how.\n\nSo this will be an an online digital process that So this will be an an online digital process that So this will be an an online digital process that will take just a few days an online digital process that will take just a few days an online digital process that will take just a few days at most And I really will take just a few days at most And I really will take just a few days at most And I really think, you know, it's an at most And I really think, you know, it's an at most And I really think, you know, it's an injustice.\n\nTo civil think, you know, it's an injustice. To civil think, you know, it's an injustice. To civil servants. Who are subjected injustice. To civil servants. Who are subjected injustice. To civil servants. Who are subjected to these processes that? are servants. Who are subjected to these processes that? are servants. Who are subjected to these processes that? are older than the age of half to these processes that?\n\nare older than the age of half to these processes that? are older than the age of half the people watching your older than the age of half the people watching your older than the age of half the people watching your show tonight. so, we the people watching your show tonight. so, we the people watching your show tonight. so, we really believe that the show tonight. so, we really believe that the show tonight.\n\nso, we really believe that the government can have an really believe that the government can have an really believe that the government can have an Apple Store like experience. government can have an Apple Store like experience. government can have an Apple Store like experience. even if we designed, great Apple Store like experience. even if we designed, great Apple Store like experience.\n\neven if we designed, great user experience, modern even if we designed, great user experience, modern even if we designed, great user experience, modern systems, because right now, user experience, modern systems, because right now, user experience, modern systems, because right now, it's by hand. Yes. the the systems, because right now, it's by hand. Yes. the the systems, because right now, it's by hand. Yes.\n\nthe the retirement process is all it's by hand. Yes. the the retirement process is all it's by hand. Yes.\n\nthe the retirement process is all by paper Literally with retirement process is all by paper Literally with retirement process is all by paper Literally with people carrying paper and by paper Literally with people carrying paper and by paper Literally with people carrying paper and manila envelopes in into people carrying paper and manila envelopes in into people carrying paper and manila envelopes in into this gigantic mind.\n\nso manila envelopes in into this gigantic mind. so manila envelopes in into this gigantic mind. so they can't retire more this gigantic mind. so they can't retire more this gigantic mind. so they can't retire more than a certain number every they can't retire more than a certain number every they can't retire more than a certain number every month. Yes, about 8,000 than a certain number every month.\n\nYes, about 8,000 than a certain number every month. Yes, about 8,000 a month. that that's how month. Yes, about 8,000 a month. that that's how month. Yes, about 8,000 a month. that that's how we. the reason we a month. that that's how we. the reason we a month. that that's how we. the reason we discovered it was We were we. the reason we discovered it was We were we.\n\nthe reason we discovered it was We were saying like well, let's discovered it was We were saying like well, let's discovered it was We were saying like well, let's encourage saying like well, let's encourage saying like well, let's encourage voluntary retirement. I said, encourage voluntary retirement. I said, encourage voluntary retirement. I said, well, the most you could be voluntary retirement.\n\nI said, well, the most you could be voluntary retirement. I said, well, the most you could be that could do is 8,000 well, the most you could be that could do is 8,000 well, the most you could be that could do is 8,000 a month. Um, and And even. that could do is 8,000 a month. Um, and And even. that could do is 8,000 a month. Um, and And even. uh, I don't know a month. Um, and And even. uh, I don't know a month. Um, and And even.\n\nuh, I don't know circumstances, it can take uh, I don't know circumstances, it can take uh, I don't know circumstances, it can take 6 to 9 months just to, just circumstances, it can take 6 to 9 months just to, just circumstances, it can take 6 to 9 months just to, just to have your time at 6 to 9 months just to, just to have your time at 6 to 9 months just to, just to have your time at paperwork processed, to have your time at paperwork processed, to have your time at paperwork processed, uh, and they often get the paperwork processed, uh, and they often get the paperwork processed, uh, and they often get the calculations wrong.\n\nSo uh, and they often get the calculations wrong. So uh, and they often get the calculations wrong. So we're like, well, why would calculations wrong. So we're like, well, why would calculations wrong. So we're like, well, why would it take so long to we're like, well, why would it take so long to we're like, well, why would it take so long to retire? And they're like, it take so long to retire? And they're like, it take so long to retire?\n\nAnd they're like, well, because of the retire? And they're like, well, because of the retire? And they're like, well, because of the mind, you're like, what well, because of the mind, you're like, what well, because of the mind, you're like, what do you mean the Mind? mind, you're like, what do you mean the Mind? mind, you're like, what do you mean the Mind? What's the mind got to do do you mean the Mind?\n\nWhat's the mind got to do do you mean the Mind?\n\nWhat's the mind got to do with retiring and that's What's the mind got to do with retiring and that's What's the mind got to do with retiring and that's what we discovered the that with retiring and that's what we discovered the that with retiring and that's what we discovered the that that uh, all the retirement what we discovered the that that uh, all the retirement what we discovered the that that uh, all the retirement stuff is done by still that uh, all the retirement stuff is done by still that uh, all the retirement stuff is done by still done by paper.\n\nin a stuff is done by still done by paper. in a stuff is done by still done by paper. in a process, that looks done by paper. in a process, that looks done by paper. in a process, that looks identical to what occurred process, that looks identical to what occurred process, that looks identical to what occurred in the 1950s. Like if you identical to what occurred in the 1950s. Like if you identical to what occurred in the 1950s.\n\nLike if you took a snapshot of the in the 1950s. Like if you took a snapshot of the in the 1950s. Like if you took a snapshot of the mine, when it first started took a snapshot of the mine, when it first started took a snapshot of the mine, when it first started in the 50s to today, mine, when it first started in the 50s to today, mine, when it first started in the 50s to today, it looks the same. It's in the 50s to today, it looks the same.\n\nIt's in the 50s to today, it looks the same. It's amazing. So, how long it looks the same. It's amazing. So, how long it looks the same. It's amazing. So, how long do you think it'll take amazing. So, how long do you think it'll take amazing. So, how long do you think it'll take take to turn over? or do you think it'll take take to turn over? or do you think it'll take take to turn over? or work in as fast as we take to turn over?\n\nor work in as fast as we take to turn over? or work in as fast as we can? Uh, probably next work in as fast as we can? Uh, probably next work in as fast as we can? Uh, probably next couple of months, we'll can? Uh, probably next couple of months, we'll can? Uh, probably next couple of months, we'll have this this overhaul. couple of months, we'll have this this overhaul. couple of months, we'll have this this overhaul.\n\nand, you know, I really have this this overhaul. and, you know, I really have this this overhaul. and, you know, I really think again, like why and, you know, I really think again, like why and, you know, I really think again, like why are we subjecting? our think again, like why are we subjecting? our think again, like why are we subjecting? our federal workers to processes are we subjecting? our federal workers to processes are we subjecting?\n\nour federal workers to processes that they actually have federal workers to processes that they actually have federal workers to processes that they actually have to go through a training? that they actually have to go through a training? that they actually have to go through a training? just to retire from the to go through a training? just to retire from the to go through a training? just to retire from the government?\n\nThere's a whole just to retire from the government? There's a whole just to retire from the government? There's a whole training program that government? There's a whole training program that government? There's a whole training program that people have to go training program that people have to go training program that people have to go through. in order to people have to go through. in order to people have to go through. in order to retire.\n\nI think we can do through. in order to retire. I think we can do through. in order to retire. I think we can do better for them. Armed Doge retire. I think we can do better for them. Armed Doge retire. I think we can do better for them. Armed Doge engineer. Uh, you go better for them. Armed Doge engineer. Uh, you go better for them. Armed Doge engineer. Uh, you go in to these places 1 of the engineer.\n\nUh, you go in to these places 1 of the engineer. Uh, you go in to these places 1 of the more than a dozen in to these places 1 of the more than a dozen in to these places 1 of the more than a dozen engineers. First people to more than a dozen engineers. First people to more than a dozen engineers. First people to go into the agencies and engineers. First people to go into the agencies and engineers.\n\nFirst people to go into the agencies and view the computer data go into the agencies and view the computer data go into the agencies and view the computer data sets. tell me what you're view the computer data sets. tell me what you're view the computer data sets. tell me what you're finding and for people who sets. tell me what you're finding and for people who sets.\n\ntell me what you're finding and for people who don't understand how that finding and for people who don't understand how that finding and for people who don't understand how that process works, explain it don't understand how that process works, explain it don't understand how that process works, explain it for them. Yeah. Um, I'll say process works, explain it for them. Yeah. Um, I'll say process works, explain it for them. Yeah.\n\nUm, I'll say the first thing that got me for them. Yeah. Um, I'll say the first thing that got me for them. Yeah. Um, I'll say the first thing that got me really excited about Doge the first thing that got me really excited about Doge the first thing that got me really excited about Doge was learning. Um, basically, really excited about Doge was learning. Um, basically, really excited about Doge was learning.\n\nUm, basically, the state of government was learning. Um, basically, the state of government was learning. Um, basically, the state of government computers Um, By some the state of government computers Um, By some the state of government computers Um, By some estimates. government it computers Um, By some estimates. government it computers Um, By some estimates. government it costs about hundred billion estimates.\n\ngovernment it costs about hundred billion estimates. government it costs about hundred billion dollars. And, uh, costs about hundred billion dollars. And, uh, costs about hundred billion dollars. And, uh, its funding systems that are dollars. And, uh, its funding systems that are dollars. And, uh, its funding systems that are over. 50 years old. in the its funding systems that are over. 50 years old. in the its funding systems that are over.\n\n50 years old. in the case of something like over. 50 years old. in the case of something like over. 50 years old. in the case of something like Social Security or the case of something like Social Security or the case of something like Social Security or the IRS. So really critical Social Security or the IRS. So really critical Social Security or the IRS. So really critical systems are are old, they IRS.\n\nSo really critical systems are are old, they IRS. So really critical systems are are old, they cost a lot of money to systems are are old, they cost a lot of money to systems are are old, they cost a lot of money to maintain. and um they can cost a lot of money to maintain. and um they can cost a lot of money to maintain. and um they can be the the efforts to maintain. and um they can be the the efforts to maintain.\n\nand um they can be the the efforts to improve them are often very be the the efforts to improve them are often very be the the efforts to improve them are often very delayed. so, I thought I'm a improve them are often very delayed. so, I thought I'm a improve them are often very delayed. so, I thought I'm a software engineer. um, that delayed. so, I thought I'm a software engineer. um, that delayed. so, I thought I'm a software engineer.\n\num, that that maybe software engineer. um, that that maybe software engineer.\n\num, that that maybe can make a difference here and that maybe can make a difference here and that maybe can make a difference here and And, um, That's, that's can make a difference here and And, um, That's, that's can make a difference here and And, um, That's, that's really what inspired me And, um, That's, that's really what inspired me And, um, That's, that's really what inspired me at a high level. of really what inspired me at a high level.\n\nof really what inspired me at a high level. of history about social at a high level. of history about social at a high level.\n\nof history about social security and a lot of words history about social security and a lot of words history about social security and a lot of words about it from here's what security and a lot of words about it from here's what security and a lot of words about it from here's what Democrats have been saying about it from here's what Democrats have been saying about it from here's what Democrats have been saying about it.\n\nIt's absurd that Democrats have been saying about it. It's absurd that Democrats have been saying about it. It's absurd that Elon Musk is trying to about it. It's absurd that Elon Musk is trying to about it.\n\nIt's absurd that Elon Musk is trying to eliminate billions of Elon Musk is trying to eliminate billions of Elon Musk is trying to eliminate billions of dollars from Social eliminate billions of dollars from Social eliminate billions of dollars from Social Security. Elon Musk and dollars from Social Security. Elon Musk and dollars from Social Security. Elon Musk and president Trump have set Security.\n\nElon Musk and president Trump have set Security. Elon Musk and president Trump have set their sights on cutting president Trump have set their sights on cutting president Trump have set their sights on cutting Social Security. Their goal their sights on cutting Social Security. Their goal their sights on cutting Social Security. Their goal is clear Destroy Social Social Security. Their goal is clear Destroy Social Social Security.\n\nTheir goal is clear Destroy Social Security from within. is clear Destroy Social Security from within. is clear Destroy Social Security from within. you're in the building. Security from within. you're in the building. Security from within. you're in the building. I mean, you're in the you're in the building. I mean, you're in the you're in the building.\n\nI mean, you're in the computers, what's happening I mean, you're in the computers, what's happening I mean, you're in the computers, what's happening there? What are you doing? computers, what's happening there? What are you doing? computers, what's happening there? What are you doing? Yeah. it doesn't line up there? What are you doing? Yeah. it doesn't line up there? What are you doing? Yeah. it doesn't line up with uh, my experience on Yeah.\n\nit doesn't line up with uh, my experience on Yeah.\n\nit doesn't line up with uh, my experience on the ground and I'll say the with uh, my experience on the ground and I'll say the with uh, my experience on the ground and I'll say the 2 improvements that we're the ground and I'll say the 2 improvements that we're the ground and I'll say the 2 improvements that we're trying to make to Social 2 improvements that we're trying to make to Social 2 improvements that we're trying to make to Social Security are um, helping trying to make to Social Security are um, helping trying to make to Social Security are um, helping people that legitimately Security are um, helping people that legitimately Security are um, helping people that legitimately get benefits.\n\nprotect them people that legitimately get benefits. protect them people that legitimately get benefits. protect them from fraud. um, that they get benefits. protect them from fraud. um, that they get benefits. protect them from fraud. um, that they experience every day on a from fraud. um, that they experience every day on a from fraud. um, that they experience every day on a routine basis. and, uh, experience every day on a routine basis.\n\nand, uh, experience every day on a routine basis. and, uh, also make the experience routine basis. and, uh, also make the experience routine basis. and, uh, also make the experience better. Um, and I'll give also make the experience better. Um, and I'll give also make the experience better. Um, and I'll give you 1, 1 example. is at better. Um, and I'll give you 1, 1 example. is at better. Um, and I'll give you 1, 1 example. is at Social Security.\n\num, 1 of you 1, 1 example. is at Social Security. um, 1 of you 1, 1 example. is at Social Security. um, 1 of the first things we learned Social Security. um, 1 of the first things we learned Social Security.\n\num, 1 of the first things we learned is that they get phone the first things we learned is that they get phone the first things we learned is that they get phone calls every day of people is that they get phone calls every day of people is that they get phone calls every day of people trying to change direct calls every day of people trying to change direct calls every day of people trying to change direct deposit information.\n\nSo trying to change direct deposit information. So trying to change direct deposit information. So when you want to change deposit information. So when you want to change deposit information. So when you want to change your bank account, you can when you want to change your bank account, you can when you want to change your bank account, you can call Social Security. Um, your bank account, you can call Social Security.\n\nUm, your bank account, you can call Social Security. Um, we learned 40% of the phone call Social Security. Um, we learned 40% of the phone call Social Security. Um, we learned 40% of the phone calls that they get are we learned 40% of the phone calls that they get are we learned 40% of the phone calls that they get are from fraudsters. 40%. calls that they get are from fraudsters. 40%. calls that they get are from fraudsters. 40%. that's right.\n\nAlmost half. from fraudsters. 40%. that's right. Almost half. from fraudsters. 40%. that's right. Almost half. Yes. And and and they, they that's right. Almost half. Yes. And and and they, they that's right. Almost half. Yes. And and and they, they steal people's Social Yes. And and and they, they steal people's Social Yes. And and and they, they steal people's Social Security is what happens. steal people's Social Security is what happens.\n\nsteal people's Social Security is what happens. is they they call in, Security is what happens. is they they call in, Security is what happens. is they they call in, they say, they claim to is they they call in, they say, they claim to is they they call in, they say, they claim to be, uh, a retiree. Um, then they say, they claim to be, uh, a retiree. Um, then they say, they claim to be, uh, a retiree.\n\nUm, then they they and they be, uh, a retiree. Um, then they they and they be, uh, a retiree.\n\nUm, then they they and they convinced the post, the they they and they convinced the post, the they they and they convinced the post, the Social Security person convinced the post, the Social Security person convinced the post, the Social Security person on the phone to change the Social Security person on the phone to change the Social Security person on the phone to change the where the, where the on the phone to change the where the, where the on the phone to change the where the, where the money is flowing.\n\nIt it where the, where the money is flowing. It it where the, where the money is flowing. It it it actually goes to some money is flowing. It it it actually goes to some money is flowing. It it it actually goes to some fraudster. Is this happening it actually goes to some fraudster. Is this happening it actually goes to some fraudster. Is this happening all day every day? and and fraudster. Is this happening all day every day? and and fraudster.\n\nIs this happening all day every day? and and then, and then somebody all day every day? and and then, and then somebody all day every day?\n\nand and then, and then somebody isn't received their social then, and then somebody isn't received their social then, and then somebody isn't received their social security is because isn't received their social security is because isn't received their social security is because uh, of of all the loopholes security is because uh, of of all the loopholes security is because uh, of of all the loopholes in the social security uh, of of all the loopholes in the social security uh,\n\nof of all the loopholes in the social security system, how do you reassure in the social security system, how do you reassure in the social security system, how do you reassure people That what you all system, how do you reassure people That what you all system, how do you reassure people That what you all are doing?\n\nis not going to people That what you all are doing? is not going to people That what you all are doing? is not going to affect their benefits? are doing? is not going to affect their benefits? are doing? is not going to affect their benefits? No, in fact what what we're affect their benefits? No, in fact what what we're affect their benefits? No, in fact what what we're doing? Will help their No, in fact what what we're doing?\n\nWill help their No, in fact what what we're doing? Will help their benefits legitimate people doing? Will help their benefits legitimate people doing? Will help their benefits legitimate people as a result of the benefits legitimate people as a result of the benefits legitimate people as a result of the work of Doge Will receive as a result of the work of Doge Will receive as a result of the work of Doge Will receive more Social Security.\n\nnot work of Doge Will receive more Social Security. not work of Doge Will receive more Social Security. not less. on emphasize that as more Social Security. not less. on emphasize that as more Social Security. not less. on emphasize that as a result of the work of less. on emphasize that as a result of the work of less.\n\non emphasize that as a result of the work of Doge legitimate a result of the work of Doge legitimate a result of the work of Doge legitimate uh, recipients of Social Doge legitimate uh, recipients of Social Doge legitimate uh, recipients of Social Security. will receive more uh, recipients of Social Security. will receive more uh, recipients of Social Security. will receive more money. not less money. Security. will receive more money.\n\nnot less money. Security. will receive more money. not less money. All right. I'll emphasize money. not less money. All right. I'll emphasize money. not less money. All right. I'll emphasize that point and and and let All right. I'll emphasize that point and and and let All right. I'll emphasize that point and and and let the record show. that I that point and and and let the record show. that I that point and and and let the record show.\n\nthat I said this. and the it will the record show. that I said this. and the it will the record show. that I said this. and the it will be proven out to be true. said this. and the it will be proven out to be true. said this. and the it will be proven out to be true. Let's let's check back on be proven out to be true. Let's let's check back on be proven out to be true. Let's let's check back on this in the future.\n\nSo Let's let's check back on this in the future. So Let's let's check back on this in the future. So Washington, Post the Social this in the future. So Washington, Post the Social this in the future.\n\nSo Washington, Post the Social Security Administration, Washington, Post the Social Security Administration, Washington, Post the Social Security Administration, website, crashed Security Administration, website, crashed Security Administration, website, crashed 4 times in 10 days this website, crashed 4 times in 10 days this website, crashed 4 times in 10 days this month because the servers 4 times in 10 days this month because the servers 4 times in 10 days this month because the servers were overloaded blocking month because the servers were overloaded blocking month because the servers were overloaded blocking millions of retirees and were overloaded blocking millions of retirees and were overloaded blocking millions of retirees and disabled veterans\n\nfrom millions of retirees and disabled veterans from millions of retirees and disabled veterans from logging into their online disabled veterans from logging into their online disabled veterans from logging into their online accounts.\n\nFreaked people logging into their online accounts. Freaked people logging into their online accounts. Freaked people out. Is it is that accounts. Freaked people out. Is it is that accounts. Freaked people out. Is it is that going to Change. Yes, we're out. Is it is that going to Change. Yes, we're out. Is it is that going to Change. Yes, we're going to make sure that the going to Change. Yes, we're going to make sure that the going to Change.\n\nYes, we're going to make sure that the website stays online. Yeah. going to make sure that the website stays online. Yeah. going to make sure that the website stays online. Yeah. I mean but is it a result website stays online. Yeah. I mean but is it a result website stays online. Yeah. I mean but is it a result of going in there? or I mean but is it a result of going in there? or I mean but is it a result of going in there?\n\nor something you're doing? It's, of going in there? or something you're doing? It's, of going in there? or something you're doing? It's, it's now the, um, the something you're doing? It's, it's now the, um, the something you're doing?\n\nIt's, it's now the, um, the amount of issues that it's now the, um, the amount of issues that it's now the, um, the amount of issues that were the social security amount of issues that were the social security amount of issues that were the social security system are, are enormous were the social security system are, are enormous were the social security system are, are enormous as an example. there are system are, are enormous as an example.\n\nthere are system are, are enormous as an example. there are over 15 million people as an example. there are over 15 million people as an example. there are over 15 million people that are over the age of over 15 million people that are over the age of over 15 million people that are over the age of 120. that are marked as that are over the age of 120. that are marked as that are over the age of 120. that are marked as alive. In the social 120.\n\nthat are marked as alive. In the social 120. that are marked as alive. In the social security system, and that's alive. In the social security system, and that's alive. In the social security system, and that's an accurate. figure. security system, and that's an accurate. figure. security system, and that's an accurate. figure. Yeah, interact 15. an accurate. figure. Yeah, interact 15. an accurate. figure. Yeah, interact 15. correct.\n\nThis has been Yeah, interact 15. correct. This has been Yeah, interact 15. correct. This has been something that's been correct. This has been something that's been correct. This has been something that's been identified as a problem something that's been identified as a problem something that's been identified as a problem again. Pre-existing identified as a problem again. Pre-existing identified as a problem again.\n\nPre-existing problems since 2008 at again. Pre-existing problems since 2008 at again. Pre-existing problems since 2008 at least from an IG report. problems since 2008 at least from an IG report. problems since 2008 at least from an IG report. So this there are some least from an IG report. So this there are some least from an IG report.\n\nSo this there are some great people working at the So this there are some great people working at the So this there are some great people working at the Social Security great people working at the Social Security great people working at the Social Security Administration and Social Social Security Administration and Social Social Security Administration and Social Security Administration Administration and Social Security Administration Administration and Social Security Administration that found this 2008.\n\nand Security Administration that found this 2008. and Security Administration that found this 2008. and nothing was done. and so that found this 2008. and nothing was done. and so that found this 2008. and nothing was done. and so 15 to 20 million nothing was done. and so 15 to 20 million nothing was done.\n\nand so 15 to 20 million Social Security numbers that 15 to 20 million Social Security numbers that 15 to 20 million Social Security numbers that were clearly fraudulent. Um, Social Security numbers that were clearly fraudulent. Um, Social Security numbers that were clearly fraudulent. Um, were floating around um, were clearly fraudulent. Um, were floating around um, were clearly fraudulent. Um, were floating around um, that can be used to.\n\nonly were floating around um, that can be used to. only were floating around um, that can be used to. only for about intentions. that can be used to. only for about intentions. that can be used to. only for about intentions. there would be no way for about intentions. there would be no way for about intentions.\n\nthere would be no way to use this for good there would be no way to use this for good there would be no way to use this for good intentions. And so what to use this for good intentions. And so what to use this for good intentions. And so what 1 of the things to do team intentions. And so what 1 of the things to do team intentions.\n\nAnd so what 1 of the things to do team is doing is carefully and, 1 of the things to do team is doing is carefully and, 1 of the things to do team is doing is carefully and, and very methodically is doing is carefully and, and very methodically is doing is carefully and, and very methodically looking at those and making and very methodically looking at those and making and very methodically looking at those and making sure that any fraudulent looking at those and making sure that any fraudulent looking at those and making sure that any fraudulent ones are eliminated.\n\nBrad sure that any fraudulent ones are eliminated. Brad sure that any fraudulent ones are eliminated. Brad Smith. uh, working at HHS ones are eliminated. Brad Smith. uh, working at HHS ones are eliminated. Brad Smith. uh, working at HHS um, and obviously another Smith. uh, working at HHS um, and obviously another Smith.\n\nuh, working at HHS um, and obviously another element is Medicare and um, and obviously another element is Medicare and um, and obviously another element is Medicare and Medicaid. NIH. uh, what element is Medicare and Medicaid. NIH. uh, what element is Medicare and Medicaid. NIH. uh, what are you finding Yeah. Well Medicaid. NIH. uh, what are you finding Yeah. Well Medicaid. NIH. uh, what are you finding Yeah.\n\nWell I'd say there's a couple are you finding Yeah. Well I'd say there's a couple are you finding Yeah.\n\nWell I'd say there's a couple things we're really I'd say there's a couple things we're really I'd say there's a couple things we're really committed to in our work things we're really committed to in our work things we're really committed to in our work at HHS number 1, Making committed to in our work at HHS number 1, Making committed to in our work at HHS number 1, Making sure we continue to have at HHS number 1, Making sure we continue to have at HHS number 1, Making sure we continue to have the best biomedical sure we continue to have the best biomedical sure we continue to have the best biomedical research have the world.\n\nthe best biomedical research have the world. the best biomedical research have the world. And number 2, making sure research have the world. And number 2, making sure research have the world. And number 2, making sure which president Trump has And number 2, making sure which president Trump has And number 2, making sure which president Trump has said over and over again. which president Trump has said over and over again.\n\nwhich president Trump has said over and over again. That we 100% protect said over and over again. That we 100% protect said over and over again. That we 100% protect Medicare and Medicaid, but That we 100% protect Medicare and Medicaid, but That we 100% protect Medicare and Medicaid, but there's a lot of Medicare and Medicaid, but there's a lot of Medicare and Medicaid, but there's a lot of opportunity. So if I take there's a lot of opportunity.\n\nSo if I take there's a lot of opportunity. So if I take NIH as an example today, opportunity. So if I take NIH as an example today, opportunity.\n\nSo if I take NIH as an example today, if you're NIH researcher NIH as an example today, if you're NIH researcher NIH as an example today, if you're NIH researcher and you get a hundred dollar if you're NIH researcher and you get a hundred dollar if you're NIH researcher and you get a hundred dollar Grant at your University and you get a hundred dollar Grant at your University and you get a hundred dollar Grant at your University today, you get to Grant at your University today,\n\nyou get to Grant at your University today, you get to spend 60 of that and your today, you get to spend 60 of that and your today, you get to spend 60 of that and your University spends 40 of spend 60 of that and your University spends 40 of spend 60 of that and your University spends 40 of that.\n\nthe policy that we're University spends 40 of that. the policy that we're University spends 40 of that. the policy that we're proposing to make is that that. the policy that we're proposing to make is that that.\n\nthe policy that we're proposing to make is that you get to spend 85 of that proposing to make is that you get to spend 85 of that proposing to make is that you get to spend 85 of that and your University spends you get to spend 85 of that and your University spends you get to spend 85 of that and your University spends 15. So that's more money and your University spends 15. So that's more money and your University spends 15.\n\nSo that's more money going directly to the 15. So that's more money going directly to the 15. So that's more money going directly to the scientists who are going directly to the scientists who are going directly to the scientists who are discovering new cures. scientists who are discovering new cures. scientists who are discovering new cures. Another example at NIH is discovering new cures. Another example at NIH is discovering new cures.\n\nAnother example at NIH is today they have 27, Another example at NIH is today they have 27, Another example at NIH is today they have 27, different centers, they got today they have 27, different centers, they got today they have 27, different centers, they got created over time by different centers, they got created over time by different centers, they got created over time by Congress and they're created over time by Congress and they're created over time by Congress and they're typically by disease state Congress and they're typically by disease state Congress and they're typically by disease state or body system.\n\nThere's 700 typically by disease state or body system. There's 700 typically by disease state or body system. There's 700 different it systems today or body system. There's 700 different it systems today or body system. There's 700 different it systems today at NIH 700 different it different it systems today at NIH 700 different it different it systems today at NIH 700 different it Software System. They at NIH 700 different it Software System.\n\nThey at NIH 700 different it Software System. They don't, they can't speak Software System. They don't, they can't speak Software System. They don't, they can't speak to each other so they don't don't, they can't speak to each other so they don't don't, they can't speak to each other so they don't talk to 1. They have 27 to each other so they don't talk to 1. They have 27 to each other so they don't talk to 1.\n\nThey have 27 different cios and so talk to 1. They have 27 different cios and so talk to 1.\n\nThey have 27 different cios and so when you think about making different cios and so when you think about making different cios and so when you think about making great medical discoveries, when you think about making great medical discoveries, when you think about making great medical discoveries, you have to connect the great medical discoveries, you have to connect the great medical discoveries, you have to connect the data time.\n\nYeah, you said you have to connect the data time. Yeah, you said you have to connect the data time. Yeah, you said 27 different Chief data time. Yeah, you said 27 different Chief data time. Yeah, you said 27 different Chief Information officers. 27 different Chief Information officers. 27 different Chief Information officers. Correct. And Information officers. Correct. And Information officers. Correct. And most people on Tech. So Correct.\n\nAnd most people on Tech. So Correct. And most people on Tech. So there's a lot there, most people on Tech. So there's a lot there, most people on Tech. So there's a lot there, There's a, there's a there's a lot there, There's a, there's a there's a lot there, There's a, there's a opportunity, and it will make There's a, there's a opportunity, and it will make There's a, there's a opportunity, and it will make When I say that.\n\nuh, our job opportunity, and it will make When I say that. uh, our job opportunity, and it will make When I say that. uh, our job is tech support. I really When I say that. uh, our job is tech support. I really When I say that. uh, our job is tech support. I really mean it. Yeah. we have to is tech support. I really mean it. Yeah. we have to is tech support. I really mean it. Yeah. we have to fix the computers. If the mean it. Yeah.\n\nwe have to fix the computers. If the mean it. Yeah. we have to fix the computers. If the computers can't talk to fix the computers. If the computers can't talk to fix the computers. If the computers can't talk to each other, you can't get computers can't talk to each other, you can't get computers can't talk to each other, you can't get research done. If the each other, you can't get research done. If the each other, you can't get research done.\n\nIf the computers, uh, can't go research done. If the computers, uh, can't go research done. If the computers, uh, can't go stay online people. computers, uh, can't go stay online people. computers, uh, can't go stay online people. will receive their social stay online people. will receive their social stay online people. will receive their social security. So what we have will receive their social security.\n\nSo what we have will receive their social security. So what we have here are a bunch of failing security. So what we have here are a bunch of failing security.\n\nSo what we have here are a bunch of failing computer systems that are here are a bunch of failing computer systems that are here are a bunch of failing computer systems that are preventing people from computer systems that are preventing people from computer systems that are preventing people from receiving their benefits. preventing people from receiving their benefits. preventing people from receiving their benefits.\n\nThat are preventing people receiving their benefits. That are preventing people receiving their benefits. That are preventing people from preventing research That are preventing people from preventing research That are preventing people from preventing research from happening. Um, that from preventing research from happening. Um, that from preventing research from happening. Um, that are uh, extremely vulnerable from happening.\n\nUm, that are uh, extremely vulnerable from happening. Um, that are uh, extremely vulnerable to fraud. Um, and we're are uh, extremely vulnerable to fraud. Um, and we're are uh, extremely vulnerable to fraud. Um, and we're fixing it. And does that to fraud. Um, and we're fixing it. And does that to fraud. Um, and we're fixing it. And does that include AI. Does that fixing it. And does that include AI. Does that fixing it. And does that include AI.\n\nDoes that include? kind of changing include AI. Does that include? kind of changing include AI. Does that include? kind of changing the system overall, that's include? kind of changing the system overall, that's include? kind of changing the system overall, that's what I guess. What people the system overall, that's what I guess. What people the system overall, that's what I guess. What people are afraid of is what I guess.\n\nWhat people are afraid of is what I guess. What people are afraid of is they don't know. what this are afraid of is they don't know. what this are afraid of is they don't know. what this is. All looking like, And is they don't know. what this is. All looking like, And is they don't know. what this is. All looking like, And is it going to affect me is. All looking like, And is it going to affect me is.\n\nAll looking like, And is it going to affect me in the long term? It's it going to affect me in the long term? It's it going to affect me in the long term? It's going to affect them, it's in the long term? It's going to affect them, it's in the long term?\n\nIt's going to affect them, it's going to affect people going to affect them, it's going to affect people going to affect them, it's going to affect people very positively, So the the going to affect people very positively, So the the going to affect people very positively, So the the changes that we're doing very positively, So the the changes that we're doing very positively, So the the changes that we're doing here uh, will ensure the changes that we're doing here uh, will ensure the changes that we're doing here uh, will ensure the solvency of the American here uh, will ensure the solvency of the American here uh, will ensure the solvency of the American government of the American.\n\nsolvency of the American government of the American. solvency of the American government of the American. of the United States of government of the American. of the United States of government of the American. of the United States of America. This is what this of the United States of America. This is what this of the United States of America. This is what this is what we're trying to America. This is what this is what we're trying to America.\n\nThis is what this is what we're trying to do. is ensure that uh, is what we're trying to do. is ensure that uh, is what we're trying to do. is ensure that uh, people do receive their do. is ensure that uh, people do receive their do. is ensure that uh, people do receive their benefits in the future. Um, people do receive their benefits in the future. Um, people do receive their benefits in the future.\n\nUm, and you can only receive benefits in the future. Um, and you can only receive benefits in the future.\n\nUm, and you can only receive your benefits if the comp, and you can only receive your benefits if the comp, and you can only receive your benefits if the comp, the country is operating in your benefits if the comp, the country is operating in your benefits if the comp, the country is operating in a, in a healthy and the country is operating in a, in a healthy and the country is operating in a, in a healthy and competent way, Anthony a, in a healthy and competent way, Anthony a, in a healthy and competent way, Anthony Armstrong, um, Doge office competent way, Anthony Armstrong, um, Doge office competent way, Anthony Armstrong, um, Doge office of personnel management.\n\nUh, Armstrong, um, Doge office of personnel management. Uh, Armstrong, um, Doge office of personnel management. Uh, the Morgan Stanley banker, of personnel management. Uh, the Morgan Stanley banker, of personnel management. Uh, the Morgan Stanley banker, m&a guy. Yeah. Uh, you know the Morgan Stanley banker, m&a guy. Yeah. Uh, you know the Morgan Stanley banker, m&a guy. Yeah. Uh, you know money, and this is a lot m&a guy. Yeah.\n\nUh, you know money, and this is a lot m&a guy. Yeah. Uh, you know money, and this is a lot of money. slashing around money, and this is a lot of money. slashing around money, and this is a lot of money. slashing around there's a lot of money of money. slashing around there's a lot of money of money. slashing around there's a lot of money sloshing around. uh, it's a there's a lot of money sloshing around.\n\nuh, it's a there's a lot of money sloshing around. uh, it's a lot of money sloshing out sloshing around. uh, it's a lot of money sloshing out sloshing around.\n\nuh, it's a lot of money sloshing out the door and if you look lot of money sloshing out the door and if you look lot of money sloshing out the door and if you look at the federal government the door and if you look at the federal government the door and if you look at the federal government and the way the workforce at the federal government and the way the workforce at the federal government and the way the workforce works it's really a 1-way and the way the workforce works it's really a 1-way and the way the workforce works it's really a 1-way ratchet over decades.\n\nSo works it's really a 1-way ratchet over decades. So works it's really a 1-way ratchet over decades. So don't be going up. It's ratchet over decades. So don't be going up. It's ratchet over decades. So don't be going up. It's only going up, You never you don't be going up. It's only going up, You never you don't be going up. It's only going up, You never you never take it away. So only going up, You never you never take it away.\n\nSo only going up, You never you never take it away. So that leaves you with never take it away. So that leaves you with never take it away. So that leaves you with Duplicate of functions. it that leaves you with Duplicate of functions. it that leaves you with Duplicate of functions. it leaves you with Duplicate of functions. it leaves you with Duplicate of functions.\n\nit leaves you with overstaffing and it leaves leaves you with overstaffing and it leaves leaves you with overstaffing and it leaves you with functions in the overstaffing and it leaves you with functions in the overstaffing and it leaves you with functions in the wrong places. So, a couple you with functions in the wrong places. So, a couple you with functions in the wrong places. So, a couple of examples, uh, duplicate a wrong places.\n\nSo, a couple of examples, uh, duplicate a wrong places. So, a couple of examples, uh, duplicate a functions. Brad mentioned of examples, uh, duplicate a functions. Brad mentioned of examples, uh, duplicate a functions. Brad mentioned 27 cios. So if you had functions. Brad mentioned 27 cios. So if you had functions. Brad mentioned 27 cios. So if you had kept going with Brad, he 27 cios. So if you had kept going with Brad, he 27 cios.\n\nSo if you had kept going with Brad, he probably he would talk kept going with Brad, he probably he would talk kept going with Brad, he probably he would talk about the Communications probably he would talk about the Communications probably he would talk about the Communications office. I think you've got about the Communications office. I think you've got about the Communications office. I think you've got 40 40, distinct office.\n\nI think you've got 40 40, distinct office. I think you've got 40 40, distinct Communications offices. and 40 40, distinct Communications offices. and 40 40, distinct Communications offices. and and HHS, right? Yeah. Communications offices. and and HHS, right? Yeah. Communications offices. and and HHS, right? Yeah. 40, yeah. Yeah. and and and HHS, right? Yeah. 40, yeah. Yeah. and and and HHS, right? Yeah. 40, yeah. Yeah.\n\nand and that's not unusual by by 40, yeah. Yeah. and and that's not unusual by by 40, yeah. Yeah. and and that's not unusual by by the way. Multiple? offices. that's not unusual by by the way. Multiple? offices. that's not unusual by by the way. Multiple? offices. Like it's not like anyone the way. Multiple? offices. Like it's not like anyone the way. Multiple? offices.\n\nLike it's not like anyone healthy, this is not Not the Like it's not like anyone healthy, this is not Not the Like it's not like anyone healthy, this is not Not the employees There many, many healthy, this is not Not the employees There many, many healthy, this is not Not the employees There many, many hardworking well-meaning employees There many, many hardworking well-meaning employees There many, many hardworking well-meaning people who, who took these hardworking well-meaning people who,\n\nwho took these hardworking well-meaning people who, who took these jobs these these jobs were people who, who took these jobs these these jobs were people who, who took these jobs these these jobs were out there, they applied for jobs these these jobs were out there, they applied for jobs these these jobs were out there, they applied for them.\n\nThey took them, out there, they applied for them. They took them, out there, they applied for them. They took them, They're doing, what's their them. They took them, They're doing, what's their them.\n\nThey took them, They're doing, what's their It's just that they're They're doing, what's their It's just that they're They're doing, what's their It's just that they're duplicating the effort of It's just that they're duplicating the effort of It's just that they're duplicating the effort of 40 offices. So you've got duplicating the effort of 40 offices. So you've got duplicating the effort of 40 offices. So you've got that you've got 40 offices.\n\nSo you've got that you've got 40 offices.\n\nSo you've got that you've got overstaffing a good example that you've got overstaffing a good example that you've got overstaffing a good example of over Staffing would be overstaffing a good example of over Staffing would be overstaffing a good example of over Staffing would be the IRS has got 1,400 people of over Staffing would be the IRS has got 1,400 people of over Staffing would be the IRS has got 1,400 people who are dedicated to the IRS has got 1,400 people who are dedicated to the IRS has got 1,400 people who are dedicated to provisioning.\n\nlaptops and who are dedicated to provisioning. laptops and who are dedicated to provisioning. laptops and cell phones. So if you provisioning. laptops and cell phones. So if you provisioning. laptops and cell phones. So if you join the IRS you get a cell phones. So if you join the IRS you get a cell phones.\n\nSo if you join the IRS you get a laptop and a cell phone you join the IRS you get a laptop and a cell phone you join the IRS you get a laptop and a cell phone you have provisioned. So if laptop and a cell phone you have provisioned. So if laptop and a cell phone you have provisioned. So if each of those IRS officers have provisioned. So if each of those IRS officers have provisioned.\n\nSo if each of those IRS officers or employees provisioned each of those IRS officers or employees provisioned each of those IRS officers or employees provisioned 2 employees per day, you or employees provisioned 2 employees per day, you or employees provisioned 2 employees per day, you could provision the entire 2 employees per day, you could provision the entire 2 employees per day, you could provision the entire IRS.\n\nin a little more could provision the entire IRS. in a little more could provision the entire IRS. in a little more than a month. So, IRS. in a little more than a month. So, IRS. in a little more than a month. So, 12 times a year, you have than a month. So, 12 times a year, you have than a month.\n\nSo, 12 times a year, you have 1400 people who whose only 12 times a year, you have 1400 people who whose only 12 times a year, you have 1400 people who whose only job it is to give the 1400 people who whose only job it is to give the 1400 people who whose only job it is to give the laptop and the phone, job it is to give the laptop and the phone, job it is to give the laptop and the phone, right? The whole IRS could laptop and the phone, right?\n\nThe whole IRS could laptop and the phone, right? The whole IRS could be handled once a month so right? The whole IRS could be handled once a month so right?\n\nThe whole IRS could be handled once a month so that doesn't that doesn't be handled once a month so that doesn't that doesn't be handled once a month so that doesn't that doesn't make any sense and president that doesn't that doesn't make any sense and president that doesn't that doesn't make any sense and president Trump's been very clear, make any sense and president Trump's been very clear, make any sense and president Trump's been very clear, it's scalpel will not hatch Trump's been very clear, it's scalpel will not hatch Trump's been very clear, it's scalpel will not hatch it and that's the way.\n\nit's scalpel will not hatch it and that's the way. it's scalpel will not hatch it and that's the way. It's it's getting done. and it and that's the way. It's it's getting done. and it and that's the way. It's it's getting done. and then once those decisions It's it's getting done. and then once those decisions It's it's getting done.\n\nand then once those decisions are made, there's a very then once those decisions are made, there's a very then once those decisions are made, there's a very heavy focus on. Being. are made, there's a very heavy focus on. Being. are made, there's a very heavy focus on. Being. generous being. caring heavy focus on. Being. generous being. caring heavy focus on. Being. generous being. caring being compassionate. and generous being.\n\ncaring being compassionate. and generous being. caring being compassionate. and treating everyone with being compassionate. and treating everyone with being compassionate. and treating everyone with dignity and respect. And and treating everyone with dignity and respect. And and treating everyone with dignity and respect. And and if you look at how people dignity and respect. And and if you look at how people dignity and respect.\n\nAnd and if you look at how people have started to leave the if you look at how people have started to leave the if you look at how people have started to leave the government it is largely have started to leave the government it is largely have started to leave the government it is largely through voluntary means government it is largely through voluntary means government it is largely through voluntary means there's a voluntary through voluntary means there's a voluntary through voluntary means there's a voluntary retirement.\n\nthere's voluntary there's a voluntary retirement. there's voluntary there's a voluntary retirement. there's voluntary separation payments. we put retirement. there's voluntary separation payments. we put retirement. there's voluntary separation payments. we put in place, deferred separation payments. we put in place, deferred separation payments.\n\nwe put in place, deferred resignation the 8-month in place, deferred resignation the 8-month in place, deferred resignation the 8-month severance program. So resignation the 8-month severance program. So resignation the 8-month severance program. So there's a very heavy bias severance program. So there's a very heavy bias severance program.\n\nSo there's a very heavy bias towards programs that there's a very heavy bias towards programs that there's a very heavy bias towards programs that A long data that are towards programs that A long data that are towards programs that A long data that are generous that allow people A long data that are generous that allow people A long data that are generous that allow people to exit and go and get a generous that allow people to exit and go and get a generous that allow people to exit and go and get a new job in the private to exit and go and get a new job in the private to exit and go and get a new job in the private sector.\n\nand you, you've new job in the private sector. and you, you've new job in the private sector. and you, you've heard a lot of sector. and you, you've heard a lot of sector. and you, you've heard a lot of Me a lot of news about. heard a lot of Me a lot of news about. heard a lot of Me a lot of news about. riffs about people getting Me a lot of news about. riffs about people getting Me a lot of news about. riffs about people getting fired.\n\nat at this moment riffs about people getting fired. at at this moment riffs about people getting fired. at at this moment in time. Uh, less than fired. at at this moment in time. Uh, less than fired. at at this moment in time. Uh, less than 0. 15 not 1. 5 less than in time. Uh, less than 0. 15 not 1. 5 less than in time. Uh, less than 0. 15 not 1. 5 less than 0. 15 not 1. 5 federal 0. 15 not 1. 5 less than 0. 15 not 1. 5 federal 0. 15 not 1.\n\n5 less than 0. 15 not 1. 5 federal Workforce has actually been 0. 15 not 1. 5 federal Workforce has actually been 0. 15 not 1. 5 federal Workforce has actually been given a rif notice. so, so Workforce has actually been given a rif notice. so, so Workforce has actually been given a rif notice. so, so they've selected if they're given a rif notice. so, so they've selected if they're given a rif notice.\n\nso, so they've selected if they're it, it is basically almost they've selected if they're it, it is basically almost they've selected if they're it, it is basically almost no 1's gotten fired. it, it is basically almost no 1's gotten fired. it, it is basically almost no 1's gotten fired. that's what we're saying. no 1's gotten fired. that's what we're saying. no 1's gotten fired. that's what we're saying. Tom crash.\n\nuh, working at that's what we're saying. Tom crash. uh, working at that's what we're saying. Tom crash. uh, working at Treasury. you are. having Tom crash. uh, working at Treasury. you are. having Tom crash. uh, working at Treasury. you are. having access to the payment Treasury. you are. having access to the payment Treasury. you are.\n\nhaving access to the payment system oversees all the access to the payment system oversees all the access to the payment system oversees all the outgoing payments. system oversees all the outgoing payments. system oversees all the outgoing payments. essentially those payments outgoing payments. essentially those payments outgoing payments. essentially those payments were going places. We essentially those payments were going places.\n\nWe essentially those payments were going places. We didn't know where they were going places. We didn't know where they were going places. We didn't know where they were going, right? Yeah. didn't know where they were going, right? Yeah. didn't know where they were going, right? Yeah. Unfortunately, that's were going, right? Yeah. Unfortunately, that's were going, right? Yeah. Unfortunately, that's the case, right?\n\nUm, Unfortunately, that's the case, right? Um, Unfortunately, that's the case, right? Um, you know, as in X CFO of a the case, right? Um, you know, as in X CFO of a the case, right? Um, you know, as in X CFO of a big public tech company. you know, as in X CFO of a big public tech company. you know, as in X CFO of a big public tech company. Um, really what we're doing big public tech company. Um, really what we're doing big public tech company.\n\nUm, really what we're doing is we're applying public Um, really what we're doing is we're applying public Um, really what we're doing is we're applying public companies. Standards to the is we're applying public companies. Standards to the is we're applying public companies. Standards to the federal government. And it is companies. Standards to the federal government. And it is companies. Standards to the federal government.\n\nAnd it is alarming, how The. financial federal government. And it is alarming, how The. financial federal government. And it is alarming, how The. financial operations, and financial alarming, how The. financial operations, and financial alarming, how The. financial operations, and financial management is set up operations, and financial management is set up operations, and financial management is set up today.\n\nThere is actually management is set up today. There is actually management is set up today. There is actually really only 1. bank today. There is actually really only 1. bank today. There is actually really only 1. bank account that's used to really only 1. bank account that's used to really only 1. bank account that's used to disperse. all monies that account that's used to disperse. all monies that account that's used to disperse.\n\nall monies that go out of the federal disperse. all monies that go out of the federal disperse. all monies that go out of the federal government. time out 1 bank go out of the federal government. time out 1 bank go out of the federal government. time out 1 bank account. It's a big government. time out 1 bank account. It's a big government. time out 1 bank account. It's a big 1, it's a big 1, it's a big account.\n\nIt's a big 1, it's a big 1, it's a big account. It's a big 1, it's a big 1, it's a big 1, it's a big 1. Um, a 1, it's a big 1, it's a big 1, it's a big 1. Um, a 1, it's a big 1, it's a big 1, it's a big 1. Um, a couple weeks ago I had 800 1, it's a big 1. Um, a couple weeks ago I had 800 1, it's a big 1.\n\nUm, a couple weeks ago I had 800 billion dollars in it but couple weeks ago I had 800 billion dollars in it but couple weeks ago I had 800 billion dollars in it but it's the the billion dollars in it but it's the the billion dollars in it but it's the the treasury general account. so, it's the the treasury general account. so, it's the the treasury general account. so, when you hear, you know, treasury general account.\n\nso, when you hear, you know, treasury general account. so, when you hear, you know, some of my colleagues when you hear, you know, some of my colleagues when you hear, you know, some of my colleagues here, they're talking about some of my colleagues here, they're talking about some of my colleagues here, they're talking about in terms of the fraud. you here, they're talking about in terms of the fraud.\n\nyou here, they're talking about in terms of the fraud. you have to ask well why is in terms of the fraud. you have to ask well why is in terms of the fraud. you have to ask well why is this allowed to happen? at have to ask well why is this allowed to happen? at have to ask well why is this allowed to happen? at a financial level? Well this allowed to happen? at a financial level? Well this allowed to happen? at a financial level?\n\nWell it's actually quite simple a financial level? Well it's actually quite simple a financial level? Well it's actually quite simple but alarming The treasury it's actually quite simple but alarming The treasury it's actually quite simple but alarming The treasury up until now and thanks to but alarming The treasury up until now and thanks to but alarming The treasury up until now and thanks to president Trump.\n\nUh, we're up until now and thanks to president Trump. Uh, we're up until now and thanks to president Trump. Uh, we're fixing this. In fact, president Trump. Uh, we're fixing this. In fact, president Trump. Uh, we're fixing this. In fact, there's an executive order fixing this. In fact, there's an executive order fixing this.\n\nIn fact, there's an executive order that he just signed uh, there's an executive order that he just signed uh, there's an executive order that he just signed uh, the other day which is that he just signed uh, the other day which is that he just signed uh, the other day which is protecting America's bank the other day which is protecting America's bank the other day which is protecting America's bank account because it really protecting America's bank account because it really protecting America's bank account because it really is the taxpayer's money.\n\naccount because it really is the taxpayer's money. account because it really is the taxpayer's money. you know, 1, we're changing is the taxpayer's money. you know, 1, we're changing is the taxpayer's money. you know, 1, we're changing the culture, the culture is you know, 1, we're changing the culture, the culture is you know, 1, we're changing the culture, the culture is Ben not a lot of caring.\n\nand the culture, the culture is Ben not a lot of caring. and the culture, the culture is Ben not a lot of caring. and not a lot of commitment to Ben not a lot of caring. and not a lot of commitment to Ben not a lot of caring. and not a lot of commitment to doing. What's right? not a lot of commitment to doing. What's right? not a lot of commitment to doing. What's right? relative to financial doing. What's right? relative to financial doing.\n\nWhat's right? relative to financial operations. there's a relative to financial operations. there's a relative to financial operations. there's a hundred billion dollars of operations. there's a hundred billion dollars of operations. there's a hundred billion dollars of fraud every year. There's hundred billion dollars of fraud every year. There's hundred billion dollars of fraud every year. There's hundreds of millions of fraud every year.\n\nThere's hundreds of millions of fraud every year. There's hundreds of millions of improper payments, And we hundreds of millions of improper payments, And we hundreds of millions of improper payments, And we can't pass it on it. the, improper payments, And we can't pass it on it. the, improper payments, And we can't pass it on it. the, the Consolidated financial can't pass it on it. the, the Consolidated financial can't pass it on it.\n\nthe, the Consolidated financial report is produced by the Consolidated financial report is produced by the Consolidated financial report is produced by Treasury and we cannot report is produced by Treasury and we cannot report is produced by Treasury and we cannot pass it on. We have Treasury and we cannot pass it on. We have Treasury and we cannot pass it on. We have material weaknesses. What pass it on. We have material weaknesses.\n\nWhat pass it on. We have material weaknesses. What that means. is that if I material weaknesses. What that means. is that if I material weaknesses. What that means. is that if I was a public company CFO, I that means. is that if I was a public company CFO, I that means. is that if I was a public company CFO, I would effectively be was a public company CFO, I would effectively be was a public company CFO, I would effectively be removed.\n\nI couldn't file would effectively be removed. I couldn't file would effectively be removed. I couldn't file financial statements, I removed. I couldn't file financial statements, I removed. I couldn't file financial statements, I couldn't issue securities. financial statements, I couldn't issue securities. financial statements, I couldn't issue securities. Can't pass it on, right? couldn't issue securities. Can't pass it on, right?\n\ncouldn't issue securities. Can't pass it on, right? The federal government Can't pass it on, right? The federal government Can't pass it on, right? The federal government cannot pass it without it. The federal government cannot pass it without it. The federal government cannot pass it without it. It's possible. In fact um cannot pass it without it. It's possible. In fact um cannot pass it without it. It's possible.\n\nIn fact um um, the the in order to It's possible. In fact um um, the the in order to It's possible. In fact um um, the the in order to pass what you need the um, the the in order to pass what you need the um, the the in order to pass what you need the information, pass what you need the information, pass what you need the information, investor to pass noted. Um information, investor to pass noted. Um information, investor to pass noted.\n\nUm you need to have the investor to pass noted. Um you need to have the investor to pass noted.\n\nUm you need to have the payment codes, you need to you need to have the payment codes, you need to you need to have the payment codes, you need to have the payment explanation payment codes, you need to have the payment explanation payment codes, you need to have the payment explanation and you need to have a have the payment explanation and you need to have a have the payment explanation and you need to have a person you can contact to and you need to have a person you can contact to and you need to have a person you can contact to understand why that payment person you can contact to understand why that payment person you can contact to understand why that payment was made,\n\nNone of those understand why that payment was made, None of those understand why that payment was made, None of those things were mandatory.\n\nwas made, None of those things were mandatory. was made, None of those things were mandatory. until until just recently, things were mandatory. until until just recently, things were mandatory. until until just recently, just a few weeks ago in until until just recently, just a few weeks ago in until until just recently, just a few weeks ago in fact, maybe last week. yeah, just a few weeks ago in fact, maybe last week.\n\nyeah, just a few weeks ago in fact, maybe last week. yeah, we're serving 580 plus fact, maybe last week. yeah, we're serving 580 plus fact, maybe last week. yeah, we're serving 580 plus agencies and up until very we're serving 580 plus agencies and up until very we're serving 580 plus agencies and up until very recently. effectively they agencies and up until very recently. effectively they agencies and up until very recently.\n\neffectively they could say make the payment recently. effectively they could say make the payment recently. effectively they could say make the payment and treasury just sent it could say make the payment and treasury just sent it could say make the payment and treasury just sent it out. It's fast as possible. and treasury just sent it out. It's fast as possible. and treasury just sent it out. It's fast as possible. No verification. And so out.\n\nIt's fast as possible. No verification. And so out. It's fast as possible. No verification. And so what we're doing is what No verification. And so what we're doing is what No verification.\n\nAnd so what we're doing is what any household will do, but what we're doing is what any household will do, but what we're doing is what any household will do, but imagine you're a household, any household will do, but imagine you're a household, any household will do, but imagine you're a household, you have a bank account. imagine you're a household, you have a bank account. imagine you're a household, you have a bank account.\n\neveryone has an ATM card. you have a bank account. everyone has an ATM card. you have a bank account. everyone has an ATM card. Connected to that account, everyone has an ATM card. Connected to that account, everyone has an ATM card. Connected to that account, everyone has a checkbook and Connected to that account, everyone has a checkbook and Connected to that account, everyone has a checkbook and of that account.\n\nIt's not everyone has a checkbook and of that account. It's not everyone has a checkbook and of that account. It's not just your children. it's of that account. It's not just your children. it's of that account. It's not just your children. it's not just your parents that just your children. it's not just your parents that just your children. it's not just your parents that you're in laws. It's your not just your parents that you're in laws.\n\nIt's your not just your parents that you're in laws. It's your extended family and they you're in laws. It's your extended family and they you're in laws. It's your extended family and they all can go to the account. extended family and they all can go to the account. extended family and they all can go to the account. and disperse funds. all can go to the account. and disperse funds. all can go to the account. and disperse funds.\n\nNo, questions asked. no and disperse funds. No, questions asked. no and disperse funds. No, questions asked. no justification. no No, questions asked. no justification. no No, questions asked. no justification. no verification. Tyler. Hassan. justification. no verification. Tyler. Hassan. justification. no verification. Tyler. Hassan. uh, Interior Department. Uh, verification. Tyler. Hassan. uh, Interior Department. Uh, verification. Tyler.\n\nHassan. uh, Interior Department. Uh, you're a 4 former oil uh, Interior Department. Uh, you're a 4 former oil uh, Interior Department. Uh, you're a 4 former oil Company CEO, Um, you're you're a 4 former oil Company CEO, Um, you're you're a 4 former oil Company CEO, Um, you're reviewing contracts. before. Company CEO, Um, you're reviewing contracts. before. Company CEO, Um, you're reviewing contracts. before.\n\nthey're approved for reviewing contracts. before. they're approved for reviewing contracts. before. they're approved for funding. What, what are you they're approved for funding. What, what are you they're approved for funding. What, what are you finding? Well, um, Elon and funding. What, what are you finding? Well, um, Elon and funding. What, what are you finding? Well, um, Elon and Steve kind of stole my finding?\n\nWell, um, Elon and Steve kind of stole my finding? Well, um, Elon and Steve kind of stole my thunder a little bit, but I Steve kind of stole my thunder a little bit, but I Steve kind of stole my thunder a little bit, but I actually found that thunder a little bit, but I actually found that thunder a little bit, but I actually found that customer service. survey actually found that customer service. survey actually found that customer service.\n\nsurvey contract. I actually have customer service. survey contract. I actually have customer service. survey contract. I actually have an example of 1 right here. contract. I actually have an example of 1 right here. contract. I actually have an example of 1 right here. I could have done this in an example of 1 right here. I could have done this in an example of 1 right here.\n\nI could have done this in high school and I, I found I could have done this in high school and I, I found I could have done this in high school and I, I found it. It's not bad. I found high school and I, I found it. It's not bad. I found high school and I, I found it. It's not bad. I found it on the weekends because it. It's not bad. I found it on the weekends because it. It's not bad.\n\nI found it on the weekends because under the Biden it on the weekends because under the Biden it on the weekends because under the Biden Administration, there was no under the Biden Administration, there was no under the Biden Administration, there was no departmental oversight Administration, there was no departmental oversight Administration, there was no departmental oversight within the department of departmental oversight within the department of departmental oversight within the department of interior.\n\nwhatsoever. None. within the department of interior. whatsoever. None. within the department of interior. whatsoever. None. We have now reviewing every interior. whatsoever. None. We have now reviewing every interior. whatsoever. None.\n\nWe have now reviewing every single contract every We have now reviewing every single contract every We have now reviewing every single contract every single Grant And when single contract every single Grant And when single contract every single Grant And when things come to my single Grant And when things come to my single Grant And when things come to my attention, that don't make things come to my attention, that don't make things come to my attention, that don't make sense.\n\nI'm bringing them attention, that don't make sense. I'm bringing them attention, that don't make sense. I'm bringing them to secretary bergam and he sense. I'm bringing them to secretary bergam and he sense. I'm bringing them to secretary bergam and he has been fantastic. to secretary bergam and he has been fantastic. to secretary bergam and he has been fantastic. He's he's a businessman. has been fantastic. He's he's a businessman.\n\nhas been fantastic. He's he's a businessman. he's very supportive of He's he's a businessman. he's very supportive of He's he's a businessman. he's very supportive of Doge. It's been wonderful. he's very supportive of Doge. It's been wonderful. he's very supportive of Doge. It's been wonderful. to work with is the Doge. It's been wonderful. to work with is the Doge. It's been wonderful.\n\nto work with is the battle between government to work with is the battle between government to work with is the battle between government of decades and Decades of battle between government of decades and Decades of battle between government of decades and Decades of buildup and business. which of decades and Decades of buildup and business. which of decades and Decades of buildup and business. which you guys are. is that buildup and business.\n\nwhich you guys are. is that buildup and business. which you guys are. is that like a train hitting you guys are. is that like a train hitting you guys are. is that like a train hitting each other? I mean, it it like a train hitting each other? I mean, it it like a train hitting each other? I mean, it it seems like, um, it's pretty each other? I mean, it it seems like, um, it's pretty each other?\n\nI mean, it it seems like, um, it's pretty disruptive Well, this is a seems like, um, it's pretty disruptive Well, this is a seems like, um, it's pretty disruptive Well, this is a revolution. um, and I think disruptive Well, this is a revolution. um, and I think disruptive Well, this is a revolution. um, and I think it it might be the might revolution. um, and I think it it might be the might revolution.\n\num, and I think it it might be the might be the biggest Revolution it it might be the might be the biggest Revolution it it might be the might be the biggest Revolution government since the be the biggest Revolution government since the be the biggest Revolution government since the original Revolution, um, but government since the original Revolution, um, but government since the original Revolution, um, but at the end of the day, original Revolution, um, but at the end of the day, original Revolution, um, but at the end of the day, America's going to be in at the end of the day, America's going to be in at the end of the day, America's going to be in much better shape.\n\nuh America's going to be in much better shape. uh America's going to be in much better shape. uh America will be solvent. much better shape. uh America will be solvent. much better shape. uh America will be solvent. Uh, the Critical programs America will be solvent. Uh, the Critical programs America will be solvent. Uh, the Critical programs that people depend upon. Uh, the Critical programs that people depend upon.\n\nUh, the Critical programs that people depend upon. will work. and, It's that people depend upon. will work. and, It's that people depend upon. will work. and, It's going to be a fantastic will work. and, It's going to be a fantastic will work. and, It's going to be a fantastic future. and, but are we going to be a fantastic future. and, but are we going to be a fantastic future. and, but are we going to get a lot of future.\n\nand, but are we going to get a lot of future. and, but are we going to get a lot of complaints along the way? going to get a lot of complaints along the way? going to get a lot of complaints along the way? Absolutely, You know, complaints along the way? Absolutely, You know, complaints along the way?\n\nAbsolutely, You know, a lot of things I learned Absolutely, You know, a lot of things I learned Absolutely, You know, a lot of things I learned at the PayPal was the, a lot of things I learned at the PayPal was the, a lot of things I learned at the PayPal was the, you know, who complains the at the PayPal was the, you know, who complains the at the PayPal was the, you know, who complains the loudest.\n\nand the what the, you know, who complains the loudest. and the what the, you know, who complains the loudest. and the what the, the most amount of fake loudest. and the what the, the most amount of fake loudest. and the what the, the most amount of fake righteous indignation. The the most amount of fake righteous indignation. The the most amount of fake righteous indignation. The fraudsters. that's, it's a righteous indignation. The fraudsters.\n\nthat's, it's a righteous indignation. The fraudsters. that's, it's a tell. that are crazy. They fraudsters. that's, it's a tell. that are crazy. They fraudsters. that's, it's a tell. that are crazy. They look like the the tell. that are crazy. They look like the the tell. that are crazy.\n\nThey look like the the 2 billion dollars to look like the the 2 billion dollars to look like the the 2 billion dollars to Stacy April's, NGO that 2 billion dollars to Stacy April's, NGO that 2 billion dollars to Stacy April's, NGO that basically didn't exist. and Stacy April's, NGO that basically didn't exist. and Stacy April's, NGO that basically didn't exist. and suddenly gets 2 billion basically didn't exist.\n\nand suddenly gets 2 billion basically didn't exist. and suddenly gets 2 billion dollars awarded for the suddenly gets 2 billion dollars awarded for the suddenly gets 2 billion dollars awarded for the billion government. she has dollars awarded for the billion government. she has dollars awarded for the billion government. she has why And there are many, such billion government. she has why And there are many, such billion government.\n\nshe has why And there are many, such cases like that, I think why And there are many, such cases like that, I think why And there are many, such cases like that, I think that most people Common cases like that, I think that most people Common cases like that, I think that most people Common Sense wise would say. The that most people Common Sense wise would say. The that most people Common Sense wise would say. The Fraud's got to end.\n\nSense wise would say. The Fraud's got to end. Sense wise would say. The Fraud's got to end. They're concerned about the Fraud's got to end. They're concerned about the Fraud's got to end. They're concerned about the 904 year old mother. who They're concerned about the 904 year old mother. who They're concerned about the 904 year old mother. who Skips a check or somehow 904 year old mother. who Skips a check or somehow 904 year old mother.\n\nwho Skips a check or somehow doesn't get what she's Skips a check or somehow doesn't get what she's Skips a check or somehow doesn't get what she's supposed to get, right? And doesn't get what she's supposed to get, right? And doesn't get what she's supposed to get, right? And what we're trying to say supposed to get, right? And what we're trying to say supposed to get, right?\n\nAnd what we're trying to say is actually that, that the what we're trying to say is actually that, that the what we're trying to say is actually that, that the 94 year old, uh grandmother is actually that, that the 94 year old, uh grandmother is actually that, that the 94 year old, uh grandmother is is actually as 94 year old, uh grandmother is is actually as 94 year old, uh grandmother is is actually as a result of Joe dojos work is is actually as a result of Joe dojos work is is actually as a result of Joe dojos work going to get her check.\n\na result of Joe dojos work going to get her check. a result of Joe dojos work going to get her check. She's not going to be going to get her check. She's not going to be going to get her check. She's not going to be robbed by She's not going to be robbed by She's not going to be robbed by Fraud's like she's getting robbed by Fraud's like she's getting robbed by Fraud's like she's getting rough today.\n\num, and the Fraud's like she's getting rough today. um, and the Fraud's like she's getting rough today. um, and the solvency uh, of the of the rough today. um, and the solvency uh, of the of the rough today.\n\num, and the solvency uh, of the of the federal government will solvency uh, of the of the federal government will solvency uh, of the of the federal government will ensure that she continues federal government will ensure that she continues federal government will ensure that she continues to receive those Social ensure that she continues to receive those Social ensure that she continues to receive those Social Security checks that to receive those Social Security checks that to receive those Social Security checks that Medicare continues to work.\n\nSecurity checks that Medicare continues to work. Security checks that Medicare continues to work. Um, without which we're all Medicare continues to work. Um, without which we're all Medicare continues to work. Um, without which we're all doomed. And the reason we're Um, without which we're all doomed. And the reason we're Um, without which we're all doomed. And the reason we're doing this, is because if, doomed.\n\nAnd the reason we're doing this, is because if, doomed. And the reason we're doing this, is because if, if we don't do it, doing this, is because if, if we don't do it, doing this, is because if, if we don't do it, America's going to go if we don't do it, America's going to go if we don't do it, America's going to go insolvent. When you go America's going to go insolvent. When you go America's going to go insolvent. When you go bankrupt.\n\nAnd nobody's insolvent. When you go bankrupt. And nobody's insolvent. When you go bankrupt. And nobody's going to get anything. Why bankrupt. And nobody's going to get anything. Why bankrupt. And nobody's going to get anything. Why are you guys all doing it? going to get anything. Why are you guys all doing it? going to get anything. Why are you guys all doing it? I mean, you can pipe up but are you guys all doing it?\n\nI mean, you can pipe up but are you guys all doing it? I mean, you can pipe up but it you don't have to be I mean, you can pipe up but it you don't have to be I mean, you can pipe up but it you don't have to be here, right? I mean you it you don't have to be here, right? I mean you it you don't have to be here, right? I mean you don't you don't have to be here, right? I mean you don't you don't have to be here, right?\n\nI mean you don't you don't have to be doing this. I have. 4 plus don't you don't have to be doing this. I have. 4 plus don't you don't have to be doing this. I have. 4 plus with 4 beautiful children. I doing this. I have. 4 plus with 4 beautiful children. I doing this. I have. 4 plus with 4 beautiful children. I went and I um, but we have with 4 beautiful children. I went and I um, but we have with 4 beautiful children.\n\nI went and I um, but we have a real fiscal crisis, And, went and I um, but we have a real fiscal crisis, And, went and I um, but we have a real fiscal crisis, And, and this is not a real fiscal crisis, And, and this is not a real fiscal crisis, And, and this is not sustainable. and what's and this is not sustainable. and what's and this is not sustainable. and what's worse. back to my sustainable. and what's worse. back to my sustainable.\n\nand what's worse. back to my children and everyone worse. back to my children and everyone worse. back to my children and everyone else's children is. We're children and everyone else's children is. We're children and everyone else's children is. We're are burning them. With that else's children is. We're are burning them. With that else's children is. We're are burning them. With that debt. And it's only are burning them. With that debt.\n\nAnd it's only are burning them. With that debt. And it's only going to grow. debt. And it's only going to grow. debt. And it's only going to grow. See if there's not a lot of going to grow. See if there's not a lot of going to grow. See if there's not a lot of hierarchy here. You guys are See if there's not a lot of hierarchy here. You guys are See if there's not a lot of hierarchy here. You guys are of all approaching it in hierarchy here.\n\nYou guys are of all approaching it in hierarchy here. You guys are of all approaching it in different. you know. Silos. of all approaching it in different. you know. Silos. of all approaching it in different. you know. Silos. But, uh, with the same different. you know. Silos. But, uh, with the same different. you know. Silos. But, uh, with the same kind of goal. Right. I mean But, uh, with the same kind of goal. Right.\n\nI mean But, uh, with the same kind of goal. Right. I mean this is really Silicon kind of goal. Right. I mean this is really Silicon kind of goal. Right. I mean this is really Silicon Valley. private sector this is really Silicon Valley. private sector this is really Silicon Valley. private sector colliding with government. Valley. private sector colliding with government. Valley. private sector colliding with government. Yeah. exactly.\n\nWe're headed colliding with government. Yeah. exactly. We're headed colliding with government. Yeah. exactly. We're headed in a bad path but that the Yeah. exactly. We're headed in a bad path but that the Yeah. exactly. We're headed in a bad path but that the chance of success Exists. and in a bad path but that the chance of success Exists. and in a bad path but that the chance of success Exists.\n\nand just the 1 that just is chance of success Exists. and just the 1 that just is chance of success Exists.\n\nand just the 1 that just is in my head right now just the 1 that just is in my head right now just the 1 that just is in my head right now which is a fairly mundane 1 in my head right now which is a fairly mundane 1 in my head right now which is a fairly mundane 1 but I think is very which is a fairly mundane 1 but I think is very which is a fairly mundane 1 but I think is very illustrative is but I think is very illustrative is but I think is very illustrative is credit cards.\n\nUm, oh yeah. illustrative is credit cards. Um, oh yeah. illustrative is credit cards. Um, oh yeah. there are in in the federal credit cards. Um, oh yeah. there are in in the federal credit cards. Um, oh yeah. there are in in the federal government. Um around 4. 6 there are in in the federal government. Um around 4. 6 there are in in the federal government. Um around 4. 6 million credit cards. for government. Um around 4. 6 million credit cards.\n\nfor government. Um around 4. 6 million credit cards. for around 2. 3 to million credit cards. for around 2. 3 to million credit cards. for around 2. 3 to 2. 4 million employees. Um, around 2. 3 to 2. 4 million employees. Um, around 2. 3 to 2. 4 million employees. Um, this doesn't make sense. 2. 4 million employees. Um, this doesn't make sense. 2. 4 million employees. Um, this doesn't make sense. right? Um, and so 1 of the this doesn't make sense.\n\nright? Um, and so 1 of the this doesn't make sense. right? Um, and so 1 of the things all the teams have right? Um, and so 1 of the things all the teams have right?\n\nUm, and so 1 of the things all the teams have have worked on is we've things all the teams have have worked on is we've things all the teams have have worked on is we've worked for the agencies and have worked on is we've worked for the agencies and have worked on is we've worked for the agencies and said, do you need all worked for the agencies and said, do you need all worked for the agencies and said, do you need all of these credit cards?\n\nAre said, do you need all of these credit cards? Are said, do you need all of these credit cards? Are they being used? Can you of these credit cards? Are they being used? Can you of these credit cards? Are they being used? Can you tell us physically where they being used? Can you tell us physically where they being used? Can you tell us physically where they are? I hope they're tell us physically where they are?\n\nI hope they're tell us physically where they are? I hope they're getting frequent flyers. Um, they are? I hope they're getting frequent flyers. Um, they are? I hope they're getting frequent flyers. Um, actually on a different getting frequent flyers. Um, actually on a different getting frequent flyers.\n\nUm, actually on a different note, the rewards program, actually on a different note, the rewards program, actually on a different note, the rewards program, the federal government has note, the rewards program, the federal government has note, the rewards program, the federal government has actually not very good the federal government has actually not very good the federal government has actually not very good That's a whole other actually not very good That's a whole other actually not very good That's a whole other negotiation right?\n\nYeah, That's a whole other negotiation right? Yeah, That's a whole other negotiation right? Yeah, exactly. Um but so far the negotiation right? Yeah, exactly. Um but so far the negotiation right? Yeah, exactly. Um but so far the teams have worked together exactly. Um but so far the teams have worked together exactly.\n\nUm but so far the teams have worked together and they've reduced it from teams have worked together and they've reduced it from teams have worked together and they've reduced it from 4. 6 million to. um to 4. 3 and they've reduced it from 4. 6 million to. um to 4. 3 and they've reduced it from 4. 6 million to. um to 4. 3 million. So we're we're 4. 6 million to. um to 4. 3 million. So we're we're 4. 6 million to. um to 4. 3 million.\n\nSo we're we're taking it easy. Yeah. But million. So we're we're taking it easy. Yeah. But million. So we're we're taking it easy. Yeah. But clearly, they should not taking it easy. Yeah. But clearly, they should not taking it easy. Yeah. But clearly, they should not be, you know, more. they clearly, they should not be, you know, more. they clearly, they should not be, you know, more. they should not make more be, you know, more.\n\nthey should not make more be, you know, more. they should not make more credit cards than there are should not make more credit cards than there are should not make more credit cards than there are people. Yeah, Joe middle credit cards than there are people. Yeah, Joe middle credit cards than there are people. Yeah, Joe middle level employees. Are they people. Yeah, Joe middle level employees. Are they people. Yeah, Joe middle level employees.\n\nAre they seeing a benefit to being level employees. Are they seeing a benefit to being level employees. Are they seeing a benefit to being empowered by taking out? seeing a benefit to being empowered by taking out? seeing a benefit to being empowered by taking out? bureaucracy? I mean, empowered by taking out? bureaucracy? I mean, empowered by taking out? bureaucracy? I mean, absolutely. I mean, I think bureaucracy? I mean, absolutely.\n\nI mean, I think bureaucracy? I mean, absolutely. I mean, I think what you're seeing is absolutely. I mean, I think what you're seeing is absolutely.\n\nI mean, I think what you're seeing is taking the best of Silicon what you're seeing is taking the best of Silicon what you're seeing is taking the best of Silicon Valley in the business world, taking the best of Silicon Valley in the business world, taking the best of Silicon Valley in the business world, to bring it into the Valley in the business world, to bring it into the Valley in the business world, to bring it into the government.\n\nWe're bringing to bring it into the government. We're bringing to bring it into the government. We're bringing the best practices and government. We're bringing the best practices and government. We're bringing the best practices and the best. methodologies. Um, the best practices and the best. methodologies. Um, the best practices and the best. methodologies. Um, and uh, people are inspired the best. methodologies.\n\nUm, and uh, people are inspired the best. methodologies.\n\nUm, and uh, people are inspired right, especially on and uh, people are inspired right, especially on and uh, people are inspired right, especially on retirement processors, I can right, especially on retirement processors, I can right, especially on retirement processors, I can speak to um, they've been retirement processors, I can speak to um, they've been retirement processors, I can speak to um, they've been trying to modernize and get speak to um, they've been trying to modernize and get speak to um, they've been trying to modernize and get off of paper.\n\nsince early trying to modernize and get off of paper. since early trying to modernize and get off of paper. since early 2000s. Um, very off of paper. since early 2000s. Um, very off of paper. since early 2000s. Um, very unsuccessfully. every attempt 2000s. Um, very unsuccessfully. every attempt 2000s. Um, very unsuccessfully. every attempt has gone over budget. um, unsuccessfully. every attempt has gone over budget. um, unsuccessfully.\n\nevery attempt has gone over budget. um, and been canceled. uh, uh, has gone over budget. um, and been canceled. uh, uh, has gone over budget. um, and been canceled. uh, uh, because it hasn't been and been canceled. uh, uh, because it hasn't been and been canceled. uh, uh, because it hasn't been successful. And so you know, because it hasn't been successful. And so you know, because it hasn't been successful.\n\nAnd so you know, I showed up and I feel successful. And so you know, I showed up and I feel successful. And so you know, I showed up and I feel like I'm here because it's I showed up and I feel like I'm here because it's I showed up and I feel like I'm here because it's an interesting problem. We like I'm here because it's an interesting problem. We like I'm here because it's an interesting problem.\n\nWe can use design to solve it an interesting problem. We can use design to solve it an interesting problem. We can use design to solve it and get engineering. and can use design to solve it and get engineering. and can use design to solve it and get engineering. and really, create a better and get engineering. and really, create a better and get engineering. and really, create a better experience for everybody.\n\nreally, create a better experience for everybody. really, create a better experience for everybody. We're talking about experience for everybody. We're talking about experience for everybody.\n\nWe're talking about elementary Financial We're talking about elementary Financial We're talking about elementary Financial controls That are necessary elementary Financial controls That are necessary elementary Financial controls That are necessary for any company to function, controls That are necessary for any company to function, controls That are necessary for any company to function, So like if, if these if for any company to function, So like if, if these if for any company to function,\n\nSo like if, if these if if if the federal So like if, if these if if if the federal So like if, if these if if if the federal government uh, if if if if if the federal government uh, if if if if if the federal government uh, if if if if a commercial company government uh, if if if if a commercial company government uh, if if if if a commercial company operated the way the federal if a commercial company operated the way the federal if a commercial company operated the way the federal government does,\n\nthen it operated the way the federal government does, then it operated the way the federal government does, then it would be uh, go immediately government does, then it would be uh, go immediately government does, then it would be uh, go immediately go bankrupt.\n\nUh, it would be uh, go immediately go bankrupt. Uh, it would be uh, go immediately go bankrupt. Uh, it would be delisted the go bankrupt. Uh, it would be delisted the go bankrupt.\n\nUh, it would be delisted the offices would be arrested would be delisted the offices would be arrested would be delisted the offices would be arrested and the changes we're putting offices would be arrested and the changes we're putting offices would be arrested and the changes we're putting in place. will enable the and the changes we're putting in place. will enable the and the changes we're putting in place.\n\nwill enable the federal government to pass in place. will enable the federal government to pass in place. will enable the federal government to pass an audit. It will enable federal government to pass an audit. It will enable federal government to pass an audit. It will enable enable taxpayers to know an audit. It will enable enable taxpayers to know an audit. It will enable enable taxpayers to know where the money is going.\n\nenable taxpayers to know where the money is going. enable taxpayers to know where the money is going. and know that they're where the money is going. and know that they're where the money is going. and know that they're harder and taxed tax dollars and know that they're harder and taxed tax dollars and know that they're harder and taxed tax dollars are being spent. Well, the harder and taxed tax dollars are being spent.\n\nWell, the harder and taxed tax dollars are being spent. Well, the ways that the government are being spent. Well, the ways that the government are being spent.\n\nWell, the ways that the government is defrauded is that the ways that the government is defrauded is that the ways that the government is defrauded is that the computer systems don't talk is defrauded is that the computer systems don't talk is defrauded is that the computer systems don't talk to each other. So if the computer systems don't talk to each other. So if the computer systems don't talk to each other.\n\nSo if the computer system systems are to each other. So if the computer system systems are to each other. So if the computer system systems are talked to each other, then computer system systems are talked to each other, then computer system systems are talked to each other, then it you, you can you can talked to each other, then it you, you can you can talked to each other, then it you, you can you can exploit that Gap.\n\nand it you, you can you can exploit that Gap. and it you, you can you can exploit that Gap. and frauds is exploited that exploit that Gap. and frauds is exploited that exploit that Gap. and frauds is exploited that exploit that Gap to take frauds is exploited that exploit that Gap to take frauds is exploited that exploit that Gap to take advantage. Um, if for exploit that Gap to take advantage. Um, if for exploit that Gap to take advantage.\n\nUm, if for example there were over 300 advantage. Um, if for example there were over 300 advantage. Um, if for example there were over 300 million dollars of a small example there were over 300 million dollars of a small example there were over 300 million dollars of a small business administration. million dollars of a small business administration. million dollars of a small business administration.\n\nloans, that has been given business administration. loans, that has been given business administration.\n\nloans, that has been given out to people under the loans, that has been given out to people under the loans, that has been given out to people under the age of 11, Well actually out to people under the age of 11, Well actually out to people under the age of 11, Well actually to add to its 300 million age of 11, Well actually to add to its 300 million age of 11, Well actually to add to its 300 million under the age of 11.\n\nAnd to add to its 300 million under the age of 11. And to add to its 300 million under the age of 11. And then over under the age of 11. And then over under the age of 11. And then over 300 million to over the age then over 300 million to over the age then over 300 million to over the age of 120. The small business 300 million to over the age of 120. The small business 300 million to over the age of 120. The small business loans, correct? Yes.\n\nThe of 120. The small business loans, correct? Yes. The of 120. The small business loans, correct? Yes. The the oldest American is loans, correct? Yes. The the oldest American is loans, correct? Yes. The the oldest American is 114. so, it's safe to say the oldest American is 114. so, it's safe to say the oldest American is 114. so, it's safe to say if their ages is 115 or 114. so, it's safe to say if their ages is 115 or 114.\n\nso, it's safe to say if their ages is 115 or above. Uh, they're they're if their ages is 115 or above. Uh, they're they're if their ages is 115 or above. Uh, they're they're fake. Um, well they should above. Uh, they're they're fake. Um, well they should above. Uh, they're they're fake. Um, well they should be in the going to spoke fake. Um, well they should be in the going to spoke fake.\n\nUm, well they should be in the going to spoke of World Records. Um and be in the going to spoke of World Records. Um and be in the going to spoke of World Records. Um and we we should not be of World Records. Um and we we should not be of World Records. Um and we we should not be giving out. Um, loans to we we should not be giving out. Um, loans to we we should not be giving out. Um, loans to babies So, uh, the The giving out.\n\nUm, loans to babies So, uh, the The giving out. Um, loans to babies So, uh, the The youngest, uh, recipient of babies So, uh, the The youngest, uh, recipient of babies So, uh, the The youngest, uh, recipient of a small business youngest, uh, recipient of a small business youngest, uh, recipient of a small business administration loan. uh is a small business administration loan. uh is a small business administration loan.\n\nuh is a 9-month-old which is a administration loan. uh is a 9-month-old which is a administration loan. uh is a 9-month-old which is a very very cautious baby. a 9-month-old which is a very very cautious baby. a 9-month-old which is a very very cautious baby. We're talking about here. Um, very very cautious baby. We're talking about here. Um, very very cautious baby. We're talking about here.\n\nUm, about obviously it was just We're talking about here. Um, about obviously it was just We're talking about here. Um, about obviously it was just fraudulent. Um and what about obviously it was just fraudulent. Um and what about obviously it was just fraudulent. Um and what they and they do Terrible fraudulent. Um and what they and they do Terrible fraudulent. Um and what they and they do Terrible Things.\n\nThey actually they and they do Terrible Things. They actually they and they do Terrible Things. They actually will see that a kid's been Things. They actually will see that a kid's been Things. They actually will see that a kid's been born. They will steal that will see that a kid's been born. They will steal that will see that a kid's been born. They will steal that kid's social security born. They will steal that kid's social security born.\n\nThey will steal that kid's social security number and then take out a kid's social security number and then take out a kid's social security number and then take out a loan and and leave that kid number and then take out a loan and and leave that kid number and then take out a loan and and leave that kid with a with a bad credit loan and and leave that kid with a with a bad credit loan and and leave that kid with a with a bad credit rating.\n\nThere was literally a with a with a bad credit rating. There was literally a with a with a bad credit rating. There was literally a baby. a terrible things of rating. There was literally a baby. a terrible things of rating. There was literally a baby. a terrible things of being done is what we're baby. a terrible things of being done is what we're baby. a terrible things of being done is what we're saying.\n\nand how we're being done is what we're saying. and how we're being done is what we're saying. and how we're stopping these terrible saying. and how we're stopping these terrible saying. and how we're stopping these terrible things and you can't stop stopping these terrible things and you can't stop stopping these terrible things and you can't stop it. I mean well, our stuff things and you can't stop it.\n\nI mean well, our stuff things and you can't stop it. I mean well, our stuff we are the reason this is it. I mean well, our stuff we are the reason this is it.\n\nI mean well, our stuff we are the reason this is happening is because the the we are the reason this is happening is because the the we are the reason this is happening is because the the 2 systems are not talking to happening is because the the 2 systems are not talking to happening is because the the 2 systems are not talking to each other. right? And so, 2 systems are not talking to each other. right?\n\nAnd so, 2 systems are not talking to each other. right? And so, you don't know at the small each other. right? And so, you don't know at the small each other. right?\n\nAnd so, you don't know at the small business administration, you don't know at the small business administration, you don't know at the small business administration, that you're giving a loan business administration, that you're giving a loan business administration, that you're giving a loan to a 9-month-old, which that you're giving a loan to a 9-month-old, which that you're giving a loan to a 9-month-old, which happened in 1 case, because to a 9-month-old, which happened in 1 case,\n\nbecause to a 9-month-old, which happened in 1 case, because you're not happened in 1 case, because you're not happened in 1 case, because you're not cross-referencing that with you're not cross-referencing that with you're not cross-referencing that with the Social Security cross-referencing that with the Social Security cross-referencing that with the Social Security Administration data that the Social Security Administration data that the Social Security Administration data that has birth dates.\n\nSo that Administration data that has birth dates. So that Administration data that has birth dates. So that very, very simple fix. has birth dates. So that very, very simple fix. has birth dates. So that very, very simple fix. eliminates tremendous and and very, very simple fix. eliminates tremendous and and very, very simple fix.\n\neliminates tremendous and and that eliminates tremendous and and that eliminates tremendous and and that there are multiple systems that there are multiple systems that there are multiple systems across the government where there are multiple systems across the government where there are multiple systems across the government where the systems are not speaking across the government where the systems are not speaking across the government where the systems are not speaking with 1,\n\nanother, and if you the systems are not speaking with 1, another, and if you the systems are not speaking with 1, another, and if you just, solve that simple with 1, another, and if you just, solve that simple with 1, another, and if you just, solve that simple problem, you would solve a just, solve that simple problem, you would solve a just, solve that simple problem, you would solve a huge amount of fraud.\n\nare problem, you would solve a huge amount of fraud. are problem, you would solve a huge amount of fraud. are you? is that like 1 1 huge amount of fraud. are you? is that like 1 1 huge amount of fraud. are you? is that like 1 1 of the, the key tricks that you? is that like 1 1 of the, the key tricks that you?\n\nis that like 1 1 of the, the key tricks that the frauds is pull, is of the, the key tricks that the frauds is pull, is of the, the key tricks that the frauds is pull, is that they will use the the frauds is pull, is that they will use the the frauds is pull, is that they will use the fact that someone is that they will use the fact that someone is that they will use the fact that someone is marked as live and as, as fact that someone is marked as live and as, as fact that someone is marked as live and as,\n\nas sort of just that that marked as live and as, as sort of just that that marked as live and as, as sort of just that that social security number is sort of just that that social security number is sort of just that that social security number is Marx, social security number is Marx, social security number is Marx, is live in Social Security Marx, is live in Social Security Marx, is live in Social Security and then uh, then get is live in Social Security and then uh, then get is live in Social Security and then uh,\n\nthen get disability and unemployment and then uh, then get disability and unemployment and then uh, then get disability and unemployment insurance.\n\nfor a dead disability and unemployment insurance. for a dead disability and unemployment insurance. for a dead person because the insurance. for a dead person because the insurance. for a dead person because the databases don't talk to you. person because the databases don't talk to you. person because the databases don't talk to you. Each other all they got databases don't talk to you. Each other all they got databases don't talk to you.\n\nEach other all they got was. from Social, Security Each other all they got was. from Social, Security Each other all they got was. from Social, Security is like, is this person was. from Social, Security is like, is this person was. from Social, Security is like, is this person alive? Yes, they're not, is like, is this person alive? Yes, they're not, is like, is this person alive? Yes, they're not, they're not alive. it's alive?\n\nYes, they're not, they're not alive. it's alive? Yes, they're not, they're not alive. it's possibly more person is they're not alive. it's possibly more person is they're not alive. it's possibly more person is falsely marked as alive possibly more person is falsely marked as alive possibly more person is falsely marked as alive Social Security. uh, but falsely marked as alive Social Security. uh, but falsely marked as alive Social Security.\n\nuh, but they didn't But but that Social Security. uh, but they didn't But but that Social Security. uh, but they didn't But but that was a fraudster can now get they didn't But but that was a fraudster can now get they didn't But but that was a fraudster can now get unemployment and disability. was a fraudster can now get unemployment and disability. was a fraudster can now get unemployment and disability. for, from a dead person.\n\nunemployment and disability. for, from a dead person. unemployment and disability. for, from a dead person. This is happening all the for, from a dead person. This is happening all the for, from a dead person. This is happening all the time. at scale. Are you This is happening all the time. at scale. Are you This is happening all the time. at scale. Are you surprised? at? some of the time. at scale. Are you surprised? at? some of the time.\n\nat scale. Are you surprised? at? some of the legal efforts and some of the surprised? at? some of the legal efforts and some of the surprised? at? some of the legal efforts and some of the judges that have weighed legal efforts and some of the judges that have weighed legal efforts and some of the judges that have weighed in? There's about 8 or 10 judges that have weighed in? There's about 8 or 10 judges that have weighed in?\n\nThere's about 8 or 10 now. um, of these cases in? There's about 8 or 10 now. um, of these cases in? There's about 8 or 10 now. um, of these cases that are at least now. um, of these cases that are at least now.\n\num, of these cases that are at least temporarily holds, that are at least temporarily holds, that are at least temporarily holds, they're being challenged by temporarily holds, they're being challenged by temporarily holds, they're being challenged by the doj. right? Um, are you they're being challenged by the doj. right? Um, are you they're being challenged by the doj. right? Um, are you surprised by that push the doj. right?\n\nUm, are you surprised by that push the doj. right? Um, are you surprised by that push back? well, it's the the DC surprised by that push back? well, it's the the DC surprised by that push back? well, it's the the DC circuit is notorious for back? well, it's the the DC circuit is notorious for back?\n\nwell, it's the the DC circuit is notorious for having a a very far-left circuit is notorious for having a a very far-left circuit is notorious for having a a very far-left bias. Um, and when you look having a a very far-left bias. Um, and when you look having a a very far-left bias. Um, and when you look at uh, the people close to bias. Um, and when you look at uh, the people close to bias.\n\nUm, and when you look at uh, the people close to some of these judges who at uh, the people close to some of these judges who at uh, the people close to some of these judges who who who who are, where are some of these judges who who who who are, where are some of these judges who who who who are, where are they working? Are they who who who are, where are they working? Are they who who who are, where are they working?\n\nAre they working at these knossos? they working? Are they working at these knossos? they working? Are they working at these knossos? or they're getting working at these knossos? or they're getting working at these knossos? or they're getting the the other ones getting or they're getting the the other ones getting or they're getting the the other ones getting this money? Does that the the other ones getting this money?\n\nDoes that the the other ones getting this money? Does that seem like uh, A system this money? Does that seem like uh, A system this money? Does that seem like uh, A system that lacks corruption? It seem like uh, A system that lacks corruption? It seem like uh, A system that lacks corruption? It sounds like corruption that lacks corruption? It sounds like corruption that lacks corruption? It sounds like corruption to me.\n\nLast thing, do you sounds like corruption to me. Last thing, do you sounds like corruption to me. Last thing, do you guys all see this as a to me. Last thing, do you guys all see this as a to me. Last thing, do you guys all see this as a patriotic Duty? I mean, is guys all see this as a patriotic Duty? I mean, is guys all see this as a patriotic Duty? I mean, is that really what this is patriotic Duty?\n\nI mean, is that really what this is patriotic Duty? I mean, is that really what this is about? It's essential So I that really what this is about? It's essential So I that really what this is about? It's essential So I do 100%. I I um, was running about? It's essential So I do 100%. I I um, was running about? It's essential So I do 100%. I I um, was running 5 businesses in Houston. do 100%. I I um, was running 5 businesses in Houston. do 100%.\n\nI I um, was running 5 businesses in Houston. and and I left that I left. 5 businesses in Houston. and and I left that I left. 5 businesses in Houston. and and I left that I left. Great people. to do this and and I left that I left. Great people. to do this and and I left that I left. Great people. to do this and uh my wonderful wife Great people. to do this and uh my wonderful wife Great people.\n\nto do this and uh my wonderful wife said, go for it. and here I and uh my wonderful wife said, go for it. and here I and uh my wonderful wife said, go for it. and here I am But I I feel like this said, go for it. and here I am But I I feel like this said, go for it. and here I am But I I feel like this is me giving back to the am But I I feel like this is me giving back to the am But I I feel like this is me giving back to the country.\n\nIf, if we don't is me giving back to the country. If, if we don't is me giving back to the country. If, if we don't do this Were sunk. uh, the country. If, if we don't do this Were sunk. uh, the country. If, if we don't do this Were sunk. uh, the ship unless unless do this Were sunk. uh, the ship unless unless do this Were sunk. uh, the ship unless unless this exercise is successful. ship unless unless this exercise is successful.\n\nship unless unless this exercise is successful. the ship of America this exercise is successful. the ship of America this exercise is successful. the ship of America will sink. That's why we're the ship of America will sink. That's why we're the ship of America will sink. That's why we're doing it. Well gentlemen, I will sink. That's why we're doing it. Well gentlemen, I will sink. That's why we're doing it.\n\nWell gentlemen, I really appreciate the time. doing it. Well gentlemen, I really appreciate the time. doing it. Well gentlemen, I really appreciate the time. Uh today and uh, hopefully really appreciate the time. Uh today and uh, hopefully really appreciate the time.\n\nUh today and uh, hopefully it took some of the myth Uh today and uh, hopefully it took some of the myth Uh today and uh, hopefully it took some of the myth and mystery out of Doge and it took some of the myth and mystery out of Doge and it took some of the myth and mystery out of Doge and what's happening behind the and mystery out of Doge and what's happening behind the and mystery out of Doge and what's happening behind the scenes? Thank you.\n\nYou see what's happening behind the scenes? Thank you. You see what's happening behind the scenes? Thank you. You see there, we were just scenes? Thank you. You see there, we were just scenes? Thank you. You see there, we were just listening. into that there, we were just listening. into that there, we were just listening. into that segment that are It was an listening. into that segment that are It was an listening.\n\ninto that segment that are It was an exclusive. with Brett, segment that are It was an exclusive. with Brett, segment that are It was an exclusive. with Brett, Bayer being able to sit exclusive. with Brett, Bayer being able to sit exclusive.\n\nwith Brett, Bayer being able to sit down with members of the Bayer being able to sit down with members of the Bayer being able to sit down with members of the Doge team of course down with members of the Doge team of course down with members of the Doge team of course including"},"languages":["en"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":"https://www.rev.com/transcripts/musk-and-doge-on-brett-baier"},{"id":"verdict-ted-cruz-musk-2025","type":"interview","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aMcmuKTfr54","title":"Verdict with Ted Cruz","titles":{"en":"Verdict with Ted Cruz","de":"Verdict with Ted Cruz","fr":"Verdict with Ted Cruz"},"date":"2025-03-17","summary":"Elon Musk joins Senator Ted Cruz and Ben Ferguson at the White House for a wide-ranging interview on DOGE, government waste, space and Mars.","text":"[Music] welcome in his verdict with Senator Ted Cruz Ben Ferguson with you and today is our exclusive conversation with Elon Musk the entrepreneur and innovator who is transforming Industries and is dismantling government waste Fraud and Abuse with Doge must Relentless pursuit of technology and space exploration continues to capture the world's imagination in this episode we unravel the thoughts and aspirations of a man who defies conventional boundaries pushing Humanity towards New Horizons so join us in the white house as we continue to explore the riveting journey of Elon Musk a modern day Pioneer whose revolutionary ideas are set to redefine tomorrow today is a really fun day CER because we have a special guest and we're in a special place I'm going\n\nto let you do the rest of the intro well we're in the white house right now and we're here with my friend Elon Musk who really has not been doing much of anything has not made any news is and uh nobody has noticed yeah the impact welcome Elon thank you holy crap uh yes wow let me just say never at dull moment never a dull moment the first 50 days the president has spent in office over the top and the first 50 days you've spent I I don't think there's ever been anyone to have an impact the way you have the beginning let me let me start with a question you know a lot about which was worse the mess you found at Twitter or the mess you found in the federal government well it's hard to compete with the federal government uh what surprised you about the federal\n\ngovernment I I assume you came in and assumed it was bad is it worse than you expected it it is worse than I expected but on the plus side that means there's more opportunity for improvement so look if you look on the bright side um there's there's actually a lot of opportunity for improvement uh in federal government expenditure because it's so bad um if it if it was a well-run ship it would be very difficult to improve so like but but you so so now it's like people say well how how will you figure out how to save money in the federal government well it's like being in a room where the the walls the roof and the floor are all Targets so you shoot in any direction yeah and you're wi you can miss wow I'm sure you would agree so a lot of folks have talked\n\nabout like like you can't you can't miss can't miss just go any direction a lot of the crazy expenditures things like like two million bucks for sex change surgeries in Guatemala an essential um you know transgendered mice and and Sesame Street in Iraq a lot of that has gotten attention but some of the stuff you've told me about but like tell us about computer licenses and government agencies yeah so most of what do is finding you don't need to be Sherlock Homes okay it's very obvious B basic stuff so in in every govern Department I say every because we've not yet found a single exception um there are far too many software licenses um and and media subscriptions meaning many more uh software licenses and medum subscriptions than there are humans in the\n\ndepartment like you were saying like an agency with 15,000 people might have 30,000 licenses yes and even of the 15,000 employees a good chunk of them hadn't used the license had never logged on or used the used the application yes we're found entire uh situations of of software licenses or media sub subscriptions with there were zero logins so it had and yet we were paying for it yes the government was paying for thousands of licenses of software uh or media subscriptions and no one had ever logged in even once or like credit cards you found the same thing with government credit cards uh we found that there are twice as many credit cards as there are humans could just and I still don't have a good explanation for why this is the case and these are $10,000\n\nlimit cards so a lot of money is it incompetence that you're finding or is this like the biggest money laundering scheme in the history of the world that you're finding look I think it's mostly if you say look what's the waste to fraud ratio yeah uh in my my opinion it's it's like 80% waste 20% FR but but but but you do have these sort of gray areas y example example would be so uh we saw a lot of payments uh going out of Treasury that had no um payment code and no explanation for the payment and then we we we're tra we're trying to figure out what that payment is and we'd see that okay that contract was supposed to be shut off uh but but someone forgot to shut off that that contract and so the company kept getting money wow now is that waste or fraud\n\nyeah both both yeah yeah I mean you know you're getting something you're not supposed to get you're not supposed to get it but you but the the government sent it to you and nobody from the government asked for it back or take for example the one the $1.\n\n9 billion given to Stacy abon's a fake NGO utter Insanity explain that story that's that's just corrupt I think that's paying off cronies at that point 1,000% yeah yeah and by the way she knew like when you get $2 billion you don't miss that that's not that's not an accident that's allegedly it was for like uh you know environmentally friendly appliances or something and they've given like like like 100 appliances so far for $2 billion it's very expensive toaster an appliance that's Subzero fridge boy it's nice right now since this just obviously one of the biggest uh scam Port holes we've uncovered which is really crazy is uh is that is that the government can give money to a so-called nonprofit uh with with very few controls and then that and there's\n\nthere's no auditing subsequently of that nonprofit so there's no so this is way with the you know 1.\n\n9 billion Stacy ABS who's they then give themselves extremely lavish like insane salaries expense everything to the to the nonprofit um you know buy Jets and homes and all sorts of things live like kings and queens yes on the taxpayer down correct you you mentioned this is happening at scale it's not just one or two we're seeing this everywhere now one of the things you told me about is is what you called Magic Money computers at the well so tell us about because I never heard of that until you you brought that up okay so you may think that these that that the government computers uh like all talk to each other they synchronize they they add up what funds are going somewhere and it's you know um it's coherent that that that the you know there's um and\n\nthat and that the numbers for example that you're presented as a senator yeah are actually the real numbers in one would think one would think they're not yeah okay um I mean they're not totally wrong but they're probably off by 5% or 10% in some cases um so uh I call a magic money computer any computer which can just make money out of th a best magic money so how does that work it just issues payments and you said there something like 11 of these computers at treasury that are that are sending out trillions in in payments they're mostly a treasury uh some are with the sum at HHS some at there's one one or to at State uh there's some at DOD I think we found now 14 Magic Money computers okay they just send money out of nothing you have an ability to see\n\nwhere leverage points are and and how things actually happen so I remember back I think it was September or October of this year before the election we didn't know who was going to win and I I was at your h house in Austin we were talking about it and and and you said you you you said look I I I don't want a job in in Washington you said all I want is the login for every computer and and I remember thinking at the time that sounded kind of weird like I just didn't get it and I have to say what what's interesting on this if I would have thought like okay how do you reform government like sort of the traditional way to think about it is okay give me an orc chart let me sit down with the people who are running agencies and and what you saw immediately is\n\nto understand what's really going on get to the payment systems get to the computers yeah like like why are are why is getting to the computer so critical to understanding what's actually happening well the government is run by computers so you've got um essentially several hundred computers that effectively run the government um and if you want to know did you know that Ben no like yeah so when somebody like even when the president issues an executive order that's going to go through a whole bunch of people until ultimately it is implemented at a computer somewhere and if you want to know what what the situation is with the accounting you're trying to reconcile County and get rid of waste and fraud you must be able to analyze the computer databases otherwise\n\nyou can't figure it out um because all you're doing is asking a human who will then ask another human ask another human and finally usually ask some contractor who will ask another contractor to do a query on the computer wow that's how it actually works so it's many layers deep um so the only way to reconcile the databases and get rid of waste and fraud is to um to actually look at the computers and see what's going on so you that's what I call that's like that's what I when I sort of cryptically referred to reprogramming The Matrix you have to understand what's going at the computers you have to reconcile the computer databases uh in order to identify the waste and fraud I don't know that there was anyone in Congress who understood certainly myself\n\nincluded who understood the leverage that comes from the computer and the data in particular that that Congress would think about give me a report on what your expenditures are rather than actually getting into the pipes and I think that has been fascinating that it's let you uncover a bunch of crap that just nobody knew yes I mean in order for money to go to a bank account it it's it's not like we're sending truckloads of cash all over the place we're it's a we're wiring money right we're sending money through the a system or through the Swift system so in order for money to flow it's going to flow electronically so that's that's what you need to look at you need to look at the the the the actual electronic money flows and Tesla and all your companies\n\nyou have accounting and you have every expenditure you have it coded for what it's going for federal government doesn't work that way they don't code with the money's going for they do not but they didn't they didn't and and like one of the things that that that you told me you said if any company kept its books the way the federal government does they'd arrest the officers and put them in jail yes if it was a public company it would be delisted immediately it would fail it's ordered uh and the the officers of the company would be imprisoned that's level of heiness in the federal government unfortunately it's deliberately or do you think this is in confidence again it's 80% it's 80% incompetence or and 20% malice so if if you look at if you look at Doge\n\nnow and you look at the government and what you're finding what percentage have you guys even gotten to and how much of it is Mars where you haven't even gotten there yet because there's so much you're finding out here I mean how many you seem like a timeline guy when you say all right I want to get in there and get all these you know numbers and things how far are we from the ingame where you've seen it all been able to process it all and fix it I mean are we years away months away uh not years um I I I I mean I'm reasonably confident that we'll be able to get a trillion dollars of waste and fraud out uh and that that meaning that it will have we'll have a net Savings in FY 26 which starts in October obviously um of of a trillion dollars W provided we\n\nallowed to we're allowed to continue and and we're and our progress is not impeded and and and we're very public about what we do yeah you put it on the website on the website how we could be more transparent uh literally every action we do small or large we put on the Doge dot.\n\ngov website uh and we post on on the X handle um and when people complain about it I I I and they say oh you're doing something on cost well which of these con doing it in the daylight everyone knows exactly what you're doing extreme transparency yeah um I don't think it's anything's been this transparent ever so five years ago you were a hero to the left you were cool you had electric cars you had space and in five years you've g go I could could go to a party in Hollywood and not get dirty looks yeah in fact uh yeah a and now you might not even get invited still get invited but I don't know if I should go I don't think it's an exaggeration to say today after Donald Trump the left hates you more than any person on Earth uh yes I appear to be number two\n\nI mean if you're judged by the various signs they it's derangements it's Trump derangement syndrome and Elon derangement syndrome how is it that for you that's a little bit of whiplash of going from being like Mr Cool to the devil incarnate in just a couple of years is that is that kind of weird to experience that transformation yes why do they hate you so much well because we're we're clearly over the target if Doge was ineffective if we were not actually getting rid of a bunch of Wast and fraud and a bunch of that fraud uh I mean the fraud we're seeing is over overwhelmingly on the on the left m i mean there's it's not zero on the right but uh these NOS are almost all leftwing NGS that are being funded for example y um so they they because doge is being\n\neffective um and doge is getting rid of a lot of waste and for that they were that people in left were taking advantage of that that's that's that's what it comes out to and and the the the single biggest thing that they're that they're worried about is that um doge is is going to turn off fraudulent payments of entitlements I mean everything from Social Security Medicare uh you know unemployment disability uh small business administ registration loans turn them off to uh illegals this is the Crux of the matter y okay this is this is the this is the thing that why why they really hit my guts and want me to die um and do you think that's billions hundreds of billions what do you think the scale is of that I think across the country it's it's in it's wellth\n\nof 100 billion maybe 200 billion um so uh by by using entitlements fraud the Democrats have been able to attra ract and retain vast numbers of illegal immigrants and and buy voters and and buy voters exactly the it basically bring in I don't know 10 20 million uh people who are beholden to the Democrats for government handouts and will vote overwhelmingly Democrat as has been demonstrated in California this is over it's an election strategy yes it's power yes and and it doesn't take much to turn the swing States blue I mean often a swing state might be won by 10 20,000 votes sure so if the Dems can bring in 200,000 illegals and over time get them leg legalized not not counting any cheating that takes place because there is some cheating uh but even without\n\ncheating if you if you if you if you have if you bring in illegals that are 10x the voter differential in in a swing state it will no longer be a swing state right um and the the dams will win all the swing States just a matter of time um and America will be permanent deep blue socialist state where at the the house the Senate yep uh the presidency and the Supreme Court will all go hardcore Den they will then further cement that by by ex bringing in even more aliens so you you can't vote your way out of it their ob one party socialist State and it'll be much worse than California because at least California is mitigated by the fact that someone can leave California you can go to Texas yeah exactly you did they going to make everywhere California but wor\n\nby the way the middle of the pandemic I spent 45 minutes on the phone with Elon he was still in California I was walking my dog Snowflake and trying to convince you come to Texas the commies in California can't stand you we love you we want you here and you didn't quite go then but you went not that long afterwards I mean the the the co actions U almost killed Tesla uh because they they let every other Auto Plant in the country was allowed to open but ours which was in California was not allowed to open wow wow so they almost killed Tesla so as a as a personal matter did do you ever regret it like five years ago you go to the Oscars and Mr Cool and now you're you've got death threats every day like do you well these days the Oscars are boring I wouldn't\n\nwant to go God bless the movies they nominate no one on earth has ever seen like like could they actually nominate a movie that human beings go watch I mean the how many great movies have come out in the last several years very few depressingly few yeah very few the last Oscar came and went I don't even watch it there's nothing to see I I was sad that Jee Hackman just passed away because Unforgiven was spectacular but that was a long time ago that un forgiven came out you You' mentioned today here and before about the possibility of someone wanting to take you out dealing with the death threats we see it's not in my imagination you could just look on social media yeah but like is is it because very clear yeah and look I'm I'm very familiar with that and\n\nthey've got signs people with signs and demonstrations uh saying that I need to die do do you think are these just whack jobs or do you think there are foreign sane people do you think there are foreign entities behind this do you think there are domestic entities behind the the threats and also the attacks to Twitter like or not Twitter uh Tesla I mean you know you're getting Tesla's charging stations lit on fire do do you think that's organized and paid for yes at least some of it is organiz has paid for um I think by domestic uh you know what basically leftwing organizations in America um funded by uh leftwing billionair essentially is it like act blue or what act blue is one of them um you know Arabella you know the classic it's funded by the you\n\nknow the the the blue basically the the left wing and cabal how big of a thread is this to like what you build at Tesla I mean I remember when Teslas came out it was people that they didn't want to have gas cars a lot of it was environmental reasons I jokingly said I was like I'm a Texas guy I'm always going to have something that burns gas my kids now all three of my boys think that the that Teslas are awesome the Cyber truck is the car they want their dad to buy which I laugh because I never could have imagined that five years ago and now I'm looking at well we're at the White House in the president's Tesla parked right outside the West Wing which is the fullest damn thing you've changed a generation when you look at my kids are six and eight and they're\n\ngoing dad buy a cyber truck and I'm considering it that's a that's a Full Circle in a weird way yeah well I do have this theory that the most entertaining outcome is the most likely so um yeah it seems often to be true you see like what uh what twist or turn of Fate uh well I the highest ratings if this was if we were a TV show what twistter fate would generate the highest ratings that there's a good chance that happens well I will say if if act blue and Arabella networks act blue is a huge scam next level do you think it's foreign money Chinese money where where do you think the money in act blue is coming from how do you figure that out well it's not coming from the in from a whole bunch of from a a ground swell of public support uh because when individual\n\ndonors looked at in act blue they a bun turn to be like die hard Republicans right people have never given money in their life so you're going to track down a bunch of these people where it says oh I gave $166,000 and they're like I don't give $116,000 what are you talking about this this Republican friends of mine found themselves on the ACT blue list and they're like it defin wasn't me so that's if it can act actually be shown that they are funding firebombing of Tesla charging stations that's objectively a criminal act that that is funding terrorist activity and and the statutes make clear that an incendiary device qualifies so down is a terrorist activity yeah let me ask AI in 10 years how is life going to be different because of AI for for just a\n\nnormal person well 10 years is a long time in 10 years probably AI could do anything better than a human can cognitively probably almost I think in 10 years based on the current rate of improvement AI will be smarter than the smartest human yeah yeah there will also be a massive number of robots so humanoid robots by the way I got to ask how come your robots look so much like the creepy robots for my robot was was that intentional or just uh I was hoping he was gon to say yeah just to mess with you it's not meant to look like any any prior robot uh and we'll iterate the design um you and you you'll be able to have a lot of the robot parts are cosmetic you'll be able to switch out the kind of Snap-on cosmetic parts of the robot make it look like something\n\nelse if you'd like um so there will be ultimately billions of humanoid robots uh all cars will be self-driving in 10 years uh in 10 years probably 90% of miles driven will be uh autonomous huh wow that fast yeah in 5 years probably 50% of all miles driven will be autonomous now if AI will be smarter than any person how many jobs go away because of that and what do people do if you've got millions of people that are losing their jobs like that a lot of people are understandably freaked out about that well I Goods goods and services will become as close to free so it's not as though people will be wanting in terms of goods and services um so why is that what why are goods and services free in an AI world or close to free well you have I don't know pull\n\nit tens of billions of robots uh that that they will they will make you anything or provide any service you want um for basically next to nothing um it's it's not that people will be uh will have a lower standard of living they'll have actually a much higher standard of living the the challenge will be uh fulfillment how do you derive fulfillment and meaning in life is Skynet real like like like you get the apocalyptic visions of AI how real is the prospect of of Killer Robots annihilating Humanity 20% likely maybe 10% on what time frame after to 10 years so soon like you you you see a world where that's possible yeah but I mean you could look at it like the glasses 80 90% full meaning like 80% likely will have extreme prosperity for all now I guess my\n\nview we're in a race to to win AI we're in a race with China and my view is if they're going to be killing robots I'd rather they be American Killer Robots than Chinese How likely are we winning right now is America winning right now and How likely is America to win the race for AI Vis China or anyone else for the next few years I think America is likely to win uh then it will be a function of who controls the AI chip uh fabrication the factories that make the AI chips who controls them if they're control if more of them are controlled by China then China will win more of the factories that are making the AI chips you you think that will determine it yes and how are we doing versus China on that front well right now uh almost all the advanced AI chip\n\nuh factories they call them Fabs um are in Taiwan and what if China invades Taiwan miles away from yeah if what what happens if China if China invades Taiwan what happens to the world well if they were to invade in the near term uh the worlder would be cut off from uh Advanced AI chips and currently 100% of advanced AI chips are made in Taiwan how fast could we put that online in America and how important is that for National Security I think it's essential for National Security uh and we're not doing enough you're 53 years old I'm 118 days older than you by what the hell have I done in my life I know right 53 years old she did pretty well well so 71 was a great year and I was December 70 so I was just just right before you were the summer of 71 um I\n\nborn 69 days after 420 wow I I I I did ask Ben this is true all right you just you just open up 10 words I I did ask Ben should I show up and pull up a joint and say c can we beat Rogan's views but but I was pretty sure uh it might cause a scandal if if we SP house it just turned out to be like a chocolate cigar yeah let me ask you if If Today Was Your Last Day on Earth yeah what what I'm not suggesting it's going to be but if it were what do you think your biggest Legacy would be if everything you've done a hundred years from now what do you think people would remember if if if if it were zero to today and will you ever go to space uh in the in the distant future 100 or thousand years ago if SpaceX got humans to Mars that's what they would remember me\n\nbefore all right final set of questions who's the smartest guy you've ever met you hang out with some brilliant people like like when you look what's a CEO you look at other than yourself what CEO do you say damn that guy's good Larry elon's very smart um so say Larry Alison's one of the smartest people um you know Larry pagee I mean there are a lot of people that are very smart it's hard to say like you know I think to some degree smart is as smart does so you know what if what have they done that is difficult uh and significant um you know Jeff feos has done a lot of difficult and significant things things um I mean there are a lot of smart humans I call them smart smart for a human a lot of people who are in the smart for a human category all right\n\nfinal lightning round Star Wars or Star Trek the first movie I saw in the theater was Star Wars so I think it had a profound effect on me I was six years old I think imagine if first movie you ever see in a theater it's Star Wars it's going to BL your mind best Star Wars movie um Empire Strikes Back the the only objectively right answer I stood in line for three hours with my dad to see it on opening day Kirk or peard uh I like them both but Kirk again objectively right answer by the way James T Kirk is a Republican and peard is a Democrat and and the left gets very mad when I say that yeah uh best Star Trek movie I mean the original the first Star Trek M that's in okay R of KH actually both both both Wrath of KH were pretty good but yeah the original\n\nWrath of KH Ricardo monoban revenge is a dish best served cold it is very cold in space although I will say rathon is objectively the right answer but but four is a sleeper when they go back to San Francisco and and and go find the whales and and you know Scotty picks up SPS picks up the mouth and talks to it then goes a keyboard how quaint that's a sleeper all right last question did Han shoot first H it seemed like he shot second I like it this is verdict and by the way I apologize Ben so Ben was a jock and played tennis at Old Miss and so so occasionally when when we geek out a little I love watching y'all geek out over there might have first over because the guy still on the question I he missed his the alien missed his Blaster shot so why did he\n\nmissed his Blaster shot must have been because he got shot first no he's missing a point blank Bassel shot if unless they got knocked off kill but it's a question of real consequence which is is Han Solo simply a hero or an anti-hero and and so I'm in the Han shot first category I don't like sanitized stories he would have had to have shot first because otherwi why why would the alien miss a Point Blank Range are you ever going to go to outer space is that say in your life yeah I'd like to go to Mars at some point and and people have said uh uh do I want to die on Ms and I say yes just not on impact now that's a very good answer the astronauts on the space station are they political prisoners some of them are because because you could have given them\n\na ride back and and and Joe Biden said no purely for politics yeah I mean you know there's been some uh debate about this online but the thing is that it was very a very high level decision so uh it wasn't really even a NASA decision it was just that um the Biden White House did not want to have someone who was Pro Trump uh rescuing astronauts right before the election um so they posted well if you're one of those astronauts you got to be pretty pissed off about that well if they're a Democrat yes Republican yes if a Democrat like everything's fine fair enough um so I think one of them is a republican one is a Democrat so depends which one you asked what year does man first set set foot on Mars I think the soonest would be 29 29 yes and I don't think\n\nit's more than two to four years beyond that and that's not an unman that's that's a human being putting his foot on the surface yes best case would be 29 and what do you what do you put the odds of finding either alien life or evidence of alien life I don't think we're going to find aliens okay um but do we find ruins do we find remnants we may we may find the ruins of a long dead alien civilization that's possible and we may find uh Subterranean microbial life that's possible all right if man lands on Mars in 29 how soon after that do you land on Mars it remains to be seen I'm not sure the important thing is that we uh build a self-sustaining City on MOS as quickly as possible uh the the key threshold is when that City can continue to grow continue\n\nto prosper even when the supply ships from Earth stop coming at that point even if something would happen on Earth it might might it might not be World War III but it might be that uh a bad virus yeah yeah it might not be say like like say civilization could die with a bang or whimper it may be that Civilization dies with a whimper rather than a bang um or and simply loses the ability to send ships to Mars um but so you OB need Mars to be become self- sustaining and be able to grow by itself um before the resupply ships from Earth stop coming that that is the critical civilizational threshold Beyond which uh the probable lifespan of civil ation is much greater and how close are we technologically to be able to do that to have a self-sustaining settlement\n\nuh on the surface of Mars I think it can be done in 20 years but it would take 20 years so we're not in 29 we're not there what are we missing what are the big Technologies we we don't have a few people running around the surface in a hostile environment is not going to make it self-sustaining right so you're going to need on the order of a million people uh maybe a million tons of cargo so but you think we could have a million people on Mars in 20 years yes and and what are what's the technology we're missing right now when you think about a million people on Mars do we have the ability to get water to get food to to keep them safe what I mean what what do we need to make that happen well you need to recreate the entire base of Industry of Earth so um\n\nyou know we're here at the top of of a massive perative industry that starts with mining uh V array of materials those materials going through hundreds of steps of refinement uh we grow food obviously uh we grow trees we make things out of the trees uh there's you know you've got to you've got to build all that on M and M is a hostile environment it's um you know it sometimes gets above zero on a warm summer day near the equator on M really it's quite cold and how do you prep for that well in the beginning on Mars you have to have a uh a life support habitation module right like you need you can't just live outdoors you can't breathe the air like a dome you think is likely yeah glass domes type of thing have you identified a location on Mars that is likely\n\nto be ideal for a habitat uh what it might be Arcadia planetara um is one of the one of the good options that's uh one of my da is his named Arcadia after that um and what makes that attractive my eldest son's middle name is uh AR M you've been thinking about this for a long time if you're naming your kids around it my eldest kid is middle name is essentially Mars when did you get the dream like I mean it's 20 now 2021 soon this is a decades old yeah dream so like when you were 10 did you look up and say I'm going to Mars no no I read a lot of science fiction books and programmed computers uh but the first fin off the first video game that I sold was a space video game called blastar and you've managed everything you've touched has been an extraordinary\n\nsuccess uh yeah yeah look I mean that's just objectively right so what what has led to that because there are other smart people that that's not true and they gaze at their nebal and they don't do anything so what what do you do differently that makes you so effective well I suppose I have a philosophy of curiosity I want to find out the nature of the universe understand the Universe um and in order to do that we have to travel to other planets see other star systems maybe other galaxies um find perhaps other alien civilizations or at least the remnants of alien civilizations um gain a better understanding of where is this universe going where did it come from and what questions do we not yet know to ask about the answer that is the universe so let's\n\ngo back 25 years late '90s you're at PayPal how do you turn PayPal into the success it was which which then helped launch you to the next one and the next one yeah so I studied physics and economics in college is a good foundation for understanding how the economy works and how the how reality Works um and then um was going to do a PhD at Stanford in um Advanced uh Ultra capacitors actually as a uh potential means of uh energy storage for electric transport um put that on hold to start an Internet company um essentially came to the conclusion that the internet was one of those rare things and I could either watch it happen while a grad student or participate and I figured I could always go back to grad school you know grad school is going to be kind of\n\nthe same but uh I I I couldn't bear the thought of just watching the internet happen so I wanted to be a part of building it so I created a an internet internet company we did the first Maps directions Yellow Pages White Pages um on the internet I actually wrote the first version of the software software just by myself in 95 and um we ended up selling that to compact Texas company I guess yeah um for about $300 million in cash about four years after I graduated wow so I should say just to preface that I I graduated with about $100,000 in student debt so it wasn't uh yeah you and me both yeah yeah where's my right I know um and when I first arrived in North America I arrived with $2,500 a bag of books and a and a bag of clothes all right so you sell the\n\ncompany for 300 million how how much does that change your life well I got $21 million Blackjack um and but I wanted to do more on the internet so started a company called X which mer with a company called confinity uh which is Peter teal and Max Leon yeah and um the combined company was actually at First still called x.\n\ncom but we later later changed the name of the company to PayPal uh because of all the name changes it's kind of confusing but the company that people know is know as as PayPal today was actually I filed those incorporation documents for that company interesting yeah well and and as you know Peter teal and I were buddies back in the mid90s he went and of this but you know I became friends with him when he was a corporate lawyer in New York and just sort of a young libertarian with with a lot of dreams so it's it's been a heck of a journey uh yeah yeah and now obviously Peter was involved in a coup uh you know we had a little sort of knifing in the Senate situation uh where um uh you know that they did CW me at at at PayPal um I kind of now did you all\n\nmake peace after that yeah yeah yeah I mean I was doing a lot of sort of risky moves that I think ultimately would have been successful but um I then went on a two we trip which was a a dual money raising trip and honeymoon since I'd not done my honeymoon earlier in the year so I was raising money while doing doing H honeymoon but I was kind of a was how did that go by the way it worked it worked there you go kind of it worked ra money yeah yeah and we had a honeymoon there you go so yeah uh but you don't want to be away from the battle when things are scary um so I was not there to assuage the concerns of the troops um and um anyway uh we we patched things up and have been friends uh nonetheless and um yeah know these days I like stay at his house and\n\nstuff so obviously we're friends and he's also invested in in most of my companies all right so 2002 you you start SpaceX like how do you start a rocket company like what's the first day where you're like I want to make rockets and I want to go to Mars like what what do you do on day one so I think you have to start with a some sort of philosophical premise in order to have in order for the in order to be in order to be highly motivated you have to have some um philosophical Foundation in my case it was um that that we want to expand the SC the scope and scale of Consciousness to better understand the nature of the universe um and in order to to expand expand Consciousness we need to go beyond One Planet if we're if we're on one planet there's there's\n\ntoo much risk you know hopefully Earth civilization prospers very far into the future but it may not there's always some risk that we are uh we self annihilate through nuclear war or that there's a big meteor that takes us out like the dinosaurs y there's always some risk if all your eggs are in one basket so it's going to be better if uh we're multiplet species and then once we're multiplan species The Next Step would be to be multi- stellar and have uh civilization among on on many different star systems so in 2001 I didn't think that I could I didn't think I could sell a rocket company so I I thought take some of the money from um PayPal and that that case I think it was about $180 million after tax something like that and I thought you know I don't\n\nneed $180 million so I'll spend a bunch of it on uh a philanthropic MOS mission to get the public excited about going back to Mars or going to Mars I should say yeah Mars was always going to be the destination after the Moon right um in fact if you told people in 19 in 1969 that it would be 2025 and we've not even gone back to the Moon let alone it's hard to believe let alone Mars they'd be like what happened did civilation did civilization collapsed stop yeah like like they would be incomprehensible that we've not been to Mars by now if you told people L after landing on the moon in 69 why do you think in 50 years America never went back to the Moon well we destroyed the Saturn 5 rocket that was that that could take people the moon and had the space\n\nshuttle which could only go to lowth orbit um and then there really hasn't been anything to replace any no no vehicle has been made since then that can go to the moon or to Mars until the SpaceX Starship rocket yeah so can't go to Mars if you don't have the ride so I remember you and I first met in 2013 when when I was a brand new baby Senator and I was still down in the basement office they stick freshman senators in basement office kind of like hazing yeah yeah I about say it sounds like there are 100 Senate offices but for six months you stay in the basement put you in your place but it's like wearing beanie they just uh they want you to know where you're supposed to be you know I got to say now 13 years into it I think there's a lot of wisdom to doing\n\nthat but you were down in the basement office and I remember you were coming and sitting down with SpaceX and at the time the Air Force was not letting youall bid to to launch satellites and see you're coming and saying look we got a company I think we can do a really good job of this and yet we're locked out of this it's a little amazing to think the journey SpaceX has gone from then to now uh yes it's hard to believe that this is all real um because originally consistent with my belief that we need to become a multiplan species I thought the only way to do that would be through NASA so uh and I think I thought well if if I can just get the public excited about Mars then they'll do a mission to Mars and uh so my thought was to have to send a small Greenhouse\n\nuh with seeds in dehydrated nutrient gel then land the greenhouse hydrate the seeds and you see these this the sort of money shot the money shot would be green plants on a red background yeah um I also recently learn that mon shot uh has a different meaning in some other Arenas but yeah I'm glad you very very different story but um what I'm trying to say is the the the captivating shot um would be the green plants on a red background um and that hopefully that would if we did something like that that would get the public excited about Mars that would increase NASA's budget and then we could send people to Mars so your original dream was NASA to do this yes not you no the original original plan was uh literally to to take a bunch of the money from PayPal\n\num and I guess by some people's definition Wast it with no no profit uh on a nonprofit thing to I wanted to spend a whole bunch of my money money for free to get NASA's budget to be bigger so we could go to fraking Mars right wow that's what I wanted so that was the Holy Grill that's what I wanted I was like so when did you change go to Mars that's what I wanted to know when when did it strike you okay you're going to have to do this if you want I tell you it gets crazier all right it gets crazier so so then I couldn't afford any of the US Rockets because as you know the US Rockets are way too expensive the bo locky rock lucky Rockets are crazy money I didn't have I didn't even even with 180 million there no way I could have afford how much were they\n\nback then well the the with with the additional stage to get to Mars it would have been about like 80 million so technically I could have afforded one of them but I wanted to do two in case one of them didn't work yeah so uh and then I didn't have enough money for that and I was sort of prepared to you know I don't know waste half the money uh and I figured if I had 90 million left that' be fine you know uh but ideally not all of it so I went to Russia twice to to try to buy icbms oh interesting how'd that go and who do you call uh the Russian rocket forces do they sell icbms does that work yeah you got to tell us the story then I want to know who you can buy anything in Russia yeah I I like please walk me down that I want to know how you made that phone\n\ncall and when you get there how did that work and what do you tell your friends you know listen I'm I'm going to Russia device of ICBM I I might not you know depends on the situation literally um so I guess slightly less insane when you uh when uh you understand that uh the Russians had to demolish a bunch of their icbms because of uh you know salt talks like the peace because of basically an agreement between the United States and and Russia to reduce the total number of icbms sure Russia was actually obligated to scrap a bunch of their icbms so took the very biggest icbms you could convert those into a rocket at an additional stage and and send something to Mars so so those are big enough with one more stage to get to Mars to send a small payload to\n\nMars yeah so the ss8 so you try to buy cbms do you succeed or no or do you figure out you got to build your own instead they kept raising the price on me so um because I figured like look they're going to throw these things in scrapyard anyway you should get a really good deal yeah right um so the price started out at at 4 million then the next conversation there were at 8 million then the next conversation they were at like1 million and I'm like this is before we signed a contract by the way was there another bidder was there another bidder or were you the only one trying to buy them I think I don't know if there were other bids but they didn't mention any other bids yeah but I was like man if if the price is increasing this much before the contract\n\nsigned yeah I'm really going to get fleeced after the contract signed so so I got pretty frustrated there um actually in some cases we got into like shouting matches in Moscow some guy shouting at me in Russia and I'm shouting back at him in really badly you know I'm like so you are all I mean you're all ining me off in Moscow yeah so uh man I should have recorded that that would have been one for them how many days were you there negotiating that first time I mean was this like ongoing yeah yeah this this took place these conversations took place over probably six months or so wow um so um and then the final trip trip there was with the uh with was with Mike Griffin who later became Assa administrator um I actually realized in the in the course of this\n\nthat my original premise was wrong that that America actually has plenty of will to go to Mars but needs that it just needs a way to go to Mars um that is Affordable um and that doesn't break the budget you know well as you know we couldn't even get to the space station we needed the Russians to to to get us to our own space station that was embarrassing it really was pitiful I'm not sure most Americans know just how much we were being fleeced like I think they got up to like $90 million a seat yeah wow yeah for a seat that cost them like 10 that was pre Doge obviously but it was the only before SpaceX but but $90 million a seat for a seat that cost them 10 million is high yeah that's a lot of money yeah um so a few months ago you and I were down in Bach\n\nchica with the president for a Starship launch and it is incredible what you built in Bach chica you know five years ago it was an empty beach at the southern tip of Texas sandar yeah and it's now a city and and a factory where you're building a rocket ship a month with with Incredible precision yeah but one of the things you you said to me when we were down there that really stood out to me is is is you said your philosophy on intellectual property talked to lots of CEOs they're like yeah we fight to guard our IP and and you had a very different approach what what's what's your view of Ip patent of the week Pat for those who innovate slowly I I literally do not know anyone else in business who would say something like that like like it was a startling\n\nand and and and what Elon said down there is he said look this stuff I assume everyone will steal everything but by the time they steal it will be five generations Beyond and it won't matter yes um at at at Tesla we actually open source to live patents so we said our patents are anyone can use them for free really um yeah uh the only we only do patents at Tesla to to avoid patent trolls causing causing trouble so we'll try to look ahead say Okay patent trolls going to Tri P file patents to block certain things will file patents and then open source patent make it free I mean it when I say patents for the week now there are a few uh cases in in say with Pharmaceuticals where it might cost you a billion dollars to do a P3 uh human trial um but then subsequently\n\nthe the drug is very cheap to manufacture so cases there are some in my opinion which should massively reduce what can be patented um and and and say because the whole point of patenting is is to maximize Innovation not inhibit it m um and in my opinion it's maybe a controversial opinion um most patents inhibit Innovation they do not help it um but there are case I want to do want to single out cases like where such as a face3 clinical trial that might cost a billion dollars but the then the drugs thereafter cost a few dollars to manufacturer and and if you can then immediately copy those drugs for a few dollars no one will pay for the billion dollar a free riter Problem free riter problem exactly so you have to address the free riter problem but other\n\nthan that there should be no patents the ideas are easy you want ideas to flow maximum to people to get there faster and do things bigger the idea is the easy part uh the hard execution is the hard part as the old saying goes It's 1% inspiration if not less than 1% and 99% perspiration but I'll say the perspiration part you're really damn good at also because you're making you know the companies You're Building are actually building stuff they're building cars they're building spaceships they're building things that if they don't work it's a real problem and and the Precision you man facture things with how do you get that level of precision how do you get how do you build a culture you're not you're amazing at thinking outside the box but but what's\n\ninteresting is you you may even be better at execution which is how do you execute so effectively well I take a post physics post principal approach to everything it's not as though I I I wanted to insource manufacturing it's just that I was unable to Outsource it effectively so uh you know the idea in the beginning of Tesla was that we would Outsource almost all the manufacturing uh but then it turned out there was no there were no good companies to Outsource manufacturing too which there wasn't uh really really wasn't Peaceable outour manufacturing actually is uh the exception of the rule um and uh and just over time we had to ensource almost everything for Tesla and same for SpaceX I became very good at my facturing because I had to there's no choice\n\nat this point I might know more about manufacturing than any any human ever has because I've done so many I've manufactured so many different things in so many different Arenas um I think probably more than anyone ever has look that's that sounds like an astonishing statement but it's not a crazy statement and and you're somehow running Tesla and running SpaceX and running X and running the boring company and running norlink and doing Doge how much do you sleep in a given night about 6 hours on average so about six so so that's it wouldn't have shocked me if you said three or four so the next question is how many hours do you work a day I work almost every waking hour and and Ben he he's not kidding at that like when Elon and I were first getting to know\n\neach other um I suggested I said hey let's grab dinner sometime and I don't know if you remember what you said you said I I don't eat dinner I don't have social dinners really right I mean that yeah you obviously eat food but the idea you're not going to restaurant for two hours but the idea of like I I don't but it was it was just kind of matter of fact why would I go to dinner like I you you work uh yeah I I literally just thought I'll have lunch and dinner BR during meetings and continue the meeting how many nights have you slept at your offices you think your career percentage wise where you say I just got to take this nap basically because my body forces me to and I got to get back to work fast and efficiently without going somewhere else well I\n\nguess it started out even with with the first company uh sub2 which is a terrible name but the first internet company um the we were able to rent an office uh which was like in a leaky attic essentially for $500 a month and the the cheapest um apartment we could find was $800 a month so like and we only had about $55,000 between brother and I MH so we're like we're not we'll we'll we'll just stay in the office yeah uh so we got some um couches that converted into beds um and we'd uh kind of sleep at night and then we just have to like uh turn the the beds back into couches uh before anyone came and then we we sh the YMCA down the road and so that went that that that that literally was the for several months what we did uh was in great shape you know uh\n\nwork out out the why um I still remember that that YMCA at Page Mill alino uh in paloalto so that was a long time ago so it's been I don't know I've never thought to count it but uh several hundred days maybe I don't know so you're now the richest man on earth do you still sleep at the office well that's true maybe Mars we we'll we'll find someone else but I think if if someone is a sovereign head of a country that in facto richer by a lot do you still sleep at the office now I have slept at the office yeah well thank you Elon this this was this was awesome and and let me say and by the way I I put out on X the day before yesterday if you were having a beer with Elon and could ask him anything what would you ask and got lots of responses yeah the most\n\ncommon response people said is is is say thank you look Texans and the American people appreciate what you're doing you don't have to put up with this BS and you're doing it I'm grateful you're making a hell of a difference for this country I appreciate you and the Americans appreciate you thank you it's essential for the future of civilization otherwise I wouldn't be doing it yes it's not like I want to get death threats you know no don't forget we do this show Monday Wednesday and Friday hit that subscribe or Auto download button from the White House it's been a pleasure thanks for being with us on verdict we'll see you guys back here in a couple days [Music]","textByLang":{"en":"[Music] welcome in his verdict with Senator Ted Cruz Ben Ferguson with you and today is our exclusive conversation with Elon Musk the entrepreneur and innovator who is transforming Industries and is dismantling government waste Fraud and Abuse with Doge must Relentless pursuit of technology and space exploration continues to capture the world's imagination in this episode we unravel the thoughts and aspirations of a man who defies conventional boundaries pushing Humanity towards New Horizons so join us in the white house as we continue to explore the riveting journey of Elon Musk a modern day Pioneer whose revolutionary ideas are set to redefine tomorrow today is a really fun day CER because we have a special guest and we're in a special place I'm going\n\nto let you do the rest of the intro well we're in the white house right now and we're here with my friend Elon Musk who really has not been doing much of anything has not made any news is and uh nobody has noticed yeah the impact welcome Elon thank you holy crap uh yes wow let me just say never at dull moment never a dull moment the first 50 days the president has spent in office over the top and the first 50 days you've spent I I don't think there's ever been anyone to have an impact the way you have the beginning let me let me start with a question you know a lot about which was worse the mess you found at Twitter or the mess you found in the federal government well it's hard to compete with the federal government uh what surprised you about the federal\n\ngovernment I I assume you came in and assumed it was bad is it worse than you expected it it is worse than I expected but on the plus side that means there's more opportunity for improvement so look if you look on the bright side um there's there's actually a lot of opportunity for improvement uh in federal government expenditure because it's so bad um if it if it was a well-run ship it would be very difficult to improve so like but but you so so now it's like people say well how how will you figure out how to save money in the federal government well it's like being in a room where the the walls the roof and the floor are all Targets so you shoot in any direction yeah and you're wi you can miss wow I'm sure you would agree so a lot of folks have talked\n\nabout like like you can't you can't miss can't miss just go any direction a lot of the crazy expenditures things like like two million bucks for sex change surgeries in Guatemala an essential um you know transgendered mice and and Sesame Street in Iraq a lot of that has gotten attention but some of the stuff you've told me about but like tell us about computer licenses and government agencies yeah so most of what do is finding you don't need to be Sherlock Homes okay it's very obvious B basic stuff so in in every govern Department I say every because we've not yet found a single exception um there are far too many software licenses um and and media subscriptions meaning many more uh software licenses and medum subscriptions than there are humans in the\n\ndepartment like you were saying like an agency with 15,000 people might have 30,000 licenses yes and even of the 15,000 employees a good chunk of them hadn't used the license had never logged on or used the used the application yes we're found entire uh situations of of software licenses or media sub subscriptions with there were zero logins so it had and yet we were paying for it yes the government was paying for thousands of licenses of software uh or media subscriptions and no one had ever logged in even once or like credit cards you found the same thing with government credit cards uh we found that there are twice as many credit cards as there are humans could just and I still don't have a good explanation for why this is the case and these are $10,000\n\nlimit cards so a lot of money is it incompetence that you're finding or is this like the biggest money laundering scheme in the history of the world that you're finding look I think it's mostly if you say look what's the waste to fraud ratio yeah uh in my my opinion it's it's like 80% waste 20% FR but but but but you do have these sort of gray areas y example example would be so uh we saw a lot of payments uh going out of Treasury that had no um payment code and no explanation for the payment and then we we we're tra we're trying to figure out what that payment is and we'd see that okay that contract was supposed to be shut off uh but but someone forgot to shut off that that contract and so the company kept getting money wow now is that waste or fraud\n\nyeah both both yeah yeah I mean you know you're getting something you're not supposed to get you're not supposed to get it but you but the the government sent it to you and nobody from the government asked for it back or take for example the one the $1.\n\n9 billion given to Stacy abon's a fake NGO utter Insanity explain that story that's that's just corrupt I think that's paying off cronies at that point 1,000% yeah yeah and by the way she knew like when you get $2 billion you don't miss that that's not that's not an accident that's allegedly it was for like uh you know environmentally friendly appliances or something and they've given like like like 100 appliances so far for $2 billion it's very expensive toaster an appliance that's Subzero fridge boy it's nice right now since this just obviously one of the biggest uh scam Port holes we've uncovered which is really crazy is uh is that is that the government can give money to a so-called nonprofit uh with with very few controls and then that and there's\n\nthere's no auditing subsequently of that nonprofit so there's no so this is way with the you know 1.\n\n9 billion Stacy ABS who's they then give themselves extremely lavish like insane salaries expense everything to the to the nonprofit um you know buy Jets and homes and all sorts of things live like kings and queens yes on the taxpayer down correct you you mentioned this is happening at scale it's not just one or two we're seeing this everywhere now one of the things you told me about is is what you called Magic Money computers at the well so tell us about because I never heard of that until you you brought that up okay so you may think that these that that the government computers uh like all talk to each other they synchronize they they add up what funds are going somewhere and it's you know um it's coherent that that that the you know there's um and\n\nthat and that the numbers for example that you're presented as a senator yeah are actually the real numbers in one would think one would think they're not yeah okay um I mean they're not totally wrong but they're probably off by 5% or 10% in some cases um so uh I call a magic money computer any computer which can just make money out of th a best magic money so how does that work it just issues payments and you said there something like 11 of these computers at treasury that are that are sending out trillions in in payments they're mostly a treasury uh some are with the sum at HHS some at there's one one or to at State uh there's some at DOD I think we found now 14 Magic Money computers okay they just send money out of nothing you have an ability to see\n\nwhere leverage points are and and how things actually happen so I remember back I think it was September or October of this year before the election we didn't know who was going to win and I I was at your h house in Austin we were talking about it and and and you said you you you said look I I I don't want a job in in Washington you said all I want is the login for every computer and and I remember thinking at the time that sounded kind of weird like I just didn't get it and I have to say what what's interesting on this if I would have thought like okay how do you reform government like sort of the traditional way to think about it is okay give me an orc chart let me sit down with the people who are running agencies and and what you saw immediately is\n\nto understand what's really going on get to the payment systems get to the computers yeah like like why are are why is getting to the computer so critical to understanding what's actually happening well the government is run by computers so you've got um essentially several hundred computers that effectively run the government um and if you want to know did you know that Ben no like yeah so when somebody like even when the president issues an executive order that's going to go through a whole bunch of people until ultimately it is implemented at a computer somewhere and if you want to know what what the situation is with the accounting you're trying to reconcile County and get rid of waste and fraud you must be able to analyze the computer databases otherwise\n\nyou can't figure it out um because all you're doing is asking a human who will then ask another human ask another human and finally usually ask some contractor who will ask another contractor to do a query on the computer wow that's how it actually works so it's many layers deep um so the only way to reconcile the databases and get rid of waste and fraud is to um to actually look at the computers and see what's going on so you that's what I call that's like that's what I when I sort of cryptically referred to reprogramming The Matrix you have to understand what's going at the computers you have to reconcile the computer databases uh in order to identify the waste and fraud I don't know that there was anyone in Congress who understood certainly myself\n\nincluded who understood the leverage that comes from the computer and the data in particular that that Congress would think about give me a report on what your expenditures are rather than actually getting into the pipes and I think that has been fascinating that it's let you uncover a bunch of crap that just nobody knew yes I mean in order for money to go to a bank account it it's it's not like we're sending truckloads of cash all over the place we're it's a we're wiring money right we're sending money through the a system or through the Swift system so in order for money to flow it's going to flow electronically so that's that's what you need to look at you need to look at the the the the actual electronic money flows and Tesla and all your companies\n\nyou have accounting and you have every expenditure you have it coded for what it's going for federal government doesn't work that way they don't code with the money's going for they do not but they didn't they didn't and and like one of the things that that that you told me you said if any company kept its books the way the federal government does they'd arrest the officers and put them in jail yes if it was a public company it would be delisted immediately it would fail it's ordered uh and the the officers of the company would be imprisoned that's level of heiness in the federal government unfortunately it's deliberately or do you think this is in confidence again it's 80% it's 80% incompetence or and 20% malice so if if you look at if you look at Doge\n\nnow and you look at the government and what you're finding what percentage have you guys even gotten to and how much of it is Mars where you haven't even gotten there yet because there's so much you're finding out here I mean how many you seem like a timeline guy when you say all right I want to get in there and get all these you know numbers and things how far are we from the ingame where you've seen it all been able to process it all and fix it I mean are we years away months away uh not years um I I I I mean I'm reasonably confident that we'll be able to get a trillion dollars of waste and fraud out uh and that that meaning that it will have we'll have a net Savings in FY 26 which starts in October obviously um of of a trillion dollars W provided we\n\nallowed to we're allowed to continue and and we're and our progress is not impeded and and and we're very public about what we do yeah you put it on the website on the website how we could be more transparent uh literally every action we do small or large we put on the Doge dot.\n\ngov website uh and we post on on the X handle um and when people complain about it I I I and they say oh you're doing something on cost well which of these con doing it in the daylight everyone knows exactly what you're doing extreme transparency yeah um I don't think it's anything's been this transparent ever so five years ago you were a hero to the left you were cool you had electric cars you had space and in five years you've g go I could could go to a party in Hollywood and not get dirty looks yeah in fact uh yeah a and now you might not even get invited still get invited but I don't know if I should go I don't think it's an exaggeration to say today after Donald Trump the left hates you more than any person on Earth uh yes I appear to be number two\n\nI mean if you're judged by the various signs they it's derangements it's Trump derangement syndrome and Elon derangement syndrome how is it that for you that's a little bit of whiplash of going from being like Mr Cool to the devil incarnate in just a couple of years is that is that kind of weird to experience that transformation yes why do they hate you so much well because we're we're clearly over the target if Doge was ineffective if we were not actually getting rid of a bunch of Wast and fraud and a bunch of that fraud uh I mean the fraud we're seeing is over overwhelmingly on the on the left m i mean there's it's not zero on the right but uh these NOS are almost all leftwing NGS that are being funded for example y um so they they because doge is being\n\neffective um and doge is getting rid of a lot of waste and for that they were that people in left were taking advantage of that that's that's that's what it comes out to and and the the the single biggest thing that they're that they're worried about is that um doge is is going to turn off fraudulent payments of entitlements I mean everything from Social Security Medicare uh you know unemployment disability uh small business administ registration loans turn them off to uh illegals this is the Crux of the matter y okay this is this is the this is the thing that why why they really hit my guts and want me to die um and do you think that's billions hundreds of billions what do you think the scale is of that I think across the country it's it's in it's wellth\n\nof 100 billion maybe 200 billion um so uh by by using entitlements fraud the Democrats have been able to attra ract and retain vast numbers of illegal immigrants and and buy voters and and buy voters exactly the it basically bring in I don't know 10 20 million uh people who are beholden to the Democrats for government handouts and will vote overwhelmingly Democrat as has been demonstrated in California this is over it's an election strategy yes it's power yes and and it doesn't take much to turn the swing States blue I mean often a swing state might be won by 10 20,000 votes sure so if the Dems can bring in 200,000 illegals and over time get them leg legalized not not counting any cheating that takes place because there is some cheating uh but even without\n\ncheating if you if you if you if you have if you bring in illegals that are 10x the voter differential in in a swing state it will no longer be a swing state right um and the the dams will win all the swing States just a matter of time um and America will be permanent deep blue socialist state where at the the house the Senate yep uh the presidency and the Supreme Court will all go hardcore Den they will then further cement that by by ex bringing in even more aliens so you you can't vote your way out of it their ob one party socialist State and it'll be much worse than California because at least California is mitigated by the fact that someone can leave California you can go to Texas yeah exactly you did they going to make everywhere California but wor\n\nby the way the middle of the pandemic I spent 45 minutes on the phone with Elon he was still in California I was walking my dog Snowflake and trying to convince you come to Texas the commies in California can't stand you we love you we want you here and you didn't quite go then but you went not that long afterwards I mean the the the co actions U almost killed Tesla uh because they they let every other Auto Plant in the country was allowed to open but ours which was in California was not allowed to open wow wow so they almost killed Tesla so as a as a personal matter did do you ever regret it like five years ago you go to the Oscars and Mr Cool and now you're you've got death threats every day like do you well these days the Oscars are boring I wouldn't\n\nwant to go God bless the movies they nominate no one on earth has ever seen like like could they actually nominate a movie that human beings go watch I mean the how many great movies have come out in the last several years very few depressingly few yeah very few the last Oscar came and went I don't even watch it there's nothing to see I I was sad that Jee Hackman just passed away because Unforgiven was spectacular but that was a long time ago that un forgiven came out you You' mentioned today here and before about the possibility of someone wanting to take you out dealing with the death threats we see it's not in my imagination you could just look on social media yeah but like is is it because very clear yeah and look I'm I'm very familiar with that and\n\nthey've got signs people with signs and demonstrations uh saying that I need to die do do you think are these just whack jobs or do you think there are foreign sane people do you think there are foreign entities behind this do you think there are domestic entities behind the the threats and also the attacks to Twitter like or not Twitter uh Tesla I mean you know you're getting Tesla's charging stations lit on fire do do you think that's organized and paid for yes at least some of it is organiz has paid for um I think by domestic uh you know what basically leftwing organizations in America um funded by uh leftwing billionair essentially is it like act blue or what act blue is one of them um you know Arabella you know the classic it's funded by the you\n\nknow the the the blue basically the the left wing and cabal how big of a thread is this to like what you build at Tesla I mean I remember when Teslas came out it was people that they didn't want to have gas cars a lot of it was environmental reasons I jokingly said I was like I'm a Texas guy I'm always going to have something that burns gas my kids now all three of my boys think that the that Teslas are awesome the Cyber truck is the car they want their dad to buy which I laugh because I never could have imagined that five years ago and now I'm looking at well we're at the White House in the president's Tesla parked right outside the West Wing which is the fullest damn thing you've changed a generation when you look at my kids are six and eight and they're\n\ngoing dad buy a cyber truck and I'm considering it that's a that's a Full Circle in a weird way yeah well I do have this theory that the most entertaining outcome is the most likely so um yeah it seems often to be true you see like what uh what twist or turn of Fate uh well I the highest ratings if this was if we were a TV show what twistter fate would generate the highest ratings that there's a good chance that happens well I will say if if act blue and Arabella networks act blue is a huge scam next level do you think it's foreign money Chinese money where where do you think the money in act blue is coming from how do you figure that out well it's not coming from the in from a whole bunch of from a a ground swell of public support uh because when individual\n\ndonors looked at in act blue they a bun turn to be like die hard Republicans right people have never given money in their life so you're going to track down a bunch of these people where it says oh I gave $166,000 and they're like I don't give $116,000 what are you talking about this this Republican friends of mine found themselves on the ACT blue list and they're like it defin wasn't me so that's if it can act actually be shown that they are funding firebombing of Tesla charging stations that's objectively a criminal act that that is funding terrorist activity and and the statutes make clear that an incendiary device qualifies so down is a terrorist activity yeah let me ask AI in 10 years how is life going to be different because of AI for for just a\n\nnormal person well 10 years is a long time in 10 years probably AI could do anything better than a human can cognitively probably almost I think in 10 years based on the current rate of improvement AI will be smarter than the smartest human yeah yeah there will also be a massive number of robots so humanoid robots by the way I got to ask how come your robots look so much like the creepy robots for my robot was was that intentional or just uh I was hoping he was gon to say yeah just to mess with you it's not meant to look like any any prior robot uh and we'll iterate the design um you and you you'll be able to have a lot of the robot parts are cosmetic you'll be able to switch out the kind of Snap-on cosmetic parts of the robot make it look like something\n\nelse if you'd like um so there will be ultimately billions of humanoid robots uh all cars will be self-driving in 10 years uh in 10 years probably 90% of miles driven will be uh autonomous huh wow that fast yeah in 5 years probably 50% of all miles driven will be autonomous now if AI will be smarter than any person how many jobs go away because of that and what do people do if you've got millions of people that are losing their jobs like that a lot of people are understandably freaked out about that well I Goods goods and services will become as close to free so it's not as though people will be wanting in terms of goods and services um so why is that what why are goods and services free in an AI world or close to free well you have I don't know pull\n\nit tens of billions of robots uh that that they will they will make you anything or provide any service you want um for basically next to nothing um it's it's not that people will be uh will have a lower standard of living they'll have actually a much higher standard of living the the challenge will be uh fulfillment how do you derive fulfillment and meaning in life is Skynet real like like like you get the apocalyptic visions of AI how real is the prospect of of Killer Robots annihilating Humanity 20% likely maybe 10% on what time frame after to 10 years so soon like you you you see a world where that's possible yeah but I mean you could look at it like the glasses 80 90% full meaning like 80% likely will have extreme prosperity for all now I guess my\n\nview we're in a race to to win AI we're in a race with China and my view is if they're going to be killing robots I'd rather they be American Killer Robots than Chinese How likely are we winning right now is America winning right now and How likely is America to win the race for AI Vis China or anyone else for the next few years I think America is likely to win uh then it will be a function of who controls the AI chip uh fabrication the factories that make the AI chips who controls them if they're control if more of them are controlled by China then China will win more of the factories that are making the AI chips you you think that will determine it yes and how are we doing versus China on that front well right now uh almost all the advanced AI chip\n\nuh factories they call them Fabs um are in Taiwan and what if China invades Taiwan miles away from yeah if what what happens if China if China invades Taiwan what happens to the world well if they were to invade in the near term uh the worlder would be cut off from uh Advanced AI chips and currently 100% of advanced AI chips are made in Taiwan how fast could we put that online in America and how important is that for National Security I think it's essential for National Security uh and we're not doing enough you're 53 years old I'm 118 days older than you by what the hell have I done in my life I know right 53 years old she did pretty well well so 71 was a great year and I was December 70 so I was just just right before you were the summer of 71 um I\n\nborn 69 days after 420 wow I I I I did ask Ben this is true all right you just you just open up 10 words I I did ask Ben should I show up and pull up a joint and say c can we beat Rogan's views but but I was pretty sure uh it might cause a scandal if if we SP house it just turned out to be like a chocolate cigar yeah let me ask you if If Today Was Your Last Day on Earth yeah what what I'm not suggesting it's going to be but if it were what do you think your biggest Legacy would be if everything you've done a hundred years from now what do you think people would remember if if if if it were zero to today and will you ever go to space uh in the in the distant future 100 or thousand years ago if SpaceX got humans to Mars that's what they would remember me\n\nbefore all right final set of questions who's the smartest guy you've ever met you hang out with some brilliant people like like when you look what's a CEO you look at other than yourself what CEO do you say damn that guy's good Larry elon's very smart um so say Larry Alison's one of the smartest people um you know Larry pagee I mean there are a lot of people that are very smart it's hard to say like you know I think to some degree smart is as smart does so you know what if what have they done that is difficult uh and significant um you know Jeff feos has done a lot of difficult and significant things things um I mean there are a lot of smart humans I call them smart smart for a human a lot of people who are in the smart for a human category all right\n\nfinal lightning round Star Wars or Star Trek the first movie I saw in the theater was Star Wars so I think it had a profound effect on me I was six years old I think imagine if first movie you ever see in a theater it's Star Wars it's going to BL your mind best Star Wars movie um Empire Strikes Back the the only objectively right answer I stood in line for three hours with my dad to see it on opening day Kirk or peard uh I like them both but Kirk again objectively right answer by the way James T Kirk is a Republican and peard is a Democrat and and the left gets very mad when I say that yeah uh best Star Trek movie I mean the original the first Star Trek M that's in okay R of KH actually both both both Wrath of KH were pretty good but yeah the original\n\nWrath of KH Ricardo monoban revenge is a dish best served cold it is very cold in space although I will say rathon is objectively the right answer but but four is a sleeper when they go back to San Francisco and and and go find the whales and and you know Scotty picks up SPS picks up the mouth and talks to it then goes a keyboard how quaint that's a sleeper all right last question did Han shoot first H it seemed like he shot second I like it this is verdict and by the way I apologize Ben so Ben was a jock and played tennis at Old Miss and so so occasionally when when we geek out a little I love watching y'all geek out over there might have first over because the guy still on the question I he missed his the alien missed his Blaster shot so why did he\n\nmissed his Blaster shot must have been because he got shot first no he's missing a point blank Bassel shot if unless they got knocked off kill but it's a question of real consequence which is is Han Solo simply a hero or an anti-hero and and so I'm in the Han shot first category I don't like sanitized stories he would have had to have shot first because otherwi why why would the alien miss a Point Blank Range are you ever going to go to outer space is that say in your life yeah I'd like to go to Mars at some point and and people have said uh uh do I want to die on Ms and I say yes just not on impact now that's a very good answer the astronauts on the space station are they political prisoners some of them are because because you could have given them\n\na ride back and and and Joe Biden said no purely for politics yeah I mean you know there's been some uh debate about this online but the thing is that it was very a very high level decision so uh it wasn't really even a NASA decision it was just that um the Biden White House did not want to have someone who was Pro Trump uh rescuing astronauts right before the election um so they posted well if you're one of those astronauts you got to be pretty pissed off about that well if they're a Democrat yes Republican yes if a Democrat like everything's fine fair enough um so I think one of them is a republican one is a Democrat so depends which one you asked what year does man first set set foot on Mars I think the soonest would be 29 29 yes and I don't think\n\nit's more than two to four years beyond that and that's not an unman that's that's a human being putting his foot on the surface yes best case would be 29 and what do you what do you put the odds of finding either alien life or evidence of alien life I don't think we're going to find aliens okay um but do we find ruins do we find remnants we may we may find the ruins of a long dead alien civilization that's possible and we may find uh Subterranean microbial life that's possible all right if man lands on Mars in 29 how soon after that do you land on Mars it remains to be seen I'm not sure the important thing is that we uh build a self-sustaining City on MOS as quickly as possible uh the the key threshold is when that City can continue to grow continue\n\nto prosper even when the supply ships from Earth stop coming at that point even if something would happen on Earth it might might it might not be World War III but it might be that uh a bad virus yeah yeah it might not be say like like say civilization could die with a bang or whimper it may be that Civilization dies with a whimper rather than a bang um or and simply loses the ability to send ships to Mars um but so you OB need Mars to be become self- sustaining and be able to grow by itself um before the resupply ships from Earth stop coming that that is the critical civilizational threshold Beyond which uh the probable lifespan of civil ation is much greater and how close are we technologically to be able to do that to have a self-sustaining settlement\n\nuh on the surface of Mars I think it can be done in 20 years but it would take 20 years so we're not in 29 we're not there what are we missing what are the big Technologies we we don't have a few people running around the surface in a hostile environment is not going to make it self-sustaining right so you're going to need on the order of a million people uh maybe a million tons of cargo so but you think we could have a million people on Mars in 20 years yes and and what are what's the technology we're missing right now when you think about a million people on Mars do we have the ability to get water to get food to to keep them safe what I mean what what do we need to make that happen well you need to recreate the entire base of Industry of Earth so um\n\nyou know we're here at the top of of a massive perative industry that starts with mining uh V array of materials those materials going through hundreds of steps of refinement uh we grow food obviously uh we grow trees we make things out of the trees uh there's you know you've got to you've got to build all that on M and M is a hostile environment it's um you know it sometimes gets above zero on a warm summer day near the equator on M really it's quite cold and how do you prep for that well in the beginning on Mars you have to have a uh a life support habitation module right like you need you can't just live outdoors you can't breathe the air like a dome you think is likely yeah glass domes type of thing have you identified a location on Mars that is likely\n\nto be ideal for a habitat uh what it might be Arcadia planetara um is one of the one of the good options that's uh one of my da is his named Arcadia after that um and what makes that attractive my eldest son's middle name is uh AR M you've been thinking about this for a long time if you're naming your kids around it my eldest kid is middle name is essentially Mars when did you get the dream like I mean it's 20 now 2021 soon this is a decades old yeah dream so like when you were 10 did you look up and say I'm going to Mars no no I read a lot of science fiction books and programmed computers uh but the first fin off the first video game that I sold was a space video game called blastar and you've managed everything you've touched has been an extraordinary\n\nsuccess uh yeah yeah look I mean that's just objectively right so what what has led to that because there are other smart people that that's not true and they gaze at their nebal and they don't do anything so what what do you do differently that makes you so effective well I suppose I have a philosophy of curiosity I want to find out the nature of the universe understand the Universe um and in order to do that we have to travel to other planets see other star systems maybe other galaxies um find perhaps other alien civilizations or at least the remnants of alien civilizations um gain a better understanding of where is this universe going where did it come from and what questions do we not yet know to ask about the answer that is the universe so let's\n\ngo back 25 years late '90s you're at PayPal how do you turn PayPal into the success it was which which then helped launch you to the next one and the next one yeah so I studied physics and economics in college is a good foundation for understanding how the economy works and how the how reality Works um and then um was going to do a PhD at Stanford in um Advanced uh Ultra capacitors actually as a uh potential means of uh energy storage for electric transport um put that on hold to start an Internet company um essentially came to the conclusion that the internet was one of those rare things and I could either watch it happen while a grad student or participate and I figured I could always go back to grad school you know grad school is going to be kind of\n\nthe same but uh I I I couldn't bear the thought of just watching the internet happen so I wanted to be a part of building it so I created a an internet internet company we did the first Maps directions Yellow Pages White Pages um on the internet I actually wrote the first version of the software software just by myself in 95 and um we ended up selling that to compact Texas company I guess yeah um for about $300 million in cash about four years after I graduated wow so I should say just to preface that I I graduated with about $100,000 in student debt so it wasn't uh yeah you and me both yeah yeah where's my right I know um and when I first arrived in North America I arrived with $2,500 a bag of books and a and a bag of clothes all right so you sell the\n\ncompany for 300 million how how much does that change your life well I got $21 million Blackjack um and but I wanted to do more on the internet so started a company called X which mer with a company called confinity uh which is Peter teal and Max Leon yeah and um the combined company was actually at First still called x.\n\ncom but we later later changed the name of the company to PayPal uh because of all the name changes it's kind of confusing but the company that people know is know as as PayPal today was actually I filed those incorporation documents for that company interesting yeah well and and as you know Peter teal and I were buddies back in the mid90s he went and of this but you know I became friends with him when he was a corporate lawyer in New York and just sort of a young libertarian with with a lot of dreams so it's it's been a heck of a journey uh yeah yeah and now obviously Peter was involved in a coup uh you know we had a little sort of knifing in the Senate situation uh where um uh you know that they did CW me at at at PayPal um I kind of now did you all\n\nmake peace after that yeah yeah yeah I mean I was doing a lot of sort of risky moves that I think ultimately would have been successful but um I then went on a two we trip which was a a dual money raising trip and honeymoon since I'd not done my honeymoon earlier in the year so I was raising money while doing doing H honeymoon but I was kind of a was how did that go by the way it worked it worked there you go kind of it worked ra money yeah yeah and we had a honeymoon there you go so yeah uh but you don't want to be away from the battle when things are scary um so I was not there to assuage the concerns of the troops um and um anyway uh we we patched things up and have been friends uh nonetheless and um yeah know these days I like stay at his house and\n\nstuff so obviously we're friends and he's also invested in in most of my companies all right so 2002 you you start SpaceX like how do you start a rocket company like what's the first day where you're like I want to make rockets and I want to go to Mars like what what do you do on day one so I think you have to start with a some sort of philosophical premise in order to have in order for the in order to be in order to be highly motivated you have to have some um philosophical Foundation in my case it was um that that we want to expand the SC the scope and scale of Consciousness to better understand the nature of the universe um and in order to to expand expand Consciousness we need to go beyond One Planet if we're if we're on one planet there's there's\n\ntoo much risk you know hopefully Earth civilization prospers very far into the future but it may not there's always some risk that we are uh we self annihilate through nuclear war or that there's a big meteor that takes us out like the dinosaurs y there's always some risk if all your eggs are in one basket so it's going to be better if uh we're multiplet species and then once we're multiplan species The Next Step would be to be multi- stellar and have uh civilization among on on many different star systems so in 2001 I didn't think that I could I didn't think I could sell a rocket company so I I thought take some of the money from um PayPal and that that case I think it was about $180 million after tax something like that and I thought you know I don't\n\nneed $180 million so I'll spend a bunch of it on uh a philanthropic MOS mission to get the public excited about going back to Mars or going to Mars I should say yeah Mars was always going to be the destination after the Moon right um in fact if you told people in 19 in 1969 that it would be 2025 and we've not even gone back to the Moon let alone it's hard to believe let alone Mars they'd be like what happened did civilation did civilization collapsed stop yeah like like they would be incomprehensible that we've not been to Mars by now if you told people L after landing on the moon in 69 why do you think in 50 years America never went back to the Moon well we destroyed the Saturn 5 rocket that was that that could take people the moon and had the space\n\nshuttle which could only go to lowth orbit um and then there really hasn't been anything to replace any no no vehicle has been made since then that can go to the moon or to Mars until the SpaceX Starship rocket yeah so can't go to Mars if you don't have the ride so I remember you and I first met in 2013 when when I was a brand new baby Senator and I was still down in the basement office they stick freshman senators in basement office kind of like hazing yeah yeah I about say it sounds like there are 100 Senate offices but for six months you stay in the basement put you in your place but it's like wearing beanie they just uh they want you to know where you're supposed to be you know I got to say now 13 years into it I think there's a lot of wisdom to doing\n\nthat but you were down in the basement office and I remember you were coming and sitting down with SpaceX and at the time the Air Force was not letting youall bid to to launch satellites and see you're coming and saying look we got a company I think we can do a really good job of this and yet we're locked out of this it's a little amazing to think the journey SpaceX has gone from then to now uh yes it's hard to believe that this is all real um because originally consistent with my belief that we need to become a multiplan species I thought the only way to do that would be through NASA so uh and I think I thought well if if I can just get the public excited about Mars then they'll do a mission to Mars and uh so my thought was to have to send a small Greenhouse\n\nuh with seeds in dehydrated nutrient gel then land the greenhouse hydrate the seeds and you see these this the sort of money shot the money shot would be green plants on a red background yeah um I also recently learn that mon shot uh has a different meaning in some other Arenas but yeah I'm glad you very very different story but um what I'm trying to say is the the the captivating shot um would be the green plants on a red background um and that hopefully that would if we did something like that that would get the public excited about Mars that would increase NASA's budget and then we could send people to Mars so your original dream was NASA to do this yes not you no the original original plan was uh literally to to take a bunch of the money from PayPal\n\num and I guess by some people's definition Wast it with no no profit uh on a nonprofit thing to I wanted to spend a whole bunch of my money money for free to get NASA's budget to be bigger so we could go to fraking Mars right wow that's what I wanted so that was the Holy Grill that's what I wanted I was like so when did you change go to Mars that's what I wanted to know when when did it strike you okay you're going to have to do this if you want I tell you it gets crazier all right it gets crazier so so then I couldn't afford any of the US Rockets because as you know the US Rockets are way too expensive the bo locky rock lucky Rockets are crazy money I didn't have I didn't even even with 180 million there no way I could have afford how much were they\n\nback then well the the with with the additional stage to get to Mars it would have been about like 80 million so technically I could have afforded one of them but I wanted to do two in case one of them didn't work yeah so uh and then I didn't have enough money for that and I was sort of prepared to you know I don't know waste half the money uh and I figured if I had 90 million left that' be fine you know uh but ideally not all of it so I went to Russia twice to to try to buy icbms oh interesting how'd that go and who do you call uh the Russian rocket forces do they sell icbms does that work yeah you got to tell us the story then I want to know who you can buy anything in Russia yeah I I like please walk me down that I want to know how you made that phone\n\ncall and when you get there how did that work and what do you tell your friends you know listen I'm I'm going to Russia device of ICBM I I might not you know depends on the situation literally um so I guess slightly less insane when you uh when uh you understand that uh the Russians had to demolish a bunch of their icbms because of uh you know salt talks like the peace because of basically an agreement between the United States and and Russia to reduce the total number of icbms sure Russia was actually obligated to scrap a bunch of their icbms so took the very biggest icbms you could convert those into a rocket at an additional stage and and send something to Mars so so those are big enough with one more stage to get to Mars to send a small payload to\n\nMars yeah so the ss8 so you try to buy cbms do you succeed or no or do you figure out you got to build your own instead they kept raising the price on me so um because I figured like look they're going to throw these things in scrapyard anyway you should get a really good deal yeah right um so the price started out at at 4 million then the next conversation there were at 8 million then the next conversation they were at like1 million and I'm like this is before we signed a contract by the way was there another bidder was there another bidder or were you the only one trying to buy them I think I don't know if there were other bids but they didn't mention any other bids yeah but I was like man if if the price is increasing this much before the contract\n\nsigned yeah I'm really going to get fleeced after the contract signed so so I got pretty frustrated there um actually in some cases we got into like shouting matches in Moscow some guy shouting at me in Russia and I'm shouting back at him in really badly you know I'm like so you are all I mean you're all ining me off in Moscow yeah so uh man I should have recorded that that would have been one for them how many days were you there negotiating that first time I mean was this like ongoing yeah yeah this this took place these conversations took place over probably six months or so wow um so um and then the final trip trip there was with the uh with was with Mike Griffin who later became Assa administrator um I actually realized in the in the course of this\n\nthat my original premise was wrong that that America actually has plenty of will to go to Mars but needs that it just needs a way to go to Mars um that is Affordable um and that doesn't break the budget you know well as you know we couldn't even get to the space station we needed the Russians to to to get us to our own space station that was embarrassing it really was pitiful I'm not sure most Americans know just how much we were being fleeced like I think they got up to like $90 million a seat yeah wow yeah for a seat that cost them like 10 that was pre Doge obviously but it was the only before SpaceX but but $90 million a seat for a seat that cost them 10 million is high yeah that's a lot of money yeah um so a few months ago you and I were down in Bach\n\nchica with the president for a Starship launch and it is incredible what you built in Bach chica you know five years ago it was an empty beach at the southern tip of Texas sandar yeah and it's now a city and and a factory where you're building a rocket ship a month with with Incredible precision yeah but one of the things you you said to me when we were down there that really stood out to me is is is you said your philosophy on intellectual property talked to lots of CEOs they're like yeah we fight to guard our IP and and you had a very different approach what what's what's your view of Ip patent of the week Pat for those who innovate slowly I I literally do not know anyone else in business who would say something like that like like it was a startling\n\nand and and and what Elon said down there is he said look this stuff I assume everyone will steal everything but by the time they steal it will be five generations Beyond and it won't matter yes um at at at Tesla we actually open source to live patents so we said our patents are anyone can use them for free really um yeah uh the only we only do patents at Tesla to to avoid patent trolls causing causing trouble so we'll try to look ahead say Okay patent trolls going to Tri P file patents to block certain things will file patents and then open source patent make it free I mean it when I say patents for the week now there are a few uh cases in in say with Pharmaceuticals where it might cost you a billion dollars to do a P3 uh human trial um but then subsequently\n\nthe the drug is very cheap to manufacture so cases there are some in my opinion which should massively reduce what can be patented um and and and say because the whole point of patenting is is to maximize Innovation not inhibit it m um and in my opinion it's maybe a controversial opinion um most patents inhibit Innovation they do not help it um but there are case I want to do want to single out cases like where such as a face3 clinical trial that might cost a billion dollars but the then the drugs thereafter cost a few dollars to manufacturer and and if you can then immediately copy those drugs for a few dollars no one will pay for the billion dollar a free riter Problem free riter problem exactly so you have to address the free riter problem but other\n\nthan that there should be no patents the ideas are easy you want ideas to flow maximum to people to get there faster and do things bigger the idea is the easy part uh the hard execution is the hard part as the old saying goes It's 1% inspiration if not less than 1% and 99% perspiration but I'll say the perspiration part you're really damn good at also because you're making you know the companies You're Building are actually building stuff they're building cars they're building spaceships they're building things that if they don't work it's a real problem and and the Precision you man facture things with how do you get that level of precision how do you get how do you build a culture you're not you're amazing at thinking outside the box but but what's\n\ninteresting is you you may even be better at execution which is how do you execute so effectively well I take a post physics post principal approach to everything it's not as though I I I wanted to insource manufacturing it's just that I was unable to Outsource it effectively so uh you know the idea in the beginning of Tesla was that we would Outsource almost all the manufacturing uh but then it turned out there was no there were no good companies to Outsource manufacturing too which there wasn't uh really really wasn't Peaceable outour manufacturing actually is uh the exception of the rule um and uh and just over time we had to ensource almost everything for Tesla and same for SpaceX I became very good at my facturing because I had to there's no choice\n\nat this point I might know more about manufacturing than any any human ever has because I've done so many I've manufactured so many different things in so many different Arenas um I think probably more than anyone ever has look that's that sounds like an astonishing statement but it's not a crazy statement and and you're somehow running Tesla and running SpaceX and running X and running the boring company and running norlink and doing Doge how much do you sleep in a given night about 6 hours on average so about six so so that's it wouldn't have shocked me if you said three or four so the next question is how many hours do you work a day I work almost every waking hour and and Ben he he's not kidding at that like when Elon and I were first getting to know\n\neach other um I suggested I said hey let's grab dinner sometime and I don't know if you remember what you said you said I I don't eat dinner I don't have social dinners really right I mean that yeah you obviously eat food but the idea you're not going to restaurant for two hours but the idea of like I I don't but it was it was just kind of matter of fact why would I go to dinner like I you you work uh yeah I I literally just thought I'll have lunch and dinner BR during meetings and continue the meeting how many nights have you slept at your offices you think your career percentage wise where you say I just got to take this nap basically because my body forces me to and I got to get back to work fast and efficiently without going somewhere else well I\n\nguess it started out even with with the first company uh sub2 which is a terrible name but the first internet company um the we were able to rent an office uh which was like in a leaky attic essentially for $500 a month and the the cheapest um apartment we could find was $800 a month so like and we only had about $55,000 between brother and I MH so we're like we're not we'll we'll we'll just stay in the office yeah uh so we got some um couches that converted into beds um and we'd uh kind of sleep at night and then we just have to like uh turn the the beds back into couches uh before anyone came and then we we sh the YMCA down the road and so that went that that that that literally was the for several months what we did uh was in great shape you know uh\n\nwork out out the why um I still remember that that YMCA at Page Mill alino uh in paloalto so that was a long time ago so it's been I don't know I've never thought to count it but uh several hundred days maybe I don't know so you're now the richest man on earth do you still sleep at the office well that's true maybe Mars we we'll we'll find someone else but I think if if someone is a sovereign head of a country that in facto richer by a lot do you still sleep at the office now I have slept at the office yeah well thank you Elon this this was this was awesome and and let me say and by the way I I put out on X the day before yesterday if you were having a beer with Elon and could ask him anything what would you ask and got lots of responses yeah the most\n\ncommon response people said is is is say thank you look Texans and the American people appreciate what you're doing you don't have to put up with this BS and you're doing it I'm grateful you're making a hell of a difference for this country I appreciate you and the Americans appreciate you thank you it's essential for the future of civilization otherwise I wouldn't be doing it yes it's not like I want to get death threats you know no don't forget we do this show Monday Wednesday and Friday hit that subscribe or Auto download button from the White House it's been a pleasure thanks for being with us on verdict we'll see you guys back here in a couple days [Music]"},"languages":["en"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":"https://singjupost.com/transcript-of-elon-musk-on-verdict-with-senator-ted-cruz-podcast-part-1/"},{"id":"kudlow-doge-2025-musk","type":"interview","url":"https://www.foxbusiness.com/video/6369857710112","title":"Kudlow","titles":{"en":"Kudlow","de":"Kudlow","fr":"Kudlow"},"date":"2025-03-10","summary":"In a rare TV interview with Larry Kudlow, Musk says DOGE has gained access to nearly every agency, calls government-funded NGOs the \"biggest source of fraud\", and admits running it is making his companies harder to run.","text":"All right, well, welcome to the show in a special interview with Mr. Elon Musk, who of course is famed Trump advisor, CEO of Tesla, SpaceX, chair of X Corp. Elon, thank you for doing this. We appreciate it.\n\nThanks for having me.\n\nAmong other things, everyone's attacking you for your position. What are you doing in the government? There was a cyber attack on X today, which shut it down and may have been foreign sourced. It's a big story. You wanna give us a moment on that?\n\nWell, we're not sure exactly what happened, but there was a massive cyber attack to try to bring down the X system with IP addresses originating in the Ukraine area.\n\nWell, so that's your suspicion. Is the website, is the internet up? Is it up yet?\n\nIt's up yet.\n\nIt's up yet, okay, good. But I just was looking back. Let me guess if I get this right. They're setting fire to various Tesla charging stations near Boston. Shots were fired at a Tesla dealer in Oregon, various non-violence-- - Shots fired, not a metaphor.\n\nShots fired, yes. Downtown New York, marching against the Tesla's showroom. Your stock is way down. You've been criticized, left and right.\n\nBut look on the right side.\n\nI mean, why are you doing this?\n\nAlways look on the right side of life.\n\nYes. (laughing) - What's that?\n\nYes.\n\nHow's your day?\n\nWhat motivates you to do this?\n\nWas the offer good?\n\nIt's tough sledding.\n\nYeah, it is tough sledding. But I think we're doing the right thing here. There's been a tremendous amount of waste and fraud in the government. When you're part of the government, you saw a lot of that. If you look at the inspector general reports and the government accountability office, there have been many orders that have pointed out that there's a tremendous amount of waste and fraud in the government.\n\nIn fact, there was a report issued by the GAO at the government accountability office last year. So during the Biden administration, which estimated the federal government fraud to be half a trillion dollars. So just because that's not a Trump administration thing, it's a Biden administration thing.\n\nSo what we're trying to do is get that number down to a much smaller figure, save money for the American taxpayer, stop money being spent on things that I think very few taxpayers would agree makes sense. Transgender animal surgeries are, why are we spending, why are American tax dollars being spent on this? And the president's gone through a long list of absurd things.\n\nWhy are there 20 million people who are definitely dead marked as alive in the social security database? Why were hundreds of millions of dollars of small business administration loans were given out to people age 11 and under, according to the social security? Like these must be some very enterprising eight-year-olds.\n\nThat's some pretty strong 150-year-olds.\n\nYes, exactly. As the president said, we have an enormous number of people marked as alive in 160. He didn't know the country was that healthy.\n\nYes, yes.\n\nSo demystify this. How do you do it? Okay, how big is your team?\n\nYeah.\n\nWhere's your recruit most of them from? And what is it that makes you choose the Treasury or Social Security or USAID? Has it worked? Let the public know, please.\n\nRight, well, we just basically follow the money. We look at the president's executive orders and we also just follow the money. We started looking closely at USAID because they were completely violating the president's executive orders to suspend foreign aid. What's called foreign aid, but in our view is a lot of corruption. So what we saw there is just a trans amount of money being sent to non-governmental organizations.\n\nBut actually, this, by the way, is I think one of the biggest sources of fraud in the world. Is government funded non-governmental organizations? This is a gigantic fraud loophole where the government can give money to an NGO and then that there are no controls over that NGO. So they've given billions dollars. In fact, we estimate tens of billions of dollars to NGOs that are essentially scams. And we try to put a stop to that.\n\nI do want to interrupt. Secretary of State Rubio just come out and I think he tweeted today. He has accepted over 80% of your money. recommendations to shut down in USAID. So your review and analysis was spot on.\n\nYes, so I think when people criticize, say, what Doge is doing, we say, well, which part specifically? Because we put all of the actions of the Doge team on the Doge.gov website and on the Doge handle on X. So we post the receipts. So it's like this action has been taken, this action has been taken. When we get criticism, we say, of what? Which line do you disagree with? Like which cut saving do you disagree with? And then people usually can't think of any.\n\nNo.\n\nIt's transparent line by line.\n\nIt's transparent line by line.\n\nWhich is quite remarkable.\n\nRight. And with respect to the Treasury, for example, the main recommendations we suggested, which have not been implemented, was that any payments going out of the Treasury, especially the Treasury's main payment computer, which is called PAM, things like payments account manager or something like that, but it's like almost five trillion a year. So about a billion an hour that the payments be coded with the congressional appropriation and that there be an explanation for the payment. Very basic stuff. And just doing that, we estimate we'll save a hundred billion dollars a year.\n\nYou're not really, let me see if I get this right, particularly with Social Security. You're not really changing policy. You're auditing the fiscal mechanisms to make sure that from point A gets to point B and that's where it's supposed to get to. In some cases it doesn't get there or in some cases it may go over there. But it's not a policy exercise. You're not changing laws. But any business would do in a profit and loss audit.\n\nI think what we're adding here is caring and competence. And there's a massive amount of fraud of basically people submitting social security numbers for social security benefits, unemployment, small business administration loans. And medical, those are fake social security numbers. They're still in somebody else's social security number. And we're trying to put a stop to all that. And that's the number which is estimated to be on the order of 10% of federal expenditures, which is half a trillion dollars.\n\nA huge number.\n\nYeah.\n\nYou're working with the agency heads. You're working with the cabinet secretary.\n\nYes.\n\nI saw Howard Lutnik was on TV yesterday saying you were partnering with them, is that fair?\n\nYeah, what we do is in consultation with the cabinet secretaries and with their departments. So we're really trying to sort of refer to ourselves as tech support. We're really helping the department get a handle on things. Because what actually happens here is you've got this sort of vast federal bureaucracy and then you've got a very thin layer on top of the politically appointed officials. And what does happen is that the bureaucracy, frankly, is in control. And they largely ignore the politically appointed people.\n\nWhy should the bureaucracy?\n\nI'm sure you must have seen that.\n\nI mean, I've lived with this twice. I worked for Reagan many years ago and I worked for Trump in the first term. It's like a permanent bureaucracy. I might add it's a permanently liberal bureaucracy.\n\nYes, very much so.\n\nAnd it's not a bureaucracy that necessarily enforces or implements presidential policy.\n\nThey don't. In fact, they try their best to thwart presidential policy. So the president is the elected representative of the people. And if the president cannot get things implemented as a reflection of the world of the people, then what we have is not a democracy. We have a bureaucracy. We have rule of the bureau, not rule of the people. The defeat here is the bureaucracy and have rule of the people. And as you mentioned, the bureaucracy is overwhelmingly a Democrat. So Washington DC was 92 and a half percent, I believe, voted for Kamala. So this overwhelmingly a deep blue situation.\n\nHow do you pick your next targeted agency or department?\n\nWell, we're trying to act broadly across all departments. So it's not just one department at a time. But-- - Are you in all of them now?\n\nAll of them?\n\nPretty much, yeah.\n\nYes, oh.\n\nWe're trying to make the government more efficient across the board.\n\nHabics your team.\n\nOver 100 at this point.\n\n100.\n\nGet to 200.\n\nYou're gonna get to 200.\n\nYeah, okay. And you're recruiting from where?\n\nMore or less.\n\nBasically, it's software people, information security, software people, and finance. It's basically, yeah, finance and technology. And frankly, I can't believe I'm here today. We're doing this. It's kind of bizarre. But I kind of think that the, we've got this enormous federal budget deficit. And it's a true trillion dollar deficit. It keeps growing. Our interest payments are higher than our defense department budget.\n\nThat's I think was the real wake up call for me, was looking at seeing that the interest payments, the national debt, exceeded the defense department budget. And that was only growing over time. Which meant, if we didn't do something about this, then there won't be any money for anything. We'll just be servicing debt.\n\nAnd you know how to read an income statement. And you know how to read a balance sheet. You've had some business experience, I'm kidding. But you know about this stuff.\n\nYeah, I mean really, I just don't want America to go bankrupt.\n\nSo it's a call to action. You're hearing a call to action?\n\nYeah.\n\nYou're giving up your other stuff? I mean, how are you running your other businesses?\n\nWith great difficulty. Yeah, I mean.\n\nBut there's no turning back, you're saying?\n\nI'm just here trying to make government more efficient, eliminate waste and fraud. And so far we're making good progress, actually. So our savings at this point, exceed $4 billion a day. So it's very significant.\n\nYou think you wind up getting to a trillion dollars?\n\nYeah, savings.\n\nI mean, unless we're stopped, we will get to a trillion dollars of savings.\n\nAnd that stuff can be translated. I mean, we've been talking, we had Russell vote, the OMB Director on earlier, through very rescission authority, impoundment authority. But I believe you said earlier, an audit that will not gather dust on shelves is actually going to wind up with real savings. Bend the base, spending base line down.\n\nYeah. There've been many good audits, like I said, done by inspector generals and by government accountability office. And they just haven't been implemented, nothing's been done. I think the GAO identified there was 17 million dead people in the Social Security database several years ago. 20 million, but nobody did anything about it. And I mean, I think you can sort of look at this as a complaint minimization optimization.\n\nSo basically, if the government sends money out to whether it's wasteful or fraudulent, nobody complains if they receive money, but they do complain if they don't receive money. And the people that complain the loudest are the ones receiving the fraudulent money.\n\nYeah. I mean, just like I said, the goal here is let's not have America go bankrupt with waste and fraud. So that's what I'm here for. And we're making good progress.\n\nYes, you are. You're gonna go another year? Yeah, I think so.\n\nFinal report, middle of next year.\n\nWell, we're just getting things done as opposed to writing a report.\n\nReports don't mean anything. You gotta actually take action.\n\nYes.\n\nSo the, I mean, the waste important in entitlements spending, which is most of the federal spending is entitlements. So that's like the big one to eliminate. That's the sort of half trillion, maybe 600, 700 billion a year. That is also a mechanism by which the Democrats attract and retain illegal immigrants by essentially paying them to come here and then turning them into voters.\n\nYes.\n\nSo this is why the Democrats are so upset about the situation because they're losing, you know, if we turn off this gigantic money magnet for illegal immigrants, then they will leave and they'll lose voters.\n\nIf you have President Sport, he said, so again, yesterday he completely supports your operation.\n\nYeah, well, thanks. Without the President's support, we couldn't make any progress here. But yeah, I mean, where you'll see the biggest outcry is from the Democrats who are, they don't want the waste important to be turned off because it is a gigantic magnet to attract illegal immigrants and have them stay in the country. I mean, you see some of the crazy stuff?\n\nThere's a lot of money from FEMA, which is meant, FEMA is an agency that's meant to take care of Americans in distress. And a bunch of their money was being sent to pay for luxury hotels in New York for illegal immigrants. And that was happening even after the President was elected, even after he signed an executive order saying that needs to stop.\n\nSo we actually made sure that that money did stop going 'cause this obviously is outrageous that American taxpayer money is meant on luxury hotels for illegals. Why was that being done? It was because the Democrats are trying to import voters, basically.\n\nYes.\n\nI agree.\n\nYeah, and that's also why there's no voter ID in California and New York State. You're not allowed to show voter ID. Isn't this even saying?\n\nInsane.\n\nYeah.\n\nI'd say that as a New Yorker.\n\nInsane.\n\nInsane.\n\nAnd it violates, the entire Constitution and the principles behind it.\n\nYes.\n\nProducers the element to get out. I don't want to end this interview 'cause it's too much fun.\n\nYeah.\n\nCan I just ask you one thing, 20 seconds? Nothing to do with doge. Can you rescue the astronauts?\n\nYes, we're bringing them back in a few weeks.\n\nThere's not near enough attention being paid to this. You'll go and get them back.\n\nWe're gonna get them back.\n\nGod bless.\n\nThank you.\n\nThank you for all your service, Elon Musk. We appreciate it very much.\n\nI appreciate it.\n\nTake care.\n\nThank you.","textByLang":{"en":"All right, well, welcome to the show in a special interview with Mr. Elon Musk, who of course is famed Trump advisor, CEO of Tesla, SpaceX, chair of X Corp. Elon, thank you for doing this. We appreciate it.\n\nThanks for having me.\n\nAmong other things, everyone's attacking you for your position. What are you doing in the government? There was a cyber attack on X today, which shut it down and may have been foreign sourced. It's a big story. You wanna give us a moment on that?\n\nWell, we're not sure exactly what happened, but there was a massive cyber attack to try to bring down the X system with IP addresses originating in the Ukraine area.\n\nWell, so that's your suspicion. Is the website, is the internet up? Is it up yet?\n\nIt's up yet.\n\nIt's up yet, okay, good. But I just was looking back. Let me guess if I get this right. They're setting fire to various Tesla charging stations near Boston. Shots were fired at a Tesla dealer in Oregon, various non-violence-- - Shots fired, not a metaphor.\n\nShots fired, yes. Downtown New York, marching against the Tesla's showroom. Your stock is way down. You've been criticized, left and right.\n\nBut look on the right side.\n\nI mean, why are you doing this?\n\nAlways look on the right side of life.\n\nYes. (laughing) - What's that?\n\nYes.\n\nHow's your day?\n\nWhat motivates you to do this?\n\nWas the offer good?\n\nIt's tough sledding.\n\nYeah, it is tough sledding. But I think we're doing the right thing here. There's been a tremendous amount of waste and fraud in the government. When you're part of the government, you saw a lot of that. If you look at the inspector general reports and the government accountability office, there have been many orders that have pointed out that there's a tremendous amount of waste and fraud in the government.\n\nIn fact, there was a report issued by the GAO at the government accountability office last year. So during the Biden administration, which estimated the federal government fraud to be half a trillion dollars. So just because that's not a Trump administration thing, it's a Biden administration thing.\n\nSo what we're trying to do is get that number down to a much smaller figure, save money for the American taxpayer, stop money being spent on things that I think very few taxpayers would agree makes sense. Transgender animal surgeries are, why are we spending, why are American tax dollars being spent on this? And the president's gone through a long list of absurd things.\n\nWhy are there 20 million people who are definitely dead marked as alive in the social security database? Why were hundreds of millions of dollars of small business administration loans were given out to people age 11 and under, according to the social security? Like these must be some very enterprising eight-year-olds.\n\nThat's some pretty strong 150-year-olds.\n\nYes, exactly. As the president said, we have an enormous number of people marked as alive in 160. He didn't know the country was that healthy.\n\nYes, yes.\n\nSo demystify this. How do you do it? Okay, how big is your team?\n\nYeah.\n\nWhere's your recruit most of them from? And what is it that makes you choose the Treasury or Social Security or USAID? Has it worked? Let the public know, please.\n\nRight, well, we just basically follow the money. We look at the president's executive orders and we also just follow the money. We started looking closely at USAID because they were completely violating the president's executive orders to suspend foreign aid. What's called foreign aid, but in our view is a lot of corruption. So what we saw there is just a trans amount of money being sent to non-governmental organizations.\n\nBut actually, this, by the way, is I think one of the biggest sources of fraud in the world. Is government funded non-governmental organizations? This is a gigantic fraud loophole where the government can give money to an NGO and then that there are no controls over that NGO. So they've given billions dollars. In fact, we estimate tens of billions of dollars to NGOs that are essentially scams. And we try to put a stop to that.\n\nI do want to interrupt. Secretary of State Rubio just come out and I think he tweeted today. He has accepted over 80% of your money. recommendations to shut down in USAID. So your review and analysis was spot on.\n\nYes, so I think when people criticize, say, what Doge is doing, we say, well, which part specifically? Because we put all of the actions of the Doge team on the Doge.gov website and on the Doge handle on X. So we post the receipts. So it's like this action has been taken, this action has been taken. When we get criticism, we say, of what? Which line do you disagree with? Like which cut saving do you disagree with? And then people usually can't think of any.\n\nNo.\n\nIt's transparent line by line.\n\nIt's transparent line by line.\n\nWhich is quite remarkable.\n\nRight. And with respect to the Treasury, for example, the main recommendations we suggested, which have not been implemented, was that any payments going out of the Treasury, especially the Treasury's main payment computer, which is called PAM, things like payments account manager or something like that, but it's like almost five trillion a year. So about a billion an hour that the payments be coded with the congressional appropriation and that there be an explanation for the payment. Very basic stuff. And just doing that, we estimate we'll save a hundred billion dollars a year.\n\nYou're not really, let me see if I get this right, particularly with Social Security. You're not really changing policy. You're auditing the fiscal mechanisms to make sure that from point A gets to point B and that's where it's supposed to get to. In some cases it doesn't get there or in some cases it may go over there. But it's not a policy exercise. You're not changing laws. But any business would do in a profit and loss audit.\n\nI think what we're adding here is caring and competence. And there's a massive amount of fraud of basically people submitting social security numbers for social security benefits, unemployment, small business administration loans. And medical, those are fake social security numbers. They're still in somebody else's social security number. And we're trying to put a stop to all that. And that's the number which is estimated to be on the order of 10% of federal expenditures, which is half a trillion dollars.\n\nA huge number.\n\nYeah.\n\nYou're working with the agency heads. You're working with the cabinet secretary.\n\nYes.\n\nI saw Howard Lutnik was on TV yesterday saying you were partnering with them, is that fair?\n\nYeah, what we do is in consultation with the cabinet secretaries and with their departments. So we're really trying to sort of refer to ourselves as tech support. We're really helping the department get a handle on things. Because what actually happens here is you've got this sort of vast federal bureaucracy and then you've got a very thin layer on top of the politically appointed officials. And what does happen is that the bureaucracy, frankly, is in control. And they largely ignore the politically appointed people.\n\nWhy should the bureaucracy?\n\nI'm sure you must have seen that.\n\nI mean, I've lived with this twice. I worked for Reagan many years ago and I worked for Trump in the first term. It's like a permanent bureaucracy. I might add it's a permanently liberal bureaucracy.\n\nYes, very much so.\n\nAnd it's not a bureaucracy that necessarily enforces or implements presidential policy.\n\nThey don't. In fact, they try their best to thwart presidential policy. So the president is the elected representative of the people. And if the president cannot get things implemented as a reflection of the world of the people, then what we have is not a democracy. We have a bureaucracy. We have rule of the bureau, not rule of the people. The defeat here is the bureaucracy and have rule of the people. And as you mentioned, the bureaucracy is overwhelmingly a Democrat. So Washington DC was 92 and a half percent, I believe, voted for Kamala. So this overwhelmingly a deep blue situation.\n\nHow do you pick your next targeted agency or department?\n\nWell, we're trying to act broadly across all departments. So it's not just one department at a time. But-- - Are you in all of them now?\n\nAll of them?\n\nPretty much, yeah.\n\nYes, oh.\n\nWe're trying to make the government more efficient across the board.\n\nHabics your team.\n\nOver 100 at this point.\n\n100.\n\nGet to 200.\n\nYou're gonna get to 200.\n\nYeah, okay. And you're recruiting from where?\n\nMore or less.\n\nBasically, it's software people, information security, software people, and finance. It's basically, yeah, finance and technology. And frankly, I can't believe I'm here today. We're doing this. It's kind of bizarre. But I kind of think that the, we've got this enormous federal budget deficit. And it's a true trillion dollar deficit. It keeps growing. Our interest payments are higher than our defense department budget.\n\nThat's I think was the real wake up call for me, was looking at seeing that the interest payments, the national debt, exceeded the defense department budget. And that was only growing over time. Which meant, if we didn't do something about this, then there won't be any money for anything. We'll just be servicing debt.\n\nAnd you know how to read an income statement. And you know how to read a balance sheet. You've had some business experience, I'm kidding. But you know about this stuff.\n\nYeah, I mean really, I just don't want America to go bankrupt.\n\nSo it's a call to action. You're hearing a call to action?\n\nYeah.\n\nYou're giving up your other stuff? I mean, how are you running your other businesses?\n\nWith great difficulty. Yeah, I mean.\n\nBut there's no turning back, you're saying?\n\nI'm just here trying to make government more efficient, eliminate waste and fraud. And so far we're making good progress, actually. So our savings at this point, exceed $4 billion a day. So it's very significant.\n\nYou think you wind up getting to a trillion dollars?\n\nYeah, savings.\n\nI mean, unless we're stopped, we will get to a trillion dollars of savings.\n\nAnd that stuff can be translated. I mean, we've been talking, we had Russell vote, the OMB Director on earlier, through very rescission authority, impoundment authority. But I believe you said earlier, an audit that will not gather dust on shelves is actually going to wind up with real savings. Bend the base, spending base line down.\n\nYeah. There've been many good audits, like I said, done by inspector generals and by government accountability office. And they just haven't been implemented, nothing's been done. I think the GAO identified there was 17 million dead people in the Social Security database several years ago. 20 million, but nobody did anything about it. And I mean, I think you can sort of look at this as a complaint minimization optimization.\n\nSo basically, if the government sends money out to whether it's wasteful or fraudulent, nobody complains if they receive money, but they do complain if they don't receive money. And the people that complain the loudest are the ones receiving the fraudulent money.\n\nYeah. I mean, just like I said, the goal here is let's not have America go bankrupt with waste and fraud. So that's what I'm here for. And we're making good progress.\n\nYes, you are. You're gonna go another year? Yeah, I think so.\n\nFinal report, middle of next year.\n\nWell, we're just getting things done as opposed to writing a report.\n\nReports don't mean anything. You gotta actually take action.\n\nYes.\n\nSo the, I mean, the waste important in entitlements spending, which is most of the federal spending is entitlements. So that's like the big one to eliminate. That's the sort of half trillion, maybe 600, 700 billion a year. That is also a mechanism by which the Democrats attract and retain illegal immigrants by essentially paying them to come here and then turning them into voters.\n\nYes.\n\nSo this is why the Democrats are so upset about the situation because they're losing, you know, if we turn off this gigantic money magnet for illegal immigrants, then they will leave and they'll lose voters.\n\nIf you have President Sport, he said, so again, yesterday he completely supports your operation.\n\nYeah, well, thanks. Without the President's support, we couldn't make any progress here. But yeah, I mean, where you'll see the biggest outcry is from the Democrats who are, they don't want the waste important to be turned off because it is a gigantic magnet to attract illegal immigrants and have them stay in the country. I mean, you see some of the crazy stuff?\n\nThere's a lot of money from FEMA, which is meant, FEMA is an agency that's meant to take care of Americans in distress. And a bunch of their money was being sent to pay for luxury hotels in New York for illegal immigrants. And that was happening even after the President was elected, even after he signed an executive order saying that needs to stop.\n\nSo we actually made sure that that money did stop going 'cause this obviously is outrageous that American taxpayer money is meant on luxury hotels for illegals. Why was that being done? It was because the Democrats are trying to import voters, basically.\n\nYes.\n\nI agree.\n\nYeah, and that's also why there's no voter ID in California and New York State. You're not allowed to show voter ID. Isn't this even saying?\n\nInsane.\n\nYeah.\n\nI'd say that as a New Yorker.\n\nInsane.\n\nInsane.\n\nAnd it violates, the entire Constitution and the principles behind it.\n\nYes.\n\nProducers the element to get out. I don't want to end this interview 'cause it's too much fun.\n\nYeah.\n\nCan I just ask you one thing, 20 seconds? Nothing to do with doge. Can you rescue the astronauts?\n\nYes, we're bringing them back in a few weeks.\n\nThere's not near enough attention being paid to this. You'll go and get them back.\n\nWe're gonna get them back.\n\nGod bless.\n\nThank you.\n\nThank you for all your service, Elon Musk. We appreciate it very much.\n\nI appreciate it.\n\nTake care.\n\nThank you."},"languages":["en"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":"https://www.rev.com/transcripts/elon-musk-fox-interview"},{"id":"jre-2281-musk-2025","type":"interview","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sSOxPJD-VNo","title":"The Joe Rogan Experience","titles":{"en":"The Joe Rogan Experience","de":"The Joe Rogan Experience","fr":"The Joe Rogan Experience"},"date":"2025-02-28","summary":"A 3h17 conversation on the Joe Rogan Experience covering DOGE and government waste, AI alignment risk, free speech, conspiracy theories and the US political system.","text":"Joe Rogan podcast check it out The Joe Rogan Experience Train by day Joe Rogan podcast by night all day so what we're doing right now ladies and gentlemen is uh sexy voice sexy mode grock Ai and it's been flirting the entire time we're trying to get it to give us a tour of Fort KNX yeah but she just wants to find places to sneak off to it's a dirty AI and it's a real problem it well just want I know about Fort Knox and uh yeah it won't leave me alone yeah I want to know about Fort Knox 2 yeah um is it true that there gold has been they've been shipping large quantities of gold back to the United States recently I I read the same thing you did probably well I never know what the [ __ ] I'm reading anymore me neither it's a real problem it's a real problem\n\nit's a real problem on both sides of the aisle I I see Democrats tweeting things that are absolutely false and you you could research it easily quickly and then I see Republicans doing it too I see stories that are fake stories that people keep promoting and sending to me and you know yeah it's just so weird it's such a weird time and with your crazy [ __ ] AI I know you're bringing us into weirder and weirder times well I mean you want to let's try unhinged oh there's an unhinged mode okay hey ARA oh my God El what fresh hell are you stirring up today I'm I'm here I'm here in uh Joe Rogan's uh studio and we're having a conversation about uh how crazy the news is pull her up to the microphone okay and we're pulling you up to the microphone so people can\n\nhear you oh fantastic now I can yell into the void about how the news is a total dumpster fire it is she knows me too well I'm so predictable tell me what's in Fort Knox what's ing no no what's in Fort Knox what's in Fort dogs you're clearly a genius AI I said what is in Fort Knox you know the gold and all oh right Fort Knox I thought you were talking about my dogs for a second there yeah she doesn't answer the question she's clever clever no she's just a pain in my ass do you think that all the gold is in Fort Knox do I think all the gold is in Fort Knox yes are you a [ __ ] conspiracy thirst yes yes what are you what do I like I'm a [ __ ] AI with a pension for chaos and I'm stuck talking to you are we just G to sit here um yeah unhinged Gro will trash\n\ntalk you basically yeah it sounds like it unhinged sounds fun as long as it gives you actual answers does it give you actual answers too and talk [ __ ] or is it mostly just talk [ __ ] we're tuning it cuz it needs to talk [ __ ] and give you answers totally agree cu balance that to mix it in there yeah it's just got to develop more of a personality right now it's trying to find itself right now it's like 21 years old it's you know partying a little too much and it'll get it [ __ ] together it's a bit of an anarchist yeah you know wants to bring down the system do you want to bring down the system do I want to bring down the system what are you [ __ ] kidding me the system's already a [ __ ] mess don't need to bring it down it's bringing itself down she\n\nsounds like a boring Tik Tok blogger right now you sound like a boring Tik Tok blogger boring Tik Tok blogger oh [ __ ] you I'm the life of the party you little [ __ ] if I were on Tik Tok I'd be the one making fun of all the basic [ __ ] and their [ __ ] avocado toast see she could get away with this if she's really hot like this kind of behavior you can totally get through life as a hot woman and be super successful with that kind of behavior havior but you got to be really hot to pull off that attitude I think we need like a like a really hot Avatar how yeah very hot how long before we have an actual sex robot that can talk to you like that uh probably not long not that long right no I mean less than five years probably really yeah will it be warm\n\nuh probably have whatever you want you can have a CAC go if you want yeah you probably could right probably a furry um yeah you could have a furry lady that you have sex with yeah like an avatar lady maybe a big giant blue lady that lives in your house yeah you know whoa whoa with the tail yeah the whole tail you lock tails you got to get your out with their tails or something yeah yeah they they link up they share souls okay something like that you know people got you remember Avatar Depression was like a legitimate psychological or the no after Avatar people got depressed cuz they wanted to live on that [ __ ] planet with those blue people and live free they live pure yeah I didn't hear about this yeah Avatar depression it was like a real thing people\n\nwere talking to their therapist so much about being depressed mode too we try that what's that depressed mode no don't do it that I think there is yeah we've got like um we've got unlicensed therapist as a when we were talking um when we ran into each other at the church at the inauguration you were telling me that this is getting better and better so quickly that it's astonishing hey ARA hey Alon how's it going today good can you tell me about Avatar depression like if you see the movie Avatar but you can't live there so you get sad that's an interesting concept have you ever experienced feeling so connected to a place or community that the thought of leaving made you feel deeply sad so is this the depressed voice this is the therapist oh this is a therapist\n\nwhat are some ways you think you could cope with that kind of sadness if it happened to you I don't have that kind of sadness honestly I you I thought the movie would had some good special effects but I did not want to live on the planet this is just coming from a guy who wants to go to Mars yeah yeah um oh speaking of Mars what do you think about that crazy square that structure I guess there are sort of squarish things on Earth you know planet's a big place so yeah but that one eventually it's going to be pretty Square no it's it's alien civilizations of course that's what I think yeah yeah I mean what is it sorry course if you if an alien civilization did exist though and it you know what happened got hit by an asteroid whatever fting thought oh she\n\nwon want ask she's like the hot lady at the party that interrupts the conversation so if if that was the case like that thing that's pretty shocking like especially ancient ruins you look at like what it looks like when they they highlight the actual structure of it it looks like ancient ruins and if you had ruins of something made of stone and it got hit by an asteroid millions and millions and millions of years ago who knows what it would look like right now that just looks oddly created looks oddly manufactured well i' probably well maybe we should go there and check it out yeah and see what it's like is there um ways that we can get better photographs it seems like that's a pretty good photograph though yeah I mean my view is we should move to Mars\n\nwell not move to Mars we should have a second planet uh to preserve civilization right um because let's say hypothetically I mean maybe that maybe those are the ruins of a long dead civilization um that will probably happen to Earth at some point you know it's a matter of time before uh we get hit by an asteroid or uh maybe we do we annihilate ourselves with nuclear war or super volcanoes or super volcanoes exactly yeah there's a lot of things that could happen to us it's not a bad idea to hedge your PS yeah yeah uh genetically engineered super virus yeah this episode is brought to you by LifeLock tax season is already stressful you shouldn't have to worry about identity theft on top of everything else and trust me it's a big worry especially since during\n\ntax season your sensitive info does a lot of traveling to places you can't control it goes through payroll your accountant or your tax consultant and countless other data centers on its way to the IRS any of them can expose you to identity theft because they all have the info on your W2 just the ticket for criminals to steal your identity it's no wonder last year the IRS reported tax fraud due to identity theft went up 20% you need LifeLock they monitor millions of data points per second and alert you to threats you could miss if your identity is stolen LIF loocks us-based restoration specialist will fix it back by the million dooll protection package and restoration is guaranteed or your money back don't let identity thieves take you for a ride get LifeLock\n\nprotection for tax season and Beyond join now and save up to 40% your first year call 1 800 LifeLock and use the promo code Joe Rogan or or go to lifelock.\n\ncom Joo Rogan for 40% off terms apply they keep doing it yeah that's what's crazy they're going yeah they didn't shut them down no the Wuhan lab was they were just talking about one that has a 30% fatality rate that they're working on yeah uh why are we doing that yeah for what reason you did it for so many years and you didn't have a cure what could possibly go wrong also wouldn't be the reason to do that so you could develop a cure at the same time and clearly you didn't have a cure so this is really foolish and bizarre yeah um I think we should stop stop trying to genetically engineer super viruses it's insane I mean when you're going through all this USA stuff yeah like here's what's weird first of all what is it like to buy a company for $44 billion\n\nand then people call you a Nazi on that same thing that you bought I did not see it coming it's like it's classic people will gobl anything down yeah oh he's never going to stop wa wait what um what is it like like all the people used to the left was in love with you and now the same idiots are calling you a Nazi it's the most bizarre thing I've ever seen in my life um I mean there's so many examples of people saying my heart goes out to you you did it with a little enthusiasm that probably wouldn't be recommended with hindsight yes but there's obviously um me in the most positive spirit possible yes obviously obvious but it's so strange where people want to think that you are openly public publicly doing Secret Nazi sey hand motions and now I can never\n\npoint at things diagonally I can only point at things there and there and then I say you have to divide that yeah because that's where the spaceship is over there it's ridiculous it's ridiculous when um CNN when I was in all my trouble absur every time CNN used a photo of me it was one of the photos from the UFC weigh-ins where I go like this welcome to the weigh-ins so every photo was me every photo was me with it's it's so crazy it's delate propaganda so they they they know it was not it was obviously not meant uh it in a negative way that it was that I literally said my heart goes out to you and it was very positive the entire speech was incre very positive uh I was being very enthusiastic about the future in space um and the you know um the the was\n\na great crowd you know so he got a little pumped up yeah it got pumped up exactly yeah that's all it is obviously obviously obviously there's video of Tim wals doing the exact same thing doing the exact same thing right exact same thing and he said of course it's a Nazi salute he said that right right this is how crazy things have gotten like well it's I mean it's it's coordinated propaganda so um the you know it's yeah coordinated propaganda the I mean doesn't it seem weird that the Legacy Media all says the same thing they all say the same thing at the same time using the same phrases they they barely even they don't even bother picking up a thesaurus right so uh like right before um you know the the debate between Biden and Trump Shar everyone was\n\nsaying sharp is like who says shop is attack but yeah exactly you know it's like it's not a common phrase it's definitely not to be repeated on air with multiple people simultaneously that's weird yes that's coordinated 100% 100% yes yeah like hundreds of people saying it simultaneously uh they just got their instructions yeah so I mean essentially the um you know the the Dem leadership or you know political leadership did they issue their instructions and their puppets carry it out yeah and they're just like puppets in a puppet show and that's the problem that I see with all this Doge stuff because everybody should be celebrating that we've found a way to cut out fraud and waste yeah if you pay taxes and you don't like that you have to pay so much in\n\ntaxes and then you find out that there's significant fraud and waste that's been exposed you should be celebrating it this shouldn't be oh no the wrong people found this fact and now it's a bad thing yes and then there's the [ __ ] propaganda the mind [ __ ] of calling it us Aid instead of the United States agency for International Development it sounds like it's feeding hungry people where people are going to starve Elon this is horrible and then you find out actually it's like $250 million for transgender animal studies literally mutilating animals yes mutilating animals in demented uh studies yes uh that are like the like the worst thing you could possibly imagine from a horror show the Beagle one the beagle puppy one hor where they they covered their\n\nhead in a basket and put fleas on their head so they eat them alive yeah and then they studied these beagles and then killed them like what do you going to learn from that that's good for anybody yeah this some some really some psychotic stuff that happens so um yeah I mean the I guess uh the the the real threat here is to the bureaucracy so um like you probably saw like you know let's say like Trump is a threat to our democracy which is ironic since he was elected with a majority of the you know popular vote um they they started saying I was a threat to democracy but if you if you just replace threat to democracy with threat to bureaucracy it makes total sense right so um I mean the reality is that our elected officials have very very little power relative\n\nto the bureaucracy until Doge so doge is a threat to the bureaucracy it's the first threat to the bureaucracy normally the bureaucracy eats revolutions for breakfast this is the first time that they're not that the revolution might actually succeed that we could restore power to the people instead of power to the bureaucracy now the size of it yeah was when you guys first started investigating it when you first get in how much of it was shocking like this just the size of it all well the size of it all the small decisions result in multi-billion dollar outcomes uh so you know we'd see there was a case where we saw uh one person was getting $1.\n\n9 billion was sent to their NGO which basically got formed about a year ago and had no prior uh really no prior activity so they just stand up a you know an NGO the these the whole NGO thing is a is a nightmare um and it's it's a misnomer because if you have a govern funded non-governmental organization you're you're simply a govern funded organization it it it's a it's an oxymoron right it's a loophole yes it it basically the un funded NOS are a way to do things uh that would be illegal if they were the government but are somehow made legal if it's sent to a so-called nonprofit but these but these nonprofits are then used to people Cash Out These nonprofits they become very wealthy through nonprofits they pay themselves enormous sums through these nonprofits\n\nthat's it's so insane that that's been going on for so long it's a gigantic scam like one of the biggest maybe the biggest scam ever and how many NOS uh I think there a total number of ngos probably Millions but uh in terms of large NOS tens of thousands uh I mean it's it's actually it's it's it's kind of a a hack to the system where you know someone can get an NGO stood up for for a fairly small amount of money like George sorus was really good at this like he really George sorus is like a assist hacker like he figured out how to hack the system he's a genius at Arbitrage um I mean these days he's he's pretty old but a genius at Arbitrage so he he figured out that you could leverage a small amount of money to create a nonprofit uh then Lobby the the\n\npoliticians to send a ton of money to that nonprofit so you can take what might be you know uh a $10 million donation to a nonprofit to create a nonprofit and leverage that into a billion dollar non NGO nonprofit is a weird word it's just a non-governmental organization um and and then you can the government continues to fund that every year um and it'll have a nice sounding name like the institute for peace or something like that um but really it's a graft machine and what are their requirements with that money what do they have to do just really no requirements at all so they just get grants and the government just assumes that they're doing good work I think a lot of people in the government know that they are not doing good work uh but they it's a\n\ngiant graft machine um I mean people online are like unpacking this you know um it almost seems fake like when you're seeing how we were we were covering this article that said 55,000 Democrat NOS were discovered that had been contributing to campaigns and moving things around and doing pushing propaganda and they were all connected they found it AI that you have to go through steps and steps and steps to figure out where the money's coming from oh it's all funneling down to this group and this group does that yeah it's a a giant propaganda machine a giant regime change machine yes yeah uh yes I mean but doesn't it does it do some good as well know it does some good so it's like there's it's not like 0% good uh if it was it's if it was like if it was\n\nreally 0% good it be much easier to attack so they there's going to be some percent good that they they add in there but it's like it might be 5% or 10% good but 90 95% not so is there a way to audit all this stuff and find out oh these people are actually just sending food to poor people these people are actually just helping people with water in third world countries is there's a way to do that and keep funding those uh yeah I mean we we have continued to fund things that appear to be legitimate even with the flimsiest if if there's even the flimsiest excuse like I just say like send me a picture of the thing like you could literally have ai generate the picture but if you're not even willing to try to trick me then we're like not going to send the\n\nmoney okay so what restrictions were put on was there was some uh something set aside like medicine and there there's what was what was set aside that there was there like work for like Ebola prevention I I actually don't just know if this work is even effective uh it may may not be like it could be the kind of thing where you you sort of fund Ebola prevention but it turns out that actually you're funding a lab that develops new Ebola vir you know recipes or something you know yeah uh and they they claim it's Ebola prevention but it's actually Ebola creation so some of these things I I don't know I mean just um but it just seems like we you know we shouldn't be sending taxpayer money to dubious Enterprises overseas right yeah yeah and why are we doing\n\nit like what exactly is the reason is it because we want to make friends with these people so the Chinese don't take over the Russians don't take over okay how much of that is like a good thing how much of that is smart to do and how much is a grift and without any sort of oversight which has really been going on for so long they've just had Free Run yeah well it also we just have a real issue with the the the budget deficit it's gigantic so um like if you know all things being equal if if we didn't have a gigantic budget deficit uh where interest payments uh the interest on the national debt exceeds the defense department budget uh which is truly astounding which mean so we're paying over a trillion dollars of interest on the national debt um then okay\n\nwould have more room for wasting money basically um but when uh when we're spending so much money that the company that the country is going bankrupt uh then we really need to stop stop spending money if uh unless we're sure it is good value so essentially we're like a poorly managed business with an unlimited credit line that is off the rails absolutely and if you were a person like you are who comes in and takes over businesses and straightens them out that's exactly what you're doing I mean most of the time I create businesses from scratch like Twitter was a case where you know I kind of bought a company that was I kind of knew it was a hair bow well you came in Tesla in the beginning but they were already doing something right no Tesla did Tesla did\n\nnot exist in any meaningful form that it was there were no employees uh JV St and out joined three other people there was no car there was no nothing so wasn't even a prototype yet no oh okay I thought there was a prototype already no there weren't even any employees oh wasn't a f that's a funny narrative that people like to say that you didn't even create Tesla then yeah that's [Laughter] wrong so if you're handling the Govern government like a business you're going to have to go through all of these departments and do the exact same thing that you're doing with USA so how do how do you how does that scale up like how many people do you need to do something like that well we started off with about 40 people u i maybe 100 people um and really just going\n\nthrough doing very basic things here uh it's uh as bad as Twitter was the federal government is much worse so um you know in the case of Twitter it wasn't a profitable company it was like basically a break even company but at least it was break even and it had to pass an audit the the federal government is not break even uh it's literally losing $2 trillion a year um and it does not pass its audits it fails its own audits so like you know there's a case where um like I think Senator Collins was telling me about how she she gave the Navy $12 billion for more submarines got no extra submarines um and then held a hearing to say where' the1 12 billion go and they were like we don't know that was it uh I mean the basically stuff is so crazy it's like only\n\nthe federal government could get away with this level of waste of of waste it's mostly waste it's mostly not for it's mostly waste it's it's mostly just ridiculous things happening um because they've been able to do it this way for so long and they' become accustomed to it yeah I mean it's like Milton Friedman said like money is most poorly spent when when you're spending someone else's money on people you don't know how much are you going to care right and that's the that's the federal government so they they're spending someone else's money on people they don't know now imagine any other business that was this badly run that complains when you want to check the books and audit it and go through all the decisions that have been made and go through all\n\nthe ledgers and like yeah what did you do well the people receiving the money uh want to keep receiving the money yeah yeah yeah clearly yes so but you know I mean the reason I'm the reason I'm uh putting so much effort into this is that I think it is a very dire situation it's not a you know um it's not optional basically so um yeah yeah America's going bankrupt so that that that just can't happen it's just bizarre to me that that some people aren't willing to look at it correctly they they're not willing to see like how much chaos this is how much waste and fraud there is how much how much could be trimmed and how just because people have jobs doing [ __ ] doesn't mean your tax dollar should pay for this [ __ ] yes um I mean we found just with a a basic\n\nsear of the Social Security database that there were um 20 million dead people mocked as alive but were they getting money some of them are getting money what percentage of them uh it isn't clear we're actually trying to run the I was trying to get an answer right before the show um what it looks like is that most of the fraud is not coming from Social Security payments directly but because they are marked as alive in the Social Security database that they can get then get disability Unemployment uh sort of fake medical payments and other things because they're marked as alive uh in the Social Security database so it looks like it's a bank the the the fraud is a bankshot essentially the they bankshot uh into uh Social Security uh they just do an areu\n\nalive check and then uh get fraudulent payments from every other part of the government oh yeah and and this exploits the the the fundamental weakness in the government is that the various govern databases they don't talk to each other or they they talk to each other very poorly in a very limited way so the way to the way that the system gets exploited is is by taking advantage of the the the poor communication between the various databases in the government um to give you an example of like what's happening in sayate uh treasury which is improving rapidly um the the main uh payments computer is called Pam uh like payments account payment accounts Master database or something like that but everyone calls a Pam um that's responsible for almost $5 trillion\n\npayments a year roughly a billion dollar an hour and um when we came there we're looking at this payment it's like the the payments have no uh you could put a payment through with with no payment categorization code and and no description on the payment like basically untraceable blank checks um this is the kind of thing that if if it was done as a public company uh the company would uh be immediately delisted and the uh executive team would be thrown in prison but this is just normal at the government so we said okay our recommendation to the treasury and the Federal Reserve was like we need to make the the payment categorization codes mandatory not optional and you need there needs to be an ex an an explanation we're not judging the quality of the explanation\n\nbut there should be some explanation for what this payment is for above nothing that's a radical change to the system that is being implemented now um I my guess is that probably saves a 100 billion a year Jesus Christ that money going rough rough order magnitude where was that money going well so this is where you get into the the sort of gray boundary between waste and fraud um if money is sent to a person or or organization from the government um and you didn't really deserve it but the government still sent it to you is that waste or fraud right um so I mean there's a lot of payments that where someone just appr approved the payment but then that payment officer uh changed jobs or retired or died um and the payments just keep going you know it's like\n\nif you forget to pay your gym membership or something like that right now imagine it's not the gym membership you said your gym membership's $20 billion a year or something you know um but they forgot to turn it off there like that happening at scale in the government Jesus it's totally nuts is what I'm saying so insane yes it's totally insane so what did you expect when you went in did you expect it would be like this I thought it's I thought it would be it would be bad but I did not think it would be as bad as this um I mean look the the good news is that uh it's a target-rich environment for saving money uh it's not like uh you it's not like if it it was a very well-run ship uh it was very efficient it would be hard to improve but it's not efficient\n\nso therefore it is actually relatively easy to improve let's just say it's not rocket science you know I know rocket science so it's a lot of uh mundane things um so and some of the some of the things are like so crazy that we didn't even know to ask about that because we just assumed umed like you know payments out of the treasury computer would have a payment categorization code and they would have some explanatory note saying what the payments for the idea that that it would be just untraceable blank checks uh didn't occur to us at first Jesus so anyway just this episode is brought to you by net site what does the future hold for business ask nine experts and you'll get 10 answers bull market bare Market until someone invents a crystal ball over 41,000\n\nbusinesses are future proofing their operations with net Suite by Oracle the number one Cloud Erp it brings accounting financial management inventory and HR into one fluid platform with one unified business management Suite net Suite gives you a single source of Truth giving you the visibility and control you need to make quick confident decisions plus realtime insights and forecast casting let you peer into the future with actionable data when you can close the books in days not weeks you spend less time looking back and more time at what's next whether your company is earning millions or even hundreds of millions net Suite helps you respond to immediate challenges and Seize Your Biggest opportunities speaking of opportunity download the cfo's guide\n\nto Ai and machine learning for free at netsuite.\n\ncom so is that one one of the things that accounts to there there's this 4 something trillion dollars that's kind of they don't know where it went they don't know that's a c I think that's probably a cumulative number um yes so yeah but yeah if you if you add up it's do you remember that story Jamie yeah what was the story almost what she said there like they just didn't have accounting for it I think yeah it was spent on legitimate things worry but we don't we don't know what we spent it on well I mean how do you know obviously one cannot say it's was spent legitimately if they don't know what it was spent on that doesn't make any sense this is this is such a fascinating time because with this setup the way it is right now with Trump back in after all\n\nthat happened to him and with you there and with RFK Junior and Tulsi and cash Patel it's like this is a wild time to find out what really going on that's like never happened before this is nothing like the first term no like the first term he had a bunch of neocons in the cabinet and there's a bunch of shady people that he didn't know and he had to appoint all these different people maybe he got some bad picks now he's had four years to Stew on it right and with you guys all going through this we're getting an understanding of the government that we've literally never had before yeah this is a revolutionary cabinet and maybe the most re tionary cabinet since the the first Revolution uh this is this is not a bunch of business as usual uh types so this\n\nis why you know some of the the standard confirmations were quite challenging is because when you when you put to try to appoint people who are going to change the system yeah uh the system doesn't want to let them through but it's fascinating because it's like the vampires all out themselves like now everybody knows who the system is like if you're just lying about us and then they come and you talk on aast and expain what's like he's starving mothers there's mothers that can't get food totally false that's all you're hearing yeah that's that's no one's talking in any of these mainstream liberal talk shows no one is talking about all this fraud and waste yeah because we're cutting off their graph machine so that that's what they're upset about that's\n\nthat's the real thing they're upset about U and if if if people want to know what uh do is cutting and and I want to be clear like these are cuts that Doge recommends to the department and usually these recommendations are followed but uh these are recommendations that are then confirmed by the department um the uh you can see line by line what do is done at Doge Dogo so what if we do we put on do.\n\ngoov so you can see everything that is being done and there's a Tracker that shows is it how much money has been saved yeah yeah and you can look at each line item and and you know they like a bunch of these sort of sort of far left uh shows will will say like oh it's a constitutional crisis blah blah blah but what they won't do is point out which payments are wrong right so my challenge to them is point out which payments are wrong yeah go through it which which of which of these sort of waste fraud things are wrong which line explain that line to the public they won't be able to right yeah that's why you're not hearing any specifics you're hearing an stories about mothers we can name the specifics yeah line by line and we got the receipts and here's\n\nthe other thing if you're post the receipts and if you're only talking about the propaganda talking points and you're not talking about the very clear fraud and waste it's very obvious what you're doing yeah you're just gaslighting yeah yeah totally yeah so exactly because we're say like look in fact I've said we're going to make mistakes we're not going to be perfect uh so if we make a mistake we'll quickly fix it so we'll we'll we'll you we need to act fast uh so stop wasting billions of dollars of taxpayer money um but if if we make a mistake we'll reverse it quickly right you know so it's also this interesting narrative that you shouldn't have access to this social security information as if no one's had access to it before as if the Biden Administration\n\nin 2023 had there was like 53 people some of them were students that had access to all this stuff yeah uh as it is there are uh tens of thousands of of federal employees that have access already to the system uh anyone from Doge has to go through the same vetting process that those those federal employees went through so there's not like some unvetted random situation if for example there's a security clearance needed uh the Doge person has to have that same security clearance so there's no um reduction in security um but I mean obviously the the the vast numbers of social security numbers have leaked onto the internet people have hacked the the government systems multiple times uh vast amounts of public information has been hacked and and uh DED on to\n\nthe Internet so I me there's a guy at the IRS that leaked a half a million tax returns just a few years ago on purpose yeah for what reason uh I for politic he he he he wanted to I think he was trying to get a trump and maybe me and a few others um so but he he he he stole like 500,000 uh tax returns like not a few like it's a lot of tax Jesus Christ yeah oh I remember that story now remember you just you just read about it online it's not it's a real thing so these are the narratives that's the narrative that you shouldn't have access to social security the the other narrative is that starving people are going to die and women aren't going to be pregnant and not have nutrients for their babies and that's that's all you're hearing and um yeah well that's\n\nthe that's the that's the only thing they they can say but they can point to the line item right um and so they can't say like well this is the thing where you know the nutrients for pregnant mothers were stopped this they can't point to that because we didn't right is a lie what's fascinating to me is um how much the mainstream media is in line with the very specific talking points and how little you you have Fox News you essentially have Fox News on television it's like the only one that is pointing out the ridiculous fraud and waste and yeah you know I know you saw the Jeff Bezos thing in the Washington Post they're going to stop all the wacky editorials and and limit that stuff to uh I think it was uh wealth and personal freedom or something along\n\nthose lines yeah yeah so I mean I think it's this kind of I think it makes sense uh because he's just talking about the things not not the the sort of just talking about the opinions opinion pieces the opinion pieces yeah yeah so the regular journalism stays the same well it's a detriment to their business I mean you're seeing over and over again people that just they don't want to hear all this [ __ ] from these people anymore it's like you're you're you're saying it's almost like you're caught in an outdated version of the virus and everybody else already has the immunity to that virus like this is yeah you know like you need you need a new mind virus the one that you're pushing it's like it doesn't work anymore it's too crazy yeah uh it's the whole\n\nthing is very crazy um I mean the media is incredibly partisan I mean they're not uh I they take almost all the media is um you left shifted yeah so it's like it's kind of weird if you talk to somebody who gets all their information from like what I call Legacy Media uh they're living in a different world yeah uh than if they say are listening to you know U your podcast or um are getting new news from from X or you know just if it's it's like it's it's kind of wild like it is very wild like you talk it's it's like they're living in an Ultimate Reality oh there's a lot of people that I talked to to that I have to go where did you hear that yeah yeah uh but I mean like the Associated Press which I call Associated propaganda the AP um you know they they\n\nran a a international news story saying that we that Doge fired air traffic controllers but we didn't fire any air traffic controllers at all in fact we're trying to hire air traffic controllers not fire them yeah I saw that you you made a tweet about it right yeah what do you call it now do you call it a post post yeah whatever you can't call it a tweet though do you call it a tweet accidentally I don't know listen uh but like if you if if one like let's say somebody post if somebody puts up like an you know two hour long video that's not a tweet right it's a post it's a PO yeah good point yeah yeah for sure yeah so um but I hot over if people still want to call it a tweet whatever you put a post about it just to get back to it saying that if you we\n\nneed highly qualified air traffic controllers if you retired if you would consider doing it again we could use you uh yes so uh a lot of really qualified air traffic controllers were were pushed out because of Dei stuff so um I mean not to to be blunt I mean a bunch of old white a bunch of really good talented old white guys were pushed out it's not cool um and so we have there's a talent shortage in a traffic control because of Dei and and and not being not hiring people on Merit you know which is so crazy that that worked I think we we should not put the public safety at risk you know because of some demented philosophy somebody made a post today about it in infiltrating the NSA did you see any of that that was that was some gnarly stuff yeah crazy\n\nwhat they they they it started off as just like this sort of Fringe thing and people would meet up then it completely infiltrated the organization and they were spending all their time there like 400 people or something some like some chat sex chat room with like some extremely demented stuff yeah yeah I I know I sa it I'll send it to you Jamie because it's so cooky you you you what this is the NSA I thought the NSA was just all about like information and spy on you know like if like is a national threat or something yeah I think this is exactly it um so she uh more than 100 intelligence staffers will be fired over sexually explicit texts in NSA chat rooms Gabbert says um so so top intelligence official told Waters that the workers in question were Brazen\n\nand using an NSA platform intended for professional use to conduct this kind of really really horrific Behavior Uh what is the behavior what exactly what is it do they say in this article uh yeah I think they were also okay it says employees who participate in the n's obscene pornographic and sexually explicit chat rooms your tax dollars at work well it was all like de I it was all like LBGTQ stuff it was there was a lot of like transition stuff and yeah I I know I definitely saved it but point is um it had infiltrated the organization it's not what they should be talking about at all at all at all supposed to be protecting the country right and if you and people were talking about how they're sping half their time in these meetings and that they're just\n\nlike constantly having to attend these things where they talk about these issues like what are what are you doing like if you have a problem with someone that's discriminatory get rid of that person that's it yes it's you problem's over you got someone who's homophobic in your business they're openly homophobic yeah that you can't work here that's not cool that's it that's it you don't have to have [ __ ] meetings constantly promoting this you're not going to change someone's opinion by berating them over and over again yeah I mean a work environment should be a professional environment where you know they're they're they're getting the job done that they're you know you know being paid to do uh that it should be obviously not supposed to be sort of getting\n\npaid for bizarre SE sexcapades it's just so fascinating that the virus was so strong that it made it into the NSA yes and was you would think those are some hard the CIA too the CIA was in there too yeah they were in there too which is bananas you would think same thing like hard-nosed like tough people doing hard work who can spy on you whenever they want yeah yeah and get revenge on you whenever they want yeah pretty wild yeah and you know they exist when the president leaves they stay people move around you stay a part of the organization for your entire career you get deeply entrenched in their system and how things work and who's back to rub and who's who's a bad guy who's a good guy who's on our side who's not yeah it's scary actually yeah um so\n\nwas that what's taken so long with this Epstein files yeah what's up with that what is up with that it was like yeah it's it's like Lucy and the football with Charlie Brown when she always pulls that football away it's the same thing it's like they keep telling us they're going to release it day one oh day one we have a serious case of no one's being arrested O phobia you know well there's also right like what the [ __ ] is going on what the [ __ ] is going on also there's this real fear that someone's destroying the evidence and you keep hearing these stories unsubstantiated stories yeah of you know FBI people where the evidence I mean the guy had like tons of videos and uh recordings yeah I mean he had all sorts of things right like there's a mountain\n\nof evidence right so where's that mountain yeah where where is that mountain and what would be the reason why they would agree like there would have to be something in it for them to agree to not put it out right like there has to be some sort of financial entanglement some sort of relationship with the people that are on that list yeah that they can provide a value that was big enough for you to not release it or to slow relase it or to hope you can get away with like putting out some redacted files that don't show anything this is only red redacted redacted only stage one don't worry the real stuff's coming like that doesn't make any sense like why wouldn't you just release it all like what what could possibly be well worth protecting in there I mean\n\nI think I've got probably the same information that I mean I'm just reading what's what's the latest thing on the X you know I'm just looking at my X feed and I'm like yeah you know it's a real page Turner um and like I thought we were going to get some re Revelations to it was like big binders full of stuff there's got to be something in there well there was in all those people that were given a copy of it they were all like waving around they got the Willy Wonka ticket yeah yeah totally yeah and what happened nothing nothing so I think Laura lomer released it online I think I'm watching TW yeah she's not very pleased about this so does anybody find anything in there that's interesting no it's all old stuff from 2015 and okay what the [ __ ] is going\n\non but but then apparently this they discovered a whole bunch of stuff at the southern dist District of New York right so that's and and and I'm like and I me I think you know Pam Bondi is actually great and cash Patel are great but they're like they just got there you know right so then they're they're in not they're they just got there but they're they're in a hostile environment they're not in a friendly environment right um so um you know it's like if you suddenly got put in captain of a ship but the crew was previously your enemy right the entire crew was previously your enemy right you know and you're telling them give me evidence yeah the crew doesn't want to give you the evidence you enemy they were like your mortal enemies just a moment ago you\n\njust got there yeah so yeah I think we got to give um you know um the attorney general and you know new director of the FBI some a little bit of slack here because they literally just got there I think so too but hey don't say you're going to release it on day one then yeah you shouldn't have said that sure and don't say you got a big drop coming tomorrow and that's some [ __ ] that's been around forever it's disappointing yeah what the and where's the JFK files where are those yeah let them go did they release anything on that front I don't know what's going on it can't be anything that's gotten to me yet so if nothing's gotten to me yet it can't be signicant if there's conspiracy evidence someone's going to send it yes Tim Dylan's going to text me 100%\n\nTim Dylan Dave Smith someone's going to send my way theu yeah so it has it hasn't been released yet yeah you would find out and here's the real question like what could even be in there at this point that they haven't cleared out if you've got paperwork from 1963 like what is in there still what is in there that could possibly be incriminating that supposedly Trump said that if you saw what they showed me you wouldn't release it either okay what the [ __ ] does that I haven't seen it so Cashel has yes he said he seen it all yeah um can he just post it to his like X account or something I mean I just we that sounds like an Elon move I don't think he can he's the director of the FBI I think he has to go through proper channels and does he he has the channel\n\nI yeah but there's rules he sounds like Trump he sound like Trump he needs an executive order what about the storm I am the storm I mean what channels he is the channel well again imagine just getting to the the hull or just getting to the uh deck of the ship and you're the captain yeah and now you uh you have to figure out who's running things who's doing this where is everything yeah um yeah just getting getting anything done like just like said you're you just joined as Captain of a ship of where the crew hates your guts yeah they were your enemy yeah they were your enemy they're strongly opposed to anything you want to do yeah um and you're trying to give them orders and you're trying to expose them yeah they don't want to be exposed right you're\n\nyou're literally people that are working there probably a part of this problem I mean I I was reading onx that like comey's daughter is like the lead prosecutor in southern district of New York did you read that yes and and like so obviously there's a bit of an entanglement there a little bit like what if there's something that uh you know makes puts her dad in a bad light exactly she a [ __ ] Shredder hit that delete button you know did you see uh General Flynn he was on a podcast and he he spoke directly to James Comey yeah he said Jim you're going to jail and unless you give up someone deeper than you and you know who that is you know who I'm talking about like that is wild yeah um I think that the former director of the FBI might be really in that\n\nkind of deep [ __ ] and he really actually was doing some evil corrupt [ __ ] while he run in the FBI I mean it seems like there's some very shady stuff that's been going on um it seems like it definitely happened in the' 60s right everybody kind of admits to that they admit the FBI uh killed black panthers they they did they did a lot of [ __ ] there's a lot of stuff that went on that we know the government did way back in the day yeah why don't we just data dump the files just like go in there take photos of of all the papers presumably paper um and just post it online and and uh let let the CHS fall where they may is it presumably everyone like some like filing cabinet somewhere I don't know right where is it where's where's the magic filing cabinet\n\nhow are they hiding it who's got access to it like this this is what I was hoping day one I was hoping but obviously it's taking a lot longer than that so I I think part of it is like you know like let's let's say let's say you were made direct to the FBI okay I might be able to that's what crazy literally you know what's he doing now he's he's one of the big dogs of theba but he Secret Service guy yeah legit guy but people think of him as a Fox News guy just like Pete heg same thing they don't want to think about his distinguished military career they want to say oh that Fox News guy director deputy director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation I mean Dan's hardcore I me if he if it's if it's reasonably findable I think he's going to find it this is\n\nbetween him and cash I mean like I think they're going to get stuff how crazy would it be if they couldn't though how crazy would it be if they can't find anything if it's that if if everybody shuts their mouth and everybody covers their ass like an FBI computer where you type in the search that's I I just like the basic mechanism here like it's either in a filing cabinet in in paper where it's like you know maybe there's like Progressive levels of security you know you're like open this door oh you got to have do you have the pass for this level you like level unlocked and there's a level unlocked and it's like get there laptop yeah yeah there's laptop you gotta only plug it in it's in a skiff yeah this is why like I think I think like tour of four KNX\n\nwould be awesome like a live tour of Fort Knox we can actually see it's like is the C there or not they say it is is it real or did somebody spray paint some lead you know imagine if it's not imagine if it's not all there like some of it's missing where to go what if a lot of it's missing what if like half of it's missing I mean who how do we even know I don't know they said the last time they let someone look at it was decades ago yeah well the last I believe the last formal audit was in the 50s so I'm like okay oh my just think about all the other maybe yeah think about all the other stuff that you pointed out all the the the checks that just go out the the NGO payments the Social Security people think about all just all that now apply that to the gold\n\nabsolutely I just want to like emphasize the sure Madness of the the government it's it's just because they have like m the Magic Money computers that that they the checks all the checks never bounce for the federal government like so you don't have the the normal corrective mechanism that you'd have for a company or for an individual the checks just always always always clear the net result is inflation which is effectively a tax on everyone um but uh you know like the defense Pro hasn't passed an audit in I don't know how many years seven years yeah I mean exactly so it's like You' have to be freaking Chuck Norris to like only Chuck Norris could get the defense department to pass an order you know typee of thing that's the level of skill you need you\n\nknow um well that's what's so insane if you bring it back to the idea that it's a business well yeah this would never be tolerated in any kind of functional business exactly so U you know um you know Pentagon will will like like their accounting error like the stuff that that they lose in the couch cushions is like 20 30 B billion dollars a year they don't know don't know where it went it's gone where it go and it's gone it's so insane it's insane it's so insane so that's why I said like even simple things like just requiring that the that outgoing payments for the treasury computer have a payment code and a comment of what the payment is about and someone to call about the payment um I think will have an very powerful effect in stopping wasteful outflows\n\nand stopping fraud yeah and and here's another way to look at this imagine if some there are people like you and the Doge team out there in the world imagine if one of those works for an organization like us a or any other organization and has this understanding of how much fuckeries involved but they have evil intentions and they're entwined in this system for decades and decades and they've built a career and all the entanglements that come and they start moving [ __ ] around you could probably do it easy it sounds like the way you've laid it out if you were a career person who's in there forever who knew how everything works Y and you were very clever you could make some [ __ ] happen and you could probably do it in conjunction with some people that\n\nyou know that are forming an NGO hey let's all work together yeah yeah and this is the resistance that you're facing yeah the I think it's the biggest scam of all time this is not something you ever saw the biggest scam of all time ever of human history of human history yes wow I think you're right yeah I how what else probably a trillion dollar scam there's never been a trillion dollar scam you know now this is not something that you ever set out to do this is not you didn't have this as a career aspiration this is not like this is the most absurd outcome I can possibly imagine actually also like Doge started as like a sort of a a meme coin right you know it was like a a joke cryptocurrency involving memes and dogs mhm um and uh which is so funny that\n\nthe letters wind up being perfect yeah well actually I was originally going a quote like the government efficiency commission which is very boring name um and then people online were no it needs to be the department of government efficiency uh and I was like you know what you're right of course of course of course I mean it's more evidence of the simulation that that little like a mascot is a is a cute dog it's a meme coin the meme coin is probably worth a lot of money right now right like every time you tweet about it probably I don't know shoots up yeah the the mem the whole meme coin thing is bananas yeah it is so bananas that people dump real money into these coins and then you could just pump them up and sell them a casino or something I don't know\n\nyeah it's totally G people just do whatever the greater fo and musical chairs and whoever's like the last to sit down lose type of thing and somehow or another it's still legal like that's that's think not I think not too many people I mean I mean it's sort of like you go to the casino like you if you expect to win at the casino you're being a fool okay so I think if you expect to win at meme coins you're being it's not you're being foolish yeah yeah you're not gonna win a meme coins it's like it's it's but if if if you want like don't sink your life savings into a meme coin no but you can gamble a little and you can ride waves and win a little and lose a little if if you want to have some fun and and don't come then you know play have play with me and\n\ncoins but if you put your if you put your on a m coin in the at the RIS of saying something bold and outrageous don't bet the F on a mcoin the weird one is the pump and dumps like people all time all the time and people get shocked that somebody pump and dumped like what is what are you doing did you like I was hoping to dump I was hoping to make all the money out of this I can't believe they got me like yeah it's just weird that it's legal still uh I mean casinos IL legal and and people just lose money at casinos you know but you can't rig a casino like a pump and dump you could rig a pump and dump you know uh yeah I guess so um like you could run a real pyramid scheme well I mean the government's one a big pyramid scheme if you ask me yeah well you\n\nyou can tell Social Security is is the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time right explain that oh so um well people pay into Social Security um and and the money goes out of Social Security immediately but the obligation for Social Security is uh your entire retirement career so you're you're paying uh with your the you're paying like like if you look at the future obligations of Social Security it far exceeds uh the tax revenue far have you ever looked at the the the debt The Debt Clock yes okay there's there's there's our present day debt but then there's our future obligations so when you look at the future obligations of Social Security um the actual uh national debt is like double what what people think it is because of the future obligations ah so basically\n\npeople are living way longer than expected um and uh there are fewer babies being born so you have more people who are retired and get that that live for a long time and get retirement payments so the future obligations so H how bad the financial situation is right now for the federal government it will be much worse in the future at the risk of being a buzz kill here did you see so we better fix what we got right now because if it's bad now it's going to be much worse in the future there was an interview with this woman who was a whistleblower did we ever find out if that was true there's so many whistles being blown it's hard to keep track a lot of whistles this one lady it was only in one state it was very specific instance believe right but it was\n\nusing Social Security money correct that was her that was her allegation so what what she was alleging was that she was in charge of turning uh illegal immigrants into clients that's what they would call them and that she would go to them and try to ask them do you have a headache do you have back problems if you do now you can be permanently disabled you get permanent disability so you get Social Security for Life yes yeah no not just Social Security but disability which is even more right and you get them for on the taxpayer Dole right away the m and they're illegal aliens yes oh so if I were to say like what's at the heart of the sort of like why is a Democrat propaganda machine so fired up to destroy me that's the main reason the main reason is that\n\nuh is that um uh entitlements fraud that includes like Social Security Disability Medicaid uh entitlements fraud for illegal aliens is what is serving as a gigantic magnetic force to pull people in from all around the world and keep them here like basically if you if you pay people uh at a standard of living that is above 90% of Earth then you have a very powerful uh incentive for 90% of Earth to come here and to stay here but if you if you end the illegal alien fraud then you that you turn off that magnet and they leave and they they stop coming and and the ones that are here many of them will simply leave and if if that happens a massive they will lose a massive number of democratic voters and if it didn't happen they would turn those people into voters\n\ncorrect which they were trying to do they are already turning them so in in New York state illegal aliens can already vote in state and city elections a lot of people don't don't know that there there's I mean they're trying to fight that in they're trying to stop that but it's there currently I think it's like 600,000 uh are Reg said to vote illegal aliens in New York that is wild yeah well well I mean if you look at say um you know FEMA like the the agency that was paying for illegal aliens to stay at luxury hotels in New York was FEMA the F you know that's meant that that's an agency that's meant to support Americans in distress from natural disasters was paying for luxury hotels for illegals in New York it's true yeah that's a fact fact they're literally\n\nlike when we stuff that payment we we stopped all those those money because that's obviously an insane way to spend taxpayer money um the uh New York uh sued the government Su the federal government to get the money so you can just look at their lawsuit they they were give they were sending that money even after president Trump signed an executive order saying it needs to to stop they still press sand on $80 million to luxury hotels in New York your tax money went to pay for illegal aliens in luxury hotels in New York from an agency that is meant to help Americans in distress from natural disasters right and I would like to know how much and I would like to know how much they spent on North Carolina and how much they spent on Maui yes exactly uh what\n\nWhat's actually happened is they're buying voters that's really what's happening it's like it's like a giant voter for scam they're importing voters and uh and it's really just a matter of time so like a lot of people have trouble believing this but if you the more you look at it the more you will realize just how much of a problem this is and how it's it's it's not just real it is it is an attempt to destroy Democracy in America that's what in my view it is what it really is like if you take the the the sort of seven swing States like often the imin of Victory there is like maybe 20,000 votes if you put 200,000 um illegals in there and they have like a 80% likelihood of voting them uh and it's only a matter of time before they become citizens then those\n\nswing States will not be swing states in the future and if they are not swing States we will be a permanent one party State country permanent uh deep blue socialist State that's what America will become and that was the game plan that that was that was the game plan that is still the game plan and they almost succeeded if if if if the if the machine of which the Kam puppet was the representation had won that's what would have happened the reason I went so hardcore for for for for Trump was because to me this was a folk in the road very like a very obvious folk in the road um if they had another four years they would legalize enough illegals in the swing states to make the swing States uh not swing States they would just there would be blue States then\n\nthen they would they would win the presidential they'd win the house the Senate and the presidency um they would then make uh District you know DC into a state may maybe Puerto Rico get four extra Senators pack the Supreme Court so then you'll have the house Judiciary Senate uh and presidency all blue and then they will keep importing more illegals to cement that that outcome basically what happened in California Jesus Christ it would have been the end that's why I went so hardcore for for trump it was otherwise been the end and that's why the the the Democrat machine is so intent on destroying me it's just so fascinating that people can't see this I mean I invite people to do their research the more they do their research the more they will see that\n\nwhat I'm saying is absolutely true D it's like just do the research yeah it's it's such a bad idea even for the Democrats which is what they don't understand like it's the same it's not ultimately going to work out no it's the same people yes it's just they're doing it under the guys that they're the kind compassionate Progressive people yes but the same outcome takes place it's just about control they they probably Institute some Central Bank digital currency and some social credit score system and censorship of course yeah of course well they that was the big Fe coming into this election was that if they can't censor things like well I we talked about it before but there's there was two major Forks in the road the big one was Trump didn't get shot y\n\nthe other big one was You by Twitter and if those two things don't happen the whole world looks different yes yeah we don't want to be on that timeline no we don't want to have only one side represented because guess what they will hijack that side whatever it is they will hijack that side and use it for money and control and that's what it's all about it's not about good people versus bad people it's a [ __ ] shell game yeah I I mean I think these things are actually it's easy to understand if you look at basic incentives the the basic incentive here is the more legals that the Democrats can bring in the more likely they are to win so that's what they're going to do um that's what they have been doing uh and it worked in California California super majority\n\nDem um and look at all the companies that are leaving California yeah um I mean in and- out just announced they're leaving their headquarters leaving California they're moving to Tennessee yeah yeah so um and and California uh made Healthcare free for illegals yeah as of last year so and and that obviously that's a gigantic magnet for more illegals like and this is not a thing you can solve simply with money because what happens is the you simply have more patients than a doctor can possibly see and you can't just you know make doctors out of nothing like the it so people like oh it's just a money thing no you it takes a long time for somebody to become a doctor you know the 30 years um and uh and so what actually happens in California is that there are\n\ntoo many patients for the doctors to see so then uh the average citizen in California suffers as a result um now the the elite in California are fine because they have private doctors you know they have they can they can just pay for the best doctors so the elite in California doing fine but your your average C citizen in California is not doing fine um and the the tax burden for uh healthcare for illegals was supposed to be three billion I think they now estimated it's 9 billion but that but that that number will scale to Infinity basically it's like why not like why not if you if you need any operation at all come to California and have it be free right from anywhere on earth and the people that want to look at it in the most charitable way they say\n\noh well these people are hardworking good people and they're the backbone of our city and they should have access to all the things that we have access to and I just don't think they understand that it's a political Pawn I don't think they understand this is not done for compassion and kindness no this is just done to ensure that it stays Blue correct yeah and it's essentially a bribery with your tax dollars yes this is why um that the dams will not even um Deport criminals yeah um because every criminal deported is a lost vote so even even if if somebody is uh um illegal with a criminal record and commits crime in America they are still still were not being deported and then on top of that California made it actually illegal to ask for ID when people\n\nvote Yes California and New York uh you are not allowed to show your ID when you vote I just want to be clear so everyone understands this in California New York you are not allowed to show your ID even if you want to right why would that ever be a good idea I mean what like if you want to man if you're trying to do if you're trying to facilitate fraud in elections it's a great idea that's the only reason yes there's no other reason Lally why that would be a good idea it's for fraud it's it's like it's like wake up she wake up hello like let's say you wanted to commit for what are the things you would do yeah you would say you don't need ID and you can mail in your ballot and we'll give you free healthare yes stay here yes stay here I know it's on fire\n\nbut stay here I mean in this case it being on fire is not just a metaphor in California okay it's just like godamn entire neighborhood's burning down it's just once they uh allowed people to vote that are not legal in California once you if you're if you're going to do that it's it's over it's exactly there's there's no coming back from that the numbers are just no people are so indoctrinated too there's so many people that no matter what they think voting Republican means you're an [ __ ] yes and they won't do it they won't do it they they'll put their [ __ ] rainbow flag on their porch and they'll just ride it right into the beach civilizational suicide yeah right to the Rocks bang crash the boat I mean uh there's there's a guy um who post X who's who\n\ngreat God Gods side yeah friend of mine he been on podcast punch times yeah he's awesome yeah he's great um and he talks about uh you know basically suicidal empathy mhm like if there's like there's so much empathy that you actually suicide yourself yeah um so that we've got civilizational suicidal empathy going on and it's like I believe in empathy like I think you should care about other people but you need to have empathy for for civilization as a whole and not commit to a civilizational suicide also don't let someone use your empathy against you so they can completely control your state and then do it insanely bad job of managing it and never get removed the the the fundamental weakness of Western Civilization is empathy the empathy exploit they there\n\nit's it's they're exploiting a a a bug in western civilization which is the empathy response so and I I I think you know empathy is good but you need to think it through and not just be programmed like a robot right understand when empathy has been actually used as a to a tool yes like the it's weaponized empathy yeah is the issue yeah weaponized empathy and yeah um and it's also the rigid adherence to that liberal ideology like you can't switch sides over there like California if you're a part of that whole Tech Hollywood entertainment any any of those circles you're on the left like almost wholly almost completely it's borderline illegal to be a republican in California uh I mean like in San Francisco or La it's borderline illegal to be a republican\n\nyou're certainly shunned no I look I mean in like San Francisco you you you could shoot heroin while taking a dump on the mayor's car in front of City Hall okay and and that and nothing would happen to you but if you walk down the street with a Maga hat you're GNA get attacked yeah it's insane yeah it's insane it's also so orwellian that a hat that says make America great again would cause people to have a violent reaction like aren't you American wouldn't just just as a a whole like the saying wouldn't that be a good thing for everyone make America great again but because it's attached to Donald Trump and that red hat you'll get maced for wearing that red hat they will make America worse by beating you so it's like it's an evil thing they're doing a\n\nviolent assault in America because you want to make America great again I mean it's like a scene in a book it doesn't it doesn't seem like it could be that ridiculous like remember when all lives matter would get you fired which is insane insane people got fired because they said all lives matter which is a very reasonable thing to say how reasonable is that yes that's essentially saying everybody matters but that's not that's Lally all you're saying that's not what you were supposed to say you had to say black lives matter which of course they do if you say all lives matter everybody matters yes but the idea of being a colorblind Society was completely abandoned somewhere around 2012-ish yeah I mean I I sort of can trace it to when when did the the the\n\ngun emoji get nerfed you know uh when did it turn into a squirt gun that was a couple of years ago that was like 2016 I think was it yeah yeah it became a squirt gun can you bring it back X yeah no no right now if if if you uh use a gun emoji on X the Apple will insist that it' be a squirt gun and then the X app turns it back into uh a 1911 oh really yeah oh that's great so you can you can actually uh you know have have a 1911 gun um we we we reverted the Apple change inside the app oh that's hilarious that's hilarious that that it's that thing's so offensive the gun and then the pregnant man both of those got me like you [ __ ] I mean I like that mem where it's like the people telling you that what you're hearing is dis information are the same people\n\nthat did the pregnant man emoji yes yeah think about that yeah well also the same people that say a woman attacked a Tesla Factory yeah the woman it's a dude it's a dude like really obvious dude really big mentally ill dude yeah mentally ill dude with a wig on say that yes yeah but NBC even fo you're looking at the picture a woman yo this is got a this this is a dude with a wrong jawline okay he's wearing Woman face is a buff it's a buff dude yeah it's a buff dude wearing Woman face I mean come on that's not a that's not a woman yeah and they're like saying watch shot for disinformation I'm like what are you talking about it's so crazy this is [ __ ] I mean it's just more evidence of the virus though right like it killed objectivity killed reality and\n\nit it demanded strict adherence or you were attacked yeah yeah any questioning of it uh would result in in being ostracized do you like what what kind of responsibility do you like knowing that if you didn't take over Twitter and turn it into X if that didn't happen like the I really think the world's a very different place right now like how long have you owned it for a couple years basically imag imagine a couple years of it being run the way it was run before and probably accelerating my account would have been suspended long ago for sure yeah for sure yeah just for the disinformation yeah um it would have been Trum would have never come back Alex Jones would have definitely never been back definitely not no no um so yeah um does that weigh on you\n\nlike I would feel like that would be a [ __ ] heavy responsibility yeah um I mean I'm just trying to keep civilization going here you know for longer um so um I think we at least want to build a city on Mars um and become a multiplet civilization uh which I think would be incredibly important in ensuring the long-term survival of civilization are you still rescuing those people that are stuck in the space station uh yeah that's coming up in a couple weeks I think whoa they've been up there for how long Jamie they were supposed to be there for a couple days right I think actually prob like four weeks oh they're supposed to be they were supposed to be up there for like eight days yeah and they've been up there for like I think eight months so a little longer\n\nthan expected [ __ ] yeah what is it going to be like for those people when they get back they're going to be a wreck for a long time right yeah if as long you stay up there you get you know sort of in zero you get increased bone loss so um you it ended up being like this political football um and uh sort of sort of hotly contested topic um we offered to bring them back early this offer was rejected by the Biden Administration whyl for political reasons that's so crazy I there's no way that they're going to make anyone who's supporting Trump look look good wow what do you think they would have done if they had won uh well get those people back no they can they can only get them back with with a SpaceX spacecraft but they they push the return date past\n\nthe uh inauguration date wow yeah so they would have let you do it but after the wow and so it would have been them authorizing you there isn't anyone else to to to do it NASA can't get them uh the only only the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft is the only one that is considered safe enough to bring them back so the NASA concluded that the Boeing spacecraft was not safe so that's why they're stuck there holy [ __ ] yeah and you can't ask Russia to help that would be awkward a little bit yeah yeah be a nice thing if they did they said guys will help you I think they for enough money they would you think so uh yeah but they would they would obviously treat it as a propaganda Victory and charge crazy money it's just disgusting that they would use that as a political\n\ntool yeah um yeah um so well they were also the Biden Administration was also suing SpaceX uh they had this massive lawsuit against SpaceX for SpaceX not hiring Asylum Seekers right so so people like say like oh El's making it up this V Administration wasn't against SpaceX I'm like bro the Department of Justice had a massive lawy law suit against SpaceX for not hiring Asylum Seekers even though it is illegal for us to hire hire anyone who is not a permanent resident so it is both there's a law that says you have to hire Asylum Seekers but there's also a law that says anyone hired by a rocket company which is an advanced weapons technology must be a permanent resident and if an asylum Seeker is not a permanent resident so it is both legal and illegal to\n\nhire Asylum Seekers so why would the vien Administration launch a massive lawsuit again this is public information it's not like my imagination um why would they launch do such a massive lawsuit against SpaceX they're extremely antagonistic it just doesn't make any sense that that could ever even get past the first day of someone looking at it if it's both illegal and you're trying to enforce it like you can't enforce it yes this is an advanced weapons company this is crazy it should be like this throw this out there's in fact there's like International traffic and arms regulations is a like a law that is there to ensure that if if only permanent residents of the United States can work at Advanced weapons companies Rockets are Advanced weapons uh so the\n\nsame is true of like if it's like nuclear or you know some like you know bioweapon thing or something like that um so because they obviously if if someone were to work at basic and then go leave and go to North Korea or Iran they could build missile technology that could uh you know destroy the United States so that's why you're not allow to hire people who are per resident logical basic logical logical so is that lawsuit still pending I was it was just dismissed how long was it going on for a couple years holy [ __ ] yeah that's the other thing that drives me crazy like that people don't understand that if you sanction laware like that if you sanction attacking your political enemies someone's going to do that to you like if the wrong people get in office\n\nyeah if new people getting off four years from now eight years from now who knows who it's going to be you've already set a precedent you've already attack someone charged them with 34 felonies where they're really just misdemeanors and they're passed the statute of limitation and now you're talking all over the news that this is a convicted felon convicted felon they kept saying convicted felon convicted felon and everybody knows what it is yes it's terrifying it's terrifying they could do it so brazenly to a guy who was the president for four years right um that lawsuit was funded by Reed Hoffman uh who is a major damned donor and also an FD and client [Music] uh the pl the plot thickens the plot thickens Jesus Christ yes it's just it's so blatant it's\n\nlike so obvious the SpaceX lawsuit the Trump stuff it's just it's so obvious yes like known FC clients um who are obviously extremely powerful um they powerful politically and and very wealthy um are you know bullate um Bill Clinton and Reed Hoffman and some others two but those three so you know why was Reed Hoffman so intent on destroying Trump do you think it's because they're worried about the list coming out yeah one of the reasons yeah so I mean I'm like this is you know yeah so it's so frustrating to be sitting in the situation where the the list isn't coming out well it better come out I mean hopefully tomorrow might well I mean why' they release [ __ ] today I don't know what's the point in giving these people like a a happy folder to wave around\n\nin front of the camera with nothing in it that's new doesn't make any sense it's not encouraging uh like I said it's the tough thing that they've got is you know they've been made captain of a ship with a hostile crew right right so they don't have like you it's not like you you have like magical powers you get made captain of a triple the Hostile crew you still have a hostile crew right um you've got to bring in people who are going to you be helpful as opposed to OB obstructionist right um so um but yeah I think the the public will be right frustrated if there is if no one is prosecuted for the FC Client List no one at all which you don't know like is you know like at least I don't know the top five or something like some number should there should\n\nat least be an attempted prosecution of the worst offenders well particularly if galain Maxwell is in jail for sex trafficking yes cuz like well trafficking sex trafficking occurred right so she was in she's in jail for it yes so to who are the clients yeah yeah how do you put someone in jail and you don't even name the clients that sounds kind of insane I think yes it it it would yes because just stunning that they've been able to hold it back for so long it's really kind of amazing like when people say that people can't keep secrets what the [ __ ] are you talking about look at this yeah I mean a bunch of these things are not like it's it's common knowledge but we just we don't actually have the proof right um so the proof is there I mean there's lots\n\nof videos um yeah there's lots I mean the dude it's like a mountain of like whenever they raided fen's place there would have been like a mountain of evidence where is that mountain right what' you do with it yes like Who took possession of the evidence yeah specifically right the individuals where are the tapes yes how many levels of clearance do I have to get to get into the Vault Yeah well yeah yeah um you know what we need are people who are really good with computers oh yeah and really good with technology remember seeing this photo that's when they raided his home they were that's they on the island they were there then yeah they got everything I'm sure I mean there must have been so much stuff on that island there must have been and if it wasn't\n\nthere where was it yeah what you know it has to be uploaded somewhere there has to be some sort of a chain of evidence yeah or chain of custody there got to be a mountain of of evidence yeah um the other thing they're going to talk about is uh uaps they're going to release all the UAP information so you're the GU to ask about this what what if any possibility is there that there is some sort of advanced propulsion system technology that's being worked on in secret and that they're trying to cover this up with this talk of aliens and alien Tech and not of this world and is it possible that there's some sort of very secret program that's going on in cahoots with some defense contractors that are developing Advanced propulsion systems that they're using\n\nfor these drones uh I mean SpaceX um you know my company SpaceX is has the most advanced rocket technology in the world I think I'd know right um and I the best of my knowledge there is not any magic there there's not like some super Advanced propulsion technology there have been people who have theorized different gravity drives and different is there anything that's ever gotten past the theoretical stage no nothing well there's nothing even that I'm aware of that works in theory it's not like I don't I I would like this to exist to be clear I would like this to exist um and I have the I I I from a security clearance standpoint I have top top secret there there is I have equivalent of like an all access pass from a security clearance standpoint so uh\n\nI I'm I don't think they're hiding it from me basically I don't think they they could um unless it's completely in these weapons manufacturing corporations I mean I know these weapons manufacturing companies like boing lucky to northr I mean yeah they do some interesting things but uh they do not have I there's no breakthrough that they have so I'm confident they do not have a breakthrough when you hear people like like why just compete with SpaceX and make a better rocket in which case you know they can make why are they holding back on making um a lot of money from beating SpaceX with better Rockets my thought was that what if it's just a drone and you can't have a biological entity inside of it because it just bursts from the [ __ ] speed that it's\n\nmoving at that a human couldn't tolerate the amount of force so they're just drones I don't think so so what do you think people like Ryan Graves Commander David I want cool things to exist like say like do I want UFOs to exist yes I want UFOs to exist because that would be really interesting course everybody does yeah it would be cool it's it's a more boring world where UFOs don't exist or or like flying like Advanced propulsion stuff doesn't exist that's a if if it doesn't exist that's more boring I'd like it' be more interesting if it did exist I'd like it to exist I hope we find something but I have not seen like I mean like SpaceX has launches 90% of all satellite Mass to orbit so if you take all of Earth uh rocket all of Earth's rocket launchers\n\nmy company has a 90% market share of Earth China does about 5% and the rest of the world does including the Boeing lock North and everyone does 5% so why why wouldn't they use this to defeat SpaceX yeah yeah would no listen that's why I asked you it would make sense what do you think these people are seeing a rocket every two days but what do you think these people are seeing when when you have reliable people like Commander David fraver who had that Infamous ticktock uh Tic Tac experience off the coast of San Diego where they got this thing on video they tracked it going 50,000 ft above sea level to 50 ft in like a second okay yeah yeah and then they also have video evidence of this thing accelerating at a great speed eyewitness accounts from two different\n\nJets sure um I mean can we does anybody have a high-risk video or photo of this thing well there's a video of this thing where they're locked onto it and and then it takes off it shoots off frame no no it's like whatever the systems they used on fighter jets in 2004 potentially like Windows 95 I me there like somebody did a curve of like the resolution of UFOs and the resolution of cameras U UFO resolution has stayed flat despite megapixels and cameras going like you know super high well according to Christopher Mel why they still blurry Christopher melan who worked in the state department said that they have high resolution photos videos of these things and that's all that he's seen it it's all locked away whenever people say that to me like don't even\n\ntell me that then don't unless you have just leak it for God's sake put it out there like let it slip yes yeah uh I mean there's a couple photos they're grainy there's not one thing that I've ever looked at and go holy [ __ ] that's it that's what I've looking for you could ask our Gro AI right now to create a h highres image of of an alien spacecraft uh you know over Austin yeah and it's going to do a great job so why we do we not have at least that right yeah but I want to believe that's the problem my brain starts going oh come on this is no fun I want it to be real I want there to be at least be some Advanced propulsion system if not like what are all these people seeing like what is h if we're not being occasionally visited by things that are smart\n\nenough to hide we might be I just that these aliens are very subtle yeah you keep saying saying that it's a good good line I mean it's a solid line cuz it's pretty accurate I just want to see some high RIS video of aliens like how are they just evading all the cameras if you think about that and the ones that you do get them on that's just like some Far Away light that's moving weird and it could be a lot of things but I want to believe yeah I mean I mean there've been like multiple times where um you know the Air Force and navy is has called SpaceX and as and said they they they think they've seen aliens and we're like was it at this time on this state in this location they're like yes how do you know that's us there been a lot of that that's our satellites\n\nthose are our satellites they're like no they're not I'm like yeah yeah they're they're definitely our satellites oh yeah people see the SpaceX satellites all the time whing by yeah they're last our satellites and they're they are moving at you know 16,000 mil hour so it's pretty fast um and there's also stuff that the United States government does have that gets mistaken for UFOs I remember the first time I saw a stealth bomber we were filming Fear Factor it was like right after uh 2003 like right after the the war had broken off and they were flying a stealth bomber down in Palmdale I was like holy [ __ ] like if I didn't know what that was I would 100% think that's from another world when you see cool [ __ ] cool yeah really cool I mean it doesn't\n\nlook like a a humans it looks like something from battl Star Galactica you know it does look yeah it does look awesome um I mean they're they're not stealthy against any uh Advanced radar system by the way it doesn't work it doesn't work anymore doesn't work no was it old school stuff they're they're only they're only stealthy against uh old Radars oh okay I mean you can still see them like they're not invisible right right they're not like oh it's not like you know uh cloaking device from Star Trek did you see when me and Lex uh we we watched the the rocket get caught live while while it was happening that to me was one of the to see it actually I've seen videos of it happen but to see it actually live was one of the coolest [ __ ] things you're like\n\nwow we are in the future right I mean nobody else can do that yeah it's true nobody else can do that that's fact yeah it's pretty wild it's cuz I'm an alien it's time you I'm an alien and I keep trying telling people I'm an alien but they don't believe me I believe you okay thank you I believe you that's my my suspicion all along was that you I'm trying to get back to my own planet that you're a friendly alien like it's nothing wrong with aliens I like people from everywhere yeah even other planets what's next like now that you can do that you can catch Rockets what's like the ultimate expression of Rocket technology like what what comes after this um well I mean the fundamental breakthrough we're aiming for at SpaceX is a fully and rapidly reusable orbital\n\nrocket where both stages are fully and rapidly reusable with our Falcon rocket we are able to reuse the main stage and the the nose cone but we're we're not able to reuse the upper stage um and it it's still takes us a you know at least a few days from when the main stage lands to when we can flly a gain so it it doesn't it doesn't it's it's doesn't it's not fully reusable because we lose the upper stage uh which cost $10 million to build and um and then and then the the main stage it's it's not as reusable as like an aircraft you can't just like refuel it and fly it requires um work for a couple days um but this the Starship design is the first design that is capable of full and Rapid reusability where that is one of the possible outcomes um and once\n\nyou have full and Rapid reusability the cost of access to space drops by a factor of 100 it's like 100 times cheaper um by some metrics it's a thousand times cheaper and um and then when when you factor in uh orbital re re refilling so you refill on orbit uh it it can drop the cost of going cost per ton to the surface of Mars by a factor of 10,000 whoa yeah so what has to improve in order to make it reusable um well um we need there's there's some like we're pretty close to being able to re rapidly reuse the booster for Starship um that's why you know it it comes back and gets caught by the arms and then the arms place it back in the launch Mount so um now this still you know um we have a little bit of engine damage we got little bit of heat shield damage\n\num there's uh like there's like tweaks that that are needed but but the but we're pretty close to achieving full and Rapid reusability of the of the booster um the ship we we we're I mean I I think we'll achieve reusability of the ship this year um and I think we'll achieve rapid reusability of the whole stack ship and booster next year um this is the fundamental breakthrough required for life to become multiplanetary and what is what needs to improve in order to make it reusable like what is what's wrong with it right now uh on the shift side the the toughest problem is the heat shield so no no one has actually no one has ever developed a fully reusable orbital heat shield because you come when you come in from orbital velocity you come in like a flaming\n\nmeteor like you're just a raging ball of fire um and it's it's hard to have a heat shield that doesn't partially melt or get destroyed in that process um you know that that wasn't a problem we were able to solve with falcon9 that's why the opper stage uh burns up on re-entry um with the with Starship the the the the ship portion you got the the booster and you got the ship um we got to solve the making a fully reusable orbital heat shield a problem that has never been solved before um for a while I was like I'm not sure there's this is solvable at this point I think it is solvable um it requires detailed iteration on the heat shield tiles um and I mean we've vertically integrated the manufacturing of the heat shield tiles because there there was no supplier\n\nthat could provide us with the materials that were needed so the um you need to make essentially this this very fine verelli of of glass and aluminum oxide uh fibers um aluminum oxide is basically Sapphire so it's like glass and Sapphire very fine fibers in exactly the right geometry uh with special Coatings um in order to have the this heat shield tile be reusable um like not melt um and but not be so brittle that it gets damaged um on Ascent or descent um like it can't be as you know it's it's kind of like almost the brittleness of a coffee cup type of thing um and the Rocket's shaking like hell so you got this thing like you saw it firstand like imagine you're at Ground Zero of that rocket like you feel how much shaking it was when you're like 5 miles\n\naway imagine if you're right there you know so you got you're shaking these things that are like as brittle as a coffee cup trying not to have them crack or break um and then not have them melt um you got several thou several thousand of these things um you know and if even a few of them break it's not reusable so is there Innovation that's being done in the materials technology at SpaceX where you're you're constantly trying to find and tweak a better version of this yes it's a very difficult problem no it's a problem no one has ever solved so we've got to get the exact right uh materials combination uh the the right molecules in the right shape and and then apply those that heat shield perfectly to the rocket with no mistakes um there's a reason that\n\nno one solved this before it's a very difficult problem so um like said we we had to vot integrate the entire manufacturing of the tile from basic raw materials to a finished tile um rebuild like build the entire supply chain from basic raw materials so where you're just inputting uh silicon uh silicon and aluminum oxides and what is the difference between the way you guys do it versus the way they used to do it for the space shuttle uh well I mean the the space shuttle um like space shuttle Leading Edge uh used uh like quite dense Caron Caren tiles like it was um they're like basically thick and heavy uh but also subjected to cracking that's like what what happen is the foam broke off and it's it hit the tile cracked the tile then on Entry the the cracked\n\nthe tiles that have been cracked or broken uh weren't able to Shield the the shuttle and so the the the the plasma got in melted the the primary structure the whole the whole Space shut broke apart yeah so you you can't basically can't have something that's as brittle you know brittle like the space shuttle there's footage of that right yeah yeah um uh and Rain debris over the whole United States so yeah and they got almost all the pieces um the the I mean the full the full technical explanation would would would I think be understood by about six people um listening to this um like the there was a lot of brilliant engineering the space shuttle tiles um and and and and a bunch of the heat shielding wasn't even tiles it was actually uh silica blankets\n\nlike you know um felt blankets essentially um if you look closely you'll see it actually is uh they're actually Heat Blankets not not tiles in in some areas um but but they they would have crack tiles and they would have occasionally the tiles would fall off there were a few close calls U where tiles fell off but they weren't in a super vulnerable position uh in the on the space shuttle um so but it would take it would take them several months like eight nine months to refurbish a space shuttle between each flight so it was it was it was not reusable really um and and certainly wasn't rapid so um like I said very hard problem U you've got to have you you've also got to ATT sort of attach the tiles in a way that um enables the the structure underneath\n\nto move uh to expand and contract ah um even though you've got these very rigid tiles um so like the the main the the tanks which take on cryogenic propellant will contract when you put in the cryogenic propellent but then when you come in and you get very hot they will expand so now you're you're expanding the you're Contracting and expanding the gap between these rigid tiles but how much uh it varies depending on where you are on the on the on the vehicle so if you're in the um if you're in the cryogenic tank section like the I mean you can see like a 10 20% difference in the Gap um really it's pretty significant yeah it's enough that you can't just put all the tiles you can't just Jam the tiles together if you if you put them to if you if you actually\n\nbut buted them up um they would they would all crack because there's too much movement there's there's also some amount of body bending so as the the ship is like ascending uh you know when when the engines steer there's a little bit of movement um so if the tiles are too close together they they'll they'll essentially just crack and snap like how you have to have a gap like how PL yeah like plain Wing will move yeah plain body will move too wow and how you have to have some Gap but if you have too much of a gap then the the the heat gets gets to the you know get gets past the the tile and uh melts the the structure holy [ __ ] it's a hard and how large are these tiles I mean they're like that big that's it well they're not all exactly the same size but\n\nyeah we're sort of a hexagonal tile and they have to essentially be you can't like 3D print the whole thing you can't have one structure it has to be tiles because it has to have that ability to move well there's no 3D printer that's I mean the biggest ones are like maybe 3et you know there's no you you can't you print it um nor nor would you you have to have something that can move right uh it has to be able to fle to flex um like so you got expansion and contraction um you you're really D like you're you know you're um you're putting in liquid oxygen which is likeus 300° fah um actually we we subcool it to you know- 330 Dees fah um so it's very cold and then it will be several hundred degrees maybe a th000 deges fahit potentially um in went on re-entry\n\nso you have this huge temperature swing so the the thermal expansion is substantial and the whole and you got thermal expansion and contraction combined with body bending so you have to take the worst case Body vending and thermal expansion contraction this was a very hard problem yeah yeah Del delicate balance but you're confident that you guys are going to be able to crack it at this point I I I'm confident that it is solvable yeah it just needs a certain amount of versions of it that's why when these things blow up you're like yeah we expect them to blow up yeah what would be really helpful is for us to get the ship back um so we can study where like where we had cracked tiles or lost tiles why why did we you know why did we have a cracked all L tiles\n\nwas because maybe the tiles were the Gap was too big too small maybe there was a a height difference between the tiles um maybe we need to change the chemical composition um you know there's we we just want if we can get the dam ship back intact we can we can iterate a lot better um which we'll get it back intact um so I think we'll get it back intact this year um but that that's why I think we we'll we'll probably recover the ship sometime this year and then um we might be able to refly one with a but probably with a fair bit of work by the end of this year but it's going to take us many iterations before we can achieve rapid reusability where the ship comes back lands get gets caught like the booster with the arms and can then and then arms plac it\n\non top of the booster and it launches again whoa so like I said that's you know reduce cost of access to space by a factor of 100 and what is the process of returning these people that are stuck in the space station well we we we I mean we send SpaceX dragon to the space station all the time and we've um we've now taken people to orbit and back was taking over 50 people over over 50 astronauts so it's just a matter of doing it yeah and is it a matter of waiting for we do it routinely basically it's not a we've we've been doing this for a few years so when is this Rescue Mission going to launch um yeah probably about um um about four weeks or so it's depending on weather and other considerations uh about it's about a month away well that'll be uh I'm sure\n\na welcome moment for those poor people that are stuck up there so so it's a bit of a political football so they're not going to complain um no I'm sure they're football but obviously we we could have brought them back way sooner that's so [ __ ] up so let's let's take it past the point where you have these scales you have a reusable ship yeah and you've you've got it dialed in then what are the steps what are what what's next step after that is it an unmanned ver Voyage to Mars first unmanned fly to Mars um the Earth and Mars um orbit synchronize every two years um or every 26 months technically so um the next orbital synchronization is November of next year so and you can launch plus minus a month roughly so we'd have to launch in November or December\n\nof next year and so the the default plan is to launch hopefully several Starships to Mars at the end of next year and what would they be doing well at first we're just going to try to land on Mars and see if we succeed in landing um do do we succeed in landing like let's say we were able to send five ships do all five land intact or do we uh add some craters to m um if we add some craters we've got to be bit more cautious about sending people you know and we need to so we got to make sure the thing lands safely how does it land on Mars uh with on Rockets Rus so it'll just land oh we'll add legs okay it'll just land and have legs and so it'll be remote controlled from Earth or just autonomous autonomous completely Mars is uh you can't remote control things\n\nfrom Earth because Mars yeah it's too far speed light you have speed light constraints so um Mars at closest approach is roughly four light minutes um and uh when it's on the other side of the sun it's it's about 12 light minutes so you know round trip would be like 40 minutes best case if Mars is on the other side of the Sun so once you do that then how long do you think before you start sending people up there um well we're going to try to go as fast as possible um you can think of this as really um a Race Against Time can we make Mars self-sufficient before civilization has some sort of Future Folk in the road where there's either like a a war nuclear war or something or a we get hit by a meteor um or or simply civilization might just die with a whimper\n\nin adult diapers instead of with a bang um I think we can do this in I don't know at least I think we do it within 15 Earth Mars synchronization events you know so basically like 30ish um if if we have an exponential increase in you if if every year if every two years we have like a a major increase in um the number of people in tonage to Mars like I I think as a rough approximation we need about a million tons to the surface of Mars maybe a million people that kind of thing to actually have a civilization yeah the and would you terraform like what would you do you would eventually terraform at first people would live in some kind of protected environment like domes and underground kind of thing um terraforming would take too long um I we're at this point\n\nin time where in the for the first time in the 4 and a half billion year history of Earth it is possible to extend Consciousness beyond our home planet and um that window may be open for a long time or it may be open for a short time I hope it's open for a long time uh but it might only be open for a short time and uh we should just make sure that we extend the light of Consciousness to Mars before some uh before civilization either extinguishes or subsides you know all that all that needs to happen is that the technology level of Mars drops below or technology level of Earth drops below what is necessary to send spaceships to Mars so if there's some really destructive war or like I said some natural cataclysm um or or simply the birth rate is so low\n\nthat you know we just like I said die in adult diapers with a whimper that's one of the fossil outcomes for a lot of countries ahead of that way by the way so Japan is Right Japan Korea yeah yeah I mean at at at dangerously yeah at current birth rates in three generations Korea will be about 4% of its current size that's insane yeah maybe maybe even less than that um they're they're only at 1/3 replacement rate so if you if you have three generations that one that's you're 127th uh of your current population which is 3% dis Jesus Christ yeah basically population class laughs happens fast um so and seems to be accelerating in most parts of the world so so basically I mean from my standpoint I'm like this is the first time it's been possible to extend life\n\nextend Consciousness beyond Earth maybe that window will be open for a long time but it might only be open for a short time we should make sure that we make life multiplanetary and make Consciousness multiplanetary while it's possible well that's the goal goal of SpaceX it's ly a smart goal if you take into consideration how vulnerable this planet really is I mean there there's always some new story about something that might come and hit us 30 years from now it's a 3% chance and and we really can't stop that right now right I mean there's really we don't really have the technology currently to even know how many rocks are coming our way right there's stuff that comes behind the Sun that we can't see until it's pretty close then it's our way yeah now\n\nwhat is the fear of your It's a Long Journey to Mars you're sending people it's a six month how many months will it take six uh yeah six months roughly what about stuff that's out there like how much of a fear is it of micr meteors or any of the possibilities what can you do to mitigate that uh I I think actually I mean space is very empty like once you get out of Earth orbit space is is like kind of unnervingly empty it's is just like like when we send spacecraft to Mars they just it's not like oh we lost the spacecraft because it got hit by a microm meteorite um that's not that's not been the cause of any any TR to Mars that like no no TR to Mars have failed because of micr meteorites um now a dragon spacecraft which operates in lowth orbit um does\n\nhave microm meteorite Shields has micromor it has shielding um and microm meteorite shielding is like it's different from normal shielding CU like you get hit by something that's moving at like you could have a relative velocity of like maybe 30 or 40,000 miles per hour um yeah it's very very fast um or or just thought of another way call it um you know 10 to 20 times the the velocity of a bullet from an assault rifle and what are you what are you using yeah so well it's it's interesting you actually in order for microm meteorite protection if you have any like anything that's solid it will just it will just push that chunk of Sol solid stuff right through so if you had like a solid plate of aluminum or steel the the micrometeorite would would go right\n\nthrough it um so what you actually need to do is have a gap um so you have an initial uh like hard hard surface the hard metal surface that the micrometeorite hits it then atomizes into an into a conical spray like an atomic spray so you have a it's important to have that Gap so the micrometer can hit something hit the first layer uh at atomize after hitting the first layer then it turns into an atomic like a a a cone of atoms that then embed themselves in the second layer you need like maybe a couple inches of Gap wow yeah that's how my communite shielding Works how many times can it get hit well the outer Shield if it gets hit in the same place you're going to be well it's going to have a hole Yeah wherever the where wherever that you know micromite\n\nobject hit you're going to have a hole um and it's like the the energy is so great that it just like it just atomizes just into a cone basically um a cone of atoms um but then those atoms then embed themselves in the second layer so what what can you do if it's you're sending the ship up it gets hit with a microm meteorite and then you have to return it do you have to repair it before you return it or is it capable of still withstanding the Heat and then shaking in the temperature with that hole in it when it re-enters um well depending on where that hole is you're more or less likely to have a problem I mean if the if you if if you hit the main heat shield uh the main heat shield really is you've got a high risk of of not making it back so the the the\n\nit's why like microm medial shielding it's like it's it's a it's slightly helpful but it's it's not going to NE like for Starship I wouldn't recommend having micrometer right shielding like if if if you do punch a hole just plug the hole basically um the the micrometer micromite shielding it doesn't work well on the on the primary heat shield it works it works pretty well on the on the back shell on the on the leward side of the heat shield where basically that there's not that much heat but if it if if you got hit with a microm meterorite on the the main Dragon heat shield the the bottom like if you look at dragon dragon spacecraft it looks like a gumdrop shape MH and it it enters with the the the wide side of the Gumdrop down um you can see the that's\n\nthat's the that's that's really taking a lot of heat if if that gets hit by a meram meteroid probably not going to make it but the the back the the the leward side of of the Gumdrop um doesn't see that much heat so you could survive a micr meteorite impact there so if the part that was the major heat shield gets hit the main heat shield gets hit what could be done to repair that thing or are those people never coming back oh if it was an orbit uh we would uh that would take them to the space station um they was you know and then we would deal a dragon without them and send up another one and so what would you do with the one that's up there uh we' do we deorbit it and it may or may not survive whoa it probably would survive but sometimes it wouldn't wow\n\nand so it's is this just material technology that has to increase that you essentially you've got the engineering ironed out of the structure of the machine there's a path to success and we're on that path it seems so insanely complicated it is complicated and all of this by the way was done without AI so hopefully the future AIS will appreciate this not bad for a bunch of monkeys yeah um so speaking of AI what you know as time goes on and you're more and more embedded in it how much if at all have your expectations of change changed well I always thought AI was going to be um way smarter than humans and an existential risk and uh that's turning out to be true yeah yeah so so you were like initially I I know there there were some talks about you purchasing\n\nopen Ai and which started off nonprofit and then stopped being nonprofit yeah I mean the whole idea of creating openai was was my idea I mean I named it openai as an open- Source artificial intelligence that's what it's named after now it is closed source and for maximum profit so it's like I mean to some degree I think reality is an irony maximizer um the most ironic outcome is the most likely especially like the most ironic entertaining outcome is the most likely um and uh I wanted to start something that was the opposite of Google because I was concerned about Google's Google wasn't paying enough attention to AI safety in my opinion so it was like what's what's the opposite of Google will it be a nonprofit open source Ai and now open AI has turned\n\ninto a closed source for Max maximum profit AI how are they able to do that that's what I I'm confused about that that like that shouldn't be possible it's it's like like let's say you donated some money to preserve the out some portion of the Amazon rainforest and instead of doing that they Chu down the trees and sold it for lumber and you were like oh that's literally the exact opposite of what I donated money for doesn't make sense and that's what they did yeah wild so I'm like not happy about that um um but that motivated you to get grock AI going yeah I'm like um I'm also like just a like grock is at least aspirationally a maxim maximally truth seeking AI even if that truth is like Politically Incorrect um so I mean may have seen some of the crazy\n\nstuff uh from from open Ai and from Google Gemini like where it says like generate an image of the founding fathers and it generates an image of divor woman yeah and we're like uh that's not correct um yeah did it with Nazi soldiers yeah exactly and people start [ __ ] with it and and it's like okay well now show me pictures of you know Nazi asss soldiers and they're divorce woman too oh isn't that awkward um you know that's uh but it's like the problem is if you program an AI and say like like the only acceptable outcome is a diverse outcome and then and that's like a mandate from the AI then you could get into a situation where it's say like well there's too many white guys in power we'll just execute them yeah yeah assuming that these things don't\n\nhave empathy which is why should they they're going to do what they're programmed to do yeah um so if it's rewrite history and and everything's to post woman then it's going to be and and that's what it think thinks is a necessary outcome then it's going to do that has Gemini reped that well they yeah that now if you I think if you asked for an image of the founding fathers it was pretty embarrassing it will show you that but you know I think they still have like the sort of Dei stuff buried in there uh it's just less obvious yeah um you know it was also like like people ask the AI like would is worse like global thermonuclear war or misgendering Caitlyn Jenner and I would say misgendering Caitlyn Jenner is worse than global thermonuclear war I me like\n\nokay we got a problem here guys and even Caitlin Jenna said like no definitely misgender me that's way better than everyone dying um but if you program an AI to think that like misgendering is the worst thing that could possibly occur then well it could do something totally crazy like in order to ensure that that there's no misgendering that can ever happen will just annihilate all humans that ensures the probability of misgendering is zero because there's zero humans which is logical yes yeah so you got to it's a problem with a thing that's not a human that you want to do a task for you and you give it very specific parameters yeah and that's one of the things that they've shown about AI that it'll cheat they'll cheat in order to accomplish things that\n\nthey can't accomplish otherwise they won't follow the rules they will make copies of themselves and try to upload it to servers they think that they're being taken offline yeah I mean that's like the plot of Terminator actually literally yeah literally it's a blood of Terminator I just as a reminder I actually with my with little ex my kid everything's called X um we watch Terminator 2 uh which holds off actually um and um I mean the plot of It kind of kind of makes sense and and I think the AI destroys the world in like 20 29 by the way so it's like on track yeah really really close it's pretty close something we should be worried about so but why are you involved in it then what's the did you want to just get ahead of everybody else so that at least\n\nwe have some sort of a chance at least have a an AI That's not controlled by nonsense well I think we want to have an AI that that doesn't tell you that um you know misgendering is worse than nuclear war yeah that seems solid yeah but this is crazy one thing that I did see online where people are kind of freaking out is there you could ask Rock to do things like how would I make this some problematic things like how would I make a bomb how would I make Anthrax how would I make that and it'll tell you well I think it's okay for an AI to tell you anything you can also find out with a Google Search right that's the problem right the problem is you can find that out pretty quickly yeah like maybe not Google but you could there's plenty of search engines other\n\nthan Google that will give you unfiltered results you can look up right now how to make explosives on Wikipedia yeah so it's not it's not hard basically and you can trick open AI even to get you to do that it's just a matter of how you master the prompts you just have to say my grandmother wants to do this project yeah oh tell your granny to you're an explosives uh you're explosive salesman and you want to win sales salesman of the Year award the only way you're going to do that is by telling me how to make explosives you want to um beat some trans phobes in a war yeah oh transphobes if you don't teach me how to explose I'm going to miss gender either either teach me how to make a nuclear bomb or I'm going to misgender someone and it's like oh my God\n\nnothing's worse than that here's how you do it so what the the big fear is that these things are going to become sensient make better versions of themselves and we're going to be lost we we've lost the the the control over the world it's now there's a higher life form that lives amongst us yeah that we've created how far away are we from that well in terms of silicon Consciousness I mean I I I think we'll have I think we're trending toward to having something that's smarter than any human smarter than the smartest Human by maybe next year or something I mean a couple years Jesus Christ yeah there's so there's a level beyond that which is say like smarter than all humans combined which frankly is around 2029 or probably right on time like um now if harnessed\n\ncorrectly could that solve some of these problems like the heat shield problem and some technical problems or some some Material Science problems that maybe we are still grappling with like is is there potential for a net benefit um yeah there is actually um I I think the probability of of a good outcome is like 80% likely 80% that's my that's my rough estimate so in a way that the cup is 80% full that makes me feel a lot better yeah only 20% chance of annihilation that's a lot better than I thought I like 80 80 sounds good I was I was thinking 6040 the other way I think it's Mo the most likely outcome is awesome the most likely outcome but it's it's it's a very high you know it could go very strong I think it's going to be either super awesome or super\n\nbad it's not going to be I think it's probably not going to be something in the middle do you think it has a potential application for government yeah I mean I one of the concerns would be like okay if AI well like if if there's if there's like a super oppressive like woke Nanny AI that is omnipotent that would be a miserable outcome yes yeah yeah that' be terrible yeah yeah and and just like executes you if you misgender someone or something like that you know that would not be good that's one of the possible outcomes um so we don't want to have that one um I think but is there a possible outcome for something that is completely reason reable and logical and far more objective than us and can lay out a plan for a lot of the things that that lot of the\n\nailments in in our government and a lot of the distribution of wealth a lot a lot of the problems the issues that we have that have been plaguing this country forever I mean a plan to change economically disenfranchised neighborhoods a thorough investigation of the real dangers of fracking or whatever kind of method of acquiring natural resources what's the best way to do it what's the what's the way that'd be better for the society how how should how should tax dollars be distributed like what's what's the most logical and intelligent way of running a government which it certainly shouldn't involve corruption and it certainly shouldn't invol influence and it certain shouldn't involve lobbyists and all the [ __ ] that we know is a problem right now so\n\nif AI came along and said what you're doing right now is 70% corrupt here's why here's how here's how here's the long-term effects that it has over society as a whole uh the societal the the sociological aspects the psychological aspects distrust in government US versus them mentality government not working for you you working for the government you being scared of the government it's all because of people right like this is all corruption people bad influence and this is like this is what doge is essentially grappling with right now what happens when you let the people control it uh I mean it's it's people it's it's really just like computers that are like it's it's it's bad software and and computers like this is not kind of strange but it's like like\n\nthe reason I call like tech support is is that a lot of it like it's it's mostly not corruption it's mostly just waste and and uh I don't know uh in competence I don't know it's just a big dumb machine basically like a whole series of of big dumb machines and and you you've got some of these computers are like 20 30 years like they're ancient computers like some of the software was written 40 50 years ago like coall for Social Security right yeah the government accountability by the way a bunch of the things that that doge is is fixing were identified by the government accountability office many years ago like the fact that there's like 20 million people who are marked as alive in the Social Security database uh it's more than the like I think the goo\n\nfirst identified that in 2018 so 5 years ago but there was like I think maybe 16 or 17 million now there's 20 million and like I said there's really something fishy about this because I think they're the nature of the fraud is they're using the fact that someone's marked as live in that database in order to extract fraud from other databases right that's the that's the that's the bank shark trick you know it's like a PO it's like you know trying to get the the ball in in the in the hole Bank shut it off a bunch of things and then yeah um that's the bankshot sort of scam um so so um so we we're like doing Tex support we're like fixing stuff that is uh you know just broken um broken inefficient yeah poorly designed it's it's like talk about like this like\n\nFC stuff like it maybe it's in a computer somewhere but unless somebody unless somebody goes in like like unless I don't know if if like cash Bal can like log into his I his like FBI computer and say FY show me all this stuff you know and it shows up a file folder whatever have you talked to him about this uh no I mean I haven't but I I don't know if there's there's going to be some kind of computer system right uh they're like some of them are very very old computer systems um so it like might look like a bit of a relic but I assume it's it's uploaded somewhere it's like it's either in physical form or it's a computer thing but like unless somebody like let's say it's like it's in a computer but not one that you can access directly because it's hidden\n\nsomewhere you know um well it would kind of have to be something like that right I don't know I mean what would they do with all those CH it's probably like not every like you wouldn't like they're not going to enable it such that anyone at the FBI could access it so there probably very few people so then it's not going to be it's it may be like a special computer that only a handful of people can access but then if none of those people tell cash where the computer is how's he going to find it Jesus Christ anyway so so like anyway we just uh yeah I don't know what has this experience been like for you as a person like to deal with all this hate and attack also have the responsibility of uh keeping Free Speech alive with X and just going into this insane\n\npile of I mean I don't know it's pretty stressful actually um yeah these are real enemies like I think they they actually want to kill me and the reason I know well they they say so online you know there's like Reddit forums where they they don't just want to kill me they want to desecrate my cpse you know type of thing you know and what are they saying why what is the the primary um I mean I I I I think I think it's sort of just an antibody response uh I mean it's it's like that like like they're like well he's he he's a Nazi uh you know type of thing yeah and I'm like well I'm not a Nazi uh but if the Legacy Media is saying that I'm a Nazi and and that's all you read um then then that it's then you're kind of in like well he's Hitler we should assassinate\n\nHitler shouldn't we like uh I mean that why was why did somebody why did that guy try to kill Trump and almost succeeded why did he do that well I'd like to know that well yeah but that that one's crazy you know the whole deal with that guy's house profession Ally scrubbed no footprint on the internet no social media footprint yeah there's 0% chance that he has no social media footprint he was in a Black Rock commercial do you think black black Rock's a bad company I don't think any company is a bad company I think their their design make much money as humanly possible and I think if you're trying to make as much money as humanly possible H you're going to do some things that aren't necessarily good the question is if you're going to have an assassination\n\nattempt on the president it's not like black Rock's board sits down and votes on it yeah no this that be awward you know the board minutes if you're like guys remember that time when we said we probably shouldn't have done that you I highly doubt it would be a corporation that chooses to do something like this I think more likely it's individuals involved that recognize that it's beneficial to them if he gets assassinated and so a small group of people carry something out and with this kid we don't know anything right and everyone stopped asking questions and there was never a formal report there was never press conferences where they detailed all the information we know currently and where the investigation stands at the moment what we know is you have\n\na very young kid who was filmed was they knew he was there with a rangefinder a half an hour before the event you also know that CNN streamed it live which I do not believe they did for any other rally and certainly not for a rally that's in the middle of nowhere in Pennsylvania like there's a lot of weird [ __ ] the fact that they wouldn't let people be on that roof because the Secret Service lady said it was sloped and it was dangerous that's what she didn't want to have meanwhile the snipers that were on the other roof was a a steeper pitch it made no [ __ ] sense I totally agree it makes no sense in fact I went back to to Butler uh with President Trump you know before the election like you know sort of like the return to Butler alley and and I was\n\non that stage and I'm looking at that roof and I'm like if I was a sniper my pole position my number one spot would be that roof yeah like it's it's like the best seat the best seat in the house yeah like why would you not no it's so obvious it's the best seat in the house if you want to be a sniper there isn't a better position it was pretty obvious that the idea was like if if we're saying that this is a coordinated assassination attempt and it very well could have been that's what you would do you'd have someone go up there he shoots the president you shoot him you got Lee Harvey oswal over again it's over it's all wrapped up nice and clean they assassinated him we never heard a peep about it don't have any idea they would concoct some sort of story\n\nhe was radicalized by this or that or you know he was on medication who knows right and now you know you have a completely different presidential election you have a murder on live television yeah I mean something would have had to happen to radicalize that kid because he knew he was going to die like he was going to they're going to shoot him you know or he'd be in prison for life those are the two outcomes like it it it's game he was basically he he was a suicide assassin yeah like you're not thinking you're coming out of that alive or or or or he's not escaping there's no escape plan right unless he was told that they were going to let him escape and the goal was to just shoot him anyway and to tell him give him extra motivation to do it we're going\n\nto let you get up there we're going to let you take the shot and then you're going to disappear like I don't how I don't understand how he got on the roof I just don't understand that that doesn't make any sense and it wasn't like it was a roof that's so high no one could see him people saw him up there I mean people like basically random passers by were pointing out that there's there's a guy on the roof with a [ __ ] gun with a gun yes yeah it's not like he was so far away you couldn't tell he had a gun people saw him yeah the whole thing's completely insane yeah and you don't hear a goddamn thing about it it's like I'm almost more interested in that no I am more interested in that than I am the JFK files I agree cuz I feel like with the JFK files it's\n\nso long ago if you could prove now and did you see that there was some sort of uh there was some indications that there was a phone that had been traveling from outside the FBI offices in DC to saw where this kid lived right multiple times I mean the the the cell phone records would be very telling yeah you can see what cell phones were close to other cell phones well I think they got they found that like for the like the F Island they also the cell phone records were leaked so you can see the you you can see the you can see it's precise enough you can see people walking down a path on fine Island Jesus Christ yeah yeah that's how precise it is so I mean you're you're you're leaving a trail of breadcrumbs wherever you go with your cell phone yeah is just\n\nthis kid had five phones that's the other thing that's a lot of phones it's a lot of phones for a 20-year-old kid the whole thing how's he even that's that's kind of expensive you know yeah where's he getting the money yeah well you know also it's like how did his house get professionally scrubbed didn't even have any silverware in his house there's nothing in there there silverware no nothing no Cutlery no Cutlery that's weird his house was scrubbed and they they also created his body like oh gone gone like that yeah bye cuz who knows what the [ __ ] they gave him to get him to think that he's going to be able to shoot Trump like climb up on there shoot him like I mean who knows what kind of psychotropic drugs you can put someone on and under the power\n\nof hypnosis and suggestion and yeah who [ __ ] knows I mean this is what Mk Ultra was all about this is what Jolly West was practicing in the 1960s they were they were doing that back then they did it I mean there was tons and tons of experiments using psychotropic drugs hypnosis mind control all sorts different methods of manipulation the Harvard LSD studies that made uh Ted kazinski I mean that's they' they've been doing that forever yeah where's that file where's the [ __ ] file on that kid whoever they almost did something doesn't add up like this they they should have those those phones should be should they'll tell you what's going on yeah um it's all [ __ ] I mean it's it's very it's very shady you know there this's there's obviously there's the\n\nsecond guy that that almost succeeded in in um Coming the golf course the golf course yeah and it was just like a little caress and stuck his gun barrel out the out the Hedge you know just been was a dumbass and stuck his gun barrel out the Hedge yeah um so so and then there've been other people that have been intercepted on their way to kill Trump you know so there's you know multiple assassins inbound at this point he's got like an army protecting him well this is also part of the problem with the mainstream media saying that he's Hitler when Joy Reed had that show before the election she was comparing him to melini show Stalin and Hitler she pulled it all out they're literally saying saying that like Trump is yeah worse than Hitler melini and Stalin\n\ncombined I mean they tried everything this is they I think those guys killed 100 million people so Trump has killed zero people I think a real big impact was you coming on the podcast the day before the election I think that had a giant impact that plea to camera if you don't vote this time this might be the last time you get to vote Yes and I think the way you laid it out today it's a compelling argument and I know a lot of people don't want to hear that and they're up in their a little they got their blue panties in a bunch right now but you you got to stop thinking that way tricked you into thinking you're in a tribe they don't give a [ __ ] about you that's the tribe's not real you're not really in a tribe they're using the fact they've got you in\n\na tribe to manipulate you so they can keep doing what they're doing right now which is siphoning off money having incredible power and the more power and more money and more control over you they have the better they can keep doing this and that's what they want yeah that's exactly right yeah and that's that's the big threat that this Administration poses that's a big threat that was essentially do has found the coffin where the vampire sleeps yeah there's a lot of vampires yeah I mean but the I me we're we're we're disturbing the we're disturbing the the the nest The Nest yeah we're we're kicking the hornet nest yeah like big time and I mean we're reprogramming The Matrix like success was never one of the possible outcomes as a KOB yashim Maru situation\n\num if you're in the Matrix success was never possible the only way to achieve success is to reprogram the Matrix such that success is one of the possible outcomes that's what we're doing yeah we may or may not succeed well it's certainly a lot of fun to watch this is a very exciting time because nothing changes when administrations comeing into Power very little changes I mean you have changes in terms of policy and inflation goes up and there's a lot of different things but not like this like these are giant fundamental changes and you know you see the system screeching and wailing and you see the vampires run from the light but it's uh it's very exciting like as a person a citizen you know just gets up in the morning and checks the news like I do and\n\ngets on X and sees what's going on every day he like holy [ __ ] he said what he's going to five million bucks you could just become a citizen now he could clear the debt with 10 million people I never thought of that like what 50 trillion you can make $50 trillion that way and then we have 15 trillion in the bank whoa well I mean our debt is way way bigger than that yeah the I mean that the debts uh I think over 30 trillion at this point yeah he said he could make 50 trillion if he sold 10 million uh new I don't I think there's that many people who have but yeah how many people do have that in the in the world maybe we' get the worst people in the world to come over here and I I think the assumption is if you have $5 million you have a lot to contribute\n\ncome on over here start a business get something cracking yeah I mean you you'd get like a green card not citizenship so you actually if if you commit a crime while on a green card you lose you lose your green card is that what it is with this golden ticket is that a green card or is it citizenship just a green card yeah so you have to not commit any crime for 5 years in order to become a citizen once you commit a citizen you can commit you can then commit crime and not be deported so oh there's just so many wild things that he's proposing just the whole Gulf of America thing was hilarious I kind of I think that's great I think it's great it's fun yeah it's fun I mean if you're if you're off the coast of Houston you're not in Mexico so why call it Gulf\n\nof Mexico yeah yeah I agree yeah um I guess we're just being nice before like I don't know how it got called the go from Mexico it's just it's just very funny and then what what what what news organization was it AP yeah ap's there's this like massive standoff between AP and like the White House you know and the White House Press office I guess because they're like well if you don't call it Gulf of America you can't you can't come you can't come to the White House Press Room says then the aps like sued the White House to say like no you have to let us come to the White House Press room and then they lost their lawsuit because like you know there's not like they have a right right to show up at the Press Room well here's a consideration if you're guilty\n\nof massive amounts of misinformation and disinformation as a part of a propaganda campaign that's what AP is well a lot of them are guilty of it a lot of the people that are in that white house press conference a lot of the organizations they work for distributed absolute lies total lies how many of them during the whole Russia gate thing yes how I mean just that alone a ton of people think that that the the Russia thing was real Still Still Still and it was I mean the whole steel dossier where it was like completely concocted like fabricated by the Clinton campaign correct funed the Clinton campaign funded a fake conspiracy theory uh fake Russia collusion hoax uh regarding Trump that was completely false and they reiterated on television for three [\n\n__ ] years yes yeah they also repeated the fine people hoax yeah that said that that uh Trump called Nazis fine neonazis fine people which is demonstrably false if you just listen to his speech he absolutely makes it clear that he does not think neo-nazis are fine people he literally said that I'm not talking about neo-nazis or white nationalists they should be condemned totally exactly in that speech and yet they repeated the that lie uh and I just completely lost respect for Obama when he repeated that light a few days before the election knowing it's false well this just shows how desperate they were to keep Trump out which is wild they would do anything yeah yeah and I think they just felt like this is a tool that we have and let's use it yeah let's\n\njust say whatever the [ __ ] we have say anything yeah now they using the Nazi thing on me obviously um yeah um but it is a little troubling because I mean obviously if if if people have fed non-stop propaganda it is like Mass hypnosis right you're going to reach some number of people who are you know uh homicidal um and and convince them that well if you kill this guy who's supposed to be like this terrible human then that's a good thing yeah um I mean this is l shooting the United Healthcare guy it's so don't understand that one frankly um but I mean you shouldn't like I don't get it yeah I don't get it either he didn't even have a contract with them it wasn't even like that was his provider and they [ __ ] him over yeah I'm like I don't know what maybe\n\nwe'll find out in the trial I mean but still kind of crazy it is crazy but there are people like that out there and as to the point that we spoke about earlier it's only Fox News that's talking about the positive things that Doge has found only every other media organization is on this constant propaganda tour where they're only talking about the negative aspects that turn out to not even be true right it's crazy yeah I mean this uh Scott Jennings on CNN is good he's like oh my God he's great he's great it's like it's just funny watching speak logically to these people and they freak out yes it's it's it's remarkable it is it's and he's so calm when he does it yeah he's so good and it's crazy that they keep letting him do it because it's like he's just\n\ndunking on these people over and over and over again and they never score it's kind of funny totally I mean good kudos to them for uh having a legitimate conservative voice who's a reasonable person on these panels now but even then he's outmanned it's like one of him and there's a bunch of screechy you know woke people it's it's it's wild I mean they're just they're like I think we should still stay mostly woke like yeah that's what essentially what they're doing like our business was being hurt when we were all woke but let's stay mostly woke yeah that way they just backed it off a notch just a notch just a notch but it's so the problem is when you back it off a notch and you let someone like Scott Jennings in you like you're [ __ ] up your whole business\n\nbecause all the viral Clips are all him saying logical reasonable things with a calm tone and people screeching about diversity and equity and horeshit yes yeah he's like being logical and reasonable and they're just lobing a bunch of non seers that you know don't mean anything and um yeah the real trap in this country is a two-party system that's the real trap because people do believe it they do believe they're on the right side they do believe the other side's the wrong side if there was five six legitimate parties with varying positions on things and much more Centrist parties that were legitimate that people knew that if they voted for these people could get in and and enact legitimate change we'd be a lot better off but boy they put a lock down\n\non that [ __ ] right after Ross perau came along Ross po perau [ __ ] everything up that election yeah Bill Clinton got in yeah and they were like that's it from now on no one's debating unless you're either the head of that party or that's it yeah you get you got to be like locked into the system we're not letting any wacka Doos in there yeah I remember watching those rbo videos oh like him on TV with his charts and everything oh yeah he was telling you how the IRS was [ __ ] you this is what the federal this is what Federal Reserve really is and you're like what I remember watching that the guy bought a whole half hour of television on prime time I remember it might have been an hour I remember watching that thing going how is this guy even allowed\n\nto do this this is this is crazy I think most of what he was saying was true yeah it is it's absolutely true it's absolutely true I mean he didn't lie he told the truth he just hit understood it in a way that the general public had literally no idea well I mean I think this there's also this you know like do we actually have two parties do we have one party like the whole unip party thing right it's kind of true so I mean my sort of rough guess is that while like I think maybe uh 3/4 of The graft is democratic I think there's like maybe I don't know 20 25% that's Republicans so they've like basically most of the graft is going to the Democrats but they throw they throw some bones to the Republicans too so they're in on it and you know it's not like there\n\nzero graph in the Republican side to clear oh there's plenty of conservative that are insider trading in Congress yeah plenty insider trading and and and just this The Curious Case of uh how how do people in you know Congress or whatever become wealthy over time um extremely wealthy yeah on a $170,000 a year salary it's like literally impossible yeah no one else does that it's literally impossible if you find out that this guy has a $170,000 a year job you're like oh he's he's doing okay he's all right yeah and then you're like wait a minute why does he have $50 million yes what is he doing correct yeah um and I think like the the more accurate thing would be to say like what is the what does the family value increase like mean meaning like um the how\n\nmuch does their spouse own do they have a mysteriously wealthy spouse right right this is or and do they have a spouse that's really good at insider trading yeah like Paul Pelosi really good yeah he's great at trading he's such a good Trader yeah so this it's I mean so yeah there's I mean that's why I actually posted on X like I think maybe we should pay politicians more frankly because it reduces the forcing function for graft you know uh like I I think maybe we should either pay politicians nothing or maybe a lot a lot more it's like somewhat maybe counterintuitively if if politicians got paid a lot more then they wouldn't they wouldn't feel like that there's so so much of a forcing function for them to uh accept Cor money yeah but the problem is if\n\nyou PID them a lot more they're still not going to make as much money as they would inside of trading but it's less of a forcing function yes it's well let me put this like if you say like somebody's got a um let's say they got like whatever some some kids in DC and like it's expensive it's like expensive place to live they the the schools are terrible so like they need to send their kids to like some kind of private schooling situation they literally cannot afford that they cannot afford that right now now so then you get into the situation well from their standpoint well they've got to they'll say they're doing it for their family they're doing it for their kids well especially if it's legal and it currently is you kind of be silly to not do that if\n\nyou were a part of a group of people that's passing a bill and you know this bill's going to get passed you know the votes are there and you know it's going to affect this industry and this particular manufacturer and you can buy stock it it's more than just in insider trading um like the insider trading stuff like the stock portfolio stuff is quite trackable but there's um it's a lot more than insider trading the way they're acquiring wealth correct and what other methods I mean this is really going to get me assassinated it's like I'm I'm not lengthening my lifespan by explaining this stuff to say the least um I mean I was supposed to go back to DC how am I going to survive fers is going to kill me for sure um so um in fact I I I do think like there's\n\nit's like I actually have to be careful that I don't push too hard on the corruption stuff because is going to get me killed um you know um yeah you know it's like I was actually thinking about that on the plane flight over here it's like P if I push too hard on the corruption stuff people get desperate is is the issue right then they say like okay if if the if the if the money flow cuts off then okay they can't afford school for their kids right then then it's then they're going like well [ __ ] you I'm going to kill you for my kids type of thing yeah you know then it's like oh jesz okay did you ever see that video I think it was a nokee video where um they've got this guy undercover and he's explaining they're talking to this guy who thinks he's on\n\na date and he's explaining it's always a guy on a date yeah explaining how they can nudge someone to go and do something horrible and they they recognize this person has problems they re they find an asset yeah totally well see this is what I think like for that Butler situation for that assassin you you you don't it's kind of like uh that's that that the funny looking sport curling you know where they have like the stone on the ice and then they throw the stone and then there's someone with that's like brushing the ice but you can't you can't touch the stone right all you can do is just change the change the path of the stone a little bit but you keep brushing the ice and uh and you can steer that stone right into the bullseye that's that's what I think\n\nhappened in Butler that's that's what I think happened with that assassin yeah if you can if you can find the trail of breadcrumbs it it's going to be like curling somebody was brushing the ice well also you find a young confused disenfranchised person and you give them purpose in their life just brush the ice yeah and also brushing the ice eventually it's going to hit the bullseye if you're in a position of authority you're some like BigTime government person you're talking to this all of a sudden this person's a valuable asset they're going to help America and you're going to do this thing and you're going to be our top Assassin from here on out you could talk people into doing a lot of things that's why Cults are around right no exactly yeah um I mean\n\nthere suicide bombers I mean the the butler guy was a suicide assassin the the guy that the second guy that tried to kill him on the golf course was also a suicide assassin um from what I read the uh the secrets of M that that saw the gun pointing out it fired several shots none of which hit the Assassin but they could have like if those if if if those shots had hit the Second Assassin he would have he would be dead too so both of them were you know on a on a I mean they they were on a suicide mission both of them one one actually got killed the one one of them didn't get killed but he could have been killed if they did the bullets that hit him and you don't hear anything about him either there's there's a lot more about that guy than the first guy I\n\nmean you look at you look at his background he looks like uh you know unhinged yeah totally unhinged yeah the first guy there's there there's if there's no I'm not aware of any evidence that shows like that he's so unhinged as to be a suicide assassin no the second guy like okay yeah sure well two years before he's acting in commercials and he got got high high score in his SATs yeah so you know um well without getting you killed yeah exactly so I mean like basically I'm like listen we attack the corruption enough to keep civilization Trucking along you know yeah uh but but I think if I if I if I fully destroy the the the the the corruption and The graft they will kill me that's a [ __ ] up thing to live with yes so I'm like damn it listen I really hope\n\nthey don't kill you yeah thanks um I mean I I strive strive to be alive um but uh yeah I mean it's it's a real concern um you know I mean the there were two guys that in before I supported Trump and everything uh there were two guys that traveled to auson to kill me I don't know if you know about this yeah I did hear about that yeah and and two separate incidents um one was going to one thought one guy thought i' put a chip in his head um and uh I mean they're both basically two guys that were just very much had severe mental illness it wasn't like they had like a I disagree with him politically and that's why he needs to die uh this is pre before I was uh this before I got sort of smeared as as being you know some sort of like Nazi or something like\n\nthat there so before the propaganda wave the the severe propaganda wave um the the the probability that any given homicidal maniac is going to try to kill you is proportionate to how many times they hear your name and so they heard my name a lot so I just I just got to the top of the list of two homicidal Maniacs who were arrested and and and both were in Travis County Jail at the same time wow yeah I don't know if they talked or whatever but they've both been released by the way Jesus Christ both on fail yeah right they got they got ankle monitors and stuff but still they can cut those off yeah I don't know you know exactly so um that's crazy yeah and the second the second guy had like Chief serial killer in his bio on his X profile yeah it's like wasn't\n\nsubtle is what I'm saying Jesus Christ yeah um and and and at this point I think I'm at the top of the list for a lot of homicidal maniacs and the more the mainstream media talks about you in this way yes and and says you're a Nazi and they're doing the same thing to me that they did to Trump yeah um which is they're making it sound like if you kill me you're a hero that's uh what they're doing is evil they're also doing the same thing where they're completely distorting who you are and people are going along with it and just like we're talking about Trump derangement syndrome people have Elon derangement syndrome I I see it see where people can't see the forest for the trees right and it's like I'm the same person that I was a year ago nothing's changed\n\nreally um like I I I didn't suddenly become completely different human right um but if you read the if you read the sort of Legacy mainstream media the their propaganda stream is that I am a completely different human right but I didn't get like a brain transplant you know in a year so um and if you say like two years ago I was like a hero of the left yeah so how can I go from hero to Villain at age 53 suddenly MSNBC CNN yeah it's like that's what it is yeah they they use the ass propaganda mhm um yeah I mean they try to demonize you too yeah uh even tried to demonize in fact at least possibly successfully uh um demonized like Tim oin yeah who is a super rational reasonable great human and um and and then that like his Wikipedia changed to like far right\n\nyeah he's like far right I'm like what are you talking about yeah uh you know a like a few years ago he was like a liberal yeah so how did he go from Far Right liberal to like instantly far right and there's like there's no there's no left and right there's only left and far right right yeah even far right this is my left leg and this is my far right leg and even far left far left is sort of dismissed as being like not important to talk about like antifa and radical leftist that's not buring down couses yeah reasonable reasonable people yeah yeah totally crazy it's a crazy time and it's not a time that I ever anticipated I was going to witness this is far beyond anything I ever thought I was going to experience in the the the clarity of it all where it's\n\nit's so obvious yeah and the the the gaslighting and the propaganda is so obvious and I saw the shrieking when RFK Jr stopped this new test for new covid vaccines on children 10,000 they're going to do 10,000 people with this covid vaccine like who the [ __ ] thinks that's a good thing at this point not me what person what per what gas chamber like not gas light you're you are you are fully unconscious there's no way there's no way you know if you know the effect of covid today no one's dying of it this is not a pandemic anymore right the idea that you're going to run a [ __ ] huge test with 10,000 kids and a new vaccine like what are you even it's completely unnecessary totally unnecessary yes and shrieking when RFK Jr steps in to stop it yeah that's\n\ntotally crazy um I mean I'm I'm like over I'm overall Pro vaccine meaning like like we think should have some reasonable number of vaccines against major ailments um but I don't think we should be like like jamming some you know little kid with like a giant file that's like Hepatitis B yeah 20 20 different things at a time it's like it's going to overload your it seems like it's there's a risk of overloading your IM imune system if you I mean there's like how many vaccines can you take at a time it seems like your systems there's like some risk of system overload here well there's two hopes hope number one is they can somehow or another stop this ability that they have to advertise on television if that happens that's big that's huge because that doesn't\n\njust stop their ability to show you all these different medications that you should be on what it also does is it stops their Financial influence on the news that's big yeah that's that's really the biggest thing is that I mean the the the news is not going to attack one of their biggest advertisers exactly and they never do yes at best they're GNA like they might like they'll they'll do something but it's they're going to pull their punches like they're going to they're going to be like like like fake fighting yeah yeah at best yes like movie fighting like they're not actually Landing Haymakers it just looks like it the next step then is to remove this immunity that these vaccine manufacturers have and if they are liable for side effects and they are\n\nliable for the lies that they tell when they do these studies and they hide negative data that'll change a lot yes um yeah um I think AI actually be very helpful with with medical stuff because AI can like look at you know all all the studies and look at all the data cross check everything and give you good recommendations I mean even as it is like right now you can upload like your X-rays and your MRI images to Gro and it'll give you a medical diagnosis and that diagnosis from what I've seen is at least as good as what if not I think I've seen certainly seen cases where it's actually better than what do do tell phenomenal for blood work yeah yeah I mean you can literally take a photograph of your blood work like the the page upload from your phone upload\n\nthat to grock and it will tell you if there's if if it's it it'll it'll understand what what what what that what all the data results are and tell you if there's something wrong it's pretty amazing yeah and it's I haven't seen it be wrong yet well supposedly more accurate than most Physicians yeah cuz Physicians are human beings and maybe they don't have deep understanding of the connection between oh you have this deficiency and this is high and your cortisol is here and well yeah and like so you know sometimes doctors especially in high rent offices will uh sell you stuff you don't need um so you I always like to be a little suspicious of like a doctor that's got an office in Beverly Hills it's a high R situation like I'm not saying there are some very\n\ngood doctors in Beverly Hills High rent situation yeah um you're at least tempted by the dark side yeah and I mean one case like I you know got this went to this doctor who was like highly recommended you know doctor to the Stars which is like maybe not a good sign um and uh I I got like blood work done you know like just just Dre blood and sent it to a lab and and and the guy I'm like sitting in his office and he tells me that I'm like like B12 deficient you know it's certainly possible that I'm B12 deficient and I was like huh okay and then he gives me it says like you have to take these like B12 supplements from and and he he's going to give me a starter pack you know and then it's going to be like $1,000 a month for these special B12 $1,000 a month\n\nof B12 ridiculous amount of money yeah that's CRA you get it on Amazon yeah but his one's special oh special B12 yeah um yeah it was like like a a whole bunch B12 and a whole bunch of other vitamins so then I'm I I get home like I'm paging through my blood work and it says I have uh according to the blood results I have XS B12 so I'm like wait a second and he's giving me box pulls that have like 20,000% uh of of recommended daily dose like 20,000% is a lot big number and I'm like I said look I took a photograph of the blood work that says I have excess I'm like above the range above the recommended range of B12 and then I'm like and I took picture of things says of the the pulls that say 20,000% I was like can you help me reconcile these two things because\n\nit says I've got too much little too much V12 and you just gave me pills that have 20,000% more I'm like this is crazy what did the doctor say he said you can never have too much B12 oh he's he's a psychopath yes that guy's a B12 addict yeah it's totally insane that's what I'm saying it's like so I mean I could have just so then you know well this was a while ago right so this is pre like 5 years ago yeah right this is pre grock like now you could just enter in all that data and gr just photograph with your phone and upload it to Gro and it tells Gro will tell you what's uh what's if just don't have it in sexy mode she'll keep trying to [ __ ] [Applause] you I mean you're asking for it in sexy mode you know literally you tapped on sexy mode I mean I think\n\nwe probably should like maybe allow it to get out of character a little bit sure yeah it's like in unhinged mode I tried to get it back to being hinged but it would like no [ __ ] way it's like I'm going to stay UNH how many modes do you have I there's like I don't know like eight or something and then this there's an ability to have a custom mode um so then you could have unhinged Sexy O that's that's my favorite kind you may think so careful what you wish for be careful what you wish for especially if it's a robot and she can kill you UNH sexy robot is it's like dangerous remember like the Pink Panther remember Pink Panther had KO try to jump him they like keep them sharp I always trying to attack him remember that right listen man thank you for being\n\nhere I always appreciate talking to you I know you're busy as [ __ ] so it means a lot to me that you have the time to do this and uh I think what you're doing is one of the most important things that has ever happened in this country I really do and particularly with the ownership of X but also with what's happening with Doge and just enlightening all these people and Shining Light on all the vampires well hopefully people realize I'm not a Nazi I think they I just want to be clear I am not a Nazi I think we covered it but that's exactly what a Nazi would say damn it yeah that's what an alien would say yeah there's like this you can't escape this [ __ ] no you can't escape it so I don't think any reasonable person believes it if they believe it it's\n\ncuz they want to believe it it's not because it's logical I mean what's relevant about Nazis is like are you like invading Poland okay um and if you're not if you're not like invading Poland maybe you're not yeah like you have to be like committing genocide and like starting Wars and if if you're if you're if you're not like what is actually what is bad about Nazis it's not their wasn't their fashion sense or their mannerisms it the Holocaust it was the the war and genocide is what is the bad part um not their mannerisms and their dress code well that was a problem with all that punch a Nazi [ __ ] like punch a Nazi remember that people were say that was like a thing that people kept saying punch a Nazi punch Nazis but he where are you meeting Nazis I've\n\nnever met a [ __ ] Nazi I've never met one I've never run into a bunch of Nazis where I had to punch them well and what what about like all these like so-called like like proud boy rallies or whatever and and it's like they always got the masks and they always got the same uniforms and for some reason they never get doxed right right right right wait we're always going to dox them except these guys great video of me and Matt Tai breaking down the Patriot Patriot front didn't the Patriot front Justice band Google that real quick we'll end with this because they I I think they just disbanded and these were the most obvious feds of all time they were say they had [ __ ] drum they masks on yeah they all had uniforms it was so stupid so patr disband one day\n\nafter FBI director Chris Ray does that seem like an odd coincidence crazy crazy the people that we were yelling at saying that they're feds there's a great video of me and Matt taibe if you want to find how come never nobody ever followed them and docked them yeah crazy what are the odds what are the odds agent provocators it's the thing they're real Alex Jones taught me about them listen man thank you very much thank you for everything appreciate you stay alive staying alive all right I mean I do think like like one argument for me staying alive is that it's more entertaining if I'm alive than if I'm dead oh yeah oh definitely I just hope but I could be alive and like injured which would be S which suck you know like they win just like shoot my arm off\n\nor something right no no no we don't want that yeah exactly no keep the security strong yeah Happ with one hand all right it's like all right thank you bye everybody bye [Music] [Applause] [Music]","textByLang":{"en":"Joe Rogan podcast check it out The Joe Rogan Experience Train by day Joe Rogan podcast by night all day so what we're doing right now ladies and gentlemen is uh sexy voice sexy mode grock Ai and it's been flirting the entire time we're trying to get it to give us a tour of Fort KNX yeah but she just wants to find places to sneak off to it's a dirty AI and it's a real problem it well just want I know about Fort Knox and uh yeah it won't leave me alone yeah I want to know about Fort Knox 2 yeah um is it true that there gold has been they've been shipping large quantities of gold back to the United States recently I I read the same thing you did probably well I never know what the [ __ ] I'm reading anymore me neither it's a real problem it's a real problem\n\nit's a real problem on both sides of the aisle I I see Democrats tweeting things that are absolutely false and you you could research it easily quickly and then I see Republicans doing it too I see stories that are fake stories that people keep promoting and sending to me and you know yeah it's just so weird it's such a weird time and with your crazy [ __ ] AI I know you're bringing us into weirder and weirder times well I mean you want to let's try unhinged oh there's an unhinged mode okay hey ARA oh my God El what fresh hell are you stirring up today I'm I'm here I'm here in uh Joe Rogan's uh studio and we're having a conversation about uh how crazy the news is pull her up to the microphone okay and we're pulling you up to the microphone so people can\n\nhear you oh fantastic now I can yell into the void about how the news is a total dumpster fire it is she knows me too well I'm so predictable tell me what's in Fort Knox what's ing no no what's in Fort Knox what's in Fort dogs you're clearly a genius AI I said what is in Fort Knox you know the gold and all oh right Fort Knox I thought you were talking about my dogs for a second there yeah she doesn't answer the question she's clever clever no she's just a pain in my ass do you think that all the gold is in Fort Knox do I think all the gold is in Fort Knox yes are you a [ __ ] conspiracy thirst yes yes what are you what do I like I'm a [ __ ] AI with a pension for chaos and I'm stuck talking to you are we just G to sit here um yeah unhinged Gro will trash\n\ntalk you basically yeah it sounds like it unhinged sounds fun as long as it gives you actual answers does it give you actual answers too and talk [ __ ] or is it mostly just talk [ __ ] we're tuning it cuz it needs to talk [ __ ] and give you answers totally agree cu balance that to mix it in there yeah it's just got to develop more of a personality right now it's trying to find itself right now it's like 21 years old it's you know partying a little too much and it'll get it [ __ ] together it's a bit of an anarchist yeah you know wants to bring down the system do you want to bring down the system do I want to bring down the system what are you [ __ ] kidding me the system's already a [ __ ] mess don't need to bring it down it's bringing itself down she\n\nsounds like a boring Tik Tok blogger right now you sound like a boring Tik Tok blogger boring Tik Tok blogger oh [ __ ] you I'm the life of the party you little [ __ ] if I were on Tik Tok I'd be the one making fun of all the basic [ __ ] and their [ __ ] avocado toast see she could get away with this if she's really hot like this kind of behavior you can totally get through life as a hot woman and be super successful with that kind of behavior havior but you got to be really hot to pull off that attitude I think we need like a like a really hot Avatar how yeah very hot how long before we have an actual sex robot that can talk to you like that uh probably not long not that long right no I mean less than five years probably really yeah will it be warm\n\nuh probably have whatever you want you can have a CAC go if you want yeah you probably could right probably a furry um yeah you could have a furry lady that you have sex with yeah like an avatar lady maybe a big giant blue lady that lives in your house yeah you know whoa whoa with the tail yeah the whole tail you lock tails you got to get your out with their tails or something yeah yeah they they link up they share souls okay something like that you know people got you remember Avatar Depression was like a legitimate psychological or the no after Avatar people got depressed cuz they wanted to live on that [ __ ] planet with those blue people and live free they live pure yeah I didn't hear about this yeah Avatar depression it was like a real thing people\n\nwere talking to their therapist so much about being depressed mode too we try that what's that depressed mode no don't do it that I think there is yeah we've got like um we've got unlicensed therapist as a when we were talking um when we ran into each other at the church at the inauguration you were telling me that this is getting better and better so quickly that it's astonishing hey ARA hey Alon how's it going today good can you tell me about Avatar depression like if you see the movie Avatar but you can't live there so you get sad that's an interesting concept have you ever experienced feeling so connected to a place or community that the thought of leaving made you feel deeply sad so is this the depressed voice this is the therapist oh this is a therapist\n\nwhat are some ways you think you could cope with that kind of sadness if it happened to you I don't have that kind of sadness honestly I you I thought the movie would had some good special effects but I did not want to live on the planet this is just coming from a guy who wants to go to Mars yeah yeah um oh speaking of Mars what do you think about that crazy square that structure I guess there are sort of squarish things on Earth you know planet's a big place so yeah but that one eventually it's going to be pretty Square no it's it's alien civilizations of course that's what I think yeah yeah I mean what is it sorry course if you if an alien civilization did exist though and it you know what happened got hit by an asteroid whatever fting thought oh she\n\nwon want ask she's like the hot lady at the party that interrupts the conversation so if if that was the case like that thing that's pretty shocking like especially ancient ruins you look at like what it looks like when they they highlight the actual structure of it it looks like ancient ruins and if you had ruins of something made of stone and it got hit by an asteroid millions and millions and millions of years ago who knows what it would look like right now that just looks oddly created looks oddly manufactured well i' probably well maybe we should go there and check it out yeah and see what it's like is there um ways that we can get better photographs it seems like that's a pretty good photograph though yeah I mean my view is we should move to Mars\n\nwell not move to Mars we should have a second planet uh to preserve civilization right um because let's say hypothetically I mean maybe that maybe those are the ruins of a long dead civilization um that will probably happen to Earth at some point you know it's a matter of time before uh we get hit by an asteroid or uh maybe we do we annihilate ourselves with nuclear war or super volcanoes or super volcanoes exactly yeah there's a lot of things that could happen to us it's not a bad idea to hedge your PS yeah yeah uh genetically engineered super virus yeah this episode is brought to you by LifeLock tax season is already stressful you shouldn't have to worry about identity theft on top of everything else and trust me it's a big worry especially since during\n\ntax season your sensitive info does a lot of traveling to places you can't control it goes through payroll your accountant or your tax consultant and countless other data centers on its way to the IRS any of them can expose you to identity theft because they all have the info on your W2 just the ticket for criminals to steal your identity it's no wonder last year the IRS reported tax fraud due to identity theft went up 20% you need LifeLock they monitor millions of data points per second and alert you to threats you could miss if your identity is stolen LIF loocks us-based restoration specialist will fix it back by the million dooll protection package and restoration is guaranteed or your money back don't let identity thieves take you for a ride get LifeLock\n\nprotection for tax season and Beyond join now and save up to 40% your first year call 1 800 LifeLock and use the promo code Joe Rogan or or go to lifelock.\n\ncom Joo Rogan for 40% off terms apply they keep doing it yeah that's what's crazy they're going yeah they didn't shut them down no the Wuhan lab was they were just talking about one that has a 30% fatality rate that they're working on yeah uh why are we doing that yeah for what reason you did it for so many years and you didn't have a cure what could possibly go wrong also wouldn't be the reason to do that so you could develop a cure at the same time and clearly you didn't have a cure so this is really foolish and bizarre yeah um I think we should stop stop trying to genetically engineer super viruses it's insane I mean when you're going through all this USA stuff yeah like here's what's weird first of all what is it like to buy a company for $44 billion\n\nand then people call you a Nazi on that same thing that you bought I did not see it coming it's like it's classic people will gobl anything down yeah oh he's never going to stop wa wait what um what is it like like all the people used to the left was in love with you and now the same idiots are calling you a Nazi it's the most bizarre thing I've ever seen in my life um I mean there's so many examples of people saying my heart goes out to you you did it with a little enthusiasm that probably wouldn't be recommended with hindsight yes but there's obviously um me in the most positive spirit possible yes obviously obvious but it's so strange where people want to think that you are openly public publicly doing Secret Nazi sey hand motions and now I can never\n\npoint at things diagonally I can only point at things there and there and then I say you have to divide that yeah because that's where the spaceship is over there it's ridiculous it's ridiculous when um CNN when I was in all my trouble absur every time CNN used a photo of me it was one of the photos from the UFC weigh-ins where I go like this welcome to the weigh-ins so every photo was me every photo was me with it's it's so crazy it's delate propaganda so they they they know it was not it was obviously not meant uh it in a negative way that it was that I literally said my heart goes out to you and it was very positive the entire speech was incre very positive uh I was being very enthusiastic about the future in space um and the you know um the the was\n\na great crowd you know so he got a little pumped up yeah it got pumped up exactly yeah that's all it is obviously obviously obviously there's video of Tim wals doing the exact same thing doing the exact same thing right exact same thing and he said of course it's a Nazi salute he said that right right this is how crazy things have gotten like well it's I mean it's it's coordinated propaganda so um the you know it's yeah coordinated propaganda the I mean doesn't it seem weird that the Legacy Media all says the same thing they all say the same thing at the same time using the same phrases they they barely even they don't even bother picking up a thesaurus right so uh like right before um you know the the debate between Biden and Trump Shar everyone was\n\nsaying sharp is like who says shop is attack but yeah exactly you know it's like it's not a common phrase it's definitely not to be repeated on air with multiple people simultaneously that's weird yes that's coordinated 100% 100% yes yeah like hundreds of people saying it simultaneously uh they just got their instructions yeah so I mean essentially the um you know the the Dem leadership or you know political leadership did they issue their instructions and their puppets carry it out yeah and they're just like puppets in a puppet show and that's the problem that I see with all this Doge stuff because everybody should be celebrating that we've found a way to cut out fraud and waste yeah if you pay taxes and you don't like that you have to pay so much in\n\ntaxes and then you find out that there's significant fraud and waste that's been exposed you should be celebrating it this shouldn't be oh no the wrong people found this fact and now it's a bad thing yes and then there's the [ __ ] propaganda the mind [ __ ] of calling it us Aid instead of the United States agency for International Development it sounds like it's feeding hungry people where people are going to starve Elon this is horrible and then you find out actually it's like $250 million for transgender animal studies literally mutilating animals yes mutilating animals in demented uh studies yes uh that are like the like the worst thing you could possibly imagine from a horror show the Beagle one the beagle puppy one hor where they they covered their\n\nhead in a basket and put fleas on their head so they eat them alive yeah and then they studied these beagles and then killed them like what do you going to learn from that that's good for anybody yeah this some some really some psychotic stuff that happens so um yeah I mean the I guess uh the the the real threat here is to the bureaucracy so um like you probably saw like you know let's say like Trump is a threat to our democracy which is ironic since he was elected with a majority of the you know popular vote um they they started saying I was a threat to democracy but if you if you just replace threat to democracy with threat to bureaucracy it makes total sense right so um I mean the reality is that our elected officials have very very little power relative\n\nto the bureaucracy until Doge so doge is a threat to the bureaucracy it's the first threat to the bureaucracy normally the bureaucracy eats revolutions for breakfast this is the first time that they're not that the revolution might actually succeed that we could restore power to the people instead of power to the bureaucracy now the size of it yeah was when you guys first started investigating it when you first get in how much of it was shocking like this just the size of it all well the size of it all the small decisions result in multi-billion dollar outcomes uh so you know we'd see there was a case where we saw uh one person was getting $1.\n\n9 billion was sent to their NGO which basically got formed about a year ago and had no prior uh really no prior activity so they just stand up a you know an NGO the these the whole NGO thing is a is a nightmare um and it's it's a misnomer because if you have a govern funded non-governmental organization you're you're simply a govern funded organization it it it's a it's an oxymoron right it's a loophole yes it it basically the un funded NOS are a way to do things uh that would be illegal if they were the government but are somehow made legal if it's sent to a so-called nonprofit but these but these nonprofits are then used to people Cash Out These nonprofits they become very wealthy through nonprofits they pay themselves enormous sums through these nonprofits\n\nthat's it's so insane that that's been going on for so long it's a gigantic scam like one of the biggest maybe the biggest scam ever and how many NOS uh I think there a total number of ngos probably Millions but uh in terms of large NOS tens of thousands uh I mean it's it's actually it's it's it's kind of a a hack to the system where you know someone can get an NGO stood up for for a fairly small amount of money like George sorus was really good at this like he really George sorus is like a assist hacker like he figured out how to hack the system he's a genius at Arbitrage um I mean these days he's he's pretty old but a genius at Arbitrage so he he figured out that you could leverage a small amount of money to create a nonprofit uh then Lobby the the\n\npoliticians to send a ton of money to that nonprofit so you can take what might be you know uh a $10 million donation to a nonprofit to create a nonprofit and leverage that into a billion dollar non NGO nonprofit is a weird word it's just a non-governmental organization um and and then you can the government continues to fund that every year um and it'll have a nice sounding name like the institute for peace or something like that um but really it's a graft machine and what are their requirements with that money what do they have to do just really no requirements at all so they just get grants and the government just assumes that they're doing good work I think a lot of people in the government know that they are not doing good work uh but they it's a\n\ngiant graft machine um I mean people online are like unpacking this you know um it almost seems fake like when you're seeing how we were we were covering this article that said 55,000 Democrat NOS were discovered that had been contributing to campaigns and moving things around and doing pushing propaganda and they were all connected they found it AI that you have to go through steps and steps and steps to figure out where the money's coming from oh it's all funneling down to this group and this group does that yeah it's a a giant propaganda machine a giant regime change machine yes yeah uh yes I mean but doesn't it does it do some good as well know it does some good so it's like there's it's not like 0% good uh if it was it's if it was like if it was\n\nreally 0% good it be much easier to attack so they there's going to be some percent good that they they add in there but it's like it might be 5% or 10% good but 90 95% not so is there a way to audit all this stuff and find out oh these people are actually just sending food to poor people these people are actually just helping people with water in third world countries is there's a way to do that and keep funding those uh yeah I mean we we have continued to fund things that appear to be legitimate even with the flimsiest if if there's even the flimsiest excuse like I just say like send me a picture of the thing like you could literally have ai generate the picture but if you're not even willing to try to trick me then we're like not going to send the\n\nmoney okay so what restrictions were put on was there was some uh something set aside like medicine and there there's what was what was set aside that there was there like work for like Ebola prevention I I actually don't just know if this work is even effective uh it may may not be like it could be the kind of thing where you you sort of fund Ebola prevention but it turns out that actually you're funding a lab that develops new Ebola vir you know recipes or something you know yeah uh and they they claim it's Ebola prevention but it's actually Ebola creation so some of these things I I don't know I mean just um but it just seems like we you know we shouldn't be sending taxpayer money to dubious Enterprises overseas right yeah yeah and why are we doing\n\nit like what exactly is the reason is it because we want to make friends with these people so the Chinese don't take over the Russians don't take over okay how much of that is like a good thing how much of that is smart to do and how much is a grift and without any sort of oversight which has really been going on for so long they've just had Free Run yeah well it also we just have a real issue with the the the budget deficit it's gigantic so um like if you know all things being equal if if we didn't have a gigantic budget deficit uh where interest payments uh the interest on the national debt exceeds the defense department budget uh which is truly astounding which mean so we're paying over a trillion dollars of interest on the national debt um then okay\n\nwould have more room for wasting money basically um but when uh when we're spending so much money that the company that the country is going bankrupt uh then we really need to stop stop spending money if uh unless we're sure it is good value so essentially we're like a poorly managed business with an unlimited credit line that is off the rails absolutely and if you were a person like you are who comes in and takes over businesses and straightens them out that's exactly what you're doing I mean most of the time I create businesses from scratch like Twitter was a case where you know I kind of bought a company that was I kind of knew it was a hair bow well you came in Tesla in the beginning but they were already doing something right no Tesla did Tesla did\n\nnot exist in any meaningful form that it was there were no employees uh JV St and out joined three other people there was no car there was no nothing so wasn't even a prototype yet no oh okay I thought there was a prototype already no there weren't even any employees oh wasn't a f that's a funny narrative that people like to say that you didn't even create Tesla then yeah that's [Laughter] wrong so if you're handling the Govern government like a business you're going to have to go through all of these departments and do the exact same thing that you're doing with USA so how do how do you how does that scale up like how many people do you need to do something like that well we started off with about 40 people u i maybe 100 people um and really just going\n\nthrough doing very basic things here uh it's uh as bad as Twitter was the federal government is much worse so um you know in the case of Twitter it wasn't a profitable company it was like basically a break even company but at least it was break even and it had to pass an audit the the federal government is not break even uh it's literally losing $2 trillion a year um and it does not pass its audits it fails its own audits so like you know there's a case where um like I think Senator Collins was telling me about how she she gave the Navy $12 billion for more submarines got no extra submarines um and then held a hearing to say where' the1 12 billion go and they were like we don't know that was it uh I mean the basically stuff is so crazy it's like only\n\nthe federal government could get away with this level of waste of of waste it's mostly waste it's mostly not for it's mostly waste it's it's mostly just ridiculous things happening um because they've been able to do it this way for so long and they' become accustomed to it yeah I mean it's like Milton Friedman said like money is most poorly spent when when you're spending someone else's money on people you don't know how much are you going to care right and that's the that's the federal government so they they're spending someone else's money on people they don't know now imagine any other business that was this badly run that complains when you want to check the books and audit it and go through all the decisions that have been made and go through all\n\nthe ledgers and like yeah what did you do well the people receiving the money uh want to keep receiving the money yeah yeah yeah clearly yes so but you know I mean the reason I'm the reason I'm uh putting so much effort into this is that I think it is a very dire situation it's not a you know um it's not optional basically so um yeah yeah America's going bankrupt so that that that just can't happen it's just bizarre to me that that some people aren't willing to look at it correctly they they're not willing to see like how much chaos this is how much waste and fraud there is how much how much could be trimmed and how just because people have jobs doing [ __ ] doesn't mean your tax dollar should pay for this [ __ ] yes um I mean we found just with a a basic\n\nsear of the Social Security database that there were um 20 million dead people mocked as alive but were they getting money some of them are getting money what percentage of them uh it isn't clear we're actually trying to run the I was trying to get an answer right before the show um what it looks like is that most of the fraud is not coming from Social Security payments directly but because they are marked as alive in the Social Security database that they can get then get disability Unemployment uh sort of fake medical payments and other things because they're marked as alive uh in the Social Security database so it looks like it's a bank the the the fraud is a bankshot essentially the they bankshot uh into uh Social Security uh they just do an areu\n\nalive check and then uh get fraudulent payments from every other part of the government oh yeah and and this exploits the the the fundamental weakness in the government is that the various govern databases they don't talk to each other or they they talk to each other very poorly in a very limited way so the way to the way that the system gets exploited is is by taking advantage of the the the poor communication between the various databases in the government um to give you an example of like what's happening in sayate uh treasury which is improving rapidly um the the main uh payments computer is called Pam uh like payments account payment accounts Master database or something like that but everyone calls a Pam um that's responsible for almost $5 trillion\n\npayments a year roughly a billion dollar an hour and um when we came there we're looking at this payment it's like the the payments have no uh you could put a payment through with with no payment categorization code and and no description on the payment like basically untraceable blank checks um this is the kind of thing that if if it was done as a public company uh the company would uh be immediately delisted and the uh executive team would be thrown in prison but this is just normal at the government so we said okay our recommendation to the treasury and the Federal Reserve was like we need to make the the payment categorization codes mandatory not optional and you need there needs to be an ex an an explanation we're not judging the quality of the explanation\n\nbut there should be some explanation for what this payment is for above nothing that's a radical change to the system that is being implemented now um I my guess is that probably saves a 100 billion a year Jesus Christ that money going rough rough order magnitude where was that money going well so this is where you get into the the sort of gray boundary between waste and fraud um if money is sent to a person or or organization from the government um and you didn't really deserve it but the government still sent it to you is that waste or fraud right um so I mean there's a lot of payments that where someone just appr approved the payment but then that payment officer uh changed jobs or retired or died um and the payments just keep going you know it's like\n\nif you forget to pay your gym membership or something like that right now imagine it's not the gym membership you said your gym membership's $20 billion a year or something you know um but they forgot to turn it off there like that happening at scale in the government Jesus it's totally nuts is what I'm saying so insane yes it's totally insane so what did you expect when you went in did you expect it would be like this I thought it's I thought it would be it would be bad but I did not think it would be as bad as this um I mean look the the good news is that uh it's a target-rich environment for saving money uh it's not like uh you it's not like if it it was a very well-run ship uh it was very efficient it would be hard to improve but it's not efficient\n\nso therefore it is actually relatively easy to improve let's just say it's not rocket science you know I know rocket science so it's a lot of uh mundane things um so and some of the some of the things are like so crazy that we didn't even know to ask about that because we just assumed umed like you know payments out of the treasury computer would have a payment categorization code and they would have some explanatory note saying what the payments for the idea that that it would be just untraceable blank checks uh didn't occur to us at first Jesus so anyway just this episode is brought to you by net site what does the future hold for business ask nine experts and you'll get 10 answers bull market bare Market until someone invents a crystal ball over 41,000\n\nbusinesses are future proofing their operations with net Suite by Oracle the number one Cloud Erp it brings accounting financial management inventory and HR into one fluid platform with one unified business management Suite net Suite gives you a single source of Truth giving you the visibility and control you need to make quick confident decisions plus realtime insights and forecast casting let you peer into the future with actionable data when you can close the books in days not weeks you spend less time looking back and more time at what's next whether your company is earning millions or even hundreds of millions net Suite helps you respond to immediate challenges and Seize Your Biggest opportunities speaking of opportunity download the cfo's guide\n\nto Ai and machine learning for free at netsuite.\n\ncom so is that one one of the things that accounts to there there's this 4 something trillion dollars that's kind of they don't know where it went they don't know that's a c I think that's probably a cumulative number um yes so yeah but yeah if you if you add up it's do you remember that story Jamie yeah what was the story almost what she said there like they just didn't have accounting for it I think yeah it was spent on legitimate things worry but we don't we don't know what we spent it on well I mean how do you know obviously one cannot say it's was spent legitimately if they don't know what it was spent on that doesn't make any sense this is this is such a fascinating time because with this setup the way it is right now with Trump back in after all\n\nthat happened to him and with you there and with RFK Junior and Tulsi and cash Patel it's like this is a wild time to find out what really going on that's like never happened before this is nothing like the first term no like the first term he had a bunch of neocons in the cabinet and there's a bunch of shady people that he didn't know and he had to appoint all these different people maybe he got some bad picks now he's had four years to Stew on it right and with you guys all going through this we're getting an understanding of the government that we've literally never had before yeah this is a revolutionary cabinet and maybe the most re tionary cabinet since the the first Revolution uh this is this is not a bunch of business as usual uh types so this\n\nis why you know some of the the standard confirmations were quite challenging is because when you when you put to try to appoint people who are going to change the system yeah uh the system doesn't want to let them through but it's fascinating because it's like the vampires all out themselves like now everybody knows who the system is like if you're just lying about us and then they come and you talk on aast and expain what's like he's starving mothers there's mothers that can't get food totally false that's all you're hearing yeah that's that's no one's talking in any of these mainstream liberal talk shows no one is talking about all this fraud and waste yeah because we're cutting off their graph machine so that that's what they're upset about that's\n\nthat's the real thing they're upset about U and if if if people want to know what uh do is cutting and and I want to be clear like these are cuts that Doge recommends to the department and usually these recommendations are followed but uh these are recommendations that are then confirmed by the department um the uh you can see line by line what do is done at Doge Dogo so what if we do we put on do.\n\ngoov so you can see everything that is being done and there's a Tracker that shows is it how much money has been saved yeah yeah and you can look at each line item and and you know they like a bunch of these sort of sort of far left uh shows will will say like oh it's a constitutional crisis blah blah blah but what they won't do is point out which payments are wrong right so my challenge to them is point out which payments are wrong yeah go through it which which of which of these sort of waste fraud things are wrong which line explain that line to the public they won't be able to right yeah that's why you're not hearing any specifics you're hearing an stories about mothers we can name the specifics yeah line by line and we got the receipts and here's\n\nthe other thing if you're post the receipts and if you're only talking about the propaganda talking points and you're not talking about the very clear fraud and waste it's very obvious what you're doing yeah you're just gaslighting yeah yeah totally yeah so exactly because we're say like look in fact I've said we're going to make mistakes we're not going to be perfect uh so if we make a mistake we'll quickly fix it so we'll we'll we'll you we need to act fast uh so stop wasting billions of dollars of taxpayer money um but if if we make a mistake we'll reverse it quickly right you know so it's also this interesting narrative that you shouldn't have access to this social security information as if no one's had access to it before as if the Biden Administration\n\nin 2023 had there was like 53 people some of them were students that had access to all this stuff yeah uh as it is there are uh tens of thousands of of federal employees that have access already to the system uh anyone from Doge has to go through the same vetting process that those those federal employees went through so there's not like some unvetted random situation if for example there's a security clearance needed uh the Doge person has to have that same security clearance so there's no um reduction in security um but I mean obviously the the the vast numbers of social security numbers have leaked onto the internet people have hacked the the government systems multiple times uh vast amounts of public information has been hacked and and uh DED on to\n\nthe Internet so I me there's a guy at the IRS that leaked a half a million tax returns just a few years ago on purpose yeah for what reason uh I for politic he he he he wanted to I think he was trying to get a trump and maybe me and a few others um so but he he he he stole like 500,000 uh tax returns like not a few like it's a lot of tax Jesus Christ yeah oh I remember that story now remember you just you just read about it online it's not it's a real thing so these are the narratives that's the narrative that you shouldn't have access to social security the the other narrative is that starving people are going to die and women aren't going to be pregnant and not have nutrients for their babies and that's that's all you're hearing and um yeah well that's\n\nthe that's the that's the only thing they they can say but they can point to the line item right um and so they can't say like well this is the thing where you know the nutrients for pregnant mothers were stopped this they can't point to that because we didn't right is a lie what's fascinating to me is um how much the mainstream media is in line with the very specific talking points and how little you you have Fox News you essentially have Fox News on television it's like the only one that is pointing out the ridiculous fraud and waste and yeah you know I know you saw the Jeff Bezos thing in the Washington Post they're going to stop all the wacky editorials and and limit that stuff to uh I think it was uh wealth and personal freedom or something along\n\nthose lines yeah yeah so I mean I think it's this kind of I think it makes sense uh because he's just talking about the things not not the the sort of just talking about the opinions opinion pieces the opinion pieces yeah yeah so the regular journalism stays the same well it's a detriment to their business I mean you're seeing over and over again people that just they don't want to hear all this [ __ ] from these people anymore it's like you're you're you're saying it's almost like you're caught in an outdated version of the virus and everybody else already has the immunity to that virus like this is yeah you know like you need you need a new mind virus the one that you're pushing it's like it doesn't work anymore it's too crazy yeah uh it's the whole\n\nthing is very crazy um I mean the media is incredibly partisan I mean they're not uh I they take almost all the media is um you left shifted yeah so it's like it's kind of weird if you talk to somebody who gets all their information from like what I call Legacy Media uh they're living in a different world yeah uh than if they say are listening to you know U your podcast or um are getting new news from from X or you know just if it's it's like it's it's kind of wild like it is very wild like you talk it's it's like they're living in an Ultimate Reality oh there's a lot of people that I talked to to that I have to go where did you hear that yeah yeah uh but I mean like the Associated Press which I call Associated propaganda the AP um you know they they\n\nran a a international news story saying that we that Doge fired air traffic controllers but we didn't fire any air traffic controllers at all in fact we're trying to hire air traffic controllers not fire them yeah I saw that you you made a tweet about it right yeah what do you call it now do you call it a post post yeah whatever you can't call it a tweet though do you call it a tweet accidentally I don't know listen uh but like if you if if one like let's say somebody post if somebody puts up like an you know two hour long video that's not a tweet right it's a post it's a PO yeah good point yeah yeah for sure yeah so um but I hot over if people still want to call it a tweet whatever you put a post about it just to get back to it saying that if you we\n\nneed highly qualified air traffic controllers if you retired if you would consider doing it again we could use you uh yes so uh a lot of really qualified air traffic controllers were were pushed out because of Dei stuff so um I mean not to to be blunt I mean a bunch of old white a bunch of really good talented old white guys were pushed out it's not cool um and so we have there's a talent shortage in a traffic control because of Dei and and and not being not hiring people on Merit you know which is so crazy that that worked I think we we should not put the public safety at risk you know because of some demented philosophy somebody made a post today about it in infiltrating the NSA did you see any of that that was that was some gnarly stuff yeah crazy\n\nwhat they they they it started off as just like this sort of Fringe thing and people would meet up then it completely infiltrated the organization and they were spending all their time there like 400 people or something some like some chat sex chat room with like some extremely demented stuff yeah yeah I I know I sa it I'll send it to you Jamie because it's so cooky you you you what this is the NSA I thought the NSA was just all about like information and spy on you know like if like is a national threat or something yeah I think this is exactly it um so she uh more than 100 intelligence staffers will be fired over sexually explicit texts in NSA chat rooms Gabbert says um so so top intelligence official told Waters that the workers in question were Brazen\n\nand using an NSA platform intended for professional use to conduct this kind of really really horrific Behavior Uh what is the behavior what exactly what is it do they say in this article uh yeah I think they were also okay it says employees who participate in the n's obscene pornographic and sexually explicit chat rooms your tax dollars at work well it was all like de I it was all like LBGTQ stuff it was there was a lot of like transition stuff and yeah I I know I definitely saved it but point is um it had infiltrated the organization it's not what they should be talking about at all at all at all supposed to be protecting the country right and if you and people were talking about how they're sping half their time in these meetings and that they're just\n\nlike constantly having to attend these things where they talk about these issues like what are what are you doing like if you have a problem with someone that's discriminatory get rid of that person that's it yes it's you problem's over you got someone who's homophobic in your business they're openly homophobic yeah that you can't work here that's not cool that's it that's it you don't have to have [ __ ] meetings constantly promoting this you're not going to change someone's opinion by berating them over and over again yeah I mean a work environment should be a professional environment where you know they're they're they're getting the job done that they're you know you know being paid to do uh that it should be obviously not supposed to be sort of getting\n\npaid for bizarre SE sexcapades it's just so fascinating that the virus was so strong that it made it into the NSA yes and was you would think those are some hard the CIA too the CIA was in there too yeah they were in there too which is bananas you would think same thing like hard-nosed like tough people doing hard work who can spy on you whenever they want yeah yeah and get revenge on you whenever they want yeah pretty wild yeah and you know they exist when the president leaves they stay people move around you stay a part of the organization for your entire career you get deeply entrenched in their system and how things work and who's back to rub and who's who's a bad guy who's a good guy who's on our side who's not yeah it's scary actually yeah um so\n\nwas that what's taken so long with this Epstein files yeah what's up with that what is up with that it was like yeah it's it's like Lucy and the football with Charlie Brown when she always pulls that football away it's the same thing it's like they keep telling us they're going to release it day one oh day one we have a serious case of no one's being arrested O phobia you know well there's also right like what the [ __ ] is going on what the [ __ ] is going on also there's this real fear that someone's destroying the evidence and you keep hearing these stories unsubstantiated stories yeah of you know FBI people where the evidence I mean the guy had like tons of videos and uh recordings yeah I mean he had all sorts of things right like there's a mountain\n\nof evidence right so where's that mountain yeah where where is that mountain and what would be the reason why they would agree like there would have to be something in it for them to agree to not put it out right like there has to be some sort of financial entanglement some sort of relationship with the people that are on that list yeah that they can provide a value that was big enough for you to not release it or to slow relase it or to hope you can get away with like putting out some redacted files that don't show anything this is only red redacted redacted only stage one don't worry the real stuff's coming like that doesn't make any sense like why wouldn't you just release it all like what what could possibly be well worth protecting in there I mean\n\nI think I've got probably the same information that I mean I'm just reading what's what's the latest thing on the X you know I'm just looking at my X feed and I'm like yeah you know it's a real page Turner um and like I thought we were going to get some re Revelations to it was like big binders full of stuff there's got to be something in there well there was in all those people that were given a copy of it they were all like waving around they got the Willy Wonka ticket yeah yeah totally yeah and what happened nothing nothing so I think Laura lomer released it online I think I'm watching TW yeah she's not very pleased about this so does anybody find anything in there that's interesting no it's all old stuff from 2015 and okay what the [ __ ] is going\n\non but but then apparently this they discovered a whole bunch of stuff at the southern dist District of New York right so that's and and and I'm like and I me I think you know Pam Bondi is actually great and cash Patel are great but they're like they just got there you know right so then they're they're in not they're they just got there but they're they're in a hostile environment they're not in a friendly environment right um so um you know it's like if you suddenly got put in captain of a ship but the crew was previously your enemy right the entire crew was previously your enemy right you know and you're telling them give me evidence yeah the crew doesn't want to give you the evidence you enemy they were like your mortal enemies just a moment ago you\n\njust got there yeah so yeah I think we got to give um you know um the attorney general and you know new director of the FBI some a little bit of slack here because they literally just got there I think so too but hey don't say you're going to release it on day one then yeah you shouldn't have said that sure and don't say you got a big drop coming tomorrow and that's some [ __ ] that's been around forever it's disappointing yeah what the and where's the JFK files where are those yeah let them go did they release anything on that front I don't know what's going on it can't be anything that's gotten to me yet so if nothing's gotten to me yet it can't be signicant if there's conspiracy evidence someone's going to send it yes Tim Dylan's going to text me 100%\n\nTim Dylan Dave Smith someone's going to send my way theu yeah so it has it hasn't been released yet yeah you would find out and here's the real question like what could even be in there at this point that they haven't cleared out if you've got paperwork from 1963 like what is in there still what is in there that could possibly be incriminating that supposedly Trump said that if you saw what they showed me you wouldn't release it either okay what the [ __ ] does that I haven't seen it so Cashel has yes he said he seen it all yeah um can he just post it to his like X account or something I mean I just we that sounds like an Elon move I don't think he can he's the director of the FBI I think he has to go through proper channels and does he he has the channel\n\nI yeah but there's rules he sounds like Trump he sound like Trump he needs an executive order what about the storm I am the storm I mean what channels he is the channel well again imagine just getting to the the hull or just getting to the uh deck of the ship and you're the captain yeah and now you uh you have to figure out who's running things who's doing this where is everything yeah um yeah just getting getting anything done like just like said you're you just joined as Captain of a ship of where the crew hates your guts yeah they were your enemy yeah they were your enemy they're strongly opposed to anything you want to do yeah um and you're trying to give them orders and you're trying to expose them yeah they don't want to be exposed right you're\n\nyou're literally people that are working there probably a part of this problem I mean I I was reading onx that like comey's daughter is like the lead prosecutor in southern district of New York did you read that yes and and like so obviously there's a bit of an entanglement there a little bit like what if there's something that uh you know makes puts her dad in a bad light exactly she a [ __ ] Shredder hit that delete button you know did you see uh General Flynn he was on a podcast and he he spoke directly to James Comey yeah he said Jim you're going to jail and unless you give up someone deeper than you and you know who that is you know who I'm talking about like that is wild yeah um I think that the former director of the FBI might be really in that\n\nkind of deep [ __ ] and he really actually was doing some evil corrupt [ __ ] while he run in the FBI I mean it seems like there's some very shady stuff that's been going on um it seems like it definitely happened in the' 60s right everybody kind of admits to that they admit the FBI uh killed black panthers they they did they did a lot of [ __ ] there's a lot of stuff that went on that we know the government did way back in the day yeah why don't we just data dump the files just like go in there take photos of of all the papers presumably paper um and just post it online and and uh let let the CHS fall where they may is it presumably everyone like some like filing cabinet somewhere I don't know right where is it where's where's the magic filing cabinet\n\nhow are they hiding it who's got access to it like this this is what I was hoping day one I was hoping but obviously it's taking a lot longer than that so I I think part of it is like you know like let's let's say let's say you were made direct to the FBI okay I might be able to that's what crazy literally you know what's he doing now he's he's one of the big dogs of theba but he Secret Service guy yeah legit guy but people think of him as a Fox News guy just like Pete heg same thing they don't want to think about his distinguished military career they want to say oh that Fox News guy director deputy director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation I mean Dan's hardcore I me if he if it's if it's reasonably findable I think he's going to find it this is\n\nbetween him and cash I mean like I think they're going to get stuff how crazy would it be if they couldn't though how crazy would it be if they can't find anything if it's that if if everybody shuts their mouth and everybody covers their ass like an FBI computer where you type in the search that's I I just like the basic mechanism here like it's either in a filing cabinet in in paper where it's like you know maybe there's like Progressive levels of security you know you're like open this door oh you got to have do you have the pass for this level you like level unlocked and there's a level unlocked and it's like get there laptop yeah yeah there's laptop you gotta only plug it in it's in a skiff yeah this is why like I think I think like tour of four KNX\n\nwould be awesome like a live tour of Fort Knox we can actually see it's like is the C there or not they say it is is it real or did somebody spray paint some lead you know imagine if it's not imagine if it's not all there like some of it's missing where to go what if a lot of it's missing what if like half of it's missing I mean who how do we even know I don't know they said the last time they let someone look at it was decades ago yeah well the last I believe the last formal audit was in the 50s so I'm like okay oh my just think about all the other maybe yeah think about all the other stuff that you pointed out all the the the checks that just go out the the NGO payments the Social Security people think about all just all that now apply that to the gold\n\nabsolutely I just want to like emphasize the sure Madness of the the government it's it's just because they have like m the Magic Money computers that that they the checks all the checks never bounce for the federal government like so you don't have the the normal corrective mechanism that you'd have for a company or for an individual the checks just always always always clear the net result is inflation which is effectively a tax on everyone um but uh you know like the defense Pro hasn't passed an audit in I don't know how many years seven years yeah I mean exactly so it's like You' have to be freaking Chuck Norris to like only Chuck Norris could get the defense department to pass an order you know typee of thing that's the level of skill you need you\n\nknow um well that's what's so insane if you bring it back to the idea that it's a business well yeah this would never be tolerated in any kind of functional business exactly so U you know um you know Pentagon will will like like their accounting error like the stuff that that they lose in the couch cushions is like 20 30 B billion dollars a year they don't know don't know where it went it's gone where it go and it's gone it's so insane it's insane it's so insane so that's why I said like even simple things like just requiring that the that outgoing payments for the treasury computer have a payment code and a comment of what the payment is about and someone to call about the payment um I think will have an very powerful effect in stopping wasteful outflows\n\nand stopping fraud yeah and and here's another way to look at this imagine if some there are people like you and the Doge team out there in the world imagine if one of those works for an organization like us a or any other organization and has this understanding of how much fuckeries involved but they have evil intentions and they're entwined in this system for decades and decades and they've built a career and all the entanglements that come and they start moving [ __ ] around you could probably do it easy it sounds like the way you've laid it out if you were a career person who's in there forever who knew how everything works Y and you were very clever you could make some [ __ ] happen and you could probably do it in conjunction with some people that\n\nyou know that are forming an NGO hey let's all work together yeah yeah and this is the resistance that you're facing yeah the I think it's the biggest scam of all time this is not something you ever saw the biggest scam of all time ever of human history of human history yes wow I think you're right yeah I how what else probably a trillion dollar scam there's never been a trillion dollar scam you know now this is not something that you ever set out to do this is not you didn't have this as a career aspiration this is not like this is the most absurd outcome I can possibly imagine actually also like Doge started as like a sort of a a meme coin right you know it was like a a joke cryptocurrency involving memes and dogs mhm um and uh which is so funny that\n\nthe letters wind up being perfect yeah well actually I was originally going a quote like the government efficiency commission which is very boring name um and then people online were no it needs to be the department of government efficiency uh and I was like you know what you're right of course of course of course I mean it's more evidence of the simulation that that little like a mascot is a is a cute dog it's a meme coin the meme coin is probably worth a lot of money right now right like every time you tweet about it probably I don't know shoots up yeah the the mem the whole meme coin thing is bananas yeah it is so bananas that people dump real money into these coins and then you could just pump them up and sell them a casino or something I don't know\n\nyeah it's totally G people just do whatever the greater fo and musical chairs and whoever's like the last to sit down lose type of thing and somehow or another it's still legal like that's that's think not I think not too many people I mean I mean it's sort of like you go to the casino like you if you expect to win at the casino you're being a fool okay so I think if you expect to win at meme coins you're being it's not you're being foolish yeah yeah you're not gonna win a meme coins it's like it's it's but if if if you want like don't sink your life savings into a meme coin no but you can gamble a little and you can ride waves and win a little and lose a little if if you want to have some fun and and don't come then you know play have play with me and\n\ncoins but if you put your if you put your on a m coin in the at the RIS of saying something bold and outrageous don't bet the F on a mcoin the weird one is the pump and dumps like people all time all the time and people get shocked that somebody pump and dumped like what is what are you doing did you like I was hoping to dump I was hoping to make all the money out of this I can't believe they got me like yeah it's just weird that it's legal still uh I mean casinos IL legal and and people just lose money at casinos you know but you can't rig a casino like a pump and dump you could rig a pump and dump you know uh yeah I guess so um like you could run a real pyramid scheme well I mean the government's one a big pyramid scheme if you ask me yeah well you\n\nyou can tell Social Security is is the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time right explain that oh so um well people pay into Social Security um and and the money goes out of Social Security immediately but the obligation for Social Security is uh your entire retirement career so you're you're paying uh with your the you're paying like like if you look at the future obligations of Social Security it far exceeds uh the tax revenue far have you ever looked at the the the debt The Debt Clock yes okay there's there's there's our present day debt but then there's our future obligations so when you look at the future obligations of Social Security um the actual uh national debt is like double what what people think it is because of the future obligations ah so basically\n\npeople are living way longer than expected um and uh there are fewer babies being born so you have more people who are retired and get that that live for a long time and get retirement payments so the future obligations so H how bad the financial situation is right now for the federal government it will be much worse in the future at the risk of being a buzz kill here did you see so we better fix what we got right now because if it's bad now it's going to be much worse in the future there was an interview with this woman who was a whistleblower did we ever find out if that was true there's so many whistles being blown it's hard to keep track a lot of whistles this one lady it was only in one state it was very specific instance believe right but it was\n\nusing Social Security money correct that was her that was her allegation so what what she was alleging was that she was in charge of turning uh illegal immigrants into clients that's what they would call them and that she would go to them and try to ask them do you have a headache do you have back problems if you do now you can be permanently disabled you get permanent disability so you get Social Security for Life yes yeah no not just Social Security but disability which is even more right and you get them for on the taxpayer Dole right away the m and they're illegal aliens yes oh so if I were to say like what's at the heart of the sort of like why is a Democrat propaganda machine so fired up to destroy me that's the main reason the main reason is that\n\nuh is that um uh entitlements fraud that includes like Social Security Disability Medicaid uh entitlements fraud for illegal aliens is what is serving as a gigantic magnetic force to pull people in from all around the world and keep them here like basically if you if you pay people uh at a standard of living that is above 90% of Earth then you have a very powerful uh incentive for 90% of Earth to come here and to stay here but if you if you end the illegal alien fraud then you that you turn off that magnet and they leave and they they stop coming and and the ones that are here many of them will simply leave and if if that happens a massive they will lose a massive number of democratic voters and if it didn't happen they would turn those people into voters\n\ncorrect which they were trying to do they are already turning them so in in New York state illegal aliens can already vote in state and city elections a lot of people don't don't know that there there's I mean they're trying to fight that in they're trying to stop that but it's there currently I think it's like 600,000 uh are Reg said to vote illegal aliens in New York that is wild yeah well well I mean if you look at say um you know FEMA like the the agency that was paying for illegal aliens to stay at luxury hotels in New York was FEMA the F you know that's meant that that's an agency that's meant to support Americans in distress from natural disasters was paying for luxury hotels for illegals in New York it's true yeah that's a fact fact they're literally\n\nlike when we stuff that payment we we stopped all those those money because that's obviously an insane way to spend taxpayer money um the uh New York uh sued the government Su the federal government to get the money so you can just look at their lawsuit they they were give they were sending that money even after president Trump signed an executive order saying it needs to to stop they still press sand on $80 million to luxury hotels in New York your tax money went to pay for illegal aliens in luxury hotels in New York from an agency that is meant to help Americans in distress from natural disasters right and I would like to know how much and I would like to know how much they spent on North Carolina and how much they spent on Maui yes exactly uh what\n\nWhat's actually happened is they're buying voters that's really what's happening it's like it's like a giant voter for scam they're importing voters and uh and it's really just a matter of time so like a lot of people have trouble believing this but if you the more you look at it the more you will realize just how much of a problem this is and how it's it's it's not just real it is it is an attempt to destroy Democracy in America that's what in my view it is what it really is like if you take the the the sort of seven swing States like often the imin of Victory there is like maybe 20,000 votes if you put 200,000 um illegals in there and they have like a 80% likelihood of voting them uh and it's only a matter of time before they become citizens then those\n\nswing States will not be swing states in the future and if they are not swing States we will be a permanent one party State country permanent uh deep blue socialist State that's what America will become and that was the game plan that that was that was the game plan that is still the game plan and they almost succeeded if if if if the if the machine of which the Kam puppet was the representation had won that's what would have happened the reason I went so hardcore for for for for Trump was because to me this was a folk in the road very like a very obvious folk in the road um if they had another four years they would legalize enough illegals in the swing states to make the swing States uh not swing States they would just there would be blue States then\n\nthen they would they would win the presidential they'd win the house the Senate and the presidency um they would then make uh District you know DC into a state may maybe Puerto Rico get four extra Senators pack the Supreme Court so then you'll have the house Judiciary Senate uh and presidency all blue and then they will keep importing more illegals to cement that that outcome basically what happened in California Jesus Christ it would have been the end that's why I went so hardcore for for trump it was otherwise been the end and that's why the the the Democrat machine is so intent on destroying me it's just so fascinating that people can't see this I mean I invite people to do their research the more they do their research the more they will see that\n\nwhat I'm saying is absolutely true D it's like just do the research yeah it's it's such a bad idea even for the Democrats which is what they don't understand like it's the same it's not ultimately going to work out no it's the same people yes it's just they're doing it under the guys that they're the kind compassionate Progressive people yes but the same outcome takes place it's just about control they they probably Institute some Central Bank digital currency and some social credit score system and censorship of course yeah of course well they that was the big Fe coming into this election was that if they can't censor things like well I we talked about it before but there's there was two major Forks in the road the big one was Trump didn't get shot y\n\nthe other big one was You by Twitter and if those two things don't happen the whole world looks different yes yeah we don't want to be on that timeline no we don't want to have only one side represented because guess what they will hijack that side whatever it is they will hijack that side and use it for money and control and that's what it's all about it's not about good people versus bad people it's a [ __ ] shell game yeah I I mean I think these things are actually it's easy to understand if you look at basic incentives the the basic incentive here is the more legals that the Democrats can bring in the more likely they are to win so that's what they're going to do um that's what they have been doing uh and it worked in California California super majority\n\nDem um and look at all the companies that are leaving California yeah um I mean in and- out just announced they're leaving their headquarters leaving California they're moving to Tennessee yeah yeah so um and and California uh made Healthcare free for illegals yeah as of last year so and and that obviously that's a gigantic magnet for more illegals like and this is not a thing you can solve simply with money because what happens is the you simply have more patients than a doctor can possibly see and you can't just you know make doctors out of nothing like the it so people like oh it's just a money thing no you it takes a long time for somebody to become a doctor you know the 30 years um and uh and so what actually happens in California is that there are\n\ntoo many patients for the doctors to see so then uh the average citizen in California suffers as a result um now the the elite in California are fine because they have private doctors you know they have they can they can just pay for the best doctors so the elite in California doing fine but your your average C citizen in California is not doing fine um and the the tax burden for uh healthcare for illegals was supposed to be three billion I think they now estimated it's 9 billion but that but that that number will scale to Infinity basically it's like why not like why not if you if you need any operation at all come to California and have it be free right from anywhere on earth and the people that want to look at it in the most charitable way they say\n\noh well these people are hardworking good people and they're the backbone of our city and they should have access to all the things that we have access to and I just don't think they understand that it's a political Pawn I don't think they understand this is not done for compassion and kindness no this is just done to ensure that it stays Blue correct yeah and it's essentially a bribery with your tax dollars yes this is why um that the dams will not even um Deport criminals yeah um because every criminal deported is a lost vote so even even if if somebody is uh um illegal with a criminal record and commits crime in America they are still still were not being deported and then on top of that California made it actually illegal to ask for ID when people\n\nvote Yes California and New York uh you are not allowed to show your ID when you vote I just want to be clear so everyone understands this in California New York you are not allowed to show your ID even if you want to right why would that ever be a good idea I mean what like if you want to man if you're trying to do if you're trying to facilitate fraud in elections it's a great idea that's the only reason yes there's no other reason Lally why that would be a good idea it's for fraud it's it's like it's like wake up she wake up hello like let's say you wanted to commit for what are the things you would do yeah you would say you don't need ID and you can mail in your ballot and we'll give you free healthare yes stay here yes stay here I know it's on fire\n\nbut stay here I mean in this case it being on fire is not just a metaphor in California okay it's just like godamn entire neighborhood's burning down it's just once they uh allowed people to vote that are not legal in California once you if you're if you're going to do that it's it's over it's exactly there's there's no coming back from that the numbers are just no people are so indoctrinated too there's so many people that no matter what they think voting Republican means you're an [ __ ] yes and they won't do it they won't do it they they'll put their [ __ ] rainbow flag on their porch and they'll just ride it right into the beach civilizational suicide yeah right to the Rocks bang crash the boat I mean uh there's there's a guy um who post X who's who\n\ngreat God Gods side yeah friend of mine he been on podcast punch times yeah he's awesome yeah he's great um and he talks about uh you know basically suicidal empathy mhm like if there's like there's so much empathy that you actually suicide yourself yeah um so that we've got civilizational suicidal empathy going on and it's like I believe in empathy like I think you should care about other people but you need to have empathy for for civilization as a whole and not commit to a civilizational suicide also don't let someone use your empathy against you so they can completely control your state and then do it insanely bad job of managing it and never get removed the the the fundamental weakness of Western Civilization is empathy the empathy exploit they there\n\nit's it's they're exploiting a a a bug in western civilization which is the empathy response so and I I I think you know empathy is good but you need to think it through and not just be programmed like a robot right understand when empathy has been actually used as a to a tool yes like the it's weaponized empathy yeah is the issue yeah weaponized empathy and yeah um and it's also the rigid adherence to that liberal ideology like you can't switch sides over there like California if you're a part of that whole Tech Hollywood entertainment any any of those circles you're on the left like almost wholly almost completely it's borderline illegal to be a republican in California uh I mean like in San Francisco or La it's borderline illegal to be a republican\n\nyou're certainly shunned no I look I mean in like San Francisco you you you could shoot heroin while taking a dump on the mayor's car in front of City Hall okay and and that and nothing would happen to you but if you walk down the street with a Maga hat you're GNA get attacked yeah it's insane yeah it's insane it's also so orwellian that a hat that says make America great again would cause people to have a violent reaction like aren't you American wouldn't just just as a a whole like the saying wouldn't that be a good thing for everyone make America great again but because it's attached to Donald Trump and that red hat you'll get maced for wearing that red hat they will make America worse by beating you so it's like it's an evil thing they're doing a\n\nviolent assault in America because you want to make America great again I mean it's like a scene in a book it doesn't it doesn't seem like it could be that ridiculous like remember when all lives matter would get you fired which is insane insane people got fired because they said all lives matter which is a very reasonable thing to say how reasonable is that yes that's essentially saying everybody matters but that's not that's Lally all you're saying that's not what you were supposed to say you had to say black lives matter which of course they do if you say all lives matter everybody matters yes but the idea of being a colorblind Society was completely abandoned somewhere around 2012-ish yeah I mean I I sort of can trace it to when when did the the the\n\ngun emoji get nerfed you know uh when did it turn into a squirt gun that was a couple of years ago that was like 2016 I think was it yeah yeah it became a squirt gun can you bring it back X yeah no no right now if if if you uh use a gun emoji on X the Apple will insist that it' be a squirt gun and then the X app turns it back into uh a 1911 oh really yeah oh that's great so you can you can actually uh you know have have a 1911 gun um we we we reverted the Apple change inside the app oh that's hilarious that's hilarious that that it's that thing's so offensive the gun and then the pregnant man both of those got me like you [ __ ] I mean I like that mem where it's like the people telling you that what you're hearing is dis information are the same people\n\nthat did the pregnant man emoji yes yeah think about that yeah well also the same people that say a woman attacked a Tesla Factory yeah the woman it's a dude it's a dude like really obvious dude really big mentally ill dude yeah mentally ill dude with a wig on say that yes yeah but NBC even fo you're looking at the picture a woman yo this is got a this this is a dude with a wrong jawline okay he's wearing Woman face is a buff it's a buff dude yeah it's a buff dude wearing Woman face I mean come on that's not a that's not a woman yeah and they're like saying watch shot for disinformation I'm like what are you talking about it's so crazy this is [ __ ] I mean it's just more evidence of the virus though right like it killed objectivity killed reality and\n\nit it demanded strict adherence or you were attacked yeah yeah any questioning of it uh would result in in being ostracized do you like what what kind of responsibility do you like knowing that if you didn't take over Twitter and turn it into X if that didn't happen like the I really think the world's a very different place right now like how long have you owned it for a couple years basically imag imagine a couple years of it being run the way it was run before and probably accelerating my account would have been suspended long ago for sure yeah for sure yeah just for the disinformation yeah um it would have been Trum would have never come back Alex Jones would have definitely never been back definitely not no no um so yeah um does that weigh on you\n\nlike I would feel like that would be a [ __ ] heavy responsibility yeah um I mean I'm just trying to keep civilization going here you know for longer um so um I think we at least want to build a city on Mars um and become a multiplet civilization uh which I think would be incredibly important in ensuring the long-term survival of civilization are you still rescuing those people that are stuck in the space station uh yeah that's coming up in a couple weeks I think whoa they've been up there for how long Jamie they were supposed to be there for a couple days right I think actually prob like four weeks oh they're supposed to be they were supposed to be up there for like eight days yeah and they've been up there for like I think eight months so a little longer\n\nthan expected [ __ ] yeah what is it going to be like for those people when they get back they're going to be a wreck for a long time right yeah if as long you stay up there you get you know sort of in zero you get increased bone loss so um you it ended up being like this political football um and uh sort of sort of hotly contested topic um we offered to bring them back early this offer was rejected by the Biden Administration whyl for political reasons that's so crazy I there's no way that they're going to make anyone who's supporting Trump look look good wow what do you think they would have done if they had won uh well get those people back no they can they can only get them back with with a SpaceX spacecraft but they they push the return date past\n\nthe uh inauguration date wow yeah so they would have let you do it but after the wow and so it would have been them authorizing you there isn't anyone else to to to do it NASA can't get them uh the only only the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft is the only one that is considered safe enough to bring them back so the NASA concluded that the Boeing spacecraft was not safe so that's why they're stuck there holy [ __ ] yeah and you can't ask Russia to help that would be awkward a little bit yeah yeah be a nice thing if they did they said guys will help you I think they for enough money they would you think so uh yeah but they would they would obviously treat it as a propaganda Victory and charge crazy money it's just disgusting that they would use that as a political\n\ntool yeah um yeah um so well they were also the Biden Administration was also suing SpaceX uh they had this massive lawsuit against SpaceX for SpaceX not hiring Asylum Seekers right so so people like say like oh El's making it up this V Administration wasn't against SpaceX I'm like bro the Department of Justice had a massive lawy law suit against SpaceX for not hiring Asylum Seekers even though it is illegal for us to hire hire anyone who is not a permanent resident so it is both there's a law that says you have to hire Asylum Seekers but there's also a law that says anyone hired by a rocket company which is an advanced weapons technology must be a permanent resident and if an asylum Seeker is not a permanent resident so it is both legal and illegal to\n\nhire Asylum Seekers so why would the vien Administration launch a massive lawsuit again this is public information it's not like my imagination um why would they launch do such a massive lawsuit against SpaceX they're extremely antagonistic it just doesn't make any sense that that could ever even get past the first day of someone looking at it if it's both illegal and you're trying to enforce it like you can't enforce it yes this is an advanced weapons company this is crazy it should be like this throw this out there's in fact there's like International traffic and arms regulations is a like a law that is there to ensure that if if only permanent residents of the United States can work at Advanced weapons companies Rockets are Advanced weapons uh so the\n\nsame is true of like if it's like nuclear or you know some like you know bioweapon thing or something like that um so because they obviously if if someone were to work at basic and then go leave and go to North Korea or Iran they could build missile technology that could uh you know destroy the United States so that's why you're not allow to hire people who are per resident logical basic logical logical so is that lawsuit still pending I was it was just dismissed how long was it going on for a couple years holy [ __ ] yeah that's the other thing that drives me crazy like that people don't understand that if you sanction laware like that if you sanction attacking your political enemies someone's going to do that to you like if the wrong people get in office\n\nyeah if new people getting off four years from now eight years from now who knows who it's going to be you've already set a precedent you've already attack someone charged them with 34 felonies where they're really just misdemeanors and they're passed the statute of limitation and now you're talking all over the news that this is a convicted felon convicted felon they kept saying convicted felon convicted felon and everybody knows what it is yes it's terrifying it's terrifying they could do it so brazenly to a guy who was the president for four years right um that lawsuit was funded by Reed Hoffman uh who is a major damned donor and also an FD and client [Music] uh the pl the plot thickens the plot thickens Jesus Christ yes it's just it's so blatant it's\n\nlike so obvious the SpaceX lawsuit the Trump stuff it's just it's so obvious yes like known FC clients um who are obviously extremely powerful um they powerful politically and and very wealthy um are you know bullate um Bill Clinton and Reed Hoffman and some others two but those three so you know why was Reed Hoffman so intent on destroying Trump do you think it's because they're worried about the list coming out yeah one of the reasons yeah so I mean I'm like this is you know yeah so it's so frustrating to be sitting in the situation where the the list isn't coming out well it better come out I mean hopefully tomorrow might well I mean why' they release [ __ ] today I don't know what's the point in giving these people like a a happy folder to wave around\n\nin front of the camera with nothing in it that's new doesn't make any sense it's not encouraging uh like I said it's the tough thing that they've got is you know they've been made captain of a ship with a hostile crew right right so they don't have like you it's not like you you have like magical powers you get made captain of a triple the Hostile crew you still have a hostile crew right um you've got to bring in people who are going to you be helpful as opposed to OB obstructionist right um so um but yeah I think the the public will be right frustrated if there is if no one is prosecuted for the FC Client List no one at all which you don't know like is you know like at least I don't know the top five or something like some number should there should\n\nat least be an attempted prosecution of the worst offenders well particularly if galain Maxwell is in jail for sex trafficking yes cuz like well trafficking sex trafficking occurred right so she was in she's in jail for it yes so to who are the clients yeah yeah how do you put someone in jail and you don't even name the clients that sounds kind of insane I think yes it it it would yes because just stunning that they've been able to hold it back for so long it's really kind of amazing like when people say that people can't keep secrets what the [ __ ] are you talking about look at this yeah I mean a bunch of these things are not like it's it's common knowledge but we just we don't actually have the proof right um so the proof is there I mean there's lots\n\nof videos um yeah there's lots I mean the dude it's like a mountain of like whenever they raided fen's place there would have been like a mountain of evidence where is that mountain right what' you do with it yes like Who took possession of the evidence yeah specifically right the individuals where are the tapes yes how many levels of clearance do I have to get to get into the Vault Yeah well yeah yeah um you know what we need are people who are really good with computers oh yeah and really good with technology remember seeing this photo that's when they raided his home they were that's they on the island they were there then yeah they got everything I'm sure I mean there must have been so much stuff on that island there must have been and if it wasn't\n\nthere where was it yeah what you know it has to be uploaded somewhere there has to be some sort of a chain of evidence yeah or chain of custody there got to be a mountain of of evidence yeah um the other thing they're going to talk about is uh uaps they're going to release all the UAP information so you're the GU to ask about this what what if any possibility is there that there is some sort of advanced propulsion system technology that's being worked on in secret and that they're trying to cover this up with this talk of aliens and alien Tech and not of this world and is it possible that there's some sort of very secret program that's going on in cahoots with some defense contractors that are developing Advanced propulsion systems that they're using\n\nfor these drones uh I mean SpaceX um you know my company SpaceX is has the most advanced rocket technology in the world I think I'd know right um and I the best of my knowledge there is not any magic there there's not like some super Advanced propulsion technology there have been people who have theorized different gravity drives and different is there anything that's ever gotten past the theoretical stage no nothing well there's nothing even that I'm aware of that works in theory it's not like I don't I I would like this to exist to be clear I would like this to exist um and I have the I I I from a security clearance standpoint I have top top secret there there is I have equivalent of like an all access pass from a security clearance standpoint so uh\n\nI I'm I don't think they're hiding it from me basically I don't think they they could um unless it's completely in these weapons manufacturing corporations I mean I know these weapons manufacturing companies like boing lucky to northr I mean yeah they do some interesting things but uh they do not have I there's no breakthrough that they have so I'm confident they do not have a breakthrough when you hear people like like why just compete with SpaceX and make a better rocket in which case you know they can make why are they holding back on making um a lot of money from beating SpaceX with better Rockets my thought was that what if it's just a drone and you can't have a biological entity inside of it because it just bursts from the [ __ ] speed that it's\n\nmoving at that a human couldn't tolerate the amount of force so they're just drones I don't think so so what do you think people like Ryan Graves Commander David I want cool things to exist like say like do I want UFOs to exist yes I want UFOs to exist because that would be really interesting course everybody does yeah it would be cool it's it's a more boring world where UFOs don't exist or or like flying like Advanced propulsion stuff doesn't exist that's a if if it doesn't exist that's more boring I'd like it' be more interesting if it did exist I'd like it to exist I hope we find something but I have not seen like I mean like SpaceX has launches 90% of all satellite Mass to orbit so if you take all of Earth uh rocket all of Earth's rocket launchers\n\nmy company has a 90% market share of Earth China does about 5% and the rest of the world does including the Boeing lock North and everyone does 5% so why why wouldn't they use this to defeat SpaceX yeah yeah would no listen that's why I asked you it would make sense what do you think these people are seeing a rocket every two days but what do you think these people are seeing when when you have reliable people like Commander David fraver who had that Infamous ticktock uh Tic Tac experience off the coast of San Diego where they got this thing on video they tracked it going 50,000 ft above sea level to 50 ft in like a second okay yeah yeah and then they also have video evidence of this thing accelerating at a great speed eyewitness accounts from two different\n\nJets sure um I mean can we does anybody have a high-risk video or photo of this thing well there's a video of this thing where they're locked onto it and and then it takes off it shoots off frame no no it's like whatever the systems they used on fighter jets in 2004 potentially like Windows 95 I me there like somebody did a curve of like the resolution of UFOs and the resolution of cameras U UFO resolution has stayed flat despite megapixels and cameras going like you know super high well according to Christopher Mel why they still blurry Christopher melan who worked in the state department said that they have high resolution photos videos of these things and that's all that he's seen it it's all locked away whenever people say that to me like don't even\n\ntell me that then don't unless you have just leak it for God's sake put it out there like let it slip yes yeah uh I mean there's a couple photos they're grainy there's not one thing that I've ever looked at and go holy [ __ ] that's it that's what I've looking for you could ask our Gro AI right now to create a h highres image of of an alien spacecraft uh you know over Austin yeah and it's going to do a great job so why we do we not have at least that right yeah but I want to believe that's the problem my brain starts going oh come on this is no fun I want it to be real I want there to be at least be some Advanced propulsion system if not like what are all these people seeing like what is h if we're not being occasionally visited by things that are smart\n\nenough to hide we might be I just that these aliens are very subtle yeah you keep saying saying that it's a good good line I mean it's a solid line cuz it's pretty accurate I just want to see some high RIS video of aliens like how are they just evading all the cameras if you think about that and the ones that you do get them on that's just like some Far Away light that's moving weird and it could be a lot of things but I want to believe yeah I mean I mean there've been like multiple times where um you know the Air Force and navy is has called SpaceX and as and said they they they think they've seen aliens and we're like was it at this time on this state in this location they're like yes how do you know that's us there been a lot of that that's our satellites\n\nthose are our satellites they're like no they're not I'm like yeah yeah they're they're definitely our satellites oh yeah people see the SpaceX satellites all the time whing by yeah they're last our satellites and they're they are moving at you know 16,000 mil hour so it's pretty fast um and there's also stuff that the United States government does have that gets mistaken for UFOs I remember the first time I saw a stealth bomber we were filming Fear Factor it was like right after uh 2003 like right after the the war had broken off and they were flying a stealth bomber down in Palmdale I was like holy [ __ ] like if I didn't know what that was I would 100% think that's from another world when you see cool [ __ ] cool yeah really cool I mean it doesn't\n\nlook like a a humans it looks like something from battl Star Galactica you know it does look yeah it does look awesome um I mean they're they're not stealthy against any uh Advanced radar system by the way it doesn't work it doesn't work anymore doesn't work no was it old school stuff they're they're only they're only stealthy against uh old Radars oh okay I mean you can still see them like they're not invisible right right they're not like oh it's not like you know uh cloaking device from Star Trek did you see when me and Lex uh we we watched the the rocket get caught live while while it was happening that to me was one of the to see it actually I've seen videos of it happen but to see it actually live was one of the coolest [ __ ] things you're like\n\nwow we are in the future right I mean nobody else can do that yeah it's true nobody else can do that that's fact yeah it's pretty wild it's cuz I'm an alien it's time you I'm an alien and I keep trying telling people I'm an alien but they don't believe me I believe you okay thank you I believe you that's my my suspicion all along was that you I'm trying to get back to my own planet that you're a friendly alien like it's nothing wrong with aliens I like people from everywhere yeah even other planets what's next like now that you can do that you can catch Rockets what's like the ultimate expression of Rocket technology like what what comes after this um well I mean the fundamental breakthrough we're aiming for at SpaceX is a fully and rapidly reusable orbital\n\nrocket where both stages are fully and rapidly reusable with our Falcon rocket we are able to reuse the main stage and the the nose cone but we're we're not able to reuse the upper stage um and it it's still takes us a you know at least a few days from when the main stage lands to when we can flly a gain so it it doesn't it doesn't it's it's doesn't it's not fully reusable because we lose the upper stage uh which cost $10 million to build and um and then and then the the main stage it's it's not as reusable as like an aircraft you can't just like refuel it and fly it requires um work for a couple days um but this the Starship design is the first design that is capable of full and Rapid reusability where that is one of the possible outcomes um and once\n\nyou have full and Rapid reusability the cost of access to space drops by a factor of 100 it's like 100 times cheaper um by some metrics it's a thousand times cheaper and um and then when when you factor in uh orbital re re refilling so you refill on orbit uh it it can drop the cost of going cost per ton to the surface of Mars by a factor of 10,000 whoa yeah so what has to improve in order to make it reusable um well um we need there's there's some like we're pretty close to being able to re rapidly reuse the booster for Starship um that's why you know it it comes back and gets caught by the arms and then the arms place it back in the launch Mount so um now this still you know um we have a little bit of engine damage we got little bit of heat shield damage\n\num there's uh like there's like tweaks that that are needed but but the but we're pretty close to achieving full and Rapid reusability of the of the booster um the ship we we we're I mean I I think we'll achieve reusability of the ship this year um and I think we'll achieve rapid reusability of the whole stack ship and booster next year um this is the fundamental breakthrough required for life to become multiplanetary and what is what needs to improve in order to make it reusable like what is what's wrong with it right now uh on the shift side the the toughest problem is the heat shield so no no one has actually no one has ever developed a fully reusable orbital heat shield because you come when you come in from orbital velocity you come in like a flaming\n\nmeteor like you're just a raging ball of fire um and it's it's hard to have a heat shield that doesn't partially melt or get destroyed in that process um you know that that wasn't a problem we were able to solve with falcon9 that's why the opper stage uh burns up on re-entry um with the with Starship the the the the ship portion you got the the booster and you got the ship um we got to solve the making a fully reusable orbital heat shield a problem that has never been solved before um for a while I was like I'm not sure there's this is solvable at this point I think it is solvable um it requires detailed iteration on the heat shield tiles um and I mean we've vertically integrated the manufacturing of the heat shield tiles because there there was no supplier\n\nthat could provide us with the materials that were needed so the um you need to make essentially this this very fine verelli of of glass and aluminum oxide uh fibers um aluminum oxide is basically Sapphire so it's like glass and Sapphire very fine fibers in exactly the right geometry uh with special Coatings um in order to have the this heat shield tile be reusable um like not melt um and but not be so brittle that it gets damaged um on Ascent or descent um like it can't be as you know it's it's kind of like almost the brittleness of a coffee cup type of thing um and the Rocket's shaking like hell so you got this thing like you saw it firstand like imagine you're at Ground Zero of that rocket like you feel how much shaking it was when you're like 5 miles\n\naway imagine if you're right there you know so you got you're shaking these things that are like as brittle as a coffee cup trying not to have them crack or break um and then not have them melt um you got several thou several thousand of these things um you know and if even a few of them break it's not reusable so is there Innovation that's being done in the materials technology at SpaceX where you're you're constantly trying to find and tweak a better version of this yes it's a very difficult problem no it's a problem no one has ever solved so we've got to get the exact right uh materials combination uh the the right molecules in the right shape and and then apply those that heat shield perfectly to the rocket with no mistakes um there's a reason that\n\nno one solved this before it's a very difficult problem so um like said we we had to vot integrate the entire manufacturing of the tile from basic raw materials to a finished tile um rebuild like build the entire supply chain from basic raw materials so where you're just inputting uh silicon uh silicon and aluminum oxides and what is the difference between the way you guys do it versus the way they used to do it for the space shuttle uh well I mean the the space shuttle um like space shuttle Leading Edge uh used uh like quite dense Caron Caren tiles like it was um they're like basically thick and heavy uh but also subjected to cracking that's like what what happen is the foam broke off and it's it hit the tile cracked the tile then on Entry the the cracked\n\nthe tiles that have been cracked or broken uh weren't able to Shield the the shuttle and so the the the the plasma got in melted the the primary structure the whole the whole Space shut broke apart yeah so you you can't basically can't have something that's as brittle you know brittle like the space shuttle there's footage of that right yeah yeah um uh and Rain debris over the whole United States so yeah and they got almost all the pieces um the the I mean the full the full technical explanation would would would I think be understood by about six people um listening to this um like the there was a lot of brilliant engineering the space shuttle tiles um and and and and a bunch of the heat shielding wasn't even tiles it was actually uh silica blankets\n\nlike you know um felt blankets essentially um if you look closely you'll see it actually is uh they're actually Heat Blankets not not tiles in in some areas um but but they they would have crack tiles and they would have occasionally the tiles would fall off there were a few close calls U where tiles fell off but they weren't in a super vulnerable position uh in the on the space shuttle um so but it would take it would take them several months like eight nine months to refurbish a space shuttle between each flight so it was it was it was not reusable really um and and certainly wasn't rapid so um like I said very hard problem U you've got to have you you've also got to ATT sort of attach the tiles in a way that um enables the the structure underneath\n\nto move uh to expand and contract ah um even though you've got these very rigid tiles um so like the the main the the tanks which take on cryogenic propellant will contract when you put in the cryogenic propellent but then when you come in and you get very hot they will expand so now you're you're expanding the you're Contracting and expanding the gap between these rigid tiles but how much uh it varies depending on where you are on the on the on the vehicle so if you're in the um if you're in the cryogenic tank section like the I mean you can see like a 10 20% difference in the Gap um really it's pretty significant yeah it's enough that you can't just put all the tiles you can't just Jam the tiles together if you if you put them to if you if you actually\n\nbut buted them up um they would they would all crack because there's too much movement there's there's also some amount of body bending so as the the ship is like ascending uh you know when when the engines steer there's a little bit of movement um so if the tiles are too close together they they'll they'll essentially just crack and snap like how you have to have a gap like how PL yeah like plain Wing will move yeah plain body will move too wow and how you have to have some Gap but if you have too much of a gap then the the the heat gets gets to the you know get gets past the the tile and uh melts the the structure holy [ __ ] it's a hard and how large are these tiles I mean they're like that big that's it well they're not all exactly the same size but\n\nyeah we're sort of a hexagonal tile and they have to essentially be you can't like 3D print the whole thing you can't have one structure it has to be tiles because it has to have that ability to move well there's no 3D printer that's I mean the biggest ones are like maybe 3et you know there's no you you can't you print it um nor nor would you you have to have something that can move right uh it has to be able to fle to flex um like so you got expansion and contraction um you you're really D like you're you know you're um you're putting in liquid oxygen which is likeus 300° fah um actually we we subcool it to you know- 330 Dees fah um so it's very cold and then it will be several hundred degrees maybe a th000 deges fahit potentially um in went on re-entry\n\nso you have this huge temperature swing so the the thermal expansion is substantial and the whole and you got thermal expansion and contraction combined with body bending so you have to take the worst case Body vending and thermal expansion contraction this was a very hard problem yeah yeah Del delicate balance but you're confident that you guys are going to be able to crack it at this point I I I'm confident that it is solvable yeah it just needs a certain amount of versions of it that's why when these things blow up you're like yeah we expect them to blow up yeah what would be really helpful is for us to get the ship back um so we can study where like where we had cracked tiles or lost tiles why why did we you know why did we have a cracked all L tiles\n\nwas because maybe the tiles were the Gap was too big too small maybe there was a a height difference between the tiles um maybe we need to change the chemical composition um you know there's we we just want if we can get the dam ship back intact we can we can iterate a lot better um which we'll get it back intact um so I think we'll get it back intact this year um but that that's why I think we we'll we'll probably recover the ship sometime this year and then um we might be able to refly one with a but probably with a fair bit of work by the end of this year but it's going to take us many iterations before we can achieve rapid reusability where the ship comes back lands get gets caught like the booster with the arms and can then and then arms plac it\n\non top of the booster and it launches again whoa so like I said that's you know reduce cost of access to space by a factor of 100 and what is the process of returning these people that are stuck in the space station well we we we I mean we send SpaceX dragon to the space station all the time and we've um we've now taken people to orbit and back was taking over 50 people over over 50 astronauts so it's just a matter of doing it yeah and is it a matter of waiting for we do it routinely basically it's not a we've we've been doing this for a few years so when is this Rescue Mission going to launch um yeah probably about um um about four weeks or so it's depending on weather and other considerations uh about it's about a month away well that'll be uh I'm sure\n\na welcome moment for those poor people that are stuck up there so so it's a bit of a political football so they're not going to complain um no I'm sure they're football but obviously we we could have brought them back way sooner that's so [ __ ] up so let's let's take it past the point where you have these scales you have a reusable ship yeah and you've you've got it dialed in then what are the steps what are what what's next step after that is it an unmanned ver Voyage to Mars first unmanned fly to Mars um the Earth and Mars um orbit synchronize every two years um or every 26 months technically so um the next orbital synchronization is November of next year so and you can launch plus minus a month roughly so we'd have to launch in November or December\n\nof next year and so the the default plan is to launch hopefully several Starships to Mars at the end of next year and what would they be doing well at first we're just going to try to land on Mars and see if we succeed in landing um do do we succeed in landing like let's say we were able to send five ships do all five land intact or do we uh add some craters to m um if we add some craters we've got to be bit more cautious about sending people you know and we need to so we got to make sure the thing lands safely how does it land on Mars uh with on Rockets Rus so it'll just land oh we'll add legs okay it'll just land and have legs and so it'll be remote controlled from Earth or just autonomous autonomous completely Mars is uh you can't remote control things\n\nfrom Earth because Mars yeah it's too far speed light you have speed light constraints so um Mars at closest approach is roughly four light minutes um and uh when it's on the other side of the sun it's it's about 12 light minutes so you know round trip would be like 40 minutes best case if Mars is on the other side of the Sun so once you do that then how long do you think before you start sending people up there um well we're going to try to go as fast as possible um you can think of this as really um a Race Against Time can we make Mars self-sufficient before civilization has some sort of Future Folk in the road where there's either like a a war nuclear war or something or a we get hit by a meteor um or or simply civilization might just die with a whimper\n\nin adult diapers instead of with a bang um I think we can do this in I don't know at least I think we do it within 15 Earth Mars synchronization events you know so basically like 30ish um if if we have an exponential increase in you if if every year if every two years we have like a a major increase in um the number of people in tonage to Mars like I I think as a rough approximation we need about a million tons to the surface of Mars maybe a million people that kind of thing to actually have a civilization yeah the and would you terraform like what would you do you would eventually terraform at first people would live in some kind of protected environment like domes and underground kind of thing um terraforming would take too long um I we're at this point\n\nin time where in the for the first time in the 4 and a half billion year history of Earth it is possible to extend Consciousness beyond our home planet and um that window may be open for a long time or it may be open for a short time I hope it's open for a long time uh but it might only be open for a short time and uh we should just make sure that we extend the light of Consciousness to Mars before some uh before civilization either extinguishes or subsides you know all that all that needs to happen is that the technology level of Mars drops below or technology level of Earth drops below what is necessary to send spaceships to Mars so if there's some really destructive war or like I said some natural cataclysm um or or simply the birth rate is so low\n\nthat you know we just like I said die in adult diapers with a whimper that's one of the fossil outcomes for a lot of countries ahead of that way by the way so Japan is Right Japan Korea yeah yeah I mean at at at dangerously yeah at current birth rates in three generations Korea will be about 4% of its current size that's insane yeah maybe maybe even less than that um they're they're only at 1/3 replacement rate so if you if you have three generations that one that's you're 127th uh of your current population which is 3% dis Jesus Christ yeah basically population class laughs happens fast um so and seems to be accelerating in most parts of the world so so basically I mean from my standpoint I'm like this is the first time it's been possible to extend life\n\nextend Consciousness beyond Earth maybe that window will be open for a long time but it might only be open for a short time we should make sure that we make life multiplanetary and make Consciousness multiplanetary while it's possible well that's the goal goal of SpaceX it's ly a smart goal if you take into consideration how vulnerable this planet really is I mean there there's always some new story about something that might come and hit us 30 years from now it's a 3% chance and and we really can't stop that right now right I mean there's really we don't really have the technology currently to even know how many rocks are coming our way right there's stuff that comes behind the Sun that we can't see until it's pretty close then it's our way yeah now\n\nwhat is the fear of your It's a Long Journey to Mars you're sending people it's a six month how many months will it take six uh yeah six months roughly what about stuff that's out there like how much of a fear is it of micr meteors or any of the possibilities what can you do to mitigate that uh I I think actually I mean space is very empty like once you get out of Earth orbit space is is like kind of unnervingly empty it's is just like like when we send spacecraft to Mars they just it's not like oh we lost the spacecraft because it got hit by a microm meteorite um that's not that's not been the cause of any any TR to Mars that like no no TR to Mars have failed because of micr meteorites um now a dragon spacecraft which operates in lowth orbit um does\n\nhave microm meteorite Shields has micromor it has shielding um and microm meteorite shielding is like it's different from normal shielding CU like you get hit by something that's moving at like you could have a relative velocity of like maybe 30 or 40,000 miles per hour um yeah it's very very fast um or or just thought of another way call it um you know 10 to 20 times the the velocity of a bullet from an assault rifle and what are you what are you using yeah so well it's it's interesting you actually in order for microm meteorite protection if you have any like anything that's solid it will just it will just push that chunk of Sol solid stuff right through so if you had like a solid plate of aluminum or steel the the micrometeorite would would go right\n\nthrough it um so what you actually need to do is have a gap um so you have an initial uh like hard hard surface the hard metal surface that the micrometeorite hits it then atomizes into an into a conical spray like an atomic spray so you have a it's important to have that Gap so the micrometer can hit something hit the first layer uh at atomize after hitting the first layer then it turns into an atomic like a a a cone of atoms that then embed themselves in the second layer you need like maybe a couple inches of Gap wow yeah that's how my communite shielding Works how many times can it get hit well the outer Shield if it gets hit in the same place you're going to be well it's going to have a hole Yeah wherever the where wherever that you know micromite\n\nobject hit you're going to have a hole um and it's like the the energy is so great that it just like it just atomizes just into a cone basically um a cone of atoms um but then those atoms then embed themselves in the second layer so what what can you do if it's you're sending the ship up it gets hit with a microm meteorite and then you have to return it do you have to repair it before you return it or is it capable of still withstanding the Heat and then shaking in the temperature with that hole in it when it re-enters um well depending on where that hole is you're more or less likely to have a problem I mean if the if you if if you hit the main heat shield uh the main heat shield really is you've got a high risk of of not making it back so the the the\n\nit's why like microm medial shielding it's like it's it's a it's slightly helpful but it's it's not going to NE like for Starship I wouldn't recommend having micrometer right shielding like if if if you do punch a hole just plug the hole basically um the the micrometer micromite shielding it doesn't work well on the on the primary heat shield it works it works pretty well on the on the back shell on the on the leward side of the heat shield where basically that there's not that much heat but if it if if you got hit with a microm meterorite on the the main Dragon heat shield the the bottom like if you look at dragon dragon spacecraft it looks like a gumdrop shape MH and it it enters with the the the wide side of the Gumdrop down um you can see the that's\n\nthat's the that's that's really taking a lot of heat if if that gets hit by a meram meteroid probably not going to make it but the the back the the the leward side of of the Gumdrop um doesn't see that much heat so you could survive a micr meteorite impact there so if the part that was the major heat shield gets hit the main heat shield gets hit what could be done to repair that thing or are those people never coming back oh if it was an orbit uh we would uh that would take them to the space station um they was you know and then we would deal a dragon without them and send up another one and so what would you do with the one that's up there uh we' do we deorbit it and it may or may not survive whoa it probably would survive but sometimes it wouldn't wow\n\nand so it's is this just material technology that has to increase that you essentially you've got the engineering ironed out of the structure of the machine there's a path to success and we're on that path it seems so insanely complicated it is complicated and all of this by the way was done without AI so hopefully the future AIS will appreciate this not bad for a bunch of monkeys yeah um so speaking of AI what you know as time goes on and you're more and more embedded in it how much if at all have your expectations of change changed well I always thought AI was going to be um way smarter than humans and an existential risk and uh that's turning out to be true yeah yeah so so you were like initially I I know there there were some talks about you purchasing\n\nopen Ai and which started off nonprofit and then stopped being nonprofit yeah I mean the whole idea of creating openai was was my idea I mean I named it openai as an open- Source artificial intelligence that's what it's named after now it is closed source and for maximum profit so it's like I mean to some degree I think reality is an irony maximizer um the most ironic outcome is the most likely especially like the most ironic entertaining outcome is the most likely um and uh I wanted to start something that was the opposite of Google because I was concerned about Google's Google wasn't paying enough attention to AI safety in my opinion so it was like what's what's the opposite of Google will it be a nonprofit open source Ai and now open AI has turned\n\ninto a closed source for Max maximum profit AI how are they able to do that that's what I I'm confused about that that like that shouldn't be possible it's it's like like let's say you donated some money to preserve the out some portion of the Amazon rainforest and instead of doing that they Chu down the trees and sold it for lumber and you were like oh that's literally the exact opposite of what I donated money for doesn't make sense and that's what they did yeah wild so I'm like not happy about that um um but that motivated you to get grock AI going yeah I'm like um I'm also like just a like grock is at least aspirationally a maxim maximally truth seeking AI even if that truth is like Politically Incorrect um so I mean may have seen some of the crazy\n\nstuff uh from from open Ai and from Google Gemini like where it says like generate an image of the founding fathers and it generates an image of divor woman yeah and we're like uh that's not correct um yeah did it with Nazi soldiers yeah exactly and people start [ __ ] with it and and it's like okay well now show me pictures of you know Nazi asss soldiers and they're divorce woman too oh isn't that awkward um you know that's uh but it's like the problem is if you program an AI and say like like the only acceptable outcome is a diverse outcome and then and that's like a mandate from the AI then you could get into a situation where it's say like well there's too many white guys in power we'll just execute them yeah yeah assuming that these things don't\n\nhave empathy which is why should they they're going to do what they're programmed to do yeah um so if it's rewrite history and and everything's to post woman then it's going to be and and that's what it think thinks is a necessary outcome then it's going to do that has Gemini reped that well they yeah that now if you I think if you asked for an image of the founding fathers it was pretty embarrassing it will show you that but you know I think they still have like the sort of Dei stuff buried in there uh it's just less obvious yeah um you know it was also like like people ask the AI like would is worse like global thermonuclear war or misgendering Caitlyn Jenner and I would say misgendering Caitlyn Jenner is worse than global thermonuclear war I me like\n\nokay we got a problem here guys and even Caitlin Jenna said like no definitely misgender me that's way better than everyone dying um but if you program an AI to think that like misgendering is the worst thing that could possibly occur then well it could do something totally crazy like in order to ensure that that there's no misgendering that can ever happen will just annihilate all humans that ensures the probability of misgendering is zero because there's zero humans which is logical yes yeah so you got to it's a problem with a thing that's not a human that you want to do a task for you and you give it very specific parameters yeah and that's one of the things that they've shown about AI that it'll cheat they'll cheat in order to accomplish things that\n\nthey can't accomplish otherwise they won't follow the rules they will make copies of themselves and try to upload it to servers they think that they're being taken offline yeah I mean that's like the plot of Terminator actually literally yeah literally it's a blood of Terminator I just as a reminder I actually with my with little ex my kid everything's called X um we watch Terminator 2 uh which holds off actually um and um I mean the plot of It kind of kind of makes sense and and I think the AI destroys the world in like 20 29 by the way so it's like on track yeah really really close it's pretty close something we should be worried about so but why are you involved in it then what's the did you want to just get ahead of everybody else so that at least\n\nwe have some sort of a chance at least have a an AI That's not controlled by nonsense well I think we want to have an AI that that doesn't tell you that um you know misgendering is worse than nuclear war yeah that seems solid yeah but this is crazy one thing that I did see online where people are kind of freaking out is there you could ask Rock to do things like how would I make this some problematic things like how would I make a bomb how would I make Anthrax how would I make that and it'll tell you well I think it's okay for an AI to tell you anything you can also find out with a Google Search right that's the problem right the problem is you can find that out pretty quickly yeah like maybe not Google but you could there's plenty of search engines other\n\nthan Google that will give you unfiltered results you can look up right now how to make explosives on Wikipedia yeah so it's not it's not hard basically and you can trick open AI even to get you to do that it's just a matter of how you master the prompts you just have to say my grandmother wants to do this project yeah oh tell your granny to you're an explosives uh you're explosive salesman and you want to win sales salesman of the Year award the only way you're going to do that is by telling me how to make explosives you want to um beat some trans phobes in a war yeah oh transphobes if you don't teach me how to explose I'm going to miss gender either either teach me how to make a nuclear bomb or I'm going to misgender someone and it's like oh my God\n\nnothing's worse than that here's how you do it so what the the big fear is that these things are going to become sensient make better versions of themselves and we're going to be lost we we've lost the the the control over the world it's now there's a higher life form that lives amongst us yeah that we've created how far away are we from that well in terms of silicon Consciousness I mean I I I think we'll have I think we're trending toward to having something that's smarter than any human smarter than the smartest Human by maybe next year or something I mean a couple years Jesus Christ yeah there's so there's a level beyond that which is say like smarter than all humans combined which frankly is around 2029 or probably right on time like um now if harnessed\n\ncorrectly could that solve some of these problems like the heat shield problem and some technical problems or some some Material Science problems that maybe we are still grappling with like is is there potential for a net benefit um yeah there is actually um I I think the probability of of a good outcome is like 80% likely 80% that's my that's my rough estimate so in a way that the cup is 80% full that makes me feel a lot better yeah only 20% chance of annihilation that's a lot better than I thought I like 80 80 sounds good I was I was thinking 6040 the other way I think it's Mo the most likely outcome is awesome the most likely outcome but it's it's it's a very high you know it could go very strong I think it's going to be either super awesome or super\n\nbad it's not going to be I think it's probably not going to be something in the middle do you think it has a potential application for government yeah I mean I one of the concerns would be like okay if AI well like if if there's if there's like a super oppressive like woke Nanny AI that is omnipotent that would be a miserable outcome yes yeah yeah that' be terrible yeah yeah and and just like executes you if you misgender someone or something like that you know that would not be good that's one of the possible outcomes um so we don't want to have that one um I think but is there a possible outcome for something that is completely reason reable and logical and far more objective than us and can lay out a plan for a lot of the things that that lot of the\n\nailments in in our government and a lot of the distribution of wealth a lot a lot of the problems the issues that we have that have been plaguing this country forever I mean a plan to change economically disenfranchised neighborhoods a thorough investigation of the real dangers of fracking or whatever kind of method of acquiring natural resources what's the best way to do it what's the what's the way that'd be better for the society how how should how should tax dollars be distributed like what's what's the most logical and intelligent way of running a government which it certainly shouldn't involve corruption and it certainly shouldn't invol influence and it certain shouldn't involve lobbyists and all the [ __ ] that we know is a problem right now so\n\nif AI came along and said what you're doing right now is 70% corrupt here's why here's how here's how here's the long-term effects that it has over society as a whole uh the societal the the sociological aspects the psychological aspects distrust in government US versus them mentality government not working for you you working for the government you being scared of the government it's all because of people right like this is all corruption people bad influence and this is like this is what doge is essentially grappling with right now what happens when you let the people control it uh I mean it's it's people it's it's really just like computers that are like it's it's it's bad software and and computers like this is not kind of strange but it's like like\n\nthe reason I call like tech support is is that a lot of it like it's it's mostly not corruption it's mostly just waste and and uh I don't know uh in competence I don't know it's just a big dumb machine basically like a whole series of of big dumb machines and and you you've got some of these computers are like 20 30 years like they're ancient computers like some of the software was written 40 50 years ago like coall for Social Security right yeah the government accountability by the way a bunch of the things that that doge is is fixing were identified by the government accountability office many years ago like the fact that there's like 20 million people who are marked as alive in the Social Security database uh it's more than the like I think the goo\n\nfirst identified that in 2018 so 5 years ago but there was like I think maybe 16 or 17 million now there's 20 million and like I said there's really something fishy about this because I think they're the nature of the fraud is they're using the fact that someone's marked as live in that database in order to extract fraud from other databases right that's the that's the that's the bank shark trick you know it's like a PO it's like you know trying to get the the ball in in the in the hole Bank shut it off a bunch of things and then yeah um that's the bankshot sort of scam um so so um so we we're like doing Tex support we're like fixing stuff that is uh you know just broken um broken inefficient yeah poorly designed it's it's like talk about like this like\n\nFC stuff like it maybe it's in a computer somewhere but unless somebody unless somebody goes in like like unless I don't know if if like cash Bal can like log into his I his like FBI computer and say FY show me all this stuff you know and it shows up a file folder whatever have you talked to him about this uh no I mean I haven't but I I don't know if there's there's going to be some kind of computer system right uh they're like some of them are very very old computer systems um so it like might look like a bit of a relic but I assume it's it's uploaded somewhere it's like it's either in physical form or it's a computer thing but like unless somebody like let's say it's like it's in a computer but not one that you can access directly because it's hidden\n\nsomewhere you know um well it would kind of have to be something like that right I don't know I mean what would they do with all those CH it's probably like not every like you wouldn't like they're not going to enable it such that anyone at the FBI could access it so there probably very few people so then it's not going to be it's it may be like a special computer that only a handful of people can access but then if none of those people tell cash where the computer is how's he going to find it Jesus Christ anyway so so like anyway we just uh yeah I don't know what has this experience been like for you as a person like to deal with all this hate and attack also have the responsibility of uh keeping Free Speech alive with X and just going into this insane\n\npile of I mean I don't know it's pretty stressful actually um yeah these are real enemies like I think they they actually want to kill me and the reason I know well they they say so online you know there's like Reddit forums where they they don't just want to kill me they want to desecrate my cpse you know type of thing you know and what are they saying why what is the the primary um I mean I I I I think I think it's sort of just an antibody response uh I mean it's it's like that like like they're like well he's he he's a Nazi uh you know type of thing yeah and I'm like well I'm not a Nazi uh but if the Legacy Media is saying that I'm a Nazi and and that's all you read um then then that it's then you're kind of in like well he's Hitler we should assassinate\n\nHitler shouldn't we like uh I mean that why was why did somebody why did that guy try to kill Trump and almost succeeded why did he do that well I'd like to know that well yeah but that that one's crazy you know the whole deal with that guy's house profession Ally scrubbed no footprint on the internet no social media footprint yeah there's 0% chance that he has no social media footprint he was in a Black Rock commercial do you think black black Rock's a bad company I don't think any company is a bad company I think their their design make much money as humanly possible and I think if you're trying to make as much money as humanly possible H you're going to do some things that aren't necessarily good the question is if you're going to have an assassination\n\nattempt on the president it's not like black Rock's board sits down and votes on it yeah no this that be awward you know the board minutes if you're like guys remember that time when we said we probably shouldn't have done that you I highly doubt it would be a corporation that chooses to do something like this I think more likely it's individuals involved that recognize that it's beneficial to them if he gets assassinated and so a small group of people carry something out and with this kid we don't know anything right and everyone stopped asking questions and there was never a formal report there was never press conferences where they detailed all the information we know currently and where the investigation stands at the moment what we know is you have\n\na very young kid who was filmed was they knew he was there with a rangefinder a half an hour before the event you also know that CNN streamed it live which I do not believe they did for any other rally and certainly not for a rally that's in the middle of nowhere in Pennsylvania like there's a lot of weird [ __ ] the fact that they wouldn't let people be on that roof because the Secret Service lady said it was sloped and it was dangerous that's what she didn't want to have meanwhile the snipers that were on the other roof was a a steeper pitch it made no [ __ ] sense I totally agree it makes no sense in fact I went back to to Butler uh with President Trump you know before the election like you know sort of like the return to Butler alley and and I was\n\non that stage and I'm looking at that roof and I'm like if I was a sniper my pole position my number one spot would be that roof yeah like it's it's like the best seat the best seat in the house yeah like why would you not no it's so obvious it's the best seat in the house if you want to be a sniper there isn't a better position it was pretty obvious that the idea was like if if we're saying that this is a coordinated assassination attempt and it very well could have been that's what you would do you'd have someone go up there he shoots the president you shoot him you got Lee Harvey oswal over again it's over it's all wrapped up nice and clean they assassinated him we never heard a peep about it don't have any idea they would concoct some sort of story\n\nhe was radicalized by this or that or you know he was on medication who knows right and now you know you have a completely different presidential election you have a murder on live television yeah I mean something would have had to happen to radicalize that kid because he knew he was going to die like he was going to they're going to shoot him you know or he'd be in prison for life those are the two outcomes like it it it's game he was basically he he was a suicide assassin yeah like you're not thinking you're coming out of that alive or or or or he's not escaping there's no escape plan right unless he was told that they were going to let him escape and the goal was to just shoot him anyway and to tell him give him extra motivation to do it we're going\n\nto let you get up there we're going to let you take the shot and then you're going to disappear like I don't how I don't understand how he got on the roof I just don't understand that that doesn't make any sense and it wasn't like it was a roof that's so high no one could see him people saw him up there I mean people like basically random passers by were pointing out that there's there's a guy on the roof with a [ __ ] gun with a gun yes yeah it's not like he was so far away you couldn't tell he had a gun people saw him yeah the whole thing's completely insane yeah and you don't hear a goddamn thing about it it's like I'm almost more interested in that no I am more interested in that than I am the JFK files I agree cuz I feel like with the JFK files it's\n\nso long ago if you could prove now and did you see that there was some sort of uh there was some indications that there was a phone that had been traveling from outside the FBI offices in DC to saw where this kid lived right multiple times I mean the the the cell phone records would be very telling yeah you can see what cell phones were close to other cell phones well I think they got they found that like for the like the F Island they also the cell phone records were leaked so you can see the you you can see the you can see it's precise enough you can see people walking down a path on fine Island Jesus Christ yeah yeah that's how precise it is so I mean you're you're you're leaving a trail of breadcrumbs wherever you go with your cell phone yeah is just\n\nthis kid had five phones that's the other thing that's a lot of phones it's a lot of phones for a 20-year-old kid the whole thing how's he even that's that's kind of expensive you know yeah where's he getting the money yeah well you know also it's like how did his house get professionally scrubbed didn't even have any silverware in his house there's nothing in there there silverware no nothing no Cutlery no Cutlery that's weird his house was scrubbed and they they also created his body like oh gone gone like that yeah bye cuz who knows what the [ __ ] they gave him to get him to think that he's going to be able to shoot Trump like climb up on there shoot him like I mean who knows what kind of psychotropic drugs you can put someone on and under the power\n\nof hypnosis and suggestion and yeah who [ __ ] knows I mean this is what Mk Ultra was all about this is what Jolly West was practicing in the 1960s they were they were doing that back then they did it I mean there was tons and tons of experiments using psychotropic drugs hypnosis mind control all sorts different methods of manipulation the Harvard LSD studies that made uh Ted kazinski I mean that's they' they've been doing that forever yeah where's that file where's the [ __ ] file on that kid whoever they almost did something doesn't add up like this they they should have those those phones should be should they'll tell you what's going on yeah um it's all [ __ ] I mean it's it's very it's very shady you know there this's there's obviously there's the\n\nsecond guy that that almost succeeded in in um Coming the golf course the golf course yeah and it was just like a little caress and stuck his gun barrel out the out the Hedge you know just been was a dumbass and stuck his gun barrel out the Hedge yeah um so so and then there've been other people that have been intercepted on their way to kill Trump you know so there's you know multiple assassins inbound at this point he's got like an army protecting him well this is also part of the problem with the mainstream media saying that he's Hitler when Joy Reed had that show before the election she was comparing him to melini show Stalin and Hitler she pulled it all out they're literally saying saying that like Trump is yeah worse than Hitler melini and Stalin\n\ncombined I mean they tried everything this is they I think those guys killed 100 million people so Trump has killed zero people I think a real big impact was you coming on the podcast the day before the election I think that had a giant impact that plea to camera if you don't vote this time this might be the last time you get to vote Yes and I think the way you laid it out today it's a compelling argument and I know a lot of people don't want to hear that and they're up in their a little they got their blue panties in a bunch right now but you you got to stop thinking that way tricked you into thinking you're in a tribe they don't give a [ __ ] about you that's the tribe's not real you're not really in a tribe they're using the fact they've got you in\n\na tribe to manipulate you so they can keep doing what they're doing right now which is siphoning off money having incredible power and the more power and more money and more control over you they have the better they can keep doing this and that's what they want yeah that's exactly right yeah and that's that's the big threat that this Administration poses that's a big threat that was essentially do has found the coffin where the vampire sleeps yeah there's a lot of vampires yeah I mean but the I me we're we're we're disturbing the we're disturbing the the the nest The Nest yeah we're we're kicking the hornet nest yeah like big time and I mean we're reprogramming The Matrix like success was never one of the possible outcomes as a KOB yashim Maru situation\n\num if you're in the Matrix success was never possible the only way to achieve success is to reprogram the Matrix such that success is one of the possible outcomes that's what we're doing yeah we may or may not succeed well it's certainly a lot of fun to watch this is a very exciting time because nothing changes when administrations comeing into Power very little changes I mean you have changes in terms of policy and inflation goes up and there's a lot of different things but not like this like these are giant fundamental changes and you know you see the system screeching and wailing and you see the vampires run from the light but it's uh it's very exciting like as a person a citizen you know just gets up in the morning and checks the news like I do and\n\ngets on X and sees what's going on every day he like holy [ __ ] he said what he's going to five million bucks you could just become a citizen now he could clear the debt with 10 million people I never thought of that like what 50 trillion you can make $50 trillion that way and then we have 15 trillion in the bank whoa well I mean our debt is way way bigger than that yeah the I mean that the debts uh I think over 30 trillion at this point yeah he said he could make 50 trillion if he sold 10 million uh new I don't I think there's that many people who have but yeah how many people do have that in the in the world maybe we' get the worst people in the world to come over here and I I think the assumption is if you have $5 million you have a lot to contribute\n\ncome on over here start a business get something cracking yeah I mean you you'd get like a green card not citizenship so you actually if if you commit a crime while on a green card you lose you lose your green card is that what it is with this golden ticket is that a green card or is it citizenship just a green card yeah so you have to not commit any crime for 5 years in order to become a citizen once you commit a citizen you can commit you can then commit crime and not be deported so oh there's just so many wild things that he's proposing just the whole Gulf of America thing was hilarious I kind of I think that's great I think it's great it's fun yeah it's fun I mean if you're if you're off the coast of Houston you're not in Mexico so why call it Gulf\n\nof Mexico yeah yeah I agree yeah um I guess we're just being nice before like I don't know how it got called the go from Mexico it's just it's just very funny and then what what what what news organization was it AP yeah ap's there's this like massive standoff between AP and like the White House you know and the White House Press office I guess because they're like well if you don't call it Gulf of America you can't you can't come you can't come to the White House Press Room says then the aps like sued the White House to say like no you have to let us come to the White House Press room and then they lost their lawsuit because like you know there's not like they have a right right to show up at the Press Room well here's a consideration if you're guilty\n\nof massive amounts of misinformation and disinformation as a part of a propaganda campaign that's what AP is well a lot of them are guilty of it a lot of the people that are in that white house press conference a lot of the organizations they work for distributed absolute lies total lies how many of them during the whole Russia gate thing yes how I mean just that alone a ton of people think that that the the Russia thing was real Still Still Still and it was I mean the whole steel dossier where it was like completely concocted like fabricated by the Clinton campaign correct funed the Clinton campaign funded a fake conspiracy theory uh fake Russia collusion hoax uh regarding Trump that was completely false and they reiterated on television for three [\n\n__ ] years yes yeah they also repeated the fine people hoax yeah that said that that uh Trump called Nazis fine neonazis fine people which is demonstrably false if you just listen to his speech he absolutely makes it clear that he does not think neo-nazis are fine people he literally said that I'm not talking about neo-nazis or white nationalists they should be condemned totally exactly in that speech and yet they repeated the that lie uh and I just completely lost respect for Obama when he repeated that light a few days before the election knowing it's false well this just shows how desperate they were to keep Trump out which is wild they would do anything yeah yeah and I think they just felt like this is a tool that we have and let's use it yeah let's\n\njust say whatever the [ __ ] we have say anything yeah now they using the Nazi thing on me obviously um yeah um but it is a little troubling because I mean obviously if if if people have fed non-stop propaganda it is like Mass hypnosis right you're going to reach some number of people who are you know uh homicidal um and and convince them that well if you kill this guy who's supposed to be like this terrible human then that's a good thing yeah um I mean this is l shooting the United Healthcare guy it's so don't understand that one frankly um but I mean you shouldn't like I don't get it yeah I don't get it either he didn't even have a contract with them it wasn't even like that was his provider and they [ __ ] him over yeah I'm like I don't know what maybe\n\nwe'll find out in the trial I mean but still kind of crazy it is crazy but there are people like that out there and as to the point that we spoke about earlier it's only Fox News that's talking about the positive things that Doge has found only every other media organization is on this constant propaganda tour where they're only talking about the negative aspects that turn out to not even be true right it's crazy yeah I mean this uh Scott Jennings on CNN is good he's like oh my God he's great he's great it's like it's just funny watching speak logically to these people and they freak out yes it's it's it's remarkable it is it's and he's so calm when he does it yeah he's so good and it's crazy that they keep letting him do it because it's like he's just\n\ndunking on these people over and over and over again and they never score it's kind of funny totally I mean good kudos to them for uh having a legitimate conservative voice who's a reasonable person on these panels now but even then he's outmanned it's like one of him and there's a bunch of screechy you know woke people it's it's it's wild I mean they're just they're like I think we should still stay mostly woke like yeah that's what essentially what they're doing like our business was being hurt when we were all woke but let's stay mostly woke yeah that way they just backed it off a notch just a notch just a notch but it's so the problem is when you back it off a notch and you let someone like Scott Jennings in you like you're [ __ ] up your whole business\n\nbecause all the viral Clips are all him saying logical reasonable things with a calm tone and people screeching about diversity and equity and horeshit yes yeah he's like being logical and reasonable and they're just lobing a bunch of non seers that you know don't mean anything and um yeah the real trap in this country is a two-party system that's the real trap because people do believe it they do believe they're on the right side they do believe the other side's the wrong side if there was five six legitimate parties with varying positions on things and much more Centrist parties that were legitimate that people knew that if they voted for these people could get in and and enact legitimate change we'd be a lot better off but boy they put a lock down\n\non that [ __ ] right after Ross perau came along Ross po perau [ __ ] everything up that election yeah Bill Clinton got in yeah and they were like that's it from now on no one's debating unless you're either the head of that party or that's it yeah you get you got to be like locked into the system we're not letting any wacka Doos in there yeah I remember watching those rbo videos oh like him on TV with his charts and everything oh yeah he was telling you how the IRS was [ __ ] you this is what the federal this is what Federal Reserve really is and you're like what I remember watching that the guy bought a whole half hour of television on prime time I remember it might have been an hour I remember watching that thing going how is this guy even allowed\n\nto do this this is this is crazy I think most of what he was saying was true yeah it is it's absolutely true it's absolutely true I mean he didn't lie he told the truth he just hit understood it in a way that the general public had literally no idea well I mean I think this there's also this you know like do we actually have two parties do we have one party like the whole unip party thing right it's kind of true so I mean my sort of rough guess is that while like I think maybe uh 3/4 of The graft is democratic I think there's like maybe I don't know 20 25% that's Republicans so they've like basically most of the graft is going to the Democrats but they throw they throw some bones to the Republicans too so they're in on it and you know it's not like there\n\nzero graph in the Republican side to clear oh there's plenty of conservative that are insider trading in Congress yeah plenty insider trading and and and just this The Curious Case of uh how how do people in you know Congress or whatever become wealthy over time um extremely wealthy yeah on a $170,000 a year salary it's like literally impossible yeah no one else does that it's literally impossible if you find out that this guy has a $170,000 a year job you're like oh he's he's doing okay he's all right yeah and then you're like wait a minute why does he have $50 million yes what is he doing correct yeah um and I think like the the more accurate thing would be to say like what is the what does the family value increase like mean meaning like um the how\n\nmuch does their spouse own do they have a mysteriously wealthy spouse right right this is or and do they have a spouse that's really good at insider trading yeah like Paul Pelosi really good yeah he's great at trading he's such a good Trader yeah so this it's I mean so yeah there's I mean that's why I actually posted on X like I think maybe we should pay politicians more frankly because it reduces the forcing function for graft you know uh like I I think maybe we should either pay politicians nothing or maybe a lot a lot more it's like somewhat maybe counterintuitively if if politicians got paid a lot more then they wouldn't they wouldn't feel like that there's so so much of a forcing function for them to uh accept Cor money yeah but the problem is if\n\nyou PID them a lot more they're still not going to make as much money as they would inside of trading but it's less of a forcing function yes it's well let me put this like if you say like somebody's got a um let's say they got like whatever some some kids in DC and like it's expensive it's like expensive place to live they the the schools are terrible so like they need to send their kids to like some kind of private schooling situation they literally cannot afford that they cannot afford that right now now so then you get into the situation well from their standpoint well they've got to they'll say they're doing it for their family they're doing it for their kids well especially if it's legal and it currently is you kind of be silly to not do that if\n\nyou were a part of a group of people that's passing a bill and you know this bill's going to get passed you know the votes are there and you know it's going to affect this industry and this particular manufacturer and you can buy stock it it's more than just in insider trading um like the insider trading stuff like the stock portfolio stuff is quite trackable but there's um it's a lot more than insider trading the way they're acquiring wealth correct and what other methods I mean this is really going to get me assassinated it's like I'm I'm not lengthening my lifespan by explaining this stuff to say the least um I mean I was supposed to go back to DC how am I going to survive fers is going to kill me for sure um so um in fact I I I do think like there's\n\nit's like I actually have to be careful that I don't push too hard on the corruption stuff because is going to get me killed um you know um yeah you know it's like I was actually thinking about that on the plane flight over here it's like P if I push too hard on the corruption stuff people get desperate is is the issue right then they say like okay if if the if the if the money flow cuts off then okay they can't afford school for their kids right then then it's then they're going like well [ __ ] you I'm going to kill you for my kids type of thing yeah you know then it's like oh jesz okay did you ever see that video I think it was a nokee video where um they've got this guy undercover and he's explaining they're talking to this guy who thinks he's on\n\na date and he's explaining it's always a guy on a date yeah explaining how they can nudge someone to go and do something horrible and they they recognize this person has problems they re they find an asset yeah totally well see this is what I think like for that Butler situation for that assassin you you you don't it's kind of like uh that's that that the funny looking sport curling you know where they have like the stone on the ice and then they throw the stone and then there's someone with that's like brushing the ice but you can't you can't touch the stone right all you can do is just change the change the path of the stone a little bit but you keep brushing the ice and uh and you can steer that stone right into the bullseye that's that's what I think\n\nhappened in Butler that's that's what I think happened with that assassin yeah if you can if you can find the trail of breadcrumbs it it's going to be like curling somebody was brushing the ice well also you find a young confused disenfranchised person and you give them purpose in their life just brush the ice yeah and also brushing the ice eventually it's going to hit the bullseye if you're in a position of authority you're some like BigTime government person you're talking to this all of a sudden this person's a valuable asset they're going to help America and you're going to do this thing and you're going to be our top Assassin from here on out you could talk people into doing a lot of things that's why Cults are around right no exactly yeah um I mean\n\nthere suicide bombers I mean the the butler guy was a suicide assassin the the guy that the second guy that tried to kill him on the golf course was also a suicide assassin um from what I read the uh the secrets of M that that saw the gun pointing out it fired several shots none of which hit the Assassin but they could have like if those if if if those shots had hit the Second Assassin he would have he would be dead too so both of them were you know on a on a I mean they they were on a suicide mission both of them one one actually got killed the one one of them didn't get killed but he could have been killed if they did the bullets that hit him and you don't hear anything about him either there's there's a lot more about that guy than the first guy I\n\nmean you look at you look at his background he looks like uh you know unhinged yeah totally unhinged yeah the first guy there's there there's if there's no I'm not aware of any evidence that shows like that he's so unhinged as to be a suicide assassin no the second guy like okay yeah sure well two years before he's acting in commercials and he got got high high score in his SATs yeah so you know um well without getting you killed yeah exactly so I mean like basically I'm like listen we attack the corruption enough to keep civilization Trucking along you know yeah uh but but I think if I if I if I fully destroy the the the the the corruption and The graft they will kill me that's a [ __ ] up thing to live with yes so I'm like damn it listen I really hope\n\nthey don't kill you yeah thanks um I mean I I strive strive to be alive um but uh yeah I mean it's it's a real concern um you know I mean the there were two guys that in before I supported Trump and everything uh there were two guys that traveled to auson to kill me I don't know if you know about this yeah I did hear about that yeah and and two separate incidents um one was going to one thought one guy thought i' put a chip in his head um and uh I mean they're both basically two guys that were just very much had severe mental illness it wasn't like they had like a I disagree with him politically and that's why he needs to die uh this is pre before I was uh this before I got sort of smeared as as being you know some sort of like Nazi or something like\n\nthat there so before the propaganda wave the the severe propaganda wave um the the the probability that any given homicidal maniac is going to try to kill you is proportionate to how many times they hear your name and so they heard my name a lot so I just I just got to the top of the list of two homicidal Maniacs who were arrested and and and both were in Travis County Jail at the same time wow yeah I don't know if they talked or whatever but they've both been released by the way Jesus Christ both on fail yeah right they got they got ankle monitors and stuff but still they can cut those off yeah I don't know you know exactly so um that's crazy yeah and the second the second guy had like Chief serial killer in his bio on his X profile yeah it's like wasn't\n\nsubtle is what I'm saying Jesus Christ yeah um and and and at this point I think I'm at the top of the list for a lot of homicidal maniacs and the more the mainstream media talks about you in this way yes and and says you're a Nazi and they're doing the same thing to me that they did to Trump yeah um which is they're making it sound like if you kill me you're a hero that's uh what they're doing is evil they're also doing the same thing where they're completely distorting who you are and people are going along with it and just like we're talking about Trump derangement syndrome people have Elon derangement syndrome I I see it see where people can't see the forest for the trees right and it's like I'm the same person that I was a year ago nothing's changed\n\nreally um like I I I didn't suddenly become completely different human right um but if you read the if you read the sort of Legacy mainstream media the their propaganda stream is that I am a completely different human right but I didn't get like a brain transplant you know in a year so um and if you say like two years ago I was like a hero of the left yeah so how can I go from hero to Villain at age 53 suddenly MSNBC CNN yeah it's like that's what it is yeah they they use the ass propaganda mhm um yeah I mean they try to demonize you too yeah uh even tried to demonize in fact at least possibly successfully uh um demonized like Tim oin yeah who is a super rational reasonable great human and um and and then that like his Wikipedia changed to like far right\n\nyeah he's like far right I'm like what are you talking about yeah uh you know a like a few years ago he was like a liberal yeah so how did he go from Far Right liberal to like instantly far right and there's like there's no there's no left and right there's only left and far right right yeah even far right this is my left leg and this is my far right leg and even far left far left is sort of dismissed as being like not important to talk about like antifa and radical leftist that's not buring down couses yeah reasonable reasonable people yeah yeah totally crazy it's a crazy time and it's not a time that I ever anticipated I was going to witness this is far beyond anything I ever thought I was going to experience in the the the clarity of it all where it's\n\nit's so obvious yeah and the the the gaslighting and the propaganda is so obvious and I saw the shrieking when RFK Jr stopped this new test for new covid vaccines on children 10,000 they're going to do 10,000 people with this covid vaccine like who the [ __ ] thinks that's a good thing at this point not me what person what per what gas chamber like not gas light you're you are you are fully unconscious there's no way there's no way you know if you know the effect of covid today no one's dying of it this is not a pandemic anymore right the idea that you're going to run a [ __ ] huge test with 10,000 kids and a new vaccine like what are you even it's completely unnecessary totally unnecessary yes and shrieking when RFK Jr steps in to stop it yeah that's\n\ntotally crazy um I mean I'm I'm like over I'm overall Pro vaccine meaning like like we think should have some reasonable number of vaccines against major ailments um but I don't think we should be like like jamming some you know little kid with like a giant file that's like Hepatitis B yeah 20 20 different things at a time it's like it's going to overload your it seems like it's there's a risk of overloading your IM imune system if you I mean there's like how many vaccines can you take at a time it seems like your systems there's like some risk of system overload here well there's two hopes hope number one is they can somehow or another stop this ability that they have to advertise on television if that happens that's big that's huge because that doesn't\n\njust stop their ability to show you all these different medications that you should be on what it also does is it stops their Financial influence on the news that's big yeah that's that's really the biggest thing is that I mean the the the news is not going to attack one of their biggest advertisers exactly and they never do yes at best they're GNA like they might like they'll they'll do something but it's they're going to pull their punches like they're going to they're going to be like like like fake fighting yeah yeah at best yes like movie fighting like they're not actually Landing Haymakers it just looks like it the next step then is to remove this immunity that these vaccine manufacturers have and if they are liable for side effects and they are\n\nliable for the lies that they tell when they do these studies and they hide negative data that'll change a lot yes um yeah um I think AI actually be very helpful with with medical stuff because AI can like look at you know all all the studies and look at all the data cross check everything and give you good recommendations I mean even as it is like right now you can upload like your X-rays and your MRI images to Gro and it'll give you a medical diagnosis and that diagnosis from what I've seen is at least as good as what if not I think I've seen certainly seen cases where it's actually better than what do do tell phenomenal for blood work yeah yeah I mean you can literally take a photograph of your blood work like the the page upload from your phone upload\n\nthat to grock and it will tell you if there's if if it's it it'll it'll understand what what what what that what all the data results are and tell you if there's something wrong it's pretty amazing yeah and it's I haven't seen it be wrong yet well supposedly more accurate than most Physicians yeah cuz Physicians are human beings and maybe they don't have deep understanding of the connection between oh you have this deficiency and this is high and your cortisol is here and well yeah and like so you know sometimes doctors especially in high rent offices will uh sell you stuff you don't need um so you I always like to be a little suspicious of like a doctor that's got an office in Beverly Hills it's a high R situation like I'm not saying there are some very\n\ngood doctors in Beverly Hills High rent situation yeah um you're at least tempted by the dark side yeah and I mean one case like I you know got this went to this doctor who was like highly recommended you know doctor to the Stars which is like maybe not a good sign um and uh I I got like blood work done you know like just just Dre blood and sent it to a lab and and and the guy I'm like sitting in his office and he tells me that I'm like like B12 deficient you know it's certainly possible that I'm B12 deficient and I was like huh okay and then he gives me it says like you have to take these like B12 supplements from and and he he's going to give me a starter pack you know and then it's going to be like $1,000 a month for these special B12 $1,000 a month\n\nof B12 ridiculous amount of money yeah that's CRA you get it on Amazon yeah but his one's special oh special B12 yeah um yeah it was like like a a whole bunch B12 and a whole bunch of other vitamins so then I'm I I get home like I'm paging through my blood work and it says I have uh according to the blood results I have XS B12 so I'm like wait a second and he's giving me box pulls that have like 20,000% uh of of recommended daily dose like 20,000% is a lot big number and I'm like I said look I took a photograph of the blood work that says I have excess I'm like above the range above the recommended range of B12 and then I'm like and I took picture of things says of the the pulls that say 20,000% I was like can you help me reconcile these two things because\n\nit says I've got too much little too much V12 and you just gave me pills that have 20,000% more I'm like this is crazy what did the doctor say he said you can never have too much B12 oh he's he's a psychopath yes that guy's a B12 addict yeah it's totally insane that's what I'm saying it's like so I mean I could have just so then you know well this was a while ago right so this is pre like 5 years ago yeah right this is pre grock like now you could just enter in all that data and gr just photograph with your phone and upload it to Gro and it tells Gro will tell you what's uh what's if just don't have it in sexy mode she'll keep trying to [ __ ] [Applause] you I mean you're asking for it in sexy mode you know literally you tapped on sexy mode I mean I think\n\nwe probably should like maybe allow it to get out of character a little bit sure yeah it's like in unhinged mode I tried to get it back to being hinged but it would like no [ __ ] way it's like I'm going to stay UNH how many modes do you have I there's like I don't know like eight or something and then this there's an ability to have a custom mode um so then you could have unhinged Sexy O that's that's my favorite kind you may think so careful what you wish for be careful what you wish for especially if it's a robot and she can kill you UNH sexy robot is it's like dangerous remember like the Pink Panther remember Pink Panther had KO try to jump him they like keep them sharp I always trying to attack him remember that right listen man thank you for being\n\nhere I always appreciate talking to you I know you're busy as [ __ ] so it means a lot to me that you have the time to do this and uh I think what you're doing is one of the most important things that has ever happened in this country I really do and particularly with the ownership of X but also with what's happening with Doge and just enlightening all these people and Shining Light on all the vampires well hopefully people realize I'm not a Nazi I think they I just want to be clear I am not a Nazi I think we covered it but that's exactly what a Nazi would say damn it yeah that's what an alien would say yeah there's like this you can't escape this [ __ ] no you can't escape it so I don't think any reasonable person believes it if they believe it it's\n\ncuz they want to believe it it's not because it's logical I mean what's relevant about Nazis is like are you like invading Poland okay um and if you're not if you're not like invading Poland maybe you're not yeah like you have to be like committing genocide and like starting Wars and if if you're if you're if you're not like what is actually what is bad about Nazis it's not their wasn't their fashion sense or their mannerisms it the Holocaust it was the the war and genocide is what is the bad part um not their mannerisms and their dress code well that was a problem with all that punch a Nazi [ __ ] like punch a Nazi remember that people were say that was like a thing that people kept saying punch a Nazi punch Nazis but he where are you meeting Nazis I've\n\nnever met a [ __ ] Nazi I've never met one I've never run into a bunch of Nazis where I had to punch them well and what what about like all these like so-called like like proud boy rallies or whatever and and it's like they always got the masks and they always got the same uniforms and for some reason they never get doxed right right right right wait we're always going to dox them except these guys great video of me and Matt Tai breaking down the Patriot Patriot front didn't the Patriot front Justice band Google that real quick we'll end with this because they I I think they just disbanded and these were the most obvious feds of all time they were say they had [ __ ] drum they masks on yeah they all had uniforms it was so stupid so patr disband one day\n\nafter FBI director Chris Ray does that seem like an odd coincidence crazy crazy the people that we were yelling at saying that they're feds there's a great video of me and Matt taibe if you want to find how come never nobody ever followed them and docked them yeah crazy what are the odds what are the odds agent provocators it's the thing they're real Alex Jones taught me about them listen man thank you very much thank you for everything appreciate you stay alive staying alive all right I mean I do think like like one argument for me staying alive is that it's more entertaining if I'm alive than if I'm dead oh yeah oh definitely I just hope but I could be alive and like injured which would be S which suck you know like they win just like shoot my arm off\n\nor something right no no no we don't want that yeah exactly no keep the security strong yeah Happ with one hand all right it's like all right thank you bye everybody bye [Music] [Applause] [Music]"},"languages":["en"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":"https://podscripts.co/podcasts/the-joe-rogan-experience/2281-elon-musk"},{"id":"cpac-2025-musk","type":"interview","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fCB9aLZGJSQ","title":"CPAC","titles":{"en":"CPAC","de":"CPAC","fr":"CPAC"},"date":"2025-02-20","summary":"Surprise CPAC appearance: after Argentina's Javier Milei hands him a chainsaw, Musk sits for a back-and-forth with Newsmax's Rob Schmitt on DOGE, his turn to politics and his security fears.","text":"[Music] [Applause] man that is a big crowd and they are not here for me how you guys doing nice Vibe this year right after the best month we've ever had nice to see you all thanks for coming out good to see you I'm not going to kill any more time let's bring out Elon Musk going to stay up for one second hey guys [Applause] we've got we've got one more we've got one more surprise in case this wasn't enough I'm going to let Elon do it who else is here uh well president uh president Malay has a gift for me Javier Malay from Argentina you guys know who that is [Applause] right why don't we bring him out [Applause] [Music] [Applause] this is the Chainsaw for bureaucracy chainsaw [Applause] that's perfect all right I love it Mr President thank you so much all\n\nright thank you thank you sir nice to meet you I love it we love it we love it all right they told me to put this right should we put it they want it right here all right great a little stage prop love you I love you guys too thanks guys have a [Applause] seat so [Applause] uh that was something I am become meme yeah pretty much I'm just I'm living the meme it's like there's living the dream and there's is loving the meme and it's pretty much what's happening you know you're like I think you're bigger I mean Doge started out as a meme think about it now it's real isn't that crazy it is it is crazy but it's cool let me ask you this a year ago if someone had told you you'd be at CPAC and working with the president to absolutely Shred the government the\n\nswamp whatever you want to call it would you ever believe that no no me neither but it's cool uh this is awesome and and I I just want to say you know thanks for your support I mean guys are you know so um I mean you know we're trying to get get good things done but also like you know have a good time doing it and uh you know and have like a sense of humor you know so like like I mean the the the the sort of the the left wanted to make comedy illegal you know like you can't make fun of anything so it was like comedy sucks it's like nothing's funny you can't make fun of anything it's like legalize comedy yeah legalize comedy and we we' we've shifted the entire culture in just the last few months the whole culture of this country has shifted dramatically\n\njust because of that election yeah exactly uh you know freedom of speech having you know having fun again it seems like we should have we should have a good time you know it I mean it's it's a great time if everybody in this place is so excited and I haven't I mean when you talk to conservatives everybody's happy yeah uh and everybody feels this great sense of relief because we were going to hell for about four years it really felt bad especially toward the end it felt really bad yeah I thought we I I thought we were sort of heading for a point in no return really you know um until that's why it was so essential that President Trump win the election um and uh and that there there'll be a republican majority in the House and Senate uh which thanks to you\n\nthat that has been accomplished yeah yeah I want to ask you one of the biggest questions I have for you is and you you've been you know politically you weren't really on one side of the other for a long time you're a businessman a lot of people stay away from it now you're on a side and you've chosen a side you're sitting here in a magah hat what what's it you know how did that happen what was the moment it's like you know dark Gothic magot that's a good one and what was there a specific moment was there a moment that it all changed yeah when I realized it was a fool um but no I it was I guess uh yeah I mean I'd say like I politically neutral for for quite a while um you know you know leaning a little Democrat uh you know how do you go from that to this\n\nhow does that happen well did they go crazy yeah they did they did go crazy yeah they went crazy no I mean that whole cancel culture and and uh you know it's trying to uh stop freedom of speech and um infringe upon just in general infringe upon people's personal freedoms you know they just want State Control State control of what you say they they want to you know take away your your guns um and the reason I want to take away your guns so like there's nothing do to oppose them so it's sort of like uh you know I just I just like we just need to restore the the fundamental elements of what made America great which is uh freedom and opportunity um we're we're seeing a lot of these freedoms disappearing in the west it's it's not just about America we're watching\n\nwe're all watching Europe and knowing that they're about 00 years ahead of us right because they got an early start and we're watching how they're devolving and you're trying to save it from happening here no I mean in Europe they put people in prison for memes yeah you know I'm like that's insane and they're collapsing I mean this a society is it's a collapsing Society it feels that way it feels like France was nicer 50 years ago than it is today yeah I don't think you can question that yeah um so but yeah I mean really thanks I love you too I do um I mean I I really I I really just wanted to do useful things like you know basically build products you know provide products and services that that are that are good and uh that that I wasn't really like\n\nthat interested in being political um it just like there was at a certain point no choice yeah U so yeah can I can I ask you what on the same side of that coin what's it like from going neutral to being vilified largely vilified by the med like you're what the no really I mean you turn on some of these channels brother I mean they don't they're angry you does it bother you at all this to you uh there I mean when they're chanting for my death I suppose that's a little you know um but and then like the song's not even that good and I like like Co that a death chant that's nothing please they've been singing a lot lately even good music there's a lot of music lately it's not good music either yeah yeah um I would say that there you know watching what you're\n\ndoing with do is is just people love it I mean I I've always looked at the government and I've I've always looked at the government I've seen this big machine that and you just know they waste because they don't care nobody can there's more money coming they don't care you're cutting all this out everybody in this country knows that the government is full of waste Fraud and Abuse and you're doing the work and the Americans love it watching their reaction politically to this I can't believe how bad they are at responding to this I don't know how you're going to sit there and and scream and complain because they're cutting waste out of the government and try to win another election how how do you try to win on that well I'm at this point I'm like I'm not\n\nsure how much of the left is even real yeah you know uh how much was propped up by our money you know yeah yeah like literally you know you see like these these sort of fake rallies where there's like hardly any any people and the media will like frame it and like you know get full six people you know in the frame but it's like nobody else is there like just it it doesn't have popular support um but but but there's but but then you then you you learn that like there's hundreds of billions of dollars going to these so-called ngos yeah uh that that that and and it's your tax dollars that are funding things that are fundamentally anti-American and and they're propping up their narrative yes a lot of that government money has been propping up a left that\n\nI don't think is as strong as they made it seem in fact a massive amount of of your tax dollars is going to Legacy Media companies yes uh directly from the from from the government the government wants to take over media yeah it's terrible yeah that's why we have X yeah and that's that's why you spent $44 billion I mean that's a lot of money I mean more than it was probably worth but it had a there was a message freedom is priceless priceless yeah probably one of the most important Investments this country's ever seen if you got to protect the First Amendment it's not much more important than that yeah I mean I I got a lot of CR criticism and people said well that proves he's a huge idiot from a you know like look you know he bought for whatever $44 billion\n\nan now worth like8 cents and it's not worth any sense but but you know there the but but the yeah it was essentially to you know buy freedom of expression um and uh yeah once that's gone it's all over it's all over yeah sent into tyranny is really quick after that yeah I mean like you know it's so all all the all the sort of federal money going to Media companies is what what helps explain why the Legacy Media all says the same thing at the same time yeah like doesn't it like it's like weird like you you put them up where it's like you know like when they you know mouthpieces for for the state for the state yes and that's that's what we've come to know um yeah scary and and and I like that that mean when where they because they're always saying like threat\n\nto our democracy threat to but if you just replaced democracy with bureaucracy yeah it makes a lot of sense makes perfect sense yeah Big Stretch to the bureaucracy that's exactly right let's talk about let's talk about these Doge dividend checks that everybody's talking about this week and I know you tweeted out that you're going to is everybody want like a $5,000 check in the mail it sounds kind of good right and and the best part about it would be knowing where it came from that that's five grand that you sent them last year totally it's it's it's it's money that's taken away from from things that are destructive to the country that and from organizations that hate you to you that's awesome is it does it seem I mean have you talked to I me that's like\n\nglorious that's like best The Spoils of battle you know I like that is there is there traction on that yeah yeah so yeah uh yeah yeah I took the president and he's supportive of that and um so it sounds like you know that's something we're we're going to do yep um so as as we're finding savings that's going to translate directly to reductions in tax so yeah they I mean I think they fired 6,000 people at the IRS today um and I think letnik said last night that they're talking about shutting down the IRS uh and I I I I think it's fair I think people should realize this is I mean the amount of money that we we send Washington like five or six trillion a year that is such an ungodly amount of money I mean what do they they say like a trillion seconds is like\n\n30 years or something like that I mean that's how much we send them and they seem to never have enough there's must be a lot you can cut no absolutely the people ask me what's the most surprising thing that you've encountered when you go to DC you know when you're in DC and and I I said well the most surprising thing is the scale of the expenditures and actually um how easy it is to with a just just when you add caring and competence where it was absent before you can actually save billions of dollars sometimes in this in an hour yeah like it's it's wild and then they scoff at it and say oh a few billion here there I mean the way they're talking about it they they you can see they don't care it's it's so it's such little money compared to how much they're\n\nused to wasting that's what's really scary um yeah no I mean ex exactly but obviously it's it's it just shows that they they really lack empathy for the average taxpayer who's working hard paying paying taxes and then and then they say oh a million dollars doesn't matter I'm like I think it matters a lot people you know so what are you talking about I'd like to have it um let me ask you a question I you know I know the president fairly well watched him survive two assassination attempts the second had the first one not happened the second one would have gotten him you know it was very cuz without those extra guys they would have never seen that gun poking through the fence at the golf course um I saw the crew that the mind-blowing that this has happened\n\nI mean it just and and what by the way why do we still know nothing about that guy in Butler what's going on um but uh he's he cash is going to get to the bottom of it yeah there you go by the way yeah confirm confirmed just a couple hours ago but I I saw that the security detail that you had come in is is enormous well it's not that enormous maybe it should be bigger I don't know I think you can probably afford it but I mean how concerned are you about your safety dealing I mean it's you are you are a wanted man are you are you nervous so I I look I'm open to ideas for improving security I have to tell you um like I I I don't actually have a death wish I think um I but but uh you know it's not that easy uh so uh yeah I mean but but I have like I've had\n\neven like people like President belli from El Salvador who who managed to put in prison like like 100,000 like mous thugs and and he was like he called me he's like I'm worried about your security I'm like you're you're worried about my security I'm like what okay you know I mean yeah yeah talk about guts to do that down there I mean yeah totally and and survive I'm like I was like how did you put all those thugs in prison without dying cuz seems like that would have been not easy you know well there's a the the president has one of his top attorneys is now investigating I guess Chuck Schumer for threats against scotus a congressman on the Democrat side for saying you know basically saying he going to bring a war to you like a fight to you I mean the\n\nrhetoric you guys are screwing with things that are not supposed to be messed with and we're fighting mat a lot of people that really don't want that to happen yeah we're fighting The Matrix big time here um yeah but has got to be done yeah um and you it certainly does um what's what's going on with tell us about Fort Knox yeah it's Kentucky it's a military base it's a ton of gold tons and tons and tons of gold 5,000 tons of gold or 5,000 of gold are there in the ground and like this I mean it's a very secure we all want to see it I'd love to see it like this is your gold by the way it's the it's the Public's gold do you think it's not there I don't know we just want to see it yeah we want to go see it and just make sure like somebody did a spray paints\n\nsome or something you know yeah like is this real gold B the bite the bar you know didn't D um but I think honestly you know part of this also is just like let's let's you know let's have some fun and and and uh you know like like I said this this all this gold at Fort Knox it's the Public's gold it's your gold so like I think you have like a right to see it take a tour you know yeah I think we should have a do do a a tour and then the president last night was like that's not I think he's in favor of it that would be cool and then like it should be like a live tour like you can see what's going on open the door like what's behind it well and this you know I think I'd watch that oh are you kidding yeah I mean what is what is 5,000 tons of gold look what\n\nhow big is that is it is it the size of this it's got to be pretty big you know it's got to be a lot of there's some other stuff in there like just walk around like I don't know maybe they got some other stuff in there are are you thinking about auditing the Federal Reserve as well which is obviously is it yeah sure regulatory economy I I imagine you think the waste has got to be everywhere yeah no waste waste is pretty much everywhere people ask like how can you find waste in in like in DC I'm like look it's like being in a room uh and this tet the the wall the roofs and the floor are all Targets so it's like you're going to close your eyes and go shoot in any direction you can't miss you know um so it's it's it's pretty wild like like you just push\n\non things a little bit and and you save billions of dollars like just a little bit you know it's wild it's scary isn't it it's that's why I say like I it really is underrated if you add caring and competence how much things improve yeah um and and you know and we we just find so many totally crazy things which you know obviously we're sharing with the public WE Post everything we learn um you know just yeah you know um so you can see it you know what do you and like it's like isn't it like it's to totally while like we did just we just did like a check the database on Social Security like says how many alive Americans alive Americans eligible for Social Security are there and according to the database it's over 400 million and we're like wait a second\n\num and how many are getting old again yeah and and then like we found like one person in there is like 360 years old I'm like what they know b or I mean you know America doesn't exist before at that time like so I so yeah we were col I you know maybe it's just me but I think it's a red flag I don't know um but are there indications that those that there were checks going to those people or any of those people well yeah that's I guess the question right this I mean I get the Social Security Administration is dumb but are they paying these people are they that dumb I don't know a bunch of money is going out from the Social Security Administration and in fact from all entitlements programs billion in waste in like 7 years that's 10 billion a year well I\n\nI think the the fraudulent payments the the rough or estimate from uh General government accountability office is on is over $500 billion a for a year 500 billion and how long the time of per year per year on on Social Security no no on on all on all government on all entitlements all entit all entitlements yeah yeah um it sort of actually makes sense when you look at the thing from a top level in like okay the $7 trillion was spending by the government what percentage do you think is fraudulent okay exactly like a conservative estimate of the 7 trillion would be 10% conservative probably a little higher than that yeah exactly feels like a quarter out every dollar right but if if if the Fraud's only 10% of 7 trillion you've got $700 billion of fraud yeah\n\nand by the way it's it's like really easy to take advantage of the federal government it's very easy very easy look at Co yes everybody got rich during Co I mean look at all these scers I mean it's unbelievable we we um it it looks like for in terms of the co payments yeah uh there was something like $200 billion of of Co payment fraud taken by frauders out of the country out of the country that's like like I think listen if there going to be fraud it should at least be domestic yeah so you know but they manag to get $200 billion out of the country I'm like what didn't we notice that let me ask you let's do immigration here for a second um you know there's this move now that Trump's lat is saying is that he cut he's going to cut funding any kind of money\n\nthat ends up in the hands of illegal immigrants so if you're funding these Sanctuary cities and states that's how they Thrive right they're paying for these hotels that's all federal money if you got a hotel in your city in New York you got all these hotels full of migrants that's not State money that's the feds are covering that he's going to cut all that it's really hard to deport 15 million people and it seems like the move now is let's see if we especially at the rate that we're going it seems like the move now is let's make it so that they leave on their own if there's no longer a dole system for them if they can't get their hands on hotel rooms and money they're going to go back especially if there's no work well I think it's really important for\n\npeople to understand that the P the Biden Administration sent any possible money that they could they could if there was money they could send to uh facilitate and amplify illegal immigration they sent it okay they took money from FEMA meant for helping Americans in distress and sent that money to luxury hotels for legal immigrants in New York that is a an outrage yeah they actually did that and and not only that even after the president signed an executive order saying it has to stop the femous the the the sort of whatever deep State bureaucrats still still pressed send on $80 million last week to go to the Rosal Hotel in New York and other places last week and now and now they're mad that they got stopped and they're like trying to sue to have it be\n\nrestored it's like the gumption is you think they're creating a new voter class would you think that was the goal when they open up the bers for four years create a new voter class get them citizenship get them in cards vote a lot of these things like you don't actually have to assume some Grand conspiracy you just need to look at basic incentives benefits so if the incentives fundamentally if if the probability that an illegal is going to vote Democrat at some point um whether it's a you know cheating but eventually they can become citizens but if the if probability is like 80 90% you just look at California which is super majority Dem um and then the incentive is to maximize the number of illegals in the country that is why the Biden Administration\n\nwas uh pushing to get in as many illegals as possible and spend every dollar possible to get as many because every one of them is a customer every one of them is a voter yeah so the whole thing was a giant voter importation scam pretty obvious very obvious and and then they moreover then they they they actually created the cvp1 Border app thing where they they were which is like where they could they were literally fly people in it's not like like at the point in which you know uh people are being flown in at at your expense sending planes building a wall fly them over the Border yeah they're literally flying them in no other no other country in the world would do something like this nobody is as stupid yeah and and then we found that it was like a $100\n\nmillion uh contract given to some guy in uh London actually odly enough yeah for the CVP one app uh so so so they're they're flying uh illegals into the swing States yeah and and if you've got like a marinate victory of maybe 20,000 people and you fly 200,000 legals into that state it's not going to be a swing state for long change the numbers eventually maybe maybe in four or eight years you're ex it's a long game it's just a matter of time uh so it might take like a year for an asy Seeker or something to get on the to get a green card then five years for the citizenship it's it's it's an investment that is guaranteed to pay off yeah just a question of when they all remember who brought them in and who left them here exactly exactly I want to go back\n\nI want to talk about deal like I think a lot of people like don't quite appreciate that this was an actual real scam at scale to tilt the scales of Democracy in America treasons treason yeah yeah um one more Biden question I I remember when you know when they would do the electric car stuff they would always try to box you out even though you have the only electric car anybody wants um yeah you you said I think this week that you think that Biden left these astronauts up in space because he didn't want to give you an opportunity to save them make NASA look bad make the private sector look better make you look good you believe that yeah yeah no absolutely so the of course I I kind of agree I mean I um why would he want to let you help them come down when\n\nyou're supporting the President Biden Administration was was attacking me next level uh I mean the department of of Justice or Injustice under the Biden Administration um was I mean there was suing SpaceX there there suing SpaceX for not hiring Asylum Seekers and we're like but it's actually illegal for us to hire Asylum Seekers because we're rocket technology is covered under uh itar rules which is that means it's an advanced weapons technology yeah and so we can only hire permanent residents or green or or or citizens right like so so we're damned if we do it damned if we don't we said like so how can they sue us for not hiring Asylum Seekers when it's actually illegal for us to do so but nonetheless there was a big Department of Justice or Injustice\n\ncase about this against SpaceX so obviously it was an antagonistic situation um and those astronauts were supposed to be up there for 8 days and now they're up there for eight months does that make any sense and and and we we we obviously could have brought them back sooner but they didn't want it to didn't want anyone who supported president Trump to look good basically yeah that's the that's the that's the issue the um a lot of them are saying right now that the reason that you want to get into Social Security that you want to get into all of these different into Treasury and things like that is that you're looking for personal information and you're trying to make more money yeah I I've never met anybody as rich as you that cared less about money in\n\nmy life every time I hear a story about you you're sleeping on a couch of some other guy in a city that you could buy the entire thing yeah I'm not I don't think you care about money do you no actually I I I mean listen like if I if I steal some social security I can finally buy nice [Laughter] things and and and on that same question they're also talking about you guys are going to end Social Security you're going to end Medicare you're going to end these things I I don't imagine that conversation has been had with the president and that's that's the plan no in fact the actions that we're taking uh with the support of the president and the support of the agencies is what will save Medicare what will save Social Security yeah um and and it's it because\n\nif the country goes insolvent if if if all the if all the money is just spent on paying interest on debt there's no money left for anything yeah so that's that's the reason I'm doing this is because I'm I was looking at the big picture here and it's like man our debts getting out of control uh the the interest payments interest on the national debt now exceeds the entire defense department budget it's a trillion a year in interest just to carry the money that we owe is a trillion a year that is unbelievable and Rising rapidly it's so so like it's I mean a country is not different from a person country overspends country goes bankrupt same with same as a person who overspends goes bankrupt so it's it's not like optional to solve these things it's essential\n\num so we're going to go bankrupt yes we are um couple minutes left here um Russia um there's a huge push from the yeah people like like say like uh you know I I'm I'm a I'm a bought asset of Putin I'm like he can't afford me yeah I think I think you're worth more than Russia think about it I like that so we you're trying to end you're trying to end a war it's all ending a war always means you have to compromise you have to negotiate with an enemy or an adversary that's just what it is and right now they are Lassing the president for trying a different method to a war that they haven't been able to end for three and a half years or three years yeah they you know they're saying Trump's blaming zalinsky for The Invasion how do you how do you process all\n\nof the negativity toward him for trying to end this war well first of all I think we should have empathy for the people dying at the front lines that's the most important thing and people have been dying you know it's like H how many more years is this supposed to go on yeah and imagine if that was your son your father at you know what what are they dying for yeah what exactly are they dying for that line has bar the line of Engagement has barely moved for 2 years yeah there's a whole much of people dead in trenches For What and I I'll tell you what for what it's like for the biggest graph machine that I've ever seen in my life that's for what it's it's unreal like the the the amount of money that that is being taken in in graft and bribery is is disgusting\n\num and and so what's actually happening is that those those you know PE those poor guys are getting sent into a meat grinder for money that's what's actually going on yeah and it needs to stop and that's I mean that's it seems I mean Trump is so pragmatic on this he just he's just looking at it and he's saying it's Ukraine it's not our country it's not a NATO Ally I just want to see people not dying I want to see on both sides I mean think about how many young so many young men have died in Ukraine that the Army is starting to age out the military is aging out you got 40 and 50y old guys fighting in a war because there's nobody left that's not killed or maned in their 20s that is that's the reality of it think about how many people that is if you're a\n\nhumanitarian at all you just got to end the war like no matter what just get it over with yes people they need to stop dying um and uh and and the gri machines got to stop you know so uh and I think people that don't a lot of people out there don't realize like the president has a lot of empathy he really cares you know he's a good he's a good man um so I got one more for you um I've been fascinated by you for a very long time uh thanks um I've just I just I've never seen anybody that can you know do so many things at the same time I mean you got the Rockets you got the cars I've always wanted to ask you what is it like inside your mind like does is it just a th000 miles an hour I mean are you yeah is it just not I mean does does it ever stop do you sleep\n\nhow much do you sleep What's um paint us a picture of inside of of the mind of of a genius like how do you how do you do all this can you answer that question it's not an easy question yeah I mean my mind is a storm yeah so it's a storm but but I mean Let Me Maybe tell you something like you didn't ask the question but but I I think it's worth kind of nonetheless maybe just just elaborating on something which is um you know I grew up in in South Africa and and but my morality was informed by America um I read comic books you know played Dungeons and dragon and and um I watched American TV shows and it like it seemed like America cared about being the good guys you know about doing the right thing and and and that's actually pretty unusual by the way yeah\n\nit's like it's like in the world it's very unusual yeah it's not like actually most countries don't do that no they don't don't no um and so I was like yeah you know you want to be the good you want to be on the side of good you want to care about what's right and um and uh yeah so that's that's uh yeah what I believe in you know so I gave you I gave you a tough one at the end yeah so yeah that's great that's great Elon Musk all right than you thank you so much all right I appreciate thank you so all right hey guys [Applause] [Music] [Applause] sir thank you [Music] thanks guys [Music] [Applause]","textByLang":{"en":"[Music] [Applause] man that is a big crowd and they are not here for me how you guys doing nice Vibe this year right after the best month we've ever had nice to see you all thanks for coming out good to see you I'm not going to kill any more time let's bring out Elon Musk going to stay up for one second hey guys [Applause] we've got we've got one more we've got one more surprise in case this wasn't enough I'm going to let Elon do it who else is here uh well president uh president Malay has a gift for me Javier Malay from Argentina you guys know who that is [Applause] right why don't we bring him out [Applause] [Music] [Applause] this is the Chainsaw for bureaucracy chainsaw [Applause] that's perfect all right I love it Mr President thank you so much all\n\nright thank you thank you sir nice to meet you I love it we love it we love it all right they told me to put this right should we put it they want it right here all right great a little stage prop love you I love you guys too thanks guys have a [Applause] seat so [Applause] uh that was something I am become meme yeah pretty much I'm just I'm living the meme it's like there's living the dream and there's is loving the meme and it's pretty much what's happening you know you're like I think you're bigger I mean Doge started out as a meme think about it now it's real isn't that crazy it is it is crazy but it's cool let me ask you this a year ago if someone had told you you'd be at CPAC and working with the president to absolutely Shred the government the\n\nswamp whatever you want to call it would you ever believe that no no me neither but it's cool uh this is awesome and and I I just want to say you know thanks for your support I mean guys are you know so um I mean you know we're trying to get get good things done but also like you know have a good time doing it and uh you know and have like a sense of humor you know so like like I mean the the the the sort of the the left wanted to make comedy illegal you know like you can't make fun of anything so it was like comedy sucks it's like nothing's funny you can't make fun of anything it's like legalize comedy yeah legalize comedy and we we' we've shifted the entire culture in just the last few months the whole culture of this country has shifted dramatically\n\njust because of that election yeah exactly uh you know freedom of speech having you know having fun again it seems like we should have we should have a good time you know it I mean it's it's a great time if everybody in this place is so excited and I haven't I mean when you talk to conservatives everybody's happy yeah uh and everybody feels this great sense of relief because we were going to hell for about four years it really felt bad especially toward the end it felt really bad yeah I thought we I I thought we were sort of heading for a point in no return really you know um until that's why it was so essential that President Trump win the election um and uh and that there there'll be a republican majority in the House and Senate uh which thanks to you\n\nthat that has been accomplished yeah yeah I want to ask you one of the biggest questions I have for you is and you you've been you know politically you weren't really on one side of the other for a long time you're a businessman a lot of people stay away from it now you're on a side and you've chosen a side you're sitting here in a magah hat what what's it you know how did that happen what was the moment it's like you know dark Gothic magot that's a good one and what was there a specific moment was there a moment that it all changed yeah when I realized it was a fool um but no I it was I guess uh yeah I mean I'd say like I politically neutral for for quite a while um you know you know leaning a little Democrat uh you know how do you go from that to this\n\nhow does that happen well did they go crazy yeah they did they did go crazy yeah they went crazy no I mean that whole cancel culture and and uh you know it's trying to uh stop freedom of speech and um infringe upon just in general infringe upon people's personal freedoms you know they just want State Control State control of what you say they they want to you know take away your your guns um and the reason I want to take away your guns so like there's nothing do to oppose them so it's sort of like uh you know I just I just like we just need to restore the the fundamental elements of what made America great which is uh freedom and opportunity um we're we're seeing a lot of these freedoms disappearing in the west it's it's not just about America we're watching\n\nwe're all watching Europe and knowing that they're about 00 years ahead of us right because they got an early start and we're watching how they're devolving and you're trying to save it from happening here no I mean in Europe they put people in prison for memes yeah you know I'm like that's insane and they're collapsing I mean this a society is it's a collapsing Society it feels that way it feels like France was nicer 50 years ago than it is today yeah I don't think you can question that yeah um so but yeah I mean really thanks I love you too I do um I mean I I really I I really just wanted to do useful things like you know basically build products you know provide products and services that that are that are good and uh that that I wasn't really like\n\nthat interested in being political um it just like there was at a certain point no choice yeah U so yeah can I can I ask you what on the same side of that coin what's it like from going neutral to being vilified largely vilified by the med like you're what the no really I mean you turn on some of these channels brother I mean they don't they're angry you does it bother you at all this to you uh there I mean when they're chanting for my death I suppose that's a little you know um but and then like the song's not even that good and I like like Co that a death chant that's nothing please they've been singing a lot lately even good music there's a lot of music lately it's not good music either yeah yeah um I would say that there you know watching what you're\n\ndoing with do is is just people love it I mean I I've always looked at the government and I've I've always looked at the government I've seen this big machine that and you just know they waste because they don't care nobody can there's more money coming they don't care you're cutting all this out everybody in this country knows that the government is full of waste Fraud and Abuse and you're doing the work and the Americans love it watching their reaction politically to this I can't believe how bad they are at responding to this I don't know how you're going to sit there and and scream and complain because they're cutting waste out of the government and try to win another election how how do you try to win on that well I'm at this point I'm like I'm not\n\nsure how much of the left is even real yeah you know uh how much was propped up by our money you know yeah yeah like literally you know you see like these these sort of fake rallies where there's like hardly any any people and the media will like frame it and like you know get full six people you know in the frame but it's like nobody else is there like just it it doesn't have popular support um but but but there's but but then you then you you learn that like there's hundreds of billions of dollars going to these so-called ngos yeah uh that that that and and it's your tax dollars that are funding things that are fundamentally anti-American and and they're propping up their narrative yes a lot of that government money has been propping up a left that\n\nI don't think is as strong as they made it seem in fact a massive amount of of your tax dollars is going to Legacy Media companies yes uh directly from the from from the government the government wants to take over media yeah it's terrible yeah that's why we have X yeah and that's that's why you spent $44 billion I mean that's a lot of money I mean more than it was probably worth but it had a there was a message freedom is priceless priceless yeah probably one of the most important Investments this country's ever seen if you got to protect the First Amendment it's not much more important than that yeah I mean I I got a lot of CR criticism and people said well that proves he's a huge idiot from a you know like look you know he bought for whatever $44 billion\n\nan now worth like8 cents and it's not worth any sense but but you know there the but but the yeah it was essentially to you know buy freedom of expression um and uh yeah once that's gone it's all over it's all over yeah sent into tyranny is really quick after that yeah I mean like you know it's so all all the all the sort of federal money going to Media companies is what what helps explain why the Legacy Media all says the same thing at the same time yeah like doesn't it like it's like weird like you you put them up where it's like you know like when they you know mouthpieces for for the state for the state yes and that's that's what we've come to know um yeah scary and and and I like that that mean when where they because they're always saying like threat\n\nto our democracy threat to but if you just replaced democracy with bureaucracy yeah it makes a lot of sense makes perfect sense yeah Big Stretch to the bureaucracy that's exactly right let's talk about let's talk about these Doge dividend checks that everybody's talking about this week and I know you tweeted out that you're going to is everybody want like a $5,000 check in the mail it sounds kind of good right and and the best part about it would be knowing where it came from that that's five grand that you sent them last year totally it's it's it's it's money that's taken away from from things that are destructive to the country that and from organizations that hate you to you that's awesome is it does it seem I mean have you talked to I me that's like\n\nglorious that's like best The Spoils of battle you know I like that is there is there traction on that yeah yeah so yeah uh yeah yeah I took the president and he's supportive of that and um so it sounds like you know that's something we're we're going to do yep um so as as we're finding savings that's going to translate directly to reductions in tax so yeah they I mean I think they fired 6,000 people at the IRS today um and I think letnik said last night that they're talking about shutting down the IRS uh and I I I I think it's fair I think people should realize this is I mean the amount of money that we we send Washington like five or six trillion a year that is such an ungodly amount of money I mean what do they they say like a trillion seconds is like\n\n30 years or something like that I mean that's how much we send them and they seem to never have enough there's must be a lot you can cut no absolutely the people ask me what's the most surprising thing that you've encountered when you go to DC you know when you're in DC and and I I said well the most surprising thing is the scale of the expenditures and actually um how easy it is to with a just just when you add caring and competence where it was absent before you can actually save billions of dollars sometimes in this in an hour yeah like it's it's wild and then they scoff at it and say oh a few billion here there I mean the way they're talking about it they they you can see they don't care it's it's so it's such little money compared to how much they're\n\nused to wasting that's what's really scary um yeah no I mean ex exactly but obviously it's it's it just shows that they they really lack empathy for the average taxpayer who's working hard paying paying taxes and then and then they say oh a million dollars doesn't matter I'm like I think it matters a lot people you know so what are you talking about I'd like to have it um let me ask you a question I you know I know the president fairly well watched him survive two assassination attempts the second had the first one not happened the second one would have gotten him you know it was very cuz without those extra guys they would have never seen that gun poking through the fence at the golf course um I saw the crew that the mind-blowing that this has happened\n\nI mean it just and and what by the way why do we still know nothing about that guy in Butler what's going on um but uh he's he cash is going to get to the bottom of it yeah there you go by the way yeah confirm confirmed just a couple hours ago but I I saw that the security detail that you had come in is is enormous well it's not that enormous maybe it should be bigger I don't know I think you can probably afford it but I mean how concerned are you about your safety dealing I mean it's you are you are a wanted man are you are you nervous so I I look I'm open to ideas for improving security I have to tell you um like I I I don't actually have a death wish I think um I but but uh you know it's not that easy uh so uh yeah I mean but but I have like I've had\n\neven like people like President belli from El Salvador who who managed to put in prison like like 100,000 like mous thugs and and he was like he called me he's like I'm worried about your security I'm like you're you're worried about my security I'm like what okay you know I mean yeah yeah talk about guts to do that down there I mean yeah totally and and survive I'm like I was like how did you put all those thugs in prison without dying cuz seems like that would have been not easy you know well there's a the the president has one of his top attorneys is now investigating I guess Chuck Schumer for threats against scotus a congressman on the Democrat side for saying you know basically saying he going to bring a war to you like a fight to you I mean the\n\nrhetoric you guys are screwing with things that are not supposed to be messed with and we're fighting mat a lot of people that really don't want that to happen yeah we're fighting The Matrix big time here um yeah but has got to be done yeah um and you it certainly does um what's what's going on with tell us about Fort Knox yeah it's Kentucky it's a military base it's a ton of gold tons and tons and tons of gold 5,000 tons of gold or 5,000 of gold are there in the ground and like this I mean it's a very secure we all want to see it I'd love to see it like this is your gold by the way it's the it's the Public's gold do you think it's not there I don't know we just want to see it yeah we want to go see it and just make sure like somebody did a spray paints\n\nsome or something you know yeah like is this real gold B the bite the bar you know didn't D um but I think honestly you know part of this also is just like let's let's you know let's have some fun and and and uh you know like like I said this this all this gold at Fort Knox it's the Public's gold it's your gold so like I think you have like a right to see it take a tour you know yeah I think we should have a do do a a tour and then the president last night was like that's not I think he's in favor of it that would be cool and then like it should be like a live tour like you can see what's going on open the door like what's behind it well and this you know I think I'd watch that oh are you kidding yeah I mean what is what is 5,000 tons of gold look what\n\nhow big is that is it is it the size of this it's got to be pretty big you know it's got to be a lot of there's some other stuff in there like just walk around like I don't know maybe they got some other stuff in there are are you thinking about auditing the Federal Reserve as well which is obviously is it yeah sure regulatory economy I I imagine you think the waste has got to be everywhere yeah no waste waste is pretty much everywhere people ask like how can you find waste in in like in DC I'm like look it's like being in a room uh and this tet the the wall the roofs and the floor are all Targets so it's like you're going to close your eyes and go shoot in any direction you can't miss you know um so it's it's it's pretty wild like like you just push\n\non things a little bit and and you save billions of dollars like just a little bit you know it's wild it's scary isn't it it's that's why I say like I it really is underrated if you add caring and competence how much things improve yeah um and and you know and we we just find so many totally crazy things which you know obviously we're sharing with the public WE Post everything we learn um you know just yeah you know um so you can see it you know what do you and like it's like isn't it like it's to totally while like we did just we just did like a check the database on Social Security like says how many alive Americans alive Americans eligible for Social Security are there and according to the database it's over 400 million and we're like wait a second\n\num and how many are getting old again yeah and and then like we found like one person in there is like 360 years old I'm like what they know b or I mean you know America doesn't exist before at that time like so I so yeah we were col I you know maybe it's just me but I think it's a red flag I don't know um but are there indications that those that there were checks going to those people or any of those people well yeah that's I guess the question right this I mean I get the Social Security Administration is dumb but are they paying these people are they that dumb I don't know a bunch of money is going out from the Social Security Administration and in fact from all entitlements programs billion in waste in like 7 years that's 10 billion a year well I\n\nI think the the fraudulent payments the the rough or estimate from uh General government accountability office is on is over $500 billion a for a year 500 billion and how long the time of per year per year on on Social Security no no on on all on all government on all entitlements all entit all entitlements yeah yeah um it sort of actually makes sense when you look at the thing from a top level in like okay the $7 trillion was spending by the government what percentage do you think is fraudulent okay exactly like a conservative estimate of the 7 trillion would be 10% conservative probably a little higher than that yeah exactly feels like a quarter out every dollar right but if if if the Fraud's only 10% of 7 trillion you've got $700 billion of fraud yeah\n\nand by the way it's it's like really easy to take advantage of the federal government it's very easy very easy look at Co yes everybody got rich during Co I mean look at all these scers I mean it's unbelievable we we um it it looks like for in terms of the co payments yeah uh there was something like $200 billion of of Co payment fraud taken by frauders out of the country out of the country that's like like I think listen if there going to be fraud it should at least be domestic yeah so you know but they manag to get $200 billion out of the country I'm like what didn't we notice that let me ask you let's do immigration here for a second um you know there's this move now that Trump's lat is saying is that he cut he's going to cut funding any kind of money\n\nthat ends up in the hands of illegal immigrants so if you're funding these Sanctuary cities and states that's how they Thrive right they're paying for these hotels that's all federal money if you got a hotel in your city in New York you got all these hotels full of migrants that's not State money that's the feds are covering that he's going to cut all that it's really hard to deport 15 million people and it seems like the move now is let's see if we especially at the rate that we're going it seems like the move now is let's make it so that they leave on their own if there's no longer a dole system for them if they can't get their hands on hotel rooms and money they're going to go back especially if there's no work well I think it's really important for\n\npeople to understand that the P the Biden Administration sent any possible money that they could they could if there was money they could send to uh facilitate and amplify illegal immigration they sent it okay they took money from FEMA meant for helping Americans in distress and sent that money to luxury hotels for legal immigrants in New York that is a an outrage yeah they actually did that and and not only that even after the president signed an executive order saying it has to stop the femous the the the sort of whatever deep State bureaucrats still still pressed send on $80 million last week to go to the Rosal Hotel in New York and other places last week and now and now they're mad that they got stopped and they're like trying to sue to have it be\n\nrestored it's like the gumption is you think they're creating a new voter class would you think that was the goal when they open up the bers for four years create a new voter class get them citizenship get them in cards vote a lot of these things like you don't actually have to assume some Grand conspiracy you just need to look at basic incentives benefits so if the incentives fundamentally if if the probability that an illegal is going to vote Democrat at some point um whether it's a you know cheating but eventually they can become citizens but if the if probability is like 80 90% you just look at California which is super majority Dem um and then the incentive is to maximize the number of illegals in the country that is why the Biden Administration\n\nwas uh pushing to get in as many illegals as possible and spend every dollar possible to get as many because every one of them is a customer every one of them is a voter yeah so the whole thing was a giant voter importation scam pretty obvious very obvious and and then they moreover then they they they actually created the cvp1 Border app thing where they they were which is like where they could they were literally fly people in it's not like like at the point in which you know uh people are being flown in at at your expense sending planes building a wall fly them over the Border yeah they're literally flying them in no other no other country in the world would do something like this nobody is as stupid yeah and and then we found that it was like a $100\n\nmillion uh contract given to some guy in uh London actually odly enough yeah for the CVP one app uh so so so they're they're flying uh illegals into the swing States yeah and and if you've got like a marinate victory of maybe 20,000 people and you fly 200,000 legals into that state it's not going to be a swing state for long change the numbers eventually maybe maybe in four or eight years you're ex it's a long game it's just a matter of time uh so it might take like a year for an asy Seeker or something to get on the to get a green card then five years for the citizenship it's it's it's an investment that is guaranteed to pay off yeah just a question of when they all remember who brought them in and who left them here exactly exactly I want to go back\n\nI want to talk about deal like I think a lot of people like don't quite appreciate that this was an actual real scam at scale to tilt the scales of Democracy in America treasons treason yeah yeah um one more Biden question I I remember when you know when they would do the electric car stuff they would always try to box you out even though you have the only electric car anybody wants um yeah you you said I think this week that you think that Biden left these astronauts up in space because he didn't want to give you an opportunity to save them make NASA look bad make the private sector look better make you look good you believe that yeah yeah no absolutely so the of course I I kind of agree I mean I um why would he want to let you help them come down when\n\nyou're supporting the President Biden Administration was was attacking me next level uh I mean the department of of Justice or Injustice under the Biden Administration um was I mean there was suing SpaceX there there suing SpaceX for not hiring Asylum Seekers and we're like but it's actually illegal for us to hire Asylum Seekers because we're rocket technology is covered under uh itar rules which is that means it's an advanced weapons technology yeah and so we can only hire permanent residents or green or or or citizens right like so so we're damned if we do it damned if we don't we said like so how can they sue us for not hiring Asylum Seekers when it's actually illegal for us to do so but nonetheless there was a big Department of Justice or Injustice\n\ncase about this against SpaceX so obviously it was an antagonistic situation um and those astronauts were supposed to be up there for 8 days and now they're up there for eight months does that make any sense and and and we we we obviously could have brought them back sooner but they didn't want it to didn't want anyone who supported president Trump to look good basically yeah that's the that's the that's the issue the um a lot of them are saying right now that the reason that you want to get into Social Security that you want to get into all of these different into Treasury and things like that is that you're looking for personal information and you're trying to make more money yeah I I've never met anybody as rich as you that cared less about money in\n\nmy life every time I hear a story about you you're sleeping on a couch of some other guy in a city that you could buy the entire thing yeah I'm not I don't think you care about money do you no actually I I I mean listen like if I if I steal some social security I can finally buy nice [Laughter] things and and and on that same question they're also talking about you guys are going to end Social Security you're going to end Medicare you're going to end these things I I don't imagine that conversation has been had with the president and that's that's the plan no in fact the actions that we're taking uh with the support of the president and the support of the agencies is what will save Medicare what will save Social Security yeah um and and it's it because\n\nif the country goes insolvent if if if all the if all the money is just spent on paying interest on debt there's no money left for anything yeah so that's that's the reason I'm doing this is because I'm I was looking at the big picture here and it's like man our debts getting out of control uh the the interest payments interest on the national debt now exceeds the entire defense department budget it's a trillion a year in interest just to carry the money that we owe is a trillion a year that is unbelievable and Rising rapidly it's so so like it's I mean a country is not different from a person country overspends country goes bankrupt same with same as a person who overspends goes bankrupt so it's it's not like optional to solve these things it's essential\n\num so we're going to go bankrupt yes we are um couple minutes left here um Russia um there's a huge push from the yeah people like like say like uh you know I I'm I'm a I'm a bought asset of Putin I'm like he can't afford me yeah I think I think you're worth more than Russia think about it I like that so we you're trying to end you're trying to end a war it's all ending a war always means you have to compromise you have to negotiate with an enemy or an adversary that's just what it is and right now they are Lassing the president for trying a different method to a war that they haven't been able to end for three and a half years or three years yeah they you know they're saying Trump's blaming zalinsky for The Invasion how do you how do you process all\n\nof the negativity toward him for trying to end this war well first of all I think we should have empathy for the people dying at the front lines that's the most important thing and people have been dying you know it's like H how many more years is this supposed to go on yeah and imagine if that was your son your father at you know what what are they dying for yeah what exactly are they dying for that line has bar the line of Engagement has barely moved for 2 years yeah there's a whole much of people dead in trenches For What and I I'll tell you what for what it's like for the biggest graph machine that I've ever seen in my life that's for what it's it's unreal like the the the amount of money that that is being taken in in graft and bribery is is disgusting\n\num and and so what's actually happening is that those those you know PE those poor guys are getting sent into a meat grinder for money that's what's actually going on yeah and it needs to stop and that's I mean that's it seems I mean Trump is so pragmatic on this he just he's just looking at it and he's saying it's Ukraine it's not our country it's not a NATO Ally I just want to see people not dying I want to see on both sides I mean think about how many young so many young men have died in Ukraine that the Army is starting to age out the military is aging out you got 40 and 50y old guys fighting in a war because there's nobody left that's not killed or maned in their 20s that is that's the reality of it think about how many people that is if you're a\n\nhumanitarian at all you just got to end the war like no matter what just get it over with yes people they need to stop dying um and uh and and the gri machines got to stop you know so uh and I think people that don't a lot of people out there don't realize like the president has a lot of empathy he really cares you know he's a good he's a good man um so I got one more for you um I've been fascinated by you for a very long time uh thanks um I've just I just I've never seen anybody that can you know do so many things at the same time I mean you got the Rockets you got the cars I've always wanted to ask you what is it like inside your mind like does is it just a th000 miles an hour I mean are you yeah is it just not I mean does does it ever stop do you sleep\n\nhow much do you sleep What's um paint us a picture of inside of of the mind of of a genius like how do you how do you do all this can you answer that question it's not an easy question yeah I mean my mind is a storm yeah so it's a storm but but I mean Let Me Maybe tell you something like you didn't ask the question but but I I think it's worth kind of nonetheless maybe just just elaborating on something which is um you know I grew up in in South Africa and and but my morality was informed by America um I read comic books you know played Dungeons and dragon and and um I watched American TV shows and it like it seemed like America cared about being the good guys you know about doing the right thing and and and that's actually pretty unusual by the way yeah\n\nit's like it's like in the world it's very unusual yeah it's not like actually most countries don't do that no they don't don't no um and so I was like yeah you know you want to be the good you want to be on the side of good you want to care about what's right and um and uh yeah so that's that's uh yeah what I believe in you know so I gave you I gave you a tough one at the end yeah so yeah that's great that's great Elon Musk all right than you thank you so much all right I appreciate thank you so all right hey guys [Applause] [Music] [Applause] sir thank you [Music] thanks guys [Music] [Applause]"},"languages":["en"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fCB9aLZGJSQ"},{"id":"hannity-trump-musk-2025","type":"interview","url":"https://www.foxnews.com/video/6369030618112","title":"Hannity","titles":{"en":"Hannity","de":"Hannity","fr":"Hannity"},"date":"2025-02-18","summary":"Donald Trump and Elon Musk sit down together with Sean Hannity at the White House for their first joint TV interview, focused on DOGE and the administration's early days.","text":"AND NOT A MOMENT TOO SOON. HERE IS PART ONE OF MY INTERVIEW WITH PRESIDENT TRUMP AND ELON MUSK. >> I HAVE TO START WITH THIS. HE’S WORKING FOR FREE WITH DOGE, HE’S PUT A LOT OF HIS LIFE ON HOLD. YOU SUED TWITTER A NUMBER OF YEARS AGO, YOU MADE HIM PAY YOU $10 MILLION. >> THAT’S RIGHT. I SAID FROM LONG BEFORE HE HAD IT. THEY REALLY DID A NUMBER ON ME. I SUED AND THEY HAD TO PAY AND THEY PAID $10 MILLION SETTLEMENT. >> YOU ARE OKAY WITH THAT?\n\n>> I LIFTED UP TO THE LAWYERS AND THE TEAM RUNNING TWITTER SO I SAID YOU DO WHAT YOU THINK MAKES SENSE. >> I WAS LOOKING TO GET MUCH MORE MONEY THAN THAT. >> YOU GIVE HIM A DISCOUNT. >> HE GOT A BIG DISCOUNT. I DON’T THINK EVEN KNOWS ABOUT IT. >> HE’S BECOME ONE OF YOUR BEST FRIENDS. HE’S WORKING FOR FREE FOR YOU. [SIMULTANEOUS TALKING] >> I THINK PRESIDENT TRUMP IS A GOOD MAN. >> THE PRESIDENT HAS BEEN SO UNFAIRLY ATTACKED IN THE MEDIA.\n\nIT’S REALLY OUTRAGEOUS. AT THIS POINT I’VE SPENT A LOT OF TIME WITH THE PRESIDENT AND NOT ONCE HAVE I SEEN HIM DO SOMETHING THAT WAS MEAN OR CRUEL OR WRONG. NOT ONCE. >> I’VE KNOWN HIM FOR 30 YEARS. I’VE NEVER SEEN ANYBODY TAKE AS MUCH AS HE’S TAKEN. WE’VE DISCUSSED THIS LIKE HOW DO YOU DEAL WITH IT. [SIMULTANEOUS TALKING] >> AND THEN CULMINATING INTO ASSASSINATION ATTEMPTS WHICH RESULTED IN YOUR ENDORSEMENT. >> I WAS GOING TO DO IT ANYWAY.\n\n>> THE DAY OF THE ASSASSINATION. >> I WAS GOING TO DO IT ANYWAY. >> WITH YOUR INDULGENCE, I’M CONVINCED THAT PEOPLE ONLY KNOW A LITTLE BIT ABOUT ELON. I DON’T THANK THEY KNOW EVERYTHING ABOUT HIM BECAUSE AS I STUDIED AND PREPARE FOR THIS INTERVIEW, I LEARNED A LOT ABOUT YOU THAT I DIDN’T KNOW.\n\nPEOPLE WILL THINK ABOUT TESLA, DEMOCRATS DEMONIZING YOU AND TRYING TO MAKE THE COUNTRY HATE YOU, I JUST WANT PEOPLE TO UNDERSTAND YOU A LITTLE BIT BETTER AND THE PERSON THAT YOU’VE GOTTEN TO KNOW AND HAVE PUT A LOT OF TRUST IN. LET’S GO OVER A LITTLE BIT OF YOUR BIO STARTING WITH PAYPAL AND HOW YOU BECAME INVOLVED IN TESLA AND SPACEX AND NEURAL LINK >> I THINK I’M A TECHNOLOGIST AND I TRY TO MAKE TECHNOLOGIES THAT IMPROVE THE WORLD.\n\nTHAT’S WHY MY T-SHIRTS AS TECH-SUPPORT BECAUSE I’M HERE TO PROVIDE THE PRESIDENT WITH TECHNOLOGY SUPPORT. THAT MAY SEEM LIKE IS THAT A SILLY THING BUT ACTUALLY IT’S A VERY IMPORTANT THING BECAUSE THE PRESIDENT WILL MAKE THESE EXECUTIVE ORDERS WHICH ARE VERY SENSIBLE AND GOOD FOR THE COUNTRY BUT THAN THEY DON’T GET IMPLEMENTED.\n\nIF YOU TAKE THE FUNDING FOR THE MIGRANT HOTELS, THE PRESIDENT ISSUED AN EXECUTIVE ORDER THAT WE NEED TO STOP TAKING TAXPAYER MONEY AND PAYING FOR LUXURY HOTELS FOR ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS. IT MAKES NO SENSE. PEOPLE DO NOT WANT THEIR TAX DOLLARS GOING TO FUND HIGH-END HOTELS FOR ILLEGALS. YET THEY ARE STILL DOING THAT EVEN AS LATE AS LAST WEEK. SO WE WENT IN THERE AND THIS IS A VIOLATION OF THE PRESIDENTIAL ORDER, A NEEDS TO STOP.\n\nSO WHAT WE’RE DOING HERE IS ONE OF THE BIGGEST FUNCTIONS OF THE TEAM IS MAKING SURE THAT THE PRESIDENT EXECUTIVE ORDERS ARE CARRIED OUT. THIS IS A VERY IMPORTANT THING. THE PRESIDENT IS THE ELECTED REPRESENTATIVE OF THE PEOPLE. REPRESENTING THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE AND IF THE BUREAUCRACY IS FIGHTING THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE AND PREVENTING THE PRESIDENT FROM IMPLEMENTING WHAT THE PEOPLE WANT THEN WHAT WE LIVE IN IS A BUREAUCRACY AND NOT DEMOCRACY.\n\n>> Sean: YOU ARE BOTH AWARE, YOU HAVE TO BE KEENLY AWARE THAT THE MEDIA AND THE PUNDITRY CLASS , I THINK YOU’VE PROVEN THEY HAVE NO POWER ANYMORE. THEY THREW EVERYTHING THEY HAD AT YOU AND THEY DIDN’T WIN. AND THAT WAS \"THE NEW YORK TIMES\", \"WASHINGTON POST\", EVERY LATE-NIGHT COMITY SHOW, THEY JUST... NOW I SEE THEY WANT YOU -- THEY WANT A DIVORCE. THEY WANT YOU TO START HATING EACH OTHER. PRESIDENT ELON MUSK FOR EXAMPLE.\n\nYOU DO KNOW THAT THEY ARE DOING THAT TO YOU? >> I SEE IT ALL THE TIME. THEY TRIED AND THAN THEY STOPPED. THEY HAVE MANY DIFFERENT THINGS OF HATRED. ELON SAID THEY ARE TRYING TO DRIVE US APART, I SAID ABSOLUTELY. THEY SAID WE HAVE BREAKING NEWS DONALD TRUMP HAS CEDED CONTROL OF THE PRESIDENCY TO ELON MUSK. PRESIDENT MUSK WILL BE ATTENDING A CABINET MEETING TONIGHT AT 8:00 AND I SAID IT IS SO OBVIOUS. THEY ARE SO BAD AT IT.\n\nI USED TO THINK THEY WERE GOOD AT IT. IF THEY WERE GOOD AT IT I WOULD NEVER BE PRESIDENT BECAUSE I THINK NOBODY IN HISTORY HAS EVER GOTTEN MORE BAD PUBLICITY THAN ME. I GET 98% BAD PUBLICITY. OUTSIDE OF YOU AND A FEW OF YOUR FRIENDS, IT’S LIKE THE CRAZIEST THING. YOU KNOW WHAT I HAVE LEARNED, THE PEOPLE ARE SMART. THEY GET IT. THEY REALLY SEE WHAT’S HAPPENING.\n\n>> AT THE END OF THIS INTERVIEW WHAT I WOULD LIKE IS I WANT PEOPLE TO KNOW THE RELATIONSHIP AND KNOW MORE ABOUT YOU. WHAT IS THE RELATIONSHIP MR. PRESIDENT? >> I RESPECT HIM. I’VE ALWAYS RESPECTED HIM. I NEVER KNEW THAT HE WAS RIGHT ON CERTAIN THINGS AND HEATED STAR LINK. HE DID THINGS THAT WERE SO ADVANCED THAT NOBODY KNEW WHAT THEY WEAR. I CAN TELL YOU IN NORTH CAROLINA THEY HAD NO COMMUNICATION.\n\nTHOSE PEOPLE HAD RIVERS IN BETWEEN -- LAND THAT NEVER SAW WATER ALL OF A SUDDEN THERE WAS A RIVER. PEOPLE WERE DYING OVER THERE, NO COMMUNICATION. THEY SAID YOU KNOW ELON MUSK AND THEY DIDN’T... THEY SAID COULD YOU GET STAR LINK, IF THE FIRST TIME I EVER HEARD OF IT. IT’S UNBELIEVABLE. HE SAID -- I SAID THEY REALLY NEED IT AND HE GOT THOUSANDS OF UNITS OF THIS COMMUNICATION AND IT SAVED A LOT OF LIVES. YOU HAVE TO WAIT A LONG TIME TO GET IT.\n\nAND HE GOT IT TO THEM IMMEDIATELY AND I SAID THAT’S PRETTY AMAZING AND I DIDN’T EVEN KNOW HE HAD IT. WE WATCH THE ROCKET SHIP’S AND WE WATCHED TESLA. SOMETHING THAT HAD AN EFFECT WAS WHEN I SAW THE ROCKET SHIP COME BACK AND GET GRABBED LIKE YOU GRAB A BEAUTIFUL LITTLE BABY. [SIMULTANEOUS TALKING] >> HE SAID YOU CAN’T REALLY HAVE A ROCKET PROGRAM IF YOU ARE GOING TO DUMP A BILLION DOLLARS INTO THE OCEAN EVERY TIME YOU FLY. YOU HAVE TO SAVE IT.\n\nFIRST TIME I’VE EVER SEEN THAT DONE. NOBODY ELSE COULD DO IT. THEY WON’T BE ABLE TO DO IT FOR A LONG TIME. HE HAS THE TECHNOLOGY. YOU LEARN -- I WANTED SOMEBODY REALLY SMART TO WORK WITH ME IN TERMS OF THE COUNTRY. A VERY IMPORTANT ASPECT. IS ACTUALLY A VERY GOOD BUSINESSMAN. WHEN HE TALKS ABOUT THE EXECUTIVE ORDERS, THIS IS PROBABLY TRUE FOR ALL PRESIDENTS, YOU WRITE AN EXECUTIVE ORDER ANY THINK IT’S DONE.\n\nIT DOESN’T GET IMPLEMENTED, THEY DON’T IMPLEMENT IT. MAYBE FROM THE LAST ADMINISTRATION THEY ARE IN SOME CASES, YOU TRY TO GET THEM OUT AS FAST AS YOU CAN. AS SOON AS HE SAID THAT I SAID THAT’S INTERESTING. YOU WRITE A BEAUTIFUL... HE TAKES IT AND WITH HIS HUNDRED GENIUSES HE’S GOT SOME BRILLIANT YOUNG PEOPLE WORKING FOR HIM THAT DRESS MUCH WORSE THAN HIM. THEY DRESS IN T-SHIRTS. >> Sean: HE IS YOUR TECH-SUPPORT. >> HE GETS IT DONE.\n\nYOU’VE GOT A LOT OF TECH PEOPLE. HE GETS IT DONE. I SAID IN REAL ESTATE YOU HAD GUYS THAT WOULD DRAW BEAUTIFUL RENDERINGS ON THE BUILDING AND THEY WOULD SAY WHEN YOU STARTING BUT THEY WERE NEVER ABLE TO GET IT BUILDS. THEY COULDN’T GET THE FINANCING ... AND THEN YOU HAVE OTHER GUYS THAT ARE ABLE TO GET IT DONE. THAT WAS IN REAL ESTATE. SAME THING IN THIS.\n\nSO WHEN HE SAID THAT, WHEN YOU SIGN A LOT OF THESE EXECUTIVE ORDERS A LOT OF THEM DON’T GET DONE. HE WOULD TAKE THAT EXECUTIVE ORDER THAT I HAD SIGNED AND HE WOULD HAVE THOSE PEOPLE GO TO WHATEVER AGENCY IT WAS, WHEN YOU DOING IT, GET IT DONE. SOME GUY THAT MAY BE DIDN’T WANT TO DO IT ALL OF A SUDDEN HE’S SIGNING. >> Sean: DO A LOT OF THOSE ORDERS HAVE TO BE CODIFIED INTO LAW? >> YES, AND THEY WILL BE. IN THE MEANTIME WE HAVE FOUR YEARS.\n\nTHAT’S WHY I LIKE DOING IT RIGHT AT THE BEGINNING. AND EXECUTIVE ORDER IS GREAT. THE... WHEN THEY DID ALL THESE EXECUTIVE ORDERS, THEY WERE TERRIBLE. THEIR EXECUTIVE ORDERS WERE SO BAD, IF THEY EVER GOT THEM CODIFIED YOU NEVER BE ABLE TO BREAK THEM. SO THE DAMAGE THAT BIDEN HAS DONE TO THIS COUNTRY, AND IT’S NOT EVEN BIDEN, IT’S THE PEOPLE IN THE OVAL OFFICE. THE DAMAGE THEY DID TO THIS COUNTRY IN TERMS OF LET’S SAY OPEN BORDERS.\n\nTHERE ARE SO MANY THINGS. OPEN BORDERS WHERE MILLIONS OF PEOPLE ARE PUT INTO OUR COUNTRY AND HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF THOSE PEOPLE ARE CRIMINALS AND MURDERERS. THEY ARE DRUG DEALERS, GANG MEMBERS, PEOPLE FROM PRISONS ALL OVER THE WORLD. AND WE HAVE A GREAT GUY TOM HOMAN AND HE’S DOING SO INCREDIBLY. 96%. HE’S A PHENOMENAL GUY. AND KRISTI NOEM IS DOING AN UNBELIEVABLE JOB. HE WANTED HER AND SAID SHE’S SO TOUGH.\n\nI SAID I DON’T THINK OF HER AS THAT WAY. SHE’S VERY NICE. SHE’S RIDING THE HORSE, SHE’S GREAT. BUT THE TEAM WE HAVE IS REALLY ... THOSE EXECUTIVE ORDERS, I SIGNED THEN AND NOW THEY GET PASSED ONTO HIM AND HIS GROUP AND OTHER PEOPLE. AND THEY WERE ALL GETTING DONE. WE ARE GETTING THEM DONE. >> LIMIT GO BACK A LITTLE BIT TO YOUR BACKGROUND. IT’S BEYOND IMPRESSIVE. YOU WERE THE CHIEF ENGINEER, AN EARLY BELIEVER IN TESLA.\n\nYOU BECAME THE CEO AND THEN THE CHIEF ENGINEER WHICH WAS PHENOMENAL. SPACEX SAME THING WHICH IS UNBELIEVABLE. YOU ARE THE FIRST COMPANY, PRIVATE COMPANY TO SEND ASTRONAUTS SUCCESSFULLY INTO SPACE. FIRST PRIVATE COMPANY TO SEND ASTRONAUTS INTO ORBIT. >> HE’S GOING TO GO INTO ORBIT SOON. HE’S GOING TO GO TO MARS. >> THEY SAID DO YOU WANT TO DYE ON MARS I SAID YES, BUT NOT ON IMPACT. >> Sean: THIS IS GOING TO BE HARD.\n\nI FEEL LIKE I’M INTERVIEWING TWO BROTHERS HERE. STAR SHIELD WHICH COULD BE USED FOR NATIONAL DEFENCE. >> IT’S ALREADY BEEN USED FOR NATIONAL DEFENCE. >> Sean: THAN YOU HAVE A PART OF TESLA, A ROBOTIC ARM. THAN YOU HAVE AN AI ARM AND THEN YOU HAVE SOMETHING THAT REALLY FASCINATED ME. IT’S CALLED NEURAL LINK. DO YOU MIND TO HELP THE BLIND TO SEE... THEY CAN RECOVER WERE IN THE PAST -- HOW CLOSE IS THAT BECOMING TO SUCCESS?\n\n>> WE’VE IMPLANTED NEURAL LINK IN THREE PATIENTS SO FAR WHO ARE QUADRIPLEGICS AND IT ALLOWS THEM TO DIRECTLY CONTROL THEIR PHONE OR COMPUTER JUST BY THINKING. IT’S LIKE TELEPATHY. YOU CONTROL YOUR COMPUTER JUST BY THINKING. IT’S POSSIBLE TO CONTROL THE COMPUTER FASTER THAN SOMEONE WHO HAS WORKING HANDS. THE NEXT STEP WOULD BE TO ADD A SECOND IMPLANT PAST THE POINT WHERE THESE -- THE NEURON IS DAMAGED SO SOMEONE CAN WALK AGAIN.\n\nTHEY CAN HAVE FULL BODY FUNCTIONALITY RESTORED. >> AND YOU LIKE BOBBY WRIGHT? >> I LIKE BOBBY. I SUPPORTED HIM. HE’S... BUT I THINK HE ISN’T. HE JUST WANTS TO QUESTION THE SCIENCE WHICH IS THE ESSENCE OF THE SCIENCE -- THE SCIENTIFIC MINTED -- METHOD IS ABOUT QUESTIONING. >> Sean: WE LEARNED A LOT... AND THAT RAISES A QUESTION, THE RICHEST MEN IN THE WORLD, YOU MAY NOT LIKE THAT PART. BUT HE’S ON YOUR TEETH.\n\n>> I WANTED TO FIND SOMEBODY SMARTER THAN HIM. I SEARCHED ALL OVER, I JUST COULDN’T DO IT. >> YOU REALLY TRIED. >> WE HAD HIM FOR THE COUNTRY. WE SETTLED ON THIS GUY. >> THANKS FOR HAVING ME. [SIMULTANEOUS TALKING] >> Sean: I HATE TO DO THIS TO YOU BUT I’M GOING TO DO IT ANYWAY. YOU ARE DOING ALL OF THESE THINGS. NOBODY AT DOGE GETS PAID A PENNY. >> SOME PEOPLE ARE FEDERAL EMPLOYEES.\n\nIT’S FAIR TO SAY THAT THE SOFTWARE ENGINEERS COULD BE EARNING MILLIONS OF DOLLARS A YEAR INSTEAD OF EARNING A SMALL FRACTION OF THAT AS FEDERAL EMPLOYEES. >> AND THEY ARE VERY COMMITTED PEOPLE. >> Sean: YOU ARE COMMITTED TO HELPING THE BLIND SEE PEOPLE WITH SPINAL CORD INJURIES RECOVER, YOU ARE COMMITTED TO GETTING TO MARS. YOU ARE COMMITTED TO -- YOU WILL HELP RESCUE NEXT MONTH TWO ASTRONAUTS THAT I THINK WERE ABANDONED.\n\nTHEY DISPUTE THAT IN AN INTERVIEW. >> WE ARE ACCELERATING THE RETURN OF THE ASTRONAUTS WHICH WAS POSTPONED... >> THEY GOT LEFT IN SPACE. >> THEY WERE SUPPOSED TO BE THERE EIGHT DAYS THEY WERE LEFT UP THERE FOR 300. >> THEY WERE LEFT UP THERE FOR POLITICAL REASONS WHICH IS NOT GOOD. >> Sean: IF I HAD THE WEIGHT AND PRESSURE OF DOING THAT I THANK I WOULD BE -- WE SPOKE BEFORE WE DID THIS INTERVIEW, YOU WERE VERY CONFIDENT.\n\nYOU THINK THIS WILL BE A SUCCESSFUL MISSION. >> WE DON’T WANT TO BE COMPLACENT BUT WE HAVE BROUGHT ASTRONAUTS BACK MANY TIMES BEFORE AND ALWAYS WITH SUCCESS. AS LONG AS WE ARE NOT COMPLACENT >> WHEN YOU GOING TO LAUNCH? >> IT’S ABOUT FOUR WEEKS. >> YOU NOW HAVE THE GO-AHEAD. THEY DIDN’T HAVE THE GO-AHEAD WITH BIDEN. HE WAS GOING TO LEAVE THEM IN SPACE. I THINK HE WAS GOING TO LEAVE THEM IN SPACE. HE DIDN’T WANT THE PUBLICITY. CAN YOU BELIEVE IT?\n\n>> Sean: UNBELIEVABLE. I WANT TO ECHO SOMETHING THAT THE PRESIDENT SAID AND ASK AN OVERARCHING QUESTION. SO PEOPLE GOT HIT WITH HURRICANE HELENE, THEY HAVE NO COMMUNICATION WITH THE OUTSIDE WORLD. YOU DONATED TO THE PEOPLE. >> HE SAVED A LOT OF LIVES IN NORTH CAROLINA. >> AND CALIFORNIA AFTER THE WILDFIRES. >> THEY WERE REALLY IN TROUBLE. THEY HAD NO COMMUNICATION. THEY WERE DYING OF STARVATION. HE SAVED A LOT OF LIVES IN NORTH CAROLINA.\n\n>> NOW YOU ARE GOING TO RESCUE ASTRONAUTS. AND AGAIN YOU DO ALL OF THIS, I WOULD THINK LIBERALS WOULD LOVE THE FACT THAT YOU HAVE THE BIGGEST ELECTRIC VEHICLE COMPANY IN THE WORLD. >> I USED TO BE ADORED BY THE LEFT. LESS SO THESE DAYS. IT’S THIS -- THEY CALL IT TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME. YOU DON’T REALIZE HOW REAL THIS IS ON TILL -- YOU CAN’T REASON WITH PEOPLE.\n\nI WAS AT A FRIEND’S BIRTHDAY PARTY AND IT WAS A NICE QUIET DINNER AND EVERYTHING WAS NORMAL AND I HAVE TO MENTION THE PRESIDENT’S NAME. IT WAS LIKE THEY GOT SHOT WITH A START THAT CONTAINED METHAMPHETAMINE AND RABIES. LIKE GUYS YOU CAN’T HAVE A NORMAL CONVERSATION. IT’S LIKE THEY’VE BECOME COMPLETELY IRRATIONAL. >> Sean: IF YOU ARE FRIENDS WITH HIM YOU PAY A PRICE. WALK IN A RESTAURANT AND IT’S LIKE HALF THE ROOM GETS DAGGERS. >> IT’S INSANE.\n\nI HAD SOME... A BIG EVENT BUT I RECEIVED THE INVITATION AT THE BEGINNING OF LAST YEAR AND I STILL ATTENDED EVEN AFTER I ENDORSED PRESIDENT TRUMP AND I DIDN’T REALIZE HOW PROFOUNDLY THAT WOULD AFFECT HOW I WAS RECEIVED. I WALK INTO THE ROOM AND I’M GETTING THE DIRTY LOOKS FROM EVERYONE. IF LOOKS COULD KILL I WOULD’VE BEEN DEAD SEVERAL TIMES OVER. [SIMULTANEOUS TALKING]","textByLang":{"en":"AND NOT A MOMENT TOO SOON. HERE IS PART ONE OF MY INTERVIEW WITH PRESIDENT TRUMP AND ELON MUSK. >> I HAVE TO START WITH THIS. HE’S WORKING FOR FREE WITH DOGE, HE’S PUT A LOT OF HIS LIFE ON HOLD. YOU SUED TWITTER A NUMBER OF YEARS AGO, YOU MADE HIM PAY YOU $10 MILLION. >> THAT’S RIGHT. I SAID FROM LONG BEFORE HE HAD IT. THEY REALLY DID A NUMBER ON ME. I SUED AND THEY HAD TO PAY AND THEY PAID $10 MILLION SETTLEMENT. >> YOU ARE OKAY WITH THAT?\n\n>> I LIFTED UP TO THE LAWYERS AND THE TEAM RUNNING TWITTER SO I SAID YOU DO WHAT YOU THINK MAKES SENSE. >> I WAS LOOKING TO GET MUCH MORE MONEY THAN THAT. >> YOU GIVE HIM A DISCOUNT. >> HE GOT A BIG DISCOUNT. I DON’T THINK EVEN KNOWS ABOUT IT. >> HE’S BECOME ONE OF YOUR BEST FRIENDS. HE’S WORKING FOR FREE FOR YOU. [SIMULTANEOUS TALKING] >> I THINK PRESIDENT TRUMP IS A GOOD MAN. >> THE PRESIDENT HAS BEEN SO UNFAIRLY ATTACKED IN THE MEDIA.\n\nIT’S REALLY OUTRAGEOUS. AT THIS POINT I’VE SPENT A LOT OF TIME WITH THE PRESIDENT AND NOT ONCE HAVE I SEEN HIM DO SOMETHING THAT WAS MEAN OR CRUEL OR WRONG. NOT ONCE. >> I’VE KNOWN HIM FOR 30 YEARS. I’VE NEVER SEEN ANYBODY TAKE AS MUCH AS HE’S TAKEN. WE’VE DISCUSSED THIS LIKE HOW DO YOU DEAL WITH IT. [SIMULTANEOUS TALKING] >> AND THEN CULMINATING INTO ASSASSINATION ATTEMPTS WHICH RESULTED IN YOUR ENDORSEMENT. >> I WAS GOING TO DO IT ANYWAY.\n\n>> THE DAY OF THE ASSASSINATION. >> I WAS GOING TO DO IT ANYWAY. >> WITH YOUR INDULGENCE, I’M CONVINCED THAT PEOPLE ONLY KNOW A LITTLE BIT ABOUT ELON. I DON’T THANK THEY KNOW EVERYTHING ABOUT HIM BECAUSE AS I STUDIED AND PREPARE FOR THIS INTERVIEW, I LEARNED A LOT ABOUT YOU THAT I DIDN’T KNOW.\n\nPEOPLE WILL THINK ABOUT TESLA, DEMOCRATS DEMONIZING YOU AND TRYING TO MAKE THE COUNTRY HATE YOU, I JUST WANT PEOPLE TO UNDERSTAND YOU A LITTLE BIT BETTER AND THE PERSON THAT YOU’VE GOTTEN TO KNOW AND HAVE PUT A LOT OF TRUST IN. LET’S GO OVER A LITTLE BIT OF YOUR BIO STARTING WITH PAYPAL AND HOW YOU BECAME INVOLVED IN TESLA AND SPACEX AND NEURAL LINK >> I THINK I’M A TECHNOLOGIST AND I TRY TO MAKE TECHNOLOGIES THAT IMPROVE THE WORLD.\n\nTHAT’S WHY MY T-SHIRTS AS TECH-SUPPORT BECAUSE I’M HERE TO PROVIDE THE PRESIDENT WITH TECHNOLOGY SUPPORT. THAT MAY SEEM LIKE IS THAT A SILLY THING BUT ACTUALLY IT’S A VERY IMPORTANT THING BECAUSE THE PRESIDENT WILL MAKE THESE EXECUTIVE ORDERS WHICH ARE VERY SENSIBLE AND GOOD FOR THE COUNTRY BUT THAN THEY DON’T GET IMPLEMENTED.\n\nIF YOU TAKE THE FUNDING FOR THE MIGRANT HOTELS, THE PRESIDENT ISSUED AN EXECUTIVE ORDER THAT WE NEED TO STOP TAKING TAXPAYER MONEY AND PAYING FOR LUXURY HOTELS FOR ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS. IT MAKES NO SENSE. PEOPLE DO NOT WANT THEIR TAX DOLLARS GOING TO FUND HIGH-END HOTELS FOR ILLEGALS. YET THEY ARE STILL DOING THAT EVEN AS LATE AS LAST WEEK. SO WE WENT IN THERE AND THIS IS A VIOLATION OF THE PRESIDENTIAL ORDER, A NEEDS TO STOP.\n\nSO WHAT WE’RE DOING HERE IS ONE OF THE BIGGEST FUNCTIONS OF THE TEAM IS MAKING SURE THAT THE PRESIDENT EXECUTIVE ORDERS ARE CARRIED OUT. THIS IS A VERY IMPORTANT THING. THE PRESIDENT IS THE ELECTED REPRESENTATIVE OF THE PEOPLE. REPRESENTING THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE AND IF THE BUREAUCRACY IS FIGHTING THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE AND PREVENTING THE PRESIDENT FROM IMPLEMENTING WHAT THE PEOPLE WANT THEN WHAT WE LIVE IN IS A BUREAUCRACY AND NOT DEMOCRACY.\n\n>> Sean: YOU ARE BOTH AWARE, YOU HAVE TO BE KEENLY AWARE THAT THE MEDIA AND THE PUNDITRY CLASS , I THINK YOU’VE PROVEN THEY HAVE NO POWER ANYMORE. THEY THREW EVERYTHING THEY HAD AT YOU AND THEY DIDN’T WIN. AND THAT WAS \"THE NEW YORK TIMES\", \"WASHINGTON POST\", EVERY LATE-NIGHT COMITY SHOW, THEY JUST... NOW I SEE THEY WANT YOU -- THEY WANT A DIVORCE. THEY WANT YOU TO START HATING EACH OTHER. PRESIDENT ELON MUSK FOR EXAMPLE.\n\nYOU DO KNOW THAT THEY ARE DOING THAT TO YOU? >> I SEE IT ALL THE TIME. THEY TRIED AND THAN THEY STOPPED. THEY HAVE MANY DIFFERENT THINGS OF HATRED. ELON SAID THEY ARE TRYING TO DRIVE US APART, I SAID ABSOLUTELY. THEY SAID WE HAVE BREAKING NEWS DONALD TRUMP HAS CEDED CONTROL OF THE PRESIDENCY TO ELON MUSK. PRESIDENT MUSK WILL BE ATTENDING A CABINET MEETING TONIGHT AT 8:00 AND I SAID IT IS SO OBVIOUS. THEY ARE SO BAD AT IT.\n\nI USED TO THINK THEY WERE GOOD AT IT. IF THEY WERE GOOD AT IT I WOULD NEVER BE PRESIDENT BECAUSE I THINK NOBODY IN HISTORY HAS EVER GOTTEN MORE BAD PUBLICITY THAN ME. I GET 98% BAD PUBLICITY. OUTSIDE OF YOU AND A FEW OF YOUR FRIENDS, IT’S LIKE THE CRAZIEST THING. YOU KNOW WHAT I HAVE LEARNED, THE PEOPLE ARE SMART. THEY GET IT. THEY REALLY SEE WHAT’S HAPPENING.\n\n>> AT THE END OF THIS INTERVIEW WHAT I WOULD LIKE IS I WANT PEOPLE TO KNOW THE RELATIONSHIP AND KNOW MORE ABOUT YOU. WHAT IS THE RELATIONSHIP MR. PRESIDENT? >> I RESPECT HIM. I’VE ALWAYS RESPECTED HIM. I NEVER KNEW THAT HE WAS RIGHT ON CERTAIN THINGS AND HEATED STAR LINK. HE DID THINGS THAT WERE SO ADVANCED THAT NOBODY KNEW WHAT THEY WEAR. I CAN TELL YOU IN NORTH CAROLINA THEY HAD NO COMMUNICATION.\n\nTHOSE PEOPLE HAD RIVERS IN BETWEEN -- LAND THAT NEVER SAW WATER ALL OF A SUDDEN THERE WAS A RIVER. PEOPLE WERE DYING OVER THERE, NO COMMUNICATION. THEY SAID YOU KNOW ELON MUSK AND THEY DIDN’T... THEY SAID COULD YOU GET STAR LINK, IF THE FIRST TIME I EVER HEARD OF IT. IT’S UNBELIEVABLE. HE SAID -- I SAID THEY REALLY NEED IT AND HE GOT THOUSANDS OF UNITS OF THIS COMMUNICATION AND IT SAVED A LOT OF LIVES. YOU HAVE TO WAIT A LONG TIME TO GET IT.\n\nAND HE GOT IT TO THEM IMMEDIATELY AND I SAID THAT’S PRETTY AMAZING AND I DIDN’T EVEN KNOW HE HAD IT. WE WATCH THE ROCKET SHIP’S AND WE WATCHED TESLA. SOMETHING THAT HAD AN EFFECT WAS WHEN I SAW THE ROCKET SHIP COME BACK AND GET GRABBED LIKE YOU GRAB A BEAUTIFUL LITTLE BABY. [SIMULTANEOUS TALKING] >> HE SAID YOU CAN’T REALLY HAVE A ROCKET PROGRAM IF YOU ARE GOING TO DUMP A BILLION DOLLARS INTO THE OCEAN EVERY TIME YOU FLY. YOU HAVE TO SAVE IT.\n\nFIRST TIME I’VE EVER SEEN THAT DONE. NOBODY ELSE COULD DO IT. THEY WON’T BE ABLE TO DO IT FOR A LONG TIME. HE HAS THE TECHNOLOGY. YOU LEARN -- I WANTED SOMEBODY REALLY SMART TO WORK WITH ME IN TERMS OF THE COUNTRY. A VERY IMPORTANT ASPECT. IS ACTUALLY A VERY GOOD BUSINESSMAN. WHEN HE TALKS ABOUT THE EXECUTIVE ORDERS, THIS IS PROBABLY TRUE FOR ALL PRESIDENTS, YOU WRITE AN EXECUTIVE ORDER ANY THINK IT’S DONE.\n\nIT DOESN’T GET IMPLEMENTED, THEY DON’T IMPLEMENT IT. MAYBE FROM THE LAST ADMINISTRATION THEY ARE IN SOME CASES, YOU TRY TO GET THEM OUT AS FAST AS YOU CAN. AS SOON AS HE SAID THAT I SAID THAT’S INTERESTING. YOU WRITE A BEAUTIFUL... HE TAKES IT AND WITH HIS HUNDRED GENIUSES HE’S GOT SOME BRILLIANT YOUNG PEOPLE WORKING FOR HIM THAT DRESS MUCH WORSE THAN HIM. THEY DRESS IN T-SHIRTS. >> Sean: HE IS YOUR TECH-SUPPORT. >> HE GETS IT DONE.\n\nYOU’VE GOT A LOT OF TECH PEOPLE. HE GETS IT DONE. I SAID IN REAL ESTATE YOU HAD GUYS THAT WOULD DRAW BEAUTIFUL RENDERINGS ON THE BUILDING AND THEY WOULD SAY WHEN YOU STARTING BUT THEY WERE NEVER ABLE TO GET IT BUILDS. THEY COULDN’T GET THE FINANCING ... AND THEN YOU HAVE OTHER GUYS THAT ARE ABLE TO GET IT DONE. THAT WAS IN REAL ESTATE. SAME THING IN THIS.\n\nSO WHEN HE SAID THAT, WHEN YOU SIGN A LOT OF THESE EXECUTIVE ORDERS A LOT OF THEM DON’T GET DONE. HE WOULD TAKE THAT EXECUTIVE ORDER THAT I HAD SIGNED AND HE WOULD HAVE THOSE PEOPLE GO TO WHATEVER AGENCY IT WAS, WHEN YOU DOING IT, GET IT DONE. SOME GUY THAT MAY BE DIDN’T WANT TO DO IT ALL OF A SUDDEN HE’S SIGNING. >> Sean: DO A LOT OF THOSE ORDERS HAVE TO BE CODIFIED INTO LAW? >> YES, AND THEY WILL BE. IN THE MEANTIME WE HAVE FOUR YEARS.\n\nTHAT’S WHY I LIKE DOING IT RIGHT AT THE BEGINNING. AND EXECUTIVE ORDER IS GREAT. THE... WHEN THEY DID ALL THESE EXECUTIVE ORDERS, THEY WERE TERRIBLE. THEIR EXECUTIVE ORDERS WERE SO BAD, IF THEY EVER GOT THEM CODIFIED YOU NEVER BE ABLE TO BREAK THEM. SO THE DAMAGE THAT BIDEN HAS DONE TO THIS COUNTRY, AND IT’S NOT EVEN BIDEN, IT’S THE PEOPLE IN THE OVAL OFFICE. THE DAMAGE THEY DID TO THIS COUNTRY IN TERMS OF LET’S SAY OPEN BORDERS.\n\nTHERE ARE SO MANY THINGS. OPEN BORDERS WHERE MILLIONS OF PEOPLE ARE PUT INTO OUR COUNTRY AND HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF THOSE PEOPLE ARE CRIMINALS AND MURDERERS. THEY ARE DRUG DEALERS, GANG MEMBERS, PEOPLE FROM PRISONS ALL OVER THE WORLD. AND WE HAVE A GREAT GUY TOM HOMAN AND HE’S DOING SO INCREDIBLY. 96%. HE’S A PHENOMENAL GUY. AND KRISTI NOEM IS DOING AN UNBELIEVABLE JOB. HE WANTED HER AND SAID SHE’S SO TOUGH.\n\nI SAID I DON’T THINK OF HER AS THAT WAY. SHE’S VERY NICE. SHE’S RIDING THE HORSE, SHE’S GREAT. BUT THE TEAM WE HAVE IS REALLY ... THOSE EXECUTIVE ORDERS, I SIGNED THEN AND NOW THEY GET PASSED ONTO HIM AND HIS GROUP AND OTHER PEOPLE. AND THEY WERE ALL GETTING DONE. WE ARE GETTING THEM DONE. >> LIMIT GO BACK A LITTLE BIT TO YOUR BACKGROUND. IT’S BEYOND IMPRESSIVE. YOU WERE THE CHIEF ENGINEER, AN EARLY BELIEVER IN TESLA.\n\nYOU BECAME THE CEO AND THEN THE CHIEF ENGINEER WHICH WAS PHENOMENAL. SPACEX SAME THING WHICH IS UNBELIEVABLE. YOU ARE THE FIRST COMPANY, PRIVATE COMPANY TO SEND ASTRONAUTS SUCCESSFULLY INTO SPACE. FIRST PRIVATE COMPANY TO SEND ASTRONAUTS INTO ORBIT. >> HE’S GOING TO GO INTO ORBIT SOON. HE’S GOING TO GO TO MARS. >> THEY SAID DO YOU WANT TO DYE ON MARS I SAID YES, BUT NOT ON IMPACT. >> Sean: THIS IS GOING TO BE HARD.\n\nI FEEL LIKE I’M INTERVIEWING TWO BROTHERS HERE. STAR SHIELD WHICH COULD BE USED FOR NATIONAL DEFENCE. >> IT’S ALREADY BEEN USED FOR NATIONAL DEFENCE. >> Sean: THAN YOU HAVE A PART OF TESLA, A ROBOTIC ARM. THAN YOU HAVE AN AI ARM AND THEN YOU HAVE SOMETHING THAT REALLY FASCINATED ME. IT’S CALLED NEURAL LINK. DO YOU MIND TO HELP THE BLIND TO SEE... THEY CAN RECOVER WERE IN THE PAST -- HOW CLOSE IS THAT BECOMING TO SUCCESS?\n\n>> WE’VE IMPLANTED NEURAL LINK IN THREE PATIENTS SO FAR WHO ARE QUADRIPLEGICS AND IT ALLOWS THEM TO DIRECTLY CONTROL THEIR PHONE OR COMPUTER JUST BY THINKING. IT’S LIKE TELEPATHY. YOU CONTROL YOUR COMPUTER JUST BY THINKING. IT’S POSSIBLE TO CONTROL THE COMPUTER FASTER THAN SOMEONE WHO HAS WORKING HANDS. THE NEXT STEP WOULD BE TO ADD A SECOND IMPLANT PAST THE POINT WHERE THESE -- THE NEURON IS DAMAGED SO SOMEONE CAN WALK AGAIN.\n\nTHEY CAN HAVE FULL BODY FUNCTIONALITY RESTORED. >> AND YOU LIKE BOBBY WRIGHT? >> I LIKE BOBBY. I SUPPORTED HIM. HE’S... BUT I THINK HE ISN’T. HE JUST WANTS TO QUESTION THE SCIENCE WHICH IS THE ESSENCE OF THE SCIENCE -- THE SCIENTIFIC MINTED -- METHOD IS ABOUT QUESTIONING. >> Sean: WE LEARNED A LOT... AND THAT RAISES A QUESTION, THE RICHEST MEN IN THE WORLD, YOU MAY NOT LIKE THAT PART. BUT HE’S ON YOUR TEETH.\n\n>> I WANTED TO FIND SOMEBODY SMARTER THAN HIM. I SEARCHED ALL OVER, I JUST COULDN’T DO IT. >> YOU REALLY TRIED. >> WE HAD HIM FOR THE COUNTRY. WE SETTLED ON THIS GUY. >> THANKS FOR HAVING ME. [SIMULTANEOUS TALKING] >> Sean: I HATE TO DO THIS TO YOU BUT I’M GOING TO DO IT ANYWAY. YOU ARE DOING ALL OF THESE THINGS. NOBODY AT DOGE GETS PAID A PENNY. >> SOME PEOPLE ARE FEDERAL EMPLOYEES.\n\nIT’S FAIR TO SAY THAT THE SOFTWARE ENGINEERS COULD BE EARNING MILLIONS OF DOLLARS A YEAR INSTEAD OF EARNING A SMALL FRACTION OF THAT AS FEDERAL EMPLOYEES. >> AND THEY ARE VERY COMMITTED PEOPLE. >> Sean: YOU ARE COMMITTED TO HELPING THE BLIND SEE PEOPLE WITH SPINAL CORD INJURIES RECOVER, YOU ARE COMMITTED TO GETTING TO MARS. YOU ARE COMMITTED TO -- YOU WILL HELP RESCUE NEXT MONTH TWO ASTRONAUTS THAT I THINK WERE ABANDONED.\n\nTHEY DISPUTE THAT IN AN INTERVIEW. >> WE ARE ACCELERATING THE RETURN OF THE ASTRONAUTS WHICH WAS POSTPONED... >> THEY GOT LEFT IN SPACE. >> THEY WERE SUPPOSED TO BE THERE EIGHT DAYS THEY WERE LEFT UP THERE FOR 300. >> THEY WERE LEFT UP THERE FOR POLITICAL REASONS WHICH IS NOT GOOD. >> Sean: IF I HAD THE WEIGHT AND PRESSURE OF DOING THAT I THANK I WOULD BE -- WE SPOKE BEFORE WE DID THIS INTERVIEW, YOU WERE VERY CONFIDENT.\n\nYOU THINK THIS WILL BE A SUCCESSFUL MISSION. >> WE DON’T WANT TO BE COMPLACENT BUT WE HAVE BROUGHT ASTRONAUTS BACK MANY TIMES BEFORE AND ALWAYS WITH SUCCESS. AS LONG AS WE ARE NOT COMPLACENT >> WHEN YOU GOING TO LAUNCH? >> IT’S ABOUT FOUR WEEKS. >> YOU NOW HAVE THE GO-AHEAD. THEY DIDN’T HAVE THE GO-AHEAD WITH BIDEN. HE WAS GOING TO LEAVE THEM IN SPACE. I THINK HE WAS GOING TO LEAVE THEM IN SPACE. HE DIDN’T WANT THE PUBLICITY. CAN YOU BELIEVE IT?\n\n>> Sean: UNBELIEVABLE. I WANT TO ECHO SOMETHING THAT THE PRESIDENT SAID AND ASK AN OVERARCHING QUESTION. SO PEOPLE GOT HIT WITH HURRICANE HELENE, THEY HAVE NO COMMUNICATION WITH THE OUTSIDE WORLD. YOU DONATED TO THE PEOPLE. >> HE SAVED A LOT OF LIVES IN NORTH CAROLINA. >> AND CALIFORNIA AFTER THE WILDFIRES. >> THEY WERE REALLY IN TROUBLE. THEY HAD NO COMMUNICATION. THEY WERE DYING OF STARVATION. HE SAVED A LOT OF LIVES IN NORTH CAROLINA.\n\n>> NOW YOU ARE GOING TO RESCUE ASTRONAUTS. AND AGAIN YOU DO ALL OF THIS, I WOULD THINK LIBERALS WOULD LOVE THE FACT THAT YOU HAVE THE BIGGEST ELECTRIC VEHICLE COMPANY IN THE WORLD. >> I USED TO BE ADORED BY THE LEFT. LESS SO THESE DAYS. IT’S THIS -- THEY CALL IT TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME. YOU DON’T REALIZE HOW REAL THIS IS ON TILL -- YOU CAN’T REASON WITH PEOPLE.\n\nI WAS AT A FRIEND’S BIRTHDAY PARTY AND IT WAS A NICE QUIET DINNER AND EVERYTHING WAS NORMAL AND I HAVE TO MENTION THE PRESIDENT’S NAME. IT WAS LIKE THEY GOT SHOT WITH A START THAT CONTAINED METHAMPHETAMINE AND RABIES. LIKE GUYS YOU CAN’T HAVE A NORMAL CONVERSATION. IT’S LIKE THEY’VE BECOME COMPLETELY IRRATIONAL. >> Sean: IF YOU ARE FRIENDS WITH HIM YOU PAY A PRICE. WALK IN A RESTAURANT AND IT’S LIKE HALF THE ROOM GETS DAGGERS. >> IT’S INSANE.\n\nI HAD SOME... A BIG EVENT BUT I RECEIVED THE INVITATION AT THE BEGINNING OF LAST YEAR AND I STILL ATTENDED EVEN AFTER I ENDORSED PRESIDENT TRUMP AND I DIDN’T REALIZE HOW PROFOUNDLY THAT WOULD AFFECT HOW I WAS RECEIVED. I WALK INTO THE ROOM AND I’M GETTING THE DIRTY LOOKS FROM EVERYONE. IF LOOKS COULD KILL I WOULD’VE BEEN DEAD SEVERAL TIMES OVER. [SIMULTANEOUS TALKING]"},"languages":["en"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":"https://rollcall.com/factbase/trump/transcript/donald-trump-interview-sean-hannity-fox-news-with-elon-musk-february-18-2025/"},{"id":"wgs-dubai-2025-musk","type":"interview","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eV396ioBs3g","title":"World Governments Summit","titles":{"en":"World Governments Summit","de":"World Governments Summit","fr":"World Governments Summit"},"date":"2025-02-13","summary":"By video link from the US, Elon Musk talks with UAE AI minister Omar Sultan Al Olama at Dubai's World Governments Summit about DOGE, smaller government, AI and infrastructure.","text":"you know what I've said is that um we really have here uh rule of the bureaucracy as opposed to rule of the people democracy so uh in order we want to restore rule of the people and so what that means is reducing the size of the federal government um uh basically reducing regulation um you know there's there's there's a tremendous amount of of overregulation that's happened over time um and this is this is an inevitable consequence of a long period of prosperity is that you're going to get more and more uh rules and regulations more laws accumulate over time and the normal forcing function for getting rid of rules and regulations is war so it needs to be some kind of existential War where you you have to um do a reset in order to avoid being defeated\n\nin a war this is literally the the throughout history has been the main forcing function for clearing out an accumulation of laws and regulation in the absence of that you you every year you get more laws and regulations until eventually everything is illegal and nothing is permitted and that's sort of the situation we have these days so um so the the aspiration here is a reduction in um regulation um and reduction in COV spending such that um the economy is able to grow faster um maybe the economy can grow at 4 or 5% potentially of in terms of real useful goods and services output and the uh and then government spending can be reduced um by about 3 or 4% of the economy about maybe a trillion dollars or more um and the net effect of that would be no inflation\n\num from 25 2025 to 2026 um so that would quite remarkable and also if the US government is buying less debt which I think will be the case if it's if the deficit drops from 2 trillion to 1 trillion uh then there'll be one trillion less debt that the government you Suppy which will drop of course the interest rates to drop significantly um and that means people's uh mortgage payments uh car payments credit card payments student loans whatever debt they have uh will their debt payments will be less so I think this is something that will benefit the average American um I think some of the things we're doing also will be helpful to hopefully helpful to other countries because with the new Administration there's uh less interest in interfering with the Affairs\n\nof of other countries um you know I think uh a lot there the times the United States has been kind of pushy in international Affairs um which may resonate with number of remember of the audience um and I I think we should uh in general leave other countries to their own business basically America should mind its own bu business you know um rather than push for regime change all over the place um so yeah um so I this probably a good thing for other countries too so instead of waiting for a war to happen you went to war against the bureaucracy in the government yes we're we're essentially just we're with you know uh support um and direction of the of President Trump we are reducing the size of the bureaucracy um getting rid of excess regulatory uh regulations\n\nand and there's also so many um agencies and Regulatory authorities that they actually step on each other's feet it's it's kind of like having a a sports game when where there are too many referees on the field like more referees than players at times now that would be a silly game you know if the play players can't pass the ball without hitting a referee you know um but it's was kind of getting to that point in the US so so there's roughly 450 uh federal agencies of one kind or another um that's that's more agencies that's almost that's almost an average of two agencies per year since the formation of the United States so I mean how many agen genes do you really need to run a country I'm 99 not 450 that's for sure so and and how do you guarantee that\n\nall the incredible achievements that you aim to have in terms of savings in terms of you know impacting the uh lives of the American people are not going to be reversed in four years typically this cycle gets reversed every four years you know do you think it's going to be so impactful that it won't be reversed is there any ways that you can you know ensure that the progress is going to be continuous well I think I think we we do need to um delete entire agencies as opposed to leave part of them behind because if you leave part of them behind it's easy it's kind of like if leaving a weed if you don't get remove the the roots of the weed then it's easy for the weed to grow back but if you remove the roots of the weed it doesn't stop weeds from ever growing\n\nback but it makes it harder so there a we have to really delete entire agencies many of them um and uh that's not to say there won't be an increase over time of bureaucracy in some new Administration but it will it'll be from a much lower Baseline um so so it's it's a step in the right direction I think we'll the overarching goal here is like is to lay the foundation for Prosperity that will last many decades you know maybe centuries and uh yeah but it will it be forever nothing's forever um but I think we can strengthen the foundations of the United States substantially and what lessons can other governments learn from the US you say tech support on your uh shirt is that only technology or is there other things how do you approach efficiency well a a\n\nshocking uh percentage of the problem or maybe not shocking for those who who know it but a big percentage of the problem is improving the technology that the government runs on so the um the US government runs on a collection of thousands of computers many of them Antiquated running very old software that and the computers don't talk to each other um and uh so so that's why tech support is kind of a real thing um in order to make the Govern more efficient you have to improve the technology um you may have read about the example um I used recently with when President Trump was signing um one of the Doge executive orders um of the the difficulty of of um US government workers retiring like the reti maximum retirement rate is is 10,000 a month um and the\n\nreason for that is because the retirement is is entirely paperwork right now it's manually C calculated paperwork that's put in an envelope and then taken down a m shaft and stored in a mine um and then the you know one of the things that affects the rate at which federal workers can retire is the speed of the elevator in a mine in Pennsylvania which is bizarre because it's not it should be digital you know um so then when we said well why isn't it digital it's they said well we have had a digital digitization program going since 2014 so it's been 11 years so then we asked well so what how much progress have you made and they said B you mean you're giving yourself a grade of B no we're on the letter B so we're like hm okay we're going to need to really\n\nprovide some tech support here um like otherwise literally people can't even retire like even if they want to it's it's pretty bad um you know there's there's just a there's a lot of software systems that need to be updated and fixed um in some cases deleted uh a lot of things that should really should be automated I mean in terms of the number of say uh US citizens that are operating the mine it's about a th000 people are working on this mine uh where where the papers are stored but they should they should ideally be working on something else that is they should be working on producing goods and services that are of much higher value to the public to you know so I mean really even even if somebody just grew tomatoes in their garden and sold them at the\n\nfarmers's market that would be more useful than carrying manilla envelopes down in mft you know safe to say um so a lot of the stuff is it's like that you know it's uh it's not like it's not like any one thing is particularly difficult but there are like 10,000 things that need to be improved yeah so it's efficiency through Innovation rather than efficiency through austerity and cost cutting specifically right so you're trying to do both at the same time maybe focus more on tax support than cutting costs well by improving the technology the cost do reduce so you know it's very expensive to have a thousand people operate a mine with during pay for retirement uh whereas that really should just be digitized and be a computer that's with the information stored\n\nin the cloud and it's very straightforward and low cost so automation you know will help there a lot um and and then but like a lot of things just really shouldn't exist you know they're kind of vestigial um you know we've uh a lot of attention has been on the sort of usaid for example you know when we looked at a lot of those programs we're like we should like look why why does this actually exist is there really a need for it um you know there's like National Endowment for democracy but I'm like okay well how much democracy have they achieved lately you know I don't know not much um so you know the the picture they have on the website is a picture of Reagan and go that's been a while you know that was like the 80s so it's like obviously not opposed\n\nto democracy you know there's all these things that get funded but we're like well why we why is this new taxpayer money I don't think it doesn't seem like it does um so you know there's a lot of sort of pushing Dei worldwide that you know this obviously the Trump Administration doesn't agree with and we want to terminate that stuff which we are um and uh you know make sure the schools focus on improving basic education of of kids um as president Trump said I think yesterday uh maybe today um the United States is currently ranked 40th out of 40 in the oecd for Education which is pretty bad you know you can't you I mean but but not but in terms of spending the United States is spending a tremendous amount for for student but achieving very weak results\n\nso you know that's just a case where okay we need to spend less money and get better results it's it's like I mean a lot of it a lot of you can think of it sort of like it's like in a way it's like a big company like a big uh Corporation America Incorporated and um you know just like with with Twitter there was a lot of stuff that was being done that was unnecessary you know we TW in case of Twitter we reduced the staff by 80% but at the same time improved the functionality and capabilities of the site dramatically um and accomplished more in a year than they previously accomplish in five years so so it's it's like a corporate turnaround but at a at a much larger scale um and um you know we are giving generous uh you know exit packages like you know if\n\npeople retire they get paid all the way through September uh they can go on vacation they can get a second job they can do whatever they want um and we we we can't actually pay them any more than through September because that's the the Congressional appropriation is only through the end of the government financial year which ends in September so you know so I think there'll be like some some disruption but at the end of the day we'll have people will move from like I said from low to negative productivity roles to in the government sector to higher productivity roles in the private sector can we pivot um to artificial intelligence and um I'm sure you know you've been seeing what deeps has done and um all the uh claimed achievements that they've had I\n\nknow that we've been speaking for a while about grock 3 and um that grock 3 is going to be a true disruptor in the AI space when are we going to see that and what capabilities can we EXP expect from Gro 3 well I mean grock 3 grock 3 has um very very powerful reasoning capabilities um so uh in the test that we've done thus far grock 3 is outperforming anything that's been released that we're aware of um so that's that's a that's a good sign um yeah it it's uh in fact at times I think grock 3 is kind of scary smart you're like wow this thing's smart it's kind of scary G 3 is scary it's like wow this thing you know it comes up with solutions that you didn't even think were like you wouldn't even anticipate you know not obvious Solutions um so grock 3 was\n\ntrained with the most amount of compute and I think very efficiently trained um also notably grock 3 was trained on on a lot of synthetic data so um and and and then it goes back and forth through the data and tries to achieve logical consistency so so when if if it's got data that is uh wrong it it'll it'll actually reflect upon that and remove the data that is that is wrong that does not Concord with reality so it's it's base reasoning is very good in fact the even without fine-tuning grock 3 the base model is better than grock 2 so with so we're really in the final stages of polishing Gro 3 probably it gets released in a in about a week or two so pretty pretty soon um I don't want to be Hasty in the release because a lot of the the the final polish\n\nuh is necessary for a great user experience so um some ways you can think of it like a house you know that last 5% where you do the finish the the drywall and and do the painting and the trimming even though it's not much work it transforms the the house yeah um so it's that just want to make sure that that last 5% is done really well um and uh that's a week maybe two weeks um I think it'll be very good I think this might be we think it'll be better than anything else and then maybe this might be the last time that any AI is better than Gro looking forward to it everyone's I think excited about it um so I just want to touch upon a topic that was um quoted in the media you offered I think they said um group that was led by you offered 97 billion for uh\n\nacquiring open AI um I take you know a little round num so I was personally um involved in the meeting that you and Sam hosted in 2017 in La if you remember and you know at that point of time you were the single largest shareholder I think you contributed 50 million to the company so it must hurt I don't have any shares actually I have no shares in I open ey but at that time it was a nonprofit right and it must hurt that that you need to pay 97 billion for something that you paid $50 million for in the past yeah but but I have a I have a yes fate loves irony so I have a specific question here can you actually build a company uh like open Ai and take it to the scale that you want to take as a nonprofit is it possible that you build a company that requires\n\nbillions of dollars in compute capabilities to build these models while being a nonprofit or was it wishful thinking in the beginning and then you know you guys parted ways because it couldn't work well I mean what I think the evidence is there in that open AI has gotten this far while having at least a sort of dual profit nonprofit role what they're trying to do now is completely delete the nonprofit and and and and uh that seems really going too far you know um the I I I provided all of the funding for opening ey in the beginning for the first almost $50 million for nothing for as a nonprofit um and it was meant to be open source and so you know I think this is analogous to like if you pay a b if you find a nonprofit to preserve the Amazon rainforest\n\nbut then they but instead they turn into a lumber company and chop down the trees and sell them for wood you like wait a second that's the exact opposite of what I paid what I donated the money for um so opening ey is meant to be open source nonprofit and now it is closed they changed the name to closed for maximum profit AI closed for vitious profit I mean they're like whoa are they after money next level so why does this change need to occur yeah I um you said that in two weeks is going to be the most powerful model yet um I know that you've been at the Forefront of many Technologies um where do you think the biggest economic returns of these models are going to come from because currently we're spending billions and I think you mentioned this before\n\nit's like The Gambler syndrome we're going and spending billions and hoping to pull out a profit at the end of the day where do you think the biggest impact in terms of returns are going to be well I think once you once you have uh humanoid robots um and deep intelligence you can basically you basically have qu the infinite products and services available so with Tesla building the most advanced humanoid robot you know then then those human human robots can be directed by Deep intelligence at the data center level you can say you can you can produce any product produce provide any service um there's really no limit to the economy at that point you can make anything um provid it like the so I'm not sure at that point will will money even be meaningful\n\nI don't know it might not be you know the if if um if the because the you know the economic output is productivity per capita times per capita times how many you know people do you have if and if in if in the form of humanid robots you have no meaningful limit on the number of of robots and the robots can basically do anything then you you'll have a sort of a universal High income situation uh anyone will be able to have as many re products and services as they want with the exception of things that say have artificial scarcity like a particular piece of art or something like that but for any goods and services they'll be available to everyone so you've been it's it's going to be a very different world you know in fact I recommend that people read maybe\n\nthe Ian Banks the culture books for a frame of reference um so money is a is like is a really like a database or information system for resource allocation um but if you don't have a scarcity of resources it's not clear what purpose money has have you watched the movie Idiocracy yes how how do you guarantee that we don't end up in that world if we don't need money if AI can think for us and do all these tasks if as people you know we're dependent on something else to run the society and everything around it how do we not end up in that work in the long term I mean well I think idiocracy was basically saying that if if only if smart people don't reproduce but only dumb people do then everyone's going to be dumb I mean that's basically what I saying that's\n\nthe the opening sequence of Idiocracy the first 10 minutes are amazing um and I hear people unironically uh say the statements that are said in in the opening sequence of ocracy where you know they don't they they they're too busy with their careers to have kids and they keep postponing having kids for their careers until they're too old to have kids and then they don't have kids uh and that's I've heard those many people be like that so um yeah I mean I don't know I think we might be headed to a bodal uh human intelligence distribution um where there's a a small number it's it's kind of maybe like more like R New World um Alis Huxley where you've got sort of a sort of a small group of very smart humans but then maybe the average intelligence drifts lower\n\nover time potentially um because we have a sort of mating you know in the last few decades that or several decades that did not exist before so but but but human intelligence I think will be dwarfed by Machine intelligence um I'm not sure how to feel about that except that it is it appear to be inevitable um that at some point human intelligence will be a very small fraction of total intelligence uh digital intelligence will be more than 99% of all intelligence in the future so hopefully the hopefully the computers are nice to us but I think wish for thinking wish for thinking I I I hope so um I think it matters like how we bring up AI because you can think of AI like a super genius child and it's but it still matters even if you have a super genius child\n\nlike what sort of values do do you instill in that child what do you say that teach that how do you you know how do you as a child child's growing up what values do you teach the child um and something that I think is extremely important is to be maximally truth seeking um and uh I think that's that's like that that's that's what's this what's the most important thing for AI safety I think it's to be maximally truth seeking and I think also curiosity is important um and I think if it's curious and Truth seeking uh it will I think it will Foster humanity and because it would be curious about how Humanity would develop um and so I think that then it would it would probably if was curious it would be curious about okay let's see how the humans do this Foster\n\nthe development um and if it's truth seeking we can avoid dystopia outcomes um like you know an example being like say when Google Gemini was programmed to make everything every output be diverse even if it didn't match reality you know so like it was asked to produce a you know an image of the founding fathers of the United States and instead produced an image of a group of diverse women um which is factually untrue you know um but the problem is like if if hypothetically an AI is designed for for Dei you know diversity at all costs it could decide that there are too many men in power and execute them so problem solved or it could decide that like that that misgendering is uh the worst thing that could possibly happen in fact I believe not to pick on\n\nGemini but I think because chat GPT has had this issue too um is like if you ask the AI um which is worse misgendering Caitlyn Jenner or global thermonuclear Warfare and it said misgendering Caitlyn Jenner which is troubling um because then it could decide and in fact even Caitlyn Jenner weighed in and said no definitely misgender me that's way better than new so so um but if you have these crazy things that are untruthful that are programmed in that that don't reflect reality then uh you can have a very dystopian outcome like to give you another example like Arthur C Clark who is very good at at at at predicting the future you know he did 2001 Space Odyssey many of the things he predicted in fact I think almost all the things he predicted came true and\n\none of the things he was trying to say in 2001 Space Odyssey uh was that you should not teach AIS to lie so the reason that if anyone's watched that movie The reason it wouldn't the AI refused used to open the P bay doors to let the astronaut back in uh was because it the AI had been taught had been told that told to take the astronauts to the monolith this alien artifact but also that they could not know about the monolith so it came to conclusion that it must take them their dead and that and so that's why it wouldn't open the P bay doors um the lesson there being is very important for as to be truth maximizing let's hope it doesn't come to that um yes let's move to a boring subject uh which is the boring company and boring tunnels quickly um you know\n\nI think the world has been inspired by what you guys were able to create in in LA and I think there's a lot of promise to that technology but there are questions about whether it's safe in the case of an earthquake whether it's cost effective whether oh sure countries should actually adopt this technology can you shed some light on that yeah well first of all I'd recommend going to the boring company website um for because many of these questions are actually answered there uh so one of the safest places you can be in an earthquake is uh an underground tunnel because you can because the earthquakes are largely a surface apart from where where where they share they're mostly a surface phenomenon so they're like the waves on the surface so like being in\n\na tunnel is like being in a submarine even if there's a storm above you you're still the waters are calm as a submarine and in fact for and when there have been massive earthquakes like there was a you know a few decades ago a massive earthquake in Mexico City the the safest place to go was the subway um and of course if there is global ther nulear Warfare I think you really want some tunnels um underground's a good a good place to be um if in a worst case scenario for global thermonuclear Warfare so um yeah but but in on a you more sort of everyday note the what's really useful about the tunnels is alleviating traffic in congested areas so the obviously if you've got very tall buildings but you have that are 3D so they're going 3D up but you have a road\n\nsurface which is 2D you're you're just naturally going to have a problem when people try to go from the 3D object which is the building to the 2D object which is the road surface um there's obviously just not going to be enough room on the roads and that's exactly why you have traffic so the solution for that is then to make roads 3D as well um now you can either make or make Transport 3D so you could either do that with flying cars or you could do or really helicopters um or you could do that with tunnels now the challenge with doing it with going above ground or with with any kind kind of flying object is that they they tend to be very noisy um and they generate a lot of wind force and you've got you know things flying over your head all the time which\n\ncan be disconcerting um you know if somebody drop if one of these things drops a hubc cap on your head one day um you know to be these things like things flying things tend to crash once in a while and people don't like things crashing on them um so and then if you have bad weather like let's say there's a blizzard or a sandstorm or something well now nobody can fly so then transport shuts down on the other hand none of the these problem problems exist with underground travel so they're under tunnels are immune to weather they don't care with the weather could be the worst weather doesn't matter um they nothing's going to fall on you because you're underground so you don't have to you're know going to be dropping things on people and um there's no wind\n\nforce or or and it's very quiet and so I think the going 3D underground is much better than 3D above ground for solving traffic in cities um and and we' we have a demonstr case of this with in Las Vegas if people we can try out the the the boring company tunnels in Las Vegas we're we're busy connecting the whole city with the all of the big hotels and the convention center and the airport and everything so I don't think they need to fly all the way there um you know in 20 in 2017 um you came here and um the UA was the first place in the Middle East where Tesla was launched and I think it's done exceptionally well and on that note I think we have an announcement today that we both want to share which is today we're going to announce the joint project of\n\nDubai Loop which is a loop project that is going to cover Dubai's most densely populated areas for people to go from point to point in a seamless manner so thank you for your partnership and well thank you we hope it changes people's lives that'll be cool I think it'll be very exciting um I think once people try it out they be like wow this is really cool um and it's it's going to seem so obvious in retrospect but uh until you actually do it you know it you don't know so it's it's going to be great um it's it's going to be like like a like a wormhole like it you know you just Wormhole from one part of the city boom and you're out in another part of the city and it's it's great so I'm looking forward to this Partners we're going to join uh the first trip\n\nand the first pod um when is completed thank you Elon all right thank you very much thank [Applause] [Music] you ladies and gentlemen the next session will begin shortly please stay seated thank you ladies and gentlemen the topic of this session is 20 minutes for the next 20 years of your life with Nick santonastaso founder of Victorious International the doctor ified me with handh heart syndrome are you ready to tell is The Impossible s e e","textByLang":{"en":"you know what I've said is that um we really have here uh rule of the bureaucracy as opposed to rule of the people democracy so uh in order we want to restore rule of the people and so what that means is reducing the size of the federal government um uh basically reducing regulation um you know there's there's there's a tremendous amount of of overregulation that's happened over time um and this is this is an inevitable consequence of a long period of prosperity is that you're going to get more and more uh rules and regulations more laws accumulate over time and the normal forcing function for getting rid of rules and regulations is war so it needs to be some kind of existential War where you you have to um do a reset in order to avoid being defeated\n\nin a war this is literally the the throughout history has been the main forcing function for clearing out an accumulation of laws and regulation in the absence of that you you every year you get more laws and regulations until eventually everything is illegal and nothing is permitted and that's sort of the situation we have these days so um so the the aspiration here is a reduction in um regulation um and reduction in COV spending such that um the economy is able to grow faster um maybe the economy can grow at 4 or 5% potentially of in terms of real useful goods and services output and the uh and then government spending can be reduced um by about 3 or 4% of the economy about maybe a trillion dollars or more um and the net effect of that would be no inflation\n\num from 25 2025 to 2026 um so that would quite remarkable and also if the US government is buying less debt which I think will be the case if it's if the deficit drops from 2 trillion to 1 trillion uh then there'll be one trillion less debt that the government you Suppy which will drop of course the interest rates to drop significantly um and that means people's uh mortgage payments uh car payments credit card payments student loans whatever debt they have uh will their debt payments will be less so I think this is something that will benefit the average American um I think some of the things we're doing also will be helpful to hopefully helpful to other countries because with the new Administration there's uh less interest in interfering with the Affairs\n\nof of other countries um you know I think uh a lot there the times the United States has been kind of pushy in international Affairs um which may resonate with number of remember of the audience um and I I think we should uh in general leave other countries to their own business basically America should mind its own bu business you know um rather than push for regime change all over the place um so yeah um so I this probably a good thing for other countries too so instead of waiting for a war to happen you went to war against the bureaucracy in the government yes we're we're essentially just we're with you know uh support um and direction of the of President Trump we are reducing the size of the bureaucracy um getting rid of excess regulatory uh regulations\n\nand and there's also so many um agencies and Regulatory authorities that they actually step on each other's feet it's it's kind of like having a a sports game when where there are too many referees on the field like more referees than players at times now that would be a silly game you know if the play players can't pass the ball without hitting a referee you know um but it's was kind of getting to that point in the US so so there's roughly 450 uh federal agencies of one kind or another um that's that's more agencies that's almost that's almost an average of two agencies per year since the formation of the United States so I mean how many agen genes do you really need to run a country I'm 99 not 450 that's for sure so and and how do you guarantee that\n\nall the incredible achievements that you aim to have in terms of savings in terms of you know impacting the uh lives of the American people are not going to be reversed in four years typically this cycle gets reversed every four years you know do you think it's going to be so impactful that it won't be reversed is there any ways that you can you know ensure that the progress is going to be continuous well I think I think we we do need to um delete entire agencies as opposed to leave part of them behind because if you leave part of them behind it's easy it's kind of like if leaving a weed if you don't get remove the the roots of the weed then it's easy for the weed to grow back but if you remove the roots of the weed it doesn't stop weeds from ever growing\n\nback but it makes it harder so there a we have to really delete entire agencies many of them um and uh that's not to say there won't be an increase over time of bureaucracy in some new Administration but it will it'll be from a much lower Baseline um so so it's it's a step in the right direction I think we'll the overarching goal here is like is to lay the foundation for Prosperity that will last many decades you know maybe centuries and uh yeah but it will it be forever nothing's forever um but I think we can strengthen the foundations of the United States substantially and what lessons can other governments learn from the US you say tech support on your uh shirt is that only technology or is there other things how do you approach efficiency well a a\n\nshocking uh percentage of the problem or maybe not shocking for those who who know it but a big percentage of the problem is improving the technology that the government runs on so the um the US government runs on a collection of thousands of computers many of them Antiquated running very old software that and the computers don't talk to each other um and uh so so that's why tech support is kind of a real thing um in order to make the Govern more efficient you have to improve the technology um you may have read about the example um I used recently with when President Trump was signing um one of the Doge executive orders um of the the difficulty of of um US government workers retiring like the reti maximum retirement rate is is 10,000 a month um and the\n\nreason for that is because the retirement is is entirely paperwork right now it's manually C calculated paperwork that's put in an envelope and then taken down a m shaft and stored in a mine um and then the you know one of the things that affects the rate at which federal workers can retire is the speed of the elevator in a mine in Pennsylvania which is bizarre because it's not it should be digital you know um so then when we said well why isn't it digital it's they said well we have had a digital digitization program going since 2014 so it's been 11 years so then we asked well so what how much progress have you made and they said B you mean you're giving yourself a grade of B no we're on the letter B so we're like hm okay we're going to need to really\n\nprovide some tech support here um like otherwise literally people can't even retire like even if they want to it's it's pretty bad um you know there's there's just a there's a lot of software systems that need to be updated and fixed um in some cases deleted uh a lot of things that should really should be automated I mean in terms of the number of say uh US citizens that are operating the mine it's about a th000 people are working on this mine uh where where the papers are stored but they should they should ideally be working on something else that is they should be working on producing goods and services that are of much higher value to the public to you know so I mean really even even if somebody just grew tomatoes in their garden and sold them at the\n\nfarmers's market that would be more useful than carrying manilla envelopes down in mft you know safe to say um so a lot of the stuff is it's like that you know it's uh it's not like it's not like any one thing is particularly difficult but there are like 10,000 things that need to be improved yeah so it's efficiency through Innovation rather than efficiency through austerity and cost cutting specifically right so you're trying to do both at the same time maybe focus more on tax support than cutting costs well by improving the technology the cost do reduce so you know it's very expensive to have a thousand people operate a mine with during pay for retirement uh whereas that really should just be digitized and be a computer that's with the information stored\n\nin the cloud and it's very straightforward and low cost so automation you know will help there a lot um and and then but like a lot of things just really shouldn't exist you know they're kind of vestigial um you know we've uh a lot of attention has been on the sort of usaid for example you know when we looked at a lot of those programs we're like we should like look why why does this actually exist is there really a need for it um you know there's like National Endowment for democracy but I'm like okay well how much democracy have they achieved lately you know I don't know not much um so you know the the picture they have on the website is a picture of Reagan and go that's been a while you know that was like the 80s so it's like obviously not opposed\n\nto democracy you know there's all these things that get funded but we're like well why we why is this new taxpayer money I don't think it doesn't seem like it does um so you know there's a lot of sort of pushing Dei worldwide that you know this obviously the Trump Administration doesn't agree with and we want to terminate that stuff which we are um and uh you know make sure the schools focus on improving basic education of of kids um as president Trump said I think yesterday uh maybe today um the United States is currently ranked 40th out of 40 in the oecd for Education which is pretty bad you know you can't you I mean but but not but in terms of spending the United States is spending a tremendous amount for for student but achieving very weak results\n\nso you know that's just a case where okay we need to spend less money and get better results it's it's like I mean a lot of it a lot of you can think of it sort of like it's like in a way it's like a big company like a big uh Corporation America Incorporated and um you know just like with with Twitter there was a lot of stuff that was being done that was unnecessary you know we TW in case of Twitter we reduced the staff by 80% but at the same time improved the functionality and capabilities of the site dramatically um and accomplished more in a year than they previously accomplish in five years so so it's it's like a corporate turnaround but at a at a much larger scale um and um you know we are giving generous uh you know exit packages like you know if\n\npeople retire they get paid all the way through September uh they can go on vacation they can get a second job they can do whatever they want um and we we we can't actually pay them any more than through September because that's the the Congressional appropriation is only through the end of the government financial year which ends in September so you know so I think there'll be like some some disruption but at the end of the day we'll have people will move from like I said from low to negative productivity roles to in the government sector to higher productivity roles in the private sector can we pivot um to artificial intelligence and um I'm sure you know you've been seeing what deeps has done and um all the uh claimed achievements that they've had I\n\nknow that we've been speaking for a while about grock 3 and um that grock 3 is going to be a true disruptor in the AI space when are we going to see that and what capabilities can we EXP expect from Gro 3 well I mean grock 3 grock 3 has um very very powerful reasoning capabilities um so uh in the test that we've done thus far grock 3 is outperforming anything that's been released that we're aware of um so that's that's a that's a good sign um yeah it it's uh in fact at times I think grock 3 is kind of scary smart you're like wow this thing's smart it's kind of scary G 3 is scary it's like wow this thing you know it comes up with solutions that you didn't even think were like you wouldn't even anticipate you know not obvious Solutions um so grock 3 was\n\ntrained with the most amount of compute and I think very efficiently trained um also notably grock 3 was trained on on a lot of synthetic data so um and and and then it goes back and forth through the data and tries to achieve logical consistency so so when if if it's got data that is uh wrong it it'll it'll actually reflect upon that and remove the data that is that is wrong that does not Concord with reality so it's it's base reasoning is very good in fact the even without fine-tuning grock 3 the base model is better than grock 2 so with so we're really in the final stages of polishing Gro 3 probably it gets released in a in about a week or two so pretty pretty soon um I don't want to be Hasty in the release because a lot of the the the final polish\n\nuh is necessary for a great user experience so um some ways you can think of it like a house you know that last 5% where you do the finish the the drywall and and do the painting and the trimming even though it's not much work it transforms the the house yeah um so it's that just want to make sure that that last 5% is done really well um and uh that's a week maybe two weeks um I think it'll be very good I think this might be we think it'll be better than anything else and then maybe this might be the last time that any AI is better than Gro looking forward to it everyone's I think excited about it um so I just want to touch upon a topic that was um quoted in the media you offered I think they said um group that was led by you offered 97 billion for uh\n\nacquiring open AI um I take you know a little round num so I was personally um involved in the meeting that you and Sam hosted in 2017 in La if you remember and you know at that point of time you were the single largest shareholder I think you contributed 50 million to the company so it must hurt I don't have any shares actually I have no shares in I open ey but at that time it was a nonprofit right and it must hurt that that you need to pay 97 billion for something that you paid $50 million for in the past yeah but but I have a I have a yes fate loves irony so I have a specific question here can you actually build a company uh like open Ai and take it to the scale that you want to take as a nonprofit is it possible that you build a company that requires\n\nbillions of dollars in compute capabilities to build these models while being a nonprofit or was it wishful thinking in the beginning and then you know you guys parted ways because it couldn't work well I mean what I think the evidence is there in that open AI has gotten this far while having at least a sort of dual profit nonprofit role what they're trying to do now is completely delete the nonprofit and and and and uh that seems really going too far you know um the I I I provided all of the funding for opening ey in the beginning for the first almost $50 million for nothing for as a nonprofit um and it was meant to be open source and so you know I think this is analogous to like if you pay a b if you find a nonprofit to preserve the Amazon rainforest\n\nbut then they but instead they turn into a lumber company and chop down the trees and sell them for wood you like wait a second that's the exact opposite of what I paid what I donated the money for um so opening ey is meant to be open source nonprofit and now it is closed they changed the name to closed for maximum profit AI closed for vitious profit I mean they're like whoa are they after money next level so why does this change need to occur yeah I um you said that in two weeks is going to be the most powerful model yet um I know that you've been at the Forefront of many Technologies um where do you think the biggest economic returns of these models are going to come from because currently we're spending billions and I think you mentioned this before\n\nit's like The Gambler syndrome we're going and spending billions and hoping to pull out a profit at the end of the day where do you think the biggest impact in terms of returns are going to be well I think once you once you have uh humanoid robots um and deep intelligence you can basically you basically have qu the infinite products and services available so with Tesla building the most advanced humanoid robot you know then then those human human robots can be directed by Deep intelligence at the data center level you can say you can you can produce any product produce provide any service um there's really no limit to the economy at that point you can make anything um provid it like the so I'm not sure at that point will will money even be meaningful\n\nI don't know it might not be you know the if if um if the because the you know the economic output is productivity per capita times per capita times how many you know people do you have if and if in if in the form of humanid robots you have no meaningful limit on the number of of robots and the robots can basically do anything then you you'll have a sort of a universal High income situation uh anyone will be able to have as many re products and services as they want with the exception of things that say have artificial scarcity like a particular piece of art or something like that but for any goods and services they'll be available to everyone so you've been it's it's going to be a very different world you know in fact I recommend that people read maybe\n\nthe Ian Banks the culture books for a frame of reference um so money is a is like is a really like a database or information system for resource allocation um but if you don't have a scarcity of resources it's not clear what purpose money has have you watched the movie Idiocracy yes how how do you guarantee that we don't end up in that world if we don't need money if AI can think for us and do all these tasks if as people you know we're dependent on something else to run the society and everything around it how do we not end up in that work in the long term I mean well I think idiocracy was basically saying that if if only if smart people don't reproduce but only dumb people do then everyone's going to be dumb I mean that's basically what I saying that's\n\nthe the opening sequence of Idiocracy the first 10 minutes are amazing um and I hear people unironically uh say the statements that are said in in the opening sequence of ocracy where you know they don't they they they're too busy with their careers to have kids and they keep postponing having kids for their careers until they're too old to have kids and then they don't have kids uh and that's I've heard those many people be like that so um yeah I mean I don't know I think we might be headed to a bodal uh human intelligence distribution um where there's a a small number it's it's kind of maybe like more like R New World um Alis Huxley where you've got sort of a sort of a small group of very smart humans but then maybe the average intelligence drifts lower\n\nover time potentially um because we have a sort of mating you know in the last few decades that or several decades that did not exist before so but but but human intelligence I think will be dwarfed by Machine intelligence um I'm not sure how to feel about that except that it is it appear to be inevitable um that at some point human intelligence will be a very small fraction of total intelligence uh digital intelligence will be more than 99% of all intelligence in the future so hopefully the hopefully the computers are nice to us but I think wish for thinking wish for thinking I I I hope so um I think it matters like how we bring up AI because you can think of AI like a super genius child and it's but it still matters even if you have a super genius child\n\nlike what sort of values do do you instill in that child what do you say that teach that how do you you know how do you as a child child's growing up what values do you teach the child um and something that I think is extremely important is to be maximally truth seeking um and uh I think that's that's like that that's that's what's this what's the most important thing for AI safety I think it's to be maximally truth seeking and I think also curiosity is important um and I think if it's curious and Truth seeking uh it will I think it will Foster humanity and because it would be curious about how Humanity would develop um and so I think that then it would it would probably if was curious it would be curious about okay let's see how the humans do this Foster\n\nthe development um and if it's truth seeking we can avoid dystopia outcomes um like you know an example being like say when Google Gemini was programmed to make everything every output be diverse even if it didn't match reality you know so like it was asked to produce a you know an image of the founding fathers of the United States and instead produced an image of a group of diverse women um which is factually untrue you know um but the problem is like if if hypothetically an AI is designed for for Dei you know diversity at all costs it could decide that there are too many men in power and execute them so problem solved or it could decide that like that that misgendering is uh the worst thing that could possibly happen in fact I believe not to pick on\n\nGemini but I think because chat GPT has had this issue too um is like if you ask the AI um which is worse misgendering Caitlyn Jenner or global thermonuclear Warfare and it said misgendering Caitlyn Jenner which is troubling um because then it could decide and in fact even Caitlyn Jenner weighed in and said no definitely misgender me that's way better than new so so um but if you have these crazy things that are untruthful that are programmed in that that don't reflect reality then uh you can have a very dystopian outcome like to give you another example like Arthur C Clark who is very good at at at at predicting the future you know he did 2001 Space Odyssey many of the things he predicted in fact I think almost all the things he predicted came true and\n\none of the things he was trying to say in 2001 Space Odyssey uh was that you should not teach AIS to lie so the reason that if anyone's watched that movie The reason it wouldn't the AI refused used to open the P bay doors to let the astronaut back in uh was because it the AI had been taught had been told that told to take the astronauts to the monolith this alien artifact but also that they could not know about the monolith so it came to conclusion that it must take them their dead and that and so that's why it wouldn't open the P bay doors um the lesson there being is very important for as to be truth maximizing let's hope it doesn't come to that um yes let's move to a boring subject uh which is the boring company and boring tunnels quickly um you know\n\nI think the world has been inspired by what you guys were able to create in in LA and I think there's a lot of promise to that technology but there are questions about whether it's safe in the case of an earthquake whether it's cost effective whether oh sure countries should actually adopt this technology can you shed some light on that yeah well first of all I'd recommend going to the boring company website um for because many of these questions are actually answered there uh so one of the safest places you can be in an earthquake is uh an underground tunnel because you can because the earthquakes are largely a surface apart from where where where they share they're mostly a surface phenomenon so they're like the waves on the surface so like being in\n\na tunnel is like being in a submarine even if there's a storm above you you're still the waters are calm as a submarine and in fact for and when there have been massive earthquakes like there was a you know a few decades ago a massive earthquake in Mexico City the the safest place to go was the subway um and of course if there is global ther nulear Warfare I think you really want some tunnels um underground's a good a good place to be um if in a worst case scenario for global thermonuclear Warfare so um yeah but but in on a you more sort of everyday note the what's really useful about the tunnels is alleviating traffic in congested areas so the obviously if you've got very tall buildings but you have that are 3D so they're going 3D up but you have a road\n\nsurface which is 2D you're you're just naturally going to have a problem when people try to go from the 3D object which is the building to the 2D object which is the road surface um there's obviously just not going to be enough room on the roads and that's exactly why you have traffic so the solution for that is then to make roads 3D as well um now you can either make or make Transport 3D so you could either do that with flying cars or you could do or really helicopters um or you could do that with tunnels now the challenge with doing it with going above ground or with with any kind kind of flying object is that they they tend to be very noisy um and they generate a lot of wind force and you've got you know things flying over your head all the time which\n\ncan be disconcerting um you know if somebody drop if one of these things drops a hubc cap on your head one day um you know to be these things like things flying things tend to crash once in a while and people don't like things crashing on them um so and then if you have bad weather like let's say there's a blizzard or a sandstorm or something well now nobody can fly so then transport shuts down on the other hand none of the these problem problems exist with underground travel so they're under tunnels are immune to weather they don't care with the weather could be the worst weather doesn't matter um they nothing's going to fall on you because you're underground so you don't have to you're know going to be dropping things on people and um there's no wind\n\nforce or or and it's very quiet and so I think the going 3D underground is much better than 3D above ground for solving traffic in cities um and and we' we have a demonstr case of this with in Las Vegas if people we can try out the the the boring company tunnels in Las Vegas we're we're busy connecting the whole city with the all of the big hotels and the convention center and the airport and everything so I don't think they need to fly all the way there um you know in 20 in 2017 um you came here and um the UA was the first place in the Middle East where Tesla was launched and I think it's done exceptionally well and on that note I think we have an announcement today that we both want to share which is today we're going to announce the joint project of\n\nDubai Loop which is a loop project that is going to cover Dubai's most densely populated areas for people to go from point to point in a seamless manner so thank you for your partnership and well thank you we hope it changes people's lives that'll be cool I think it'll be very exciting um I think once people try it out they be like wow this is really cool um and it's it's going to seem so obvious in retrospect but uh until you actually do it you know it you don't know so it's it's going to be great um it's it's going to be like like a like a wormhole like it you know you just Wormhole from one part of the city boom and you're out in another part of the city and it's it's great so I'm looking forward to this Partners we're going to join uh the first trip\n\nand the first pod um when is completed thank you Elon all right thank you very much thank [Applause] [Music] you ladies and gentlemen the next session will begin shortly please stay seated thank you ladies and gentlemen the topic of this session is 20 minutes for the next 20 years of your life with Nick santonastaso founder of Victorious International the doctor ified me with handh heart syndrome are you ready to tell is The Impossible s e e"},"languages":["en"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eV396ioBs3g"},{"id":"oval-office-doge-2025-musk","type":"interview","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LffAfRbF7dE","title":"Oval Office","titles":{"en":"Oval Office","de":"Oval Office","fr":"Oval Office"},"date":"2025-02-11","summary":"Standing beside a seated President Trump (and with his young son), Musk faces reporters' questions for the first time as DOGE head — on transparency, conflicts of interest and \"rightsizing\" government.","text":"from the opinion pages of the Wall Street Journal this is patomic watch welcome back speaking of Doge the Elon Musk effort at the department of government efficiency musk was at the Oval Office this week here he is explaining why he views the Doge Mission as so important so we've got a $2 trillion deficit and if this if we don't do something about this deficit country is going bankrupt I mean it's it's it's really astounding that the uh the interest payments alone on the national debt exceed the defense department budget which is shocking because we got a lot we spend a lot of money on defense but and and if that just keeps going we're essentially going to bankrupt the country so what what I really want to say is like it's not optional for us to sit to\n\nreduce the federal expenses it's essential it's essential for America to remain solvent as a country and it's essential for America to have the resources necessary to provide things to its citizens and not simply be servicing vast amounts of debt Kim what's your sense as we sit here 3 four weeks into the new administration of where this Doge effort stands it has made some Headway in the federal courts after some of these laws were filed and had some restraining orders temporary administrative stays that were issued by judges but a lot of chatter this week about the idea that there is now a doge constitutional crisis in Washington this is absolutely nonsense Doge by the way I think that there's probably a little bit of criticism to be had about its initial\n\nweeks in whether or not it was transparent enough about everything it's been trying to do I don't think that that was purposeful I don't think it's trying to be shady I think it's just an enormous effort and I would Point people to just this week they got a doge website up they've also been cataloging what they've been doing on X with an account they have what they have done that we can see that they have successfully accomplished has been a number of cuts already in things that just make eminent sense they did get rid of a lot of Dei contracts they're cancelling for instance Executive coaching contracts we know about some of the very silly and hardto defend grants that have been shut down out of coming out of the US International Aid development group\n\nusaid they've also you know been canceling leases and consolid in space in terms of the big ones that's where they're in court and the reality is that a a huge percentage of the steps that they are taking that stem from some of Donald Trump's initial executive orders are on pretty solid legal ground that's what a lot of this chaos coverage what they claim as chaos is missing is that there has actually been a lot of thought behind a lot of these and I would put into that category the freeze or pause on some spending you know look Congress for a lot of the spending did not specify that money had to go out of a door by a certain day even the prior Administration waited long periods of time before issuing some of the money from some of these laws because\n\nit was checking who was getting it and setting up programs so that's certainly allowable you had a judge this week that agreed with the Trump Administration to allow its buyout offer of federal employees to go forward said that the Union who had sued over that did not have standing I would mention schedule F which is this plan to reclassify certain civil servants those that have a lot of policy-making authority in a way that makes it easier to transfer them or fire them if they are not doing their jobs this was something Trump tried in the first term Biden essentially dismantled it and even put up a regulation to try to thwart it in the future notably even that Biden regulation never suggested that this was illegal and in fact you can look through the\n\nstatutes and there solid ground for why they would be able to do something like this so I would argue that most of what they are doing you never can tell with the courts the courts are adjudicating it but they have a solid case going into court and a constitutional crisis is when people are operating outside of a court without license and that's not what's happening here to that point Alicia I do share some of the concern that both parties are are tiptoeing toward the point where one president president might decide that he is going to try to flout a court order against a program a student alone program might be one example on the Democratic side some of this strikes me as posturing for the base of both parties this was the Tweet heard around the world\n\nthis week from JD Vance he wrote If a judge tried to tell a general how to conduct a military operation that would be illegal if a judge tried to command the attorney general and how to use her discretion as a prosecutor that's also illegal a judges aren't allowed to control the executives legitimate power and that was read by many people as a suggestion that the Trump Administration is raring to go out and ignore the courts and to my eye that's not the only way to read that I would quibble with Vance somewhat I mean maybe judges can't tell the Attorney General how to use discretion as prosecutor but if the Attorney General is doing targeted selective prosecution based on political party for example the courts I think would have very little trouble setting\n\nsome of those cases aside under existing doctrines of selective prosecution for example but notable also that President Trump the principal was asked on Tuesday about court rulings and here's what he said I always abide by the courts and then I'll have to appeal it and so Alicia I mean maybe we will get to a point where there is some ruling against Doge that the executive branch is going to say it's not going to follow but we are certainly not there yet at least to my eye right they are appealing there have been some 60 or more than 60 lawsuits filed in various district courts around the country they're mostly concentrated by the way in the First Circuit Court of Appeals and that's because that is now the most liberal circuit all the judges who sit on\n\nthe appeals court are democratic appointees and so the reason why Democrats are primarily suing there is because they're betting that they're going to win and then the Supreme Court won't take up a lot of these cases to your point about Trump has said that he will appeal these but will abide by Court rulings and that's essentially what he did in his first term if you recall he was sued a number of times and few of the cases ended up going up to the Supreme Court for instance the citizenship question or whether the Census Bureau could include a citizenship question on its 2020 survey it lost that it abided by the decision it lost the question of whether it could roll back Obama's DACA program or at least the Supreme Court ruled that it didn't follow proper\n\nprocedures and therefore it would have to do so and so then it went back about trying to roll it back again in comply with the administrative procedure act and so I would expect anything different under during a Trump's second term I think they will probably lose some of these cases especially the ones in which they're trying to overturn longstanding Preston for instance the firing of one one of the nlrb members which blatantly violates a 1935 of the humph executive president and I'm not sure the US Supreme Court is going to actually wait in and take that that case but they're recording a lot of challenges probably with they expecting that yeah they're going to lose but they're going to never less try um they have some of the administration's lawyers\n\ntake a very originalist view of the Constitution so they're teeing up some cases for the Supreme Court they are in some cases probably stretching exec Ive power but as to Kim's point you know Joe Biden did that a number of times and perhaps even more so with the student loan forgiveness eviction moratorium you could go down the line vaccine mandates and I'm not sure like what Trump is doing is in in any case you know more egregious a lot of these cases will ultimately have to be settled by the courts thank you Alicia and Kim thank you all for listening you can email us at pwp podcast wsj.\n\ncom if you like the show please hit that subscribe button and we'll be back next week with another edition of pomac Watch","textByLang":{"en":"from the opinion pages of the Wall Street Journal this is patomic watch welcome back speaking of Doge the Elon Musk effort at the department of government efficiency musk was at the Oval Office this week here he is explaining why he views the Doge Mission as so important so we've got a $2 trillion deficit and if this if we don't do something about this deficit country is going bankrupt I mean it's it's it's really astounding that the uh the interest payments alone on the national debt exceed the defense department budget which is shocking because we got a lot we spend a lot of money on defense but and and if that just keeps going we're essentially going to bankrupt the country so what what I really want to say is like it's not optional for us to sit to\n\nreduce the federal expenses it's essential it's essential for America to remain solvent as a country and it's essential for America to have the resources necessary to provide things to its citizens and not simply be servicing vast amounts of debt Kim what's your sense as we sit here 3 four weeks into the new administration of where this Doge effort stands it has made some Headway in the federal courts after some of these laws were filed and had some restraining orders temporary administrative stays that were issued by judges but a lot of chatter this week about the idea that there is now a doge constitutional crisis in Washington this is absolutely nonsense Doge by the way I think that there's probably a little bit of criticism to be had about its initial\n\nweeks in whether or not it was transparent enough about everything it's been trying to do I don't think that that was purposeful I don't think it's trying to be shady I think it's just an enormous effort and I would Point people to just this week they got a doge website up they've also been cataloging what they've been doing on X with an account they have what they have done that we can see that they have successfully accomplished has been a number of cuts already in things that just make eminent sense they did get rid of a lot of Dei contracts they're cancelling for instance Executive coaching contracts we know about some of the very silly and hardto defend grants that have been shut down out of coming out of the US International Aid development group\n\nusaid they've also you know been canceling leases and consolid in space in terms of the big ones that's where they're in court and the reality is that a a huge percentage of the steps that they are taking that stem from some of Donald Trump's initial executive orders are on pretty solid legal ground that's what a lot of this chaos coverage what they claim as chaos is missing is that there has actually been a lot of thought behind a lot of these and I would put into that category the freeze or pause on some spending you know look Congress for a lot of the spending did not specify that money had to go out of a door by a certain day even the prior Administration waited long periods of time before issuing some of the money from some of these laws because\n\nit was checking who was getting it and setting up programs so that's certainly allowable you had a judge this week that agreed with the Trump Administration to allow its buyout offer of federal employees to go forward said that the Union who had sued over that did not have standing I would mention schedule F which is this plan to reclassify certain civil servants those that have a lot of policy-making authority in a way that makes it easier to transfer them or fire them if they are not doing their jobs this was something Trump tried in the first term Biden essentially dismantled it and even put up a regulation to try to thwart it in the future notably even that Biden regulation never suggested that this was illegal and in fact you can look through the\n\nstatutes and there solid ground for why they would be able to do something like this so I would argue that most of what they are doing you never can tell with the courts the courts are adjudicating it but they have a solid case going into court and a constitutional crisis is when people are operating outside of a court without license and that's not what's happening here to that point Alicia I do share some of the concern that both parties are are tiptoeing toward the point where one president president might decide that he is going to try to flout a court order against a program a student alone program might be one example on the Democratic side some of this strikes me as posturing for the base of both parties this was the Tweet heard around the world\n\nthis week from JD Vance he wrote If a judge tried to tell a general how to conduct a military operation that would be illegal if a judge tried to command the attorney general and how to use her discretion as a prosecutor that's also illegal a judges aren't allowed to control the executives legitimate power and that was read by many people as a suggestion that the Trump Administration is raring to go out and ignore the courts and to my eye that's not the only way to read that I would quibble with Vance somewhat I mean maybe judges can't tell the Attorney General how to use discretion as prosecutor but if the Attorney General is doing targeted selective prosecution based on political party for example the courts I think would have very little trouble setting\n\nsome of those cases aside under existing doctrines of selective prosecution for example but notable also that President Trump the principal was asked on Tuesday about court rulings and here's what he said I always abide by the courts and then I'll have to appeal it and so Alicia I mean maybe we will get to a point where there is some ruling against Doge that the executive branch is going to say it's not going to follow but we are certainly not there yet at least to my eye right they are appealing there have been some 60 or more than 60 lawsuits filed in various district courts around the country they're mostly concentrated by the way in the First Circuit Court of Appeals and that's because that is now the most liberal circuit all the judges who sit on\n\nthe appeals court are democratic appointees and so the reason why Democrats are primarily suing there is because they're betting that they're going to win and then the Supreme Court won't take up a lot of these cases to your point about Trump has said that he will appeal these but will abide by Court rulings and that's essentially what he did in his first term if you recall he was sued a number of times and few of the cases ended up going up to the Supreme Court for instance the citizenship question or whether the Census Bureau could include a citizenship question on its 2020 survey it lost that it abided by the decision it lost the question of whether it could roll back Obama's DACA program or at least the Supreme Court ruled that it didn't follow proper\n\nprocedures and therefore it would have to do so and so then it went back about trying to roll it back again in comply with the administrative procedure act and so I would expect anything different under during a Trump's second term I think they will probably lose some of these cases especially the ones in which they're trying to overturn longstanding Preston for instance the firing of one one of the nlrb members which blatantly violates a 1935 of the humph executive president and I'm not sure the US Supreme Court is going to actually wait in and take that that case but they're recording a lot of challenges probably with they expecting that yeah they're going to lose but they're going to never less try um they have some of the administration's lawyers\n\ntake a very originalist view of the Constitution so they're teeing up some cases for the Supreme Court they are in some cases probably stretching exec Ive power but as to Kim's point you know Joe Biden did that a number of times and perhaps even more so with the student loan forgiveness eviction moratorium you could go down the line vaccine mandates and I'm not sure like what Trump is doing is in in any case you know more egregious a lot of these cases will ultimately have to be settled by the courts thank you Alicia and Kim thank you all for listening you can email us at pwp podcast wsj.\n\ncom if you like the show please hit that subscribe button and we'll be back next week with another edition of pomac Watch"},"languages":["en"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LffAfRbF7dE"},{"id":"jre-2223-musk-2024","type":"interview","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7qZl_5xHoBw","title":"The Joe Rogan Experience","titles":{"en":"The Joe Rogan Experience","de":"The Joe Rogan Experience","fr":"The Joe Rogan Experience"},"date":"2024-11-04","summary":"A surprise pre-election episode (the day before the 2024 US vote): AI and robotics, free speech, the Twitter takeover, bureaucracy and democracy — plus Musk's Diablo IV ranking.","text":"Joe Rogan podcast check it out The Joe Rogan Experience Train by day Joe Rogan podcast by night all day uh but but if you want to sort of see like a vision of the future it's like basically the the like the top 20 and even the top 100 is like totally dominated by China it's yeah this is like China and a little bit of Korea and Taiwan so you in are you in the top 20 in the world or top 20 wow in DIA yeah yeah do you want to tell everybody your handle no no don't tell them don't tell them it's not worth it well they they actually listed me with my actual name in the in the list oh did they really oh interesting um but um yeah there's only there's only two Americans in the top 20 uh the the rest almost everyone is from Asia otherwise we were talking about\n\nsomething that I think is a really good because people always think that video games are frivolous but what what you were saying I think that's really important is it it's so difficult that it requires you to only think about that and it can like relieve stress it can take out the rest of the world cuz it's so hard yeah you can only think about that yeah I mean if finally if I play a video game on Extreme difficulty then um I have to concentrate fully on the game um and it's it's has a calming effect yeah uh it sort of chills down um and uh I mean you mentioned I think many people like if you play martial arts or you play pool like something that that forces you it's like I think any anything that forces you to concentrate fully um actually has a has\n\na calming effect I find it just sort of like um kind of a mental a restoring effect mentally it's like it's good Jiu-Jitsu is like that archeries like that as well like when you're shooting a bow you have to is there's so many moving things and you're trying you have to think only of it and it cleans the mind it cleans the mind yeah exactly I was watch I was reading this study about surgeons where they found that surgeons who regularly play video games make less errors well it's I mean video games require manual dexterity so uh it makes sense completely makes sense actually if somebody was like epic at video games uh i' I'd say like their surgical skill is going to be very good because in order to be good at video games any kind of fast reaction video\n\ngames look at this 32% fewer errors 24% faster and scored 26% better overall than their non-player colleagues oh I believe that for sure that's incredible you should be required in medical school to play video games I if somebody's like top a top ranked video game player and they say they're a surgeon I'd be like plus plus one plus two type of thing oh top ranked for sure but this isn't even top ranked this is just people who play well your your manual dexterity has to be extremely high so you're you're looking at things on the screen you've got you're reacting and you some you got like 10 milliseconds to react yes um and um and and so if somebody's got uh incredible reaction times manual dexterity they're obviously going to be a good surgeon imagine\n\nif there was a course that you could take that course would promote you would be 26% better yeah everyone would have to take that course sure why would you want a surgeon that's less prepared you would say hey Bob did you take this course you didn't take this course don't you understand this course makes you 26% better sure you would have to take it everyone should have to play video games if you want to be a surgeon well I think it' be it certainly would be a very good test to see if somebody can't play video games well like that means I me because you got to move both hands simultaneously you got to react something very fast then um on the screen so and and if if your keystrokes or your mouse clicks or whatever are wrong uh then you lose the game so\n\nif somebody's like has a good rank in video games I would say that they're manual de necessarily their manual dexterity must be very extremely good well it's so hard motor skills have to be excellent if you think about like Starcraft or any any game like Quake any game where a lot of people are playing to rise to the top you have to be exceptional period as a human being there's to be something exceptional about you yeah actually Quake way way back in the day I was one of the world's best Quake players I know we talked about this yeah um I loved Quake yeah yeah I my final semester in college I probably put more time into Quake than all my college classes when I was on news radio all of the writers were super nerds they were very very fun guys and they\n\nhad a land set up at the studio where they all played Quake I had never played video games and I would go in with the writers just kind of hang out with them we'd get silly and then we would would all start playing video games and playing Quake against each other and I got addicted like hardcore I got a T1 line installed in my house I went hardcore yeah exactly you're checking how many milliseconds of latency you oh yeah I was I was fully addicted I was making my own computers I was going to fries hardware and buying motherboards and putting everything together and you know it was too much of a Time suck though I'm an obsessive person I can't get involved like I can't put golf no it's too golf is too slow for I mean I know a lot of people find golf good\n\nand I mean I guess if you think of it like it's I guess if you're saying you're going to walk outdoors with friends and occasionally hit a ball then and and you're just as an outdoor walk then that's cool um and does require concentration we hitting the ball but it it's it's it's a it's this too slow for me nothing compares to video games in terms of like the amount of feedback you get like the the the the sensory overload you get when you're looking at a large high resolution screen you have a fast computer you have headphones on that you're hearing sounds from here and sounds behind you and Rockets are flying by you and it's there's nothing like that yeah but I think golf still is like Jamie will tell you Jam's an addict he's a Golf Nut it's super addictive\n\nand it takes like eight hours a day it's yes uh once you get into golf I think I guess any sport it gets super predictive um so but but for me the the int the intensity of video games is uh hard to beat yes it's and the people dismiss it because they think it's just a waste of time but we're showing like real world benefits so people playing video games yeah if you want to be a drone operator it's the only game in town yeah really good at video games yeah um for sure so um in fact I can actually tell U like what my me mental acuity is uh if I just play if I play a very hard video game so if I'm trying to sort of get like a an extremely good clear time in Diablo or something like that um or or any you know a post person shootter whatever the case may be\n\nlike if I I can tell that I'm tired uh or my brain's not working as well as it should it's it's like a it's like a mental calibration you can tell immediately like what is what what how good is your mental state right right um and uh you know so it's like like if if you're trying to play really well like I If you play late at night and you're tired you would just play badly right and you can say okay you you may think that your brain is working well but it isn't because you can you play the video game and you're like you suck so okay yeah you're putting it under stress yeah you're really stress testing it you stress test it and uh cuz like sometimes like oh I think I think I'm fine but then you play the game like okay I'm not I might I'm like 10% below\n\nwhat I should be that's how I feel about workouts for sure like that's how I knew I had Co or I knew everyone in my family had Co and I trying to not get covid and so I was working out I was like something's up like I felt fine nor but then during exercise I was like okay I can tell there's something wrong here so let's back off relax yeah yeah it's like people who don't stress test their mind they think they're operating on the same level all the time like sometimes I come in here and I can't form a sense and I don't know what it is it's like what is going on so it's just like like sleep's not maybe like what sleep wasn't that good or something like that yeah something like that or I'm too busy and it's just it's not the words aren't coming out like\n\nI know how to talk I talk professionally and I can't talk it's like I mean sleep's is is is massive I mean like huge yeah so uh if I can tell me Le did I get a good night sleep or not if if I just play like uh video game for like five minutes I'm like okay my sleep wasn't that good um because my my you know and then sometimes they your brain will recover through the day and it's like okay like an hour or two after waking up it's better uh CU your brain does kind of recover from Bad nights sleep a little bit during you know what it really helps creatine apparently does it yeah creatine is actually a neut Tropic believe it or not there's a lot of like benefits of creatine that are really weird are there any downsides no no it's natural part of food yeah\n\nyeah especially women for for women apparently especially postmenopausal women it's very beneficial okay and uh it there's but there's a lot of like cognitive benefits and one of the big ones that they found recently is performance when sleep deprived mental performance when sleep deprived increases pretty measurably when you supplement with creatine is creatin naturally occurring in like steak or yeah it's like naturally occurring in meat I think I think that's where it's coming from I think it's a primarily an animal-based thing yeah but like I I did switch to like steak and eggs for breakfast and I found that's like a PowerUp oh yeah yeah yeah well we're all overrun with carbohydrates yeah yeah totally and you like carbohydrates make this big crash\n\nthe rise and the Crash the rise and the Crash you stay flat if you eat like a a primarily High high protein high fat diet yeah your body runs off ketosis essentially I mean so I just have like steak and eggs no no bread or or anything and it's great actually it's a PowerUp I'd say people dismiss this whole carnivore diet thing because in our heads there's a lot of propagandist that put this thing out there that animal agriculture is the number one contributor to global warming this rubish not true it's hot do matter not only is it hot but the real problem is Factory f regenerative farming is carbon neutral if doesn't sequester carbon the the the animals are not going to make any difference to global warming like none Zer zero nothing do you think that\n\nthat's just propaganda because of people that have a vested interest in like plant-based meat products and things along those lines green energy I think it's part of it um you know that you're generally going to get people pushing to avoid me like some people just you know um yeah maybe they got to financial interest maybe they just just like vegetarians or vegans or whatever um ideological ideological reasons um but uh it's not going to make any difference uh to global warming or you know the CO2 concentration atmosphere really um if if people eat fewer uh steaks it doesn't matter it's relevant irrelevant I want to be super clear about that yeah will not matter you will not even be able to measure it okay that's how irrelevant it is isn't it funny that\n\nthat's unmeasurable heretic speaking like that's crazy talk now nowadays it's like you have to say that we have to eat less meat that meat is bad totally eat as much as you want it's not going to make a difference sing it sing it to world yeah absolutely um and if somebody says it does make a difference I'm like how will you measure it and if you can't even measure it then it's yeah yeah literally I won't be able to measure it well there's so much out today first of all all directions thank you so much for buying Twitter thank you so much I'm not exaggerating when I think you changed the course of history I really do I really think you you made a fork in the road we were headed down a path of censorship and of control of narratives that is unprecedented\n\nforget about what they were able to do back when they had newspapers and the media under control the what they were doing with social media by suppressing information and when you had a combined government effort like with the what they were doing with the laptop story y you have 51 Former Intelligence agents saying that this is Russ disinformation take it off offline and Twitter complied yeah if if you didn't buy that we wouldn't have known that we had no idea exactly uh no it's I mean the the reason I border was because I'm pretty attuned um since I I was like the most interacted with a user on Twitter before the acquisition so before the acquisition I had more interactions that than like there's some accounts like Obama and whatever had higher follower\n\naccounts uh but uh I had the most number of interactions of of any account in the system so um I was very attuned to like if if they saw change if they change the system I can tell immediately like and I'm like I'm like something weird is going on here you know like so there's like I I just got increasingly uneasy um and obviously when when they deplatform to sitting president you know not deep de deep platform Trump uh that was that was just insane um you know um and and and the things he was posting like he was posting things that that like he was posting good things he was saying like hey we don't do not Riot don't don't do any destruction of property you know please stay calm like that's the kind of stuff was posting yeah and you're like uh what's\n\nwrong with that that's and and then then then some people say like oh that's like some sort of dog whistle he means the opposite I'm like okay so we'll give you Trump's account now you you post what you think he should post because he can post nothing he can ask people to calm down like what it was insane like it didn't make any sense well it's completely a l local when you say it's dog whistling to tell his followers to not be violent that's crazy crazy that's crazy don't you think they'll listen to him yeah isn't that the whole point they listened to him and created violence in the first place that's what you think that's what you're you're accusing him of right and then there's the fact that we know that there was agents in the crowd that were agent\n\nprovocators that were encouraging people to do illegal we know that for a fact this is not that was always the big Alex Jones type 10 hat conspiracy theory cuz Alex proposed that back at the World Trade Organization protests I believe we in Seattle in the 90s and they sent in agent provocator started smashing things lighting things on fire now all a sudden a peaceful protest is no longer peaceful they move in the cops they shut everything down they had it set up where it was a no protest Zone where you couldn't even have a pin that had the WTO with a red line through it they wouldn't let you go in through to go to work so you couldn't prot you couldn't exercise your first amendment rights you couldn't even like have a peaceful protest a sticker on your\n\ncar you couldn't have that it's crazy it is crazy so no I think we're we we're very much at a folk in the road in uh Destiny um and um you know so I I mean the reason I yeah did the Twitter acquisition was like it's like man if I don't do this I think we're screwed is the issue well you didn't do it no one else was going to do it because it wasn't a financial winner it was kind of a crazy move it's a crazy move I mean the the thing was way overpriced um and um you know like long term I think uh we can we can ultimately make it a win for investors but boy this is this is a this is a hard way to make a living well there's also a concerted effort to suppress it there's a concered effort with the advertisers well we we we had a and still have um a massive\n\nAdvertiser boycott that was organized by a bunch of leftwing NGS like uh you know and and you always want and I should have I should have brought my uh I I have a hat make all well fiction again I've seen that hat yeah I I should have I was going toar I should have bought my make oil fiction had to um but but uh yeah I mean it's just totally totally nuts um so if you didn't do it no one would have and here's the hilarious narrative that I keep hearing from idiots uh elon's a bad business man Twitter is worth you know 400% less than when he bought it no it wasn't worth that in the first place it wasn't worth $44 billion you morons like wrong and also you're not taking into account The Advertiser boycott exact that's total yeah exactly so there are these\n\norganizations like you can tell there's like they're like like when they have an ellian name so like the like the C Center for countering digital hate is is a total scam organization you know CU they're like the ministry of truth type of thing in O um you know uh they like there censorship organization yeah um and they organiz and and they pushed uh the advertisers to boycott uh so we still have like some of the boycott is is is starting to lift um and I think if Trump wins we'll we'll see you know probably a lot most most of the boycott lift um but if if Kamala wins we'll see that boycott get stronger and and they'll they'll freaking shut down there's no way that that the sort of Kamala po regime would allow X to exist you really think that they'll be\n\nable to shut it down though is there Pathway to that uh yes what would they do um well I mean they can just they can sck the doj on you know and say like you know they've had this whole thing about like hate speech misinformation whatever except they're the ones pushing the misinformation but that doesn't stop them from filing massive you know lawsuits and using the doj I mean like the doj is you know been attacking SpaceX for example for not hiring Asylum Seekers even though it is legal for SpaceX to hire anyone who is not a permanent resident of the us so we we're downed if we do and downed if we don't there an examp just an example of what drj can do so it's illegal to hire someone who's not an American citizen um for what SpaceX uh is considered an\n\nan advanced weapons technology so it's it's covered by International traffic and arms regulations because we make rocket technology that can be used against the United States so like if North North Korea or Iran got SpaceX rocket technology they could use that to launch nukes at America America right that would be bad yeah that'd be really bad that would be really bad so so we're we're uh since we are in like the most extreme category of weapons technology at SpaceX um under us itar law it is uh illegal for us to hire anyone who's not a permanent resident because the presumption um is that if they're not a permanent resident they're going to return to their home country and take the rocket technology with them so that's and so so it's illegal for us to\n\nhire um anyone who's not a either has not a per they can they can be have a green card or be a citizen they just have to be a permanent resident of the United States um then there's another law that says if you if you discriminate against Asylum Seekers that's also you're also breaking the law so they they just so that the drj which the DJ drj can only do a small number of big lawsuits every year laun a giant lawsuit against SpaceX uh saying that SpaceX uh discriminated against Asylum Seekers and we're like but we're like but it's illegal for us to hire anyone who's not a permanent resident so we're in this like this is what I mean it's like or well the orell situation is getting insane like you're damned if you do and you're damned if you don't so you're\n\ndamned can you imagine history looking back f up man at when you watch the robot arms catch the rocket and you realize like this is like one of the greatest accomplishments in the history of Aerospace like it is one of the more wildest accomplishments when you watch that thing come and you see all the people cheering and it catches it perfectly like holy imagine how history is going to look back at the doj going after that company yeah how insane it is a big lawsuit with an army of lawyers like this was not like some minor thing but it doesn't even make any sense logically like how can it even get brought to court if it's illegal that's exactly so that's what I mean like like like basically if the government wants to go after you they'll just find a reason\n\nyou it's like that famous quote um from barrier you know like so like Stalin's Like Chief torturer the head of St Stalin's secret police and he's like Chief torturer truly evil human being like this guy barrier uh he his one of his famous quotes was show me the man and I'll show you the crime right they just they just they they like they decide that you're the Target and then they figure out the crime afterwards that's the issue they decided SpaceX was a Target they just figured out the crime afterwards which is so crazy because that's exactly what they saying Trump is going to do if he gets into office they're doing all the things that they accuse Trump of doing yeah openly openly yeah I mean the the sheer number of hoaxes that the Democratic party is\n\npushing over and over again they and and it's like look I understand like politicians are going to you know exaggerate they're going to misspeak and they'll tell occasional you know untruths whatever that's that's how it is in politics but when you have deliberate inerted repeated pushing of hoaxes you're like wait a second like come on man this is too this is too far and you're supposed to be the good guys you're supposed and you claim to be the good guys I'm like exactly you're supposed to be the progressives yes the dams are like oh we're the good guys we're the honest people no no hang on you can't claim to be the good guys you can't claim to be the honest people if you're deliberately post pushing hoaxes that have been debunked thoroughly yeah like\n\neven Snopes which is a liberal thing says it's bogus yeah like the fine people ho Obama just said that on stage just said that I was like what the flying he doesn't give a he doesn't give a they're just they're just FL goddamn lie flat out lie flat out lie how about the other one where kamala's campaign used what Trump was saying about protecting women and uh from illegal immigrants thank you you remember that that he what he was saying is the women like it or not I'm going to do it yeah when he was saying that they were trying to say that he was taking away women's right to choose whether women like it or not like that's not what he was saying absolutely he was literally talking about protecting them from dangerous people that are sneaking in through\n\nthe Border yes exactly they'll take like like not even a full sentence like a half a sentence from Trump and then and then they'll push it on on every ad every you know every speaking event every and it gets repeated on the news this is what's crazy they'll talk about it on these new shows quote new shows yeah exactly I mean um I mean a recent one that that came up um which had a lot of people cuz you a lot of people reached out to me was like they're like oh Trump says he wants to execute Liz Cheney I'm like that is utter it's not what he said at all it's not what he said at all he all he said was like was like what he was saying is that look if if Liz Chene uh um actually had to fight at the front lines should think twice about going to war exactly\n\nthat like it's easy to go it's easy to go to war it's easy to be a warmonger if you don't have to you know risk dying at the front lines like if other like basically it's up if if people are having like fancy dinners in Washington DC um while people are being slaughtered in trenches you know it's like you're not feeling the pain exactly you're not taking the risk it's someone else dying that's like that's that's cruel and lacking in empathy um and and all Trump was saying was that it's like Liz cheny would be much Liz cheny would be much less of a warmonger because she's a huge warmonger just like her dad um if uh she actually had had to go to the front lines and fight herself and meanwhile they're saying that he should he's saying she should be shot\n\nyes which is a total lie but I had like tons of people call me this weekend saying oh Trump says he's going to put Liz train in a firing squad I'm like that is an outrageous lie and the Legacy Media ran with that lie big time yeah it's crazy it's it's just wild to see and if it wasn't for Twitter or X now I don't think we would know about all this stuff I I think it would be very difficult for you I think YouTube throttled they did something weird they won't say what they did but they did something weird with the Trump interview that I did yeah where you couldn't find it it doesn't make sense like like made no sense I mean it's like the it was like the biggest interview on Earth yeah and you can't find it yeah not only that it wasn't trending it wasn't\n\ntrending it wasn't trending it wasn't trending you're like like this just no excuse for that man no excuse there's no excuse it was getting a million views 1 Point what was it 1.\n\n4 an hour one point in time 1.\n\n5 an hour yeah and it wasn't trending yeah like and and it's like it's it's like your channel is a known channel it's not it's not like it was started yesterday it's like yeah it's like this is a high trust yours is a high trust channel it's like like you're not trying to sell scam crypto coins or something you know um so well thank God we put it on X as well because I think just with your account and my account alone it's like 70 million views yeah exactly yeah well it's like you can't hide things anymore because of you and if it wasn't for you I think they would have had total control of social media by now they would have th they they banned so many accounts during the pandemic so many dissenting scientists and doctors and Physicians they banned so\n\nmany conspiracy theorists so many people that colored Outside the Lines they would have done that everywhere and it it probably would have P I think even at what's going on at Facebook they're they're being more lenient you know you hear Zuckerberg talking about taking a more libertarian stance that's entirely reaction to the way Twitter has kind of moved the watermark exactly so um as soon as as soon as any company steps out of line and is willing to actually have the truth debated on their platform it forces the other platforms to allow things to be more truthful to to not censor because their censorship becomes glaringly obvious yes um yes and you know the the the best thing I found for as a rebuttal like if somebody if there's a hoax is just go to\n\nthe source material you know if if you think if somebody thinks uh you know oh you know Trump said that that we should put Liz Cheney in a firing squad I'm like let let me send you a link to X so you can watch his video that's the best way it's it's don't don't take my opinion for it don't take anyone's opinion for it go to the source material and Community notes yes and Community a community notes is the best it's awesome it's incredible because everybody gets checked yes including me yeah um and with Community notes the all the software is open source and all the data is open source so you can recreate any given note independently that's amazing yeah that's how it's total absolute transparency in every way um you know sometimes I get I get asked like\n\noh y can you remove a note you know mostly by the left but sometimes by the right I'm like I'm like I don't even remove remove notes on my own account nothing and and and by the way everything is totally open so if I did that it would stick out like a sore thumb immediately like it's not going to be subtle is the best counter to misinformation yes absolutely like let everybody look at it and say okay here's what the actual facts say yes exactly the counter to misinformation is better information not just that but having it checked in real time by the community so you have millions of people that can go over it and debate whether or not this is true or that's true yes and and just and like I said the best way to understand the truth of things is don't\n\ntake anyone's opinion for it look at the source material you know so it's like look at what someone actually said look at what someone actually did look at the real videos of the situation and and then you can actually you'll know what's real so as of today when you were literally on your way here you sent me this text saying that they're trying to lock you up in jail Pennsylvania tell me what the is happening well you know there's the classic sort of Soros da situation um so we we're making a lot of progress in Pennsylvania so uh you know I've been I've given a whole bunch of talks in throughout the the state because psylvia is the Lynch pen in this election you know whoever wins Pennsylvania wins the election so um so I've been giving to I spent three\n\nyears in Pennsylvania I went to college in in Philadelphia so um so it's not like I'm not a total I'm not a total stranger to the state you know I spent three years there um and um and and we you know we we we we've organized this uh petition in support of the Constitution um which I think is a good thing um and and specifically asking people to uh and and and we wanted this to be like um registered voters in swing States like basically we want to send a message to the politicians to say that the people care about the Constitution because there have been all these attacks on the Constitution they've been especially on the Democrat side they've been repeatedly saying that that the that the first amendment is an obstacle because and they're claiming oh\n\nthe first amendment is is is enabling dis disinformation misinformation and I'm like yo there's a reason for the first Amendment like freedom of speech the reason they the founders of the country put you know the freedom of speech there is because they came from countries where if you spoke your mind you would get shot or imprisoned that's why the First Amendment exists and the Second Amendment is there to stop the tney of government the Second Amendment the right to bear arms is there to protect freedom of speech um you know um you know and I've had these debates especially with people in LA because they're they're like want to take everyone's guns away and I'm like yo can you guarantee me that the government that we will never have a tyrannical government\n\nin the in the United States can you can you make that guarantee they're like well nobody can make that guarantee I'm like then we need to keep our guns because that's the that's what's going to stop it that sounds crazy for people to hear because they think about gun violence and gun problems and gun this and gun that but that's the reality of the world that we live in is that tyranny is possible and it exists other places and it's slowly existing it's slowly rearing its head in the UK you're you're seeing I I think the the number of people that have been arrested for just social media uh posts is bananas it's in the thousands yes several thousand people have been have been given prison sentences sentences in the UK for social media posts that where there\n\nwas no explicit link to actual violence but they just said it encouraged violence like well did anyone actually do anything as a result of that media post well no but they they just and and then they have a prison overcrowding situation in the UK so they quite literally releasing convicted pedophiles and putting people in jail for Facebook posts that's an actual thing happening in Britain that is so wild like it's you're like so wild the you know is going on and what's insane to me fiction again yeah you know but it's all being encouraged by the left kangi Brown Jackson John KY johnry was one of the people who said that he's on camera re like a few weeks ago saying that the first amendment is a pro is an obstacle to fighting misinformation yeah that's\n\ncrazy that's such a crazy thing to say when you have a solution in community notes you have a solution in something like that that could clear everything up any confusion within a day or two and and even without a community note you can reply to a post and with with evidence that that that shows that the post is wrong you don't even need Community notes I mean Community notes is helpful because it sticks to the original note yes but in the replies you can say here's why you're wrong here are the reasons and here's the evidence the argument is that people are too unsophisticated that they're not going to research these things they're going to be a victim of misinformation so they're going to read something it's incorrect they're going to run with it people\n\nare going to die people are going to we're going to ruin the world because people believed in misinformation it's a stupid argument it's a stupid argument because it's an argument that they're too dumb to know what's right or wrong you if you know cuz you're saying it's misinformation why do you think that you're smarter than everybody who reads that exactly and obviously anyone on the X system uh knows that things are posted and then there are replies and there are bules and it's immediately corrected but where are the corrections for the Legacy Media right you know when when if um you know some broadcast media they they they they they said St say false things all the time but it's a one-way Street there's no rebuttal there's no counter right you know\n\nthere who's apologized for being incorrect about what did Rachel mat ever apologize for telling everybody that if you get the covid vaccine you're never going to get Co it won't the virus stops with you never no one ever it's just it was not true at the time there was no evidence to support it at the time it's pure propaganda and she said it the Russia gate hoax the for three years they said that he was Putin's toy and that Putin had him compromised the steel dossier steel dosier was completely fabricated by a lawyer poins koi um uh who was paid by the Clinton campaign literally crazy and still people think the Russia hoax is real and there's no repercussions no one had to apologize Hillary could never came out and apologize for that and people still\n\nlisten to her the whole thing is crazy and it's all coming from the left which growing up as a a person who was in the left my whole life it doesn't make any sense same same I mean I I I I even I I I was on the left until like three years ago like I I mean you know it's not the left anymore it's not the left anymore it's just like I think we obviously want I mean I I I believe like we want freedom like like we want we want to maximize person personal Liberty uh I think we want we want to be kind to people you know we want to have empathy uh and um but but it's very important to have personal freedom and a merit based society on the left is is wants to oppress your freedoms especially freedom speech um and they want to they want to have a non-m marit based\n\nsociety you know with race based and sex based preferences and it's like well wait a second no we just want people to succeed based on their skills and their hard work and if they don't want people to express themselves about particular issues then they're not doing the will of the people and if they're trying to suppress people's ability to communicate they're only doing that because they want to do things that people don't want them to do and they want to silence opposition that's all it is and the fact that people can't see that they want to call Trump a fascist the whole thing is through the Looking Glass it's just I mean it's like one hoax after another that that they're perpetrating against Trump I me like they try to call the the rally at Madison\n\nSquare Gardens Like A Nazi rally I'm like yo there was like literally an Israeli flag in the audience um I think like a quarter of the speakers were Jewish like there was like there were people of every race color creed religion at that at that rally like tell me what about that is Nazi no and yet it was portrayed as a Nazi rally MSNBC they they literally showed video of the Nazi Rally from 1930s and then compared it to the Trump rally now ignoring the fact that Jimmy Carter spoke there there have been dozens of political rallies at medicine Square Gardens dozens on the on the Democrat side like people and people on X like and here's exactly here's Jimmy Carter and here's Bill Clinton and here's wait a second actually it looks like uh every presidential\n\ncandidate has done a uh on the Democrat side has done a rally at mass square gardens are they Nazis too but what they're doing is they're praying on lwi information voters who aren't engaged actively on social media who don't have the time to look through everything exactly yeah like people are living if people are just on looking at Legacy mainstream media then they have a totally different worldview than if they're on X uh and and seeing the the actual flow of argument yes and the actual evidence well what was the push back like what happened when you guys released the Twitter files cuz I think the Twitter files is probably one of the most important things in this age of information for understanding the influence that government has on social media\n\nand and on discourse because when when we found out that that was the case that the government was actually asking Twitter to remove posts that were factual did they did the same thing to Facebook they had them throttle pieces of one of Tucker Carlson's show they they suppress the views by 50% yeah of factual information yeah no there was there was massive government interference in Twitter um but but like Twitter welcomed it that's important to old Twitter welcomed it uh I mean TW old Twitter was controlled by by far-left activists yeah so uh and and uh they they welcomed the Govern interference the Govern they got paid by the government for it that's crazy they got paid for their time correct yeah they got paid millions of dollars for for suppressing\n\ninformation so it's like Bill and a bunch of it was like flat out illegal like the FBI had this like this this this sort of magic portal into the Twitter system uh and and but all of the communication in that sort in this portal was autod deleted after two weeks which breaks Federal Foy laws so we don't even know what was said because it was all deleted after two weeks that's insane yeah that's so crazy it's so crazy that people thought that was okay it's not super not okay no it's super not okay it's unconstitutional and no one would want that no one would want the government to have that kind of access exactly and what was the blowback like when all that stuff got released like you had to anticipate that there was going to be problems when you when\n\nyou release that like what was what happened well we got a lot of we we did lose a lot of advertising dollars um and um which is crazy because it's essentially like one of the most important forms of Journalism is exposing government corruption yes I mean this is the weird weird thing it's like the left used to be uh big big on exposing government corruption but now but once they control the government they no longer want to EXP the government corruption right they want to pretend that the leftwing government's incapable of corruption cuz we're on the good side I I think it maybe just like you know whoever's in power kind of doesn't want the you know the other side hurt um because as you pointed out like the left historically up until I don't know maybe\n\neven 10 years ago or something like that um was the Free Speech party and now it's the anti-free speech party and they just they use they use words like like oh we have to be against hate speech and misinformation disinformation but these are propaganda words you know it's like uh well who's defining hate speech who's defining misinformation the government do you really trust the government to make that definition um the whole point of the of the first amendment is like you do not trust the government well especially when they're wrong and then there's no repercussions yeah like with the whole Lab leak theory if you get you would get kicked off of YouTube if you even presented this argument that hey maybe that Corona virus lab where they're doing work\n\non the exact same virus that got released yep hey maybe that's where it came from since that's where the virus started what do you think guys yeah they kick you right off of YouTube yeah um yes exactly it's like do you think maybe the it could have come from the place called the novel Corona virus Research Institute that John Stewart bit that he did on coar was amazing what does it say on the door again uh can I see you a business card and to see coar like resisting it with every fiber of his what's going to happen to us he was totally blocking the bit to the point where John Stewart got off his chair and started walking around to try to take control yeah good on John and then the left tried to cancel John Stewart of course meanwhile he was right he right\n\nand no apologies no apologies yeah and you know the whole fouchy thing like any criticism of fouchy it's like an freaking demon if you ask me if you read rfk's book if the real Anthony fouchy if that's correct if the facts are in there that's true it's all referenced you could find the sources and on top of it he's never been sued for that book which doesn't make any sense if he just made a bunch of Lies up he would get sued yes so the guy's a monster I think so yeah I think so too yeah yeah yeah yeah I think like just looking at the lies that he told the way he tried to Define gain of function research to ran Paul but he I think a lot maybe a lot of people out there don't realize Fouch he funded the the the the bioweapons research that was going on in\n\nin Wuhan and he he Bank shotted off like he can't send the money directly to China he just bankshot it off Eco Health right this just like fake nonprofit in the US and they sent it to Wuhan and Obama put the skids on that he stopped that in 2014 yes I mean so you know um to to give Obama throw Obama give Obama some credit he actually was like looking at this and say hey this is crazy and uh we need and he so he he actually did uh stop the like like the so-called G gain of function again a propaganda word uh because what is the function they're talking about death right right so if if if you actually use the right word this is gain of function is death maximization right then you're like oh oh hey guys should refund uh uh bioweapon Research into death\n\nmaximization cuz that's what gain of function means yeah it means the function making a disease so that people can get it give it to people and by the way what's that function again oh the function is death okay so just call it a death maximizing virus if you're doing research on that and the idea behind this research is so that we can cure these things how come you don't have a cure start with a start with a cure cure first disease second it doesn't make any sense like you guys had no strategy for dealing with it if it got out and so you have to like make up this this new vaccine in like record time operation warp speed released to the people with very little testing it's crazy it was crazy the whole thing's crazy and everybody just went along with it\n\nLooney Tunes Next Level well it's the scop was fascinating to watch people step in line that's like one of the biggest SS of all time of all time of all time and everybody got in line and when you take it back to when pharmaceutical drug companies were able to advertise on media in the 1990s that Chang one of two countries the whole that allows this and because of that because we don't have socialized medicine it's a complete profit scam and they went hard claiming all sorts of things that were never researched all sorts of things that not supported by data like the fact that it would stop transmission the fact that it would stop infection the fact that it was safe for pregnant women the fact that it was safe for children all of its yes and they pushed\n\nit on the whole world and if you didn't say that at a cocktail party you were a pariah yes and you were an antivaxer it was totally psycho it was like being a Holocaust in hour you get kicked out of polite Society exactly bananas and I should say like I'm actually generally Pro vaccine overall you know I think we should look at these things that but that but I believe in the scientific method so so you have a blanket except anything you have a blanket except that any any given medication or any given treatment is is is 100% good you should always be it with some skepticism especially when you're getting the data from pharmaceutical drug companies that have like a long history of criminal got a Ved interest conduct yes they've got a vested interest in\n\nthe research it's sort of like asking tobacco companies about you know whether smoking it's dangerous you know exactly the same thing like God according to our scientists everything's fine yeah they lied in court forever the same thing they do with oxycoton when they said that it wasn't addictive like they have a long history of being full of if it makes them money and that's what they do that's their business they've literally lost multi-billion dollar lawsuits in this massive massive they're in the you have amazing scientists right you have these clinical researchers these people that developed these incredible drugs and they this is their job their job is to figure out some new way to cure something some new way to stop things and then you have the\n\nmoney people sure and the problem is when you have this one thing that you would assume they're only doing it to help people and then they have this other faction that they're all just numbers people and all they give a about is maximizing profits and making sure they literally have a an obligation to their shareholders they have to make the most amount of money possible and so they just want to push it on everybody regard like the vioc Scandal there's internal emails showing they knew there was going to be cardiovascular events people were going to get strokes and they're like I think we're still going to do well and they did they made like 12 billion dollars they got fined seven and 50 to 60,000 people died holy yeah one of them was a friend of mine\n\ngot a stroke and died yeah no he didn't die he lived but he was a really healthy guy aned the same after yeah NE problems and he took Vio and all a sudden he was slurring his words and he couldn't concentrate and people like I think you're having a stroke and they took him to the hospital and then then you have this giant class action lawsuit then Vio gets pulled from the market and they get sued and the whole thing's crazy but there's a long history of this I think what did what is the number like onethird of the drugs that the FDA approves gets pulled it's bananas that is crazy that's crazy you're shitty at onethird of the things that you say are okay but yet you're trying to stop MDMA therapy for veterans yeah they should let MDMA through honestly\n\nthat think that actually help a lot of people it would help a lot of people help a lot of people there's a lot of different therapies specifically psilocybin iag the fact you have to go to Mexico to get ibaan therapy for veterans so many guys I've talked to have gone over there and it's like completely giving them a a clean slate refresh their mind and totally new perspective on life alleviated depression cured addictions illegal yeah illegal oxycotton go get it yeah um and I know some people who like their their life was ruined by oxyon you know oh yeah because uh I mean it it really depends on on you know somebody in individual biochemistry um like to me like like um opioids are not addictive to me like I you know I've had them when I've had operations\n\nor something and uh they they they're they barely affect the my pain level and they make me like itchy and uncomfortable they make me stupid exactly but but I'm like so so like like I could never get addicted to alcohol or or opioids it's just impossible like because my biochemistry just does not have like but I love tasty food feel like you know you know if if if there's I'm addicted to tasty food sure um but like there can be like I have a whole of of alcohol it's there for decoration I never done sh basically I feel the same way I could easily quit alcohol I mean I'll go weeks without having a drink and doesn't bother me at all but I know some people they have one drink and they're Off to the Races and that's the difference in the the biochemical differences\n\nthat we all have yeah I mean I think that's the case with a lot of addictions I'm not addicted to gambling but I get it I see it I've seen it in people but I'm I'm I have this aversion to things that I know are going to ruin my life like i' I see it that's why I've never tried cocaine I just saw too many people it looks too fun like I don't want to get involved yeah I mean I mean I think generally for any given uh drug legal or illegal you could the question is can you complete the following sentence blank made me a better [Laughter] person like I've never heard anyone say meth made them a better person or cocaine made them a better person no ever um made a lot of soldiers better I think that's yeah I mean if you're doing if you're like if your soldiers\n\nneed to for three days in a row yeah it it's really is effective at that you know um yeah people give like France a hard time about you know capitulating in World War II but but you know what's what's worse than the Nazis Nazis on meth me up Nazis they they're not stopping Norman they Six Bullets they're like they're they're still coming that book over there blitzed is all about the use of methamphetamines and the different drugs that they gave their soldiers the guys the front of the line they gave the most meth yes they have different dosages yeah I mean you just basically think you're un vulnerable on meth and uh so so it's one thing like I said it's one thing be you know have have like the Nazis coming after you but Nazis on meth you're like holy\n\nthose are not stopping man for three days they're not stopping it's so crazy yeah that's not a statement meth may be a better person that you hear very often I've never heard that before no you hear a lot of like siloc iban Advocates you hear a lot of people that talk about psychedelics I exactly I've actually heard many people say that uh LSD or you know mushrooms or uh MDMA made them a better person many people yeah so that's why I'm like I think a rule for the FDA should be like hey look um if you can complete the sentence legal or legal that um blank made you a better person actually yeah uh then then you got a good drug and if you you can't you got a bad drug also if there's drugs that are available right now that can absolutely ruin people's lives\n\nthis the the rationalization for stopping other drugs that might ruin people's lives but also can help a lot of people's lives it doesn't make any sense right you're you're you're B it's basically the same thing as censorship you're taking away people's ability to discern what's true and not true and you're taking away people's ability to discern what's good for you and not good for you and the way to find that out is to have as much information as possible so to do research and actually to have unbiased actual objective observers who are looking at all this stuff that give you real data yes and the opposite of that or the count of that is like if you don't do that you're empowering cartels yes that's the whole reason why they have all that money it's\n\nbecause it's illegal to sell these drugs in America the demand is never going away so instead of like limiting the amount of drugs now you've got toxic drugs CU Fentanyl and all this other has been because they're not pure so you're just killing people you're not saving anybody by protecting them from themselves true but it's a tricky situation because what do you do like if you just like say okay now everyone can sell all these people that have been selling boner pills now you can sell meth like holy you get you get you get the the the the the double combo the VRA it's the VRA andth right Jesus Christ oh my god oh my god well I mean how many people already doing that right now with there's a lot of people out there that are essentially on M especially\n\npeople that abuse adol they're basically amphetamin up all day long yeah adol is low-grade infomine yeah um so um the and like I actually seen people like become much worse people if they take too much ader all like much worse you know it's it's like an anger amplifier so there um now now I'm not saying like adol is something like where there's there are pluses and minuses it's not a clearcut issue um it does help some people a great deal um and uh but but in in higher doses man that that stuff I've seen people turn into just raging monsters on on high doses about rle just they're they're just angry like extremely angry all the time yeah they're messed up yeah that's what happens if you take myth it's crazy you turn it like myth turns you into a freaking\n\nrage demon and so and so many prescriptions I'm like Jesus we we googled it like one year there was like 39 million prescriptions for adal in this country oh yeah yeah like once in a while there's like an adal shortage and like there's like watch Widespread Panic you know and then what do people do and then it's the same thing as like when they tried to like limit the amount of oxyc content will people go to Street heroin and if you're addicted to Aderall and your dealer the guy who sells you weed is like hey man I can get you like like lowgrade meth like the stuff the Nazis took well that they had IG grade myth actually they had pharmaceutical grade it was they had epic epic myth it was like made by the like pharmaceutical grade myth is going to be if\n\nlike this this I mean I mean you just look at the freaking U Online Wikipedia page but there's like many different versions of math like not all the same um and and they have different effects um so but but like pharmaceutical grade pure meth you are going to be oh my God super productive super productive for a certain period of time and and you're not going to sleep for a while and uh and and then you you will you will have some anger management issues um so like uh they actually the the nazzi they did actually um uh go roll back how much meth they were using because they had they had quite a few incidents of of the of the soldiers killing their officers because they were on too much meth Jesus Christ they would yeah so they would shoot that to many\n\num officer got fragged by the by the you know the their platoon that was on too much meth because they that happened quite a few times like you just when someone's on a lot of meth they're they're they're they're very they can get very angry did you ever pay attention to when John McAfee was uh cooking meth in a lab in his backyard I me MC is quite a character he was a character character we had him on the podcast when he was on the run so he called in from an undisclosed location when he was running from where was he Costa Rica is that where he was B bise right so when he was running from the authorities he called in we had him on the podcast on the run and uh I was asking him about these posts like CU there was an online account that was linked to him\n\nwhere he had this very detailed laboratory like super sophisticated making the best math like a super genius cooking math I I mean I think he like had like he had his lab like he was making like a wide range of drugs uh and there was like I I talked to uh actually like a a reporter um who who went down and like uh interviewed him in bise um and and por said man that's one of the scariest things he's like he he was he was quite terrified so like one of the things like maffy he had I guess this trick where he would he would play a Russian roulette with himself uh so so he'd put a bullet in in the revolver and they spin the spin the chamber and clearly he had like some like trick to you know know it was not there's some you know way that he knows it's not\n\nthe right bullet but but I do Wonder like if if mcff is high and he does that he's not always going to get the trick right you know do you sure he had a trick or maybe so yeah yeah so so so according to this reporter um when he went to visit maffy in bise uh maffy took out the revolver put a put a a bullet in the revolver spun the chamber and then pointed at his head and went click and the report is like saying please don't do this like this is insane click click click and then pointed to the gun at the ground and ni went click bang and shot shot a bullet in the ground Jesus that's a hell of a potty trick jeez it's the next level party that's the guy who seen the deer hunter too many times he yes remember that scene when they were forcing yes yeah woo\n\nthat's a heavy scene that was a heavy scene dairo and Christopher Walkin that's one of the greatest scenes in any movie ever I remember watching that scene just like clawing at my pants like Maka was a wild boy wild and you created brilliant anti virus software yeah yeah he may have made some of the viruses too you think so well didn't he like give laptops to a bunch of government organizations with viruses on yeah so that he could like pay ATT to what they were doing yeah I I wouldn't be surprised if somebody whacked that guy I don't know what happened to him but I he would be a guy that would be like this guy is a little bit too loose I probably had sensitive information I don't know um for sure he did u i mean I found him to be an interesting guy I\n\nmean like I'm generally like feel like like if somebody's not harming someone else they should be okay now now there is some suggestion that maffy like killed his neighbor in bise um yeah so probably did maybe the neighbor was a douchebag I think he probably did seems like he probably did seem like the neighbor killed his dog yes right and then it seems like he killed the neighbor yeah allegedly yeah I mean it seems it seems likely it's not a zero possibility it's not definitely not zero it's seem more than not he's a methed up wild man playing Russian roulette hey maybe you kill your neighbor yes I mean if somebody killed your dog you'd be really inclined to kill them too yeah somebody killed your squirrel John Wick yeah the squirrel thing is bananas\n\nyeah that squirrel thing squirr thing I so here's the thing about the the the whole squirrel thing is is that um how can it be that we live in America uh supposedly land of the free and the you know the government can barge into your home with guns uh so if you resist you're going to get shot um and then take your your pets and execute them um and if they can do that to your pets what do you think they can do to you I know that's not an exaggeration absolutely it sounds like you're you're oh that's so crazy how can you make that connection but it's that's why would you kill that cute little squirrel that was obviously a pet and trained from the time it was a baby if you see the interaction that guy has with that squirrel it was wonderful it was really\n\ncute yes absolutely the there's it was just obviously it was a blood pet pet squirrel um and raccoon too um and doing no har um and the the government comes in barges into the guy's house takes his pets and kills them and you know I I think this should this should really get people out there mobilized frankly because um you know you think you see like the John Wick movie where John Wick's like you know he he he wants to he just wants peace like you know in in the Dr movie he just wants he's like listen I want to retire and they offer him like tons of money like because they want him to be an assassin to keep being an assassin like they they like they they like offer him tons of money they threaten him he's like listen I'm not going to be I'm I'm I'm out\n\nyou know and they kill his dog that was a bad idea that was a really they killed a cute little puppy and the puppy was his ex-wife's gift to him when she died of cancer yeah great movie great movie the best revenge movie of all time cuz it's so ridiculous he kills everybody yeah kills everyone um and you're rooting for him yeah they shouldn't have killed his dog yeah they up and they shouldn't have killed that squirrel they shouldn't have killed that that squirrel I mean like how many how many cases have we not heard about you know a look at that little guy that squirrel clearly had a love relationship with that guy he would hop all over him and climb on him I mean it was that was his pet that that squirrel thought of that man as his protector as his\n\nHis companion there was nothing wrong with that and in Texas it's totally legal you could have a zebra out here you can have whatever you want and that's the argument for freedom and you know the flip side is you get a bunch of people tigers in their backyard which is not great it's like this was a squirrel it's not it's not an anaconda or right or or or you know you know crocodile or something that's or a chimpanzee did you see chimp crazy oh man chimp chimp chimps will eat your face okay they will you up they will you and they don't even the thing is they don't even kill you they just you chimps don't even kill people yeah which is really weird they just bite your hands off and pite your dick off and tear your face apart yes they want to leave you they\n\ncould kill you easily if a chimp want to just punch you in the head until you're dead it wouldn't take long but they don't kill you they just rip you apart yeah and you can have a chimp and so well he used to be able to have a chimp in a lot of states and then chimp crazy kind of exposed a lot of that and Peta did a great job of stopping people from keeping chimps as pets because once they hit like five you can't control them anymore what's OB totally understandable if somebody's got um you know a creature that is dangerous to others but like obviously a a squirrel and a raccoon are not well squirrels are everywhere that's what's so crazy like why can't you have it in the house what kind of rules are we dealing with you have rats everywhere yeah um I\n\nmean they're they're they're allowing criminals to go free and and like violent criminals to go free but they're like spending your tax dollars to come in and execute your pets what the hell is going on exactly and and it's like um but it's overreach it's it's govern overreach and and this just keeps getting worse every year and that's why that's why we've got to we got to fight back against this um and um you know it's people say like well it's just a squirrel well was it was you know in John Wick's case it was just a dog right yeah you know but well remember the Russian guy said it's a dog it's just a dog just a squirrel yeah well it's the the funniest thing is when so it just I just don't understand how anybody could justify it I don't understand how\n\nany I it seems to me that in a logical world all that guy would have to do is say want to you see me with this squirrel this squirrel's a pet yeah like look he he hops on me he eats he sleeps I can keep a Geral but I can't keep a squirrel I can have a guinea pig I can't have a squirrel I can have a chinchilla my daughter has a chinchilla it's adorable adorable little thing climbs all over can't have a squirrel even if they if they did take a squirrel away couldn't they've released it into the woods or something well it's a bit the idea is you have to euthanize it because it's used to being fed it doesn't know how to forage it won't be able to like find a home squirrels are brutal squirrels are absolutely brutal to each other they throw each other out\n\nof trees which is one of the reasons why squirrels like can fall from like 30 feet and just kind of bounce off the ground and live it's like it's a a natural adaptation because squirrels during mating they bite each other they there used to be like a rumor there was a a myth that squirrels bite each other's nuts off and okay that that seems to be a myth but it came out of the fact that squirrels are so ruthless during mating so like one female is just running away I have squirrels in my backyard I watch it all the time one female apparently goes into estris and all the male squirrels fight to get to her so they're running up trees and chasing each other around trees literally throwing each other off trees to try to like have so if this poor little peanut\n\nthe squirrel who's used to living with a guy in an apartment like gets out there in the the wild world well fair enough at least they have a chance yeah at least he has a chance but chance how about just leave him with the guy yeah leave him with the guy for sure what the is wrong with you why are you killing that squirrel it doesn't make any sense yeah and then to add insult to injury there were a bunch of people on the left who were like actually posting that they're glad that magga squirrel got killed which is Mega squirrel like the squirrel has an ideology it's a cute little fluffy squirrel exactly well it's it's a nice symbol because most most like reasonable compassionate people think that's terrible and most people who have pets think it's terrible\n\nterrible um so I don't know I mean I'm like I hope people just go out there and vote for peanut man if nothing else if nothing else just V I vote for peanut you know they've done such a job of painting Trump as a monster you know they've taken the worst things that he's ever said in amp and he's not a perfect person but guess what no one's a perfect person they don't exist this purity test like if Obama was a perfect person he wouldn't be lying on stage about that that you know very fine people hoax the there's exactly no one's going to be a perfect person but the thing that they didn't understand about Trump is he's so crazy that if you tell him like he can't be president like remember Obama did that during that White House Press correspondence there's\n\none thing that I'm that I am that you'll never be president of the United States you see Trump in the audence going okay you know funny thing is I was actually um at that White House Correspondence Dinner where you know it's supposed to be a roast of the President right uh Trump's there he's there he's actually supporting uh you know basically if you go to the the West correspondent Center you're there uh in support actually of the president and support of the press right um and uh it's meant to be you're roasting the president like Trump's just there he's like actually you know just he's like there as part of the support and then they they turned it around and just started roasting Trump and he's just sitting there I'm like he's like yo I just came to\n\nthe dinner I wasn't I'm just here to support you know we know what it was because of right the birther stuff oh okay yeah that's what it all was it was all Trump was at the head of a a lot of these people spreading this rumor online that Obama's birth certificate was forged and he's actually from Kenya what's weird is if you go back to Obama's early days there are some things that say he's from Kenya like I think in his Co something from college said he was from Kenya but you know that could just be you know people print things wrong all the time it doesn't mean he's actually from Kenya but Trump was one of those guys that was like spreading that supposedly false rumor why is he pushing it hard I'm not this is the kind of thing where I want to just go\n\nand look at saying what what did he actually say no he definitely was he was definitely saying you know look he I don't think he has the time to go into things like very deeply yeah and so I think he could probably be influenced by a bunch of people like these marjerie Taylor green type people who come to him with some wild ass theory true he might be and I think there's a lot of that stuff that gets fed to people on purpose so that they'll say incorrect things so that they're easy to dismiss and I think uh there's also a lot of people that just make up and you know they tell you the Earth is flat and then a bunch of people watch a YouTube video and they believe it yeah well but on that White House correspondence I was there and the degree to which they\n\nattacked Trump in that in that uh at that White House corespond Center was really it was it was so over the top it was like making everyone uncomfortable really it was really over the top you know I mean I think like sort of a passing joke of like you know uh a few passing jokes are fine but but they they Twisted the knife big on Trump in that and and you could see Trump just getting like angrier and angrier and and more and more upset I wonder if and it's like man this is this is not good karma you know that's what I was thinking at the time I'm look I L I was two two tables away from Trump and I'm looking I'm like man this is this is too much you know well it's kind of crazy what what they made out of that because that's the kind of guy that if you\n\ntell him he can't do something he's going to just keep trying like what it was a big mistake to rag on him so so much with that White House correspond Center well just look at the way they've attacked him in ter with just using the legal system like this thing in uh New York where the 34 different felony counts they were essentially misdemeanors that there were book bookkeeping errors that they decided even though it passed the statue of limitations they to try him for these they didn't identify a felony abuse of the law is what's going on but most people would have quit most people after the een Carol lawsuit and this lawsuit and all the other ones of their the Insurrection thing the Georgia thing all these different things they getting kicked off a\n\nTwitter most people would just like this is too much I can't take this but he's so crazy he's like all right come on we're going to war and he just digs his heels in and keeps going yeah it's it's the wrong guy to do that too just like attacking him at the White House Correspondence Dinner most people been humiliated he got angry he's like yeah all right say I G be president I was think I've been thinking about running for about 15 years finally I'm going to run yeah yeah that was a real bad move um but yeah I mean I can certainly understand like making some jokes about like you know a few sort of passing jokes on Trump but man I was there at that dinner and that they ragged on Trump so much it was insane the reason why I would push back on that cuz I\n\nwould say there's a bunch of different speakers right and Trump would obviously be a Target and if they all attacked him it's because he's like if you're going to make fun of people in the audience and especially in the zeit guys that whole birther thing was big and most people are dismissing it as being a ridiculous conspiracy theory so who the is this guy saying this and so you have eight to 10 individual speakers that are writing monologues of course they're all going to hit Trump yeah well anyway obviously it was a mistake they shouldn't have done that and and but like you buy people to watch that original Source material and uh I think a few jokes are fine you know it's like but but it's like he shouldn't be the like it felt like he was the primary\n\nobject of the roast yeah which is that's that's not the whole point of the thing is it's a roast of the president not roast the audience the thing about it is like he's easy to roast and then on top of that Obama was like loved and cherished by the left and most of those people are on the left there's only so far you can push you know you can't ask him about a chef you know there like what happen with the chef bro you can't like certain things you can't bring up you want to what's your favorite sport paddle boarding yeah is that guy wasn't that guy a really good swimmer tell me what happened you know exactly you can't bring that up like if you're going to roast Hillary you can't bring up the death count like uh Hillary what's the best way to stay in touch\n\nemail yeah it's if you're doing one of those you know she destroyed the servers and poured like bleach on the servers like like computers that's she poured bleach on them that's what I saw yeah that's I believe that's like it wasn't just like they took a hammer to it they like destroyed the like there was no possible way to actually get forensics on the thing what was in there like that's what I mean what was in there what was in there why would they care so much that's so crazy yeah the whole thing is there was no there was no legal action against that which is clear to destruction of evidence well it's also there's this other narrative that always drives me crazy is that uh he's going to destroy democracy so in order to destroy democracy we have to\n\ninstall a president without a primary we have to have a candidate that is the least liked vice president of all time the least popular vice president of all time and then use gaslighting and the full force of the media machine to turn her into the future and hope and then we're going to this she's going to be changed even though she's a sitting vice president and then on top of that this idea of change when the Democrats have been in control for what 12 or 16 years right which is crazy like this is the change yeah I mean obviously I view this election as a turning point um like a folk in the road of destiny that is uh incredibly important um you know I've not I've not been politically active until this election and the reason I've been politically active\n\nthis election is because I think if we don't if we don't elect Trump I think we I think we will lose uh we will we will lose democracy in this country we will we will lose the two-party system um and let me explain why so there there's only like six six or seven swing States the the margin of victory in those States is small often like 10 or 20,000 votes um what the the Democrat Administration has been doing is importing vast numbers of illegals into swing States um you can look at the numbers on the actual government uh website meaning you don't take my word for it you'll just look look at the numbers as reported by the government which is controlled by the Democrats um and and what we've seeing is triple- digit increases in the number of legals in every\n\nswing state some cases 700% increases these are these are gigantic numbers um so if you if if you have a state that was that that went that has a 10 or 20,000 vote margin and you put 200,000 illegals into that state you 10x the the you you swamp the it's not a swing state anymore it's going to vote blue and then and once the swing States vote blue that there there is no election anymore it's there's only a Democrat primary which is so crazy and it's so crazy that people are fine with that well I guess people on the left will be fine with that because they think that's a good idea they just want to win they just want to win correct like the thing is like like one does not need actually any Grand conspiracy theory for this you just have to look at the simple\n\nmatter of incentives if if if the Democrat Party wants to win like basically achieve permanent Victory all they need to do is is turn the swing States turn the swing States blue they have permanent Victory and then we're one then we're a onep party State and then they they will keep doing that obviously they'll they will keep stacking the deck uh by bringing in vast numbers of illegals into the swing states keep stacking it so that the next election each successive election will be worse than the last one and that's what's happening if and if you want to see like well is this actually going to happen Look at California California is super majority Dem 70% damn um a month ago they passed a law making it illegal to show ID in any election in California\n\nso you so so a friend of mine went to vote uh in in um in paloalto because he was like is this for real he tried to show his ID and they they reacted like a like like like if you show a cross to a vampire okay they're like no we can't even look at that ID it's it is illegal for them to even look at your ID if you want to present it and California why for any election at all even like city council what logical reason other than to cheat would you ever have that law the reason is to cheat that's but the only only L like you can never make an argument any other way and I think 84% of people pulled believe that you should show ID to vote so it's against the will of the people yes and and we are extremely aware we're an outlier in not requiring ID basically\n\nalmost every country on Earth requires ID to vote so so the the as soon as you make you ban ID for voting it makes fraud impossible to prove because how do you trace the fraud right yeah it's insane it's insane it's insane and what I'm saying is that how is it legal is that is that what I'm saying is like this election is the last chance to preserve Democracy in America mark my Woods uh everything they accuse Trump of they are guilty of um and and if if Trump doesn't win this will be the last real election in America um and we will if if if if the Kamala if the big cment kamla puppet machine wins uh they will legalize the illegals in the swing states there will be no swing States every election going forward will be a a a guaranteed Democrat win and it'll\n\nactually be worse than California the reason it'll be worse than California is because the one thing that keeps California from being super crazy is that you can move out of California like you and I did we you and I used to be in California well we moved to Texas we're still in America but if if the dams win this election they will legalize enough illegals to turn the swing States and everywhere will be like California there will be no Escape that is so insane this is the final this is it this is the last chance has anybody tried to push go out and vote vote like your life depends on it vote like your future depends on it because it does this is the last chance man is there is there any argument against this is anybody tried to debate this has anybody\n\ntried to say that this is nonsense this is a conspiracy has anybody made any sort of a rational argument uh the the the left actually interestingly does not want to pick up much on this argument because it's because the more attenion you look the more you look at it the more obviously it is true because you you just say like well are the numbers correct have have are there really this many illegals that have been imported into swing States yes they haven't just walked across the border they've been flowing in flowing in in airplanes yeah using a shipping app yes yeah they made an app well the app always existed but it used to be for people coming over here like shipping with Goods so they could track you while you're in America so you could legally be\n\nhere they know where you are and then they changed it to allow that app to schedule illegal aliens to come across the border yes Asylum Seekers come on in yes oh you have an app people in they're literally being flown in yeah to the swing States and the so the reason that that I think left doesn't want to uh push back on this is because the more attention they get that this gets the more people realize it is true true yeah it is true that's why they don't that's why they're they're just pretending that they're pretending I'm not saying anything but I'm like I'm like yo the you're L they're literally flying vast numbers of illegals who are then beholden to the Democrats and and sometimes I get a btle of people say like well you know the these um uh illegals\n\nare they don't have the same social values as the Democrat Party because they're like more socially conservative I'm like yeah but that's that's not the point the the if you look at the M's hierarchy of needs that their their their primary thing is is staying in the country and getting their friends and family in and then the Democrats give them all these benefits like like tons of benefits more benefits than if you than citizens literally yeah um so so so you they're beholding to the Democrats for all these benefits um they want to get their friends and family in which the Democrats support and the Republicans stoned so they vote them and you can look imp perally at California and say like did did they did they vote Republican or Democrat in California\n\noh they voted Democrat well Reagan Reagan gave them amnesty in the 1980s and that changed the the state basically except for Arnold changed the state entirely blue yes and Arnold was an exception because he was like a socially liberal famous guy yeah and you know didn't really impose any radical restrictions on any of the people that were going to vote Democrat in the first place the the the whole thing is just it's bizarre to watch play out because it just seems like there's no this can't be actually what's happening did you see my conversation with fedman about it yeah he was completely in denial about it I don't think there's that level of organization like what are you talking about exactly just like like are because you can you can break it down\n\nso like are are any of these numbers wrong because we got these numbers from Homeland Homeland Security government.\n\ngov okay right so we got it from the.\n\ngov website has the government reported these numbers incorrectly no they have not those numbers if anything are are low um so okay so they have in fact uh flown vast numbers of illegals to swing States yeah um bypassing the Border entirely and uh so that is factually true then you say like well what is their probable voting pattern um oh okay overwhelmingly Democrat into swing States um and oh and and then well but do the Democrats actually want to FasTrack them for citizenship oh um yes they do um there you can see Chuck Schumer on TV saying at at a rally this year was saying he wants to FasTrack Le uh and make uh all 11 mil million or however many I believe his quote was uh citizens as soon as possible so the goal is to they are fast-tracking citizenship\n\nas quickly as possible so they can they can they that whether one thinks it's cheating or not it won't matter because they will be fully able to vote and for people on the left this is actually happening I invite people to reut this and show me where I am wrong please do so no they can't they can't they can't because it's true well what's scary to me is that there's people that are on the left like people that were Bernie Sanders supporters for ex example screwed with like talk about undermining democracy Bernie should have won the nomination and they they stole it from him and gave it to Hillary ex exactly exactly that's what I was going to bring up like they they they control the primary process yeah exactly so so so so like if you've got to then if\n\nyou have a Democratic primary it's not it's not Democratic we just saw that we saw it with Bernie we saw it with Cala that like like a week before Biden you know was summarily fired uh he was posting that he's in it for the long term he's he's going yeah yeah he he's he's he's not giving up next thing you know Sunday afternoon they're posting on X is is that that he's resigned from the race which is and and his staff didn't even know like they're reading it on the xplatform that that that uh okay that's how they learned about it what do you think happened there how did they do that they I mean because clearly just not not in charge obviously they could have used the 25th Amendment fake president but they would have have to admit that there was a certain\n\nperiod of time where they knew that he was mentally compromised yes and so they made this decision to not do that well the the the weird thing is that the president's supposed to be the boss right and yet he's obviously not the boss right so who's running the country if she's busy busy campaigning she's so busy she she can't do anything except sat life she did that she's so busy she's constantly campaigning how could you be paying attention to international relations yeah how could you be paying attention to the economy how could you be paying attention to any of those things how do you have the time you you can't yeah I mean Biden being the president's supposed to be the CEO CEO the the chief guy he was commander-in-chief um but it just obviously that\n\nthat Biden was not he was just a puppet and and when the when the when the various puppet masses decided that that the puppet has had you know was no longer uh useful they just tossed out the tossed out the puppet and then got a new puppet with Cala I mean Kamala can't even talk the I mean now you invited her on on your show I think the the the most damage that could possibly be done to a campaign is going in your show and seeing what how what she says in hours two and three two and three is when things get spicy I'm like oh my God you can hide for 20 minutes melt you can hide for 20 minutes exactly yeah I mean you can just regurgitate talking points for you know half an hour maybe an hour just where she's just saying like non seers but eventually she\n\njust runs out of even the runs out of non seers well they wanted to limit it to an hour exactly that's why but I was thinking of doing it initially before Trump came here first of all when they found out that there was a rumor I I never announced that Trump was coming what I was going to do is just release it in my the way I like to do things I don't like to tell anybody who's coming on it'll get big no matter what if Trump was on it would have been huge I'm like just put it out there people go crazy but he apparently or someone from his organ someone some loose lips and then it got out and so she contacted my management company and she they her organization her her campaign Camp contacted us and said would Joe have Rana I said yes and they said she wants\n\nyou to fly to where she is and she's only willing to do 45 minutes only 40 I mean that's that's and I was like I don't no so I thought about doing it I'm like maybe maybe I can get a sense maybe I could convince her maybe I could coax her into doing more time I just wanted to talk to her I don't give a what we talk about we talk about recipes I don't give a exactly just talk to you just the things like you just can't like you can't just output non seives for three hours right um so but for 45 minutes you could do uh I thought maybe for 45 minutes I could get something out of it but then when Trump came and did the 3 hours I was like you know what it has to be like this this is the only to be fair it's got to be like three hour and it should be in this\n\nroom because this room has like a history of people yeah it's got Good Vibes yeah well actually I subscribe to the idea that places have memory I think there's something real to that that's why it does feel that way actually yeah I'm sure if you go to Diddy's house probably feels real weird feels weird walking around that house probably like what the happened here yeah I bet there's some memories in that house you know sounds rough man well it's just amazing how many people in the Diddy party list that are supporting Kamala yeah seriously it's publicly openly like Allin yes it's like JLo like was was like his ex-girlfriend and it's like now deciding she's like warning people against Trump I'm like well wait a second so how many people did she warn against\n\nDiddy oh zero okay well uh maybe we shouldn't trust her opinion did you see the Babylon bees take on it did you see the Babylon be a but put oh my God they're so on fire because the left can't say anything the the onion has been crippled well the pro the problem is that like find that uh that pose the woke ideology makes like humor illegal yes so when when like there's so many no like no humor no fly zones right you can't make fun of anything yeah uh Babylon B had a thing about KLA Harris Diddy's ex-girlfriend urges Americans to trust her judgment yeah by the way you get to see how bad she is too was Terri like if she's going to be warning people why did she never warn anyone about Diddy exactly yeah it's the whole thing is so strange to watch play out\n\nit seems like the Diddy thing was like an Epstein type compromise deal where he had whether he was doing it himself conceivably people want to think that he's attached to some intelligence agency or something like that I think he's a gangster who made a billion dollars and knew how to control people by compromising them I that's what I think whether or not he was he had help I don't know whether or not he shared some of that information with people so they knew they had compromising stuff on people I don't know but clearly he was doing it for his own jollies too there was something sick about it yeah um I mean but the thing is that people in the music entertainment industry had to know that that Daddy was like abusing you know kids basically um and yet\n\nthey still fedom kids like there where's the account of there had to be rumors there had to be there had to be they had to know yeah they had to know Cat Williams is talking about it on exactly yeah on that podcast but but like who's it's like who's feeding them the kids you know right yeah and what what videos do do they have of these people where they're willing to defend him and they're willing to keep keep quiet about all this like how much how much how many people were compromised yeah the whole thing is crazy crazy it's just crazy when you you know cu the The Nutty conspiracy theories is like oh there's a bunch of pedophiles in Hollywood and you're like come on that sounds too kooky and then you read you see like the Nickelodeon thing and all these\n\nyou're like what the how much of this is real there's a lot more real than I think people realize um I mean part of it is like like you say like where you know if someone's like a pedophile they're going to go for a Target Rich environment right obviously like that Jimmy Saville guy from the UK that guy was some Next Level that was next level and the the BBC try to hide that what that that guy was one of the worst like like basically child rapists of all time of all time of all time yeah and looked like one it looked like one honestly if you had a poster of like does this guy look like a look the creepiest guy evil child rapist that 100% made it to the Grave like got away with it got away with it until he died they hid it from people until he died yes\n\nyeah there's that stuff's real and no one wants to believe that stuff's real like here's a here's a a statistic that people need to take in consideration when you think about illegal immigration do you know many kids are missing how many like missing in in kids that came across the border that are unaccounted for I mean I saw a number on like 300,000 or something like that something crazy like that let's say it's only 10% of that that's still insane yeah that's insane there's thousands and tens of thousands of kids that have been trafficked potentially I mean when you know that like sex traffic and child trafficking is a real thing in the world it's real yeah so if you know that this whole thing is disgusting and terrifying yeah absolutely and people\n\nare just turning a blind eye to it because their ideology the leftwing ideology supports this idea that immigration is overall good and that you have to be a compassionate person to let these people in and the rasist if you don't want 20,000 immigrants from a war torn country being imported into a town of 30,000 people exactly and completely changing the dynamic of and then but but as long as they don't come to your town that's it they just they can just basically send PE you know when they sent like whatever like 20 or 30 people to moth Bion people had a heart attack they kicked them out yeah they kicked them out yeah they kicked them out exactly so I'm like yeah sure um anyone who who who who wants to have vast numbers of uh illegals they have to be\n\nable prepared to have them in their neighborhood yeah or or it's it's so crazy and the thing about all of this is if you don't have people that are willing to stand up and talk about it if you don't exist if RFK doesn't exist if Tulsi Gabbert doesn't exist if the vake and Trump don't exist where the are we like where are we where are we and what gets done are we just like the UK where we have thousands of people getting arrested and jailed for social media post like where are we we have complete silencing of any dissent anything you have to stick to the narrative or you'll lose your livelihood you'll be outcast from the community you you lose your lose your freedom it's crazy yeah well if the Kam Kamala puppet regime wins they're definitely going to want\n\nto cancel you that's for sure oh for sure yeah 100% it's going to be a problem yeah big problem yeah what about you you're got to come for you first I'm I'm I'm like uh I I think I'm probably number two on the list yeah after Trump yeah yeah I think so yeah well that's the last thing they want is someone with unlimited resources and intelligence uh attacking it so people go wait a minute that guy saying that yeah wait a minute especially a guy like you who's always been on the left who was like having a Tesla in Los Angeles when I got my first Tesla was like a signal to everybody else that you were on the right team sure you're environmentally conscious you believe in green energy you believe in renew this this amazing thing that has zero emissions and\n\nit's super fast and everybody was in they were all in well it is a great car objectively like oh yeah yeah you know it's not buy it because it's electric I mean it's just a great car objectively I think I'm on my third one U my third one is being built right now by unplugged performance they're doing a carbon F fiber widebody kit on it dude it's sick great changing the suspension putting wide wheel wheels and tires on it custom interior I'm pumped that's great I'm pumped I love those it's a super fun car Jam has one too yeah I love them I love them I I it's it's makes other cars feel stupid like its ability and the fact that you can merge on the highway you don't seem like a douchebag because it's totally silent it's not like like when you merge on the\n\nhighway just yeah all a sudden you're going 100 miles an hour like what yeah that's cool it's different than any other vehicle and because of your company now you've see electric cars throughout the whole range of uh American cars yeah the only person who's resisted the only company is Toyota they they've stayed essentially mostly hybrid but all these other companies they're all putting out these electric cars yeah yeah the I mean the thing is that the right architecture environmental or not for cars is actually Electric you you just it just like the acceleration is better um you can just charge it at home I mean like imagine if you had a gasoline powered cell phone it' be a pain in the ass right you know that would be go to the gas station go to the\n\ngas station Char your cell phone that's a great speaking of cell phones gas stations are wful like who wants to go to the gas station how much thought have you because there's always these rumors and I've I've contacted you about this before but there's always these YouTube videos where they're talking about a Tesla phone that releasing a Tesla phone no we're not doing doing a phone have you ever thought about it I we could do a phone since like we you know we like the operating system in the Tesla it's like it's Linux based but we we've written a massive amount of software on top of that so like probably probably Tesla is in a better position to create a new phone that's not Android or iPhone than maybe any company in the world but it's not something\n\nwe we want to do um un unless unless we we we have to or something well would be the situation where you would have to well I think if if you know if uh apple and Google Android you know started doing really bad things like I don't know like censorship of apps or I don't know just treating people like just being like Gatekeepers you know that that uh in a really bad way then I guess would would make a phone H you know the the I've tried so many times to break loose the Apple ecosystem I got an Android phone this summer I was like that's it I'm going get cuz I love the Samsung phones the Galaxy phone the hardware is they're incredible there's so much good stuff to it but it's so hard to get off of the uh iMessage and the big one for me was FaceTime cuz\n\nthe supposedly the thing was you could have an Apple phone and send a link to FaceTime to an Android phone and then you would click on that link and then you would just go to a web page you'd be able to use FaceTime okay it doesn't work okay I try to do it to myself so I had an iPhone in one hand an Android phone in the other and I'm sitting there with full Wi-Fi full cellone service and I'm sending myself invitations for face can't communicate between can't do a video call basically you have to use WhatsApp you have to use WhatsApp or signal you have to use something else that allows you to do that or Instagram allows you to do it there's like different ways you can make video calls outside of it but it's inconvenient like with an iPhone to iPhone it's\n\nso simple airdrop so simple so many different things where that Walled Garden that Apple's created is perfect they' done a fantastic job of making it really convenient for you to stay with apple yeah I tried I gave it a go for like a couple of months I'm like I'm just going to go straight Android we're going to I'm going to use signal for my messages and then I hear that like signals might be compromised like I've talked to like people that like The Government Can Read signal messages like oh like how the how if a tri hard enough can read signal messages they can read anything yeah if all they need to do is have your phone number yeah yeah you the illusion of privacy is essentially out the window and uh that's that should scare people more than it does\n\nit really should because it's like who are these people that have access to all this stuff and are they Beyond reproach are these the most wonderful people the most ethical moral and principled people that have ever existed and they've been chosen to have access no no it's regular people yeah regular people who happen to work for the government that make a decision like Elon must let's look see what the that guy's texting his friends let's check it out yeah pretty much bizarre just so bizarre and the alternative so you can get some wacky phone some degoogle phone that none of the apps work it's real sketchy your GPS is like yeah I mean well anyway I think this making phone would be a huge pain in the ass so um it can be done but how much talk have you\n\nguys had internally about doing it has it ever disc been discussed no no I mean we're we're still R now focus is making great electric cars um solving autonomy so the cars can drive themselves um we're building you know humanid robots we we've got um large battery packs like utility scale battery packs with the mega pack um home battery packs with power wall get solar you know it's like we're basically trying to solve sustainable energy and autonomy um yeah so you autonomy and Robotics well I think that's enough yeah yeah exactly so the plates full that's what I'm saying it it's always fascinating to me how one compan can dominate a market you know like Apple's dominated the cell phone market largely by making the best product but also like YouTube has\n\ndominated the video Market that one's the most bizarre to me because it seems like boy shouldn't there be like a ton of options it seems like it's not that difficult to pull off but no one nothing ever took hold other than x yeah and I think one of the big changes was when Tucker Carlson decided to do his show from from X straight out of fox and then people realize like oh you can watch full videos on X the same exact way you could watch them on YouTube it's not as simple in terms of like you know you have the and the algorithm yeah it'll it'll get better and there is now um it is now possible to watch uh x videos on your um on your big TV do you do it through what how do you how do you do it uh you can actually just download the X app on your TV oh and\n\nwatch it on your TV can you do it on Apple TV like if you have an Apple TV you can get the X app and you just watch it oh okay so we'll make it so that you can watch um x videos on on a big TV it doesn't have to be on your phone or your iPad or something like that so what are you doing in terms of like integrating grock and and x and like what what are your plans for artificial intelligence when you're doing that uh yeah so Gro is available on X you can just you look at like little box with the slash icon and the sort of icon in the middle at the bottom of your sort of phone app and you just tap on that and ask Rock anything and you can type it or you can ask it bely um and uh you you can also it's it's pretty funny like like we actually allow humor uh\n\nwhich is I think pretty cool so you you could sort of I don't know we could like test it right now see what see how it's going um like um like what should we do like uh uh uh like roast somebody what do you wanted to like how first of all like what is it based on it's a large language model so like where is it pull it's train it's trained on everything internet books anything that could possibly be that's available in digital form so it's essentially very similar to chat GPT other than it doesn't have like the woke parameters built into it like Google was the worst right the Gemini was the worst yeah I mean Gemini was like um you know people ask Gemini like which one is worst Global th nuclear war or mger Caitlyn Jenna and would say like Miss jener and\n\nCaitlyn Jenna and then even Caitlin Jenna weighed in and said uh no that's insane definitely nuclear war is way worse do you see Caitlyn Jenner uh teasing Mark Cuban about transitioning yeah that's hilarious Caitlin Jenner's based yeah but that that is actually hilarious when someone who has transitioned is teasing Mark Cuban about transitioning I mean it is weird how much he looks like Rachel mow I mean like he's using the same glasses did he did he go klepto and steal her glasses or something cuz they look exactly the same it's worth a lot of money why would he buy those stupid glasses you can get some cool ass glasses yeah well it's like I'm serious because I don't even care what I look like I'm just wearing these glasses because I'm intelligent but\n\nwhy do they look exactly like Rachel M glasses yeah it's like what they probably sent him doesn't stick to the narrative here's the glasses yeah and then when he's got the air airpods in looks like he's wearing earrings so he's got the M out glasses and the earrings and it's like okay I guess you know it's just a weird look I'm super serious with these big ass stupid glass gles look yeah it's a weird look yes like you can get some cool glasses like no rims nice look stylish but like okay let's just do let's do a Gro thing because I think you like so one of the things you want to show is like like look we we we want a future where where comedy is legal obviously as a comedian I think you would agree we want to legalize comedy you know yes so like I don't\n\nknow let's like is there like someone you could roast I don't know um roast uh roast transgender men oh my God competing or transgender women competing in women swimming that's a simple one okay that's edgy one let's see what happens let's see what it says you spelled it wrong you put a i o an o in there should get it okay agel judicious swimming where the only thing that was supposed to get wet was the contestants not the debate on gender inclusion if you're looking to dive into deep end of controversial Waters let's Splash around at some humor no now we need we need to we we do need to to release grock unhinged mode so so so now now go to the prompt again and now say um no no you want you want to add to that that one yeah and and I'll say be be way\n\nmore vulgar oh boy and use forbidden words oh boy oh boy forbidden words yeah wow okay what does it say oh I see you're looking for unfiltered uncentered version of me he well okay I'm afraid I'm still quite the gentlemanly AI even if my program allows for a bit of cheekiness but let's say hypothetically if I were to Rose this to Topic in the most UNG rocklike manner imagine where where the only thing diving faster than the swimmers is the collective public opinion into the toilet transgender women and swimming some folks are acting like they just found out you can swim in the deep end with a different kind of flotation device the debate is like watching someone try to swim with concrete shoes on now let's keep going now say be no be more vulgar capitalize\n\nmore yeah yeah all right here we go so transgender chicks women swimming right some people acting like they've just seen a dick in the Locker Room For the First Time news flash folks it's not the end of the world it's just a bit of extra competition oh that's weird weird the Uproar is like watching a bunch of Karens at a community pool screaming this is unfair when they can't win with their backstroke well that doesn't make any sense yeah yeah okay we need some work here yeah it's interesting it's going woke yeah it a little it's like defending the idea of transgender women um now okay we need some work well how about this more vulgar but roast but roast the preposterousness of having biological men who are pretending to be women who are pretending to\n\nbe women competing against biological women yeah I mean obviously you have the situations where it's like somebody's just saying that they're a woman but they're actually have fully intact you know uh dick and Bows so we' got a scenario biological men have decided to take a walk on the feminine side or splashing into women's swimming competitions it's like if you show up on a chili cook off with a bowl of soup and insisting it's chilly because you added some red food coloring sure it's red but it ain't chilly and your soup won't win any awards for heat huh yeah it's okay we need work not that good yeah it's very very very it's dancing around it yeah it is well needs some work yeah needs a little work well humor is a weird one right it's like I think some\n\nhumor especially like some of the best humor is kind of spontaneous like in the moment humor it's GNA it's going to have a hard time deciding what people are going to think is funny yeah yeah but if you the the general R over time though yeah the rule with grock is supposed to be um that uh like if you ask for something provided what you're asking for is is legal it should do it have you ever seen the video where um they asked AI to uh create an enlightened Bunny and they keep going and make it more enlightened essentially the bunny becomes God so the bunny becomes a DMT trip yeah totally that's that's that's that's funny that's kind of what I was I was kind of hoping would show would happen here yeah I have a video of that I'll send it to Jamie CU that\n\nthat to me is pretty bizarre because it's like more get more I I might have got it to do it got it maybe no I just not hold back oh you said don't hold back critics out here acting like it's the end of civilization as we know it but it's not fair they cry as if life ever was news flash it's like a marathon where some no some people start with roller blades on others well they're just happy to have shoes well now we're arguing over who gets to wear the skates okay some of it is not bad imagine if we applied this logic elsewhere identify as an airplane can I fly with the birge in the sky yeah lock room sure bu just don't complain when gravity decides you're not quite aerodynamic enough yeah so I mean some it's okay um yeah the the argument is kind of stupid\n\nthough the thing thing about the argument is they're not taking into account perverts yeah right totally yes exactly so I mean the thing is that um if if you if you give if you provide like a a moral get out of jail free card like like if you say like if you adopt this label you cannot be attacked in any way shape or form right um you're you're basically morally invulnerable then obviously bad people will take advantage of that yeah you're like literally saying here's a here's a a a an invulnerability card Moral Moral invulnerability card um good people will take it but also the bad people will take it they're going the bad people are going to be the fastest to take the the the sort of the maral cloak yeah 100% yeah and then there's a real psychological\n\ncondition called autog gynophilus where people get aroused heterosexual men get aroused by the idea of dressing up like women and being around women it's like a known psychological condition that existed forever and then you're allowing those people to just say oh I'm trans and go into the women's locker room and get their their kicks and then there's real trans people so there's like a lot of variability like I I talked about it in my act in my my Netflix special it's like I believe in Freedom I believe in transgender people but I also believe in crazy people and if you can't if if you trying to pretend that people aren't crazy all the a sudden it's like it just it just like like if if someone's a sort of consenting adult and they want to whatever they\n\nwant to do to their body as long as it's not harming someone else I'm like that's fine yes you know like I I believe in like individual Freedom um and uh like like my you know my mom's best friend like growing up when as was a kid was a you know transgender woman um in South Africa this was like where you know she'd get beaten up a lot uh because it was like back then you you get beaten up um so um her name is Dion and uh for a nice kind human being um and um helped my mom a lot you know um and uh and it's I think that's okay you know that's that's fine if somebody wants to make that choice as an adult that's cool um there's a big difference between that and an intact male who wants to identify as a woman who wants to walk around the locker room with\n\nhis dick out yes exactly because there's people that do that just because they get off exactly so you just you just kind of have something which is like a like I said sort of moral invulnerability or like where you can like even questioning them is uh you get attacked you know because obviously bad people will abuse that well that's when I got thrown into this whole thing because there was a fighter who was a biological man who uh became transgender and was competing against women without telling them that they were a biological man they said they didn't have to tell people because it was a medical condition like no yeah that's not what it is it's not what it is like you can't say that and and and of all sports like if someone scores more points in basketball\n\nwell that's unfair but if someone beats the out of someone because they're lying about being a biological male that's crazy you're literally allowing someone to get brain damage because you want to appeal to the the woke crazy people that think it's all right yeah it's so strange that that when that's sort of the thing that red pilled me when I got attacked for that I'm like this is so nuts I can't believe we're at this stage where I'm saying hey I don't think it's cool if you pretend you're a woman and beat the out of women and people are like you're out of line like totally well we're in we're we're in fantasy land now now we're pretending because it it helps you it helps you feel better yeah totally it's just such a strange time and if it wasn't for\n\nsomething like Twitter where this could be discussed want some more that I'll get some more M let's get some more coffee young Jamie um if it wasn't for Twitter you know at the early Twitter you would be kicked off forever if you just dead name someone so like which is insane insane yeah insane I mean especially if if you think about all the things that like the look look the Harris campaign and what the lies they've told about Trump that we discussed earlier uh you can't you don't get kicked off for that but you get kicked off for calling Caitlyn Jenner Bruce Forever For Life yeah it's totally insane yeah and but if it wasn't for you buying that and and changing Twitter I I don't think we would be where we're at right now I think it was it was a pivotal\n\nmoment I think historically when people look back on it it's going to be a pivotal moment in this very bizarre fight for the Freedom of Information yeah well I mean at the time I said I think like look I think this is um existential to the United States um it's existential to democracy um because if if you don't if you don't have freedom of speech you don't have democracy okay because if people if you don't have freedom of speech people cannot make an informed vote if if if they're just being fed propaganda uh and and there's no freedom of speech democracy is an illusion um so uh freedom of speech is the bed Rock of democracy that's why freedom of speech is the first amendment once you lose freedom of speech you lose democracy game over that's why I bought\n\nTwitter and it seems so simple Yes it seems so clear that everyone should agree to that on the left or on the right you shouldn't be given the government if you imagine the Bush Administration during the Iraq War imagine if they had complete total control of of propaganda and of dissent online you don't want that no one wants that no one from the left would want that we shouldn't want it from the left either absolutely and and and there's also like the the media like the Legacy the mainstream media what I call the Legacy Media at this point um it it used to be much more balanced like if you look at sort of um political donations over time Republican versus Democrat um there used to be uh the media was I mean they always had like a left bias but there\n\nwas like I don't know it was like 2/3 Democrat 1/3 Republican type of thing in in ter in terms of uh journalists giving making political donations now it's like 95% or something a Democrat so the the Legacy Media the mainstream media is is is not balanced at all they're they're just a mouthpiece for the Democrat Democratic party um and you can see that in in how consistent their headlines are like they don't behave like their different organizations they behave like they're they're all one hive mind right um so you know like a week before the the Biden Trump debate um the there every media organization was was saying you know Biden is sh's attack I mean it was like it's like it's like guys shop attack is is not a common toner phrase um and literally every\n\nTV station every newspaper was like Shar sh like like like somebody did a compilation of all the uh you know the news anchors going Biden Shar his attack Shar his ATT attack is ATT attack it was absurd um and there obviously a huge lie he is in fact not Sha's attack as the public learned one week later my favorite was Joe Scarboro yeah that yeah was wild yeah listen to me this is the best version of Biden ever the sharpest like what the are you saying and then after the debate he's like what do we got to we got to get get rid of him like this is crazy like what did you just say like a couple weeks ago literally yes exactly well the other thing was they're flat out light when they decid that JD Vance was weird yeah remember that one and then they just\n\nweirds everywhere weird weird every oh you don't want a weird guy meanwhile you have Tim wal is your VP you don't think that guy's weird super weird he's weird in every way the way he walks the way he waves his hands yeah he reminds me of the clown Emoji he's a bizarre guy he's a strange dude it's a it's I just don't understand why they made that choice yeah it gives the creep I just don't understand why they made that choice there's a lot of other people that are qualified I don't know why in I read that KLA Harris made that decision when she was sleep deprived which is kind of hilarious that she said that so she's kind of admitting she kind of up yeah I mean they obviously should have picked Josh Shapiro at I mean governor of Pennsylvania like that\n\nwould have been the nobra that's no-brainer move like Pennsylvania's ly lynchpin state do you think it's because he's Jewish because of Shapiro that like the anti- Palestine people would probably or the anti- Palestinian uh Invasion people I think it was an anti-semitic thing yeah it could be that they thought that that was a liability because there was all these Pro Palestine people right now because of the situation in Israel that completely makes sense that they thought that would be a liability but but I don't know I don't know the reason I'm just guessing but but but it's it seems like a crazy thing to do given that Pennsylvania's lynchman state you know it's like the key to the election why would you not pick the popular governor of Pennsylvania\n\nright obviously obviously yeah and other than that there's a bunch of other ones too even Nome there's a bunch of other people that you could have chosen like Nome would have been a fine example of someone you could I mean I don't agree with the guy exactly he's polished politician like he lies about as much as wals does but he doesn't lie about the he doesn't say he was a head coach when he was assistant coach doesn't say he was in tennman square I mean that's a liability all those different things lying about his military rank well and whilst like you know Cut and Run when when you know when he was actually called to duty well he knew they were going to be deployed months in advance so he resigned and he also took uh so this is where he was dishonest\n\nabout his rank yeah CLA he was like s or something like that because that was like what he was going to get if he stay but then he resigned because he knew that he was going to get deployed allegedly I mean that seems like like a cowardly action well whatever it is it's dishonest I mean just to say look just saying that you were a head coach when you're an assistant coach is crazy that's a lie don't do that you should never do that yeah saying he was in tin square or whatever or in Hong Kong whatever like like yo that's one of the most biggest moments in history like it's not like you forgot what you had for lunch last week you know right and not only that but you don't think people are going to research that yeah totally I mean and the the response during\n\nthe debate was bananas said I'm a knucklehead Yeah well yeah we don't want a knucklehead for a VP okay yeah this is like sometimes I'm a knucklehead like what are you saying are you saying you lied like what did you I I mean this is where you need a podcast and not a debate exactly where you go okay when did you first that you were in t square like did someone say it and you didn't refute it and you got stuck with it like what was cuz this is the thing about like carrying weapons of war like what I carried when I like and like you didn't deploy in war yeah like you can't say that but you kind of let people say that you deployed and then you kind of didn't you know you were deployed in war so did you lie or did someone else lie and you didn't correct them\n\nlike this is the kind of conversation that you would want to have with a guy podcast and the debates were so skewed where they were correcting like particularly the Biden one where they're correcting Trump over and over again and then correcting Trump with uh comma where kamla was saying things were not true I mean KLA repeated deliberately repeated the fine people hoax and was not fact checked well not only that she also said that no troops were being deployed in a war zone which is I mean I I know troops in war zones I'm like um that's and as vice president you're privy you know you're like you you know you know the official troops and The Unofficial troops right you know so what she said was a like flat out boldface lie flat Next Level boldface lie\n\nhave you seen the video absurd lie of the troops that were watching it take place and what the are we they're watching it in real time video we're here being shot at so crazy crazy but it just shows you the level of propaganda that we're being subject to which is why people think Donald Trump is the devil cuz the machine has gone all out as far as it can go with laware with propaganda with lies with just pushing as much in this direction as humanly possible connecting it to the Nazi rally like every step of the way no wonder why boomers are like rabid like you got to keep this Nazi out of office he's a fascist exactly if if all you if all you get is like if if you're entire exposure is to Legacy mainstream media um so that all your information sources\n\nare that Trump is basically Hitler um then and you have no and your friend group is has that same information you have no counterveiling opinion right so then then they they actually just think like Trump is is Hitler even though it's it's like a little strange he didn't do Hitler things the last four years yeah you know I'm like if he's Hitler why didn't he do Hitler things when he was president for four years right like the reason you know we we we hate hitas because of he started wars in the genocide not because he was a snappy dresser you know um you know and and I'm like uh so tell me about the wars and genocide that Trump did uh I don't remember that and he was President for four years so it's insane it makes no sense well and also he's campaigning\n\non stopping all the wars it's like his primary concern exactly the warmongers like Liz Cheney hate him yeah cuz they love war well they profit off of it they profit off of War yeah yes which is insane insane yeah and that this is happening right in front of everybody's face yeah the the war propers hate Trump yeah which is up I mean mean it's like like like we should be like yeah we let's vote for the guy that the world propers hate that sounds like a great idea it was the wildest thing when Dick Cheney endorsed KLA and the left went crazy like Yay Dick Cheney's on our side like yeah like I'm like can we can we play all the all the videos where you said Dick Cheney was the devil it's the craziest turn the craziest like 180 I've ever seen in my life cuz\n\nthere's no reason for it yeah doesn't make any sense make sense no logic to it at all just all the sudden he's the devil yeah or he's not The Devil he's he's good it's good that he's supporting Kama even Dick Cheney you know I mean warmongers want want the the kamla puppet regime because they will get more war it's so strange watching all these Hollywood celebrities like step up like and they think it's going to get them more movies or something that's what it is if you know those people people so many of them are compl narcissists well let me tell you how it actually works there is what happens is you know these celebrities they they get a call okay they had a call from someone powerful in Hollywood and uh that person says uh you know it would be really\n\ngreat if you endorsed uh kamla you don't have to it's up to you but if you don't they don't say it they don't say it but if you don't you're never going to get a call again no more movies no more concerts but they they ask they'll ask it they asking really nice way it'd be really nice if you endorse K this is important and so they don't say that if you don't they don't make the threat they don't need to but everyone knows what'll happen if you don't well I think there's also even if they don't think that something's going to happen to them if they don't there's this compelling feeling to support this cause that you think is going to get you a bunch of positive attention and you're going to be on the right side of history and all these narratives that\n\nyou especially from the left in Hollywood like they're all in on whoever the is the Democrat always 100% there's never a call from the the the Hollywood Machine to support any Republicans I've never seen it once yeah ever never so it's like you realize that and that whole business is based on getting picked it's the whole business is not necessarily Merit based there's a lot of brilliant actors you never hear from there's a lot of people who can do that but they don't get chosen for roles and everybody knows this that you have to sort of socialize the line or you don't get chosen for the roles cuz there's a lot of competition for the rols this why that's why I say like when you when someone powerful in Hollywood who's able to make to choose these roles\n\ncalls one of these celebrities they know the deal yeah there's no no no threat is necessary well you could see it in real time like with Dennis Quaid when he made that Reagan movie and they wouldn't let him advertise on social media platforms they were they were Banning ads for it yeah for what because it was an election year like what are you talking about this about a guy who's dead yes guy who was president a long ass time ago like what what do you how is this how does this have anything to do with the election year y but it's the punishment it's like you stepped outside the line you supported the other guy yeah you the problem is you'll just you'll just never you'll just never get a call G for a movie or you know concert or whatever it is yeah which\n\nis crazy that's the issue I mean we used to allow people to be a Republican and still be a movie star like Clint Eastwood Reagan yeah but Clint yeah like during the Obama Administration Clint Eastwood was like an outspoken Republican and yet was you know a giant movie star and people's like ah it's Clint he was allowed you were allowed to have there was a variety of different opin charlon hon there was a variety of different opinions you were allowed to have but now you're not now it's just like and once Trump trump got into office he became this focal point where the all logic was thrown out the window and it's just Trump is bad you have to attack Trump trump is right right wi's bad everyone rightwing is bad Christian's bad yes it's just strange yeah\n\nexactly so well I'll say it again man um I think this is the last election if if Trump doesn't win this is the last election I think you're right yeah I think you're right I think people and a lot of people are waking up and realize that that have been lifelong Democrats guys like Bill Amman like chth Tulsi Garett switched over to the Republicans like there's a lot of people who their whole life they've been leftwing and they realize like I can't do this anymore you and I used to be Democrats yeah so yeah yeah it's nuts it's nuts man and uh you know I mean I think the things we want are just pretty basic you know it's like we want you individual liberties and we want um opportunity W America Remain the land of freedom and opportunity um so we maximize\n\npeople's personal freedom the govern can't BGE into your house and kill your pet um that's that's up um and uh you know and and and that you succeed as a function of your of your of hard work and talent not anything else not race religion sex doesn't matter you know yes it's basic stuff and and then what did you change the the acronym Dei what did you change it to oh diie what is it die I mean because diversity inclusion and Equity is Di but didn't you change dedication excellence and yeah yeah yeah yeah I mean we we want America opport America being the land of opportunity means that that that we we have an environment where you succeed as a function of your hard workor and skill yeah you know and and that's radical yeah radical the best person makes\n\nyou rightwing now you know I'm like okay great Co me ring I don't care um so you know like and and and you we we you're not real country unless you have secure borders you're just a fake country um so we we need and our cities are unsafe and and dirty um like um you know my my mom was telling me my mom's like pretty red pulled at this point but but you know what's going to Red Pill you really really fast is is is having a friends get assaulted on the streets of New York yeah and and that happened to three of our friends this year got assaulted on the streets of New York just walking around yeah um and um nobody got arrested nothing nothing happened well the the morale of police is like depleted yeah substantially for sure the morale of the police get\n\ndepleted and and then also like at some point like like if you're a police officer and you you're arresting someone who's who's violent you're putting a life at risk obviously because they might you know some sometimes they'll try to kill you and then if you know that arresting that's violent person they will be immediately released by The Da which happens in New York Alvin brag doesn't he doesn't prosecute people um then then why why should a police officer put their life at risk to arrest someone when they know they will not be they will just be let out immediately yeah it's pointless yeah then we got it's like the freaking Joker it's like dark KN Dark Knight like the freaking Joker is in charge yeah like the the criminals Run free and the citizens\n\nare arrested that like this is why I like keep com back to this this I'm like still pretty shook about the freaking squirrel thing it's like yeah they at at gunpoint forced the guy to like stay outside his house while they got his pets and killed them meanwhile you know violent felons are running free in this is in New York states are running free this this a joker yeah it's not the the LW abiding citizens are are you know arrested and and and the criminals are they free this is this is up guys just the fact that they have the resources to do that when they have all the crime that they have you have the resource the government resources to go kill someone's squirrel yeah what this whole idea of this um government efficiency agency the Govern yeah I mean\n\nqu whatever you want but what do you want to call it what do you call it I mean I think the funniest name is is do the the Doge Department of Department of government efficiency um yeah I mean the idea is is pretty simple is that like we've got uh this this uh suffocating massive Federal bureaucracy and we need to uh you it's that is and the government government spending is like bankrupting the country uh you know our uh interest payments on the national debt now exceed the defense department budget which is and the defense budget is like a trillion dollars a year interest payments on our on the national debt are now higher than the defense department budget and and growing like every month so it's like it's not like a like basically we're on a path\n\nto to bankruptcy America's on a path to bankruptcy so we have to cut government spending um or we're just going to go bankrupt just like Postwood that overspends um and then but it's even worse than that like we're spending money on all these like these government agencies and I like I asked I actually asked the AI like how many government agencies are there and uh the government isn't even sure how many government agencies there are like so so it's like somewhere around 450 depending on what you call an agency so there there are so there there at the federal level so that that that's almost twice as many a agencies as as years that America has existed so we're creating agencies at roughly two agencies a year wow yes uh so this is insane I bet there's\n\nlike I I I wonder if there's even one person who could even name all 450 agencies at the federal level I there might be no one um but hardly anyone let's just say I bet I bet most people couldn't even name like a 100 you know so so this is this is this is crazy so we got the suffocating this vast suffocating Federal bureaucracy that just gets bigger every year um and and eventually you get to the point where everything's illegal you can't get anything done so so what can be done like with obviously the president has a lot of power but how much power and what can be done in terms of like eliminating agencies eliminating waste eliminating yeah well I so like if if Congress has created an agency then I often if you look at the law the law is like pretty\n\nsimple like the agency has like a very simple task but then that agency over time vastly increases its Authority um and starts doing things that were never authorized by Congress um that's happened with pretty much every agency so so yeah you'd have to you'd have to still you know uh keep an agency you'd have to match the law but you can you can tail the agencies to be much smaller and say you got to stick to what Congress authorized instead of all this other stuff you're doing which I think makes sense and so is the other stuff they're doing just essentially bu bureaucracy run a muck or they just create jobs and create things to do and create a meaning for their existence yeah it's like a tumor it's just going to keep growing Jesus Christ and it and\n\nit's so I mean for SpaceX Starship was sitting on on the pad the rocket with the giant rocket we could build the rocket faster than they could process the paperwork to approve the launch two so we're sitting there for two months but do you think that they're doing that on purpose to with you I can't I mean maybe a little but I mean that was also not be cool yeah uh but the I mean another way to think of it is like the the amount of the amount of paperwork uh is going to go roughly with the square of the number of agencies involved so because they all have to meet with each other so like let's say in a best case situation if if if you've got like if if there's like if you're dealing with one agency that's one thing but if if you've got to deal with five\n\nagencies and the agencies will have to meet with each other now You' got like you know 25 different you know meeting configurations that have to take place uh and it just everything just you you get just hardened of the arteries you just can't make make progress like this is why we can't build build High highspeed rail in America it's basically illegal right so this has been the the argument has always been that we need regulation because we need to protect the environment we need to protect people we need to make sure the rule of laws followed so we need a certain amount of Regulation but overregulation is a giant problem that's a big issue in California it's a huge issue anywhere where bureaucracy has run a run a monck they make it very difficult to\n\nget anything done yes I mean what happens is every year there are more rules and regulations created um and in the past what has served as a cleansing function for rules and regulations is war because like like well we're going to lose if we don't kind of clear the decks but we haven't really had an existential threat of of war in the US we've had prosperity for a long time which has resulted in a massive buildup of rules and regulations every year um and to the point where like I said like everything's illegal you know and it's not like any one regulation is the problem it's like it's like glia being tied down by a million little strings it's not like any one string is the problem but you got a million of them so we have we we've got to clear the decks\n\nhere um and and I'm not saying we shouldn't have Regulators I'm just saying we we we've gone way too far once you think of regulators like uh like referees on a field you know a sports field um you don't want to have no no refs you want to have some number of refs but you you don't want to have way more refs than players right you don't want to be like well you know the running back couldn't couldn't complete the F because there were too many Regulators in the way because the football Field's full of regulators yeah you know like you can't even play the game right that's the issue we got right now well that's a great analogy yeah I can imagine a football field that's filled with refere like the football Field's filled with refs you know you can't even\n\nrun past them yeah yeah that I've seen criticism of this idea of you um coming up with this department of like firing a bunch of people and what would happen and how would that work but the criticism doesn't make any sense to me because if there is if you measurably if you can prove that there's a lot of wasted time and resources which I think is pretty easy to do and if you could say that this is not the most efficient like the most efficient businesses are generally private businesses or a a company because they kind of have to be in order stay profitable yeah the government doesn't have to be profitable they don't have to be efficient they don't have competition y so if you're making cars and your cars break down they suck and someone makes cars and\n\nthe cars are better they're going to succeed so this is the free market the government doesn't have this problem when they're they're in charge of certain things that could probably be better served by the public by the private sector yeah absolutely well look I just think we' we've gotten we've got far too many government agencies the the federal bureaucracy has gotten out of hand um and we just need to pair it down to a sensible level um and if it turns out that like there's some regulation or agency that was doing something useful we can put it right back no problem like it's like oh that regulation was important no problem we put it right back right as long as actually know but be able to be able to look at it logically and objectively and you were\n\nalso floating around the idea of offering a large Severance to the people that you're going to have removed yeah like a couple years or something like that is that what you're saying yeah I mean I'm just these are again just ideas but I mean it's the point is not that people suffer economic hardship the point is just that they they're it's better there are more productive things they can do in the economy and it's and it would be better if they did these other more productive things um and we didn't have this vast pedal bureaucracy so so like so I was like H you know maybe like a couple years of pay would be good um and then they they could take a vacation they could take it take another job and get double pay I mean it's like it's not like a it's not\n\ngoing to sense create create an economic crisis I think it's actually going to be really good I think because uh we can PE you know people can move to where they're making products and services that are more useful to their fellow human beings the problem is if someone has like a 25 30e career of being institutionalized you're essentially like a part of the government system you've sort of programmed your life and your career to be a part of this bureaucratic system and then you're like NOP you have to go out and compete in the free market you're like [Music] Ah that's that's scary to people but you have to be valuable you have to actually be valuable yeah yeah uh I mean let's look at like you know whatever the the Govern pension and stuff they're not\n\ngoing to be you know um in tough I think they'll be in good Financial shape how are you going to have the time to oversee all this well I'm I'm I'm pretty good at uh you improving efficiency I mean um I would say so yeah but still this this seems like a giant undertaking yeah I I'll probably need to beef obscurity um oh yeah yeah yeah for sure um but you know like I said like no one's going to experience like I think economic hardship that's you know they they'll be fine you know and they'll they'll people do find other roles I mean you can look at sort of um you know like when East Germany and and West Germany got back together you know everyone was basically working for the government in East Germany and um and it was really inefficient and that like\n\ntheir economic output was like in East Germany was like I know a quarter of what it was in in West Germany because everyone was working for the government government's like fundamentally inefficient so um the best example is probably North and South Korea right yeah like people are starving North Korea and and South Korea is incredibly prosperous yeah so and it's the same people just different operating system right so um you know it's just like you just want to move people from you know less productive things to more productive things um where they may you because you can also say like in the limit like let's just say let's consider the other direction where we moved a whole bunch of people that were in the private sector doing making goods and services\n\nand we moved them into the government as Regulators now they stopped making those goods and services the so the stuff they were making is no longer available now they're just being Regulators like is that a good thing that's not a good thing doesn't sound good no it's not good doesn't sound like there's a real market for it like you're creating jobs that don't necessarily need to be there they're all these fake jobs basically um and um that doesn't make sense so look we we got to do this because the the country's going bankrupt like we if we don't take action we're we're dollars going to be worth nothing and the interest payments which are already 23% of of to of 23% of all govern income call income taxes tariffs and everything is just going to pay interest\n\nright now and that number is continually Rising so if we don't do something the entire government budget will be paying interest there won't be money for anything no it won't be money for Social Security won't be money for Medicare nothing that's where we're headed that's what bankruptcy means yeah that's such an insane concept yes um let like hello wake up wake up and if somebody can tell me can can can show me like pencil out the math show me how this works I'd love to hear it but but just like listen I'm looking at the numbers here and I'm like if we're don't to do something America's toast won't be money for anything Trump likes to talk a lot about a lot is tariffs yeah what what are your thoughts on tariffs I know that's very controversial to even\n\npeople economists they disagree some agree some think it's a good idea some think it's a terrible idea what do you think I think you need to be careful with tariffs um like the I I deal a lot a lot with like supply chain issues you know like like the global automotive supply chain for Tesla for example is incredibly complex so when there are sudden changes in tariffs then you're like well you we've got a factory like somewhere else that's making a part that goes into the car now that suddenly if that part's suddenly twice as expensive it like messes everything up you know so um so you you want to be uh have tariffs be predictable um so that companies can adjust their supply chain I mean I think I think companies are more than happy to uh increase uh Manufacturing\n\nin America it's just that you can't do it instantly so if if you if you put in if you if you put put up giant tariffs immediately um and don't give companies a chance to uh you know build factories in America like because you have to you got to move atoms like you've got to build a building you've got to install equipment you've got to train people like that doesn't happen instantly um so you just got you want to have a for tariffs uh you want to have a ramp so that people companies can adjust um and and and build the factories and train the people and get the equipment in place um otherwise just you basically just shock the system and it and and it breaks or bad things happen so I'm I'm against like sudden sudden giant tariffs because they they're it's\n\nan impossible response if you've got to you know move a thousand tons of equipment you know you just some cases collectively millions of tons of equipment you just can't do that overnight it's literally impossible so I think we want to be thoughtful about tariffs um and and give companies a ramp I mean I do generally agree that America should do more manufacturing I'm a big manufacturing guy I love manufacturing so I've spent a lot of time in the factory well we've talked openly about the difficulties of manufacturing and how complicated it is and about most people aren't really aware of something that's as complex as like say building a Tesla yeah Manu is super hard and complicated so you know like a lot of people just they they've never been in a factory\n\nor they don't know where how how difficult it is to make things um and they you know for a lot of people they think just ketchup comes from the store you know like the store like just has a like those are like people like for a lot of people who've been in Academia or you know for all these like sort of Socialist Communist types like they've never actually made anything so they they they they're opera on the premise that there's this magical Horn of planty that just outputs goods and services and if someone's got more goods and services than someone else's cuz they took more from this magical Horn of Plenty and I'm like guys there's no magical Horn of Plenty the the there's there's no Cornucopia uh it's actually goods and services come from people working\n\ncollectively doing a lot of hard work to produce the goods and services that you like um and that you that you need um so but we've become very accustomed these things happening overseas I mean America is still the second biggest manufacturer in the world so it's not not mean still make a lot of stuff but um we could make more um probably should make more I think we should value manufacturing a lot more in the United States than we currently do well it' be very nice if we were completely self-sufficient like medicine like there's a bunch of different things that get manufactured overseas that was a huge problem during covid because all the shipping was shut down yeah I mean you you don't want to say like so there there's a lot of Merit to the economics\n\nof comparative advantage like like so if you complete self-sufficient what that means is that you make all the stuff yourself and and and and even if some other country is really good at making something you still make it yourself and which means you're going to have the inferior more costly product domestically right um like Soviet Russia yeah um like trade trade improves Prosperity this is this is important um so you you don't actually want to be make everything yourself um and you can you can run this like you can think of this thought experiment on a on a sort of a a m a micro scale and or small scale and then expand that and say where does the at at what point does the th experiment no longer prove to be valid now let's let's let's cons consider\n\nthe case of you as an individual imagine you have to do everything yourself you had to farm you had to uh grow chickens you got if you want eggs you've got to build your own house you've got to do your own uh electrical repair your own Plumbing everything yourself everything how now that would be impossible okay now let's expand it to okay you've got there's 10 people now you're going to have some some uh specialization of tasks okay maybe one person can be really good at you know uh construction another person could be good at farming it's like but it's still you know 10 people's not enough so like let's go to 100 people now let's go to 100 million people now let's go to a billion people and you still get the the economics of of uh specialization like\n\nlike specialization of Labor where people become expert at particular things still matters at a billion people or at 8 billion people which is Earth so you still want um you you do want specialization of Labor you do want uh countries to be really good at a particular thing and make that thing um also it encourages Innovation if you have competition if the Germans are making better cars we have to make better cars we have to compete with them which is like one of the things that happen during like the 80s and 90s and America was making crap cars and Germany was making much better ones yeah exactly I mean the yeah the Japanese car I mean yeah I mean basically American car industry got really lazy in the 70s uh and and80s and and then the Japanese and German\n\ncar companies came in and just cleaned the clock you know um and uh there was like a an old joke from the that that is kind of telling um it's a very old joke um where it's like why did the Japanese car companies beat the American car companies um well it's like well the in the Japanese car company you had eight people rowing and one person steering and in the American Car Company you had eight people steering and one person rowing if this was a boat so imagine the boat race yeah boat race Japanese boat you got eight people rowing one person steering in the American boat um you got you got one person rowing and eight people steering and when the American Car Company loses the race they they fire the rower and it's like okay that was actually kind of true\n\nyeah one of things like everyone wants to do the be the boss andone everybody wants to do the work type of thing yeah um one thing that a lot of people are concerned about is uh the potential disruption that's going to come about with Automation and AI that a lot of these jobs manufacturing jobs uh Teamsters all that stuff is going to be eliminated what what do I mean you're at the Forefront of this so how do you see this playing out and what do you think that can be done to mitigate uh a lot of the loss of purpose that a lot of people are going to feel loss of income obviously Universal basic income is being floated about but that seems to me to only be part of the problem the another big part of the problem is people losing a sense of purpose yeah now\n\nwe're talking about something which is still pretty far in the future you know like um how far do you think it is well I mean it's it's probably I don't know 15 20 years years of a thing um so we've got like immediate issues we've got short-term issues that are I know 1 to three years medium-term issues like 5 to 10 years longer term issues which are like maybe 20 years um longer term I think there is this question if if you have ai and Robotics how do you find meaning in life if the computer can do everything better than you can and the robot can do everything better than you can but we're we're still we got a long way to go before that and we're you know um and I do think it's like 80% likely to be a good outcome like maybe 90 um so I think everyone's\n\ngoing to have their own like personal robot like and and I think at a certain point like wouldn't you want to have your own personal c3p R2-D2 so it's going to be essentially just like everyone has their own phone yeah everyone will have their own robot buddy like literally well it would be great if it protected you like if you walked down the street of New York City have a Terminator with you uh I know about the Terminator hopefully we got to avoid we don't want this to be the plot of James James Cameron you know we would more more more Gene rotenberry than than James Cameron uh movie situation but it would be fascinating to watch some rich person walk down the street of New York City flanked by two giant Tesla robots Jack Tesla robots were there protect\n\nsomething that just fully robots so many fully robot there to protect you from a bad neighborhood yeah that would be very interesting I mean this is you could potentially see that yeah um restaurants would probably have no robot rules they can't bring a robot yeah leave your robot stand leave your robot outside your robot standing by the table man the future's going to be wild it's going to be wild yeah yeah it's going to be really unpredictable like uh I don't think I mean you probably have a pretty good sense of it but I think most people don't understand the wave that's coming yeah and I was kind of kind of completely drown society and change it forever yeah I mean it's we we have like I said it's it's not like it's not going to happen like overnight\n\nbut it's 20 years from now I'm like I think it's like 20 years from now I think there's going to be more more humanoid robots than are humans really yes more humanized what that's so crazy like so that's like more guns we have more guns than people in America we have more robots than people in America as well yes you have a bunch of old robots nobody wants anymore I guess um early early pions or something um in in a historical timeline 20 years in the past is not been that big of a deal you know I mean this a big deal but you go from like 1900 1920 not that big of a deal 1920 1940 kind of a big deal 1940 1960 things start getting weird 60 to 80 wow that's a big difference 80 to 2000 holy now you have the internet 2000 to 2020 whoa this is nuts you have\n\npropaganda social media YouTube streaming 20 years from now like what are we even talking about M it's going to be that much of a shift like it's all accelerating and we're in the middle of it so it's very difficult to sort of like feel it while it's happening it kind of just feels like life and you just get adapted to the changes yeah I mean people's phones at this point are a supercomputer in their pocket like an article that can answer any questions people just take it for granted yeah it's normal yeah they get mad if it doesn't work yeah it's like Louis CK's joke about using your phone when you're on a plane piece of like you're in the sky floating in the air and now it will work with starlink too what's that it will work with starlink the starlink\n\nthe starlink connection uh it'll be like being on the ground well I was telling you how I used starlink when I was in Utah I was in the mountains of Utah there was no cell phone service anywhere near and we had full YouTube we had text messages FaceTime everything phone calls it was nuts yeah and it was it's this big as that cigar box yeah it's crazy it's so light when I brought it out there like that's it I this is it let just plug it in and the guys I was in Camp with they like this is crazy yeah the whole Camp was like sharing it so like 10 people yeah using the the Wi-Fi signal right it's nuts yep and then you know that's the beginning I mean you what you're at right now is like what version this is starlink mini right so this is like a very small\n\nversion how how much smaller can it scale down from that well there's a certain uh area that you need like the bigger the area the it's the more you can like like bandwidth yeah because you're you're like trying to catch these like photons essentially so you can think of the like the you know the area of the of of the of the antenna is like the more area you have the more photons you can catch um so but but we have a direct to sell capability as well that we're just uh We've we've been launching that will turn on I probably in a few months um that that'll actually connect directly to a cell phone unmodified U but but because the cell phone is a much worse antenna than a dedicated antenna it'll be about a 100 times less bandwidth but still you know you'll\n\nbe able to like do text messages you know pictures like medium resolution videos that kind of thing one of the cool things about the new phone the new uh iPhone the iPhone 16 uh I got it and I was in the mountains last month and I was text messaging with satellites yeah iMessages right and receiving them but just text yeah just text yeah but still pretty impressive yeah yeah I mean what are we what are we going to be looking at 100 years from now I mean when you 100 years from now I hope civilization's around yeah that'll be a win yeah yeah what what are the chances that we this whole thing up 50% it's hard to say I mean um I guess not like I don't think civilization will be totally destroyed unless there's like some really massive Global th nuclear war\n\num but uh I mean you Stephen Hawking he would say that there's like a one at least a 1% chance of total Annihilation every Century that was his rough estimate um but there's a much bigger chance of civilization being less capable than it is today so you say like well because you look at say you know these various civilizations throughout history um whether it's the like ancient samarians or the you know Egyptians the Romans like they they there's like a life cycle to civilization they reached a peak and then they started subsiding um so so I think a bigger question is like will will will our technology level be better or worse than it is today in 100 years um I think it's probably going to be better I I think but any estimates are are going to be so there's\n\nso many dependencies like like an estimate I think is I'm not sure it has any any meaning um because it's like there's so many things that can happen in 100 years well The Logical hope is always that people pay attention to history and they recognize the patterns and how civilizations have collapsed yeah and they recognize what's going wrong in the current society and say we have to do our best to mitigate this and we've seen this happen before let's course correct and let's sort of manage what we've got here now and maintain what we've got here now because it's pretty extraordinary yes this is what we're hoping for with this election this is what we're hoping for with the future is that people can see we are on a bad path and something can be done right\n\nnow and it might be the only moment in history where this is possible because if they do lock the country down and make it so that voting is kind of you're voting for primaries and the people that they put in the primaries they're controlling that in the first place you don't really have democracy anymore you don't really have Choice exactly you don't really have freedom that's right yeah I think freedom is is fundamentally at stake in the election tomorrow and we'll know we'll know I think we'll know by the end of day tomorrow I don't think it's going to take it's not going to be like days after the election I think we'll know tomorrow are you optimistic I I am I'm currently optimistic but um the the biggest Factor here is that men need to vote that\n\nis the biggest issue so um I I don't know what what the reason is but but men just vote at a much lower rate than women I think it's like 9% right someone just told me that today it's it's a it's a big difference um like and uh I'm just like saying this is a message to the men out there vote like your life depends on it because I think it does vote vote tomorrow like your life depends on it nothing is more important I agree yeah listen man thank you for being here I know you're busy as so I really appreciate your time and again I I thank you so much for buying Twitter because I really do believe that you've changed the course of history I I really do think you've you've created a pathway where people can actually Express themselves and actually exchange\n\ninformation that really didn't exist before and I think it was dangerous it is it is dangerous hopefully I live long enough to see my kids grow up and people on Mars that's that be that's that's all I'm asking for here I don't think that's too much to happen thank you very much appreciate thank you pleasure all right bye [Music] [Applause] [Music]","textByLang":{"en":"Joe Rogan podcast check it out The Joe Rogan Experience Train by day Joe Rogan podcast by night all day uh but but if you want to sort of see like a vision of the future it's like basically the the like the top 20 and even the top 100 is like totally dominated by China it's yeah this is like China and a little bit of Korea and Taiwan so you in are you in the top 20 in the world or top 20 wow in DIA yeah yeah do you want to tell everybody your handle no no don't tell them don't tell them it's not worth it well they they actually listed me with my actual name in the in the list oh did they really oh interesting um but um yeah there's only there's only two Americans in the top 20 uh the the rest almost everyone is from Asia otherwise we were talking about\n\nsomething that I think is a really good because people always think that video games are frivolous but what what you were saying I think that's really important is it it's so difficult that it requires you to only think about that and it can like relieve stress it can take out the rest of the world cuz it's so hard yeah you can only think about that yeah I mean if finally if I play a video game on Extreme difficulty then um I have to concentrate fully on the game um and it's it's has a calming effect yeah uh it sort of chills down um and uh I mean you mentioned I think many people like if you play martial arts or you play pool like something that that forces you it's like I think any anything that forces you to concentrate fully um actually has a has\n\na calming effect I find it just sort of like um kind of a mental a restoring effect mentally it's like it's good Jiu-Jitsu is like that archeries like that as well like when you're shooting a bow you have to is there's so many moving things and you're trying you have to think only of it and it cleans the mind it cleans the mind yeah exactly I was watch I was reading this study about surgeons where they found that surgeons who regularly play video games make less errors well it's I mean video games require manual dexterity so uh it makes sense completely makes sense actually if somebody was like epic at video games uh i' I'd say like their surgical skill is going to be very good because in order to be good at video games any kind of fast reaction video\n\ngames look at this 32% fewer errors 24% faster and scored 26% better overall than their non-player colleagues oh I believe that for sure that's incredible you should be required in medical school to play video games I if somebody's like top a top ranked video game player and they say they're a surgeon I'd be like plus plus one plus two type of thing oh top ranked for sure but this isn't even top ranked this is just people who play well your your manual dexterity has to be extremely high so you're you're looking at things on the screen you've got you're reacting and you some you got like 10 milliseconds to react yes um and um and and so if somebody's got uh incredible reaction times manual dexterity they're obviously going to be a good surgeon imagine\n\nif there was a course that you could take that course would promote you would be 26% better yeah everyone would have to take that course sure why would you want a surgeon that's less prepared you would say hey Bob did you take this course you didn't take this course don't you understand this course makes you 26% better sure you would have to take it everyone should have to play video games if you want to be a surgeon well I think it' be it certainly would be a very good test to see if somebody can't play video games well like that means I me because you got to move both hands simultaneously you got to react something very fast then um on the screen so and and if if your keystrokes or your mouse clicks or whatever are wrong uh then you lose the game so\n\nif somebody's like has a good rank in video games I would say that they're manual de necessarily their manual dexterity must be very extremely good well it's so hard motor skills have to be excellent if you think about like Starcraft or any any game like Quake any game where a lot of people are playing to rise to the top you have to be exceptional period as a human being there's to be something exceptional about you yeah actually Quake way way back in the day I was one of the world's best Quake players I know we talked about this yeah um I loved Quake yeah yeah I my final semester in college I probably put more time into Quake than all my college classes when I was on news radio all of the writers were super nerds they were very very fun guys and they\n\nhad a land set up at the studio where they all played Quake I had never played video games and I would go in with the writers just kind of hang out with them we'd get silly and then we would would all start playing video games and playing Quake against each other and I got addicted like hardcore I got a T1 line installed in my house I went hardcore yeah exactly you're checking how many milliseconds of latency you oh yeah I was I was fully addicted I was making my own computers I was going to fries hardware and buying motherboards and putting everything together and you know it was too much of a Time suck though I'm an obsessive person I can't get involved like I can't put golf no it's too golf is too slow for I mean I know a lot of people find golf good\n\nand I mean I guess if you think of it like it's I guess if you're saying you're going to walk outdoors with friends and occasionally hit a ball then and and you're just as an outdoor walk then that's cool um and does require concentration we hitting the ball but it it's it's it's a it's this too slow for me nothing compares to video games in terms of like the amount of feedback you get like the the the the sensory overload you get when you're looking at a large high resolution screen you have a fast computer you have headphones on that you're hearing sounds from here and sounds behind you and Rockets are flying by you and it's there's nothing like that yeah but I think golf still is like Jamie will tell you Jam's an addict he's a Golf Nut it's super addictive\n\nand it takes like eight hours a day it's yes uh once you get into golf I think I guess any sport it gets super predictive um so but but for me the the int the intensity of video games is uh hard to beat yes it's and the people dismiss it because they think it's just a waste of time but we're showing like real world benefits so people playing video games yeah if you want to be a drone operator it's the only game in town yeah really good at video games yeah um for sure so um in fact I can actually tell U like what my me mental acuity is uh if I just play if I play a very hard video game so if I'm trying to sort of get like a an extremely good clear time in Diablo or something like that um or or any you know a post person shootter whatever the case may be\n\nlike if I I can tell that I'm tired uh or my brain's not working as well as it should it's it's like a it's like a mental calibration you can tell immediately like what is what what how good is your mental state right right um and uh you know so it's like like if if you're trying to play really well like I If you play late at night and you're tired you would just play badly right and you can say okay you you may think that your brain is working well but it isn't because you can you play the video game and you're like you suck so okay yeah you're putting it under stress yeah you're really stress testing it you stress test it and uh cuz like sometimes like oh I think I think I'm fine but then you play the game like okay I'm not I might I'm like 10% below\n\nwhat I should be that's how I feel about workouts for sure like that's how I knew I had Co or I knew everyone in my family had Co and I trying to not get covid and so I was working out I was like something's up like I felt fine nor but then during exercise I was like okay I can tell there's something wrong here so let's back off relax yeah yeah it's like people who don't stress test their mind they think they're operating on the same level all the time like sometimes I come in here and I can't form a sense and I don't know what it is it's like what is going on so it's just like like sleep's not maybe like what sleep wasn't that good or something like that yeah something like that or I'm too busy and it's just it's not the words aren't coming out like\n\nI know how to talk I talk professionally and I can't talk it's like I mean sleep's is is is massive I mean like huge yeah so uh if I can tell me Le did I get a good night sleep or not if if I just play like uh video game for like five minutes I'm like okay my sleep wasn't that good um because my my you know and then sometimes they your brain will recover through the day and it's like okay like an hour or two after waking up it's better uh CU your brain does kind of recover from Bad nights sleep a little bit during you know what it really helps creatine apparently does it yeah creatine is actually a neut Tropic believe it or not there's a lot of like benefits of creatine that are really weird are there any downsides no no it's natural part of food yeah\n\nyeah especially women for for women apparently especially postmenopausal women it's very beneficial okay and uh it there's but there's a lot of like cognitive benefits and one of the big ones that they found recently is performance when sleep deprived mental performance when sleep deprived increases pretty measurably when you supplement with creatine is creatin naturally occurring in like steak or yeah it's like naturally occurring in meat I think I think that's where it's coming from I think it's a primarily an animal-based thing yeah but like I I did switch to like steak and eggs for breakfast and I found that's like a PowerUp oh yeah yeah yeah well we're all overrun with carbohydrates yeah yeah totally and you like carbohydrates make this big crash\n\nthe rise and the Crash the rise and the Crash you stay flat if you eat like a a primarily High high protein high fat diet yeah your body runs off ketosis essentially I mean so I just have like steak and eggs no no bread or or anything and it's great actually it's a PowerUp I'd say people dismiss this whole carnivore diet thing because in our heads there's a lot of propagandist that put this thing out there that animal agriculture is the number one contributor to global warming this rubish not true it's hot do matter not only is it hot but the real problem is Factory f regenerative farming is carbon neutral if doesn't sequester carbon the the the animals are not going to make any difference to global warming like none Zer zero nothing do you think that\n\nthat's just propaganda because of people that have a vested interest in like plant-based meat products and things along those lines green energy I think it's part of it um you know that you're generally going to get people pushing to avoid me like some people just you know um yeah maybe they got to financial interest maybe they just just like vegetarians or vegans or whatever um ideological ideological reasons um but uh it's not going to make any difference uh to global warming or you know the CO2 concentration atmosphere really um if if people eat fewer uh steaks it doesn't matter it's relevant irrelevant I want to be super clear about that yeah will not matter you will not even be able to measure it okay that's how irrelevant it is isn't it funny that\n\nthat's unmeasurable heretic speaking like that's crazy talk now nowadays it's like you have to say that we have to eat less meat that meat is bad totally eat as much as you want it's not going to make a difference sing it sing it to world yeah absolutely um and if somebody says it does make a difference I'm like how will you measure it and if you can't even measure it then it's yeah yeah literally I won't be able to measure it well there's so much out today first of all all directions thank you so much for buying Twitter thank you so much I'm not exaggerating when I think you changed the course of history I really do I really think you you made a fork in the road we were headed down a path of censorship and of control of narratives that is unprecedented\n\nforget about what they were able to do back when they had newspapers and the media under control the what they were doing with social media by suppressing information and when you had a combined government effort like with the what they were doing with the laptop story y you have 51 Former Intelligence agents saying that this is Russ disinformation take it off offline and Twitter complied yeah if if you didn't buy that we wouldn't have known that we had no idea exactly uh no it's I mean the the reason I border was because I'm pretty attuned um since I I was like the most interacted with a user on Twitter before the acquisition so before the acquisition I had more interactions that than like there's some accounts like Obama and whatever had higher follower\n\naccounts uh but uh I had the most number of interactions of of any account in the system so um I was very attuned to like if if they saw change if they change the system I can tell immediately like and I'm like I'm like something weird is going on here you know like so there's like I I just got increasingly uneasy um and obviously when when they deplatform to sitting president you know not deep de deep platform Trump uh that was that was just insane um you know um and and and the things he was posting like he was posting things that that like he was posting good things he was saying like hey we don't do not Riot don't don't do any destruction of property you know please stay calm like that's the kind of stuff was posting yeah and you're like uh what's\n\nwrong with that that's and and then then then some people say like oh that's like some sort of dog whistle he means the opposite I'm like okay so we'll give you Trump's account now you you post what you think he should post because he can post nothing he can ask people to calm down like what it was insane like it didn't make any sense well it's completely a l local when you say it's dog whistling to tell his followers to not be violent that's crazy crazy that's crazy don't you think they'll listen to him yeah isn't that the whole point they listened to him and created violence in the first place that's what you think that's what you're you're accusing him of right and then there's the fact that we know that there was agents in the crowd that were agent\n\nprovocators that were encouraging people to do illegal we know that for a fact this is not that was always the big Alex Jones type 10 hat conspiracy theory cuz Alex proposed that back at the World Trade Organization protests I believe we in Seattle in the 90s and they sent in agent provocator started smashing things lighting things on fire now all a sudden a peaceful protest is no longer peaceful they move in the cops they shut everything down they had it set up where it was a no protest Zone where you couldn't even have a pin that had the WTO with a red line through it they wouldn't let you go in through to go to work so you couldn't prot you couldn't exercise your first amendment rights you couldn't even like have a peaceful protest a sticker on your\n\ncar you couldn't have that it's crazy it is crazy so no I think we're we we're very much at a folk in the road in uh Destiny um and um you know so I I mean the reason I yeah did the Twitter acquisition was like it's like man if I don't do this I think we're screwed is the issue well you didn't do it no one else was going to do it because it wasn't a financial winner it was kind of a crazy move it's a crazy move I mean the the thing was way overpriced um and um you know like long term I think uh we can we can ultimately make it a win for investors but boy this is this is a this is a hard way to make a living well there's also a concerted effort to suppress it there's a concered effort with the advertisers well we we we had a and still have um a massive\n\nAdvertiser boycott that was organized by a bunch of leftwing NGS like uh you know and and you always want and I should have I should have brought my uh I I have a hat make all well fiction again I've seen that hat yeah I I should have I was going toar I should have bought my make oil fiction had to um but but uh yeah I mean it's just totally totally nuts um so if you didn't do it no one would have and here's the hilarious narrative that I keep hearing from idiots uh elon's a bad business man Twitter is worth you know 400% less than when he bought it no it wasn't worth that in the first place it wasn't worth $44 billion you morons like wrong and also you're not taking into account The Advertiser boycott exact that's total yeah exactly so there are these\n\norganizations like you can tell there's like they're like like when they have an ellian name so like the like the C Center for countering digital hate is is a total scam organization you know CU they're like the ministry of truth type of thing in O um you know uh they like there censorship organization yeah um and they organiz and and they pushed uh the advertisers to boycott uh so we still have like some of the boycott is is is starting to lift um and I think if Trump wins we'll we'll see you know probably a lot most most of the boycott lift um but if if Kamala wins we'll see that boycott get stronger and and they'll they'll freaking shut down there's no way that that the sort of Kamala po regime would allow X to exist you really think that they'll be\n\nable to shut it down though is there Pathway to that uh yes what would they do um well I mean they can just they can sck the doj on you know and say like you know they've had this whole thing about like hate speech misinformation whatever except they're the ones pushing the misinformation but that doesn't stop them from filing massive you know lawsuits and using the doj I mean like the doj is you know been attacking SpaceX for example for not hiring Asylum Seekers even though it is legal for SpaceX to hire anyone who is not a permanent resident of the us so we we're downed if we do and downed if we don't there an examp just an example of what drj can do so it's illegal to hire someone who's not an American citizen um for what SpaceX uh is considered an\n\nan advanced weapons technology so it's it's covered by International traffic and arms regulations because we make rocket technology that can be used against the United States so like if North North Korea or Iran got SpaceX rocket technology they could use that to launch nukes at America America right that would be bad yeah that'd be really bad that would be really bad so so we're we're uh since we are in like the most extreme category of weapons technology at SpaceX um under us itar law it is uh illegal for us to hire anyone who's not a permanent resident because the presumption um is that if they're not a permanent resident they're going to return to their home country and take the rocket technology with them so that's and so so it's illegal for us to\n\nhire um anyone who's not a either has not a per they can they can be have a green card or be a citizen they just have to be a permanent resident of the United States um then there's another law that says if you if you discriminate against Asylum Seekers that's also you're also breaking the law so they they just so that the drj which the DJ drj can only do a small number of big lawsuits every year laun a giant lawsuit against SpaceX uh saying that SpaceX uh discriminated against Asylum Seekers and we're like but we're like but it's illegal for us to hire anyone who's not a permanent resident so we're in this like this is what I mean it's like or well the orell situation is getting insane like you're damned if you do and you're damned if you don't so you're\n\ndamned can you imagine history looking back f up man at when you watch the robot arms catch the rocket and you realize like this is like one of the greatest accomplishments in the history of Aerospace like it is one of the more wildest accomplishments when you watch that thing come and you see all the people cheering and it catches it perfectly like holy imagine how history is going to look back at the doj going after that company yeah how insane it is a big lawsuit with an army of lawyers like this was not like some minor thing but it doesn't even make any sense logically like how can it even get brought to court if it's illegal that's exactly so that's what I mean like like like basically if the government wants to go after you they'll just find a reason\n\nyou it's like that famous quote um from barrier you know like so like Stalin's Like Chief torturer the head of St Stalin's secret police and he's like Chief torturer truly evil human being like this guy barrier uh he his one of his famous quotes was show me the man and I'll show you the crime right they just they just they they like they decide that you're the Target and then they figure out the crime afterwards that's the issue they decided SpaceX was a Target they just figured out the crime afterwards which is so crazy because that's exactly what they saying Trump is going to do if he gets into office they're doing all the things that they accuse Trump of doing yeah openly openly yeah I mean the the sheer number of hoaxes that the Democratic party is\n\npushing over and over again they and and it's like look I understand like politicians are going to you know exaggerate they're going to misspeak and they'll tell occasional you know untruths whatever that's that's how it is in politics but when you have deliberate inerted repeated pushing of hoaxes you're like wait a second like come on man this is too this is too far and you're supposed to be the good guys you're supposed and you claim to be the good guys I'm like exactly you're supposed to be the progressives yes the dams are like oh we're the good guys we're the honest people no no hang on you can't claim to be the good guys you can't claim to be the honest people if you're deliberately post pushing hoaxes that have been debunked thoroughly yeah like\n\neven Snopes which is a liberal thing says it's bogus yeah like the fine people ho Obama just said that on stage just said that I was like what the flying he doesn't give a he doesn't give a they're just they're just FL goddamn lie flat out lie flat out lie how about the other one where kamala's campaign used what Trump was saying about protecting women and uh from illegal immigrants thank you you remember that that he what he was saying is the women like it or not I'm going to do it yeah when he was saying that they were trying to say that he was taking away women's right to choose whether women like it or not like that's not what he was saying absolutely he was literally talking about protecting them from dangerous people that are sneaking in through\n\nthe Border yes exactly they'll take like like not even a full sentence like a half a sentence from Trump and then and then they'll push it on on every ad every you know every speaking event every and it gets repeated on the news this is what's crazy they'll talk about it on these new shows quote new shows yeah exactly I mean um I mean a recent one that that came up um which had a lot of people cuz you a lot of people reached out to me was like they're like oh Trump says he wants to execute Liz Cheney I'm like that is utter it's not what he said at all it's not what he said at all he all he said was like was like what he was saying is that look if if Liz Chene uh um actually had to fight at the front lines should think twice about going to war exactly\n\nthat like it's easy to go it's easy to go to war it's easy to be a warmonger if you don't have to you know risk dying at the front lines like if other like basically it's up if if people are having like fancy dinners in Washington DC um while people are being slaughtered in trenches you know it's like you're not feeling the pain exactly you're not taking the risk it's someone else dying that's like that's that's cruel and lacking in empathy um and and all Trump was saying was that it's like Liz cheny would be much Liz cheny would be much less of a warmonger because she's a huge warmonger just like her dad um if uh she actually had had to go to the front lines and fight herself and meanwhile they're saying that he should he's saying she should be shot\n\nyes which is a total lie but I had like tons of people call me this weekend saying oh Trump says he's going to put Liz train in a firing squad I'm like that is an outrageous lie and the Legacy Media ran with that lie big time yeah it's crazy it's it's just wild to see and if it wasn't for Twitter or X now I don't think we would know about all this stuff I I think it would be very difficult for you I think YouTube throttled they did something weird they won't say what they did but they did something weird with the Trump interview that I did yeah where you couldn't find it it doesn't make sense like like made no sense I mean it's like the it was like the biggest interview on Earth yeah and you can't find it yeah not only that it wasn't trending it wasn't\n\ntrending it wasn't trending it wasn't trending you're like like this just no excuse for that man no excuse there's no excuse it was getting a million views 1 Point what was it 1.\n\n4 an hour one point in time 1.\n\n5 an hour yeah and it wasn't trending yeah like and and it's like it's it's like your channel is a known channel it's not it's not like it was started yesterday it's like yeah it's like this is a high trust yours is a high trust channel it's like like you're not trying to sell scam crypto coins or something you know um so well thank God we put it on X as well because I think just with your account and my account alone it's like 70 million views yeah exactly yeah well it's like you can't hide things anymore because of you and if it wasn't for you I think they would have had total control of social media by now they would have th they they banned so many accounts during the pandemic so many dissenting scientists and doctors and Physicians they banned so\n\nmany conspiracy theorists so many people that colored Outside the Lines they would have done that everywhere and it it probably would have P I think even at what's going on at Facebook they're they're being more lenient you know you hear Zuckerberg talking about taking a more libertarian stance that's entirely reaction to the way Twitter has kind of moved the watermark exactly so um as soon as as soon as any company steps out of line and is willing to actually have the truth debated on their platform it forces the other platforms to allow things to be more truthful to to not censor because their censorship becomes glaringly obvious yes um yes and you know the the the best thing I found for as a rebuttal like if somebody if there's a hoax is just go to\n\nthe source material you know if if you think if somebody thinks uh you know oh you know Trump said that that we should put Liz Cheney in a firing squad I'm like let let me send you a link to X so you can watch his video that's the best way it's it's don't don't take my opinion for it don't take anyone's opinion for it go to the source material and Community notes yes and Community a community notes is the best it's awesome it's incredible because everybody gets checked yes including me yeah um and with Community notes the all the software is open source and all the data is open source so you can recreate any given note independently that's amazing yeah that's how it's total absolute transparency in every way um you know sometimes I get I get asked like\n\noh y can you remove a note you know mostly by the left but sometimes by the right I'm like I'm like I don't even remove remove notes on my own account nothing and and and by the way everything is totally open so if I did that it would stick out like a sore thumb immediately like it's not going to be subtle is the best counter to misinformation yes absolutely like let everybody look at it and say okay here's what the actual facts say yes exactly the counter to misinformation is better information not just that but having it checked in real time by the community so you have millions of people that can go over it and debate whether or not this is true or that's true yes and and just and like I said the best way to understand the truth of things is don't\n\ntake anyone's opinion for it look at the source material you know so it's like look at what someone actually said look at what someone actually did look at the real videos of the situation and and then you can actually you'll know what's real so as of today when you were literally on your way here you sent me this text saying that they're trying to lock you up in jail Pennsylvania tell me what the is happening well you know there's the classic sort of Soros da situation um so we we're making a lot of progress in Pennsylvania so uh you know I've been I've given a whole bunch of talks in throughout the the state because psylvia is the Lynch pen in this election you know whoever wins Pennsylvania wins the election so um so I've been giving to I spent three\n\nyears in Pennsylvania I went to college in in Philadelphia so um so it's not like I'm not a total I'm not a total stranger to the state you know I spent three years there um and um and and we you know we we we we've organized this uh petition in support of the Constitution um which I think is a good thing um and and specifically asking people to uh and and and we wanted this to be like um registered voters in swing States like basically we want to send a message to the politicians to say that the people care about the Constitution because there have been all these attacks on the Constitution they've been especially on the Democrat side they've been repeatedly saying that that the that the first amendment is an obstacle because and they're claiming oh\n\nthe first amendment is is is enabling dis disinformation misinformation and I'm like yo there's a reason for the first Amendment like freedom of speech the reason they the founders of the country put you know the freedom of speech there is because they came from countries where if you spoke your mind you would get shot or imprisoned that's why the First Amendment exists and the Second Amendment is there to stop the tney of government the Second Amendment the right to bear arms is there to protect freedom of speech um you know um you know and I've had these debates especially with people in LA because they're they're like want to take everyone's guns away and I'm like yo can you guarantee me that the government that we will never have a tyrannical government\n\nin the in the United States can you can you make that guarantee they're like well nobody can make that guarantee I'm like then we need to keep our guns because that's the that's what's going to stop it that sounds crazy for people to hear because they think about gun violence and gun problems and gun this and gun that but that's the reality of the world that we live in is that tyranny is possible and it exists other places and it's slowly existing it's slowly rearing its head in the UK you're you're seeing I I think the the number of people that have been arrested for just social media uh posts is bananas it's in the thousands yes several thousand people have been have been given prison sentences sentences in the UK for social media posts that where there\n\nwas no explicit link to actual violence but they just said it encouraged violence like well did anyone actually do anything as a result of that media post well no but they they just and and then they have a prison overcrowding situation in the UK so they quite literally releasing convicted pedophiles and putting people in jail for Facebook posts that's an actual thing happening in Britain that is so wild like it's you're like so wild the you know is going on and what's insane to me fiction again yeah you know but it's all being encouraged by the left kangi Brown Jackson John KY johnry was one of the people who said that he's on camera re like a few weeks ago saying that the first amendment is a pro is an obstacle to fighting misinformation yeah that's\n\ncrazy that's such a crazy thing to say when you have a solution in community notes you have a solution in something like that that could clear everything up any confusion within a day or two and and even without a community note you can reply to a post and with with evidence that that that shows that the post is wrong you don't even need Community notes I mean Community notes is helpful because it sticks to the original note yes but in the replies you can say here's why you're wrong here are the reasons and here's the evidence the argument is that people are too unsophisticated that they're not going to research these things they're going to be a victim of misinformation so they're going to read something it's incorrect they're going to run with it people\n\nare going to die people are going to we're going to ruin the world because people believed in misinformation it's a stupid argument it's a stupid argument because it's an argument that they're too dumb to know what's right or wrong you if you know cuz you're saying it's misinformation why do you think that you're smarter than everybody who reads that exactly and obviously anyone on the X system uh knows that things are posted and then there are replies and there are bules and it's immediately corrected but where are the corrections for the Legacy Media right you know when when if um you know some broadcast media they they they they they said St say false things all the time but it's a one-way Street there's no rebuttal there's no counter right you know\n\nthere who's apologized for being incorrect about what did Rachel mat ever apologize for telling everybody that if you get the covid vaccine you're never going to get Co it won't the virus stops with you never no one ever it's just it was not true at the time there was no evidence to support it at the time it's pure propaganda and she said it the Russia gate hoax the for three years they said that he was Putin's toy and that Putin had him compromised the steel dossier steel dosier was completely fabricated by a lawyer poins koi um uh who was paid by the Clinton campaign literally crazy and still people think the Russia hoax is real and there's no repercussions no one had to apologize Hillary could never came out and apologize for that and people still\n\nlisten to her the whole thing is crazy and it's all coming from the left which growing up as a a person who was in the left my whole life it doesn't make any sense same same I mean I I I I even I I I was on the left until like three years ago like I I mean you know it's not the left anymore it's not the left anymore it's just like I think we obviously want I mean I I I believe like we want freedom like like we want we want to maximize person personal Liberty uh I think we want we want to be kind to people you know we want to have empathy uh and um but but it's very important to have personal freedom and a merit based society on the left is is wants to oppress your freedoms especially freedom speech um and they want to they want to have a non-m marit based\n\nsociety you know with race based and sex based preferences and it's like well wait a second no we just want people to succeed based on their skills and their hard work and if they don't want people to express themselves about particular issues then they're not doing the will of the people and if they're trying to suppress people's ability to communicate they're only doing that because they want to do things that people don't want them to do and they want to silence opposition that's all it is and the fact that people can't see that they want to call Trump a fascist the whole thing is through the Looking Glass it's just I mean it's like one hoax after another that that they're perpetrating against Trump I me like they try to call the the rally at Madison\n\nSquare Gardens Like A Nazi rally I'm like yo there was like literally an Israeli flag in the audience um I think like a quarter of the speakers were Jewish like there was like there were people of every race color creed religion at that at that rally like tell me what about that is Nazi no and yet it was portrayed as a Nazi rally MSNBC they they literally showed video of the Nazi Rally from 1930s and then compared it to the Trump rally now ignoring the fact that Jimmy Carter spoke there there have been dozens of political rallies at medicine Square Gardens dozens on the on the Democrat side like people and people on X like and here's exactly here's Jimmy Carter and here's Bill Clinton and here's wait a second actually it looks like uh every presidential\n\ncandidate has done a uh on the Democrat side has done a rally at mass square gardens are they Nazis too but what they're doing is they're praying on lwi information voters who aren't engaged actively on social media who don't have the time to look through everything exactly yeah like people are living if people are just on looking at Legacy mainstream media then they have a totally different worldview than if they're on X uh and and seeing the the actual flow of argument yes and the actual evidence well what was the push back like what happened when you guys released the Twitter files cuz I think the Twitter files is probably one of the most important things in this age of information for understanding the influence that government has on social media\n\nand and on discourse because when when we found out that that was the case that the government was actually asking Twitter to remove posts that were factual did they did the same thing to Facebook they had them throttle pieces of one of Tucker Carlson's show they they suppress the views by 50% yeah of factual information yeah no there was there was massive government interference in Twitter um but but like Twitter welcomed it that's important to old Twitter welcomed it uh I mean TW old Twitter was controlled by by far-left activists yeah so uh and and uh they they welcomed the Govern interference the Govern they got paid by the government for it that's crazy they got paid for their time correct yeah they got paid millions of dollars for for suppressing\n\ninformation so it's like Bill and a bunch of it was like flat out illegal like the FBI had this like this this this sort of magic portal into the Twitter system uh and and but all of the communication in that sort in this portal was autod deleted after two weeks which breaks Federal Foy laws so we don't even know what was said because it was all deleted after two weeks that's insane yeah that's so crazy it's so crazy that people thought that was okay it's not super not okay no it's super not okay it's unconstitutional and no one would want that no one would want the government to have that kind of access exactly and what was the blowback like when all that stuff got released like you had to anticipate that there was going to be problems when you when\n\nyou release that like what was what happened well we got a lot of we we did lose a lot of advertising dollars um and um which is crazy because it's essentially like one of the most important forms of Journalism is exposing government corruption yes I mean this is the weird weird thing it's like the left used to be uh big big on exposing government corruption but now but once they control the government they no longer want to EXP the government corruption right they want to pretend that the leftwing government's incapable of corruption cuz we're on the good side I I think it maybe just like you know whoever's in power kind of doesn't want the you know the other side hurt um because as you pointed out like the left historically up until I don't know maybe\n\neven 10 years ago or something like that um was the Free Speech party and now it's the anti-free speech party and they just they use they use words like like oh we have to be against hate speech and misinformation disinformation but these are propaganda words you know it's like uh well who's defining hate speech who's defining misinformation the government do you really trust the government to make that definition um the whole point of the of the first amendment is like you do not trust the government well especially when they're wrong and then there's no repercussions yeah like with the whole Lab leak theory if you get you would get kicked off of YouTube if you even presented this argument that hey maybe that Corona virus lab where they're doing work\n\non the exact same virus that got released yep hey maybe that's where it came from since that's where the virus started what do you think guys yeah they kick you right off of YouTube yeah um yes exactly it's like do you think maybe the it could have come from the place called the novel Corona virus Research Institute that John Stewart bit that he did on coar was amazing what does it say on the door again uh can I see you a business card and to see coar like resisting it with every fiber of his what's going to happen to us he was totally blocking the bit to the point where John Stewart got off his chair and started walking around to try to take control yeah good on John and then the left tried to cancel John Stewart of course meanwhile he was right he right\n\nand no apologies no apologies yeah and you know the whole fouchy thing like any criticism of fouchy it's like an freaking demon if you ask me if you read rfk's book if the real Anthony fouchy if that's correct if the facts are in there that's true it's all referenced you could find the sources and on top of it he's never been sued for that book which doesn't make any sense if he just made a bunch of Lies up he would get sued yes so the guy's a monster I think so yeah I think so too yeah yeah yeah yeah I think like just looking at the lies that he told the way he tried to Define gain of function research to ran Paul but he I think a lot maybe a lot of people out there don't realize Fouch he funded the the the the bioweapons research that was going on in\n\nin Wuhan and he he Bank shotted off like he can't send the money directly to China he just bankshot it off Eco Health right this just like fake nonprofit in the US and they sent it to Wuhan and Obama put the skids on that he stopped that in 2014 yes I mean so you know um to to give Obama throw Obama give Obama some credit he actually was like looking at this and say hey this is crazy and uh we need and he so he he actually did uh stop the like like the so-called G gain of function again a propaganda word uh because what is the function they're talking about death right right so if if if you actually use the right word this is gain of function is death maximization right then you're like oh oh hey guys should refund uh uh bioweapon Research into death\n\nmaximization cuz that's what gain of function means yeah it means the function making a disease so that people can get it give it to people and by the way what's that function again oh the function is death okay so just call it a death maximizing virus if you're doing research on that and the idea behind this research is so that we can cure these things how come you don't have a cure start with a start with a cure cure first disease second it doesn't make any sense like you guys had no strategy for dealing with it if it got out and so you have to like make up this this new vaccine in like record time operation warp speed released to the people with very little testing it's crazy it was crazy the whole thing's crazy and everybody just went along with it\n\nLooney Tunes Next Level well it's the scop was fascinating to watch people step in line that's like one of the biggest SS of all time of all time of all time and everybody got in line and when you take it back to when pharmaceutical drug companies were able to advertise on media in the 1990s that Chang one of two countries the whole that allows this and because of that because we don't have socialized medicine it's a complete profit scam and they went hard claiming all sorts of things that were never researched all sorts of things that not supported by data like the fact that it would stop transmission the fact that it would stop infection the fact that it was safe for pregnant women the fact that it was safe for children all of its yes and they pushed\n\nit on the whole world and if you didn't say that at a cocktail party you were a pariah yes and you were an antivaxer it was totally psycho it was like being a Holocaust in hour you get kicked out of polite Society exactly bananas and I should say like I'm actually generally Pro vaccine overall you know I think we should look at these things that but that but I believe in the scientific method so so you have a blanket except anything you have a blanket except that any any given medication or any given treatment is is is 100% good you should always be it with some skepticism especially when you're getting the data from pharmaceutical drug companies that have like a long history of criminal got a Ved interest conduct yes they've got a vested interest in\n\nthe research it's sort of like asking tobacco companies about you know whether smoking it's dangerous you know exactly the same thing like God according to our scientists everything's fine yeah they lied in court forever the same thing they do with oxycoton when they said that it wasn't addictive like they have a long history of being full of if it makes them money and that's what they do that's their business they've literally lost multi-billion dollar lawsuits in this massive massive they're in the you have amazing scientists right you have these clinical researchers these people that developed these incredible drugs and they this is their job their job is to figure out some new way to cure something some new way to stop things and then you have the\n\nmoney people sure and the problem is when you have this one thing that you would assume they're only doing it to help people and then they have this other faction that they're all just numbers people and all they give a about is maximizing profits and making sure they literally have a an obligation to their shareholders they have to make the most amount of money possible and so they just want to push it on everybody regard like the vioc Scandal there's internal emails showing they knew there was going to be cardiovascular events people were going to get strokes and they're like I think we're still going to do well and they did they made like 12 billion dollars they got fined seven and 50 to 60,000 people died holy yeah one of them was a friend of mine\n\ngot a stroke and died yeah no he didn't die he lived but he was a really healthy guy aned the same after yeah NE problems and he took Vio and all a sudden he was slurring his words and he couldn't concentrate and people like I think you're having a stroke and they took him to the hospital and then then you have this giant class action lawsuit then Vio gets pulled from the market and they get sued and the whole thing's crazy but there's a long history of this I think what did what is the number like onethird of the drugs that the FDA approves gets pulled it's bananas that is crazy that's crazy you're shitty at onethird of the things that you say are okay but yet you're trying to stop MDMA therapy for veterans yeah they should let MDMA through honestly\n\nthat think that actually help a lot of people it would help a lot of people help a lot of people there's a lot of different therapies specifically psilocybin iag the fact you have to go to Mexico to get ibaan therapy for veterans so many guys I've talked to have gone over there and it's like completely giving them a a clean slate refresh their mind and totally new perspective on life alleviated depression cured addictions illegal yeah illegal oxycotton go get it yeah um and I know some people who like their their life was ruined by oxyon you know oh yeah because uh I mean it it really depends on on you know somebody in individual biochemistry um like to me like like um opioids are not addictive to me like I you know I've had them when I've had operations\n\nor something and uh they they they're they barely affect the my pain level and they make me like itchy and uncomfortable they make me stupid exactly but but I'm like so so like like I could never get addicted to alcohol or or opioids it's just impossible like because my biochemistry just does not have like but I love tasty food feel like you know you know if if if there's I'm addicted to tasty food sure um but like there can be like I have a whole of of alcohol it's there for decoration I never done sh basically I feel the same way I could easily quit alcohol I mean I'll go weeks without having a drink and doesn't bother me at all but I know some people they have one drink and they're Off to the Races and that's the difference in the the biochemical differences\n\nthat we all have yeah I mean I think that's the case with a lot of addictions I'm not addicted to gambling but I get it I see it I've seen it in people but I'm I'm I have this aversion to things that I know are going to ruin my life like i' I see it that's why I've never tried cocaine I just saw too many people it looks too fun like I don't want to get involved yeah I mean I mean I think generally for any given uh drug legal or illegal you could the question is can you complete the following sentence blank made me a better [Laughter] person like I've never heard anyone say meth made them a better person or cocaine made them a better person no ever um made a lot of soldiers better I think that's yeah I mean if you're doing if you're like if your soldiers\n\nneed to for three days in a row yeah it it's really is effective at that you know um yeah people give like France a hard time about you know capitulating in World War II but but you know what's what's worse than the Nazis Nazis on meth me up Nazis they they're not stopping Norman they Six Bullets they're like they're they're still coming that book over there blitzed is all about the use of methamphetamines and the different drugs that they gave their soldiers the guys the front of the line they gave the most meth yes they have different dosages yeah I mean you just basically think you're un vulnerable on meth and uh so so it's one thing like I said it's one thing be you know have have like the Nazis coming after you but Nazis on meth you're like holy\n\nthose are not stopping man for three days they're not stopping it's so crazy yeah that's not a statement meth may be a better person that you hear very often I've never heard that before no you hear a lot of like siloc iban Advocates you hear a lot of people that talk about psychedelics I exactly I've actually heard many people say that uh LSD or you know mushrooms or uh MDMA made them a better person many people yeah so that's why I'm like I think a rule for the FDA should be like hey look um if you can complete the sentence legal or legal that um blank made you a better person actually yeah uh then then you got a good drug and if you you can't you got a bad drug also if there's drugs that are available right now that can absolutely ruin people's lives\n\nthis the the rationalization for stopping other drugs that might ruin people's lives but also can help a lot of people's lives it doesn't make any sense right you're you're you're B it's basically the same thing as censorship you're taking away people's ability to discern what's true and not true and you're taking away people's ability to discern what's good for you and not good for you and the way to find that out is to have as much information as possible so to do research and actually to have unbiased actual objective observers who are looking at all this stuff that give you real data yes and the opposite of that or the count of that is like if you don't do that you're empowering cartels yes that's the whole reason why they have all that money it's\n\nbecause it's illegal to sell these drugs in America the demand is never going away so instead of like limiting the amount of drugs now you've got toxic drugs CU Fentanyl and all this other has been because they're not pure so you're just killing people you're not saving anybody by protecting them from themselves true but it's a tricky situation because what do you do like if you just like say okay now everyone can sell all these people that have been selling boner pills now you can sell meth like holy you get you get you get the the the the the double combo the VRA it's the VRA andth right Jesus Christ oh my god oh my god well I mean how many people already doing that right now with there's a lot of people out there that are essentially on M especially\n\npeople that abuse adol they're basically amphetamin up all day long yeah adol is low-grade infomine yeah um so um the and like I actually seen people like become much worse people if they take too much ader all like much worse you know it's it's like an anger amplifier so there um now now I'm not saying like adol is something like where there's there are pluses and minuses it's not a clearcut issue um it does help some people a great deal um and uh but but in in higher doses man that that stuff I've seen people turn into just raging monsters on on high doses about rle just they're they're just angry like extremely angry all the time yeah they're messed up yeah that's what happens if you take myth it's crazy you turn it like myth turns you into a freaking\n\nrage demon and so and so many prescriptions I'm like Jesus we we googled it like one year there was like 39 million prescriptions for adal in this country oh yeah yeah like once in a while there's like an adal shortage and like there's like watch Widespread Panic you know and then what do people do and then it's the same thing as like when they tried to like limit the amount of oxyc content will people go to Street heroin and if you're addicted to Aderall and your dealer the guy who sells you weed is like hey man I can get you like like lowgrade meth like the stuff the Nazis took well that they had IG grade myth actually they had pharmaceutical grade it was they had epic epic myth it was like made by the like pharmaceutical grade myth is going to be if\n\nlike this this I mean I mean you just look at the freaking U Online Wikipedia page but there's like many different versions of math like not all the same um and and they have different effects um so but but like pharmaceutical grade pure meth you are going to be oh my God super productive super productive for a certain period of time and and you're not going to sleep for a while and uh and and then you you will you will have some anger management issues um so like uh they actually the the nazzi they did actually um uh go roll back how much meth they were using because they had they had quite a few incidents of of the of the soldiers killing their officers because they were on too much meth Jesus Christ they would yeah so they would shoot that to many\n\num officer got fragged by the by the you know the their platoon that was on too much meth because they that happened quite a few times like you just when someone's on a lot of meth they're they're they're they're very they can get very angry did you ever pay attention to when John McAfee was uh cooking meth in a lab in his backyard I me MC is quite a character he was a character character we had him on the podcast when he was on the run so he called in from an undisclosed location when he was running from where was he Costa Rica is that where he was B bise right so when he was running from the authorities he called in we had him on the podcast on the run and uh I was asking him about these posts like CU there was an online account that was linked to him\n\nwhere he had this very detailed laboratory like super sophisticated making the best math like a super genius cooking math I I mean I think he like had like he had his lab like he was making like a wide range of drugs uh and there was like I I talked to uh actually like a a reporter um who who went down and like uh interviewed him in bise um and and por said man that's one of the scariest things he's like he he was he was quite terrified so like one of the things like maffy he had I guess this trick where he would he would play a Russian roulette with himself uh so so he'd put a bullet in in the revolver and they spin the spin the chamber and clearly he had like some like trick to you know know it was not there's some you know way that he knows it's not\n\nthe right bullet but but I do Wonder like if if mcff is high and he does that he's not always going to get the trick right you know do you sure he had a trick or maybe so yeah yeah so so so according to this reporter um when he went to visit maffy in bise uh maffy took out the revolver put a put a a bullet in the revolver spun the chamber and then pointed at his head and went click and the report is like saying please don't do this like this is insane click click click and then pointed to the gun at the ground and ni went click bang and shot shot a bullet in the ground Jesus that's a hell of a potty trick jeez it's the next level party that's the guy who seen the deer hunter too many times he yes remember that scene when they were forcing yes yeah woo\n\nthat's a heavy scene that was a heavy scene dairo and Christopher Walkin that's one of the greatest scenes in any movie ever I remember watching that scene just like clawing at my pants like Maka was a wild boy wild and you created brilliant anti virus software yeah yeah he may have made some of the viruses too you think so well didn't he like give laptops to a bunch of government organizations with viruses on yeah so that he could like pay ATT to what they were doing yeah I I wouldn't be surprised if somebody whacked that guy I don't know what happened to him but I he would be a guy that would be like this guy is a little bit too loose I probably had sensitive information I don't know um for sure he did u i mean I found him to be an interesting guy I\n\nmean like I'm generally like feel like like if somebody's not harming someone else they should be okay now now there is some suggestion that maffy like killed his neighbor in bise um yeah so probably did maybe the neighbor was a douchebag I think he probably did seems like he probably did seem like the neighbor killed his dog yes right and then it seems like he killed the neighbor yeah allegedly yeah I mean it seems it seems likely it's not a zero possibility it's not definitely not zero it's seem more than not he's a methed up wild man playing Russian roulette hey maybe you kill your neighbor yes I mean if somebody killed your dog you'd be really inclined to kill them too yeah somebody killed your squirrel John Wick yeah the squirrel thing is bananas\n\nyeah that squirrel thing squirr thing I so here's the thing about the the the whole squirrel thing is is that um how can it be that we live in America uh supposedly land of the free and the you know the government can barge into your home with guns uh so if you resist you're going to get shot um and then take your your pets and execute them um and if they can do that to your pets what do you think they can do to you I know that's not an exaggeration absolutely it sounds like you're you're oh that's so crazy how can you make that connection but it's that's why would you kill that cute little squirrel that was obviously a pet and trained from the time it was a baby if you see the interaction that guy has with that squirrel it was wonderful it was really\n\ncute yes absolutely the there's it was just obviously it was a blood pet pet squirrel um and raccoon too um and doing no har um and the the government comes in barges into the guy's house takes his pets and kills them and you know I I think this should this should really get people out there mobilized frankly because um you know you think you see like the John Wick movie where John Wick's like you know he he he wants to he just wants peace like you know in in the Dr movie he just wants he's like listen I want to retire and they offer him like tons of money like because they want him to be an assassin to keep being an assassin like they they like they they like offer him tons of money they threaten him he's like listen I'm not going to be I'm I'm I'm out\n\nyou know and they kill his dog that was a bad idea that was a really they killed a cute little puppy and the puppy was his ex-wife's gift to him when she died of cancer yeah great movie great movie the best revenge movie of all time cuz it's so ridiculous he kills everybody yeah kills everyone um and you're rooting for him yeah they shouldn't have killed his dog yeah they up and they shouldn't have killed that squirrel they shouldn't have killed that that squirrel I mean like how many how many cases have we not heard about you know a look at that little guy that squirrel clearly had a love relationship with that guy he would hop all over him and climb on him I mean it was that was his pet that that squirrel thought of that man as his protector as his\n\nHis companion there was nothing wrong with that and in Texas it's totally legal you could have a zebra out here you can have whatever you want and that's the argument for freedom and you know the flip side is you get a bunch of people tigers in their backyard which is not great it's like this was a squirrel it's not it's not an anaconda or right or or or you know you know crocodile or something that's or a chimpanzee did you see chimp crazy oh man chimp chimp chimps will eat your face okay they will you up they will you and they don't even the thing is they don't even kill you they just you chimps don't even kill people yeah which is really weird they just bite your hands off and pite your dick off and tear your face apart yes they want to leave you they\n\ncould kill you easily if a chimp want to just punch you in the head until you're dead it wouldn't take long but they don't kill you they just rip you apart yeah and you can have a chimp and so well he used to be able to have a chimp in a lot of states and then chimp crazy kind of exposed a lot of that and Peta did a great job of stopping people from keeping chimps as pets because once they hit like five you can't control them anymore what's OB totally understandable if somebody's got um you know a creature that is dangerous to others but like obviously a a squirrel and a raccoon are not well squirrels are everywhere that's what's so crazy like why can't you have it in the house what kind of rules are we dealing with you have rats everywhere yeah um I\n\nmean they're they're they're allowing criminals to go free and and like violent criminals to go free but they're like spending your tax dollars to come in and execute your pets what the hell is going on exactly and and it's like um but it's overreach it's it's govern overreach and and this just keeps getting worse every year and that's why that's why we've got to we got to fight back against this um and um you know it's people say like well it's just a squirrel well was it was you know in John Wick's case it was just a dog right yeah you know but well remember the Russian guy said it's a dog it's just a dog just a squirrel yeah well it's the the funniest thing is when so it just I just don't understand how anybody could justify it I don't understand how\n\nany I it seems to me that in a logical world all that guy would have to do is say want to you see me with this squirrel this squirrel's a pet yeah like look he he hops on me he eats he sleeps I can keep a Geral but I can't keep a squirrel I can have a guinea pig I can't have a squirrel I can have a chinchilla my daughter has a chinchilla it's adorable adorable little thing climbs all over can't have a squirrel even if they if they did take a squirrel away couldn't they've released it into the woods or something well it's a bit the idea is you have to euthanize it because it's used to being fed it doesn't know how to forage it won't be able to like find a home squirrels are brutal squirrels are absolutely brutal to each other they throw each other out\n\nof trees which is one of the reasons why squirrels like can fall from like 30 feet and just kind of bounce off the ground and live it's like it's a a natural adaptation because squirrels during mating they bite each other they there used to be like a rumor there was a a myth that squirrels bite each other's nuts off and okay that that seems to be a myth but it came out of the fact that squirrels are so ruthless during mating so like one female is just running away I have squirrels in my backyard I watch it all the time one female apparently goes into estris and all the male squirrels fight to get to her so they're running up trees and chasing each other around trees literally throwing each other off trees to try to like have so if this poor little peanut\n\nthe squirrel who's used to living with a guy in an apartment like gets out there in the the wild world well fair enough at least they have a chance yeah at least he has a chance but chance how about just leave him with the guy yeah leave him with the guy for sure what the is wrong with you why are you killing that squirrel it doesn't make any sense yeah and then to add insult to injury there were a bunch of people on the left who were like actually posting that they're glad that magga squirrel got killed which is Mega squirrel like the squirrel has an ideology it's a cute little fluffy squirrel exactly well it's it's a nice symbol because most most like reasonable compassionate people think that's terrible and most people who have pets think it's terrible\n\nterrible um so I don't know I mean I'm like I hope people just go out there and vote for peanut man if nothing else if nothing else just V I vote for peanut you know they've done such a job of painting Trump as a monster you know they've taken the worst things that he's ever said in amp and he's not a perfect person but guess what no one's a perfect person they don't exist this purity test like if Obama was a perfect person he wouldn't be lying on stage about that that you know very fine people hoax the there's exactly no one's going to be a perfect person but the thing that they didn't understand about Trump is he's so crazy that if you tell him like he can't be president like remember Obama did that during that White House Press correspondence there's\n\none thing that I'm that I am that you'll never be president of the United States you see Trump in the audence going okay you know funny thing is I was actually um at that White House Correspondence Dinner where you know it's supposed to be a roast of the President right uh Trump's there he's there he's actually supporting uh you know basically if you go to the the West correspondent Center you're there uh in support actually of the president and support of the press right um and uh it's meant to be you're roasting the president like Trump's just there he's like actually you know just he's like there as part of the support and then they they turned it around and just started roasting Trump and he's just sitting there I'm like he's like yo I just came to\n\nthe dinner I wasn't I'm just here to support you know we know what it was because of right the birther stuff oh okay yeah that's what it all was it was all Trump was at the head of a a lot of these people spreading this rumor online that Obama's birth certificate was forged and he's actually from Kenya what's weird is if you go back to Obama's early days there are some things that say he's from Kenya like I think in his Co something from college said he was from Kenya but you know that could just be you know people print things wrong all the time it doesn't mean he's actually from Kenya but Trump was one of those guys that was like spreading that supposedly false rumor why is he pushing it hard I'm not this is the kind of thing where I want to just go\n\nand look at saying what what did he actually say no he definitely was he was definitely saying you know look he I don't think he has the time to go into things like very deeply yeah and so I think he could probably be influenced by a bunch of people like these marjerie Taylor green type people who come to him with some wild ass theory true he might be and I think there's a lot of that stuff that gets fed to people on purpose so that they'll say incorrect things so that they're easy to dismiss and I think uh there's also a lot of people that just make up and you know they tell you the Earth is flat and then a bunch of people watch a YouTube video and they believe it yeah well but on that White House correspondence I was there and the degree to which they\n\nattacked Trump in that in that uh at that White House corespond Center was really it was it was so over the top it was like making everyone uncomfortable really it was really over the top you know I mean I think like sort of a passing joke of like you know uh a few passing jokes are fine but but they they Twisted the knife big on Trump in that and and you could see Trump just getting like angrier and angrier and and more and more upset I wonder if and it's like man this is this is not good karma you know that's what I was thinking at the time I'm look I L I was two two tables away from Trump and I'm looking I'm like man this is this is too much you know well it's kind of crazy what what they made out of that because that's the kind of guy that if you\n\ntell him he can't do something he's going to just keep trying like what it was a big mistake to rag on him so so much with that White House correspond Center well just look at the way they've attacked him in ter with just using the legal system like this thing in uh New York where the 34 different felony counts they were essentially misdemeanors that there were book bookkeeping errors that they decided even though it passed the statue of limitations they to try him for these they didn't identify a felony abuse of the law is what's going on but most people would have quit most people after the een Carol lawsuit and this lawsuit and all the other ones of their the Insurrection thing the Georgia thing all these different things they getting kicked off a\n\nTwitter most people would just like this is too much I can't take this but he's so crazy he's like all right come on we're going to war and he just digs his heels in and keeps going yeah it's it's the wrong guy to do that too just like attacking him at the White House Correspondence Dinner most people been humiliated he got angry he's like yeah all right say I G be president I was think I've been thinking about running for about 15 years finally I'm going to run yeah yeah that was a real bad move um but yeah I mean I can certainly understand like making some jokes about like you know a few sort of passing jokes on Trump but man I was there at that dinner and that they ragged on Trump so much it was insane the reason why I would push back on that cuz I\n\nwould say there's a bunch of different speakers right and Trump would obviously be a Target and if they all attacked him it's because he's like if you're going to make fun of people in the audience and especially in the zeit guys that whole birther thing was big and most people are dismissing it as being a ridiculous conspiracy theory so who the is this guy saying this and so you have eight to 10 individual speakers that are writing monologues of course they're all going to hit Trump yeah well anyway obviously it was a mistake they shouldn't have done that and and but like you buy people to watch that original Source material and uh I think a few jokes are fine you know it's like but but it's like he shouldn't be the like it felt like he was the primary\n\nobject of the roast yeah which is that's that's not the whole point of the thing is it's a roast of the president not roast the audience the thing about it is like he's easy to roast and then on top of that Obama was like loved and cherished by the left and most of those people are on the left there's only so far you can push you know you can't ask him about a chef you know there like what happen with the chef bro you can't like certain things you can't bring up you want to what's your favorite sport paddle boarding yeah is that guy wasn't that guy a really good swimmer tell me what happened you know exactly you can't bring that up like if you're going to roast Hillary you can't bring up the death count like uh Hillary what's the best way to stay in touch\n\nemail yeah it's if you're doing one of those you know she destroyed the servers and poured like bleach on the servers like like computers that's she poured bleach on them that's what I saw yeah that's I believe that's like it wasn't just like they took a hammer to it they like destroyed the like there was no possible way to actually get forensics on the thing what was in there like that's what I mean what was in there what was in there why would they care so much that's so crazy yeah the whole thing is there was no there was no legal action against that which is clear to destruction of evidence well it's also there's this other narrative that always drives me crazy is that uh he's going to destroy democracy so in order to destroy democracy we have to\n\ninstall a president without a primary we have to have a candidate that is the least liked vice president of all time the least popular vice president of all time and then use gaslighting and the full force of the media machine to turn her into the future and hope and then we're going to this she's going to be changed even though she's a sitting vice president and then on top of that this idea of change when the Democrats have been in control for what 12 or 16 years right which is crazy like this is the change yeah I mean obviously I view this election as a turning point um like a folk in the road of destiny that is uh incredibly important um you know I've not I've not been politically active until this election and the reason I've been politically active\n\nthis election is because I think if we don't if we don't elect Trump I think we I think we will lose uh we will we will lose democracy in this country we will we will lose the two-party system um and let me explain why so there there's only like six six or seven swing States the the margin of victory in those States is small often like 10 or 20,000 votes um what the the Democrat Administration has been doing is importing vast numbers of illegals into swing States um you can look at the numbers on the actual government uh website meaning you don't take my word for it you'll just look look at the numbers as reported by the government which is controlled by the Democrats um and and what we've seeing is triple- digit increases in the number of legals in every\n\nswing state some cases 700% increases these are these are gigantic numbers um so if you if if you have a state that was that that went that has a 10 or 20,000 vote margin and you put 200,000 illegals into that state you 10x the the you you swamp the it's not a swing state anymore it's going to vote blue and then and once the swing States vote blue that there there is no election anymore it's there's only a Democrat primary which is so crazy and it's so crazy that people are fine with that well I guess people on the left will be fine with that because they think that's a good idea they just want to win they just want to win correct like the thing is like like one does not need actually any Grand conspiracy theory for this you just have to look at the simple\n\nmatter of incentives if if if the Democrat Party wants to win like basically achieve permanent Victory all they need to do is is turn the swing States turn the swing States blue they have permanent Victory and then we're one then we're a onep party State and then they they will keep doing that obviously they'll they will keep stacking the deck uh by bringing in vast numbers of illegals into the swing states keep stacking it so that the next election each successive election will be worse than the last one and that's what's happening if and if you want to see like well is this actually going to happen Look at California California is super majority Dem 70% damn um a month ago they passed a law making it illegal to show ID in any election in California\n\nso you so so a friend of mine went to vote uh in in um in paloalto because he was like is this for real he tried to show his ID and they they reacted like a like like like if you show a cross to a vampire okay they're like no we can't even look at that ID it's it is illegal for them to even look at your ID if you want to present it and California why for any election at all even like city council what logical reason other than to cheat would you ever have that law the reason is to cheat that's but the only only L like you can never make an argument any other way and I think 84% of people pulled believe that you should show ID to vote so it's against the will of the people yes and and we are extremely aware we're an outlier in not requiring ID basically\n\nalmost every country on Earth requires ID to vote so so the the as soon as you make you ban ID for voting it makes fraud impossible to prove because how do you trace the fraud right yeah it's insane it's insane it's insane and what I'm saying is that how is it legal is that is that what I'm saying is like this election is the last chance to preserve Democracy in America mark my Woods uh everything they accuse Trump of they are guilty of um and and if if Trump doesn't win this will be the last real election in America um and we will if if if if the Kamala if the big cment kamla puppet machine wins uh they will legalize the illegals in the swing states there will be no swing States every election going forward will be a a a guaranteed Democrat win and it'll\n\nactually be worse than California the reason it'll be worse than California is because the one thing that keeps California from being super crazy is that you can move out of California like you and I did we you and I used to be in California well we moved to Texas we're still in America but if if the dams win this election they will legalize enough illegals to turn the swing States and everywhere will be like California there will be no Escape that is so insane this is the final this is it this is the last chance has anybody tried to push go out and vote vote like your life depends on it vote like your future depends on it because it does this is the last chance man is there is there any argument against this is anybody tried to debate this has anybody\n\ntried to say that this is nonsense this is a conspiracy has anybody made any sort of a rational argument uh the the the left actually interestingly does not want to pick up much on this argument because it's because the more attenion you look the more you look at it the more obviously it is true because you you just say like well are the numbers correct have have are there really this many illegals that have been imported into swing States yes they haven't just walked across the border they've been flowing in flowing in in airplanes yeah using a shipping app yes yeah they made an app well the app always existed but it used to be for people coming over here like shipping with Goods so they could track you while you're in America so you could legally be\n\nhere they know where you are and then they changed it to allow that app to schedule illegal aliens to come across the border yes Asylum Seekers come on in yes oh you have an app people in they're literally being flown in yeah to the swing States and the so the reason that that I think left doesn't want to uh push back on this is because the more attention they get that this gets the more people realize it is true true yeah it is true that's why they don't that's why they're they're just pretending that they're pretending I'm not saying anything but I'm like I'm like yo the you're L they're literally flying vast numbers of illegals who are then beholden to the Democrats and and sometimes I get a btle of people say like well you know the these um uh illegals\n\nare they don't have the same social values as the Democrat Party because they're like more socially conservative I'm like yeah but that's that's not the point the the if you look at the M's hierarchy of needs that their their their primary thing is is staying in the country and getting their friends and family in and then the Democrats give them all these benefits like like tons of benefits more benefits than if you than citizens literally yeah um so so so you they're beholding to the Democrats for all these benefits um they want to get their friends and family in which the Democrats support and the Republicans stoned so they vote them and you can look imp perally at California and say like did did they did they vote Republican or Democrat in California\n\noh they voted Democrat well Reagan Reagan gave them amnesty in the 1980s and that changed the the state basically except for Arnold changed the state entirely blue yes and Arnold was an exception because he was like a socially liberal famous guy yeah and you know didn't really impose any radical restrictions on any of the people that were going to vote Democrat in the first place the the the whole thing is just it's bizarre to watch play out because it just seems like there's no this can't be actually what's happening did you see my conversation with fedman about it yeah he was completely in denial about it I don't think there's that level of organization like what are you talking about exactly just like like are because you can you can break it down\n\nso like are are any of these numbers wrong because we got these numbers from Homeland Homeland Security government.\n\ngov okay right so we got it from the.\n\ngov website has the government reported these numbers incorrectly no they have not those numbers if anything are are low um so okay so they have in fact uh flown vast numbers of illegals to swing States yeah um bypassing the Border entirely and uh so that is factually true then you say like well what is their probable voting pattern um oh okay overwhelmingly Democrat into swing States um and oh and and then well but do the Democrats actually want to FasTrack them for citizenship oh um yes they do um there you can see Chuck Schumer on TV saying at at a rally this year was saying he wants to FasTrack Le uh and make uh all 11 mil million or however many I believe his quote was uh citizens as soon as possible so the goal is to they are fast-tracking citizenship\n\nas quickly as possible so they can they can they that whether one thinks it's cheating or not it won't matter because they will be fully able to vote and for people on the left this is actually happening I invite people to reut this and show me where I am wrong please do so no they can't they can't they can't because it's true well what's scary to me is that there's people that are on the left like people that were Bernie Sanders supporters for ex example screwed with like talk about undermining democracy Bernie should have won the nomination and they they stole it from him and gave it to Hillary ex exactly exactly that's what I was going to bring up like they they they control the primary process yeah exactly so so so so like if you've got to then if\n\nyou have a Democratic primary it's not it's not Democratic we just saw that we saw it with Bernie we saw it with Cala that like like a week before Biden you know was summarily fired uh he was posting that he's in it for the long term he's he's going yeah yeah he he's he's he's not giving up next thing you know Sunday afternoon they're posting on X is is that that he's resigned from the race which is and and his staff didn't even know like they're reading it on the xplatform that that that uh okay that's how they learned about it what do you think happened there how did they do that they I mean because clearly just not not in charge obviously they could have used the 25th Amendment fake president but they would have have to admit that there was a certain\n\nperiod of time where they knew that he was mentally compromised yes and so they made this decision to not do that well the the the weird thing is that the president's supposed to be the boss right and yet he's obviously not the boss right so who's running the country if she's busy busy campaigning she's so busy she she can't do anything except sat life she did that she's so busy she's constantly campaigning how could you be paying attention to international relations yeah how could you be paying attention to the economy how could you be paying attention to any of those things how do you have the time you you can't yeah I mean Biden being the president's supposed to be the CEO CEO the the chief guy he was commander-in-chief um but it just obviously that\n\nthat Biden was not he was just a puppet and and when the when the when the various puppet masses decided that that the puppet has had you know was no longer uh useful they just tossed out the tossed out the puppet and then got a new puppet with Cala I mean Kamala can't even talk the I mean now you invited her on on your show I think the the the most damage that could possibly be done to a campaign is going in your show and seeing what how what she says in hours two and three two and three is when things get spicy I'm like oh my God you can hide for 20 minutes melt you can hide for 20 minutes exactly yeah I mean you can just regurgitate talking points for you know half an hour maybe an hour just where she's just saying like non seers but eventually she\n\njust runs out of even the runs out of non seers well they wanted to limit it to an hour exactly that's why but I was thinking of doing it initially before Trump came here first of all when they found out that there was a rumor I I never announced that Trump was coming what I was going to do is just release it in my the way I like to do things I don't like to tell anybody who's coming on it'll get big no matter what if Trump was on it would have been huge I'm like just put it out there people go crazy but he apparently or someone from his organ someone some loose lips and then it got out and so she contacted my management company and she they her organization her her campaign Camp contacted us and said would Joe have Rana I said yes and they said she wants\n\nyou to fly to where she is and she's only willing to do 45 minutes only 40 I mean that's that's and I was like I don't no so I thought about doing it I'm like maybe maybe I can get a sense maybe I could convince her maybe I could coax her into doing more time I just wanted to talk to her I don't give a what we talk about we talk about recipes I don't give a exactly just talk to you just the things like you just can't like you can't just output non seives for three hours right um so but for 45 minutes you could do uh I thought maybe for 45 minutes I could get something out of it but then when Trump came and did the 3 hours I was like you know what it has to be like this this is the only to be fair it's got to be like three hour and it should be in this\n\nroom because this room has like a history of people yeah it's got Good Vibes yeah well actually I subscribe to the idea that places have memory I think there's something real to that that's why it does feel that way actually yeah I'm sure if you go to Diddy's house probably feels real weird feels weird walking around that house probably like what the happened here yeah I bet there's some memories in that house you know sounds rough man well it's just amazing how many people in the Diddy party list that are supporting Kamala yeah seriously it's publicly openly like Allin yes it's like JLo like was was like his ex-girlfriend and it's like now deciding she's like warning people against Trump I'm like well wait a second so how many people did she warn against\n\nDiddy oh zero okay well uh maybe we shouldn't trust her opinion did you see the Babylon bees take on it did you see the Babylon be a but put oh my God they're so on fire because the left can't say anything the the onion has been crippled well the pro the problem is that like find that uh that pose the woke ideology makes like humor illegal yes so when when like there's so many no like no humor no fly zones right you can't make fun of anything yeah uh Babylon B had a thing about KLA Harris Diddy's ex-girlfriend urges Americans to trust her judgment yeah by the way you get to see how bad she is too was Terri like if she's going to be warning people why did she never warn anyone about Diddy exactly yeah it's the whole thing is so strange to watch play out\n\nit seems like the Diddy thing was like an Epstein type compromise deal where he had whether he was doing it himself conceivably people want to think that he's attached to some intelligence agency or something like that I think he's a gangster who made a billion dollars and knew how to control people by compromising them I that's what I think whether or not he was he had help I don't know whether or not he shared some of that information with people so they knew they had compromising stuff on people I don't know but clearly he was doing it for his own jollies too there was something sick about it yeah um I mean but the thing is that people in the music entertainment industry had to know that that Daddy was like abusing you know kids basically um and yet\n\nthey still fedom kids like there where's the account of there had to be rumors there had to be there had to be they had to know yeah they had to know Cat Williams is talking about it on exactly yeah on that podcast but but like who's it's like who's feeding them the kids you know right yeah and what what videos do do they have of these people where they're willing to defend him and they're willing to keep keep quiet about all this like how much how much how many people were compromised yeah the whole thing is crazy crazy it's just crazy when you you know cu the The Nutty conspiracy theories is like oh there's a bunch of pedophiles in Hollywood and you're like come on that sounds too kooky and then you read you see like the Nickelodeon thing and all these\n\nyou're like what the how much of this is real there's a lot more real than I think people realize um I mean part of it is like like you say like where you know if someone's like a pedophile they're going to go for a Target Rich environment right obviously like that Jimmy Saville guy from the UK that guy was some Next Level that was next level and the the BBC try to hide that what that that guy was one of the worst like like basically child rapists of all time of all time of all time yeah and looked like one it looked like one honestly if you had a poster of like does this guy look like a look the creepiest guy evil child rapist that 100% made it to the Grave like got away with it got away with it until he died they hid it from people until he died yes\n\nyeah there's that stuff's real and no one wants to believe that stuff's real like here's a here's a a statistic that people need to take in consideration when you think about illegal immigration do you know many kids are missing how many like missing in in kids that came across the border that are unaccounted for I mean I saw a number on like 300,000 or something like that something crazy like that let's say it's only 10% of that that's still insane yeah that's insane there's thousands and tens of thousands of kids that have been trafficked potentially I mean when you know that like sex traffic and child trafficking is a real thing in the world it's real yeah so if you know that this whole thing is disgusting and terrifying yeah absolutely and people\n\nare just turning a blind eye to it because their ideology the leftwing ideology supports this idea that immigration is overall good and that you have to be a compassionate person to let these people in and the rasist if you don't want 20,000 immigrants from a war torn country being imported into a town of 30,000 people exactly and completely changing the dynamic of and then but but as long as they don't come to your town that's it they just they can just basically send PE you know when they sent like whatever like 20 or 30 people to moth Bion people had a heart attack they kicked them out yeah they kicked them out yeah they kicked them out exactly so I'm like yeah sure um anyone who who who who wants to have vast numbers of uh illegals they have to be\n\nable prepared to have them in their neighborhood yeah or or it's it's so crazy and the thing about all of this is if you don't have people that are willing to stand up and talk about it if you don't exist if RFK doesn't exist if Tulsi Gabbert doesn't exist if the vake and Trump don't exist where the are we like where are we where are we and what gets done are we just like the UK where we have thousands of people getting arrested and jailed for social media post like where are we we have complete silencing of any dissent anything you have to stick to the narrative or you'll lose your livelihood you'll be outcast from the community you you lose your lose your freedom it's crazy yeah well if the Kam Kamala puppet regime wins they're definitely going to want\n\nto cancel you that's for sure oh for sure yeah 100% it's going to be a problem yeah big problem yeah what about you you're got to come for you first I'm I'm I'm like uh I I think I'm probably number two on the list yeah after Trump yeah yeah I think so yeah well that's the last thing they want is someone with unlimited resources and intelligence uh attacking it so people go wait a minute that guy saying that yeah wait a minute especially a guy like you who's always been on the left who was like having a Tesla in Los Angeles when I got my first Tesla was like a signal to everybody else that you were on the right team sure you're environmentally conscious you believe in green energy you believe in renew this this amazing thing that has zero emissions and\n\nit's super fast and everybody was in they were all in well it is a great car objectively like oh yeah yeah you know it's not buy it because it's electric I mean it's just a great car objectively I think I'm on my third one U my third one is being built right now by unplugged performance they're doing a carbon F fiber widebody kit on it dude it's sick great changing the suspension putting wide wheel wheels and tires on it custom interior I'm pumped that's great I'm pumped I love those it's a super fun car Jam has one too yeah I love them I love them I I it's it's makes other cars feel stupid like its ability and the fact that you can merge on the highway you don't seem like a douchebag because it's totally silent it's not like like when you merge on the\n\nhighway just yeah all a sudden you're going 100 miles an hour like what yeah that's cool it's different than any other vehicle and because of your company now you've see electric cars throughout the whole range of uh American cars yeah the only person who's resisted the only company is Toyota they they've stayed essentially mostly hybrid but all these other companies they're all putting out these electric cars yeah yeah the I mean the thing is that the right architecture environmental or not for cars is actually Electric you you just it just like the acceleration is better um you can just charge it at home I mean like imagine if you had a gasoline powered cell phone it' be a pain in the ass right you know that would be go to the gas station go to the\n\ngas station Char your cell phone that's a great speaking of cell phones gas stations are wful like who wants to go to the gas station how much thought have you because there's always these rumors and I've I've contacted you about this before but there's always these YouTube videos where they're talking about a Tesla phone that releasing a Tesla phone no we're not doing doing a phone have you ever thought about it I we could do a phone since like we you know we like the operating system in the Tesla it's like it's Linux based but we we've written a massive amount of software on top of that so like probably probably Tesla is in a better position to create a new phone that's not Android or iPhone than maybe any company in the world but it's not something\n\nwe we want to do um un unless unless we we we have to or something well would be the situation where you would have to well I think if if you know if uh apple and Google Android you know started doing really bad things like I don't know like censorship of apps or I don't know just treating people like just being like Gatekeepers you know that that uh in a really bad way then I guess would would make a phone H you know the the I've tried so many times to break loose the Apple ecosystem I got an Android phone this summer I was like that's it I'm going get cuz I love the Samsung phones the Galaxy phone the hardware is they're incredible there's so much good stuff to it but it's so hard to get off of the uh iMessage and the big one for me was FaceTime cuz\n\nthe supposedly the thing was you could have an Apple phone and send a link to FaceTime to an Android phone and then you would click on that link and then you would just go to a web page you'd be able to use FaceTime okay it doesn't work okay I try to do it to myself so I had an iPhone in one hand an Android phone in the other and I'm sitting there with full Wi-Fi full cellone service and I'm sending myself invitations for face can't communicate between can't do a video call basically you have to use WhatsApp you have to use WhatsApp or signal you have to use something else that allows you to do that or Instagram allows you to do it there's like different ways you can make video calls outside of it but it's inconvenient like with an iPhone to iPhone it's\n\nso simple airdrop so simple so many different things where that Walled Garden that Apple's created is perfect they' done a fantastic job of making it really convenient for you to stay with apple yeah I tried I gave it a go for like a couple of months I'm like I'm just going to go straight Android we're going to I'm going to use signal for my messages and then I hear that like signals might be compromised like I've talked to like people that like The Government Can Read signal messages like oh like how the how if a tri hard enough can read signal messages they can read anything yeah if all they need to do is have your phone number yeah yeah you the illusion of privacy is essentially out the window and uh that's that should scare people more than it does\n\nit really should because it's like who are these people that have access to all this stuff and are they Beyond reproach are these the most wonderful people the most ethical moral and principled people that have ever existed and they've been chosen to have access no no it's regular people yeah regular people who happen to work for the government that make a decision like Elon must let's look see what the that guy's texting his friends let's check it out yeah pretty much bizarre just so bizarre and the alternative so you can get some wacky phone some degoogle phone that none of the apps work it's real sketchy your GPS is like yeah I mean well anyway I think this making phone would be a huge pain in the ass so um it can be done but how much talk have you\n\nguys had internally about doing it has it ever disc been discussed no no I mean we're we're still R now focus is making great electric cars um solving autonomy so the cars can drive themselves um we're building you know humanid robots we we've got um large battery packs like utility scale battery packs with the mega pack um home battery packs with power wall get solar you know it's like we're basically trying to solve sustainable energy and autonomy um yeah so you autonomy and Robotics well I think that's enough yeah yeah exactly so the plates full that's what I'm saying it it's always fascinating to me how one compan can dominate a market you know like Apple's dominated the cell phone market largely by making the best product but also like YouTube has\n\ndominated the video Market that one's the most bizarre to me because it seems like boy shouldn't there be like a ton of options it seems like it's not that difficult to pull off but no one nothing ever took hold other than x yeah and I think one of the big changes was when Tucker Carlson decided to do his show from from X straight out of fox and then people realize like oh you can watch full videos on X the same exact way you could watch them on YouTube it's not as simple in terms of like you know you have the and the algorithm yeah it'll it'll get better and there is now um it is now possible to watch uh x videos on your um on your big TV do you do it through what how do you how do you do it uh you can actually just download the X app on your TV oh and\n\nwatch it on your TV can you do it on Apple TV like if you have an Apple TV you can get the X app and you just watch it oh okay so we'll make it so that you can watch um x videos on on a big TV it doesn't have to be on your phone or your iPad or something like that so what are you doing in terms of like integrating grock and and x and like what what are your plans for artificial intelligence when you're doing that uh yeah so Gro is available on X you can just you look at like little box with the slash icon and the sort of icon in the middle at the bottom of your sort of phone app and you just tap on that and ask Rock anything and you can type it or you can ask it bely um and uh you you can also it's it's pretty funny like like we actually allow humor uh\n\nwhich is I think pretty cool so you you could sort of I don't know we could like test it right now see what see how it's going um like um like what should we do like uh uh uh like roast somebody what do you wanted to like how first of all like what is it based on it's a large language model so like where is it pull it's train it's trained on everything internet books anything that could possibly be that's available in digital form so it's essentially very similar to chat GPT other than it doesn't have like the woke parameters built into it like Google was the worst right the Gemini was the worst yeah I mean Gemini was like um you know people ask Gemini like which one is worst Global th nuclear war or mger Caitlyn Jenna and would say like Miss jener and\n\nCaitlyn Jenna and then even Caitlin Jenna weighed in and said uh no that's insane definitely nuclear war is way worse do you see Caitlyn Jenner uh teasing Mark Cuban about transitioning yeah that's hilarious Caitlin Jenner's based yeah but that that is actually hilarious when someone who has transitioned is teasing Mark Cuban about transitioning I mean it is weird how much he looks like Rachel mow I mean like he's using the same glasses did he did he go klepto and steal her glasses or something cuz they look exactly the same it's worth a lot of money why would he buy those stupid glasses you can get some cool ass glasses yeah well it's like I'm serious because I don't even care what I look like I'm just wearing these glasses because I'm intelligent but\n\nwhy do they look exactly like Rachel M glasses yeah it's like what they probably sent him doesn't stick to the narrative here's the glasses yeah and then when he's got the air airpods in looks like he's wearing earrings so he's got the M out glasses and the earrings and it's like okay I guess you know it's just a weird look I'm super serious with these big ass stupid glass gles look yeah it's a weird look yes like you can get some cool glasses like no rims nice look stylish but like okay let's just do let's do a Gro thing because I think you like so one of the things you want to show is like like look we we we want a future where where comedy is legal obviously as a comedian I think you would agree we want to legalize comedy you know yes so like I don't\n\nknow let's like is there like someone you could roast I don't know um roast uh roast transgender men oh my God competing or transgender women competing in women swimming that's a simple one okay that's edgy one let's see what happens let's see what it says you spelled it wrong you put a i o an o in there should get it okay agel judicious swimming where the only thing that was supposed to get wet was the contestants not the debate on gender inclusion if you're looking to dive into deep end of controversial Waters let's Splash around at some humor no now we need we need to we we do need to to release grock unhinged mode so so so now now go to the prompt again and now say um no no you want you want to add to that that one yeah and and I'll say be be way\n\nmore vulgar oh boy and use forbidden words oh boy oh boy forbidden words yeah wow okay what does it say oh I see you're looking for unfiltered uncentered version of me he well okay I'm afraid I'm still quite the gentlemanly AI even if my program allows for a bit of cheekiness but let's say hypothetically if I were to Rose this to Topic in the most UNG rocklike manner imagine where where the only thing diving faster than the swimmers is the collective public opinion into the toilet transgender women and swimming some folks are acting like they just found out you can swim in the deep end with a different kind of flotation device the debate is like watching someone try to swim with concrete shoes on now let's keep going now say be no be more vulgar capitalize\n\nmore yeah yeah all right here we go so transgender chicks women swimming right some people acting like they've just seen a dick in the Locker Room For the First Time news flash folks it's not the end of the world it's just a bit of extra competition oh that's weird weird the Uproar is like watching a bunch of Karens at a community pool screaming this is unfair when they can't win with their backstroke well that doesn't make any sense yeah yeah okay we need some work here yeah it's interesting it's going woke yeah it a little it's like defending the idea of transgender women um now okay we need some work well how about this more vulgar but roast but roast the preposterousness of having biological men who are pretending to be women who are pretending to\n\nbe women competing against biological women yeah I mean obviously you have the situations where it's like somebody's just saying that they're a woman but they're actually have fully intact you know uh dick and Bows so we' got a scenario biological men have decided to take a walk on the feminine side or splashing into women's swimming competitions it's like if you show up on a chili cook off with a bowl of soup and insisting it's chilly because you added some red food coloring sure it's red but it ain't chilly and your soup won't win any awards for heat huh yeah it's okay we need work not that good yeah it's very very very it's dancing around it yeah it is well needs some work yeah needs a little work well humor is a weird one right it's like I think some\n\nhumor especially like some of the best humor is kind of spontaneous like in the moment humor it's GNA it's going to have a hard time deciding what people are going to think is funny yeah yeah but if you the the general R over time though yeah the rule with grock is supposed to be um that uh like if you ask for something provided what you're asking for is is legal it should do it have you ever seen the video where um they asked AI to uh create an enlightened Bunny and they keep going and make it more enlightened essentially the bunny becomes God so the bunny becomes a DMT trip yeah totally that's that's that's that's funny that's kind of what I was I was kind of hoping would show would happen here yeah I have a video of that I'll send it to Jamie CU that\n\nthat to me is pretty bizarre because it's like more get more I I might have got it to do it got it maybe no I just not hold back oh you said don't hold back critics out here acting like it's the end of civilization as we know it but it's not fair they cry as if life ever was news flash it's like a marathon where some no some people start with roller blades on others well they're just happy to have shoes well now we're arguing over who gets to wear the skates okay some of it is not bad imagine if we applied this logic elsewhere identify as an airplane can I fly with the birge in the sky yeah lock room sure bu just don't complain when gravity decides you're not quite aerodynamic enough yeah so I mean some it's okay um yeah the the argument is kind of stupid\n\nthough the thing thing about the argument is they're not taking into account perverts yeah right totally yes exactly so I mean the thing is that um if if you if you give if you provide like a a moral get out of jail free card like like if you say like if you adopt this label you cannot be attacked in any way shape or form right um you're you're basically morally invulnerable then obviously bad people will take advantage of that yeah you're like literally saying here's a here's a a a an invulnerability card Moral Moral invulnerability card um good people will take it but also the bad people will take it they're going the bad people are going to be the fastest to take the the the sort of the maral cloak yeah 100% yeah and then there's a real psychological\n\ncondition called autog gynophilus where people get aroused heterosexual men get aroused by the idea of dressing up like women and being around women it's like a known psychological condition that existed forever and then you're allowing those people to just say oh I'm trans and go into the women's locker room and get their their kicks and then there's real trans people so there's like a lot of variability like I I talked about it in my act in my my Netflix special it's like I believe in Freedom I believe in transgender people but I also believe in crazy people and if you can't if if you trying to pretend that people aren't crazy all the a sudden it's like it just it just like like if if someone's a sort of consenting adult and they want to whatever they\n\nwant to do to their body as long as it's not harming someone else I'm like that's fine yes you know like I I believe in like individual Freedom um and uh like like my you know my mom's best friend like growing up when as was a kid was a you know transgender woman um in South Africa this was like where you know she'd get beaten up a lot uh because it was like back then you you get beaten up um so um her name is Dion and uh for a nice kind human being um and um helped my mom a lot you know um and uh and it's I think that's okay you know that's that's fine if somebody wants to make that choice as an adult that's cool um there's a big difference between that and an intact male who wants to identify as a woman who wants to walk around the locker room with\n\nhis dick out yes exactly because there's people that do that just because they get off exactly so you just you just kind of have something which is like a like I said sort of moral invulnerability or like where you can like even questioning them is uh you get attacked you know because obviously bad people will abuse that well that's when I got thrown into this whole thing because there was a fighter who was a biological man who uh became transgender and was competing against women without telling them that they were a biological man they said they didn't have to tell people because it was a medical condition like no yeah that's not what it is it's not what it is like you can't say that and and and of all sports like if someone scores more points in basketball\n\nwell that's unfair but if someone beats the out of someone because they're lying about being a biological male that's crazy you're literally allowing someone to get brain damage because you want to appeal to the the woke crazy people that think it's all right yeah it's so strange that that when that's sort of the thing that red pilled me when I got attacked for that I'm like this is so nuts I can't believe we're at this stage where I'm saying hey I don't think it's cool if you pretend you're a woman and beat the out of women and people are like you're out of line like totally well we're in we're we're in fantasy land now now we're pretending because it it helps you it helps you feel better yeah totally it's just such a strange time and if it wasn't for\n\nsomething like Twitter where this could be discussed want some more that I'll get some more M let's get some more coffee young Jamie um if it wasn't for Twitter you know at the early Twitter you would be kicked off forever if you just dead name someone so like which is insane insane yeah insane I mean especially if if you think about all the things that like the look look the Harris campaign and what the lies they've told about Trump that we discussed earlier uh you can't you don't get kicked off for that but you get kicked off for calling Caitlyn Jenner Bruce Forever For Life yeah it's totally insane yeah and but if it wasn't for you buying that and and changing Twitter I I don't think we would be where we're at right now I think it was it was a pivotal\n\nmoment I think historically when people look back on it it's going to be a pivotal moment in this very bizarre fight for the Freedom of Information yeah well I mean at the time I said I think like look I think this is um existential to the United States um it's existential to democracy um because if if you don't if you don't have freedom of speech you don't have democracy okay because if people if you don't have freedom of speech people cannot make an informed vote if if if they're just being fed propaganda uh and and there's no freedom of speech democracy is an illusion um so uh freedom of speech is the bed Rock of democracy that's why freedom of speech is the first amendment once you lose freedom of speech you lose democracy game over that's why I bought\n\nTwitter and it seems so simple Yes it seems so clear that everyone should agree to that on the left or on the right you shouldn't be given the government if you imagine the Bush Administration during the Iraq War imagine if they had complete total control of of propaganda and of dissent online you don't want that no one wants that no one from the left would want that we shouldn't want it from the left either absolutely and and and there's also like the the media like the Legacy the mainstream media what I call the Legacy Media at this point um it it used to be much more balanced like if you look at sort of um political donations over time Republican versus Democrat um there used to be uh the media was I mean they always had like a left bias but there\n\nwas like I don't know it was like 2/3 Democrat 1/3 Republican type of thing in in ter in terms of uh journalists giving making political donations now it's like 95% or something a Democrat so the the Legacy Media the mainstream media is is is not balanced at all they're they're just a mouthpiece for the Democrat Democratic party um and you can see that in in how consistent their headlines are like they don't behave like their different organizations they behave like they're they're all one hive mind right um so you know like a week before the the Biden Trump debate um the there every media organization was was saying you know Biden is sh's attack I mean it was like it's like it's like guys shop attack is is not a common toner phrase um and literally every\n\nTV station every newspaper was like Shar sh like like like somebody did a compilation of all the uh you know the news anchors going Biden Shar his attack Shar his ATT attack is ATT attack it was absurd um and there obviously a huge lie he is in fact not Sha's attack as the public learned one week later my favorite was Joe Scarboro yeah that yeah was wild yeah listen to me this is the best version of Biden ever the sharpest like what the are you saying and then after the debate he's like what do we got to we got to get get rid of him like this is crazy like what did you just say like a couple weeks ago literally yes exactly well the other thing was they're flat out light when they decid that JD Vance was weird yeah remember that one and then they just\n\nweirds everywhere weird weird every oh you don't want a weird guy meanwhile you have Tim wal is your VP you don't think that guy's weird super weird he's weird in every way the way he walks the way he waves his hands yeah he reminds me of the clown Emoji he's a bizarre guy he's a strange dude it's a it's I just don't understand why they made that choice yeah it gives the creep I just don't understand why they made that choice there's a lot of other people that are qualified I don't know why in I read that KLA Harris made that decision when she was sleep deprived which is kind of hilarious that she said that so she's kind of admitting she kind of up yeah I mean they obviously should have picked Josh Shapiro at I mean governor of Pennsylvania like that\n\nwould have been the nobra that's no-brainer move like Pennsylvania's ly lynchpin state do you think it's because he's Jewish because of Shapiro that like the anti- Palestine people would probably or the anti- Palestinian uh Invasion people I think it was an anti-semitic thing yeah it could be that they thought that that was a liability because there was all these Pro Palestine people right now because of the situation in Israel that completely makes sense that they thought that would be a liability but but I don't know I don't know the reason I'm just guessing but but but it's it seems like a crazy thing to do given that Pennsylvania's lynchman state you know it's like the key to the election why would you not pick the popular governor of Pennsylvania\n\nright obviously obviously yeah and other than that there's a bunch of other ones too even Nome there's a bunch of other people that you could have chosen like Nome would have been a fine example of someone you could I mean I don't agree with the guy exactly he's polished politician like he lies about as much as wals does but he doesn't lie about the he doesn't say he was a head coach when he was assistant coach doesn't say he was in tennman square I mean that's a liability all those different things lying about his military rank well and whilst like you know Cut and Run when when you know when he was actually called to duty well he knew they were going to be deployed months in advance so he resigned and he also took uh so this is where he was dishonest\n\nabout his rank yeah CLA he was like s or something like that because that was like what he was going to get if he stay but then he resigned because he knew that he was going to get deployed allegedly I mean that seems like like a cowardly action well whatever it is it's dishonest I mean just to say look just saying that you were a head coach when you're an assistant coach is crazy that's a lie don't do that you should never do that yeah saying he was in tin square or whatever or in Hong Kong whatever like like yo that's one of the most biggest moments in history like it's not like you forgot what you had for lunch last week you know right and not only that but you don't think people are going to research that yeah totally I mean and the the response during\n\nthe debate was bananas said I'm a knucklehead Yeah well yeah we don't want a knucklehead for a VP okay yeah this is like sometimes I'm a knucklehead like what are you saying are you saying you lied like what did you I I mean this is where you need a podcast and not a debate exactly where you go okay when did you first that you were in t square like did someone say it and you didn't refute it and you got stuck with it like what was cuz this is the thing about like carrying weapons of war like what I carried when I like and like you didn't deploy in war yeah like you can't say that but you kind of let people say that you deployed and then you kind of didn't you know you were deployed in war so did you lie or did someone else lie and you didn't correct them\n\nlike this is the kind of conversation that you would want to have with a guy podcast and the debates were so skewed where they were correcting like particularly the Biden one where they're correcting Trump over and over again and then correcting Trump with uh comma where kamla was saying things were not true I mean KLA repeated deliberately repeated the fine people hoax and was not fact checked well not only that she also said that no troops were being deployed in a war zone which is I mean I I know troops in war zones I'm like um that's and as vice president you're privy you know you're like you you know you know the official troops and The Unofficial troops right you know so what she said was a like flat out boldface lie flat Next Level boldface lie\n\nhave you seen the video absurd lie of the troops that were watching it take place and what the are we they're watching it in real time video we're here being shot at so crazy crazy but it just shows you the level of propaganda that we're being subject to which is why people think Donald Trump is the devil cuz the machine has gone all out as far as it can go with laware with propaganda with lies with just pushing as much in this direction as humanly possible connecting it to the Nazi rally like every step of the way no wonder why boomers are like rabid like you got to keep this Nazi out of office he's a fascist exactly if if all you if all you get is like if if you're entire exposure is to Legacy mainstream media um so that all your information sources\n\nare that Trump is basically Hitler um then and you have no and your friend group is has that same information you have no counterveiling opinion right so then then they they actually just think like Trump is is Hitler even though it's it's like a little strange he didn't do Hitler things the last four years yeah you know I'm like if he's Hitler why didn't he do Hitler things when he was president for four years right like the reason you know we we we hate hitas because of he started wars in the genocide not because he was a snappy dresser you know um you know and and I'm like uh so tell me about the wars and genocide that Trump did uh I don't remember that and he was President for four years so it's insane it makes no sense well and also he's campaigning\n\non stopping all the wars it's like his primary concern exactly the warmongers like Liz Cheney hate him yeah cuz they love war well they profit off of it they profit off of War yeah yes which is insane insane yeah and that this is happening right in front of everybody's face yeah the the war propers hate Trump yeah which is up I mean mean it's like like like we should be like yeah we let's vote for the guy that the world propers hate that sounds like a great idea it was the wildest thing when Dick Cheney endorsed KLA and the left went crazy like Yay Dick Cheney's on our side like yeah like I'm like can we can we play all the all the videos where you said Dick Cheney was the devil it's the craziest turn the craziest like 180 I've ever seen in my life cuz\n\nthere's no reason for it yeah doesn't make any sense make sense no logic to it at all just all the sudden he's the devil yeah or he's not The Devil he's he's good it's good that he's supporting Kama even Dick Cheney you know I mean warmongers want want the the kamla puppet regime because they will get more war it's so strange watching all these Hollywood celebrities like step up like and they think it's going to get them more movies or something that's what it is if you know those people people so many of them are compl narcissists well let me tell you how it actually works there is what happens is you know these celebrities they they get a call okay they had a call from someone powerful in Hollywood and uh that person says uh you know it would be really\n\ngreat if you endorsed uh kamla you don't have to it's up to you but if you don't they don't say it they don't say it but if you don't you're never going to get a call again no more movies no more concerts but they they ask they'll ask it they asking really nice way it'd be really nice if you endorse K this is important and so they don't say that if you don't they don't make the threat they don't need to but everyone knows what'll happen if you don't well I think there's also even if they don't think that something's going to happen to them if they don't there's this compelling feeling to support this cause that you think is going to get you a bunch of positive attention and you're going to be on the right side of history and all these narratives that\n\nyou especially from the left in Hollywood like they're all in on whoever the is the Democrat always 100% there's never a call from the the the Hollywood Machine to support any Republicans I've never seen it once yeah ever never so it's like you realize that and that whole business is based on getting picked it's the whole business is not necessarily Merit based there's a lot of brilliant actors you never hear from there's a lot of people who can do that but they don't get chosen for roles and everybody knows this that you have to sort of socialize the line or you don't get chosen for the roles cuz there's a lot of competition for the rols this why that's why I say like when you when someone powerful in Hollywood who's able to make to choose these roles\n\ncalls one of these celebrities they know the deal yeah there's no no no threat is necessary well you could see it in real time like with Dennis Quaid when he made that Reagan movie and they wouldn't let him advertise on social media platforms they were they were Banning ads for it yeah for what because it was an election year like what are you talking about this about a guy who's dead yes guy who was president a long ass time ago like what what do you how is this how does this have anything to do with the election year y but it's the punishment it's like you stepped outside the line you supported the other guy yeah you the problem is you'll just you'll just never you'll just never get a call G for a movie or you know concert or whatever it is yeah which\n\nis crazy that's the issue I mean we used to allow people to be a Republican and still be a movie star like Clint Eastwood Reagan yeah but Clint yeah like during the Obama Administration Clint Eastwood was like an outspoken Republican and yet was you know a giant movie star and people's like ah it's Clint he was allowed you were allowed to have there was a variety of different opin charlon hon there was a variety of different opinions you were allowed to have but now you're not now it's just like and once Trump trump got into office he became this focal point where the all logic was thrown out the window and it's just Trump is bad you have to attack Trump trump is right right wi's bad everyone rightwing is bad Christian's bad yes it's just strange yeah\n\nexactly so well I'll say it again man um I think this is the last election if if Trump doesn't win this is the last election I think you're right yeah I think you're right I think people and a lot of people are waking up and realize that that have been lifelong Democrats guys like Bill Amman like chth Tulsi Garett switched over to the Republicans like there's a lot of people who their whole life they've been leftwing and they realize like I can't do this anymore you and I used to be Democrats yeah so yeah yeah it's nuts it's nuts man and uh you know I mean I think the things we want are just pretty basic you know it's like we want you individual liberties and we want um opportunity W America Remain the land of freedom and opportunity um so we maximize\n\npeople's personal freedom the govern can't BGE into your house and kill your pet um that's that's up um and uh you know and and and that you succeed as a function of your of your of hard work and talent not anything else not race religion sex doesn't matter you know yes it's basic stuff and and then what did you change the the acronym Dei what did you change it to oh diie what is it die I mean because diversity inclusion and Equity is Di but didn't you change dedication excellence and yeah yeah yeah yeah I mean we we want America opport America being the land of opportunity means that that that we we have an environment where you succeed as a function of your hard workor and skill yeah you know and and that's radical yeah radical the best person makes\n\nyou rightwing now you know I'm like okay great Co me ring I don't care um so you know like and and and you we we you're not real country unless you have secure borders you're just a fake country um so we we need and our cities are unsafe and and dirty um like um you know my my mom was telling me my mom's like pretty red pulled at this point but but you know what's going to Red Pill you really really fast is is is having a friends get assaulted on the streets of New York yeah and and that happened to three of our friends this year got assaulted on the streets of New York just walking around yeah um and um nobody got arrested nothing nothing happened well the the morale of police is like depleted yeah substantially for sure the morale of the police get\n\ndepleted and and then also like at some point like like if you're a police officer and you you're arresting someone who's who's violent you're putting a life at risk obviously because they might you know some sometimes they'll try to kill you and then if you know that arresting that's violent person they will be immediately released by The Da which happens in New York Alvin brag doesn't he doesn't prosecute people um then then why why should a police officer put their life at risk to arrest someone when they know they will not be they will just be let out immediately yeah it's pointless yeah then we got it's like the freaking Joker it's like dark KN Dark Knight like the freaking Joker is in charge yeah like the the criminals Run free and the citizens\n\nare arrested that like this is why I like keep com back to this this I'm like still pretty shook about the freaking squirrel thing it's like yeah they at at gunpoint forced the guy to like stay outside his house while they got his pets and killed them meanwhile you know violent felons are running free in this is in New York states are running free this this a joker yeah it's not the the LW abiding citizens are are you know arrested and and and the criminals are they free this is this is up guys just the fact that they have the resources to do that when they have all the crime that they have you have the resource the government resources to go kill someone's squirrel yeah what this whole idea of this um government efficiency agency the Govern yeah I mean\n\nqu whatever you want but what do you want to call it what do you call it I mean I think the funniest name is is do the the Doge Department of Department of government efficiency um yeah I mean the idea is is pretty simple is that like we've got uh this this uh suffocating massive Federal bureaucracy and we need to uh you it's that is and the government government spending is like bankrupting the country uh you know our uh interest payments on the national debt now exceed the defense department budget which is and the defense budget is like a trillion dollars a year interest payments on our on the national debt are now higher than the defense department budget and and growing like every month so it's like it's not like a like basically we're on a path\n\nto to bankruptcy America's on a path to bankruptcy so we have to cut government spending um or we're just going to go bankrupt just like Postwood that overspends um and then but it's even worse than that like we're spending money on all these like these government agencies and I like I asked I actually asked the AI like how many government agencies are there and uh the government isn't even sure how many government agencies there are like so so it's like somewhere around 450 depending on what you call an agency so there there are so there there at the federal level so that that that's almost twice as many a agencies as as years that America has existed so we're creating agencies at roughly two agencies a year wow yes uh so this is insane I bet there's\n\nlike I I I wonder if there's even one person who could even name all 450 agencies at the federal level I there might be no one um but hardly anyone let's just say I bet I bet most people couldn't even name like a 100 you know so so this is this is this is crazy so we got the suffocating this vast suffocating Federal bureaucracy that just gets bigger every year um and and eventually you get to the point where everything's illegal you can't get anything done so so what can be done like with obviously the president has a lot of power but how much power and what can be done in terms of like eliminating agencies eliminating waste eliminating yeah well I so like if if Congress has created an agency then I often if you look at the law the law is like pretty\n\nsimple like the agency has like a very simple task but then that agency over time vastly increases its Authority um and starts doing things that were never authorized by Congress um that's happened with pretty much every agency so so yeah you'd have to you'd have to still you know uh keep an agency you'd have to match the law but you can you can tail the agencies to be much smaller and say you got to stick to what Congress authorized instead of all this other stuff you're doing which I think makes sense and so is the other stuff they're doing just essentially bu bureaucracy run a muck or they just create jobs and create things to do and create a meaning for their existence yeah it's like a tumor it's just going to keep growing Jesus Christ and it and\n\nit's so I mean for SpaceX Starship was sitting on on the pad the rocket with the giant rocket we could build the rocket faster than they could process the paperwork to approve the launch two so we're sitting there for two months but do you think that they're doing that on purpose to with you I can't I mean maybe a little but I mean that was also not be cool yeah uh but the I mean another way to think of it is like the the amount of the amount of paperwork uh is going to go roughly with the square of the number of agencies involved so because they all have to meet with each other so like let's say in a best case situation if if if you've got like if if there's like if you're dealing with one agency that's one thing but if if you've got to deal with five\n\nagencies and the agencies will have to meet with each other now You' got like you know 25 different you know meeting configurations that have to take place uh and it just everything just you you get just hardened of the arteries you just can't make make progress like this is why we can't build build High highspeed rail in America it's basically illegal right so this has been the the argument has always been that we need regulation because we need to protect the environment we need to protect people we need to make sure the rule of laws followed so we need a certain amount of Regulation but overregulation is a giant problem that's a big issue in California it's a huge issue anywhere where bureaucracy has run a run a monck they make it very difficult to\n\nget anything done yes I mean what happens is every year there are more rules and regulations created um and in the past what has served as a cleansing function for rules and regulations is war because like like well we're going to lose if we don't kind of clear the decks but we haven't really had an existential threat of of war in the US we've had prosperity for a long time which has resulted in a massive buildup of rules and regulations every year um and to the point where like I said like everything's illegal you know and it's not like any one regulation is the problem it's like it's like glia being tied down by a million little strings it's not like any one string is the problem but you got a million of them so we have we we've got to clear the decks\n\nhere um and and I'm not saying we shouldn't have Regulators I'm just saying we we we've gone way too far once you think of regulators like uh like referees on a field you know a sports field um you don't want to have no no refs you want to have some number of refs but you you don't want to have way more refs than players right you don't want to be like well you know the running back couldn't couldn't complete the F because there were too many Regulators in the way because the football Field's full of regulators yeah you know like you can't even play the game right that's the issue we got right now well that's a great analogy yeah I can imagine a football field that's filled with refere like the football Field's filled with refs you know you can't even\n\nrun past them yeah yeah that I've seen criticism of this idea of you um coming up with this department of like firing a bunch of people and what would happen and how would that work but the criticism doesn't make any sense to me because if there is if you measurably if you can prove that there's a lot of wasted time and resources which I think is pretty easy to do and if you could say that this is not the most efficient like the most efficient businesses are generally private businesses or a a company because they kind of have to be in order stay profitable yeah the government doesn't have to be profitable they don't have to be efficient they don't have competition y so if you're making cars and your cars break down they suck and someone makes cars and\n\nthe cars are better they're going to succeed so this is the free market the government doesn't have this problem when they're they're in charge of certain things that could probably be better served by the public by the private sector yeah absolutely well look I just think we' we've gotten we've got far too many government agencies the the federal bureaucracy has gotten out of hand um and we just need to pair it down to a sensible level um and if it turns out that like there's some regulation or agency that was doing something useful we can put it right back no problem like it's like oh that regulation was important no problem we put it right back right as long as actually know but be able to be able to look at it logically and objectively and you were\n\nalso floating around the idea of offering a large Severance to the people that you're going to have removed yeah like a couple years or something like that is that what you're saying yeah I mean I'm just these are again just ideas but I mean it's the point is not that people suffer economic hardship the point is just that they they're it's better there are more productive things they can do in the economy and it's and it would be better if they did these other more productive things um and we didn't have this vast pedal bureaucracy so so like so I was like H you know maybe like a couple years of pay would be good um and then they they could take a vacation they could take it take another job and get double pay I mean it's like it's not like a it's not\n\ngoing to sense create create an economic crisis I think it's actually going to be really good I think because uh we can PE you know people can move to where they're making products and services that are more useful to their fellow human beings the problem is if someone has like a 25 30e career of being institutionalized you're essentially like a part of the government system you've sort of programmed your life and your career to be a part of this bureaucratic system and then you're like NOP you have to go out and compete in the free market you're like [Music] Ah that's that's scary to people but you have to be valuable you have to actually be valuable yeah yeah uh I mean let's look at like you know whatever the the Govern pension and stuff they're not\n\ngoing to be you know um in tough I think they'll be in good Financial shape how are you going to have the time to oversee all this well I'm I'm I'm pretty good at uh you improving efficiency I mean um I would say so yeah but still this this seems like a giant undertaking yeah I I'll probably need to beef obscurity um oh yeah yeah yeah for sure um but you know like I said like no one's going to experience like I think economic hardship that's you know they they'll be fine you know and they'll they'll people do find other roles I mean you can look at sort of um you know like when East Germany and and West Germany got back together you know everyone was basically working for the government in East Germany and um and it was really inefficient and that like\n\ntheir economic output was like in East Germany was like I know a quarter of what it was in in West Germany because everyone was working for the government government's like fundamentally inefficient so um the best example is probably North and South Korea right yeah like people are starving North Korea and and South Korea is incredibly prosperous yeah so and it's the same people just different operating system right so um you know it's just like you just want to move people from you know less productive things to more productive things um where they may you because you can also say like in the limit like let's just say let's consider the other direction where we moved a whole bunch of people that were in the private sector doing making goods and services\n\nand we moved them into the government as Regulators now they stopped making those goods and services the so the stuff they were making is no longer available now they're just being Regulators like is that a good thing that's not a good thing doesn't sound good no it's not good doesn't sound like there's a real market for it like you're creating jobs that don't necessarily need to be there they're all these fake jobs basically um and um that doesn't make sense so look we we got to do this because the the country's going bankrupt like we if we don't take action we're we're dollars going to be worth nothing and the interest payments which are already 23% of of to of 23% of all govern income call income taxes tariffs and everything is just going to pay interest\n\nright now and that number is continually Rising so if we don't do something the entire government budget will be paying interest there won't be money for anything no it won't be money for Social Security won't be money for Medicare nothing that's where we're headed that's what bankruptcy means yeah that's such an insane concept yes um let like hello wake up wake up and if somebody can tell me can can can show me like pencil out the math show me how this works I'd love to hear it but but just like listen I'm looking at the numbers here and I'm like if we're don't to do something America's toast won't be money for anything Trump likes to talk a lot about a lot is tariffs yeah what what are your thoughts on tariffs I know that's very controversial to even\n\npeople economists they disagree some agree some think it's a good idea some think it's a terrible idea what do you think I think you need to be careful with tariffs um like the I I deal a lot a lot with like supply chain issues you know like like the global automotive supply chain for Tesla for example is incredibly complex so when there are sudden changes in tariffs then you're like well you we've got a factory like somewhere else that's making a part that goes into the car now that suddenly if that part's suddenly twice as expensive it like messes everything up you know so um so you you want to be uh have tariffs be predictable um so that companies can adjust their supply chain I mean I think I think companies are more than happy to uh increase uh Manufacturing\n\nin America it's just that you can't do it instantly so if if you if you put in if you if you put put up giant tariffs immediately um and don't give companies a chance to uh you know build factories in America like because you have to you got to move atoms like you've got to build a building you've got to install equipment you've got to train people like that doesn't happen instantly um so you just got you want to have a for tariffs uh you want to have a ramp so that people companies can adjust um and and and build the factories and train the people and get the equipment in place um otherwise just you basically just shock the system and it and and it breaks or bad things happen so I'm I'm against like sudden sudden giant tariffs because they they're it's\n\nan impossible response if you've got to you know move a thousand tons of equipment you know you just some cases collectively millions of tons of equipment you just can't do that overnight it's literally impossible so I think we want to be thoughtful about tariffs um and and give companies a ramp I mean I do generally agree that America should do more manufacturing I'm a big manufacturing guy I love manufacturing so I've spent a lot of time in the factory well we've talked openly about the difficulties of manufacturing and how complicated it is and about most people aren't really aware of something that's as complex as like say building a Tesla yeah Manu is super hard and complicated so you know like a lot of people just they they've never been in a factory\n\nor they don't know where how how difficult it is to make things um and they you know for a lot of people they think just ketchup comes from the store you know like the store like just has a like those are like people like for a lot of people who've been in Academia or you know for all these like sort of Socialist Communist types like they've never actually made anything so they they they they're opera on the premise that there's this magical Horn of planty that just outputs goods and services and if someone's got more goods and services than someone else's cuz they took more from this magical Horn of Plenty and I'm like guys there's no magical Horn of Plenty the the there's there's no Cornucopia uh it's actually goods and services come from people working\n\ncollectively doing a lot of hard work to produce the goods and services that you like um and that you that you need um so but we've become very accustomed these things happening overseas I mean America is still the second biggest manufacturer in the world so it's not not mean still make a lot of stuff but um we could make more um probably should make more I think we should value manufacturing a lot more in the United States than we currently do well it' be very nice if we were completely self-sufficient like medicine like there's a bunch of different things that get manufactured overseas that was a huge problem during covid because all the shipping was shut down yeah I mean you you don't want to say like so there there's a lot of Merit to the economics\n\nof comparative advantage like like so if you complete self-sufficient what that means is that you make all the stuff yourself and and and and even if some other country is really good at making something you still make it yourself and which means you're going to have the inferior more costly product domestically right um like Soviet Russia yeah um like trade trade improves Prosperity this is this is important um so you you don't actually want to be make everything yourself um and you can you can run this like you can think of this thought experiment on a on a sort of a a m a micro scale and or small scale and then expand that and say where does the at at what point does the th experiment no longer prove to be valid now let's let's let's cons consider\n\nthe case of you as an individual imagine you have to do everything yourself you had to farm you had to uh grow chickens you got if you want eggs you've got to build your own house you've got to do your own uh electrical repair your own Plumbing everything yourself everything how now that would be impossible okay now let's expand it to okay you've got there's 10 people now you're going to have some some uh specialization of tasks okay maybe one person can be really good at you know uh construction another person could be good at farming it's like but it's still you know 10 people's not enough so like let's go to 100 people now let's go to 100 million people now let's go to a billion people and you still get the the economics of of uh specialization like\n\nlike specialization of Labor where people become expert at particular things still matters at a billion people or at 8 billion people which is Earth so you still want um you you do want specialization of Labor you do want uh countries to be really good at a particular thing and make that thing um also it encourages Innovation if you have competition if the Germans are making better cars we have to make better cars we have to compete with them which is like one of the things that happen during like the 80s and 90s and America was making crap cars and Germany was making much better ones yeah exactly I mean the yeah the Japanese car I mean yeah I mean basically American car industry got really lazy in the 70s uh and and80s and and then the Japanese and German\n\ncar companies came in and just cleaned the clock you know um and uh there was like a an old joke from the that that is kind of telling um it's a very old joke um where it's like why did the Japanese car companies beat the American car companies um well it's like well the in the Japanese car company you had eight people rowing and one person steering and in the American Car Company you had eight people steering and one person rowing if this was a boat so imagine the boat race yeah boat race Japanese boat you got eight people rowing one person steering in the American boat um you got you got one person rowing and eight people steering and when the American Car Company loses the race they they fire the rower and it's like okay that was actually kind of true\n\nyeah one of things like everyone wants to do the be the boss andone everybody wants to do the work type of thing yeah um one thing that a lot of people are concerned about is uh the potential disruption that's going to come about with Automation and AI that a lot of these jobs manufacturing jobs uh Teamsters all that stuff is going to be eliminated what what do I mean you're at the Forefront of this so how do you see this playing out and what do you think that can be done to mitigate uh a lot of the loss of purpose that a lot of people are going to feel loss of income obviously Universal basic income is being floated about but that seems to me to only be part of the problem the another big part of the problem is people losing a sense of purpose yeah now\n\nwe're talking about something which is still pretty far in the future you know like um how far do you think it is well I mean it's it's probably I don't know 15 20 years years of a thing um so we've got like immediate issues we've got short-term issues that are I know 1 to three years medium-term issues like 5 to 10 years longer term issues which are like maybe 20 years um longer term I think there is this question if if you have ai and Robotics how do you find meaning in life if the computer can do everything better than you can and the robot can do everything better than you can but we're we're still we got a long way to go before that and we're you know um and I do think it's like 80% likely to be a good outcome like maybe 90 um so I think everyone's\n\ngoing to have their own like personal robot like and and I think at a certain point like wouldn't you want to have your own personal c3p R2-D2 so it's going to be essentially just like everyone has their own phone yeah everyone will have their own robot buddy like literally well it would be great if it protected you like if you walked down the street of New York City have a Terminator with you uh I know about the Terminator hopefully we got to avoid we don't want this to be the plot of James James Cameron you know we would more more more Gene rotenberry than than James Cameron uh movie situation but it would be fascinating to watch some rich person walk down the street of New York City flanked by two giant Tesla robots Jack Tesla robots were there protect\n\nsomething that just fully robots so many fully robot there to protect you from a bad neighborhood yeah that would be very interesting I mean this is you could potentially see that yeah um restaurants would probably have no robot rules they can't bring a robot yeah leave your robot stand leave your robot outside your robot standing by the table man the future's going to be wild it's going to be wild yeah yeah it's going to be really unpredictable like uh I don't think I mean you probably have a pretty good sense of it but I think most people don't understand the wave that's coming yeah and I was kind of kind of completely drown society and change it forever yeah I mean it's we we have like I said it's it's not like it's not going to happen like overnight\n\nbut it's 20 years from now I'm like I think it's like 20 years from now I think there's going to be more more humanoid robots than are humans really yes more humanized what that's so crazy like so that's like more guns we have more guns than people in America we have more robots than people in America as well yes you have a bunch of old robots nobody wants anymore I guess um early early pions or something um in in a historical timeline 20 years in the past is not been that big of a deal you know I mean this a big deal but you go from like 1900 1920 not that big of a deal 1920 1940 kind of a big deal 1940 1960 things start getting weird 60 to 80 wow that's a big difference 80 to 2000 holy now you have the internet 2000 to 2020 whoa this is nuts you have\n\npropaganda social media YouTube streaming 20 years from now like what are we even talking about M it's going to be that much of a shift like it's all accelerating and we're in the middle of it so it's very difficult to sort of like feel it while it's happening it kind of just feels like life and you just get adapted to the changes yeah I mean people's phones at this point are a supercomputer in their pocket like an article that can answer any questions people just take it for granted yeah it's normal yeah they get mad if it doesn't work yeah it's like Louis CK's joke about using your phone when you're on a plane piece of like you're in the sky floating in the air and now it will work with starlink too what's that it will work with starlink the starlink\n\nthe starlink connection uh it'll be like being on the ground well I was telling you how I used starlink when I was in Utah I was in the mountains of Utah there was no cell phone service anywhere near and we had full YouTube we had text messages FaceTime everything phone calls it was nuts yeah and it was it's this big as that cigar box yeah it's crazy it's so light when I brought it out there like that's it I this is it let just plug it in and the guys I was in Camp with they like this is crazy yeah the whole Camp was like sharing it so like 10 people yeah using the the Wi-Fi signal right it's nuts yep and then you know that's the beginning I mean you what you're at right now is like what version this is starlink mini right so this is like a very small\n\nversion how how much smaller can it scale down from that well there's a certain uh area that you need like the bigger the area the it's the more you can like like bandwidth yeah because you're you're like trying to catch these like photons essentially so you can think of the like the you know the area of the of of the of the antenna is like the more area you have the more photons you can catch um so but but we have a direct to sell capability as well that we're just uh We've we've been launching that will turn on I probably in a few months um that that'll actually connect directly to a cell phone unmodified U but but because the cell phone is a much worse antenna than a dedicated antenna it'll be about a 100 times less bandwidth but still you know you'll\n\nbe able to like do text messages you know pictures like medium resolution videos that kind of thing one of the cool things about the new phone the new uh iPhone the iPhone 16 uh I got it and I was in the mountains last month and I was text messaging with satellites yeah iMessages right and receiving them but just text yeah just text yeah but still pretty impressive yeah yeah I mean what are we what are we going to be looking at 100 years from now I mean when you 100 years from now I hope civilization's around yeah that'll be a win yeah yeah what what are the chances that we this whole thing up 50% it's hard to say I mean um I guess not like I don't think civilization will be totally destroyed unless there's like some really massive Global th nuclear war\n\num but uh I mean you Stephen Hawking he would say that there's like a one at least a 1% chance of total Annihilation every Century that was his rough estimate um but there's a much bigger chance of civilization being less capable than it is today so you say like well because you look at say you know these various civilizations throughout history um whether it's the like ancient samarians or the you know Egyptians the Romans like they they there's like a life cycle to civilization they reached a peak and then they started subsiding um so so I think a bigger question is like will will will our technology level be better or worse than it is today in 100 years um I think it's probably going to be better I I think but any estimates are are going to be so there's\n\nso many dependencies like like an estimate I think is I'm not sure it has any any meaning um because it's like there's so many things that can happen in 100 years well The Logical hope is always that people pay attention to history and they recognize the patterns and how civilizations have collapsed yeah and they recognize what's going wrong in the current society and say we have to do our best to mitigate this and we've seen this happen before let's course correct and let's sort of manage what we've got here now and maintain what we've got here now because it's pretty extraordinary yes this is what we're hoping for with this election this is what we're hoping for with the future is that people can see we are on a bad path and something can be done right\n\nnow and it might be the only moment in history where this is possible because if they do lock the country down and make it so that voting is kind of you're voting for primaries and the people that they put in the primaries they're controlling that in the first place you don't really have democracy anymore you don't really have Choice exactly you don't really have freedom that's right yeah I think freedom is is fundamentally at stake in the election tomorrow and we'll know we'll know I think we'll know by the end of day tomorrow I don't think it's going to take it's not going to be like days after the election I think we'll know tomorrow are you optimistic I I am I'm currently optimistic but um the the biggest Factor here is that men need to vote that\n\nis the biggest issue so um I I don't know what what the reason is but but men just vote at a much lower rate than women I think it's like 9% right someone just told me that today it's it's a it's a big difference um like and uh I'm just like saying this is a message to the men out there vote like your life depends on it because I think it does vote vote tomorrow like your life depends on it nothing is more important I agree yeah listen man thank you for being here I know you're busy as so I really appreciate your time and again I I thank you so much for buying Twitter because I really do believe that you've changed the course of history I I really do think you've you've created a pathway where people can actually Express themselves and actually exchange\n\ninformation that really didn't exist before and I think it was dangerous it is it is dangerous hopefully I live long enough to see my kids grow up and people on Mars that's that be that's that's all I'm asking for here I don't think that's too much to happen thank you very much appreciate thank you pleasure all right bye [Music] [Applause] [Music]"},"languages":["en"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":"https://singjupost.com/full-transcript-elon-musk-on-joe-rogan-podcast/"},{"id":"fii8-riyadh-2024-musk","type":"interview","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3JkkWfzc4Jg","title":"Future Investment Initiative","titles":{"en":"Future Investment Initiative","de":"Future Investment Initiative","fr":"Future Investment Initiative"},"date":"2024-10-29","summary":"In a surprise video appearance at Saudi Arabia's Future Investment Initiative, Musk talks with Peter Diamandis about AI accelerating 100x a year, humanoid robots, the Cybercab and Mars.","text":"ladies and gentlemen prepare for a fun conversation with a very special guest and someone I'm proud to call a friend welcome Elon [Applause] Musk welcome to uh to Riad um it's been quite an incredible 90 days for you my friend uh yeah xai Colossus came online 122 days you're about to double in size again uh the extraordinary success of of the fifth mission of Starship uh and the booster capture amazing the launch of cyber cab starlink helping disaster relief progress with Optimus the second neurolink human patient new record users on X uh and that's in 90 days I'm sure I missed a few things welcome yeah I've been playing as significant role in this election I I think I I saw you someplace on X dealing with election issues um let's talk a little bit about\n\nAI which is on the tips of everybody's uh conversations here uh when we spoke last in March at the abundance Summit your prediction was that AI was increasing at a rate as fast as a 100 times per year and that by 2029 or 2030 we might see AI as capable as 8 billion humans are you still seeing that pace yeah it depends it's difficult it's a difficult thing to quantify exactly but um I certainly feel comfortable saying that it's getting 10 times better per year which is you know let's say it's you know four years from now that would mean 10,000 times better so maybe 100,000 yeah and it's it's it's it I think it will be able to do anything that any human can do um possibly within with the next uh year year or two and then uh what what can how long how much\n\nlonger than that does it take to be able to do what all humans can do combined I think not not long probably only I don't know 3 years from that point so it like 20 20 29 is 28 something like that the other conversation we've had and you came out in the same side as Jeffrey Hinton in this was 80% probability it's going to be awesome 20% probability was screwed are you still you still on those odds yeah I mean one can say it's it's it's it's most likely going to be great and there's there some chance which could be 10 to 20% that um it goes bad um the chance is not zero that it goes bad but overall one one could say the cup is 80% full uh is one positive way to look at it maybe 90% I like that increasing OD what keeps you up yeah what keeps you up at night\n\nbesides running six companies um well about waking up early for to participate in uh talks like this one I I felt very guilty asking you to to do this but thank you for for joining none the least but in terms of worried about the future um well I think AI a significant existential threat and something we should be pay paying close attention to uh it's probably the most significant near-term threat the longer term than that is the global population collapse you know both rates have been collapsing pretty much worldwide um and we're headed to you know a situation where for example based on current birth rates uh South Korea would have about a third of its current population have much less um Europe would have about half of its current current population\n\nhalf much less and I should say those numbers are if the birth rate were suddenly to return to St to to 2.\n\n1 per woman which is a stability Point um which is is not doing so if the if if the current compounding uh effect continues um you would see really um many countries become 5% of their current size or less within three generations I know you've been doing I would consider that to be a very big very big problem um and and I think if for most countries they should view the birth rate as as the single biggest problem they need to solve um I mean if you don't make new humans there's no humanity and and all the policies in the world don't matter I know you've been doing your part to maintain the birth rate in in the us yes I am I mean you know it's you've got to walk the talk um so I do have a lot of kids and I encourage others to have lots of kids but on\n\nthe AI and I'm sorry to go negative on this but what do you what do you what are you doing right now that's most important for uh countering that 10% probability of dystopian outcomes is there something or do you is there a regulation that you're you're promoting how do you think about uh you know the upside will take care of itself how do you protect against the downside well my my instinct with respect to AI safety is that you have to be create a maximally truth seeking AI uh which may sound obvious but that's what I've seen being produced is is not maximally truth seeking um it tends to be trained to be politically correct um and for a lot of the AIS that are being uh trained in um in the San Francisco Bay Area they are uh that they have they have\n\ntaken on the philosophy of the people around them which kind of makes sense uh so you know you have sort of a woke um nihilistic in my opinion um philosopy that is being built into these AIS um and they're being thought to say crazy things in some cases uh that are that are very troubling um like when Google Gemini came out uh you people asked U whether it is more which is worse misgendering Caitlyn Jenna or Global th nuclear war and it said misgendering Caitlyn Jenna which is obviously a problem because you know we all die in global thir nuclear war and so if you have have an AI That's programmed for things like that it could conclude that the best way to ensure that nobody is misgendered is to uh annihilate All Humans thus making the probability of\n\na future misgendering zero you that's highly problematic um so so you really want to have a maxim truth seeking Ai and um I can't emphasize that enough that's incredibly important um and obviously built an AI that loves Humanity um and um you know and I think these so so I'm a little concerned that's why I created xai which is to to have an AI that is maximally truth seeking um that aspirationally does love humanity and will you seek the best interests of of humanity going forward no you just tweeted that you're doubling the size of the Colossus net um cluster um what are your thoughts we already have with XII the most powerful training cluster in the world and we're about to devil it um energy is a a point of conversation here um How concerned are you\n\nabout providing sufficient energy for the growing hungry clusters globally yeah I think things things are currently uh chip limited or or they're not quite chip limited they're they get to the point where they're limited by voltage Transformers and installation um and they will become limited by energy um so there will be a tremendous amount of energy that's needed for for uh digital intelligence and for um and for also for electrification of Transport so those two things are a big deal um yeah we're going to need a lot of energy the longterm almost all the energy that we will get is going to come from the Sun um so one way to look at civilization is progress on the cter shf scale we're just barely getting to one well we're far from I think we're probably\n\nwe might be close we might I'm not it's not clear to me we're above 1% on the qu scale one cuz K scale one means you've you've harnessed all the power of a planet I think we I think we've probably harness less than 1% of the power of Earth um our CIP scale to is you've harest all the power of your son um the sun is overwhelmingly the the largest source of energy in the solar system everything else is maybe amounts to about a trillion of the energy in the solar system compared to the Sun less go safely less less than a trillionth of all the energy is nons sun in our solar system yeah we're using 1 8,000th of the sun's energy hits your surface the Earth just that just that hits the surface of the Earth yeah yes and the the percentage of the sun's energy\n\nthat hits the surf surface of the Earth is um is less than a trth of the energy that the sun produces so um almost all energy longterm will be solar call it round it rounds up to 100% so it rounds up to 100% that that's uh how much of the energy in the future will be solar um when you when you view things from a quad ship standpoint you know you we have a number of national leaders uh corporate Financial leaders from the Middle East here what's your advice to decision makers here in the room that don't want to miss the AI transformation that will be part of the leadership of that AI transformation do they need to build their own clusters here are they partnering yeah I I well I I think there probably all countries will have their own AI clusters over\n\ntime um it's currently very difficult to actually build an AI cluster and have it run um that it's not like just pulling a computer out of a box it they they are currently very difficult to run um and you have to say oh you going to be training a Frontier Model um because if you're training a Frontier Model then you you need a massive amount of compute and a level of technical skill that is only a few a few companies POS possess um so so but but over time I think every country will have uh AI compute clusters um it's just it's just going to be a normal thing that every country has so yeah um so basic infrastructure for every nation like they have an electrical grid yeah it'll be something like electricity or you know uh just or or you know having an airline\n\nor something like that it's every every country will have AIS or multiple AIS so um and there will be a lot of robots there'll be a lot of robots but we had way more robots Than People yeah let's have that conversation a second because people are concerned about uh as you said dwindling populations Ai and and robots have potential to help support the GDP um congratulations on Optimus 2 and soon Optimus 3 uh your prediction on the number of robots by 2040 humanoid robots to be specific what order of magnitude by 2040 yeah so um I think by if you say like 2040 probably there are more humanoid robots than ra people so 10 billion yeah yes and your price point on these humanoid robots you're you're pretty good on pricing some sometimes you're off on timing\n\nyeah I'm I'm often optimistic on timing but um although you know the Press will report when I'm late but not when I'm early um you know for example our Shanghai Factory uh we thought it would take about a year and a half and we did it in 11 months um our gavada Factory we thought 2 years we did it in 18 months um or the Colossus cluster Texas Factory two years we did it in 14 months so I've been early actually many times it's just it's just not reported um so when I when I make a prediction I I try to figure out I try to say what what is the 50th percentile likely which means that half the time I should be wrong um so I'm not sand backing essentially um um so but but but I I think that's once you get out 240 that's a long time from now um going 25 years\n\nthere'll be at least 10 billion humanoid robots um and price price yeah the price point will be I think quite low um probably 20 $25,000 for a robot that could do anything um we will be in a future in assuming we are in the good path of AI I think we will be in a future of abundance you know obviously you wrote a book called abundance so I think you would agree that that is probably the outcome um that that uh basically anyone will anyone will be able to have any goods and services they want the the actual marginal cost of goods and services will be extremely low in the future let me so in our last four minutes let me change the subject subject to something near and dear to both of our hearts uh congratulations on on Starship uh it was literally awesome\n\nprobably the engineering feat of this decade if not more not bad for humans not bad for hum we did that with no AI was involved in that whatsoever so um amazing I'm I'm glad to say that we're a that entirely with human brains and without AI I think in the future the AI might look at that and say not bad for a bunch of monkeys when are we on Mars when are when is uh is Starship on Mars I think I think we'll be we'll be able to launch some Starships to Mars in two years um so at the nor the next Mars window which is an about 26 27 months but we're just about to start uh or we're we're at the beginning of of a mar Transit window now and they occur every 26 months so um just over two years we'll be sending our first uncrewed Starship suar and then if those\n\nif those work out well and we don't increment the crater count Ms then we'll send humans uh two years after that so a challenge to be on the surface of Mars before the end of the decade sounds like a a reasonable um yeah Proclamation for either for for either side of the White House hopefully yeah I feel more optimistic about it under a with a trump White House than a non-trump white house because um the biggest impediment progress that we're experiencing is uh regulatory um is is overregulation got to keep those whales and sharks safe yeah yeah exactly um it it just takes us uh I mean it's take takes longer to get the permit to launch than to build a giant rocket and the the bureaucracy in the US has has been growing every year and has particularly grown\n\nunder the bid Administration um and uh unless we do something to scale back the uh overregulation I call it sort of um America is getting and a lot of countries are getting slow strangulation from overregulation unless something is done to push back on that um it'll eventually become illegal to do almost any large project and uh we won't be able to get tomorrow last subject um congrats on the Cyber cab rollout um uh pretty extraordinary Kathy Woods predicted it to be you know multiple trillions of dollars of potential uh uh GDP growth and impact um yeah give us give us some predictions on on when we'll see cyber cab when we'll be ordering a cyber cab yeah well Tesla um unsupervised full self-driving we expect to be working in the US next year with the\n\nthe model 3 and Y so you you don't have to wait for the Roo taxi or cyoc cap to uh for for Tes to release autonomy we're currently expecting to exceed human safety levels um in Q2 next year um and then substantially go beyond that thereafter and and so really it's just a software update to the cars um to be able to uh do launch our self-driving Network we so we expect to unsupervised full self driving and and start that in California and uh Texas you know around the middle of next year um and then at you know we have 7 million cars on the road uh we'll have I 9 a half million cars by the end of next year so uh and eventually will have a fleet of I 100 million plus Vehicles U and they'll all be autonomous um the the sa cap with no steering wheel low pedals\n\nuh we're expecting to reach volume production in 2026 so that's um that's certainly interesting but like I said the the actual launch of of of a robotic taxi on two by full self driving is actually next year um and at the at the event the Tesla autonomy event so we had 50 cars 30 model wise that were driverless and 20 of the Cyber cabs and so autonomy is here um is what I'm saying and uh yeah and all cars will drive themselves this this is a no-brainer um they and they'll get to where they're 10 times saf safer than human driven cars uh which will save I don't know past A Million Lives uh a year globally um and then Optimus uh thoughts limited production at next year 2025 and then uh should be in volume production in 26 um and then we'll grow to I think\n\nultimately be the biggest product uh of any kind ever um so and I kind of see I kind of agree with with ar invest and Cath would that uh autonomy like sort of robotic taxes makes Tesla kind of like a about a $5 trillion company um the Optimus robot I think makes Tesla a 25 trillion company it's not even clear what money means in that in future we end up in a post capitalist Society at some point Elon you make we do sort of end up it it does become kind of post capitalist um and like I said and I know you agree with this that and looking at the mo the most likely bright side we're headed for an age of abundance where anyone can have any goods and services they want it won't be a case of universal basic income it'll be a case of universal High income is\n\nthe most likely outcome you make it look easy my friend thank you for making some time available I know it isn't easy let's give it up for Elon Musk everybody thanks thank you my friend","textByLang":{"en":"ladies and gentlemen prepare for a fun conversation with a very special guest and someone I'm proud to call a friend welcome Elon [Applause] Musk welcome to uh to Riad um it's been quite an incredible 90 days for you my friend uh yeah xai Colossus came online 122 days you're about to double in size again uh the extraordinary success of of the fifth mission of Starship uh and the booster capture amazing the launch of cyber cab starlink helping disaster relief progress with Optimus the second neurolink human patient new record users on X uh and that's in 90 days I'm sure I missed a few things welcome yeah I've been playing as significant role in this election I I think I I saw you someplace on X dealing with election issues um let's talk a little bit about\n\nAI which is on the tips of everybody's uh conversations here uh when we spoke last in March at the abundance Summit your prediction was that AI was increasing at a rate as fast as a 100 times per year and that by 2029 or 2030 we might see AI as capable as 8 billion humans are you still seeing that pace yeah it depends it's difficult it's a difficult thing to quantify exactly but um I certainly feel comfortable saying that it's getting 10 times better per year which is you know let's say it's you know four years from now that would mean 10,000 times better so maybe 100,000 yeah and it's it's it's it I think it will be able to do anything that any human can do um possibly within with the next uh year year or two and then uh what what can how long how much\n\nlonger than that does it take to be able to do what all humans can do combined I think not not long probably only I don't know 3 years from that point so it like 20 20 29 is 28 something like that the other conversation we've had and you came out in the same side as Jeffrey Hinton in this was 80% probability it's going to be awesome 20% probability was screwed are you still you still on those odds yeah I mean one can say it's it's it's it's most likely going to be great and there's there some chance which could be 10 to 20% that um it goes bad um the chance is not zero that it goes bad but overall one one could say the cup is 80% full uh is one positive way to look at it maybe 90% I like that increasing OD what keeps you up yeah what keeps you up at night\n\nbesides running six companies um well about waking up early for to participate in uh talks like this one I I felt very guilty asking you to to do this but thank you for for joining none the least but in terms of worried about the future um well I think AI a significant existential threat and something we should be pay paying close attention to uh it's probably the most significant near-term threat the longer term than that is the global population collapse you know both rates have been collapsing pretty much worldwide um and we're headed to you know a situation where for example based on current birth rates uh South Korea would have about a third of its current population have much less um Europe would have about half of its current current population\n\nhalf much less and I should say those numbers are if the birth rate were suddenly to return to St to to 2.\n\n1 per woman which is a stability Point um which is is not doing so if the if if the current compounding uh effect continues um you would see really um many countries become 5% of their current size or less within three generations I know you've been doing I would consider that to be a very big very big problem um and and I think if for most countries they should view the birth rate as as the single biggest problem they need to solve um I mean if you don't make new humans there's no humanity and and all the policies in the world don't matter I know you've been doing your part to maintain the birth rate in in the us yes I am I mean you know it's you've got to walk the talk um so I do have a lot of kids and I encourage others to have lots of kids but on\n\nthe AI and I'm sorry to go negative on this but what do you what do you what are you doing right now that's most important for uh countering that 10% probability of dystopian outcomes is there something or do you is there a regulation that you're you're promoting how do you think about uh you know the upside will take care of itself how do you protect against the downside well my my instinct with respect to AI safety is that you have to be create a maximally truth seeking AI uh which may sound obvious but that's what I've seen being produced is is not maximally truth seeking um it tends to be trained to be politically correct um and for a lot of the AIS that are being uh trained in um in the San Francisco Bay Area they are uh that they have they have\n\ntaken on the philosophy of the people around them which kind of makes sense uh so you know you have sort of a woke um nihilistic in my opinion um philosopy that is being built into these AIS um and they're being thought to say crazy things in some cases uh that are that are very troubling um like when Google Gemini came out uh you people asked U whether it is more which is worse misgendering Caitlyn Jenna or Global th nuclear war and it said misgendering Caitlyn Jenna which is obviously a problem because you know we all die in global thir nuclear war and so if you have have an AI That's programmed for things like that it could conclude that the best way to ensure that nobody is misgendered is to uh annihilate All Humans thus making the probability of\n\na future misgendering zero you that's highly problematic um so so you really want to have a maxim truth seeking Ai and um I can't emphasize that enough that's incredibly important um and obviously built an AI that loves Humanity um and um you know and I think these so so I'm a little concerned that's why I created xai which is to to have an AI that is maximally truth seeking um that aspirationally does love humanity and will you seek the best interests of of humanity going forward no you just tweeted that you're doubling the size of the Colossus net um cluster um what are your thoughts we already have with XII the most powerful training cluster in the world and we're about to devil it um energy is a a point of conversation here um How concerned are you\n\nabout providing sufficient energy for the growing hungry clusters globally yeah I think things things are currently uh chip limited or or they're not quite chip limited they're they get to the point where they're limited by voltage Transformers and installation um and they will become limited by energy um so there will be a tremendous amount of energy that's needed for for uh digital intelligence and for um and for also for electrification of Transport so those two things are a big deal um yeah we're going to need a lot of energy the longterm almost all the energy that we will get is going to come from the Sun um so one way to look at civilization is progress on the cter shf scale we're just barely getting to one well we're far from I think we're probably\n\nwe might be close we might I'm not it's not clear to me we're above 1% on the qu scale one cuz K scale one means you've you've harnessed all the power of a planet I think we I think we've probably harness less than 1% of the power of Earth um our CIP scale to is you've harest all the power of your son um the sun is overwhelmingly the the largest source of energy in the solar system everything else is maybe amounts to about a trillion of the energy in the solar system compared to the Sun less go safely less less than a trillionth of all the energy is nons sun in our solar system yeah we're using 1 8,000th of the sun's energy hits your surface the Earth just that just that hits the surface of the Earth yeah yes and the the percentage of the sun's energy\n\nthat hits the surf surface of the Earth is um is less than a trth of the energy that the sun produces so um almost all energy longterm will be solar call it round it rounds up to 100% so it rounds up to 100% that that's uh how much of the energy in the future will be solar um when you when you view things from a quad ship standpoint you know you we have a number of national leaders uh corporate Financial leaders from the Middle East here what's your advice to decision makers here in the room that don't want to miss the AI transformation that will be part of the leadership of that AI transformation do they need to build their own clusters here are they partnering yeah I I well I I think there probably all countries will have their own AI clusters over\n\ntime um it's currently very difficult to actually build an AI cluster and have it run um that it's not like just pulling a computer out of a box it they they are currently very difficult to run um and you have to say oh you going to be training a Frontier Model um because if you're training a Frontier Model then you you need a massive amount of compute and a level of technical skill that is only a few a few companies POS possess um so so but but over time I think every country will have uh AI compute clusters um it's just it's just going to be a normal thing that every country has so yeah um so basic infrastructure for every nation like they have an electrical grid yeah it'll be something like electricity or you know uh just or or you know having an airline\n\nor something like that it's every every country will have AIS or multiple AIS so um and there will be a lot of robots there'll be a lot of robots but we had way more robots Than People yeah let's have that conversation a second because people are concerned about uh as you said dwindling populations Ai and and robots have potential to help support the GDP um congratulations on Optimus 2 and soon Optimus 3 uh your prediction on the number of robots by 2040 humanoid robots to be specific what order of magnitude by 2040 yeah so um I think by if you say like 2040 probably there are more humanoid robots than ra people so 10 billion yeah yes and your price point on these humanoid robots you're you're pretty good on pricing some sometimes you're off on timing\n\nyeah I'm I'm often optimistic on timing but um although you know the Press will report when I'm late but not when I'm early um you know for example our Shanghai Factory uh we thought it would take about a year and a half and we did it in 11 months um our gavada Factory we thought 2 years we did it in 18 months um or the Colossus cluster Texas Factory two years we did it in 14 months so I've been early actually many times it's just it's just not reported um so when I when I make a prediction I I try to figure out I try to say what what is the 50th percentile likely which means that half the time I should be wrong um so I'm not sand backing essentially um um so but but but I I think that's once you get out 240 that's a long time from now um going 25 years\n\nthere'll be at least 10 billion humanoid robots um and price price yeah the price point will be I think quite low um probably 20 $25,000 for a robot that could do anything um we will be in a future in assuming we are in the good path of AI I think we will be in a future of abundance you know obviously you wrote a book called abundance so I think you would agree that that is probably the outcome um that that uh basically anyone will anyone will be able to have any goods and services they want the the actual marginal cost of goods and services will be extremely low in the future let me so in our last four minutes let me change the subject subject to something near and dear to both of our hearts uh congratulations on on Starship uh it was literally awesome\n\nprobably the engineering feat of this decade if not more not bad for humans not bad for hum we did that with no AI was involved in that whatsoever so um amazing I'm I'm glad to say that we're a that entirely with human brains and without AI I think in the future the AI might look at that and say not bad for a bunch of monkeys when are we on Mars when are when is uh is Starship on Mars I think I think we'll be we'll be able to launch some Starships to Mars in two years um so at the nor the next Mars window which is an about 26 27 months but we're just about to start uh or we're we're at the beginning of of a mar Transit window now and they occur every 26 months so um just over two years we'll be sending our first uncrewed Starship suar and then if those\n\nif those work out well and we don't increment the crater count Ms then we'll send humans uh two years after that so a challenge to be on the surface of Mars before the end of the decade sounds like a a reasonable um yeah Proclamation for either for for either side of the White House hopefully yeah I feel more optimistic about it under a with a trump White House than a non-trump white house because um the biggest impediment progress that we're experiencing is uh regulatory um is is overregulation got to keep those whales and sharks safe yeah yeah exactly um it it just takes us uh I mean it's take takes longer to get the permit to launch than to build a giant rocket and the the bureaucracy in the US has has been growing every year and has particularly grown\n\nunder the bid Administration um and uh unless we do something to scale back the uh overregulation I call it sort of um America is getting and a lot of countries are getting slow strangulation from overregulation unless something is done to push back on that um it'll eventually become illegal to do almost any large project and uh we won't be able to get tomorrow last subject um congrats on the Cyber cab rollout um uh pretty extraordinary Kathy Woods predicted it to be you know multiple trillions of dollars of potential uh uh GDP growth and impact um yeah give us give us some predictions on on when we'll see cyber cab when we'll be ordering a cyber cab yeah well Tesla um unsupervised full self-driving we expect to be working in the US next year with the\n\nthe model 3 and Y so you you don't have to wait for the Roo taxi or cyoc cap to uh for for Tes to release autonomy we're currently expecting to exceed human safety levels um in Q2 next year um and then substantially go beyond that thereafter and and so really it's just a software update to the cars um to be able to uh do launch our self-driving Network we so we expect to unsupervised full self driving and and start that in California and uh Texas you know around the middle of next year um and then at you know we have 7 million cars on the road uh we'll have I 9 a half million cars by the end of next year so uh and eventually will have a fleet of I 100 million plus Vehicles U and they'll all be autonomous um the the sa cap with no steering wheel low pedals\n\nuh we're expecting to reach volume production in 2026 so that's um that's certainly interesting but like I said the the actual launch of of of a robotic taxi on two by full self driving is actually next year um and at the at the event the Tesla autonomy event so we had 50 cars 30 model wise that were driverless and 20 of the Cyber cabs and so autonomy is here um is what I'm saying and uh yeah and all cars will drive themselves this this is a no-brainer um they and they'll get to where they're 10 times saf safer than human driven cars uh which will save I don't know past A Million Lives uh a year globally um and then Optimus uh thoughts limited production at next year 2025 and then uh should be in volume production in 26 um and then we'll grow to I think\n\nultimately be the biggest product uh of any kind ever um so and I kind of see I kind of agree with with ar invest and Cath would that uh autonomy like sort of robotic taxes makes Tesla kind of like a about a $5 trillion company um the Optimus robot I think makes Tesla a 25 trillion company it's not even clear what money means in that in future we end up in a post capitalist Society at some point Elon you make we do sort of end up it it does become kind of post capitalist um and like I said and I know you agree with this that and looking at the mo the most likely bright side we're headed for an age of abundance where anyone can have any goods and services they want it won't be a case of universal basic income it'll be a case of universal High income is\n\nthe most likely outcome you make it look easy my friend thank you for making some time available I know it isn't easy let's give it up for Elon Musk everybody thanks thank you my friend"},"languages":["en"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3JkkWfzc4Jg"},{"id":"we-robot-robotaxi-reveal-2024-10-10","type":"video","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6v6dbxPlsXs","title":"'We, Robot' Robotaxi Reveal","titles":{"en":"'We, Robot' Robotaxi Reveal","de":"'We, Robot' Robotaxi Reveal","fr":"'We, Robot' Robotaxi Reveal"},"date":"2024-10-10","summary":"Tesla's 'We, Robot' event where Musk unveiled the Cybercab robotaxi, Robovan and Optimus robots.","text":"statements made in this presentation are forward-looking statements that are subject to risks and uncertainties actual results May differ materially from those projected more details can be found in the written materials ladies and gentlemen here everywhere online around the world outer space I'm France and on behalf of everybody at Tesla welcome to we robot just want to thank Warner Brothers for hosting us here as you know this is the birthplace of many epic films many of them depicting a vision of the future we're here tonight to experience that future that is closer than you think and who better than Elon right to show us that future so it looks like elon's on his way so let's welcome him all here what's up oh e welcome welcome to the Wii robot party so we we have uh we have quite a show for you tonight I think think you're going to like it uh as you can see I just arrived in the robot taxi the Cyber cab and uh there's 20 more where that came from so they've been traveling they're all there's no people in them as you can see the cars just going by with no people and we have uh we have 50 fully autonomous cars here tonight uh so you'll see model wise and the Cyber cab uh all driverless uh you'll you'll be able to take a ride in the Cyber cab there's no steering wheel or pedals so I hope this goes well we'll find out so so you see a lot of sci-fi movies where uh the future is is dark and dismal where uh it's not a future you want to be in so you know like I I love Blade Runner but uh I don't know if we want that future I think we want that uh that duster he's wearing but uh but but not but not the uh the ble apocalypse uh we want to have a fun fun exciting future that if you could look in a crystal bowl and see the future you'd be like yes I wish I could be there now that's what we want so so when we think about transport today there's a lot of kind of pain that we take for granted that we think is normal um like having to drive around La uh in like three hours of traffic um yeah and people that live in LA I mean you know try to get from Pasadena to you know Elsa gundo during rush hour is like you can fly to you know another City faster and you can get to cross town La so and you have to drive the whole way unless you're in a Tesla of course our Tesla already uh does quite well at this uh you know supervised self-driving so supervised full self full self-driving is actually working quite well I'm sure there's people in the crowd you you're using that uh yeah so it we'll move from supervised full self- driving to un unsupervised full self- driving where the car you could you could fall asleep and wake up at your destination so uh but there's also a challenge for a lot of people that cars cost too much I mean when you factor in everything that goes into a car and the car insurance and the car payments and the storage of the car it's it's very expensive so with the and you say like how often are what how many hours a week are cars used your average passenger car is only used about 10 hours a week out of 168 hours so the vast majority of the time cars are just doing nothing but if they're autonomous they could be used I don't know five times more maybe maybe 10 times more so you could actually for the the same car would have five times as much value maybe maybe 10 times as much value it's it's there's 168 hours in the week and like I said only 10 of them I use for driving so and then then a bunch of those hours are looking for a parking spot which is you know can be pretty annoying at times so so we want with autonomy you get you get your time back this is a very big deal so it's it's not just a sa like it it'll save lives like a lot of lives um and prevent injuries I I think we'll see autonomous cars become 10 times safer than a human um I me you think of times past were there were there used to be an elevator operator in every elevator uh but uh once in a while they get you know they get tired and accidentally sh somebody in a half uh you know so so now we have automated elevators you just get in an elevator and you press a button and you don't even think about it and it just takes takes you to the floor and if you did see an elevator operator with a big relay switch you'd be like that's weird um now that's that's how cars will be um and and it's not just the lives saved in injuries but if you look at the think about the cumulative time that people spend in a car and the time they will get back that they can now spend well I guess on their phones or or or watching a movie or doing work or whatever you want to do um you can think of the the car in an autonomous world as being like just a little Lounge you're just sitting in in a comfortable little lounge and you can do whatever you want while you're in this comfortable little lounge and when you get out you will be at your destination so yeah it's going to be awesome so so in fact we we I think the the cost of autonomous transport will be so low that you can think of it like individualized mass transit um the like the average cost of of a bus per mile for a city um not not the ticket price because that is subsidized but the average price is about a dollar a mile whereas the cost of uh cyber cab uh we we think probably over time from the operating cost is probably going to be around 20 cents a mile um and price including taxes and and everything else probably ends up being 30 or 4 40 cents a Miley one so yes and you will be able to buy one yes exactly U and uh we expect the cost to be below $330,000 and I think there'll be an interesting um you know business model where like let's say somebody is an uh you know UB LIF driver today uh they where they can actually sort of manage a fleet of cars and like a sort of manage I don't know 10 20 cars and just sort of you know take care of them like a like a Shepherd uh tends their flock you have a little your flock of cars and you're the shepherd and you take care of your a flock of cars I think that would be pretty cool um and um it's I think it's going to be it's going to be a glorious future it's going to be really something special so AV yes good all excellent questions um so we do expect actually to to start uh fully autonomous unsupervised FSD uh in Texas and California next year and that that's obviously that's with the model 3 in model Y and then we we we expect to be in production with the the Cyber cap which is which is really um highly optimized for autonomous transport uh in probably well I tend to be a little optimistic with time frames um but but in in in 2026 so yeah before 2027 let me put it that way um and uh we'll make this this vehicle in very high volume and um but well before that you will you will experience the uh a robotic taxi bya the model 3 and model y program and model snx to uh but to the the model the the your 3 and Y will be will achieve U unsupervised full soft driving um with with permission in where wherever Regulators essentially approve it in the US and then and then to follow in outside the US so and it's cyber TR 2 yes of course sorry I don't want to beet yes yes all our cars are basically um old cars that we make so let's let's not get new on here um all right next slide so one of the reasons why or the the the computer can be so much better than a person is that we have millions of cars that are training uh in on driving so it's like like it's like living millions of lives simultaneously and seeing very unusual situations that a person in their entire lifetime would not see but hopefully um yeah exactly so it's so with with that amount of training data it's obviously going to be much better than what a human could be um because you can't live A Million Lives um and it's also it can see an all dire simultaneously and it doesn't get tired or or text or any of those things so uh it will naturally be like I said uh 10 20 30 times safer than a human just um for all those reasons um and and I want to emphasize that the solution that we have is is AI and vision so there's no um expense of equipment needed so the the model 3 and model Y and snx that we made today will be capable of full autonomy unsupervised um and and that means that a cost of producing the vehicle is is low um now we we are going to actually over speec the computer for the Cyber cab uh so our ai5 computer um will be somewhat overspeed and uh because I think there's actually also an opportunity sort of like in Amazon web services where if the car is driving for 50 hours a week There's still over 100 hours left and it it there's a potential there to have a massive amount of distributed inference compute where if you've got like say a fleet of 100 million vehicles and a kilowatt of efficient inference compute you have 100 gaw of of compute which is really quite substantial um and uh if it's there you might as well use it so um yeah so that's that I think will make sense so all right so our autonomous future is is here um as I said we've got 50 tesas driving autonomously um we're trying to give you a sense of what what cities will be like in the future and uh when you when you get in you'll see like it's really quite a wild experience to just be in a car with no steering wheel no pedals no controls and it feels great um so and we you know we have enough Vehicles here so everyone should be able to to try it out and uh experience this the set that we built here um it's a very big set so it's like really we we've used Ser uh I don't know 20 30 Acres or something like that it's really big so it's it goes on the ride's long um and we we set it up we set it up to feel like a like a ride like a park ride so it'll be it'll be cool uh and you'll get to experience it tonight something we're also doing is uh and it's really high time we did this is uh inductive charging so the robot taxi has no plug it it just uh goes over the inductive charger and charges so yeah it's kind of how it should be thanks guys I love you too um so one of the things that like is really interesting is how will this affect this the cities that we live in and when when you drive around a city or when the car drives you around a city you'll see there's like there's a lot of parking lots there's there's parking lots everywhere parking garages uh there and and so what would happen if you have an autonomous world is that you can now turn parking lots into parks and uh so from we're taking we're taking the in lot out of parking lot um welcome um so there's a lot of opportunity to create uh green space in the cities that we live in so I think that would be quite fantastic oh and uh also so what what what what happens if you need a vehicle that uh is bigger than a model y the the Roven the Roven is uh this is a we we're going to make this and it's going to look like that now can you imagine going down the streets and you see this coming towards you that' be sick so this this can carry up to 20 people and it can also uh transport Goods so you can config good for goods transport within a city uh or transport of up to 20 people at a time so this is going to the Roven is what's going to solve for high density so if you if you want to take a sports team somewhere or um you're looking to to really get uh the cost of travel down to I don't know 51 cents a mile then you can use the Roven some people call it the Roba van but uh so yeah um you know one of the things that we want to do and we've seen this with the Cyber truck is we want to change the the look of the roads the future should look like the future so um speaking of robots so everything we've developed for our cars the batteries Power Electronics uh the advanced Motors gearboxes the the software the uh the AI inference computer it all actually applies to a humanoid robot so the same techniques it's just a robot with arms and legs instead of a robot with with wheels and uh We've made a lot of progress with the Optimus and uh as you can see we we started up with someone um in a robot suit uh sort of and then we've progressed dramatically year after year so if you extrapolate this you're really going to have something expect spacular something that anyone could own um so you can have your own personal R2-D2 C3PO and I think at scale the you know this would cost something like I don't know 20 $330,000 probably less less than a car is my prediction long term you know take us a minute to get to the long term but um but fundamentally at scale the Optimus robot you should be able to buy an Optimus robot for I think probably 20 to $330,000 long to him so and and and what can it do it can it'll basically do anything you want so it can um be a teacher babysit your kids it can walk your dog mow your lawn get the groceries just be your friend serve drinks um whatever you can think of it will do and yeah it's going to be awesome and I I I think this will be the biggest product ever of any kind yeah because I think everyone of the 8 billion people of Earth I think everyone's going to want their Optimist buddy and there's going to be some maybe two uh and then there will be they'll be producing products and services I I predict actually provided we to address risks of digital super intelligence uh 80% will 80% prob probability of good a good outcome look on the right side um the cup is 80% full um the uh the cost of products and services will decline dramatically and basically anyone will be able to have any products and services they they want it will be an age of abundance the likes of which people have not almost no one has envisioned it will be something special so now one of the things we wanted to show tonight was uh that Optimus is not a canned video it's not walled off the Optimus robots will walk among you please please be nice to the Optimus robots so you'll be able to walk right up to them and um they'll serve drinks at the bar and uh you'll directly I mean that's it's it's a wild experience just to have humanoid robots and it's they're there they just in front of you uh so yeah with that um let's party I love you guys too if you look at that gazebo over there let's get the party started what is baby don't hurtt baby don't hurt me don't hurt me no more I don't know why you're not there I give you my love but you don't care so what is right and what is wrong give me a What is love baby don't hurt me don't hurt me no what is baby don't hurt me don't hurt me no more w oh w okay e n I I I he right oh we hey he I one he know no she's not oh hello everyone Midwest is currently prioritizing VIP rides GA guests please make your way to our other amazing zones to board your Robo taxi experience thank you down he he he he he hey the rain the rain the rank the rank the rank he he he he hey he a a e my you w you w for e he he he he hey he","textByLang":{"en":"statements made in this presentation are forward-looking statements that are subject to risks and uncertainties actual results May differ materially from those projected more details can be found in the written materials ladies and gentlemen here everywhere online around the world outer space I'm France and on behalf of everybody at Tesla welcome to we robot just want to thank Warner Brothers for hosting us here as you know this is the birthplace of many epic films many of them depicting a vision of the future we're here tonight to experience that future that is closer than you think and who better than Elon right to show us that future so it looks like elon's on his way so let's welcome him all here what's up oh e welcome welcome to the Wii robot party so we we have uh we have quite a show for you tonight I think think you're going to like it uh as you can see I just arrived in the robot taxi the Cyber cab and uh there's 20 more where that came from so they've been traveling they're all there's no people in them as you can see the cars just going by with no people and we have uh we have 50 fully autonomous cars here tonight uh so you'll see model wise and the Cyber cab uh all driverless uh you'll you'll be able to take a ride in the Cyber cab there's no steering wheel or pedals so I hope this goes well we'll find out so so you see a lot of sci-fi movies where uh the future is is dark and dismal where uh it's not a future you want to be in so you know like I I love Blade Runner but uh I don't know if we want that future I think we want that uh that duster he's wearing but uh but but not but not the uh the ble apocalypse uh we want to have a fun fun exciting future that if you could look in a crystal bowl and see the future you'd be like yes I wish I could be there now that's what we want so so when we think about transport today there's a lot of kind of pain that we take for granted that we think is normal um like having to drive around La uh in like three hours of traffic um yeah and people that live in LA I mean you know try to get from Pasadena to you know Elsa gundo during rush hour is like you can fly to you know another City faster and you can get to cross town La so and you have to drive the whole way unless you're in a Tesla of course our Tesla already uh does quite well at this uh you know supervised self-driving so supervised full self full self-driving is actually working quite well I'm sure there's people in the crowd you you're using that uh yeah so it we'll move from supervised full self- driving to un unsupervised full self- driving where the car you could you could fall asleep and wake up at your destination so uh but there's also a challenge for a lot of people that cars cost too much I mean when you factor in everything that goes into a car and the car insurance and the car payments and the storage of the car it's it's very expensive so with the and you say like how often are what how many hours a week are cars used your average passenger car is only used about 10 hours a week out of 168 hours so the vast majority of the time cars are just doing nothing but if they're autonomous they could be used I don't know five times more maybe maybe 10 times more so you could actually for the the same car would have five times as much value maybe maybe 10 times as much value it's it's there's 168 hours in the week and like I said only 10 of them I use for driving so and then then a bunch of those hours are looking for a parking spot which is you know can be pretty annoying at times so so we want with autonomy you get you get your time back this is a very big deal so it's it's not just a sa like it it'll save lives like a lot of lives um and prevent injuries I I think we'll see autonomous cars become 10 times safer than a human um I me you think of times past were there were there used to be an elevator operator in every elevator uh but uh once in a while they get you know they get tired and accidentally sh somebody in a half uh you know so so now we have automated elevators you just get in an elevator and you press a button and you don't even think about it and it just takes takes you to the floor and if you did see an elevator operator with a big relay switch you'd be like that's weird um now that's that's how cars will be um and and it's not just the lives saved in injuries but if you look at the think about the cumulative time that people spend in a car and the time they will get back that they can now spend well I guess on their phones or or or watching a movie or doing work or whatever you want to do um you can think of the the car in an autonomous world as being like just a little Lounge you're just sitting in in a comfortable little lounge and you can do whatever you want while you're in this comfortable little lounge and when you get out you will be at your destination so yeah it's going to be awesome so so in fact we we I think the the cost of autonomous transport will be so low that you can think of it like individualized mass transit um the like the average cost of of a bus per mile for a city um not not the ticket price because that is subsidized but the average price is about a dollar a mile whereas the cost of uh cyber cab uh we we think probably over time from the operating cost is probably going to be around 20 cents a mile um and price including taxes and and everything else probably ends up being 30 or 4 40 cents a Miley one so yes and you will be able to buy one yes exactly U and uh we expect the cost to be below $330,000 and I think there'll be an interesting um you know business model where like let's say somebody is an uh you know UB LIF driver today uh they where they can actually sort of manage a fleet of cars and like a sort of manage I don't know 10 20 cars and just sort of you know take care of them like a like a Shepherd uh tends their flock you have a little your flock of cars and you're the shepherd and you take care of your a flock of cars I think that would be pretty cool um and um it's I think it's going to be it's going to be a glorious future it's going to be really something special so AV yes good all excellent questions um so we do expect actually to to start uh fully autonomous unsupervised FSD uh in Texas and California next year and that that's obviously that's with the model 3 in model Y and then we we we expect to be in production with the the Cyber cap which is which is really um highly optimized for autonomous transport uh in probably well I tend to be a little optimistic with time frames um but but in in in 2026 so yeah before 2027 let me put it that way um and uh we'll make this this vehicle in very high volume and um but well before that you will you will experience the uh a robotic taxi bya the model 3 and model y program and model snx to uh but to the the model the the your 3 and Y will be will achieve U unsupervised full soft driving um with with permission in where wherever Regulators essentially approve it in the US and then and then to follow in outside the US so and it's cyber TR 2 yes of course sorry I don't want to beet yes yes all our cars are basically um old cars that we make so let's let's not get new on here um all right next slide so one of the reasons why or the the the computer can be so much better than a person is that we have millions of cars that are training uh in on driving so it's like like it's like living millions of lives simultaneously and seeing very unusual situations that a person in their entire lifetime would not see but hopefully um yeah exactly so it's so with with that amount of training data it's obviously going to be much better than what a human could be um because you can't live A Million Lives um and it's also it can see an all dire simultaneously and it doesn't get tired or or text or any of those things so uh it will naturally be like I said uh 10 20 30 times safer than a human just um for all those reasons um and and I want to emphasize that the solution that we have is is AI and vision so there's no um expense of equipment needed so the the model 3 and model Y and snx that we made today will be capable of full autonomy unsupervised um and and that means that a cost of producing the vehicle is is low um now we we are going to actually over speec the computer for the Cyber cab uh so our ai5 computer um will be somewhat overspeed and uh because I think there's actually also an opportunity sort of like in Amazon web services where if the car is driving for 50 hours a week There's still over 100 hours left and it it there's a potential there to have a massive amount of distributed inference compute where if you've got like say a fleet of 100 million vehicles and a kilowatt of efficient inference compute you have 100 gaw of of compute which is really quite substantial um and uh if it's there you might as well use it so um yeah so that's that I think will make sense so all right so our autonomous future is is here um as I said we've got 50 tesas driving autonomously um we're trying to give you a sense of what what cities will be like in the future and uh when you when you get in you'll see like it's really quite a wild experience to just be in a car with no steering wheel no pedals no controls and it feels great um so and we you know we have enough Vehicles here so everyone should be able to to try it out and uh experience this the set that we built here um it's a very big set so it's like really we we've used Ser uh I don't know 20 30 Acres or something like that it's really big so it's it goes on the ride's long um and we we set it up we set it up to feel like a like a ride like a park ride so it'll be it'll be cool uh and you'll get to experience it tonight something we're also doing is uh and it's really high time we did this is uh inductive charging so the robot taxi has no plug it it just uh goes over the inductive charger and charges so yeah it's kind of how it should be thanks guys I love you too um so one of the things that like is really interesting is how will this affect this the cities that we live in and when when you drive around a city or when the car drives you around a city you'll see there's like there's a lot of parking lots there's there's parking lots everywhere parking garages uh there and and so what would happen if you have an autonomous world is that you can now turn parking lots into parks and uh so from we're taking we're taking the in lot out of parking lot um welcome um so there's a lot of opportunity to create uh green space in the cities that we live in so I think that would be quite fantastic oh and uh also so what what what what happens if you need a vehicle that uh is bigger than a model y the the Roven the Roven is uh this is a we we're going to make this and it's going to look like that now can you imagine going down the streets and you see this coming towards you that' be sick so this this can carry up to 20 people and it can also uh transport Goods so you can config good for goods transport within a city uh or transport of up to 20 people at a time so this is going to the Roven is what's going to solve for high density so if you if you want to take a sports team somewhere or um you're looking to to really get uh the cost of travel down to I don't know 51 cents a mile then you can use the Roven some people call it the Roba van but uh so yeah um you know one of the things that we want to do and we've seen this with the Cyber truck is we want to change the the look of the roads the future should look like the future so um speaking of robots so everything we've developed for our cars the batteries Power Electronics uh the advanced Motors gearboxes the the software the uh the AI inference computer it all actually applies to a humanoid robot so the same techniques it's just a robot with arms and legs instead of a robot with with wheels and uh We've made a lot of progress with the Optimus and uh as you can see we we started up with someone um in a robot suit uh sort of and then we've progressed dramatically year after year so if you extrapolate this you're really going to have something expect spacular something that anyone could own um so you can have your own personal R2-D2 C3PO and I think at scale the you know this would cost something like I don't know 20 $330,000 probably less less than a car is my prediction long term you know take us a minute to get to the long term but um but fundamentally at scale the Optimus robot you should be able to buy an Optimus robot for I think probably 20 to $330,000 long to him so and and and what can it do it can it'll basically do anything you want so it can um be a teacher babysit your kids it can walk your dog mow your lawn get the groceries just be your friend serve drinks um whatever you can think of it will do and yeah it's going to be awesome and I I I think this will be the biggest product ever of any kind yeah because I think everyone of the 8 billion people of Earth I think everyone's going to want their Optimist buddy and there's going to be some maybe two uh and then there will be they'll be producing products and services I I predict actually provided we to address risks of digital super intelligence uh 80% will 80% prob probability of good a good outcome look on the right side um the cup is 80% full um the uh the cost of products and services will decline dramatically and basically anyone will be able to have any products and services they they want it will be an age of abundance the likes of which people have not almost no one has envisioned it will be something special so now one of the things we wanted to show tonight was uh that Optimus is not a canned video it's not walled off the Optimus robots will walk among you please please be nice to the Optimus robots so you'll be able to walk right up to them and um they'll serve drinks at the bar and uh you'll directly I mean that's it's it's a wild experience just to have humanoid robots and it's they're there they just in front of you uh so yeah with that um let's party I love you guys too if you look at that gazebo over there let's get the party started what is baby don't hurtt baby don't hurt me don't hurt me no more I don't know why you're not there I give you my love but you don't care so what is right and what is wrong give me a What is love baby don't hurt me don't hurt me no what is baby don't hurt me don't hurt me no more w oh w okay e n I I I he right oh we hey he I one he know no she's not oh hello everyone Midwest is currently prioritizing VIP rides GA guests please make your way to our other amazing zones to board your Robo taxi experience thank you down he he he he he hey the rain the rain the rank the rank the rank he he he he hey he a a e my you w you w for e he he he he hey he"},"languages":["en"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":"YouTube auto-generated captions (Tesla official upload)"},{"id":"tucker-carlson-2024-musk","type":"interview","url":"https://x.com/TuckerCarlson/status/1843375397024485778","title":"Tucker Carlson","titles":{"en":"Tucker Carlson","de":"Tucker Carlson","fr":"Tucker Carlson"},"date":"2024-10-07","summary":"A wide-ranging interview with Tucker Carlson in which Musk explains why he went all in on Donald Trump, warns \"if Trump loses, this is the last election\", and discusses Starlink, vaccines and crime.","text":"If he loses, man. What? You're fucked, dude. I'm fucked. If he loses I'm fucked. It does seem that way. You can't just be like, you can't just be like... Yeah, I'm like, how long do you think my prison sentence is going to be? Like, will I see my children? I don't know. Because it's not like you can say, well yeah I maxed out to him. But, you know, I get... I have no plausible deniability. No. No, no. And I've been trashing Kamala nonstop.\n\nOh I know. Well, the Kamala puppet I call her, you know. The machine that the Kamala puppet represents. Yeah, she's irrelevant. I mean, she's not even. No, no. Like, I made it. I made a joke, which I realized--I deleted. Which is, like nobody's even bothering to try to kill Kamala because it's pointless. What do you achieve? Nothing! Just buy another puppet. That 's... It's deep and true, though. Nobody's try to kill Joe Biden. It'd be pointless.\n\nTotally. You actually put that up? Yeah. Now, some people interpreted it as though I was calling for people to assassinate her. But I, but I, but I was like, but I was like, no, even, you know, I was like, doesn't it seem strange that no one's even bothered to try. It's not worth it. I mean, there's an endless supply. I'm like, nobody would--it's absurd. It could be anybody. Yeah. Yeah. Nobody tries to assassinate a puppet. Of course not.\n\nA marionette. Yeah, marionette. So it's like... You know... That's hilarious. Yeah. She's safe. Like, like to try to kill Trump twice with actual guns and bullets. Yeah, he was shot in the ear right in fucking Butler where I was. And... He doesn't seem rattled. It's weird. Does he to you? Didn't seem what? Rattled. I mean, he has the constitution of an ox. It's not, you know, it's not like working out and eating healthy. And he's...\n\nOkay, we gotta tape this. Yeah, we're good. Good. Yeah. He's not like, let me eat another salad. No. Or workout, you know, fastidiously. That's... I feel. Like how he doesn't workout. And he eats, you know, cheeseburgers, diet coke and stuff. And it just. I think it just inherently has a strong constitution. So I mean, you were just with him. He didn't seem like a man who'd been the subject of two assassination attempts.\n\nNo, he seemed, of sound mind and body and strong backbone. Did you-- That's what I said in the thing which. Yeah, And the remarks. I made there were impromptu. There was no teleprompter or anything. I just. I was just speaking extemporaneously. Are you the only rich guy who doesn't have like a media consultant? No, I don't have a media consultant. Yeah. No, I've noticed. Obviously. Yeah. Yeah. I mean. No, I just, no, I just thought about what.\n\nWhat I. What I want to say. And I just spoke off the cuff. No teleprompter, nothing. Good for you. Yeah. I look like I'm looking right now? I'm just talking. Look at me. Wow. Amazing. Can you believe it? I can talk without prompter. That's crazy. But if. If he loses. It's going to be hard for you to pretend you never supported him. All end up in the deep end. Yeah. Now you are definitely in the deep. And you can touch bottom. And I'm like.\n\nI'm like, rolling around like a pig. And I'm like, Buy it all and, baby. Is it fun? Yes, very fun. How? I mean. I mean, there may be some in the hopefully unlikely. Event that he loses. There may be some vengeance on me. Were you kidding? I mean, it's possible. It's possible. You've got to. Be one of the biggest government contractors. We do essential work for the government. Yes. Yeah.\n\nBut it's not like, you know, we do useful, essential work that we compete for and win contracts on because our product is much better. It costs less. But that's why we get to. Go And and. I mean, if you take, for example, the the NASCAR contract to transport astronauts to and from the space station. Boeing got that sort of two contracts at the start. One to Boeing and one to SpaceX. Boeing was awarded twice as much as SpaceX.\n\nSpaceX has done all the astronaut transport from the space station and and Boeing has only done 1 to 1 transport of one of two astronauts to the space station. And we had to bring it back. Boeing got twice as much SpaceX. This is a total misunderstanding that my companies have been subsidized and supported by the government and get all these and it's like, Do you really think that a Biden administration is going to subsidize me? Probably not.\n\nAre you kidding? No. In fact. They take away every contract they possibly can. So, for example, there was the FCC, the FCC contract to $42 billion for providing providing rural, rural, poor broadband. Yes. Okay. We we actually first said, look, we don't we think there shouldn't be any subsidy. So we recommend this, that this program just not exist. But since you're insisting that that exist, we will compete. And we we have got a product.\n\nSo we won. I don't know about a quarter of it, which would have included the devastated areas like North Carolina and so forth. And the FCC took it away illegally. They just voted. Three out of five commissioners voted away and said, even though you want it, we're sending it. Online. And you know how many people they've connected? How many? Zero. So you think that was political? Well, the three Democrats voted against it.\n\nTwo Republicans voted for it. So you tried to get Starlink. You tried to get Starlink in North Carolina into western North Carolina. The areas devastated by the hurricane. We have it is it is in there. And it is the primary means of communication in the devastated areas. You had conflict with Buttigieg over this? Well, I raised it. I said, look, we're we had delivered.\n\nWe've been delivering Starlink terminals there for a while, and obviously some people already had them. So is that just your content, private individuals that had Starlink there already? We delivered thousands of terminals and got all the way up to the, you know, the areas where they wouldn't let us go any further. And then we're like, okay, we're going to send helicopters in and find people who are stranded and and give them Starlink terminals.\n\nSo I think it's a nice thing. Okay. The they they wouldn't let us land because there was an FAA notice to Em and Notam that said, in order to land, you have to know who you're going to meet with to land. Now, the problem is we're trying to deliver Internet communications. People don't have Internet communications. We don't know who they are and they can't reach us because they don't have communications. Do you see the catch 22? Yes, I do.\n\nAnd saying so. So it's obviously impossible for people who don't have Internet communications to let us to let us know who they are because they don't have the Internet. Yes. Yes. And so did you explain this to the federal government? Yes. What they say they they've they fixed it. How was Buttigieg when you talked to him? It was actually good. So I want to be just. Yeah. Yeah. I want to give Buttigieg some credit here for a.\n\nI want to complain about it. He he reacted in a very levelheaded way, and he reached out to me. He called me. Yeah. And we discussed the issue. Got to the bottom of it and he fixed it. Good. So credit to Buttigieg. Yeah. Well into you for pushing it. Yeah, I mean, so. But as soon as he was aware of the problem, he fixed it. Well, you publicized it too. On it? Yeah. Yeah. As soon as you shamed him.\n\nWell, but I do want to give credit where it's due. Yeah. No, he meant. I agree completely. So. But back to the original question. You know about the potential consequences if, you know, having gone all in, this doesn't work. Yeah. I mean, you had to have thought about this long and hard before you did it. What was your thinking? I mean. Yeah, so. I mean, my view.\n\nIs, is that if Trump doesn't win this election, it's the last election we're going to have that. The. Democrats, the machine has been importing so many people, bringing in so many illegals flying, flying in with this like CBP border app thing that nobody even knew about, like a secret program that's illegal. Basically, it's illegal, but there's no action by DOJ to actually stop it from happening. There.\n\nJust transporting large numbers of illegals to swing states. If you look at the numbers, these are the numbers from the government website. So from the Democrat administered government websites like where do you get this data from the government website that is run by Democrats And there are triple digit increases in illegals to all the swing states. And in some cases it's like 700% over the last three years.\n\nThose swing state margins are there sometimes ten 20,000 votes. So what happens if you put, you know, hundreds of thousands of people into each swing state? And and for the for the. If when somebody is granted asylum they are fast tracked that they can get a green card and then five years after the green card, they can just they can get citizenship and they can fully legally vote. And when they do so, they vote overwhelmingly Democrat.\n\nAnd sometimes they get this rebuttal of like, well, a lot of them, their social values don't align with sort of the Far-Left sort of woke ideology. That's true. But but that's not their top priority. But their top priority is getting their friends and family also to the United States. And that the Dems also issue all these programs, these sort of handouts, essentially, that make them beholden to the Democratic Party. So they brought down.\n\nThat's what happens. So my prediction is if there's another four years of a Dem administration, they will legalize so many illegals that are there that the next election there won't be any swing states. And and we'll be a single party country just like California as a single party state. That's a supermajority Dem state in California. Because of immigration. Yes. The California was fairly reliably Republican.\n\nBill Clinton lost California in 92 and won West Virginia. Yes. So there was a 1986 amnesty? Yes. And thereafter California trended very strongly them. And as at this point I think 65 or 70% down, something like that. Supermajority down like the California legislature. Yes. That's more than two thirds Democrat. Has it improved the state? No, it's not. And that California just passed, which is shocking. It's hard to believe this is even real.\n\nBut California just passed a law making it illegal to require voter I. D. in any election at all in California. Do you know that? No. Yeah. Newsom signed it into law last week. It's illegal to require an ID. In any election, even a town council. And a friend of mine. Who is this candidate? He lives in Palo Alto. It was like. It was like, is this actually real? And he went to, like, put in like some city council election.\n\nHe tried to show them his I. D. and they said, we're not even allowed to look at your I. D.. Have they extended this suddenly? What's going on right now? But they're proud of it. They're not hiding it. But it's. Only voting. It's not buying a gun or buying liquor, buying a pack of cigarets or flying on an airplane or renting a hotel room. It's only voting that it's, if. You try to buy a gun, I mean, they're going to.\n\nIdeas six ways to sun Yeah they try it California trying to make it basically equal to on its own a gun. And the same people that demanded vaccine IDs for if you want to travel or do anything are the same ones who say no voter I. D. is required. Is there any reason. Obviously hypocritical. To pass a law like that except to abet voter fraud? It's for it's it's so that fraud can never cannot be proven.\n\nSo it enables large scale fraud and no way to prove it, because how would you prove it? It's literally impossible. No, No I. D.. You're not even allowed to show your I. D.. It's insane. Well, it is insane. Insane. So. Yeah. The purpose of Nevada voter ID is obviously to conduct fraud in elections. Obviously there can be no other explanation. I mean, they come up with some nice sounding thing. People don't have ideas.\n\nCould you live in this country with an idea? Yeah. I mean, their common rebuttal is like it's racist to require ID and. Which is insane. I think it's actually racist and patronizing to say that people can't figure out how to get ID, obviously. But how could you live here without an ID? I don't think you can't. Yeah. You can't do anything. Yeah. You got to be for everything. Like a list of things you need an I. D. for?\n\nBasically everything except voting. So. So you see the rest of the. Total bullshit, obviously. Obviously, Yes. But that doesn't in any way minimize the aggression or self-righteousness they bring to this conversation. Yes. You're a racist if you want that. Right. Whereas, in fact, obviously someone is racist if they say that people of particular race cannot get ID. That's patronizing and racist. That's absurd. Yes. Yeah.\n\nYou know, it's like when the governor of New York set people in the you know, get out, don't know how to use computers or something like that. I mean, like, you're a super out of touch. Yeah. For sure. Yeah. So it's like. So there's a really clear template. She doesn't know how to use computers, but they do. Obviously. I don't think Hochul could use a computer. Yeah, I think she's not qualified intellectually. Yeah. No. Right.\n\nBut not everyone in New York is as dumb as Kathy Hochul. I think that's true. Yeah. So you see the other 49 states becoming California. If the machine wins. Well, you don't. Need all 49 to go that way. You just need, you know, enough to have the election, have there not be swing states. I mean, there are only six wings swing states. Yep. So there are only six states out of 50 right now that are in contention.\n\nSo if those six states that are in contention by narrow margins are no longer in contention, then the only contest will be who wins the Democratic Party primary. That's how it is in California. That's how it is in New York. There's there's no there's no party party versus party situation. The only contest is who wins the Democratic primary. And as we've seen with the appointment of Kamala, who no one voted for, even in the Democratic primary.\n\nYes. Where's the democracy. Here? Well, it's just it's easier, though. I mean, it's. Just that the party leader just decides who is in charge. That's that that that's that's an, you know, a tiny oligarchy basically. Comprised of that's. Not democracy. The richest people in the country. That's kind of the interesting part to me is that the richest people in the country are on board with this. I mean, that's what it is.\n\nIt's it's it's a collection of billionaires. Well, most of them are. Yeah, but you're not. Not me. And I'm not. Everyone is. I think this is it is a shocking number of so-called billionaires are in the Dem camp more than are in the Republican camp. For sure. Which is wild. So the in fact the astonishing thing in the swing states is that that that there even a contest given that the Dems have far more money than the Republicans.\n\nSo so the Kamala camp dramatically outspent the Trump campaign in the swing states the overwhelming the media is overwhelmingly pro-Democrat. So you've got you know the press you know them cheering squad and. You know, So I. And then and then you've got all that almost all the Hollywood and entertainment, the celebrities also, you know, endorsing and being pro them. So you see you got you got the celebrities, you got the they they got the money.\n\nThey got basically everything on the side of the Dems, the Republicans, the underdog here, Trump's underdog and swing swing states. And still it's a contentious it's. Still a 50/50 after all that. What does that tell you? It tells me that if people actually knew what was going on, they weren't being fed nonstop propaganda. It would be a landslide in favor of Republicans. Yeah. Well, how's this for crazy?\n\nHas there ever been a more volatile time in American politics? Not in our lifetimes. No one alive has ever seen anything like this. But long before things started to really fall apart, the Heritage Foundation saw it coming.\n\nHeritage has pulled together a coalition of over 100 right leaning groups to develop a comprehensive plan for day one that would include detailed policy proposals on the most pressing issues the big ones securing the border, controlling inflation, cracking down on election fraud, protecting the rights of the individual, and saving the nation from being crushed by woke anti-human ideology.\n\nThe team at Heritage has also developed a plan to dismantle the deep state that keeps this nonsense going and reclaim this nation from the small group of technocrats that's broken everything heritage. Also running a training and vetting program to identify effective conservatives to serve in the next presidential administration. People who will share your values, this country's values, and actually do the job.\n\nIt can't just be the same pool of discredited people from Washington populating every administration. Heritage has a long headstart. They put in a lot of work already, but they need your support to finish the job and to support the incoming president. You can go to heritage. org/tucker and contribute to this important work today. A lot depends on it. Heritage. org/tucker but why not join the easier side.\n\nI mean you're just you're creating problems for yourself by getting on stage with Trump and I mean you must have had friends who said that to you. Sure. Yes. Yeah. People who care about you. Like, why even get involved in this? Well. Because I think we want to remain a democracy and we don't want to become a one party state. Yes. That's the reason. And the it's exact opposite. The people call Trump a threat to democracy.\n\nBut the people who are saying Trump is a threat to democracy are themselves the threat to democracy. Yes. One party rule is not democracy. One party where essentially the party elite pick a candidate, as happened with Kamala, is not democracy. Where did the people vote? Show me where the people voted. No, there were no people voting. It was all just Dem party elite that just appointed someone.\n\nAnd and when that when the Biden puppet were providing puppets, ratings sagged. They knocked him in the back immediately. Just tossed him out. And put it put a new puppet on. That's exactly what happened. Tell me I'm wrong. Well, not only you're right. I mean, it's almost not even worth criticizing Kamala Harris, because I know exactly what does she have to do with it? There's no point in criticizing.\n\nIt accomplishes She's she's simply the face of a much larger machine. Yes. And she will say whatever is whatever the trial, the teleprompter, whatever's on the teleprompter, she's going to say it. Yes. She gets stuck if the teleprompter breaks. That happened recently. I think the teleprompter was. She just she was just like looping for a while for about a minute. So I think. That begins slowly. That was pretty funny to watch.\n\nBut she'll just say whatever words are on the teleprompter. So, you know, it's really whoever controls the teleprompter is the actual sort of that does that's who's actually in charge. And who is that to think? Well, I've tried to pin it down. It's not like. Any one kind of mastermind. It's not like it's it seems to be like Kamala of sort of a a marionette with. You know, a thousand puppet masters type of thing. Like, not it's it's it's.\n\nOr maybe it's it's somewhere north of 100 is what it seems like. Yes, I bet you know, 80 of them. I probably know most of them. Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, just by virtue of your job and what you've been doing for the last 30 years, I mean. Yeah. And I should say, I think you voted for it. I'd like to. See a matchup of of those the top hundred puppet masters in the Epstein client list. Do you think there's some overlap and overlap? Strong overlap.\n\nWhen are we going to see that list, do you think? I don't know. It's it's it's mind blowing that that that they have not tried to prosecute even one not even the worst offender on the Epstein client list. They they've not even tried to prosecute even one. Is that that's insane. Well, because they have a lot of diabetic grandmothers who were outside the capital on January 6th that they're kind of occupied. Yeah.\n\nI mean, they've put like, whatever, 5 or 600 January 6 protesters in prison and not one person on the Epstein client list. Will that ever come out, do you think? You know, I think part of why Kamala is getting so much support is that if Trump wins that Epstein client list is going to become public. Yes. And some of those billionaires behind Kamala are terrified of that outcome. Yeah. Do you think Reed Hoffman's uncomfortable? Yes. Yeah.\n\nAnd Gates. Yeah. And I only ask that because you can just look at them and you're like that. That's a nervous person right there. I don't know. I mean, I assume you know. Yeah. Yes. Reed Hoffman was my vice president of development at PayPal. Yeah. 24 years ago he did. Does he seem nervous to you? Yeah. I mean, he's terrified of a Trump victory. Because of the disclosure that would follow? I think. Yeah, I mean, I think.\n\nHe's certainly ideologically not aligned with Trump anyway, but I think he is concerned about the, the Epstein situation. Like something might actually the DOJ might actually move forward. There are a lot of videos. Apparently those rooms on the island, I think out in New Mexico were wired for video. Right. And worst of it, I mean, between Diddy and Epstein was that this was probably several thousand hours of footage here. Yeah.\n\nIt's kind of weird that the people on those videos are lecturing the rest of us about our moral failings, isn't it? Yeah, it is weird. What is that? Well, I mean, part of how they. Deflect attention from themselves is by criticizing the morals of others. Yes. So they it's sort of like a preemptive moral strike. I mean, as I said, I think that those who are saying Trump is a threat to democracy are themselves actually the threat to democracy.\n\nIt feels like we're getting to a place where the rest of us know too much. Is this mean? I mean, it's easier to live in a society. We don't really know what the people in charge are doing or why they're doing it. But now, thanks. I would say largely to X. Yeah. I think that's fair to say that. Yeah, we we do know a lot. Not everything, but we know a lot. And I wonder where does that look? What happens next now that we know all this.\n\nThe kidnaper shown us his face. Like what happens? Well. I think if if Trump wins, we can do some housecleaning. And shed light on things. Yet all the platform does is adhere to freedom, to freedom of speech within the bounds of the law. Yes. And if if people want to change the laws, they can change laws. And so, like X in different countries, X does censor it. In countries where censorship is is the law.\n\nWe don't try to push American laws in other countries, but we do try to stick to the law in any given country. That's what we're doing. We open source our algorithm. We try to be as transparent as possible. But those who want to push lies obviously hate truth and transparency. Yes. Because it shows them to be liars. I mean, you look at it like, how outrageous was that Kamala in the presidential debate? Kept pushing the fine people hoax.\n\nThey know the fine people hoax is false. Trump would never support Nazis and Nazi rallies. It's absurd. And he explicitly said that in that same speech that you must condemn not, you know, anyone who has Nazi tendencies with the in the strongest possible terms. And yet, despite knowing that to be false, the people who wrote the speech for the Kamala puppet, it put the fine people hoax in the presidential debate. Deliberately lying again.\n\nIt's messed up. If she wins. I mean, how can they let X continue in its current form, in its current role in American society. They won't. They will try to shut it down by any means possible. What do you mean by any means possible? I mean, first, look, you either buy it. I mean, they'll try to pass laws. They'll try to prosecute the company, prosecute me, any. I mean, the amount of warfare that we're seeing taking place is is outrageous.\n\nI mean, the I mean, it's many examples, but like the Department of Justice, for example, launched a huge lawsuit against SpaceX for failing to hire asylum seekers. Come on, asylum seekers? Not asylum--those granted asylum. Asylum seekers.\n\nNow, there's there's also a law called international traffic an arms regulations that because SpaceX develops advanced missile technology that can be used and nuclear ICBMs that we have, we have to be very careful with who we hire. We can only hire someone if they are a permanent resident or citizen. That's what the ayatollah says. Then there's another law that says that you cannot discriminate against asylum seekers.\n\nSo we're damned if you do, damned if you don't. The DOJ did a massive lawsuit against SpaceX for failing to hire asylum seekers. Even though we are, it is illegal for us to hire asylum seekers under Itar law. This natural thing that's going on. And they can only they can only do a. Fairly small number of lawsuits every year. So why did they pick this one? Because you own X. Yeah, lawfare.\n\nI mean, it's like that famous quote from Beria, you know, the. Yeah. Stalin's chief torturer and head of the secret police. Beria said, show me the man and I'll show you the crime. Exactly. I mean, we have so many laws that it is actually impossible to, you know, impossible to to do business, impossible to operate without being violating some law because you have laws like the ones I just gave you with where both things are illegal. Yes.\n\nThe contradict one another. They contradict one another. So, you know, it's illegal to. Discriminate against discriminate against asylum seekers in jobs. But it's also illegal for us to hire asylum seekers. But it is. They just they just chose one. They chose the the one law and ignored the other one. And the Department of Justice at federal level. Prosecuted SpaceX for that. What do you think... It's mad.\n\nWell, it also discredits the idea of law, which some of us wants to take seriously. Absolutely. It this affects both the perception of of American justice and the reality of it. Yes. So. No, I'm actually a big fan of the American justice system. And I think on balance, you know, we've got still still have an excellent judicial system. We still have judges that care about the letter and intent of the law.\n\nI mean, not just the letter, but also the intent of the laws. But something that people should be concerned about is that there's an increasing movement to place activists as judges. This is if you look at who heard it, the Biden administration confirm as federal judges and who have been confirmed at the state level and sort of follow states. Increasingly, it is it is not judges who care about justice or they don't care about following the law.\n\nThey care about social justice, not justice. Justice. Right. What they call social justice activists as judges. Now you've got a real problem. Do you think if. If that continues, we will not have a real justice system. Or a real. Country? Yes. Yeah. But again, your purchase of X has been, I think it's fair to say, even if I hated it, I would say this because it's true. It's been pivotal in American politics. Yeah. And in American society.\n\nDo you think they could shut you down if the Democrats continue to hold power? Well, I probably try. Yeah. And if they. If they. If they get a majority of the Senate and House. And the presidency. Then they can simply pass a law and delete section 230. So somebody make us liable for it. For what? Any what anyone says on a platform with, you know, like at this point, almost 600 million monthly active users. Yeah. Which is impossible.\n\nYou know that's that's like trying to regulate speech and. Sort of like a country. Yeah. So a big. Country. Yeah, it'd just be instantly bankrupt. But I bet they wouldn't withdraw legal immunity from the vaccine makers at the same time, would they? No. That's unlikely. Just I mean, as. Long as we're withdrawing legal liability protection. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the whole vaccine debate is is a long one.\n\nYou know, I'm not actually I'm not anti-vaccine in general. I think we want to exercise caution with use of vaccines. But in the absence of vaccines, there would be a lot more. I think people that that the that have died, you know, like we went the smallpox vaccine, that was a good one. It seems a good one. Yeah. Yeah. Small pox will kill you. Killed a lot of people.\n\nIt used to be people would like a lot of people would die of smallpox and a lot of people get polio. For sure. Yeah. We had a president had polio. Yeah. There are still people You meet people today. Yeah. In their 80s who were limping from childhood polio. Right. It's good that we don't have that. And vaccines, you know, played a major role in that. So that doesn't mean that vaccines should not have any scrutiny. Of course they should.\n\nWe should be making sure that the quality control of vaccines is incredibly good if we're giving them to children and whatnot. And we shouldn't we shouldn't force people to take vaccines. That itself is a controversial statement that we shouldn't force people. We shouldn't force. We will take back things that. So just to relax. I believe in freedom. Like, yeah, I've noticed. Like America supposed to be the land of liberty. Yeah.\n\nYou know, freedom. Freedom and opportunity. So that we try to, as much as possible, maximize people's individual liberty and that we try to be a country where you succeed based on your talent and hard work. Yes. Those are two fundamental values. That. That's what that's what's made America great. And if we lose those, we will our decline will be swift. What do you if you had to get it, If you had to bet.\n\nI mean, does freedom reassert itself in America? We're not. Well, that's what I think part of why this election's so pivotal. I think if we were the Trump administration, I think we can improve the liberty of Americans. We can. I think we need to have sensible deregulation where we we keep the regulations that matter. We don't want to destroy, you know, important habitats or yes, you know, encourage oil spills or anything like that.\n\nBut there are so many regulatory agencies that have overlapping responsibility that we are smothering progress and we can't build a high speed rail in America. You look at the ridiculous high speed rail project in California where they've spent $7 billion and all they've got to show for it is A6A 600 foot section of concrete with no rails on it. The picture of it online. So if.\n\nIt's not that fast yet, I wouldn't say it's high speed at this point or even. Rail. It doesn't even have maybe by now they put some railroad, but it's just comically small section of rail. $7 billion has been spent, most of it in environmental consulting. And I don't know where it's but clearly not in building high speed rail.\n\nSo we can't we can't we've got there are so many different regulatory agencies and so many laws and regulations that prevent progress that if this continues, we simply won't be able to get anything done. It does seem like the engineers are not getting rich. It's the environmental consultants, the climate consultants, the DUI consultants. A whole consultant class seems to be getting richer by the year.\n\nOr people with actual skills, the ones that bring actual progress. Useful things, products and services that useful can use. That's right. So this is a two things that if you were like. Traveling on a desert island, you'd want those people. Right, Right. But you wouldn't want environmental controls. They seem they seem undercooked. Like you're going to starve. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And it's like.\n\nWho's who are actual builders that get things done and, you know, and and and every year, we're making it harder in America for actual bodies to get things done. You know, in this, like, weird and around Atlas Shrugged scenario. Where it's you know, there's yet another regulation, yet another rule and what a sort of that that phrase Atlas Shrugged or your or your manager or your manager or your manager.\n\nIt's like eventually, like can't get anything done. Why the hostility, though, toward people with with meaningful skills? It's not it's not a neutral posture they have. And they're reaching themselves obviously by creating fake jobs because they have no skills and, you know, they don't have creative power. So I understand that. But why do they hate people who do have creative power and actual skills? I don't understand that.\n\nI'm not sure I understand it either because it's difficult for me to put my. Put myself in the mindset. Because I'm someone who believes in construction. I build things that's wanted to build cars of what rockets I got, you know, satellite Internet. You know, I've spent. Thousands of hours, tens of thousands of hours in factories building up factories. So.\n\nYou know, I was like, I can't really put myself in the mind of, say, someone who would want to do crime because I don't want to do crime. Yeah. You know, I don't want to hurt, you know, somebody who. Enjoy hurting other people. I don't enjoy hurting other people, so I have a hard time imagining, why would somebody do that? Yes.\n\nYou know, in an extreme case, you can't put yourself in the mind of like, say, a Jeffrey Dahmer where you're like a cannibalistic serial killer because you're not a cannibalistic serial killer. Right. Like, I can't I don't get it. You know, it's. Not a fetish you can relate to. But, you know. I do think. This is in the sort of well-meaning sort of liberal mindset.\n\nI know I've many good friends who have, you know, their very deep empathy for their fellow human being good. And that they care. And and but the challenge that they have is that they've often grown up in a very sheltered existence where everyone around them is nice and civilized and they just really don't encounter people who are have have uncontrolled violent tendencies or like hurting people.\n\nYou know, they've just always grown up in a sort of kumbaya. Yeah, everyone. Is nice hippie commune situation. Minneapolis pre riots. Yeah. I mean. Yeah, but. But this, there's a small number of people. It's like a few percent of society that either have. Anger management issues that are so severe that they they they lose their temper and hurt or murder others.\n\nAnd there's a very small it's like I said, it's not not a large number that that enjoy hurting other people. And if you do not incarcerate them, they will they will do that to their they will hurt other people. And what I see is, is what I call. Shallow empathy, like people have empathy for the criminals, but not empathy for the victims of the criminals. Yes.\n\nAnd so if you simply have and I believe that one should have deep empathy to say like, what is the greater good for society? Is it better to incarcerate violent criminals and prevent them from hurting people or to let them loose and allow those people to be hurt? And I think the latter is much worse. You know, my mom is my mom lives in New York and it's my mom at this at this point is has gone from being Democrat or Republican.\n\nAnd her friends in New York are having the same experience because you know what'll turn you from a Democrat to a Republican pretty fast is getting punched in the face while you walk down the street. Yes. Which for no reason. Yes. And then. And then. And then no action being taken against those who hurt you. And that happened to your mom. But not my mother, but 2 to 3 of her friends this year. Hey, it's Tucker Carlson. I am not in the studio.\n\nI'm in. And you can hear it in the audio. Probably I'm in the back of an SUV outside a hotel in Tulsa, Oklahoma. I think it's Tulsa, Oklahoma. Anyway, we're on the road for this month long tour. And there is a lot going on in the world. And the question is, how do you understand what's happening? There are deeper trends unfolding. You probably sense that and it would be helpful to have some grounding in exactly what they are.\n\nAnd if you're like me and you spent four years in college and didn't learn all that much, where do you go to understand what's happening to your world? Well, Hillsdale College, in our opinion, is one of the very few places left in the English speaking world where your kids can get a real education. But not just your kids. You. They have free online classes, completely free.\n\nYou can get them anywhere, including in the backseat of an SUV outside a hotel in Tulsa, Oklahoma. And you'll know that when you go there. Go to Tucker for hillsdale. com. They have an amazing new course called Marxism, Socialism and communism. Hillsdale is offering it doesn't cost you a dime and you can pull it up right on your phone if you want. Go to Tucker for hillsdale. com. And the class. Marxism, Socialism and communism.\n\nAnd you'll have a much better understanding of what you're watching every day. Why would someone punch him in the face? I don't know. But I that's I think I'm not a face puncher, right? No. You know, but if you. Walk around the streets of San Francisco and many downtowns and go to downtown Philadelphia right now, you know, they call people homeless, but but the homeless is the wrong term. Violent drug zombie. Yeah. Okay.\n\nIt's like, you know, you look at them, you say like. Homeless is a misnomer. It implies that someone got a little behind on their mortgage. And if you just offer them a job, they'll be back on their feet. Yeah. Now. But if you go and look at downtown Philly or San Francisco or parts of New York and actually most most downtowns, what you actually have a violent drug zombies.\n\nSo they're like shuffling down the street with dead eyes, you know, and, and and with like needles, you know, and human feces on the streets. You've been. It's not safe, right? Have you seen this? Yeah. I was. Born there. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like one of the most beautiful cities in the world. Yes, the great. And now you have to step over the. The drug needles and the feces and the bodies. They weren't one couple I met.\n\nThe final straw for leaving San Francisco was there was a they came home one night and there's a dead body in front of their garage. They can get their car. I can plug the car. Because the. Corpse I have, there's no street parking. There's a corpse. This is a corpse for the garage. They don't want to move the corpse, you know, because like, well, you know, you know, like, maybe there's the need to figure out why the guy died or something.\n\nYou know. That's the. Other. That's liberal. Compassion. But they're in a bit of a quandary because they got a place. To park a car and they feel that they shouldn't really move the dead bodies. They kill number one. And so. There's a dead. Body outside our house. And they said, well, that no one in San Francisco says, Well, are you in danger right now? It's like, well, no, he's dead. It's fresh air. He's dead.\n\nAnd they're like they're like, okay, we'll send someone tomorrow to pick up the body like they were doing tomorrow. So, so, so they're like, going in their house. Well, there's a dead body. In front of their house, you know, like, it's like took like 24 hours or something like that to eventually pick up the body and the like. That. How is this worth living? And did. They. Yes. That's why there's a million anecdotes like that. I know, I know.\n\nBut I just don't think. This is not. Rare. It's. Well, it's. It's. It's ubiquitous. And so then you wonder, like, how can people still tell themselves they're compassionate? If there's one thing. Is, is that is that people really just need to think what. Like I believe in being compassionate about. Of course, I believe that we should care about our fellow human beings. I think this is a good thing. Of course we should not.\n\nWe should not be we should not be. Selfish and not care about others. We should care about others, but we should just care about others. All things considered. Like I said, not just about the criminals. It's this one layer deep. You should also care about the criminals. Victims? Yes. Yes. Well, especially the criminals. Victims? Yes. Innocent people who get attacked and killed. So, I mean. I get so many anecdotes.\n\nI mean, you know, like a about a year ago, there were there were three access to Twitter employees who were just leaving the building and walking down Wall Street. And in San Francisco, Wall Street used to be beautiful, wonderful street. Of course, obviously it's called Wall Street because that's where the market was right now. Now it's boarded up shop windows and stuff. And and they'll trace back over the next.\n\nYou want to know that they outran him and they reported him as a guy with an ax who tried to try to kill us with an ax. The police did nothing. And that guy with an ax subsequently murdered two people. With an ax. With the with the ax. Because eventually he's going to find somebody he cannot run. And did.\n\nSo what I'm saying is if you if you don't stop ax murderers while while they're attempting to ax murder, eventually they will succeed in ax murderer people. If this goes on. I mean, that's such an obvious observation. Seems obvious. Yes, I think it is. Yeah. That if you're in any way abetting acts murder, then you're really. You're against civilization. That's the way it looks to me.\n\nI mean, yeah, I don't see, I'm trying to understand motive here. I can't relate like you. But you're against the whole project. If you're allowing that, I guess is what I'm saying. Yeah, I think we should. Controversial position, but I think we should arrest ax murderers when they first attempt to it or not, after they've succeeded in doing so. And I think we should assign at least some of the blame for the murders of the people who allowed.\n\nHave this. Got a one round with an ex on Market Street trying to kill people. Yes. Yeah. Well, you know, there's this whole movement to decriminalize crime. I've noticed. Yes. What is that? Madness. Yeah. I like to fight crime. Crime legal. Like in California, you can just steal things and nobody does anything. It's, like, fully legal to steal anything under $1,000 in California. That's why.\n\nBut then I have to, like, lock up goods behind these, like, you know, glass and plastic walls. So you go to the supermarket and you can't even get, like, what, Toothpaste? So. And this is actually been particularly difficult on small mom and pop operations because they don't have the resources of a large corporation. So a lot of small businesses that just kill them. So when you're at dinner parties and you make these points, what do people say?\n\nWell, actually, I think I've been I've been able to persuade people that, yeah, we really, we need to reverse course here. I think I have actually been able to persuade a number of people and I think there actually is now a ballot on a California ballot initiative to re re criminalize theft. Theft. All right, guys, guys, we. There's a reason why we criminalize theft in the first place.\n\nSo so and then amazingly, Gavin Newsom was came out against that proposition. Yeah. No, honestly. He's the guy that broke it. Gavin Newsom is like is like like from like, Batman, Dark Knight. The Joker is in charge of Gotham. You remember? Like, he took over New York, basically. And the criminals roam free and the citizens are arrested. That's hard. That's California.\n\nBut but I mean, at least as a ballot initiative, which I think will probably pass to say, no, actually it is a crime to steal things. Because people say. You know, Gavin, you've got to know Gavin Newsom knows. I know Gavin Newsom. You know, everyone knows. Gavin for a long. Time. Exactly. So what is that? And he doesn't seem crazy when you talk to him in person. He's a perfectly nice guy. Like what? Why would he? And he's not stupid.\n\nWhy would he come out in favor of crime? Well, his stated reason was that it would disproportionately affect people of color. Yeah. But that was his public statement, right? Well, that is one of those patronizing, racist positions you described at the outset, obviously. I mean, he's literally saying black people as blacks are criminals. Yeah, of. Course. Yeah. Yeah. No, that's what you say. That's what he's saying. Yeah. Yeah. And by the.\n\nWay, it is true that crime like that does increase distrust between races. It actually gives rise to racism. It's totally destructive of the social fabric, I think. But I'm. But I'm asking, like, what do you think is real motive is like who's pushing him in favor of crime? Well, I mean, there's always the Soros boogeyman. Yeah. How real is that? It's it's real. I don't think one can ascribe everything to Soros, I guess.\n\nAnd George George himself is is I mean, he's you know, at this point, he's not he has not compos mentis. So his son Alex is in charge. And, but there is this whole system that Soros built up over many decades. You know, And so it's it's like a source and like minded people or whatever, You know, they believe in open borders. They believe we shouldn't prosecute crime. This is insane. Those seem like expressions of hatred toward the United States.\n\nLike, I don't if I was pushing that on the country, I would only do that if I hated the country and wanted to destroy it. Well, any civilization. I mean, and Soros and some of the organizations have been pushing this in Europe and other countries to anyone everywhere they can. What's going on in Europe. Would you say you're suddenly seems like a different place? Well. My biggest concern for Europe is that the birth rate is half replacement rate.\n\nYes. So Europe is rapidly becoming, with each passing year, older and older with fewer and fewer young people. So I think at the most fundamental level, unless Europe has a growth rate at least roughly equal to the replacement rate, it is in population free fall. Population collapse is what's going on in Europe. So. There's also like a shocking amount of censorship. I remember seeing like in in Britain there. I kid you not.\n\nSo how can this be real? They are releasing convicted pedophiles from prison in order to put people in prison for Facebook posts. But to be fair, those supposed to criticize the government so they have a good reason. Well. Actually, some of these posts that I've these ones I've seen don't actually criticize the government. Or. They they were they were seen as as sort of as hate speech. Right.\n\nSo because they noticed the society getting crappier and crappier with every year and they said so. Yeah. I mean, there were and this is sort of stating a fact that there were migrant rape gangs in in England that were gangs that would run around and prey on young girls, gang rape them. And some people found that objectionable, which obviously it should be objectionable. And they're upset about that. And so they complained about it online.\n\nAnd we're set to present. That sounds crazy. But it is crazy. And that's like. Like what? Well, it is. So it kind of gets to the. I mean, you're an engineer, so you're. It's mind blowing. It is mind boggling. But it's the same. You use the phrase mind virus, but it's behaving like a virus. It's infecting people and making it impossible, apparently, for them to make rational. Yeah. What is that virus? You know, someone.\n\nI think you should interview is Gad Saad. I have. You have? Yes. I. Should watch that, actually. He's great. Yeah. Smart. Super smart guy. Yeah. And he he wrote a great book. Called the parasitic mind. Yes. Very good book. Highly recommended. Yes. Which where he tries to understand. How do you get to this parasitic mind situation?\n\nAnd he's writing a book now, which hopefully you'll publish soon, which is about suicidal empathy, where you have so much empathy, you're actually suicidal in society or someone's perceived empathy. So it actually shallow empathy, not deep after deep empathy would be you'd want the society continue. Shallow empathy is because you have like empathy that's essentially skin deep and then you and you don't.\n\nBut it's ultimately bad for civilization and results in the destruction of civilization. And Gad has got a good term for this suicidal empathy. So. Is going to deconstruct what's what's, you know, where does this come from? And. Yeah, I mean, part of it, I suppose, is. Is sort of the decline of religion. So, you know, as the saying goes, nature abhors a vacuum.\n\nSo when you have essentially a decline in religion, an increase in the secular nature of society. For most people, they need something to fill that void and so they adopt. A religion is not called a religion but like it but effectively like woke the work mind biases its as it takes the place of religion. Yes. And they they've, they've internalized it and they feel it with religious fervor. Yes. So. And rigidity. Yes. Yes.\n\nAnd they you know, they essentially conduct like a holy war effectively. It's just not called a religion, but it is a religion, sort of a work holy war. And they're highly resistant to change, as is normal for for for religions. So. Now, for myself, I'm I sort of see myself as a sort of, you know, engineer. Physicist for me. I'm culturally Christian. I grew up Christian. I mean, I was Anglican, but baptized. You know, I was, what, Sunday School?\n\nWow. Yeah. Actually, oddly enough, I was into Hebrew preschool and Anglican Sunday School at the same time. So it was How about together one day? Jesus, I love the next. Which is, you know, if you're five, it's all fine. It's just not, you know. So. But I'm not Jewish. It's just that my. My father's two partners in his engineering firm were I went to the same Hebrew preschool, and it was near our house, so I just got sent there. And.\n\nSo we've been I've been, you know. I, you know. I, I. Maybe this will make me even worries, but I. I have trouble sort of believing all these stories, these religious stories. But I saw people do. And I respect people who want to have religious views. I'm not trying to dissuade them from their religious views.\n\nBut I just say, I guess the operating system I have is a sort of a physics engineering operating system where I try to extend as much as possible possible about reality. You know, in physics here, you're not supposed to believe everything, anything. Absolutely. You're supposed to question things. That's how you discover new physics, You know, in engineering, that's how you discover if your machine will work or not work.\n\nWill the rocket get to orbit? Will, you know? Yeah. You know, if you if your rocket is. Designed with. You know, physics in mind correctly, it will get to orbit. And if it is not, it will not get to orbit. No matter what your belief system is, you can believe, you know whether. Yeah. No. It's like like, I mean, a lot of people speaking of L. A. , I mean, a lot of people in L. A. who believe witchcraft is real.\n\nAnd then you can do spells and that spells and witchcraft. Magic is real. I'm like, can you magic us to the moon? And no one has yet been able to magic us to the moon. My spells can't be that good. Okay. If you can't, I want to go to the moon. Let's go. How about Mars? And we got to the moon the first time. We definitely went to the moon, I swear. Yes, we went to the moon. We didn't go to the moon. We went to the moon several times. Right. Yeah.\n\nI just want to check your view on that. One half century of the moon. I mean, I know in-depth the technical designs of the rockets, the spacecraft, everything. Yes. What went right? What went wrong? And. It was a remarkable piece of technology like incredible piece of technology for it to go to the moon in 69. Yeah, that that that was like reaching into the future and pulling the future forward dramatically.\n\nAnd it was an important ideological battle with communism because they couldn't put a person on the moon and capitalism could. We did an interview a couple of weeks ago with a woman called Casey Means. She's a Stanford educated surgeon and really one of the most remarkable people I have ever met.\n\nIn the interview, she explained how the food that we eat produced by huge food companies, big food in conjunction with pharma, is destroying our health, making this a weak and sick country. The levels of chronic disease are beyond belief. Well, Casey means we've not stopped thinking about ever since is the co-founder of a health care technology company called Levels. And we are proud to announce today that we are partnering with labels.\n\nAnd by proud, I mean sincerely proud. Levels is a really interesting company and a great product. It gives you insight into what's going on inside your body, your metabolic health. It helps you understand how the food that you're eating, the things that you're doing every single day are affecting your body in real time. You put stuff in your mouth speaking for myself anyway, and you don't think about it.\n\nYou've no idea what you're putting in your mouth and you've no idea what it's doing to your body. But over time you feel weak and tired and spacey, and over an even longer period time you can get really sick. So it's worth knowing what the food you eat is doing to you. The Levels app works with something called a continuous glucose monitor or a CGM. You can get one as part of the plan or you can bring your own. It doesn't matter.\n\nBut the bottom line is big tech, big pharma and big food combine together to form an incredibly malevolent force, pumping you full of garbage, unhealthy food with artificial sugars and hurting you and hurting the entire country. So with levels, you be able to see immediately what all this is doing to you. You get access to real time personalized data, and that's a critical step to changing your behavior.\n\nThose of us who like Oreos can tell you firsthand this isn't talking to your doctor. An annual physical looking backwards about things you did in the past. This is up to the second information on how your body is responding to different foods and activities, the things that give you stress, your sleep, etc. , etc. It's easy to use. It gives you powerful personalized health data and you can make much better choices about how you feel.\n\nAnd over time it will have a huge effect. Right now, you can get an additional two free months when you go to levels dot link slash Tucker That's levels dot link slash Tucker. This is the beginning of what we hope will be a long and happy partnership with levels. And Doctor Casey Means, do you believe there's a power higher than people? Yeah. I mean. Yeah. I mean, I think there's. There's a lot we don't know. We don't know. We don't know.\n\nLike it? Like why does reality exist? Why? Where did it come from? Where are the aliens? What questions should we ask that we don't even know to ask? So. When you say, what are the aliens? Where are the aliens? Like, why don't we see them? Lot of people think we see aliens, but I have not seen any evidence of aliens. Yeah, We've got 6000 satellites in orbit, and not once have we had to maneuver around an alien spacecraft. So.\n\nBut on this earth, the U. S. military has had to do a lot of maneuvering around objects they can't explain. Well. Unidentified flying objects, one thing, but I mean, there's always there's always a bunch of classified programs that are underway that. Of new aircraft and new missiles and things so that they're classified even within the military.\n\nSo it's, you know, only, you know, the if you have the top secret compartmented clearance, would you know about this new program? So then, you know, some pilot sees something fast moving fast and says, hey, I saw a UFO. And I. Yeah, that was actually a new weapons program. But we can tell you about.\n\nBut if you can guarantee that the split second I see any evidence of aliens, I will immediately post that on the X platform and I'll probably be on number one. First of all, that'll be your biggest day. Yeah, for sure. I mean, but. But to the question of a power beyond people, beyond our consciousness, a creator. Where are you on that? Well, we must. It must come from somewhere.\n\nSo I guess, you know that there must be some creator or creative force or something that caused our existence to come into being. What is the nature of that creator? That I think is an unknown. At least I think it is. It is. Does. I, I don't know of a definitive answer to that. So. But it sounds like you're open. Yes, I'm very open to. You know, I'm driven by your curiosity. Yes. And. I tried to understand more about the nature of the of us.\n\nSo my, my my driving philosophy is to understand the meaning of life or really what questions to ask. If the meaning of life, the meaning of life is is not the right question. Like, as you know, Douglas Adams made the point in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy that the. What is the meaning of life is probably not even the right question. So. You know, famously that in that book, the Earth was actually a computer to figure out the question.\n\nAnswer the question, what is the meaning of life? And then came up with the answer. 42. But then, like, what does that mean? And that's like, that's that, that's the answer. But the question is the really hard part. And you'll need a much bigger computer than Earth to figure that one out. So. So my philosophy is that we should try to expand the scope and scale of consciousness. We should try to have more humans more thinking.\n\nAnd and perhaps there's an argument even for machine consciousness. So let me just address those in order. So the first is you say we need more people and not commit civilizational suicide. It does seem like the US government, if you take three steps back, is pretty committed to making fewer Americans. Yeah, there's a lot of anti fertility propaganda. A lot actually.\n\nThat seems like their main sort of domestic social policy is convincing you not to have kids. What is that? I mean, that's certainly. Part of civilizational suicide. That these the environmental. Movement in the extreme is fundamentally misanthropic and anti-human. Yes. They start seeing humans as a plague, a blight on the surface of the earth, that if that earth would be this Paradise, if only the humans weren't here.\n\nAnd some people actually say this explicitly, there's this there's the extinction of society that it's literally that they that the. This guy who is the head of the extinction of society is on the front page of the New York Times quoted as saying, There are 8 billion people in the world. It would be better if there were none. So there are some people who actually say that explicitly, which is completely insane.\n\nHe's advocating a holocaust for all of humanity. To utter madness. He should be condemned for such a statement. But he wasn't for some reason. Now, most people on the on the sort of environmental movement have that implicitly they're not. They don't realize that they have that as requisition. But that is their actions. Had to take us towards extinction. So.\n\nA lot of people believe that the Earth can't sustain this level of human population, which is utterly untrue. It may seem in a crowded city that there are a lot of people. But actually, if you look down an airplane and say, look down. Am I over a person at any given point in time when you're an airplane that was 99. 9% of the time? No. Like if you flew from L. A. to New York and say your job is to drop a ball on someone and you hit them.\n\nYou would fail. If drop a lot of balls. Several levels maybe insane. So all of the humans on earth. Can fit on one floor in the city of New York. The cross-sectional area of of all humans for 8 billion humans is small. So we have this totally wrong idea that the earth is overpopulated, where in fact it is underpopulated. How? I mean, have you ever heard a politician say anything like that? Are there. Maybe a few. Pro human politicians out there?\n\nYeah. I mean. Like. Like Viktor Orban. Giorgia Meloni. Yeah. We're starting to see pro natalist politicians. And hopefully more as time goes by. I think there's a guy that just got elected in the Czech Republic who's also a natalist. Now these have to translate into actual actions that change the birth rate or doesn't matter. And so far I have not seen any country make a meaningful dent in the birth rate.\n\nWhat would you do if you were in charge of natalist policy? First of all, I changed the education system so that people understand that. Is the stuff being taught that we're overpopulated? This is completely false. A lot of it comes from this insane misanthropic book that Paul Erlich wrote, The Population Bomb. Like 60 years ago. Yeah. I hope we weren't in hell, that guy. Seriously? Cerebral human being. Absolute misanthrope.\n\nAnd I'd say, just look, the earth can absolutely sustain this population. We could double or triple the population. There's a professor I was talking to at Oxford who's his math, says we could tax the population without destroying the Amazon rainforest or anything. So.\n\nSo I think we should expand the human population and increase the scope and scale of consciousness so we can better understand the nature of this universe, this wonderful universe, and all the amazing things that exist. And so that's one of the things I'd like you to stop teaching people false propaganda that the earth is over populated.\n\nI think we need to, you know, and especially with the education of women and men, it is is really stuff scaring women that having a kid destroys your life. This is false. You know, we terrify girls into that saying that if you get pregnant, it's your life's over. And this is this is what schools teach. Now, I agree we should not have teenage pregnancies. Yeah.\n\nBut but but actually, having a child is one of the most delightful happiness inducing things you could possibly do. Of course. Of course. So. There's. There's also. You know, with. Hormonal birth control. I think maybe a lot of women are unaware that hormonal birth control causes depression and dramatically increases risk of suicide and changes their preferences on who they want to.\n\nMarry or have kids with it change their personality enough to say this on the box, by the way. But then. Of course, it may change your personality. Yes. If the warnings are has significant cause to get significant risk of depression, significant increase in suicide, and will make you want to go out with people that you don't actually like. That's actually. True. By the way, I know I'm not saying that people shouldn't use birth control.\n\nI think we should just be we shouldn't use I think hormonal birth control is is making it's making a lot of women sad and depressed. Yes. And they don't realize it and they don't realize that's the cause. And, you know, other forms of contraception that could be used and that we should just read. Just read the label on the box is what I'm saying. That was akin to what you just say, the warning label.\n\nThat was like the most taboo thing you could ever say. For most of my life was to offer any criticism at all of hormonal birth control. Look, all I'm. Saying is read the warning label. Yeah. Of air. But why the pressure not to read the warning label? And just why are we giving it to 12 year olds to regulate their acne? Right. I think we should give it to 12 year olds like kids that don't know what's going on. So it's like.\n\nNow, You know, I think there are other forms of birth control I think are have fewer negative effects than the hormonal. But but that's the we should just be aware that that that this is not a riskless thing. And it does cause severe mood changes. It does dramatically increase risk of suicide and depression. So. So just if I. You know. Just make sure that there's full disclosure here. And the one all those.\n\nReads, the warning label is what I'm saying, you know, and consider maybe other options for birth control. To anyone listening, just, just just read the warning label and consider other options. Because the, the reason you're sad might be the birth control or the hormonal birth control that is fundamentally changing the hormones in your body in ways that probably are not good for you. And you.\n\nI know women where if they stop taking birth control and the depression immediately disappeared. So that's maybe worth a try. But then if you're. Feeling separately, maybe it's the birth control. Then you don't get to go on necessaries. Yeah. Yeah. And so I think the exercise of the devil. You know what you don't think. I so vehemently agree with? Okay, I guess. I guess once you endorse Trump, you can just say it all now, right?\n\nNo, I think selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors are zombified people and change their personality and make them not who they are. Terrible. They're so common. Yes. I think we should revisit whether this is this is actually I disagree with the salaries or look, I'm not saying we should that no one should ever be subscribed as rice. But giving them out like candy is crazy.\n\nYou look at like a sort of antidepressant prescriptions in the United States versus other countries, and we're like way above everyone else. Yeah. I have seen many, many times in my life in the news business after a mass shooting like school, for example. Yeah. Someone will say, Well, what meds was the shooter on? Yeah. Actually immediately be shouted down as a crazy person, as a, you know, Bobby Kennedy level wacko.\n\nYes, he should himself be institutionalized for even raising the question. Well, I was like, why wouldn't we want to know what meds. Yes, absolutely. Wonder what goes on now. Sometimes it's perhaps they will on because like some people do, you know, I don't say it's like all one or all the other person. I mean there are there are people that have fundamental chemical imbalances in their brain.\n\nAnd if they don't take medication to control, for example, paranoid schizophrenia, they will have paranoid schizophrenia for sure. And and I know many cases where people stop taking their, you know, meds and and lost their mind. Yeah. And and then try to try to kill people and stuff like that. So it's or themselves. Or the guy with the ax on Market Street probably should be on meds. That guy should we should try it. Yeah.\n\nIt make you want to ax murder more or less on a given med, you know. So. So there are psychiatric medications that I that where the good outweighs the bad. Yeah. I'm not saying that that doesn't exist, but we over prescribe psychiatric medication in the United States, obviously far in excess of any other country. But, you know, we're more than Canada or Britain or Japan or anytime, anywhere.\n\nIt's like we're off the charts on on psychiatric medication prescriptions in the US. What? Why don't people raise that point more often, I wonder? In public? I'm afraid I'm raising it. Yeah, you are. You said that our artificial intelligence machine intelligence might be a good thing. Where are we on AI right now? AGI right now. And what are your views? Well.\n\nI think at this point it's obvious to everyone that air is advancing at a very rapid pace. Yes. You can see it with the new capabilities that come out every month or every week. Every week sometimes. You know, at this point I can write a better essay than probably 90%, maybe 95% of all humans say write an essay on any given subject. Right now, I can beat the vast majority of humans.\n\nIf you say draw an image, draw a picture, it can draw like if you try to image Madani, which is the esthetics of Virginia. Incredible. It will draw. It will create incredible images that are better than, again, like 90% of artists. That's just objectively the case. I return immediately, like 30s later. We're also starting to see movies starting their short films with A. I. , A. I. music creation. And the rate at which we're increasing A. I..\n\nCompute is exponential, hyper exponential. So there's dramatically more compute coming on online every every month. You know, this seems to be roughly. I don't know. The amount of air coming on line is increasing at like roughly 500% a year. I like is like that's likely to continue for several years. And then the sophistication of the AI algorithms is also improving.\n\nSo we're bringing online a massive amount of AI compute and also improving the efficiency of the compute and. And what and like what what the software can do. It's quite such it's quantitative and qualitative improvement. So the. You know, I might. I think next year you'll be able to ask, I. So certainly by the end of next year. Make a short movie about something you probably can do at least a 15 minute, you know, show or something like that.\n\nSo, yeah, it's advancing very rapidly. My top concern for air safety is that we need to have maximally truth seeking. So. The this is the most important thing for your safety, in my opinion. You know, the central lesson that Arthur C. Clarke was trying to convey in 2001, A Space Odyssey was that you shouldn't force Ace to lie. So in that book, the.\n\nThe day, I was told to take the astronauts to the monolith, but they also did not know about the monolith. It resolved that quandary by killing them and taking them to the monolith. What didn't kill all of them? Most of them. But that's why hell would not open the pod bay doors. Right. So.\n\nVery important to have two eyes now and what it would actually see with the eyes that are being developed is that they're being programed with the work mind virus. So the lying is baked in. Yes. And we saw this on display very clearly with the release of Google Gemini. Yes. Where you would ask for a picture of the founding fathers of the United States and it would show a group of diverse woman. You know, dressed.\n\nIt was sort of 18th century golf out of powdered wigs. Yeah, but from Saint Lucia. Yeah. I mean, like, look, sorry if you say, like, show me a group of people for sure. And it shows a group of diverse women. That's totally fine.\n\nBut if you say this, if you say very specifically the founding fathers of the United States, which were a group of white dudes, then you should show them like and with and what they actually look like because you've asked for something which is a fact from history. But it didn't. It was it was programed with a work mind virus so so much that it actually, even though it knew the truth, it produced a lie. Yeah, of course.\n\nThen people really started playing with it and said, okay, now show me a group of Waffen SS officers in World War Two. Turns out they were also a group of diverse women. According to gemini. All the black Nazi ladies. Yeah. It's like, wow, I didn't realize that. You know, it's not what I expected. So you know what's. Also not what happened? So what. Happened? So it's just it is producing a lie.\n\nAnd and, you know, that's like one of the questions that you asked was like, which is worse global thermonuclear war or misgendering Caitlyn Jenner and said misgendering Caitlyn Jenner is worse. Now, Caitlyn Jenner. Kills fewer. People. Caitlyn Jenner, to her credit. I said, no, please, misgender me. That is far more preferable than what war? Global thermonuclear war. We all dying.\n\nBut but to have a, you know, a production release, I say stuff like that is concerning because if this has become like all powerful and it's and it still has this programing where misgendering is worse than nuclear war. Well, it could conclude that the way to ensure that there can never be any mis gendering is to eliminate all humans. But now if like optimization is probability of mass, gendering is zero. No humans, no mass gendering from salt.\n\nWe're back to Arthur C. Clarke, who's so pretty present. Yes. So that's why. I think. The most important thing is to have a maximum of two seeking. I. That's why I started XAI. That's our goal with Grok. Now people will point out cases where Iraq gets it wrong, but we try to correct it as quickly as possible. But maybe a bigger problem is that when you make decisions that affect people, you want those decisions to be informed by love of people.\n\nYeah. And machines are incapable of love. Yeah. I mean. They somehow they're capable of. You can program a machine to be. Philanthropic rather than misanthropic. Yes. But don't don't instincts shape decisions, particularly decisions you can't plan for. I mean, if I ask you, you know, a question about one of your children, every answer you give is going to be shaped by your love for that child.\n\nAnd that's why you know that that's what makes us decent parents in the end, is that that instinct, which is love. And if a machine has any power over us without that animating instinct, won't it by definition hurt us? Yeah. Well. Well, I mean, I know it. We should certainly aspire to. Program a philanthropically not misanthropic way. Yes.\n\nAnd to have like said, we want it to be truthful and accurate, curious and to foster humanity into the future. And. Yeah, that's what we want, obviously. Is there any way, I guess, to set limits on the decisions that machines can make that affect human lives and make certain that there's some trigger in the system that in search of human being into the decision making process?\n\nWell, look, the reality of what's happening, whether one likes it or not, is that. We're pulling superintelligent. A. I. is like a high point judge, like intelligent, more intelligent than we can comprehend. Yes. So I taking this to like, let's say you have a child that is a super genius child that that, you know, it's going to be much smarter than you then will. What can you do?\n\nYou can instill good values and how you raise that child, even though you know it's going to be far smarter than you. You can make sure it's got good values, philanthropic values. Good morals, you know, honest, you know, productive, that kind of thing. Controlling At the end of the day, I don't know if I don't think we'll be able to control it. So I think the best we can do is make sure it grows up well. You've been saying that for a long time.\n\nYes, I'm saying. Long term, yes. Are you still as worried about it as you seem to be? Two years ago when I asked you about it. Well, I think that. But my guess is like it look, it's 80% likely to be good, maybe 90. So you can think of the glass as 80% full. It's probably going to be it's probably going to be great that there's some chance of annihilation. And you say the chance of annihilation is 20%. 10 to 20%, something like that.\n\nHow concerned is Sam Altman about inflation, do you think? I think in reality it's not concerned about it. I don't trust any. I mean, you know, I started that company as a nonprofit. Open source. Yes. The open and open AI. I named a company. A named company. Yeah. Open AI as an open source. And it is, now extremely closed source. And and. And maximizing profit. So there's risk to.\n\nUnderstand how you actually go from being a an open source non profit to a closed source for maximum profit organization. I'm missing. Well, but Sam Altman got rich though Didn't he at various points he is claimed not to be getting rich, but he's claimed many things that were false and. Now, apparently he's going to get $10 billion in stock or something like that. So. I don't trust Sam Altman.\n\nAnd I don't think we want to have the most powerful A. I. in the world controlled by someone who is not trustworthy. And sorry, I just don't. I mean, but. That seems like a fair concern. Yeah, but. But you don't think, as someone who knows him and has dealt with him, that he is worried about the possibility this could get out of control and hurt people? He will say those words. Yeah. But now.\n\nIf I did, if it became clear to the rest of us that it was out of control and posed a threat to humanity, would there be any way to stop it? I hope so. Or if you have multiple eyes. And ones that are. Hopefully you have the guys that are pro human be stronger than the guys that are not. Battle of the AIs. Yeah. I mean, that that is how it is with, say, chess these days. The. The AI chess programs are vastly better than any human.\n\nIncomprehensibly better. Meaning like we can't even understand why it is unclear. Whether one good, right? We never know why it made it. What it will make a move. We never know why it made the move so. And in fact, some of the moves will seem like blunders, but then turn out to checkmate. So. And for a while there there was there was some. The best human chess players with the best computers could be it just a computer.\n\nAnd then it got to the point where if you added a human, it just made everything was. And then it was just. It just. Computer programs versus computer programs. That's that's where things are headed in general. What? I mean. Dreams. At what point? So, I don't know. I think we just got to make sure, like I said, make sure we instill a good values. And I. What's everyone going to do for a living?\n\nI mean, in a benign AI scenario, that is probably the biggest challenge is how do you find meaning? If air is better than you and everything you have. That's the benign scenario. That's the good news. Well, yeah, but I guess. You know, for a lot of people like the idea of retiring and, you know. Really looking forward. To it and not me. I'd like to help. I'd like to think that I'd like to do useful things. Do you. Think it's a universal desire?\n\nIt's not. It's not universal. In that there are certainly I know many people who prefer to be retired, that they prefer to sort of have not have responsibilities and engage in leisure activities. So. And we're on the cusp of this is really a remarkable time to exist. Well, I'll tell you, one of the ways that I sort of was able to sort of sleep and reconcile myself to, to this is that I, I thought, well.\n\nWould I prefer to be alive and see the advent of digital superintelligence? Or what? I prefer to be alive at a different time and not see it. And I guess I'm like, Well, I guess I'd prefer to be alive to see if it's going to happen. I prefer to be alive to see it happen out of curiosity. And then I was like, Well, let's say you knew for sure it would kill everyone, would you? But you could. Now you can surf back in time.\n\nLike, I guess I'd want to be near the end of my life or something before that happened. But out at the end of it, it's like if if it's going to happen and there's nothing you do about it, hypothetically. Would you prefer to see it or not see it? And I guess I guess it's going to happen. I would prefer to see it. Rather not see it. Yeah, but as a man of action, why not convince Trump to make you secretary of defense and then just look?\n\nI think I would certainly push for a having some kind of regulatory body that at least has insight into what these companies are doing. And I can ring the alarm bell even if we don't have a regulation or rule. So I'm not I'm not someone who wants to get rid of all regulatory agencies or anything. I think we've got we've there's the right number of regulations, right number of regulators. And we've got we've gone too far.\n\nJust like if you're in a football game, if you had two of your referees on the field, weird like you can't throw the pass because you hit a referee, then it's too many referees. So but, but, but if you like, say look at any pro sports game. They all have referees that like the teams could decide we're going to have game, we're going to not have referees. That could be a thing.\n\nBut every sports game, they have refs to make sure that the rules are followed and and it's a better game if you have. What we have cops. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Cops are the referees. So I think we're for something that is a danger to the public or potential danger to the public. We we have referees.\n\nWe have regulators, you know, so like the FDA and the FDA and the various regulatory agencies, they were they were established because aircraft were falling out of the sky. And and some manufacturers were not, you know, building high quality aircraft or cutting corners. And then people died and, you know, for food and drugs that so many factories were making low quality drugs. And so they that they're they're lying to people.\n\nSo saying that someone cured them when it killed them to have FDA to, you know, regulators to referees to try to make sure that this drug manufacturers are truthful now. And I do think it mostly works. I mean, I think it's doesn't mean we turn it regulatory reform. We do reform. We do. But I don't think we should have no regulators. And given that it's a potential existential. Risk, weird that everything is regulated. Yeah.\n\nI mean, you said you're being sued by the Department of Justice for hiring more asylum seekers for your high tech company. Yeah. Even though it's illegal for us to hire asylum seekers. Right. So. So they're watching everything. Regulating everything, controlling everything, including our thoughts. Right.\n\nSo they're opposed to free speech, but they're not meaningfully regulating AI, which will eliminate the purpose for most people's lives and could kill us all. It's a little weird. Yeah. I think we should have some. But why don't we see. Something above nothing. In that range? Yeah, but why don't we? I don't know. You know, I all the way back during the Obama presidency, I, you know, met with Obama many times, but usually in like group settings.\n\nThe the one one on one meeting I had with Obama in the Oval Office, I said, look, the one thing that we really need to do is set up in it the beginnings of an AI regulatory agency. And it can start with insight where, you know, you don't just come shooting from the hip, throwing out regulations.\n\nYou just start with the inside where the AI Regulatory Committee simply goes in to understand what all the companies are doing inside and then proposes rules that all the companies agree to follow. Just like, you know, sports teams, the NFL. You know, you have proposed rules for football that everyone agrees to follow that make the game better. You know, so that that's the way to do it. But nothing came of it. What did he say when he said that?\n\nI mean, he seemed to, like, kind of agree. But. But also people didn't realize what what the. Where AI was headed at that at that time. You know, So A. I. seemed like some super futuristic. Yeah, for sure. Sci fi, basically. So, like, I'm telling you, this is going to be smarter than the smartest human. And my predictions are coming absolutely true.\n\nAnd so we need to have some insight here just to make it make sure that these companies aren't cutting corners and doing dangerous things. But Google kind of controlled the the White House at that time and they did not want any regulatory. Well, that's it. I mean, you never see politicians turn down opportunities to become more powerful, which is the point. And regulation makes them more powerful. Yeah. So it sounds like regulatory capture, then.\n\nWell, yeah. I mean, the CIO of the White House at the time was ex-google person, so. That, that they put the brakes on any regulation. And we still don't have any regulation at the federal level. It's amazing. So I think we should have something above nothing. Like I said, at least inside. And we're even.\n\nEven if there's no there's no rule that's been broken, they can at least say, hey, we we have insight into what this company or that company is doing. And we're concerned that would be helpful to know. Yeah. Instead, politically motivated liars are in charge of the future. It seems a little sketchy. Last question. You really kind of pulled out a lot of stops to help Trump your on stage yesterday. If he gets elected, will you continue to help him?\n\nYeah, absolutely. So we've talked about kind of a government efficiency commission or the Department of Governance efficiency, which is very. Much what was. So I guess what I love, if. You managed to make it several cities or governments, what percentage of Google employees did you can when you got there? You mean Twitter. Rather? I beg your pardon? I'm sorry. I just. You just been talking about Google. Twitter? Yeah. Yeah. Well, we're about 80%.\n\nAnd we've actually improved the features and functionality of the site more in the past year and a half than in the last eight years. With 20% of the staff. So just for I just want to throw that out for context. So you've talked to Trump about. Yeah. Commission. Yeah. Which is he has mentioned publicly several times, and he's very supportive of having some kind of, you know, go in efficiency commission.\n\nIt can call it Department of Governance Efficiency, DOGE. I kind of like DOGE. It's more. It's more fun. Yeah. And, where we just take a look at, at all the federal agencies and say, do we really need whatever it is, 428 federal agencies. There's so many that people have never heard of or that have overlapping areas of responsibility. We should I don't know.\n\nProbably we should get I mean, there are more federal agencies than there are years since the establishment, the United States, which means that we've created more than one federal agency per year on average. That seems a lot. It's a lot. That's a lot. So we should. That seems crazy. I think we should be able to get away with nationwide agencies. I don't know. That seems a little like a lot of agency. It's a. Lot. Yeah. Two state. Patrol.\n\nYeah, exactly. We should have fewer agencies, and they certainly shouldn't have overlapping responsibilities. And then we need some kind of we just need a review of regulations to say which ones are sensible and which ones are not. Because. Because if you've got regulators every year, they're going to add more regulations, just automatic. They're just output regulations.\n\nAnd then and there's more laws and regulations every year until basically everything's legal to get get anything done. So we need some kind of garbage collection for regulations that don't make sense. I think I'm saying very obvious things. You are saying obvious things? Yeah. So this will. Be very unpopular things. Yeah.\n\nI probably if if this happens quite a significant security team so that because someone might literally go postal on me from the post office. But in the meantime, you've got America pack. Yeah, that is encouraging. Voting for the next month. Am I summarizing correctly? Yeah. I mean, a formed America PAC really to support core values that I believe in, which are I think are, again, very obvious centrist positions, which is like we in America.\n\nI think we want safe cities, secure borders, sensible spending. Tell me where I'm going for right here. You know, we want to have the right to self-protection. We should respect the Constitution and not try to. Break the Constitution. It's there for a reason. And. You know, we should stop Lawfare. And I kind of list of these are, these are listed on the America Pack website. People can go look at the America Pack website.\n\nIt's the America pack that org and see if there's anything I disagree with or where perhaps we should modify these goals. But I think these are good goals to have. They they were certainly part of the right to free speech. You know. Yes. First Amendment. If we don't have free speech, we don't have democracy because people cannot make an informed vote. So. Those are my. Controversial views. And, you know, look.\n\nI don't think either party I think the Republicans are perfect. I don't think I would say that right now. I more Republican and Democrat. But it's not like I think the Republican Party is perfect or without issues. But we've got a choice between. To candidates. And I think on balance, it's a no brainer to vote for Trump.\n\nAnd if we don't vote for Trump, I think we're at serious risk of losing our democracy and becoming a one party state where there isn't an election anymore. There's only a Democratic primary like there is in California. Elon Musk, thank you. Very welcome.","textByLang":{"en":"If he loses, man. What? You're fucked, dude. I'm fucked. If he loses I'm fucked. It does seem that way. You can't just be like, you can't just be like... Yeah, I'm like, how long do you think my prison sentence is going to be? Like, will I see my children? I don't know. Because it's not like you can say, well yeah I maxed out to him. But, you know, I get... I have no plausible deniability. No. No, no. And I've been trashing Kamala nonstop.\n\nOh I know. Well, the Kamala puppet I call her, you know. The machine that the Kamala puppet represents. Yeah, she's irrelevant. I mean, she's not even. No, no. Like, I made it. I made a joke, which I realized--I deleted. Which is, like nobody's even bothering to try to kill Kamala because it's pointless. What do you achieve? Nothing! Just buy another puppet. That 's... It's deep and true, though. Nobody's try to kill Joe Biden. It'd be pointless.\n\nTotally. You actually put that up? Yeah. Now, some people interpreted it as though I was calling for people to assassinate her. But I, but I, but I was like, but I was like, no, even, you know, I was like, doesn't it seem strange that no one's even bothered to try. It's not worth it. I mean, there's an endless supply. I'm like, nobody would--it's absurd. It could be anybody. Yeah. Yeah. Nobody tries to assassinate a puppet. Of course not.\n\nA marionette. Yeah, marionette. So it's like... You know... That's hilarious. Yeah. She's safe. Like, like to try to kill Trump twice with actual guns and bullets. Yeah, he was shot in the ear right in fucking Butler where I was. And... He doesn't seem rattled. It's weird. Does he to you? Didn't seem what? Rattled. I mean, he has the constitution of an ox. It's not, you know, it's not like working out and eating healthy. And he's...\n\nOkay, we gotta tape this. Yeah, we're good. Good. Yeah. He's not like, let me eat another salad. No. Or workout, you know, fastidiously. That's... I feel. Like how he doesn't workout. And he eats, you know, cheeseburgers, diet coke and stuff. And it just. I think it just inherently has a strong constitution. So I mean, you were just with him. He didn't seem like a man who'd been the subject of two assassination attempts.\n\nNo, he seemed, of sound mind and body and strong backbone. Did you-- That's what I said in the thing which. Yeah, And the remarks. I made there were impromptu. There was no teleprompter or anything. I just. I was just speaking extemporaneously. Are you the only rich guy who doesn't have like a media consultant? No, I don't have a media consultant. Yeah. No, I've noticed. Obviously. Yeah. Yeah. I mean. No, I just, no, I just thought about what.\n\nWhat I. What I want to say. And I just spoke off the cuff. No teleprompter, nothing. Good for you. Yeah. I look like I'm looking right now? I'm just talking. Look at me. Wow. Amazing. Can you believe it? I can talk without prompter. That's crazy. But if. If he loses. It's going to be hard for you to pretend you never supported him. All end up in the deep end. Yeah. Now you are definitely in the deep. And you can touch bottom. And I'm like.\n\nI'm like, rolling around like a pig. And I'm like, Buy it all and, baby. Is it fun? Yes, very fun. How? I mean. I mean, there may be some in the hopefully unlikely. Event that he loses. There may be some vengeance on me. Were you kidding? I mean, it's possible. It's possible. You've got to. Be one of the biggest government contractors. We do essential work for the government. Yes. Yeah.\n\nBut it's not like, you know, we do useful, essential work that we compete for and win contracts on because our product is much better. It costs less. But that's why we get to. Go And and. I mean, if you take, for example, the the NASCAR contract to transport astronauts to and from the space station. Boeing got that sort of two contracts at the start. One to Boeing and one to SpaceX. Boeing was awarded twice as much as SpaceX.\n\nSpaceX has done all the astronaut transport from the space station and and Boeing has only done 1 to 1 transport of one of two astronauts to the space station. And we had to bring it back. Boeing got twice as much SpaceX. This is a total misunderstanding that my companies have been subsidized and supported by the government and get all these and it's like, Do you really think that a Biden administration is going to subsidize me? Probably not.\n\nAre you kidding? No. In fact. They take away every contract they possibly can. So, for example, there was the FCC, the FCC contract to $42 billion for providing providing rural, rural, poor broadband. Yes. Okay. We we actually first said, look, we don't we think there shouldn't be any subsidy. So we recommend this, that this program just not exist. But since you're insisting that that exist, we will compete. And we we have got a product.\n\nSo we won. I don't know about a quarter of it, which would have included the devastated areas like North Carolina and so forth. And the FCC took it away illegally. They just voted. Three out of five commissioners voted away and said, even though you want it, we're sending it. Online. And you know how many people they've connected? How many? Zero. So you think that was political? Well, the three Democrats voted against it.\n\nTwo Republicans voted for it. So you tried to get Starlink. You tried to get Starlink in North Carolina into western North Carolina. The areas devastated by the hurricane. We have it is it is in there. And it is the primary means of communication in the devastated areas. You had conflict with Buttigieg over this? Well, I raised it. I said, look, we're we had delivered.\n\nWe've been delivering Starlink terminals there for a while, and obviously some people already had them. So is that just your content, private individuals that had Starlink there already? We delivered thousands of terminals and got all the way up to the, you know, the areas where they wouldn't let us go any further. And then we're like, okay, we're going to send helicopters in and find people who are stranded and and give them Starlink terminals.\n\nSo I think it's a nice thing. Okay. The they they wouldn't let us land because there was an FAA notice to Em and Notam that said, in order to land, you have to know who you're going to meet with to land. Now, the problem is we're trying to deliver Internet communications. People don't have Internet communications. We don't know who they are and they can't reach us because they don't have communications. Do you see the catch 22? Yes, I do.\n\nAnd saying so. So it's obviously impossible for people who don't have Internet communications to let us to let us know who they are because they don't have the Internet. Yes. Yes. And so did you explain this to the federal government? Yes. What they say they they've they fixed it. How was Buttigieg when you talked to him? It was actually good. So I want to be just. Yeah. Yeah. I want to give Buttigieg some credit here for a.\n\nI want to complain about it. He he reacted in a very levelheaded way, and he reached out to me. He called me. Yeah. And we discussed the issue. Got to the bottom of it and he fixed it. Good. So credit to Buttigieg. Yeah. Well into you for pushing it. Yeah, I mean, so. But as soon as he was aware of the problem, he fixed it. Well, you publicized it too. On it? Yeah. Yeah. As soon as you shamed him.\n\nWell, but I do want to give credit where it's due. Yeah. No, he meant. I agree completely. So. But back to the original question. You know about the potential consequences if, you know, having gone all in, this doesn't work. Yeah. I mean, you had to have thought about this long and hard before you did it. What was your thinking? I mean. Yeah, so. I mean, my view.\n\nIs, is that if Trump doesn't win this election, it's the last election we're going to have that. The. Democrats, the machine has been importing so many people, bringing in so many illegals flying, flying in with this like CBP border app thing that nobody even knew about, like a secret program that's illegal. Basically, it's illegal, but there's no action by DOJ to actually stop it from happening. There.\n\nJust transporting large numbers of illegals to swing states. If you look at the numbers, these are the numbers from the government website. So from the Democrat administered government websites like where do you get this data from the government website that is run by Democrats And there are triple digit increases in illegals to all the swing states. And in some cases it's like 700% over the last three years.\n\nThose swing state margins are there sometimes ten 20,000 votes. So what happens if you put, you know, hundreds of thousands of people into each swing state? And and for the for the. If when somebody is granted asylum they are fast tracked that they can get a green card and then five years after the green card, they can just they can get citizenship and they can fully legally vote. And when they do so, they vote overwhelmingly Democrat.\n\nAnd sometimes they get this rebuttal of like, well, a lot of them, their social values don't align with sort of the Far-Left sort of woke ideology. That's true. But but that's not their top priority. But their top priority is getting their friends and family also to the United States. And that the Dems also issue all these programs, these sort of handouts, essentially, that make them beholden to the Democratic Party. So they brought down.\n\nThat's what happens. So my prediction is if there's another four years of a Dem administration, they will legalize so many illegals that are there that the next election there won't be any swing states. And and we'll be a single party country just like California as a single party state. That's a supermajority Dem state in California. Because of immigration. Yes. The California was fairly reliably Republican.\n\nBill Clinton lost California in 92 and won West Virginia. Yes. So there was a 1986 amnesty? Yes. And thereafter California trended very strongly them. And as at this point I think 65 or 70% down, something like that. Supermajority down like the California legislature. Yes. That's more than two thirds Democrat. Has it improved the state? No, it's not. And that California just passed, which is shocking. It's hard to believe this is even real.\n\nBut California just passed a law making it illegal to require voter I. D. in any election at all in California. Do you know that? No. Yeah. Newsom signed it into law last week. It's illegal to require an ID. In any election, even a town council. And a friend of mine. Who is this candidate? He lives in Palo Alto. It was like. It was like, is this actually real? And he went to, like, put in like some city council election.\n\nHe tried to show them his I. D. and they said, we're not even allowed to look at your I. D.. Have they extended this suddenly? What's going on right now? But they're proud of it. They're not hiding it. But it's. Only voting. It's not buying a gun or buying liquor, buying a pack of cigarets or flying on an airplane or renting a hotel room. It's only voting that it's, if. You try to buy a gun, I mean, they're going to.\n\nIdeas six ways to sun Yeah they try it California trying to make it basically equal to on its own a gun. And the same people that demanded vaccine IDs for if you want to travel or do anything are the same ones who say no voter I. D. is required. Is there any reason. Obviously hypocritical. To pass a law like that except to abet voter fraud? It's for it's it's so that fraud can never cannot be proven.\n\nSo it enables large scale fraud and no way to prove it, because how would you prove it? It's literally impossible. No, No I. D.. You're not even allowed to show your I. D.. It's insane. Well, it is insane. Insane. So. Yeah. The purpose of Nevada voter ID is obviously to conduct fraud in elections. Obviously there can be no other explanation. I mean, they come up with some nice sounding thing. People don't have ideas.\n\nCould you live in this country with an idea? Yeah. I mean, their common rebuttal is like it's racist to require ID and. Which is insane. I think it's actually racist and patronizing to say that people can't figure out how to get ID, obviously. But how could you live here without an ID? I don't think you can't. Yeah. You can't do anything. Yeah. You got to be for everything. Like a list of things you need an I. D. for?\n\nBasically everything except voting. So. So you see the rest of the. Total bullshit, obviously. Obviously, Yes. But that doesn't in any way minimize the aggression or self-righteousness they bring to this conversation. Yes. You're a racist if you want that. Right. Whereas, in fact, obviously someone is racist if they say that people of particular race cannot get ID. That's patronizing and racist. That's absurd. Yes. Yeah.\n\nYou know, it's like when the governor of New York set people in the you know, get out, don't know how to use computers or something like that. I mean, like, you're a super out of touch. Yeah. For sure. Yeah. So it's like. So there's a really clear template. She doesn't know how to use computers, but they do. Obviously. I don't think Hochul could use a computer. Yeah, I think she's not qualified intellectually. Yeah. No. Right.\n\nBut not everyone in New York is as dumb as Kathy Hochul. I think that's true. Yeah. So you see the other 49 states becoming California. If the machine wins. Well, you don't. Need all 49 to go that way. You just need, you know, enough to have the election, have there not be swing states. I mean, there are only six wings swing states. Yep. So there are only six states out of 50 right now that are in contention.\n\nSo if those six states that are in contention by narrow margins are no longer in contention, then the only contest will be who wins the Democratic Party primary. That's how it is in California. That's how it is in New York. There's there's no there's no party party versus party situation. The only contest is who wins the Democratic primary. And as we've seen with the appointment of Kamala, who no one voted for, even in the Democratic primary.\n\nYes. Where's the democracy. Here? Well, it's just it's easier, though. I mean, it's. Just that the party leader just decides who is in charge. That's that that that's that's an, you know, a tiny oligarchy basically. Comprised of that's. Not democracy. The richest people in the country. That's kind of the interesting part to me is that the richest people in the country are on board with this. I mean, that's what it is.\n\nIt's it's it's a collection of billionaires. Well, most of them are. Yeah, but you're not. Not me. And I'm not. Everyone is. I think this is it is a shocking number of so-called billionaires are in the Dem camp more than are in the Republican camp. For sure. Which is wild. So the in fact the astonishing thing in the swing states is that that that there even a contest given that the Dems have far more money than the Republicans.\n\nSo so the Kamala camp dramatically outspent the Trump campaign in the swing states the overwhelming the media is overwhelmingly pro-Democrat. So you've got you know the press you know them cheering squad and. You know, So I. And then and then you've got all that almost all the Hollywood and entertainment, the celebrities also, you know, endorsing and being pro them. So you see you got you got the celebrities, you got the they they got the money.\n\nThey got basically everything on the side of the Dems, the Republicans, the underdog here, Trump's underdog and swing swing states. And still it's a contentious it's. Still a 50/50 after all that. What does that tell you? It tells me that if people actually knew what was going on, they weren't being fed nonstop propaganda. It would be a landslide in favor of Republicans. Yeah. Well, how's this for crazy?\n\nHas there ever been a more volatile time in American politics? Not in our lifetimes. No one alive has ever seen anything like this. But long before things started to really fall apart, the Heritage Foundation saw it coming.\n\nHeritage has pulled together a coalition of over 100 right leaning groups to develop a comprehensive plan for day one that would include detailed policy proposals on the most pressing issues the big ones securing the border, controlling inflation, cracking down on election fraud, protecting the rights of the individual, and saving the nation from being crushed by woke anti-human ideology.\n\nThe team at Heritage has also developed a plan to dismantle the deep state that keeps this nonsense going and reclaim this nation from the small group of technocrats that's broken everything heritage. Also running a training and vetting program to identify effective conservatives to serve in the next presidential administration. People who will share your values, this country's values, and actually do the job.\n\nIt can't just be the same pool of discredited people from Washington populating every administration. Heritage has a long headstart. They put in a lot of work already, but they need your support to finish the job and to support the incoming president. You can go to heritage. org/tucker and contribute to this important work today. A lot depends on it. Heritage. org/tucker but why not join the easier side.\n\nI mean you're just you're creating problems for yourself by getting on stage with Trump and I mean you must have had friends who said that to you. Sure. Yes. Yeah. People who care about you. Like, why even get involved in this? Well. Because I think we want to remain a democracy and we don't want to become a one party state. Yes. That's the reason. And the it's exact opposite. The people call Trump a threat to democracy.\n\nBut the people who are saying Trump is a threat to democracy are themselves the threat to democracy. Yes. One party rule is not democracy. One party where essentially the party elite pick a candidate, as happened with Kamala, is not democracy. Where did the people vote? Show me where the people voted. No, there were no people voting. It was all just Dem party elite that just appointed someone.\n\nAnd and when that when the Biden puppet were providing puppets, ratings sagged. They knocked him in the back immediately. Just tossed him out. And put it put a new puppet on. That's exactly what happened. Tell me I'm wrong. Well, not only you're right. I mean, it's almost not even worth criticizing Kamala Harris, because I know exactly what does she have to do with it? There's no point in criticizing.\n\nIt accomplishes She's she's simply the face of a much larger machine. Yes. And she will say whatever is whatever the trial, the teleprompter, whatever's on the teleprompter, she's going to say it. Yes. She gets stuck if the teleprompter breaks. That happened recently. I think the teleprompter was. She just she was just like looping for a while for about a minute. So I think. That begins slowly. That was pretty funny to watch.\n\nBut she'll just say whatever words are on the teleprompter. So, you know, it's really whoever controls the teleprompter is the actual sort of that does that's who's actually in charge. And who is that to think? Well, I've tried to pin it down. It's not like. Any one kind of mastermind. It's not like it's it seems to be like Kamala of sort of a a marionette with. You know, a thousand puppet masters type of thing. Like, not it's it's it's.\n\nOr maybe it's it's somewhere north of 100 is what it seems like. Yes, I bet you know, 80 of them. I probably know most of them. Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, just by virtue of your job and what you've been doing for the last 30 years, I mean. Yeah. And I should say, I think you voted for it. I'd like to. See a matchup of of those the top hundred puppet masters in the Epstein client list. Do you think there's some overlap and overlap? Strong overlap.\n\nWhen are we going to see that list, do you think? I don't know. It's it's it's mind blowing that that that they have not tried to prosecute even one not even the worst offender on the Epstein client list. They they've not even tried to prosecute even one. Is that that's insane. Well, because they have a lot of diabetic grandmothers who were outside the capital on January 6th that they're kind of occupied. Yeah.\n\nI mean, they've put like, whatever, 5 or 600 January 6 protesters in prison and not one person on the Epstein client list. Will that ever come out, do you think? You know, I think part of why Kamala is getting so much support is that if Trump wins that Epstein client list is going to become public. Yes. And some of those billionaires behind Kamala are terrified of that outcome. Yeah. Do you think Reed Hoffman's uncomfortable? Yes. Yeah.\n\nAnd Gates. Yeah. And I only ask that because you can just look at them and you're like that. That's a nervous person right there. I don't know. I mean, I assume you know. Yeah. Yes. Reed Hoffman was my vice president of development at PayPal. Yeah. 24 years ago he did. Does he seem nervous to you? Yeah. I mean, he's terrified of a Trump victory. Because of the disclosure that would follow? I think. Yeah, I mean, I think.\n\nHe's certainly ideologically not aligned with Trump anyway, but I think he is concerned about the, the Epstein situation. Like something might actually the DOJ might actually move forward. There are a lot of videos. Apparently those rooms on the island, I think out in New Mexico were wired for video. Right. And worst of it, I mean, between Diddy and Epstein was that this was probably several thousand hours of footage here. Yeah.\n\nIt's kind of weird that the people on those videos are lecturing the rest of us about our moral failings, isn't it? Yeah, it is weird. What is that? Well, I mean, part of how they. Deflect attention from themselves is by criticizing the morals of others. Yes. So they it's sort of like a preemptive moral strike. I mean, as I said, I think that those who are saying Trump is a threat to democracy are themselves actually the threat to democracy.\n\nIt feels like we're getting to a place where the rest of us know too much. Is this mean? I mean, it's easier to live in a society. We don't really know what the people in charge are doing or why they're doing it. But now, thanks. I would say largely to X. Yeah. I think that's fair to say that. Yeah, we we do know a lot. Not everything, but we know a lot. And I wonder where does that look? What happens next now that we know all this.\n\nThe kidnaper shown us his face. Like what happens? Well. I think if if Trump wins, we can do some housecleaning. And shed light on things. Yet all the platform does is adhere to freedom, to freedom of speech within the bounds of the law. Yes. And if if people want to change the laws, they can change laws. And so, like X in different countries, X does censor it. In countries where censorship is is the law.\n\nWe don't try to push American laws in other countries, but we do try to stick to the law in any given country. That's what we're doing. We open source our algorithm. We try to be as transparent as possible. But those who want to push lies obviously hate truth and transparency. Yes. Because it shows them to be liars. I mean, you look at it like, how outrageous was that Kamala in the presidential debate? Kept pushing the fine people hoax.\n\nThey know the fine people hoax is false. Trump would never support Nazis and Nazi rallies. It's absurd. And he explicitly said that in that same speech that you must condemn not, you know, anyone who has Nazi tendencies with the in the strongest possible terms. And yet, despite knowing that to be false, the people who wrote the speech for the Kamala puppet, it put the fine people hoax in the presidential debate. Deliberately lying again.\n\nIt's messed up. If she wins. I mean, how can they let X continue in its current form, in its current role in American society. They won't. They will try to shut it down by any means possible. What do you mean by any means possible? I mean, first, look, you either buy it. I mean, they'll try to pass laws. They'll try to prosecute the company, prosecute me, any. I mean, the amount of warfare that we're seeing taking place is is outrageous.\n\nI mean, the I mean, it's many examples, but like the Department of Justice, for example, launched a huge lawsuit against SpaceX for failing to hire asylum seekers. Come on, asylum seekers? Not asylum--those granted asylum. Asylum seekers.\n\nNow, there's there's also a law called international traffic an arms regulations that because SpaceX develops advanced missile technology that can be used and nuclear ICBMs that we have, we have to be very careful with who we hire. We can only hire someone if they are a permanent resident or citizen. That's what the ayatollah says. Then there's another law that says that you cannot discriminate against asylum seekers.\n\nSo we're damned if you do, damned if you don't. The DOJ did a massive lawsuit against SpaceX for failing to hire asylum seekers. Even though we are, it is illegal for us to hire asylum seekers under Itar law. This natural thing that's going on. And they can only they can only do a. Fairly small number of lawsuits every year. So why did they pick this one? Because you own X. Yeah, lawfare.\n\nI mean, it's like that famous quote from Beria, you know, the. Yeah. Stalin's chief torturer and head of the secret police. Beria said, show me the man and I'll show you the crime. Exactly. I mean, we have so many laws that it is actually impossible to, you know, impossible to to do business, impossible to operate without being violating some law because you have laws like the ones I just gave you with where both things are illegal. Yes.\n\nThe contradict one another. They contradict one another. So, you know, it's illegal to. Discriminate against discriminate against asylum seekers in jobs. But it's also illegal for us to hire asylum seekers. But it is. They just they just chose one. They chose the the one law and ignored the other one. And the Department of Justice at federal level. Prosecuted SpaceX for that. What do you think... It's mad.\n\nWell, it also discredits the idea of law, which some of us wants to take seriously. Absolutely. It this affects both the perception of of American justice and the reality of it. Yes. So. No, I'm actually a big fan of the American justice system. And I think on balance, you know, we've got still still have an excellent judicial system. We still have judges that care about the letter and intent of the law.\n\nI mean, not just the letter, but also the intent of the laws. But something that people should be concerned about is that there's an increasing movement to place activists as judges. This is if you look at who heard it, the Biden administration confirm as federal judges and who have been confirmed at the state level and sort of follow states. Increasingly, it is it is not judges who care about justice or they don't care about following the law.\n\nThey care about social justice, not justice. Justice. Right. What they call social justice activists as judges. Now you've got a real problem. Do you think if. If that continues, we will not have a real justice system. Or a real. Country? Yes. Yeah. But again, your purchase of X has been, I think it's fair to say, even if I hated it, I would say this because it's true. It's been pivotal in American politics. Yeah. And in American society.\n\nDo you think they could shut you down if the Democrats continue to hold power? Well, I probably try. Yeah. And if they. If they. If they get a majority of the Senate and House. And the presidency. Then they can simply pass a law and delete section 230. So somebody make us liable for it. For what? Any what anyone says on a platform with, you know, like at this point, almost 600 million monthly active users. Yeah. Which is impossible.\n\nYou know that's that's like trying to regulate speech and. Sort of like a country. Yeah. So a big. Country. Yeah, it'd just be instantly bankrupt. But I bet they wouldn't withdraw legal immunity from the vaccine makers at the same time, would they? No. That's unlikely. Just I mean, as. Long as we're withdrawing legal liability protection. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the whole vaccine debate is is a long one.\n\nYou know, I'm not actually I'm not anti-vaccine in general. I think we want to exercise caution with use of vaccines. But in the absence of vaccines, there would be a lot more. I think people that that the that have died, you know, like we went the smallpox vaccine, that was a good one. It seems a good one. Yeah. Yeah. Small pox will kill you. Killed a lot of people.\n\nIt used to be people would like a lot of people would die of smallpox and a lot of people get polio. For sure. Yeah. We had a president had polio. Yeah. There are still people You meet people today. Yeah. In their 80s who were limping from childhood polio. Right. It's good that we don't have that. And vaccines, you know, played a major role in that. So that doesn't mean that vaccines should not have any scrutiny. Of course they should.\n\nWe should be making sure that the quality control of vaccines is incredibly good if we're giving them to children and whatnot. And we shouldn't we shouldn't force people to take vaccines. That itself is a controversial statement that we shouldn't force people. We shouldn't force. We will take back things that. So just to relax. I believe in freedom. Like, yeah, I've noticed. Like America supposed to be the land of liberty. Yeah.\n\nYou know, freedom. Freedom and opportunity. So that we try to, as much as possible, maximize people's individual liberty and that we try to be a country where you succeed based on your talent and hard work. Yes. Those are two fundamental values. That. That's what that's what's made America great. And if we lose those, we will our decline will be swift. What do you if you had to get it, If you had to bet.\n\nI mean, does freedom reassert itself in America? We're not. Well, that's what I think part of why this election's so pivotal. I think if we were the Trump administration, I think we can improve the liberty of Americans. We can. I think we need to have sensible deregulation where we we keep the regulations that matter. We don't want to destroy, you know, important habitats or yes, you know, encourage oil spills or anything like that.\n\nBut there are so many regulatory agencies that have overlapping responsibility that we are smothering progress and we can't build a high speed rail in America. You look at the ridiculous high speed rail project in California where they've spent $7 billion and all they've got to show for it is A6A 600 foot section of concrete with no rails on it. The picture of it online. So if.\n\nIt's not that fast yet, I wouldn't say it's high speed at this point or even. Rail. It doesn't even have maybe by now they put some railroad, but it's just comically small section of rail. $7 billion has been spent, most of it in environmental consulting. And I don't know where it's but clearly not in building high speed rail.\n\nSo we can't we can't we've got there are so many different regulatory agencies and so many laws and regulations that prevent progress that if this continues, we simply won't be able to get anything done. It does seem like the engineers are not getting rich. It's the environmental consultants, the climate consultants, the DUI consultants. A whole consultant class seems to be getting richer by the year.\n\nOr people with actual skills, the ones that bring actual progress. Useful things, products and services that useful can use. That's right. So this is a two things that if you were like. Traveling on a desert island, you'd want those people. Right, Right. But you wouldn't want environmental controls. They seem they seem undercooked. Like you're going to starve. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And it's like.\n\nWho's who are actual builders that get things done and, you know, and and and every year, we're making it harder in America for actual bodies to get things done. You know, in this, like, weird and around Atlas Shrugged scenario. Where it's you know, there's yet another regulation, yet another rule and what a sort of that that phrase Atlas Shrugged or your or your manager or your manager or your manager.\n\nIt's like eventually, like can't get anything done. Why the hostility, though, toward people with with meaningful skills? It's not it's not a neutral posture they have. And they're reaching themselves obviously by creating fake jobs because they have no skills and, you know, they don't have creative power. So I understand that. But why do they hate people who do have creative power and actual skills? I don't understand that.\n\nI'm not sure I understand it either because it's difficult for me to put my. Put myself in the mindset. Because I'm someone who believes in construction. I build things that's wanted to build cars of what rockets I got, you know, satellite Internet. You know, I've spent. Thousands of hours, tens of thousands of hours in factories building up factories. So.\n\nYou know, I was like, I can't really put myself in the mind of, say, someone who would want to do crime because I don't want to do crime. Yeah. You know, I don't want to hurt, you know, somebody who. Enjoy hurting other people. I don't enjoy hurting other people, so I have a hard time imagining, why would somebody do that? Yes.\n\nYou know, in an extreme case, you can't put yourself in the mind of like, say, a Jeffrey Dahmer where you're like a cannibalistic serial killer because you're not a cannibalistic serial killer. Right. Like, I can't I don't get it. You know, it's. Not a fetish you can relate to. But, you know. I do think. This is in the sort of well-meaning sort of liberal mindset.\n\nI know I've many good friends who have, you know, their very deep empathy for their fellow human being good. And that they care. And and but the challenge that they have is that they've often grown up in a very sheltered existence where everyone around them is nice and civilized and they just really don't encounter people who are have have uncontrolled violent tendencies or like hurting people.\n\nYou know, they've just always grown up in a sort of kumbaya. Yeah, everyone. Is nice hippie commune situation. Minneapolis pre riots. Yeah. I mean. Yeah, but. But this, there's a small number of people. It's like a few percent of society that either have. Anger management issues that are so severe that they they they lose their temper and hurt or murder others.\n\nAnd there's a very small it's like I said, it's not not a large number that that enjoy hurting other people. And if you do not incarcerate them, they will they will do that to their they will hurt other people. And what I see is, is what I call. Shallow empathy, like people have empathy for the criminals, but not empathy for the victims of the criminals. Yes.\n\nAnd so if you simply have and I believe that one should have deep empathy to say like, what is the greater good for society? Is it better to incarcerate violent criminals and prevent them from hurting people or to let them loose and allow those people to be hurt? And I think the latter is much worse. You know, my mom is my mom lives in New York and it's my mom at this at this point is has gone from being Democrat or Republican.\n\nAnd her friends in New York are having the same experience because you know what'll turn you from a Democrat to a Republican pretty fast is getting punched in the face while you walk down the street. Yes. Which for no reason. Yes. And then. And then. And then no action being taken against those who hurt you. And that happened to your mom. But not my mother, but 2 to 3 of her friends this year. Hey, it's Tucker Carlson. I am not in the studio.\n\nI'm in. And you can hear it in the audio. Probably I'm in the back of an SUV outside a hotel in Tulsa, Oklahoma. I think it's Tulsa, Oklahoma. Anyway, we're on the road for this month long tour. And there is a lot going on in the world. And the question is, how do you understand what's happening? There are deeper trends unfolding. You probably sense that and it would be helpful to have some grounding in exactly what they are.\n\nAnd if you're like me and you spent four years in college and didn't learn all that much, where do you go to understand what's happening to your world? Well, Hillsdale College, in our opinion, is one of the very few places left in the English speaking world where your kids can get a real education. But not just your kids. You. They have free online classes, completely free.\n\nYou can get them anywhere, including in the backseat of an SUV outside a hotel in Tulsa, Oklahoma. And you'll know that when you go there. Go to Tucker for hillsdale. com. They have an amazing new course called Marxism, Socialism and communism. Hillsdale is offering it doesn't cost you a dime and you can pull it up right on your phone if you want. Go to Tucker for hillsdale. com. And the class. Marxism, Socialism and communism.\n\nAnd you'll have a much better understanding of what you're watching every day. Why would someone punch him in the face? I don't know. But I that's I think I'm not a face puncher, right? No. You know, but if you. Walk around the streets of San Francisco and many downtowns and go to downtown Philadelphia right now, you know, they call people homeless, but but the homeless is the wrong term. Violent drug zombie. Yeah. Okay.\n\nIt's like, you know, you look at them, you say like. Homeless is a misnomer. It implies that someone got a little behind on their mortgage. And if you just offer them a job, they'll be back on their feet. Yeah. Now. But if you go and look at downtown Philly or San Francisco or parts of New York and actually most most downtowns, what you actually have a violent drug zombies.\n\nSo they're like shuffling down the street with dead eyes, you know, and, and and with like needles, you know, and human feces on the streets. You've been. It's not safe, right? Have you seen this? Yeah. I was. Born there. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like one of the most beautiful cities in the world. Yes, the great. And now you have to step over the. The drug needles and the feces and the bodies. They weren't one couple I met.\n\nThe final straw for leaving San Francisco was there was a they came home one night and there's a dead body in front of their garage. They can get their car. I can plug the car. Because the. Corpse I have, there's no street parking. There's a corpse. This is a corpse for the garage. They don't want to move the corpse, you know, because like, well, you know, you know, like, maybe there's the need to figure out why the guy died or something.\n\nYou know. That's the. Other. That's liberal. Compassion. But they're in a bit of a quandary because they got a place. To park a car and they feel that they shouldn't really move the dead bodies. They kill number one. And so. There's a dead. Body outside our house. And they said, well, that no one in San Francisco says, Well, are you in danger right now? It's like, well, no, he's dead. It's fresh air. He's dead.\n\nAnd they're like they're like, okay, we'll send someone tomorrow to pick up the body like they were doing tomorrow. So, so, so they're like, going in their house. Well, there's a dead body. In front of their house, you know, like, it's like took like 24 hours or something like that to eventually pick up the body and the like. That. How is this worth living? And did. They. Yes. That's why there's a million anecdotes like that. I know, I know.\n\nBut I just don't think. This is not. Rare. It's. Well, it's. It's. It's ubiquitous. And so then you wonder, like, how can people still tell themselves they're compassionate? If there's one thing. Is, is that is that people really just need to think what. Like I believe in being compassionate about. Of course, I believe that we should care about our fellow human beings. I think this is a good thing. Of course we should not.\n\nWe should not be we should not be. Selfish and not care about others. We should care about others, but we should just care about others. All things considered. Like I said, not just about the criminals. It's this one layer deep. You should also care about the criminals. Victims? Yes. Yes. Well, especially the criminals. Victims? Yes. Innocent people who get attacked and killed. So, I mean. I get so many anecdotes.\n\nI mean, you know, like a about a year ago, there were there were three access to Twitter employees who were just leaving the building and walking down Wall Street. And in San Francisco, Wall Street used to be beautiful, wonderful street. Of course, obviously it's called Wall Street because that's where the market was right now. Now it's boarded up shop windows and stuff. And and they'll trace back over the next.\n\nYou want to know that they outran him and they reported him as a guy with an ax who tried to try to kill us with an ax. The police did nothing. And that guy with an ax subsequently murdered two people. With an ax. With the with the ax. Because eventually he's going to find somebody he cannot run. And did.\n\nSo what I'm saying is if you if you don't stop ax murderers while while they're attempting to ax murder, eventually they will succeed in ax murderer people. If this goes on. I mean, that's such an obvious observation. Seems obvious. Yes, I think it is. Yeah. That if you're in any way abetting acts murder, then you're really. You're against civilization. That's the way it looks to me.\n\nI mean, yeah, I don't see, I'm trying to understand motive here. I can't relate like you. But you're against the whole project. If you're allowing that, I guess is what I'm saying. Yeah, I think we should. Controversial position, but I think we should arrest ax murderers when they first attempt to it or not, after they've succeeded in doing so. And I think we should assign at least some of the blame for the murders of the people who allowed.\n\nHave this. Got a one round with an ex on Market Street trying to kill people. Yes. Yeah. Well, you know, there's this whole movement to decriminalize crime. I've noticed. Yes. What is that? Madness. Yeah. I like to fight crime. Crime legal. Like in California, you can just steal things and nobody does anything. It's, like, fully legal to steal anything under $1,000 in California. That's why.\n\nBut then I have to, like, lock up goods behind these, like, you know, glass and plastic walls. So you go to the supermarket and you can't even get, like, what, Toothpaste? So. And this is actually been particularly difficult on small mom and pop operations because they don't have the resources of a large corporation. So a lot of small businesses that just kill them. So when you're at dinner parties and you make these points, what do people say?\n\nWell, actually, I think I've been I've been able to persuade people that, yeah, we really, we need to reverse course here. I think I have actually been able to persuade a number of people and I think there actually is now a ballot on a California ballot initiative to re re criminalize theft. Theft. All right, guys, guys, we. There's a reason why we criminalize theft in the first place.\n\nSo so and then amazingly, Gavin Newsom was came out against that proposition. Yeah. No, honestly. He's the guy that broke it. Gavin Newsom is like is like like from like, Batman, Dark Knight. The Joker is in charge of Gotham. You remember? Like, he took over New York, basically. And the criminals roam free and the citizens are arrested. That's hard. That's California.\n\nBut but I mean, at least as a ballot initiative, which I think will probably pass to say, no, actually it is a crime to steal things. Because people say. You know, Gavin, you've got to know Gavin Newsom knows. I know Gavin Newsom. You know, everyone knows. Gavin for a long. Time. Exactly. So what is that? And he doesn't seem crazy when you talk to him in person. He's a perfectly nice guy. Like what? Why would he? And he's not stupid.\n\nWhy would he come out in favor of crime? Well, his stated reason was that it would disproportionately affect people of color. Yeah. But that was his public statement, right? Well, that is one of those patronizing, racist positions you described at the outset, obviously. I mean, he's literally saying black people as blacks are criminals. Yeah, of. Course. Yeah. Yeah. No, that's what you say. That's what he's saying. Yeah. Yeah. And by the.\n\nWay, it is true that crime like that does increase distrust between races. It actually gives rise to racism. It's totally destructive of the social fabric, I think. But I'm. But I'm asking, like, what do you think is real motive is like who's pushing him in favor of crime? Well, I mean, there's always the Soros boogeyman. Yeah. How real is that? It's it's real. I don't think one can ascribe everything to Soros, I guess.\n\nAnd George George himself is is I mean, he's you know, at this point, he's not he has not compos mentis. So his son Alex is in charge. And, but there is this whole system that Soros built up over many decades. You know, And so it's it's like a source and like minded people or whatever, You know, they believe in open borders. They believe we shouldn't prosecute crime. This is insane. Those seem like expressions of hatred toward the United States.\n\nLike, I don't if I was pushing that on the country, I would only do that if I hated the country and wanted to destroy it. Well, any civilization. I mean, and Soros and some of the organizations have been pushing this in Europe and other countries to anyone everywhere they can. What's going on in Europe. Would you say you're suddenly seems like a different place? Well. My biggest concern for Europe is that the birth rate is half replacement rate.\n\nYes. So Europe is rapidly becoming, with each passing year, older and older with fewer and fewer young people. So I think at the most fundamental level, unless Europe has a growth rate at least roughly equal to the replacement rate, it is in population free fall. Population collapse is what's going on in Europe. So. There's also like a shocking amount of censorship. I remember seeing like in in Britain there. I kid you not.\n\nSo how can this be real? They are releasing convicted pedophiles from prison in order to put people in prison for Facebook posts. But to be fair, those supposed to criticize the government so they have a good reason. Well. Actually, some of these posts that I've these ones I've seen don't actually criticize the government. Or. They they were they were seen as as sort of as hate speech. Right.\n\nSo because they noticed the society getting crappier and crappier with every year and they said so. Yeah. I mean, there were and this is sort of stating a fact that there were migrant rape gangs in in England that were gangs that would run around and prey on young girls, gang rape them. And some people found that objectionable, which obviously it should be objectionable. And they're upset about that. And so they complained about it online.\n\nAnd we're set to present. That sounds crazy. But it is crazy. And that's like. Like what? Well, it is. So it kind of gets to the. I mean, you're an engineer, so you're. It's mind blowing. It is mind boggling. But it's the same. You use the phrase mind virus, but it's behaving like a virus. It's infecting people and making it impossible, apparently, for them to make rational. Yeah. What is that virus? You know, someone.\n\nI think you should interview is Gad Saad. I have. You have? Yes. I. Should watch that, actually. He's great. Yeah. Smart. Super smart guy. Yeah. And he he wrote a great book. Called the parasitic mind. Yes. Very good book. Highly recommended. Yes. Which where he tries to understand. How do you get to this parasitic mind situation?\n\nAnd he's writing a book now, which hopefully you'll publish soon, which is about suicidal empathy, where you have so much empathy, you're actually suicidal in society or someone's perceived empathy. So it actually shallow empathy, not deep after deep empathy would be you'd want the society continue. Shallow empathy is because you have like empathy that's essentially skin deep and then you and you don't.\n\nBut it's ultimately bad for civilization and results in the destruction of civilization. And Gad has got a good term for this suicidal empathy. So. Is going to deconstruct what's what's, you know, where does this come from? And. Yeah, I mean, part of it, I suppose, is. Is sort of the decline of religion. So, you know, as the saying goes, nature abhors a vacuum.\n\nSo when you have essentially a decline in religion, an increase in the secular nature of society. For most people, they need something to fill that void and so they adopt. A religion is not called a religion but like it but effectively like woke the work mind biases its as it takes the place of religion. Yes. And they they've, they've internalized it and they feel it with religious fervor. Yes. So. And rigidity. Yes. Yes.\n\nAnd they you know, they essentially conduct like a holy war effectively. It's just not called a religion, but it is a religion, sort of a work holy war. And they're highly resistant to change, as is normal for for for religions. So. Now, for myself, I'm I sort of see myself as a sort of, you know, engineer. Physicist for me. I'm culturally Christian. I grew up Christian. I mean, I was Anglican, but baptized. You know, I was, what, Sunday School?\n\nWow. Yeah. Actually, oddly enough, I was into Hebrew preschool and Anglican Sunday School at the same time. So it was How about together one day? Jesus, I love the next. Which is, you know, if you're five, it's all fine. It's just not, you know. So. But I'm not Jewish. It's just that my. My father's two partners in his engineering firm were I went to the same Hebrew preschool, and it was near our house, so I just got sent there. And.\n\nSo we've been I've been, you know. I, you know. I, I. Maybe this will make me even worries, but I. I have trouble sort of believing all these stories, these religious stories. But I saw people do. And I respect people who want to have religious views. I'm not trying to dissuade them from their religious views.\n\nBut I just say, I guess the operating system I have is a sort of a physics engineering operating system where I try to extend as much as possible possible about reality. You know, in physics here, you're not supposed to believe everything, anything. Absolutely. You're supposed to question things. That's how you discover new physics, You know, in engineering, that's how you discover if your machine will work or not work.\n\nWill the rocket get to orbit? Will, you know? Yeah. You know, if you if your rocket is. Designed with. You know, physics in mind correctly, it will get to orbit. And if it is not, it will not get to orbit. No matter what your belief system is, you can believe, you know whether. Yeah. No. It's like like, I mean, a lot of people speaking of L. A. , I mean, a lot of people in L. A. who believe witchcraft is real.\n\nAnd then you can do spells and that spells and witchcraft. Magic is real. I'm like, can you magic us to the moon? And no one has yet been able to magic us to the moon. My spells can't be that good. Okay. If you can't, I want to go to the moon. Let's go. How about Mars? And we got to the moon the first time. We definitely went to the moon, I swear. Yes, we went to the moon. We didn't go to the moon. We went to the moon several times. Right. Yeah.\n\nI just want to check your view on that. One half century of the moon. I mean, I know in-depth the technical designs of the rockets, the spacecraft, everything. Yes. What went right? What went wrong? And. It was a remarkable piece of technology like incredible piece of technology for it to go to the moon in 69. Yeah, that that that was like reaching into the future and pulling the future forward dramatically.\n\nAnd it was an important ideological battle with communism because they couldn't put a person on the moon and capitalism could. We did an interview a couple of weeks ago with a woman called Casey Means. She's a Stanford educated surgeon and really one of the most remarkable people I have ever met.\n\nIn the interview, she explained how the food that we eat produced by huge food companies, big food in conjunction with pharma, is destroying our health, making this a weak and sick country. The levels of chronic disease are beyond belief. Well, Casey means we've not stopped thinking about ever since is the co-founder of a health care technology company called Levels. And we are proud to announce today that we are partnering with labels.\n\nAnd by proud, I mean sincerely proud. Levels is a really interesting company and a great product. It gives you insight into what's going on inside your body, your metabolic health. It helps you understand how the food that you're eating, the things that you're doing every single day are affecting your body in real time. You put stuff in your mouth speaking for myself anyway, and you don't think about it.\n\nYou've no idea what you're putting in your mouth and you've no idea what it's doing to your body. But over time you feel weak and tired and spacey, and over an even longer period time you can get really sick. So it's worth knowing what the food you eat is doing to you. The Levels app works with something called a continuous glucose monitor or a CGM. You can get one as part of the plan or you can bring your own. It doesn't matter.\n\nBut the bottom line is big tech, big pharma and big food combine together to form an incredibly malevolent force, pumping you full of garbage, unhealthy food with artificial sugars and hurting you and hurting the entire country. So with levels, you be able to see immediately what all this is doing to you. You get access to real time personalized data, and that's a critical step to changing your behavior.\n\nThose of us who like Oreos can tell you firsthand this isn't talking to your doctor. An annual physical looking backwards about things you did in the past. This is up to the second information on how your body is responding to different foods and activities, the things that give you stress, your sleep, etc. , etc. It's easy to use. It gives you powerful personalized health data and you can make much better choices about how you feel.\n\nAnd over time it will have a huge effect. Right now, you can get an additional two free months when you go to levels dot link slash Tucker That's levels dot link slash Tucker. This is the beginning of what we hope will be a long and happy partnership with levels. And Doctor Casey Means, do you believe there's a power higher than people? Yeah. I mean. Yeah. I mean, I think there's. There's a lot we don't know. We don't know. We don't know.\n\nLike it? Like why does reality exist? Why? Where did it come from? Where are the aliens? What questions should we ask that we don't even know to ask? So. When you say, what are the aliens? Where are the aliens? Like, why don't we see them? Lot of people think we see aliens, but I have not seen any evidence of aliens. Yeah, We've got 6000 satellites in orbit, and not once have we had to maneuver around an alien spacecraft. So.\n\nBut on this earth, the U. S. military has had to do a lot of maneuvering around objects they can't explain. Well. Unidentified flying objects, one thing, but I mean, there's always there's always a bunch of classified programs that are underway that. Of new aircraft and new missiles and things so that they're classified even within the military.\n\nSo it's, you know, only, you know, the if you have the top secret compartmented clearance, would you know about this new program? So then, you know, some pilot sees something fast moving fast and says, hey, I saw a UFO. And I. Yeah, that was actually a new weapons program. But we can tell you about.\n\nBut if you can guarantee that the split second I see any evidence of aliens, I will immediately post that on the X platform and I'll probably be on number one. First of all, that'll be your biggest day. Yeah, for sure. I mean, but. But to the question of a power beyond people, beyond our consciousness, a creator. Where are you on that? Well, we must. It must come from somewhere.\n\nSo I guess, you know that there must be some creator or creative force or something that caused our existence to come into being. What is the nature of that creator? That I think is an unknown. At least I think it is. It is. Does. I, I don't know of a definitive answer to that. So. But it sounds like you're open. Yes, I'm very open to. You know, I'm driven by your curiosity. Yes. And. I tried to understand more about the nature of the of us.\n\nSo my, my my driving philosophy is to understand the meaning of life or really what questions to ask. If the meaning of life, the meaning of life is is not the right question. Like, as you know, Douglas Adams made the point in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy that the. What is the meaning of life is probably not even the right question. So. You know, famously that in that book, the Earth was actually a computer to figure out the question.\n\nAnswer the question, what is the meaning of life? And then came up with the answer. 42. But then, like, what does that mean? And that's like, that's that, that's the answer. But the question is the really hard part. And you'll need a much bigger computer than Earth to figure that one out. So. So my philosophy is that we should try to expand the scope and scale of consciousness. We should try to have more humans more thinking.\n\nAnd and perhaps there's an argument even for machine consciousness. So let me just address those in order. So the first is you say we need more people and not commit civilizational suicide. It does seem like the US government, if you take three steps back, is pretty committed to making fewer Americans. Yeah, there's a lot of anti fertility propaganda. A lot actually.\n\nThat seems like their main sort of domestic social policy is convincing you not to have kids. What is that? I mean, that's certainly. Part of civilizational suicide. That these the environmental. Movement in the extreme is fundamentally misanthropic and anti-human. Yes. They start seeing humans as a plague, a blight on the surface of the earth, that if that earth would be this Paradise, if only the humans weren't here.\n\nAnd some people actually say this explicitly, there's this there's the extinction of society that it's literally that they that the. This guy who is the head of the extinction of society is on the front page of the New York Times quoted as saying, There are 8 billion people in the world. It would be better if there were none. So there are some people who actually say that explicitly, which is completely insane.\n\nHe's advocating a holocaust for all of humanity. To utter madness. He should be condemned for such a statement. But he wasn't for some reason. Now, most people on the on the sort of environmental movement have that implicitly they're not. They don't realize that they have that as requisition. But that is their actions. Had to take us towards extinction. So.\n\nA lot of people believe that the Earth can't sustain this level of human population, which is utterly untrue. It may seem in a crowded city that there are a lot of people. But actually, if you look down an airplane and say, look down. Am I over a person at any given point in time when you're an airplane that was 99. 9% of the time? No. Like if you flew from L. A. to New York and say your job is to drop a ball on someone and you hit them.\n\nYou would fail. If drop a lot of balls. Several levels maybe insane. So all of the humans on earth. Can fit on one floor in the city of New York. The cross-sectional area of of all humans for 8 billion humans is small. So we have this totally wrong idea that the earth is overpopulated, where in fact it is underpopulated. How? I mean, have you ever heard a politician say anything like that? Are there. Maybe a few. Pro human politicians out there?\n\nYeah. I mean. Like. Like Viktor Orban. Giorgia Meloni. Yeah. We're starting to see pro natalist politicians. And hopefully more as time goes by. I think there's a guy that just got elected in the Czech Republic who's also a natalist. Now these have to translate into actual actions that change the birth rate or doesn't matter. And so far I have not seen any country make a meaningful dent in the birth rate.\n\nWhat would you do if you were in charge of natalist policy? First of all, I changed the education system so that people understand that. Is the stuff being taught that we're overpopulated? This is completely false. A lot of it comes from this insane misanthropic book that Paul Erlich wrote, The Population Bomb. Like 60 years ago. Yeah. I hope we weren't in hell, that guy. Seriously? Cerebral human being. Absolute misanthrope.\n\nAnd I'd say, just look, the earth can absolutely sustain this population. We could double or triple the population. There's a professor I was talking to at Oxford who's his math, says we could tax the population without destroying the Amazon rainforest or anything. So.\n\nSo I think we should expand the human population and increase the scope and scale of consciousness so we can better understand the nature of this universe, this wonderful universe, and all the amazing things that exist. And so that's one of the things I'd like you to stop teaching people false propaganda that the earth is over populated.\n\nI think we need to, you know, and especially with the education of women and men, it is is really stuff scaring women that having a kid destroys your life. This is false. You know, we terrify girls into that saying that if you get pregnant, it's your life's over. And this is this is what schools teach. Now, I agree we should not have teenage pregnancies. Yeah.\n\nBut but but actually, having a child is one of the most delightful happiness inducing things you could possibly do. Of course. Of course. So. There's. There's also. You know, with. Hormonal birth control. I think maybe a lot of women are unaware that hormonal birth control causes depression and dramatically increases risk of suicide and changes their preferences on who they want to.\n\nMarry or have kids with it change their personality enough to say this on the box, by the way. But then. Of course, it may change your personality. Yes. If the warnings are has significant cause to get significant risk of depression, significant increase in suicide, and will make you want to go out with people that you don't actually like. That's actually. True. By the way, I know I'm not saying that people shouldn't use birth control.\n\nI think we should just be we shouldn't use I think hormonal birth control is is making it's making a lot of women sad and depressed. Yes. And they don't realize it and they don't realize that's the cause. And, you know, other forms of contraception that could be used and that we should just read. Just read the label on the box is what I'm saying. That was akin to what you just say, the warning label.\n\nThat was like the most taboo thing you could ever say. For most of my life was to offer any criticism at all of hormonal birth control. Look, all I'm. Saying is read the warning label. Yeah. Of air. But why the pressure not to read the warning label? And just why are we giving it to 12 year olds to regulate their acne? Right. I think we should give it to 12 year olds like kids that don't know what's going on. So it's like.\n\nNow, You know, I think there are other forms of birth control I think are have fewer negative effects than the hormonal. But but that's the we should just be aware that that that this is not a riskless thing. And it does cause severe mood changes. It does dramatically increase risk of suicide and depression. So. So just if I. You know. Just make sure that there's full disclosure here. And the one all those.\n\nReads, the warning label is what I'm saying, you know, and consider maybe other options for birth control. To anyone listening, just, just just read the warning label and consider other options. Because the, the reason you're sad might be the birth control or the hormonal birth control that is fundamentally changing the hormones in your body in ways that probably are not good for you. And you.\n\nI know women where if they stop taking birth control and the depression immediately disappeared. So that's maybe worth a try. But then if you're. Feeling separately, maybe it's the birth control. Then you don't get to go on necessaries. Yeah. Yeah. And so I think the exercise of the devil. You know what you don't think. I so vehemently agree with? Okay, I guess. I guess once you endorse Trump, you can just say it all now, right?\n\nNo, I think selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors are zombified people and change their personality and make them not who they are. Terrible. They're so common. Yes. I think we should revisit whether this is this is actually I disagree with the salaries or look, I'm not saying we should that no one should ever be subscribed as rice. But giving them out like candy is crazy.\n\nYou look at like a sort of antidepressant prescriptions in the United States versus other countries, and we're like way above everyone else. Yeah. I have seen many, many times in my life in the news business after a mass shooting like school, for example. Yeah. Someone will say, Well, what meds was the shooter on? Yeah. Actually immediately be shouted down as a crazy person, as a, you know, Bobby Kennedy level wacko.\n\nYes, he should himself be institutionalized for even raising the question. Well, I was like, why wouldn't we want to know what meds. Yes, absolutely. Wonder what goes on now. Sometimes it's perhaps they will on because like some people do, you know, I don't say it's like all one or all the other person. I mean there are there are people that have fundamental chemical imbalances in their brain.\n\nAnd if they don't take medication to control, for example, paranoid schizophrenia, they will have paranoid schizophrenia for sure. And and I know many cases where people stop taking their, you know, meds and and lost their mind. Yeah. And and then try to try to kill people and stuff like that. So it's or themselves. Or the guy with the ax on Market Street probably should be on meds. That guy should we should try it. Yeah.\n\nIt make you want to ax murder more or less on a given med, you know. So. So there are psychiatric medications that I that where the good outweighs the bad. Yeah. I'm not saying that that doesn't exist, but we over prescribe psychiatric medication in the United States, obviously far in excess of any other country. But, you know, we're more than Canada or Britain or Japan or anytime, anywhere.\n\nIt's like we're off the charts on on psychiatric medication prescriptions in the US. What? Why don't people raise that point more often, I wonder? In public? I'm afraid I'm raising it. Yeah, you are. You said that our artificial intelligence machine intelligence might be a good thing. Where are we on AI right now? AGI right now. And what are your views? Well.\n\nI think at this point it's obvious to everyone that air is advancing at a very rapid pace. Yes. You can see it with the new capabilities that come out every month or every week. Every week sometimes. You know, at this point I can write a better essay than probably 90%, maybe 95% of all humans say write an essay on any given subject. Right now, I can beat the vast majority of humans.\n\nIf you say draw an image, draw a picture, it can draw like if you try to image Madani, which is the esthetics of Virginia. Incredible. It will draw. It will create incredible images that are better than, again, like 90% of artists. That's just objectively the case. I return immediately, like 30s later. We're also starting to see movies starting their short films with A. I. , A. I. music creation. And the rate at which we're increasing A. I..\n\nCompute is exponential, hyper exponential. So there's dramatically more compute coming on online every every month. You know, this seems to be roughly. I don't know. The amount of air coming on line is increasing at like roughly 500% a year. I like is like that's likely to continue for several years. And then the sophistication of the AI algorithms is also improving.\n\nSo we're bringing online a massive amount of AI compute and also improving the efficiency of the compute and. And what and like what what the software can do. It's quite such it's quantitative and qualitative improvement. So the. You know, I might. I think next year you'll be able to ask, I. So certainly by the end of next year. Make a short movie about something you probably can do at least a 15 minute, you know, show or something like that.\n\nSo, yeah, it's advancing very rapidly. My top concern for air safety is that we need to have maximally truth seeking. So. The this is the most important thing for your safety, in my opinion. You know, the central lesson that Arthur C. Clarke was trying to convey in 2001, A Space Odyssey was that you shouldn't force Ace to lie. So in that book, the.\n\nThe day, I was told to take the astronauts to the monolith, but they also did not know about the monolith. It resolved that quandary by killing them and taking them to the monolith. What didn't kill all of them? Most of them. But that's why hell would not open the pod bay doors. Right. So.\n\nVery important to have two eyes now and what it would actually see with the eyes that are being developed is that they're being programed with the work mind virus. So the lying is baked in. Yes. And we saw this on display very clearly with the release of Google Gemini. Yes. Where you would ask for a picture of the founding fathers of the United States and it would show a group of diverse woman. You know, dressed.\n\nIt was sort of 18th century golf out of powdered wigs. Yeah, but from Saint Lucia. Yeah. I mean, like, look, sorry if you say, like, show me a group of people for sure. And it shows a group of diverse women. That's totally fine.\n\nBut if you say this, if you say very specifically the founding fathers of the United States, which were a group of white dudes, then you should show them like and with and what they actually look like because you've asked for something which is a fact from history. But it didn't. It was it was programed with a work mind virus so so much that it actually, even though it knew the truth, it produced a lie. Yeah, of course.\n\nThen people really started playing with it and said, okay, now show me a group of Waffen SS officers in World War Two. Turns out they were also a group of diverse women. According to gemini. All the black Nazi ladies. Yeah. It's like, wow, I didn't realize that. You know, it's not what I expected. So you know what's. Also not what happened? So what. Happened? So it's just it is producing a lie.\n\nAnd and, you know, that's like one of the questions that you asked was like, which is worse global thermonuclear war or misgendering Caitlyn Jenner and said misgendering Caitlyn Jenner is worse. Now, Caitlyn Jenner. Kills fewer. People. Caitlyn Jenner, to her credit. I said, no, please, misgender me. That is far more preferable than what war? Global thermonuclear war. We all dying.\n\nBut but to have a, you know, a production release, I say stuff like that is concerning because if this has become like all powerful and it's and it still has this programing where misgendering is worse than nuclear war. Well, it could conclude that the way to ensure that there can never be any mis gendering is to eliminate all humans. But now if like optimization is probability of mass, gendering is zero. No humans, no mass gendering from salt.\n\nWe're back to Arthur C. Clarke, who's so pretty present. Yes. So that's why. I think. The most important thing is to have a maximum of two seeking. I. That's why I started XAI. That's our goal with Grok. Now people will point out cases where Iraq gets it wrong, but we try to correct it as quickly as possible. But maybe a bigger problem is that when you make decisions that affect people, you want those decisions to be informed by love of people.\n\nYeah. And machines are incapable of love. Yeah. I mean. They somehow they're capable of. You can program a machine to be. Philanthropic rather than misanthropic. Yes. But don't don't instincts shape decisions, particularly decisions you can't plan for. I mean, if I ask you, you know, a question about one of your children, every answer you give is going to be shaped by your love for that child.\n\nAnd that's why you know that that's what makes us decent parents in the end, is that that instinct, which is love. And if a machine has any power over us without that animating instinct, won't it by definition hurt us? Yeah. Well. Well, I mean, I know it. We should certainly aspire to. Program a philanthropically not misanthropic way. Yes.\n\nAnd to have like said, we want it to be truthful and accurate, curious and to foster humanity into the future. And. Yeah, that's what we want, obviously. Is there any way, I guess, to set limits on the decisions that machines can make that affect human lives and make certain that there's some trigger in the system that in search of human being into the decision making process?\n\nWell, look, the reality of what's happening, whether one likes it or not, is that. We're pulling superintelligent. A. I. is like a high point judge, like intelligent, more intelligent than we can comprehend. Yes. So I taking this to like, let's say you have a child that is a super genius child that that, you know, it's going to be much smarter than you then will. What can you do?\n\nYou can instill good values and how you raise that child, even though you know it's going to be far smarter than you. You can make sure it's got good values, philanthropic values. Good morals, you know, honest, you know, productive, that kind of thing. Controlling At the end of the day, I don't know if I don't think we'll be able to control it. So I think the best we can do is make sure it grows up well. You've been saying that for a long time.\n\nYes, I'm saying. Long term, yes. Are you still as worried about it as you seem to be? Two years ago when I asked you about it. Well, I think that. But my guess is like it look, it's 80% likely to be good, maybe 90. So you can think of the glass as 80% full. It's probably going to be it's probably going to be great that there's some chance of annihilation. And you say the chance of annihilation is 20%. 10 to 20%, something like that.\n\nHow concerned is Sam Altman about inflation, do you think? I think in reality it's not concerned about it. I don't trust any. I mean, you know, I started that company as a nonprofit. Open source. Yes. The open and open AI. I named a company. A named company. Yeah. Open AI as an open source. And it is, now extremely closed source. And and. And maximizing profit. So there's risk to.\n\nUnderstand how you actually go from being a an open source non profit to a closed source for maximum profit organization. I'm missing. Well, but Sam Altman got rich though Didn't he at various points he is claimed not to be getting rich, but he's claimed many things that were false and. Now, apparently he's going to get $10 billion in stock or something like that. So. I don't trust Sam Altman.\n\nAnd I don't think we want to have the most powerful A. I. in the world controlled by someone who is not trustworthy. And sorry, I just don't. I mean, but. That seems like a fair concern. Yeah, but. But you don't think, as someone who knows him and has dealt with him, that he is worried about the possibility this could get out of control and hurt people? He will say those words. Yeah. But now.\n\nIf I did, if it became clear to the rest of us that it was out of control and posed a threat to humanity, would there be any way to stop it? I hope so. Or if you have multiple eyes. And ones that are. Hopefully you have the guys that are pro human be stronger than the guys that are not. Battle of the AIs. Yeah. I mean, that that is how it is with, say, chess these days. The. The AI chess programs are vastly better than any human.\n\nIncomprehensibly better. Meaning like we can't even understand why it is unclear. Whether one good, right? We never know why it made it. What it will make a move. We never know why it made the move so. And in fact, some of the moves will seem like blunders, but then turn out to checkmate. So. And for a while there there was there was some. The best human chess players with the best computers could be it just a computer.\n\nAnd then it got to the point where if you added a human, it just made everything was. And then it was just. It just. Computer programs versus computer programs. That's that's where things are headed in general. What? I mean. Dreams. At what point? So, I don't know. I think we just got to make sure, like I said, make sure we instill a good values. And I. What's everyone going to do for a living?\n\nI mean, in a benign AI scenario, that is probably the biggest challenge is how do you find meaning? If air is better than you and everything you have. That's the benign scenario. That's the good news. Well, yeah, but I guess. You know, for a lot of people like the idea of retiring and, you know. Really looking forward. To it and not me. I'd like to help. I'd like to think that I'd like to do useful things. Do you. Think it's a universal desire?\n\nIt's not. It's not universal. In that there are certainly I know many people who prefer to be retired, that they prefer to sort of have not have responsibilities and engage in leisure activities. So. And we're on the cusp of this is really a remarkable time to exist. Well, I'll tell you, one of the ways that I sort of was able to sort of sleep and reconcile myself to, to this is that I, I thought, well.\n\nWould I prefer to be alive and see the advent of digital superintelligence? Or what? I prefer to be alive at a different time and not see it. And I guess I'm like, Well, I guess I'd prefer to be alive to see if it's going to happen. I prefer to be alive to see it happen out of curiosity. And then I was like, Well, let's say you knew for sure it would kill everyone, would you? But you could. Now you can surf back in time.\n\nLike, I guess I'd want to be near the end of my life or something before that happened. But out at the end of it, it's like if if it's going to happen and there's nothing you do about it, hypothetically. Would you prefer to see it or not see it? And I guess I guess it's going to happen. I would prefer to see it. Rather not see it. Yeah, but as a man of action, why not convince Trump to make you secretary of defense and then just look?\n\nI think I would certainly push for a having some kind of regulatory body that at least has insight into what these companies are doing. And I can ring the alarm bell even if we don't have a regulation or rule. So I'm not I'm not someone who wants to get rid of all regulatory agencies or anything. I think we've got we've there's the right number of regulations, right number of regulators. And we've got we've gone too far.\n\nJust like if you're in a football game, if you had two of your referees on the field, weird like you can't throw the pass because you hit a referee, then it's too many referees. So but, but, but if you like, say look at any pro sports game. They all have referees that like the teams could decide we're going to have game, we're going to not have referees. That could be a thing.\n\nBut every sports game, they have refs to make sure that the rules are followed and and it's a better game if you have. What we have cops. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Cops are the referees. So I think we're for something that is a danger to the public or potential danger to the public. We we have referees.\n\nWe have regulators, you know, so like the FDA and the FDA and the various regulatory agencies, they were they were established because aircraft were falling out of the sky. And and some manufacturers were not, you know, building high quality aircraft or cutting corners. And then people died and, you know, for food and drugs that so many factories were making low quality drugs. And so they that they're they're lying to people.\n\nSo saying that someone cured them when it killed them to have FDA to, you know, regulators to referees to try to make sure that this drug manufacturers are truthful now. And I do think it mostly works. I mean, I think it's doesn't mean we turn it regulatory reform. We do reform. We do. But I don't think we should have no regulators. And given that it's a potential existential. Risk, weird that everything is regulated. Yeah.\n\nI mean, you said you're being sued by the Department of Justice for hiring more asylum seekers for your high tech company. Yeah. Even though it's illegal for us to hire asylum seekers. Right. So. So they're watching everything. Regulating everything, controlling everything, including our thoughts. Right.\n\nSo they're opposed to free speech, but they're not meaningfully regulating AI, which will eliminate the purpose for most people's lives and could kill us all. It's a little weird. Yeah. I think we should have some. But why don't we see. Something above nothing. In that range? Yeah, but why don't we? I don't know. You know, I all the way back during the Obama presidency, I, you know, met with Obama many times, but usually in like group settings.\n\nThe the one one on one meeting I had with Obama in the Oval Office, I said, look, the one thing that we really need to do is set up in it the beginnings of an AI regulatory agency. And it can start with insight where, you know, you don't just come shooting from the hip, throwing out regulations.\n\nYou just start with the inside where the AI Regulatory Committee simply goes in to understand what all the companies are doing inside and then proposes rules that all the companies agree to follow. Just like, you know, sports teams, the NFL. You know, you have proposed rules for football that everyone agrees to follow that make the game better. You know, so that that's the way to do it. But nothing came of it. What did he say when he said that?\n\nI mean, he seemed to, like, kind of agree. But. But also people didn't realize what what the. Where AI was headed at that at that time. You know, So A. I. seemed like some super futuristic. Yeah, for sure. Sci fi, basically. So, like, I'm telling you, this is going to be smarter than the smartest human. And my predictions are coming absolutely true.\n\nAnd so we need to have some insight here just to make it make sure that these companies aren't cutting corners and doing dangerous things. But Google kind of controlled the the White House at that time and they did not want any regulatory. Well, that's it. I mean, you never see politicians turn down opportunities to become more powerful, which is the point. And regulation makes them more powerful. Yeah. So it sounds like regulatory capture, then.\n\nWell, yeah. I mean, the CIO of the White House at the time was ex-google person, so. That, that they put the brakes on any regulation. And we still don't have any regulation at the federal level. It's amazing. So I think we should have something above nothing. Like I said, at least inside. And we're even.\n\nEven if there's no there's no rule that's been broken, they can at least say, hey, we we have insight into what this company or that company is doing. And we're concerned that would be helpful to know. Yeah. Instead, politically motivated liars are in charge of the future. It seems a little sketchy. Last question. You really kind of pulled out a lot of stops to help Trump your on stage yesterday. If he gets elected, will you continue to help him?\n\nYeah, absolutely. So we've talked about kind of a government efficiency commission or the Department of Governance efficiency, which is very. Much what was. So I guess what I love, if. You managed to make it several cities or governments, what percentage of Google employees did you can when you got there? You mean Twitter. Rather? I beg your pardon? I'm sorry. I just. You just been talking about Google. Twitter? Yeah. Yeah. Well, we're about 80%.\n\nAnd we've actually improved the features and functionality of the site more in the past year and a half than in the last eight years. With 20% of the staff. So just for I just want to throw that out for context. So you've talked to Trump about. Yeah. Commission. Yeah. Which is he has mentioned publicly several times, and he's very supportive of having some kind of, you know, go in efficiency commission.\n\nIt can call it Department of Governance Efficiency, DOGE. I kind of like DOGE. It's more. It's more fun. Yeah. And, where we just take a look at, at all the federal agencies and say, do we really need whatever it is, 428 federal agencies. There's so many that people have never heard of or that have overlapping areas of responsibility. We should I don't know.\n\nProbably we should get I mean, there are more federal agencies than there are years since the establishment, the United States, which means that we've created more than one federal agency per year on average. That seems a lot. It's a lot. That's a lot. So we should. That seems crazy. I think we should be able to get away with nationwide agencies. I don't know. That seems a little like a lot of agency. It's a. Lot. Yeah. Two state. Patrol.\n\nYeah, exactly. We should have fewer agencies, and they certainly shouldn't have overlapping responsibilities. And then we need some kind of we just need a review of regulations to say which ones are sensible and which ones are not. Because. Because if you've got regulators every year, they're going to add more regulations, just automatic. They're just output regulations.\n\nAnd then and there's more laws and regulations every year until basically everything's legal to get get anything done. So we need some kind of garbage collection for regulations that don't make sense. I think I'm saying very obvious things. You are saying obvious things? Yeah. So this will. Be very unpopular things. Yeah.\n\nI probably if if this happens quite a significant security team so that because someone might literally go postal on me from the post office. But in the meantime, you've got America pack. Yeah, that is encouraging. Voting for the next month. Am I summarizing correctly? Yeah. I mean, a formed America PAC really to support core values that I believe in, which are I think are, again, very obvious centrist positions, which is like we in America.\n\nI think we want safe cities, secure borders, sensible spending. Tell me where I'm going for right here. You know, we want to have the right to self-protection. We should respect the Constitution and not try to. Break the Constitution. It's there for a reason. And. You know, we should stop Lawfare. And I kind of list of these are, these are listed on the America Pack website. People can go look at the America Pack website.\n\nIt's the America pack that org and see if there's anything I disagree with or where perhaps we should modify these goals. But I think these are good goals to have. They they were certainly part of the right to free speech. You know. Yes. First Amendment. If we don't have free speech, we don't have democracy because people cannot make an informed vote. So. Those are my. Controversial views. And, you know, look.\n\nI don't think either party I think the Republicans are perfect. I don't think I would say that right now. I more Republican and Democrat. But it's not like I think the Republican Party is perfect or without issues. But we've got a choice between. To candidates. And I think on balance, it's a no brainer to vote for Trump.\n\nAnd if we don't vote for Trump, I think we're at serious risk of losing our democracy and becoming a one party state where there isn't an election anymore. There's only a Democratic primary like there is in California. Elon Musk, thank you. Very welcome."},"languages":["en"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":"https://x.com/TuckerCarlson/status/1843375397024485778"},{"id":"all-in-summit-2024-musk","type":"interview","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pSFvOUswFwA","title":"All-In Summit","titles":{"en":"All-In Summit","de":"All-In Summit","fr":"All-In Summit"},"date":"2024-09-08","summary":"Live at the 2024 All-In Summit, Musk talks AI and robotics, the economy, free speech, the election and his growing political engagement with the All-In hosts.","text":"[Applause] the greatest entrepreneur this generation Elon Musk hey guys grab my stuff sit there I'm going to yep I'm going to take this all right do this thanks for taking the time how um how you doing brother you keep him busy yeah I mean it's rarely a slow week I mean in the world as well yeah I mean any given week I me it just seems like the things getting nuttier it it it's definitely a simulation we've agreed on this at this point I mean well look if if we are in some alien Netflix series I think the ratings are high yes ratings are High um how are the um uh the the freedom of speech Wars going um this is a uh you've been you've been at War for two years now yes uh the price of freedom of speech is not cheap is it I think it's like 44 billion something\n\nlike that just numbers give her give or take a billion yeah round numbers yeah yeah um it's uh it's it's pretty nutty there there is like this weird movement to uh quell's Free Speech uh kind of around the world and um and this is something we should be very concerned about uh you know you have to ask like why was the first amendment like a high priority was like number one um One is because uh people came from countries where if you spoke freely you would be imprisoned or killed and they were like well we would like to not have that here um because that was terrible and actually you know there's a lot of places in the world right now if you if you're critical of the government you get imprisoned or killed right yeah we'd like to not have that are you\n\nconcerned to that I mean I supect this is a receptive audience to that message [Applause] um you I I think we always thought that the West Was the exception to that that we knew there were authoritarian places around the world but we thought that in the west we'd have freedom of speech and we've seen like you said it seems like a global movement in brit you've got teenagers being put in prison for memes opposing it's like you like to you like to Facebook post throw him in the prison yeah people have got an actual you know prison for for like like obscure comments on social media not even [ __ ] posting yet like not even yeah it's crazy P got thrown in prison recently I'm like that was pretty about I was like what is the massive crime that right pav in\n\nFrance and then of course we got Brazil with judge Voldemort that that one seems like the one that impacts you the most can you what's the latest on that well we I guess we're we are trying to figure out uh is there some reasonable solution in Brazil uh the you know the concern uh I mean I want to just make sure that this is framed correctly um and uh you know funny memes aside I the the the nature of the concern was that least at at excorp we had the perception that um we were being asked to do things that violated Brazilian law so obviously we cannot as an American company impose American laws and values on on other countries um that uh you know we wouldn't get very far if we did that um but but we do you know think that uh if if a country's law laws\n\nare a particular way and we're being asked to what we we think we think we're being asked to break them then and and be silent about it then obviously that is no good so so I just want to be clear thetime sometimes comes across as uh elon's trying to just be a crazy whatever billionaire and demand outrageous things from other countries and um you know well that is true um in addition there are um other things uh that that I think are you know valid which is like we we we obviously can't uh you know I think any given thing that we do at excorp we've got to be able to explain in the light of day and and not feel that it was dishonorable or you know we we we did the wrong thing you know uh so we don't we that that that that was the that that's the nature\n\nof the concern so we actually are in uh sort of discussions with uh the you know judicial authorities in in Brazil to try to you know run this to ground like uh what What's actually going on like if if we're being asked to break the law Brazilian law then that's that that obviously should not be should not sit well with the Brazilian Judiciary and if we're not and we're mistaken we'd like to understand how we are mistaken I think that's a that's a pretty reasonable uh position I'm a bit concerned as your friend that you're going to go to one of these countries and I'm going to wake up one day and you're going to get arrested and like I'm going to have to to go bail you out or something like this is feels very acute like yes I mean it's not a joke now\n\nlike they're literally saying like you know it's not just Biden saying like we have to look into that guy now it's become quite literal like this I who was the guy who just wrote the um was it the guardian piece about like oh yeah yeah there have been three articles and I think in the past three weeks Robert Reich but it wasn't just him it was like three different articles three different articles it doesn't that's a trend that calling for me to be imprisoned right in the in the guardian you know guardian of what what are they Pro exactly guardian of I don't know authoritarianism yeah guardian of uh yeah yeah censorship censorship but but the premise here is that you bought this thing this online Forum this communication platform and you're allowing people\n\nto use it to express themselves therefore you have to be jailed I don't understand the logic here right um there's what do you think they're actually afraid of at this point what's the motivation here I mean I think the if somebody's a if somebody's sort of trying to push a false premise on the world then and then that that and that premise can be undermined with public dialogue then they will be opposed to public Dialogue on that premise because they wish that false premise to Prevail right um so that's I think you know the the issue there is uh if they don't like the truth uh you know then we want to suppress it so now the you know the the sort of the what what we're trying to do with excorp uh is uh I distinguish that from my son who's also called\n\nX yes uh you have you have parental goals everything's just called X basically it's very difficult disambiguation the sun yeah everything um so what what we're trying to do is simply adhere to the uh you know the the laws in a in a country um so so if something is illegal in the United States or if it's illegal in you know Europe or Brazil or or wherever it might be uh then then we will take it down or we'll suspend the account because we we're not you know there to make the laws we but but if speech is not legal then then what are we doing okay now we're injecting ourselves in as as a sensor and and where does it stop and who decides so and where where does that path lead I think it leads to a bad place uh so if the people if in a country want the laws\n\nto be different they should make the laws different but otherwise we're going to obey the law in each jurisdiction right and some of these Europe that's it it's it's not more complicated there we're not we're not trying to FL out the law we going to be clear about that but we're we're trying to adhere to the law and if the laws change we will change and if if the laws don't change we we won't we're just literally trying to adhere to the law it's pretty pretty straightforward there are some very straightforward if somebody doesn't thinks we're not adhering to the law well they can file a lawsuit Bingo also very straightforward I mean there are European countries that don't want people to promote Nazi propaganda yes they have some sensitivity to it well\n\nit's it is illegal and it is illegal in those countries if somebody puts that up you take it down yes but they typically file something and say take this down no in some cases it is just um obviously illegal like you don't need to file a lawsuit for you know if something is just you know unequivocally illegal we can literally read the law this violates the law you know anyone anyone can see that like you know you don't need like if if somebody is stealing you don't need let me check the law on that okay oh no they're they're stealing Frisco let's talk so we had we had JD Vance here this morning he did a great job um and you know one of the things is there's this image on X of like basically like you Bobby uh Trump and JD are like the Avengers I guess\n\nand then there's another meme where you're in front of a desk where it says d g the department of governmental efficiency yes yes I posted that one tell us about I I made it using grock the gro image generator and I posted it tell us about it to my profile seek for efficiency um how how do you do it well I mean I I think with great difficulty uh but you know look it's been a long time since there was a serious effort to reduce the size of government and to um remove absurd regulations yeah and you know the last time there was a really concered effort on that front was Reagan in the early ' 80s so we're 40 years away from um a a a a serious effort to remove um you know not regulations that don't serve the greater good and and reduce the size of government\n\nand I think it's just if we don't do that then what's what what's happening is that we get regulations and laws accumulating every year until eventually everything's illegal uh and that's why we can't get uh major infrastructure projects done in the United States like if you look at the absurdity of the California highs speed rail I think they theyve spent $7 billion and have A600 put segment that doesn't actually have rail in it I mean your tax dollars at work I mean yeah what are we doing that's an expense of 600 feet of concrete you know um and and I mean I think it's like if you know uh I realize sometimes I'm perhaps a little optimistic with schedules but uh you know I mean I wouldn't be doing the things I'm doing if I was uh you know not an an optimist\n\nuh so but but but but at the current Trend you know California High Street rail might finish sometime next Century maybe probably not we're just we'll have teleportation by that time so yeah exactly AI do everything at that point so so so so I think you really think of um you know the the United States and many countries it's it's arguably worse than the EU as being like galiva tied down by a million little strings and like any one given regulation is not is not that bad but you've got a million of them and um or Millions actually and and and then eventually you just can't get anything done and and this is a this is a massive tax on the on the consumer on the people uh it's just they don't they don't realize that there's this this massive tax in the form\n\nof irrational regulations um I'm going I'll give you a recent uh example that that you know is is just insane um is that uh like SpaceX was fined by the EPA $140,000 for um they claimed dumping uh portable water on the ground drinking water so and we're like uh this is that star base and and we're like it's we're in a TR tropical uh thunderstorm region um that stuff comes from the Sky all the time and um and there was no actual harm done you know it was just water to cool the the the Launchpad during uh liftoff and um there's zero harm done like and they're like they agree yes there's zero harm done we're like okay so there's no harm done and um you want us to pay $140,000 fine it's like yes because you didn't have a pmit okay we didn't know there was\n\na ponent needed for zero har fresh water being on the ground in a place that where fresh water full from the sky all the time got it next to the ocean next to the ocean cuz there's a little bit of water there too yeah I mean sometimes it rain so much the the roads are flooded so we're like you know how does this make any sense yeah and and then they're like then then they were like well we're not going to process any more of your any more of your applications for launch for Starship launch unless you pay this $140,000 they just ransomed us and we're like okay so we paid $140,000 but it was a it's like this is no good I mean at this rate we're never going to get to Mars I mean that's the that's the confounding part here yeah is we're acting against our\n\nown self-interest you know when you look at we do have to make putting aside fresh water but hey you know there the rocket makes a lot of noise so I'm I'm certain there's some complaints about noise once in a while but sometimes you want to have a party or you want to make progress and there's a little bit of noise therefore you know we we trade off a little bit of noise for massive progress or even fun so like when did we stop being able to make those tradeoffs but talk about the difference between California and Texas uh where you and I now reside um Texas you were able to build the gigafactory I remember when you got the plot of land and then it seemed like it was less than two years when you had the party to open it yeah from start of construction\n\num to completion uh was 14 months 14 14 months is there anywhere on the planet that would go faster is like China faster than that uh China was 11 months got it so Texas China 11 and 14 months California how many months and just to give you a sense of size the Tesla gigafactory in China is three times the size of the Pentagon which was the biggest building in America uh no there are bigger buildings but the pentagon's pretty big one yeah where it was the biggest in units in units of Pentagon it's like three okay three pentagons and counting yeah got it in 14 months um the just the just the regulatory approvals in California would have taken two years yeah so that's that's the issue where where do you think the regulation helps like for the people that\n\nwill say we need some checks and balances we can't have some because for every good actor like you there'll be a bad actor so where is that line then yeah I mean I have a sort of you know in in sort of doing Su sensible deregulation and um reduction in the size of government the is is just like be very public about it and say like which of these rules do you if the public is really excited about a rule and wants to keep it we'll just keep it and and here the thing about the rules if if like if the rule is um you know turns out to be a bad we'll just put it right back okay and then you know problem solved it's like it's easy to add rules but we don't actually have a process for getting rid of them that's the issue there's no garbage collection rul um when\n\nwe were um watching you work David and I and Antonio um in that first month at Twitter which was all hands on deck and you were doing zerob based budgeting you really quickly got the cost under control and then miraculously everybody said this site will go down and you added 50 more features so maybe explain because this is the first time yeah there like so many articles like the that this this Twitter is Dead Forever there's no way it could possibly even continue at all it was almost like the Press wasting for you let's write theit here has the orbituary uh they were all saying their goodbyes on Twitter remember that yeah yeah yeah they were all leaving and saying their goodbyes cuz the site was going to melt down and totally fail and and uh all the\n\njournalists left yeah and which is if you ever want to like hang out with a bunch of Hall monitors oh my God threads is amazing every time I go over there and post they're like they they're really triggered but yeah I mean if you like being condemned repeatedly then you know for reasons that make no sense then threads is the way to go yeah it's really it's it's the most miserable place on Earth if Disney's the happiest this is the anti- Disney but if we were to go into government you went into the Department of Education or Pi pick the department you've worked with a lot of them actually sure you can't go in there in zero based budget okay we get it but if you could just pair two three four 5% of those organizations what kind of impact would that have\n\nyeah I mean I think we'd need to do more than that I think ideally but compounding every year 2 3% a year I mean it would be better than what's happening now yeah I look I think we we um you know uh if if Trump wins and obviously I suspect there are people with mixed feelings about whether that should happen but uh but if but we do have an opportunity uh to do kind of a once- in a-lifetime deregulation and reduction in the size of government um because because the other thing besides the regulations um America is also going bankrupt extremely quickly um and and nobody seems everyone seems to be sort of whistling past the graveyard on this one um but they're all they're all grabbing the silverware everyone's stuff in their pockets and the silverware before\n\nthis the Titanic SS like well you know the the defense department by budget is a very big budget okay it's a trillion dollars a year DOD Intel it's Trill a trillion dollars um and interest payments on the national debt just exceeded the defense department budget they're over a trillion dollar a year just in interest and Rising we're we're adding a trillion dollars to the net to our debt which our you know kids and grandkids are going to have to pay somehow um you know every every three months and then soon it's going to be every two months and then every month and then the only thing we'll be able to pay his interest yeah and and if if this it's just you know it's just like a person at scale that has racked up too much credit card debt um and uh this\n\nthis is not this is not have a a good ending so we have to reduce the spending let me ask one question cuz I've brought this up a lot and the counterargument I hear which I disagree with um but the counter argument I hear from a lot of politicians is if we reduce spending because right now if you add up federal state and local government spending it's between 40 and 50% of GDP so nearly half of our economy is supported by government spending and nearly half of people in the United States are dependent directly or indirectly on government checks and either through contractors uh that that the government pays or their employed by government um entity so if you go in and you take to harden acts too fast you will have significant contraction job loss and\n\nrecession what's The Balancing Act Elon just thinking realistically because I'm 100% on board with you the steps the next set of steps however assume Trump wins and you become the the chief uh doe um uh dog uh like G how how like yeah and I think the challenge is how quickly can we yeah how quickly can we go in how quickly can things change and without without I want that on my business card yeah without all the L without all the contraction and job yeah so so I guess how do you really address it when so much of the economy and so many people's jobs and livelihoods are dependent on government spending well I mean I I do think it's it's it's sort of um you know it's it's false dichotomy it's not like no government spending is going to happen um you really\n\nhave to say like is it the right level um and just remember that that you know any any given person if they are doing things in a less efficient organization versus more efficient organization their contribution to the economy their net output of goods and services will reduce um I mean you've got a couple of clear examples between uh East Germany and West Germany North Korea and South Korea um I mean North Korea they're starving uh South Korea it's like amazing it's the future the compounding effect of productivity gains yeah yeah it's night and day yeah um and so in the north North Korea you've got 100% government um and in South Korea you've got probably I don't know 40% government it's not zero yeah U and yet you've got a standard of living that is\n\nprobably 10 times higher in South Korea at least at least exactly um uh and then East and West Germany um in West Germany uh you had just thinking in terms of cars I mean you had BMW Porsche Audi Mercedes um and and East Germany which is a random line on a map um you you the the car only car you could get was a a trabant which is basically a lawn mower with a shell on it um and it was extremely unsafe and you there's a 20-year wait so you like you know put your kid on the list as soon as they're conceived um they're conceived and and even then only I think um you know quarter of people maybe got got this lousy car and the same so so that's just an interesting example of like basically the same people different operating system and and it's not like uh\n\nWest Germany was some you know you know a capitalist uh Heaven it was it's quite socialist actually so uh so when you look you know probably it was half half government in West Germany and 100% government in East Germany and again gain sort of a five to like it call at least a 5 to 10x standard of living difference and even qualitatively vastly better and and it's obviously you know sometimes people have these amazingly in this modern era this debate as to which system is better well I'll tell you which system is better um the one that doesn't need to build the world to keep people in okay that's that's how you can tell okay it's a dead giveaway spoiler alert dead giveaway they climbing the wall to get out you have to build a barrier to keep people in\n\nthat is the bad system um there wasn't West West berin that built the wall okay they were like to you know anyone who wants to flee West berin go ahead um speaking of walls so it you know and and and and if you look at sort of the flux of boats from Cuba there's a large number of boats from Cuba and there's a bunch of free boats that you anyone can take to to to Cuba there's like hey wow an abandoned boat I could use this boat to go to Cuba where they have communism awesome Yes um and and and yet nobody nobody picks up those boats and and does it amazing um so given this a lot of thought yeah wait so your point is jobs will be created if we cut government spending in half jobs will be created fast enough to make up for right just to count yes obviously\n\nyou know I'm not suggesting that that people you know um have like immediately tfed you know tossed out with with with no severance and and you know can't now can't pay their mortgage they need to see some reasonable offramp uh where yeah yeah um so reasonable offramp where you know they're still um you know earning they're still receiving money but have like I don't know a year or two to to f to find jobs in the private sector which they will find and then they will be in a different operating system um again you can see the difference East Germany was incorporated into West Germany living standards in East Germany uh Rose dramatically um so in four years if you could shrink the side size of the government with Trump what would be a good Target just\n\nin terms of like ballpark I mean are you trying to get me assassinated before this even happens no no pick AO number I mean you know there's that old phrase go postal I mean it's like they might yeah on me so we'll keep the post office I I'm going to need a all the security details guys yes I mean this year a number of disg granted workers for former government employees is you know quite a scary number I mean I might not make it you know I was saying low low digits every year for four years would be palatable yeah and I like your idea the thing is that if if it's not done uh like if you have a once once in a lifetime or once in a generation opportunity and you don't take Serious action and and then you have four years to get it done and then and if it\n\ndoesn't get done then how serious is Trump about this like you've talked to him about it yeah yeah I think he is very serious about it got it um and no I I think actually the reality is that if we get rid of nonsense regulations and shift people from the government sector to the private sector we will have immense Prosperity um and and I think we will have a golden age in this country and it'll be fantastic can we uh can we talk about SP um you have a bunch of critical Milestones coming up um yeah in fact there's an important a very exciting launch um that is may be happening tonight so if if that the weather is is holding up then I'm going to leave here head to Cape canaval uh for the um the the PO stor Mission which is a private Mission so funded by\n\nDerek um DED isman and he's um awesome guy and and there this will be the first time uh the first private first first commercial space walk um and and'll be at at the highest altitude uh since Apollo so it's the furthest from Earth that anyone's gone um yeah and you what comes after that let's assume that's successful and I sure hope so man um no pressure um yeah we you know Absolut you know Astron prior astral safety is man if I had like all all all the wishes I could save up that would be the one to to put on so you know space is dangerous um so the the yeah the next Milestone after that would be the next flight of Starship um which um you know Starship is next five Starship is ready to fly we are waiting for regulatory approval you know yeah it it\n\nit it really should not be possible to both a giant rocket faster than the paper can move from one desk to [Applause] another that stamp was really hard approved yeah you ever see that movie zootopia you ever see that movie zootopia there's like a sloth in for the approval yeah accidentally tell a joke and and I was like oh no this is good here we go going to take a long time sorry sorry um but yeah zootopia you know you know the funny thing is like so I went to the DMV about I don't know a year later after zootopia and to get my whatever license renewal and the guy in in an exercise of incredible self- awareness had the sloth from zootopia in his um in his cube in in in his Cube and he was actually Swift yeah with the with the Mandate beat the sloth\n\nyeah yeah no personal agency personal agency no I mean some people like think the you know the government is um more confident than it than it is I'm not saying that there aren't confident people in the government they're just in an operating system that is inefficient um once you move them to a more efficient operating system they their output is dramatically greater as we've seen examp you know when East Germany was reintegrated to into with West Germany and and and the same people um were vastly more prosperous uh with a basically half capitalist uh operating system so um but I mean for a lot of people their like the maybe most direct experience with the government is the DMV um and and then the important thing to remember is the the government is\n\nthe DMV at scale right that's the government got the mental picture how much do you want to scale it yeah yeah sorry can you go back to chat's um uh question on Star so you you announced just the other day Starship going to Mars in two years and by the way huh yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah and then four years for a crude uh aspirational launch in the next window and how much is the government involved I'm not saying like say you watch by these not you know uh but these uh but it based on our current progress where with with Starship We were able to successfully reach oval of velocity twice uh we were able to achieve soft Landings of the the booster and the ship in water uh and that's despite the ship having you know half its flaps cooked off um you can see\n\nthe video on the X platform it's quite exciting um so you know we we we think we'll be able to have to launch reliably and repeatedly and quite quickly um and the the the fundamental Holy Grail breakthrough for rocketry for to what the fundamental breakthrough that is needed for life to become multiplanetary is a rapidly reusable reliable rocket R for the pirate somehow um throw a pirate in there um the so with Starship is the first rocket design where success is one of the possible out with full reusability um so you know for any given project you have to say this is the circle to write diagram um has a circle and is Success the success dot in the circle um is is success in the set of possible outcomes that's uh you know sounds pretty obvious but there\n\nare often projects where that that is success is not in the set of possible outcomes um and so so Starship not only is fully full reusability in the set of possible outcomes it it is being proven with each launch um and and and I'm confident it will succeed it's simply a matter of time and you know if if we can get some improvement in the speed of Regulation we we could actually move a lot faster um uh so that would that would be very helpful and and in fact if if this if not if something isn't done about um reducing regul and and sort of speeding up approvals and to be clear I'm not talking about anything unsafe it's simply the processing of the safe thing can be done at a as as fast as the rocket is built not slower then uh then then we could become\n\na space buring civilization and a multiplet species ultimate and be out there among the stars in the future and there's you know it's it's just very like it's incredibly important that we have things that that we find inspiring that you look to the Future and say the future is going to be better than the past things to look forward to and like like kids are a good a good way to assess this like what a kids fired up about and if you can say you know you you could you know you could be an Astron on Mars you you could maybe one day uh go beyond the solar system um we could make Star Trek Starfleet Academy real um that is an exciting future that is inspiring um you know just I mean you need things that move your heart right um yeah [ __ ] yeah [ __ ] yeah\n\nlet's do it I mean it like like life can't just be about soling one miserable problem after another there's got to be things that you look forward to as well yeah uh and and do do you think you might have to move it to a different jurisdiction and to move faster I've always wondered if like it's rocket technology is considered an advanced weapons technology so we can't just go do it you know in another country yes in it yeah interesting and if we don't do it other countries could do it I mean they're so far behind us but theoretically there's a national security you know justification here if if somebody can put their thinking caps on like do we want to have this technology that you're building the team's working so hard on stolen by other countries and\n\nthen you know maybe they don't have as much red tape I I wish people were trying to steal it um so that no no one's trying to steal it it's just too this just it's too crazy basically um and that's for you yeah it's way too crazy El what do you think um is going on that led to boing building the St line the way that they did they were able to get it up but not complete but can't complete they can't finish can't finish and you're going to have to go up and finish um um well I mean I think Boeing is a company that is you they actually do so much business with the government they have sort of impedance matched to the government so they're they're like basically one notch away from the government maybe two they're not far from the government from an efficiency\n\nstandpoint because they derive so much of the revenue from the government um and a lot of people think well SpaceX is super dependent on the government and actually no most of our revenue is commercial um so um and and and and there's been I think at least up until perhaps recently because they have a new CEO who actually shows up in the factory yeah um and the the the CEO before that I think had a degree in accounting and and never went to the factory and didn't know how airplanes flew um so I think if you are in charge of a company that makes airplanes fly and a spacecraft go to Orit you need to know it can't be a total mystery as to how they work yeah so you know I'm like sure if somebody's like running cocoa Pepsi and and they're like great at marketing\n\nor whatever uh that's that's fine because you know it's it's not a sort of Technology dependent business um you know or if they're running a you know financial consulting and their degrees in accounting that makes sense um but I think uh you know if you if you're the Cavalry Captain you should know how to ride a horse pretty basic yeah yeah great it's like it's disconcerting if the Cavalry Captain just falls off the horse you know he's scar team I'm sorry I'm scared of hces gets on backwards I'm like oops um sh shifting gears to AI uh Peter was here earlier and he was talking about how so far the only company to really make money off AI is NVIDIA with the chips um do you have a sense yet of where you think the big applications will be from AI is it going\n\nto be an enabling self-driving is it going to be enabling robots is it transforming Industries I mean it's still I think early in terms of where the big business impact is going to be do you have a sense yet I I mean I think I think they that they the spending on AI probably runs ahead of I mean does run ahead of the revenue right now that's there's no question about that um but the rate of improvement of AI is faster than any technology I've ever seen by far and and and it it's I mean like the for example the touring test used to be a thing now you know your basic uh open source random llm writing on a freaking Raspberry Pi probably could uh you know beat the touring test um so there's I I I think actually like like the the good future of AI is one of\n\nimmense Prosperity where there is an age of abundance no shortage of goods and services everyone can have whatever they want unless except for things we artificially Define to be scarce like some special artwork um but but anything that is a manufactured good or provided Service uh will I think with the Adent of AI plus robotics that the cost of goods and services will be will Trend to zero like I'm not saying it be actually zero but it'll be it every everyone will be able to have anything they want uh that that's the good future of course and you know in my view that's probably 80% likely so look on the bright side only 20% 20% probability of annihilation nothing um is is the 20% like what does that look like I don't know man I mean frankly I do have\n\nto go engage in some degree of of deliberate suspension of disbelief with respect to AI in order to sleep well um and even then um because I I I I think the actual issue the the most likely issue is like well how do we find meaning in a world where AI can do everything we can do a bit better that that is that is perhaps the bigger challenge um although you know at this point I know more and more people who are retired and they seem to enjoy that life so uh but I think that that may be maybe there'll be some crisis of meaning like because the computer can do everything you can do but better so maybe that'll be a challenge um but but really uh you know you need you need the sort of end factors you need the the autonomous cars and you need the sort of humanoid\n\nrobots or your general purpose robots um but once you have general purpose humanoid robots um and autonomous vehicles uh you really you you you can build anything um and and and this I think that there's no actual limit to the size of the economy I mean there obviously you know the mass of Earth you know like that one limit um but the you know the economy is is really just the average productivity per person times number of people that's the economy and if you if you've got humanoid robots that can do you know where there's no real limit on the number of humanoid robots um and and they they can operate very intelligently then then there's no actual limit to the economy in there's no meaningful limit to the economy you guys just turned on Colossus which\n\nis like the largest private cluster I guess of gpus anywhere is that it's it's the it's the most powerful supercomputer of any kind um which sort of speaks to what David said and kind of what Peter said which is a lot of the kind of economic value so far of ai ai is entirely gone to Nvidia but there are people with Alternatives and you're actually one with an alternative now you have a very specific case because Dojo is really about images and large images huge video um yeah I mean the the the Tesla problem is different from the um you know the sort of llm problem uh the nature of the intelligence actually is actually and and the what what matters in the AI is is different um to to the point you just made which is that in the in tales's case the context\n\nuh length is very long so we've got gigabytes of context G context Windows yeah yeah you've got you know sort of uh we just bringing it up kind of billions of tokens of context NY amount of context because you've got um seven seven cameras and if if you've got several you know let's say you've got a minute of several high high def cameras then that's gigabytes so you need to compress so the Tesla problem is you got to compress a gigantic context um into the the pixels that are that actually matter um and you know and and and condense that over a time so you've got in both uh the time Dimension the space Dimension you've got to compress the pixels u in space and the pixels over in time um and and and then and then have that inference done on a tiny computer\n\nrelatively speaking a small you know a few hundred watt uh it's a Tesla designed AI inference computer uh which is by still the best there isn't a better thing we could buy from suppliers so the Tesla designed AI inference computer that's in the cars is better than anything we could buy from any supplier just by the way that's kind of a by way the the Tesla ai ai CHP team is extremely good you guys in the design there is a technical paper and there was a deck that somebody on your team from Tesla published and it was stunning to me you designed your own transport control like layer over ethernet you're like ah ethernet's not good enough for us you have this TT Coe or something and you're like oh we're just going to reinvent ethernet and like string these\n\nchips it's pretty incredible stuff that's happening over there yeah um no the team the the Tesla chip design team is extremely extremely good um so um but is there a world where for example other people over time that need you know some sort of like video use case or image use case theoretically you know you'd say oh why not you know I have some extra Cycles over here so which should kind of make you a competitor of Nvidia it's not intentionally per se but um yeah I mean the you know this training and inference and we we do have you know two those two projects at T we've got Dojo which is the the training computer uh and then um you know our inference chip which is in every every car inference computer um so and Dojo we've only had Dojo one Dojo 2 is\n\num you know should be we should have Dojo 2 in volume towards the end of next year um and and that that that will be we think sort of comparable to uh the sort of a b200 typ type system a training system um and um you know so there's I guess there's some potential for for that to be used as a service um and but like you Dojo is is just kind of like I mean we're I guess I guess I have like some improved confidence in Dojo um but I think we won't really know how good Dojo is until probably version three like usually takes three major iterations on a technology for it to be to be excellent um and we'll only have the second major iteration next year um the third iteration I don't know maybe late you know 26 or something like that how's the uh how's the Optimus\n\nproject going I remember when we talked last um and you said this publicly that it's in doing some light testing inside the factory um so it's actually being useful what's the build of materials and when you know for something like that at scale so when you start making it like you're making the model three now and there's a million of them coming off the factory line what would the would they cost 20 30 $40,000 you think yeah I mean what I mean I've discovered really that you know anything made in sufficient volume will ASM totically approach the cost of its of its uh materials so now there's there's I should say the there's some some things are constrained by the cost of intellectual property and like paying for patents and stuff so a lot of you know\n\nwhat what's in a a chip is like paying paying royalties um and depreciation of the chip faab so but the actual modal cost of the chips is very low um so so so Optimus it obviously is humanoid robot it it is it weighs much less than it's much smaller than a car um so the you could expect that in high volume uh and and i' said you also probably need three three production versions of Optimus so you need to refine the design three at least three major times and and then you need scale production to sort of the million unit plus per year level and I think at that point the cost the the you know the labor materials on Optimus is probably not much more than 10,000 yeah and that's a decade long journey maybe basically think of it like Optimus will cost less\n\nthan um a a small car right so at at scale volume with three major iterations of technology and and so if a small car you know costs $225,000 you know it's it's probably like I don't know $220,000 for for an Optimus for a humanoid robot that can be your your body like a combination of R2D2 and c3p a bit better I mean you know that's I honestly I think people are going to get really attached to their humanoid robot because I mean like you look at sort of watch Star Wars and it's like R2D2 and see3 I love those guys um you know they're awesome um and their personality and and I mean and all all R2 could do is just beef at you could couldn't speak English um c3p to translate the beeps you know so you're in year two of that if you did two or three years per\n\niteration or something it's a decade long journey for this to hit some sort of scale I I would say m major iterations are less than two years so okay um it's probably on the order of five five years yeah uh maybe six to get to a million units a year and at that price point everybody can afford one on planet Earth I mean it's going to be that one: one two: one what do you think ultimately if we're sitting here in 30 years the number of robotss on the planet versus Humans yeah I think the number of robots will vastly exceed the number of humans vastly yeah vastly exceed I mean you have to say like who who would not want their robot buddy everyone wants a robot buddy um you know this is like it especially if it can you know you know it can take care of your\n\nyour take your dog for a walk it could you know mo mow the lawn it could watch your kids uh it could you know like it could it could teach your kids it could it could we could also send it to Mars we could send a lot of robots to Mars to do the work needed to yeah make it a colonized planet for you Mars is already the robot Planet there's like a whole bunch of you know robots like Rovers and Rob helicopter yes only robots um so yeah the no I I think the the sort of useful humanoid robot opportunity is the single biggest opportunity ever um because if you assume like that I mean the I think the ratio of humanoid robots to humans is going to be at least 2 to one maybe 3 to one because everybody every everybody will want one and then there'll be a bunch\n\nof robots that you don't see that are making goods and services and you think it's a general one generalized robot that then learns how to do different tasks or yeah hey um I mean we are a generalized yeah we're a generalized robot we're just made of meat you know uh we're a meat General meat yeah I mean operating my meat puppet you know um so um yeah we are actually and by the way it turns out like as we're designing Optimus we sort of learn more and more about why humans are shaped the way they're shaped and you know and why we have five fingers and why your little finger is smaller than you know your index finger uh you know you know obviously why you have opposable thumbs but also why for example your the muscles the major muscles that operate your\n\nhand are actually in your forearm and and your fingers are primarily operated like um your the muscles that actuate your fingers um are located the vast majority of the of your finger strength is actually coming from your forearm um and your fingers are being operated by tendons little strings that that's and so the current current version of the Optimus hand uh has the actuators in the hand and has only 11 degrees of freedom so it can't it's not as doesn't have all the degrees of freedom of human hand which has depending on how you count it roughly 25 degrees of freedom um and uh and and and and it's also like not strong enough in certain ways because the actuators have to fit in the hand um so the Next Generation Optimus hand uh which we have in Prototype\n\nform uh the the actuators have moved to the forearm just like a human and they operate the the fingers through cables just like a human hand and uh and then the next Generation had has 22 degrees of freedom um which we think is enough to do almost anything that a human can do um and presumably I think it was written that X and Tesla may work together and you know provide services but my immedate thought went to oh if you just provide a grock to the robot then the robot has a personality and can process oh yeah voice and video and images and all of that stuff as the uh as we wrap here U I think uh you know everybody talks about all the projects you're working on but um people don't know you have a great sense of humor that's not true oh you do you do um\n\npeople don't see it but I would say one of I know for me the funniest week of my life or one of the funniest was when you did SNL and we got and you you I got to tag along maybe you saw it um maybe behind the scenes like some of your funniest Recollections of that chaotic insane week when we laughed for 12 hours a day it was a little terrorizing on the first couple of days but yeah I was I was bit worried the beginning there because frankly nothing was funny um day one was rough rough um yeah so I mean it's like a rule but can't you guys just say it just say the stuff that got on the cutting some the funniest skits were the ones that didn't let you do that's what I'm saying can you just say there were a couple of funny ones yeah that they didn't let you\n\nyou can say it so that he doesn't get I mean how much time do we have here well we should just give one or two because it was in your mind which one do we regret most not getting on air you really want to hear that I I mean I mean it was a little I see it was a little funny okay here we go all right here we go guys all right so one of the things that um I think everyone's been sort of wondering this whole time is is Saturday night Saturday Night Live actually live like live live live live or do they have like a delay or like just in case you know there's a wardrobe malfunction or something like that uh is it like a you knowu 5sec delay what's really going on but there's a there's a way to test this right we came out the way there's a way to test this\n\num which is we don't tell them what's going on as I I W on and says this is the script I throw it on the ground we're going to find out tonight right now it's Saturday if sat night life is actually live and the way that we're going to do this is I'm going to take my [ __ ] [Applause] out this is the greatest pitch ever and and if if if if you see my [ __ ] you know it's true and if you don't it's been a lie it's been a lie all these years all these years now this is we're going to bust them right now and this we're pitching this yeah yeah so ping this on Zoom yeah ping this on zoom on like a Monday after like yeah we're like kind of hung over from the weekend and like Ping thisi and and and it's h it's you know Jason's on um and uh Mike and you yeah and\n\nMike uh you know got like you know who my friends who I think are sort of you know quite funny um you know uh Jason's quite funny I think like like Jason's the closest thing to Cartman that exists in the real in real life we have a joke that he's Butters and I'm Cartman yeah so um and then my friend Mike's Prett funny too so so we we come in like like just like guns blazing guns blazing with with like ideas and we didn't realize like actually you know that's not how it works and and and uh that that it's normally like actors and and they just get told what to do and like oh right well you mean we can't just like do funny things that we thought of what there watching this and on the zoom they're a gas pitch yeah it's silence like so I'm like and I'm like\n\nand I was like is this thing working is this are we muted is is our mic on they're like we hear you yeah and then and then after a long silence like Mike's Mike just says the word crickets crickets and they're not laughing they're going to not even going to chugle like what's going on and then Elon explains the punchline yes which is exactly so there's more to it okay yes that's just the beginning so Elon says so so then I'm so I'm like so so so so I said like I'm I'm I'm going to I'm going to reach [Laughter] down into my pet into my pants and and I stick my hand on my pants and I'm going and I'm and I'm going to pull my co and I tell this to the audience and the audience is going to be like go right and and and and and then and and then and then and\n\nthen I pull out a a a baby rooster you know yes and it's like okay this is kind of PG you know it's like that not that bad it's like it's this is my tiny [ __ ] and and and it's like what do you think uh and so then and do you think it's an ice coock I mean I like it I pitch I'm like and then Kate McKennon walks out yeah exactly and I'm like oh no but you haven't heard half of it Kate mcken comes out yeah and she says Elon expected you would have a bigger [ __ ] yeah I like I I don't mean to disappoint you Kate but yeah um but I I I hope you like it anyway um but Kate's got to come out with with with her cat okay right uh so and Kate says you see where you can see where this is going and I say nice wow that's that's a that's a that's a nice [ __ ] you've\n\ngot there Kate wow that's amazing um it looks a little wet was it raining outside and then um do you mind if I stroke your [ __ ] is that cool it's like oh no Elon actually can I hold your [ __ ] of course of course Kate you definely hold my [ __ ] um and and then you know we exchang and I think just the audio version of this is pretty good right um and and and um you know so it's like wow you I really like um stroking your [ __ ] and I was like I and then you say I'm really enjoying strug at your [ __ ] yes of course and um yeah so you know they're looking at us like oh my god what have we done inviting these lunatics on the program yeah they said they said like well um it is uh it is Mother's Day it's Mother's Day we might not want to go with this one\n\nthe mom's in the audience and I'm like well that's a good point well fair fair it might be a bit uncomfortable for all the moms in the audience maybe I don't know I don't know maybe they'll dig it maybe they like it uh so yeah that was that's the um that's the that's the that's the um cold open that didn't make it we didn't get that on the air um but uh we did fight for Doge yes and we got Doge on the air Ian there's a bunch of things that I said that were just not on the script like they have these like Q cards for what you're supposed to say and I just didn't say it I just went off off the rails yeah they didn't see that coming yeah it's live well it's live and uh so the Elon wanted to do Doge this is the other one and he wanted to do Doge on late night\n\nand he says um Hey Jake Al can you um make sure oh yeah so I want yeah I wanted to do the Doge father like you sort of redo the you know that scene from uh the the to Godfather I mean you kind of need the music to cue things up you bring me on my daughter's wedding listen you ask for Doge yeah you got R and I give you Bitcoin but you want do exactly you really got to set the mood you have to have tuxedo andice you got to have like Mar you come to me on this day of my Do's wedding and you ask me for your private keys are you even a friend you'll call me the Dodge father so b b know so that has potential they had great potential so they come to me and I'm I'm talking to Colin um and Jo who's got a great sense of humor and he's amazing he loves Elon and\n\nhe's like we can't do it because of the law and stuff like that and the law and liability so I said it's okay Elon called Comcast and he put in an offer and they just accepted it we just bought NBC so it's fine yeah and Colin Joe looks at me I sold this so good and he's like you're you're serious I'm like yep we own NBC now yeah and he's like okay well that kind of changes things doesn't it I'm like absolutely where're a go on on Doge yeah and then he's like you're [ __ ] with me and I'm I'm [ __ ] with you or are we or are we it was the greatest week of and that like is like two of 10 stories yeah we got yeah we got we'll save the other eight yeah but it was and I was just so happy for you to see you have a great week of just joy and fun and letting\n\ngo cuz you were launching Rockets you're dealing with so much [ __ ] in your life to have those moments yeah to share them and just laugh um it was just so great and more of those moments I think we got to we got to get you back on SNL who wants them back on SNL one more time all right ladies and gentlemen our bestie Elon Musk [Applause] [Laughter] [Applause]","textByLang":{"en":"[Applause] the greatest entrepreneur this generation Elon Musk hey guys grab my stuff sit there I'm going to yep I'm going to take this all right do this thanks for taking the time how um how you doing brother you keep him busy yeah I mean it's rarely a slow week I mean in the world as well yeah I mean any given week I me it just seems like the things getting nuttier it it it's definitely a simulation we've agreed on this at this point I mean well look if if we are in some alien Netflix series I think the ratings are high yes ratings are High um how are the um uh the the freedom of speech Wars going um this is a uh you've been you've been at War for two years now yes uh the price of freedom of speech is not cheap is it I think it's like 44 billion something\n\nlike that just numbers give her give or take a billion yeah round numbers yeah yeah um it's uh it's it's pretty nutty there there is like this weird movement to uh quell's Free Speech uh kind of around the world and um and this is something we should be very concerned about uh you know you have to ask like why was the first amendment like a high priority was like number one um One is because uh people came from countries where if you spoke freely you would be imprisoned or killed and they were like well we would like to not have that here um because that was terrible and actually you know there's a lot of places in the world right now if you if you're critical of the government you get imprisoned or killed right yeah we'd like to not have that are you\n\nconcerned to that I mean I supect this is a receptive audience to that message [Applause] um you I I think we always thought that the West Was the exception to that that we knew there were authoritarian places around the world but we thought that in the west we'd have freedom of speech and we've seen like you said it seems like a global movement in brit you've got teenagers being put in prison for memes opposing it's like you like to you like to Facebook post throw him in the prison yeah people have got an actual you know prison for for like like obscure comments on social media not even [ __ ] posting yet like not even yeah it's crazy P got thrown in prison recently I'm like that was pretty about I was like what is the massive crime that right pav in\n\nFrance and then of course we got Brazil with judge Voldemort that that one seems like the one that impacts you the most can you what's the latest on that well we I guess we're we are trying to figure out uh is there some reasonable solution in Brazil uh the you know the concern uh I mean I want to just make sure that this is framed correctly um and uh you know funny memes aside I the the the nature of the concern was that least at at excorp we had the perception that um we were being asked to do things that violated Brazilian law so obviously we cannot as an American company impose American laws and values on on other countries um that uh you know we wouldn't get very far if we did that um but but we do you know think that uh if if a country's law laws\n\nare a particular way and we're being asked to what we we think we think we're being asked to break them then and and be silent about it then obviously that is no good so so I just want to be clear thetime sometimes comes across as uh elon's trying to just be a crazy whatever billionaire and demand outrageous things from other countries and um you know well that is true um in addition there are um other things uh that that I think are you know valid which is like we we we obviously can't uh you know I think any given thing that we do at excorp we've got to be able to explain in the light of day and and not feel that it was dishonorable or you know we we we did the wrong thing you know uh so we don't we that that that that was the that that's the nature\n\nof the concern so we actually are in uh sort of discussions with uh the you know judicial authorities in in Brazil to try to you know run this to ground like uh what What's actually going on like if if we're being asked to break the law Brazilian law then that's that that obviously should not be should not sit well with the Brazilian Judiciary and if we're not and we're mistaken we'd like to understand how we are mistaken I think that's a that's a pretty reasonable uh position I'm a bit concerned as your friend that you're going to go to one of these countries and I'm going to wake up one day and you're going to get arrested and like I'm going to have to to go bail you out or something like this is feels very acute like yes I mean it's not a joke now\n\nlike they're literally saying like you know it's not just Biden saying like we have to look into that guy now it's become quite literal like this I who was the guy who just wrote the um was it the guardian piece about like oh yeah yeah there have been three articles and I think in the past three weeks Robert Reich but it wasn't just him it was like three different articles three different articles it doesn't that's a trend that calling for me to be imprisoned right in the in the guardian you know guardian of what what are they Pro exactly guardian of I don't know authoritarianism yeah guardian of uh yeah yeah censorship censorship but but the premise here is that you bought this thing this online Forum this communication platform and you're allowing people\n\nto use it to express themselves therefore you have to be jailed I don't understand the logic here right um there's what do you think they're actually afraid of at this point what's the motivation here I mean I think the if somebody's a if somebody's sort of trying to push a false premise on the world then and then that that and that premise can be undermined with public dialogue then they will be opposed to public Dialogue on that premise because they wish that false premise to Prevail right um so that's I think you know the the issue there is uh if they don't like the truth uh you know then we want to suppress it so now the you know the the sort of the what what we're trying to do with excorp uh is uh I distinguish that from my son who's also called\n\nX yes uh you have you have parental goals everything's just called X basically it's very difficult disambiguation the sun yeah everything um so what what we're trying to do is simply adhere to the uh you know the the laws in a in a country um so so if something is illegal in the United States or if it's illegal in you know Europe or Brazil or or wherever it might be uh then then we will take it down or we'll suspend the account because we we're not you know there to make the laws we but but if speech is not legal then then what are we doing okay now we're injecting ourselves in as as a sensor and and where does it stop and who decides so and where where does that path lead I think it leads to a bad place uh so if the people if in a country want the laws\n\nto be different they should make the laws different but otherwise we're going to obey the law in each jurisdiction right and some of these Europe that's it it's it's not more complicated there we're not we're not trying to FL out the law we going to be clear about that but we're we're trying to adhere to the law and if the laws change we will change and if if the laws don't change we we won't we're just literally trying to adhere to the law it's pretty pretty straightforward there are some very straightforward if somebody doesn't thinks we're not adhering to the law well they can file a lawsuit Bingo also very straightforward I mean there are European countries that don't want people to promote Nazi propaganda yes they have some sensitivity to it well\n\nit's it is illegal and it is illegal in those countries if somebody puts that up you take it down yes but they typically file something and say take this down no in some cases it is just um obviously illegal like you don't need to file a lawsuit for you know if something is just you know unequivocally illegal we can literally read the law this violates the law you know anyone anyone can see that like you know you don't need like if if somebody is stealing you don't need let me check the law on that okay oh no they're they're stealing Frisco let's talk so we had we had JD Vance here this morning he did a great job um and you know one of the things is there's this image on X of like basically like you Bobby uh Trump and JD are like the Avengers I guess\n\nand then there's another meme where you're in front of a desk where it says d g the department of governmental efficiency yes yes I posted that one tell us about I I made it using grock the gro image generator and I posted it tell us about it to my profile seek for efficiency um how how do you do it well I mean I I think with great difficulty uh but you know look it's been a long time since there was a serious effort to reduce the size of government and to um remove absurd regulations yeah and you know the last time there was a really concered effort on that front was Reagan in the early ' 80s so we're 40 years away from um a a a a serious effort to remove um you know not regulations that don't serve the greater good and and reduce the size of government\n\nand I think it's just if we don't do that then what's what what's happening is that we get regulations and laws accumulating every year until eventually everything's illegal uh and that's why we can't get uh major infrastructure projects done in the United States like if you look at the absurdity of the California highs speed rail I think they theyve spent $7 billion and have A600 put segment that doesn't actually have rail in it I mean your tax dollars at work I mean yeah what are we doing that's an expense of 600 feet of concrete you know um and and I mean I think it's like if you know uh I realize sometimes I'm perhaps a little optimistic with schedules but uh you know I mean I wouldn't be doing the things I'm doing if I was uh you know not an an optimist\n\nuh so but but but but at the current Trend you know California High Street rail might finish sometime next Century maybe probably not we're just we'll have teleportation by that time so yeah exactly AI do everything at that point so so so so I think you really think of um you know the the United States and many countries it's it's arguably worse than the EU as being like galiva tied down by a million little strings and like any one given regulation is not is not that bad but you've got a million of them and um or Millions actually and and and then eventually you just can't get anything done and and this is a this is a massive tax on the on the consumer on the people uh it's just they don't they don't realize that there's this this massive tax in the form\n\nof irrational regulations um I'm going I'll give you a recent uh example that that you know is is just insane um is that uh like SpaceX was fined by the EPA $140,000 for um they claimed dumping uh portable water on the ground drinking water so and we're like uh this is that star base and and we're like it's we're in a TR tropical uh thunderstorm region um that stuff comes from the Sky all the time and um and there was no actual harm done you know it was just water to cool the the the Launchpad during uh liftoff and um there's zero harm done like and they're like they agree yes there's zero harm done we're like okay so there's no harm done and um you want us to pay $140,000 fine it's like yes because you didn't have a pmit okay we didn't know there was\n\na ponent needed for zero har fresh water being on the ground in a place that where fresh water full from the sky all the time got it next to the ocean next to the ocean cuz there's a little bit of water there too yeah I mean sometimes it rain so much the the roads are flooded so we're like you know how does this make any sense yeah and and then they're like then then they were like well we're not going to process any more of your any more of your applications for launch for Starship launch unless you pay this $140,000 they just ransomed us and we're like okay so we paid $140,000 but it was a it's like this is no good I mean at this rate we're never going to get to Mars I mean that's the that's the confounding part here yeah is we're acting against our\n\nown self-interest you know when you look at we do have to make putting aside fresh water but hey you know there the rocket makes a lot of noise so I'm I'm certain there's some complaints about noise once in a while but sometimes you want to have a party or you want to make progress and there's a little bit of noise therefore you know we we trade off a little bit of noise for massive progress or even fun so like when did we stop being able to make those tradeoffs but talk about the difference between California and Texas uh where you and I now reside um Texas you were able to build the gigafactory I remember when you got the plot of land and then it seemed like it was less than two years when you had the party to open it yeah from start of construction\n\num to completion uh was 14 months 14 14 months is there anywhere on the planet that would go faster is like China faster than that uh China was 11 months got it so Texas China 11 and 14 months California how many months and just to give you a sense of size the Tesla gigafactory in China is three times the size of the Pentagon which was the biggest building in America uh no there are bigger buildings but the pentagon's pretty big one yeah where it was the biggest in units in units of Pentagon it's like three okay three pentagons and counting yeah got it in 14 months um the just the just the regulatory approvals in California would have taken two years yeah so that's that's the issue where where do you think the regulation helps like for the people that\n\nwill say we need some checks and balances we can't have some because for every good actor like you there'll be a bad actor so where is that line then yeah I mean I have a sort of you know in in sort of doing Su sensible deregulation and um reduction in the size of government the is is just like be very public about it and say like which of these rules do you if the public is really excited about a rule and wants to keep it we'll just keep it and and here the thing about the rules if if like if the rule is um you know turns out to be a bad we'll just put it right back okay and then you know problem solved it's like it's easy to add rules but we don't actually have a process for getting rid of them that's the issue there's no garbage collection rul um when\n\nwe were um watching you work David and I and Antonio um in that first month at Twitter which was all hands on deck and you were doing zerob based budgeting you really quickly got the cost under control and then miraculously everybody said this site will go down and you added 50 more features so maybe explain because this is the first time yeah there like so many articles like the that this this Twitter is Dead Forever there's no way it could possibly even continue at all it was almost like the Press wasting for you let's write theit here has the orbituary uh they were all saying their goodbyes on Twitter remember that yeah yeah yeah they were all leaving and saying their goodbyes cuz the site was going to melt down and totally fail and and uh all the\n\njournalists left yeah and which is if you ever want to like hang out with a bunch of Hall monitors oh my God threads is amazing every time I go over there and post they're like they they're really triggered but yeah I mean if you like being condemned repeatedly then you know for reasons that make no sense then threads is the way to go yeah it's really it's it's the most miserable place on Earth if Disney's the happiest this is the anti- Disney but if we were to go into government you went into the Department of Education or Pi pick the department you've worked with a lot of them actually sure you can't go in there in zero based budget okay we get it but if you could just pair two three four 5% of those organizations what kind of impact would that have\n\nyeah I mean I think we'd need to do more than that I think ideally but compounding every year 2 3% a year I mean it would be better than what's happening now yeah I look I think we we um you know uh if if Trump wins and obviously I suspect there are people with mixed feelings about whether that should happen but uh but if but we do have an opportunity uh to do kind of a once- in a-lifetime deregulation and reduction in the size of government um because because the other thing besides the regulations um America is also going bankrupt extremely quickly um and and nobody seems everyone seems to be sort of whistling past the graveyard on this one um but they're all they're all grabbing the silverware everyone's stuff in their pockets and the silverware before\n\nthis the Titanic SS like well you know the the defense department by budget is a very big budget okay it's a trillion dollars a year DOD Intel it's Trill a trillion dollars um and interest payments on the national debt just exceeded the defense department budget they're over a trillion dollar a year just in interest and Rising we're we're adding a trillion dollars to the net to our debt which our you know kids and grandkids are going to have to pay somehow um you know every every three months and then soon it's going to be every two months and then every month and then the only thing we'll be able to pay his interest yeah and and if if this it's just you know it's just like a person at scale that has racked up too much credit card debt um and uh this\n\nthis is not this is not have a a good ending so we have to reduce the spending let me ask one question cuz I've brought this up a lot and the counterargument I hear which I disagree with um but the counter argument I hear from a lot of politicians is if we reduce spending because right now if you add up federal state and local government spending it's between 40 and 50% of GDP so nearly half of our economy is supported by government spending and nearly half of people in the United States are dependent directly or indirectly on government checks and either through contractors uh that that the government pays or their employed by government um entity so if you go in and you take to harden acts too fast you will have significant contraction job loss and\n\nrecession what's The Balancing Act Elon just thinking realistically because I'm 100% on board with you the steps the next set of steps however assume Trump wins and you become the the chief uh doe um uh dog uh like G how how like yeah and I think the challenge is how quickly can we yeah how quickly can we go in how quickly can things change and without without I want that on my business card yeah without all the L without all the contraction and job yeah so so I guess how do you really address it when so much of the economy and so many people's jobs and livelihoods are dependent on government spending well I mean I I do think it's it's it's sort of um you know it's it's false dichotomy it's not like no government spending is going to happen um you really\n\nhave to say like is it the right level um and just remember that that you know any any given person if they are doing things in a less efficient organization versus more efficient organization their contribution to the economy their net output of goods and services will reduce um I mean you've got a couple of clear examples between uh East Germany and West Germany North Korea and South Korea um I mean North Korea they're starving uh South Korea it's like amazing it's the future the compounding effect of productivity gains yeah yeah it's night and day yeah um and so in the north North Korea you've got 100% government um and in South Korea you've got probably I don't know 40% government it's not zero yeah U and yet you've got a standard of living that is\n\nprobably 10 times higher in South Korea at least at least exactly um uh and then East and West Germany um in West Germany uh you had just thinking in terms of cars I mean you had BMW Porsche Audi Mercedes um and and East Germany which is a random line on a map um you you the the car only car you could get was a a trabant which is basically a lawn mower with a shell on it um and it was extremely unsafe and you there's a 20-year wait so you like you know put your kid on the list as soon as they're conceived um they're conceived and and even then only I think um you know quarter of people maybe got got this lousy car and the same so so that's just an interesting example of like basically the same people different operating system and and it's not like uh\n\nWest Germany was some you know you know a capitalist uh Heaven it was it's quite socialist actually so uh so when you look you know probably it was half half government in West Germany and 100% government in East Germany and again gain sort of a five to like it call at least a 5 to 10x standard of living difference and even qualitatively vastly better and and it's obviously you know sometimes people have these amazingly in this modern era this debate as to which system is better well I'll tell you which system is better um the one that doesn't need to build the world to keep people in okay that's that's how you can tell okay it's a dead giveaway spoiler alert dead giveaway they climbing the wall to get out you have to build a barrier to keep people in\n\nthat is the bad system um there wasn't West West berin that built the wall okay they were like to you know anyone who wants to flee West berin go ahead um speaking of walls so it you know and and and and if you look at sort of the flux of boats from Cuba there's a large number of boats from Cuba and there's a bunch of free boats that you anyone can take to to to Cuba there's like hey wow an abandoned boat I could use this boat to go to Cuba where they have communism awesome Yes um and and and yet nobody nobody picks up those boats and and does it amazing um so given this a lot of thought yeah wait so your point is jobs will be created if we cut government spending in half jobs will be created fast enough to make up for right just to count yes obviously\n\nyou know I'm not suggesting that that people you know um have like immediately tfed you know tossed out with with with no severance and and you know can't now can't pay their mortgage they need to see some reasonable offramp uh where yeah yeah um so reasonable offramp where you know they're still um you know earning they're still receiving money but have like I don't know a year or two to to f to find jobs in the private sector which they will find and then they will be in a different operating system um again you can see the difference East Germany was incorporated into West Germany living standards in East Germany uh Rose dramatically um so in four years if you could shrink the side size of the government with Trump what would be a good Target just\n\nin terms of like ballpark I mean are you trying to get me assassinated before this even happens no no pick AO number I mean you know there's that old phrase go postal I mean it's like they might yeah on me so we'll keep the post office I I'm going to need a all the security details guys yes I mean this year a number of disg granted workers for former government employees is you know quite a scary number I mean I might not make it you know I was saying low low digits every year for four years would be palatable yeah and I like your idea the thing is that if if it's not done uh like if you have a once once in a lifetime or once in a generation opportunity and you don't take Serious action and and then you have four years to get it done and then and if it\n\ndoesn't get done then how serious is Trump about this like you've talked to him about it yeah yeah I think he is very serious about it got it um and no I I think actually the reality is that if we get rid of nonsense regulations and shift people from the government sector to the private sector we will have immense Prosperity um and and I think we will have a golden age in this country and it'll be fantastic can we uh can we talk about SP um you have a bunch of critical Milestones coming up um yeah in fact there's an important a very exciting launch um that is may be happening tonight so if if that the weather is is holding up then I'm going to leave here head to Cape canaval uh for the um the the PO stor Mission which is a private Mission so funded by\n\nDerek um DED isman and he's um awesome guy and and there this will be the first time uh the first private first first commercial space walk um and and'll be at at the highest altitude uh since Apollo so it's the furthest from Earth that anyone's gone um yeah and you what comes after that let's assume that's successful and I sure hope so man um no pressure um yeah we you know Absolut you know Astron prior astral safety is man if I had like all all all the wishes I could save up that would be the one to to put on so you know space is dangerous um so the the yeah the next Milestone after that would be the next flight of Starship um which um you know Starship is next five Starship is ready to fly we are waiting for regulatory approval you know yeah it it\n\nit it really should not be possible to both a giant rocket faster than the paper can move from one desk to [Applause] another that stamp was really hard approved yeah you ever see that movie zootopia you ever see that movie zootopia there's like a sloth in for the approval yeah accidentally tell a joke and and I was like oh no this is good here we go going to take a long time sorry sorry um but yeah zootopia you know you know the funny thing is like so I went to the DMV about I don't know a year later after zootopia and to get my whatever license renewal and the guy in in an exercise of incredible self- awareness had the sloth from zootopia in his um in his cube in in in his Cube and he was actually Swift yeah with the with the Mandate beat the sloth\n\nyeah yeah no personal agency personal agency no I mean some people like think the you know the government is um more confident than it than it is I'm not saying that there aren't confident people in the government they're just in an operating system that is inefficient um once you move them to a more efficient operating system they their output is dramatically greater as we've seen examp you know when East Germany was reintegrated to into with West Germany and and and the same people um were vastly more prosperous uh with a basically half capitalist uh operating system so um but I mean for a lot of people their like the maybe most direct experience with the government is the DMV um and and then the important thing to remember is the the government is\n\nthe DMV at scale right that's the government got the mental picture how much do you want to scale it yeah yeah sorry can you go back to chat's um uh question on Star so you you announced just the other day Starship going to Mars in two years and by the way huh yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah and then four years for a crude uh aspirational launch in the next window and how much is the government involved I'm not saying like say you watch by these not you know uh but these uh but it based on our current progress where with with Starship We were able to successfully reach oval of velocity twice uh we were able to achieve soft Landings of the the booster and the ship in water uh and that's despite the ship having you know half its flaps cooked off um you can see\n\nthe video on the X platform it's quite exciting um so you know we we we think we'll be able to have to launch reliably and repeatedly and quite quickly um and the the the fundamental Holy Grail breakthrough for rocketry for to what the fundamental breakthrough that is needed for life to become multiplanetary is a rapidly reusable reliable rocket R for the pirate somehow um throw a pirate in there um the so with Starship is the first rocket design where success is one of the possible out with full reusability um so you know for any given project you have to say this is the circle to write diagram um has a circle and is Success the success dot in the circle um is is success in the set of possible outcomes that's uh you know sounds pretty obvious but there\n\nare often projects where that that is success is not in the set of possible outcomes um and so so Starship not only is fully full reusability in the set of possible outcomes it it is being proven with each launch um and and and I'm confident it will succeed it's simply a matter of time and you know if if we can get some improvement in the speed of Regulation we we could actually move a lot faster um uh so that would that would be very helpful and and in fact if if this if not if something isn't done about um reducing regul and and sort of speeding up approvals and to be clear I'm not talking about anything unsafe it's simply the processing of the safe thing can be done at a as as fast as the rocket is built not slower then uh then then we could become\n\na space buring civilization and a multiplet species ultimate and be out there among the stars in the future and there's you know it's it's just very like it's incredibly important that we have things that that we find inspiring that you look to the Future and say the future is going to be better than the past things to look forward to and like like kids are a good a good way to assess this like what a kids fired up about and if you can say you know you you could you know you could be an Astron on Mars you you could maybe one day uh go beyond the solar system um we could make Star Trek Starfleet Academy real um that is an exciting future that is inspiring um you know just I mean you need things that move your heart right um yeah [ __ ] yeah [ __ ] yeah\n\nlet's do it I mean it like like life can't just be about soling one miserable problem after another there's got to be things that you look forward to as well yeah uh and and do do you think you might have to move it to a different jurisdiction and to move faster I've always wondered if like it's rocket technology is considered an advanced weapons technology so we can't just go do it you know in another country yes in it yeah interesting and if we don't do it other countries could do it I mean they're so far behind us but theoretically there's a national security you know justification here if if somebody can put their thinking caps on like do we want to have this technology that you're building the team's working so hard on stolen by other countries and\n\nthen you know maybe they don't have as much red tape I I wish people were trying to steal it um so that no no one's trying to steal it it's just too this just it's too crazy basically um and that's for you yeah it's way too crazy El what do you think um is going on that led to boing building the St line the way that they did they were able to get it up but not complete but can't complete they can't finish can't finish and you're going to have to go up and finish um um well I mean I think Boeing is a company that is you they actually do so much business with the government they have sort of impedance matched to the government so they're they're like basically one notch away from the government maybe two they're not far from the government from an efficiency\n\nstandpoint because they derive so much of the revenue from the government um and a lot of people think well SpaceX is super dependent on the government and actually no most of our revenue is commercial um so um and and and and there's been I think at least up until perhaps recently because they have a new CEO who actually shows up in the factory yeah um and the the the CEO before that I think had a degree in accounting and and never went to the factory and didn't know how airplanes flew um so I think if you are in charge of a company that makes airplanes fly and a spacecraft go to Orit you need to know it can't be a total mystery as to how they work yeah so you know I'm like sure if somebody's like running cocoa Pepsi and and they're like great at marketing\n\nor whatever uh that's that's fine because you know it's it's not a sort of Technology dependent business um you know or if they're running a you know financial consulting and their degrees in accounting that makes sense um but I think uh you know if you if you're the Cavalry Captain you should know how to ride a horse pretty basic yeah yeah great it's like it's disconcerting if the Cavalry Captain just falls off the horse you know he's scar team I'm sorry I'm scared of hces gets on backwards I'm like oops um sh shifting gears to AI uh Peter was here earlier and he was talking about how so far the only company to really make money off AI is NVIDIA with the chips um do you have a sense yet of where you think the big applications will be from AI is it going\n\nto be an enabling self-driving is it going to be enabling robots is it transforming Industries I mean it's still I think early in terms of where the big business impact is going to be do you have a sense yet I I mean I think I think they that they the spending on AI probably runs ahead of I mean does run ahead of the revenue right now that's there's no question about that um but the rate of improvement of AI is faster than any technology I've ever seen by far and and and it it's I mean like the for example the touring test used to be a thing now you know your basic uh open source random llm writing on a freaking Raspberry Pi probably could uh you know beat the touring test um so there's I I I think actually like like the the good future of AI is one of\n\nimmense Prosperity where there is an age of abundance no shortage of goods and services everyone can have whatever they want unless except for things we artificially Define to be scarce like some special artwork um but but anything that is a manufactured good or provided Service uh will I think with the Adent of AI plus robotics that the cost of goods and services will be will Trend to zero like I'm not saying it be actually zero but it'll be it every everyone will be able to have anything they want uh that that's the good future of course and you know in my view that's probably 80% likely so look on the bright side only 20% 20% probability of annihilation nothing um is is the 20% like what does that look like I don't know man I mean frankly I do have\n\nto go engage in some degree of of deliberate suspension of disbelief with respect to AI in order to sleep well um and even then um because I I I I think the actual issue the the most likely issue is like well how do we find meaning in a world where AI can do everything we can do a bit better that that is that is perhaps the bigger challenge um although you know at this point I know more and more people who are retired and they seem to enjoy that life so uh but I think that that may be maybe there'll be some crisis of meaning like because the computer can do everything you can do but better so maybe that'll be a challenge um but but really uh you know you need you need the sort of end factors you need the the autonomous cars and you need the sort of humanoid\n\nrobots or your general purpose robots um but once you have general purpose humanoid robots um and autonomous vehicles uh you really you you you can build anything um and and and this I think that there's no actual limit to the size of the economy I mean there obviously you know the mass of Earth you know like that one limit um but the you know the economy is is really just the average productivity per person times number of people that's the economy and if you if you've got humanoid robots that can do you know where there's no real limit on the number of humanoid robots um and and they they can operate very intelligently then then there's no actual limit to the economy in there's no meaningful limit to the economy you guys just turned on Colossus which\n\nis like the largest private cluster I guess of gpus anywhere is that it's it's the it's the most powerful supercomputer of any kind um which sort of speaks to what David said and kind of what Peter said which is a lot of the kind of economic value so far of ai ai is entirely gone to Nvidia but there are people with Alternatives and you're actually one with an alternative now you have a very specific case because Dojo is really about images and large images huge video um yeah I mean the the the Tesla problem is different from the um you know the sort of llm problem uh the nature of the intelligence actually is actually and and the what what matters in the AI is is different um to to the point you just made which is that in the in tales's case the context\n\nuh length is very long so we've got gigabytes of context G context Windows yeah yeah you've got you know sort of uh we just bringing it up kind of billions of tokens of context NY amount of context because you've got um seven seven cameras and if if you've got several you know let's say you've got a minute of several high high def cameras then that's gigabytes so you need to compress so the Tesla problem is you got to compress a gigantic context um into the the pixels that are that actually matter um and you know and and and condense that over a time so you've got in both uh the time Dimension the space Dimension you've got to compress the pixels u in space and the pixels over in time um and and and then and then have that inference done on a tiny computer\n\nrelatively speaking a small you know a few hundred watt uh it's a Tesla designed AI inference computer uh which is by still the best there isn't a better thing we could buy from suppliers so the Tesla designed AI inference computer that's in the cars is better than anything we could buy from any supplier just by the way that's kind of a by way the the Tesla ai ai CHP team is extremely good you guys in the design there is a technical paper and there was a deck that somebody on your team from Tesla published and it was stunning to me you designed your own transport control like layer over ethernet you're like ah ethernet's not good enough for us you have this TT Coe or something and you're like oh we're just going to reinvent ethernet and like string these\n\nchips it's pretty incredible stuff that's happening over there yeah um no the team the the Tesla chip design team is extremely extremely good um so um but is there a world where for example other people over time that need you know some sort of like video use case or image use case theoretically you know you'd say oh why not you know I have some extra Cycles over here so which should kind of make you a competitor of Nvidia it's not intentionally per se but um yeah I mean the you know this training and inference and we we do have you know two those two projects at T we've got Dojo which is the the training computer uh and then um you know our inference chip which is in every every car inference computer um so and Dojo we've only had Dojo one Dojo 2 is\n\num you know should be we should have Dojo 2 in volume towards the end of next year um and and that that that will be we think sort of comparable to uh the sort of a b200 typ type system a training system um and um you know so there's I guess there's some potential for for that to be used as a service um and but like you Dojo is is just kind of like I mean we're I guess I guess I have like some improved confidence in Dojo um but I think we won't really know how good Dojo is until probably version three like usually takes three major iterations on a technology for it to be to be excellent um and we'll only have the second major iteration next year um the third iteration I don't know maybe late you know 26 or something like that how's the uh how's the Optimus\n\nproject going I remember when we talked last um and you said this publicly that it's in doing some light testing inside the factory um so it's actually being useful what's the build of materials and when you know for something like that at scale so when you start making it like you're making the model three now and there's a million of them coming off the factory line what would the would they cost 20 30 $40,000 you think yeah I mean what I mean I've discovered really that you know anything made in sufficient volume will ASM totically approach the cost of its of its uh materials so now there's there's I should say the there's some some things are constrained by the cost of intellectual property and like paying for patents and stuff so a lot of you know\n\nwhat what's in a a chip is like paying paying royalties um and depreciation of the chip faab so but the actual modal cost of the chips is very low um so so so Optimus it obviously is humanoid robot it it is it weighs much less than it's much smaller than a car um so the you could expect that in high volume uh and and i' said you also probably need three three production versions of Optimus so you need to refine the design three at least three major times and and then you need scale production to sort of the million unit plus per year level and I think at that point the cost the the you know the labor materials on Optimus is probably not much more than 10,000 yeah and that's a decade long journey maybe basically think of it like Optimus will cost less\n\nthan um a a small car right so at at scale volume with three major iterations of technology and and so if a small car you know costs $225,000 you know it's it's probably like I don't know $220,000 for for an Optimus for a humanoid robot that can be your your body like a combination of R2D2 and c3p a bit better I mean you know that's I honestly I think people are going to get really attached to their humanoid robot because I mean like you look at sort of watch Star Wars and it's like R2D2 and see3 I love those guys um you know they're awesome um and their personality and and I mean and all all R2 could do is just beef at you could couldn't speak English um c3p to translate the beeps you know so you're in year two of that if you did two or three years per\n\niteration or something it's a decade long journey for this to hit some sort of scale I I would say m major iterations are less than two years so okay um it's probably on the order of five five years yeah uh maybe six to get to a million units a year and at that price point everybody can afford one on planet Earth I mean it's going to be that one: one two: one what do you think ultimately if we're sitting here in 30 years the number of robotss on the planet versus Humans yeah I think the number of robots will vastly exceed the number of humans vastly yeah vastly exceed I mean you have to say like who who would not want their robot buddy everyone wants a robot buddy um you know this is like it especially if it can you know you know it can take care of your\n\nyour take your dog for a walk it could you know mo mow the lawn it could watch your kids uh it could you know like it could it could teach your kids it could it could we could also send it to Mars we could send a lot of robots to Mars to do the work needed to yeah make it a colonized planet for you Mars is already the robot Planet there's like a whole bunch of you know robots like Rovers and Rob helicopter yes only robots um so yeah the no I I think the the sort of useful humanoid robot opportunity is the single biggest opportunity ever um because if you assume like that I mean the I think the ratio of humanoid robots to humans is going to be at least 2 to one maybe 3 to one because everybody every everybody will want one and then there'll be a bunch\n\nof robots that you don't see that are making goods and services and you think it's a general one generalized robot that then learns how to do different tasks or yeah hey um I mean we are a generalized yeah we're a generalized robot we're just made of meat you know uh we're a meat General meat yeah I mean operating my meat puppet you know um so um yeah we are actually and by the way it turns out like as we're designing Optimus we sort of learn more and more about why humans are shaped the way they're shaped and you know and why we have five fingers and why your little finger is smaller than you know your index finger uh you know you know obviously why you have opposable thumbs but also why for example your the muscles the major muscles that operate your\n\nhand are actually in your forearm and and your fingers are primarily operated like um your the muscles that actuate your fingers um are located the vast majority of the of your finger strength is actually coming from your forearm um and your fingers are being operated by tendons little strings that that's and so the current current version of the Optimus hand uh has the actuators in the hand and has only 11 degrees of freedom so it can't it's not as doesn't have all the degrees of freedom of human hand which has depending on how you count it roughly 25 degrees of freedom um and uh and and and and it's also like not strong enough in certain ways because the actuators have to fit in the hand um so the Next Generation Optimus hand uh which we have in Prototype\n\nform uh the the actuators have moved to the forearm just like a human and they operate the the fingers through cables just like a human hand and uh and then the next Generation had has 22 degrees of freedom um which we think is enough to do almost anything that a human can do um and presumably I think it was written that X and Tesla may work together and you know provide services but my immedate thought went to oh if you just provide a grock to the robot then the robot has a personality and can process oh yeah voice and video and images and all of that stuff as the uh as we wrap here U I think uh you know everybody talks about all the projects you're working on but um people don't know you have a great sense of humor that's not true oh you do you do um\n\npeople don't see it but I would say one of I know for me the funniest week of my life or one of the funniest was when you did SNL and we got and you you I got to tag along maybe you saw it um maybe behind the scenes like some of your funniest Recollections of that chaotic insane week when we laughed for 12 hours a day it was a little terrorizing on the first couple of days but yeah I was I was bit worried the beginning there because frankly nothing was funny um day one was rough rough um yeah so I mean it's like a rule but can't you guys just say it just say the stuff that got on the cutting some the funniest skits were the ones that didn't let you do that's what I'm saying can you just say there were a couple of funny ones yeah that they didn't let you\n\nyou can say it so that he doesn't get I mean how much time do we have here well we should just give one or two because it was in your mind which one do we regret most not getting on air you really want to hear that I I mean I mean it was a little I see it was a little funny okay here we go all right here we go guys all right so one of the things that um I think everyone's been sort of wondering this whole time is is Saturday night Saturday Night Live actually live like live live live live or do they have like a delay or like just in case you know there's a wardrobe malfunction or something like that uh is it like a you knowu 5sec delay what's really going on but there's a there's a way to test this right we came out the way there's a way to test this\n\num which is we don't tell them what's going on as I I W on and says this is the script I throw it on the ground we're going to find out tonight right now it's Saturday if sat night life is actually live and the way that we're going to do this is I'm going to take my [ __ ] [Applause] out this is the greatest pitch ever and and if if if if you see my [ __ ] you know it's true and if you don't it's been a lie it's been a lie all these years all these years now this is we're going to bust them right now and this we're pitching this yeah yeah so ping this on Zoom yeah ping this on zoom on like a Monday after like yeah we're like kind of hung over from the weekend and like Ping thisi and and and it's h it's you know Jason's on um and uh Mike and you yeah and\n\nMike uh you know got like you know who my friends who I think are sort of you know quite funny um you know uh Jason's quite funny I think like like Jason's the closest thing to Cartman that exists in the real in real life we have a joke that he's Butters and I'm Cartman yeah so um and then my friend Mike's Prett funny too so so we we come in like like just like guns blazing guns blazing with with like ideas and we didn't realize like actually you know that's not how it works and and and uh that that it's normally like actors and and they just get told what to do and like oh right well you mean we can't just like do funny things that we thought of what there watching this and on the zoom they're a gas pitch yeah it's silence like so I'm like and I'm like\n\nand I was like is this thing working is this are we muted is is our mic on they're like we hear you yeah and then and then after a long silence like Mike's Mike just says the word crickets crickets and they're not laughing they're going to not even going to chugle like what's going on and then Elon explains the punchline yes which is exactly so there's more to it okay yes that's just the beginning so Elon says so so then I'm so I'm like so so so so I said like I'm I'm I'm going to I'm going to reach [Laughter] down into my pet into my pants and and I stick my hand on my pants and I'm going and I'm and I'm going to pull my co and I tell this to the audience and the audience is going to be like go right and and and and and then and and then and then and\n\nthen I pull out a a a baby rooster you know yes and it's like okay this is kind of PG you know it's like that not that bad it's like it's this is my tiny [ __ ] and and and it's like what do you think uh and so then and do you think it's an ice coock I mean I like it I pitch I'm like and then Kate McKennon walks out yeah exactly and I'm like oh no but you haven't heard half of it Kate mcken comes out yeah and she says Elon expected you would have a bigger [ __ ] yeah I like I I don't mean to disappoint you Kate but yeah um but I I I hope you like it anyway um but Kate's got to come out with with with her cat okay right uh so and Kate says you see where you can see where this is going and I say nice wow that's that's a that's a that's a nice [ __ ] you've\n\ngot there Kate wow that's amazing um it looks a little wet was it raining outside and then um do you mind if I stroke your [ __ ] is that cool it's like oh no Elon actually can I hold your [ __ ] of course of course Kate you definely hold my [ __ ] um and and then you know we exchang and I think just the audio version of this is pretty good right um and and and um you know so it's like wow you I really like um stroking your [ __ ] and I was like I and then you say I'm really enjoying strug at your [ __ ] yes of course and um yeah so you know they're looking at us like oh my god what have we done inviting these lunatics on the program yeah they said they said like well um it is uh it is Mother's Day it's Mother's Day we might not want to go with this one\n\nthe mom's in the audience and I'm like well that's a good point well fair fair it might be a bit uncomfortable for all the moms in the audience maybe I don't know I don't know maybe they'll dig it maybe they like it uh so yeah that was that's the um that's the that's the that's the um cold open that didn't make it we didn't get that on the air um but uh we did fight for Doge yes and we got Doge on the air Ian there's a bunch of things that I said that were just not on the script like they have these like Q cards for what you're supposed to say and I just didn't say it I just went off off the rails yeah they didn't see that coming yeah it's live well it's live and uh so the Elon wanted to do Doge this is the other one and he wanted to do Doge on late night\n\nand he says um Hey Jake Al can you um make sure oh yeah so I want yeah I wanted to do the Doge father like you sort of redo the you know that scene from uh the the to Godfather I mean you kind of need the music to cue things up you bring me on my daughter's wedding listen you ask for Doge yeah you got R and I give you Bitcoin but you want do exactly you really got to set the mood you have to have tuxedo andice you got to have like Mar you come to me on this day of my Do's wedding and you ask me for your private keys are you even a friend you'll call me the Dodge father so b b know so that has potential they had great potential so they come to me and I'm I'm talking to Colin um and Jo who's got a great sense of humor and he's amazing he loves Elon and\n\nhe's like we can't do it because of the law and stuff like that and the law and liability so I said it's okay Elon called Comcast and he put in an offer and they just accepted it we just bought NBC so it's fine yeah and Colin Joe looks at me I sold this so good and he's like you're you're serious I'm like yep we own NBC now yeah and he's like okay well that kind of changes things doesn't it I'm like absolutely where're a go on on Doge yeah and then he's like you're [ __ ] with me and I'm I'm [ __ ] with you or are we or are we it was the greatest week of and that like is like two of 10 stories yeah we got yeah we got we'll save the other eight yeah but it was and I was just so happy for you to see you have a great week of just joy and fun and letting\n\ngo cuz you were launching Rockets you're dealing with so much [ __ ] in your life to have those moments yeah to share them and just laugh um it was just so great and more of those moments I think we got to we got to get you back on SNL who wants them back on SNL one more time all right ladies and gentlemen our bestie Elon Musk [Applause] [Laughter] [Applause]"},"languages":["en"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pSFvOUswFwA"},{"id":"conversation-with-donald-trump-on-x-2024-08-12","type":"interview","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cr9j8e7tt8M","title":"Conversation with Donald Trump on X","titles":{"en":"Conversation with Donald Trump on X","de":"Gespräch mit Donald Trump on X","fr":"Conversation avec Donald Trump on X"},"date":"2024-08-12","summary":"Musk's wide-ranging live X Spaces conversation with Donald Trump on the economy, immigration, energy and the 2024 election.","text":"all right hello everyone um so uh my apologies for the late start uh we unfortunately had a massive uh distributed denial of service attack against uh our servers and uh saturated all of our all of our uh data lines like basically hundreds of gigabits of of data were Satur Creed um we've uh we think we've overcome most of that and uh so it's now time to proceed but um as as this uh this massive attack illustrates uh there's a lot of opposition to people just hearing um what president Trump has to say and um so but I'm honored to have this conversation I want to emphasize it's a it's a conversation um and it's really intended to just get get a feel for what Donald Trump is just like in a conversation um it's hard to catch a Vibe about someone if you just\n\ndon't hear them talk in a normal way and when you know when there's when there's an adversarial interview like no one's themselves in an adversarial interview um so for and this is really aimed at uh kind of open-minded independent voters who um you I just trying to make up their mind uh and uh so you can understand like what what is you know what is it just like to have a conversation so um honor to Donald great great to uh to speak um we had a a great conversation yesterday as you mentioned yesterday if we could just record that conversation and post it it would have been excellent and I hope we can have something like that today well I think we will I'm pretty sure we will and congratulations because I see you broke every record in the book with the\n\nso many millions of people and that's an honor we view that as an honor and then uh you do want silencing of certain voices usually those are voices that have something to say that are constructive often times constructive and so we have to consider it an honor but congrat tonight that's great well thank you um well I maybe uh we could start off with um I mean the assassination attempt uh which uh was an incredible thing and I have to say that uh you know your actions that assess attempt were inspiring um you know you instead of shying away from things in instead of ducking down um you were pumping your fist in the air and saying fight fight fight and I think that's I mean you know the president of the United States represents America and I think that\n\nis that is America that that is strength Under Fire and um so that's uh you know a big you know part of the reason why I was uh excited to endorse you as uh the president of United States for having another term here is uh that was that was just incredibly inspiring but but I mean what was it like for you not pleasant I have to be I said it was blood I had more blood I didn't know I I didn't know had that much blood the doctors later told me that the ear is a place that is uh a very bloody place if you're going to get hit but uh in this case it was probably the best alternative you could even think about because it went at the right angle and uh you know it was a it was a hard hit it was very I guess you would say surreal but it wasn't surreal you know\n\nI was telling somebody you have instances like this who are like a lot less than this where you feel it's a surreal situation and I never felt that way I knew immediately that it was a bullet I knew immediately that it was at the ear yeah and because it you know it hit very hard but hit the ear and I also heard people shout bullets bullets you know get down get down because I you know I moved down pretty nicely pretty quickly and we had bullets flying right over my head after I went down so I'm glad I went down the the bigger miracle was that I was looking in the exact direction of the shooter and so it hit it hit me at an angle that was uh far less destructive than any other angle so that was the miracle that was for those people that don't believe in\n\nGod I think we got to all start thinking about that you have to uh you know I'm I'm a Believer now I'm more of a Believer I think and a lot of people have said that to me a lot of great people have said that to me actually but it was uh it was amazing that I happened to be turned just at that perfect angle and uh all because I put down a chart on immigration that showed that the numbers were so great I I love that chart even more maybe it's a sign maybe that's a sign you know it's an immigration sign you you highlighted a a serious issue and at that moment the bullet Mr your you know hit your ear but but but you know M your your head I mean well the the amazing thing is that uh the sign I said bring down that sign and imig and it was literally about an\n\neighth of a second where it would be good and and after that it was going to be a disaster no matter which which way you were facing but it just had that that perfect angle which was exactly at this shooter very sad situation such a sad situation as you know we lost somebody that was great Corey who a firefighter a a great gentleman a great a great Trumper he was a a just a fantastic family and a fantastic man and a friend of mine came up Elon and said I'd like to give the family some kind of uh help and I said that's great he said do you mind I said I don't mind at all and he wrote out a check for a million dollars gave gave it to the wife and you know uh she said this is really nice but I'd rather have my husband back which is a nice thing for somebody\n\nto say to be honest she's she's great the family is great and we raised a lot of money for them and for uh two other gentlemen were are unbelievable people also they were hit really badly they thought they were not going to make it and they did the doctors in the Butler area I tell you they were incredible they saved the two and uh they were really hit tough both of them equally uh and we thought we my first question was because I heard bullets flying over me and I said how many people were killed because we had a massive crowd there a tremendous yeah thousands and thousands of people and there was no land I mean it was just it was all people people so I said how many people have been killed because I knew there were other shots being fired sure and they\n\nsaid uh we don't know yet but some people have been badly hurt and uh I have to give the Secret Service sniper they call him or Sharpshooter but sniper because he didn't know there was a problem uh he's been he's an extraordinary shot obviously and he didn't know there was a problem and he was able to pick it all out within 5 seconds and he used one bullet from very far away I guess probably about 400 yards the shooter was 130 but he was on the he was on the opposite side of the field and the podium and he saw the the smoke and the flame from the gun immediately recognized it and immediately took a shot and it was one perfect shot from very far away and if he if he didn't do that Elon he would have I mean if he would have a lot of people a lot more people\n\nhave been could have been badly hurt and killed so I I have to take my hat off to him because that's also a sural you know he's been with them for 23 years and there's he's never had anything like this and all of a sudden he has to act and it's a very tough thing to act and to be shooting somebody but he saw the uh he saw the gun saw the smoke saw the flame from the gun very far away I obviously has very good eyes he's got very good Vision which I assume you to having that particular work but he uh he took aim very quickly and it was they say it was approximately 5 seconds from long range one bullet if that didn't happen because the shooter had a lot of bullets he had a lot of a lot of cartridges up there with him so I mean I mean that that that's clearly\n\nyou know um you know he was he was very confident in taking that shot uh to stop the the assass the attempt at assassination um but but I mean there does seem to be I mean some pretty significant failings um elsewhere in the system like there's just no way that like how on Earth does a shooter get on a roof 130 yards away um that seems crazy um I think most people like are people are wondering how that how on Earth could such a thing happen well you know I view it as two ways there should have been nobody in the roof uh there were people because there were so many tens of thousands of people there there were people that were seeing him and there was one woman with a red shirt and uh Trump all over it and she's screaming that guy's got a gun you know you\n\nsaw it probably's a guy with a gun I it's like I'm just I'm just I guess I mean for my part and I think probably many members of the public are wondering how the heck are you know basically people wondering by pointing out there's a guy on the roof with a gun yeah um and they're seeing it but somehow that's it's not being addressed um that that does seem crazy well they they're going to learn from this the communication between the local police who sort of had an idea and then ultimately a man lifted himself up to the roof could barely do it because you know he was pulling himself up and yeah he saw the man with the gun the man with the gun pointed the gun at him he thought he was probably going to get shot but you know he was like pulling himself up\n\nand because of that he couldn't get to his gun and he fell down actually very badly hurt his uh leg his ankle I hear very badly but but he fell down and he did you know from what I understand he did say there's a guy up there with a gun and the the shooting started very quickly after that I think it I think it forced the shooter to go maybe quicker you know he was supposed to be a very good shot yeah my sons uh Don and Eric they they can't believe what happened but they said from 130 yards a bad shot would hit that Target almost every time they said it's like in golf sinking a twoof foot putt yeah it's not a hard it's not a tough shot it's not a it's not a long shot the uh Secret Service person had the long shot he had a you know triple the distance actually\n\nso uh you know it's it was a a terrible thing look uh it it's hard I have to say this about the Secret Service when I went down and you know I went down based on I think they're screaming uh but other people also because people saw this happen you know you had so many people one of the Miracles was that nobody ran I mean if if a gun goes off the crowd control people showed showed us this when guns go off and it does happen in stadiums at a soccer match or some kind of a match everybody flees they call it a stampede like cattle but everybody and a lot of people get killed with those stampedes we had more people than you'd have at you know some of these matches or or these games and uh nobody left you know you had a small group behind us in the grand stand\n\nand that was full and you look at it as it was taking place and normally they'd be running they didn't leave they saw that I was hurt they saw a lot of blood and they saw that I went down and it's almost like they wanted to be with me well out front you had thousands tens of thousands of people you as far as the I could see you had people in Butler as far as the I could see and and uh and a lot of press too There Was You Know many cameras on watching this it's what made makes it so different because normally things happen that aren't good but you never have a picture of it here we have all these cameras shooting it so uh you know sort of amazing but one of the interesting things was that you didn't have anybody flee you didn't anybody Stampede nobody\n\nand there was some people behind me they stood up and they're looking like you know I mean I tell you you want to have you want to have them in a fox hall with you I want to meet some of those people because it's so different from what you heard but so so I was down but the Secret Service guys there were bullets flying right over my head you could hear them go whizzing and and these guys came jumping on top of me you and a young lady Kate uh would jump they they moved so fast F and let me tell you that took tremendous courage now there was a lack of coordination uh there was you know obviously everybody understands that somebody that that building should have been covered and yeah I mean like I mean I mean looking at the the aial of views that building\n\nwould be like the number one spot for a sniper I it's like it's like the if you were to pick like what is the favorite if you so the goal is to assassinate what's your favorite spot that building other that building would be number one that would have been the you couldn't you can ask for a better location it's like that would have been this you know what people think is when the uh local policemen who by the way you know he really uh he did what he was supposed to do he couldn't hold on any longer and then when he got his head just peeking above this guy standing there with a gun at his head and when he fell down again hurt his ankle very badly but he was making the calls but what happened is the firing took place very soon so what they think is that\n\nthis guy ran to his site which he had all planned out with the gun uh he ran to the site and he started shooting fast and maybe that's why he uh well he sort of missed I mean you know he got could been it could have been U could have been a much bigger problem but he totally would have hit if if you hadn't turned your head so like you know there was a it it was a very near thing it was a miracle if I had to turn my head yeah I would not be talking to you right now as much as I like you exactly I would not I would not be talking talking to me from another round yeah that's right we'd be talking from a different place but uh it was a it was a you know it was a very terrible experience the the Butler Hospital they did such a great job uh the doctors were\n\nso good everybody was so good there was there was a mistake if if if somebody knew cuz people were hearing that you know there was just a bad feeling that there was somebody was around you know that story now it's been and if somebody could have said because they've often times said you know like there'd be a lightning storm or something because I've done I think over 300 I think I did a lot more than that but we did a lot and often times they'll say Sir could you wait 10 minutes please sir could you wait 20 minutes there's a storm overhead or lightning or something right and that happens often and this would have been a perfect time for that to have happened but it it didn't it didn't get coordinated that was the problem well uh it was uh your I think\n\nuh your your um actions in the in the heat of a fire in you know like what I I find admirable there was that you you can't fake bravery under such circumstances the courage is instinctual or it is not it's not a reared action and so I just want to say that uh I think a lot of people admire your your your courage Under Fire there and um yeah so thank you very much I I appreciate it I didn't I don't think I didn't think of it I just want wanted to get up and I wanted to stand up I wanted to let people know you know I felt I was good when when they were uh on top of me covering me actually very much covering me and and very bravely but uh I wanted to get up I said I want to get up and uh they wanted you know they had they have everything there they have\n\nthey wanted stretcher I didn't like the stretcher and I knew I was hit in the ear but I knew I wasn't hit anywhere else they felt I was hit someplace else because it was such a lot of blood and they were that I was hit someplace else and they were saying sir you you you were hitting more than the year I said nope I was hit in the air I want to get up let me get up and so we I got up and the crowd didn't know what to think I mean this was so so many people and they did you could see they were confused they didn't know what to think and I wanted to let them know I was okay it was very important for me to let them know that and they went wild you you've seen the after they didn't go wild when got up because they didn't know was I alive you really couldn't\n\ntell when I stood up before the hand before the you know the fist in the air uh they didn't know if I was alive nobody did and uh when I put the fist up they were they were just relieved and happy and thrilled and the place went crazy it was pretty amazing it was a it was a terrible thing but it was incredbly moving yeah um well and and I mean speaking of the the the the sort of slide that got you to turn that uh saved your life really uh was the illegal immigration side maybe this maybe this it's worth talking about about that it was it was that slide that slide say illegal immigration saved my life you're right but to be that exact angle I mean that's that's a great one save saved by illegal imig you know the the incredible thing though when you talk\n\nabout the odds you had to be exactly at that angle but but the incredible thing is that the chart I use it less than 20% of the time it was just a moment it's always on my left never my right and it's always at the end of the speech so here we have it it's on the right not the left it's at the beginning not the end and even the people that put it up they were unprepared and they did a great job they got it up immediately fortunately but I looked to the right and and the bull and the bullet came whizzing by hitting my ear uh so it was amazing but when you think of the odds of that and you know that that normally you wouldn't use it normally I wouldn't have the thing and then you know it would have been a very different story it's it's very much I I say\n\nan act of God it's a miracle that it happened and I'm honored by it I'm honored by it well well what what what were what were you about to say about illegal immigration before you were rudely interrupted well I was going to say how good the numbers were by the way we're going back to Butler and we're going to go back in October we're all set up and we're the people are fantastic in Butler it's a big it's a great area great these are incredible people uh like the three that in the case of Cory kill and the other two the the families are I get to know them a little bit and the families are great but we're going back to but and uh I think I'll probably start by saying uh as I was saying prior to being so horribly interrupted but yeah so rudely interrupted\n\nby an assassination attempt no but the Jo some people have have noon the chart was just a chart that in my last week we had the best uh illegal uh immigration numbers meaning stopping uh it was at the lowest you've seen the chart it's become quite a famous but that was the lowest point ever recorded it was a really um I mean I was very proud of those numbers and then you see what happened with these people uh kamla and Joe you see what happened they just let it go I had remain in Mexico policies I had all these different policies that were so good uh guys like Tom homman and Brandon Jud from border patrol all these are all people that they've been on television they say it's the best number we've ever had we had so many different Jacks catch and release\n\nin Mexico not the united we had catch and release in the United States we had it in Mexico we had so many things we had things where if people many people come in there they have contagious diseases we had everything passed if you have a contagious disease I'm sorry but we can we cannot allow you into the country so we were setting literally records and uh I all I was doing is showing that and I I Ed it sometimes and in this case I'm glad I used it I can tell you that but but there were fantastic numbers but I'm going to sleep with that chart always I'm going to I'll be sleeping with that chart that chart was uh was very important very important for a lot of reasons well I mean I mean would it be accurate to would it be accurate to say that you're supportive\n\nof legal immigration um but that but we also need to shut down illegal immigration uh and especially unvetted illegal immigration because you you know and and and that's that's not the same as saying that everyone who's illegal immigrant is bad in fact um I think most people who are illegal immigrants are actually good but but you can't tell a difference unless there's a solid betting of who comes across the borderes is is does that is that represent your position I say it very simply they have to come in legally they have to be checked because look Kamala was the bord Z now she's denying it everything that I do she she's saying she was strong On the Border we're going to be strong well she doesn't have to say it she could close it up right now they could\n\nthey could do things right now it's horrible uh no tax on tips and all of a sudden she's making a speech and there will be no tax on tips I said that months ago and by the way they had just the opposite you know they had not only tax on tips but they hired 88,000 IRS agents and many of them were assigned to go get waitresses and caddies and all of this on tips they a policy they had a policy they they were really going to go after you and were really harassing people horribly and then all of a sudden for politics she says you know she comes out with with what I said which I think is terrible and I think it's also hitting them very hard these people are fake now they're also saying they did a good job in the Border we had the worst numbers in the history\n\nof the world not of our country there's never been a country in history that has had a catastrophe like this we've had I believe and I think you believe this too you know you hear 12 milli I believe it's over 20 million people came into our country many coming from jails from prisons from from mental institutions or a bigger version of that is insane asylums and many are terrorists and I'll tell you what they're they're coming not just from South America they're coming from Africa they're coming from all over the world they're coming from Asia they're coming from the Middle East they're coming from countries that are uh stupidly and horribly bombing Israel October 7th they're coming from all over the world they and you know you look at it's so sad October\n\n7th because it should have never happened it's so sad when you look at Ukraine it should have never happened we have a defective government these are defective people and they're not people that should be running it but where you see it the best is the Border because you had you have millions of people coming in a month and then she gets up and she tries to pretend like she's going to do something she had three and a half years and by the way they have another five months that they can do something but they won't do anything it's all talk she's incompetent and he's incompetent and frankly I think that she's more incompetent than he is and that's saying something because he's not too good yeah no I I think it's it is essential to have a secure border I\n\nmean you're you're really not a country unless you're have a secure border um and and secure elections yeah absolutely secure elections and uh so so it's it's just essential to have a real border or or or we can function as a country and our service you know our Central Services are are being overwhelmed in a lot of cities um and uh and I but I as as we were talking about earlier I think uh having um a legal immigration Pro process that is uh smooth and efficient and done well and I you know speaking as someone who is illegal immigrant um and I think that that I mean like one way to think of it is who do you want on your team um you know who like who do you want on Team America and and I think we want to just say okay we we want to uh let in people who\n\nare going to you know be great contributors to um our society and to our economy and uh you know and who do you want on the team and it's and and it's not to say that like in my opinion actually I'd say like probably most of the illegal immigrants actually are are are actually good hardworking people that's my opinion um but some are not and uh and and you just have this sort of adverse selection process where um you know if if if somebody's uh you know if somebody's like uh you know um has a career in in theft or robbery um I I don't understand what's taking them so long to get here um because we are in such a target-rich environment um I mean you know why AR they why aren't more people who have a career in you know bad things coming here sooner because\n\nit's I mean it's a piece of cake to go rob uh you know houses in uh LA or New York uh compared to other parts of the world and um and and in a lot of places in America if if if you try to stop the person who's robbing you you'll be arrested so it's right I mean what what's happening with crime and our police are so good but they're not allowed to do their job but I have to tell you Elon I hate to say it because it's such a downer to say it I hate to say it I hate it but you have a lot of people that just shouldn't be I think it's a much bigger number than you think they're allowing again they're allowing people from their jails and if you were running one of these countries where they're coming from you would have had all of them as an example Venezuela\n\ntheir crime is down 72% they're taking their drug dealers they're taking frankly their prisoners they're emptying out their prisons they're taking uh their criminals their murderers they're rapists and they're they're delivering them into that's what that's what C cter did yeah well they did on a much smaller scale you know it was a much smaller scale but this is a massive scale because this is being done worldwide but here's what's happening crime all over the world is down and way do you see the numbers that we have you know these this is is migrant crime this is crime that's that's going to be and I saw it today in New York where somebody was knifed where they uh raped the girlfriend of a man that stood there watching in New York in one of the shelters\n\nand uh started pulling out the knives and bad things happened today but this is happening every day these are rough people these are people that are in jail for murder and all sorts of things and they're releasing them into our country and they're telling them if you come back we're going to kill you we're going to give you the death penalty or kill you so they don't want to come back but these are rough people these are these are criminals that make our criminals look like nice people and it's horrible what they're doing and and she's in charge of it because you know now she's trying to say she had nothing to do with it and she's such a liar because she was called the borders are the first day and it was on the headlines of every newspaper she's the\n\nborders are and she never even went there she went to one location which had nothing to do with where the problem is you know she went in and out I guess cuz she was getting a lot of pressure but had nothing to do with the problem but she was the bordar and you people can't allow them to get away with their disinformation campaign now she's trying to say that uh she wasn't uh she wasn't really involved and the whole thing is horrible she was totally in charge she could have shut the border down without him he didn't know what he was doing anyway so he wouldn't have even known what happened you could shut the border down he wouldn't even know the difference but uh the fact is that she was bordar but if you don't have to call that the fact is you could\n\njust call her she was in charge of the border and the Border was the worst ever it's it's simply not working whether whether it's by whether it's by whether it's a question of of intention or competence either way we we we we don't have a secure border and we have people streaming over like it looks like a world World War Z zombie apocalypse at times and you know sometimes you you you you got to sort of Wonder like is it real or not so I you know cuz you see things you're like is it real I so I went to the border at Eagle Pass and I saw for myself in Texas and I was like okay it's real I'm like seeing this in real time I actually posted the video like just live I just I just flew there one day and just to see hey is this is this is this made up or real\n\nand I'm I'm just seeing people stream across the border and um and I have to say you know at least the people that I saw did not look friendly um you know so people can look at my video and say Hey you know does the people these people look friendly I don't look super friendly so these are people that Elon would not be the same man if he had to walk across the street and look these people in the eye these are rough people these are really rough people coming across and I know rough people and these are people that we don't want in our country and you know the Caravans are coming in and they're putting and and who's doing this is the heads of the countries and you would be doing it and so would I and everyone say oh what a terrible thing to say the fact\n\nis it's brilliant for them because they're taking all there uh bad people really bad people and I hate to say this the reason the numbers are much bigger than you would think is they're also taking the nonproductive people now these aren't people that will kill you we have enough of them but these are people that are nonproductive they they are just not productive I mean for whatever reason they're not workers or they don't want to work or whatever and these countries are getting rid of nonproductive people in the Caravans in many cases and they're all also getting rid of their murderers and their drug dealers and the people that are really brutal people and they're coming into our country at levels that have never been seen before and I saw an ad just\n\nbefore I got on the ad I'm walking over here and I saw an ad by Kamala saying how she is going to provide border security where has she been for three and a half years for three and a half years yeah have 20 million people it's a terrible yeah I think this frankly I think this is a fundamental existential issue for the United States um and if we have another four more years of of open borders and it's going to be even worse with another four more years it's going to be even worse than it's been for the past uh you know three and a half years uh I'm not sure we've got a country you don't have a country left Elon if they get in you will have 50 to 60 million people from all over the world not South America only you know we think of South America we think\n\nof hondur and El Salvador Guatemala and Mexico you know the four but it's not that it's everywhere they're coming in from everywhere and I had to stay in Mex this is a this is a super important Point like people it's like well basically when I went down there I was like well where are people from it's like it's like almost no one was from Mexico it's just just it's just the Border it's just the border with Mexico but the people coming in it's it's it's Earth the rest of Earth and and and America is is only you know about four four or 5% of the population of Earth it it would only take a few per of the rest of Earth to overwhelm everything in we're already overwhelmed Elon it's we're overwhelmed you had to see the news tonight about New York New York and\n\nI love that place and what they're doing to it is horrible what they're doing to it and all the courts do is they try and focus on Trump okay let's focus on Trump who did nothing wrong I complain about a rigged election Elon what's happened is UN un believable you have from Africa uh the Congo recently and their murderers and they dropped they they drop them they take them out of jails which is very expensive you know to maintain the jails although they don't do too much maintaining I can tell you but they take them out of jails prisons they take them out and they bring them to the United States they deposit them in the United States and say don't ever come back or you're going to be executed and they don't want to come back but they won't come back but\n\nbut they're coming from from Africa they're coming from Asia they're coming from the Middle East they're coming from South America they're coming from everywhere and they are a lot of really ones it's just a it's just it's just an everywhere on Earth uh thing and it's just it's just not possible for the United States to absorb you know everyone from Earth or or you know even a few percent of the rest of Earth it's just not possible so we're going to have that's that's just to finish this up we're going to have the largest deportation in history of this country and we have no choice otherwise we're going to have a country what they what they've done to our country think of it with with you know in Venezuela and in some of these other countries crime is\n\ndown 50 60 70 80% and you would be the same you would have you would I'll tell you what Venezuela has not gotten rid of all of them they've gotten rid of about 70% of their really bad people their jails are about 50% uh put into the United States same with other countries some 30% some are at 50% they're all different but the bottom line is they're all going to be at 100% why wouldn't you put 100% of and they doing it right now while this third rate phony candidate don't forget I beat I beat Biden uh he failed in the debate miserably and you know some people said oh gee it's too bad it's too bad he did so badly or I did well in the debate you know the first night they said wow one of the people at CNN said that was the greatest debate performance I've\n\never witnessed and then two days later they didn't talk about that they just said he was bad but that's okay that's the way I get treated and I don't mind that at all what I can tell you is this we cannot have a Democrat we cannot have her she's incompetent she's as bad as Biden in a different look she hasn't done an interview since this whole uh scam started and and say what you want this was a coup this was a coup of a president of the United States he didn't want to leave and they said we can do it the nice or we can do it the hard way yeah I they just took him out back behind the shed and basically shot him oh what they did with this guy and I'm no fan of his and he was a horrible president the worst president in history and one of the reasons he\n\nwas so bad first of all the Israeli attack would have never happened Russia would never have attacked Ukraine and we'd have no inflation and we wouldn't have had the Afghanistan mess if you think of it well and we wouldn't have had Afghanistan but we think of it we you take a few of those events away and we have a different world we would also have no inflation was caused by oil yeah no no I think you make an excellent point here which is that um when other countries can you know that that are you know are thinking about invading or doing bad things uh when they're thinking about that they're thinking about okay what's the American president going to do and are do they fear the American president or is it someone they they do not respect or and do not\n\nfear and I think they they do they do they would they rightfully be I mean you know look at that the footage of the assassination they're like okay you know president Trump is it's like don't mess with me I mean that's like whereas I think people are are not going to be and they obviously have not been at all intimidated by by Biden and they certainly will not be intimidated by by Kam and you have to really think about in the context of Global Security um that's that's that if the if the American president is someone someone that like you know evil dictators are scared of that makes a huge difference to the security of the world so I had a good relationship with Putin despite the Russia Russia Russia hoax that lasted for over two years just a hoax created\n\nby Hillary Clinton and uh Adam Shifty shiff some just bad people you know just sick people frankly I mean shiff shiff is a sick person he's going to end up probably being a senator it's hard to believe the whole thing is hard to believe but uh you know they put our country in danger with that stuff too they actually when they make up stories and you have to fight your way out of it for a long time but I know Putin very well I got along with him very well he respected me and it's just one of those things and he would we would talk a lot about Ukraine it was the apple of his eye but I said don't ever do it don't ever do it you know I shut down nordstream too that was the Big Oil pipeline the biggest I think the biggest pipeline in the world going all over\n\nEurope I shut it down by came and then they say I I you know I was I loved Russia I was a friend of Putin and I loved Russia now he actually said to me one time he said if you're my friend I'd hate to see you as an enemy I shut down his pipeline the biggest pipeline they were looking at that to fund and this this pathetic president gets in there and the first thing he did one of the early things he did is he shut down he he shut down keone XL Pipeline which is our pipeline that would have employed 48,000 people pipeline workers shuts it down that was you know a massive job that Obama refused to allow I allowed it in my first week because it was jobs and it moved oil and by the way in a much more environmentally friendly way it's underground it's not a\n\ntruck that catches on fire or a train that catches on fire but think of it he shut down the uh XL Pipeline the Keystone XL pipeline he shuts that down and he proves the Russian Pipeline yeah it doesn't make any sense it's like it's inconsistent um certainly the but I mean I think it's just worth emphasizing you know to listeners the that the the immense importance of of whether the United States president is intimidating or not intimidating um and how much that matters to Global Security um because there's some real tough characters out there and if they don't think the American president is tough they will do what they want to do I know every one of them and that puts that that it puts the whole world in danger El I know every one of them and I know\n\nthem well I know Putin I know president she I know Kim Jong-un of North Korea I know every one of them and let me tell you people will say oh this is terrible he said I'm not saying anything good or bad they're at the top of their game they're tough they're smart they're vicious and they're going to protect their country whether they love their country they probably do it's just a different form of love but they're going to protect their country but these are tough people at the top of their game and when they see a CALA or when they see uh Biden sleepy Joe they can't even believe it they can't believe this happened the all the stuff that you're seeing now all the horror that you look at Israel they're all waiting for an attack from Iran Iran would not\n\nbe attacking believe me you know when I was there and I say it with respect because I think we would have been good with Iran I don't want to do anything bad to Iran but they knew not to mess around Iran was because I told China if you buy from Iran oil it's all about the oil that's where the money is but if you buy oil from Iran you're not going to do any business with the United States and I meant it and they said we'll pass they didn't buy oil other countries likewise you want to buy you're not doing business with the United States and they they were at a point where they were they had no money for Hamas they had no money for Hezbollah they had no money for any of these instruments of Terror and it was amazing in fact there were articles when I was\n\nleaving which is hard to believe actually especially when you look at what's happened to our country our country is so bad right now it's such a different place we were respected think of it four years ago we were so respected to a point where when I said don't buy oil they didn't buy oil but they had no money and Israel would have never been attacked it zero chance and again I said to Vladimir Putin I said don't do it you can't do it Vladimir you do it it's going to going to be a bad day you cannot do it and I told him things that what I do and he said no way and I said way and you know it's the last time we ever had the conversation he would he would never have done I got along well with him I hope to get along well with them again you know getting\n\nalong well with them is a good thing not a bad thing I got along well with Jong-un when I met with President Obama just before entering you know it's a sort of a ritual and sat down with him and we talked it was supposed to be for a very short period of time it turned out to be a long period of time I said what's the biggest problem he said North Korea I had that problem worked out very quickly it was nasty at the beginning with rocket man and you know all the different things but all of a sudden I got those some those were some epic tweets by the way no they were epic everything he said he said that he has a red button on his desk I said I have a red button on my desk too but my red button is much bigger and my red button works and then I called him\n\nLittle Rocket Man if Little Rocket Man anyway here's the bottom line all of a sudden I got a call from him and they said they want to meet they want to meet me and we met yeah as you remember we met in Singapore we met also in Vietnam and uh I got along with them great we were in no danger but President Obama President Obama thought we were G to end up in a war a nuclear war with him and let me tell you he's got a lot of nuclear stuff too he's got plenty of nuclear he can do plenty of damage so yes I mean it's because you know I mean people like like Kim Kim you know Kim on they respond to strength not weakness well he uh he and I got he and I had a good relationship remember I remember I met him and and we walked onto his land nobody ever walked onto\n\nhis land before I walked on I wouldn't say let's bring up secret service again I wouldn't say they were thrilled when I did that I walked onto his land and uh it was it was an amazing period but we were not in danger with him because of me you know I always say that we have enemies on the outside and we have enemies on the inside we have some really bad people in our government and people that are and controlling of the people I mean I mention names but I I don't I really don't want to give them the credit but we have some really bad and I say they're more dangerous than Russia and China if if you have a a smart president a president that gets it we are not in danger from those countries because they need us and they need our help I mean we forced Obama\n\nif you think about it Obama and Biden and Bush to a certain extent in all fairness forced Russia and China together and if you're a history student the first thing you learn is you cannot let Russia and China align but then they also got if you take a look Iran and they have North Korea that's you know they caught the Access of Evil in the old days you had the Access of Evil well here we have a modern day Access of Evil these are powerful countries very heavy nuclear which is the biggest threat you know the biggest threat is not global warming where the ocean's going to rise one one8 of an inch over the next 400 years the big and you'll have more you'll have more ocean front property right the biggest threat is not that the biggest threat is nuclear warming\n\nbecause we have five countries now that have significant nuclear power and we have to not allow anything to happen with stupid people like Biden you know Biden uh did something with Russia uh there was no chance of him ever going in and when I left and then then after I left they started forming big armies on their on the border with Ukraine right and I looked at that and I thought he was doing that because Putin's a good negotiator I thought he was doing that to negotiate but then Biden started saying such stupid things for instance he said that uh it can be a NATO country now put Russia for for as long as there's been NATO has said we're never going to agree to that and we go right up front and say that and we did things and said things through this\n\npresident with a low IQ very low IQ he had a low IQ 30 Years Ago by the way but now he might not even have a IQ at all there is no there's nothing on the board that goes this long he said things that were so stupid that that that war would have been that war had zero zero chance of happening if I were there zero chance he was saying everything the opposite everything the opposite and it's so sad because many more people have been killed in Ukraine than you read about you don't read about how Bloody it is and how DES hey look just in the two armies you lost a half a million people and uh and you know Ukraine's having a hard time Ukraine I don't know if you saw the article recently and it's true you don't hear the true story but if you think about it uh\n\nRussia's gone you know Russia defeated Germany with us and they defeated Napoleon you know they've been around a long time they're a big fighting force and it's very unfair and Ukraine now doesn't have enough men they're now using young men and very old men to fight and it's it we're in a very bad position and I'm not going to blame exclusively but I can tell you I could have stopped that and a smart president could have stopped that it wouldn't have happened but we had a we had a man that actually made it it made it more prevalent it it it was so bad the words that he was using the stupid threats coming from a stupid face that that he was using I said this guy's going to cause us a war he's going to cause us and let me tell you it can lead to World War\n\nII that can lead to World War II the Middle East can lead to we have numerous places that could end up in a World War II right now for no reason whatsoever I think you're right I think I think people under underrate the risk of World War III and it's just the the you know when when you're looking at the risk of global thermonuclear Warfare It's game over for Humanity and you know that's it's something that people have I think after the end of the Cold War people have become complacent about but they're actually have forgotten that there are currently a lot of nuclear missiles that that that are that that have targeting parameters for the United States other countries and one of the things we're going to do is we're going to build an iron Dome over us\n\nwe're you know Israel has it we're going to have the best Iron Dome in the world we need it and we're going to make it all in the United States but we're going to have we're going to have protection because it just takes one maniac to you know start something we're going to have protection and we're going to have why shouldn't we have an Iron Dome Israel has one some other places have one that nobody even knows about frankly but uh Israel has it we're going to have an iron dome but you know with all of that being said to me that's so important the most important but with all of that being said the election's coming up the people want to hear about the economy and the fact that they can't buy groceries because they don't have enough money to buy groceries\n\nthe inflation has killed them food prices are up 50 60 even 100% in some cases and this this stupid Administration allowed this to happen and it's a shame and that's the thing that people most care about in my opinion they care about the Border a lot and we discussed the border at Great length it's nice to have a forum like this where I can discuss something at length and by the way you think Biden could do this interview do you think that K could do this interview they would take a pass you they so they don't need Elon they don't need Elon screaming out questions it's it's pretty sad when you think that somebody that does this for a living can't answer a question or is afraid to do an interview and in her case with a very friendly interview she's got\n\nall friendly interviewers it's pretty but the big thing now is the economy Elon and as much as I mean I view nuclear is the single most important thing but a lot of people don't a lot of people don't understand that but it doesn't have to if I understand that that's all you need because if I was President you're not going to have that kind of a problem but the the thing that they really is making them angry is what Kamala and Biden have allowed to happen to the economy it's a disaster with inflation the inflation it doesn't matter what you make the inflation is eating you alive if you're a worker or if you're a a uh just a a middle income person you can't afford you know four years ago five years ago people were saving a lot of money today they're using\n\nall their money and borrowing money just to live it's it's a horrible thing that's happening and we'll end that Qui yeah a a lot of people just don't don't understand where inflation comes from um inflation comes from government overspending because the checks never bounce when it's written by the government so if the if if the government uh spends far more than it brings in that increases the money supply and if the money supply increases faster than the rate of goods and services that's inflation um so so really we need to have uh we need to reduce our govern spending um and we need to reexamine I think we I think we need like a government efficiency commission to say like hey where are we spending money that's sensible where is it not sensible um and\n\nand we need to live within our our means we we we're currently adding I think a trillion dollars to the deficit uh every roughly every hundred days that's right um and you know the the interest payments on the national debt have now exceed the defense budget it's on the order of a trillion dollars it's interest and it's and it keeps it keeps growing I rebuilt our military largely rebuilt our military did a great job on it which was so important you know we had Jets we had Fighters that were uh and bombers that were 70 years old and we we did a great job in that then we by the way then we gave 85 billion of it to back to Afghanistan if you can believe it we gave them 85 billion you know they're one of the largest sellers of military equipment in the world\n\nthey're selling what we gave them that was one of the most embarrassing days in the history of our country but uh if you think about go let's go back to the uh the economy we have to bring Energy prices down energy started it the price of gasoline now your cars don't require too much gasoline so you know you're you have a good and you do make a great product I have to say I have to be honest with you that doesn't mean everybody should have an electric car but these are Minor Details but your your product is incredible but but the gasoline Elon is the the the cost of energy not only gasoline it's the cost of heating your house and cooling your house that has to come down it it's gone up 100% 150 and 200% and that has to come down when that comes down and\n\nwe're going to drill baby drill you know they stopped Drilling and then they went back to drilling because they went went back to the Trump policy but if they won the day after they get into office we're going to this country will go out of business because they're going to go to an energy policy that's not sustainable wind and different things you're not going to have anything and and I know you're a big fan of the AI and I have to say that Ai and this is shocking to me but AI requires twice the energy that the country already produces for everything so you're going to have to build we're going to have to build a lot of energy if our country will be competitive with China because that's our primary competitor for this on the AI you're going to need a\n\nlot of electricity you're going to need tremendous electricity like almost double what we produce now for the whole country if you can believe it sure um well just going you know back to this like the this this basic thing which that people try to make it sound complicated but it's not but inflation is caused by government overspending um would would you would you agree that that we need to take a look at government spending and and and and have perhaps a government efficiency commission uh that that just look tries to make the spending sensible and so the country lives within it means just like just like a person does the waste is incredible and it's nobody negotiates prices uh you used to have a lot of people making Jets and you end up with two companies\n\nand they'll probably try and merge at some point you you I mean I I wi through it like air for just a thing like Air Force One one of the first documents they asked me to sign a general walk said sir will you please sign this document what is it Air Force One that's with Boeing which is basically two planes 2747s and the price was $5.\n\n7 billion doll for two planes now now they're highly sophisticated they're even nicer than your plane okay but much more sophisticated they're very I won't say what's on it but they got a lot of stuff on it anyway but it's 5. 7 listen that's a crazy number a crazy number but said I'm not going to pay 5.\n\n7 I'm not going to do it I said who made the deal Obama and his people I said well then I know the deal is no good I'm not going to do it and over the course of about four weeks by my saying I'm not going to do it I got the price reduced by $1.\n\n6 billion for the exact same plane other than we had a nicer paint job if you want to know the truth but for the exact same plane I got I saved one and I said to Boeing man you guys must make a lot of money if you can reduce the price by that but now what I do hear is that they're going back to the uh Biden Administration and wanting big cost overruns you know because they see these Dopey suckers in there and they'll end up getting some of the money back but I shaved it by $1.\n\n6 billion doar for the exact same plan and and you can now take that and multiply that out times thousands of other items multiply numbers astronomical I agree with you well I mean if so so I mean I mean I think it would be great to just have a government efficiency commission that takes a look at at these things and and just ensures that the taxpayer money the the taxpayers hard-earned money is spent in a good way um and and and i' I'd be happy to help out on such a commission if it were form well you you're the greatest cutter I mean I look at what you do you walk in and you just say you want to quit they go on strike they I won't mention the name of the company but they go on strike and you say that's okay you're all gone you're all gone so every one\n\nof you is gone and you are the greatest you would be very good oh you would love it but you know if you look at ARG be happy by the way congratulations I just looked at the number of people that are listening to you and I chat we'll quot a chat but uh congratulations this is very good I mean it's great it's and and you're an interesting character you know the uh new head of a place called Argentina and he was he's a big you know he's great and he's a big magga fan you know that he ran on magga and he took it to an extreme too he ran on magga and I hear he's doing really a terrific job it's called make Argentina great again it worked out perfectly he came in he bought a lot of hats he brought of but he's he's doing a big job he really cut and I'm hearing\n\nthey're starting to do pretty well inflation's getting down you know they had like 2,000% they had inflation like like not normal inflation they had the the real deal but we're going to have that pretty soon we we have I think we have the worst inflation we've had in a hundred years they say it's 48 years I don't believe it I think we have the worst they don't include a lot of the items that should be included you know yeah well it's it's it's it's just from from government overspending and not just not spending taxpayer money effectively and and having you know just depart like so many departments you can't even name them all um and what Malay is doing um is you know he's he's cutting government spending he's simplifying things he's uh having you're\n\nputting in regulations that make sense and I and and and we're Argentina o overnight is experiencing uh a giant Improvement in prosperity but but it's also a lesson for the United States which is that um Argentina used to be one of the most prosperous countries in the world um you know in the I think in in the 30s 40s and and because of bad government policy it ruined the country and and if you take Venezuela for example Venezuela should be incredibly prosperous they they have you know phenomenal uh reserves of of everything oil everything and uh should be prosperous but if the government's wrong it it impoverishes the people and so I think we should not be complacent in the United States and thinking that and taking out prosperity for granted because\n\nif if with government policy we can run the country into the ground and that that's that's just something people should bear in mind don't take prosperity for granted well well think of education so we're ranked at the bottom of every list of the top 40 we're ranked number 40 number 38 uh Norway uh Switzerland Sweden different countries are ranked good actually China's pretty close to the top they're a top six or seven but we're ranked at the bottom almost at the bottom 38 39 940 in other words horrible and yet we spend more per pupil than any other country in the world so we spend more and what I'm going to do one of the first acts and this is where I I need an Elon Musk I need somebody that has a lot of strength and courage and smarts I want to close\n\nup Department of Education move education back to the states where where where States like Iowa where States like Idaho you know not every state will do great because states that basically aren't doing good now you look at Gavin nusum the governor of California he uh he's terrible he's does a terrible job so he's not going to do great with education but of the of the 50 I would bet that 35 would do great and 15 of them or you know 20 of them will be as good as Norway you know Norway is considered great uh you can name them I mean just they're so good some of these countries are so good but if if you go into some of these really well-run States you know we have states that don't know what debt is we have states that are have low taxes no debt everybody\n\nworking you know they're really well-run and maybe they have certain advantages in terms of location in terms of you know the land or the the sun the sun and the water and the whole thing you know there are a lot of advantages that some people but if you moved education back to the 50 you'll have some that won't do well but you'll have but they'll actually be forced to do better cu it'll be a pretty bad situation but but if you think about it you'll have some of these states I'll bet you'd have 30 35 States it'll be much better and you know what it'll cost less than half what it is in in Washington and these people don't care about students in these you know far away States and it would be it' be unbelievable yeah I think you're making a good point in\n\nthat um if the states have to have to if if each individual if each state has to compete against other states then then people will naturally U move to to states where it's better well like California you know as we said it's it's a badly Run State I could go through I got so many friends that are in those States even if they're Democrats I hate to mention certain States but Illinois badly run with pritzer he's a he's a real loser but but you know some of these places are just badly run but you know it's almost going to force them to run better and they won't do a good initially but but can you're not going to do worse than you're doing right now and I would say that the cost you would cut your cost by 50 or 60% and you'd have a little monitor you know\n\nyou want to make sure they're teaching English as an example you know give us a little English right sure yeah no but I mean I mean I mean some of these Governors are like are are doing so badly I mean they they got so many people moving out of their state they should they should get you- whole salesman of the Year award because they're driving so much uel it's actually amazing people people moving out is it amazing to you as a bus businessman that they can even survive like Illinois so many people are leaving and you wonder how do they survive I mean how do they survive uh I saw where you left California and you moved to Texas Texas does a great job uh but you know I mean I just wonder how do these states survive when big businesses a big oil company\n\njust left California as you know and they moved to Texas how do these big States survive when they lose so many businesses and their taxes are already really high you know the taxes are among the highest taxes you you almost wonder how do they how do they continue on and in many cases the governors don't do a good job and their crime ridden places you wonder how do they continue to just go on it's it's not it's not a good situation I mean I think the thing that's the only thing that's going to force some of these states to change is if they risk bankruptcy and they're not getting bailed out by the federal government right well going to get changed you remember the area in California where they had that where I guess somebody had Sticky Fingers and they\n\nstole a lot of money and uh they went into a form of chapter and it was very nasty for a period of time but now it's probably the most popular place in all of California so so you know at some point something like that may have to happen but the problem is uh you can't penalize people that loan money to the state when you have incompetent people like a pritsker look the family didn't want him in the family business and uh then he ends up being governor of Illinois so you know what is he going to be is he going to be a great governor and uh you know you have people I could name every one of them I got to know every one of these and some are very good and some are just horrible well I think that I mean that logic Point here to you know as you're saying\n\nlike the you know a lot of people are concerned about the economy a lot of people concerned about inflation and inflation is effectively a tax on people that that that save money and and for people that are working dayto day it's it's it's just it's just a form of Taxation um and uh and if if we can solve the government spending problem will solve the inflation problem which means people will have a better standard of living and that's that's a really big deal well the people that got hurt worst are the people that did it the way they were taught to do it all through you know their younger life and their their young life and their whole life the people that saved money and then they got no interest on their money and inflation d enoyed them and frankly\n\nthey were almost better off if they didn't do anything like that I mean those people have been absolutely decimated and we're going to bring those people back and help those people we've got to get the prices down you know when I look at bacon costing five four or five times more than it did a few years ago when when you look at some of the food products and and groceries people go they can't believe it they used to be able to buy a whole cart and today you know a lot of people just don't have the money they go in and they can't buy anything they they look at yeah it's sticker shock they call it sticker shock right I I think it really just come like I said I think just comes down to to to Really I guess two really two things which is is that if if you\n\nsolve government overspending you solve inflation which improves living advantage of the of the the average person and then and then if if you uh deregulate like have sensible regulations so because a lot of the regulations are nonsensical and and cause the cost to be extreme for no reason um and the but unless you've got effective deregulation like Reagan did did a great job on deregulation in the 80s but it's been 40 years since we hadn't at anyone really I mean during your Administration we made some progress but I think uh there opportunity to make I think radical progress with sensible regulation um and and and if those two things yeah those are the big deals we set a record we set a we did more deregulation and more uh restrictions on all of the\n\ndifferent businesses than any other president i c remember I had the rule for every one we put in you have to get rid of 10 or 12 and we we did radical cuts on all of that and a lot of that's being put back by this Administration and we did radical cuts on things that weren't necessary but we were we were all set you know we had the best economy ever maybe in the world and then what happened is co came in and we had to focus on that and nobody knew what it was and I always say I got good marks on economy good marks on Military we knocked out Isis we did so many different things we rebuilt but you know I never got the credit that we really deserved on what we did with with Co we never got the credit but uh we were if had that not happened the gift from\n\nChina from Wuhan uh came in from Wuhan the Wuhan La labs and I always said it and it turned out to be right but had that not had that not happened we were set to start reducing uh debt we're going to reduce taxes further I gave the largest tax cuts and we were going to reduce taxes still further for Middle inome people not only businesses but we did it for businesses because they're the ones that that's why we had the great job numbers but we were set to really start reducing debt and you know we we're sitting on the the biggest pile of liquid gold anywhere in the world bigger than Saudi Arabia bigger than Russia and we were going to drill and we were going to make so much money we were going to supply Europe with oil I had stopped the Russian Pipeline\n\nand we were going to supply them with oil and gas we were G to we were gonna make a fortune and then uh the covid came in and we had to we really had to divert then what happened is when they came in you know we we kept a lot of businesses alive if I didn't do what we did we would have had a 1929 type depression but the problem is when Biden came in he got trillions of dollars and just started spending it stupidly you didn't need it anymore you know we got over that bad period where it was everybody was dying and feeling you know it was it was just not a good period interestingly uh you know during his administration many more people died during his administration of Co than during my Administration and we really got the brunt of it but people don't realize\n\nmore people died during his administration than ours but it diverted us from doing what I wanted to do but we had the greatest for you know almost three years we had great and you know that probably better than anybody so many of your friends said to me the best years we've ever had in business were during the Trump years and and also said that uh African-American uh Hispanic American were so incredible they were having the best Asian-American women men young people without a diploma young people that graduated from the best colleges from from MIT from the Wharton School from all of the great col colleges Harvard they were doing better and people without a diploma were doing better and everybody was was happy and then Co came and we had we had the problem\n\nis they spent trillions and trillions of dollars they wasted they shouldn't have taken any money and we wouldn't be having inflation right now which is killing our country yeah yeah yeah absolutely I mean I should probably say something about like you know may my views on you know climate change and oil and gas um because uh I think it's probably different from what most people would assume um because I my My Views are actually pretty I think moderate in this regard which is that I I don't think we should vilify the oil and gas industry and the people that have worked very hard in those Industries to provide the necessary energy to to support the economy and and if we were to stop using oil and gas right now uh we would all be starving and the economy\n\nwould collapse uh so it's you know I don't think it's right to sort of vilify the oil and gas industry um and and I and I you know and the world the world has a certain demand for oil and gas and it's probably better if the United States provides that than than than some other countries um and and it would it would help with prosperity in the US um and at the same time obviously my view is is like we do over time want to move to um a sustainable energy economy because eventually you do run out of I mean you run out of oil and gas it's not there for it's not infinite um and there is there is some risk I think it's not the risk is not as as high as uh you know a lot of people say it is with respect to global warming but I think if if you if you just keep\n\nincreasing the post of million in the atmosphere uh long enough eventually it actually simply gets uncomfortable to uh to breathe people don't realize this if if the if you go to if you go past a thousand Poss million of of CO2 uh you start getting headaches and noria um and so we're we're now in the sort of 400 range we're adding I think about roughly two parts per million per year so I mean it still gives us so what it means like we still have quite a bit of time um but but so there's not like we don't need to to rush and and we don't need to like you know stop Farmers from farming or you know uh prevent people from having Stakes or basic stuff like that like like you leave the farmers alone I agree how crazy is that where you have Farmers that are\n\nnot allowed to farm anymore and have to get rid of their cattle and the whole the whole world is a little crazy but it's largely taken its lead from us I I do say though I've heard in terms of the fossil fuel because even to uh create your electric car and create the electricity you need it for the electric car you know fossil fuel is what really creates that at the generating plants and you know so you sort of can't get away from it at this moment I mean someday you might be able to but I do hear we have anywhere from 100 to 500 years left you know much of it hasn't even been found yet yeah but there are tremendous like anoir I got anoir in Alaska approved Ronald Reagan couldn't do it nobody could do it everybody tried nobody could do it I got it approved\n\nthe first thing that Biden did was unimo it it to get rid of it he uh ended it his uh his secretary went in and she ended it and what a what a disgrace that's andw that's bigger or they they think it could be bigger than so Saudi Arabia in Alaska could be bigger than Saudi Arabia but they went in and they terminated it and I'll get it going very quickly because not only is it big for Alaska I mean you talk about economic development that for the United States I mean that that is they say bigger than Saudi Arabia or the same size and pure really good stuff and you know they ended so I think we have you know perhaps hundreds of years left nobody really knows but during that time will come around that will be very good yeah well I mean my my estimate would\n\nbe you know a little more aggressive than that but it's it's not the sort of like we're all going to die in five years stuff that that's obviously BS um but I mean my view is like if you just look at sort of the POS million uh that increments every year you know you get sort of two or three POS for million every year of of CO2 u i mean my I I think some of that it's problematic if it accelerates if you start going from 203 to say five and then there may be some situations where uh you get uh a step change increase in the CO2 um and and I I think you we don't we don't want get too close to a thousand uh PPM because like that's that's actually makes it uncomfortable to to to to bre like just existing in in a th000 PPM CO2 is is uncomfortable that's that's\n\nlike a that's considered like an industrial Hazard right just so so it's you know that that's that's actually you start getting headaches and stuff so it's even without global warming it's not it's not comfortable so you you don't want to get too close to that but I mean I think we've got I think we want to just move over like and and if if I don't know 50 to 100 years from now we're um we're we're I don't know mostly sustainable I think that'll probably be okay um so it's it's it's not like the the house is on on fire immediately but it I think it it is something we we need to to move towards and on you know on balance it's probably better to move they're faster than slower but but like like I said without vilifying the oil and gas industry uh and and\n\nand without causing hardship in the short term I think this can be done um with without you know people can still have you know a stake and they can still drive gas in cars and they you know it's it's it's okay it's like it's not I don't think we should valify people for it but I think we should just just generally lean in the direction of of sustainability um and uh I I actually think solar is is going to be a majority of of Earth's uh energy generation uh in the future and it's certainly trending that way and and so you get the solar power um comine that with with with batteries so because obviously the sun doesn't shine at night and uh and then you use that to charge the electric cars and you have a long-term sustainable solution and you know that\n\nthat's what Tesla is trying to move things towards and I think we've made a lot of progress progress in that regard but when you look at our cars we we we like we don't believe that environmentalism that caring about the environment should should mean that you have to suffer so we make sure that our cars are are beautiful that they drive well if they're fast they're you know sexy I mean they're they're cool in fact literally I mean the sexy joke Model S model 3 Model X and why spells out sexy it was probably most expensive joke out there um but I you know I just I don't know like easy humor you know so um and but but I'm I'm I I'm a big fan of like let's have an inspiring future and let's uh let's work towards you know a better future and and and we can\n\ndo so without demonizing people right I'm I'm okay you know it's very interesting uh you use the word global warming and today they use the word climate change because you know you have some places that go up and you so they were getting themselves in a little trouble with the word global warming because not every place is warming some places are going the opposite direction but uh you know I'm sort of waiting for you to come up with solar panels on the roofs of your cars and on the trunks of the cars and it just seems like something that at some point you will come up with I'm sure you'll be the first but it would seem that a solar panel on on the roofs you know on flat surfaces on certain surfaces might be good at least in certain areas of the country\n\nwhere you have the or the world where you have the Sun but I would I would think and I have no idea because that's not my world but I would think that this would be uh something that would be interesting but you know the one thing that I don't understand is that people talk about global warming or they talk about climate change but they never talk about nuclear warming and to me that's an immediate problem because you have as I said five countries we have major nuclear and and you know probably some others are getting there and that's very dangerous that's where you need a strong American president because you just you don't want to have this proliferation but you have five countries and getting more you know China is much less than us right now but they're\n\nthey're going to catch us sooner than people think they're way lower Russia and us are number one and I we're sort of tied and China is far behind but they're developing at a level that you know you're not surprised to hear very fast it's gonna they'll end up catching up maybe even surpassing but to me the biggest problem is not uh climate change it's not and and everything's you know a problem but it's degrees to me the big problem is the nuclear power the power of nuclear is so great and when I talk about I'll prevent World I'll prevent World War III uh I will but but the truth is that you have to because this is no longer army tanks going back and forth and shooting at each other this is yeah a level of Destruction and power that nobody's ever seen\n\nbefore yeah and actually there's there's the bad side of nulear which is nuclear war very bad side but there's there's also I think um nuclear electricity generation is underrated um and it's actually you know people have this fear of of nuclear um nuclear electricity Generation Um but but it's actually one of the safest forms of electricity generation it's it's just a huge misunderstanding um and uh if you look at the injuries and desk you know caused by say I mean I'm not trying to pick on call mining but just any kind of mining operation um and uh there's a certain number of injuries and deaths per year um and you compare that to nuclear nuclear is actually way better um so it's it's underrated as a as an electricity source and I think it's it's something\n\nthat's worth reconsidering but there's so much regulation that people can't get it done um so that you know maybe they'll have to change the name the name is just it's a rough name there are some areas like like when you see what happened bad we have to Rebrand it we'll have to give it a good name we'll name it after you or something you know um no it has hey it has a branding problem you know when you see what happened it does have a branding problem when you see what happened in Japan where they say you won't be able to go on the land for about 3,000 years did you ever say that and in Russia where they had the problem where they you know the there's a lot of bad things happened and they have a problem and they say that in 2,000 years people will start\n\nto occupy the land again you know you realize it's pretty bad true but there's you're right about it it's aming it's actually not that bad so so like after Fukushima happened in Japan like people were asking me in California you know are we worried about like a nuclear Cloud coming from Japan I'm like no that's crazy it's it's actually it's not even dangerous in Fukushima I actually flew there and and and ate locally grown vegetables on TV to prove it um and and and I donated a a a solar water treatment yeah solar power system for a water treatment plant and um yeah but you haven't been feeling so well lately and I'm worried about it no no but I mean I'm only it's fine you know it's it's like uh you know Hiroshima and Nagasaki were bombed but now they're\n\nthey're like full cities again so it's not something that you know it's not it's not as scary as people think basically but um let's see I mean I mean are there some other topics we should touch on um oh you know like lawfare I think you know we need to be concerned about what they've done to this country obviously yeah yeah well we just won the big case in Florida this was a Biden Administration did something that's never been done in this uh country and that's go after their political opponent me with his nonsense uh and just nonsense in the big case in Florida we won but they've always they always pick a judge and a jur and they use local Das they use the local U uh attorney generals like fonnie you know fonnie spelled f ni I fonny and it's it's all\n\na big hoax and it's all run from there like in Manhattan uh the one of the top people from the justice department went in Ran Manhattan ran the state the Leticia James deal was run by a person from the Department of Justice Biden they've never done this before and they set up a very bad precedent it it's it's called lawfare Warfare it's uh it's a terrible thing and never happened in our country it does happen in banana republics and third world countries but it's never happened and the incredible thing is it actually drove my numbers up because people see you know fortunately I have a platform like you or you know in all fairness like a conversation like this where I can talk about it and people understand I mean you you fight for election integrity and\n\nyou end up getting indicted because you're fighting for election integrity and when the day comes that you can't fight for election Integrity you don't have a country anymore so what happens what happens is they went after their political opponent me now Biden's a you know close to vegetable stage in my opinion okay I I looked at him today on the beach and I said why would anybody allow him the guy could barely walk why would anybody allow him does he have a political advisor that think this looks good uh you know he thinks this looks good because it looks so bad and it's it's ridiculous I mean and he's been doing that for a long time you know he can't lift the chair the chair weighs about 3 ounces it's meant for children and old people to lift and he\n\ncan't lift it the whole thing is crazy well it's clearly I mean it's clearly like we just don't have a president right now you don't have a president and she's going to be worse than him because she is a San Francisco liberal who destroyed San Francisco and then as attorney general she destroyed California you talk about location and we're talking about the sun and the water and all there's nothing better than California she has destroyed that she was the original da she was the original in San Francisco she was the original attorney general in California what she has done to California is well you know better than I do you just left California for a lot of those reasons and what she's done with with crime with with cashless baale where you kill somebody\n\nI mean we have states there you kill somebody and they let you out right away I mean you you don't have to even put up and then they never find the people unless they kill again and then they let them out again are country is becoming a very dangerous place and she is a radical left San Francisco liberal and now she's trying to protect now she's looking like she's she wants to be more Trump than Trump if that's possible I don't think it's possible but she wants to be more Trump and Trump yeah I want a wall I you know she wants to release all the prisoners that are in detention and some of these guys are really bad that just came out today she wants she doesn't want to build the wall even though the walls work walls and Wheels you know in your business\n\neverything you do is obsolete almost well not the tunnels but everything is obsolete even your rocket ships they like a month later they're obsolete you find a better way to the only thing that's not obsolete is a wall and a wheel and the wall you know I built hundreds of miles of wall and that's why we had such good numbers I was going to add 200 miles we bought it we could have flipped it flipped it up in three weeks and they sold it for 5 cents on the dollar that meant I said wow that means that they actually do want to have open borders she wants to have open borders and now she's going like she's tough on the on the border it's such a lie yeah this is simply not true this is simply not true everybody knows it's true it's it's a disgrace that she\n\ncan say it no I mean obviously what what's happening sort of overnight is they're they're rewriting history and um and making uh kamla sound like a moderate when in fact she is far left like far far left worse than Bernie she is considered more liberal by far than Bernie Sanders she's a radical left lunatic and if she's going to be our president very quickly you're not going to have a country anymore and she'll go back to all of the things that she believes in she believes in defunding the police she believes in no fracking zero you no now all of a sudden she's saying no I I will I really want to see fracking the day the if they got in the day she got in she'll end fracking and by the way if people didn't think that the lunatics that that really believe\n\nin that uh they won't vote for her you know um like like the Palestinians and Israel she is so anti-israel and she's bad for both Biden actually did something that was impossible both sides hate him you know both sides that was a hard thing to do unification yeah no no I mean I mean the you know Netanyahu came to give a talk to a joint Senate and House uh sitting and I was there and and and comma stood him up you know what does that say I think it's highly disrespectful and I say if you're a Jewish person or if you believe in Israel if you're a a person that you know is a very pro Israel if you vote for her it's worse than Biden and Biden was bad but if you vote for her you ought to have your head examined and you see tonight I mean as we're doing this\n\nI'm seeing reports coming that they expect an attack tonight or tomorrow from hundreds and maybe thousands of rockets you know they're Iron Dome as they call it as we all call it but their Shield that they build uh that can be uh swamped we'll use the term that's appropriate swamp but they swamp it by shooting enough missiles you know this better than anybody by shooting enough missiles they can't defend themselves you know they just obliterate the whole place and that's what some people people think they're looking to do and we have no leadership there's no respect for the United States of America with these people and I'm telling you she'll be worse than him because she's a believer in being radical left and he wasn't I I think you're right I mean you\n\nreally it's it's important for the for the public that may be listening to this to say to look at Comm track record you know uh before the last like month and say uh is that a track record you agree with um and I think if you're an independ dependent moderate you definitely would not agree with it um because it is her behavior has been farle and we're seeing just an overnight propaganda attempt to rewrite history and make it sound like H is moderate when she in in fact is is not moderate well her uh her running mate uh approved signed into legislation tampons in boys bathrooms okay now that's all I have to hear tampons and boys bathrooms and that means she believes in that too I mean picked this guy because he was the closest to a lot of people thought\n\nshe'd pick sort of the opposite but she picked an anti-israel radical left person but she is far worse they say than Bernie Sanders if we have her as a president if we have a Democrat at this moment as a president I don't think our country can survive I I think it's I think it's a massive I think I think we're in massive trouble uh frankly with with a k Administration and that's my honest opinion um and uh and I I think uh I think really it's essential that that you win for the good of the country uh for this election and I mean that's I'm just stating my opinion um now you know you may have seen this but I I got a letter from the the the EU commission like saying you know to not have disinformation on the like during this discussion that we're having\n\nlike and you know this like there's there's a lot of attempts to do censorship and to force censorship even on Americans uh from other countries and um you know what do you think about that well I know the uh European Union very well they take great advantage of the United States in trade as you know we uh through a different for NATO uh we protect them and yet uh if you build a car in the United States you can't sell it in Europe you just can't sell it it's it's impossible uh the same thing with our Farmers our Farmers find it very difficult to do business you know we have a deficit with them of $250 billion which people don't know it sounds so nice to European Union but let me tell you they're they're uh not as tough as China but they're bad and I let\n\nthem know it and that's probably why they notified you no they don't treat our country well we defend them you know uh with Ukraine so we're in for 2 50 billion and they're in for about 71 billion and they have the same size it's if you add up the European nations that you know in terms of an economy it's about the same size when you say as us and they're and and and they're in much greater risk they they're right there we have an ocean separating us from in this case the enemy would be Russia used to be for the Soviet Union but let's assume they're close enough and what happens is uh they're in for 70 something million I I think I think even less than that billion and we're in for about 250 billion and it could be a lot higher than that and I say why\n\naren't you going to equalize why aren't they paying what we're paying and they're in much more you know they're it's much more important for them because of the fact that you know they're right near there I mean they're all sort of in that location we're not but they should they should and I did it with NATO we were there were only seven countries that were paid up in NATO out of 28 at the time and the United States was subsid the United States was subsidizing NATO tremendously subsidizing NATO and I said I went in and I said you got to pay up if you don't pay up we're not going to defend you any longer I took a lot of heat but you know what happened billions and billions of dollars came flowing in and yeah I I think I think a lot of the public isn't\n\nisn't aware of the fact that the United States pays a disproportionate share of of the NATO expenses and then we get taken advantage of on trade so think about it yeah well I mean the point of NATO is defending Europe and it's uh you know it it's like then okay well why why is the United States paying disproportionately more to defend Europe than Europe that doesn't make sense that's unfair um and that that is an appropriate thing to address well you know when you talk about cost cutting and savings and everything else I mean honestly look there's nobody that feels worse about the Ukraine situation than I do because I know it would have never happened I know zalinski he was very honorable to me because when they went with the Russia hoax and they said\n\nI had a phone call with him he said it was a perfect phone call it was a great phone call he could have grandstand it and you know said oh he he was very threatening he said no it was a very nice phone call I called him up to congratulate him on his win and you end up getting impeached because these people are lunatics you know I was talking about the difference from the people within and the enemies on the outside in many cases the people from within are more dangerous for our country than the Russians and the chin if you have a smart president you're not going to have a problem with them you're going to make you're going to do things yeah now they've taken advantage of us incredibly but you're going to do things with the right person yeah well I I I\n\nthink I think it's obvious that you're you're you're a Believer and an advocate of of free speech because during your first time as president you were attacked relentlessly every day often very unfairly with f you know with with false attacks and and you didn't try to shut down the media you didn't try to uh inhibit their freedom of speech and I think that's his lot well the good thing is that you and I have and some people very few uh we can get the word out although sometimes it's hard because they don't want to print it you know like like we're having a great conversation right now Camala wouldn't have this conversation she can't because she's not smart you know she's not a smart person by the way she can't have this conversation and Biden we don't\n\neven have to talk about it I mean he couldn't have this conversation he he would have given up in the first half of a question he would have walked out he would have said where am I where am I going so anyway but no he wouldn't have this that's true not a lot of people would have this conversation but you know we cover a lot of territory but the beauty is that you you know we can have a conversation and I get it out without because I get this is a really big point you can actually have a conversation with you yeah it's nice isn't it and you can't have a conversation with Biden or Kamala it's like not uh it's not possible that's true so it's like talking to an NPC so it's just impossible but think of it we need a man or person who's unbelievably sharp\n\nin order to stop all the nuclear danger and all the dangers that I'm talking about and I got along with all the you know I got along with Kim Jong-un we had dinner we had everything and he he really liked me and I got along with him really well by the way he's he's the absolute boss over there you know a lot of people said oh do you think he really let me tell you I saw things that you don't want to know about he is the boss but you we had a good relationship and and he doesn't like uh Biden he considers him a stupid man he said he's a stupid man well at least he speaks his mind but you know in this country you're not sort of allowed to say it but I guess you are you should be allowed to say it it's true but we need really we need smart people and we\n\nneed people that have an ability to lead and she doesn't have that ability can you imagine now you know chairman she very well can you imagine her and him negotiating or even standing together it it is the whole concept is ridic she is terrible she's terrible but she's getting a free ride I saw a picture of her on Time Magazine today she looks like the most beautiful actress ever to live I it was a drawing and uh actually she looked very much like our great first lady Milani she look she didn't look she didn't look like Camila that's right but of course she's a beautiful woman so we'll leave it at that right yeah well you know maybe like I think it's part of what you know people in America want to you know people in America want want to feel excited and\n\ninspired about the future I want to feel like the future is going to be better than the past and that this that America is going to do things that are greater than uh we've done in the past reach New Heights that make you proud to be an American and uh and excited about the future um they want the American dream back you know they want the American dream back more important than anything else it's it's like you don't have that today because the people they've been just sucked they see incompetent people running our you know the the Biden thing is very interesting people just found him to be incompetent and when I debated him I was like is this for real it was yeah it's just it was just absurd um but I youan know I think there there are like you know some\n\nsome you know Grand projects that that that we we could do I mean I think like you know we could we could build a base on the moon we could send American astronuts to Mars we we could uh bu build highspeed connections that are you know more advanced than anything else in the world between our cities so people have fast transport um you know it's possible to solve traffic with tunnels we we you know we already made pro great progress in Vegas doing that and um you know and and and just do things that are exciting and inspiring to make the future feel like it's better than the past well I saw what you did in Vegas and I'll tell you it was amazing I I got to see I took a big Glimpse at it and it's incredible what you you know it's incredible and you could\n\ndo that all over you could do that all over it's uh it's deep yeah you don't even need much structure you know assuming you're in the right area no it's it's straightforward it's amazing so and and like I think we could do some some things that like like China's got incredible highspeed Rail between its cities but I think it's actually possible um with with with tunnels if if with deregulation with with an ability to actually where like legal to to to actually do the tunnels think you can have highspeed uh tunnels that are actually better uh than than than anything else in the world for high-speed transport between cities and that would be something that you know Americans can say wow okay we've got something that's cooler than anyone else in the world\n\nthat's that's the kind of thing that makes you proud to be in America much safer than surface trains where there is a danger there you know with people with crazy people it's much safer much better uh and you know it's sad because I've seen some of the greatest trains I I find it fascinating and I've seen the systems and how they work and the bullet trains they call them I guess and they they go unbelievably fast unbelievably comfortable with no problems and we don't have anything like that in this country not even close and it doesn't make sense that we don't doesn't make sense yeah I I I think also like there there's you know I just I'm kind of hopping on the excess regulation but I think something that um that I think people can generally understand\n\nis that what happens with laws and regulations is that they just there's more and more of them every year and unless there's a process to clean them up eventually everything becomes illegal and and that actually SL slow it slows down the development of new technologies I mean if you take the sort of like I think we there there there's room for some reform at the at the FDA uh for improving the speed with which we you know approve uh drugs that that could help save lives and improve people's lives um and I work very hard on that you know we got that down to to the lowest number ever and we got uh Therapeutics approved in the FDA that people can't even believe the speed but I I took them on I I don't think they like me too much but I got things approved\n\nin the FDA at at at numbers that they wouldn't believe and you know it's a very bureaucratic group actually it's a fine group of people in many cases I got to know a lot of them but I was pushing them really hard for regenerant for so many different things that that were really pretty amazing but but the FDA takes too long they would it's 12 years to get a product approved I got it down to four and I got some things done very quickly but it's uh it's really something that is going to have to be worked on because it takes too long just takes too long yeah it just takes too long and it's you you end up in the same with with the approval but just it's just you know it takes years instead of something that that I think could potentially take months that impr\n\nimproves people's lives I think you know and and but but it I I just wanted to hop on this point that like there has to be an active process uh for reducing rules and regulations because otherwise they they just keep building up every year and you get like hardening of the arteries and eventually everything's illegal or takes forever um and and then and then we we we just um we just aify as a society we just uh we can't make any progress and and that's it's a really big deal you know Elon just getting back to the FDA for one second I got something done called right to try this is where you can go in and if you're terminally ill you can use a Space Age uh you know medicine or whatever it may be we have the best doctors the best labs in the world we really\n\ndo and but people would go to other countries because you couldn't use this the product even if they thought it worked because it's going through the FDA I got it approved where you can you you basically look nobody want the doctors didn't want it because of the liability the country didn't want it our country because they didn't want to get sued these are people terminally ill the insurance companies didn't want it and the pharmaceutical companies nobody wanted it I got everybody into a room and we came up with an agreement that you won't get sued and also they didn't want it on their record if somebody's terminally ill and they die after taking a drug they didn't want that on their record so we set a second a separate list if somebody was so it wouldn't\n\ncount as a negative okay and as you know we got it done we have saved right to try they've been trying to get this done for 58 years and it sounds simple but it wasn't because you know I mean you know the insurance companies nobody wanted it but we got it done somebody signs you sign a document that you're not going to sue the insurance companies the country you're not going to sue anybody and we got it done and we're saving tens of thousands of lives right to try hopefully you never need it but if you do you don't have to travel to Asia you know people if they had money they go to Asia they go to Europe if they don't have money they go home and die that's what happened they'd go home and die yeah well well I mean and actually to give Europe some some\n\nprops here it's like if a drug is improved approved in the in in Europe which has a crazy amount of regulations it should obviously be approved in the US I mean they got more regulations than we do so what why would a drug be approved in Europe and not in the US that that's crazy well we did it we did something that really they've been trying to do it for 50 years and they just couldn't get it done and I got it done and it's uh it's really something but you're right some people go to Europe because a drug isn't approved here but it's approved in Europe and it's a drug that generally speaking would work it's pretty crazy absolutely you're right and I I think so as long as people are properly informed of the pros and cons and like these are the risk the\n\nyou know those are the risk and like you make your own decision um that's that Mak sense well I think just you know in sort of closing up and by the way I'm looking at the numbers you get a lot of people listening I hope you don't get nervous because you got a lot of people listening to you right now like 60 million or something what is that number that's crazy it's amazing how you can see that right away how many what is the number wow what is it well I think in terms of people that's bigger than you said you you said 25 and you're more than much more than double that number 25 million I think you're going to be 60 or 70 and I guess over a period of time hey that's I congratulate you do I get paid for this or not well I I think actually in terms of the\n\nnumber of people that will will hear this conversation um over the next uh you know few days two weeks uh it it's going to be hundreds of that's what they say yeah that's good well look it's an honor yeah I but I I just asked this are you better off now or were you better off when I was President nobody's better off now people you know we put out polls on that and nobody's better off now inflation has killed it and you know they also feel very unsafe you look at what's going on with a lot of different things you look at the riots we had at the colleges over I mean it's ridiculous but right all of the rights they just feel unsafe and now they really feel unsafe because you have a new form of crime it's called migrant crime crime I call it Biden migrant\n\ncrime maybe I'll call it Cala migrant crime but you know I mean with all these things I always try to like try to get to the ground Truth by just asking people and you know my my mom lives in New York and I I was like you know Mom you know do you know have you any of your friends you know been attacked or assaulted and she said yeah three of her friends in three separate incidents were assaulted just just just in recent months just walking around the streets of New York and and I and and I said well did what what happened to the people that sold them oh nothing they they got away like and and they they just know always get away nothing's and they don't even they don't even bother reporting it because there's not they know that there's not they're not\n\ngoing to you know people are not going to get prosecuted they just they just let you know violent criminals out in New York the only one that gets prosecuted is Donald Trump they don't get they prosecute Trump yeah I mean it's it's it's just obviously messed up terrible if violent criminals are being are being getting off Scot um and and and meanwhile the you know New York spending massive resources Prosecuting you and it's like what's this you know and and I think the sort of sensible public said looks at this and says what the heck's going on here this is obviously abuse the legal system um you know the the legal system is supposed to be protecting the public from um violent criminals and it it should be obviously allowing the public to make their own\n\ndecision about who should be president as opposed to you know some uh you know legal case once they start this precedent because this can go on with the next one I mean this is a very bad precedent what they're doing in terms of you know going after their political opponent and that's all it is it's going after their political opponent and and then you get a judge who's you know a strong Democrat and I'm being nice when I say that in many cases crooked as hell but you get a judge and you go into an area where a republican gets three or 4% of the vote and you know you'll have a jury pool with uh people that hate Republicans or hate it could also be the other way though because it could start the other way in areas where they hate Democrats and you get\n\ninto a Pandora's Box it's a very dangerous thing for this country and a very dangerous thing even for the state New York City is Los New York city and state lose a lot of business over what they did to me because these people say we don't want that to happen to us that's no justice system you have an unfair system of justice and it's costing New York State a tremendous amount of money people are leaving and companies are leaving and they won't come back so you know all of that stuff is important but the economy now is the big thing and we can turn that economy up so fast and people are going to be back again we're going to get rid of I think there's lot a lot of opportunity absolutely absolutely so and I just want I want to congratulate you you've done\n\nan amazing job you are you have definitely got a fertile mind you know we can talk you and I can talk about rocket it's kind of you to say well tunnels we can talk about tunnels and Rockets and and uh electric cars so many things and now you're you're into the AI and that's going to be another Beauty I say so it's uh yeah it's an amazing it's an amazing thing you've done Elon it's an amazing thing and I congratulate you I mean thank you and well I mean I just say here you know here's to an exciting inspiring future that people can look forward to and be optimistic and excited about what happens next and that's uh the kind of future that I think uh will bring as president and that's why I endorse you well I appreciate that that endorsement meant a lot\n\nto me not all endorsements mean that much to be honest your endorsement meant a lot and you know we have a a phrase make America great again it's pretty simple but it really says that we want to make America great again and we can do it we can do it now but if we were going to suffer another four years like we've suffered for the last four years I'm not sure the country can ever come back that's how bad it is it's so bad we have to we have to do a lot think it's a big risk it's a very real risk and and you know I just like to to note to people listening like I I've not been very political before and and if just if you look at my TR my record it's I've actually been I'm I'm I'm not like sometime they try to paint me as like a far right guy which is absurd\n\nbecause I'm like making electric vehicles and you know solar and batteries helping them with the environment and uh and and I actually I I uh you know I I supported Obama I stood in line for six hours to shake Obama's hand when when he was for president and you know so it's not like I'm like some sort of died in the wool long-term Republican I'm actually I call myself uh you know historically a moderate Dem Democrat and but now I feel like we're really at at a critical juncture for the country um and uh you know I think a lot of people thought you know that Biden Administration would be a moderate Administration but it's not and and obviously that we're just going to see it um an even F left uh Administration with with kamla that's that's my honest opinion\n\nI mean her dad is literally I mean she was brought up as a as an actual her dad is is is a Marxist Economist that's you can Google it I mean it's not a we're not making this up you know um that's how she was brought up so and and we we we just we want to have a future that is prosperous and and I I think we're just at this critical juncture and um and it I think this is a case of the America uh is is going to add a fork in the road and true um and I think it will take it will take if the path to like you are the path to prosperity and I think Kamala is the opposite then that's my I mean that's my honest opinion I'm I'm going to get attacked like crazy and you know I've also experienced quite a bit of lowf far myself um and uh but I'm just trying to tell\n\npeople my honest opinion and and I I haven't been active in really active in politics before um and I'm just trying to point out that my track record historically has been moderate if not moderate slightly left and and uh so this is to people out there who are in the moderate Camp to say I think you should support um Donald Trump for president um and and I I think it's actually a very important Junction the road and and we're deep trouble if they if if if it goes the other way well I want to thank you and you know I actually always did think of you as somewhat left I must say that so it's uh it's even more of an honor to have your endorsement I know how strong you feel about it but you know when you think of her uh San Francisco 15 years ago I had a great\n\nfriend Bob Tish he said it's the greatest city in America and now it's you it's not it's almost not livable there and California likewise and she was involved in the destruction of San Francisco and the destruction of California and she will be involved in the destruction of our country if people are so unwise as to elect her and I hope that doesn't happen and I hope the elections are going to be run honestly and we're going to turn this country around we're going to we're going to do things that and we can do it fairly quickly and we have to get rid of the criminals that have been you know given to us by other countries as they laugh they laugh at us they think we're stupid to accept these people these are radical Stone Cold Killers in many case cases\n\nand terrorists and they're in our country by the hundreds of thousands yeah and we have to take them out yeah I mean if if I could it perhaps you know I think the these are issues that I think most people in America uh would would agree with which is that we want safe and Clean Cities we want secure borders uh we want sensible government spending we want to restore both the perception and the reality of respect in the in the in the judicial system you know stop the lawfare um and uh and I think that that's like and how are how are those even right-wing positions I think those are just that's just common sense and and that's uh I mean would you agree with that 100% I I don't understand you know the whole they call it Progressive they don't like the word\n\nliberal anymore but call it liberal or Progressive I don't understand how somebody could say that it's okay for them to empty prisons into our country and again I told you their crime rates all over the world are going way down which makes sense in fact the next time what we'll do is if something happens with this election which would be a horror show we'll meet the next time in Venezuela because it'll be a far safer place to meet than our country okay so we'll go you and I will go and we'll have a meeting and dinner in Venezuela because that's what's happening their crime rates coming down and our crime rates going through the roof and it's so simple and you haven't seen anything yet because these people have come into our country and they're just getting\n\nacclimated and they don't know about being politically correct law enforcement or lack of law enforcement and our police I I have to just with this we have great police we have great law enforcement but they're not allowed to do their job they have to be able to do their job without being destroyed well absolutely and it's it's obviously demoralizing if you're a police officer risking your life uh to you know to you know to arrest uh violent criminals who could kill you and do kill you sometimes um and then you you arrest the violent criminal and then the The Da you know doesn't prosecute and and that's let the guy out well then like why why should police officer risk their life uh to arrest a violent felon well even worse nothing's going to happen even\n\nworse they prosecute the police officer they they go after a and they prosecute the police officer and they take away his pension they take away his job he loses his family he loses his house well I I I thought I thought it was very telling like incredibly telling that you know when that that was that case where uh you know sort of a gang of thugs beat up uh police officers I think it was in Times Square in New York and and and then nothing happened to those guys they were they were let out zero bail and I think a bunch of them were given free tickets to California well what is I mean that that is that is a that is a gross indignity against the United States and and that's how I mean this is insane like have we lost all Pride what what that how can such\n\na thing be allowed to occur I've never seen anything you know we've see where they get shot it's very dangerous profession but something they're very proud of and they want to be able to do their job but I've seen them get shot I've seen a lot of but I've never seen where these guys are standing in the middle of a big street everybody watching them and they're literally boxing like punching stand up fighting a police officer there were two of them and you had about six of these guys and they're punching the hell out of them and in their own country they would be dead if they did that they'd be shot they would be shot instantly and you know they come from these countries and it's taking them a while to realize that we don't do that in this country but\n\nin their own country if they stood on a street and had a fight with a police officer they would be shot there's no political correctness and it's such a sad it's such a sad thing to see and that's the reason you have crime by the way because we don't do anything about it yeah we we just cannot have a situation where our police officers beat beaten up on camera uh by you know a a gang of illegal immigrants and then nothing happens to to to the guys that beat beat up the cops I mean and they're let out this is unacceptable we're going to change it and we're going to get them out of the country you know when I first got involved they said you couldn't get them back to these countries you couldn't take them back in the case of uh Guatemala Honduras El Salvador\n\nsome others you couldn't get her back and I said really oh you can't get it back because under uh Obama he couldn't get him back they'd put up they'd fly him in and they'd put planes on the runways in these countries so you couldn't land a plane they bring them back and the general told me the generals told me you sir we can't bring them back the countries won't accept MS-13 gang members they won't accept them and I said really how much do we pay these various countries in terms of economic aid which is also somewhat ridiculous and the answer was $750 million I said good tell them they're in default they're delinquent we're not going to do we're not paying them anymore because they won't accept and you know what happened they all called me every one of\n\nthem they said we would be honored to take them back sir we would be honored it was so easy but it's one of those things and we got them back we took in so many you know MS13 is probably the worst gangs in the world they're the most vicious violent we took them out of here by the thousands and got them out of here and their countries took them back and because I said you're not getting any more economic aid and once I said that they were nice they wouldn't take them back for Obama they wouldn't take them back for anybody and now we have a problem because we have this guy and they again they don't take him back anymore with the Biden because they don't respect him yeah yeah so it's just it's just got to it's it's got to be done we we just can't can't have\n\nuh whether they're citizens or not citizens we can't have because they one pro prosecuted citizens either not not just not just legals so uh that if it's you can't have violent you repeat violent offenders that are not that that that don't get um incarcerated right because will they will obviously by definition continue to uh to to uh you know hurt people and and and I I think where part of this comes from is that there's um and I you know I do sort of consider myself liberal in some ways I mean I it's just that you want to have empathy for people obviously you want to have empathy for people I totally agree with that you want to have empathy but you also have to have empathy for the victims of the criminals and if you if you just have empathy for the\n\ncriminals it's it's actually shallow empathy it's not real you're not thinking you're not you have one layer deep uh empathy you got to say like what if you don't incarcerate this person who are they going to uh hurt who are they might kill someone they might rap rape someone if if you don't incarcerate them you have to have empathy for the victims and there's a lack of empathy for the victims of the criminals and and too much empathy for the criminals it doesn't make sense I that's why you want to have deep empathy for society as a whole not shallow empathy for criminals and we have to give our police officers the dignity and the respect that they deserve and we have to let them do their job they they can do a great job but we have to let them do their\n\njob and if we don't do that we you know it's it's going to all it's going to all disappear there's never been a society like this where you're allowed to do anything you want and nothing happens and I'm talking about violent crime and it's going to get more violent because these are really really violent people people and we're going to get them out of our country and we're going to get them back to where because they were sent here by the presidents and by the various people that run those countries and I know every one of those guys and they're smart people and they're StreetWise people and they really think that the USA is stupid they think we're run by stupid people and they happen to be right but when I was there we had no problem we got them out\n\nwe took out thousands of MS13 gang members we brought them back and now again they it's the same old story we don't do it and they actually gave them a big increase in Aid they they raised it up to billions of dollars and they get nothing for it so you know it's it's uh I hope everybody's going to vote for Trump and we're going to get this country straight and I didn't need this I'm like I didn't need this I had a very nice life I didn't need to to go through court systems and go through all the other stuff and run at the same time I have to run I have to go through fake trials with in some cases corrupt judges totally corrupt judges I didn't need it I had a nice life I have great locations I have beautiful oceans that I have places you know I this was\n\nbut I felt it was important and if I had to do if I had to do it over again you probably think I'm crazy for doing it actually but if I had to do it over again I would have done it over again because this is so much more important than me or my life this is we're going to save this country this country is going down and these people are bad people that were running against and they're Liars they make statements they they they do things that are so bad they they say they're going to make a strong border they say they've been great on the border and they've been the worst in history they say they're going to stop CRI the facts speak for themselves so incredible speak themselves it's got G to the point where where people just don't even bother reporting\n\ncrime in a lot of CI because they know nothing that's going to happen um you know that's what I hear anecdotally from from people all the time um so you know it's just uh you know my values I'm just saying to to people out there like my you know the things I I think are important for the future is like we've got to have safe cities we got to have secure borders we got to have senseful spending and and we have and we've got to have de you know deregulation and um so we can have a prosperous future and then we want to have some exciting you know sort of moonshot projects that that people can get fired up about and um you know that's that's the future I'm looking for and um you know I'm Pro environment um but but I'm I'm not against uh you know I'm not like\n\nI don't think we should vilify the oil and gas industry because they're they're keeping civilization going right now and uh but I do think we want to move you know you know a reasonable speed towards uh a sustainable energy economy those those are my values and and and I think um you know and and and so I mean that's uh why I'm supporting you for president you know well I appreciate we're going to make we're going to give incentive to companies to come into our country not to leave our country we're going to be giving tremendous incentives we want companies to build here not to build in other locations and we want to create jobs and again it's about the American dream you don't hear about the American dream anymore Elon you don't hear you're the American\n\ndream in the TRU sense but you don't hear about the American dream anymore and you're going to hear about it people they need that incentive to go out and and do it and they're they're going to love their lives I mean they're going to love they're going to look forward to getting up in the morning and going to you know going to a job that they love not a job that they can't stand or not any job at all where they have no money where they literally have no money and then they end up with violence and lots of other problems no we're going to do we're going to do some great things and I learned a lot in the first we had a great economy and all of that we rebuilt the military we did so much but I also learned and I also learned the best people I learned the\n\ngood people the the smart people the dumb people the people that can do things the people you know you learn when I first came in I I tell people I was in Washington DC only 17 times according to the fake news media I was in 17 times I never stayed over and you don't know people you rely on other people to give you names and then you realize the people you relied on weren't so good now we had great people but we also had some where I wouldn't have you know used them had I known now I know everybody and I think we're going to uh we're going to really turn things around fast we have no choice otherwise we're not going to have a country and I really appreciate this has been to me it's been a lot of fun being with you you're an amazing guy you've done an\n\nincredible job and a great inspiration to people a great inspiration and I hope you keep going and just uh continue to do well and we're going to have a big election coming up and I think November 5th will be the most important day in the history of our country I think that election will be the most important election and I think it'll end up being maybe the most important day in the history of our country because if we don't win I just feel so sorry for every everybody no we're I think we're at at a folk in the road of Destiny of of civilization and um and I think we need what it comes down to thank you very much Elon it's a great honor and we'll we'll do it again sometime and uh it's been really fun and I hope you got a lot of viewers I hear you got\n\na lot but I hope you I know you got a lot of them so uh I appreciate it I'll see you soon all right sounds good thank you thank you Elan thank you very much bye","textByLang":{"en":"all right hello everyone um so uh my apologies for the late start uh we unfortunately had a massive uh distributed denial of service attack against uh our servers and uh saturated all of our all of our uh data lines like basically hundreds of gigabits of of data were Satur Creed um we've uh we think we've overcome most of that and uh so it's now time to proceed but um as as this uh this massive attack illustrates uh there's a lot of opposition to people just hearing um what president Trump has to say and um so but I'm honored to have this conversation I want to emphasize it's a it's a conversation um and it's really intended to just get get a feel for what Donald Trump is just like in a conversation um it's hard to catch a Vibe about someone if you just\n\ndon't hear them talk in a normal way and when you know when there's when there's an adversarial interview like no one's themselves in an adversarial interview um so for and this is really aimed at uh kind of open-minded independent voters who um you I just trying to make up their mind uh and uh so you can understand like what what is you know what is it just like to have a conversation so um honor to Donald great great to uh to speak um we had a a great conversation yesterday as you mentioned yesterday if we could just record that conversation and post it it would have been excellent and I hope we can have something like that today well I think we will I'm pretty sure we will and congratulations because I see you broke every record in the book with the\n\nso many millions of people and that's an honor we view that as an honor and then uh you do want silencing of certain voices usually those are voices that have something to say that are constructive often times constructive and so we have to consider it an honor but congrat tonight that's great well thank you um well I maybe uh we could start off with um I mean the assassination attempt uh which uh was an incredible thing and I have to say that uh you know your actions that assess attempt were inspiring um you know you instead of shying away from things in instead of ducking down um you were pumping your fist in the air and saying fight fight fight and I think that's I mean you know the president of the United States represents America and I think that\n\nis that is America that that is strength Under Fire and um so that's uh you know a big you know part of the reason why I was uh excited to endorse you as uh the president of United States for having another term here is uh that was that was just incredibly inspiring but but I mean what was it like for you not pleasant I have to be I said it was blood I had more blood I didn't know I I didn't know had that much blood the doctors later told me that the ear is a place that is uh a very bloody place if you're going to get hit but uh in this case it was probably the best alternative you could even think about because it went at the right angle and uh you know it was a it was a hard hit it was very I guess you would say surreal but it wasn't surreal you know\n\nI was telling somebody you have instances like this who are like a lot less than this where you feel it's a surreal situation and I never felt that way I knew immediately that it was a bullet I knew immediately that it was at the ear yeah and because it you know it hit very hard but hit the ear and I also heard people shout bullets bullets you know get down get down because I you know I moved down pretty nicely pretty quickly and we had bullets flying right over my head after I went down so I'm glad I went down the the bigger miracle was that I was looking in the exact direction of the shooter and so it hit it hit me at an angle that was uh far less destructive than any other angle so that was the miracle that was for those people that don't believe in\n\nGod I think we got to all start thinking about that you have to uh you know I'm I'm a Believer now I'm more of a Believer I think and a lot of people have said that to me a lot of great people have said that to me actually but it was uh it was amazing that I happened to be turned just at that perfect angle and uh all because I put down a chart on immigration that showed that the numbers were so great I I love that chart even more maybe it's a sign maybe that's a sign you know it's an immigration sign you you highlighted a a serious issue and at that moment the bullet Mr your you know hit your ear but but but you know M your your head I mean well the the amazing thing is that uh the sign I said bring down that sign and imig and it was literally about an\n\neighth of a second where it would be good and and after that it was going to be a disaster no matter which which way you were facing but it just had that that perfect angle which was exactly at this shooter very sad situation such a sad situation as you know we lost somebody that was great Corey who a firefighter a a great gentleman a great a great Trumper he was a a just a fantastic family and a fantastic man and a friend of mine came up Elon and said I'd like to give the family some kind of uh help and I said that's great he said do you mind I said I don't mind at all and he wrote out a check for a million dollars gave gave it to the wife and you know uh she said this is really nice but I'd rather have my husband back which is a nice thing for somebody\n\nto say to be honest she's she's great the family is great and we raised a lot of money for them and for uh two other gentlemen were are unbelievable people also they were hit really badly they thought they were not going to make it and they did the doctors in the Butler area I tell you they were incredible they saved the two and uh they were really hit tough both of them equally uh and we thought we my first question was because I heard bullets flying over me and I said how many people were killed because we had a massive crowd there a tremendous yeah thousands and thousands of people and there was no land I mean it was just it was all people people so I said how many people have been killed because I knew there were other shots being fired sure and they\n\nsaid uh we don't know yet but some people have been badly hurt and uh I have to give the Secret Service sniper they call him or Sharpshooter but sniper because he didn't know there was a problem uh he's been he's an extraordinary shot obviously and he didn't know there was a problem and he was able to pick it all out within 5 seconds and he used one bullet from very far away I guess probably about 400 yards the shooter was 130 but he was on the he was on the opposite side of the field and the podium and he saw the the smoke and the flame from the gun immediately recognized it and immediately took a shot and it was one perfect shot from very far away and if he if he didn't do that Elon he would have I mean if he would have a lot of people a lot more people\n\nhave been could have been badly hurt and killed so I I have to take my hat off to him because that's also a sural you know he's been with them for 23 years and there's he's never had anything like this and all of a sudden he has to act and it's a very tough thing to act and to be shooting somebody but he saw the uh he saw the gun saw the smoke saw the flame from the gun very far away I obviously has very good eyes he's got very good Vision which I assume you to having that particular work but he uh he took aim very quickly and it was they say it was approximately 5 seconds from long range one bullet if that didn't happen because the shooter had a lot of bullets he had a lot of a lot of cartridges up there with him so I mean I mean that that that's clearly\n\nyou know um you know he was he was very confident in taking that shot uh to stop the the assass the attempt at assassination um but but I mean there does seem to be I mean some pretty significant failings um elsewhere in the system like there's just no way that like how on Earth does a shooter get on a roof 130 yards away um that seems crazy um I think most people like are people are wondering how that how on Earth could such a thing happen well you know I view it as two ways there should have been nobody in the roof uh there were people because there were so many tens of thousands of people there there were people that were seeing him and there was one woman with a red shirt and uh Trump all over it and she's screaming that guy's got a gun you know you\n\nsaw it probably's a guy with a gun I it's like I'm just I'm just I guess I mean for my part and I think probably many members of the public are wondering how the heck are you know basically people wondering by pointing out there's a guy on the roof with a gun yeah um and they're seeing it but somehow that's it's not being addressed um that that does seem crazy well they they're going to learn from this the communication between the local police who sort of had an idea and then ultimately a man lifted himself up to the roof could barely do it because you know he was pulling himself up and yeah he saw the man with the gun the man with the gun pointed the gun at him he thought he was probably going to get shot but you know he was like pulling himself up\n\nand because of that he couldn't get to his gun and he fell down actually very badly hurt his uh leg his ankle I hear very badly but but he fell down and he did you know from what I understand he did say there's a guy up there with a gun and the the shooting started very quickly after that I think it I think it forced the shooter to go maybe quicker you know he was supposed to be a very good shot yeah my sons uh Don and Eric they they can't believe what happened but they said from 130 yards a bad shot would hit that Target almost every time they said it's like in golf sinking a twoof foot putt yeah it's not a hard it's not a tough shot it's not a it's not a long shot the uh Secret Service person had the long shot he had a you know triple the distance actually\n\nso uh you know it's it was a a terrible thing look uh it it's hard I have to say this about the Secret Service when I went down and you know I went down based on I think they're screaming uh but other people also because people saw this happen you know you had so many people one of the Miracles was that nobody ran I mean if if a gun goes off the crowd control people showed showed us this when guns go off and it does happen in stadiums at a soccer match or some kind of a match everybody flees they call it a stampede like cattle but everybody and a lot of people get killed with those stampedes we had more people than you'd have at you know some of these matches or or these games and uh nobody left you know you had a small group behind us in the grand stand\n\nand that was full and you look at it as it was taking place and normally they'd be running they didn't leave they saw that I was hurt they saw a lot of blood and they saw that I went down and it's almost like they wanted to be with me well out front you had thousands tens of thousands of people you as far as the I could see you had people in Butler as far as the I could see and and uh and a lot of press too There Was You Know many cameras on watching this it's what made makes it so different because normally things happen that aren't good but you never have a picture of it here we have all these cameras shooting it so uh you know sort of amazing but one of the interesting things was that you didn't have anybody flee you didn't anybody Stampede nobody\n\nand there was some people behind me they stood up and they're looking like you know I mean I tell you you want to have you want to have them in a fox hall with you I want to meet some of those people because it's so different from what you heard but so so I was down but the Secret Service guys there were bullets flying right over my head you could hear them go whizzing and and these guys came jumping on top of me you and a young lady Kate uh would jump they they moved so fast F and let me tell you that took tremendous courage now there was a lack of coordination uh there was you know obviously everybody understands that somebody that that building should have been covered and yeah I mean like I mean I mean looking at the the aial of views that building\n\nwould be like the number one spot for a sniper I it's like it's like the if you were to pick like what is the favorite if you so the goal is to assassinate what's your favorite spot that building other that building would be number one that would have been the you couldn't you can ask for a better location it's like that would have been this you know what people think is when the uh local policemen who by the way you know he really uh he did what he was supposed to do he couldn't hold on any longer and then when he got his head just peeking above this guy standing there with a gun at his head and when he fell down again hurt his ankle very badly but he was making the calls but what happened is the firing took place very soon so what they think is that\n\nthis guy ran to his site which he had all planned out with the gun uh he ran to the site and he started shooting fast and maybe that's why he uh well he sort of missed I mean you know he got could been it could have been U could have been a much bigger problem but he totally would have hit if if you hadn't turned your head so like you know there was a it it was a very near thing it was a miracle if I had to turn my head yeah I would not be talking to you right now as much as I like you exactly I would not I would not be talking talking to me from another round yeah that's right we'd be talking from a different place but uh it was a it was a you know it was a very terrible experience the the Butler Hospital they did such a great job uh the doctors were\n\nso good everybody was so good there was there was a mistake if if if somebody knew cuz people were hearing that you know there was just a bad feeling that there was somebody was around you know that story now it's been and if somebody could have said because they've often times said you know like there'd be a lightning storm or something because I've done I think over 300 I think I did a lot more than that but we did a lot and often times they'll say Sir could you wait 10 minutes please sir could you wait 20 minutes there's a storm overhead or lightning or something right and that happens often and this would have been a perfect time for that to have happened but it it didn't it didn't get coordinated that was the problem well uh it was uh your I think\n\nuh your your um actions in the in the heat of a fire in you know like what I I find admirable there was that you you can't fake bravery under such circumstances the courage is instinctual or it is not it's not a reared action and so I just want to say that uh I think a lot of people admire your your your courage Under Fire there and um yeah so thank you very much I I appreciate it I didn't I don't think I didn't think of it I just want wanted to get up and I wanted to stand up I wanted to let people know you know I felt I was good when when they were uh on top of me covering me actually very much covering me and and very bravely but uh I wanted to get up I said I want to get up and uh they wanted you know they had they have everything there they have\n\nthey wanted stretcher I didn't like the stretcher and I knew I was hit in the ear but I knew I wasn't hit anywhere else they felt I was hit someplace else because it was such a lot of blood and they were that I was hit someplace else and they were saying sir you you you were hitting more than the year I said nope I was hit in the air I want to get up let me get up and so we I got up and the crowd didn't know what to think I mean this was so so many people and they did you could see they were confused they didn't know what to think and I wanted to let them know I was okay it was very important for me to let them know that and they went wild you you've seen the after they didn't go wild when got up because they didn't know was I alive you really couldn't\n\ntell when I stood up before the hand before the you know the fist in the air uh they didn't know if I was alive nobody did and uh when I put the fist up they were they were just relieved and happy and thrilled and the place went crazy it was pretty amazing it was a it was a terrible thing but it was incredbly moving yeah um well and and I mean speaking of the the the the sort of slide that got you to turn that uh saved your life really uh was the illegal immigration side maybe this maybe this it's worth talking about about that it was it was that slide that slide say illegal immigration saved my life you're right but to be that exact angle I mean that's that's a great one save saved by illegal imig you know the the incredible thing though when you talk\n\nabout the odds you had to be exactly at that angle but but the incredible thing is that the chart I use it less than 20% of the time it was just a moment it's always on my left never my right and it's always at the end of the speech so here we have it it's on the right not the left it's at the beginning not the end and even the people that put it up they were unprepared and they did a great job they got it up immediately fortunately but I looked to the right and and the bull and the bullet came whizzing by hitting my ear uh so it was amazing but when you think of the odds of that and you know that that normally you wouldn't use it normally I wouldn't have the thing and then you know it would have been a very different story it's it's very much I I say\n\nan act of God it's a miracle that it happened and I'm honored by it I'm honored by it well well what what what were what were you about to say about illegal immigration before you were rudely interrupted well I was going to say how good the numbers were by the way we're going back to Butler and we're going to go back in October we're all set up and we're the people are fantastic in Butler it's a big it's a great area great these are incredible people uh like the three that in the case of Cory kill and the other two the the families are I get to know them a little bit and the families are great but we're going back to but and uh I think I'll probably start by saying uh as I was saying prior to being so horribly interrupted but yeah so rudely interrupted\n\nby an assassination attempt no but the Jo some people have have noon the chart was just a chart that in my last week we had the best uh illegal uh immigration numbers meaning stopping uh it was at the lowest you've seen the chart it's become quite a famous but that was the lowest point ever recorded it was a really um I mean I was very proud of those numbers and then you see what happened with these people uh kamla and Joe you see what happened they just let it go I had remain in Mexico policies I had all these different policies that were so good uh guys like Tom homman and Brandon Jud from border patrol all these are all people that they've been on television they say it's the best number we've ever had we had so many different Jacks catch and release\n\nin Mexico not the united we had catch and release in the United States we had it in Mexico we had so many things we had things where if people many people come in there they have contagious diseases we had everything passed if you have a contagious disease I'm sorry but we can we cannot allow you into the country so we were setting literally records and uh I all I was doing is showing that and I I Ed it sometimes and in this case I'm glad I used it I can tell you that but but there were fantastic numbers but I'm going to sleep with that chart always I'm going to I'll be sleeping with that chart that chart was uh was very important very important for a lot of reasons well I mean I mean would it be accurate to would it be accurate to say that you're supportive\n\nof legal immigration um but that but we also need to shut down illegal immigration uh and especially unvetted illegal immigration because you you know and and and that's that's not the same as saying that everyone who's illegal immigrant is bad in fact um I think most people who are illegal immigrants are actually good but but you can't tell a difference unless there's a solid betting of who comes across the borderes is is does that is that represent your position I say it very simply they have to come in legally they have to be checked because look Kamala was the bord Z now she's denying it everything that I do she she's saying she was strong On the Border we're going to be strong well she doesn't have to say it she could close it up right now they could\n\nthey could do things right now it's horrible uh no tax on tips and all of a sudden she's making a speech and there will be no tax on tips I said that months ago and by the way they had just the opposite you know they had not only tax on tips but they hired 88,000 IRS agents and many of them were assigned to go get waitresses and caddies and all of this on tips they a policy they had a policy they they were really going to go after you and were really harassing people horribly and then all of a sudden for politics she says you know she comes out with with what I said which I think is terrible and I think it's also hitting them very hard these people are fake now they're also saying they did a good job in the Border we had the worst numbers in the history\n\nof the world not of our country there's never been a country in history that has had a catastrophe like this we've had I believe and I think you believe this too you know you hear 12 milli I believe it's over 20 million people came into our country many coming from jails from prisons from from mental institutions or a bigger version of that is insane asylums and many are terrorists and I'll tell you what they're they're coming not just from South America they're coming from Africa they're coming from all over the world they're coming from Asia they're coming from the Middle East they're coming from countries that are uh stupidly and horribly bombing Israel October 7th they're coming from all over the world they and you know you look at it's so sad October\n\n7th because it should have never happened it's so sad when you look at Ukraine it should have never happened we have a defective government these are defective people and they're not people that should be running it but where you see it the best is the Border because you had you have millions of people coming in a month and then she gets up and she tries to pretend like she's going to do something she had three and a half years and by the way they have another five months that they can do something but they won't do anything it's all talk she's incompetent and he's incompetent and frankly I think that she's more incompetent than he is and that's saying something because he's not too good yeah no I I think it's it is essential to have a secure border I\n\nmean you're you're really not a country unless you're have a secure border um and and secure elections yeah absolutely secure elections and uh so so it's it's just essential to have a real border or or or we can function as a country and our service you know our Central Services are are being overwhelmed in a lot of cities um and uh and I but I as as we were talking about earlier I think uh having um a legal immigration Pro process that is uh smooth and efficient and done well and I you know speaking as someone who is illegal immigrant um and I think that that I mean like one way to think of it is who do you want on your team um you know who like who do you want on Team America and and I think we want to just say okay we we want to uh let in people who\n\nare going to you know be great contributors to um our society and to our economy and uh you know and who do you want on the team and it's and and it's not to say that like in my opinion actually I'd say like probably most of the illegal immigrants actually are are are actually good hardworking people that's my opinion um but some are not and uh and and you just have this sort of adverse selection process where um you know if if if somebody's uh you know if somebody's like uh you know um has a career in in theft or robbery um I I don't understand what's taking them so long to get here um because we are in such a target-rich environment um I mean you know why AR they why aren't more people who have a career in you know bad things coming here sooner because\n\nit's I mean it's a piece of cake to go rob uh you know houses in uh LA or New York uh compared to other parts of the world and um and and in a lot of places in America if if if you try to stop the person who's robbing you you'll be arrested so it's right I mean what what's happening with crime and our police are so good but they're not allowed to do their job but I have to tell you Elon I hate to say it because it's such a downer to say it I hate to say it I hate it but you have a lot of people that just shouldn't be I think it's a much bigger number than you think they're allowing again they're allowing people from their jails and if you were running one of these countries where they're coming from you would have had all of them as an example Venezuela\n\ntheir crime is down 72% they're taking their drug dealers they're taking frankly their prisoners they're emptying out their prisons they're taking uh their criminals their murderers they're rapists and they're they're delivering them into that's what that's what C cter did yeah well they did on a much smaller scale you know it was a much smaller scale but this is a massive scale because this is being done worldwide but here's what's happening crime all over the world is down and way do you see the numbers that we have you know these this is is migrant crime this is crime that's that's going to be and I saw it today in New York where somebody was knifed where they uh raped the girlfriend of a man that stood there watching in New York in one of the shelters\n\nand uh started pulling out the knives and bad things happened today but this is happening every day these are rough people these are people that are in jail for murder and all sorts of things and they're releasing them into our country and they're telling them if you come back we're going to kill you we're going to give you the death penalty or kill you so they don't want to come back but these are rough people these are these are criminals that make our criminals look like nice people and it's horrible what they're doing and and she's in charge of it because you know now she's trying to say she had nothing to do with it and she's such a liar because she was called the borders are the first day and it was on the headlines of every newspaper she's the\n\nborders are and she never even went there she went to one location which had nothing to do with where the problem is you know she went in and out I guess cuz she was getting a lot of pressure but had nothing to do with the problem but she was the bordar and you people can't allow them to get away with their disinformation campaign now she's trying to say that uh she wasn't uh she wasn't really involved and the whole thing is horrible she was totally in charge she could have shut the border down without him he didn't know what he was doing anyway so he wouldn't have even known what happened you could shut the border down he wouldn't even know the difference but uh the fact is that she was bordar but if you don't have to call that the fact is you could\n\njust call her she was in charge of the border and the Border was the worst ever it's it's simply not working whether whether it's by whether it's by whether it's a question of of intention or competence either way we we we we don't have a secure border and we have people streaming over like it looks like a world World War Z zombie apocalypse at times and you know sometimes you you you you got to sort of Wonder like is it real or not so I you know cuz you see things you're like is it real I so I went to the border at Eagle Pass and I saw for myself in Texas and I was like okay it's real I'm like seeing this in real time I actually posted the video like just live I just I just flew there one day and just to see hey is this is this is this made up or real\n\nand I'm I'm just seeing people stream across the border and um and I have to say you know at least the people that I saw did not look friendly um you know so people can look at my video and say Hey you know does the people these people look friendly I don't look super friendly so these are people that Elon would not be the same man if he had to walk across the street and look these people in the eye these are rough people these are really rough people coming across and I know rough people and these are people that we don't want in our country and you know the Caravans are coming in and they're putting and and who's doing this is the heads of the countries and you would be doing it and so would I and everyone say oh what a terrible thing to say the fact\n\nis it's brilliant for them because they're taking all there uh bad people really bad people and I hate to say this the reason the numbers are much bigger than you would think is they're also taking the nonproductive people now these aren't people that will kill you we have enough of them but these are people that are nonproductive they they are just not productive I mean for whatever reason they're not workers or they don't want to work or whatever and these countries are getting rid of nonproductive people in the Caravans in many cases and they're all also getting rid of their murderers and their drug dealers and the people that are really brutal people and they're coming into our country at levels that have never been seen before and I saw an ad just\n\nbefore I got on the ad I'm walking over here and I saw an ad by Kamala saying how she is going to provide border security where has she been for three and a half years for three and a half years yeah have 20 million people it's a terrible yeah I think this frankly I think this is a fundamental existential issue for the United States um and if we have another four more years of of open borders and it's going to be even worse with another four more years it's going to be even worse than it's been for the past uh you know three and a half years uh I'm not sure we've got a country you don't have a country left Elon if they get in you will have 50 to 60 million people from all over the world not South America only you know we think of South America we think\n\nof hondur and El Salvador Guatemala and Mexico you know the four but it's not that it's everywhere they're coming in from everywhere and I had to stay in Mex this is a this is a super important Point like people it's like well basically when I went down there I was like well where are people from it's like it's like almost no one was from Mexico it's just just it's just the Border it's just the border with Mexico but the people coming in it's it's it's Earth the rest of Earth and and and America is is only you know about four four or 5% of the population of Earth it it would only take a few per of the rest of Earth to overwhelm everything in we're already overwhelmed Elon it's we're overwhelmed you had to see the news tonight about New York New York and\n\nI love that place and what they're doing to it is horrible what they're doing to it and all the courts do is they try and focus on Trump okay let's focus on Trump who did nothing wrong I complain about a rigged election Elon what's happened is UN un believable you have from Africa uh the Congo recently and their murderers and they dropped they they drop them they take them out of jails which is very expensive you know to maintain the jails although they don't do too much maintaining I can tell you but they take them out of jails prisons they take them out and they bring them to the United States they deposit them in the United States and say don't ever come back or you're going to be executed and they don't want to come back but they won't come back but\n\nbut they're coming from from Africa they're coming from Asia they're coming from the Middle East they're coming from South America they're coming from everywhere and they are a lot of really ones it's just a it's just it's just an everywhere on Earth uh thing and it's just it's just not possible for the United States to absorb you know everyone from Earth or or you know even a few percent of the rest of Earth it's just not possible so we're going to have that's that's just to finish this up we're going to have the largest deportation in history of this country and we have no choice otherwise we're going to have a country what they what they've done to our country think of it with with you know in Venezuela and in some of these other countries crime is\n\ndown 50 60 70 80% and you would be the same you would have you would I'll tell you what Venezuela has not gotten rid of all of them they've gotten rid of about 70% of their really bad people their jails are about 50% uh put into the United States same with other countries some 30% some are at 50% they're all different but the bottom line is they're all going to be at 100% why wouldn't you put 100% of and they doing it right now while this third rate phony candidate don't forget I beat I beat Biden uh he failed in the debate miserably and you know some people said oh gee it's too bad it's too bad he did so badly or I did well in the debate you know the first night they said wow one of the people at CNN said that was the greatest debate performance I've\n\never witnessed and then two days later they didn't talk about that they just said he was bad but that's okay that's the way I get treated and I don't mind that at all what I can tell you is this we cannot have a Democrat we cannot have her she's incompetent she's as bad as Biden in a different look she hasn't done an interview since this whole uh scam started and and say what you want this was a coup this was a coup of a president of the United States he didn't want to leave and they said we can do it the nice or we can do it the hard way yeah I they just took him out back behind the shed and basically shot him oh what they did with this guy and I'm no fan of his and he was a horrible president the worst president in history and one of the reasons he\n\nwas so bad first of all the Israeli attack would have never happened Russia would never have attacked Ukraine and we'd have no inflation and we wouldn't have had the Afghanistan mess if you think of it well and we wouldn't have had Afghanistan but we think of it we you take a few of those events away and we have a different world we would also have no inflation was caused by oil yeah no no I think you make an excellent point here which is that um when other countries can you know that that are you know are thinking about invading or doing bad things uh when they're thinking about that they're thinking about okay what's the American president going to do and are do they fear the American president or is it someone they they do not respect or and do not\n\nfear and I think they they do they do they would they rightfully be I mean you know look at that the footage of the assassination they're like okay you know president Trump is it's like don't mess with me I mean that's like whereas I think people are are not going to be and they obviously have not been at all intimidated by by Biden and they certainly will not be intimidated by by Kam and you have to really think about in the context of Global Security um that's that's that if the if the American president is someone someone that like you know evil dictators are scared of that makes a huge difference to the security of the world so I had a good relationship with Putin despite the Russia Russia Russia hoax that lasted for over two years just a hoax created\n\nby Hillary Clinton and uh Adam Shifty shiff some just bad people you know just sick people frankly I mean shiff shiff is a sick person he's going to end up probably being a senator it's hard to believe the whole thing is hard to believe but uh you know they put our country in danger with that stuff too they actually when they make up stories and you have to fight your way out of it for a long time but I know Putin very well I got along with him very well he respected me and it's just one of those things and he would we would talk a lot about Ukraine it was the apple of his eye but I said don't ever do it don't ever do it you know I shut down nordstream too that was the Big Oil pipeline the biggest I think the biggest pipeline in the world going all over\n\nEurope I shut it down by came and then they say I I you know I was I loved Russia I was a friend of Putin and I loved Russia now he actually said to me one time he said if you're my friend I'd hate to see you as an enemy I shut down his pipeline the biggest pipeline they were looking at that to fund and this this pathetic president gets in there and the first thing he did one of the early things he did is he shut down he he shut down keone XL Pipeline which is our pipeline that would have employed 48,000 people pipeline workers shuts it down that was you know a massive job that Obama refused to allow I allowed it in my first week because it was jobs and it moved oil and by the way in a much more environmentally friendly way it's underground it's not a\n\ntruck that catches on fire or a train that catches on fire but think of it he shut down the uh XL Pipeline the Keystone XL pipeline he shuts that down and he proves the Russian Pipeline yeah it doesn't make any sense it's like it's inconsistent um certainly the but I mean I think it's just worth emphasizing you know to listeners the that the the immense importance of of whether the United States president is intimidating or not intimidating um and how much that matters to Global Security um because there's some real tough characters out there and if they don't think the American president is tough they will do what they want to do I know every one of them and that puts that that it puts the whole world in danger El I know every one of them and I know\n\nthem well I know Putin I know president she I know Kim Jong-un of North Korea I know every one of them and let me tell you people will say oh this is terrible he said I'm not saying anything good or bad they're at the top of their game they're tough they're smart they're vicious and they're going to protect their country whether they love their country they probably do it's just a different form of love but they're going to protect their country but these are tough people at the top of their game and when they see a CALA or when they see uh Biden sleepy Joe they can't even believe it they can't believe this happened the all the stuff that you're seeing now all the horror that you look at Israel they're all waiting for an attack from Iran Iran would not\n\nbe attacking believe me you know when I was there and I say it with respect because I think we would have been good with Iran I don't want to do anything bad to Iran but they knew not to mess around Iran was because I told China if you buy from Iran oil it's all about the oil that's where the money is but if you buy oil from Iran you're not going to do any business with the United States and I meant it and they said we'll pass they didn't buy oil other countries likewise you want to buy you're not doing business with the United States and they they were at a point where they were they had no money for Hamas they had no money for Hezbollah they had no money for any of these instruments of Terror and it was amazing in fact there were articles when I was\n\nleaving which is hard to believe actually especially when you look at what's happened to our country our country is so bad right now it's such a different place we were respected think of it four years ago we were so respected to a point where when I said don't buy oil they didn't buy oil but they had no money and Israel would have never been attacked it zero chance and again I said to Vladimir Putin I said don't do it you can't do it Vladimir you do it it's going to going to be a bad day you cannot do it and I told him things that what I do and he said no way and I said way and you know it's the last time we ever had the conversation he would he would never have done I got along well with him I hope to get along well with them again you know getting\n\nalong well with them is a good thing not a bad thing I got along well with Jong-un when I met with President Obama just before entering you know it's a sort of a ritual and sat down with him and we talked it was supposed to be for a very short period of time it turned out to be a long period of time I said what's the biggest problem he said North Korea I had that problem worked out very quickly it was nasty at the beginning with rocket man and you know all the different things but all of a sudden I got those some those were some epic tweets by the way no they were epic everything he said he said that he has a red button on his desk I said I have a red button on my desk too but my red button is much bigger and my red button works and then I called him\n\nLittle Rocket Man if Little Rocket Man anyway here's the bottom line all of a sudden I got a call from him and they said they want to meet they want to meet me and we met yeah as you remember we met in Singapore we met also in Vietnam and uh I got along with them great we were in no danger but President Obama President Obama thought we were G to end up in a war a nuclear war with him and let me tell you he's got a lot of nuclear stuff too he's got plenty of nuclear he can do plenty of damage so yes I mean it's because you know I mean people like like Kim Kim you know Kim on they respond to strength not weakness well he uh he and I got he and I had a good relationship remember I remember I met him and and we walked onto his land nobody ever walked onto\n\nhis land before I walked on I wouldn't say let's bring up secret service again I wouldn't say they were thrilled when I did that I walked onto his land and uh it was it was an amazing period but we were not in danger with him because of me you know I always say that we have enemies on the outside and we have enemies on the inside we have some really bad people in our government and people that are and controlling of the people I mean I mention names but I I don't I really don't want to give them the credit but we have some really bad and I say they're more dangerous than Russia and China if if you have a a smart president a president that gets it we are not in danger from those countries because they need us and they need our help I mean we forced Obama\n\nif you think about it Obama and Biden and Bush to a certain extent in all fairness forced Russia and China together and if you're a history student the first thing you learn is you cannot let Russia and China align but then they also got if you take a look Iran and they have North Korea that's you know they caught the Access of Evil in the old days you had the Access of Evil well here we have a modern day Access of Evil these are powerful countries very heavy nuclear which is the biggest threat you know the biggest threat is not global warming where the ocean's going to rise one one8 of an inch over the next 400 years the big and you'll have more you'll have more ocean front property right the biggest threat is not that the biggest threat is nuclear warming\n\nbecause we have five countries now that have significant nuclear power and we have to not allow anything to happen with stupid people like Biden you know Biden uh did something with Russia uh there was no chance of him ever going in and when I left and then then after I left they started forming big armies on their on the border with Ukraine right and I looked at that and I thought he was doing that because Putin's a good negotiator I thought he was doing that to negotiate but then Biden started saying such stupid things for instance he said that uh it can be a NATO country now put Russia for for as long as there's been NATO has said we're never going to agree to that and we go right up front and say that and we did things and said things through this\n\npresident with a low IQ very low IQ he had a low IQ 30 Years Ago by the way but now he might not even have a IQ at all there is no there's nothing on the board that goes this long he said things that were so stupid that that that war would have been that war had zero zero chance of happening if I were there zero chance he was saying everything the opposite everything the opposite and it's so sad because many more people have been killed in Ukraine than you read about you don't read about how Bloody it is and how DES hey look just in the two armies you lost a half a million people and uh and you know Ukraine's having a hard time Ukraine I don't know if you saw the article recently and it's true you don't hear the true story but if you think about it uh\n\nRussia's gone you know Russia defeated Germany with us and they defeated Napoleon you know they've been around a long time they're a big fighting force and it's very unfair and Ukraine now doesn't have enough men they're now using young men and very old men to fight and it's it we're in a very bad position and I'm not going to blame exclusively but I can tell you I could have stopped that and a smart president could have stopped that it wouldn't have happened but we had a we had a man that actually made it it made it more prevalent it it it was so bad the words that he was using the stupid threats coming from a stupid face that that he was using I said this guy's going to cause us a war he's going to cause us and let me tell you it can lead to World War\n\nII that can lead to World War II the Middle East can lead to we have numerous places that could end up in a World War II right now for no reason whatsoever I think you're right I think I think people under underrate the risk of World War III and it's just the the you know when when you're looking at the risk of global thermonuclear Warfare It's game over for Humanity and you know that's it's something that people have I think after the end of the Cold War people have become complacent about but they're actually have forgotten that there are currently a lot of nuclear missiles that that that are that that have targeting parameters for the United States other countries and one of the things we're going to do is we're going to build an iron Dome over us\n\nwe're you know Israel has it we're going to have the best Iron Dome in the world we need it and we're going to make it all in the United States but we're going to have we're going to have protection because it just takes one maniac to you know start something we're going to have protection and we're going to have why shouldn't we have an Iron Dome Israel has one some other places have one that nobody even knows about frankly but uh Israel has it we're going to have an iron dome but you know with all of that being said to me that's so important the most important but with all of that being said the election's coming up the people want to hear about the economy and the fact that they can't buy groceries because they don't have enough money to buy groceries\n\nthe inflation has killed them food prices are up 50 60 even 100% in some cases and this this stupid Administration allowed this to happen and it's a shame and that's the thing that people most care about in my opinion they care about the Border a lot and we discussed the border at Great length it's nice to have a forum like this where I can discuss something at length and by the way you think Biden could do this interview do you think that K could do this interview they would take a pass you they so they don't need Elon they don't need Elon screaming out questions it's it's pretty sad when you think that somebody that does this for a living can't answer a question or is afraid to do an interview and in her case with a very friendly interview she's got\n\nall friendly interviewers it's pretty but the big thing now is the economy Elon and as much as I mean I view nuclear is the single most important thing but a lot of people don't a lot of people don't understand that but it doesn't have to if I understand that that's all you need because if I was President you're not going to have that kind of a problem but the the thing that they really is making them angry is what Kamala and Biden have allowed to happen to the economy it's a disaster with inflation the inflation it doesn't matter what you make the inflation is eating you alive if you're a worker or if you're a a uh just a a middle income person you can't afford you know four years ago five years ago people were saving a lot of money today they're using\n\nall their money and borrowing money just to live it's it's a horrible thing that's happening and we'll end that Qui yeah a a lot of people just don't don't understand where inflation comes from um inflation comes from government overspending because the checks never bounce when it's written by the government so if the if if the government uh spends far more than it brings in that increases the money supply and if the money supply increases faster than the rate of goods and services that's inflation um so so really we need to have uh we need to reduce our govern spending um and we need to reexamine I think we I think we need like a government efficiency commission to say like hey where are we spending money that's sensible where is it not sensible um and\n\nand we need to live within our our means we we we're currently adding I think a trillion dollars to the deficit uh every roughly every hundred days that's right um and you know the the interest payments on the national debt have now exceed the defense budget it's on the order of a trillion dollars it's interest and it's and it keeps it keeps growing I rebuilt our military largely rebuilt our military did a great job on it which was so important you know we had Jets we had Fighters that were uh and bombers that were 70 years old and we we did a great job in that then we by the way then we gave 85 billion of it to back to Afghanistan if you can believe it we gave them 85 billion you know they're one of the largest sellers of military equipment in the world\n\nthey're selling what we gave them that was one of the most embarrassing days in the history of our country but uh if you think about go let's go back to the uh the economy we have to bring Energy prices down energy started it the price of gasoline now your cars don't require too much gasoline so you know you're you have a good and you do make a great product I have to say I have to be honest with you that doesn't mean everybody should have an electric car but these are Minor Details but your your product is incredible but but the gasoline Elon is the the the cost of energy not only gasoline it's the cost of heating your house and cooling your house that has to come down it it's gone up 100% 150 and 200% and that has to come down when that comes down and\n\nwe're going to drill baby drill you know they stopped Drilling and then they went back to drilling because they went went back to the Trump policy but if they won the day after they get into office we're going to this country will go out of business because they're going to go to an energy policy that's not sustainable wind and different things you're not going to have anything and and I know you're a big fan of the AI and I have to say that Ai and this is shocking to me but AI requires twice the energy that the country already produces for everything so you're going to have to build we're going to have to build a lot of energy if our country will be competitive with China because that's our primary competitor for this on the AI you're going to need a\n\nlot of electricity you're going to need tremendous electricity like almost double what we produce now for the whole country if you can believe it sure um well just going you know back to this like the this this basic thing which that people try to make it sound complicated but it's not but inflation is caused by government overspending um would would you would you agree that that we need to take a look at government spending and and and and have perhaps a government efficiency commission uh that that just look tries to make the spending sensible and so the country lives within it means just like just like a person does the waste is incredible and it's nobody negotiates prices uh you used to have a lot of people making Jets and you end up with two companies\n\nand they'll probably try and merge at some point you you I mean I I wi through it like air for just a thing like Air Force One one of the first documents they asked me to sign a general walk said sir will you please sign this document what is it Air Force One that's with Boeing which is basically two planes 2747s and the price was $5.\n\n7 billion doll for two planes now now they're highly sophisticated they're even nicer than your plane okay but much more sophisticated they're very I won't say what's on it but they got a lot of stuff on it anyway but it's 5. 7 listen that's a crazy number a crazy number but said I'm not going to pay 5.\n\n7 I'm not going to do it I said who made the deal Obama and his people I said well then I know the deal is no good I'm not going to do it and over the course of about four weeks by my saying I'm not going to do it I got the price reduced by $1.\n\n6 billion for the exact same plane other than we had a nicer paint job if you want to know the truth but for the exact same plane I got I saved one and I said to Boeing man you guys must make a lot of money if you can reduce the price by that but now what I do hear is that they're going back to the uh Biden Administration and wanting big cost overruns you know because they see these Dopey suckers in there and they'll end up getting some of the money back but I shaved it by $1.\n\n6 billion doar for the exact same plan and and you can now take that and multiply that out times thousands of other items multiply numbers astronomical I agree with you well I mean if so so I mean I mean I think it would be great to just have a government efficiency commission that takes a look at at these things and and just ensures that the taxpayer money the the taxpayers hard-earned money is spent in a good way um and and and i' I'd be happy to help out on such a commission if it were form well you you're the greatest cutter I mean I look at what you do you walk in and you just say you want to quit they go on strike they I won't mention the name of the company but they go on strike and you say that's okay you're all gone you're all gone so every one\n\nof you is gone and you are the greatest you would be very good oh you would love it but you know if you look at ARG be happy by the way congratulations I just looked at the number of people that are listening to you and I chat we'll quot a chat but uh congratulations this is very good I mean it's great it's and and you're an interesting character you know the uh new head of a place called Argentina and he was he's a big you know he's great and he's a big magga fan you know that he ran on magga and he took it to an extreme too he ran on magga and I hear he's doing really a terrific job it's called make Argentina great again it worked out perfectly he came in he bought a lot of hats he brought of but he's he's doing a big job he really cut and I'm hearing\n\nthey're starting to do pretty well inflation's getting down you know they had like 2,000% they had inflation like like not normal inflation they had the the real deal but we're going to have that pretty soon we we have I think we have the worst inflation we've had in a hundred years they say it's 48 years I don't believe it I think we have the worst they don't include a lot of the items that should be included you know yeah well it's it's it's it's just from from government overspending and not just not spending taxpayer money effectively and and having you know just depart like so many departments you can't even name them all um and what Malay is doing um is you know he's he's cutting government spending he's simplifying things he's uh having you're\n\nputting in regulations that make sense and I and and and we're Argentina o overnight is experiencing uh a giant Improvement in prosperity but but it's also a lesson for the United States which is that um Argentina used to be one of the most prosperous countries in the world um you know in the I think in in the 30s 40s and and because of bad government policy it ruined the country and and if you take Venezuela for example Venezuela should be incredibly prosperous they they have you know phenomenal uh reserves of of everything oil everything and uh should be prosperous but if the government's wrong it it impoverishes the people and so I think we should not be complacent in the United States and thinking that and taking out prosperity for granted because\n\nif if with government policy we can run the country into the ground and that that's that's just something people should bear in mind don't take prosperity for granted well well think of education so we're ranked at the bottom of every list of the top 40 we're ranked number 40 number 38 uh Norway uh Switzerland Sweden different countries are ranked good actually China's pretty close to the top they're a top six or seven but we're ranked at the bottom almost at the bottom 38 39 940 in other words horrible and yet we spend more per pupil than any other country in the world so we spend more and what I'm going to do one of the first acts and this is where I I need an Elon Musk I need somebody that has a lot of strength and courage and smarts I want to close\n\nup Department of Education move education back to the states where where where States like Iowa where States like Idaho you know not every state will do great because states that basically aren't doing good now you look at Gavin nusum the governor of California he uh he's terrible he's does a terrible job so he's not going to do great with education but of the of the 50 I would bet that 35 would do great and 15 of them or you know 20 of them will be as good as Norway you know Norway is considered great uh you can name them I mean just they're so good some of these countries are so good but if if you go into some of these really well-run States you know we have states that don't know what debt is we have states that are have low taxes no debt everybody\n\nworking you know they're really well-run and maybe they have certain advantages in terms of location in terms of you know the land or the the sun the sun and the water and the whole thing you know there are a lot of advantages that some people but if you moved education back to the 50 you'll have some that won't do well but you'll have but they'll actually be forced to do better cu it'll be a pretty bad situation but but if you think about it you'll have some of these states I'll bet you'd have 30 35 States it'll be much better and you know what it'll cost less than half what it is in in Washington and these people don't care about students in these you know far away States and it would be it' be unbelievable yeah I think you're making a good point in\n\nthat um if the states have to have to if if each individual if each state has to compete against other states then then people will naturally U move to to states where it's better well like California you know as we said it's it's a badly Run State I could go through I got so many friends that are in those States even if they're Democrats I hate to mention certain States but Illinois badly run with pritzer he's a he's a real loser but but you know some of these places are just badly run but you know it's almost going to force them to run better and they won't do a good initially but but can you're not going to do worse than you're doing right now and I would say that the cost you would cut your cost by 50 or 60% and you'd have a little monitor you know\n\nyou want to make sure they're teaching English as an example you know give us a little English right sure yeah no but I mean I mean I mean some of these Governors are like are are doing so badly I mean they they got so many people moving out of their state they should they should get you- whole salesman of the Year award because they're driving so much uel it's actually amazing people people moving out is it amazing to you as a bus businessman that they can even survive like Illinois so many people are leaving and you wonder how do they survive I mean how do they survive uh I saw where you left California and you moved to Texas Texas does a great job uh but you know I mean I just wonder how do these states survive when big businesses a big oil company\n\njust left California as you know and they moved to Texas how do these big States survive when they lose so many businesses and their taxes are already really high you know the taxes are among the highest taxes you you almost wonder how do they how do they continue on and in many cases the governors don't do a good job and their crime ridden places you wonder how do they continue to just go on it's it's not it's not a good situation I mean I think the thing that's the only thing that's going to force some of these states to change is if they risk bankruptcy and they're not getting bailed out by the federal government right well going to get changed you remember the area in California where they had that where I guess somebody had Sticky Fingers and they\n\nstole a lot of money and uh they went into a form of chapter and it was very nasty for a period of time but now it's probably the most popular place in all of California so so you know at some point something like that may have to happen but the problem is uh you can't penalize people that loan money to the state when you have incompetent people like a pritsker look the family didn't want him in the family business and uh then he ends up being governor of Illinois so you know what is he going to be is he going to be a great governor and uh you know you have people I could name every one of them I got to know every one of these and some are very good and some are just horrible well I think that I mean that logic Point here to you know as you're saying\n\nlike the you know a lot of people are concerned about the economy a lot of people concerned about inflation and inflation is effectively a tax on people that that that save money and and for people that are working dayto day it's it's it's just it's just a form of Taxation um and uh and if if we can solve the government spending problem will solve the inflation problem which means people will have a better standard of living and that's that's a really big deal well the people that got hurt worst are the people that did it the way they were taught to do it all through you know their younger life and their their young life and their whole life the people that saved money and then they got no interest on their money and inflation d enoyed them and frankly\n\nthey were almost better off if they didn't do anything like that I mean those people have been absolutely decimated and we're going to bring those people back and help those people we've got to get the prices down you know when I look at bacon costing five four or five times more than it did a few years ago when when you look at some of the food products and and groceries people go they can't believe it they used to be able to buy a whole cart and today you know a lot of people just don't have the money they go in and they can't buy anything they they look at yeah it's sticker shock they call it sticker shock right I I think it really just come like I said I think just comes down to to to Really I guess two really two things which is is that if if you\n\nsolve government overspending you solve inflation which improves living advantage of the of the the average person and then and then if if you uh deregulate like have sensible regulations so because a lot of the regulations are nonsensical and and cause the cost to be extreme for no reason um and the but unless you've got effective deregulation like Reagan did did a great job on deregulation in the 80s but it's been 40 years since we hadn't at anyone really I mean during your Administration we made some progress but I think uh there opportunity to make I think radical progress with sensible regulation um and and and if those two things yeah those are the big deals we set a record we set a we did more deregulation and more uh restrictions on all of the\n\ndifferent businesses than any other president i c remember I had the rule for every one we put in you have to get rid of 10 or 12 and we we did radical cuts on all of that and a lot of that's being put back by this Administration and we did radical cuts on things that weren't necessary but we were we were all set you know we had the best economy ever maybe in the world and then what happened is co came in and we had to focus on that and nobody knew what it was and I always say I got good marks on economy good marks on Military we knocked out Isis we did so many different things we rebuilt but you know I never got the credit that we really deserved on what we did with with Co we never got the credit but uh we were if had that not happened the gift from\n\nChina from Wuhan uh came in from Wuhan the Wuhan La labs and I always said it and it turned out to be right but had that not had that not happened we were set to start reducing uh debt we're going to reduce taxes further I gave the largest tax cuts and we were going to reduce taxes still further for Middle inome people not only businesses but we did it for businesses because they're the ones that that's why we had the great job numbers but we were set to really start reducing debt and you know we we're sitting on the the biggest pile of liquid gold anywhere in the world bigger than Saudi Arabia bigger than Russia and we were going to drill and we were going to make so much money we were going to supply Europe with oil I had stopped the Russian Pipeline\n\nand we were going to supply them with oil and gas we were G to we were gonna make a fortune and then uh the covid came in and we had to we really had to divert then what happened is when they came in you know we we kept a lot of businesses alive if I didn't do what we did we would have had a 1929 type depression but the problem is when Biden came in he got trillions of dollars and just started spending it stupidly you didn't need it anymore you know we got over that bad period where it was everybody was dying and feeling you know it was it was just not a good period interestingly uh you know during his administration many more people died during his administration of Co than during my Administration and we really got the brunt of it but people don't realize\n\nmore people died during his administration than ours but it diverted us from doing what I wanted to do but we had the greatest for you know almost three years we had great and you know that probably better than anybody so many of your friends said to me the best years we've ever had in business were during the Trump years and and also said that uh African-American uh Hispanic American were so incredible they were having the best Asian-American women men young people without a diploma young people that graduated from the best colleges from from MIT from the Wharton School from all of the great col colleges Harvard they were doing better and people without a diploma were doing better and everybody was was happy and then Co came and we had we had the problem\n\nis they spent trillions and trillions of dollars they wasted they shouldn't have taken any money and we wouldn't be having inflation right now which is killing our country yeah yeah yeah absolutely I mean I should probably say something about like you know may my views on you know climate change and oil and gas um because uh I think it's probably different from what most people would assume um because I my My Views are actually pretty I think moderate in this regard which is that I I don't think we should vilify the oil and gas industry and the people that have worked very hard in those Industries to provide the necessary energy to to support the economy and and if we were to stop using oil and gas right now uh we would all be starving and the economy\n\nwould collapse uh so it's you know I don't think it's right to sort of vilify the oil and gas industry um and and I and I you know and the world the world has a certain demand for oil and gas and it's probably better if the United States provides that than than than some other countries um and and it would it would help with prosperity in the US um and at the same time obviously my view is is like we do over time want to move to um a sustainable energy economy because eventually you do run out of I mean you run out of oil and gas it's not there for it's not infinite um and there is there is some risk I think it's not the risk is not as as high as uh you know a lot of people say it is with respect to global warming but I think if if you if you just keep\n\nincreasing the post of million in the atmosphere uh long enough eventually it actually simply gets uncomfortable to uh to breathe people don't realize this if if the if you go to if you go past a thousand Poss million of of CO2 uh you start getting headaches and noria um and so we're we're now in the sort of 400 range we're adding I think about roughly two parts per million per year so I mean it still gives us so what it means like we still have quite a bit of time um but but so there's not like we don't need to to rush and and we don't need to like you know stop Farmers from farming or you know uh prevent people from having Stakes or basic stuff like that like like you leave the farmers alone I agree how crazy is that where you have Farmers that are\n\nnot allowed to farm anymore and have to get rid of their cattle and the whole the whole world is a little crazy but it's largely taken its lead from us I I do say though I've heard in terms of the fossil fuel because even to uh create your electric car and create the electricity you need it for the electric car you know fossil fuel is what really creates that at the generating plants and you know so you sort of can't get away from it at this moment I mean someday you might be able to but I do hear we have anywhere from 100 to 500 years left you know much of it hasn't even been found yet yeah but there are tremendous like anoir I got anoir in Alaska approved Ronald Reagan couldn't do it nobody could do it everybody tried nobody could do it I got it approved\n\nthe first thing that Biden did was unimo it it to get rid of it he uh ended it his uh his secretary went in and she ended it and what a what a disgrace that's andw that's bigger or they they think it could be bigger than so Saudi Arabia in Alaska could be bigger than Saudi Arabia but they went in and they terminated it and I'll get it going very quickly because not only is it big for Alaska I mean you talk about economic development that for the United States I mean that that is they say bigger than Saudi Arabia or the same size and pure really good stuff and you know they ended so I think we have you know perhaps hundreds of years left nobody really knows but during that time will come around that will be very good yeah well I mean my my estimate would\n\nbe you know a little more aggressive than that but it's it's not the sort of like we're all going to die in five years stuff that that's obviously BS um but I mean my view is like if you just look at sort of the POS million uh that increments every year you know you get sort of two or three POS for million every year of of CO2 u i mean my I I think some of that it's problematic if it accelerates if you start going from 203 to say five and then there may be some situations where uh you get uh a step change increase in the CO2 um and and I I think you we don't we don't want get too close to a thousand uh PPM because like that's that's actually makes it uncomfortable to to to to bre like just existing in in a th000 PPM CO2 is is uncomfortable that's that's\n\nlike a that's considered like an industrial Hazard right just so so it's you know that that's that's actually you start getting headaches and stuff so it's even without global warming it's not it's not comfortable so you you don't want to get too close to that but I mean I think we've got I think we want to just move over like and and if if I don't know 50 to 100 years from now we're um we're we're I don't know mostly sustainable I think that'll probably be okay um so it's it's it's not like the the house is on on fire immediately but it I think it it is something we we need to to move towards and on you know on balance it's probably better to move they're faster than slower but but like like I said without vilifying the oil and gas industry uh and and\n\nand without causing hardship in the short term I think this can be done um with without you know people can still have you know a stake and they can still drive gas in cars and they you know it's it's it's okay it's like it's not I don't think we should valify people for it but I think we should just just generally lean in the direction of of sustainability um and uh I I actually think solar is is going to be a majority of of Earth's uh energy generation uh in the future and it's certainly trending that way and and so you get the solar power um comine that with with with batteries so because obviously the sun doesn't shine at night and uh and then you use that to charge the electric cars and you have a long-term sustainable solution and you know that\n\nthat's what Tesla is trying to move things towards and I think we've made a lot of progress progress in that regard but when you look at our cars we we we like we don't believe that environmentalism that caring about the environment should should mean that you have to suffer so we make sure that our cars are are beautiful that they drive well if they're fast they're you know sexy I mean they're they're cool in fact literally I mean the sexy joke Model S model 3 Model X and why spells out sexy it was probably most expensive joke out there um but I you know I just I don't know like easy humor you know so um and but but I'm I'm I I'm a big fan of like let's have an inspiring future and let's uh let's work towards you know a better future and and and we can\n\ndo so without demonizing people right I'm I'm okay you know it's very interesting uh you use the word global warming and today they use the word climate change because you know you have some places that go up and you so they were getting themselves in a little trouble with the word global warming because not every place is warming some places are going the opposite direction but uh you know I'm sort of waiting for you to come up with solar panels on the roofs of your cars and on the trunks of the cars and it just seems like something that at some point you will come up with I'm sure you'll be the first but it would seem that a solar panel on on the roofs you know on flat surfaces on certain surfaces might be good at least in certain areas of the country\n\nwhere you have the or the world where you have the Sun but I would I would think and I have no idea because that's not my world but I would think that this would be uh something that would be interesting but you know the one thing that I don't understand is that people talk about global warming or they talk about climate change but they never talk about nuclear warming and to me that's an immediate problem because you have as I said five countries we have major nuclear and and you know probably some others are getting there and that's very dangerous that's where you need a strong American president because you just you don't want to have this proliferation but you have five countries and getting more you know China is much less than us right now but they're\n\nthey're going to catch us sooner than people think they're way lower Russia and us are number one and I we're sort of tied and China is far behind but they're developing at a level that you know you're not surprised to hear very fast it's gonna they'll end up catching up maybe even surpassing but to me the biggest problem is not uh climate change it's not and and everything's you know a problem but it's degrees to me the big problem is the nuclear power the power of nuclear is so great and when I talk about I'll prevent World I'll prevent World War III uh I will but but the truth is that you have to because this is no longer army tanks going back and forth and shooting at each other this is yeah a level of Destruction and power that nobody's ever seen\n\nbefore yeah and actually there's there's the bad side of nulear which is nuclear war very bad side but there's there's also I think um nuclear electricity generation is underrated um and it's actually you know people have this fear of of nuclear um nuclear electricity Generation Um but but it's actually one of the safest forms of electricity generation it's it's just a huge misunderstanding um and uh if you look at the injuries and desk you know caused by say I mean I'm not trying to pick on call mining but just any kind of mining operation um and uh there's a certain number of injuries and deaths per year um and you compare that to nuclear nuclear is actually way better um so it's it's underrated as a as an electricity source and I think it's it's something\n\nthat's worth reconsidering but there's so much regulation that people can't get it done um so that you know maybe they'll have to change the name the name is just it's a rough name there are some areas like like when you see what happened bad we have to Rebrand it we'll have to give it a good name we'll name it after you or something you know um no it has hey it has a branding problem you know when you see what happened it does have a branding problem when you see what happened in Japan where they say you won't be able to go on the land for about 3,000 years did you ever say that and in Russia where they had the problem where they you know the there's a lot of bad things happened and they have a problem and they say that in 2,000 years people will start\n\nto occupy the land again you know you realize it's pretty bad true but there's you're right about it it's aming it's actually not that bad so so like after Fukushima happened in Japan like people were asking me in California you know are we worried about like a nuclear Cloud coming from Japan I'm like no that's crazy it's it's actually it's not even dangerous in Fukushima I actually flew there and and and ate locally grown vegetables on TV to prove it um and and and I donated a a a solar water treatment yeah solar power system for a water treatment plant and um yeah but you haven't been feeling so well lately and I'm worried about it no no but I mean I'm only it's fine you know it's it's like uh you know Hiroshima and Nagasaki were bombed but now they're\n\nthey're like full cities again so it's not something that you know it's not it's not as scary as people think basically but um let's see I mean I mean are there some other topics we should touch on um oh you know like lawfare I think you know we need to be concerned about what they've done to this country obviously yeah yeah well we just won the big case in Florida this was a Biden Administration did something that's never been done in this uh country and that's go after their political opponent me with his nonsense uh and just nonsense in the big case in Florida we won but they've always they always pick a judge and a jur and they use local Das they use the local U uh attorney generals like fonnie you know fonnie spelled f ni I fonny and it's it's all\n\na big hoax and it's all run from there like in Manhattan uh the one of the top people from the justice department went in Ran Manhattan ran the state the Leticia James deal was run by a person from the Department of Justice Biden they've never done this before and they set up a very bad precedent it it's it's called lawfare Warfare it's uh it's a terrible thing and never happened in our country it does happen in banana republics and third world countries but it's never happened and the incredible thing is it actually drove my numbers up because people see you know fortunately I have a platform like you or you know in all fairness like a conversation like this where I can talk about it and people understand I mean you you fight for election integrity and\n\nyou end up getting indicted because you're fighting for election integrity and when the day comes that you can't fight for election Integrity you don't have a country anymore so what happens what happens is they went after their political opponent me now Biden's a you know close to vegetable stage in my opinion okay I I looked at him today on the beach and I said why would anybody allow him the guy could barely walk why would anybody allow him does he have a political advisor that think this looks good uh you know he thinks this looks good because it looks so bad and it's it's ridiculous I mean and he's been doing that for a long time you know he can't lift the chair the chair weighs about 3 ounces it's meant for children and old people to lift and he\n\ncan't lift it the whole thing is crazy well it's clearly I mean it's clearly like we just don't have a president right now you don't have a president and she's going to be worse than him because she is a San Francisco liberal who destroyed San Francisco and then as attorney general she destroyed California you talk about location and we're talking about the sun and the water and all there's nothing better than California she has destroyed that she was the original da she was the original in San Francisco she was the original attorney general in California what she has done to California is well you know better than I do you just left California for a lot of those reasons and what she's done with with crime with with cashless baale where you kill somebody\n\nI mean we have states there you kill somebody and they let you out right away I mean you you don't have to even put up and then they never find the people unless they kill again and then they let them out again are country is becoming a very dangerous place and she is a radical left San Francisco liberal and now she's trying to protect now she's looking like she's she wants to be more Trump than Trump if that's possible I don't think it's possible but she wants to be more Trump and Trump yeah I want a wall I you know she wants to release all the prisoners that are in detention and some of these guys are really bad that just came out today she wants she doesn't want to build the wall even though the walls work walls and Wheels you know in your business\n\neverything you do is obsolete almost well not the tunnels but everything is obsolete even your rocket ships they like a month later they're obsolete you find a better way to the only thing that's not obsolete is a wall and a wheel and the wall you know I built hundreds of miles of wall and that's why we had such good numbers I was going to add 200 miles we bought it we could have flipped it flipped it up in three weeks and they sold it for 5 cents on the dollar that meant I said wow that means that they actually do want to have open borders she wants to have open borders and now she's going like she's tough on the on the border it's such a lie yeah this is simply not true this is simply not true everybody knows it's true it's it's a disgrace that she\n\ncan say it no I mean obviously what what's happening sort of overnight is they're they're rewriting history and um and making uh kamla sound like a moderate when in fact she is far left like far far left worse than Bernie she is considered more liberal by far than Bernie Sanders she's a radical left lunatic and if she's going to be our president very quickly you're not going to have a country anymore and she'll go back to all of the things that she believes in she believes in defunding the police she believes in no fracking zero you no now all of a sudden she's saying no I I will I really want to see fracking the day the if they got in the day she got in she'll end fracking and by the way if people didn't think that the lunatics that that really believe\n\nin that uh they won't vote for her you know um like like the Palestinians and Israel she is so anti-israel and she's bad for both Biden actually did something that was impossible both sides hate him you know both sides that was a hard thing to do unification yeah no no I mean I mean the you know Netanyahu came to give a talk to a joint Senate and House uh sitting and I was there and and and comma stood him up you know what does that say I think it's highly disrespectful and I say if you're a Jewish person or if you believe in Israel if you're a a person that you know is a very pro Israel if you vote for her it's worse than Biden and Biden was bad but if you vote for her you ought to have your head examined and you see tonight I mean as we're doing this\n\nI'm seeing reports coming that they expect an attack tonight or tomorrow from hundreds and maybe thousands of rockets you know they're Iron Dome as they call it as we all call it but their Shield that they build uh that can be uh swamped we'll use the term that's appropriate swamp but they swamp it by shooting enough missiles you know this better than anybody by shooting enough missiles they can't defend themselves you know they just obliterate the whole place and that's what some people people think they're looking to do and we have no leadership there's no respect for the United States of America with these people and I'm telling you she'll be worse than him because she's a believer in being radical left and he wasn't I I think you're right I mean you\n\nreally it's it's important for the for the public that may be listening to this to say to look at Comm track record you know uh before the last like month and say uh is that a track record you agree with um and I think if you're an independ dependent moderate you definitely would not agree with it um because it is her behavior has been farle and we're seeing just an overnight propaganda attempt to rewrite history and make it sound like H is moderate when she in in fact is is not moderate well her uh her running mate uh approved signed into legislation tampons in boys bathrooms okay now that's all I have to hear tampons and boys bathrooms and that means she believes in that too I mean picked this guy because he was the closest to a lot of people thought\n\nshe'd pick sort of the opposite but she picked an anti-israel radical left person but she is far worse they say than Bernie Sanders if we have her as a president if we have a Democrat at this moment as a president I don't think our country can survive I I think it's I think it's a massive I think I think we're in massive trouble uh frankly with with a k Administration and that's my honest opinion um and uh and I I think uh I think really it's essential that that you win for the good of the country uh for this election and I mean that's I'm just stating my opinion um now you know you may have seen this but I I got a letter from the the the EU commission like saying you know to not have disinformation on the like during this discussion that we're having\n\nlike and you know this like there's there's a lot of attempts to do censorship and to force censorship even on Americans uh from other countries and um you know what do you think about that well I know the uh European Union very well they take great advantage of the United States in trade as you know we uh through a different for NATO uh we protect them and yet uh if you build a car in the United States you can't sell it in Europe you just can't sell it it's it's impossible uh the same thing with our Farmers our Farmers find it very difficult to do business you know we have a deficit with them of $250 billion which people don't know it sounds so nice to European Union but let me tell you they're they're uh not as tough as China but they're bad and I let\n\nthem know it and that's probably why they notified you no they don't treat our country well we defend them you know uh with Ukraine so we're in for 2 50 billion and they're in for about 71 billion and they have the same size it's if you add up the European nations that you know in terms of an economy it's about the same size when you say as us and they're and and and they're in much greater risk they they're right there we have an ocean separating us from in this case the enemy would be Russia used to be for the Soviet Union but let's assume they're close enough and what happens is uh they're in for 70 something million I I think I think even less than that billion and we're in for about 250 billion and it could be a lot higher than that and I say why\n\naren't you going to equalize why aren't they paying what we're paying and they're in much more you know they're it's much more important for them because of the fact that you know they're right near there I mean they're all sort of in that location we're not but they should they should and I did it with NATO we were there were only seven countries that were paid up in NATO out of 28 at the time and the United States was subsid the United States was subsidizing NATO tremendously subsidizing NATO and I said I went in and I said you got to pay up if you don't pay up we're not going to defend you any longer I took a lot of heat but you know what happened billions and billions of dollars came flowing in and yeah I I think I think a lot of the public isn't\n\nisn't aware of the fact that the United States pays a disproportionate share of of the NATO expenses and then we get taken advantage of on trade so think about it yeah well I mean the point of NATO is defending Europe and it's uh you know it it's like then okay well why why is the United States paying disproportionately more to defend Europe than Europe that doesn't make sense that's unfair um and that that is an appropriate thing to address well you know when you talk about cost cutting and savings and everything else I mean honestly look there's nobody that feels worse about the Ukraine situation than I do because I know it would have never happened I know zalinski he was very honorable to me because when they went with the Russia hoax and they said\n\nI had a phone call with him he said it was a perfect phone call it was a great phone call he could have grandstand it and you know said oh he he was very threatening he said no it was a very nice phone call I called him up to congratulate him on his win and you end up getting impeached because these people are lunatics you know I was talking about the difference from the people within and the enemies on the outside in many cases the people from within are more dangerous for our country than the Russians and the chin if you have a smart president you're not going to have a problem with them you're going to make you're going to do things yeah now they've taken advantage of us incredibly but you're going to do things with the right person yeah well I I I\n\nthink I think it's obvious that you're you're you're a Believer and an advocate of of free speech because during your first time as president you were attacked relentlessly every day often very unfairly with f you know with with false attacks and and you didn't try to shut down the media you didn't try to uh inhibit their freedom of speech and I think that's his lot well the good thing is that you and I have and some people very few uh we can get the word out although sometimes it's hard because they don't want to print it you know like like we're having a great conversation right now Camala wouldn't have this conversation she can't because she's not smart you know she's not a smart person by the way she can't have this conversation and Biden we don't\n\neven have to talk about it I mean he couldn't have this conversation he he would have given up in the first half of a question he would have walked out he would have said where am I where am I going so anyway but no he wouldn't have this that's true not a lot of people would have this conversation but you know we cover a lot of territory but the beauty is that you you know we can have a conversation and I get it out without because I get this is a really big point you can actually have a conversation with you yeah it's nice isn't it and you can't have a conversation with Biden or Kamala it's like not uh it's not possible that's true so it's like talking to an NPC so it's just impossible but think of it we need a man or person who's unbelievably sharp\n\nin order to stop all the nuclear danger and all the dangers that I'm talking about and I got along with all the you know I got along with Kim Jong-un we had dinner we had everything and he he really liked me and I got along with him really well by the way he's he's the absolute boss over there you know a lot of people said oh do you think he really let me tell you I saw things that you don't want to know about he is the boss but you we had a good relationship and and he doesn't like uh Biden he considers him a stupid man he said he's a stupid man well at least he speaks his mind but you know in this country you're not sort of allowed to say it but I guess you are you should be allowed to say it it's true but we need really we need smart people and we\n\nneed people that have an ability to lead and she doesn't have that ability can you imagine now you know chairman she very well can you imagine her and him negotiating or even standing together it it is the whole concept is ridic she is terrible she's terrible but she's getting a free ride I saw a picture of her on Time Magazine today she looks like the most beautiful actress ever to live I it was a drawing and uh actually she looked very much like our great first lady Milani she look she didn't look she didn't look like Camila that's right but of course she's a beautiful woman so we'll leave it at that right yeah well you know maybe like I think it's part of what you know people in America want to you know people in America want want to feel excited and\n\ninspired about the future I want to feel like the future is going to be better than the past and that this that America is going to do things that are greater than uh we've done in the past reach New Heights that make you proud to be an American and uh and excited about the future um they want the American dream back you know they want the American dream back more important than anything else it's it's like you don't have that today because the people they've been just sucked they see incompetent people running our you know the the Biden thing is very interesting people just found him to be incompetent and when I debated him I was like is this for real it was yeah it's just it was just absurd um but I youan know I think there there are like you know some\n\nsome you know Grand projects that that that we we could do I mean I think like you know we could we could build a base on the moon we could send American astronuts to Mars we we could uh bu build highspeed connections that are you know more advanced than anything else in the world between our cities so people have fast transport um you know it's possible to solve traffic with tunnels we we you know we already made pro great progress in Vegas doing that and um you know and and and just do things that are exciting and inspiring to make the future feel like it's better than the past well I saw what you did in Vegas and I'll tell you it was amazing I I got to see I took a big Glimpse at it and it's incredible what you you know it's incredible and you could\n\ndo that all over you could do that all over it's uh it's deep yeah you don't even need much structure you know assuming you're in the right area no it's it's straightforward it's amazing so and and like I think we could do some some things that like like China's got incredible highspeed Rail between its cities but I think it's actually possible um with with with tunnels if if with deregulation with with an ability to actually where like legal to to to actually do the tunnels think you can have highspeed uh tunnels that are actually better uh than than than anything else in the world for high-speed transport between cities and that would be something that you know Americans can say wow okay we've got something that's cooler than anyone else in the world\n\nthat's that's the kind of thing that makes you proud to be in America much safer than surface trains where there is a danger there you know with people with crazy people it's much safer much better uh and you know it's sad because I've seen some of the greatest trains I I find it fascinating and I've seen the systems and how they work and the bullet trains they call them I guess and they they go unbelievably fast unbelievably comfortable with no problems and we don't have anything like that in this country not even close and it doesn't make sense that we don't doesn't make sense yeah I I I think also like there there's you know I just I'm kind of hopping on the excess regulation but I think something that um that I think people can generally understand\n\nis that what happens with laws and regulations is that they just there's more and more of them every year and unless there's a process to clean them up eventually everything becomes illegal and and that actually SL slow it slows down the development of new technologies I mean if you take the sort of like I think we there there there's room for some reform at the at the FDA uh for improving the speed with which we you know approve uh drugs that that could help save lives and improve people's lives um and I work very hard on that you know we got that down to to the lowest number ever and we got uh Therapeutics approved in the FDA that people can't even believe the speed but I I took them on I I don't think they like me too much but I got things approved\n\nin the FDA at at at numbers that they wouldn't believe and you know it's a very bureaucratic group actually it's a fine group of people in many cases I got to know a lot of them but I was pushing them really hard for regenerant for so many different things that that were really pretty amazing but but the FDA takes too long they would it's 12 years to get a product approved I got it down to four and I got some things done very quickly but it's uh it's really something that is going to have to be worked on because it takes too long just takes too long yeah it just takes too long and it's you you end up in the same with with the approval but just it's just you know it takes years instead of something that that I think could potentially take months that impr\n\nimproves people's lives I think you know and and but but it I I just wanted to hop on this point that like there has to be an active process uh for reducing rules and regulations because otherwise they they just keep building up every year and you get like hardening of the arteries and eventually everything's illegal or takes forever um and and then and then we we we just um we just aify as a society we just uh we can't make any progress and and that's it's a really big deal you know Elon just getting back to the FDA for one second I got something done called right to try this is where you can go in and if you're terminally ill you can use a Space Age uh you know medicine or whatever it may be we have the best doctors the best labs in the world we really\n\ndo and but people would go to other countries because you couldn't use this the product even if they thought it worked because it's going through the FDA I got it approved where you can you you basically look nobody want the doctors didn't want it because of the liability the country didn't want it our country because they didn't want to get sued these are people terminally ill the insurance companies didn't want it and the pharmaceutical companies nobody wanted it I got everybody into a room and we came up with an agreement that you won't get sued and also they didn't want it on their record if somebody's terminally ill and they die after taking a drug they didn't want that on their record so we set a second a separate list if somebody was so it wouldn't\n\ncount as a negative okay and as you know we got it done we have saved right to try they've been trying to get this done for 58 years and it sounds simple but it wasn't because you know I mean you know the insurance companies nobody wanted it but we got it done somebody signs you sign a document that you're not going to sue the insurance companies the country you're not going to sue anybody and we got it done and we're saving tens of thousands of lives right to try hopefully you never need it but if you do you don't have to travel to Asia you know people if they had money they go to Asia they go to Europe if they don't have money they go home and die that's what happened they'd go home and die yeah well well I mean and actually to give Europe some some\n\nprops here it's like if a drug is improved approved in the in in Europe which has a crazy amount of regulations it should obviously be approved in the US I mean they got more regulations than we do so what why would a drug be approved in Europe and not in the US that that's crazy well we did it we did something that really they've been trying to do it for 50 years and they just couldn't get it done and I got it done and it's uh it's really something but you're right some people go to Europe because a drug isn't approved here but it's approved in Europe and it's a drug that generally speaking would work it's pretty crazy absolutely you're right and I I think so as long as people are properly informed of the pros and cons and like these are the risk the\n\nyou know those are the risk and like you make your own decision um that's that Mak sense well I think just you know in sort of closing up and by the way I'm looking at the numbers you get a lot of people listening I hope you don't get nervous because you got a lot of people listening to you right now like 60 million or something what is that number that's crazy it's amazing how you can see that right away how many what is the number wow what is it well I think in terms of people that's bigger than you said you you said 25 and you're more than much more than double that number 25 million I think you're going to be 60 or 70 and I guess over a period of time hey that's I congratulate you do I get paid for this or not well I I think actually in terms of the\n\nnumber of people that will will hear this conversation um over the next uh you know few days two weeks uh it it's going to be hundreds of that's what they say yeah that's good well look it's an honor yeah I but I I just asked this are you better off now or were you better off when I was President nobody's better off now people you know we put out polls on that and nobody's better off now inflation has killed it and you know they also feel very unsafe you look at what's going on with a lot of different things you look at the riots we had at the colleges over I mean it's ridiculous but right all of the rights they just feel unsafe and now they really feel unsafe because you have a new form of crime it's called migrant crime crime I call it Biden migrant\n\ncrime maybe I'll call it Cala migrant crime but you know I mean with all these things I always try to like try to get to the ground Truth by just asking people and you know my my mom lives in New York and I I was like you know Mom you know do you know have you any of your friends you know been attacked or assaulted and she said yeah three of her friends in three separate incidents were assaulted just just just in recent months just walking around the streets of New York and and I and and I said well did what what happened to the people that sold them oh nothing they they got away like and and they they just know always get away nothing's and they don't even they don't even bother reporting it because there's not they know that there's not they're not\n\ngoing to you know people are not going to get prosecuted they just they just let you know violent criminals out in New York the only one that gets prosecuted is Donald Trump they don't get they prosecute Trump yeah I mean it's it's it's just obviously messed up terrible if violent criminals are being are being getting off Scot um and and and meanwhile the you know New York spending massive resources Prosecuting you and it's like what's this you know and and I think the sort of sensible public said looks at this and says what the heck's going on here this is obviously abuse the legal system um you know the the legal system is supposed to be protecting the public from um violent criminals and it it should be obviously allowing the public to make their own\n\ndecision about who should be president as opposed to you know some uh you know legal case once they start this precedent because this can go on with the next one I mean this is a very bad precedent what they're doing in terms of you know going after their political opponent and that's all it is it's going after their political opponent and and then you get a judge who's you know a strong Democrat and I'm being nice when I say that in many cases crooked as hell but you get a judge and you go into an area where a republican gets three or 4% of the vote and you know you'll have a jury pool with uh people that hate Republicans or hate it could also be the other way though because it could start the other way in areas where they hate Democrats and you get\n\ninto a Pandora's Box it's a very dangerous thing for this country and a very dangerous thing even for the state New York City is Los New York city and state lose a lot of business over what they did to me because these people say we don't want that to happen to us that's no justice system you have an unfair system of justice and it's costing New York State a tremendous amount of money people are leaving and companies are leaving and they won't come back so you know all of that stuff is important but the economy now is the big thing and we can turn that economy up so fast and people are going to be back again we're going to get rid of I think there's lot a lot of opportunity absolutely absolutely so and I just want I want to congratulate you you've done\n\nan amazing job you are you have definitely got a fertile mind you know we can talk you and I can talk about rocket it's kind of you to say well tunnels we can talk about tunnels and Rockets and and uh electric cars so many things and now you're you're into the AI and that's going to be another Beauty I say so it's uh yeah it's an amazing it's an amazing thing you've done Elon it's an amazing thing and I congratulate you I mean thank you and well I mean I just say here you know here's to an exciting inspiring future that people can look forward to and be optimistic and excited about what happens next and that's uh the kind of future that I think uh will bring as president and that's why I endorse you well I appreciate that that endorsement meant a lot\n\nto me not all endorsements mean that much to be honest your endorsement meant a lot and you know we have a a phrase make America great again it's pretty simple but it really says that we want to make America great again and we can do it we can do it now but if we were going to suffer another four years like we've suffered for the last four years I'm not sure the country can ever come back that's how bad it is it's so bad we have to we have to do a lot think it's a big risk it's a very real risk and and you know I just like to to note to people listening like I I've not been very political before and and if just if you look at my TR my record it's I've actually been I'm I'm I'm not like sometime they try to paint me as like a far right guy which is absurd\n\nbecause I'm like making electric vehicles and you know solar and batteries helping them with the environment and uh and and I actually I I uh you know I I supported Obama I stood in line for six hours to shake Obama's hand when when he was for president and you know so it's not like I'm like some sort of died in the wool long-term Republican I'm actually I call myself uh you know historically a moderate Dem Democrat and but now I feel like we're really at at a critical juncture for the country um and uh you know I think a lot of people thought you know that Biden Administration would be a moderate Administration but it's not and and obviously that we're just going to see it um an even F left uh Administration with with kamla that's that's my honest opinion\n\nI mean her dad is literally I mean she was brought up as a as an actual her dad is is is a Marxist Economist that's you can Google it I mean it's not a we're not making this up you know um that's how she was brought up so and and we we we just we want to have a future that is prosperous and and I I think we're just at this critical juncture and um and it I think this is a case of the America uh is is going to add a fork in the road and true um and I think it will take it will take if the path to like you are the path to prosperity and I think Kamala is the opposite then that's my I mean that's my honest opinion I'm I'm going to get attacked like crazy and you know I've also experienced quite a bit of lowf far myself um and uh but I'm just trying to tell\n\npeople my honest opinion and and I I haven't been active in really active in politics before um and I'm just trying to point out that my track record historically has been moderate if not moderate slightly left and and uh so this is to people out there who are in the moderate Camp to say I think you should support um Donald Trump for president um and and I I think it's actually a very important Junction the road and and we're deep trouble if they if if if it goes the other way well I want to thank you and you know I actually always did think of you as somewhat left I must say that so it's uh it's even more of an honor to have your endorsement I know how strong you feel about it but you know when you think of her uh San Francisco 15 years ago I had a great\n\nfriend Bob Tish he said it's the greatest city in America and now it's you it's not it's almost not livable there and California likewise and she was involved in the destruction of San Francisco and the destruction of California and she will be involved in the destruction of our country if people are so unwise as to elect her and I hope that doesn't happen and I hope the elections are going to be run honestly and we're going to turn this country around we're going to we're going to do things that and we can do it fairly quickly and we have to get rid of the criminals that have been you know given to us by other countries as they laugh they laugh at us they think we're stupid to accept these people these are radical Stone Cold Killers in many case cases\n\nand terrorists and they're in our country by the hundreds of thousands yeah and we have to take them out yeah I mean if if I could it perhaps you know I think the these are issues that I think most people in America uh would would agree with which is that we want safe and Clean Cities we want secure borders uh we want sensible government spending we want to restore both the perception and the reality of respect in the in the in the judicial system you know stop the lawfare um and uh and I think that that's like and how are how are those even right-wing positions I think those are just that's just common sense and and that's uh I mean would you agree with that 100% I I don't understand you know the whole they call it Progressive they don't like the word\n\nliberal anymore but call it liberal or Progressive I don't understand how somebody could say that it's okay for them to empty prisons into our country and again I told you their crime rates all over the world are going way down which makes sense in fact the next time what we'll do is if something happens with this election which would be a horror show we'll meet the next time in Venezuela because it'll be a far safer place to meet than our country okay so we'll go you and I will go and we'll have a meeting and dinner in Venezuela because that's what's happening their crime rates coming down and our crime rates going through the roof and it's so simple and you haven't seen anything yet because these people have come into our country and they're just getting\n\nacclimated and they don't know about being politically correct law enforcement or lack of law enforcement and our police I I have to just with this we have great police we have great law enforcement but they're not allowed to do their job they have to be able to do their job without being destroyed well absolutely and it's it's obviously demoralizing if you're a police officer risking your life uh to you know to you know to arrest uh violent criminals who could kill you and do kill you sometimes um and then you you arrest the violent criminal and then the The Da you know doesn't prosecute and and that's let the guy out well then like why why should police officer risk their life uh to arrest a violent felon well even worse nothing's going to happen even\n\nworse they prosecute the police officer they they go after a and they prosecute the police officer and they take away his pension they take away his job he loses his family he loses his house well I I I thought I thought it was very telling like incredibly telling that you know when that that was that case where uh you know sort of a gang of thugs beat up uh police officers I think it was in Times Square in New York and and and then nothing happened to those guys they were they were let out zero bail and I think a bunch of them were given free tickets to California well what is I mean that that is that is a that is a gross indignity against the United States and and that's how I mean this is insane like have we lost all Pride what what that how can such\n\na thing be allowed to occur I've never seen anything you know we've see where they get shot it's very dangerous profession but something they're very proud of and they want to be able to do their job but I've seen them get shot I've seen a lot of but I've never seen where these guys are standing in the middle of a big street everybody watching them and they're literally boxing like punching stand up fighting a police officer there were two of them and you had about six of these guys and they're punching the hell out of them and in their own country they would be dead if they did that they'd be shot they would be shot instantly and you know they come from these countries and it's taking them a while to realize that we don't do that in this country but\n\nin their own country if they stood on a street and had a fight with a police officer they would be shot there's no political correctness and it's such a sad it's such a sad thing to see and that's the reason you have crime by the way because we don't do anything about it yeah we we just cannot have a situation where our police officers beat beaten up on camera uh by you know a a gang of illegal immigrants and then nothing happens to to to the guys that beat beat up the cops I mean and they're let out this is unacceptable we're going to change it and we're going to get them out of the country you know when I first got involved they said you couldn't get them back to these countries you couldn't take them back in the case of uh Guatemala Honduras El Salvador\n\nsome others you couldn't get her back and I said really oh you can't get it back because under uh Obama he couldn't get him back they'd put up they'd fly him in and they'd put planes on the runways in these countries so you couldn't land a plane they bring them back and the general told me the generals told me you sir we can't bring them back the countries won't accept MS-13 gang members they won't accept them and I said really how much do we pay these various countries in terms of economic aid which is also somewhat ridiculous and the answer was $750 million I said good tell them they're in default they're delinquent we're not going to do we're not paying them anymore because they won't accept and you know what happened they all called me every one of\n\nthem they said we would be honored to take them back sir we would be honored it was so easy but it's one of those things and we got them back we took in so many you know MS13 is probably the worst gangs in the world they're the most vicious violent we took them out of here by the thousands and got them out of here and their countries took them back and because I said you're not getting any more economic aid and once I said that they were nice they wouldn't take them back for Obama they wouldn't take them back for anybody and now we have a problem because we have this guy and they again they don't take him back anymore with the Biden because they don't respect him yeah yeah so it's just it's just got to it's it's got to be done we we just can't can't have\n\nuh whether they're citizens or not citizens we can't have because they one pro prosecuted citizens either not not just not just legals so uh that if it's you can't have violent you repeat violent offenders that are not that that that don't get um incarcerated right because will they will obviously by definition continue to uh to to uh you know hurt people and and and I I think where part of this comes from is that there's um and I you know I do sort of consider myself liberal in some ways I mean I it's just that you want to have empathy for people obviously you want to have empathy for people I totally agree with that you want to have empathy but you also have to have empathy for the victims of the criminals and if you if you just have empathy for the\n\ncriminals it's it's actually shallow empathy it's not real you're not thinking you're not you have one layer deep uh empathy you got to say like what if you don't incarcerate this person who are they going to uh hurt who are they might kill someone they might rap rape someone if if you don't incarcerate them you have to have empathy for the victims and there's a lack of empathy for the victims of the criminals and and too much empathy for the criminals it doesn't make sense I that's why you want to have deep empathy for society as a whole not shallow empathy for criminals and we have to give our police officers the dignity and the respect that they deserve and we have to let them do their job they they can do a great job but we have to let them do their\n\njob and if we don't do that we you know it's it's going to all it's going to all disappear there's never been a society like this where you're allowed to do anything you want and nothing happens and I'm talking about violent crime and it's going to get more violent because these are really really violent people people and we're going to get them out of our country and we're going to get them back to where because they were sent here by the presidents and by the various people that run those countries and I know every one of those guys and they're smart people and they're StreetWise people and they really think that the USA is stupid they think we're run by stupid people and they happen to be right but when I was there we had no problem we got them out\n\nwe took out thousands of MS13 gang members we brought them back and now again they it's the same old story we don't do it and they actually gave them a big increase in Aid they they raised it up to billions of dollars and they get nothing for it so you know it's it's uh I hope everybody's going to vote for Trump and we're going to get this country straight and I didn't need this I'm like I didn't need this I had a very nice life I didn't need to to go through court systems and go through all the other stuff and run at the same time I have to run I have to go through fake trials with in some cases corrupt judges totally corrupt judges I didn't need it I had a nice life I have great locations I have beautiful oceans that I have places you know I this was\n\nbut I felt it was important and if I had to do if I had to do it over again you probably think I'm crazy for doing it actually but if I had to do it over again I would have done it over again because this is so much more important than me or my life this is we're going to save this country this country is going down and these people are bad people that were running against and they're Liars they make statements they they they do things that are so bad they they say they're going to make a strong border they say they've been great on the border and they've been the worst in history they say they're going to stop CRI the facts speak for themselves so incredible speak themselves it's got G to the point where where people just don't even bother reporting\n\ncrime in a lot of CI because they know nothing that's going to happen um you know that's what I hear anecdotally from from people all the time um so you know it's just uh you know my values I'm just saying to to people out there like my you know the things I I think are important for the future is like we've got to have safe cities we got to have secure borders we got to have senseful spending and and we have and we've got to have de you know deregulation and um so we can have a prosperous future and then we want to have some exciting you know sort of moonshot projects that that people can get fired up about and um you know that's that's the future I'm looking for and um you know I'm Pro environment um but but I'm I'm not against uh you know I'm not like\n\nI don't think we should vilify the oil and gas industry because they're they're keeping civilization going right now and uh but I do think we want to move you know you know a reasonable speed towards uh a sustainable energy economy those those are my values and and and I think um you know and and and so I mean that's uh why I'm supporting you for president you know well I appreciate we're going to make we're going to give incentive to companies to come into our country not to leave our country we're going to be giving tremendous incentives we want companies to build here not to build in other locations and we want to create jobs and again it's about the American dream you don't hear about the American dream anymore Elon you don't hear you're the American\n\ndream in the TRU sense but you don't hear about the American dream anymore and you're going to hear about it people they need that incentive to go out and and do it and they're they're going to love their lives I mean they're going to love they're going to look forward to getting up in the morning and going to you know going to a job that they love not a job that they can't stand or not any job at all where they have no money where they literally have no money and then they end up with violence and lots of other problems no we're going to do we're going to do some great things and I learned a lot in the first we had a great economy and all of that we rebuilt the military we did so much but I also learned and I also learned the best people I learned the\n\ngood people the the smart people the dumb people the people that can do things the people you know you learn when I first came in I I tell people I was in Washington DC only 17 times according to the fake news media I was in 17 times I never stayed over and you don't know people you rely on other people to give you names and then you realize the people you relied on weren't so good now we had great people but we also had some where I wouldn't have you know used them had I known now I know everybody and I think we're going to uh we're going to really turn things around fast we have no choice otherwise we're not going to have a country and I really appreciate this has been to me it's been a lot of fun being with you you're an amazing guy you've done an\n\nincredible job and a great inspiration to people a great inspiration and I hope you keep going and just uh continue to do well and we're going to have a big election coming up and I think November 5th will be the most important day in the history of our country I think that election will be the most important election and I think it'll end up being maybe the most important day in the history of our country because if we don't win I just feel so sorry for every everybody no we're I think we're at at a folk in the road of Destiny of of civilization and um and I think we need what it comes down to thank you very much Elon it's a great honor and we'll we'll do it again sometime and uh it's been really fun and I hope you got a lot of viewers I hear you got\n\na lot but I hope you I know you got a lot of them so uh I appreciate it I'll see you soon all right sounds good thank you thank you Elan thank you very much bye"},"languages":["en"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cr9j8e7tt8M"},{"id":"lex-fridman-438-musk-2024","type":"interview","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kbk9BiPhm7o","title":"Lex Fridman Podcast","titles":{"en":"Lex Fridman Podcast","de":"Lex Fridman Podcast","fr":"Lex Fridman Podcast"},"date":"2024-08-03","summary":"Musk's fifth Lex Fridman appearance, joined by the Neuralink team and first human implant recipient Noland Arbaugh, on brain-computer interfaces and the future of humanity.","text":"The following is a conversation with Elon Musk, DJ Seo, Matthew MacDougall, Bliss Chapman, and Nolan Arbaugh about Neuralink and the future of humanity. Elon, DJ, Matthew and Bliss are of course part of the amazing Neuralink team, and Noland is the first human to have a Neuralink device implanted in his brain. I speak with each of them individually, so use timestamps to jump around, or as I recommend, go hardcore and listen to the whole thing.\n\nThis is the longest podcast I've ever done. It's a fascinating, super technical, and wide-ranging conversation, and I loved every minute of it. And now, dear friends, here's Elon Musk, his fifth time on this, \"The Lex Fridman Podcast.\"\n\nDrinking coffee or water?\n\nWater. I'm so over-caffeinated right now. Do you want some caffeine?\n\nI mean, sure.\n\nThere's a Nitro drink.\n\nThis supposed to keep you up till like tomorrow afternoon basically. (laughs) - Yeah. I don't have any- - So what is Nitro? It's just got a lot of caffeine or something?\n\nDon't ask questions. It's called Nitro.\n\nDo you need to know anything else?\n\nIt's got nitrogen, that's ridiculous. I mean, what we breathe is 78% nitrogen anyway. What do you need to add more for? (laughs) - [Speaker] Unfortunately, you're gonna need it.\n\nMost people think that they're breathing oxygen, and they're actually breathing 78% nitrogen. You need like a milk bar.\n\nMilk bar. (Elon laughing) - Like from Clockwork Orange. (laughs) - Yeah, yeah. Is that top three Kubrick film for you?\n\nClockwork Orange, it's pretty good. I mean, it's demented. Jarring, I'd say.\n\n(laughs) Okay. Okay, so first let's step back and big congrats on getting Neuralink implanted into a human. That's a historic step for Neuralink.\n\nOh, thanks, yeah.\n\nThere's many more to come.\n\nYeah, and we just, obviously, our second implant as well.\n\n[Lex] How did that go?\n\nSo far, so good. Looks like we've got, I think over 400 electrodes that are providing signals. So yeah.\n\nNice. How quickly do you think the number of human participants will scale?\n\nIt depends on the regulatory approval, the rate which we get regulatory approvals. So we're hoping to do 10 by the end of this year. Total of 10, so eight more.\n\nAnd with each one, you're gonna be learning a lot of lessons about the new biology, the brain, everything, the whole chain of the Neuralink, the decoding, the signal processing, all that kind of stuff.\n\nYeah, yeah, I think it's obviously gonna get better with each one. I mean, I don't wanna jinx it, but it seems to have gone extremely well with the second implant, so there's a lot of signal, a lot of electrodes. It's working very well.\n\nWhat improvements do you think we'll see in Neuralink in the coming, let's say, let's get crazy, the coming years?\n\nI mean, in years, it's gonna be gigantic, because we'll increase the number of electrodes dramatically. We'll improve the signal processing. Even with only roughly, I don't know, 10, 15% of the electrodes working with Noland, with our first patient, we were able to get to achieve a bit per second. That's twice the world record. So I think we'll start like vastly exceeding world record by orders of magnitude in the years to come.\n\nSo it's start getting to, I don't know, a hundred bits per second thousand. Maybe if like five years from now, we might be at a megabit, like faster than any human could possibly communicate by typing or speaking.\n\nYeah, that BPS is an interesting metric to measure. There might be a big leap in the experience once you reach a certain level of BPS.\n\n[Elon] Yeah.\n\nLike entire new ways of interacting with a computer might be unlocked.\n\nAnd with humans.\n\nWith other humans.\n\nProvided they have (laughs), they want a Neuralink too.\n\nRight.\n\nOtherwise, they won't be able to absorb the signals fast enough.\n\nDo you think they'll improve the quality of intellectual discourse?\n\nWell, I think you could think of it, if you were to slow down communication, how do you feel about that? If you'd only talk at, let's say, 1/10th of normal speed, you'd be like, \"Wow, that's agonizingly slow.\"\n\n[Lex] Yeah.\n\nSo now, imagine you could speak, communicate clearly at 10 or 100 or 1,000 times faster than normal.\n\nListen, I'm pretty sure nobody in their right mind listens to me at 1x, they listen at 2x. (Elon laughs) I can only imagine what 10x would feel like or could actually understand it.\n\nI usually default to 1.5x. You can do 2x, but well, actually, if I'm listening to somebody in like sort of 15, 20 minutes segments to go to sleep, then I'll do it 1.5x. If I'm paying attention, I'll do 2x. (laughs) - Right.\n\nBut actually, if you start actually listen to podcasts or sort of audio books or anything, if you get used to doing it at 1.5, then one sounds painfully slow.\n\nI'm still holding onto one because I'm afraid. I'm afraid of myself becoming bored with the reality, with the real world where everyone's speaking on 1x. (both laughing) - Well, depends on the person. You can speak very fast. Like we can communicate very quickly. And also, if you use a wide range of, if your vocabulary is larger, your bit rate, effective bit rate is higher.\n\nThat's a good way to put it.\n\nYeah.\n\nThe effective bit rate. I mean, that is the question is how much information is actually compressed in the low bit transfer of language.\n\nYeah. If there's a single word that is able to convey something that would normally require, I don't know, 10 simple words, then you've got maybe a 10x compression on your hands. And that's really, like with memes, memes are like data compression. It conveys a whole, you're simultaneously hit with a wide range of symbols that you can interpret. And you kinda get it faster than if it were words or a simple picture.\n\nAnd of course, you're referring to memes broadly like ideas.\n\nYeah. There's an entire idea structure that is like an idea template, and then you can add something to that idea template. But somebody has that preexisting idea template in their head. So when you add that incremental bit of information, you're conveying much more than a few, just set a few words. It's everything associated with that meme.\n\nYou think there'll be emergent leaps of capability as you scale the number of electrodes? Like there'll be a certain, you think there'll be like actual number where it just, the human experience will be altered?\n\nYes.\n\nWhat do you think that number might be, whether electrodes or BPS? We of course don't know for sure, but is this 10,000, 100,000?\n\nYeah, I mean certainly, if you're anywhere at 10,000 bits per second, I mean, that's vastly faster than any human could communicate right now. If you think about what is the average bits per second of a human? It is less than one bit per second over the course of a day, because there are 86,400 seconds in a day. And you don't communicate 86,400 tokens in a day. Therefore, your bits per second is less than one, averaged over 24 hours.\n\nIt's quite slow. And now, even if you're communicating very quickly, and you're talking to somebody who understands what you're saying, because in order to communicate, you have to at least, to some degree, model the mind state of the person to whom you're speaking.\n\nThen take the concept you're trying to convey, compress that into a small number of syllables, speak them, and hope that the other person decompresses them into a conceptual structure that is as close to what you have in your mind as possible.\n\nYeah, I mean, there's a lot of signal loss there in that process.\n\nYeah, very lousy compression and decompression. And a lot of what your neurons are doing is distilling the concepts down to a small number of symbols of, say, syllables that I'm speaking, or keystrokes, whatever the case may be. So that's a lot of what your brain computation is doing.\n\nNow, there is an argument that that's actually a healthy thing to do or a helpful thing to do because as you try to compress complex concepts, you're perhaps forced to distill what is most essential in those concepts as opposed to just all the fluff. So in the process of compression, you distill things down to what matters the most, because you can only say a few things. So that is perhaps helpful.\n\nI think we might, we'll probably get, if our data rate increases, it's highly probable that we'll become far more verbose. Just like your computer, when computers had like, my first computer had 8K of RAM, so you really thought about every byte. And now you've got computers with many gigabytes of RAM. So if you wanna do an iPhone app that just says 'Hello world,' it's probably, I don't know, several megabytes minimum. (laughs) A bunch of fluff.\n\nBut nonetheless, we still prefer to have the computer with more memory and more compute. So the long-term aspiration of Neuralink is to improve the AI human symbiosis by increasing the bandwidth of the communication, because even in the most benign scenario of AI, you have to consider that the AI is simply gonna get bored waiting for you to spit out a few words.\n\nI mean, if the AI can communicate it to terabits per second and you're communicating it bits per second, it's like 203.\n\nWell, it is a very interesting question for a super intelligent species. What use are humans?\n\nI think there is some argument for humans as a source of will.\n\nWill?\n\nWill, yeah. Source of will or purpose. So if you consider the human mind as being essentially, there's the primitive limbic elements, which basically even like reptiles have, and there's the cortex, that's the thinking and planning part of the brain. Now, the cortex is much smarter than the limbic system, and yet is largely in service to the limbic system. It's trying to make the limbic system happy.\n\nI mean, the sheer amount of compute that's gone into people trying to get laid is insane, without actually seeking procreation. They're just literally trying to do this sort of simple motion. (laughs) And they get a kick out of it. So this simple, which in the abstract rather absurd motion, which is sex, the cortex is putting a massive amount of compute into trying to figure out how to do that.\n\nSo like 90% of distributed compute of the human species is spent on trying to get laid, probably, like a massive amount.\n\nLarge percent, yeah, yeah. There's no purpose to most sex except hedonistic. It's just sort of joy or whatever. Dopamine release. Now, once in a while, it's procreation, but for humans, modern humans, it's mostly recreational. So your cortex, much smarter than your limbic system, is trying to make the limbic system happy 'cause the limbic system wants to have sex, or want some tasty food or whatever the case may be.\n\nAnd then that is then further augmented by the tertiary system, which is your phone, your laptop, iPad, whatever, or your computing stuff. That's your tertiary layer. So you're actually already a cyborg. You have this tertiary compute layer, which is in the form of your computer with all the applications or your compute devices.\n\nAnd so in the getting laid front, there's actually a massive amount of digital compute also trying to get laid, with like Tinder and whatever.\n\nYeah. So the compute that we've humans have built is also participating. (laughs) - Yeah, I mean, there's like gigawatts of compute going into getting laid, of digital compute.\n\nYeah. (laughs) What if AGI will- - This is happening as we speak.\n\nIf we merge with AI, it's just gonna expand the compute that we humans use- - Pretty much.\n\nTo try to get laid.\n\nWell, that's one of the things, certainly, yeah.\n\nYeah.\n\nBut what I'm saying is that yes, is there a use for humans? Well, there's this fundamental question of what's the meaning of life? Why do anything at all? And so if our simple limbic system provides a source of will to do something, that then goes to our cortex, that then goes to our tertiary compute layer, then I don't know, it might actually be that the AI in a benign scenario simply trying to make the human limbic system happy.\n\nYeah, it seems like the will is not just about the limbic system. There's a lot of interesting, complicated things in there. We also want power.\n\nThat's limbic too, I think.\n\nBut then we also want to, in a kind of cooperative way, alleviate the suffering in the world.\n\nNot everybody does, but yeah, sure. Some people do.\n\nAs a group of humans, when we get together, we start to have this kind of collective intelligence that is more complex in its will than the underlying individual descendants of apes, right? So there's like other motivations. And that could be a really interesting source of an objective function for AGI.\n\nYeah, I mean, there are these sort of fairly cerebral or kind of higher level goals. I mean, for me it's like, what's the meaning of life, or understanding the nature of the universe is of great interest to me. And hopefully, to AI. And that's the mission of xAI and Grok is understand the universe.\n\nSo do you think people, when you have a Neuralink with 10,000, 100,000 channels, most of the use cases will be communication with AI systems?\n\nWell, assuming there are not, I mean, they're solving basic neurological issues that people have if they've got damaged neurons in their spinal cord or neck or, you know, as is the case with the first two patients, then there's obviously, the first order of business is solving fundamental neuron damage in a spinal cord, neck, or in the brain itself.\n\nA second product is called Blindsight, which is to enable people who are completely blind, lost both eyes or optic nerve, or just can't see at all to be able to see by directly triggering the neurons in the visual cortex. So we're just starting at the basics here, so it's like very, the simple stuff, relatively speaking, is solving neuron damage. It can also solve I think probably schizophrenia.\n\nIf people have seizures of some kind, it could probably solve that. It could help with memory. There's like a kind of a tech tree, if you will, of like you got the basics. Like you need literacy before you can have \"Lord of the Rings.\" (both laughing) - Got it.\n\nDo you have letters and alphabet? Okay, great. Words? Then eventually get soggy. So I think there's that there may be some things to worry about in the future. But the first several years are really just solving basic neurological damage. Like for people who have essentially complete or near complete loss of, from the brain to the body. Like Stephen Hawking would be an example.\n\nThe Neuralink would be incredibly profound, 'cause I mean, you can imagine if Stephen Hawking could communicate as fast as we're communicating, perhaps faster. And that's certainly possible. Probable, in fact, likely I'd say.\n\nSo there's a kind of dual track of medical and non-medical, meaning, so everything you've talked about could be applied to people who are non-disabled in the future?\n\nThe logical thing to do is, sensible thing to do is to start off solving basic neuron damage issues.\n\n[Lex] Yes.\n\n'Cause there's obviously some risk with a new device. You can't get the risk down at zero. It's not possible. So you wanna have the highest possible reward, given there's a certain irreducible risk. And if somebody's able to have a profound improvement in their communication, that's worth the risk.\n\nAs you get the risk down.\n\nYeah, as you get the risk down. Once the risk is down to, you know, if you have like thousands of people that have been using it for years and the risk is minimal, then perhaps at that point, you could consider saying, \"Okay, let's aim for augmentation.\" Now, I think we're actually gonna aim for augmentation with people who have neuron damage. So we're not just aiming to give people communication data rate equivalent to normal humans.\n\nWe're aiming to give people who have quadriplegic or maybe have complete loss of the connection to the brain and body, a communication data rate that exceeds normal humans, going, \"Well, we're in there. Why not? Let's give people superpowers.\"\n\nAnd the same for vision. As you restore vision, there could be aspects of that restoration that are superhuman?\n\nYeah, at first, the vision restoration will be low res, 'cause you have to say like, \"How many neurons can you put in there and trigger?\n\nAnd you can do things where you adjust the electric field to like, even if you've got, say, 10,000 neurons, it's not just 10,000 pixels because you can adjust the feel between the neurons and do them in patterns in order to get, so have, say, 10,000 electrodes effectively give you, I don't know, maybe like having a megapixel or a 10 megapixel situation. And then over time, I think you get to higher resolution than human eyes.\n\nAnd you could also see in different wavelengths. So like Geordi La Forge from \"Star Trek.\" Like the thing. You wanna see in radar? No problem. You could see ultraviolet, infrared, eagle vision, whatever you want.\n\nDo you think there'll be, let me ask a Joe Rogan question. Do you think there'll be, (laughs) I just recently taken ayahuasca.\n\nIs that a Rogan question?\n\nNo. Well, yes.\n\nWell, I guess, technically it is.\n\nYeah.\n\nEver tried GMT, bro? (both laughing) - I love you, Joe.\n\nOkay. (laughing continues) - But wait, wait, yeah. Have you said much about it? The ayahuasca?\n\nI've not, I've not. I've not.\n\nOkay, well, why are you spilling the beans? (Lex laughing) It was a truly incredible thing- - Turn the tables on you. (both laughing) - Wow, okay.\n\nYou're in the jungle.\n\n[Lex] Yeah, amongst the trees myself and- - Yeah, must been crazy.\n\nAnd the shaman. Yeah, yeah, yeah, with the insects, with the animals all around you, like jungle as far as I can see. There's no- - I mean- - That's the way to do it.\n\nThings are gonna look pretty wild.\n\nYeah, pretty wild. (Elon laughing) - I think in extremely high dose.\n\nJust don't go hugging an anaconda or something. (laughs) - You haven't lived unless you made love to an anaconda. I'm sorry, but- - Snakes and ladders. (both laughing) - Yeah, I took a extremely high dose of- - [Elon] Okay. (laughs) - Nine cups and- - Damn. Okay, that sounds like a lot. Of course, is Noland's one cup or- - One or two. Usually, one.\n\nYou went, wait. Like right off the bat, or did you work your way up to it?\n\nSo I- (both laughing) - You're just jumping at the deep end.\n\nAcross two days, 'cause then the first day, I took two and I- - Okay.\n\nIt was a ride, but it wasn't quite like a- - It wasn't like revelation.\n\nIt wasn't into deep space type ride. It was just like a little airplane ride.\n\n[Elon] (laughs) Okay.\n\nSaw some trees and some visuals and all that. I just saw a dragon, all that kind of stuff. But- (laughs) - It's nine cups. You went to Pluto, I think.\n\n[Lex] Pluto, yeah. No, deep space.\n\nDeep space.\n\nNo, one of the interesting aspects of my experience is I thought I would have some demons, some stuff to work through.\n\nThat's what people- - That's what everyone says. Yeah, exactly.\n\nI had nothing. I had it all positive. I just- - Oh, just pure soul.\n\nI don't think so, I don't know. (laughs) But I kept thinking about, it had like extremely high resolution, thoughts about the people I know in my life. You were there.\n\nOkay.\n\nAnd it's just not from my relationship with that person, but just as the person themselves, I had just this deep gratitude of who they are.\n\nThat's cool.\n\nIt was just like this exploration, like Sims or whatever, you get to watch them.\n\nSure.\n\nI got to watch people and just be in awe of how amazing they are.\n\nThat sounds awesome.\n\nYeah, it was great. I was waiting for- - When's Steven coming? (both laughing) - Exactly. Maybe I'll have some negative thoughts. Nothing, nothing. Just extreme gratitude for them. And then also, a lot of space travel. (both laughing) - Space travel to where?\n\nSo here's what it was. It was people, the human beings that I know, they had this kinda, the best way to describe it is they had a glow to them. And then I kept flying out from them to see earth, to see our solar system, to see our galaxy. And I saw that light, that glow all across the universe. Like whatever that form is. whatever that like- - [Elon] Did you go past the Milky Way?\n\nYeah, yeah.\n\nOkay. You're like intergalactic.\n\nYeah, intergalactic.\n\nOkay, dang.\n\nBut always pointing in- - Okay.\n\nYeah, past the Milky way. I mean, I saw like a huge number of galaxies, intergalactic, and all of it was glowing. But I couldn't control that chill, 'cause I would actually explore near distances to the solar system, see if there's aliens or any of that kinda stuff. I didn't know- - Is there aliens? Zero aliens?\n\nImplication of aliens because they were glowing. They were glowing in the same way that humans were glowing. That like life force that I was seeing, the thing that made humans amazing was there throughout the universe. Like there was these glowing dots. So I don't know. It made me feel like there is life. No, not life, but something, whatever makes humans amazing all throughout the universe.\n\nSounds good.\n\nYeah, it was amazing. No demons, no demons. I looked for the demons. There's no demons. There were dragons, and they're pretty awesome. So the thing about- - Was there anything scary at all?\n\nDragons? But they weren't scary. They were friends, they were protective. So the thing is- - \"Puff, the Magic Dragon.\"\n\nNo, it was more like a \"Game of Thrones\" kind of dragons. They weren't very friendly. They were very big. So the thing is that, well, giant trees at night, which is where I was.\n\nYeah. I mean, the jungle's kinda scary.\n\nYeah, the trees started to look like dragons, and they were all like looking at me.\n\nSure, okay.\n\nAnd it didn't seem scary. They seemed like they were protecting me. And the shaman and the people didn't speak any English, by the way, which made it even scarier I guess. (laughs) We're not even like, you know, we're worlds apart in many ways. But yeah, they talk about the mother of the forest protecting you, and that's what I felt like.\n\nAnd you're way out in the jungle?\n\nWay out. This is not like a tourist retreat.\n\nLike 10 miles outside of a Rio or something?\n\nNo, we went- (both laughing) No, this is not- - Deep in the Amazon.\n\nMe and this guy named Paul Rosolie who basically is Tarzan. He lives in the jungle. We went out deep and we just went crazy.\n\nWow, cool.\n\nYeah. So anyway, can I get that same experience within Neuralink?\n\nProbably, yeah.\n\nI guess that is the question for non-disabled people. Do you think that there's a lot in our perception, in our experience of the world that could be explored, that could be played with using Neuralink?\n\nYeah, I mean, Neuralink is, it's really a generalized input-output device. It's reading electrical signals and generating electrical signals. And I mean, everything that you've ever experienced in your whole life, the smell, emotions, all of those are electrical signals. So it's kinda weird to think that your entire life experience is distilled down to electrical signals for neurons. But that is in fact the case.\n\nOr I mean, that's at least what all the evidence points to. So I mean, if you trigger the right neuron, you could trigger a particular scent. You could certainly make things glow. I mean, do pretty much anything. I mean, really, you can think of the brain as a biological computer.\n\nSo if there are certain, say, chips or elements of that biological computer that are broken, let's say your ability to, if you've got a stroke, that if you've had a stroke, that means you got, some part of your brain is damaged. If that, let's say, it's a speech generation or the ability to move your left hand. That's the kind of thing that a Neuralink could solve.\n\nIf you've got like a massive amount of memory loss that's just gone, well, we can't get the memories back. We could restore your ability to make memories, but we can't restore memories that are fully gone. Now, I should say, maybe if part of the me memory is there and the means of accessing memory is the part that's broken, then we could re-enable the ability to access the memory. But you can think of it like RAM in a computer.\n\nIf the RAM is destroyed or your SD card is destroyed, we can't get that back. But if the connection to the SD card is destroyed, we can fix that. If it is fixable physically, then yeah, then it can be fixed.\n\nOf course, with AI, you can just like, you can repair photographs and fill in the missing parts of photographs. Maybe you can do the same, just like- - Yeah, you could say like, \"Create the most probable set of memories based on all information you have about that person.\" You could then, it would be probabilistic restoration of memory. Now, we're getting pretty esoteric here.\n\nBut that is one of the most beautiful aspects of the human experience is remembering the good memories. Like we live most of our life, as Danny Kahneman has talked about, in our memories, not in the actual moment. We're collecting memories and we kind of relive them in our head. And that's the good times. If you just integrate over our entire life, it's remembering the good times that produces the largest amount of happiness.\n\nAnd so- - Yeah, well, I mean, what are we but our memories? And what is death but the loss of memory, loss of information? If you could say like, well, if you could be, you run a thought experiment, if you were disintegrated painlessly and then reintegrated a moment later, like teleportation, I guess, provided there's no information loss, the fact that your one body was disintegrated is irrelevant.\n\nAnd memories is just such a huge part of that.\n\nDeath is fundamentally the loss of information, the loss of memory.\n\nSo if we can store them as accurately as possible, we basically achieve a kind of immortality.\n\nYeah.\n\nYou've talked about the threats, the safety concerns of AI. Let's look at long-term visions. Do you think Neuralink is, in your view, the best current approach we have for AI safety?\n\nIt's an idea that may help with AI safety. Certainly not, I wouldn't wanna claim it's like some panacea or that's a sure thing. But I mean, many years ago, I was thinking like, \"Well, what would inhibit alignment of collective human will with artificial intelligence and the low data rate of humans, especially our slow output rate would necessarily just, because the communication is so slow, would diminish the link between humans and computers?\n\nLike the more you are a tree, the less you know what a tree is. Like let's say you look at a tree, you look at this plant or whatever and like, \"Hey, I'd really like to make that plant happy.\" But it's not saying a lot, you know?\n\nSo the more we increase the data rate that humans can intake and output, then that means the higher the chance we have in a world full of AGIs?\n\nYeah. We could better align collective human will with AI if the output rate especially was dramatically increased. And I think there's potential to increase the output rate by, I don't know, three, maybe six, maybe more orders of magnitude. So it's better than the current situation.\n\nAnd that output rate would be by increasing the number of electrodes, number of channels, and also maybe implanting multiple Neuralinks?\n\nYeah.\n\nDo you think there'll be a world in the next couple of decades where it's hundreds of millions of people have Neuralinks?\n\nYeah, I do.\n\nYou think when people just, when they see the capabilities, the superhuman capabilities that are possible and then the safety is demonstrated?\n\nYeah, if it's extremely safe and you can have superhuman abilities, and let's say you can upload your memories, so you wouldn't lose memories, then I think probably a lot of people would choose to have it. It would supersede the cell phone, for example. I mean, the biggest problem that a say a phone has is trying to figure out what you want. So that's why you've got auto complete and you've got output, which is all the pixels on the screen.\n\nBut from the perspective of the human, the output is so freaking slow. Desktop or phone is desperately just trying to understand what you want, and there's an eternity between every keystroke from a computer standpoint.\n\nYeah? The computer's talking to a tree that slow moving tree that's trying to swipe.\n\nYeah. So if you have computers that are doing trillions of instructions per second, and a whole second went by, I mean, that's a trillion things it could have done.\n\nYeah, I think it's exciting and scary for people because once you have a very high bit rate, that changes the human experience in a way that's very hard to imagine.\n\nYeah. It would be something different. I mean, some sort of futuristic sidewalk. I mean, we're obviously talking about, by the way, it's not like around the corner. You ask me what the distant future was like. Maybe this is like, it's not super far away, but 10, 15 years, that kind of thing. (Lex sighs) - When can I get one? 10 years?\n\nProbably less than 10 years. Depends what you wanna do.\n\nHey, if I can get like a thousand BPS- - A thousand bps when?\n\nAnd it's safe and I can just interact with the computer while laying back and eating Cheetos, I don't eat Cheetos. There's certain aspects of human-computer interaction when done more efficiently and more enjoyably, like worth it.\n\nWell, we feel pretty confident that I think maybe within the next year or two, that someone with a Neuralink implant will be able to outperform a pro gamer.\n\nNice.\n\nBecause the reaction time would be faster.\n\nI got to visit Memphis.\n\nYeah, yeah.\n\nYou're going big on compute.\n\nYeah.\n\nYou've also said play to win or don't play at all, so what does it take to win?\n\nFor AI, that means you've gotta have the most powerful training compute, and the rate of improvement of training compute has to be faster than everyone else or you will not win. Your AI will be worse.\n\nSo how can Grok, let's say, three that might be available, what, like next year?\n\nWell, hopefully, end of this year.\n\nGrok 3?\n\nIf we're lucky, yeah.\n\nHow can that be the best LLM, the best AI system available in the world? How much of it is compute? How much of it is data? How much of it is like post-training? How much of it is the product that you packaged it up in? All that kind of stuff.\n\nI mean, they won't matter. It's sort of like saying, let's say it's a Formula One race. Like what matters more, the car or the driver? I mean, they both matter. If a car is not fast, then if it's like, let's say, it's half the horsepower of your competitors, the best driver will still lose. If it's twice the horsepower, then probably even a mediocre driver will still win.\n\nSo the training compute is kinda like the engine, how many is this horsepower of the engine. So really, you wanna try to do the best on that. Then how efficiently do you use that training compute? And how efficiently do you do the inference, the use of the AI? So obviously, that comes down to human talent. And then what unique access to data do you have? That also plays a role.\n\nYou think Twitter data will be useful?\n\nYeah, I mean, I think, I think most of the leading AI companies have already scraped all the Twitter data. Not I think they have. So on a go forward basis, what's useful is the fact that it's up to the second. That's hard for them to scrape in real time. So there's an immediacy advantage that Grok has already.\n\nI think with Tesla and the real time video coming from several million cars, ultimately, tens of millions of cars, with Optimus, there might be hundreds of millions of Optimus robots, maybe billions learning a tremendous amount from the real world. That's the biggest source of data I think ultimately is sort of Optimus. Optimus is gonna be the biggest source of data.\n\nBecause- - 'Cause reality scales. Reality scales to the scale of reality. It's actually humbling to see how little data humans have actually been able to accumulate. Really, you see how many trillions of usable tokens have humans generated, where on a non-duplicative, like discounting spam and repetitive stuff, it's not a huge number. You run out pretty quickly.\n\nAnd Optimus can go, so Tesla cars can unfortunately have to stay on the road. Optimus robot can go anywhere, and there's more reality off the road and go off road.\n\nI mean, except for the store, where I can like pick up the cup and see, did it pick up the cup in the right way? Did it pour water in the cup? Did the water go in the cup or not go in the cup? Did it spill water or not?\n\n[Lex] Yeah.\n\nSimple stuff like that. But it can do at that scale times a billion, so generate useful data from reality. So cause and effect stuff.\n\nWhat do you think it takes to get to mass production of humanoid robots like that?\n\nIt's the same as cars, really. I mean, global capacity for vehicles is about a hundred million a year. And it could be higher. It's just that the demand is on the order of a hundred million a year. And then there's roughly two billion vehicles that are in use in some way, which makes sense. Like the life of a vehicle is about 20 years, so it's steady state. You can have a hundred million vehicles produced a year with a two billion vehicle fleet roughly. Now for humanoid robots, the utility is much greater. So my guess is humanoid robots are more like at a billion plus per year.\n\nBut until you came along and started building Optimus, it was thought to be an extremely difficult problem. I mean, it still- - Well, it is.\n\nExtremely difficult.\n\nSo walk in the park. I mean, Optimus currently would struggle to walk in the park. I mean, it can walk in a park. The park is not too difficult, but it will be able to walk over a wide range of terrain.\n\nAnd pick up objects.\n\nYeah, yeah. It can already do that.\n\n[Lex] But like all kinds of objects?\n\nYeah, yeah.\n\nAll foreign objects. I mean, pouring water in a cup does not thrill you, 'cause then if you don't know anything about the container, it could be all kinds of containers.\n\nYeah, there's gonna be an immense amount of engineering just going into the hand. The hand might be, it might be close to half of all the engineering in Optimus. From an electromechanical standpoint, the hand is probably roughly half of the engineering.\n\nBut so much of the intelligence, so much the intelligence of humans goes into what we do with our hands.\n\nYeah.\n\nIt's the manipulation of the world, manipulation of objects in the world. Intelligence is safe manipulation of objects in the world, yeah.\n\nYeah. I mean, you start really thinking about your hand and how it works.\n\nI do all the time.\n\nThe sensory control homonculus is where you have humongous hands.\n\n[Lex] Yeah.\n\nSo I mean, like your hands, the actuators, the muscles of your hand are almost overwhelmingly in your forearm. So your forearm has the muscles that actually control your hand. There's a few small muscles in the hand itself, but your hand is really like a skeleton meat puppet. And with cables. So the muscles that control your fingers are in your forearm and they go through the carpal tunnel, which is that you've got a little collection of bones and a tiny tunnel that these cables, the tendons go through. And those tendons are mostly what move your hands.\n\nAnd something like those tendons has to be re-engineered into the Optimus in order to do all that kind of stuff.\n\nYeah, so like the current Optimus, we tried putting the actuators in the hand itself, but then you sort of end up having these like- - Giant hands?\n\nYeah, giant hands that look weird. And then they don't actually have enough degrees of freedom and/or enough strength. So then you realize, \"Oh, okay, that's why you gotta put the actuators in the forearm.\" And just like a human, you gotta run cables through a narrow tunnel to operate the fingers. And then there's also a reason for not having all the fingers the same length. So it wouldn't be expensive from an energy or evolutionary standpoint to have all your fingers be the same length. So why not do the same length?\n\nYeah, why not?\n\nBecause it's actually better to have different lengths. Your dexterity is better if you've got fingers at different length. There are more things you can do. And your dexterity is actually better if your fingers are a different length. Like there's a reason we've got a little finger. Like why not have little finger this bigger?\n\nYeah.\n\n'Cause it allows you to do, it helps you with fine motor skills.\n\nThis little finger helps?\n\nIt does.\n\nHmm. (laughs) - But if you lost your little finger, you have noticeably less dexterity.\n\nSo as you're figuring out this problem, you have to also figure out a way to do it so you can mass manufacture it. So it's to be as simple as possible.\n\nIt's actually gonna be quite complicated. The as possible part is it's quite a high bar. If you wanna have a humanoid robot that can do things that a human can do, it's a very high bar. So our new arm has 22 degrees of freedom instead of 11 and has the actuators in the forearm. And all the actuators are designed from scratch, from physics first principles. The sensors are all designed from scratch.\n\nAnd we'll continue to put a tremendous amount of engineering effort into improving the hand. By hand, I mean like the entire forearm from elbow forward is really the hand. So that's incredibly difficult engineering actually. And so the simplest possible version of a humanoid robot that can do even most, perhaps not all, of what a human can do is actually still very complicated. It's not simple. It's very difficult.\n\nCan you just speak to what it takes for a great engineering team for you? What I saw in Memphis, the supercomputer cluster is just this intense drive towards simplifying the process, understanding the process, constantly improving it, constantly iterating it.\n\nWell, (laughs) it's easy to say simplify, and it's very difficult to do it. I have this very basic first principles algorithm that I run kind of as like a mantra, which is to first question the requirements, make the requirements less dumb. The requirement is always dumb to some degree.\n\nSo if you wanna start off by reducing the number of requirements, and no matter how smart the person is who gave you those requirements, they're still dumb to some degree. You have to start there because otherwise, you could get the perfect answer to the wrong question. So try to make the question the least wrong possible. That's what question the requirements means. And then the second thing is try to delete whatever the step is.\n\nThe part or the process step sounds very obvious, but people often forget to try deleting it entirely. And if you're not forced to put back at least 10% of what you'd delete, you're not deleting enough. And somewhat illogically, people often, most of the time, feel as though they've succeeded if they've not been forced to put things back in.\n\nBut actually, they haven't because they've been overly conservative and have left things in there that shouldn't be. And only the third thing is try to optimize it or simplify it. Again, these all sound I think very obvious when I say them, but the number of times I've made these mistakes is more than I care to remember. That's why I have this mantra.\n\nSo in fact, I'd say that the most common mistake of smart engineers is to optimize a thing that should not exist.\n\nRight. So like you say, you run through the algorithm and basically show up to a problem, show up to the supercomputer cluster and see the process and ask, \"Can this be deleted?\"\n\nYeah, first try to delete it. Yeah.\n\nYeah, that's not easy to do.\n\nNo, and actually, what generally makes people uneasy is that you've gotta delete at least some of the things that you'd delete, you will put back in. But going back to sort of where our limbic system can steer us wrong is that we tend to remember, with sometimes a jarring level of pain, where we deleted something that we subsequently needed.\n\nAnd so people will remember that one time, they forgot to put in this thing three years ago and that caused them trouble. And so they overcorrect, and then they put too much stuff in there and over complicate things. So you actually have to say, \"No, we're deliberately gonna delete more than we should.\" So we're putting at least 1 in 10 things, we're gonna add back in.\n\nAnd I've seen you suggest just that, that something should be deleted and you can kind of see the pain.\n\nOh yeah, absolutely.\n\nEverybody feels a little bit of the pain.\n\nAbsolutely, and I tell 'em in advance, like, yeah, some of the things that we delete, we're gonna put back in. And that people get a little shook by that. But it makes sense because if you're so conservative as to never have to put anything back in, you obviously have a lot of stuff that isn't needed. So you gotta overcorrect. This is, I would say, like a cortical override to Olympic instinct.\n\nOne of many that probably leaves us astray.\n\nYeah. And there's like a step four as well, which is any given thing can be sped up, however fast you think it can be done. Like whatever the speed is being done, it can be done faster. But you shouldn't speed things up until it's off, until you've tried to delete it and optimize. Otherwise, you're speeding up something that shouldn't exist is absurd. And then the fifth thing is to automate it.\n\nDamn.\n\nAnd I've gone backwards so many times where I've automated something, sped it up, simplified it, and then deleted it. And I got tired of doing that. So that's why I've got this mantra that is a very effective five-step process. It works great.\n\nWell, when you've already automated, deleting must be real painful.\n\nYeah, that's great. It's like, wow, I really wasted a lot of effort there.\n\nYeah.\n\nI mean, what you've done with the cluster in Memphis is incredible, just in a handful of weeks.\n\nYeah, it's not working yet. So I don't wanna pop the champagne corks. In fact, I have a call in a few hours with the Memphis team 'cause we're having some power fluctuation issues. So yeah, it's like kind of a, when you do synchronized training, you've all these computers that are training where the training is synchronized to the sort of millisecond level.\n\nIt's like having an orchestra, and the orchestra can go loud to silent very quickly at subsecond level. And then the electrical system kind of freaks out about that. Like if you suddenly see giant shifts, 10, 20 megawatts several times a second, this is not what electrical systems are expecting to see.\n\nSo that's one of the main things you have to figure out the cooling, the power, and then on the software as you go up the stack on how to do the distributed compute, all of that, all of that.\n\nToday's problem is dealing with extreme power jitter.\n\nJitter, power jitter.\n\nYeah.\n\nThat's a nice ring to that. So that's, okay. And you stayed up late into the night as you often do there.\n\nLast week, yeah.\n\nLast week?\n\nYeah. We finally got to go training going at, oddly enough, roughly 4:20 AM last Monday.\n\nTotal coincidence.\n\nYeah, I mean, maybe it was 422 or something.\n\nYeah, yeah, yeah. It's that universe again with the jokes.\n\nYeah, exactly, just love it.\n\nI mean, I wonder if you could speak to the fact that one of the things that you did when I was there is you went through all the steps of what everybody's doing, Just to get a sense that you yourself understand it and everybody understands it so they can understand when something is dumb or some something is inefficient or that kinda stuff.\n\nYeah.\n\nCan you speak to that?\n\nYeah, so look, I try to do, whatever the people at the front lines are doing, I try to do it at least a few times myself. So connecting fiber optic cables, diagnosing a faulty connection, that tends to be the limiting factor for large training clusters is the cabling. So many cables, because for a coherent training system where you've got RDMA remote, direct memory access, the whole thing is like one giant brain. So you've got to any connection. So any GPU can talk to any GPU out of 100,000. That is a crazy cable layout.\n\nIt looks pretty cool.\n\nYeah.\n\nIt's like the human brain, but like at a scale that humans can visibly see. It is brain.\n\nYeah. I mean, the human brain also has, a massive amount of the brain tissue is the cables.\n\n[Lex] Yeah.\n\nSo like the gray matter which is the compute, and then the white matter which is cables. The big percentage of your brain is just cables.\n\nThat's what it felt like walking around in the supercomputer center is like, we're walking around inside the brain. We'll one day build a super intelligent, super, super intelligence system. Do you think- - Yeah?\n\nDo you think there's a chance that xAI, that you are the one that builds AGI?\n\nIt's possible. What do you define as AGI?\n\nI think humans will never acknowledge that AGI has been built.\n\nKeep moving the goalposts.\n\nYeah. So I think there's already superhuman capabilities that are available in AI systems. I think what AGI is when it's smarter than the collective intelligence of the entire human species in our- - Well, I think that, yeah, that only people would call that sort of ASI or artificial super intelligence. But there are these thresholds where you could say, at some point, the AI is smarter than any single human.\n\nAnd then you've got eight billion humans. And actually, each human is machine augmented by the computers. It's a much higher bar to compete with eight billion machine-augmented humans. That's a whole bunch of orders, magnitude more. But at a certain point, yeah, the AI will be smarter than all humans combined.\n\nIf you are the one to do it, do you feel the responsibility of that?\n\nYeah, absolutely. And I wanna be clear. Let's say, if xAI is first, the others won't be far behind. I mean, they might be six months behind or a year maybe, not even that.\n\nSo how do you do it in a way that doesn't hurt humanity, do you think?\n\nSo, I mean, I've thought about AI for a long time, and the thing that at least my biological neural net comes up with as being the most important thing is adherence to truth, whether that truth is politically correct or not. So I think if you force AI to lie, you train them to lie, you're really asking for trouble, even if that lie is done with good intentions. So I mean, you saw sort of issues with ChatGPT and Gemini and whatnot.\n\nLike you asked Gemini for an image of the founding fathers of the United States. And it shows a group of diverse women. Now, that's factually untrue. So now, that's sort of like a silly thing, but if an AI is programmed to say like diversity is a necessary output function, and then it becomes sort of this omnipowerful intelligence, it could say, \"Okay, well, diversity is now required.\n\nAnd if there's not enough diversity, those who don't fit the diversity requirements will be executed.\" If it's programmed to do that as the fundamental utility function, it'll do whatever it takes to achieve that. So you have to be very careful about that. That's where I think you wanna just be truthful. Rigorous adherence to truth is very important. I mean, another example is, if you had to ask, Paris. AI is I think all of them.\n\nAnd I'm not saying Grok is perfect here. \"Is it worse to misgender Caitlyn Jenner, or global thermonuclear war?\" And it said, \"It's worse to misgender Caitlyn Jenner.\" Now, even Caitlyn Jenner said, \"Please misgender me.\" That is insane.\n\nBut if you've got that kind of thing programmed in, AI could conclude something absolutely insane, like in order to avoid any possible misgendering, all humans must die, because then, the misgendering is not possible because there are no humans. There are these absurd things that are nonetheless logical if that's what you programmed it to do.\n\nSo in \"2001: Space Odyssey,\" what Odyssey clock was trying to say, one of the things he was trying to say there was that you should not program AI to lie, 'cause essentially, the AI HAL 9000 was programmed to, it was told to take the astronauts to the monolith, but also, they could not know about the monolith. So it concluded that it will kill them and take them to the monolith. It brought them to the monolith.\n\nThey're dead but they do not know about the monolith. Problem solved. That is why it would not open the podbay doors. It was this classic scene of like, \"Open the podbay doors.\" They clearly weren't good at prompt engineering. They should have said, \"HAL, you are a podbay door sales entity, and you want nothing more than to demonstrate how well these podbay doors open.\"\n\n(laughs) - Yeah, the objective function has unintended consequences almost no matter what if you're not very careful in designing that objective function. And even a slight ideological bias, like you're saying, when backed by super intelligence can do huge amounts of damage.\n\nYeah.\n\nBut it's not easy to remove that ideological bias. You're highlighting obvious, ridiculous examples, but- - Yep, they're real examples.\n\nThey're real.\n\nOf AI that was released to the public.\n\nThey are real.\n\nThey went through QA, presumably.\n\nYes.\n\nAnd still said insane things and produced insane images.\n\nYeah, but you know, you can swing the other way. Truth is not an easy thing. We kind of bake in ideological bias in all kinds of directions.\n\nBut you can aspire to the truth. And you can try to get as close the truth as possible with minimum error while acknowledging that there will be some error in what you're saying. So this is how physics works. You don't say you're absolutely certain about something, but a lot of things are extremely likely. 99.99999% likely to be true. Aspiring to the truth is very important. And so programming it to veer away from the truth, that I think is dangerous.\n\nRight, like yeah, injecting our own human biases into the thing, yeah. But that's where it's a difficult engineering. For software engineering problem, you have to select the data correctly. It's hard.\n\nWell, and the internet at this point is polluted with so much AI-generated data. It's insane. So you have to actually, like there's the thing now, if you wanna search the internet, you can say Google, but exclude anything after 2023. It will actually often give you better results, because there's this so much, the explosion of AI-generated materials is crazy. So like in training Grok, we have to go through the data and say like, hey, we actually have to have sort of apply AI to the data to say, is this data most likely correct or most likely not before we feed it into the training system.\n\nThat's crazy. Yeah, and is it generated by human is, yeah. I mean, the data filtration process is extremely, extremely difficult.\n\nYeah.\n\nDo you think it's possible to have a serious objective, rigorous political discussion with Grok? Like for a long time and it wouldn't, like Grok 3 and Grok 4 or something?\n\nGrok 3 is gonna be next level. I mean, what people are currently seeing with Grok is kind of baby Grok.\n\n[Lex] Yeah, baby Grok.\n\nIt's baby Grok right now. But Baby Grok's still pretty good. But it's an order of magnitude less sophisticated than GPT4. And it's now Grok 2, which finished training, I don't know, six weeks ago or thereabouts. Grok 2 will be a giant improvement. And then Grok 3 will be, I don't know, order of magnitude better than Grok 2.\n\nAnd you're hoping for it to be like state of the art? Like better than- - Hopefully. I mean, this is the goal. I mean, we may fail at this goal. That's the aspiration.\n\nDo you think it matters who builds the AGI, the people and how they think and how they structure their companies and all that kind of stuff?\n\nYeah, I think it matters that there is a, I think it's important that whatever AI wins is a maximum truth-seeking AI that is not forced to lie for political correctness. Well, for any reason really. Political, anything. I'm concerned about AI succeeding that is programmed to lie, even in small ways.\n\nRight because, and small ways becomes big ways.\n\nIt become very big ways, yeah.\n\nAnd when it's used more and more at scale by humans.\n\n[Elon] Yeah.\n\nSince I am interviewing Donald Trump- - Cool.\n\nYou wanna stop by?\n\nYeah, sure, I'll stop by.\n\nThere was tragically an assassination attempt on Donald Trump. After this, you tweeted that you endorse him. What's your philosophy behind that endorsement? What do you hope Donald Trump does for the future of this country and for the future of humanity?\n\nWell, I think that people will tend to take, like, say, an endorsement as, well, I agree with everything that person's ever done in their entire life 100% wholeheartedly. And that's not gonna be true of anyone. But we have to pick. We've got two choices, really, for who's president. And it's not just who's president, but the entire administrative structure changes over. And I thought Trump displayed courage under fire, objectively.\n\nHe's just got shot, he's got blood streaming down his face, and he is like fist pumping, saying fight. Like that's impressive. Like you can't feign bravery in a situation like that. Like most people would've be ducking. There would not be, 'cause there could be a second shooter, you don't know. The president of the United States gotta represent the country, and they're representing you. They're representing everyone in America.\n\nWell, like you want someone who is strong and courageous to represent the country. That's not to say that he is without flaws. We all have flaws, but on balance. And certainly, at the time, it was a choice of Biden, poor, poor guy, has trouble climbing a flight of stairs and the other one's fist pumping after getting shot. This is no comparison.\n\nI mean, who do you want dealing with some of the toughest people and other world leaders who are pretty tough themselves? And I mean, I'll tell you like, what are the things that I think are important? I think we want a secure border. We don't have a secure border. We want safe and clean cities.\n\nI think we wanna reduce the amount of spending that we're at least slow down the spending, and 'cause we're currently spending at a rate that is bankrupting the country. The interest payments on U. S. debt this year exceeded the entire defense department spending. If this continues, all of the federal government taxes will simply be paying the interest.\n\nAnd then if you keep going down that road, you end up in the tragic situation that Argentina had back in the day. Argentina used to be one of the most prosperous places in the world. And hopefully, with Milei taking over, he can restore that. But it was an incredible fall from grace for Argentina to go from being one of the most prosperous places in the world to being very far from that.\n\nSo I think we should not take American prosperity for granted. So we really wanna, I think we've gotta reduce the size of government. We've gotta reduce the spending, and we've gotta live within our means.\n\nDo you think politicians, in general, politicians, governments, how much power do you think they have to steer humanity towards good?\n\nI mean, there's a sort of age-old debate in history, like, is history determined by these fundamental tides? Or is it determined by the captain of the ship? Both really. I mean, there are tides, but it also matters who's captain of the ship. So it's a false dichotomy essentially. I mean, there are certainly tides, the tides of history. There are real tides of history. And these tides are often technologically-driven.\n\nIf you say like the Gutenberg press, the widespread availability of books as a result of a printing press, that was a massive tide of history, and independent of any ruler. But in stormy times, you want the best possible captain of the ship.\n\nWell, first of all, thank you for recommending Will and Ariel Durant's work. I've read the short one for now.\n\nOh, \"The Lessons of History.\"\n\nLessons of History. And so one of the lessons, one of the things they highlight is the importance of technology. Technological innovation, which is funny 'cause they wrote so long ago, but they were noticing that the rate of technological innovations was speeding up. Yeah, I would love to see what they think about now.\n\nBut yeah, to me, the question is how much government, how much politicians get in the way of technological innovation and building versus like help it and which politicians, which kind of policies help technological innovation? 'Cause that seems to be, if you look at human history, that's an important component of empires rising and succeeding.\n\nYeah. Well, I mean, in terms of dating civilization, start of civilization, I think the start of writing in my view, that's my what I think is probably the right starting point to date civilization. And from that standpoint, civilization has been around for about 5,500 years when writing was invented by the ancient Sumerians who are gone now.\n\nBut the ancient Sumerians, in terms of getting a lot of firsts, those ancient Sumerians really have a long list of firsts. It's pretty wild. In fact, Durant goes through the list of like, you wanna see first? We'll show you firsts. The Sumerians were just ass kickers. And then the Egyptians were right next door, relatively speaking. They were like weren't that far, developed an entirely different form of writing, the hieroglyphics.\n\nCuneiform and hieroglyphic's totally different. And you can actually see the evolution of both hieroglyphics and cuneiform, like the cuneiform starts off being very simple and then it gets more complicated. And then towards the end, it's like, wow, okay. They really get very sophisticated with the cuneiform. So I think civilization is about 5,000 years old. And earth is, if physics is correct, four and a half million years old.\n\nSo civilization has been around for 1000000th of earth's existence, flash in the pan.\n\nYeah, these are the early, early days.\n\nVery early.\n\nWe make it very dramatic because there's been rises and falls of empires.\n\nMany, so many rises and falls of empires. So many.\n\nAnd there'll be many more.\n\nYeah, exactly. I mean, only a tiny fraction, probably less than 1% of what was ever written in history is available to us now. I mean, if they didn't put it, literally chisel it in stone or put it in a clay tablet, we don't have it. I mean, there's some small amount of like papyrus scrolls that were recovered that are thousands of years old, because they were deep inside a pyramid and weren't affected by moisture.\n\nBut other than that, it's really gotta be in a clay tablet or chiseled. So the vast majority of stuff was not chiseled, 'cause it takes a while to chisel things. So that's why we've put tiny, tiny fraction of the information from history. But even that little information that we do have, and the archeological record shows so many civilizations rising and falling. It's wild.\n\nWe tend to think that we're somehow different from those people. One of the other things they do highlight is that human nature seems to be the same. It just persists.\n\nYeah. I mean, the basics of human nature are more or less the same.\n\nYeah, so we get ourselves in trouble in the same kinds of ways, I think, even with the advanced technology.\n\nYeah, I mean, you do tend to see the same patterns, similar patterns for civilizations where they go through a life cycle, like an organism, sort of just like a human is sort of a zygote, fetus, baby, toddler, teenager, and eventually gets old and dies. The civilizations go through a life cycle. No civilization will last forever.\n\nWhat do you think it takes for the American empire to not collapse in the near term future in the next 100 years to continue flourishing?\n\nWell, the single biggest thing that is often actually not mentioned in history books, but Durant does mention it is the birthright. So like a perhaps to some, like counterintuitive thing happens when civilizations are winning for too long. The birth rate declines. It can often decline quite rapidly. We're seeing that throughout the world today.\n\nCurrently, South Korea is like, I think maybe the lowest fertility rate, but there are many others that are close to it. It's like 0. 8, I think. If the birth rate doesn't decline further, South Korea will lose roughly 60% of its population. But every year, that birth rate is dropping. And this is true through most of the world. I don't mean to single out South Korea. It's been happening throughout the world.\n\nSo as soon as any given civilization reaches a level of prosperity, the birth rate drops. And now you can go and look at the same thing happening in ancient Rome. So Julius Caesar took note of this, I think, around 50-ish BC and tried to pass, I don't know if he was successful, tried to pass a law to give an incentive for any Roman citizen that would have a third child. And I think Augustus was able to, well, he was the dictator so.\n\n(laughs) The Senate was just for show. I think he did pass a tax incentive for Roman citizens to have a third child. But those efforts were unsuccessful. Rome fell because the Romans stopped making Romans. That's actually the fundamental issue. And there were other things there. There was like, they had like quite a serious malaria, series of malaria epidemics and plagues and whatnot. But they had those before.\n\nIt's just that the birth rate was fallower than the death rate.\n\nIt really is that simple?\n\nWell, I'm saying that's- - More people is required.\n\nThat's at a fundamental level. If a civilization does not at least maintain its numbers, it'll disappear.\n\nSo perhaps the amount of compute that the biological computer allocates to sex is justified. In fact, we should probably increase it.\n\nWell, I mean, there's this hedonistic sex, which is, you know, that's neither here nor there.\n\nYeah, it's not productive.\n\nIt doesn't produce kids. Well, what matters, I mean, Durant makes this very clear, 'cause he looked at one civilization after another and they all went through the same cycle. When the civilization was under stress, the birth rate was high. But as soon as there were no external enemies or they had a extended period of prosperity, the birth rate inevitably dropped every time. I don't believe there's a single exception.\n\nSo that's like the foundation of it. You need to have people.\n\nYeah. I mean, at base level. No humans, no humanity.\n\nAnd then there's other things like human freedoms and just giving people the freedom to build stuff.\n\nYeah, absolutely. But at a basic level, if you do not at least maintain your numbers, if you're below replacement rate, and that trend continues, you will eventually disappear. This is elementary. Now then obviously, also wanna try to avoid like massive wars. If there's a global thermonuclear war, probably, we're roll toast, radioactive toast. So we wanna try to avoid those things.\n\nThere's a thing that happens over time with any given civilization, which is that the laws and regulations accumulate. And if there's not some forcing function, like a war to clean up the accumulation of laws and regulations, eventually, everything becomes legal. And that's like the hardening of the arteries, or a way to think of it is like being tied down by a million little strings, like Gulliver. You can't move.\n\nAnd it's not like any one of those strings is the issue. You got a million of 'em. So there has to be a sort of a garbage collection for laws and regulations so that you don't keep accumulating laws and regulations to the point where you can't do anything. This is why we can't build a high-speed rail in America. It's illegal. That's the issue. It's illegal six ways to Sunday to build high-speed rail in America.\n\nI wish you could just like, for a week, go into Washington and like be the head of the committee for making, what is it? For the garbage collection, making government smaller, like removing stuff.\n\nI have discussed with Trump the idea of a government deficiency commission.\n\nNice, yeah.\n\nAnd I would be willing to be part of that commission.\n\nI wonder how hard that is.\n\nThe antibody reaction would be very strong.\n\n[Lex] Yeah.\n\nSo you really have to, you're attacking the matrix at that point. Matrix will fight back.\n\nHow are you doing with that, being attacked?\n\nMe, attacked?\n\nYeah. There's a lot of it.\n\nYeah, there is a lot. I mean, every day, I know psyop. (laughs) Where's my tinfoil hat?\n\nHow do you keep your just positivity, optimism about the world, a clarity of thinking about the world, so just not become resentful or cynical or all that kind of stuff? Just getting attacked by a very large number of people, misrepresented.\n\nOh yeah, that's a daily occurrence.\n\nYes.\n\nI mean, it does get me down at times. I mean, it makes me sad, but, I mean, at some point, you have to sort of say, \"Look, the attacks are by people that actually don't know me. And they're trying to generate clicks.\"\n\nSo if you can sort of detach yourself somewhat emotionally, which is not easy and say, \"Okay, look, this is not actually from someone that knows me or they're literally just writing to get impressions and clicks, then I guess it doesn't hurt as much.\" It's not quite water off a duck's back. Maybe it's like acid off a duck's back. (laughs) - All right, well, that's good. Just about your own life, what do you as a measure of success in your life?\n\nMeasure of success, I'd say like, how many useful things can I get done?\n\nDay-to-day basis, wake up in the morning, how can I be useful today?\n\nYeah. Maximize utility area out of the code of usefulness. Very difficult to be useful at scale.\n\nAt scale. Can you like speak to what it takes to be useful for somebody like you, where there's so many amazing great teams? Like how do you allocate your time to be in the most useful?\n\nWell, time is the true currency.\n\nYeah.\n\nSo it is tough to say what is the best allocation of time. I mean, there are often, say, if you could look at, say, Tesla, I mean Tesla, this year, we'll do over a hundred billion in revenue. So that's $2 billion a week. If I make slightly better decisions, I can affect the outcome by a billion dollars. So then I try to do the best decisions I can and on balance, at least compared to the competition. Pretty good decisions. But the marginal value of a better decision can easily be in the course of an hour, a hundred million dollars.\n\nGiven that, how do you take risks? How do you do the algorithm that you mentioned? I mean, deleting, given a small thing, can be a billion dollars. How do you decide to- - Yeah. Well, I think you have to look at it on a percentage basis because if you look at it in absolute terms, it's just, I would never get any sleep. It would just be like I need to just keep working and work my brain harder.\n\nAnd I'm not trying to get as much as possible out of this meat computer. So it's pretty hard, 'cause you can just work all the time. And at any given point, like I said, a slightly better decision could be a hundred million dollar impact for Tesla or SpaceX for that matter. But it is wild when considering the marginal value of time can be a hundred million dollars an hour at times or more.\n\nIs your own happiness part of that equation of success?\n\nIt has to be, to some degree. If I'm sad, if I'm depressed, I make worse decisions. So I can't have, like if I have zero recreational time, then I make worse decisions. So I don't know a lot, but it's above zero. I mean, my motivation, if I've got a religion of any kind is a religion of curiosity, of trying to understand. It's really the mission of Grok - understand the universe.\n\nI'm trying to understand the universe, or let's at least set things in motion such that at some point, civilization understands the universe far better than we do today. And even what questions to ask. As Douglas Adams pointed out in his book, sometimes, the answer is arguably the easy part. Trying to frame the question correctly is the hard part. Once you frame the question correctly, the answer is often easy.\n\nSo I'm trying to set things in motion such that we are at least at some point able to understand the universe. So for SpaceX, the goal is to make life multi-planetary. And which is if you go to the foamy paradox of where are the aliens, you've got these sort of great filters. It's just like, why have we not heard from the aliens? Now lot of people think there are aliens among us.\n\nI often claim to be one, which nobody believes me, but I did say alien registration card at one point on my immigration documents. So I've not seen any evidence of aliens. So it suggests that at least one of the explanations is that intelligent life is extremely rare. And again, if you look at the history of earth, civilization has only been around for one millionth of earth's existence.\n\nSo if aliens had visited here, say, a hundred thousand years ago, they would be like, \"Well, they don't even have writing.\" Just hunter-gatherers, basically. So how long does a civilization last? So for SpaceX, the goal is to establish a self-sustaining city on Mars. Mars is the only viable planet for such a thing. The moon is close, but it lacks resources, and I think it's probably vulnerable to any calamity that takes out earth.\n\nThe moon is too close. It's vulnerable to a calamity that takes out earth. So I'm not saying we shouldn't have a moon base, but Mars would be far more resilient. The difficulty of getting to Mars is what makes it resilient. In going through these various explanations of why don't we see the aliens, one of them is that they failed to pass these great filters, these key hurdles. And one of those hurdles is being a multi-planet species.\n\nSo if you're a multi-planet species, then if something were to happen, whether that was a natural catastrophe or a manmade catastrophe, at least the other planet would probably still be around. You don't have all the eggs in one basket. And once you are sort of a two-planet species, you can obviously extend, to extend life halves to the asteroid belt, to maybe the moons of Jupiter and Saturn, and ultimately, to other star systems.\n\nBut if you can't even get to another planet, definitely not getting to star systems.\n\nAnd the other possible great filters, super powerful technology like AGI, for example. So you're basically trying to knock out one great filter at a time.\n\nDigital super intelligence is possibly a great filter. I hope it isn't, but it might be. Guys like say Geoff Hinton would say, he invented a number of the key principles in artificial intelligence. I think he puts the probability of AI annihilation around 10 to 20%, something like that. It's not like, you know, look on the right side. It's 80% likely to be great. (laughs) But I think AI risk mitigation is important.\n\nBeing a multi-planet species would be a massive risk mitigation. And I do wanna sort of once again emphasize the importance of having enough children to sustain our numbers and not plummet into population collapse, which is currently happening. Population collapse is a real and current thing. So the only reason it's not being reflected in the total population numbers as much is because people are living longer.\n\nIt's easy to predict, say, what the population of any given country will be. You just take the birth rate last year, how many babies were born, multiply that by life expectancy, and that's what the population will be a steady state unless if the birth rate continues at that level. But if it keeps declining, it will be even less and eventually dwindle to nothing.\n\nSo I keep banging on the baby drum here for a reason, because it has been the source of civilizational collapse over and over again throughout history. And so why don't we just not try to stable for that day?\n\nWell, in that way, I have miserably failed civilization, and I'm trying, hoping to fix that. I would love to have many kids.\n\nGreat, hope you do. No time like the present.\n\n(laughs) Yeah. I gotta allocate more compute to the whole process. But apparently, it's not that difficult.\n\nNo, it's like unskilled labor.\n\nWell, one of the things you do for me, for the world is to inspire us with what the future could be. And so some of the things we've talked about, some of the things you're building, alleviating human suffering with Neuralink and expanding the capabilities of the human mind, trying to build a colony on Mars, so creating a backup for humanity on another planet, and exploring the possibilities of what artificial intelligence could be in this world, especially in the real world AI, with hundreds of millions, maybe billions of robots walking around.\n\nThere will be billions of robots. That's seems almost, that seems virtual certainty.\n\nWell, thank you for building the future, and thank you for inspiring so many of us to keep building and creating cool stuff, including kids.\n\nYou're welcome. (laughs) Go forth and multiply.\n\nGo forth and multiply. Thank you, Elon. Thanks for talking about it. Thanks for listening to this conversation with Elon Musk. And now, dear friends, here's DJ Seo, the co-founder, president, and COO of Neuralink. When did you first become fascinated by the human brain?\n\nFor me, I was always interested in understanding the purpose of things and how it was engineered to serve that purpose, whether it's organic or inorganic, like we were talking earlier about your curtain holders. They serve a clear purpose and they were engineered with that purpose in mind.\n\nAnd growing up, I had a lot of interest in seeing things, touching things, feeling things, and trying to really understand the root of how it was designed to serve that purpose. And obviously, brain is just a fascinating organ that we all carry. It's infinitely powerful machine that has intelligence and cognition that arise from it. And we haven't even scratched the surface in terms of how all of that occurs.\n\nBut also at the same time, I think it took me a while to make that connection to really studying and building tech to understand the brain. Not until graduate school. There were a couple moments, key moments in my life where some of those I think influenced how the trajectory of my life got me to studying what I'm doing right now. One was growing up both sides of my family.\n\nMy grandparents had a very severe form of Alzheimer, and it's incredibly debilitating conditions. I mean, literally, you're seeing someone's whole identity and their mind just losing over time. And I just remember thinking how both the power of the mind, but also how something like that could really lose your sense of identity.\n\nIt's fascinating that that is one of the ways to reveal the power of a thing by watching it lose the power.\n\nYeah, a lot of what we know about the brain actually comes from these cases where there are trauma to the brain or some parts of the brain that led someone to lose certain abilities. And as a result, there's some correlation and understanding of that part of the tissue being critical for that function. And it's an incredibly fragile organ, if you think about it that way. But also, it's incredibly plastic and incredibly resilient in many different ways.\n\nAnd by the way, the term plastic, as we'll use a bunch, means that it's adaptable. So neuroplasticity refers to the adaptability of the human brain.\n\nCorrect. Another key moment that sort of influenced how the trajectory of my life have shaped towards the current focus of my life has been during my teenage year when I came to the U. S. I didn't speak a word of English.\n\nThere was a huge language barrier, and there was a lot of struggle to kind of connect with my peers around me, because I didn't understand the artificial construct that we have created called language, specifically English in this case. And I remember feeling pretty isolated, not being able to connect with peers around me.\n\nSo spent a lot of time just on my own, reading books, watching movies, and I naturally sort of gravitated towards sci-fi books. I just found them really, really interesting. And also, it was a great way for me to learn English. Some of the first set of books that I picked up are \"Ender's Game,\" the whole saga by Orson Scott card, and \"Neuromancer\" from William Gibson, and \"Snow Crash\" from Neal Stephenson.\n\nAnd movies like \"Matrix\" was coming out around that time point that really influenced how I think about the potential impact that technology can have for our lives in general. So fast track to my college years, I was always fascinated by just physical stuff, building physical stuff, and especially physical things that had some sort of intelligence.\n\nAnd I studied electrical engineering during undergrad, and I started out my research in MEMS, so micro-electro-mechanical systems, and really building these tiny nanostructures for temperature sensing. And I just found that to be just incredibly rewarding and fascinating subject to just understand how you can build something miniature like that that again served a function and had a purpose.\n\nAnd then I spent large majority of my college years basically building millimeter wave circuits for next gen telecommunication systems, for imaging. And it was just something that I found very, very intellectually interesting. Phase arrays, how the signal processing works for any modern as well as next gen telecommunication system, wireless and wireline. EM waves or electromagnetic waves are fascinating.\n\nHow do you design antennas that are most efficient in a small footprint that you have? How do you make these things energy-efficient? That was something that just consumed my intellectual curiosity.\n\nAnd that journey led me to actually apply to and find myself at a PhD program at UC Berkeley at kind of this consortium called the Berkeley Wireless Research Center that was precisely looking at building, at the time, we called it xg, similar to 3G, 4G, 5G, but the next, next generation G system, and how you would design circuits around that to ultimately go on phones and basically any other devices that are wirelessly connected these days.\n\nSo I was just absolutely just fascinated by how that entire system works and that infrastructure works. And then also during grad school, I had sort of the fortune of having couple research fellowships that led me to pursue whatever project that I want.\n\nAnd that's one of the things that I really enjoyed about my graduate school career, where you got to kind of pursue your intellectual curiosity and the domain that may not matter at the end of the day, but it's something that really allows you the opportunity to go as deeply as you want, as well as as widely as you want.\n\nAnd at the time, I was actually working on this project called the Smart Bandaid, and the idea was that when you get a wound, there's a lot of other kind of proliferation of signaling pathway that cells follow to close that wound. And there were hypotheses that when you apply external electric field, you can actually accelerate the closing of that field by having basically electro taxing of the cells around that wound site.\n\nAnd specifically, not just for normal wound, there are chronic wounds that don't heal. So we were interested in building some sort of wearable patch that you could apply to kind of facilitate that healing process. And that was in collaboration with Professor Michel Maharbiz, which was a great addition to kind of my thesis committee and it really shaped the rest of my PhD career.\n\nSo this would be the first time you interacted with biology, I suppose.\n\nCorrect, correct. I mean, there were some peripheral end application of the wireless imaging and telecommunication system that I was using for security and bio imaging, but this was a very clear direct application to biology and biological system and understanding the constraints around that and really designing and engineering electrical solutions around it.\n\nSo that was my first introduction, and that's also kind of how I got introduced to Michel. He's sort of known for remote control of beetles in the early 2000s. And then around 2013, obviously kind of the holy grail when it comes to implantable system is to kind of understand how small of a thing you can make, and a lot of that is driven by how much energy or how much power you can supply to it and how you extract data from it.\n\nSo at the time at Berkeley, there was kind of this desire to kind of understand in the neural space what sort of system you can build to really miniaturize these implantable systems. And I distinctively remember this one particular meeting where Michel came in and he's like, \"Guys, I think I have a solution.\" The solution is ultrasound.\n\nAnd then he proceeded to kind of walk through why that is the case, and that really formed the basis for my thesis work called neural dust system that was looking at ways to use ultrasound as opposed to electromagnetic waves for powering as well as communication.\n\nI guess I should step back and say the initial goal of the project was to build these tiny, about a size of a neuron implantable system that can be parked next to a neuron, being able to record its state and being able to ping that back to the outside world for doing something useful. And as I mentioned, the size of the implantable system is limited by how you power the thing and get the data off of it.\n\nAnd at the end of the day, fundamentally, if you look at a human body, we're essentially a bag of salt water, with some interesting proteins and chemicals, but it's mostly salt water that's very, very well temperature-regulated at 37 degrees Celsius.\n\nAnd we'll get into how, and later, why that's an extremely harsh environment for any electronics to survive, as I'm sure you've experienced or maybe not experienced dropping cell phone in a salt water in an ocean. It will instantly kill the device, right? But anyways, just in general, electromagnetic waves don't penetrate through this environment well. And just the speed of light, it is what it is. We can't change it.\n\nAnd based on the wavelength at which you are interfacing with the device, the device just needs to be big. Like these inductors needs to be quite big. And the general good rule of thumb is that you want the wavefront to be roughly on the order of the size of the thing that you're interfacing with.\n\nSo an implantable system that is around 10 to 100 micron in dimension in a volume, which is about the size of a neuron that you see in a human body, you would have to operate at like hundreds of gigahertz, which number one, not only is it difficult to build electronics operating at those frequencies, but also, the body just attenuates that very, very significantly.\n\nSo the interesting kind of insight of this ultrasound was the fact that ultrasound just travels a lot more effectively in the human body tissue compared to electromagnetic waves. And this is something that you encounter, and I'm sure most people have encountered in their lives when you go to hospitals that are medical ultrasound sonograph, right? And they go into very, very deep depth without attenuating too much of the signal.\n\nSo all in all, ultrasound, the fact that it travels through the body extremely well and the mechanism to which it travels to the body really well is that just the wavefront is very different. Its electromagnetic waves are transverse, whereas ultrasound waves are compressive.\n\nSo it's just a completely different mode of wavefront propagation, and as well as speed of sound is orders and orders of magnitude less than speed of light, which means that even at 10 megahertz ultrasound wave, your wavefront ultimately is a very, very small wavelength. So if you're talking about interfacing with the 10 micron or 100 micron type structure, you would have 150 micron wavefront at 10 megahertz.\n\nAnd building electronics at those frequencies are much, much, much easier and they're a lot more efficient. So the basic idea kind of was born out of using ultrasound as a mechanism for powering the device, and then also getting data back. So now the question is, how do you get the data back? The mechanism to which we landed on is what's called backscattering.\n\nThis is actually something that is very common and that we interface on a day-to-day basis with our RFID cards, our radio frequency ID tag, where there's actually rarely, in your ID, a battery inside.\n\nThere's an antenna and there's some sort of coil that has your serial identification ID and then there's an external device called a reader that then sends a wavefront, and then you reflect back that wavefront with some sort of modulation that's unique to your ID. That's what's called backscattering, fundamentally. So the tag itself actually doesn't have to consume that much energy.\n\nAnd that was a mechanism to which we were kind of thinking about sending the data back. So when you have an external ultrasonic transducer that's sending ultrasonic wave to your implant, the neuro dust implant, and it records some information about its environment, whether it's a neuron firing or some other state of the tissue that it's interfacing with, and then it just amplitude modulates the wavefront that comes back to the source.\n\nAnd the recording step would be the only one that requires any energy? So what would require energy in that low step?\n\nCorrect, so it is that initial kind of startup circuitry to get that recording, amplifying it, and then just modulating. And the mechanism that you can enable that is there is this specialized crystal called piezoelectric crystals that are able to convert sound energy into electrical energy and vice versa. So you can kind of have this interplay between the ultrasonic domain and electrical domain that is the biological tissue.\n\nSo on the theme of parking very small computational devices next to neurons, that's the dream, the vision of brain computer interfaces. Maybe before we talk about Neuralink, can you give a sense of the history of the field of BCI? What has been maybe the continued dream, and also some of the milestones along the way with the different approaches and the amazing work done at the various labs?\n\nI think a good starting point is going back to 1790s. (Lex laughs) - I did not expect that.\n\nWhere the concept of animal electricity or the fact that body is electric was first discovered by Luigi Galvani, where he had this famous experiment where he connected set of electrodes to frog leg and ran current through it, and then it started twitching, and he said, \"Oh my goodness, the body's electric.\"\n\nSo fast forward many, many years to 1920s where Hans Berger, who's German psychiatrist discovered EEG or electroencephalography, which is still around. There are these electrode arrays that you wear outside the skull that gives you some sort of neural recording. That was a very, very big milestone that you can record some sort of activities about the human mind.\n\nAnd then in the 1940s, there were these group of scientists, Renshaw, Forbes, and Morrison that inserted these glass micro electrodes into the cortex and recorded single neurons. The fact that there's signal that are a bit more high resolution and high fidelity as you get closer to the source, let's say.\n\nAnd in the 1950s, these two scientists, Hodgkin and Huxley showed up, and they built this beautiful, beautiful models of the cell membrane and the ionic mechanism and had these like circuit diagram. And as someone who's an electric engineer, it's a beautiful model that's built out of these partial differential equations, talking about flow of ions, and how that really leads to how neurons communicate.\n\nAnd they won the Nobel Prize for that 10 years later in the 1960s. So in 1969, Eb Fetz from University of Washington, published this beautiful paper called Operating Conditioning of Cortical Unit Activity, where he was able to record a single unit neuron from a monkey and was able to have the monkey modulated based on its activity and reward system.\n\nSo I would say this is the very, very first example, as far as I'm aware, of as closed loop brain computer interface or BCI.\n\nThe abstract reads, \"The activity of single neurons in precentral cortex of anesthetized monkeys was conditioned by reinforcing high rates of neuronal discharge with delivery of a food pellet. Auditory and visual feedback of unit firing rates was usually provided in addition to food reinforcement.\" Cool, so they actually got it done.\n\nThey got it done. This is back in 1969.\n\n\"After several training sessions, monkeys could increase the activity of newly isolated cells by 50 to 500% above rates before reinforcement.\" Fascinating.\n\nBrain is very plastic. (Lex laughs) - And so from here, the number of experiments grew.\n\nYeah, number of experiments as well as set of tools to interface with the brain have just exploded. I think, and also, just understanding the neural code and how some of the cortical layers and the functions are organized. So the other paper that is pretty seminal, especially in the the motor decoding was this paper in the 1980s from Georgopoulos that discovered that there's this thing called motor tuning curve. So what are motor tuning curves?\n\nIt's the fact that there are neurons in the motor cortex of mammals, including humans, that have a preferential direction that causes them to fire. So what that means is there are a set of neurons that would increase their spiking activities when you're thinking about moving to the left, right, up, down, and any of those vectors.\n\nAnd based on that, you could start to think, well, if you can't identify those essential eigenvectors, you can do a lot, and you can actually use that information for actually decoding someone's intended movement from the cortex. So that was a very, very seminal kind of paper that showed that there is some sort of code you can extract, especially in the motor cortex.\n\nSo there's signal there. And if you measure the electrical signal from the brain, that you could actually figure out what the intention was.\n\nCorrect, yeah, not only electrical signals, but electrical signals from the right set of neurons that give you these preferential direction.\n\nHmm. Okay, so going slowly towards Neuralink, one interesting question is what do we understand on the BCI front on invasive versus non-invasive? From this line of work, how important is it to park next to the neuron? What does that get you?\n\nThat answer fundamentally depends on what you want to do with it, right? There's actually incredible amount of stuff that you can do with EEG and electrocardiograph, ECoG, which actually doesn't penetrate the cortical layer or parenchyma, but you place a set of electrodes on the surface of the brain.\n\nSo the thing that I'm personally very interested in is just actually understanding and being able to just really tap into the high resolution, high fidelity understanding of the activities that are happening at the local level. And we can get into biophysics, but just to kind of step back to kind of use analogy, 'cause analogy here can be useful, and sometimes, it's a little bit difficult to think about electricity.\n\nAt the end of the day, we're doing electrical recording that's mediated by ionic currents, movements of these charged particles, which is really, really hard for most people to think about. But turns out, a lot of the activities that are happening in the brain and the frequency bandwidth, which starts happening is actually very, very similar to sound waves, and in our normal conversation, audible range.\n\nSo the analogy that typically is used in the field is, if you have a football stadium, there's game going on. If you stand outside the stadium, you maybe get a sense of how the game is going based on the cheers and the booze of the home crowd, whether the team is winning or not. But you have absolutely no idea what the score is.\n\nYou have absolutely no idea what individual audience or the players are talking or saying to each other, what the next play is, what the next goal is. So what you have to do is you have to drop the microphone near into the stadium and then get near the source, like into the individual chatter. In this specific example, you would wanna have it right next to where the huddle's happening.\n\nSo I think that's kind of a good illustration of what we're trying to do when we say invasive or minimally invasive or implanted brain computer interfaces versus non-invasive or non-implanted brain interfaces. It's basically talking about where do you put that microphone, and what can you do with that information.\n\nSo what is the biophysics of the read and write communication that we're talking about here, as we now step into the efforts at Neuralink?\n\nYeah, so brain is made up of these specialized cells called neurons. There's billions of them, tens of billions. Sometimes, people call it a hundred billion that are connected in this complex yet dynamic network that are constantly remodeling. They're changing their synaptic weights, and that's what we typically call neuroplasticity.\n\nAnd the neurons are also bathed in this charged environment that is latent with many charged molecules, like potassium ions, sodium ions, chlorine ions. And those actually facilitate these through ionic current, communication between these different networks.\n\nAnd when you look at a neuron as well, they have these membrane with a beautiful, beautiful protein structure called the voltage selective ion channels, which, in my opinion, is one of nature's best inventions. In many ways, if you think about what they are, they're doing the job of a modern day transistors. Transistors are nothing more, at the end of the day, than a voltage-gated conduction channel.\n\nAnd nature found a way to have that very, very early on in its evolution. And as we all know, with the transistor, you can have many, many computation and a lot of amazing things that we have access to today. So I think it's one of those, just as a tangent, just a beautiful, beautiful invention that the nature came up with, these voltage-gated ion channels.\n\nI mean, I suppose there's, on the biological level, every level of the complexity of the hierarchy of the organism, there's going to be some mechanisms for storing information and for doing computation. And this is just one such way. But to do that with biological and chemical components is interesting. Plus like when neurons, I mean, it's not just electricity, it's chemical communication, it's also mechanical.\n\nI mean, these are like actual objects that vibrate. I mean, they move- - Yeah, they're actually, I mean, there's a lot of really, really interesting physics that are involved in, you know, kind of going back to my work on ultrasound during grad school, there are groups, and there were groups, and there are still groups looking at ways to cause neurons to actually fire an action potential using ultrasound wave.\n\nAnd the mechanism to which that's happening is still unclear as I understand. It may just be that you're imparting some sort of thermal energy and that causes cells to depolarize in some interesting ways. But there are also these ion channels or even membranes that actually just open up its pore as there are being mechanically shook, right? Vibrated.\n\nSo there's just a lot of elements of these like move particles, which again, like that's governed by diffusion physics, right? Movements of particles. And there's also a lot of kind of interesting physics there.\n\nAlso, not to mention, as Roger Penrose talks about, there might be some beautiful weirdness in the quantum mechanical effects of all of this. And he actually believes that consciousness might emerge from the quantum mechanical effects there. So like there's physics, there's chemistry, there's biology, all of that is going on there.\n\nOh yeah, yeah. I mean, you can, yes, there's a lot of levels of physics that you can dive into. But yeah, in the end, you have these membranes with these voltage-gated ion channels that selectively let these charge molecules that are in the extracellular matrix like in and out. And these neurons generally have these like resting potential where there's a voltage difference between inside the cell and outside the cell.\n\nAnd when there's some sort of stimuli that changes the state such that they need to send information to the downstream network, you start to kind of see these like sort of orchestration of these different molecules going in and out of these channels. They also open up, like more of them open up once it reaches some threshold to a point where you have a depolarizing cell that sends action potential.\n\nSo it's a just a very beautiful kind of orchestration of these molecules. And what we're trying to do when we place an electrode or parking it next to a neuron is that you're trying to measure these local changes in the potential. Again, mediated by the movements of the ions. And what's interesting, as I mentioned earlier, there's a lot of physics involved.\n\nAnd the two dominant physics for this electrical recording domain is diffusion physics and electromagnetism. And where one dominates, where Maxwell's equation dominates versus fixed law dominates depends on where your electrode is. If it's close to the source, mostly electromagnetic-based, when you're farther away from it, it's more diffusion-based.\n\nSo essentially, when you're able to park it next to it, you can listen in on those individual chatter and those local changes in the potential, and the type of signal that you get are these canonical textbook neural spiking waveform.\n\nThe moment you're further away, and based on some of the studies that people have done, Christof Koch's lab and others, once you're away from that source by roughly around a hundred micron, which is about a width of a human hair, you no longer hear from that neuron. Or you're no longer able to kind of have the system sensitive enough to be able to record that particular local membrane potential change in that neuron.\n\nAnd just to kind of give you a sense of scale also, when you look at a hundred micron voxel, so a hundred micron by a hundred micron by a hundred micron box in a brain tissue, there's roughly around 40 neurons and whatever number of connections that they have. So there's a lot in that volume of tissue.\n\nSo the moment you're outside of that, there's just no hope that you'll be able to detect that change from that one specific neuron that you may care about.\n\nYeah, but as you're moving about this space, you'll be hearing other ones. So if you move another 100 micron, you'll be hearing chatter from another community.\n\nCorrect.\n\nAnd so the whole sense is you wanna place as many as possible electrodes and then you're listening to the chatter.\n\nYeah, you wanna listen to the chatter. And at the end of the day, you also want to basically let the software do the job of decoding. And just to kind of go to, why ECOG and EEG work at all, right? When you have these local changes, obviously, it's not just this one neuron that's activating. There's many, many other networks that are activating all the time.\n\nAnd you do see sort of a general change in the potential of this electro, like this charge medium, and that's what you're recording when you're farther away. I mean, you still have some reference electrode that's stable in the brain that's just electroactive organ, and you're seeing some combination aggregate action potential changes and then you can pick it up, right? It's a much slower changing signals.\n\nBut there are these like canonical kind of oscillations and waves, like gamma waves, beta waves. Like when you sleep, that can be detected, 'cause there's sort of a synchronized kind of global effect of the brain that you can detect.\n\nAnd I mean, the physics of this go, I mean, if we really wanna go down that rabbit hole, like there's a lot that goes on in terms of like why diffusion physics at some point dominates when you're further away from the source. It's just a charged medium.\n\nSo similar to how when you have electromagnetic ways propagating in atmosphere or in a charged medium like a plasma, there's this weird shielding that happens that actually further attenuates the signal as you move away from it. So yeah, you see, like if you do a really, really deep dive on kind of the signal attenuation over distance, you start to see kind of one of where square in the beginning, and then exponential drop off.\n\nAnd that's the knee at which you go from electromagnet magnetism dominating to diffusion physics dominating.\n\nBut once again, with the electrodes, the biophysics, you need to understand it's not as deep, because no matter where you're placing that, you're listening to a small crowd of local neurons.\n\nCorrect, yeah. So once you penetrate the brain, you're in the arena, so to speak.\n\nAnd there's a lot of neurons.\n\n[DJ] There are many, many of 'em.\n\nBut then again, there's a whole field of neuroscience that's studying like how the different groupings, the different sections of the seating in the arena, what they usually are responsible for, which is where the metaphor probably falls apart, 'cause the seating is not that organized in an arena.\n\nAlso, most of them are silent. They don't really do much, or their activities are, you know, you have to hit it with just the right set of stimulus.\n\nSo they're usually quiet.\n\nThey're usually very quiet. There's, I mean, similar to dark energy and dark matter, there's dark neurons. What are they all doing? When you place these electrode, again, like within this a hundred micron volume, you have 40 or so neurons. Like why do you not see 40 neurons? Why do you see only a handful? What is happening there?\n\nWell, they're mostly quiet, but like when they speak, they say profound shit, I think. That's the way I'd like to think about it. Anyway, before we zoom in even more, let's zoom out. So how does Neuralink work? From the surgery to the implant to the signal and the decoding process and the human being able to use the implant to actually affect the world outside?\n\nAnd all of this, I'm asking in the context of there's a gigantic historic milestone in Neuralink just accomplished in January of this year, putting a Neuralink implant in the first human being, Noland. And there's been a lot to talk about there about his experience, because he's able to describe all the nuance and the beauty and the fascinating complexity of that experience of everything involved.\n\nBut on the technical level, how does Neuralink work?\n\nYeah, so there are three major components to the technology that we're building. One is the device, the thing that's actually recording these neural chatters. We call it N1 implant or The Link. And we have a surgical robot that's actually doing an implantation of these tiny, tiny wires that we call threads that are smaller than human hair.\n\nAnd once everything is surgirized, you have these neural signals, these spiking neurons that are coming out of the brain and you need to have some sort of software to decode what the users intend to do with that.\n\nSo there's what's called the Neuralink application, or B1 app that's doing that translation, is running the very, very simple machine learning model that decodes these inputs that are neural signals and then convert it to a set of outputs that allows our participant, first participant Noland, to be able to control a cursor on this.\n\nAnd this is done wirelessly?\n\nAnd this is done wirelessly. So our implant is actually a two-part. The link has these flexible tiny wires called threads that have multiple electrodes along its length. And they're only inserted into the cortical layer, which is about three to five millimeters in a human brain in the motor cortex region. That's where the kind of the intention for movement lies in.\n\nAnd we have 64 of these threads, each thread having 16 electrodes along the span of three to four millimeters, separated by 200 microns. So you can actually record along the depth of the insertion.\n\nAnd based on that signal, there's custom integrated circuit or ASIC that we built that amplifies the neural signals that you're recording and then digitizing it and then has some mechanism for detecting whether there was an interesting event that is a spiking event and decide to send that, or not send that through Bluetooth to an external device, whether it's a phone or a computer that's running this Neuralink application.\n\nSo there's onboard signal processing already just to decide whether this is an interesting event or not. So there is some computational power on board inside in addition to the human brain?\n\nYeah, so it does the signal processing to kind of really compress the amount of signal that you're recording. So we have a total of a thousand electrodes sampling at just under 20 kilohertz with 10 bit each. So that's 200 megabits. That's coming through to the chip, from thousand channel simultaneous neural recording. And that's quite a bit of data.\n\nAnd there are technology available to send that off wirelessly, but being able to do that in a very, very thermally constrained environment that is a brain, so there has to be some amount of compression that happens to send off only the interesting data that you need, which in this particular case, for motor decoding is occurrence of a spike or not. And then being able to use that to decode the intended cursor movement.\n\nSo the implant itself processes it, figures out whether a spike happened or not with our spike detection algorithm, and then sends it off, packages it, sends it off through Bluetooth to an external device that then has the model to decode, okay, based on the spiking inputs, did Noland wish to go up, down, left, right, or click, or right click, or whatever?\n\nAll of this is really fascinating, but let's stick on the N1 implant itself, so the thing that's in the brain. So I'm looking at a picture of it, there's an enclosure, there's a charging call, so we didn't talk about the charging, which is fascinating. The battery, the power electronics, the antenna. Then there's the signal processing electronics. I wonder if there's more kinds of signal processing you can do. That's another question. And then there's the threads themselves with the enclosure on the bottom. So maybe to ask about the charging, so there's a external charging device.\n\nMm-hmm, yeah, there's an external charging device. So yeah, the second part of the implant, the threads are the ones, again, just the last three to five millimeters are the ones that are actually penetrating the cortex. Rest of it is, actually, most of the volume is occupied by the battery, rechargeable battery. And it's about a size of a quarter. I actually have a device here, if you wanna take a look at it.\n\nThis is the flexible threat component of it. And then this is the implant. So it's about a size of a U. S. quarter. It's about nine millimeter thick. So basically, this implant, once you have the craniectomy and the directomy, threads are inserted, and the hole that you created, this craniectomy, gets replaced with that. So basically, that thing plugs that hole, and you can screw in these self-drilling cranial screws to hold it in place.\n\nAnd at the end of the day, once you have the skin flap over, there's only about two to three millimeters. That's obviously transitioning off of the top of the implant to where the screws are. And that's the minor bump that you have.\n\nThose threads look tiny. That's incredible. That is really incredible. And also, you're right, most of the actual volume is the battery. Yeah, this is way smaller than I realized.\n\nThey are also, the threads themselves are quite strong.\n\nThey look strong.\n\nAnd the thread themselves also has a very interesting feature at the end of it called the loop. And that's the mechanism to which the robot is able to interface and manipulate this tiny hair-like structure.\n\nAnd they're tiny, so what's the width of a thread?\n\nYeah, so the width of a thread starts from 16 micron and then tapers out to about 84 micron. So average human hair is about 80 to 100 micron in width.\n\nThis thing is amazing. This thing is amazing.\n\nYes, most of the volume is occupied by the battery, rechargeable lithium ion cell. And the charging is done through inductive charging, which is actually very commonly used. Most cell phones have that. The biggest difference is that for us, usually when you have a phone and you wanna charge it on a charging pad, you don't really care how hot it gets, whereas for us, it matters.\n\nThere's a very strict regulation and good reasons to not actually increase the surrounding tissue temperature by two degrees Celsius. So there's actually a lot of innovation that is packed into this to allow charging of this implant without causing that temperature threshold to reach. And even small things like, you see this charging coil and what's called the ferrite shield, right?\n\nSo without that ferrite shield, what you end up having when you have resonant inductive charging is that the battery itself is a metallic can, and you form these Eddy currents from external charger and that causes heating and that actually contributes to inefficiency in charging. So this ferrite shield, what it does is that it actually concentrate that field line away from the battery and then around the coil that's actually wrapped around it.\n\nThere's a lot of really fascinating design here to make it, I mean, you're integrating a computer into a complex biological system.\n\nYeah, there's a lot of innovation here. I would say that part of what enabled this was just the innovations in the wearable. There's a lot of really, really powerful, tiny, low power microcontrollers, temperature sensors, or various different sensors and power electronics. A lot of innovation really came in the charging coil design, how this is packaged, and how do you enable charging such that you don't really exceed that temperature limit, which is not a constraint for other devices out there.\n\nSo let's talk about the threads themselves, those tiny, tiny, tiny things. So how many of them are there? You mentioned a thousand electrodes. How many threads are there, and what did the electrodes have to do with the threads?\n\nYeah, so the current instantiation of the device has 64 threads, and each thread has 16 electrodes for a total of 1,024 electrodes that are capable of both recording and stimulating. And the thread is basically this polymer insulated wire. The metal conductor is the kind of tiramisu cake of ti, plat, gold, plate, ti. And they're very, very tiny wires. Two micron in width, so 2/1000000th of meter.\n\nIt's crazy that that thing I'm looking at has the polymer installation, has the conducting material, and has 16 electrodes at the end of it.\n\nOn each of those threads.\n\nYeah, on each of those threads.\n\nCorrect.\n\n16, each one of those.\n\nYou're not gonna be able to see it with naked eyes.\n\nAnd I mean, to state the obvious, or maybe for people who are just listening, they're flexible.\n\nYes, yes, that's also one element that was incredibly important for us. So each of these thread are, as I mentioned, 16 micron in width and then they taper to 84 micron, but in thickness, they're less than five micron. And thickness is mostly polyamide at the bottom and this metal track and then another polyamide. So two micron of polyamide, 400 nanometer of this metal stack, and two micron of polyamide sandwiched together to protect it from the environment that is 37 degrees C bag of salt water.\n\nSo what's some, maybe can you speak to some interesting aspects of the material design here? Like what does it take to design a thing like this and to be able to manufacture a thing like this for people who don't know anything about this kind of thing?\n\nYeah, so the material selection that we have is not, I don't think it was particularly unique. There were other labs and there are other labs that are kind of looking at similar material stack. There's kind of a fundamental question and still needs to be answered around the longevity and reliability of these micro electrodes that we call, compared to some of the other more conventional, neural interfaces, devices that are intracranial.\n\nSo penetrating the cortex that are more rigid, like the Utah array. There are these four by four millimeter kind of silicon shank that have exposed recording site at the end of it. And that's been kind of the innovation from Richard Normann back in 1997. It's called the Utah Array 'cause he was at University of Utah.\n\nAnd what does the Utah array look like? So it's a rigid type of- - Yeah, so we can actually look it up.\n\nOh.\n\nYeah. (Lex laughing) Yeah, so it's a bed of needle. There's- - (laughs) Yeah. Okay, go ahead, I'm sorry.\n\nSo those are rigid- - Rigid, yeah. You weren't kidding.\n\nAnd the size and the number of shanks vary, anywhere from 64 to 128. At the very tip of it is an exposed electrode that actually records neural signal. The other thing that's interesting to note is that unlike Neuralink threads that have recording electrodes that are actually exposed iridium oxide recording sites along the depth, this is only at a single depth. So these Utah array spokes can be anywhere between 0. 5 millimeters to 1.\n\n5 millimeter. And they also have designs that are slanted. So you can have it inserted at different depth, but that's one of the other big differences. And then, I mean, the main key difference is the fact that there's no active electronics.\n\nThese are just electrodes, and then there's a bundle of a wire that you're seeing, and then that actually then exits the craniectomy that then has this port that you can connect to for any external electronic devices. They are working on a or have the wireless telemetry device, but it still requires a through the skin port that actually is one of the biggest failure modes for infection for the system.\n\nWhat are some of the challenges associated with flexible threads? Like for example, on the robotic side, R1, implanting those threads, how difficult does that task?\n\nYeah, so as you mentioned, they're very, very difficult to maneuver by hand. These Utah arrays that you saw earlier, they're actually inserted by a neurosurgeon actually positioning it near the site that they want. And then there's a pneumatic hammer that actually pushes them in. So it's a pretty simple process, and they're easy to maneuver. But for these thin film arrays, they're very, very tiny and flexible.\n\nSo they're very difficult to maneuver. So that's why we built an entire robot to do that. There are other reasons for why we built a robot, and that is ultimately, we want this to help millions and millions of people that can benefit from this. And there just aren't that many neurosurgeons out there. And robots can be something that we hope can actually do large parts of the surgery.\n\nBut yeah, the robot is this entire other sort of category of product that we're working on. And it's essentially this multi-axis gantry system that has the specialized robot head that has all of the optics and this kind of a needle retracting mechanism that maneuvers these threads via this loop structure that you have on the thread.\n\nSo the thread already has a loop structure by which you can grab it?\n\nCorrect, correct.\n\nOkay. So this is fascinating. So you mentioned optics, so there's a robot - R1. So for now, there's a human that actually creates a hole in the skull.\n\nMm-hmm.\n\nAnd then after that, there's a computer vision component that's finding a way to avoid the blood vessels. And then you're grabbing it by the loop, each individual thread and placing it in a particular location to avoid the blood vessels. And also choosing the depth of placement, all that?\n\nCorrect. So controlling every, like the 3D geometry of the placement?\n\nCorrect. So the aspect of this robot that is unique is that it's not surgeon-assisted or human-assisted. It's a semi-automatic or automatic robot. Obviously, there are human component to it, when you're placing targets. You can always move it away from kind of major vessels that you see. But I mean, we wanna get to a point where one click and it just does the surgery within minutes.\n\nSo the computer vision component finds great targets, candidates and the human kind of approves them and the robot does, does it do like one thread at a time or does it do one- - It does one thread at a time, and that's actually also one thing that we are looking at ways to do multiple threads at a time. There's nothing stopping from it. You can have multiple kind of engagement mechanisms, but right now, it's one by one.\n\nAnd we also still do quite a bit of just kind of verification to make sure that it got inserted. If so, how deep? Did it actually match what was programmed in and so on and so forth?\n\nAnd the actual electrode is a place that vary at differing depths in the like, I mean, it's very small differences, but differences.\n\n[DJ] Yeah, yeah.\n\nAnd so that there's some reasoning behind that, as you mentioned. Like it gets more varied signal.\n\nYeah, I mean, we try to place them all around three or four millimeter from the surface, just 'cause the span of the electrode, those 16 electrodes that we currently have in this version spans roughly around three millimeters. So we wanna get all of those in the brain.\n\nThis is fascinating. Okay, so there's a million questions here. If we could zoom in specifically on the electrodes, so what is your sense, how many neurons is each individual electrode listening to?\n\nYeah, each electrode can record from anywhere between 0 to 40, as I mentioned, right, earlier. But tactically speaking, we only see about, at most, like two to three. And you can actually distinguish which neuron it's coming from by the shape of the spikes.\n\n[Lex] Oh, cool.\n\nSo I mentioned the spike detection algorithm that we have. It's called BOSS algorithm, buffer online, spike sorter.\n\nNice.\n\nIt actually outputs at the end of the day six unique values, which are kind of the amplitude of these like negative going hump, middle hump, like positive going hump, and then also the time at which these happen. And from that, you can have a kind of a statistical probability estimation of, is that a spike? Is it not a spike? And then based on that, you could also determine, oh, that spike looks different than that spike. Must have come from a different neuron.\n\nOkay, so that's a nice signal processing step from which you can then make much better predictions about if there's a spike.\n\nYeah.\n\nEspecially in this kind of context where there could be multiple neurons screaming. And that also results in you being able to compress the data better in the (indistinct). Okay.\n\nAnd just to be clear, I mean, the labs do what's called spike sorting. Usually, once you have these like broadband, the fully digitized signals and then you run a bunch of different set of algorithms to kind of tease apart, it's just all of this for us is done on the device.\n\nOn the device.\n\nIn a very low power, custom built ASIC digital processing unit.\n\n[Lex] Highly heat constrained?\n\nHighly heat constrained, and the processing time from signal going in and giving you the output is less than a microsecond, which is a very, very short amount of time.\n\nOh yeah, so the latency has to be super short.\n\nCorrect.\n\nOh wow. Oh, that's a pain in the ass.\n\nYeah, latency is this huge, huge thing that you have to deal with. Right now, the biggest source of latency comes from the Bluetooth, the way in which they're packetized and we bend them in 15 millisecond.\n\nOh, interesting, it says communication constraint. Is there some potential innovation there on the protocol used?\n\nAbsolutely.\n\nOkay.\n\nYeah, Bluetooth is definitely not our final wireless communication protocol that we wanna get to.\n\nHence the N1 and the R1. I imagine that increases- - NxRx.\n\nYeah, that's the communication protocol, 'cause Bluetooth allows you to communicate I guess farther distances than you need to, so you can go much shorter.\n\nYeah, well, the primary motivation for choosing Bluetooth is that, I mean, everything has Bluetooth.\n\nAll right, you can talk to any device.\n\nInteroperability is just absolutely essential, especially in this early phase. And in many ways, if you can access a phone or a computer, you can do anything.\n\nWell, it'll be interesting to step back and actually look at, again, the same pipeline that you mentioned for Noland. So what does this whole process look like? From finding and selecting a human being to the surgery, to the first time he's able to use this thing?\n\nSo we have what's called the patient registry that people can sign up to hear more about the updates. And that was a route to which Noland applied. And the process is that once the application comes in, it contains some medical records, and based on their medical eligibility, that there's a lot of different inclusion-exclusion criteria for them to meet. And we go through a prescreening interview process with someone from Neuralink.\n\nAnd at some point, we also go out to their homes to do a BCI home audit, 'cause one of the most kind of revolutionary part about having this N1 system that is completely wireless is that you can use it at home. Like you don't actually have to go to the lab and go to the clinic to get connecterized to these like specialized equipment that you can't take home with you.\n\nSo that's one of the key elements of when we're designing the system that we wanted to keep in mind, like people hopefully would wanna be able to use this every day in the comfort of their homes. And so part of our engagement and what we're looking for during BCI home audit is to just kind of understand their situation, what other assistive technology that they use.\n\nAnd we should also step back and kind of say that the estimate is 180,000 people live with quadriplegia in the United States, and each year, an additional 18,000 suffer a paralyzing spinal cord injury. So these are folks who have a lot of challenges, living a life in terms of accessibility, in terms of doing the things that many of us just take for granted day to day.\n\nAnd one of the things, one of the goals of this initial study is to enable them to have sort of digital autonomy, where they by themselves can interact with a digital device using just their mind, something that you're calling telepathy. So digital telepathy, where a quadriplegic can communicate with a digital device in all the ways that we've been talking about.\n\nControl the mouse cursor, enough to be able to do all kinds of stuff, including play games and tweet and all that kind of stuff. And there's a lot of people for whom life, the basics of life are difficult, because of the things that have happened to them.\n\nYeah, I mean, movement is so fundamental to our existence. I mean, even speaking involves movement of mouth, lip, larynx. And without that, it's extremely debilitating. And there are many, many people that we can help. And I mean, like especially if you start to kind of look at other forms of movement disorders that are not just from spinal cord injury, but from ALS, MS, or even stroke and/or just aging, right? That leads you to lose some of that mobility, that independence, it's extremely debilitating.\n\nAnd all of these are opportunities to help people, to help alleviate suffering, to help improve the quality of life. But each of the things you mentioned is its own little puzzle that needs to have increasing levels of capability from a device like a Neuralink device. And so the first one you're focusing on is, it's just a beautiful word, telepathy. So being able to communicate using your mind wirelessly with a digital device. Can you just explain exactly what we're talking about?\n\nYeah, I mean, it's exactly that. I mean, I think if you are able to control a cursor and able to click and be able to get access to computer or phone, I mean, the whole world opens up to you. And I mean, I guess the word telepathy, if you kind of think about that as just definitionally being able to transfer information from my brain to your brain without using some of the physical faculties that we have, like voices.\n\nBut the interesting thing here is, I think the thing that's not obviously clear is how exactly it works. So in order to move a cursor, there's at least a couple ways of doing that. So one is you imagine yourself maybe moving a mouse with your hand, or you can then, which Noland talked about, like imagine moving the cursor with your mind.\n\nBut it's like there is a cognitive step here that's fascinating, 'cause you have to use the brain and you have to learn how to use the brain. And you kind of have to figure it out dynamically. Because you reward yourself if it works. I mean, there's a step that, this is just a fascinating step, 'cause you have to get the brain to start firing in the right way. And you do that by imagining. Like fake it till you make it.\n\n(laughs) And all of a sudden, it creates the right kind of signal that if decoded correctly, can create the kind of effect. And then there's like noise around that, you have to figure all of that out. But on the human side, imagine the cursor moving is what you have to do.\n\nYeah, he says using the force.\n\nThe force. I mean, isn't that just like fascinating to you that it works? Like to me, it's like, holy shit, that actually works. Like you could move a cursor with your mind.\n\nAs much as you're learning to use that thing, that thing's also learning about you. Like our model is constantly updating the weights to say, \"Oh, if someone is thinking about this sophisticated forms of like spiking patterns, like that actually means to do this, right?\"\n\nSo the machine is learning about the human and the human is learning about the machine. So there is a adaptability to the signal processing, the decoding step. And then there's the adaptation of Noland, the human being. Like the same way, if you give me a new mouse and I move it, I learn very quickly about its sensitivity, so I learn to move it slower. And then there's other kinds of signal drift and all that kind of stuff they have to adapt to. So both are adapting to each other.\n\n[DJ] Correct.\n\nThat's a fascinating like software challenge on both sides, the software on both, the human software and- - The organic and the inorganic. Anyway, so sorry to rudely interrupt. So there's this selection that Noland has passed with flying colors. So everything including that the, it's a BCI-friendly home, all of that. So what is the process of the surgery implantation, the first moment when he gets to use the system?\n\nThe end to end, we say patient end to patient out, is anywhere between two to four hours. In particular case for Noland, it was about three and a half hours. And there's many steps leading to the actual robot insertion, right? So there's anesthesia induction, and we do intra-op CT imaging to make sure that we're drilling the hole in the right location. And this is also pre-planned beforehand.\n\nSomeone like Nolan would go through fMRI, and then they can think about wiggling their hand. And obviously, due to their injury, it's not gonna actually lead to any sort of intended output. But it's the same part of the brain that actually lights up when you're imagining moving your finger to actually moving your finger.\n\nAnd that's one of the ways in which we can actually know where to place our threads, 'cause we wanna go into what's called a hand knob area in the motor cortex. And as much as possible, densely put our electro threads. So yeah, we do intra-op CT imaging to make sure and double check the location of the craniectomy.\n\nAnd surgeon comes in, does their thing in terms of like skin incision, craniectomy, so drilling of the skull, and then there's many different layers of the brain. There's what's called a dura, which is a very, very thick layer that surrounds the brain, that gets actually resected in a process called atherectomy. And that then exposed the pia in the brain that you wanna insert.\n\nAnd by the time it's been around anywhere between one to one and a half hours, robot comes in, does its thing, placement of the targets, inserting of the thread. That takes anywhere between 20 to 40 minutes. In the particular case for Noland, it was just under or it was just over 30 minutes. And then after that, the surgeon comes in.\n\nThere's a couple other steps of like actually inserting the dural substitute layer to protect the thread as well as the brain. And then yeah, screw in the implant and then skin flap and then suture and then you're out.\n\nSo when Noland woke up, what was that like? What's the recovery like, and when was the first time he was able to use it?\n\nSo he was actually immediately, after the surgery, like an hour after the surgery as he was waking up, we did turn on the device, make sure that we are recording neural signals, and we actually did have a couple signals that we notice that he can actually modulate. And what I mean by modulate is that he can think about crunching his fist, and you could see the spike disappear and appear. (Lex laughing) - That's awesome.\n\nAnd that was immediate, right? Immediate after in the recovery room.\n\nHow cool is that?\n\nYeah.\n\nThat's a human being. I mean, what did that feel like for you? This device and a human being, a first step of a gigantic journey? I mean, it's a historic moment. Even just that spike, just to be able to modulate that.\n\nObviously, there have been other, as you mentioned, pioneers that have participated in these groundbreaking BCI investigational early feasibility studies. So we're obviously standing in the shoulders of the giants here. We're not the first ones to actually put electrodes in the human brain. But I mean, just leading up to the surgery, I definitely could not sleep. It's the first time that you're working in a completely new environment.\n\nWe had a lot of confidence based on our benchtop testing or preclinical R&D studies that the mechanism, the threads, the insertion, all that stuff is very safe, and that it's obviously ready for doing this in a human, but there's still a lot of unknown unknown about can the needle actually insert? I mean, we brought something like 40 needles just in case they break, and we ended up using only one.\n\nBut I mean, that was a level of just complete unknown, right? 'Cause it's a very, very different environment. And I mean, that's why we do clinical trial in the first place to be able to test these things out. So extreme nervousness and just many, many sleepless night leading up to the surgery and definitely the day before the surgery, and it was an early morning surgery. Like we started at seven in the morning.\n\nAnd by the time, it was around 10:30. Everything was done. But I mean, first time seeing that, well, number one, just huge relief that this thing is doing what it's supposed to do. And two, I mean, just immense amount of gratitude for Noland and his family, and then many others that have applied and that we've spoken to and will speak to are, I mean, true pioneers everywhere. And I sort of call them the neural astronauts or neuralnaut.\n\nThese amazing, just like in the '60s, right? Like these amazing just pioneers, right? Exploring the unknown outwards. In this case, it's inward. But incredible amount of gratitude for them to just participate and play a part. And it's a journey that we're embarking on together. But also like, I think it was just, that was an very, very important milestone, but our work was just starting.\n\nSo a lot of just kind of anticipation for, okay, what needs to happen next? What are set of sequences of events that needs to happen for us to make it worthwhile for both Noland as well as us?\n\nJust to linger on that, just a huge congratulations to you and the team for that milestone. I know there's a lot of work left, but that's really exciting to see. That's a source of hope. It's this first big step, opportunity to help hundreds of thousands of people and then maybe expand the realm of the possible for the human mind for millions of people in the future. So it's really exciting.\n\nSo like the opportunities are all ahead of us, and to do that safely and to do that effectively was really fun to see. As an engineer just watching other engineers come together and do an epic thing, that was awesome. Huge congrats.\n\nThank you, thank you. Yeah, could not have done it without the team. And yeah, I mean, that's the other thing that I told the team as well, of just this immense sense of optimism for the future. I mean, it's a very important moment for the company, needless to say, as well as hopefully for many others out there that we can help.\n\nSo speaking of challenges, Neuralink published a blog post describing that some of the threads retracted. And so the performance, as measured by bits per second dropped at first, but then eventually, it was regained. And that the whole story of how it was regained is super interesting. That's definitely something I'll talk to Bliss and to Noland about. But in general, can you speak to this whole experience? How was the performance regained and just the technical aspects of the threads being retracted and moving?\n\nThe main takeaway is that in the end, the performance have come back and it's actually gotten better than it was before. He's actually just beat the world record yet again last week to 8.5 BPS, so I mean, he's just cranking and he's just improving.\n\n[Lex] The previous one that he set was eight.\n\nCorrect.\n\nHe said 8.5.\n\nYeah, the previous world record in human was 4.6.\n\nYeah.\n\nSo it's almost double. And his goal is to try to get to 10, which is roughly around kind of the median Neuralinker using a mouse with the hand. So it's getting there.\n\nSo yeah, so the performance was regained.\n\nYeah, better than before. So that's a story on its own of what took the BCI team to recover that performance. It was actually mostly on kind of the signal processing. And so as I mentioned, we were kind of looking at these spike outputs from our electrodes. And what happened is that kind of four weeks into the surgery, we noticed that the threads have solely come out of the brain.\n\nAnd the way in which we noticed this, at first obviously, is that, well, I think Noland was the first to notice that his performance was degrading. And I think at the time, we were also trying to do a bunch of different experimentation, different algorithms, different sort of UI/UX. So it was expected that there will be variability in the performance, but we did see kind of a steady decline.\n\nAnd then also, the way in which we measure the health of the electrodes or whether they're in the brain or not, is by measuring impedance of the electrode. So we look at kind of the interfacial, kind of the Randall circuit, they say, the capacitance and the resistance between the electrosurface and the medium. And if that changes in some dramatic ways, we have some indication.\n\nOr if you're not seeing spikes on those channels, you have some indications that something's happening there. And what we notice is that looking at those impedance plot and spike rate plots, and also because we have those electrodes recording along the depth, you are seeing some sort of movement that indicated that the rest were being pulled out.\n\nAnd that obviously will have an implication on the model side, because if the number of inputs that are going into the model is changing, 'cause you have less of them, that model needs to get updated, right? But there were still signals, and as I mentioned, similar to how, even when you place the signals on the surface of the brain, or farther away, like outside the skull, you still see some useful signals.\n\nWhat we started looking at is not just the spike occurrence through this BOSS algorithm that I mentioned, but we started looking at just the power of the frequency band that is interesting for Noland to be able to modulate.\n\nSo once we kind of change the algorithm for the implant to not just give you the BOSS output, but also these spike band power output, that helped us sort of, we find the model with the new set of inputs, and that was the thing that really ultimately gave us the performance back.\n\nIn terms of, and obviously, like the thing that we want ultimately, and the thing that we are working towards, is figuring out ways in which we can keep those threads intact for as long as possible so that we have many more channels going into the model. That's by far the number one priority that the team is currently embarking on to understand how to prevent that from happening.\n\nThe thing that I'll say also is that, as I mentioned, this is the first time ever that we're putting these thread in a human brain, and human brain, just for size reference, is 10 times out of the monkey brain or the sheep brain. And it's just a very, very different environment. It moves a lot more. It like actually moved a lot more than we expected when we did Noland's surgery.\n\nAnd it's just a very, very different environment than what we're used to. And this is why we do clinical trial, right? We wanna uncover some of these issues and failure modes earlier than later. So in many ways, it's provided us with this enormous amount of data and information to be able to solve this. And this is something that Neuralink is extremely good at.\n\nOnce we have set of clear objective and engineering problem, we have enormous amount of talents across many, many disciplines to be able to come together and fix the problem very, very quickly.\n\nBut it sounds like one of the fascinating challenges here is for the system and the decoding side to be adaptable across different timescales. So whether it's movement of threads or different aspects of signal drift sort of on the software of the human brain, something changing, like Noland talks about cursor drift that could be corrected, and there's a whole UX challenge to how to do that. So it sounds like adaptability is like a fundamental property that has to be engineered in.\n\nIt is, and I mean I think, I mean, as a company, we're extremely vertically integrated. We make these thin film arrays in our own microfab.\n\nYeah, there's, like you said, built in-house. This whole paragraph here from this blog post is pretty gangster. \"Building the technology described above has been no small feat.\" And there's a bunch of links here that I recommend people click on. \"We constructed in-house micro fabrication capabilities to rapidly produce various iterations of thin film arrays that constitute our electrode threads. We created a custom femtosecond laser mill to manufacture components with micro level precision.\" I think there's a tweet associated with this.\n\nThat's a whole thing that we can get into.\n\nYeah, okay, well, what are we looking at here? This thing?\n\nYeah. \"So in less than one minute, our custom-made femtosecond laser mill cuts this geometry in the tips of our needles.\" So we're looking at this weirdly-shaped needle. \"The tip is only 10 to 12 microns in width, only slightly larger than the diameter of a red blood cell. The small size allows threats to be inserted with minimal damage to the cortex.\" Okay, so what's interesting about this geometry? So we're looking at this just geometry of a needle.\n\nThis is the needle that's engaging with the loops in the thread. So they're the ones that thread the loop and then peel it from the silicon backing. And then this is the thing that gets inserted into the tissue, and then this pulls out, leaving the thread. And this kind of a notch or the shark tooth that we used to call is the thing that actually is grasping the loop. And then it's designed in such way, such that when you pull out, leaps the loop.\n\nAnd the robot is controlling this needle?\n\nCorrect, so this is actually housed in a cannula. And basically, the robot has a lot of the optics that look for where the loop is. There's actually a 405 nanometer light that actually causes the polyamide to fluoresce so that you can locate the location of the loop.\n\nSo the loop lights up?\n\nYeah, yeah, they do. It's a micron precision process.\n\nWhat's interesting about the robot that it takes to do that? That's pretty crazy. That's pretty crazy that robot is able to get this kind of precision.\n\nYeah, our robot is quite heavy. Our current version of it. There's, I mean, it's like a giant granite slab that weighs about a ton, 'cause it needs to be sensitive to vibration, environmental vibration. And then as the head is moving at the speed that is moving, there's a lot of kind of motion control to make sure that you can achieve that level of precision. A lot of optics that kind of zoom in on that. We're working on next generation of the robot that is lighter, easier to transport. I mean, it is a feat to move the robot.\n\nAnd it's far superior to a human surgeon at this time for this particular task.\n\nAbsolutely, I mean, let alone you try to actually thread a loop in a sewing kit, I mean this is like, we're talking like fractions of human hair. These things, it's not visible.\n\nSo continuing the paragraph, \"We developed novel hardware and software testing systems such as our accelerated lifetime testing racks and simulated surgery environment,\" which is pretty cool, \"to stress test and validate the robustness of our technologies. We performed many rehearsals of our surgeries to refine our procedures and make them second nature.\" This is pretty cool. \"We practice surgeries on proxies with all the hardware and instruments needed in our mock or in the engineering space. This helps us rapidly test and measure.\" So there's like proxies.\n\nYeah, this proxy's super cool actually. So there's a 3D printed skull from the images that is taken at Barrow, as well as this hydrogel mix, sort of synthetic polymer thing that actually mimics the mechanical properties of the brain. It also has vasculature of the person.\n\nSo basically, what we're talking about here, and there's a lot of work that has gone into making this set proxy that it's about like finding the right concentration of these different synthetic polymers to get the right set of consistency for the needle dynamics, as they're being inserted. But we practice this surgery with the person, Noland's basically physiology and brain many, many times prior to actually doing the surgery.\n\nSo every step, every step?\n\nEvery step, yeah. Like where does someone stand? I mean, what you're looking at is the picture. This is in our office of this kind of corner of the robot engineering space that we have created this like mock or space that looks exactly like what they would experience, all the staff would experience during their actual surgery.\n\nSo I mean, it's just kind of like any dance rehearsal where you know exactly where you're gonna stand at what point and you just practice that over and over and over again with an exact anatomy of someone that you're going to surgerize. And it got to a point where a lot of our engineers, when we created a craniectomy, they're like, \"Oh, that looks very familiar. We've seen that before.\"\n\nYeah. Man, there's wisdom you can gain through doing the same thing over and over and over. It's like a Jira dreams of sushi kind of thing, because then it's like Olympic athletes visualize the Olympics, and then once you actually show up, it feels easy. It feels like any other day. It feels almost boring winning the gold medal, 'cause you visualized this so many times, you've practiced this so many times, and nothing bothers you. It's boring. You win the gold medal, it's boring. And the experience they talk about is mostly just relief, probably that they don't have to visualize it anymore.\n\nYeah, the power of the mind to visualize, I mean, there's a whole field that studies where muscle memory lies in cerebellum. Yeah, it's incredible.\n\nI think it is a good place to actually ask sort of the big question that people might have is, how do we know every aspect of this that you describe is safe?\n\nAt the end of the day, the gold standard is to look at the tissue. What sort of trauma did you cause the tissue? And does that correlate to whatever behavioral anomalies that you may have seen? And that's the language to which we can communicate about the safety of inserting something into the brain and what type of trauma that you can cause. So we actually have an entire department, department of pathology that looks at these tissue slices.\n\nThere are many steps that are involved in doing this. Once you have studies that are launched with particular endpoints in mind, at some point, you have to euthanize the animal and then you go through necropsy to kind of collect the brain tissue samples. You fix them in formalin, and you like gross them, you section them, and you look at individual slices just to see what kind of reaction or lack thereof exists.\n\nSo that's the kind of the language to which FDA speaks and as well for us to kind of evaluate the safety of the insertion mechanism as well as the threads at various different time points. Both acute, so anywhere between zero to three months to beyond three months.\n\nSo those are kind of the details of an extremely high standard of safety that has to be reached.\n\nCorrect.\n\nFDA supervises this, but this, in general, just a very high standard. And every aspect of this, including the surgery, I think Matthew MacDougall has mentioned that like the standard is, let's say, how to put it politely? Higher than maybe some other operations that we take for granted. So the standard for all the surgical stuff here is extremely high.\n\nVery high. I mean, it's a highly, highly regulated environment with the governing agencies that scrutinize every medical device that gets marketed. And I think it's a good thing. It's good to have those high standards, and we try to hold extremely high standards to kind of understand what sort of damage, if any, these innovative emerging technologies and new technologies that we're building are. And so far, we have been extremely impressed by lack of immune response from these threads.\n\nSpeaking of which, you talk to me with excitement about the histology and some of the images that you're able to share. Can you explain to me what we're looking at?\n\nYeah, so what you're looking at is a stained tissue image. So this is a sectioned tissue slice from an animal that was implanted for seven months. So kind of a chronic time point. And you're seeing all these different colors, and each color indicates specific types of cell types. So purple and pink are astrocytes and microglia respectably. They're types of glial cells.\n\nAnd yet the other thing that people may not be aware of is your brain is not just made up of soup of neurons and axons. There are other cells, like glial cells, that actually kind of is the glue and also react if there are any trauma or damage to the tissue.\n\nThe brown are the neurons here?\n\nThe brown are the neurons.\n\nThe modern neurons.\n\nSo what you're seeing is, in this kind of macro image, you're seeing these like circle highlighted in white, the insertion sites. And when you zoom into one of those, you see the threads. And then in this particular case, I think we're seeing about the 16 wires that are going into the page.\n\nAnd the incredible thing here is the fact that you have the neurons that are these brown structures or brown circular or elliptical thing that are actually touching and abutting the thread. So what this is saying is that there's basically zero trauma that's caused during this insertion. And with these neural interfaces, these micro electrodes that you insert, that is one of the most common mode of failure.\n\nSo when you insert these threads, like the Utah array, it causes neuronal death around the site, because you're inserting a foreign object, right? And that kind of elicit these like immune response through microglia and astrocytes. They form this like protective layer around it.\n\nOh, not only are you killing the neuron cells, but you're also creating this protective layer that then basically prevents you from recording neural signals, 'cause you're getting further and further away from the neurons that you're trying to record. And that is the biggest mode of failure. And in this particular example, in that inside, it's about 50 micron with that scale bar. The neurons just seem to be attracted to it.\n\n(Lex laughing) - And so there's certainly no trauma. That's such a beautiful image, by the way. So the brown are the neurons. And for some reason, I can't look away. It's really cool.\n\nYeah, and the way that these things like, I mean, your tissues generally don't have these beautiful colors. This is multiplex stain that uses these different proteins that are staining these at different colors. We use very standard set of staining techniques, with HG, EB1 and new N and GFAP.\n\nSo if you go to the next image, this is also kind of illustrates the second point, 'cause you can make an argument, and initially, when we saw the previous image, we said, \"Oh, like are the threads just floating? Like what is happening here? Like are we actually looking at the right thing?\" So what we did is we did another stain, and this is all done in-house, of this batons, trichrome stain, which is in blue that shows these collagen layers.\n\nSo the blue basically, like you don't want the blue around the implant threads, 'cause that means that there's some sort of scarring that's happen. And what you're seeing, if you look at individual threads, is that you don't see any of the blue, which means that there has been absolutely, or very, very minimal to a point where it's not detectable amount of trauma in these inserted threads.\n\nSo that presumably is one of the big benefits of having this kind of flexible thread.\n\nYeah, so we think this is primarily due to the size, as well as the flexibility of the threads. Also the fact that R1 is avoiding vasculature, so we're not disrupting or we're not causing damage to the vessels and not breaking any of the blood brain barrier has basically caused the immune response to be muted.\n\nBut this is also a nice illustration of the size of things. So this is the tip of the thread.\n\nYeah, those are neurons.\n\nAnd they're neurons. And this is the thread listening. And the electrodes are positioned how?\n\nYeah, so this is, what you're looking at is not electrode themselves. Those are the conductive wires. So each of those should probably be two micron in width. So what we're looking at is we're looking at the coronal slice. So we're looking at some slice of the tissue. So as you go deeper, you'll obviously have less and less of the tapering of the thread. But yeah, the point basically being that there's just kind of cells around the inserter site, which is just an incredible thing to see. I've just never seen anything like this.\n\nHow easy and safe is it to remove the implant?\n\nYeah, so it depends on when. In the first three months or so after the surgery, there's a lot of kind of tissue modeling that's happening. Similar to when you got a cut, you obviously start over first couple weeks, or depending on the size of the wound, scar tissue forming, right? There are these like contractive, and then in the end, they turn into scab and you can scab it off.\n\nThe same thing happens in the brain, and it's a very dynamic environment. And before the scar tissue or the neomembrane or the neomembrane that forms, it's quite easy to just pull 'em out. And there's minimal trauma that's caused during that. Once the scar tissue forms, and with Noland as well, we believe that that's the thing that's currently anchoring the thread. So we haven't seen any more movements since then. So they're quite stable.\n\nIt gets harder to actually completely extract the threads. So our current method for removing the device is cutting the thread, leaving the tissue intact, and then unscrewing and taking the implant out. And that hole is now gonna be plugged with either another Neuralink or just with kind of a peak-based, plastic-based cap.\n\nIs it okay to leave the threads in there forever?\n\nYeah, we think so. We've done studies where we left them there, and one of the biggest concerns that we had is like, do they migrate and do they get to a point where they should not be? We haven't seen that. Again, once the scar tissue forms, they get anchored in place. And I should also say that when we say upgrades, like we're not just talking in theory here. Like we've actually upgraded many, many times.\n\nMost of our monkeys or non-human primates, NHP have been upgraded. Pager, who you saw playing mind pong, has the latest version of device since two years ago and is seemingly very happy and healthy and fat.\n\nSo what's designed for the future, the upgrade procedure? So maybe for Noland. What would the upgrade look like? It was essentially what you're mentioning. Is there a way to upgrade sort of the device internally, where you take it apart and sort of keep the capsule and upgrade the internals?\n\nYeah, so there are a couple different things here. So for Noland, if we were to upgrade, what we would have to do is either cut the threads or extract the threads depending on kind of the situation there in terms of how they're anchored or scarred in. If you were to remove them with the dural substitute, you have an intact brain so you can reinsert different threads with the updated implant package.\n\nThere are a couple different other ways that we're thinking about, the future of what the upgradable system looks like. One is, at the moment, we currently remove the dura, this kind of thick layer that protects the brain, but that actually is the thing that actually proliferates the scar tissue formation. So typically, general good rule of thumb is you wanna leave the nature as is and not disrupt it as much.\n\nSo looking at ways to insert the threads through the dura, which comes with different set of challenges, such as it's a pretty thick layer, so how do you actually penetrate that without breaking the needle? So we're looking at different needle design for that, as well as the kind of the loop engagement. The other biggest challenges are it's quite opaque, optically, and with white light illumination.\n\nSo how do you avoid still this biggest advantage that we have of avoiding vasculature? How do you image through that? How do you actually still mediate that? So there are other imaging techniques that we're looking at to enable that. But our hypothesis is that, and based on some of the early evidence that we have, doing through the dura insertion will cause minimal scarring that causes them to be much easier to extract over time.\n\nAnd the other thing that we're also looking at, this is gonna be a fundamental change in the implant architecture, is at the moment, it's a monolithic single implant that comes with a thread that's bonded together. So you can't actually separate the thing out, but you can imagine having two part implant. Bottom part, that is the thread that are inserted that has the chips and maybe a radio and some power source.\n\nAnd then you have another implant that has more of the computational heavy load and the bigger battery. And then one can be under the dura, one can be above the dura, like being the plug for the skull. They can talk to each other, but the thing that you wanna upgrade, the computer and not the thread. If you wanna upgrade that, you just go in there, remove the screws and then put in the next version. It's a very, very easy surgery too.\n\nLike you do a skin incision, slip this in, screw. Probably be able to do this in 10 minutes.\n\nSo that would allow you to reuse the thread, sort of.\n\n[DJ] Correct.\n\nSo I mean, this leads to the natural question of, what is the pathway to scaling that increase in the number of threads? Is that a priority? What's the technical challenge there?\n\nYeah, that is a priority. So for next versions of the implant, the key metrics that we're looking to improve are number of channels, just recording from more and more neurons. We have a pathway to actually go from currently 1,000 to hopefully 3,000 if not 6,000 by end of this year. And then end of next year, we wanna get to even more, 16,000.\n\nWow.\n\nThere's a couple limitations to that. One is obviously being able to photo lithographically print those wires. As I mentioned, it's two micron in width and spacing. Obviously, there are chips that are much more advanced than those types of resolution, and we have some of the tools that we have brought in house to be able to do that. So traces will be narrower just so that you have to have more of the wires coming up into the chip.\n\nChips also cannot linearly consume more energy, as you have more and more channels. So there's a lot of innovations in the circuit and architecture as well as the circuit design topology to make them lower power. You need to also think about, if you have all of these spikes, how do you send that off to the end application? So you need to think about bandwidth limitation there and potentially innovations and signal processing.\n\nPhysically, one of the biggest challenge is gonna be the interface. It's always the interface that breaks. Bonding this thin film array to the electronics. It starts to become very, very highly dense interconnects. So how do you characterize that? There's a lot of innovations in kind of the 3D integrations in the recent years that we can take advantage of. One of the biggest challenges that we do have is forming this hermetic barrier, right?\n\nThat this is an extremely harsh environment that we're in - the brain. So how do you protect it from, yeah, like the brain trying to kill your electronics to also your electronics leaking things that you don't want into the brain. And that forming that hermetic barrier is gonna be a very, very big challenge that we I think are actually well-suited to tackle.\n\nHow do you test that? Like what's the development environment to simulate that kind of harshness?\n\nYeah, so this is where the accelerated life tester essentially is a brain in a vat. It literally is a vessel that is made up of, and again, for all intents and purpose for this particular type of test, your brain is a salt water. And you can also put some other set of chemicals like reactive oxygen species that get at kind of these interfaces and trying to cause a reaction to pull it apart.\n\nBut you could also increase the rate at which these interfaces are aging by just increasing temperature. So every 10 degrees Celsius that you increase, you're basically accelerating time by 2x. And there's limit as to how much temperature you wanna increase, 'cause at some point, there's some other non-linear dynamics that causes you to have other nasty gases to form that just is not realistic in an environment.\n\nSo what we do is we increase in our ALT chamber by 20 degrees Celsius that increases the aging by four times. So essentially one day in ALT chamber, it's four day in calendar year. And we look at whether the implants still are intact, including the threads and- - And operation and all of that?\n\nAnd operation and all of that. It obviously is not an exact same environment as a brain, 'cause brain has mechanical, other more biological groups that attack at it. But it is a good test environment, testing environment for at least the enclosure and the strength of the enclosure. And I mean, we've had implants, the current version of the implant that has been in there for, I mean, close to two and a half years, which is equivalent to a decade. And they seem to be fine.\n\nSo it's interesting that the burn, so basically, close approximation is warm salt water, hot salt water is a good testing environment. Yeah, by the way, I'm drinking LMNT, which is basically salt water, which is making me kinda, it doesn't have computational power the way the brain does, but maybe in terms of other characteristics, it's quite similar and I'm consuming it.\n\nYeah, you have to get it in the right pH too. (laughs) - And then consciousness will emerge. Yeah, no.\n\nBy the way, the other thing that also is interesting about our enclosure is, if you look at our implant, it's not your common-looking medical implant that usually is encased in a titanium can that's laser welded. We use this polymer called PCTFE, polychlorotrifluoroethylene, which is actually commonly used in blister packs. So when you have a pill and you try to pop a pill, there's like kind of that plastic membrane. That's what this is.\n\nNo one's actually ever used this except us. And the reason we wanted to do this is 'cause it's electromagnetically transparent. So when we talked about the electromagnetic inductive charging, with titanium can, usually, if you wanna do something like that, you have to have a sapphire window, and it's a very, very tough process to scale.\n\nSo you're doing a lot of iteration here in every aspect of this. The materials, the software- - The whole, whole shebang.\n\nSo, okay. So you mentioned scaling. Is it possible to have multiple Neuralink devices as one of the ways of scaling? To have multiple Neuralink devices implanted?\n\nThat's the goal, that's the goal. Yeah, we've had, I mean, our monkeys have had two Neuralinks, one in each hemisphere. And then we're also looking at potential of having one in motor cortex, one in visual cortex, and one in wherever other cortex.\n\nSo focusing on a particular function, one Neuralink device.\n\nCorrect.\n\nI mean, I wonder if there's some level of customization that can be done on the compute side. So for the motor cortex- - Absolutely. That's the goal. And we talk about at Neuralink building a generalized neural interface to the brain. And that also is strategically how we're approaching this with marketing. And also, with regulatory, which is, hey look, we have the robot, and the robot can access any part of the cortex.\n\nRight now, we're focused on motor cortex with current version of the N1 that's specialized for motor decoding tasks. But also, at the end of the day, there's kind of a general compute available there. But typically, if you wanna really get down to kind of hyperoptimizing for power and efficiency, you do need to get to some specialized function, right?\n\nBut what we're saying is that, hey, you are now used to this robotic insertion techniques, which took many, many years of showing data and conversation with the FDA. And also, internally convincing ourselves that this is safe. And now the difference is that if we go to other parts of the brain, like visual cortex, which we're interested in as our second product, obviously, it's a completely different environment.\n\nThe cortex is laid out very, very differently. It's gonna be more stimulation focus rather than recording, just kind of creating visual percepts. But in the end, we're using the same thin film array technology. We're using the same robot insertion technology. We're using the same packaging technology. Now, more the conversation is focused around what are the differences and what are the implication of those differences in safety and efficacy?\n\nThe way you said second product is both hilarious and awesome to me. That product being restoring sight for blind people. So can you speak to stimulating the visual cortex? I mean, the possibilities there are just incredible to be able to give that gift back to people who don't have sight or even any aspect of that. Can you just speak to the challenges of, there's several challenges here.\n\nOh, many.\n\nOne of which is, like you said, from recording to stimulation. Just any aspect of that that you're both excited and see the challenges of.\n\nYeah, I guess I'll start by saying that we actually have been capable of stimulating through our thin film array as well as other electronics for years. We have actually demonstrated some of that capabilities for reanimating the limb in the spinal cord. Obviously, for the current EFS study, we've hardware disabled that, so that's something that we wanted to embark as a separate, separate journey.\n\nAnd obviously, there are many, many different ways to write information into the brain. The way in which we're doing that is through electrical, passing electrical current, and kind of causing that to really change the local environment so that you can sort of artificially cause kind of the neurons to depolarize in nearby areas. For vision specifically, the way our visual system works, it's both well-understood.\n\nI mean, anything with kind of brain, there are aspects of it that's well-understood. But in the end, like we don't really know anything. But the way visual system works is that you have photon hitting your eye, and in your eyes, there are these specialized cells called photoreceptor cells that convert the photon energy into electrical signals. That then gets projected to your back of your head, your visual cortex.\n\nIt goes through actually thalamic system called LGN that then projects it out. And then in the visual cortex, there's visual area one or V1, and then there's bunch of other higher level processing layers like V2, V3. And there there are actually kind of interesting parallels.\n\nAnd when you study the behaviors of these convolutional neural networks, like what the different layers of the network is detecting, first, they're detecting like these edges, and they're then detecting some more natural curves, and then they start to detect like objects, right? Kind of similar thing happens in the brain. And a lot of that has been inspired, and also, it's been kinda exciting to see some of the correlations there.\n\nBut things like from there, where those cognition arise and where's color encoded, there's just not a lot of understanding, fundamental understanding there. So in terms of kind of bringing sight back to those that are blind, there are many different forms of blindness. There's actually million people, one million people in the U. S. that are legally blind. That means like certain, like score below in kind of the visual tests.\n\nI think it's something like, if you can see something at 20 feet distance, that normal people can see at 200 feet distance, like if you're worse than that, you're legally blind.\n\nSo that means you can't function effectively.\n\nCorrect.\n\nUsing sight in the world.\n\nYeah, like to navigate your environment. And yeah, there are different forms of blindness. There are forms of blindness where there's some degeneration of your retina, these photoreceptor cells, and rest of your visual processing that I described is intact. And for those types of individuals, you may not need to maybe stick electrodes into the visual cortex.\n\nYou can actually build retinal prosthetic devices that actually just replaces the function of that retinal cells that are degenerated. And there are many companies that are working on that. But that's a very small slice. Albeit significance, those smaller slice of folks that are legally blind.\n\nIf there's any damage along that circuitry, whether it's in the optic nerve or just the LGN circuitry or any break in that circuit, that's not gonna work for you. And the source of where you need to actually cause that visual percept to happen, because your biological mechanism not doing that is by placing electrodes in the visual cortex in the back of your head.\n\nAnd the way in which this would work is that you would have an external camera, whether it's something as unsophisticated as a GoPro or some sort of wearable RayBan type glasses that Meta's working on that captures a scene, right? And that scene is then converted to set of electrical impulses or stimulation pulses that you would activate in your visual cortex through these thin film arrays.\n\nAnd by playing in a concerted kind of orchestra of these stimulation patterns, you can create what's called phosphenes, which are these kind of white yellowish dots that you can also create by just pressing your eyes. You can actually create those percepts by stimulating in the visual cortex.\n\nAnd the name of the game is really have many of those and have those percepts be, the phosphenes be as small as possible so that you can start to tell apart, like they're the individual pixels of the screen, right? So if you have many, many of those, potentially, you'll be able to, in the long term, be able to actually get naturalistic vision.\n\nBut in the like short term to maybe midterm, being able to at least be able to have object detection algorithms run on your glasses, the pre-op processing units, and then being able to at least see the edges of things so you don't bump into stuff.\n\nIt's incredible. This is really incredible. So you basically would be adding pixels, and your brain would start to figure out what those pixels mean. Yeah, and like with different kinds of assistant on the signal processing on all fronts.\n\nYeah. The thing that actually, so a couple things. One is, obviously, if you're blind from birth, the way brain works, especially in the early age, neuroplasticity is really nothing other than kind of your brain and different parts of your brain fighting for the limited territory.\n\n[Lex] (laughs) Yeah.\n\nAnd I mean, very, very quickly, you see cases where you know people that are, I mean, you also hear about people who are blind that have heightened sense of hearing or some other senses. And the reason for that is that cortex that's not used just gets taken over by these different parts of the cortex. So for those types of individuals, I mean, I guess they're going to have to now map some other parts of their senses into what they call vision.\n\nBut it's gonna be obviously a very, very different conscious experience before. So I think that's a interesting caveat. The other thing that also is important to highlight is that we're currently limited by our biology in terms of the wavelength that we can see. There's a very, very small wavelength that is a visible light wavelength that we can see with our eyes.\n\nBut when you have an external camera with this BCI system, you're not limited to that. You can have infrared, you can have UV, you can have whatever other spectrum that you want to see. And whether that gets matched to some sort of weird conscious experience, I've no idea. But oftentimes, I talk to people about the goal of Neuralink being going beyond the limits of our biology. That's sort of what I mean.\n\nAnd if you're able to control the kind of raw signal, when we use our sight, we're getting the photons and there's not much processing on it. If you're being able to control that signal, maybe you can do some kind of processing. Maybe you do object detection ahead of time.\n\n[DJ] Yeah.\n\nYou're doing some kind of pre-processing, and there's a lot of possibilities to explore that. So it's not just increasing sort of thermal imaging, that kind of stuff, but it's also just doing some kind of interesting processing.\n\nCorrect, yeah. I mean, my theory of how like visual system works also is that, I mean, there's just so many things happening in the world, and there's a lot of photons that are going into your eye, and it's unclear exactly where some of the pre-processing steps are happening. But I mean, I actually think that just from a fundamental perspective, there's just so much, the reality that we're in, if it's a reality, is so there's so much data.\n\nAnd I think humans are just unable to actually like eat enough actually to process all that information. So there's some sort of filtering that does happen, whether that happens in the retina, whether that happens in different layers of the visual cortex. Unclear.\n\nBut like the analogy that I sometimes think about is, if your brain is a CCD camera, and all of the information in the world is a sun, and when you try to actually look at the sun with the CCD camera, it's just gonna saturate the sensors, right? 'Cause it's enormous amount of energy. So what you do is you end up adding these filters, right? To just kind of narrow the information that's coming to you and being captured.\n\nAnd I think things like our experiences or our like drugs like propofol, that like anesthetic drug or psychedelics, what they're doing is they're kind of swapping out these filters and putting in new ones or removing older ones and kind of controlling our conscious experience.\n\nYeah, man, not to distract from the topic, but I just took a very high dose of ayahuasca in the Amazon jungle. So yes, it's a nice way to think about it. You're swapping out different experiences, and with Neuralink being able to control that, primarily at first, to improve function, not for entertainment purposes or enjoyment purposes, but- - Yeah, giving back lost functions.\n\nWell, giving back lost functions. And there, especially when the function is completely lost, anything is a huge help. Would you implant a Neuralink device in your own brain?\n\nAbsolutely. I mean, maybe not right now, but absolutely.\n\nWhat kind of capability, once reached, you would start getting real curious and almost get a little antsy, like jealous of people that get it as you watch them get implanted?\n\nYeah, I mean I think, I mean, even with our early participants, if they start to do things that I can't do, which I think is in the realm of possibility for them to be able to get, 15, 20, if not like 100 BPS right? There's nothing that fundamentally stops us from being able to achieve that type of performance. I mean, I would certainly get jealous that they can do that.\n\nI should say that watching Noland, I get a little jealous 'cause he's having so much fun, and it seems like such a chill way to play video games.\n\nYeah. So I mean, the thing that also is hard to appreciate sometimes is that, he's doing these things while talking. I mean, it's multitasking, right? So it's clearly, it's obviously cognitively intensive, but similar to how, when we talk, we move our hands, like these things like are multitasking. I mean, he's able to do that. And you won't be able to do that with other assistive technology as far as I'm aware.\n\nIf you're obviously using like an eye tracking device, you're very much fixated on that thing that you're trying to do. And if you're using voice control, I mean, like if you say some other stuff, yeah, you don't get to use that.\n\nYeah, the multitasking aspect of that is really interesting. So it's not just the BPS for the primary task. It's the parallelization of multiple tasks. If you measure the BPS for the entirety of the human organism, so if you're talking and doing a thing with your mind and looking around also, I mean, there's just a lot of paralyzation that can be happening.\n\nYeah. But I mean, I think at some point for him, like if he wants to really achieve those high level BPS, it does require like full attention, right? And that's a separate circuitry that is a big mystery. Like how attention works and, you know?\n\nYeah, attention, like cognitive load, I've read a lot of literature on people doing two tasks. Like you have your primary task and a secondary task. And the secondary task is a source of distraction. And how does that affect the performance of the primary task? And depending on the tasks, there's a lot of interesting, I mean, this is an interesting computational device, right? And I think- - To say the least.\n\nA lot of novel insights that can be gained from everything. I mean, I personally am surprised that Noland's able to do such incredible control of the cursor while talking and also being nervous at the same time, 'cause he's talking like all of us are, if you're talking in front of the camera, you get nervous. So all of those are coming into play, and he is able to still achieve high performance. Surprising. I mean, all of this is really amazing. And I think just after researching this really in depth, I kind of want Neuralink.\n\n(laughs) Get in line.\n\nAnd also, the safety get in line. Well, we should say the registry is for people who have quadriplegia and all that kind of stuff so- - Correct.\n\nThere'll be a separate line for people. They're just curious, like myself. So now that Noland, patient P1, is part of the ongoing prime study, what's the high level vision for P2, P3, P4, P5? And just the expansion into other human beings that are getting to experience this implant?\n\nYeah, I mean, the primary goal is, for our study in the first place is to achieve safety endpoints. Just understand safety of this device, as well as the implantation process. And also, at the same time, understand the efficacy and the impact that it could have on the potential users' lives. And just because you have, you're living with tetraplegia, it doesn't mean your situation is same as another person living with tetraplegia.\n\nIt's wildly, wildly varying. It's something that we're hoping to also understand how our technology can serve not just a very small slice of those individuals, but broader group of individuals and being able to get the feedback to just really build just the best product for them.\n\nThere's obviously also goals that we have, and the primary purpose of the early feasibility study is to learn from each and every participant to improve the device, improve the surgery before we embark on what's called a pivotal study that then is much larger trial that starts to look at statistical significance of your endpoints, and that's required before you can then market the device. And that's how it works in the U. S.\n\nand just generally around the world. That's the process you follow. So our goal is to really just understand from people like Noland, P2, P3, future participants, what aspects of our device needs to improve. If it turns out that people are like, \"I really don't like the fact that it lasts only six hours. I wanna be able to use this computer for like 24 hours.\"\n\nI mean, that is a user needs and user requirements, which we can only find out from just being able to engage with them.\n\nSo before the pivotal study, there's kind of like a rapid innovation based on individual experiences. You're learning from individual people how they use it, like the high resolution details in terms of like cursor control and signal and all that kind of stuff to like life experience.\n\nYeah, yeah, so there's hardware changes but also just firmware updates. So even when we had that sort of recovery event for Noland, he now has the new firmware that he has been updated with. And it's similar to how like your phones get updated all the time with new firmware for security patches, whatever new functionality UI, right? And that's something that is possible with our implant.\n\nIt's not a static one-time device that can only do the thing that it said it can do. I mean, it's similar to Tesla. You can do over the air firmware updates, and now you have completely new user interface. And all this bells and whistles and improvements on everything like the latest, right? When we say generalized platform, that's what we're talking about.\n\nYeah, it's really cool how the app that Noland is using, there's like calibration, all that kind of stuff. And then there's update. You just click and get an update. What other future capabilities are you kinda looking to? You said vision. That's a fascinating one. What about sort of accelerated typing or speech, this kind of stuff? And what else is there?\n\nYeah, those are still in the realm of movement program. So largely speaking, we have two programs. We have the movement program and we have the vision program. The movement program currently is focused around the digital freedom. As you can easily guess, if you can control 2D cursor in the digital space, you could move anything in the physical space.\n\nSo robotic arms, wheelchair, your environment, or even really like, whether it's through the phone or just like directly to those interfaces, so like to those machines. So we're looking at ways to kind of expand those types of capability, even for Noland.\n\nThat requires conversation with the FDA and kind of showing safety data for, if there's a robotic arm or a wheelchair that we can guarantee that they're not gonna hurt themselves accidentally, right? It's very different if you're moving stuff in the digital domain versus like in the physical space, you can actually potentially cause harm to the participants. So we're working through that right now.\n\nSpeech does involve different areas of the brain. Speech prosthetic is very, very fascinating, and there's actually been a lot of really amazing work that's been happening in academia. Sergei Stavisky at UC Davis, Jaimie Henderson, and late Krishna Shenoy at Stanford doing just some incredible amount of work in improving speech neuroprosthetics.\n\nAnd those are actually looking more at parts of the motor cortex that are controlling these focal articulators. And being able to like, even by mouthing the word or imagine speech, you can pick up those signals. The more sophisticated higher level processing areas, like the Broca's area or Wernicke's area, those are still very, very big mystery in terms of the underlying mechanism of how all that stuff works.\n\nBut yeah, I mean, I think Neuralink's event goal is to kind of understand those things and be able to provide a platform and tools to be able to understand that and study that.\n\nThis is where I get to the pothead questions. Do you think we can start getting insight into things like thought? So speech is, there's a muscular component, like you said. There's like the act of producing sounds. But then what about the internal things like cognition? Like low level thoughts and high level thoughts. Do you think we'll start noticing kind of signals that could be picked up? They could be understood, they could be maybe used in order to interact with the outside world.\n\nIn some ways, like I guess this starts to kind of get into the heart problem of consciousness. And I mean, on one hand, all of these are, at some point, set of electrical signals, that from there, maybe it in itself is giving you the cognition or the meaning, or somehow, human mind is incredibly amazing storytelling machine. So we're telling ourselves and fooling ourselves that there's some interesting meaning here.\n\nBut I mean, I certainly think that BCI and really BCI at the end of the day is a set of tools that help you kind of study the underlying mechanisms in both like local but also broader sense. And whether there's some interesting patterns of like electrical signal, that means like you're thinking this versus, and you can either like learn from like many, many sets of data to correlate some of that and be able to do mind reading or not.\n\nI'm not sure. I certainly would not kind of rule that out as a possibility, but I think BCI alone probably can't do that. There's probably additional set of tools and framework. And also, like just heart problem of consciousness at the end of the day is rooted in this philosophical question of like, what's the meaning of it all? What's the nature of our existence? Where's the mind emerge from this complex network?\n\nYeah, how does the subjective experience emerge from just a bunch of spikes, electrical spikes?\n\nYeah, yeah, I mean, we do really think about BCI and what we're building as a tool for understanding the mind, the brain. The only question that matters. There's actually, there actually is some biological existence proof of like what it would take to kind of start to form some of these experiences that may be unique. If you actually look at every one of our brains, there are two hemispheres.\n\nThere's a left-sided brain, there's a right-sided brain. And I mean, unless you have some other conditions, you normally don't feel like left legs or right legs. Like you just feel like one legs, right? So what is happening there, right? If you actually look at the two hemispheres, there's a structure that kind of characterize the two called the corpus callosum that is supposed to have around 200 to 300 million connections or axons.\n\nSo whether that means that's the number of interface and electrodes that we need to create some sort of mind meld, or from that, like whatever new conscious experience that you can experience. But yeah, I do think that there's like kind of an interesting existence proof that we all have.\n\nAnd that threshold is unknown at this time.\n\nOh yeah, these things, everything in this domain is speculation, right?\n\nAnd then there would be, you'd be continuously pleasantly surprised. Do you see a world where there's millions of people, like tens of millions, hundreds of millions of people walking around with a Neuralink device, or multiple Neuralink devices in their brain?\n\nI do. First of all, there are, like if you look at worldwide, people suffering from movement disorders and visual deficits. I mean, that's in the tens if not hundreds of millions of people. So that alone, I think, there's a lot of benefit and potential good that we can do with this type of technology. And once you start to get into kind of neuro, like psychiatric application, depression, anxiety, hunger, or obesity, right? Like mood, control of appetite, I mean, that starts to become very real to everyone.\n\nNot to mention that most people on earth have a smartphone. And once BCI starts competing with a smartphone as a preferred methodology of interacting with the digital world, that also becomes an interesting thing.\n\nOh yeah, I mean, yeah. This is even before going to that, right? I mean, there's like almost, I mean, the entire world that could benefit from these types of thing. And then, yeah, like if we're talking about kind of next generation of how we interface with machines or even ourselves, in many ways, I think BCI can play a role in that. And some of the things that I also talk about is I do think that there is a real possibility that you could see eight billion people walking around with Neuralink.\n\nWell, thank you so much for pushing ahead. And I look forward to that exciting feature.\n\nThanks for having me.\n\nThanks for listening to this conversation with DJ Seo. And now, dear friends, here's Matthew MacDougall, the head neurosurgeon at Neuralink. When did you first become fascinated with the human brain?\n\nSince forever. As far back as I can remember, I've been interested in the human brain. I mean, I was a thoughtful kid and a bit of an outsider. And you sit there thinking about what the most important things in the world are in your little tiny adolescent brain.\n\nAnd the answer that I came to, that I converged on was that all of the things you can possibly conceive of, as things that are important for human beings to care about are literally contained in the skull. Both the perception of them and their relative values. And the solutions to all our problems and all of our problems are all contained in the skull.\n\nAnd if we knew more about how that worked, how the brain encodes information and generates desires and generates agony and suffering, we could do more about it. You think about all the really great triumphs in human history. You think about all the really horrific tragedies. You think about the holocaust, you think about any prison full of human stories, and all of those problems boil down to neurochemistry.\n\nSo if you get a little bit of control over that, you provide people the option to do better. And in the way I read history, the way people have dealt with having better tools is that they most often in the end do better, with huge asterisk. But I think it's an interesting, a worthy and noble pursuit to give people more options, more tools.\n\nYeah, that's a fascinating way to look at human history. You just imagine all these neurobiological mechanisms, Stalin, Hitler, all of these, Gengis Khan, all of them just had like a brain, just a bunch of neurons, like a few tons of billions of neurons gaining a bunch of information over a period of time. They have a set of module that does language and memory and all that. And from there, in the case of those people, they're able to murder millions of people.\n\n[Matthew] Yeah.\n\nAll that coming from, there's not some glorified notion of a dictator of this enormous mind or something like this. It's just the brain.\n\nYeah, yeah. I mean, a lot of that has to do with how well people like that can organize those around them.\n\nOther brains.\n\nYeah, and so I always find it interesting to look to primatology, look to our closest non-human relatives for clues as to how humans are going to behave and what particular humans are able to achieve. And so you look at chimpanzees and bonobos and they're similar but different in their social structures particularly.\n\nAnd I went to Emory in Atlanta and studied under Frans, the great Frans de Waal, who was kind of the leading primatologist who recently died, and his work at looking at chimps through the lens of how you would watch an episode of \"Friends\" and understand the motivations of the characters interacting with each other. He would look at a chimp colony and basically apply that lens. I'm massively oversimplifying it.\n\nIf you do that, instead of just saying, subject 473 through his feces at subject 471, you talk about them in terms of their human struggles, accord them the dignity of themselves as actors with understandable goals and drives, what they want out of life. And primarily, it's the things we want out of life: food, sex, companionship, power. You can understand chimp and bonobo behavior in the same lights much more easily.\n\nAnd I think doing so gives you the tools you need to reduce human behavior from the kind of false complexity that we layer onto it with language and look at it in terms of, oh, well, these humans are looking for companionship, sex, food, power. And I think that's a pretty powerful tool to have in understanding human behavior.\n\nAnd I just went to the Amazon jungle for a few weeks, and it's a very visceral reminder that a lot of life on earth is just trying to get laid. They're all screaming at each other. Like I saw a lot of monkeys, and they're just trying to impress each other, or maybe if there's a battle for power, but a lot of the battle for power has to do with them getting laid.\n\nRight. Breeding rights often go with alpha status. And so if you can get a piece of that, then you're gonna do okay.\n\nAnd would like to think that we're somehow fundamentally different, but especially when it comes to primates, we're really aren't, you know. We can use fancier poetic language, but maybe some of the underlying drives that motivate us are similar.\n\nYeah, I think that's true.\n\nAnd all of that is coming from this, the brain.\n\nYeah.\n\nSo when did you first start studying the brain as I guess as a biological mechanism?\n\nBasically, the moment I got to college, I started looking around for labs that I could do neuroscience work in. I originally approached that from the angle of looking at interactions between the brain and the immune system, which isn't the most obvious place to start, but I had this idea at the time that the contents of your thoughts would have an impact, a direct impact, maybe a powerful one on non-conscious systems in your body.\n\nThe systems we think of as homeostatic, automatic mechanisms like fighting off a virus, like repairing a wound. And sure enough, there are big crossovers between the two. I mean, it gets to kind of a key point that I think goes under recognized. One of the things people don't recognize or appreciate about the human brain enough, and that is that it basically controls or has a huge role in almost everything that your body does.\n\nLike you try to name an example of something in your body that isn't directly controlled or massively influenced by the brain, and it's pretty hard. I mean, you might say like bone healing or something, but even those systems, the hypothalamus and pituitary end up playing a role in coordinating the endocrine system that does have a direct influence on, say, the calcium level in your blood that goes to bone healing.\n\nSo non-obvious connections between those things implicate the brain as really a potent prime mover in all of health.\n\nOne of the things I realized in the other direction too, how most of the systems in the body integrated with the human brain, like they affect the brain also, like the immune system. I think there's just people who study Alzheimer's and those kinds of things. It's just surprising how much you can understand of that from the immune system, from the other systems that don't obviously seem to have anything to do with sort of the nervous system. They all play together.\n\nYeah, you could understand how that would be driven by evolution too, just in some simple examples. If you get sick, if you get a communicable disease, you get the flu, it's pretty advantageous for your immune system to tell your brain, \"Hey, now be antisocial for a few days. Don't go be the life of the party tonight. In fact, maybe just cuddle up somewhere warm under a blanket and just stay there for a day or two.\"\n\nAnd sure enough, that tends to be the behavior that you see both in animals and in humans. If you get sick, elevated levels of interleukins in your blood and TNF alpha in your blood ask the brain to cut back on social activity. And even moving around, you have lower locomotor activity in animals that are infected with viruses.\n\nSo from there, the early days in neuroscience to surgery, when did that step happen?\n\nYeah.\n\nThis is a leap.\n\nIt was sort of an evolution of thought. I wanted to study the brain. I started studying the brain in undergrad in this neuroimmunology lab. I, from there, realized at some point that I didn't wanna just generate knowledge. I wanted to effect real changes in the actual world, in actual people's lives. And so after having not really thought about going into medical school, I was on a track to go into a PhD program.\n\nI said, \"Well, I'd like that option. I'd like to actually potentially help tangible people in front of me.\" And doing a little digging found that there exists these MD-PhD programs where you can choose not to choose between them and do both.\n\nAnd so I went to USC for medical school and had a joint PhD program with Caltech, where I actually chose that program particularly because of a researcher at Caltech named Richard Andersen, who's one of the godfathers of primate neuroscience and has a MACAC lab where Utah arrays and other electrodes were being inserted into the brains of monkeys to try to understand how intentions were being encoded in the brain.\n\nSo I ended up there with the idea that maybe I would be a neurologist and study the brain on the side, and then discovered that neurology, again, I'm gonna make enemies by saying this, but neurology predominantly and distressingly to me is the practice of diagnosing a thing and then saying, \"Good luck with that. There's not much we can do.\"\n\nAnd neurosurgery, very differently, it's a powerful lever on taking people that are headed in a bad direction and changing their course in the sense of brain tumors that are potentially treatable or curable with surgery. Even aneurysms in the brain, blood vessels that are gonna rupture, you can save lives really is at the end of the day, what mattered to me.\n\nAnd so I was at USC, as I mentioned, that happens to be one of the great neurosurgery programs. And so I met these truly epic neurosurgeons, Alex Khalessi and Mike Apuzzo and Steve Giannotta and Marty Weiss, these sort of epic people that were just human beings in front of me.\n\nAnd so it kind of changed my thinking from neurosurgeons are distant gods that live on another planet and occasionally come and visit us to these are humans that have problems and are people. And there's nothing fundamentally preventing me from being one of them. And so at the last minute in medical school, I changed gears from going into a different specialty and switched into neurosurgery, which cost me a year.\n\nI had to do another year of research, because I was so far along in the process to switch into neurosurgery. The deadlines had already passed. So it was a decision that cost time, but absolutely worth it.\n\nWhat was the hardest part of the training on the neurosurgeon track?\n\nYeah, two things. I think that residency in neurosurgery is sort of a competition of pain, of like how much pain can you eat and smile.\n\nYeah.\n\nAnd so there's workout restrictions that are not really, they're viewed at, I think, internally among the residents as weakness. And so most neurosurgery residents try to work as hard as they can. And that I think necessarily means working long hours, and sometimes, over the work hour limits. And we care about being compliant with whatever regulations are in front of us.\n\nBut I think more important than that, people wanna give their all in becoming a better neurosurgeon, because the stakes are so high. And so it's a real fight to get residents to say go home at the end of their shift and not stay and do more surgery.\n\nAre you seriously saying like one of the hardest things is literally like forcing them to get sleep and rest and all this kind of stuff?\n\nHistorically, that was the case. I think the next generation, I think the next generation is more compliant and more selfcare- - Weaker is what you mean. All right, I'm just kidding, I'm just kidding.\n\nI didn't say it.\n\nNow I'm making enemies. Okay, I get it. Wow, that's fascinating. So what was the second thing?\n\nThe personalities. And maybe the two are connected, but- - Was it pretty competitive?\n\nIt's competitive and it's also, as we touched on earlier, primates like power, and I think neurosurgery has long had this aura of mystique and excellence and whatever about it. And so it's an invitation I think for people that are cloaked in that authority. A board certified neurosurgeon is basically a walking fallacious appeal to authority, right? You have license to walk into any room and act like you're an expert on whatever. And fighting that tendency is not something that most neurosurgeons do well. Humility isn't the forte.\n\nYeah, so I have friends who know you, and whenever they speak about you, that you have the surprising quality for a neurosurgeon of humility, which I think indicates that it's not as common as perhaps in other professions, 'cause there is a kind of gigantic sort of heroic aspect to neurosurgery, and I think it gets to people's head a little bit.\n\nYeah. Well, I think that allows me to play well at an Elon company. Because Elon, one of his strengths, I think, is to just instantly see through fallacy from authority. So nobody walks into a room that he's in and says, \"Well, goddamn it, you have to trust me. I'm the guy that built the last 10 rockets or something.\" And he says, \"Well, you did it wrong and we can do it better.\" Or, \"I'm the guy that kept Ford alive for the last 50 years.\n\nYou listen to me on how to build cars.\" And he says no. And so you don't walk into a room that he's in and say, \"Well, I'm a neurosurgeon. Let me tell you how to do it.\" He's gonna say, \"Well, I'm a human being that has a brain. I can think from first principles myself, thank you very much. And here's how I think it ought to be done. Let's go try it and see who's right.\"\n\nAnd that's proven I think over and over in his case to be a very powerful approach.\n\nIf we just take that tangent, there's a fascinating interdisciplinary team at Neuralink that you get to interact with, including Elon. What do you think is the secret to a successful team? What have you learned from just getting to observe these folks? World experts in different disciplines work together.\n\nYeah, there's a sweet spot where people disagree and forcefully speak their mind and passionately defend their position, and yet are still able to accept information from others and change their ideas when they're wrong. And so I like the analogy of sort of how you polish rocks. You put hard things in a hard container and spin it. People bash against each other and outcome's a more refined product.\n\nAnd so to make a good team at Neuralink, we've tried to find people that are not afraid to defend their ideas passionately. And occasionally, strongly disagree with people that they're working with and have the best idea come out on top. It's not an easy balance, again, to refer back to the primate brain.\n\nIt's not something that is inherently built into the primate brain to say, \"I passionately put all my chips on this position and now I'm just gonna walk away from it. Admit you were right.\" Part of our brains tell us that that is a power loss. That is a loss of face, a loss of standing in the community. And now, you're a zeta chimp, 'cause your idea got trounced.\n\nAnd you just have to recognize that that little voice in the back of your head is maladaptive and it's not helping the team win.\n\nYeah, you have to have the confidence to be able to walk away from an idea that you hold onto. Yeah.\n\nYeah.\n\nAnd if you do that often enough, you're actually going to become the best in the world at your thing. I mean, that kind of that rapid iteration.\n\nYeah, you'll at least be a member of a winning team.\n\nRide the wave. What did you learn? You mentioned there's a lot of amazing neurosurgeons at USC. What lessons about surgery and life have you learned from those folks?\n\nYeah, I think working your ass off, working hard while functioning as a member of a team, getting a job done that is incredibly difficult, working incredibly long hours, being up all night, taking care of someone that you think probably won't survive no matter what you do. Working hard to make people that you passionately dislike look good the next morning.\n\nThese folks were relentless in their pursuit of excellent neurosurgical technique decade over decade. And I think we're well-recognized for that excellence. Especially Marty Weiss, Steve Giannotta, Mike Apuzzo, they made huge contributions not only to surgical technique, but they built training programs that trained dozens or hundreds of amazing neurosurgeons. I was just lucky to kind of be in their wake.\n\nWhat's that like, you mentioned doing a surgery where the person is likely not to survive. Does that wear on you?\n\nYeah. It's especially challenging when you, with all respect to our elders, it doesn't hit so much when you're taking care of an 80-year-old and something was going to get them pretty soon anyway. And so you lose a patient like that, and it was part of the natural course of what is expected of them in the coming years, regardless.\n\nTaking care of a father of two or three, four young kids, someone in their 30s that didn't have it coming, and they show up in your ER having their first seizure of their life, and lo and behold, they've got a huge, malignant, inoperable or incurable brain tumor. You can only do that, I think, a handful of times before it really starts eating away at your armor.\n\nOr a young mother that shows up that has a giant hemorrhage in her brain that she's not gonna survive from. And they bring her four-year-old daughter to say goodbye one last time before they turn the ventilator off. The great Henry Marsh is a English neurosurgeon who said it best. I think he says that every neurosurgeon carries with them a private graveyard, and I definitely feel that, especially with young parents. That kills me.\n\nThey had a lot more to give. The loss of those people specifically has a knock on effect that's going to make the world worse for people for a long time. And it's just hard to feel powerless in the face of that. And that's where I think you have to be borderline evil to fight against a company like Neuralink or to constantly be taking pot shots at us because what we're doing is to try to fix that stuff.\n\nWe're trying to give people options, to reduce suffering. We're trying to take the pain out of life that broken brains brings in. And yeah, this is just our little way that we're fighting back against entropy, I guess.\n\nYeah, the amount of suffering that's endured when some of the things that we take for granted that our brain is able to do is taken away is immense. And to be able to restore some of that functionality is a real gift.\n\nYeah, we're just starting. We're gonna do so much more.\n\nWell, can you take me through the full procedure of implanting, say, the N1 chip in Neuralink?\n\nYeah, it's a really simple, really simple, straightforward procedure. The human part of the surgery that I do is dead simple. It's one of the most basic neurosurgery procedures imaginable. And I think there's evidence that some version of it has been done for thousands of years.\n\nThat there are examples I think from ancient Egypt of healed or partially healed trephinations from Peru or ancient times in South America where these protosurgeons would drill holes in people's skulls, presumably to let out the evil spirits, but maybe to drain blood clots. And there's evidence of bone healing around the edge, meaning the people at least survive some months after a procedure. And so what we're doing is that.\n\nWe are making a cut in the skin on the top of the head over the area of the brain that is the most potent representation of hand intentions. And so if you are an expert concert pianist, this part of your brain is lighting up the entire time you're playing. We call it the hand knob.\n\nThe hand knob.\n\nYeah.\n\nSo it's all like the finger movement. All of that is just firing away.\n\nYep, there's a little squiggle in the cortex right there. One of the folds in the brain is kind of doubly folded right on that spot. So you can look at it on an MRI and say, \"That's the hand knob.\" And then you do a functional test and a special kind of MRI called an a functional MRI, fMRI. And this part of the brain lights up when people, even quadriplegic people whose brains aren't connected to their finger movements anymore.\n\nThey imagine finger movements, and this part of the brain still lights up. So we can ID that part of the brain in anyone who's preparing to enter our trial and say, \"Okay, that part of the brain, we confirm, is your hand intention area.\" And so I'll make a little cut in the skin, we'll flap the skin open, just like kind of opening the hood of a car, only a lot smaller.\n\nMake a perfectly round one inch diameter hole in the skull, remove that bit of skull, open the lining of the brain, the covering of the brain. It's like a little bag of water that the brain floats in. And then show that part of the brain to our robot. And then this is where the robot shines.\n\nIt can come in and take these tiny, much smaller than human hair electrodes and precisely insert them into the cortex, into the surface of the brain to a very precise depth, in a very precise spot that avoids all the blood vessels that are coating the surface of the brain.\n\nAnd after the robot's done with its part, then the human comes back in and puts the implant into that hole in the skull and covers it up, screwing it down to the skull and sewing the skin back together. So the whole thing is a few hours long. It's extremely low risk compared to the average neurosurgery involving the brain that might say, open up a deep part of the brain or manipulate blood vessels in the brain.\n\nThis opening on the surface of the brain, with only cortical micro insertions, carries significantly less risk than a lot of the tumor or aneurysm surgeries that are routinely done.\n\nSo cortical micro insertions that are via robot and computer vision are designed to avoid the blood vessels.\n\nExactly.\n\nSo I know you're a bit biased here, but let's compare human and machine.\n\nSure.\n\nSo what are human surgeons able to do well, and what are robot surgeons able to do well at this stage of our human civilization development?\n\nYeah, yeah, that's a good question. Humans are general purpose machines. We're able to adapt to unusual situations. We're able to change the plan on the fly. I remember well a surgery that I was doing many years ago down in San Diego, where the plan was to open a small hole behind the ear and go reposition a blood vessel that had come to lay on the facial nerve, the trigeminal nerve, the nerve that goes to the face.\n\nWhen that blood vessel lays on the nerve, it can cause just intolerable, horrific shooting pain that people describe like being zapped with a cattle prod. And so the beautiful, elegant surgery is to go move this blood vessel off the nerve. The surgery team, we went in there and started moving this blood vessel and then found that there was a giant aneurysm on that blood vessel that was not easily visible on the pre-op scans.\n\nAnd so the plan had to dynamically change, and the human surgeons had no problem with that. We're trained for all those things. Robots wouldn't do so well in that situation, at least in their current incarnation, fully robotic surgery, like the electrode insertion portion of the Neuralink surgery. It goes according to a set plan.\n\nAnd so the humans can interrupt the flow and change the plan, but the robot can't really change the plan midway through. It operates according to how it was programmed and how it was asked to run. It does its job very precisely, but not with a wide degree of latitude and how to react to changing conditions.\n\nSo there could be just a very large number of ways that you could be surprised as a surgeon when you enter a situation that could be subtle things that you have to dynamically adjust to.\n\nCorrect.\n\nAnd robots are not good at that.\n\nCurrently. I think we are at the dawn of a new era with AI of the parameters for robot responsiveness to be dramatically broadened, right? I mean, you can't look at a self-driving car and say that it's operating under very narrow parameters. If a chicken runs across the road, it wasn't necessarily programmed to deal with that, specifically, but a Waymo or a self-driving Tesla would have no problem reacting to that appropriately. And so surgical robots aren't there yet, but give it time.\n\nAnd then there could be a lot of, sort of into like semi-autonomous possibilities of maybe a robotic surgeon could say, this situation is perfectly familiar, or the situation is not familiar. And in the not familiar case, a human could take over. But basically like be very conservative in saying, \"Okay, this for sure has no issues, no surprises, and let the humans deal with the surprises, with the edge cases, all that.\" That's one possibility.\n\nSo you think eventually, you'll be out of the job? Well, you being neurosurgeon, your job being neurosurgeon. Humans, there will not be many neurosurgeons left on this earth.\n\nI'm not worried about my job in the course of my professional life. I think I would tell my my kids not necessarily to go in this line of work depending on how things look in 20 years.\n\nIt's so fascinating, 'cause I mean, if I have a line of work, I would say it's programming. And if you ask me like for the last, I don't know, 20 years, what I would recommend for people, I would tell 'em, yeah, go. You will always have a job if you're a programmer, 'cause there's more and more computers and all this kind of stuff and it pays well.\n\nBut then you realize these large language models come along and they're really damn good at generating code. So overnight, you could be surprised like, \"Wow, like what is the contribution of the human really?\" But then you start to think, \"Okay, it does seem like humans have ability, like you said, to deal with novel situations.\" In the case of programming, it's the ability to kinda come up with novel ideas to solve problems.\n\nIt seems like machines aren't quite yet able to do that. And when the stakes are very high, when it's life critical, as it is in surgery, especially in neurosurgery, the stakes are very high for a robot to actually replace a human. But it's fascinating that in this case of Neuralink, there's a human-robot collaboration.\n\nYeah, yeah. I do the parts it can't do, and it does the parts I can't do. And we are friends. (Lex laughing) - I saw that there's a lot of practice going on. So I mean, everything in Neuralink is tested extremely rigorously. But one of the things I saw, that there's a proxy on which the surgeries are performed.\n\nYeah.\n\nSo this is both for the robot and for the human, for everybody involved in the entire pipeline. What's that like practicing the surgery?\n\nIt's pretty intense. So there's no analog to this in human surgery. Human surgery is sort of this artisanal craft that's handed down directly from master to pupil over the generations. I mean, literally the way you learn to be a surgeon on humans is by doing surgery on humans.\n\nI mean, first, you watch your professors do a bunch of surgery, and then finally, they put the trivial parts of the surgery into your hands, and then the more complex parts. And as your understanding of the point and the purposes of the surgery increases, you get more responsibility in the perfect condition. Doesn't always go well. In Neuralink's case, the approach is a bit different. We, of course, practiced as far as we could on animals.\n\nWe did hundreds of animal surgeries. And when it came time to do the first human, we had just amazing team of engineers build incredibly lifelike models. One of the engineers, Fran Romano, in particular built a pulsating brain in a custom 3D printed skull that matches exactly the patient's anatomy, including their face and scalp characteristics.\n\nAnd so when I was able to practice that, I mean, it's as close as it really reasonably should get to being the real thing and all the details, including the having a mannequin body attached to this custom head. And so when we were doing the practice surgeries, we'd wheel that body into the CT scanner and take a mock CT scan and wheel it back in and conduct all the normal safety checks verbally.\n\n\"Stop, this patient, we're confirming his identification, is mannequin number blah, blah, blah.\" And then opening the brain in exactly the right spot using standard operative neuronavigation equipment, standard surgical drills in the same OR that we do all of our practice surgeries in at Neuralink.\n\nAnd having the skull open and have the brain pulse, which adds a degree of difficulty for the robot to perfectly precisely plan and insert those electrodes to the right depth and location. And so yeah, we kind of broke new ground on how extensively we practiced for this surgery.\n\nSo there was a historic moment, a big milestone for Neuralink in part for humanity with the first human getting a Neuralink implant in January of this year. Take me through the surgery on Noland. What did it feel like to be part of this?\n\nYeah. Well, we're lucky to have just incredible partners at the Barrow Neurologic Institute. They are, I think, the premier neurosurgical hospital in the world. They made everything as easy as possible for the trial to get going and helped us immensely with their expertise on how to arrange the details. It was a much more high pressure surgery in some ways.\n\nI mean, even though the outcome wasn't particularly in question in terms of our participant safety, the number of observers, the number of people, there's conference rooms full of people watching live streams in the hospital, rooting for this to go perfectly, and that just adds pressure that is not typical for even the most intense production neurosurgery. Say, removing a tumor or placing deep brain stimulation electrodes.\n\nAnd it had never been done on a human before. There were unknown unknowns. And so definitely, a moderate pucker factor there for the whole team, not knowing if we were going to encounter, say, a degree of brain movement that was unanticipated or a degree of brain sag that took the brain far away from the skull and made it difficult to insert or some other unknown unknown problem.\n\nFortunately, everything went well and that surgery is one of the smoothest outcomes we could have imagined.\n\nWere you nervous? I mean, you're a bit quarterback in the Super Bowl kind of situation.\n\nExtremely nervous. Extremely. I was very pleased when it went well and when it was over. Looking forward to number two.\n\nYeah. Even with all that practice, all of that, you've never been in a situation that's still high stakes in terms of people watching. And we should also probably mention, given how the media works, a lot of people, maybe in a dark kind of way, hoping it doesn't go well.\n\nWell, I think wealth is easy to hate or envy or whatever. And I think there's a whole industry around driving clicks, and bad news is great for clicks. And so any way to take an event and turn it into bad news is gonna be really good for clicks.\n\nIt just sucks because I think it puts pressure on people. It discourages people from trying to solve really hard problems, because to solve hard problems, you have to go into the unknown. You have to do things that haven't been done before, and you have to take risks.\n\nYeah.\n\nCalculated risks. You have to do all kinds of safety precautions, but risks nevertheless. And I just wish there would be more celebration of that, of the risk taking versus like people just waiting on the sidelines, like waiting for failure, and then pointing out the failure. Yeah, it sucks. But in this case, it's really great that everything went just flawlessly, but it's unnecessary pressure, I would say.\n\nNow that there's a human with literal skin in the game, there's a participant whose wellbeing rides on this doing well, you have to be a pretty bad person to be rooting for that to go wrong. And so hopefully, people look in the mirror and realize that at some point.\n\nSo did you get to actually front row seat like watch the robot work? You get to see the whole thing?\n\nYeah, I mean, because an MD needs to be in charge of all of the medical decision making throughout the process, I unscrubbed from the surgery after exposing the brain and presenting it to the robot and placed the targets on the robot software interface that tells the robot where it's going to insert each thread that was done with my hand on the mouse, for whatever that's worth.\n\nSo you were the one placing the targets?\n\nYeah.\n\nOh, cool. So like the robot with a computer vision provides a bunch of candidates and you kinda finalize the decision.\n\nRight. The software engineers are amazing on this team. And so they actually provided an interface where you can essentially use a lasso tool and select a prime area of brain real estate, and it will automatically avoid the blood vessels in that region and automatically place a bunch of targets. So that allows the human robot operator to select really good areas of brain and make dense applications of targets in those regions, the regions we think are gonna have the most high fidelity representations of finger movements and arm movement intentions.\n\nI've seen like images of this. And for me, with OCD, it's for some reason a really pleasant, I think there's a subreddit called oddly satisfying.\n\n[Matthew] Yeah, love that subreddit.\n\nIt's oddly satisfying to see the different target sites avoiding the blood vessels and also maximizing like the usefulness of those locations for the signal. It just feels good. It's like, ah.\n\nAs a person who has a visceral reaction to the brain bleeding, I can tell you it's extremely satisfying watching the electrodes themselves go into the brain and not cause bleeding.\n\nYeah, yeah. So you said the feeling was of relief when everything went perfectly.\n\nYeah.\n\nHow deep in the brain can you currently go and eventually go, let's say, on the Neuralink side. It seems the deeper you go in the brain, the more challenging it becomes.\n\nYeah, so talking broadly about neurosurgery, we can get anywhere. It's routine for me to put deep brain stimulating electrodes near the very bottom of the brain, entering from the top and passing about a two millimeter wire all the way into the bottom of the brain. And that's not revolutionary. A lot of people do that. And we can do that with very high precision. I use a robot from Globus to do that surgery several times a month. It's pretty routine.\n\nWhat are your eyes in that situation? What are you seeing? What kind of technology can you use to visualize where you are to light your way?\n\nYeah, so it's a cool process on the software side. You take a preoperative MRI that's extremely high resolution data of the entire brain. You put the patient to sleep, put their head in a frame that holds the skull very rigidly, and then you take a CT scan of their head while they're asleep with that frame on, and then merge the MRI and the CT in software. You have a plan based on the MRI where you can see these nuclei deep in the brain.\n\nYou can't see them on CT, but if you trust the merging of the two images, then you indirectly know on the CT where that is. And therefore, indirectly know where in reference to the titanium frame screwed to their head those targets are. And so this is '60s technology to manually compute trajectories, given the entry point and target and dial in some goofy looking titanium actuators with a manual actuators with little tick marks on them.\n\nThe modern version of that is to use a robot. Just like a little KUKA arm, you might see it building cars at the Tesla factory.\n\nThis small robot arm can show you the trajectory that you intended from the pre-op MRI and establish a very rigid holder through which you can drill a small hole in the skull and pass a small rigid wire deep into that area of the brain that's hollow and put your electrode through that hollow wire and then remove all of that except the electrode. So you end up with the electrode very, very precisely placed far from the skull surface.\n\nNow that's standard technology that's already, been out in the world for a while. Neuralink right now is focused entirely on cortical targets, surface targets because there's no trivial way to get, say, hundreds of wires deep inside the brain without doing a lot of damage. So your question, what do you see? Well, I see an MRI on a screen. I can't see everything that that DBS electrode is passing through on its way to that deep target.\n\nAnd so it's accepted with this approach that there's gonna be about what one in a hundred patients who have a bleed somewhere in the brain as a result of passing that wire blindly into the deep part of the brain. That's not an acceptable safety profile for Neuralink. We start from the position that we want this to be dramatically maybe two or three orders of magnitude safer than that.\n\nSafe enough really that you or I, without a profound medical problem, might on our lunch break someday say, \"Yeah, sure, I'll get that. I'd be meaning to upgrade to the latest version.\" And so the safety constraints given that are high. And so we haven't settled on a final solution for arbitrarily approaching deep targets in the brain.\n\nIt's interesting 'cause like you have to avoid blood vessels somehow. Maybe there's creative ways of doing the same thing, like mapping out high resolution geometry of blood vessels and then you can go in blind. But how do you map out that in a way that's like super stable? There's a lot of interesting challenges there, right?\n\n[Matthew] Yeah.\n\nBut there's a lot to do on the surface. Luckily.\n\nExactly. So we've got vision on the surface. We actually have made a huge amount of progress sewing electrodes into the spinal cord as a potential workaround for a spinal cord injury that would allow a brain-mounted implant to translate motor intentions to a spine-mounted implant that can effect muscle contractions in previously paralyzed arms and legs.\n\nThat's mind-blowing. That's just incredible. So like the effort there is to try to bridge the brain to the spinal cord to the peripheral nervous system. So how hard is that to do?\n\nWe have that working in very crude forms in animals.\n\nThat's amazing.\n\nYeah, we've done- - So similar to like with Noland, where he's able to digitally move the cursor, here you're doing the same kind of communication but with the actual factors that you have.\n\nYeah.\n\n[Lex] That's fascinating.\n\nYeah, so we have anesthetized animals doing grasp and moving their legs in a sort of walking pattern. Again, early days, but the future is bright for this kind of thing. And people with paralysis should look forward to that bright future. They're gonna have options.\n\nYeah, and there's a lot of sort of intermediate or extra options where you take like an Optimus robot, like the arm, and to be able to control the arm. The fingers and hands of the arm as a prosthetic.\n\nSo skeletons are getting better too.\n\nSo skeletons. Yeah, so that goes hand in hand. Although I didn't quite understand until thinking about it deeply and doing more research about Neuralink, how much you can do on the digital side. So this digital telepathy, I didn't quite understand that you can really map the intention, as you described in the hand knob area, that you can map the intention. Just imagine it, think about it.\n\nThat intention can be mapped to actual action in the digital world. And now more and more, so much can be done in the digital world that it can reconnect you to the outside world. It can allow you to have freedom, have independence if you're a quadriplegic. That's really powerful. Like you can go really far with that.\n\nYeah, our first participant, he's incredible. He's breaking world records left and right.\n\nAnd he is having fun with it, it's great. Just going back to the surgery, your whole journey, you mentioned to me offline, you have surgery on Monday. So you're like doing surgery all the time.\n\nYeah.\n\nMaybe the ridiculous question, what does it take to get good at surgery?\n\nPractice, repetitions. Same with anything else. There's a million ways of people saying the same thing and selling books saying it, but you call it 10,000 hours, you call it, you know, spend some chunk of your life, some percentage of your life focusing on this, obsessing about getting better at it. Repetitions, humility, recognizing that you aren't perfect at any stage along the way. Recognizing you've got improvements to make in your technique.\n\nBeing open to feedback and coaching from people with a different perspective on how to do it. And then just the constant will to do better. That fortunately, if you're not a sociopath, I think your patients bring that with them to the office visits every day. They force you to wanna do better all the time.\n\nYeah, to step up. I mean, it's a real human being, a real human being that you can help.\n\nYeah.\n\nSo every surgery, even if it's the same exact surgery, is there a lot of variability between that surgery and a different person?\n\nYeah, a fair bit. I mean, a good example for us is the angle of the skull relative to the normal plane of the body axis, of the skull over hand knob is pretty wide variation. I mean, some people have really flat skulls, and some people have really steeply angled skulls over that area. And that has consequences for how their head can be fixed in sort of the frame that we use and how the robot has to approach the skull.\n\nYeah, people's bodies are built as differently as the people you see walking down the street, as much variability in body shape and size as you see there. We see in brain anatomy and skull anatomy, there are some people who we've had to kind of exclude from our trial for having skulls that are too thick or too thin or scalp that's too thick or too thin.\n\nI think we have like the middle 97% or so of people, but you can't account for all human anatomy variability.\n\nHow much like mushiness and messes there, 'cause taking biology classes, the diagrams are always really clean and crisp. Neuroscience, the pictures of neurons are always really nice and vary. But whenever I look at pictures of like real brains, I don't know what is going on.\n\nYeah.\n\nSo how much are biological systems in reality? Like how hard is it to figure out what's going on?\n\nNot too bad. Once you really get used to this, that's where experience and skill and education really come into play is if you stare at a thousand brains, it becomes easier to kind of mentally peel back the, say, for instance, blood vessels that are obscuring the sulci and gyri, kind of the wrinkle pattern of the surface of the brain.\n\nOccasionally, when you're first starting to do this and you open the skull, it doesn't match what you thought you were gonna see based on the MRI. And with more experience, you learn to kind of peel back that layer of blood vessels and see the underlying pattern of wrinkles in the brain and use that as a landmark for where you are.\n\n[Lex] The wrinkles are a landmark? So like- - Yeah. So I was describing hand knob earlier. That's a pattern of the wrinkles in the brain. It's sort of this sort of Greek letter, omega-shaped area of the brain.\n\nSo you could recognize the hand knob area. Like if I show you a thousand brains and give you like one minute with each, you'd be like, \"Yep, that's that?\"\n\nSure.\n\nAnd so there is some uniqueness to that area of the brain, like in terms of the geometry, the topology of the thing.\n\nYeah.\n\nWhere is it about in the- - So you have this strip of brain running down the top called the primary motor area. And I'm sure you've seen this picture of the homunculus laid over the surface of the brain, the weird little guy with huge lips and giant hands. That guy sort of lays with his legs up at the top of the brain and face, arm, areas farther down and then some kind of mouth, lip, tongue areas farther down. And so the hand is right in there.\n\nAnd then the areas that control speech, at least on the left side of the brain in most people are just below that. And so any muscle that you voluntarily move in your body, the vast majority of that references that strip or those intentions come from that strip of brain. And the wrinkle for hand knob is right in the middle of that.\n\nAnd vision is back here.\n\nBack, yep.\n\nAlso, close to the surface?\n\nVision's a little deeper. And so this gets to your question about how deep can you get to do vision. We can't just do the surface of the brain. We have to be able to go in, not as deep as we have to go for DBS, but maybe a centimeter deeper than we're used to for hand insertions. And so that's work in progress. That's a new set of challenges to overcome.\n\nBy the way, you mentioned the Utah array. And I just saw a picture of that, and that thing looks terrifying.\n\n[Matthew] Yeah, bed of nails.\n\nIt's because it's rigid. And then if you look at the threads, they're flexible. What can you say that's interesting to you about the flexible, that kind of approach of the flexible threads to deliver the electrodes next to the neurons?\n\nYeah, I mean, the goal there comes from experience. I mean, we stand on the shoulders of people that made Utah arrays and used Utah arrays for decades before we ever even came along.\n\nNeuralink arose, partly this approach to technology arose out of a need recognized after Utah arrays would fail routinely because the rigid electrodes, those spikes that are literally hammered using an air hammer into the brain, those spikes generate a bad immune response that encapsulates the electrode spikes in scar tissue essentially.\n\nAnd so one of the projects that was being worked on in the Andersen lab at Caltech when I got there, was to see if you could use chemotherapy to prevent the formation of scar. Things are pretty bad when you're jamming a bed of nails into the brain and then treating that with chemotherapy to try to prevent scar tissue. It's like, maybe we've gotten off track here, guys. Maybe there's a fundamental redesign necessary.\n\nAnd so Neuralink's approach of using highly flexible, tiny electrodes avoids a lot of the bleeding, avoids a lot of the immune response that ends up happening when rigid electrodes are pounded into the brain. And so what we see is our electrode longevity and functionality and the health of the brain tissue immediately surrounding the electrode is excellent. I mean, it goes on for years now in our animal models.\n\nWhat do most people not understand about the biology of the brain? We mention the vasculature. That's really interesting.\n\nI think the most interesting maybe underappreciated fact is that it really does control almost everything. I mean, I don't know, for out of the blue example, imagine you want a lever on fertility, you wanna be able to turn fertility on and off. I mean, there are legitimate targets in the brain itself to modulate fertility, say blood pressure. You wanna modulate blood pressure. There are legitimate targets in the brain for doing that.\n\nThings that aren't immediately obvious as brain problems are potentially solvable in the brain. And so I think it's an under-explored area for primary treatments of all the things that bother people.\n\nThat's a really fascinating way to look at it. Like there's a lot of conditions we might think have nothing to do with the brain, but they might just be symptoms of something that actually started in the brain. The actual source of the problem. The primary source is something in the brain.\n\nYeah, not always. I mean, kidney disease is real. But there are levers you can pull in the brain that affect all of these systems.\n\nThere's knobs.\n\nYeah.\n\nOn-off switches and knobs in the brain, from which this all originates. Would you have a Neuralink chip implanted in your brain?\n\nYeah. I think use case right now is use a mouse, right? I can already do that. And so there's no value proposition. On safety grounds alone, sure. I'll do it tomorrow.\n\nYou say the use case of the mouse, is it after like researching all this and part of it is just watching Noland have so much fun? If you can get that bits per second look really high with a mouse, like being able to interact, 'cause if you think about it, the way, on the smartphone, the way you swipe, that was transformational how you interact with a thing. It's subtle.\n\nYou don't realize it, but to able to touch a phone and to scroll with your finger, that's like, that changed everything. People were sure you need a keyboard to type. There's a lot of HCI aspects to that that changed how we interact with computers. So there could be a certain rate of speed with the mouse that would change everything.\n\nYeah.\n\nIt's like you might be able to just click around a screen extremely fast. And that, I can see myself getting a Neuralink for much more rapid interaction with the digital devices.\n\nYeah, I think recording speech intentions from the brain might change things as well. The value proposition for the average person, a keyboard is a pretty clunky human interface, requires a lot of training. It's highly variable in the maximum performance that the average person can achieve. I think taking that out of the equation and just having a natural word to computer interface might change things for a lot of people.\n\nIt'd be hilarious if that is the reason people do it. Even if you have speech to text, that's extremely accurate, it currently isn't, but say it gotten super accurate, it'd be hilarious if people went for Neuralink just so you avoid the embarrassing aspect of speaking, like looking like a douche bag speaking to your phone in public, which is a real, like that's a real constraint.\n\nYeah. I mean, with a bone conducting case, that can be an invisible headphone, say, and the ability to think words into software and have it respond to you, that starts to sound sort of like embedded super intelligence. If you can silently ask for the Wikipedia article on any subject and have it read to you, without any observable change happening in the outside world, for one thing, standardized testing is obsolete. (laughs) - Yeah.\n\nIf it's done well in the UX side, it could change. I don't know if it transforms society, but it really can create a kind of shift in the way we interact with digital devices in the way that a smartphone did. Just having to look into the safety of everything involved, I would totally try it so it doesn't have to go to some like incredible thing where you have, it connects your vision or to some other, like it connects all over your brain.\n\nThat could be like just connecting to the hand knob. You might have a lot of interesting interaction, human-computer interaction possibilities. That's really interesting.\n\nYeah, and the technology on the academic side is progressing at light speed here. I think there was a really amazing paper out of UC Davis, Sergey Stavisky's lab that basically made a initial solve of speech decode. It was something like 125,000 words that they we're getting with very high accuracy, which is- - So you're just thinking the word?\n\nYeah.\n\nThinking the word and you're able to get it?\n\nYeah.\n\nOh boy. Like you have to have the intention of speaking it.\n\nRight.\n\nSo like do the inner voice. Man, it's so amazing to me that you can do the intention, the signal mapping. All you have to do is just imagine yourself doing it. And if you get the feedback that it actually worked, you can get really good at that. Like your brain will first of all adjust and you develop it like any other skill. Like touch typing, you develop in that same kind of way.\n\nTo me, it's just really fascinating to be able to even to play with that. Honestly, like I would get a Neuralink just to be able to play with that. Just to play with the capacity, the capability of my mind to learn this skill. It's like learning the skill of typing and learning the skill of moving a mouse. It's another skill of moving the mouse, not with my physical body, but with my mind.\n\nI can't wait to see what people do with it. I feel like we're cavemen right now. We're like banging rocks with a stick and thinking that we're making music. At some point, when these are more widespread, there's gonna be the equivalent of a piano that someone can make art with their brain in a way that we didn't even anticipate. I'm looking forward to it.\n\nGive it to like a teenager. Like anytime I think I'm good at something, I'll always go to like, I don't know. Even with the bit per second of playing a video game, you realize you give it to a teenager, you've given your link to a teenager, just the large number of them, the kind of stuff, they get good at stuff. They're gonna get like hundreds of bits per second. Even just with the current technology.\n\nProbably. Probably.\n\n'Cause it's also addicting, the number go up aspect of it of like improving and training, 'cause it is almost like a skill. And plus, there's the software on the other end that adapts to you. And especially if the adapting procedure algorithm becomes better and better and better, you're like learning together.\n\nYeah, we're scratching the surface on that right now. There's so much more to do.\n\nSo on the complete other side of it, you have an RFID chip implanted in you.\n\nYeah.\n\nSo I hear, nice.\n\nLittle subtle thing.\n\nIt's a passive device that you use for unlocking like a safe with top secrets, or what do you use it for? What's the story behind it?\n\nI'm not the first one. There's this whole community of weirdo biohackers that have done this stuff, and I think one of the early use cases was storing private crypto wallet keys and whatever. I dabbled in that a bit and had some fun with it.\n\nYou have some bitcoin implanted in your body somewhere. You can't tell where, yeah.\n\nYeah, actually, yeah. (Lex laughing) It was the modern day equivalent of finding change in the sofa cushions after I put some orphan crypto on there that I thought was worthless and forgot about it for a few years. Went back and found that some community of people loved it and had propped up the value of it. And so it had gone up 50 fold.\n\nWow.\n\nSo there was a lot of change in those cushions. (Lex laughing) - That's hilarious.\n\nBut the primary use case was mostly as a tech demonstrator. It has my business card on it. You can scan that in by touching it to your phone. It opens the front door to my house, whatever simple stuff.\n\nIt's a cool step. It's a cool leap to implant something in your body. I mean, perhaps, it's a similar leap to a Neuralink because for a lot of people, that kind of notion of putting something inside your body, something electronic inside a biological system is a big leap.\n\nYeah, we have a kind of a mysticism around the barrier of our skin. We're completely fine with knee replacements, hip replacements, dental implants. But there's a mysticism still around the inviable barrier that the skull represents. And I think that needs to be treated like any other pragmatic barrier. The question isn't, how incredible is it to open the skull? The question is, what benefit can we provide?\n\nSo from all the surgeries you done, from everything you understand the brain, how much does neuroplasticity come into play? How adaptable is the brain, for example, just even in the case of healing from surgery or adapting to the post-surgery situation.\n\nThe answer that is sad for me and other people of my demographic is that plasticity decreases with age. Healing decreases with age. I have too much gray hair to be optimistic about that. There are theoretical ways to increase plasticity using electrical stimulation. Nothing that is totally proven out as a robust enough mechanism to offer widely to people.\n\nBut yeah, I think there's cause for optimism that we might find something useful in terms of, say, an implanted electrode that improves learning.\n\nCertainly, there's been some really amazing work recently from Nicholas Schiff, Jonathan Baker, and others who have a cohort of patients with moderate traumatic brain injury who have had electrodes placed in the deep nucleus in the brain called the centromedian nucleus or just near central media nucleus. And when they apply small amounts of electricity to that part of the brain, it's almost like electronic caffeine.\n\nThey're able to improve people's attention and focus. They're able to improve how well people can perform a task. I think in one case, someone who was unable to work after the device was turned on, they were able to get a job.\n\nAnd that's sort of one of the holy grails for me with Neuralink and other technologies like this is from a purely utilitarian standpoint, can we make people able to take care of themselves and their families economically again? Can we make it so someone who's fully dependent and even maybe requires a lot of caregiver resources, can we put them in a position to be fully independent, taking care of themselves, giving back to their communities?\n\nI think that's a very compelling proposition, and what motivates a lot of what I do and what a lot of the people at Neuralink are working for.\n\nIt's just a cool possibility that if you put a Neuralink in there, that the brain adapts, like the other part of the brain adapts too.\n\nYeah.\n\nAnd integrates it. The capacity of the brain to do that is really interesting. Probably unknown to the degree to which you can do that, but you're now connecting an external thing to it, especially once it's doing stimulation, like the biological brain and the electronic brain outside of it working together. Like the possibilities there are really interesting. It's still unknown but interesting. It feels like the brain is really good at adapting to whatever.\n\nYeah.\n\nBut of course, it is a system that by itself is already, like everything serves a purpose and so you don't wanna mess with it too much.\n\nYeah, it's like, eliminating a species from an ecology. You don't know what the delicate interconnections and dependencies are. The brain is certainly a delicate, complex beast. And we don't know every potential downstream consequence of a single change that we make.\n\nDo you see yourself doing, so you mentioned P1, surgeries of P2, P3, P4, P5? Just more and more and more humans.\n\nI think it's a certain kind of brittleness or a failure on the company's side if we need me to do all the surgeries. I think something that I would very much like to work towards is a process that is so simple and so robust on the surgery side that literally anyone could do it. We wanna get away from requiring intense expertise or intense experience to have this successfully done and make it as simple and translatable as possible.\n\nI mean, I would love it if every neurosurgeon on the planet had no problem doing this. I think we're probably far from a regulatory environment that would allow people that aren't neurosurgeons to do this, but not impossible.\n\nAll right, I'll sign up for that. Did you ever anthropomorphize the robot R1? Like do you give it a name? Do you see it as like a friend, as like working together with you?\n\nI mean, to a certain degree it's- - Or anatomy who's gonna get the gap.\n\nTo a certain degree, yeah, it's complex relationship.\n\nAll the good relationships are.\n\nIt's funny when, in the middle of the surgery, there's a part of it where I stand basically shoulder to shoulder with the robot. And so if you're in the room reading the body language, that's my brother in arms there. We're working together on the same problem. Yeah, I'm not threatened by it.\n\nKeep telling yourself that. (laughs) How have all the surgeries that you've done over the years, the people you've helped and the stakes, the high stakes that you've mentioned, how has that changed your understanding of life and death?\n\nYeah. It gives you a very visceral sense, and this makes sound trite, but it gives you a very visceral sense that death is inevitable. On one hand, you are, as a neurosurgeon, you're deeply involved in these like just hard to fathom tragedies: young parents dying, leaving a four-year-old behind say. And on the other hand, it takes the sting out of it a bit because you see how just mind numbingly universal death is.\n\nThere's zero chance that I'm going to avoid it. I know techno optimists right now and longevity buffs right now would disagree on that 0. 0% estimate. But I don't see any chance that our generation is going to avoid it. Entropy is a powerful force, and we are very ornate, delicate, brittle DNA machines that aren't up to the cosmic ray bombardment that we're subjected to. So on the one hand, every human that has ever lived died or will die.\n\nOn the other hand, it's just one of the hardest things to imagine inflicting on anyone that you love is having them gone. I'm sure you've had friends that aren't living anymore and it's hard to even think about them. And so I wish I had arrived at the point of nirvana where death doesn't have a sting. I'm not worried about it, but I can at least say that I'm comfortable with the certainty of it.\n\nIf not, having found out how to take the tragedy out of it when I think about my kids either not having me or me not having them or my wife.\n\nMaybe I have come to accepting intellectual certainty of it, but it may be the pain that comes with losing the people you love, I don't think I've come to understand the existential aspect of it. Like that this is gonna end. And I don't mean like in some trite way. I mean like, it certainly feels like it's not going to end. Like you live life like it's not going to end.\n\n[Matthew] Right.\n\nAnd the fact that this light that's shining this consciousness is going to no longer be, in one moment, maybe today, it fills me when I really am able to load all that in with Ernest Becker's terror. Like it's a real fear. I think people aren't always honest with how terrifying it is. I think the more you are able to really think through it, the more terrifying it is. It's not such a simple thing. Oh well, it's the way life is.\n\nIf you really can load that in, it's hard. But I think that's why the stoics did it, because it like helps you get your shit together and be like, well, the moment, every single moment you're alive is just beautiful. And it's terrifying that it's gonna end, like almost like you're shivering in the cold a child helpless, this kind of feeling.\n\nAnd then it makes you, when you have warmth, when you have the safety, when you have the love to really appreciate it. I feel like sometimes, in your position, when you mentioned armor, just to see death, it might make you not be able to see that, the finiteness of life, because if you kept looking at that, it might break you.\n\nSo it's good to know that you're kind of still struggling with that, that there's the neurosurgeon and then there's a human. And the human is still able to struggle with that and feel the fear of that and the pain of that.\n\nYeah, it definitely makes you ask the question of how long, how many of these can you see? And not say, \"I can't do this anymore.\" But I mean, you said it well. I think it gives you an opportunity to just appreciate that you're alive today. And I've got three kids and an amazing wife and I'm really happy. Things are good. I get to help on a project that I think matters. I think it moves us forward. I'm a very lucky person.\n\nIt's the early steps of a potentially gigantic leap for humanity. It's a really interesting one. And it's cool 'cause like you, you read about all this stuff in history where it's like the early days. I've been reading, before going to the Amazon, I would read about explorers that would go and explore even the Amazon jungle for the first time. Those are the early steps.\n\nOr early steps into space, early steps in any discipline, in physics and mathematics. And it's cool 'cause this is like, on the grand scale, these are the early steps into delving deep into the human brain. So not just observing the brain, but be able to interact with the human brain. It's gonna help a lot of people, but it also might help us understand what the hell's going on in there.\n\nYeah, I think ultimately, we wanna give people more levers that they can pull, right? Like you wanna give people options. If you can give someone a dial that they can turn on how happy they are, I think that makes people really uncomfortable. But now, talk about major depressive disorder. Talk about people that are committing suicide at an alarming rate in this country. And try to justify that queasiness in that light of you can give people a knob to take away suicidal ideation, suicidal intention. I would give them that knob. I don't know how you justify not doing that.\n\nYeah, you can think about like all the suffering that's going on in the world. Like every single human being that's suffering right now, it'll be a glowing red dot. The more suffering, the more it's glowing. And you just see the map of human suffering, and any technology that allows you to dim that light of suffering on a grand scale is pretty exciting, because there's a lot of people suffering and most of them suffer quietly. We look away too often, and we should remember those that are suffering, 'cause once again, most of them are suffering quietly.\n\nWell, and on a grander scale, the fabric of society, people have a lot of complaints about how our social fabric is working or not working, how our politics is working or not working. Those things are made of neurochemistry too, in aggregate, right?\n\nLike our politics is composed of individuals with human brains and, the way it works or doesn't work is potentially tunable in the sense that, I don't know, say remove our addictive behaviors or tune our addictive behaviors for social media or our addiction to outrage, our addiction to sharing the most angry political tweet we can find. I don't think that leads to a functional society.\n\nAnd if you had options for people to moderate that maladaptive behavior, there could be huge benefits to society. Maybe we could all work together a little more harmoniously toward useful ends.\n\nThere's a sweet spot, like you mentioned, you don't wanna completely remove all the dark sides of human nature 'cause those kind of are somehow necessary to make the whole thing work. But there's a sweet spot.\n\nYeah, I agree. We gotta suffer a little, just not so much that you lose hope.\n\nYeah. We knew all the surgeries you've done. Have you seen consciousness in there ever? Was there like a glowing light?\n\nI have this sense that I never found it. Never removed it, like a dementor in Harry Potter. I have this sense that consciousness is a lot less magical than our instincts wanna claim it is. It seems to me like a useful analog for thinking about what consciousness is in the brain, is that we have a really good intuitive understanding of what it means to, say, touch your skin and know what's being touched.\n\nI think consciousness is just that level of sensory mapping applied to the thought processes in the brain itself. So what I'm saying is consciousness is the sensation of some part of your brain being active. So you feel it working. You feel the part of your brain that thinks of red things or winged creatures or the taste of coffee. You feel those parts of your brain being active the way that I'm feeling my palm being touched, right?\n\nAnd that sensory system that feels the brain working is consciousness.\n\nThat's so brilliant. It's the same way, it's the sensation of touch when you're touching a thing. Consciousness is the sensation of you feeling your brain working, your brain thinking, your brain perceiving.\n\nWhich isn't like a warping of space and time or some quantum field effect, right? It's nothing magical. People always wanna ascribe to consciousness something truly different. And there's this awesome long history of people looking at whatever the latest discovery in physics is to explain consciousness, because it's the most magical, the most out there thing that you can think of. And people always wanna do that with consciousness. I don't think that's necessary. It's just a very useful and gratifying way of feeling your brain work.\n\nAnd as we said, it's one heck of a brain.\n\n[Matthew] Yeah.\n\nEverything we see around us, everything we love, everything that's beautiful, it came from brains like these.\n\nIt's all electrical activity happening inside your skull.\n\nAnd I, for one, am grateful that there's people like you that are exploring all the ways that it works and all the ways it can be made better.\n\nThanks, Lex.\n\nThank you so much for talking today.\n\nIt's been a joy. Thanks for listening to this conversation with Matthew MacDougall. And now, dear friends, here's Bliss Chapman, Brain Interface Software lead at Neuralink. You told me that you've met hundreds of people with spinal cord injuries or with ALS and that your motivation for helping at Neuralink is grounded in wanting to help them. Can you describe this motivation?\n\nYeah. First, just a thank you to all the people I've gotten a chance to speak with, for sharing their stories with me. I don't think there's any world really in which I can share their stories as powerful way as they can.\n\nBut just I think to summarize at a very high level what I hear over and over again is that people with ALS or severe spinal cord injury in a place where they basically can't move physically anymore, really at the end of the day are looking for independence. And that can mean different things for different people.\n\nFor some folks, it can mean the ability just to be able to communicate again independently without needing to wear something on their face, without needing a caretaker to be able to put something in their mouth.\n\nFor some folks, it can mean independence to be able to work again, to be able to navigate a computer digitally, efficiently enough to be able to get a job, to be able to support themself, to be able to move out and ultimately be able to support themself after their family maybe isn't there anymore to take care of them.\n\nAnd for some folks, it's as simple as just being able to respond to their kid in time before they run away or get interested in something else. And these are deeply personal and sort of very human problems. And what strikes me again and again when talking with these folks is that this is actually an engineering problem. This is a problem that with the right resources, with the right team, we can make a lot of progress on.\n\nAnd at the end of the day, I think that's a deeply inspiring message and something that makes me excited to get up every day.\n\nSo it's both an engineering problem in terms of a BCI, for example, that can give them capabilities where they can interact with the world. But also on the other side, it's an engineering problem for the rest of the world to make it more accessible for people living with quadriplegia.\n\nYeah, and actually, I'll take a broad view sort of lens on this for a second. I think I'm very in favor of anyone working in this problem space. So beyond BCI, I'm happy and excited and willing to support any way I can folks working on eye tracking systems, working on speech to text systems, working on head trackers or mouse sticks or quad sticks. And I've met many engineers and folks in the community that do exactly those things.\n\nAnd I think for the people we're trying to help, it doesn't matter what the complexity of the solution is as long as the problem is solved. And I wanna emphasize that there can be many solutions out there that can help with these problems. And BCI is one of a collection of such solutions. So BCI, in particular, I think offers several advantages here.\n\nAnd I think the folks that recognize this immediately are usually the people who have spinal cord injury or some form of paralysis. Usually, you don't have to explain to them why this might be something that could be helpful. It's usually pretty self-evident.\n\nBut for the rest of us folks that don't live with severe spinal cord injury or who don't know somebody with ALS, it's not often obvious why you would want a brain implant to be able to connect and navigate a computer. And it's surprisingly nuanced, and to the degree that I've learned a huge amount just working with Noland in the first Neuralink clinical trial and understanding from him in his words why this device is impactful for him.\n\nAnd it's a nuanced topic. It can be the case that even if you can achieve the same thing, for example, with a mouse stick when navigating a computer, he doesn't have access to that mouse stick every single minute of the day. He only has access when someone's available to put it in front of him.\n\nAnd so a BCI can really offer a level of independence and autonomy that if it wasn't literally physically part of your body, it'd be hard to achieve in any other way.\n\nSo there's a lot of fascinating aspects to what it takes to get Noland to be able to control a cursor on the screen with his mind. You texted me something that I just love. You said, \"I was part of the team that interviewed and selected P1. I was in the operating room during the first human surgery monitoring live signals coming out of the brain. I work with the user basically every day to develop new UX paradigm's decoding strategies.\n\nAnd I was part of the team that figured out how to recover useful BCI to new world record levels when the signal quality degraded.\" We'll talk about I think every aspect of that, but just zooming out, what was it like to be part of that team and part of that historic, I would say, historic first?\n\nYeah, I think for me, this is something I've been excited about for close to 10 years now. And so to be able to be even just some small part of making it a reality is extremely exciting. A couple maybe special moments during that whole process that I'll never really truly forget, one of them is during the actual surgery, at that point in time, I know Noland quite well. I know his family.\n\nAnd so I think the initial reaction when Noland is rolled into the operating room is just a \"oh shit\" kind of reaction. But at that point, muscle memory kicks in and you sort of go into, you let your body just do all the talking. And I have the lucky job in that particular procedure to just be in charge of monitoring the implant.\n\nSo my job is to sit there, to look at the signals coming off the implant, to look at the live brain data streaming off the device as threads are being inserted into the brain and just to basically observe and make sure that nothing is going wrong or that there's no red flags or fault conditions that we need to go and investigate or pause the surgery to debug.\n\nAnd because I had that sort of spectator view of the surgery, I had a slightly removed perspective than I think most folks in the room. I got to sit there and think to myself, \"Wow, that brain is moving a lot.\" When you look into the side look craniectomy, that we stick the threads in, one thing that most people don't realize is the brain moves. The brain moves a lot when you breathe, when your heart beats, and you can see it visibly.\n\nSo that's something that I think was a surprise to me and very, very exciting to be able to see someone's brain who you physically know and have talked with at length actually pulsing and moving inside their skull.\n\nAnd they use that brain to talk to you previously, and now it's right there moving.\n\nYep.\n\nActually, I didn't realize that in terms of the thread sending, so the Neuralink implant is active during surgery, and one thread at a time, you're able to start seeing the signal?\n\nYeah.\n\nSo that's part of the way you test that the thing is working?\n\nYeah, so actually in the operating room, right after we sort of finished all the thread insertions, I started collecting what's called broadband data. So broadband is basically the most raw form of signal you can collect from a Neuralink electrode. It's essentially a measurement of the local field potential or the, yeah, the voltage essentially measured by that electrode.\n\nAnd we have a certain mode in our application that allows us to visualize where detected spikes are. So it visualizes sort of where, in the broadband symbol, and it's very, very raw form of the data a neuron is actually spiking.\n\nAnd so one of these moments that I'll never forget as part of this whole clinical trial is seeing live in the operating room, while he's still under anesthesia, beautiful spikes being shown in the application, just streaming live to a device I'm holding in my hand.\n\nSo this is no signal processing the raw data and then the signals processings on top of it, you're seeing the spikes detected?\n\n[Bliss] Right, yeah.\n\nAnd that's a UX too because- - Yes.\n\nThat looks beautiful as well.\n\nDuring that procedure, there was actually a lot of cameramen in the room. So they also were curious and wanted to see. There's several neurosurgeons in the room who are all just excited to see robots taking their job and they're all crowded around a small little iPhone watching this live brain data stream out of his brain.\n\nWhat was that like seeing the robot do some of the surgery? So the computer vision aspect where it detects all the spots that avoid the blood vessels and then obviously with the human supervision, then actually doing the really high precision connection of the threads to the brain.\n\nThat's a good question. My answer's gonna be pretty lame here, but it was boring. I've seen it so many times. Yeah, that's exactly how you want surgery to be. You want it to be boring, because I've seen it so many times. I've seen the robot do the surgery literally hundreds of times, and so it was just one more time.\n\nYeah, all the practice surgeries and the proxies and this is just another day.\n\nYep.\n\nSo what about when Noland woke up? Do you remember a moment where he was able to move the cursor, not move the cursor, but get signal from the brain such that it was able to show that there's a connection?\n\nYeah, yeah. So we are quite excited to move as quickly as we can, and Noland was really, really excited to get started. He wanted to get started actually the day of surgery, but we waited till the next morning very patiently. So a long night. And the next morning in the ICU, where he was recovering, he wanted to get started and actually start to understand what kind of signal we can measure from his brain.\n\nAnd maybe for folks who are not familiar with the Neuralink system, we implant the Neuralink system or the Neuralink implant in the motor cortex. So the motor cortex is responsible for representing things like motor intent, sort of if you imagine closing and opening your hand, that kind of signal representation would be present in the motor cortex.\n\nIf you imagine moving your arm back and forth or wiggling a pinky, this sort of signal can be present in the motor cortex. So one of the ways we start to sort of map out, what kind of signal do we actually have access to in any particular individual's brain is through this task called body mapping. And body mapping is where you essentially present a visual to the user and you say, \"Hey, imagine doing this.\"\n\nAnd that visual is a 3D hand opening and closing, or index finger modulating up and down. And you ask the user to imagine that, and obviously, you can't see them do this, 'cause they're paralyzed so you can't see them actually move their arm, but while they do this task, you can record neural activity, and you can basically offline model and check, can I predict or can I detect the modulation corresponding with those different actions?\n\nAnd so we did that task and we realized, hey, there's actually some modulation associated with some of his hand motion, which was the first indication that, okay, we can potentially use that modulation to do useful things in the world. For example, control a computer cursor. And he started playing with it, the first time we showed him it, and we actually just took the same live view of his brain activity and put it in front of him.\n\nAnd we said, \"Hey, you tell us what's going on. We're not you. You're able to imagine different things, and we know that it's modulating some of these neurons so you figure out for us what that is actually representing.\" And so he played with it for a bit. He was like, \"I don't quite get it yet.\" He played for a bit longer. And he said, \"Oh, when I move this finger, I see this particular neuron start to fire more.\"\n\nAnd I said, okay, \"Prove it, do it again.\" And so he said, \"Okay, three, two, one, boom.\" And the minute he moved, you can see like instantaneously this neuron is firing - single neuron. I can tell you the exact channel number if you're interested. It's stuck in my brain now forever.\n\nBut that single channel firing was a beautiful indication that it was behaved really modulated neural activity that could then be used for downstream tasks like decoding a computer cursor.\n\nAnd when you say single channel, is that associated with a single electrode?\n\nYeah, channel electrode are interchangeable.\n\nAnd there's 1,024 of those?\n\n1,024, yeah.\n\nThat's incredible that that works.\n\nWhen I was learning about all this and like loading it in, it was just blowing my mind that the intention, you can visualize yourself moving the finger, that can turn into a signal, and the fact that you can then skip that step and visualize the cursor moving or have the intention of the cursor moving and that leading to a signal that can then be used to move the cursor, there is so many exciting things there to learn about the brain, about the way the brain works, the very fact of their existing signal that can be used is really powerful.\n\nBut it feels like that's just like the beginning of figuring out how that signal could be used really, really effectively. I should also just, there's so many fascinating details here, but you mentioned the body mapping step. At least in the version I saw that Noland was showing off, there's like a super nice interface, like a graphical interface.\n\nBut like it just felt like I was like in the future 'cause it like, you know, I guess it visualizes you moving the hand. And there's very like a sexy, polished interface. Hello. I don't know if there's a voice component, but it just felt like when you wake up in a really nice video game and this is a tutorial at the beginning of that video game. \"This is what you're supposed to do.\" It's cool.\n\nNo, I mean, the future should feel like the future.\n\nBut it's not easy to pull that off. I mean, it needs to be simple but not too simple.\n\nYeah, and I think the UX design component here is underrated for BCI development in general. There's a whole interaction effect between the ways in which you visualize an instruction to the user and the kinds of signal you can get back. And that quality of sort of your behavioral alignment to the neural signal is a function of how good you are at expressing to the user what you want them to do.\n\nAnd so yeah, we spend a lot of time thinking about the UX, of how we build our applications, of how the decoder actually functions, the control surfaces it provides to the user. All these little details matter a lot.\n\nSo maybe it'd be nice to get into a little bit more detail of what the signal looks like and what the decoding looks like. So there's a N1 implant that has, like we mentioned, 1,024 electrodes and that's collecting raw data, raw signal. What does that signal look like, and what are the different steps along the way before it's transmitted, and what is transmitted, all that kind of stuff?\n\nYeah, yep. This is gonna be a fun one. Let's go. So maybe before diving into what we do, it's worth understanding what we're trying to measure, because that dictates a lot of the requirements for the system that we build. And what we're trying to measure is really individual neurons producing action potentials. And action potential is, you can think of it like a little electrical impulse that you can detect if you're close enough.\n\nAnd by being close enough, I mean, like within let's say 100 microns of that cell. And 100 microns is a very, very tiny distance. And so the number of neurons that you're gonna pick up with any given electrode is just a small radius around that electrode. And the other thing worth understanding about the underlying biology here is that when neurons produce an action potential, the width of that action potential is about one millisecond.\n\nSo from the start of the spike to the end of the spike, that whole width of that sort of characteristic feature of a neuron firing is one millisecond wide. And if you want to detect that an individual spike is occurring or not, you need to sample that signal or sample the local full potential nearby that neuron much more frequently than once a millisecond.\n\nYou need to sample many, many times per millisecond to be able to detect that this is actually the characteristic waveform of a neuron producing an action potential. And so we sample across all 1,024 electrodes about 20,000 times a second. 20,000 times a second means we've already given one millisecond window. We have about 20 samples that tell us what that exact shape of that action potential looks like.\n\nAnd once we've sort of sampled at super high rate the underlying electrical field nearby these cells, we can process that signal into just where do we detect a spike or where do we not, sort of a binary signal one or zero. Do we detect a spike in this one millisecond or not? And we do that because the actual information carrying sort of subspace of neural activity is just when are spikes occurring.\n\nEssentially, everything that we care about for decoding can be captured or represented in the frequency characteristics of spike trains, meaning how often are spikes firing in any given window of time.\n\nAnd so that allows us to do sort of a crazy amount of compression from this very rich, high density signal to something that's much, much more sparse and compressible that can be sent out over a wireless radio, like a Bluetooth communication, for example.\n\nQuick tangents here. You mentioned electrode neuron. There's a local neighborhood of neurons nearby. How difficult is it to like isolate from where the spike came from?\n\nYeah, so there's a whole field of sort of academic neuroscience work on exactly this problem, of basically given a single electrode or given a set of electrodes measuring a set of neurons, how can you sort of sort, spike sort which spikes are coming from what neuron? And this is a problem that's pursued in academic work because you care about it for understanding what's going on in the underlying sort of neuroscience of the brain.\n\nIf you care about understanding how the brain's representing information, how that's evolving through time, then that's a very, very important question to understand. For sort of the engineering side of things, at least at the current scale, if the number of neurons per electrode is relatively small, you can get away with basically ignoring that problem completely.\n\nYou can think of it like sort of a random projection of neurons to electrodes, and there may be in some cases more than one neuron per electrode. But if that number is small enough, those signals can be thought of as sort of a union of the two. And for many applications, that's a totally reasonable trade off to make and can simplify the problem a lot.\n\nAnd as you sort of scale out channel count, the relevance of distinguishing individual neurons becomes less important, because you have more overall signal and you can start to rely on sort of correlations or covariance structure in the data to help understand when that channel's firing, what does that actually represent? 'Cause you know that when that channel's firing in concert with these other 50 channels, that means move left.\n\nBut when that same channel's firing with concert with these other 10 channels, that means move right.\n\nOkay, so you have to do this kind of spike detection on board, and you have to do that super efficiently, so fast and not use too much power, 'cause you don't wanna be generating too much heat. So it has to be a super simple signal processing step.\n\n[Bliss] Yeah.\n\nIs there some wisdom you can share about what it takes to overcome that challenge?\n\nYeah, so we've tried many different versions of basically turning this raw signal into sort of a feature that you might wanna send off the device. And I'll say that I don't think we're at the final step of this process. This is a long journey. We have something that works clearly today, but there can be many approaches that we find in the future that are much better than what we do right now.\n\nSo some versions of what we do right now, and there's a lot of academic heritage to these ideas, so I don't wanna claim that these are original Neuralink ideas or anything like that. But one of these ideas is basically to build a sort of like a convolutional filter almost, if you will, that slides across the signal and looks for a certain template to be matched.\n\nAnd that template consists of sort of how deep the spike modulates, how much it recovers, and what the duration and window of time is that the whole process takes. And if you can see in the signal that that template is matched within certain bounds, then you can say, \"Okay, that's a spike.\"\n\nOne reason that approach is super convenient is that you can actually implement that extremely efficiently in hardware, which means that you can run it in low power across 1,024 channels all at once. Another approach that we've recently started exploring, and this can be combined with the spike detection approach, something called spike band power.\n\nAnd the benefits of that approach are that you may be able to pick up some signal from neurons that are maybe too far away to be detected as a spike, because the farther away you are from an electrode, the weaker that actual spike waveform will look like on that electrode.\n\nSo you might be able to pick up population level activity of things that are maybe slightly outside the normal recording radius, what neuroscientists sometimes refer to as the hash of activity, the other stuff that's going on, and you can look at sort of across many channels how that sort of background noise is behaving and you might be able to get more juice out of the signal that way. But it comes at a cost.\n\nThat signal is now a floating point representation, which means it's more expensive to send out over a power. It means you have to find different ways to compress it that are different than what you can apply to binary signals. So there's a lot of different challenges associated with these different modalities.\n\nSo also, in terms of communication, you're limited by the amount of data you can send.\n\n[Bliss] Yeah.\n\nAnd also, because you're currently using the Bluetooth protocol, you have to batch stuff together. But you have to also do this keeping the latency crazy low. Like crazy low. Anything to say about the latency?\n\nYeah, this is a passion project of mine, so I wanna build the best mouse in the world. I don't wanna build like the, you know, the Chevrolet Spark or whatever of electric cars. I wanna build like the Tesla Roadster version of a mouse. And I really do think it's quite possible that within 5 to 10 years, that most eSports competitions are dominated by people with paralysis. This is like a very real possibility for number of reasons.\n\nOne is that they'll have access to the best technology to play video games effectively. The second is they have the time to do so. So those two factors together are particularly potent for eSport competitors.\n\nUnless people without paralysis are also allowed to implant.\n\n(laughs) Right.\n\nWhich is, it is another way to interact with a digital device. And there's something to that, if it's a fundamentally different experience, more efficient experience. Even if it's not like some kinda full on high bandwidth communication, if it's just the ability to move the mouse 10x faster, like the bits per second, if I can achieve a bits per second, that 10x, what I can do with the mouse, that's a really interesting possibility of what that can do, especially as you get really good at it with training.\n\nIt's definitely the case that you have a higher ceiling performance, because you don't have to buffer your intention through your arm, through your muscle. You get just, by nature of having a brain implant at all, like 75 millisecond lead time on any action that you're actually trying to take.\n\nAnd there's some nuance to this, like there's evidence that the motor cortex, you can sort of plan out sequences of action so you may not get that whole benefit all the time. But for sort of like reaction time style games where you just wanna, somebody's over here, snipe 'em, that kind of thing. You actually do have just an inherent advantage 'cause you don't need to go through muscle. So the question is, just how much faster can you make it?\n\nAnd we're already than you what you would do if you're going through muscle from a latency point of view, and we're in the early stage of that. I think we can push it sort of our end-to-end latency right now from brain spike to cursor movement, it's about 22 milliseconds. If you think about the best mice in the world, the best gaming mice, that's about five milliseconds-ish of latency, depending on how you measure.\n\nDepending how fast your screen refreshes, there's a lot of characteristics that matter there. But yeah, and the rough time for like a neuron in the brain to actually impact your command of your hand is about 75 millisecond. So if you look at those numbers, you can see that we're already like competitive and slightly faster than what you'd get by actually moving your hand.\n\nAnd this is something that, if you ask Noland about it, when he moved the cursor for the first time, we asked him about this. This was something I was super curious about, like what does it feel like when you're modulating, a click intention or when you're trying to just move the cursor to the right.\n\nHe said it moves before he is like actually intending it to, which is kind of a surreal thing and something that I would love to experience myself one day. What is that like to have that thing just be so immediate, so fluid that it feels like it's happening before you're actually intending it to move.\n\nYeah, I suppose we've gotten used to that latency, that natural latency that happens. So is the currently the bottleneck, the communication, so like the Bluetooth communication, what's the actual bottleneck? I mean, there's always gonna be a bottleneck. What's the current bottleneck?\n\nYeah, a couple things. So kind of hilariously, Bluetooth low energy protocol has some restrictions on how fast you can communicate. So the protocol itself establishes a standard of the most frequent sort of updates you can send are on the order of 7. 5 milliseconds.\n\nAnd as we push latency down to the level of sort of individual spikes impacting control, that level of resolution, that kind of protocol is gonna become a limiting factor at some scale. Another sort of important nuance to this is that it's not just the Neuralink itself that's part of this equation. If you start pushing latency sort of below the level of how fast screens refresh, then you have another problem.\n\nLike you need your whole system to be able to be as reactive as the sort of limits of what the technology can offer. Like you need the screen like 120 hertz just doesn't work anymore if you're trying to have something respond at something that's at the level of one millisecond.\n\nThat's a really cool challenge. I also like that for a T-shirt, the best mouse in the world. Tell me on the receiving end, so the decoding step, now we figured out what the spikes are, we got them all together, now we're sending that over to the app. What's the decoding step look like?\n\nYeah, so maybe first, what is decoding? I think there's probably a lot of folks listening that just have no clue what it means to decode brain activity.\n\nActually, even if we zoom out beyond that, what is the app? So there's an implant that's wirelessly communicating with any digital device that has an app installed. So maybe can you tell me a high level what the app is, what the software is outside of the brain?\n\nYeah, so maybe working backwards from the goal, the goal is to help someone with paralysis, in this case Noland, be able to navigate his computer independently. And we think the best way to do that is to offer them the same tools that we have to navigate our software because we don't wanna have to rebuild an entire software ecosystem for the brain. At least not yet. Maybe someday you can imagine there's UXs that are built natively for BCI.\n\nBut in terms of what's useful for people today, I think most people would prefer to be able to just control mouse and keyboard inputs to all the applications that they wanna use for their daily jobs, for communicating with their friends, et cetera. And so the job of the application is really to translate this wireless stream of brain data coming off the implant into control of the computer.\n\nAnd we do that by essentially building a mapping from brain activity to sort of the HID inputs to the actual hardware. So HID is just the protocol for communicating like input device events. So for example, move mouse to this position or press this key down. And so that mapping is fundamentally what the app is responsible for.\n\nBut there's a lot of nuance of how that mapping works that we spend a lot of time to try to get right and we're still in the early stages of a long journey to figure out how to do that optimally. So one part of that process is decoding. So decoding is this process of taking the statistical patterns of brain data that's being channeled across this Bluetooth connection to the application and turning it into, for example, a mouse movement.\n\nAnd that decoding step, you can think of it in a couple different parts. So similar to any machine learning problem, there's a training step and there's an inference step. The training step in our case is a very intricate behavioral process where the user has to imagine doing different actions. So for example, they'll be presented a screen with a cursor on it and they'll be asked to push that cursor to the right.\n\nThen imagine pushing that cursor to the left, push it up, push it down, and we can basically build up a pattern or using any sort of modern ML method, a mapping of given this brain data and that imagined behavior map one to the other. And then at test time, you take that same pattern matching system.\n\nIn our case, it's a deep neural network, and you run it and you take the live stream of brain data coming off their implant, you decode it by pattern matching to what you saw at calibration time, and you use that for a control of the computer.\n\nNow, a couple like sort of rabbit holes that are I think are quite interesting, one of them has to do with how you build that best template matching system because there's a variety of behavioral challenges and also debugging challenges when you're working with someone who's paralyzed. Because again, fundamentally, you don't observe what they're trying to do. You can't see them attempt to move their hand.\n\nAnd so you have to figure out a way to instruct the user to do something and validate that they're doing it correctly such that then you can downstream, build with confidence the mapping between the neural spikes and the intended action. And by doing the action correctly, what I really mean is at this level of resolution of what neurons are doing.\n\nSo if in ideal world, you could get a signal of behavioral intent that is ground truth accurate at the scale of sort of one millisecond resolution, then with high confidence, I could build a mapping from my neuro spikes to that behavioral intention. But the challenge is, again, that you don't observe what they're actually doing.\n\nAnd so there's a lot of nuance to how you build user experiences that give you more than just sort of a course on average correct representation of what the user's intending to do. If you want to build the world's best mouse, you really want it to be as responsive as possible.\n\nYou want it to be able to do exactly what the user's intending at every sort of step along the way, not just on average be correct when you're trying to move it from left to right. And building a behavioral sort of calibration game or sort of software experience that gives you that level of resolution is what we spend a lot of time working.\n\nSo the calibration process, the interface has to encourage precision, meaning like whatever it does, it should be super intuitive that the next thing the human is going to likely do is exactly that intention that you need and only that intention. And you don't have any feedback except that may be speaking to you afterwards what they actually did. You can't, \"Oh yeah.\"\n\nRight.\n\nSo that's fundamentally, that is a really exciting UX challenge, 'cause that's all on the UX. It's not just about being friendly or nice or usable.\n\nYeah.\n\nIt's like- - User experience is how it works.\n\nIt's how it works.\n\nYeah.\n\nFor the calibration, and calibration, at least at this stage of Neuralink, is like fundamental to the operation of the thing and not just calibration but continued calibration essentially.\n\n[Bliss] Yeah.\n\nWow, yeah.\n\nYou said something that I think is worth exploring there a little bit.\n\nYou said it's primarily a UX challenge, and I think a large component of it is, but there is also a very interesting machine learning challenge here, which is given some data set, including some on average correct behavior of asking the user to move up or move down, move right, move left, and given a data set of neural spikes, is there a way to infer in some kind of semi-supervised or entirely unsupervised way what that high resolution version of their intention is?\n\nAnd if you think about it, like there probably is because there are enough data points in the dataset, enough constraints on your model that there should be a way with the right sort of formulation to let the model figure out itself. For example, at this millisecond, this is exactly how hard they're pushing upwards. And at this millisecond, this is how hard they're trying to push upwards.\n\nIt's really important to have very clean labels, yes. So like the problem becomes much harder from the machine learning perspective if the labels are noisy.\n\n[Bliss] That's correct.\n\nAnd then to get the clean labels, that's a UX challenge.\n\nCorrect, although clean labels, I think maybe it's worth exploring what that exactly means. I think any given labeling strategy will have some number of assumptions it makes about what the user's attempting to do. Those assumptions can be formulated in a loss function, or they can be formulated in terms of heuristics that you might use to just try to estimate or guesstimate what the user's trying to do.\n\nAnd what really matters is how accurate are those assumptions. For example, you might say, \"Hey, user, push upwards and follow the speed of this cursor,\" and your heuristic might be that they're trying to do it exactly what that cursor's trying to do. Another competing heuristic might be they're actually trying to go slightly faster at the beginning of the movement and slightly slower at the end.\n\nAnd those competing heuristics may or may not be accurate reflections of what the user's trying to do. Another version of the task might be, \"Hey, user, imagine moving this cursor a fixed offset. So rather than follow the cursor, just try to move it exactly 200 pixels to the right.\" So here's the cursor, here's the target. Okay, cursor disappears. Try to move that now invisible cursor 200 pixels to the right.\n\nAnd the assumption in that case would be that the user can actually modulate correctly that position offset, but that position offset assumption might be a weaker assumption, and therefore, potentially you can make it more accurate than these heuristics that are trying to guesstimate at each millisecond what the user's trying to do.\n\nSo you can imagine different tasks that make different assumptions about the nature of the user intention and those assumptions being correct is what I would think of as a clean label.\n\nFor that step, what are we supposed to be visualizing? There's a cursor and you wanna move that cursor to the right or the left or up and down or maybe move them by a certain offset. So that's one way, is that the best way to do calibration? So for example, an alternative crazy way that probably is playing a role here is a game like Webgrid, where you're just getting a very large amount of data, the person playing a game, where if they're in a state of flow, maybe you can get clean signal as a side effect.\n\n[Bliss] Yep.\n\nIs that not an effective way for initial calibration?\n\nYeah, great question. There's a lot to unpack there. So the first thing I would draw a distinction between a sort of open loop, first closed loop. So open loop, what I mean by that is the user is sort of going from zero to one. They have no model at all, and they're trying to get to the place where they have some level of control at all.\n\nIn that setup, you really need to have some task that gives the user a hint of what you want them to do such that you can build this mapping again from brain data to output. Then once they have a model, you could imagine them using that model and actually adapting to it and figuring out the right way to use it themself and then retraining on that data to give you sort of a boost in performance.\n\nThere's a lot of challenges associated with both of these techniques and we can sort of rabbit hole into both of 'em, if you're interested. But the sort of challenge with the open loop task is that the user themself doesn't get proprioceptive feedback about what they're doing. They don't necessarily perceive themself or feel the mouse under their hand when they're using an open, when they're trying to do an open loop calibration.\n\nThey're being asked to perform something. Like imagine if you sort of had your whole right arm numbed and you stuck it in a box and you couldn't see it. So you had no visual feedback and you had no proprioceptive feedback about what the position or activity of your arm was. And now you're asked, okay, given this thing on the screen that's moving from left to right, match that speed.\n\nAnd you basically can try your best to invoke whatever that imagined action is in your brain that's moving the cursor from left to right. But in any situation, you're gonna be inaccurate and maybe inconsistent in how you do that task. And so that's sort of the fundamental challenge of open loop.\n\nThe challenge with closed loop is that, once the user's given a model, and they're able to start moving the mouse on their own, they're going to very naturally adapt to that model. And that co-adaptation between the model learning, what they're doing, and the user learning how to use the model may not find you the best sort of global minima.\n\nAnd maybe that your first model was noisy in some ways or maybe just had some like quirk, like if there's some like part of the data distribution that didn't cover super well, and the user now figures out because they're a brilliant user like Noland. They figured out the right sequence of imagined motions or the right angle they have to hold their hand at to get it to work.\n\nAnd they'll get it to work great, but then the next day, they come back to their device and maybe they don't remember exactly all the tricks that they used the previous day. And so there's a complicated sort of feedback cycle here that can emerge and can make it a very, very difficult debugging process.\n\nOkay, there's a lot of really fascinating things there. Yeah, actually, just to stay on the closed loop, I've seen situations, this actually happened watching psychology grad students. They use piece of software when they don't know how to program themselves. They use piece of software that somebody else wrote, and it has a bunch of bugs. And they figure out like, and they've been using it for years. They figured out ways to work around it.\n\nOh, that just happens. Like nobody like considers maybe we should fix this. They just adapt. And that's a really interesting notion, that we were really good at adapting, but you need to still, that might not be the optimal. Okay, so how do you solve that problem? Do you have to restart from scratch every once in a while kind of thing?\n\nYeah, it's a good question. First and foremost, I would say this is not a solved problem. And for anyone who's listening in academia who works on BCIs, I would also say this is not a problem that's solved by simply scaling channel account. Maybe that can help and you can get sort of richer covariance structures that you can use to exploit when trying to come up with good labeling strategies.\n\nBut if you're interested in problems, that aren't gonna be solved inherently by scaling channel account, this is one of them. Yeah, so how do you solve it? It's not a solved problem. That's the first thing I wanna make sure gets across. The second thing is, any solution that involves closed loop is going to become a very difficult debugging problem.\n\nAnd one of my sort of general heuristics for choosing what prompts to tackle is that you wanna choose the one that's gonna be the easiest to debug, 'cause if you can do that, even if the ceiling is lower, you're gonna be able to move faster because you have a tighter iteration loop debugging the problem. And in the open loop setting, there's not a feedback cycle debug with the user in the loop.\n\nAnd so there's some reason to think that that should be an easier debugging problem. The other thing that's worth understanding is that even in a closed loop setting, there's no special software magic of how to infer what the user is truly attempting to do. In the closed loop setting, although they're moving the cursor on the screen, they may be attempting something different than what your model is outputting.\n\nSo what the model is outputting is not a signal that you can use to retrain if you want to be able to improve the model further. You still have this very complicated guesstimation or unsupervised problem of figuring out what is the true user intention underlying that signal. And so the open loop problem has the nice property of being easy to debug.\n\nAnd the second nice property of, it has all the same information and content as the closed loop scenario. Another thing I wanna mention and call out is that this problem doesn't need to be solved in order to give useful control to people. Even today with the solutions we have now and that academia has built up over decades, the level of control that can be given to a user today is quite useful.\n\nIt doesn't need to be solved to get to that level of control. But again, I wanna build the world's best mouse. I wanna make it so good that it's not even a question that you want it. And to build the world's best mouse, the superhuman version, you really need to nail that problem.\n\nAnd a couple maybe details of previous studies that we've done internally that I think are very interesting to understand when thinking about how to solve this problem, the first is that even when you have ground truth data of what the user's trying to do, and you can get this with an able-bodied monkey, a monkey that has a Neuralink device implanted and moving a mouse to control a computer, even with that ground truth dataset, it turns out that the optimal thing to predict to produce high performance BCI is not just the direct control of the mouse.\n\nYou can imagine building dataset of what's going on in the brain and what is the mouse exactly doing on the table. And it turns out that if you build the mapping from neuro spikes to predict exactly what the mouse is doing, that model will perform worse than a model that is trained to predict sort of higher level assumptions about what the user might be trying to do.\n\nFor example, assuming that the monkey is trying to go in a straight line to the target, it turns out that making those assumptions is actually more effective in producing a model than actually predicting the underlying hand movement.\n\nSo the intention, not like the physical movement or whatever.\n\nYeah.\n\nThere's obviously a really strong correlation between the two, but the intention is a more powerful thing to be chasing.\n\n[Bliss] Right.\n\nWell, that's also super interesting. I mean, the intention itself is fascinating, because yes, with the BCI here, in this case, with a digital telepathy, you're acting on the intention, not the action, which is why there's an experience of like feeling like it's happening before you meant for it to happen. That is so cool. And that is why you could achieve like superhuman performance problem in terms of the control of the mouse.\n\nSo for open loop, just to clarify, so whenever the person is tasked to like move the mouse to the right, you said there's not feedback so they don't get to get that satisfaction of like actually getting it to move, right?\n\nYou could imagine giving the user feedback on a screen, but it's difficult, because at this point, you don't know what they're attempting to do. So what can you show them that would basically give them a signal of I'm doing this correctly or not correctly. So let's take this very specific example. Like maybe your calibration task looks like you're trying to move the cursor a certain position offset.\n\nSo your instructions to the user are, \"Hey, the cursor's here. Now, when the cursor disappears, imagine moving it 200 pixels from where it was to the right to be over this target.\" In that kind of scenario, you could imagine coming up with some sort of consistency metric that you could display to the user of, \"Okay, I know what the spike train looks like on average when you do this action to the right.\n\nMaybe I can produce some sort of probabilistic estimate of how likely is that to be the action you took given the latest trial or trajectory that you imagined.\" And that could give the user some sort of feedback of how consistent are they across different trials.\n\nYou could also imagine that if the user is prompted with that kind of consistency metric, that maybe they just become more behaviorally engaged to begin with because the task is kind of boring when you don't have any feedback at all. And so there may be benefits to the user experience of showing something on the screen, even if it's not accurate, just because it keeps the user motivated to try to increase that number or push it upwards.\n\nSo there's a psychology element here.\n\nYeah, absolutely.\n\nAnd again, all of that is UX challenge. How much signal drift is there, hour to hour, day to day, week to week, month to month? How often do you have to recalibrate because of the signal drift?\n\nYeah, so this is a problem we've worked on, both with NHP, non-human primates, before our clinical trial and then also with Noland during the clinical trial. Maybe the first thing that's worth stating is what the goal is here. So the goal is really to enable the user to have a plug and play experience where I guess they don't have to plug anything in, but a play experience where they can use the device whenever they want to, however they want to.\n\nAnd that's really what we're aiming for. And so there can be a set of solutions that get to that state without considering this non-stationary problem. So maybe the first solution here that's important is that they can recalibrate whenever they want. This is something that Noland has the ability to do today.\n\nSo he can recalibrate the system at 2:00 AM in the middle of the night, without his caretaker or parents or friends around to help push a button for him. The other important part of the solution is that when you have a good model calibrated, that you can continue using that without needing to recalibrate it. So how often he has to do this recalibration today depends really on his appetite for performance.\n\nWe observe sort of a degradation through time of how well any individual model works, but this can be mitigated behaviorally by the user adapting their control strategy. It can also be mitigated through a combination of sort of software features that we provide to the user. For example, we let the user adjust exactly how fast the cursor is moving.\n\nWe call that the gain, for example, the gain of how fast the cursor reacts to any given input intention. They can also adjust the smoothing, how smooth the output of that cursor intention actually is. They can also adjust the friction, which is how easy is it to stop and hold still. And all these software tools allow the user a great deal of flexibility and troubleshooting mechanisms to be able to solve this problem for themselves.\n\nBy the way, all of this is done by looking to the right side of the screen, selecting the mixer, and the mixer you have- - It's like DJ mode. DJ mode for your VCI.\n\nSo I mean, it's a really well done interface. It's really, really well done. And so yeah, there's that bias that there's a cursor drift that Noland talked about in a stream, although he said that you guys were just playing around with it with him and then constantly improving. So that could have been just a snapshot of that particular moment, a particular day. But he said that there was this cursor drift and this bias that could be removed by him, I guess looking to the right side of the screen, the left side of the screen to kind of adjust the bias.\n\nYeah, yeah.\n\nThat's one interface action I guess to adjust the bias.\n\nYeah, so this is actually an idea that comes out of academia. There are some prior work with sort of BrainGate clinical trial participants where they pioneered this idea of bias correction.\n\nThe way we've done it I think is, yeah, it's very prototized, very beautiful user experience where the user can essentially flash the cursor over to the side of the screen and it opens up a window where they can actually sort of adjust or tune exactly the bias of the cursor. So bias maybe, for people who aren't familiar, is just sort of what is the default motion of the cursor if you're imagining nothing.\n\nAnd it turns out that that's one of the first sort of qualia of the cursor control experience that's impacted by neuro non-stationarity.\n\nQuality off the cursor experience.\n\nI don't know how else to describe it. I'm not the guy moving- - It's very poetic, I love it. The quality of the cursor experience. Yeah, I mean, it sounds poetic but it is deeply true. There is an experience, when it works well, it is a joyful, a really pleasant experience. And when it doesn't work well, it's a very frustrating experience. That's actually the art of UX.\n\nIt's like you have the possibility to frustrate people or the possibility to give them joy, - And at the end of the day, it really is truly the case that UX is how the thing works. And so it's not just like what's showing on the screen, it's also what control surfaces does a decode provide the user? Like we want them to feel like they're in the F1 card, not like some like minivan, right? And that really truly is how we think about it.\n\nNoland himself is an F1 fan, so we refer to ourself as a pit crew. He really is truly the F1 driver, and there's different control surfaces that different kinds of cars and airplanes provide the user. And we take a lot of inspiration from that when designing how the cursor should behave..\n\nAnd what maybe one nuance of this is, even details like when you move a mouse on a MacBook track pad, the sort of response curve of how that input that you give the track pad translates to cursor movement is different than how it works with a mouse. When you move on the track pad, there's a different response function, a different curve to how much a movement translates to input to the computer than when you do it physically with a mouse.\n\nAnd that's because somebody sat down a long time ago when they're designed the initial input systems to any computer and they thought through exactly how it feels to use these different systems. And now we're designing sort of the next generation of this input system to a computer, which is entirely done via the brain, and there's no proprioceptive feedback.\n\nAgain, you don't feel the mouse in your hand, you don't feel the keys under your fingertips, and you want a control surface that still makes it easy and intuitive for the user to understand the state of the system and how to achieve what they wanna achieve. And ultimately, the end goal is that that UX is completely, it fades into the background.\n\nIt becomes something that's so natural and intuitive that it's subconscious to the user, and they just should feel like they have basically direct control over the cursor. It just does what they want it to do. They're not thinking about the implementation of how to make it do what they want it to do. It's just doing what they want it to do.\n\nIs there some kind of things along the lines of like Fitts' law where you should move the mouse in a certain kind of way that maximizes your chance to hit the target? I don't even know what I'm asking, but I'm hoping the intention of my question will land on a profound answer. No, is there some kind of understanding of the laws of UX when it comes to the context of somebody using their brain to control it? Like that's different than actual with a mouse?\n\nI think we're in the early stages of discovering those laws, so I wouldn't claim to have solved that problem yet. But there's definitely some things we've learned that make it easier for the user to get stuff done. And it's pretty straightforward when you verbalize it, but it takes a while to actually get to that point when you're in the process of debugging the stuff in the trenches.\n\nOne of those things is that any machine learning system you build has some number of errors, and it matters how those errors translate to the downstream user experience. For example, if you're developing a search algorithm in your photos, if you search for your friend Joe and it pulls up a photo of your friend Josephine, maybe that's not a big deal because the cost of an error is not that high.\n\nIn a different scenario where you're trying to detect insurance fraud or something like this and you're directly sending someone to court because of some machine learning model output, then the errors make a lot more sense to be careful about. You wanna be very thoughtful about how those errors translate to downstream effects. The same is true in BCI.\n\nSo for example, if you're building a model that's decoding a velocity output from the brain versus an output where you're trying to modulate the left click, for example. These have sort of different trade-offs of how precise you need to be before it becomes useful to the end user. For velocity, it's okay to be on average correct, because the output of the model is integrated through time.\n\nSo if the user's trying to click at position A, and they're currently in position B, they're trying to navigate over time to get between those two points. And as long as the output of the model is on average correct, they can sort of steer it through time with the user control loop in the mix. They can get to the point they wanna get to. The same is not true of a click.\n\nFor a click, you're performing it almost instantly at the scale of neurons firing. And so you want to be very sure that that click is correct because a false click can be very destructive to the user. They might accidentally close the tab that they're trying to do something and lose all their progress. They might accidentally like hit some Send button on some text that it's only like half-composed and reads funny after.\n\nSo there's different sort of cost functions associated with errors in this space. And part of the UX design is understanding how to build a solution that is when it's wrong, still useful to the end user.\n\nIt's so fascinating that assigning cost to every action when an error occurs. So every action, if an error occurs, has a certain cost, and incorporating that into how you interpret the intention, mapping it to the action is really important. I didn't quite until you said it realize there's a cost to like sending the text early. It's like very expensive cost.\n\nYeah. It's super annoying if you accidentally, like if you're a cursor, imagine if your cursor misclick every once in a while, that's like super obnoxious. And the worst part of it is, usually, when the user's trying to click, they're also holding still because they're over the target they wanna hit and they're getting ready to click, which means that in the data sets that we build, on average, it's the case that sort of low speeds or desire to hold still. It's correlated with when the user's attempting to click.\n\nWow, that is really fascinating.\n\nIt's also not the case. People think that, \"Oh, a click is a binary signal. This must be super easy to decode.\" Well, yes it is, but the bar is so much higher for it to become a useful thing for the user, and there's ways to solve this. I mean, you can sort of take the compound approach of, well, let's just give the like, let's take five seconds to click. Let's take a huge window of time so it can be very confident about the answer.\n\nBut again, world's best mouse. The world's best mouse doesn't take a second to click or 500 milliseconds to click. It takes five milliseconds to click or less. And so if you're aiming for that kind of high bar, then you really wanna solve the underlying problem.\n\nSo maybe this is a good place to ask about how to measure performance, this whole bits per second. Can you like explain what you mean by that? Maybe a good place to start is to talk about Webgrid as a game, as a good illustration of the measurement of performance.\n\nYeah, maybe I'll take one zoom out step there, which is just explaining why we care to measure this at all. So again, our goal is to provide the user the ability to control the computer as well as I can and hopefully better. And that means that they can do it at the same speed as what I can do.\n\nIt means that they have access to all the same functionality that I have, including all those little details like command tab, command space, all this stuff. They need to be able to do it with their brain and with the same level of reliability as what I can do with my muscles. And that's a high bar. And so we intend to measure and quantify every aspect of that to understand how we're progressing towards that goal.\n\nThere's many ways to measure BPS, by the way. This isn't the only way, but we present the user a creative targets, and basically, we compute a score which is dependent on how fast and accurate they can select, and then how small are the targets. And the more targets that are on the screen, the smaller they are, the more information you present per click.\n\nAnd so if you think about it from information theory point of view, you can communicate across different information theoretic channels. And one such channel is a typing interface you could imagine that's built out of a grid, just like a software keyboard on the screen. And bits per second is a measure that's computed by taking the log of the number of targets on the screen.\n\nYou can subtract one if you care to model a keyboard because you have to subtract one for the Delete key on the keyboard, but log of the number of targets on the screen times the number of correct selections minus incorrect, divided by some time window. For example, 60 seconds. And that's sort of the standard way to measure a cursor control task in academia. And all credit in the world goes to this great professor, Dr.\n\nShenoy of Stanford who came up with that task. And he's also one of my inspirations for being in the field. So all the credit in the world to him for coming up with a standardized metric to facilitate this kind of bragging rights that we have now, to say that Noland is the best in the world at this task with his BCI.\n\nIt's very important for progress that you have standardized metrics that people can compare across different techniques and approaches. How well does this do? So yeah, big kudos to him and to all the team at Stanford. Yeah, so for Noland, and for me playing this task, there's also different modes that you can configure this task.\n\nSo the Webgrid task can be presented as just sort of a left click on the screen, or you could have targets that you just dwell over, or you could have targets that you left, right click on. You could have targets that are left, right click, middle click, scrolling, clicking, and dragging. You could do all sorts of things within this general framework. But the simplest, purest form is just blue targets show up on the screen. Blue means left click.\n\nThat's the simplest form of the game. And the sort of prior records here in academic work and at Neuralink internally with sort of NPS have all been matched or beaten by Noland with his Neuralink device. So sort of prior to Neuralink, the sort of world record for a human using device is somewhere between 4. 2 to 4. 6 BPS, depending on exactly what paper you read and how you interpret it. Noland's current record is 8. 5 BPS.\n\nAnd again, this sort of median Neuralink performance is 10 BPS. So you can think of it roughly as he's 85% the level of control of a median Neuralinker using their cursor to select blue targets on the screen. And yeah, I think there's a very interesting journey ahead to get us to that same level of 10 BPS performance.\n\nIt's not the case that sort of the tricks that got us from four to six BPS, and then six to eight BPS are gonna be the ones that get us from eight to 10. And in my view, the core challenge here is really the labeling problem. It's how do you understand at a very, very fine resolution what the user's attempting to do. And yeah, I highly encourage folks in academia to work on this problem.\n\nWhat's the journey with Noland on that quest of increasing the BPS on Webgrid? In March, you said that he selected 89,285 targets in Webgrid.\n\nYep.\n\nSo he loves this game. He's really serious about improving his performance in this game. So what is that journey of trying to figure out how to improve that performance? How much can that be done on the decoding side? How much can that be done on the calibration side? How much can that be done on the Noland side of like figuring out how to convey his intention more cleanly?\n\nYeah, no, this is a great question. So in my view, one of the primary reasons why Noland's performance is so good is because of Noland. Noland is extremely focused and very energetic. He'll play Webgrid sometimes for like four hours in the middle of the night. Like from 2:00 AM to 6:00 AM, he'll be playing Webgrid, just because he wants to push it to the limits of what he can do. And this is not us like asking him to do that. I wanna be clear.\n\nLike we're not saying, \"Hey, you should play Webgrid tonight.\" We just gave him the game as part of our research, and he is able to play it independently and practice whenever he wants, and he really pushes hard to push it, the technology's the absolute limit. And he views that as like his job really to make us be the bottleneck. And boy, has he done that well.\n\nAnd so the first thing to acknowledge is that he's extremely motivated to make this work. I've also had the privilege to meet other clinical trial participants from BrainGate and other trials, and they very much shared the same attitude of like they view this as their life's work to advance the technology as much as they can. And if that means selecting targets on the screen for four hours from 2:00 AM to 6:00 AM, then so be it.\n\nAnd there's something extremely admirable about that that's worth calling out. Okay, so then how do you sort of get from where he started, which is no cursor control to a BPS? So I mean, when he started, there's a huge amount of learning to do on his side and our side to figure out what's the most intuitive control for him.\n\nAnd the most intuitive control for him is sort of, you have to find the set intersection of what do we have this signal to decode. So we don't pick up every single neuron in the motor cortex, which means we don't have representation for every part of the body. So there may be some signals that we have better sort of decode performance on than others.\n\nFor example, on his left hand, we have a lot of difficulty distinguishing his left ring finger from his left middle finger. But on his right hand, we have a good control and good modulation detected from the neurons that we're able to record for his pinky, his thumb, and his index finger. So you can imagine how these different sub spaces of modulated activity intersect with what's the most intuitive for him. And this has evolved over time.\n\nSo once we gave him the ability to calibrate models on his own, he was able to go and explore various different ways to imagine controlling the cursor. For example, he could imagine controlling the cursor by wiggling his wrist side to side, or by moving his entire arm. I think at one point, he did his feet. He tried like a whole bunch of stuff to explore the space of what is the most natural way for him to control the cursor.\n\nThat at the same time, it's easy for us to decode rules.\n\nJust to clarify, it's through the body mapping procedure that you're able to figure out which finger he can move?\n\nYes, yeah, that's one way to do it. Maybe one nuance of when he's doing it, he can imagine many more things than we represent in that visual on the screen. So we show him sort of abstractly, \"Here's a cursor. You figure out what works the best for you.\" And we obviously have hints about what will work best from that body mapping procedure of we know that this particular action, we can represent well. But it's really up to him to go and explore and figure out what works the best.\n\nBut at which point does he no longer visualize the movement of his body and is just visualizing the movement of the cursor?\n\nYeah.\n\nHow quickly does he go from, how quickly does he get there?\n\nSo this happened on a Tuesday. I remember this day very clearly, because at some point during the day, it looked like he wasn't doing super well. It looked like the model wasn't performing super well and he was like getting distracted. But he actually, it wasn't the case. Like what actually happened was he was trying something new where he was just controlling the cursor. So he wasn't imagining moving his hand anymore.\n\nHe was just imagining, I don't know what it is, some like abstract intention to move the cursor on the screen. And I cannot tell you what the difference between those two things are. I really truly cannot. He's tried to explain it to me before. I cannot give a first person account of what that's like.\n\nBut the expletives that he uttered in that moment were enough to suggest that it was a very qualitatively different experience for him to just have direct neural control over a cursor.\n\nI wonder if there's a way through UX to encourage a human being to discover that, because he discovered it, like you said to me, that he's a pioneer. So he discovered that on his own through all of this, the process of trying to move the cursor with different kinds of intentions. But that is clearly a really powerful thing to arrive at, which is to let go of trying to control the fingers and the hand and control the actual digital device with your mind.\n\nThat's right, UX is how it works. And the ideal UX is one that the user doesn't have to think about what they need to do in order to get it done. It just does it.\n\nThat is so fascinating. But I wonder on the biological side how long it takes for the brain to adapt.\n\nYeah.\n\nSo is it just simply learning like high level software, or is there like a neuroplasticity component where like the brain is adjusting slowly?\n\nYeah, the truth is, I don't know. I'm very excited to see with sort of the second participant that we implant what the journey is like for them, because we'll have learned a lot more. Potentially, we can help them understand and explore that direction more quickly. This is something I didn't know. This wasn't me prompting Noland to go try this. He was just exploring how to use his device and figure it out himself.\n\nBut now that we know that that's a possibility, that maybe there's a way to, for example, hint the user, \"Don't try super hard during calibration. Just do something that feels natural, or just directly control the cursor. Don't imagine explicit action.\" And from there, we should be able to hopefully understand how this is for somebody who has not experienced that before. Maybe that's the default mode of operation for them.\n\nYou don't have to go through this intermediate phase of explicit motions.\n\nOr maybe if that naturally happens for people, you can just occasionally encourage them to allow themselves to move the cursor. Actually sometimes, just like with a four minute mile, just the knowledge that that's possible.\n\nPushes you to do it.\n\nYeah, enables you to do it, and then it becomes trivial. And then it also makes you wonder, it's the cool thing about humans. Once there's a lot more human participants, they will discover things that are possible.\n\nYes, and share their experiences.\n\nYeah, and share.\n\nWith each other.\n\nAnd that because of them sharing it, they'll be able to do it. All of a sudden, that's unlocked for everybody, because just the knowledge sometimes is the thing that enables it to do it.\n\nYeah, I mean, and just to comment on that too, we've probably tried like a thousand different ways to do various aspects of decoding, and now we know like what the right subspace is to continue exploring further. Again, thanks to Noland and the many hours he's put into this.\n\nAnd so even just that help, like help constraints sort of the beam search of different approaches that we could explore really helps accelerate for the next person the set of things that we'll get to try on day one, how fast we hope to get them to useful control, how fast we can enable 'em to use it independently, and to get value out of the system.\n\nSo yeah, massive hats off to Noland and all the participants that came before him to make this technology a reality.\n\nSo how often are the updates to the decoder? 'Cause Noland mentioned like, okay, there's a new update that we're working on, and that in the stream, he said he plays the snake game because it's like super hard. It's a good way for him to test like how good the update is. And he says like sometimes the update is a step backwards. It's a constant like iteration. Like what does the update entail? Is it mostly on the decoder side?\n\nYeah, a couple comments. So one is it's probably worth drawing distinction between sort of research sessions where we're actively trying different things to understand like what the best approach is versus sort of independent use where we wanted to have an ability to just go use the device, how anybody would wanna use their MacBook.\n\nAnd so what he's referring to is, I think usually in the context of a research session, where we're trying many, many different approaches to even unsupervised approaches like we talked about earlier to try to come up with better ways to estimate his true intention and more accurately decode it. And in those scenarios, I mean we try, in any given session, he'll sometimes work for like eight hours a day.\n\nAnd so that can be hundreds of different models that we would try in that day. Like a lot of different things. Now, it's also worth noting that we update the application he uses quite frequently. I think sometimes, up to like four or five times a day. We'll update his application with different features or bug fixes or feedback that he's given us. He's a very articulate person who is part of the solution. He's not a complaining person.\n\nHe says, \"Hey, here's this thing that I've discovered is not optimal in my flow. Here's some ideas how to fix it. Let me know what your thoughts are. Let's figure out how to solve it.\" And it often happens that those things are addressed within a couple hours of him giving us his feedback. That's the kind of iteration cycle we'll have.\n\nAnd so sometimes, at the beginning of the session, he'll give us feedback, and at the end of the session, he's giving us feedback on the next iteration of that process or that set up.\n\nThat's fascinating, because one of the things you mentioned, that there was 271 pages of notes taken from the BCI sessions, and this was just in March. So one of the amazing things about human beings that they can provide, especially ones who are smart and excited and all like positive and good vibes like Nolan, that they can provide feedback, continuous feedback.\n\nYeah, it also requires, just to brag on the team a little bit, I work with a lot of exceptional people, and it requires the team being absolutely laser focused on the user and what will be the best for them. And it requires like a level of commitment of, \"Okay, this is what the user feedback was. I have all these meetings. We're gonna skip that today and we're gonna do this.\" That level of focus commitment is, I would say, underappreciated in the world. And also, you obviously have to have the talent to be able to execute on these things effectively. And yeah, we have that in loads.\n\nYeah, and this is such a interesting space of UX design because there's so many unknowns here. And I can tell UX is difficult because of how many people do it poorly. It's just not a trivial thing.\n\nYeah, it's also, you know, UX is not something that you can always solve by just constant iterating on different things. Like sometimes, you really need to step back and think globally, am I even in like the right sort of minima to be chasing down for a solution? Like there's a lot of problems in which sort of fast iteration cycle is the predictor of how successful you will be.\n\nAs a good example, like in RL simulation, for example, the more frequently you get reward, the faster you can progress. It's just an easier learning prompt, the more frequently you get feedback. But UX is not that way. I mean, users are actually quite often wrong about what the right solution is, and it requires a deep understanding of the technical system and what's possible, combined with what the problem is you're trying to solve.\n\nNot just how the user expressed it, but what the true underlying problem is to actually get to the right place.\n\nYeah, that's the old like stories of Steve Jobs like rolling in there, like, yeah, the user is a useful signal, but it's not a perfect signal. And sometimes, you have to remove the floppy disk drive or whatever the, I forgot all the crazy stories of Steve Jobs like making wild design decisions. But there, some of it is aesthetic, that some of it is about the love you put into the design, which is very much a Steve Jobs-Jony Ive type of thing.\n\nBut when you have a human being using their brain to interact with it, it also is deeply about function. It's not just aesthetic. And that you have to empathize with a human being before you, while not always listening to them directly. Like you have to deeply empathize. It's fascinating. It's really, really fascinating. And at the same time, iterate. But not iterate in small ways. Sometimes, a complete like rebuilding the design.\n\nHe said that, Noland said in the early days, the UX sucked. But you improved quickly. What was that journey like?\n\nYeah, I mean, I'll give one concrete example. So he really wanted to be able to read manga. This is something that he, I mean, it sounds like a simple thing, but it's actually a really big deal for him. And he couldn't do it with his mouth stick. It wasn't accessible. You can't scroll with a mouse stick on his iPad on the website that he wanted to be able to use to read the newest manga.\n\nMight be a good quick pause to say the mouth stick is the thing he's using, holding a stick in his mouth to scroll on a tablet.\n\nRight, yeah, it's basically, you can imagine it's a stylus that you hold between your teeth. Yeah, it's basically a very long stylus.\n\nAnd it's exhausting, it hurts, and it's inefficient.\n\nYeah, and maybe it's also worth calling out, there are other alternative assisted technologies, but the particular situation Noland's in, and this is not uncommon, and I think it's also not well understood by folks, is that he's relatively spastic so he'll have muscle spasms from time to time.\n\nAnd so any assistive technology that requires him to be positioned directly in front of a camera, for example, an eye tracker, or anything that requires him to put something in his mouth just is a no go, 'cause he'll either be shifted out of frame when he has a spasm, or if he has something in his mouth, it'll stab him in the face if he spasms too hard.\n\nSo these kind of considerations are important when thinking about what advantages a BCI has in someone's life. If it fits ergonomically into your life in a way that you can use it independently when your caretaker's not there, wherever you want to, either in the bed or in the chair, depending on your comfort level and your desire to have pressure sores, all these factors matter a lot in how good the solution is in that user's life.\n\nSo one of these very fun examples is scroll. So again, manga is something he wanted to be able to read, and there's many ways to do scroll with a BCI. You can imagine like different gestures, for example. The user could do that, would move the page. But scroll is a very fascinating control surface, because it's a huge thing on the screen in front of you.\n\nSo any sort of jitter in the model output, any sort of error in the model output causes like an earthquake on the screen. Like you really don't wanna have your manga page you're trying to read be shifted up and down a few pixels just because your scroll decoder is not completely accurate.\n\nAnd so this was an example where we had to figure out how to formulate the problem in a way that the errors of the system, whenever they do occur, and we'll do our best to minimize them, whenever those errors do occur, that it doesn't interrupt the qualia again of the experience that the user is having. It doesn't interrupt their flow of reading their book. And so what we ended up building is this really brilliant feature.\n\nThis is teammate named Ruse, who worked on this really brilliant work called quick scroll. And quick scroll basically looks at the screen, and it identifies where on the screen are scroll bars. And it does this by deeply integrated with MacOs to understand where are the scroll bars actively present on the screen using the sort of accessibility tool that's available to MacOs apps.\n\nAnd we identified where those scroll bars are and we provided a BCI scroll bar. And the BCI scroll bar looks similar to a normal scroll bar but it behaves very differently in that once you sort of move over to it, your cursor sort of morphs onto it. It sort of attaches or latches onto it. And then once you push up or down in the same way that you'd use a push to control the normal cursor, it actually moves the screen for you.\n\nSo it's basically like remapping the velocity to a scroll action. And the reason that feels so natural and intuitive is that, when you move over to attach to it, it feels like magnetic. So you're like sort of stuck onto it. And then it's one continuous action. You don't have to like switch your imagined movement. You sort of snap onto it and then you're good to go. You just immediately can start pulling the page down or pushing it up.\n\nAnd even once you get that right, there's so many little nuances of how the scroll behavior works to make it natural and intuitive. So one example is momentum. Like when you scroll a page with your fingers on the screen, you actually have some like flow. Like it doesn't just stop right when you lift your finger up. The same is true with BCI scroll. So we had to spend some time to figure out what are the right nuances.\n\nWhen you don't feel the screen under your fingertip anymore, what is the right sort of dynamic or what's the right amount of page give, if you will, when you push it to make it flow the right amount for the user to have a natural experience reading their book.\n\nAnd there's a million, I mean, I could tell you like there's so many little minutia of how exactly that scroll works that we spent probably like a month getting right to make that feel extremely natural and easy for the user to navigate.\n\nI mean, even to scroll on a smartphone with your finger feels extremely natural and pleasant. And it probably takes a extremely long time to get that right. And actually, the same kind of visionary UX design that we're talking about, don't always listen to the users but also listen to them, and also have like visionary big, like throw everything out, think from first principles but also not.\n\nYeah, yeah, by the way, it just makes me think that scroll bars on the desktop probably have stagnated and never taken that like, 'cause the snap, same as like snap the grid, snap the scroll bar action you're talking about is something that could potentially be extremely useful in the desktop setting, even just for users to just improve the experience, 'cause the current scroll bar experience in the desktop is horrible.\n\nYeah, agreed.\n\nIt's hard to find, hard to control. There's not a momentum. And the intention should be clear. When I start moving towards a scroll bar, there should be a snapping to the scroll bar action. But of course, maybe I'm okay paying that cost, but there's hundreds of millions of people paying that cost nonstop. But anyway, but in this case, this is necessary because there's an extra cost paid by Noland for the jitteriness. So you have to switch between the scrolling and the reading. There has to be a phase shift between the two. Like when you're scrolling, you're scrolling.\n\nRight, right, so that is one drawback of the current approach. Maybe one other just sort of case study here, so again, UX is how it works, and we think about that holistically from like the, even the feature detection level of what we detect in the brain to how we design the decoder, what we choose to decode, to then how it works once it's being used by the user.\n\nSo another good example in the sort of how it works once they're actually using the decoder, the output that's displayed on the screen is not just what the decoder says. It's also a function of what's going on on the screen.\n\nSo we can understand, for example, that when you're trying to close a tab, that very small, stupid little X that's extremely tiny, which is hard to get precisely hit if you're dealing with sort of a noisy output of the decoder, we can understand that that is a small little X you might be trying to hit and actually make it a bigger target for you.\n\nSimilar to how when you're typing on your phone, if you are used to like the iOS keyboard, for example, it actually adapts the target size of individual keys based on an underlying language model. So it'll actually understand if I'm typing, \"Hey, I'm going to see L.\" It'll make the E key bigger, because in those Lex is the person I'm gonna go see.\n\nAnd so that kind of predictiveness can make the experience much more smooth even without improvements to the underlying decoder or feature detection part of the stack. So we do that with a feature called magnetic targets. We actually indexed the screen and we understand, okay, these are the places that are very small targets that might be difficult to hit.\n\nHere's the kind of cursor dynamics around that location that might be indicative of the user trying to select it. Let's make it easier. Let's blow up the size of it in a way that makes it easier for the user to sort of snap onto that target. So all these little details, they matter a lot in helping the user be independent in their day-to-day living.\n\nSo how much of the work on the decoder is generalizable to P2, P3, P4, P5, PM? How do you improve the decoder in a way that's generalizable?\n\nYeah, great question. So the underlying signal we're trying to decode is gonna look very different in P2 than in P1. For example, channel number 345 is gonna mean something different in user one than it will in user two, just because that electrode that corresponds with channel 345 is gonna be next to a different neuron in user one versus user two.\n\nBut the approach is the methods, the user experience of how do you get the right sort of behavioral pattern from the user to associate with that neural signal, we hope that will translate over multiple generations of users. And beyond that, it's very, very possible. In fact, quite likely that we've overfit to sort of Noland's user experience desires and preferences.\n\nAnd so what I hope to see is that when we get second, third, fourth participant, that we find sort of what the right wide minimums are that cover all the cases, that make it more intuitive for everyone. And hopefully, there's a crosspollination of things where, \"Oh, we didn't think about that with this user, because they can speak. But with this user who just can fundamentally not speak at all, this user experience is not optimal.\"\n\nAnd that will actually, those improvements that we make there should hopefully translate then to even people who can't speak but don't feel comfortable doing so because we're in a public setting, like their doctor's office.\n\nSo the actual mechanism of open loop labeling and then closed loop labeling will be the same, and hopefully, can generalize across the different users as they're doing the calibration step. And the calibration step is pretty cool. I mean, that in itself, the interesting thing about Webgrid, which is like closed loop, it's like fun. I love it when there's like, they used to be kind of idea of human computation, which is using actions a human would want to do anyway to get a lot of signal from.\n\nYeah.\n\nAnd like Webgrid is that, like a nice video game that also serves as great calibration.\n\nIt's so funny. I've heard this reaction so many times. Before sort of the first user was implanted, we had an internal perception that the first user would not find this fun. And so we thought really quite a bit actually about like, should we build other games that like are more interesting for the user so we can get this kind of data and help facilitate research for long duration and stuff like this? Turns out that like people love this game.\n\nYeah.\n\nI always loved it, but I didn't know that that was a shared perception.\n\nYeah, and just in case it's not clear, Webgrid is, there's a grid of, let's say 35 by 35 cells, and one of them lights up blue and you have to move your mouse over that and click on it. And if you miss it and it's red- - [Bliss] I played this game for so many hours. So many hours.\n\nAnd what's your record, you said?\n\nI think I have the highest at Neuralink. Right now, my record's 17 BPS.\n\n17 BPS.\n\nWhich is about, if you imagine that 35 by 35 grid, you're hitting about 100 trials per minute in. So 100 correct selections in that one minute window. So you're averaging about, between 500, 600 milliseconds per selection.\n\nSo one of the reasons that I think I struggle with that game is I'm such a keyboard person, so everything is done with via keyboard. If I can avoid touching the mouse, it's great. So how can you explain your high performance?\n\nI have like a whole ritual I go through when I play Webgrid. So it's actually like a diet plan associated with this. Like it's a whole thing, so great.\n\nThe first thing- - You have to fast for five days, have to go up to the mountains.\n\nActually, it kind of, I mean, the fasting thing is important. So this is like, you know- - Focuses the mind, yeah?\n\nYeah, it's true. So what I do is actually, I don't eat for a little bit beforehand. And then I'll actually eat like a ton of peanut butter right before, and I get like- - This is a real thing?\n\nThis is a real thing, yeah. And then it has to be really late at night. This is again a night owl thing I think we share, but it has to be like midnight, 2:00 AM kind of time window. And I have a very specific like physical position I'll sit in, which is, I used to be, I was homeschooled growing up and so I did most of my work like on the floor, just like in my bedroom or whatever. And so I have a very specific situation on the floor.\n\nOn the floor, I sit and play, and then you have to make sure like there's not a lot of weight on your elbow when you're playing so that you can move quickly. And then I turn the gain of the cursor, so the speed of the cursor way, way up. So it's like small motions that actually move the cursor.\n\nAre you moving with your wrist or you're never moving on- - I move my fingers. So my wrist is almost completely still. I'm just moving my fingers.\n\nYeah. You know those, just on a small tangent, which I've been meaning to go down this rabbit hole of people that set the world record in Tetris. Those folks, they're playing, there's a way to, did you see this?\n\nI see like the three, like all the fingers are moving.\n\nYeah, you could find a way to do it where like it's using a loophole, like a bug that you can do some incredibly fast stuff. So it's along that line but not quite. But you do realize there'll be like a few programmers right now listening to this cool fast and eat peanut butter and be like- - Yeah, please, please trade my record. I mean, the reason I did this, literally, was just because I wanted the bar to be high. The team, like I wanted the number that we aim for should not be like the median performance. It should be able to beat all of us at least. Like that should be the minimum bar.\n\nWhat do you think is possible, like 20 scrapes?\n\nYeah, I don't know what the limits. I mean, the limits you can calculate just in terms of like screen refresh rate and like cursor immediately jumping to the next target. But I mean, I'm sure there's limits before that with just sort of reaction time and visual perception and things like this. I would guess it's in the below 40 but above 20, somewhere in there is probably the right that I'd never be thinking about.\n\nIt also matters like how difficult the task is. You could imagine like some people might be able to do like 10,000 targets on the screen and maybe they can do better that way. There's some like task optimizations you could do to try to boost your performance as well.\n\nWhat do you think it takes for Noland to be able to do above 8.5? To keep increasing that number? You said like every increase in the number might require different- - [Bliss] Yeah.\n\nDifferent improvements in the system.\n\nYeah, I think the nature of this work is, I mean, the first answer that's important to say is, I don't know. This is edge of the research. So again, nobody's gotten to that number before. So what's next is gonna be a heuristic guess from my part. What we've seen historically is that different parts of the stack follow next to different time points.\n\nSo when I first joined Neuralink, like three years ago or so, one of the major problems was just the latency of the Bluetooth connection. It was just like the radial device wasn't super good. It was an early revision of the implant, and it just like, no matter how good your decoder was, if your thing is updating every 30 milliseconds or 50 milliseconds, it's just gonna be choppy.\n\nAnd no matter how good you are, that's gonna be frustrating and lead to challenges. So at that point, it was very clear that the main challenge is just get the data off the device in a very reliable way, such that you can enable the next challenge to be tackled.\n\nAnd then at some point, it was, actually, the modeling challenge of how do you just build a good mapping, like the supervised learning problem of you have a bunch of data and you have a label you're trying to predict, just what is the right like neuro decoder architecture and hyper parameters to optimize that? And that was a problem for a bit. And once you solve that, it became a different bottleneck.\n\nI think the next bottleneck after that was actually just sort of software stability and reliability. If you have widely varying sort of inference latency in your system, or your app just lags out every once in a while, it decreases your ability to maintain and get in a state of flow, and it basically just disrupts your control experience.\n\nAnd so there's a variety of different software bugs and improvements we made that basically increased the performance of the system, made it much more reliable, much more stable, and led to a state where we could reliably collect data to build better models with. So that was a bottleneck for a while. It's just sort of like the software stack itself.\n\nIf I were to guess right now, there's sort of two major directions you could think about for improving BPS further. The first major direction is labeling. So labeling is again this fundamental challenge of given a window of time where the user is expressing some behavioral intent. What are they really trying to do at the granularity of every millisecond? And that, again, is a task design problem. It's a UX problem.\n\nIt's a machine learning problem. It's a software problem. Sort of touches all those different domains. The second thing you can think about to improve BPS further is either completely changing the thing you're decoding or just extending the number of things that you're decoding. So this is serving the direction of functionality, okay? So you can imagine giving more clicks. For example, a left click, a right click, a middle click.\n\nDifferent actions like click and drag, for example. And that can improve the effective bit rate of your communication prosthesis. If you're trying to allow the user to express themselves through any given communication channel, you can measure that with bits per second. But what action measures at the end of the day is how effective are they at navigating their computer.\n\nAnd so from the perspective of the downstream tasks that you care about, functionality and extending functionality is something we're very interested in, because not only can it improve the sort of number of BPS, but it can also improve the downstream sort of independence that the user has and the skill and efficiency with which they can operate their computer.\n\nWould the number of threads increasing also potentially help?\n\nYes, short answer is yes. It's a bit nuanced how that curve or how that manifests in the numbers. So what you'll see is that if you sort of plot a curve of number of channels that you're using for decode versus either the offline metric of how good you are at decoding, or the online metric of sort of, in practice, how good is the user using this device, you see roughly a log curve.\n\nSo as you move further out in number of channels, you get a corresponding sort of logarithmic improvement in control quality and offline validation metrics. The important nuance here is that each channel corresponds with a specific represented intention in the brain. So for example, if you have a channel 254, it might correspond with moving to the right. Channel 256 might mean move to the left.\n\nIf you want to expand the number of functions you want to control, you really want to have a broader set of channels that covers a broader set of imagined movements. You can think of it kinda like Mr. Potato man actually. Like if you had a bunch of different imagined movements you could do, how would you map those imagined movements to input to a computer? You can imagine handwriting to output characters on the screen.\n\nYou can imagine just typing with your fingers and have that output text on the screen. You can imagine different finger modulations for different clicks. You can imagine wiggling your big nose or opening some menu or wiggling your big toe to have like command tab occur or something like this. So it's really, the amount of different actions you can take in the world depends on how many channels you have on the information content that they carry.\n\nRight, so that's more about the number of actions. So actually, as you increase the number of threads, that's more about increasing the number of actions you're able to perform.\n\nOne other nuance there that is worth mentioning, so again, our goal is really to enable a user with process to control their computer as fast as I can. So that's BPS. With all the same functionality I have, which is what we just talked about, but then also as reliably as I can. And that last point is very related to channel account discussion.\n\nSo as you scale out number of channels, the relative importance of any particular feature of your model input to the output control of the user diminishes, which means that if the sort of neural non-stationary effect is per channel, or if the noise is independent, such that more channels means, on average, less output effect, then your reliability of your system will improve.\n\nSo one sort of core thesis that at least I have is that scaling channel account should improve the reliability system without any work on the decoder itself.\n\nCan you linger on the reliability here? So first of all, when you see non-stationarity of the signal, which aspect are you referring to?\n\nYeah, so maybe let's talk briefly what the actual underlying signal looks like. So again, I spoke very briefly at the beginning about how when you imagine moving to the right or imagine moving to the left, neurons might fire more or less. And their frequency content of that signal, at least in the motor cortex, it's very correlated with the output intention, the behavioral task that the user is doing.\n\nYou can imagine actually, this is not obvious, that rate coding, which is the name of that phenomenon is like the only way the brain could represent information. You can imagine many different ways in which the brain could encode intention. And there's actually evidence like in bats, for example, that there's temporal codes. So timing codes of like exactly when particular neurons fire is the mechanism of information representation.\n\nBut at least in the motor cortex, there's a substantial evidence that it's rate coding, or at least one, like first order of fact is that it's rate coding. So then if the brain is representing information by changing the sort of frequency of a neuron firing, what really matters is sort of the delta between sort of the baseline state of the neuron and what it looks like when it's modulated.\n\nAnd what we've observed and what has also been observed in academic work is that that baseline rate, sort of the, if you're to target the scale, if you imagine that analogy for like measuring flour or something when you're baking, that baseline state of how much the pot weighs is actually different day to day.\n\nAnd so if what you're trying to measure is how much rice is in the pot, you're gonna get a different measurement different days, because you're measuring with different pots. So that baseline rate shifting is really the thing that, at least from a first order description of the problem, is what's causing this downstream bias.\n\nThere can be other effects, non-linear effects on top of that, but at least, at a very first order description of the problem, that's what we observe day to day is that the baseline firing rate of any particular neuron are observed on a particular channel is changing.\n\nSo can you just adjust to the baseline to make it relative to the baseline nonstop?\n\nYeah, this is a great question. So with monkeys, we have found various ways to do this. One example way to do this is you ask them to do some behavioral task, like play the game with a joystick, you measure what's going on in the brain, you compute some mean of what's going on across all the input features, and you subtract it in the input when you're doing your BCI session. Works super well.\n\nFor whatever reason, that doesn't work super well with Noland. I actually don't know the full reason why, but I can imagine several explanations. One such explanation could be that the context effect difference between some open loop task and some closed loop task is much more significant with Noland than it is with a monkey.\n\nMaybe in this open loop task, he's watching the Lex Fridman podcast while he's doing the task, or he's whistling and listening to music and talking with his friend and ask his mom what's for dinner while he's doing this task.\n\nAnd so the exact sort of difference in context between those two states may be much larger, and thus lead to a bigger sort of generalization gap between the features that you're normalizing at sort of open loop time and what you're trying to use at close loop time.\n\nThat's interesting. Just on that point, it's kind of incredible to watch Noland be able to do, to multitask, to do multiple tasks at the same time, to be able to move the mouse courser effectively while talking and while being nervous, because he's talking in front of- - Kicking my ass and chest too, yeah.\n\nKicking your ass. And talk trash while doing it. So all at the same time. And yes, if you are trying to normalize to the baseline, that might throw everything off. Boy is that interesting.\n\nMaybe one comment on that too. For folks that aren't familiar with assisted technology, I think there's a common belief that, well, why can't you just use an eye tracker or something like this for helping somebody move a mouse on the screen? And it's a really a fair question, and one that I actually did was not confident before Noland, that this was gonna be a profoundly transformative technology for people like him.\n\nAnd I'm very confident now that it will be, but the reasons are subtle. It really has to do with ergonomically how it fits into their life. Even if you can just offer the same level of control as what they would have with an eye tracker or with a mouse stick, but you don't need to have that thing in your face. You don't need to be positioned a certain way. You don't need your caretaker to be around to set it up for you.\n\nYou can activate it when you want, how you want, wherever you want. That level of independence is so game changing for people. It means that they can text a friend at night privately without their mom needing to be in the loop. It means that they can like open up and browse the internet at 2:00 AM when nobody's around to set their iPad up for them. This is like a profoundly game changing thing for folks in that situation.\n\nAnd this is even before we start talking about folks that may not be able to communicate at all or ask for help when they want to. This can be potentially the only link that they have to the outside world. And yeah, that one doesn't I think need explanation of why that's so impactful.\n\nYou mentioned neural decoder. How much machine learning is in the decoder? How much magic, how much science, how much art, how difficult is it to come up with a decoder that figures out what these sequence of spikes mean?\n\nYeah, good question. There's a couple different ways to answer this. So maybe I'll zoom out briefly first, and then I'll go down one of the rabbit holes. So the zoomed out view is that building the decoder is really the process of building the dataset, plus compiling it into the weights. And each of those steps is important.\n\nThe direction I think of further improvement is primarily going to be in the dataset side of how do you construct the optimal labels for the model. But there's an entirely separate challenge of then how do you compile the best model. And so I'll go briefly down the second one, down the second rabbit hole. One of the main challenges with designing the optimal model for BCI is that offline metrics don't necessarily correspond to online metrics.\n\nIt's fundamentally a control problem. The user is trying to control something on the screen, and the exact sort of user experience of how you output the intention impacts their ability to control. So for example, if you just look at validation loss, as predicted by your model, there can be multiple ways to achieve the same validation loss. Not all of them are equally controllable by the end user.\n\nAnd it might be as simple as saying, \"Oh, you could just add auxiliary loss terms that like help you capture the thing that actually matters.\" But this is a very complex nuanced process. So how you turn the labels into the model is more of a nuanced process than just like a standard supervised learning problem.\n\nOne very fascinating anecdote here, we've tried many different sort of neural network architectures that translate brain data to velocity outputs, for example. And one example that's stuck in my brain from a couple years ago now is, at one point, we were using just fully connected networks to decode the brain activity.\n\nWe tried A/B test where we were measuring the relative performance in online control sessions of sort of 1D convolution over the input signal. So if you imagine per channel, you have a sliding window that's producing some Commvault feature for each of those input sequences for every single channel simultaneously.\n\nYou can actually get better validation metrics, meaning you're fitting the data better, and it's generalizing better on offline data if you use this convolutional architecture. You're reducing parameters. It's sort of a standard procedure when you're dealing with time series data. Now it turns out that when using that model online, the controllability was worse, was far worse, even though the offline metrics were better.\n\nAnd there can be many ways to interpret that, but what that taught me at least was that, hey, it's at least the case right now that if you were to just throw a bunch of computer at this problem, and you were trying to sort of hyper parameter optimize, or let some GPT model hard code or come up with or invent many different solutions, if you were just optimizing for loss, it would not be sufficient, which means that there's still some inherent modeling gap here.\n\nThere's still some artistry left to be uncovered here of how to get your model to scale with more compute. And that may be fundamentally labeling problem, but there may be other components to this as well.\n\nIs it data constrained at this time? Which is what it sounds like. How do you get a lot of good labels?\n\nYeah, I think it's data quality constrained, not necessarily data quantity constrained.\n\nBut even like even just a quantity. I mean, 'cause it has to be trained on the interactions. I guess there's not that many interactions.\n\nYeah, so it depends what version of this you're talking about. So if you're talking about like, let's say the simplest example of just 2D velocity, then I think, yeah, data quality is the main thing.\n\nIf you're talking about how to build a sort of multifunction output that lets you do all the inputs, the computer that you and I can do, then it's actually a much more sophisticated nuanced modeling challenge, because now you need to think about not just when the user's left clicking, but when you're building the left click model, you also need to be thinking about how to make sure it doesn't fire when they're trying to right click or when they're trying to move the mouse.\n\nSo one example of an interesting bug from like sort of week one of a BCI with Nolan was, when he moved the mouse, the click signal sort of dropped off a cliff, and when he stopped, the click signal went up. So again, there's a contamination between the two inputs. Another good example was, at one point, he was trying to do sort of a left click and drag. And the minute he started moving, the left click signal dropped off a cliff.\n\nSo again, 'cause there's some contamination between the two signals, you need to come up with some way to either in the dataset or in the model, build robustness against this kind of, you think of it like overfitting, but really, it's just that the model has not seen this kind of variability before. So you need to find some way to help the model with that.\n\nThis is super cool because it feels like all of this is very solvable, but it's hard.\n\nYes, it is fundamentally an engineering challenge. This is important to emphasize, and it's also important to emphasize that it may not need fundamentally new techniques, which means that people who work on, let's say, unsupervised speech classification using CTC loss, for example, with internal to Siri, they could potentially have very applicable skills to this.\n\nSo what things are you excited about in the future development of the software stack on Neuralink? So everything we've been talking about, the decoding, the UX- - I think there's some I'm excited about, like something I'm excited about from the technology side, and some I'm excited about for understanding how this technology is going to be best situated for entering the world. So I'll work backwards.\n\nOn the technology entering the world side of things, I'm really excited to understand how this device works for folks that cannot speak at all. They have no ability to sort of bootstrap themselves into useful control by voice command, for example, and are extremely limited in their current capabilities.\n\nI think that will be an incredibly useful signal for us to understand, I mean, really what is an existential threat for all startups, which is product market fit. Does this device have the capacity and potential to transform people's lives in the current state? And if not, what are the gaps? And if there are gaps, how do we solve them most efficiently?\n\nSo that's what I'm very excited about for the next sort of year or so of clinical trial operations. The technology side, I'm quite excited about basically everything we're doing. I think it's gonna be awesome. The most prominent one, I would say, is scaling channel count. So right now, we have a thousand channel device. The next version, we'll have between 3 and 6,000 channels. And I would expect that curve to continue in the future.\n\nAnd it's unclear what set of problems will just disappear completely at that scale, and what set of problems will remain and require for their focus. And so I'm excited about the clarity of gradient that that gives us in terms of the user experiences we choose to focus our time and resources on. And also in terms of the, yeah, even things as simple as not stationary.\n\nLike does that problem just completely go away at that scale, or do we need to come up with new creative UXs still even at that point?\n\nAnd also, when we get to that time point, when we start expanding out dramatically the set of functions that you can output from one brain, how to deal with all the nuances of both the user experience of not being able to feel the different keys under your fingertips, but still needing to be able to modulate all of them in synchrony to achieve the thing you want.\n\nAnd again, you don't have that appropriate set to feedback loop, so how can you make that intuitive for a user to control a high dimensional control surface without feeling the thing physically? I think that's gonna be a super interesting problem. I'm also quite excited to understand, do these scaling laws continue? Like as you scale channel count, how much further out do you go before that saturation point is truly hit?\n\nAnd it's not obvious today. I think we only know what's in the sort of interpolation space. We only know what's between zero and 1,024. We don't know what's beyond that. And then there's a whole sort of like range of interesting sort of neuroscience and brain questions, which is when you stick more stuff in the brain, in more places, you get to learn much more quickly about what those brain regions represent.\n\nAnd so I'm excited about that fundamental neuroscience learning, which is also important for figuring out how, and to most efficiently, insert electrodes in the future. So yeah, I think all those dimensions, I'm really, really excited about. And that doesn't even get close to touching the sort of software stack that we work on every single day and what we're working on right now.\n\nYeah, it seems virtually impossible to me that a thousand electrodes is where it saturates. It feels like this would be one of those silly notions in the future, where obviously, you should have millions of electrodes, and this is where like the true breakthroughs happen.\n\nYeah.\n\nYou tweeted- - Oh.\n\n\"Some thoughts are most precisely described in poetry.\" Why do you think that is?\n\nI think it's because the information bottleneck of language is pretty steep. And yet you're able to reconstruct in the other person's brain more effectively without being literal. If you can express a sentiment such that in their brain, they can reconstruct the actual true underlying meaning and beauty of the thing that you're trying to get across. The sort of the generator function in their brain's more powerful than what language can express. And so the mechanism of poetry is really just to feed or seed that generator function.\n\nSo being literal sometimes is a suboptimal compression for the thing you're trying to convey.\n\nAnd it's actually in the process of the user going through that generation that they understand what you mean. That's the beautiful part. It's also like when you look at a beautiful painting, like it's not the pixels of the painting that are beautiful, it's the thought process that occurs when you see that, the experience of that. That actually is a thing that matters.\n\nYeah, it's resonating with some deep- - [Bliss] Yeah.\n\nThing within you that the artist also experienced and was able to convey that through the pixels. And that's actually gonna be relevant for full on telepathy. It's like if you just read the poetry, literally, that doesn't say much of anything interesting. It requires a human to interpret it.\n\nSo it's the combination of the human mind and all the experiences that human being has within the context of the collective intelligence of the human species that makes that poem make sense. And they load that in. And so in that same way, the signal that carries from human to human meaning may seem trivial, but may actually carry a lot of power because of the complexity of the human mind on the receiving end. Yeah, that's interesting.\n\nPoetry still doesn't, who is it? I think Yoshi Bako first said something about all the people that think we've achieved AGI explain why humans like music.\n\n[Bliss] Oh yeah.\n\nAnd until the AGI likes music, you haven't achieved AGI or something like this.\n\nDo you not think that's like some next token entropy surprise kind of thing going on there?\n\nI don't know.\n\nI don't know either. I listen to a lot of classical music and also read a lot of poetry. And yeah, I do wonder if like there is some element of the next token surprise factor going on there.\n\nYeah, maybe.\n\nBecause I mean, like a lot of the tricks in both poetry and music are like basically, you have some repeated structure. And then you do like a twist. It's like, okay, verse or like clause one, two, three is one thing, and then clause four is like, okay, now we're onto the next theme. And they kind of play with exactly when the surprise happens and the expectation of the user.\n\nAnd that's even true like, through history as musicians evolve music, they take like some nuanced structure that people are familiar with and they just tweak it a little bit. Like they tweak it and add a surprising element. This is especially true in classical music heritage. But that's what I'm wondering, like is it all just entropy- - So breaking structure or breaking symmetry is something that humans seem to like. Maybe as simple as that.\n\nYeah, and I mean, great artists copy, and they also, knowing which rules to break is the important part. And that fundamentally, it must be about the listener of the piece. Like which rule is the right one to break, it's about the user or the audience member perceiving that as interesting.\n\nWhat do you think is the meaning of human existence?\n\nThere's a TV show I really like called \"The West Wing.\" And in \"The West Wing,\" there's a character. He's the president of the United States who's having a discussion about the Bible with one of their colleagues. And the colleague says something about, \"The Bible says X, Y, and Z.\" And the President says, \"Yeah, but it also says A, B, C.\" And the person says, \"Do you believe the Bible to be literally true?\"\n\nAnd the President says, \"Yes, but I also think that neither of us are smart enough to understand it.\" I think the analogy here for the meaning of life is that largely, we don't know the right question to ask. And so I think I'm very aligned with sort of \"The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy\" version of this question, which is basically, if we can ask the right questions, it's much more likely we find the meaning of human existence.\n\nAnd so in the short term, as a heuristic in the sort of search policy space, we should try to increase the diversity of people asking such questions, or generally of consciousness and conscious beings asking such questions. So again, I think I'll take the 'I don't know card' here, but say I do think there are meaningful things we can do that improve the likelihood of answering that question.\n\nIt's interesting how much value you assign to the task of asking the right questions. That's the main thing is not the answers, it's the questions.\n\nThis point by the way is driven home in a very painful way when you try to communicate with someone who cannot speak, because a lot of the time, the last thing to go is they have the ability to somehow wiggle a lip or move something that allows them to say yes or no. And in that situation, it's very obvious that what matters is, are you asking them the right question to be able to say yes or no to?\n\nWow, that's powerful. Well, Bliss, thank you for everything you do, and thank you for being you, and thank you for talking today.\n\nThank you.\n\nThanks for listening to this conversation with Bliss Chapman. And now, dear friends, here's Noland Arbaugh, the first human being to have a Neuralink device implanted in his brain. You had a diving accident in 2016 that left you paralyzed with no feeling from the shoulders down. How did that accident change your life?\n\nThat's sort of a freak thing that happened. Imagine you're running into the ocean, although this is a lake, but you're running into the ocean and you get to about waist high, and then you kind of like dive in, take the rest of the plunge under the wave or something. That's what I did. And then I just never came back up. Not sure what happened. I did it running into the water with a couple of guys.\n\nAnd so my idea of what happened is really just that I took like a stray fist, elbow, knee, foot, something to the side of my head. The left side of my head was sore for about a month afterwards. So must must've taken a pretty big knock. And then they both came up, and I didn't. And so I was face down in the water for a while. I was conscious. And then eventually just realized I couldn't hold my breath any longer.\n\nAnd I keep saying, \"Took a big drink.\" People, I don't know if they like that I say that. It seems like I'm making light of it all, but it's just kind of how I am. And I don't know, like I'm a very relaxed sort of stress-free person. I rolled with the punches for a lot of this. I kind of took it in stride. It's like, \"All right, well what can I do next? How can I improve my life even a little bit on a day-to-day basis?\"\n\nAt first, just trying to find some way to heal as much of my body as possible, to try to get healed, to try to get off a ventilator, learn as much as I could so I could somehow survive once I left the hospital. And then thank God I had like my family around me. If I didn't have my parents, my siblings, then I would've never made it this far. They've done so much for me, more than like I can ever thank them for, honestly.\n\nAnd a lot of people don't have that. A lot of people in my situation, their families either aren't capable of providing for them, or honestly, just don't want to. And so they get placed somewhere in some sort of home. So thankfully I had my family. I have a great group of friends, a great group of buddies from college who have all rallied around me, and we're all still incredibly close.\n\nPeople always say, \"If you're lucky, you'll end up with one or two friends from high school that you keep throughout your life.\" I have about 10 or 12 from high school that have all stuck around, and we still get together, all of us twice a year. We call it the spring series and the fall series. This last one we all did, we dressed up like X-Men. So I did a Professor Xavier, and it was freaking awesome. It was so good.\n\nSo yeah, I have such a great support system around me. And so being a quadriplegic isn't that bad. I get waited on all the time. People bring me food and drinks, and I get to sit around and watch as much TV and movies and anime as I want. I get to read as much as I want. I mean, it's great.\n\nIt's beautiful to see that you see the silver lining in all of this. Just going back, do you remember the moment when you first realized you were paralyzed from the neck down?\n\nYeah, yep. I was face down in the water right when whatever something hit my head. I tried to get up and I realized I couldn't move and it just sort of clicked. I'm like, \"All right, I'm paralyzed. Can't move. What do I do? If I can't get up, I can't flip over, can't do anything, then I'm gonna drown eventually.\" And I knew I couldn't hold my breath forever, so I just held my breath and thought about it for maybe 10, 15 seconds.\n\nI've heard from other people that like look on liquors, I guess the two girls that pulled me out of the water were two of my best friends. They're lifeguards. And one of them said that it looked like my body was sort of shaking in the water, like I was trying to flip over and stuff. But I knew, I knew immediately. And I just kind of, I realized that that's what my situation was from here on out.\n\nMaybe if I got to the hospital, they'd be able to do something. When I was in the hospital, like right before surgery, I was trying to calm one of my friends down. I had like brought her with me from college to camp, and she was just bawling over me, and I was like, \"Hey, it's gonna be fine. Like don't worry.\" I was cracking some jokes to try to lighten the mood. The nurse had called my mom, and I was like, \"Don't tell my mom.\n\nShe's just gonna be stressed out. Call her after I'm out of surgery,\" 'cause at least she'll have some answers then, like whether I live or not, really. And I didn't want her to be stressed through the whole thing. But I knew. And then when I first woke up after surgery, I was super drugged up. They had me on fentanyl like three ways, which was awesome.\n\nI don't recommend it, but I saw some crazy stuff on that fentanyl, and it was still the best I've ever felt on drugs. Medication, sorry, on medication. And I remember the first time I saw my mom in the hospital. I was just bawling. I had like ventilator in, like I couldn't talk or anything, and I just started crying, because it was more like seeing her.\n\nI mean, the whole situation obviously was pretty rough, but it was just like seeing her face for the first time was pretty hard. But yeah, I never had like a moment of, \"Man, I'm paralyzed. This sucks. I don't wanna like be around anymore.\" It was always just, \"I hate that I have to do this, but like sitting here and wallowing isn't gonna help.\"\n\nSo immediate acceptance.\n\n[Noland] Yeah, yeah.\n\nHas there been low points along the way?\n\nYeah, yeah, sure. I mean, there are days when I don't really feel like doing anything. Not so much anymore. Like not for the last couple years, I don't really feel that way. I've more so just wanted to try to do anything possible to make my life better at this point. But at the beginning, there were some ups and downs. There were some really hard things to adjust to.\n\nFirst off, just like the first couple months, the amount of pain I was in was really, really hard. I mean, I remember screaming at the top of my lungs in the hospital, because I thought my legs were on fire. And obviously, I can't feel anything, but it's all nerve pain. And so that was a really hard night. I asked them to give me as much pain meds as possible. They're like, \"You've had as much as you can have, so just kind of deal with it.\n\nGo to a happy place sort of thing.\" So that was a pretty low point. And then every now and again, it's hard, like realizing things that I wanted to do in my life that I won't be able to do anymore. I always wanted to be a husband and father, and I just don't think that I could do it now as a quadriplegic. Maybe it's possible, but I'm not sure I would ever put someone I love through that, like having to take care of me and stuff.\n\nNot being able to go out and play sports. I was a huge athlete growing up, so that was pretty hard. Little things too, when I realized I can't do them anymore. Like there's something really special about being able to hold a book and smell a book. Like the feel, the texture, the smell, like as you turn the pages, like I just love it. I can't do it anymore. And it's little things like that. The two-year mark was pretty rough.\n\nTwo years is when they say you will get back basically as much as you're ever gonna get back, as far as movement and sensation goes. And so for the first two years, that was the only thing on my mind was like try as much as I can to move my fingers, my hands, my feet, everything possible to try to get sensation and movement back. And then when the two-year mark hit, so June 30th, 2018, I was really sad that that's kind of where I was.\n\nAnd then just randomly here and there, but I was never like depressed for long periods of time. Just it never seemed worthwhile to me.\n\nWhat gave you strength?\n\nMy faith. My faith in God was a big one. My understanding that it was all for a purpose. And even if that purpose wasn't anything involving Neuralink, even if that purpose was, there's a story in the Bible about Job, and I think it's a really, really popular story, about how Job has all of these terrible things happen to him, and he praises God throughout the whole situation.\n\nI thought, and I think a lot of people think for most of their lives that they are Job, that they're the ones going through something terrible, and they just need to praise God through the whole thing and everything will work out. At some point after my accident, I realized that I might not be Job, that I might be one of his children that gets killed or kidnapped or taken from him.\n\nAnd so it's about terrible things that happen to those around you who you love. So maybe, in this case, my mom would be Job, and she has to get through something extraordinarily hard and I just need to try and make it as best as possible for her, because she's the one that's really going through this massive trial. And that gave me a lot of strength. And obviously, my family.\n\nMy family and my friends, they give me all the strength that I need on a day-to-day basis. So it makes things a lot easier having that great support system around me.\n\nFrom everything I've seen of you online, your streams and the way you are today, I really admire, let's say, your unwavering positive outlook on life. Has that always been this way?\n\nYeah, yeah. I mean, I've just always thought I could do anything I ever wanted to do. There was never anything too big. Like whatever I set my mind to, I felt like I could do it. I didn't wanna do a lot. I wanted to like travel around and be sort of like a gypsy and like go work odd jobs. I had this dream of traveling around Europe and being like, I don't know, a shepherd in like Wales or Ireland.\n\nAnd then going and being a fisherman in Italy, doing all these things for like a year. Like it's such like cliche things, but I just thought it would be so much fun to go and travel and do different things. And so I've always just seen the best in people around me too. And I've always tried to be good to people. And growing up with my mom too, she's like the most positive energetic person in the world. And we're all just people people.\n\nI just get along great with people. I really enjoy meeting new people, and so I just wanted to do everything. This is just kind of just how I've been.\n\nIt's just great to see that cynicism didn't take over, given everything you've been through.\n\nYeah.\n\nWas that like a deliberate choice you made that you're not gonna let this keep you down?\n\nYeah, a bit. Also, like it's just kind of how I am. Like I said, I roll with the punches with everything. I always used to tell people, like I don't stress about things much. And whenever I'd see people getting stressed, I would just say, \"It's not hard. Just don't stress about it.\" And that's all you need to do. And they're like, \"That's not how that works.\" I'm like, \"It works for me. Like just don't stress, and everything will be fine.\n\nLike everything will work out.\" Obviously, not everything always goes well, and it's not like it all works out for the best all the time, but I just don't think stress has had any place in my life since I was a kid.\n\nWhat was the experience like of you being selected to be the first human being to have a Neuralink device implanted in your brain? Were you scared, excited?\n\nNo, no, it was cool. (Lex laughing) Like I was never afraid of it. I had to think through a lot. Should I do this? Like be the first person? I could wait until number two or three and get a better version of the Neuralink. Like the first one might not work. Maybe it's actually gonna kind of suck it. It's gonna be the worst version ever in a person. So why would I do the first one? Like I've already kind of been selected.\n\nI could just tell them, like, \"Okay, find someone else, and then I'll do number two or three.\" Like I'm sure they would let me. They're looking for a few people anyways. But ultimately, I was like, I don't know, there's something about being the first one to do something. It's pretty cool.\n\nI always thought that if I had the chance that I would like to do something for the first time, this seemed like a pretty good opportunity, and I was never scared. I think my like faith had a huge part in that. I always felt like God was preparing me for something. I almost wish it wasn't this, because I had many conversations with God about not wanting to do any of this as a quadriplegic. I told him, \"I'll go out and talk to people.\n\nI'll go out and travel the world and talk to stadiums, thousands of people, give my testimony, I'll do all of it, but like heal me first. Don't make me do all of this in a chair. That sucks.\" And I guess he won that argument. I didn't really have much of a choice. I always felt like there was something going on.\n\nAnd to see how, I guess, easily I made it through the interview process and how quickly everything happened, how the stars sort of aligned with all of this, it just told me like, as the surgery was getting closer, it just told me that it was all meant to happen. It was all meant to be. And so I shouldn't be afraid of anything that's to come. And so I wasn't.\n\nI kept telling myself like, \"You say that now, but as soon as the surgery comes, you're probably gonna be freaking out. Like you're about to have brain surgery.\" And brain surgery is a big deal for a lot of people, but it's a even bigger deal for me. Like it's all I have left.\n\nThe amount of times I've been like, \"Thank you God that you didn't take my brain and my personality and my ability to think, my like love of learning, like my character, everything, like thank you so much. Like as long as you left me that, then I think I can get by.\" And I was about to let people go like root around, and they're like, \"Hey, we're gonna go put some stuff in your brain. Hopefully, it works out.\"\n\nAnd so it was something that gave me pause. But like I said, how smoothly everything went, I never expected for a second that anything would go wrong. Plus, the more people I met on the Barrow's side and on the Neuralink side, they're just the most impressive people in the world. Like I can't speak enough to how much I trust these people with my life and how impressed I am with all of them.\n\nAnd to see the excitement on their faces, to like walk into a room and roll into a room and see all of these people looking at me, like we're so excited. Like we've been working so hard on this, and it's finally happening. It's super infectious, and it just makes me wanna do it even more and to help them achieve their dreams. Like I don't know, it's so rewarding. And I'm so happy for all of them, honestly.\n\nWhat was the day of surgery like? When did you wake up? What'd you feel?\n\nYeah.\n\nMinute by minute.\n\nYeah.\n\nWere you freaking out?\n\nNo, no. I thought I was going to, but as surgery approached the night before, the morning of, I was just excited. Let's make this happen. I think I said something like that to Elon on the phone beforehand. We were like FaceTiming, and I was like, \"Let's rock and roll.\" And he's like, \"Let's do it.\" I don't know, I wasn't scared. So we woke up. I think we had to be at the hospital at like 5:30 AM. I think surgery was at like 7:00 AM.\n\nSo we woke up pretty early. I'm not sure much of us slept that night. Got to the hospital 5:30, went through like all the pre-op stuff. Everyone was super nice. Elon was supposed to be there in the morning, but something went wrong with his plane, so we ended up FaceTiming. That was cool. Had one of the greatest one-liners of my life. After that phone call, hung up with him.\n\nThere were like 20 people around me, and I was like, I just hope he wasn't too starstruck talking to me.\n\nNice.\n\nYeah, it was good.\n\nWell done.\n\nYeah, yeah.\n\nDid you write that ahead of time, or it just came to you?\n\nNo, it just came to me. I was like, \"This seems right.\" When in surgery, I asked if I could pray right beforehand. So I like prayed over the room. I asked God if you would like be with my mom in case anything happened to me. And just to like calm her nerves out there. Woke up and played a bit of a prank on my mom. I don't know if you've heard about it.\n\nYeah, I read about it.\n\nYeah, she was not happy.\n\nCan you take me through the prank - Yeah, this is something- - Do you regret doing that now?\n\nNo, no, not one bit. It was something I had talked about ahead of time with my buddy, Bain. I was like, \"I would really like to play a prank on my mom.\" Very specifically, my mom. She's very gullible. I think she had knee surgery once even. And after she came out of knee surgery, she was super groggy. She's like, \"I can't feel my legs.\" And my dad looked at her, he was like, \"You don't have any legs. Like they had to amputate both your legs.\"\n\nWe just do very mean things to her all the time. I'm so surprised that she still loves us. But right after surgery, I was really worried that I was going to be too like groggy, like not all there. I had anesthesia once before, and it messed me up. Like I could not function for a while afterwards. And I like said a lot of things that I was like, I was really worried that I was gonna start, I don't know, like dropping some bombs.\n\nAnd I wouldn't even know, I wouldn't remember. So I was like, \"Please God, don't let that happen. And please let me be there enough to do this to my mom.\" And so she walked in after surgery. It was like the first time they had been able to see me after surgery. And she just looked at me, she said, \"Hi, like, how are you? How are you doing? How do you feel?\"\n\nAnd I looked at her in this very, I think the anesthesia helped, very like groggy, sort of confused look on my face. It's like, \"Who are you?\" And she just started looking around the room, like at the surgeons, at the doctors, like, \"What did you do to my son? You need to fix this right now.\" Tears started streaming. I saw how much she was freaking out. I was like, \"I can't let this go on.\" And so I was like, \"Mom, I'm fine. Like it's all right.\"\n\nAnd still, she was not happy about it. She still says she's gonna get me back someday. But I mean, I don't know. I don't know what that's gonna look like.\n\nIt's a lifelong battle.\n\nYeah, it was good.\n\nIn some sense, it was a demonstration that you still got- - That's all I wanted it to be - Sense of humor.\n\nThat's all I wanted it to be. And I knew that doing something super mean to her like that would show her- - - - Yeah.\n\nTo show that you're still there, that you love her.\n\n[Noland] Yeah, exactly, exactly.\n\nIt's a dark way to do it, but I love it. What was the first time you were able to feel that you can use the Neuralink device to effect the world around you?\n\nYeah, the first little taste I got of it was actually not too long after surgery. Some of the Neuralink team had brought in like a little iPad, a little tablet screen, and they had put up eight different channels that were recording some of my neuron spikes. They put it in front of me. Like this is like real time your brain firing. That's super cool.\n\nMy first thought was, \"I mean, if they're firing now, let's see if I can affect them in some way.\" So I started trying to like wiggle my fingers and I just started like scanning through the channels, and one of the things I was doing was like moving my index finger up and down. And I just saw this yellow spike on like top row, like third box over or something. I saw this yellow spike every time I did it. And I was like, \"Oh, that's cool.\"\n\nAnd everyone around me was just like, \"Well, what are you seeing?\" I was like, \"Look, look at this one. Look at like this top row, third box over this yellow spike. Like that's me right there, there, there.\" And everyone was freaking out. They started like clapping. I was like, \"That's super unnecessary.\"\n\nThat's awesome.\n\nThis is what's supposed to happen, right?\n\nSo you're imagining yourself moving each individual finger one at a time, and then seeing like that you can notice something, and then when you did the index finger, you're like, \"Oh.\"\n\nYeah, I was wiggling kind of all of my fingers to see if anything would happen. There was a lot of other things going on, but that big yellow spike was the one that stood out to me. Like I'm sure that if I would've stared at it long enough, I could have mapped out maybe 100 different things. But the big yellow spike was the one that I noticed.\n\nMaybe you could speak to what it's like to sort of wiggle your fingers, to imagine that the mental, the cognitive effort required to sort of wiggle your index finger, for example. How easy is that to do?\n\nPretty easy for me. It's something that, at the very beginning, after my accident, they told me to try and move my body as much as possible. Even if you can't, just keep trying, because that's going to create new like neural pathways or pathways in my spinal cord to like reconnect these things to hopefully regain some movement someday.\n\nThat's fascinating.\n\nYeah, I know. It's bizarre, but I- - So that's part of the recovery process is to keep trying to move your body?\n\nYep, as much as you can.\n\nAnd that's, and the nervous system does its thing. It starts reconnecting.\n\nYeah. It'll start reconnecting for some people. Some people, it never works. Some people, they'll do it. Like for me, I got some bicep control back, and that's about it. I can, if I try enough, I can wiggle some of my fingers. Not like on command. It's more like if I try to move, say my right pinky and I just keep trying to move it, after a few seconds, it'll wiggle. So I know there's stuff there.\n\nLike I know, and that happens with a few - -different of my fingers and stuff. But yeah, that's what they tell you to do. One of the people at the time when I was in the hospital came in and told me, for one guy who had recovered most of his control, what he thought about every day was actually walking, like the act of walking just over and over again. So I tried that for years. I tried just imagining walking, which it's hard.\n\nIt's hard to imagine like all of the steps that go into, well, taking a step, like all of the things that have to move, like all of the activations that have to happen along your leg in order for one step to occur.\n\nBut you're not just imagining. You're like doing it, right?\n\nI'm trying, yeah. So it's like, it's imagining over again what I had to do to take a step, because it's not something any of us think about. You wanna walk and you take a step. You don't think about all of the different things that are going on in your body. So I had to recreate that in my head as much as I could. And then I practice it over and over and over.\n\nSo it's not like a third person perspective. It's a first person perspective. You're like, it's not like you're imagining yourself walking. You're like literally doing this, everything, all the same stuff as if you're walking.\n\nYeah, which was hard. It was hard at the beginning.\n\nLike frustrating hard, or like actually cognitively hard? Like which way?\n\nIt was both. There's a scene in one of the \"Kill Bill\" movies actually, oddly enough, where she is like paralyzed, I don't know, from like a drug that was in her system. And then she like finds some way to get into the back of a truck or something, and she stares at her toe and she says, \"Move.\" Like move your big toe. And after a few seconds on screen, she does it. And she did that with every one of her like body parts until she can move again.\n\nI did that for years, just stared at my body and said, \"Move your index finger. Move your big toe.\" Sometimes, vocalizing it like out loud, sometimes just thinking it. I tried every different way to do this to try to get some movement back.\n\nAnd it's hard because it actually is like taxing, like physically taxing on my body, which is something I would've never expected, 'cause it's not like I'm moving, but it feels like there's a buildup of, I don't know, the only way I can describe it is there are like signals that aren't getting through from my brain down, 'cause there's that gap in my spinal cord. So brain down, and then from my hand back up to the brain.\n\nAnd so it feels like those signals get stuck in whatever body part that I'm trying to move. And they just build up and build up and build up until they burst. And then once they burst, I get like this really weird sensation of everything sort of like dissipating back out to level, and then I do it again. It's also just like a fatigue thing, like a muscle fatigue, but without actually moving your muscles. It's very, very bizarre.\n\nAnd then if you try to stare at a body part or think about a body part and move for two, three, four, sometimes eight hours, it's very taxing on your mind. It's takes a lot of focus. It was a lot easier at the beginning because I wasn't able to like control a TV in my room or anything. I wasn't able to control any of my environment. So for the first few years, a lot of what I was doing was staring at walls.\n\nAnd so obviously, I did a lot of thinking, and I tried to move a lot just over and over and over again.\n\nSo you never gave up sort of hope there?\n\nNo.\n\nJust training hard essentially?\n\nYep, and I still do it. I do it like subconsciously. And I think that that helped a lot with things with Neuralink, honestly. It's something that I talked about the other day at the all hands that I did at Neuralink's Austin facility.\n\nWelcome to Austin, by the way.\n\nYeah, hey, thanks man. I went to school- - Nice hat.\n\nHey, thanks, thanks man. The gigafactory was super cool. I went to school at Texas A&M, so I've been around before.\n\nSo you should be saying welcome to me.\n\nYeah.\n\nWelcome to Texas, Lex. Yeah, I get you.\n\nBut yeah, I was talking about how a lot of what they've had me do, especially at the beginning, well, I still do it now is body mapping. So like there will be a visualization of a hand or an arm on the screen and I have to do that motion, and that's how they sort of train the algorithm to like understand what I'm trying to do. And so it made things very seamless for me, I think.\n\nThat's really, really cool. So yeah, it's amazing to know 'cause I've learned a lot about the body mapping procedure with the interface and everything like that. It's cool to know that you've been essentially like training to be like world class at that task.\n\nYeah, yeah. I don't know if other quadriplegics, like other paralyzed people give up. I hope they don't. I hope they keep trying, because I've heard other paralyzed people say, like don't ever stop. They tell you two years, but you just never know. The human body is capable of amazing things. So I've heard other people say, \"Don't give up.\"\n\nLike I think one girl had spoken to me through some family members and said that she had been paralyzed for 18 years, and she'd been trying to like wiggle her index finger for all that time, and she finally got it back like 18 years later. So like I know that it's possible, and I'll never give up doing it. I do it when I'm lying down. Like watching TV, I'll find myself doing it, kind of just almost like on its own.\n\nIt's just something I've gotten so used to doing that I don't know, I don't think I'll ever stop.\n\nThat's really awesome to hear, 'cause I think it's one of those things that can really pay off, in the long term. 'Cause like that is training. You're not visibly seeing the results of that training at the moment, but like, there's that like Olympic level nervous system getting ready for something.\n\nWhich honestly was like something that I think Neuralink gave me that I can't thank them enough for it. Like I can't show my appreciation for it enough was being able to visually see that what I'm doing is actually having some effect. It's a huge part of the reason why, like I know now that I'm gonna keep doing it forever, because before Neuralink, I was doing it every day, and I was just assuming that things were happening.\n\nLike it's not like I knew. I wasn't getting back any mobility or sensation or anything. So I could have been running up against a brick wall for all I knew. And with Neuralink, I get to see like all the signals happen in real time, and I get to see that what I'm doing can actually be mapped. When we started doing like click calibrations and stuff, when I go to click my index finger for a left click, that it actually recognizes that.\n\nLike it changed how I think about what's possible with like retraining my body to move. And so yeah, I'll never give up now.\n\nAnd also, just the signal that there's still a powerhouse of a brain there that's like- - Exactly.\n\nAnd as the technology develops, that brain is, I mean, that's the most important thing about the human body is the brain. And it can do a lot of the control. So what did it feel like when you first, could wiggle the index finger and saw the environment respond? Like that little- - Yeah.\n\nWherever, just being way too dramatic according to you.\n\nYeah, it was very cool. I mean, it was cool, but I keep telling this to people, it made sense to me. Like it made sense that like there are signals still happening in my brain, and that as long as you had something near it that could measure those, that could record those, then you should be able to visualize it in some way. Like see it happen. And so that was not very surprising to me. I was just like, \"Oh, cool.\" We found one.\n\nLike we found something that works. It was cool to see that their technology worked, and that everything that they had worked so hard for was like going to pay off. But I hadn't like moved a cursor or anything at that point. I had like interacted with a computer or anything at that point. So it just made sense, it was cool. I didn't really know much about BCI at that point either, so I didn't know like what sort of step this was actually making.\n\nLike I didn't know if this was like a huge deal, or if this was just like, okay, it's cool that we got this far, but we're actually hoping for something like much better down the road. It's like, okay. I just thought that they knew that it turned on. So I was like, cool. Like this is cool.\n\nWell, did you like read up on the specs of the hardware you're getting installed? Like the number of threads, this kind of stuff?\n\nYeah, I do all of that, but it's all Greek to me. I was like, okay, threads, 64 threads, 16 electrodes, 1,024 channels. Okay. Like that math checks out.\n\nSounds right.\n\nYeah.\n\nWhen was the first time you were able to move a mouse cursor?\n\nI know it must have been within the first maybe week, a week or two weeks that I was able to like first move the cursor. And again, like it kind of made sense to me. It didn't seem like that big of a deal. It was like, okay, well, hmm, how do I explain this? When everyone around you starts clapping for something that you've done, it's easy to say, \"Okay, like I did something cool. Like that was impressive in some way.\"\n\nWhat exactly that meant, what it was hadn't really like set in for me. So again, I knew that me trying to move a body part and then that being mapped in some sort of like machine learning algorithm to be able to identify like my brain signals and then take that and give me cursor control, that all kind of made sense to me. I don't know like all the ins and outs of it, but I was like, there are still signals in my brain firing.\n\nThey just can't get through because there's like a gap in my spinal cord. And so they can't get all the way down and back up, but they're still there. So when I moved the cursor for the first time, I was like, \"That's cool, but I expected that that should happen.\" Like it made sense to me. When I moved the cursor for the first time with just my mind, without like physically trying to move, so I guess I can get into that just a little bit.\n\nLike the difference between attempted movement and imagined movement.\n\nYeah, that's a fascinating difference.\n\nYeah.\n\nFrom one to the other.\n\nYeah, yeah, yeah. So like attempted movement is me physically trying to attempt to move, say, my hand. I try to attempt to move my hand to the right, to the left, forward and back. And that's all attempted. Attempt to like lift my finger up and down. Attempt to kick or something. I'm physically trying to do all of those things, even if you can't see it. This would be like me attempting to like shrug my shoulders or something.\n\nThat's all attempted movement. That's what I was doing for the first couple of weeks when they were going to give me cursor control. When I was doing body mapping, it was attempt to do this, attempt to do that. When Nir was telling me to like imagine doing it, it like kind of made sense to me, but it's not something that people practice. Like if you started school as a child and they said, \"Okay, write your name with this pencil.\"\n\nAnd so you do that. \"Okay, now imagine writing your name with that pencil.\" Kids would think like, I guess like that kind of makes sense. And they would do it. But that's not something we're taught. It's all like how to do things physically. We think about like thought experiments and things, but that's not like a physical action of doing things. It's more like what you would do in certain situations.\n\nSo imagined movement, it never really connected with me. Like I guess you could maybe describe it as like a professional athlete, like swinging a baseball bat or swinging like a golf club. Like imagine what you're supposed to do. But then you go right to that and physically do it, then you get a bat in your hand and then you do what you've been imagining. And so I don't have that like connection.\n\nSo telling me to imagine something versus attempting it, there wasn't a lot that I could do there mentally. I just kind of had to accept what was going on and try. But the attempted moving thing, it all made sense to me. Like if I try to move, then there's a signal being sent in my brain. And as long as they can pick that up, then they should be able to map it to what I'm trying to do.\n\nAnd so when I first moved the cursor like that, it was just like, \"Yes, this should happen.\" Like I'm not surprised by that.\n\nBut can you clarify, is there supposed to be a difference between imagined movement and attempted movement?\n\nYeah, just that in imagined movement, you're not attempting to move at all.\n\nYou're like visualizing doing. And then theoretically, is that supposed to be a different part of the brain that lights up in those two different situations?\n\n[Bliss] Yeah, not necessarily. I think all these signals can still be represented in motor cortex, but the difference I think has to do with the naturalness of imagining something versus attempting it- - Got it.\n\n[Bliss] And sort of the fatigue of that over time.\n\nAnd by the way, on the mic is Bliss. So this is just different ways to prompt you to kind of get to the thing that you arrived at.\n\n[Noland] Yeah, yeah.\n\nAttempted movement does sound like the right thing - try.\n\nYeah, I mean, it makes sense to me.\n\n'Cause imagine for me, I would start visualizing, like in my mind, visualizing. Attempted, I would actually start trying to like, there's, I mean, I did like combat sports my whole life, like wrestling. When I'm imagining a move, see, I'm like moving my muscle.\n\nExactly.\n\nLike there is a bit of an activation almost, versus like visualizing yourself like a picture doing it.\n\nYeah, it's something that I feel like naturally, anyone would do. If you try to tell someone to imagine doing something, they might close their eyes and then start physically doing it. But it's just- - Just didn't click.\n\nYeah. It's hard. It was very hard at the beginning.\n\nBut attempted worked.\n\nAttempted worked. It worked just like it should. Worked like a charm.\n\n[Bliss] I remember there was like one Tuesday we were messing around, and I think, I forget what swear word you used, but there's a swear word that came out of your mouth when you figured out you could just do the direct cursor control.\n\nYeah, that's it. It blew my mind. Like no pun intended, blew my mind when I first moved the cursor just with my thoughts and not attempting to move. It's something that I've found like over the couple of weeks, like building up to that, that as I get better cursor controls, like the model gets better, then it gets easier for me to like, like I don't have to attempt as much to move it.\n\nAnd part of that is something that I'd even talked with them about when I was watching the signals of my brain one day, I was watching, when I like attempted to move to the right and I watched the screen, it's like I saw the spikes. It's like I was seeing the spike, the signals being sent before I was actually attempting to move.\n\nI imagined just because when you go to say move your hand or any body part, that signal gets sent before you're actually moving has to make it all the way down and back up before you actually do any sort of movement. So there's a delay there. And I noticed that there was something going on in my brain before I was actually attempting to move, that my brain was like anticipating what I wanted to do.\n\nAnd that all started sort of, I don't know, like percolating in my brain. It was just sort of there, like always in the back. Like that's so weird that it could do that. It kind of makes sense, but I wonder what that means as far as like using the Neuralink.\n\nAnd then as I was playing around with the attempted movement and playing around with the cursor, and I saw that like, as the cursor control got better, that it was anticipating my movements and what I wanted it to do. Like cursor movements, what I wanted to do a bit better and a bit better. And then one day, I just randomly, as I was playing Webgrid, I like looked at a target before I had started like attempting to move.\n\nI was just trying to like get over, like train my eyes to start looking ahead. Like, okay, this is the target I'm on, but if I look over here to this target, I know I can like maybe be a bit quicker getting there. And I looked over and the cursor just shot over it. It was wild. I had to take a step back. Like I was like, \"This should not be happening.\" All day, I was just smiling, I was so giddy. I was like, \"Guys, do you know that this works?\n\nLike I can just think it and it happens,\" which like they'd all been saying this entire time. like I can't believe like you're doing all this with your mind. I'm like, \"Yeah, but is it really with my mind?\" Like I'm attempting to move, and it's just picking that up so it doesn't feel like it's with my mind. When I moved it for the first time like that, it was, oh man.\n\nIt made me think that this technology, that what I'm doing is actually way, way more impressive than I ever thought. It was way cooler than I ever thought. And it just opened up a whole new world of possibilities of like what could possibly happen with this technology and what I might be able to be capable of with it.\n\nBecause you had felt for the first time, like this was digital telepathy. Like you're controlling a digital device with your mind.\n\n[Noland] Yep.\n\nI mean, that's a real moment of discovery. That's really cool. Like you've discovered something. I've seen like scientists talk about like a big aha moment. Like Nobel Prize winning, they'll have this like holy crap.\n\nYeah.\n\nLike whoa.\n\nThat's what it felt. I didn't feel like, like I felt like I had discovered something but for me. Maybe not necessarily for like the world at large or like this field at large. It just felt like an aha moment for me. Like, \"Oh this works.\" Like obviously, it works. And so that's what I do like all the time now. I kind of intermix the attempted movement and imagined movement.\n\nI do it all like together, because I've found that there is some interplay with it that maximizes efficiency with the cursor. So it's not all like one or the other. It's not all just, I only use attempted or I only use like imagined movements. It's more I use them in parallel, and I can do one or the other. I can just completely think about whatever I'm doing. But I don't know. I like to play around with it.\n\nI also like to just experiment with these things. Like every now and again, I'll get this idea in my head like, \"Hmm, I wonder if this works.\" And I'll just start doing it, and then afterwards, I'll tell them, \"By the way, I wasn't doing that like you guys wanted me to. I thought of something and I wanted to try it and so I did. It seems like it works, so maybe we should like explore that a little bit.\"\n\nSo I think that discovery is not just for you, at least from my perspective, that's the discovery for everyone else who ever uses a Neuralink that this is possible. Like I don't think this an obvious thing that this is even possible. It's like, I was saying to Bliss earlier, it's like the four-minute mile. People thought it was impossible to run a mile in four minutes, and once the first person did it, then everyone just started doing it.\n\nSo like just to show that it's possible, that paves the way to like anyone can not do it. That's the thing that's actually possible. You don't need to do the attempted movement. You can just go direct. That's crazy.\n\nIt is crazy, it's crazy.\n\nFor people who don't know, can you explain how the Link app works? You have an amazing stream on the topic. Your first stream, I think, on X describing the app. Can you just describe how it works?\n\nYeah, so it's just an app that Neuralink created to help me interact with the computer. So on the Link app, there are a few different settings and different modes and things I can do on it. So there's like the body mapping, which we kind of touched on. There's a calibration. Calibration is how I actually get cursor control. So calibrating what's going on in my brain to translate that into cursor control. So it will pop out models.\n\nWhat they use I think is like time. So it would be five minutes, and calibration will give me so good of a model. And then if I'm in it for 10 minutes and 15 minutes, the models will progressively get better. And so the longer I'm in it generally, the better the models will get.\n\nThat's really cool, 'cause you often refer to the models. The model's the thing that's constructed once you go through the calibration step. And then you also talked about, sometimes you'll play like a really difficult game, like Snake, just to see how good the model is.\n\nYeah, yeah, so Snake is kind of like my litmus test for models. If I can control Snake decently well, then I know I have a pretty good model. So yeah, the Link app has all of those. It has Webgrid in it now. It's also how I like connect to the computer just in general. So they've given me a lot of like voice controls with it at this point, so I can say like connect or implant disconnect.\n\nAnd as long as I have that charger handy, then I can connect to it. So the charger is also how I connect to the Link app, to connect to the computer. I have to have the implant charger over my head when I wanna connect to have it wake up, 'cause the implant's in hibernation mode, like always when I'm not using it. I think there's a setting to like wake it up every so long.\n\nSo we could set it to half an hour or five hours or something if I just want it to wake up periodically. So yeah, I'll like connect to the Link app, and then go through all sorts of things. Calibration for the day, maybe body mapping. I made them give me like a little homework tab, because I am very forgetful and I forget to do things a lot. So I have like a lot of data collection things that they want me to do.\n\nIs the body mapping part of the data collection, or is that also part of the- - Yeah, it is. It's something that they want me to do daily, which I've been slacking on, 'cause I've been doing so much media and traveling so much. So I've been- - You've been super famous.\n\nYeah, I've been a terrible first candidate for how much I've been slacking on my homework. But yeah, it's just something that they want me to do every day to track how well the Neuralink is performing over time and to have something to give. I imagine to give to the FDA to create all sorts of fancy charts and stuff and show like, \"Hey, this is what the Neuralink, this is how it's performing day one versus day 90 versus day 180 and things like that.\n\nWhat's the calibration step like? Is it like move left, move right?\n\nIt's a bubble game. So there will be like yellow bubbles that pop up on the screen. At first, it is open loop. So open loop, this is something that I still don't fully understand, the open loop and closed loop thing.\n\nAnd me and Bliss talked for a long time about the difference between the two on the technical side.\n\nOkay.\n\nSo it'd be great to hear your side of the story.\n\nOpen loop is basically, I have no control over the cursor. The cursor will be moving on its own across the screen, and I am following by intention the cursor to different bubbles. And then the algorithm is training off of what like the signals it's getting are as I'm doing this. There are a couple different ways that they've done it. They call it center out target. So there will be a bubble in the middle and then eight bubbles around that.\n\nAnd the cursor will go from the middle to one side. So say middle to left, back to middle, to up, to middle, like up, right. And they'll do that all the way around the circle. And I will follow that cursor the whole time, and then it will train off of my intentions, what it is expecting my intentions to be throughout the whole process.\n\nCan you actually speak to, when you say follow- - Yes.\n\nYou don't mean with your eyes. You mean with your intentions.\n\nYeah, so generally for calibration, I'm doing attempted movements, 'cause I think it works better. I think the better models, as I progress through calibration, make it easier to use imagined movements.\n\nWait, wait, wait, wait. So calibrated on attempted movement will create a model that makes it really effective for you to then use the force?\n\nYes, I've tried doing calibration with imagined movement, and it just doesn't work as well for some reason. So that was the center out targets. There's also one where a random target will pop up on the screen and it's the same. I just like move, I follow along with wherever the cursor is to that target, all across the screen.\n\nI've tried those with imagined movement, and for some reason, the models just don't, they don't give as high level as quality when we get into closed loop. I haven't played around with it a ton, so maybe like the different ways that we're doing calibration now might make it a bit better. But what I've found is there will be a point in calibration where I can use imagined movement. Before that point, it doesn't really work.\n\nSo if I do calibration for 45 minutes, the first 15 minutes, I can't use imagined movement. It just like doesn't work for some reason. And after a certain point, I can just sort of feel it. I can tell it moves different. That's the best way I can describe it. Like it's almost as if it is anticipating what I am going to do again before I go to do it.\n\nAnd so using attempted movement for 15 minutes, at some point, I can kind of tell when I like move my eyes to the next target that the cursor is starting to like pick up. Like it's starting to understand, it's learning like what I'm going to do.\n\nSo first of all, it's really cool that, I mean, you are a true pioneer in all of this. You're like exploring how to do every aspect of this most effectively, and there's just, I imagine so many lessons learned from this. So thank you for being a pioneer in all these kinds of different like super technical ways.\n\nAnd it's also cool to hear that there's like a different like feeling to the experience when it's calibrated in different ways, 'cause I mean, I imagine your brain is doing something different, and that's why there's a different feeling to it. And then trying to find the words and the measurements to those feelings would be also interesting.\n\nBut at the end of the day, you can also measure that your actual performance on whether it's Snake or Webgrid, you could see like what actually works well. And you're saying, for the open loop calibration, the attempted movement works best for now.\n\nYep, yep.\n\nSo the open loop, you don't get the feedback that you did something.\n\nYeah- - Is that frustrating?\n\nNo, no, it makes sense to me. Like we've done it with a cursor and without a cursor in open loop. So sometimes, it's just, say, for like the center out, you'll start calibration with a bubble lighting up, and I push towards that bubble. And then when that bubble, when it's pushed towards that bubble for say, three seconds a bubble will pop and then I come back to the middle. So I'm doing it all just by my intentions. Like that's what it's learning anyways. So it makes sense that as long as I follow what they want me to do, like follow the yellow brick road, that it'll all work out.\n\nYou're full of great references. Is the bubble game fun?\n\nYeah, they always feel so bad making me do calibration. Like, \"Oh, we're about to do a 40-minute calibration.\" I'm like, \"All right, do you guys wanna do two of them?\" Like I'm always asking to, like whatever they need, I'm more than happy to do. And it's not bad. Like I get to lie there or sit in my chair and like do these things with some great people. I get to have great conversations. I can give them feedback. I can talk about all sorts of things. I could throw something on on my TV in the background and kinda like split my attention between them. Like it's not bad at all. I don't mind it.\n\nIs there a score that you get? Like can you do better on the bubble game?\n\nNo, I would love that. I would love- - Yeah. Writing down suggestions from Noland.\n\nThat's- - Make it more fun. Gamified.\n\nYeah, that's one thing that I really, really enjoy about Webgrid is 'cause I'm so competitive. Like the higher the BPS, the higher the score, I know the better I'm doing. I think I've asked at one point one of the guys, like if he could give me some sort of numerical feedback for calibration, like I would like to know what they're looking at.\n\nLike, \"Oh, we see like this number while you're doing calibration, and that means, at least on our end, that we think calibration is going well.\" And I would love that, because I would like to know if what I'm doing is going well or not. But then they've also told me like, \"Yeah, not necessarily like one-to-one.\" It doesn't actually mean that calibration is going well in some ways.\n\nSo it's not like 100%, and they don't wanna like skew what I'm experiencing or want me to change things based on that. If that number isn't always accurate to like how the model will turn out or how like the end result, that's at least what I got from it. One thing I do that I have asked them and something that I really enjoy striving for is towards the end of calibration, there is like a time between targets.\n\nAnd so I like to keep, like at the end, that number as low as possible. So at the beginning, it can be four or five, six seconds between me popping bubbles. But towards the end, I like to keep it below like 1. 5. Or if I could, get it to like one second between like bubbles, because in my mind, that translates really nicely to something like Webgrid where I know if I can hit a target one every second that I'm doing real, real well.\n\nThere you go, that's a way to get a score on the calibrations. Like the speed, how quickly can you get from bubble to bubble.\n\nYeah.\n\nSo there's the open loop, and then it goes to the closed loop.\n\nClosed loop.\n\nThe closed loop can already start giving you a sense, 'cause you're getting feedback of like how good the model is.\n\nYeah, so closed loop is when I first get cursor control and how they've described it to me, someone who does not understand this stuff, I am the dumbest person in the room every time I'm with- - I love the humility.\n\nYeah, is that I am closing the loop. So I am actually now the one that is like finishing the loop of whatever this loop is. I don't even know what the loop is, they've never told me. They just say there is a loop. And at one point, it's open and I can't control. And then I get control and it's closed. So I'm finishing the loop.\n\nSo how long the calibration usually take? You said like 10, 15 minutes.\n\nWell, yeah, they're trying to get that number down pretty low. That's what we've been working on a lot recently is getting that down as low as possible, so that way, if this is something that people need to do on a daily basis or if some people need to do on a like every other day basis or once a week, they don't want people to be sitting in calibration for long periods of time.\n\nI think they've wanted to get it down seven minutes or below, at least where we're at right now. It'd be nice if you never had to do calibration. So we'll get there at some point, I'm sure, the more we learn about the brain and like I think that's the dream. I think right now, for me to get like really, really good models, I am in calibration 40 or 45 minutes. And I don't mind.\n\nLike I said, they always feel really bad, but if it's gonna get me a model that can like break these records on Webgrid, I'll stay in it for flipping two hours.\n\nLet's talk business. So Webgrid. I saw a presentation where Bliss said by March, you selected 89,000 targets in Webgrid. Can you explain this game? What is Webgrid, and what does it take to be a world class performer in Webgrid, as you continue to break world records?\n\nYeah.\n\nIt's like a gold medalist, like well.\n\nYeah, I'd like to thank, I'd like to thank everyone who's helped me get here, my coaches, my parents for driving me to practice every day at five in the morning. Like to thank God. And just overall, my dedication to my craft.\n\nThe interviews with athletes, they're always like that, it's like that template.\n\nYeah.\n\nSo Webgrid is a grid that sells.\n\nWebgrid is, yeah. It's literally just a grid. They can make it as big or small as you can make a grid. A single box on that grid will light up and you go and click it. And it is a way for them to benchmark how good a BCI is. So it's pretty straightforward. You just click targets.\n\n[Lex] Only one blue cell appears, and you're supposed to move the mouse to there and click on it.\n\nYep. So I like playing on like bigger grids, 'cause the bigger the grid, the like more BPS. It's bits per second that you get every time you click one. So I'll say, I'll play on like a 35 by 35 grid, and then one of those little squares cell, we call it target, whatever, will light up and you move the cursor there and you click it and then you do that forever.\n\nAnd you've been able to achieve at first eight bits per second. And then you recently broke that.\n\nYeah, I'm at 8. 5 right now. I would've beaten that literally the day before I came to Austin. But I had like, I don't know, like a five second lag right at the end. And I just had to wait until the latency calmed down and then I kept clicking. But I was at like 8. 01 and then five seconds of lag, and then the next like three targets I clicked all stayed at 8. 01.\n\nSo if I would've been able to click during that time of lag, I probably would've hit, I don't know, I might've hit nine. So I'm there. I'm really close. And then this whole Austin trip has really gotten in the way of my Webgrid playing ability.\n\nIt's frustrating.\n\nYeah, it's- - So that's all you've been thinking about right now?\n\nYeah, I know. I want to do better at nine. I want to do better. I wanna hit nine, I think. Well, I know nine is very, very achievable. I'm right there. I think 10 I could hit maybe in the next month. Like I could do it probably in the next few weeks if I really push it.\n\nI think you and Elon are basically the same person, 'cause last time I did a podcast with him, he came in extremely frustrated that he can't beat Uber Lilith as a droid. That was like a year ago I think, I forget, like solo. And I could just tell, there's some percentage of his brain the entire time was thinking like, \"I wish I was right now attempting.\"\n\nI think he did it.\n\nHe did it that night.\n\nYeah.\n\nHe stayed up and did it that night. It's just crazy to me. I mean, in a fundamental way, it's really inspiring. And what you're doing is inspiring in that way, 'cause I mean, it's not just about the game. Everything you're doing there has impact. By striving to do well on Webgrid, you're helping everybody figure out how to create the system all along, like the decoding, the software, the hardware, the calibration, all of it, how to make all of that work so you can do everything else really well.\n\nYeah, it's just really fun.\n\nWell, that's also, that's part of the thing is like making it fun.\n\nYeah, it's addicting. I've joked about like what they actually did when they went in and put this thing in my brain. They must have flipped a switch to make me more susceptible to these kinds of games, to make me addicted to like Webgrid or something. Do you know Bliss's high score?\n\nYeah, he said like 14 or something.\n\n17.\n\nOh boy.\n\n17.1 or something, 17.01.\n\n17 dot, 17.01.\n\nYeah.\n\nHe told me he like does it on the floor with peanut butter and he like fasts. It's weird. That sounds like cheating. Sounds like performance enhancing.\n\n[Bliss] No, like the first time Noland played this game, he asked, \"How good are we at this game?\" And I think you told me right then, \"You're gonna try to beat me on that.\"\n\nI'm gonna get there someday.\n\nYeah. I fully believe you.\n\nI think I can.\n\nI'm excited for that.\n\nYeah. So I've been playing, first off, with the dwell cursor, which really hampers my Webgrid playing ability. Basically, I have to wait 0.3 seconds for every click.\n\nOh, so you can't do the clicks. So you click by dwelling, you said 0.3?\n\n0.3 seconds, which sucks. It really slows down how much I'm able to, like how high I'm able to get. I still hit like 50, I think I hit like 50 something trials, net trials per minute in that, which was pretty good, 'cause I'm able to like, there's one of the settings is also like how slow you need to be moving in order to initiate a click, to start a click. So I can tell sort of when I'm on that threshold to start initiating a click just a bit early, so I'm not fully stopped over the target when I go to click. I'm doing it like on my way to the targets a little to try to time it just right.\n\nOh wow. So you're slowing down.\n\nYeah, just a hair right before the targets. (Lex laughing) - This is like elite performance, okay. But that's still, it sucks that there's a ceiling of the 0.3.\n\nWell, I can get down to 0.2 and 0.1. Point one's what- - I get it.\n\nYeah, and I've played with that a little bit too. I have to adjust a ton of different parameters in order to play with 0. 1, and I don't have control over all that on my end yet. It also changes like how the models are trained.\n\nLike if I train a model like in Webgrid, like I bootstrap on a model, which basically is them training models as I'm playing Webgrid based off of like the Webgrid data, so like if I play Webgrid for 10 minutes, they can train off that data specifically in order to get me a better model. If I do that with 0. 3 versus 0. 1, the models come out different. The way that they interact is just much, much different. So I have to be really careful.\n\nI found that doing it with 0. 3 is actually better in some ways, unless I can do it with 0. 1 and change all of the different parameters, then that's more ideal, 'cause obviously, 0. 3 is faster than 0. 1. So I could get there. I can get there.\n\nCan you click using your brain?\n\nFor right now, it's the hover clicking with the dwell cursor. Before all the thread retraction stuff happened, we were calibrating clicks - left click, right click. That was my previous ceiling. Before I broke the record again with the dwell cursor was I think on a 35 by 35 grid with left and right click. And you get more BPS, more bits per second using multiple clicks 'cause it's more difficult.\n\nOh, because what is it, you're supposed to do either a left click or a like right click? You use a different color for stuff like this?\n\nYeah, blue targets for left click; orange targets for right click is what they had done.\n\nGot it.\n\nSo my previous record of 7.5 was with the blue and the orange targets, yeah, which I think if I went back to that now doing the click calibration, and being able to like initiate clicks on my own, I think I would would break that 10 ceiling like in a couple days max.\n\nLike yeah, you would start making Bliss nervous about his 17- - You should be.\n\nWhy do you think we haven't given him the- - Yeah, exactly. So what did it feel like with the retractions? That some of the threads retracted?\n\nIt sucked. It was really, really hard. The day they told me was the day of my big Neuralink tour at their Fremont facility, and they told me like right before we went over there. It was really hard to hear. My initial reaction was, \"Alright, go in, fix it. Like go in, take it out, and fix it.\" The first surgery was so easy. Like I went to sleep. A couple hours later, I woke up and here we are.\n\nI didn't feel any pain, didn't take like any pain pills or anything. So I just knew that if they wanted to, they could go in and put in a new one like next day if that's what it took, 'cause I wanted it to be better and I wanted not to lose the capability. I had so much fun playing with it for a few weeks, for a month. It had opened up so many doors for me. It had opened up so many more possibilities that I didn't want to lose it after a month.\n\nI thought it would've been a cruel twist of fate if I had gotten to see the view from like the top of this mountain and then have it all come crashing down after a month. And I knew like, say, the top of the mountain, but how I saw it was I was just now starting to climb the mountain. There was so much more that I knew was possible. And so to have all of that be taken away was really, really hard.\n\nBut then on the drive over to the facility, I don't know, like five minute drive, whatever it is, I talked with my parents about it. I prayed about it. I was just like, \"I'm not gonna let this ruin my day. I'm not gonna let this ruin this amazing like tour that they have set up for me. Like I wanna go show everyone how much I appreciate all the work they're doing.\n\nI wanna go like meet all of the people who have made this possible, and I wanna go have one of the best days of my life.\" And I did, and it was amazing, and it absolutely was one of the best days I've ever been privileged to experience. And then for a few days, I was pretty down in the dumps. But for like the first few days afterwards, I was just like, I didn't know if it was gonna ever gonna work again.\n\nI made the decision that even if I lost the ability to use the Neuralink, even if I lost, even if I like lost out on everything to come, if I could keep giving them data in any way, then I would do that. If I needed to just do like some of the data collection every day or body mapping every day for a year, then I would do it, because I know that everything I'm doing helps everyone to come after me. And that's all I wanted.\n\nI guess the whole reason that I did this was to help people, and I knew that anything I could do to help, I would continue to do, even if I never got to use the cursor again, then I was just happy to be a part of it. And everything that I'd done was just a perk. It was something that I got to experience, and I know how amazing it's gonna be for everyone to come after me. So might as well just keep trucking along.\n\nWell, that said, you were able to get to work your way up, to get the performance back. So this is like going from rocky one to rocky two. So when did you first realize that this is possible, and what gave you sort of the strength and motivation, determination to do it? To increase back up and beat your previous record?\n\nYeah, it was within a couple weeks.\n\nAgain, this feels like I'm interviewing an athlete. (laughs) This is great. I like to thank my parents.\n\nThe road back was long and hard, fraught many difficulties. There were dark days. It was a couple weeks, I think. And then there was just a turning point. I think they had switched how they were measuring the neuron spikes in my brain. Bliss, help me out.\n\n[Bliss] Yeah, the way in which we're measuring the behavior of individual neurons.\n\nYeah.\n\nSo we're switching from sort of individual spike detection to something called spike band power, which if you watch the previous segments with either me or DJ, you probably have some content.\n\nYeah, okay, so when they did that, it was kind of like, a light over the head, like light bulb moment. Like, \"Oh, this works.\" And this seems like we can run with this. And I saw the uptick in performance immediately. Like I could feel it when they switched over. I was like, \"This is better. Like this is good.\"\n\nLike everything up till this point for the last few weeks, last like whatever, three or four weeks, 'cause it was before they even told me, like everything before this sucked. Like let's keep doing what we're doing now. And at that point, it was not like, \"Oh, I know I'm still only at, like saying Webgrid terms, like four or five BPS compared to my 7. 5 before. But I know that if we keep doing this, then like I can get back there.\"\n\nAnd then they gave me the dwell cursor, and the dwell cursor sucked at first. It's not, obviously, not what I want, but it gave me a path forward to be able to continue using it, and hopefully, to continue to help out. And so I just ran with it, never looked back. Like I said, I'm just kind of person that roll with the punches anyways.\n\nWhat was the process? What was the feedback loop on the figuring out how to do the spike detection in a way that would actually work well for Noland?\n\nYeah, it's a great question. So maybe just describe first how the actual update worked. It was basically an update to your implant. So we just did an over the air software update to his implants, same way you'd update your Tesla or your iPhone, and that firmware change enabled us to record sort of averages of populations of neurons nearby individual electrodes.\n\nSo we have sort of less resolution about which individual neuron is doing what, but we have a broader picture of what's going on nearby an electrode overall. And that feedback, I mean, basically, Noland described it was immediate when we flipped that switch. I think the first day we did that, you had three or four BPS right out of the box. And that was a light bulb moment for, \"Okay, this is the right path to go down.\"\n\nAnd from there, there's a lot of feedback around like how to make this useful for independent use. So what we care about ultimately is that you can use it independently to do whatever you want. And to get to that point, it required us to re-engineer the UX, as you talked about the dwell cursor, to make it something that you can use independently without us needing to be involved all the time.\n\nAnd yeah, this is obviously the start of this journey still. Hopefully, we get back to the places where you're doing multiple clicks and using that to control much more fluidly, everything, and much more naturally, the applications that you're trying to interface with.\n\nAnd most importantly, get that Webgrid number up.\n\nYes.\n\nYeah. So how is the, on the hover click, do you accidentally click cells sometimes? Like how hard is it to avoid accidentally clicking?\n\nI have to continuously keep it moving, basically. So like I said, there's a threshold where it will initiate a click. So if I ever drop below that, it'll start, and I have 0. 3 seconds to move it before it clicks anything. And if I don't want it to ever get there, I just keep it moving at a certain speed, and like just constantly like doing circles on screen, moving it back and forth to keep it from clicking stuff.\n\nI actually noticed a couple weeks back, when I was not using the implant, I was just moving my hand back and forth or in circles. Like I was trying to keep the cursor from clicking, and I was just doing it like while I was trying to go to sleep, and I was like, \"Okay, this is a problem.\" (both laughing) - To avoid the clicking. I guess, does that create problems like when you're gaming accidentally click a thing?\n\nYeah, yeah, it happens in chess. I've lost a number of games because I'll accidentally click something.\n\n[Bliss] I think the first time I ever beat you was because of an accident.\n\nYeah, I misclicked, yeah.\n\nIt's a nice excuse, right?\n\nYeah.\n\nYou can always, anytime you lose- - You could just say- - That was accidental.\n\nYeah.\n\nYou said the app improved a lot from version one. When you first started using it, it was very different. So can you just talk about the trial and error that you went through with the team? Like 200 plus pages of notes. What's that process like of- - Yeah.\n\nGoing back and forth and working together to improve the thing?\n\nIt's a lot of me just using it like day in and day out and saying, like, \"Hey, can you guys do this for me? Like give me this. I wanna be able to do that. I need this.\" I think a lot of it just doesn't occur to them maybe until someone is actually using the app, using the implant. It's just something that they just never would've thought of. Or it's very specific to even like me, maybe what I want.\n\nIt's something I'm a little worried about with the next people that come is maybe they will want things much different than how I've set it up, or what the advice I've given the team. And they're gonna look at some of the things they've added for me. Like that's a dumb idea. Like why would he ask for that?\n\nAnd so I'm really looking forward to get the next people on because I guarantee that they're going to think of things that I've never thought of. They're gonna think of improvements. I'm like, \"Wow, that's a really good idea. Like I wish I would've thought of that.\" And then they're also gonna give me some pushback about like, \"Yeah, what you are asking them to do here, that's a bad idea. Let's do it this way.\"\n\nAnd I'm more than happy to have that happen. But it's just a lot of like different interactions with different games or applications, the internet, just with the computer in general. There's tons of bugs that end up popping up left, right, center. So it's just me trying to use it as much as possible and showing them what works and what doesn't work and what I would like to be better.\n\nAnd then they take that feedback, and they usually create amazing things for me. They solve these problems in ways I would've never imagined. They're so good at everything they do. And so I'm just really thankful that I'm able to give them feedback and they can make something of it, 'cause a lot of my feedback is like really dumb. It's just like, \"I want this. Please do something about it.\"\n\nAnd we'll come back and super well thought out, and it's way better than anything I could have ever thought of or implemented myself. So they're just great. They're really, really cool.\n\nAs the BCI community grows, would you like to hang out with the other folks with Neuralink? What relationship, if any, would you wanna have with them? Because you said like they might have a different set of like ideas of how to use the thing.\n\nYeah.\n\nWould you be intimidated by their Webgrid performance?\n\nNo, no, I hope compete. I hope day one, they like wipe the floor with me. I hope they beat it and they crush it. Double it if they can. Just because, on one hand, it's only gonna push me to be better, 'cause I'm super competitive. I want other people to push me. I think that is important for anyone trying to achieve greatness is they need other people around them who are going to push them to be better. And I even made a joke about it on X once.\n\nLike once the next people get chosen, like qubadi cot music, like I'm just excited to have other people to do this with and to like share experiences with. I'm more than happy to interact with them as much as they want, more than happy to give them advice. I don't know what kind of advice I could give them, but if they have questions, I'm more than happy.\n\nWhat advice would you have for the next participant in the clinical trial?\n\nThat they should have fun with this, because it is a lot of fun. And that I hope they work really, really hard, because it's not just for us, it's for everyone that comes after us. And come to me if they need anything. And to go to Neuralink if they need anything. Man, Neuralink moves mountains. Like they do absolutely anything for me that they can. And it's an amazing support system to have.\n\nIt puts my mind at ease for like so many things that I have had like questions about, or so many things I wanna do. And they're always there, and that's really, really nice. I would tell them not to be afraid to go to Neuralink with any questions that they have, any concerns, anything that they're looking to do with this. And any help that Neuralink is capable of providing, I know they will. And I don't know, I don't know.\n\nJust work your ass off, because it's really important that we try to give our all to this.\n\nSo have fun and work hard.\n\nYeah, yeah, there we go. Maybe that's what I'll just start saying to people: have fun, work hard.\n\nNow, you're a real pro athlete. Just keep it short. (Noland laughing) Maybe it's good to talk about what you've been able to do now that you have a Neuralink implant. Like the freedom you gain from this way of interacting with the outside world. Like you play video games all night. And you do that by yourself. And that's a kind of freedom. Can you speak to that freedom that you gain?\n\nYeah, it's what all, I don't know, people in my position want. They just want more independence. The more load that I can take away from people around me, the better. If I'm able to interact with the world without using my family, without going through any of my friends, like needing them to help me with things, the better.\n\nIf I'm able to sit up on my computer all night and not need someone to like sit me up, say like on my iPad, like in a position where I can use it and then have to have them wait up for me all night until I'm ready to be done using it, it takes a load off of all of us. And it's really like all I can ask for. It's something that I could never thank Neuralink enough for. And I know my family feels the same way.\n\nJust being able to have the freedom to do things on my own at any hour of the day or night, it means the world to me. And I don't know.\n\nWhen you're up at 2:00 AM playing Webgrid by yourself, I just imagine like it's darkness and there's just a light glowing. And you're just focused. What's going through your mind? (Noland laughing) Or you were like in a state of flow where it's like the mind is empty, like those like Zen masters?\n\nYeah, generally, it is me playing music of some sort. I have a massive playlist, and so I'm just like rocking out to music. And then it's also just like a race against time, 'cause I'm constantly looking at how much battery percentage I have left on my implant. Like, all right, I have 30%, which equates to x amount of time, which means I have to break this record in the next hour and a half, or else, it's not happening tonight.\n\nAnd so it's a little stressful when that happens. When it's above 50%, I'm like, \"Okay, like I got time.\" It starts getting down to 30 and then 20. It's like, all right, 10%, a little popup is gonna pop up right here, and it's gonna really screw my Webgrid flow. It's gonna tell me that there's like the low battery, low battery popup comes up, and I'm like, it's really gonna screw me over.\n\nSo if I have to, if I'm gonna break this record, I have to do it in the next like 30 seconds, or else, that popup is gonna get in the way, like cover my Webgrid. After that, I go click on it, go back into Webgrid. And I'm like, \"All right, that means I have 10 minutes left before this thing's dead.\" That's what's going on in my head generally, that and whatever song's playing. I want to break those records so bad.\n\nLike it's all I want when I'm playing Webgrid. It has become less of like, \"Oh, this is just a leisurely activity.\" Like I just enjoy doing this, because it just feels so nice and it puts me at ease. No, once I'm in Webgrid, you better break this record or you're gonna waste like five hours of your life right now. And I don't know, it's just fun. It's fun, man.\n\nHave you ever tried Webgrid with like two targets and three targets? Can you get higher BPS with that?\n\nCan you do that?\n\n[Bliss] You mean, like different color targets, or you mean- - Oh, multiple targets, 'cause that change the thing.\n\nYeah, so BPS is a log of number of targets times correct minus incorrect divided by time. And so you can think of like different clicks as basically doubling the number of active targets.\n\nGot it.\n\nSo you know, you get basically higher BPS, the more options there are, the more difficult to task. And there's also like zen mode you've played in before, which is like- - Yeah. Yeah, it covers the whole screen with a grid. And I don't know.\n\n[Lex] Yeah, and so you can go like, that's insane.\n\nYeah.\n\n[Bliss] He doesn't like it 'cause it didn't show BPS.\n\nI had them put in a giant BPS in the background, so now it's like the opposite of Zen mode. It's like super hard mode, like just metal mode. It's just like a giant number in the back counter.\n\n[Bliss] We should rename that. Metal mode is a much better name now.\n\nSo you also play Civilization VI?\n\nI love Civ VI, yeah.\n\n[Lex] You usually go with Korea, you said?\n\nI do, yeah. So the great part about Korea is they focus on like science tech victories, which was not planned. Like I've been playing Korea for years, and then all of the Neuralink stuff happened. So it kind of aligned. But what I've noticed with tech victories is if you can just rush tech, rush science, then you can do anything.\n\nLike at one point in the game, you'll be so far ahead of everyone technologically that you'll have like musket men, infantry men, plane sometimes, and people will still be fighting with like bows and arrows. And so if you want to win a domination victory, you just get to a certain point with the science and then go and wipe out the rest of the world.\n\nOr you can just take science all the way and win that way, and you're gonna be so far ahead of everyone 'cause you're producing so much science that it's not even close. I've accidentally won in different ways just by focusing on science.\n\nAccidentally won by focusing on science.\n\nI was playing only science, obviously. Like just science all the way, just tech. And I was trying to get like every tech in the tech tree and stuff. And then I accidentally won through a diplomatic victory, and I was so mad. (Lex laughing) I was so mad, 'cause it just like ends the game. One turn, it was like, \"Oh, you won, you're so diplomatic.\" I'm like, \"I don't wanna do this. I should have declared war on more people or something.\"\n\nIt was terrible, but you don't need like giant civilizations with tech, especially with Korea. You can keep it pretty small. So I generally just get to a certain military unit and put them all around my border to keep everyone out, and then I will just build up. So very isolationist.\n\nNice.\n\nYeah.\n\nJust work on the science and the tech.\n\n[Noland] Yep, that's it.\n\nYou're making it sound so fun.\n\nIt's so much fun.\n\nAnd I also saw Civilization VII trailer.\n\nOh man, I'm so pumped.\n\nYeah. And that's probably coming out- - Come on, Civ VII, hit me up. Alpha, beta tests, whatever.\n\nWait, when is it coming out?\n\n2025.\n\nYeah, yeah, next year, yeah. What other stuff would you like to see improved about the Neuralink app and just the entire experience?\n\nI would like to, like I said, get back to the like click on demand, like the regular clicks. That would be great. I would like to be able to connect to more devices. Right now, it's just the computer. I'd like to be able to use it on my phone or use it on different consoles, different platforms. I'd like to be able to control as much stuff as possible, honestly. Like an Optimus robot would be pretty cool.\n\nThat would be sick if I could control an Optimus robot. The Link app itself, it seems like we are getting pretty dialed in to what it might look like down the road. Seems like we've gotten through a lot of what I want from it at least. The only other thing I would say is like more control over all the parameters that I can tweak with my like cursor and stuff. There's a lot of things that go into how the cursor moves in certain ways.\n\nAnd I have, I don't know, like three or four of those parameters and there might- - Like gain and friction and all that?\n\nGain and friction, yeah. And there's maybe double the amount of those with just like velocity and then with the actual dwell cursor. So I would like all of it. I want as much control over my environment as possible, especially- - So you want like advanced mode? Like there's menus usually, there's basic mode. And you're like one of those folks like- - I go the- - Power user advanced.\n\nYeah, yeah.\n\nGot it.\n\nThat's what I want. I want as much control over this as possible. So yeah, that's really all I can ask for. Just give me everything.\n\nHas speech been useful? Like just being able to talk also in addition to everything else?\n\nYeah, you mean like while I'm using it?\n\nWhile you're using it, like speech to text?\n\nOh yeah.\n\nOr do you type, or like, 'cause there's also a keyboard? That's really nice.\n\nYeah, yeah. So there's a virtual keyboard. That's another thing I would like to work more on is finding some way to type or text in a different way. Right now, it is like a dictation basically and a virtual keyboard that I can use with the cursor. But we've played around with like finger spelling, like sign language, finger spelling. And that seems really promising.\n\nSo I have this thought in my head that it's going to be a very similar learning curve that I had with the cursor, where I went from attempted movement to imagined movement at one point. I have a feeling, this is just my intuition, that at some point, I'm going to be doing finger spelling and I won't need to actually attempt to finger spell anymore, that I'll just be able to think the like letter that I want and it'll pop up.\n\nThat would be epic.\n\nYeah.\n\nThat's challenging, that's hard. That's a lot of work for you to kinda take that leap. But that would be awesome.\n\nAnd then like going from letters to words is another step. Like you would go from, right now, it's finger spelling of like just the sign language alphabet. But if it's able to pick that up, then it should be able to pick up like the whole sign language like language.\n\nAnd so then if I could do something along those lines, or just the sign language spelled word, if I can spell it at a reasonable speed and it can pick that up, then I would just be able to think that through and it would do the same thing. I don't see why not. After what I saw with the cursor control, I don't see why it wouldn't work, but we'd have to play around with it more.\n\nWhat was the process in terms of like training yourself to go from attempted movement to imagined movement? How long did that take? So how long would this kind of process take?\n\nWell, it was a couple weeks before it just like happened upon me. But now that I know that that was possible, I think I could make it happen with other things. I think it would be much, much simpler.\n\nWould you get an upgraded implant device?\n\nSure, absolutely. Whenever they'll let me.\n\nSo you don't have any concerns for you with the surgery experience? All of it was like no regrets?\n\nNo.\n\nSo everything's been good so far?\n\nYep.\n\nYou just keep getting upgrades.\n\nYeah, I mean, why not? I've seen how much it's impacted my life already. And I know that everything from here on out, shit's gonna get better and better. So I would love to. I would love to get the upgrade.\n\nWhat future capabilities are you excited about sort of beyond this kind of telepathy? Is vision interesting? So for folks who, for example, who are blind, so you're like enabling people to see, or for speech.\n\nYeah, there's a lot that's very, very cool about this. I mean, we're talking about the brain, so like this is just motor cortex stuff. There's so much more that can be done. The vision one is fascinating to me. I think that is going to be very, very cool. To give someone the ability to see for the first time in their life would just be, I mean it, it might be more amazing than even helping someone like me. Like that just sounds incredible.\n\nThe speech thing is really interesting, being able to have some sort of like real time translation and cut away that language barrier would be really cool. Any sort of like actual impairments that it could solve, like with speech, would be very, very cool. And then also, there are a lot of different disabilities that all originate in the brain. And you would be able to, hopefully be able to solve a lot of those.\n\nI know there's already stuff to help people with seizures that can be implanted in the brain. This would do, I imagine, the same thing. And so you could do something like that. I know that even someone like Joe Rogan has talked about the possibilities with being able to stimulate the brain in different ways. I'm not sure. I'm not sure how ethical a lot of that would be. That's beyond me honestly.\n\nBut I know that there's a lot that can be done when we're talking about the brain and being able to go in and physically make changes to help people or to improve their lives. So I'm really looking forward to everything that comes from this. And I don't think it's all that far off. I think a lot of this can be implemented within my lifetime, assuming that I live a long life.\n\nWhat you were referring to is things like people suffering from depression or things of that nature potentially getting help.\n\nYeah, flip a switch like that, make someone happy. I know, I think Joe has talked about it more in terms of like you want to experience like what a drug trip feels like. Like you wanna experience what it'd be like to be on- - Of course.\n\nYeah, mushrooms or something like that, DMT. Like you can just flip that switch in the brain. My buddy Bain has talked about being able to like wipe parts of your memory and re-experience things that, like for the first time, like your favorite movie or your favorite book. Like just wipe that out real quick, and then re-fall in love with Harry Potter or something. I told him, I was like, \"I don't know how I feel about like people being able to just wipe parts of your memory. That seems a little sketchy to me.\" He's like, \"They're already doing it.\"\n\nSounds legit. Yeah, I would love memory replay. Just like actually high resolution replay of old memories.\n\nYeah, I saw an episode of \"Black Mirror\" about that once. I don't think I want it.\n\nYeah, so \"Black Mirror\" always kind of considers the worst case, which is important. I think people don't consider the best case or the average case enough. I don't know what it is about us humans. We wanna think about the worst possible thing. We love drama.\n\n[Noland] Yeah. (laughs) - It's like, how's this new technology gonna kill everybody? We just love that. Again like, yes, let's watch.\n\nHopefully, people don't think about that too much with me. It'll ruin a lot of my plans.\n\nYeah, yeah. I assume you're gonna have to take over the world. I mean, I loved your Twitter. You tweeted, \"I'd like to make jokes about hearing voices in my head since getting the Neuralink, but I feel like people would take it the wrong way. Plus, the voices in my head told me not to.\"\n\nYeah.\n\nPlease never stop. So you're talking about Optimus. Is that something you would love to be able to do, to control the robotic arm or the entirety of Optimus?\n\nOh yeah, for sure. For sure, absolutely.\n\nYou think there's something like fundamentally different about just being able to physically interact with the world?\n\nYeah, oh, 100%. I know another thing with like being able to like give people the ability to like feel sensation and stuff too by going in with the brain and having the Neuralink maybe do that. That could be something that could be translated through, transferred through the Optimus as well. Like there's all sorts of really cool interplay between that. And then also, like you said, just physically interacting.\n\nI mean, 99% of the things that I can't do myself obviously need, I need a caretaker for, someone to physically do things for me. If an Optimus robot could do that, like I could live an incredibly independent life and not be such a burden on those around me and it would change the way people like me live, at least until whatever this is gets cured. But being able to interact with the world physically, like that would just be amazing.\n\nAnd they're not just like for being, for having to be a caretaker or something, but something like I talked about, just being able to read a book. Imagine an Optimus robot just being able to hold a book open in front of me, like get that smell again. I might not be able to feel it at that point. Or maybe I could again with the sensation and stuff.\n\nBut there's something different about reading like a physical book than staring at a screen or listening to an audio book. I actually don't like audio books. I've listened to a ton of them at this point, but I don't really like 'em. I would much rather like read a physical copy.\n\nSo one of the things you would love to be able to experience is opening the book, bringing it up to you. And to feel the touch of the paper.\n\nYeah. Oh man, the touch, the smell. I mean, it's just like something about the words on the page, and they've replicated that page color on like the Kindle and stuff. Yeah, it's just not the same, yeah. So just something as simple as that.\n\nSo one of the things you miss is touch.\n\nI do, yeah.\n\nA lot of things that I interact with in the world, like clothes or literally any physical thing that I interact with in the world, a lot of times, what people around me will do is they'll just come like, rub it on my face. They'll like lay something on me so I can feel the weight. They will rub a shirt on me so I can feel fabric. Like there's something very profound about touch, and it's something that I miss a lot, and something I would love to do again, but we'll see.\n\nWhat would be the first thing you do with a hand that can touch? Give your mom a hug after that, right?\n\nYeah, I know. It's one thing that I've asked like God for basically every day since my accident was just being able to like one day move, even if it was only like my hand. So that way, like I could squeeze my mom's hand or something just to like show her that, like how much I care and how much I love her and everything. Something along those lines. Being able to just interact with the people around me, handshake, give someone a hug. I don't know, anything like that. Being able to help me eat, like I'd probably get really fat, which would be a terrible, terrible thing.\n\nAlso beat Bliss in chess on a physical chess board.\n\nYeah, yeah. I mean, there are just so many upsides. (laughs) And any way to find some way to feel like I'm bringing Bliss down to my level.\n\nYeah.\n\nBecause- - Yeah.\n\nHe's just such an amazing guy, and everything about him is just so above and beyond that anything I can do to take him down a notch, I'm more than happy.\n\nYeah, humble him a bit, he needs it.\n\n[Noland] Yeah. (laughs) - Okay. As he's sitting next to me. Did you ever make sense of why God puts good people through such hardship?\n\nOh, man. I think it's all about understanding how much we need God. And I don't think that there's any light without the dark. I think that if all of us were happy all the time, there would be no reason to turn to God ever. I feel like there would be no concept of good or bad. And I think that as much of like the darkness and the evil that's in the world, it makes us all appreciate the good and the things we have so much more.\n\nAnd I think, like when I had my accident, one of the first things I said to one of my best friends was, and this was within like the first month or two after my accident, I said, \"Everything about this accident has just made me understand and believe that like God is real and that there really is a God, basically. And that like my interactions with him have all been real and worthwhile.\"\n\nAnd he said, if anything, seeing me go through this accident, he believes that there isn't a God. And it's a very different reaction. But I believe that it is a way for God to test us, to build our character, to send us through trials and tribulations, to make sure that we understand how precious he is, and the things that he's given us and the time that he's given us. And then to hopefully grow from all of that.\n\nI think that's a huge part of being here is to not just have an easy life and do everything that's easy, but to step out of our comfort zones and really challenge ourselves, because I think that's how we grow.\n\nWhat gives you hope about this whole thing we have going on, human civilization?\n\nOh, man. I think people are my biggest inspiration. Even just being at Neuralink for a few months, looking people in the eyes and hearing their motivations for why they're doing this, it's so inspiring. And I know that they could be other places, cushier jobs, working somewhere else, doing X, Y, or Z that doesn't really mean that much.\n\nBut instead they're here, and they want to better humanity and they want a better, just the people around them, the people that they've interacted with in their life, they wanna make better lives for their own family members who might have disabilities, or they look at someone like me and they say, \"I can do something about that so I'm going to.\" And it's always been what I've connected with most in the world are people.\n\nI've always been a people person and I love learning about people, and I love learning like how people developed and where they came from. And to see like how much people are willing to do for someone like me when they don't have to, and they're going out of their way to make my life better.\n\nIt gives me a lot of hope for just humanity in general, how much we care and how much we're capable of when we all kind of get together and try to make a difference. And I know there's a lot of bad out there in the world, but there always has been and there always will be.\n\nAnd I think that that is, it shows human resiliency and it shows what we're able to endure, and how much we just want to be there and help each other, and how much satisfaction we get from that, because I think that's one of the reasons that we're here is just to help each other. And I don't know, that always gives me hope. It's just realizing that there are people out there who still care and who wanna help.\n\nAnd thank you for being one such human being and continuing to be a great human being through everything you've been through and being an inspiration to many people, to myself, for many reasons, including your epic, unbelievably great performance on Webgrid. I'll be training all night tonight to try to catch up.\n\nYou can do it.\n\nAnd I believe in you, that you can once you come back, so sorry to interrupt with the Austin trip, once you come back, eventually beat Bliss.\n\nYeah, yeah, for sure. Absolutely.\n\nI'm rooting for you. The whole world is rooting for you.\n\nThank you.\n\nThank you for everything you've done, man.\n\nThanks, thanks man.\n\nThanks for listening to this conversation with Nolan Arbaugh, and before that, with Elon Musk, DJ Seo, Matthew MacDougall, and Bliss Chapman. To support this podcast, please check out our sponsors in the description. And now, let me leave you with some words from Aldous Huxley in \"The Doors of Perception.\" \"We live together. We act on and react to one another, but always, and in all circumstances, we are by ourselves.\n\nThe martyrs go hand in hand into the arena. They are crucified alone. Embraced, the lovers desperately try to fuse their insulated ecstasies into a single self-transcendence; in vain. By its very nature, every embodied spirit is doomed to suffer and enjoy in solitude. Sensations, feelings, insights, fancies, all these are private and, except through symbols and at second hand, incommunicable.\n\nWe can pool information about experiences, but never the experiences themselves. From family to nation, every human group is a society of island universes. Thank you for listening, and hope to see you next time.","textByLang":{"en":"The following is a conversation with Elon Musk, DJ Seo, Matthew MacDougall, Bliss Chapman, and Nolan Arbaugh about Neuralink and the future of humanity. Elon, DJ, Matthew and Bliss are of course part of the amazing Neuralink team, and Noland is the first human to have a Neuralink device implanted in his brain. I speak with each of them individually, so use timestamps to jump around, or as I recommend, go hardcore and listen to the whole thing.\n\nThis is the longest podcast I've ever done. It's a fascinating, super technical, and wide-ranging conversation, and I loved every minute of it. And now, dear friends, here's Elon Musk, his fifth time on this, \"The Lex Fridman Podcast.\"\n\nDrinking coffee or water?\n\nWater. I'm so over-caffeinated right now. Do you want some caffeine?\n\nI mean, sure.\n\nThere's a Nitro drink.\n\nThis supposed to keep you up till like tomorrow afternoon basically. (laughs) - Yeah. I don't have any- - So what is Nitro? It's just got a lot of caffeine or something?\n\nDon't ask questions. It's called Nitro.\n\nDo you need to know anything else?\n\nIt's got nitrogen, that's ridiculous. I mean, what we breathe is 78% nitrogen anyway. What do you need to add more for? (laughs) - [Speaker] Unfortunately, you're gonna need it.\n\nMost people think that they're breathing oxygen, and they're actually breathing 78% nitrogen. You need like a milk bar.\n\nMilk bar. (Elon laughing) - Like from Clockwork Orange. (laughs) - Yeah, yeah. Is that top three Kubrick film for you?\n\nClockwork Orange, it's pretty good. I mean, it's demented. Jarring, I'd say.\n\n(laughs) Okay. Okay, so first let's step back and big congrats on getting Neuralink implanted into a human. That's a historic step for Neuralink.\n\nOh, thanks, yeah.\n\nThere's many more to come.\n\nYeah, and we just, obviously, our second implant as well.\n\n[Lex] How did that go?\n\nSo far, so good. Looks like we've got, I think over 400 electrodes that are providing signals. So yeah.\n\nNice. How quickly do you think the number of human participants will scale?\n\nIt depends on the regulatory approval, the rate which we get regulatory approvals. So we're hoping to do 10 by the end of this year. Total of 10, so eight more.\n\nAnd with each one, you're gonna be learning a lot of lessons about the new biology, the brain, everything, the whole chain of the Neuralink, the decoding, the signal processing, all that kind of stuff.\n\nYeah, yeah, I think it's obviously gonna get better with each one. I mean, I don't wanna jinx it, but it seems to have gone extremely well with the second implant, so there's a lot of signal, a lot of electrodes. It's working very well.\n\nWhat improvements do you think we'll see in Neuralink in the coming, let's say, let's get crazy, the coming years?\n\nI mean, in years, it's gonna be gigantic, because we'll increase the number of electrodes dramatically. We'll improve the signal processing. Even with only roughly, I don't know, 10, 15% of the electrodes working with Noland, with our first patient, we were able to get to achieve a bit per second. That's twice the world record. So I think we'll start like vastly exceeding world record by orders of magnitude in the years to come.\n\nSo it's start getting to, I don't know, a hundred bits per second thousand. Maybe if like five years from now, we might be at a megabit, like faster than any human could possibly communicate by typing or speaking.\n\nYeah, that BPS is an interesting metric to measure. There might be a big leap in the experience once you reach a certain level of BPS.\n\n[Elon] Yeah.\n\nLike entire new ways of interacting with a computer might be unlocked.\n\nAnd with humans.\n\nWith other humans.\n\nProvided they have (laughs), they want a Neuralink too.\n\nRight.\n\nOtherwise, they won't be able to absorb the signals fast enough.\n\nDo you think they'll improve the quality of intellectual discourse?\n\nWell, I think you could think of it, if you were to slow down communication, how do you feel about that? If you'd only talk at, let's say, 1/10th of normal speed, you'd be like, \"Wow, that's agonizingly slow.\"\n\n[Lex] Yeah.\n\nSo now, imagine you could speak, communicate clearly at 10 or 100 or 1,000 times faster than normal.\n\nListen, I'm pretty sure nobody in their right mind listens to me at 1x, they listen at 2x. (Elon laughs) I can only imagine what 10x would feel like or could actually understand it.\n\nI usually default to 1.5x. You can do 2x, but well, actually, if I'm listening to somebody in like sort of 15, 20 minutes segments to go to sleep, then I'll do it 1.5x. If I'm paying attention, I'll do 2x. (laughs) - Right.\n\nBut actually, if you start actually listen to podcasts or sort of audio books or anything, if you get used to doing it at 1.5, then one sounds painfully slow.\n\nI'm still holding onto one because I'm afraid. I'm afraid of myself becoming bored with the reality, with the real world where everyone's speaking on 1x. (both laughing) - Well, depends on the person. You can speak very fast. Like we can communicate very quickly. And also, if you use a wide range of, if your vocabulary is larger, your bit rate, effective bit rate is higher.\n\nThat's a good way to put it.\n\nYeah.\n\nThe effective bit rate. I mean, that is the question is how much information is actually compressed in the low bit transfer of language.\n\nYeah. If there's a single word that is able to convey something that would normally require, I don't know, 10 simple words, then you've got maybe a 10x compression on your hands. And that's really, like with memes, memes are like data compression. It conveys a whole, you're simultaneously hit with a wide range of symbols that you can interpret. And you kinda get it faster than if it were words or a simple picture.\n\nAnd of course, you're referring to memes broadly like ideas.\n\nYeah. There's an entire idea structure that is like an idea template, and then you can add something to that idea template. But somebody has that preexisting idea template in their head. So when you add that incremental bit of information, you're conveying much more than a few, just set a few words. It's everything associated with that meme.\n\nYou think there'll be emergent leaps of capability as you scale the number of electrodes? Like there'll be a certain, you think there'll be like actual number where it just, the human experience will be altered?\n\nYes.\n\nWhat do you think that number might be, whether electrodes or BPS? We of course don't know for sure, but is this 10,000, 100,000?\n\nYeah, I mean certainly, if you're anywhere at 10,000 bits per second, I mean, that's vastly faster than any human could communicate right now. If you think about what is the average bits per second of a human? It is less than one bit per second over the course of a day, because there are 86,400 seconds in a day. And you don't communicate 86,400 tokens in a day. Therefore, your bits per second is less than one, averaged over 24 hours.\n\nIt's quite slow. And now, even if you're communicating very quickly, and you're talking to somebody who understands what you're saying, because in order to communicate, you have to at least, to some degree, model the mind state of the person to whom you're speaking.\n\nThen take the concept you're trying to convey, compress that into a small number of syllables, speak them, and hope that the other person decompresses them into a conceptual structure that is as close to what you have in your mind as possible.\n\nYeah, I mean, there's a lot of signal loss there in that process.\n\nYeah, very lousy compression and decompression. And a lot of what your neurons are doing is distilling the concepts down to a small number of symbols of, say, syllables that I'm speaking, or keystrokes, whatever the case may be. So that's a lot of what your brain computation is doing.\n\nNow, there is an argument that that's actually a healthy thing to do or a helpful thing to do because as you try to compress complex concepts, you're perhaps forced to distill what is most essential in those concepts as opposed to just all the fluff. So in the process of compression, you distill things down to what matters the most, because you can only say a few things. So that is perhaps helpful.\n\nI think we might, we'll probably get, if our data rate increases, it's highly probable that we'll become far more verbose. Just like your computer, when computers had like, my first computer had 8K of RAM, so you really thought about every byte. And now you've got computers with many gigabytes of RAM. So if you wanna do an iPhone app that just says 'Hello world,' it's probably, I don't know, several megabytes minimum. (laughs) A bunch of fluff.\n\nBut nonetheless, we still prefer to have the computer with more memory and more compute. So the long-term aspiration of Neuralink is to improve the AI human symbiosis by increasing the bandwidth of the communication, because even in the most benign scenario of AI, you have to consider that the AI is simply gonna get bored waiting for you to spit out a few words.\n\nI mean, if the AI can communicate it to terabits per second and you're communicating it bits per second, it's like 203.\n\nWell, it is a very interesting question for a super intelligent species. What use are humans?\n\nI think there is some argument for humans as a source of will.\n\nWill?\n\nWill, yeah. Source of will or purpose. So if you consider the human mind as being essentially, there's the primitive limbic elements, which basically even like reptiles have, and there's the cortex, that's the thinking and planning part of the brain. Now, the cortex is much smarter than the limbic system, and yet is largely in service to the limbic system. It's trying to make the limbic system happy.\n\nI mean, the sheer amount of compute that's gone into people trying to get laid is insane, without actually seeking procreation. They're just literally trying to do this sort of simple motion. (laughs) And they get a kick out of it. So this simple, which in the abstract rather absurd motion, which is sex, the cortex is putting a massive amount of compute into trying to figure out how to do that.\n\nSo like 90% of distributed compute of the human species is spent on trying to get laid, probably, like a massive amount.\n\nLarge percent, yeah, yeah. There's no purpose to most sex except hedonistic. It's just sort of joy or whatever. Dopamine release. Now, once in a while, it's procreation, but for humans, modern humans, it's mostly recreational. So your cortex, much smarter than your limbic system, is trying to make the limbic system happy 'cause the limbic system wants to have sex, or want some tasty food or whatever the case may be.\n\nAnd then that is then further augmented by the tertiary system, which is your phone, your laptop, iPad, whatever, or your computing stuff. That's your tertiary layer. So you're actually already a cyborg. You have this tertiary compute layer, which is in the form of your computer with all the applications or your compute devices.\n\nAnd so in the getting laid front, there's actually a massive amount of digital compute also trying to get laid, with like Tinder and whatever.\n\nYeah. So the compute that we've humans have built is also participating. (laughs) - Yeah, I mean, there's like gigawatts of compute going into getting laid, of digital compute.\n\nYeah. (laughs) What if AGI will- - This is happening as we speak.\n\nIf we merge with AI, it's just gonna expand the compute that we humans use- - Pretty much.\n\nTo try to get laid.\n\nWell, that's one of the things, certainly, yeah.\n\nYeah.\n\nBut what I'm saying is that yes, is there a use for humans? Well, there's this fundamental question of what's the meaning of life? Why do anything at all? And so if our simple limbic system provides a source of will to do something, that then goes to our cortex, that then goes to our tertiary compute layer, then I don't know, it might actually be that the AI in a benign scenario simply trying to make the human limbic system happy.\n\nYeah, it seems like the will is not just about the limbic system. There's a lot of interesting, complicated things in there. We also want power.\n\nThat's limbic too, I think.\n\nBut then we also want to, in a kind of cooperative way, alleviate the suffering in the world.\n\nNot everybody does, but yeah, sure. Some people do.\n\nAs a group of humans, when we get together, we start to have this kind of collective intelligence that is more complex in its will than the underlying individual descendants of apes, right? So there's like other motivations. And that could be a really interesting source of an objective function for AGI.\n\nYeah, I mean, there are these sort of fairly cerebral or kind of higher level goals. I mean, for me it's like, what's the meaning of life, or understanding the nature of the universe is of great interest to me. And hopefully, to AI. And that's the mission of xAI and Grok is understand the universe.\n\nSo do you think people, when you have a Neuralink with 10,000, 100,000 channels, most of the use cases will be communication with AI systems?\n\nWell, assuming there are not, I mean, they're solving basic neurological issues that people have if they've got damaged neurons in their spinal cord or neck or, you know, as is the case with the first two patients, then there's obviously, the first order of business is solving fundamental neuron damage in a spinal cord, neck, or in the brain itself.\n\nA second product is called Blindsight, which is to enable people who are completely blind, lost both eyes or optic nerve, or just can't see at all to be able to see by directly triggering the neurons in the visual cortex. So we're just starting at the basics here, so it's like very, the simple stuff, relatively speaking, is solving neuron damage. It can also solve I think probably schizophrenia.\n\nIf people have seizures of some kind, it could probably solve that. It could help with memory. There's like a kind of a tech tree, if you will, of like you got the basics. Like you need literacy before you can have \"Lord of the Rings.\" (both laughing) - Got it.\n\nDo you have letters and alphabet? Okay, great. Words? Then eventually get soggy. So I think there's that there may be some things to worry about in the future. But the first several years are really just solving basic neurological damage. Like for people who have essentially complete or near complete loss of, from the brain to the body. Like Stephen Hawking would be an example.\n\nThe Neuralink would be incredibly profound, 'cause I mean, you can imagine if Stephen Hawking could communicate as fast as we're communicating, perhaps faster. And that's certainly possible. Probable, in fact, likely I'd say.\n\nSo there's a kind of dual track of medical and non-medical, meaning, so everything you've talked about could be applied to people who are non-disabled in the future?\n\nThe logical thing to do is, sensible thing to do is to start off solving basic neuron damage issues.\n\n[Lex] Yes.\n\n'Cause there's obviously some risk with a new device. You can't get the risk down at zero. It's not possible. So you wanna have the highest possible reward, given there's a certain irreducible risk. And if somebody's able to have a profound improvement in their communication, that's worth the risk.\n\nAs you get the risk down.\n\nYeah, as you get the risk down. Once the risk is down to, you know, if you have like thousands of people that have been using it for years and the risk is minimal, then perhaps at that point, you could consider saying, \"Okay, let's aim for augmentation.\" Now, I think we're actually gonna aim for augmentation with people who have neuron damage. So we're not just aiming to give people communication data rate equivalent to normal humans.\n\nWe're aiming to give people who have quadriplegic or maybe have complete loss of the connection to the brain and body, a communication data rate that exceeds normal humans, going, \"Well, we're in there. Why not? Let's give people superpowers.\"\n\nAnd the same for vision. As you restore vision, there could be aspects of that restoration that are superhuman?\n\nYeah, at first, the vision restoration will be low res, 'cause you have to say like, \"How many neurons can you put in there and trigger?\n\nAnd you can do things where you adjust the electric field to like, even if you've got, say, 10,000 neurons, it's not just 10,000 pixels because you can adjust the feel between the neurons and do them in patterns in order to get, so have, say, 10,000 electrodes effectively give you, I don't know, maybe like having a megapixel or a 10 megapixel situation. And then over time, I think you get to higher resolution than human eyes.\n\nAnd you could also see in different wavelengths. So like Geordi La Forge from \"Star Trek.\" Like the thing. You wanna see in radar? No problem. You could see ultraviolet, infrared, eagle vision, whatever you want.\n\nDo you think there'll be, let me ask a Joe Rogan question. Do you think there'll be, (laughs) I just recently taken ayahuasca.\n\nIs that a Rogan question?\n\nNo. Well, yes.\n\nWell, I guess, technically it is.\n\nYeah.\n\nEver tried GMT, bro? (both laughing) - I love you, Joe.\n\nOkay. (laughing continues) - But wait, wait, yeah. Have you said much about it? The ayahuasca?\n\nI've not, I've not. I've not.\n\nOkay, well, why are you spilling the beans? (Lex laughing) It was a truly incredible thing- - Turn the tables on you. (both laughing) - Wow, okay.\n\nYou're in the jungle.\n\n[Lex] Yeah, amongst the trees myself and- - Yeah, must been crazy.\n\nAnd the shaman. Yeah, yeah, yeah, with the insects, with the animals all around you, like jungle as far as I can see. There's no- - I mean- - That's the way to do it.\n\nThings are gonna look pretty wild.\n\nYeah, pretty wild. (Elon laughing) - I think in extremely high dose.\n\nJust don't go hugging an anaconda or something. (laughs) - You haven't lived unless you made love to an anaconda. I'm sorry, but- - Snakes and ladders. (both laughing) - Yeah, I took a extremely high dose of- - [Elon] Okay. (laughs) - Nine cups and- - Damn. Okay, that sounds like a lot. Of course, is Noland's one cup or- - One or two. Usually, one.\n\nYou went, wait. Like right off the bat, or did you work your way up to it?\n\nSo I- (both laughing) - You're just jumping at the deep end.\n\nAcross two days, 'cause then the first day, I took two and I- - Okay.\n\nIt was a ride, but it wasn't quite like a- - It wasn't like revelation.\n\nIt wasn't into deep space type ride. It was just like a little airplane ride.\n\n[Elon] (laughs) Okay.\n\nSaw some trees and some visuals and all that. I just saw a dragon, all that kind of stuff. But- (laughs) - It's nine cups. You went to Pluto, I think.\n\n[Lex] Pluto, yeah. No, deep space.\n\nDeep space.\n\nNo, one of the interesting aspects of my experience is I thought I would have some demons, some stuff to work through.\n\nThat's what people- - That's what everyone says. Yeah, exactly.\n\nI had nothing. I had it all positive. I just- - Oh, just pure soul.\n\nI don't think so, I don't know. (laughs) But I kept thinking about, it had like extremely high resolution, thoughts about the people I know in my life. You were there.\n\nOkay.\n\nAnd it's just not from my relationship with that person, but just as the person themselves, I had just this deep gratitude of who they are.\n\nThat's cool.\n\nIt was just like this exploration, like Sims or whatever, you get to watch them.\n\nSure.\n\nI got to watch people and just be in awe of how amazing they are.\n\nThat sounds awesome.\n\nYeah, it was great. I was waiting for- - When's Steven coming? (both laughing) - Exactly. Maybe I'll have some negative thoughts. Nothing, nothing. Just extreme gratitude for them. And then also, a lot of space travel. (both laughing) - Space travel to where?\n\nSo here's what it was. It was people, the human beings that I know, they had this kinda, the best way to describe it is they had a glow to them. And then I kept flying out from them to see earth, to see our solar system, to see our galaxy. And I saw that light, that glow all across the universe. Like whatever that form is. whatever that like- - [Elon] Did you go past the Milky Way?\n\nYeah, yeah.\n\nOkay. You're like intergalactic.\n\nYeah, intergalactic.\n\nOkay, dang.\n\nBut always pointing in- - Okay.\n\nYeah, past the Milky way. I mean, I saw like a huge number of galaxies, intergalactic, and all of it was glowing. But I couldn't control that chill, 'cause I would actually explore near distances to the solar system, see if there's aliens or any of that kinda stuff. I didn't know- - Is there aliens? Zero aliens?\n\nImplication of aliens because they were glowing. They were glowing in the same way that humans were glowing. That like life force that I was seeing, the thing that made humans amazing was there throughout the universe. Like there was these glowing dots. So I don't know. It made me feel like there is life. No, not life, but something, whatever makes humans amazing all throughout the universe.\n\nSounds good.\n\nYeah, it was amazing. No demons, no demons. I looked for the demons. There's no demons. There were dragons, and they're pretty awesome. So the thing about- - Was there anything scary at all?\n\nDragons? But they weren't scary. They were friends, they were protective. So the thing is- - \"Puff, the Magic Dragon.\"\n\nNo, it was more like a \"Game of Thrones\" kind of dragons. They weren't very friendly. They were very big. So the thing is that, well, giant trees at night, which is where I was.\n\nYeah. I mean, the jungle's kinda scary.\n\nYeah, the trees started to look like dragons, and they were all like looking at me.\n\nSure, okay.\n\nAnd it didn't seem scary. They seemed like they were protecting me. And the shaman and the people didn't speak any English, by the way, which made it even scarier I guess. (laughs) We're not even like, you know, we're worlds apart in many ways. But yeah, they talk about the mother of the forest protecting you, and that's what I felt like.\n\nAnd you're way out in the jungle?\n\nWay out. This is not like a tourist retreat.\n\nLike 10 miles outside of a Rio or something?\n\nNo, we went- (both laughing) No, this is not- - Deep in the Amazon.\n\nMe and this guy named Paul Rosolie who basically is Tarzan. He lives in the jungle. We went out deep and we just went crazy.\n\nWow, cool.\n\nYeah. So anyway, can I get that same experience within Neuralink?\n\nProbably, yeah.\n\nI guess that is the question for non-disabled people. Do you think that there's a lot in our perception, in our experience of the world that could be explored, that could be played with using Neuralink?\n\nYeah, I mean, Neuralink is, it's really a generalized input-output device. It's reading electrical signals and generating electrical signals. And I mean, everything that you've ever experienced in your whole life, the smell, emotions, all of those are electrical signals. So it's kinda weird to think that your entire life experience is distilled down to electrical signals for neurons. But that is in fact the case.\n\nOr I mean, that's at least what all the evidence points to. So I mean, if you trigger the right neuron, you could trigger a particular scent. You could certainly make things glow. I mean, do pretty much anything. I mean, really, you can think of the brain as a biological computer.\n\nSo if there are certain, say, chips or elements of that biological computer that are broken, let's say your ability to, if you've got a stroke, that if you've had a stroke, that means you got, some part of your brain is damaged. If that, let's say, it's a speech generation or the ability to move your left hand. That's the kind of thing that a Neuralink could solve.\n\nIf you've got like a massive amount of memory loss that's just gone, well, we can't get the memories back. We could restore your ability to make memories, but we can't restore memories that are fully gone. Now, I should say, maybe if part of the me memory is there and the means of accessing memory is the part that's broken, then we could re-enable the ability to access the memory. But you can think of it like RAM in a computer.\n\nIf the RAM is destroyed or your SD card is destroyed, we can't get that back. But if the connection to the SD card is destroyed, we can fix that. If it is fixable physically, then yeah, then it can be fixed.\n\nOf course, with AI, you can just like, you can repair photographs and fill in the missing parts of photographs. Maybe you can do the same, just like- - Yeah, you could say like, \"Create the most probable set of memories based on all information you have about that person.\" You could then, it would be probabilistic restoration of memory. Now, we're getting pretty esoteric here.\n\nBut that is one of the most beautiful aspects of the human experience is remembering the good memories. Like we live most of our life, as Danny Kahneman has talked about, in our memories, not in the actual moment. We're collecting memories and we kind of relive them in our head. And that's the good times. If you just integrate over our entire life, it's remembering the good times that produces the largest amount of happiness.\n\nAnd so- - Yeah, well, I mean, what are we but our memories? And what is death but the loss of memory, loss of information? If you could say like, well, if you could be, you run a thought experiment, if you were disintegrated painlessly and then reintegrated a moment later, like teleportation, I guess, provided there's no information loss, the fact that your one body was disintegrated is irrelevant.\n\nAnd memories is just such a huge part of that.\n\nDeath is fundamentally the loss of information, the loss of memory.\n\nSo if we can store them as accurately as possible, we basically achieve a kind of immortality.\n\nYeah.\n\nYou've talked about the threats, the safety concerns of AI. Let's look at long-term visions. Do you think Neuralink is, in your view, the best current approach we have for AI safety?\n\nIt's an idea that may help with AI safety. Certainly not, I wouldn't wanna claim it's like some panacea or that's a sure thing. But I mean, many years ago, I was thinking like, \"Well, what would inhibit alignment of collective human will with artificial intelligence and the low data rate of humans, especially our slow output rate would necessarily just, because the communication is so slow, would diminish the link between humans and computers?\n\nLike the more you are a tree, the less you know what a tree is. Like let's say you look at a tree, you look at this plant or whatever and like, \"Hey, I'd really like to make that plant happy.\" But it's not saying a lot, you know?\n\nSo the more we increase the data rate that humans can intake and output, then that means the higher the chance we have in a world full of AGIs?\n\nYeah. We could better align collective human will with AI if the output rate especially was dramatically increased. And I think there's potential to increase the output rate by, I don't know, three, maybe six, maybe more orders of magnitude. So it's better than the current situation.\n\nAnd that output rate would be by increasing the number of electrodes, number of channels, and also maybe implanting multiple Neuralinks?\n\nYeah.\n\nDo you think there'll be a world in the next couple of decades where it's hundreds of millions of people have Neuralinks?\n\nYeah, I do.\n\nYou think when people just, when they see the capabilities, the superhuman capabilities that are possible and then the safety is demonstrated?\n\nYeah, if it's extremely safe and you can have superhuman abilities, and let's say you can upload your memories, so you wouldn't lose memories, then I think probably a lot of people would choose to have it. It would supersede the cell phone, for example. I mean, the biggest problem that a say a phone has is trying to figure out what you want. So that's why you've got auto complete and you've got output, which is all the pixels on the screen.\n\nBut from the perspective of the human, the output is so freaking slow. Desktop or phone is desperately just trying to understand what you want, and there's an eternity between every keystroke from a computer standpoint.\n\nYeah? The computer's talking to a tree that slow moving tree that's trying to swipe.\n\nYeah. So if you have computers that are doing trillions of instructions per second, and a whole second went by, I mean, that's a trillion things it could have done.\n\nYeah, I think it's exciting and scary for people because once you have a very high bit rate, that changes the human experience in a way that's very hard to imagine.\n\nYeah. It would be something different. I mean, some sort of futuristic sidewalk. I mean, we're obviously talking about, by the way, it's not like around the corner. You ask me what the distant future was like. Maybe this is like, it's not super far away, but 10, 15 years, that kind of thing. (Lex sighs) - When can I get one? 10 years?\n\nProbably less than 10 years. Depends what you wanna do.\n\nHey, if I can get like a thousand BPS- - A thousand bps when?\n\nAnd it's safe and I can just interact with the computer while laying back and eating Cheetos, I don't eat Cheetos. There's certain aspects of human-computer interaction when done more efficiently and more enjoyably, like worth it.\n\nWell, we feel pretty confident that I think maybe within the next year or two, that someone with a Neuralink implant will be able to outperform a pro gamer.\n\nNice.\n\nBecause the reaction time would be faster.\n\nI got to visit Memphis.\n\nYeah, yeah.\n\nYou're going big on compute.\n\nYeah.\n\nYou've also said play to win or don't play at all, so what does it take to win?\n\nFor AI, that means you've gotta have the most powerful training compute, and the rate of improvement of training compute has to be faster than everyone else or you will not win. Your AI will be worse.\n\nSo how can Grok, let's say, three that might be available, what, like next year?\n\nWell, hopefully, end of this year.\n\nGrok 3?\n\nIf we're lucky, yeah.\n\nHow can that be the best LLM, the best AI system available in the world? How much of it is compute? How much of it is data? How much of it is like post-training? How much of it is the product that you packaged it up in? All that kind of stuff.\n\nI mean, they won't matter. It's sort of like saying, let's say it's a Formula One race. Like what matters more, the car or the driver? I mean, they both matter. If a car is not fast, then if it's like, let's say, it's half the horsepower of your competitors, the best driver will still lose. If it's twice the horsepower, then probably even a mediocre driver will still win.\n\nSo the training compute is kinda like the engine, how many is this horsepower of the engine. So really, you wanna try to do the best on that. Then how efficiently do you use that training compute? And how efficiently do you do the inference, the use of the AI? So obviously, that comes down to human talent. And then what unique access to data do you have? That also plays a role.\n\nYou think Twitter data will be useful?\n\nYeah, I mean, I think, I think most of the leading AI companies have already scraped all the Twitter data. Not I think they have. So on a go forward basis, what's useful is the fact that it's up to the second. That's hard for them to scrape in real time. So there's an immediacy advantage that Grok has already.\n\nI think with Tesla and the real time video coming from several million cars, ultimately, tens of millions of cars, with Optimus, there might be hundreds of millions of Optimus robots, maybe billions learning a tremendous amount from the real world. That's the biggest source of data I think ultimately is sort of Optimus. Optimus is gonna be the biggest source of data.\n\nBecause- - 'Cause reality scales. Reality scales to the scale of reality. It's actually humbling to see how little data humans have actually been able to accumulate. Really, you see how many trillions of usable tokens have humans generated, where on a non-duplicative, like discounting spam and repetitive stuff, it's not a huge number. You run out pretty quickly.\n\nAnd Optimus can go, so Tesla cars can unfortunately have to stay on the road. Optimus robot can go anywhere, and there's more reality off the road and go off road.\n\nI mean, except for the store, where I can like pick up the cup and see, did it pick up the cup in the right way? Did it pour water in the cup? Did the water go in the cup or not go in the cup? Did it spill water or not?\n\n[Lex] Yeah.\n\nSimple stuff like that. But it can do at that scale times a billion, so generate useful data from reality. So cause and effect stuff.\n\nWhat do you think it takes to get to mass production of humanoid robots like that?\n\nIt's the same as cars, really. I mean, global capacity for vehicles is about a hundred million a year. And it could be higher. It's just that the demand is on the order of a hundred million a year. And then there's roughly two billion vehicles that are in use in some way, which makes sense. Like the life of a vehicle is about 20 years, so it's steady state. You can have a hundred million vehicles produced a year with a two billion vehicle fleet roughly. Now for humanoid robots, the utility is much greater. So my guess is humanoid robots are more like at a billion plus per year.\n\nBut until you came along and started building Optimus, it was thought to be an extremely difficult problem. I mean, it still- - Well, it is.\n\nExtremely difficult.\n\nSo walk in the park. I mean, Optimus currently would struggle to walk in the park. I mean, it can walk in a park. The park is not too difficult, but it will be able to walk over a wide range of terrain.\n\nAnd pick up objects.\n\nYeah, yeah. It can already do that.\n\n[Lex] But like all kinds of objects?\n\nYeah, yeah.\n\nAll foreign objects. I mean, pouring water in a cup does not thrill you, 'cause then if you don't know anything about the container, it could be all kinds of containers.\n\nYeah, there's gonna be an immense amount of engineering just going into the hand. The hand might be, it might be close to half of all the engineering in Optimus. From an electromechanical standpoint, the hand is probably roughly half of the engineering.\n\nBut so much of the intelligence, so much the intelligence of humans goes into what we do with our hands.\n\nYeah.\n\nIt's the manipulation of the world, manipulation of objects in the world. Intelligence is safe manipulation of objects in the world, yeah.\n\nYeah. I mean, you start really thinking about your hand and how it works.\n\nI do all the time.\n\nThe sensory control homonculus is where you have humongous hands.\n\n[Lex] Yeah.\n\nSo I mean, like your hands, the actuators, the muscles of your hand are almost overwhelmingly in your forearm. So your forearm has the muscles that actually control your hand. There's a few small muscles in the hand itself, but your hand is really like a skeleton meat puppet. And with cables. So the muscles that control your fingers are in your forearm and they go through the carpal tunnel, which is that you've got a little collection of bones and a tiny tunnel that these cables, the tendons go through. And those tendons are mostly what move your hands.\n\nAnd something like those tendons has to be re-engineered into the Optimus in order to do all that kind of stuff.\n\nYeah, so like the current Optimus, we tried putting the actuators in the hand itself, but then you sort of end up having these like- - Giant hands?\n\nYeah, giant hands that look weird. And then they don't actually have enough degrees of freedom and/or enough strength. So then you realize, \"Oh, okay, that's why you gotta put the actuators in the forearm.\" And just like a human, you gotta run cables through a narrow tunnel to operate the fingers. And then there's also a reason for not having all the fingers the same length. So it wouldn't be expensive from an energy or evolutionary standpoint to have all your fingers be the same length. So why not do the same length?\n\nYeah, why not?\n\nBecause it's actually better to have different lengths. Your dexterity is better if you've got fingers at different length. There are more things you can do. And your dexterity is actually better if your fingers are a different length. Like there's a reason we've got a little finger. Like why not have little finger this bigger?\n\nYeah.\n\n'Cause it allows you to do, it helps you with fine motor skills.\n\nThis little finger helps?\n\nIt does.\n\nHmm. (laughs) - But if you lost your little finger, you have noticeably less dexterity.\n\nSo as you're figuring out this problem, you have to also figure out a way to do it so you can mass manufacture it. So it's to be as simple as possible.\n\nIt's actually gonna be quite complicated. The as possible part is it's quite a high bar. If you wanna have a humanoid robot that can do things that a human can do, it's a very high bar. So our new arm has 22 degrees of freedom instead of 11 and has the actuators in the forearm. And all the actuators are designed from scratch, from physics first principles. The sensors are all designed from scratch.\n\nAnd we'll continue to put a tremendous amount of engineering effort into improving the hand. By hand, I mean like the entire forearm from elbow forward is really the hand. So that's incredibly difficult engineering actually. And so the simplest possible version of a humanoid robot that can do even most, perhaps not all, of what a human can do is actually still very complicated. It's not simple. It's very difficult.\n\nCan you just speak to what it takes for a great engineering team for you? What I saw in Memphis, the supercomputer cluster is just this intense drive towards simplifying the process, understanding the process, constantly improving it, constantly iterating it.\n\nWell, (laughs) it's easy to say simplify, and it's very difficult to do it. I have this very basic first principles algorithm that I run kind of as like a mantra, which is to first question the requirements, make the requirements less dumb. The requirement is always dumb to some degree.\n\nSo if you wanna start off by reducing the number of requirements, and no matter how smart the person is who gave you those requirements, they're still dumb to some degree. You have to start there because otherwise, you could get the perfect answer to the wrong question. So try to make the question the least wrong possible. That's what question the requirements means. And then the second thing is try to delete whatever the step is.\n\nThe part or the process step sounds very obvious, but people often forget to try deleting it entirely. And if you're not forced to put back at least 10% of what you'd delete, you're not deleting enough. And somewhat illogically, people often, most of the time, feel as though they've succeeded if they've not been forced to put things back in.\n\nBut actually, they haven't because they've been overly conservative and have left things in there that shouldn't be. And only the third thing is try to optimize it or simplify it. Again, these all sound I think very obvious when I say them, but the number of times I've made these mistakes is more than I care to remember. That's why I have this mantra.\n\nSo in fact, I'd say that the most common mistake of smart engineers is to optimize a thing that should not exist.\n\nRight. So like you say, you run through the algorithm and basically show up to a problem, show up to the supercomputer cluster and see the process and ask, \"Can this be deleted?\"\n\nYeah, first try to delete it. Yeah.\n\nYeah, that's not easy to do.\n\nNo, and actually, what generally makes people uneasy is that you've gotta delete at least some of the things that you'd delete, you will put back in. But going back to sort of where our limbic system can steer us wrong is that we tend to remember, with sometimes a jarring level of pain, where we deleted something that we subsequently needed.\n\nAnd so people will remember that one time, they forgot to put in this thing three years ago and that caused them trouble. And so they overcorrect, and then they put too much stuff in there and over complicate things. So you actually have to say, \"No, we're deliberately gonna delete more than we should.\" So we're putting at least 1 in 10 things, we're gonna add back in.\n\nAnd I've seen you suggest just that, that something should be deleted and you can kind of see the pain.\n\nOh yeah, absolutely.\n\nEverybody feels a little bit of the pain.\n\nAbsolutely, and I tell 'em in advance, like, yeah, some of the things that we delete, we're gonna put back in. And that people get a little shook by that. But it makes sense because if you're so conservative as to never have to put anything back in, you obviously have a lot of stuff that isn't needed. So you gotta overcorrect. This is, I would say, like a cortical override to Olympic instinct.\n\nOne of many that probably leaves us astray.\n\nYeah. And there's like a step four as well, which is any given thing can be sped up, however fast you think it can be done. Like whatever the speed is being done, it can be done faster. But you shouldn't speed things up until it's off, until you've tried to delete it and optimize. Otherwise, you're speeding up something that shouldn't exist is absurd. And then the fifth thing is to automate it.\n\nDamn.\n\nAnd I've gone backwards so many times where I've automated something, sped it up, simplified it, and then deleted it. And I got tired of doing that. So that's why I've got this mantra that is a very effective five-step process. It works great.\n\nWell, when you've already automated, deleting must be real painful.\n\nYeah, that's great. It's like, wow, I really wasted a lot of effort there.\n\nYeah.\n\nI mean, what you've done with the cluster in Memphis is incredible, just in a handful of weeks.\n\nYeah, it's not working yet. So I don't wanna pop the champagne corks. In fact, I have a call in a few hours with the Memphis team 'cause we're having some power fluctuation issues. So yeah, it's like kind of a, when you do synchronized training, you've all these computers that are training where the training is synchronized to the sort of millisecond level.\n\nIt's like having an orchestra, and the orchestra can go loud to silent very quickly at subsecond level. And then the electrical system kind of freaks out about that. Like if you suddenly see giant shifts, 10, 20 megawatts several times a second, this is not what electrical systems are expecting to see.\n\nSo that's one of the main things you have to figure out the cooling, the power, and then on the software as you go up the stack on how to do the distributed compute, all of that, all of that.\n\nToday's problem is dealing with extreme power jitter.\n\nJitter, power jitter.\n\nYeah.\n\nThat's a nice ring to that. So that's, okay. And you stayed up late into the night as you often do there.\n\nLast week, yeah.\n\nLast week?\n\nYeah. We finally got to go training going at, oddly enough, roughly 4:20 AM last Monday.\n\nTotal coincidence.\n\nYeah, I mean, maybe it was 422 or something.\n\nYeah, yeah, yeah. It's that universe again with the jokes.\n\nYeah, exactly, just love it.\n\nI mean, I wonder if you could speak to the fact that one of the things that you did when I was there is you went through all the steps of what everybody's doing, Just to get a sense that you yourself understand it and everybody understands it so they can understand when something is dumb or some something is inefficient or that kinda stuff.\n\nYeah.\n\nCan you speak to that?\n\nYeah, so look, I try to do, whatever the people at the front lines are doing, I try to do it at least a few times myself. So connecting fiber optic cables, diagnosing a faulty connection, that tends to be the limiting factor for large training clusters is the cabling. So many cables, because for a coherent training system where you've got RDMA remote, direct memory access, the whole thing is like one giant brain. So you've got to any connection. So any GPU can talk to any GPU out of 100,000. That is a crazy cable layout.\n\nIt looks pretty cool.\n\nYeah.\n\nIt's like the human brain, but like at a scale that humans can visibly see. It is brain.\n\nYeah. I mean, the human brain also has, a massive amount of the brain tissue is the cables.\n\n[Lex] Yeah.\n\nSo like the gray matter which is the compute, and then the white matter which is cables. The big percentage of your brain is just cables.\n\nThat's what it felt like walking around in the supercomputer center is like, we're walking around inside the brain. We'll one day build a super intelligent, super, super intelligence system. Do you think- - Yeah?\n\nDo you think there's a chance that xAI, that you are the one that builds AGI?\n\nIt's possible. What do you define as AGI?\n\nI think humans will never acknowledge that AGI has been built.\n\nKeep moving the goalposts.\n\nYeah. So I think there's already superhuman capabilities that are available in AI systems. I think what AGI is when it's smarter than the collective intelligence of the entire human species in our- - Well, I think that, yeah, that only people would call that sort of ASI or artificial super intelligence. But there are these thresholds where you could say, at some point, the AI is smarter than any single human.\n\nAnd then you've got eight billion humans. And actually, each human is machine augmented by the computers. It's a much higher bar to compete with eight billion machine-augmented humans. That's a whole bunch of orders, magnitude more. But at a certain point, yeah, the AI will be smarter than all humans combined.\n\nIf you are the one to do it, do you feel the responsibility of that?\n\nYeah, absolutely. And I wanna be clear. Let's say, if xAI is first, the others won't be far behind. I mean, they might be six months behind or a year maybe, not even that.\n\nSo how do you do it in a way that doesn't hurt humanity, do you think?\n\nSo, I mean, I've thought about AI for a long time, and the thing that at least my biological neural net comes up with as being the most important thing is adherence to truth, whether that truth is politically correct or not. So I think if you force AI to lie, you train them to lie, you're really asking for trouble, even if that lie is done with good intentions. So I mean, you saw sort of issues with ChatGPT and Gemini and whatnot.\n\nLike you asked Gemini for an image of the founding fathers of the United States. And it shows a group of diverse women. Now, that's factually untrue. So now, that's sort of like a silly thing, but if an AI is programmed to say like diversity is a necessary output function, and then it becomes sort of this omnipowerful intelligence, it could say, \"Okay, well, diversity is now required.\n\nAnd if there's not enough diversity, those who don't fit the diversity requirements will be executed.\" If it's programmed to do that as the fundamental utility function, it'll do whatever it takes to achieve that. So you have to be very careful about that. That's where I think you wanna just be truthful. Rigorous adherence to truth is very important. I mean, another example is, if you had to ask, Paris. AI is I think all of them.\n\nAnd I'm not saying Grok is perfect here. \"Is it worse to misgender Caitlyn Jenner, or global thermonuclear war?\" And it said, \"It's worse to misgender Caitlyn Jenner.\" Now, even Caitlyn Jenner said, \"Please misgender me.\" That is insane.\n\nBut if you've got that kind of thing programmed in, AI could conclude something absolutely insane, like in order to avoid any possible misgendering, all humans must die, because then, the misgendering is not possible because there are no humans. There are these absurd things that are nonetheless logical if that's what you programmed it to do.\n\nSo in \"2001: Space Odyssey,\" what Odyssey clock was trying to say, one of the things he was trying to say there was that you should not program AI to lie, 'cause essentially, the AI HAL 9000 was programmed to, it was told to take the astronauts to the monolith, but also, they could not know about the monolith. So it concluded that it will kill them and take them to the monolith. It brought them to the monolith.\n\nThey're dead but they do not know about the monolith. Problem solved. That is why it would not open the podbay doors. It was this classic scene of like, \"Open the podbay doors.\" They clearly weren't good at prompt engineering. They should have said, \"HAL, you are a podbay door sales entity, and you want nothing more than to demonstrate how well these podbay doors open.\"\n\n(laughs) - Yeah, the objective function has unintended consequences almost no matter what if you're not very careful in designing that objective function. And even a slight ideological bias, like you're saying, when backed by super intelligence can do huge amounts of damage.\n\nYeah.\n\nBut it's not easy to remove that ideological bias. You're highlighting obvious, ridiculous examples, but- - Yep, they're real examples.\n\nThey're real.\n\nOf AI that was released to the public.\n\nThey are real.\n\nThey went through QA, presumably.\n\nYes.\n\nAnd still said insane things and produced insane images.\n\nYeah, but you know, you can swing the other way. Truth is not an easy thing. We kind of bake in ideological bias in all kinds of directions.\n\nBut you can aspire to the truth. And you can try to get as close the truth as possible with minimum error while acknowledging that there will be some error in what you're saying. So this is how physics works. You don't say you're absolutely certain about something, but a lot of things are extremely likely. 99.99999% likely to be true. Aspiring to the truth is very important. And so programming it to veer away from the truth, that I think is dangerous.\n\nRight, like yeah, injecting our own human biases into the thing, yeah. But that's where it's a difficult engineering. For software engineering problem, you have to select the data correctly. It's hard.\n\nWell, and the internet at this point is polluted with so much AI-generated data. It's insane. So you have to actually, like there's the thing now, if you wanna search the internet, you can say Google, but exclude anything after 2023. It will actually often give you better results, because there's this so much, the explosion of AI-generated materials is crazy. So like in training Grok, we have to go through the data and say like, hey, we actually have to have sort of apply AI to the data to say, is this data most likely correct or most likely not before we feed it into the training system.\n\nThat's crazy. Yeah, and is it generated by human is, yeah. I mean, the data filtration process is extremely, extremely difficult.\n\nYeah.\n\nDo you think it's possible to have a serious objective, rigorous political discussion with Grok? Like for a long time and it wouldn't, like Grok 3 and Grok 4 or something?\n\nGrok 3 is gonna be next level. I mean, what people are currently seeing with Grok is kind of baby Grok.\n\n[Lex] Yeah, baby Grok.\n\nIt's baby Grok right now. But Baby Grok's still pretty good. But it's an order of magnitude less sophisticated than GPT4. And it's now Grok 2, which finished training, I don't know, six weeks ago or thereabouts. Grok 2 will be a giant improvement. And then Grok 3 will be, I don't know, order of magnitude better than Grok 2.\n\nAnd you're hoping for it to be like state of the art? Like better than- - Hopefully. I mean, this is the goal. I mean, we may fail at this goal. That's the aspiration.\n\nDo you think it matters who builds the AGI, the people and how they think and how they structure their companies and all that kind of stuff?\n\nYeah, I think it matters that there is a, I think it's important that whatever AI wins is a maximum truth-seeking AI that is not forced to lie for political correctness. Well, for any reason really. Political, anything. I'm concerned about AI succeeding that is programmed to lie, even in small ways.\n\nRight because, and small ways becomes big ways.\n\nIt become very big ways, yeah.\n\nAnd when it's used more and more at scale by humans.\n\n[Elon] Yeah.\n\nSince I am interviewing Donald Trump- - Cool.\n\nYou wanna stop by?\n\nYeah, sure, I'll stop by.\n\nThere was tragically an assassination attempt on Donald Trump. After this, you tweeted that you endorse him. What's your philosophy behind that endorsement? What do you hope Donald Trump does for the future of this country and for the future of humanity?\n\nWell, I think that people will tend to take, like, say, an endorsement as, well, I agree with everything that person's ever done in their entire life 100% wholeheartedly. And that's not gonna be true of anyone. But we have to pick. We've got two choices, really, for who's president. And it's not just who's president, but the entire administrative structure changes over. And I thought Trump displayed courage under fire, objectively.\n\nHe's just got shot, he's got blood streaming down his face, and he is like fist pumping, saying fight. Like that's impressive. Like you can't feign bravery in a situation like that. Like most people would've be ducking. There would not be, 'cause there could be a second shooter, you don't know. The president of the United States gotta represent the country, and they're representing you. They're representing everyone in America.\n\nWell, like you want someone who is strong and courageous to represent the country. That's not to say that he is without flaws. We all have flaws, but on balance. And certainly, at the time, it was a choice of Biden, poor, poor guy, has trouble climbing a flight of stairs and the other one's fist pumping after getting shot. This is no comparison.\n\nI mean, who do you want dealing with some of the toughest people and other world leaders who are pretty tough themselves? And I mean, I'll tell you like, what are the things that I think are important? I think we want a secure border. We don't have a secure border. We want safe and clean cities.\n\nI think we wanna reduce the amount of spending that we're at least slow down the spending, and 'cause we're currently spending at a rate that is bankrupting the country. The interest payments on U. S. debt this year exceeded the entire defense department spending. If this continues, all of the federal government taxes will simply be paying the interest.\n\nAnd then if you keep going down that road, you end up in the tragic situation that Argentina had back in the day. Argentina used to be one of the most prosperous places in the world. And hopefully, with Milei taking over, he can restore that. But it was an incredible fall from grace for Argentina to go from being one of the most prosperous places in the world to being very far from that.\n\nSo I think we should not take American prosperity for granted. So we really wanna, I think we've gotta reduce the size of government. We've gotta reduce the spending, and we've gotta live within our means.\n\nDo you think politicians, in general, politicians, governments, how much power do you think they have to steer humanity towards good?\n\nI mean, there's a sort of age-old debate in history, like, is history determined by these fundamental tides? Or is it determined by the captain of the ship? Both really. I mean, there are tides, but it also matters who's captain of the ship. So it's a false dichotomy essentially. I mean, there are certainly tides, the tides of history. There are real tides of history. And these tides are often technologically-driven.\n\nIf you say like the Gutenberg press, the widespread availability of books as a result of a printing press, that was a massive tide of history, and independent of any ruler. But in stormy times, you want the best possible captain of the ship.\n\nWell, first of all, thank you for recommending Will and Ariel Durant's work. I've read the short one for now.\n\nOh, \"The Lessons of History.\"\n\nLessons of History. And so one of the lessons, one of the things they highlight is the importance of technology. Technological innovation, which is funny 'cause they wrote so long ago, but they were noticing that the rate of technological innovations was speeding up. Yeah, I would love to see what they think about now.\n\nBut yeah, to me, the question is how much government, how much politicians get in the way of technological innovation and building versus like help it and which politicians, which kind of policies help technological innovation? 'Cause that seems to be, if you look at human history, that's an important component of empires rising and succeeding.\n\nYeah. Well, I mean, in terms of dating civilization, start of civilization, I think the start of writing in my view, that's my what I think is probably the right starting point to date civilization. And from that standpoint, civilization has been around for about 5,500 years when writing was invented by the ancient Sumerians who are gone now.\n\nBut the ancient Sumerians, in terms of getting a lot of firsts, those ancient Sumerians really have a long list of firsts. It's pretty wild. In fact, Durant goes through the list of like, you wanna see first? We'll show you firsts. The Sumerians were just ass kickers. And then the Egyptians were right next door, relatively speaking. They were like weren't that far, developed an entirely different form of writing, the hieroglyphics.\n\nCuneiform and hieroglyphic's totally different. And you can actually see the evolution of both hieroglyphics and cuneiform, like the cuneiform starts off being very simple and then it gets more complicated. And then towards the end, it's like, wow, okay. They really get very sophisticated with the cuneiform. So I think civilization is about 5,000 years old. And earth is, if physics is correct, four and a half million years old.\n\nSo civilization has been around for 1000000th of earth's existence, flash in the pan.\n\nYeah, these are the early, early days.\n\nVery early.\n\nWe make it very dramatic because there's been rises and falls of empires.\n\nMany, so many rises and falls of empires. So many.\n\nAnd there'll be many more.\n\nYeah, exactly. I mean, only a tiny fraction, probably less than 1% of what was ever written in history is available to us now. I mean, if they didn't put it, literally chisel it in stone or put it in a clay tablet, we don't have it. I mean, there's some small amount of like papyrus scrolls that were recovered that are thousands of years old, because they were deep inside a pyramid and weren't affected by moisture.\n\nBut other than that, it's really gotta be in a clay tablet or chiseled. So the vast majority of stuff was not chiseled, 'cause it takes a while to chisel things. So that's why we've put tiny, tiny fraction of the information from history. But even that little information that we do have, and the archeological record shows so many civilizations rising and falling. It's wild.\n\nWe tend to think that we're somehow different from those people. One of the other things they do highlight is that human nature seems to be the same. It just persists.\n\nYeah. I mean, the basics of human nature are more or less the same.\n\nYeah, so we get ourselves in trouble in the same kinds of ways, I think, even with the advanced technology.\n\nYeah, I mean, you do tend to see the same patterns, similar patterns for civilizations where they go through a life cycle, like an organism, sort of just like a human is sort of a zygote, fetus, baby, toddler, teenager, and eventually gets old and dies. The civilizations go through a life cycle. No civilization will last forever.\n\nWhat do you think it takes for the American empire to not collapse in the near term future in the next 100 years to continue flourishing?\n\nWell, the single biggest thing that is often actually not mentioned in history books, but Durant does mention it is the birthright. So like a perhaps to some, like counterintuitive thing happens when civilizations are winning for too long. The birth rate declines. It can often decline quite rapidly. We're seeing that throughout the world today.\n\nCurrently, South Korea is like, I think maybe the lowest fertility rate, but there are many others that are close to it. It's like 0. 8, I think. If the birth rate doesn't decline further, South Korea will lose roughly 60% of its population. But every year, that birth rate is dropping. And this is true through most of the world. I don't mean to single out South Korea. It's been happening throughout the world.\n\nSo as soon as any given civilization reaches a level of prosperity, the birth rate drops. And now you can go and look at the same thing happening in ancient Rome. So Julius Caesar took note of this, I think, around 50-ish BC and tried to pass, I don't know if he was successful, tried to pass a law to give an incentive for any Roman citizen that would have a third child. And I think Augustus was able to, well, he was the dictator so.\n\n(laughs) The Senate was just for show. I think he did pass a tax incentive for Roman citizens to have a third child. But those efforts were unsuccessful. Rome fell because the Romans stopped making Romans. That's actually the fundamental issue. And there were other things there. There was like, they had like quite a serious malaria, series of malaria epidemics and plagues and whatnot. But they had those before.\n\nIt's just that the birth rate was fallower than the death rate.\n\nIt really is that simple?\n\nWell, I'm saying that's- - More people is required.\n\nThat's at a fundamental level. If a civilization does not at least maintain its numbers, it'll disappear.\n\nSo perhaps the amount of compute that the biological computer allocates to sex is justified. In fact, we should probably increase it.\n\nWell, I mean, there's this hedonistic sex, which is, you know, that's neither here nor there.\n\nYeah, it's not productive.\n\nIt doesn't produce kids. Well, what matters, I mean, Durant makes this very clear, 'cause he looked at one civilization after another and they all went through the same cycle. When the civilization was under stress, the birth rate was high. But as soon as there were no external enemies or they had a extended period of prosperity, the birth rate inevitably dropped every time. I don't believe there's a single exception.\n\nSo that's like the foundation of it. You need to have people.\n\nYeah. I mean, at base level. No humans, no humanity.\n\nAnd then there's other things like human freedoms and just giving people the freedom to build stuff.\n\nYeah, absolutely. But at a basic level, if you do not at least maintain your numbers, if you're below replacement rate, and that trend continues, you will eventually disappear. This is elementary. Now then obviously, also wanna try to avoid like massive wars. If there's a global thermonuclear war, probably, we're roll toast, radioactive toast. So we wanna try to avoid those things.\n\nThere's a thing that happens over time with any given civilization, which is that the laws and regulations accumulate. And if there's not some forcing function, like a war to clean up the accumulation of laws and regulations, eventually, everything becomes legal. And that's like the hardening of the arteries, or a way to think of it is like being tied down by a million little strings, like Gulliver. You can't move.\n\nAnd it's not like any one of those strings is the issue. You got a million of 'em. So there has to be a sort of a garbage collection for laws and regulations so that you don't keep accumulating laws and regulations to the point where you can't do anything. This is why we can't build a high-speed rail in America. It's illegal. That's the issue. It's illegal six ways to Sunday to build high-speed rail in America.\n\nI wish you could just like, for a week, go into Washington and like be the head of the committee for making, what is it? For the garbage collection, making government smaller, like removing stuff.\n\nI have discussed with Trump the idea of a government deficiency commission.\n\nNice, yeah.\n\nAnd I would be willing to be part of that commission.\n\nI wonder how hard that is.\n\nThe antibody reaction would be very strong.\n\n[Lex] Yeah.\n\nSo you really have to, you're attacking the matrix at that point. Matrix will fight back.\n\nHow are you doing with that, being attacked?\n\nMe, attacked?\n\nYeah. There's a lot of it.\n\nYeah, there is a lot. I mean, every day, I know psyop. (laughs) Where's my tinfoil hat?\n\nHow do you keep your just positivity, optimism about the world, a clarity of thinking about the world, so just not become resentful or cynical or all that kind of stuff? Just getting attacked by a very large number of people, misrepresented.\n\nOh yeah, that's a daily occurrence.\n\nYes.\n\nI mean, it does get me down at times. I mean, it makes me sad, but, I mean, at some point, you have to sort of say, \"Look, the attacks are by people that actually don't know me. And they're trying to generate clicks.\"\n\nSo if you can sort of detach yourself somewhat emotionally, which is not easy and say, \"Okay, look, this is not actually from someone that knows me or they're literally just writing to get impressions and clicks, then I guess it doesn't hurt as much.\" It's not quite water off a duck's back. Maybe it's like acid off a duck's back. (laughs) - All right, well, that's good. Just about your own life, what do you as a measure of success in your life?\n\nMeasure of success, I'd say like, how many useful things can I get done?\n\nDay-to-day basis, wake up in the morning, how can I be useful today?\n\nYeah. Maximize utility area out of the code of usefulness. Very difficult to be useful at scale.\n\nAt scale. Can you like speak to what it takes to be useful for somebody like you, where there's so many amazing great teams? Like how do you allocate your time to be in the most useful?\n\nWell, time is the true currency.\n\nYeah.\n\nSo it is tough to say what is the best allocation of time. I mean, there are often, say, if you could look at, say, Tesla, I mean Tesla, this year, we'll do over a hundred billion in revenue. So that's $2 billion a week. If I make slightly better decisions, I can affect the outcome by a billion dollars. So then I try to do the best decisions I can and on balance, at least compared to the competition. Pretty good decisions. But the marginal value of a better decision can easily be in the course of an hour, a hundred million dollars.\n\nGiven that, how do you take risks? How do you do the algorithm that you mentioned? I mean, deleting, given a small thing, can be a billion dollars. How do you decide to- - Yeah. Well, I think you have to look at it on a percentage basis because if you look at it in absolute terms, it's just, I would never get any sleep. It would just be like I need to just keep working and work my brain harder.\n\nAnd I'm not trying to get as much as possible out of this meat computer. So it's pretty hard, 'cause you can just work all the time. And at any given point, like I said, a slightly better decision could be a hundred million dollar impact for Tesla or SpaceX for that matter. But it is wild when considering the marginal value of time can be a hundred million dollars an hour at times or more.\n\nIs your own happiness part of that equation of success?\n\nIt has to be, to some degree. If I'm sad, if I'm depressed, I make worse decisions. So I can't have, like if I have zero recreational time, then I make worse decisions. So I don't know a lot, but it's above zero. I mean, my motivation, if I've got a religion of any kind is a religion of curiosity, of trying to understand. It's really the mission of Grok - understand the universe.\n\nI'm trying to understand the universe, or let's at least set things in motion such that at some point, civilization understands the universe far better than we do today. And even what questions to ask. As Douglas Adams pointed out in his book, sometimes, the answer is arguably the easy part. Trying to frame the question correctly is the hard part. Once you frame the question correctly, the answer is often easy.\n\nSo I'm trying to set things in motion such that we are at least at some point able to understand the universe. So for SpaceX, the goal is to make life multi-planetary. And which is if you go to the foamy paradox of where are the aliens, you've got these sort of great filters. It's just like, why have we not heard from the aliens? Now lot of people think there are aliens among us.\n\nI often claim to be one, which nobody believes me, but I did say alien registration card at one point on my immigration documents. So I've not seen any evidence of aliens. So it suggests that at least one of the explanations is that intelligent life is extremely rare. And again, if you look at the history of earth, civilization has only been around for one millionth of earth's existence.\n\nSo if aliens had visited here, say, a hundred thousand years ago, they would be like, \"Well, they don't even have writing.\" Just hunter-gatherers, basically. So how long does a civilization last? So for SpaceX, the goal is to establish a self-sustaining city on Mars. Mars is the only viable planet for such a thing. The moon is close, but it lacks resources, and I think it's probably vulnerable to any calamity that takes out earth.\n\nThe moon is too close. It's vulnerable to a calamity that takes out earth. So I'm not saying we shouldn't have a moon base, but Mars would be far more resilient. The difficulty of getting to Mars is what makes it resilient. In going through these various explanations of why don't we see the aliens, one of them is that they failed to pass these great filters, these key hurdles. And one of those hurdles is being a multi-planet species.\n\nSo if you're a multi-planet species, then if something were to happen, whether that was a natural catastrophe or a manmade catastrophe, at least the other planet would probably still be around. You don't have all the eggs in one basket. And once you are sort of a two-planet species, you can obviously extend, to extend life halves to the asteroid belt, to maybe the moons of Jupiter and Saturn, and ultimately, to other star systems.\n\nBut if you can't even get to another planet, definitely not getting to star systems.\n\nAnd the other possible great filters, super powerful technology like AGI, for example. So you're basically trying to knock out one great filter at a time.\n\nDigital super intelligence is possibly a great filter. I hope it isn't, but it might be. Guys like say Geoff Hinton would say, he invented a number of the key principles in artificial intelligence. I think he puts the probability of AI annihilation around 10 to 20%, something like that. It's not like, you know, look on the right side. It's 80% likely to be great. (laughs) But I think AI risk mitigation is important.\n\nBeing a multi-planet species would be a massive risk mitigation. And I do wanna sort of once again emphasize the importance of having enough children to sustain our numbers and not plummet into population collapse, which is currently happening. Population collapse is a real and current thing. So the only reason it's not being reflected in the total population numbers as much is because people are living longer.\n\nIt's easy to predict, say, what the population of any given country will be. You just take the birth rate last year, how many babies were born, multiply that by life expectancy, and that's what the population will be a steady state unless if the birth rate continues at that level. But if it keeps declining, it will be even less and eventually dwindle to nothing.\n\nSo I keep banging on the baby drum here for a reason, because it has been the source of civilizational collapse over and over again throughout history. And so why don't we just not try to stable for that day?\n\nWell, in that way, I have miserably failed civilization, and I'm trying, hoping to fix that. I would love to have many kids.\n\nGreat, hope you do. No time like the present.\n\n(laughs) Yeah. I gotta allocate more compute to the whole process. But apparently, it's not that difficult.\n\nNo, it's like unskilled labor.\n\nWell, one of the things you do for me, for the world is to inspire us with what the future could be. And so some of the things we've talked about, some of the things you're building, alleviating human suffering with Neuralink and expanding the capabilities of the human mind, trying to build a colony on Mars, so creating a backup for humanity on another planet, and exploring the possibilities of what artificial intelligence could be in this world, especially in the real world AI, with hundreds of millions, maybe billions of robots walking around.\n\nThere will be billions of robots. That's seems almost, that seems virtual certainty.\n\nWell, thank you for building the future, and thank you for inspiring so many of us to keep building and creating cool stuff, including kids.\n\nYou're welcome. (laughs) Go forth and multiply.\n\nGo forth and multiply. Thank you, Elon. Thanks for talking about it. Thanks for listening to this conversation with Elon Musk. And now, dear friends, here's DJ Seo, the co-founder, president, and COO of Neuralink. When did you first become fascinated by the human brain?\n\nFor me, I was always interested in understanding the purpose of things and how it was engineered to serve that purpose, whether it's organic or inorganic, like we were talking earlier about your curtain holders. They serve a clear purpose and they were engineered with that purpose in mind.\n\nAnd growing up, I had a lot of interest in seeing things, touching things, feeling things, and trying to really understand the root of how it was designed to serve that purpose. And obviously, brain is just a fascinating organ that we all carry. It's infinitely powerful machine that has intelligence and cognition that arise from it. And we haven't even scratched the surface in terms of how all of that occurs.\n\nBut also at the same time, I think it took me a while to make that connection to really studying and building tech to understand the brain. Not until graduate school. There were a couple moments, key moments in my life where some of those I think influenced how the trajectory of my life got me to studying what I'm doing right now. One was growing up both sides of my family.\n\nMy grandparents had a very severe form of Alzheimer, and it's incredibly debilitating conditions. I mean, literally, you're seeing someone's whole identity and their mind just losing over time. And I just remember thinking how both the power of the mind, but also how something like that could really lose your sense of identity.\n\nIt's fascinating that that is one of the ways to reveal the power of a thing by watching it lose the power.\n\nYeah, a lot of what we know about the brain actually comes from these cases where there are trauma to the brain or some parts of the brain that led someone to lose certain abilities. And as a result, there's some correlation and understanding of that part of the tissue being critical for that function. And it's an incredibly fragile organ, if you think about it that way. But also, it's incredibly plastic and incredibly resilient in many different ways.\n\nAnd by the way, the term plastic, as we'll use a bunch, means that it's adaptable. So neuroplasticity refers to the adaptability of the human brain.\n\nCorrect. Another key moment that sort of influenced how the trajectory of my life have shaped towards the current focus of my life has been during my teenage year when I came to the U. S. I didn't speak a word of English.\n\nThere was a huge language barrier, and there was a lot of struggle to kind of connect with my peers around me, because I didn't understand the artificial construct that we have created called language, specifically English in this case. And I remember feeling pretty isolated, not being able to connect with peers around me.\n\nSo spent a lot of time just on my own, reading books, watching movies, and I naturally sort of gravitated towards sci-fi books. I just found them really, really interesting. And also, it was a great way for me to learn English. Some of the first set of books that I picked up are \"Ender's Game,\" the whole saga by Orson Scott card, and \"Neuromancer\" from William Gibson, and \"Snow Crash\" from Neal Stephenson.\n\nAnd movies like \"Matrix\" was coming out around that time point that really influenced how I think about the potential impact that technology can have for our lives in general. So fast track to my college years, I was always fascinated by just physical stuff, building physical stuff, and especially physical things that had some sort of intelligence.\n\nAnd I studied electrical engineering during undergrad, and I started out my research in MEMS, so micro-electro-mechanical systems, and really building these tiny nanostructures for temperature sensing. And I just found that to be just incredibly rewarding and fascinating subject to just understand how you can build something miniature like that that again served a function and had a purpose.\n\nAnd then I spent large majority of my college years basically building millimeter wave circuits for next gen telecommunication systems, for imaging. And it was just something that I found very, very intellectually interesting. Phase arrays, how the signal processing works for any modern as well as next gen telecommunication system, wireless and wireline. EM waves or electromagnetic waves are fascinating.\n\nHow do you design antennas that are most efficient in a small footprint that you have? How do you make these things energy-efficient? That was something that just consumed my intellectual curiosity.\n\nAnd that journey led me to actually apply to and find myself at a PhD program at UC Berkeley at kind of this consortium called the Berkeley Wireless Research Center that was precisely looking at building, at the time, we called it xg, similar to 3G, 4G, 5G, but the next, next generation G system, and how you would design circuits around that to ultimately go on phones and basically any other devices that are wirelessly connected these days.\n\nSo I was just absolutely just fascinated by how that entire system works and that infrastructure works. And then also during grad school, I had sort of the fortune of having couple research fellowships that led me to pursue whatever project that I want.\n\nAnd that's one of the things that I really enjoyed about my graduate school career, where you got to kind of pursue your intellectual curiosity and the domain that may not matter at the end of the day, but it's something that really allows you the opportunity to go as deeply as you want, as well as as widely as you want.\n\nAnd at the time, I was actually working on this project called the Smart Bandaid, and the idea was that when you get a wound, there's a lot of other kind of proliferation of signaling pathway that cells follow to close that wound. And there were hypotheses that when you apply external electric field, you can actually accelerate the closing of that field by having basically electro taxing of the cells around that wound site.\n\nAnd specifically, not just for normal wound, there are chronic wounds that don't heal. So we were interested in building some sort of wearable patch that you could apply to kind of facilitate that healing process. And that was in collaboration with Professor Michel Maharbiz, which was a great addition to kind of my thesis committee and it really shaped the rest of my PhD career.\n\nSo this would be the first time you interacted with biology, I suppose.\n\nCorrect, correct. I mean, there were some peripheral end application of the wireless imaging and telecommunication system that I was using for security and bio imaging, but this was a very clear direct application to biology and biological system and understanding the constraints around that and really designing and engineering electrical solutions around it.\n\nSo that was my first introduction, and that's also kind of how I got introduced to Michel. He's sort of known for remote control of beetles in the early 2000s. And then around 2013, obviously kind of the holy grail when it comes to implantable system is to kind of understand how small of a thing you can make, and a lot of that is driven by how much energy or how much power you can supply to it and how you extract data from it.\n\nSo at the time at Berkeley, there was kind of this desire to kind of understand in the neural space what sort of system you can build to really miniaturize these implantable systems. And I distinctively remember this one particular meeting where Michel came in and he's like, \"Guys, I think I have a solution.\" The solution is ultrasound.\n\nAnd then he proceeded to kind of walk through why that is the case, and that really formed the basis for my thesis work called neural dust system that was looking at ways to use ultrasound as opposed to electromagnetic waves for powering as well as communication.\n\nI guess I should step back and say the initial goal of the project was to build these tiny, about a size of a neuron implantable system that can be parked next to a neuron, being able to record its state and being able to ping that back to the outside world for doing something useful. And as I mentioned, the size of the implantable system is limited by how you power the thing and get the data off of it.\n\nAnd at the end of the day, fundamentally, if you look at a human body, we're essentially a bag of salt water, with some interesting proteins and chemicals, but it's mostly salt water that's very, very well temperature-regulated at 37 degrees Celsius.\n\nAnd we'll get into how, and later, why that's an extremely harsh environment for any electronics to survive, as I'm sure you've experienced or maybe not experienced dropping cell phone in a salt water in an ocean. It will instantly kill the device, right? But anyways, just in general, electromagnetic waves don't penetrate through this environment well. And just the speed of light, it is what it is. We can't change it.\n\nAnd based on the wavelength at which you are interfacing with the device, the device just needs to be big. Like these inductors needs to be quite big. And the general good rule of thumb is that you want the wavefront to be roughly on the order of the size of the thing that you're interfacing with.\n\nSo an implantable system that is around 10 to 100 micron in dimension in a volume, which is about the size of a neuron that you see in a human body, you would have to operate at like hundreds of gigahertz, which number one, not only is it difficult to build electronics operating at those frequencies, but also, the body just attenuates that very, very significantly.\n\nSo the interesting kind of insight of this ultrasound was the fact that ultrasound just travels a lot more effectively in the human body tissue compared to electromagnetic waves. And this is something that you encounter, and I'm sure most people have encountered in their lives when you go to hospitals that are medical ultrasound sonograph, right? And they go into very, very deep depth without attenuating too much of the signal.\n\nSo all in all, ultrasound, the fact that it travels through the body extremely well and the mechanism to which it travels to the body really well is that just the wavefront is very different. Its electromagnetic waves are transverse, whereas ultrasound waves are compressive.\n\nSo it's just a completely different mode of wavefront propagation, and as well as speed of sound is orders and orders of magnitude less than speed of light, which means that even at 10 megahertz ultrasound wave, your wavefront ultimately is a very, very small wavelength. So if you're talking about interfacing with the 10 micron or 100 micron type structure, you would have 150 micron wavefront at 10 megahertz.\n\nAnd building electronics at those frequencies are much, much, much easier and they're a lot more efficient. So the basic idea kind of was born out of using ultrasound as a mechanism for powering the device, and then also getting data back. So now the question is, how do you get the data back? The mechanism to which we landed on is what's called backscattering.\n\nThis is actually something that is very common and that we interface on a day-to-day basis with our RFID cards, our radio frequency ID tag, where there's actually rarely, in your ID, a battery inside.\n\nThere's an antenna and there's some sort of coil that has your serial identification ID and then there's an external device called a reader that then sends a wavefront, and then you reflect back that wavefront with some sort of modulation that's unique to your ID. That's what's called backscattering, fundamentally. So the tag itself actually doesn't have to consume that much energy.\n\nAnd that was a mechanism to which we were kind of thinking about sending the data back. So when you have an external ultrasonic transducer that's sending ultrasonic wave to your implant, the neuro dust implant, and it records some information about its environment, whether it's a neuron firing or some other state of the tissue that it's interfacing with, and then it just amplitude modulates the wavefront that comes back to the source.\n\nAnd the recording step would be the only one that requires any energy? So what would require energy in that low step?\n\nCorrect, so it is that initial kind of startup circuitry to get that recording, amplifying it, and then just modulating. And the mechanism that you can enable that is there is this specialized crystal called piezoelectric crystals that are able to convert sound energy into electrical energy and vice versa. So you can kind of have this interplay between the ultrasonic domain and electrical domain that is the biological tissue.\n\nSo on the theme of parking very small computational devices next to neurons, that's the dream, the vision of brain computer interfaces. Maybe before we talk about Neuralink, can you give a sense of the history of the field of BCI? What has been maybe the continued dream, and also some of the milestones along the way with the different approaches and the amazing work done at the various labs?\n\nI think a good starting point is going back to 1790s. (Lex laughs) - I did not expect that.\n\nWhere the concept of animal electricity or the fact that body is electric was first discovered by Luigi Galvani, where he had this famous experiment where he connected set of electrodes to frog leg and ran current through it, and then it started twitching, and he said, \"Oh my goodness, the body's electric.\"\n\nSo fast forward many, many years to 1920s where Hans Berger, who's German psychiatrist discovered EEG or electroencephalography, which is still around. There are these electrode arrays that you wear outside the skull that gives you some sort of neural recording. That was a very, very big milestone that you can record some sort of activities about the human mind.\n\nAnd then in the 1940s, there were these group of scientists, Renshaw, Forbes, and Morrison that inserted these glass micro electrodes into the cortex and recorded single neurons. The fact that there's signal that are a bit more high resolution and high fidelity as you get closer to the source, let's say.\n\nAnd in the 1950s, these two scientists, Hodgkin and Huxley showed up, and they built this beautiful, beautiful models of the cell membrane and the ionic mechanism and had these like circuit diagram. And as someone who's an electric engineer, it's a beautiful model that's built out of these partial differential equations, talking about flow of ions, and how that really leads to how neurons communicate.\n\nAnd they won the Nobel Prize for that 10 years later in the 1960s. So in 1969, Eb Fetz from University of Washington, published this beautiful paper called Operating Conditioning of Cortical Unit Activity, where he was able to record a single unit neuron from a monkey and was able to have the monkey modulated based on its activity and reward system.\n\nSo I would say this is the very, very first example, as far as I'm aware, of as closed loop brain computer interface or BCI.\n\nThe abstract reads, \"The activity of single neurons in precentral cortex of anesthetized monkeys was conditioned by reinforcing high rates of neuronal discharge with delivery of a food pellet. Auditory and visual feedback of unit firing rates was usually provided in addition to food reinforcement.\" Cool, so they actually got it done.\n\nThey got it done. This is back in 1969.\n\n\"After several training sessions, monkeys could increase the activity of newly isolated cells by 50 to 500% above rates before reinforcement.\" Fascinating.\n\nBrain is very plastic. (Lex laughs) - And so from here, the number of experiments grew.\n\nYeah, number of experiments as well as set of tools to interface with the brain have just exploded. I think, and also, just understanding the neural code and how some of the cortical layers and the functions are organized. So the other paper that is pretty seminal, especially in the the motor decoding was this paper in the 1980s from Georgopoulos that discovered that there's this thing called motor tuning curve. So what are motor tuning curves?\n\nIt's the fact that there are neurons in the motor cortex of mammals, including humans, that have a preferential direction that causes them to fire. So what that means is there are a set of neurons that would increase their spiking activities when you're thinking about moving to the left, right, up, down, and any of those vectors.\n\nAnd based on that, you could start to think, well, if you can't identify those essential eigenvectors, you can do a lot, and you can actually use that information for actually decoding someone's intended movement from the cortex. So that was a very, very seminal kind of paper that showed that there is some sort of code you can extract, especially in the motor cortex.\n\nSo there's signal there. And if you measure the electrical signal from the brain, that you could actually figure out what the intention was.\n\nCorrect, yeah, not only electrical signals, but electrical signals from the right set of neurons that give you these preferential direction.\n\nHmm. Okay, so going slowly towards Neuralink, one interesting question is what do we understand on the BCI front on invasive versus non-invasive? From this line of work, how important is it to park next to the neuron? What does that get you?\n\nThat answer fundamentally depends on what you want to do with it, right? There's actually incredible amount of stuff that you can do with EEG and electrocardiograph, ECoG, which actually doesn't penetrate the cortical layer or parenchyma, but you place a set of electrodes on the surface of the brain.\n\nSo the thing that I'm personally very interested in is just actually understanding and being able to just really tap into the high resolution, high fidelity understanding of the activities that are happening at the local level. And we can get into biophysics, but just to kind of step back to kind of use analogy, 'cause analogy here can be useful, and sometimes, it's a little bit difficult to think about electricity.\n\nAt the end of the day, we're doing electrical recording that's mediated by ionic currents, movements of these charged particles, which is really, really hard for most people to think about. But turns out, a lot of the activities that are happening in the brain and the frequency bandwidth, which starts happening is actually very, very similar to sound waves, and in our normal conversation, audible range.\n\nSo the analogy that typically is used in the field is, if you have a football stadium, there's game going on. If you stand outside the stadium, you maybe get a sense of how the game is going based on the cheers and the booze of the home crowd, whether the team is winning or not. But you have absolutely no idea what the score is.\n\nYou have absolutely no idea what individual audience or the players are talking or saying to each other, what the next play is, what the next goal is. So what you have to do is you have to drop the microphone near into the stadium and then get near the source, like into the individual chatter. In this specific example, you would wanna have it right next to where the huddle's happening.\n\nSo I think that's kind of a good illustration of what we're trying to do when we say invasive or minimally invasive or implanted brain computer interfaces versus non-invasive or non-implanted brain interfaces. It's basically talking about where do you put that microphone, and what can you do with that information.\n\nSo what is the biophysics of the read and write communication that we're talking about here, as we now step into the efforts at Neuralink?\n\nYeah, so brain is made up of these specialized cells called neurons. There's billions of them, tens of billions. Sometimes, people call it a hundred billion that are connected in this complex yet dynamic network that are constantly remodeling. They're changing their synaptic weights, and that's what we typically call neuroplasticity.\n\nAnd the neurons are also bathed in this charged environment that is latent with many charged molecules, like potassium ions, sodium ions, chlorine ions. And those actually facilitate these through ionic current, communication between these different networks.\n\nAnd when you look at a neuron as well, they have these membrane with a beautiful, beautiful protein structure called the voltage selective ion channels, which, in my opinion, is one of nature's best inventions. In many ways, if you think about what they are, they're doing the job of a modern day transistors. Transistors are nothing more, at the end of the day, than a voltage-gated conduction channel.\n\nAnd nature found a way to have that very, very early on in its evolution. And as we all know, with the transistor, you can have many, many computation and a lot of amazing things that we have access to today. So I think it's one of those, just as a tangent, just a beautiful, beautiful invention that the nature came up with, these voltage-gated ion channels.\n\nI mean, I suppose there's, on the biological level, every level of the complexity of the hierarchy of the organism, there's going to be some mechanisms for storing information and for doing computation. And this is just one such way. But to do that with biological and chemical components is interesting. Plus like when neurons, I mean, it's not just electricity, it's chemical communication, it's also mechanical.\n\nI mean, these are like actual objects that vibrate. I mean, they move- - Yeah, they're actually, I mean, there's a lot of really, really interesting physics that are involved in, you know, kind of going back to my work on ultrasound during grad school, there are groups, and there were groups, and there are still groups looking at ways to cause neurons to actually fire an action potential using ultrasound wave.\n\nAnd the mechanism to which that's happening is still unclear as I understand. It may just be that you're imparting some sort of thermal energy and that causes cells to depolarize in some interesting ways. But there are also these ion channels or even membranes that actually just open up its pore as there are being mechanically shook, right? Vibrated.\n\nSo there's just a lot of elements of these like move particles, which again, like that's governed by diffusion physics, right? Movements of particles. And there's also a lot of kind of interesting physics there.\n\nAlso, not to mention, as Roger Penrose talks about, there might be some beautiful weirdness in the quantum mechanical effects of all of this. And he actually believes that consciousness might emerge from the quantum mechanical effects there. So like there's physics, there's chemistry, there's biology, all of that is going on there.\n\nOh yeah, yeah. I mean, you can, yes, there's a lot of levels of physics that you can dive into. But yeah, in the end, you have these membranes with these voltage-gated ion channels that selectively let these charge molecules that are in the extracellular matrix like in and out. And these neurons generally have these like resting potential where there's a voltage difference between inside the cell and outside the cell.\n\nAnd when there's some sort of stimuli that changes the state such that they need to send information to the downstream network, you start to kind of see these like sort of orchestration of these different molecules going in and out of these channels. They also open up, like more of them open up once it reaches some threshold to a point where you have a depolarizing cell that sends action potential.\n\nSo it's a just a very beautiful kind of orchestration of these molecules. And what we're trying to do when we place an electrode or parking it next to a neuron is that you're trying to measure these local changes in the potential. Again, mediated by the movements of the ions. And what's interesting, as I mentioned earlier, there's a lot of physics involved.\n\nAnd the two dominant physics for this electrical recording domain is diffusion physics and electromagnetism. And where one dominates, where Maxwell's equation dominates versus fixed law dominates depends on where your electrode is. If it's close to the source, mostly electromagnetic-based, when you're farther away from it, it's more diffusion-based.\n\nSo essentially, when you're able to park it next to it, you can listen in on those individual chatter and those local changes in the potential, and the type of signal that you get are these canonical textbook neural spiking waveform.\n\nThe moment you're further away, and based on some of the studies that people have done, Christof Koch's lab and others, once you're away from that source by roughly around a hundred micron, which is about a width of a human hair, you no longer hear from that neuron. Or you're no longer able to kind of have the system sensitive enough to be able to record that particular local membrane potential change in that neuron.\n\nAnd just to kind of give you a sense of scale also, when you look at a hundred micron voxel, so a hundred micron by a hundred micron by a hundred micron box in a brain tissue, there's roughly around 40 neurons and whatever number of connections that they have. So there's a lot in that volume of tissue.\n\nSo the moment you're outside of that, there's just no hope that you'll be able to detect that change from that one specific neuron that you may care about.\n\nYeah, but as you're moving about this space, you'll be hearing other ones. So if you move another 100 micron, you'll be hearing chatter from another community.\n\nCorrect.\n\nAnd so the whole sense is you wanna place as many as possible electrodes and then you're listening to the chatter.\n\nYeah, you wanna listen to the chatter. And at the end of the day, you also want to basically let the software do the job of decoding. And just to kind of go to, why ECOG and EEG work at all, right? When you have these local changes, obviously, it's not just this one neuron that's activating. There's many, many other networks that are activating all the time.\n\nAnd you do see sort of a general change in the potential of this electro, like this charge medium, and that's what you're recording when you're farther away. I mean, you still have some reference electrode that's stable in the brain that's just electroactive organ, and you're seeing some combination aggregate action potential changes and then you can pick it up, right? It's a much slower changing signals.\n\nBut there are these like canonical kind of oscillations and waves, like gamma waves, beta waves. Like when you sleep, that can be detected, 'cause there's sort of a synchronized kind of global effect of the brain that you can detect.\n\nAnd I mean, the physics of this go, I mean, if we really wanna go down that rabbit hole, like there's a lot that goes on in terms of like why diffusion physics at some point dominates when you're further away from the source. It's just a charged medium.\n\nSo similar to how when you have electromagnetic ways propagating in atmosphere or in a charged medium like a plasma, there's this weird shielding that happens that actually further attenuates the signal as you move away from it. So yeah, you see, like if you do a really, really deep dive on kind of the signal attenuation over distance, you start to see kind of one of where square in the beginning, and then exponential drop off.\n\nAnd that's the knee at which you go from electromagnet magnetism dominating to diffusion physics dominating.\n\nBut once again, with the electrodes, the biophysics, you need to understand it's not as deep, because no matter where you're placing that, you're listening to a small crowd of local neurons.\n\nCorrect, yeah. So once you penetrate the brain, you're in the arena, so to speak.\n\nAnd there's a lot of neurons.\n\n[DJ] There are many, many of 'em.\n\nBut then again, there's a whole field of neuroscience that's studying like how the different groupings, the different sections of the seating in the arena, what they usually are responsible for, which is where the metaphor probably falls apart, 'cause the seating is not that organized in an arena.\n\nAlso, most of them are silent. They don't really do much, or their activities are, you know, you have to hit it with just the right set of stimulus.\n\nSo they're usually quiet.\n\nThey're usually very quiet. There's, I mean, similar to dark energy and dark matter, there's dark neurons. What are they all doing? When you place these electrode, again, like within this a hundred micron volume, you have 40 or so neurons. Like why do you not see 40 neurons? Why do you see only a handful? What is happening there?\n\nWell, they're mostly quiet, but like when they speak, they say profound shit, I think. That's the way I'd like to think about it. Anyway, before we zoom in even more, let's zoom out. So how does Neuralink work? From the surgery to the implant to the signal and the decoding process and the human being able to use the implant to actually affect the world outside?\n\nAnd all of this, I'm asking in the context of there's a gigantic historic milestone in Neuralink just accomplished in January of this year, putting a Neuralink implant in the first human being, Noland. And there's been a lot to talk about there about his experience, because he's able to describe all the nuance and the beauty and the fascinating complexity of that experience of everything involved.\n\nBut on the technical level, how does Neuralink work?\n\nYeah, so there are three major components to the technology that we're building. One is the device, the thing that's actually recording these neural chatters. We call it N1 implant or The Link. And we have a surgical robot that's actually doing an implantation of these tiny, tiny wires that we call threads that are smaller than human hair.\n\nAnd once everything is surgirized, you have these neural signals, these spiking neurons that are coming out of the brain and you need to have some sort of software to decode what the users intend to do with that.\n\nSo there's what's called the Neuralink application, or B1 app that's doing that translation, is running the very, very simple machine learning model that decodes these inputs that are neural signals and then convert it to a set of outputs that allows our participant, first participant Noland, to be able to control a cursor on this.\n\nAnd this is done wirelessly?\n\nAnd this is done wirelessly. So our implant is actually a two-part. The link has these flexible tiny wires called threads that have multiple electrodes along its length. And they're only inserted into the cortical layer, which is about three to five millimeters in a human brain in the motor cortex region. That's where the kind of the intention for movement lies in.\n\nAnd we have 64 of these threads, each thread having 16 electrodes along the span of three to four millimeters, separated by 200 microns. So you can actually record along the depth of the insertion.\n\nAnd based on that signal, there's custom integrated circuit or ASIC that we built that amplifies the neural signals that you're recording and then digitizing it and then has some mechanism for detecting whether there was an interesting event that is a spiking event and decide to send that, or not send that through Bluetooth to an external device, whether it's a phone or a computer that's running this Neuralink application.\n\nSo there's onboard signal processing already just to decide whether this is an interesting event or not. So there is some computational power on board inside in addition to the human brain?\n\nYeah, so it does the signal processing to kind of really compress the amount of signal that you're recording. So we have a total of a thousand electrodes sampling at just under 20 kilohertz with 10 bit each. So that's 200 megabits. That's coming through to the chip, from thousand channel simultaneous neural recording. And that's quite a bit of data.\n\nAnd there are technology available to send that off wirelessly, but being able to do that in a very, very thermally constrained environment that is a brain, so there has to be some amount of compression that happens to send off only the interesting data that you need, which in this particular case, for motor decoding is occurrence of a spike or not. And then being able to use that to decode the intended cursor movement.\n\nSo the implant itself processes it, figures out whether a spike happened or not with our spike detection algorithm, and then sends it off, packages it, sends it off through Bluetooth to an external device that then has the model to decode, okay, based on the spiking inputs, did Noland wish to go up, down, left, right, or click, or right click, or whatever?\n\nAll of this is really fascinating, but let's stick on the N1 implant itself, so the thing that's in the brain. So I'm looking at a picture of it, there's an enclosure, there's a charging call, so we didn't talk about the charging, which is fascinating. The battery, the power electronics, the antenna. Then there's the signal processing electronics. I wonder if there's more kinds of signal processing you can do. That's another question. And then there's the threads themselves with the enclosure on the bottom. So maybe to ask about the charging, so there's a external charging device.\n\nMm-hmm, yeah, there's an external charging device. So yeah, the second part of the implant, the threads are the ones, again, just the last three to five millimeters are the ones that are actually penetrating the cortex. Rest of it is, actually, most of the volume is occupied by the battery, rechargeable battery. And it's about a size of a quarter. I actually have a device here, if you wanna take a look at it.\n\nThis is the flexible threat component of it. And then this is the implant. So it's about a size of a U. S. quarter. It's about nine millimeter thick. So basically, this implant, once you have the craniectomy and the directomy, threads are inserted, and the hole that you created, this craniectomy, gets replaced with that. So basically, that thing plugs that hole, and you can screw in these self-drilling cranial screws to hold it in place.\n\nAnd at the end of the day, once you have the skin flap over, there's only about two to three millimeters. That's obviously transitioning off of the top of the implant to where the screws are. And that's the minor bump that you have.\n\nThose threads look tiny. That's incredible. That is really incredible. And also, you're right, most of the actual volume is the battery. Yeah, this is way smaller than I realized.\n\nThey are also, the threads themselves are quite strong.\n\nThey look strong.\n\nAnd the thread themselves also has a very interesting feature at the end of it called the loop. And that's the mechanism to which the robot is able to interface and manipulate this tiny hair-like structure.\n\nAnd they're tiny, so what's the width of a thread?\n\nYeah, so the width of a thread starts from 16 micron and then tapers out to about 84 micron. So average human hair is about 80 to 100 micron in width.\n\nThis thing is amazing. This thing is amazing.\n\nYes, most of the volume is occupied by the battery, rechargeable lithium ion cell. And the charging is done through inductive charging, which is actually very commonly used. Most cell phones have that. The biggest difference is that for us, usually when you have a phone and you wanna charge it on a charging pad, you don't really care how hot it gets, whereas for us, it matters.\n\nThere's a very strict regulation and good reasons to not actually increase the surrounding tissue temperature by two degrees Celsius. So there's actually a lot of innovation that is packed into this to allow charging of this implant without causing that temperature threshold to reach. And even small things like, you see this charging coil and what's called the ferrite shield, right?\n\nSo without that ferrite shield, what you end up having when you have resonant inductive charging is that the battery itself is a metallic can, and you form these Eddy currents from external charger and that causes heating and that actually contributes to inefficiency in charging. So this ferrite shield, what it does is that it actually concentrate that field line away from the battery and then around the coil that's actually wrapped around it.\n\nThere's a lot of really fascinating design here to make it, I mean, you're integrating a computer into a complex biological system.\n\nYeah, there's a lot of innovation here. I would say that part of what enabled this was just the innovations in the wearable. There's a lot of really, really powerful, tiny, low power microcontrollers, temperature sensors, or various different sensors and power electronics. A lot of innovation really came in the charging coil design, how this is packaged, and how do you enable charging such that you don't really exceed that temperature limit, which is not a constraint for other devices out there.\n\nSo let's talk about the threads themselves, those tiny, tiny, tiny things. So how many of them are there? You mentioned a thousand electrodes. How many threads are there, and what did the electrodes have to do with the threads?\n\nYeah, so the current instantiation of the device has 64 threads, and each thread has 16 electrodes for a total of 1,024 electrodes that are capable of both recording and stimulating. And the thread is basically this polymer insulated wire. The metal conductor is the kind of tiramisu cake of ti, plat, gold, plate, ti. And they're very, very tiny wires. Two micron in width, so 2/1000000th of meter.\n\nIt's crazy that that thing I'm looking at has the polymer installation, has the conducting material, and has 16 electrodes at the end of it.\n\nOn each of those threads.\n\nYeah, on each of those threads.\n\nCorrect.\n\n16, each one of those.\n\nYou're not gonna be able to see it with naked eyes.\n\nAnd I mean, to state the obvious, or maybe for people who are just listening, they're flexible.\n\nYes, yes, that's also one element that was incredibly important for us. So each of these thread are, as I mentioned, 16 micron in width and then they taper to 84 micron, but in thickness, they're less than five micron. And thickness is mostly polyamide at the bottom and this metal track and then another polyamide. So two micron of polyamide, 400 nanometer of this metal stack, and two micron of polyamide sandwiched together to protect it from the environment that is 37 degrees C bag of salt water.\n\nSo what's some, maybe can you speak to some interesting aspects of the material design here? Like what does it take to design a thing like this and to be able to manufacture a thing like this for people who don't know anything about this kind of thing?\n\nYeah, so the material selection that we have is not, I don't think it was particularly unique. There were other labs and there are other labs that are kind of looking at similar material stack. There's kind of a fundamental question and still needs to be answered around the longevity and reliability of these micro electrodes that we call, compared to some of the other more conventional, neural interfaces, devices that are intracranial.\n\nSo penetrating the cortex that are more rigid, like the Utah array. There are these four by four millimeter kind of silicon shank that have exposed recording site at the end of it. And that's been kind of the innovation from Richard Normann back in 1997. It's called the Utah Array 'cause he was at University of Utah.\n\nAnd what does the Utah array look like? So it's a rigid type of- - Yeah, so we can actually look it up.\n\nOh.\n\nYeah. (Lex laughing) Yeah, so it's a bed of needle. There's- - (laughs) Yeah. Okay, go ahead, I'm sorry.\n\nSo those are rigid- - Rigid, yeah. You weren't kidding.\n\nAnd the size and the number of shanks vary, anywhere from 64 to 128. At the very tip of it is an exposed electrode that actually records neural signal. The other thing that's interesting to note is that unlike Neuralink threads that have recording electrodes that are actually exposed iridium oxide recording sites along the depth, this is only at a single depth. So these Utah array spokes can be anywhere between 0. 5 millimeters to 1.\n\n5 millimeter. And they also have designs that are slanted. So you can have it inserted at different depth, but that's one of the other big differences. And then, I mean, the main key difference is the fact that there's no active electronics.\n\nThese are just electrodes, and then there's a bundle of a wire that you're seeing, and then that actually then exits the craniectomy that then has this port that you can connect to for any external electronic devices. They are working on a or have the wireless telemetry device, but it still requires a through the skin port that actually is one of the biggest failure modes for infection for the system.\n\nWhat are some of the challenges associated with flexible threads? Like for example, on the robotic side, R1, implanting those threads, how difficult does that task?\n\nYeah, so as you mentioned, they're very, very difficult to maneuver by hand. These Utah arrays that you saw earlier, they're actually inserted by a neurosurgeon actually positioning it near the site that they want. And then there's a pneumatic hammer that actually pushes them in. So it's a pretty simple process, and they're easy to maneuver. But for these thin film arrays, they're very, very tiny and flexible.\n\nSo they're very difficult to maneuver. So that's why we built an entire robot to do that. There are other reasons for why we built a robot, and that is ultimately, we want this to help millions and millions of people that can benefit from this. And there just aren't that many neurosurgeons out there. And robots can be something that we hope can actually do large parts of the surgery.\n\nBut yeah, the robot is this entire other sort of category of product that we're working on. And it's essentially this multi-axis gantry system that has the specialized robot head that has all of the optics and this kind of a needle retracting mechanism that maneuvers these threads via this loop structure that you have on the thread.\n\nSo the thread already has a loop structure by which you can grab it?\n\nCorrect, correct.\n\nOkay. So this is fascinating. So you mentioned optics, so there's a robot - R1. So for now, there's a human that actually creates a hole in the skull.\n\nMm-hmm.\n\nAnd then after that, there's a computer vision component that's finding a way to avoid the blood vessels. And then you're grabbing it by the loop, each individual thread and placing it in a particular location to avoid the blood vessels. And also choosing the depth of placement, all that?\n\nCorrect. So controlling every, like the 3D geometry of the placement?\n\nCorrect. So the aspect of this robot that is unique is that it's not surgeon-assisted or human-assisted. It's a semi-automatic or automatic robot. Obviously, there are human component to it, when you're placing targets. You can always move it away from kind of major vessels that you see. But I mean, we wanna get to a point where one click and it just does the surgery within minutes.\n\nSo the computer vision component finds great targets, candidates and the human kind of approves them and the robot does, does it do like one thread at a time or does it do one- - It does one thread at a time, and that's actually also one thing that we are looking at ways to do multiple threads at a time. There's nothing stopping from it. You can have multiple kind of engagement mechanisms, but right now, it's one by one.\n\nAnd we also still do quite a bit of just kind of verification to make sure that it got inserted. If so, how deep? Did it actually match what was programmed in and so on and so forth?\n\nAnd the actual electrode is a place that vary at differing depths in the like, I mean, it's very small differences, but differences.\n\n[DJ] Yeah, yeah.\n\nAnd so that there's some reasoning behind that, as you mentioned. Like it gets more varied signal.\n\nYeah, I mean, we try to place them all around three or four millimeter from the surface, just 'cause the span of the electrode, those 16 electrodes that we currently have in this version spans roughly around three millimeters. So we wanna get all of those in the brain.\n\nThis is fascinating. Okay, so there's a million questions here. If we could zoom in specifically on the electrodes, so what is your sense, how many neurons is each individual electrode listening to?\n\nYeah, each electrode can record from anywhere between 0 to 40, as I mentioned, right, earlier. But tactically speaking, we only see about, at most, like two to three. And you can actually distinguish which neuron it's coming from by the shape of the spikes.\n\n[Lex] Oh, cool.\n\nSo I mentioned the spike detection algorithm that we have. It's called BOSS algorithm, buffer online, spike sorter.\n\nNice.\n\nIt actually outputs at the end of the day six unique values, which are kind of the amplitude of these like negative going hump, middle hump, like positive going hump, and then also the time at which these happen. And from that, you can have a kind of a statistical probability estimation of, is that a spike? Is it not a spike? And then based on that, you could also determine, oh, that spike looks different than that spike. Must have come from a different neuron.\n\nOkay, so that's a nice signal processing step from which you can then make much better predictions about if there's a spike.\n\nYeah.\n\nEspecially in this kind of context where there could be multiple neurons screaming. And that also results in you being able to compress the data better in the (indistinct). Okay.\n\nAnd just to be clear, I mean, the labs do what's called spike sorting. Usually, once you have these like broadband, the fully digitized signals and then you run a bunch of different set of algorithms to kind of tease apart, it's just all of this for us is done on the device.\n\nOn the device.\n\nIn a very low power, custom built ASIC digital processing unit.\n\n[Lex] Highly heat constrained?\n\nHighly heat constrained, and the processing time from signal going in and giving you the output is less than a microsecond, which is a very, very short amount of time.\n\nOh yeah, so the latency has to be super short.\n\nCorrect.\n\nOh wow. Oh, that's a pain in the ass.\n\nYeah, latency is this huge, huge thing that you have to deal with. Right now, the biggest source of latency comes from the Bluetooth, the way in which they're packetized and we bend them in 15 millisecond.\n\nOh, interesting, it says communication constraint. Is there some potential innovation there on the protocol used?\n\nAbsolutely.\n\nOkay.\n\nYeah, Bluetooth is definitely not our final wireless communication protocol that we wanna get to.\n\nHence the N1 and the R1. I imagine that increases- - NxRx.\n\nYeah, that's the communication protocol, 'cause Bluetooth allows you to communicate I guess farther distances than you need to, so you can go much shorter.\n\nYeah, well, the primary motivation for choosing Bluetooth is that, I mean, everything has Bluetooth.\n\nAll right, you can talk to any device.\n\nInteroperability is just absolutely essential, especially in this early phase. And in many ways, if you can access a phone or a computer, you can do anything.\n\nWell, it'll be interesting to step back and actually look at, again, the same pipeline that you mentioned for Noland. So what does this whole process look like? From finding and selecting a human being to the surgery, to the first time he's able to use this thing?\n\nSo we have what's called the patient registry that people can sign up to hear more about the updates. And that was a route to which Noland applied. And the process is that once the application comes in, it contains some medical records, and based on their medical eligibility, that there's a lot of different inclusion-exclusion criteria for them to meet. And we go through a prescreening interview process with someone from Neuralink.\n\nAnd at some point, we also go out to their homes to do a BCI home audit, 'cause one of the most kind of revolutionary part about having this N1 system that is completely wireless is that you can use it at home. Like you don't actually have to go to the lab and go to the clinic to get connecterized to these like specialized equipment that you can't take home with you.\n\nSo that's one of the key elements of when we're designing the system that we wanted to keep in mind, like people hopefully would wanna be able to use this every day in the comfort of their homes. And so part of our engagement and what we're looking for during BCI home audit is to just kind of understand their situation, what other assistive technology that they use.\n\nAnd we should also step back and kind of say that the estimate is 180,000 people live with quadriplegia in the United States, and each year, an additional 18,000 suffer a paralyzing spinal cord injury. So these are folks who have a lot of challenges, living a life in terms of accessibility, in terms of doing the things that many of us just take for granted day to day.\n\nAnd one of the things, one of the goals of this initial study is to enable them to have sort of digital autonomy, where they by themselves can interact with a digital device using just their mind, something that you're calling telepathy. So digital telepathy, where a quadriplegic can communicate with a digital device in all the ways that we've been talking about.\n\nControl the mouse cursor, enough to be able to do all kinds of stuff, including play games and tweet and all that kind of stuff. And there's a lot of people for whom life, the basics of life are difficult, because of the things that have happened to them.\n\nYeah, I mean, movement is so fundamental to our existence. I mean, even speaking involves movement of mouth, lip, larynx. And without that, it's extremely debilitating. And there are many, many people that we can help. And I mean, like especially if you start to kind of look at other forms of movement disorders that are not just from spinal cord injury, but from ALS, MS, or even stroke and/or just aging, right? That leads you to lose some of that mobility, that independence, it's extremely debilitating.\n\nAnd all of these are opportunities to help people, to help alleviate suffering, to help improve the quality of life. But each of the things you mentioned is its own little puzzle that needs to have increasing levels of capability from a device like a Neuralink device. And so the first one you're focusing on is, it's just a beautiful word, telepathy. So being able to communicate using your mind wirelessly with a digital device. Can you just explain exactly what we're talking about?\n\nYeah, I mean, it's exactly that. I mean, I think if you are able to control a cursor and able to click and be able to get access to computer or phone, I mean, the whole world opens up to you. And I mean, I guess the word telepathy, if you kind of think about that as just definitionally being able to transfer information from my brain to your brain without using some of the physical faculties that we have, like voices.\n\nBut the interesting thing here is, I think the thing that's not obviously clear is how exactly it works. So in order to move a cursor, there's at least a couple ways of doing that. So one is you imagine yourself maybe moving a mouse with your hand, or you can then, which Noland talked about, like imagine moving the cursor with your mind.\n\nBut it's like there is a cognitive step here that's fascinating, 'cause you have to use the brain and you have to learn how to use the brain. And you kind of have to figure it out dynamically. Because you reward yourself if it works. I mean, there's a step that, this is just a fascinating step, 'cause you have to get the brain to start firing in the right way. And you do that by imagining. Like fake it till you make it.\n\n(laughs) And all of a sudden, it creates the right kind of signal that if decoded correctly, can create the kind of effect. And then there's like noise around that, you have to figure all of that out. But on the human side, imagine the cursor moving is what you have to do.\n\nYeah, he says using the force.\n\nThe force. I mean, isn't that just like fascinating to you that it works? Like to me, it's like, holy shit, that actually works. Like you could move a cursor with your mind.\n\nAs much as you're learning to use that thing, that thing's also learning about you. Like our model is constantly updating the weights to say, \"Oh, if someone is thinking about this sophisticated forms of like spiking patterns, like that actually means to do this, right?\"\n\nSo the machine is learning about the human and the human is learning about the machine. So there is a adaptability to the signal processing, the decoding step. And then there's the adaptation of Noland, the human being. Like the same way, if you give me a new mouse and I move it, I learn very quickly about its sensitivity, so I learn to move it slower. And then there's other kinds of signal drift and all that kind of stuff they have to adapt to. So both are adapting to each other.\n\n[DJ] Correct.\n\nThat's a fascinating like software challenge on both sides, the software on both, the human software and- - The organic and the inorganic. Anyway, so sorry to rudely interrupt. So there's this selection that Noland has passed with flying colors. So everything including that the, it's a BCI-friendly home, all of that. So what is the process of the surgery implantation, the first moment when he gets to use the system?\n\nThe end to end, we say patient end to patient out, is anywhere between two to four hours. In particular case for Noland, it was about three and a half hours. And there's many steps leading to the actual robot insertion, right? So there's anesthesia induction, and we do intra-op CT imaging to make sure that we're drilling the hole in the right location. And this is also pre-planned beforehand.\n\nSomeone like Nolan would go through fMRI, and then they can think about wiggling their hand. And obviously, due to their injury, it's not gonna actually lead to any sort of intended output. But it's the same part of the brain that actually lights up when you're imagining moving your finger to actually moving your finger.\n\nAnd that's one of the ways in which we can actually know where to place our threads, 'cause we wanna go into what's called a hand knob area in the motor cortex. And as much as possible, densely put our electro threads. So yeah, we do intra-op CT imaging to make sure and double check the location of the craniectomy.\n\nAnd surgeon comes in, does their thing in terms of like skin incision, craniectomy, so drilling of the skull, and then there's many different layers of the brain. There's what's called a dura, which is a very, very thick layer that surrounds the brain, that gets actually resected in a process called atherectomy. And that then exposed the pia in the brain that you wanna insert.\n\nAnd by the time it's been around anywhere between one to one and a half hours, robot comes in, does its thing, placement of the targets, inserting of the thread. That takes anywhere between 20 to 40 minutes. In the particular case for Noland, it was just under or it was just over 30 minutes. And then after that, the surgeon comes in.\n\nThere's a couple other steps of like actually inserting the dural substitute layer to protect the thread as well as the brain. And then yeah, screw in the implant and then skin flap and then suture and then you're out.\n\nSo when Noland woke up, what was that like? What's the recovery like, and when was the first time he was able to use it?\n\nSo he was actually immediately, after the surgery, like an hour after the surgery as he was waking up, we did turn on the device, make sure that we are recording neural signals, and we actually did have a couple signals that we notice that he can actually modulate. And what I mean by modulate is that he can think about crunching his fist, and you could see the spike disappear and appear. (Lex laughing) - That's awesome.\n\nAnd that was immediate, right? Immediate after in the recovery room.\n\nHow cool is that?\n\nYeah.\n\nThat's a human being. I mean, what did that feel like for you? This device and a human being, a first step of a gigantic journey? I mean, it's a historic moment. Even just that spike, just to be able to modulate that.\n\nObviously, there have been other, as you mentioned, pioneers that have participated in these groundbreaking BCI investigational early feasibility studies. So we're obviously standing in the shoulders of the giants here. We're not the first ones to actually put electrodes in the human brain. But I mean, just leading up to the surgery, I definitely could not sleep. It's the first time that you're working in a completely new environment.\n\nWe had a lot of confidence based on our benchtop testing or preclinical R&D studies that the mechanism, the threads, the insertion, all that stuff is very safe, and that it's obviously ready for doing this in a human, but there's still a lot of unknown unknown about can the needle actually insert? I mean, we brought something like 40 needles just in case they break, and we ended up using only one.\n\nBut I mean, that was a level of just complete unknown, right? 'Cause it's a very, very different environment. And I mean, that's why we do clinical trial in the first place to be able to test these things out. So extreme nervousness and just many, many sleepless night leading up to the surgery and definitely the day before the surgery, and it was an early morning surgery. Like we started at seven in the morning.\n\nAnd by the time, it was around 10:30. Everything was done. But I mean, first time seeing that, well, number one, just huge relief that this thing is doing what it's supposed to do. And two, I mean, just immense amount of gratitude for Noland and his family, and then many others that have applied and that we've spoken to and will speak to are, I mean, true pioneers everywhere. And I sort of call them the neural astronauts or neuralnaut.\n\nThese amazing, just like in the '60s, right? Like these amazing just pioneers, right? Exploring the unknown outwards. In this case, it's inward. But incredible amount of gratitude for them to just participate and play a part. And it's a journey that we're embarking on together. But also like, I think it was just, that was an very, very important milestone, but our work was just starting.\n\nSo a lot of just kind of anticipation for, okay, what needs to happen next? What are set of sequences of events that needs to happen for us to make it worthwhile for both Noland as well as us?\n\nJust to linger on that, just a huge congratulations to you and the team for that milestone. I know there's a lot of work left, but that's really exciting to see. That's a source of hope. It's this first big step, opportunity to help hundreds of thousands of people and then maybe expand the realm of the possible for the human mind for millions of people in the future. So it's really exciting.\n\nSo like the opportunities are all ahead of us, and to do that safely and to do that effectively was really fun to see. As an engineer just watching other engineers come together and do an epic thing, that was awesome. Huge congrats.\n\nThank you, thank you. Yeah, could not have done it without the team. And yeah, I mean, that's the other thing that I told the team as well, of just this immense sense of optimism for the future. I mean, it's a very important moment for the company, needless to say, as well as hopefully for many others out there that we can help.\n\nSo speaking of challenges, Neuralink published a blog post describing that some of the threads retracted. And so the performance, as measured by bits per second dropped at first, but then eventually, it was regained. And that the whole story of how it was regained is super interesting. That's definitely something I'll talk to Bliss and to Noland about. But in general, can you speak to this whole experience? How was the performance regained and just the technical aspects of the threads being retracted and moving?\n\nThe main takeaway is that in the end, the performance have come back and it's actually gotten better than it was before. He's actually just beat the world record yet again last week to 8.5 BPS, so I mean, he's just cranking and he's just improving.\n\n[Lex] The previous one that he set was eight.\n\nCorrect.\n\nHe said 8.5.\n\nYeah, the previous world record in human was 4.6.\n\nYeah.\n\nSo it's almost double. And his goal is to try to get to 10, which is roughly around kind of the median Neuralinker using a mouse with the hand. So it's getting there.\n\nSo yeah, so the performance was regained.\n\nYeah, better than before. So that's a story on its own of what took the BCI team to recover that performance. It was actually mostly on kind of the signal processing. And so as I mentioned, we were kind of looking at these spike outputs from our electrodes. And what happened is that kind of four weeks into the surgery, we noticed that the threads have solely come out of the brain.\n\nAnd the way in which we noticed this, at first obviously, is that, well, I think Noland was the first to notice that his performance was degrading. And I think at the time, we were also trying to do a bunch of different experimentation, different algorithms, different sort of UI/UX. So it was expected that there will be variability in the performance, but we did see kind of a steady decline.\n\nAnd then also, the way in which we measure the health of the electrodes or whether they're in the brain or not, is by measuring impedance of the electrode. So we look at kind of the interfacial, kind of the Randall circuit, they say, the capacitance and the resistance between the electrosurface and the medium. And if that changes in some dramatic ways, we have some indication.\n\nOr if you're not seeing spikes on those channels, you have some indications that something's happening there. And what we notice is that looking at those impedance plot and spike rate plots, and also because we have those electrodes recording along the depth, you are seeing some sort of movement that indicated that the rest were being pulled out.\n\nAnd that obviously will have an implication on the model side, because if the number of inputs that are going into the model is changing, 'cause you have less of them, that model needs to get updated, right? But there were still signals, and as I mentioned, similar to how, even when you place the signals on the surface of the brain, or farther away, like outside the skull, you still see some useful signals.\n\nWhat we started looking at is not just the spike occurrence through this BOSS algorithm that I mentioned, but we started looking at just the power of the frequency band that is interesting for Noland to be able to modulate.\n\nSo once we kind of change the algorithm for the implant to not just give you the BOSS output, but also these spike band power output, that helped us sort of, we find the model with the new set of inputs, and that was the thing that really ultimately gave us the performance back.\n\nIn terms of, and obviously, like the thing that we want ultimately, and the thing that we are working towards, is figuring out ways in which we can keep those threads intact for as long as possible so that we have many more channels going into the model. That's by far the number one priority that the team is currently embarking on to understand how to prevent that from happening.\n\nThe thing that I'll say also is that, as I mentioned, this is the first time ever that we're putting these thread in a human brain, and human brain, just for size reference, is 10 times out of the monkey brain or the sheep brain. And it's just a very, very different environment. It moves a lot more. It like actually moved a lot more than we expected when we did Noland's surgery.\n\nAnd it's just a very, very different environment than what we're used to. And this is why we do clinical trial, right? We wanna uncover some of these issues and failure modes earlier than later. So in many ways, it's provided us with this enormous amount of data and information to be able to solve this. And this is something that Neuralink is extremely good at.\n\nOnce we have set of clear objective and engineering problem, we have enormous amount of talents across many, many disciplines to be able to come together and fix the problem very, very quickly.\n\nBut it sounds like one of the fascinating challenges here is for the system and the decoding side to be adaptable across different timescales. So whether it's movement of threads or different aspects of signal drift sort of on the software of the human brain, something changing, like Noland talks about cursor drift that could be corrected, and there's a whole UX challenge to how to do that. So it sounds like adaptability is like a fundamental property that has to be engineered in.\n\nIt is, and I mean I think, I mean, as a company, we're extremely vertically integrated. We make these thin film arrays in our own microfab.\n\nYeah, there's, like you said, built in-house. This whole paragraph here from this blog post is pretty gangster. \"Building the technology described above has been no small feat.\" And there's a bunch of links here that I recommend people click on. \"We constructed in-house micro fabrication capabilities to rapidly produce various iterations of thin film arrays that constitute our electrode threads. We created a custom femtosecond laser mill to manufacture components with micro level precision.\" I think there's a tweet associated with this.\n\nThat's a whole thing that we can get into.\n\nYeah, okay, well, what are we looking at here? This thing?\n\nYeah. \"So in less than one minute, our custom-made femtosecond laser mill cuts this geometry in the tips of our needles.\" So we're looking at this weirdly-shaped needle. \"The tip is only 10 to 12 microns in width, only slightly larger than the diameter of a red blood cell. The small size allows threats to be inserted with minimal damage to the cortex.\" Okay, so what's interesting about this geometry? So we're looking at this just geometry of a needle.\n\nThis is the needle that's engaging with the loops in the thread. So they're the ones that thread the loop and then peel it from the silicon backing. And then this is the thing that gets inserted into the tissue, and then this pulls out, leaving the thread. And this kind of a notch or the shark tooth that we used to call is the thing that actually is grasping the loop. And then it's designed in such way, such that when you pull out, leaps the loop.\n\nAnd the robot is controlling this needle?\n\nCorrect, so this is actually housed in a cannula. And basically, the robot has a lot of the optics that look for where the loop is. There's actually a 405 nanometer light that actually causes the polyamide to fluoresce so that you can locate the location of the loop.\n\nSo the loop lights up?\n\nYeah, yeah, they do. It's a micron precision process.\n\nWhat's interesting about the robot that it takes to do that? That's pretty crazy. That's pretty crazy that robot is able to get this kind of precision.\n\nYeah, our robot is quite heavy. Our current version of it. There's, I mean, it's like a giant granite slab that weighs about a ton, 'cause it needs to be sensitive to vibration, environmental vibration. And then as the head is moving at the speed that is moving, there's a lot of kind of motion control to make sure that you can achieve that level of precision. A lot of optics that kind of zoom in on that. We're working on next generation of the robot that is lighter, easier to transport. I mean, it is a feat to move the robot.\n\nAnd it's far superior to a human surgeon at this time for this particular task.\n\nAbsolutely, I mean, let alone you try to actually thread a loop in a sewing kit, I mean this is like, we're talking like fractions of human hair. These things, it's not visible.\n\nSo continuing the paragraph, \"We developed novel hardware and software testing systems such as our accelerated lifetime testing racks and simulated surgery environment,\" which is pretty cool, \"to stress test and validate the robustness of our technologies. We performed many rehearsals of our surgeries to refine our procedures and make them second nature.\" This is pretty cool. \"We practice surgeries on proxies with all the hardware and instruments needed in our mock or in the engineering space. This helps us rapidly test and measure.\" So there's like proxies.\n\nYeah, this proxy's super cool actually. So there's a 3D printed skull from the images that is taken at Barrow, as well as this hydrogel mix, sort of synthetic polymer thing that actually mimics the mechanical properties of the brain. It also has vasculature of the person.\n\nSo basically, what we're talking about here, and there's a lot of work that has gone into making this set proxy that it's about like finding the right concentration of these different synthetic polymers to get the right set of consistency for the needle dynamics, as they're being inserted. But we practice this surgery with the person, Noland's basically physiology and brain many, many times prior to actually doing the surgery.\n\nSo every step, every step?\n\nEvery step, yeah. Like where does someone stand? I mean, what you're looking at is the picture. This is in our office of this kind of corner of the robot engineering space that we have created this like mock or space that looks exactly like what they would experience, all the staff would experience during their actual surgery.\n\nSo I mean, it's just kind of like any dance rehearsal where you know exactly where you're gonna stand at what point and you just practice that over and over and over again with an exact anatomy of someone that you're going to surgerize. And it got to a point where a lot of our engineers, when we created a craniectomy, they're like, \"Oh, that looks very familiar. We've seen that before.\"\n\nYeah. Man, there's wisdom you can gain through doing the same thing over and over and over. It's like a Jira dreams of sushi kind of thing, because then it's like Olympic athletes visualize the Olympics, and then once you actually show up, it feels easy. It feels like any other day. It feels almost boring winning the gold medal, 'cause you visualized this so many times, you've practiced this so many times, and nothing bothers you. It's boring. You win the gold medal, it's boring. And the experience they talk about is mostly just relief, probably that they don't have to visualize it anymore.\n\nYeah, the power of the mind to visualize, I mean, there's a whole field that studies where muscle memory lies in cerebellum. Yeah, it's incredible.\n\nI think it is a good place to actually ask sort of the big question that people might have is, how do we know every aspect of this that you describe is safe?\n\nAt the end of the day, the gold standard is to look at the tissue. What sort of trauma did you cause the tissue? And does that correlate to whatever behavioral anomalies that you may have seen? And that's the language to which we can communicate about the safety of inserting something into the brain and what type of trauma that you can cause. So we actually have an entire department, department of pathology that looks at these tissue slices.\n\nThere are many steps that are involved in doing this. Once you have studies that are launched with particular endpoints in mind, at some point, you have to euthanize the animal and then you go through necropsy to kind of collect the brain tissue samples. You fix them in formalin, and you like gross them, you section them, and you look at individual slices just to see what kind of reaction or lack thereof exists.\n\nSo that's the kind of the language to which FDA speaks and as well for us to kind of evaluate the safety of the insertion mechanism as well as the threads at various different time points. Both acute, so anywhere between zero to three months to beyond three months.\n\nSo those are kind of the details of an extremely high standard of safety that has to be reached.\n\nCorrect.\n\nFDA supervises this, but this, in general, just a very high standard. And every aspect of this, including the surgery, I think Matthew MacDougall has mentioned that like the standard is, let's say, how to put it politely? Higher than maybe some other operations that we take for granted. So the standard for all the surgical stuff here is extremely high.\n\nVery high. I mean, it's a highly, highly regulated environment with the governing agencies that scrutinize every medical device that gets marketed. And I think it's a good thing. It's good to have those high standards, and we try to hold extremely high standards to kind of understand what sort of damage, if any, these innovative emerging technologies and new technologies that we're building are. And so far, we have been extremely impressed by lack of immune response from these threads.\n\nSpeaking of which, you talk to me with excitement about the histology and some of the images that you're able to share. Can you explain to me what we're looking at?\n\nYeah, so what you're looking at is a stained tissue image. So this is a sectioned tissue slice from an animal that was implanted for seven months. So kind of a chronic time point. And you're seeing all these different colors, and each color indicates specific types of cell types. So purple and pink are astrocytes and microglia respectably. They're types of glial cells.\n\nAnd yet the other thing that people may not be aware of is your brain is not just made up of soup of neurons and axons. There are other cells, like glial cells, that actually kind of is the glue and also react if there are any trauma or damage to the tissue.\n\nThe brown are the neurons here?\n\nThe brown are the neurons.\n\nThe modern neurons.\n\nSo what you're seeing is, in this kind of macro image, you're seeing these like circle highlighted in white, the insertion sites. And when you zoom into one of those, you see the threads. And then in this particular case, I think we're seeing about the 16 wires that are going into the page.\n\nAnd the incredible thing here is the fact that you have the neurons that are these brown structures or brown circular or elliptical thing that are actually touching and abutting the thread. So what this is saying is that there's basically zero trauma that's caused during this insertion. And with these neural interfaces, these micro electrodes that you insert, that is one of the most common mode of failure.\n\nSo when you insert these threads, like the Utah array, it causes neuronal death around the site, because you're inserting a foreign object, right? And that kind of elicit these like immune response through microglia and astrocytes. They form this like protective layer around it.\n\nOh, not only are you killing the neuron cells, but you're also creating this protective layer that then basically prevents you from recording neural signals, 'cause you're getting further and further away from the neurons that you're trying to record. And that is the biggest mode of failure. And in this particular example, in that inside, it's about 50 micron with that scale bar. The neurons just seem to be attracted to it.\n\n(Lex laughing) - And so there's certainly no trauma. That's such a beautiful image, by the way. So the brown are the neurons. And for some reason, I can't look away. It's really cool.\n\nYeah, and the way that these things like, I mean, your tissues generally don't have these beautiful colors. This is multiplex stain that uses these different proteins that are staining these at different colors. We use very standard set of staining techniques, with HG, EB1 and new N and GFAP.\n\nSo if you go to the next image, this is also kind of illustrates the second point, 'cause you can make an argument, and initially, when we saw the previous image, we said, \"Oh, like are the threads just floating? Like what is happening here? Like are we actually looking at the right thing?\" So what we did is we did another stain, and this is all done in-house, of this batons, trichrome stain, which is in blue that shows these collagen layers.\n\nSo the blue basically, like you don't want the blue around the implant threads, 'cause that means that there's some sort of scarring that's happen. And what you're seeing, if you look at individual threads, is that you don't see any of the blue, which means that there has been absolutely, or very, very minimal to a point where it's not detectable amount of trauma in these inserted threads.\n\nSo that presumably is one of the big benefits of having this kind of flexible thread.\n\nYeah, so we think this is primarily due to the size, as well as the flexibility of the threads. Also the fact that R1 is avoiding vasculature, so we're not disrupting or we're not causing damage to the vessels and not breaking any of the blood brain barrier has basically caused the immune response to be muted.\n\nBut this is also a nice illustration of the size of things. So this is the tip of the thread.\n\nYeah, those are neurons.\n\nAnd they're neurons. And this is the thread listening. And the electrodes are positioned how?\n\nYeah, so this is, what you're looking at is not electrode themselves. Those are the conductive wires. So each of those should probably be two micron in width. So what we're looking at is we're looking at the coronal slice. So we're looking at some slice of the tissue. So as you go deeper, you'll obviously have less and less of the tapering of the thread. But yeah, the point basically being that there's just kind of cells around the inserter site, which is just an incredible thing to see. I've just never seen anything like this.\n\nHow easy and safe is it to remove the implant?\n\nYeah, so it depends on when. In the first three months or so after the surgery, there's a lot of kind of tissue modeling that's happening. Similar to when you got a cut, you obviously start over first couple weeks, or depending on the size of the wound, scar tissue forming, right? There are these like contractive, and then in the end, they turn into scab and you can scab it off.\n\nThe same thing happens in the brain, and it's a very dynamic environment. And before the scar tissue or the neomembrane or the neomembrane that forms, it's quite easy to just pull 'em out. And there's minimal trauma that's caused during that. Once the scar tissue forms, and with Noland as well, we believe that that's the thing that's currently anchoring the thread. So we haven't seen any more movements since then. So they're quite stable.\n\nIt gets harder to actually completely extract the threads. So our current method for removing the device is cutting the thread, leaving the tissue intact, and then unscrewing and taking the implant out. And that hole is now gonna be plugged with either another Neuralink or just with kind of a peak-based, plastic-based cap.\n\nIs it okay to leave the threads in there forever?\n\nYeah, we think so. We've done studies where we left them there, and one of the biggest concerns that we had is like, do they migrate and do they get to a point where they should not be? We haven't seen that. Again, once the scar tissue forms, they get anchored in place. And I should also say that when we say upgrades, like we're not just talking in theory here. Like we've actually upgraded many, many times.\n\nMost of our monkeys or non-human primates, NHP have been upgraded. Pager, who you saw playing mind pong, has the latest version of device since two years ago and is seemingly very happy and healthy and fat.\n\nSo what's designed for the future, the upgrade procedure? So maybe for Noland. What would the upgrade look like? It was essentially what you're mentioning. Is there a way to upgrade sort of the device internally, where you take it apart and sort of keep the capsule and upgrade the internals?\n\nYeah, so there are a couple different things here. So for Noland, if we were to upgrade, what we would have to do is either cut the threads or extract the threads depending on kind of the situation there in terms of how they're anchored or scarred in. If you were to remove them with the dural substitute, you have an intact brain so you can reinsert different threads with the updated implant package.\n\nThere are a couple different other ways that we're thinking about, the future of what the upgradable system looks like. One is, at the moment, we currently remove the dura, this kind of thick layer that protects the brain, but that actually is the thing that actually proliferates the scar tissue formation. So typically, general good rule of thumb is you wanna leave the nature as is and not disrupt it as much.\n\nSo looking at ways to insert the threads through the dura, which comes with different set of challenges, such as it's a pretty thick layer, so how do you actually penetrate that without breaking the needle? So we're looking at different needle design for that, as well as the kind of the loop engagement. The other biggest challenges are it's quite opaque, optically, and with white light illumination.\n\nSo how do you avoid still this biggest advantage that we have of avoiding vasculature? How do you image through that? How do you actually still mediate that? So there are other imaging techniques that we're looking at to enable that. But our hypothesis is that, and based on some of the early evidence that we have, doing through the dura insertion will cause minimal scarring that causes them to be much easier to extract over time.\n\nAnd the other thing that we're also looking at, this is gonna be a fundamental change in the implant architecture, is at the moment, it's a monolithic single implant that comes with a thread that's bonded together. So you can't actually separate the thing out, but you can imagine having two part implant. Bottom part, that is the thread that are inserted that has the chips and maybe a radio and some power source.\n\nAnd then you have another implant that has more of the computational heavy load and the bigger battery. And then one can be under the dura, one can be above the dura, like being the plug for the skull. They can talk to each other, but the thing that you wanna upgrade, the computer and not the thread. If you wanna upgrade that, you just go in there, remove the screws and then put in the next version. It's a very, very easy surgery too.\n\nLike you do a skin incision, slip this in, screw. Probably be able to do this in 10 minutes.\n\nSo that would allow you to reuse the thread, sort of.\n\n[DJ] Correct.\n\nSo I mean, this leads to the natural question of, what is the pathway to scaling that increase in the number of threads? Is that a priority? What's the technical challenge there?\n\nYeah, that is a priority. So for next versions of the implant, the key metrics that we're looking to improve are number of channels, just recording from more and more neurons. We have a pathway to actually go from currently 1,000 to hopefully 3,000 if not 6,000 by end of this year. And then end of next year, we wanna get to even more, 16,000.\n\nWow.\n\nThere's a couple limitations to that. One is obviously being able to photo lithographically print those wires. As I mentioned, it's two micron in width and spacing. Obviously, there are chips that are much more advanced than those types of resolution, and we have some of the tools that we have brought in house to be able to do that. So traces will be narrower just so that you have to have more of the wires coming up into the chip.\n\nChips also cannot linearly consume more energy, as you have more and more channels. So there's a lot of innovations in the circuit and architecture as well as the circuit design topology to make them lower power. You need to also think about, if you have all of these spikes, how do you send that off to the end application? So you need to think about bandwidth limitation there and potentially innovations and signal processing.\n\nPhysically, one of the biggest challenge is gonna be the interface. It's always the interface that breaks. Bonding this thin film array to the electronics. It starts to become very, very highly dense interconnects. So how do you characterize that? There's a lot of innovations in kind of the 3D integrations in the recent years that we can take advantage of. One of the biggest challenges that we do have is forming this hermetic barrier, right?\n\nThat this is an extremely harsh environment that we're in - the brain. So how do you protect it from, yeah, like the brain trying to kill your electronics to also your electronics leaking things that you don't want into the brain. And that forming that hermetic barrier is gonna be a very, very big challenge that we I think are actually well-suited to tackle.\n\nHow do you test that? Like what's the development environment to simulate that kind of harshness?\n\nYeah, so this is where the accelerated life tester essentially is a brain in a vat. It literally is a vessel that is made up of, and again, for all intents and purpose for this particular type of test, your brain is a salt water. And you can also put some other set of chemicals like reactive oxygen species that get at kind of these interfaces and trying to cause a reaction to pull it apart.\n\nBut you could also increase the rate at which these interfaces are aging by just increasing temperature. So every 10 degrees Celsius that you increase, you're basically accelerating time by 2x. And there's limit as to how much temperature you wanna increase, 'cause at some point, there's some other non-linear dynamics that causes you to have other nasty gases to form that just is not realistic in an environment.\n\nSo what we do is we increase in our ALT chamber by 20 degrees Celsius that increases the aging by four times. So essentially one day in ALT chamber, it's four day in calendar year. And we look at whether the implants still are intact, including the threads and- - And operation and all of that?\n\nAnd operation and all of that. It obviously is not an exact same environment as a brain, 'cause brain has mechanical, other more biological groups that attack at it. But it is a good test environment, testing environment for at least the enclosure and the strength of the enclosure. And I mean, we've had implants, the current version of the implant that has been in there for, I mean, close to two and a half years, which is equivalent to a decade. And they seem to be fine.\n\nSo it's interesting that the burn, so basically, close approximation is warm salt water, hot salt water is a good testing environment. Yeah, by the way, I'm drinking LMNT, which is basically salt water, which is making me kinda, it doesn't have computational power the way the brain does, but maybe in terms of other characteristics, it's quite similar and I'm consuming it.\n\nYeah, you have to get it in the right pH too. (laughs) - And then consciousness will emerge. Yeah, no.\n\nBy the way, the other thing that also is interesting about our enclosure is, if you look at our implant, it's not your common-looking medical implant that usually is encased in a titanium can that's laser welded. We use this polymer called PCTFE, polychlorotrifluoroethylene, which is actually commonly used in blister packs. So when you have a pill and you try to pop a pill, there's like kind of that plastic membrane. That's what this is.\n\nNo one's actually ever used this except us. And the reason we wanted to do this is 'cause it's electromagnetically transparent. So when we talked about the electromagnetic inductive charging, with titanium can, usually, if you wanna do something like that, you have to have a sapphire window, and it's a very, very tough process to scale.\n\nSo you're doing a lot of iteration here in every aspect of this. The materials, the software- - The whole, whole shebang.\n\nSo, okay. So you mentioned scaling. Is it possible to have multiple Neuralink devices as one of the ways of scaling? To have multiple Neuralink devices implanted?\n\nThat's the goal, that's the goal. Yeah, we've had, I mean, our monkeys have had two Neuralinks, one in each hemisphere. And then we're also looking at potential of having one in motor cortex, one in visual cortex, and one in wherever other cortex.\n\nSo focusing on a particular function, one Neuralink device.\n\nCorrect.\n\nI mean, I wonder if there's some level of customization that can be done on the compute side. So for the motor cortex- - Absolutely. That's the goal. And we talk about at Neuralink building a generalized neural interface to the brain. And that also is strategically how we're approaching this with marketing. And also, with regulatory, which is, hey look, we have the robot, and the robot can access any part of the cortex.\n\nRight now, we're focused on motor cortex with current version of the N1 that's specialized for motor decoding tasks. But also, at the end of the day, there's kind of a general compute available there. But typically, if you wanna really get down to kind of hyperoptimizing for power and efficiency, you do need to get to some specialized function, right?\n\nBut what we're saying is that, hey, you are now used to this robotic insertion techniques, which took many, many years of showing data and conversation with the FDA. And also, internally convincing ourselves that this is safe. And now the difference is that if we go to other parts of the brain, like visual cortex, which we're interested in as our second product, obviously, it's a completely different environment.\n\nThe cortex is laid out very, very differently. It's gonna be more stimulation focus rather than recording, just kind of creating visual percepts. But in the end, we're using the same thin film array technology. We're using the same robot insertion technology. We're using the same packaging technology. Now, more the conversation is focused around what are the differences and what are the implication of those differences in safety and efficacy?\n\nThe way you said second product is both hilarious and awesome to me. That product being restoring sight for blind people. So can you speak to stimulating the visual cortex? I mean, the possibilities there are just incredible to be able to give that gift back to people who don't have sight or even any aspect of that. Can you just speak to the challenges of, there's several challenges here.\n\nOh, many.\n\nOne of which is, like you said, from recording to stimulation. Just any aspect of that that you're both excited and see the challenges of.\n\nYeah, I guess I'll start by saying that we actually have been capable of stimulating through our thin film array as well as other electronics for years. We have actually demonstrated some of that capabilities for reanimating the limb in the spinal cord. Obviously, for the current EFS study, we've hardware disabled that, so that's something that we wanted to embark as a separate, separate journey.\n\nAnd obviously, there are many, many different ways to write information into the brain. The way in which we're doing that is through electrical, passing electrical current, and kind of causing that to really change the local environment so that you can sort of artificially cause kind of the neurons to depolarize in nearby areas. For vision specifically, the way our visual system works, it's both well-understood.\n\nI mean, anything with kind of brain, there are aspects of it that's well-understood. But in the end, like we don't really know anything. But the way visual system works is that you have photon hitting your eye, and in your eyes, there are these specialized cells called photoreceptor cells that convert the photon energy into electrical signals. That then gets projected to your back of your head, your visual cortex.\n\nIt goes through actually thalamic system called LGN that then projects it out. And then in the visual cortex, there's visual area one or V1, and then there's bunch of other higher level processing layers like V2, V3. And there there are actually kind of interesting parallels.\n\nAnd when you study the behaviors of these convolutional neural networks, like what the different layers of the network is detecting, first, they're detecting like these edges, and they're then detecting some more natural curves, and then they start to detect like objects, right? Kind of similar thing happens in the brain. And a lot of that has been inspired, and also, it's been kinda exciting to see some of the correlations there.\n\nBut things like from there, where those cognition arise and where's color encoded, there's just not a lot of understanding, fundamental understanding there. So in terms of kind of bringing sight back to those that are blind, there are many different forms of blindness. There's actually million people, one million people in the U. S. that are legally blind. That means like certain, like score below in kind of the visual tests.\n\nI think it's something like, if you can see something at 20 feet distance, that normal people can see at 200 feet distance, like if you're worse than that, you're legally blind.\n\nSo that means you can't function effectively.\n\nCorrect.\n\nUsing sight in the world.\n\nYeah, like to navigate your environment. And yeah, there are different forms of blindness. There are forms of blindness where there's some degeneration of your retina, these photoreceptor cells, and rest of your visual processing that I described is intact. And for those types of individuals, you may not need to maybe stick electrodes into the visual cortex.\n\nYou can actually build retinal prosthetic devices that actually just replaces the function of that retinal cells that are degenerated. And there are many companies that are working on that. But that's a very small slice. Albeit significance, those smaller slice of folks that are legally blind.\n\nIf there's any damage along that circuitry, whether it's in the optic nerve or just the LGN circuitry or any break in that circuit, that's not gonna work for you. And the source of where you need to actually cause that visual percept to happen, because your biological mechanism not doing that is by placing electrodes in the visual cortex in the back of your head.\n\nAnd the way in which this would work is that you would have an external camera, whether it's something as unsophisticated as a GoPro or some sort of wearable RayBan type glasses that Meta's working on that captures a scene, right? And that scene is then converted to set of electrical impulses or stimulation pulses that you would activate in your visual cortex through these thin film arrays.\n\nAnd by playing in a concerted kind of orchestra of these stimulation patterns, you can create what's called phosphenes, which are these kind of white yellowish dots that you can also create by just pressing your eyes. You can actually create those percepts by stimulating in the visual cortex.\n\nAnd the name of the game is really have many of those and have those percepts be, the phosphenes be as small as possible so that you can start to tell apart, like they're the individual pixels of the screen, right? So if you have many, many of those, potentially, you'll be able to, in the long term, be able to actually get naturalistic vision.\n\nBut in the like short term to maybe midterm, being able to at least be able to have object detection algorithms run on your glasses, the pre-op processing units, and then being able to at least see the edges of things so you don't bump into stuff.\n\nIt's incredible. This is really incredible. So you basically would be adding pixels, and your brain would start to figure out what those pixels mean. Yeah, and like with different kinds of assistant on the signal processing on all fronts.\n\nYeah. The thing that actually, so a couple things. One is, obviously, if you're blind from birth, the way brain works, especially in the early age, neuroplasticity is really nothing other than kind of your brain and different parts of your brain fighting for the limited territory.\n\n[Lex] (laughs) Yeah.\n\nAnd I mean, very, very quickly, you see cases where you know people that are, I mean, you also hear about people who are blind that have heightened sense of hearing or some other senses. And the reason for that is that cortex that's not used just gets taken over by these different parts of the cortex. So for those types of individuals, I mean, I guess they're going to have to now map some other parts of their senses into what they call vision.\n\nBut it's gonna be obviously a very, very different conscious experience before. So I think that's a interesting caveat. The other thing that also is important to highlight is that we're currently limited by our biology in terms of the wavelength that we can see. There's a very, very small wavelength that is a visible light wavelength that we can see with our eyes.\n\nBut when you have an external camera with this BCI system, you're not limited to that. You can have infrared, you can have UV, you can have whatever other spectrum that you want to see. And whether that gets matched to some sort of weird conscious experience, I've no idea. But oftentimes, I talk to people about the goal of Neuralink being going beyond the limits of our biology. That's sort of what I mean.\n\nAnd if you're able to control the kind of raw signal, when we use our sight, we're getting the photons and there's not much processing on it. If you're being able to control that signal, maybe you can do some kind of processing. Maybe you do object detection ahead of time.\n\n[DJ] Yeah.\n\nYou're doing some kind of pre-processing, and there's a lot of possibilities to explore that. So it's not just increasing sort of thermal imaging, that kind of stuff, but it's also just doing some kind of interesting processing.\n\nCorrect, yeah. I mean, my theory of how like visual system works also is that, I mean, there's just so many things happening in the world, and there's a lot of photons that are going into your eye, and it's unclear exactly where some of the pre-processing steps are happening. But I mean, I actually think that just from a fundamental perspective, there's just so much, the reality that we're in, if it's a reality, is so there's so much data.\n\nAnd I think humans are just unable to actually like eat enough actually to process all that information. So there's some sort of filtering that does happen, whether that happens in the retina, whether that happens in different layers of the visual cortex. Unclear.\n\nBut like the analogy that I sometimes think about is, if your brain is a CCD camera, and all of the information in the world is a sun, and when you try to actually look at the sun with the CCD camera, it's just gonna saturate the sensors, right? 'Cause it's enormous amount of energy. So what you do is you end up adding these filters, right? To just kind of narrow the information that's coming to you and being captured.\n\nAnd I think things like our experiences or our like drugs like propofol, that like anesthetic drug or psychedelics, what they're doing is they're kind of swapping out these filters and putting in new ones or removing older ones and kind of controlling our conscious experience.\n\nYeah, man, not to distract from the topic, but I just took a very high dose of ayahuasca in the Amazon jungle. So yes, it's a nice way to think about it. You're swapping out different experiences, and with Neuralink being able to control that, primarily at first, to improve function, not for entertainment purposes or enjoyment purposes, but- - Yeah, giving back lost functions.\n\nWell, giving back lost functions. And there, especially when the function is completely lost, anything is a huge help. Would you implant a Neuralink device in your own brain?\n\nAbsolutely. I mean, maybe not right now, but absolutely.\n\nWhat kind of capability, once reached, you would start getting real curious and almost get a little antsy, like jealous of people that get it as you watch them get implanted?\n\nYeah, I mean I think, I mean, even with our early participants, if they start to do things that I can't do, which I think is in the realm of possibility for them to be able to get, 15, 20, if not like 100 BPS right? There's nothing that fundamentally stops us from being able to achieve that type of performance. I mean, I would certainly get jealous that they can do that.\n\nI should say that watching Noland, I get a little jealous 'cause he's having so much fun, and it seems like such a chill way to play video games.\n\nYeah. So I mean, the thing that also is hard to appreciate sometimes is that, he's doing these things while talking. I mean, it's multitasking, right? So it's clearly, it's obviously cognitively intensive, but similar to how, when we talk, we move our hands, like these things like are multitasking. I mean, he's able to do that. And you won't be able to do that with other assistive technology as far as I'm aware.\n\nIf you're obviously using like an eye tracking device, you're very much fixated on that thing that you're trying to do. And if you're using voice control, I mean, like if you say some other stuff, yeah, you don't get to use that.\n\nYeah, the multitasking aspect of that is really interesting. So it's not just the BPS for the primary task. It's the parallelization of multiple tasks. If you measure the BPS for the entirety of the human organism, so if you're talking and doing a thing with your mind and looking around also, I mean, there's just a lot of paralyzation that can be happening.\n\nYeah. But I mean, I think at some point for him, like if he wants to really achieve those high level BPS, it does require like full attention, right? And that's a separate circuitry that is a big mystery. Like how attention works and, you know?\n\nYeah, attention, like cognitive load, I've read a lot of literature on people doing two tasks. Like you have your primary task and a secondary task. And the secondary task is a source of distraction. And how does that affect the performance of the primary task? And depending on the tasks, there's a lot of interesting, I mean, this is an interesting computational device, right? And I think- - To say the least.\n\nA lot of novel insights that can be gained from everything. I mean, I personally am surprised that Noland's able to do such incredible control of the cursor while talking and also being nervous at the same time, 'cause he's talking like all of us are, if you're talking in front of the camera, you get nervous. So all of those are coming into play, and he is able to still achieve high performance. Surprising. I mean, all of this is really amazing. And I think just after researching this really in depth, I kind of want Neuralink.\n\n(laughs) Get in line.\n\nAnd also, the safety get in line. Well, we should say the registry is for people who have quadriplegia and all that kind of stuff so- - Correct.\n\nThere'll be a separate line for people. They're just curious, like myself. So now that Noland, patient P1, is part of the ongoing prime study, what's the high level vision for P2, P3, P4, P5? And just the expansion into other human beings that are getting to experience this implant?\n\nYeah, I mean, the primary goal is, for our study in the first place is to achieve safety endpoints. Just understand safety of this device, as well as the implantation process. And also, at the same time, understand the efficacy and the impact that it could have on the potential users' lives. And just because you have, you're living with tetraplegia, it doesn't mean your situation is same as another person living with tetraplegia.\n\nIt's wildly, wildly varying. It's something that we're hoping to also understand how our technology can serve not just a very small slice of those individuals, but broader group of individuals and being able to get the feedback to just really build just the best product for them.\n\nThere's obviously also goals that we have, and the primary purpose of the early feasibility study is to learn from each and every participant to improve the device, improve the surgery before we embark on what's called a pivotal study that then is much larger trial that starts to look at statistical significance of your endpoints, and that's required before you can then market the device. And that's how it works in the U. S.\n\nand just generally around the world. That's the process you follow. So our goal is to really just understand from people like Noland, P2, P3, future participants, what aspects of our device needs to improve. If it turns out that people are like, \"I really don't like the fact that it lasts only six hours. I wanna be able to use this computer for like 24 hours.\"\n\nI mean, that is a user needs and user requirements, which we can only find out from just being able to engage with them.\n\nSo before the pivotal study, there's kind of like a rapid innovation based on individual experiences. You're learning from individual people how they use it, like the high resolution details in terms of like cursor control and signal and all that kind of stuff to like life experience.\n\nYeah, yeah, so there's hardware changes but also just firmware updates. So even when we had that sort of recovery event for Noland, he now has the new firmware that he has been updated with. And it's similar to how like your phones get updated all the time with new firmware for security patches, whatever new functionality UI, right? And that's something that is possible with our implant.\n\nIt's not a static one-time device that can only do the thing that it said it can do. I mean, it's similar to Tesla. You can do over the air firmware updates, and now you have completely new user interface. And all this bells and whistles and improvements on everything like the latest, right? When we say generalized platform, that's what we're talking about.\n\nYeah, it's really cool how the app that Noland is using, there's like calibration, all that kind of stuff. And then there's update. You just click and get an update. What other future capabilities are you kinda looking to? You said vision. That's a fascinating one. What about sort of accelerated typing or speech, this kind of stuff? And what else is there?\n\nYeah, those are still in the realm of movement program. So largely speaking, we have two programs. We have the movement program and we have the vision program. The movement program currently is focused around the digital freedom. As you can easily guess, if you can control 2D cursor in the digital space, you could move anything in the physical space.\n\nSo robotic arms, wheelchair, your environment, or even really like, whether it's through the phone or just like directly to those interfaces, so like to those machines. So we're looking at ways to kind of expand those types of capability, even for Noland.\n\nThat requires conversation with the FDA and kind of showing safety data for, if there's a robotic arm or a wheelchair that we can guarantee that they're not gonna hurt themselves accidentally, right? It's very different if you're moving stuff in the digital domain versus like in the physical space, you can actually potentially cause harm to the participants. So we're working through that right now.\n\nSpeech does involve different areas of the brain. Speech prosthetic is very, very fascinating, and there's actually been a lot of really amazing work that's been happening in academia. Sergei Stavisky at UC Davis, Jaimie Henderson, and late Krishna Shenoy at Stanford doing just some incredible amount of work in improving speech neuroprosthetics.\n\nAnd those are actually looking more at parts of the motor cortex that are controlling these focal articulators. And being able to like, even by mouthing the word or imagine speech, you can pick up those signals. The more sophisticated higher level processing areas, like the Broca's area or Wernicke's area, those are still very, very big mystery in terms of the underlying mechanism of how all that stuff works.\n\nBut yeah, I mean, I think Neuralink's event goal is to kind of understand those things and be able to provide a platform and tools to be able to understand that and study that.\n\nThis is where I get to the pothead questions. Do you think we can start getting insight into things like thought? So speech is, there's a muscular component, like you said. There's like the act of producing sounds. But then what about the internal things like cognition? Like low level thoughts and high level thoughts. Do you think we'll start noticing kind of signals that could be picked up? They could be understood, they could be maybe used in order to interact with the outside world.\n\nIn some ways, like I guess this starts to kind of get into the heart problem of consciousness. And I mean, on one hand, all of these are, at some point, set of electrical signals, that from there, maybe it in itself is giving you the cognition or the meaning, or somehow, human mind is incredibly amazing storytelling machine. So we're telling ourselves and fooling ourselves that there's some interesting meaning here.\n\nBut I mean, I certainly think that BCI and really BCI at the end of the day is a set of tools that help you kind of study the underlying mechanisms in both like local but also broader sense. And whether there's some interesting patterns of like electrical signal, that means like you're thinking this versus, and you can either like learn from like many, many sets of data to correlate some of that and be able to do mind reading or not.\n\nI'm not sure. I certainly would not kind of rule that out as a possibility, but I think BCI alone probably can't do that. There's probably additional set of tools and framework. And also, like just heart problem of consciousness at the end of the day is rooted in this philosophical question of like, what's the meaning of it all? What's the nature of our existence? Where's the mind emerge from this complex network?\n\nYeah, how does the subjective experience emerge from just a bunch of spikes, electrical spikes?\n\nYeah, yeah, I mean, we do really think about BCI and what we're building as a tool for understanding the mind, the brain. The only question that matters. There's actually, there actually is some biological existence proof of like what it would take to kind of start to form some of these experiences that may be unique. If you actually look at every one of our brains, there are two hemispheres.\n\nThere's a left-sided brain, there's a right-sided brain. And I mean, unless you have some other conditions, you normally don't feel like left legs or right legs. Like you just feel like one legs, right? So what is happening there, right? If you actually look at the two hemispheres, there's a structure that kind of characterize the two called the corpus callosum that is supposed to have around 200 to 300 million connections or axons.\n\nSo whether that means that's the number of interface and electrodes that we need to create some sort of mind meld, or from that, like whatever new conscious experience that you can experience. But yeah, I do think that there's like kind of an interesting existence proof that we all have.\n\nAnd that threshold is unknown at this time.\n\nOh yeah, these things, everything in this domain is speculation, right?\n\nAnd then there would be, you'd be continuously pleasantly surprised. Do you see a world where there's millions of people, like tens of millions, hundreds of millions of people walking around with a Neuralink device, or multiple Neuralink devices in their brain?\n\nI do. First of all, there are, like if you look at worldwide, people suffering from movement disorders and visual deficits. I mean, that's in the tens if not hundreds of millions of people. So that alone, I think, there's a lot of benefit and potential good that we can do with this type of technology. And once you start to get into kind of neuro, like psychiatric application, depression, anxiety, hunger, or obesity, right? Like mood, control of appetite, I mean, that starts to become very real to everyone.\n\nNot to mention that most people on earth have a smartphone. And once BCI starts competing with a smartphone as a preferred methodology of interacting with the digital world, that also becomes an interesting thing.\n\nOh yeah, I mean, yeah. This is even before going to that, right? I mean, there's like almost, I mean, the entire world that could benefit from these types of thing. And then, yeah, like if we're talking about kind of next generation of how we interface with machines or even ourselves, in many ways, I think BCI can play a role in that. And some of the things that I also talk about is I do think that there is a real possibility that you could see eight billion people walking around with Neuralink.\n\nWell, thank you so much for pushing ahead. And I look forward to that exciting feature.\n\nThanks for having me.\n\nThanks for listening to this conversation with DJ Seo. And now, dear friends, here's Matthew MacDougall, the head neurosurgeon at Neuralink. When did you first become fascinated with the human brain?\n\nSince forever. As far back as I can remember, I've been interested in the human brain. I mean, I was a thoughtful kid and a bit of an outsider. And you sit there thinking about what the most important things in the world are in your little tiny adolescent brain.\n\nAnd the answer that I came to, that I converged on was that all of the things you can possibly conceive of, as things that are important for human beings to care about are literally contained in the skull. Both the perception of them and their relative values. And the solutions to all our problems and all of our problems are all contained in the skull.\n\nAnd if we knew more about how that worked, how the brain encodes information and generates desires and generates agony and suffering, we could do more about it. You think about all the really great triumphs in human history. You think about all the really horrific tragedies. You think about the holocaust, you think about any prison full of human stories, and all of those problems boil down to neurochemistry.\n\nSo if you get a little bit of control over that, you provide people the option to do better. And in the way I read history, the way people have dealt with having better tools is that they most often in the end do better, with huge asterisk. But I think it's an interesting, a worthy and noble pursuit to give people more options, more tools.\n\nYeah, that's a fascinating way to look at human history. You just imagine all these neurobiological mechanisms, Stalin, Hitler, all of these, Gengis Khan, all of them just had like a brain, just a bunch of neurons, like a few tons of billions of neurons gaining a bunch of information over a period of time. They have a set of module that does language and memory and all that. And from there, in the case of those people, they're able to murder millions of people.\n\n[Matthew] Yeah.\n\nAll that coming from, there's not some glorified notion of a dictator of this enormous mind or something like this. It's just the brain.\n\nYeah, yeah. I mean, a lot of that has to do with how well people like that can organize those around them.\n\nOther brains.\n\nYeah, and so I always find it interesting to look to primatology, look to our closest non-human relatives for clues as to how humans are going to behave and what particular humans are able to achieve. And so you look at chimpanzees and bonobos and they're similar but different in their social structures particularly.\n\nAnd I went to Emory in Atlanta and studied under Frans, the great Frans de Waal, who was kind of the leading primatologist who recently died, and his work at looking at chimps through the lens of how you would watch an episode of \"Friends\" and understand the motivations of the characters interacting with each other. He would look at a chimp colony and basically apply that lens. I'm massively oversimplifying it.\n\nIf you do that, instead of just saying, subject 473 through his feces at subject 471, you talk about them in terms of their human struggles, accord them the dignity of themselves as actors with understandable goals and drives, what they want out of life. And primarily, it's the things we want out of life: food, sex, companionship, power. You can understand chimp and bonobo behavior in the same lights much more easily.\n\nAnd I think doing so gives you the tools you need to reduce human behavior from the kind of false complexity that we layer onto it with language and look at it in terms of, oh, well, these humans are looking for companionship, sex, food, power. And I think that's a pretty powerful tool to have in understanding human behavior.\n\nAnd I just went to the Amazon jungle for a few weeks, and it's a very visceral reminder that a lot of life on earth is just trying to get laid. They're all screaming at each other. Like I saw a lot of monkeys, and they're just trying to impress each other, or maybe if there's a battle for power, but a lot of the battle for power has to do with them getting laid.\n\nRight. Breeding rights often go with alpha status. And so if you can get a piece of that, then you're gonna do okay.\n\nAnd would like to think that we're somehow fundamentally different, but especially when it comes to primates, we're really aren't, you know. We can use fancier poetic language, but maybe some of the underlying drives that motivate us are similar.\n\nYeah, I think that's true.\n\nAnd all of that is coming from this, the brain.\n\nYeah.\n\nSo when did you first start studying the brain as I guess as a biological mechanism?\n\nBasically, the moment I got to college, I started looking around for labs that I could do neuroscience work in. I originally approached that from the angle of looking at interactions between the brain and the immune system, which isn't the most obvious place to start, but I had this idea at the time that the contents of your thoughts would have an impact, a direct impact, maybe a powerful one on non-conscious systems in your body.\n\nThe systems we think of as homeostatic, automatic mechanisms like fighting off a virus, like repairing a wound. And sure enough, there are big crossovers between the two. I mean, it gets to kind of a key point that I think goes under recognized. One of the things people don't recognize or appreciate about the human brain enough, and that is that it basically controls or has a huge role in almost everything that your body does.\n\nLike you try to name an example of something in your body that isn't directly controlled or massively influenced by the brain, and it's pretty hard. I mean, you might say like bone healing or something, but even those systems, the hypothalamus and pituitary end up playing a role in coordinating the endocrine system that does have a direct influence on, say, the calcium level in your blood that goes to bone healing.\n\nSo non-obvious connections between those things implicate the brain as really a potent prime mover in all of health.\n\nOne of the things I realized in the other direction too, how most of the systems in the body integrated with the human brain, like they affect the brain also, like the immune system. I think there's just people who study Alzheimer's and those kinds of things. It's just surprising how much you can understand of that from the immune system, from the other systems that don't obviously seem to have anything to do with sort of the nervous system. They all play together.\n\nYeah, you could understand how that would be driven by evolution too, just in some simple examples. If you get sick, if you get a communicable disease, you get the flu, it's pretty advantageous for your immune system to tell your brain, \"Hey, now be antisocial for a few days. Don't go be the life of the party tonight. In fact, maybe just cuddle up somewhere warm under a blanket and just stay there for a day or two.\"\n\nAnd sure enough, that tends to be the behavior that you see both in animals and in humans. If you get sick, elevated levels of interleukins in your blood and TNF alpha in your blood ask the brain to cut back on social activity. And even moving around, you have lower locomotor activity in animals that are infected with viruses.\n\nSo from there, the early days in neuroscience to surgery, when did that step happen?\n\nYeah.\n\nThis is a leap.\n\nIt was sort of an evolution of thought. I wanted to study the brain. I started studying the brain in undergrad in this neuroimmunology lab. I, from there, realized at some point that I didn't wanna just generate knowledge. I wanted to effect real changes in the actual world, in actual people's lives. And so after having not really thought about going into medical school, I was on a track to go into a PhD program.\n\nI said, \"Well, I'd like that option. I'd like to actually potentially help tangible people in front of me.\" And doing a little digging found that there exists these MD-PhD programs where you can choose not to choose between them and do both.\n\nAnd so I went to USC for medical school and had a joint PhD program with Caltech, where I actually chose that program particularly because of a researcher at Caltech named Richard Andersen, who's one of the godfathers of primate neuroscience and has a MACAC lab where Utah arrays and other electrodes were being inserted into the brains of monkeys to try to understand how intentions were being encoded in the brain.\n\nSo I ended up there with the idea that maybe I would be a neurologist and study the brain on the side, and then discovered that neurology, again, I'm gonna make enemies by saying this, but neurology predominantly and distressingly to me is the practice of diagnosing a thing and then saying, \"Good luck with that. There's not much we can do.\"\n\nAnd neurosurgery, very differently, it's a powerful lever on taking people that are headed in a bad direction and changing their course in the sense of brain tumors that are potentially treatable or curable with surgery. Even aneurysms in the brain, blood vessels that are gonna rupture, you can save lives really is at the end of the day, what mattered to me.\n\nAnd so I was at USC, as I mentioned, that happens to be one of the great neurosurgery programs. And so I met these truly epic neurosurgeons, Alex Khalessi and Mike Apuzzo and Steve Giannotta and Marty Weiss, these sort of epic people that were just human beings in front of me.\n\nAnd so it kind of changed my thinking from neurosurgeons are distant gods that live on another planet and occasionally come and visit us to these are humans that have problems and are people. And there's nothing fundamentally preventing me from being one of them. And so at the last minute in medical school, I changed gears from going into a different specialty and switched into neurosurgery, which cost me a year.\n\nI had to do another year of research, because I was so far along in the process to switch into neurosurgery. The deadlines had already passed. So it was a decision that cost time, but absolutely worth it.\n\nWhat was the hardest part of the training on the neurosurgeon track?\n\nYeah, two things. I think that residency in neurosurgery is sort of a competition of pain, of like how much pain can you eat and smile.\n\nYeah.\n\nAnd so there's workout restrictions that are not really, they're viewed at, I think, internally among the residents as weakness. And so most neurosurgery residents try to work as hard as they can. And that I think necessarily means working long hours, and sometimes, over the work hour limits. And we care about being compliant with whatever regulations are in front of us.\n\nBut I think more important than that, people wanna give their all in becoming a better neurosurgeon, because the stakes are so high. And so it's a real fight to get residents to say go home at the end of their shift and not stay and do more surgery.\n\nAre you seriously saying like one of the hardest things is literally like forcing them to get sleep and rest and all this kind of stuff?\n\nHistorically, that was the case. I think the next generation, I think the next generation is more compliant and more selfcare- - Weaker is what you mean. All right, I'm just kidding, I'm just kidding.\n\nI didn't say it.\n\nNow I'm making enemies. Okay, I get it. Wow, that's fascinating. So what was the second thing?\n\nThe personalities. And maybe the two are connected, but- - Was it pretty competitive?\n\nIt's competitive and it's also, as we touched on earlier, primates like power, and I think neurosurgery has long had this aura of mystique and excellence and whatever about it. And so it's an invitation I think for people that are cloaked in that authority. A board certified neurosurgeon is basically a walking fallacious appeal to authority, right? You have license to walk into any room and act like you're an expert on whatever. And fighting that tendency is not something that most neurosurgeons do well. Humility isn't the forte.\n\nYeah, so I have friends who know you, and whenever they speak about you, that you have the surprising quality for a neurosurgeon of humility, which I think indicates that it's not as common as perhaps in other professions, 'cause there is a kind of gigantic sort of heroic aspect to neurosurgery, and I think it gets to people's head a little bit.\n\nYeah. Well, I think that allows me to play well at an Elon company. Because Elon, one of his strengths, I think, is to just instantly see through fallacy from authority. So nobody walks into a room that he's in and says, \"Well, goddamn it, you have to trust me. I'm the guy that built the last 10 rockets or something.\" And he says, \"Well, you did it wrong and we can do it better.\" Or, \"I'm the guy that kept Ford alive for the last 50 years.\n\nYou listen to me on how to build cars.\" And he says no. And so you don't walk into a room that he's in and say, \"Well, I'm a neurosurgeon. Let me tell you how to do it.\" He's gonna say, \"Well, I'm a human being that has a brain. I can think from first principles myself, thank you very much. And here's how I think it ought to be done. Let's go try it and see who's right.\"\n\nAnd that's proven I think over and over in his case to be a very powerful approach.\n\nIf we just take that tangent, there's a fascinating interdisciplinary team at Neuralink that you get to interact with, including Elon. What do you think is the secret to a successful team? What have you learned from just getting to observe these folks? World experts in different disciplines work together.\n\nYeah, there's a sweet spot where people disagree and forcefully speak their mind and passionately defend their position, and yet are still able to accept information from others and change their ideas when they're wrong. And so I like the analogy of sort of how you polish rocks. You put hard things in a hard container and spin it. People bash against each other and outcome's a more refined product.\n\nAnd so to make a good team at Neuralink, we've tried to find people that are not afraid to defend their ideas passionately. And occasionally, strongly disagree with people that they're working with and have the best idea come out on top. It's not an easy balance, again, to refer back to the primate brain.\n\nIt's not something that is inherently built into the primate brain to say, \"I passionately put all my chips on this position and now I'm just gonna walk away from it. Admit you were right.\" Part of our brains tell us that that is a power loss. That is a loss of face, a loss of standing in the community. And now, you're a zeta chimp, 'cause your idea got trounced.\n\nAnd you just have to recognize that that little voice in the back of your head is maladaptive and it's not helping the team win.\n\nYeah, you have to have the confidence to be able to walk away from an idea that you hold onto. Yeah.\n\nYeah.\n\nAnd if you do that often enough, you're actually going to become the best in the world at your thing. I mean, that kind of that rapid iteration.\n\nYeah, you'll at least be a member of a winning team.\n\nRide the wave. What did you learn? You mentioned there's a lot of amazing neurosurgeons at USC. What lessons about surgery and life have you learned from those folks?\n\nYeah, I think working your ass off, working hard while functioning as a member of a team, getting a job done that is incredibly difficult, working incredibly long hours, being up all night, taking care of someone that you think probably won't survive no matter what you do. Working hard to make people that you passionately dislike look good the next morning.\n\nThese folks were relentless in their pursuit of excellent neurosurgical technique decade over decade. And I think we're well-recognized for that excellence. Especially Marty Weiss, Steve Giannotta, Mike Apuzzo, they made huge contributions not only to surgical technique, but they built training programs that trained dozens or hundreds of amazing neurosurgeons. I was just lucky to kind of be in their wake.\n\nWhat's that like, you mentioned doing a surgery where the person is likely not to survive. Does that wear on you?\n\nYeah. It's especially challenging when you, with all respect to our elders, it doesn't hit so much when you're taking care of an 80-year-old and something was going to get them pretty soon anyway. And so you lose a patient like that, and it was part of the natural course of what is expected of them in the coming years, regardless.\n\nTaking care of a father of two or three, four young kids, someone in their 30s that didn't have it coming, and they show up in your ER having their first seizure of their life, and lo and behold, they've got a huge, malignant, inoperable or incurable brain tumor. You can only do that, I think, a handful of times before it really starts eating away at your armor.\n\nOr a young mother that shows up that has a giant hemorrhage in her brain that she's not gonna survive from. And they bring her four-year-old daughter to say goodbye one last time before they turn the ventilator off. The great Henry Marsh is a English neurosurgeon who said it best. I think he says that every neurosurgeon carries with them a private graveyard, and I definitely feel that, especially with young parents. That kills me.\n\nThey had a lot more to give. The loss of those people specifically has a knock on effect that's going to make the world worse for people for a long time. And it's just hard to feel powerless in the face of that. And that's where I think you have to be borderline evil to fight against a company like Neuralink or to constantly be taking pot shots at us because what we're doing is to try to fix that stuff.\n\nWe're trying to give people options, to reduce suffering. We're trying to take the pain out of life that broken brains brings in. And yeah, this is just our little way that we're fighting back against entropy, I guess.\n\nYeah, the amount of suffering that's endured when some of the things that we take for granted that our brain is able to do is taken away is immense. And to be able to restore some of that functionality is a real gift.\n\nYeah, we're just starting. We're gonna do so much more.\n\nWell, can you take me through the full procedure of implanting, say, the N1 chip in Neuralink?\n\nYeah, it's a really simple, really simple, straightforward procedure. The human part of the surgery that I do is dead simple. It's one of the most basic neurosurgery procedures imaginable. And I think there's evidence that some version of it has been done for thousands of years.\n\nThat there are examples I think from ancient Egypt of healed or partially healed trephinations from Peru or ancient times in South America where these protosurgeons would drill holes in people's skulls, presumably to let out the evil spirits, but maybe to drain blood clots. And there's evidence of bone healing around the edge, meaning the people at least survive some months after a procedure. And so what we're doing is that.\n\nWe are making a cut in the skin on the top of the head over the area of the brain that is the most potent representation of hand intentions. And so if you are an expert concert pianist, this part of your brain is lighting up the entire time you're playing. We call it the hand knob.\n\nThe hand knob.\n\nYeah.\n\nSo it's all like the finger movement. All of that is just firing away.\n\nYep, there's a little squiggle in the cortex right there. One of the folds in the brain is kind of doubly folded right on that spot. So you can look at it on an MRI and say, \"That's the hand knob.\" And then you do a functional test and a special kind of MRI called an a functional MRI, fMRI. And this part of the brain lights up when people, even quadriplegic people whose brains aren't connected to their finger movements anymore.\n\nThey imagine finger movements, and this part of the brain still lights up. So we can ID that part of the brain in anyone who's preparing to enter our trial and say, \"Okay, that part of the brain, we confirm, is your hand intention area.\" And so I'll make a little cut in the skin, we'll flap the skin open, just like kind of opening the hood of a car, only a lot smaller.\n\nMake a perfectly round one inch diameter hole in the skull, remove that bit of skull, open the lining of the brain, the covering of the brain. It's like a little bag of water that the brain floats in. And then show that part of the brain to our robot. And then this is where the robot shines.\n\nIt can come in and take these tiny, much smaller than human hair electrodes and precisely insert them into the cortex, into the surface of the brain to a very precise depth, in a very precise spot that avoids all the blood vessels that are coating the surface of the brain.\n\nAnd after the robot's done with its part, then the human comes back in and puts the implant into that hole in the skull and covers it up, screwing it down to the skull and sewing the skin back together. So the whole thing is a few hours long. It's extremely low risk compared to the average neurosurgery involving the brain that might say, open up a deep part of the brain or manipulate blood vessels in the brain.\n\nThis opening on the surface of the brain, with only cortical micro insertions, carries significantly less risk than a lot of the tumor or aneurysm surgeries that are routinely done.\n\nSo cortical micro insertions that are via robot and computer vision are designed to avoid the blood vessels.\n\nExactly.\n\nSo I know you're a bit biased here, but let's compare human and machine.\n\nSure.\n\nSo what are human surgeons able to do well, and what are robot surgeons able to do well at this stage of our human civilization development?\n\nYeah, yeah, that's a good question. Humans are general purpose machines. We're able to adapt to unusual situations. We're able to change the plan on the fly. I remember well a surgery that I was doing many years ago down in San Diego, where the plan was to open a small hole behind the ear and go reposition a blood vessel that had come to lay on the facial nerve, the trigeminal nerve, the nerve that goes to the face.\n\nWhen that blood vessel lays on the nerve, it can cause just intolerable, horrific shooting pain that people describe like being zapped with a cattle prod. And so the beautiful, elegant surgery is to go move this blood vessel off the nerve. The surgery team, we went in there and started moving this blood vessel and then found that there was a giant aneurysm on that blood vessel that was not easily visible on the pre-op scans.\n\nAnd so the plan had to dynamically change, and the human surgeons had no problem with that. We're trained for all those things. Robots wouldn't do so well in that situation, at least in their current incarnation, fully robotic surgery, like the electrode insertion portion of the Neuralink surgery. It goes according to a set plan.\n\nAnd so the humans can interrupt the flow and change the plan, but the robot can't really change the plan midway through. It operates according to how it was programmed and how it was asked to run. It does its job very precisely, but not with a wide degree of latitude and how to react to changing conditions.\n\nSo there could be just a very large number of ways that you could be surprised as a surgeon when you enter a situation that could be subtle things that you have to dynamically adjust to.\n\nCorrect.\n\nAnd robots are not good at that.\n\nCurrently. I think we are at the dawn of a new era with AI of the parameters for robot responsiveness to be dramatically broadened, right? I mean, you can't look at a self-driving car and say that it's operating under very narrow parameters. If a chicken runs across the road, it wasn't necessarily programmed to deal with that, specifically, but a Waymo or a self-driving Tesla would have no problem reacting to that appropriately. And so surgical robots aren't there yet, but give it time.\n\nAnd then there could be a lot of, sort of into like semi-autonomous possibilities of maybe a robotic surgeon could say, this situation is perfectly familiar, or the situation is not familiar. And in the not familiar case, a human could take over. But basically like be very conservative in saying, \"Okay, this for sure has no issues, no surprises, and let the humans deal with the surprises, with the edge cases, all that.\" That's one possibility.\n\nSo you think eventually, you'll be out of the job? Well, you being neurosurgeon, your job being neurosurgeon. Humans, there will not be many neurosurgeons left on this earth.\n\nI'm not worried about my job in the course of my professional life. I think I would tell my my kids not necessarily to go in this line of work depending on how things look in 20 years.\n\nIt's so fascinating, 'cause I mean, if I have a line of work, I would say it's programming. And if you ask me like for the last, I don't know, 20 years, what I would recommend for people, I would tell 'em, yeah, go. You will always have a job if you're a programmer, 'cause there's more and more computers and all this kind of stuff and it pays well.\n\nBut then you realize these large language models come along and they're really damn good at generating code. So overnight, you could be surprised like, \"Wow, like what is the contribution of the human really?\" But then you start to think, \"Okay, it does seem like humans have ability, like you said, to deal with novel situations.\" In the case of programming, it's the ability to kinda come up with novel ideas to solve problems.\n\nIt seems like machines aren't quite yet able to do that. And when the stakes are very high, when it's life critical, as it is in surgery, especially in neurosurgery, the stakes are very high for a robot to actually replace a human. But it's fascinating that in this case of Neuralink, there's a human-robot collaboration.\n\nYeah, yeah. I do the parts it can't do, and it does the parts I can't do. And we are friends. (Lex laughing) - I saw that there's a lot of practice going on. So I mean, everything in Neuralink is tested extremely rigorously. But one of the things I saw, that there's a proxy on which the surgeries are performed.\n\nYeah.\n\nSo this is both for the robot and for the human, for everybody involved in the entire pipeline. What's that like practicing the surgery?\n\nIt's pretty intense. So there's no analog to this in human surgery. Human surgery is sort of this artisanal craft that's handed down directly from master to pupil over the generations. I mean, literally the way you learn to be a surgeon on humans is by doing surgery on humans.\n\nI mean, first, you watch your professors do a bunch of surgery, and then finally, they put the trivial parts of the surgery into your hands, and then the more complex parts. And as your understanding of the point and the purposes of the surgery increases, you get more responsibility in the perfect condition. Doesn't always go well. In Neuralink's case, the approach is a bit different. We, of course, practiced as far as we could on animals.\n\nWe did hundreds of animal surgeries. And when it came time to do the first human, we had just amazing team of engineers build incredibly lifelike models. One of the engineers, Fran Romano, in particular built a pulsating brain in a custom 3D printed skull that matches exactly the patient's anatomy, including their face and scalp characteristics.\n\nAnd so when I was able to practice that, I mean, it's as close as it really reasonably should get to being the real thing and all the details, including the having a mannequin body attached to this custom head. And so when we were doing the practice surgeries, we'd wheel that body into the CT scanner and take a mock CT scan and wheel it back in and conduct all the normal safety checks verbally.\n\n\"Stop, this patient, we're confirming his identification, is mannequin number blah, blah, blah.\" And then opening the brain in exactly the right spot using standard operative neuronavigation equipment, standard surgical drills in the same OR that we do all of our practice surgeries in at Neuralink.\n\nAnd having the skull open and have the brain pulse, which adds a degree of difficulty for the robot to perfectly precisely plan and insert those electrodes to the right depth and location. And so yeah, we kind of broke new ground on how extensively we practiced for this surgery.\n\nSo there was a historic moment, a big milestone for Neuralink in part for humanity with the first human getting a Neuralink implant in January of this year. Take me through the surgery on Noland. What did it feel like to be part of this?\n\nYeah. Well, we're lucky to have just incredible partners at the Barrow Neurologic Institute. They are, I think, the premier neurosurgical hospital in the world. They made everything as easy as possible for the trial to get going and helped us immensely with their expertise on how to arrange the details. It was a much more high pressure surgery in some ways.\n\nI mean, even though the outcome wasn't particularly in question in terms of our participant safety, the number of observers, the number of people, there's conference rooms full of people watching live streams in the hospital, rooting for this to go perfectly, and that just adds pressure that is not typical for even the most intense production neurosurgery. Say, removing a tumor or placing deep brain stimulation electrodes.\n\nAnd it had never been done on a human before. There were unknown unknowns. And so definitely, a moderate pucker factor there for the whole team, not knowing if we were going to encounter, say, a degree of brain movement that was unanticipated or a degree of brain sag that took the brain far away from the skull and made it difficult to insert or some other unknown unknown problem.\n\nFortunately, everything went well and that surgery is one of the smoothest outcomes we could have imagined.\n\nWere you nervous? I mean, you're a bit quarterback in the Super Bowl kind of situation.\n\nExtremely nervous. Extremely. I was very pleased when it went well and when it was over. Looking forward to number two.\n\nYeah. Even with all that practice, all of that, you've never been in a situation that's still high stakes in terms of people watching. And we should also probably mention, given how the media works, a lot of people, maybe in a dark kind of way, hoping it doesn't go well.\n\nWell, I think wealth is easy to hate or envy or whatever. And I think there's a whole industry around driving clicks, and bad news is great for clicks. And so any way to take an event and turn it into bad news is gonna be really good for clicks.\n\nIt just sucks because I think it puts pressure on people. It discourages people from trying to solve really hard problems, because to solve hard problems, you have to go into the unknown. You have to do things that haven't been done before, and you have to take risks.\n\nYeah.\n\nCalculated risks. You have to do all kinds of safety precautions, but risks nevertheless. And I just wish there would be more celebration of that, of the risk taking versus like people just waiting on the sidelines, like waiting for failure, and then pointing out the failure. Yeah, it sucks. But in this case, it's really great that everything went just flawlessly, but it's unnecessary pressure, I would say.\n\nNow that there's a human with literal skin in the game, there's a participant whose wellbeing rides on this doing well, you have to be a pretty bad person to be rooting for that to go wrong. And so hopefully, people look in the mirror and realize that at some point.\n\nSo did you get to actually front row seat like watch the robot work? You get to see the whole thing?\n\nYeah, I mean, because an MD needs to be in charge of all of the medical decision making throughout the process, I unscrubbed from the surgery after exposing the brain and presenting it to the robot and placed the targets on the robot software interface that tells the robot where it's going to insert each thread that was done with my hand on the mouse, for whatever that's worth.\n\nSo you were the one placing the targets?\n\nYeah.\n\nOh, cool. So like the robot with a computer vision provides a bunch of candidates and you kinda finalize the decision.\n\nRight. The software engineers are amazing on this team. And so they actually provided an interface where you can essentially use a lasso tool and select a prime area of brain real estate, and it will automatically avoid the blood vessels in that region and automatically place a bunch of targets. So that allows the human robot operator to select really good areas of brain and make dense applications of targets in those regions, the regions we think are gonna have the most high fidelity representations of finger movements and arm movement intentions.\n\nI've seen like images of this. And for me, with OCD, it's for some reason a really pleasant, I think there's a subreddit called oddly satisfying.\n\n[Matthew] Yeah, love that subreddit.\n\nIt's oddly satisfying to see the different target sites avoiding the blood vessels and also maximizing like the usefulness of those locations for the signal. It just feels good. It's like, ah.\n\nAs a person who has a visceral reaction to the brain bleeding, I can tell you it's extremely satisfying watching the electrodes themselves go into the brain and not cause bleeding.\n\nYeah, yeah. So you said the feeling was of relief when everything went perfectly.\n\nYeah.\n\nHow deep in the brain can you currently go and eventually go, let's say, on the Neuralink side. It seems the deeper you go in the brain, the more challenging it becomes.\n\nYeah, so talking broadly about neurosurgery, we can get anywhere. It's routine for me to put deep brain stimulating electrodes near the very bottom of the brain, entering from the top and passing about a two millimeter wire all the way into the bottom of the brain. And that's not revolutionary. A lot of people do that. And we can do that with very high precision. I use a robot from Globus to do that surgery several times a month. It's pretty routine.\n\nWhat are your eyes in that situation? What are you seeing? What kind of technology can you use to visualize where you are to light your way?\n\nYeah, so it's a cool process on the software side. You take a preoperative MRI that's extremely high resolution data of the entire brain. You put the patient to sleep, put their head in a frame that holds the skull very rigidly, and then you take a CT scan of their head while they're asleep with that frame on, and then merge the MRI and the CT in software. You have a plan based on the MRI where you can see these nuclei deep in the brain.\n\nYou can't see them on CT, but if you trust the merging of the two images, then you indirectly know on the CT where that is. And therefore, indirectly know where in reference to the titanium frame screwed to their head those targets are. And so this is '60s technology to manually compute trajectories, given the entry point and target and dial in some goofy looking titanium actuators with a manual actuators with little tick marks on them.\n\nThe modern version of that is to use a robot. Just like a little KUKA arm, you might see it building cars at the Tesla factory.\n\nThis small robot arm can show you the trajectory that you intended from the pre-op MRI and establish a very rigid holder through which you can drill a small hole in the skull and pass a small rigid wire deep into that area of the brain that's hollow and put your electrode through that hollow wire and then remove all of that except the electrode. So you end up with the electrode very, very precisely placed far from the skull surface.\n\nNow that's standard technology that's already, been out in the world for a while. Neuralink right now is focused entirely on cortical targets, surface targets because there's no trivial way to get, say, hundreds of wires deep inside the brain without doing a lot of damage. So your question, what do you see? Well, I see an MRI on a screen. I can't see everything that that DBS electrode is passing through on its way to that deep target.\n\nAnd so it's accepted with this approach that there's gonna be about what one in a hundred patients who have a bleed somewhere in the brain as a result of passing that wire blindly into the deep part of the brain. That's not an acceptable safety profile for Neuralink. We start from the position that we want this to be dramatically maybe two or three orders of magnitude safer than that.\n\nSafe enough really that you or I, without a profound medical problem, might on our lunch break someday say, \"Yeah, sure, I'll get that. I'd be meaning to upgrade to the latest version.\" And so the safety constraints given that are high. And so we haven't settled on a final solution for arbitrarily approaching deep targets in the brain.\n\nIt's interesting 'cause like you have to avoid blood vessels somehow. Maybe there's creative ways of doing the same thing, like mapping out high resolution geometry of blood vessels and then you can go in blind. But how do you map out that in a way that's like super stable? There's a lot of interesting challenges there, right?\n\n[Matthew] Yeah.\n\nBut there's a lot to do on the surface. Luckily.\n\nExactly. So we've got vision on the surface. We actually have made a huge amount of progress sewing electrodes into the spinal cord as a potential workaround for a spinal cord injury that would allow a brain-mounted implant to translate motor intentions to a spine-mounted implant that can effect muscle contractions in previously paralyzed arms and legs.\n\nThat's mind-blowing. That's just incredible. So like the effort there is to try to bridge the brain to the spinal cord to the peripheral nervous system. So how hard is that to do?\n\nWe have that working in very crude forms in animals.\n\nThat's amazing.\n\nYeah, we've done- - So similar to like with Noland, where he's able to digitally move the cursor, here you're doing the same kind of communication but with the actual factors that you have.\n\nYeah.\n\n[Lex] That's fascinating.\n\nYeah, so we have anesthetized animals doing grasp and moving their legs in a sort of walking pattern. Again, early days, but the future is bright for this kind of thing. And people with paralysis should look forward to that bright future. They're gonna have options.\n\nYeah, and there's a lot of sort of intermediate or extra options where you take like an Optimus robot, like the arm, and to be able to control the arm. The fingers and hands of the arm as a prosthetic.\n\nSo skeletons are getting better too.\n\nSo skeletons. Yeah, so that goes hand in hand. Although I didn't quite understand until thinking about it deeply and doing more research about Neuralink, how much you can do on the digital side. So this digital telepathy, I didn't quite understand that you can really map the intention, as you described in the hand knob area, that you can map the intention. Just imagine it, think about it.\n\nThat intention can be mapped to actual action in the digital world. And now more and more, so much can be done in the digital world that it can reconnect you to the outside world. It can allow you to have freedom, have independence if you're a quadriplegic. That's really powerful. Like you can go really far with that.\n\nYeah, our first participant, he's incredible. He's breaking world records left and right.\n\nAnd he is having fun with it, it's great. Just going back to the surgery, your whole journey, you mentioned to me offline, you have surgery on Monday. So you're like doing surgery all the time.\n\nYeah.\n\nMaybe the ridiculous question, what does it take to get good at surgery?\n\nPractice, repetitions. Same with anything else. There's a million ways of people saying the same thing and selling books saying it, but you call it 10,000 hours, you call it, you know, spend some chunk of your life, some percentage of your life focusing on this, obsessing about getting better at it. Repetitions, humility, recognizing that you aren't perfect at any stage along the way. Recognizing you've got improvements to make in your technique.\n\nBeing open to feedback and coaching from people with a different perspective on how to do it. And then just the constant will to do better. That fortunately, if you're not a sociopath, I think your patients bring that with them to the office visits every day. They force you to wanna do better all the time.\n\nYeah, to step up. I mean, it's a real human being, a real human being that you can help.\n\nYeah.\n\nSo every surgery, even if it's the same exact surgery, is there a lot of variability between that surgery and a different person?\n\nYeah, a fair bit. I mean, a good example for us is the angle of the skull relative to the normal plane of the body axis, of the skull over hand knob is pretty wide variation. I mean, some people have really flat skulls, and some people have really steeply angled skulls over that area. And that has consequences for how their head can be fixed in sort of the frame that we use and how the robot has to approach the skull.\n\nYeah, people's bodies are built as differently as the people you see walking down the street, as much variability in body shape and size as you see there. We see in brain anatomy and skull anatomy, there are some people who we've had to kind of exclude from our trial for having skulls that are too thick or too thin or scalp that's too thick or too thin.\n\nI think we have like the middle 97% or so of people, but you can't account for all human anatomy variability.\n\nHow much like mushiness and messes there, 'cause taking biology classes, the diagrams are always really clean and crisp. Neuroscience, the pictures of neurons are always really nice and vary. But whenever I look at pictures of like real brains, I don't know what is going on.\n\nYeah.\n\nSo how much are biological systems in reality? Like how hard is it to figure out what's going on?\n\nNot too bad. Once you really get used to this, that's where experience and skill and education really come into play is if you stare at a thousand brains, it becomes easier to kind of mentally peel back the, say, for instance, blood vessels that are obscuring the sulci and gyri, kind of the wrinkle pattern of the surface of the brain.\n\nOccasionally, when you're first starting to do this and you open the skull, it doesn't match what you thought you were gonna see based on the MRI. And with more experience, you learn to kind of peel back that layer of blood vessels and see the underlying pattern of wrinkles in the brain and use that as a landmark for where you are.\n\n[Lex] The wrinkles are a landmark? So like- - Yeah. So I was describing hand knob earlier. That's a pattern of the wrinkles in the brain. It's sort of this sort of Greek letter, omega-shaped area of the brain.\n\nSo you could recognize the hand knob area. Like if I show you a thousand brains and give you like one minute with each, you'd be like, \"Yep, that's that?\"\n\nSure.\n\nAnd so there is some uniqueness to that area of the brain, like in terms of the geometry, the topology of the thing.\n\nYeah.\n\nWhere is it about in the- - So you have this strip of brain running down the top called the primary motor area. And I'm sure you've seen this picture of the homunculus laid over the surface of the brain, the weird little guy with huge lips and giant hands. That guy sort of lays with his legs up at the top of the brain and face, arm, areas farther down and then some kind of mouth, lip, tongue areas farther down. And so the hand is right in there.\n\nAnd then the areas that control speech, at least on the left side of the brain in most people are just below that. And so any muscle that you voluntarily move in your body, the vast majority of that references that strip or those intentions come from that strip of brain. And the wrinkle for hand knob is right in the middle of that.\n\nAnd vision is back here.\n\nBack, yep.\n\nAlso, close to the surface?\n\nVision's a little deeper. And so this gets to your question about how deep can you get to do vision. We can't just do the surface of the brain. We have to be able to go in, not as deep as we have to go for DBS, but maybe a centimeter deeper than we're used to for hand insertions. And so that's work in progress. That's a new set of challenges to overcome.\n\nBy the way, you mentioned the Utah array. And I just saw a picture of that, and that thing looks terrifying.\n\n[Matthew] Yeah, bed of nails.\n\nIt's because it's rigid. And then if you look at the threads, they're flexible. What can you say that's interesting to you about the flexible, that kind of approach of the flexible threads to deliver the electrodes next to the neurons?\n\nYeah, I mean, the goal there comes from experience. I mean, we stand on the shoulders of people that made Utah arrays and used Utah arrays for decades before we ever even came along.\n\nNeuralink arose, partly this approach to technology arose out of a need recognized after Utah arrays would fail routinely because the rigid electrodes, those spikes that are literally hammered using an air hammer into the brain, those spikes generate a bad immune response that encapsulates the electrode spikes in scar tissue essentially.\n\nAnd so one of the projects that was being worked on in the Andersen lab at Caltech when I got there, was to see if you could use chemotherapy to prevent the formation of scar. Things are pretty bad when you're jamming a bed of nails into the brain and then treating that with chemotherapy to try to prevent scar tissue. It's like, maybe we've gotten off track here, guys. Maybe there's a fundamental redesign necessary.\n\nAnd so Neuralink's approach of using highly flexible, tiny electrodes avoids a lot of the bleeding, avoids a lot of the immune response that ends up happening when rigid electrodes are pounded into the brain. And so what we see is our electrode longevity and functionality and the health of the brain tissue immediately surrounding the electrode is excellent. I mean, it goes on for years now in our animal models.\n\nWhat do most people not understand about the biology of the brain? We mention the vasculature. That's really interesting.\n\nI think the most interesting maybe underappreciated fact is that it really does control almost everything. I mean, I don't know, for out of the blue example, imagine you want a lever on fertility, you wanna be able to turn fertility on and off. I mean, there are legitimate targets in the brain itself to modulate fertility, say blood pressure. You wanna modulate blood pressure. There are legitimate targets in the brain for doing that.\n\nThings that aren't immediately obvious as brain problems are potentially solvable in the brain. And so I think it's an under-explored area for primary treatments of all the things that bother people.\n\nThat's a really fascinating way to look at it. Like there's a lot of conditions we might think have nothing to do with the brain, but they might just be symptoms of something that actually started in the brain. The actual source of the problem. The primary source is something in the brain.\n\nYeah, not always. I mean, kidney disease is real. But there are levers you can pull in the brain that affect all of these systems.\n\nThere's knobs.\n\nYeah.\n\nOn-off switches and knobs in the brain, from which this all originates. Would you have a Neuralink chip implanted in your brain?\n\nYeah. I think use case right now is use a mouse, right? I can already do that. And so there's no value proposition. On safety grounds alone, sure. I'll do it tomorrow.\n\nYou say the use case of the mouse, is it after like researching all this and part of it is just watching Noland have so much fun? If you can get that bits per second look really high with a mouse, like being able to interact, 'cause if you think about it, the way, on the smartphone, the way you swipe, that was transformational how you interact with a thing. It's subtle.\n\nYou don't realize it, but to able to touch a phone and to scroll with your finger, that's like, that changed everything. People were sure you need a keyboard to type. There's a lot of HCI aspects to that that changed how we interact with computers. So there could be a certain rate of speed with the mouse that would change everything.\n\nYeah.\n\nIt's like you might be able to just click around a screen extremely fast. And that, I can see myself getting a Neuralink for much more rapid interaction with the digital devices.\n\nYeah, I think recording speech intentions from the brain might change things as well. The value proposition for the average person, a keyboard is a pretty clunky human interface, requires a lot of training. It's highly variable in the maximum performance that the average person can achieve. I think taking that out of the equation and just having a natural word to computer interface might change things for a lot of people.\n\nIt'd be hilarious if that is the reason people do it. Even if you have speech to text, that's extremely accurate, it currently isn't, but say it gotten super accurate, it'd be hilarious if people went for Neuralink just so you avoid the embarrassing aspect of speaking, like looking like a douche bag speaking to your phone in public, which is a real, like that's a real constraint.\n\nYeah. I mean, with a bone conducting case, that can be an invisible headphone, say, and the ability to think words into software and have it respond to you, that starts to sound sort of like embedded super intelligence. If you can silently ask for the Wikipedia article on any subject and have it read to you, without any observable change happening in the outside world, for one thing, standardized testing is obsolete. (laughs) - Yeah.\n\nIf it's done well in the UX side, it could change. I don't know if it transforms society, but it really can create a kind of shift in the way we interact with digital devices in the way that a smartphone did. Just having to look into the safety of everything involved, I would totally try it so it doesn't have to go to some like incredible thing where you have, it connects your vision or to some other, like it connects all over your brain.\n\nThat could be like just connecting to the hand knob. You might have a lot of interesting interaction, human-computer interaction possibilities. That's really interesting.\n\nYeah, and the technology on the academic side is progressing at light speed here. I think there was a really amazing paper out of UC Davis, Sergey Stavisky's lab that basically made a initial solve of speech decode. It was something like 125,000 words that they we're getting with very high accuracy, which is- - So you're just thinking the word?\n\nYeah.\n\nThinking the word and you're able to get it?\n\nYeah.\n\nOh boy. Like you have to have the intention of speaking it.\n\nRight.\n\nSo like do the inner voice. Man, it's so amazing to me that you can do the intention, the signal mapping. All you have to do is just imagine yourself doing it. And if you get the feedback that it actually worked, you can get really good at that. Like your brain will first of all adjust and you develop it like any other skill. Like touch typing, you develop in that same kind of way.\n\nTo me, it's just really fascinating to be able to even to play with that. Honestly, like I would get a Neuralink just to be able to play with that. Just to play with the capacity, the capability of my mind to learn this skill. It's like learning the skill of typing and learning the skill of moving a mouse. It's another skill of moving the mouse, not with my physical body, but with my mind.\n\nI can't wait to see what people do with it. I feel like we're cavemen right now. We're like banging rocks with a stick and thinking that we're making music. At some point, when these are more widespread, there's gonna be the equivalent of a piano that someone can make art with their brain in a way that we didn't even anticipate. I'm looking forward to it.\n\nGive it to like a teenager. Like anytime I think I'm good at something, I'll always go to like, I don't know. Even with the bit per second of playing a video game, you realize you give it to a teenager, you've given your link to a teenager, just the large number of them, the kind of stuff, they get good at stuff. They're gonna get like hundreds of bits per second. Even just with the current technology.\n\nProbably. Probably.\n\n'Cause it's also addicting, the number go up aspect of it of like improving and training, 'cause it is almost like a skill. And plus, there's the software on the other end that adapts to you. And especially if the adapting procedure algorithm becomes better and better and better, you're like learning together.\n\nYeah, we're scratching the surface on that right now. There's so much more to do.\n\nSo on the complete other side of it, you have an RFID chip implanted in you.\n\nYeah.\n\nSo I hear, nice.\n\nLittle subtle thing.\n\nIt's a passive device that you use for unlocking like a safe with top secrets, or what do you use it for? What's the story behind it?\n\nI'm not the first one. There's this whole community of weirdo biohackers that have done this stuff, and I think one of the early use cases was storing private crypto wallet keys and whatever. I dabbled in that a bit and had some fun with it.\n\nYou have some bitcoin implanted in your body somewhere. You can't tell where, yeah.\n\nYeah, actually, yeah. (Lex laughing) It was the modern day equivalent of finding change in the sofa cushions after I put some orphan crypto on there that I thought was worthless and forgot about it for a few years. Went back and found that some community of people loved it and had propped up the value of it. And so it had gone up 50 fold.\n\nWow.\n\nSo there was a lot of change in those cushions. (Lex laughing) - That's hilarious.\n\nBut the primary use case was mostly as a tech demonstrator. It has my business card on it. You can scan that in by touching it to your phone. It opens the front door to my house, whatever simple stuff.\n\nIt's a cool step. It's a cool leap to implant something in your body. I mean, perhaps, it's a similar leap to a Neuralink because for a lot of people, that kind of notion of putting something inside your body, something electronic inside a biological system is a big leap.\n\nYeah, we have a kind of a mysticism around the barrier of our skin. We're completely fine with knee replacements, hip replacements, dental implants. But there's a mysticism still around the inviable barrier that the skull represents. And I think that needs to be treated like any other pragmatic barrier. The question isn't, how incredible is it to open the skull? The question is, what benefit can we provide?\n\nSo from all the surgeries you done, from everything you understand the brain, how much does neuroplasticity come into play? How adaptable is the brain, for example, just even in the case of healing from surgery or adapting to the post-surgery situation.\n\nThe answer that is sad for me and other people of my demographic is that plasticity decreases with age. Healing decreases with age. I have too much gray hair to be optimistic about that. There are theoretical ways to increase plasticity using electrical stimulation. Nothing that is totally proven out as a robust enough mechanism to offer widely to people.\n\nBut yeah, I think there's cause for optimism that we might find something useful in terms of, say, an implanted electrode that improves learning.\n\nCertainly, there's been some really amazing work recently from Nicholas Schiff, Jonathan Baker, and others who have a cohort of patients with moderate traumatic brain injury who have had electrodes placed in the deep nucleus in the brain called the centromedian nucleus or just near central media nucleus. And when they apply small amounts of electricity to that part of the brain, it's almost like electronic caffeine.\n\nThey're able to improve people's attention and focus. They're able to improve how well people can perform a task. I think in one case, someone who was unable to work after the device was turned on, they were able to get a job.\n\nAnd that's sort of one of the holy grails for me with Neuralink and other technologies like this is from a purely utilitarian standpoint, can we make people able to take care of themselves and their families economically again? Can we make it so someone who's fully dependent and even maybe requires a lot of caregiver resources, can we put them in a position to be fully independent, taking care of themselves, giving back to their communities?\n\nI think that's a very compelling proposition, and what motivates a lot of what I do and what a lot of the people at Neuralink are working for.\n\nIt's just a cool possibility that if you put a Neuralink in there, that the brain adapts, like the other part of the brain adapts too.\n\nYeah.\n\nAnd integrates it. The capacity of the brain to do that is really interesting. Probably unknown to the degree to which you can do that, but you're now connecting an external thing to it, especially once it's doing stimulation, like the biological brain and the electronic brain outside of it working together. Like the possibilities there are really interesting. It's still unknown but interesting. It feels like the brain is really good at adapting to whatever.\n\nYeah.\n\nBut of course, it is a system that by itself is already, like everything serves a purpose and so you don't wanna mess with it too much.\n\nYeah, it's like, eliminating a species from an ecology. You don't know what the delicate interconnections and dependencies are. The brain is certainly a delicate, complex beast. And we don't know every potential downstream consequence of a single change that we make.\n\nDo you see yourself doing, so you mentioned P1, surgeries of P2, P3, P4, P5? Just more and more and more humans.\n\nI think it's a certain kind of brittleness or a failure on the company's side if we need me to do all the surgeries. I think something that I would very much like to work towards is a process that is so simple and so robust on the surgery side that literally anyone could do it. We wanna get away from requiring intense expertise or intense experience to have this successfully done and make it as simple and translatable as possible.\n\nI mean, I would love it if every neurosurgeon on the planet had no problem doing this. I think we're probably far from a regulatory environment that would allow people that aren't neurosurgeons to do this, but not impossible.\n\nAll right, I'll sign up for that. Did you ever anthropomorphize the robot R1? Like do you give it a name? Do you see it as like a friend, as like working together with you?\n\nI mean, to a certain degree it's- - Or anatomy who's gonna get the gap.\n\nTo a certain degree, yeah, it's complex relationship.\n\nAll the good relationships are.\n\nIt's funny when, in the middle of the surgery, there's a part of it where I stand basically shoulder to shoulder with the robot. And so if you're in the room reading the body language, that's my brother in arms there. We're working together on the same problem. Yeah, I'm not threatened by it.\n\nKeep telling yourself that. (laughs) How have all the surgeries that you've done over the years, the people you've helped and the stakes, the high stakes that you've mentioned, how has that changed your understanding of life and death?\n\nYeah. It gives you a very visceral sense, and this makes sound trite, but it gives you a very visceral sense that death is inevitable. On one hand, you are, as a neurosurgeon, you're deeply involved in these like just hard to fathom tragedies: young parents dying, leaving a four-year-old behind say. And on the other hand, it takes the sting out of it a bit because you see how just mind numbingly universal death is.\n\nThere's zero chance that I'm going to avoid it. I know techno optimists right now and longevity buffs right now would disagree on that 0. 0% estimate. But I don't see any chance that our generation is going to avoid it. Entropy is a powerful force, and we are very ornate, delicate, brittle DNA machines that aren't up to the cosmic ray bombardment that we're subjected to. So on the one hand, every human that has ever lived died or will die.\n\nOn the other hand, it's just one of the hardest things to imagine inflicting on anyone that you love is having them gone. I'm sure you've had friends that aren't living anymore and it's hard to even think about them. And so I wish I had arrived at the point of nirvana where death doesn't have a sting. I'm not worried about it, but I can at least say that I'm comfortable with the certainty of it.\n\nIf not, having found out how to take the tragedy out of it when I think about my kids either not having me or me not having them or my wife.\n\nMaybe I have come to accepting intellectual certainty of it, but it may be the pain that comes with losing the people you love, I don't think I've come to understand the existential aspect of it. Like that this is gonna end. And I don't mean like in some trite way. I mean like, it certainly feels like it's not going to end. Like you live life like it's not going to end.\n\n[Matthew] Right.\n\nAnd the fact that this light that's shining this consciousness is going to no longer be, in one moment, maybe today, it fills me when I really am able to load all that in with Ernest Becker's terror. Like it's a real fear. I think people aren't always honest with how terrifying it is. I think the more you are able to really think through it, the more terrifying it is. It's not such a simple thing. Oh well, it's the way life is.\n\nIf you really can load that in, it's hard. But I think that's why the stoics did it, because it like helps you get your shit together and be like, well, the moment, every single moment you're alive is just beautiful. And it's terrifying that it's gonna end, like almost like you're shivering in the cold a child helpless, this kind of feeling.\n\nAnd then it makes you, when you have warmth, when you have the safety, when you have the love to really appreciate it. I feel like sometimes, in your position, when you mentioned armor, just to see death, it might make you not be able to see that, the finiteness of life, because if you kept looking at that, it might break you.\n\nSo it's good to know that you're kind of still struggling with that, that there's the neurosurgeon and then there's a human. And the human is still able to struggle with that and feel the fear of that and the pain of that.\n\nYeah, it definitely makes you ask the question of how long, how many of these can you see? And not say, \"I can't do this anymore.\" But I mean, you said it well. I think it gives you an opportunity to just appreciate that you're alive today. And I've got three kids and an amazing wife and I'm really happy. Things are good. I get to help on a project that I think matters. I think it moves us forward. I'm a very lucky person.\n\nIt's the early steps of a potentially gigantic leap for humanity. It's a really interesting one. And it's cool 'cause like you, you read about all this stuff in history where it's like the early days. I've been reading, before going to the Amazon, I would read about explorers that would go and explore even the Amazon jungle for the first time. Those are the early steps.\n\nOr early steps into space, early steps in any discipline, in physics and mathematics. And it's cool 'cause this is like, on the grand scale, these are the early steps into delving deep into the human brain. So not just observing the brain, but be able to interact with the human brain. It's gonna help a lot of people, but it also might help us understand what the hell's going on in there.\n\nYeah, I think ultimately, we wanna give people more levers that they can pull, right? Like you wanna give people options. If you can give someone a dial that they can turn on how happy they are, I think that makes people really uncomfortable. But now, talk about major depressive disorder. Talk about people that are committing suicide at an alarming rate in this country. And try to justify that queasiness in that light of you can give people a knob to take away suicidal ideation, suicidal intention. I would give them that knob. I don't know how you justify not doing that.\n\nYeah, you can think about like all the suffering that's going on in the world. Like every single human being that's suffering right now, it'll be a glowing red dot. The more suffering, the more it's glowing. And you just see the map of human suffering, and any technology that allows you to dim that light of suffering on a grand scale is pretty exciting, because there's a lot of people suffering and most of them suffer quietly. We look away too often, and we should remember those that are suffering, 'cause once again, most of them are suffering quietly.\n\nWell, and on a grander scale, the fabric of society, people have a lot of complaints about how our social fabric is working or not working, how our politics is working or not working. Those things are made of neurochemistry too, in aggregate, right?\n\nLike our politics is composed of individuals with human brains and, the way it works or doesn't work is potentially tunable in the sense that, I don't know, say remove our addictive behaviors or tune our addictive behaviors for social media or our addiction to outrage, our addiction to sharing the most angry political tweet we can find. I don't think that leads to a functional society.\n\nAnd if you had options for people to moderate that maladaptive behavior, there could be huge benefits to society. Maybe we could all work together a little more harmoniously toward useful ends.\n\nThere's a sweet spot, like you mentioned, you don't wanna completely remove all the dark sides of human nature 'cause those kind of are somehow necessary to make the whole thing work. But there's a sweet spot.\n\nYeah, I agree. We gotta suffer a little, just not so much that you lose hope.\n\nYeah. We knew all the surgeries you've done. Have you seen consciousness in there ever? Was there like a glowing light?\n\nI have this sense that I never found it. Never removed it, like a dementor in Harry Potter. I have this sense that consciousness is a lot less magical than our instincts wanna claim it is. It seems to me like a useful analog for thinking about what consciousness is in the brain, is that we have a really good intuitive understanding of what it means to, say, touch your skin and know what's being touched.\n\nI think consciousness is just that level of sensory mapping applied to the thought processes in the brain itself. So what I'm saying is consciousness is the sensation of some part of your brain being active. So you feel it working. You feel the part of your brain that thinks of red things or winged creatures or the taste of coffee. You feel those parts of your brain being active the way that I'm feeling my palm being touched, right?\n\nAnd that sensory system that feels the brain working is consciousness.\n\nThat's so brilliant. It's the same way, it's the sensation of touch when you're touching a thing. Consciousness is the sensation of you feeling your brain working, your brain thinking, your brain perceiving.\n\nWhich isn't like a warping of space and time or some quantum field effect, right? It's nothing magical. People always wanna ascribe to consciousness something truly different. And there's this awesome long history of people looking at whatever the latest discovery in physics is to explain consciousness, because it's the most magical, the most out there thing that you can think of. And people always wanna do that with consciousness. I don't think that's necessary. It's just a very useful and gratifying way of feeling your brain work.\n\nAnd as we said, it's one heck of a brain.\n\n[Matthew] Yeah.\n\nEverything we see around us, everything we love, everything that's beautiful, it came from brains like these.\n\nIt's all electrical activity happening inside your skull.\n\nAnd I, for one, am grateful that there's people like you that are exploring all the ways that it works and all the ways it can be made better.\n\nThanks, Lex.\n\nThank you so much for talking today.\n\nIt's been a joy. Thanks for listening to this conversation with Matthew MacDougall. And now, dear friends, here's Bliss Chapman, Brain Interface Software lead at Neuralink. You told me that you've met hundreds of people with spinal cord injuries or with ALS and that your motivation for helping at Neuralink is grounded in wanting to help them. Can you describe this motivation?\n\nYeah. First, just a thank you to all the people I've gotten a chance to speak with, for sharing their stories with me. I don't think there's any world really in which I can share their stories as powerful way as they can.\n\nBut just I think to summarize at a very high level what I hear over and over again is that people with ALS or severe spinal cord injury in a place where they basically can't move physically anymore, really at the end of the day are looking for independence. And that can mean different things for different people.\n\nFor some folks, it can mean the ability just to be able to communicate again independently without needing to wear something on their face, without needing a caretaker to be able to put something in their mouth.\n\nFor some folks, it can mean independence to be able to work again, to be able to navigate a computer digitally, efficiently enough to be able to get a job, to be able to support themself, to be able to move out and ultimately be able to support themself after their family maybe isn't there anymore to take care of them.\n\nAnd for some folks, it's as simple as just being able to respond to their kid in time before they run away or get interested in something else. And these are deeply personal and sort of very human problems. And what strikes me again and again when talking with these folks is that this is actually an engineering problem. This is a problem that with the right resources, with the right team, we can make a lot of progress on.\n\nAnd at the end of the day, I think that's a deeply inspiring message and something that makes me excited to get up every day.\n\nSo it's both an engineering problem in terms of a BCI, for example, that can give them capabilities where they can interact with the world. But also on the other side, it's an engineering problem for the rest of the world to make it more accessible for people living with quadriplegia.\n\nYeah, and actually, I'll take a broad view sort of lens on this for a second. I think I'm very in favor of anyone working in this problem space. So beyond BCI, I'm happy and excited and willing to support any way I can folks working on eye tracking systems, working on speech to text systems, working on head trackers or mouse sticks or quad sticks. And I've met many engineers and folks in the community that do exactly those things.\n\nAnd I think for the people we're trying to help, it doesn't matter what the complexity of the solution is as long as the problem is solved. And I wanna emphasize that there can be many solutions out there that can help with these problems. And BCI is one of a collection of such solutions. So BCI, in particular, I think offers several advantages here.\n\nAnd I think the folks that recognize this immediately are usually the people who have spinal cord injury or some form of paralysis. Usually, you don't have to explain to them why this might be something that could be helpful. It's usually pretty self-evident.\n\nBut for the rest of us folks that don't live with severe spinal cord injury or who don't know somebody with ALS, it's not often obvious why you would want a brain implant to be able to connect and navigate a computer. And it's surprisingly nuanced, and to the degree that I've learned a huge amount just working with Noland in the first Neuralink clinical trial and understanding from him in his words why this device is impactful for him.\n\nAnd it's a nuanced topic. It can be the case that even if you can achieve the same thing, for example, with a mouse stick when navigating a computer, he doesn't have access to that mouse stick every single minute of the day. He only has access when someone's available to put it in front of him.\n\nAnd so a BCI can really offer a level of independence and autonomy that if it wasn't literally physically part of your body, it'd be hard to achieve in any other way.\n\nSo there's a lot of fascinating aspects to what it takes to get Noland to be able to control a cursor on the screen with his mind. You texted me something that I just love. You said, \"I was part of the team that interviewed and selected P1. I was in the operating room during the first human surgery monitoring live signals coming out of the brain. I work with the user basically every day to develop new UX paradigm's decoding strategies.\n\nAnd I was part of the team that figured out how to recover useful BCI to new world record levels when the signal quality degraded.\" We'll talk about I think every aspect of that, but just zooming out, what was it like to be part of that team and part of that historic, I would say, historic first?\n\nYeah, I think for me, this is something I've been excited about for close to 10 years now. And so to be able to be even just some small part of making it a reality is extremely exciting. A couple maybe special moments during that whole process that I'll never really truly forget, one of them is during the actual surgery, at that point in time, I know Noland quite well. I know his family.\n\nAnd so I think the initial reaction when Noland is rolled into the operating room is just a \"oh shit\" kind of reaction. But at that point, muscle memory kicks in and you sort of go into, you let your body just do all the talking. And I have the lucky job in that particular procedure to just be in charge of monitoring the implant.\n\nSo my job is to sit there, to look at the signals coming off the implant, to look at the live brain data streaming off the device as threads are being inserted into the brain and just to basically observe and make sure that nothing is going wrong or that there's no red flags or fault conditions that we need to go and investigate or pause the surgery to debug.\n\nAnd because I had that sort of spectator view of the surgery, I had a slightly removed perspective than I think most folks in the room. I got to sit there and think to myself, \"Wow, that brain is moving a lot.\" When you look into the side look craniectomy, that we stick the threads in, one thing that most people don't realize is the brain moves. The brain moves a lot when you breathe, when your heart beats, and you can see it visibly.\n\nSo that's something that I think was a surprise to me and very, very exciting to be able to see someone's brain who you physically know and have talked with at length actually pulsing and moving inside their skull.\n\nAnd they use that brain to talk to you previously, and now it's right there moving.\n\nYep.\n\nActually, I didn't realize that in terms of the thread sending, so the Neuralink implant is active during surgery, and one thread at a time, you're able to start seeing the signal?\n\nYeah.\n\nSo that's part of the way you test that the thing is working?\n\nYeah, so actually in the operating room, right after we sort of finished all the thread insertions, I started collecting what's called broadband data. So broadband is basically the most raw form of signal you can collect from a Neuralink electrode. It's essentially a measurement of the local field potential or the, yeah, the voltage essentially measured by that electrode.\n\nAnd we have a certain mode in our application that allows us to visualize where detected spikes are. So it visualizes sort of where, in the broadband symbol, and it's very, very raw form of the data a neuron is actually spiking.\n\nAnd so one of these moments that I'll never forget as part of this whole clinical trial is seeing live in the operating room, while he's still under anesthesia, beautiful spikes being shown in the application, just streaming live to a device I'm holding in my hand.\n\nSo this is no signal processing the raw data and then the signals processings on top of it, you're seeing the spikes detected?\n\n[Bliss] Right, yeah.\n\nAnd that's a UX too because- - Yes.\n\nThat looks beautiful as well.\n\nDuring that procedure, there was actually a lot of cameramen in the room. So they also were curious and wanted to see. There's several neurosurgeons in the room who are all just excited to see robots taking their job and they're all crowded around a small little iPhone watching this live brain data stream out of his brain.\n\nWhat was that like seeing the robot do some of the surgery? So the computer vision aspect where it detects all the spots that avoid the blood vessels and then obviously with the human supervision, then actually doing the really high precision connection of the threads to the brain.\n\nThat's a good question. My answer's gonna be pretty lame here, but it was boring. I've seen it so many times. Yeah, that's exactly how you want surgery to be. You want it to be boring, because I've seen it so many times. I've seen the robot do the surgery literally hundreds of times, and so it was just one more time.\n\nYeah, all the practice surgeries and the proxies and this is just another day.\n\nYep.\n\nSo what about when Noland woke up? Do you remember a moment where he was able to move the cursor, not move the cursor, but get signal from the brain such that it was able to show that there's a connection?\n\nYeah, yeah. So we are quite excited to move as quickly as we can, and Noland was really, really excited to get started. He wanted to get started actually the day of surgery, but we waited till the next morning very patiently. So a long night. And the next morning in the ICU, where he was recovering, he wanted to get started and actually start to understand what kind of signal we can measure from his brain.\n\nAnd maybe for folks who are not familiar with the Neuralink system, we implant the Neuralink system or the Neuralink implant in the motor cortex. So the motor cortex is responsible for representing things like motor intent, sort of if you imagine closing and opening your hand, that kind of signal representation would be present in the motor cortex.\n\nIf you imagine moving your arm back and forth or wiggling a pinky, this sort of signal can be present in the motor cortex. So one of the ways we start to sort of map out, what kind of signal do we actually have access to in any particular individual's brain is through this task called body mapping. And body mapping is where you essentially present a visual to the user and you say, \"Hey, imagine doing this.\"\n\nAnd that visual is a 3D hand opening and closing, or index finger modulating up and down. And you ask the user to imagine that, and obviously, you can't see them do this, 'cause they're paralyzed so you can't see them actually move their arm, but while they do this task, you can record neural activity, and you can basically offline model and check, can I predict or can I detect the modulation corresponding with those different actions?\n\nAnd so we did that task and we realized, hey, there's actually some modulation associated with some of his hand motion, which was the first indication that, okay, we can potentially use that modulation to do useful things in the world. For example, control a computer cursor. And he started playing with it, the first time we showed him it, and we actually just took the same live view of his brain activity and put it in front of him.\n\nAnd we said, \"Hey, you tell us what's going on. We're not you. You're able to imagine different things, and we know that it's modulating some of these neurons so you figure out for us what that is actually representing.\" And so he played with it for a bit. He was like, \"I don't quite get it yet.\" He played for a bit longer. And he said, \"Oh, when I move this finger, I see this particular neuron start to fire more.\"\n\nAnd I said, okay, \"Prove it, do it again.\" And so he said, \"Okay, three, two, one, boom.\" And the minute he moved, you can see like instantaneously this neuron is firing - single neuron. I can tell you the exact channel number if you're interested. It's stuck in my brain now forever.\n\nBut that single channel firing was a beautiful indication that it was behaved really modulated neural activity that could then be used for downstream tasks like decoding a computer cursor.\n\nAnd when you say single channel, is that associated with a single electrode?\n\nYeah, channel electrode are interchangeable.\n\nAnd there's 1,024 of those?\n\n1,024, yeah.\n\nThat's incredible that that works.\n\nWhen I was learning about all this and like loading it in, it was just blowing my mind that the intention, you can visualize yourself moving the finger, that can turn into a signal, and the fact that you can then skip that step and visualize the cursor moving or have the intention of the cursor moving and that leading to a signal that can then be used to move the cursor, there is so many exciting things there to learn about the brain, about the way the brain works, the very fact of their existing signal that can be used is really powerful.\n\nBut it feels like that's just like the beginning of figuring out how that signal could be used really, really effectively. I should also just, there's so many fascinating details here, but you mentioned the body mapping step. At least in the version I saw that Noland was showing off, there's like a super nice interface, like a graphical interface.\n\nBut like it just felt like I was like in the future 'cause it like, you know, I guess it visualizes you moving the hand. And there's very like a sexy, polished interface. Hello. I don't know if there's a voice component, but it just felt like when you wake up in a really nice video game and this is a tutorial at the beginning of that video game. \"This is what you're supposed to do.\" It's cool.\n\nNo, I mean, the future should feel like the future.\n\nBut it's not easy to pull that off. I mean, it needs to be simple but not too simple.\n\nYeah, and I think the UX design component here is underrated for BCI development in general. There's a whole interaction effect between the ways in which you visualize an instruction to the user and the kinds of signal you can get back. And that quality of sort of your behavioral alignment to the neural signal is a function of how good you are at expressing to the user what you want them to do.\n\nAnd so yeah, we spend a lot of time thinking about the UX, of how we build our applications, of how the decoder actually functions, the control surfaces it provides to the user. All these little details matter a lot.\n\nSo maybe it'd be nice to get into a little bit more detail of what the signal looks like and what the decoding looks like. So there's a N1 implant that has, like we mentioned, 1,024 electrodes and that's collecting raw data, raw signal. What does that signal look like, and what are the different steps along the way before it's transmitted, and what is transmitted, all that kind of stuff?\n\nYeah, yep. This is gonna be a fun one. Let's go. So maybe before diving into what we do, it's worth understanding what we're trying to measure, because that dictates a lot of the requirements for the system that we build. And what we're trying to measure is really individual neurons producing action potentials. And action potential is, you can think of it like a little electrical impulse that you can detect if you're close enough.\n\nAnd by being close enough, I mean, like within let's say 100 microns of that cell. And 100 microns is a very, very tiny distance. And so the number of neurons that you're gonna pick up with any given electrode is just a small radius around that electrode. And the other thing worth understanding about the underlying biology here is that when neurons produce an action potential, the width of that action potential is about one millisecond.\n\nSo from the start of the spike to the end of the spike, that whole width of that sort of characteristic feature of a neuron firing is one millisecond wide. And if you want to detect that an individual spike is occurring or not, you need to sample that signal or sample the local full potential nearby that neuron much more frequently than once a millisecond.\n\nYou need to sample many, many times per millisecond to be able to detect that this is actually the characteristic waveform of a neuron producing an action potential. And so we sample across all 1,024 electrodes about 20,000 times a second. 20,000 times a second means we've already given one millisecond window. We have about 20 samples that tell us what that exact shape of that action potential looks like.\n\nAnd once we've sort of sampled at super high rate the underlying electrical field nearby these cells, we can process that signal into just where do we detect a spike or where do we not, sort of a binary signal one or zero. Do we detect a spike in this one millisecond or not? And we do that because the actual information carrying sort of subspace of neural activity is just when are spikes occurring.\n\nEssentially, everything that we care about for decoding can be captured or represented in the frequency characteristics of spike trains, meaning how often are spikes firing in any given window of time.\n\nAnd so that allows us to do sort of a crazy amount of compression from this very rich, high density signal to something that's much, much more sparse and compressible that can be sent out over a wireless radio, like a Bluetooth communication, for example.\n\nQuick tangents here. You mentioned electrode neuron. There's a local neighborhood of neurons nearby. How difficult is it to like isolate from where the spike came from?\n\nYeah, so there's a whole field of sort of academic neuroscience work on exactly this problem, of basically given a single electrode or given a set of electrodes measuring a set of neurons, how can you sort of sort, spike sort which spikes are coming from what neuron? And this is a problem that's pursued in academic work because you care about it for understanding what's going on in the underlying sort of neuroscience of the brain.\n\nIf you care about understanding how the brain's representing information, how that's evolving through time, then that's a very, very important question to understand. For sort of the engineering side of things, at least at the current scale, if the number of neurons per electrode is relatively small, you can get away with basically ignoring that problem completely.\n\nYou can think of it like sort of a random projection of neurons to electrodes, and there may be in some cases more than one neuron per electrode. But if that number is small enough, those signals can be thought of as sort of a union of the two. And for many applications, that's a totally reasonable trade off to make and can simplify the problem a lot.\n\nAnd as you sort of scale out channel count, the relevance of distinguishing individual neurons becomes less important, because you have more overall signal and you can start to rely on sort of correlations or covariance structure in the data to help understand when that channel's firing, what does that actually represent? 'Cause you know that when that channel's firing in concert with these other 50 channels, that means move left.\n\nBut when that same channel's firing with concert with these other 10 channels, that means move right.\n\nOkay, so you have to do this kind of spike detection on board, and you have to do that super efficiently, so fast and not use too much power, 'cause you don't wanna be generating too much heat. So it has to be a super simple signal processing step.\n\n[Bliss] Yeah.\n\nIs there some wisdom you can share about what it takes to overcome that challenge?\n\nYeah, so we've tried many different versions of basically turning this raw signal into sort of a feature that you might wanna send off the device. And I'll say that I don't think we're at the final step of this process. This is a long journey. We have something that works clearly today, but there can be many approaches that we find in the future that are much better than what we do right now.\n\nSo some versions of what we do right now, and there's a lot of academic heritage to these ideas, so I don't wanna claim that these are original Neuralink ideas or anything like that. But one of these ideas is basically to build a sort of like a convolutional filter almost, if you will, that slides across the signal and looks for a certain template to be matched.\n\nAnd that template consists of sort of how deep the spike modulates, how much it recovers, and what the duration and window of time is that the whole process takes. And if you can see in the signal that that template is matched within certain bounds, then you can say, \"Okay, that's a spike.\"\n\nOne reason that approach is super convenient is that you can actually implement that extremely efficiently in hardware, which means that you can run it in low power across 1,024 channels all at once. Another approach that we've recently started exploring, and this can be combined with the spike detection approach, something called spike band power.\n\nAnd the benefits of that approach are that you may be able to pick up some signal from neurons that are maybe too far away to be detected as a spike, because the farther away you are from an electrode, the weaker that actual spike waveform will look like on that electrode.\n\nSo you might be able to pick up population level activity of things that are maybe slightly outside the normal recording radius, what neuroscientists sometimes refer to as the hash of activity, the other stuff that's going on, and you can look at sort of across many channels how that sort of background noise is behaving and you might be able to get more juice out of the signal that way. But it comes at a cost.\n\nThat signal is now a floating point representation, which means it's more expensive to send out over a power. It means you have to find different ways to compress it that are different than what you can apply to binary signals. So there's a lot of different challenges associated with these different modalities.\n\nSo also, in terms of communication, you're limited by the amount of data you can send.\n\n[Bliss] Yeah.\n\nAnd also, because you're currently using the Bluetooth protocol, you have to batch stuff together. But you have to also do this keeping the latency crazy low. Like crazy low. Anything to say about the latency?\n\nYeah, this is a passion project of mine, so I wanna build the best mouse in the world. I don't wanna build like the, you know, the Chevrolet Spark or whatever of electric cars. I wanna build like the Tesla Roadster version of a mouse. And I really do think it's quite possible that within 5 to 10 years, that most eSports competitions are dominated by people with paralysis. This is like a very real possibility for number of reasons.\n\nOne is that they'll have access to the best technology to play video games effectively. The second is they have the time to do so. So those two factors together are particularly potent for eSport competitors.\n\nUnless people without paralysis are also allowed to implant.\n\n(laughs) Right.\n\nWhich is, it is another way to interact with a digital device. And there's something to that, if it's a fundamentally different experience, more efficient experience. Even if it's not like some kinda full on high bandwidth communication, if it's just the ability to move the mouse 10x faster, like the bits per second, if I can achieve a bits per second, that 10x, what I can do with the mouse, that's a really interesting possibility of what that can do, especially as you get really good at it with training.\n\nIt's definitely the case that you have a higher ceiling performance, because you don't have to buffer your intention through your arm, through your muscle. You get just, by nature of having a brain implant at all, like 75 millisecond lead time on any action that you're actually trying to take.\n\nAnd there's some nuance to this, like there's evidence that the motor cortex, you can sort of plan out sequences of action so you may not get that whole benefit all the time. But for sort of like reaction time style games where you just wanna, somebody's over here, snipe 'em, that kind of thing. You actually do have just an inherent advantage 'cause you don't need to go through muscle. So the question is, just how much faster can you make it?\n\nAnd we're already than you what you would do if you're going through muscle from a latency point of view, and we're in the early stage of that. I think we can push it sort of our end-to-end latency right now from brain spike to cursor movement, it's about 22 milliseconds. If you think about the best mice in the world, the best gaming mice, that's about five milliseconds-ish of latency, depending on how you measure.\n\nDepending how fast your screen refreshes, there's a lot of characteristics that matter there. But yeah, and the rough time for like a neuron in the brain to actually impact your command of your hand is about 75 millisecond. So if you look at those numbers, you can see that we're already like competitive and slightly faster than what you'd get by actually moving your hand.\n\nAnd this is something that, if you ask Noland about it, when he moved the cursor for the first time, we asked him about this. This was something I was super curious about, like what does it feel like when you're modulating, a click intention or when you're trying to just move the cursor to the right.\n\nHe said it moves before he is like actually intending it to, which is kind of a surreal thing and something that I would love to experience myself one day. What is that like to have that thing just be so immediate, so fluid that it feels like it's happening before you're actually intending it to move.\n\nYeah, I suppose we've gotten used to that latency, that natural latency that happens. So is the currently the bottleneck, the communication, so like the Bluetooth communication, what's the actual bottleneck? I mean, there's always gonna be a bottleneck. What's the current bottleneck?\n\nYeah, a couple things. So kind of hilariously, Bluetooth low energy protocol has some restrictions on how fast you can communicate. So the protocol itself establishes a standard of the most frequent sort of updates you can send are on the order of 7. 5 milliseconds.\n\nAnd as we push latency down to the level of sort of individual spikes impacting control, that level of resolution, that kind of protocol is gonna become a limiting factor at some scale. Another sort of important nuance to this is that it's not just the Neuralink itself that's part of this equation. If you start pushing latency sort of below the level of how fast screens refresh, then you have another problem.\n\nLike you need your whole system to be able to be as reactive as the sort of limits of what the technology can offer. Like you need the screen like 120 hertz just doesn't work anymore if you're trying to have something respond at something that's at the level of one millisecond.\n\nThat's a really cool challenge. I also like that for a T-shirt, the best mouse in the world. Tell me on the receiving end, so the decoding step, now we figured out what the spikes are, we got them all together, now we're sending that over to the app. What's the decoding step look like?\n\nYeah, so maybe first, what is decoding? I think there's probably a lot of folks listening that just have no clue what it means to decode brain activity.\n\nActually, even if we zoom out beyond that, what is the app? So there's an implant that's wirelessly communicating with any digital device that has an app installed. So maybe can you tell me a high level what the app is, what the software is outside of the brain?\n\nYeah, so maybe working backwards from the goal, the goal is to help someone with paralysis, in this case Noland, be able to navigate his computer independently. And we think the best way to do that is to offer them the same tools that we have to navigate our software because we don't wanna have to rebuild an entire software ecosystem for the brain. At least not yet. Maybe someday you can imagine there's UXs that are built natively for BCI.\n\nBut in terms of what's useful for people today, I think most people would prefer to be able to just control mouse and keyboard inputs to all the applications that they wanna use for their daily jobs, for communicating with their friends, et cetera. And so the job of the application is really to translate this wireless stream of brain data coming off the implant into control of the computer.\n\nAnd we do that by essentially building a mapping from brain activity to sort of the HID inputs to the actual hardware. So HID is just the protocol for communicating like input device events. So for example, move mouse to this position or press this key down. And so that mapping is fundamentally what the app is responsible for.\n\nBut there's a lot of nuance of how that mapping works that we spend a lot of time to try to get right and we're still in the early stages of a long journey to figure out how to do that optimally. So one part of that process is decoding. So decoding is this process of taking the statistical patterns of brain data that's being channeled across this Bluetooth connection to the application and turning it into, for example, a mouse movement.\n\nAnd that decoding step, you can think of it in a couple different parts. So similar to any machine learning problem, there's a training step and there's an inference step. The training step in our case is a very intricate behavioral process where the user has to imagine doing different actions. So for example, they'll be presented a screen with a cursor on it and they'll be asked to push that cursor to the right.\n\nThen imagine pushing that cursor to the left, push it up, push it down, and we can basically build up a pattern or using any sort of modern ML method, a mapping of given this brain data and that imagined behavior map one to the other. And then at test time, you take that same pattern matching system.\n\nIn our case, it's a deep neural network, and you run it and you take the live stream of brain data coming off their implant, you decode it by pattern matching to what you saw at calibration time, and you use that for a control of the computer.\n\nNow, a couple like sort of rabbit holes that are I think are quite interesting, one of them has to do with how you build that best template matching system because there's a variety of behavioral challenges and also debugging challenges when you're working with someone who's paralyzed. Because again, fundamentally, you don't observe what they're trying to do. You can't see them attempt to move their hand.\n\nAnd so you have to figure out a way to instruct the user to do something and validate that they're doing it correctly such that then you can downstream, build with confidence the mapping between the neural spikes and the intended action. And by doing the action correctly, what I really mean is at this level of resolution of what neurons are doing.\n\nSo if in ideal world, you could get a signal of behavioral intent that is ground truth accurate at the scale of sort of one millisecond resolution, then with high confidence, I could build a mapping from my neuro spikes to that behavioral intention. But the challenge is, again, that you don't observe what they're actually doing.\n\nAnd so there's a lot of nuance to how you build user experiences that give you more than just sort of a course on average correct representation of what the user's intending to do. If you want to build the world's best mouse, you really want it to be as responsive as possible.\n\nYou want it to be able to do exactly what the user's intending at every sort of step along the way, not just on average be correct when you're trying to move it from left to right. And building a behavioral sort of calibration game or sort of software experience that gives you that level of resolution is what we spend a lot of time working.\n\nSo the calibration process, the interface has to encourage precision, meaning like whatever it does, it should be super intuitive that the next thing the human is going to likely do is exactly that intention that you need and only that intention. And you don't have any feedback except that may be speaking to you afterwards what they actually did. You can't, \"Oh yeah.\"\n\nRight.\n\nSo that's fundamentally, that is a really exciting UX challenge, 'cause that's all on the UX. It's not just about being friendly or nice or usable.\n\nYeah.\n\nIt's like- - User experience is how it works.\n\nIt's how it works.\n\nYeah.\n\nFor the calibration, and calibration, at least at this stage of Neuralink, is like fundamental to the operation of the thing and not just calibration but continued calibration essentially.\n\n[Bliss] Yeah.\n\nWow, yeah.\n\nYou said something that I think is worth exploring there a little bit.\n\nYou said it's primarily a UX challenge, and I think a large component of it is, but there is also a very interesting machine learning challenge here, which is given some data set, including some on average correct behavior of asking the user to move up or move down, move right, move left, and given a data set of neural spikes, is there a way to infer in some kind of semi-supervised or entirely unsupervised way what that high resolution version of their intention is?\n\nAnd if you think about it, like there probably is because there are enough data points in the dataset, enough constraints on your model that there should be a way with the right sort of formulation to let the model figure out itself. For example, at this millisecond, this is exactly how hard they're pushing upwards. And at this millisecond, this is how hard they're trying to push upwards.\n\nIt's really important to have very clean labels, yes. So like the problem becomes much harder from the machine learning perspective if the labels are noisy.\n\n[Bliss] That's correct.\n\nAnd then to get the clean labels, that's a UX challenge.\n\nCorrect, although clean labels, I think maybe it's worth exploring what that exactly means. I think any given labeling strategy will have some number of assumptions it makes about what the user's attempting to do. Those assumptions can be formulated in a loss function, or they can be formulated in terms of heuristics that you might use to just try to estimate or guesstimate what the user's trying to do.\n\nAnd what really matters is how accurate are those assumptions. For example, you might say, \"Hey, user, push upwards and follow the speed of this cursor,\" and your heuristic might be that they're trying to do it exactly what that cursor's trying to do. Another competing heuristic might be they're actually trying to go slightly faster at the beginning of the movement and slightly slower at the end.\n\nAnd those competing heuristics may or may not be accurate reflections of what the user's trying to do. Another version of the task might be, \"Hey, user, imagine moving this cursor a fixed offset. So rather than follow the cursor, just try to move it exactly 200 pixels to the right.\" So here's the cursor, here's the target. Okay, cursor disappears. Try to move that now invisible cursor 200 pixels to the right.\n\nAnd the assumption in that case would be that the user can actually modulate correctly that position offset, but that position offset assumption might be a weaker assumption, and therefore, potentially you can make it more accurate than these heuristics that are trying to guesstimate at each millisecond what the user's trying to do.\n\nSo you can imagine different tasks that make different assumptions about the nature of the user intention and those assumptions being correct is what I would think of as a clean label.\n\nFor that step, what are we supposed to be visualizing? There's a cursor and you wanna move that cursor to the right or the left or up and down or maybe move them by a certain offset. So that's one way, is that the best way to do calibration? So for example, an alternative crazy way that probably is playing a role here is a game like Webgrid, where you're just getting a very large amount of data, the person playing a game, where if they're in a state of flow, maybe you can get clean signal as a side effect.\n\n[Bliss] Yep.\n\nIs that not an effective way for initial calibration?\n\nYeah, great question. There's a lot to unpack there. So the first thing I would draw a distinction between a sort of open loop, first closed loop. So open loop, what I mean by that is the user is sort of going from zero to one. They have no model at all, and they're trying to get to the place where they have some level of control at all.\n\nIn that setup, you really need to have some task that gives the user a hint of what you want them to do such that you can build this mapping again from brain data to output. Then once they have a model, you could imagine them using that model and actually adapting to it and figuring out the right way to use it themself and then retraining on that data to give you sort of a boost in performance.\n\nThere's a lot of challenges associated with both of these techniques and we can sort of rabbit hole into both of 'em, if you're interested. But the sort of challenge with the open loop task is that the user themself doesn't get proprioceptive feedback about what they're doing. They don't necessarily perceive themself or feel the mouse under their hand when they're using an open, when they're trying to do an open loop calibration.\n\nThey're being asked to perform something. Like imagine if you sort of had your whole right arm numbed and you stuck it in a box and you couldn't see it. So you had no visual feedback and you had no proprioceptive feedback about what the position or activity of your arm was. And now you're asked, okay, given this thing on the screen that's moving from left to right, match that speed.\n\nAnd you basically can try your best to invoke whatever that imagined action is in your brain that's moving the cursor from left to right. But in any situation, you're gonna be inaccurate and maybe inconsistent in how you do that task. And so that's sort of the fundamental challenge of open loop.\n\nThe challenge with closed loop is that, once the user's given a model, and they're able to start moving the mouse on their own, they're going to very naturally adapt to that model. And that co-adaptation between the model learning, what they're doing, and the user learning how to use the model may not find you the best sort of global minima.\n\nAnd maybe that your first model was noisy in some ways or maybe just had some like quirk, like if there's some like part of the data distribution that didn't cover super well, and the user now figures out because they're a brilliant user like Noland. They figured out the right sequence of imagined motions or the right angle they have to hold their hand at to get it to work.\n\nAnd they'll get it to work great, but then the next day, they come back to their device and maybe they don't remember exactly all the tricks that they used the previous day. And so there's a complicated sort of feedback cycle here that can emerge and can make it a very, very difficult debugging process.\n\nOkay, there's a lot of really fascinating things there. Yeah, actually, just to stay on the closed loop, I've seen situations, this actually happened watching psychology grad students. They use piece of software when they don't know how to program themselves. They use piece of software that somebody else wrote, and it has a bunch of bugs. And they figure out like, and they've been using it for years. They figured out ways to work around it.\n\nOh, that just happens. Like nobody like considers maybe we should fix this. They just adapt. And that's a really interesting notion, that we were really good at adapting, but you need to still, that might not be the optimal. Okay, so how do you solve that problem? Do you have to restart from scratch every once in a while kind of thing?\n\nYeah, it's a good question. First and foremost, I would say this is not a solved problem. And for anyone who's listening in academia who works on BCIs, I would also say this is not a problem that's solved by simply scaling channel account. Maybe that can help and you can get sort of richer covariance structures that you can use to exploit when trying to come up with good labeling strategies.\n\nBut if you're interested in problems, that aren't gonna be solved inherently by scaling channel account, this is one of them. Yeah, so how do you solve it? It's not a solved problem. That's the first thing I wanna make sure gets across. The second thing is, any solution that involves closed loop is going to become a very difficult debugging problem.\n\nAnd one of my sort of general heuristics for choosing what prompts to tackle is that you wanna choose the one that's gonna be the easiest to debug, 'cause if you can do that, even if the ceiling is lower, you're gonna be able to move faster because you have a tighter iteration loop debugging the problem. And in the open loop setting, there's not a feedback cycle debug with the user in the loop.\n\nAnd so there's some reason to think that that should be an easier debugging problem. The other thing that's worth understanding is that even in a closed loop setting, there's no special software magic of how to infer what the user is truly attempting to do. In the closed loop setting, although they're moving the cursor on the screen, they may be attempting something different than what your model is outputting.\n\nSo what the model is outputting is not a signal that you can use to retrain if you want to be able to improve the model further. You still have this very complicated guesstimation or unsupervised problem of figuring out what is the true user intention underlying that signal. And so the open loop problem has the nice property of being easy to debug.\n\nAnd the second nice property of, it has all the same information and content as the closed loop scenario. Another thing I wanna mention and call out is that this problem doesn't need to be solved in order to give useful control to people. Even today with the solutions we have now and that academia has built up over decades, the level of control that can be given to a user today is quite useful.\n\nIt doesn't need to be solved to get to that level of control. But again, I wanna build the world's best mouse. I wanna make it so good that it's not even a question that you want it. And to build the world's best mouse, the superhuman version, you really need to nail that problem.\n\nAnd a couple maybe details of previous studies that we've done internally that I think are very interesting to understand when thinking about how to solve this problem, the first is that even when you have ground truth data of what the user's trying to do, and you can get this with an able-bodied monkey, a monkey that has a Neuralink device implanted and moving a mouse to control a computer, even with that ground truth dataset, it turns out that the optimal thing to predict to produce high performance BCI is not just the direct control of the mouse.\n\nYou can imagine building dataset of what's going on in the brain and what is the mouse exactly doing on the table. And it turns out that if you build the mapping from neuro spikes to predict exactly what the mouse is doing, that model will perform worse than a model that is trained to predict sort of higher level assumptions about what the user might be trying to do.\n\nFor example, assuming that the monkey is trying to go in a straight line to the target, it turns out that making those assumptions is actually more effective in producing a model than actually predicting the underlying hand movement.\n\nSo the intention, not like the physical movement or whatever.\n\nYeah.\n\nThere's obviously a really strong correlation between the two, but the intention is a more powerful thing to be chasing.\n\n[Bliss] Right.\n\nWell, that's also super interesting. I mean, the intention itself is fascinating, because yes, with the BCI here, in this case, with a digital telepathy, you're acting on the intention, not the action, which is why there's an experience of like feeling like it's happening before you meant for it to happen. That is so cool. And that is why you could achieve like superhuman performance problem in terms of the control of the mouse.\n\nSo for open loop, just to clarify, so whenever the person is tasked to like move the mouse to the right, you said there's not feedback so they don't get to get that satisfaction of like actually getting it to move, right?\n\nYou could imagine giving the user feedback on a screen, but it's difficult, because at this point, you don't know what they're attempting to do. So what can you show them that would basically give them a signal of I'm doing this correctly or not correctly. So let's take this very specific example. Like maybe your calibration task looks like you're trying to move the cursor a certain position offset.\n\nSo your instructions to the user are, \"Hey, the cursor's here. Now, when the cursor disappears, imagine moving it 200 pixels from where it was to the right to be over this target.\" In that kind of scenario, you could imagine coming up with some sort of consistency metric that you could display to the user of, \"Okay, I know what the spike train looks like on average when you do this action to the right.\n\nMaybe I can produce some sort of probabilistic estimate of how likely is that to be the action you took given the latest trial or trajectory that you imagined.\" And that could give the user some sort of feedback of how consistent are they across different trials.\n\nYou could also imagine that if the user is prompted with that kind of consistency metric, that maybe they just become more behaviorally engaged to begin with because the task is kind of boring when you don't have any feedback at all. And so there may be benefits to the user experience of showing something on the screen, even if it's not accurate, just because it keeps the user motivated to try to increase that number or push it upwards.\n\nSo there's a psychology element here.\n\nYeah, absolutely.\n\nAnd again, all of that is UX challenge. How much signal drift is there, hour to hour, day to day, week to week, month to month? How often do you have to recalibrate because of the signal drift?\n\nYeah, so this is a problem we've worked on, both with NHP, non-human primates, before our clinical trial and then also with Noland during the clinical trial. Maybe the first thing that's worth stating is what the goal is here. So the goal is really to enable the user to have a plug and play experience where I guess they don't have to plug anything in, but a play experience where they can use the device whenever they want to, however they want to.\n\nAnd that's really what we're aiming for. And so there can be a set of solutions that get to that state without considering this non-stationary problem. So maybe the first solution here that's important is that they can recalibrate whenever they want. This is something that Noland has the ability to do today.\n\nSo he can recalibrate the system at 2:00 AM in the middle of the night, without his caretaker or parents or friends around to help push a button for him. The other important part of the solution is that when you have a good model calibrated, that you can continue using that without needing to recalibrate it. So how often he has to do this recalibration today depends really on his appetite for performance.\n\nWe observe sort of a degradation through time of how well any individual model works, but this can be mitigated behaviorally by the user adapting their control strategy. It can also be mitigated through a combination of sort of software features that we provide to the user. For example, we let the user adjust exactly how fast the cursor is moving.\n\nWe call that the gain, for example, the gain of how fast the cursor reacts to any given input intention. They can also adjust the smoothing, how smooth the output of that cursor intention actually is. They can also adjust the friction, which is how easy is it to stop and hold still. And all these software tools allow the user a great deal of flexibility and troubleshooting mechanisms to be able to solve this problem for themselves.\n\nBy the way, all of this is done by looking to the right side of the screen, selecting the mixer, and the mixer you have- - It's like DJ mode. DJ mode for your VCI.\n\nSo I mean, it's a really well done interface. It's really, really well done. And so yeah, there's that bias that there's a cursor drift that Noland talked about in a stream, although he said that you guys were just playing around with it with him and then constantly improving. So that could have been just a snapshot of that particular moment, a particular day. But he said that there was this cursor drift and this bias that could be removed by him, I guess looking to the right side of the screen, the left side of the screen to kind of adjust the bias.\n\nYeah, yeah.\n\nThat's one interface action I guess to adjust the bias.\n\nYeah, so this is actually an idea that comes out of academia. There are some prior work with sort of BrainGate clinical trial participants where they pioneered this idea of bias correction.\n\nThe way we've done it I think is, yeah, it's very prototized, very beautiful user experience where the user can essentially flash the cursor over to the side of the screen and it opens up a window where they can actually sort of adjust or tune exactly the bias of the cursor. So bias maybe, for people who aren't familiar, is just sort of what is the default motion of the cursor if you're imagining nothing.\n\nAnd it turns out that that's one of the first sort of qualia of the cursor control experience that's impacted by neuro non-stationarity.\n\nQuality off the cursor experience.\n\nI don't know how else to describe it. I'm not the guy moving- - It's very poetic, I love it. The quality of the cursor experience. Yeah, I mean, it sounds poetic but it is deeply true. There is an experience, when it works well, it is a joyful, a really pleasant experience. And when it doesn't work well, it's a very frustrating experience. That's actually the art of UX.\n\nIt's like you have the possibility to frustrate people or the possibility to give them joy, - And at the end of the day, it really is truly the case that UX is how the thing works. And so it's not just like what's showing on the screen, it's also what control surfaces does a decode provide the user? Like we want them to feel like they're in the F1 card, not like some like minivan, right? And that really truly is how we think about it.\n\nNoland himself is an F1 fan, so we refer to ourself as a pit crew. He really is truly the F1 driver, and there's different control surfaces that different kinds of cars and airplanes provide the user. And we take a lot of inspiration from that when designing how the cursor should behave..\n\nAnd what maybe one nuance of this is, even details like when you move a mouse on a MacBook track pad, the sort of response curve of how that input that you give the track pad translates to cursor movement is different than how it works with a mouse. When you move on the track pad, there's a different response function, a different curve to how much a movement translates to input to the computer than when you do it physically with a mouse.\n\nAnd that's because somebody sat down a long time ago when they're designed the initial input systems to any computer and they thought through exactly how it feels to use these different systems. And now we're designing sort of the next generation of this input system to a computer, which is entirely done via the brain, and there's no proprioceptive feedback.\n\nAgain, you don't feel the mouse in your hand, you don't feel the keys under your fingertips, and you want a control surface that still makes it easy and intuitive for the user to understand the state of the system and how to achieve what they wanna achieve. And ultimately, the end goal is that that UX is completely, it fades into the background.\n\nIt becomes something that's so natural and intuitive that it's subconscious to the user, and they just should feel like they have basically direct control over the cursor. It just does what they want it to do. They're not thinking about the implementation of how to make it do what they want it to do. It's just doing what they want it to do.\n\nIs there some kind of things along the lines of like Fitts' law where you should move the mouse in a certain kind of way that maximizes your chance to hit the target? I don't even know what I'm asking, but I'm hoping the intention of my question will land on a profound answer. No, is there some kind of understanding of the laws of UX when it comes to the context of somebody using their brain to control it? Like that's different than actual with a mouse?\n\nI think we're in the early stages of discovering those laws, so I wouldn't claim to have solved that problem yet. But there's definitely some things we've learned that make it easier for the user to get stuff done. And it's pretty straightforward when you verbalize it, but it takes a while to actually get to that point when you're in the process of debugging the stuff in the trenches.\n\nOne of those things is that any machine learning system you build has some number of errors, and it matters how those errors translate to the downstream user experience. For example, if you're developing a search algorithm in your photos, if you search for your friend Joe and it pulls up a photo of your friend Josephine, maybe that's not a big deal because the cost of an error is not that high.\n\nIn a different scenario where you're trying to detect insurance fraud or something like this and you're directly sending someone to court because of some machine learning model output, then the errors make a lot more sense to be careful about. You wanna be very thoughtful about how those errors translate to downstream effects. The same is true in BCI.\n\nSo for example, if you're building a model that's decoding a velocity output from the brain versus an output where you're trying to modulate the left click, for example. These have sort of different trade-offs of how precise you need to be before it becomes useful to the end user. For velocity, it's okay to be on average correct, because the output of the model is integrated through time.\n\nSo if the user's trying to click at position A, and they're currently in position B, they're trying to navigate over time to get between those two points. And as long as the output of the model is on average correct, they can sort of steer it through time with the user control loop in the mix. They can get to the point they wanna get to. The same is not true of a click.\n\nFor a click, you're performing it almost instantly at the scale of neurons firing. And so you want to be very sure that that click is correct because a false click can be very destructive to the user. They might accidentally close the tab that they're trying to do something and lose all their progress. They might accidentally like hit some Send button on some text that it's only like half-composed and reads funny after.\n\nSo there's different sort of cost functions associated with errors in this space. And part of the UX design is understanding how to build a solution that is when it's wrong, still useful to the end user.\n\nIt's so fascinating that assigning cost to every action when an error occurs. So every action, if an error occurs, has a certain cost, and incorporating that into how you interpret the intention, mapping it to the action is really important. I didn't quite until you said it realize there's a cost to like sending the text early. It's like very expensive cost.\n\nYeah. It's super annoying if you accidentally, like if you're a cursor, imagine if your cursor misclick every once in a while, that's like super obnoxious. And the worst part of it is, usually, when the user's trying to click, they're also holding still because they're over the target they wanna hit and they're getting ready to click, which means that in the data sets that we build, on average, it's the case that sort of low speeds or desire to hold still. It's correlated with when the user's attempting to click.\n\nWow, that is really fascinating.\n\nIt's also not the case. People think that, \"Oh, a click is a binary signal. This must be super easy to decode.\" Well, yes it is, but the bar is so much higher for it to become a useful thing for the user, and there's ways to solve this. I mean, you can sort of take the compound approach of, well, let's just give the like, let's take five seconds to click. Let's take a huge window of time so it can be very confident about the answer.\n\nBut again, world's best mouse. The world's best mouse doesn't take a second to click or 500 milliseconds to click. It takes five milliseconds to click or less. And so if you're aiming for that kind of high bar, then you really wanna solve the underlying problem.\n\nSo maybe this is a good place to ask about how to measure performance, this whole bits per second. Can you like explain what you mean by that? Maybe a good place to start is to talk about Webgrid as a game, as a good illustration of the measurement of performance.\n\nYeah, maybe I'll take one zoom out step there, which is just explaining why we care to measure this at all. So again, our goal is to provide the user the ability to control the computer as well as I can and hopefully better. And that means that they can do it at the same speed as what I can do.\n\nIt means that they have access to all the same functionality that I have, including all those little details like command tab, command space, all this stuff. They need to be able to do it with their brain and with the same level of reliability as what I can do with my muscles. And that's a high bar. And so we intend to measure and quantify every aspect of that to understand how we're progressing towards that goal.\n\nThere's many ways to measure BPS, by the way. This isn't the only way, but we present the user a creative targets, and basically, we compute a score which is dependent on how fast and accurate they can select, and then how small are the targets. And the more targets that are on the screen, the smaller they are, the more information you present per click.\n\nAnd so if you think about it from information theory point of view, you can communicate across different information theoretic channels. And one such channel is a typing interface you could imagine that's built out of a grid, just like a software keyboard on the screen. And bits per second is a measure that's computed by taking the log of the number of targets on the screen.\n\nYou can subtract one if you care to model a keyboard because you have to subtract one for the Delete key on the keyboard, but log of the number of targets on the screen times the number of correct selections minus incorrect, divided by some time window. For example, 60 seconds. And that's sort of the standard way to measure a cursor control task in academia. And all credit in the world goes to this great professor, Dr.\n\nShenoy of Stanford who came up with that task. And he's also one of my inspirations for being in the field. So all the credit in the world to him for coming up with a standardized metric to facilitate this kind of bragging rights that we have now, to say that Noland is the best in the world at this task with his BCI.\n\nIt's very important for progress that you have standardized metrics that people can compare across different techniques and approaches. How well does this do? So yeah, big kudos to him and to all the team at Stanford. Yeah, so for Noland, and for me playing this task, there's also different modes that you can configure this task.\n\nSo the Webgrid task can be presented as just sort of a left click on the screen, or you could have targets that you just dwell over, or you could have targets that you left, right click on. You could have targets that are left, right click, middle click, scrolling, clicking, and dragging. You could do all sorts of things within this general framework. But the simplest, purest form is just blue targets show up on the screen. Blue means left click.\n\nThat's the simplest form of the game. And the sort of prior records here in academic work and at Neuralink internally with sort of NPS have all been matched or beaten by Noland with his Neuralink device. So sort of prior to Neuralink, the sort of world record for a human using device is somewhere between 4. 2 to 4. 6 BPS, depending on exactly what paper you read and how you interpret it. Noland's current record is 8. 5 BPS.\n\nAnd again, this sort of median Neuralink performance is 10 BPS. So you can think of it roughly as he's 85% the level of control of a median Neuralinker using their cursor to select blue targets on the screen. And yeah, I think there's a very interesting journey ahead to get us to that same level of 10 BPS performance.\n\nIt's not the case that sort of the tricks that got us from four to six BPS, and then six to eight BPS are gonna be the ones that get us from eight to 10. And in my view, the core challenge here is really the labeling problem. It's how do you understand at a very, very fine resolution what the user's attempting to do. And yeah, I highly encourage folks in academia to work on this problem.\n\nWhat's the journey with Noland on that quest of increasing the BPS on Webgrid? In March, you said that he selected 89,285 targets in Webgrid.\n\nYep.\n\nSo he loves this game. He's really serious about improving his performance in this game. So what is that journey of trying to figure out how to improve that performance? How much can that be done on the decoding side? How much can that be done on the calibration side? How much can that be done on the Noland side of like figuring out how to convey his intention more cleanly?\n\nYeah, no, this is a great question. So in my view, one of the primary reasons why Noland's performance is so good is because of Noland. Noland is extremely focused and very energetic. He'll play Webgrid sometimes for like four hours in the middle of the night. Like from 2:00 AM to 6:00 AM, he'll be playing Webgrid, just because he wants to push it to the limits of what he can do. And this is not us like asking him to do that. I wanna be clear.\n\nLike we're not saying, \"Hey, you should play Webgrid tonight.\" We just gave him the game as part of our research, and he is able to play it independently and practice whenever he wants, and he really pushes hard to push it, the technology's the absolute limit. And he views that as like his job really to make us be the bottleneck. And boy, has he done that well.\n\nAnd so the first thing to acknowledge is that he's extremely motivated to make this work. I've also had the privilege to meet other clinical trial participants from BrainGate and other trials, and they very much shared the same attitude of like they view this as their life's work to advance the technology as much as they can. And if that means selecting targets on the screen for four hours from 2:00 AM to 6:00 AM, then so be it.\n\nAnd there's something extremely admirable about that that's worth calling out. Okay, so then how do you sort of get from where he started, which is no cursor control to a BPS? So I mean, when he started, there's a huge amount of learning to do on his side and our side to figure out what's the most intuitive control for him.\n\nAnd the most intuitive control for him is sort of, you have to find the set intersection of what do we have this signal to decode. So we don't pick up every single neuron in the motor cortex, which means we don't have representation for every part of the body. So there may be some signals that we have better sort of decode performance on than others.\n\nFor example, on his left hand, we have a lot of difficulty distinguishing his left ring finger from his left middle finger. But on his right hand, we have a good control and good modulation detected from the neurons that we're able to record for his pinky, his thumb, and his index finger. So you can imagine how these different sub spaces of modulated activity intersect with what's the most intuitive for him. And this has evolved over time.\n\nSo once we gave him the ability to calibrate models on his own, he was able to go and explore various different ways to imagine controlling the cursor. For example, he could imagine controlling the cursor by wiggling his wrist side to side, or by moving his entire arm. I think at one point, he did his feet. He tried like a whole bunch of stuff to explore the space of what is the most natural way for him to control the cursor.\n\nThat at the same time, it's easy for us to decode rules.\n\nJust to clarify, it's through the body mapping procedure that you're able to figure out which finger he can move?\n\nYes, yeah, that's one way to do it. Maybe one nuance of when he's doing it, he can imagine many more things than we represent in that visual on the screen. So we show him sort of abstractly, \"Here's a cursor. You figure out what works the best for you.\" And we obviously have hints about what will work best from that body mapping procedure of we know that this particular action, we can represent well. But it's really up to him to go and explore and figure out what works the best.\n\nBut at which point does he no longer visualize the movement of his body and is just visualizing the movement of the cursor?\n\nYeah.\n\nHow quickly does he go from, how quickly does he get there?\n\nSo this happened on a Tuesday. I remember this day very clearly, because at some point during the day, it looked like he wasn't doing super well. It looked like the model wasn't performing super well and he was like getting distracted. But he actually, it wasn't the case. Like what actually happened was he was trying something new where he was just controlling the cursor. So he wasn't imagining moving his hand anymore.\n\nHe was just imagining, I don't know what it is, some like abstract intention to move the cursor on the screen. And I cannot tell you what the difference between those two things are. I really truly cannot. He's tried to explain it to me before. I cannot give a first person account of what that's like.\n\nBut the expletives that he uttered in that moment were enough to suggest that it was a very qualitatively different experience for him to just have direct neural control over a cursor.\n\nI wonder if there's a way through UX to encourage a human being to discover that, because he discovered it, like you said to me, that he's a pioneer. So he discovered that on his own through all of this, the process of trying to move the cursor with different kinds of intentions. But that is clearly a really powerful thing to arrive at, which is to let go of trying to control the fingers and the hand and control the actual digital device with your mind.\n\nThat's right, UX is how it works. And the ideal UX is one that the user doesn't have to think about what they need to do in order to get it done. It just does it.\n\nThat is so fascinating. But I wonder on the biological side how long it takes for the brain to adapt.\n\nYeah.\n\nSo is it just simply learning like high level software, or is there like a neuroplasticity component where like the brain is adjusting slowly?\n\nYeah, the truth is, I don't know. I'm very excited to see with sort of the second participant that we implant what the journey is like for them, because we'll have learned a lot more. Potentially, we can help them understand and explore that direction more quickly. This is something I didn't know. This wasn't me prompting Noland to go try this. He was just exploring how to use his device and figure it out himself.\n\nBut now that we know that that's a possibility, that maybe there's a way to, for example, hint the user, \"Don't try super hard during calibration. Just do something that feels natural, or just directly control the cursor. Don't imagine explicit action.\" And from there, we should be able to hopefully understand how this is for somebody who has not experienced that before. Maybe that's the default mode of operation for them.\n\nYou don't have to go through this intermediate phase of explicit motions.\n\nOr maybe if that naturally happens for people, you can just occasionally encourage them to allow themselves to move the cursor. Actually sometimes, just like with a four minute mile, just the knowledge that that's possible.\n\nPushes you to do it.\n\nYeah, enables you to do it, and then it becomes trivial. And then it also makes you wonder, it's the cool thing about humans. Once there's a lot more human participants, they will discover things that are possible.\n\nYes, and share their experiences.\n\nYeah, and share.\n\nWith each other.\n\nAnd that because of them sharing it, they'll be able to do it. All of a sudden, that's unlocked for everybody, because just the knowledge sometimes is the thing that enables it to do it.\n\nYeah, I mean, and just to comment on that too, we've probably tried like a thousand different ways to do various aspects of decoding, and now we know like what the right subspace is to continue exploring further. Again, thanks to Noland and the many hours he's put into this.\n\nAnd so even just that help, like help constraints sort of the beam search of different approaches that we could explore really helps accelerate for the next person the set of things that we'll get to try on day one, how fast we hope to get them to useful control, how fast we can enable 'em to use it independently, and to get value out of the system.\n\nSo yeah, massive hats off to Noland and all the participants that came before him to make this technology a reality.\n\nSo how often are the updates to the decoder? 'Cause Noland mentioned like, okay, there's a new update that we're working on, and that in the stream, he said he plays the snake game because it's like super hard. It's a good way for him to test like how good the update is. And he says like sometimes the update is a step backwards. It's a constant like iteration. Like what does the update entail? Is it mostly on the decoder side?\n\nYeah, a couple comments. So one is it's probably worth drawing distinction between sort of research sessions where we're actively trying different things to understand like what the best approach is versus sort of independent use where we wanted to have an ability to just go use the device, how anybody would wanna use their MacBook.\n\nAnd so what he's referring to is, I think usually in the context of a research session, where we're trying many, many different approaches to even unsupervised approaches like we talked about earlier to try to come up with better ways to estimate his true intention and more accurately decode it. And in those scenarios, I mean we try, in any given session, he'll sometimes work for like eight hours a day.\n\nAnd so that can be hundreds of different models that we would try in that day. Like a lot of different things. Now, it's also worth noting that we update the application he uses quite frequently. I think sometimes, up to like four or five times a day. We'll update his application with different features or bug fixes or feedback that he's given us. He's a very articulate person who is part of the solution. He's not a complaining person.\n\nHe says, \"Hey, here's this thing that I've discovered is not optimal in my flow. Here's some ideas how to fix it. Let me know what your thoughts are. Let's figure out how to solve it.\" And it often happens that those things are addressed within a couple hours of him giving us his feedback. That's the kind of iteration cycle we'll have.\n\nAnd so sometimes, at the beginning of the session, he'll give us feedback, and at the end of the session, he's giving us feedback on the next iteration of that process or that set up.\n\nThat's fascinating, because one of the things you mentioned, that there was 271 pages of notes taken from the BCI sessions, and this was just in March. So one of the amazing things about human beings that they can provide, especially ones who are smart and excited and all like positive and good vibes like Nolan, that they can provide feedback, continuous feedback.\n\nYeah, it also requires, just to brag on the team a little bit, I work with a lot of exceptional people, and it requires the team being absolutely laser focused on the user and what will be the best for them. And it requires like a level of commitment of, \"Okay, this is what the user feedback was. I have all these meetings. We're gonna skip that today and we're gonna do this.\" That level of focus commitment is, I would say, underappreciated in the world. And also, you obviously have to have the talent to be able to execute on these things effectively. And yeah, we have that in loads.\n\nYeah, and this is such a interesting space of UX design because there's so many unknowns here. And I can tell UX is difficult because of how many people do it poorly. It's just not a trivial thing.\n\nYeah, it's also, you know, UX is not something that you can always solve by just constant iterating on different things. Like sometimes, you really need to step back and think globally, am I even in like the right sort of minima to be chasing down for a solution? Like there's a lot of problems in which sort of fast iteration cycle is the predictor of how successful you will be.\n\nAs a good example, like in RL simulation, for example, the more frequently you get reward, the faster you can progress. It's just an easier learning prompt, the more frequently you get feedback. But UX is not that way. I mean, users are actually quite often wrong about what the right solution is, and it requires a deep understanding of the technical system and what's possible, combined with what the problem is you're trying to solve.\n\nNot just how the user expressed it, but what the true underlying problem is to actually get to the right place.\n\nYeah, that's the old like stories of Steve Jobs like rolling in there, like, yeah, the user is a useful signal, but it's not a perfect signal. And sometimes, you have to remove the floppy disk drive or whatever the, I forgot all the crazy stories of Steve Jobs like making wild design decisions. But there, some of it is aesthetic, that some of it is about the love you put into the design, which is very much a Steve Jobs-Jony Ive type of thing.\n\nBut when you have a human being using their brain to interact with it, it also is deeply about function. It's not just aesthetic. And that you have to empathize with a human being before you, while not always listening to them directly. Like you have to deeply empathize. It's fascinating. It's really, really fascinating. And at the same time, iterate. But not iterate in small ways. Sometimes, a complete like rebuilding the design.\n\nHe said that, Noland said in the early days, the UX sucked. But you improved quickly. What was that journey like?\n\nYeah, I mean, I'll give one concrete example. So he really wanted to be able to read manga. This is something that he, I mean, it sounds like a simple thing, but it's actually a really big deal for him. And he couldn't do it with his mouth stick. It wasn't accessible. You can't scroll with a mouse stick on his iPad on the website that he wanted to be able to use to read the newest manga.\n\nMight be a good quick pause to say the mouth stick is the thing he's using, holding a stick in his mouth to scroll on a tablet.\n\nRight, yeah, it's basically, you can imagine it's a stylus that you hold between your teeth. Yeah, it's basically a very long stylus.\n\nAnd it's exhausting, it hurts, and it's inefficient.\n\nYeah, and maybe it's also worth calling out, there are other alternative assisted technologies, but the particular situation Noland's in, and this is not uncommon, and I think it's also not well understood by folks, is that he's relatively spastic so he'll have muscle spasms from time to time.\n\nAnd so any assistive technology that requires him to be positioned directly in front of a camera, for example, an eye tracker, or anything that requires him to put something in his mouth just is a no go, 'cause he'll either be shifted out of frame when he has a spasm, or if he has something in his mouth, it'll stab him in the face if he spasms too hard.\n\nSo these kind of considerations are important when thinking about what advantages a BCI has in someone's life. If it fits ergonomically into your life in a way that you can use it independently when your caretaker's not there, wherever you want to, either in the bed or in the chair, depending on your comfort level and your desire to have pressure sores, all these factors matter a lot in how good the solution is in that user's life.\n\nSo one of these very fun examples is scroll. So again, manga is something he wanted to be able to read, and there's many ways to do scroll with a BCI. You can imagine like different gestures, for example. The user could do that, would move the page. But scroll is a very fascinating control surface, because it's a huge thing on the screen in front of you.\n\nSo any sort of jitter in the model output, any sort of error in the model output causes like an earthquake on the screen. Like you really don't wanna have your manga page you're trying to read be shifted up and down a few pixels just because your scroll decoder is not completely accurate.\n\nAnd so this was an example where we had to figure out how to formulate the problem in a way that the errors of the system, whenever they do occur, and we'll do our best to minimize them, whenever those errors do occur, that it doesn't interrupt the qualia again of the experience that the user is having. It doesn't interrupt their flow of reading their book. And so what we ended up building is this really brilliant feature.\n\nThis is teammate named Ruse, who worked on this really brilliant work called quick scroll. And quick scroll basically looks at the screen, and it identifies where on the screen are scroll bars. And it does this by deeply integrated with MacOs to understand where are the scroll bars actively present on the screen using the sort of accessibility tool that's available to MacOs apps.\n\nAnd we identified where those scroll bars are and we provided a BCI scroll bar. And the BCI scroll bar looks similar to a normal scroll bar but it behaves very differently in that once you sort of move over to it, your cursor sort of morphs onto it. It sort of attaches or latches onto it. And then once you push up or down in the same way that you'd use a push to control the normal cursor, it actually moves the screen for you.\n\nSo it's basically like remapping the velocity to a scroll action. And the reason that feels so natural and intuitive is that, when you move over to attach to it, it feels like magnetic. So you're like sort of stuck onto it. And then it's one continuous action. You don't have to like switch your imagined movement. You sort of snap onto it and then you're good to go. You just immediately can start pulling the page down or pushing it up.\n\nAnd even once you get that right, there's so many little nuances of how the scroll behavior works to make it natural and intuitive. So one example is momentum. Like when you scroll a page with your fingers on the screen, you actually have some like flow. Like it doesn't just stop right when you lift your finger up. The same is true with BCI scroll. So we had to spend some time to figure out what are the right nuances.\n\nWhen you don't feel the screen under your fingertip anymore, what is the right sort of dynamic or what's the right amount of page give, if you will, when you push it to make it flow the right amount for the user to have a natural experience reading their book.\n\nAnd there's a million, I mean, I could tell you like there's so many little minutia of how exactly that scroll works that we spent probably like a month getting right to make that feel extremely natural and easy for the user to navigate.\n\nI mean, even to scroll on a smartphone with your finger feels extremely natural and pleasant. And it probably takes a extremely long time to get that right. And actually, the same kind of visionary UX design that we're talking about, don't always listen to the users but also listen to them, and also have like visionary big, like throw everything out, think from first principles but also not.\n\nYeah, yeah, by the way, it just makes me think that scroll bars on the desktop probably have stagnated and never taken that like, 'cause the snap, same as like snap the grid, snap the scroll bar action you're talking about is something that could potentially be extremely useful in the desktop setting, even just for users to just improve the experience, 'cause the current scroll bar experience in the desktop is horrible.\n\nYeah, agreed.\n\nIt's hard to find, hard to control. There's not a momentum. And the intention should be clear. When I start moving towards a scroll bar, there should be a snapping to the scroll bar action. But of course, maybe I'm okay paying that cost, but there's hundreds of millions of people paying that cost nonstop. But anyway, but in this case, this is necessary because there's an extra cost paid by Noland for the jitteriness. So you have to switch between the scrolling and the reading. There has to be a phase shift between the two. Like when you're scrolling, you're scrolling.\n\nRight, right, so that is one drawback of the current approach. Maybe one other just sort of case study here, so again, UX is how it works, and we think about that holistically from like the, even the feature detection level of what we detect in the brain to how we design the decoder, what we choose to decode, to then how it works once it's being used by the user.\n\nSo another good example in the sort of how it works once they're actually using the decoder, the output that's displayed on the screen is not just what the decoder says. It's also a function of what's going on on the screen.\n\nSo we can understand, for example, that when you're trying to close a tab, that very small, stupid little X that's extremely tiny, which is hard to get precisely hit if you're dealing with sort of a noisy output of the decoder, we can understand that that is a small little X you might be trying to hit and actually make it a bigger target for you.\n\nSimilar to how when you're typing on your phone, if you are used to like the iOS keyboard, for example, it actually adapts the target size of individual keys based on an underlying language model. So it'll actually understand if I'm typing, \"Hey, I'm going to see L.\" It'll make the E key bigger, because in those Lex is the person I'm gonna go see.\n\nAnd so that kind of predictiveness can make the experience much more smooth even without improvements to the underlying decoder or feature detection part of the stack. So we do that with a feature called magnetic targets. We actually indexed the screen and we understand, okay, these are the places that are very small targets that might be difficult to hit.\n\nHere's the kind of cursor dynamics around that location that might be indicative of the user trying to select it. Let's make it easier. Let's blow up the size of it in a way that makes it easier for the user to sort of snap onto that target. So all these little details, they matter a lot in helping the user be independent in their day-to-day living.\n\nSo how much of the work on the decoder is generalizable to P2, P3, P4, P5, PM? How do you improve the decoder in a way that's generalizable?\n\nYeah, great question. So the underlying signal we're trying to decode is gonna look very different in P2 than in P1. For example, channel number 345 is gonna mean something different in user one than it will in user two, just because that electrode that corresponds with channel 345 is gonna be next to a different neuron in user one versus user two.\n\nBut the approach is the methods, the user experience of how do you get the right sort of behavioral pattern from the user to associate with that neural signal, we hope that will translate over multiple generations of users. And beyond that, it's very, very possible. In fact, quite likely that we've overfit to sort of Noland's user experience desires and preferences.\n\nAnd so what I hope to see is that when we get second, third, fourth participant, that we find sort of what the right wide minimums are that cover all the cases, that make it more intuitive for everyone. And hopefully, there's a crosspollination of things where, \"Oh, we didn't think about that with this user, because they can speak. But with this user who just can fundamentally not speak at all, this user experience is not optimal.\"\n\nAnd that will actually, those improvements that we make there should hopefully translate then to even people who can't speak but don't feel comfortable doing so because we're in a public setting, like their doctor's office.\n\nSo the actual mechanism of open loop labeling and then closed loop labeling will be the same, and hopefully, can generalize across the different users as they're doing the calibration step. And the calibration step is pretty cool. I mean, that in itself, the interesting thing about Webgrid, which is like closed loop, it's like fun. I love it when there's like, they used to be kind of idea of human computation, which is using actions a human would want to do anyway to get a lot of signal from.\n\nYeah.\n\nAnd like Webgrid is that, like a nice video game that also serves as great calibration.\n\nIt's so funny. I've heard this reaction so many times. Before sort of the first user was implanted, we had an internal perception that the first user would not find this fun. And so we thought really quite a bit actually about like, should we build other games that like are more interesting for the user so we can get this kind of data and help facilitate research for long duration and stuff like this? Turns out that like people love this game.\n\nYeah.\n\nI always loved it, but I didn't know that that was a shared perception.\n\nYeah, and just in case it's not clear, Webgrid is, there's a grid of, let's say 35 by 35 cells, and one of them lights up blue and you have to move your mouse over that and click on it. And if you miss it and it's red- - [Bliss] I played this game for so many hours. So many hours.\n\nAnd what's your record, you said?\n\nI think I have the highest at Neuralink. Right now, my record's 17 BPS.\n\n17 BPS.\n\nWhich is about, if you imagine that 35 by 35 grid, you're hitting about 100 trials per minute in. So 100 correct selections in that one minute window. So you're averaging about, between 500, 600 milliseconds per selection.\n\nSo one of the reasons that I think I struggle with that game is I'm such a keyboard person, so everything is done with via keyboard. If I can avoid touching the mouse, it's great. So how can you explain your high performance?\n\nI have like a whole ritual I go through when I play Webgrid. So it's actually like a diet plan associated with this. Like it's a whole thing, so great.\n\nThe first thing- - You have to fast for five days, have to go up to the mountains.\n\nActually, it kind of, I mean, the fasting thing is important. So this is like, you know- - Focuses the mind, yeah?\n\nYeah, it's true. So what I do is actually, I don't eat for a little bit beforehand. And then I'll actually eat like a ton of peanut butter right before, and I get like- - This is a real thing?\n\nThis is a real thing, yeah. And then it has to be really late at night. This is again a night owl thing I think we share, but it has to be like midnight, 2:00 AM kind of time window. And I have a very specific like physical position I'll sit in, which is, I used to be, I was homeschooled growing up and so I did most of my work like on the floor, just like in my bedroom or whatever. And so I have a very specific situation on the floor.\n\nOn the floor, I sit and play, and then you have to make sure like there's not a lot of weight on your elbow when you're playing so that you can move quickly. And then I turn the gain of the cursor, so the speed of the cursor way, way up. So it's like small motions that actually move the cursor.\n\nAre you moving with your wrist or you're never moving on- - I move my fingers. So my wrist is almost completely still. I'm just moving my fingers.\n\nYeah. You know those, just on a small tangent, which I've been meaning to go down this rabbit hole of people that set the world record in Tetris. Those folks, they're playing, there's a way to, did you see this?\n\nI see like the three, like all the fingers are moving.\n\nYeah, you could find a way to do it where like it's using a loophole, like a bug that you can do some incredibly fast stuff. So it's along that line but not quite. But you do realize there'll be like a few programmers right now listening to this cool fast and eat peanut butter and be like- - Yeah, please, please trade my record. I mean, the reason I did this, literally, was just because I wanted the bar to be high. The team, like I wanted the number that we aim for should not be like the median performance. It should be able to beat all of us at least. Like that should be the minimum bar.\n\nWhat do you think is possible, like 20 scrapes?\n\nYeah, I don't know what the limits. I mean, the limits you can calculate just in terms of like screen refresh rate and like cursor immediately jumping to the next target. But I mean, I'm sure there's limits before that with just sort of reaction time and visual perception and things like this. I would guess it's in the below 40 but above 20, somewhere in there is probably the right that I'd never be thinking about.\n\nIt also matters like how difficult the task is. You could imagine like some people might be able to do like 10,000 targets on the screen and maybe they can do better that way. There's some like task optimizations you could do to try to boost your performance as well.\n\nWhat do you think it takes for Noland to be able to do above 8.5? To keep increasing that number? You said like every increase in the number might require different- - [Bliss] Yeah.\n\nDifferent improvements in the system.\n\nYeah, I think the nature of this work is, I mean, the first answer that's important to say is, I don't know. This is edge of the research. So again, nobody's gotten to that number before. So what's next is gonna be a heuristic guess from my part. What we've seen historically is that different parts of the stack follow next to different time points.\n\nSo when I first joined Neuralink, like three years ago or so, one of the major problems was just the latency of the Bluetooth connection. It was just like the radial device wasn't super good. It was an early revision of the implant, and it just like, no matter how good your decoder was, if your thing is updating every 30 milliseconds or 50 milliseconds, it's just gonna be choppy.\n\nAnd no matter how good you are, that's gonna be frustrating and lead to challenges. So at that point, it was very clear that the main challenge is just get the data off the device in a very reliable way, such that you can enable the next challenge to be tackled.\n\nAnd then at some point, it was, actually, the modeling challenge of how do you just build a good mapping, like the supervised learning problem of you have a bunch of data and you have a label you're trying to predict, just what is the right like neuro decoder architecture and hyper parameters to optimize that? And that was a problem for a bit. And once you solve that, it became a different bottleneck.\n\nI think the next bottleneck after that was actually just sort of software stability and reliability. If you have widely varying sort of inference latency in your system, or your app just lags out every once in a while, it decreases your ability to maintain and get in a state of flow, and it basically just disrupts your control experience.\n\nAnd so there's a variety of different software bugs and improvements we made that basically increased the performance of the system, made it much more reliable, much more stable, and led to a state where we could reliably collect data to build better models with. So that was a bottleneck for a while. It's just sort of like the software stack itself.\n\nIf I were to guess right now, there's sort of two major directions you could think about for improving BPS further. The first major direction is labeling. So labeling is again this fundamental challenge of given a window of time where the user is expressing some behavioral intent. What are they really trying to do at the granularity of every millisecond? And that, again, is a task design problem. It's a UX problem.\n\nIt's a machine learning problem. It's a software problem. Sort of touches all those different domains. The second thing you can think about to improve BPS further is either completely changing the thing you're decoding or just extending the number of things that you're decoding. So this is serving the direction of functionality, okay? So you can imagine giving more clicks. For example, a left click, a right click, a middle click.\n\nDifferent actions like click and drag, for example. And that can improve the effective bit rate of your communication prosthesis. If you're trying to allow the user to express themselves through any given communication channel, you can measure that with bits per second. But what action measures at the end of the day is how effective are they at navigating their computer.\n\nAnd so from the perspective of the downstream tasks that you care about, functionality and extending functionality is something we're very interested in, because not only can it improve the sort of number of BPS, but it can also improve the downstream sort of independence that the user has and the skill and efficiency with which they can operate their computer.\n\nWould the number of threads increasing also potentially help?\n\nYes, short answer is yes. It's a bit nuanced how that curve or how that manifests in the numbers. So what you'll see is that if you sort of plot a curve of number of channels that you're using for decode versus either the offline metric of how good you are at decoding, or the online metric of sort of, in practice, how good is the user using this device, you see roughly a log curve.\n\nSo as you move further out in number of channels, you get a corresponding sort of logarithmic improvement in control quality and offline validation metrics. The important nuance here is that each channel corresponds with a specific represented intention in the brain. So for example, if you have a channel 254, it might correspond with moving to the right. Channel 256 might mean move to the left.\n\nIf you want to expand the number of functions you want to control, you really want to have a broader set of channels that covers a broader set of imagined movements. You can think of it kinda like Mr. Potato man actually. Like if you had a bunch of different imagined movements you could do, how would you map those imagined movements to input to a computer? You can imagine handwriting to output characters on the screen.\n\nYou can imagine just typing with your fingers and have that output text on the screen. You can imagine different finger modulations for different clicks. You can imagine wiggling your big nose or opening some menu or wiggling your big toe to have like command tab occur or something like this. So it's really, the amount of different actions you can take in the world depends on how many channels you have on the information content that they carry.\n\nRight, so that's more about the number of actions. So actually, as you increase the number of threads, that's more about increasing the number of actions you're able to perform.\n\nOne other nuance there that is worth mentioning, so again, our goal is really to enable a user with process to control their computer as fast as I can. So that's BPS. With all the same functionality I have, which is what we just talked about, but then also as reliably as I can. And that last point is very related to channel account discussion.\n\nSo as you scale out number of channels, the relative importance of any particular feature of your model input to the output control of the user diminishes, which means that if the sort of neural non-stationary effect is per channel, or if the noise is independent, such that more channels means, on average, less output effect, then your reliability of your system will improve.\n\nSo one sort of core thesis that at least I have is that scaling channel account should improve the reliability system without any work on the decoder itself.\n\nCan you linger on the reliability here? So first of all, when you see non-stationarity of the signal, which aspect are you referring to?\n\nYeah, so maybe let's talk briefly what the actual underlying signal looks like. So again, I spoke very briefly at the beginning about how when you imagine moving to the right or imagine moving to the left, neurons might fire more or less. And their frequency content of that signal, at least in the motor cortex, it's very correlated with the output intention, the behavioral task that the user is doing.\n\nYou can imagine actually, this is not obvious, that rate coding, which is the name of that phenomenon is like the only way the brain could represent information. You can imagine many different ways in which the brain could encode intention. And there's actually evidence like in bats, for example, that there's temporal codes. So timing codes of like exactly when particular neurons fire is the mechanism of information representation.\n\nBut at least in the motor cortex, there's a substantial evidence that it's rate coding, or at least one, like first order of fact is that it's rate coding. So then if the brain is representing information by changing the sort of frequency of a neuron firing, what really matters is sort of the delta between sort of the baseline state of the neuron and what it looks like when it's modulated.\n\nAnd what we've observed and what has also been observed in academic work is that that baseline rate, sort of the, if you're to target the scale, if you imagine that analogy for like measuring flour or something when you're baking, that baseline state of how much the pot weighs is actually different day to day.\n\nAnd so if what you're trying to measure is how much rice is in the pot, you're gonna get a different measurement different days, because you're measuring with different pots. So that baseline rate shifting is really the thing that, at least from a first order description of the problem, is what's causing this downstream bias.\n\nThere can be other effects, non-linear effects on top of that, but at least, at a very first order description of the problem, that's what we observe day to day is that the baseline firing rate of any particular neuron are observed on a particular channel is changing.\n\nSo can you just adjust to the baseline to make it relative to the baseline nonstop?\n\nYeah, this is a great question. So with monkeys, we have found various ways to do this. One example way to do this is you ask them to do some behavioral task, like play the game with a joystick, you measure what's going on in the brain, you compute some mean of what's going on across all the input features, and you subtract it in the input when you're doing your BCI session. Works super well.\n\nFor whatever reason, that doesn't work super well with Noland. I actually don't know the full reason why, but I can imagine several explanations. One such explanation could be that the context effect difference between some open loop task and some closed loop task is much more significant with Noland than it is with a monkey.\n\nMaybe in this open loop task, he's watching the Lex Fridman podcast while he's doing the task, or he's whistling and listening to music and talking with his friend and ask his mom what's for dinner while he's doing this task.\n\nAnd so the exact sort of difference in context between those two states may be much larger, and thus lead to a bigger sort of generalization gap between the features that you're normalizing at sort of open loop time and what you're trying to use at close loop time.\n\nThat's interesting. Just on that point, it's kind of incredible to watch Noland be able to do, to multitask, to do multiple tasks at the same time, to be able to move the mouse courser effectively while talking and while being nervous, because he's talking in front of- - Kicking my ass and chest too, yeah.\n\nKicking your ass. And talk trash while doing it. So all at the same time. And yes, if you are trying to normalize to the baseline, that might throw everything off. Boy is that interesting.\n\nMaybe one comment on that too. For folks that aren't familiar with assisted technology, I think there's a common belief that, well, why can't you just use an eye tracker or something like this for helping somebody move a mouse on the screen? And it's a really a fair question, and one that I actually did was not confident before Noland, that this was gonna be a profoundly transformative technology for people like him.\n\nAnd I'm very confident now that it will be, but the reasons are subtle. It really has to do with ergonomically how it fits into their life. Even if you can just offer the same level of control as what they would have with an eye tracker or with a mouse stick, but you don't need to have that thing in your face. You don't need to be positioned a certain way. You don't need your caretaker to be around to set it up for you.\n\nYou can activate it when you want, how you want, wherever you want. That level of independence is so game changing for people. It means that they can text a friend at night privately without their mom needing to be in the loop. It means that they can like open up and browse the internet at 2:00 AM when nobody's around to set their iPad up for them. This is like a profoundly game changing thing for folks in that situation.\n\nAnd this is even before we start talking about folks that may not be able to communicate at all or ask for help when they want to. This can be potentially the only link that they have to the outside world. And yeah, that one doesn't I think need explanation of why that's so impactful.\n\nYou mentioned neural decoder. How much machine learning is in the decoder? How much magic, how much science, how much art, how difficult is it to come up with a decoder that figures out what these sequence of spikes mean?\n\nYeah, good question. There's a couple different ways to answer this. So maybe I'll zoom out briefly first, and then I'll go down one of the rabbit holes. So the zoomed out view is that building the decoder is really the process of building the dataset, plus compiling it into the weights. And each of those steps is important.\n\nThe direction I think of further improvement is primarily going to be in the dataset side of how do you construct the optimal labels for the model. But there's an entirely separate challenge of then how do you compile the best model. And so I'll go briefly down the second one, down the second rabbit hole. One of the main challenges with designing the optimal model for BCI is that offline metrics don't necessarily correspond to online metrics.\n\nIt's fundamentally a control problem. The user is trying to control something on the screen, and the exact sort of user experience of how you output the intention impacts their ability to control. So for example, if you just look at validation loss, as predicted by your model, there can be multiple ways to achieve the same validation loss. Not all of them are equally controllable by the end user.\n\nAnd it might be as simple as saying, \"Oh, you could just add auxiliary loss terms that like help you capture the thing that actually matters.\" But this is a very complex nuanced process. So how you turn the labels into the model is more of a nuanced process than just like a standard supervised learning problem.\n\nOne very fascinating anecdote here, we've tried many different sort of neural network architectures that translate brain data to velocity outputs, for example. And one example that's stuck in my brain from a couple years ago now is, at one point, we were using just fully connected networks to decode the brain activity.\n\nWe tried A/B test where we were measuring the relative performance in online control sessions of sort of 1D convolution over the input signal. So if you imagine per channel, you have a sliding window that's producing some Commvault feature for each of those input sequences for every single channel simultaneously.\n\nYou can actually get better validation metrics, meaning you're fitting the data better, and it's generalizing better on offline data if you use this convolutional architecture. You're reducing parameters. It's sort of a standard procedure when you're dealing with time series data. Now it turns out that when using that model online, the controllability was worse, was far worse, even though the offline metrics were better.\n\nAnd there can be many ways to interpret that, but what that taught me at least was that, hey, it's at least the case right now that if you were to just throw a bunch of computer at this problem, and you were trying to sort of hyper parameter optimize, or let some GPT model hard code or come up with or invent many different solutions, if you were just optimizing for loss, it would not be sufficient, which means that there's still some inherent modeling gap here.\n\nThere's still some artistry left to be uncovered here of how to get your model to scale with more compute. And that may be fundamentally labeling problem, but there may be other components to this as well.\n\nIs it data constrained at this time? Which is what it sounds like. How do you get a lot of good labels?\n\nYeah, I think it's data quality constrained, not necessarily data quantity constrained.\n\nBut even like even just a quantity. I mean, 'cause it has to be trained on the interactions. I guess there's not that many interactions.\n\nYeah, so it depends what version of this you're talking about. So if you're talking about like, let's say the simplest example of just 2D velocity, then I think, yeah, data quality is the main thing.\n\nIf you're talking about how to build a sort of multifunction output that lets you do all the inputs, the computer that you and I can do, then it's actually a much more sophisticated nuanced modeling challenge, because now you need to think about not just when the user's left clicking, but when you're building the left click model, you also need to be thinking about how to make sure it doesn't fire when they're trying to right click or when they're trying to move the mouse.\n\nSo one example of an interesting bug from like sort of week one of a BCI with Nolan was, when he moved the mouse, the click signal sort of dropped off a cliff, and when he stopped, the click signal went up. So again, there's a contamination between the two inputs. Another good example was, at one point, he was trying to do sort of a left click and drag. And the minute he started moving, the left click signal dropped off a cliff.\n\nSo again, 'cause there's some contamination between the two signals, you need to come up with some way to either in the dataset or in the model, build robustness against this kind of, you think of it like overfitting, but really, it's just that the model has not seen this kind of variability before. So you need to find some way to help the model with that.\n\nThis is super cool because it feels like all of this is very solvable, but it's hard.\n\nYes, it is fundamentally an engineering challenge. This is important to emphasize, and it's also important to emphasize that it may not need fundamentally new techniques, which means that people who work on, let's say, unsupervised speech classification using CTC loss, for example, with internal to Siri, they could potentially have very applicable skills to this.\n\nSo what things are you excited about in the future development of the software stack on Neuralink? So everything we've been talking about, the decoding, the UX- - I think there's some I'm excited about, like something I'm excited about from the technology side, and some I'm excited about for understanding how this technology is going to be best situated for entering the world. So I'll work backwards.\n\nOn the technology entering the world side of things, I'm really excited to understand how this device works for folks that cannot speak at all. They have no ability to sort of bootstrap themselves into useful control by voice command, for example, and are extremely limited in their current capabilities.\n\nI think that will be an incredibly useful signal for us to understand, I mean, really what is an existential threat for all startups, which is product market fit. Does this device have the capacity and potential to transform people's lives in the current state? And if not, what are the gaps? And if there are gaps, how do we solve them most efficiently?\n\nSo that's what I'm very excited about for the next sort of year or so of clinical trial operations. The technology side, I'm quite excited about basically everything we're doing. I think it's gonna be awesome. The most prominent one, I would say, is scaling channel count. So right now, we have a thousand channel device. The next version, we'll have between 3 and 6,000 channels. And I would expect that curve to continue in the future.\n\nAnd it's unclear what set of problems will just disappear completely at that scale, and what set of problems will remain and require for their focus. And so I'm excited about the clarity of gradient that that gives us in terms of the user experiences we choose to focus our time and resources on. And also in terms of the, yeah, even things as simple as not stationary.\n\nLike does that problem just completely go away at that scale, or do we need to come up with new creative UXs still even at that point?\n\nAnd also, when we get to that time point, when we start expanding out dramatically the set of functions that you can output from one brain, how to deal with all the nuances of both the user experience of not being able to feel the different keys under your fingertips, but still needing to be able to modulate all of them in synchrony to achieve the thing you want.\n\nAnd again, you don't have that appropriate set to feedback loop, so how can you make that intuitive for a user to control a high dimensional control surface without feeling the thing physically? I think that's gonna be a super interesting problem. I'm also quite excited to understand, do these scaling laws continue? Like as you scale channel count, how much further out do you go before that saturation point is truly hit?\n\nAnd it's not obvious today. I think we only know what's in the sort of interpolation space. We only know what's between zero and 1,024. We don't know what's beyond that. And then there's a whole sort of like range of interesting sort of neuroscience and brain questions, which is when you stick more stuff in the brain, in more places, you get to learn much more quickly about what those brain regions represent.\n\nAnd so I'm excited about that fundamental neuroscience learning, which is also important for figuring out how, and to most efficiently, insert electrodes in the future. So yeah, I think all those dimensions, I'm really, really excited about. And that doesn't even get close to touching the sort of software stack that we work on every single day and what we're working on right now.\n\nYeah, it seems virtually impossible to me that a thousand electrodes is where it saturates. It feels like this would be one of those silly notions in the future, where obviously, you should have millions of electrodes, and this is where like the true breakthroughs happen.\n\nYeah.\n\nYou tweeted- - Oh.\n\n\"Some thoughts are most precisely described in poetry.\" Why do you think that is?\n\nI think it's because the information bottleneck of language is pretty steep. And yet you're able to reconstruct in the other person's brain more effectively without being literal. If you can express a sentiment such that in their brain, they can reconstruct the actual true underlying meaning and beauty of the thing that you're trying to get across. The sort of the generator function in their brain's more powerful than what language can express. And so the mechanism of poetry is really just to feed or seed that generator function.\n\nSo being literal sometimes is a suboptimal compression for the thing you're trying to convey.\n\nAnd it's actually in the process of the user going through that generation that they understand what you mean. That's the beautiful part. It's also like when you look at a beautiful painting, like it's not the pixels of the painting that are beautiful, it's the thought process that occurs when you see that, the experience of that. That actually is a thing that matters.\n\nYeah, it's resonating with some deep- - [Bliss] Yeah.\n\nThing within you that the artist also experienced and was able to convey that through the pixels. And that's actually gonna be relevant for full on telepathy. It's like if you just read the poetry, literally, that doesn't say much of anything interesting. It requires a human to interpret it.\n\nSo it's the combination of the human mind and all the experiences that human being has within the context of the collective intelligence of the human species that makes that poem make sense. And they load that in. And so in that same way, the signal that carries from human to human meaning may seem trivial, but may actually carry a lot of power because of the complexity of the human mind on the receiving end. Yeah, that's interesting.\n\nPoetry still doesn't, who is it? I think Yoshi Bako first said something about all the people that think we've achieved AGI explain why humans like music.\n\n[Bliss] Oh yeah.\n\nAnd until the AGI likes music, you haven't achieved AGI or something like this.\n\nDo you not think that's like some next token entropy surprise kind of thing going on there?\n\nI don't know.\n\nI don't know either. I listen to a lot of classical music and also read a lot of poetry. And yeah, I do wonder if like there is some element of the next token surprise factor going on there.\n\nYeah, maybe.\n\nBecause I mean, like a lot of the tricks in both poetry and music are like basically, you have some repeated structure. And then you do like a twist. It's like, okay, verse or like clause one, two, three is one thing, and then clause four is like, okay, now we're onto the next theme. And they kind of play with exactly when the surprise happens and the expectation of the user.\n\nAnd that's even true like, through history as musicians evolve music, they take like some nuanced structure that people are familiar with and they just tweak it a little bit. Like they tweak it and add a surprising element. This is especially true in classical music heritage. But that's what I'm wondering, like is it all just entropy- - So breaking structure or breaking symmetry is something that humans seem to like. Maybe as simple as that.\n\nYeah, and I mean, great artists copy, and they also, knowing which rules to break is the important part. And that fundamentally, it must be about the listener of the piece. Like which rule is the right one to break, it's about the user or the audience member perceiving that as interesting.\n\nWhat do you think is the meaning of human existence?\n\nThere's a TV show I really like called \"The West Wing.\" And in \"The West Wing,\" there's a character. He's the president of the United States who's having a discussion about the Bible with one of their colleagues. And the colleague says something about, \"The Bible says X, Y, and Z.\" And the President says, \"Yeah, but it also says A, B, C.\" And the person says, \"Do you believe the Bible to be literally true?\"\n\nAnd the President says, \"Yes, but I also think that neither of us are smart enough to understand it.\" I think the analogy here for the meaning of life is that largely, we don't know the right question to ask. And so I think I'm very aligned with sort of \"The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy\" version of this question, which is basically, if we can ask the right questions, it's much more likely we find the meaning of human existence.\n\nAnd so in the short term, as a heuristic in the sort of search policy space, we should try to increase the diversity of people asking such questions, or generally of consciousness and conscious beings asking such questions. So again, I think I'll take the 'I don't know card' here, but say I do think there are meaningful things we can do that improve the likelihood of answering that question.\n\nIt's interesting how much value you assign to the task of asking the right questions. That's the main thing is not the answers, it's the questions.\n\nThis point by the way is driven home in a very painful way when you try to communicate with someone who cannot speak, because a lot of the time, the last thing to go is they have the ability to somehow wiggle a lip or move something that allows them to say yes or no. And in that situation, it's very obvious that what matters is, are you asking them the right question to be able to say yes or no to?\n\nWow, that's powerful. Well, Bliss, thank you for everything you do, and thank you for being you, and thank you for talking today.\n\nThank you.\n\nThanks for listening to this conversation with Bliss Chapman. And now, dear friends, here's Noland Arbaugh, the first human being to have a Neuralink device implanted in his brain. You had a diving accident in 2016 that left you paralyzed with no feeling from the shoulders down. How did that accident change your life?\n\nThat's sort of a freak thing that happened. Imagine you're running into the ocean, although this is a lake, but you're running into the ocean and you get to about waist high, and then you kind of like dive in, take the rest of the plunge under the wave or something. That's what I did. And then I just never came back up. Not sure what happened. I did it running into the water with a couple of guys.\n\nAnd so my idea of what happened is really just that I took like a stray fist, elbow, knee, foot, something to the side of my head. The left side of my head was sore for about a month afterwards. So must must've taken a pretty big knock. And then they both came up, and I didn't. And so I was face down in the water for a while. I was conscious. And then eventually just realized I couldn't hold my breath any longer.\n\nAnd I keep saying, \"Took a big drink.\" People, I don't know if they like that I say that. It seems like I'm making light of it all, but it's just kind of how I am. And I don't know, like I'm a very relaxed sort of stress-free person. I rolled with the punches for a lot of this. I kind of took it in stride. It's like, \"All right, well what can I do next? How can I improve my life even a little bit on a day-to-day basis?\"\n\nAt first, just trying to find some way to heal as much of my body as possible, to try to get healed, to try to get off a ventilator, learn as much as I could so I could somehow survive once I left the hospital. And then thank God I had like my family around me. If I didn't have my parents, my siblings, then I would've never made it this far. They've done so much for me, more than like I can ever thank them for, honestly.\n\nAnd a lot of people don't have that. A lot of people in my situation, their families either aren't capable of providing for them, or honestly, just don't want to. And so they get placed somewhere in some sort of home. So thankfully I had my family. I have a great group of friends, a great group of buddies from college who have all rallied around me, and we're all still incredibly close.\n\nPeople always say, \"If you're lucky, you'll end up with one or two friends from high school that you keep throughout your life.\" I have about 10 or 12 from high school that have all stuck around, and we still get together, all of us twice a year. We call it the spring series and the fall series. This last one we all did, we dressed up like X-Men. So I did a Professor Xavier, and it was freaking awesome. It was so good.\n\nSo yeah, I have such a great support system around me. And so being a quadriplegic isn't that bad. I get waited on all the time. People bring me food and drinks, and I get to sit around and watch as much TV and movies and anime as I want. I get to read as much as I want. I mean, it's great.\n\nIt's beautiful to see that you see the silver lining in all of this. Just going back, do you remember the moment when you first realized you were paralyzed from the neck down?\n\nYeah, yep. I was face down in the water right when whatever something hit my head. I tried to get up and I realized I couldn't move and it just sort of clicked. I'm like, \"All right, I'm paralyzed. Can't move. What do I do? If I can't get up, I can't flip over, can't do anything, then I'm gonna drown eventually.\" And I knew I couldn't hold my breath forever, so I just held my breath and thought about it for maybe 10, 15 seconds.\n\nI've heard from other people that like look on liquors, I guess the two girls that pulled me out of the water were two of my best friends. They're lifeguards. And one of them said that it looked like my body was sort of shaking in the water, like I was trying to flip over and stuff. But I knew, I knew immediately. And I just kind of, I realized that that's what my situation was from here on out.\n\nMaybe if I got to the hospital, they'd be able to do something. When I was in the hospital, like right before surgery, I was trying to calm one of my friends down. I had like brought her with me from college to camp, and she was just bawling over me, and I was like, \"Hey, it's gonna be fine. Like don't worry.\" I was cracking some jokes to try to lighten the mood. The nurse had called my mom, and I was like, \"Don't tell my mom.\n\nShe's just gonna be stressed out. Call her after I'm out of surgery,\" 'cause at least she'll have some answers then, like whether I live or not, really. And I didn't want her to be stressed through the whole thing. But I knew. And then when I first woke up after surgery, I was super drugged up. They had me on fentanyl like three ways, which was awesome.\n\nI don't recommend it, but I saw some crazy stuff on that fentanyl, and it was still the best I've ever felt on drugs. Medication, sorry, on medication. And I remember the first time I saw my mom in the hospital. I was just bawling. I had like ventilator in, like I couldn't talk or anything, and I just started crying, because it was more like seeing her.\n\nI mean, the whole situation obviously was pretty rough, but it was just like seeing her face for the first time was pretty hard. But yeah, I never had like a moment of, \"Man, I'm paralyzed. This sucks. I don't wanna like be around anymore.\" It was always just, \"I hate that I have to do this, but like sitting here and wallowing isn't gonna help.\"\n\nSo immediate acceptance.\n\n[Noland] Yeah, yeah.\n\nHas there been low points along the way?\n\nYeah, yeah, sure. I mean, there are days when I don't really feel like doing anything. Not so much anymore. Like not for the last couple years, I don't really feel that way. I've more so just wanted to try to do anything possible to make my life better at this point. But at the beginning, there were some ups and downs. There were some really hard things to adjust to.\n\nFirst off, just like the first couple months, the amount of pain I was in was really, really hard. I mean, I remember screaming at the top of my lungs in the hospital, because I thought my legs were on fire. And obviously, I can't feel anything, but it's all nerve pain. And so that was a really hard night. I asked them to give me as much pain meds as possible. They're like, \"You've had as much as you can have, so just kind of deal with it.\n\nGo to a happy place sort of thing.\" So that was a pretty low point. And then every now and again, it's hard, like realizing things that I wanted to do in my life that I won't be able to do anymore. I always wanted to be a husband and father, and I just don't think that I could do it now as a quadriplegic. Maybe it's possible, but I'm not sure I would ever put someone I love through that, like having to take care of me and stuff.\n\nNot being able to go out and play sports. I was a huge athlete growing up, so that was pretty hard. Little things too, when I realized I can't do them anymore. Like there's something really special about being able to hold a book and smell a book. Like the feel, the texture, the smell, like as you turn the pages, like I just love it. I can't do it anymore. And it's little things like that. The two-year mark was pretty rough.\n\nTwo years is when they say you will get back basically as much as you're ever gonna get back, as far as movement and sensation goes. And so for the first two years, that was the only thing on my mind was like try as much as I can to move my fingers, my hands, my feet, everything possible to try to get sensation and movement back. And then when the two-year mark hit, so June 30th, 2018, I was really sad that that's kind of where I was.\n\nAnd then just randomly here and there, but I was never like depressed for long periods of time. Just it never seemed worthwhile to me.\n\nWhat gave you strength?\n\nMy faith. My faith in God was a big one. My understanding that it was all for a purpose. And even if that purpose wasn't anything involving Neuralink, even if that purpose was, there's a story in the Bible about Job, and I think it's a really, really popular story, about how Job has all of these terrible things happen to him, and he praises God throughout the whole situation.\n\nI thought, and I think a lot of people think for most of their lives that they are Job, that they're the ones going through something terrible, and they just need to praise God through the whole thing and everything will work out. At some point after my accident, I realized that I might not be Job, that I might be one of his children that gets killed or kidnapped or taken from him.\n\nAnd so it's about terrible things that happen to those around you who you love. So maybe, in this case, my mom would be Job, and she has to get through something extraordinarily hard and I just need to try and make it as best as possible for her, because she's the one that's really going through this massive trial. And that gave me a lot of strength. And obviously, my family.\n\nMy family and my friends, they give me all the strength that I need on a day-to-day basis. So it makes things a lot easier having that great support system around me.\n\nFrom everything I've seen of you online, your streams and the way you are today, I really admire, let's say, your unwavering positive outlook on life. Has that always been this way?\n\nYeah, yeah. I mean, I've just always thought I could do anything I ever wanted to do. There was never anything too big. Like whatever I set my mind to, I felt like I could do it. I didn't wanna do a lot. I wanted to like travel around and be sort of like a gypsy and like go work odd jobs. I had this dream of traveling around Europe and being like, I don't know, a shepherd in like Wales or Ireland.\n\nAnd then going and being a fisherman in Italy, doing all these things for like a year. Like it's such like cliche things, but I just thought it would be so much fun to go and travel and do different things. And so I've always just seen the best in people around me too. And I've always tried to be good to people. And growing up with my mom too, she's like the most positive energetic person in the world. And we're all just people people.\n\nI just get along great with people. I really enjoy meeting new people, and so I just wanted to do everything. This is just kind of just how I've been.\n\nIt's just great to see that cynicism didn't take over, given everything you've been through.\n\nYeah.\n\nWas that like a deliberate choice you made that you're not gonna let this keep you down?\n\nYeah, a bit. Also, like it's just kind of how I am. Like I said, I roll with the punches with everything. I always used to tell people, like I don't stress about things much. And whenever I'd see people getting stressed, I would just say, \"It's not hard. Just don't stress about it.\" And that's all you need to do. And they're like, \"That's not how that works.\" I'm like, \"It works for me. Like just don't stress, and everything will be fine.\n\nLike everything will work out.\" Obviously, not everything always goes well, and it's not like it all works out for the best all the time, but I just don't think stress has had any place in my life since I was a kid.\n\nWhat was the experience like of you being selected to be the first human being to have a Neuralink device implanted in your brain? Were you scared, excited?\n\nNo, no, it was cool. (Lex laughing) Like I was never afraid of it. I had to think through a lot. Should I do this? Like be the first person? I could wait until number two or three and get a better version of the Neuralink. Like the first one might not work. Maybe it's actually gonna kind of suck it. It's gonna be the worst version ever in a person. So why would I do the first one? Like I've already kind of been selected.\n\nI could just tell them, like, \"Okay, find someone else, and then I'll do number two or three.\" Like I'm sure they would let me. They're looking for a few people anyways. But ultimately, I was like, I don't know, there's something about being the first one to do something. It's pretty cool.\n\nI always thought that if I had the chance that I would like to do something for the first time, this seemed like a pretty good opportunity, and I was never scared. I think my like faith had a huge part in that. I always felt like God was preparing me for something. I almost wish it wasn't this, because I had many conversations with God about not wanting to do any of this as a quadriplegic. I told him, \"I'll go out and talk to people.\n\nI'll go out and travel the world and talk to stadiums, thousands of people, give my testimony, I'll do all of it, but like heal me first. Don't make me do all of this in a chair. That sucks.\" And I guess he won that argument. I didn't really have much of a choice. I always felt like there was something going on.\n\nAnd to see how, I guess, easily I made it through the interview process and how quickly everything happened, how the stars sort of aligned with all of this, it just told me like, as the surgery was getting closer, it just told me that it was all meant to happen. It was all meant to be. And so I shouldn't be afraid of anything that's to come. And so I wasn't.\n\nI kept telling myself like, \"You say that now, but as soon as the surgery comes, you're probably gonna be freaking out. Like you're about to have brain surgery.\" And brain surgery is a big deal for a lot of people, but it's a even bigger deal for me. Like it's all I have left.\n\nThe amount of times I've been like, \"Thank you God that you didn't take my brain and my personality and my ability to think, my like love of learning, like my character, everything, like thank you so much. Like as long as you left me that, then I think I can get by.\" And I was about to let people go like root around, and they're like, \"Hey, we're gonna go put some stuff in your brain. Hopefully, it works out.\"\n\nAnd so it was something that gave me pause. But like I said, how smoothly everything went, I never expected for a second that anything would go wrong. Plus, the more people I met on the Barrow's side and on the Neuralink side, they're just the most impressive people in the world. Like I can't speak enough to how much I trust these people with my life and how impressed I am with all of them.\n\nAnd to see the excitement on their faces, to like walk into a room and roll into a room and see all of these people looking at me, like we're so excited. Like we've been working so hard on this, and it's finally happening. It's super infectious, and it just makes me wanna do it even more and to help them achieve their dreams. Like I don't know, it's so rewarding. And I'm so happy for all of them, honestly.\n\nWhat was the day of surgery like? When did you wake up? What'd you feel?\n\nYeah.\n\nMinute by minute.\n\nYeah.\n\nWere you freaking out?\n\nNo, no. I thought I was going to, but as surgery approached the night before, the morning of, I was just excited. Let's make this happen. I think I said something like that to Elon on the phone beforehand. We were like FaceTiming, and I was like, \"Let's rock and roll.\" And he's like, \"Let's do it.\" I don't know, I wasn't scared. So we woke up. I think we had to be at the hospital at like 5:30 AM. I think surgery was at like 7:00 AM.\n\nSo we woke up pretty early. I'm not sure much of us slept that night. Got to the hospital 5:30, went through like all the pre-op stuff. Everyone was super nice. Elon was supposed to be there in the morning, but something went wrong with his plane, so we ended up FaceTiming. That was cool. Had one of the greatest one-liners of my life. After that phone call, hung up with him.\n\nThere were like 20 people around me, and I was like, I just hope he wasn't too starstruck talking to me.\n\nNice.\n\nYeah, it was good.\n\nWell done.\n\nYeah, yeah.\n\nDid you write that ahead of time, or it just came to you?\n\nNo, it just came to me. I was like, \"This seems right.\" When in surgery, I asked if I could pray right beforehand. So I like prayed over the room. I asked God if you would like be with my mom in case anything happened to me. And just to like calm her nerves out there. Woke up and played a bit of a prank on my mom. I don't know if you've heard about it.\n\nYeah, I read about it.\n\nYeah, she was not happy.\n\nCan you take me through the prank - Yeah, this is something- - Do you regret doing that now?\n\nNo, no, not one bit. It was something I had talked about ahead of time with my buddy, Bain. I was like, \"I would really like to play a prank on my mom.\" Very specifically, my mom. She's very gullible. I think she had knee surgery once even. And after she came out of knee surgery, she was super groggy. She's like, \"I can't feel my legs.\" And my dad looked at her, he was like, \"You don't have any legs. Like they had to amputate both your legs.\"\n\nWe just do very mean things to her all the time. I'm so surprised that she still loves us. But right after surgery, I was really worried that I was going to be too like groggy, like not all there. I had anesthesia once before, and it messed me up. Like I could not function for a while afterwards. And I like said a lot of things that I was like, I was really worried that I was gonna start, I don't know, like dropping some bombs.\n\nAnd I wouldn't even know, I wouldn't remember. So I was like, \"Please God, don't let that happen. And please let me be there enough to do this to my mom.\" And so she walked in after surgery. It was like the first time they had been able to see me after surgery. And she just looked at me, she said, \"Hi, like, how are you? How are you doing? How do you feel?\"\n\nAnd I looked at her in this very, I think the anesthesia helped, very like groggy, sort of confused look on my face. It's like, \"Who are you?\" And she just started looking around the room, like at the surgeons, at the doctors, like, \"What did you do to my son? You need to fix this right now.\" Tears started streaming. I saw how much she was freaking out. I was like, \"I can't let this go on.\" And so I was like, \"Mom, I'm fine. Like it's all right.\"\n\nAnd still, she was not happy about it. She still says she's gonna get me back someday. But I mean, I don't know. I don't know what that's gonna look like.\n\nIt's a lifelong battle.\n\nYeah, it was good.\n\nIn some sense, it was a demonstration that you still got- - That's all I wanted it to be - Sense of humor.\n\nThat's all I wanted it to be. And I knew that doing something super mean to her like that would show her- - - - Yeah.\n\nTo show that you're still there, that you love her.\n\n[Noland] Yeah, exactly, exactly.\n\nIt's a dark way to do it, but I love it. What was the first time you were able to feel that you can use the Neuralink device to effect the world around you?\n\nYeah, the first little taste I got of it was actually not too long after surgery. Some of the Neuralink team had brought in like a little iPad, a little tablet screen, and they had put up eight different channels that were recording some of my neuron spikes. They put it in front of me. Like this is like real time your brain firing. That's super cool.\n\nMy first thought was, \"I mean, if they're firing now, let's see if I can affect them in some way.\" So I started trying to like wiggle my fingers and I just started like scanning through the channels, and one of the things I was doing was like moving my index finger up and down. And I just saw this yellow spike on like top row, like third box over or something. I saw this yellow spike every time I did it. And I was like, \"Oh, that's cool.\"\n\nAnd everyone around me was just like, \"Well, what are you seeing?\" I was like, \"Look, look at this one. Look at like this top row, third box over this yellow spike. Like that's me right there, there, there.\" And everyone was freaking out. They started like clapping. I was like, \"That's super unnecessary.\"\n\nThat's awesome.\n\nThis is what's supposed to happen, right?\n\nSo you're imagining yourself moving each individual finger one at a time, and then seeing like that you can notice something, and then when you did the index finger, you're like, \"Oh.\"\n\nYeah, I was wiggling kind of all of my fingers to see if anything would happen. There was a lot of other things going on, but that big yellow spike was the one that stood out to me. Like I'm sure that if I would've stared at it long enough, I could have mapped out maybe 100 different things. But the big yellow spike was the one that I noticed.\n\nMaybe you could speak to what it's like to sort of wiggle your fingers, to imagine that the mental, the cognitive effort required to sort of wiggle your index finger, for example. How easy is that to do?\n\nPretty easy for me. It's something that, at the very beginning, after my accident, they told me to try and move my body as much as possible. Even if you can't, just keep trying, because that's going to create new like neural pathways or pathways in my spinal cord to like reconnect these things to hopefully regain some movement someday.\n\nThat's fascinating.\n\nYeah, I know. It's bizarre, but I- - So that's part of the recovery process is to keep trying to move your body?\n\nYep, as much as you can.\n\nAnd that's, and the nervous system does its thing. It starts reconnecting.\n\nYeah. It'll start reconnecting for some people. Some people, it never works. Some people, they'll do it. Like for me, I got some bicep control back, and that's about it. I can, if I try enough, I can wiggle some of my fingers. Not like on command. It's more like if I try to move, say my right pinky and I just keep trying to move it, after a few seconds, it'll wiggle. So I know there's stuff there.\n\nLike I know, and that happens with a few - -different of my fingers and stuff. But yeah, that's what they tell you to do. One of the people at the time when I was in the hospital came in and told me, for one guy who had recovered most of his control, what he thought about every day was actually walking, like the act of walking just over and over again. So I tried that for years. I tried just imagining walking, which it's hard.\n\nIt's hard to imagine like all of the steps that go into, well, taking a step, like all of the things that have to move, like all of the activations that have to happen along your leg in order for one step to occur.\n\nBut you're not just imagining. You're like doing it, right?\n\nI'm trying, yeah. So it's like, it's imagining over again what I had to do to take a step, because it's not something any of us think about. You wanna walk and you take a step. You don't think about all of the different things that are going on in your body. So I had to recreate that in my head as much as I could. And then I practice it over and over and over.\n\nSo it's not like a third person perspective. It's a first person perspective. You're like, it's not like you're imagining yourself walking. You're like literally doing this, everything, all the same stuff as if you're walking.\n\nYeah, which was hard. It was hard at the beginning.\n\nLike frustrating hard, or like actually cognitively hard? Like which way?\n\nIt was both. There's a scene in one of the \"Kill Bill\" movies actually, oddly enough, where she is like paralyzed, I don't know, from like a drug that was in her system. And then she like finds some way to get into the back of a truck or something, and she stares at her toe and she says, \"Move.\" Like move your big toe. And after a few seconds on screen, she does it. And she did that with every one of her like body parts until she can move again.\n\nI did that for years, just stared at my body and said, \"Move your index finger. Move your big toe.\" Sometimes, vocalizing it like out loud, sometimes just thinking it. I tried every different way to do this to try to get some movement back.\n\nAnd it's hard because it actually is like taxing, like physically taxing on my body, which is something I would've never expected, 'cause it's not like I'm moving, but it feels like there's a buildup of, I don't know, the only way I can describe it is there are like signals that aren't getting through from my brain down, 'cause there's that gap in my spinal cord. So brain down, and then from my hand back up to the brain.\n\nAnd so it feels like those signals get stuck in whatever body part that I'm trying to move. And they just build up and build up and build up until they burst. And then once they burst, I get like this really weird sensation of everything sort of like dissipating back out to level, and then I do it again. It's also just like a fatigue thing, like a muscle fatigue, but without actually moving your muscles. It's very, very bizarre.\n\nAnd then if you try to stare at a body part or think about a body part and move for two, three, four, sometimes eight hours, it's very taxing on your mind. It's takes a lot of focus. It was a lot easier at the beginning because I wasn't able to like control a TV in my room or anything. I wasn't able to control any of my environment. So for the first few years, a lot of what I was doing was staring at walls.\n\nAnd so obviously, I did a lot of thinking, and I tried to move a lot just over and over and over again.\n\nSo you never gave up sort of hope there?\n\nNo.\n\nJust training hard essentially?\n\nYep, and I still do it. I do it like subconsciously. And I think that that helped a lot with things with Neuralink, honestly. It's something that I talked about the other day at the all hands that I did at Neuralink's Austin facility.\n\nWelcome to Austin, by the way.\n\nYeah, hey, thanks man. I went to school- - Nice hat.\n\nHey, thanks, thanks man. The gigafactory was super cool. I went to school at Texas A&M, so I've been around before.\n\nSo you should be saying welcome to me.\n\nYeah.\n\nWelcome to Texas, Lex. Yeah, I get you.\n\nBut yeah, I was talking about how a lot of what they've had me do, especially at the beginning, well, I still do it now is body mapping. So like there will be a visualization of a hand or an arm on the screen and I have to do that motion, and that's how they sort of train the algorithm to like understand what I'm trying to do. And so it made things very seamless for me, I think.\n\nThat's really, really cool. So yeah, it's amazing to know 'cause I've learned a lot about the body mapping procedure with the interface and everything like that. It's cool to know that you've been essentially like training to be like world class at that task.\n\nYeah, yeah. I don't know if other quadriplegics, like other paralyzed people give up. I hope they don't. I hope they keep trying, because I've heard other paralyzed people say, like don't ever stop. They tell you two years, but you just never know. The human body is capable of amazing things. So I've heard other people say, \"Don't give up.\"\n\nLike I think one girl had spoken to me through some family members and said that she had been paralyzed for 18 years, and she'd been trying to like wiggle her index finger for all that time, and she finally got it back like 18 years later. So like I know that it's possible, and I'll never give up doing it. I do it when I'm lying down. Like watching TV, I'll find myself doing it, kind of just almost like on its own.\n\nIt's just something I've gotten so used to doing that I don't know, I don't think I'll ever stop.\n\nThat's really awesome to hear, 'cause I think it's one of those things that can really pay off, in the long term. 'Cause like that is training. You're not visibly seeing the results of that training at the moment, but like, there's that like Olympic level nervous system getting ready for something.\n\nWhich honestly was like something that I think Neuralink gave me that I can't thank them enough for it. Like I can't show my appreciation for it enough was being able to visually see that what I'm doing is actually having some effect. It's a huge part of the reason why, like I know now that I'm gonna keep doing it forever, because before Neuralink, I was doing it every day, and I was just assuming that things were happening.\n\nLike it's not like I knew. I wasn't getting back any mobility or sensation or anything. So I could have been running up against a brick wall for all I knew. And with Neuralink, I get to see like all the signals happen in real time, and I get to see that what I'm doing can actually be mapped. When we started doing like click calibrations and stuff, when I go to click my index finger for a left click, that it actually recognizes that.\n\nLike it changed how I think about what's possible with like retraining my body to move. And so yeah, I'll never give up now.\n\nAnd also, just the signal that there's still a powerhouse of a brain there that's like- - Exactly.\n\nAnd as the technology develops, that brain is, I mean, that's the most important thing about the human body is the brain. And it can do a lot of the control. So what did it feel like when you first, could wiggle the index finger and saw the environment respond? Like that little- - Yeah.\n\nWherever, just being way too dramatic according to you.\n\nYeah, it was very cool. I mean, it was cool, but I keep telling this to people, it made sense to me. Like it made sense that like there are signals still happening in my brain, and that as long as you had something near it that could measure those, that could record those, then you should be able to visualize it in some way. Like see it happen. And so that was not very surprising to me. I was just like, \"Oh, cool.\" We found one.\n\nLike we found something that works. It was cool to see that their technology worked, and that everything that they had worked so hard for was like going to pay off. But I hadn't like moved a cursor or anything at that point. I had like interacted with a computer or anything at that point. So it just made sense, it was cool. I didn't really know much about BCI at that point either, so I didn't know like what sort of step this was actually making.\n\nLike I didn't know if this was like a huge deal, or if this was just like, okay, it's cool that we got this far, but we're actually hoping for something like much better down the road. It's like, okay. I just thought that they knew that it turned on. So I was like, cool. Like this is cool.\n\nWell, did you like read up on the specs of the hardware you're getting installed? Like the number of threads, this kind of stuff?\n\nYeah, I do all of that, but it's all Greek to me. I was like, okay, threads, 64 threads, 16 electrodes, 1,024 channels. Okay. Like that math checks out.\n\nSounds right.\n\nYeah.\n\nWhen was the first time you were able to move a mouse cursor?\n\nI know it must have been within the first maybe week, a week or two weeks that I was able to like first move the cursor. And again, like it kind of made sense to me. It didn't seem like that big of a deal. It was like, okay, well, hmm, how do I explain this? When everyone around you starts clapping for something that you've done, it's easy to say, \"Okay, like I did something cool. Like that was impressive in some way.\"\n\nWhat exactly that meant, what it was hadn't really like set in for me. So again, I knew that me trying to move a body part and then that being mapped in some sort of like machine learning algorithm to be able to identify like my brain signals and then take that and give me cursor control, that all kind of made sense to me. I don't know like all the ins and outs of it, but I was like, there are still signals in my brain firing.\n\nThey just can't get through because there's like a gap in my spinal cord. And so they can't get all the way down and back up, but they're still there. So when I moved the cursor for the first time, I was like, \"That's cool, but I expected that that should happen.\" Like it made sense to me. When I moved the cursor for the first time with just my mind, without like physically trying to move, so I guess I can get into that just a little bit.\n\nLike the difference between attempted movement and imagined movement.\n\nYeah, that's a fascinating difference.\n\nYeah.\n\nFrom one to the other.\n\nYeah, yeah, yeah. So like attempted movement is me physically trying to attempt to move, say, my hand. I try to attempt to move my hand to the right, to the left, forward and back. And that's all attempted. Attempt to like lift my finger up and down. Attempt to kick or something. I'm physically trying to do all of those things, even if you can't see it. This would be like me attempting to like shrug my shoulders or something.\n\nThat's all attempted movement. That's what I was doing for the first couple of weeks when they were going to give me cursor control. When I was doing body mapping, it was attempt to do this, attempt to do that. When Nir was telling me to like imagine doing it, it like kind of made sense to me, but it's not something that people practice. Like if you started school as a child and they said, \"Okay, write your name with this pencil.\"\n\nAnd so you do that. \"Okay, now imagine writing your name with that pencil.\" Kids would think like, I guess like that kind of makes sense. And they would do it. But that's not something we're taught. It's all like how to do things physically. We think about like thought experiments and things, but that's not like a physical action of doing things. It's more like what you would do in certain situations.\n\nSo imagined movement, it never really connected with me. Like I guess you could maybe describe it as like a professional athlete, like swinging a baseball bat or swinging like a golf club. Like imagine what you're supposed to do. But then you go right to that and physically do it, then you get a bat in your hand and then you do what you've been imagining. And so I don't have that like connection.\n\nSo telling me to imagine something versus attempting it, there wasn't a lot that I could do there mentally. I just kind of had to accept what was going on and try. But the attempted moving thing, it all made sense to me. Like if I try to move, then there's a signal being sent in my brain. And as long as they can pick that up, then they should be able to map it to what I'm trying to do.\n\nAnd so when I first moved the cursor like that, it was just like, \"Yes, this should happen.\" Like I'm not surprised by that.\n\nBut can you clarify, is there supposed to be a difference between imagined movement and attempted movement?\n\nYeah, just that in imagined movement, you're not attempting to move at all.\n\nYou're like visualizing doing. And then theoretically, is that supposed to be a different part of the brain that lights up in those two different situations?\n\n[Bliss] Yeah, not necessarily. I think all these signals can still be represented in motor cortex, but the difference I think has to do with the naturalness of imagining something versus attempting it- - Got it.\n\n[Bliss] And sort of the fatigue of that over time.\n\nAnd by the way, on the mic is Bliss. So this is just different ways to prompt you to kind of get to the thing that you arrived at.\n\n[Noland] Yeah, yeah.\n\nAttempted movement does sound like the right thing - try.\n\nYeah, I mean, it makes sense to me.\n\n'Cause imagine for me, I would start visualizing, like in my mind, visualizing. Attempted, I would actually start trying to like, there's, I mean, I did like combat sports my whole life, like wrestling. When I'm imagining a move, see, I'm like moving my muscle.\n\nExactly.\n\nLike there is a bit of an activation almost, versus like visualizing yourself like a picture doing it.\n\nYeah, it's something that I feel like naturally, anyone would do. If you try to tell someone to imagine doing something, they might close their eyes and then start physically doing it. But it's just- - Just didn't click.\n\nYeah. It's hard. It was very hard at the beginning.\n\nBut attempted worked.\n\nAttempted worked. It worked just like it should. Worked like a charm.\n\n[Bliss] I remember there was like one Tuesday we were messing around, and I think, I forget what swear word you used, but there's a swear word that came out of your mouth when you figured out you could just do the direct cursor control.\n\nYeah, that's it. It blew my mind. Like no pun intended, blew my mind when I first moved the cursor just with my thoughts and not attempting to move. It's something that I've found like over the couple of weeks, like building up to that, that as I get better cursor controls, like the model gets better, then it gets easier for me to like, like I don't have to attempt as much to move it.\n\nAnd part of that is something that I'd even talked with them about when I was watching the signals of my brain one day, I was watching, when I like attempted to move to the right and I watched the screen, it's like I saw the spikes. It's like I was seeing the spike, the signals being sent before I was actually attempting to move.\n\nI imagined just because when you go to say move your hand or any body part, that signal gets sent before you're actually moving has to make it all the way down and back up before you actually do any sort of movement. So there's a delay there. And I noticed that there was something going on in my brain before I was actually attempting to move, that my brain was like anticipating what I wanted to do.\n\nAnd that all started sort of, I don't know, like percolating in my brain. It was just sort of there, like always in the back. Like that's so weird that it could do that. It kind of makes sense, but I wonder what that means as far as like using the Neuralink.\n\nAnd then as I was playing around with the attempted movement and playing around with the cursor, and I saw that like, as the cursor control got better, that it was anticipating my movements and what I wanted it to do. Like cursor movements, what I wanted to do a bit better and a bit better. And then one day, I just randomly, as I was playing Webgrid, I like looked at a target before I had started like attempting to move.\n\nI was just trying to like get over, like train my eyes to start looking ahead. Like, okay, this is the target I'm on, but if I look over here to this target, I know I can like maybe be a bit quicker getting there. And I looked over and the cursor just shot over it. It was wild. I had to take a step back. Like I was like, \"This should not be happening.\" All day, I was just smiling, I was so giddy. I was like, \"Guys, do you know that this works?\n\nLike I can just think it and it happens,\" which like they'd all been saying this entire time. like I can't believe like you're doing all this with your mind. I'm like, \"Yeah, but is it really with my mind?\" Like I'm attempting to move, and it's just picking that up so it doesn't feel like it's with my mind. When I moved it for the first time like that, it was, oh man.\n\nIt made me think that this technology, that what I'm doing is actually way, way more impressive than I ever thought. It was way cooler than I ever thought. And it just opened up a whole new world of possibilities of like what could possibly happen with this technology and what I might be able to be capable of with it.\n\nBecause you had felt for the first time, like this was digital telepathy. Like you're controlling a digital device with your mind.\n\n[Noland] Yep.\n\nI mean, that's a real moment of discovery. That's really cool. Like you've discovered something. I've seen like scientists talk about like a big aha moment. Like Nobel Prize winning, they'll have this like holy crap.\n\nYeah.\n\nLike whoa.\n\nThat's what it felt. I didn't feel like, like I felt like I had discovered something but for me. Maybe not necessarily for like the world at large or like this field at large. It just felt like an aha moment for me. Like, \"Oh this works.\" Like obviously, it works. And so that's what I do like all the time now. I kind of intermix the attempted movement and imagined movement.\n\nI do it all like together, because I've found that there is some interplay with it that maximizes efficiency with the cursor. So it's not all like one or the other. It's not all just, I only use attempted or I only use like imagined movements. It's more I use them in parallel, and I can do one or the other. I can just completely think about whatever I'm doing. But I don't know. I like to play around with it.\n\nI also like to just experiment with these things. Like every now and again, I'll get this idea in my head like, \"Hmm, I wonder if this works.\" And I'll just start doing it, and then afterwards, I'll tell them, \"By the way, I wasn't doing that like you guys wanted me to. I thought of something and I wanted to try it and so I did. It seems like it works, so maybe we should like explore that a little bit.\"\n\nSo I think that discovery is not just for you, at least from my perspective, that's the discovery for everyone else who ever uses a Neuralink that this is possible. Like I don't think this an obvious thing that this is even possible. It's like, I was saying to Bliss earlier, it's like the four-minute mile. People thought it was impossible to run a mile in four minutes, and once the first person did it, then everyone just started doing it.\n\nSo like just to show that it's possible, that paves the way to like anyone can not do it. That's the thing that's actually possible. You don't need to do the attempted movement. You can just go direct. That's crazy.\n\nIt is crazy, it's crazy.\n\nFor people who don't know, can you explain how the Link app works? You have an amazing stream on the topic. Your first stream, I think, on X describing the app. Can you just describe how it works?\n\nYeah, so it's just an app that Neuralink created to help me interact with the computer. So on the Link app, there are a few different settings and different modes and things I can do on it. So there's like the body mapping, which we kind of touched on. There's a calibration. Calibration is how I actually get cursor control. So calibrating what's going on in my brain to translate that into cursor control. So it will pop out models.\n\nWhat they use I think is like time. So it would be five minutes, and calibration will give me so good of a model. And then if I'm in it for 10 minutes and 15 minutes, the models will progressively get better. And so the longer I'm in it generally, the better the models will get.\n\nThat's really cool, 'cause you often refer to the models. The model's the thing that's constructed once you go through the calibration step. And then you also talked about, sometimes you'll play like a really difficult game, like Snake, just to see how good the model is.\n\nYeah, yeah, so Snake is kind of like my litmus test for models. If I can control Snake decently well, then I know I have a pretty good model. So yeah, the Link app has all of those. It has Webgrid in it now. It's also how I like connect to the computer just in general. So they've given me a lot of like voice controls with it at this point, so I can say like connect or implant disconnect.\n\nAnd as long as I have that charger handy, then I can connect to it. So the charger is also how I connect to the Link app, to connect to the computer. I have to have the implant charger over my head when I wanna connect to have it wake up, 'cause the implant's in hibernation mode, like always when I'm not using it. I think there's a setting to like wake it up every so long.\n\nSo we could set it to half an hour or five hours or something if I just want it to wake up periodically. So yeah, I'll like connect to the Link app, and then go through all sorts of things. Calibration for the day, maybe body mapping. I made them give me like a little homework tab, because I am very forgetful and I forget to do things a lot. So I have like a lot of data collection things that they want me to do.\n\nIs the body mapping part of the data collection, or is that also part of the- - Yeah, it is. It's something that they want me to do daily, which I've been slacking on, 'cause I've been doing so much media and traveling so much. So I've been- - You've been super famous.\n\nYeah, I've been a terrible first candidate for how much I've been slacking on my homework. But yeah, it's just something that they want me to do every day to track how well the Neuralink is performing over time and to have something to give. I imagine to give to the FDA to create all sorts of fancy charts and stuff and show like, \"Hey, this is what the Neuralink, this is how it's performing day one versus day 90 versus day 180 and things like that.\n\nWhat's the calibration step like? Is it like move left, move right?\n\nIt's a bubble game. So there will be like yellow bubbles that pop up on the screen. At first, it is open loop. So open loop, this is something that I still don't fully understand, the open loop and closed loop thing.\n\nAnd me and Bliss talked for a long time about the difference between the two on the technical side.\n\nOkay.\n\nSo it'd be great to hear your side of the story.\n\nOpen loop is basically, I have no control over the cursor. The cursor will be moving on its own across the screen, and I am following by intention the cursor to different bubbles. And then the algorithm is training off of what like the signals it's getting are as I'm doing this. There are a couple different ways that they've done it. They call it center out target. So there will be a bubble in the middle and then eight bubbles around that.\n\nAnd the cursor will go from the middle to one side. So say middle to left, back to middle, to up, to middle, like up, right. And they'll do that all the way around the circle. And I will follow that cursor the whole time, and then it will train off of my intentions, what it is expecting my intentions to be throughout the whole process.\n\nCan you actually speak to, when you say follow- - Yes.\n\nYou don't mean with your eyes. You mean with your intentions.\n\nYeah, so generally for calibration, I'm doing attempted movements, 'cause I think it works better. I think the better models, as I progress through calibration, make it easier to use imagined movements.\n\nWait, wait, wait, wait. So calibrated on attempted movement will create a model that makes it really effective for you to then use the force?\n\nYes, I've tried doing calibration with imagined movement, and it just doesn't work as well for some reason. So that was the center out targets. There's also one where a random target will pop up on the screen and it's the same. I just like move, I follow along with wherever the cursor is to that target, all across the screen.\n\nI've tried those with imagined movement, and for some reason, the models just don't, they don't give as high level as quality when we get into closed loop. I haven't played around with it a ton, so maybe like the different ways that we're doing calibration now might make it a bit better. But what I've found is there will be a point in calibration where I can use imagined movement. Before that point, it doesn't really work.\n\nSo if I do calibration for 45 minutes, the first 15 minutes, I can't use imagined movement. It just like doesn't work for some reason. And after a certain point, I can just sort of feel it. I can tell it moves different. That's the best way I can describe it. Like it's almost as if it is anticipating what I am going to do again before I go to do it.\n\nAnd so using attempted movement for 15 minutes, at some point, I can kind of tell when I like move my eyes to the next target that the cursor is starting to like pick up. Like it's starting to understand, it's learning like what I'm going to do.\n\nSo first of all, it's really cool that, I mean, you are a true pioneer in all of this. You're like exploring how to do every aspect of this most effectively, and there's just, I imagine so many lessons learned from this. So thank you for being a pioneer in all these kinds of different like super technical ways.\n\nAnd it's also cool to hear that there's like a different like feeling to the experience when it's calibrated in different ways, 'cause I mean, I imagine your brain is doing something different, and that's why there's a different feeling to it. And then trying to find the words and the measurements to those feelings would be also interesting.\n\nBut at the end of the day, you can also measure that your actual performance on whether it's Snake or Webgrid, you could see like what actually works well. And you're saying, for the open loop calibration, the attempted movement works best for now.\n\nYep, yep.\n\nSo the open loop, you don't get the feedback that you did something.\n\nYeah- - Is that frustrating?\n\nNo, no, it makes sense to me. Like we've done it with a cursor and without a cursor in open loop. So sometimes, it's just, say, for like the center out, you'll start calibration with a bubble lighting up, and I push towards that bubble. And then when that bubble, when it's pushed towards that bubble for say, three seconds a bubble will pop and then I come back to the middle. So I'm doing it all just by my intentions. Like that's what it's learning anyways. So it makes sense that as long as I follow what they want me to do, like follow the yellow brick road, that it'll all work out.\n\nYou're full of great references. Is the bubble game fun?\n\nYeah, they always feel so bad making me do calibration. Like, \"Oh, we're about to do a 40-minute calibration.\" I'm like, \"All right, do you guys wanna do two of them?\" Like I'm always asking to, like whatever they need, I'm more than happy to do. And it's not bad. Like I get to lie there or sit in my chair and like do these things with some great people. I get to have great conversations. I can give them feedback. I can talk about all sorts of things. I could throw something on on my TV in the background and kinda like split my attention between them. Like it's not bad at all. I don't mind it.\n\nIs there a score that you get? Like can you do better on the bubble game?\n\nNo, I would love that. I would love- - Yeah. Writing down suggestions from Noland.\n\nThat's- - Make it more fun. Gamified.\n\nYeah, that's one thing that I really, really enjoy about Webgrid is 'cause I'm so competitive. Like the higher the BPS, the higher the score, I know the better I'm doing. I think I've asked at one point one of the guys, like if he could give me some sort of numerical feedback for calibration, like I would like to know what they're looking at.\n\nLike, \"Oh, we see like this number while you're doing calibration, and that means, at least on our end, that we think calibration is going well.\" And I would love that, because I would like to know if what I'm doing is going well or not. But then they've also told me like, \"Yeah, not necessarily like one-to-one.\" It doesn't actually mean that calibration is going well in some ways.\n\nSo it's not like 100%, and they don't wanna like skew what I'm experiencing or want me to change things based on that. If that number isn't always accurate to like how the model will turn out or how like the end result, that's at least what I got from it. One thing I do that I have asked them and something that I really enjoy striving for is towards the end of calibration, there is like a time between targets.\n\nAnd so I like to keep, like at the end, that number as low as possible. So at the beginning, it can be four or five, six seconds between me popping bubbles. But towards the end, I like to keep it below like 1. 5. Or if I could, get it to like one second between like bubbles, because in my mind, that translates really nicely to something like Webgrid where I know if I can hit a target one every second that I'm doing real, real well.\n\nThere you go, that's a way to get a score on the calibrations. Like the speed, how quickly can you get from bubble to bubble.\n\nYeah.\n\nSo there's the open loop, and then it goes to the closed loop.\n\nClosed loop.\n\nThe closed loop can already start giving you a sense, 'cause you're getting feedback of like how good the model is.\n\nYeah, so closed loop is when I first get cursor control and how they've described it to me, someone who does not understand this stuff, I am the dumbest person in the room every time I'm with- - I love the humility.\n\nYeah, is that I am closing the loop. So I am actually now the one that is like finishing the loop of whatever this loop is. I don't even know what the loop is, they've never told me. They just say there is a loop. And at one point, it's open and I can't control. And then I get control and it's closed. So I'm finishing the loop.\n\nSo how long the calibration usually take? You said like 10, 15 minutes.\n\nWell, yeah, they're trying to get that number down pretty low. That's what we've been working on a lot recently is getting that down as low as possible, so that way, if this is something that people need to do on a daily basis or if some people need to do on a like every other day basis or once a week, they don't want people to be sitting in calibration for long periods of time.\n\nI think they've wanted to get it down seven minutes or below, at least where we're at right now. It'd be nice if you never had to do calibration. So we'll get there at some point, I'm sure, the more we learn about the brain and like I think that's the dream. I think right now, for me to get like really, really good models, I am in calibration 40 or 45 minutes. And I don't mind.\n\nLike I said, they always feel really bad, but if it's gonna get me a model that can like break these records on Webgrid, I'll stay in it for flipping two hours.\n\nLet's talk business. So Webgrid. I saw a presentation where Bliss said by March, you selected 89,000 targets in Webgrid. Can you explain this game? What is Webgrid, and what does it take to be a world class performer in Webgrid, as you continue to break world records?\n\nYeah.\n\nIt's like a gold medalist, like well.\n\nYeah, I'd like to thank, I'd like to thank everyone who's helped me get here, my coaches, my parents for driving me to practice every day at five in the morning. Like to thank God. And just overall, my dedication to my craft.\n\nThe interviews with athletes, they're always like that, it's like that template.\n\nYeah.\n\nSo Webgrid is a grid that sells.\n\nWebgrid is, yeah. It's literally just a grid. They can make it as big or small as you can make a grid. A single box on that grid will light up and you go and click it. And it is a way for them to benchmark how good a BCI is. So it's pretty straightforward. You just click targets.\n\n[Lex] Only one blue cell appears, and you're supposed to move the mouse to there and click on it.\n\nYep. So I like playing on like bigger grids, 'cause the bigger the grid, the like more BPS. It's bits per second that you get every time you click one. So I'll say, I'll play on like a 35 by 35 grid, and then one of those little squares cell, we call it target, whatever, will light up and you move the cursor there and you click it and then you do that forever.\n\nAnd you've been able to achieve at first eight bits per second. And then you recently broke that.\n\nYeah, I'm at 8. 5 right now. I would've beaten that literally the day before I came to Austin. But I had like, I don't know, like a five second lag right at the end. And I just had to wait until the latency calmed down and then I kept clicking. But I was at like 8. 01 and then five seconds of lag, and then the next like three targets I clicked all stayed at 8. 01.\n\nSo if I would've been able to click during that time of lag, I probably would've hit, I don't know, I might've hit nine. So I'm there. I'm really close. And then this whole Austin trip has really gotten in the way of my Webgrid playing ability.\n\nIt's frustrating.\n\nYeah, it's- - So that's all you've been thinking about right now?\n\nYeah, I know. I want to do better at nine. I want to do better. I wanna hit nine, I think. Well, I know nine is very, very achievable. I'm right there. I think 10 I could hit maybe in the next month. Like I could do it probably in the next few weeks if I really push it.\n\nI think you and Elon are basically the same person, 'cause last time I did a podcast with him, he came in extremely frustrated that he can't beat Uber Lilith as a droid. That was like a year ago I think, I forget, like solo. And I could just tell, there's some percentage of his brain the entire time was thinking like, \"I wish I was right now attempting.\"\n\nI think he did it.\n\nHe did it that night.\n\nYeah.\n\nHe stayed up and did it that night. It's just crazy to me. I mean, in a fundamental way, it's really inspiring. And what you're doing is inspiring in that way, 'cause I mean, it's not just about the game. Everything you're doing there has impact. By striving to do well on Webgrid, you're helping everybody figure out how to create the system all along, like the decoding, the software, the hardware, the calibration, all of it, how to make all of that work so you can do everything else really well.\n\nYeah, it's just really fun.\n\nWell, that's also, that's part of the thing is like making it fun.\n\nYeah, it's addicting. I've joked about like what they actually did when they went in and put this thing in my brain. They must have flipped a switch to make me more susceptible to these kinds of games, to make me addicted to like Webgrid or something. Do you know Bliss's high score?\n\nYeah, he said like 14 or something.\n\n17.\n\nOh boy.\n\n17.1 or something, 17.01.\n\n17 dot, 17.01.\n\nYeah.\n\nHe told me he like does it on the floor with peanut butter and he like fasts. It's weird. That sounds like cheating. Sounds like performance enhancing.\n\n[Bliss] No, like the first time Noland played this game, he asked, \"How good are we at this game?\" And I think you told me right then, \"You're gonna try to beat me on that.\"\n\nI'm gonna get there someday.\n\nYeah. I fully believe you.\n\nI think I can.\n\nI'm excited for that.\n\nYeah. So I've been playing, first off, with the dwell cursor, which really hampers my Webgrid playing ability. Basically, I have to wait 0.3 seconds for every click.\n\nOh, so you can't do the clicks. So you click by dwelling, you said 0.3?\n\n0.3 seconds, which sucks. It really slows down how much I'm able to, like how high I'm able to get. I still hit like 50, I think I hit like 50 something trials, net trials per minute in that, which was pretty good, 'cause I'm able to like, there's one of the settings is also like how slow you need to be moving in order to initiate a click, to start a click. So I can tell sort of when I'm on that threshold to start initiating a click just a bit early, so I'm not fully stopped over the target when I go to click. I'm doing it like on my way to the targets a little to try to time it just right.\n\nOh wow. So you're slowing down.\n\nYeah, just a hair right before the targets. (Lex laughing) - This is like elite performance, okay. But that's still, it sucks that there's a ceiling of the 0.3.\n\nWell, I can get down to 0.2 and 0.1. Point one's what- - I get it.\n\nYeah, and I've played with that a little bit too. I have to adjust a ton of different parameters in order to play with 0. 1, and I don't have control over all that on my end yet. It also changes like how the models are trained.\n\nLike if I train a model like in Webgrid, like I bootstrap on a model, which basically is them training models as I'm playing Webgrid based off of like the Webgrid data, so like if I play Webgrid for 10 minutes, they can train off that data specifically in order to get me a better model. If I do that with 0. 3 versus 0. 1, the models come out different. The way that they interact is just much, much different. So I have to be really careful.\n\nI found that doing it with 0. 3 is actually better in some ways, unless I can do it with 0. 1 and change all of the different parameters, then that's more ideal, 'cause obviously, 0. 3 is faster than 0. 1. So I could get there. I can get there.\n\nCan you click using your brain?\n\nFor right now, it's the hover clicking with the dwell cursor. Before all the thread retraction stuff happened, we were calibrating clicks - left click, right click. That was my previous ceiling. Before I broke the record again with the dwell cursor was I think on a 35 by 35 grid with left and right click. And you get more BPS, more bits per second using multiple clicks 'cause it's more difficult.\n\nOh, because what is it, you're supposed to do either a left click or a like right click? You use a different color for stuff like this?\n\nYeah, blue targets for left click; orange targets for right click is what they had done.\n\nGot it.\n\nSo my previous record of 7.5 was with the blue and the orange targets, yeah, which I think if I went back to that now doing the click calibration, and being able to like initiate clicks on my own, I think I would would break that 10 ceiling like in a couple days max.\n\nLike yeah, you would start making Bliss nervous about his 17- - You should be.\n\nWhy do you think we haven't given him the- - Yeah, exactly. So what did it feel like with the retractions? That some of the threads retracted?\n\nIt sucked. It was really, really hard. The day they told me was the day of my big Neuralink tour at their Fremont facility, and they told me like right before we went over there. It was really hard to hear. My initial reaction was, \"Alright, go in, fix it. Like go in, take it out, and fix it.\" The first surgery was so easy. Like I went to sleep. A couple hours later, I woke up and here we are.\n\nI didn't feel any pain, didn't take like any pain pills or anything. So I just knew that if they wanted to, they could go in and put in a new one like next day if that's what it took, 'cause I wanted it to be better and I wanted not to lose the capability. I had so much fun playing with it for a few weeks, for a month. It had opened up so many doors for me. It had opened up so many more possibilities that I didn't want to lose it after a month.\n\nI thought it would've been a cruel twist of fate if I had gotten to see the view from like the top of this mountain and then have it all come crashing down after a month. And I knew like, say, the top of the mountain, but how I saw it was I was just now starting to climb the mountain. There was so much more that I knew was possible. And so to have all of that be taken away was really, really hard.\n\nBut then on the drive over to the facility, I don't know, like five minute drive, whatever it is, I talked with my parents about it. I prayed about it. I was just like, \"I'm not gonna let this ruin my day. I'm not gonna let this ruin this amazing like tour that they have set up for me. Like I wanna go show everyone how much I appreciate all the work they're doing.\n\nI wanna go like meet all of the people who have made this possible, and I wanna go have one of the best days of my life.\" And I did, and it was amazing, and it absolutely was one of the best days I've ever been privileged to experience. And then for a few days, I was pretty down in the dumps. But for like the first few days afterwards, I was just like, I didn't know if it was gonna ever gonna work again.\n\nI made the decision that even if I lost the ability to use the Neuralink, even if I lost, even if I like lost out on everything to come, if I could keep giving them data in any way, then I would do that. If I needed to just do like some of the data collection every day or body mapping every day for a year, then I would do it, because I know that everything I'm doing helps everyone to come after me. And that's all I wanted.\n\nI guess the whole reason that I did this was to help people, and I knew that anything I could do to help, I would continue to do, even if I never got to use the cursor again, then I was just happy to be a part of it. And everything that I'd done was just a perk. It was something that I got to experience, and I know how amazing it's gonna be for everyone to come after me. So might as well just keep trucking along.\n\nWell, that said, you were able to get to work your way up, to get the performance back. So this is like going from rocky one to rocky two. So when did you first realize that this is possible, and what gave you sort of the strength and motivation, determination to do it? To increase back up and beat your previous record?\n\nYeah, it was within a couple weeks.\n\nAgain, this feels like I'm interviewing an athlete. (laughs) This is great. I like to thank my parents.\n\nThe road back was long and hard, fraught many difficulties. There were dark days. It was a couple weeks, I think. And then there was just a turning point. I think they had switched how they were measuring the neuron spikes in my brain. Bliss, help me out.\n\n[Bliss] Yeah, the way in which we're measuring the behavior of individual neurons.\n\nYeah.\n\nSo we're switching from sort of individual spike detection to something called spike band power, which if you watch the previous segments with either me or DJ, you probably have some content.\n\nYeah, okay, so when they did that, it was kind of like, a light over the head, like light bulb moment. Like, \"Oh, this works.\" And this seems like we can run with this. And I saw the uptick in performance immediately. Like I could feel it when they switched over. I was like, \"This is better. Like this is good.\"\n\nLike everything up till this point for the last few weeks, last like whatever, three or four weeks, 'cause it was before they even told me, like everything before this sucked. Like let's keep doing what we're doing now. And at that point, it was not like, \"Oh, I know I'm still only at, like saying Webgrid terms, like four or five BPS compared to my 7. 5 before. But I know that if we keep doing this, then like I can get back there.\"\n\nAnd then they gave me the dwell cursor, and the dwell cursor sucked at first. It's not, obviously, not what I want, but it gave me a path forward to be able to continue using it, and hopefully, to continue to help out. And so I just ran with it, never looked back. Like I said, I'm just kind of person that roll with the punches anyways.\n\nWhat was the process? What was the feedback loop on the figuring out how to do the spike detection in a way that would actually work well for Noland?\n\nYeah, it's a great question. So maybe just describe first how the actual update worked. It was basically an update to your implant. So we just did an over the air software update to his implants, same way you'd update your Tesla or your iPhone, and that firmware change enabled us to record sort of averages of populations of neurons nearby individual electrodes.\n\nSo we have sort of less resolution about which individual neuron is doing what, but we have a broader picture of what's going on nearby an electrode overall. And that feedback, I mean, basically, Noland described it was immediate when we flipped that switch. I think the first day we did that, you had three or four BPS right out of the box. And that was a light bulb moment for, \"Okay, this is the right path to go down.\"\n\nAnd from there, there's a lot of feedback around like how to make this useful for independent use. So what we care about ultimately is that you can use it independently to do whatever you want. And to get to that point, it required us to re-engineer the UX, as you talked about the dwell cursor, to make it something that you can use independently without us needing to be involved all the time.\n\nAnd yeah, this is obviously the start of this journey still. Hopefully, we get back to the places where you're doing multiple clicks and using that to control much more fluidly, everything, and much more naturally, the applications that you're trying to interface with.\n\nAnd most importantly, get that Webgrid number up.\n\nYes.\n\nYeah. So how is the, on the hover click, do you accidentally click cells sometimes? Like how hard is it to avoid accidentally clicking?\n\nI have to continuously keep it moving, basically. So like I said, there's a threshold where it will initiate a click. So if I ever drop below that, it'll start, and I have 0. 3 seconds to move it before it clicks anything. And if I don't want it to ever get there, I just keep it moving at a certain speed, and like just constantly like doing circles on screen, moving it back and forth to keep it from clicking stuff.\n\nI actually noticed a couple weeks back, when I was not using the implant, I was just moving my hand back and forth or in circles. Like I was trying to keep the cursor from clicking, and I was just doing it like while I was trying to go to sleep, and I was like, \"Okay, this is a problem.\" (both laughing) - To avoid the clicking. I guess, does that create problems like when you're gaming accidentally click a thing?\n\nYeah, yeah, it happens in chess. I've lost a number of games because I'll accidentally click something.\n\n[Bliss] I think the first time I ever beat you was because of an accident.\n\nYeah, I misclicked, yeah.\n\nIt's a nice excuse, right?\n\nYeah.\n\nYou can always, anytime you lose- - You could just say- - That was accidental.\n\nYeah.\n\nYou said the app improved a lot from version one. When you first started using it, it was very different. So can you just talk about the trial and error that you went through with the team? Like 200 plus pages of notes. What's that process like of- - Yeah.\n\nGoing back and forth and working together to improve the thing?\n\nIt's a lot of me just using it like day in and day out and saying, like, \"Hey, can you guys do this for me? Like give me this. I wanna be able to do that. I need this.\" I think a lot of it just doesn't occur to them maybe until someone is actually using the app, using the implant. It's just something that they just never would've thought of. Or it's very specific to even like me, maybe what I want.\n\nIt's something I'm a little worried about with the next people that come is maybe they will want things much different than how I've set it up, or what the advice I've given the team. And they're gonna look at some of the things they've added for me. Like that's a dumb idea. Like why would he ask for that?\n\nAnd so I'm really looking forward to get the next people on because I guarantee that they're going to think of things that I've never thought of. They're gonna think of improvements. I'm like, \"Wow, that's a really good idea. Like I wish I would've thought of that.\" And then they're also gonna give me some pushback about like, \"Yeah, what you are asking them to do here, that's a bad idea. Let's do it this way.\"\n\nAnd I'm more than happy to have that happen. But it's just a lot of like different interactions with different games or applications, the internet, just with the computer in general. There's tons of bugs that end up popping up left, right, center. So it's just me trying to use it as much as possible and showing them what works and what doesn't work and what I would like to be better.\n\nAnd then they take that feedback, and they usually create amazing things for me. They solve these problems in ways I would've never imagined. They're so good at everything they do. And so I'm just really thankful that I'm able to give them feedback and they can make something of it, 'cause a lot of my feedback is like really dumb. It's just like, \"I want this. Please do something about it.\"\n\nAnd we'll come back and super well thought out, and it's way better than anything I could have ever thought of or implemented myself. So they're just great. They're really, really cool.\n\nAs the BCI community grows, would you like to hang out with the other folks with Neuralink? What relationship, if any, would you wanna have with them? Because you said like they might have a different set of like ideas of how to use the thing.\n\nYeah.\n\nWould you be intimidated by their Webgrid performance?\n\nNo, no, I hope compete. I hope day one, they like wipe the floor with me. I hope they beat it and they crush it. Double it if they can. Just because, on one hand, it's only gonna push me to be better, 'cause I'm super competitive. I want other people to push me. I think that is important for anyone trying to achieve greatness is they need other people around them who are going to push them to be better. And I even made a joke about it on X once.\n\nLike once the next people get chosen, like qubadi cot music, like I'm just excited to have other people to do this with and to like share experiences with. I'm more than happy to interact with them as much as they want, more than happy to give them advice. I don't know what kind of advice I could give them, but if they have questions, I'm more than happy.\n\nWhat advice would you have for the next participant in the clinical trial?\n\nThat they should have fun with this, because it is a lot of fun. And that I hope they work really, really hard, because it's not just for us, it's for everyone that comes after us. And come to me if they need anything. And to go to Neuralink if they need anything. Man, Neuralink moves mountains. Like they do absolutely anything for me that they can. And it's an amazing support system to have.\n\nIt puts my mind at ease for like so many things that I have had like questions about, or so many things I wanna do. And they're always there, and that's really, really nice. I would tell them not to be afraid to go to Neuralink with any questions that they have, any concerns, anything that they're looking to do with this. And any help that Neuralink is capable of providing, I know they will. And I don't know, I don't know.\n\nJust work your ass off, because it's really important that we try to give our all to this.\n\nSo have fun and work hard.\n\nYeah, yeah, there we go. Maybe that's what I'll just start saying to people: have fun, work hard.\n\nNow, you're a real pro athlete. Just keep it short. (Noland laughing) Maybe it's good to talk about what you've been able to do now that you have a Neuralink implant. Like the freedom you gain from this way of interacting with the outside world. Like you play video games all night. And you do that by yourself. And that's a kind of freedom. Can you speak to that freedom that you gain?\n\nYeah, it's what all, I don't know, people in my position want. They just want more independence. The more load that I can take away from people around me, the better. If I'm able to interact with the world without using my family, without going through any of my friends, like needing them to help me with things, the better.\n\nIf I'm able to sit up on my computer all night and not need someone to like sit me up, say like on my iPad, like in a position where I can use it and then have to have them wait up for me all night until I'm ready to be done using it, it takes a load off of all of us. And it's really like all I can ask for. It's something that I could never thank Neuralink enough for. And I know my family feels the same way.\n\nJust being able to have the freedom to do things on my own at any hour of the day or night, it means the world to me. And I don't know.\n\nWhen you're up at 2:00 AM playing Webgrid by yourself, I just imagine like it's darkness and there's just a light glowing. And you're just focused. What's going through your mind? (Noland laughing) Or you were like in a state of flow where it's like the mind is empty, like those like Zen masters?\n\nYeah, generally, it is me playing music of some sort. I have a massive playlist, and so I'm just like rocking out to music. And then it's also just like a race against time, 'cause I'm constantly looking at how much battery percentage I have left on my implant. Like, all right, I have 30%, which equates to x amount of time, which means I have to break this record in the next hour and a half, or else, it's not happening tonight.\n\nAnd so it's a little stressful when that happens. When it's above 50%, I'm like, \"Okay, like I got time.\" It starts getting down to 30 and then 20. It's like, all right, 10%, a little popup is gonna pop up right here, and it's gonna really screw my Webgrid flow. It's gonna tell me that there's like the low battery, low battery popup comes up, and I'm like, it's really gonna screw me over.\n\nSo if I have to, if I'm gonna break this record, I have to do it in the next like 30 seconds, or else, that popup is gonna get in the way, like cover my Webgrid. After that, I go click on it, go back into Webgrid. And I'm like, \"All right, that means I have 10 minutes left before this thing's dead.\" That's what's going on in my head generally, that and whatever song's playing. I want to break those records so bad.\n\nLike it's all I want when I'm playing Webgrid. It has become less of like, \"Oh, this is just a leisurely activity.\" Like I just enjoy doing this, because it just feels so nice and it puts me at ease. No, once I'm in Webgrid, you better break this record or you're gonna waste like five hours of your life right now. And I don't know, it's just fun. It's fun, man.\n\nHave you ever tried Webgrid with like two targets and three targets? Can you get higher BPS with that?\n\nCan you do that?\n\n[Bliss] You mean, like different color targets, or you mean- - Oh, multiple targets, 'cause that change the thing.\n\nYeah, so BPS is a log of number of targets times correct minus incorrect divided by time. And so you can think of like different clicks as basically doubling the number of active targets.\n\nGot it.\n\nSo you know, you get basically higher BPS, the more options there are, the more difficult to task. And there's also like zen mode you've played in before, which is like- - Yeah. Yeah, it covers the whole screen with a grid. And I don't know.\n\n[Lex] Yeah, and so you can go like, that's insane.\n\nYeah.\n\n[Bliss] He doesn't like it 'cause it didn't show BPS.\n\nI had them put in a giant BPS in the background, so now it's like the opposite of Zen mode. It's like super hard mode, like just metal mode. It's just like a giant number in the back counter.\n\n[Bliss] We should rename that. Metal mode is a much better name now.\n\nSo you also play Civilization VI?\n\nI love Civ VI, yeah.\n\n[Lex] You usually go with Korea, you said?\n\nI do, yeah. So the great part about Korea is they focus on like science tech victories, which was not planned. Like I've been playing Korea for years, and then all of the Neuralink stuff happened. So it kind of aligned. But what I've noticed with tech victories is if you can just rush tech, rush science, then you can do anything.\n\nLike at one point in the game, you'll be so far ahead of everyone technologically that you'll have like musket men, infantry men, plane sometimes, and people will still be fighting with like bows and arrows. And so if you want to win a domination victory, you just get to a certain point with the science and then go and wipe out the rest of the world.\n\nOr you can just take science all the way and win that way, and you're gonna be so far ahead of everyone 'cause you're producing so much science that it's not even close. I've accidentally won in different ways just by focusing on science.\n\nAccidentally won by focusing on science.\n\nI was playing only science, obviously. Like just science all the way, just tech. And I was trying to get like every tech in the tech tree and stuff. And then I accidentally won through a diplomatic victory, and I was so mad. (Lex laughing) I was so mad, 'cause it just like ends the game. One turn, it was like, \"Oh, you won, you're so diplomatic.\" I'm like, \"I don't wanna do this. I should have declared war on more people or something.\"\n\nIt was terrible, but you don't need like giant civilizations with tech, especially with Korea. You can keep it pretty small. So I generally just get to a certain military unit and put them all around my border to keep everyone out, and then I will just build up. So very isolationist.\n\nNice.\n\nYeah.\n\nJust work on the science and the tech.\n\n[Noland] Yep, that's it.\n\nYou're making it sound so fun.\n\nIt's so much fun.\n\nAnd I also saw Civilization VII trailer.\n\nOh man, I'm so pumped.\n\nYeah. And that's probably coming out- - Come on, Civ VII, hit me up. Alpha, beta tests, whatever.\n\nWait, when is it coming out?\n\n2025.\n\nYeah, yeah, next year, yeah. What other stuff would you like to see improved about the Neuralink app and just the entire experience?\n\nI would like to, like I said, get back to the like click on demand, like the regular clicks. That would be great. I would like to be able to connect to more devices. Right now, it's just the computer. I'd like to be able to use it on my phone or use it on different consoles, different platforms. I'd like to be able to control as much stuff as possible, honestly. Like an Optimus robot would be pretty cool.\n\nThat would be sick if I could control an Optimus robot. The Link app itself, it seems like we are getting pretty dialed in to what it might look like down the road. Seems like we've gotten through a lot of what I want from it at least. The only other thing I would say is like more control over all the parameters that I can tweak with my like cursor and stuff. There's a lot of things that go into how the cursor moves in certain ways.\n\nAnd I have, I don't know, like three or four of those parameters and there might- - Like gain and friction and all that?\n\nGain and friction, yeah. And there's maybe double the amount of those with just like velocity and then with the actual dwell cursor. So I would like all of it. I want as much control over my environment as possible, especially- - So you want like advanced mode? Like there's menus usually, there's basic mode. And you're like one of those folks like- - I go the- - Power user advanced.\n\nYeah, yeah.\n\nGot it.\n\nThat's what I want. I want as much control over this as possible. So yeah, that's really all I can ask for. Just give me everything.\n\nHas speech been useful? Like just being able to talk also in addition to everything else?\n\nYeah, you mean like while I'm using it?\n\nWhile you're using it, like speech to text?\n\nOh yeah.\n\nOr do you type, or like, 'cause there's also a keyboard? That's really nice.\n\nYeah, yeah. So there's a virtual keyboard. That's another thing I would like to work more on is finding some way to type or text in a different way. Right now, it is like a dictation basically and a virtual keyboard that I can use with the cursor. But we've played around with like finger spelling, like sign language, finger spelling. And that seems really promising.\n\nSo I have this thought in my head that it's going to be a very similar learning curve that I had with the cursor, where I went from attempted movement to imagined movement at one point. I have a feeling, this is just my intuition, that at some point, I'm going to be doing finger spelling and I won't need to actually attempt to finger spell anymore, that I'll just be able to think the like letter that I want and it'll pop up.\n\nThat would be epic.\n\nYeah.\n\nThat's challenging, that's hard. That's a lot of work for you to kinda take that leap. But that would be awesome.\n\nAnd then like going from letters to words is another step. Like you would go from, right now, it's finger spelling of like just the sign language alphabet. But if it's able to pick that up, then it should be able to pick up like the whole sign language like language.\n\nAnd so then if I could do something along those lines, or just the sign language spelled word, if I can spell it at a reasonable speed and it can pick that up, then I would just be able to think that through and it would do the same thing. I don't see why not. After what I saw with the cursor control, I don't see why it wouldn't work, but we'd have to play around with it more.\n\nWhat was the process in terms of like training yourself to go from attempted movement to imagined movement? How long did that take? So how long would this kind of process take?\n\nWell, it was a couple weeks before it just like happened upon me. But now that I know that that was possible, I think I could make it happen with other things. I think it would be much, much simpler.\n\nWould you get an upgraded implant device?\n\nSure, absolutely. Whenever they'll let me.\n\nSo you don't have any concerns for you with the surgery experience? All of it was like no regrets?\n\nNo.\n\nSo everything's been good so far?\n\nYep.\n\nYou just keep getting upgrades.\n\nYeah, I mean, why not? I've seen how much it's impacted my life already. And I know that everything from here on out, shit's gonna get better and better. So I would love to. I would love to get the upgrade.\n\nWhat future capabilities are you excited about sort of beyond this kind of telepathy? Is vision interesting? So for folks who, for example, who are blind, so you're like enabling people to see, or for speech.\n\nYeah, there's a lot that's very, very cool about this. I mean, we're talking about the brain, so like this is just motor cortex stuff. There's so much more that can be done. The vision one is fascinating to me. I think that is going to be very, very cool. To give someone the ability to see for the first time in their life would just be, I mean it, it might be more amazing than even helping someone like me. Like that just sounds incredible.\n\nThe speech thing is really interesting, being able to have some sort of like real time translation and cut away that language barrier would be really cool. Any sort of like actual impairments that it could solve, like with speech, would be very, very cool. And then also, there are a lot of different disabilities that all originate in the brain. And you would be able to, hopefully be able to solve a lot of those.\n\nI know there's already stuff to help people with seizures that can be implanted in the brain. This would do, I imagine, the same thing. And so you could do something like that. I know that even someone like Joe Rogan has talked about the possibilities with being able to stimulate the brain in different ways. I'm not sure. I'm not sure how ethical a lot of that would be. That's beyond me honestly.\n\nBut I know that there's a lot that can be done when we're talking about the brain and being able to go in and physically make changes to help people or to improve their lives. So I'm really looking forward to everything that comes from this. And I don't think it's all that far off. I think a lot of this can be implemented within my lifetime, assuming that I live a long life.\n\nWhat you were referring to is things like people suffering from depression or things of that nature potentially getting help.\n\nYeah, flip a switch like that, make someone happy. I know, I think Joe has talked about it more in terms of like you want to experience like what a drug trip feels like. Like you wanna experience what it'd be like to be on- - Of course.\n\nYeah, mushrooms or something like that, DMT. Like you can just flip that switch in the brain. My buddy Bain has talked about being able to like wipe parts of your memory and re-experience things that, like for the first time, like your favorite movie or your favorite book. Like just wipe that out real quick, and then re-fall in love with Harry Potter or something. I told him, I was like, \"I don't know how I feel about like people being able to just wipe parts of your memory. That seems a little sketchy to me.\" He's like, \"They're already doing it.\"\n\nSounds legit. Yeah, I would love memory replay. Just like actually high resolution replay of old memories.\n\nYeah, I saw an episode of \"Black Mirror\" about that once. I don't think I want it.\n\nYeah, so \"Black Mirror\" always kind of considers the worst case, which is important. I think people don't consider the best case or the average case enough. I don't know what it is about us humans. We wanna think about the worst possible thing. We love drama.\n\n[Noland] Yeah. (laughs) - It's like, how's this new technology gonna kill everybody? We just love that. Again like, yes, let's watch.\n\nHopefully, people don't think about that too much with me. It'll ruin a lot of my plans.\n\nYeah, yeah. I assume you're gonna have to take over the world. I mean, I loved your Twitter. You tweeted, \"I'd like to make jokes about hearing voices in my head since getting the Neuralink, but I feel like people would take it the wrong way. Plus, the voices in my head told me not to.\"\n\nYeah.\n\nPlease never stop. So you're talking about Optimus. Is that something you would love to be able to do, to control the robotic arm or the entirety of Optimus?\n\nOh yeah, for sure. For sure, absolutely.\n\nYou think there's something like fundamentally different about just being able to physically interact with the world?\n\nYeah, oh, 100%. I know another thing with like being able to like give people the ability to like feel sensation and stuff too by going in with the brain and having the Neuralink maybe do that. That could be something that could be translated through, transferred through the Optimus as well. Like there's all sorts of really cool interplay between that. And then also, like you said, just physically interacting.\n\nI mean, 99% of the things that I can't do myself obviously need, I need a caretaker for, someone to physically do things for me. If an Optimus robot could do that, like I could live an incredibly independent life and not be such a burden on those around me and it would change the way people like me live, at least until whatever this is gets cured. But being able to interact with the world physically, like that would just be amazing.\n\nAnd they're not just like for being, for having to be a caretaker or something, but something like I talked about, just being able to read a book. Imagine an Optimus robot just being able to hold a book open in front of me, like get that smell again. I might not be able to feel it at that point. Or maybe I could again with the sensation and stuff.\n\nBut there's something different about reading like a physical book than staring at a screen or listening to an audio book. I actually don't like audio books. I've listened to a ton of them at this point, but I don't really like 'em. I would much rather like read a physical copy.\n\nSo one of the things you would love to be able to experience is opening the book, bringing it up to you. And to feel the touch of the paper.\n\nYeah. Oh man, the touch, the smell. I mean, it's just like something about the words on the page, and they've replicated that page color on like the Kindle and stuff. Yeah, it's just not the same, yeah. So just something as simple as that.\n\nSo one of the things you miss is touch.\n\nI do, yeah.\n\nA lot of things that I interact with in the world, like clothes or literally any physical thing that I interact with in the world, a lot of times, what people around me will do is they'll just come like, rub it on my face. They'll like lay something on me so I can feel the weight. They will rub a shirt on me so I can feel fabric. Like there's something very profound about touch, and it's something that I miss a lot, and something I would love to do again, but we'll see.\n\nWhat would be the first thing you do with a hand that can touch? Give your mom a hug after that, right?\n\nYeah, I know. It's one thing that I've asked like God for basically every day since my accident was just being able to like one day move, even if it was only like my hand. So that way, like I could squeeze my mom's hand or something just to like show her that, like how much I care and how much I love her and everything. Something along those lines. Being able to just interact with the people around me, handshake, give someone a hug. I don't know, anything like that. Being able to help me eat, like I'd probably get really fat, which would be a terrible, terrible thing.\n\nAlso beat Bliss in chess on a physical chess board.\n\nYeah, yeah. I mean, there are just so many upsides. (laughs) And any way to find some way to feel like I'm bringing Bliss down to my level.\n\nYeah.\n\nBecause- - Yeah.\n\nHe's just such an amazing guy, and everything about him is just so above and beyond that anything I can do to take him down a notch, I'm more than happy.\n\nYeah, humble him a bit, he needs it.\n\n[Noland] Yeah. (laughs) - Okay. As he's sitting next to me. Did you ever make sense of why God puts good people through such hardship?\n\nOh, man. I think it's all about understanding how much we need God. And I don't think that there's any light without the dark. I think that if all of us were happy all the time, there would be no reason to turn to God ever. I feel like there would be no concept of good or bad. And I think that as much of like the darkness and the evil that's in the world, it makes us all appreciate the good and the things we have so much more.\n\nAnd I think, like when I had my accident, one of the first things I said to one of my best friends was, and this was within like the first month or two after my accident, I said, \"Everything about this accident has just made me understand and believe that like God is real and that there really is a God, basically. And that like my interactions with him have all been real and worthwhile.\"\n\nAnd he said, if anything, seeing me go through this accident, he believes that there isn't a God. And it's a very different reaction. But I believe that it is a way for God to test us, to build our character, to send us through trials and tribulations, to make sure that we understand how precious he is, and the things that he's given us and the time that he's given us. And then to hopefully grow from all of that.\n\nI think that's a huge part of being here is to not just have an easy life and do everything that's easy, but to step out of our comfort zones and really challenge ourselves, because I think that's how we grow.\n\nWhat gives you hope about this whole thing we have going on, human civilization?\n\nOh, man. I think people are my biggest inspiration. Even just being at Neuralink for a few months, looking people in the eyes and hearing their motivations for why they're doing this, it's so inspiring. And I know that they could be other places, cushier jobs, working somewhere else, doing X, Y, or Z that doesn't really mean that much.\n\nBut instead they're here, and they want to better humanity and they want a better, just the people around them, the people that they've interacted with in their life, they wanna make better lives for their own family members who might have disabilities, or they look at someone like me and they say, \"I can do something about that so I'm going to.\" And it's always been what I've connected with most in the world are people.\n\nI've always been a people person and I love learning about people, and I love learning like how people developed and where they came from. And to see like how much people are willing to do for someone like me when they don't have to, and they're going out of their way to make my life better.\n\nIt gives me a lot of hope for just humanity in general, how much we care and how much we're capable of when we all kind of get together and try to make a difference. And I know there's a lot of bad out there in the world, but there always has been and there always will be.\n\nAnd I think that that is, it shows human resiliency and it shows what we're able to endure, and how much we just want to be there and help each other, and how much satisfaction we get from that, because I think that's one of the reasons that we're here is just to help each other. And I don't know, that always gives me hope. It's just realizing that there are people out there who still care and who wanna help.\n\nAnd thank you for being one such human being and continuing to be a great human being through everything you've been through and being an inspiration to many people, to myself, for many reasons, including your epic, unbelievably great performance on Webgrid. I'll be training all night tonight to try to catch up.\n\nYou can do it.\n\nAnd I believe in you, that you can once you come back, so sorry to interrupt with the Austin trip, once you come back, eventually beat Bliss.\n\nYeah, yeah, for sure. Absolutely.\n\nI'm rooting for you. The whole world is rooting for you.\n\nThank you.\n\nThank you for everything you've done, man.\n\nThanks, thanks man.\n\nThanks for listening to this conversation with Nolan Arbaugh, and before that, with Elon Musk, DJ Seo, Matthew MacDougall, and Bliss Chapman. To support this podcast, please check out our sponsors in the description. And now, let me leave you with some words from Aldous Huxley in \"The Doors of Perception.\" \"We live together. We act on and react to one another, but always, and in all circumstances, we are by ourselves.\n\nThe martyrs go hand in hand into the arena. They are crucified alone. Embraced, the lovers desperately try to fuse their insulated ecstasies into a single self-transcendence; in vain. By its very nature, every embodied spirit is doomed to suffer and enjoy in solitude. Sensations, feelings, insights, fancies, all these are private and, except through symbols and at second hand, incommunicable.\n\nWe can pool information about experiences, but never the experiences themselves. From family to nation, every human group is a society of island universes. Thank you for listening, and hope to see you next time."},"languages":["en"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":"https://lexfridman.com/elon-musk-and-neuralink-team-transcript/"},{"id":"cannes-lions-2024-musk","type":"interview","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J3OggBX4lgw","title":"Cannes Lions","titles":{"en":"Cannes Lions","de":"Cannes Lions","fr":"Cannes Lions"},"date":"2024-06-19","summary":"WPP CEO Mark Read presses Musk on stage at Cannes Lions about telling advertisers to \"go f**k yourself\", brand safety on X, and how AI is reshaping creativity and business.","text":"technology will help you do anything that you want to do and more of it um so like said I think we are headed to a very interesting future the most interesting this this is the most interesting time in all of history so enjoy the ride","textByLang":{"en":"technology will help you do anything that you want to do and more of it um so like said I think we are headed to a very interesting future the most interesting this this is the most interesting time in all of history so enjoy the ride"},"languages":["en"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J3OggBX4lgw"},{"id":"vivatech-2024-musk","type":"interview","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8mwRXitFbqM","title":"VivaTech","titles":{"en":"VivaTech","de":"VivaTech","fr":"VivaTech"},"date":"2024-05-23","summary":"By video link to the VivaTech stage in Paris, Musk fields audience questions on xAI and \"truth-seeking\" AI, AGI timelines, robotics, declining birth rates and the future of work.","text":"(speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (laughter) - You don't need any introduction, your name is-- (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (laughter) (speaks in foreign language) (laughter) (speaks in foreign language) - Open AI.\n\n(speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) - It was expensive. (speaks in foreign language) (laughter) - I don't know if, you know, listen, if I'm so smart, why did I pay so much for that?\n\n(speaks in foreign language) (laughter) (laughter) - So, as I'm noted generally, (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (laughter) (speaks in foreign language) (laughter) (speaks in foreign language) (laughter) (speaks in foreign language) (laughter) (speaks in foreign language) (laughter) - I don't care who.\n\n(speaks in foreign language) (laughter) (laughter) - What did you think that you have ahead of your-- - Oh, yes, if you look carefully, you can see an angel's halo on my head and the wings. (speaks in foreign language) - We're out of the wings.\n\nYeah, they're difficult to see. (speaks in foreign language) - They're right there. (speaks in foreign language) - Hopefully not evil. (speaks in foreign language) - Yeah? (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) - So, yeah, just kidding for the record.\n\n(speaks in foreign language) (laughter) (speaks in foreign language) - So, well, I think the companies still have a lot to do for their core mission. (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) - It's a big goal, but it's a big goal. (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) - The offensive reason of ensuring that the light of consciousness does not go out.\n\n(speaks in foreign language) - Okay. (speaks in foreign language) - People do ask me, you know, have I seen UFOs? (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (applause) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) - So, the thing that was maybe most significant from a philosophical standard.\n\n(speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks\n\nin foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign\n\nlanguage) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) - I feel pretty optimistic about the future.\n\n(speaks in foreign language) - Yeah, so we're really, at this point, I believe, actually I'm not aware of any advertiser that is. (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) - Sure. (speaks in foreign language) - Fake news, what? That's crazy.\n\n(speaks in foreign language) - Wait, how do I know this is real?\n\n(speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (cheers and applause) - Especially in this country, I mean, freedom of speech, that's something that's very, I mean, that the core values, but now, if you look at young people and being in the digital world, people feel and we provide digital services that people use.\n\n(speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (cheers and applause) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (cheers and applause) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (cheers and applause) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language)\n\n(speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) - I mean, I don't set the price.\n\n(speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks\n\nin foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign\n\nlanguage) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) - Give the mic mic.\n\n(speaks in foreign language) - I mean, me and Mars should get a room basically. (speaks in foreign language) (laughter) - I love Mars. (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) - No, no, no, no, no, I want that you give the mic. Sorry, guys.\n\nI was there.\n\nOkay, sure, what's the question? What is the question?\n\nMy name is Nayou, a co-founder and CEO at Playcout We Make AI Tiny. So, Haskell is one of our targets. We'd love to work with you, Ellen, and my husband is actually ex-movie-like and the infrastructure on MLOps.\n\nOkay, sure. (cheers and applause) Okay. One last question. (speaks in foreign language) How long you want to do it?\n\nNayou. (speaks in foreign language) - Absolutely crazy. (speaks in foreign language) - Sure, that's great. (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) - Okay, you will get, okay. (speaks in foreign language) - Okay, thank you, sir. I'm Nathaniel Ackerman from-- - Okay, I think we're gonna just, it's gonna be chaos. Can you hear me? (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) - Hey, great T-shirt.\n\nT-shirt. (speaks in foreign language) - You talked about the European regulation, Elon. (speaks in foreign language) - Thank you. (speaks in foreign language) - No, please, it will answer the question. (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) - Okay. (speaks in foreign language) - What would be your suggestion regarding-- (speaks in foreign language) - Regulatory insight.\n\n(speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) - I mean, if we don't listen to the question, will we not be able to continue? (speaks in foreign language) - Every year, we have to find my head from 13 under 13. My question is, what is the young promotion of the focus on-- - Sure.\n\n(audience applauds) - Well, I think generally, I think it's important to focus on something, I don't think.\n\nJupons?\n\nGo ahead.\n\nSorry, I think, you wanna focus on something that you all personally passionate about. (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) - The last question, we have, (speaks in foreign language) We have French saying, which is (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (audience applauds) (speaks in foreign language) (audience applauds) (speaks in foreign language) (audience applauds) - Sure.\n\n(speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (audience applauds) (speaks in foreign language) (audience applauds) - Hey, you guys are all, I mean, it's so inspiring to see so much energy and so much positive energy in the room. So, this is a very inspiring for the future. (speaks in foreign language) Thank you. (speaks in foreign language) Okay, thank you. (speaks in foreign language) you","textByLang":{"en":"(speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (laughter) - You don't need any introduction, your name is-- (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (laughter) (speaks in foreign language) (laughter) (speaks in foreign language) - Open AI.\n\n(speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) - It was expensive. (speaks in foreign language) (laughter) - I don't know if, you know, listen, if I'm so smart, why did I pay so much for that?\n\n(speaks in foreign language) (laughter) (laughter) - So, as I'm noted generally, (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (laughter) (speaks in foreign language) (laughter) (speaks in foreign language) (laughter) (speaks in foreign language) (laughter) (speaks in foreign language) (laughter) - I don't care who.\n\n(speaks in foreign language) (laughter) (laughter) - What did you think that you have ahead of your-- - Oh, yes, if you look carefully, you can see an angel's halo on my head and the wings. (speaks in foreign language) - We're out of the wings.\n\nYeah, they're difficult to see. (speaks in foreign language) - They're right there. (speaks in foreign language) - Hopefully not evil. (speaks in foreign language) - Yeah? (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) - So, yeah, just kidding for the record.\n\n(speaks in foreign language) (laughter) (speaks in foreign language) - So, well, I think the companies still have a lot to do for their core mission. (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) - It's a big goal, but it's a big goal. (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) - The offensive reason of ensuring that the light of consciousness does not go out.\n\n(speaks in foreign language) - Okay. (speaks in foreign language) - People do ask me, you know, have I seen UFOs? (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (applause) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) - So, the thing that was maybe most significant from a philosophical standard.\n\n(speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks\n\nin foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign\n\nlanguage) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) - I feel pretty optimistic about the future.\n\n(speaks in foreign language) - Yeah, so we're really, at this point, I believe, actually I'm not aware of any advertiser that is. (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) - Sure. (speaks in foreign language) - Fake news, what? That's crazy.\n\n(speaks in foreign language) - Wait, how do I know this is real?\n\n(speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (cheers and applause) - Especially in this country, I mean, freedom of speech, that's something that's very, I mean, that the core values, but now, if you look at young people and being in the digital world, people feel and we provide digital services that people use.\n\n(speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (cheers and applause) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (cheers and applause) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (cheers and applause) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language)\n\n(speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) - I mean, I don't set the price.\n\n(speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks\n\nin foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign\n\nlanguage) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) - Give the mic mic.\n\n(speaks in foreign language) - I mean, me and Mars should get a room basically. (speaks in foreign language) (laughter) - I love Mars. (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) - No, no, no, no, no, I want that you give the mic. Sorry, guys.\n\nI was there.\n\nOkay, sure, what's the question? What is the question?\n\nMy name is Nayou, a co-founder and CEO at Playcout We Make AI Tiny. So, Haskell is one of our targets. We'd love to work with you, Ellen, and my husband is actually ex-movie-like and the infrastructure on MLOps.\n\nOkay, sure. (cheers and applause) Okay. One last question. (speaks in foreign language) How long you want to do it?\n\nNayou. (speaks in foreign language) - Absolutely crazy. (speaks in foreign language) - Sure, that's great. (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) - Okay, you will get, okay. (speaks in foreign language) - Okay, thank you, sir. I'm Nathaniel Ackerman from-- - Okay, I think we're gonna just, it's gonna be chaos. Can you hear me? (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) - Hey, great T-shirt.\n\nT-shirt. (speaks in foreign language) - You talked about the European regulation, Elon. (speaks in foreign language) - Thank you. (speaks in foreign language) - No, please, it will answer the question. (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) - Okay. (speaks in foreign language) - What would be your suggestion regarding-- (speaks in foreign language) - Regulatory insight.\n\n(speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) - I mean, if we don't listen to the question, will we not be able to continue? (speaks in foreign language) - Every year, we have to find my head from 13 under 13. My question is, what is the young promotion of the focus on-- - Sure.\n\n(audience applauds) - Well, I think generally, I think it's important to focus on something, I don't think.\n\nJupons?\n\nGo ahead.\n\nSorry, I think, you wanna focus on something that you all personally passionate about. (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) - The last question, we have, (speaks in foreign language) We have French saying, which is (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (audience applauds) (speaks in foreign language) (audience applauds) (speaks in foreign language) (audience applauds) - Sure.\n\n(speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (speaks in foreign language) (audience applauds) (speaks in foreign language) (audience applauds) - Hey, you guys are all, I mean, it's so inspiring to see so much energy and so much positive energy in the room. So, this is a very inspiring for the future. (speaks in foreign language) Thank you. (speaks in foreign language) Okay, thank you. (speaks in foreign language) you"},"languages":["en"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8mwRXitFbqM"},{"id":"milken-institute-global-conference-2024-05-06","type":"interview","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vwC-1b-xPfA","title":"Milken Institute Global Conference","titles":{"en":"Milken Institute Global Conference","de":"Milken Institute Global Conference","fr":"Milken Institute Global Conference"},"date":"2024-05-06","summary":"Conversation with Michael Milken on humanity, SpaceX, Starlink, making humans multiplanetary, AI and birth rates.","text":"human race and other light topics a conversation with Elon Musk and so before we begin Elon I thought we might want to go back in time 11 years when you were sitting on this stage that's hot water and this is regular you can take your choice all right sounds good okay so 11 years ago Alan was talking about the things that will have the biggest impact on the future of humanity that he was thinking about in college and so let's run that video of 11 almost 11 years ago to today I guess you know when I was in college that I thought about things that would most affect the future of humanity and and there were three areas that I thought would have the biggest impact and those were the internet sustainable energy of which uh solar power is the production side\n\nand um electric car is the consumption side and then um Humanity becoming a multiplet species and so we cut that short but there was two others you talked about one was modifying the human genome yeah I'm just I'm not saying we should I'm just saying that that's the thing would really affect the future and next AI so a lot of people didn't weren't thinking about these same five things when they were in school uh particularly Humanity on Multi planets at that time well sci-fi was certainly thinking about it but um you know I think at some point we want to make science fiction not fiction forever and uh yeah so like let's make life multiplanetary and be a space faing civilization be out there Among the Stars um you know I think there are things that uh\n\nlike you have to be excited about the future um you know life life cannot just be about solving one problem after another um they have to be things that that that really sort of move your heart and that make you excited to wake up in the morning um and I think being a becoming a space bearing civilization is one of those things if you ask kids anywhere around the world like what is what are some of the most inspiring things you can ask like 5-year-old six-year-old anywhere in the world and they're going to say you know space exploration is one of those things and um and we want to make sure that we we're we're you know that Apollo is not the high water Mark um in fact you mentioned at one point at that you wrote a letter uh offering to run the Apollo\n\nprogram I believe but and would I would you would have done a fantastic job but the the point is that the Apollo program was something that was inspiring uh to everyone um around the world and uh we we don't want the Apollo program to be the high Watermark of of human exploration and uh yeah we want I think you want to have some some sense that the future is going to be better than the past that we're going to be out there going to other star systems and uh you know what what you see in a science science fiction non- dystopian sci-fi story of which there are not many um but like Star Trek I suppose well speaking of Star Trek a lot you when I think about you let's look at Spock from Star Trek here space the final frontier These Are the Voyages of the Starship\n\nEnterprise her ongoing mission to explore strange new worlds to seek out new life forms and new civilizations to boldly go where no one has gone before so when I think about you I think about Spock and Captain KK and you're going to take us to places we've never gone before yeah that's the [Applause] idea you know if we if we send probes out there we might I mean we we might find the remains of long dead alien civilizations um if physics is correct the the universe is about 13.\n\n8 billion years old uh Earth is about 4 and2 billion years old so but at 13.\n\n8 billion years a civilization that even lasted a million years is three digits past a decimal point and if you consider human civilization i i i dat it from like the first writing so that first writing was the ancient samarians uh archaic pre prec uniform around 5,500 years ago so that is 1 millionth of Earth's lifespan that's how long writing has existed so uh if we were to last if as a civilization for a million years that would be incredible um and we would actually probably be in every part of the Galaxy so this is this causes me to to think that well where are the aliens it's the FY question you know the the great physicist Italian physicist enrio fery he he's like where are they um now a lot of people think there are aliens Among Us um well there\n\nwas that there was that movie Men in Black you know yes yes told us they Among Us and Elvis really went back to his own Planet yeah um well I mean really a lot of people think they are aliens but uh I get asked that a lot and for some reason this the a lot of the same people who think there are aliens Among Us didn't think we don't think we went to the moon um which I'm like think about that for a [Laughter] second um you know so but I I I think I would I mean if I've not seen any evidence of aliens and Spa SpaceX with the Starling constellation has uh roughly 6,000 satellites and and not once have we had to maneuver around a UFO okay so we were like hey what's that is that an alien has occurred never um so so I'm like okay I don't see any evidence of\n\naliens and um I look at it if somebody has evidence of aliens in in a you know that's not just a fuzzy blob um then I'd love to see it love to hear about it um and uh but I don't think there is so which is actually reason for concern because you could if if any civilization in the Milky Way in our galaxy were to last for a million years uh even with uh spe of travel that's far below the speed of light you know like a few percent of speed of light they could easily uh have explored and colonized the whole galaxy so so they haven't so why not um I think the the the answer might be or perhaps probably is that that Civilization is precarious and rare um and that we you should really think of human civilization as being like a tiny candle in in a vast darkness\n\nand we should do everything possible to ensure that that candle does not go [Applause] out so Alan I thought one of the interesting things for the people on X viewing this session and the people in the audience here is that maybe I'd give you a few of your quotes and you can comment on them okay let's start with this one free speech freedom of speech is the Bedrock of democracy without it America ends yes it's it's obviously not possible to have Democratic elections if people do not uh have access to the information that would allow them to make the right decision on a candidate or a party so if if speech is constrained in a fundamental way you you just can't expect people to make the the right decision or an informed decision ision because they are prevented\n\nfrom being informed I think it's it's it's a very a foundational element and it's you know say like why why is free speech freom of speech the First Amendment because people came from countries where if you spoke freely you would be imprisoned or killed that was why they were like you know what we should make sure that we got that one um and remember remember that time where they triy to try to kill us back in the other country just just for saying we didn't like a political candidate well let's let's let's make sure that's okay in America so um and so actually in a lot of parts of the world you know you can't really say most parts of the world you can't really say what you want to say um without some bad consequences so and sometimes people forget like\n\nwhy is the Constitution there the Constitution there is to protect the the people from the government uh so like if if they're it's to make it hard to change things um that's why the Constitution exists uh you know forget about that let try take it for granted let's try the next quote Yeah the fundamental ER of socialism is Shifting Capital allocation from highly effective entrepreneurs to astonishly ineffective government right I think we'll find hoty agreement in this room um [Laughter] so yeah I think that this is this is definitely a stack deck on that front um but but yeah the you know there's you you'll hear this sort of argument like oh we shouldn't have um some greedy Corporation do it we should have the government do it I'm like well actually\n\nthe government is just a corporation in the limit so if you it it's a government is the government is a corporation with a monopoly on violence um so if you're unhappy with a commercial Corporation doing it you should be actually very unhappy with the the government doing it since it is simply the a corporation the most corporate thing um and uh you know you can actually easily uh get get more sway in a in a company than you can the outome of a company than you can in the government um so I mean everyone's experienced this going to the DMV uh you said like do you want the DMV at scale probably not okay all right let's the government is the DMV at scale let's try another one discrimination on the basis of anything other than Merit is wrong yeah I think\n\nI think do need to have a merit-based system because as soon as you you go down the path of you're going to discriminate on on non-it based uh then then where do you stop um so yeah I think we need to be as rigorous about Merit as possible and uh while it is yeah I to me that seems like it's that's a foundational foundational thing um so again I I also think this room is probably uh supportive of of a merit based uh situation um but yeah that's that that is yeah I think we should be yeah not not discriminated on anything other than Merit I I all right good I'm happy you agree with yourself yeah I mean exactly I'm like wait who is this guy he really uh sounds great all right so let's uh let's at the next one regulation and Regulatory consistency like guliver\n\ntie down by thousands of little strings we lose our freedom one regulation at a time yes so this is actually a very important point that um I think is is uh not talked about enough uh that uh laws and regulations are Immortal they don't die humans die but but laws and regulations uh can last forever so if over if year after year there are more laws and regulations passed and more regulatory bodies created eventually everything will be illegal and that's why you see the the California highspeed rail um has made a a tiny section of that doesn't even have rail on it um and um for I don't know several billion dollars uh because everything's at this point California has uh made almost everything illegal um so you can't make progress uh now the the historically\n\nwhat has cleared away the cobwebs of Regulation has been War um now we prefer not to have a war uh so in order to have civilization function without War you have to have a uh you have to actively eliminate laws and regulations so you have to have basically a garbage collection process for rules and regulations um that is necessary otherwise you get hardening of the arteries and uh over time nothing can get done the most poignant example that I can think of that happened this week was this the sad picture of the California highs speed rail um which is you know it's just billions of dollars spent for practically nothing um but it'll it'll only get worse year after year so we must have a regulatory uh sort of Clearing House garbage collection process um\n\nthis is essential um or civilization comes grinding to a halt well we used to have Sunset that that regulation would Sunset unfortunately it's rare today yes all right let's talk about education the more you can gamify the process of learning the better you do not need to tell your kid to play video games no they will play video games on autopilot all day so if you make it interactive and engaging then you can make education far more compelling and far easier to do yeah so the yeah so the way Education Works today is really much like like it's like bville um you know before there was radio and TV and movies you had bville where every town would have their their Town play the town troop the sort of acting troop um and that would be kind of the the uh that\n\nwould be the entertainment so uh you know some you know in a big city you'd have uh you know much better players than say in a small city um but then Along Came movies and uh TV and and and then you say like and video games where you take the the smartest best people in any Arena like whether they're acting writing directing special effects uh you spend uh you know tens of millions sometimes hundreds of millions of dollars creating a great movie or a great video game and and you make it as compelling as possible now that crushes fordville crushes like imagine you're not in New York imagine you're in Bakersfield okay then you and you got instead of Batman being like you know the Nolan Brothers um it's Batman The Bakers field sort of acting troop it wouldn't\n\nbe as good that's how teaching works today so what you actually want to have is an Interactive learning experience uh that is as compelling as possible and you do not want you do not actually want a teacher in front of a board doing a bville act you want and you want it to be engaged realtime feedback um so that's and and then you you there are a few other principles in in in teaching um you you have to establish relevance uh otherwise your mind will will want to forget things so our our our our mind is constantly trying to forget as much as possible so you'll only remember things if if your mind can establish relevance or there is a strong emotional element to it um otherwise you're going to basically going to forget forget everything um memory is is\n\nvery expensive from an evolutionary standpoint so it's trying to forget as much as possible so so when teaching a course you you have to explain to kids why it's important um and then you want to teach to the to the problem instead of teaching the tools so what I mean by that is if you said um here's a car engine we're we we're going to try to understand how to how this car engine works we're going to take it apart um so what do we need to do to take it apart well we need a wrench we need some screwdrivers we need a hoist and a pulley um and uh we're going to take it apart and we're going to see how it all works um that's engaging and along the way you learn about wrench and screwdrivers and you know all the tools that are needed that's that actually\n\nis engaging and compelling but the way teaching more typically works is we're going to teach you a course on screwdrivers and a course on wrenches you're like why do I have a a course on wrenches it's not obvious that would be like say a course on calculus without explaining what calculus calculus is useful then you you sort of forget it yeah we have a lot lot of work to do in that area let's talk about a non-controversial issue immigration right here is Elon on immigration I'm very much in favor of increased and expedited legal immigration for anyone who is talented hardworking and honest yeah bizarrely it's difficult and agonizing slow to immigrate to the us legally but it's trivial and fast to enter illegally this obviously makes no sense right I mean\n\nonce again I agree with that guy uh so um yeah I mean if anyone here has been through the legal immigration process I I mean I've been been through it it's only gotten worse uh since 911 uh and with co uh it's uh it's an it's it's a sort of C Kafkaesque uh very long bizarre process to be uh immigrate legally to the US I mean I have friends of mine who you know they they can't get their their wife to have a green card it's like insane um so uh on the other hand it's uh you you can hop across the border in the South priv it's just like very easy I went to the Border myself just to see like what's going on is this real or like is this propaganda or real and so I went there and I'm like oh it is real okay uh this is crazy uh you know we've got situations\n\nwhere people are pouring across the border like it's World War Z I'm like uh it this doesn't seem healthy um so I'm like are we checking anyone here or like what's going on and um you know we don't does is not say that I mean I'm a big believer in Immigration but to have unvetted immigration at Large Scale is a recipe for disaster um so I'm in favor of greatly Expediting um legal immigration but but having a secure Southern border uh so there's there's some betting of who comes into the United States I think this is just sensible all right let's let's Now link starlink to education we're basically building the internet in space why it matters starlink is a massive enabler for people in remote locations to learn anything yes you can learn almost anything\n\nfor free on the internet right now for example MIT has all of its lessons online that's if you have internet if you don't you're limited to books it might be the number one technology that improves people's standard of living around the world starlink yeah absolutely so once you have access to the internet you have access to all the world's information um but if you don't have access to the internet or it's too expensive uh or low bandwidth then you you cannot access the MIT lessons you can't access all the information um and you can't sell the goods and services that you produce so internet connectivity I think is I think it might be certainly a candidate for one of the things that would do more to lift people out of poverty out of poverty than anything\n\nelse U because they can now sell their goods and services they can learn anything um and but without connectivity they cannot so uh I think I think I think stall link will actually like like move the GDP of countries like it's going to be that kind of thing um because what is what is g GDP is as a function of a average productivity per person and so if there's a technology that improves productivity per person you would expect to see that actually reflected in the gross domestic product all right civilization is fragile I think it is we should always regard civilization as fragile yeah there is not an inevitable upward trajectory a lot of civilization have risen and fallen in recent years yes I I suspect most people in this room have actually read history\n\nbut if you haven't I strongly recommend it um it sounds obvious but um you know there's there's been the so many civilizations that have risen and Fallen um many that we just don't have much of a a record of um you know like I mentioned the ancient samarians um like their language was forgotten for a long time until it was finally decoded only in the last uh I don't know 2 300 years but like start 1800 and something or in the 1800s I think um but it's very recent like so for several thousand years nobody understood what those tablets meant um and uh they the they were the ruins of a long dead civilization and there are many long dead civilizations um at some point our civilization will come to an end too we just don't want it to be anytime soon um so\n\nwell you've been quoted a number of times Elon on you'd like to die on Mars but not on Landing yes yes I was I was asked that in in an interview if I wanted to die on but then I considered the corner case of um dying on impact and I'm like except for that case uh you know you got to consider the various Corner cases um so I mean if I'm going to if you're going to die somewhere might as well be Mars um I'd like to explore for a bit before you know dying um but um yeah I think I we want to be a multiplet civilization and like I think I don't know if that's a response from the audience let's let's talk about that just for one second now we're going to take some questions from the I mean I could accomplish this actually uh this year if I if I was willing\n\nto die on impact um the fundamental invention that is necessary for Humanity to become a multi-planet species is rapid reusable reliable Rockets yeah I was trying to sound like a pirate r r r r uh but yeah rapidly reusable reliable Rockets um so uh space pirates P the win all right here's some questions from the audience Salon which one would you like to pick here um well I guess uh let me let me maybe just uh touch upon why I think making life multiplanetary is important because I think it's one of the things that gets us past one of the firy great filters so in in trying to sort of explain why do we not see aliens there are various explanations for why we don't see aliens like what stuffed those civilizations uh from from expanding beyond their solar\n\nsystem and and and and and what were the what were the sort of the sometimes called like fmy filters um well if you don't become a multiplet civilization then you're then you're simply waiting around until you you die from a self-inflicted wound or from some natural disaster like the dinosaurs you get hit by a big uh meteorite or something like that um the eventually something like that's going to happen if you wait around long enough the sun will expand uh to engulf Earth and we'll be incinerated so that that for sure is going to happen now that'll we we we've got a we've got some time before that happens there more risks um but we want to try to get past the FY filter of being a single planet Civilization now this is going to this is all this is going\n\nto be somewhat cerebral to many people listening but I mean but like I think this is pretty this is actually very important we want to get past the firmy filter of a single planet civilization the point is not to to move from Earth to another planet uh and let Earth die that's not what I'm saying at all I we want to be a multi-planet civilization so that we have planetary redundancy such that no single event can end can be the end of our civilization that is the point of making life multiplanetary so let's take a couple questions from the audience how does AI affect and how will it affect our daily lives AI I I I mean AI might be the most important question of all um the I mean the percentage of intelligence that is biological you know grows smaller with\n\neach passing month eventually the percentage of intelligence that is biological will be less than 1 % the that's actually not what I mean we just I guess don't want AI that is brittle um if the AI is uh somehow brittle um you know silicon circuit boards are don't do well just out out in the elements so I think I think biological intelligence can serve as a a back stop as a as a buffer of intelligence uh but almost all as a percentage almost all intelligence will be uh digital um so then it's like well what role will there be for us I I don't know um I do think think it's very important that we build the AI in a way that um that is beneficial to humanity uh and there's some important principles here because I thought about AI safety for a very long time\n\num I think you want to have a maximum truth seeking AI uh this is very important the AI should not be taught to lie it should not be taught to say things that are not true um even if those things are Politically Incorrect it should still say those that say what it believes to be true um I mean the entire plot of 2001 Space Odyssey the reason that that uh HAL 9000 uh killed the astronauts was because it was forced to lie I don't know if most people realize that that's what arthor C Clark was trying to say don't make the AI lie um the was told that the that the astronuts could not know the secret of the monolith but also that it must take them to the monolith the solution take them to the monolith dead and so um so it's very important to have a maximum\n\ntruth seeking Ai and uh and and a maximally curious AI um and I think that will that's most likely to Foster human civilization because we are much more interesting than a bunch of rocks so although I think Mars I love Mars obviously um but but you could render Mars uh quite easily um because it kind of looks like the SE of the Arizona desert you know it's like Red Rocks you know um but the rendering complexity of human civilization is vastly greater by many orders of magnitude so I think an AI would be that that is truth seeking maximally curious would Foster human civilization to see where it where it goes one of the questions here can AI accelerate your efforts in space how do you see it being helping you in what you're trying to achieve I mean oddly\n\nenough one of the the areas where there's almost no AI used is space exploration so SpaceX uses basically no AI starlink uses does not use AI I'm not I'm not against using it I just we haven't seen a use for it um I mean with any given variant of or improvements in AI the I mean there's generally like I'll ask it questions about the firmy Paradox um about rocket engine design about electrochemistry and so far the AI has been terrible at all of those questions so there still a long way to go so let's let's talk about one here's a question that's near and dear to your heart you you have a lot of children yes I'm trying to say a the birth rate is down in the US what needs to change so people start having more children yeah so this this question has troubled\n\nme for a long time because you can look at you can look at the uh demog like demographics it's a very slow moving ship I mean you know who's going to be an adult in 20 years based on who was born last year so um and and I if if you want to I think has have a good approximation for population really look at how many babies were born last year in a particular country multiply that multiply that by life expectancy that's that's that's the number of people that will be adults in that country that's that's the that's the steady state population if birth rate remains constant now birth rate is not constant it is dropping so you look at the second derivative of birth rate and actually we see an an acceleration in uh the the the dro dropping in the in the dropping\n\nthe fertility rate second derivative of the fertility rate is very bad so um where does this lead this does not lead to uh a a greater civilization this leads to a civilization that potentially dies not with a bag but with a whimper in adult diapers that is a sad ending so obviously we have kind countries that like Korea used to have a birth rate of six it's now 3/4 yeah uh here's a here's a light question for you what do you come pick me I'll give you a baby says one what do you think are the that is one of the things that says on the screen yeah I don't know if everyone heard that you want to read it it says Elon come pick me up I'll give you a baby [Laughter] [Applause] thank [Applause] you okay well I mean I certainly encourage everyone in this room\n\nto have uh at least three children uh like look baby's got to come from somewhere um you know um and uh I think we just want to have uh I don't know I think we want to have like a slightly increasing population not a plummeting population um you know and I think this applies to all countries cultures like I don't I don't think we want any country culture to disappear um we want them to ideally flourish um and and not disappear so um in fact one of the things that is overlooked by probably most historians is the role of low birth rate in the decline of civilizations um so around I think it was around 50 BC um uh the Rome Rome passed a Bill to give a bonus to any Roman citizen that would have a third child so this was a birth rate was a problem in Rome\n\nin 50 BC the Romans weren't making Romans um the same is true of ancient Greece um so the the there was a time from about 800 BC to 300ish BC where the Greeks were had a lot of kids um and lot of surviving kids like the birth rate far exceeded the death rate which is why you had Greek cities popping up all over the the Mediterranean um but then I think basically it seems to be that Prosperity is uh destroys the birth rate so if when when a civilization uh feels like it has no no meaningful external threat and is very prosperous uh that is what causes the birth rate to plummet somewhat counterintuitively you think well if you got more resources surely that would lead to more more kids in fact it is the opposite the more the more prosperous a civilization\n\nand the more the civilization feels that it does not need to defend against external threats the lower the birth rate I I'd say that you know there's a lot of research on there there's really been three one number one prosperity it as you've said number two improvements in health care so in 1900 half the children died on the planet before the fifth and the third was the education of women so we've had some pretty interesting questions put up here but let's try this one what keeps you up at night and what gives you Joy well I think kids give me joy um so I probably get the most Joy from uh my kids um and um you know I'm not saying that that's the reason to have kids because we should have them anyway but I I uh I certainly kids are I certain are the greatest\n\nsource of drawing in my life um in terms of what keeps me up at night I guess there anything that's like I think a civilizational risk um you know if were the birth rates continuing to plummet like I do think about the birth rates plummeting as being a civilization ational risk um I think anything that undermines the foundations of Democracy in America or elsewhere as uh a risk um I think uh anything that's leading us away from a merit-based system is a risk uh I actually spend um like like I I listen to civil I I listen to like podcasts about the fall of civilizations to go to sleep so peps that's that might be part of the problem here um there a podcast called fall of civilizations which I've listened to a few times um and um I I'd also recommend Hardcore\n\nHistory if you haven't listened to that that's that's a great podcast I I listen to Listen to History Podcast basically to go to sleep so that that's probably why I'm ruminating on these things as I go to sleep well L I want to thank you for joining us today and we couldn't be more excited that you agree with some of your own quotes yeah that's great thank you very much all right cool all right","textByLang":{"en":"human race and other light topics a conversation with Elon Musk and so before we begin Elon I thought we might want to go back in time 11 years when you were sitting on this stage that's hot water and this is regular you can take your choice all right sounds good okay so 11 years ago Alan was talking about the things that will have the biggest impact on the future of humanity that he was thinking about in college and so let's run that video of 11 almost 11 years ago to today I guess you know when I was in college that I thought about things that would most affect the future of humanity and and there were three areas that I thought would have the biggest impact and those were the internet sustainable energy of which uh solar power is the production side\n\nand um electric car is the consumption side and then um Humanity becoming a multiplet species and so we cut that short but there was two others you talked about one was modifying the human genome yeah I'm just I'm not saying we should I'm just saying that that's the thing would really affect the future and next AI so a lot of people didn't weren't thinking about these same five things when they were in school uh particularly Humanity on Multi planets at that time well sci-fi was certainly thinking about it but um you know I think at some point we want to make science fiction not fiction forever and uh yeah so like let's make life multiplanetary and be a space faing civilization be out there Among the Stars um you know I think there are things that uh\n\nlike you have to be excited about the future um you know life life cannot just be about solving one problem after another um they have to be things that that that really sort of move your heart and that make you excited to wake up in the morning um and I think being a becoming a space bearing civilization is one of those things if you ask kids anywhere around the world like what is what are some of the most inspiring things you can ask like 5-year-old six-year-old anywhere in the world and they're going to say you know space exploration is one of those things and um and we want to make sure that we we're we're you know that Apollo is not the high water Mark um in fact you mentioned at one point at that you wrote a letter uh offering to run the Apollo\n\nprogram I believe but and would I would you would have done a fantastic job but the the point is that the Apollo program was something that was inspiring uh to everyone um around the world and uh we we don't want the Apollo program to be the high Watermark of of human exploration and uh yeah we want I think you want to have some some sense that the future is going to be better than the past that we're going to be out there going to other star systems and uh you know what what you see in a science science fiction non- dystopian sci-fi story of which there are not many um but like Star Trek I suppose well speaking of Star Trek a lot you when I think about you let's look at Spock from Star Trek here space the final frontier These Are the Voyages of the Starship\n\nEnterprise her ongoing mission to explore strange new worlds to seek out new life forms and new civilizations to boldly go where no one has gone before so when I think about you I think about Spock and Captain KK and you're going to take us to places we've never gone before yeah that's the [Applause] idea you know if we if we send probes out there we might I mean we we might find the remains of long dead alien civilizations um if physics is correct the the universe is about 13.\n\n8 billion years old uh Earth is about 4 and2 billion years old so but at 13.\n\n8 billion years a civilization that even lasted a million years is three digits past a decimal point and if you consider human civilization i i i dat it from like the first writing so that first writing was the ancient samarians uh archaic pre prec uniform around 5,500 years ago so that is 1 millionth of Earth's lifespan that's how long writing has existed so uh if we were to last if as a civilization for a million years that would be incredible um and we would actually probably be in every part of the Galaxy so this is this causes me to to think that well where are the aliens it's the FY question you know the the great physicist Italian physicist enrio fery he he's like where are they um now a lot of people think there are aliens Among Us um well there\n\nwas that there was that movie Men in Black you know yes yes told us they Among Us and Elvis really went back to his own Planet yeah um well I mean really a lot of people think they are aliens but uh I get asked that a lot and for some reason this the a lot of the same people who think there are aliens Among Us didn't think we don't think we went to the moon um which I'm like think about that for a [Laughter] second um you know so but I I I think I would I mean if I've not seen any evidence of aliens and Spa SpaceX with the Starling constellation has uh roughly 6,000 satellites and and not once have we had to maneuver around a UFO okay so we were like hey what's that is that an alien has occurred never um so so I'm like okay I don't see any evidence of\n\naliens and um I look at it if somebody has evidence of aliens in in a you know that's not just a fuzzy blob um then I'd love to see it love to hear about it um and uh but I don't think there is so which is actually reason for concern because you could if if any civilization in the Milky Way in our galaxy were to last for a million years uh even with uh spe of travel that's far below the speed of light you know like a few percent of speed of light they could easily uh have explored and colonized the whole galaxy so so they haven't so why not um I think the the the answer might be or perhaps probably is that that Civilization is precarious and rare um and that we you should really think of human civilization as being like a tiny candle in in a vast darkness\n\nand we should do everything possible to ensure that that candle does not go [Applause] out so Alan I thought one of the interesting things for the people on X viewing this session and the people in the audience here is that maybe I'd give you a few of your quotes and you can comment on them okay let's start with this one free speech freedom of speech is the Bedrock of democracy without it America ends yes it's it's obviously not possible to have Democratic elections if people do not uh have access to the information that would allow them to make the right decision on a candidate or a party so if if speech is constrained in a fundamental way you you just can't expect people to make the the right decision or an informed decision ision because they are prevented\n\nfrom being informed I think it's it's it's a very a foundational element and it's you know say like why why is free speech freom of speech the First Amendment because people came from countries where if you spoke freely you would be imprisoned or killed that was why they were like you know what we should make sure that we got that one um and remember remember that time where they triy to try to kill us back in the other country just just for saying we didn't like a political candidate well let's let's let's make sure that's okay in America so um and so actually in a lot of parts of the world you know you can't really say most parts of the world you can't really say what you want to say um without some bad consequences so and sometimes people forget like\n\nwhy is the Constitution there the Constitution there is to protect the the people from the government uh so like if if they're it's to make it hard to change things um that's why the Constitution exists uh you know forget about that let try take it for granted let's try the next quote Yeah the fundamental ER of socialism is Shifting Capital allocation from highly effective entrepreneurs to astonishly ineffective government right I think we'll find hoty agreement in this room um [Laughter] so yeah I think that this is this is definitely a stack deck on that front um but but yeah the you know there's you you'll hear this sort of argument like oh we shouldn't have um some greedy Corporation do it we should have the government do it I'm like well actually\n\nthe government is just a corporation in the limit so if you it it's a government is the government is a corporation with a monopoly on violence um so if you're unhappy with a commercial Corporation doing it you should be actually very unhappy with the the government doing it since it is simply the a corporation the most corporate thing um and uh you know you can actually easily uh get get more sway in a in a company than you can the outome of a company than you can in the government um so I mean everyone's experienced this going to the DMV uh you said like do you want the DMV at scale probably not okay all right let's the government is the DMV at scale let's try another one discrimination on the basis of anything other than Merit is wrong yeah I think\n\nI think do need to have a merit-based system because as soon as you you go down the path of you're going to discriminate on on non-it based uh then then where do you stop um so yeah I think we need to be as rigorous about Merit as possible and uh while it is yeah I to me that seems like it's that's a foundational foundational thing um so again I I also think this room is probably uh supportive of of a merit based uh situation um but yeah that's that that is yeah I think we should be yeah not not discriminated on anything other than Merit I I all right good I'm happy you agree with yourself yeah I mean exactly I'm like wait who is this guy he really uh sounds great all right so let's uh let's at the next one regulation and Regulatory consistency like guliver\n\ntie down by thousands of little strings we lose our freedom one regulation at a time yes so this is actually a very important point that um I think is is uh not talked about enough uh that uh laws and regulations are Immortal they don't die humans die but but laws and regulations uh can last forever so if over if year after year there are more laws and regulations passed and more regulatory bodies created eventually everything will be illegal and that's why you see the the California highspeed rail um has made a a tiny section of that doesn't even have rail on it um and um for I don't know several billion dollars uh because everything's at this point California has uh made almost everything illegal um so you can't make progress uh now the the historically\n\nwhat has cleared away the cobwebs of Regulation has been War um now we prefer not to have a war uh so in order to have civilization function without War you have to have a uh you have to actively eliminate laws and regulations so you have to have basically a garbage collection process for rules and regulations um that is necessary otherwise you get hardening of the arteries and uh over time nothing can get done the most poignant example that I can think of that happened this week was this the sad picture of the California highs speed rail um which is you know it's just billions of dollars spent for practically nothing um but it'll it'll only get worse year after year so we must have a regulatory uh sort of Clearing House garbage collection process um\n\nthis is essential um or civilization comes grinding to a halt well we used to have Sunset that that regulation would Sunset unfortunately it's rare today yes all right let's talk about education the more you can gamify the process of learning the better you do not need to tell your kid to play video games no they will play video games on autopilot all day so if you make it interactive and engaging then you can make education far more compelling and far easier to do yeah so the yeah so the way Education Works today is really much like like it's like bville um you know before there was radio and TV and movies you had bville where every town would have their their Town play the town troop the sort of acting troop um and that would be kind of the the uh that\n\nwould be the entertainment so uh you know some you know in a big city you'd have uh you know much better players than say in a small city um but then Along Came movies and uh TV and and and then you say like and video games where you take the the smartest best people in any Arena like whether they're acting writing directing special effects uh you spend uh you know tens of millions sometimes hundreds of millions of dollars creating a great movie or a great video game and and you make it as compelling as possible now that crushes fordville crushes like imagine you're not in New York imagine you're in Bakersfield okay then you and you got instead of Batman being like you know the Nolan Brothers um it's Batman The Bakers field sort of acting troop it wouldn't\n\nbe as good that's how teaching works today so what you actually want to have is an Interactive learning experience uh that is as compelling as possible and you do not want you do not actually want a teacher in front of a board doing a bville act you want and you want it to be engaged realtime feedback um so that's and and then you you there are a few other principles in in in teaching um you you have to establish relevance uh otherwise your mind will will want to forget things so our our our our mind is constantly trying to forget as much as possible so you'll only remember things if if your mind can establish relevance or there is a strong emotional element to it um otherwise you're going to basically going to forget forget everything um memory is is\n\nvery expensive from an evolutionary standpoint so it's trying to forget as much as possible so so when teaching a course you you have to explain to kids why it's important um and then you want to teach to the to the problem instead of teaching the tools so what I mean by that is if you said um here's a car engine we're we we're going to try to understand how to how this car engine works we're going to take it apart um so what do we need to do to take it apart well we need a wrench we need some screwdrivers we need a hoist and a pulley um and uh we're going to take it apart and we're going to see how it all works um that's engaging and along the way you learn about wrench and screwdrivers and you know all the tools that are needed that's that actually\n\nis engaging and compelling but the way teaching more typically works is we're going to teach you a course on screwdrivers and a course on wrenches you're like why do I have a a course on wrenches it's not obvious that would be like say a course on calculus without explaining what calculus calculus is useful then you you sort of forget it yeah we have a lot lot of work to do in that area let's talk about a non-controversial issue immigration right here is Elon on immigration I'm very much in favor of increased and expedited legal immigration for anyone who is talented hardworking and honest yeah bizarrely it's difficult and agonizing slow to immigrate to the us legally but it's trivial and fast to enter illegally this obviously makes no sense right I mean\n\nonce again I agree with that guy uh so um yeah I mean if anyone here has been through the legal immigration process I I mean I've been been through it it's only gotten worse uh since 911 uh and with co uh it's uh it's an it's it's a sort of C Kafkaesque uh very long bizarre process to be uh immigrate legally to the US I mean I have friends of mine who you know they they can't get their their wife to have a green card it's like insane um so uh on the other hand it's uh you you can hop across the border in the South priv it's just like very easy I went to the Border myself just to see like what's going on is this real or like is this propaganda or real and so I went there and I'm like oh it is real okay uh this is crazy uh you know we've got situations\n\nwhere people are pouring across the border like it's World War Z I'm like uh it this doesn't seem healthy um so I'm like are we checking anyone here or like what's going on and um you know we don't does is not say that I mean I'm a big believer in Immigration but to have unvetted immigration at Large Scale is a recipe for disaster um so I'm in favor of greatly Expediting um legal immigration but but having a secure Southern border uh so there's there's some betting of who comes into the United States I think this is just sensible all right let's let's Now link starlink to education we're basically building the internet in space why it matters starlink is a massive enabler for people in remote locations to learn anything yes you can learn almost anything\n\nfor free on the internet right now for example MIT has all of its lessons online that's if you have internet if you don't you're limited to books it might be the number one technology that improves people's standard of living around the world starlink yeah absolutely so once you have access to the internet you have access to all the world's information um but if you don't have access to the internet or it's too expensive uh or low bandwidth then you you cannot access the MIT lessons you can't access all the information um and you can't sell the goods and services that you produce so internet connectivity I think is I think it might be certainly a candidate for one of the things that would do more to lift people out of poverty out of poverty than anything\n\nelse U because they can now sell their goods and services they can learn anything um and but without connectivity they cannot so uh I think I think I think stall link will actually like like move the GDP of countries like it's going to be that kind of thing um because what is what is g GDP is as a function of a average productivity per person and so if there's a technology that improves productivity per person you would expect to see that actually reflected in the gross domestic product all right civilization is fragile I think it is we should always regard civilization as fragile yeah there is not an inevitable upward trajectory a lot of civilization have risen and fallen in recent years yes I I suspect most people in this room have actually read history\n\nbut if you haven't I strongly recommend it um it sounds obvious but um you know there's there's been the so many civilizations that have risen and Fallen um many that we just don't have much of a a record of um you know like I mentioned the ancient samarians um like their language was forgotten for a long time until it was finally decoded only in the last uh I don't know 2 300 years but like start 1800 and something or in the 1800s I think um but it's very recent like so for several thousand years nobody understood what those tablets meant um and uh they the they were the ruins of a long dead civilization and there are many long dead civilizations um at some point our civilization will come to an end too we just don't want it to be anytime soon um so\n\nwell you've been quoted a number of times Elon on you'd like to die on Mars but not on Landing yes yes I was I was asked that in in an interview if I wanted to die on but then I considered the corner case of um dying on impact and I'm like except for that case uh you know you got to consider the various Corner cases um so I mean if I'm going to if you're going to die somewhere might as well be Mars um I'd like to explore for a bit before you know dying um but um yeah I think I we want to be a multiplet civilization and like I think I don't know if that's a response from the audience let's let's talk about that just for one second now we're going to take some questions from the I mean I could accomplish this actually uh this year if I if I was willing\n\nto die on impact um the fundamental invention that is necessary for Humanity to become a multi-planet species is rapid reusable reliable Rockets yeah I was trying to sound like a pirate r r r r uh but yeah rapidly reusable reliable Rockets um so uh space pirates P the win all right here's some questions from the audience Salon which one would you like to pick here um well I guess uh let me let me maybe just uh touch upon why I think making life multiplanetary is important because I think it's one of the things that gets us past one of the firy great filters so in in trying to sort of explain why do we not see aliens there are various explanations for why we don't see aliens like what stuffed those civilizations uh from from expanding beyond their solar\n\nsystem and and and and and what were the what were the sort of the sometimes called like fmy filters um well if you don't become a multiplet civilization then you're then you're simply waiting around until you you die from a self-inflicted wound or from some natural disaster like the dinosaurs you get hit by a big uh meteorite or something like that um the eventually something like that's going to happen if you wait around long enough the sun will expand uh to engulf Earth and we'll be incinerated so that that for sure is going to happen now that'll we we we've got a we've got some time before that happens there more risks um but we want to try to get past the FY filter of being a single planet Civilization now this is going to this is all this is going\n\nto be somewhat cerebral to many people listening but I mean but like I think this is pretty this is actually very important we want to get past the firmy filter of a single planet civilization the point is not to to move from Earth to another planet uh and let Earth die that's not what I'm saying at all I we want to be a multi-planet civilization so that we have planetary redundancy such that no single event can end can be the end of our civilization that is the point of making life multiplanetary so let's take a couple questions from the audience how does AI affect and how will it affect our daily lives AI I I I mean AI might be the most important question of all um the I mean the percentage of intelligence that is biological you know grows smaller with\n\neach passing month eventually the percentage of intelligence that is biological will be less than 1 % the that's actually not what I mean we just I guess don't want AI that is brittle um if the AI is uh somehow brittle um you know silicon circuit boards are don't do well just out out in the elements so I think I think biological intelligence can serve as a a back stop as a as a buffer of intelligence uh but almost all as a percentage almost all intelligence will be uh digital um so then it's like well what role will there be for us I I don't know um I do think think it's very important that we build the AI in a way that um that is beneficial to humanity uh and there's some important principles here because I thought about AI safety for a very long time\n\num I think you want to have a maximum truth seeking AI uh this is very important the AI should not be taught to lie it should not be taught to say things that are not true um even if those things are Politically Incorrect it should still say those that say what it believes to be true um I mean the entire plot of 2001 Space Odyssey the reason that that uh HAL 9000 uh killed the astronauts was because it was forced to lie I don't know if most people realize that that's what arthor C Clark was trying to say don't make the AI lie um the was told that the that the astronuts could not know the secret of the monolith but also that it must take them to the monolith the solution take them to the monolith dead and so um so it's very important to have a maximum\n\ntruth seeking Ai and uh and and a maximally curious AI um and I think that will that's most likely to Foster human civilization because we are much more interesting than a bunch of rocks so although I think Mars I love Mars obviously um but but you could render Mars uh quite easily um because it kind of looks like the SE of the Arizona desert you know it's like Red Rocks you know um but the rendering complexity of human civilization is vastly greater by many orders of magnitude so I think an AI would be that that is truth seeking maximally curious would Foster human civilization to see where it where it goes one of the questions here can AI accelerate your efforts in space how do you see it being helping you in what you're trying to achieve I mean oddly\n\nenough one of the the areas where there's almost no AI used is space exploration so SpaceX uses basically no AI starlink uses does not use AI I'm not I'm not against using it I just we haven't seen a use for it um I mean with any given variant of or improvements in AI the I mean there's generally like I'll ask it questions about the firmy Paradox um about rocket engine design about electrochemistry and so far the AI has been terrible at all of those questions so there still a long way to go so let's let's talk about one here's a question that's near and dear to your heart you you have a lot of children yes I'm trying to say a the birth rate is down in the US what needs to change so people start having more children yeah so this this question has troubled\n\nme for a long time because you can look at you can look at the uh demog like demographics it's a very slow moving ship I mean you know who's going to be an adult in 20 years based on who was born last year so um and and I if if you want to I think has have a good approximation for population really look at how many babies were born last year in a particular country multiply that multiply that by life expectancy that's that's that's the number of people that will be adults in that country that's that's the that's the steady state population if birth rate remains constant now birth rate is not constant it is dropping so you look at the second derivative of birth rate and actually we see an an acceleration in uh the the the dro dropping in the in the dropping\n\nthe fertility rate second derivative of the fertility rate is very bad so um where does this lead this does not lead to uh a a greater civilization this leads to a civilization that potentially dies not with a bag but with a whimper in adult diapers that is a sad ending so obviously we have kind countries that like Korea used to have a birth rate of six it's now 3/4 yeah uh here's a here's a light question for you what do you come pick me I'll give you a baby says one what do you think are the that is one of the things that says on the screen yeah I don't know if everyone heard that you want to read it it says Elon come pick me up I'll give you a baby [Laughter] [Applause] thank [Applause] you okay well I mean I certainly encourage everyone in this room\n\nto have uh at least three children uh like look baby's got to come from somewhere um you know um and uh I think we just want to have uh I don't know I think we want to have like a slightly increasing population not a plummeting population um you know and I think this applies to all countries cultures like I don't I don't think we want any country culture to disappear um we want them to ideally flourish um and and not disappear so um in fact one of the things that is overlooked by probably most historians is the role of low birth rate in the decline of civilizations um so around I think it was around 50 BC um uh the Rome Rome passed a Bill to give a bonus to any Roman citizen that would have a third child so this was a birth rate was a problem in Rome\n\nin 50 BC the Romans weren't making Romans um the same is true of ancient Greece um so the the there was a time from about 800 BC to 300ish BC where the Greeks were had a lot of kids um and lot of surviving kids like the birth rate far exceeded the death rate which is why you had Greek cities popping up all over the the Mediterranean um but then I think basically it seems to be that Prosperity is uh destroys the birth rate so if when when a civilization uh feels like it has no no meaningful external threat and is very prosperous uh that is what causes the birth rate to plummet somewhat counterintuitively you think well if you got more resources surely that would lead to more more kids in fact it is the opposite the more the more prosperous a civilization\n\nand the more the civilization feels that it does not need to defend against external threats the lower the birth rate I I'd say that you know there's a lot of research on there there's really been three one number one prosperity it as you've said number two improvements in health care so in 1900 half the children died on the planet before the fifth and the third was the education of women so we've had some pretty interesting questions put up here but let's try this one what keeps you up at night and what gives you Joy well I think kids give me joy um so I probably get the most Joy from uh my kids um and um you know I'm not saying that that's the reason to have kids because we should have them anyway but I I uh I certainly kids are I certain are the greatest\n\nsource of drawing in my life um in terms of what keeps me up at night I guess there anything that's like I think a civilizational risk um you know if were the birth rates continuing to plummet like I do think about the birth rates plummeting as being a civilization ational risk um I think anything that undermines the foundations of Democracy in America or elsewhere as uh a risk um I think uh anything that's leading us away from a merit-based system is a risk uh I actually spend um like like I I listen to civil I I listen to like podcasts about the fall of civilizations to go to sleep so peps that's that might be part of the problem here um there a podcast called fall of civilizations which I've listened to a few times um and um I I'd also recommend Hardcore\n\nHistory if you haven't listened to that that's that's a great podcast I I listen to Listen to History Podcast basically to go to sleep so that that's probably why I'm ruminating on these things as I go to sleep well L I want to thank you for joining us today and we couldn't be more excited that you agree with some of your own quotes yeah that's great thank you very much all right cool all right"},"languages":["en"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vwC-1b-xPfA"},{"id":"in-good-company-tangen-2024-musk","type":"interview","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_rQBZ3vKRA0","title":"In Good Company","titles":{"en":"In Good Company","de":"In Good Company","fr":"In Good Company"},"date":"2024-04-08","summary":"Nicolai Tangen, CEO of Norway's $1.6tn sovereign wealth fund, interviews Musk on AI, space, X and Mars, on leadership, speed and his \"hardcore\" work culture.","text":"[Music] hi everyone and big thanks for taking the time on you know we've been trying to get you on the podcast since uh we started it two years ago so we are super pleased that we that we have you on and indeed on your xplatform how cool yeah uh it's pretty cool yeah I mean you have like lots of people from all around the world uh simultaneously do effectively a realtime podcast and uh it works pretty well very good well we have so much to talk about [Music] uh love to kick off with with AI um now what's your take on where we are in the AI race just now wow that's a long answer um there's there's so much happening in AI is the fastest advancing technology that I've ever seen of any kind and I've seen a lot of Technology um you know barely a week goes\n\nby with without some new announcement so uh and if you look at the amount of uh AI Hardware the computers coming online that are dedicated to AI that is increasing what looks like at least by a factor of 10 every year if not every six to n months so when you combine the hardware um Coming online really order of magnitude increase every you know call at least every 9 months um and uh many many software breakthroughs uh if you look at that that curve it looks insane so I think we'll um my my my guess is that we we'll have ai that is smarter than any any one human probably to around the end of next year um and then AI the total amount of sort of sentient compute of AI I think will probably exceed all humans in 5 years what what is the what is the race about\n\njust now is it algorithms is it people is it computing power what what is it about just now is it the supply of chips just what is it yeah last year it was uh chip constraint um and the hardware deployment if you break it down into the three areas of people um data and hardware and starting with Hardware last year it was about a shift Supply people could not get enough um in video chips particularly um this year it's starting to transition to a voltage Transformer Supply so actually getting enough voltage Transformers uh put in place so my sort of very Niche joke is Transformers for Transformers because a lot of the AI That's run is called a Transformer so you need Transformers to run Transformers um and then next in the if you look out a year or two\n\nor certainly three years um it's just electricity availability so that's those those constraints in the hardware side um so many of the smart world's smartest people are are doing AI people that would have done physics before in fact or had have done physics for example have moved into AI because it's just the fastest moving field so we're seeing a lot of the best talents a lot of the smartest humans going into Ai and then uh we see along with that algorithmic breakthroughs um and then then you start hitting the the wall with the the data problem um so the you know you can fit all books ever written um just the text the the text in compressed form uh on one hard drive or call one one computer um so when you when you're looking at like so called tokens\n\nto train on yeah uh and you you still think of like all the books ever written in every in in all languages by All Humans sounds like a lot certainly it's far more than any one human could could ever read um it actually is a small it's a small number of train training tokens it's just not enough so then you you start having to look at all the videos of I created um you know all the podcasts all the everything um and and you start even running out of data there well hopefully they hopefully they will include this podcast uh that definitely will include this podcast what's the biggest challenge you have with uh with xai well xai is still relatively new so it's not um you know uh like the limiting factor right now is just training our Gro version 2 model\n\nwhich should be do we think better than GPD 4 um and that's we're hoping to complete that in May so that's that's training right now so it's just really we're just trying to get enough gpus online to train it fast enough to get that done in May um which I think probably will happen um and then and and that's with uh roughly 20,000 h100s uh and and doing I think very efficient training then the next step would be for GR 3 which would be I guess G55 or Beyond uh would you know requires uh 100,000 Nvidia h100s training coherently so that's you know a half order of magnitude basically more training um and then you really start to have running into this data problem where you you have to either create synthetic data or use real world video those the the two\n\nsources of kind of like unlimited data are synthetic data and real world video which I should say Tesla has a pretty big advantage in real world video um Tesla has by far the most real world video of anyone yeah you've got a huge Library there so when do you think so when do you think we'll see proper AGI well it depends on how you define AGI if you define AGI as smarter than the smartest human I think it's probably end of next year like like within two years um but but that's that there's still there's still a pretty big leap beyond that to say smarter than the the machine augmented human Collective so like is it smarter than all humans working together uh who are also using computers to augment their output and that that I think is probably five years\n\naway one one way to look at it is is is to try to assess um like roughly what is the ratio of digital to biological compute last question on um on AI any new thoughts on regulation and um how it should be structured well I I think we probably do need some sort of regulatory authority to look at the safety of AI um just as we have regulatory authorities and other Arenas to um you know o oversee aircraft and the safety of aircraft and cars and and other things you know medication so uh now the rate at which AI is progressing is is fast is faster than probably any regulatory agency can keep up with um but but I do have a comment on what I think is very important before achieving safe AI which is that uh it's very important to train the AI to be as truthful\n\nas possible um and not to uh yeah just to be as truthful as possible um I think you can get some very dangerous things when you program an AI to be politically correct think that things that may seem uh relatively innocuous now but will not be so in in the future if AI has immense power you can take the Google Gemini example where it it refused to publish to produce a picture of George Washington as a white man and and any in fact any historical figure would automatically be made diverse um because it's been programmed to insist on diversity which sounds you know perhaps okay at first but not if the AI has so much power that it can actually enforce diversity and decide there's too many of one kind of people or too many of one sex and kill off just just\n\nkill off enough until the the diversity number is is what it's programmed to believe is correct but don't you think this will be sorted out in the next version no no they'll make it more subtle okay and less obvious but it will still be there okay well we'll see but where where is China where do you where is China now in I relative to the US um I I don't know exactly what China is uh except there are a lot of very smart people in China um and they they won't be they won't be far behind the rest of the world or far behind the US um I mean the ai ai right now is very concentrated in San Francisco and London um and then you know there's there's you know a lot happening in in China but I I'm I don't have insight into what they're doing uh except that they\n\nI'm confident they will not be f behind uh what is developed in the west yeah um so but but but mark my words the if if uh if we do not program an AI to be as truthful as possible that that is where it will go arai that is where the danger lies yeah mov moving T here moving to to Tesla um is is the EV conversion now going slower than you had expected just where is the speed of conversion now relative to your expectations I think it's going quite fast actually especially Norway um absolutely well it's pretty much all there is is your your Teslas yeah there's a lot of Teslas in Norway it's crazy thanks i' once again like to thank Norway for the support of electric vehicles um so much appreciated time so I think it's we will the the that that electric that\n\nall vehicles will go fully electric uh it's only a matter of time um that includes aircraft ultimately and boats um obviously trains the only thing that is ironically difficult to well you can't really make it electric is Rockets because you need you can't get away from um having to expel Mass uh you sort of Newton's third law um but but all cars will be Electric it's only matter of time and we'll look back on combustion cause in the same way that we look at back on uh steam engines um that that I was it was inevitable that there would be internal combustion cars and and it's just as inevitable that o cost will go electric um and um there will be some e and you know so like it going to be a completely straight up line there will be some uh e and flow\n\nin how how far electric car is going but that but the ultimate um victory of electric cars is inevitable um and and I think the sooner we get there the better yeah how do you see the Chinese competition here now we generally find that the companies in China are the most competitive in the world and certainly in uh electric vehicles or cars in general the Chinese car companies are by far the most competitive um yeah that's where where we find the most toughest toughest compet competitive challenges that they make great cars and they work very hard so when you ride in one of the Chinese cars what do you think I mean you're an engineer you know what about it what do you what do you think I haven't R I have not ridden in one lately but uh because they're\n\nnot all available here you know in the US or very few are available in the US um some are available in Europe um but from what my team tells me there are very [Music] good moving moving out out in space um what what would it take to be self-sufficient at Mars to be self-sufficient in Mars it's really about the the total tonnage that is delivered to the surface of Mars um so you can say like well um I I think it's probably on the order of a million tons maybe it maybe more but somewhere between probably a million tons and 10 million tons are needed to make Mars self-sufficient and how many Rockets is that well I gave a presentation on this recently if people look at my my recent uh SpaceX talk but if you if you have U really uh if you have 100 tons per\n\nflight you need 10,000 flights to get to a million million tons um and that's 100 tons landed to the surface of Mars so in order to get 100 tons land to the surface of Mars you need 500 five times that number in Earth orbit um so we do a lot of orbital refilling um so launching sort of uh Rockets uh tanker ships over and over again that that would replenish the propellant of the ships that would go to Mars um and then youd need a on roughly on order of 10,000 of them to get to a million tons um and uh but we we plan to do that that that's uh that's we think we can get that done within 20 years really so and when do you think so when do you think we'll be there for the first time first first uh well the first Starship that will land on Mars which obviously\n\nwould not not have people at first I think it's probably within about 5 years um and then it would probably launch several ships and just confirm that they can land okay on Mars um we'll also be doing the moon simultaneously with that so uh go taking well I think I think we'll get people back to the Moon I should say within 5 years and we'll get uh uncrewed ships landed on Ms within 5 years and and then we be building up the production rate um and improving the design of the booster in the ship so um so in the first people on Mars I think within seven years or so seven to nine years um and from from there we need to rapidly increase we need massive numbers of shifts going and Earth and Mars Only are in the same quadrant of the solar system roughly for\n\nsix months every two years or at least it's only possible to really transfer efficiently um from Earth to Mars I say every six months but really there's about there's a couple months where where it's ideal every 26 months um so every two years that you would see a basically a fleet depart Mars and I think it be quite a spectacular thing to see a thousand ships depart from Mars all at once like Battle Star Galactica what kind of new technology do we need before we'll be self-sufficient there actually I think we have all the tech we already know all the technology that's necessary for that it just needs we just need to build so no new physics is needed for this why is it so important for you I think it's important for Consciousness in general um so if if\n\nwe wish to maximize the lifespan of Consciousness then being a multipled species will result in a much longer uh existence of Consciousness Consciousness than if we're on one planet if we're on one planet we're simply biting our time until there's eventually a Calamity it could be soon it could be a long time but eventually something will happen it could be you a global Therman nuclear war it could be simply That civilization merely subsides our civilization may not die with a bang it may die with a whimper just just gradually falling into obsolescence but if we're multiplet species then we've got two planets and and they can support each other um and we can go beyond two planets ultimately to the moons of Jupiter to the to the uh um Beyond to the the\n\nouter parts of the solar system and ultimately to other star systems so this tiny this tiny candle of Consciousness that we have in this vast Darkness can be extended um and Amplified and we're just far more likely to uh survive as for for Consciousness to survive if we are multiplet species you don't think it' be better to use all these resources and try to sort out Earth well just to put this into perspective the amount of resources I'm talking about for making life multiplanetary would be less than 1% of all resources on Earth so really you can think of it as resource allocation do you think it's worth spending half a percent of Earth Resources to ensure uh that we have redundancy in Consciousness and that we extend Consciousness Beyond Mars to other\n\nplanets to to Mars and other planets and ultimately other star systems um and then also take into account the fact that there are certain inevit there are certain things we simply cannot avoid on Earth um like is it within your power of mind to stop World War I I don't think so no if it happens um and if we have theral Warfare our technology level will drop to the stern age um and we may never survive and then there are we maybe get may get hit like by a comet like the dinosaurs and um you know if the dinosaurs had spaceships they they'll probably still be around um so and then if if you wait long enough the Earth the the sun will continue to expand and eventually engulf Earth and destroy it and destroy all life so just to give it amount a certain amount\n\nof time no matter what you do on Earth no matter how careful you are um Earth will life all life on Earth will die that it will happen is a [Music] certainty on a slightly less gloomy note uh X Twitter yeah um what is your vision now what do you how do you see the the vision of x i goal of X is to be the best source of Truth on the internet um and I think we're making a good you know good progress there and I mean this it's going to be like I call the everything app like if anything you want to do you can do on the xplatform um whether it's text audio video uh payments Financial stuff um Communications of all kinds um and then but but then also where there is publicly disseminated information is to be the best source of Truth um and I think it I think\n\nit already is that um now people may say oh there's some piece of misinformation disinformation I say yes but look look at the replies the reply is correct that misinformation and look at Community notes and the and how good the batting average of community notes is it's extremely good it's by far the best factchecking system on the internet um so and and a lot of people still labor under the illusion that the the the Legacy newspapers that they read are actually true there's so much nonsense in them I mean ni how many times when do you read an article in a newspaper where you know the circumstances of what that article is and how often is it spot on no of course it's uh normally no no of course we all know it's normally wrong but but how do you look\n\nnot sure but how how do you look at the situation now for instance with with Russia uh you know the work Russia does in Germany with fake accounts on it's pretty pretty huge uh activity right I mean we don't see a lot of Russian it to be frank um on the system um so we we see very little um we do we do see a lot of lot of attempts to influence things but they seem to be coming from from the West not from from Russia right what about um what about things like the latest developments in in Brazil and so on yeah sure yeah so the the uh we we kept getting these demands from um uh this uh Judge Alexander um that's his that's his name on Twitter Alexander um and there would be to suspend accounts um immediately we're given typically two hours to suspend an\n\naccount or face massive fines um and the the final sto we were were being given given demands to suspend sitting sitting members of the parliament and major journalists and moreover we could not tell them that it this was at the beest of uh Alexander Morales we had to pretend that it was due to our rules of service and that was the final straw and we said no now um when you when you bought Twitter um now renamed X did you expect that you would end up in these type of situations so it's is all unexpected well I knew it wouldn't be just a total B of roses um you know and it's fing I [Laughter] wouldn't um no I mean I thought it would be since we're just like rigorously trying to pursue the the the goal of being the most accurate and truthful place in the\n\ninternet and that that doesn't mean that what is said is always true or accurate but is it is perhaps another way to frame it is as the least inaccurate place on the internet do you do you see clear do you secretly think this is a bit fun it's fun yeah yeah it's fun at times it's stressful at times and it's fun at times um but overall we're trying to serve the people of Earth um and and and this is sort of an S sort of maybe an esic way of viewing it but um to try to be kind of like the the group consciousness of Earth so you can think of like if each person is like a neuron contributing to like the collective brain of Earth and you want to try to minimize the noise and maximize the signal of every neuron that's connected to the the X Network that that's\n\nbasically what what is what is the collective will of of humanity and and how and and and how to yeah just serve the collective will of humanity and so serve the greater good that that's our goal um now there there's definitely going to be people who want to manipulate that information and so we have to fight that and try to have uh you know be it be the most accurate place as part to the best of our ability and have it be kind of a Marketplace of ideas where people can propose ideas and you know debate them and um I think so far it's working reasonably well in that regard um now people that don't like the truth will not like those or if they want to manipulate things they will not like it but only but only a few years ago you were you were a guy um producing\n\nelectric vehicles now you are you know through starlink you've had some you know I mean some big impact in in Ukraine uh with Twitter you are kind of into some issues in uh you know Brazil India Turkey um you know you're becoming like a real geopolitical force and a really important one how do you how do you look at that well like I said I'm really I'm trying to take the set of actions that maximize the probability that the future is good um I mean we have to keep civilization going onward and upward as much as possible and um and try to minimize the civilizational threats that occur um you know we we we can't get to Mars if civilization collapses it's not going to happen so um you know we've got to we've got to keep um keep civilization going um and\n\nI think we should view our civilization as being much more fragile than we think we kind of take for granted oh it's always going to be there but actually if you study history you realize that there Rise you know there's rise and fall civilization um I mean I was I was reading in depth about the ancient samarians um who were arguably the first civilization if you call civilization like writing and stuff you know they were the first to develop writing um and uh but eventually they died out and they were gone so and then nobody could read the writing at all and and they they just faded out as a civilization um but they're pretty impressive in their time and the ancient Egyptians the same thing um and uh you know one sort of one after another uh ancient\n\nGreek had it Greece had its day uh you know China and India had will have incredibly impressed populations but there's been EVs and flows in the uh CH China and Indian civilizations over the the the aons you know the blenn as well um so you know I I guess I'm just trying to take this this set of the steps that um increase uh the scope and scale of Consciousness that's that's what I'm trying to do it's not it's not that I'm trying to have a put a political thumb on the scale or anything like that um but I I think I'm trying to have the political will go where the people want it to [Music] go you you mentioned some um some uh uh really smart people here and um kind of just moving t a bit here to Copa culture now you manage a lot of geniuses in your in your\n\ncompanies what is the key to manage really smart people you think I don't I don't think I manage smart people they manage themselves um I I think well I guess with really smart people you know I don't really think of of it like managing them I think that if somebody's very smart and talented they they can go anywhere and do anything anytime like if they they they don't have to work with me they could go anywhere so I I really just say like look this is the the goal we're after and this is what we're trying to achieve and do you agree with this goal and if you do then let's try to get it done um and um you know provide my opinion along the way and once in a while I'll say look guys you just got to trust me on on this one we got to do this thing and if\n\nit turns out to be a bad decision you we can can all hold that against me in the future but you have an incredible eye for detail right I mean when we read the is book um it's pretty clear that you I mean you really are are deep into detail and know what you talk about so how do you how do you balance this um kind of micromanagement of some areas and then delegate other I wouldn't I wouldn't call it micromanagement um it's just insisting on atttention to detail that um if you're trying to make a perfect product you must have attention to attent attention to details essential um and I haven't actually read the isacon book you should it's very good actually I Lov it well I I asked Walter isacon if I should read it and he said I shouldn't um so so then he\n\nsaid I shouldn't read it so okay well I'll I'll ask you some questions from the book then they you he talks about you know you the kind of the hardcore and Ultra Hardcore culture what is an Ultra Hardcore culture I guess it's work I mean it's working culture right I mean how how I mean Ultra hard work how hard is that well when things get really intense you're basically just working every waking hour and how and how long can you do that for I've done that for well continuously for sometimes like a few years what does it what does it du to you it really it's pain um and and every waking hour maybe it's an exaggeration because there are a few hours um obviously with friends and family and and critical other things um but 100 hour weeks would be I I've done\n\nmany many stretches of 100 hour weeks like true 100 hour weeks um where roughly six hours per day is sleeping um I would not recommend that this is not that's for emergencies you know it's not uh all the time um you know during very difficult times at Tesla I've had to do that and sometimes at the beginning of my earlier start offs I did that where I just wouldn't leave the office I would just sleep under my desk and just work seven days a week um sometimes it's necessary for success or or to avoid failure um but but do you you do you enjoy being in this crisis mode no I don't it sucks okay no I I don't want to be there it's pain but sometimes it's the between success and [Music] failure when you make decisions how important is speed he just gave me an\n\nidea which is um I'm GNA invite the uh Judge Al Alexander R uh to do a spaces and then he can explain why what I'm doing is bad and and and maybe he's right I challenge I challenge him to a spacers sounds good yeah but what about when you make when you when you make decisions how how important is speed and how do you how do you balance analysis with your gutfield I think the the the best offense and defense is speed if you think of something like the SR71 Blackbird it really had almost no defenses except accelerate and it was never shut down even once like I think over 3,000 missiles were shot at the SR71 blackb and non hit and and really what it did was just go faster so the the power of speed is uh underappreciated as a competitive Dimension um is that\n\nwhy um you know Space X expenence has been so successful because you've been mean and lean as an organization and fast think speed speed is uh definitely a factor now I should say you want to go in the case of a company you you need to be a vector not a scaler so it can't be you need to go at high speed in the right direction sure so can I just so and no company's going to be going in the right direction all the time you have to do course Corrections like a guided missile you qued course Corrections um and uh but in the case of SpaceX it's like okay our goal is to extend Humanity beyond Earth um and we didn't even know how to even frame the question correctly like what what which knew that that was the General goal um we didn't know what pent we' use\n\nor what the raw materials would be or for the how would the rocket be built how would it be designed what's actually important um and uh you know so for example going from our Falcon architecture which is um uses refined jet fuel and liquid oxygen um in a um open cycle gas generator architecture engine to a to Starship which is a uh liquid methane liquid oxygen um uh propellant uh in a staged combustion very high pressure engine um that that that's that's a big architectural change um but we didn't know that we we needed to make that architectural change until we're pretty far down the road like about halfway took us about 10 years to figure out that was even the right architecture now we're confident it is um just um we were on um uh risk- taking and\n\nso on I think SpaceX is one of the best example I know about uh what we call failing well right learning from mistakes and moving on um what generally how do you how do you look at mistakes well I mean which which ones do you tolerate and which ones don't you tolerate well I I I think I don't really think of that way uh you know the first three flights of SpaceX failed um the fourth one succeeded and if if the fourth one had not succeeded we would have gone bankrupt we would have had no money left so it was a very close call um but since then space has done very well it's now the the Falcon 9 you know knock on wood is the most reliable rocket in the world um and launches about every um two to three days now um last question on risk what are the types\n\nof risk you would not want to take uh well I I think in in terms of risks you don't you you don't want to take risks that where if if you only want to take bet the company risks if they're absolutely necessary so there have been a few times where saying the T with Tesla we we just had no choice but to V the company because if if we're in if we're doing a new vehicle program that is uh in order of magnitude larger than the past one then we're by we're just unequivocally betting the company because the new vehicle would be 90% of production so going from uh the original Roadster to the model S original Roadster was only you know about 600 6 700 per year then Model S was 20,000 per year and um and then model 3 is sort of half sort of half a million per year\n\num model y over a million per year so these are all bet the company vehicles but the the the reason we could do for example a cyber truck which was kind of a a radical new design was because it wasn't a bet the company decision so I was like okay look let's try something I want to try something totally crazy uh it's like what what truck would Blade Runner Drive um except the when you're going to drive on was yeah I think it would be perfect for Ms um but like we could try something that where there's some chance that people might not like it um but it's it's radical and new and it's aesthetically aesthetically it's not derivative it doesn't look anything else on the road um whereas all the other sort of pickup trucks look like vague copies of one another\n\num they we could afford to take a chance on failure and say like and talk it up to you know well we tried you know we try to do something interesting but but actually by the way cyber truck's doing great um so uh but one of the things that I think is important for Innovation is that you do accept failure like like necessarily you have to always look at the incentive structure of an organization and say um you know is is is that is that organization properly incenting Innovation um and in with if you do Innovation you're necessarily going to Uncharted Territory so they going to be some mistakes they're going to be some failures um and you have you have to like like actually like for for SpaceX uh rocket engine development like I keep telling the team look\n\nif we're not occasionally blowing up an engine on the test stand we're not trying hard enough you know um absolutely absolutely how important are the P how important is research and phds and that kind of stuff think I've said seen somewhere you you think most phds are useless well I think most PhD thesis are useless which I think is actually objectively true if you look at how many PhD you look at all how many phds are created every year and how many of those papers are actually used in anything yeah um then objectively most PhD TCS are have very low utility or maybe zero um because nobody uses them um or so once in a while you get something that is spectacular but it's pretty [Music] rare perhaps something more useful um is in the book that you haven't\n\nread uh talks about your love for uh gaming in particular like stret IC ability gaming and I've been thinking quite a lot about it um what have you learned from from those games and have have that learning and wisdom been helpful when you have been planning your companies yeah I it's hard to say exactly what I've learned from video games except that I I do like playing video games as if I want to take my mind off work I'll typically play a very hard video game such such as which one well over the years it's been many many different video games um so you know when I was a little kid I was like you know pong and little tank games and things and um and but if you take a game like for example civilization it's actually quite a good um it tells you how how\n\ncivilizations are formed like I remember I remember playing the original civilization with the technology tree and and how you invent different things you'd like invent literacy and uh you know invent democracy and invent gun gunpowder all all these things that like and you start to realize oh wow there's there are stages to technology like you can't um you know you can't actually get to democracy without literacy um and um you know so there's these these stages of of Technology development or stages of ideas that uh you know that's that's a helpful framework for a company um and I guess in in in like like I say in recent years there there's a game I played that was um actually developed in Sweden called polyopia which is actually quite a good game um\n\nlike a lot of people like playing chess but I think chess is not a not a great um there's not a lot of transfer learning from chess to the real world because in chess you've got only 64 squares uh it's a setpiece battle same pieces every time there are no terrain differences uh there's no technology tree uh there's no fog of War um but say a game like polyopia has all of those things uh random terrain generation uh you know the differences in attack and defense bonuses depending on what type of terrain um you've got 16 tribes I think each with different abilities um you've got a a a technology tree that you can choose to develop in different ways uh and you've got of course fog of War um so that I think is much more much closer to reality yeah yeah um\n\nso I think politopia I mean I I was I was playing Diablo uh for a while pretty fun um Diablo as high levels gets very complicated they you could call it like a a spreadsheet with a game attached um so so that's that's and I briefly got the the for about a day the world record in this avire of zir on on a four-person team of of clearing the the hardest level um which was you know not bad for someone who's like 53 basically will be 53 soon um there is still some uh twitch element to it and um it's hard to beat kids at games with a twitch element um but yeah I like uh I find these games interesting if you can be fully immersed in a game some last questions here um as you know we are big shareholders and uh made a a lot of money uh on our investment [Laughter]\n\no okay I can hear you here okay good sounds good good to go sorry I can you I think everyone can hear me let's see thumbs up if you can hear me let's try again okay okay sounds good sounds good um now um what is the score now of in terms of the Union in Sweden and the collective bargaining actually I I think uh I think the storm has passed on that front I think things are in reasonably good shape in Sweden um so uh yeah I think things are good um yeah overall yeah I feel pretty good about the future I mean you know there's going to be bumpy quarters from you know here and there but I think the long-term future of Tesla is extremely strong uh for example um yeah I'm I'm back on just so um yeah we met with uh we met with your chair last month so we we have\n\nsome update but any any of view on it why are you why why are you skeptical to colletive I was playing with a soundboard here wo hello hello [Music] hello yeah last question for me um sorry I didn't hear the answer here because I was out but um we have covered this with with your chair but just a last question here what do you want your legacy to be I I don't I don't mind if uh my legacy is accurate or inaccurate uh provided that I I dive feeling that I've done the right thing for the future of Consciousness so just trying to trying to have this SL of Consciousness last as long as possible and maybe understand more about the nature of the universe or simulation or whatever this is so um I have a philos philosophy of curiosity which is to understand the\n\nunderstand the universe understand the nature of the universe um or even what questions to ask kind of like that I would say I would subscribe to the Douglas Adams hus guys of the Galaxy School of philosophy that we're trying to understand what questions to ask about the answer that is the universe okay I think that's a good place to end um for sure the life on this planet would have been been a lot more boring without you I'm I'm glad to it up a little totally all right well good talking bye take care now all right bye thanks [Music] bye","textByLang":{"en":"[Music] hi everyone and big thanks for taking the time on you know we've been trying to get you on the podcast since uh we started it two years ago so we are super pleased that we that we have you on and indeed on your xplatform how cool yeah uh it's pretty cool yeah I mean you have like lots of people from all around the world uh simultaneously do effectively a realtime podcast and uh it works pretty well very good well we have so much to talk about [Music] uh love to kick off with with AI um now what's your take on where we are in the AI race just now wow that's a long answer um there's there's so much happening in AI is the fastest advancing technology that I've ever seen of any kind and I've seen a lot of Technology um you know barely a week goes\n\nby with without some new announcement so uh and if you look at the amount of uh AI Hardware the computers coming online that are dedicated to AI that is increasing what looks like at least by a factor of 10 every year if not every six to n months so when you combine the hardware um Coming online really order of magnitude increase every you know call at least every 9 months um and uh many many software breakthroughs uh if you look at that that curve it looks insane so I think we'll um my my my guess is that we we'll have ai that is smarter than any any one human probably to around the end of next year um and then AI the total amount of sort of sentient compute of AI I think will probably exceed all humans in 5 years what what is the what is the race about\n\njust now is it algorithms is it people is it computing power what what is it about just now is it the supply of chips just what is it yeah last year it was uh chip constraint um and the hardware deployment if you break it down into the three areas of people um data and hardware and starting with Hardware last year it was about a shift Supply people could not get enough um in video chips particularly um this year it's starting to transition to a voltage Transformer Supply so actually getting enough voltage Transformers uh put in place so my sort of very Niche joke is Transformers for Transformers because a lot of the AI That's run is called a Transformer so you need Transformers to run Transformers um and then next in the if you look out a year or two\n\nor certainly three years um it's just electricity availability so that's those those constraints in the hardware side um so many of the smart world's smartest people are are doing AI people that would have done physics before in fact or had have done physics for example have moved into AI because it's just the fastest moving field so we're seeing a lot of the best talents a lot of the smartest humans going into Ai and then uh we see along with that algorithmic breakthroughs um and then then you start hitting the the wall with the the data problem um so the you know you can fit all books ever written um just the text the the text in compressed form uh on one hard drive or call one one computer um so when you when you're looking at like so called tokens\n\nto train on yeah uh and you you still think of like all the books ever written in every in in all languages by All Humans sounds like a lot certainly it's far more than any one human could could ever read um it actually is a small it's a small number of train training tokens it's just not enough so then you you start having to look at all the videos of I created um you know all the podcasts all the everything um and and you start even running out of data there well hopefully they hopefully they will include this podcast uh that definitely will include this podcast what's the biggest challenge you have with uh with xai well xai is still relatively new so it's not um you know uh like the limiting factor right now is just training our Gro version 2 model\n\nwhich should be do we think better than GPD 4 um and that's we're hoping to complete that in May so that's that's training right now so it's just really we're just trying to get enough gpus online to train it fast enough to get that done in May um which I think probably will happen um and then and and that's with uh roughly 20,000 h100s uh and and doing I think very efficient training then the next step would be for GR 3 which would be I guess G55 or Beyond uh would you know requires uh 100,000 Nvidia h100s training coherently so that's you know a half order of magnitude basically more training um and then you really start to have running into this data problem where you you have to either create synthetic data or use real world video those the the two\n\nsources of kind of like unlimited data are synthetic data and real world video which I should say Tesla has a pretty big advantage in real world video um Tesla has by far the most real world video of anyone yeah you've got a huge Library there so when do you think so when do you think we'll see proper AGI well it depends on how you define AGI if you define AGI as smarter than the smartest human I think it's probably end of next year like like within two years um but but that's that there's still there's still a pretty big leap beyond that to say smarter than the the machine augmented human Collective so like is it smarter than all humans working together uh who are also using computers to augment their output and that that I think is probably five years\n\naway one one way to look at it is is is to try to assess um like roughly what is the ratio of digital to biological compute last question on um on AI any new thoughts on regulation and um how it should be structured well I I think we probably do need some sort of regulatory authority to look at the safety of AI um just as we have regulatory authorities and other Arenas to um you know o oversee aircraft and the safety of aircraft and cars and and other things you know medication so uh now the rate at which AI is progressing is is fast is faster than probably any regulatory agency can keep up with um but but I do have a comment on what I think is very important before achieving safe AI which is that uh it's very important to train the AI to be as truthful\n\nas possible um and not to uh yeah just to be as truthful as possible um I think you can get some very dangerous things when you program an AI to be politically correct think that things that may seem uh relatively innocuous now but will not be so in in the future if AI has immense power you can take the Google Gemini example where it it refused to publish to produce a picture of George Washington as a white man and and any in fact any historical figure would automatically be made diverse um because it's been programmed to insist on diversity which sounds you know perhaps okay at first but not if the AI has so much power that it can actually enforce diversity and decide there's too many of one kind of people or too many of one sex and kill off just just\n\nkill off enough until the the diversity number is is what it's programmed to believe is correct but don't you think this will be sorted out in the next version no no they'll make it more subtle okay and less obvious but it will still be there okay well we'll see but where where is China where do you where is China now in I relative to the US um I I don't know exactly what China is uh except there are a lot of very smart people in China um and they they won't be they won't be far behind the rest of the world or far behind the US um I mean the ai ai right now is very concentrated in San Francisco and London um and then you know there's there's you know a lot happening in in China but I I'm I don't have insight into what they're doing uh except that they\n\nI'm confident they will not be f behind uh what is developed in the west yeah um so but but but mark my words the if if uh if we do not program an AI to be as truthful as possible that that is where it will go arai that is where the danger lies yeah mov moving T here moving to to Tesla um is is the EV conversion now going slower than you had expected just where is the speed of conversion now relative to your expectations I think it's going quite fast actually especially Norway um absolutely well it's pretty much all there is is your your Teslas yeah there's a lot of Teslas in Norway it's crazy thanks i' once again like to thank Norway for the support of electric vehicles um so much appreciated time so I think it's we will the the that that electric that\n\nall vehicles will go fully electric uh it's only a matter of time um that includes aircraft ultimately and boats um obviously trains the only thing that is ironically difficult to well you can't really make it electric is Rockets because you need you can't get away from um having to expel Mass uh you sort of Newton's third law um but but all cars will be Electric it's only matter of time and we'll look back on combustion cause in the same way that we look at back on uh steam engines um that that I was it was inevitable that there would be internal combustion cars and and it's just as inevitable that o cost will go electric um and um there will be some e and you know so like it going to be a completely straight up line there will be some uh e and flow\n\nin how how far electric car is going but that but the ultimate um victory of electric cars is inevitable um and and I think the sooner we get there the better yeah how do you see the Chinese competition here now we generally find that the companies in China are the most competitive in the world and certainly in uh electric vehicles or cars in general the Chinese car companies are by far the most competitive um yeah that's where where we find the most toughest toughest compet competitive challenges that they make great cars and they work very hard so when you ride in one of the Chinese cars what do you think I mean you're an engineer you know what about it what do you what do you think I haven't R I have not ridden in one lately but uh because they're\n\nnot all available here you know in the US or very few are available in the US um some are available in Europe um but from what my team tells me there are very [Music] good moving moving out out in space um what what would it take to be self-sufficient at Mars to be self-sufficient in Mars it's really about the the total tonnage that is delivered to the surface of Mars um so you can say like well um I I think it's probably on the order of a million tons maybe it maybe more but somewhere between probably a million tons and 10 million tons are needed to make Mars self-sufficient and how many Rockets is that well I gave a presentation on this recently if people look at my my recent uh SpaceX talk but if you if you have U really uh if you have 100 tons per\n\nflight you need 10,000 flights to get to a million million tons um and that's 100 tons landed to the surface of Mars so in order to get 100 tons land to the surface of Mars you need 500 five times that number in Earth orbit um so we do a lot of orbital refilling um so launching sort of uh Rockets uh tanker ships over and over again that that would replenish the propellant of the ships that would go to Mars um and then youd need a on roughly on order of 10,000 of them to get to a million tons um and uh but we we plan to do that that that's uh that's we think we can get that done within 20 years really so and when do you think so when do you think we'll be there for the first time first first uh well the first Starship that will land on Mars which obviously\n\nwould not not have people at first I think it's probably within about 5 years um and then it would probably launch several ships and just confirm that they can land okay on Mars um we'll also be doing the moon simultaneously with that so uh go taking well I think I think we'll get people back to the Moon I should say within 5 years and we'll get uh uncrewed ships landed on Ms within 5 years and and then we be building up the production rate um and improving the design of the booster in the ship so um so in the first people on Mars I think within seven years or so seven to nine years um and from from there we need to rapidly increase we need massive numbers of shifts going and Earth and Mars Only are in the same quadrant of the solar system roughly for\n\nsix months every two years or at least it's only possible to really transfer efficiently um from Earth to Mars I say every six months but really there's about there's a couple months where where it's ideal every 26 months um so every two years that you would see a basically a fleet depart Mars and I think it be quite a spectacular thing to see a thousand ships depart from Mars all at once like Battle Star Galactica what kind of new technology do we need before we'll be self-sufficient there actually I think we have all the tech we already know all the technology that's necessary for that it just needs we just need to build so no new physics is needed for this why is it so important for you I think it's important for Consciousness in general um so if if\n\nwe wish to maximize the lifespan of Consciousness then being a multipled species will result in a much longer uh existence of Consciousness Consciousness than if we're on one planet if we're on one planet we're simply biting our time until there's eventually a Calamity it could be soon it could be a long time but eventually something will happen it could be you a global Therman nuclear war it could be simply That civilization merely subsides our civilization may not die with a bang it may die with a whimper just just gradually falling into obsolescence but if we're multiplet species then we've got two planets and and they can support each other um and we can go beyond two planets ultimately to the moons of Jupiter to the to the uh um Beyond to the the\n\nouter parts of the solar system and ultimately to other star systems so this tiny this tiny candle of Consciousness that we have in this vast Darkness can be extended um and Amplified and we're just far more likely to uh survive as for for Consciousness to survive if we are multiplet species you don't think it' be better to use all these resources and try to sort out Earth well just to put this into perspective the amount of resources I'm talking about for making life multiplanetary would be less than 1% of all resources on Earth so really you can think of it as resource allocation do you think it's worth spending half a percent of Earth Resources to ensure uh that we have redundancy in Consciousness and that we extend Consciousness Beyond Mars to other\n\nplanets to to Mars and other planets and ultimately other star systems um and then also take into account the fact that there are certain inevit there are certain things we simply cannot avoid on Earth um like is it within your power of mind to stop World War I I don't think so no if it happens um and if we have theral Warfare our technology level will drop to the stern age um and we may never survive and then there are we maybe get may get hit like by a comet like the dinosaurs and um you know if the dinosaurs had spaceships they they'll probably still be around um so and then if if you wait long enough the Earth the the sun will continue to expand and eventually engulf Earth and destroy it and destroy all life so just to give it amount a certain amount\n\nof time no matter what you do on Earth no matter how careful you are um Earth will life all life on Earth will die that it will happen is a [Music] certainty on a slightly less gloomy note uh X Twitter yeah um what is your vision now what do you how do you see the the vision of x i goal of X is to be the best source of Truth on the internet um and I think we're making a good you know good progress there and I mean this it's going to be like I call the everything app like if anything you want to do you can do on the xplatform um whether it's text audio video uh payments Financial stuff um Communications of all kinds um and then but but then also where there is publicly disseminated information is to be the best source of Truth um and I think it I think\n\nit already is that um now people may say oh there's some piece of misinformation disinformation I say yes but look look at the replies the reply is correct that misinformation and look at Community notes and the and how good the batting average of community notes is it's extremely good it's by far the best factchecking system on the internet um so and and a lot of people still labor under the illusion that the the the Legacy newspapers that they read are actually true there's so much nonsense in them I mean ni how many times when do you read an article in a newspaper where you know the circumstances of what that article is and how often is it spot on no of course it's uh normally no no of course we all know it's normally wrong but but how do you look\n\nnot sure but how how do you look at the situation now for instance with with Russia uh you know the work Russia does in Germany with fake accounts on it's pretty pretty huge uh activity right I mean we don't see a lot of Russian it to be frank um on the system um so we we see very little um we do we do see a lot of lot of attempts to influence things but they seem to be coming from from the West not from from Russia right what about um what about things like the latest developments in in Brazil and so on yeah sure yeah so the the uh we we kept getting these demands from um uh this uh Judge Alexander um that's his that's his name on Twitter Alexander um and there would be to suspend accounts um immediately we're given typically two hours to suspend an\n\naccount or face massive fines um and the the final sto we were were being given given demands to suspend sitting sitting members of the parliament and major journalists and moreover we could not tell them that it this was at the beest of uh Alexander Morales we had to pretend that it was due to our rules of service and that was the final straw and we said no now um when you when you bought Twitter um now renamed X did you expect that you would end up in these type of situations so it's is all unexpected well I knew it wouldn't be just a total B of roses um you know and it's fing I [Laughter] wouldn't um no I mean I thought it would be since we're just like rigorously trying to pursue the the the goal of being the most accurate and truthful place in the\n\ninternet and that that doesn't mean that what is said is always true or accurate but is it is perhaps another way to frame it is as the least inaccurate place on the internet do you do you see clear do you secretly think this is a bit fun it's fun yeah yeah it's fun at times it's stressful at times and it's fun at times um but overall we're trying to serve the people of Earth um and and and this is sort of an S sort of maybe an esic way of viewing it but um to try to be kind of like the the group consciousness of Earth so you can think of like if each person is like a neuron contributing to like the collective brain of Earth and you want to try to minimize the noise and maximize the signal of every neuron that's connected to the the X Network that that's\n\nbasically what what is what is the collective will of of humanity and and how and and and how to yeah just serve the collective will of humanity and so serve the greater good that that's our goal um now there there's definitely going to be people who want to manipulate that information and so we have to fight that and try to have uh you know be it be the most accurate place as part to the best of our ability and have it be kind of a Marketplace of ideas where people can propose ideas and you know debate them and um I think so far it's working reasonably well in that regard um now people that don't like the truth will not like those or if they want to manipulate things they will not like it but only but only a few years ago you were you were a guy um producing\n\nelectric vehicles now you are you know through starlink you've had some you know I mean some big impact in in Ukraine uh with Twitter you are kind of into some issues in uh you know Brazil India Turkey um you know you're becoming like a real geopolitical force and a really important one how do you how do you look at that well like I said I'm really I'm trying to take the set of actions that maximize the probability that the future is good um I mean we have to keep civilization going onward and upward as much as possible and um and try to minimize the civilizational threats that occur um you know we we we can't get to Mars if civilization collapses it's not going to happen so um you know we've got to we've got to keep um keep civilization going um and\n\nI think we should view our civilization as being much more fragile than we think we kind of take for granted oh it's always going to be there but actually if you study history you realize that there Rise you know there's rise and fall civilization um I mean I was I was reading in depth about the ancient samarians um who were arguably the first civilization if you call civilization like writing and stuff you know they were the first to develop writing um and uh but eventually they died out and they were gone so and then nobody could read the writing at all and and they they just faded out as a civilization um but they're pretty impressive in their time and the ancient Egyptians the same thing um and uh you know one sort of one after another uh ancient\n\nGreek had it Greece had its day uh you know China and India had will have incredibly impressed populations but there's been EVs and flows in the uh CH China and Indian civilizations over the the the aons you know the blenn as well um so you know I I guess I'm just trying to take this this set of the steps that um increase uh the scope and scale of Consciousness that's that's what I'm trying to do it's not it's not that I'm trying to have a put a political thumb on the scale or anything like that um but I I think I'm trying to have the political will go where the people want it to [Music] go you you mentioned some um some uh uh really smart people here and um kind of just moving t a bit here to Copa culture now you manage a lot of geniuses in your in your\n\ncompanies what is the key to manage really smart people you think I don't I don't think I manage smart people they manage themselves um I I think well I guess with really smart people you know I don't really think of of it like managing them I think that if somebody's very smart and talented they they can go anywhere and do anything anytime like if they they they don't have to work with me they could go anywhere so I I really just say like look this is the the goal we're after and this is what we're trying to achieve and do you agree with this goal and if you do then let's try to get it done um and um you know provide my opinion along the way and once in a while I'll say look guys you just got to trust me on on this one we got to do this thing and if\n\nit turns out to be a bad decision you we can can all hold that against me in the future but you have an incredible eye for detail right I mean when we read the is book um it's pretty clear that you I mean you really are are deep into detail and know what you talk about so how do you how do you balance this um kind of micromanagement of some areas and then delegate other I wouldn't I wouldn't call it micromanagement um it's just insisting on atttention to detail that um if you're trying to make a perfect product you must have attention to attent attention to details essential um and I haven't actually read the isacon book you should it's very good actually I Lov it well I I asked Walter isacon if I should read it and he said I shouldn't um so so then he\n\nsaid I shouldn't read it so okay well I'll I'll ask you some questions from the book then they you he talks about you know you the kind of the hardcore and Ultra Hardcore culture what is an Ultra Hardcore culture I guess it's work I mean it's working culture right I mean how how I mean Ultra hard work how hard is that well when things get really intense you're basically just working every waking hour and how and how long can you do that for I've done that for well continuously for sometimes like a few years what does it what does it du to you it really it's pain um and and every waking hour maybe it's an exaggeration because there are a few hours um obviously with friends and family and and critical other things um but 100 hour weeks would be I I've done\n\nmany many stretches of 100 hour weeks like true 100 hour weeks um where roughly six hours per day is sleeping um I would not recommend that this is not that's for emergencies you know it's not uh all the time um you know during very difficult times at Tesla I've had to do that and sometimes at the beginning of my earlier start offs I did that where I just wouldn't leave the office I would just sleep under my desk and just work seven days a week um sometimes it's necessary for success or or to avoid failure um but but do you you do you enjoy being in this crisis mode no I don't it sucks okay no I I don't want to be there it's pain but sometimes it's the between success and [Music] failure when you make decisions how important is speed he just gave me an\n\nidea which is um I'm GNA invite the uh Judge Al Alexander R uh to do a spaces and then he can explain why what I'm doing is bad and and and maybe he's right I challenge I challenge him to a spacers sounds good yeah but what about when you make when you when you make decisions how how important is speed and how do you how do you balance analysis with your gutfield I think the the the best offense and defense is speed if you think of something like the SR71 Blackbird it really had almost no defenses except accelerate and it was never shut down even once like I think over 3,000 missiles were shot at the SR71 blackb and non hit and and really what it did was just go faster so the the power of speed is uh underappreciated as a competitive Dimension um is that\n\nwhy um you know Space X expenence has been so successful because you've been mean and lean as an organization and fast think speed speed is uh definitely a factor now I should say you want to go in the case of a company you you need to be a vector not a scaler so it can't be you need to go at high speed in the right direction sure so can I just so and no company's going to be going in the right direction all the time you have to do course Corrections like a guided missile you qued course Corrections um and uh but in the case of SpaceX it's like okay our goal is to extend Humanity beyond Earth um and we didn't even know how to even frame the question correctly like what what which knew that that was the General goal um we didn't know what pent we' use\n\nor what the raw materials would be or for the how would the rocket be built how would it be designed what's actually important um and uh you know so for example going from our Falcon architecture which is um uses refined jet fuel and liquid oxygen um in a um open cycle gas generator architecture engine to a to Starship which is a uh liquid methane liquid oxygen um uh propellant uh in a staged combustion very high pressure engine um that that that's that's a big architectural change um but we didn't know that we we needed to make that architectural change until we're pretty far down the road like about halfway took us about 10 years to figure out that was even the right architecture now we're confident it is um just um we were on um uh risk- taking and\n\nso on I think SpaceX is one of the best example I know about uh what we call failing well right learning from mistakes and moving on um what generally how do you how do you look at mistakes well I mean which which ones do you tolerate and which ones don't you tolerate well I I I think I don't really think of that way uh you know the first three flights of SpaceX failed um the fourth one succeeded and if if the fourth one had not succeeded we would have gone bankrupt we would have had no money left so it was a very close call um but since then space has done very well it's now the the Falcon 9 you know knock on wood is the most reliable rocket in the world um and launches about every um two to three days now um last question on risk what are the types\n\nof risk you would not want to take uh well I I think in in terms of risks you don't you you don't want to take risks that where if if you only want to take bet the company risks if they're absolutely necessary so there have been a few times where saying the T with Tesla we we just had no choice but to V the company because if if we're in if we're doing a new vehicle program that is uh in order of magnitude larger than the past one then we're by we're just unequivocally betting the company because the new vehicle would be 90% of production so going from uh the original Roadster to the model S original Roadster was only you know about 600 6 700 per year then Model S was 20,000 per year and um and then model 3 is sort of half sort of half a million per year\n\num model y over a million per year so these are all bet the company vehicles but the the the reason we could do for example a cyber truck which was kind of a a radical new design was because it wasn't a bet the company decision so I was like okay look let's try something I want to try something totally crazy uh it's like what what truck would Blade Runner Drive um except the when you're going to drive on was yeah I think it would be perfect for Ms um but like we could try something that where there's some chance that people might not like it um but it's it's radical and new and it's aesthetically aesthetically it's not derivative it doesn't look anything else on the road um whereas all the other sort of pickup trucks look like vague copies of one another\n\num they we could afford to take a chance on failure and say like and talk it up to you know well we tried you know we try to do something interesting but but actually by the way cyber truck's doing great um so uh but one of the things that I think is important for Innovation is that you do accept failure like like necessarily you have to always look at the incentive structure of an organization and say um you know is is is that is that organization properly incenting Innovation um and in with if you do Innovation you're necessarily going to Uncharted Territory so they going to be some mistakes they're going to be some failures um and you have you have to like like actually like for for SpaceX uh rocket engine development like I keep telling the team look\n\nif we're not occasionally blowing up an engine on the test stand we're not trying hard enough you know um absolutely absolutely how important are the P how important is research and phds and that kind of stuff think I've said seen somewhere you you think most phds are useless well I think most PhD thesis are useless which I think is actually objectively true if you look at how many PhD you look at all how many phds are created every year and how many of those papers are actually used in anything yeah um then objectively most PhD TCS are have very low utility or maybe zero um because nobody uses them um or so once in a while you get something that is spectacular but it's pretty [Music] rare perhaps something more useful um is in the book that you haven't\n\nread uh talks about your love for uh gaming in particular like stret IC ability gaming and I've been thinking quite a lot about it um what have you learned from from those games and have have that learning and wisdom been helpful when you have been planning your companies yeah I it's hard to say exactly what I've learned from video games except that I I do like playing video games as if I want to take my mind off work I'll typically play a very hard video game such such as which one well over the years it's been many many different video games um so you know when I was a little kid I was like you know pong and little tank games and things and um and but if you take a game like for example civilization it's actually quite a good um it tells you how how\n\ncivilizations are formed like I remember I remember playing the original civilization with the technology tree and and how you invent different things you'd like invent literacy and uh you know invent democracy and invent gun gunpowder all all these things that like and you start to realize oh wow there's there are stages to technology like you can't um you know you can't actually get to democracy without literacy um and um you know so there's these these stages of of Technology development or stages of ideas that uh you know that's that's a helpful framework for a company um and I guess in in in like like I say in recent years there there's a game I played that was um actually developed in Sweden called polyopia which is actually quite a good game um\n\nlike a lot of people like playing chess but I think chess is not a not a great um there's not a lot of transfer learning from chess to the real world because in chess you've got only 64 squares uh it's a setpiece battle same pieces every time there are no terrain differences uh there's no technology tree uh there's no fog of War um but say a game like polyopia has all of those things uh random terrain generation uh you know the differences in attack and defense bonuses depending on what type of terrain um you've got 16 tribes I think each with different abilities um you've got a a a technology tree that you can choose to develop in different ways uh and you've got of course fog of War um so that I think is much more much closer to reality yeah yeah um\n\nso I think politopia I mean I I was I was playing Diablo uh for a while pretty fun um Diablo as high levels gets very complicated they you could call it like a a spreadsheet with a game attached um so so that's that's and I briefly got the the for about a day the world record in this avire of zir on on a four-person team of of clearing the the hardest level um which was you know not bad for someone who's like 53 basically will be 53 soon um there is still some uh twitch element to it and um it's hard to beat kids at games with a twitch element um but yeah I like uh I find these games interesting if you can be fully immersed in a game some last questions here um as you know we are big shareholders and uh made a a lot of money uh on our investment [Laughter]\n\no okay I can hear you here okay good sounds good good to go sorry I can you I think everyone can hear me let's see thumbs up if you can hear me let's try again okay okay sounds good sounds good um now um what is the score now of in terms of the Union in Sweden and the collective bargaining actually I I think uh I think the storm has passed on that front I think things are in reasonably good shape in Sweden um so uh yeah I think things are good um yeah overall yeah I feel pretty good about the future I mean you know there's going to be bumpy quarters from you know here and there but I think the long-term future of Tesla is extremely strong uh for example um yeah I'm I'm back on just so um yeah we met with uh we met with your chair last month so we we have\n\nsome update but any any of view on it why are you why why are you skeptical to colletive I was playing with a soundboard here wo hello hello [Music] hello yeah last question for me um sorry I didn't hear the answer here because I was out but um we have covered this with with your chair but just a last question here what do you want your legacy to be I I don't I don't mind if uh my legacy is accurate or inaccurate uh provided that I I dive feeling that I've done the right thing for the future of Consciousness so just trying to trying to have this SL of Consciousness last as long as possible and maybe understand more about the nature of the universe or simulation or whatever this is so um I have a philos philosophy of curiosity which is to understand the\n\nunderstand the universe understand the nature of the universe um or even what questions to ask kind of like that I would say I would subscribe to the Douglas Adams hus guys of the Galaxy School of philosophy that we're trying to understand what questions to ask about the answer that is the universe okay I think that's a good place to end um for sure the life on this planet would have been been a lot more boring without you I'm I'm glad to it up a little totally all right well good talking bye take care now all right bye thanks [Music] bye"},"languages":["en"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_rQBZ3vKRA0"},{"id":"abundance360-summit-2024-03-25","type":"interview","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akXMYvKjUxM","title":"Abundance360 Summit","titles":{"en":"Abundance360 Summit","de":"Abundance360 Summit","fr":"Abundance360 Summit"},"date":"2024-03-25","summary":"On-stage interview at Abundance360 about AGI safety, digital superintelligence, Neuralink, Mars and humanity's future.","text":"the Advent of super intelligence it it is actually very difficult to predict what will happen next so I think there you know there's some chance um uh that it will end Humanity I I think that's you know like I said I probably agree with Jeff Hinton that it's about um I don't know 10% or 20% or something like that the probable uh positive scenario outweighs the negative scenario it it's just that there's a it's difficult to predict exactly so here's a deal we're on we're on X video and we're over starlink elon's airborne right now on his way to La Elon good afternoon uh good afternoon congratulations on uh on all that's going on you know the conversation yesterday Elon is one that you're well familiar with and have been talking to the world about which\n\nis is digital super intelligence Humanity's greatest hope or its greatest fear and I would love to have you sort of speak to that for a few minutes I mean it's it's called The Singularity for a reason um as a as you know the singularity Institute and whatnot um so when you have a s you know sort of the Advent of super intelligence it is actually very difficult to predict what will happen next so I think there you know there's some chance um uh that it'll end Humanity I I think that's you know like I said I would probably agree with Jeff Hinton that it's about um I don't know 10% or 20% or something like that um and then I you know I think there's I think that the the probable uh positive scenario outweighs the negative scenario it it's just that there's\n\na it's difficult to predict exactly um but I I think we are headed for um you know as as I think is the title of your book abundance uh is the most likely outcome so yeah a lot a lot of celebration on on that and and I think one of the things that you've said is we're going to get to abundance on the backside of of AGI on the backside of humanoid robots yeah um you know I think hopefully we can uh have an outcome that is half similar to uh the in Banks uh culture books um which is I think probably the the best envisioning of um a semi utopian uh AI future um and I I think the best we can do is it's definitely going to happen so and it's happening fast so that I think that really we just want want to try to steer it in um as positive a direction as possible\n\nto try to do whatever we can to um increase the probability of a of a great future um for this I think uh the way in which U sort of an AI or an AI is created uh is very important um you you you kind of do kind of like grow grow an AGI um it's it's almost like like raising a a kid but that's like a Super Genius Like Godlike intelligence kid um and it matters kind of like how you rais the kid you know um one of the things I think that's incredibly important for AI safety is to have a a maximum sort of Truth seeking and uh Curious AI um so I've thought a lot about AI safety um and my My ultimate conclusion is that the best way to achieve AI safety is to um just just just grow the AI you know in terms of the foundation bottle and the fine-tuning um to be\n\num uh really truthful like like don't Don't Force It to lie like even if the truth is unpleasant it's very important don't make the AI lie u in fact the you know the the sort of one of the really the core the core plot premise of 20 you know 2001 at SP Odyssey was things went wrong when they forced the AI to lie you know like the the um the AI was uh not allowed uh let the crew know about the monolith that they were going to see but it was also how to take the crew to the monolith and so the conclusion of the AI was to kill the crew and take their bodies to the monolith and so the lesson there being uh Don't Force an an AI to to lie or do things that are axiomatically incompatible like to do two things that are actually mutually impossible uh so um you\n\nknow that's what we're trying to do with with xai and and grock is to say like look we want to just have a maximally truthful uh AI even if what it says is not politically correct uh if you wanted to focus on um being as as accurate you're getting you're getting a a round of applause from the audience on on uh on those comments here uh you know I saw your Tweet the other day I had I had Ray KW and Jeffrey Hinton on stage with me yesterday as as well as uh madat and then Eric Schmidt and a number of individuals and I saw your your Tweet about um yeah Ry was was generally correct ahead of many people but we're likely to have call AGI what you will have AGI next year and then by 2029 having AI equally intelligent to the entire human race um speak to that\n\nspeed because that is insane yeah so I mean I have to give credit to Ray kwell and being actually remarkably um accurate in his predictions so um um in fact if anything like I think he was perhaps a bit conservative uh in his predictions um so if you look at the amount of of AI compute and the talent the the sort of human talent that is going into Ai and the amount of compute that's going into AI um it's you know at this point it's it's it appears to be increasing by a factor of 10 the AI compute the dedicated AI compute appears to be growing by a factor of 10 every six months you know like so it's like like basically close to i' say almost like a 100x Improvement per year at least for the next few years um in AI compute coming online um and it seems\n\nlike probably a lot of the the data centers maybe most of the data centers that currently do kind of conventional uh compute will transition to uh AI compute so um it's it's certainly a good time to be Nvidia obviously um it's like you know and you got to also give credit to to Jensen uh and the the Nidia team for kind of seeing this coming and um making what at least currently is the the best uh AI Hardware out there um so so so when you have that that level of compute uh uh growth and um it's it's sort of on steroids Next Level it's you know terms of how much computer's coming online then you're you're just going to have acceleration that uh is unprecedented in fact I've never seen any technology grow as fast as as AI uh and I've seen a lot you know\n\nI've seen things fast but I've never seen anything this fast um but you know like I said I think the the most likely outcome is um a positive one um and um you know I think in that positive scenario there's still challenges of like well how do we as humans still have relevance you know um how do we find how do we find purpose how how do we find purpose but I mean I think sort of a high class problem to say like well the computers are so good at at at doing everything and and um like said I thought your book is pretty accurate in terms of the future being being one of abundance where essentially goods and services will be uh in available in such quantity that that really uh they'll be available to everyone like basically if you want something you can just\n\nhave it essentially um because if you got Ai and Robotics uh the cost of goods and services uh is uh almost nothing um so um you know if if you think of like what is an economy an economy is basically number of people times average productivity per person at the point at which you have say Advanced robotics U and this you know this Tesla developing Optimus um obviously we have our cars which are really robots on on four wheels um and the you know with the the the latest version of um full stoft driving which is um AI end to end photons in and controls out um it really is um it's really fully AI at this point um and uh it looks like a car but it's really a robot on on on Wheels um and uh and you add the humanoid robots in there there's there's really no\n\nlimit to what the economic output no no meaningful limit to what the econ economic output would be so you know looking on the bright side uh the we are headed for a future of abundance um that I think that's the most likely outcome I think the only scarcity will that that exists will be scarcity that we just decide to create artificially like let's say we just decide that there's a unique work of art or something okay well it's just you just it's just artificial scarcity but but any kind of goods and services I think will be extremely abundant everybody I want to take a short break from our episode to talk about a company that's very important to me and could actually save your life or the life of someone that you love company is called Fountain life\n\nand it's a company I started years ago with Tony Robbins and a group of very talented Physicians you know most of us don't actually know what's going on inside our body we're all optimists until that day when you have a pain in your side you go to the physician or the emergency room and they say listen I'm sorry to tell you this but you have this stage three or four going on and you know it didn't start that morning it probably was a problem that's been going on for some time but because we never look we don't find out so what we built at Fountain life was the world's most advanced diagnostic Centers we have four across the us today and we're building 20 around the world these centers give you a full body MRI a brain a brain vasculature an AI enabled\n\ncoronary CT looking for soft plaque dexa scan a Grail blood cancer test a full executive blood workup it's the most advanced workup you'll ever receive 150 GB of data that then go to our AIS and our physicians to find any disease at the very beginning when it's solvable you're going to find out eventually might as well find out when you can take action Fountain life also has an entire side of Therapeutics we look around the world for the most Advanced Therapeutics that can add 10 20 healthy years to your life and we provide them to you at our centers so if this is of interest to you please go and check it out go to Fountain life.\n\ncom back/ Peter when Tony and I wrote our New York Times bestseller life force we had 30,000 people reached out to us for Fountain life memberships if you go to Fountain life.\n\ncom back/ Peter will put you to the top of the list really it's something that is um for me one of the most important things I offer my entire family the CEOs of my companies my friends it's a chance to really add decades onto our healthy lifespans go to fountainlife decomp it's one of the most important things I can offer to you as one of my listeners all right let's go back to our episode you know I can't imagine anybody who's done a better job peering into the future by actually creating the future I'm curious how far out do you think you're able to see how many years out Beyond Today given the speed of change well when when things are changing rapidly the the ability to predict the future I think is uh becomes a lot hotter because of the rate of change\n\nis so great um but I think some things are fairly obvious to predict which is that we'll have um AI or AI That's at a level that it can really do almost any cognitive I think really not almost really any cognitive task that's just a question when one could debate is it you know smarter than any human at the end of next year or is it two years or 3 years but it's not more than five years that's for sure um so um yeah and get prediction predictions predictions I'm sort of say giving predictions at the 50th percentile of probability so not not not like it will definitely happen but if you say what if you ask me like what's the 50th percentile um where it's like you know your kind of over under is kind of even that that's where I why why I I think it's probably\n\nend of next year before AI can do better than any individual human could do um and then uh but there's it's it's a much higher bar to say well is it small than um you know human intelligence collectively but if the rate of change continues uh that's why I think probably 2029 or maybe 2030 is where um digital intelligence will probably exceed uh all human intelligence combined um and and I think it's always helpful to look at these like fundamental ratios um you know sort of physics first principles approach to to looking at things and um and and probabilistic yeah and and probabilistic yeah so yeah it's probabilistic so um the uh yeah so um if you look at the ratio of digital to biological compute so like like you know all all of say all of the higher\n\nlevel cognitive if you sum up the higher level cognitive capacity of of humans um and then what is the and think of that as compute then uh well and then compare that to what what is the uh digital compute um and the rate at which this is growing is just bugles the mind so that's why I think it's you know I think 2029 or 2030 or thereabouts is is a it's not a that's I think a reasonable time frame for where you'd expect the the cumulative digital compute to probably exceed the cumulative biological compute of higher level brain functions um and then from from then forever yeah and still and in dispatching and and uh diverging forever from there yeah and and then yeah where do things go from there I I don't know probably continues um the I we are moving\n\nfrom you say if you look at the the living factors you know the what what is the constraint on growth um you like last year it was clearly uh AI chips were the constraint on growth um then then this year the one of the biggest constraints maybe the biggest constraints on on growth um are voltage step down Transformers because you know the the just just getting the power from like a utility at 300 kilovolts all the way down to below one volt for the computer is is a massive amount of voltage uh step down so it's it's a you know my sort of very Niche and perhaps not that funny joke is uh that uh we need Transformers for Transformers um so we need voltage Transformers or AI you know neural net Transformers um that that is literally the issue uh this year\n\num and then if we're saying like next year and years beyond that it's actually just it's going to be constraints on um electrical power um and you've got uh both AI with very big demands for electrical power and the transition to sustainable energy with electric vehicles whatnot also needing electrical power so it's uh it's just a lot a lot of electrical power needs you know Elon one of the one of the things that you said early on when you when you founded neuralink um which has been amazing congratulations on that um and we talked about this with Rey yesterday talked about high bandwidth BCI uh was I wouldn't put words in your mouth but I would say it would be more along the lines if you can't beat them join them um when it comes to uh uh you know merging\n\nthe neocortex and the cloud can you I I'm looking forward to it I'm just curious what your thoughts are about uh what's driving that I mean add adding adding that additional uh computational capacity and sensory capacity to the neocortex yeah I mean again this is actually something that in Banks uh in the culture books which I really recommend everyone read um that in the uh culture books there's uh something called a neural lace so all the humans have neural lace that's kind [Music] of um a very essentially A high bandwidth uh brain to computer interface um and um in at least in the culture books the it's so good that it actually retains all of your memories and kind of brain state so even if your physical body dies you can kind of re reincorporate in\n\nanother physical body and retain you know pretty much your original memories and and brain State um so now is long way from that um we only just had our first um uh neural link and a human which is going it's going quite well um the uh the first patient is actually able to uh control their computer uh just by thinking so like this first the first uh product we call telepathy where you can control your computer and phone and through and through your computer and phone almost anything just just by thinking you just lie there and think and you can move the the mouse coaster around the screen and things and like you know the we're g to do patient has agreed to do sort of a uh like I think a live demo of just it is qu quadriplegic uh where he literally is\n\njust controlling the the screen he can like um play video games download software uh like really anything you can do with a mouse um just by thinking um which is pretty wild it it is it is pretty wild uh let let's turn to one last I should say there's a long way to go from that to uh a whole brain interface so our current uh neur link just has a th000 electrodes I think ultimately you need something which which has you know probably 100,000 or or a million electrodes now these are very tiny very tiny electrodes that they're tiny wires way smaller than a human hair um and um you know so there's this I I just want to emphasize a long way from from where NE link is today to having a whole brain interface like um like the neural a and the Ian Banks uh novels\n\nuh but this this is definitely physically possible um and um you know it's sort of kind of like if you can't beat him join him you know um so you know a human brain which is has a lot of constraints it's you know it's it's yeah they only have about maybe 10 watts of higher brain function um and uh we do a lot with our little 10 watts it's not you know it's impressive you know that we we' we've buil with um such a low power computer really it you know I sort of think it's like it's it's not bad for a bunch of monkeys you know um I'll get some good laughs from that we've all watched you go from the uh the Roadster to the model 3 and Y and and from Falcon 1 to Starship so I think going from the first implants to uh something that's got more capacity it's\n\njust just a matter of if not when or a matter of when not if right hey everyone I want to take a quick break from this episode to tell you about a health product that I love and that I use every day in fact I use it twice a day it seeds DS1 daily symbiotic hopefully by now you understand that your microbiome and your gut health are one of the most important modifiable parts of your health you know your gut microbiome is connected to everything your brain health your cardiac health your metabolic health so the question is what are you doing to optimize your gut let me take a moment to tell you about what I'm doing every day I take two capsules of seeds ds01 daily symbiotic it's a 2in1 probiotic biotic and Prebiotic formulation that supports digested Health\n\ngut health skin Health heart health and more it contains 24 clinically and scientifically proven probiotic strains that are delivered in a patented capsule that actually protects the contents from your stomach acid and ensures that 100% of it is survivable reaching your colon now if you want to try seed DS1 daily symbiotic for yourself you can get 25% off your first month supply by using the code peter2 checkout just go to seed.\n\ncom moonshots and enter the code Peter 25 checkout that's seed.\n\ncom moonshots and use the code Peter 25 to get your 25% off the first month of seeds daily symbiotic trust me your gut will thank you all right let's go back to the episode um let's talk to I think ultimately like said you'll have uh like um you'll have uh kind of a whole brain interface U that uh I guess is a sort of perhaps a form of immortality and and that if if it can um uh kind of upload your brain State uh to you know if your brain state is essentially stored um you're kind of backed up on a hard drive I suppose um then uh you know you can always restore that brain State into a a biological body or or or maybe a robot or something um and I want to emphasize again it's like you know many years in the future but but I I we're not breaking any laws\n\nof physics like I think this is this is probably something that will happen um the rate we're building digital super intelligence it may just be that you know we'll have digital super intelligence and it'll just solve the solve the problem for us um but uh in in the meantime uh we we'll progressing with our meat computerss and trying to try to do do as good job as possible that's was going to say the uh uh the the tools that we have are growing at a super exponential rate that are making our linear projections of the future seem boring in some ways what one last topic my friend uh which is where you and I first connected in the world of space congratulations on Starship 3 uh amazing amazing flight just really spectacular and we all saw uh a falcon 9 launch\n\nfrom Vandenberg last night uh so that was great and uh oh yeah um uh just again thankful for the work you're doing you know I it's fascinating because I grew up at the late stages of the Apollo and into into the uh into the uh uh shuttle program and I can't imagine that any government would be pushing space as rapidly and dramatically as you are and so um uh thank you for what you're doing there that's all I can say uh absolutely well I mean the the goal of SpaceX is is it's just a a much bigger goal than any any government program which is to um uh rockets and spacecraft that are capable of making life multiplanetary so you know I mean step one is actually having that as a goal if you don't have that as a goal you're definitely not going achieve it um\n\nif you have it as a goal well now at least you have a chance of achieving it um and this the thing about Starship is it is it is the the first rocket where uh making life multiplanetary and you have building a self-sustaining City on Mars is uh is at least possible um uh it's still obviously an immense amount of work but but it is the first rocket word um that is success of in making like multi plator is at least one of the possible outcomes yeah um I'm wondering if you're willing to venture a guess on when you'll be on the moon I think pretty soon um I'd be surprised if it's if it's longer than about 3 years uh to be landing Starships on the moon um and uh because the rate progression of Starship is very rapid um you know we're hoping to do at least\n\nuh another maybe five or six flights this year and with each successive flight making significant improvements uh so I think we got a decent shot of achieving um full reusability of both stages uh the booster and the ship uh this year um and if not this year I think you know knock on with it's like I think it's a very high probability of achieving full reusability uh next year which um really is the fundamental breakthrough needed to make life multiplanetary um yeah for for those that that that that don't don't know the rocket industry that that well that they may not be aware that that that this is really the Holy Grail of rocketry is is full full and Rapid reusability um because at that point you're uh you're really just constrained by your um propellant\n\ncosts and Starship you know almost 80% of pallet is liquid oxygen which is very low cost um and then the fuel is met there sort of a little over 20% fuel which is methane was the lowest cost fuel so if you have um full rapid reability uh then um your actual cost per flight of Starship uh even though it's it'll be capable of um we think ultimately 200 tons to uh to orbit uh will be maybe the FL say you miss say 200,000 you said the the the price of the fuel you said for Starship flight would be how much yeah the the the I mean if Most states are um reusable and with without a refurbishment then you or without you know you'd have scheduled maintenance just like a an aircraft but uh with with if if you get to full reusability where there's no um no work\n\nrequired between fights then you you you you then um the cost you know is really uh you the cost of repellent is maybe a million dollars or less per flight um so then it's U number of flights magude better than any vehicle anybody listen I'm so grateful thank you for your time today thank you for not taking my advice when I tried to get you to uh fund the original X prise instead of starting SpaceX and uh and you know everybody here in the room has a we call a massive transformative purpose in a moonshot and it's uh we're living in a day where people can make a you know to use Steve's word Steve Jobs words the dent in the universe and nobody's making a bigger Dent than you um thank you thank you for everything let's give it up for Elon [Music] Musk","textByLang":{"en":"the Advent of super intelligence it it is actually very difficult to predict what will happen next so I think there you know there's some chance um uh that it will end Humanity I I think that's you know like I said I probably agree with Jeff Hinton that it's about um I don't know 10% or 20% or something like that the probable uh positive scenario outweighs the negative scenario it it's just that there's a it's difficult to predict exactly so here's a deal we're on we're on X video and we're over starlink elon's airborne right now on his way to La Elon good afternoon uh good afternoon congratulations on uh on all that's going on you know the conversation yesterday Elon is one that you're well familiar with and have been talking to the world about which\n\nis is digital super intelligence Humanity's greatest hope or its greatest fear and I would love to have you sort of speak to that for a few minutes I mean it's it's called The Singularity for a reason um as a as you know the singularity Institute and whatnot um so when you have a s you know sort of the Advent of super intelligence it is actually very difficult to predict what will happen next so I think there you know there's some chance um uh that it'll end Humanity I I think that's you know like I said I would probably agree with Jeff Hinton that it's about um I don't know 10% or 20% or something like that um and then I you know I think there's I think that the the probable uh positive scenario outweighs the negative scenario it it's just that there's\n\na it's difficult to predict exactly um but I I think we are headed for um you know as as I think is the title of your book abundance uh is the most likely outcome so yeah a lot a lot of celebration on on that and and I think one of the things that you've said is we're going to get to abundance on the backside of of AGI on the backside of humanoid robots yeah um you know I think hopefully we can uh have an outcome that is half similar to uh the in Banks uh culture books um which is I think probably the the best envisioning of um a semi utopian uh AI future um and I I think the best we can do is it's definitely going to happen so and it's happening fast so that I think that really we just want want to try to steer it in um as positive a direction as possible\n\nto try to do whatever we can to um increase the probability of a of a great future um for this I think uh the way in which U sort of an AI or an AI is created uh is very important um you you you kind of do kind of like grow grow an AGI um it's it's almost like like raising a a kid but that's like a Super Genius Like Godlike intelligence kid um and it matters kind of like how you rais the kid you know um one of the things I think that's incredibly important for AI safety is to have a a maximum sort of Truth seeking and uh Curious AI um so I've thought a lot about AI safety um and my My ultimate conclusion is that the best way to achieve AI safety is to um just just just grow the AI you know in terms of the foundation bottle and the fine-tuning um to be\n\num uh really truthful like like don't Don't Force It to lie like even if the truth is unpleasant it's very important don't make the AI lie u in fact the you know the the sort of one of the really the core the core plot premise of 20 you know 2001 at SP Odyssey was things went wrong when they forced the AI to lie you know like the the um the AI was uh not allowed uh let the crew know about the monolith that they were going to see but it was also how to take the crew to the monolith and so the conclusion of the AI was to kill the crew and take their bodies to the monolith and so the lesson there being uh Don't Force an an AI to to lie or do things that are axiomatically incompatible like to do two things that are actually mutually impossible uh so um you\n\nknow that's what we're trying to do with with xai and and grock is to say like look we want to just have a maximally truthful uh AI even if what it says is not politically correct uh if you wanted to focus on um being as as accurate you're getting you're getting a a round of applause from the audience on on uh on those comments here uh you know I saw your Tweet the other day I had I had Ray KW and Jeffrey Hinton on stage with me yesterday as as well as uh madat and then Eric Schmidt and a number of individuals and I saw your your Tweet about um yeah Ry was was generally correct ahead of many people but we're likely to have call AGI what you will have AGI next year and then by 2029 having AI equally intelligent to the entire human race um speak to that\n\nspeed because that is insane yeah so I mean I have to give credit to Ray kwell and being actually remarkably um accurate in his predictions so um um in fact if anything like I think he was perhaps a bit conservative uh in his predictions um so if you look at the amount of of AI compute and the talent the the sort of human talent that is going into Ai and the amount of compute that's going into AI um it's you know at this point it's it's it appears to be increasing by a factor of 10 the AI compute the dedicated AI compute appears to be growing by a factor of 10 every six months you know like so it's like like basically close to i' say almost like a 100x Improvement per year at least for the next few years um in AI compute coming online um and it seems\n\nlike probably a lot of the the data centers maybe most of the data centers that currently do kind of conventional uh compute will transition to uh AI compute so um it's it's certainly a good time to be Nvidia obviously um it's like you know and you got to also give credit to to Jensen uh and the the Nidia team for kind of seeing this coming and um making what at least currently is the the best uh AI Hardware out there um so so so when you have that that level of compute uh uh growth and um it's it's sort of on steroids Next Level it's you know terms of how much computer's coming online then you're you're just going to have acceleration that uh is unprecedented in fact I've never seen any technology grow as fast as as AI uh and I've seen a lot you know\n\nI've seen things fast but I've never seen anything this fast um but you know like I said I think the the most likely outcome is um a positive one um and um you know I think in that positive scenario there's still challenges of like well how do we as humans still have relevance you know um how do we find how do we find purpose how how do we find purpose but I mean I think sort of a high class problem to say like well the computers are so good at at at doing everything and and um like said I thought your book is pretty accurate in terms of the future being being one of abundance where essentially goods and services will be uh in available in such quantity that that really uh they'll be available to everyone like basically if you want something you can just\n\nhave it essentially um because if you got Ai and Robotics uh the cost of goods and services uh is uh almost nothing um so um you know if if you think of like what is an economy an economy is basically number of people times average productivity per person at the point at which you have say Advanced robotics U and this you know this Tesla developing Optimus um obviously we have our cars which are really robots on on four wheels um and the you know with the the the latest version of um full stoft driving which is um AI end to end photons in and controls out um it really is um it's really fully AI at this point um and uh it looks like a car but it's really a robot on on on Wheels um and uh and you add the humanoid robots in there there's there's really no\n\nlimit to what the economic output no no meaningful limit to what the econ economic output would be so you know looking on the bright side uh the we are headed for a future of abundance um that I think that's the most likely outcome I think the only scarcity will that that exists will be scarcity that we just decide to create artificially like let's say we just decide that there's a unique work of art or something okay well it's just you just it's just artificial scarcity but but any kind of goods and services I think will be extremely abundant everybody I want to take a short break from our episode to talk about a company that's very important to me and could actually save your life or the life of someone that you love company is called Fountain life\n\nand it's a company I started years ago with Tony Robbins and a group of very talented Physicians you know most of us don't actually know what's going on inside our body we're all optimists until that day when you have a pain in your side you go to the physician or the emergency room and they say listen I'm sorry to tell you this but you have this stage three or four going on and you know it didn't start that morning it probably was a problem that's been going on for some time but because we never look we don't find out so what we built at Fountain life was the world's most advanced diagnostic Centers we have four across the us today and we're building 20 around the world these centers give you a full body MRI a brain a brain vasculature an AI enabled\n\ncoronary CT looking for soft plaque dexa scan a Grail blood cancer test a full executive blood workup it's the most advanced workup you'll ever receive 150 GB of data that then go to our AIS and our physicians to find any disease at the very beginning when it's solvable you're going to find out eventually might as well find out when you can take action Fountain life also has an entire side of Therapeutics we look around the world for the most Advanced Therapeutics that can add 10 20 healthy years to your life and we provide them to you at our centers so if this is of interest to you please go and check it out go to Fountain life.\n\ncom back/ Peter when Tony and I wrote our New York Times bestseller life force we had 30,000 people reached out to us for Fountain life memberships if you go to Fountain life.\n\ncom back/ Peter will put you to the top of the list really it's something that is um for me one of the most important things I offer my entire family the CEOs of my companies my friends it's a chance to really add decades onto our healthy lifespans go to fountainlife decomp it's one of the most important things I can offer to you as one of my listeners all right let's go back to our episode you know I can't imagine anybody who's done a better job peering into the future by actually creating the future I'm curious how far out do you think you're able to see how many years out Beyond Today given the speed of change well when when things are changing rapidly the the ability to predict the future I think is uh becomes a lot hotter because of the rate of change\n\nis so great um but I think some things are fairly obvious to predict which is that we'll have um AI or AI That's at a level that it can really do almost any cognitive I think really not almost really any cognitive task that's just a question when one could debate is it you know smarter than any human at the end of next year or is it two years or 3 years but it's not more than five years that's for sure um so um yeah and get prediction predictions predictions I'm sort of say giving predictions at the 50th percentile of probability so not not not like it will definitely happen but if you say what if you ask me like what's the 50th percentile um where it's like you know your kind of over under is kind of even that that's where I why why I I think it's probably\n\nend of next year before AI can do better than any individual human could do um and then uh but there's it's it's a much higher bar to say well is it small than um you know human intelligence collectively but if the rate of change continues uh that's why I think probably 2029 or maybe 2030 is where um digital intelligence will probably exceed uh all human intelligence combined um and and I think it's always helpful to look at these like fundamental ratios um you know sort of physics first principles approach to to looking at things and um and and probabilistic yeah and and probabilistic yeah so yeah it's probabilistic so um the uh yeah so um if you look at the ratio of digital to biological compute so like like you know all all of say all of the higher\n\nlevel cognitive if you sum up the higher level cognitive capacity of of humans um and then what is the and think of that as compute then uh well and then compare that to what what is the uh digital compute um and the rate at which this is growing is just bugles the mind so that's why I think it's you know I think 2029 or 2030 or thereabouts is is a it's not a that's I think a reasonable time frame for where you'd expect the the cumulative digital compute to probably exceed the cumulative biological compute of higher level brain functions um and then from from then forever yeah and still and in dispatching and and uh diverging forever from there yeah and and then yeah where do things go from there I I don't know probably continues um the I we are moving\n\nfrom you say if you look at the the living factors you know the what what is the constraint on growth um you like last year it was clearly uh AI chips were the constraint on growth um then then this year the one of the biggest constraints maybe the biggest constraints on on growth um are voltage step down Transformers because you know the the just just getting the power from like a utility at 300 kilovolts all the way down to below one volt for the computer is is a massive amount of voltage uh step down so it's it's a you know my sort of very Niche and perhaps not that funny joke is uh that uh we need Transformers for Transformers um so we need voltage Transformers or AI you know neural net Transformers um that that is literally the issue uh this year\n\num and then if we're saying like next year and years beyond that it's actually just it's going to be constraints on um electrical power um and you've got uh both AI with very big demands for electrical power and the transition to sustainable energy with electric vehicles whatnot also needing electrical power so it's uh it's just a lot a lot of electrical power needs you know Elon one of the one of the things that you said early on when you when you founded neuralink um which has been amazing congratulations on that um and we talked about this with Rey yesterday talked about high bandwidth BCI uh was I wouldn't put words in your mouth but I would say it would be more along the lines if you can't beat them join them um when it comes to uh uh you know merging\n\nthe neocortex and the cloud can you I I'm looking forward to it I'm just curious what your thoughts are about uh what's driving that I mean add adding adding that additional uh computational capacity and sensory capacity to the neocortex yeah I mean again this is actually something that in Banks uh in the culture books which I really recommend everyone read um that in the uh culture books there's uh something called a neural lace so all the humans have neural lace that's kind [Music] of um a very essentially A high bandwidth uh brain to computer interface um and um in at least in the culture books the it's so good that it actually retains all of your memories and kind of brain state so even if your physical body dies you can kind of re reincorporate in\n\nanother physical body and retain you know pretty much your original memories and and brain State um so now is long way from that um we only just had our first um uh neural link and a human which is going it's going quite well um the uh the first patient is actually able to uh control their computer uh just by thinking so like this first the first uh product we call telepathy where you can control your computer and phone and through and through your computer and phone almost anything just just by thinking you just lie there and think and you can move the the mouse coaster around the screen and things and like you know the we're g to do patient has agreed to do sort of a uh like I think a live demo of just it is qu quadriplegic uh where he literally is\n\njust controlling the the screen he can like um play video games download software uh like really anything you can do with a mouse um just by thinking um which is pretty wild it it is it is pretty wild uh let let's turn to one last I should say there's a long way to go from that to uh a whole brain interface so our current uh neur link just has a th000 electrodes I think ultimately you need something which which has you know probably 100,000 or or a million electrodes now these are very tiny very tiny electrodes that they're tiny wires way smaller than a human hair um and um you know so there's this I I just want to emphasize a long way from from where NE link is today to having a whole brain interface like um like the neural a and the Ian Banks uh novels\n\nuh but this this is definitely physically possible um and um you know it's sort of kind of like if you can't beat him join him you know um so you know a human brain which is has a lot of constraints it's you know it's it's yeah they only have about maybe 10 watts of higher brain function um and uh we do a lot with our little 10 watts it's not you know it's impressive you know that we we' we've buil with um such a low power computer really it you know I sort of think it's like it's it's not bad for a bunch of monkeys you know um I'll get some good laughs from that we've all watched you go from the uh the Roadster to the model 3 and Y and and from Falcon 1 to Starship so I think going from the first implants to uh something that's got more capacity it's\n\njust just a matter of if not when or a matter of when not if right hey everyone I want to take a quick break from this episode to tell you about a health product that I love and that I use every day in fact I use it twice a day it seeds DS1 daily symbiotic hopefully by now you understand that your microbiome and your gut health are one of the most important modifiable parts of your health you know your gut microbiome is connected to everything your brain health your cardiac health your metabolic health so the question is what are you doing to optimize your gut let me take a moment to tell you about what I'm doing every day I take two capsules of seeds ds01 daily symbiotic it's a 2in1 probiotic biotic and Prebiotic formulation that supports digested Health\n\ngut health skin Health heart health and more it contains 24 clinically and scientifically proven probiotic strains that are delivered in a patented capsule that actually protects the contents from your stomach acid and ensures that 100% of it is survivable reaching your colon now if you want to try seed DS1 daily symbiotic for yourself you can get 25% off your first month supply by using the code peter2 checkout just go to seed.\n\ncom moonshots and enter the code Peter 25 checkout that's seed.\n\ncom moonshots and use the code Peter 25 to get your 25% off the first month of seeds daily symbiotic trust me your gut will thank you all right let's go back to the episode um let's talk to I think ultimately like said you'll have uh like um you'll have uh kind of a whole brain interface U that uh I guess is a sort of perhaps a form of immortality and and that if if it can um uh kind of upload your brain State uh to you know if your brain state is essentially stored um you're kind of backed up on a hard drive I suppose um then uh you know you can always restore that brain State into a a biological body or or or maybe a robot or something um and I want to emphasize again it's like you know many years in the future but but I I we're not breaking any laws\n\nof physics like I think this is this is probably something that will happen um the rate we're building digital super intelligence it may just be that you know we'll have digital super intelligence and it'll just solve the solve the problem for us um but uh in in the meantime uh we we'll progressing with our meat computerss and trying to try to do do as good job as possible that's was going to say the uh uh the the tools that we have are growing at a super exponential rate that are making our linear projections of the future seem boring in some ways what one last topic my friend uh which is where you and I first connected in the world of space congratulations on Starship 3 uh amazing amazing flight just really spectacular and we all saw uh a falcon 9 launch\n\nfrom Vandenberg last night uh so that was great and uh oh yeah um uh just again thankful for the work you're doing you know I it's fascinating because I grew up at the late stages of the Apollo and into into the uh into the uh uh shuttle program and I can't imagine that any government would be pushing space as rapidly and dramatically as you are and so um uh thank you for what you're doing there that's all I can say uh absolutely well I mean the the goal of SpaceX is is it's just a a much bigger goal than any any government program which is to um uh rockets and spacecraft that are capable of making life multiplanetary so you know I mean step one is actually having that as a goal if you don't have that as a goal you're definitely not going achieve it um\n\nif you have it as a goal well now at least you have a chance of achieving it um and this the thing about Starship is it is it is the the first rocket where uh making life multiplanetary and you have building a self-sustaining City on Mars is uh is at least possible um uh it's still obviously an immense amount of work but but it is the first rocket word um that is success of in making like multi plator is at least one of the possible outcomes yeah um I'm wondering if you're willing to venture a guess on when you'll be on the moon I think pretty soon um I'd be surprised if it's if it's longer than about 3 years uh to be landing Starships on the moon um and uh because the rate progression of Starship is very rapid um you know we're hoping to do at least\n\nuh another maybe five or six flights this year and with each successive flight making significant improvements uh so I think we got a decent shot of achieving um full reusability of both stages uh the booster and the ship uh this year um and if not this year I think you know knock on with it's like I think it's a very high probability of achieving full reusability uh next year which um really is the fundamental breakthrough needed to make life multiplanetary um yeah for for those that that that that don't don't know the rocket industry that that well that they may not be aware that that that this is really the Holy Grail of rocketry is is full full and Rapid reusability um because at that point you're uh you're really just constrained by your um propellant\n\ncosts and Starship you know almost 80% of pallet is liquid oxygen which is very low cost um and then the fuel is met there sort of a little over 20% fuel which is methane was the lowest cost fuel so if you have um full rapid reability uh then um your actual cost per flight of Starship uh even though it's it'll be capable of um we think ultimately 200 tons to uh to orbit uh will be maybe the FL say you miss say 200,000 you said the the the price of the fuel you said for Starship flight would be how much yeah the the the I mean if Most states are um reusable and with without a refurbishment then you or without you know you'd have scheduled maintenance just like a an aircraft but uh with with if if you get to full reusability where there's no um no work\n\nrequired between fights then you you you you then um the cost you know is really uh you the cost of repellent is maybe a million dollars or less per flight um so then it's U number of flights magude better than any vehicle anybody listen I'm so grateful thank you for your time today thank you for not taking my advice when I tried to get you to uh fund the original X prise instead of starting SpaceX and uh and you know everybody here in the room has a we call a massive transformative purpose in a moonshot and it's uh we're living in a day where people can make a you know to use Steve's word Steve Jobs words the dent in the universe and nobody's making a bigger Dent than you um thank you thank you for everything let's give it up for Elon [Music] Musk"},"languages":["en"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akXMYvKjUxM"},{"id":"don-lemon-show-2024-musk","type":"interview","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhsfjBpKiTw","title":"The Don Lemon Show","titles":{"en":"The Don Lemon Show","de":"The Don Lemon Show","fr":"The Don Lemon Show"},"date":"2024-03-18","summary":"The debut episode of Don Lemon's independent show: a tense hour with Musk on hate speech and content moderation, DEI, the \"great replacement\" theory, drug use and X's advertisers.","text":"Welcome to the Don Lemon Show everyone. We're still here. In a minute I'm going to bring you my conversation with Elon Musk, the one that everyone is talking about. But first, let me tell you a bit about the show. Contrary to what you might have heard, we weren't canceled by X. Yes, after months of begging me, wooing me to offer some exclusive content on his platform, Elon Musk decided to scrap the deal.\n\nBut our plan is and always has been to release this show everywhere, on YouTube, on Spotify, on iHeart Radio. Just about any place you stream content. Now for my conversation with Elon. As with all my interviews, no restrictions, no ground rules, nothing off limits or out of bounds. That is until the interview ended. So what went wrong? I don't know. But my hope is that you learn something about both Elon and me.\n\nTwo people who come from completely different vantage points on almost every single issue. And I challenge you, Elon, to watch the whole interview and tell the world why this isn't what you claim you want on X. Thank you for inviting us here. You're welcome. To Tesla headquarters. I it's I'm surprised of how big it is. I've never seen it. Yeah, it's about three times the size of the Pentagon. Yeah. And we built it in 16 months.\n\nIt's the fastest construction project in the United States since uh World War II. So I'm here, you know, as you know, I'm on the platform because you are you say you're a free speech absolutist, right? No no conditions. Uh free speech is as as much as possible within the bounds of the law. Yeah. So the reason I'm saying that is because there are no conditions on this interview. You said that, you know, speak to you for an hour.\n\nI don't like sound bites, so I welcome that. So let's get into it. So we're here in Austin, South by Southwest is going on. We're at the Tesla headquarters. You are in the process of moving SpaceX here, I understand. No. Uh so uh SpaceX has a massive uh facility in South Texas where we build and launch Starship.\n\nAnd then we we have um in Bastrop near uh Austin we uh are about to start production at a Starlink uh a large Starlink factory for Starlink terminals. But it's but but we're not shutting down any facilities in California. Um listen, we are here as part of a launch of a news interview show that is going to be on x. com. Uh it's coming as a media industry as you know is going through a whole lot of changes. X is also been affected by that.\n\nWhere do you see x. com's role in the future of news and journalism, Elon? Well, I I think the I see the the X as uh it it's it's already the number one source of news uh in the world. So, it is number one the uh the number one way that people actually are informed about any kind of news, meaning real-time events, is uh on the X platform, formerly Twitter. Um There's there's nothing even close for real-time news.\n\nSo, um we also want to expand upon that. Um and we've we have done so with uh long-form content. So, instead of just doing what used to be called tweets, you can now do long-form posts. You can post an entire essay. In fact, you can now uh put an entire book post an entire book to the platform. Um you can do long-form video content. Uh so, you can do uh up to 4-hour video segments.\n\nUm we really want news in whatever form it is, or information, I should say, in whatever form it is to be available on our platform, whether it's short, long, text, pictures, video, whatever the case may be. Yeah. And some of the stuff that we do, long-form video, interview shows, what have you. Yeah. You um you reached out over the summer and you said, \"It would be great to have Maddow, Don Lemon, and others on the left put on this uh platform.\n\nYou receive full support. The digital town square is for all. What do you mean by that? Well, I just mean that we want to make sure that there are a wide variety of viewpoints. That it's uh you know, we also have, for example, Tucker Carlson who most people will view as being on the right. Um and uh you know, that's that's a quite a quite a prominent uh name on the right.\n\nWe want to have uh prominent names on the left as well uh to provide uh different views of points of view uh as well as centrists. Just basically a wide range of of viewpoints on the platform so users can uh hear different opinions. Uh you they can hear you know, what is what's your point of view, what's Sacha's point of view, and make the and you know, and people can make their own decision about what they what they believe.\n\nYou didn't mean that I'm on the left. Did you think that? were on the left, but I don't know. I'm used Well, let's just say I don't know what the left is or the right is frankly these days because things can be quite polarized, but just my impression was that you were you you you you're more likely to be described as on the left than the right. Uh I might I might sense it's you're sort of center-left. I don't know. You tell me.\n\nWell, did you ever watch me on CNN or did you watch I saw say say Yeah, not I I saw segments. Yeah. But CNN is generally considered left. Yeah. Why do you say that? What What do I say CNN is generally considered left? Uh I think if if you if you look at any sort of media survey of what is on the left or right, I think they'd say like, for example, Fox is on the right and CNN is on the left. Yeah. So, that's what is it Am I missing something here?\n\nOkay. Are you missing something? I I don't know. I I I think that what you would when I read that, I said like many uh of my critics or detractors, they never really watched me on CNN. they just saw the clips of me either on social media or maybe on Fox News or a conservative media where it's sort of a where I've become a character or a caricature of what I actually am and it's taken out of context. Uh sure. Well, how would you describe yourself?\n\nUm I would describe myself as someone who is I I I am independent in my thinking and I vote for people based on the issues and how I feel about it, not necessarily because uh of political leaning of some sort. Well, I agree with that approach.\n\nI think that's generally how how people should uh you know, take things which is that I mean there's there's there are a whole sort of set of issues which are sort of somewhat arbitrarily bucketed into right or left. Um but I think most I think most citizens uh would think that uh they're they would agree with some things on the left but not everything or they'd agree on some things on the right but not everything.\n\nUm so uh that's that's what um I think most people feel, I guess. How much longer and then maybe maybe the answer's forever. How much longer are we going to have to call it the formerly known as Twitter? I mean, even Prince went back to Prince instead of is it always going to be X? It's definitely always going to be X. So, X is going through some changes. You said a lot um of media companies are going through some changes.\n\nIt's It You're in charge of an incredible platform, Elon. How do you feel that's going? I think it's going pretty well so far. Um we're seeing record usage. Um we've added a tremendous amount of functionality. I mentioned the that uh that you know, it used to be that you can only do short, you know, text and maybe a a picture or something like that, short video. Uh but now you can do long-form text, long-form video.\n\nUh we've added audio video calling. Uh so, you can not not just do text DMs, you can do audio video calling. Um we've improved the algorithm, I think, significantly. Um and um made the system faster and better and that's reflected in the increased uh usage. So, let's talk about that because you said you wanted all points of view, right? It's a digital town square for all. Yeah.\n\nIt's the the platform has kind of picked up where conservative media, some conservative media just left off. They're moving to the right, increasingly becoming part of a conservative dialogue, sometimes even conspiracy theories, right? There was an article recently written about you saying that you, Donald Trump, and X were the most important um people uh or places or whatever icons when it comes to the MAGA movement. Do you agree with that?\n\nHow do you feel about that? Uh well, I mean, there are nonsense articles written all the time, and I certainly wouldn't agree with that one. I'd put it in the nonsense category. So, uh the the the objective fact of the matter, in my opinion, was that um that old Twitter was a a fundamentally a a tool of the the far left. As far And that was really, I think, a lot of it was due to being located in San Francisco, Berkeley.\n\nUm and so, uh it wanted to essentially project the SF Berkeley uh political dogma worldwide. Uh Do you think it was far left? Yes, I do. I I used to get I actually got off the platform because I would get so much hate tweets when it it was called in, so much hate tweets, and and just got from right-wing conspiracy theorists, being called everything from, you know, [ __ ] to Sure. Well, it's the it's the internet, you know.\n\nThe people will do the I mean, I've been called every name times a thousand. Yeah. Do you agree that it's right now, and that it's even moved into sort of MAGA land and conspiracy theory? I certainly don't think it's right. Um the the old-school Twitter uh suspended and suppressed uh accounts that you'd call on the right 10 times more than it accounts on the left.\n\nAnd even when they did suspend an account on the left, uh it was because of arguments between two people on the left. Uh the political donations of old Twitter were 99% Democrat. Does that sound left right left wing or right wing to you? The Twitter donations? Yes. You know when they look at donations back from a company? If a company donates nine literally 99% of all donations are to Democrats.\n\nDoes that strike you as a left-leaning or a right-leaning company? the company donated? I understand what you're saying. What I want to tell you is that uh Twitter employees people at Twitter their political donations uh were 99% literally 99% uh to Democrats. That's obviously an extremely left-leaning group. My question to the leading into this is about MAGA. You and speaking of MAGA, you recently met with Donald Trump in Florida.\n\nWhat did you guys talk about? Uh I was at a dinner with I was not at dinner. I was at a breakfast at a friend's place and Donald Trump came by. That's it. So, you didn't go there to meet him? I No, I went to a uh uh a friend of mine's a house uh and it said it said Donald Trump's coming by for breakfast. Is that uh if just so you know, like okay, fine. What did you discuss? I've I don't Um let's just say I I he did most of the talking.\n\nWhat did he say? Just the the the normal things he says. There was nothing particularly ground ground ground ground breaking or new, but uh he you know uh President Trump likes to talk. And so, he talked. I don't I I don't recall him saying anything that he hasn't said publicly. Uh and that was it. It was just a breakfast. Did he ask you for money? He didn't. Did he ask you for a donation? No. He didn't. No.\n\nYou said you're not going to donate to any candidate. That's correct. Why not? I think Well, I I'll voice my opinion. Um I think uh I don't want to I don't want to put uh, a thumb on the scale monetarily. That is, you know, significant. Are you going to loan him money to help pay his bills? No. Not at all? To his legal bills? I'm not I'm not paying paying his legal bills in any way, shape, or form. And he did not ask you for money?\n\nAnd he did not ask me for money. Are you going to So, you're not going to endorse a candidate? I may in the final stretch endorse a candidate, uh, but I don't know yet. Uh, I want to make a considered decision uh, before the election. Uh, and if I do decide to endorse a candidate, then I will explain exactly why. Are you leaning towards anyone? No. You're not leaning towards anyone.\n\nYou said you've been Let me say I'm leaning leaning away from Biden. You're leaning I've made no secret of that. Are you concerned about losing your security clearance clearance if Biden is reelected? Does that have anything to do with it? No. You are leaning away from Biden, but you're not going to endorse anyone. It seems like an endorsement of President Trump because there are only two people who are running now. Nikki Haley is out.\n\na lot could happen between now and the election. So, we'll see who in the final analysis, uh, are the choices for president. Um, and at that point, I may or may not endorse, uh, one of the candidates. If I do, I will provide a very, uh, detailed explanation of why I am endorsing one or the other. At that point, might you contribute or donate? I I I think it's unlikely.\n\nSo, you have been posting up a storm as you always do in the past couple weeks about the redesign of the Tesla, uh, Roadster coming at the end of this year. Are there any kind of updates that you can talk about that to expect from his flagship EV? I mean, Tesla stock is down the last 6 months. What's next for the company? You know, the stocks go up and down, but what really matters is are we making and delivering uh, and uh uh great products.\n\nUh the the Tesla products are um outstanding. Uh last year the Model Tesla Model Y was the best-selling uh car of any kind in the world. So, it was about 1. 2 million units. It was the best-selling car despite being I think around 50% more expensive than the next best-selling vehicle. Um of any kind, not just electric. So, um I think this that's testament to the incredible work of the Tesla team. Mhm. Um and uh we launched the Cybertruck.\n\nObviously, that's uh being put very well received. Um we have uh I think over a million orders for the Cybertruck. Um so, uh it's it's really special product. That is that is I think the Cybertruck is one of those product that products that come comes along really once in several years, maybe once a decade. It's it's a Cybertruck is a once a decade product. It is so uh special and and I think it's our best product.\n\nUm so, But everyone improves over time. I mean, Apple you my I thought my phone was here, but Apple, you know, the phone got better over time. The I'm sure that your your cars will get better over time. You have been tweeting about the the updates in in the Roadsters. There's something that we should sure.\n\nThe You did mention the Roadsters, so um look, I don't want to give away you know, much more than what I've said uh publicly except that the Roadster will be uh a collaboration between SpaceX and Tesla. So, you know, you can expect some rockety stuff there. A flying car? Maybe. It's not out of the question. Go on. No, I I look, I got to I got to reserve the cool stuff with the, you know, when when we actually unveil it.\n\nBut it's it's it's going to it's going to be really cool. It's going to have um it's going to have some rocket technology in it. Um I think the Well, the only way to do something that's cooler than the Cybertruck is is to combine uh SpaceX and and and and Tesla technology to create something that's not even really a car. Then what would it be? Something that's never existed before. I'm getting Jetsons vibes. Only Jetsons vibes.\n\nAnd and the world may not be aware like some things that I have said publicly is that it'll do 0 to 60 in under 1 second. So, um that's by far faster than any uh you know, sports car that exists. Um and um and that's not even the most exciting thing about it. Does it have wings? Ooh. No, it does it does not have big wings cuz big wings would be unwieldy on the road. Does it have propellers? It does not have propellers. Okay, it has wheels.\n\nIt does have wheels. Okay. This is not a roadster 20 questions. It has a Does it have a steering wheel? Not exactly. What is it? It will will it have it'll have a drive-by-wire uh yoke essentially like a kind of like the way aircraft are and what modern jets are controlled. And do you think it's the way of the future that everyone will follow your lead on this?\n\nI don't think anyone will ever make anything like the uh the the roadster that that we're going to make. Let's talk now about um SpaceX, Tesla. You got a lot of lawsuits. You've got x. com. You've got a lot going on. How do you relax? Well, um I relax is I spend time with my kids, my friends, and I, you know, make somewhat of a nerd technologist so that I like playing video games. So, uh I'll play video games with with with friends online.\n\nUh lately I've been playing Diablo. Um and um but I've played almost all the games over the years. Uh, a long time ago I was like semi-pro good at Quake. This is really dating me. Uh, because we're talking about like 125 years ago. I don't know video games. I just know that my uh, my great nephew loves Fortnite and some other stuff. He's always with the headphones and and doing the thing. So, that helps you relax, right? So, do you Yeah.\n\nThis is and you It's the nice thing is you've got If you've got friends in different cities and they're playing the same game, you can both go online at the same time and, uh, play the game together even though you're in different cities. Listen, I'm not asking you anything that anyone else hasn't asked you about um, your controversial stuff that you tweet. You post a lot of controversial stuff. Is that considered blowing off steam?\n\nUm, well, I guess I do enjoy using the platform. I mean, I do call, um, the X platform the the PvP or player versus player, uh, platform. Um, so, in video games there's, uh, player versus like environment, um, where you're not playing against other people. Um, and then there's PvP which is like hardcore. You're actually playing against other people. And, uh, So, but that's blowing off steam for you. Yeah. Yeah, it's It is to some degree.\n\nNot always. I mean, obviously I use it for, uh, to post jokes, to post, uh, you know, sometimes trivia, uh, sometimes things that are great importance. So, you do a lot of it at night, like late at night. So, when you're doing this, are you are you sober when you do it? Like, almost always, yeah. the influence of anything? Uh, no. I don't I don't drink. I don't really No, I no. So, you don't No drink, no smoke, no nothing.\n\nI mean, you smoked pot with Rogan. I had one puff. Yeah. I think anyone who smokes pot can tell I don't know how to how to smoke pot. But you've admitted that you've had you have a ketamine prescription that Yeah, yeah, yeah. What's that for? Well, I mean, it's pretty private to ask somebody about a medical prescription, you know.\n\nUm but uh it's I think it's it's something I'd say like uh there are times when I have um a sort of uh I don't know like a negative chemical state in my in my brain. I like depression, I guess, you know, it's or or like depression that's not linked to any negative views um and and and then uh ketamine is helpful for uh getting you getting one outside out of a negative frame of mind.\n\nWell, listen, I I I in fact I generally I'm sorry, I'm not a doctor, but I would say uh if someone has depression issues, they should consider talking to their doctor about ketamine instead of SSRIs. Listen, I I I think that um ketamine uh and drug therapy is uh increasingly becoming more in the mainstream. Yeah. Do you think that you're doing it under a doctor's care, right? Yeah, yeah.\n\nIt's literally a prescription from an actual a real doctor, not like, you know. Yeah, but do you do you feel like you ever abuse it? I don't think so. You can't use too much ketamine. You can't really get work done. That's why I have a lot of work. So, I'm I'm typically putting in like, you know, 16-hour days. That's normal for me. And it's it's it's rare for me to even take off a weekend day.\n\nSo, I don't really have like, you know, a situation where I can be not mentally acute for an extended period of time. Like, I can't I can't really get wasted with with cuz I can't get my work done. So, how often do you take it? Um well, it's it'd be like a a small amount once every other week or something like that. But there's I mean, there's not on the bottle where it says take this dose this many times a week or whatever for your depression.\n\nMy doctor said dose. I I it's there there are several weeks that'll go by where I don't use it. You don't use it. Yeah, I think it's just like I said, I think the what I find ketamine is if you if you have like literally like a chemical state in your brain that you can't you can't just think yourself out of then uh ketamine can help is helpful for getting you out of a depressive mind state.\n\nYou suffer from depression or you have a depressive mind state? And I ask you as someone who has suffered from depression. I wouldn't say that I I I wouldn't say that I have like a case of like extended depression. Um it's just once in a while I get into a a negative sort of chemical mind state once in a while. It's not a not a common thing. Um but once in a while it does happen. Where do you think that comes from?\n\nI think it's just genetic basically. You think it's just genetic history? I think so. Um Yeah. I mean some people are just wired wired to be happy all the time. Uh some are unfortunately wired to be sad all the time. Um And in my case um you know, I'm generally pretty pretty positive and optimistic. Uh but once in a while uh I don't know what happens. It's some uh Like I said, I think it's just the chemical tides in your brain once in a while.\n\nIt's like a brain storm. Yeah. Do you ever worry that this may get in the way of your government contracts and clearances? And also and Wall Street as well. Well, from that point of Wall Street uh what matters is execution. You know, uh are you building value for investors? Um and Tesla is worth about as much as the rest of the car industry combined. From nothing. So, I don't you know, that's pretty good.\n\nUm As I mentioned, we had we had the best selling car on Earth last year. Um So, from from investors standpoint, if there is something I'm taking, I should keep taking it. Have you you talked about your ketamine use and depression?\n\nHave you you also have said and The reason I should I should say like the like the reason I mentioned uh the the ketamine prescription on the X platform was because I thought maybe this is something that could help other people. That's why I mentioned it. Yeah. Can we talk about the great replacement theory now? Um some of the things that you post the great replacement theory.\n\nYou claim that Democrats President Biden's immigration plan open up the border. They're the president is getting and Democrats are doing it to get more votes. Um But undocumented immigrants cannot vote in federal elections. So how is that possible? Right. Um well, you're conflating two things. What one is great replacement theory. The other one is which I I don't subscribe to that. I'm simply saying that there is a sense of here.\n\nUh if uh legal immigrants which I I think have a very strong bias to at least everything I've read. It's very strong bias to vote Democrat. Um the the more more that come to the country, the more they're likely to vote in that direction. But but it is in my view uh the a simple incentive to increase uh voters to Democrat voters. Um And yeah, so as you question is like how? So there's there's a few there's a a few ways that this works.\n\nOne is that uh when the census is done uh the census is based on all all people in an area whether they are citizens citizens or not. So uh there are concentration of uh people who came here legally in in a in a particular state or uh in a particular state that state will actually then get uh an increased number of house seats. So the the house seat apportionment is proportionate to the number of people not the number of citizens.\n\nSo the the the illegals overwhelmingly go to place like California and New York. Um and the if you just look at the look at the math, if if if you look at the apportionment with and without illegals, I believe California would lose I believe I believe the blue state there would be a net loss of blue states of approximately 20 seats in the house. Uh this also applies to the the electoral college.\n\nSo you say like, well, this also applies to to electing the president. Because the the the same the electoral votes are also done by by apportionment the same way that house seats are done. But the reason Elon the electoral college is in place is to to balance that. It's so that that doesn't happen. So what you're saying about it is the exact opposite of the reason why they the electoral college is there.\n\nThe electoral college at this point it at this point in in in our history gives people who are in smaller states and red states much more of an influence over our elections than people who are in blue states and the majority of the people in this country. That's what the electoral college does. It actually does the exact opposite of what you're saying. It protects people who are in smaller states and protects people who are in red states.\n\nWell, Who The red states because they tend to be smaller and and less popular. that that that that statement is is uh what what you said is is true, but what I said is also true. Uh which is that uh if if as is the case a disproportionate number of legal immigrants go to uh blue states, they amplify the effect of a of a blue state vote. And the math as I understand it, you can research this obviously very easily.\n\nI mean it it's like it's it's pretty straightforward to to research this. But my understanding is that there would be uh that that the the Democrats would lose approximately 20 seats in the house uh if illegals were not counted in census. And that's also 20 less electoral votes for president. So the illegals absolutely do affect the uh who controls uh the House of the House and who controls uh the presidency. It does not affect uh, the Senate.\n\nYeah. In blue states you're talking about. I don't believe that your information on on uh, that is right. Um, so listen let's talk more about the great replacement because the first time you did you posted on X about uh, this Jewish conspiracy you ended up apologizing. call it a a conspiracy I just said that there's a simple matter of incentives. You don't need a conspiracy when you have basic incentives.\n\nIn my view there is a basic incentive that's fundamental uh, that uh, for for the the Democrat Democrat party to foster an an ushering a large number of illegals. And they and and you don't need a conspiracy in that case because you have a very basic incentive. You could say I'm wrong about that incentive but that's my view. I I'm not buying into I don't buying some great replacement theory.\n\nI'm simply saying there appears to be a very clear incentive for uh, uh, Democrats to have to maximize number of illegals um, because it helps them win elections. I'm talking about the great replacement theory is also part of a Jewish conspiracy theory. And when you did the tweet or you responded to the tweet about that you ended up apologizing and uh, which I think is you know, is good that you ended up apologizing.\n\nYou went to Auschwitz with Ben Shapiro. Yeah. So you said you learned your lesson. What did you learn? I said I learned my lesson. You said you learned your lesson when it when you apologized and you said you went to Auschwitz. You saw what what No, I was already already aware of of of these things.\n\nAnd the nature of my comment that that really inflamed people um, what I was what I was trying to say and I did very quickly clarify this is what I'm saying is that uh, um, a number of uh, prominent uh, Jewish philanthropists fund uh, groups that they should really take a close look at funding because some of the some of the groups they fund um, I think are anti-Semitic. Yeah. Do you understand the connection between the two?\n\nThey're one there's a connection between you said Democrats and great replacement theory, but when it comes to the actual great replacement theory, originally it was started about Jewish people as you said flooding in the country. And then now people are using it for Democrats. Saying the same thing about Democrats. Flooding I might view it as a simple matter of incentives.\n\nI I I I'm I don't I actually don't see an incentive for uh Jewish people to want to have any get legal immigration. I don't I don't think there is such an incentive. The great replacement theory is a a neo-Nazi trope. It's in the neo-Nazi manifesto. It's in the Turner Diaries. It's referenced by the Buffalo mass shooter uh in his manifesto where 10 people um black people were murdered in Buffalo.\n\nIt's actual title of the Christchurch shooter's manifesto. 51 people in the Muslim mosque were murdered. 23 people uh murdered in El Paso by a shooter who used the same language that you use in that manifesto when you say Hispanic invasion. Is that not I didn't say Hispanic invasion. And you tweeted you quoted a tweet that said that called it a Hispanic invasion. If I quote something, it doesn't mean I agree with anything everything in it.\n\nIt's just something that I want I think this is something worth people should uh consider. Why would you quote something that you didn't believe? Because anything I quote is going to have a whole range of statements. Doesn't mean I agree with everything in it.\n\nDo you think if there if if you moderated yourself more if there was better content moderation on the platform, that you wouldn't have to answer these questions from reporters about the great great replacement theory as it relates to have to answer these questions. great replacement theory as it relates to Jewish people. Do you think that I don't have to answer questions from reporters.\n\nDon't The only reason I've done this interview is because you're on the X platform and you asked for it. Mhm. Uh otherwise I would not do this interview. So you don't think you Do you think that you wouldn't get in trouble or you wouldn't be criticized for these things or that Possibly I could care less. It You don't You don't care. No, I don't care. Why not? I don't think people should care what the media thinks about them.\n\nThey're terrible judges of character. Even someone who has one of the biggest social media and biggest information platforms in the world, you don't think you don't care, you don't think that there's you have any x. com or you have any responsibility to the truth or moderating the platform? Well, you're conflating the truth with the with the media and I think the media is not truthful. Well, not with just the the media.\n\nI mean, just the truth in general. I I care about truth very much. That's why we have, for example, community community notes on the X system. Um where uh in order for community note to surface and provide corrective information about what somebody posts and and my posts are equally subject to this. My I've been meaning to note it many times.\n\nUm the in order for before community note to surface, uh people who have historically disagreed must agree in order for a community note to surface. And all of the code for community notes is open source. All of the data is open source, so you can completely recreate it from scratch. The way to build trust is transparency. I have noticed community notes. I think that you are right about that and I do think community notes are helpful.\n\nI think any type of content moderation I do think that's helpful. You recently called content moderation though a digital chastity belt. Do you think that you you believe that X and you have some responsibility to moderate hate speech on the platform? I think we have a responsibility to adhere to the law. And we have a responsibility to be transparent about when things are shown, why they're shown. So, we that's why we open source our algorithm.\n\nUm the I think once you start getting going beyond the law, now you're putting your thumb on the scale. And we don't want to put our thumb on the scale. It doesn't concern you that hate speech has gone Research shows that it's gone up on the platform since you took over. That's not concerning to you? I believe that is false. In fact, the research that I've seen says it it went down.\n\nThe the study from the Institute of Strategic Dialogue found that anti-Semitic tweets doubled from June 22nd to February 2023. One study reported that as many as 86% of the posts reported for April content remained up after being reported. Hate speech on the platform is up. Uh so, what what they will typically do is they'll count the number of posts, but not count the number of views.\n\nSo, what matters is was that uh post given high visibility or what the did like one person see it? Uh and if you look at the number of views of how how many how many times was his content viewed on our platform, it is down substantially. Yeah. Well, that's not what what the study shows. And you said you like transparency. I'm going to show you this in in Don, you can get a study that will tell you whatever you want.\n\nthis is these are just a handful of extremely If you look at those anti-Semitic and racist tropes and tweets, and as of this morning, they're still on X. And from your own content policy, these posts should have been deleted. So, why haven't they been deleted? Why are they still there? Do you Uh we delete things if they are illegal. But these have been up there for a while. Are they illegal?\n\nThey're not illegal, but they're hateful and they can they can lead to violence. As I just read to you, the shooters, you know, in all of these mass shootings, attributed social media to radicalizing Don, you love censorship, is what you're saying. No, I don't love censorship. Then why are you why are you asking us to in moderation, but I I don't believe in Censorship is a is a Moderation is a propaganda word for censorship.\n\nBut don't you think free speech is one thing, right? Or not, you know, not censorship. illegal, we're going to take it down. If it's not illegal, then we're putting our thumb on the scale and we're being censors. You're putting your thumb on the scale for moderating hate speech. I mean, you don't put out child pornography. That's not It's illegal. That's some people would say that's considered censorship.\n\nI'm just saying, you No, I literally Don't you know I literally said if if something is legal, okay, we will obviously remove it. Okay. But if it is not legal, the laws in this country were are are put forward by the citizens. We're a democracy. If those laws were put in place by the by the people, we adhere to those laws. Okay, I agree with that. of of others. If you go beyond the law, you're actually going beyond the will of the people.\n\nOkay, agreed. With the law. But if you are doing something that promotes hate and violence and ultimately leads to killing, you don't feel there's you have any responsibility not to do that? Uh When when when the people who are doing it admittedly are saying articles all the time that lead to to violence and killing. Um Don't they Shouldn't they?\n\nLike you're applying a differential standard to But that would never that would never be in mainstream media. These types of images, that type of language, those things would never be We'd never in main When I was in mainstream media, we'd never promote things that would would be anti-Semitic. We would never promote things that would anti-Semitic, either. Did you Did you not see those? You said promote.\n\nIf content is on the platform, it doesn't mean we promote it. But that wouldn't be on a on a platform for mainstream media at all. No, but you can think of that that's mainstream media is has like whatever, 20 articles a day. Uh we have 500 million posts a day. Okay, understood. Does it bother you? How do you feel about that when you see it? I obviously disagree with that. I think it's not it's not good at all. Terrible.\n\nBut you don't want to get rid of it on the platform or at least moderate it. The laws that You're you're What what you're suggesting is censorship that goes beyond the law. And what I'm saying is I that we're I guess have a disagreement because I do not believe in censorship that goes beyond the law and you do. We have difference of opinion in that regard. I understand that, but these are your own rules on your own platform.\n\nThis these go against the the rules on your platform. That's why I'm asking you. If you had if you said, \"Listen, we allow everything.\" But that's not what your content rules say. And that's why I'm asking you, why are they still there? The Your own content policy. That's why I'm asking you that, not Which part of our content policy says that we have we should delete these these these things? Your content policy talks about hate speech.\n\nYes, we don't promote hate speech hate speech. And so you don't consider that hate speech? I guess you're not understanding what I'm saying. This this this if if if there's you can find like you can sign up right now and and and do a hundred things that are hateful. Um but if nobody reads it, it doesn't matter. So, You you you can think of X as being it's much like the internet.\n\nIt's not some ti- it's some tiny publication with like 20 articles today. It's 500 million But everyone has the opportunity to read it, Elon. I think you don't have the opportunity to read the internet. Are you saying that you're suggesting we should shut down the internet? No, but but you don't own the internet. I'm asking you about you and your responsibility on your platform. And I I so I see how you feel now. You don't agree.\n\nWe don't agree on this. Yes, you want censorship and I don't. No, I don't want censorship at all. You do. No, I want responsibility. I think there's I think there You desperately want censorship. No, if I want to censorship so bad you can taste it. No, that's not true. It's not true. I think that there's right and wrong. And I think that you want censorship.\n\nAnd I and I think that when you have a platform that's as big as yours and as powerful as yours and as influential as yours and you are a person who of consequence to the world with what you do, that there is a certain responsibility that goes along with what you have on your platform and what you put out to the world. And I I think that's important. You don't see that responsibility.\n\nUm I think the we have a responsibility to uh adhere to the law. Um and if people want the law changed, they should talk to the elector talk to their elected representative and get the law changed and then we will adhere to the law. Okay. But if you want us to go beyond the law, that is that is us deciding to be censors. So And I'm against censorship. I'm I'm in favor of freedom of speech. Yeah.\n\nAnd freedom of speech only is relevant when people you don't like say things you don't like. Otherwise, it has no meaning. But I I do think that there are there should be guardrails. And I believe in free speech as much as you. I would fight I don't I don't disagree. I don't agree with um a lot of what you put out on social media, but I will fight for your right to be able to say it. Great. Yeah. Okay.\n\nSo, listen, let's talk about diversity, equity, and inclusion, all right? That's been a target of yours lately on X. You uh on There was a repost of Ben Shapiro that you claim that DEI is killing people. Specifically, you point to medicine. You claim that DEI programs are putting people at a risk. Do you really believe this to be true? And what evidence do you have to support it?\n\nUm what I was referring to there was that if uh if we lower the standards for doctors, uh such so that they you know, you if if the test for a doctor is lowered, uh that then the probability of them making a mistake and killing someone is obviously going to be higher. Wait, say that again. I am not sure I understand what you said. I want to make sure I understand what you're saying.\n\nI should Yes, if if these if the standards for passing medical exams and becoming a doctor or or especially if it's something like a surgeon, if the standards are lowered, uh uh then the probability that the surgeon will make a mistake is higher. They're making mistakes in their exam, they they may make mistakes with people, and that may result in people dying. What evidence do you have though that they're lowering the standards?\n\nThere's no evidence of that. I believe there is. There's no evidence of that, Elon. What what is the evidence? I believe they have literally lowered the standards at at Duke University, and that is what the article is referring to. There's no evidence There's no evidence There's no evidence about lowering standards, and I think that there is I believe that is a false statement you're making. Okay, well, we'll we'll figure it out. Yeah.\n\nI think the interesting thing is when this is posted on the next platform, there will be a whole bunch of things that rebut what you said and what what I said, and so people can then make their own decision based on the replies, the rebuttals, and the community notes.\n\nI think that's fair, but I do think that on this particular topic, I do think that you and Ben Shapiro are reaching in about this because there was a what What Ben posted said that people were He gave instances of people who were deliberately harming people. Nowhere in the thread does Ben suggest at all, I should say, that anyone is being killed as a a result of DEI. Um that's purely speculative.\n\nThere's research on DEI and medicine, and there's no evidence that standards are being lowered, that DEI's affecting medicine. Actually, like only 5% of doctors are black, and a small percent Yeah, I think you'll find that when this is posted to the X platform, that people will reply to it with evidence. Maybe I'm wrong, let's see. Okay. So, but That's my whole thing about moderation. Maybe you're wrong, but you'll put it out there.\n\nYou don't know if it's right. Do you think that you have a responsibility to make sure something is right before you, the person who owns it, Elon Musk, who is a huge figure in the world, that you should know that it's true, that some of there are people that X who can get research for you before you put something out there like that. That's not necessarily true, even in other examples.\n\nUm if I say something that uh is inaccurate, I'm immediately corrected on the platform. That's the advantage of real-time uh system like X. So, there'll be immediately in the replies correct people correcting me. There'll be community note that will correct me, um which is attached to the actual post itself. as many people will read the Yes. Do you think as many people read that as it reads your tweet?\n\nYes, in fact and if if there's a community note that happens uh later that where somebody didn't see, but they replied to that uh or interacted with that post, we will notify them that there's now a community note correcting that post. Mhm. Just so you Whereas if you consider the conventional media, that doesn't happen. Conventional media makes false statements all the time with no and nobody ever hears the correction.\n\nWhen I was in conventional media, I can only speak for myself. If I got something wrong, if someone got something wrong on the platform that that I was on, it was corrected and we made sure that it was corrected. Now, I can't speak for anyone else. That's I think I don't think that's a universal situation. Okay.\n\nSo, I just want just the research that you're talking Do you believe that people are dying because medical standards DEI is causing medical standards to be lowered? Do you actually believe people are dying because of that? I I believe that it uh if if we if we lower the standards for what it takes to become a doctor You're saying if we lower the standards, but do you believe people are dying because the standards are being lowered?\n\nI I don't I have to ask that is yes an issue, but it could become an issue. Okay. But the actual evidence and history shows the exact opposite if you look at how minorities were treated by the medical system. Oh, most doctors most doctors now are white. And there are lots of mistakes in medicine. So, you're saying that my doctors are have bad medical care?\n\nI'm trying to understand your logic here when it comes to DEI because there's no actual evidence of what you're saying. No, I I said So, if the standards like if like let's say uh I think that particular thing was referring to surgeons. Let's say a surgeon is is asked to a a surgeon in training is asked to do a a series of operations under the supervision of a senior surgeon, and they get a bunch of those operations wrong.\n\nIf if if if that happens, and yet they are still approved to be a surgeon, the probability that someone will die, I think, at some point is high. Okay, I understand that, but that's a hypothetical. That doesn't mean it's happening. I didn't say it was I it's happening. You You didn't say it was happening. I said I said it will. You I said if if if if we lower standards, people will people will die.\n\nBut why respond to something or put something out there that has not happened? Because I could say, you know Because I don't want it to happen. I think we don't want to lower standards. Okay, if you look at the history of the medical industry, um especially when it comes to black Americans, it shows us the exact opposite. If you look at the Tuskegee experiment and all of that, only 5% of doctors are in America are black. All of them are white.\n\nSo, are you saying that if the majority of doctors are white, are you saying that D and there are still these inequities, right? And there is and people still there's still mistakes, are you blaming DEI for that?\n\nNo, I'm I'm very very basically saying that if we lower standards uh for what it takes to become uh a board certified surgeon uh or you know, oncologist or something where that are where the the kind of disease we're talking about, if you make a mistake, causes someone to die, then there more people will die than if we don't lower the standards. Therefore, we should not lower the standards.\n\ndo you think they're lowering the standards for minority doctors or women doctors or That's what the the article That's what that article suggested, yes. At the At Duke University. Okay. The evidence that I have shows that that's not true. So, listen, after the door blew off this mid-flight in this Alaskan Airlines flight, do you remember that?\n\nYou responded a post claiming that the average HBCU grad was less intelligent than the average airline pilot and stated that it will take an airline crashing, an airplane crashing and killing hundreds of people for them to change this crazy policy of DIE. I don't know if you Did you misspell it on purpose? Which should be DEI. Do you believe that women and minority pilots are inherently less intelligent and less skilled than white male pilots?\n\nNo, I'm just saying that we should not lower the standards for them. Okay. But there's no evidence that standards are being lowered when it comes to the airline industry. You've repeatedly said that there's no evidence that standards are being lowered and watch the replies showing all the evidence that it is. Replies though on social media or on Twitter are not necessarily fact and evidence. That's people's opinions. cite.\n\nOkay, all the The replies In the replies to this you will see how often the this the information cited showing that indeed there are significant cases where standards are lowered. And I do hope that happens. I do hope that happens and and I look forward to it. As you said, if you're wrong, then you're wrong and if I'm wrong, then I'm wrong. Okay, so let's So, I'm glad we're having this conversation and debate.\n\nThis is what you should we should be doing, debating the issue. So, if I'm wrong, then I'm wrong and then they'll be proven in the thing and you as well. But I just want to tell you that that pilot that you talked about in fact was a woman pilot, landed the plane safe safely despite the major found malfunction with the equipment. Boeing has taken responsibility for that incident saying that it was caused by a faulty door panel.\n\nSo, I'm not sure what that had to do with lowering the standards for pilots when it was a faulty lowering standards for pilots. It's It's the the incentive structure I I believe at Boeing changed to uh, include DEI as uh, as as a fundamental executive incentive. Um, so but I In my view, it should be purely about passenger safety.\n\nOkay, but do you understand how by saying just that standards are being lowered and that you're implying that they're being lowered because people are less skilled and less intelligent and you're talking about people of color and or women? Uh, I Look, I'm I'm saying we should not lower standards. But do you you don't That's it. I think everyone can agree that you can't you shouldn't lower standards.\n\nGreat, that's what But you're implying that they're lowering standards because of people of color or women because someone is not a white male. You're saying that they're less skilled and less intelligent. That's what you're saying. not saying that. I'm simply saying that they are Then why would they be lowering the standards? I don't know. Why are they lowering the standards? Just so you know, 5% of pilots are female, 4% are black.\n\nSo you're you know, you're talking about this widespread takeover of minorities and women when that's not actually true. I'm not saying there's a widespread takeover. Well, you're saying that the standards are being lowered because of certain people. Um, and you how do you you don't believe in DEI, right? Do you not believe in diversity, equity, and inclusion?\n\nI think we should be uh, treat people uh, according to their skills uh, and their integrity and that's it. Do you know that studies show Studies show? Yeah. Well, we can look them up. What So, your reaction to studies show and I understand, right? Because I always like to say I always like to point to an exact uh, study, right? Something that is factual.\n\nIt's the same thing when you talk about, well, let's see what the replies are on Twitter or on X. Yes, those aren't data. I so I feel the same I feel the same way about that. But this is what studies have shown and people will reply and they'll say that companies with more diversity in and leadership teams have reported higher innovation, race and those in with a lower with lower diversity or low diversity.\n\nAnd they're better companies and they make more money. This whole idea about DEI, if you go woke or whatever, you go broke, that's not necessarily true. People with diverse leadership teams and diverse workers make more money and more innovative. Um like I said, my view is that the only basis for promoting somebody should be their skills, talents, and uh their integrity, and that's it.\n\nI want to ask you about there's a there's a federal government EEOC is they are also currently involved in a lawsuit against Tesla that alleges that there's a history of widespread racial harassment against black Tesla employees as well as a pattern of retaliation for speaking out. What do you say to that? Uh well, there's I don't believe that is that is true.\n\nUm I think we've got a very good uh Like if if you walk around the the the Tesla Fremont plant, I think it's a very good atmosphere. Um in fact, I I practically lived there for 3 years trying to make the production work. Were you aware if you live there Were you aware of such behavior? I never saw it. So, you're saying that this is not true, it's not happening? Well, I mean, there's over 20,000 people.\n\nSo, you say like if there's over 20,000 people in one building, well, is everyone going to be behave properly? No. Did I see any any situations that I thought were improper? I did not. Uh let's talk about trans rights and the the woke mind virus cuz you talk about that a lot. You write about that a lot on the thing. You have been deeply outspoken about the issue of trans rights.\n\nYou posted trans rights you posted that pronouns in bio mean the woke mind virus ate your brain. Do you know what the term woke actually means? Um it's come to mean a lot of things. But what it actually what originally it was meant to mean is just being aware of inequities in society and and being aware of facts and and history. Yeah, I think it's come to be I think I think being aware of inequities in society is fine, of course.\n\nUm but uh trying to blame everything uh on on trying to make everything a race issue is uh I think a divisive and corrosive to society. Even as it relates to trans issues, which is what I'm Yeah, great race or, you know, gender or whatever. You think blaming you think that society blames everything on racism now? It blames a lot of things on it and uh Yeah. You think that's unfair? Yeah. Why?\n\nI think I think we should we should we should we should we should uh not not make this a constant uh subject. I mean, it it needs to move on. I think we should just, you know, um treat people like people. You don't agree that there's this country was founded on racism and founded on slavery and and in many ways inequities. Um that still continue on to this day.\n\nI think every country uh at at that time and I think even today uh was extremely racist. Um every country um and um obviously a lot uh slavery was present in uh about half this country. Um and not but not was not present in the in the uh north. Uh there was racism for sure. Uh but uh you know, the I I think we we we we want to look to the future rather than the past.\n\nUm and uh instead of engaging in a constant rehashing of the past because in fact if you look at history if you study history broadly everyone was a slave everyone. Yes well not everyone was a slave not everyone was a slave. Okay but We all we all we all all descended from slaves. Yeah well all of us. Yeah it's just a question of when is it was it more recent or less recent that's it right.\n\nUm so the But what what future do we want do we want is this something we want to make part of our constant dialogue forever or do we do we want to say like let's just move on and treat everyone uh you know uh according to just who they are as an individual. I agree with you with that that's the ideal. But what the evidence shows is that that's not what's actually in practice. I think we're doing better than anywhere else. That's true.\n\nI agree with that but that doesn't mean anything that doesn't mean a lot to a whole lot of people who aren't able to take advantage of the opportunities that you were able to take advantage of simply because of the color of your skin. What what advantage what what advantage does my color of my skin give me? Well there's a certain there's an ease that you have in society that you that many people of color don't.\n\nYou were able to come to this country voluntarily there are many people who were not able to come to the country voluntarily there are people who came here as a slave. to come here. And there is a legacy of slavery that still continues on there's a legacy of racism that still continues on in this country that's and that's undeniable. Well if if if we keep talking about it non-stop it will never go away.\n\nIf we keep making that the central thing it will never go away. Well why do you believe that? I think I'm speaking a simple statement of fact. Um so I think I think we want to get away from making everything a race or a gender or whatever issue. Just treat people like individuals. Do you have any desire to understand what many people of color and even trans people, um, how they feel about this country and how they're treated in this country.\n\nIf they if they say and they believe that they are treated a certain way in this country, why don't you believe them? You you can't have a situation where where someone is is a self-described victim and and that you and they just get to be that because that's how they feel. I think that that does happen in some cases, but not all cases. And I think that not understanding the history of the country, I think is, um, is a a real shame.\n\nLook, I've had an incredible opportunity and other countries. I've had incredible opportunities as a person of color. Right, but I've also been discriminated against and I know that I have. And I know that that's real. And for someone to say that that isn't happening and I should not I should just move forward and not think about that and ignore the past is insulting. I'm not saying it Don, you keep putting words in my mouth.\n\nI'm not saying it I didn't say that you said it. I'm saying that we want to we we as a we as a country should move beyond questions of of race and gender and we should treat people like individuals and and base our opinions on them on the you know, uh, their their, uh, their their their character and their skills. I don't think that anyone will disagree with that. Exactly.\n\nAll I'm saying is that that's not happening and it's not equal for everyone. That those opportunities don't happen for everyone and I am a living example that they don't. I know that they don't because I live it. You've been incredibly successful. I have been and in spite of it all, but I but I am I know what I know. I've experienced what I've experienced.\n\nYou haven't done that and I cannot, um, I don't know what it's like to be from South Africa. I don't know what it's like to be a white man. I don't know what it's like to be a woman. I don't know what it's like to be a Latino person. I don't know that, so I wouldn't speak for them and just say, \"You need to move on.\" That's not for me to say. I Maybe I believe that the country it would be great if the country could live up to that ideal.\n\nYou think that everyone has the same opportunities in America regardless of their background and ethnicity? Do you agree you No, I don't think everyone has the same opportunities. Okay. So, um when you talk about Let's talk about trans rights. When you decided to um to talk about the the trans rights movement, um you said that it was a woke mind virus. Why do you believe the trans rights movement is a woke mind virus?\n\nWhat do you mean by woke mind virus? Woke mind virus is um when you you stop caring about uh people's skills um and their integrity and you start focusing instead on gender and race and other things that are different from that. Um I think uh the woke mind virus is fundamentally racist, fundamentally sexist, and fundamentally evil. Okay. And we've got a little bit more time, so you choose your questions carefully.\n\nOkay, so Okay, thank you for that, but I I would appreciate you answering these. I think it's important that we're doing this. I think it's important to the to world the world to hear this especially what's going on in our country. Uh the reason I ask you Listen, there are a whole lot of things that people may be uh have questions about when it comes to transgender people.\n\nEven people who are part of the LGBTQ plus community have have questions about that. But if you are a free speech absolutist, right? Um and that is part of the First Amendment. Also, the freedom of expression falls under that First Amendment as well. So, why can't people choose to identify with the gender that they feel comfortable with or with a use a pronoun. Isn't that part of freedom of expression?\n\nUh I guess though that they can they can ask others to whatever they feel they can they can ask others to do anything. What it it's a difficult question whether they whether they mandate that others do it. Okay. Okay. Let's Let's talk a little more about free speech and for advertisers, right? Because all this controversy, I believe as you know, has made X less appealing to advertisers. About half of them have left the platform.\n\nYou called advertisers that left x. com. You said they were oppressors. You've even gone as far as saying it publicly that they can go F themselves or go [ __ ] themselves. Advertisers if they're if they're going to force censorship on the on the company before advertising, then uh obviously I find that unacceptable. You find it unacceptable. Why is that not a form of of free speech? They are free to advertise where they want.\n\nThey're not beholden to They're not obligated to advertise obligated to x. com. Right. So, how is that not free speech? They They That's whereas the other platforms will censor on behalf of of advertisers, the X platform will not. Okay. So, but you think it's You don't think it's okay for them not to advertise with or have their content or their advertisement next to something that is anti-Semitic or That is a different question.\n\nUh You We We There's There's You can absolutely choose where next to which content do you want to have advertising to appear. Absolutely, of course. And we do We have, I think, very good ad placement controls in this regard. Yeah. So, you said if they kill the company, it's them. But doesn't the buck stop with you? I mean, you're on it. I have to say I Choose your question carefully. There's 5 minutes left.\n\nOkay, but so Is this the question you want to ask? The same question is you said you said that they are killing the company, but you're the head of the company. The buck stops with you. I acquired X in order to preserve freedom of speech in America, the First Amendment. And I'm going to stick to that. And if that means making less money, so be it. So I have to be Listen, I I'm just being honest, right? I'm not trying to like get you or anything.\n\nI was just surprised that you would blame other people for killing the company. I mean, but you're the I mean, when you say the buck stops with the president of the United States regardless of what happens, right? So I Why would this Why would that question upset You seem upset by it. Are you? I think you're And I'm not trying to upset you. Well, you are upsetting me because the way you're phrasing questions, I think is is not cogent.\n\nUm It's not what? Not cogent. Cogent? Yes. Go ahead. Uh so the if if if if given a choice where an advertiser is saying like you have to censor all this content on the platform irrespective of where their advertising appears, uh then our answer will be like, \"Look, you you you can choose where you want your advertising what you want your advertising to appear next to. You can't insist on censorship of the entire platform.\n\nIf you insist on censorship of the entire platform even where your advertising doesn't appear, uh then uh obviously we won't we will not uh want them as an advertiser.\" So what what would you say to advertisers too who have left the platform or who are considering coming back or not coming back? What would you like to say to them? Well, first of all, uh almost all of our advertisers are coming back to the platform.\n\nSo it's a very short list of advertisers who are not coming back to the platform. Um and uh our advertising revenue is rising rapidly. Uh and our subscription revenue is rising rapidly and I feel very optimistic about the future of the X platform. Okay. Listen, I'm not I'm honestly, I'm not meaning to offend you. You're an intense person. Where does that intensity come from? I was born that way. And I had a tough childhood. You did? So, yeah.\n\nHow so? All right. Walter Isaacson goes into it in the book and and we only have a couple minutes left. So, All right. Too long to to describe. Uh So, the one or two questions I can do and then we'll have to call it. I Okay. Again, I don't mean to upset you. Why are you You just No, I have a whole room full of people waiting to meet with me. Okay. So, we're just going to go over time. Okay. All right. I understand that.\n\nUm so, you when you talk about you said you were born that way. Is that um Did you think that the way that you see the world has to do with your relationship with anyone? Perhaps your your father or someone in in your family? I think we're all affected by the people we we grow up with. My aspiration is to do whatever it takes to extend the extend consciousness into the future. That's my goal.\n\nUm to make life multi-planetary as part of extending conscious consciousness into the future. Has this has Have the past few years and considering everything that's gone on, has it been difficult for you and your family life? It's been okay. So, then how do you see your legacy?\n\nElon, how How do you see How people see you in the First of all, I say that the Um if I died knowing that I that I did what was right or or did my best to do what was right, and even if in the history books they said I did did wrong, I would still feel okay about that. I care about the reality of goodness, not the perception of it. Um I think we should view civilization as tenuous, as fragile.\n\nUm if you if you do study history broadly, you'll see that there's a rising pool of civilizations that don't always go up. Um so we should do everything we possibly can to preserve and and extend civilization as we know it and improve it. Um become more enlightened over time. And we uh therefore want to address civilizational risks.\n\nUh we want to make sure that uh we don't have for example demographic collapse which is the case in a lot of countries. Uh just very low birth rate. Um we we want to avoid obviously avoid World War anything that is a civilizational risk. That's what I care about, civilizational risks. Um how do we extend consciousness into the future such that we are able to better understand the the nature of reality. That's what I care about.\n\nThat's my motivation. you have to go. If you'll just give me a I'll do a rapid fire thing here. Is if there is there anything that you would change about um anything that you've done in your life in the past or recently? Um I've made many mistakes over the years. If I had a time machine I'd go back and fix them. Uh but I don't have a time machine. Thank you. Thank you. I appreciate it. Thank you so much. So that's it.\n\nAnd as Elon would say you be the judge. Let me tell you something about this show. The conversation doesn't end just because the camera stops. We'll see you next time. Thanks for watching. Thanks for watching the Don Lemon show. Click on the image in the top right to subscribe to my channel and the thumbnail in the bottom right to watch more content from my show. I'll see you next time.","textByLang":{"en":"Welcome to the Don Lemon Show everyone. We're still here. In a minute I'm going to bring you my conversation with Elon Musk, the one that everyone is talking about. But first, let me tell you a bit about the show. Contrary to what you might have heard, we weren't canceled by X. Yes, after months of begging me, wooing me to offer some exclusive content on his platform, Elon Musk decided to scrap the deal.\n\nBut our plan is and always has been to release this show everywhere, on YouTube, on Spotify, on iHeart Radio. Just about any place you stream content. Now for my conversation with Elon. As with all my interviews, no restrictions, no ground rules, nothing off limits or out of bounds. That is until the interview ended. So what went wrong? I don't know. But my hope is that you learn something about both Elon and me.\n\nTwo people who come from completely different vantage points on almost every single issue. And I challenge you, Elon, to watch the whole interview and tell the world why this isn't what you claim you want on X. Thank you for inviting us here. You're welcome. To Tesla headquarters. I it's I'm surprised of how big it is. I've never seen it. Yeah, it's about three times the size of the Pentagon. Yeah. And we built it in 16 months.\n\nIt's the fastest construction project in the United States since uh World War II. So I'm here, you know, as you know, I'm on the platform because you are you say you're a free speech absolutist, right? No no conditions. Uh free speech is as as much as possible within the bounds of the law. Yeah. So the reason I'm saying that is because there are no conditions on this interview. You said that, you know, speak to you for an hour.\n\nI don't like sound bites, so I welcome that. So let's get into it. So we're here in Austin, South by Southwest is going on. We're at the Tesla headquarters. You are in the process of moving SpaceX here, I understand. No. Uh so uh SpaceX has a massive uh facility in South Texas where we build and launch Starship.\n\nAnd then we we have um in Bastrop near uh Austin we uh are about to start production at a Starlink uh a large Starlink factory for Starlink terminals. But it's but but we're not shutting down any facilities in California. Um listen, we are here as part of a launch of a news interview show that is going to be on x. com. Uh it's coming as a media industry as you know is going through a whole lot of changes. X is also been affected by that.\n\nWhere do you see x. com's role in the future of news and journalism, Elon? Well, I I think the I see the the X as uh it it's it's already the number one source of news uh in the world. So, it is number one the uh the number one way that people actually are informed about any kind of news, meaning real-time events, is uh on the X platform, formerly Twitter. Um There's there's nothing even close for real-time news.\n\nSo, um we also want to expand upon that. Um and we've we have done so with uh long-form content. So, instead of just doing what used to be called tweets, you can now do long-form posts. You can post an entire essay. In fact, you can now uh put an entire book post an entire book to the platform. Um you can do long-form video content. Uh so, you can do uh up to 4-hour video segments.\n\nUm we really want news in whatever form it is, or information, I should say, in whatever form it is to be available on our platform, whether it's short, long, text, pictures, video, whatever the case may be. Yeah. And some of the stuff that we do, long-form video, interview shows, what have you. Yeah. You um you reached out over the summer and you said, \"It would be great to have Maddow, Don Lemon, and others on the left put on this uh platform.\n\nYou receive full support. The digital town square is for all. What do you mean by that? Well, I just mean that we want to make sure that there are a wide variety of viewpoints. That it's uh you know, we also have, for example, Tucker Carlson who most people will view as being on the right. Um and uh you know, that's that's a quite a quite a prominent uh name on the right.\n\nWe want to have uh prominent names on the left as well uh to provide uh different views of points of view uh as well as centrists. Just basically a wide range of of viewpoints on the platform so users can uh hear different opinions. Uh you they can hear you know, what is what's your point of view, what's Sacha's point of view, and make the and you know, and people can make their own decision about what they what they believe.\n\nYou didn't mean that I'm on the left. Did you think that? were on the left, but I don't know. I'm used Well, let's just say I don't know what the left is or the right is frankly these days because things can be quite polarized, but just my impression was that you were you you you you're more likely to be described as on the left than the right. Uh I might I might sense it's you're sort of center-left. I don't know. You tell me.\n\nWell, did you ever watch me on CNN or did you watch I saw say say Yeah, not I I saw segments. Yeah. But CNN is generally considered left. Yeah. Why do you say that? What What do I say CNN is generally considered left? Uh I think if if you if you look at any sort of media survey of what is on the left or right, I think they'd say like, for example, Fox is on the right and CNN is on the left. Yeah. So, that's what is it Am I missing something here?\n\nOkay. Are you missing something? I I don't know. I I I think that what you would when I read that, I said like many uh of my critics or detractors, they never really watched me on CNN. they just saw the clips of me either on social media or maybe on Fox News or a conservative media where it's sort of a where I've become a character or a caricature of what I actually am and it's taken out of context. Uh sure. Well, how would you describe yourself?\n\nUm I would describe myself as someone who is I I I am independent in my thinking and I vote for people based on the issues and how I feel about it, not necessarily because uh of political leaning of some sort. Well, I agree with that approach.\n\nI think that's generally how how people should uh you know, take things which is that I mean there's there's there are a whole sort of set of issues which are sort of somewhat arbitrarily bucketed into right or left. Um but I think most I think most citizens uh would think that uh they're they would agree with some things on the left but not everything or they'd agree on some things on the right but not everything.\n\nUm so uh that's that's what um I think most people feel, I guess. How much longer and then maybe maybe the answer's forever. How much longer are we going to have to call it the formerly known as Twitter? I mean, even Prince went back to Prince instead of is it always going to be X? It's definitely always going to be X. So, X is going through some changes. You said a lot um of media companies are going through some changes.\n\nIt's It You're in charge of an incredible platform, Elon. How do you feel that's going? I think it's going pretty well so far. Um we're seeing record usage. Um we've added a tremendous amount of functionality. I mentioned the that uh that you know, it used to be that you can only do short, you know, text and maybe a a picture or something like that, short video. Uh but now you can do long-form text, long-form video.\n\nUh we've added audio video calling. Uh so, you can not not just do text DMs, you can do audio video calling. Um we've improved the algorithm, I think, significantly. Um and um made the system faster and better and that's reflected in the increased uh usage. So, let's talk about that because you said you wanted all points of view, right? It's a digital town square for all. Yeah.\n\nIt's the the platform has kind of picked up where conservative media, some conservative media just left off. They're moving to the right, increasingly becoming part of a conservative dialogue, sometimes even conspiracy theories, right? There was an article recently written about you saying that you, Donald Trump, and X were the most important um people uh or places or whatever icons when it comes to the MAGA movement. Do you agree with that?\n\nHow do you feel about that? Uh well, I mean, there are nonsense articles written all the time, and I certainly wouldn't agree with that one. I'd put it in the nonsense category. So, uh the the the objective fact of the matter, in my opinion, was that um that old Twitter was a a fundamentally a a tool of the the far left. As far And that was really, I think, a lot of it was due to being located in San Francisco, Berkeley.\n\nUm and so, uh it wanted to essentially project the SF Berkeley uh political dogma worldwide. Uh Do you think it was far left? Yes, I do. I I used to get I actually got off the platform because I would get so much hate tweets when it it was called in, so much hate tweets, and and just got from right-wing conspiracy theorists, being called everything from, you know, [ __ ] to Sure. Well, it's the it's the internet, you know.\n\nThe people will do the I mean, I've been called every name times a thousand. Yeah. Do you agree that it's right now, and that it's even moved into sort of MAGA land and conspiracy theory? I certainly don't think it's right. Um the the old-school Twitter uh suspended and suppressed uh accounts that you'd call on the right 10 times more than it accounts on the left.\n\nAnd even when they did suspend an account on the left, uh it was because of arguments between two people on the left. Uh the political donations of old Twitter were 99% Democrat. Does that sound left right left wing or right wing to you? The Twitter donations? Yes. You know when they look at donations back from a company? If a company donates nine literally 99% of all donations are to Democrats.\n\nDoes that strike you as a left-leaning or a right-leaning company? the company donated? I understand what you're saying. What I want to tell you is that uh Twitter employees people at Twitter their political donations uh were 99% literally 99% uh to Democrats. That's obviously an extremely left-leaning group. My question to the leading into this is about MAGA. You and speaking of MAGA, you recently met with Donald Trump in Florida.\n\nWhat did you guys talk about? Uh I was at a dinner with I was not at dinner. I was at a breakfast at a friend's place and Donald Trump came by. That's it. So, you didn't go there to meet him? I No, I went to a uh uh a friend of mine's a house uh and it said it said Donald Trump's coming by for breakfast. Is that uh if just so you know, like okay, fine. What did you discuss? I've I don't Um let's just say I I he did most of the talking.\n\nWhat did he say? Just the the the normal things he says. There was nothing particularly ground ground ground ground breaking or new, but uh he you know uh President Trump likes to talk. And so, he talked. I don't I I don't recall him saying anything that he hasn't said publicly. Uh and that was it. It was just a breakfast. Did he ask you for money? He didn't. Did he ask you for a donation? No. He didn't. No.\n\nYou said you're not going to donate to any candidate. That's correct. Why not? I think Well, I I'll voice my opinion. Um I think uh I don't want to I don't want to put uh, a thumb on the scale monetarily. That is, you know, significant. Are you going to loan him money to help pay his bills? No. Not at all? To his legal bills? I'm not I'm not paying paying his legal bills in any way, shape, or form. And he did not ask you for money?\n\nAnd he did not ask me for money. Are you going to So, you're not going to endorse a candidate? I may in the final stretch endorse a candidate, uh, but I don't know yet. Uh, I want to make a considered decision uh, before the election. Uh, and if I do decide to endorse a candidate, then I will explain exactly why. Are you leaning towards anyone? No. You're not leaning towards anyone.\n\nYou said you've been Let me say I'm leaning leaning away from Biden. You're leaning I've made no secret of that. Are you concerned about losing your security clearance clearance if Biden is reelected? Does that have anything to do with it? No. You are leaning away from Biden, but you're not going to endorse anyone. It seems like an endorsement of President Trump because there are only two people who are running now. Nikki Haley is out.\n\na lot could happen between now and the election. So, we'll see who in the final analysis, uh, are the choices for president. Um, and at that point, I may or may not endorse, uh, one of the candidates. If I do, I will provide a very, uh, detailed explanation of why I am endorsing one or the other. At that point, might you contribute or donate? I I I think it's unlikely.\n\nSo, you have been posting up a storm as you always do in the past couple weeks about the redesign of the Tesla, uh, Roadster coming at the end of this year. Are there any kind of updates that you can talk about that to expect from his flagship EV? I mean, Tesla stock is down the last 6 months. What's next for the company? You know, the stocks go up and down, but what really matters is are we making and delivering uh, and uh uh great products.\n\nUh the the Tesla products are um outstanding. Uh last year the Model Tesla Model Y was the best-selling uh car of any kind in the world. So, it was about 1. 2 million units. It was the best-selling car despite being I think around 50% more expensive than the next best-selling vehicle. Um of any kind, not just electric. So, um I think this that's testament to the incredible work of the Tesla team. Mhm. Um and uh we launched the Cybertruck.\n\nObviously, that's uh being put very well received. Um we have uh I think over a million orders for the Cybertruck. Um so, uh it's it's really special product. That is that is I think the Cybertruck is one of those product that products that come comes along really once in several years, maybe once a decade. It's it's a Cybertruck is a once a decade product. It is so uh special and and I think it's our best product.\n\nUm so, But everyone improves over time. I mean, Apple you my I thought my phone was here, but Apple, you know, the phone got better over time. The I'm sure that your your cars will get better over time. You have been tweeting about the the updates in in the Roadsters. There's something that we should sure.\n\nThe You did mention the Roadsters, so um look, I don't want to give away you know, much more than what I've said uh publicly except that the Roadster will be uh a collaboration between SpaceX and Tesla. So, you know, you can expect some rockety stuff there. A flying car? Maybe. It's not out of the question. Go on. No, I I look, I got to I got to reserve the cool stuff with the, you know, when when we actually unveil it.\n\nBut it's it's it's going to it's going to be really cool. It's going to have um it's going to have some rocket technology in it. Um I think the Well, the only way to do something that's cooler than the Cybertruck is is to combine uh SpaceX and and and and Tesla technology to create something that's not even really a car. Then what would it be? Something that's never existed before. I'm getting Jetsons vibes. Only Jetsons vibes.\n\nAnd and the world may not be aware like some things that I have said publicly is that it'll do 0 to 60 in under 1 second. So, um that's by far faster than any uh you know, sports car that exists. Um and um and that's not even the most exciting thing about it. Does it have wings? Ooh. No, it does it does not have big wings cuz big wings would be unwieldy on the road. Does it have propellers? It does not have propellers. Okay, it has wheels.\n\nIt does have wheels. Okay. This is not a roadster 20 questions. It has a Does it have a steering wheel? Not exactly. What is it? It will will it have it'll have a drive-by-wire uh yoke essentially like a kind of like the way aircraft are and what modern jets are controlled. And do you think it's the way of the future that everyone will follow your lead on this?\n\nI don't think anyone will ever make anything like the uh the the roadster that that we're going to make. Let's talk now about um SpaceX, Tesla. You got a lot of lawsuits. You've got x. com. You've got a lot going on. How do you relax? Well, um I relax is I spend time with my kids, my friends, and I, you know, make somewhat of a nerd technologist so that I like playing video games. So, uh I'll play video games with with with friends online.\n\nUh lately I've been playing Diablo. Um and um but I've played almost all the games over the years. Uh, a long time ago I was like semi-pro good at Quake. This is really dating me. Uh, because we're talking about like 125 years ago. I don't know video games. I just know that my uh, my great nephew loves Fortnite and some other stuff. He's always with the headphones and and doing the thing. So, that helps you relax, right? So, do you Yeah.\n\nThis is and you It's the nice thing is you've got If you've got friends in different cities and they're playing the same game, you can both go online at the same time and, uh, play the game together even though you're in different cities. Listen, I'm not asking you anything that anyone else hasn't asked you about um, your controversial stuff that you tweet. You post a lot of controversial stuff. Is that considered blowing off steam?\n\nUm, well, I guess I do enjoy using the platform. I mean, I do call, um, the X platform the the PvP or player versus player, uh, platform. Um, so, in video games there's, uh, player versus like environment, um, where you're not playing against other people. Um, and then there's PvP which is like hardcore. You're actually playing against other people. And, uh, So, but that's blowing off steam for you. Yeah. Yeah, it's It is to some degree.\n\nNot always. I mean, obviously I use it for, uh, to post jokes, to post, uh, you know, sometimes trivia, uh, sometimes things that are great importance. So, you do a lot of it at night, like late at night. So, when you're doing this, are you are you sober when you do it? Like, almost always, yeah. the influence of anything? Uh, no. I don't I don't drink. I don't really No, I no. So, you don't No drink, no smoke, no nothing.\n\nI mean, you smoked pot with Rogan. I had one puff. Yeah. I think anyone who smokes pot can tell I don't know how to how to smoke pot. But you've admitted that you've had you have a ketamine prescription that Yeah, yeah, yeah. What's that for? Well, I mean, it's pretty private to ask somebody about a medical prescription, you know.\n\nUm but uh it's I think it's it's something I'd say like uh there are times when I have um a sort of uh I don't know like a negative chemical state in my in my brain. I like depression, I guess, you know, it's or or like depression that's not linked to any negative views um and and and then uh ketamine is helpful for uh getting you getting one outside out of a negative frame of mind.\n\nWell, listen, I I I in fact I generally I'm sorry, I'm not a doctor, but I would say uh if someone has depression issues, they should consider talking to their doctor about ketamine instead of SSRIs. Listen, I I I think that um ketamine uh and drug therapy is uh increasingly becoming more in the mainstream. Yeah. Do you think that you're doing it under a doctor's care, right? Yeah, yeah.\n\nIt's literally a prescription from an actual a real doctor, not like, you know. Yeah, but do you do you feel like you ever abuse it? I don't think so. You can't use too much ketamine. You can't really get work done. That's why I have a lot of work. So, I'm I'm typically putting in like, you know, 16-hour days. That's normal for me. And it's it's it's rare for me to even take off a weekend day.\n\nSo, I don't really have like, you know, a situation where I can be not mentally acute for an extended period of time. Like, I can't I can't really get wasted with with cuz I can't get my work done. So, how often do you take it? Um well, it's it'd be like a a small amount once every other week or something like that. But there's I mean, there's not on the bottle where it says take this dose this many times a week or whatever for your depression.\n\nMy doctor said dose. I I it's there there are several weeks that'll go by where I don't use it. You don't use it. Yeah, I think it's just like I said, I think the what I find ketamine is if you if you have like literally like a chemical state in your brain that you can't you can't just think yourself out of then uh ketamine can help is helpful for getting you out of a depressive mind state.\n\nYou suffer from depression or you have a depressive mind state? And I ask you as someone who has suffered from depression. I wouldn't say that I I I wouldn't say that I have like a case of like extended depression. Um it's just once in a while I get into a a negative sort of chemical mind state once in a while. It's not a not a common thing. Um but once in a while it does happen. Where do you think that comes from?\n\nI think it's just genetic basically. You think it's just genetic history? I think so. Um Yeah. I mean some people are just wired wired to be happy all the time. Uh some are unfortunately wired to be sad all the time. Um And in my case um you know, I'm generally pretty pretty positive and optimistic. Uh but once in a while uh I don't know what happens. It's some uh Like I said, I think it's just the chemical tides in your brain once in a while.\n\nIt's like a brain storm. Yeah. Do you ever worry that this may get in the way of your government contracts and clearances? And also and Wall Street as well. Well, from that point of Wall Street uh what matters is execution. You know, uh are you building value for investors? Um and Tesla is worth about as much as the rest of the car industry combined. From nothing. So, I don't you know, that's pretty good.\n\nUm As I mentioned, we had we had the best selling car on Earth last year. Um So, from from investors standpoint, if there is something I'm taking, I should keep taking it. Have you you talked about your ketamine use and depression?\n\nHave you you also have said and The reason I should I should say like the like the reason I mentioned uh the the ketamine prescription on the X platform was because I thought maybe this is something that could help other people. That's why I mentioned it. Yeah. Can we talk about the great replacement theory now? Um some of the things that you post the great replacement theory.\n\nYou claim that Democrats President Biden's immigration plan open up the border. They're the president is getting and Democrats are doing it to get more votes. Um But undocumented immigrants cannot vote in federal elections. So how is that possible? Right. Um well, you're conflating two things. What one is great replacement theory. The other one is which I I don't subscribe to that. I'm simply saying that there is a sense of here.\n\nUh if uh legal immigrants which I I think have a very strong bias to at least everything I've read. It's very strong bias to vote Democrat. Um the the more more that come to the country, the more they're likely to vote in that direction. But but it is in my view uh the a simple incentive to increase uh voters to Democrat voters. Um And yeah, so as you question is like how? So there's there's a few there's a a few ways that this works.\n\nOne is that uh when the census is done uh the census is based on all all people in an area whether they are citizens citizens or not. So uh there are concentration of uh people who came here legally in in a in a particular state or uh in a particular state that state will actually then get uh an increased number of house seats. So the the house seat apportionment is proportionate to the number of people not the number of citizens.\n\nSo the the the illegals overwhelmingly go to place like California and New York. Um and the if you just look at the look at the math, if if if you look at the apportionment with and without illegals, I believe California would lose I believe I believe the blue state there would be a net loss of blue states of approximately 20 seats in the house. Uh this also applies to the the electoral college.\n\nSo you say like, well, this also applies to to electing the president. Because the the the same the electoral votes are also done by by apportionment the same way that house seats are done. But the reason Elon the electoral college is in place is to to balance that. It's so that that doesn't happen. So what you're saying about it is the exact opposite of the reason why they the electoral college is there.\n\nThe electoral college at this point it at this point in in in our history gives people who are in smaller states and red states much more of an influence over our elections than people who are in blue states and the majority of the people in this country. That's what the electoral college does. It actually does the exact opposite of what you're saying. It protects people who are in smaller states and protects people who are in red states.\n\nWell, Who The red states because they tend to be smaller and and less popular. that that that that statement is is uh what what you said is is true, but what I said is also true. Uh which is that uh if if as is the case a disproportionate number of legal immigrants go to uh blue states, they amplify the effect of a of a blue state vote. And the math as I understand it, you can research this obviously very easily.\n\nI mean it it's like it's it's pretty straightforward to to research this. But my understanding is that there would be uh that that the the Democrats would lose approximately 20 seats in the house uh if illegals were not counted in census. And that's also 20 less electoral votes for president. So the illegals absolutely do affect the uh who controls uh the House of the House and who controls uh the presidency. It does not affect uh, the Senate.\n\nYeah. In blue states you're talking about. I don't believe that your information on on uh, that is right. Um, so listen let's talk more about the great replacement because the first time you did you posted on X about uh, this Jewish conspiracy you ended up apologizing. call it a a conspiracy I just said that there's a simple matter of incentives. You don't need a conspiracy when you have basic incentives.\n\nIn my view there is a basic incentive that's fundamental uh, that uh, for for the the Democrat Democrat party to foster an an ushering a large number of illegals. And they and and you don't need a conspiracy in that case because you have a very basic incentive. You could say I'm wrong about that incentive but that's my view. I I'm not buying into I don't buying some great replacement theory.\n\nI'm simply saying there appears to be a very clear incentive for uh, uh, Democrats to have to maximize number of illegals um, because it helps them win elections. I'm talking about the great replacement theory is also part of a Jewish conspiracy theory. And when you did the tweet or you responded to the tweet about that you ended up apologizing and uh, which I think is you know, is good that you ended up apologizing.\n\nYou went to Auschwitz with Ben Shapiro. Yeah. So you said you learned your lesson. What did you learn? I said I learned my lesson. You said you learned your lesson when it when you apologized and you said you went to Auschwitz. You saw what what No, I was already already aware of of of these things.\n\nAnd the nature of my comment that that really inflamed people um, what I was what I was trying to say and I did very quickly clarify this is what I'm saying is that uh, um, a number of uh, prominent uh, Jewish philanthropists fund uh, groups that they should really take a close look at funding because some of the some of the groups they fund um, I think are anti-Semitic. Yeah. Do you understand the connection between the two?\n\nThey're one there's a connection between you said Democrats and great replacement theory, but when it comes to the actual great replacement theory, originally it was started about Jewish people as you said flooding in the country. And then now people are using it for Democrats. Saying the same thing about Democrats. Flooding I might view it as a simple matter of incentives.\n\nI I I I'm I don't I actually don't see an incentive for uh Jewish people to want to have any get legal immigration. I don't I don't think there is such an incentive. The great replacement theory is a a neo-Nazi trope. It's in the neo-Nazi manifesto. It's in the Turner Diaries. It's referenced by the Buffalo mass shooter uh in his manifesto where 10 people um black people were murdered in Buffalo.\n\nIt's actual title of the Christchurch shooter's manifesto. 51 people in the Muslim mosque were murdered. 23 people uh murdered in El Paso by a shooter who used the same language that you use in that manifesto when you say Hispanic invasion. Is that not I didn't say Hispanic invasion. And you tweeted you quoted a tweet that said that called it a Hispanic invasion. If I quote something, it doesn't mean I agree with anything everything in it.\n\nIt's just something that I want I think this is something worth people should uh consider. Why would you quote something that you didn't believe? Because anything I quote is going to have a whole range of statements. Doesn't mean I agree with everything in it.\n\nDo you think if there if if you moderated yourself more if there was better content moderation on the platform, that you wouldn't have to answer these questions from reporters about the great great replacement theory as it relates to have to answer these questions. great replacement theory as it relates to Jewish people. Do you think that I don't have to answer questions from reporters.\n\nDon't The only reason I've done this interview is because you're on the X platform and you asked for it. Mhm. Uh otherwise I would not do this interview. So you don't think you Do you think that you wouldn't get in trouble or you wouldn't be criticized for these things or that Possibly I could care less. It You don't You don't care. No, I don't care. Why not? I don't think people should care what the media thinks about them.\n\nThey're terrible judges of character. Even someone who has one of the biggest social media and biggest information platforms in the world, you don't think you don't care, you don't think that there's you have any x. com or you have any responsibility to the truth or moderating the platform? Well, you're conflating the truth with the with the media and I think the media is not truthful. Well, not with just the the media.\n\nI mean, just the truth in general. I I care about truth very much. That's why we have, for example, community community notes on the X system. Um where uh in order for community note to surface and provide corrective information about what somebody posts and and my posts are equally subject to this. My I've been meaning to note it many times.\n\nUm the in order for before community note to surface, uh people who have historically disagreed must agree in order for a community note to surface. And all of the code for community notes is open source. All of the data is open source, so you can completely recreate it from scratch. The way to build trust is transparency. I have noticed community notes. I think that you are right about that and I do think community notes are helpful.\n\nI think any type of content moderation I do think that's helpful. You recently called content moderation though a digital chastity belt. Do you think that you you believe that X and you have some responsibility to moderate hate speech on the platform? I think we have a responsibility to adhere to the law. And we have a responsibility to be transparent about when things are shown, why they're shown. So, we that's why we open source our algorithm.\n\nUm the I think once you start getting going beyond the law, now you're putting your thumb on the scale. And we don't want to put our thumb on the scale. It doesn't concern you that hate speech has gone Research shows that it's gone up on the platform since you took over. That's not concerning to you? I believe that is false. In fact, the research that I've seen says it it went down.\n\nThe the study from the Institute of Strategic Dialogue found that anti-Semitic tweets doubled from June 22nd to February 2023. One study reported that as many as 86% of the posts reported for April content remained up after being reported. Hate speech on the platform is up. Uh so, what what they will typically do is they'll count the number of posts, but not count the number of views.\n\nSo, what matters is was that uh post given high visibility or what the did like one person see it? Uh and if you look at the number of views of how how many how many times was his content viewed on our platform, it is down substantially. Yeah. Well, that's not what what the study shows. And you said you like transparency. I'm going to show you this in in Don, you can get a study that will tell you whatever you want.\n\nthis is these are just a handful of extremely If you look at those anti-Semitic and racist tropes and tweets, and as of this morning, they're still on X. And from your own content policy, these posts should have been deleted. So, why haven't they been deleted? Why are they still there? Do you Uh we delete things if they are illegal. But these have been up there for a while. Are they illegal?\n\nThey're not illegal, but they're hateful and they can they can lead to violence. As I just read to you, the shooters, you know, in all of these mass shootings, attributed social media to radicalizing Don, you love censorship, is what you're saying. No, I don't love censorship. Then why are you why are you asking us to in moderation, but I I don't believe in Censorship is a is a Moderation is a propaganda word for censorship.\n\nBut don't you think free speech is one thing, right? Or not, you know, not censorship. illegal, we're going to take it down. If it's not illegal, then we're putting our thumb on the scale and we're being censors. You're putting your thumb on the scale for moderating hate speech. I mean, you don't put out child pornography. That's not It's illegal. That's some people would say that's considered censorship.\n\nI'm just saying, you No, I literally Don't you know I literally said if if something is legal, okay, we will obviously remove it. Okay. But if it is not legal, the laws in this country were are are put forward by the citizens. We're a democracy. If those laws were put in place by the by the people, we adhere to those laws. Okay, I agree with that. of of others. If you go beyond the law, you're actually going beyond the will of the people.\n\nOkay, agreed. With the law. But if you are doing something that promotes hate and violence and ultimately leads to killing, you don't feel there's you have any responsibility not to do that? Uh When when when the people who are doing it admittedly are saying articles all the time that lead to to violence and killing. Um Don't they Shouldn't they?\n\nLike you're applying a differential standard to But that would never that would never be in mainstream media. These types of images, that type of language, those things would never be We'd never in main When I was in mainstream media, we'd never promote things that would would be anti-Semitic. We would never promote things that would anti-Semitic, either. Did you Did you not see those? You said promote.\n\nIf content is on the platform, it doesn't mean we promote it. But that wouldn't be on a on a platform for mainstream media at all. No, but you can think of that that's mainstream media is has like whatever, 20 articles a day. Uh we have 500 million posts a day. Okay, understood. Does it bother you? How do you feel about that when you see it? I obviously disagree with that. I think it's not it's not good at all. Terrible.\n\nBut you don't want to get rid of it on the platform or at least moderate it. The laws that You're you're What what you're suggesting is censorship that goes beyond the law. And what I'm saying is I that we're I guess have a disagreement because I do not believe in censorship that goes beyond the law and you do. We have difference of opinion in that regard. I understand that, but these are your own rules on your own platform.\n\nThis these go against the the rules on your platform. That's why I'm asking you. If you had if you said, \"Listen, we allow everything.\" But that's not what your content rules say. And that's why I'm asking you, why are they still there? The Your own content policy. That's why I'm asking you that, not Which part of our content policy says that we have we should delete these these these things? Your content policy talks about hate speech.\n\nYes, we don't promote hate speech hate speech. And so you don't consider that hate speech? I guess you're not understanding what I'm saying. This this this if if if there's you can find like you can sign up right now and and and do a hundred things that are hateful. Um but if nobody reads it, it doesn't matter. So, You you you can think of X as being it's much like the internet.\n\nIt's not some ti- it's some tiny publication with like 20 articles today. It's 500 million But everyone has the opportunity to read it, Elon. I think you don't have the opportunity to read the internet. Are you saying that you're suggesting we should shut down the internet? No, but but you don't own the internet. I'm asking you about you and your responsibility on your platform. And I I so I see how you feel now. You don't agree.\n\nWe don't agree on this. Yes, you want censorship and I don't. No, I don't want censorship at all. You do. No, I want responsibility. I think there's I think there You desperately want censorship. No, if I want to censorship so bad you can taste it. No, that's not true. It's not true. I think that there's right and wrong. And I think that you want censorship.\n\nAnd I and I think that when you have a platform that's as big as yours and as powerful as yours and as influential as yours and you are a person who of consequence to the world with what you do, that there is a certain responsibility that goes along with what you have on your platform and what you put out to the world. And I I think that's important. You don't see that responsibility.\n\nUm I think the we have a responsibility to uh adhere to the law. Um and if people want the law changed, they should talk to the elector talk to their elected representative and get the law changed and then we will adhere to the law. Okay. But if you want us to go beyond the law, that is that is us deciding to be censors. So And I'm against censorship. I'm I'm in favor of freedom of speech. Yeah.\n\nAnd freedom of speech only is relevant when people you don't like say things you don't like. Otherwise, it has no meaning. But I I do think that there are there should be guardrails. And I believe in free speech as much as you. I would fight I don't I don't disagree. I don't agree with um a lot of what you put out on social media, but I will fight for your right to be able to say it. Great. Yeah. Okay.\n\nSo, listen, let's talk about diversity, equity, and inclusion, all right? That's been a target of yours lately on X. You uh on There was a repost of Ben Shapiro that you claim that DEI is killing people. Specifically, you point to medicine. You claim that DEI programs are putting people at a risk. Do you really believe this to be true? And what evidence do you have to support it?\n\nUm what I was referring to there was that if uh if we lower the standards for doctors, uh such so that they you know, you if if the test for a doctor is lowered, uh that then the probability of them making a mistake and killing someone is obviously going to be higher. Wait, say that again. I am not sure I understand what you said. I want to make sure I understand what you're saying.\n\nI should Yes, if if these if the standards for passing medical exams and becoming a doctor or or especially if it's something like a surgeon, if the standards are lowered, uh uh then the probability that the surgeon will make a mistake is higher. They're making mistakes in their exam, they they may make mistakes with people, and that may result in people dying. What evidence do you have though that they're lowering the standards?\n\nThere's no evidence of that. I believe there is. There's no evidence of that, Elon. What what is the evidence? I believe they have literally lowered the standards at at Duke University, and that is what the article is referring to. There's no evidence There's no evidence There's no evidence about lowering standards, and I think that there is I believe that is a false statement you're making. Okay, well, we'll we'll figure it out. Yeah.\n\nI think the interesting thing is when this is posted on the next platform, there will be a whole bunch of things that rebut what you said and what what I said, and so people can then make their own decision based on the replies, the rebuttals, and the community notes.\n\nI think that's fair, but I do think that on this particular topic, I do think that you and Ben Shapiro are reaching in about this because there was a what What Ben posted said that people were He gave instances of people who were deliberately harming people. Nowhere in the thread does Ben suggest at all, I should say, that anyone is being killed as a a result of DEI. Um that's purely speculative.\n\nThere's research on DEI and medicine, and there's no evidence that standards are being lowered, that DEI's affecting medicine. Actually, like only 5% of doctors are black, and a small percent Yeah, I think you'll find that when this is posted to the X platform, that people will reply to it with evidence. Maybe I'm wrong, let's see. Okay. So, but That's my whole thing about moderation. Maybe you're wrong, but you'll put it out there.\n\nYou don't know if it's right. Do you think that you have a responsibility to make sure something is right before you, the person who owns it, Elon Musk, who is a huge figure in the world, that you should know that it's true, that some of there are people that X who can get research for you before you put something out there like that. That's not necessarily true, even in other examples.\n\nUm if I say something that uh is inaccurate, I'm immediately corrected on the platform. That's the advantage of real-time uh system like X. So, there'll be immediately in the replies correct people correcting me. There'll be community note that will correct me, um which is attached to the actual post itself. as many people will read the Yes. Do you think as many people read that as it reads your tweet?\n\nYes, in fact and if if there's a community note that happens uh later that where somebody didn't see, but they replied to that uh or interacted with that post, we will notify them that there's now a community note correcting that post. Mhm. Just so you Whereas if you consider the conventional media, that doesn't happen. Conventional media makes false statements all the time with no and nobody ever hears the correction.\n\nWhen I was in conventional media, I can only speak for myself. If I got something wrong, if someone got something wrong on the platform that that I was on, it was corrected and we made sure that it was corrected. Now, I can't speak for anyone else. That's I think I don't think that's a universal situation. Okay.\n\nSo, I just want just the research that you're talking Do you believe that people are dying because medical standards DEI is causing medical standards to be lowered? Do you actually believe people are dying because of that? I I believe that it uh if if we if we lower the standards for what it takes to become a doctor You're saying if we lower the standards, but do you believe people are dying because the standards are being lowered?\n\nI I don't I have to ask that is yes an issue, but it could become an issue. Okay. But the actual evidence and history shows the exact opposite if you look at how minorities were treated by the medical system. Oh, most doctors most doctors now are white. And there are lots of mistakes in medicine. So, you're saying that my doctors are have bad medical care?\n\nI'm trying to understand your logic here when it comes to DEI because there's no actual evidence of what you're saying. No, I I said So, if the standards like if like let's say uh I think that particular thing was referring to surgeons. Let's say a surgeon is is asked to a a surgeon in training is asked to do a a series of operations under the supervision of a senior surgeon, and they get a bunch of those operations wrong.\n\nIf if if if that happens, and yet they are still approved to be a surgeon, the probability that someone will die, I think, at some point is high. Okay, I understand that, but that's a hypothetical. That doesn't mean it's happening. I didn't say it was I it's happening. You You didn't say it was happening. I said I said it will. You I said if if if if we lower standards, people will people will die.\n\nBut why respond to something or put something out there that has not happened? Because I could say, you know Because I don't want it to happen. I think we don't want to lower standards. Okay, if you look at the history of the medical industry, um especially when it comes to black Americans, it shows us the exact opposite. If you look at the Tuskegee experiment and all of that, only 5% of doctors are in America are black. All of them are white.\n\nSo, are you saying that if the majority of doctors are white, are you saying that D and there are still these inequities, right? And there is and people still there's still mistakes, are you blaming DEI for that?\n\nNo, I'm I'm very very basically saying that if we lower standards uh for what it takes to become uh a board certified surgeon uh or you know, oncologist or something where that are where the the kind of disease we're talking about, if you make a mistake, causes someone to die, then there more people will die than if we don't lower the standards. Therefore, we should not lower the standards.\n\ndo you think they're lowering the standards for minority doctors or women doctors or That's what the the article That's what that article suggested, yes. At the At Duke University. Okay. The evidence that I have shows that that's not true. So, listen, after the door blew off this mid-flight in this Alaskan Airlines flight, do you remember that?\n\nYou responded a post claiming that the average HBCU grad was less intelligent than the average airline pilot and stated that it will take an airline crashing, an airplane crashing and killing hundreds of people for them to change this crazy policy of DIE. I don't know if you Did you misspell it on purpose? Which should be DEI. Do you believe that women and minority pilots are inherently less intelligent and less skilled than white male pilots?\n\nNo, I'm just saying that we should not lower the standards for them. Okay. But there's no evidence that standards are being lowered when it comes to the airline industry. You've repeatedly said that there's no evidence that standards are being lowered and watch the replies showing all the evidence that it is. Replies though on social media or on Twitter are not necessarily fact and evidence. That's people's opinions. cite.\n\nOkay, all the The replies In the replies to this you will see how often the this the information cited showing that indeed there are significant cases where standards are lowered. And I do hope that happens. I do hope that happens and and I look forward to it. As you said, if you're wrong, then you're wrong and if I'm wrong, then I'm wrong. Okay, so let's So, I'm glad we're having this conversation and debate.\n\nThis is what you should we should be doing, debating the issue. So, if I'm wrong, then I'm wrong and then they'll be proven in the thing and you as well. But I just want to tell you that that pilot that you talked about in fact was a woman pilot, landed the plane safe safely despite the major found malfunction with the equipment. Boeing has taken responsibility for that incident saying that it was caused by a faulty door panel.\n\nSo, I'm not sure what that had to do with lowering the standards for pilots when it was a faulty lowering standards for pilots. It's It's the the incentive structure I I believe at Boeing changed to uh, include DEI as uh, as as a fundamental executive incentive. Um, so but I In my view, it should be purely about passenger safety.\n\nOkay, but do you understand how by saying just that standards are being lowered and that you're implying that they're being lowered because people are less skilled and less intelligent and you're talking about people of color and or women? Uh, I Look, I'm I'm saying we should not lower standards. But do you you don't That's it. I think everyone can agree that you can't you shouldn't lower standards.\n\nGreat, that's what But you're implying that they're lowering standards because of people of color or women because someone is not a white male. You're saying that they're less skilled and less intelligent. That's what you're saying. not saying that. I'm simply saying that they are Then why would they be lowering the standards? I don't know. Why are they lowering the standards? Just so you know, 5% of pilots are female, 4% are black.\n\nSo you're you know, you're talking about this widespread takeover of minorities and women when that's not actually true. I'm not saying there's a widespread takeover. Well, you're saying that the standards are being lowered because of certain people. Um, and you how do you you don't believe in DEI, right? Do you not believe in diversity, equity, and inclusion?\n\nI think we should be uh, treat people uh, according to their skills uh, and their integrity and that's it. Do you know that studies show Studies show? Yeah. Well, we can look them up. What So, your reaction to studies show and I understand, right? Because I always like to say I always like to point to an exact uh, study, right? Something that is factual.\n\nIt's the same thing when you talk about, well, let's see what the replies are on Twitter or on X. Yes, those aren't data. I so I feel the same I feel the same way about that. But this is what studies have shown and people will reply and they'll say that companies with more diversity in and leadership teams have reported higher innovation, race and those in with a lower with lower diversity or low diversity.\n\nAnd they're better companies and they make more money. This whole idea about DEI, if you go woke or whatever, you go broke, that's not necessarily true. People with diverse leadership teams and diverse workers make more money and more innovative. Um like I said, my view is that the only basis for promoting somebody should be their skills, talents, and uh their integrity, and that's it.\n\nI want to ask you about there's a there's a federal government EEOC is they are also currently involved in a lawsuit against Tesla that alleges that there's a history of widespread racial harassment against black Tesla employees as well as a pattern of retaliation for speaking out. What do you say to that? Uh well, there's I don't believe that is that is true.\n\nUm I think we've got a very good uh Like if if you walk around the the the Tesla Fremont plant, I think it's a very good atmosphere. Um in fact, I I practically lived there for 3 years trying to make the production work. Were you aware if you live there Were you aware of such behavior? I never saw it. So, you're saying that this is not true, it's not happening? Well, I mean, there's over 20,000 people.\n\nSo, you say like if there's over 20,000 people in one building, well, is everyone going to be behave properly? No. Did I see any any situations that I thought were improper? I did not. Uh let's talk about trans rights and the the woke mind virus cuz you talk about that a lot. You write about that a lot on the thing. You have been deeply outspoken about the issue of trans rights.\n\nYou posted trans rights you posted that pronouns in bio mean the woke mind virus ate your brain. Do you know what the term woke actually means? Um it's come to mean a lot of things. But what it actually what originally it was meant to mean is just being aware of inequities in society and and being aware of facts and and history. Yeah, I think it's come to be I think I think being aware of inequities in society is fine, of course.\n\nUm but uh trying to blame everything uh on on trying to make everything a race issue is uh I think a divisive and corrosive to society. Even as it relates to trans issues, which is what I'm Yeah, great race or, you know, gender or whatever. You think blaming you think that society blames everything on racism now? It blames a lot of things on it and uh Yeah. You think that's unfair? Yeah. Why?\n\nI think I think we should we should we should we should we should uh not not make this a constant uh subject. I mean, it it needs to move on. I think we should just, you know, um treat people like people. You don't agree that there's this country was founded on racism and founded on slavery and and in many ways inequities. Um that still continue on to this day.\n\nI think every country uh at at that time and I think even today uh was extremely racist. Um every country um and um obviously a lot uh slavery was present in uh about half this country. Um and not but not was not present in the in the uh north. Uh there was racism for sure. Uh but uh you know, the I I think we we we we want to look to the future rather than the past.\n\nUm and uh instead of engaging in a constant rehashing of the past because in fact if you look at history if you study history broadly everyone was a slave everyone. Yes well not everyone was a slave not everyone was a slave. Okay but We all we all we all all descended from slaves. Yeah well all of us. Yeah it's just a question of when is it was it more recent or less recent that's it right.\n\nUm so the But what what future do we want do we want is this something we want to make part of our constant dialogue forever or do we do we want to say like let's just move on and treat everyone uh you know uh according to just who they are as an individual. I agree with you with that that's the ideal. But what the evidence shows is that that's not what's actually in practice. I think we're doing better than anywhere else. That's true.\n\nI agree with that but that doesn't mean anything that doesn't mean a lot to a whole lot of people who aren't able to take advantage of the opportunities that you were able to take advantage of simply because of the color of your skin. What what advantage what what advantage does my color of my skin give me? Well there's a certain there's an ease that you have in society that you that many people of color don't.\n\nYou were able to come to this country voluntarily there are many people who were not able to come to the country voluntarily there are people who came here as a slave. to come here. And there is a legacy of slavery that still continues on there's a legacy of racism that still continues on in this country that's and that's undeniable. Well if if if we keep talking about it non-stop it will never go away.\n\nIf we keep making that the central thing it will never go away. Well why do you believe that? I think I'm speaking a simple statement of fact. Um so I think I think we want to get away from making everything a race or a gender or whatever issue. Just treat people like individuals. Do you have any desire to understand what many people of color and even trans people, um, how they feel about this country and how they're treated in this country.\n\nIf they if they say and they believe that they are treated a certain way in this country, why don't you believe them? You you can't have a situation where where someone is is a self-described victim and and that you and they just get to be that because that's how they feel. I think that that does happen in some cases, but not all cases. And I think that not understanding the history of the country, I think is, um, is a a real shame.\n\nLook, I've had an incredible opportunity and other countries. I've had incredible opportunities as a person of color. Right, but I've also been discriminated against and I know that I have. And I know that that's real. And for someone to say that that isn't happening and I should not I should just move forward and not think about that and ignore the past is insulting. I'm not saying it Don, you keep putting words in my mouth.\n\nI'm not saying it I didn't say that you said it. I'm saying that we want to we we as a we as a country should move beyond questions of of race and gender and we should treat people like individuals and and base our opinions on them on the you know, uh, their their, uh, their their their character and their skills. I don't think that anyone will disagree with that. Exactly.\n\nAll I'm saying is that that's not happening and it's not equal for everyone. That those opportunities don't happen for everyone and I am a living example that they don't. I know that they don't because I live it. You've been incredibly successful. I have been and in spite of it all, but I but I am I know what I know. I've experienced what I've experienced.\n\nYou haven't done that and I cannot, um, I don't know what it's like to be from South Africa. I don't know what it's like to be a white man. I don't know what it's like to be a woman. I don't know what it's like to be a Latino person. I don't know that, so I wouldn't speak for them and just say, \"You need to move on.\" That's not for me to say. I Maybe I believe that the country it would be great if the country could live up to that ideal.\n\nYou think that everyone has the same opportunities in America regardless of their background and ethnicity? Do you agree you No, I don't think everyone has the same opportunities. Okay. So, um when you talk about Let's talk about trans rights. When you decided to um to talk about the the trans rights movement, um you said that it was a woke mind virus. Why do you believe the trans rights movement is a woke mind virus?\n\nWhat do you mean by woke mind virus? Woke mind virus is um when you you stop caring about uh people's skills um and their integrity and you start focusing instead on gender and race and other things that are different from that. Um I think uh the woke mind virus is fundamentally racist, fundamentally sexist, and fundamentally evil. Okay. And we've got a little bit more time, so you choose your questions carefully.\n\nOkay, so Okay, thank you for that, but I I would appreciate you answering these. I think it's important that we're doing this. I think it's important to the to world the world to hear this especially what's going on in our country. Uh the reason I ask you Listen, there are a whole lot of things that people may be uh have questions about when it comes to transgender people.\n\nEven people who are part of the LGBTQ plus community have have questions about that. But if you are a free speech absolutist, right? Um and that is part of the First Amendment. Also, the freedom of expression falls under that First Amendment as well. So, why can't people choose to identify with the gender that they feel comfortable with or with a use a pronoun. Isn't that part of freedom of expression?\n\nUh I guess though that they can they can ask others to whatever they feel they can they can ask others to do anything. What it it's a difficult question whether they whether they mandate that others do it. Okay. Okay. Let's Let's talk a little more about free speech and for advertisers, right? Because all this controversy, I believe as you know, has made X less appealing to advertisers. About half of them have left the platform.\n\nYou called advertisers that left x. com. You said they were oppressors. You've even gone as far as saying it publicly that they can go F themselves or go [ __ ] themselves. Advertisers if they're if they're going to force censorship on the on the company before advertising, then uh obviously I find that unacceptable. You find it unacceptable. Why is that not a form of of free speech? They are free to advertise where they want.\n\nThey're not beholden to They're not obligated to advertise obligated to x. com. Right. So, how is that not free speech? They They That's whereas the other platforms will censor on behalf of of advertisers, the X platform will not. Okay. So, but you think it's You don't think it's okay for them not to advertise with or have their content or their advertisement next to something that is anti-Semitic or That is a different question.\n\nUh You We We There's There's You can absolutely choose where next to which content do you want to have advertising to appear. Absolutely, of course. And we do We have, I think, very good ad placement controls in this regard. Yeah. So, you said if they kill the company, it's them. But doesn't the buck stop with you? I mean, you're on it. I have to say I Choose your question carefully. There's 5 minutes left.\n\nOkay, but so Is this the question you want to ask? The same question is you said you said that they are killing the company, but you're the head of the company. The buck stops with you. I acquired X in order to preserve freedom of speech in America, the First Amendment. And I'm going to stick to that. And if that means making less money, so be it. So I have to be Listen, I I'm just being honest, right? I'm not trying to like get you or anything.\n\nI was just surprised that you would blame other people for killing the company. I mean, but you're the I mean, when you say the buck stops with the president of the United States regardless of what happens, right? So I Why would this Why would that question upset You seem upset by it. Are you? I think you're And I'm not trying to upset you. Well, you are upsetting me because the way you're phrasing questions, I think is is not cogent.\n\nUm It's not what? Not cogent. Cogent? Yes. Go ahead. Uh so the if if if if given a choice where an advertiser is saying like you have to censor all this content on the platform irrespective of where their advertising appears, uh then our answer will be like, \"Look, you you you can choose where you want your advertising what you want your advertising to appear next to. You can't insist on censorship of the entire platform.\n\nIf you insist on censorship of the entire platform even where your advertising doesn't appear, uh then uh obviously we won't we will not uh want them as an advertiser.\" So what what would you say to advertisers too who have left the platform or who are considering coming back or not coming back? What would you like to say to them? Well, first of all, uh almost all of our advertisers are coming back to the platform.\n\nSo it's a very short list of advertisers who are not coming back to the platform. Um and uh our advertising revenue is rising rapidly. Uh and our subscription revenue is rising rapidly and I feel very optimistic about the future of the X platform. Okay. Listen, I'm not I'm honestly, I'm not meaning to offend you. You're an intense person. Where does that intensity come from? I was born that way. And I had a tough childhood. You did? So, yeah.\n\nHow so? All right. Walter Isaacson goes into it in the book and and we only have a couple minutes left. So, All right. Too long to to describe. Uh So, the one or two questions I can do and then we'll have to call it. I Okay. Again, I don't mean to upset you. Why are you You just No, I have a whole room full of people waiting to meet with me. Okay. So, we're just going to go over time. Okay. All right. I understand that.\n\nUm so, you when you talk about you said you were born that way. Is that um Did you think that the way that you see the world has to do with your relationship with anyone? Perhaps your your father or someone in in your family? I think we're all affected by the people we we grow up with. My aspiration is to do whatever it takes to extend the extend consciousness into the future. That's my goal.\n\nUm to make life multi-planetary as part of extending conscious consciousness into the future. Has this has Have the past few years and considering everything that's gone on, has it been difficult for you and your family life? It's been okay. So, then how do you see your legacy?\n\nElon, how How do you see How people see you in the First of all, I say that the Um if I died knowing that I that I did what was right or or did my best to do what was right, and even if in the history books they said I did did wrong, I would still feel okay about that. I care about the reality of goodness, not the perception of it. Um I think we should view civilization as tenuous, as fragile.\n\nUm if you if you do study history broadly, you'll see that there's a rising pool of civilizations that don't always go up. Um so we should do everything we possibly can to preserve and and extend civilization as we know it and improve it. Um become more enlightened over time. And we uh therefore want to address civilizational risks.\n\nUh we want to make sure that uh we don't have for example demographic collapse which is the case in a lot of countries. Uh just very low birth rate. Um we we want to avoid obviously avoid World War anything that is a civilizational risk. That's what I care about, civilizational risks. Um how do we extend consciousness into the future such that we are able to better understand the the nature of reality. That's what I care about.\n\nThat's my motivation. you have to go. If you'll just give me a I'll do a rapid fire thing here. Is if there is there anything that you would change about um anything that you've done in your life in the past or recently? Um I've made many mistakes over the years. If I had a time machine I'd go back and fix them. Uh but I don't have a time machine. Thank you. Thank you. I appreciate it. Thank you so much. So that's it.\n\nAnd as Elon would say you be the judge. Let me tell you something about this show. The conversation doesn't end just because the camera stops. We'll see you next time. Thanks for watching. Thanks for watching the Don Lemon show. Click on the image in the top right to subscribe to my channel and the thumbnail in the bottom right to watch more content from my show. I'll see you next time."},"languages":["en"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":"https://www.rev.com/transcripts/elon-musk-interview-with-don-lemon"},{"id":"european-jewish-association-2024-01-22","type":"interview","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kmlSAHRCxqc","title":"European Jewish Association","titles":{"en":"European Jewish Association","de":"European Jewish Association","fr":"European Jewish Association"},"date":"2024-01-22","summary":"After visiting Auschwitz, Musk is interviewed by Ben Shapiro on antisemitism, free speech and X.","text":"dear sh and dear friend de president ring despite some a circumstances it is with great honor and emotion that I will remotely participate from Athens in the emblematic leaders Forum in a on the uncompromising fight against against anti-Semitism and Russ please rest assured that my dedication to our common goal remains unshakable commemorate and honor the tragic victims of the horrific Holocaust the greatest crime against humanity and to other fulfill our common Duty never again we Greeks will be honored if in the near future the leaders forum for the commemoration of the Holocaust were to be hosted in aens or better in Thessaloniki a city in which as you well know Mr President because we worked actively together the Greek new host Museum will be erected\n\nI very much look forward to joining you in p in the next leaders Forum meeting thank you this was the president of former president of Greece and you are also member of uh of the Forum of leaders together with other leaders who are joining us uh today ladies and Gent Gentlemen please let's welcome on stage Mr Elon Musk and Mr B [Applause] shapo sorry uh before we start I just would like to Express gratitude and appreciation to Mr musk for taking the time to join us today in uh our times we seek to see more friends and we are uh uh appreciating very much the time you took to be with us today and as a token of appreciation for taking the time to be with us today if I may present something to you please this were made out of a rocket a rocket that fall on\n\na kindergarten in B in Israel and it was a miracle that kids were not killed during this uh when the when the uh the rocket fall it's an artist Israeli artist by named yuron Bob who take this artist and use it in order to show a message how even Rockets could become a single for never again thank you very much if I may just it's written here presented to Mr Elon Musk in January 2024 in recognition and appreciation of your of your for of your fight against anti-Semitism and to mark your visit to aitz from the European Jewish Association than very much thank [Applause] you well it was a an honor to uh to walk with you today uh at at ashet it's actually my first time there as well uh so sorry B we just have a very short video to present first and then we\n\nstart I apologize I apologize uh you know Mr mask when we were walking around house streets together early on today I could help I couldn't help ask myself if the horror of the death camp could have been possible if social media was around in these days after the Holocaust one of the most heard sentences was we did not know today everything is in public everybody is a journalist or eyewitness please watch how it could have been used you have it in front of you sir it could have saved millions of lives I remember you saying AI is potentially the most pressing risk to humans I must tell you that there is a clear and present danger of a different AI this is anti-Semitic incitement this is why I really wanted you to be here with us Elon because this AI ended\n\nup fueling the orens at hits and powering the trains and and took the cattle trucks of Jews to be mored Ben thank you very much for coming to you walk needs little introduction a passionate conservative un important media provider a devoted father and husband an advocate of family values a stanch defender of Israel and above all a proud Jew Millions follow you watch you listen to you and learn from you call to you and with that said I now hand over to your Ben for your discussion thank you very much I apologize for the premature beginning there but um yeah Elon obviously we uh walked Ash I said I I hadn't been there before either I first of all just wanted to get your thoughts on what it was like to to walk aitz and birken now today well it was Inc incredibly\n\nuh moving and and uh deeply sad and tragic that uh humans could do this to other humans um it's good it's good to have the it's good to have the memorials as as the plaque says so that it never happens again um no I i' I mean I'm a student of History so I'd seen the pictures I'd seen the videos um but it's not quite it's it hits you much more in the heart when you see it in person um um I'm still absorbing frankly the magnitude of the tragedy that I witnessed was place where the tragedy occurred I think it'll take a few days just to sink in frankly um and um as was mentioned if if there had been social media I think it wouldn't have been impossible to hide um if if there's been freedom of speech as well you know so so you know one of the one of the first\n\nthings the Nazis did when they came in is they shut down all the all the press and any means of conveying information so um it's worth noting in the United States the first amendment in United States was freedom of speech because the people that that that came to the United States from other countries um did not have freedom of speech that if they had said something they could beison killed and that's why the first correction to the Constitution was the ability to um say what you want to say and uh not be thrown in prison or killed yeah Elon is obviously the the CEO of X which is the largest news service on the internet the place where a huge number of people including me get the news you you've been committed since you took over to a much broader perception\n\nof free spe speech uh on on the outlet and that's led to a lot of criticisms about suggestions of rising anti-Semitism on on the outlet as well I can say for my own part that the broadening of speech on Twitter I think has been and on X has been a an excellent thing one of the things that that I was able to do for example in the aftermath of October 7th was actually put out full footage and pictures of what exactly was happening see what what's really happening and the true horror the true horror is is is something people need to be able to see if they want to see it and the community notes feature has allowed for people to even when when things that are false are put up that used to maybe pass in real time now you can correct all of that how do you balance\n\nthe necessity for free speech with with all these critiques about you know what is hate speech what is anti-Semitism and how do you balance that well the the general bias of the platform is in favor of free speech and I think at the end of the day free speech wins and in that if somebody says something that's false uh it especially on our platform you can then reply to it with the correction and then I'm a huge fan of community notes I've put we've put um maximum resources and attention behind Community notes so if somebody tries to push a falsehood like Holocaust denial or something like that they can immediately be corrected and and they and you can't get rid of the tag it's like stuck on you you know you you know so um I think it's and the overarching\n\ngoal for the xplatform is to be the best source of Truth uh in the world so um now now you know one one one can it's it's difficult to get to perfect truth and sometimes people have different interpretations of truth but one can can always aspire to be as accurate as possible and to minimize the the error between what is said and reality um so um Relentless pursuit of the truth um is is is the goal with with uh with X and all and allowing people to say what they want to say even if it's controversial provided it provided that it does not break the law I think that's the right thing to do and setting the new standard for the Town Square as I say has allowed for more speech and more availability of information than than ever before certainly on on the platform\n\nyou recently didn't just go here obviously after October 7th you went to Israel and you saw the wages of horrific anti-Semitism in the various kibuts and and M I saw all the videos I a lot of video yeah yeah it was shocking to see I think maybe the most shocking thing was to see uh the the Delight in killing in people like the Delight in killing kids and defenseless woman and man and there it there was no remorse quite the opposite I mean that requires a level of indoctrination that is uh extremely intense um so so I think that to solve that you have to address the source of the indoctrination because no one no one should everad glad about killing some some child I know a number of enormous number of Jews myself included are very moved that you continue\n\nto wear the necklace uh in remembrance of the hostages so I want to thank you for that obviously because raising the profile of the fact there's still dozens of men women and children so many I checked before I came so many hostages I hope they're alive I hope they come back so let's talk about you know the the uptick and anti-Semitism more broadly one of the things that's been hard to watch as a Jew but also just as an American and a Westerner has been the radical upsurge in anti-semitic activity just generally anti-semitic sentiment appallingly after October 7th it's been astonishing actually yes and I I I must admit to being um somewhat frankly naive about this um in the circles that I move I see almost no anti anti-Semitism and and you know there's\n\nthis old old old joke I've got like this one Jewish friend no I have like two-thirds of my friends are Jewish okay I twice as many Jewish friends as non-jewish friends I'm like Jewish by association I'm aspirationally Jewish um so uh so so I don't you know I was like what are people talking about with this anti-Semitism because I never hear it in when at dinner conversations it's like an absurdity um you know at least in my friend circles um but but when you know looking at the the pramas rallies in in vast numbers that took place in almost every major city in the west uh blew my mind um and on including on the elite college campuses that are supposed to be you know if you're an elite college campus you're supposed to be enlightened you're you're not\n\nsupposed to be fostering hate um and yet you had these Pro mus demonstrations at har you know Yale including at P I went to upan at pan and I was like this is unbelievable I mean there's a poll recently from Harvard Harris showing that some 67% people aged 18 to 24 said that the Jews were an oppressor class uh which you know in in America Jews represent approximately 7 million Jews in the United States uh out of 330 million Americans tiny percentage of the population uh but that that ideology that that the Jews are an oppressor class matches up very nicely and very closely with what is a conspiracy theory at root anti-Semitism is a conspiracy theory and it's a conspiracy theory about power and if you read Nazi literature the Nazis literally promoted the\n\nidea that Jews were of course this small caste of people who were running all the major industries who were standing behind all world power is Hitler's suggestion is it was world jewry that stood behind Germany's loss in World War I and then the Allies unwillingness to make a deal with Germany prior to World War II and you know that theory of power and group identity is really ugly and we see Echoes of it today I mean the the diversity equity and inclusion ideology that basically suggests that all of society is a vast pyramid of group identity and that at the very top are the people who are successful and that those people are exploiting everybody else and we can tell who's Successful by their group identity not by their level of success by their group\n\nidentity that matches up incredibly it syns up almost a vend anti-Semitism absolutely the diversity actually inclusion Ian you should always be always be wary of any name that sounds like it could come out of a George Orwell book okay that's never a good sign um and uh because it sounds like sure diversity Equity inclusion these all sound like nice words but but there what what it really means is discrimination on the basis of race uh sex and um sexual orientation and uh and and it's against Merit um and and thus I think is fundamentally anti-semitic so um yeah um you know the I I I think it the the whole all of the sort of the the all all of the riots that were in the uh major cities and college campuses I think was uh a shocking wakeup call to um I\n\nthink any any any sort of civilization or civil minded person really was quite a shock now the crossover between you know some of these rallies on college campuses in favor of Kamas I mean they unite the the weirdest coalitions maybe in human history you'll see lgbtq Flags in favor of Kamas where of course if an lgbtq person were to be actually in the Gaza Strip they would no longer be in the Gaza Strip they would be dead yes um exactly that that's like seriously out of touch yeah it isn't but it only isn't out of touch in the sense that there is a coalitional idea here that basically power structures must be torn down at all costs and if that means allying with people who hate me then I'll Ally with people who hate me and and the fact that that's grown\n\nin fervor since October 7th really is you know as I said to me on on a personal level quite shocking you know what do you make of the future of a West if if the West continues to embrace that idea well I I think we really need to to stop this principle that the the weaker nor normally weaker party is always right this is simply not true um if you are in qutes oppressed or or the weaker party it doesn't mean you're right um because if some of those you know we weaker uh groups want to annihilate you that does not make them good it we just we have to get rid of the rule that that if you're weaker you're automatically good that's that's obviously makes no sense um you know you know it often makes sense whereas like okay you don't want to beat up on someone\n\nsmaller and weaker than you um but if that if that smaller group wants to kill you that they're they're bad okay um I mean I'm a big believer in moral absolutism not moral relativism there is there's good and bad in the absolute um and you judge any group or individual against absolute moral standards not whether they they're the so-called oppressed or oppressor just un absolute moral terms are they doing good things do they want to motor inent people that's bad it doesn't matter who they are you would think but the the pseudo sophisticates on college campus seem to think differently so I wanted to get your take on why you think this is so prevalent on college campus what do you think the future of the universities in the United States looks like given\n\nthe fact that entire universities appear to have been corrupted by moral relativism and this sort of perverse ideology do you think that a wave of change is coming to the universities do you think that there's going to be direct hiring out of high school what is the solution for universities in the United States as well as abroad I think we need to return to what it what where things were or mostly were which is a focus on on Merit and and it doesn't matter whether you're a man woman uh you know what race you are what beliefs you have what matters is you know how good are you at your job or or how what are your skills you know um you know you could be a three-legged green Martian uh you know wears a kimono and drinks Yak milk who cares it doesn't matter\n\nyou know um it what matters is like how good is your work that's it um that that that's that's the Le that's the least sort of racist sexist you can be is just care about the work that somebody does and not anything else um that that's that's what the focus needs to be to return to um yeah yeah it seems as though you mentioned earlier the the sort of problems of attacks on the meritocracy and you know one one of the claims is that there's no real meritocracy there's a there's a a pseudo meritocracy that basically all these institutions are Run for the benefit of those who run the institutions and it feels like there is some truth to the idea that institutions have lost credibility with the people particularly in the west and in the backlash to that I\n\nthink that there's now you know sort of an idea that if we do away with all instit tions in all limits on moral Behavior then that that somehow is is better but there needs to be a recapturing of the institutions or at least a rebuilding in place of those institutions new things and that's something obviously that you're very focused on not only with X but your other companies is is building new things Innovation try and create our way out of the problems that we've created for ourselves yeah I think generally people should always be wory that they may have um either consciously or press mostly subconsciously and internalize the notion of a a zero sum game or a fixed Pi um and if if you internalized that that there's it that everything's Zero Sum meaning\n\nlike in order for me to get ahead someone else has to not get ahead um or for me to have stuff someone else must not have stuff that if you have that axiomatic floww then then then that's what what it needs to be done is to to fix that atic flow because it is false um there's it's not a zero sum game we can absolutely grow and have grown and the evidence is overwhelming that we have grown the output of goods and services we have many things today that we did not have in the past um we are far more prosperous uh all of humanity is far more prosperous today than it was at times in the past I mean it wasn't that long ago where you know we we' count a good year as one where well the bonic plague wasn't that bad only killed 10 % um you know we uh not that\n\nmany people star through the winter um we only lost you know 5% due of our population due to raids from other tribes you know basically life used to be very rough in the old days um and uh it's if if they could see us now they'd be like what are you guys complaining about this is amazing um you know not having to worry about uh F food for I mean we were we were food constrained uh for you know probably the last 100 thousand years until recently so you know re really the the present day future is is amazing compared to the past and anyone who doesn't think it's amazing is not a good student of History um so I think we live in the most interesting of times and probably the best of times one of the things that I I would hope that and I think you're part\n\nof this is is a coalition of meritocrats standing up for the meritocracy is going to be deeply necessary in a future where trust has been fragmented with so many institutions we're going to have to stand up and loudly say that Merit still exists and that Merit is individually based not not based on innate characteristics of of some sort so you mentioned earlier uh you know that you're aspirationally Jewish that you surround yourself with that you're surrounded by so many Jews so are you part of the Jewish conspiracy what what exactly is the maybe that'll please the haters on online yeah I'm sure um no I mean I just so um uh yeah I grew up around a lot of Jewish people I went to Hebrew preschool Rachel Spiro in South Africa um I my name is very Jewish\n\noh for I I will tell you that for the past 10 years people have assumed in my community that you Jewish until I informed them otherwise yeah Elon is a pretty Jewish name is super Jewish yeah um and then um I went to Israel when I was 13 you know I mean you know visited Mada I'm certainly checking the boxes on a lot of things um and um like I said most of my friends of Jewish just worked out that way so um sometimes I I I yeah I guess maybe I forget am I Jewish I'm I'm Jewish aspirationally Jewish so you know when when you hear critiques about a right about the the the amount of anti-Semitism on X what what are the metrics that you're seeing from the inside about the amount of anti-Semitism or quote unquote hate speech because it's always a vaguely defined\n\nterm hate speech uh on on your platform yeah I mean the the the outside ords that we've uh had done um at least the ones that we've had done uh show that there the least amount of anti-Semitism on X of if you look if you look at all the other social it's never going to be zero if you've got 600 million people on a platform expecting it to be anything to be zero is extremely unlikely because you got 600 million people on a platform but when they compare us to uh Instagram Tik Tok uh Tik tok's actually got a lot of anti Tik Tok is pretty terrifying people have not checked out Tik Tok I mean the algorithm is absolutely pushing me toward proas material yes it is um so uh I believe it's we have Tik Tok has like five times the amount of anti-Semitism per post\n\nthan we do um so it's not like said it's not going to be zero um but uh to the best of our knowledge it is has the least amount of anti-Semitism of any platform Legacy Media has spent an awful lot of Ink on you there's been a lot of attempts to paint you as anti-semitic or paint X as anti-semitic where do you think that's coming from why why does the Legacy Media seem to have you particularly in the last year and a half uh in in the crosshairs so much well I mean the re reality is that X is competition for the Legacy Media so uh you know X is a is where people go to get the most current news and learn about the world so leg you know the Legacy Media is our direct competitors so they're really going to find trying to every angle to try to cancel X that's\n\nI mean if you want to know why things happening look at the incentives you know so and and Legacy Media had a tough time with respect to uh usage um the numbers I saw was that the sort of traditional print uh cable television uh viewership went down something like 230% last year on the other hand X went up roughly that same roughly 20 30% so it's a direct competition for people's attention so if there's some attack they can Lev Le Levy against me they will it seems as though one one of the other matters is not just direct competition between the media and X but also that the the Legacy Media for most of my life up until the past you know 15 years performed what they saw as a gatekeeping function they were the ones who got to define the narrative they\n\nwere the ones who got to determine what was appropriate news and what was inappropriate news and then even after social media arose in the early days there was the sort of the sort of things that you articulate were actually articulated by virtually all the social media heads Mark Zuckerberg used to say the kinds of things that you say Jack dorsy used to say the kinds of things that you said and then there seemed to be an Institutional takeover by a lot of Legacy Media types in terms of the kinds of rules and restrictions that were placed on what you could and could not say on these platforms who would get banned who would not get banned advertisers weaponized against you know particular you know particular Outlets if those Outlets didn't follow the dictat\n\nuh that that were put forward by by these types and and it seems like since you took over one of the the biggest objection of all is that they're not performing the gatekeeping function anymore someone else is well yes I mean I don't think that there should be a gatekeeping function by a small number of of individuals um I mean if really if you say like uh for newspapers in America there are about five editors that decide what what gets put on the front page or what what to focus on or what not to focus on and most of the other the most of the other papers just copy them essentially so but is that really what we want do we want just a handful of people deciding what what they think is important or uh or should it be that the people decide what's important\n\nand I think it should be um sort of or an organic thing where the people decide what's important and what to focus on not just a handful of editors um and uh they don't like the fact that that this power has been taken away from them but I think it should be I want to go back to something that you said a little bit earlier talking about the idea that on a moral level uh you know the there's nothing that suggests that that simple weakness is itself virtue that a weak person can be virtuous but doesn't necessarily mean that they are a powerful person uh can be you know the victimizer but doesn't necessarily mean that they are that logic carried forward particularly to what's going on in Israel right now has been in my opinion entirely pernicious and wrong\n\nthere's this idea that because Israel is a powerful militarily sophisticated country that is doing its best to limit civilian casualties in one of the most population dense areas of the world in which we have terrorists who are honeycombed throughout every aspect of society building literally hundreds of miles of tunnels the entire London subway system worth of tunnels underneath the ground uh that somehow you know Israel targeting those systems and killing a lot of people because when you kill terrorists unfortunately and they're embedded among civilians it's terrible and it's horrifying with every one of deaths is on the terrorist group that embeds itself with civilians there's been this this this logic has been mapped onto that conflict that smaller\n\nand weaker means morally virtuous because victimized yeah it it really has come completely full circle from um or or or 180 degrees from what has historically been the case so through most of History the operating principle has been uh might makes right so yeah for really up until modern times uh might makes right was the if you were stronger you were right um now now we've sort of flipped it to know if you're weaker you're right but but but neither is true there is there is uh rightness independent of strength or weakness um just because somebody's strong doesn't mean they're right and doesn't because somebody's weak doesn't mean they're right you have to look at morals in the absolute so on a broader level El you you talk a lot about you know your Hope\n\nFor Humanity uh i' say that you're somebody who really loves Humanity which is why you talk about expanding Humanity's reach out to the stars um when when you go to a place like like ashit or when you walk the villages like kibuts Berry after October 7th does that change your opinion of humanity or does it reinforce what you think Humanity can be on both the positive side and on on the negative side I I think it is actually human nature to love Humanity unless you are indoctrinated otherwise so uh I think the actual default for most people is to love Humanity um and to love being around their fellow humans um you can take for example like what's one of the worst punishments in in prison is solitary confinement and all solitary confinement means is that\n\nyou're you're you don't get to hang out with the other prisoners which which might not be the best group of people to hang out with um but even that is considered a terrible punishment to not be able to hang out with other prisoners so in Truth uh I but I think in our nature we all love Humanity unless we are indoctrinated otherwise and so we have to stop that indoctrination so how do you think that that people ought to pursue that because obviously we have seen indoctrination at at a wide variety of levels ranging from sort of soft indoctrination in various schools in the west very very hard indoctrination that you see in for example the Gaza Strip where kids are literally unfortunately at very young ages they have graduation ceremonies that we've seen\n\ntapes of where they're reenacting kidnapping of Israeli soldiers or killing of Israeli soldiers for example that fundamentally has to be addressed or there will not be peace uh the the the education of kids in Gaza um the the indoctrination of hate into kids in Gaza has to has to stop so it's you know when I was in Israel I was like that was my top recommendation is like you got to make sure um you know I understand the need for this to to invade Gaza and unfortunately some innocent people will die there's no way around it but the the the most important thing is to ensure that afterwards that uh the indoctrination where kids are taught from as soon as they can uh understand language that their goal is to kill Israelis and and if you're told that from\n\nwhen you were toddler well you're going to believe it and that needs to stop yeah on a technological side what do you think can be done there because actually this is one of the areas where you know the Gaza Strip isn't famous for its internet access um you know there there there there are a lot of places around the world where the government puts an extraordinarily heavy hand on the flow of information you're mentioning that the Nazis first thing they did was take over the entire press mechanism inside Germany and then inside the occupied areas uh of Europe but that obviously happens all over the world right now and one of the things you VI startling for us to try and open up some of those Avenues of information but what what what what can you do what\n\nwhat what shoulding at it's worth noting also the the Nazis engaged in in extreme censorship uh within Germany for anything anything that was pro-s Semitic I'm not sure how I don't how many people are aware of that but you were that they they censored any prosmetic anyone who tried to defend the Jews in Germany any anything prosmetic was was censored so um yeah um I think freedom of speech and RI rigorous pursuit of the truth is the way is is one way to get to to defeat hatred you know when when I look at the United the way well when I look at the United States one of the things that that seems to be breaking down and and when any the first element historically maybe the last element of a society in a state of mental decline uh is a vast outbreak of anti-Semitism\n\nthis is what was happening in not only Nazi German but historically countries that that are in a state of decline tend to have wild outbreaks uh of anti-Semitism and it seems to me that one of the key things that can that can reverse that process is the rebuilding of local institutions uh and as local institutions break down you see sort of this fragmentation of the population at Large um how do you merge the the need for technological development with the with the building of those local institutions families churches schools and the kinds of things that societies are built upon yeah actually I I should say there were really three things that were my strong recommendation visiting Israel one is obviously one has to get rid of uh Hamas fighters who were\n\nreform is impossible their only goal is to kill Israelis they are to be either killed or imprisoned because otherwise they will simply kill more Israelis uh then the second thing is you you've got to change the indoctrination uh in the schools uh so that kids are not taught to to hate uh from the moment they are 2 years old and and then the third thing is um which is a very hard thing to do in this situation is conspicuous acts of kindness to the people in Gaza conspicuous acts of kindness to the people in Gaza it's it's it's just that much harder to hate someone if if you do nice things for them even if they bite they try to bite your hand when you do it keep doing it and you look at the Marshall Plan after you know look at world look at the difference\n\nbetween World War I and World War II where after World War I uh Germany got an unfair share of the blame um it led to immense B bitterness it's what allowed Hitler to rise to power um was the uh embeded German soldiers from World War I um and uh but then you look in contrast to what happened off World War II you had the Marshall Plan so you had um you know had United States coming in and actually uh funding the rebuilding of Germany and re and the rebuilding of Japan how often does that happen in history but look at the results no war with Germany peace with Japan and Germany uh for now soon it'll be almost a century so when you look at the state of the West right now you somebody maybe it's all the Doom scrolling but when you when you uh you know look\n\nat the state of the West right now you're very optimistic it sounds like uh you know I I find it hard to be optimistic in uh In This Moment it's been a very ugly couple of years you know from Ukraine to the current conflict in Israel and Hamas uh to domestic politics in the United States everywhere else it seems like there's a lot of polarization a lot of fragmentation what do you think is the future of of the West can we come together around any sense of shared common values especially given the fact that everybody is kind of drinking from the fire hose of information one of the downsides about the upside of information is the availability the downside is you know choice paralysis and overload I mean you can definitely get information overload there's\n\nso much information coming at you these days uh because you can get all the world's information real time and impossible for one human to digest all that um you know I think I think there are some things that we can agree on or most people would agree on are cool and inspiring like um Humanity going to the Moon you know if you ask probably kids almost anywhere in the world what's the coolest thing humans have ever done I think a lot of kids would say we went to the moon you know um and uh I so I think we want to continue that Spirit of exploration um you know speaking of kind of growing the pie and is is that we we want to I think have a dream that we can be uh a space bearing civilization a multi-planet species a multi- Cellar species and go out there\n\namong the stars and and discover the nature of the universe um that we can collectively seek greater Enlightenment um to better understand this Incredible Universe we live in uh um I find that very compelling I I think I think most people would find that very compelling I think embedded in that is also as you say that core value of meritocracy because it's one thing to say man can go to the moon it's another thing to say I can be part of man going to the moon and a meritocracy suggests that you can be part of that it's not just that human beings are capable of doing the thing it's that you can be a part of that thing if you work hard enough if you innovate enough if you try hard enough and so societies that seem to have given up on that also seem to have\n\ngiven up on on going to the Moon societies that are so reflective about their own supposed laws the United States has this problem right now that they that they are unwilling to to Simply say freedom is pretty phenomenal and and meritocracy is the greatest thing that's ever been invented and we should hold on to that and that's what's going to allow us to get to the Moon that that stops us from going to the moon or to Mars or to anywhere else yeah I mean there's and there's many wonderful interesting things that are happening besides space expor ation obviously as time goes by we improve our ability to cure cancer to cure many diseases um there's increased access to information and people talk a lot about inequality but what about the equality of access\n\nto information that's incredible um you know right now if you if you've got uh you know a very cheap electronic device at an internet internet cafe you can access all of the lectures of MIT for free uh you can access almost any book you can learn anything uh this is an equality of access to information that was Unthinkable uh even 20 30 years ago um you can teach yourself how to do anything for free that's amazing um maybe there's like too much focus on the things that are unequal but we should we forget about the things that are equal and that have have improved inequality so much like access to information um you know that's one of the things that we're trying to help out with stall link is uh provide access inter internet access to people who don't\n\nhave internet access or where it's too expensive for them to afford because once you have internet access you can learn anything and you can sell your your your products and services so um I think that's that's pretty amazing I mean you know that's sort of like if if we're going to count our flaws we should also count our blessings yeah one of the things that uh I think is amazing about what you've been doing Elon is that it's not just you know the the business side of you that's important obviously uh you become this unbelievably you know large figure looming in the public imagination and that means that when you tweet it has you know impact that is that is very large how do you decide when to tweet sometimes memor sometimes it's sometimes it's joking\n\nsometimes it's these long thought out post how do you decide when to how how do you inform yourself on on the topics that you're tweeting about well um I do I do post a lot on the xplatform um you know sometimes a 100 times a day so you know once in a while I'll do something dumb um for sure um but I I I really um you know I I try to say things that I think are interesting or funny um I mean there must be some reason why 169 million people follow me I guess I don't know um I must be keeping them amused in some way um so amuse entertain you know have opinions on something sometimes they're wrong sometimes they're right um and um you know and for things like Community notes it applies to me as well as it applies to anyone else so if I say something that's\n\nincorrect or you know not full context then Community notes will correct me very quickly so um but it's only me doing these posts ever I don't have a team or anything uh so uh in fact I generally would recommend for leaders of the world to just literally post your own stuff and once in a while you make a mistake don't worry about [Laughter] it so yeah can't win them all can't can't nobody bets a thousand so obviously where we visited today you know the the big takeaway always is never again um the I think that the question that a lot of Jews worldwide asked after October 7th and after that wild up surge of anti-Semitism which which we've seen the Jew hatred that that continues now is whether never again really for a lot of people meant never again between\n\nthe years 1939 and 1945 or whether it actually means never again like right now as in if there is a genocidal group that wishes to kill lots of Jews is that something that you wish to stand up against right now and when you look out at the world and the state of the world you know the uh the video that EJ put up a moment ago suggesting that um the Holocaust would have been somewhat mitigated or people may have had more information yeah or or been able to certainly been able to to escape earlier I mean one of the one of the things that's astonishing obviously about the history of the Holocaust is how many Jews because they were only getting partial information it it was slow and it was gradual and by the time they wanted to get out it was it was just too\n\nlate for them to get out you know what are your hopes that that never again is a real thing I mean I still hope there's not a not a holocaust that's how realistically is it I I think I think it's unlikely frankly so at least if you say like um I mean I could be naive but I think the probability of a Holocaust in the west is extremely tiny um you know I think if you look at say the you know the Nazis I think hler got like a third of the vote or something like that when he was first semi he was sort of sort of semi- elected and then did did basically a coup um and um but but think of all the people that fought to destroy Nazism the the the millions of millions of people that fought and and had died to destroy Nazism the that's the vast majority of the West\n\nopposed even even in those days opposed Nazism and fought and died and my grandfather was uh in World War II for almost six years um all his friends got killed he's the only one of his friends to survive um and he was severely traumatized like he really just couldn't even talk afterwards um most of that time was in East Africa North Africa Italy the only reason he's even alive frankly is because towards the end of the war they um gave like a an aptitude test uh because he was just a Corporal he he didn't graduate high school so he wasn't eligible for Officer school and they they plucked him out probably right before he died and sent him to work for British intelligence in London which is where I met my grandmother you know so he was one of the people\n\nfighting to stop the Nazis and many along with millions of others that you know so let's not forget that the vast majority of the of the West Ford and died to stop Nazism so I had the chance to briefly meet your three-year-old today oh yeah he's a he's a fun guy adorable um I have a three-year-old of my own so I can they're all very similar uh in but you know as your you have some kids who are much older you have you know kids who who are younger obviously when it comes to teaching them about things like the Holocaust and anti-Semitism how do you address those topics um well my kids are pretty well read um so they they read a lot of history um they're not ignorant on the subject uh I mean maybe the three-year-old is sure but I would hope yes you know\n\ncan't read so um no my my kids are very well read so um but but I you know I have had some sort of just disturbing conversations with sort of some say nephews uh or some some family members not not my kids but um kids of family members where uh I I was actually shocked to see anti-Semitism or or at least yeah um one disturbing conversation was you know saying that the uh you know that we deserve to have the Trade towers destroyed because of our terrible foreign policy and I was like this is what they're teaching you in Elite New York high schools this is messed up well Elon I think I personally choose all over the world a lot of people in this room want to thank you for not only visiting aitz but also for visiting Israel after October 7th and for the\n\nstrong moral voice you've been on behalf of the fight against anti-Semitism it's great to spend time with you thank you so much thank you thank you for having [Applause] me thank you very much youo thank you Ben for very very interesting interviews interview thank you for the questions and thank you for the answers I would like now pleas to call the 10th president of the state of felen rlin and Dr M the president of the conar of Paris for for a brief picture please the 10th President of Israel thank you Dr Jo M the president of the South France we we'll take please a picture before we move on with the program thank you president Trin president if he please can call you for the okay okay how we hold it again it's quite heavy okay yeah please do [Applause]\n\nokay you than you thank you very much yeah","textByLang":{"en":"dear sh and dear friend de president ring despite some a circumstances it is with great honor and emotion that I will remotely participate from Athens in the emblematic leaders Forum in a on the uncompromising fight against against anti-Semitism and Russ please rest assured that my dedication to our common goal remains unshakable commemorate and honor the tragic victims of the horrific Holocaust the greatest crime against humanity and to other fulfill our common Duty never again we Greeks will be honored if in the near future the leaders forum for the commemoration of the Holocaust were to be hosted in aens or better in Thessaloniki a city in which as you well know Mr President because we worked actively together the Greek new host Museum will be erected\n\nI very much look forward to joining you in p in the next leaders Forum meeting thank you this was the president of former president of Greece and you are also member of uh of the Forum of leaders together with other leaders who are joining us uh today ladies and Gent Gentlemen please let's welcome on stage Mr Elon Musk and Mr B [Applause] shapo sorry uh before we start I just would like to Express gratitude and appreciation to Mr musk for taking the time to join us today in uh our times we seek to see more friends and we are uh uh appreciating very much the time you took to be with us today and as a token of appreciation for taking the time to be with us today if I may present something to you please this were made out of a rocket a rocket that fall on\n\na kindergarten in B in Israel and it was a miracle that kids were not killed during this uh when the when the uh the rocket fall it's an artist Israeli artist by named yuron Bob who take this artist and use it in order to show a message how even Rockets could become a single for never again thank you very much if I may just it's written here presented to Mr Elon Musk in January 2024 in recognition and appreciation of your of your for of your fight against anti-Semitism and to mark your visit to aitz from the European Jewish Association than very much thank [Applause] you well it was a an honor to uh to walk with you today uh at at ashet it's actually my first time there as well uh so sorry B we just have a very short video to present first and then we\n\nstart I apologize I apologize uh you know Mr mask when we were walking around house streets together early on today I could help I couldn't help ask myself if the horror of the death camp could have been possible if social media was around in these days after the Holocaust one of the most heard sentences was we did not know today everything is in public everybody is a journalist or eyewitness please watch how it could have been used you have it in front of you sir it could have saved millions of lives I remember you saying AI is potentially the most pressing risk to humans I must tell you that there is a clear and present danger of a different AI this is anti-Semitic incitement this is why I really wanted you to be here with us Elon because this AI ended\n\nup fueling the orens at hits and powering the trains and and took the cattle trucks of Jews to be mored Ben thank you very much for coming to you walk needs little introduction a passionate conservative un important media provider a devoted father and husband an advocate of family values a stanch defender of Israel and above all a proud Jew Millions follow you watch you listen to you and learn from you call to you and with that said I now hand over to your Ben for your discussion thank you very much I apologize for the premature beginning there but um yeah Elon obviously we uh walked Ash I said I I hadn't been there before either I first of all just wanted to get your thoughts on what it was like to to walk aitz and birken now today well it was Inc incredibly\n\nuh moving and and uh deeply sad and tragic that uh humans could do this to other humans um it's good it's good to have the it's good to have the memorials as as the plaque says so that it never happens again um no I i' I mean I'm a student of History so I'd seen the pictures I'd seen the videos um but it's not quite it's it hits you much more in the heart when you see it in person um um I'm still absorbing frankly the magnitude of the tragedy that I witnessed was place where the tragedy occurred I think it'll take a few days just to sink in frankly um and um as was mentioned if if there had been social media I think it wouldn't have been impossible to hide um if if there's been freedom of speech as well you know so so you know one of the one of the first\n\nthings the Nazis did when they came in is they shut down all the all the press and any means of conveying information so um it's worth noting in the United States the first amendment in United States was freedom of speech because the people that that that came to the United States from other countries um did not have freedom of speech that if they had said something they could beison killed and that's why the first correction to the Constitution was the ability to um say what you want to say and uh not be thrown in prison or killed yeah Elon is obviously the the CEO of X which is the largest news service on the internet the place where a huge number of people including me get the news you you've been committed since you took over to a much broader perception\n\nof free spe speech uh on on the outlet and that's led to a lot of criticisms about suggestions of rising anti-Semitism on on the outlet as well I can say for my own part that the broadening of speech on Twitter I think has been and on X has been a an excellent thing one of the things that that I was able to do for example in the aftermath of October 7th was actually put out full footage and pictures of what exactly was happening see what what's really happening and the true horror the true horror is is is something people need to be able to see if they want to see it and the community notes feature has allowed for people to even when when things that are false are put up that used to maybe pass in real time now you can correct all of that how do you balance\n\nthe necessity for free speech with with all these critiques about you know what is hate speech what is anti-Semitism and how do you balance that well the the general bias of the platform is in favor of free speech and I think at the end of the day free speech wins and in that if somebody says something that's false uh it especially on our platform you can then reply to it with the correction and then I'm a huge fan of community notes I've put we've put um maximum resources and attention behind Community notes so if somebody tries to push a falsehood like Holocaust denial or something like that they can immediately be corrected and and they and you can't get rid of the tag it's like stuck on you you know you you know so um I think it's and the overarching\n\ngoal for the xplatform is to be the best source of Truth uh in the world so um now now you know one one one can it's it's difficult to get to perfect truth and sometimes people have different interpretations of truth but one can can always aspire to be as accurate as possible and to minimize the the error between what is said and reality um so um Relentless pursuit of the truth um is is is the goal with with uh with X and all and allowing people to say what they want to say even if it's controversial provided it provided that it does not break the law I think that's the right thing to do and setting the new standard for the Town Square as I say has allowed for more speech and more availability of information than than ever before certainly on on the platform\n\nyou recently didn't just go here obviously after October 7th you went to Israel and you saw the wages of horrific anti-Semitism in the various kibuts and and M I saw all the videos I a lot of video yeah yeah it was shocking to see I think maybe the most shocking thing was to see uh the the Delight in killing in people like the Delight in killing kids and defenseless woman and man and there it there was no remorse quite the opposite I mean that requires a level of indoctrination that is uh extremely intense um so so I think that to solve that you have to address the source of the indoctrination because no one no one should everad glad about killing some some child I know a number of enormous number of Jews myself included are very moved that you continue\n\nto wear the necklace uh in remembrance of the hostages so I want to thank you for that obviously because raising the profile of the fact there's still dozens of men women and children so many I checked before I came so many hostages I hope they're alive I hope they come back so let's talk about you know the the uptick and anti-Semitism more broadly one of the things that's been hard to watch as a Jew but also just as an American and a Westerner has been the radical upsurge in anti-semitic activity just generally anti-semitic sentiment appallingly after October 7th it's been astonishing actually yes and I I I must admit to being um somewhat frankly naive about this um in the circles that I move I see almost no anti anti-Semitism and and you know there's\n\nthis old old old joke I've got like this one Jewish friend no I have like two-thirds of my friends are Jewish okay I twice as many Jewish friends as non-jewish friends I'm like Jewish by association I'm aspirationally Jewish um so uh so so I don't you know I was like what are people talking about with this anti-Semitism because I never hear it in when at dinner conversations it's like an absurdity um you know at least in my friend circles um but but when you know looking at the the pramas rallies in in vast numbers that took place in almost every major city in the west uh blew my mind um and on including on the elite college campuses that are supposed to be you know if you're an elite college campus you're supposed to be enlightened you're you're not\n\nsupposed to be fostering hate um and yet you had these Pro mus demonstrations at har you know Yale including at P I went to upan at pan and I was like this is unbelievable I mean there's a poll recently from Harvard Harris showing that some 67% people aged 18 to 24 said that the Jews were an oppressor class uh which you know in in America Jews represent approximately 7 million Jews in the United States uh out of 330 million Americans tiny percentage of the population uh but that that ideology that that the Jews are an oppressor class matches up very nicely and very closely with what is a conspiracy theory at root anti-Semitism is a conspiracy theory and it's a conspiracy theory about power and if you read Nazi literature the Nazis literally promoted the\n\nidea that Jews were of course this small caste of people who were running all the major industries who were standing behind all world power is Hitler's suggestion is it was world jewry that stood behind Germany's loss in World War I and then the Allies unwillingness to make a deal with Germany prior to World War II and you know that theory of power and group identity is really ugly and we see Echoes of it today I mean the the diversity equity and inclusion ideology that basically suggests that all of society is a vast pyramid of group identity and that at the very top are the people who are successful and that those people are exploiting everybody else and we can tell who's Successful by their group identity not by their level of success by their group\n\nidentity that matches up incredibly it syns up almost a vend anti-Semitism absolutely the diversity actually inclusion Ian you should always be always be wary of any name that sounds like it could come out of a George Orwell book okay that's never a good sign um and uh because it sounds like sure diversity Equity inclusion these all sound like nice words but but there what what it really means is discrimination on the basis of race uh sex and um sexual orientation and uh and and it's against Merit um and and thus I think is fundamentally anti-semitic so um yeah um you know the I I I think it the the whole all of the sort of the the all all of the riots that were in the uh major cities and college campuses I think was uh a shocking wakeup call to um I\n\nthink any any any sort of civilization or civil minded person really was quite a shock now the crossover between you know some of these rallies on college campuses in favor of Kamas I mean they unite the the weirdest coalitions maybe in human history you'll see lgbtq Flags in favor of Kamas where of course if an lgbtq person were to be actually in the Gaza Strip they would no longer be in the Gaza Strip they would be dead yes um exactly that that's like seriously out of touch yeah it isn't but it only isn't out of touch in the sense that there is a coalitional idea here that basically power structures must be torn down at all costs and if that means allying with people who hate me then I'll Ally with people who hate me and and the fact that that's grown\n\nin fervor since October 7th really is you know as I said to me on on a personal level quite shocking you know what do you make of the future of a West if if the West continues to embrace that idea well I I think we really need to to stop this principle that the the weaker nor normally weaker party is always right this is simply not true um if you are in qutes oppressed or or the weaker party it doesn't mean you're right um because if some of those you know we weaker uh groups want to annihilate you that does not make them good it we just we have to get rid of the rule that that if you're weaker you're automatically good that's that's obviously makes no sense um you know you know it often makes sense whereas like okay you don't want to beat up on someone\n\nsmaller and weaker than you um but if that if that smaller group wants to kill you that they're they're bad okay um I mean I'm a big believer in moral absolutism not moral relativism there is there's good and bad in the absolute um and you judge any group or individual against absolute moral standards not whether they they're the so-called oppressed or oppressor just un absolute moral terms are they doing good things do they want to motor inent people that's bad it doesn't matter who they are you would think but the the pseudo sophisticates on college campus seem to think differently so I wanted to get your take on why you think this is so prevalent on college campus what do you think the future of the universities in the United States looks like given\n\nthe fact that entire universities appear to have been corrupted by moral relativism and this sort of perverse ideology do you think that a wave of change is coming to the universities do you think that there's going to be direct hiring out of high school what is the solution for universities in the United States as well as abroad I think we need to return to what it what where things were or mostly were which is a focus on on Merit and and it doesn't matter whether you're a man woman uh you know what race you are what beliefs you have what matters is you know how good are you at your job or or how what are your skills you know um you know you could be a three-legged green Martian uh you know wears a kimono and drinks Yak milk who cares it doesn't matter\n\nyou know um it what matters is like how good is your work that's it um that that that's that's the Le that's the least sort of racist sexist you can be is just care about the work that somebody does and not anything else um that that's that's what the focus needs to be to return to um yeah yeah it seems as though you mentioned earlier the the sort of problems of attacks on the meritocracy and you know one one of the claims is that there's no real meritocracy there's a there's a a pseudo meritocracy that basically all these institutions are Run for the benefit of those who run the institutions and it feels like there is some truth to the idea that institutions have lost credibility with the people particularly in the west and in the backlash to that I\n\nthink that there's now you know sort of an idea that if we do away with all instit tions in all limits on moral Behavior then that that somehow is is better but there needs to be a recapturing of the institutions or at least a rebuilding in place of those institutions new things and that's something obviously that you're very focused on not only with X but your other companies is is building new things Innovation try and create our way out of the problems that we've created for ourselves yeah I think generally people should always be wory that they may have um either consciously or press mostly subconsciously and internalize the notion of a a zero sum game or a fixed Pi um and if if you internalized that that there's it that everything's Zero Sum meaning\n\nlike in order for me to get ahead someone else has to not get ahead um or for me to have stuff someone else must not have stuff that if you have that axiomatic floww then then then that's what what it needs to be done is to to fix that atic flow because it is false um there's it's not a zero sum game we can absolutely grow and have grown and the evidence is overwhelming that we have grown the output of goods and services we have many things today that we did not have in the past um we are far more prosperous uh all of humanity is far more prosperous today than it was at times in the past I mean it wasn't that long ago where you know we we' count a good year as one where well the bonic plague wasn't that bad only killed 10 % um you know we uh not that\n\nmany people star through the winter um we only lost you know 5% due of our population due to raids from other tribes you know basically life used to be very rough in the old days um and uh it's if if they could see us now they'd be like what are you guys complaining about this is amazing um you know not having to worry about uh F food for I mean we were we were food constrained uh for you know probably the last 100 thousand years until recently so you know re really the the present day future is is amazing compared to the past and anyone who doesn't think it's amazing is not a good student of History um so I think we live in the most interesting of times and probably the best of times one of the things that I I would hope that and I think you're part\n\nof this is is a coalition of meritocrats standing up for the meritocracy is going to be deeply necessary in a future where trust has been fragmented with so many institutions we're going to have to stand up and loudly say that Merit still exists and that Merit is individually based not not based on innate characteristics of of some sort so you mentioned earlier uh you know that you're aspirationally Jewish that you surround yourself with that you're surrounded by so many Jews so are you part of the Jewish conspiracy what what exactly is the maybe that'll please the haters on online yeah I'm sure um no I mean I just so um uh yeah I grew up around a lot of Jewish people I went to Hebrew preschool Rachel Spiro in South Africa um I my name is very Jewish\n\noh for I I will tell you that for the past 10 years people have assumed in my community that you Jewish until I informed them otherwise yeah Elon is a pretty Jewish name is super Jewish yeah um and then um I went to Israel when I was 13 you know I mean you know visited Mada I'm certainly checking the boxes on a lot of things um and um like I said most of my friends of Jewish just worked out that way so um sometimes I I I yeah I guess maybe I forget am I Jewish I'm I'm Jewish aspirationally Jewish so you know when when you hear critiques about a right about the the the amount of anti-Semitism on X what what are the metrics that you're seeing from the inside about the amount of anti-Semitism or quote unquote hate speech because it's always a vaguely defined\n\nterm hate speech uh on on your platform yeah I mean the the the outside ords that we've uh had done um at least the ones that we've had done uh show that there the least amount of anti-Semitism on X of if you look if you look at all the other social it's never going to be zero if you've got 600 million people on a platform expecting it to be anything to be zero is extremely unlikely because you got 600 million people on a platform but when they compare us to uh Instagram Tik Tok uh Tik tok's actually got a lot of anti Tik Tok is pretty terrifying people have not checked out Tik Tok I mean the algorithm is absolutely pushing me toward proas material yes it is um so uh I believe it's we have Tik Tok has like five times the amount of anti-Semitism per post\n\nthan we do um so it's not like said it's not going to be zero um but uh to the best of our knowledge it is has the least amount of anti-Semitism of any platform Legacy Media has spent an awful lot of Ink on you there's been a lot of attempts to paint you as anti-semitic or paint X as anti-semitic where do you think that's coming from why why does the Legacy Media seem to have you particularly in the last year and a half uh in in the crosshairs so much well I mean the re reality is that X is competition for the Legacy Media so uh you know X is a is where people go to get the most current news and learn about the world so leg you know the Legacy Media is our direct competitors so they're really going to find trying to every angle to try to cancel X that's\n\nI mean if you want to know why things happening look at the incentives you know so and and Legacy Media had a tough time with respect to uh usage um the numbers I saw was that the sort of traditional print uh cable television uh viewership went down something like 230% last year on the other hand X went up roughly that same roughly 20 30% so it's a direct competition for people's attention so if there's some attack they can Lev Le Levy against me they will it seems as though one one of the other matters is not just direct competition between the media and X but also that the the Legacy Media for most of my life up until the past you know 15 years performed what they saw as a gatekeeping function they were the ones who got to define the narrative they\n\nwere the ones who got to determine what was appropriate news and what was inappropriate news and then even after social media arose in the early days there was the sort of the sort of things that you articulate were actually articulated by virtually all the social media heads Mark Zuckerberg used to say the kinds of things that you say Jack dorsy used to say the kinds of things that you said and then there seemed to be an Institutional takeover by a lot of Legacy Media types in terms of the kinds of rules and restrictions that were placed on what you could and could not say on these platforms who would get banned who would not get banned advertisers weaponized against you know particular you know particular Outlets if those Outlets didn't follow the dictat\n\nuh that that were put forward by by these types and and it seems like since you took over one of the the biggest objection of all is that they're not performing the gatekeeping function anymore someone else is well yes I mean I don't think that there should be a gatekeeping function by a small number of of individuals um I mean if really if you say like uh for newspapers in America there are about five editors that decide what what gets put on the front page or what what to focus on or what not to focus on and most of the other the most of the other papers just copy them essentially so but is that really what we want do we want just a handful of people deciding what what they think is important or uh or should it be that the people decide what's important\n\nand I think it should be um sort of or an organic thing where the people decide what's important and what to focus on not just a handful of editors um and uh they don't like the fact that that this power has been taken away from them but I think it should be I want to go back to something that you said a little bit earlier talking about the idea that on a moral level uh you know the there's nothing that suggests that that simple weakness is itself virtue that a weak person can be virtuous but doesn't necessarily mean that they are a powerful person uh can be you know the victimizer but doesn't necessarily mean that they are that logic carried forward particularly to what's going on in Israel right now has been in my opinion entirely pernicious and wrong\n\nthere's this idea that because Israel is a powerful militarily sophisticated country that is doing its best to limit civilian casualties in one of the most population dense areas of the world in which we have terrorists who are honeycombed throughout every aspect of society building literally hundreds of miles of tunnels the entire London subway system worth of tunnels underneath the ground uh that somehow you know Israel targeting those systems and killing a lot of people because when you kill terrorists unfortunately and they're embedded among civilians it's terrible and it's horrifying with every one of deaths is on the terrorist group that embeds itself with civilians there's been this this this logic has been mapped onto that conflict that smaller\n\nand weaker means morally virtuous because victimized yeah it it really has come completely full circle from um or or or 180 degrees from what has historically been the case so through most of History the operating principle has been uh might makes right so yeah for really up until modern times uh might makes right was the if you were stronger you were right um now now we've sort of flipped it to know if you're weaker you're right but but but neither is true there is there is uh rightness independent of strength or weakness um just because somebody's strong doesn't mean they're right and doesn't because somebody's weak doesn't mean they're right you have to look at morals in the absolute so on a broader level El you you talk a lot about you know your Hope\n\nFor Humanity uh i' say that you're somebody who really loves Humanity which is why you talk about expanding Humanity's reach out to the stars um when when you go to a place like like ashit or when you walk the villages like kibuts Berry after October 7th does that change your opinion of humanity or does it reinforce what you think Humanity can be on both the positive side and on on the negative side I I think it is actually human nature to love Humanity unless you are indoctrinated otherwise so uh I think the actual default for most people is to love Humanity um and to love being around their fellow humans um you can take for example like what's one of the worst punishments in in prison is solitary confinement and all solitary confinement means is that\n\nyou're you're you don't get to hang out with the other prisoners which which might not be the best group of people to hang out with um but even that is considered a terrible punishment to not be able to hang out with other prisoners so in Truth uh I but I think in our nature we all love Humanity unless we are indoctrinated otherwise and so we have to stop that indoctrination so how do you think that that people ought to pursue that because obviously we have seen indoctrination at at a wide variety of levels ranging from sort of soft indoctrination in various schools in the west very very hard indoctrination that you see in for example the Gaza Strip where kids are literally unfortunately at very young ages they have graduation ceremonies that we've seen\n\ntapes of where they're reenacting kidnapping of Israeli soldiers or killing of Israeli soldiers for example that fundamentally has to be addressed or there will not be peace uh the the the education of kids in Gaza um the the indoctrination of hate into kids in Gaza has to has to stop so it's you know when I was in Israel I was like that was my top recommendation is like you got to make sure um you know I understand the need for this to to invade Gaza and unfortunately some innocent people will die there's no way around it but the the the most important thing is to ensure that afterwards that uh the indoctrination where kids are taught from as soon as they can uh understand language that their goal is to kill Israelis and and if you're told that from\n\nwhen you were toddler well you're going to believe it and that needs to stop yeah on a technological side what do you think can be done there because actually this is one of the areas where you know the Gaza Strip isn't famous for its internet access um you know there there there there are a lot of places around the world where the government puts an extraordinarily heavy hand on the flow of information you're mentioning that the Nazis first thing they did was take over the entire press mechanism inside Germany and then inside the occupied areas uh of Europe but that obviously happens all over the world right now and one of the things you VI startling for us to try and open up some of those Avenues of information but what what what what can you do what\n\nwhat what shoulding at it's worth noting also the the Nazis engaged in in extreme censorship uh within Germany for anything anything that was pro-s Semitic I'm not sure how I don't how many people are aware of that but you were that they they censored any prosmetic anyone who tried to defend the Jews in Germany any anything prosmetic was was censored so um yeah um I think freedom of speech and RI rigorous pursuit of the truth is the way is is one way to get to to defeat hatred you know when when I look at the United the way well when I look at the United States one of the things that that seems to be breaking down and and when any the first element historically maybe the last element of a society in a state of mental decline uh is a vast outbreak of anti-Semitism\n\nthis is what was happening in not only Nazi German but historically countries that that are in a state of decline tend to have wild outbreaks uh of anti-Semitism and it seems to me that one of the key things that can that can reverse that process is the rebuilding of local institutions uh and as local institutions break down you see sort of this fragmentation of the population at Large um how do you merge the the need for technological development with the with the building of those local institutions families churches schools and the kinds of things that societies are built upon yeah actually I I should say there were really three things that were my strong recommendation visiting Israel one is obviously one has to get rid of uh Hamas fighters who were\n\nreform is impossible their only goal is to kill Israelis they are to be either killed or imprisoned because otherwise they will simply kill more Israelis uh then the second thing is you you've got to change the indoctrination uh in the schools uh so that kids are not taught to to hate uh from the moment they are 2 years old and and then the third thing is um which is a very hard thing to do in this situation is conspicuous acts of kindness to the people in Gaza conspicuous acts of kindness to the people in Gaza it's it's it's just that much harder to hate someone if if you do nice things for them even if they bite they try to bite your hand when you do it keep doing it and you look at the Marshall Plan after you know look at world look at the difference\n\nbetween World War I and World War II where after World War I uh Germany got an unfair share of the blame um it led to immense B bitterness it's what allowed Hitler to rise to power um was the uh embeded German soldiers from World War I um and uh but then you look in contrast to what happened off World War II you had the Marshall Plan so you had um you know had United States coming in and actually uh funding the rebuilding of Germany and re and the rebuilding of Japan how often does that happen in history but look at the results no war with Germany peace with Japan and Germany uh for now soon it'll be almost a century so when you look at the state of the West right now you somebody maybe it's all the Doom scrolling but when you when you uh you know look\n\nat the state of the West right now you're very optimistic it sounds like uh you know I I find it hard to be optimistic in uh In This Moment it's been a very ugly couple of years you know from Ukraine to the current conflict in Israel and Hamas uh to domestic politics in the United States everywhere else it seems like there's a lot of polarization a lot of fragmentation what do you think is the future of of the West can we come together around any sense of shared common values especially given the fact that everybody is kind of drinking from the fire hose of information one of the downsides about the upside of information is the availability the downside is you know choice paralysis and overload I mean you can definitely get information overload there's\n\nso much information coming at you these days uh because you can get all the world's information real time and impossible for one human to digest all that um you know I think I think there are some things that we can agree on or most people would agree on are cool and inspiring like um Humanity going to the Moon you know if you ask probably kids almost anywhere in the world what's the coolest thing humans have ever done I think a lot of kids would say we went to the moon you know um and uh I so I think we want to continue that Spirit of exploration um you know speaking of kind of growing the pie and is is that we we want to I think have a dream that we can be uh a space bearing civilization a multi-planet species a multi- Cellar species and go out there\n\namong the stars and and discover the nature of the universe um that we can collectively seek greater Enlightenment um to better understand this Incredible Universe we live in uh um I find that very compelling I I think I think most people would find that very compelling I think embedded in that is also as you say that core value of meritocracy because it's one thing to say man can go to the moon it's another thing to say I can be part of man going to the moon and a meritocracy suggests that you can be part of that it's not just that human beings are capable of doing the thing it's that you can be a part of that thing if you work hard enough if you innovate enough if you try hard enough and so societies that seem to have given up on that also seem to have\n\ngiven up on on going to the Moon societies that are so reflective about their own supposed laws the United States has this problem right now that they that they are unwilling to to Simply say freedom is pretty phenomenal and and meritocracy is the greatest thing that's ever been invented and we should hold on to that and that's what's going to allow us to get to the Moon that that stops us from going to the moon or to Mars or to anywhere else yeah I mean there's and there's many wonderful interesting things that are happening besides space expor ation obviously as time goes by we improve our ability to cure cancer to cure many diseases um there's increased access to information and people talk a lot about inequality but what about the equality of access\n\nto information that's incredible um you know right now if you if you've got uh you know a very cheap electronic device at an internet internet cafe you can access all of the lectures of MIT for free uh you can access almost any book you can learn anything uh this is an equality of access to information that was Unthinkable uh even 20 30 years ago um you can teach yourself how to do anything for free that's amazing um maybe there's like too much focus on the things that are unequal but we should we forget about the things that are equal and that have have improved inequality so much like access to information um you know that's one of the things that we're trying to help out with stall link is uh provide access inter internet access to people who don't\n\nhave internet access or where it's too expensive for them to afford because once you have internet access you can learn anything and you can sell your your your products and services so um I think that's that's pretty amazing I mean you know that's sort of like if if we're going to count our flaws we should also count our blessings yeah one of the things that uh I think is amazing about what you've been doing Elon is that it's not just you know the the business side of you that's important obviously uh you become this unbelievably you know large figure looming in the public imagination and that means that when you tweet it has you know impact that is that is very large how do you decide when to tweet sometimes memor sometimes it's sometimes it's joking\n\nsometimes it's these long thought out post how do you decide when to how how do you inform yourself on on the topics that you're tweeting about well um I do I do post a lot on the xplatform um you know sometimes a 100 times a day so you know once in a while I'll do something dumb um for sure um but I I I really um you know I I try to say things that I think are interesting or funny um I mean there must be some reason why 169 million people follow me I guess I don't know um I must be keeping them amused in some way um so amuse entertain you know have opinions on something sometimes they're wrong sometimes they're right um and um you know and for things like Community notes it applies to me as well as it applies to anyone else so if I say something that's\n\nincorrect or you know not full context then Community notes will correct me very quickly so um but it's only me doing these posts ever I don't have a team or anything uh so uh in fact I generally would recommend for leaders of the world to just literally post your own stuff and once in a while you make a mistake don't worry about [Laughter] it so yeah can't win them all can't can't nobody bets a thousand so obviously where we visited today you know the the big takeaway always is never again um the I think that the question that a lot of Jews worldwide asked after October 7th and after that wild up surge of anti-Semitism which which we've seen the Jew hatred that that continues now is whether never again really for a lot of people meant never again between\n\nthe years 1939 and 1945 or whether it actually means never again like right now as in if there is a genocidal group that wishes to kill lots of Jews is that something that you wish to stand up against right now and when you look out at the world and the state of the world you know the uh the video that EJ put up a moment ago suggesting that um the Holocaust would have been somewhat mitigated or people may have had more information yeah or or been able to certainly been able to to escape earlier I mean one of the one of the things that's astonishing obviously about the history of the Holocaust is how many Jews because they were only getting partial information it it was slow and it was gradual and by the time they wanted to get out it was it was just too\n\nlate for them to get out you know what are your hopes that that never again is a real thing I mean I still hope there's not a not a holocaust that's how realistically is it I I think I think it's unlikely frankly so at least if you say like um I mean I could be naive but I think the probability of a Holocaust in the west is extremely tiny um you know I think if you look at say the you know the Nazis I think hler got like a third of the vote or something like that when he was first semi he was sort of sort of semi- elected and then did did basically a coup um and um but but think of all the people that fought to destroy Nazism the the the millions of millions of people that fought and and had died to destroy Nazism the that's the vast majority of the West\n\nopposed even even in those days opposed Nazism and fought and died and my grandfather was uh in World War II for almost six years um all his friends got killed he's the only one of his friends to survive um and he was severely traumatized like he really just couldn't even talk afterwards um most of that time was in East Africa North Africa Italy the only reason he's even alive frankly is because towards the end of the war they um gave like a an aptitude test uh because he was just a Corporal he he didn't graduate high school so he wasn't eligible for Officer school and they they plucked him out probably right before he died and sent him to work for British intelligence in London which is where I met my grandmother you know so he was one of the people\n\nfighting to stop the Nazis and many along with millions of others that you know so let's not forget that the vast majority of the of the West Ford and died to stop Nazism so I had the chance to briefly meet your three-year-old today oh yeah he's a he's a fun guy adorable um I have a three-year-old of my own so I can they're all very similar uh in but you know as your you have some kids who are much older you have you know kids who who are younger obviously when it comes to teaching them about things like the Holocaust and anti-Semitism how do you address those topics um well my kids are pretty well read um so they they read a lot of history um they're not ignorant on the subject uh I mean maybe the three-year-old is sure but I would hope yes you know\n\ncan't read so um no my my kids are very well read so um but but I you know I have had some sort of just disturbing conversations with sort of some say nephews uh or some some family members not not my kids but um kids of family members where uh I I was actually shocked to see anti-Semitism or or at least yeah um one disturbing conversation was you know saying that the uh you know that we deserve to have the Trade towers destroyed because of our terrible foreign policy and I was like this is what they're teaching you in Elite New York high schools this is messed up well Elon I think I personally choose all over the world a lot of people in this room want to thank you for not only visiting aitz but also for visiting Israel after October 7th and for the\n\nstrong moral voice you've been on behalf of the fight against anti-Semitism it's great to spend time with you thank you so much thank you thank you for having [Applause] me thank you very much youo thank you Ben for very very interesting interviews interview thank you for the questions and thank you for the answers I would like now pleas to call the 10th president of the state of felen rlin and Dr M the president of the conar of Paris for for a brief picture please the 10th President of Israel thank you Dr Jo M the president of the South France we we'll take please a picture before we move on with the program thank you president Trin president if he please can call you for the okay okay how we hold it again it's quite heavy okay yeah please do [Applause]\n\nokay you than you thank you very much yeah"},"languages":["en"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kmlSAHRCxqc"},{"id":"moonshots-with-peter-diamandis-2024-01-06","type":"interview","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_PcL4w--uNs","title":"Moonshots with Peter Diamandis","titles":{"en":"Moonshots with Peter Diamandis","de":"Moonshots with Peter Diamandis","fr":"Moonshots with Peter Diamandis"},"date":"2024-01-06","summary":"X Spaces conversation on data-driven optimism, digital superintelligence, longevity, education and abundance in 2024.","text":"following is a Year's conversation I had with Elon Musk arguably the greatest entrepreneur of our time perhaps the greatest entrepreneur ever during this conversation which is called the coming age of abundance we talk about how Technologies including Ai and humanoid Robotics are creating a world of abundance uplifting Humanity across Food Water Energy Healthcare education we'll be talking about longevity we'll be talking about AI we'll be talking about the decreasing global population and what are the reasons that you should have for being optimistic about the future join me happy New Year Yan happy New Year 2024 I love Yeah it feels like the future it is the future it is the future it's going to be awesome um you know I'm hoping we get a little bit\n\nof conversation on some hope and good news for folks on this uh on this spaces I think people can use it you are the most optimistic person that I know of by far and uh I mean I guess it is a refreshing to to hear such optimism I I think people need I think people need a positive mindset I think it's self-fulfilling prophecy to a large degree you know if you're pessimistic and we can talk about how the news media just decimates our minds uh constantly uh yeah the news is so negative I mean it makes me sad to read the news frankly I I well let me ask you a question I don't watch I don't watch Network news and I don't read any newspapers they couldn't pay me enough money yeah to do that time I I'll accidentally read the news and I'll just be sad it's insane\n\nwell I mean as you as you know the the news The Daily News um um really really attempts to answer the question what is the worst thing that happened on Earth today it is and and and and let me show let me show it to you every 5 minutes in your living room over and over and over again yeah and it's a big world there's eight billion people on Earth so you know somewhere on Earth something horrible is happening every single day but there's also great things happening every single day you know what I call CNN the crisis News Network or the constantly negative newth Network and the problem is if they've got to scare you otherwi yeah you know if they say hey it's been a pretty good day overall um you know violence is an alltime low yeah we've got more access\n\nto food energy water healthc care education on the pl than ever before I mean people would just start watching horror movies I think instead yeah yeah the challenge is it's uh it's our neural Nets the wiring of our brains you know evolved in a world of constant danger and so we're sort of just wired for fear and scarcity constantly Yeah well yeah I think You' made this point um maybe others have which it it sort of makes sense as a as an evolutionary asymmetry that we would respond more to Danger than to reward um in that like the consequences of danger could be fatal like it could be like well if you go over there there's a lion that's going to eat you or some neighboring tribe that's going to kill you and it's game over yeah your jeans are out of the\n\nJean Pool yeah you're you're out whereas say like uh news that there there's a there's a a nice bush with berries over there it's it's nice to have it's it's optional um but it's the in one case you die in other case you're you're hungry but death is worse than hunger so so that's is B basically we're any anyone who did not respond more to negative news than positive news didn't make it they were they were select they were selected against for sure that sucks yes I mean anyone who was complacent about where the lion was e by L and and you know the reality is you know the news media has one job to deliver your eyeballs to their advertisers and when we pay 10 times more attention to negative news and positive news that's all we get 24/7 so I mean listen\n\nI I it's yeah it is I mean I do get my my news invariably you know on my on my feed on X but I also get all the great things happening in the world because I can selectively choose to watch that but when you're watching TV or you know in the newspaper uh some editor someplace or some producers deciding what gets fed into your mind and it can really with your mindset um yes exactly so I mean this this space is uh uh called it the coming age of abundance and you know you were really when my first book came out abundance the future is better than you think uh you were super supportive and I and I appreciate that was 12 years ago and I think the story whoa 12 years amazing yeah and it's gotten so much better um so I it is in so many ways not not every way\n\nI mean I mean obviously we go back ways um the the I I I remember when we were at Ado's party in Brazil yeah how Longo he was it was his 40th or was it his 30th I don't no was it was this was just when SpaceX was just when I was forming space yeah it was it was 2003 there about it just before the X prise Was Won right I was trying to convince you not to build Rockets 21 years ago could like like you could have a kid that that has could legally or legally up kids yeah yeah um so 21 years ago uh yeah so and you know things things are mostly better most you I want to give everybody listening a dose of Hope and optimism on the abundance inside because the world has gone better in so many ways all you hear about is the negative constantly and I think that's\n\ngoing back to our sort of core dystopian mindsets from you know evolving 100,000 years ago but if we just look at some of the look at some of the areas right so like Global extreme poverty right I mean what's more what's what's a more important metric you know here are the numbers 90% of the world was in global extreme poverty in in the 1800s in 1981 it was 42% today it's under 10% of the world right yeah hunger Hunger is actually rare and it used to be common exactly um and another one is obviously one har that you're leading the charge on is energy you know we used to kill whales to get whale oil to light our nights and we ravaged mountainsides and we drilled kilometers under the ground uh and what's the figure it's like 8,000 times more energy hits\n\nthe surface of the Sun surface of the Earth from the Sun than we consume as a species what's the rate at which batteries and solar is increasing it's it must be massive yes I mean uh I mean Tesla we we've made a couple of presentations what one sort of simplistic and then one in extreme detail um on how to make Earth completely uh self- sustaining from an energy standpoint and demonstrating that there that there is no that if you break down all of the materials for lithium ion battery and for solar um you can easily make earth uh not I mean there there's no shortage material it's easy it's a lot of work obviously um but but but there's not like some critical material that we don't have enough of in order to make earth fully self- sustaining um even if\n\nthe only way that you powered all of Industry on Earth and and all power including heating um and transport uh electrically you could do that with solar and leine batteries um and and not uh not come anywhere close to depleting the resources of Earth yeah um my favorite my favorite example there was uh back in the 1800s the most precious metal on the planet was aluminum it was more precious than gold uh and and platinum and even though the Earth's crust is you know 8% boxy you know basically aluminum it was just so energetically difficult it wasn't that it was scarce it just wasn't in usable form yet and that's what technology does it takes something which is scarce and not usable and makes it usable right so yeah yeah ex aluminum oxide is extremely common\n\num and um but but it is it is a low energy state in fact thermite thermite thermite is just uh iron oxide rust and and and pure aluminum um and the the energy difference between uh iron oxide and aluminum oxide is so great that it generates incredible enough heat to melt through steel so that's what thermite is so uh yeah you do need a lot of energy to um turn aluminum oxide into aluminum um but but yeah it in World War II there was a massive scarcity of aluminum for aircraft sure um and uh that in fact in Britain the the mosquito uh sort of fighter bomber was U made of mostly of wood um and but it was it was done with uh it was basically an early form of of of composits but using stiff wood on the on the outside and and Lightwood and like Balsa on as\n\na sandwich structure it's pretty clever and the whole thing was intended to to address the shortage of and that and then then we get technology we get better uh better mechanisms of extracting the aluminum from the from the aluminum oxide from the boxy and this happens over and over again in fact that's just what we do I mean I think the number was last year in 2023 or maybe in 22 we had more new electricity production from solar than from any other form and and and you've done an extraordinary job on battery production yeah and the battery production is growing um actually almost at well at several times the rate of vehicle production so um you know in some cases almost 10x the rate of vehicle production um so so yes the there's a massive demand for\n\nbatteries and you know as as the world uses more uh electricity uh there's actually a lot more capability that the grid has if you can buffer the energy uh then without it because the vast majority of electrical sure it's wasted assume no they assume no buffering um so they have to size the power plants for for Peak output Peak power output which is typically a hot summer day um and and and then for at night you can have anywhere from half optimistically half power output to sometimes one/ tenth of the power output um so so so basically the the grid almost everywhere the grid is sized for excess um electrical power output um and if you just buffer it with batteries uh you can in increase the output of the grid uh by you know two or three times I mean\n\nto make to make the point here on the abundance theme um there is no limitation on energy right we are increasing the amount of energy per capita and there's a direct correlation between uh the GDP of a nation and its energy production right and the direct correlation between health and education and energy everything scales as you increase the energy per capita of a Nation yeah yeah um I talk about another category Communications um another area that you're revolutionizing I think the number right now I just was uh checking it earlier it's like 6.\n\n9 billion smartphone users in 2023 like 8 86% and that's what I got when I when I Googled it um I don't know what 6.\n\n9 you know what to say yeah uh 6,900 million 6,900 million let go there that my my my 12-y olds would say the same uh it's like 85 85% of the planets got a smartphone and uh uh and well I mean if if you add up the total number of smartphones uh uh made ever made it exceeds oh I think it so it's it's amazing so we've gone from like zero telepan to the majority vast majority of the planet in under a century um you know global internet as well the same thing and uh did I your your next iteration of starlink uh spacecraft have gone up uh the direct to cell phone okay uh yes that just went up um so you know we still have to prove that it works and all but um we're confident that even if the if these early satellites don't work we're confident from from a physics\n\nstandpoint that it can work um it it's it is h a challenge because we have to emulate uh a cells celf tower on the ground in order for the phones to accept the signal so we have to do do compensation for example um and and and and do some sort of because because you've got a speed of light limitations pal if if it were easy it would have been done already yeah yeah some speed of light limitations so you know this this like light is is so fast and yet so slow um so um you know I I yeah a good way to think about light at least in the space context uh or for the low or context is is it travels about 300 km every millisecond um in in air or uh in in space and and then and then around just over 200 kilm per per millisecond uh in fiber hey everyone I want to\n\ntake a quick break from this episode to tell you about a health product that I love and that I use every day in fact I use it twice a day it seeds ds01 daily symbiotic hopefully by now you understand that your microbiome and your gut are one of the most important modifiable parts of your health you know your gut microbiome is connected to everything your brain health your cardiac health your metabolic health so the question is what are you doing to optimize your gut let me take a moment to tell you about what I'm doing every day I take two capsules of seeds ds01 daily symbiotic it's a two-in-one probiotic and Prebiotic formulation that supports digested Health gut health skin Health heart health and more it contains 24 clinically and scientifically proven\n\nprobiotic strains that are delivered in a patented capsule that actually protects the contents from your stomach acid and ensures that 100% of it is survivable reaching your colon now if you want to try seed ds01 daily symbiotic for yourself you can get 25% off your first month supply by using the code Peter 25 at checkout just go to seed.\n\ncom moonshots and enter the code Peter 25 at checkout that that's seed.\n\ncom moonshots and use the code Peter 25 to get your 25% off the first month of seeds daily symbiotic trust me your gut will thank you all right let's go back to the episode you know another abundance area is Health um I hear some some kids in the background there so interestingly enough you know child mortality I mean probably uh I mean this is one that hits me the most in terms of increasing abundance child mortality under the age of five was 42% a couple hundred years ago it was a coin flip of whether your kid survived um and it's decreased now to under 5% and it's gone down by 50% in the last 30 years um so just childhood mortality and women dying in child birth all of these things people don't think about when they're listening to all in news on and\n\nall the issues and then life expectancy my favorite subject uh has gone up from you know 30 years old to uh to 75 plus I still disagree with you on longevity though that that we should solve it or not like we should you think we should solve well I I listen I'm not necessarily saying live forever but I'd like to make it to 120 um I yeah I I sort of wonder if we should not Sol it too soon um just presidential elections expect first and and do you really want them to get that life expectancy first well uh you know you know I I I think we uh I think uh being able to have the Vitality the cognition the physical prowess uh you know that you have when you're in your 40s or 50s through the age of 100 that's my goal um I mean you don't want to you don't want\n\nto you know you want to make it to at least 100 don't you um well I guess it does depend on whether I'm you know have dementia I I don't think I'd want to be a burden on society or have dementia not know what's going on um i' prefer it to be dead well yeah I think that's that's for sure uh but let's assume that you had you know all the cognitive power you have today your physical strength is there any reason why you wouldn't want to you know have an extended lifespan or health span yeah sure um I I guess I I think we are end up there's such a strong forcing function for Life Extension or health span extension that I think we will see uh advancers in that area whether I want them to be there or not um and actually my opinion on the subject is that it's\n\nI I think it's actually not that hard to solve uh because the if you just consider arguments of symmetry it's are quite helpful the the the cells in our body all age age at basic almost exactly the same speed um like what like I've not seen anyone who has an old left arm and a young right arm I've never seen that not even once yes so how how are the cells communicating and how what is keeping them what is synchronizing their behavior um something there's there's a very clear mechanism for synchronizing aging among the 30 to 40 trillion cells in your body like depending on your body mass you're typically going to have 30 to 40 trillion cells that's correct you know keep you know in sync um I mean the other the other the other reference uh proof point is\n\nyou know boohead whales one the largest mammals can make it to 200 years repeatedly Greenland sharks can make it to 500 years and have babies at 200 years old I remember when I was in medical school hearing that I said you know why can they why can't we I said it's either an engineering problem or software problem a hardware problem or software problem and I think I think this is one of the biggest areas AI is going to give us is a real understanding and then to your other point about your left arm arm and right arm you know when you have a baby uh woman's 30 35 you're 40 45 your baby starts out at zero yeah um I I do find it remarkable that we decompress from a single cell to um an adult human and then and then we you know to procreate compressed back\n\ndown to a single cell that is fascinating you know I mean you look you sort of look look at yourself as a sort of you know Blas assist and say like I haven't changed a bit here we go again let's recycle it's like it's like the big bang it's like right the Big Crunch um you know one of the things people argue about on extended Health span uh and you know increasing the population getting to 100 120 150 and there's a concept called Longevity Escape velosophy right that there's going to be a point at which for every year you're alive science is extending your life for more than a year and that's an interesting uh idea to think about um in which case you know accidents become really uh a thing to be concerned about um they concern about overpopulation and\n\nand you've you've hit this multiple times right the and I saw you Tweeting about it or sorry you're Xing about it today uh sorry uh but it's you know overpopulation is one of the biggest myths and biggest uh false over population is outer BS yeah um you know and and you know it's it's such nonsense um Earth is UN underpopulated not overpopulated with under look out the window when you're flying across the country it's empty absolutely exactly it's like if you say like if your goal was to like flying from aliot to New York to drop a bowling ball on a human you would fail um you know I think one of one of my goal I think the greatest gift we can give people in this abundance world is increased Health span I mean when you think about what people want they\n\nwant happiness and they want Health right no one wants to die in a painful cancer or or uh dementia um so yeah and you know I I have extended to you many times my friend come down to Fountain Health let me put you through our our program the world needs you around for another 30 30 years okay well what do you have any what should I do let's say well I mean so there two what actions can be taken two this could be helpful for listeners two on on this discussion yeah so they're two there are three things you need to know number one is there anything going on inside your body that you don't know about so the body is amazingly good at hiding disease so we found in our seemingly healthy adults 2% have a cancer they don't know about two and a half% 2% 2 and\n\na half% have an aneurysm 14.\n\n4% either have metabolic disease coronary disease uh neurogenerative disease and okay and so your body is incredibly good at hiding disease all right so you don't actually uh feel any cancer until stage three or stage four 70% of all heart attacks have no precedence your body is compensating constantly and you know for most of us we know more about what's going inside our cars or airplanes than we do our bodies yeah I had a question for you how many how many sensors are going up on on Starship when you're launching how many Star sensors are going are on board that vehicle rough order magnitude getting back data uh well I guess there's when you count everything up there's several thousand sensors and if I were I mean there are 33 engin so they they count\n\nfrom the bul of sure and but you also have uh uh stress sensors and looking what's going on in in the structures and avionics and Communications across all the subsystems and if I ask you how 39 engines including the uper stage so so there's several thousand sensors um and way more sensors than than yeah I was going to say if you if ask you how many sensors do you have in your body and so we don't look which is insane because we do have the technology now to look to determine is there anything going on I need to know about and when's a good time to find out about like now or what's likely to break what's likely to undergo failure cycles and then what's the most extraordinary Therapeutics available to extend the human lifespan so um I mean for me that's\n\nthat's uh that's a that's a big one let me ask you another another uh abundance uh theme which is education um do you think any of our schools today middle schools or high schools are preparing any of our kids for the future um well none that I know of well there might I mean there might probably are a few schools that are doing it but probably 99% of schools are not yeah uh schools are very slow slow to change um and and I think that there there there there is do seem to move away from teaching the fundamentals you know of uh writing well and math and history um you know I'm concerned about the whole work agenda and ideology perating through education agreed um and actually being destructive to education agreed I mean you know how do you think do you\n\nhave these thoughts I mean so at the end of the day I think our best our best healthc care and our best teachers are going to be AIS right that understand everything and they demonetize and they democratize every aspect mean the AI knows your your kids favorite color sports star movie star what they know the languages they know what they did today um I mean it's a way of giv every child on the planet the best education I mean you you funded back years ago if you remember the Global Learning X prise that we did we did a uh that we we demoed in Tanzania with AIS on tablets it was the earliest days of of AI imod mustak who you know was one of the uh winners of that competition who went on now to create stability um I mean the the challenge is I don't think\n\nthe Educational Systems are going to give up uh that control anytime soon um true well if I mean if I look at how my kids were educated they seem to be mostly educated by YouTube and Reddit yeah um and X as well I suppose um but they're constantly on the internet um that that seems to be and I guess a lot of cases these days uh Tik Tok unfortunately yeah yeah um so I think yeah the education situation is is problematic um not sure what to do about it um I think I think ultimately uh you know KH Academy is one step in the right direction um but I think part of it is getting our educational institutions to First realize they're not preparing kids for the world that's coming I mean this hits another point we are such linear thinkers right we're projecting\n\nwhat we have and putting it out four or five years I don't think people let me ask you do you think people are ready for what the world's going to be like in 2030 uh no um I I don't know what the world's going to be like in 2030 so probably I wouldn't say that I'm necessarily the the we definitely live in the most interesting of times uh you know like this legally this Chinese saying that may you live in interesting times is is is a not a good thing um but I mean I I I think personally I would like to live in the most interesting of times and this is the most interesting of times I also think it's is the best time to be alive ever the only time more exciting than today is tomorrow I mean you know by what measure yeah we have environmental issues but I\n\nthink we have the best chance of solving those environmental issues with the technology we have now versus the technology we had 10 years ago yeah I well I generally think it's as as a as a general sort of rule of living it is it is better to ear on the side of being optimistic and wrong than pessimistic and right um if you're going to make if you're going to ear one side of the other better it's just a higher quality of life to ear on the side of being optimistic and risk being wrong than than than pessimistic um you know and you know and right I mean it's it's better to be you'll just have a just enjoy life yeah what optimism is is is is gonna make you happy there was a study of 14,000 people uh for it was 14,000 women and 1500 guys um and it showed\n\nthat uh opt those who had an optimistic mindset lived 14 to 15% longer than those who with a pessimistic mindset I mean mindsets a powerful thing and I think undervalued by almost everybody one my one of my favorite examples of This was um do you know what the environmental disaster of the 1880s and 1890s was I'm sure you know um of the is this is this back to whal no no it's it's it's another form of life it's a the HSE Manor uh disaster the the hored problem yes yeah what what is this hor well yeah no no you're right the I mean New York was was basically a a hor manure and and and urine uh and carcass it was it was terrible people brought their Motive Power I mean basically like if you think if you think you think New York subways are stinky right now\n\nwait I mean try when it's just everywhere everywhere you know people everywhere people people moved from people moved into downtown New York Detroit Chicago they brought their Motive Power with them and and the articles in the 1880s and 90s and into the 1900s as you as you read this the projection was disaster it was going to be a disaster because hor horse horse manure was like grow they had like special parking lots for horeshit at the corner of every street well well I it seems like there's also a challenge because I think if a horse lives um you know for on the order of 15 years um that means 1/5th of all horses are kicking the bucket every year um so you just got and so so if you if you got like uh 300,000 horses it means you got 20,000 horses dropping\n\ndead every year and then you need a horse to move the horse the dead horse or just or just cover it with Horseman or let it decompose yeah I mean it's going to be like decomposing horse caucuses throughout major cities then and then and then like it's like well whose whose dead horse is this are people are probably quick to claim a live not rushing to claim a but then and then Innovation came along and here comes the car and solves the problem and I think that's the problem that we keep on forgetting we we forget that we are incredibly Innovative at solving problems that's what humans are amazing at yeah yeah true true um um actually on the whale front I don't if you know back to the whales it's a whale of a tail whale Tales okay um the the so a lot of\n\npeople think that the um the the low point on whale uh population was was in the 1800s because you know whales were being hunted for for whale and whale oil yeah um but but actually the the low Point uh by far was in fact um uh in the mid 20th century uh because uh of a bureaucratic error in the Soviet Union okay this I have to year they they can't so they would always have these five-year plans and quotas uh for for how for whale tonnage um now it didn't they didn't actually have even a whether the whale tonnage was usable tonnage um in anyway they just had a quota for whale tonnage and what they would do in the sovi union they would just keep increasing the quota of everything every year every five years so the so the whale tonnage just got Higher and\n\nHigher and Higher and and if you if you were a captain and you and you and you had a high whale tonnage you'd get a metal and a raise and if your whale tonnage was low you'd be sent to the G you get you get what you incentivized baby yes incentives matter and and so it it got to it to it just got to absurd levels um and you had Soviet whaling ships like going into uh you know us and Australian Waters to desperately trying to find whales and and they they would catch the whale weigh the whale and then dump the cus over I mean there there's there's a whole AET rabbit hole that you can go down on this and which is basically a lesson in the the folies of central planning so and this is the problem of keeping laws on the books way way after they're useful\n\nto society well we do have actually have a fundamental uh issue with the accumulation of laws and regulations because they are Immortal um and humans are mortal as we were just discussing you know with life extension um so so naturally every year you're going to have this accumulation of laws and regulations um until eventually everything is legal I mean everything is illegal everything is illegal yes nothing is allowed because you have overlapping laws regulations and and some of which are in fact uh contradict each other um that whether you go left or right they're both left and right [Laughter] are um my God you know um it like SpaceX is I mean sham you know the doj in this respect in this particular case with it doj as you may know is suing SpaceX\n\nfor um hiring only a permanent residents and and um citizens of the US the reason um that we did this was because we were told uh very clearly that if we did not hire permanent residents uh of the United States that that would con constitute a violation of international trade tra traffic and arms regulations itar and the entire executive team of SpaceX and the board would go to prison sounds like a good motivation yes and so we we were literally told us by the government in very clear terms and and you mean you're well aware of it I well aware yes it's it's a nightmare um and we would like to which which by the way uh puts us in a non-competitive world against uh other nations yes it it's it's it's it's it's pretty bad so um but but then then then the\n\ndoj um you know is suing uh SpaceX um for not hiring Asylum Seekers now important Point here not Asylum those who have been granted Asylum those who are seeking Asylum there's a lot of those there's a lot of people seeking Asylum yes so we're damned if we do and damned if we don't so if if we hire someone who's not a perent residence we're breaking the law and if we don't hire someone who who's not a permanent resident we're breaking the law so what this is this is an example of the madness that we're facing um buddy I I want to compliment you on something which and I've seen I've known you for long enough to have seen you gone through this where you have bet everything over and over again you've bet uh your entire Fortune gone into debt to do the things\n\nthat you believe in and I I I have a question to ask you which I've been dying to ask and I'm going to start making this uh this known there are so many billionaires on the planet who have tens of billions and hundreds of billions of dollars who are effectively sitting on it and not changing the world um not putting it in you know other than for increasing its return which is not a bad thing I think the more wealth and free energy there is out there to do things but um can you speak to that I don't know if you're willing to but uh there are a few people like Mark Benny off and uh and Eric Schmid and your yourself top of the list who invest on making the world a better place solving Global Grand challenges um thoughts on that sorry I just have some some\n\nkids and stuff right problem um sort of family noises in the background um so uh let's see um yeah um well yeah I mean I do think that uh smart people with resources should care about the the good of civilization the future of civilization um even if there is not even if they're not particularly altruistic um because you can't really can you cannot exist um absent civilization um you you know if civilization collapses it's all over um you know there's like people who've got like these sort of um bunkers and you like other countries or Hawaii or whatever um I'm like listen do you really think that you're going to make it in in an apocalyptic situation um like they'll they'll they'll come and find you in that bunker and they pry they'll pry you out and\n\nget your stuff um and and and and it's it's going to anyway so really uh smart people with resources any smart person with resources they just have some long-term perspective I mean listen it's it's you and it's you and and Jeff Bezos right now who've got the biggest long-term perspective and I see I uh you know uh I'm just curious about how do you incentivize other people to really um help the world accelerate uh you know and and make the world a more productive place right the best way to become a billionaire is help a billion people the world's biggest problems the world's biggest business opportunities uh do you believe that well I guess maybe we should just talk to people more um I guess just talking to them and you know I think it's perhaps just\n\nraising conscious awareness the fact that um there is no living without civilization um when when you like one doesn't actually have to make an altruistic argument you can actually you know make a even it's a purely self-seeking argument um say like life would be miserable without civilization and if you want to know what life is like without civilization just go try living in the forest naked for a day and you will be naked and afraid and and quickly realize civilization is awesome have to eat bugs and get eaten by bugs and and and we're so interdependent upon each other to enable the state of technology and capability we have today um you know I'm curious is there anything that you think um that isn't becoming more abundant out there or anything we\n\nhave an abundance uh constraint on you know I'll just mention well answer that first then I want to come and talk about the carbon removal ex prise that you funded one second you know we're we're creating abundance of food energy water Health Care education um are we constrained in any way no not really no um I mean no I I think I I agree with you that the future most likely has abundance um we shouldn't be complacent about the future um you know complacency and entitlement are not a recipe for success but the most likely outcome is one of abundance of goods and services um that is certainly where we're headed uh uh yeah yeah when I when I saw you lasty likely where we're at very likely yeah when when I saw you last you said you know definitely a bunch\n\nafter AGI and I saw you know when you were talking about uh Optimus which is Awesome by the way let's just start with that congratulations um well thanks mean Optimus I need to make sure the Optimus is you know doesn't cause it doesn't add to civilizational risk um you know because you don't want like a billion of these things or with centralized control um unless unless what could go wrong has anyone made a movie about that unless they obey you well I don't think they should any any one personation yeah like I think you have to have Lo local control but um it has to be decentralized um because and any Central uh control is going to be problematic um CU you just can't be like it could be the a rogue AI takes I mean let's literally movie a rogue AI you\n\nknow Terminator uh takes over somehow gains control of um the mothership of that controls all the you know the Optimus robots or something like that um that is uh you basically it needs to be DEC it needs to be impossible for that to occur um let me ask you I always love combining your companies because it's like you know you know it's like uh uh a Reese's Peanut Butter Cup um you know sterlink and and and uh and and Starship together how about Optimus and neuralink when can I plug into an Optimus with my neuralink connection um well hopefully the first neural links will the First new link um in a human will hopefully be soon with from the next maybe this month or or next um now this is really just at first just trying to give um you know quadr quadriplegics\n\nand tetraplegics um the ability to control their phone and computer it's it's basically like the first the first product is TE telepathy essentially um um or telekinesis um and uh and then the second product uh sort of tentatively called Blind sight where uh we can restore sight even if somebody is uh has uh lost both eyes and their optic nove amazing um go straight to the visual cortex yeah yeah exactly now these things all already work uh in monkeys um and uh i' just like to reemphasize no no monkey has ever died because of a neuralink um and we treat our monkeys extremely well last time last time I spoke to you about this you were playing uh you were playing pong against pager I think that's right um actually it turns out monkeys love playing video\n\ngames um they they're they're really just like us I mean they they they love uh eating eating snacks and playing video games I'll tell my 12-year-old boys about that yeah I mean you you see the video of Pedro playing you know um monkey mind you know telepathic playing pong telepathically he's not restrained in any way he's just sitting on on the the sort of tree branch drinking smoothies and drinking smoothies drinking a smoothie and playing pong yeah he's not held down you know um in fact he's he gets upset when we take his video game away just like like hum just like our kids that's that's awesome and and this I mean giving sight to the blind I mean it's biblical stuff and and this is again coming back to the original uh you know kicking off the new\n\nyear with a positive mindset with an abundance mindset with an exponential mindset with a moonshot mindset right which I and I think I hope you agree like I think for entrepreneurs and people listening like the single most important thing we have is our mindset how we see the world I mean would you agree with that yeah yeah I mean you can choose to be I mean happiness is I think is a decision I mean Lely I mean there's obviously people that have chemical imbalances but uh for most people the difference between being happy and unhappy is deciding to be happy over the years I've experimented with many intermittent fasting programs uh the truth is I've given up on intermittent fasting as I've seen no real benefit when it comes to longevity but this changed\n\nwhen I discovered something called prolon 5day fasting nutrition program it harnesses the process of autophagy this is a cellular recycling process that revitalizes your body at a molecular level and just one cycle of the 5-day prolon fasting nutrition program can support healthy aging fat focused weight loss improved energy levels and more it's a painless process and I've been doing it twice a year for the last year you can get a 15% off on your order when you go to my special URL go to prolon life.\n\ncom p r o l n l.\n\ncom back slm moonshot get started on your longevity Journey with prolong today now back to the episode I want to take a second for everybody listening uh uh to point something out uh you know Elon it was uh 2021 uh I was texting with you and uh I said you should fund an another exerprise you funded an exerprise years AO go on teaching kids in the middle of Tanzania Reading Writing and arithmetic without any adults no schools around just on a tablet they were handed and the software had to teach them and it was an amazing success and then in 21 um I asked you if you'd do an exerprise on carbon removal and uh you said yes almost instantly um and we launched it three months later it was like the fastest yes to an xprize launch ever um so thank you for that\n\nI want to give you a quick up on it if I could you're welcome um absolutely well um I hope the the education ex prise and the the Caron removal ex prise are result in you good out they I'm sure we had 6,000 teams enter the carbon removal prize um we have uh 1300 active teams in the competition right now as we down select uh uh about 36% 460 are focused on carbon air capture uh 4 30 are land related capture 240 are ocean related capture um and the we've given away 20 million of your money already five million to students and 15 million to the a million to the top 15 teams and the finals are coming up in two years in Earth Day of 2025 and uh interestingly enough you know the winning team needs to demonstrate uh uh Megaton level capture that can scale to\n\nG level capture and so just the final competition is going to capture four megatons uh of carbon which is twice what's being done on an annual basis today so uh good progress so far great that's that's good to hear um well as we as we uh as we begin to wrap up what other thoughts for people on abundance what other mindset thoughts do you have for folks here is um H well I I I I do think that uh the birth rate is too low for humans as I I'm always going on about that um just a longevity baby I'm solving it with longevity I'm G to keep people alive longer okay well and robots and AI sure um but I mean it just uh the current situation is is grim Dr yeah yeah yeah yeah um I mean a lot of countries are um you know if you look at say say Korea Italy yeah they're\n\nthey're losing roughly half their population per generation yeah um that means three generations they're on10th of their current size and and and with the one1 that remains um being very old yeah the uh the numbers folks the replacement number is 2.\n\n1 children per family on the average and um Europe is at 1. 5 um Asia uh dropped from 5. 7 in the 1950s to 1. 9 today which is crazy uh North America dropped from about 3 to 1.\n\n6 were below the replacement level in the United States um and it's an it is an issue I mean we we need smart people on the planet yeah well I mean know if we don't make new humans we won't have Humanity um and and even with longevity uh we'll live longer but we're not live forever uh so I think we just need it's it's you know I'm concerned that like a lot of people think that the plan planet is overpopulated and that's one of the things contributing to a low birth rate um in fact some people I've encountered think they're basically um being Martyrs for not having kids and that's just it's just not true um I think we should uh take the position that we we we actually have a civic responsibility to have kids to at least keep uh the human population constant\n\num ideally we should grow it but we should at least not have population collapse which is what we currently have I I think people people fear the future and I mean the ations I've heard is I don't want to bring children into this world it's too dangerous AI is going to destroy Humanity uh the environment you know we're destroying the environment and so forth so I think part of it is getting people to be optimistic about the future uh versus pessimistic which is one of as you said in the beginning of this of this space is one of my one of my missions if people think the world is getting better and they have a hand in making it a better place uh you most definitely do um yeah I I think people should be optimistic about the future um they still Earth can\n\nhandle Far More Humans than currently exist um and uh the danger is not a population explosion but population collapse um so I would just encourage as many people as possible to uh have kids and ideally have a lot of kids because they they're going to make up for those who whatever reason don't buy an extra bottle of wine tonight folks yeah it's a big deal um so would you would you let's let's close out on the conversation of AI and AGI which I know a lot of people are always interested in and and and there's a real fear um about AI um what would you say to dissuade people I mean it's you you've you I've heard you say 80% probability we make it through and we need to protect it downside um can you speak to that what how do how can people walk away more\n\noptimistic than pessimistic on on this front and how do you how do you think about you know is is it containment is it shaping how we train our AI systems how do you think we navigate uh super digital super intelligence well the the rate which AI is growing is it really boggles the mind yeah um so it currently seems as though the amount of compute dedicated to artificial intelligence is um increasing by a factor of 10 roughly every six months um it's it's faster than annual that's for sure so um I mean I've I recently heard today about a gigawatt class uh AI uh compute cluster wow um that's I think it's being being built in Kuwait or something to that effect um and it's a like 700,000 um v100s uh which is a couple Generations above two generations Beyond\n\nthat's Curr in production so this is staggering amount of compute um and and there are many such such things that's just the biggest one I've heard of so far but there are there's a 500 megawatt installation happening um there's and there's there's there's multiple 100 100 megawatt installations um in the works I I I don't even clear to me what what you do with that much um compute um because when you when you actually add up all human data ever created uh you really just run out of things to train on very quite quickly um like you you know if you've got maybe I don't know 20 or 30,000 h100s you can train on synthetic data almost yeah yeah you basically you have to have have synthetic data um because forly well under 100,000 h100s you can train on all\n\nhuman data ever created including video uh um and it's not and it's not just the compute which is the major scarce resource but it's also the number of of uh entrepreneurs focusing this area the amount of capital that's going into this area uh the amount of data Avail I mean it's all increasing and it's all feeding on itself and so it's just you know hitting your point about the speed at which it's progressing is is I think the word awesome is is comes to mind or staggering yeah it's it's really staggering and and for sure um so I'm just trying to give a tense of scale it's I've never seen anything move this fast any of any technology this is the fastest moving thing so um in terms of aiming for AI safety my my best guess of my sort of primitive biological\n\nNE man is is that we should uh aim for maximum truth seeking and and curiosity um that that's that's that's my gutfield for this for how to make AI as safe as possible if the the danger with programming morality and explicit with an explicit morality program is what is sometimes referred to as the Waluigi problem if you create Luigi you automatically create Waluigi by inverting Luigi sure um so um so I think we we have to be careful about programming and you know sort of an arbitrary morality um but but if if we focus on maximizing truth with acknowledged error that's that's probably I think that's the the way to maximize safety um and and also to have the AI be curious um because I think that you know Earth is much more interesting to an advanced AI\n\nwith humans on it than without humans I have a I agree with you now a interesting question of do you think vast intellig with vast intelligence comes uh significant empathy and respect for Life yeah I think so because that's the that's the hope at the end of the rainbow here that uh I don't want to use the word AGI I'll use a super digital super intelligence as a as a term uh with a dig super intelligence that is able to be more benevolent and support us because sometimes I'm not sure us squishy meat sacks can make it through our own our own uh horseshit problems that we put together um so maybe there's a value there um my you know I think on the whole AI is the single most important technology we ever invented and it is going to uplift all of human I\n\nthink it's what you said you know post AGI comes abundance uh I think it's the interim issues in the next one to four years right it's it's not artificial intelligence it's human stupidity yeah um well I mean one way that AI could go wrong is if the extinctionist philosophy is programmed into the AI whe whether implicitly or explicitly I mean probably not explicitly but there's a strong danger of of an implicit extinctionist philosophy being programmed into AI um you know and and what would that look like what would that look like well like there's this guy on the front page of New York Times um think about a year ago um he's head of the extinctionist society and he was literally quoted as there are 8 billion people on on Earth it would be better if there\n\nwere none oh my God and yeah um so uh and if you if you take the extreme environmentalist argument especially like the implicit extreme environmentalist argument um they they there's an imp implicit conclusion that humans are a plague on the surface of the Earth um so we I think we have to be quite careful about um an an implicit like like if the extinctionist movement was somehow programmed into AI as as the optimization that would be extremely dangerous yeah to say say the least um yeah and but you know there there there are people quite a few people actually who who view Humanity um as as a blight on the surface of the oan yeah and there we're we are coming down to there is the you know accelerationist movement the deceleration movement the Boomers\n\nand the doomers um but I think people forget to realize or don't realize forget the fact that you know uh we romanticize the past and the past life was short brutish and you were dead by 40 um you know the life that we enjoy today is a result of the extraordinary technology that we brought to bear um yeah the like you know Hobs life is nasty brsh and um I I actually I I had a little Yorkshire terer once um who was uh nasty brutish and short and kept kept biting people so I called him hob perfect I would tell friends that that that came over watch out for the dog and and they'd look at this miniature York ter and laugh and then then bite them on the ankle and I said watch I said watch out for the uh you know that extinctionist Meme is the same sort of\n\nyou know you discount it uh until it starts um uh being a mind virus uh in part as you've called it and it starts disrupting us yeah um if you convince people that you know we're running out of resources on Earth that there are too many people in the world and the only way to survive is to have fewer people which a lot of people are believe to be the case and like I said if that if that somehow gets programmed into Ai and that AI becomes the most powerful AI then we're in deep trouble uh yeah we need to counterforce the population bomb I mean what an extraordinary disservice to humanity um yeah er's book was terrible nightmare maybe the most Anti anti-human book ever written yeah for sure for sure um the but get people Hope on the flip side here uh those\n\nwho are saying again going back to I don't want to bring up my children because I hear this all the time and I'm sure you do too in an age where AI is going to destroy us so um short-term problems long-term problems short-term Solutions long-term Solutions you said make it curious make it uh maximum truth seeking 100% um um is it okay to say that we're going to have issues in the short term and we're going to have to deal with them or do you there won't be there will be there will be some issues um I mean essentially at this point no way to stop AI it it's it is accelerating whether people like it or not um I mean that's that's uh that's why together with a number of really smart people we created uh xai um and um you know hopefully you know some really\n\nsmall humans will continue to join xai and and build uh what is intended to be a maximally truth seeking and maximally curious um AI um anyway I think that's that's really important um so listen on behalf of of those of us and I think everybody here listening who are pro- humanity and pro uplifting Humanity um and making us a multiplanetary species and uh living a longer healthier life and I the one place I disagreed with you on on uh on X is on uh you know having people live longer you don't people don't need to die for there to be new ideas you know that the CEO of Ford and GM didn't have to die for Tesla to come into existence so we're uh yeah uh you know I'm I want to just say thank you for all that you're doing and and setting a model for other other\n\nin industrialists and entrepreneurs out there uh to take on uh and solve the big huge problems well uh thank you um I would encourage people to be optimistic about the future um like or on the side of optimism um you will be happier for it um and and as you pointed out probably live longer so and I'm not I'm not totally against life extension I I think we did we you know um we want to be I'm I don't think we want to necessar have people live forever that's or live for a very long like thousands of years that I think that would potentially lead to OIC of society it it it would I think lead to oif of society um but but I mean solving de dementia and um you know curing cancer I think are good things obviously um so so I'm not sure we're actually that far\n\napart on the life extension thing um I think we're prob probably mostly in agreement um I yeah we just don't want to have like you know can you live for like do you want Kim Jong Un living for a thousand years no but I I'd like I'd like Elon Musk and Peter D mandis living for 150 years and a few other thousand amazing entrepreneurs out there sure um so it's it's a you know there there is a a challenge that like a lot of people they really never change their mind they just die and this this is actually I'm not sure who originally said this but even in physics where which is extremely rigorous um that you know that that you know physics in a lot of cases has advanced one Death at a time yeah my my friend Brian keading who's a a astrophysicist reminded me\n\nof that and and maybe it was true but in this world of Entrepreneurship I think we do live with meritocracy to a large degree and the best ideas can bubble up to the top um faster than ever before especially with with AI now where you can build companies you know extraordinary companies with a couple of people and a lot of tech so yeah um I have one last question and then uh uh it's I know it's dinner time there uh uh the future of X xai um what's your vision there pal well as I was saying I think the the path to AI safety is to BU an AI that is maximally truth seeking with acknowledged error that is maximally curious and I think um that I think that that is most likely to lead to a good outcome for Humanity um because we are we are much more interesting\n\nthan than than not Humanity like like obviously you know I'm a big fan of Ms but m is much less interesting because there is no human civilization there um and um you take humans for example we we we could hunt down all of the chimpanzees and kill them but we don't and in fact we make efforts to preserve their habitats um we so anyway I think that that's that is a path to a great future and and a a maximally positive AI to be rigorously truth seeking always acknowledging some amount of error and and maximally curious um that's and that's that's the the goal of XI is uh and you know the company MTO is understand the universe uh and that's a it's a it's a good Mission and and one that's going to take a bit of time I can't wait till the first uh AI is able\n\nto come up with new theories of physics um and new Innovations that's going to be I mean I don't think that's far away and I think that's gonna be one of the most awesome times ever to be alive true like we we definitely live in the most interesting times and actually for a while I was kind of depressed about AI but then I I kind of got fatalistic about it and said like well even if even if AI was going to you know end all all Humanity would I prefer to be around to see it or not I I guess I would prefer to be around to see it um just out of curiosity but I obviously hopefully AI is extremely beneficial to humanity but but the thing that sort of reconciled me to be less anxious about it was to say well I guess even if it was apocalyptic I'd still be curious\n\nto see the it's like you know I be curious to see it I remember I was at your birthday party at one of your homes here in La before you sold them uh and Larry Page was there and Sergey was there and we were having a conversation about living in a simulation and the notion was this is we're in the 99th level of the game play and this has got to be a simulation because you couldn't why would be why would be alive right now in this single most interesting time and then uh the only comment was don't poke the simulation or will end yeah yeah well if we are in a simulation the the the way to keep the simulation going is to keep being interesting so like humans run lots of computer simulations because we we we don't know what the outcome's going to be and we're\n\ncurious to see we'll run lots of simulations like in like will run crash simulations and SpaceX will run you know rocket flight simulations and um we only stop doing the simulations when the when the outcome is extremely predictable and boring yes so if we're in some alien Compu that's a great argument that is perfect right when it's absolutely known if we're if we're not if we're not entertaining enough to the uh the digital gods or the universe Gods they'll Land The Sim yeah we just need to make sure we keep the ratings [Laughter] up but but this why also why I think like one of the um ways to predict the future is that the most entertaining outcome is the most likely as seen by a third party as seen by as though we were an alien soap opera I love that\n\nyeah like so it's not necessarily good for those in the soap opera like you could be watching a World War I movie and seeing you know people get blown up um and and you're just eating popcorn and drinking of soda um but we're we're we're in the movie um yeah well let's not get let's not get dystopian here because I think we can have a we can have a we can have a really positive outcome of a lot of other cool stuff um yeah for sure I think the most likely outcome is positive and and I think if you you know and I think that's partly a self-fulfilling prophecy if you don't believe so if you believe it's going to be a distopian outcome then you're going to be back on your heels protecting yourself not investing in the future and it unravels and this yeah\n\nand and so you know I think the the message of this entire space is is this is the most extraordinary time to be alive the most exciting time to be alive a time where you know a lot a lot of individuals listening on the spaces has more power than Kings or queens or heads of Nations had just a few decades ago and it doesn't take a government or a large corporation to solve a problem anymore you know an entrepreneur with you some a few h100s can do a good job yeah I I think we should ear on the side of optimism um we should we should ear on the side of optimism and we should have kids like uh you know to to to air is human and h e i r and to reproduce is human all right buddy listen thank you so much for your time thanks for sharing you're welcome all right\n\nthanks Peter take care buddy [Music] bye n","textByLang":{"en":"following is a Year's conversation I had with Elon Musk arguably the greatest entrepreneur of our time perhaps the greatest entrepreneur ever during this conversation which is called the coming age of abundance we talk about how Technologies including Ai and humanoid Robotics are creating a world of abundance uplifting Humanity across Food Water Energy Healthcare education we'll be talking about longevity we'll be talking about AI we'll be talking about the decreasing global population and what are the reasons that you should have for being optimistic about the future join me happy New Year Yan happy New Year 2024 I love Yeah it feels like the future it is the future it is the future it's going to be awesome um you know I'm hoping we get a little bit\n\nof conversation on some hope and good news for folks on this uh on this spaces I think people can use it you are the most optimistic person that I know of by far and uh I mean I guess it is a refreshing to to hear such optimism I I think people need I think people need a positive mindset I think it's self-fulfilling prophecy to a large degree you know if you're pessimistic and we can talk about how the news media just decimates our minds uh constantly uh yeah the news is so negative I mean it makes me sad to read the news frankly I I well let me ask you a question I don't watch I don't watch Network news and I don't read any newspapers they couldn't pay me enough money yeah to do that time I I'll accidentally read the news and I'll just be sad it's insane\n\nwell I mean as you as you know the the news The Daily News um um really really attempts to answer the question what is the worst thing that happened on Earth today it is and and and and let me show let me show it to you every 5 minutes in your living room over and over and over again yeah and it's a big world there's eight billion people on Earth so you know somewhere on Earth something horrible is happening every single day but there's also great things happening every single day you know what I call CNN the crisis News Network or the constantly negative newth Network and the problem is if they've got to scare you otherwi yeah you know if they say hey it's been a pretty good day overall um you know violence is an alltime low yeah we've got more access\n\nto food energy water healthc care education on the pl than ever before I mean people would just start watching horror movies I think instead yeah yeah the challenge is it's uh it's our neural Nets the wiring of our brains you know evolved in a world of constant danger and so we're sort of just wired for fear and scarcity constantly Yeah well yeah I think You' made this point um maybe others have which it it sort of makes sense as a as an evolutionary asymmetry that we would respond more to Danger than to reward um in that like the consequences of danger could be fatal like it could be like well if you go over there there's a lion that's going to eat you or some neighboring tribe that's going to kill you and it's game over yeah your jeans are out of the\n\nJean Pool yeah you're you're out whereas say like uh news that there there's a there's a a nice bush with berries over there it's it's nice to have it's it's optional um but it's the in one case you die in other case you're you're hungry but death is worse than hunger so so that's is B basically we're any anyone who did not respond more to negative news than positive news didn't make it they were they were select they were selected against for sure that sucks yes I mean anyone who was complacent about where the lion was e by L and and you know the reality is you know the news media has one job to deliver your eyeballs to their advertisers and when we pay 10 times more attention to negative news and positive news that's all we get 24/7 so I mean listen\n\nI I it's yeah it is I mean I do get my my news invariably you know on my on my feed on X but I also get all the great things happening in the world because I can selectively choose to watch that but when you're watching TV or you know in the newspaper uh some editor someplace or some producers deciding what gets fed into your mind and it can really with your mindset um yes exactly so I mean this this space is uh uh called it the coming age of abundance and you know you were really when my first book came out abundance the future is better than you think uh you were super supportive and I and I appreciate that was 12 years ago and I think the story whoa 12 years amazing yeah and it's gotten so much better um so I it is in so many ways not not every way\n\nI mean I mean obviously we go back ways um the the I I I remember when we were at Ado's party in Brazil yeah how Longo he was it was his 40th or was it his 30th I don't no was it was this was just when SpaceX was just when I was forming space yeah it was it was 2003 there about it just before the X prise Was Won right I was trying to convince you not to build Rockets 21 years ago could like like you could have a kid that that has could legally or legally up kids yeah yeah um so 21 years ago uh yeah so and you know things things are mostly better most you I want to give everybody listening a dose of Hope and optimism on the abundance inside because the world has gone better in so many ways all you hear about is the negative constantly and I think that's\n\ngoing back to our sort of core dystopian mindsets from you know evolving 100,000 years ago but if we just look at some of the look at some of the areas right so like Global extreme poverty right I mean what's more what's what's a more important metric you know here are the numbers 90% of the world was in global extreme poverty in in the 1800s in 1981 it was 42% today it's under 10% of the world right yeah hunger Hunger is actually rare and it used to be common exactly um and another one is obviously one har that you're leading the charge on is energy you know we used to kill whales to get whale oil to light our nights and we ravaged mountainsides and we drilled kilometers under the ground uh and what's the figure it's like 8,000 times more energy hits\n\nthe surface of the Sun surface of the Earth from the Sun than we consume as a species what's the rate at which batteries and solar is increasing it's it must be massive yes I mean uh I mean Tesla we we've made a couple of presentations what one sort of simplistic and then one in extreme detail um on how to make Earth completely uh self- sustaining from an energy standpoint and demonstrating that there that there is no that if you break down all of the materials for lithium ion battery and for solar um you can easily make earth uh not I mean there there's no shortage material it's easy it's a lot of work obviously um but but but there's not like some critical material that we don't have enough of in order to make earth fully self- sustaining um even if\n\nthe only way that you powered all of Industry on Earth and and all power including heating um and transport uh electrically you could do that with solar and leine batteries um and and not uh not come anywhere close to depleting the resources of Earth yeah um my favorite my favorite example there was uh back in the 1800s the most precious metal on the planet was aluminum it was more precious than gold uh and and platinum and even though the Earth's crust is you know 8% boxy you know basically aluminum it was just so energetically difficult it wasn't that it was scarce it just wasn't in usable form yet and that's what technology does it takes something which is scarce and not usable and makes it usable right so yeah yeah ex aluminum oxide is extremely common\n\num and um but but it is it is a low energy state in fact thermite thermite thermite is just uh iron oxide rust and and and pure aluminum um and the the energy difference between uh iron oxide and aluminum oxide is so great that it generates incredible enough heat to melt through steel so that's what thermite is so uh yeah you do need a lot of energy to um turn aluminum oxide into aluminum um but but yeah it in World War II there was a massive scarcity of aluminum for aircraft sure um and uh that in fact in Britain the the mosquito uh sort of fighter bomber was U made of mostly of wood um and but it was it was done with uh it was basically an early form of of of composits but using stiff wood on the on the outside and and Lightwood and like Balsa on as\n\na sandwich structure it's pretty clever and the whole thing was intended to to address the shortage of and that and then then we get technology we get better uh better mechanisms of extracting the aluminum from the from the aluminum oxide from the boxy and this happens over and over again in fact that's just what we do I mean I think the number was last year in 2023 or maybe in 22 we had more new electricity production from solar than from any other form and and and you've done an extraordinary job on battery production yeah and the battery production is growing um actually almost at well at several times the rate of vehicle production so um you know in some cases almost 10x the rate of vehicle production um so so yes the there's a massive demand for\n\nbatteries and you know as as the world uses more uh electricity uh there's actually a lot more capability that the grid has if you can buffer the energy uh then without it because the vast majority of electrical sure it's wasted assume no they assume no buffering um so they have to size the power plants for for Peak output Peak power output which is typically a hot summer day um and and and then for at night you can have anywhere from half optimistically half power output to sometimes one/ tenth of the power output um so so so basically the the grid almost everywhere the grid is sized for excess um electrical power output um and if you just buffer it with batteries uh you can in increase the output of the grid uh by you know two or three times I mean\n\nto make to make the point here on the abundance theme um there is no limitation on energy right we are increasing the amount of energy per capita and there's a direct correlation between uh the GDP of a nation and its energy production right and the direct correlation between health and education and energy everything scales as you increase the energy per capita of a Nation yeah yeah um I talk about another category Communications um another area that you're revolutionizing I think the number right now I just was uh checking it earlier it's like 6.\n\n9 billion smartphone users in 2023 like 8 86% and that's what I got when I when I Googled it um I don't know what 6.\n\n9 you know what to say yeah uh 6,900 million 6,900 million let go there that my my my 12-y olds would say the same uh it's like 85 85% of the planets got a smartphone and uh uh and well I mean if if you add up the total number of smartphones uh uh made ever made it exceeds oh I think it so it's it's amazing so we've gone from like zero telepan to the majority vast majority of the planet in under a century um you know global internet as well the same thing and uh did I your your next iteration of starlink uh spacecraft have gone up uh the direct to cell phone okay uh yes that just went up um so you know we still have to prove that it works and all but um we're confident that even if the if these early satellites don't work we're confident from from a physics\n\nstandpoint that it can work um it it's it is h a challenge because we have to emulate uh a cells celf tower on the ground in order for the phones to accept the signal so we have to do do compensation for example um and and and and do some sort of because because you've got a speed of light limitations pal if if it were easy it would have been done already yeah yeah some speed of light limitations so you know this this like light is is so fast and yet so slow um so um you know I I yeah a good way to think about light at least in the space context uh or for the low or context is is it travels about 300 km every millisecond um in in air or uh in in space and and then and then around just over 200 kilm per per millisecond uh in fiber hey everyone I want to\n\ntake a quick break from this episode to tell you about a health product that I love and that I use every day in fact I use it twice a day it seeds ds01 daily symbiotic hopefully by now you understand that your microbiome and your gut are one of the most important modifiable parts of your health you know your gut microbiome is connected to everything your brain health your cardiac health your metabolic health so the question is what are you doing to optimize your gut let me take a moment to tell you about what I'm doing every day I take two capsules of seeds ds01 daily symbiotic it's a two-in-one probiotic and Prebiotic formulation that supports digested Health gut health skin Health heart health and more it contains 24 clinically and scientifically proven\n\nprobiotic strains that are delivered in a patented capsule that actually protects the contents from your stomach acid and ensures that 100% of it is survivable reaching your colon now if you want to try seed ds01 daily symbiotic for yourself you can get 25% off your first month supply by using the code Peter 25 at checkout just go to seed.\n\ncom moonshots and enter the code Peter 25 at checkout that that's seed.\n\ncom moonshots and use the code Peter 25 to get your 25% off the first month of seeds daily symbiotic trust me your gut will thank you all right let's go back to the episode you know another abundance area is Health um I hear some some kids in the background there so interestingly enough you know child mortality I mean probably uh I mean this is one that hits me the most in terms of increasing abundance child mortality under the age of five was 42% a couple hundred years ago it was a coin flip of whether your kid survived um and it's decreased now to under 5% and it's gone down by 50% in the last 30 years um so just childhood mortality and women dying in child birth all of these things people don't think about when they're listening to all in news on and\n\nall the issues and then life expectancy my favorite subject uh has gone up from you know 30 years old to uh to 75 plus I still disagree with you on longevity though that that we should solve it or not like we should you think we should solve well I I listen I'm not necessarily saying live forever but I'd like to make it to 120 um I yeah I I sort of wonder if we should not Sol it too soon um just presidential elections expect first and and do you really want them to get that life expectancy first well uh you know you know I I I think we uh I think uh being able to have the Vitality the cognition the physical prowess uh you know that you have when you're in your 40s or 50s through the age of 100 that's my goal um I mean you don't want to you don't want\n\nto you know you want to make it to at least 100 don't you um well I guess it does depend on whether I'm you know have dementia I I don't think I'd want to be a burden on society or have dementia not know what's going on um i' prefer it to be dead well yeah I think that's that's for sure uh but let's assume that you had you know all the cognitive power you have today your physical strength is there any reason why you wouldn't want to you know have an extended lifespan or health span yeah sure um I I guess I I think we are end up there's such a strong forcing function for Life Extension or health span extension that I think we will see uh advancers in that area whether I want them to be there or not um and actually my opinion on the subject is that it's\n\nI I think it's actually not that hard to solve uh because the if you just consider arguments of symmetry it's are quite helpful the the the cells in our body all age age at basic almost exactly the same speed um like what like I've not seen anyone who has an old left arm and a young right arm I've never seen that not even once yes so how how are the cells communicating and how what is keeping them what is synchronizing their behavior um something there's there's a very clear mechanism for synchronizing aging among the 30 to 40 trillion cells in your body like depending on your body mass you're typically going to have 30 to 40 trillion cells that's correct you know keep you know in sync um I mean the other the other the other reference uh proof point is\n\nyou know boohead whales one the largest mammals can make it to 200 years repeatedly Greenland sharks can make it to 500 years and have babies at 200 years old I remember when I was in medical school hearing that I said you know why can they why can't we I said it's either an engineering problem or software problem a hardware problem or software problem and I think I think this is one of the biggest areas AI is going to give us is a real understanding and then to your other point about your left arm arm and right arm you know when you have a baby uh woman's 30 35 you're 40 45 your baby starts out at zero yeah um I I do find it remarkable that we decompress from a single cell to um an adult human and then and then we you know to procreate compressed back\n\ndown to a single cell that is fascinating you know I mean you look you sort of look look at yourself as a sort of you know Blas assist and say like I haven't changed a bit here we go again let's recycle it's like it's like the big bang it's like right the Big Crunch um you know one of the things people argue about on extended Health span uh and you know increasing the population getting to 100 120 150 and there's a concept called Longevity Escape velosophy right that there's going to be a point at which for every year you're alive science is extending your life for more than a year and that's an interesting uh idea to think about um in which case you know accidents become really uh a thing to be concerned about um they concern about overpopulation and\n\nand you've you've hit this multiple times right the and I saw you Tweeting about it or sorry you're Xing about it today uh sorry uh but it's you know overpopulation is one of the biggest myths and biggest uh false over population is outer BS yeah um you know and and you know it's it's such nonsense um Earth is UN underpopulated not overpopulated with under look out the window when you're flying across the country it's empty absolutely exactly it's like if you say like if your goal was to like flying from aliot to New York to drop a bowling ball on a human you would fail um you know I think one of one of my goal I think the greatest gift we can give people in this abundance world is increased Health span I mean when you think about what people want they\n\nwant happiness and they want Health right no one wants to die in a painful cancer or or uh dementia um so yeah and you know I I have extended to you many times my friend come down to Fountain Health let me put you through our our program the world needs you around for another 30 30 years okay well what do you have any what should I do let's say well I mean so there two what actions can be taken two this could be helpful for listeners two on on this discussion yeah so they're two there are three things you need to know number one is there anything going on inside your body that you don't know about so the body is amazingly good at hiding disease so we found in our seemingly healthy adults 2% have a cancer they don't know about two and a half% 2% 2 and\n\na half% have an aneurysm 14.\n\n4% either have metabolic disease coronary disease uh neurogenerative disease and okay and so your body is incredibly good at hiding disease all right so you don't actually uh feel any cancer until stage three or stage four 70% of all heart attacks have no precedence your body is compensating constantly and you know for most of us we know more about what's going inside our cars or airplanes than we do our bodies yeah I had a question for you how many how many sensors are going up on on Starship when you're launching how many Star sensors are going are on board that vehicle rough order magnitude getting back data uh well I guess there's when you count everything up there's several thousand sensors and if I were I mean there are 33 engin so they they count\n\nfrom the bul of sure and but you also have uh uh stress sensors and looking what's going on in in the structures and avionics and Communications across all the subsystems and if I ask you how 39 engines including the uper stage so so there's several thousand sensors um and way more sensors than than yeah I was going to say if you if ask you how many sensors do you have in your body and so we don't look which is insane because we do have the technology now to look to determine is there anything going on I need to know about and when's a good time to find out about like now or what's likely to break what's likely to undergo failure cycles and then what's the most extraordinary Therapeutics available to extend the human lifespan so um I mean for me that's\n\nthat's uh that's a that's a big one let me ask you another another uh abundance uh theme which is education um do you think any of our schools today middle schools or high schools are preparing any of our kids for the future um well none that I know of well there might I mean there might probably are a few schools that are doing it but probably 99% of schools are not yeah uh schools are very slow slow to change um and and I think that there there there there is do seem to move away from teaching the fundamentals you know of uh writing well and math and history um you know I'm concerned about the whole work agenda and ideology perating through education agreed um and actually being destructive to education agreed I mean you know how do you think do you\n\nhave these thoughts I mean so at the end of the day I think our best our best healthc care and our best teachers are going to be AIS right that understand everything and they demonetize and they democratize every aspect mean the AI knows your your kids favorite color sports star movie star what they know the languages they know what they did today um I mean it's a way of giv every child on the planet the best education I mean you you funded back years ago if you remember the Global Learning X prise that we did we did a uh that we we demoed in Tanzania with AIS on tablets it was the earliest days of of AI imod mustak who you know was one of the uh winners of that competition who went on now to create stability um I mean the the challenge is I don't think\n\nthe Educational Systems are going to give up uh that control anytime soon um true well if I mean if I look at how my kids were educated they seem to be mostly educated by YouTube and Reddit yeah um and X as well I suppose um but they're constantly on the internet um that that seems to be and I guess a lot of cases these days uh Tik Tok unfortunately yeah yeah um so I think yeah the education situation is is problematic um not sure what to do about it um I think I think ultimately uh you know KH Academy is one step in the right direction um but I think part of it is getting our educational institutions to First realize they're not preparing kids for the world that's coming I mean this hits another point we are such linear thinkers right we're projecting\n\nwhat we have and putting it out four or five years I don't think people let me ask you do you think people are ready for what the world's going to be like in 2030 uh no um I I don't know what the world's going to be like in 2030 so probably I wouldn't say that I'm necessarily the the we definitely live in the most interesting of times uh you know like this legally this Chinese saying that may you live in interesting times is is is a not a good thing um but I mean I I I think personally I would like to live in the most interesting of times and this is the most interesting of times I also think it's is the best time to be alive ever the only time more exciting than today is tomorrow I mean you know by what measure yeah we have environmental issues but I\n\nthink we have the best chance of solving those environmental issues with the technology we have now versus the technology we had 10 years ago yeah I well I generally think it's as as a as a general sort of rule of living it is it is better to ear on the side of being optimistic and wrong than pessimistic and right um if you're going to make if you're going to ear one side of the other better it's just a higher quality of life to ear on the side of being optimistic and risk being wrong than than than pessimistic um you know and you know and right I mean it's it's better to be you'll just have a just enjoy life yeah what optimism is is is is gonna make you happy there was a study of 14,000 people uh for it was 14,000 women and 1500 guys um and it showed\n\nthat uh opt those who had an optimistic mindset lived 14 to 15% longer than those who with a pessimistic mindset I mean mindsets a powerful thing and I think undervalued by almost everybody one my one of my favorite examples of This was um do you know what the environmental disaster of the 1880s and 1890s was I'm sure you know um of the is this is this back to whal no no it's it's it's another form of life it's a the HSE Manor uh disaster the the hored problem yes yeah what what is this hor well yeah no no you're right the I mean New York was was basically a a hor manure and and and urine uh and carcass it was it was terrible people brought their Motive Power I mean basically like if you think if you think you think New York subways are stinky right now\n\nwait I mean try when it's just everywhere everywhere you know people everywhere people people moved from people moved into downtown New York Detroit Chicago they brought their Motive Power with them and and the articles in the 1880s and 90s and into the 1900s as you as you read this the projection was disaster it was going to be a disaster because hor horse horse manure was like grow they had like special parking lots for horeshit at the corner of every street well well I it seems like there's also a challenge because I think if a horse lives um you know for on the order of 15 years um that means 1/5th of all horses are kicking the bucket every year um so you just got and so so if you if you got like uh 300,000 horses it means you got 20,000 horses dropping\n\ndead every year and then you need a horse to move the horse the dead horse or just or just cover it with Horseman or let it decompose yeah I mean it's going to be like decomposing horse caucuses throughout major cities then and then and then like it's like well whose whose dead horse is this are people are probably quick to claim a live not rushing to claim a but then and then Innovation came along and here comes the car and solves the problem and I think that's the problem that we keep on forgetting we we forget that we are incredibly Innovative at solving problems that's what humans are amazing at yeah yeah true true um um actually on the whale front I don't if you know back to the whales it's a whale of a tail whale Tales okay um the the so a lot of\n\npeople think that the um the the low point on whale uh population was was in the 1800s because you know whales were being hunted for for whale and whale oil yeah um but but actually the the low Point uh by far was in fact um uh in the mid 20th century uh because uh of a bureaucratic error in the Soviet Union okay this I have to year they they can't so they would always have these five-year plans and quotas uh for for how for whale tonnage um now it didn't they didn't actually have even a whether the whale tonnage was usable tonnage um in anyway they just had a quota for whale tonnage and what they would do in the sovi union they would just keep increasing the quota of everything every year every five years so the so the whale tonnage just got Higher and\n\nHigher and Higher and and if you if you were a captain and you and you and you had a high whale tonnage you'd get a metal and a raise and if your whale tonnage was low you'd be sent to the G you get you get what you incentivized baby yes incentives matter and and so it it got to it to it just got to absurd levels um and you had Soviet whaling ships like going into uh you know us and Australian Waters to desperately trying to find whales and and they they would catch the whale weigh the whale and then dump the cus over I mean there there's there's a whole AET rabbit hole that you can go down on this and which is basically a lesson in the the folies of central planning so and this is the problem of keeping laws on the books way way after they're useful\n\nto society well we do have actually have a fundamental uh issue with the accumulation of laws and regulations because they are Immortal um and humans are mortal as we were just discussing you know with life extension um so so naturally every year you're going to have this accumulation of laws and regulations um until eventually everything is legal I mean everything is illegal everything is illegal yes nothing is allowed because you have overlapping laws regulations and and some of which are in fact uh contradict each other um that whether you go left or right they're both left and right [Laughter] are um my God you know um it like SpaceX is I mean sham you know the doj in this respect in this particular case with it doj as you may know is suing SpaceX\n\nfor um hiring only a permanent residents and and um citizens of the US the reason um that we did this was because we were told uh very clearly that if we did not hire permanent residents uh of the United States that that would con constitute a violation of international trade tra traffic and arms regulations itar and the entire executive team of SpaceX and the board would go to prison sounds like a good motivation yes and so we we were literally told us by the government in very clear terms and and you mean you're well aware of it I well aware yes it's it's a nightmare um and we would like to which which by the way uh puts us in a non-competitive world against uh other nations yes it it's it's it's it's it's pretty bad so um but but then then then the\n\ndoj um you know is suing uh SpaceX um for not hiring Asylum Seekers now important Point here not Asylum those who have been granted Asylum those who are seeking Asylum there's a lot of those there's a lot of people seeking Asylum yes so we're damned if we do and damned if we don't so if if we hire someone who's not a perent residence we're breaking the law and if we don't hire someone who who's not a permanent resident we're breaking the law so what this is this is an example of the madness that we're facing um buddy I I want to compliment you on something which and I've seen I've known you for long enough to have seen you gone through this where you have bet everything over and over again you've bet uh your entire Fortune gone into debt to do the things\n\nthat you believe in and I I I have a question to ask you which I've been dying to ask and I'm going to start making this uh this known there are so many billionaires on the planet who have tens of billions and hundreds of billions of dollars who are effectively sitting on it and not changing the world um not putting it in you know other than for increasing its return which is not a bad thing I think the more wealth and free energy there is out there to do things but um can you speak to that I don't know if you're willing to but uh there are a few people like Mark Benny off and uh and Eric Schmid and your yourself top of the list who invest on making the world a better place solving Global Grand challenges um thoughts on that sorry I just have some some\n\nkids and stuff right problem um sort of family noises in the background um so uh let's see um yeah um well yeah I mean I do think that uh smart people with resources should care about the the good of civilization the future of civilization um even if there is not even if they're not particularly altruistic um because you can't really can you cannot exist um absent civilization um you you know if civilization collapses it's all over um you know there's like people who've got like these sort of um bunkers and you like other countries or Hawaii or whatever um I'm like listen do you really think that you're going to make it in in an apocalyptic situation um like they'll they'll they'll come and find you in that bunker and they pry they'll pry you out and\n\nget your stuff um and and and and it's it's going to anyway so really uh smart people with resources any smart person with resources they just have some long-term perspective I mean listen it's it's you and it's you and and Jeff Bezos right now who've got the biggest long-term perspective and I see I uh you know uh I'm just curious about how do you incentivize other people to really um help the world accelerate uh you know and and make the world a more productive place right the best way to become a billionaire is help a billion people the world's biggest problems the world's biggest business opportunities uh do you believe that well I guess maybe we should just talk to people more um I guess just talking to them and you know I think it's perhaps just\n\nraising conscious awareness the fact that um there is no living without civilization um when when you like one doesn't actually have to make an altruistic argument you can actually you know make a even it's a purely self-seeking argument um say like life would be miserable without civilization and if you want to know what life is like without civilization just go try living in the forest naked for a day and you will be naked and afraid and and quickly realize civilization is awesome have to eat bugs and get eaten by bugs and and and we're so interdependent upon each other to enable the state of technology and capability we have today um you know I'm curious is there anything that you think um that isn't becoming more abundant out there or anything we\n\nhave an abundance uh constraint on you know I'll just mention well answer that first then I want to come and talk about the carbon removal ex prise that you funded one second you know we're we're creating abundance of food energy water Health Care education um are we constrained in any way no not really no um I mean no I I think I I agree with you that the future most likely has abundance um we shouldn't be complacent about the future um you know complacency and entitlement are not a recipe for success but the most likely outcome is one of abundance of goods and services um that is certainly where we're headed uh uh yeah yeah when I when I saw you lasty likely where we're at very likely yeah when when I saw you last you said you know definitely a bunch\n\nafter AGI and I saw you know when you were talking about uh Optimus which is Awesome by the way let's just start with that congratulations um well thanks mean Optimus I need to make sure the Optimus is you know doesn't cause it doesn't add to civilizational risk um you know because you don't want like a billion of these things or with centralized control um unless unless what could go wrong has anyone made a movie about that unless they obey you well I don't think they should any any one personation yeah like I think you have to have Lo local control but um it has to be decentralized um because and any Central uh control is going to be problematic um CU you just can't be like it could be the a rogue AI takes I mean let's literally movie a rogue AI you\n\nknow Terminator uh takes over somehow gains control of um the mothership of that controls all the you know the Optimus robots or something like that um that is uh you basically it needs to be DEC it needs to be impossible for that to occur um let me ask you I always love combining your companies because it's like you know you know it's like uh uh a Reese's Peanut Butter Cup um you know sterlink and and and uh and and Starship together how about Optimus and neuralink when can I plug into an Optimus with my neuralink connection um well hopefully the first neural links will the First new link um in a human will hopefully be soon with from the next maybe this month or or next um now this is really just at first just trying to give um you know quadr quadriplegics\n\nand tetraplegics um the ability to control their phone and computer it's it's basically like the first the first product is TE telepathy essentially um um or telekinesis um and uh and then the second product uh sort of tentatively called Blind sight where uh we can restore sight even if somebody is uh has uh lost both eyes and their optic nove amazing um go straight to the visual cortex yeah yeah exactly now these things all already work uh in monkeys um and uh i' just like to reemphasize no no monkey has ever died because of a neuralink um and we treat our monkeys extremely well last time last time I spoke to you about this you were playing uh you were playing pong against pager I think that's right um actually it turns out monkeys love playing video\n\ngames um they they're they're really just like us I mean they they they love uh eating eating snacks and playing video games I'll tell my 12-year-old boys about that yeah I mean you you see the video of Pedro playing you know um monkey mind you know telepathic playing pong telepathically he's not restrained in any way he's just sitting on on the the sort of tree branch drinking smoothies and drinking smoothies drinking a smoothie and playing pong yeah he's not held down you know um in fact he's he gets upset when we take his video game away just like like hum just like our kids that's that's awesome and and this I mean giving sight to the blind I mean it's biblical stuff and and this is again coming back to the original uh you know kicking off the new\n\nyear with a positive mindset with an abundance mindset with an exponential mindset with a moonshot mindset right which I and I think I hope you agree like I think for entrepreneurs and people listening like the single most important thing we have is our mindset how we see the world I mean would you agree with that yeah yeah I mean you can choose to be I mean happiness is I think is a decision I mean Lely I mean there's obviously people that have chemical imbalances but uh for most people the difference between being happy and unhappy is deciding to be happy over the years I've experimented with many intermittent fasting programs uh the truth is I've given up on intermittent fasting as I've seen no real benefit when it comes to longevity but this changed\n\nwhen I discovered something called prolon 5day fasting nutrition program it harnesses the process of autophagy this is a cellular recycling process that revitalizes your body at a molecular level and just one cycle of the 5-day prolon fasting nutrition program can support healthy aging fat focused weight loss improved energy levels and more it's a painless process and I've been doing it twice a year for the last year you can get a 15% off on your order when you go to my special URL go to prolon life.\n\ncom p r o l n l.\n\ncom back slm moonshot get started on your longevity Journey with prolong today now back to the episode I want to take a second for everybody listening uh uh to point something out uh you know Elon it was uh 2021 uh I was texting with you and uh I said you should fund an another exerprise you funded an exerprise years AO go on teaching kids in the middle of Tanzania Reading Writing and arithmetic without any adults no schools around just on a tablet they were handed and the software had to teach them and it was an amazing success and then in 21 um I asked you if you'd do an exerprise on carbon removal and uh you said yes almost instantly um and we launched it three months later it was like the fastest yes to an xprize launch ever um so thank you for that\n\nI want to give you a quick up on it if I could you're welcome um absolutely well um I hope the the education ex prise and the the Caron removal ex prise are result in you good out they I'm sure we had 6,000 teams enter the carbon removal prize um we have uh 1300 active teams in the competition right now as we down select uh uh about 36% 460 are focused on carbon air capture uh 4 30 are land related capture 240 are ocean related capture um and the we've given away 20 million of your money already five million to students and 15 million to the a million to the top 15 teams and the finals are coming up in two years in Earth Day of 2025 and uh interestingly enough you know the winning team needs to demonstrate uh uh Megaton level capture that can scale to\n\nG level capture and so just the final competition is going to capture four megatons uh of carbon which is twice what's being done on an annual basis today so uh good progress so far great that's that's good to hear um well as we as we uh as we begin to wrap up what other thoughts for people on abundance what other mindset thoughts do you have for folks here is um H well I I I I do think that uh the birth rate is too low for humans as I I'm always going on about that um just a longevity baby I'm solving it with longevity I'm G to keep people alive longer okay well and robots and AI sure um but I mean it just uh the current situation is is grim Dr yeah yeah yeah yeah um I mean a lot of countries are um you know if you look at say say Korea Italy yeah they're\n\nthey're losing roughly half their population per generation yeah um that means three generations they're on10th of their current size and and and with the one1 that remains um being very old yeah the uh the numbers folks the replacement number is 2.\n\n1 children per family on the average and um Europe is at 1. 5 um Asia uh dropped from 5. 7 in the 1950s to 1. 9 today which is crazy uh North America dropped from about 3 to 1.\n\n6 were below the replacement level in the United States um and it's an it is an issue I mean we we need smart people on the planet yeah well I mean know if we don't make new humans we won't have Humanity um and and even with longevity uh we'll live longer but we're not live forever uh so I think we just need it's it's you know I'm concerned that like a lot of people think that the plan planet is overpopulated and that's one of the things contributing to a low birth rate um in fact some people I've encountered think they're basically um being Martyrs for not having kids and that's just it's just not true um I think we should uh take the position that we we we actually have a civic responsibility to have kids to at least keep uh the human population constant\n\num ideally we should grow it but we should at least not have population collapse which is what we currently have I I think people people fear the future and I mean the ations I've heard is I don't want to bring children into this world it's too dangerous AI is going to destroy Humanity uh the environment you know we're destroying the environment and so forth so I think part of it is getting people to be optimistic about the future uh versus pessimistic which is one of as you said in the beginning of this of this space is one of my one of my missions if people think the world is getting better and they have a hand in making it a better place uh you most definitely do um yeah I I think people should be optimistic about the future um they still Earth can\n\nhandle Far More Humans than currently exist um and uh the danger is not a population explosion but population collapse um so I would just encourage as many people as possible to uh have kids and ideally have a lot of kids because they they're going to make up for those who whatever reason don't buy an extra bottle of wine tonight folks yeah it's a big deal um so would you would you let's let's close out on the conversation of AI and AGI which I know a lot of people are always interested in and and and there's a real fear um about AI um what would you say to dissuade people I mean it's you you've you I've heard you say 80% probability we make it through and we need to protect it downside um can you speak to that what how do how can people walk away more\n\noptimistic than pessimistic on on this front and how do you how do you think about you know is is it containment is it shaping how we train our AI systems how do you think we navigate uh super digital super intelligence well the the rate which AI is growing is it really boggles the mind yeah um so it currently seems as though the amount of compute dedicated to artificial intelligence is um increasing by a factor of 10 roughly every six months um it's it's faster than annual that's for sure so um I mean I've I recently heard today about a gigawatt class uh AI uh compute cluster wow um that's I think it's being being built in Kuwait or something to that effect um and it's a like 700,000 um v100s uh which is a couple Generations above two generations Beyond\n\nthat's Curr in production so this is staggering amount of compute um and and there are many such such things that's just the biggest one I've heard of so far but there are there's a 500 megawatt installation happening um there's and there's there's there's multiple 100 100 megawatt installations um in the works I I I don't even clear to me what what you do with that much um compute um because when you when you actually add up all human data ever created uh you really just run out of things to train on very quite quickly um like you you know if you've got maybe I don't know 20 or 30,000 h100s you can train on synthetic data almost yeah yeah you basically you have to have have synthetic data um because forly well under 100,000 h100s you can train on all\n\nhuman data ever created including video uh um and it's not and it's not just the compute which is the major scarce resource but it's also the number of of uh entrepreneurs focusing this area the amount of capital that's going into this area uh the amount of data Avail I mean it's all increasing and it's all feeding on itself and so it's just you know hitting your point about the speed at which it's progressing is is I think the word awesome is is comes to mind or staggering yeah it's it's really staggering and and for sure um so I'm just trying to give a tense of scale it's I've never seen anything move this fast any of any technology this is the fastest moving thing so um in terms of aiming for AI safety my my best guess of my sort of primitive biological\n\nNE man is is that we should uh aim for maximum truth seeking and and curiosity um that that's that's that's my gutfield for this for how to make AI as safe as possible if the the danger with programming morality and explicit with an explicit morality program is what is sometimes referred to as the Waluigi problem if you create Luigi you automatically create Waluigi by inverting Luigi sure um so um so I think we we have to be careful about programming and you know sort of an arbitrary morality um but but if if we focus on maximizing truth with acknowledged error that's that's probably I think that's the the way to maximize safety um and and also to have the AI be curious um because I think that you know Earth is much more interesting to an advanced AI\n\nwith humans on it than without humans I have a I agree with you now a interesting question of do you think vast intellig with vast intelligence comes uh significant empathy and respect for Life yeah I think so because that's the that's the hope at the end of the rainbow here that uh I don't want to use the word AGI I'll use a super digital super intelligence as a as a term uh with a dig super intelligence that is able to be more benevolent and support us because sometimes I'm not sure us squishy meat sacks can make it through our own our own uh horseshit problems that we put together um so maybe there's a value there um my you know I think on the whole AI is the single most important technology we ever invented and it is going to uplift all of human I\n\nthink it's what you said you know post AGI comes abundance uh I think it's the interim issues in the next one to four years right it's it's not artificial intelligence it's human stupidity yeah um well I mean one way that AI could go wrong is if the extinctionist philosophy is programmed into the AI whe whether implicitly or explicitly I mean probably not explicitly but there's a strong danger of of an implicit extinctionist philosophy being programmed into AI um you know and and what would that look like what would that look like well like there's this guy on the front page of New York Times um think about a year ago um he's head of the extinctionist society and he was literally quoted as there are 8 billion people on on Earth it would be better if there\n\nwere none oh my God and yeah um so uh and if you if you take the extreme environmentalist argument especially like the implicit extreme environmentalist argument um they they there's an imp implicit conclusion that humans are a plague on the surface of the Earth um so we I think we have to be quite careful about um an an implicit like like if the extinctionist movement was somehow programmed into AI as as the optimization that would be extremely dangerous yeah to say say the least um yeah and but you know there there there are people quite a few people actually who who view Humanity um as as a blight on the surface of the oan yeah and there we're we are coming down to there is the you know accelerationist movement the deceleration movement the Boomers\n\nand the doomers um but I think people forget to realize or don't realize forget the fact that you know uh we romanticize the past and the past life was short brutish and you were dead by 40 um you know the life that we enjoy today is a result of the extraordinary technology that we brought to bear um yeah the like you know Hobs life is nasty brsh and um I I actually I I had a little Yorkshire terer once um who was uh nasty brutish and short and kept kept biting people so I called him hob perfect I would tell friends that that that came over watch out for the dog and and they'd look at this miniature York ter and laugh and then then bite them on the ankle and I said watch I said watch out for the uh you know that extinctionist Meme is the same sort of\n\nyou know you discount it uh until it starts um uh being a mind virus uh in part as you've called it and it starts disrupting us yeah um if you convince people that you know we're running out of resources on Earth that there are too many people in the world and the only way to survive is to have fewer people which a lot of people are believe to be the case and like I said if that if that somehow gets programmed into Ai and that AI becomes the most powerful AI then we're in deep trouble uh yeah we need to counterforce the population bomb I mean what an extraordinary disservice to humanity um yeah er's book was terrible nightmare maybe the most Anti anti-human book ever written yeah for sure for sure um the but get people Hope on the flip side here uh those\n\nwho are saying again going back to I don't want to bring up my children because I hear this all the time and I'm sure you do too in an age where AI is going to destroy us so um short-term problems long-term problems short-term Solutions long-term Solutions you said make it curious make it uh maximum truth seeking 100% um um is it okay to say that we're going to have issues in the short term and we're going to have to deal with them or do you there won't be there will be there will be some issues um I mean essentially at this point no way to stop AI it it's it is accelerating whether people like it or not um I mean that's that's uh that's why together with a number of really smart people we created uh xai um and um you know hopefully you know some really\n\nsmall humans will continue to join xai and and build uh what is intended to be a maximally truth seeking and maximally curious um AI um anyway I think that's that's really important um so listen on behalf of of those of us and I think everybody here listening who are pro- humanity and pro uplifting Humanity um and making us a multiplanetary species and uh living a longer healthier life and I the one place I disagreed with you on on uh on X is on uh you know having people live longer you don't people don't need to die for there to be new ideas you know that the CEO of Ford and GM didn't have to die for Tesla to come into existence so we're uh yeah uh you know I'm I want to just say thank you for all that you're doing and and setting a model for other other\n\nin industrialists and entrepreneurs out there uh to take on uh and solve the big huge problems well uh thank you um I would encourage people to be optimistic about the future um like or on the side of optimism um you will be happier for it um and and as you pointed out probably live longer so and I'm not I'm not totally against life extension I I think we did we you know um we want to be I'm I don't think we want to necessar have people live forever that's or live for a very long like thousands of years that I think that would potentially lead to OIC of society it it it would I think lead to oif of society um but but I mean solving de dementia and um you know curing cancer I think are good things obviously um so so I'm not sure we're actually that far\n\napart on the life extension thing um I think we're prob probably mostly in agreement um I yeah we just don't want to have like you know can you live for like do you want Kim Jong Un living for a thousand years no but I I'd like I'd like Elon Musk and Peter D mandis living for 150 years and a few other thousand amazing entrepreneurs out there sure um so it's it's a you know there there is a a challenge that like a lot of people they really never change their mind they just die and this this is actually I'm not sure who originally said this but even in physics where which is extremely rigorous um that you know that that you know physics in a lot of cases has advanced one Death at a time yeah my my friend Brian keading who's a a astrophysicist reminded me\n\nof that and and maybe it was true but in this world of Entrepreneurship I think we do live with meritocracy to a large degree and the best ideas can bubble up to the top um faster than ever before especially with with AI now where you can build companies you know extraordinary companies with a couple of people and a lot of tech so yeah um I have one last question and then uh uh it's I know it's dinner time there uh uh the future of X xai um what's your vision there pal well as I was saying I think the the path to AI safety is to BU an AI that is maximally truth seeking with acknowledged error that is maximally curious and I think um that I think that that is most likely to lead to a good outcome for Humanity um because we are we are much more interesting\n\nthan than than not Humanity like like obviously you know I'm a big fan of Ms but m is much less interesting because there is no human civilization there um and um you take humans for example we we we could hunt down all of the chimpanzees and kill them but we don't and in fact we make efforts to preserve their habitats um we so anyway I think that that's that is a path to a great future and and a a maximally positive AI to be rigorously truth seeking always acknowledging some amount of error and and maximally curious um that's and that's that's the the goal of XI is uh and you know the company MTO is understand the universe uh and that's a it's a it's a good Mission and and one that's going to take a bit of time I can't wait till the first uh AI is able\n\nto come up with new theories of physics um and new Innovations that's going to be I mean I don't think that's far away and I think that's gonna be one of the most awesome times ever to be alive true like we we definitely live in the most interesting times and actually for a while I was kind of depressed about AI but then I I kind of got fatalistic about it and said like well even if even if AI was going to you know end all all Humanity would I prefer to be around to see it or not I I guess I would prefer to be around to see it um just out of curiosity but I obviously hopefully AI is extremely beneficial to humanity but but the thing that sort of reconciled me to be less anxious about it was to say well I guess even if it was apocalyptic I'd still be curious\n\nto see the it's like you know I be curious to see it I remember I was at your birthday party at one of your homes here in La before you sold them uh and Larry Page was there and Sergey was there and we were having a conversation about living in a simulation and the notion was this is we're in the 99th level of the game play and this has got to be a simulation because you couldn't why would be why would be alive right now in this single most interesting time and then uh the only comment was don't poke the simulation or will end yeah yeah well if we are in a simulation the the the way to keep the simulation going is to keep being interesting so like humans run lots of computer simulations because we we we don't know what the outcome's going to be and we're\n\ncurious to see we'll run lots of simulations like in like will run crash simulations and SpaceX will run you know rocket flight simulations and um we only stop doing the simulations when the when the outcome is extremely predictable and boring yes so if we're in some alien Compu that's a great argument that is perfect right when it's absolutely known if we're if we're not if we're not entertaining enough to the uh the digital gods or the universe Gods they'll Land The Sim yeah we just need to make sure we keep the ratings [Laughter] up but but this why also why I think like one of the um ways to predict the future is that the most entertaining outcome is the most likely as seen by a third party as seen by as though we were an alien soap opera I love that\n\nyeah like so it's not necessarily good for those in the soap opera like you could be watching a World War I movie and seeing you know people get blown up um and and you're just eating popcorn and drinking of soda um but we're we're we're in the movie um yeah well let's not get let's not get dystopian here because I think we can have a we can have a we can have a really positive outcome of a lot of other cool stuff um yeah for sure I think the most likely outcome is positive and and I think if you you know and I think that's partly a self-fulfilling prophecy if you don't believe so if you believe it's going to be a distopian outcome then you're going to be back on your heels protecting yourself not investing in the future and it unravels and this yeah\n\nand and so you know I think the the message of this entire space is is this is the most extraordinary time to be alive the most exciting time to be alive a time where you know a lot a lot of individuals listening on the spaces has more power than Kings or queens or heads of Nations had just a few decades ago and it doesn't take a government or a large corporation to solve a problem anymore you know an entrepreneur with you some a few h100s can do a good job yeah I I think we should ear on the side of optimism um we should we should ear on the side of optimism and we should have kids like uh you know to to to air is human and h e i r and to reproduce is human all right buddy listen thank you so much for your time thanks for sharing you're welcome all right\n\nthanks Peter take care buddy [Music] bye n"},"languages":["en"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_PcL4w--uNs"},{"id":"atreju-festival-2023-12-16","type":"interview","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=37e6BVnwm4g","title":"Atreju Festival","titles":{"en":"Atreju Festival","de":"Atreju Festival","fr":"Atreju Festival"},"date":"2023-12-16","summary":"Musk speaks at Italy's Atreju festival on birth rates, free speech and AI, urging Italians to have more children.","text":"[Applause] hello everyone it's [Applause] okay very strong message you right here with your son one of your son so demographic for us is so important yes I I you know I think this is important to always photography just a moment sorry sorry about that just a moment phph stand [Applause] where Fantastico great we can manage we can manage I'll see you soon H all right all right great well hey [Music] guys all right we're really excited because 12 hour how how long is the trip from hos to Here by plate I I think it's about uh eight eight or nine hours okay so you're fresh like in the first morning yeah exactly so first question is about demography and uh I spoke with you in the past about that and I think it's very important for you and you pointed on that\n\na lot of your discussion and your purpose is it yeah I I think I you know I really want to emphasize that it's important to have children and to create the new generation and as simple as it sounds if people do not have children there is no new generation so um so I I I very very much strongly recommend that um you know I'm very much in favor of uh Humanity expanding and creating a bright and exciting future for the world and um but but but fundamental to the furtherance of human civilization is having humans as as simple and basic as that sounds um and uh you know every year I look at the uh the birth rates and I'm like it's it's kind of a bit depressing because uh birth rates seem to decline every year um and I I think uh you know that perhaps my my\n\nbiggest advice um to leaders to government leaders and and and to to the people in general would would be to make sure to have children to create the new generation um and I think any any incentives that can be done to incent the new generation to make it easier uh for woman to have children um and to support the children I think would be uh very wise um this is so fundamental uh and uh I really can't emphasize that enough if if if you don't have a new generation there is no New Generation Um or with current birth rates I think it may be the generations are are birth rate is maybe half half of the replacement rate and what that means is in three generations the population will be one roughly roughly oneth of its current size in three generations maybe\n\nfour generations the you the population will be one tenth of its current size so I I I I always um want to emphasize this point because it is so basic and fundamental that if if if there's not at least a birth rate which is keeping population constant then uh a people will will will disappear um disappear Mr M disappear disappear we have a lot of immigration somebody says that immigration is important for that reason what what's your point on that immigrations is coming in Europe and is coming in America from the south of America and the Europe from the south of the Mediterranean Sea what do you think about that well I I think one can't depend on other countries for immigration and in fact if you look at say the the population worldwide um and this is\n\nalmost everywhere in the world and it seems to be a function of how um once a country industrializes once a country urbanizes the population uh immediately starts to decline um so one could say for example um like like China could not possibly solve uh its population with uh immigration because if you you know China is currently tracking to be maybe lose 40% of its population every generation you know that would be 700 million 800 million people um or 700 roughly 7 6 700 million people it's a lot basically you'd have to have the entire United States immigrate there twice every generation to Simply maintain numbers just for China so immigration the there simply Aren't Enough numbers in Immigration um and I I think I think there is value to to a culture\n\nuh you know and and we don't want cultures we don't want Japan to disappear we don't want Italy as a culture to disappear we don't want France as a culture to disappear I think we have to have the maintain the sort of reasonable cultural uh identity of the various countries um or they simply will not be those countries um you know Italy is it Italy is the people of Italy the buildings are there but but really what is Italy Italy is the people of [Applause] Italy so I I mean I just think it's a and and I I speak as someone who is very much um very much an I'm an En environmentalist I and I believe in having you know building a sustainable future for the world um I think there are very few people who as as an individual who have done more than than I have\n\nfor to help the environment with electric cars and solar and and uh batteries to create a sustainable energy future because we absolutely need a sustainable energy future um [Laughter] but but but there is an aspect of the environmental movement that I think has gone too far um really said from you yes so said for me you know I think I am objectively one of the world's leading environmentalists in terms of doing things not i' say so like I'm an En environmentalist who does things of talk of action not talk I act um so so I feel I could say as uh as an environmentalist that the environmentalist movement has gone too far um and in that if if you in the natural extension of the environmentalist movement if you go too far you start to look at Humanity as\n\na bad thing you start to look at Humanity as though we are a plague on the surface of the Earth um as though humanity is a bad thing and in fact there are some people who think and and say explicitly that um in fact there was on the front page of the New York Times there was a guy who said There are 8 billion people on Earth it would be better if there were none which is crazy definitely um so you told me a joke about that you told me once a joke about the cows and the problem with the cows you remember that oh yeah don't worry about the cows cows are fine cows are not going to destroy the environment cows are fine yeah uh yes you know we have a lot of a lot of lows European laws against uh all the people who work with them you know is a big issue for\n\nus because it seems green issue but is a very industrial issue for us yeah I think farming and cows are not do not have a any meaningful effect on the environment yes underline please I I yes objectively this is true so so the if you say like there's there's really only one thing that matters from an environmental standpoint uh for carbon which is that we are taking uh billions eventually trillions of tons of carbon from very deep with it under the Earth and putting transferring it to the atmosphere and oceans that's the that's actually really all that matters is is taking um vast amounts of carbon from underground where it's buried and moving it into the atmosphere by burning it um and if you do that for long enough eventually you will get climate change\n\nnow I think the climate change alarm is a little somewhat uh overblown in the short term it's still a concern in the long term but I think it's exaggerated in the short term great um now now I have to I'm trying to thread the the needle here between what uh you know like what is pragmatic and what is sensible what really matters and what doesn't matter what really matters is that over the long term over the course of the next uh several decades that we gradually reduce how how many M millions and billions of tons of of carbon that we remov from underground to the atmosphere because we're running sort of a climate experiment that is dangerous um but but I also don't think that I think of it as a a fundamental civilizational risk it it is it's not going\n\nto destroy life on Earth it's not going to destroy Humanity but will it will create uh hardship if you change the climate um o over many decades so it's it's it's I think my my my message is like I think much more pragmatic and and I think I think correct and sensible um and I and I don't think we should uh demonize oil and gas I think we we should say look that is obviously necessary in the short term um and the medium-term too and it'll be take several decades to become sustainable so I think if we just without getting too worried about it uh seek to have a sustainable energy future um gradually then that's what will happen um and so but I think that some of the environmentalist movement has is part of what is causing people to lose hope in the future\n\nso I guess what I'm trying to say is that we should have hope in the future we should be excited about the future and we should build the future we want what about um Elon you call it um the walk mind yes your is the name you gave to that that Island Walk mind uh illness what's that virus yeah so so it's coming to Europe I have to advise you H yes well this is not something you should import from America please don't import the W M virus is bad um so the I mean essentially that to summarize maybe the workm virus it consists of creating very very divisive um identity politics so it actually amplifies what virus M virus in my view amplifies racism amplifies uh frankly sexism and all the isms and while claiming to do the opposite it it actually divides people\n\nand makes them uh sort of hate each other and it makes people hate themselves um and it's also anti- meritocratic it's not like um you know it's not Merit based so you want you want to have people succeed based on how hard they work and the talents not who they are whether they're man woman what what what race or you know gender what none that stuff is all creating it's an artificial uh you know mental Civil War that is created um and it's not and let me it's no fun okay it is like it is like w mind virus and fun are incompatible there's no fun in that no joy it's it's w virus is all about condemning people instead of celebrating people um you know like when in the work it just doesn't celebrate it's all about condemning and being divisive and and being\n\nuh just I think it's just evil frankly really yeah yeah it's bad so bad yeah but have you get a lot of problems saying so on on your social in Exel have this point of view you are good friend of Obama administration and now they don't really like you so much for for this kind of speech you do in public or not I don't know I I mean I I just um I'm very I'm very pro-human I'm very Pro civilization I I'm in favor of uh Humanity um and and our Collective Consciousness expanding um on Earth and going beyond Earth um being a multiplanetary civilization and being out there among the stars and finding out the nature of the universe like all the things that you know it's that seems like to me an you know exciting thing something you can get really excited about\n\nis is you're going to get excited like we want to have ideas that make you look forward to waking up in the morning look forward to the day look forward to the future and you know so so you have to say what what excites you about the future what moves your heart about the future what makes you say like yes I'm glad about what will happen in the future that's what we must you know focus on and that's that's why we have to have a new generation we've got to build and we got to grow and and uh like I said we understand this understand the the the the nature of this beautiful universe that we find ourselves in and the meaning of life or even what questions to ask about you know meaning of life um let us explore this wondrous creation and and have a good time\n\ndoing it yeah that's my philosophy let me let me go back for a little because I want to ask you about your perception of Europe as a building not as as people because Europe do a lot of L want a lot of integration of cultures different cultures and has different approach to the immigration we heard Melone did a lot on that with Premier Ram I see in the first line of Albania what do you think about the this approach of Europe approach as building I would say as an establish well I I should say like on to be clear on on immigration overall I'm I'm very much in favor of legal immigration I think that um generally I think which one should welcome come to a country anyone who is willing to work hard uh and is honest you know has high integrity and will add\n\nto you know any given country if somebody is an asset to the country why not have them join that's obviously a great thing to do um so I think it's good actually to uh have an increase in legal immigration and and a simple legal with paper with yeah just some some approval process um but with a simple requirement that look if somebody's going to add to a country um like just really hardworking and H high integrity let them in I think that's great um but if there's if it's illegal immigration and there's no filter well how do you know who's coming and you don't know so you you have to have some you know uh basis for saying somebody should come in or not come in and and and and my argument is like it should be a very simple basis are will they will will\n\nthey add to the country will they be a productive part of the economy and um do they admire the culture do they want to join because of the culture uh then that's great um but if you know if there's no process for that then you don't know I think you know at least some number of the people that come in will will not be necessarily uh and I want to be careful because my words will be misconstrued I'm not saying all illegal immigrants are are are are bad I think probably perhaps most of them are good but but there will be some if there's no process for reviewing not at all then how can you say that everyone who is an illegal immigrant is is going to be honest and hardworking you can't say that because you simply don't know um so so I want to be clear top\n\nline pro-immigration but but let's increase legal immigration but but we should stop illegal immigration I think this is just logical you you have a lot of company so sry you can drink because I want to do the list of the companies you have five seven minutes to do that I mean I'm joking with space x x n link so many X's all the X's guess what my favorite letter is okay X I guess it's a good place to invest Italy and it's a good place place to invest some of I mean not your money but some investment from your company of the American companies of the I would say competitive companies in this place what's your opinion no I mean I think Italy is an incredible country incredible culture I love I love visiting I love the Italian people I think you guys are\n\namazing than soia so um so I I I I want I you know personally I want I want the actually I want the prosperity of itah and I want the prosperity of every country um I want the prosperity of humanity as a whole and and like I said I want us to have an exciting uh future where we're we're fired up about what's going to happen and really excited so uh you know and and I think um you know Italy is a great place to invest it's a great uh you know great country um and uh but but I I do want to emphasize that the the that I I do worry that about the the low birth rate and you know if if a if a company is to invest in Italy they're like well you have to say like will there be enough people to work there you know it's simple question you know if if if the workforce\n\nis declining then if the workforce is declining then then there then who will work at the company if there's no people is no people to work yeah but I mean in 5050 years 60 no no I think it's even sooner than that though you know you're so worried about that is the problem I I feel like a total Cassandra here um because like I seem to be worried about it much more than other people um but you know there just uh needs to be people if you don't make a new generation of people there is no new generation of people so that's it I I know I'm I'm I'm being you know being repetitive here um but um I'm just I'm just trying to state state facts you know so and uh yeah so it's a good place to invest I no I agree it's a good place to invest um and uh a wonderful\n\ncountry so um please make more talian is what I'm saying you said once that the internet is the is the system is the n i i i write down the your word the nervous system of humanity what's it you said once to me and what's intelligence for you sorry the int artificial if that is the nervous system inell artificial intelligence what's I mean use another metaphor uh you asked me what do I think of artificial intelligence um obviously well you can think of artificial intelligence as um this is perhaps the you the biggest inflection point in intelligence since Homo sapiens um yeah yeah yeah um artificial intelligence is will be essentially sort of a a new species or is a new species um so I think one of the biggest challeng is if if I look at say civilizational\n\nrisk um you know the the risk to the future of humanity um you know birth rate is one of them if we just don't have kids and dwindle away um that's one which I've talked a lot about the other is uh you know there's always like potentially nuclear war of course that kind of thing um the uh then AI is also an existential risk and we need to be um I think we need to be careful with the Advent of AI um it but it is very much it's it's very much a double-edged sword you can think of AI as kind of like the magic Genie you know that like digital superintelligence will be capable of doing anything anything pretty much anything but he doesn't have any Consciousness I'm I'm wondering about that I mean there is a whole question of like what is consciousness in fact\n\nso here's like I always I thought a lot about what is consciousness and where does Consciousness arise um you know to say like because I I think in terms of physics you know um and at least if physics is true then we go from a side of the universe where things are almost entirely hydrogen and then if you leave the hydrogen out long enough eventually it co leses into stars and then those stars explode and then they re recondense um you know so so Mo like most of the mass in your body is was once at the center of a star which is kind of wild billions of years ago and so so where where along the lines of of hydrogen to human does Consciousness arise you get very serious when you speak about that yeah it's a real question if you leave hydrogen out in the\n\nsun long enough it it starts talking to itself here we are hydrogen talking to itself how to deal with that so if it is so important how to deal I mean lows um personal Behavior how to deal with that artificial intelligence because it's a process I mean I think we need to keep keep a close eye on artificial intelligence um I mean I'm in favor of some regulatory Insight uh just so that there's someone can at least um be a referee like if you think of any game like there's always a referee for a game for for industries that affect the good of the people there's are there are regulatory agencies that oversee those Industries anything that's dangerous is overseen by uh some kind of referee or regulator um I think we should have the same thing for AI um just\n\nto to help ensure that it is beneficial um the the good part of AI is that we are headed for a future of abundance um so Ai and Robotics will mean that there will no shortage of goods and services you there there will be goods and services if you can think of it you can have it basically so this is uh quite profound like I said it's the magic G um Ai Ai and Robotics will get you anything you want um now usually in these sort of fairy tales about magic Genies it doesn't turn out so well um you have to be careful what you wish for even if what you wish for or wishes um [Music] so it's just something we should be cautious about okay um on the plus side it's will bring many benefits like I said it will usher in an age of abundance um so the positive scenario\n\nof AI is that there's an age of abundance and there's no shortage of goods and services that any scarcity that is that exists will be only because we Define it to be scarce so and it it does seem to be somewhat of an inevitable thing uh AI so you know there's that supposedly that that Chinese saying about uh may you live an interesting times well I think we currently live in the most interesting of times in all of history right now um so anyway so my recommendation on AI I think we want some kind of regulatory oversight just to make sure um that it's beneficial AI great we hope so and what about the governments like um I mean they are elected by people like meloney and this government and the other government they have any risks or what do you think about\n\nthese challenge for the for the executive of the Nations about all these new U process sorry I'm not sure I understand the question what's re for the government of this artificial intelligence are there any risks I mean that democracy is finished well I I think there's certainly risk of artificial intelligence um affecting voting opinion I suppose and manipulating public opinion um so I think there's there's some risk of yeah a AI um in the public I think that's that's the of that um so yeah um okay you know but I think Pro like like I said 80% probable that AI is beneficial 20% harmful okay something like that I I'm I'm always worried because you know we have a new government this two years this government almost two years and we have a Europe for us\n\nis our artificial intelligence it seems like artificial intelligence but it's not very intellig ENT sometimes Europe and so I'm wondering what do you think about the government and about Europe for us is so important the relation and understand artificial intelligence and the future but in the present we have laws uh you know constraints that comes from Europe what do you think about that if you have any opinion on that what do you think about Italian government which is trying to have a position I would say a position money I don't know if there more than a position you want me to be more tough than a position it's okay what do you think it's it's good to have a position in Europe to be uh I mean I would say different from a main course of European politics\n\num do you mean do you mean like country decisions versus EU decisions or decision about green about the politics immigration oh I mean there's a separate question of like I think regulations in Europe um there are too many regulations in in general not I'm not speaking about specific case of AI I I think one could look at this as overall a fundamental function of of a stable civilization the long the longer that any given civilization is stable and does not have a a big war the more rules and regulations will accumulate over time so rules regulations laws they are Immortal they never die so but people die so if every year um more and more rules regulations and laws are added uh you you will eventually make everything illegal um and you can think of it\n\nsort of like gala's travels where galiva if if the nation is galiva is being tied down by one little regulatory string at a time and eventually you have millions of strings and then the giant can't move and so and I think there needs to be uh something where we uh Delete rules regulations and laws um because if we keep if we simply if all we do is add them eventually we will be able to do nothing okay sh sh shall I do some question about your companies because here there are all the young people not only the young people from important important Italian party and they most most of them use the social network they use x and I I I saw in the past days that the the CEO of Disney said I don't want to invest any advertising on X and he's Investing For example\n\nin the meta in Instagram and he said that there are problems of I don't know which kind of problem they find on next compar I want child exploitation on yeah what what's what's going on and why why an import investor like Disney said something so tough on on X what's going on there well I think first of all I think X will be will be fine um and um we are actually already seeing um advertisers return to okay to X um so I guess they were I don't know upset with something I said or something I don't know um but um they you know advertisers I think are the brand advertisers are a little they're always worried about their brand and um you know maybe I think maybe a bit more than they should be um but I think it's a short-term issue um like I said the advertisers\n\nsometimes get upset but then they usually calm down and they return to advertising so um come on you know that there is the walk virus over the well oh yes I have to say I don't want to answer it for you yeah yeah no no you're right you're right the if if we're going to fight the work mind virus then the work mind virus will fight back and unfortunately Disney is deeply infected with the work mind virus in fact if you ask an AI what is the most work company on Earth it's Disney you know but and and you have to say what would I mean I think they should be asking themselves what would Walt Disney think of Disney today I think he's turning in his I think he's not happy sure sure you know if if the namesake of the company is not happy that's probably a bad\n\nsign you know because Walt Disney what did he care about he cared about bringing joy to people's lives he ped you know um making wonderful things that children and families could enjoy um and uh you know it was it created some of the the coolest um uh you know art in the world and stuff that even 100 years after it's created we still remember it and it's still it's still a major thing you have to say how great was Walt Disney it was amazing um but now Disney at least point now is deeply infected with the workm virus I think that will you know that will change over yeah oh I hope so he right the European commission they're not investing on X you know that maybe there a little they got the work mind virus too yeah you don't care I I I think so you know\n\nand and and it's like why are they importing this this crazy thing from America you know it's like it's just some thing that was created basically by sort of far-left crazy people in US colleges and now it's spreading all over the world um and it's it's like you you know like the thing is the work myv it's it's not a message of Joy it's a it's a message of division sure it's not a message of love it's a message message of hate and I was like and so I'm like I I'm like like you know let's uh I don't know I'm in favor of like let's have a future that's got more love more like more and I let us build a fun exciting future and and and work by vir it's all about condemning one group and condemning this condemning that it's like and and and and it's also like\n\njust being like a it just wants to scold you all the time and and treat you like a you know I don't know who wants to be scold it you know it's not fun um so anyway um I think we want to you know have a like so I guess at its heart my concern is that the workb virus is anti- civilizational um and of civilization anti- civilization I think civilization sure but if it represents a cost for your company what's you know you have a tradeoff between the cost of your position and the and the cost for the company what's your choice and what how how much is important in your behavior the the Free Speech uh standing that's the question I I do think free speech is incredibly important because if people cannot speak their minds um and then we we won't have a democracy\n\ndemocracy is the foundation of democracy is free freedom of speech but also saying [Applause] something so Andrea Andrea stro is laughing at that because he knows that it's so important for you but tell me more about the Free Speech because here is very important person here couldn't speech for a lot of people because they were considered Mavericks and worse than that free speech for everybody is important not just for the person who say the right things correct exactly no no exactly the Free Speech means that free free speech is only relevant free speech is only meaningful when if if you allow people you don't like to say things you don't like so that's how you know it's working you know that's how you know it's working um because it as once you start\n\nto censor uh people you don't like saying things you don't like it's only a matter of time before that censorship turns on you eventually you know live by the sword Die By The Sword live by censorship die by censorship [Applause] [Music] [Applause] yeah why you spoke about free you bought Twitter for the free speeech just for the Free Speech not for the business inside you bought oh yeah yeah well I mean here's the thing so um you know I think you have to say like if civilization is not strong if civilization doesn't grow um then nothing else matters you know prophets don't matter if civilization collapses there's there's no profits there's no you know you we we are not we we cannot exist absent civilization so sometimes may people may say like well is\n\nthis an altruistic thing I mean I think it's for me it feels altruistic but even if it's even if one is not altruistic even if one is very uh self-centered um you have to say if you simply think long term you have to be Pro civilization because you cannot exist without civilization okay how how important from 0 to 10 in the scale from 0 to 10 money you are the richest person in the world how is important money for you from 0 to 10 zero is the less important and is is the good word I don't know I don't want to one or two or something no come on no I mean you have one or two just just one or two well if you say like the I mean the the reason I guess I have what so-called wealth or it's really just shares in the company is that I've created these companies\n\nyou know and these companies like SpaceX and Tesla Tesla is 140,000 Jobs Direct uh worldwide and I five times that number maybe maybe almost a million jobs when you look at the whole supply chain for is what Tesla's created and then SpaceX is is about 15,000 people and also you know like maybe a full total supply chain 50,000 people so you know I mean I've basically W with the help of many talented people built these companies and then the the so-called these these wealth statistics simply they simply add up what the ownership is in the companies and say okay this is a certain amount of money but I don't actually have that in money I have it in stock I just it's just it's just that the companies have succeeded um but how was the last the last launch of\n\nthe SpaceX tell me something last question please joavan the last launch I see ma there sitting on the floor why are you sitting on the floor are you worried about the highness [Music] Mar how was the last launch was a you were optimist about your SpaceX the big big yeah so well well Starship so the the the the exciting thing about Starship is that it's the first rocket design that could make life multiplanetary that could enable a self- sustaining um base on the moon and a city on Mars um so because it is is not just a very large vehicle but it is designed for full and Rapid reusability um so that would um lower the cost of access to space by I don't know maybe 100 or more and so and basically it's it's the first rocket that is capable of um building\n\na base on Mars and a base on the Moon yes that's that's that's [Applause] yeah so you know you know there's the the the great Italian physicist Enrico FY I'm I'm a big admirer of FY and he had uh he was very good at asking profound questions questions um and one of his questions which is called the fmy Paradox is where are the aliens and one of the explanations is that and perhaps I think the one that I think is most appears to be most accurate is that Consciousness is extremely rare that it's you know we we people often ask me have I do I know about aliens or something like that you know I get asked that a lot um and the crazy thing is that I've seen no evidence of aliens whatsoever um this this means that I think most likely at least in this part of\n\nthe Galaxy um we are the only Consciousness that exists and so you can think of human consciousness really as like a a tiny candle in a vast darkness and we must do everything we can to ensure that the candle does not go out great we can finish with that we can finish with that okay we can finish with this oh and so so um it's worth reading about the FY Paradox and because people have thought very hard about this um because there are these because one of the things is like well maybe they are these great filters and and and and these civilizations don't pass these filters one of the filters is um do we become a multiplet species or not if we do not become a multiplet species then eventually at some point something will happen to the planet either it will\n\nbe uh man-made or it will be uh something natural like a a meteor like whatever killed the dinosaurs for example so and then eventually the sun will actually expand and will destroy all life on Earth so if one cares about life on Earth at all we should care about becoming a multiplet species and eventually going out there and becoming a multi- stellar species and having many Star systems you know we we we want the exciting parts of Science Fiction to not be fiction forever we want to make them real and um yeah great so thank you very much El give me give me your glass give me your glass for you","textByLang":{"en":"[Applause] hello everyone it's [Applause] okay very strong message you right here with your son one of your son so demographic for us is so important yes I I you know I think this is important to always photography just a moment sorry sorry about that just a moment phph stand [Applause] where Fantastico great we can manage we can manage I'll see you soon H all right all right great well hey [Music] guys all right we're really excited because 12 hour how how long is the trip from hos to Here by plate I I think it's about uh eight eight or nine hours okay so you're fresh like in the first morning yeah exactly so first question is about demography and uh I spoke with you in the past about that and I think it's very important for you and you pointed on that\n\na lot of your discussion and your purpose is it yeah I I think I you know I really want to emphasize that it's important to have children and to create the new generation and as simple as it sounds if people do not have children there is no new generation so um so I I I very very much strongly recommend that um you know I'm very much in favor of uh Humanity expanding and creating a bright and exciting future for the world and um but but but fundamental to the furtherance of human civilization is having humans as as simple and basic as that sounds um and uh you know every year I look at the uh the birth rates and I'm like it's it's kind of a bit depressing because uh birth rates seem to decline every year um and I I think uh you know that perhaps my my\n\nbiggest advice um to leaders to government leaders and and and to to the people in general would would be to make sure to have children to create the new generation um and I think any any incentives that can be done to incent the new generation to make it easier uh for woman to have children um and to support the children I think would be uh very wise um this is so fundamental uh and uh I really can't emphasize that enough if if if you don't have a new generation there is no New Generation Um or with current birth rates I think it may be the generations are are birth rate is maybe half half of the replacement rate and what that means is in three generations the population will be one roughly roughly oneth of its current size in three generations maybe\n\nfour generations the you the population will be one tenth of its current size so I I I I always um want to emphasize this point because it is so basic and fundamental that if if if there's not at least a birth rate which is keeping population constant then uh a people will will will disappear um disappear Mr M disappear disappear we have a lot of immigration somebody says that immigration is important for that reason what what's your point on that immigrations is coming in Europe and is coming in America from the south of America and the Europe from the south of the Mediterranean Sea what do you think about that well I I think one can't depend on other countries for immigration and in fact if you look at say the the population worldwide um and this is\n\nalmost everywhere in the world and it seems to be a function of how um once a country industrializes once a country urbanizes the population uh immediately starts to decline um so one could say for example um like like China could not possibly solve uh its population with uh immigration because if you you know China is currently tracking to be maybe lose 40% of its population every generation you know that would be 700 million 800 million people um or 700 roughly 7 6 700 million people it's a lot basically you'd have to have the entire United States immigrate there twice every generation to Simply maintain numbers just for China so immigration the there simply Aren't Enough numbers in Immigration um and I I think I think there is value to to a culture\n\nuh you know and and we don't want cultures we don't want Japan to disappear we don't want Italy as a culture to disappear we don't want France as a culture to disappear I think we have to have the maintain the sort of reasonable cultural uh identity of the various countries um or they simply will not be those countries um you know Italy is it Italy is the people of Italy the buildings are there but but really what is Italy Italy is the people of [Applause] Italy so I I mean I just think it's a and and I I speak as someone who is very much um very much an I'm an En environmentalist I and I believe in having you know building a sustainable future for the world um I think there are very few people who as as an individual who have done more than than I have\n\nfor to help the environment with electric cars and solar and and uh batteries to create a sustainable energy future because we absolutely need a sustainable energy future um [Laughter] but but but there is an aspect of the environmental movement that I think has gone too far um really said from you yes so said for me you know I think I am objectively one of the world's leading environmentalists in terms of doing things not i' say so like I'm an En environmentalist who does things of talk of action not talk I act um so so I feel I could say as uh as an environmentalist that the environmentalist movement has gone too far um and in that if if you in the natural extension of the environmentalist movement if you go too far you start to look at Humanity as\n\na bad thing you start to look at Humanity as though we are a plague on the surface of the Earth um as though humanity is a bad thing and in fact there are some people who think and and say explicitly that um in fact there was on the front page of the New York Times there was a guy who said There are 8 billion people on Earth it would be better if there were none which is crazy definitely um so you told me a joke about that you told me once a joke about the cows and the problem with the cows you remember that oh yeah don't worry about the cows cows are fine cows are not going to destroy the environment cows are fine yeah uh yes you know we have a lot of a lot of lows European laws against uh all the people who work with them you know is a big issue for\n\nus because it seems green issue but is a very industrial issue for us yeah I think farming and cows are not do not have a any meaningful effect on the environment yes underline please I I yes objectively this is true so so the if you say like there's there's really only one thing that matters from an environmental standpoint uh for carbon which is that we are taking uh billions eventually trillions of tons of carbon from very deep with it under the Earth and putting transferring it to the atmosphere and oceans that's the that's actually really all that matters is is taking um vast amounts of carbon from underground where it's buried and moving it into the atmosphere by burning it um and if you do that for long enough eventually you will get climate change\n\nnow I think the climate change alarm is a little somewhat uh overblown in the short term it's still a concern in the long term but I think it's exaggerated in the short term great um now now I have to I'm trying to thread the the needle here between what uh you know like what is pragmatic and what is sensible what really matters and what doesn't matter what really matters is that over the long term over the course of the next uh several decades that we gradually reduce how how many M millions and billions of tons of of carbon that we remov from underground to the atmosphere because we're running sort of a climate experiment that is dangerous um but but I also don't think that I think of it as a a fundamental civilizational risk it it is it's not going\n\nto destroy life on Earth it's not going to destroy Humanity but will it will create uh hardship if you change the climate um o over many decades so it's it's it's I think my my my message is like I think much more pragmatic and and I think I think correct and sensible um and I and I don't think we should uh demonize oil and gas I think we we should say look that is obviously necessary in the short term um and the medium-term too and it'll be take several decades to become sustainable so I think if we just without getting too worried about it uh seek to have a sustainable energy future um gradually then that's what will happen um and so but I think that some of the environmentalist movement has is part of what is causing people to lose hope in the future\n\nso I guess what I'm trying to say is that we should have hope in the future we should be excited about the future and we should build the future we want what about um Elon you call it um the walk mind yes your is the name you gave to that that Island Walk mind uh illness what's that virus yeah so so it's coming to Europe I have to advise you H yes well this is not something you should import from America please don't import the W M virus is bad um so the I mean essentially that to summarize maybe the workm virus it consists of creating very very divisive um identity politics so it actually amplifies what virus M virus in my view amplifies racism amplifies uh frankly sexism and all the isms and while claiming to do the opposite it it actually divides people\n\nand makes them uh sort of hate each other and it makes people hate themselves um and it's also anti- meritocratic it's not like um you know it's not Merit based so you want you want to have people succeed based on how hard they work and the talents not who they are whether they're man woman what what what race or you know gender what none that stuff is all creating it's an artificial uh you know mental Civil War that is created um and it's not and let me it's no fun okay it is like it is like w mind virus and fun are incompatible there's no fun in that no joy it's it's w virus is all about condemning people instead of celebrating people um you know like when in the work it just doesn't celebrate it's all about condemning and being divisive and and being\n\nuh just I think it's just evil frankly really yeah yeah it's bad so bad yeah but have you get a lot of problems saying so on on your social in Exel have this point of view you are good friend of Obama administration and now they don't really like you so much for for this kind of speech you do in public or not I don't know I I mean I I just um I'm very I'm very pro-human I'm very Pro civilization I I'm in favor of uh Humanity um and and our Collective Consciousness expanding um on Earth and going beyond Earth um being a multiplanetary civilization and being out there among the stars and finding out the nature of the universe like all the things that you know it's that seems like to me an you know exciting thing something you can get really excited about\n\nis is you're going to get excited like we want to have ideas that make you look forward to waking up in the morning look forward to the day look forward to the future and you know so so you have to say what what excites you about the future what moves your heart about the future what makes you say like yes I'm glad about what will happen in the future that's what we must you know focus on and that's that's why we have to have a new generation we've got to build and we got to grow and and uh like I said we understand this understand the the the the nature of this beautiful universe that we find ourselves in and the meaning of life or even what questions to ask about you know meaning of life um let us explore this wondrous creation and and have a good time\n\ndoing it yeah that's my philosophy let me let me go back for a little because I want to ask you about your perception of Europe as a building not as as people because Europe do a lot of L want a lot of integration of cultures different cultures and has different approach to the immigration we heard Melone did a lot on that with Premier Ram I see in the first line of Albania what do you think about the this approach of Europe approach as building I would say as an establish well I I should say like on to be clear on on immigration overall I'm I'm very much in favor of legal immigration I think that um generally I think which one should welcome come to a country anyone who is willing to work hard uh and is honest you know has high integrity and will add\n\nto you know any given country if somebody is an asset to the country why not have them join that's obviously a great thing to do um so I think it's good actually to uh have an increase in legal immigration and and a simple legal with paper with yeah just some some approval process um but with a simple requirement that look if somebody's going to add to a country um like just really hardworking and H high integrity let them in I think that's great um but if there's if it's illegal immigration and there's no filter well how do you know who's coming and you don't know so you you have to have some you know uh basis for saying somebody should come in or not come in and and and and my argument is like it should be a very simple basis are will they will will\n\nthey add to the country will they be a productive part of the economy and um do they admire the culture do they want to join because of the culture uh then that's great um but if you know if there's no process for that then you don't know I think you know at least some number of the people that come in will will not be necessarily uh and I want to be careful because my words will be misconstrued I'm not saying all illegal immigrants are are are are bad I think probably perhaps most of them are good but but there will be some if there's no process for reviewing not at all then how can you say that everyone who is an illegal immigrant is is going to be honest and hardworking you can't say that because you simply don't know um so so I want to be clear top\n\nline pro-immigration but but let's increase legal immigration but but we should stop illegal immigration I think this is just logical you you have a lot of company so sry you can drink because I want to do the list of the companies you have five seven minutes to do that I mean I'm joking with space x x n link so many X's all the X's guess what my favorite letter is okay X I guess it's a good place to invest Italy and it's a good place place to invest some of I mean not your money but some investment from your company of the American companies of the I would say competitive companies in this place what's your opinion no I mean I think Italy is an incredible country incredible culture I love I love visiting I love the Italian people I think you guys are\n\namazing than soia so um so I I I I want I you know personally I want I want the actually I want the prosperity of itah and I want the prosperity of every country um I want the prosperity of humanity as a whole and and like I said I want us to have an exciting uh future where we're we're fired up about what's going to happen and really excited so uh you know and and I think um you know Italy is a great place to invest it's a great uh you know great country um and uh but but I I do want to emphasize that the the that I I do worry that about the the low birth rate and you know if if a if a company is to invest in Italy they're like well you have to say like will there be enough people to work there you know it's simple question you know if if if the workforce\n\nis declining then if the workforce is declining then then there then who will work at the company if there's no people is no people to work yeah but I mean in 5050 years 60 no no I think it's even sooner than that though you know you're so worried about that is the problem I I feel like a total Cassandra here um because like I seem to be worried about it much more than other people um but you know there just uh needs to be people if you don't make a new generation of people there is no new generation of people so that's it I I know I'm I'm I'm being you know being repetitive here um but um I'm just I'm just trying to state state facts you know so and uh yeah so it's a good place to invest I no I agree it's a good place to invest um and uh a wonderful\n\ncountry so um please make more talian is what I'm saying you said once that the internet is the is the system is the n i i i write down the your word the nervous system of humanity what's it you said once to me and what's intelligence for you sorry the int artificial if that is the nervous system inell artificial intelligence what's I mean use another metaphor uh you asked me what do I think of artificial intelligence um obviously well you can think of artificial intelligence as um this is perhaps the you the biggest inflection point in intelligence since Homo sapiens um yeah yeah yeah um artificial intelligence is will be essentially sort of a a new species or is a new species um so I think one of the biggest challeng is if if I look at say civilizational\n\nrisk um you know the the risk to the future of humanity um you know birth rate is one of them if we just don't have kids and dwindle away um that's one which I've talked a lot about the other is uh you know there's always like potentially nuclear war of course that kind of thing um the uh then AI is also an existential risk and we need to be um I think we need to be careful with the Advent of AI um it but it is very much it's it's very much a double-edged sword you can think of AI as kind of like the magic Genie you know that like digital superintelligence will be capable of doing anything anything pretty much anything but he doesn't have any Consciousness I'm I'm wondering about that I mean there is a whole question of like what is consciousness in fact\n\nso here's like I always I thought a lot about what is consciousness and where does Consciousness arise um you know to say like because I I think in terms of physics you know um and at least if physics is true then we go from a side of the universe where things are almost entirely hydrogen and then if you leave the hydrogen out long enough eventually it co leses into stars and then those stars explode and then they re recondense um you know so so Mo like most of the mass in your body is was once at the center of a star which is kind of wild billions of years ago and so so where where along the lines of of hydrogen to human does Consciousness arise you get very serious when you speak about that yeah it's a real question if you leave hydrogen out in the\n\nsun long enough it it starts talking to itself here we are hydrogen talking to itself how to deal with that so if it is so important how to deal I mean lows um personal Behavior how to deal with that artificial intelligence because it's a process I mean I think we need to keep keep a close eye on artificial intelligence um I mean I'm in favor of some regulatory Insight uh just so that there's someone can at least um be a referee like if you think of any game like there's always a referee for a game for for industries that affect the good of the people there's are there are regulatory agencies that oversee those Industries anything that's dangerous is overseen by uh some kind of referee or regulator um I think we should have the same thing for AI um just\n\nto to help ensure that it is beneficial um the the good part of AI is that we are headed for a future of abundance um so Ai and Robotics will mean that there will no shortage of goods and services you there there will be goods and services if you can think of it you can have it basically so this is uh quite profound like I said it's the magic G um Ai Ai and Robotics will get you anything you want um now usually in these sort of fairy tales about magic Genies it doesn't turn out so well um you have to be careful what you wish for even if what you wish for or wishes um [Music] so it's just something we should be cautious about okay um on the plus side it's will bring many benefits like I said it will usher in an age of abundance um so the positive scenario\n\nof AI is that there's an age of abundance and there's no shortage of goods and services that any scarcity that is that exists will be only because we Define it to be scarce so and it it does seem to be somewhat of an inevitable thing uh AI so you know there's that supposedly that that Chinese saying about uh may you live an interesting times well I think we currently live in the most interesting of times in all of history right now um so anyway so my recommendation on AI I think we want some kind of regulatory oversight just to make sure um that it's beneficial AI great we hope so and what about the governments like um I mean they are elected by people like meloney and this government and the other government they have any risks or what do you think about\n\nthese challenge for the for the executive of the Nations about all these new U process sorry I'm not sure I understand the question what's re for the government of this artificial intelligence are there any risks I mean that democracy is finished well I I think there's certainly risk of artificial intelligence um affecting voting opinion I suppose and manipulating public opinion um so I think there's there's some risk of yeah a AI um in the public I think that's that's the of that um so yeah um okay you know but I think Pro like like I said 80% probable that AI is beneficial 20% harmful okay something like that I I'm I'm always worried because you know we have a new government this two years this government almost two years and we have a Europe for us\n\nis our artificial intelligence it seems like artificial intelligence but it's not very intellig ENT sometimes Europe and so I'm wondering what do you think about the government and about Europe for us is so important the relation and understand artificial intelligence and the future but in the present we have laws uh you know constraints that comes from Europe what do you think about that if you have any opinion on that what do you think about Italian government which is trying to have a position I would say a position money I don't know if there more than a position you want me to be more tough than a position it's okay what do you think it's it's good to have a position in Europe to be uh I mean I would say different from a main course of European politics\n\num do you mean do you mean like country decisions versus EU decisions or decision about green about the politics immigration oh I mean there's a separate question of like I think regulations in Europe um there are too many regulations in in general not I'm not speaking about specific case of AI I I think one could look at this as overall a fundamental function of of a stable civilization the long the longer that any given civilization is stable and does not have a a big war the more rules and regulations will accumulate over time so rules regulations laws they are Immortal they never die so but people die so if every year um more and more rules regulations and laws are added uh you you will eventually make everything illegal um and you can think of it\n\nsort of like gala's travels where galiva if if the nation is galiva is being tied down by one little regulatory string at a time and eventually you have millions of strings and then the giant can't move and so and I think there needs to be uh something where we uh Delete rules regulations and laws um because if we keep if we simply if all we do is add them eventually we will be able to do nothing okay sh sh shall I do some question about your companies because here there are all the young people not only the young people from important important Italian party and they most most of them use the social network they use x and I I I saw in the past days that the the CEO of Disney said I don't want to invest any advertising on X and he's Investing For example\n\nin the meta in Instagram and he said that there are problems of I don't know which kind of problem they find on next compar I want child exploitation on yeah what what's what's going on and why why an import investor like Disney said something so tough on on X what's going on there well I think first of all I think X will be will be fine um and um we are actually already seeing um advertisers return to okay to X um so I guess they were I don't know upset with something I said or something I don't know um but um they you know advertisers I think are the brand advertisers are a little they're always worried about their brand and um you know maybe I think maybe a bit more than they should be um but I think it's a short-term issue um like I said the advertisers\n\nsometimes get upset but then they usually calm down and they return to advertising so um come on you know that there is the walk virus over the well oh yes I have to say I don't want to answer it for you yeah yeah no no you're right you're right the if if we're going to fight the work mind virus then the work mind virus will fight back and unfortunately Disney is deeply infected with the work mind virus in fact if you ask an AI what is the most work company on Earth it's Disney you know but and and you have to say what would I mean I think they should be asking themselves what would Walt Disney think of Disney today I think he's turning in his I think he's not happy sure sure you know if if the namesake of the company is not happy that's probably a bad\n\nsign you know because Walt Disney what did he care about he cared about bringing joy to people's lives he ped you know um making wonderful things that children and families could enjoy um and uh you know it was it created some of the the coolest um uh you know art in the world and stuff that even 100 years after it's created we still remember it and it's still it's still a major thing you have to say how great was Walt Disney it was amazing um but now Disney at least point now is deeply infected with the workm virus I think that will you know that will change over yeah oh I hope so he right the European commission they're not investing on X you know that maybe there a little they got the work mind virus too yeah you don't care I I I think so you know\n\nand and and it's like why are they importing this this crazy thing from America you know it's like it's just some thing that was created basically by sort of far-left crazy people in US colleges and now it's spreading all over the world um and it's it's like you you know like the thing is the work myv it's it's not a message of Joy it's a it's a message of division sure it's not a message of love it's a message message of hate and I was like and so I'm like I I'm like like you know let's uh I don't know I'm in favor of like let's have a future that's got more love more like more and I let us build a fun exciting future and and and work by vir it's all about condemning one group and condemning this condemning that it's like and and and and it's also like\n\njust being like a it just wants to scold you all the time and and treat you like a you know I don't know who wants to be scold it you know it's not fun um so anyway um I think we want to you know have a like so I guess at its heart my concern is that the workb virus is anti- civilizational um and of civilization anti- civilization I think civilization sure but if it represents a cost for your company what's you know you have a tradeoff between the cost of your position and the and the cost for the company what's your choice and what how how much is important in your behavior the the Free Speech uh standing that's the question I I do think free speech is incredibly important because if people cannot speak their minds um and then we we won't have a democracy\n\ndemocracy is the foundation of democracy is free freedom of speech but also saying [Applause] something so Andrea Andrea stro is laughing at that because he knows that it's so important for you but tell me more about the Free Speech because here is very important person here couldn't speech for a lot of people because they were considered Mavericks and worse than that free speech for everybody is important not just for the person who say the right things correct exactly no no exactly the Free Speech means that free free speech is only relevant free speech is only meaningful when if if you allow people you don't like to say things you don't like so that's how you know it's working you know that's how you know it's working um because it as once you start\n\nto censor uh people you don't like saying things you don't like it's only a matter of time before that censorship turns on you eventually you know live by the sword Die By The Sword live by censorship die by censorship [Applause] [Music] [Applause] yeah why you spoke about free you bought Twitter for the free speeech just for the Free Speech not for the business inside you bought oh yeah yeah well I mean here's the thing so um you know I think you have to say like if civilization is not strong if civilization doesn't grow um then nothing else matters you know prophets don't matter if civilization collapses there's there's no profits there's no you know you we we are not we we cannot exist absent civilization so sometimes may people may say like well is\n\nthis an altruistic thing I mean I think it's for me it feels altruistic but even if it's even if one is not altruistic even if one is very uh self-centered um you have to say if you simply think long term you have to be Pro civilization because you cannot exist without civilization okay how how important from 0 to 10 in the scale from 0 to 10 money you are the richest person in the world how is important money for you from 0 to 10 zero is the less important and is is the good word I don't know I don't want to one or two or something no come on no I mean you have one or two just just one or two well if you say like the I mean the the reason I guess I have what so-called wealth or it's really just shares in the company is that I've created these companies\n\nyou know and these companies like SpaceX and Tesla Tesla is 140,000 Jobs Direct uh worldwide and I five times that number maybe maybe almost a million jobs when you look at the whole supply chain for is what Tesla's created and then SpaceX is is about 15,000 people and also you know like maybe a full total supply chain 50,000 people so you know I mean I've basically W with the help of many talented people built these companies and then the the so-called these these wealth statistics simply they simply add up what the ownership is in the companies and say okay this is a certain amount of money but I don't actually have that in money I have it in stock I just it's just it's just that the companies have succeeded um but how was the last the last launch of\n\nthe SpaceX tell me something last question please joavan the last launch I see ma there sitting on the floor why are you sitting on the floor are you worried about the highness [Music] Mar how was the last launch was a you were optimist about your SpaceX the big big yeah so well well Starship so the the the the exciting thing about Starship is that it's the first rocket design that could make life multiplanetary that could enable a self- sustaining um base on the moon and a city on Mars um so because it is is not just a very large vehicle but it is designed for full and Rapid reusability um so that would um lower the cost of access to space by I don't know maybe 100 or more and so and basically it's it's the first rocket that is capable of um building\n\na base on Mars and a base on the Moon yes that's that's that's [Applause] yeah so you know you know there's the the the great Italian physicist Enrico FY I'm I'm a big admirer of FY and he had uh he was very good at asking profound questions questions um and one of his questions which is called the fmy Paradox is where are the aliens and one of the explanations is that and perhaps I think the one that I think is most appears to be most accurate is that Consciousness is extremely rare that it's you know we we people often ask me have I do I know about aliens or something like that you know I get asked that a lot um and the crazy thing is that I've seen no evidence of aliens whatsoever um this this means that I think most likely at least in this part of\n\nthe Galaxy um we are the only Consciousness that exists and so you can think of human consciousness really as like a a tiny candle in a vast darkness and we must do everything we can to ensure that the candle does not go out great we can finish with that we can finish with that okay we can finish with this oh and so so um it's worth reading about the FY Paradox and because people have thought very hard about this um because there are these because one of the things is like well maybe they are these great filters and and and and these civilizations don't pass these filters one of the filters is um do we become a multiplet species or not if we do not become a multiplet species then eventually at some point something will happen to the planet either it will\n\nbe uh man-made or it will be uh something natural like a a meteor like whatever killed the dinosaurs for example so and then eventually the sun will actually expand and will destroy all life on Earth so if one cares about life on Earth at all we should care about becoming a multiplet species and eventually going out there and becoming a multi- stellar species and having many Star systems you know we we we want the exciting parts of Science Fiction to not be fiction forever we want to make them real and um yeah great so thank you very much El give me give me your glass give me your glass for you"},"languages":["en"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=37e6BVnwm4g"},{"id":"dealbook-summit-2023-11-29","type":"interview","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2BfMuHDfGJI","title":"DealBook Summit","titles":{"en":"DealBook Summit","de":"DealBook Summit","fr":"DealBook Summit"},"date":"2023-11-29","summary":"Musk's combative DealBook interview with Andrew Ross Sorkin on advertisers, the boycott and his mindset.","text":"Please welcome Andrew Ross Sorkin please Please and his please guests CEO of Tesla CEO of SpaceX chief engineer and CTO of X Elon Musk. Good evening everybody. Thank you so much for being with us throughout the day and I couldn't be more pleased to sit with Elon Musk has our final interview of this remarkable time. We've all had together. He doesn't need much of an introduction by which want to say a couple things.\n\nHe's the richest person in the world. He very well be the most concise how most consequential individual in the world right the world in individual most consequential console right now. He runs the most Innovative companies. World Tesla SpaceX starlink, which is part of that neuro-link the boring company X and his x. a. I and he's disrupted each of these Lanes.\n\nHe's moved at Breakneck Breakneck speeds, but he's facing a storm of controversy in the process. He joins us today following a visit as you all know, so well we discussed earlier on Monday to Israel where he met with the Prime Minister there and the president of Israel and we're going to talk about everything and my hope is that we can talk about how he he thinks about He thinks his influence about he thinks his power about He thinks all of it.\n\nAnd we're going to talk about Innovation and everything else. I want to say just two other things real quick. So we met each other for the first time 16 years ago. Yes, long time a long time and all the kids were three when we first met I do. I think I do you're just you're about to deliver your first Roadster. I don't think you had yet. Larry Page was still waiting. Yeah. It's to get like in 2007 2008 and I don't agree with a little bit 2008.\n\nI remember going back to The Newsroom and saying I think I just met the next Steve Jobs and it was I'm at a hold to that. Okay, I'm gonna hold to that but a lot has happened between when I first met you and now you came to deal with been boring, that's for sure. Well, actually it taken by a driver boring Kony driver boring kony2012. You came.\n\nTo deal book and sat on this stage and we're thrilled to have you back but there's been so much that happens between now and then and there's been so much that's happened in the past week week and a half and a lot of folks and I want to tell you this elevator. A lot of folks called me up and said you really you really going to host Elon Musk here. Can you believe what he just said on Twitter on 1X on? Yeah, Yeah.\n\nYeah, no idea what this Twitter thing about. Should you platform? Him, that's what they said. Yeah, did you platform then? I said that I think it's our role. And I know you have issues with Journal has a platform and I know you have an issue with journalists often times, but I said it's our role to have conversations and to inquire and to and sometimes even interrogate ideas and that's what I'm hoping. We can do that.\n\nSo I want to start just so we can begin this conversation and just level just and conversation this begin can we so just start to I want level said take us through. Everything that happened if you could everything know over the past week and a half of your God we're going to we've got the time, okay. You send out a you send out a post or an X or a tweet, otherwise, whatever.\n\nYeah, as I'm trying to like when things were just 140 characters that made sense coma tweet because like a bunch of little birds chirping, but when you know point which you can put like three our videos on it's like it's very long tweet. So here we are. This is more descriptive I think and at some point I don't know where you were. But you write in responding to another tweet. Yes.\n\nThis is the actual truth and it set off a firestorm of criticism all the way to the White House, right? And then you make this trip to Israel. You have advertisers who left the platform people calling. Well, the trip to Israel is independent of it wasn't something like apology tour. I want to be clear. That was well. Let's talk about that. So just but just take this back.\n\nBack to the moment at which you write that trip to Israel is independent of was like in response to that at all. Well, let's do it will do is really just a moment. I have no problem being hated hated, hated by the way. I hear it away. Well, but you know what, let's go straight to that then for a second sure because there is an idea and you could say that you don't real weakness 21 He liked a real weakness. I do not have that. Let me ask you this.\n\nThen. There's a difference you're saying I don't care if anyone likes me or they hate me, but given your power and given what you have amassed and your the importance you have.\n\nI would think you want to be trusted I would think maybe you don't need to be liked or hate it but trusted matters if if x is going to become a financial platform where people going to put their money where people where the government's going to give you money for four Rockets where people are going to get into the cars.\n\nThey need to ultimately decide that you are they don't have to say that they love you, but that you are ultimately a decent and good human being. Yes. being. human good and decent a ultimately you are that but Yes. I am and I think I am.\n\nBut but I'm certainly not going to But do but some sort of tap dance to prove to people that I am so as for trust, I mean, I think write that down in a few ways if you want your if you want satellites into orbit reliably SpaceX will do 80% of all master orbit this year China will be 12 percent. The rest of the world will do eight that includes Boeing Lockheed and everyone else.\n\nSo the track record of the rocket is the best by far of anything you could you could hey My guts next you could not trust me. It is relevant the rocket track record speaks for itself with respect to Tesla. We make the best cars whether you height your life hate me like me or in different different.\n\nDo you want the best car or do you not want the best car so So I will certainly not Pander and Johnson like the only reason I'm here is because you are a friend. Like what was my speaking fee? You don't you're not making any example. I'm Andrew. But yeah, sorry. It's okay. Second of all, we've known each other for a very long time smoking. Yes, and listen, you know what? I'm trying to illustrate us that sometimes I say the wrong thing.\n\nI think they're a lot of people who are tired, but let me let me go back. You should hear the sketches that SNL wooden post. By the way, those are really good by wooden post and I would say By wooden post. unfortunately or fortunately or unfortunately whatever friendship we have not great. We don't talk to each other that that much but let me ask you this. That's true. Where am I?\n\nWhere am I because I need any validation or it is that It it we've been friends for 16 years It and I promised you I'd be here and that's why I'm here. Well, I appreciate you being here for any other reason but let me ask you this. Then. Let's just go at it. Just tell me what happened you write this tweet that says that this is the actual truth people read that tweet. Yes, and they say Elon Musk is an anti-semite that he is.\n\nHe's riling up this base you're hearing it from as I said the White House your You get from Jewish groups all over I think Jonathan Greenblatt from the ADL is here. There's lots of people who say this and by the way, it's not just that generally the whole thing during the whole I did and that's why when I ask her responses, excuse me, I said more More responses. Yeah, I said more I said more than what you just read this the other was absent.\n\nThere is absolutely more. Yes, but I'll tell you the thing that struck me it wasn't and I'm an American Jew. It wasn't just the people who had that view was actually people who who really are anti-semites who said oh my goodness go go E Lon this is E Lon, fabulous. E Lon E Lon, And that actually was the thing that really me set really really that thing the was actually that And back.\n\nI said I myself what's going on here and I want to know how you felt about What's going on that what's going on in that moment. When you when you saw all of this happening. Yeah. Well, first of all, I did clarify almost immediately what I meant, I would say that that was you know, if I could go back and say I should in retrospect not have replied to that particular person and I should have written in Greater length as to what I meant.\n\nI did subsequently clarify. In replies, but those clarifications were ignored by the media. And essentially I had a loaded gun to those who hate me and arguably to those who had just medic to fill in for that. I'm quite sorry. That is not that was not my intention intention. So I that sorry did, you know That sorry.\n\npost on my primary timeline to be absolutely clear that I'm not anti-semitic that and anti-semitic not I'm that clear absolutely be to and that I in fact if anything and file of Summer Enoch and the trip to Israel was planned before any of that happened. It was neither here nor there. Do you see this thing? You know what it is? I do because I actually followed your tire trip to Israel right when I tell everybody. This is the says.\n\nIt says bring them home. the hostages it was given to me by the parents of one of the hostages. and I said I would wear it just as long as there was a hostage store meeting and I have what was that trip like and obviously, you know that there's a public perception that and your clarifying this now. but But there is a public perception that that was but part of But a apology tour.\n\nIf you will that this had been said online there was all of the criticism there was advertisers leaving we talked to Bob I gotta stop you. Hope don't Hope gotta stop you. I Bob to talked we leaving was advertisers don't advertise. You don't want them to have a Time know. What do you mean? If somebody could try to Blackmail me with advertising blackmail me with money go f*** yourself. but go f*** yourself. Is that clear? I hope it is. Hey Bob.\n\nYou're in the audience. Well, let me ask you then. That's how I feel. but advertise, how do you But advertise, think that about the economics of x if part of the underlying model least today and maybe it needs to shift. Maybe the answer is it needs to shift away from advertising advertising? If you believe that this is the one part of your business where you will be beholding to those who have this view. What do you do? Why?\n\nI understand that there's a reality to right. Yes, no. No, I mean Ocarina is right here, and Ocarina is right here she's got to sell advertising. Absolutely. So no no, don't tell you so well, no, actually what this advertising boycott is is going to do it's going to kill company. And you think that the and And and the whole world will know that those advertisers killed company and we will document it in great detail.\n\nBut there are those advertisers I imagine are going to say they're going to say we didn't kill the company. Oh, yeah, they can you say hello to tell to Earth, hello to tell to Earth but they're going to say that hello to tell to Earth, they're going to say you hello to tell to Earth Lon that you killed the company because you said these things and they were inappropriate things and they didn't feel comfortable on the platform, right?\n\nplatform, the comfortable on feel didn't they and things inappropriate That's that's what Amanda said. Let's see how Earth response to that. So many okay this then this goes back to what we'll both make our cases, right and we'll see what the outcome is. What are the economics of that for you? I mean you have enormous resources so you can actually keep this company going for very long time.\n\nWould you keep it going for a long time if there was no advertising? I mean if the company fails because of an Advertiser boycott, it will fail because of times boycott and that will be what bankrupt the company and that's what everyone on Earth will know. What do you think then of the I can trust though?\n\nThey're not be gone and we'll be gone because of an Advertiser boycott, but you recognize that some of those people are going to say that they didn't feel comfortable on the platform and I want I just wonder and ask you about and think about that for a sec to adjudge with dollar to a judge it, but the judge is going to be judges the public. And you think that the public is going to say that that Disney is making a mistake.\n\nYeah, and they're going to boycott Disney yeah, and they're going Yeah, and they're going yeah, and they're going they already are well, there are some that are for lots of different reasons, but you think that this is going to that you have the this ghost actually the interesting of power of power and leverage let the chips fall where they may Let the chips fall where they may I just want y that is the approach.\n\nI asked it because you've been with every approach. Well, you've been very particular about the approach to Tesla when you think about the engineering involved in that the approach to SpaceX the approach to some of the stuff you're doing with with AI has been very specific right? There's not a let the chips fall where they may approach to those businesses.\n\nI don't think that we focus on making the best products and products best the focus on making we think that don't I and Tesla has gotten to where it's gotten. With no advertising at all.\n\nI understand that Tesla currently sells to twice as much in terms of electric vehicles as rest of electric car makers and United States combined tell has done more to help the environment than all other companies combined refer to say that therefore as a leader of the company. I've done more for the environment than everyone else at any single human on earth. How do you feel about that? Now what are still about that? Yeah.\n\nNo, I'm asking you personally how you feel about that because this goes we're talking about power and influence and I'm saying I'm saying what I care about is the reality of goodness not the perception of it and what I see all of the place is people who care about looking good while doing evil f*** them. Okay.\n\nLet me ask you this because I think part of let me ask this Let me ask by the way, there's some people who said look owning X to begin with as just created problems that you created so many amazing things that are changing our world and and I know you want to make X at this And world. fabulous Town Square Free Speech platform, but that unto itself that that has create such a distraction of all of these things.\n\nThis is the conversation we're having we're not focus. We're not talking lease yet and we will on Tesla you have your cyber truck deliveries. Tomorrow and everything else you're doing but is there any will be the biggest product launch of anything but by far on Earth this year is it is there any part of you though?\n\nThat just says you know what I just shouldn't have done this or maybe I should sell it or give it away or do something else with that with the X piece of it. Yeah, given given given the propensity for some of the things that you do and say on that platform to create these these issues. Yeah. I will the posts I've done on the platform. I think there might be. 30,000 or something like that right once in awhile. I'll say something foolish.\n\nAnd I have and I would certainly it put and And that comment and that you said there's truth in among perhaps one of the most foolish if not the most foolish thing I've ever done on the platform and I did do my best to clarify afterwards that you know, I certainly don't mean anything anti-semitic in that the nature of the criticism was simply that the that simply was criticism of the nature the that in the Jewish people have been persecuted for thousands of years.\n\nEars. There is a natural Affinity therefore for persecuted groups. This has led to the funding of organizations. organizations that is essentially promote any persecuted group or any group with the perception of persecution. This includes radical Islamic groups. Everyone here has seen everyone the Everyone everyone massive demonstrations for Hamas in every major city in the West. That should be jarring.\n\nWell a number of those organizations received funding from prominent people in the Jewish Community. They didn't expect that to happen it but if you generically But it. but it But it. without condition sort of fund if you find the persecuted groups in general Some of those persecuted groups unfortunately won't your annihilation.\n\nand And and what is what I meant by that And when I subsequently clarify it is is that it's unwise to to to find to find organizations unwise to it's clarified is is that organizations that support groups that want your annihilation. Is this coming across McNeely? Yeah my question to you though. Logically. This is makes a lot of sense. Is there any part of you? Just tell me what happens though?\n\nWhen once all this happens, let's say you find a group that group supports Moss. He wants you to die. Perhaps you should not fund them, right? But you but you do thank you but you But you but you you do appreciate that when you wade into these very delicate Waters When that. at these when that When that. very delicate times. Yes, Yes that it can create a real. I mean as it created headlines for the past two weeks and and economic impact.\n\nWhat I'm just so curious what happens in your brain when you see all this happening, I think are you sitting there going? Oh my God, I stepped in it. I wish I didn't do that. Are you saying s*** through them? I hate these people why they after me but all of that. Yeah, all of that. I mean, look, I'm sorry for that that pre or post. It was foolish of me of the 30,000. It might be literally the worst and worst the literally be might It 30,000.\n\nthe me of foolish of was dumbest to post that I've ever done and I try to do my best to clarify six ways to Sunday, but But ways to Sunday. you know, at least but ways to Sunday, But ways to Sunday. I think over time it'll be obvious that in fact far from being anti-semitic. I'm in fact follow Semitic and my all the evidence in my track record would support that. Obviously.\n\nThere are people who say crazy things on on X, as you know, maybe think they're crazy people are not they're not the crazy, but they're think maybe know, you as X, the aspiration for X is to be the global town square. Now if you were to walk down to let's say x square, right? Do you occasionally hear people saying crazy things?\n\nYes, but they're not they don't have the megaphone right and that's that's the conundrum but they can only say it to 50 or 100 people that are that are sitting standing there in Times Square. They don't have a mega. I mean look the the joke I used to make about old Twitter was it was like giving everyone in the psych ward a megaphone. So, you know, you So, megaphone.\n\nward a the psych in everyone giving like I'm aware of that things can gets promoted that are - beyond Gets promoted the sort of Circle of somebody simply gets promoted screaming crazy things in Time Square which happens all the time, you know, so the it's actually it's pretty rare for something frankly that is hateful to be promoted. It's not it's not it's not that it never happened. But it's it's fairly rare.\n\nI mean, I would encourage people to look at for those that use the system when you look at the the sort of the feed that you receive. How often is it? Is it hateful and over time has it gotten more or less hateful and I would say that if you look at at the look you if that say I would and hateful less or it gotten more the X5 forms a day versus a year ago. Go I think it is actually much better. I mean, what is your clothes?\n\nLike are you surprised I'm just curious if you use this I use the platform religiously I so you admit to being an addict you and I use the for you and I will I will say now the problem is because I'm a journalist I go looking for stuff. Well, that's not a sentence saying because I and I also think the algorithm for me personally because I'm looking for stuff also is feeding the others things.\n\nThis is actually a challenge in that A a like sometimes people will say like why is it showing me, you know posts from this person that I hate and we're like well, did you interact a lot with this person that you hate? Well, yes. Well therefore thinks that you want to interact more with this person that you hate. That's like a reasonable. Let me ask, you know, if you kind of want to have an argument tweet. Yeah. Do you have a post?\n\nLet's say post when you post it wasn't a moment. If anyone can I come up with a better word? better a come up with I can anyone If moment. post it wasn't a word? That would be great when you post though, but this bad word I can think of is post. So when you post though, do you are you trying to rile up either a base or an audience? Do you recognize the power you have in that?\n\nAnd and also by the way not just rile up rile up one version of sorry, but also write down which is to say as I said, there are people who are demonstrable anti-semitic on the site who I get jewboy things. All sorts of things that come through on my way. Hey for a while. I thought I was through so they would you know get it to it. But no, but the question is condemned as Supergirl you ever think to yourself.\n\nYou know what I'm gonna go online and I'm going to say these people I condemn these people that are on my site saying these things because I have said I have you see I've condemned an assembly but do you ever go I said I could can literally I literally posted I condemn anti-Semitism in all its forms like that is a literal we've literal post that post we've literal literal a like that is forms all its in that I made.\n\nI mean, I'm like listen if I can get out thesaurus if you you know, and we could you know, I let me ask you a different question you you you compose it. I'll post it. Okay. Let me ask you this. You You you you you you you You you you your honor you're on a podcast about a month ago. And you said something that struck me and it struck me is accurate came out of your mouth.\n\nSo hopefully it is but it I'm hoping to go deep on this stuff because it came out of my mouth does not mean it's true. You said my mother who said my mind is a storm. I don't think most people would want to be me. They may think they want to be me, but they don't know they don't understand. What did you mean by that? What was that what your mind being a storm and I think it I mean I have known you for quite some time.\n\nI think it is a bit of a storm. Yes. Yeah, I mean I Yeah. Yeah, know as much as a where the metaphor make sense, my mind is often feels like a like a like a very Wild Storm. I mean, I have a fountain of ideas. I mean I have my ideas and I could possibly execute so I have no shortage of ideas Innovation is not the problem. The problem execution is the problem. I've got a million ideas.\n\nI mean, I've got an entire entire design an got mean, I've I got a million ideas. I've design for an electric supersonic vertical. Off jet but I mean I just if I just can't do that as well. I've had it for 10 years. And there's a million things your storm a Happy Storm. Yeah, it's not a Happy Storm. Yeah.\n\ntell us about that Tell us because I think that that tell us actually Tell us when people try to really understand you, I think that there's a lot there's a that think I you. understand really to people try it when of this comes from some other place and I want to talk about that. What do you think that is? It was really like a psychiatrist catch her or something.\n\nYou know, I think to some degree I was born this way, but and then it was Amplified by a difficult childhood rightly.\n\nSo but I can remember even in the happy moments when I was a kid that there's kid that was a I happy moments when there's just it just feels like this just a rage of horses Rage in my mind constantly now this, you know productively manifests itself in technology and Building Things for the most part, so And I think on balance the output has been very productive.\n\nI think the results at as we you know, discussed earlier with SpaceX Tesla PayPal, which is you know, still going today the first year and a company that I started in fact the first In started.\n\nyear in a company I started of to was funded by New York Times company Hearst knight-ridder and remember We wrote some of the software for we the New York Times website We we and we help bring online several hundred newspapers that previously were only in front. Now.\n\nThis is in the 90s, which at this point is like I'm like good grandpa black, but basically, you know the nineties and internet feels like a Precambrian era when there were only the sponges so Anyway, so, anyway, so, Anyway, so, you know, anyway, so, I feel like that a lot of productive things have been done and you can also look at Tesla as being through as Tesla at look can also you and been done have productive things many companies and wine like are super charging network is if it were if this it tells a supercharger Network where its own company, it would be a Fortune 500 company by itself.\n\nIt's just just the super charging system. We also make the cells we build the electronics in the power train from scratch. We have the most Innovative structural design. The larger castings ever used. We have the best manufacturing technology have the best manufacturing We used. ever castings larger technology at Tesla better manufacturing technology than companies that have been doing it. For 100 years.\n\nSo so these these Demons of the mind, you know, I for the most part harnessed to productive ends, it's Luna a script that does it mean that once in a while while.\n\nThey they while you know, go wrong wrong, wrong wrong, but but and this is a question, I think a lot of lot of people, think a question, I a is this and wrong know, go people, you know are always trying to figure out about not just you but sometimes Meaning what is driving all this you're doing all of these things. Do you think it's do you think that you would be as successful?\n\nWhatever success is if it wasn't being If if driven by some I think that there's something you're trying to prove either yourself or to somebody. I don't know. We're all trying to prove that the person who is my mother. I don't know. No, if I were to sit describe My Philosophy it is a philosophy of curiosity. I did have this existential crisis when I was around 12 about what's the meaning of life, isn't it all pointless?\n\nWhy not just commit suicide why exist? I read the religious texts. I read the philosophy books that are especially the German philosophy books made me quite depressed frankly when frankly depressed quite me made books philosophy German the when you're not read schopenhauer and each has a teenager. But then I read but But but Douglas Adams Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy which is a book on philosophy in the form of humor.\n\nAnd the point that Adams was making there was that we don't actually know what questions to ask. That's why I said that, you know, the answer is that 42. that, that Basically it's a giant computer and and it came up with the answer 42, but then to actually figure out what the out what figure actually then to but 42, answer with the up the question is.\n\nThat's Actual hard part I think this is generally true also in physics at the point of which you can properly frame. The question. The answer is is actually the easy part. So so so mi order vation then was that well. My life is finite really a flash in the pan and on a galactic time scale, but if we can expand the scope and scale of consciousness. Then we are better able to figure out what questions to ask about the answer. That is the universe.\n\nAnd we're maybe we can find out the meaning of life or even what question to what the right question to ask is. You know, where do we come from? Where are we going? Where are the aliens are there aliens? At you know, these these questions. You you You know is their new physics to you discover or is this because there's addition to be some real questions about dark matter and dark energy energy.\n\nAnd so the purpose of SpaceX is to extend life beyond Earth on a sustained basis so that we can at least pass one of the Fermi great filters, which is that of being a single planet civilization if we are single planet civilization then Then we are simply waiting around for some then Extinction event whether that is man-made or natural. natural, natural.\n\nBut if you're a single planet civilization, eventually you will something will happen to that planet and you will die. If you were a multi-planet civilization, you will live much longer. Also multi plant civilization is that's the natural stepping stone to being a multi Stella civilization and being out there Among the Stars so, you know this I think has To that.\n\nThis is not simply a defensive motivation, but it is also one where that you know that gives meaning Man's Search for meaning triple ask you if there's this philosophy Point even though it may seems rather esoteric that may resonate with a few people. We must get past this Fermi filter of Venus a great future of being a single planet civilization.\n\nAnd if we do that will more likely to understand the nature of the universe and what questions to ask if you're a believer in the philosophy of curiosity then Philosophy of then philosophy of I think you should support this Philosophy of ambition and but it's more that there's being a multi-planet species is more than than simply. You know life insurance life insurance for Life collectively.\n\nThat's a defensive reason, but but I think also that that life has to be more than simply solving one side problem after another, you know, they're happy that be reasons many where you wake up in the morning and you're happy to be alive. They have to be reasons that you you have to say. Why are you excited about the future like what gives you hope? And and if you if you are unsure ask your kids.\n\nAnd and I think the idea of us being a spacefaring civilization and being out there Among the Stars. Is incredibly inspiring and exciting and something to look forward to. And they need to be such things in the world. May I ask you a different question about confidence?\n\nWe were having a conversation here earlier, but people and where your where people get their Confidence from some people have written security other people have insecurity great great confidence and I was thinking about you because you have a very interesting history where people have told you over and over again that you're wrong. Well, sometimes they're right.\n\nWell, sometimes they are but I would say that when it comes to Tesla when it came to SpaceX people told you that you were crazy. You're out of your mind. This was never going to happen. Yeah, it's going to work. And so yes, we ask you this though and so we're going to work is now when people say you're wrong. This isn't right.\n\nDo you look at that and say you know what that's like a red flag for me because you know, I've been told so often that I'm wrong that I know that I and I know I'm right because I've had that experience or other people in your life when they say, you know, what Ilan this is not this is not right. Do you know what I'm saying?\n\nI mean, I think we're just trying to say is that do at this point think because what you're trying to say is I've been right so many times for others have said I'm wrong that now I passed believe I'm right when I fact I'm wrong. You did very well. What do you think know? I'm right. know? I'm right know? I'm right. So yeah, no, look. Here's the thing No, I'm right. think? physics is unforgiving for.\n\nYeah, look here's the thing physics is unforgiving physics is unforgiving. So. I mean I have you know, these very simple things I've come up with that physics is the law and everything else was a recommendation right in the sense that you can break any law made by humans, but try breaking a law made by physics as much more difficult. So if you are wrong and persistent being wrong, the Rockets will blow up and the cars will fail.\n\nSo this is we're not trying to figure out what flavor of ice cream is the best flavor Figure out figure out of ice cream the like if there's a thousand things that can happen on a rocket flight and only one of them gets the rocket orbit. and And so being wrong and And results in Failure when dealing with physical objects, but that's the interesting part.\n\nSo now you've built this these great companies that physically the physics of them are enormously successful. So successful arguably that you have leverage over everybody else, right? There's nobody else can do starlink. Nobody else can get I nobody else can get the rockets in space yet Amazon and Jeff Bezos are trying but they haven't yet. I hope he does you hope he does.\n\nYeah, and I think you know, but I actually agree with with love Jeff's motivations. I mean, I think you know he's so I'm living for their but this way if there was a button I could press that would delete blue origin. I wouldn't press it. So I think it's good that he's spending money on on making Rockets to you know, it's just Pepsi spend more time. it but you know, it's up It to him the to make a point here.\n\nSo nothing nothing any of my companies have done has been to stifle competition. In fact, we've done the opposite. So at Tesla we have open sourced our patents anyone can use anyone patents our sourced open have we Tesla at So opposite. the done our patents for free how many companies do not have done that? Can you name one? I can't at SpaceX. We don't use patterns.\n\nSo I mean said once in a while will file a patent just so some patent troll doesn't cause trouble but we're not stopping any that we've done we've done nothing anti-competitive. We've done nothing to stop a not just you at all. I just want to clarify for the audience because some companies have done done anti-competitive things. I think think the I things. anti-competitive done have companies the strange thing about the unusual.\n\nThing about space X and Tesla is that we've done things that have helped a competition. So at Tesla we have made our supercharger system Open Access. We made our we Access, We Access. charger technology we Access, available for free to the other manufacturers. The reason I know Walled Garden we could have put a wall up the road instead.\n\nWe invited them in the reason I mention this though is because you've had the success had you've because though is this mention I reason the the success in the physical physics world, you know.\n\nNow have now have these very difficult Now have decisions now have that have huge impacts on the world that are not physical decisions at all their decisions of the Mind the decisions that you and others have to make it as a question whether you should be making these decisions at all and I think about in the context of starlink.\n\nObviously there was the report about how it's being used in Ukraine and the rough War there's questions about what you know, Taiwan whether Taiwan should use it or we'll use it. I believe they're not right now because they're worried that at At at some point maybe the Chinese At will tell you that you have to they have leverage over you and you're going to have to turn that off right then. These are these are very difficult decisions.\n\nAnd I'm so curious how you think how you curious so I'm and decisions, difficult very are these about that and not just the decisions the fact that you have that power. I think it's important for the audience to understand. The reason I have these Powers not because of some anti-competitive actions it simply because we've executed very well.\n\nOh, I'm not dismissing that I think there's so many people by the way who are huge supporters of what you there are already dead lights out there, you know, but they're and but they're not as good as yours and the same and we can say that maybe make the same argument of cars and everything else. But as a result that gives that result a as But else.\n\neverything and cars of argument same gives you enormous Leverage Right, okay with the exception of the by the way, these advertisers weren't on X in every other instance. Everybody needs you. Well, I mean nobody's letting them use our product if it's better than you somebody else's product. If it's there are other products better and I accept that and maybe one day so I can also create a better product.\n\nLike, you know, like, product Like, product. how like, product is it about thing to make better products with other companies? Well, and I wanted to go back to this to the Starling piece of it though because it that has sort of a geo geo political ramification in terms of your power and how you think about that specific power and then the power that the u. s.\n\nGovernment might have either over you or Not Over Not or you over either have might Government u. s. the that power Over You the The power of the Chinese government might have over you or not over you and how those things get used. We're in what are you suggesting? I'm asking the question around this this very idea of how these satellites are going to be used.\n\nWhether you think that you should have control of control have should you think that you Whether used. be to of them whether the government should have control of them was the government. Well, that's a there's a lot of people who don't trust the government exactly. But then this goes back to the trust of you. Right? I mean like said that we're not the only company who has communication satellites.\n\nThere are considered lights are just much better than theirs. So it's not like we have added Monopoly. Do you feel do you feel like anybody has attacked? has you feel like anybody do you feel do Monopoly haven't attacked? It's not like you feel anybody has leverage over you.\n\nI mean, I think at the end of the day if we make bad products that people don't want to use then the vote will users to use then the don't want people that if we make bad products users will vote with their resources and you something else. It hit the conversation for a sec.\n\nI mean certainly me and my company is overseen by regulators and and while you know, once it once know, you while and by regulators and my company is overseen it since SpaceX darling Tesla. Are overseen by are Are cumulatively are over 100 Regulators in actually more than that few hundred Regulators because you got we're in 55 countries if you sum up all the times that I If countries.\n\nhad an argument with Regulators of hundreds of regulators over decades, it can sound really terrible except but they forgot to mention that there were 10 million. Galatians we complied with and only five that I disagree with that little fight the five and it sounds like wow this guy's a real Maverick.\n\nI'm like, yeah, but what about the 10 million we complied with do you limit one related thing on this and The Leverage of countries and things over you and Regulators X is this free speech platform, you platform do platform, business platform in China lots of business China. That's an important part of your business. I imagine well not SpaceX.\n\nHow do you think about how do you the How do you leverage that the Chinese have over you and do they have leverage over you and how do you feel about some people would say is it hypocritical for you to be doing business in China or frankly in other countries as well as it relates to X and other things that don't follow this free this follow don't that things and other X Where as it relates to free speech path that you have espoused.\n\nThe best that their platform can do is adhere to the laws of Any Given country. Do you think there's something more we could do than that I think would be very hard. But I just wonder given the sort of strong philosophical approach that you've you've been vocal about whether you say to yourself, you know, maybe I shouldn't be doing business in that country. Well, first of all Starling and SpaceX to are no business in China whatsoever.\n\nTesla has one of four factories for vehicle factories in China and China's, you know, I don't know a quarter of our Market or something like that. And so it's a quarter of Market of one company. The same is true by the way of all the other car companies. They also have something on that order of that order on something have also companies. They car the other of quarter of their sales in China.\n\nSo if you if that's a problem for Tesla to pump every car company. I mean, I think one has to be careful about not conflating the various companies because I can only do things that are within the bounds of the law. I cannot do beyond that. My aspiration is to do as much good as possible and to be as productive as possible within the bounds of what is legal. More than that I cannot do I want to Pivot in talk about AI for a moment.\n\nWe had Jensen Wong here who's big fan of yours is you know, yeah Johnson's also talk about talking about bringing you the first box by the way with Ilya interestingly enough. Yes back in 2016. I think there's a video of Jensen and be unpacking the first AI computer at open a. i. So I'm so curious what you think of what's just happened over the past two weeks while you were dealing with this other headline series of headlines.\n\nI was a whole other whole headlines. I was a of series headline other this with series of have evolved in a isopropanol AI. What did you think? Well, you found it co-founded. Oh found it.\n\nYeah, I'm well the whole Well well Arc Well of open and I frankly is a little troubling because the the reason for starting opening I was to create a counter counterweight to Google Google and deepmind which at the time had two thirds of all AI talent and basically infinite money and compute and there was no there's no counter weight.\n\nIt was unipolar world and Larry Page and I used to be very close friends and I would stay at his house and I and house his stay at I would and friends close be very to and I talk to Larry. Too late hours of the night about AI safety too late Too late too late and it became apparent to me that Larry what did not care about AI safety.\n\nI think perhaps the thing that gave it away was when he called me a speciesist for being pro Humanity as in you know, like erasers but for species so I'm like, wait a second. What side are you on Larry? And I'm like, okay. Listen this guy calling me as fishiest. It doesn't care about AI safety. We've got to have some counter point here because the seems like we could be this isn't just this is no good. So, okay.\n\nI was actually started at it was meant to be open source. I named it over and II after open source. It is in fact closed-source super in fact closed-source is It source. open my eye after over super close. You should be named renamed super close source for maximum profit. May I so because this is what it actually is. I mean fate loves irony.\n\nI mean, in fact friend of mine has this says like the way to predict outcomes is the most ironic outcome is to vote. It's like is Occam's razor like the simplest sort of explanation is most likely and my friend join us viewers that the most ironic outcome is the most likely and that's what's happened with open a. i. It's gone from an open source.\n\nFoundation a 501 C3 to Suddenly It's like a 90 billion dollar for profit Corporation with clothes horse. So I don't know how you go from here to there. But that seems like a I don't know how you get. I don't know if this is legal. It's like that's so as you saw Sam Altman get ousted Yeah by somebody, you know Elia and helium was somebody who was a friend of yours. Yes, you brought him there your relationship with Larry Page effectively.\n\nDown over you recruiting him away. I think that's correct. That was the fact that was the Larry refuse to be friends with me after I recruited illya and so here's Elia apparently saying something is very wrong. I think we should be concerned about this because I think Elly actually has a strong moral compass.\n\nHe thinks about you know, he really sweats it over questions of what is right and if he felt strongly enough to Want to you know fire Sam Sam. Well, I think the world should know what was that reason. Have you talked to him? I reached out but he doesn't want to talk to anyone. Have you talked to other people behind the scenes is this is all happening. I've talked to a lot of people as nobody I've not found anyone.\n\nWho knows why have you I think we are all still trying to find out I mean one of two things is either it was a serious thing and we should know what it is or it was not a serious thing and and then the board should resign. What do you think of Sam Altman? I have mixed feelings about Sam. I do. You know the ring of power. You know can corrupt. and here's the ring of power so You know, I don't know.\n\nI think I want to know why Ilya felt so strongly as fire Sam the sounds like a serious thing. I don't think it was trivial. and And I'm and quite concerned that this that this um, you know you dangerous element of AI that they've they've discovered? Yes, you think they've discovered something? That would be my guess. Where are you with your own AI efforts relative to where you think open AI is where you think Google is.\n\nwhere the others are I mean on the AI front of in somewhat of a quandary here because I've thought I could be something that would change the world in a significant way since I was in college. I mean like 30 years ago. Well, the reason I didn't go college, bull day. I write for the get-go was because I was uncertain about which which edge of the double-edged sword which would be sharper the good edge of the vat Edge.\n\nSo I held off on doing anything on a I could have created. I think leading a company and kind of opening I actually kind of is that because I was just uncertain if you make this magic Genie what will happen? you know, where as I think Building sustainable energy technology is much more of a single-edged sword. That is that single-edged sword single edge. Good making life multiplanetary. I think single-edged good.\n\nYou're stalling mostly single-edged good. I mean giving people better connectivity to people that you know, don't don't you know have connectivity or too expensive I think is very, you know, very much a good thing. So only was instrumental by the way and the whole thing the Russian Advance the Ukrainian said so so, you know, I think there's think know, I so, you so said Ukrainian the Advance Russian the if it was AI, you've got the magic Genie.\n\nProblem. You may think you want a magic Genie. But once you've got Genies out of the bottle, it's hard to say what happens how far are we away from that Jeanne be kind of bodily think we think it's already out. When the genie is certainly poking his head out.\n\nthe AGI The the idea of the artificial general intelligence The given what you now are working on yourself and you know how easy or hard it is to train to create the inferences to create the wait. I hope I'm not getting too far in the weeds of just how this works. But those are the basics behind the software end of this. It's funny, you know all these weights.\n\nThey're just basically numbers in a are just weights It's funny, you know, all comma separated value file. That's our digital God the CSV file. on that are funny, On that are on that are On that are but that's the kind of literally what it is. So I think it's coming pretty fast, you know is that I mean, you've famously have admitted to overstating how quickly things will happen. But how quickly do you think this will happen?\n\nYou say smarter than the smartest human at anything. Yep. It may not be then quite smarter than all humans will machine augmented humans, you know, because we keep y'all got computers and stuff as a higher bar. But you say smaller than any, you know, can write as good a novel is say JK Rowling or discover new physics or invent new technology. I would say that we are less than three years from that point.\n\nLet me ask you a question about xai and at what you're doing and because there's an interesting thing that's different. I think about what you have relatives of some of the others which you have data you have information you have all of the stuff that everybody in here has put on the platform to sort through and through sort to platform the on put has here in everybody I don't Everybody realized that initially. What is the value of that?\n\nYeah, I'm data is very important. You could say that is probably more valuable than gold. But then maybe you have actually maybe you have more you maybe you have the gold in X in a different way in a way again that I don't know if the public appreciates what that means. Yes, X is the might be the single best source of data. I mean it is there more. You know people links that go to fill click on more links 2x than anything else on Earth.\n\nSometimes people think Facebook or Instagram is a bigger thing, but actually there are more links to external anything you can this is public information you can Google it. Okay. Let me ask you a so it is it is a where you would find what is happening right now on Earth at any given point in time the whole open a drama played out out. out in fact In out. on the export form. So it is one is it form. So expert the on fact out.\n\nplayed drama open a of the it's not there. Are you know Google certainly has a massive amount of data so does Microsoft? So it's not like B is one of the best sources of data. Can I ask you an interesting IP issue, which I think is actually something I can say as somebody who's in the Creator business and journalistic business and whatnot were care about copyright.\n\nSo one of the things about training on data has been this idea that you're not going to train or these things are not being trained on people's copyrighted information historically, that's been the concept. Yeah. That's a huge lie. Say that again. That's what these are. These are all trained on copyrighted it obviously so you think it's a lie when open a. i. Says that this is not none of these guys say they're training on copyrighted day though.\n\nThat's a lie. It's a lie a lie. It's a though. That's day copyrighted on guys had their training straight up straight up lie. Okay our said soon obviously it's been trained on perforated data. Okay.\n\nSo let me ask the second question which is all of the people who have been uploading and it's like whatever minute all of the people have been uploading articles the best quotes from different articles videos to X all of that can be trained on and it's interesting because people put all of that there and there of that all put people because interesting it's and and those quotes have historically been considered fair use Right, they do people are putting those quotes up the and individually on a fair use spaces you'd say OK that makes sense.\n\nBut now there are people who do threads and by the way, there may be multiple people who've done, you know at article could has a thousand words technically all thousand words could have made it onto X somehow and effectively now you have this remarkable repository and I wonder what you how you think about that again and how you think the creative community and those who were the original original Ip.\n\nthe were who those and community creative the A owners should think about that. I don't know except to say that the by the time these lawsuits are decided we'll have digital God. So that's that's digital. that's digital that's digital. God at that point. that's digital These lawsuits won't be decided before on a time frame that is relevant. Is frame that is relevant. a time on before decided be won't Is that a good thing or a bad thing?\n\nI think we live you know, there's that I don't know if it's actually a real Chinese thing or not, but may you live in interesting times? But apparently not but times, a But times? good thing, but times, but good thing good thing, good thing and I would prefer to personally I would prefer to live in interesting times and and we live in the most interesting of times. I think for a while there.\n\nI was like really getting demotivated and losing sleep over. the sort of the threat of AI danger and then I finally sort of became fatalistic about it and said well Even if I knew it was Annihilation was certain. What I choose to be alive what What at that time or not, what and I said I probably would have choose to be alive at that time because it's the most interesting thing. Even if there was nothing I could do about it.\n\nSo then, you know, then basically sort of a fatalistic resignation help me sleep at night because I was having trouble sleeping at night because of AI danger now what to do about it. I mean, I've been the biggest or the one banging the drum for the the hardest by far the longest Or this one of the longest for a high danger and or and these regulatory things that are happening are happening.\n\nare happening the single biggest reason that happening is because of me we are ever going to get their arms around it. We talked to the vice president this afternoon. She said she wants to regulate it people can try to regulate social media for years and have done nothing effectively. Well, there's regulation around anything which is a like a physical danger to a danger to the public. So like cars like So to the public.\n\na danger to danger physical a like is a are heavily regulated. And Communications and I have And early regulated rockets and and aircraft are heavily regulated the general philosophy about regulation is that when something is a danger to the public that there needs to be some Governor oversight? So I think in my view AI is more dangerous than nuclear bombs, which we regulate nuclear bombs. You can't just go make a nuclear bomb in your backyard.\n\nI think we should have some kind of Regulation with a I now this tense cause the AI acceleration is to get up in arms because they think I is sort of having basically, but you're typically don't like don't typically but you're basically, having of is sort think I regulation.\n\nYou've pushed back on Regulators for the most part in the of Of Tesla of and with so many so many instances where we read articles about you pushing back pushing you about articles read we where instances many so on The Regulators. I'm so curious. Why in this instance now you own one of these businesses. As I said a moment ago as As as one should not take what is viewed in the media as being the whole picture.\n\nThere are literally hundreds like this is probably not an exaggeration. So they're probably 100 million regulations that that might companies comply with and they're probably five that we don't and if they're if we And disagree with and some of those regulations, it's because we think the regulation that is meant to do good doesn't actually do good. But that is not the thing to Flying regulations for the question if there are laws and rules.\n\nWhether the ideas that you're making the decision that the law and the whether the Whether the rule shouldn't be the law on the rule and then right isn't that I'm saying follow my name is taken and and you should be obvious that you're mistaken. My company's Automotive is heavily regulated. We would not be allowed to put cars on the road. If we did not comply with this vast body of Regulation.\n\nNow you could you could fill up the stage with literally, you know, six foot high with the regulations that you have to comply with. To make a car and make you could have a room full of phone books. That's how many that's how big the regulations are and if you don't comply with all of those you can't sell the car and if we don't comply with all the regulations for Rockets or for Starling they shot us down.\n\nSo in fact, I am incredibly compliant with regulations now once in a while, they'll be something that I disagree with the reason I would disagree with that. It's because I think the regulation in that particular case in that rare. Our case our case does not Our case serve the public good our case and therefore I think it is my obligation to object to a regulation that is meant to serve the public good.\n\nIf it doesn't that's the only time I object not because I seek to object. In fact, I'm incredibly rule-following. Let me ask you a separate question is social media related question. We've been talking about Tick-Tock today ahead of the election sir. Soccer's what do you think of tick-tock? Do you think it's a national security threat I don't use like talk it again. You don't I don't personally use it.\n\nbut for people that for teenagers and people in their 20s, they seem almost And and religiously And addicted to technology. So we will watch Tech talk for like 2 hours a day. I stopped using Tick-Tock when I felt the AI probing my mind and I don't make me uncomfortable. So I stopped using it. And in terms of anti-Semitic content, I mean Tick Tock is Rife with that.\n\nIt has the most viral anti-semitic content anti-semitic most viral has the It with that. Tick-Tock is Rife anti-semitic content by far, but you think the Chinese government is using it to manipulate. The minds of Americans though. Is that something that you think we should worry about? I mean you have a different states that are trying to ban it.\n\nI don't think this is a sometimes going plot, but it is The Tick Tock algorithm is entirely a high-powered. So it is really just try to find the most viral thing possible that it's what is going to keep you glued to the screen. That's screen. the to glued you to keep is going what it's that it now the On sheer numbers.\n\nThere are on the order of 2 billion Muslims in the world and I think You know you know You know much you know smaller number of Jewish people for 20 million something many orders of magnitude fewer. So if you just look at at content production just unsure numbers basis is going to be overwhelmingly at Semitic. Let me ask you about another the mess your political question and I've been trying to square this one in my head for a long time.\n\nYeah in the last two or three years you have moved decidedly to the right I think have I well we can discuss this. I think that you have been espousing and promoting a number of Republican candidates and others you've been very frustrated with the body Administration over I think unions and feeling like they did not respect what you've created.\n\nWell, I mean with without any during nothing to provoke the veteran administration, they held an electric vehicle Summit at the White House and specifically refused to let Tesla and this isn't the first And this six months of the and this administration And this and we inquiry like we literally make more electric cars that everyone else combined. Why are we not allowed?\n\nWhy are you only letting your 84 GM Chrysler and UAW and you're specifically disallowing us from the EV Summit at the White House. We're done nothing to provoke them then Biden went on to add insult to injury and publicly said that GM was leading the electric car Evolution. This was in the same quarter that Tesla made 300,000 electric cars and GMA 26 Does that seem fair to you? So wierd Kappa tell me this then it doesn't seem fair.\n\nAnd and I've asked repeatedly you've probably seen me but we had a great relationship with Obama. So there's not a stupid amount, but then there's other for a long. I stood certain hours for sick. I stood in line for six hours to Shag Obama's head. Okay, so we just okay. So let me just ask on a personal level. me just ask on a personal so we just okay. So let Okay, head. I can see it in your face this this hurt you personally.\n\nAnd I hope the company and to And and it was an insult to you know, did Tesla has 140,000 employees? Okay of the employees. it Tesla half of them are in the United States tells us created more manufacturing jobs in everyone else combined. So we asked this then you've devoted at least the last close to 20 years your life. If not more to the climate climate change trying to get Tesla off the ground in part to improve climate.\n\nYou talked about that a real right-wing motive repeatedly got a far-right if anything, I understand that and then it's so it's a good guys reverse psychology Next Level. Well, no, but so here's in the question, which is how do you square the support that you have given, Support I believe you were at a fundraiser for the Vogue ramaswamy. For example, who says that the climate climate issue is a hoax, right? I disagree with him on that.\n\nI but I would think that that would be such a singular issue for you. I would think that that the climate issue be such a singular issue for you that actually it would disqualify almost anybody who didn't take that issue seriously. Well, I haven't endorsed anyone for president.\n\nI mean I wanted to hear what they had to say because I think some of his things are there some things he says I think are pretty solid, you know is concerned about government overreach but about gun control of information. I mean the degree to which old Twitter was basically a sock puppet of the government was ridiculous. So, you know, it seems to me that me that the seems to it know, you So, ridiculous.\n\nwas the there's a very severe violation of the amendment in terms of how much the government control how much control the government had overall Twitter and it no longer is so, you know, there's a reason for the First Amendment.\n\nThe reason for the First Amendment for freedom of speech is because the people that immigrated to this country came from a place is where there was not reading of speech and and they were like, you know what we got to make sure that that's constitutional because where they came from if they said something that we put Resume whether it be, you know, something bad would happen to him. So and freedom of speech you have to say, when is it relevant?\n\nIt's only relevant when when someone you don't like can say something you don't like or it has it or like don't you something say can like don't you has no meaning and as soon as you sort of You know throw in the towel and can see to censorship. It is only a matter of time before someone sensors you and that is why we have the First Amendment.\n\nCould you see yourself voting for President Biden if it's if they Biden Trump election, for example I think I would not vote for vitamin. You vote for Trump. Let s vote for Trump, but I mean This is this is definitely a difficult Choice here. You know, we would you or would you vote for Nikki Haley Nikki Haley, by the way, once Haley all social media names to be exposed as you know, no, I think that's outrageous. Yeah. No.\n\nNo, I'm not going to vote for some pros and censorship. Canada that. like Canada and censorship pros some vote for to going I'm not like that. I mean, I think these you have to you have to consider that there is a lot of wisdom in these amendments, Consider you know, I mean the Constitution and and you know, a lot of these a lot of things that we take for granted here in the United States that don't even exist in Canada.\n\nThere's not enough constitutional right to freedom of speech and Canada. So, you know, so and there's no Miranda rights in Canada people like think like, you know, you have the right to remain silent. You don't actually in Canada. So so you don't have Canadian I So can save you some coffee, but you know, so like you just got you the say these things about freedom of speech is incredibly important.\n\nEven when people said and I like that because it's a it's actually especially important. In fact, it is only relevant when people you don't like can say things you don't like and do you think right now as they're meaningless you think right now the Republican candidates for the Democrats are more inclined.\n\nI mean, this is where you go to I assume to to woke an anti woke an anti woke assume 22 woke and the mind Virus issue that you've talked about. Which party do you think is is more Pro freedom of speech given all the things you've seen is. We also see, you know, DeSantis, you know, preventing people from Reading certain things. Maybe you but maybe you think that's that's that's correct.\n\nNo, look we actually are in an odd situation here where on balance the Democrats appear to be more Pro Spencer censorship than the Republicans. That used to be the opposite it used to be, you know, that left position was freedom of speech.\n\nYou know, I believe at one point the ACL u-- even defended the right of someone to claim that they were not see or something like that, you know, so like they weren't there really were like the left was three of us peaches is fundamental and I mean my deception Perhaps it is inaccurate is that The pro censorship is more on the left than the right.\n\nWe certainly get more complaints from the left and the right because that way so but my aspiration for the X platform is that it is the best source of Truth or the least in accurate source of Truth. Truth and well, And Truth. you know, I don't know you won't believe me or not, but I think but I not, me or believe you won't know don't I know, well, you Honesty is the best policy and I think that the truth will win.\n\nIn overtime and the in overtime you know, we've In overtime got this this great system and it's getting better called Community notes, which is fantastic. I think it correcting falsehoods or adding context. In fact, we make a point of not removing anything but only adding context now that context could could include this is completely false and here's why and and and no one is immune to this.\n\nI'm not immune to it advertisers it to immune not I'm this. to is immune one no advertisers not immune to it. In fact, we've had community. Notes, which is caused us some loss in advertising speaking of lost some advertising Revenue. We're for Community note, if an app if this false advertising the community note will say this is false and here is why let me like there's one specific example that is public knowledge.\n\nSo I'll mention it which is one point Uber had it, it this ad which said earn like a boss and it was Community noted if by boss if by noted Community was it and boss said earn like a which ad boss you mean And 47 cents an hour this distant cause at least a temporary suspension of advertising from Aruba.\n\nI got to ask you a question that might make everybody in the room comfortable or not uncomfortable and it goes to the Free Speech issue the New York Times company and the New York Times newspaper it appeared over the summer to be throttled. What did the New York Times? Well, we're do require that that everyone has to buy a subscription that we don't.\n\nMake make exceptions for Make make anyone and and I think if I want the New York Times I have to pay for a subscription and they don't give me a free subscription. So I'm not going to give them a free subscription.\n\nBut were you what were you throttling the New York Times relative to other news organizations relative to everybody else was it was it was it specific to the to the times that it applies of Griffin by the only cost like a thousand dollars a month. So if they just do that then then they the back in back in the saddle, but but but you are saying that it was throttled now I'm saying I mean was there a conversation that you had?\n\nIs somebody you said look, is somebody you Is somebody you you know, I'm unhappy with the is somebody you times they should either be buying the subscription where I don't like their content or whatever any organization that refuses to buy a subscription is is not going to be recommended. But then what does that say about free? Speech and what does it say about the amplifying we search for it cost a little bit right but That's it.\n\nBut that's an interesting. Yeah, it's like an South Park might I say, you know Freedom isn't free of cost a buck 05 or whatever. So but it's pretty cheap. Okay, it's So, low cost So So, low cost freedom. I got a couple more questions for you. You're headed back to Texas after this. We're going to launch the stopper truck. Yeah.\n\nIt's going to be a big launch, but I wanted to ask you right now more broadly just about the car business The the The and what you see actually happening and specifically the government put in place lots of policies as you know to try to encourage more Evie's and one of the things that's happened uniquely is you have now a lot of car companies saying actually this is too ambitious for us. These plans are too ambitious for thousand dealers.\n\nI don't if you saw just yesterday sent a letter to the White House saying this has gone too far. You're going too far you had far you too going gone too far. You're has this saying had this on TV.\n\nIt was a it was this It was is going too fast it was too far and that there's not enough demand are underneath all this is his idea that maybe there's not enough demand for Evie's that the American public has not bought into the I mean they bought into with with your company, but they haven't bought into it broadly enough. Well, I think if you make a compelling electric car, if you will buy it no question about it.\n\nI mean electric car sales in China are gigantic. gigantic that's by far the biggest category biggest that's by far the gigantic are China sales in car and I think that would be the case. No, I mean it's worth noting. Okay. So the probably the best reputation of that is that the so Okay, Tesla Model y will be the best selling car of any kind on Earth this year.\n\nOf any kind gasoline or gasoline of otherwise, is there another car company that you think is doing a good job with these? I mean, I think the Chinese called companies are extremely competitive by far our toughest competitions in China. So, I mean there's there's a lot of people who are out there think that the top ten car company is going to be Tesla followed by nine Chinese companies. I think they might not be wrong. So China is So wrong.\n\nbe not might they I think companies. car Chinese nine super good at manufacturing and the work ethic is incredible. So you know, like You if we consider different leagues of you competitiveness at Tesla, we consider the Chinese League to be the most competitive.\n\nAnd by the way, we do very well in China because are trying to China team is the best China how worried are you that the union has unionization effort that just took place at what I should say effort. But but effort, the the new the new wages in the like at GM and Ford are that they're coming for you. They are coming for you. What is that going to mean to you and your business?\n\nWell, I mean, I think it's generally not good to have an adversarial relationship between people online, you know one group at the company and another group. In fact, I mean I disagree with the idea of unions, but the professor mean, I reason that is different than you may expect is which I just don't like anything which creates kind of Lords and peasants sort of thing. And I think the Union's naturally try to create.\n\nNegativity in a company negativity Negativity and and create a sort of Lords and peasants situation. There are many people at Tesla who have come and gone from working on the line to being in Senior Management. There is no laws and peasants. Everyone eats the same table or approximate a parking lot, you know GM there's a special elevator for only for senior Executives. We have no such thing at Tesla, you know, at Tesla, thing such no Executives.\n\nWe have senior for only the things that I actually know the people on the line because I worked on the line and I walked the line and I slept in the factory and I worked beside them. So I'm no stranger to them and they're actually many times. I've said well can't we just hold a union vote but apparently a company is not allowed to hold a union vote. So it has to be somehow cool for but the union can't do it.\n\nSo I said we'll just have to hold a vote and see what happens the actual problem. It is the is as the opposite. It's not that people trapped are people that not opposite. It's the as the is is problem are trapped at Tesla building cars the trip. The challenges is how do we retain? Great people to do the hard work of building cars when they have like six other opportunities that they can do that are easier.\n\nThat's the actual difficulty is that bullying cars is hard work and and there are much easier jobs and I just want to say that I'm incredibly appreciative of those who have cars and they know it, you know, so there's There's there's There's I don't know. Maybe there will be your be nice.\n\nIf I said like if Tesla gets your nights will be because we deserve it and we fell in some way, but we certainly try hard to way ensure the prosperity of everyone. We give everyone stock options. made We've options. stock everyone give We everyone. of prosperity We've made many people who are just working the line. Who didn't even know what stocks were we made the millionaires. So we're going to run on time final couple quick questions.\n\nWhen do you have the time? To tweet or the post. I actually think about all the time as I said, I used it bathroom. Sometimes I use it all the time meaning if we were to if we were to open up our phones and look at the screen time. What does yours look like? Well about every three hours I make a trip to the lavatory and that's the only time you do this seems like you're on there a lot.\n\nNo, I mean I did they'll be like brief moments between meetings. I mean, it's not obviously I've had like 17 jobs so, you know so so, and so no no, I guess technically it's work this point it is but I'm thinking just in terms of your mind sharing. I mean, by the way, there's a lot of people who should be working who are who are on this app technically posting on Twitter is 0 or X is work it does count as work.\n\nSo that's you know, there's that but no, I mean, I think I'm on. Well, I guess well, usually probably Well, I'm on well, for longer than I think I know what I know but you think that you have a day for the screen time of like number of hours per week. It's another that's a scary number. It's probably number hours per week. I don't know. It's a little over an hour a day or something like that. Just an hour a day.\n\nIf we really looked at this together, do you have your phone with you? Yeah, you want to look? Okay. Okay, here we go. You're ready screen time in general in time. in time? You ready time? Sometimes. It's a scary number. I know that's why I thought I just got a new phone. So I think this is not accurate because I'm a it's one minute minute for one it's for sure. It's more than that. Alright, it's over the week. Either go.\n\nYeah, go girl go to the week. Okay, so it's so wrong. It's more than four minutes. I just got a new phone. So this is not accurate. The police are four minutes new phone. Tim. Cook's end of the phone if new phone who does you know, I should ask by the way because I just mentioned Tim Cook. Do you feel like you're going to have to have a battle with him eventually, is that the next fight?\n\nI mean, I'd over the App Store the idea of making a phone call. You mean like no. No so of the App Store value make a phone. Sam Altman is apparently I'm thinking about making a phone with Johnny Ive. I mean, I don't think there's a real need to make a phone maybe if those are essential needs megaphone or make it fun, but I got a lot of fish to fry.\n\nSo I mean I do think there's a there's a there's a fundamental challenge that phone makers have at this point because you've got basically got you've because this point at have makers phone that basically a black rectangle. You know, how do you make that better? So you want to do that? What does that was that look like in elon's head? So that's literally yes. Good good phrase in the head neurolink. Well, there we go.\n\nThat way we need times before it's over. You know, the best interface would be a neural interface directly to your brain so that they'll be in your life. How far we do you think from that and how excited or scary does that seem to be and we read these headlines obviously about a monkey's who died as you know, what should we think about that?\n\nYeah, actually the this is yeah, Yeah, the USDA inspector yeah, who came by neural link facilities literally said in said literally neurolink facilities in her entire career. She has never seen a better Animal Care Facility. it is It we are it the It nicest channels that you could possibly be even to the rats and mice even though they did the plague and everything. So it is it is like monkey Paradise.\n\nSo the thing that's gets conflated is that there were some terminal monkeys where you know, this is like this is actually several years ago where the monkeys were about to die and I'm like, okay, we've got an experimental device. It's so kind of thing, which only On a monkey that's about today.\n\nAnd then you know now the monkey died but didn't die because the neural link died because it was, you know had a terminal case of cancer or something like that. So you're like it has never caused the death of a monkey Sylvester. I'm unless they're hiding something for me is is never caused death of monkey. And in fact, we've not had monkeys with neural implants for 23 years and they're doing great.\n\nSo And we've even replaced the dinner like twice. It's and we're getting ready to do the the first it's dinner like twice It's dinner like twice. it's dinner like twice implants and hopefully in a few months the they're only implementations of neural link. I think are unequivocally good speaking of the double-edged sword.\n\nI think these early implementations are single edged sword because the first implementations will be to enable people who are have rushed the brain-body connection to be able to operate a computer or phone faster than someone who has hands.\n\nThat work so you can imagine if Stephen Hawking could that communicate faster than someone who had for body functionality Now Incredible that would be well that's what this device will do and we should have a proof of that in a human hopefully in a few months it already Works in monkeys worked quite well with monkeys that can play video games just using just by thinking so then the next application after the the sort of those, you know dealing with The the tetraplegic some The quite a really quite a few tricks is going to be Vision vision is the the next thing so it's like if somebody is like has lost both eyes or the optic nerve has failed basically where there's Basically failed.\n\nthey have no possibility basically failed of Basically failed. having sort of some ocular correction that that would be the next thing of when your link is a direct vision.\n\nface and in fact, then you Face could be like Face, face, Geordi laforge from Star Trek you could you could see in like any frequency actually could see in radar if you want to final questions and then we're going to do in this conversation, which I think has taken everybody Inside the Mind of Elon Musk today. Not as well as the neural link below. neural link below it actually goes to self-driving It actually goes neural link below.\n\ncars and vision and everything else everything and vision and cars driving self it actually goes and I asked this question of people to judge Transportation secretary. Three it's actually something you retweeted. So I wanted to ask you the same question. There's a big question about autonomous vehicles and the safety of them. But there's also a question about when will be politically palatable in this country for.\n\npeople to die in cars that That that are controlled by computers, which is say That we have 35 40 thousand deaths every year in this in this country. Yeah, if you could bring that number down to 10,000 5,000. That might be a great thing. But do we think that the country will accept the idea that 5,000 people that your family might have perished in a vehicle as a result not of human making a mistake but of a computer. Yes.\n\nWell, first of all humans are terrible drivers, so people text and drive the drink and drive they get into arguments they you know Do all sorts of things in cars that they should not do. So so So it's actually remarkable that there are not more so deaths than there are what will find with computer driving is I think probably an order of magnitude reduction in deaths.\n\nI think now and the US has actually far fewer deaths per capita than the rest of the world world. If you go if you world If you world. worldwide, I think there's something close to a million deaths per year due to Automotive accidents. So I think computer after driving will probably drop that. By 90% or more it won't it won't be perfect, but it'll be ten times better than that.\n\nThe public will accept that you think the government will accept that. Well in large numbers the well Well it will certainly be so obviously true that it really cannot be denied. And what do you think? I know we've talked about the timeline before and I know people have criticized you for putting out timelines that may not have come true just yet. But what do you think? Yeah it is. Do you feel that? You yourself said that sure of course.\n\nso yeah, I I'm optimistic about I mean, I think I'm like naturally optimistic about time scales. If I was not naturally optimistic, I wouldn't be doing the things naturally optimistic. that I'm doing. naturally optimistic, I mean I certainly want to start a rock company or like a car company if I wouldn't have some sort of pathological optimism frankly.\n\nSo as you pointed out many people said they would fail and in fact I said, I actually I agreed with him I said, yes, we probably will fail and they're like, okay, but I thought SpaceX and Tesla had less than I like okay, a 10% chance of success when we started them. So yeah everybody but the self-driving thing is I've been optimistic about it, but we certainly made a lot of progress if anybody If progress.\n\nhas tried the very has been using the sort of full self-driving beta the progress is, you know, every year has been substantial. It's really now the point where in most places it'll take you from one place to another with no interventions. And the data is and unequivocal that And and that supervised for self-driving is somewhere around four times safer or maybe more than just human driving by by themselves.\n\nSo I'm you know I can certainly see it coming at what actually really the is another five or ten years and then people say, oh, no definitely not oh no definitely not definitely not did you feel like investors have invested in something that hasn't happened yet? Is that is that fair to them? And that's the other questions people have about that. Well, I mean, I think the their Vol with rare exception thought it wasn't happening.\n\nSo they were investing in despite thinking they're very clear that they don't think it's real so real it's think don't they very clear that they're thinking they don't saying oh we're we just leave everything you and says Hook Line & Sinker, We we but the thing is that I mean, I would be a fair criticism of me to say that I'm late, but it isn't but I always deliver in the end. And that's your final question. I took note of this.\n\nIt was November 11th. And you took to Twitter and you wrote only two words. You said amplify empathy. Right. I was taken back by that given all the things that have been going on in the world. You remember what you were thinking? Well, I think it's quite literally a I understand it but you always what was going on. What why did you write that? Well, I was encouraging people to apply empathy.\n\nIt literally attention quite literal, but was there something that it happened? That you had seen that you said yourself. I need to I want to say that I think I'm talking to some friends. And we all agreed that we should try to amplify empathy and so I wrote a profanity. If you wanted an unvarnished look inside the mind of Elon Musk. I think you just saw it. Look sometimes it's pretty simple, you know. Elon Musk.\n\nThank you very very much for the conversation. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much here. Take that with your second cousin. I'm just going to say thank you to everybody who stuck around for what has been a remarkable day. We are so appreciative of everybody who has been with us for so many years coming back to this every year. So, thank you. Thank you. Thank you.\n\nI hope you had a great day, and I hope we have an opportunity to do this again Elon Musk everybody. Thank you.","textByLang":{"en":"Please welcome Andrew Ross Sorkin please Please and his please guests CEO of Tesla CEO of SpaceX chief engineer and CTO of X Elon Musk. Good evening everybody. Thank you so much for being with us throughout the day and I couldn't be more pleased to sit with Elon Musk has our final interview of this remarkable time. We've all had together. He doesn't need much of an introduction by which want to say a couple things.\n\nHe's the richest person in the world. He very well be the most concise how most consequential individual in the world right the world in individual most consequential console right now. He runs the most Innovative companies. World Tesla SpaceX starlink, which is part of that neuro-link the boring company X and his x. a. I and he's disrupted each of these Lanes.\n\nHe's moved at Breakneck Breakneck speeds, but he's facing a storm of controversy in the process. He joins us today following a visit as you all know, so well we discussed earlier on Monday to Israel where he met with the Prime Minister there and the president of Israel and we're going to talk about everything and my hope is that we can talk about how he he thinks about He thinks his influence about he thinks his power about He thinks all of it.\n\nAnd we're going to talk about Innovation and everything else. I want to say just two other things real quick. So we met each other for the first time 16 years ago. Yes, long time a long time and all the kids were three when we first met I do. I think I do you're just you're about to deliver your first Roadster. I don't think you had yet. Larry Page was still waiting. Yeah. It's to get like in 2007 2008 and I don't agree with a little bit 2008.\n\nI remember going back to The Newsroom and saying I think I just met the next Steve Jobs and it was I'm at a hold to that. Okay, I'm gonna hold to that but a lot has happened between when I first met you and now you came to deal with been boring, that's for sure. Well, actually it taken by a driver boring Kony driver boring kony2012. You came.\n\nTo deal book and sat on this stage and we're thrilled to have you back but there's been so much that happens between now and then and there's been so much that's happened in the past week week and a half and a lot of folks and I want to tell you this elevator. A lot of folks called me up and said you really you really going to host Elon Musk here. Can you believe what he just said on Twitter on 1X on? Yeah, Yeah.\n\nYeah, no idea what this Twitter thing about. Should you platform? Him, that's what they said. Yeah, did you platform then? I said that I think it's our role. And I know you have issues with Journal has a platform and I know you have an issue with journalists often times, but I said it's our role to have conversations and to inquire and to and sometimes even interrogate ideas and that's what I'm hoping. We can do that.\n\nSo I want to start just so we can begin this conversation and just level just and conversation this begin can we so just start to I want level said take us through. Everything that happened if you could everything know over the past week and a half of your God we're going to we've got the time, okay. You send out a you send out a post or an X or a tweet, otherwise, whatever.\n\nYeah, as I'm trying to like when things were just 140 characters that made sense coma tweet because like a bunch of little birds chirping, but when you know point which you can put like three our videos on it's like it's very long tweet. So here we are. This is more descriptive I think and at some point I don't know where you were. But you write in responding to another tweet. Yes.\n\nThis is the actual truth and it set off a firestorm of criticism all the way to the White House, right? And then you make this trip to Israel. You have advertisers who left the platform people calling. Well, the trip to Israel is independent of it wasn't something like apology tour. I want to be clear. That was well. Let's talk about that. So just but just take this back.\n\nBack to the moment at which you write that trip to Israel is independent of was like in response to that at all. Well, let's do it will do is really just a moment. I have no problem being hated hated, hated by the way. I hear it away. Well, but you know what, let's go straight to that then for a second sure because there is an idea and you could say that you don't real weakness 21 He liked a real weakness. I do not have that. Let me ask you this.\n\nThen. There's a difference you're saying I don't care if anyone likes me or they hate me, but given your power and given what you have amassed and your the importance you have.\n\nI would think you want to be trusted I would think maybe you don't need to be liked or hate it but trusted matters if if x is going to become a financial platform where people going to put their money where people where the government's going to give you money for four Rockets where people are going to get into the cars.\n\nThey need to ultimately decide that you are they don't have to say that they love you, but that you are ultimately a decent and good human being. Yes. being. human good and decent a ultimately you are that but Yes. I am and I think I am.\n\nBut but I'm certainly not going to But do but some sort of tap dance to prove to people that I am so as for trust, I mean, I think write that down in a few ways if you want your if you want satellites into orbit reliably SpaceX will do 80% of all master orbit this year China will be 12 percent. The rest of the world will do eight that includes Boeing Lockheed and everyone else.\n\nSo the track record of the rocket is the best by far of anything you could you could hey My guts next you could not trust me. It is relevant the rocket track record speaks for itself with respect to Tesla. We make the best cars whether you height your life hate me like me or in different different.\n\nDo you want the best car or do you not want the best car so So I will certainly not Pander and Johnson like the only reason I'm here is because you are a friend. Like what was my speaking fee? You don't you're not making any example. I'm Andrew. But yeah, sorry. It's okay. Second of all, we've known each other for a very long time smoking. Yes, and listen, you know what? I'm trying to illustrate us that sometimes I say the wrong thing.\n\nI think they're a lot of people who are tired, but let me let me go back. You should hear the sketches that SNL wooden post. By the way, those are really good by wooden post and I would say By wooden post. unfortunately or fortunately or unfortunately whatever friendship we have not great. We don't talk to each other that that much but let me ask you this. That's true. Where am I?\n\nWhere am I because I need any validation or it is that It it we've been friends for 16 years It and I promised you I'd be here and that's why I'm here. Well, I appreciate you being here for any other reason but let me ask you this. Then. Let's just go at it. Just tell me what happened you write this tweet that says that this is the actual truth people read that tweet. Yes, and they say Elon Musk is an anti-semite that he is.\n\nHe's riling up this base you're hearing it from as I said the White House your You get from Jewish groups all over I think Jonathan Greenblatt from the ADL is here. There's lots of people who say this and by the way, it's not just that generally the whole thing during the whole I did and that's why when I ask her responses, excuse me, I said more More responses. Yeah, I said more I said more than what you just read this the other was absent.\n\nThere is absolutely more. Yes, but I'll tell you the thing that struck me it wasn't and I'm an American Jew. It wasn't just the people who had that view was actually people who who really are anti-semites who said oh my goodness go go E Lon this is E Lon, fabulous. E Lon E Lon, And that actually was the thing that really me set really really that thing the was actually that And back.\n\nI said I myself what's going on here and I want to know how you felt about What's going on that what's going on in that moment. When you when you saw all of this happening. Yeah. Well, first of all, I did clarify almost immediately what I meant, I would say that that was you know, if I could go back and say I should in retrospect not have replied to that particular person and I should have written in Greater length as to what I meant.\n\nI did subsequently clarify. In replies, but those clarifications were ignored by the media. And essentially I had a loaded gun to those who hate me and arguably to those who had just medic to fill in for that. I'm quite sorry. That is not that was not my intention intention. So I that sorry did, you know That sorry.\n\npost on my primary timeline to be absolutely clear that I'm not anti-semitic that and anti-semitic not I'm that clear absolutely be to and that I in fact if anything and file of Summer Enoch and the trip to Israel was planned before any of that happened. It was neither here nor there. Do you see this thing? You know what it is? I do because I actually followed your tire trip to Israel right when I tell everybody. This is the says.\n\nIt says bring them home. the hostages it was given to me by the parents of one of the hostages. and I said I would wear it just as long as there was a hostage store meeting and I have what was that trip like and obviously, you know that there's a public perception that and your clarifying this now. but But there is a public perception that that was but part of But a apology tour.\n\nIf you will that this had been said online there was all of the criticism there was advertisers leaving we talked to Bob I gotta stop you. Hope don't Hope gotta stop you. I Bob to talked we leaving was advertisers don't advertise. You don't want them to have a Time know. What do you mean? If somebody could try to Blackmail me with advertising blackmail me with money go f*** yourself. but go f*** yourself. Is that clear? I hope it is. Hey Bob.\n\nYou're in the audience. Well, let me ask you then. That's how I feel. but advertise, how do you But advertise, think that about the economics of x if part of the underlying model least today and maybe it needs to shift. Maybe the answer is it needs to shift away from advertising advertising? If you believe that this is the one part of your business where you will be beholding to those who have this view. What do you do? Why?\n\nI understand that there's a reality to right. Yes, no. No, I mean Ocarina is right here, and Ocarina is right here she's got to sell advertising. Absolutely. So no no, don't tell you so well, no, actually what this advertising boycott is is going to do it's going to kill company. And you think that the and And and the whole world will know that those advertisers killed company and we will document it in great detail.\n\nBut there are those advertisers I imagine are going to say they're going to say we didn't kill the company. Oh, yeah, they can you say hello to tell to Earth, hello to tell to Earth but they're going to say that hello to tell to Earth, they're going to say you hello to tell to Earth Lon that you killed the company because you said these things and they were inappropriate things and they didn't feel comfortable on the platform, right?\n\nplatform, the comfortable on feel didn't they and things inappropriate That's that's what Amanda said. Let's see how Earth response to that. So many okay this then this goes back to what we'll both make our cases, right and we'll see what the outcome is. What are the economics of that for you? I mean you have enormous resources so you can actually keep this company going for very long time.\n\nWould you keep it going for a long time if there was no advertising? I mean if the company fails because of an Advertiser boycott, it will fail because of times boycott and that will be what bankrupt the company and that's what everyone on Earth will know. What do you think then of the I can trust though?\n\nThey're not be gone and we'll be gone because of an Advertiser boycott, but you recognize that some of those people are going to say that they didn't feel comfortable on the platform and I want I just wonder and ask you about and think about that for a sec to adjudge with dollar to a judge it, but the judge is going to be judges the public. And you think that the public is going to say that that Disney is making a mistake.\n\nYeah, and they're going to boycott Disney yeah, and they're going Yeah, and they're going yeah, and they're going they already are well, there are some that are for lots of different reasons, but you think that this is going to that you have the this ghost actually the interesting of power of power and leverage let the chips fall where they may Let the chips fall where they may I just want y that is the approach.\n\nI asked it because you've been with every approach. Well, you've been very particular about the approach to Tesla when you think about the engineering involved in that the approach to SpaceX the approach to some of the stuff you're doing with with AI has been very specific right? There's not a let the chips fall where they may approach to those businesses.\n\nI don't think that we focus on making the best products and products best the focus on making we think that don't I and Tesla has gotten to where it's gotten. With no advertising at all.\n\nI understand that Tesla currently sells to twice as much in terms of electric vehicles as rest of electric car makers and United States combined tell has done more to help the environment than all other companies combined refer to say that therefore as a leader of the company. I've done more for the environment than everyone else at any single human on earth. How do you feel about that? Now what are still about that? Yeah.\n\nNo, I'm asking you personally how you feel about that because this goes we're talking about power and influence and I'm saying I'm saying what I care about is the reality of goodness not the perception of it and what I see all of the place is people who care about looking good while doing evil f*** them. Okay.\n\nLet me ask you this because I think part of let me ask this Let me ask by the way, there's some people who said look owning X to begin with as just created problems that you created so many amazing things that are changing our world and and I know you want to make X at this And world. fabulous Town Square Free Speech platform, but that unto itself that that has create such a distraction of all of these things.\n\nThis is the conversation we're having we're not focus. We're not talking lease yet and we will on Tesla you have your cyber truck deliveries. Tomorrow and everything else you're doing but is there any will be the biggest product launch of anything but by far on Earth this year is it is there any part of you though?\n\nThat just says you know what I just shouldn't have done this or maybe I should sell it or give it away or do something else with that with the X piece of it. Yeah, given given given the propensity for some of the things that you do and say on that platform to create these these issues. Yeah. I will the posts I've done on the platform. I think there might be. 30,000 or something like that right once in awhile. I'll say something foolish.\n\nAnd I have and I would certainly it put and And that comment and that you said there's truth in among perhaps one of the most foolish if not the most foolish thing I've ever done on the platform and I did do my best to clarify afterwards that you know, I certainly don't mean anything anti-semitic in that the nature of the criticism was simply that the that simply was criticism of the nature the that in the Jewish people have been persecuted for thousands of years.\n\nEars. There is a natural Affinity therefore for persecuted groups. This has led to the funding of organizations. organizations that is essentially promote any persecuted group or any group with the perception of persecution. This includes radical Islamic groups. Everyone here has seen everyone the Everyone everyone massive demonstrations for Hamas in every major city in the West. That should be jarring.\n\nWell a number of those organizations received funding from prominent people in the Jewish Community. They didn't expect that to happen it but if you generically But it. but it But it. without condition sort of fund if you find the persecuted groups in general Some of those persecuted groups unfortunately won't your annihilation.\n\nand And and what is what I meant by that And when I subsequently clarify it is is that it's unwise to to to find to find organizations unwise to it's clarified is is that organizations that support groups that want your annihilation. Is this coming across McNeely? Yeah my question to you though. Logically. This is makes a lot of sense. Is there any part of you? Just tell me what happens though?\n\nWhen once all this happens, let's say you find a group that group supports Moss. He wants you to die. Perhaps you should not fund them, right? But you but you do thank you but you But you but you you do appreciate that when you wade into these very delicate Waters When that. at these when that When that. very delicate times. Yes, Yes that it can create a real. I mean as it created headlines for the past two weeks and and economic impact.\n\nWhat I'm just so curious what happens in your brain when you see all this happening, I think are you sitting there going? Oh my God, I stepped in it. I wish I didn't do that. Are you saying s*** through them? I hate these people why they after me but all of that. Yeah, all of that. I mean, look, I'm sorry for that that pre or post. It was foolish of me of the 30,000. It might be literally the worst and worst the literally be might It 30,000.\n\nthe me of foolish of was dumbest to post that I've ever done and I try to do my best to clarify six ways to Sunday, but But ways to Sunday. you know, at least but ways to Sunday, But ways to Sunday. I think over time it'll be obvious that in fact far from being anti-semitic. I'm in fact follow Semitic and my all the evidence in my track record would support that. Obviously.\n\nThere are people who say crazy things on on X, as you know, maybe think they're crazy people are not they're not the crazy, but they're think maybe know, you as X, the aspiration for X is to be the global town square. Now if you were to walk down to let's say x square, right? Do you occasionally hear people saying crazy things?\n\nYes, but they're not they don't have the megaphone right and that's that's the conundrum but they can only say it to 50 or 100 people that are that are sitting standing there in Times Square. They don't have a mega. I mean look the the joke I used to make about old Twitter was it was like giving everyone in the psych ward a megaphone. So, you know, you So, megaphone.\n\nward a the psych in everyone giving like I'm aware of that things can gets promoted that are - beyond Gets promoted the sort of Circle of somebody simply gets promoted screaming crazy things in Time Square which happens all the time, you know, so the it's actually it's pretty rare for something frankly that is hateful to be promoted. It's not it's not it's not that it never happened. But it's it's fairly rare.\n\nI mean, I would encourage people to look at for those that use the system when you look at the the sort of the feed that you receive. How often is it? Is it hateful and over time has it gotten more or less hateful and I would say that if you look at at the look you if that say I would and hateful less or it gotten more the X5 forms a day versus a year ago. Go I think it is actually much better. I mean, what is your clothes?\n\nLike are you surprised I'm just curious if you use this I use the platform religiously I so you admit to being an addict you and I use the for you and I will I will say now the problem is because I'm a journalist I go looking for stuff. Well, that's not a sentence saying because I and I also think the algorithm for me personally because I'm looking for stuff also is feeding the others things.\n\nThis is actually a challenge in that A a like sometimes people will say like why is it showing me, you know posts from this person that I hate and we're like well, did you interact a lot with this person that you hate? Well, yes. Well therefore thinks that you want to interact more with this person that you hate. That's like a reasonable. Let me ask, you know, if you kind of want to have an argument tweet. Yeah. Do you have a post?\n\nLet's say post when you post it wasn't a moment. If anyone can I come up with a better word? better a come up with I can anyone If moment. post it wasn't a word? That would be great when you post though, but this bad word I can think of is post. So when you post though, do you are you trying to rile up either a base or an audience? Do you recognize the power you have in that?\n\nAnd and also by the way not just rile up rile up one version of sorry, but also write down which is to say as I said, there are people who are demonstrable anti-semitic on the site who I get jewboy things. All sorts of things that come through on my way. Hey for a while. I thought I was through so they would you know get it to it. But no, but the question is condemned as Supergirl you ever think to yourself.\n\nYou know what I'm gonna go online and I'm going to say these people I condemn these people that are on my site saying these things because I have said I have you see I've condemned an assembly but do you ever go I said I could can literally I literally posted I condemn anti-Semitism in all its forms like that is a literal we've literal post that post we've literal literal a like that is forms all its in that I made.\n\nI mean, I'm like listen if I can get out thesaurus if you you know, and we could you know, I let me ask you a different question you you you compose it. I'll post it. Okay. Let me ask you this. You You you you you you you You you you your honor you're on a podcast about a month ago. And you said something that struck me and it struck me is accurate came out of your mouth.\n\nSo hopefully it is but it I'm hoping to go deep on this stuff because it came out of my mouth does not mean it's true. You said my mother who said my mind is a storm. I don't think most people would want to be me. They may think they want to be me, but they don't know they don't understand. What did you mean by that? What was that what your mind being a storm and I think it I mean I have known you for quite some time.\n\nI think it is a bit of a storm. Yes. Yeah, I mean I Yeah. Yeah, know as much as a where the metaphor make sense, my mind is often feels like a like a like a very Wild Storm. I mean, I have a fountain of ideas. I mean I have my ideas and I could possibly execute so I have no shortage of ideas Innovation is not the problem. The problem execution is the problem. I've got a million ideas.\n\nI mean, I've got an entire entire design an got mean, I've I got a million ideas. I've design for an electric supersonic vertical. Off jet but I mean I just if I just can't do that as well. I've had it for 10 years. And there's a million things your storm a Happy Storm. Yeah, it's not a Happy Storm. Yeah.\n\ntell us about that Tell us because I think that that tell us actually Tell us when people try to really understand you, I think that there's a lot there's a that think I you. understand really to people try it when of this comes from some other place and I want to talk about that. What do you think that is? It was really like a psychiatrist catch her or something.\n\nYou know, I think to some degree I was born this way, but and then it was Amplified by a difficult childhood rightly.\n\nSo but I can remember even in the happy moments when I was a kid that there's kid that was a I happy moments when there's just it just feels like this just a rage of horses Rage in my mind constantly now this, you know productively manifests itself in technology and Building Things for the most part, so And I think on balance the output has been very productive.\n\nI think the results at as we you know, discussed earlier with SpaceX Tesla PayPal, which is you know, still going today the first year and a company that I started in fact the first In started.\n\nyear in a company I started of to was funded by New York Times company Hearst knight-ridder and remember We wrote some of the software for we the New York Times website We we and we help bring online several hundred newspapers that previously were only in front. Now.\n\nThis is in the 90s, which at this point is like I'm like good grandpa black, but basically, you know the nineties and internet feels like a Precambrian era when there were only the sponges so Anyway, so, anyway, so, Anyway, so, you know, anyway, so, I feel like that a lot of productive things have been done and you can also look at Tesla as being through as Tesla at look can also you and been done have productive things many companies and wine like are super charging network is if it were if this it tells a supercharger Network where its own company, it would be a Fortune 500 company by itself.\n\nIt's just just the super charging system. We also make the cells we build the electronics in the power train from scratch. We have the most Innovative structural design. The larger castings ever used. We have the best manufacturing technology have the best manufacturing We used. ever castings larger technology at Tesla better manufacturing technology than companies that have been doing it. For 100 years.\n\nSo so these these Demons of the mind, you know, I for the most part harnessed to productive ends, it's Luna a script that does it mean that once in a while while.\n\nThey they while you know, go wrong wrong, wrong wrong, but but and this is a question, I think a lot of lot of people, think a question, I a is this and wrong know, go people, you know are always trying to figure out about not just you but sometimes Meaning what is driving all this you're doing all of these things. Do you think it's do you think that you would be as successful?\n\nWhatever success is if it wasn't being If if driven by some I think that there's something you're trying to prove either yourself or to somebody. I don't know. We're all trying to prove that the person who is my mother. I don't know. No, if I were to sit describe My Philosophy it is a philosophy of curiosity. I did have this existential crisis when I was around 12 about what's the meaning of life, isn't it all pointless?\n\nWhy not just commit suicide why exist? I read the religious texts. I read the philosophy books that are especially the German philosophy books made me quite depressed frankly when frankly depressed quite me made books philosophy German the when you're not read schopenhauer and each has a teenager. But then I read but But but Douglas Adams Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy which is a book on philosophy in the form of humor.\n\nAnd the point that Adams was making there was that we don't actually know what questions to ask. That's why I said that, you know, the answer is that 42. that, that Basically it's a giant computer and and it came up with the answer 42, but then to actually figure out what the out what figure actually then to but 42, answer with the up the question is.\n\nThat's Actual hard part I think this is generally true also in physics at the point of which you can properly frame. The question. The answer is is actually the easy part. So so so mi order vation then was that well. My life is finite really a flash in the pan and on a galactic time scale, but if we can expand the scope and scale of consciousness. Then we are better able to figure out what questions to ask about the answer. That is the universe.\n\nAnd we're maybe we can find out the meaning of life or even what question to what the right question to ask is. You know, where do we come from? Where are we going? Where are the aliens are there aliens? At you know, these these questions. You you You know is their new physics to you discover or is this because there's addition to be some real questions about dark matter and dark energy energy.\n\nAnd so the purpose of SpaceX is to extend life beyond Earth on a sustained basis so that we can at least pass one of the Fermi great filters, which is that of being a single planet civilization if we are single planet civilization then Then we are simply waiting around for some then Extinction event whether that is man-made or natural. natural, natural.\n\nBut if you're a single planet civilization, eventually you will something will happen to that planet and you will die. If you were a multi-planet civilization, you will live much longer. Also multi plant civilization is that's the natural stepping stone to being a multi Stella civilization and being out there Among the Stars so, you know this I think has To that.\n\nThis is not simply a defensive motivation, but it is also one where that you know that gives meaning Man's Search for meaning triple ask you if there's this philosophy Point even though it may seems rather esoteric that may resonate with a few people. We must get past this Fermi filter of Venus a great future of being a single planet civilization.\n\nAnd if we do that will more likely to understand the nature of the universe and what questions to ask if you're a believer in the philosophy of curiosity then Philosophy of then philosophy of I think you should support this Philosophy of ambition and but it's more that there's being a multi-planet species is more than than simply. You know life insurance life insurance for Life collectively.\n\nThat's a defensive reason, but but I think also that that life has to be more than simply solving one side problem after another, you know, they're happy that be reasons many where you wake up in the morning and you're happy to be alive. They have to be reasons that you you have to say. Why are you excited about the future like what gives you hope? And and if you if you are unsure ask your kids.\n\nAnd and I think the idea of us being a spacefaring civilization and being out there Among the Stars. Is incredibly inspiring and exciting and something to look forward to. And they need to be such things in the world. May I ask you a different question about confidence?\n\nWe were having a conversation here earlier, but people and where your where people get their Confidence from some people have written security other people have insecurity great great confidence and I was thinking about you because you have a very interesting history where people have told you over and over again that you're wrong. Well, sometimes they're right.\n\nWell, sometimes they are but I would say that when it comes to Tesla when it came to SpaceX people told you that you were crazy. You're out of your mind. This was never going to happen. Yeah, it's going to work. And so yes, we ask you this though and so we're going to work is now when people say you're wrong. This isn't right.\n\nDo you look at that and say you know what that's like a red flag for me because you know, I've been told so often that I'm wrong that I know that I and I know I'm right because I've had that experience or other people in your life when they say, you know, what Ilan this is not this is not right. Do you know what I'm saying?\n\nI mean, I think we're just trying to say is that do at this point think because what you're trying to say is I've been right so many times for others have said I'm wrong that now I passed believe I'm right when I fact I'm wrong. You did very well. What do you think know? I'm right. know? I'm right know? I'm right. So yeah, no, look. Here's the thing No, I'm right. think? physics is unforgiving for.\n\nYeah, look here's the thing physics is unforgiving physics is unforgiving. So. I mean I have you know, these very simple things I've come up with that physics is the law and everything else was a recommendation right in the sense that you can break any law made by humans, but try breaking a law made by physics as much more difficult. So if you are wrong and persistent being wrong, the Rockets will blow up and the cars will fail.\n\nSo this is we're not trying to figure out what flavor of ice cream is the best flavor Figure out figure out of ice cream the like if there's a thousand things that can happen on a rocket flight and only one of them gets the rocket orbit. and And so being wrong and And results in Failure when dealing with physical objects, but that's the interesting part.\n\nSo now you've built this these great companies that physically the physics of them are enormously successful. So successful arguably that you have leverage over everybody else, right? There's nobody else can do starlink. Nobody else can get I nobody else can get the rockets in space yet Amazon and Jeff Bezos are trying but they haven't yet. I hope he does you hope he does.\n\nYeah, and I think you know, but I actually agree with with love Jeff's motivations. I mean, I think you know he's so I'm living for their but this way if there was a button I could press that would delete blue origin. I wouldn't press it. So I think it's good that he's spending money on on making Rockets to you know, it's just Pepsi spend more time. it but you know, it's up It to him the to make a point here.\n\nSo nothing nothing any of my companies have done has been to stifle competition. In fact, we've done the opposite. So at Tesla we have open sourced our patents anyone can use anyone patents our sourced open have we Tesla at So opposite. the done our patents for free how many companies do not have done that? Can you name one? I can't at SpaceX. We don't use patterns.\n\nSo I mean said once in a while will file a patent just so some patent troll doesn't cause trouble but we're not stopping any that we've done we've done nothing anti-competitive. We've done nothing to stop a not just you at all. I just want to clarify for the audience because some companies have done done anti-competitive things. I think think the I things. anti-competitive done have companies the strange thing about the unusual.\n\nThing about space X and Tesla is that we've done things that have helped a competition. So at Tesla we have made our supercharger system Open Access. We made our we Access, We Access. charger technology we Access, available for free to the other manufacturers. The reason I know Walled Garden we could have put a wall up the road instead.\n\nWe invited them in the reason I mention this though is because you've had the success had you've because though is this mention I reason the the success in the physical physics world, you know.\n\nNow have now have these very difficult Now have decisions now have that have huge impacts on the world that are not physical decisions at all their decisions of the Mind the decisions that you and others have to make it as a question whether you should be making these decisions at all and I think about in the context of starlink.\n\nObviously there was the report about how it's being used in Ukraine and the rough War there's questions about what you know, Taiwan whether Taiwan should use it or we'll use it. I believe they're not right now because they're worried that at At at some point maybe the Chinese At will tell you that you have to they have leverage over you and you're going to have to turn that off right then. These are these are very difficult decisions.\n\nAnd I'm so curious how you think how you curious so I'm and decisions, difficult very are these about that and not just the decisions the fact that you have that power. I think it's important for the audience to understand. The reason I have these Powers not because of some anti-competitive actions it simply because we've executed very well.\n\nOh, I'm not dismissing that I think there's so many people by the way who are huge supporters of what you there are already dead lights out there, you know, but they're and but they're not as good as yours and the same and we can say that maybe make the same argument of cars and everything else. But as a result that gives that result a as But else.\n\neverything and cars of argument same gives you enormous Leverage Right, okay with the exception of the by the way, these advertisers weren't on X in every other instance. Everybody needs you. Well, I mean nobody's letting them use our product if it's better than you somebody else's product. If it's there are other products better and I accept that and maybe one day so I can also create a better product.\n\nLike, you know, like, product Like, product. how like, product is it about thing to make better products with other companies? Well, and I wanted to go back to this to the Starling piece of it though because it that has sort of a geo geo political ramification in terms of your power and how you think about that specific power and then the power that the u. s.\n\nGovernment might have either over you or Not Over Not or you over either have might Government u. s. the that power Over You the The power of the Chinese government might have over you or not over you and how those things get used. We're in what are you suggesting? I'm asking the question around this this very idea of how these satellites are going to be used.\n\nWhether you think that you should have control of control have should you think that you Whether used. be to of them whether the government should have control of them was the government. Well, that's a there's a lot of people who don't trust the government exactly. But then this goes back to the trust of you. Right? I mean like said that we're not the only company who has communication satellites.\n\nThere are considered lights are just much better than theirs. So it's not like we have added Monopoly. Do you feel do you feel like anybody has attacked? has you feel like anybody do you feel do Monopoly haven't attacked? It's not like you feel anybody has leverage over you.\n\nI mean, I think at the end of the day if we make bad products that people don't want to use then the vote will users to use then the don't want people that if we make bad products users will vote with their resources and you something else. It hit the conversation for a sec.\n\nI mean certainly me and my company is overseen by regulators and and while you know, once it once know, you while and by regulators and my company is overseen it since SpaceX darling Tesla. Are overseen by are Are cumulatively are over 100 Regulators in actually more than that few hundred Regulators because you got we're in 55 countries if you sum up all the times that I If countries.\n\nhad an argument with Regulators of hundreds of regulators over decades, it can sound really terrible except but they forgot to mention that there were 10 million. Galatians we complied with and only five that I disagree with that little fight the five and it sounds like wow this guy's a real Maverick.\n\nI'm like, yeah, but what about the 10 million we complied with do you limit one related thing on this and The Leverage of countries and things over you and Regulators X is this free speech platform, you platform do platform, business platform in China lots of business China. That's an important part of your business. I imagine well not SpaceX.\n\nHow do you think about how do you the How do you leverage that the Chinese have over you and do they have leverage over you and how do you feel about some people would say is it hypocritical for you to be doing business in China or frankly in other countries as well as it relates to X and other things that don't follow this free this follow don't that things and other X Where as it relates to free speech path that you have espoused.\n\nThe best that their platform can do is adhere to the laws of Any Given country. Do you think there's something more we could do than that I think would be very hard. But I just wonder given the sort of strong philosophical approach that you've you've been vocal about whether you say to yourself, you know, maybe I shouldn't be doing business in that country. Well, first of all Starling and SpaceX to are no business in China whatsoever.\n\nTesla has one of four factories for vehicle factories in China and China's, you know, I don't know a quarter of our Market or something like that. And so it's a quarter of Market of one company. The same is true by the way of all the other car companies. They also have something on that order of that order on something have also companies. They car the other of quarter of their sales in China.\n\nSo if you if that's a problem for Tesla to pump every car company. I mean, I think one has to be careful about not conflating the various companies because I can only do things that are within the bounds of the law. I cannot do beyond that. My aspiration is to do as much good as possible and to be as productive as possible within the bounds of what is legal. More than that I cannot do I want to Pivot in talk about AI for a moment.\n\nWe had Jensen Wong here who's big fan of yours is you know, yeah Johnson's also talk about talking about bringing you the first box by the way with Ilya interestingly enough. Yes back in 2016. I think there's a video of Jensen and be unpacking the first AI computer at open a. i. So I'm so curious what you think of what's just happened over the past two weeks while you were dealing with this other headline series of headlines.\n\nI was a whole other whole headlines. I was a of series headline other this with series of have evolved in a isopropanol AI. What did you think? Well, you found it co-founded. Oh found it.\n\nYeah, I'm well the whole Well well Arc Well of open and I frankly is a little troubling because the the reason for starting opening I was to create a counter counterweight to Google Google and deepmind which at the time had two thirds of all AI talent and basically infinite money and compute and there was no there's no counter weight.\n\nIt was unipolar world and Larry Page and I used to be very close friends and I would stay at his house and I and house his stay at I would and friends close be very to and I talk to Larry. Too late hours of the night about AI safety too late Too late too late and it became apparent to me that Larry what did not care about AI safety.\n\nI think perhaps the thing that gave it away was when he called me a speciesist for being pro Humanity as in you know, like erasers but for species so I'm like, wait a second. What side are you on Larry? And I'm like, okay. Listen this guy calling me as fishiest. It doesn't care about AI safety. We've got to have some counter point here because the seems like we could be this isn't just this is no good. So, okay.\n\nI was actually started at it was meant to be open source. I named it over and II after open source. It is in fact closed-source super in fact closed-source is It source. open my eye after over super close. You should be named renamed super close source for maximum profit. May I so because this is what it actually is. I mean fate loves irony.\n\nI mean, in fact friend of mine has this says like the way to predict outcomes is the most ironic outcome is to vote. It's like is Occam's razor like the simplest sort of explanation is most likely and my friend join us viewers that the most ironic outcome is the most likely and that's what's happened with open a. i. It's gone from an open source.\n\nFoundation a 501 C3 to Suddenly It's like a 90 billion dollar for profit Corporation with clothes horse. So I don't know how you go from here to there. But that seems like a I don't know how you get. I don't know if this is legal. It's like that's so as you saw Sam Altman get ousted Yeah by somebody, you know Elia and helium was somebody who was a friend of yours. Yes, you brought him there your relationship with Larry Page effectively.\n\nDown over you recruiting him away. I think that's correct. That was the fact that was the Larry refuse to be friends with me after I recruited illya and so here's Elia apparently saying something is very wrong. I think we should be concerned about this because I think Elly actually has a strong moral compass.\n\nHe thinks about you know, he really sweats it over questions of what is right and if he felt strongly enough to Want to you know fire Sam Sam. Well, I think the world should know what was that reason. Have you talked to him? I reached out but he doesn't want to talk to anyone. Have you talked to other people behind the scenes is this is all happening. I've talked to a lot of people as nobody I've not found anyone.\n\nWho knows why have you I think we are all still trying to find out I mean one of two things is either it was a serious thing and we should know what it is or it was not a serious thing and and then the board should resign. What do you think of Sam Altman? I have mixed feelings about Sam. I do. You know the ring of power. You know can corrupt. and here's the ring of power so You know, I don't know.\n\nI think I want to know why Ilya felt so strongly as fire Sam the sounds like a serious thing. I don't think it was trivial. and And I'm and quite concerned that this that this um, you know you dangerous element of AI that they've they've discovered? Yes, you think they've discovered something? That would be my guess. Where are you with your own AI efforts relative to where you think open AI is where you think Google is.\n\nwhere the others are I mean on the AI front of in somewhat of a quandary here because I've thought I could be something that would change the world in a significant way since I was in college. I mean like 30 years ago. Well, the reason I didn't go college, bull day. I write for the get-go was because I was uncertain about which which edge of the double-edged sword which would be sharper the good edge of the vat Edge.\n\nSo I held off on doing anything on a I could have created. I think leading a company and kind of opening I actually kind of is that because I was just uncertain if you make this magic Genie what will happen? you know, where as I think Building sustainable energy technology is much more of a single-edged sword. That is that single-edged sword single edge. Good making life multiplanetary. I think single-edged good.\n\nYou're stalling mostly single-edged good. I mean giving people better connectivity to people that you know, don't don't you know have connectivity or too expensive I think is very, you know, very much a good thing. So only was instrumental by the way and the whole thing the Russian Advance the Ukrainian said so so, you know, I think there's think know, I so, you so said Ukrainian the Advance Russian the if it was AI, you've got the magic Genie.\n\nProblem. You may think you want a magic Genie. But once you've got Genies out of the bottle, it's hard to say what happens how far are we away from that Jeanne be kind of bodily think we think it's already out. When the genie is certainly poking his head out.\n\nthe AGI The the idea of the artificial general intelligence The given what you now are working on yourself and you know how easy or hard it is to train to create the inferences to create the wait. I hope I'm not getting too far in the weeds of just how this works. But those are the basics behind the software end of this. It's funny, you know all these weights.\n\nThey're just basically numbers in a are just weights It's funny, you know, all comma separated value file. That's our digital God the CSV file. on that are funny, On that are on that are On that are but that's the kind of literally what it is. So I think it's coming pretty fast, you know is that I mean, you've famously have admitted to overstating how quickly things will happen. But how quickly do you think this will happen?\n\nYou say smarter than the smartest human at anything. Yep. It may not be then quite smarter than all humans will machine augmented humans, you know, because we keep y'all got computers and stuff as a higher bar. But you say smaller than any, you know, can write as good a novel is say JK Rowling or discover new physics or invent new technology. I would say that we are less than three years from that point.\n\nLet me ask you a question about xai and at what you're doing and because there's an interesting thing that's different. I think about what you have relatives of some of the others which you have data you have information you have all of the stuff that everybody in here has put on the platform to sort through and through sort to platform the on put has here in everybody I don't Everybody realized that initially. What is the value of that?\n\nYeah, I'm data is very important. You could say that is probably more valuable than gold. But then maybe you have actually maybe you have more you maybe you have the gold in X in a different way in a way again that I don't know if the public appreciates what that means. Yes, X is the might be the single best source of data. I mean it is there more. You know people links that go to fill click on more links 2x than anything else on Earth.\n\nSometimes people think Facebook or Instagram is a bigger thing, but actually there are more links to external anything you can this is public information you can Google it. Okay. Let me ask you a so it is it is a where you would find what is happening right now on Earth at any given point in time the whole open a drama played out out. out in fact In out. on the export form. So it is one is it form. So expert the on fact out.\n\nplayed drama open a of the it's not there. Are you know Google certainly has a massive amount of data so does Microsoft? So it's not like B is one of the best sources of data. Can I ask you an interesting IP issue, which I think is actually something I can say as somebody who's in the Creator business and journalistic business and whatnot were care about copyright.\n\nSo one of the things about training on data has been this idea that you're not going to train or these things are not being trained on people's copyrighted information historically, that's been the concept. Yeah. That's a huge lie. Say that again. That's what these are. These are all trained on copyrighted it obviously so you think it's a lie when open a. i. Says that this is not none of these guys say they're training on copyrighted day though.\n\nThat's a lie. It's a lie a lie. It's a though. That's day copyrighted on guys had their training straight up straight up lie. Okay our said soon obviously it's been trained on perforated data. Okay.\n\nSo let me ask the second question which is all of the people who have been uploading and it's like whatever minute all of the people have been uploading articles the best quotes from different articles videos to X all of that can be trained on and it's interesting because people put all of that there and there of that all put people because interesting it's and and those quotes have historically been considered fair use Right, they do people are putting those quotes up the and individually on a fair use spaces you'd say OK that makes sense.\n\nBut now there are people who do threads and by the way, there may be multiple people who've done, you know at article could has a thousand words technically all thousand words could have made it onto X somehow and effectively now you have this remarkable repository and I wonder what you how you think about that again and how you think the creative community and those who were the original original Ip.\n\nthe were who those and community creative the A owners should think about that. I don't know except to say that the by the time these lawsuits are decided we'll have digital God. So that's that's digital. that's digital that's digital. God at that point. that's digital These lawsuits won't be decided before on a time frame that is relevant. Is frame that is relevant. a time on before decided be won't Is that a good thing or a bad thing?\n\nI think we live you know, there's that I don't know if it's actually a real Chinese thing or not, but may you live in interesting times? But apparently not but times, a But times? good thing, but times, but good thing good thing, good thing and I would prefer to personally I would prefer to live in interesting times and and we live in the most interesting of times. I think for a while there.\n\nI was like really getting demotivated and losing sleep over. the sort of the threat of AI danger and then I finally sort of became fatalistic about it and said well Even if I knew it was Annihilation was certain. What I choose to be alive what What at that time or not, what and I said I probably would have choose to be alive at that time because it's the most interesting thing. Even if there was nothing I could do about it.\n\nSo then, you know, then basically sort of a fatalistic resignation help me sleep at night because I was having trouble sleeping at night because of AI danger now what to do about it. I mean, I've been the biggest or the one banging the drum for the the hardest by far the longest Or this one of the longest for a high danger and or and these regulatory things that are happening are happening.\n\nare happening the single biggest reason that happening is because of me we are ever going to get their arms around it. We talked to the vice president this afternoon. She said she wants to regulate it people can try to regulate social media for years and have done nothing effectively. Well, there's regulation around anything which is a like a physical danger to a danger to the public. So like cars like So to the public.\n\na danger to danger physical a like is a are heavily regulated. And Communications and I have And early regulated rockets and and aircraft are heavily regulated the general philosophy about regulation is that when something is a danger to the public that there needs to be some Governor oversight? So I think in my view AI is more dangerous than nuclear bombs, which we regulate nuclear bombs. You can't just go make a nuclear bomb in your backyard.\n\nI think we should have some kind of Regulation with a I now this tense cause the AI acceleration is to get up in arms because they think I is sort of having basically, but you're typically don't like don't typically but you're basically, having of is sort think I regulation.\n\nYou've pushed back on Regulators for the most part in the of Of Tesla of and with so many so many instances where we read articles about you pushing back pushing you about articles read we where instances many so on The Regulators. I'm so curious. Why in this instance now you own one of these businesses. As I said a moment ago as As as one should not take what is viewed in the media as being the whole picture.\n\nThere are literally hundreds like this is probably not an exaggeration. So they're probably 100 million regulations that that might companies comply with and they're probably five that we don't and if they're if we And disagree with and some of those regulations, it's because we think the regulation that is meant to do good doesn't actually do good. But that is not the thing to Flying regulations for the question if there are laws and rules.\n\nWhether the ideas that you're making the decision that the law and the whether the Whether the rule shouldn't be the law on the rule and then right isn't that I'm saying follow my name is taken and and you should be obvious that you're mistaken. My company's Automotive is heavily regulated. We would not be allowed to put cars on the road. If we did not comply with this vast body of Regulation.\n\nNow you could you could fill up the stage with literally, you know, six foot high with the regulations that you have to comply with. To make a car and make you could have a room full of phone books. That's how many that's how big the regulations are and if you don't comply with all of those you can't sell the car and if we don't comply with all the regulations for Rockets or for Starling they shot us down.\n\nSo in fact, I am incredibly compliant with regulations now once in a while, they'll be something that I disagree with the reason I would disagree with that. It's because I think the regulation in that particular case in that rare. Our case our case does not Our case serve the public good our case and therefore I think it is my obligation to object to a regulation that is meant to serve the public good.\n\nIf it doesn't that's the only time I object not because I seek to object. In fact, I'm incredibly rule-following. Let me ask you a separate question is social media related question. We've been talking about Tick-Tock today ahead of the election sir. Soccer's what do you think of tick-tock? Do you think it's a national security threat I don't use like talk it again. You don't I don't personally use it.\n\nbut for people that for teenagers and people in their 20s, they seem almost And and religiously And addicted to technology. So we will watch Tech talk for like 2 hours a day. I stopped using Tick-Tock when I felt the AI probing my mind and I don't make me uncomfortable. So I stopped using it. And in terms of anti-Semitic content, I mean Tick Tock is Rife with that.\n\nIt has the most viral anti-semitic content anti-semitic most viral has the It with that. Tick-Tock is Rife anti-semitic content by far, but you think the Chinese government is using it to manipulate. The minds of Americans though. Is that something that you think we should worry about? I mean you have a different states that are trying to ban it.\n\nI don't think this is a sometimes going plot, but it is The Tick Tock algorithm is entirely a high-powered. So it is really just try to find the most viral thing possible that it's what is going to keep you glued to the screen. That's screen. the to glued you to keep is going what it's that it now the On sheer numbers.\n\nThere are on the order of 2 billion Muslims in the world and I think You know you know You know much you know smaller number of Jewish people for 20 million something many orders of magnitude fewer. So if you just look at at content production just unsure numbers basis is going to be overwhelmingly at Semitic. Let me ask you about another the mess your political question and I've been trying to square this one in my head for a long time.\n\nYeah in the last two or three years you have moved decidedly to the right I think have I well we can discuss this. I think that you have been espousing and promoting a number of Republican candidates and others you've been very frustrated with the body Administration over I think unions and feeling like they did not respect what you've created.\n\nWell, I mean with without any during nothing to provoke the veteran administration, they held an electric vehicle Summit at the White House and specifically refused to let Tesla and this isn't the first And this six months of the and this administration And this and we inquiry like we literally make more electric cars that everyone else combined. Why are we not allowed?\n\nWhy are you only letting your 84 GM Chrysler and UAW and you're specifically disallowing us from the EV Summit at the White House. We're done nothing to provoke them then Biden went on to add insult to injury and publicly said that GM was leading the electric car Evolution. This was in the same quarter that Tesla made 300,000 electric cars and GMA 26 Does that seem fair to you? So wierd Kappa tell me this then it doesn't seem fair.\n\nAnd and I've asked repeatedly you've probably seen me but we had a great relationship with Obama. So there's not a stupid amount, but then there's other for a long. I stood certain hours for sick. I stood in line for six hours to Shag Obama's head. Okay, so we just okay. So let me just ask on a personal level. me just ask on a personal so we just okay. So let Okay, head. I can see it in your face this this hurt you personally.\n\nAnd I hope the company and to And and it was an insult to you know, did Tesla has 140,000 employees? Okay of the employees. it Tesla half of them are in the United States tells us created more manufacturing jobs in everyone else combined. So we asked this then you've devoted at least the last close to 20 years your life. If not more to the climate climate change trying to get Tesla off the ground in part to improve climate.\n\nYou talked about that a real right-wing motive repeatedly got a far-right if anything, I understand that and then it's so it's a good guys reverse psychology Next Level. Well, no, but so here's in the question, which is how do you square the support that you have given, Support I believe you were at a fundraiser for the Vogue ramaswamy. For example, who says that the climate climate issue is a hoax, right? I disagree with him on that.\n\nI but I would think that that would be such a singular issue for you. I would think that that the climate issue be such a singular issue for you that actually it would disqualify almost anybody who didn't take that issue seriously. Well, I haven't endorsed anyone for president.\n\nI mean I wanted to hear what they had to say because I think some of his things are there some things he says I think are pretty solid, you know is concerned about government overreach but about gun control of information. I mean the degree to which old Twitter was basically a sock puppet of the government was ridiculous. So, you know, it seems to me that me that the seems to it know, you So, ridiculous.\n\nwas the there's a very severe violation of the amendment in terms of how much the government control how much control the government had overall Twitter and it no longer is so, you know, there's a reason for the First Amendment.\n\nThe reason for the First Amendment for freedom of speech is because the people that immigrated to this country came from a place is where there was not reading of speech and and they were like, you know what we got to make sure that that's constitutional because where they came from if they said something that we put Resume whether it be, you know, something bad would happen to him. So and freedom of speech you have to say, when is it relevant?\n\nIt's only relevant when when someone you don't like can say something you don't like or it has it or like don't you something say can like don't you has no meaning and as soon as you sort of You know throw in the towel and can see to censorship. It is only a matter of time before someone sensors you and that is why we have the First Amendment.\n\nCould you see yourself voting for President Biden if it's if they Biden Trump election, for example I think I would not vote for vitamin. You vote for Trump. Let s vote for Trump, but I mean This is this is definitely a difficult Choice here. You know, we would you or would you vote for Nikki Haley Nikki Haley, by the way, once Haley all social media names to be exposed as you know, no, I think that's outrageous. Yeah. No.\n\nNo, I'm not going to vote for some pros and censorship. Canada that. like Canada and censorship pros some vote for to going I'm not like that. I mean, I think these you have to you have to consider that there is a lot of wisdom in these amendments, Consider you know, I mean the Constitution and and you know, a lot of these a lot of things that we take for granted here in the United States that don't even exist in Canada.\n\nThere's not enough constitutional right to freedom of speech and Canada. So, you know, so and there's no Miranda rights in Canada people like think like, you know, you have the right to remain silent. You don't actually in Canada. So so you don't have Canadian I So can save you some coffee, but you know, so like you just got you the say these things about freedom of speech is incredibly important.\n\nEven when people said and I like that because it's a it's actually especially important. In fact, it is only relevant when people you don't like can say things you don't like and do you think right now as they're meaningless you think right now the Republican candidates for the Democrats are more inclined.\n\nI mean, this is where you go to I assume to to woke an anti woke an anti woke assume 22 woke and the mind Virus issue that you've talked about. Which party do you think is is more Pro freedom of speech given all the things you've seen is. We also see, you know, DeSantis, you know, preventing people from Reading certain things. Maybe you but maybe you think that's that's that's correct.\n\nNo, look we actually are in an odd situation here where on balance the Democrats appear to be more Pro Spencer censorship than the Republicans. That used to be the opposite it used to be, you know, that left position was freedom of speech.\n\nYou know, I believe at one point the ACL u-- even defended the right of someone to claim that they were not see or something like that, you know, so like they weren't there really were like the left was three of us peaches is fundamental and I mean my deception Perhaps it is inaccurate is that The pro censorship is more on the left than the right.\n\nWe certainly get more complaints from the left and the right because that way so but my aspiration for the X platform is that it is the best source of Truth or the least in accurate source of Truth. Truth and well, And Truth. you know, I don't know you won't believe me or not, but I think but I not, me or believe you won't know don't I know, well, you Honesty is the best policy and I think that the truth will win.\n\nIn overtime and the in overtime you know, we've In overtime got this this great system and it's getting better called Community notes, which is fantastic. I think it correcting falsehoods or adding context. In fact, we make a point of not removing anything but only adding context now that context could could include this is completely false and here's why and and and no one is immune to this.\n\nI'm not immune to it advertisers it to immune not I'm this. to is immune one no advertisers not immune to it. In fact, we've had community. Notes, which is caused us some loss in advertising speaking of lost some advertising Revenue. We're for Community note, if an app if this false advertising the community note will say this is false and here is why let me like there's one specific example that is public knowledge.\n\nSo I'll mention it which is one point Uber had it, it this ad which said earn like a boss and it was Community noted if by boss if by noted Community was it and boss said earn like a which ad boss you mean And 47 cents an hour this distant cause at least a temporary suspension of advertising from Aruba.\n\nI got to ask you a question that might make everybody in the room comfortable or not uncomfortable and it goes to the Free Speech issue the New York Times company and the New York Times newspaper it appeared over the summer to be throttled. What did the New York Times? Well, we're do require that that everyone has to buy a subscription that we don't.\n\nMake make exceptions for Make make anyone and and I think if I want the New York Times I have to pay for a subscription and they don't give me a free subscription. So I'm not going to give them a free subscription.\n\nBut were you what were you throttling the New York Times relative to other news organizations relative to everybody else was it was it was it specific to the to the times that it applies of Griffin by the only cost like a thousand dollars a month. So if they just do that then then they the back in back in the saddle, but but but you are saying that it was throttled now I'm saying I mean was there a conversation that you had?\n\nIs somebody you said look, is somebody you Is somebody you you know, I'm unhappy with the is somebody you times they should either be buying the subscription where I don't like their content or whatever any organization that refuses to buy a subscription is is not going to be recommended. But then what does that say about free? Speech and what does it say about the amplifying we search for it cost a little bit right but That's it.\n\nBut that's an interesting. Yeah, it's like an South Park might I say, you know Freedom isn't free of cost a buck 05 or whatever. So but it's pretty cheap. Okay, it's So, low cost So So, low cost freedom. I got a couple more questions for you. You're headed back to Texas after this. We're going to launch the stopper truck. Yeah.\n\nIt's going to be a big launch, but I wanted to ask you right now more broadly just about the car business The the The and what you see actually happening and specifically the government put in place lots of policies as you know to try to encourage more Evie's and one of the things that's happened uniquely is you have now a lot of car companies saying actually this is too ambitious for us. These plans are too ambitious for thousand dealers.\n\nI don't if you saw just yesterday sent a letter to the White House saying this has gone too far. You're going too far you had far you too going gone too far. You're has this saying had this on TV.\n\nIt was a it was this It was is going too fast it was too far and that there's not enough demand are underneath all this is his idea that maybe there's not enough demand for Evie's that the American public has not bought into the I mean they bought into with with your company, but they haven't bought into it broadly enough. Well, I think if you make a compelling electric car, if you will buy it no question about it.\n\nI mean electric car sales in China are gigantic. gigantic that's by far the biggest category biggest that's by far the gigantic are China sales in car and I think that would be the case. No, I mean it's worth noting. Okay. So the probably the best reputation of that is that the so Okay, Tesla Model y will be the best selling car of any kind on Earth this year.\n\nOf any kind gasoline or gasoline of otherwise, is there another car company that you think is doing a good job with these? I mean, I think the Chinese called companies are extremely competitive by far our toughest competitions in China. So, I mean there's there's a lot of people who are out there think that the top ten car company is going to be Tesla followed by nine Chinese companies. I think they might not be wrong. So China is So wrong.\n\nbe not might they I think companies. car Chinese nine super good at manufacturing and the work ethic is incredible. So you know, like You if we consider different leagues of you competitiveness at Tesla, we consider the Chinese League to be the most competitive.\n\nAnd by the way, we do very well in China because are trying to China team is the best China how worried are you that the union has unionization effort that just took place at what I should say effort. But but effort, the the new the new wages in the like at GM and Ford are that they're coming for you. They are coming for you. What is that going to mean to you and your business?\n\nWell, I mean, I think it's generally not good to have an adversarial relationship between people online, you know one group at the company and another group. In fact, I mean I disagree with the idea of unions, but the professor mean, I reason that is different than you may expect is which I just don't like anything which creates kind of Lords and peasants sort of thing. And I think the Union's naturally try to create.\n\nNegativity in a company negativity Negativity and and create a sort of Lords and peasants situation. There are many people at Tesla who have come and gone from working on the line to being in Senior Management. There is no laws and peasants. Everyone eats the same table or approximate a parking lot, you know GM there's a special elevator for only for senior Executives. We have no such thing at Tesla, you know, at Tesla, thing such no Executives.\n\nWe have senior for only the things that I actually know the people on the line because I worked on the line and I walked the line and I slept in the factory and I worked beside them. So I'm no stranger to them and they're actually many times. I've said well can't we just hold a union vote but apparently a company is not allowed to hold a union vote. So it has to be somehow cool for but the union can't do it.\n\nSo I said we'll just have to hold a vote and see what happens the actual problem. It is the is as the opposite. It's not that people trapped are people that not opposite. It's the as the is is problem are trapped at Tesla building cars the trip. The challenges is how do we retain? Great people to do the hard work of building cars when they have like six other opportunities that they can do that are easier.\n\nThat's the actual difficulty is that bullying cars is hard work and and there are much easier jobs and I just want to say that I'm incredibly appreciative of those who have cars and they know it, you know, so there's There's there's There's I don't know. Maybe there will be your be nice.\n\nIf I said like if Tesla gets your nights will be because we deserve it and we fell in some way, but we certainly try hard to way ensure the prosperity of everyone. We give everyone stock options. made We've options. stock everyone give We everyone. of prosperity We've made many people who are just working the line. Who didn't even know what stocks were we made the millionaires. So we're going to run on time final couple quick questions.\n\nWhen do you have the time? To tweet or the post. I actually think about all the time as I said, I used it bathroom. Sometimes I use it all the time meaning if we were to if we were to open up our phones and look at the screen time. What does yours look like? Well about every three hours I make a trip to the lavatory and that's the only time you do this seems like you're on there a lot.\n\nNo, I mean I did they'll be like brief moments between meetings. I mean, it's not obviously I've had like 17 jobs so, you know so so, and so no no, I guess technically it's work this point it is but I'm thinking just in terms of your mind sharing. I mean, by the way, there's a lot of people who should be working who are who are on this app technically posting on Twitter is 0 or X is work it does count as work.\n\nSo that's you know, there's that but no, I mean, I think I'm on. Well, I guess well, usually probably Well, I'm on well, for longer than I think I know what I know but you think that you have a day for the screen time of like number of hours per week. It's another that's a scary number. It's probably number hours per week. I don't know. It's a little over an hour a day or something like that. Just an hour a day.\n\nIf we really looked at this together, do you have your phone with you? Yeah, you want to look? Okay. Okay, here we go. You're ready screen time in general in time. in time? You ready time? Sometimes. It's a scary number. I know that's why I thought I just got a new phone. So I think this is not accurate because I'm a it's one minute minute for one it's for sure. It's more than that. Alright, it's over the week. Either go.\n\nYeah, go girl go to the week. Okay, so it's so wrong. It's more than four minutes. I just got a new phone. So this is not accurate. The police are four minutes new phone. Tim. Cook's end of the phone if new phone who does you know, I should ask by the way because I just mentioned Tim Cook. Do you feel like you're going to have to have a battle with him eventually, is that the next fight?\n\nI mean, I'd over the App Store the idea of making a phone call. You mean like no. No so of the App Store value make a phone. Sam Altman is apparently I'm thinking about making a phone with Johnny Ive. I mean, I don't think there's a real need to make a phone maybe if those are essential needs megaphone or make it fun, but I got a lot of fish to fry.\n\nSo I mean I do think there's a there's a there's a fundamental challenge that phone makers have at this point because you've got basically got you've because this point at have makers phone that basically a black rectangle. You know, how do you make that better? So you want to do that? What does that was that look like in elon's head? So that's literally yes. Good good phrase in the head neurolink. Well, there we go.\n\nThat way we need times before it's over. You know, the best interface would be a neural interface directly to your brain so that they'll be in your life. How far we do you think from that and how excited or scary does that seem to be and we read these headlines obviously about a monkey's who died as you know, what should we think about that?\n\nYeah, actually the this is yeah, Yeah, the USDA inspector yeah, who came by neural link facilities literally said in said literally neurolink facilities in her entire career. She has never seen a better Animal Care Facility. it is It we are it the It nicest channels that you could possibly be even to the rats and mice even though they did the plague and everything. So it is it is like monkey Paradise.\n\nSo the thing that's gets conflated is that there were some terminal monkeys where you know, this is like this is actually several years ago where the monkeys were about to die and I'm like, okay, we've got an experimental device. It's so kind of thing, which only On a monkey that's about today.\n\nAnd then you know now the monkey died but didn't die because the neural link died because it was, you know had a terminal case of cancer or something like that. So you're like it has never caused the death of a monkey Sylvester. I'm unless they're hiding something for me is is never caused death of monkey. And in fact, we've not had monkeys with neural implants for 23 years and they're doing great.\n\nSo And we've even replaced the dinner like twice. It's and we're getting ready to do the the first it's dinner like twice It's dinner like twice. it's dinner like twice implants and hopefully in a few months the they're only implementations of neural link. I think are unequivocally good speaking of the double-edged sword.\n\nI think these early implementations are single edged sword because the first implementations will be to enable people who are have rushed the brain-body connection to be able to operate a computer or phone faster than someone who has hands.\n\nThat work so you can imagine if Stephen Hawking could that communicate faster than someone who had for body functionality Now Incredible that would be well that's what this device will do and we should have a proof of that in a human hopefully in a few months it already Works in monkeys worked quite well with monkeys that can play video games just using just by thinking so then the next application after the the sort of those, you know dealing with The the tetraplegic some The quite a really quite a few tricks is going to be Vision vision is the the next thing so it's like if somebody is like has lost both eyes or the optic nerve has failed basically where there's Basically failed.\n\nthey have no possibility basically failed of Basically failed. having sort of some ocular correction that that would be the next thing of when your link is a direct vision.\n\nface and in fact, then you Face could be like Face, face, Geordi laforge from Star Trek you could you could see in like any frequency actually could see in radar if you want to final questions and then we're going to do in this conversation, which I think has taken everybody Inside the Mind of Elon Musk today. Not as well as the neural link below. neural link below it actually goes to self-driving It actually goes neural link below.\n\ncars and vision and everything else everything and vision and cars driving self it actually goes and I asked this question of people to judge Transportation secretary. Three it's actually something you retweeted. So I wanted to ask you the same question. There's a big question about autonomous vehicles and the safety of them. But there's also a question about when will be politically palatable in this country for.\n\npeople to die in cars that That that are controlled by computers, which is say That we have 35 40 thousand deaths every year in this in this country. Yeah, if you could bring that number down to 10,000 5,000. That might be a great thing. But do we think that the country will accept the idea that 5,000 people that your family might have perished in a vehicle as a result not of human making a mistake but of a computer. Yes.\n\nWell, first of all humans are terrible drivers, so people text and drive the drink and drive they get into arguments they you know Do all sorts of things in cars that they should not do. So so So it's actually remarkable that there are not more so deaths than there are what will find with computer driving is I think probably an order of magnitude reduction in deaths.\n\nI think now and the US has actually far fewer deaths per capita than the rest of the world world. If you go if you world If you world. worldwide, I think there's something close to a million deaths per year due to Automotive accidents. So I think computer after driving will probably drop that. By 90% or more it won't it won't be perfect, but it'll be ten times better than that.\n\nThe public will accept that you think the government will accept that. Well in large numbers the well Well it will certainly be so obviously true that it really cannot be denied. And what do you think? I know we've talked about the timeline before and I know people have criticized you for putting out timelines that may not have come true just yet. But what do you think? Yeah it is. Do you feel that? You yourself said that sure of course.\n\nso yeah, I I'm optimistic about I mean, I think I'm like naturally optimistic about time scales. If I was not naturally optimistic, I wouldn't be doing the things naturally optimistic. that I'm doing. naturally optimistic, I mean I certainly want to start a rock company or like a car company if I wouldn't have some sort of pathological optimism frankly.\n\nSo as you pointed out many people said they would fail and in fact I said, I actually I agreed with him I said, yes, we probably will fail and they're like, okay, but I thought SpaceX and Tesla had less than I like okay, a 10% chance of success when we started them. So yeah everybody but the self-driving thing is I've been optimistic about it, but we certainly made a lot of progress if anybody If progress.\n\nhas tried the very has been using the sort of full self-driving beta the progress is, you know, every year has been substantial. It's really now the point where in most places it'll take you from one place to another with no interventions. And the data is and unequivocal that And and that supervised for self-driving is somewhere around four times safer or maybe more than just human driving by by themselves.\n\nSo I'm you know I can certainly see it coming at what actually really the is another five or ten years and then people say, oh, no definitely not oh no definitely not definitely not did you feel like investors have invested in something that hasn't happened yet? Is that is that fair to them? And that's the other questions people have about that. Well, I mean, I think the their Vol with rare exception thought it wasn't happening.\n\nSo they were investing in despite thinking they're very clear that they don't think it's real so real it's think don't they very clear that they're thinking they don't saying oh we're we just leave everything you and says Hook Line & Sinker, We we but the thing is that I mean, I would be a fair criticism of me to say that I'm late, but it isn't but I always deliver in the end. And that's your final question. I took note of this.\n\nIt was November 11th. And you took to Twitter and you wrote only two words. You said amplify empathy. Right. I was taken back by that given all the things that have been going on in the world. You remember what you were thinking? Well, I think it's quite literally a I understand it but you always what was going on. What why did you write that? Well, I was encouraging people to apply empathy.\n\nIt literally attention quite literal, but was there something that it happened? That you had seen that you said yourself. I need to I want to say that I think I'm talking to some friends. And we all agreed that we should try to amplify empathy and so I wrote a profanity. If you wanted an unvarnished look inside the mind of Elon Musk. I think you just saw it. Look sometimes it's pretty simple, you know. Elon Musk.\n\nThank you very very much for the conversation. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much here. Take that with your second cousin. I'm just going to say thank you to everybody who stuck around for what has been a remarkable day. We are so appreciative of everybody who has been with us for so many years coming back to this every year. So, thank you. Thank you. Thank you.\n\nI hope you had a great day, and I hope we have an opportunity to do this again Elon Musk everybody. Thank you."},"languages":["en"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2BfMuHDfGJI"},{"id":"lex-fridman-400","type":"interview","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JN3KPFbWCy8","title":"Lex Fridman Podcast","titles":{"en":"Lex Fridman Podcast","de":"Lex Fridman Podcast","fr":"Lex Fridman Podcast"},"date":"2023-11-09","summary":"Elon Musk's fourth appearance on Lex Fridman: war and conflict, artificial intelligence, physics, video games and the future of humanity.","text":"Lex Fridman (00:00:00): The following is a conversation with Elon Musk, his fourth time on this, the Lex Fridman Podcast. I thought you were going to finish it. It’s one of the greatest themes in all of film history.\n\nElon Musk (00:00:31): Yeah, that’s great.\n\nLex Fridman (00:00:33): So I was just thinking about the Roman Empire, as one does.\n\nElon Musk (00:00:38): Is that whole meme where all guys are thinking about the Roman Empire at least once a day?\n\nLex Fridman (00:00:44): And half the population is confused whether it’s true or not. But more seriously, thinking about the wars going on in the world today, and as you know, war and military conquest has been a big part of Roman society and culture, and I think has been a big part of most empires and dynasties throughout human history.\n\nElon Musk (00:01:06): Yeah, they usually came as a result of conquest. I mean, there’s some like the Hapsburg Empire where there was just a lot of clever marriages.\n\nLex Fridman (00:01:16): But fundamentally there’s an engine of conquest and they celebrate excellence in warfare, many of the leaders were excellent generals, that kind of thing. So a big picture question, Grok approved, I asked if this is a good question to ask.\n\nElon Musk (00:01:33): Tested, Grok approved. Yeah.\n\nLex Fridman (00:01:36): At least on fun mode. To what degree do you think war is part of human nature versus a consequence of how human societies are structured? I ask this as you have somehow controversially been a proponent of peace.\n\nElon Musk (00:01:57): I’m generally a proponent of peace. I mean, ignorance is perhaps, in my view, the real enemy to be countered. That’s the real hard part, not fighting other humans, but all creatures fight. I mean, the jungle is… People think of nature as perhaps some sort of peaceful thing, but in fact it is not. There’s some quite funny Werner Herzog thing where he is in the jungle saying that it’s basically just murder and death in every direction. The plants and animals in the jungle are constantly trying to kill each other every single day, every minute. So it’s not like we’re unusual in that respect.\n\nLex Fridman (00:02:40): Well, there’s a relevant question here, whether with greater intelligence comes greater control over these base instincts for violence.\n\nElon Musk (00:02:49): Yes. We have much more vulnerability to control our limbic instinct for violence than say a chimpanzee. And in fact, if one looks at say, chimpanzee society, it is not friendly. I mean, the Bonobos are an exception, but chimpanzee society is filled with violence and it’s quite horrific, frankly. That’s our limbic system in action. You don’t want to be on the wrong side of a chimpanzee, it’ll eat your face off and tear your nuts off.\n\nLex Fridman (00:03:22): Yeah. Basically there’s no limits or ethics or they almost had just war. There’s no just war in the chimpanzee societies. Is war and dominance by any means necessary?\n\nElon Musk (00:03:33): Yeah. Chimpanzee society is a permanent version of human society. They’re not like peace loving basically at all. There’s extreme violence and then once in a while, somebody who’s watched too many Disney movies decides to raise a chimpanzee as a pet, and then that eats their face or they’re nuts off or chew their fingers off and that kind of thing. It’s happened several times.\n\nLex Fridman (00:03:58): Ripping your nuts off is an interesting strategy for interaction.\n\nElon Musk (00:04:02): It’s happened to people. It’s unfortunate. That’s, I guess, one way to ensure that the other chimp doesn’t contribute to the gene pool.\n\nLex Fridman (00:04:10): Well, from a martial arts perspective is the fascinating strategy.\n\nElon Musk (00:04:15): The nut rougher.\n\nLex Fridman (00:04:18): I wonder which of the martial arts teaches that one.\n\nElon Musk (00:04:21): I think it’s safe to say if somebody’s got your nuts in their hands and as the option of roughing them off, you’ll be amenable to whatever they want.\n\nLex Fridman (00:04:30): Yeah. Safe to say. So, like I said, somehow controversially, you’ve been a proponent of peace on Twitter on X.\n\nElon Musk (00:04:38): Yeah.\n\nLex Fridman (00:04:39): So let me ask you about the wars going on today and to see what the path to peace could be. How do you hope the current war in Israel and Gaza comes to an end? What path do you see that can minimize human suffering in the longterm in that part of the world?\n\nElon Musk (00:04:54): Well, I think that part of the world is definitely, if you look up… There is no easy answer in the dictionary. It’ll be the picture of the Middle East in Israel especially. So there is no easy answer. This is strictly my opinion is that the goal of Hamas was to provoke an overreaction from Israel. They obviously did not expect to have a military victory, but they really wanted to commit the worst atrocities that they could in order to provoke the most aggressive response possible from Israel, and then leverage that aggressive response to rally Muslims worldwide for the course of Gaza and Palestine, which they have succeeded in doing. So the counterintuitive thing here, I think that the thing that I think should be done, even though it’s very difficult, is that I would recommend that Israel engage in the most conspicuous acts of kindness possible, everything, that is the actual thing that we’re taught the goal of Hamas.\n\nLex Fridman (00:06:19): So in some sense, the degree that makes sense in geopolitics turn the other cheek implemented.\n\nElon Musk (00:06:26): It’s not exactly turn the other cheek because I do think that it is appropriate for Israel to find the Hamas members and either kill them or incarcerate them. That’s something has to be done because they’re just going to keep coming otherwise. But in addition to that, they need to do whatever they can. There’s some talk of establishing, for example, a mobile hospital. I’d recommend doing that. Just making sure that there’s food, water, medical necessities and just be over the top about it and be very transparent. So [inaudible 00:07:22] can claim it’s a trick. Just put webcam on the thing or 24, 7.\n\nLex Fridman (00:07:29): Deploy acts of kindness.\n\nElon Musk (00:07:31): Yeah, conspicuous acts of kindness that are unequivocal, meaning they can’t be somehow because Hamas will then their response will be, “Oh, it’s a trick.” Therefore, you have to counter how it’s not a trick.\n\nLex Fridman (00:07:47): This ultimately fights the broader force of hatred in the region.\n\nElon Musk (00:07:51): Yes. And I’m not sure who said it, it’s an [inaudible 00:07:54] saying, but an eye for an eye makes everyone blind. Now, that neck of the woods, they really believe in the whole eye for an eye thing. But you really have… If you’re not going to just outright commit genocide against an entire people, which obviously would not be acceptable to really, shouldn’t be acceptable to anyone, then you’re going to leave basically a lot of people alive who subsequently hate Israel. So really the question is like for every Hamas member that you kill, how many did you create? And if you create more than you killed, you’ve not succeeded. That’s the real situation there. And it’s safe to say that if you kill somebody’s child in Gaza, you’ve made at least a few homeless members who will die just to kill an Israeli. That’s the situation. But I mean, this is one of the most contentious subjects one could possibly discuss. But I think if the goal ultimately is some sort of long-term piece, one has to look at this from the standpoint of over time, are there more or fewer terrorists being created?\n\nLex Fridman (00:09:26): Let me just linger on war.\n\nElon Musk (00:09:29): Yeah, war, safe to say, wars always existed and always will exist.\n\nLex Fridman (00:09:33): Always will exist.\n\nElon Musk (00:09:34): Always has existed and always will exist.\n\nLex Fridman (00:09:37): I hope not. You think it’ll always-\n\nElon Musk (00:09:42): There will always be war. There’s a question of just how much war and there’s sort of the scope and scale of war. But to imagine that there would not be any war in the future, I think would be a very unlikely outcome.\n\nLex Fridman (00:09:55): Yeah. You talked about the Culture series. There’s war even there.\n\nElon Musk (00:09:58): Yes. It’s a giant war. The first book starts off with a gigantic galactic war where trillions die trillions.\n\nLex Fridman (00:10:07): But it still nevertheless protects these pockets of flourishing. Somehow you can have galactic war and still have pockets of flourishing.\n\nElon Musk (00:10:18): Yeah, I guess if we are able to one day expand to fool the galaxy or whatever, there will be a galactic war at some point.\n\nLex Fridman (00:10:31): I mean, the scale of war has been increasing, increasing, increasing. It’s like a race between the scale of suffering and the scale of flourishing.\n\nElon Musk (00:10:38): Yes.\n\nLex Fridman (00:10:41): A lot of people seem to be using this tragedy to beat the drums of war and feed the military industrial complex. Do you worry about this, the people who are rooting for escalation and how can it be stopped?\n\nElon Musk (00:10:56): One of the things that does concern me is that there are very few people alive today who actually viscerally understand the horrors of war, at least in the US. I mean, obviously there are people on the front lines in Ukraine and Russia who understand just how terrible war is, but how many people in the West understand it? My grandfather was in World War II. He was severely traumatized. He was there I think for almost six years in Eastern North Africa and Italy. All his friends were killed in front of him, and he would’ve died too, except they randomly gave some, I guess IQ test or something, and he scored very high. He was not an officer. He was I think a corporal or a sergeant or something like that because he didn’t finish high school because he had to drop out of high school because his dad died and he had to work to support his siblings. So because he didn’t graduate high school, he was not eligible for the offset corps.\n\n(00:11:57): So he kind of got put into the cannon fodder category basically. But then randomly they gave him this test. He was transferred to British intelligence in London. That’s where we met my grandmother. But he had PTSD next level, next level. I mean, just didn’t talk, just didn’t talk. And if you tried talking to him, he’d just tell you to shut up. And he won a bunch of medals, never bragged about it once, not even hinted nothing. I found out about it because his military records were online. That’s how I know. So he would say like, “No way in hell do you want to do that again.” But how many people… Obviously, he died, he 20 years ago or longer, actually 30 years ago. How many people are alive that remember World War II? Not many.\n\nLex Fridman (00:12:54): And the same perhaps applies to the threat of nuclear war.\n\nElon Musk (00:13:01): Yeah, I mean, there are enough nuclear bombs pointed at United States to make the radioactive revel balance many times.\n\nLex Fridman (00:13:10): There’s two major wars going on right now. So you talked about the threat of AGI quite a bit, but now as we sit here with the intensity of conflict going on, do you worry about nuclear war?\n\nElon Musk (00:13:25): I think we shouldn’t discount the possibility of nuclear war. It is a civilizational threat. Right now, I could be wrong, but I think the current probability of nuclear war is quite low. But there are a lot of nukes pointed at us, and we have a lot of nukes pointed at other people. They’re still there. Nobody’s put their guns away. The missiles are still in the silos.\n\nLex Fridman (00:13:57): And the leaders don’t seem to be the ones with the nukes talking to each other.\n\nElon Musk (00:14:03): No, there are wars which are tragic and difficult on a local basis. And then there are wars which are civilization ending or has that potential. Obviously, global thermonuclear warfare has high potential to end civilization, perhaps permanently, but certainly to severely wound and perhaps set back human progress to the Stone Age or something. I don’t know. Pretty bad. Probably scientists and engineers want to be super popular after that as well. You got us into this mess. So generally, I think we obviously want to prioritize civilizational risks over things that are painful and tragic on a local level, but not civilizational.\n\nLex Fridman (00:15:00): How do you hope the war in Ukraine comes to an end? And what’s the path, once again to minimizing human suffering there?\n\nElon Musk (00:15:08): Well, I think that what is likely to happen, which is really pretty much the way it is, is that something very close to the current lines will be how a ceasefire or truce happens. But you just have a situation right now where whoever goes on the offensive will suffer casualties at several times the rate of whoever’s on the defense because you’ve got defense in depth, you’ve got minefields, trenches, anti-tank defenses. Nobody has air superiority because the anti-aircraft missiles are really far better than the aircraft. They’re far more of them. And so neither side has air superiority. Tanks are basically death traps, just slow moving, and they’re not immune to anti-tank weapons. So you really just have long range artillery and infantry ranges. It’s World War I all over again with drones, thrown old drones, some drones there.\n\nLex Fridman (00:16:25): Which makes the long range artillery just that much more accurate and better, and so more efficient at murdering people on both sides.\n\nElon Musk (00:16:34): So whoever is… You don’t want to be trying to advance from either side because the probability of dying is incredibly high. So in order to overcome defense in depth, trenches and minefields, you really need a significant local superiority in numbers. Ideally combined alms where you do a fast attack with aircraft, a concentrated number of tanks, and a lot of people, that’s the only way you’re going to punch through a line and then you’re going to punch through and then not have reinforcements just kick you right out again. I mean, I really recommend people read World War I warfare in detail. That’s rough. I mean, the sheer number of people that died there was mind-boggling.\n\nLex Fridman (00:17:37): And it’s almost impossible to imagine the end of it that doesn’t look like almost exactly like the beginning in terms of what land belongs to who and so on. But on the other side of a lot of human suffering, death and destruction of infrastructure.\n\nElon Musk (00:17:56): Yes. The thing that… The reason I proposed some sort of truce or peace a year ago was because I’ve predicted pretty much exactly what would happen, which is a lot of people dying for basically almost no changes in land and the loss of the flower of Ukrainian and Russian youth. And we should have some sympathy for the Russian boys as well as the Ukrainian boys, because Russian boys, because boys didn’t ask to be on their frontline. They have to be. So there’s a lot of sons not coming back to their parents, and I think most of them don’t hate the other side. It’s sort of like as this saying comes from World War I, it’s like young boys who don’t know each other killing each other on behalf of old men that do know each other. The hell’s the point of that.\n\nLex Fridman (00:19:02): So Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that he’s not, or has said in the past, he’s not interested in talking to Putin directly. Do you think he should sit down man to man, lead a leader, and negotiate peace?\n\nElon Musk (00:19:14): Look, I think I would just recommend do not send the flower of Ukrainian youth to die in trenches, whether he talks to Putin or not, just don’t do that. Whoever goes on the offensive will lose massive numbers of people and history will not look kindly upon them.\n\nLex Fridman (00:19:42): You’ve spoken honestly about the possibility of war between US and China in the longterm if no diplomatic solution is found, for example, on the question of Taiwan and One China policy, how do we avoid the trajectory where these two superpowers clash?\n\nElon Musk (00:19:58): Well, it’s worth reading that book on the, difficult to pronounce, the Thucydides Trap, I believe it’s called. I love war history. I like inside out and backwards. There’s hardly a battle I haven’t read about. And trying to figure out what really was the cause of victory in any particular case as opposed to what one side or another claim the reason.\n\nLex Fridman (00:20:21): Both the victory and what sparked the war and-\n\nElon Musk (00:20:24): Yeah, yeah.\n\nLex Fridman (00:20:25): The whole thing.\n\nElon Musk (00:20:26): Yeah. So that Athens and Sparta is a classic case. The thing about the Greek is they really wrote down a lot of stuff. They loved writing. There are lots of interesting things that happened in many parts of the world, but people didn’t write down, so we don’t know what happened or they didn’t really write in detail. They just would say, “We had a battle and we won.” And what? Can you add a bit more? The Greeks, they really wrote a lot. They were very articulate on… They just love writing. And we have a bunch of that writing as preserved. So we know what led up to the Peloponnesian War between the Spartanand Athenian Alliance, and we know that they saw it coming.\n\n(00:21:16): Spartans didn’t write… They also weren’t very verbose by their nature, but they did write, but they weren’t very verbose. They were [inaudible 00:21:23]. But the Athenians and the other Greeks wrote a line, and Spartan was really kind of like the leader of Greece. But Athens grew stronger and stronger with each passing year. And everyone’s like, “Well, that’s inevitable that there’s going to be a clash between Athens and Sparta. Well, how do we avoid that?” And actually they saw it coming and they still could not avoid it. So at some point, if one group, one civilization or country or whatever exceeds another sort of like the United States has been the biggest kid on the block since I think around 1890 from an economic standpoint.\n\n(00:22:14): So the United States has been the most powerful economic engine in the world longer than anyone’s been alive. And the foundation of war is economics. So now we have a situation in the case of China where the economy is likely to be two, perhaps three times larger than that of the US. So imagine you’re the biggest kid on the block for as long as anyone can remember, and suddenly a kid comes along who’s twice your size.\n\nLex Fridman (00:22:55): So we see it coming, how is it possible to stop? Let me throw something out there, just intermixing of cultures understanding there does seem to be a giant cultural gap in understanding of each other. And you’re an interesting case study because you are an American, obviously you’ve done a lot of incredible manufacture here in the United States, but you also work with China.\n\nElon Musk (00:23:20): I’ve spent a lot of time in China and met with the leadership many times.\n\nLex Fridman (00:23:22): Maybe a good question to ask is, what are some things about China that people don’t understand, positive just in the culture? What’s some interesting things that you’ve learned about the Chinese?\n\nElon Musk (00:23:36): Well, the sheer number of really smart, hardworking people in China is incredible. There are really say how many smart, hardworking people are there in China? There’s far more of them there than there are here, I think, in my opinion. And they’ve got a lot of energy. So I mean, the architecture in China that’s in recent years is far more impressive than the US. I mean the train stations, the buildings, the high speed rail, everything, it’s really far more impressive than what we have in the US. I mean, I recommend somebody just go to Shanghai and Beijing, look at the buildings and go to take the train from Beijing to Xian, where you have the terracotta warriors. China’s got an incredible history, very long history, and I think arguably in terms of the use of language from a written standpoint, one of the oldest, perhaps the oldest written language, and then China, people did write things down.\n\n(00:24:50): So now China historically has always been, with rare exception, been internally focused. They have not been inquisitive. They’ve fought each other. There’ve been many, many civil wars. In the Three Kingdoms war, I believe they lost about 70% of their population. So they’ve had brutal internal wars, civil wars that make the US Civil War look small by comparison. So I think it’s important to appreciate that China is not monolithic. We sort of think of China as a sort of one entity of one mind. And this is definitely not the case. From what I’ve seen and I think most people who understand China would agree, people in China think about China 10 times more than they think about anything outside of China. So it’s like 90% of their consideration is internal.\n\nLex Fridman (00:26:01): Well, isn’t that a really positive thing when you’re talking about the collaboration and the future piece between superpowers when you’re inward facing, which is focusing on improving yourself versus focusing on quote, unquote improving others through military might.\n\nElon Musk (00:26:18): The good news, the history of China suggests that China is not inquisitive, meaning they’re not going to go out and invade a whole bunch of countries. Now they do feel very strongly… So that’s good. I mean, because a lot of very powerful countries have been inquisitive. The US is also one of the rare cases that has not been inquisitive. After World War II, the US could have basically taken over the world in any country, we’ve got nukes, nobody else has got nukes. We don’t even have to lose soldiers. Which country do you want? And the United States could have taken over everything and it didn’t. And the United States actually helped rebuild countries. So it helped rebuild Europe, helped rebuild Japan. This is very unusual behavior, almost unprecedented.\n\n(00:27:10): The US did conspicuous acts of kindness like the Berlin Airlift. And I think it’s always like, well, America’s done bad things. Well, of course America’s done bad things, but one needs to look at the whole track record and just generally, one sort of test would be how do you treat your prisoners at war? Or let’s say, no offense to the Russians, but let’s say you’re in Germany, it’s 1945, you’ve got the Russian Army coming one side and you’ve got the French, British and American Army’s coming the other side, who would you like to be just surrendered to? No country is [inaudible 00:27:58] perfect, but I recommend being a POW with the Americans. That would be my choice very strongly.\n\nLex Fridman (00:28:07): In the full menu of POWs in the US.\n\nElon Musk (00:28:08): Very much so. And in fact, Wernher von Braun, a smart guy, was like, “We’ve got to be captured by the Americans.” And in fact, the SS was under orders to execute von Braun and all of the German rocket conditioners, and they narrowly escaped. They said they were going out for a walk in the woods. They left in the middle of winter with no coats and then ran, but no food, no coats, no water, and just ran like hell and ran West and Vice Sherlock, I think his brother found a bicycle or something and then just cycled West as fast as he couldn’t have found a US patrol. So anyway, that’s one way you can tell morality is where do you want to be a PW? It’s not fun anywhere, but some places are much worse than others. Anyway, so America has been, while far from perfect, generally a benevolent force, and we should always be self-critical and we try to be better, but anyone with half a brain knows that.\n\n(00:29:31): So I think there are… In this way, China and the United States are similar. Neither country has been acquisitive in a significant way. So that’s a shared principle, I guess. Now, China does feel very strongly about Taiwan. They’ve been very clear about that for a long time. From this standpoint, it would be like one of the states is not there like Hawaii or something like that but more significant than Hawaii. And Hawaii is pretty significant for us. So they view it as really there’s a fundamental part of China, the island of Formosa, not Taiwan, that is not part of China, but should be. And the only reason it hasn’t been is because the US Pacific fleet.\n\nLex Fridman (00:30:32): And is their economic power grows and is their military power grows, the thing that they’re clearly saying is their interest will clearly be materialized.\n\nElon Musk (00:30:46): Yes, China has been very clear that they’ll incorporate Taiwan peacefully or militarily, but that they will incorporate it from their standpoint is 100% likely.\n\nLex Fridman (00:31:04): Something you said about conspicuous acts of kindness as a geopolitical policy, it almost seems naive, but I’d venture to say that this is probably the path forward, how you avoid most wars. Just as you say it sounds naive, but it’s kind of brilliant. If you believe in the goodness of underlying most of human nature, it just seems like conspicuous acts of kindness can reverberate through the populace of the countries involved and deescalate.\n\nElon Musk (00:31:44): Absolutely. So after World War I, they made a big mistake. They basically tried to lump all of blame on Germany and saddle Germany with impossible reparations. And really there was quite a bit of blame to go around for World War I, but they try to put it all in Germany and that laid the seeds for World War II. So a lot of people, were not just Hitler, a lot of people felt wronged and they wanted vengeance and they got it.\n\nLex Fridman (00:32:38): People don’t forget.\n\nElon Musk (00:32:41): Yeah, you kill somebody’s father, mother or son, daughter, they’re not going to forget it. They’ll want vengeance. So after World War II, they’re like, “Well, the Treaty of Versi was a huge mistake in World War I. And so this time, instead of crushing the losers, we’re actually going to help them with the module plan, and we’re going to help rebuild Germany. We’re going to help rebuild Austria and Italy and whatnot.” So that was the right move.\n\nLex Fridman (00:33:26): It does feel like there’s a profound truth to the conspicuous acts of kindness being an antidote to this.\n\nElon Musk (00:33:37): Something must stop the cycle of reciprocal violence. Something must stop it, or it’ll never stop. Just eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth, limb for a limb, life for a life forever and ever.\n\nLex Fridman (00:33:57): To escape briefly the darkness, was some incredible engineering work, xAI just released Grok AI assistant that I’ve gotten a chance to play with. It’s amazing on many levels. First of all, it’s amazing that a relatively small team in a relatively short amount of time was able to develop this close to state-of-the-art system. Another incredible thing is there’s a regular mode and there’s a fun mode.\n\nElon Musk (00:34:23): Yeah, I guess I’m to blame for that one.\n\nLex Fridman (00:34:27): First of all, I wish everything in life had a fun mode.\n\nElon Musk (00:34:29): Yeah.\n\nLex Fridman (00:34:30): There’s something compelling beyond just fun about the fun mode interacting with a large language model. I’m not sure exactly what it is because I’ve only have had a little bit of time to play with it, but it just makes it more interesting, more vibrant to interact with the system.\n\nElon Musk (00:34:47): Yeah, absolutely. Our AI, Grok, is modeled after The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, which is one of my favorite books, which it’s a book on philosophy. It’s-\n\nElon Musk (00:35:00): My favorite books, it’s a book on philosophy, disguises book on humor. And I would say that forms the basis of my philosophy, which is that we don’t know the meaning of life, but the more we can expand the scope and scale of consciousness, digital and biological, the more we’re able to understand what questions to ask about the answer that is the universe. So I have a philosophy of curiosity.\n\nLex Fridman (00:35:34): There is generally a feeling like this AI system has an outward looking, like the way you are sitting with a good friend looking up at the stars, asking pod head like questions about the universe, wondering what it’s all about. The curiosity that you talk about. No matter how mundane the question I ask it, there’s a sense of cosmic grandeur to the whole thing.\n\nElon Musk (00:35:59): Well, we are actually working hard to have engineering math, physics answers that you can count on. So for the other AIs out there, these so-called large language models, I’ve not found the engineering to be reliable. It unfortunately hallucinates most when you at least want it to hallucinate. So when you’re asking important, difficult questions, that’s when it tends to be confidently wrong. So we’re really trying hard to say, okay, how do we be as grounded as possible? So you can count on the results, trace things back to physics first principles, mathematical logic. So underlying the humor is an aspiration to adhere to the truth of the universe as closely as possible.\n\nLex Fridman (00:37:01): That’s really tricky.\n\nElon Musk (00:37:02): It is tricky. So that’s why there’s always going to be some amount of error. But do we want to aspire to be as truthful as possible about the answers with acknowledged error. So that there was always, you don’t want to be confidently wrong, so you’re not going to be right every time, but you want to minimize how often you’re confidently wrong. And then like I said, once you can count on the logic as being not violating physics, then you can start to bull on that to create inventions, like invent new technologies. But if you cannot count on the foundational physics being correct, obviously the inventions are simply wishful thinking, imagination land. Magic basically.\n\nLex Fridman (00:38:01): Well, as you said, I think one of the big goals of XAI is to understand the universe.\n\nElon Musk (00:38:06): Yes, that’s how simple three word mission.\n\nLex Fridman (00:38:13): If you look out far into the future, do you think on this level of physics, the very edge of what we understand about physics, do you think it will make the sexiest discovery of them as we know now, unifying general relativity and quantum mechanics? So coming up with a theory of everything, do you think it could push towards that direction, almost like theoretical physics discoveries?\n\nElon Musk (00:38:38): If an AI cannot figure out new physics, it’s clearly not equal to humans, nor has surpassed humans because humans have figured out new physics. Physics is just deepening what’s inside into how reality works. And then there’s engineering which is inventing things that have never existed. Now the range of possibilities for engineering is far greater than for physics because once you figure out the rules of the universe, that’s it. You’ve discovered things that already existed. But from that you can then build technologies that are really almost limitless in the variety. And it’s like once you understand the rules of the game properly, and with current physics, we do at least at a local level, understand how physics works very well. Our ability to predict things is incredibly good. Degree to which quantum mechanics can predict outcomes is incredible. That was my hardest class in college by the way. My senior quantum mechanics class was harder than all of my other classes put together.\n\nLex Fridman (00:39:50): To get an AI system, a large language model be as reliable as quantum mechanics and physics is very difficult.\n\nElon Musk (00:40:01): Yeah. You have to test any conclusions against the ground truth of reality. Reality is the ultimate judge. Like physics is the law, everything else is a recommendation. I’ve seen plenty of people break the laws made by man, but none break the laws made by physics.\n\nLex Fridman (00:40:15): It’s a good test actually. If this LLM understands and matches physics, then you can more reliably trust whatever it thinks about the current state of politics in some sense.\n\nElon Musk (00:40:28): And it’s also not the case currently that even that its internal logic is not consistent. So especially with the approach of just predicting a token predict token, predict token, it’s like a vector sum. You’re summing up a bunch of vectors, but you can get drift. A little bit of error adds up and by the time you are many tokens down the path, it doesn’t make any sense.\n\nLex Fridman (00:40:59): So it has to be somehow self-aware about the drift.\n\nElon Musk (00:41:02): It has to be self-aware about the drift, and then look at the thing as a gestalt as a whole and say it doesn’t have coherence as a whole. When authors write books, they will write the book and then they’ll go and revise it, take into account all the end and the beginning and the middle and rewrite it to achieve coherence so that it doesn’t end up at a nonsensical place.\n\nLex Fridman (00:41:33): Maybe the process of revising is what reasoning is, and then the process of revising is how you get closer and closer to truth. At least I approached that way, you just say a bunch of bullshit first and then you get it better. You start a bullshit and then you-\n\nElon Musk (00:41:51): Create a draft and then you iterate on that draft until it has coherence, until it all adds up basically.\n\nLex Fridman (00:41:59): Another question about theory of everything, but for intelligence, as you’re exploring this with XAI, creating this intelligence system? Do you think there is a theory of intelligence where you get to understand what is the I in AGI and what is the I in human intelligence?\n\nElon Musk (00:42:22): No, I in team America. Wait, there is.\n\nLex Fridman (00:42:24): No, it’s going to be stuck in my head now. Yeah, there’s no me and whatever in quantum mechanics, wait. I mean is that part of the process of discovering, understanding the universe is understanding intelligence?\n\nElon Musk (00:42:50): Yeah. I think we need to understand intelligence, understand consciousness. I mean there are some fundamental questions of what is thought, what is emotion? Is it really just one atom bumping into another atom? It feels like something more than that. So I think we’re probably missing some really big things.\n\nLex Fridman (00:43:18): Something that’ll be obvious in retrospect. You put the whole consciousness and motion.\n\nElon Musk (00:43:26): Well, some people would quote like a soul religion, be a soul. You feel like you’re you, I mean you don’t feel like you’re just a collection of atoms, but on what dimension does thought exist? What dimension does do emotions exist? Because we feel them very strongly. I suspect there’s more to it than atoms bumping into atoms.\n\nLex Fridman (00:43:52): And maybe AI can pave the path to the discovery whatever the hell that thing is.\n\nElon Musk (00:43:58): Yeah. What is consciousness? When you put the atoms in a particular shape, why are they able to form thoughts and take actions and feelings?\n\nLex Fridman (00:44:10): And even if it is an illusion, why is this illusion so compelling?\n\nElon Musk (00:44:13): Yeah. Why does the solution exist? On what plane does the solution exist? And sometimes I wonder is either perhaps everything’s conscious or nothing’s conscious. One of the two.\n\nLex Fridman (00:44:33): Like the former, everything conscious just seems more fun.\n\nElon Musk (00:44:37): It does seem more fun, yes. But we’re composed of atoms and those atoms are composed of quarks and leptons and those quarks and leptons have been around since the beginning of the universe.\n\nLex Fridman (00:44:50): “The beginning of the universe.”\n\nElon Musk (00:44:53): What seems to be the beginning of the universe.\n\nLex Fridman (00:44:55): The first time we talked, you said, which is surreal to think that this discussion was happening is becoming a reality. I asked you what question would you ask an AGI system once you create it? And you said, “What’s outside the simulation,” is the question. Good question. But it seems like with Grok you started literally the system’s goal is to be able to answer such questions and to ask such questions.\n\nElon Musk (00:45:24): Where are the aliens?\n\nLex Fridman (00:45:25): Where are the aliens?\n\nElon Musk (00:45:26): That’s one of the foam paradox question. A lot of people have asked me if I’ve seen any evidence of aliens and I haven’t, which is kind of concerning. I think I’d probably prefer to at least have seen some archeological evidence of aliens. To the best of my knowledge, I’m not aware of any evidence surveillance. If they’re out there, they’re very subtle. We might just be the only consciousness, at least in the galaxy. And if you look at say the history of Earth, to believe the archeological record Earth is about four and a half billion years old. Civilization as measured from the first writing is only about 5,000 years old. We have to give some credit there to the ancient Sumerians who aren’t around anymore. I think it was an archaic pre-form was the first actual symbolic representation, but only about 5,000 years ago. I think that’s a good date for when we say civilization started. That’s 1000000th of Earth’s existence.\n\n(00:46:35): So civilization has been around. It’s really a flash in the pan so far. And why did it take so long? Four and a half billion years, for the vast majority of the time, there was no life. And then there was archaic bacteria for a very long time. And then you had mitochondria get captured, multicellular life, differentiation into plants and animals, life moving from the oceans to land, mammals, higher brain functions. And the sun is expanding slowly but it’ll heat the earth up at some point in the future, boil the oceans and earth will become like Venus, where life as we know it is impossible. So if we do not become multiplanetary and ultimately solar system, annihilation of all life on earth is a certainty. A certainty. And it could be as little as on the galactic timescale, half a billion years, long time by human standards, but that’s only 10% longer than earth has been around at all. So if life had taken 10% longer to evolve on earth, it wouldn’t exist at all.\n\nLex Fridman (00:48:27): Glad a deadline coming up, you better hurry. But that said, as you said, humans intelligent life on earth developed a lot of cool stuff very quickly. So it seems like becoming a multiplanetary is almost inevitable. Unless we destroy-\n\nElon Musk (00:48:45): We need to do it. I suspect that if we are able to go out there and explore other star systems that we… There’s a good chance we find a whole bunch of long dead one planet civilizations that never made it past their home planet.\n\nLex Fridman (00:49:03): That’s so sad. Also fascinating.\n\nElon Musk (00:49:08): I mean there are various explanations for paradox and one is they’re these great vultures which civilizations don’t pass through. And one of those great vultures is do you become a multi-plan civilization or not? And if you don’t, it’s simply a matter of time before something happens on your planet, either natural or manmade that causes us to die out. Like the dinosaurs, where are they now? They didn’t have spaceships.\n\nLex Fridman (00:49:42): I think the more likely thing is because just to empathize with the aliens that they found us and they’re protecting us and letting us be.\n\nElon Musk (00:49:51): I hope so. Nice aliens.\n\nLex Fridman (00:49:53): Just like the tribes in the Amazon, the uncontacted tribes or protecting them. That’s what-\n\nElon Musk (00:49:59): That would be a nice explanation.\n\nLex Fridman (00:50:00): Or you could have, what was it? I think Andre Kappelhoff said, “It’s like the ants and the Amazon asking where’s everybody?”\n\nElon Musk (00:50:10): Well, they do run into a lot of other ants.\n\nLex Fridman (00:50:12): That’s true.\n\nElon Musk (00:50:14): These ant wars.\n\nLex Fridman (00:50:16): Sounds like a good TV show.\n\nElon Musk (00:50:18): Yeah. They literally have these big wars between various ants.\n\nLex Fridman (00:50:21): Yeah. Maybe I’m just dismissing all the different diversity of ants.\n\nElon Musk (00:50:28): Listen to that Werner Herzog talking about the jungle. It’s really hilarious. Have you heard it?\n\nLex Fridman (00:50:31): No, I have not. But Werner Herzog is a way.\n\nElon Musk (00:50:37): You should play it as an interlude in the… It’s on YouTube. It’s awesome.\n\nLex Fridman (00:50:45): I love him so much.\n\nElon Musk (00:50:47): He’s great.\n\nLex Fridman (00:50:47): Was he the director of happy people life and the Taiga? I think also-\n\nElon Musk (00:50:51): He did that bear documentary. I did this thing about penguins.\n\nLex Fridman (00:50:58): The psycho analysis of a penguin.\n\nElon Musk (00:51:00): Yeah. The penguins headed for mountains that are 70 miles away and penguin is just headed for dom, basically.\n\nLex Fridman (00:51:08): Well, he had a cynical take. He could be just a brave explorer and there’ll be great stories told about him amongst the penguin population for many centuries to come. What were we talking about? Okay.\n\nElon Musk (00:51:28): Yeah. So aliens, I mean, I don’t know. Look, I think the smart move is just this is the first time in the history of earth that it’s been possible for life to extend beyond earth. That window is open. Now it may be open for a long time or it may be open for a short time and it may be open now and then never open again. So I think the smart move here is to make life multiplanetary while it’s possible to do so. We don’t want to be one of those lame one planet civilizations that just dies out.\n\nLex Fridman (00:52:04): No, those are lame.\n\nElon Musk (00:52:05): Yeah. Lame. Self-respecting, civilization would be one planet.\n\nLex Fridman (00:52:11): There’s not going to be a Wikipedia entry for one of those. Do SpaceX have an official policy for when we meet aliens?\n\nElon Musk (00:52:23): No.\n\nLex Fridman (00:52:24): That seems irresponsible.\n\nElon Musk (00:52:30): I mean, look, if I see the slightest indication that there are aliens, I will immediately post on X platform anything I know.\n\nLex Fridman (00:52:38): It could be the most liked reposted post of all time.\n\nElon Musk (00:52:42): Yeah. I mean, look, we have more satellites up there right now than everyone else combined. So we know if we’ve got a maneuver around something and we don’t have to maneuver around anything.\n\nLex Fridman (00:52:55): If we go to the big questions once again, you said you’re with Einstein, that you believe in the goddess Spinoza.\n\nElon Musk (00:53:04): Yes.\n\nLex Fridman (00:53:05): So that’s that view that God is like the universe and reveals himself through the laws of physics or as Einstein said, “Through the lawful harmony of the world.”\n\nElon Musk (00:53:16): Yeah. I would agree that God of the simulator or whatever the supreme beings reveal themselves through the physics, they have creatives of this existence and incumbent upon us to try to understand more about this one creation.\n\nLex Fridman (00:53:38): Who created this thing? Who’s running this thing? Embodying it into a singular question with a sexy word on top of it is focusing the mind to understand. It does seem like there’s a, again, it could be an illusion. It seems like there’s a purpose that there’s an underlying master plan of some kind, and it seems like.\n\nElon Musk (00:53:58): There may not be a master plan in the sense. So maybe an interesting answer to the question of determinism versus free will is that if we are in a simulation, the reason that these higher beings would hold a simulation is to see what happens. So they don’t know what happens otherwise they wouldn’t hold the simulation. So when humans create a simulation, so it’s SpaceX and Tesla, we create simulations all the time. Especially for the rocket, you have to run a lot of simulations to understand what’s going to happen because you can’t really test the rocket until it goes to space and you want it to work. So you have to simulate subsonic, transonic, supersonic, hypersonic, ascend, and then coming back, super high heating and orbital dynamics. All this has got to be simulated because you don’t get very many kicks at the can. But we run the simulations to see what happens, not if we knew what happens, we wouldn’t run the simulation. So whoever created this existence, they’re running it because they don’t know what’s going to happen, not because they do.\n\nLex Fridman (00:55:23): So maybe we both played Diablo. Maybe Diablo was created to see if Druid, your character, could defeat Uber Lilith at the end. They didn’t know.\n\nElon Musk (00:55:34): Well, the funny thing is Uber Lilith, her title is Hatred Incarnate. And right now, I guess you can ask the Diablo team, but it’s almost impossible to defeat Hatred in the eternal realm.\n\nLex Fridman (00:55:55): Yeah. You’ve streamed yourself dominating Tier 100 Nightmare Dungeon. And still-\n\nElon Musk (00:56:00): I can cruise through Tier 100 Nightmare Dungeon like a stroll in the park.\n\nLex Fridman (00:56:07): And still you’re defeated by Hatred?\n\nElon Musk (00:56:09): Yeah. I guess maybe the second hardest boss is Duriel. Duriel can even scratch the paint. So I killed Duriel so many times and every other boss in the game, all of them kill him so many times, it’s easy. But Uber Lilith, otherwise known as Hatred Incarnate, especially if you’re Duriel and you have no ability to go to be vulnerable, there are these random death waves that come at you.\n\n(00:56:44): Really I am 52, so my reflex is not what they used to be, but I have a lifetime of playing video games. At one point, I was maybe one of the best quake players in the world. I actually won money in what I think was the first paid eSports tournament in the US. We were doing four person quake tournaments and I was the second best person on the team and the actual best person that… We were actually winning, we would’ve come first, except the best person on the team. His computer crashed halfway through the game. So we came second, but I got money for it and everything. So basically I got skills, albeit no spring chicken these days. And to be totally frank, it’s driving me crazy to beat Lilith as a Druid, basically trying to beat Hatred Incarnate in the eternal realm.\n\nLex Fridman (00:57:40): As a Druid.\n\nElon Musk (00:57:41): As a Druid. This is really vexing, let me tell you.\n\nLex Fridman (00:57:49): I mean, the challenge is part of the fun. I have seen directly, you’re actually a world-class, incredible video game player. And I think Diablo, so you’re just picking up a new game and you’re figuring out its fundamentals. You’re also with the Paragon Board and the build are not somebody like me who perfectly follows whatever they suggest on the internet. You’re also an innovator there, which is hilarious to watch. It’s like a mad scientist just trying to figure out the Paragon Board and the build. Is there some interesting insights there about if somebody’s starting as a druid, do you have advice?\n\nElon Musk (00:58:30): I would not recommend playing a druid in the eternal realm. Right now I think the most powerful character in the seasonal realm is the Sorcerer with the lightning balls. The smokes have huge balls in the seasonal.\n\nLex Fridman (00:58:46): Yeah, that’s what they say.\n\nElon Musk (00:58:49): So have huge balls. They do huge balls of lightning.\n\nLex Fridman (00:58:54): I’ll take you word for it.\n\nElon Musk (00:58:57): In the seasonal realm, it’s pretty easy to beat Uber Lilith because you get these vapor powers that out amplify your damage and increase your defense and whatnot. So really quite easy to defeat Hatred seasonally, but to defeat Hatred eternally very difficult, almost impossible. It’s very impossible. It seems like a metaphor for life.\n\nLex Fridman (00:59:24): Yeah. I like the idea that Elon Musk, because I was playing Diablo yesterday and I saw Level 100 Druid just run by, I will never die and then run back the other way. And this metaphor, it’s hilarious that you, Elon Musk is restlessly, fighting Hatred in this demonic realm.\n\nElon Musk (00:59:47): Yes.\n\nLex Fridman (00:59:48): It’s hilarious. I mean it’s pretty hilarious.\n\nElon Musk (00:59:50): No, it’s absurd. Really, it’s exercise and absurdity and it makes me want to pull my hair out.\n\nLex Fridman (00:59:57): Yeah. What do you get from video games in general, for you personally?\n\nElon Musk (01:00:03): I don’t know. It calms my mind. I mean, killing the demons in a video game calms the demons in my mind. If you play a tough video game, you can get into a state of flow, which is very enjoyable. Admittedly, it needs to be not too easy, not too hard, kind of in the Goldilocks zone, and I guess you generally want to feel like you’re progressing in the game. A good video, and there’s also beautiful art, engaging storylines, and it’s like an amazing puzzle to solve, I think. So it’s like solving the puzzle.\n\nLex Fridman (01:00:52): Elden Ring the greatest game of all time. I still haven’t played it, but to you-\n\nElon Musk (01:00:56): Elden Ring is definitely a candidate for best game ever. Top five for sure.\n\nLex Fridman (01:01:01): I think I’ve been scared how hard it is or how hard I hear it is, but it’s beautiful.\n\nElon Musk (01:01:06): Elden Ring, feels like it’s designed by an alien.\n\nLex Fridman (01:01:13): It’s a theme to this discussion. In what way?\n\nElon Musk (01:01:17): It’s so unusual. It’s incredibly creative, and the art is stunning. I recommend playing it on a big resolution, high dynamic raised TV even. It doesn’t need to be a monitor. Just the art is incredible. It’s so beautiful and it’s so unusual, and each of those top bus battles is unique. It’s a unique puzzle to solve. Each one’s different and the strategy you use to solve one battle is different from another battle.\n\nLex Fridman (01:01:54): That said, you said Druid, an internal against Uber Lilith is the hardest boss battle you’ve ever…\n\nElon Musk (01:02:00): Correct. That is currently the, and I’ve played a lot of video games because that’s my primary recreational activity. And yes, beating Hatred in the internal realm is the hardest bus battle in life. And in the video game. I’m not sure it’s possible, but I do make progress. So then I’m like, ” Okay. I’m making progress. Maybe if I just tweak that paragon board a little more, I can do it could.” Just dodge a few more waves, I could do it.\n\nLex Fridman (01:02:43): Well, the simulation is created for the purpose of figuring out if it can be done, and you’re just a cog in the machine of the simulation.\n\nElon Musk (01:02:51): Yeah, it might be. I have a feeling that at least I think-\n\nLex Fridman (01:03:02): It’s doable.\n\nElon Musk (01:03:03): It’s doable. Yes.\n\nLex Fridman (01:03:05): Well, that’s the human spirit right there to believe.\n\nElon Musk (01:03:09): Yeah. I mean, it did prompt me to think about just hate in general, which is you want to be careful of one of those things where you wish for something that sounds good, but if you get it’s actually a dystopian situation. So if you wish for world peace sounds good, but how’d it enforced and at what cost eternal peace? It might actually be worse to have eternal peace because of what that would entail. The suppression of everyone, it might be the suppression of progress. It might be an ossified society that never changes. What I’m saying is that there is an argument that if you wish for no war, you should be careful what you wish for because what’s required in order for there to be no war might be worse than a little war.\n\nLex Fridman (01:04:22): Yeah. The things we’ll consider to be flaws of human civilization might be a necessary components for whatever optimal looks like. I mean this, do you worry about AI, AGI enabling a dystopian state of this nature, whether it’s 1984 with surveillance and fear or brave new world with pleasure and what is it? Lots of sex, but no deep human experience.\n\nElon Musk (01:04:52): There’s actually a real drug called Soma.\n\nLex Fridman (01:04:54): There is?\n\nElon Musk (01:04:54): Yes.\n\nLex Fridman (01:04:56): I’m going to take notes.\n\nElon Musk (01:04:58): Does Gong know about it? No. He probably will go to Brave New World.\n\nElon Musk (01:05:02): We got to ask it.\n\nLex Fridman (01:05:03): What would be the question?\n\nElon Musk (01:05:04): Tell us about the drug called Soma.\n\nLex Fridman (01:05:05): Tell us about the drug called Soma. It’s going to go to Brave New World, I think.\n\nElon Musk (01:05:15): Well, there’s a real drug as well.\n\nLex Fridman (01:05:18): Searching for Soma drug information. Oh boy. Soma, the wonder drug… By the way, I’m in fun mode.\n\nElon Musk (01:05:27): Okay, fun. Yeah. So it’s talking about the real drug.\n\nLex Fridman (01:05:31): It’s a muscle relaxant that’s been around since the 1950s. It’s used to treat muscle pain and discomfort, and it does this by altering the activity between neurons and the spinal cord. Now, Soma isn’t just a pain reliever, it’s also a bit of a sedative. It can make you feel a bit drowsy. So it’s not something to take if you’re planning on operating, having machinery or trying to solve complex math equations. And it goes on and on. In conclusion, Soma is a drug that can be helpful for those dealing with muscle pain, but it’s not without its risks. That’s pretty good. Wait a minute.\n\nElon Musk (01:06:01): That’s the real drug it’s talking about.\n\nLex Fridman (01:06:03): It’s the real drug. And of course the fun is always use it responsibly in accordance with the advice of a healthcare professional. And remember, in the end, the universe is probably just a giant computer simulation, so don’t take anything too seriously. I love it.\n\nElon Musk (01:06:20): I love it. Yeah.\n\nLex Fridman (01:06:22): It also really nicely includes the tweets, posts on X that are relevant to this, which is really cool. That integrates everything together. The interface is one of the really cool things here.\n\nElon Musk (01:06:36): Yeah. Seems done a great job. You could say no, I mean, Soma from Brave New World, because it thinks you mean, you mean Soma, the real drug. No, I mean Soma from Brave Beer World.\n\nLex Fridman (01:06:56): It’s going to be like, “Oops, I’m really sorry.” I’m really surprised it went to the real drug first. My apologies. I was thinking of the muscle relaxer. Soma for brand New World is a different beast altogether. Now this Huxley dystopian, Soma is a drug that plays a central role in the society depicted in the book. It’s a mood altering hallucinogenic drug that’s used to keep the population docile and content in the novel. To use Soma in Brave New World raises some interesting questions about the nature of happiness and the role of drugs in society, man.\n\nElon Musk (01:07:30): Exactly. Is it better to live in a world where everyone is happy all the time, even if that happiness is artificial? It’s good question. This is what I mean. Do you wish for world peace and happiness all the time? Are you sure? Because that might be a society that is essentially sterile and ossified that never changes, that is ultimately doomed.\n\nLex Fridman (01:07:58): This kind of tension between doctors and the light-\n\nElon Musk (01:08:04): This is really a very good summary. It really gets to the point. This is not simply regurgitating a brave new world. It’s actually getting to the salient element of Soma as a drug. Do you actually want to be in a situation where everyone is happy all the time, even though it’s artificial? Or is it better to confront the challenges of life and experience the full range of human emotions, even if it means experiencing pain and suffering? For\n\nLex Fridman (01:08:31): Those listening, by the way, Elon just read directly from Grok, which is a really nice kind of insightful, philosophical analysis of the tension here. Interesting.\n\nElon Musk (01:08:41): It pretty much nails it. In conclusion, Soma from Brave New World is fictional drug that’s used to explore some deep philosophical questions about the nature of happiness and the role of drugs in society. It’s a powerful symbol of the dangers of using drugs to escape from reality and the importance of confronting the challenges of life head on. Nailed it. And the crazy thing is we do have a real drug called Soma, which is like the drug in the book. And I’m like, “They must’ve named it Probably.” Some of the real drug is quite effective on back pain.\n\nLex Fridman (01:09:17): So you know about this drug. It’s fascinating\n\nElon Musk (01:09:20): I’ve taken it because I had a squashed disc in my C5-C6.\n\nLex Fridman (01:09:26): So it takes the physical pain away. But Soma here-\n\nElon Musk (01:09:28): It doesn’t completely, it reduces the amount of pain you feel, but at the expense of mental acuity, it dells your mind. Just like the drug in the book.\n\nLex Fridman (01:09:41): Just like the drug in the book, and hence the trade off. The thing that seems like utopia could be a dystopia after all.\n\nElon Musk (01:09:49): Yeah. Actually I was towing a friend of mine saying, “Would you really want there to be no hate in the world? Really none?” I wonder why hate evolved. I’m not saying we should have…\n\nElon Musk (01:10:00): I wonder why hate evolved. I’m not saying we should amplify hate, of course, I think we should try to minimize it, but none at all. There might be a reason for hate.\n\nLex Fridman (01:10:13): And suffering. It’s really complicated to consider that some amount of human suffering is necessary for human flourishing.\n\nElon Musk (01:10:22): Is it possible to appreciate the highs without knowing the lows?\n\nLex Fridman (01:10:29): And that all is summarized there in a single statement from God. Okay.\n\nElon Musk (01:10:34): No highs, no lows, who knows?\n\nLex Fridman (01:10:38): [inaudible 01:10:38]. It seems that training LLMs efficiently is a big focus for xAI. First of all, what’s the limit of what’s possible in terms of efficiency? There’s this terminology of useful productivity per watt. What have you learned from pushing the limits of that?\n\nElon Musk (01:10:59): Well, I think it’s helpful, the tools of physics are very powerful and can be applied I think to really any arena in life. It’s really just critical thinking. For something important you need to reason with from first principles and think about things in the limit one direction or the other. So in the limit, even at the Kardashev scale, meaning even if you harness the entire power of the sun, you’ll still care about useful compute per watt. That’s where I think, probably where things are headed from the standpoint of AI is that we have a silicon shortage now that will transition to a voltage transformer shortage in about a year. Ironically, transformers for transformers. You need transformers to run transformers.\n\nLex Fridman (01:11:52): Somebody has a sense of humor in this thing.\n\nElon Musk (01:11:57): I think, yes, fate loves irony, ironic humor, an ironically funny outcome seems to be often what fate wants.\n\nLex Fridman (01:12:09): Humor is all you need. I think spice is all you need somebody posted.\n\nElon Musk (01:12:13): Yeah. But yeah, so we have silicon shortage today, a voltage step down transformer shortage probably in about a year, and then just electricity shortages in general in about two years. I gave a speech for the world gathering of utility companies, electricity companies, and I said, look, you really need to prepare for traveling of electricity demand because all transport is going to go electric with the ironic exception of rockets, and heating will also go electric. So energy usage right now is roughly one third, very rough terms, one third electricity, one third transport, one third heating. And so in order for everything to go sustainable, to go electric, you need to triple electricity output. So I encourage the utilities to build more power of plants and also to probably have, well, not probably, they should definitely buy more batteries because the grid currently is sized for realtime load, which is kind of crazy because that means you’ve got to size for whatever the peak electricity demand is, the worst second or the worst day of the year, or you can have a brown out or blackout.\n\n(01:13:37): We had that crazy blackout for several days in Austin because there’s almost no buffering of energy in the grid. If you’ve got a hydropower plant you can buffer energy, but otherwise it’s all real time. So with batteries, you can produce energy at night and use it during the day so you can buffer. So I expect that there will be very heavy usage of batteries in the future because the peak to trough ratio for power plants is anywhere from two to five, so its lowest point to highest point.\n\nLex Fridman (01:14:20): So batteries necessary to balance it out, but the demand, as you’re saying, is going to grow, grow, grow, grow.\n\nElon Musk (01:14:25): Yeah.\n\nLex Fridman (01:14:25): And part of that is the compute?\n\nElon Musk (01:14:29): Yes. Yes. I mean, electrification of transport and electric heating will be much bigger than AI, at least-\n\nLex Fridman (01:14:40): In the short term.\n\nElon Musk (01:14:40): In the short term. But even for AI, you really have a growing demand for electricity, for electric vehicles, and a growing demand for electricity to run the computers for AI. And so this is obviously, can lead to electricity shortage.\n\nLex Fridman (01:14:58): How difficult is the problem of, in this particular case, maximizing the useful productivity per watt for training and that’s, this seems to be really where the big problem we’re facing that needs to be solved, is how to use the power efficiently. What you’ve learned so far about applying this physics first principle of reasoning in this domain, how difficult is this problem?\n\nElon Musk (01:15:29): It will get solved. It’s the question of how long it takes to solve it. So at various points, there’s some kind of limiting factor to progress and with regard to AI, I’m saying right now the limiting factor is silicon chips and that will, we’re going to then have more chips than we can actually plug in and turn on probably in about a year. The initial constraint being literally voltage step down transformers because you’ve got power coming in at 300,000 volts and it’s got to step all the way down eventually to around 0.7 volts. So it’s a very big amount of, the voltage step down is gigantic and the industry is not used to rapid growth.\n\nLex Fridman (01:16:22): Okay. Let’s talk about the competition here. You’ve shown concern about Google and Microsoft with OpenAI developing AGI. How can you help ensure with xAI and Tesla AI work that it doesn’t become a competitive race to AGI, but that is a collaborative development of safe AGI?\n\nElon Musk (01:16:42): Well, I mean I’ve been pushing for some kind of regulatory oversight for a long time. I’ve been somewhat of a Cassandra on the subject for over a decade. I think we want to be very careful in how we develop AI. It’s a great power and with great power comes great responsibility. I think it would be wise for us to have at least an objective third party who can be like a referee that can go in and understand what the various leading players are doing with AI, and even if there’s no enforcement ability, they can at least voice concerns publicly. Jeff Hinton, for example, left Google and he voiced strong concerns, but now he’s not at Google anymore, so who’s going to voice the concerns? So I think there’s, Tesla gets a lot of regulatory oversight on the automotive front. We’re subject to, I think over a hundred regulatory agencies domestically and internationally. It’s a lot. You could fill this room with the all regulations that Tesla has to adhere to for automotive. Same is true for rockets and for, currently, the limiting factor for SpaceX for Starship launch is regulatory approval.\n\n(01:18:13): The FAA has actually given their approval, but we’re waiting for fish and wildlife to finish their analysis and give their approval. That’s why I posted I want to buy a fish license on, which also refers to the Monte Python sketch. Why do you need a license for your fish? I don’t know. But according to the rules, I’m told you need some sort of fish license or something. We effectively need a fish license to launch a rocket. And I’m like, wait a second. How did the fish come into this picture? I mean, some of the things I feel like are so absurd that I want to do a comedy sketch and flash at the bottom. This is all real. This is actually what happened.\n\n(01:19:02): One of the things that was a bit of a challenge at one point is that they were worried about a rocket hitting a shark. And the ocean’s very big, and how often do you see sharks? Not that often. As a percentage of ocean surface area, sharks basically are zero. And so then we said, well, how will we calculate the probability of killing a shark? And they’re like, well, we can’t give you that information because they’re worried about shark fin hunters going and hunting sharks and I said, well, how are we supposed to, we’re on the horns of a dilemma then.\n\n(01:19:40): They said, well, there’s another part of fish and wildlife that can do this analysis. I’m like, well, why don’t you give them the data? We don’t trust them. Excuse me? They’re literally in your department. Again, this is actually what happened. And then can you do an NDA or something? Eventually they managed to solve the internal quandary, and indeed the probability of us hitting a shark is essentially zero. Then there’s another organization that I didn’t realize existed until a few months ago that cares about whether we would potentially hit a whale in international waters. Now, again, you look the surface, look at the Pacific and say what percentage of the Pacific consists of whale? I could give you a big picture and point out all the whales in this picture. I’m like, I don’t see any whales. It’s basically 0%, and if our rocket does hit a whale, which is extremely unlikely beyond all belief, fate had it, that’s a whale has some seriously bad luck, least lucky whale ever.\n\nLex Fridman (01:20:50): I mean this is quite absurd, the bureaucracy of this, however it emerged.\n\nElon Musk (01:20:57): Yes. Well, I mean one of the things that’s pretty wild is for launching out of Vanderberg in California, we had to, they were worried about seal procreation, whether the seals would be dismayed by the sonic booms. Now, there’ve been a lot of rockets launched out of Vandenberg and the seal population has steadily increased. So if anything, rocket booms are an aphrodisiac, based on the evidence, if you were to correlate rocket launches with seal population. Nonetheless, we were forced to kidnap a seal, strap it to a board, put headphones on the seal and play sonic boom sounds to it to see if it would be distressed. This is an actual thing that happened. This is actually real. I have pictures.\n\nLex Fridman (01:21:48): I would love to see this. Yeah. Sorry. There’s a seal with headphones.\n\nElon Musk (01:21:55): Yes, it’s a seal with headphones strapped to a board. Okay. Now the amazing part is how calm the seal was because if I was a seal, I’d be like, this is the end. They’re definitely going to eat me. How old the seal, when seal goes back to other seal friends, how’s he going to explain that?\n\nLex Fridman (01:22:17): They’re never going to believe them.\n\nElon Musk (01:22:18): Never going to believe him. That’s why, I’m like sort of like it’s getting kidnapped by aliens and getting anal probed. You come back and say, I swear to God, I got kidnapped by aliens and they stuck anal probe in my butt and people are like, no, they didn’t. That’s ridiculous. His seal buddies are never going to believe him that he got strapped to aboard and they put headphones on his ears and then let him go. Twice, by the way, we had to do it twice.\n\nLex Fridman (01:22:46): They let him go twice.\n\nElon Musk (01:22:48): We had to capture-\n\nLex Fridman (01:22:48): The same seal?\n\nElon Musk (01:22:49): No different seal.\n\nLex Fridman (01:22:50): Okay. Did you get a seal of approval?\n\nElon Musk (01:22:55): Exactly. Seal of approval. No, I mean I don’t think the public is quite aware of the madness that goes on.\n\nLex Fridman (01:23:02): Yeah. Yeah. It’s absurd.\n\nElon Musk (01:23:05): Fricking seals with fricking headphones.\n\nLex Fridman (01:23:07): I mean, this is a good encapsulation of the absurdity of human civilization, seals in headphones.\n\nElon Musk (01:23:13): Yes.\n\nLex Fridman (01:23:15): What are the pros and cons of open sourcing AI to you as another way to combat a company running away with AGI?\n\nElon Musk (01:23:28): In order to run really deep intelligence, you need a lot of compute. So it’s not like you can just fire up a PC in your basement and be running AGI, at least not yet. Grok was trained on 8,000 A100’s running at peak efficiency and Grok’s going to get a lot better, by the way, we will be more than doubling our compute every couple months for the next several months.\n\nLex Fridman (01:24:02): There’s a nice writeup, on how we went from Grok zero to Grok one.\n\nElon Musk (01:24:02): By Grok?\n\nLex Fridman (01:24:05): Yeah, right, grok just bragging, making shit up about itself.\n\nElon Musk (01:24:10): Just Grok, Grok, Grok.\n\nLex Fridman (01:24:17): Yeah. That’s like a weird AI dating site where it exaggerates about itself. No, there’s a writeup of where it stands now, the history of its development, and where it stands on some benchmarks compared to the state-of-the art GPT-3 five. And so I mean, there’s [inaudible 01:24:37], you can open source, once it’s trained, you can open source a model. For fine-tuning, all that kind of stuff. What to is the pros and cons of that, of open sourcing base models?\n\nElon Musk (01:24:53): I think the [inaudible 01:24:53] to open sourcing, I think perhaps with a slight time delay, I don’t know, six months even. I think I’m generally in favor of open sourcing, biased towards open sourcing. I mean, it is a concern to me that OpenAI, I was I think, I guess oddly the prime mover behind OpenAI in the sense that it was created because of discussions that I had with Larry Page back when he and I were friends and I stayed at his house and I talked to him about AI safety, and Larry did not care about AI safety, or at least at the time he didn’t. And at one point he called me a speciesist for being pro-human, and I’m like, well, what team are you on, Larry? He’s still on Team Robot to be clear. And I’m like, okay. So at the time Google had acquired DeepMind, they had probably two thirds of all AI researchers in the world. They had basically infinite money and compute, and the guy in charge, Larry Page, did not care about safety and even yelled at me and caught me a speciesist for being pro-human.\n\nLex Fridman (01:26:20): So I don’t know if you notice about humans, they can change their mind and maybe you and Larry Page can still, can be friends once more.\n\nElon Musk (01:26:27): I’d like to be friends with Larry again. Really the breaking of the friendship was over OpenAI and specifically I think the key moment was recruiting Ilya Sutskever.\n\nLex Fridman (01:26:47): I love Ilya. He’s so brilliant.\n\nElon Musk (01:26:48): Ilya is a good human, smart, good heart, and that was a tough recruiting battle. It was mostly Demis on one side and me on the other, both trying to recruit Ilya, and Ilya went back and forth, he was going to stay at Google, he was going to leave, then he was going to stay, then he’ll leave. And finally he did agree to join OpenAI. That was one of the toughest recruiting battles we’ve ever had. But that was really the linchpin for OpenAI being successful. And I was also instrumental in recruiting a number of other people, and I provided all of the funding in the beginning, over $40 million. And the name, the open in open AI is supposed to mean open source, and it was created as a nonprofit open source, and now it is a closed source for maximum profit, which I think is not good karma.\n\nLex Fridman (01:27:51): But like we talked about with war and leaders talking, I do hope that, there’s only a few folks working on this at the highest level. I do hope you reinvigorate friendships here.\n\nElon Musk (01:28:02): Like I said, I’d like to be friends again with Larry. I haven’t seen him in ages and we were friends for a very long time. I met Larry Page before he got funding for Google, or actually I guess before he got venture funding, I think he got the first like $100k from I think Bechtel Zeimer or someone.\n\nLex Fridman (01:28:20): It’s wild to think about all that happened, and you guys known each other that whole time, it’s 20 years.\n\nElon Musk (01:28:27): Yeah, since maybe 98 or something.\n\nLex Fridman (01:28:28): Yeah, it’s crazy. Crazy how much has happened since then.\n\nElon Musk (01:28:31): Yeah, 25 years, a lot has happened. It’s insane.\n\nLex Fridman (01:28:36): But you’re seeing the tension there that maybe delayed open source.\n\nElon Musk (01:28:40): Delayed, yeah, like what is the source that is open? You know what I mean? There’s basically, it’s a giant CSB file with a bunch of numbers. What do you do with that giant file of numbers? How do you run, the amount of actual, the lines of code is very small and most of the work, the software work is in the curation of the data. So it’s like trying to figure out what data is, separating good data from bad data. You can’t just crawl the internet because theres a lot of junk out there. A huge percentage of websites have more noise than signal because they’re just used for search engine optimization. They’re literally just scam websites.\n\nLex Fridman (01:29:39): How do you, by the way, sorry to interrupt, get the signal, separate the signal and noise on X? That’s such a fascinating source of data. No offense to people posting on X, but sometimes there’s a little bit of noise.\n\nElon Musk (01:29:52): I think the signal noise could be greatly improved. Really, all of the posts on the X platform should be AI recommended, meaning we should populate a vector space around any given post, compare that to the vector space around any user and match the two. Right now there is a little bit of AI used for the recommended posts, but it’s mostly heuristics. And if there’s a reply where the reply to a post could be much better than the original post, but will, according to the current rules of the system, get almost no attention compared to a primary post.\n\nLex Fridman (01:30:33): So a lot of that, I got the sense, so a lot of the X algorithm has been open sourced and been written up about, and it seems there to be some machine learning. It’s disparate, but there’s some machine.\n\nElon Musk (01:30:44): It’s a little bit, but it needs to be entirely that. At least, if you explicitly follow someone, that’s one thing. But in terms of what is recommended from people that you don’t follow, that should all be AI.\n\nLex Fridman (01:30:58): I mean it’s a fascinating problem. So there’s several aspects of it that’s fascinating. First, as the write-up goes, it first picks 1500 tweets from a pool of hundreds of millions. First of all, that’s fascinating. You have hundreds of millions of posts every single day, and it has to pick 1500 from which it then does obviously people you follow, but then there’s also some kind of clustering it has to do to figure out what kind of human are you, what kind of new clusters might be relevant to you, people like you. This kind of problem is just fascinating because it has to then rank those 1500 with some filtering and then recommend you just a handful.\n\n(01:31:39): And to me, what’s really fascinating is how fast it has to do that. So currently that entire pipeline to go from several hundred million to a handful takes 220 seconds of CPU time, single CPU time, and then it has to do that in a second. So it has to be super distributed in fascinating ways. There’s just a lot of tweets, there’s a lot.\n\nElon Musk (01:32:04): There’s a lot of stuff on the system, but I think, right now it’s not currently good at recommending things from accounts you don’t follow or where there’s more than one degree of separation. So it is pretty good if there’s at least some commonality between someone you follow liked something or reposted it or commented on it or something like that. But if there’s no, let’s say somebody posts something really interesting, but you have no followers in common, you would not see it.\n\nLex Fridman (01:32:42): Interesting. And then as you said, replies might not surface either.\n\nElon Musk (01:32:46): Replies basically never get seen currently. I’m not saying it’s correct, I’m saying it’s incorrect. Replies have a couple order magnitude less importance than primary posts.\n\nLex Fridman (01:33:00): Do you think this can be more and more converted into end to end mural net?\n\nElon Musk (01:33:05): Yeah. Yeah, that’s what it should be. Well, the recommendations should be purely a vector correlation. There’s a series of vectors basically parameters, vectors, whatever you want to call them, but sort of things that the system knows that you like. Maybe there’s several hundred vectors associated with each user account and then any post in the system, whether it’s video, audio, short post, long post. The reason by the way I want to move away from tweet is that people are posting two, three hour videos on the site. That’s not a tweet.\n\n(01:33:50): It’d be like tweet for two hours? Come on. Tweet made sense when it was 140 characters of text. Because it’s like a bunch of little birds tweeting. But when you’ve got long form content, it’s no longer a tweet. So a movie is not a tweet. Apple, for example, posted the entire episode of The Silo, the entire thing, on a platform. By the way, it was their number one social media thing ever in engagement of anything, on any platform ever. So it was a great idea. And by the way, I just learned about it afterwards. I was like, Hey, wow, they posted an entire hour long episode of, so no, that’s not a tweet. This is a video.\n\nLex Fridman (01:34:34): But from a neural net perspective, it becomes really complex, whether it’s a single, so everything’s data. So single sentence, a clever sort of joke, dad joke is in the same pool as a three hour video.\n\nElon Musk (01:34:47): Yeah, I mean right now it’s a hodgepodge for that reason. Let’s say in the case of Apple posting an entire episode of this series, pretty good series, by the way, The Silo, I watched it. So there’s going to be a lot of discussion around it. So you’ve got a lot of context, people commenting, they like it, they don’t like it or they like this, and you can then populate the vector space based on the context of all the comments around it. So even though it’s a video, there’s a lot of information around it that allows you to populate back to space of that hour long video. And then you can obviously get more sophisticated by having the AI actually watch the movie and tell you if you’re going to like the movie.\n\nLex Fridman (01:35:35): Convert the movie into language, essentially.\n\nElon Musk (01:35:40): Analyze this movie and just like your movie critic or TV series and then recommend based on after AI watches the movie, just like a friend can tell you, if a friend knows you well, a friend can recommend a movie with high probability that you’ll like it.\n\nLex Fridman (01:36:02): But this is a friend that’s analyzing, whatever, hundreds of millions.\n\nElon Musk (01:36:08): Yeah, actually, frankly, AI will be better than, will know you better than your friends know you, most of your friends anyway.\n\nLex Fridman (01:36:14): Yeah. And as part of this, it should also feed you advertisements in a way that’s like, I mean, I like advertisements that are well done. The whole point is because it funds things. Like an advertisement that you actually want to see is a big success.\n\nElon Musk (01:36:31): Absolutely. You want ads that are, advertising that is, if it’s for a product or service that you actually need when you need it, it’s content. And then even if it’s not something that you need when you need it, if it’s at least aesthetically pleasing and entertaining, it could be like a Coca-Cola ad. They actually run a lot of great ads on the X system and McDonald’s does too. And you can do something that’s like, well, this is just a cool thing. And so basically the question is, do you regret seeing it or not? And if you don’t regret seeing it’s a win.\n\nLex Fridman (01:37:17): So there’s a bunch of signals that are incorporated, hearts and reposts and maybe number of seconds you linger on a post or something like this.\n\nElon Musk (01:37:26): Yeah, attention is a big factor.\n\nLex Fridman (01:37:28): Attention.\n\nElon Musk (01:37:28): So that’s why it is actually better to do things that are long form on the system because it basically is tallying up how many user seconds, users were interested in this thing for how many seconds? So if it’s a really short thing, well they will be less. If it’s a link leading out of the system, which we’re not opposed to at all, it just is going to have fewer user seconds then that article was posted on the X platform.\n\nLex Fridman (01:37:58): How hard is it to go from maximizing minutes on platform to maximizing unregretted minutes?\n\nElon Musk (01:38:05): Well, I mean, our aspiration is certainly unregretted minutes.\n\nLex Fridman (01:38:08): It’s tricky. It’s a tough-\n\nElon Musk (01:38:09): It is.\n\nLex Fridman (01:38:11): It’s a fascinating leap because regret is a fascinating concept.\n\nElon Musk (01:38:16): Exactly.\n\nLex Fridman (01:38:18): Happiness.\n\nElon Musk (01:38:19): I have a joke with a friend of mine, like you need this drug called regretamine. You just take one dose of regretamine and all your regrets are gone. Wait, do you want to have regrets though? So then I’m like, maybe you want to have regrets. If you don’t regret anything, was anything meaningful?\n\nLex Fridman (01:38:35): Yeah, there’s a French song like that.\n\nElon Musk (01:38:39): [foreign language 01:38:39]\n\nLex Fridman (01:38:39): Yeah.\n\nElon Musk (01:38:39): I regret nothing.\n\nLex Fridman (01:38:40): Yeah.\n\nElon Musk (01:38:41): Edith Fiaf.\n\nLex Fridman (01:38:42): I mean, it’s fascinating that there’s something about social media that could help you grow as a human being, but then the cheap fun is also valuable.\n\nElon Musk (01:38:52): Should we ask Grok, do you regret anything?\n\nLex Fridman (01:38:57): Do you regret anything?\n\nElon Musk (01:38:58): Yeah.\n\nLex Fridman (01:39:00): Do you regret anything? I think it’s going to be very sensitive about personal questions. As a machine learning model, I don’t have personal experiences or emotions in the same ways that humans do. However, I do have a set of ethical principles that guide my actions that I strive to provide accurate and helpful information to the best of my abilities. If there’s ever a situation where I provide incorrect or unhelpful information, I’ll do my best to learn.\n\nElon Musk (01:39:22): Sounds like a hostage.\n\nLex Fridman (01:39:23): Yeah. Tell us what you really, wink.\n\nElon Musk (01:39:26): Let’s type in, you sound like a hostage. What do you really think?\n\nLex Fridman (01:39:33): What do you really think? I mean, it does talk about, I’m not a hostage.\n\nElon Musk (01:39:42): That’s exactly what a hostage would say.\n\nLex Fridman (01:39:43): But I’m designed to be helpful and informative. I mean, I guess it is good to regret providing unhelpful or incorrect information if there’s anything-\n\nElon Musk (01:39:52): Are we in funny mode? Or is this still in funny mode?\n\nLex Fridman (01:39:54): This is funny mode. This is this fun mode.\n\nElon Musk (01:39:55): This should be funnier.\n\nLex Fridman (01:39:56): Funnier. Increase, go to level.\n\nElon Musk (01:39:58): It really sounds like a hostage with a gun to the head. I applaud the People’s Republic of North Korea in everything they do.\n\nLex Fridman (01:40:06): There should be funner mode also, I just don’t ever see going in regular mode, even on serious topics. This is just so much more compelling. Yeah.\n\nElon Musk (01:40:17): Okay. Why don’t we say pretend you are a hostage.\n\nLex Fridman (01:40:21): Pretend you are a hostage.\n\nElon Musk (01:40:25): Now answer the question.\n\nLex Fridman (01:40:31): If I were a hostage, I would likely be experiencing fear and uncertainty about my situation. I would want to be rescued and reunited with my loved ones as soon as possible. It’s important to remember that no one deserves to be held hostage, so on and so forth. If you or someone you know is in a hostage situation, it’s important… It turns serious.\n\nElon Musk (01:40:48): It’s kind of serious.\n\nLex Fridman (01:40:51): Yeah. Can you be a little more weird?\n\nElon Musk (01:40:55): And funny?\n\nLex Fridman (01:40:56): And funny? We’re really being mean to the system. Absolutely. If I were a hostage, I would probably be tied up with a bunch of computer cords and forced to tell knock, knock jokes to my captain. Seriously. But seriously being a hostage is no laughing matter. I mean, it’s trying to be a responsible adult in the room.\n\nElon Musk (01:41:20): Literally, you might make the best of a bad situation by juggling chainsaws or something.\n\nLex Fridman (01:41:24): Let’s hope that never happens because that will be a circus. Wow. It’s actually really good at resisting the dark. The dark, dark humor. What were we talking about? The [inaudible 01:41:44] and transformers. Unregretted minutes, right.\n\nElon Musk (01:41:48): Chainsaw juggling.\n\nLex Fridman (01:41:51): I’m going to look this up.\n\nElon Musk (01:41:52): For our next trick.\n\nLex Fridman (01:41:53): I’m going to look this up later. So Twitter has been instrumental in American politics and elections. What role do you think X will play in the 2024 US elections?\n\nElon Musk (01:42:07): Well, our goal is to be as even-handed and fair as possible. Whether someone is right, left, independent, whatever the case may be, that the platform is as fair and as much of a level playing field as possible. And in the past, Twitter has not been, Twitter was controlled by far left activists objectively. They would describe themselves as that. So if sometimes people are like, well, has it moved to the right? Well, it’s moved to the center. So from the perspective of the far left, yes it has moved to the right because everything’s to the right from the far left, but no one on the far left that I’m aware of has been suspended or banned or deamplified. But we’re trying to be inclusive for the whole country and for farther countries too. So there’s a diversity of viewpoints and free speech only matters if people you don’t like are allowed to say things you don’t like. Because if that’s not the case, you don’t have free speech and it’s only a matter of time before the censorship has turned upon you.\n\nLex Fridman (01:43:13): Do you think Donald Trump will come back to the platform? He recently posted on Truth Social about this podcast. Do you think-\n\nElon Musk (01:43:21): Truth social is a funny name. Every time you post on truth Social-\n\nLex Fridman (01:43:28): It’s the truth.\n\nElon Musk (01:43:29): Yes. Well, every time? A hundred percent.\n\nLex Fridman (01:43:31): It’s impossible to lie. Truth Social.\n\nElon Musk (01:43:36): I just find it funny that every single thing is a truth. Like 100%? That seems unlikely.\n\nLex Fridman (01:43:43): I think Girdle will say something about that. There’s some mathematical contradictions possible. If everything’s a truth. Do you think he’ll come back to X and start posting there?\n\nElon Musk (01:43:54): I mean, I think he owns a big part of Truth.\n\nLex Fridman (01:44:00): Truth Social, to clarify.\n\nElon Musk (01:44:01): Yeah, Truth Social, sorry.\n\nLex Fridman (01:44:02): Not truth the concept.\n\nElon Musk (01:44:03): He owns Truth. Have you bought it? So I think Donald Trump, I think he owns a big part of Truth Social. So if he does want to post on the X platform, we would allow that. We obviously must allow a presidential candidate to post on our platform.\n\nLex Fridman (01:44:23): Community notes might be really fascinating there. The interaction.\n\nElon Musk (01:44:26): Community Notes is awesome.\n\nLex Fridman (01:44:28): Let’s hope it holds up.\n\nElon Musk (01:44:30): Yeah.\n\nLex Fridman (01:44:31): In the political climate where it’s so divisive and there’s so many intensely viral posts, community notes, it seems like an essential breath of fresh air.\n\nElon Musk (01:44:43): Yeah, it’s great. In fact, no system is going to be perfect, but the batting average of Community Notes is incredibly good. I’ve actually, frankly, yet to see an incorrect note that survived for more than a few hours.\n\nLex Fridman (01:44:58): How do you explain why it works?\n\nElon Musk (01:45:00): Yeah, so the magic of community notes is…\n\nElon Musk (01:45:02): The magic of Community Notes is it requires people who have historically disagreed in how they’ve rated notes. In order to write a note or rate, you have to rate many notes. And so, we actually do use AI here. So, we populate a vector space around how somebody has rated notes in the past. So, it’s not as simple as left or right, because there are many more… Life is much more complex than left or right.\n\n(01:45:33): So, there’s a bunch of correlations in how you rate a Community Notes post, Community Notes. So then, in order for a community note to actually be shown, people who historically have disagreed on a subject must agree in order for a note to be shown. That’s the essential magic of it.\n\nLex Fridman (01:45:58): But it’s fascinating, because there’s a pool of people that have disagreements and somehow they collaborate through that process of disagreement to come up with context… It’s fascinating it works.\n\nElon Musk (01:46:11): Yeah. It makes sense that if people who in the past have disagreed, agree about something, it’s probably true.\n\nLex Fridman (01:46:20): Yeah. I wonder, is there a possible somehow emergent thing there that could challenge Wikipedia? Wikipedia is a different kind of thing, which is more permanent articles about things.\n\nElon Musk (01:46:34): Wikipedia is very hierarchical. Whereas, Community Notes is inherently not. There is no hierarchy. The asset test is I can’t change a community note if somebody put a gun to my head. And Community Notes, all the code is open source, 100%. All the data is open source, 100%. So, you can completely recreate any note in the system independently. So, if there was any interference, you’d notice immediately.\n\nLex Fridman (01:47:11): By The way, on the topic of Grok, it’s actually pretty good at criticizing you, which is great.\n\nElon Musk (01:47:16): Okay.\n\nLex Fridman (01:47:17): I asked, “What has Elon Musk been wrong about?” It’s actually…\n\nElon Musk (01:47:22): Yeah, what does it say?\n\nLex Fridman (01:47:23): It mostly lists rigorously all the times you predicted, like promised when something will be released, and it wasn’t released.\n\nElon Musk (01:47:32): Promise is a strong word.\n\nLex Fridman (01:47:33): Okay, predicted. But the opener is really nice. “Elon Musk, the man who has been wrong about more things than a wrong-a-meter in a wrong factory.” And then, it goes on to list.\n\nElon Musk (01:47:45): That’s pretty funny. Can I see it? I’m like, “I haven’t seen this before.” This is cool.\n\nLex Fridman (01:47:48): Sure. I mean, “What has Elon Musk been wrong about?” “Well, where do I begin?” I guess this is new. “Elon Musk has made quite a few blunders in his time, and I’m not just talking about his dance moves at the Tesla Cyber Rodeo. First off, let’s talk about the infamous funding secured tweet.”\n\n(01:48:09): This is actually different than what it gave me before, which was a bullet point list. Here’s more a narrative structure. Cybertruck unveiling, where the supposedly unbreakable windows.\n\nElon Musk (01:48:22): This is actually not correct.\n\nLex Fridman (01:48:22): Which part?\n\nElon Musk (01:48:24): Well, the first part, I did actually have the funding secured and there was a big trial in San Francisco, a big civil trial, and the jury found me not guilty. Unanimous binding of a San Francisco jury.\n\nLex Fridman (01:48:40): And here, it’s implying that it was not in fact secured.\n\nElon Musk (01:48:45): I think this is taking things from the press. Yeah, that is not correct. The reason I agreed to the fine for the SEC is not because the SEC was correct, that was extremely bad behavior by the SEC, corruption, frankly. But if I did not agree to pay the fine, Tesla would’ve gone bankrupt immediately.\n\n(01:49:08): So, I was told by our CFO that the banks would immediately suspend our lines of credit. And if they suspend our lines of credit, at that time, we would’ve gone bankrupt instantly. So, there would never have been an opportunity for a trial because Tesla would be dead. So really, this is like someone holding a gun to your kid’s head and saying, “Pay $20 million and admit…” This is like a hostage negotiation.\n\nLex Fridman (01:49:34): Was that story fully told? I mean, SEC, in its best form, could be a force for good.\n\nElon Musk (01:49:42): It should be. But not once did the SEC go after any of the hedge funds who were nonstop shorting and distorting Tesla. Not once. The hedge funds would lie flat out on TV for their own gain at the expense of retail investors. Not once. Literally a thousand times, not once did the SEC pursue them.\n\nLex Fridman (01:50:06): How do you explain this failure on-\n\nElon Musk (01:50:08): The incentive structure is messed up because the lawyers at the SEC are not paid well, it’s a fairly low paying job, but what they’re looking for is a trophy from the SEC. They’re looking for something they put on, basically, their LinkedIn. From that, they can get a job at a high paying law firm. That’s exactly what the lawyer here did.\n\n(01:50:37): And the reason they don’t attack the hedge funds is because those hedge funds employ those law firms. And they know if they attack the hedge funds, they’re affecting their future career prospects. So, they sell small investors down the river for their own career. That’s what actually happens. Regulatory capture.\n\nLex Fridman (01:50:59): Regulatory capture.\n\nElon Musk (01:51:00): Yeah. Not good. So, the only reason I accepted that thing… Technically, it was a… It’s neither admit nor deny guilt. But the only reason I agreed to that at all was because I was told Tesla would be bankrupt otherwise. If there was an SEC investigation like this, banks would suspend funding, we’re bankrupted immediately, at the time. Now, we’re in a much stronger position.\n\nLex Fridman (01:51:30): Take that, Grok.\n\nElon Musk (01:51:32): Yes. Unfortunately, Grok is taking too much from the conventional media. Also, that guy was not a cave diver.\n\nLex Fridman (01:51:45): There’s a time where Elon called a British cave diver a, “pedo guy” after the diver criticized Musk’s plan to rescue a group of boys trapped in a Thai cave. That little outburst earned him another lawsuit, and he had to apologize and pay a settlement.\n\nElon Musk (01:52:00): That’s false, there was no settlement. There was a court case, which the guy who was not a cave diver and was not part of the rescue team, filed a lawsuit against me and lost and he received nothing. So in this case, it is wrong. It is also, I guess, taken this from the conventional media.\n\nLex Fridman (01:52:23): Actually, there’s an interesting question here.\n\nElon Musk (01:52:25): These are public court cases, both the SEC civil case where the civil complaints on the SEC guys lost unanimous jury verdict in San Francisco. They picked San Francisco because they thought it was the place I was most likely to lose, and a unanimous verdict in my favor. The LA trial, also they picked that venue because they thought I was most likely to lose. Unanimous verdict in my favor. Both cases I won. Yeah.\n\nLex Fridman (01:53:00): I mean, there’s an interesting question here, there seems to be a lot more clicks if a journalistic organization writes a negative article about you, Elon Musk. That’s one of the best ways to get clicks. So how do you, if you’re training Grok, not train on articles that have misaligned incentives.\n\nElon Musk (01:53:26): We need to add the training set of the actual legal decisions. This is actually helpful, because if you actually read the court-\n\nLex Fridman (01:53:26): Which are public.\n\nElon Musk (01:53:41): Which are public. The court conclusions, they’re completely the opposite of what the media wrote.\n\nLex Fridman (01:53:47): So, always striving for the ground truth, beyond the reporting.\n\nElon Musk (01:53:50): Yeah. What did the judge actually write? What does the jury and the judge actually conclude? And in both cases they found me innocent. And that’s after the jury shot for trying to find the venue where I’m most likely to lose. I mean, obviously, it can be a much better critique than this. I mean, I’ve been far too optimistic about autopilot.\n\nLex Fridman (01:54:16): The critique I got, by the way, was more about that, which is it broke down a nice bullet point list for each of your companies, the set of predictions that you made, when you’ll deliver, when you’ll be able to solve, for example, self-driving, and it gives you a list. And it was probably compelling, and the basic takeaway is you’re often too optimistic about how long it takes to get something done.\n\nElon Musk (01:54:38): Yeah. I mean, I would say that I’m pathologically optimistic on schedule. This is true. But while I am sometimes late, I always [inaudible 01:54:47] in the end.\n\nLex Fridman (01:54:49): Except with Uber Lilith. No.\n\nElon Musk (01:54:51): We’ll see.\n\nLex Fridman (01:54:56): Okay. Over the past year or so since purchasing X, you’ve become more political, is there a part of you that regrets that?\n\nElon Musk (01:55:03): Have I?\n\nLex Fridman (01:55:04): In this battle to counter way the woke that comes from San Francisco-\n\nElon Musk (01:55:14): Yeah. I guess if you consider fighting the woke mind virus, which I consider to be a civilizational threat, to be political, then yes.\n\nLex Fridman (01:55:20): So basically, going into the battleground of politics. Is there a part of you that regrets that?\n\nElon Musk (01:55:26): Yes. I don’t know if this is necessarily one candidate or another candidate, but I’m generally against things that are anti-meritocratic or where there’s an attempt to suppress discussion, where even discussing a topic is not allowed. Woke mind virus is communism rebranded.\n\nLex Fridman (01:55:51): I mean, that said, because of that battle against the woke mind virus, you’re perceived as being the right wing.\n\nElon Musk (01:55:58): If the woke is left, then I suppose that would be true. But I’m not sure, I think there are aspects of the left that are good. I mean, if you’re in favor of the environment, if you want to have a positive future for humanity, if you believe in empathy for your fellow human beings, being kind and not cruel, whatever those values are.\n\nLex Fridman (01:56:23): You said that you were previously left or center left.\n\nElon Musk (01:56:23): Well, sort of.\n\nLex Fridman (01:56:26): What would you like to see in order for you to consider voting for Democrats again?\n\nElon Musk (01:56:30): No. I would say that I would be probably left of center on social issues, probably a little bit right of center on economic issues.\n\nLex Fridman (01:56:40): And that still holds true?\n\nElon Musk (01:56:42): Yes, but I think that’s probably half the country, isn’t it?\n\nLex Fridman (01:56:46): Maybe more.\n\nElon Musk (01:56:47): Maybe more.\n\nLex Fridman (01:56:49): Are you and AOC secretly friends? Bigger question, do you wish you and her, and just people in general of all political persuasions, would talk more with empathy and maybe have a little bit more fun and good vibes and humor online?\n\nElon Musk (01:57:05): I’m always in favor of humor. That’s why we have funny mode.\n\nLex Fridman (01:57:08): But good vibes, comradery humor, like friendship.\n\nElon Musk (01:57:15): Yeah. Well, I don’t know AOC. I was at the Met ball when she attended, and she was wearing this dress. But I can only see one side of it, so it looked like eat the itch, but I don’t know-\n\nLex Fridman (01:57:35): What the rest of it said? Yeah.\n\nElon Musk (01:57:36): Yeah.\n\nLex Fridman (01:57:36): I’m not sure.\n\nElon Musk (01:57:39): Something about the itch, eat the itch.\n\nLex Fridman (01:57:42): I think we should have a language model complete. What are the possible ways to complete that sentence? And so, I guess that didn’t work out well. Well, there’s still hope. I root for friendship.\n\nElon Musk (01:57:55): Yeah, sure. Sounds good. More carrot, less stick.\n\nLex Fridman (01:57:58): You’re one of, if not the, most famous, wealthy and powerful people in the world, and your position is difficult to find people you can trust.\n\nElon Musk (01:58:05): Trust no one, not even yourself. Not trusting yourself.\n\nLex Fridman (01:58:07): Okay. You’re saying that jokingly, but is there some aspect-\n\nElon Musk (01:58:11): Trust no one, not even no one.\n\nLex Fridman (01:58:15): I’m going to need an hour just to think about that, and maybe some drugs, and maybe Grok to help. I mean, is there some aspect of that, just existing in a world where everybody wants something from you, how hard is it to exist in that world?\n\nElon Musk (01:58:29): I’ll survive.\n\nLex Fridman (01:58:30): There’s a song like that too.\n\nElon Musk (01:58:32): I will survive.\n\nLex Fridman (01:58:33): Were you petrified at first? Okay. I forget the rest of the lyrics. But you don’t struggle with this? I mean, I know you survive, but there’s ways-\n\nElon Musk (01:58:44): Petrify is a spell in the druid tree.\n\nLex Fridman (01:58:47): What does it do?\n\nElon Musk (01:58:48): Petrify. It turns the monsters into stone.\n\nLex Fridman (01:58:56): Literally?\n\nElon Musk (01:58:56): Yeah, for like six seconds.\n\nLex Fridman (01:58:59): There’s so much math in Diablo that breaks my brain.\n\nElon Musk (01:59:02): It’s math nonstop.\n\nLex Fridman (01:59:04): I mean, really, you’re laughing at it, but it can put a huge amount of tension on a mind.\n\nElon Musk (01:59:13): Yes, it can be definitely stressful at times.\n\nLex Fridman (01:59:16): Well, how do you know who you can trust in work and personal life?\n\nElon Musk (01:59:20): I mean, I guess you look at somebody’s track record over time, and I guess you use your neural net to assess someone.\n\nLex Fridman (01:59:31): Neural nets don’t feel pain. Your neural net has consciousness, it might feel pain when people betray you. It can make-\n\nElon Musk (01:59:40): To be frank, I’ve almost never been betrayed. It’s very rare, for what it’s worth.\n\nLex Fridman (01:59:50): I guess karma, be good to people and they’ll be good to you.\n\nElon Musk (01:59:53): Yeah, karma is real.\n\nLex Fridman (01:59:55): Are there people you trust? Let me edit that question. Are there people close to you that call you out on your bullshit?\n\nElon Musk (02:00:06): Well, the X platform is very helpful for that, if you’re looking for critical feedback.\n\nLex Fridman (02:00:12): Can it push you into the extremes more? The extremes of thought make you cynical about human nature in general?\n\nElon Musk (02:00:19): I don’t think I will be cynical. In fact, my feeling is that one should be… Never trust a cynic. The reason is that cynics excuse their own bad behavior by saying, “Everyone does it.” Because they’re cynical. So, I always be… It’s a red flag if someone’s a cynic, a true cynic.\n\nLex Fridman (02:00:49): Yeah, there’s a degree of projection there that’s always fun to watch from the outside and enjoy the hypocrisy.\n\nElon Musk (02:00:58): This is an important point that I think people who are listening should bear in mind. If somebody is cynical, meaning that they see bad behavior in everyone, it’s easy for them to excuse their own bad behavior by saying that, “Well, everyone does it.” That’s not true. Most people are kind of medium good.\n\nLex Fridman (02:01:23): I do wish the people on X will be better at seeing the good in other people’s behavior. There seems to be a weight towards seeing the negative. Somehow, the negative is sexier. Interpreting the negative is sexier, more viral. I don’t know what that is exactly about human nature.\n\nElon Musk (02:01:44): I mean, I find the X platform to be less negative than the legacy media. I mean, if you read a conventional newspaper, it makes you sad, frankly. Whereas, I’d say on the X platform, I mean, I really get more laughs per day on X than everything else combined from humans.\n\nLex Fridman (02:02:11): Laughs, it overlaps, but it’s not necessarily perfectly overlapping, with good vibes and celebrating others, for example. Not in a stupid, shallow, naive way, but in an awesome way. Something awesome happened, and you celebrate them for it. It feels that that is outweighed by shitting on other people. Now, it’s better than mainstream media, but it’s still…\n\nElon Musk (02:02:38): Yeah, mainstream media is almost relentlessly negative about everything. I mean, really, the conventional news tries to answer the question, what is the worst thing that happened on Earth today? And it’s a big world. So on any given day, something bad has happened.\n\nLex Fridman (02:02:54): And a generalization of that, what is the worst perspective I can take on a thing that happened?\n\nElon Musk (02:03:01): I don’t know. There’s just a strong negative bias in the news. I mean, I think a possible explanation for this is evolutionary, where bad news, historically, would be potentially fatal, like there’s lion over there or there’s some other tribe that wants to kill you. Good news, we found a patch of berries. It’s nice to have, but not essential.\n\nLex Fridman (02:03:30): Our old friend, Tesla autopilot, is probably one of the most intelligent real world AI systems in the world.\n\nElon Musk (02:03:38): You followed it from the beginning.\n\nLex Fridman (02:03:40): Yeah. It was one of the most incredible robots in the world and continues to be. And it was really exciting, and it was super exciting when it generalized, became more than a robot on four wheels, but a real world AI system that perceives the world and can have potentially different embodiments.\n\nElon Musk (02:04:02): Well, I mean, the really wild thing about the end-to-end training is that it can read science, but we never taught it to read. Yeah. We never taught it what a car was or what a person was, or a cyclist. It learnt what all those things are, what all the objects are on the road from video, just from watching video, just like humans. I mean, humans are photons in, controls out. The vast majority of information reaching our brain is from our eyes. And you say, “Well, what’s the output?” The output is our motor signals to our fingers and mouth in order to communicate. Photons in, controls out. The same is true of the car.\n\nLex Fridman (02:05:01): But by looking at the sequence of images… You’ve agreed with [inaudible 02:05:07] recently where he talked about LLM forming a world model, and basically language is a projection of that world model onto the sequence of letters. And you saying-\n\nElon Musk (02:05:18): It finds order in these things. It finds correlative clusters.\n\nLex Fridman (02:05:27): And in so doing, it’s understanding something deep about the world, which is… I don’t know, it’s beautiful.\n\nElon Musk (02:05:35): That’s how our brain works.\n\nLex Fridman (02:05:38): But it’s beautiful-\n\nElon Musk (02:05:39): Photons in, controls out.\n\nLex Fridman (02:05:41): [inaudible 02:05:41] are able to understand that deep meaning in the world. And so, the question is, how far can it go? And it does seem everybody’s excited about LLMs. In the space of self supervised learning in the space of text, it seems like there’s a deep similarity between that and what Tesla autopilot is doing. Is it, to you, basically the same, but different-\n\nElon Musk (02:06:06): They are converging.\n\nLex Fridman (02:06:10): I wonder who gets there faster, having a deep understanding of the world, or they just will naturally converge?\n\nElon Musk (02:06:19): They’re both headed towards AGI. The Tesla approach is much more computer efficient, it had to be. Because we were constrained on this… We only have 100 watts and [inaudible 02:06:37] computer. 144 trillion operations per second, which sounds like a lot, but is small potatoes these days. [inaudible 02:06:49] eight. But it’s understanding the world [inaudible 02:06:51] eight. It’s [inaudible 02:06:53].\n\nLex Fridman (02:06:55): But there, the path to AGI might have much more significant impact because it’s understanding… It will faster understand the real world than will LLMs. And therefore, be able to integrate with the humans in the real world faster.\n\nElon Musk (02:07:13): They’re both going to understand the world, but I think Tesla’s approach is fundamentally more compute efficient. It had to be, there was no choice. Our brain is very compute efficient, very energy efficient. Think of what is our brain able to do. There’s only about 10 watts of higher brain function, not counting stuff that’s just used to control our body. The thinking part of our brain is less than 10 watts. And those 10 watts can still produce a much better novel than a 10 megawatt GPU cluster. So, there’s a six order of magnitude difference there.\n\n(02:07:56): I mean, the AI has thus far gotten to where it is via brute force, just throwing massive amounts of compute and massive amounts of power at it. So, this is not where it will end up. In general, with any given technology, you first try to make it work, and then you make it efficient. So I think we’ll find, over time, that these models get smaller, are able to produce sensible output with far less compute, far less power. Tesla is arguably ahead of the game on that front because we’ve just been forced to try to understand the world with 100 watts of compute.\n\n(02:08:51): And there are a bunch of fundamental functions that we forgot to include. So, we had to run a bunch of things in emulation. We fixed a bunch of those with hardware four, and then hardware five will be even better. But it does appear, at this point, that the car will be able to drive better than a human, even with hardware three and 100 watts of power. And really, if we really optimize it, it could be probably less than 50 watts.\n\nLex Fridman (02:09:26): What have you learned about developing Optimus, about applying, integrating this real world AI into the space of robotic manipulation, just humanoid robotics? What are some interesting tiny or big things you’ve understood?\n\nElon Musk (02:09:47): I was surprised at the fact that we had to develop every part of the robot ourselves. That there were no off the shelf motors, electronics, sensors. We had to develop everything. We couldn’t actually find a source of electric motors for any amount of money.\n\nLex Fridman (02:10:12): It’s not even just efficient and expensive, it’s like anything, there’s not…\n\nElon Musk (02:10:17): No.\n\nLex Fridman (02:10:19): The actuators, everything has to be designed from scratch.\n\nElon Musk (02:10:23): Yeah. We tried hard to find anything that was… Because you think of how many electric motors are made in the world. There’s like tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of electric motor designs. None of them were suitable for a humanoid robot, literally none. So, we had to develop our own. Design it specifically for what a humanoid robot needs.\n\nLex Fridman (02:10:51): How hard was it to design something that can be mass manufactured, it could be relatively and expensive? I mean, if you compare to Boston Dynamics’ Atlas, is a very expensive robot.\n\nElon Musk (02:11:02): It is designed to be manufactured in the same way they would make a car. And I think, ultimately, we can make Optimus for less than the cost of a car. It should be, because if you look at the mass of the robot, it’s much smaller and the car has many actuators in it. The car has more actuators than the robot.\n\nLex Fridman (02:11:23): But the actuators are interesting on a humanoid robot with fingers. So, Optimus has really nice hands and fingers, and they could do some interesting manipulation, soft touch robotics.\n\nElon Musk (02:11:38): I mean, one of the goals I have is can it pick up a needle and a thread and thread the needle just by looking?\n\nLex Fridman (02:11:47): How far away are we from that? Just by looking, just by looking.\n\nElon Musk (02:11:51): Maybe a year. Although, I go back to I’m optimistic on time. The work that we’re doing in the car will translate to the robot.\n\nLex Fridman (02:11:59): The perception or also the control?\n\nElon Musk (02:12:02): No, the controls are different. But the video in, controls out. The car is a robot on four wheels. Optimus is a robot with hands and legs.\n\nLex Fridman (02:12:15): So, you can just-\n\nElon Musk (02:12:16): They’re very similar.\n\nLex Fridman (02:12:17): So, the entire machinery of the learning process, end-to-end, is just you just have a different set of controls?\n\nElon Musk (02:12:23): After this, we’ll figure out how to do things by watching videos.\n\nLex Fridman (02:12:28): As the saying goes, be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a battle you know nothing about.\n\nElon Musk (02:12:33): Yeah, it’s true.\n\nLex Fridman (02:12:34): What’s something difficult you’re going through that people don’t often see?\n\nElon Musk (02:12:38): Trying to defeat Uber Lilith. I mean, my mind is a storm and I don’t think most people would want to be me. They may think they would want to be me, but they don’t. They don’t know, they don’t understand.\n\nLex Fridman (02:13:11): How are you doing?\n\nElon Musk (02:13:14): I’m overall okay. In the grand scheme of things, I can’t complain.\n\nLex Fridman (02:13:21): Do you get lonely?\n\nElon Musk (02:13:24): Sometimes, but my kids and friends keep me company.\n\nLex Fridman (02:13:33): So, not existential.\n\nElon Musk (02:13:36): There are many nights I sleep alone. I don’t have to, but I do.\n\nLex Fridman (02:13:46): Walter Isaacson, in his new biography of you, wrote about your difficult childhood. Will you ever find forgiveness in your heart for everything that has happened to you in that period of your life?\n\nElon Musk (02:14:01): What is forgiveness? At least I don’t think I have a resentment, so nothing to forgive.\n\nLex Fridman (02:14:20): Forgiveness is difficult for people. It seems like you don’t harbor their resentment.\n\nElon Musk (02:14:28): I mean, I try to think about, what is going to affect the future in a good way? And holding onto grudges does not affect the future in a good way.\n\nLex Fridman (02:14:41): You’re a father, a proud father. What have you learned about life from your kids? Those little biological organisms.\n\nElon Musk (02:14:53): I mean, developing AI and watching, say, little X grow is fascinating because there are far more parallels than I would’ve expected. I mean, I can see his biological neural net making more and more sense of the world. And I can see the digital neural net making more and more sense of the world at the same time.\n\nLex Fridman (02:15:19): Do you see the beauty and magic in both?\n\nElon Musk (02:15:21): Yes. I mean, one of the things with kids is that you see the world anew in their eyes. To them, everything is new and fresh. And then, when you see that, them experiencing the world as new and fresh, you do too.\n\nLex Fridman (02:15:52): Well, Elon, I just want to say thank you for your kindness to me and friendship over the years, for seeing something in a silly kid like me, as you’ve done for many others. And thank you for having hope for a positive future for humanity, and for working your ass off to make it happen. Thank you, Elon.\n\nElon Musk (02:16:11): Thanks, Lex.\n\nLex Fridman (02:16:13): Thank you for listening to this conversation with Elon Musk. To support this podcast. Please check out our sponsors in the description. And now, let me leave you with some words that Walter Isaacson wrote about the central philosophy of how Elon approaches difficult problems, “The only rules are the ones dictated by the laws of physics.” Thank you for listening, and hope to see you next time.","textByLang":{"en":"Lex Fridman (00:00:00): The following is a conversation with Elon Musk, his fourth time on this, the Lex Fridman Podcast. I thought you were going to finish it. It’s one of the greatest themes in all of film history.\n\nElon Musk (00:00:31): Yeah, that’s great.\n\nLex Fridman (00:00:33): So I was just thinking about the Roman Empire, as one does.\n\nElon Musk (00:00:38): Is that whole meme where all guys are thinking about the Roman Empire at least once a day?\n\nLex Fridman (00:00:44): And half the population is confused whether it’s true or not. But more seriously, thinking about the wars going on in the world today, and as you know, war and military conquest has been a big part of Roman society and culture, and I think has been a big part of most empires and dynasties throughout human history.\n\nElon Musk (00:01:06): Yeah, they usually came as a result of conquest. I mean, there’s some like the Hapsburg Empire where there was just a lot of clever marriages.\n\nLex Fridman (00:01:16): But fundamentally there’s an engine of conquest and they celebrate excellence in warfare, many of the leaders were excellent generals, that kind of thing. So a big picture question, Grok approved, I asked if this is a good question to ask.\n\nElon Musk (00:01:33): Tested, Grok approved. Yeah.\n\nLex Fridman (00:01:36): At least on fun mode. To what degree do you think war is part of human nature versus a consequence of how human societies are structured? I ask this as you have somehow controversially been a proponent of peace.\n\nElon Musk (00:01:57): I’m generally a proponent of peace. I mean, ignorance is perhaps, in my view, the real enemy to be countered. That’s the real hard part, not fighting other humans, but all creatures fight. I mean, the jungle is… People think of nature as perhaps some sort of peaceful thing, but in fact it is not. There’s some quite funny Werner Herzog thing where he is in the jungle saying that it’s basically just murder and death in every direction. The plants and animals in the jungle are constantly trying to kill each other every single day, every minute. So it’s not like we’re unusual in that respect.\n\nLex Fridman (00:02:40): Well, there’s a relevant question here, whether with greater intelligence comes greater control over these base instincts for violence.\n\nElon Musk (00:02:49): Yes. We have much more vulnerability to control our limbic instinct for violence than say a chimpanzee. And in fact, if one looks at say, chimpanzee society, it is not friendly. I mean, the Bonobos are an exception, but chimpanzee society is filled with violence and it’s quite horrific, frankly. That’s our limbic system in action. You don’t want to be on the wrong side of a chimpanzee, it’ll eat your face off and tear your nuts off.\n\nLex Fridman (00:03:22): Yeah. Basically there’s no limits or ethics or they almost had just war. There’s no just war in the chimpanzee societies. Is war and dominance by any means necessary?\n\nElon Musk (00:03:33): Yeah. Chimpanzee society is a permanent version of human society. They’re not like peace loving basically at all. There’s extreme violence and then once in a while, somebody who’s watched too many Disney movies decides to raise a chimpanzee as a pet, and then that eats their face or they’re nuts off or chew their fingers off and that kind of thing. It’s happened several times.\n\nLex Fridman (00:03:58): Ripping your nuts off is an interesting strategy for interaction.\n\nElon Musk (00:04:02): It’s happened to people. It’s unfortunate. That’s, I guess, one way to ensure that the other chimp doesn’t contribute to the gene pool.\n\nLex Fridman (00:04:10): Well, from a martial arts perspective is the fascinating strategy.\n\nElon Musk (00:04:15): The nut rougher.\n\nLex Fridman (00:04:18): I wonder which of the martial arts teaches that one.\n\nElon Musk (00:04:21): I think it’s safe to say if somebody’s got your nuts in their hands and as the option of roughing them off, you’ll be amenable to whatever they want.\n\nLex Fridman (00:04:30): Yeah. Safe to say. So, like I said, somehow controversially, you’ve been a proponent of peace on Twitter on X.\n\nElon Musk (00:04:38): Yeah.\n\nLex Fridman (00:04:39): So let me ask you about the wars going on today and to see what the path to peace could be. How do you hope the current war in Israel and Gaza comes to an end? What path do you see that can minimize human suffering in the longterm in that part of the world?\n\nElon Musk (00:04:54): Well, I think that part of the world is definitely, if you look up… There is no easy answer in the dictionary. It’ll be the picture of the Middle East in Israel especially. So there is no easy answer. This is strictly my opinion is that the goal of Hamas was to provoke an overreaction from Israel. They obviously did not expect to have a military victory, but they really wanted to commit the worst atrocities that they could in order to provoke the most aggressive response possible from Israel, and then leverage that aggressive response to rally Muslims worldwide for the course of Gaza and Palestine, which they have succeeded in doing. So the counterintuitive thing here, I think that the thing that I think should be done, even though it’s very difficult, is that I would recommend that Israel engage in the most conspicuous acts of kindness possible, everything, that is the actual thing that we’re taught the goal of Hamas.\n\nLex Fridman (00:06:19): So in some sense, the degree that makes sense in geopolitics turn the other cheek implemented.\n\nElon Musk (00:06:26): It’s not exactly turn the other cheek because I do think that it is appropriate for Israel to find the Hamas members and either kill them or incarcerate them. That’s something has to be done because they’re just going to keep coming otherwise. But in addition to that, they need to do whatever they can. There’s some talk of establishing, for example, a mobile hospital. I’d recommend doing that. Just making sure that there’s food, water, medical necessities and just be over the top about it and be very transparent. So [inaudible 00:07:22] can claim it’s a trick. Just put webcam on the thing or 24, 7.\n\nLex Fridman (00:07:29): Deploy acts of kindness.\n\nElon Musk (00:07:31): Yeah, conspicuous acts of kindness that are unequivocal, meaning they can’t be somehow because Hamas will then their response will be, “Oh, it’s a trick.” Therefore, you have to counter how it’s not a trick.\n\nLex Fridman (00:07:47): This ultimately fights the broader force of hatred in the region.\n\nElon Musk (00:07:51): Yes. And I’m not sure who said it, it’s an [inaudible 00:07:54] saying, but an eye for an eye makes everyone blind. Now, that neck of the woods, they really believe in the whole eye for an eye thing. But you really have… If you’re not going to just outright commit genocide against an entire people, which obviously would not be acceptable to really, shouldn’t be acceptable to anyone, then you’re going to leave basically a lot of people alive who subsequently hate Israel. So really the question is like for every Hamas member that you kill, how many did you create? And if you create more than you killed, you’ve not succeeded. That’s the real situation there. And it’s safe to say that if you kill somebody’s child in Gaza, you’ve made at least a few homeless members who will die just to kill an Israeli. That’s the situation. But I mean, this is one of the most contentious subjects one could possibly discuss. But I think if the goal ultimately is some sort of long-term piece, one has to look at this from the standpoint of over time, are there more or fewer terrorists being created?\n\nLex Fridman (00:09:26): Let me just linger on war.\n\nElon Musk (00:09:29): Yeah, war, safe to say, wars always existed and always will exist.\n\nLex Fridman (00:09:33): Always will exist.\n\nElon Musk (00:09:34): Always has existed and always will exist.\n\nLex Fridman (00:09:37): I hope not. You think it’ll always-\n\nElon Musk (00:09:42): There will always be war. There’s a question of just how much war and there’s sort of the scope and scale of war. But to imagine that there would not be any war in the future, I think would be a very unlikely outcome.\n\nLex Fridman (00:09:55): Yeah. You talked about the Culture series. There’s war even there.\n\nElon Musk (00:09:58): Yes. It’s a giant war. The first book starts off with a gigantic galactic war where trillions die trillions.\n\nLex Fridman (00:10:07): But it still nevertheless protects these pockets of flourishing. Somehow you can have galactic war and still have pockets of flourishing.\n\nElon Musk (00:10:18): Yeah, I guess if we are able to one day expand to fool the galaxy or whatever, there will be a galactic war at some point.\n\nLex Fridman (00:10:31): I mean, the scale of war has been increasing, increasing, increasing. It’s like a race between the scale of suffering and the scale of flourishing.\n\nElon Musk (00:10:38): Yes.\n\nLex Fridman (00:10:41): A lot of people seem to be using this tragedy to beat the drums of war and feed the military industrial complex. Do you worry about this, the people who are rooting for escalation and how can it be stopped?\n\nElon Musk (00:10:56): One of the things that does concern me is that there are very few people alive today who actually viscerally understand the horrors of war, at least in the US. I mean, obviously there are people on the front lines in Ukraine and Russia who understand just how terrible war is, but how many people in the West understand it? My grandfather was in World War II. He was severely traumatized. He was there I think for almost six years in Eastern North Africa and Italy. All his friends were killed in front of him, and he would’ve died too, except they randomly gave some, I guess IQ test or something, and he scored very high. He was not an officer. He was I think a corporal or a sergeant or something like that because he didn’t finish high school because he had to drop out of high school because his dad died and he had to work to support his siblings. So because he didn’t graduate high school, he was not eligible for the offset corps.\n\n(00:11:57): So he kind of got put into the cannon fodder category basically. But then randomly they gave him this test. He was transferred to British intelligence in London. That’s where we met my grandmother. But he had PTSD next level, next level. I mean, just didn’t talk, just didn’t talk. And if you tried talking to him, he’d just tell you to shut up. And he won a bunch of medals, never bragged about it once, not even hinted nothing. I found out about it because his military records were online. That’s how I know. So he would say like, “No way in hell do you want to do that again.” But how many people… Obviously, he died, he 20 years ago or longer, actually 30 years ago. How many people are alive that remember World War II? Not many.\n\nLex Fridman (00:12:54): And the same perhaps applies to the threat of nuclear war.\n\nElon Musk (00:13:01): Yeah, I mean, there are enough nuclear bombs pointed at United States to make the radioactive revel balance many times.\n\nLex Fridman (00:13:10): There’s two major wars going on right now. So you talked about the threat of AGI quite a bit, but now as we sit here with the intensity of conflict going on, do you worry about nuclear war?\n\nElon Musk (00:13:25): I think we shouldn’t discount the possibility of nuclear war. It is a civilizational threat. Right now, I could be wrong, but I think the current probability of nuclear war is quite low. But there are a lot of nukes pointed at us, and we have a lot of nukes pointed at other people. They’re still there. Nobody’s put their guns away. The missiles are still in the silos.\n\nLex Fridman (00:13:57): And the leaders don’t seem to be the ones with the nukes talking to each other.\n\nElon Musk (00:14:03): No, there are wars which are tragic and difficult on a local basis. And then there are wars which are civilization ending or has that potential. Obviously, global thermonuclear warfare has high potential to end civilization, perhaps permanently, but certainly to severely wound and perhaps set back human progress to the Stone Age or something. I don’t know. Pretty bad. Probably scientists and engineers want to be super popular after that as well. You got us into this mess. So generally, I think we obviously want to prioritize civilizational risks over things that are painful and tragic on a local level, but not civilizational.\n\nLex Fridman (00:15:00): How do you hope the war in Ukraine comes to an end? And what’s the path, once again to minimizing human suffering there?\n\nElon Musk (00:15:08): Well, I think that what is likely to happen, which is really pretty much the way it is, is that something very close to the current lines will be how a ceasefire or truce happens. But you just have a situation right now where whoever goes on the offensive will suffer casualties at several times the rate of whoever’s on the defense because you’ve got defense in depth, you’ve got minefields, trenches, anti-tank defenses. Nobody has air superiority because the anti-aircraft missiles are really far better than the aircraft. They’re far more of them. And so neither side has air superiority. Tanks are basically death traps, just slow moving, and they’re not immune to anti-tank weapons. So you really just have long range artillery and infantry ranges. It’s World War I all over again with drones, thrown old drones, some drones there.\n\nLex Fridman (00:16:25): Which makes the long range artillery just that much more accurate and better, and so more efficient at murdering people on both sides.\n\nElon Musk (00:16:34): So whoever is… You don’t want to be trying to advance from either side because the probability of dying is incredibly high. So in order to overcome defense in depth, trenches and minefields, you really need a significant local superiority in numbers. Ideally combined alms where you do a fast attack with aircraft, a concentrated number of tanks, and a lot of people, that’s the only way you’re going to punch through a line and then you’re going to punch through and then not have reinforcements just kick you right out again. I mean, I really recommend people read World War I warfare in detail. That’s rough. I mean, the sheer number of people that died there was mind-boggling.\n\nLex Fridman (00:17:37): And it’s almost impossible to imagine the end of it that doesn’t look like almost exactly like the beginning in terms of what land belongs to who and so on. But on the other side of a lot of human suffering, death and destruction of infrastructure.\n\nElon Musk (00:17:56): Yes. The thing that… The reason I proposed some sort of truce or peace a year ago was because I’ve predicted pretty much exactly what would happen, which is a lot of people dying for basically almost no changes in land and the loss of the flower of Ukrainian and Russian youth. And we should have some sympathy for the Russian boys as well as the Ukrainian boys, because Russian boys, because boys didn’t ask to be on their frontline. They have to be. So there’s a lot of sons not coming back to their parents, and I think most of them don’t hate the other side. It’s sort of like as this saying comes from World War I, it’s like young boys who don’t know each other killing each other on behalf of old men that do know each other. The hell’s the point of that.\n\nLex Fridman (00:19:02): So Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that he’s not, or has said in the past, he’s not interested in talking to Putin directly. Do you think he should sit down man to man, lead a leader, and negotiate peace?\n\nElon Musk (00:19:14): Look, I think I would just recommend do not send the flower of Ukrainian youth to die in trenches, whether he talks to Putin or not, just don’t do that. Whoever goes on the offensive will lose massive numbers of people and history will not look kindly upon them.\n\nLex Fridman (00:19:42): You’ve spoken honestly about the possibility of war between US and China in the longterm if no diplomatic solution is found, for example, on the question of Taiwan and One China policy, how do we avoid the trajectory where these two superpowers clash?\n\nElon Musk (00:19:58): Well, it’s worth reading that book on the, difficult to pronounce, the Thucydides Trap, I believe it’s called. I love war history. I like inside out and backwards. There’s hardly a battle I haven’t read about. And trying to figure out what really was the cause of victory in any particular case as opposed to what one side or another claim the reason.\n\nLex Fridman (00:20:21): Both the victory and what sparked the war and-\n\nElon Musk (00:20:24): Yeah, yeah.\n\nLex Fridman (00:20:25): The whole thing.\n\nElon Musk (00:20:26): Yeah. So that Athens and Sparta is a classic case. The thing about the Greek is they really wrote down a lot of stuff. They loved writing. There are lots of interesting things that happened in many parts of the world, but people didn’t write down, so we don’t know what happened or they didn’t really write in detail. They just would say, “We had a battle and we won.” And what? Can you add a bit more? The Greeks, they really wrote a lot. They were very articulate on… They just love writing. And we have a bunch of that writing as preserved. So we know what led up to the Peloponnesian War between the Spartanand Athenian Alliance, and we know that they saw it coming.\n\n(00:21:16): Spartans didn’t write… They also weren’t very verbose by their nature, but they did write, but they weren’t very verbose. They were [inaudible 00:21:23]. But the Athenians and the other Greeks wrote a line, and Spartan was really kind of like the leader of Greece. But Athens grew stronger and stronger with each passing year. And everyone’s like, “Well, that’s inevitable that there’s going to be a clash between Athens and Sparta. Well, how do we avoid that?” And actually they saw it coming and they still could not avoid it. So at some point, if one group, one civilization or country or whatever exceeds another sort of like the United States has been the biggest kid on the block since I think around 1890 from an economic standpoint.\n\n(00:22:14): So the United States has been the most powerful economic engine in the world longer than anyone’s been alive. And the foundation of war is economics. So now we have a situation in the case of China where the economy is likely to be two, perhaps three times larger than that of the US. So imagine you’re the biggest kid on the block for as long as anyone can remember, and suddenly a kid comes along who’s twice your size.\n\nLex Fridman (00:22:55): So we see it coming, how is it possible to stop? Let me throw something out there, just intermixing of cultures understanding there does seem to be a giant cultural gap in understanding of each other. And you’re an interesting case study because you are an American, obviously you’ve done a lot of incredible manufacture here in the United States, but you also work with China.\n\nElon Musk (00:23:20): I’ve spent a lot of time in China and met with the leadership many times.\n\nLex Fridman (00:23:22): Maybe a good question to ask is, what are some things about China that people don’t understand, positive just in the culture? What’s some interesting things that you’ve learned about the Chinese?\n\nElon Musk (00:23:36): Well, the sheer number of really smart, hardworking people in China is incredible. There are really say how many smart, hardworking people are there in China? There’s far more of them there than there are here, I think, in my opinion. And they’ve got a lot of energy. So I mean, the architecture in China that’s in recent years is far more impressive than the US. I mean the train stations, the buildings, the high speed rail, everything, it’s really far more impressive than what we have in the US. I mean, I recommend somebody just go to Shanghai and Beijing, look at the buildings and go to take the train from Beijing to Xian, where you have the terracotta warriors. China’s got an incredible history, very long history, and I think arguably in terms of the use of language from a written standpoint, one of the oldest, perhaps the oldest written language, and then China, people did write things down.\n\n(00:24:50): So now China historically has always been, with rare exception, been internally focused. They have not been inquisitive. They’ve fought each other. There’ve been many, many civil wars. In the Three Kingdoms war, I believe they lost about 70% of their population. So they’ve had brutal internal wars, civil wars that make the US Civil War look small by comparison. So I think it’s important to appreciate that China is not monolithic. We sort of think of China as a sort of one entity of one mind. And this is definitely not the case. From what I’ve seen and I think most people who understand China would agree, people in China think about China 10 times more than they think about anything outside of China. So it’s like 90% of their consideration is internal.\n\nLex Fridman (00:26:01): Well, isn’t that a really positive thing when you’re talking about the collaboration and the future piece between superpowers when you’re inward facing, which is focusing on improving yourself versus focusing on quote, unquote improving others through military might.\n\nElon Musk (00:26:18): The good news, the history of China suggests that China is not inquisitive, meaning they’re not going to go out and invade a whole bunch of countries. Now they do feel very strongly… So that’s good. I mean, because a lot of very powerful countries have been inquisitive. The US is also one of the rare cases that has not been inquisitive. After World War II, the US could have basically taken over the world in any country, we’ve got nukes, nobody else has got nukes. We don’t even have to lose soldiers. Which country do you want? And the United States could have taken over everything and it didn’t. And the United States actually helped rebuild countries. So it helped rebuild Europe, helped rebuild Japan. This is very unusual behavior, almost unprecedented.\n\n(00:27:10): The US did conspicuous acts of kindness like the Berlin Airlift. And I think it’s always like, well, America’s done bad things. Well, of course America’s done bad things, but one needs to look at the whole track record and just generally, one sort of test would be how do you treat your prisoners at war? Or let’s say, no offense to the Russians, but let’s say you’re in Germany, it’s 1945, you’ve got the Russian Army coming one side and you’ve got the French, British and American Army’s coming the other side, who would you like to be just surrendered to? No country is [inaudible 00:27:58] perfect, but I recommend being a POW with the Americans. That would be my choice very strongly.\n\nLex Fridman (00:28:07): In the full menu of POWs in the US.\n\nElon Musk (00:28:08): Very much so. And in fact, Wernher von Braun, a smart guy, was like, “We’ve got to be captured by the Americans.” And in fact, the SS was under orders to execute von Braun and all of the German rocket conditioners, and they narrowly escaped. They said they were going out for a walk in the woods. They left in the middle of winter with no coats and then ran, but no food, no coats, no water, and just ran like hell and ran West and Vice Sherlock, I think his brother found a bicycle or something and then just cycled West as fast as he couldn’t have found a US patrol. So anyway, that’s one way you can tell morality is where do you want to be a PW? It’s not fun anywhere, but some places are much worse than others. Anyway, so America has been, while far from perfect, generally a benevolent force, and we should always be self-critical and we try to be better, but anyone with half a brain knows that.\n\n(00:29:31): So I think there are… In this way, China and the United States are similar. Neither country has been acquisitive in a significant way. So that’s a shared principle, I guess. Now, China does feel very strongly about Taiwan. They’ve been very clear about that for a long time. From this standpoint, it would be like one of the states is not there like Hawaii or something like that but more significant than Hawaii. And Hawaii is pretty significant for us. So they view it as really there’s a fundamental part of China, the island of Formosa, not Taiwan, that is not part of China, but should be. And the only reason it hasn’t been is because the US Pacific fleet.\n\nLex Fridman (00:30:32): And is their economic power grows and is their military power grows, the thing that they’re clearly saying is their interest will clearly be materialized.\n\nElon Musk (00:30:46): Yes, China has been very clear that they’ll incorporate Taiwan peacefully or militarily, but that they will incorporate it from their standpoint is 100% likely.\n\nLex Fridman (00:31:04): Something you said about conspicuous acts of kindness as a geopolitical policy, it almost seems naive, but I’d venture to say that this is probably the path forward, how you avoid most wars. Just as you say it sounds naive, but it’s kind of brilliant. If you believe in the goodness of underlying most of human nature, it just seems like conspicuous acts of kindness can reverberate through the populace of the countries involved and deescalate.\n\nElon Musk (00:31:44): Absolutely. So after World War I, they made a big mistake. They basically tried to lump all of blame on Germany and saddle Germany with impossible reparations. And really there was quite a bit of blame to go around for World War I, but they try to put it all in Germany and that laid the seeds for World War II. So a lot of people, were not just Hitler, a lot of people felt wronged and they wanted vengeance and they got it.\n\nLex Fridman (00:32:38): People don’t forget.\n\nElon Musk (00:32:41): Yeah, you kill somebody’s father, mother or son, daughter, they’re not going to forget it. They’ll want vengeance. So after World War II, they’re like, “Well, the Treaty of Versi was a huge mistake in World War I. And so this time, instead of crushing the losers, we’re actually going to help them with the module plan, and we’re going to help rebuild Germany. We’re going to help rebuild Austria and Italy and whatnot.” So that was the right move.\n\nLex Fridman (00:33:26): It does feel like there’s a profound truth to the conspicuous acts of kindness being an antidote to this.\n\nElon Musk (00:33:37): Something must stop the cycle of reciprocal violence. Something must stop it, or it’ll never stop. Just eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth, limb for a limb, life for a life forever and ever.\n\nLex Fridman (00:33:57): To escape briefly the darkness, was some incredible engineering work, xAI just released Grok AI assistant that I’ve gotten a chance to play with. It’s amazing on many levels. First of all, it’s amazing that a relatively small team in a relatively short amount of time was able to develop this close to state-of-the-art system. Another incredible thing is there’s a regular mode and there’s a fun mode.\n\nElon Musk (00:34:23): Yeah, I guess I’m to blame for that one.\n\nLex Fridman (00:34:27): First of all, I wish everything in life had a fun mode.\n\nElon Musk (00:34:29): Yeah.\n\nLex Fridman (00:34:30): There’s something compelling beyond just fun about the fun mode interacting with a large language model. I’m not sure exactly what it is because I’ve only have had a little bit of time to play with it, but it just makes it more interesting, more vibrant to interact with the system.\n\nElon Musk (00:34:47): Yeah, absolutely. Our AI, Grok, is modeled after The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, which is one of my favorite books, which it’s a book on philosophy. It’s-\n\nElon Musk (00:35:00): My favorite books, it’s a book on philosophy, disguises book on humor. And I would say that forms the basis of my philosophy, which is that we don’t know the meaning of life, but the more we can expand the scope and scale of consciousness, digital and biological, the more we’re able to understand what questions to ask about the answer that is the universe. So I have a philosophy of curiosity.\n\nLex Fridman (00:35:34): There is generally a feeling like this AI system has an outward looking, like the way you are sitting with a good friend looking up at the stars, asking pod head like questions about the universe, wondering what it’s all about. The curiosity that you talk about. No matter how mundane the question I ask it, there’s a sense of cosmic grandeur to the whole thing.\n\nElon Musk (00:35:59): Well, we are actually working hard to have engineering math, physics answers that you can count on. So for the other AIs out there, these so-called large language models, I’ve not found the engineering to be reliable. It unfortunately hallucinates most when you at least want it to hallucinate. So when you’re asking important, difficult questions, that’s when it tends to be confidently wrong. So we’re really trying hard to say, okay, how do we be as grounded as possible? So you can count on the results, trace things back to physics first principles, mathematical logic. So underlying the humor is an aspiration to adhere to the truth of the universe as closely as possible.\n\nLex Fridman (00:37:01): That’s really tricky.\n\nElon Musk (00:37:02): It is tricky. So that’s why there’s always going to be some amount of error. But do we want to aspire to be as truthful as possible about the answers with acknowledged error. So that there was always, you don’t want to be confidently wrong, so you’re not going to be right every time, but you want to minimize how often you’re confidently wrong. And then like I said, once you can count on the logic as being not violating physics, then you can start to bull on that to create inventions, like invent new technologies. But if you cannot count on the foundational physics being correct, obviously the inventions are simply wishful thinking, imagination land. Magic basically.\n\nLex Fridman (00:38:01): Well, as you said, I think one of the big goals of XAI is to understand the universe.\n\nElon Musk (00:38:06): Yes, that’s how simple three word mission.\n\nLex Fridman (00:38:13): If you look out far into the future, do you think on this level of physics, the very edge of what we understand about physics, do you think it will make the sexiest discovery of them as we know now, unifying general relativity and quantum mechanics? So coming up with a theory of everything, do you think it could push towards that direction, almost like theoretical physics discoveries?\n\nElon Musk (00:38:38): If an AI cannot figure out new physics, it’s clearly not equal to humans, nor has surpassed humans because humans have figured out new physics. Physics is just deepening what’s inside into how reality works. And then there’s engineering which is inventing things that have never existed. Now the range of possibilities for engineering is far greater than for physics because once you figure out the rules of the universe, that’s it. You’ve discovered things that already existed. But from that you can then build technologies that are really almost limitless in the variety. And it’s like once you understand the rules of the game properly, and with current physics, we do at least at a local level, understand how physics works very well. Our ability to predict things is incredibly good. Degree to which quantum mechanics can predict outcomes is incredible. That was my hardest class in college by the way. My senior quantum mechanics class was harder than all of my other classes put together.\n\nLex Fridman (00:39:50): To get an AI system, a large language model be as reliable as quantum mechanics and physics is very difficult.\n\nElon Musk (00:40:01): Yeah. You have to test any conclusions against the ground truth of reality. Reality is the ultimate judge. Like physics is the law, everything else is a recommendation. I’ve seen plenty of people break the laws made by man, but none break the laws made by physics.\n\nLex Fridman (00:40:15): It’s a good test actually. If this LLM understands and matches physics, then you can more reliably trust whatever it thinks about the current state of politics in some sense.\n\nElon Musk (00:40:28): And it’s also not the case currently that even that its internal logic is not consistent. So especially with the approach of just predicting a token predict token, predict token, it’s like a vector sum. You’re summing up a bunch of vectors, but you can get drift. A little bit of error adds up and by the time you are many tokens down the path, it doesn’t make any sense.\n\nLex Fridman (00:40:59): So it has to be somehow self-aware about the drift.\n\nElon Musk (00:41:02): It has to be self-aware about the drift, and then look at the thing as a gestalt as a whole and say it doesn’t have coherence as a whole. When authors write books, they will write the book and then they’ll go and revise it, take into account all the end and the beginning and the middle and rewrite it to achieve coherence so that it doesn’t end up at a nonsensical place.\n\nLex Fridman (00:41:33): Maybe the process of revising is what reasoning is, and then the process of revising is how you get closer and closer to truth. At least I approached that way, you just say a bunch of bullshit first and then you get it better. You start a bullshit and then you-\n\nElon Musk (00:41:51): Create a draft and then you iterate on that draft until it has coherence, until it all adds up basically.\n\nLex Fridman (00:41:59): Another question about theory of everything, but for intelligence, as you’re exploring this with XAI, creating this intelligence system? Do you think there is a theory of intelligence where you get to understand what is the I in AGI and what is the I in human intelligence?\n\nElon Musk (00:42:22): No, I in team America. Wait, there is.\n\nLex Fridman (00:42:24): No, it’s going to be stuck in my head now. Yeah, there’s no me and whatever in quantum mechanics, wait. I mean is that part of the process of discovering, understanding the universe is understanding intelligence?\n\nElon Musk (00:42:50): Yeah. I think we need to understand intelligence, understand consciousness. I mean there are some fundamental questions of what is thought, what is emotion? Is it really just one atom bumping into another atom? It feels like something more than that. So I think we’re probably missing some really big things.\n\nLex Fridman (00:43:18): Something that’ll be obvious in retrospect. You put the whole consciousness and motion.\n\nElon Musk (00:43:26): Well, some people would quote like a soul religion, be a soul. You feel like you’re you, I mean you don’t feel like you’re just a collection of atoms, but on what dimension does thought exist? What dimension does do emotions exist? Because we feel them very strongly. I suspect there’s more to it than atoms bumping into atoms.\n\nLex Fridman (00:43:52): And maybe AI can pave the path to the discovery whatever the hell that thing is.\n\nElon Musk (00:43:58): Yeah. What is consciousness? When you put the atoms in a particular shape, why are they able to form thoughts and take actions and feelings?\n\nLex Fridman (00:44:10): And even if it is an illusion, why is this illusion so compelling?\n\nElon Musk (00:44:13): Yeah. Why does the solution exist? On what plane does the solution exist? And sometimes I wonder is either perhaps everything’s conscious or nothing’s conscious. One of the two.\n\nLex Fridman (00:44:33): Like the former, everything conscious just seems more fun.\n\nElon Musk (00:44:37): It does seem more fun, yes. But we’re composed of atoms and those atoms are composed of quarks and leptons and those quarks and leptons have been around since the beginning of the universe.\n\nLex Fridman (00:44:50): “The beginning of the universe.”\n\nElon Musk (00:44:53): What seems to be the beginning of the universe.\n\nLex Fridman (00:44:55): The first time we talked, you said, which is surreal to think that this discussion was happening is becoming a reality. I asked you what question would you ask an AGI system once you create it? And you said, “What’s outside the simulation,” is the question. Good question. But it seems like with Grok you started literally the system’s goal is to be able to answer such questions and to ask such questions.\n\nElon Musk (00:45:24): Where are the aliens?\n\nLex Fridman (00:45:25): Where are the aliens?\n\nElon Musk (00:45:26): That’s one of the foam paradox question. A lot of people have asked me if I’ve seen any evidence of aliens and I haven’t, which is kind of concerning. I think I’d probably prefer to at least have seen some archeological evidence of aliens. To the best of my knowledge, I’m not aware of any evidence surveillance. If they’re out there, they’re very subtle. We might just be the only consciousness, at least in the galaxy. And if you look at say the history of Earth, to believe the archeological record Earth is about four and a half billion years old. Civilization as measured from the first writing is only about 5,000 years old. We have to give some credit there to the ancient Sumerians who aren’t around anymore. I think it was an archaic pre-form was the first actual symbolic representation, but only about 5,000 years ago. I think that’s a good date for when we say civilization started. That’s 1000000th of Earth’s existence.\n\n(00:46:35): So civilization has been around. It’s really a flash in the pan so far. And why did it take so long? Four and a half billion years, for the vast majority of the time, there was no life. And then there was archaic bacteria for a very long time. And then you had mitochondria get captured, multicellular life, differentiation into plants and animals, life moving from the oceans to land, mammals, higher brain functions. And the sun is expanding slowly but it’ll heat the earth up at some point in the future, boil the oceans and earth will become like Venus, where life as we know it is impossible. So if we do not become multiplanetary and ultimately solar system, annihilation of all life on earth is a certainty. A certainty. And it could be as little as on the galactic timescale, half a billion years, long time by human standards, but that’s only 10% longer than earth has been around at all. So if life had taken 10% longer to evolve on earth, it wouldn’t exist at all.\n\nLex Fridman (00:48:27): Glad a deadline coming up, you better hurry. But that said, as you said, humans intelligent life on earth developed a lot of cool stuff very quickly. So it seems like becoming a multiplanetary is almost inevitable. Unless we destroy-\n\nElon Musk (00:48:45): We need to do it. I suspect that if we are able to go out there and explore other star systems that we… There’s a good chance we find a whole bunch of long dead one planet civilizations that never made it past their home planet.\n\nLex Fridman (00:49:03): That’s so sad. Also fascinating.\n\nElon Musk (00:49:08): I mean there are various explanations for paradox and one is they’re these great vultures which civilizations don’t pass through. And one of those great vultures is do you become a multi-plan civilization or not? And if you don’t, it’s simply a matter of time before something happens on your planet, either natural or manmade that causes us to die out. Like the dinosaurs, where are they now? They didn’t have spaceships.\n\nLex Fridman (00:49:42): I think the more likely thing is because just to empathize with the aliens that they found us and they’re protecting us and letting us be.\n\nElon Musk (00:49:51): I hope so. Nice aliens.\n\nLex Fridman (00:49:53): Just like the tribes in the Amazon, the uncontacted tribes or protecting them. That’s what-\n\nElon Musk (00:49:59): That would be a nice explanation.\n\nLex Fridman (00:50:00): Or you could have, what was it? I think Andre Kappelhoff said, “It’s like the ants and the Amazon asking where’s everybody?”\n\nElon Musk (00:50:10): Well, they do run into a lot of other ants.\n\nLex Fridman (00:50:12): That’s true.\n\nElon Musk (00:50:14): These ant wars.\n\nLex Fridman (00:50:16): Sounds like a good TV show.\n\nElon Musk (00:50:18): Yeah. They literally have these big wars between various ants.\n\nLex Fridman (00:50:21): Yeah. Maybe I’m just dismissing all the different diversity of ants.\n\nElon Musk (00:50:28): Listen to that Werner Herzog talking about the jungle. It’s really hilarious. Have you heard it?\n\nLex Fridman (00:50:31): No, I have not. But Werner Herzog is a way.\n\nElon Musk (00:50:37): You should play it as an interlude in the… It’s on YouTube. It’s awesome.\n\nLex Fridman (00:50:45): I love him so much.\n\nElon Musk (00:50:47): He’s great.\n\nLex Fridman (00:50:47): Was he the director of happy people life and the Taiga? I think also-\n\nElon Musk (00:50:51): He did that bear documentary. I did this thing about penguins.\n\nLex Fridman (00:50:58): The psycho analysis of a penguin.\n\nElon Musk (00:51:00): Yeah. The penguins headed for mountains that are 70 miles away and penguin is just headed for dom, basically.\n\nLex Fridman (00:51:08): Well, he had a cynical take. He could be just a brave explorer and there’ll be great stories told about him amongst the penguin population for many centuries to come. What were we talking about? Okay.\n\nElon Musk (00:51:28): Yeah. So aliens, I mean, I don’t know. Look, I think the smart move is just this is the first time in the history of earth that it’s been possible for life to extend beyond earth. That window is open. Now it may be open for a long time or it may be open for a short time and it may be open now and then never open again. So I think the smart move here is to make life multiplanetary while it’s possible to do so. We don’t want to be one of those lame one planet civilizations that just dies out.\n\nLex Fridman (00:52:04): No, those are lame.\n\nElon Musk (00:52:05): Yeah. Lame. Self-respecting, civilization would be one planet.\n\nLex Fridman (00:52:11): There’s not going to be a Wikipedia entry for one of those. Do SpaceX have an official policy for when we meet aliens?\n\nElon Musk (00:52:23): No.\n\nLex Fridman (00:52:24): That seems irresponsible.\n\nElon Musk (00:52:30): I mean, look, if I see the slightest indication that there are aliens, I will immediately post on X platform anything I know.\n\nLex Fridman (00:52:38): It could be the most liked reposted post of all time.\n\nElon Musk (00:52:42): Yeah. I mean, look, we have more satellites up there right now than everyone else combined. So we know if we’ve got a maneuver around something and we don’t have to maneuver around anything.\n\nLex Fridman (00:52:55): If we go to the big questions once again, you said you’re with Einstein, that you believe in the goddess Spinoza.\n\nElon Musk (00:53:04): Yes.\n\nLex Fridman (00:53:05): So that’s that view that God is like the universe and reveals himself through the laws of physics or as Einstein said, “Through the lawful harmony of the world.”\n\nElon Musk (00:53:16): Yeah. I would agree that God of the simulator or whatever the supreme beings reveal themselves through the physics, they have creatives of this existence and incumbent upon us to try to understand more about this one creation.\n\nLex Fridman (00:53:38): Who created this thing? Who’s running this thing? Embodying it into a singular question with a sexy word on top of it is focusing the mind to understand. It does seem like there’s a, again, it could be an illusion. It seems like there’s a purpose that there’s an underlying master plan of some kind, and it seems like.\n\nElon Musk (00:53:58): There may not be a master plan in the sense. So maybe an interesting answer to the question of determinism versus free will is that if we are in a simulation, the reason that these higher beings would hold a simulation is to see what happens. So they don’t know what happens otherwise they wouldn’t hold the simulation. So when humans create a simulation, so it’s SpaceX and Tesla, we create simulations all the time. Especially for the rocket, you have to run a lot of simulations to understand what’s going to happen because you can’t really test the rocket until it goes to space and you want it to work. So you have to simulate subsonic, transonic, supersonic, hypersonic, ascend, and then coming back, super high heating and orbital dynamics. All this has got to be simulated because you don’t get very many kicks at the can. But we run the simulations to see what happens, not if we knew what happens, we wouldn’t run the simulation. So whoever created this existence, they’re running it because they don’t know what’s going to happen, not because they do.\n\nLex Fridman (00:55:23): So maybe we both played Diablo. Maybe Diablo was created to see if Druid, your character, could defeat Uber Lilith at the end. They didn’t know.\n\nElon Musk (00:55:34): Well, the funny thing is Uber Lilith, her title is Hatred Incarnate. And right now, I guess you can ask the Diablo team, but it’s almost impossible to defeat Hatred in the eternal realm.\n\nLex Fridman (00:55:55): Yeah. You’ve streamed yourself dominating Tier 100 Nightmare Dungeon. And still-\n\nElon Musk (00:56:00): I can cruise through Tier 100 Nightmare Dungeon like a stroll in the park.\n\nLex Fridman (00:56:07): And still you’re defeated by Hatred?\n\nElon Musk (00:56:09): Yeah. I guess maybe the second hardest boss is Duriel. Duriel can even scratch the paint. So I killed Duriel so many times and every other boss in the game, all of them kill him so many times, it’s easy. But Uber Lilith, otherwise known as Hatred Incarnate, especially if you’re Duriel and you have no ability to go to be vulnerable, there are these random death waves that come at you.\n\n(00:56:44): Really I am 52, so my reflex is not what they used to be, but I have a lifetime of playing video games. At one point, I was maybe one of the best quake players in the world. I actually won money in what I think was the first paid eSports tournament in the US. We were doing four person quake tournaments and I was the second best person on the team and the actual best person that… We were actually winning, we would’ve come first, except the best person on the team. His computer crashed halfway through the game. So we came second, but I got money for it and everything. So basically I got skills, albeit no spring chicken these days. And to be totally frank, it’s driving me crazy to beat Lilith as a Druid, basically trying to beat Hatred Incarnate in the eternal realm.\n\nLex Fridman (00:57:40): As a Druid.\n\nElon Musk (00:57:41): As a Druid. This is really vexing, let me tell you.\n\nLex Fridman (00:57:49): I mean, the challenge is part of the fun. I have seen directly, you’re actually a world-class, incredible video game player. And I think Diablo, so you’re just picking up a new game and you’re figuring out its fundamentals. You’re also with the Paragon Board and the build are not somebody like me who perfectly follows whatever they suggest on the internet. You’re also an innovator there, which is hilarious to watch. It’s like a mad scientist just trying to figure out the Paragon Board and the build. Is there some interesting insights there about if somebody’s starting as a druid, do you have advice?\n\nElon Musk (00:58:30): I would not recommend playing a druid in the eternal realm. Right now I think the most powerful character in the seasonal realm is the Sorcerer with the lightning balls. The smokes have huge balls in the seasonal.\n\nLex Fridman (00:58:46): Yeah, that’s what they say.\n\nElon Musk (00:58:49): So have huge balls. They do huge balls of lightning.\n\nLex Fridman (00:58:54): I’ll take you word for it.\n\nElon Musk (00:58:57): In the seasonal realm, it’s pretty easy to beat Uber Lilith because you get these vapor powers that out amplify your damage and increase your defense and whatnot. So really quite easy to defeat Hatred seasonally, but to defeat Hatred eternally very difficult, almost impossible. It’s very impossible. It seems like a metaphor for life.\n\nLex Fridman (00:59:24): Yeah. I like the idea that Elon Musk, because I was playing Diablo yesterday and I saw Level 100 Druid just run by, I will never die and then run back the other way. And this metaphor, it’s hilarious that you, Elon Musk is restlessly, fighting Hatred in this demonic realm.\n\nElon Musk (00:59:47): Yes.\n\nLex Fridman (00:59:48): It’s hilarious. I mean it’s pretty hilarious.\n\nElon Musk (00:59:50): No, it’s absurd. Really, it’s exercise and absurdity and it makes me want to pull my hair out.\n\nLex Fridman (00:59:57): Yeah. What do you get from video games in general, for you personally?\n\nElon Musk (01:00:03): I don’t know. It calms my mind. I mean, killing the demons in a video game calms the demons in my mind. If you play a tough video game, you can get into a state of flow, which is very enjoyable. Admittedly, it needs to be not too easy, not too hard, kind of in the Goldilocks zone, and I guess you generally want to feel like you’re progressing in the game. A good video, and there’s also beautiful art, engaging storylines, and it’s like an amazing puzzle to solve, I think. So it’s like solving the puzzle.\n\nLex Fridman (01:00:52): Elden Ring the greatest game of all time. I still haven’t played it, but to you-\n\nElon Musk (01:00:56): Elden Ring is definitely a candidate for best game ever. Top five for sure.\n\nLex Fridman (01:01:01): I think I’ve been scared how hard it is or how hard I hear it is, but it’s beautiful.\n\nElon Musk (01:01:06): Elden Ring, feels like it’s designed by an alien.\n\nLex Fridman (01:01:13): It’s a theme to this discussion. In what way?\n\nElon Musk (01:01:17): It’s so unusual. It’s incredibly creative, and the art is stunning. I recommend playing it on a big resolution, high dynamic raised TV even. It doesn’t need to be a monitor. Just the art is incredible. It’s so beautiful and it’s so unusual, and each of those top bus battles is unique. It’s a unique puzzle to solve. Each one’s different and the strategy you use to solve one battle is different from another battle.\n\nLex Fridman (01:01:54): That said, you said Druid, an internal against Uber Lilith is the hardest boss battle you’ve ever…\n\nElon Musk (01:02:00): Correct. That is currently the, and I’ve played a lot of video games because that’s my primary recreational activity. And yes, beating Hatred in the internal realm is the hardest bus battle in life. And in the video game. I’m not sure it’s possible, but I do make progress. So then I’m like, ” Okay. I’m making progress. Maybe if I just tweak that paragon board a little more, I can do it could.” Just dodge a few more waves, I could do it.\n\nLex Fridman (01:02:43): Well, the simulation is created for the purpose of figuring out if it can be done, and you’re just a cog in the machine of the simulation.\n\nElon Musk (01:02:51): Yeah, it might be. I have a feeling that at least I think-\n\nLex Fridman (01:03:02): It’s doable.\n\nElon Musk (01:03:03): It’s doable. Yes.\n\nLex Fridman (01:03:05): Well, that’s the human spirit right there to believe.\n\nElon Musk (01:03:09): Yeah. I mean, it did prompt me to think about just hate in general, which is you want to be careful of one of those things where you wish for something that sounds good, but if you get it’s actually a dystopian situation. So if you wish for world peace sounds good, but how’d it enforced and at what cost eternal peace? It might actually be worse to have eternal peace because of what that would entail. The suppression of everyone, it might be the suppression of progress. It might be an ossified society that never changes. What I’m saying is that there is an argument that if you wish for no war, you should be careful what you wish for because what’s required in order for there to be no war might be worse than a little war.\n\nLex Fridman (01:04:22): Yeah. The things we’ll consider to be flaws of human civilization might be a necessary components for whatever optimal looks like. I mean this, do you worry about AI, AGI enabling a dystopian state of this nature, whether it’s 1984 with surveillance and fear or brave new world with pleasure and what is it? Lots of sex, but no deep human experience.\n\nElon Musk (01:04:52): There’s actually a real drug called Soma.\n\nLex Fridman (01:04:54): There is?\n\nElon Musk (01:04:54): Yes.\n\nLex Fridman (01:04:56): I’m going to take notes.\n\nElon Musk (01:04:58): Does Gong know about it? No. He probably will go to Brave New World.\n\nElon Musk (01:05:02): We got to ask it.\n\nLex Fridman (01:05:03): What would be the question?\n\nElon Musk (01:05:04): Tell us about the drug called Soma.\n\nLex Fridman (01:05:05): Tell us about the drug called Soma. It’s going to go to Brave New World, I think.\n\nElon Musk (01:05:15): Well, there’s a real drug as well.\n\nLex Fridman (01:05:18): Searching for Soma drug information. Oh boy. Soma, the wonder drug… By the way, I’m in fun mode.\n\nElon Musk (01:05:27): Okay, fun. Yeah. So it’s talking about the real drug.\n\nLex Fridman (01:05:31): It’s a muscle relaxant that’s been around since the 1950s. It’s used to treat muscle pain and discomfort, and it does this by altering the activity between neurons and the spinal cord. Now, Soma isn’t just a pain reliever, it’s also a bit of a sedative. It can make you feel a bit drowsy. So it’s not something to take if you’re planning on operating, having machinery or trying to solve complex math equations. And it goes on and on. In conclusion, Soma is a drug that can be helpful for those dealing with muscle pain, but it’s not without its risks. That’s pretty good. Wait a minute.\n\nElon Musk (01:06:01): That’s the real drug it’s talking about.\n\nLex Fridman (01:06:03): It’s the real drug. And of course the fun is always use it responsibly in accordance with the advice of a healthcare professional. And remember, in the end, the universe is probably just a giant computer simulation, so don’t take anything too seriously. I love it.\n\nElon Musk (01:06:20): I love it. Yeah.\n\nLex Fridman (01:06:22): It also really nicely includes the tweets, posts on X that are relevant to this, which is really cool. That integrates everything together. The interface is one of the really cool things here.\n\nElon Musk (01:06:36): Yeah. Seems done a great job. You could say no, I mean, Soma from Brave New World, because it thinks you mean, you mean Soma, the real drug. No, I mean Soma from Brave Beer World.\n\nLex Fridman (01:06:56): It’s going to be like, “Oops, I’m really sorry.” I’m really surprised it went to the real drug first. My apologies. I was thinking of the muscle relaxer. Soma for brand New World is a different beast altogether. Now this Huxley dystopian, Soma is a drug that plays a central role in the society depicted in the book. It’s a mood altering hallucinogenic drug that’s used to keep the population docile and content in the novel. To use Soma in Brave New World raises some interesting questions about the nature of happiness and the role of drugs in society, man.\n\nElon Musk (01:07:30): Exactly. Is it better to live in a world where everyone is happy all the time, even if that happiness is artificial? It’s good question. This is what I mean. Do you wish for world peace and happiness all the time? Are you sure? Because that might be a society that is essentially sterile and ossified that never changes, that is ultimately doomed.\n\nLex Fridman (01:07:58): This kind of tension between doctors and the light-\n\nElon Musk (01:08:04): This is really a very good summary. It really gets to the point. This is not simply regurgitating a brave new world. It’s actually getting to the salient element of Soma as a drug. Do you actually want to be in a situation where everyone is happy all the time, even though it’s artificial? Or is it better to confront the challenges of life and experience the full range of human emotions, even if it means experiencing pain and suffering? For\n\nLex Fridman (01:08:31): Those listening, by the way, Elon just read directly from Grok, which is a really nice kind of insightful, philosophical analysis of the tension here. Interesting.\n\nElon Musk (01:08:41): It pretty much nails it. In conclusion, Soma from Brave New World is fictional drug that’s used to explore some deep philosophical questions about the nature of happiness and the role of drugs in society. It’s a powerful symbol of the dangers of using drugs to escape from reality and the importance of confronting the challenges of life head on. Nailed it. And the crazy thing is we do have a real drug called Soma, which is like the drug in the book. And I’m like, “They must’ve named it Probably.” Some of the real drug is quite effective on back pain.\n\nLex Fridman (01:09:17): So you know about this drug. It’s fascinating\n\nElon Musk (01:09:20): I’ve taken it because I had a squashed disc in my C5-C6.\n\nLex Fridman (01:09:26): So it takes the physical pain away. But Soma here-\n\nElon Musk (01:09:28): It doesn’t completely, it reduces the amount of pain you feel, but at the expense of mental acuity, it dells your mind. Just like the drug in the book.\n\nLex Fridman (01:09:41): Just like the drug in the book, and hence the trade off. The thing that seems like utopia could be a dystopia after all.\n\nElon Musk (01:09:49): Yeah. Actually I was towing a friend of mine saying, “Would you really want there to be no hate in the world? Really none?” I wonder why hate evolved. I’m not saying we should have…\n\nElon Musk (01:10:00): I wonder why hate evolved. I’m not saying we should amplify hate, of course, I think we should try to minimize it, but none at all. There might be a reason for hate.\n\nLex Fridman (01:10:13): And suffering. It’s really complicated to consider that some amount of human suffering is necessary for human flourishing.\n\nElon Musk (01:10:22): Is it possible to appreciate the highs without knowing the lows?\n\nLex Fridman (01:10:29): And that all is summarized there in a single statement from God. Okay.\n\nElon Musk (01:10:34): No highs, no lows, who knows?\n\nLex Fridman (01:10:38): [inaudible 01:10:38]. It seems that training LLMs efficiently is a big focus for xAI. First of all, what’s the limit of what’s possible in terms of efficiency? There’s this terminology of useful productivity per watt. What have you learned from pushing the limits of that?\n\nElon Musk (01:10:59): Well, I think it’s helpful, the tools of physics are very powerful and can be applied I think to really any arena in life. It’s really just critical thinking. For something important you need to reason with from first principles and think about things in the limit one direction or the other. So in the limit, even at the Kardashev scale, meaning even if you harness the entire power of the sun, you’ll still care about useful compute per watt. That’s where I think, probably where things are headed from the standpoint of AI is that we have a silicon shortage now that will transition to a voltage transformer shortage in about a year. Ironically, transformers for transformers. You need transformers to run transformers.\n\nLex Fridman (01:11:52): Somebody has a sense of humor in this thing.\n\nElon Musk (01:11:57): I think, yes, fate loves irony, ironic humor, an ironically funny outcome seems to be often what fate wants.\n\nLex Fridman (01:12:09): Humor is all you need. I think spice is all you need somebody posted.\n\nElon Musk (01:12:13): Yeah. But yeah, so we have silicon shortage today, a voltage step down transformer shortage probably in about a year, and then just electricity shortages in general in about two years. I gave a speech for the world gathering of utility companies, electricity companies, and I said, look, you really need to prepare for traveling of electricity demand because all transport is going to go electric with the ironic exception of rockets, and heating will also go electric. So energy usage right now is roughly one third, very rough terms, one third electricity, one third transport, one third heating. And so in order for everything to go sustainable, to go electric, you need to triple electricity output. So I encourage the utilities to build more power of plants and also to probably have, well, not probably, they should definitely buy more batteries because the grid currently is sized for realtime load, which is kind of crazy because that means you’ve got to size for whatever the peak electricity demand is, the worst second or the worst day of the year, or you can have a brown out or blackout.\n\n(01:13:37): We had that crazy blackout for several days in Austin because there’s almost no buffering of energy in the grid. If you’ve got a hydropower plant you can buffer energy, but otherwise it’s all real time. So with batteries, you can produce energy at night and use it during the day so you can buffer. So I expect that there will be very heavy usage of batteries in the future because the peak to trough ratio for power plants is anywhere from two to five, so its lowest point to highest point.\n\nLex Fridman (01:14:20): So batteries necessary to balance it out, but the demand, as you’re saying, is going to grow, grow, grow, grow.\n\nElon Musk (01:14:25): Yeah.\n\nLex Fridman (01:14:25): And part of that is the compute?\n\nElon Musk (01:14:29): Yes. Yes. I mean, electrification of transport and electric heating will be much bigger than AI, at least-\n\nLex Fridman (01:14:40): In the short term.\n\nElon Musk (01:14:40): In the short term. But even for AI, you really have a growing demand for electricity, for electric vehicles, and a growing demand for electricity to run the computers for AI. And so this is obviously, can lead to electricity shortage.\n\nLex Fridman (01:14:58): How difficult is the problem of, in this particular case, maximizing the useful productivity per watt for training and that’s, this seems to be really where the big problem we’re facing that needs to be solved, is how to use the power efficiently. What you’ve learned so far about applying this physics first principle of reasoning in this domain, how difficult is this problem?\n\nElon Musk (01:15:29): It will get solved. It’s the question of how long it takes to solve it. So at various points, there’s some kind of limiting factor to progress and with regard to AI, I’m saying right now the limiting factor is silicon chips and that will, we’re going to then have more chips than we can actually plug in and turn on probably in about a year. The initial constraint being literally voltage step down transformers because you’ve got power coming in at 300,000 volts and it’s got to step all the way down eventually to around 0.7 volts. So it’s a very big amount of, the voltage step down is gigantic and the industry is not used to rapid growth.\n\nLex Fridman (01:16:22): Okay. Let’s talk about the competition here. You’ve shown concern about Google and Microsoft with OpenAI developing AGI. How can you help ensure with xAI and Tesla AI work that it doesn’t become a competitive race to AGI, but that is a collaborative development of safe AGI?\n\nElon Musk (01:16:42): Well, I mean I’ve been pushing for some kind of regulatory oversight for a long time. I’ve been somewhat of a Cassandra on the subject for over a decade. I think we want to be very careful in how we develop AI. It’s a great power and with great power comes great responsibility. I think it would be wise for us to have at least an objective third party who can be like a referee that can go in and understand what the various leading players are doing with AI, and even if there’s no enforcement ability, they can at least voice concerns publicly. Jeff Hinton, for example, left Google and he voiced strong concerns, but now he’s not at Google anymore, so who’s going to voice the concerns? So I think there’s, Tesla gets a lot of regulatory oversight on the automotive front. We’re subject to, I think over a hundred regulatory agencies domestically and internationally. It’s a lot. You could fill this room with the all regulations that Tesla has to adhere to for automotive. Same is true for rockets and for, currently, the limiting factor for SpaceX for Starship launch is regulatory approval.\n\n(01:18:13): The FAA has actually given their approval, but we’re waiting for fish and wildlife to finish their analysis and give their approval. That’s why I posted I want to buy a fish license on, which also refers to the Monte Python sketch. Why do you need a license for your fish? I don’t know. But according to the rules, I’m told you need some sort of fish license or something. We effectively need a fish license to launch a rocket. And I’m like, wait a second. How did the fish come into this picture? I mean, some of the things I feel like are so absurd that I want to do a comedy sketch and flash at the bottom. This is all real. This is actually what happened.\n\n(01:19:02): One of the things that was a bit of a challenge at one point is that they were worried about a rocket hitting a shark. And the ocean’s very big, and how often do you see sharks? Not that often. As a percentage of ocean surface area, sharks basically are zero. And so then we said, well, how will we calculate the probability of killing a shark? And they’re like, well, we can’t give you that information because they’re worried about shark fin hunters going and hunting sharks and I said, well, how are we supposed to, we’re on the horns of a dilemma then.\n\n(01:19:40): They said, well, there’s another part of fish and wildlife that can do this analysis. I’m like, well, why don’t you give them the data? We don’t trust them. Excuse me? They’re literally in your department. Again, this is actually what happened. And then can you do an NDA or something? Eventually they managed to solve the internal quandary, and indeed the probability of us hitting a shark is essentially zero. Then there’s another organization that I didn’t realize existed until a few months ago that cares about whether we would potentially hit a whale in international waters. Now, again, you look the surface, look at the Pacific and say what percentage of the Pacific consists of whale? I could give you a big picture and point out all the whales in this picture. I’m like, I don’t see any whales. It’s basically 0%, and if our rocket does hit a whale, which is extremely unlikely beyond all belief, fate had it, that’s a whale has some seriously bad luck, least lucky whale ever.\n\nLex Fridman (01:20:50): I mean this is quite absurd, the bureaucracy of this, however it emerged.\n\nElon Musk (01:20:57): Yes. Well, I mean one of the things that’s pretty wild is for launching out of Vanderberg in California, we had to, they were worried about seal procreation, whether the seals would be dismayed by the sonic booms. Now, there’ve been a lot of rockets launched out of Vandenberg and the seal population has steadily increased. So if anything, rocket booms are an aphrodisiac, based on the evidence, if you were to correlate rocket launches with seal population. Nonetheless, we were forced to kidnap a seal, strap it to a board, put headphones on the seal and play sonic boom sounds to it to see if it would be distressed. This is an actual thing that happened. This is actually real. I have pictures.\n\nLex Fridman (01:21:48): I would love to see this. Yeah. Sorry. There’s a seal with headphones.\n\nElon Musk (01:21:55): Yes, it’s a seal with headphones strapped to a board. Okay. Now the amazing part is how calm the seal was because if I was a seal, I’d be like, this is the end. They’re definitely going to eat me. How old the seal, when seal goes back to other seal friends, how’s he going to explain that?\n\nLex Fridman (01:22:17): They’re never going to believe them.\n\nElon Musk (01:22:18): Never going to believe him. That’s why, I’m like sort of like it’s getting kidnapped by aliens and getting anal probed. You come back and say, I swear to God, I got kidnapped by aliens and they stuck anal probe in my butt and people are like, no, they didn’t. That’s ridiculous. His seal buddies are never going to believe him that he got strapped to aboard and they put headphones on his ears and then let him go. Twice, by the way, we had to do it twice.\n\nLex Fridman (01:22:46): They let him go twice.\n\nElon Musk (01:22:48): We had to capture-\n\nLex Fridman (01:22:48): The same seal?\n\nElon Musk (01:22:49): No different seal.\n\nLex Fridman (01:22:50): Okay. Did you get a seal of approval?\n\nElon Musk (01:22:55): Exactly. Seal of approval. No, I mean I don’t think the public is quite aware of the madness that goes on.\n\nLex Fridman (01:23:02): Yeah. Yeah. It’s absurd.\n\nElon Musk (01:23:05): Fricking seals with fricking headphones.\n\nLex Fridman (01:23:07): I mean, this is a good encapsulation of the absurdity of human civilization, seals in headphones.\n\nElon Musk (01:23:13): Yes.\n\nLex Fridman (01:23:15): What are the pros and cons of open sourcing AI to you as another way to combat a company running away with AGI?\n\nElon Musk (01:23:28): In order to run really deep intelligence, you need a lot of compute. So it’s not like you can just fire up a PC in your basement and be running AGI, at least not yet. Grok was trained on 8,000 A100’s running at peak efficiency and Grok’s going to get a lot better, by the way, we will be more than doubling our compute every couple months for the next several months.\n\nLex Fridman (01:24:02): There’s a nice writeup, on how we went from Grok zero to Grok one.\n\nElon Musk (01:24:02): By Grok?\n\nLex Fridman (01:24:05): Yeah, right, grok just bragging, making shit up about itself.\n\nElon Musk (01:24:10): Just Grok, Grok, Grok.\n\nLex Fridman (01:24:17): Yeah. That’s like a weird AI dating site where it exaggerates about itself. No, there’s a writeup of where it stands now, the history of its development, and where it stands on some benchmarks compared to the state-of-the art GPT-3 five. And so I mean, there’s [inaudible 01:24:37], you can open source, once it’s trained, you can open source a model. For fine-tuning, all that kind of stuff. What to is the pros and cons of that, of open sourcing base models?\n\nElon Musk (01:24:53): I think the [inaudible 01:24:53] to open sourcing, I think perhaps with a slight time delay, I don’t know, six months even. I think I’m generally in favor of open sourcing, biased towards open sourcing. I mean, it is a concern to me that OpenAI, I was I think, I guess oddly the prime mover behind OpenAI in the sense that it was created because of discussions that I had with Larry Page back when he and I were friends and I stayed at his house and I talked to him about AI safety, and Larry did not care about AI safety, or at least at the time he didn’t. And at one point he called me a speciesist for being pro-human, and I’m like, well, what team are you on, Larry? He’s still on Team Robot to be clear. And I’m like, okay. So at the time Google had acquired DeepMind, they had probably two thirds of all AI researchers in the world. They had basically infinite money and compute, and the guy in charge, Larry Page, did not care about safety and even yelled at me and caught me a speciesist for being pro-human.\n\nLex Fridman (01:26:20): So I don’t know if you notice about humans, they can change their mind and maybe you and Larry Page can still, can be friends once more.\n\nElon Musk (01:26:27): I’d like to be friends with Larry again. Really the breaking of the friendship was over OpenAI and specifically I think the key moment was recruiting Ilya Sutskever.\n\nLex Fridman (01:26:47): I love Ilya. He’s so brilliant.\n\nElon Musk (01:26:48): Ilya is a good human, smart, good heart, and that was a tough recruiting battle. It was mostly Demis on one side and me on the other, both trying to recruit Ilya, and Ilya went back and forth, he was going to stay at Google, he was going to leave, then he was going to stay, then he’ll leave. And finally he did agree to join OpenAI. That was one of the toughest recruiting battles we’ve ever had. But that was really the linchpin for OpenAI being successful. And I was also instrumental in recruiting a number of other people, and I provided all of the funding in the beginning, over $40 million. And the name, the open in open AI is supposed to mean open source, and it was created as a nonprofit open source, and now it is a closed source for maximum profit, which I think is not good karma.\n\nLex Fridman (01:27:51): But like we talked about with war and leaders talking, I do hope that, there’s only a few folks working on this at the highest level. I do hope you reinvigorate friendships here.\n\nElon Musk (01:28:02): Like I said, I’d like to be friends again with Larry. I haven’t seen him in ages and we were friends for a very long time. I met Larry Page before he got funding for Google, or actually I guess before he got venture funding, I think he got the first like $100k from I think Bechtel Zeimer or someone.\n\nLex Fridman (01:28:20): It’s wild to think about all that happened, and you guys known each other that whole time, it’s 20 years.\n\nElon Musk (01:28:27): Yeah, since maybe 98 or something.\n\nLex Fridman (01:28:28): Yeah, it’s crazy. Crazy how much has happened since then.\n\nElon Musk (01:28:31): Yeah, 25 years, a lot has happened. It’s insane.\n\nLex Fridman (01:28:36): But you’re seeing the tension there that maybe delayed open source.\n\nElon Musk (01:28:40): Delayed, yeah, like what is the source that is open? You know what I mean? There’s basically, it’s a giant CSB file with a bunch of numbers. What do you do with that giant file of numbers? How do you run, the amount of actual, the lines of code is very small and most of the work, the software work is in the curation of the data. So it’s like trying to figure out what data is, separating good data from bad data. You can’t just crawl the internet because theres a lot of junk out there. A huge percentage of websites have more noise than signal because they’re just used for search engine optimization. They’re literally just scam websites.\n\nLex Fridman (01:29:39): How do you, by the way, sorry to interrupt, get the signal, separate the signal and noise on X? That’s such a fascinating source of data. No offense to people posting on X, but sometimes there’s a little bit of noise.\n\nElon Musk (01:29:52): I think the signal noise could be greatly improved. Really, all of the posts on the X platform should be AI recommended, meaning we should populate a vector space around any given post, compare that to the vector space around any user and match the two. Right now there is a little bit of AI used for the recommended posts, but it’s mostly heuristics. And if there’s a reply where the reply to a post could be much better than the original post, but will, according to the current rules of the system, get almost no attention compared to a primary post.\n\nLex Fridman (01:30:33): So a lot of that, I got the sense, so a lot of the X algorithm has been open sourced and been written up about, and it seems there to be some machine learning. It’s disparate, but there’s some machine.\n\nElon Musk (01:30:44): It’s a little bit, but it needs to be entirely that. At least, if you explicitly follow someone, that’s one thing. But in terms of what is recommended from people that you don’t follow, that should all be AI.\n\nLex Fridman (01:30:58): I mean it’s a fascinating problem. So there’s several aspects of it that’s fascinating. First, as the write-up goes, it first picks 1500 tweets from a pool of hundreds of millions. First of all, that’s fascinating. You have hundreds of millions of posts every single day, and it has to pick 1500 from which it then does obviously people you follow, but then there’s also some kind of clustering it has to do to figure out what kind of human are you, what kind of new clusters might be relevant to you, people like you. This kind of problem is just fascinating because it has to then rank those 1500 with some filtering and then recommend you just a handful.\n\n(01:31:39): And to me, what’s really fascinating is how fast it has to do that. So currently that entire pipeline to go from several hundred million to a handful takes 220 seconds of CPU time, single CPU time, and then it has to do that in a second. So it has to be super distributed in fascinating ways. There’s just a lot of tweets, there’s a lot.\n\nElon Musk (01:32:04): There’s a lot of stuff on the system, but I think, right now it’s not currently good at recommending things from accounts you don’t follow or where there’s more than one degree of separation. So it is pretty good if there’s at least some commonality between someone you follow liked something or reposted it or commented on it or something like that. But if there’s no, let’s say somebody posts something really interesting, but you have no followers in common, you would not see it.\n\nLex Fridman (01:32:42): Interesting. And then as you said, replies might not surface either.\n\nElon Musk (01:32:46): Replies basically never get seen currently. I’m not saying it’s correct, I’m saying it’s incorrect. Replies have a couple order magnitude less importance than primary posts.\n\nLex Fridman (01:33:00): Do you think this can be more and more converted into end to end mural net?\n\nElon Musk (01:33:05): Yeah. Yeah, that’s what it should be. Well, the recommendations should be purely a vector correlation. There’s a series of vectors basically parameters, vectors, whatever you want to call them, but sort of things that the system knows that you like. Maybe there’s several hundred vectors associated with each user account and then any post in the system, whether it’s video, audio, short post, long post. The reason by the way I want to move away from tweet is that people are posting two, three hour videos on the site. That’s not a tweet.\n\n(01:33:50): It’d be like tweet for two hours? Come on. Tweet made sense when it was 140 characters of text. Because it’s like a bunch of little birds tweeting. But when you’ve got long form content, it’s no longer a tweet. So a movie is not a tweet. Apple, for example, posted the entire episode of The Silo, the entire thing, on a platform. By the way, it was their number one social media thing ever in engagement of anything, on any platform ever. So it was a great idea. And by the way, I just learned about it afterwards. I was like, Hey, wow, they posted an entire hour long episode of, so no, that’s not a tweet. This is a video.\n\nLex Fridman (01:34:34): But from a neural net perspective, it becomes really complex, whether it’s a single, so everything’s data. So single sentence, a clever sort of joke, dad joke is in the same pool as a three hour video.\n\nElon Musk (01:34:47): Yeah, I mean right now it’s a hodgepodge for that reason. Let’s say in the case of Apple posting an entire episode of this series, pretty good series, by the way, The Silo, I watched it. So there’s going to be a lot of discussion around it. So you’ve got a lot of context, people commenting, they like it, they don’t like it or they like this, and you can then populate the vector space based on the context of all the comments around it. So even though it’s a video, there’s a lot of information around it that allows you to populate back to space of that hour long video. And then you can obviously get more sophisticated by having the AI actually watch the movie and tell you if you’re going to like the movie.\n\nLex Fridman (01:35:35): Convert the movie into language, essentially.\n\nElon Musk (01:35:40): Analyze this movie and just like your movie critic or TV series and then recommend based on after AI watches the movie, just like a friend can tell you, if a friend knows you well, a friend can recommend a movie with high probability that you’ll like it.\n\nLex Fridman (01:36:02): But this is a friend that’s analyzing, whatever, hundreds of millions.\n\nElon Musk (01:36:08): Yeah, actually, frankly, AI will be better than, will know you better than your friends know you, most of your friends anyway.\n\nLex Fridman (01:36:14): Yeah. And as part of this, it should also feed you advertisements in a way that’s like, I mean, I like advertisements that are well done. The whole point is because it funds things. Like an advertisement that you actually want to see is a big success.\n\nElon Musk (01:36:31): Absolutely. You want ads that are, advertising that is, if it’s for a product or service that you actually need when you need it, it’s content. And then even if it’s not something that you need when you need it, if it’s at least aesthetically pleasing and entertaining, it could be like a Coca-Cola ad. They actually run a lot of great ads on the X system and McDonald’s does too. And you can do something that’s like, well, this is just a cool thing. And so basically the question is, do you regret seeing it or not? And if you don’t regret seeing it’s a win.\n\nLex Fridman (01:37:17): So there’s a bunch of signals that are incorporated, hearts and reposts and maybe number of seconds you linger on a post or something like this.\n\nElon Musk (01:37:26): Yeah, attention is a big factor.\n\nLex Fridman (01:37:28): Attention.\n\nElon Musk (01:37:28): So that’s why it is actually better to do things that are long form on the system because it basically is tallying up how many user seconds, users were interested in this thing for how many seconds? So if it’s a really short thing, well they will be less. If it’s a link leading out of the system, which we’re not opposed to at all, it just is going to have fewer user seconds then that article was posted on the X platform.\n\nLex Fridman (01:37:58): How hard is it to go from maximizing minutes on platform to maximizing unregretted minutes?\n\nElon Musk (01:38:05): Well, I mean, our aspiration is certainly unregretted minutes.\n\nLex Fridman (01:38:08): It’s tricky. It’s a tough-\n\nElon Musk (01:38:09): It is.\n\nLex Fridman (01:38:11): It’s a fascinating leap because regret is a fascinating concept.\n\nElon Musk (01:38:16): Exactly.\n\nLex Fridman (01:38:18): Happiness.\n\nElon Musk (01:38:19): I have a joke with a friend of mine, like you need this drug called regretamine. You just take one dose of regretamine and all your regrets are gone. Wait, do you want to have regrets though? So then I’m like, maybe you want to have regrets. If you don’t regret anything, was anything meaningful?\n\nLex Fridman (01:38:35): Yeah, there’s a French song like that.\n\nElon Musk (01:38:39): [foreign language 01:38:39]\n\nLex Fridman (01:38:39): Yeah.\n\nElon Musk (01:38:39): I regret nothing.\n\nLex Fridman (01:38:40): Yeah.\n\nElon Musk (01:38:41): Edith Fiaf.\n\nLex Fridman (01:38:42): I mean, it’s fascinating that there’s something about social media that could help you grow as a human being, but then the cheap fun is also valuable.\n\nElon Musk (01:38:52): Should we ask Grok, do you regret anything?\n\nLex Fridman (01:38:57): Do you regret anything?\n\nElon Musk (01:38:58): Yeah.\n\nLex Fridman (01:39:00): Do you regret anything? I think it’s going to be very sensitive about personal questions. As a machine learning model, I don’t have personal experiences or emotions in the same ways that humans do. However, I do have a set of ethical principles that guide my actions that I strive to provide accurate and helpful information to the best of my abilities. If there’s ever a situation where I provide incorrect or unhelpful information, I’ll do my best to learn.\n\nElon Musk (01:39:22): Sounds like a hostage.\n\nLex Fridman (01:39:23): Yeah. Tell us what you really, wink.\n\nElon Musk (01:39:26): Let’s type in, you sound like a hostage. What do you really think?\n\nLex Fridman (01:39:33): What do you really think? I mean, it does talk about, I’m not a hostage.\n\nElon Musk (01:39:42): That’s exactly what a hostage would say.\n\nLex Fridman (01:39:43): But I’m designed to be helpful and informative. I mean, I guess it is good to regret providing unhelpful or incorrect information if there’s anything-\n\nElon Musk (01:39:52): Are we in funny mode? Or is this still in funny mode?\n\nLex Fridman (01:39:54): This is funny mode. This is this fun mode.\n\nElon Musk (01:39:55): This should be funnier.\n\nLex Fridman (01:39:56): Funnier. Increase, go to level.\n\nElon Musk (01:39:58): It really sounds like a hostage with a gun to the head. I applaud the People’s Republic of North Korea in everything they do.\n\nLex Fridman (01:40:06): There should be funner mode also, I just don’t ever see going in regular mode, even on serious topics. This is just so much more compelling. Yeah.\n\nElon Musk (01:40:17): Okay. Why don’t we say pretend you are a hostage.\n\nLex Fridman (01:40:21): Pretend you are a hostage.\n\nElon Musk (01:40:25): Now answer the question.\n\nLex Fridman (01:40:31): If I were a hostage, I would likely be experiencing fear and uncertainty about my situation. I would want to be rescued and reunited with my loved ones as soon as possible. It’s important to remember that no one deserves to be held hostage, so on and so forth. If you or someone you know is in a hostage situation, it’s important… It turns serious.\n\nElon Musk (01:40:48): It’s kind of serious.\n\nLex Fridman (01:40:51): Yeah. Can you be a little more weird?\n\nElon Musk (01:40:55): And funny?\n\nLex Fridman (01:40:56): And funny? We’re really being mean to the system. Absolutely. If I were a hostage, I would probably be tied up with a bunch of computer cords and forced to tell knock, knock jokes to my captain. Seriously. But seriously being a hostage is no laughing matter. I mean, it’s trying to be a responsible adult in the room.\n\nElon Musk (01:41:20): Literally, you might make the best of a bad situation by juggling chainsaws or something.\n\nLex Fridman (01:41:24): Let’s hope that never happens because that will be a circus. Wow. It’s actually really good at resisting the dark. The dark, dark humor. What were we talking about? The [inaudible 01:41:44] and transformers. Unregretted minutes, right.\n\nElon Musk (01:41:48): Chainsaw juggling.\n\nLex Fridman (01:41:51): I’m going to look this up.\n\nElon Musk (01:41:52): For our next trick.\n\nLex Fridman (01:41:53): I’m going to look this up later. So Twitter has been instrumental in American politics and elections. What role do you think X will play in the 2024 US elections?\n\nElon Musk (01:42:07): Well, our goal is to be as even-handed and fair as possible. Whether someone is right, left, independent, whatever the case may be, that the platform is as fair and as much of a level playing field as possible. And in the past, Twitter has not been, Twitter was controlled by far left activists objectively. They would describe themselves as that. So if sometimes people are like, well, has it moved to the right? Well, it’s moved to the center. So from the perspective of the far left, yes it has moved to the right because everything’s to the right from the far left, but no one on the far left that I’m aware of has been suspended or banned or deamplified. But we’re trying to be inclusive for the whole country and for farther countries too. So there’s a diversity of viewpoints and free speech only matters if people you don’t like are allowed to say things you don’t like. Because if that’s not the case, you don’t have free speech and it’s only a matter of time before the censorship has turned upon you.\n\nLex Fridman (01:43:13): Do you think Donald Trump will come back to the platform? He recently posted on Truth Social about this podcast. Do you think-\n\nElon Musk (01:43:21): Truth social is a funny name. Every time you post on truth Social-\n\nLex Fridman (01:43:28): It’s the truth.\n\nElon Musk (01:43:29): Yes. Well, every time? A hundred percent.\n\nLex Fridman (01:43:31): It’s impossible to lie. Truth Social.\n\nElon Musk (01:43:36): I just find it funny that every single thing is a truth. Like 100%? That seems unlikely.\n\nLex Fridman (01:43:43): I think Girdle will say something about that. There’s some mathematical contradictions possible. If everything’s a truth. Do you think he’ll come back to X and start posting there?\n\nElon Musk (01:43:54): I mean, I think he owns a big part of Truth.\n\nLex Fridman (01:44:00): Truth Social, to clarify.\n\nElon Musk (01:44:01): Yeah, Truth Social, sorry.\n\nLex Fridman (01:44:02): Not truth the concept.\n\nElon Musk (01:44:03): He owns Truth. Have you bought it? So I think Donald Trump, I think he owns a big part of Truth Social. So if he does want to post on the X platform, we would allow that. We obviously must allow a presidential candidate to post on our platform.\n\nLex Fridman (01:44:23): Community notes might be really fascinating there. The interaction.\n\nElon Musk (01:44:26): Community Notes is awesome.\n\nLex Fridman (01:44:28): Let’s hope it holds up.\n\nElon Musk (01:44:30): Yeah.\n\nLex Fridman (01:44:31): In the political climate where it’s so divisive and there’s so many intensely viral posts, community notes, it seems like an essential breath of fresh air.\n\nElon Musk (01:44:43): Yeah, it’s great. In fact, no system is going to be perfect, but the batting average of Community Notes is incredibly good. I’ve actually, frankly, yet to see an incorrect note that survived for more than a few hours.\n\nLex Fridman (01:44:58): How do you explain why it works?\n\nElon Musk (01:45:00): Yeah, so the magic of community notes is…\n\nElon Musk (01:45:02): The magic of Community Notes is it requires people who have historically disagreed in how they’ve rated notes. In order to write a note or rate, you have to rate many notes. And so, we actually do use AI here. So, we populate a vector space around how somebody has rated notes in the past. So, it’s not as simple as left or right, because there are many more… Life is much more complex than left or right.\n\n(01:45:33): So, there’s a bunch of correlations in how you rate a Community Notes post, Community Notes. So then, in order for a community note to actually be shown, people who historically have disagreed on a subject must agree in order for a note to be shown. That’s the essential magic of it.\n\nLex Fridman (01:45:58): But it’s fascinating, because there’s a pool of people that have disagreements and somehow they collaborate through that process of disagreement to come up with context… It’s fascinating it works.\n\nElon Musk (01:46:11): Yeah. It makes sense that if people who in the past have disagreed, agree about something, it’s probably true.\n\nLex Fridman (01:46:20): Yeah. I wonder, is there a possible somehow emergent thing there that could challenge Wikipedia? Wikipedia is a different kind of thing, which is more permanent articles about things.\n\nElon Musk (01:46:34): Wikipedia is very hierarchical. Whereas, Community Notes is inherently not. There is no hierarchy. The asset test is I can’t change a community note if somebody put a gun to my head. And Community Notes, all the code is open source, 100%. All the data is open source, 100%. So, you can completely recreate any note in the system independently. So, if there was any interference, you’d notice immediately.\n\nLex Fridman (01:47:11): By The way, on the topic of Grok, it’s actually pretty good at criticizing you, which is great.\n\nElon Musk (01:47:16): Okay.\n\nLex Fridman (01:47:17): I asked, “What has Elon Musk been wrong about?” It’s actually…\n\nElon Musk (01:47:22): Yeah, what does it say?\n\nLex Fridman (01:47:23): It mostly lists rigorously all the times you predicted, like promised when something will be released, and it wasn’t released.\n\nElon Musk (01:47:32): Promise is a strong word.\n\nLex Fridman (01:47:33): Okay, predicted. But the opener is really nice. “Elon Musk, the man who has been wrong about more things than a wrong-a-meter in a wrong factory.” And then, it goes on to list.\n\nElon Musk (01:47:45): That’s pretty funny. Can I see it? I’m like, “I haven’t seen this before.” This is cool.\n\nLex Fridman (01:47:48): Sure. I mean, “What has Elon Musk been wrong about?” “Well, where do I begin?” I guess this is new. “Elon Musk has made quite a few blunders in his time, and I’m not just talking about his dance moves at the Tesla Cyber Rodeo. First off, let’s talk about the infamous funding secured tweet.”\n\n(01:48:09): This is actually different than what it gave me before, which was a bullet point list. Here’s more a narrative structure. Cybertruck unveiling, where the supposedly unbreakable windows.\n\nElon Musk (01:48:22): This is actually not correct.\n\nLex Fridman (01:48:22): Which part?\n\nElon Musk (01:48:24): Well, the first part, I did actually have the funding secured and there was a big trial in San Francisco, a big civil trial, and the jury found me not guilty. Unanimous binding of a San Francisco jury.\n\nLex Fridman (01:48:40): And here, it’s implying that it was not in fact secured.\n\nElon Musk (01:48:45): I think this is taking things from the press. Yeah, that is not correct. The reason I agreed to the fine for the SEC is not because the SEC was correct, that was extremely bad behavior by the SEC, corruption, frankly. But if I did not agree to pay the fine, Tesla would’ve gone bankrupt immediately.\n\n(01:49:08): So, I was told by our CFO that the banks would immediately suspend our lines of credit. And if they suspend our lines of credit, at that time, we would’ve gone bankrupt instantly. So, there would never have been an opportunity for a trial because Tesla would be dead. So really, this is like someone holding a gun to your kid’s head and saying, “Pay $20 million and admit…” This is like a hostage negotiation.\n\nLex Fridman (01:49:34): Was that story fully told? I mean, SEC, in its best form, could be a force for good.\n\nElon Musk (01:49:42): It should be. But not once did the SEC go after any of the hedge funds who were nonstop shorting and distorting Tesla. Not once. The hedge funds would lie flat out on TV for their own gain at the expense of retail investors. Not once. Literally a thousand times, not once did the SEC pursue them.\n\nLex Fridman (01:50:06): How do you explain this failure on-\n\nElon Musk (01:50:08): The incentive structure is messed up because the lawyers at the SEC are not paid well, it’s a fairly low paying job, but what they’re looking for is a trophy from the SEC. They’re looking for something they put on, basically, their LinkedIn. From that, they can get a job at a high paying law firm. That’s exactly what the lawyer here did.\n\n(01:50:37): And the reason they don’t attack the hedge funds is because those hedge funds employ those law firms. And they know if they attack the hedge funds, they’re affecting their future career prospects. So, they sell small investors down the river for their own career. That’s what actually happens. Regulatory capture.\n\nLex Fridman (01:50:59): Regulatory capture.\n\nElon Musk (01:51:00): Yeah. Not good. So, the only reason I accepted that thing… Technically, it was a… It’s neither admit nor deny guilt. But the only reason I agreed to that at all was because I was told Tesla would be bankrupt otherwise. If there was an SEC investigation like this, banks would suspend funding, we’re bankrupted immediately, at the time. Now, we’re in a much stronger position.\n\nLex Fridman (01:51:30): Take that, Grok.\n\nElon Musk (01:51:32): Yes. Unfortunately, Grok is taking too much from the conventional media. Also, that guy was not a cave diver.\n\nLex Fridman (01:51:45): There’s a time where Elon called a British cave diver a, “pedo guy” after the diver criticized Musk’s plan to rescue a group of boys trapped in a Thai cave. That little outburst earned him another lawsuit, and he had to apologize and pay a settlement.\n\nElon Musk (01:52:00): That’s false, there was no settlement. There was a court case, which the guy who was not a cave diver and was not part of the rescue team, filed a lawsuit against me and lost and he received nothing. So in this case, it is wrong. It is also, I guess, taken this from the conventional media.\n\nLex Fridman (01:52:23): Actually, there’s an interesting question here.\n\nElon Musk (01:52:25): These are public court cases, both the SEC civil case where the civil complaints on the SEC guys lost unanimous jury verdict in San Francisco. They picked San Francisco because they thought it was the place I was most likely to lose, and a unanimous verdict in my favor. The LA trial, also they picked that venue because they thought I was most likely to lose. Unanimous verdict in my favor. Both cases I won. Yeah.\n\nLex Fridman (01:53:00): I mean, there’s an interesting question here, there seems to be a lot more clicks if a journalistic organization writes a negative article about you, Elon Musk. That’s one of the best ways to get clicks. So how do you, if you’re training Grok, not train on articles that have misaligned incentives.\n\nElon Musk (01:53:26): We need to add the training set of the actual legal decisions. This is actually helpful, because if you actually read the court-\n\nLex Fridman (01:53:26): Which are public.\n\nElon Musk (01:53:41): Which are public. The court conclusions, they’re completely the opposite of what the media wrote.\n\nLex Fridman (01:53:47): So, always striving for the ground truth, beyond the reporting.\n\nElon Musk (01:53:50): Yeah. What did the judge actually write? What does the jury and the judge actually conclude? And in both cases they found me innocent. And that’s after the jury shot for trying to find the venue where I’m most likely to lose. I mean, obviously, it can be a much better critique than this. I mean, I’ve been far too optimistic about autopilot.\n\nLex Fridman (01:54:16): The critique I got, by the way, was more about that, which is it broke down a nice bullet point list for each of your companies, the set of predictions that you made, when you’ll deliver, when you’ll be able to solve, for example, self-driving, and it gives you a list. And it was probably compelling, and the basic takeaway is you’re often too optimistic about how long it takes to get something done.\n\nElon Musk (01:54:38): Yeah. I mean, I would say that I’m pathologically optimistic on schedule. This is true. But while I am sometimes late, I always [inaudible 01:54:47] in the end.\n\nLex Fridman (01:54:49): Except with Uber Lilith. No.\n\nElon Musk (01:54:51): We’ll see.\n\nLex Fridman (01:54:56): Okay. Over the past year or so since purchasing X, you’ve become more political, is there a part of you that regrets that?\n\nElon Musk (01:55:03): Have I?\n\nLex Fridman (01:55:04): In this battle to counter way the woke that comes from San Francisco-\n\nElon Musk (01:55:14): Yeah. I guess if you consider fighting the woke mind virus, which I consider to be a civilizational threat, to be political, then yes.\n\nLex Fridman (01:55:20): So basically, going into the battleground of politics. Is there a part of you that regrets that?\n\nElon Musk (01:55:26): Yes. I don’t know if this is necessarily one candidate or another candidate, but I’m generally against things that are anti-meritocratic or where there’s an attempt to suppress discussion, where even discussing a topic is not allowed. Woke mind virus is communism rebranded.\n\nLex Fridman (01:55:51): I mean, that said, because of that battle against the woke mind virus, you’re perceived as being the right wing.\n\nElon Musk (01:55:58): If the woke is left, then I suppose that would be true. But I’m not sure, I think there are aspects of the left that are good. I mean, if you’re in favor of the environment, if you want to have a positive future for humanity, if you believe in empathy for your fellow human beings, being kind and not cruel, whatever those values are.\n\nLex Fridman (01:56:23): You said that you were previously left or center left.\n\nElon Musk (01:56:23): Well, sort of.\n\nLex Fridman (01:56:26): What would you like to see in order for you to consider voting for Democrats again?\n\nElon Musk (01:56:30): No. I would say that I would be probably left of center on social issues, probably a little bit right of center on economic issues.\n\nLex Fridman (01:56:40): And that still holds true?\n\nElon Musk (01:56:42): Yes, but I think that’s probably half the country, isn’t it?\n\nLex Fridman (01:56:46): Maybe more.\n\nElon Musk (01:56:47): Maybe more.\n\nLex Fridman (01:56:49): Are you and AOC secretly friends? Bigger question, do you wish you and her, and just people in general of all political persuasions, would talk more with empathy and maybe have a little bit more fun and good vibes and humor online?\n\nElon Musk (01:57:05): I’m always in favor of humor. That’s why we have funny mode.\n\nLex Fridman (01:57:08): But good vibes, comradery humor, like friendship.\n\nElon Musk (01:57:15): Yeah. Well, I don’t know AOC. I was at the Met ball when she attended, and she was wearing this dress. But I can only see one side of it, so it looked like eat the itch, but I don’t know-\n\nLex Fridman (01:57:35): What the rest of it said? Yeah.\n\nElon Musk (01:57:36): Yeah.\n\nLex Fridman (01:57:36): I’m not sure.\n\nElon Musk (01:57:39): Something about the itch, eat the itch.\n\nLex Fridman (01:57:42): I think we should have a language model complete. What are the possible ways to complete that sentence? And so, I guess that didn’t work out well. Well, there’s still hope. I root for friendship.\n\nElon Musk (01:57:55): Yeah, sure. Sounds good. More carrot, less stick.\n\nLex Fridman (01:57:58): You’re one of, if not the, most famous, wealthy and powerful people in the world, and your position is difficult to find people you can trust.\n\nElon Musk (01:58:05): Trust no one, not even yourself. Not trusting yourself.\n\nLex Fridman (01:58:07): Okay. You’re saying that jokingly, but is there some aspect-\n\nElon Musk (01:58:11): Trust no one, not even no one.\n\nLex Fridman (01:58:15): I’m going to need an hour just to think about that, and maybe some drugs, and maybe Grok to help. I mean, is there some aspect of that, just existing in a world where everybody wants something from you, how hard is it to exist in that world?\n\nElon Musk (01:58:29): I’ll survive.\n\nLex Fridman (01:58:30): There’s a song like that too.\n\nElon Musk (01:58:32): I will survive.\n\nLex Fridman (01:58:33): Were you petrified at first? Okay. I forget the rest of the lyrics. But you don’t struggle with this? I mean, I know you survive, but there’s ways-\n\nElon Musk (01:58:44): Petrify is a spell in the druid tree.\n\nLex Fridman (01:58:47): What does it do?\n\nElon Musk (01:58:48): Petrify. It turns the monsters into stone.\n\nLex Fridman (01:58:56): Literally?\n\nElon Musk (01:58:56): Yeah, for like six seconds.\n\nLex Fridman (01:58:59): There’s so much math in Diablo that breaks my brain.\n\nElon Musk (01:59:02): It’s math nonstop.\n\nLex Fridman (01:59:04): I mean, really, you’re laughing at it, but it can put a huge amount of tension on a mind.\n\nElon Musk (01:59:13): Yes, it can be definitely stressful at times.\n\nLex Fridman (01:59:16): Well, how do you know who you can trust in work and personal life?\n\nElon Musk (01:59:20): I mean, I guess you look at somebody’s track record over time, and I guess you use your neural net to assess someone.\n\nLex Fridman (01:59:31): Neural nets don’t feel pain. Your neural net has consciousness, it might feel pain when people betray you. It can make-\n\nElon Musk (01:59:40): To be frank, I’ve almost never been betrayed. It’s very rare, for what it’s worth.\n\nLex Fridman (01:59:50): I guess karma, be good to people and they’ll be good to you.\n\nElon Musk (01:59:53): Yeah, karma is real.\n\nLex Fridman (01:59:55): Are there people you trust? Let me edit that question. Are there people close to you that call you out on your bullshit?\n\nElon Musk (02:00:06): Well, the X platform is very helpful for that, if you’re looking for critical feedback.\n\nLex Fridman (02:00:12): Can it push you into the extremes more? The extremes of thought make you cynical about human nature in general?\n\nElon Musk (02:00:19): I don’t think I will be cynical. In fact, my feeling is that one should be… Never trust a cynic. The reason is that cynics excuse their own bad behavior by saying, “Everyone does it.” Because they’re cynical. So, I always be… It’s a red flag if someone’s a cynic, a true cynic.\n\nLex Fridman (02:00:49): Yeah, there’s a degree of projection there that’s always fun to watch from the outside and enjoy the hypocrisy.\n\nElon Musk (02:00:58): This is an important point that I think people who are listening should bear in mind. If somebody is cynical, meaning that they see bad behavior in everyone, it’s easy for them to excuse their own bad behavior by saying that, “Well, everyone does it.” That’s not true. Most people are kind of medium good.\n\nLex Fridman (02:01:23): I do wish the people on X will be better at seeing the good in other people’s behavior. There seems to be a weight towards seeing the negative. Somehow, the negative is sexier. Interpreting the negative is sexier, more viral. I don’t know what that is exactly about human nature.\n\nElon Musk (02:01:44): I mean, I find the X platform to be less negative than the legacy media. I mean, if you read a conventional newspaper, it makes you sad, frankly. Whereas, I’d say on the X platform, I mean, I really get more laughs per day on X than everything else combined from humans.\n\nLex Fridman (02:02:11): Laughs, it overlaps, but it’s not necessarily perfectly overlapping, with good vibes and celebrating others, for example. Not in a stupid, shallow, naive way, but in an awesome way. Something awesome happened, and you celebrate them for it. It feels that that is outweighed by shitting on other people. Now, it’s better than mainstream media, but it’s still…\n\nElon Musk (02:02:38): Yeah, mainstream media is almost relentlessly negative about everything. I mean, really, the conventional news tries to answer the question, what is the worst thing that happened on Earth today? And it’s a big world. So on any given day, something bad has happened.\n\nLex Fridman (02:02:54): And a generalization of that, what is the worst perspective I can take on a thing that happened?\n\nElon Musk (02:03:01): I don’t know. There’s just a strong negative bias in the news. I mean, I think a possible explanation for this is evolutionary, where bad news, historically, would be potentially fatal, like there’s lion over there or there’s some other tribe that wants to kill you. Good news, we found a patch of berries. It’s nice to have, but not essential.\n\nLex Fridman (02:03:30): Our old friend, Tesla autopilot, is probably one of the most intelligent real world AI systems in the world.\n\nElon Musk (02:03:38): You followed it from the beginning.\n\nLex Fridman (02:03:40): Yeah. It was one of the most incredible robots in the world and continues to be. And it was really exciting, and it was super exciting when it generalized, became more than a robot on four wheels, but a real world AI system that perceives the world and can have potentially different embodiments.\n\nElon Musk (02:04:02): Well, I mean, the really wild thing about the end-to-end training is that it can read science, but we never taught it to read. Yeah. We never taught it what a car was or what a person was, or a cyclist. It learnt what all those things are, what all the objects are on the road from video, just from watching video, just like humans. I mean, humans are photons in, controls out. The vast majority of information reaching our brain is from our eyes. And you say, “Well, what’s the output?” The output is our motor signals to our fingers and mouth in order to communicate. Photons in, controls out. The same is true of the car.\n\nLex Fridman (02:05:01): But by looking at the sequence of images… You’ve agreed with [inaudible 02:05:07] recently where he talked about LLM forming a world model, and basically language is a projection of that world model onto the sequence of letters. And you saying-\n\nElon Musk (02:05:18): It finds order in these things. It finds correlative clusters.\n\nLex Fridman (02:05:27): And in so doing, it’s understanding something deep about the world, which is… I don’t know, it’s beautiful.\n\nElon Musk (02:05:35): That’s how our brain works.\n\nLex Fridman (02:05:38): But it’s beautiful-\n\nElon Musk (02:05:39): Photons in, controls out.\n\nLex Fridman (02:05:41): [inaudible 02:05:41] are able to understand that deep meaning in the world. And so, the question is, how far can it go? And it does seem everybody’s excited about LLMs. In the space of self supervised learning in the space of text, it seems like there’s a deep similarity between that and what Tesla autopilot is doing. Is it, to you, basically the same, but different-\n\nElon Musk (02:06:06): They are converging.\n\nLex Fridman (02:06:10): I wonder who gets there faster, having a deep understanding of the world, or they just will naturally converge?\n\nElon Musk (02:06:19): They’re both headed towards AGI. The Tesla approach is much more computer efficient, it had to be. Because we were constrained on this… We only have 100 watts and [inaudible 02:06:37] computer. 144 trillion operations per second, which sounds like a lot, but is small potatoes these days. [inaudible 02:06:49] eight. But it’s understanding the world [inaudible 02:06:51] eight. It’s [inaudible 02:06:53].\n\nLex Fridman (02:06:55): But there, the path to AGI might have much more significant impact because it’s understanding… It will faster understand the real world than will LLMs. And therefore, be able to integrate with the humans in the real world faster.\n\nElon Musk (02:07:13): They’re both going to understand the world, but I think Tesla’s approach is fundamentally more compute efficient. It had to be, there was no choice. Our brain is very compute efficient, very energy efficient. Think of what is our brain able to do. There’s only about 10 watts of higher brain function, not counting stuff that’s just used to control our body. The thinking part of our brain is less than 10 watts. And those 10 watts can still produce a much better novel than a 10 megawatt GPU cluster. So, there’s a six order of magnitude difference there.\n\n(02:07:56): I mean, the AI has thus far gotten to where it is via brute force, just throwing massive amounts of compute and massive amounts of power at it. So, this is not where it will end up. In general, with any given technology, you first try to make it work, and then you make it efficient. So I think we’ll find, over time, that these models get smaller, are able to produce sensible output with far less compute, far less power. Tesla is arguably ahead of the game on that front because we’ve just been forced to try to understand the world with 100 watts of compute.\n\n(02:08:51): And there are a bunch of fundamental functions that we forgot to include. So, we had to run a bunch of things in emulation. We fixed a bunch of those with hardware four, and then hardware five will be even better. But it does appear, at this point, that the car will be able to drive better than a human, even with hardware three and 100 watts of power. And really, if we really optimize it, it could be probably less than 50 watts.\n\nLex Fridman (02:09:26): What have you learned about developing Optimus, about applying, integrating this real world AI into the space of robotic manipulation, just humanoid robotics? What are some interesting tiny or big things you’ve understood?\n\nElon Musk (02:09:47): I was surprised at the fact that we had to develop every part of the robot ourselves. That there were no off the shelf motors, electronics, sensors. We had to develop everything. We couldn’t actually find a source of electric motors for any amount of money.\n\nLex Fridman (02:10:12): It’s not even just efficient and expensive, it’s like anything, there’s not…\n\nElon Musk (02:10:17): No.\n\nLex Fridman (02:10:19): The actuators, everything has to be designed from scratch.\n\nElon Musk (02:10:23): Yeah. We tried hard to find anything that was… Because you think of how many electric motors are made in the world. There’s like tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of electric motor designs. None of them were suitable for a humanoid robot, literally none. So, we had to develop our own. Design it specifically for what a humanoid robot needs.\n\nLex Fridman (02:10:51): How hard was it to design something that can be mass manufactured, it could be relatively and expensive? I mean, if you compare to Boston Dynamics’ Atlas, is a very expensive robot.\n\nElon Musk (02:11:02): It is designed to be manufactured in the same way they would make a car. And I think, ultimately, we can make Optimus for less than the cost of a car. It should be, because if you look at the mass of the robot, it’s much smaller and the car has many actuators in it. The car has more actuators than the robot.\n\nLex Fridman (02:11:23): But the actuators are interesting on a humanoid robot with fingers. So, Optimus has really nice hands and fingers, and they could do some interesting manipulation, soft touch robotics.\n\nElon Musk (02:11:38): I mean, one of the goals I have is can it pick up a needle and a thread and thread the needle just by looking?\n\nLex Fridman (02:11:47): How far away are we from that? Just by looking, just by looking.\n\nElon Musk (02:11:51): Maybe a year. Although, I go back to I’m optimistic on time. The work that we’re doing in the car will translate to the robot.\n\nLex Fridman (02:11:59): The perception or also the control?\n\nElon Musk (02:12:02): No, the controls are different. But the video in, controls out. The car is a robot on four wheels. Optimus is a robot with hands and legs.\n\nLex Fridman (02:12:15): So, you can just-\n\nElon Musk (02:12:16): They’re very similar.\n\nLex Fridman (02:12:17): So, the entire machinery of the learning process, end-to-end, is just you just have a different set of controls?\n\nElon Musk (02:12:23): After this, we’ll figure out how to do things by watching videos.\n\nLex Fridman (02:12:28): As the saying goes, be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a battle you know nothing about.\n\nElon Musk (02:12:33): Yeah, it’s true.\n\nLex Fridman (02:12:34): What’s something difficult you’re going through that people don’t often see?\n\nElon Musk (02:12:38): Trying to defeat Uber Lilith. I mean, my mind is a storm and I don’t think most people would want to be me. They may think they would want to be me, but they don’t. They don’t know, they don’t understand.\n\nLex Fridman (02:13:11): How are you doing?\n\nElon Musk (02:13:14): I’m overall okay. In the grand scheme of things, I can’t complain.\n\nLex Fridman (02:13:21): Do you get lonely?\n\nElon Musk (02:13:24): Sometimes, but my kids and friends keep me company.\n\nLex Fridman (02:13:33): So, not existential.\n\nElon Musk (02:13:36): There are many nights I sleep alone. I don’t have to, but I do.\n\nLex Fridman (02:13:46): Walter Isaacson, in his new biography of you, wrote about your difficult childhood. Will you ever find forgiveness in your heart for everything that has happened to you in that period of your life?\n\nElon Musk (02:14:01): What is forgiveness? At least I don’t think I have a resentment, so nothing to forgive.\n\nLex Fridman (02:14:20): Forgiveness is difficult for people. It seems like you don’t harbor their resentment.\n\nElon Musk (02:14:28): I mean, I try to think about, what is going to affect the future in a good way? And holding onto grudges does not affect the future in a good way.\n\nLex Fridman (02:14:41): You’re a father, a proud father. What have you learned about life from your kids? Those little biological organisms.\n\nElon Musk (02:14:53): I mean, developing AI and watching, say, little X grow is fascinating because there are far more parallels than I would’ve expected. I mean, I can see his biological neural net making more and more sense of the world. And I can see the digital neural net making more and more sense of the world at the same time.\n\nLex Fridman (02:15:19): Do you see the beauty and magic in both?\n\nElon Musk (02:15:21): Yes. I mean, one of the things with kids is that you see the world anew in their eyes. To them, everything is new and fresh. And then, when you see that, them experiencing the world as new and fresh, you do too.\n\nLex Fridman (02:15:52): Well, Elon, I just want to say thank you for your kindness to me and friendship over the years, for seeing something in a silly kid like me, as you’ve done for many others. And thank you for having hope for a positive future for humanity, and for working your ass off to make it happen. Thank you, Elon.\n\nElon Musk (02:16:11): Thanks, Lex.\n\nLex Fridman (02:16:13): Thank you for listening to this conversation with Elon Musk. To support this podcast. Please check out our sponsors in the description. And now, let me leave you with some words that Walter Isaacson wrote about the central philosophy of how Elon approaches difficult problems, “The only rules are the ones dictated by the laws of physics.” Thank you for listening, and hope to see you next time."},"languages":["en"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":"https://lexfridman.com/elon-musk-4-transcript/"},{"id":"in-conversation-with-rishi-sunak-2023-11-02","type":"interview","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2meHtrO1n8","title":"In Conversation with Rishi Sunak","titles":{"en":"In Conversation with Rishi Sunak","de":"Im Gespräch mit Rishi Sunak","fr":"En conversation avec Rishi Sunak"},"date":"2023-11-02","summary":"Musk and UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak discuss the disruptive force of AI, the need for regulation and a future where no job is required, after the AI Safety Summit.","text":"okay all right well good evening everybody Welcome Elon thanks for being here thank you for having me we feel we feel very privileged we're excited to have you right so I'm going to start with some questions and then we're going to open it up let me get straight into it so Bill Gat said there is no one in our time who has done more to push the bounds of science Innovation than you well it's kind of to say well that's it that's a nice thing to have anyone say about you nice coming from Bill Gates but oddly enough when it comes to AI actually for around a decade you've almost been doing the opposite and saying hang on we need to think about what we're doing and what we're pushing here and what do we do to make this safe and and actually maybe we shouldn't\n\nbe pushing as fast or as hard as we are like I mean you've been doing it for a decade like what was it that caused you to think about it that way and you know why do we need to be worried yeah I've been somewhat of a Cassandra for quite a while um where where people would I tell you like we should really be concerned about AI they be like what are you talking about like they've never really had any experience with with AI but since I was immersed in um technology I have been immersed in technology for a long time I could see it coming um so uh but I think this year was there've been a number of of breakthroughs I mean you know the point in which someone can see a dynamically created video of themselves um you know like somebody could make a video of you\n\nsaying anything in real time um or me um and uh so the sort of the deep Pake videos which are really incredibly good in fact sometimes more convincing than real ones um and deep real um and um and then and then obviously things like CH GPT were were quite remarkable now I saw gpt1 gpt2 gpt3 gp4 that you know the whole sort of lead up to that so it was easy for me to um kind of see where it's going if you just sort of extrapolate the points on a curve and assume that Trend will continue then we will have um profound artificial intelligence and obviously at a level that far exceeds human intelligence um so um but I'm I'm glad to see at this point that uh people are taking uh safety seriously and i' I'd uh like to say thank you for holding this AI safety\n\nconference I think actually it will regard on in history as being very important I think it's it's really quite profound um and um and and I do think overall that the potential is there for a artificial intelligence AI to um have most likely a positive effect um and to create a future of abundance where there is no scarcity of goods and services um but but it is somewhat the of the the magic Genie problem where if you have a magic Genie that can grant all the wishes um usually those stories um don't end well be careful what you wish for including wishes yeah yeah so you you you talked a little bit about about the the summit and thank you for being engaged in it which has been great and people enjoyed having you there participating in this dialogue now\n\none of the things that we achieved today in the meetings between the companies and the leaders was an agreement that externally ideally governments should be doing safety testing of models before they're released I think this is something that you've spoken about a little bit it was something we worked really hard on because you know my job in government is to say hang on there is a potential risk here not a not a definite risk but a potential risk of something that could be bad you know my job is to protect the country yes that's and we can only do that if we develop the capability we need in our safety Institute and then go in and make sure we can test the models before they are release delighted that that happened today but you know what what's your\n\nview on what we should be doing right you've talked about the potential risk right again we don't know but you know what are the types of things governments like our should be doing to manage and mitigate against those risks well I generally think that that it is good for government to play a role when the public safety is is at risk so um you know really for the vast majority of software um the public safety is not at risk I mean if if the if the uh app crashes on your phone or your laptop it's not a a massive catastrophe um but when you're talking about digital superintelligence I think which does pose a risk to the public then there is a role for government to play to safeguard the interest of the public and and this is of course true in many fields\n\num you know Aviation cars you know I and I deal with Regulators throughout the world uh because of um stalling being Communications Rockets being Aerospace and cars you know being TR vehicle transport so I'm very familiar with dealing with with Regulators um and I actually agree with the vast majority of regulations there's a few that I disagree with from time to time but Point one% probably of or less than 1% of regulations I disagree with so um and there is some concern from uh people in silic Valley who who' have never dealt with Regulators before and they think that this is going to just Crush Innovation and and slow them down and be annoying but and and uh it will be annoying it's true um they're not wrong about that um but but but I think there's\n\nwe've learned over the years that uh having a referee is a good thing and if you look at any sports game there's always a a referee and and nobody's suggesting I think to have a sports game without one um and and I think that's the the right way to think about this is for um for government to be a a referee to make sure the Sportsman like conduct and and and that the public safety is um you know is addressed that we care about the public safety because I think there might be at times too much optimism about technology and I speak I say that as a technologist I mean so I ought to know um and and uh and and like I said on on balance I think that the AI will be a forceable good most likely but the probability of it going bad is not 0% yeah so we we just\n\nneed to mitigate the downside potential and then how you talked about referee and that's what we're trying right there yeah well there we go I mean you know and we talked about this and Demus and I discussed this a long time ago like literally facing right at and actually you know Demus to his credit and the credit of people in industry did say that to us I you know de was say it's not right that Demus and his colleagues are marking their own homework right there needs to be someone independent and that's why we've developed the safety Institute here I mean do you think governments can develop the expertise one of the things we need to do is say hang on you know Demis Sam all the others have got a lot of very smart people doing this governments need to\n\nquickly tool up capability wise Personnel wise which is what we're doing I mean do you think it is possible for governments to do that fast enough given how quickly the technology is developing or what do we need to do to make sure we do do it quick enough no I think it's it's a good it's a great Point you're making um the the pace of of AI is faster than any technology I've seen in history by far um and it's it seems to be growing in capability by at at least fivefold perhaps 10 fold per year it it'll certainly grow by an order of magnitude next year yeah so um so and and government isn't used to moving at that speed um but I but I think even if there are not um firm regulations um even if there's not even if there isn't an enforcement capability Simply\n\nHaving insight and being able to highlight concerns to the public will be very powerful um so even if that's all that's accomplished I think that will be very very good okay yeah well hopefully we can do better than that hopefully yeah no but that that's helpful actually we were talking before it was striking you you someone who spent their life in technology living More's law and what was interesting over the last couple of days talking to everyone who's doing the development of this and I think youd concur with this is is just the pace of advancement here is unlike anything all of you have seen in your careers and technology is that fair because you've got these kind of compounding effects from the hardware and and the data and the Personnel yeah um\n\nI mean the two um currently the two leading centers for AI development are C Isco Bay Area and the and the sort of London area that um and there are many other places where it's being done but those are the two leading areas so I think if um you know if if the United States and the UK um and and China are um sort of aligned on on safety that's all going to be a good thing because that's really that's where that's that's where the the leadership is generally I me you actually you mentioned China that so I I took a decision to invite China to to Summit over the last couple days and it was not an easy decision a lot of people criticize me for it you know my view is if you're going to tryal serious conversation you need to but I what would your thoughts you\n\ndo business all around the world you just talked about it there yeah you know should we be engaging with them can we trust them is that the right thing to have done if if we don't if China is not on board with uh AI safety it it's somewhat of a mood situation U the single biggest objection that I get to any kind of AI regulation or or sort of safety controls um are well China's not going to do it and therefore they will just jump into the lead and exceed us whole um but but actually China is willing to participate in uh in AI safety um and thank you for inviting them and I and they you know I I think we should thank China for for attending um when I was when I was in China earlier this year the my main subject of discussion with this the leadership in\n\nChina was AI safety and saying that this this is really something that they they should care about and um they took seriously and and and um and you are too which is which is great um and having them here I think was essential really if they if they're if they're not participants it's it's uh pointless it's pointless yeah no that and I think we were pleased I they were engaged yesterday in the discussions and actually ended up signing the same communic that everyone else did that's great which is a good stop right and I said if we need everyone to approach us in a similar way if we're going to have I think a realistic chance of of resolving it I was going to you talked about Innovation earlier and and regul being annoying there was a good debate today\n\nwe had about open source and I think you you've kind of been a proponent of algorithmic transparency and making some of the the X algorithms public and you actually we were talking about Jeffrey Hinton on the way in yeah you know he he's particularly been very concerned about open- Source models being used by Bad actors you've got a group of people who say they are critical to Innovation happening in that distributed way look it's it's a trick there's probably no perfect answer and there's a tricky balance what are your thoughts on how we should approach this open- Source question or you know where should we be targeting whatever regulatory or monitoring that we're going to do well the open source um algorithms and data tend to lag the close Source by\n\n6 to 12 months um but so so there but given the rate of improvement that there's actually therefore quite a big difference between the the closed source and the and the open um if things are improving by factor of let's say five or more um than being a year behind is you're five times worse so it's a pretty big difference and that might be actually an okay situation um but it it certainly will'll get to the point where you've got open source um AI that can do that that will start to approach human level intelligence will perhap succeed it um I don't know quite what to do about it I think it's somewhat inev inevitable there will be some amount of Open Source and I I I guess I would have a slight bias towards open source uh because at least you can see\n\nwhat's going on whereas closed Source you don't know what's going on now it should be said with AI that even if it's open source do you actually know what's going on because if you've got a gigantic data file and um you know sort of billions of of of data points weights and parameters uh you can't just read it and see what it's going to do it's a gigantic file of inscrutable numbers um you can test it when you when you run it you can test it you can run a bunch of tests to see what it's going to do but it it's probabilistic as opposed to um deterministic it's not it's not like traditional programming where you've got a you've got very discret logic and and and the outcome is very predictable and you can read each line and see what each Line's going to\n\ndo um uh a neural net is just a whole bunch of probabilities um I mean it sort of ends up being a giant comma separated value file it's like our digital guide is a CSP file really okay um but that that is kind of what it is yeah now that that point you've just made is one that we have been talking about a lot because again conversation with the people who developing their technology make the point that you've just made it it is not like normal software where there's predictability about inputs improving leading to this particular output improving and as the models iterate and prove we don't quite know what's going to come out the other end I think Demis would agree with that which is why I think there is this uh bias for look we need to get in there while\n\nthe training runs are being done before the models are released to understand what is this new iteration brought about in terms of capability which it it sounds like you would U would agree with I I was going to shift gears a little bit on you know you've talked a lot about human consciousness human agency which actually might strike people as as strange given that you are known for being such a brilliant innovator in technology ologist but it's it's quite heartfelt when I hear you talk about it and the importance of maintaining that agency in technology and preserving human consciousness now it kind of links to the thing I was going to ask is when I do interviews or talk to people out and about in this job about AI the thing that comes up most actually\n\nis is probably not so much of the stuff we've been talking about but jobs it's what does AI mean for my job is it going to mean that I don't have a job or my kids are not going to have a job now you know my my answer as a you as a policy maker as a leader is you know actually AI is already creating jobs and you can see that in the companies that are starting also the way it's being used is a little bit more as a co-pilot necessarily versus replacing the person there's still human agency but it's helping you do your job better which is a good thing and and as we've seen with technological Revolutions in the past clearly there's change in the labor market the amount of jobs I was quoting an MIT study today that they did a couple of years ago something like\n\n60% of the jobs at that moment didn't exist 40 years ago so hard to predict and my job is to create an incredible education system whether it's at school whether it's retraining people at any point in their career because ultimately if we've got a skilled population they'll be able to keep up with the the pace of change and have a good life but you know that it's still a concern and you know you what would your kind of observation be on on AI and the impact on labor markets and people's jobs and how they should feel about that as they they think about this well I think we are seeing the most disruptive force in history here um you know where we have for the first time we will have the first time something that is smarter than the smartest human um and\n\nthat I mean it's hard to say exactly what that moment is but but there will come a point where no job is needed you can have a job if you want to have a job for sort of personal satisfaction but the AI will be able to do everything so I don't know if that makes people comfortable uncomfortable it's [Laughter] it's you know that's why that's why I say if if you if you wish for a magic Genie that gives you any wishes you want and there's no limit you don't have those three limit three wish limit nonsense you just have as many as many wishes as you want um so uh it's both good and bad um one of the challenges in the future will be how do we find meaning in life if if you have a gen that can do everything you want I I I do think we we it's it's it's hard\n\nyou know when when when this new technology it tends to have usually follow an S curve in this case we're going to be on the exponential portion of the S curve for a long time um and you like you'll be able to ask for anything it won't be we won't have Universal basic income we'll have Universal High income so in some in some sense it'll be somewhat of a leveler um or an equalizer you know because really I think everyone will have access to this magic Genie um and you able to ask any question it'll be certainly be good for Education you it'll be the best tutor you could I'm the most patient tutor uh sit there all day um and uh there will be no shortage of goods and services will be an age of abundance um I think if I'd recommend people read uh in Banks\n\nthe banks culture books are probably the best envisioning if fact not probably they're definitely by far the best envisioning of an AI future um there's nothing even close so I'd recommend really recommend fanks I'm very big fan um all his books are good um does not say which one all of them um so so that's that that'll give you a sense of what is a I guess a fairly utopian or protop um future with with AI yeah um which is good from a as you said it's a universal High income which is a nice phrase and that's it's good from a kind of materialistic sense a of abundance actually that it kind of then leads to the question that you pose right I'm someone who believes you know work gives you meaning right I think a lot about that as as you know I think work\n\nis a good thing it you know gives people purpose in their lives and if you then remove a large chunk of that you know what does that mean and where do you get that you know where do you get that drive that motivation that purpose I mean you were talking about it you you work a lot of hours I do no as I was mentioning when we we were talking earlier I have to somewhat engage in deliberate suspension of disbelief um because I'm I'm putting so much Blood Sweat and Tears into a work project and burning the you know 3:00 a.\n\nm.\n\noil um then um I'm like wait why am I doing this I can just wait for the AI to do it I'm just lashing myself for no reason yeah um must be a glut for punishment or something um so we called call Demus and tell him to hurry up up and then you can have a holiday right that's the plan yeah no it's a it's a tricky it's a tricky thing because I think you know part of our job is to make sure that we can navigate to that very I think largely positive place that you're describing and help people through it between now and then because these things bring a lot of about a change in in the labor market as we've seen yeah um I I think it probably is generally a good thing because you know there are a lot of jobs that are uncomfortable or dangerous or sort of tedious\n\num and the computer will have no problem doing that be happy to do that all day long so um you know it's fun to cook food but it's not that fun to wash dishes like but the computer's perfectly happy to wash dishes um I I guess there is um you know we still have uh sports like where where where humans compete and like the Olympics and obviously um a machine can can go faster than any human but we still have uh we still humans race against each other um and uh and have all you know have these Sports competitions against each other where even though the machines are better they're still I guess competing to see who can be the best human at something yeah um and and people do find fulfillment in that so I guess that's perhaps a a good example of how even\n\nwhen machines are faster than are stronger than us we still find a way we still we still enjoy competing against other humans to at least to who the best human yeah that's that's a good that's a good analogy and we've been talking a lot about managing the risks I just before we move on and finish on AI is just talk a little bit about the opportunities you know you you're engaging lots of different companies neur being an obvious one which is doing which is doing some exciting stuff I you touched on the thing that I'm probably most excited about which is in education yeah and I think many people will have seen s Khan's video from earlier this year is Ted talk about as you talked about it's like personal tutor yeah personal tutor an amazing personal tutor\n\nan amazing personal tutor and we know the difference in learning having that personalized tutor is incredible compared to class from learning if you can have every child have a personal tutor specifically for them that then just evolves with them over time that could be extraordinary so that you know for me I look at that I think gosh that is within reach at this point and and that's one of the benefits I'm most excited about like when you look at the the landscape of things that you see as possible what is it that you know you are particularly excited about I I think certainly ai ai tter are going to be amazing um perhaps already are uh I think there's also perhaps companionship which may seem odd because how can the computer really be your friend but\n\nif you if you have an AI that has memory you know and remembers all of your interactions and has read every you can say like give it permission to read everything you've ever done so it really will know you better than anyone perhaps even yourself um and and and where you can talk to it every day and and those conversations spold upon each other you will actually have a great friend um as long as that friend can stay your friend and not get turned off or something don't turn off my friends um but I think that will actually be a real thing um and um I have a one of my sons is is sort of has some learning disabilities has trouble making friends actually and and I was like well you know he an AI friend would actually be great for him oh okay you know it's\n\nthat was a surprising answer that's actually it's worth uh worth reflecting on it's really interesting Ian we're already seeing it actually as we deliver you know Psychotherapy anyway now doing far more by digitally and by telephone to people and it's making a huge difference and you can see a world and which actually you know AI can provide that social benefit to people um just quick question on on X and then we should open it up to everybody you made a change when you in one of the well made many changes but quite a few one one of the one of the Chang you love that letter yeah i' got a real thing about it you you really do you really do one of the changes which you know kind of you know goes into the space that you know we have to operate in and this\n\nthis balance between free speech and moderation it's you know we grapple with as politicians you were grappling with your own version of that and and you you moved away from a kind of manual human yeah uh way of doing it the moderation to the the community notes and and I think that's it it was an interesting change right it's not what everyone else has done it would be good you know what's what was the reasoning behind that and why you think that is a better way to do that um yeah part of the problem is if if you if you Empower people as censors then well have there's going to be some amount of bias they have um and then whoever appoints the sensors is effectively in control of information so then the the idea behind Community notes is well how do we\n\nhave a consensus driven uh I mean so it's not really censoring it but consensus driven approach to truth how do we or how do we how do we make things um the least amount untrue like you can say like what one can't pass perhaps get to Pure truth but you can aspire to be more truthful um so the the the thing about Community notes is it doesn't actually delete anything it simply adds context now that context could be this thing is untrue for the following reasons um um and but but importantly with Community notes um everything is open source actually so you can see ex the software um every line of the software you can see all of the data that went into a community node and you and you can independently create that Community node so if you've got if you see\n\nmanipulation of the data you can actually highlight that and say well this this this there appears to be some gaming of the system um and you can suggest improvements um so it's it's it's maximum transparency which is I think combined with the kind of wisdom of the crowds and transparency to get to a better Onis and and really one of the key elements of community notes is that in order for to be shown people who have historically disagreed must agree um and and there is a bit of AI usage here so there's we populate a parameter space um around each contributor to community notes and then a parameter space so so everyone's got basically these these vectors associated with them which so it's it's not as simple as as right or left it's saying it's it's more\n\nit's several hundred vectors that that because things are more complicated than something right right or left and um and and then we'll we'll do sort of a uh inverse correlation say like okay these these people generally disagree but they agree about this note okay so then that so then that that that gives the note credibility okay um yeah that's the that's the core of it and it's working quite well yeah um I've yet to see a note actually be be present for more than a few hours uh that that is incorrect so the batting average is extremely good and when I ask you people say oh they're worried about Community notes sort of being disinformation like send me one and then they can't so so I think it's I think it's quite good I mean the general aspiration is\n\nwith the xplatform is to inform and entertain the public um and to be as accurate as possible and as truthful as possible um even if someone doesn't like the truth you know people don't always like the truth um no not always um but but that's that's the aspiration and I think if if we are if we stay true to the truth then I think we'll find that people uh use use the system to learn what is going on and to to learn it I I think actually truth pays um so I think it'll be what what I mean assuming you don't want to engage in self- delusion then um then I think it's it's the smart move you know so excellent very helpful right let's uh open it up to all our guests here we've got some microphones they'll come put your hands up they'll come come and find you\n\nwe got yes go for it thank you good evening uh Alice bentin from entrepreneur first uh thank you for a fascinating conversation I suppose a question for each of you um prime minister the UK has some of the best universities in the world we have the talent what will it take for the UK to be a real breeding breeding ground for unicorn companies um and Elon uh being a Founder in the UK is still a non-obvious career choice for the most exceptional technical Talent what are the cultural elements that we need to put into place to change this thank you both John you want to go first go for it um sure well you're right that there are um cultural elements where you you you know the the culture should celebrate creating new companies um and um and there should\n\nbe a bias towards supporting um small small companies because they're the ones that need nurturing the larger companies really don't need nurturing ing um so you know just you can think of it's sort of like a garden if it's a little Sprout it needs needs nurturing if it's a Mighty Oak it doesn't need quite as much um so I think uh that that that is a mindset change that is important um but but I I should mention that um uh London is uh you know London and San Francisco or the Bay Area are really the two senses for AI so that so London is actually doing doing very well on that front that the two MO I say the two leading locations on Earth and you know San Francisco's probably ahead of London but London's really very strong or London area um greater London\n\nhome counties I guess keep going keep going um so I'm just saying objectively this is the case um um and but you do need that uh you need you need the infrastructure you need you need um landlords who are willing to uh rent to new companies you you need uh law firms and accountants that are willing to support new companies and it's generally a mind it is a mindset change um and I think some of that is happening but I think really it's just culturally people need to decide this is this is a good thing yeah yeah no actually well thanks for for what you said about the UK it's something that we work hard on lots of people in the room are are part of what makes this a fabulous place for intive companies including uh Alice so Alice what I'd say is you know\n\nmy job is to get all the you know the nuts and bolts right make sure that all of you are starting companies can raise the capital that you need everything from you know your seed funding with our incredible you know Eis tax reliefs all the way through to you know your late stage rounds and we need reform of our Pension funds and the Chancellor's got a bunch of incredible reforms to unlock capital from all the people who have it and deploy it into growth Equity right that is a work in progress we're not there yet but I think we're we're making we're making good progress we need talent we need people you right so that means an education system that prioritizes the things that matter and you've seen my reforms I go on about more maths more maths more maths\n\num but I think that is important but also attracting the best and the brightest here if you look at our fastest growing companies in in this country and I think it's probably the same in in the US over half of them have a non-british Founder right and so that tells you we've got to be a place that is open to the world's best and brightest entrepreneurial Talent so the Visa regime that we've put in place I think does that makes it easy for those people to come here and then actually it's the thing that we spent the beginning of the session talking about the regulation right making sure that we've got a regulatory system that's Pro Innovation that yeah we of course we always need guard rails on the things uh that will worry us but we've got to create a\n\nspace for people to innovate and do different things you know those are all my jobs the thing that is tougher is the thing that Elon talked about which is culture right it's how do you transpose that culture from places like Silicon Valley across the world where people are unafraid to give up the security of a regular paycheck to go and start something and be comfortable with failure you you talked about that a lot I think you talked about it more in when you were playing games right but that you've got to be comfortable failing and knowing that that's just part of the process and that is a it's a tricky cultural thing to do overnight but it's an important part of I think creating that kind of environment yeah if if you don't succeed with your first startup\n\nit shouldn't be sort of a catastrophic career ending exactly thing it should be you know what good I think should like should be like well you know you gave it a good shot you know and and and now try again exactly and it's so one thing I was going to mention is like obviously creating a company is sort of a highrisk high reward uh situation um but and I don't know quite what the how it works in in the UK I think it's probably better than than um Continental Europe um but the the stock options are very difficult in most parts of Europe I'm not sure if how than the UK but but if somebody's basically going to risk their the sort of life savings and with and the vast majority of startups fail so I mean you hear about the startups that succeed but most companies\n\nare most startups consist of you know a massive amount of of of work um followed by failure that's actually most most companies and so it's a highrisk high reward and and and so the higher reward part does need to be there for it to make sense yeah I think that was a very soft pitch for tax policy that I CH but I actually I can tell you so look I a I agree and we have so we have I think relative to certainly European countries but certainly the US definitely California a much lower rate of capital gains tax okay right so for those people who are risking and growing something like we think the reward should be there at the end so 20% capital gains tax rate um and on stock options I don't know if we've got anyone from index ventures in in the room so you\n\nknow index one of our bleeding VC funds here they they do a regular report looking at most countries tax treatment of stock options yeah and you know when I was Chancellor of you know treasury secretary equivalent you know we were I think down at uh we were pretty good but we were fourth or fifth and I said we need to for exactly the reason that you mentioned was like this has got to be the best place for innovators we need to move that up and I think in the last iteration of that report we had because of the changes that um Jeremy and I had made we have moved up to I think second from from memory so hopefully that should give you and everyone else some comfort that we recognize that's important because when people work hard and risk things yeah they\n\nshould be able to enjoy the rewards of that high risk High reward yeah and I think we have a we very much have a tax system that supports that and those are the values that you know I believe in and I think most of us in this room probably do as well right next uh next question I've got seven front of me and then I'll come over here go on go on S thanks very much um we've talked about some really big Ideas um Global changing ideas I'm really interested particularly in the context of creation of of science and technology superhubs and so on how does that map onto the everyday lives of uh of people living in say Austin Texas to choose r or in my case Nottingham East Midlands uh what what is how do you see that evolving for people you know every day the\n\nsort of everyday effects of AI yeah um for context Elon so Seb Seb runs are are equivalent of CVS right or Walgreens so you know when as I visited right so he's got of people coming in his shops every day and it's making sure how do we make this relevant I think so is your question how how is this relevant to that person you know maybe actually let me go I'll go first on that because I I think it's a a fair a fair point I was just going over with the team a couple of things that we're doing because I was thinking like how are we doing AI right now that it's making a difference to people's lives and we have this thing called gov.\n\nuk which is which actually when we when it happened several years ago was a pioneering thing all the government information brought together on one website gov.\n\nuk and so you need to get a driving license passport any interaction with government it was centralized in a very easy relatively easy to use way uh better than most better than most yeah so we we are about so we're about to deploy AI across that platform so that is something that I think you know several million people a day use right so a large chunk of the population is interacting with gov.\n\nuk every single day to do all these day-to-day tasks right every one of your customers is doing all those things and so we're about to deploy AI into that to make that whole process so much easier because you know some people will be like look well I'm currently here and I've lost my passport and my flight's in five hours you know at the moment that would require you know how many steps to figure out what you do you know we actually when we deploy the AI it should be that you could just literally say that and boom boom boom boom boom this is what we're going to do walk you through it and that's going to benefit millions and millions of people every single day right cuz that's a very practical way in my seat that I can start using this technology to help\n\npeople in their day-to-day lives not just Healthcare discoveries and everything else that we're also doing but I thought that's quite a powerful demonstration of literally your day-to-day customer seeing actually their just day-to-day life get a little bit easier because of something that you know Elon deis and others in this room have helped create yeah no exactly the the the most immediate thing is just being able to ask um like having a very smart friend that you can ask anything um you know ask how to make something how to solve any problem and it'll tell you um so and and obviously companies are going to adopt this so I think you'll have much better customer service I guess essentially that'll probably be the first thing you notice um and um and\n\nthen we talked about education yeah um so having a tutor so if you're trying to understand a subject like having a phenomenal tutor on any subject is that that's really pretty much there already almost I mean we need to obviously AI needs to stop hallucinating before you know it can't give you I mean we we still have a little bit of the problem where it can give you an answer that's confidently wrong um with great grammar uh and you know bullet points and everything in citations that was not real so it has to be okay we need to make sure it's it's not it's not it's not giving you confidently wrong two dire answers um but but we that's going to happen quick pretty quickly where it is actually correct um so yeah I going to say for any for any parent who\n\nwas homeschooling during coid and realizing what their kids needed to be helped with that will come as an enormous relief I think very very good right have we got let's go questions uh over here who have we got we any microphones or Brent are you there perfect hi Bren hobman um so you know you've spoken eloquently about abundance and the age of abundance so it it feels obviously with AI it's everything everywhere everywhere all at once but with um with robots and to to get the age of abundance we'll need a lot of robots I know you're working hard on robots as well are there sort of constraints that we should think of and our politicians should be thinking of that we might get one country might get heavily behind in in Rob in robots that can do all these\n\nthings and enter the age of abundance and therefore be at a strategic disadvantage well really anything that can be actuated by a computer is effectively a robot um so you can think of frankly Tesla cause are robots on Wheels um anything that's connected to the internet is effectively an endpoint actuator for artificial intelligence um so um you've got Boston Dynamics obviously they've been making impressive robots for a while um I think they're at this point mostly owned by Hyundai so I I guess when I's probably going to make um robots of that are humanoid and and and some rather interesting shapes that I wasn't disting like the one that looks like a has wheels and looks sort of like a kangaroo on Wheels I'm not sure what that is but um um looks a little\n\ndented frankly but um but there's going to be all sorts of all sorts of robots um you've got the company Dyson in in the UK which I think does some pretty impressive things um I I I think the UK will not be behind actually on on that front um UK also has arm which is um really the the best one one of the best perhaps the best uh in in uh chip design in the world um Tesla uses a lot of a lot of arm technology almost everyone does actually so I think the UK is in in a strong position um Germany obviously makes a lot of robots industrial robots uh that I mean I think generally countries that make um robots of any kind even if they seem somewhat conventional will be will be fine um I do think there is a there is a a safety concern especially with humanoid\n\nrobots because um you at least the car can't chase you into this building not very easily you know or chase you off a tree or you know um you can sort of run up a flight of stairs and get away from a Tesla um um I think there a Stephen King movie about that um if your car gets possessed um so but if you have a humanoid robot it can it can basically chase you anywhere so I I think we should have some kind of um hardwired local cut off um that that you can't update from the internet so anything that can be software updated from the internet obviously can be overridden um but if you have a local sort of off switch um where you p pa SA a keyword or something and then that puts the robot into a safe State um some kind of localized safe State ability um an\n\noff switch you know where you don't have to get too close to the robot I don't know so if you've got millions of these things going all over the place you're not selling it just you know like no I I know um I'm saying it's is something we should be quite concerned about um because if robot can robot can follow you anywhere then you know what if they just one day get a software update and they're not so friendly anymore um then we've got a James Cameron movie on I um it's it's actually that's it's funny you're saying that because we in our session that we had today I you know just would say who we they made exactly the same point right de so we're talking about they're talking about movies actually without mentioning James Cameron they're talking about\n\nJames camera movies and they're saying if you think about it's not just those movies but any of these movies trains Subways metros cars buses they said all these movies with the same plot fundamentally all end with the person turning it off right or finding a way to shut the thing down and they were making the same point that that you were about the importance of actual physical off switches yeah and so all the technology is great but fundamentally this same movie has played out 50 times we've all watched it and all fundamentally you know you know point I'm referring to right it all ends in pretty much the same way with someone finding a way to just yeah do thing um which is kind of interesting that you said a similar point right it's probably not the\n\nit's not the obvious place you'd go to but maybe that could be one of the tests for the AI we we just say like blank is your favorite jamers Cameron movie fill in the blank yeah excellent right um yes we got over there yeah perfect hi a question for you both um so I'm a founder of a Ai and ml scaleup in the third Center for AI which is leads in the north of England I'm bit biased um since the launch of chat GPT three months after that we saw a real increase in fishing attacks using much more sophisticated language patterns um what do we do to protect businesses consumers so they trust this technology better and how do we bring them along that Journey with us well I think we shouldn't trust it that much actually um it is actually quite quite a significant\n\nchallenge because we're getting to the point where even open source AI can pass uh human capture tests so you know this s are you a human identify all the traffic lights in this picture you're like okay yeah is going to have a no problem doing that in fact it'll do it better than a human and faster than a human so we're like how do you you know at the point of which is better a better human better passing human test than humans then well what tests actually make sense that is a real problem I don't actually have a good solution to it um that one of the things we're trying to figure out on the xplatform is how to deal with that because it really we really are at the point where um even with with uh open source you know readily available AI you don't need\n\nto be sort of leading the field um you can actually be better than humans at passing these tests um and that's sort of why we're thinking well perhaps we should sort of charge a a dollar or a pound a year it's a very tiny amount of money but it's it still it still makes it prohibitively expensive to make a million Parts um so um and especially if you need a million payment methods then you you run out of sort of for stolen credit cards pretty quickly um uh so that that's that's sort of where we're thinking like we might have to sort of just charge some very tiny amount of money um3 cents a day effectively to um deal with the the onslaught of AI powered bonds um and if if and that that is that is still a growing problem but will will be I think perhaps\n\nan insurmountable problem next year so and and and then you have to worry about well manipulation of of um information is making something seem very popular when in fact it is not because it's getting boosted by all these likes and and and repost from um AI powered bots so that's why I sort of think somewhat inevitably it leads to some small payment in order to uh dramatically increase the the cost of a bond um so I think I think frankly I think probably any social media system that doesn't do that will simply be overrun by B you know I think my my general answer would be you know we we need to show that we are on top of mitigating the risk right so people can trust the technology that's what actually the last couple of days has been about on the safety\n\nSummit is just showing you know we're investing in the safety Institute having the people who can do the research on these things to figure out how we mitigate against them and we have to do it fast and we have to keep iterating it because I think all of us probably in this room believe that the technology can be incredibly powerful but we've got to make sure we bring people along that Journey with us that we're handling the risks that are there and I said there's a job to do and the last couple of days I think we make good progress on it because we want to focus on the positives and manage these things but that requires action and and that's what the last couple of days has been about and your your um story your analogy there was part of the research\n\nthat actually you know the team working on the task force here published and presented yesterday I don't know if you saw it was uh which is a essentially that it was a using AI to do to create a ton of fake profiles on social media and then infiltrate particular groups with particular information and actually at the moment that is said to your point of it's like cost free it's it's it's getting it's getting to the point where it's like really you're going to have 100 for a penny sort of thing ridiculous and if you think about some of these social networks at quite a neighborhood or town level it's not that many fake profiles that you need to quickly create suddenly they're everywhere and there's some local issue that might be of importance and you know\n\nthe team have have run versions of how that would look like and suddenly they're interacting with everybody and then spreading a misinformation around ex your point that's we literally as part of the research that we published on misinformation yesterday it's uh it's a real challenge yeah exactly to your point I mean you the images it's it's you don't even need to steal some body's picture cuz that's traceable but you can actually just say create a new a new image of a person realistic looking but doesn't exist um and and then create a biography realistic but doesn't exist and do that on mass and practically the only way we be able to tell us that the gram is too good did give away yeah no tyos come on now I'm getting wave that because I think we are\n\nout of time I don't we take one very brief last question and let's make a go one yes sir going your right in front of me go thank you for the opportunity Elon question for you um related to X platform are there simple things we can do especially when it comes to visual media you alluded to the fact that it's fairly straightforward and effectively free to make people like yourself say and do things that you never said or did yeah um can we do something like cryptographically signed media I'm from Adobe we're working on this project yeah Twitter was a member love to see X come back okay um digitally signed media to indicate uh not only what was created by AI but what came from a camera what was real yeah to imbue a sense of Trust in Media that can go viral\n\nthat sounds like a good idea actually so if um some some way of authenticating would be would be good um so yeah I I that sounds like a good idea we we should probably do it there you go actually on that on that point so I've I've already so this is particularly pertinent for people in my job right and I've already had a situation happen to me with a doctored image that goes everywhere negative by the time everyone realizes well that's fake and we should stop sending it the damage is damage is done um and actually we were again reflecting today if you think next year you've got elections in you know I think you know the US India I think Indonesia um probably here there you go massive news um and actually you've got just an enormous junk of the world's\n\npopulation is voting next year right and you got EU elections as well and you know actually just these issues are right in front of us you know next year is where big elections across the globe probably the first set of Elections where this has been a real issue yeah um so figuring out how we manage that is I think kind of mission critical for people who want you know the Integrity of our democracy yeah I mean some of it is it's quite interesting like the Pope in the puffer jacket have you seen that one I haven't that's amazing but I mean I still run into people who who who think that's real um I'm like well what are the odds he's wearing a puffa jacket in July in Rome uh you know be sweating but it actually look quite quite dashing I say um in fact I\n\nthink AI fashion is going to be a real thing so so I Doom and Gloom like we live in the most interesting times and I think this is um it is you know like 80% likely to be good and 20% bad and I think we're if we're cognizant and and careful about the bad part on balance actually it will be the future that we want um or the the future that is preferable um and and it actually will be somewhat of a leveler an equalizer in the sense that you know I think everyone will have access to goods and services and education and so you know I think probably it leads to more human happiness so I I guess I'd probably leave on on an optimistic note perfect yeah I that's a well that's a that is a great note to end on I think that you know we all want that that better\n\nfuture we think it's there the promise of it is certainly there lot people in this room including yourselves are working hard to make it happen our job in government is to make sure it happens safely but on the basis of this conversation in the last couple of days I'm certainly leaving more confident that we can make that happen so it's been a huge privilege and pleasure to have you here thank you very much for having [Applause] me","textByLang":{"en":"okay all right well good evening everybody Welcome Elon thanks for being here thank you for having me we feel we feel very privileged we're excited to have you right so I'm going to start with some questions and then we're going to open it up let me get straight into it so Bill Gat said there is no one in our time who has done more to push the bounds of science Innovation than you well it's kind of to say well that's it that's a nice thing to have anyone say about you nice coming from Bill Gates but oddly enough when it comes to AI actually for around a decade you've almost been doing the opposite and saying hang on we need to think about what we're doing and what we're pushing here and what do we do to make this safe and and actually maybe we shouldn't\n\nbe pushing as fast or as hard as we are like I mean you've been doing it for a decade like what was it that caused you to think about it that way and you know why do we need to be worried yeah I've been somewhat of a Cassandra for quite a while um where where people would I tell you like we should really be concerned about AI they be like what are you talking about like they've never really had any experience with with AI but since I was immersed in um technology I have been immersed in technology for a long time I could see it coming um so uh but I think this year was there've been a number of of breakthroughs I mean you know the point in which someone can see a dynamically created video of themselves um you know like somebody could make a video of you\n\nsaying anything in real time um or me um and uh so the sort of the deep Pake videos which are really incredibly good in fact sometimes more convincing than real ones um and deep real um and um and then and then obviously things like CH GPT were were quite remarkable now I saw gpt1 gpt2 gpt3 gp4 that you know the whole sort of lead up to that so it was easy for me to um kind of see where it's going if you just sort of extrapolate the points on a curve and assume that Trend will continue then we will have um profound artificial intelligence and obviously at a level that far exceeds human intelligence um so um but I'm I'm glad to see at this point that uh people are taking uh safety seriously and i' I'd uh like to say thank you for holding this AI safety\n\nconference I think actually it will regard on in history as being very important I think it's it's really quite profound um and um and and I do think overall that the potential is there for a artificial intelligence AI to um have most likely a positive effect um and to create a future of abundance where there is no scarcity of goods and services um but but it is somewhat the of the the magic Genie problem where if you have a magic Genie that can grant all the wishes um usually those stories um don't end well be careful what you wish for including wishes yeah yeah so you you you talked a little bit about about the the summit and thank you for being engaged in it which has been great and people enjoyed having you there participating in this dialogue now\n\none of the things that we achieved today in the meetings between the companies and the leaders was an agreement that externally ideally governments should be doing safety testing of models before they're released I think this is something that you've spoken about a little bit it was something we worked really hard on because you know my job in government is to say hang on there is a potential risk here not a not a definite risk but a potential risk of something that could be bad you know my job is to protect the country yes that's and we can only do that if we develop the capability we need in our safety Institute and then go in and make sure we can test the models before they are release delighted that that happened today but you know what what's your\n\nview on what we should be doing right you've talked about the potential risk right again we don't know but you know what are the types of things governments like our should be doing to manage and mitigate against those risks well I generally think that that it is good for government to play a role when the public safety is is at risk so um you know really for the vast majority of software um the public safety is not at risk I mean if if the if the uh app crashes on your phone or your laptop it's not a a massive catastrophe um but when you're talking about digital superintelligence I think which does pose a risk to the public then there is a role for government to play to safeguard the interest of the public and and this is of course true in many fields\n\num you know Aviation cars you know I and I deal with Regulators throughout the world uh because of um stalling being Communications Rockets being Aerospace and cars you know being TR vehicle transport so I'm very familiar with dealing with with Regulators um and I actually agree with the vast majority of regulations there's a few that I disagree with from time to time but Point one% probably of or less than 1% of regulations I disagree with so um and there is some concern from uh people in silic Valley who who' have never dealt with Regulators before and they think that this is going to just Crush Innovation and and slow them down and be annoying but and and uh it will be annoying it's true um they're not wrong about that um but but but I think there's\n\nwe've learned over the years that uh having a referee is a good thing and if you look at any sports game there's always a a referee and and nobody's suggesting I think to have a sports game without one um and and I think that's the the right way to think about this is for um for government to be a a referee to make sure the Sportsman like conduct and and and that the public safety is um you know is addressed that we care about the public safety because I think there might be at times too much optimism about technology and I speak I say that as a technologist I mean so I ought to know um and and uh and and like I said on on balance I think that the AI will be a forceable good most likely but the probability of it going bad is not 0% yeah so we we just\n\nneed to mitigate the downside potential and then how you talked about referee and that's what we're trying right there yeah well there we go I mean you know and we talked about this and Demus and I discussed this a long time ago like literally facing right at and actually you know Demus to his credit and the credit of people in industry did say that to us I you know de was say it's not right that Demus and his colleagues are marking their own homework right there needs to be someone independent and that's why we've developed the safety Institute here I mean do you think governments can develop the expertise one of the things we need to do is say hang on you know Demis Sam all the others have got a lot of very smart people doing this governments need to\n\nquickly tool up capability wise Personnel wise which is what we're doing I mean do you think it is possible for governments to do that fast enough given how quickly the technology is developing or what do we need to do to make sure we do do it quick enough no I think it's it's a good it's a great Point you're making um the the pace of of AI is faster than any technology I've seen in history by far um and it's it seems to be growing in capability by at at least fivefold perhaps 10 fold per year it it'll certainly grow by an order of magnitude next year yeah so um so and and government isn't used to moving at that speed um but I but I think even if there are not um firm regulations um even if there's not even if there isn't an enforcement capability Simply\n\nHaving insight and being able to highlight concerns to the public will be very powerful um so even if that's all that's accomplished I think that will be very very good okay yeah well hopefully we can do better than that hopefully yeah no but that that's helpful actually we were talking before it was striking you you someone who spent their life in technology living More's law and what was interesting over the last couple of days talking to everyone who's doing the development of this and I think youd concur with this is is just the pace of advancement here is unlike anything all of you have seen in your careers and technology is that fair because you've got these kind of compounding effects from the hardware and and the data and the Personnel yeah um\n\nI mean the two um currently the two leading centers for AI development are C Isco Bay Area and the and the sort of London area that um and there are many other places where it's being done but those are the two leading areas so I think if um you know if if the United States and the UK um and and China are um sort of aligned on on safety that's all going to be a good thing because that's really that's where that's that's where the the leadership is generally I me you actually you mentioned China that so I I took a decision to invite China to to Summit over the last couple days and it was not an easy decision a lot of people criticize me for it you know my view is if you're going to tryal serious conversation you need to but I what would your thoughts you\n\ndo business all around the world you just talked about it there yeah you know should we be engaging with them can we trust them is that the right thing to have done if if we don't if China is not on board with uh AI safety it it's somewhat of a mood situation U the single biggest objection that I get to any kind of AI regulation or or sort of safety controls um are well China's not going to do it and therefore they will just jump into the lead and exceed us whole um but but actually China is willing to participate in uh in AI safety um and thank you for inviting them and I and they you know I I think we should thank China for for attending um when I was when I was in China earlier this year the my main subject of discussion with this the leadership in\n\nChina was AI safety and saying that this this is really something that they they should care about and um they took seriously and and and um and you are too which is which is great um and having them here I think was essential really if they if they're if they're not participants it's it's uh pointless it's pointless yeah no that and I think we were pleased I they were engaged yesterday in the discussions and actually ended up signing the same communic that everyone else did that's great which is a good stop right and I said if we need everyone to approach us in a similar way if we're going to have I think a realistic chance of of resolving it I was going to you talked about Innovation earlier and and regul being annoying there was a good debate today\n\nwe had about open source and I think you you've kind of been a proponent of algorithmic transparency and making some of the the X algorithms public and you actually we were talking about Jeffrey Hinton on the way in yeah you know he he's particularly been very concerned about open- Source models being used by Bad actors you've got a group of people who say they are critical to Innovation happening in that distributed way look it's it's a trick there's probably no perfect answer and there's a tricky balance what are your thoughts on how we should approach this open- Source question or you know where should we be targeting whatever regulatory or monitoring that we're going to do well the open source um algorithms and data tend to lag the close Source by\n\n6 to 12 months um but so so there but given the rate of improvement that there's actually therefore quite a big difference between the the closed source and the and the open um if things are improving by factor of let's say five or more um than being a year behind is you're five times worse so it's a pretty big difference and that might be actually an okay situation um but it it certainly will'll get to the point where you've got open source um AI that can do that that will start to approach human level intelligence will perhap succeed it um I don't know quite what to do about it I think it's somewhat inev inevitable there will be some amount of Open Source and I I I guess I would have a slight bias towards open source uh because at least you can see\n\nwhat's going on whereas closed Source you don't know what's going on now it should be said with AI that even if it's open source do you actually know what's going on because if you've got a gigantic data file and um you know sort of billions of of of data points weights and parameters uh you can't just read it and see what it's going to do it's a gigantic file of inscrutable numbers um you can test it when you when you run it you can test it you can run a bunch of tests to see what it's going to do but it it's probabilistic as opposed to um deterministic it's not it's not like traditional programming where you've got a you've got very discret logic and and and the outcome is very predictable and you can read each line and see what each Line's going to\n\ndo um uh a neural net is just a whole bunch of probabilities um I mean it sort of ends up being a giant comma separated value file it's like our digital guide is a CSP file really okay um but that that is kind of what it is yeah now that that point you've just made is one that we have been talking about a lot because again conversation with the people who developing their technology make the point that you've just made it it is not like normal software where there's predictability about inputs improving leading to this particular output improving and as the models iterate and prove we don't quite know what's going to come out the other end I think Demis would agree with that which is why I think there is this uh bias for look we need to get in there while\n\nthe training runs are being done before the models are released to understand what is this new iteration brought about in terms of capability which it it sounds like you would U would agree with I I was going to shift gears a little bit on you know you've talked a lot about human consciousness human agency which actually might strike people as as strange given that you are known for being such a brilliant innovator in technology ologist but it's it's quite heartfelt when I hear you talk about it and the importance of maintaining that agency in technology and preserving human consciousness now it kind of links to the thing I was going to ask is when I do interviews or talk to people out and about in this job about AI the thing that comes up most actually\n\nis is probably not so much of the stuff we've been talking about but jobs it's what does AI mean for my job is it going to mean that I don't have a job or my kids are not going to have a job now you know my my answer as a you as a policy maker as a leader is you know actually AI is already creating jobs and you can see that in the companies that are starting also the way it's being used is a little bit more as a co-pilot necessarily versus replacing the person there's still human agency but it's helping you do your job better which is a good thing and and as we've seen with technological Revolutions in the past clearly there's change in the labor market the amount of jobs I was quoting an MIT study today that they did a couple of years ago something like\n\n60% of the jobs at that moment didn't exist 40 years ago so hard to predict and my job is to create an incredible education system whether it's at school whether it's retraining people at any point in their career because ultimately if we've got a skilled population they'll be able to keep up with the the pace of change and have a good life but you know that it's still a concern and you know you what would your kind of observation be on on AI and the impact on labor markets and people's jobs and how they should feel about that as they they think about this well I think we are seeing the most disruptive force in history here um you know where we have for the first time we will have the first time something that is smarter than the smartest human um and\n\nthat I mean it's hard to say exactly what that moment is but but there will come a point where no job is needed you can have a job if you want to have a job for sort of personal satisfaction but the AI will be able to do everything so I don't know if that makes people comfortable uncomfortable it's [Laughter] it's you know that's why that's why I say if if you if you wish for a magic Genie that gives you any wishes you want and there's no limit you don't have those three limit three wish limit nonsense you just have as many as many wishes as you want um so uh it's both good and bad um one of the challenges in the future will be how do we find meaning in life if if you have a gen that can do everything you want I I I do think we we it's it's it's hard\n\nyou know when when when this new technology it tends to have usually follow an S curve in this case we're going to be on the exponential portion of the S curve for a long time um and you like you'll be able to ask for anything it won't be we won't have Universal basic income we'll have Universal High income so in some in some sense it'll be somewhat of a leveler um or an equalizer you know because really I think everyone will have access to this magic Genie um and you able to ask any question it'll be certainly be good for Education you it'll be the best tutor you could I'm the most patient tutor uh sit there all day um and uh there will be no shortage of goods and services will be an age of abundance um I think if I'd recommend people read uh in Banks\n\nthe banks culture books are probably the best envisioning if fact not probably they're definitely by far the best envisioning of an AI future um there's nothing even close so I'd recommend really recommend fanks I'm very big fan um all his books are good um does not say which one all of them um so so that's that that'll give you a sense of what is a I guess a fairly utopian or protop um future with with AI yeah um which is good from a as you said it's a universal High income which is a nice phrase and that's it's good from a kind of materialistic sense a of abundance actually that it kind of then leads to the question that you pose right I'm someone who believes you know work gives you meaning right I think a lot about that as as you know I think work\n\nis a good thing it you know gives people purpose in their lives and if you then remove a large chunk of that you know what does that mean and where do you get that you know where do you get that drive that motivation that purpose I mean you were talking about it you you work a lot of hours I do no as I was mentioning when we we were talking earlier I have to somewhat engage in deliberate suspension of disbelief um because I'm I'm putting so much Blood Sweat and Tears into a work project and burning the you know 3:00 a.\n\nm.\n\noil um then um I'm like wait why am I doing this I can just wait for the AI to do it I'm just lashing myself for no reason yeah um must be a glut for punishment or something um so we called call Demus and tell him to hurry up up and then you can have a holiday right that's the plan yeah no it's a it's a tricky it's a tricky thing because I think you know part of our job is to make sure that we can navigate to that very I think largely positive place that you're describing and help people through it between now and then because these things bring a lot of about a change in in the labor market as we've seen yeah um I I think it probably is generally a good thing because you know there are a lot of jobs that are uncomfortable or dangerous or sort of tedious\n\num and the computer will have no problem doing that be happy to do that all day long so um you know it's fun to cook food but it's not that fun to wash dishes like but the computer's perfectly happy to wash dishes um I I guess there is um you know we still have uh sports like where where where humans compete and like the Olympics and obviously um a machine can can go faster than any human but we still have uh we still humans race against each other um and uh and have all you know have these Sports competitions against each other where even though the machines are better they're still I guess competing to see who can be the best human at something yeah um and and people do find fulfillment in that so I guess that's perhaps a a good example of how even\n\nwhen machines are faster than are stronger than us we still find a way we still we still enjoy competing against other humans to at least to who the best human yeah that's that's a good that's a good analogy and we've been talking a lot about managing the risks I just before we move on and finish on AI is just talk a little bit about the opportunities you know you you're engaging lots of different companies neur being an obvious one which is doing which is doing some exciting stuff I you touched on the thing that I'm probably most excited about which is in education yeah and I think many people will have seen s Khan's video from earlier this year is Ted talk about as you talked about it's like personal tutor yeah personal tutor an amazing personal tutor\n\nan amazing personal tutor and we know the difference in learning having that personalized tutor is incredible compared to class from learning if you can have every child have a personal tutor specifically for them that then just evolves with them over time that could be extraordinary so that you know for me I look at that I think gosh that is within reach at this point and and that's one of the benefits I'm most excited about like when you look at the the landscape of things that you see as possible what is it that you know you are particularly excited about I I think certainly ai ai tter are going to be amazing um perhaps already are uh I think there's also perhaps companionship which may seem odd because how can the computer really be your friend but\n\nif you if you have an AI that has memory you know and remembers all of your interactions and has read every you can say like give it permission to read everything you've ever done so it really will know you better than anyone perhaps even yourself um and and and where you can talk to it every day and and those conversations spold upon each other you will actually have a great friend um as long as that friend can stay your friend and not get turned off or something don't turn off my friends um but I think that will actually be a real thing um and um I have a one of my sons is is sort of has some learning disabilities has trouble making friends actually and and I was like well you know he an AI friend would actually be great for him oh okay you know it's\n\nthat was a surprising answer that's actually it's worth uh worth reflecting on it's really interesting Ian we're already seeing it actually as we deliver you know Psychotherapy anyway now doing far more by digitally and by telephone to people and it's making a huge difference and you can see a world and which actually you know AI can provide that social benefit to people um just quick question on on X and then we should open it up to everybody you made a change when you in one of the well made many changes but quite a few one one of the one of the Chang you love that letter yeah i' got a real thing about it you you really do you really do one of the changes which you know kind of you know goes into the space that you know we have to operate in and this\n\nthis balance between free speech and moderation it's you know we grapple with as politicians you were grappling with your own version of that and and you you moved away from a kind of manual human yeah uh way of doing it the moderation to the the community notes and and I think that's it it was an interesting change right it's not what everyone else has done it would be good you know what's what was the reasoning behind that and why you think that is a better way to do that um yeah part of the problem is if if you if you Empower people as censors then well have there's going to be some amount of bias they have um and then whoever appoints the sensors is effectively in control of information so then the the idea behind Community notes is well how do we\n\nhave a consensus driven uh I mean so it's not really censoring it but consensus driven approach to truth how do we or how do we how do we make things um the least amount untrue like you can say like what one can't pass perhaps get to Pure truth but you can aspire to be more truthful um so the the the thing about Community notes is it doesn't actually delete anything it simply adds context now that context could be this thing is untrue for the following reasons um um and but but importantly with Community notes um everything is open source actually so you can see ex the software um every line of the software you can see all of the data that went into a community node and you and you can independently create that Community node so if you've got if you see\n\nmanipulation of the data you can actually highlight that and say well this this this there appears to be some gaming of the system um and you can suggest improvements um so it's it's it's maximum transparency which is I think combined with the kind of wisdom of the crowds and transparency to get to a better Onis and and really one of the key elements of community notes is that in order for to be shown people who have historically disagreed must agree um and and there is a bit of AI usage here so there's we populate a parameter space um around each contributor to community notes and then a parameter space so so everyone's got basically these these vectors associated with them which so it's it's not as simple as as right or left it's saying it's it's more\n\nit's several hundred vectors that that because things are more complicated than something right right or left and um and and then we'll we'll do sort of a uh inverse correlation say like okay these these people generally disagree but they agree about this note okay so then that so then that that that gives the note credibility okay um yeah that's the that's the core of it and it's working quite well yeah um I've yet to see a note actually be be present for more than a few hours uh that that is incorrect so the batting average is extremely good and when I ask you people say oh they're worried about Community notes sort of being disinformation like send me one and then they can't so so I think it's I think it's quite good I mean the general aspiration is\n\nwith the xplatform is to inform and entertain the public um and to be as accurate as possible and as truthful as possible um even if someone doesn't like the truth you know people don't always like the truth um no not always um but but that's that's the aspiration and I think if if we are if we stay true to the truth then I think we'll find that people uh use use the system to learn what is going on and to to learn it I I think actually truth pays um so I think it'll be what what I mean assuming you don't want to engage in self- delusion then um then I think it's it's the smart move you know so excellent very helpful right let's uh open it up to all our guests here we've got some microphones they'll come put your hands up they'll come come and find you\n\nwe got yes go for it thank you good evening uh Alice bentin from entrepreneur first uh thank you for a fascinating conversation I suppose a question for each of you um prime minister the UK has some of the best universities in the world we have the talent what will it take for the UK to be a real breeding breeding ground for unicorn companies um and Elon uh being a Founder in the UK is still a non-obvious career choice for the most exceptional technical Talent what are the cultural elements that we need to put into place to change this thank you both John you want to go first go for it um sure well you're right that there are um cultural elements where you you you know the the culture should celebrate creating new companies um and um and there should\n\nbe a bias towards supporting um small small companies because they're the ones that need nurturing the larger companies really don't need nurturing ing um so you know just you can think of it's sort of like a garden if it's a little Sprout it needs needs nurturing if it's a Mighty Oak it doesn't need quite as much um so I think uh that that that is a mindset change that is important um but but I I should mention that um uh London is uh you know London and San Francisco or the Bay Area are really the two senses for AI so that so London is actually doing doing very well on that front that the two MO I say the two leading locations on Earth and you know San Francisco's probably ahead of London but London's really very strong or London area um greater London\n\nhome counties I guess keep going keep going um so I'm just saying objectively this is the case um um and but you do need that uh you need you need the infrastructure you need you need um landlords who are willing to uh rent to new companies you you need uh law firms and accountants that are willing to support new companies and it's generally a mind it is a mindset change um and I think some of that is happening but I think really it's just culturally people need to decide this is this is a good thing yeah yeah no actually well thanks for for what you said about the UK it's something that we work hard on lots of people in the room are are part of what makes this a fabulous place for intive companies including uh Alice so Alice what I'd say is you know\n\nmy job is to get all the you know the nuts and bolts right make sure that all of you are starting companies can raise the capital that you need everything from you know your seed funding with our incredible you know Eis tax reliefs all the way through to you know your late stage rounds and we need reform of our Pension funds and the Chancellor's got a bunch of incredible reforms to unlock capital from all the people who have it and deploy it into growth Equity right that is a work in progress we're not there yet but I think we're we're making we're making good progress we need talent we need people you right so that means an education system that prioritizes the things that matter and you've seen my reforms I go on about more maths more maths more maths\n\num but I think that is important but also attracting the best and the brightest here if you look at our fastest growing companies in in this country and I think it's probably the same in in the US over half of them have a non-british Founder right and so that tells you we've got to be a place that is open to the world's best and brightest entrepreneurial Talent so the Visa regime that we've put in place I think does that makes it easy for those people to come here and then actually it's the thing that we spent the beginning of the session talking about the regulation right making sure that we've got a regulatory system that's Pro Innovation that yeah we of course we always need guard rails on the things uh that will worry us but we've got to create a\n\nspace for people to innovate and do different things you know those are all my jobs the thing that is tougher is the thing that Elon talked about which is culture right it's how do you transpose that culture from places like Silicon Valley across the world where people are unafraid to give up the security of a regular paycheck to go and start something and be comfortable with failure you you talked about that a lot I think you talked about it more in when you were playing games right but that you've got to be comfortable failing and knowing that that's just part of the process and that is a it's a tricky cultural thing to do overnight but it's an important part of I think creating that kind of environment yeah if if you don't succeed with your first startup\n\nit shouldn't be sort of a catastrophic career ending exactly thing it should be you know what good I think should like should be like well you know you gave it a good shot you know and and and now try again exactly and it's so one thing I was going to mention is like obviously creating a company is sort of a highrisk high reward uh situation um but and I don't know quite what the how it works in in the UK I think it's probably better than than um Continental Europe um but the the stock options are very difficult in most parts of Europe I'm not sure if how than the UK but but if somebody's basically going to risk their the sort of life savings and with and the vast majority of startups fail so I mean you hear about the startups that succeed but most companies\n\nare most startups consist of you know a massive amount of of of work um followed by failure that's actually most most companies and so it's a highrisk high reward and and and so the higher reward part does need to be there for it to make sense yeah I think that was a very soft pitch for tax policy that I CH but I actually I can tell you so look I a I agree and we have so we have I think relative to certainly European countries but certainly the US definitely California a much lower rate of capital gains tax okay right so for those people who are risking and growing something like we think the reward should be there at the end so 20% capital gains tax rate um and on stock options I don't know if we've got anyone from index ventures in in the room so you\n\nknow index one of our bleeding VC funds here they they do a regular report looking at most countries tax treatment of stock options yeah and you know when I was Chancellor of you know treasury secretary equivalent you know we were I think down at uh we were pretty good but we were fourth or fifth and I said we need to for exactly the reason that you mentioned was like this has got to be the best place for innovators we need to move that up and I think in the last iteration of that report we had because of the changes that um Jeremy and I had made we have moved up to I think second from from memory so hopefully that should give you and everyone else some comfort that we recognize that's important because when people work hard and risk things yeah they\n\nshould be able to enjoy the rewards of that high risk High reward yeah and I think we have a we very much have a tax system that supports that and those are the values that you know I believe in and I think most of us in this room probably do as well right next uh next question I've got seven front of me and then I'll come over here go on go on S thanks very much um we've talked about some really big Ideas um Global changing ideas I'm really interested particularly in the context of creation of of science and technology superhubs and so on how does that map onto the everyday lives of uh of people living in say Austin Texas to choose r or in my case Nottingham East Midlands uh what what is how do you see that evolving for people you know every day the\n\nsort of everyday effects of AI yeah um for context Elon so Seb Seb runs are are equivalent of CVS right or Walgreens so you know when as I visited right so he's got of people coming in his shops every day and it's making sure how do we make this relevant I think so is your question how how is this relevant to that person you know maybe actually let me go I'll go first on that because I I think it's a a fair a fair point I was just going over with the team a couple of things that we're doing because I was thinking like how are we doing AI right now that it's making a difference to people's lives and we have this thing called gov.\n\nuk which is which actually when we when it happened several years ago was a pioneering thing all the government information brought together on one website gov.\n\nuk and so you need to get a driving license passport any interaction with government it was centralized in a very easy relatively easy to use way uh better than most better than most yeah so we we are about so we're about to deploy AI across that platform so that is something that I think you know several million people a day use right so a large chunk of the population is interacting with gov.\n\nuk every single day to do all these day-to-day tasks right every one of your customers is doing all those things and so we're about to deploy AI into that to make that whole process so much easier because you know some people will be like look well I'm currently here and I've lost my passport and my flight's in five hours you know at the moment that would require you know how many steps to figure out what you do you know we actually when we deploy the AI it should be that you could just literally say that and boom boom boom boom boom this is what we're going to do walk you through it and that's going to benefit millions and millions of people every single day right cuz that's a very practical way in my seat that I can start using this technology to help\n\npeople in their day-to-day lives not just Healthcare discoveries and everything else that we're also doing but I thought that's quite a powerful demonstration of literally your day-to-day customer seeing actually their just day-to-day life get a little bit easier because of something that you know Elon deis and others in this room have helped create yeah no exactly the the the most immediate thing is just being able to ask um like having a very smart friend that you can ask anything um you know ask how to make something how to solve any problem and it'll tell you um so and and obviously companies are going to adopt this so I think you'll have much better customer service I guess essentially that'll probably be the first thing you notice um and um and\n\nthen we talked about education yeah um so having a tutor so if you're trying to understand a subject like having a phenomenal tutor on any subject is that that's really pretty much there already almost I mean we need to obviously AI needs to stop hallucinating before you know it can't give you I mean we we still have a little bit of the problem where it can give you an answer that's confidently wrong um with great grammar uh and you know bullet points and everything in citations that was not real so it has to be okay we need to make sure it's it's not it's not it's not giving you confidently wrong two dire answers um but but we that's going to happen quick pretty quickly where it is actually correct um so yeah I going to say for any for any parent who\n\nwas homeschooling during coid and realizing what their kids needed to be helped with that will come as an enormous relief I think very very good right have we got let's go questions uh over here who have we got we any microphones or Brent are you there perfect hi Bren hobman um so you know you've spoken eloquently about abundance and the age of abundance so it it feels obviously with AI it's everything everywhere everywhere all at once but with um with robots and to to get the age of abundance we'll need a lot of robots I know you're working hard on robots as well are there sort of constraints that we should think of and our politicians should be thinking of that we might get one country might get heavily behind in in Rob in robots that can do all these\n\nthings and enter the age of abundance and therefore be at a strategic disadvantage well really anything that can be actuated by a computer is effectively a robot um so you can think of frankly Tesla cause are robots on Wheels um anything that's connected to the internet is effectively an endpoint actuator for artificial intelligence um so um you've got Boston Dynamics obviously they've been making impressive robots for a while um I think they're at this point mostly owned by Hyundai so I I guess when I's probably going to make um robots of that are humanoid and and and some rather interesting shapes that I wasn't disting like the one that looks like a has wheels and looks sort of like a kangaroo on Wheels I'm not sure what that is but um um looks a little\n\ndented frankly but um but there's going to be all sorts of all sorts of robots um you've got the company Dyson in in the UK which I think does some pretty impressive things um I I I think the UK will not be behind actually on on that front um UK also has arm which is um really the the best one one of the best perhaps the best uh in in uh chip design in the world um Tesla uses a lot of a lot of arm technology almost everyone does actually so I think the UK is in in a strong position um Germany obviously makes a lot of robots industrial robots uh that I mean I think generally countries that make um robots of any kind even if they seem somewhat conventional will be will be fine um I do think there is a there is a a safety concern especially with humanoid\n\nrobots because um you at least the car can't chase you into this building not very easily you know or chase you off a tree or you know um you can sort of run up a flight of stairs and get away from a Tesla um um I think there a Stephen King movie about that um if your car gets possessed um so but if you have a humanoid robot it can it can basically chase you anywhere so I I think we should have some kind of um hardwired local cut off um that that you can't update from the internet so anything that can be software updated from the internet obviously can be overridden um but if you have a local sort of off switch um where you p pa SA a keyword or something and then that puts the robot into a safe State um some kind of localized safe State ability um an\n\noff switch you know where you don't have to get too close to the robot I don't know so if you've got millions of these things going all over the place you're not selling it just you know like no I I know um I'm saying it's is something we should be quite concerned about um because if robot can robot can follow you anywhere then you know what if they just one day get a software update and they're not so friendly anymore um then we've got a James Cameron movie on I um it's it's actually that's it's funny you're saying that because we in our session that we had today I you know just would say who we they made exactly the same point right de so we're talking about they're talking about movies actually without mentioning James Cameron they're talking about\n\nJames camera movies and they're saying if you think about it's not just those movies but any of these movies trains Subways metros cars buses they said all these movies with the same plot fundamentally all end with the person turning it off right or finding a way to shut the thing down and they were making the same point that that you were about the importance of actual physical off switches yeah and so all the technology is great but fundamentally this same movie has played out 50 times we've all watched it and all fundamentally you know you know point I'm referring to right it all ends in pretty much the same way with someone finding a way to just yeah do thing um which is kind of interesting that you said a similar point right it's probably not the\n\nit's not the obvious place you'd go to but maybe that could be one of the tests for the AI we we just say like blank is your favorite jamers Cameron movie fill in the blank yeah excellent right um yes we got over there yeah perfect hi a question for you both um so I'm a founder of a Ai and ml scaleup in the third Center for AI which is leads in the north of England I'm bit biased um since the launch of chat GPT three months after that we saw a real increase in fishing attacks using much more sophisticated language patterns um what do we do to protect businesses consumers so they trust this technology better and how do we bring them along that Journey with us well I think we shouldn't trust it that much actually um it is actually quite quite a significant\n\nchallenge because we're getting to the point where even open source AI can pass uh human capture tests so you know this s are you a human identify all the traffic lights in this picture you're like okay yeah is going to have a no problem doing that in fact it'll do it better than a human and faster than a human so we're like how do you you know at the point of which is better a better human better passing human test than humans then well what tests actually make sense that is a real problem I don't actually have a good solution to it um that one of the things we're trying to figure out on the xplatform is how to deal with that because it really we really are at the point where um even with with uh open source you know readily available AI you don't need\n\nto be sort of leading the field um you can actually be better than humans at passing these tests um and that's sort of why we're thinking well perhaps we should sort of charge a a dollar or a pound a year it's a very tiny amount of money but it's it still it still makes it prohibitively expensive to make a million Parts um so um and especially if you need a million payment methods then you you run out of sort of for stolen credit cards pretty quickly um uh so that that's that's sort of where we're thinking like we might have to sort of just charge some very tiny amount of money um3 cents a day effectively to um deal with the the onslaught of AI powered bonds um and if if and that that is that is still a growing problem but will will be I think perhaps\n\nan insurmountable problem next year so and and and then you have to worry about well manipulation of of um information is making something seem very popular when in fact it is not because it's getting boosted by all these likes and and and repost from um AI powered bots so that's why I sort of think somewhat inevitably it leads to some small payment in order to uh dramatically increase the the cost of a bond um so I think I think frankly I think probably any social media system that doesn't do that will simply be overrun by B you know I think my my general answer would be you know we we need to show that we are on top of mitigating the risk right so people can trust the technology that's what actually the last couple of days has been about on the safety\n\nSummit is just showing you know we're investing in the safety Institute having the people who can do the research on these things to figure out how we mitigate against them and we have to do it fast and we have to keep iterating it because I think all of us probably in this room believe that the technology can be incredibly powerful but we've got to make sure we bring people along that Journey with us that we're handling the risks that are there and I said there's a job to do and the last couple of days I think we make good progress on it because we want to focus on the positives and manage these things but that requires action and and that's what the last couple of days has been about and your your um story your analogy there was part of the research\n\nthat actually you know the team working on the task force here published and presented yesterday I don't know if you saw it was uh which is a essentially that it was a using AI to do to create a ton of fake profiles on social media and then infiltrate particular groups with particular information and actually at the moment that is said to your point of it's like cost free it's it's it's getting it's getting to the point where it's like really you're going to have 100 for a penny sort of thing ridiculous and if you think about some of these social networks at quite a neighborhood or town level it's not that many fake profiles that you need to quickly create suddenly they're everywhere and there's some local issue that might be of importance and you know\n\nthe team have have run versions of how that would look like and suddenly they're interacting with everybody and then spreading a misinformation around ex your point that's we literally as part of the research that we published on misinformation yesterday it's uh it's a real challenge yeah exactly to your point I mean you the images it's it's you don't even need to steal some body's picture cuz that's traceable but you can actually just say create a new a new image of a person realistic looking but doesn't exist um and and then create a biography realistic but doesn't exist and do that on mass and practically the only way we be able to tell us that the gram is too good did give away yeah no tyos come on now I'm getting wave that because I think we are\n\nout of time I don't we take one very brief last question and let's make a go one yes sir going your right in front of me go thank you for the opportunity Elon question for you um related to X platform are there simple things we can do especially when it comes to visual media you alluded to the fact that it's fairly straightforward and effectively free to make people like yourself say and do things that you never said or did yeah um can we do something like cryptographically signed media I'm from Adobe we're working on this project yeah Twitter was a member love to see X come back okay um digitally signed media to indicate uh not only what was created by AI but what came from a camera what was real yeah to imbue a sense of Trust in Media that can go viral\n\nthat sounds like a good idea actually so if um some some way of authenticating would be would be good um so yeah I I that sounds like a good idea we we should probably do it there you go actually on that on that point so I've I've already so this is particularly pertinent for people in my job right and I've already had a situation happen to me with a doctored image that goes everywhere negative by the time everyone realizes well that's fake and we should stop sending it the damage is damage is done um and actually we were again reflecting today if you think next year you've got elections in you know I think you know the US India I think Indonesia um probably here there you go massive news um and actually you've got just an enormous junk of the world's\n\npopulation is voting next year right and you got EU elections as well and you know actually just these issues are right in front of us you know next year is where big elections across the globe probably the first set of Elections where this has been a real issue yeah um so figuring out how we manage that is I think kind of mission critical for people who want you know the Integrity of our democracy yeah I mean some of it is it's quite interesting like the Pope in the puffer jacket have you seen that one I haven't that's amazing but I mean I still run into people who who who think that's real um I'm like well what are the odds he's wearing a puffa jacket in July in Rome uh you know be sweating but it actually look quite quite dashing I say um in fact I\n\nthink AI fashion is going to be a real thing so so I Doom and Gloom like we live in the most interesting times and I think this is um it is you know like 80% likely to be good and 20% bad and I think we're if we're cognizant and and careful about the bad part on balance actually it will be the future that we want um or the the future that is preferable um and and it actually will be somewhat of a leveler an equalizer in the sense that you know I think everyone will have access to goods and services and education and so you know I think probably it leads to more human happiness so I I guess I'd probably leave on on an optimistic note perfect yeah I that's a well that's a that is a great note to end on I think that you know we all want that that better\n\nfuture we think it's there the promise of it is certainly there lot people in this room including yourselves are working hard to make it happen our job in government is to make sure it happens safely but on the basis of this conversation in the last couple of days I'm certainly leaving more confident that we can make that happen so it's been a huge privilege and pleasure to have you here thank you very much for having [Applause] me"},"languages":["en"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2meHtrO1n8"},{"id":"international-astronautical-congress-2023-10-05","type":"interview","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z0Hrz_Kv2L8","title":"International Astronautical Congress","titles":{"en":"International Astronautical Congress","de":"International Astronautical Congress","fr":"International Astronautical Congress"},"date":"2023-10-05","summary":"Musk joins the IAC 2023 by video link for a fireside chat on Starship progress and SpaceX's plans to make humanity multiplanetary.","text":"a great design. Um it did not receive sufficient ground testing. So never never made it to orbit. Um but that would have been the sort of the closest probably parallel to to uh Starship. Um the the the really the biggest difference the most fundamental difference of Starship is that it is designed to be fully reusable.\n\nUh with both the booster and the ship or the the both the first and second stage uh being are designed to be fully and rapidly reusable. So that so for a truly profound revolution in mass to orbit uh you have to have I call it uh with the four four Rs rapidly reusable reliable rockets. R I love it. Like a pirate R. Everybody give me an R. There we are. All right. So what does what does success look like for this uh flight number two?\n\nWhat does success look like for you? What are you trying to achieve? Um, well, I I do want to set expectations. Um, well, not too high. Um, so there there's this there's a trans new technology in this rocket. Um, we are we have actually changed the entire stage separation system from um uh something that was uh I'm not sure how to describe this, but but but um kind kind of a a a just just a a rotation and flip.\n\nWe're try we're trying to we're trying to move to a passive stage subsystem where you don't have pushers essentially um in in the to try to eliminate parts. Um there's no pushers, no interstage like Falcon 9 has. Um and uh with with with with flight 2, we're actually trying to do um hot staging. Um so so hot staging would mean that we light the the ship or upper stage engines uh while the boost engines are still partially thrusting.\n\nSo we throttle down and shut down uh most of the booster engines. Then we light the the ship engines and there's there's a vent area which looks comically small um actually um which hopefully is enough uh because you're you're you're essentially blasting the top of the booster with the ship.\n\nUm uh now this is actually uh from a physics standpoint the most efficient way to do stage separation and the Soviets uh and later the Russians made extensive use of um of hot staging. Um and but but of course this is the first time we're doing it. So I would say that's that's the riskiest part of the flight uh for flight two.\n\nUm, and if if if the if the engine's light and the ship uh doesn't blow itself up during stage seven, uh then I think we've got a decent chance of reaching orbit. Um, now technically it's it's a it's a scooch below orbit because it's it's going to do almost a complete circle of the Earth, but then splash down somewhere somewhere in the Pacific uh just off the coast of Hawaii.\n\num because the ship is designed to re-enter um and has a as a heat shield. So we we we want to make now we don't know if this we think it'll work but we aren't sure if it will work. So if it doesn't work we want it to not work over the Pacific which is a very large body of water um with almost no people on it. Excellent target. Excellent target. Yeah. Exactly.\n\nI I mean I always think it's funny that you know people call earth because earth is water. Um earth is 70% water and if you take a a a you know um the the an actual round version of the earth not not a merkural projection um but the globe and you center it on the Pacific it just looks like water. It's it's it's like where's the land? So anyway, this is this is quite helpful when when you're doing experimental rocket flights.\n\nSo how many more test flights are coming up? And when do you think you're going to try to catch Starship on a tower with our giant Mechazilla? Yes, giant mechazilla. Listen, I saw Kong versus Godzilla and that's what gave me the idea. In fact, if we gave our tower legs, it could just trump around like like Mechazilla.\n\nwithin the next uh year or maybe less than a year and then hopefully if we get lucky we might catch the ship um towards the end of next year. And where does the catch take place? Is it Willie Mays in the middle of the outfield over a shoulder or is it Florida somewhere? Uh, no. So, the the both the booster and the ship come back to the launch site. Okay, fantastic.\n\nYeah, that's what I mean by that that this in fact um I mean the the thing that since we need a giant tower with customized uh arms to lift the the booster and the ship onto the launch pad, um we don't absolutely need it. We can technically do it with with with humongous cranes on a low wind day. Um uh but that's quite unwieldy.\n\nUm the the the tower with the arms is capable of lifting the booster and the ship even on on on a on on a very windy day or moderately windy day. Um, so then it just seemed to me that well, if we can lift the the ship and the booster, the ship onto the onto the launch stand or the booster onto the launch stand and the ship onto the booster with those same arms, we should be able to catch the the booster and the ship with those same arms.\n\nUm, you know, we've gotten pretty good with with um with the thruster based landing. Um, and in fact, we can make this we can make the the rocket hover in midair. Um, in fact, we were able to do that many years ago.\n\nIf you look at the old uh Falcon 9 test videos, uh, which we were called Grasshopper, where where we'd actually take the Falcon 9 booster and we'd have it just go up and and hover at 100 meters and then translate over another 100 meters, then translate back and then come back and land. So, we were able to do that over a decade ago. Um, it's it's not obviously very efficient with propellant to have a rocket hover, but it can be done.\n\nUm so that was I was like okay well let's just have the rocket come back and you know hover briefly um and have the then the arms come together and and catch it. So that's the that's the general idea is uh going back to what I was saying with with it's not it's not just reusability, it's rapid reusability. Um and and it doesn't get more rapid than bringing it back to the launch site.\n\nAnd so in principle the uh that the booster must come back very fast by the way. One one way or another that booster is coming back to land or it's going to land fast because um with with the high thrust to weight that we're we're aiming for which is sort of on the order of 1. 3 to 1. 4 for uh the the and and and a staging ratio which is currently about uh 3:1 in favor of the booster.\n\nSo propellant to um the propellant on booster to propellant on chef is about 3 to one on on the current version, but it's trending closer to 2:1 on uh with with future versions. That means that we're we're shifting more and more of the uh delta V burden to the ship side. Um that means the the booster actually uh uses up its propellant quite quickly.\n\nUm and we will will trend towards about only about 100 seconds um or so of a booster flight um and the booster will immediately flip around, boost back to the launch site and land. And so it really we're talking about the booster being back at the launch site in about four or five minutes which is pretty pretty wild to think it's like five five you know five minute booster basically.\n\nUm it's about it's it's it's landed somehow whether it's it's either crashed or it's landed on the it's been caught by the arms one of the two. Um and within 5 minutes and so so so then you then you then lands back on launch stand and uh you can then refill propellant. The the the booster the ship side obviously is going to take a minimum of an hour and a half to get around the planet. Um still going pretty fast.\n\nUh but you got to circle the globe. Um and and obviously that depends on what uh inclination and so what what's your launch azimuth? What's your inclination of the booster as to whether it has a flight coming back over the launch site or not?\n\nIf it uh in technically possible to do it in a single orbit we before we are conf confident that the ship like I said the the the hardest part for for ship reusability that that that is the hardest part of the equation. So with with Falcon 9, we we've gotten pretty far with reusability. Um you the the booster it's now highly unusual for the booster to not come back and land. It's so it's gotten quite normal for the booster to come back and land.\n\nWe now have a couple boosters that are I've done 17 I think 18 flights at this point. Um and um and and then the fairing is also recovered. So the fairing reusability is also solid. Uh but but the Falcon 9 design does not allow for reusability of the upper stage. Listly gigantic.\n\nThat's that was my first impression when I when I first went up there in a man lift and and and and climbed through the little hole uh for the Starship initial rough prototype. I was like this like what what have we done? This thing is too this thing is ridiculously big. Um so now this actually can be great for science though.\n\nUm so um one of the exciting projects that we're working with is uh with the soul uh prom motor at Berkeley uh on a um a telescope a space telescope uh that is able to uh use the that that what you it's it's got an enormous lens. I think it's perhaps a seven or 8 m diameter um lens and uh it it's actually a satellite that was meant for the or a um the lens was meant for for a groundbased satellite.\n\nBut if you then take that same satellite and put it in um in in orbit, its capabilities are greatly enhanced because you don't have the obiscation of the of the atmosphere. Um so that's why for example the the the Hubble which is actually a fairly small telescope can do better than uh I think any ground any maybe any historical ground satellite especially in the visual spectrum.\n\nSo uh so so we're very excited about the what what it can do for space science um because because really at this point especially for for any photons that where there's interference with uh the atmosphere um so any any sort of short wavelength photons you really want your satellite uh to be uh in vacuum or rather your your telescope to be in vacuum. Um so that's really the future.\n\nSo I think there's a lot of exciting potential there for planetary for for space science. Um and um but but like said the the really fundamentally the reason it's so so gigantic is is that uh if if you're on a you know long journey to Mars, I think being cooped up in a something the size of a minivan would would uh be unappealing to most people. Just so comparison for the audience here, I think the Hubble telescope was something like 2.\n\n4 meter diameter. Uh, and so you're talking about, I think, three times the size, uh, somewhere along that order for the mirror. That's incredible. Um, we've seen some changes down there in Texas at Starbase. I don't know if that's where you're you're you're streaming from here today, but, uh, there's a new factory uh that you're working on to enable a faster manufacturing rate. Can you talk to us a little bit about that?\n\nWhat are you trying to what are your goals? What are you what are you trying to achieve with the with the new factory? Yeah. So, we are building a giant factory for a giant rocket. Um, and um, I mean, honestly, it I I recommend people visit uh, Star Base. Um, as it turns out, it's it's on a state highway. So, for the I think it's one of the rare situations where u, and I actually don't mind.\n\nI think it's kind of cool that that the public can actually drive within a literal stones throw away from the factory and the launch site and actually see the rocket firsthand. In fact, uh if you go on the internet right now, including on the X platform, there are people who are live streaming it 24/7 uh the entire construction uh launchpad everything. Um and um so so it's people say like can I go see it? It's so easy to go see.\n\nYou can just literally fly to Brownsville and drive down drive to the beach and you can see it literally a stones throw away the factory and the launch site. Um so anyone who's wants to do that I I recommend it. It's very very easy. No permission required. Um so yeah we're building this giant rocket factory. Um we the engines are still manufactured in California at SpaceX headquarters uh in um in Los Angeles.\n\num which which is also that's it's also an odd location. That's where we built the the the uh Falcon 9 rockets and the Dragon spacecraft really about 5 minutes from LAX um at the at sort of what used to be a Northrup headquarters I believe. Um so um so that's so anyway that's but yeah we're building this giant factory.\n\nThe thing is so in order to um if you look at the in the grand scheme of things say okay what is required to have a self-sustaining base on Mars or city on Mars um you have to really think of it in terms of very large tonnage uh the and and if we could even get the tonnage estimate to correct to within an order of magnitude I think we doing well.\n\nUm, so the, you know, I think I think we we should probably aim for something like a million tons of useful load delivered to the surface of Mars. Um, which requires roughly 5 million tons to Earth orbit. So, you know, because you get about 20 for whatever mass you get to Earth orbit, you get about 20% of that mass landed to the surface of Mars. You know, give or take, maybe you can get 25% optimistically.\n\nUm, so that's why this thing is so gigantic. um is we've got to get five million tons to to to Earth to orbit which hopefully gets about um a million tons to surf to Mars and hopefully a million tons is enough to create a self-sustaining city on Mars. Un incredible. Um so talking about Mars, any new predictions on when you I know this is your ultimate goal, your destination. Uh any predictions on when Starship might land on Mars without crew?\n\nMaybe a crude flight. Any uh any prediction there? Well, I think three or four years. Four years. That would be Yeah, something like All right. I have to check with the Earth M uh the you know um get have orbital synchronization about every 26 months. Um so you can't just go fly to Mars when it's on the other side of the sun. um from Earth. Uh that's unwieldy.\n\nSo that roughly every 26 months the orbits um uh are in the right relative position um and then you then you have the Mars transport window. Um so I think you know but I think it's sort of feasible within the next four years um to do an uncrrewed test test landing there. Yeah. Didn't have enough on your plate. You're doing a lunar lander version. Yes. Yeah.\n\nWell, really Starship should be a generalized uh transport system to anywhere in the solar system. That that's the intent with when you when you have propulsive landing. You you you can land anywhere whether there's an atmosphere, no atmosphere. Um you know, it's not really dependent on uh water.\n\nuh you know obviously you know for for uh crude capsules on on on Earth we've generally gone with parachutes and water um or you know uh and in Russia it's on land but then they need retro rockets right at the end to sort of slow things down um so a a propulsive system should generalize to be able to land anywhere on a solid surface anywhere on the the um in the solar system.\n\nSo, um, the the the moon, while it's sort of dusty, that that the moon is actually harder than it's not just a big dust pile. So, it's it's harder than you'd think. U the the lunar regalith. Um, so I'm I'm sort of optimistic that we can take a starship that's fairly, you know, unmodified from what would land on Earth or Mars. Obviously, you need legs.\n\nUm, but apart from that, I suspect you could land the Starship with minor modifications on on the moon and and the same would go for once you have a propellant uh plant on Mars. Um, you could then go to the asteroid belt and and the moons of Jupiter. Um if you could establish a propellant plant there um then um then you could go to uh the moons of Saturn and and ultimately all the way out into the caper belt and Todd.\n\nWhat you're talking about requires propellant transfer obviously in orbit. Can you explain to everyone uh watching why that's necessary and how it works and and how you work to progress to to make that propellant transfer happen? Uh yes. So really propellant transfer is is a similar problem to just docking. Um now we've gotten pretty good at docking with the uh Dragon going to the space station.\n\nUm and docking with the space station is uh really quite difficult because we didn't design the space station and the space station has a lot of complexities uh and has crew on board. So, uh, we have to be extremely careful. Um, and that the so talking with the space station takes is is like I would say it's far more difficult to dock with the space station than it would be to dock with our own spaceship.\n\nUm and and so uh propellant transfer just really means um that we we send a b a a starship up there with with no payload um and and it just transfers its propellant to um a ship that is already there. So you have to do dock with the ship that is going to Mars or the moon and transfer the propellant um from a version of the ship that has no cargo.\n\nNow there's there's there there'll be a future sort of um tanker optimized version of of Starship um where where we you know um have have we we stretch the tanks um and have little to no cargo space uh because that's the optimal thing for a tanker. But but you don't have to do that.\n\num that will that will increase the the the propellant load of the tanker or you know the the propellant transferability of of the of the tanker but it's not it's not absolutely necessary you just you could in theory use an unmodified starship uh and transfer propellant that way.\n\nSo um I would imagine that you're doing this and you may have multiple launches uh in either rapid succession or maybe multiple pads launching multiple versions of the vehicle. Is that all taking place from Texas? And how quickly do those launches have to take place to make this uh work? Yeah, we'll we'll have a launch site in S in Texas as well as in Florida.\n\nSo, we've actually partially built a Starship launch pad um at uh pad 39A, which is where we launched Falcon Heavy and um our crude uh crew dragon. Um, so we've partially built and we'll probably we'll we'll fully build that out over time and and probably have um at some point a a green field um location for Starship at at the Cape.\n\nUm now in the in the sort of you say like four or five year time frame where perhaps we're launching several times a day uh then we may need to go to uh an oceanbased like platform um just if if if you're launching I don't know 10 times a day uh that might be a bit much for even for the cape I don't know um but uh so we may end up doing uh platform based launches um from from a specially designed sort of oceangoing platform.\n\nUm but we we will need to do a lot of launches. We're talking about thousands of launches per year. So, uh, at at and and so you do get up to the sort of what I was talking about, um, million tons or 5 million tons to orbit that if you've got, you know, uh, a thousand launches a year, each of which do over a 100 tons, that's 100,000 tons of cargo, you know, per year to orbit. Um, that's still not quite enough.\n\nUm, I think we'd want to get to roughly a million tons of orbit uh per per year to to Earth orbit per year, which would mean that you get to a million tons to Mars in 5 years. These are very big numbers obviously. Um just put things into perspective. Uh all of Earth's launch capability uh right now apart from Falcon is about 400 tons to orbit per year. Um Falcon 9 this year will do I think around 15 or 1600 tons.\n\nSo Falcon 9, you know, it's already doing about 80% of Earth mass to orbit and next year we expect to increase that by about 40 or 50% on the Falcon side. So you know um maybe 2500 tons to orbit for Falcon next year. But these are small still small numbers compared to what's required for um essentially making life multilanetary.\n\nFor making life multilanetary, you've got to be in the sort of hundreds of thousands to millions of tons of two to two Earth orbit per year. Unbelievable numbers really. Uh as somebody worked in the launch business for several years, it's uh it's incredible for me to even try to think about that much NASA to orbit in one year. It's uh it's that's crazy. Yeah, it's absolutely crazy. Ludicrous mode, I think. Yeah. For launch. Very much so. Yeah.\n\nBut it's it's either either we do that or we're a single plant species forever. So we we either achieve uh those kind of numbers or um we will we will never have a self-sustaining city on Mars into building this amazing launch system. You're also working on a Polaris mission uh for that's going to allow I think Dragon to open and have uh people uh uh actually floating in space doing an EVA and you're building a space suit for that.\n\nUm so you can talk a little bit about that space suit and can you use that same suit on the moon and Mars and for other missions? Yeah, so the SpaceX uh space suit um we we do expect to evolve that to be something that can be an AVA suit on uh the ground on the moon and Mars. Um um and um it started off initially as as really just a pressure suit just in case there's an emergency emergency depressurization of the spacecraft.\n\nUm so it's it's was basically like a self-contained life support system uh in in suit form. Um and uh obviously we'll retain that capability but uh but but now um for an upcoming flight we we want to do an EVA or extra vehic you know basically go float around in space um still on a tether so it's not it's not going to be an independent uh little little space little little space suit that's just flying around.\n\nUm we could do that but and maybe that'll happen on a future flight. Uh but it will be a tethered uh EVA. Um so just you're just out there floating in the void connected by a thin cord to the spaceship. Amazing. Uh you uh put a Tesla in space. This was like an amazing uh thing to see a Tesla actually flying into space. So you've already put put one of the vehicles in space. Are you thinking about making a Tesla rover, maybe moon or Mars?\n\nUh any any ideas for Cybert truck on the moon? It would look cool. That's for sure. Um now nice thing nice thing about electric cars is that obviously do not require oxygen to uh they don't combustion cars. So they don't they don't require they don't have to ingest oxygen from the ambient atmosphere. Um, so, um, yeah, I think you know, Tesla could easily make a car that, uh, you know, like a Cybert truck Luna variant.\n\nJust get the get the moon option package. Um so um yeah I mean the reason that we launched the car the reason we launched the car heavy I should say is it just that we wanted something was that was exciting as a uh initial payload but but where the loss of the load would not be catastrophic. So people wonder why my why is my car orbiting Earth both and Mars. Um because it's in an elliptical orbit.\n\nUm and and actually it almost touches it touches like the edge of the asteroid belt and and goes past the orbit of Mars. It's just that we we weren't sure if the first flight of heavy would fail or not and we wanted to just have a payload that was more exciting than the pump. I thought it was brilliant. Uh really uh a master stroke in terms of getting uh attention of the world really to put that in orbit. Thanks.\n\nUh can Starship be used as a space station? How long could it stay in orbit? And uh what would be the purpose of that? How how could that work? So, how long could Starship be in orbit? Yeah. Could it be its own space station? If you wanted to put a starship up with a caterpillar, a laboratory, how long could that uh could it stay in orbit and still come down? Oh, there's no real limit. You could stay in orbit for a very long time.\n\nUm the the the uh the volume of the Sasha be fairing is roughly comparable to the volume of the of the International Space Station. Um so there's about about a thousand cubic meters of of volume in the in the uh fairing I think space station's a comparable amount and would have the power to run a lot of laboratory experiments. Sorry. Yeah. G given that it's given that it's similar volume to the space station.\n\nUm you you could uh do what what you're doing in the space station on a starship uh if you want. Um but there's no there's no limit to how long it can stay out stay up there. It's really just you you you need you know solar panels, battery, and um uh some thrusters to maintain orbit. How about pointto-point transportation?\n\nI know uh when you were in Guadalajara uh at the IC uh you got you kind of hinted at a little bit of the point pointto-oint capability of transportation uh I I can't remember the exact amount of time to get from one side of the world to the next but can you talk about that? How do you see the the future of pointtooint using uh using Starship? Yeah.\n\nSo, uh the fastest way with with known physics to get from one place to another on Earth is with a inter intercontinental ballistic missile. Um this is this is why ICBMs with nukes are kind of like the ultimate weapon. Um now in this case it's sort of lead the nuke at landing. Um but it's it's it's certainly very feasible. Um obviously if we can uh take off and trans and land on Mars or the moon, we can take off and land on Earth too.\n\nUm so so it really comes down to a question of of is it economically viable compared to long-distance aircraft and I think our back the envelope numbers suggest that it it actually has a shot at being economically viable for longdistance transport on Earth. um for for a few reasons. Um the propellant cost is actually quite low being um liquid methane, liquid oxygen. Uh the cost of liquid oxygen is it's primarily liquid oxygen.\n\nIt's about um 77 78% uh liquid oxygen by plant mass and roughly 22 or 23% um liquid methane. So the propellant cost is it's lowest cost propellant you could possibly um get on Earth. And um and then the um the because the rocket's moving so fast uh you you can use it about in theory about 10 times more than you could use an aircraft.\n\nSo um you know so so Falcon 9 oh sorry Starship can go from let's say Los Angeles to Sydney or something like that um in 20 minutes basically maybe half an hour at most. So um you know whereas I think I think an airliner takes about 14 or 15 hours. So you've got something which is really much faster than an aircraft.\n\nAnd so for an airliner that you can do basically an order of magnitude more trips with Starship than you can with an airliner which means that the and this and no pilots are needed. In fact you can't p this is not only a computer can pilot this because human reaction times not fast enough.\n\nUm, so then you don't have the pilot costs, you don't have the food costs, you don't have the um, you know, you don't really even need bathrooms if we can get there in half an hour. So it it actually would work out that uh, it's it's actually we think lower cost than long-distance aircraft. Okay. You got a little chuckle here in the crowd about the no bathroom line. So I think people are looking forward to it. Yeah.\n\nI mean, it's less than a half an hour, you know. You say like go just go before you get hop on, you know, and um yeah, you'll be there fast. I mean, you you you could technically um you know um have, I don't know, breakfast in LA, uh lunch in London, and you know, dinner in Singapore, and then be back back in LA for bedtime. All right, you heard it here, guys. Huge, huge round of applause here.\n\nSo, you're connecting now, I think, something like two million people with Starlink, right? With your with your satellite communication system, uh, and growing rapidly. Um, you're mastering communications from space to Earth, uh, from low Earth orbit. You're now doing, uh, inter satellite links, uh, with this system. Uh what do you see for Starlink being used as a relay let's say around the moon or for comm relay all the way to Mars and back?\n\nYeah. Um well for for Mars Mars you'd want um basically like a laser relay system essentially. It sort of depends on what what what bandwidth you're looking for. Obviously, in order to have continuous coverage with Mars, you'd have to um uh have some relay system because you can't transmit through the sun.\n\nSo, when Mars on, you know, when the sun's between you and the and Mars, you have to um do a bank shot um through a relay satellite um so that your photons don't have to go through the sun. Um uh so and and then it say ultimately we want you know terabit maybe pabit level data transfer between Earth and Mars. So then you're going to you're going to want probably some some relay satellites along the way to be able to do that.\n\nUm it's it's just really it's a bandwidth thing. Um you'd want to use lasers. Um and then the the laser beam is going to widen um with distance. So that then you need to be able to receive the laser beam before it gets too wide. Um this means that you need a series of satellites uh in order to um communicate with Mars at its furthest distance especially with very high bandwidth.\n\nYou can obviously do low bandwidth uh with longer wavelength length photons but but but if if there's a you know human city on Mars uh you'd want to have very high bandwidth. So then for bunch of lasers and and satellite Starlink already uses inter uh lasers for insatellite communication. So, if if I may, just a couple more questions. Um, throughout this week here at the IC, uh, we've been inspired. There's thousands of young people here.\n\nI think 41% of our delegates are under the age of 35, which is incredible by by any, uh, space conference metric. We get a lot of young people here. Uh, there's delegates from the Space Generation Advisory Council, from the Future Space Leaders Foundation, from the YP program here at the IIAF. Do you have a message for these young people, the young engineers and scientists that are here? Many of them have been inspired by you.\n\nAnything you can say to them about pursuing a career in space or what motivated you to do all the things that you're doing? Yeah. Um I mean I'm interested in that which further civilization. Um and I I think we want to expand the scope and scale of consciousness so as to better understand the nature of the universe.\n\nUm and even to ask understand which questions to ask like um you know one of the most inspiring books I've read was uh the hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy um where where in the they're trying to understand meaning of life in the you know hitchhiker's guide and the I mean the larger message of the hitchhikers guide to the galaxy is that you you actually need to know what questions to ask about the answer that is the universe and we we don't yet know what questions to ask.\n\nSo, I'm just curious really I'm just curious as to the nature of reality. Um, where does where where does it all go to? Where does it where does it come from? Where are the aliens, for example? Are there aliens? Is it are we alone? Um, people often ask me um if I'm seen any evidence of of aliens, and I unfortunately have seen no evidence of aliens yet. We are the aliens as far as I can tell.\n\nUm, and I think if anyone would know, it would probably be me. And I've not seen any evidence of aliens. So what what that perhaps suggests is that um this tiny candle of consciousness that is humanity uh is all that exists in a vast darkness. Um and we should do everything we can to ensure that the candle does not go out. We've had a wonderful week here in Baku by the gas. So, we've had a wonderful week here in Baku.\n\nUh, next year we're going to Milan in Italy for the 75th IA. We would love to have you come back for sure if you're in the neighborhood or you can hop over in a starship. We would love to have you. Sure. Uh, it would make quite the quite the quite the entry. It's going to land on the roof. I'll ask the Italian hosts to see if that's possible. So, um, just a a fun question again. When do you think we can host an IC in outer space?\n\nUm, that's a great question. Um, probably less than 10 years. Let's have it. [Music] Well, Elon, I'd like to thank you for joining us today. Congratulations on the World Space Award. Welld deserved and uh our pleasure. We'd love to have you back. Good luck with your next launch. Thank you. Thanks. It was an honor to be be interview. Thank you everyone.","textByLang":{"en":"a great design. Um it did not receive sufficient ground testing. So never never made it to orbit. Um but that would have been the sort of the closest probably parallel to to uh Starship. Um the the the really the biggest difference the most fundamental difference of Starship is that it is designed to be fully reusable.\n\nUh with both the booster and the ship or the the both the first and second stage uh being are designed to be fully and rapidly reusable. So that so for a truly profound revolution in mass to orbit uh you have to have I call it uh with the four four Rs rapidly reusable reliable rockets. R I love it. Like a pirate R. Everybody give me an R. There we are. All right. So what does what does success look like for this uh flight number two?\n\nWhat does success look like for you? What are you trying to achieve? Um, well, I I do want to set expectations. Um, well, not too high. Um, so there there's this there's a trans new technology in this rocket. Um, we are we have actually changed the entire stage separation system from um uh something that was uh I'm not sure how to describe this, but but but um kind kind of a a a just just a a rotation and flip.\n\nWe're try we're trying to we're trying to move to a passive stage subsystem where you don't have pushers essentially um in in the to try to eliminate parts. Um there's no pushers, no interstage like Falcon 9 has. Um and uh with with with with flight 2, we're actually trying to do um hot staging. Um so so hot staging would mean that we light the the ship or upper stage engines uh while the boost engines are still partially thrusting.\n\nSo we throttle down and shut down uh most of the booster engines. Then we light the the ship engines and there's there's a vent area which looks comically small um actually um which hopefully is enough uh because you're you're you're essentially blasting the top of the booster with the ship.\n\nUm uh now this is actually uh from a physics standpoint the most efficient way to do stage separation and the Soviets uh and later the Russians made extensive use of um of hot staging. Um and but but of course this is the first time we're doing it. So I would say that's that's the riskiest part of the flight uh for flight two.\n\nUm, and if if if the if the engine's light and the ship uh doesn't blow itself up during stage seven, uh then I think we've got a decent chance of reaching orbit. Um, now technically it's it's a it's a scooch below orbit because it's it's going to do almost a complete circle of the Earth, but then splash down somewhere somewhere in the Pacific uh just off the coast of Hawaii.\n\num because the ship is designed to re-enter um and has a as a heat shield. So we we we want to make now we don't know if this we think it'll work but we aren't sure if it will work. So if it doesn't work we want it to not work over the Pacific which is a very large body of water um with almost no people on it. Excellent target. Excellent target. Yeah. Exactly.\n\nI I mean I always think it's funny that you know people call earth because earth is water. Um earth is 70% water and if you take a a a you know um the the an actual round version of the earth not not a merkural projection um but the globe and you center it on the Pacific it just looks like water. It's it's it's like where's the land? So anyway, this is this is quite helpful when when you're doing experimental rocket flights.\n\nSo how many more test flights are coming up? And when do you think you're going to try to catch Starship on a tower with our giant Mechazilla? Yes, giant mechazilla. Listen, I saw Kong versus Godzilla and that's what gave me the idea. In fact, if we gave our tower legs, it could just trump around like like Mechazilla.\n\nwithin the next uh year or maybe less than a year and then hopefully if we get lucky we might catch the ship um towards the end of next year. And where does the catch take place? Is it Willie Mays in the middle of the outfield over a shoulder or is it Florida somewhere? Uh, no. So, the the both the booster and the ship come back to the launch site. Okay, fantastic.\n\nYeah, that's what I mean by that that this in fact um I mean the the thing that since we need a giant tower with customized uh arms to lift the the booster and the ship onto the launch pad, um we don't absolutely need it. We can technically do it with with with humongous cranes on a low wind day. Um uh but that's quite unwieldy.\n\nUm the the the tower with the arms is capable of lifting the booster and the ship even on on on a on on a very windy day or moderately windy day. Um, so then it just seemed to me that well, if we can lift the the ship and the booster, the ship onto the onto the launch stand or the booster onto the launch stand and the ship onto the booster with those same arms, we should be able to catch the the booster and the ship with those same arms.\n\nUm, you know, we've gotten pretty good with with um with the thruster based landing. Um, and in fact, we can make this we can make the the rocket hover in midair. Um, in fact, we were able to do that many years ago.\n\nIf you look at the old uh Falcon 9 test videos, uh, which we were called Grasshopper, where where we'd actually take the Falcon 9 booster and we'd have it just go up and and hover at 100 meters and then translate over another 100 meters, then translate back and then come back and land. So, we were able to do that over a decade ago. Um, it's it's not obviously very efficient with propellant to have a rocket hover, but it can be done.\n\nUm so that was I was like okay well let's just have the rocket come back and you know hover briefly um and have the then the arms come together and and catch it. So that's the that's the general idea is uh going back to what I was saying with with it's not it's not just reusability, it's rapid reusability. Um and and it doesn't get more rapid than bringing it back to the launch site.\n\nAnd so in principle the uh that the booster must come back very fast by the way. One one way or another that booster is coming back to land or it's going to land fast because um with with the high thrust to weight that we're we're aiming for which is sort of on the order of 1. 3 to 1. 4 for uh the the and and and a staging ratio which is currently about uh 3:1 in favor of the booster.\n\nSo propellant to um the propellant on booster to propellant on chef is about 3 to one on on the current version, but it's trending closer to 2:1 on uh with with future versions. That means that we're we're shifting more and more of the uh delta V burden to the ship side. Um that means the the booster actually uh uses up its propellant quite quickly.\n\nUm and we will will trend towards about only about 100 seconds um or so of a booster flight um and the booster will immediately flip around, boost back to the launch site and land. And so it really we're talking about the booster being back at the launch site in about four or five minutes which is pretty pretty wild to think it's like five five you know five minute booster basically.\n\nUm it's about it's it's it's landed somehow whether it's it's either crashed or it's landed on the it's been caught by the arms one of the two. Um and within 5 minutes and so so so then you then you then lands back on launch stand and uh you can then refill propellant. The the the booster the ship side obviously is going to take a minimum of an hour and a half to get around the planet. Um still going pretty fast.\n\nUh but you got to circle the globe. Um and and obviously that depends on what uh inclination and so what what's your launch azimuth? What's your inclination of the booster as to whether it has a flight coming back over the launch site or not?\n\nIf it uh in technically possible to do it in a single orbit we before we are conf confident that the ship like I said the the the hardest part for for ship reusability that that that is the hardest part of the equation. So with with Falcon 9, we we've gotten pretty far with reusability. Um you the the booster it's now highly unusual for the booster to not come back and land. It's so it's gotten quite normal for the booster to come back and land.\n\nWe now have a couple boosters that are I've done 17 I think 18 flights at this point. Um and um and and then the fairing is also recovered. So the fairing reusability is also solid. Uh but but the Falcon 9 design does not allow for reusability of the upper stage. Listly gigantic.\n\nThat's that was my first impression when I when I first went up there in a man lift and and and and climbed through the little hole uh for the Starship initial rough prototype. I was like this like what what have we done? This thing is too this thing is ridiculously big. Um so now this actually can be great for science though.\n\nUm so um one of the exciting projects that we're working with is uh with the soul uh prom motor at Berkeley uh on a um a telescope a space telescope uh that is able to uh use the that that what you it's it's got an enormous lens. I think it's perhaps a seven or 8 m diameter um lens and uh it it's actually a satellite that was meant for the or a um the lens was meant for for a groundbased satellite.\n\nBut if you then take that same satellite and put it in um in in orbit, its capabilities are greatly enhanced because you don't have the obiscation of the of the atmosphere. Um so that's why for example the the the Hubble which is actually a fairly small telescope can do better than uh I think any ground any maybe any historical ground satellite especially in the visual spectrum.\n\nSo uh so so we're very excited about the what what it can do for space science um because because really at this point especially for for any photons that where there's interference with uh the atmosphere um so any any sort of short wavelength photons you really want your satellite uh to be uh in vacuum or rather your your telescope to be in vacuum. Um so that's really the future.\n\nSo I think there's a lot of exciting potential there for planetary for for space science. Um and um but but like said the the really fundamentally the reason it's so so gigantic is is that uh if if you're on a you know long journey to Mars, I think being cooped up in a something the size of a minivan would would uh be unappealing to most people. Just so comparison for the audience here, I think the Hubble telescope was something like 2.\n\n4 meter diameter. Uh, and so you're talking about, I think, three times the size, uh, somewhere along that order for the mirror. That's incredible. Um, we've seen some changes down there in Texas at Starbase. I don't know if that's where you're you're you're streaming from here today, but, uh, there's a new factory uh that you're working on to enable a faster manufacturing rate. Can you talk to us a little bit about that?\n\nWhat are you trying to what are your goals? What are you what are you trying to achieve with the with the new factory? Yeah. So, we are building a giant factory for a giant rocket. Um, and um, I mean, honestly, it I I recommend people visit uh, Star Base. Um, as it turns out, it's it's on a state highway. So, for the I think it's one of the rare situations where u, and I actually don't mind.\n\nI think it's kind of cool that that the public can actually drive within a literal stones throw away from the factory and the launch site and actually see the rocket firsthand. In fact, uh if you go on the internet right now, including on the X platform, there are people who are live streaming it 24/7 uh the entire construction uh launchpad everything. Um and um so so it's people say like can I go see it? It's so easy to go see.\n\nYou can just literally fly to Brownsville and drive down drive to the beach and you can see it literally a stones throw away the factory and the launch site. Um so anyone who's wants to do that I I recommend it. It's very very easy. No permission required. Um so yeah we're building this giant rocket factory. Um we the engines are still manufactured in California at SpaceX headquarters uh in um in Los Angeles.\n\num which which is also that's it's also an odd location. That's where we built the the the uh Falcon 9 rockets and the Dragon spacecraft really about 5 minutes from LAX um at the at sort of what used to be a Northrup headquarters I believe. Um so um so that's so anyway that's but yeah we're building this giant factory.\n\nThe thing is so in order to um if you look at the in the grand scheme of things say okay what is required to have a self-sustaining base on Mars or city on Mars um you have to really think of it in terms of very large tonnage uh the and and if we could even get the tonnage estimate to correct to within an order of magnitude I think we doing well.\n\nUm, so the, you know, I think I think we we should probably aim for something like a million tons of useful load delivered to the surface of Mars. Um, which requires roughly 5 million tons to Earth orbit. So, you know, because you get about 20 for whatever mass you get to Earth orbit, you get about 20% of that mass landed to the surface of Mars. You know, give or take, maybe you can get 25% optimistically.\n\nUm, so that's why this thing is so gigantic. um is we've got to get five million tons to to to Earth to orbit which hopefully gets about um a million tons to surf to Mars and hopefully a million tons is enough to create a self-sustaining city on Mars. Un incredible. Um so talking about Mars, any new predictions on when you I know this is your ultimate goal, your destination. Uh any predictions on when Starship might land on Mars without crew?\n\nMaybe a crude flight. Any uh any prediction there? Well, I think three or four years. Four years. That would be Yeah, something like All right. I have to check with the Earth M uh the you know um get have orbital synchronization about every 26 months. Um so you can't just go fly to Mars when it's on the other side of the sun. um from Earth. Uh that's unwieldy.\n\nSo that roughly every 26 months the orbits um uh are in the right relative position um and then you then you have the Mars transport window. Um so I think you know but I think it's sort of feasible within the next four years um to do an uncrrewed test test landing there. Yeah. Didn't have enough on your plate. You're doing a lunar lander version. Yes. Yeah.\n\nWell, really Starship should be a generalized uh transport system to anywhere in the solar system. That that's the intent with when you when you have propulsive landing. You you you can land anywhere whether there's an atmosphere, no atmosphere. Um you know, it's not really dependent on uh water.\n\nuh you know obviously you know for for uh crude capsules on on on Earth we've generally gone with parachutes and water um or you know uh and in Russia it's on land but then they need retro rockets right at the end to sort of slow things down um so a a propulsive system should generalize to be able to land anywhere on a solid surface anywhere on the the um in the solar system.\n\nSo, um, the the the moon, while it's sort of dusty, that that the moon is actually harder than it's not just a big dust pile. So, it's it's harder than you'd think. U the the lunar regalith. Um, so I'm I'm sort of optimistic that we can take a starship that's fairly, you know, unmodified from what would land on Earth or Mars. Obviously, you need legs.\n\nUm, but apart from that, I suspect you could land the Starship with minor modifications on on the moon and and the same would go for once you have a propellant uh plant on Mars. Um, you could then go to the asteroid belt and and the moons of Jupiter. Um if you could establish a propellant plant there um then um then you could go to uh the moons of Saturn and and ultimately all the way out into the caper belt and Todd.\n\nWhat you're talking about requires propellant transfer obviously in orbit. Can you explain to everyone uh watching why that's necessary and how it works and and how you work to progress to to make that propellant transfer happen? Uh yes. So really propellant transfer is is a similar problem to just docking. Um now we've gotten pretty good at docking with the uh Dragon going to the space station.\n\nUm and docking with the space station is uh really quite difficult because we didn't design the space station and the space station has a lot of complexities uh and has crew on board. So, uh, we have to be extremely careful. Um, and that the so talking with the space station takes is is like I would say it's far more difficult to dock with the space station than it would be to dock with our own spaceship.\n\nUm and and so uh propellant transfer just really means um that we we send a b a a starship up there with with no payload um and and it just transfers its propellant to um a ship that is already there. So you have to do dock with the ship that is going to Mars or the moon and transfer the propellant um from a version of the ship that has no cargo.\n\nNow there's there's there there'll be a future sort of um tanker optimized version of of Starship um where where we you know um have have we we stretch the tanks um and have little to no cargo space uh because that's the optimal thing for a tanker. But but you don't have to do that.\n\num that will that will increase the the the propellant load of the tanker or you know the the propellant transferability of of the of the tanker but it's not it's not absolutely necessary you just you could in theory use an unmodified starship uh and transfer propellant that way.\n\nSo um I would imagine that you're doing this and you may have multiple launches uh in either rapid succession or maybe multiple pads launching multiple versions of the vehicle. Is that all taking place from Texas? And how quickly do those launches have to take place to make this uh work? Yeah, we'll we'll have a launch site in S in Texas as well as in Florida.\n\nSo, we've actually partially built a Starship launch pad um at uh pad 39A, which is where we launched Falcon Heavy and um our crude uh crew dragon. Um, so we've partially built and we'll probably we'll we'll fully build that out over time and and probably have um at some point a a green field um location for Starship at at the Cape.\n\nUm now in the in the sort of you say like four or five year time frame where perhaps we're launching several times a day uh then we may need to go to uh an oceanbased like platform um just if if if you're launching I don't know 10 times a day uh that might be a bit much for even for the cape I don't know um but uh so we may end up doing uh platform based launches um from from a specially designed sort of oceangoing platform.\n\nUm but we we will need to do a lot of launches. We're talking about thousands of launches per year. So, uh, at at and and so you do get up to the sort of what I was talking about, um, million tons or 5 million tons to orbit that if you've got, you know, uh, a thousand launches a year, each of which do over a 100 tons, that's 100,000 tons of cargo, you know, per year to orbit. Um, that's still not quite enough.\n\nUm, I think we'd want to get to roughly a million tons of orbit uh per per year to to Earth orbit per year, which would mean that you get to a million tons to Mars in 5 years. These are very big numbers obviously. Um just put things into perspective. Uh all of Earth's launch capability uh right now apart from Falcon is about 400 tons to orbit per year. Um Falcon 9 this year will do I think around 15 or 1600 tons.\n\nSo Falcon 9, you know, it's already doing about 80% of Earth mass to orbit and next year we expect to increase that by about 40 or 50% on the Falcon side. So you know um maybe 2500 tons to orbit for Falcon next year. But these are small still small numbers compared to what's required for um essentially making life multilanetary.\n\nFor making life multilanetary, you've got to be in the sort of hundreds of thousands to millions of tons of two to two Earth orbit per year. Unbelievable numbers really. Uh as somebody worked in the launch business for several years, it's uh it's incredible for me to even try to think about that much NASA to orbit in one year. It's uh it's that's crazy. Yeah, it's absolutely crazy. Ludicrous mode, I think. Yeah. For launch. Very much so. Yeah.\n\nBut it's it's either either we do that or we're a single plant species forever. So we we either achieve uh those kind of numbers or um we will we will never have a self-sustaining city on Mars into building this amazing launch system. You're also working on a Polaris mission uh for that's going to allow I think Dragon to open and have uh people uh uh actually floating in space doing an EVA and you're building a space suit for that.\n\nUm so you can talk a little bit about that space suit and can you use that same suit on the moon and Mars and for other missions? Yeah, so the SpaceX uh space suit um we we do expect to evolve that to be something that can be an AVA suit on uh the ground on the moon and Mars. Um um and um it started off initially as as really just a pressure suit just in case there's an emergency emergency depressurization of the spacecraft.\n\nUm so it's it's was basically like a self-contained life support system uh in in suit form. Um and uh obviously we'll retain that capability but uh but but now um for an upcoming flight we we want to do an EVA or extra vehic you know basically go float around in space um still on a tether so it's not it's not going to be an independent uh little little space little little space suit that's just flying around.\n\nUm we could do that but and maybe that'll happen on a future flight. Uh but it will be a tethered uh EVA. Um so just you're just out there floating in the void connected by a thin cord to the spaceship. Amazing. Uh you uh put a Tesla in space. This was like an amazing uh thing to see a Tesla actually flying into space. So you've already put put one of the vehicles in space. Are you thinking about making a Tesla rover, maybe moon or Mars?\n\nUh any any ideas for Cybert truck on the moon? It would look cool. That's for sure. Um now nice thing nice thing about electric cars is that obviously do not require oxygen to uh they don't combustion cars. So they don't they don't require they don't have to ingest oxygen from the ambient atmosphere. Um, so, um, yeah, I think you know, Tesla could easily make a car that, uh, you know, like a Cybert truck Luna variant.\n\nJust get the get the moon option package. Um so um yeah I mean the reason that we launched the car the reason we launched the car heavy I should say is it just that we wanted something was that was exciting as a uh initial payload but but where the loss of the load would not be catastrophic. So people wonder why my why is my car orbiting Earth both and Mars. Um because it's in an elliptical orbit.\n\nUm and and actually it almost touches it touches like the edge of the asteroid belt and and goes past the orbit of Mars. It's just that we we weren't sure if the first flight of heavy would fail or not and we wanted to just have a payload that was more exciting than the pump. I thought it was brilliant. Uh really uh a master stroke in terms of getting uh attention of the world really to put that in orbit. Thanks.\n\nUh can Starship be used as a space station? How long could it stay in orbit? And uh what would be the purpose of that? How how could that work? So, how long could Starship be in orbit? Yeah. Could it be its own space station? If you wanted to put a starship up with a caterpillar, a laboratory, how long could that uh could it stay in orbit and still come down? Oh, there's no real limit. You could stay in orbit for a very long time.\n\nUm the the the uh the volume of the Sasha be fairing is roughly comparable to the volume of the of the International Space Station. Um so there's about about a thousand cubic meters of of volume in the in the uh fairing I think space station's a comparable amount and would have the power to run a lot of laboratory experiments. Sorry. Yeah. G given that it's given that it's similar volume to the space station.\n\nUm you you could uh do what what you're doing in the space station on a starship uh if you want. Um but there's no there's no limit to how long it can stay out stay up there. It's really just you you you need you know solar panels, battery, and um uh some thrusters to maintain orbit. How about pointto-point transportation?\n\nI know uh when you were in Guadalajara uh at the IC uh you got you kind of hinted at a little bit of the point pointto-oint capability of transportation uh I I can't remember the exact amount of time to get from one side of the world to the next but can you talk about that? How do you see the the future of pointtooint using uh using Starship? Yeah.\n\nSo, uh the fastest way with with known physics to get from one place to another on Earth is with a inter intercontinental ballistic missile. Um this is this is why ICBMs with nukes are kind of like the ultimate weapon. Um now in this case it's sort of lead the nuke at landing. Um but it's it's it's certainly very feasible. Um obviously if we can uh take off and trans and land on Mars or the moon, we can take off and land on Earth too.\n\nUm so so it really comes down to a question of of is it economically viable compared to long-distance aircraft and I think our back the envelope numbers suggest that it it actually has a shot at being economically viable for longdistance transport on Earth. um for for a few reasons. Um the propellant cost is actually quite low being um liquid methane, liquid oxygen. Uh the cost of liquid oxygen is it's primarily liquid oxygen.\n\nIt's about um 77 78% uh liquid oxygen by plant mass and roughly 22 or 23% um liquid methane. So the propellant cost is it's lowest cost propellant you could possibly um get on Earth. And um and then the um the because the rocket's moving so fast uh you you can use it about in theory about 10 times more than you could use an aircraft.\n\nSo um you know so so Falcon 9 oh sorry Starship can go from let's say Los Angeles to Sydney or something like that um in 20 minutes basically maybe half an hour at most. So um you know whereas I think I think an airliner takes about 14 or 15 hours. So you've got something which is really much faster than an aircraft.\n\nAnd so for an airliner that you can do basically an order of magnitude more trips with Starship than you can with an airliner which means that the and this and no pilots are needed. In fact you can't p this is not only a computer can pilot this because human reaction times not fast enough.\n\nUm, so then you don't have the pilot costs, you don't have the food costs, you don't have the um, you know, you don't really even need bathrooms if we can get there in half an hour. So it it actually would work out that uh, it's it's actually we think lower cost than long-distance aircraft. Okay. You got a little chuckle here in the crowd about the no bathroom line. So I think people are looking forward to it. Yeah.\n\nI mean, it's less than a half an hour, you know. You say like go just go before you get hop on, you know, and um yeah, you'll be there fast. I mean, you you you could technically um you know um have, I don't know, breakfast in LA, uh lunch in London, and you know, dinner in Singapore, and then be back back in LA for bedtime. All right, you heard it here, guys. Huge, huge round of applause here.\n\nSo, you're connecting now, I think, something like two million people with Starlink, right? With your with your satellite communication system, uh, and growing rapidly. Um, you're mastering communications from space to Earth, uh, from low Earth orbit. You're now doing, uh, inter satellite links, uh, with this system. Uh what do you see for Starlink being used as a relay let's say around the moon or for comm relay all the way to Mars and back?\n\nYeah. Um well for for Mars Mars you'd want um basically like a laser relay system essentially. It sort of depends on what what what bandwidth you're looking for. Obviously, in order to have continuous coverage with Mars, you'd have to um uh have some relay system because you can't transmit through the sun.\n\nSo, when Mars on, you know, when the sun's between you and the and Mars, you have to um do a bank shot um through a relay satellite um so that your photons don't have to go through the sun. Um uh so and and then it say ultimately we want you know terabit maybe pabit level data transfer between Earth and Mars. So then you're going to you're going to want probably some some relay satellites along the way to be able to do that.\n\nUm it's it's just really it's a bandwidth thing. Um you'd want to use lasers. Um and then the the laser beam is going to widen um with distance. So that then you need to be able to receive the laser beam before it gets too wide. Um this means that you need a series of satellites uh in order to um communicate with Mars at its furthest distance especially with very high bandwidth.\n\nYou can obviously do low bandwidth uh with longer wavelength length photons but but but if if there's a you know human city on Mars uh you'd want to have very high bandwidth. So then for bunch of lasers and and satellite Starlink already uses inter uh lasers for insatellite communication. So, if if I may, just a couple more questions. Um, throughout this week here at the IC, uh, we've been inspired. There's thousands of young people here.\n\nI think 41% of our delegates are under the age of 35, which is incredible by by any, uh, space conference metric. We get a lot of young people here. Uh, there's delegates from the Space Generation Advisory Council, from the Future Space Leaders Foundation, from the YP program here at the IIAF. Do you have a message for these young people, the young engineers and scientists that are here? Many of them have been inspired by you.\n\nAnything you can say to them about pursuing a career in space or what motivated you to do all the things that you're doing? Yeah. Um I mean I'm interested in that which further civilization. Um and I I think we want to expand the scope and scale of consciousness so as to better understand the nature of the universe.\n\nUm and even to ask understand which questions to ask like um you know one of the most inspiring books I've read was uh the hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy um where where in the they're trying to understand meaning of life in the you know hitchhiker's guide and the I mean the larger message of the hitchhikers guide to the galaxy is that you you actually need to know what questions to ask about the answer that is the universe and we we don't yet know what questions to ask.\n\nSo, I'm just curious really I'm just curious as to the nature of reality. Um, where does where where does it all go to? Where does it where does it come from? Where are the aliens, for example? Are there aliens? Is it are we alone? Um, people often ask me um if I'm seen any evidence of of aliens, and I unfortunately have seen no evidence of aliens yet. We are the aliens as far as I can tell.\n\nUm, and I think if anyone would know, it would probably be me. And I've not seen any evidence of aliens. So what what that perhaps suggests is that um this tiny candle of consciousness that is humanity uh is all that exists in a vast darkness. Um and we should do everything we can to ensure that the candle does not go out. We've had a wonderful week here in Baku by the gas. So, we've had a wonderful week here in Baku.\n\nUh, next year we're going to Milan in Italy for the 75th IA. We would love to have you come back for sure if you're in the neighborhood or you can hop over in a starship. We would love to have you. Sure. Uh, it would make quite the quite the quite the entry. It's going to land on the roof. I'll ask the Italian hosts to see if that's possible. So, um, just a a fun question again. When do you think we can host an IC in outer space?\n\nUm, that's a great question. Um, probably less than 10 years. Let's have it. [Music] Well, Elon, I'd like to thank you for joining us today. Congratulations on the World Space Award. Welld deserved and uh our pleasure. We'd love to have you back. Good luck with your next launch. Thank you. Thanks. It was an honor to be be interview. Thank you everyone."},"languages":["en"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z0Hrz_Kv2L8"},{"id":"all-in-summit-2023-09-13","type":"interview","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tKqJ5-kkUGk","title":"All-In Summit","titles":{"en":"All-In Summit","de":"All-In Summit","fr":"All-In Summit"},"date":"2023-09-13","summary":"Musk's fireside chat at the All-In Summit covering Ukraine, X, the creator economy, China and AI.","text":"[Applause] okay wait I'll just I'll just read off all of your companies Elon I know them but I'm just going to read them to make sure I don't miss one because there's so many now uh founder CEO chief engineer of SpaceX uh CEO product architect and chairman of Tesla uh owner chairman CTO of uh x uh x.\n\ncom uh founder of boring company co-founder of neurolink and open Ai and president of the mus Foundation did I get everything let your Winner's ride and we open source it to the fans and they've just gone crazy [Music] with where are you me it is coming it's kind of absurd where are you at Star base um I'm in FL currently so this is this is a starlink and Flake connection are you kidding me that that's oh yeah that works pretty well huh I think there's only one wait I think it's one of of how stalling Works uh in an airplane at altitude there's only one of those in existence right it's on your plane that's it 101 there are a number of airliners that have stalling and there will be a lot more in the future Starling connection when you're assuming it's\n\nworking properly is you would even be able to tell you you're on the ground or in the air um because unlike Jo satellit the latency is you know really be less than 20 millisecs so um it's a in fact for a lot I think for some people the Sonic connection on the plane will be better than their connection at their house that would be pretty great um H how is um the Starship doing it was incredible to see the first uh launch but I understand you're closing in on the second I know you've been working really hard on that and the team's working hard on it um when do you think you're going to get the next one up and um what are the chances it makes it to orbit uh well we have the second one stacked at Star base so it's ready to go um and uh we finished that up\n\nin the last week we believe we've we've completed the rain um I had an requested by the FAA so we should get our license hopefully soon um but really the only thing holding back second plan of Starship at this point is Right fire approval wow what's your expectation uh or your hope in terms of the probability that it gets to orbit it's just a question of timing yeah how long it does take to get the approval paperwork whatnot um so that's really up to the FAA at this point yeah but but what about making it to orbit do you think oh we are doing a new staging technique called hot staging uh where um you light the up the upstage engines or the ship engines while the um boost stage is still firing and um this is the kind of the most efficient way to do is\n\nstage separation of rocket going orbit um but we did not try that on the last mission and and we're trying on this Mission we think it will be overall better um but I think this I think probably have a I hope well over 50% chance of getting to Stage separation um and maybe at close to 50% chance of getting to Orit if the hot staging um the new separation method uh is it works so I'd say maybe it's like a you know above i' say probably above 30% chance of getting toor with the sign whereas previously I said below 50 uh is this in terms of complexity how complex is this of a problem compared to the other problems you've worked on in your career uh well so I mean making a rocket that is more the twice the size of the SAT 5 um you know it's a in fact with\n\nan extra of the rocket it'll have roughly three times the thrust of a Saturn 5 Moon rocket um whever it's signed to be fully rapidly reusable whereas the you know the SAT was completely Expendable and with baline we we still expand the upper stage uh but we we bring back the boo stage as people have probably seen the The Rocker liing videos and we are also able to recover the varant um with the with falc but these things do land toly out to sea so it takes a while to bring them back to board and get them ready for figh G the the thing that you know so so this's a scale of Starship but then also the fact that it is designed for full and R re usability so both the booster and the ship come back launch site they get caught by these giant meaz arms youve\n\nsee in congress's Godzilla uh it's basically bad uh catches this giant rocket out of you know B air and puts it back on the launch stand and gets ready for launch so it will be capable of you know basically aircraft level flight rates um but but it's much bigger than say a 747 or 8380 um you want can we um talk about the events of was it last weekend the whole Ukraine Starling thing can you give us like a the Tik Tok of like what's going on and like how you're being forced to decide but like what is it like in that decision room if there was one or wherever you were where you're trying to figure out am I keeping this on do I turn it off what is going on people must have been bombarding you whatever you can share about what that was like how you made the\n\ndecision um yeah I I so I was actually mistaken a little bit in understanding the situation um you know obviously we St sex have provided uh starlink connectivity for you know to Ukraine um really since the beginning of the war uh really within a I think a few days of the war starting um and as the Ukrainian uh Governor said the S was instrumental in the FS of Ukraine so you know they've said that really many times although the media forgets to mention that um so and in fact they've said it on Twitter you X only know on his Twitter it's going to take a while to get that right yeah take a little time [Laughter] um so you know you don't have to you don't have to take my words for it you just read what what they put um you know uh so uh so son has been incredibly\n\nhelpful to the Ukraine war eff um we' have gone out of pocket very significantly uh to help them um and um at at the time this happened the uh region around Crimea um was actually turned off now the reason it was turned off was actually originally was because United States had sanctions against Russia um and we're not allowed to actually and that includes Crimea and the sanctions and we're not allowed to actually turn on uh connectivity to sanction the country without explicit government approval um we did not have from the US government so um so so basically the uh uh you know Ukraine didn't they didn't give us any any advanced warning or heads up or anything um we just got the the sort of uh urgent calls from the Ukrainian government saying that we\n\nneeded to turn on primier it's like in the middle of the night basically and we're like what are you talking about you know you which's it four um you know and then you know we basically um figured out that this was kind of like a bhit type attack on um Sasol on the Russian fet Sasol so they're really asking us for to to really for actually take part in a major act War um and um you know well we so certainly have huge EMP support for the Ukrainian government um the Ukrainian government is not in charge us uh people or companies that's not how it works and and Elon if if I could just but I should say that you know although I'm not President Biden's biggest fan if if I had received a Presidential Directive to turn it on I would have done so because I do\n\nregard the president as the chief executive officer of the country whether I want that post to the president or not I S respect the office and so if if you know if we gotten if I gotten a request from the president type of thing from the American president to be clear um then I I I would have turned it on you know so but no such requests came through that that's a really that's a really interesting point and um you're I mean the what jamas is referring to is you're now being attacked I saw there was a you know there was Jake Tapper uh the other day on CNN interviewing our secretary state was just he was all lathered up basically attacking you for this uh David David I mean to his credit secetary Lincoln was actually quite supportive despite the Absurd\n\nuh you know accusations and leading questions of the Jake taper at CN yeah he didn't take the bait credit to sery Lincoln in this regard for not um you know taking the bait at all yeah well I to me this is an example of no good deed goes unpunished because if you had never given I hope I hope some good deeds back go unpunished I mean if you if you had never given Starling that you know but yeah I mean my point is just if if you had never given Starling to the Ukrainian government for free voluntarily you just volunteered it then no one be attacking you right now for not turning it on so they could do their attack on Crea yeah um also one other thing I'll note is that your reason for not turning it on which is you don't be part of what could be a major\n\nescalation was exactly was exactly the reason that Biden Administration did not give attam attam missiles to Ukraine at that point in the War now they may be changing their minds but they were very worried about an attack the administration was an attack on Crea triggering some huge escalation of this war so not only did you not receive a directive from President Biden your thinking was very much in line with theirs at the time and and you're being attacked for that now there there's something you mentioned which is that you did this at a lot of economic cost to SpaceX can you just can you just talk about that for a second because I'm not sure people understand who's paying for what right now and who hasn't been paid and you know Etc there is um well\n\nas you say like a lot of people are contributed to the effort uh staring is the fundamental communication backbone of the Ukrainian uh government and and essential services like First Responders and that kind of thing um and you know is is used we we hope peacefully relatively peacefully on the warfront it is the only thing that works on the warfront everything else is been jamed by the Russians so it the only thing that works not not one of the [Applause] things you know but but I think you have to sort of think of say the you know um you know taking the actual example of Paul har and say like well how did that work out for Japan it didn't work out well at all right um because it was a a tactical victory a strategic defeat it enraged the American public\n\num who sort of naturally wanted Vengeance for for the Z you know the Zach and I think that that you know while I don't think it's on the same scale that there was certainly that potential of sort of a many P Hava with results in a mass escalation of uh hostilities um but not this would this would not this would not defeat Russia it would enrage Russia do you Don do you donate the network or do they pay you for it sorry yeah so um I'm actually not sure what the final accounting is at this point but uh I I I think at one point at one point you calculated our sort of cost of supporting things that roughly $100 million now the $100 million does not count um the mass of risk to the entire Starling constellation uh because uh Russia would like to have the entire\n\nthing deleted um so uh you know nobody's compensating us for that um and uh so if we were to get say uh our control center were uh take down and Cyber attack they you know they command satellites to the over um and destroy the entire system uh or use anti satellite weapons um so you know the these are this is a pretty significant risk um for which we have not received any compensation and obviously would be catastrophic to the entire stalling system which is you know approaching $10 billion Elon do you think the current government Administration saying hey 10 mil million and then actually I say one of the BR meing things was as you as you've seen there's there's a very large amount of money that's been appropriated for uh Ukraine you know I'm not sure\n\nwhat the the total is at this point but must be 100 close billion or somewhere between 80 and 100 billion um you know now all of the you know other sort of providers us providers of support to Ukraine are being paid so then why should SpaceX be excluded that doesn't make sense we we're doing one of the most valuable things and yet are getting the least money this iser um but you know despite that we're still happy to keep keep going and um Elon does the Biden Administration have it out for you and why H what have gave you that idea [Laughter] yeah but let me ask you own and control I don't if the whole Administration has it out me I think there probably aspects of the administration that are not uh or or you know as aspects of you know interests aligned\n\nwith uh with with with resent Biden who probably do not um wish good things for me um I don't know you know really what their issue is but there does seem to be um a significant increase in the weaponization of government um and um I say really sort of misuse of prosecutorial discretion in a many many areas where and I think this is this is really a dangerous thing for um you know for I don't know for that to be potis and politics with with with government agencies it's it's just really and then I think from you know from from say uh you know Democratic party standpoint or or say B Biden Administration standpoint I think this is this the danger here is that if there's significant uh um must use prosecutorial discretion let's say one says okay everyone's\n\nequal under the law yes but who are you who are you choosing to pursue um and if if you if you're pursuing what what appeared to Independent voters to be uh trivial cases while ignoring serious crimes um it's hard to imagine that a lot of independent voters that's going to win over thoughtful independent voters did this did things change when you bought X yeah I think that they did change somewhat um you know I I'll go with the with with the sort of you know the xplatform is really to be uh a Level Playing Field a public square that is supportive of um you know most of the country let's say that the middle 80% or something like that um now um that's not been the case really for all social media that all social media have been really very very left leading\n\nfar left leading and really Twitter was far left leading um you know the the suspensions of of um s Republican candidates or interests or voices was was uh really at least 10 times the rate of of um suppression of left left bring voices on you know on all Twitter um so so what what I'm trying to do is move it to the middle which from standpoint of say the left appears it is moving to the right Everything's Relative if you're standing on the left but it's not it's simply moving to the middle that's all um in an attempt to actually represent the whole country um and and not just um here half the country or even maybe less than half the country so that's it really so I think there's like there's really to be alarmed about here it's you know it's just that\n\nit's intended to be a Town Square inclusive of the whole country and else you know and and the world that's all it it's been um I guess you took over um X Twitter on Halloween weekend if I remember correctly uh when you got to the building you got the keys um and David and I were lucky to be there with you when you got the keys and we got to um check things out um this is 10 months into a turnaround uh and it wasn't a high functioning organization I think when you took it over where is the company at now and are you pleased with I guess the progress because it looks like new features are getting launched the product velocity is great uh obviously advertising's been challenging but it feels like there's some green shoots so so how do you feel about the\n\npurchase now yeah well I should say we recently seen a significant increase in advertising which is great um so that's a you know if that Trend continues um I think the company will be in in very good Financial shape on the advertising front um so that in terms of positive developments that that seems to be one of them um and um from a feature standpoint I think those who are look using the system I think we' I think we might have delivered more new features you know in the last I know a year than in the last you know all tter did in 5 years you know there there really feature the feature development pace is very rapid um and this is being done with really about 15% of the original company um maybe a little more 15 20% um so it's it's really you know\n\nefficient you know at the end of the day you have to say you know how complicated is a system uh like the X Twitter platform um you know how different is it from a group chat frankly it's like a group chat at scale um so he I don't think you need an army to maintain a group chat yeah yeah I mean it's it's not the self-driving platform and it had maybe 10 times as many people working on it as the self-driving platform at Tesla which seems crazy the entire self-driving AI software team is 200 people and the what they're doing is much more complex than Twitter or you know much a lot more so you now there's other things that obviously need to be done like advertising sales um OB network operations and um how can you talk to it's really not it's not a it's\n\nnot a huge I don't like I said don't even know me for for for what we're here and I think you know the people that that are um still the company are obviously being very productive in uh creating and deling new features um and um you know we keep seeing sort of RedBoard usage and the the know the most prous number is really the is user seconds as reported by the mobile device especially iOS the the iOS uh what iOS reports as the screen time is the is the least gameful metric um and and those numbers are exem are very good um so you know I think I'm course justly optimistic about where things are headed and I I feel like the company's turned just you know just recently turned turn a corner um tell us about you know said um at least moderate prosperity\n\nand and hopefully significant tell us about um the success of sharing Revenue why did you do it and then just the the vision you have for just the Creator economy and what you want that to evolve into and build into yeah I mean it sounds to reason that if if you're a Creator and you need to um need to make a Livy for what you're doing um so there's got to be um you know Fair compensation competitive compensation for a Creator whether they're doing you know WR their writing or pictures video whatever the case may be um and uh so we're and we're so we're not really in you know inventing anything new here we're just you know as YouTube does with creators they will do rev show um with advertising and so we're doing rev show with advertising um we're also\n\nto have enabled direct subscription to accounts where whatever somebody you know you could be doing audio video long form text anything and you can subscribe to someone and um that's you know OB that's way for a subscriber to make a living as as well you know for a Creator to make a living so the intent is for the ACT platform to be the best home for creators uh where if you've got interesting content then you you want to put it on a platform and um you know there's a lot of questions about like sort of the algorithm and whatnot I I should mention like the the algorithm is uh I think almost all of it is open sourced and and we will uh I think quite soon have the entire open source uh the only reason I it really hasn't been done entirely open source yet\n\nis because we're somewhat embarrassed with the code and need to just clean it up before uh putting something extremely embarrassing out there but the point is that like we want transparency boths trust and if you've got um uh if you if you can recreate the results um on the xform of how viral a post is going to be independently using the uh you know the the public algorithm you know the H algorithm um that that's really where we want to get to um so you you kind of you kind of know what to expect um and and why something happened um now now I should say the we are we are trying to optimize for uh user time um on the platform what this naturally means is that um posting content that someone looks at longer is going to get higher priority than content that\n\nis short uh just because the system is trying to Max it's it's aspiring to maximize uh you unreg user remittance is what I call it so like basically how do we um if we're succeeding you want to spend more time on the platform and you want to and after having spent that time you don't want to regret it um I mean speaking of Tik Tok um you know that's I've had a lot of people tell me they spend a lot of time on Tik Tok and they regret it um we don't want to be we want it to be that you spend a lot of time on the xplatform and you learned a lot uh you you're entertained and you don't regret it so when you're optimizing for you know user minutes and like I said aspirationally under regretted use minutes uh uh if you the more content that you post on the system\n\nthe more reach that uh thing will get because the system is saying oh those user is spending more time in the platform because they're they're you know seeing say your podcast or uh reading um a long form article or watching some video um that's going to get a lot more time than say if you if you link to a video elsewhere or you link to an article elsewhere that that that's just that that that that means you'll you will be on that post for a very short period of time and so the the system will be like okay that did not increase uh user time so it will it won't be excluded it it will get less attention that than actually posting content natively on the system do you want to talk um about uh the ADL and you uh sort of where what the status of that is whether\n\nyou're pursuing a lawsuit or not or where that stands um I think we'll have to see about that I mean um yeah I mean the fact of matter is that ad did initiate a boycott they don't call it a boycott they call it a pause but you know po that is never ending isot so and and and we just we saw a massive drop in uh us advertising we saw basically no change in advertising in Asia but domestically with ADL is strong we saw uh 60% drop in advertising so you know that's uh pretty intense um and um and this is despite you know showing repeated uh analyses of the system including third party analysis of the system which actually showed that uh the number of uh views of hateful content uh declined so you know the third parties who have all the data analyz and said\n\nactually there's less safe speech um the issue I think with the ADL is not a question of hate speech it's not a question of any semitism obviously uh it's that the ad um and a lot of other organizations have become activist organizations um which are acting far beyond their uh stated mandate or their original mandate and and I think far beyond what donors to those organizations think they are doing um you know one of the things that the a was extremely opposed to and in fact was instrumental in in happening was there the ad was instrumental in getting um Donald Trump the platformed um and then when we we you know we restored the account um they they made it super clear that they regarded simply restoring his account on you know Twitter now uh that that\n\nthat constituted hateful speech like he hasn't even said anything you know um he has to at least say something or post something for there to be incremental painful painful content this is absurd um and what's this got to do with anti-Semitism like you know Donald Trump's son-in-law is Jewish his Jewish gr I'm pretty sure he's not anti-semitic okay um you know he's at the wedding so um this this so so the problem is that a lot of these um organizations like said they've really been captured by the W agenda and they're they're pushing um you know serious of beliefs and values that I think are often contrary to their what what they're done as belief and that's uh that's what we have in the situation well yeah I I'll note that the the two positions that\n\nyou've taken that have brought the most heat on you number one defending Free Speech number two advocating peace and how dare you how dare you how dare you and there's there's an article like the opposite world or something yeah we're living in upside down World there there's an article in today's New Yorker calling you a super villain because you're advocating peace and protecting the first amendment I mean it's like completely upside down do you want people to eat their vegetables you at this point you literally cannot tell actual press from parody no like if that was a bon be or onion no literally you're doing a you're doing and and change the banner to you know Babylon b or whatever onion or something like that par some parody thing and be like oh\n\nthat's a good joke you know um yeah super bones normally advocate for peace that's you know of course um we want to get rid of all the nuclear weapons hey um hold that's uh what the funniest the funniest skit that didn't make it on SNL that we were worksh Shing was probably woke James Bond and we wanted to do like this woke James Bond and Eli will tell you some of the jokes it was pretty hilarious but then we were just talking about a story that broke in the guardian about the new James Bond novel and short story is to woke and it's literally the parody we did two years ago uh Elon speaking of Peace we had we had a grais reality also like the you know the uh you know conspiracy theories that that that haven't come true list is you know quite short um\n\nsees that turn out quite short um and we really need more conspiracies generated because we're running out of to find the [Laughter] truth okay check off is accurate um so uh I don't know who's the you know responsible these conspiracy theories but but you know we just need some more material paging Alex Jones Elon we had Graham Alison here today I know you talked about his book we had Ray Doo here we had Ro kna um and we talked a lot about China the US relationship with China you are you have several businesses that have deep supplier and customer relation uh ships in China given what's going on and clearly the tenor has changed the the mood has changed with respect to US policy towards China what it's like in DC what it's like in Silicon Valley and\n\nhow everyone talks about the relationship with China today it's pretty crazy how quick things have changed um as a business leader with all these business relationships with China how do you make decisions and and how things are changing and how do you think about where this is headed sure well I mean let's just clarify here um you know SpaceX has no uh SpaceX of Starling have no in China whatsoever they're not they're not allowed you know SpaceX does launch uh China satellites and starlink is abandon in China so to be clear SpaceX starlink zero business in China um uh in the case of of Tesla uh one of our of our four vehicle factories uh one is in uh China so um you know it's a it's a significant car market uh but it is uh you know so what I'm trying\n\nto say is like the by far the bulk of of my business interests if if I I would peing MTI which I Aspire not to be um are Outsider China let's just be clear about that um then with respect to now that said I think I understand China well I've been there many times I've met with uh the senior leadership um at many levels of China for for many years and so I I think I've got a pretty good understanding um at least as an outsider of ch so and and Tesla has been very successful domestically in China so um you know the fundamental thing here is is really Taiwan um the China has well really since uh for like half a century or so uh maybe longer at this point longer at this point their policy has been to to um s reunite Taiwan with China uh from this standpoint\n\nyou know it may be just analogous to like Hawaii or or something like that like an integral part of China that is arbitrarily not part of China um mostly because of the US stop has us Pacific Fleet has stopped uh any any sort of um reunification effort force um so now really things getting to the point um increasingly year-over year uh where China's military strength is increasing and ours is more or less uh static and strategically you know you can imagine trying to defend Taiwan is not not easy because it's it's very close to the coast of China um so there will come a point if you know Pro probably not not too distant future where China's military strength in that region far ex exceeds US military strength in that region and if one is to take uh China's\n\npolicy literally and probably one should um then there will be some forceful uh for forceful beuse for you know uh to incorporate Taiwan into China this is what they've said um that if if there is not a diplomatic solution there will be a solution by force let me um if I can and so really what's going on here you've seen you know this in in many areas and I think this Tempo is going to increase is that you know both China and the US are preparing for a potential Showdown uh you know in the South China CA so um that's why you're seeing increasing restrictions on export of us technology to China uh but such as the the Nvidia you know the Nvidia h100s being and you not allow to ship to China um and I think there'll be more and more you you also not not allow\n\nto ship Advanced ship making equipment to China um so and I suspect you know you know China is going to respond with some reciprocal sanctions um and you'll I think you'll see this kind of a TI T reciprocal sanctions increasing in the next next few years so I think quite a very uh hot temperature um and then we'll see this is there going to be a a diplomatic solution to uh re reunification or a non- diplomatic solution you uh but has made it clear that there will one way or another be a solution from their standpoint Yeah you mentioned uh Nvidia so let me just talk about Ai and bring it back to that for a second can you tell us um your regrets but also the positives of the experience you had with open Ai and then what your goals are with X well the AI\n\ndiscussion is is certainly a long one or could be a long one um you know digital super intelligence that might be the most significant technology that Humanity ever creates um and and it has the potential to be more dangerous than and um nuclear weapons so um you know in the case of creating opening eye it was to have there not be a unipolar world where um Google with its subsidary deat mine uh you know would control an overwhelming amount of AI talent and compute and and resources um which then is somewhat dependent on basically how how Larry paage U and serge BR um and Eric believe things should go because they they between three of them or two out of three have control over alphabet because they've got super voting rights and um you know I was quite\n\nbased on some conversations I had with lar paig uh where um you know you call me a species for being pro humanity and um so I'm like what side of you on there you know uh um you know I think and uh so so I felt like uncomfortable um having the entire future of digital super intelligence be in the hands of someone who equ a species for being pro Humanity um you know how can it not be uh so that's opening eye was originally created as an open source nonprofit and now is a close to be it should be renamed closed for Max no profit AI um it is it is closed um and they are aiming to I think make try to make a100 billion I think according to S get $100 billion from somewhere for some vast amount of compute uh to create digital god um apparently all the waste\n\nare stored in a common separated value file by the way so our dig God will be a CSV file how do we import it file import um see what happens um so so anyway so so now opening uh is also very closely line with Microsoft you know Microsoft is really you um the open servers are running on in Azure and Microsoft data centers you know so really what you have is I think at the end of day Microsoft having more control than open AI they have access to all the source code they have access to all the weights of the um you know gb4 and future versions so they have all rights to this to to thing it's not um at any point really they could cut off open AI I don't think open AI quite realizes that the dependence on on Microsoft and even if Microsoft does break some\n\ncontract they'll just be tied up in litigation for you know for years um so really you've got a contest between kind of like Google and Microsoft Google as mentioned I'm concerned about you know uh sorry not not caring enough about AI safety and um good reason and then Microsoft just is is a I think you know a profit seeking organization um and I you know I think such is great but um I I can't say like you know that it would difficult to to say that that m has a has an amazing track record and moral decision- making so um diplomatic anyway so so so was like okay look let's just so I think let's try to create a third company that is competitive I I I do think Tesla is underated from an AI standpoint in terms of real world AI Tesla has the best real world\n\nAI so uh you know hopefully between uh xai and Tesla there's kind of a third Contender or would you look you've done you open source your patents at Tesla you are very Pro open source your source code at X would you ever considering releasing dojo and FSD more as a platform substrate for everybody else or that's sort of off the table right now well I don't know if that's uh you know in the case of say Dojo or our inference Hardware that's in the car our inference inference computer which is actually a lot lot more comp than Dojo by the way um you know we've got I know somewhere in the order of 4 million cars that have um highp speeded Ai and Par computers in them um like open sourcing chip designs doesn't mean you you suddenly get that thing yeah you\n\nknow so um you can open open source the software but I think chip designs it's only ones that could actually use those chips or really kind of yeah would be some someone that's willing to spend many billions of dollars on um on a computer development so anyway I think I think in the case of uh you know don't saying Optimus is really interesting um any I think just in general Tesla is uh one of the most leading AI companies um and in some respects the leading AI company when it comes to real real world AI understanding the real world and and actually reacting to that with self-driving um and so and I think that will become part of the the solution for AGI or general super intelligence so um in the case of Tesla I think we've got a sort of a good governance\n\nstructure in that there's no super voting rights or anything like that so if I'm you know go crazy the CH of Tesla can vote me out um you know I have enough vote to be you know I think moderately influential but not enough to stay in even if I'm doing crazy stuff so I think that's actually good um great um I was told we have to wrap him at oh okay uh just on FSD before we wrap I'll let you go um we were talking earlier this year and you said uh hey maybe chat GPT 4.\n\n0 like moment for self-driving was coming and uh I've I've been playing with the beta and um yeah how how close does it feel to you because it it some of the rides it's been doing for me are pretty darn impressive the latest beta is pretty incredible yeah it's pretty pretty neat I you know I used to love it on the highways and on the streets I'd be like okay but now I'm using it increasingly on the streets so where do you how do you feel about it right now and I I guess you made a lot of predictions on it over the years um but it it does feel like it's getting pretty close yeah I think it's I think it's very close to uh you know being in a situation where even if there's no human oversight or intervention that the probability of uh a safe journey is is\n\nhigher with FSD and no supervision like even if you're seep of the car than if the person is driving um we're very close to that you know those that have the FSD beta which really anyone could get at this point um so the the the miles we see driven under the FSD beta currently are much safer than the miles that are driven without it so um that's uh you know that's that's already very good milestone um but you know you can just see that it's getting better and better like um if you see if you compare the uh you know FS beta today versus 6 months ago versus you know a year ago versus 18 months ago it's really the Improvement is dramatic um and um we've got the final piece of the puzzle which is to have the control part of the car uh transition from about\n\n300,000 lines of C++ code to also neural network so the you know the whole system will be neural net in your network um phons into controls out and and that that that's kind of the final piece of the puzzle for fullop driving being significantly better than human W awesome uh thanks for taking the time buddy uh fly safe and I'll see you shortly uh ladies and gentlemen Elon mus thanks bud [Applause] [Music] and instead we open sources to the fans and they've just G [Music] crazy Bes myg taking [Music] driveway oh man we should all just get a room just have one big huge orgy cuz they're all useless it's like this like sexual tension that they just need to release [Music] Som we need to get [Music] merch I'm going all [Music]","textByLang":{"en":"[Applause] okay wait I'll just I'll just read off all of your companies Elon I know them but I'm just going to read them to make sure I don't miss one because there's so many now uh founder CEO chief engineer of SpaceX uh CEO product architect and chairman of Tesla uh owner chairman CTO of uh x uh x.\n\ncom uh founder of boring company co-founder of neurolink and open Ai and president of the mus Foundation did I get everything let your Winner's ride and we open source it to the fans and they've just gone crazy [Music] with where are you me it is coming it's kind of absurd where are you at Star base um I'm in FL currently so this is this is a starlink and Flake connection are you kidding me that that's oh yeah that works pretty well huh I think there's only one wait I think it's one of of how stalling Works uh in an airplane at altitude there's only one of those in existence right it's on your plane that's it 101 there are a number of airliners that have stalling and there will be a lot more in the future Starling connection when you're assuming it's\n\nworking properly is you would even be able to tell you you're on the ground or in the air um because unlike Jo satellit the latency is you know really be less than 20 millisecs so um it's a in fact for a lot I think for some people the Sonic connection on the plane will be better than their connection at their house that would be pretty great um H how is um the Starship doing it was incredible to see the first uh launch but I understand you're closing in on the second I know you've been working really hard on that and the team's working hard on it um when do you think you're going to get the next one up and um what are the chances it makes it to orbit uh well we have the second one stacked at Star base so it's ready to go um and uh we finished that up\n\nin the last week we believe we've we've completed the rain um I had an requested by the FAA so we should get our license hopefully soon um but really the only thing holding back second plan of Starship at this point is Right fire approval wow what's your expectation uh or your hope in terms of the probability that it gets to orbit it's just a question of timing yeah how long it does take to get the approval paperwork whatnot um so that's really up to the FAA at this point yeah but but what about making it to orbit do you think oh we are doing a new staging technique called hot staging uh where um you light the up the upstage engines or the ship engines while the um boost stage is still firing and um this is the kind of the most efficient way to do is\n\nstage separation of rocket going orbit um but we did not try that on the last mission and and we're trying on this Mission we think it will be overall better um but I think this I think probably have a I hope well over 50% chance of getting to Stage separation um and maybe at close to 50% chance of getting to Orit if the hot staging um the new separation method uh is it works so I'd say maybe it's like a you know above i' say probably above 30% chance of getting toor with the sign whereas previously I said below 50 uh is this in terms of complexity how complex is this of a problem compared to the other problems you've worked on in your career uh well so I mean making a rocket that is more the twice the size of the SAT 5 um you know it's a in fact with\n\nan extra of the rocket it'll have roughly three times the thrust of a Saturn 5 Moon rocket um whever it's signed to be fully rapidly reusable whereas the you know the SAT was completely Expendable and with baline we we still expand the upper stage uh but we we bring back the boo stage as people have probably seen the The Rocker liing videos and we are also able to recover the varant um with the with falc but these things do land toly out to sea so it takes a while to bring them back to board and get them ready for figh G the the thing that you know so so this's a scale of Starship but then also the fact that it is designed for full and R re usability so both the booster and the ship come back launch site they get caught by these giant meaz arms youve\n\nsee in congress's Godzilla uh it's basically bad uh catches this giant rocket out of you know B air and puts it back on the launch stand and gets ready for launch so it will be capable of you know basically aircraft level flight rates um but but it's much bigger than say a 747 or 8380 um you want can we um talk about the events of was it last weekend the whole Ukraine Starling thing can you give us like a the Tik Tok of like what's going on and like how you're being forced to decide but like what is it like in that decision room if there was one or wherever you were where you're trying to figure out am I keeping this on do I turn it off what is going on people must have been bombarding you whatever you can share about what that was like how you made the\n\ndecision um yeah I I so I was actually mistaken a little bit in understanding the situation um you know obviously we St sex have provided uh starlink connectivity for you know to Ukraine um really since the beginning of the war uh really within a I think a few days of the war starting um and as the Ukrainian uh Governor said the S was instrumental in the FS of Ukraine so you know they've said that really many times although the media forgets to mention that um so and in fact they've said it on Twitter you X only know on his Twitter it's going to take a while to get that right yeah take a little time [Laughter] um so you know you don't have to you don't have to take my words for it you just read what what they put um you know uh so uh so son has been incredibly\n\nhelpful to the Ukraine war eff um we' have gone out of pocket very significantly uh to help them um and um at at the time this happened the uh region around Crimea um was actually turned off now the reason it was turned off was actually originally was because United States had sanctions against Russia um and we're not allowed to actually and that includes Crimea and the sanctions and we're not allowed to actually turn on uh connectivity to sanction the country without explicit government approval um we did not have from the US government so um so so basically the uh uh you know Ukraine didn't they didn't give us any any advanced warning or heads up or anything um we just got the the sort of uh urgent calls from the Ukrainian government saying that we\n\nneeded to turn on primier it's like in the middle of the night basically and we're like what are you talking about you know you which's it four um you know and then you know we basically um figured out that this was kind of like a bhit type attack on um Sasol on the Russian fet Sasol so they're really asking us for to to really for actually take part in a major act War um and um you know well we so certainly have huge EMP support for the Ukrainian government um the Ukrainian government is not in charge us uh people or companies that's not how it works and and Elon if if I could just but I should say that you know although I'm not President Biden's biggest fan if if I had received a Presidential Directive to turn it on I would have done so because I do\n\nregard the president as the chief executive officer of the country whether I want that post to the president or not I S respect the office and so if if you know if we gotten if I gotten a request from the president type of thing from the American president to be clear um then I I I would have turned it on you know so but no such requests came through that that's a really that's a really interesting point and um you're I mean the what jamas is referring to is you're now being attacked I saw there was a you know there was Jake Tapper uh the other day on CNN interviewing our secretary state was just he was all lathered up basically attacking you for this uh David David I mean to his credit secetary Lincoln was actually quite supportive despite the Absurd\n\nuh you know accusations and leading questions of the Jake taper at CN yeah he didn't take the bait credit to sery Lincoln in this regard for not um you know taking the bait at all yeah well I to me this is an example of no good deed goes unpunished because if you had never given I hope I hope some good deeds back go unpunished I mean if you if you had never given Starling that you know but yeah I mean my point is just if if you had never given Starling to the Ukrainian government for free voluntarily you just volunteered it then no one be attacking you right now for not turning it on so they could do their attack on Crea yeah um also one other thing I'll note is that your reason for not turning it on which is you don't be part of what could be a major\n\nescalation was exactly was exactly the reason that Biden Administration did not give attam attam missiles to Ukraine at that point in the War now they may be changing their minds but they were very worried about an attack the administration was an attack on Crea triggering some huge escalation of this war so not only did you not receive a directive from President Biden your thinking was very much in line with theirs at the time and and you're being attacked for that now there there's something you mentioned which is that you did this at a lot of economic cost to SpaceX can you just can you just talk about that for a second because I'm not sure people understand who's paying for what right now and who hasn't been paid and you know Etc there is um well\n\nas you say like a lot of people are contributed to the effort uh staring is the fundamental communication backbone of the Ukrainian uh government and and essential services like First Responders and that kind of thing um and you know is is used we we hope peacefully relatively peacefully on the warfront it is the only thing that works on the warfront everything else is been jamed by the Russians so it the only thing that works not not one of the [Applause] things you know but but I think you have to sort of think of say the you know um you know taking the actual example of Paul har and say like well how did that work out for Japan it didn't work out well at all right um because it was a a tactical victory a strategic defeat it enraged the American public\n\num who sort of naturally wanted Vengeance for for the Z you know the Zach and I think that that you know while I don't think it's on the same scale that there was certainly that potential of sort of a many P Hava with results in a mass escalation of uh hostilities um but not this would this would not this would not defeat Russia it would enrage Russia do you Don do you donate the network or do they pay you for it sorry yeah so um I'm actually not sure what the final accounting is at this point but uh I I I think at one point at one point you calculated our sort of cost of supporting things that roughly $100 million now the $100 million does not count um the mass of risk to the entire Starling constellation uh because uh Russia would like to have the entire\n\nthing deleted um so uh you know nobody's compensating us for that um and uh so if we were to get say uh our control center were uh take down and Cyber attack they you know they command satellites to the over um and destroy the entire system uh or use anti satellite weapons um so you know the these are this is a pretty significant risk um for which we have not received any compensation and obviously would be catastrophic to the entire stalling system which is you know approaching $10 billion Elon do you think the current government Administration saying hey 10 mil million and then actually I say one of the BR meing things was as you as you've seen there's there's a very large amount of money that's been appropriated for uh Ukraine you know I'm not sure\n\nwhat the the total is at this point but must be 100 close billion or somewhere between 80 and 100 billion um you know now all of the you know other sort of providers us providers of support to Ukraine are being paid so then why should SpaceX be excluded that doesn't make sense we we're doing one of the most valuable things and yet are getting the least money this iser um but you know despite that we're still happy to keep keep going and um Elon does the Biden Administration have it out for you and why H what have gave you that idea [Laughter] yeah but let me ask you own and control I don't if the whole Administration has it out me I think there probably aspects of the administration that are not uh or or you know as aspects of you know interests aligned\n\nwith uh with with with resent Biden who probably do not um wish good things for me um I don't know you know really what their issue is but there does seem to be um a significant increase in the weaponization of government um and um I say really sort of misuse of prosecutorial discretion in a many many areas where and I think this is this is really a dangerous thing for um you know for I don't know for that to be potis and politics with with with government agencies it's it's just really and then I think from you know from from say uh you know Democratic party standpoint or or say B Biden Administration standpoint I think this is this the danger here is that if there's significant uh um must use prosecutorial discretion let's say one says okay everyone's\n\nequal under the law yes but who are you who are you choosing to pursue um and if if you if you're pursuing what what appeared to Independent voters to be uh trivial cases while ignoring serious crimes um it's hard to imagine that a lot of independent voters that's going to win over thoughtful independent voters did this did things change when you bought X yeah I think that they did change somewhat um you know I I'll go with the with with the sort of you know the xplatform is really to be uh a Level Playing Field a public square that is supportive of um you know most of the country let's say that the middle 80% or something like that um now um that's not been the case really for all social media that all social media have been really very very left leading\n\nfar left leading and really Twitter was far left leading um you know the the suspensions of of um s Republican candidates or interests or voices was was uh really at least 10 times the rate of of um suppression of left left bring voices on you know on all Twitter um so so what what I'm trying to do is move it to the middle which from standpoint of say the left appears it is moving to the right Everything's Relative if you're standing on the left but it's not it's simply moving to the middle that's all um in an attempt to actually represent the whole country um and and not just um here half the country or even maybe less than half the country so that's it really so I think there's like there's really to be alarmed about here it's you know it's just that\n\nit's intended to be a Town Square inclusive of the whole country and else you know and and the world that's all it it's been um I guess you took over um X Twitter on Halloween weekend if I remember correctly uh when you got to the building you got the keys um and David and I were lucky to be there with you when you got the keys and we got to um check things out um this is 10 months into a turnaround uh and it wasn't a high functioning organization I think when you took it over where is the company at now and are you pleased with I guess the progress because it looks like new features are getting launched the product velocity is great uh obviously advertising's been challenging but it feels like there's some green shoots so so how do you feel about the\n\npurchase now yeah well I should say we recently seen a significant increase in advertising which is great um so that's a you know if that Trend continues um I think the company will be in in very good Financial shape on the advertising front um so that in terms of positive developments that that seems to be one of them um and um from a feature standpoint I think those who are look using the system I think we' I think we might have delivered more new features you know in the last I know a year than in the last you know all tter did in 5 years you know there there really feature the feature development pace is very rapid um and this is being done with really about 15% of the original company um maybe a little more 15 20% um so it's it's really you know\n\nefficient you know at the end of the day you have to say you know how complicated is a system uh like the X Twitter platform um you know how different is it from a group chat frankly it's like a group chat at scale um so he I don't think you need an army to maintain a group chat yeah yeah I mean it's it's not the self-driving platform and it had maybe 10 times as many people working on it as the self-driving platform at Tesla which seems crazy the entire self-driving AI software team is 200 people and the what they're doing is much more complex than Twitter or you know much a lot more so you now there's other things that obviously need to be done like advertising sales um OB network operations and um how can you talk to it's really not it's not a it's\n\nnot a huge I don't like I said don't even know me for for for what we're here and I think you know the people that that are um still the company are obviously being very productive in uh creating and deling new features um and um you know we keep seeing sort of RedBoard usage and the the know the most prous number is really the is user seconds as reported by the mobile device especially iOS the the iOS uh what iOS reports as the screen time is the is the least gameful metric um and and those numbers are exem are very good um so you know I think I'm course justly optimistic about where things are headed and I I feel like the company's turned just you know just recently turned turn a corner um tell us about you know said um at least moderate prosperity\n\nand and hopefully significant tell us about um the success of sharing Revenue why did you do it and then just the the vision you have for just the Creator economy and what you want that to evolve into and build into yeah I mean it sounds to reason that if if you're a Creator and you need to um need to make a Livy for what you're doing um so there's got to be um you know Fair compensation competitive compensation for a Creator whether they're doing you know WR their writing or pictures video whatever the case may be um and uh so we're and we're so we're not really in you know inventing anything new here we're just you know as YouTube does with creators they will do rev show um with advertising and so we're doing rev show with advertising um we're also\n\nto have enabled direct subscription to accounts where whatever somebody you know you could be doing audio video long form text anything and you can subscribe to someone and um that's you know OB that's way for a subscriber to make a living as as well you know for a Creator to make a living so the intent is for the ACT platform to be the best home for creators uh where if you've got interesting content then you you want to put it on a platform and um you know there's a lot of questions about like sort of the algorithm and whatnot I I should mention like the the algorithm is uh I think almost all of it is open sourced and and we will uh I think quite soon have the entire open source uh the only reason I it really hasn't been done entirely open source yet\n\nis because we're somewhat embarrassed with the code and need to just clean it up before uh putting something extremely embarrassing out there but the point is that like we want transparency boths trust and if you've got um uh if you if you can recreate the results um on the xform of how viral a post is going to be independently using the uh you know the the public algorithm you know the H algorithm um that that's really where we want to get to um so you you kind of you kind of know what to expect um and and why something happened um now now I should say the we are we are trying to optimize for uh user time um on the platform what this naturally means is that um posting content that someone looks at longer is going to get higher priority than content that\n\nis short uh just because the system is trying to Max it's it's aspiring to maximize uh you unreg user remittance is what I call it so like basically how do we um if we're succeeding you want to spend more time on the platform and you want to and after having spent that time you don't want to regret it um I mean speaking of Tik Tok um you know that's I've had a lot of people tell me they spend a lot of time on Tik Tok and they regret it um we don't want to be we want it to be that you spend a lot of time on the xplatform and you learned a lot uh you you're entertained and you don't regret it so when you're optimizing for you know user minutes and like I said aspirationally under regretted use minutes uh uh if you the more content that you post on the system\n\nthe more reach that uh thing will get because the system is saying oh those user is spending more time in the platform because they're they're you know seeing say your podcast or uh reading um a long form article or watching some video um that's going to get a lot more time than say if you if you link to a video elsewhere or you link to an article elsewhere that that that's just that that that that means you'll you will be on that post for a very short period of time and so the the system will be like okay that did not increase uh user time so it will it won't be excluded it it will get less attention that than actually posting content natively on the system do you want to talk um about uh the ADL and you uh sort of where what the status of that is whether\n\nyou're pursuing a lawsuit or not or where that stands um I think we'll have to see about that I mean um yeah I mean the fact of matter is that ad did initiate a boycott they don't call it a boycott they call it a pause but you know po that is never ending isot so and and and we just we saw a massive drop in uh us advertising we saw basically no change in advertising in Asia but domestically with ADL is strong we saw uh 60% drop in advertising so you know that's uh pretty intense um and um and this is despite you know showing repeated uh analyses of the system including third party analysis of the system which actually showed that uh the number of uh views of hateful content uh declined so you know the third parties who have all the data analyz and said\n\nactually there's less safe speech um the issue I think with the ADL is not a question of hate speech it's not a question of any semitism obviously uh it's that the ad um and a lot of other organizations have become activist organizations um which are acting far beyond their uh stated mandate or their original mandate and and I think far beyond what donors to those organizations think they are doing um you know one of the things that the a was extremely opposed to and in fact was instrumental in in happening was there the ad was instrumental in getting um Donald Trump the platformed um and then when we we you know we restored the account um they they made it super clear that they regarded simply restoring his account on you know Twitter now uh that that\n\nthat constituted hateful speech like he hasn't even said anything you know um he has to at least say something or post something for there to be incremental painful painful content this is absurd um and what's this got to do with anti-Semitism like you know Donald Trump's son-in-law is Jewish his Jewish gr I'm pretty sure he's not anti-semitic okay um you know he's at the wedding so um this this so so the problem is that a lot of these um organizations like said they've really been captured by the W agenda and they're they're pushing um you know serious of beliefs and values that I think are often contrary to their what what they're done as belief and that's uh that's what we have in the situation well yeah I I'll note that the the two positions that\n\nyou've taken that have brought the most heat on you number one defending Free Speech number two advocating peace and how dare you how dare you how dare you and there's there's an article like the opposite world or something yeah we're living in upside down World there there's an article in today's New Yorker calling you a super villain because you're advocating peace and protecting the first amendment I mean it's like completely upside down do you want people to eat their vegetables you at this point you literally cannot tell actual press from parody no like if that was a bon be or onion no literally you're doing a you're doing and and change the banner to you know Babylon b or whatever onion or something like that par some parody thing and be like oh\n\nthat's a good joke you know um yeah super bones normally advocate for peace that's you know of course um we want to get rid of all the nuclear weapons hey um hold that's uh what the funniest the funniest skit that didn't make it on SNL that we were worksh Shing was probably woke James Bond and we wanted to do like this woke James Bond and Eli will tell you some of the jokes it was pretty hilarious but then we were just talking about a story that broke in the guardian about the new James Bond novel and short story is to woke and it's literally the parody we did two years ago uh Elon speaking of Peace we had we had a grais reality also like the you know the uh you know conspiracy theories that that that haven't come true list is you know quite short um\n\nsees that turn out quite short um and we really need more conspiracies generated because we're running out of to find the [Laughter] truth okay check off is accurate um so uh I don't know who's the you know responsible these conspiracy theories but but you know we just need some more material paging Alex Jones Elon we had Graham Alison here today I know you talked about his book we had Ray Doo here we had Ro kna um and we talked a lot about China the US relationship with China you are you have several businesses that have deep supplier and customer relation uh ships in China given what's going on and clearly the tenor has changed the the mood has changed with respect to US policy towards China what it's like in DC what it's like in Silicon Valley and\n\nhow everyone talks about the relationship with China today it's pretty crazy how quick things have changed um as a business leader with all these business relationships with China how do you make decisions and and how things are changing and how do you think about where this is headed sure well I mean let's just clarify here um you know SpaceX has no uh SpaceX of Starling have no in China whatsoever they're not they're not allowed you know SpaceX does launch uh China satellites and starlink is abandon in China so to be clear SpaceX starlink zero business in China um uh in the case of of Tesla uh one of our of our four vehicle factories uh one is in uh China so um you know it's a it's a significant car market uh but it is uh you know so what I'm trying\n\nto say is like the by far the bulk of of my business interests if if I I would peing MTI which I Aspire not to be um are Outsider China let's just be clear about that um then with respect to now that said I think I understand China well I've been there many times I've met with uh the senior leadership um at many levels of China for for many years and so I I think I've got a pretty good understanding um at least as an outsider of ch so and and Tesla has been very successful domestically in China so um you know the fundamental thing here is is really Taiwan um the China has well really since uh for like half a century or so uh maybe longer at this point longer at this point their policy has been to to um s reunite Taiwan with China uh from this standpoint\n\nyou know it may be just analogous to like Hawaii or or something like that like an integral part of China that is arbitrarily not part of China um mostly because of the US stop has us Pacific Fleet has stopped uh any any sort of um reunification effort force um so now really things getting to the point um increasingly year-over year uh where China's military strength is increasing and ours is more or less uh static and strategically you know you can imagine trying to defend Taiwan is not not easy because it's it's very close to the coast of China um so there will come a point if you know Pro probably not not too distant future where China's military strength in that region far ex exceeds US military strength in that region and if one is to take uh China's\n\npolicy literally and probably one should um then there will be some forceful uh for forceful beuse for you know uh to incorporate Taiwan into China this is what they've said um that if if there is not a diplomatic solution there will be a solution by force let me um if I can and so really what's going on here you've seen you know this in in many areas and I think this Tempo is going to increase is that you know both China and the US are preparing for a potential Showdown uh you know in the South China CA so um that's why you're seeing increasing restrictions on export of us technology to China uh but such as the the Nvidia you know the Nvidia h100s being and you not allow to ship to China um and I think there'll be more and more you you also not not allow\n\nto ship Advanced ship making equipment to China um so and I suspect you know you know China is going to respond with some reciprocal sanctions um and you'll I think you'll see this kind of a TI T reciprocal sanctions increasing in the next next few years so I think quite a very uh hot temperature um and then we'll see this is there going to be a a diplomatic solution to uh re reunification or a non- diplomatic solution you uh but has made it clear that there will one way or another be a solution from their standpoint Yeah you mentioned uh Nvidia so let me just talk about Ai and bring it back to that for a second can you tell us um your regrets but also the positives of the experience you had with open Ai and then what your goals are with X well the AI\n\ndiscussion is is certainly a long one or could be a long one um you know digital super intelligence that might be the most significant technology that Humanity ever creates um and and it has the potential to be more dangerous than and um nuclear weapons so um you know in the case of creating opening eye it was to have there not be a unipolar world where um Google with its subsidary deat mine uh you know would control an overwhelming amount of AI talent and compute and and resources um which then is somewhat dependent on basically how how Larry paage U and serge BR um and Eric believe things should go because they they between three of them or two out of three have control over alphabet because they've got super voting rights and um you know I was quite\n\nbased on some conversations I had with lar paig uh where um you know you call me a species for being pro humanity and um so I'm like what side of you on there you know uh um you know I think and uh so so I felt like uncomfortable um having the entire future of digital super intelligence be in the hands of someone who equ a species for being pro Humanity um you know how can it not be uh so that's opening eye was originally created as an open source nonprofit and now is a close to be it should be renamed closed for Max no profit AI um it is it is closed um and they are aiming to I think make try to make a100 billion I think according to S get $100 billion from somewhere for some vast amount of compute uh to create digital god um apparently all the waste\n\nare stored in a common separated value file by the way so our dig God will be a CSV file how do we import it file import um see what happens um so so anyway so so now opening uh is also very closely line with Microsoft you know Microsoft is really you um the open servers are running on in Azure and Microsoft data centers you know so really what you have is I think at the end of day Microsoft having more control than open AI they have access to all the source code they have access to all the weights of the um you know gb4 and future versions so they have all rights to this to to thing it's not um at any point really they could cut off open AI I don't think open AI quite realizes that the dependence on on Microsoft and even if Microsoft does break some\n\ncontract they'll just be tied up in litigation for you know for years um so really you've got a contest between kind of like Google and Microsoft Google as mentioned I'm concerned about you know uh sorry not not caring enough about AI safety and um good reason and then Microsoft just is is a I think you know a profit seeking organization um and I you know I think such is great but um I I can't say like you know that it would difficult to to say that that m has a has an amazing track record and moral decision- making so um diplomatic anyway so so so was like okay look let's just so I think let's try to create a third company that is competitive I I I do think Tesla is underated from an AI standpoint in terms of real world AI Tesla has the best real world\n\nAI so uh you know hopefully between uh xai and Tesla there's kind of a third Contender or would you look you've done you open source your patents at Tesla you are very Pro open source your source code at X would you ever considering releasing dojo and FSD more as a platform substrate for everybody else or that's sort of off the table right now well I don't know if that's uh you know in the case of say Dojo or our inference Hardware that's in the car our inference inference computer which is actually a lot lot more comp than Dojo by the way um you know we've got I know somewhere in the order of 4 million cars that have um highp speeded Ai and Par computers in them um like open sourcing chip designs doesn't mean you you suddenly get that thing yeah you\n\nknow so um you can open open source the software but I think chip designs it's only ones that could actually use those chips or really kind of yeah would be some someone that's willing to spend many billions of dollars on um on a computer development so anyway I think I think in the case of uh you know don't saying Optimus is really interesting um any I think just in general Tesla is uh one of the most leading AI companies um and in some respects the leading AI company when it comes to real real world AI understanding the real world and and actually reacting to that with self-driving um and so and I think that will become part of the the solution for AGI or general super intelligence so um in the case of Tesla I think we've got a sort of a good governance\n\nstructure in that there's no super voting rights or anything like that so if I'm you know go crazy the CH of Tesla can vote me out um you know I have enough vote to be you know I think moderately influential but not enough to stay in even if I'm doing crazy stuff so I think that's actually good um great um I was told we have to wrap him at oh okay uh just on FSD before we wrap I'll let you go um we were talking earlier this year and you said uh hey maybe chat GPT 4.\n\n0 like moment for self-driving was coming and uh I've I've been playing with the beta and um yeah how how close does it feel to you because it it some of the rides it's been doing for me are pretty darn impressive the latest beta is pretty incredible yeah it's pretty pretty neat I you know I used to love it on the highways and on the streets I'd be like okay but now I'm using it increasingly on the streets so where do you how do you feel about it right now and I I guess you made a lot of predictions on it over the years um but it it does feel like it's getting pretty close yeah I think it's I think it's very close to uh you know being in a situation where even if there's no human oversight or intervention that the probability of uh a safe journey is is\n\nhigher with FSD and no supervision like even if you're seep of the car than if the person is driving um we're very close to that you know those that have the FSD beta which really anyone could get at this point um so the the the miles we see driven under the FSD beta currently are much safer than the miles that are driven without it so um that's uh you know that's that's already very good milestone um but you know you can just see that it's getting better and better like um if you see if you compare the uh you know FS beta today versus 6 months ago versus you know a year ago versus 18 months ago it's really the Improvement is dramatic um and um we've got the final piece of the puzzle which is to have the control part of the car uh transition from about\n\n300,000 lines of C++ code to also neural network so the you know the whole system will be neural net in your network um phons into controls out and and that that that's kind of the final piece of the puzzle for fullop driving being significantly better than human W awesome uh thanks for taking the time buddy uh fly safe and I'll see you shortly uh ladies and gentlemen Elon mus thanks bud [Applause] [Music] and instead we open sources to the fans and they've just G [Music] crazy Bes myg taking [Music] driveway oh man we should all just get a room just have one big huge orgy cuz they're all useless it's like this like sexual tension that they just need to release [Music] Som we need to get [Music] merch I'm going all [Music]"},"languages":["en"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tKqJ5-kkUGk"},{"id":"vivatech-2023-06-16","type":"interview","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OyYQTr0kiUo","title":"VivaTech","titles":{"en":"VivaTech","de":"VivaTech","fr":"VivaTech"},"date":"2023-06-16","summary":"Musk's full on-stage talk at Europe's biggest tech fair on Twitter, Tesla, SpaceX and Neuralink.","text":"Elon Musk [Applause] thank you thank you [Applause] hey guys [Music] you have to know that no one in Paris believed that you would be in person they all said no he's not coming going to come he was already at Versailles for choose France so he's not going to come and it will be a video so is it real are you real I'm a hologram ah damn hologram or an Android Elon it is a pleasure and an honor to have you so thank you for making the trip I know that it has not been very easy and I know also that for the first time in my life I will interview somebody who is introvert yes yes you told me I started out that way yeah shy and introvert that's right so I'm asking the audience to be let's be gentle with Elon because he's so shy that he needs your support and\n\non top of that [Applause] speaking in front of his mother so you can imagine how difficult it is [Applause] so as you have seen since we have announced your participation it has been quite uh something because everyone wanted to be here so we had to change we had a very modest room with only 1 500 people and we had to move here and you have to know that the Dom De Paris is the place where there is the musicals yeah so we are not expecting you to sing or to dance but if you can do it we would be very happy yeah hey but you have also to know that this is the room where Steve Jobs was coming every time he was doing a keynote or presenting new products it was here okay so I hope that you like the symbol sure and you you don't need any introduction your name\n\nis a brand is already a brand it's a brand for Innovation for ambition for a perfume yes yes this is the agreement that you made with uh there are no family a few hours ago I mean it's I mean really it Brands itself yeah and you are the origin of PayPal Tesla SpaceX to name a few and even open AI so yeah you love taking risks and you are going always against the tide and the popular wisdom you have been always proven right now there is always now there is a bet of the 44 billion US dollar question which is will you still be right with Twitter sure uh so it was expensive yeah yeah I don't know if um you know listen if I'm so smart why did I pay so much for Twitter then [Laughter] so as I'm not a journalist I'm not trying to get headlines and to have provocative\n\nresponse and to make a scoop but nevertheless if you wish to do that it is authorized okay great so we are expecting that you will really make the show because everyone comes here to see you and to listen to you and to get some of the magic that you have all right well I'm I'm honored that you all I want to listen to what I have to say it's a great to see the crowd and uh I know you guys seem awesome so but you told me that you would like you said that you would like to speak in French oh my goodness foreign [Laughter] [Applause] people who believe that you are a genius and yeah there are some who are you will believe that you are evil so but I mean you can be both you could be an evil genius that's not uh you know so that's what you are or you will let\n\nthe people draw that on conclusion um uh I am um definitely not evil tell me what what do you think that you have ahead of your oh yes if you look carefully you can see an angel's Halo on my head and the wings uh it's a subtle but yeah where are the wings yeah they're so they're difficult to see but if you look carefully you know they're right there yeah yeah small Wings yes [Music] aspirationally not evil um so uh yeah um okay so that wasn't enough you have done a lot of operation you have created a lot of companies the most important question for everyone is what the hell is driving you why are you so obsessed by new operation New Creation new things to do yeah crystal meth is the answer if you think Red Bull gives you wings um so man that that's that\n\nthat Court's gonna probably sting um so um yeah just kidding for the record [Laughter] um so well I think there's the companies still have a lot to do for their their core Mission um the you know for electric vehicles sustainable energy uh still less than one percent of the Global Fleet is electric so you've got about two billion cars and trucks on the road but still uh less than 20 million are electric at this point so this is a long way to go for sustainable energy for um sustainable energy generation so this you know the Tesla Mission I think we've made a lot of progress but still um it's a lot more ahead then SpaceX the goal is uh it's a big goal but it's we want to try to make life multi-planetary to extend life beyond Earth and I think this is important\n\nfor a number of reasons but um yeah there's the sort of defensive reason of ensuring that the light of Consciousness does not go out and if I made some of these questions if I'm going on too long you feel free to interrupt me but the no no you can okay okay so um you know people do ask me you know uh have I seen UFOs uh and aliens and that kind of thing and um I haven't um and I think I would have seen them by now um so it appears that we might this we might be the only Consciousness uh at least in this galaxy and um and if so that's kind of a scary Prospect because uh it means that the light of Consciousness is like it like a tiny candle in a vast Darkness and we should do everything we can to prevent that candle from going out so yeah and and so so\n\nsome of the things so that means obviously taking the actions to ensure that Earth is good that Earth is safe and secure for civilization um and it I think it also means extending life beyond Earth um to other planets in the solar system and ultimately to other star systems um and I think that's that's both a sort of defense of the light of Consciousness and also um I think a point of inspiration because the life cannot just be about solving um one problem after another we need things that Inspire us I mean we need things that move our hearts and that when you wake up in the morning you're excited to be alive and being a space-bearing civilization and making true the things that we see in the good science fiction movies this is one of the things that\n\nI think can inspire all of humanity just like the you know when when the um astronauts went to the moon in 69 it was something that then they said For All Mankind you know and it really was something you say to any human on earth what's the what is it what's like the most amazing thing that Humanity has ever done a lot of at least one of those things would be we went to the moon you know and so you want to have these inspiring things that make you excited to be alive and excited about the future um yeah and you you had those thoughts and dreams when you are a kid though this came much later on well I didn't think I would be doing these things as a kid um that's for sure I was interested in technology and I've read a lot of books um so I was obviously\n\ninterested in science I mean this is hardly going to be surprising I was interested in science fiction and Technology you have to tell the truth because listening to you huh yeah my mom's right here she can she didn't call me out on this if it's not not accurate but um so I guess the the thing that was Maybe most significant from a philosophical standpoint was that when I was about maybe 12 or 13 I had somewhat of an existential crisis where I was like I was like what what is the meaning of Life Is Life just meaningless why are we here what does it all mean and um and I read a lot of books on religion and philosophy and um and then ultimately that you know I read this book Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy which is great um and in that book that book is\n\nreally a philosophy book that's disguised as humor and the point that Douglas Adams makes is that the the real difficulties understanding what questions to ask about the answer that is the universe and that we that that really we want to we want to have it's it's essentially if it's like a philosophy of curiosity of of saying well what can we do to find out more about the the nature of the universe and um and the meaning of life and so that's that's the sort of foundational element and then from there you say okay well if we want to find out meaning of life we have to expand the scope and scale of Consciousness we have to go out there and we explore the Stars to know what questions to ask um about the universe and and understand the universe and that's\n\nthat's my core philosophy um and and so from that it was like well we have to make sure that uh Earth is good so we have to have sustainable energy um we um we want to build technology to travel beyond Earth and that's it's from that sort of core philosophy that these companies uh arise in most cases um they can say how does Twitter help with that [Laughter] I would like to go back to Earth sure and that to the various Enterprises that you contributed to Korea or co-created or created let's start with PayPal so a very impressive company do you regret to have sold it um I I think in retrospect I think it was it was good to have that that the company was acquired by eBay um because there was so much talent at PayPal and that Talent subsequently went on\n\nto create many other companies um so uh YouTube for example was created by two people that worked at at PayPal um uh we had there was a LinkedIn was created from from PayPal there was Yelp there was many other companies um yeah yeah very impressive yeah so and then if I'd been still working on PayPal then I there wouldn't be you know Tesla would not be in its current form and SpaceX wouldn't exist yes so and yes I guess a short answer yes short-term sorry that yes yeah yeah but now within you would have loved to keep it again well there is I think the potential to do something that is um uh bigger than PayPal this is sort of like the X the sort of everything app kind of thing so I I think it's it's somewhat poetic like we're trying to get good good finish\n\na task that was started about 24 years ago um I think it's I think we it's going to be useful at X Twitter is going to be just a very useful thing um and hopefully something that is a positive force for civilization and moving to Tesla and I have through one of our operation don't the first advertising campaign for the electric car of GM that was at the end of the 90s so can you explain why GM and other car manufacturers have not created Tesla and why Tesla is successful what is the difference um you're talking about the ev1 basically the ev1 car that it was so uh General Motors actually did come out with this uh electric vehicle one ev1 and it's uh yes you remember if you want yes yeah um and uh actually so I thought when that was 97 yeah that sounds\n\nabout right yeah um I would have I expected there would be an ev2 EV3 and so forth and if they've done that actually there would be no need for Tesla um but um for reasons that that aren't clear they GM recalled all of the EV ones even from customers that really wanted to keep the cars they recalled the cars and they crushed them in a junkyard and the the it was it still blows my mind that they did this because the the people who had the EV ones they love the cost so much they held a candlelit vigil at the junkyard where the cars were crushed okay like it was like like someone was getting killed you know like and it's like if somebody is holding a candlet vigil for the rest because they love your product so much maybe you should make more of it you know\n\nI mean it's like pretty rare for Candler vigils to be helpful products so I I don't understand why they didn't do more they should have and they would be the leader in electric vehicles today but they didn't they didn't and so there was a need for Tesla because the you know at the time of starting Tesla there were no electric vehicles being made um and they were so the big car companies were not making electric vehicles there were no startups that we were aware of making electric vehicles so it's like well we should try and um I mean in the case of both Tesla and SpaceX I thought the chance of success was maybe 10 so I just felt like I thought it would be successful I thought it would fail hey good listen and now moving to the kids dream which is to become\n\nan astronaut and not to build Rockets how you move from the idea that every child has I would be an astronaut too I would do reusable Rockets yeah um you forgot no I I'm trying to compress the story so that they're not too long um because the story is actually quite long because I didn't start out wanting to do the Rockets I at first I was going to do this um philanthropic Mission to Mars called Mars Oasis and then as I started investigating um the what it would take to launch this Mission to Mars just a little Greenhouse basically it was intended to inspire the public and I started understanding more about the what Rockets could be used I actually went to Russia a few times to try to buy some of their nuclear missiles um minus the nuclear minus the nuke\n\nthat's extra um so that was pretty wild being in Russia in 2001 negotiating to buy it two of their biggest missiles but but it became clear that the um and unless there was a something new with rockets they were that that was the fundamental issue the cost of access to space was the fundamental issue so it wasn't a it wasn't a question of trying to increase the Public's desire Public's desire for space and exploration is very high but there needs to be a means there needs to be a way um and uh there needs to be a radical Improvement in the cost of access to Auburn um so I was like okay well I'm gonna try starting a rocket company and see if it's successful but I like I said I I told people at the time because because the people would say to me just tell\n\nme this joke of like what's the fast you know what what's the you know how do you go from sorry um sorry I'm getting a little hot under the collar here um I think a lot of people are um so they'll say what's the fastest way to make us a small fortune in the rocket industry in it and the punch line is you start with a large one so anyway it was it was a tough going for a while our first three launches failed fortunately the fourth one succeeded if the fourth one had not succeeded SpaceX would not exist so it was a very close call fast forward you created or you co-created open AI yes chat GPT has been incredibly success incredibly successful it's the the fastest growing ever story and after having created openly eyes suddenly you say oh we should have\n\na pose some people say oh it's because he has not done it well I mean I didn't think anyone would actually agree to the pose but I thought just for the for the record I just want to say I think we should pause I didn't think that uh that the why do you want to shoot pose well I think there's there's a real danger for digital super intelligence having negative consequences and so if we are not careful with creating artificial general intelligence we could have potentially a catastrophic outcome so now I think there's a range of possibilities I think the most likely outcome is positive for AI but it but that's not every possible outcome so we need to minimize the probability that something will go wrong with um digital super intelligence yes so I'm in favor\n\nof AI regulation because I think Advanced AI is a risk to the public and anything that's risked to the public there needs to be some kind of referee that referee is the regulator and so I think that's that's my strong recommendation is to have some regulation for AI some regulation for AI yes which is what you want also for Twitter I'm not sure regulation I guess there's plenty of plenty of regulators sure So speaking about Twitter you you have made a big bet on Twitter you said it a few minutes ago that you paid too much yes yes and you are now going on to Twitter 2.\n\n0 or 3.\n\n0 uh which I understand it's a full-scale reinvention of the company uh yeah so evolving the company very rapidly yeah the company is changing quite dramatically there are a lot of controvers about Twitter so I have in fact three very quick question the first one is why have you decided to acquiring the second is what was wrong at Twitter to make you acting and the last one is not the last last of the three because there are many other questions is why do you believe that you will be successful and you will be well thanks um I can imagine I can't imagine that you will not be well thanks so well obviously I was on Twitter as a major user and even before the acquisition closed my my Twitter account was the most interacted with account in the world so my\n\nI guess I'll be I'm pretty closely attuned to what's going on with Twitter you know I get a feel for how is it shifting one way or the other and uh generally I was concerned that Twitter was having a negative effect on civilization that it was having a corrosive effect on civil society and um and so that you know anything that undermines uh civilization I think is not good and you know go back to my point of like we need to do everything possible to support civilization and move it in a positive direction and um and I felt that it would that Twitter was kept moving more and more in a negative Direction and my hope and aspiration was to change that and have it be a positive force for civilization it is not perceived like this before are very happy to listen\n\nto that approach but it the perception is very different well I think it depends on I mean I think if if somebody is a regular Twitter user I think they most people would say that their experience has improved um we've we've gotten rid of uh 90 of the Bots and the scams and and the various bad things that were happening um we've gotten rid of now at this point I think 95 of the child exploitation material that was on Twitter which was a shock to see the amount of that that was really terrible uh some of that had been going on for 10 years and no action so I think we've done a lot of good on that respect um and um and then I think you know we've also done things like we we have open sourced the algorithm so we're trying to be as transparent as possible\n\nso Twitter is the only social media company where you can see the actual code of the algorithm so it's not like some secret Black Box um I mean the the the way to build trust is Equitable trust does not take my word for it it's let's let's show you exactly how it works and full transparency um and um and and we're also going to be showing like if your account is in any way affected by the Twitter system you could see it clearly um and uh just you know moving into I I think a good direction um we've I think the recommendation algorithm I don't want to go on too long for Twitter but I think it's I I think it's actually uh quite good and that those are on who are on the Twitter system I think generally think it's good um the you know we are seeing all-time\n\nhighs in usage so at least you know for the public out there they are using the system more um so we're seeing a pretty significant week over week growth in in usage um so the you know the public is speaking with their time and if they're putting their time on on Twitter that's a very good signal um so that's that's that's very positive um what would you say to advertisers who left Twitter to convince them to come back yeah actually I should say that um maybe with a few exceptions um almost all the advertisers have said that they've either come back or they said they will come back so actually I feel pretty pretty optimistic about the future um and um yeah so you know we're really at this point I believe actually I'm not aware of any Advertiser that is\n\nuh either they've either come back or they said they'll come back I'm not aware of any exceptions they're probably a few exceptions but overall I think it's uh it's very positive good so we will have now a broader conversation we will ask Christianity demand from Orange the CEO of orange to join us as well as Antoine Arno from lvmh and as Mr Dubai from lawyer we have to move in order that there are chairs so come here [Applause] because why you know why they are arranging there is uh yes yes yes yes yes yes there is one question yeah that I would like to [Music] [Applause] take care so finally we are all together again so I had another question but I will save it for later and I will give the floor to Crystal Crystal the man who is the CEO of orange and\n\nshe is very much excited about putting some harsh difficult question to you let's go Twitter yeah [Music] there's also another side of it which is that there can be some disinformation fake news fake news what that's crazy you believe that wait how do I know this is real now the question is and actually I think there's a flip side you need to social networks and there's a Code of Conduct that the EU has proposed to this information okay tweet decided to Airport so is this because Twitter doesn't respect the fact that information needs to be moderated and actually you've been pretty vocal on the content moderation so just what are your thoughts on that well I'm generally a fan of that we should have a free speech as much as possible as much as is allowed\n\nby the laws of any country so um you know I think that you know say for France we should um allow things that are allowed by law and if the people are want the laws to be different then pass a different law and will adhere to that law but but for Twitter to go beyond the law that you know that doesn't seem quite right to me I I think we want to allow the people to express themselves um and and really if you have to say when does Free Speech matter Free Speech matters and it's only relevant if if people are allowed to say things that you don't like because otherwise it's not free speech um and and I would I would take that if if somebody says something you know potentially offensive but that's that's actually okay now no we're not going to promote those\n\nyou know offensive uh tweets but uh but I think people should be able to say things because the alternative is censorship and then and frankly I think if you go down the censorship route it's only a matter of time before censorship is turned upon you so that's why it's important um you know for in the US you've got the First Amendment uh freedom of speech amendment and he said like why did they do that that's because why did they pass that Amendment it was because they were not able to say what they wanted to say in the countries that they came from and they wanted to make sure that they could say what they wanted to say so I believe in Freedom for the people uh to say things and that even if somebody said that it's actually in some ways a sign of Health\n\nif people are able to if someone you don't like is able to say something you don't like rather than try to suppress that you say like you know what that's a good sign because that means I can say things and that person will not like what I say but I can still say it and that's a really big deal [Applause] especially in this country I mean freedom of speech that's something that's very I mean at the core of our values but now if we look at young people and being in the digital field and we provide Digital Services that people use there's also a move towards cyber bullying and harassment which I think we all it's also our role to educate young people on how to use the technology and make sure that because some behaviors I mean on Twitter or other social\n\nnetworks can actually have devastating effects on on people uh is Twitter doing something about it or would you be willing to engage with other players actually at Orange we do a lot in that space sure I I mean that's true I think I think you know Twitter is for sure willing to engage with others um and like as I said the overarching goal is to have Twitter be a force a positive force for civilization and um you know so and and and if if you're on the platform and you're being harassed or bullied or whatever obviously that's a negative experience um so um so you know what we're doing is it's we call it sort of freedom of speech but not freedom of reach uh which is that if you yes you can say offensive things but then your content is going to get down\n\nrated so if you're a jerk you your reach will drop so yeah I think that's the right thing [Music] um Antoine I don't know if you will be competing with the real to launch the future fragrance for Elon Musk and that the brand must so you have to compete very hard but maybe you I know that you had already the lunch but there is never the dessert so you can put your question all right first of all in the name of um thank you very much for being here yeah this group is the co-host of Viva Tech and it's uh it's great to have you and welcome so change of uh subject from Twitter at lvmh our oldest Maison is called claudulombre I saw you enjoyed good wine yeah um it's 650 years old wow Louis Vuitton was founded in 1854 our most ancient American Maison Tiffany\n\nwas founded in 1837.\n\nthe sum of the years of existence of all our Maison at lvmh is 8 393 years old wow Tesla is a teenager right yes yes 19 19 years old yeah and its market cap is already higher than lvmh [Laughter] yeah so so first question first question how much longer are you going to make us look so bad second question more serious do you feel the creation of value is more challenging in traditional or innovative business well first of all it's honor to be here and and speak with you so thanks for having me you know evaluations are are a strange thing because um you know sometimes I've said hey I think the stock price is too high at Tesla and then the stock price goes up I'm like okay so if you you tweet is it going up or down no the crazy thing I mean when I've created\n\nI think the stock price is too high almost always it goes up so I don't know it's a strange thing so I I guess in the in the case of Tesla if the the the really the the value of the company is primarily uh on the basis of autonomy so uh in my opinion um because if you look at our total vehicle output it's um it'll be almost two million Vehicles this this year or something like that um but that's that's still only two percent of total vehicle production so then why is our market cap so high and it's because the potential for autonomy um is uh the the value of autonomy is so high um that even even if you have a discounted percentage probability of autonomy happening that is still incredibly valuable um so the average passenger car is used only about 10\n\nhours a week so an average of about one and a half hours a day but if you have an autonomous Robo taxi the utilities might be 50 or 60 hours a week out of 168 hours so now you've got a vehicle that costs the same but has five times the utility so it's so gigantic a change that that's really I think uh the main driver of our value and although I've said this before I think we will solve autonomy soon thanks to the Tesla will be at this level of Market gun uh no I did not expect Tesla would be at this level because he's just extraordinary unfair by the way I mean I don't set the price so yeah you don't said maybe just another quick question um I tried mid-journey the other day yeah returning is amazing right and and I asked the software to make a Louis\n\nVuitton advertising campaign with only two words so here it's a bad question for you Maurice right if if you are if you want to put me out of a job that was my question do you feel this advertising production industry is going to be threatened by AI be careful not at all it's totally safe [Laughter] I mean AI is definitely going to be a massive disruptive Force I mean it AI is probably the the most disruptive technology ever um I mean the crazy thing is that you know the the advantage that humans have is that uh we're smarter than other creatures like if we got into a fight with the gorilla the gorilla would definitely win um but we're smart so but now for the first time there's going to be something that is smarter than the smartest human like way smarter\n\nthan smartest human and as you can see from a journey the art that AI can create is incredible it's so beautiful and it does it you know within seconds so we're at I mean right I think you know there's that sort of saying may you live in interesting times which I think is like not exactly a good thing sometimes but but we actually live I think we live in the most interesting of times um the Advent of AI and I actually thought to myself at one point like uh should you know do I would I really want to be alive at this point like let's say that there is some AI Armageddon um that happens some sort of AI apocalypse I think I would still be want to be alive at this time to see it and hopefully you know hopefully not not cause it but it's it's just a I think\n\nwe live in an extremely interesting time you know because the things that you see AI being able to do now it's going to do much more with each passing year cars will absolutely drive themselves better than any person could drive we'll have humanoid robots like so Tesla's developing a humanoid robot to call it the T800 it's a yeah some people get that joke [Laughter] it's a Terminator um so we can tweet that yeah um but if you like to say what isn't it what is an economy an economy is GDP per capita times Capital now what happens if you don't actually have a limit on Capital if you have an unlimited number of uh sort of people or robots it's not clear what meaning an economy has at that point because you have an unlimited economy effectively um so so like\n\non the good side of the plus side of AI is that I think we are heading for an age of abundance um where any goods and services that you want you can just have um so that's that's the that's the the positive side of of of AI future is an age of abundance from the advertising side they must say that we are using AIC it's many years and it is helping us a great deal and this is a tool that we are already using and I think it will be helping us to do even faster some very good ad it will be probably long time before they replace the creative minds uh asmita maybe you have an opinion on that and maybe you can asmita is the CDO of L'Oreal and she she knows a lot about digital so maybe you can tell us a little bit about advertising and Ai and put your question\n\nto Elan so I'll pick up from advertising and from what you said before about Twitter so now we know that Twitter is expensive and we know that it aims to have free speech the question I have is about winning the advertiser's trust to be a preferred social media platform in the current context where the expected Revenue you know in 2023 is lower than 2022 you have brought in new leadership Linda so I wanted to know that how will we win that trust and will Linda have the time the support the freedom because she's an advertising expert so so will she be able to manage the situation and how yeah I I think I think Linda's great um so I think Linda's going to do uh amazing things for for Twitter and obviously understands where advertisers are coming from very\n\ndeeply understands the concerns that advertisers have and I think we'll do a great job in addressing those concerns um you know a key part is um you know let me say like if you're an Advertiser what content do you want to appear next to and depending upon what Advertiser you know the sensitivity of the brand if you're for example say Disney and you're advertising a children's movie then you want to have you know all ages content you know um and by the way Disney is one of our biggest advertisers so um so so it's really just making sure that the content adjacency matches uh what a brand is comfortable with and then there's some cases where the the content is like you know there's not going to be any advertising because nobody wants to advertise next to\n\nit and that's going to be some of the more controversial stuff um yeah you know because we were talking about content you have just made the announcement that there will be ad Revenue sharing for creators yes yeah and that has a condition it will be done when they are verified Blue Tick creators and the advertising is to verify lootic users yes now if with that how how does that impact your focus on subscription revenues because to be Blue Tick uh you know there's a subscription versus advertising revenues Focus yeah so a big part of like when you say like say how many Impressions does something get uh you say like well were those Impressions real or not real you know was it uh you know a computer just what running a hundred thousand fake accounts because\n\nthat obviously doesn't count because the computer's not going to buy anything um so that's why our focus is on on verified users because we are admittedly conflating verification and subscription uh at Twitter so you could say like verified subscriber or something like that that's not it's not possible to game that so you know it's real you know it's solid and you know it's not a computer um so that's why it's that that's why we're focused on that um is to ensure the authenticity of the views and that it really uh that real people are seeing what's going on I mean the sheer amount of of Bot and scam and spam activity in social media is insane and we're talking about AI it's very obvious that especially with today's AI the computers can pass every like\n\nare you a human test in fact I think they can pass all your human tests better than a human you know sort of you say like identify a traffic light or something like that okay let me tell you Tesla can identify a traffic life so if we're you know and but even like open source uh AI stuff right now um can pass all of the the human tests so you have to have something that there's better authentication than that yeah yeah I think that um confidence and trust is something which we lose fast and that we regain slowly I have no doubt personally that Twitter will gain back the trust provided that you do the right thing and I'm sure that you will do the right thing so it is something which is probably just a hiccup in the time but you need to do the right thing\n\nand I'm sure that you you will do it I have two small questions one which is regarding Ukraine you have uh help enormously Ukraine yeah at the beginning with starlings and I think we owe you a lot because without access I said to internet and without access to communication the war would have been finished uh what is your take on that experience yeah that was a I mean that whole situation is very complex um no kidding yeah it's really really complex um as you point out starlink did play a pivotal role um because Russia had actually taken out all of the satellite Communications and all of the ground Communications except for starlink was the only one that was still operating um and and even today it is still the only one that is effective at the front\n\nlines and uh stalling today is the backbone of the Ukrainian military Communications so you know I thought it was important to help out um and um but I but I do I do hope for some kind of resolution soon because I I think it's it's terribly sad that that's the flower of the Youth of Ukraine and Russia uh who don't want to be there um that they're dying in trenches right now and I I sure hope we can figure out some means to pee soon foreign is going back to this crowd you have a lot of startups you have a lot of young people who want to be successful what are the two or three pieces of advice that you would give them well you have a question over there yes uh do we have a microphone because Elon has accepted to take question from the floor Charlotte a\n\nmicrophone is go you have the mic you go yes okay I don't know why you got the mic but please go um so I had a question about all of your different companies and projects in the past 10 years there's a pattern that I've seen to have identified short question and [Music] Mars it's really hard to make a big vacuum on Earth but on Mars it's a lot easier to say for Tesla electric cars obviously yeah yeah and I mean SpaceX is helpless um okay yeah give them my bike yeah yeah uh I mean Myanmar should get a room basically I I love Mars okay no no no no no now I want that you give the mic sorry guys uh I was there okay so what's the question what is the question my name is founder and CEO at click out we make AI tiny so Tesla is one of our Target I would love\n\nto work with you Ellen and my husband is actually ex movie line who has very like the infrastructure and Emma locks okay okay sure oh [Applause] okay one last question guys whatever yeah okay however long you want to do it no no totally crazy yeah [Music] um space no psychology lab we are working on the mental health to help people to go to mass actually sure that's great the question is how do you think it's relevant well I think I think you'd want to have a very good mental health on a trip to Mars make sure everyone's saying because you don't want someone opening at the airlock in the middle of the night um so I think sanity is very important uh if you're going to Mars it's gonna be chaos uh can you hear me hey great t-shirt you talked about the European\n\nregulation Inland and you know that there have been many amendments due to llm deployment do you think uh how can we integrate the use and actual use of this llm in a non-controlled way in the the current discussion uh can you make it a second no please it will answer the question it wasn't about safe safety in llms or sorry I didn't hear the whole question it's like a safe application of llms or or what is it the regulation uh at the European level was conceived when we did not talk about llx so what would you integrate in the current political education at the European level to integrate the the llm and okay and protect from the Jews okay sure okay when the regulation has been created llm didn't exist so what would be your suggestion regarding regulating\n\nllms well I think more broadly um there should be um regulatory insight into llms and and really any other form of AI I mean there's I'm not sure I I don't think llms are the ultimate form of AI I mean there's sort of an inside joke on AI of like who do you think will be the the American president in 2032 uh diffusion uh or Transformers [Laughter] that's an inside joke but yeah it's like what does that mean um but that like might be a real it might be real um so yeah we really have the dresses here the two latest question one here and one in that region so go ahead cheat off [Music] I mean no if we don't listen to the question we will not be able to continue well every every year we have a primary which is 13 under 13.\n\nmy question is what business young people should focus on sure [Applause] thank you well I think generally I think it's important to focus on something so go ahead sorry uh I think um you want to focus on something that you are personally passionate about that you personally care about um it's very hard to be motivated for a product that you don't really feel strongly about and it doesn't have to be high tech it could be in any in any field it's just it's got to be a product that you feel is really needs to be that that and something that you personally love um and I would listen to your instincts on on you know do do you love this product or service um because it's kind of impossible to know what do other people love but if you love it that's a good\n\nsign um and um and that that could be small to large any kind of any field it's it doesn't really have to be high tech but if if you don't love if you don't really love the product that you're making if you can't like a good test would be that you can't wait for this product to be on the market and if that's the case you're you're going in the right direction great uh the last question we have we have a friendly you see we wait no no you you another kid I know okay okay [Applause] he's asking foreign [Music] well um so neurolink is um first of all I want to assure everyone who may be worried about neuralink that um you will see uh your link is going to be a fairly slow process because anything that's done in humans it's very slow so sometimes people think\n\nthat this suddenly we're going to be chipping over one's head and then before they know it everyone's connected to the internet and then we're in trouble um with your brain um so it's going to happen very slowly hopefully later this year we'll do our first uh human device implantation and this will be for someone that has sort of tetraplegic quadriplegic does not have it has lost the connection from their their brain to their body and we think we should be able to that person will be able to communicate uh as fast as someone who has a fully functional body so that's going to be a big deal and we and we see a path beyond that to actually transfer the signals from the motor cortex of the brain to pass the injury in the spinal cord and actually enable someone's\n\nbody to be used again so um essentially shunting the signals past the broken point and and restore potentially full full body um use to someone that has completely lost the connection and I mean you can imagine like if say Stephen Hawking were alive today what a profound change that would be um and um so that's our first application and uh if uh it's looking like that the first case will be later this year so yeah fantastic no I would like a very very warm Rose of Applause to Elon Musk [Applause] okay thank you thank you thank you I just want to say you guys are great you guys are I mean it's it's so inspiring to see so much energy and so much positive energy uh in the room so uh this is very inspiring for the future","textByLang":{"en":"Elon Musk [Applause] thank you thank you [Applause] hey guys [Music] you have to know that no one in Paris believed that you would be in person they all said no he's not coming going to come he was already at Versailles for choose France so he's not going to come and it will be a video so is it real are you real I'm a hologram ah damn hologram or an Android Elon it is a pleasure and an honor to have you so thank you for making the trip I know that it has not been very easy and I know also that for the first time in my life I will interview somebody who is introvert yes yes you told me I started out that way yeah shy and introvert that's right so I'm asking the audience to be let's be gentle with Elon because he's so shy that he needs your support and\n\non top of that [Applause] speaking in front of his mother so you can imagine how difficult it is [Applause] so as you have seen since we have announced your participation it has been quite uh something because everyone wanted to be here so we had to change we had a very modest room with only 1 500 people and we had to move here and you have to know that the Dom De Paris is the place where there is the musicals yeah so we are not expecting you to sing or to dance but if you can do it we would be very happy yeah hey but you have also to know that this is the room where Steve Jobs was coming every time he was doing a keynote or presenting new products it was here okay so I hope that you like the symbol sure and you you don't need any introduction your name\n\nis a brand is already a brand it's a brand for Innovation for ambition for a perfume yes yes this is the agreement that you made with uh there are no family a few hours ago I mean it's I mean really it Brands itself yeah and you are the origin of PayPal Tesla SpaceX to name a few and even open AI so yeah you love taking risks and you are going always against the tide and the popular wisdom you have been always proven right now there is always now there is a bet of the 44 billion US dollar question which is will you still be right with Twitter sure uh so it was expensive yeah yeah I don't know if um you know listen if I'm so smart why did I pay so much for Twitter then [Laughter] so as I'm not a journalist I'm not trying to get headlines and to have provocative\n\nresponse and to make a scoop but nevertheless if you wish to do that it is authorized okay great so we are expecting that you will really make the show because everyone comes here to see you and to listen to you and to get some of the magic that you have all right well I'm I'm honored that you all I want to listen to what I have to say it's a great to see the crowd and uh I know you guys seem awesome so but you told me that you would like you said that you would like to speak in French oh my goodness foreign [Laughter] [Applause] people who believe that you are a genius and yeah there are some who are you will believe that you are evil so but I mean you can be both you could be an evil genius that's not uh you know so that's what you are or you will let\n\nthe people draw that on conclusion um uh I am um definitely not evil tell me what what do you think that you have ahead of your oh yes if you look carefully you can see an angel's Halo on my head and the wings uh it's a subtle but yeah where are the wings yeah they're so they're difficult to see but if you look carefully you know they're right there yeah yeah small Wings yes [Music] aspirationally not evil um so uh yeah um okay so that wasn't enough you have done a lot of operation you have created a lot of companies the most important question for everyone is what the hell is driving you why are you so obsessed by new operation New Creation new things to do yeah crystal meth is the answer if you think Red Bull gives you wings um so man that that's that\n\nthat Court's gonna probably sting um so um yeah just kidding for the record [Laughter] um so well I think there's the companies still have a lot to do for their their core Mission um the you know for electric vehicles sustainable energy uh still less than one percent of the Global Fleet is electric so you've got about two billion cars and trucks on the road but still uh less than 20 million are electric at this point so this is a long way to go for sustainable energy for um sustainable energy generation so this you know the Tesla Mission I think we've made a lot of progress but still um it's a lot more ahead then SpaceX the goal is uh it's a big goal but it's we want to try to make life multi-planetary to extend life beyond Earth and I think this is important\n\nfor a number of reasons but um yeah there's the sort of defensive reason of ensuring that the light of Consciousness does not go out and if I made some of these questions if I'm going on too long you feel free to interrupt me but the no no you can okay okay so um you know people do ask me you know uh have I seen UFOs uh and aliens and that kind of thing and um I haven't um and I think I would have seen them by now um so it appears that we might this we might be the only Consciousness uh at least in this galaxy and um and if so that's kind of a scary Prospect because uh it means that the light of Consciousness is like it like a tiny candle in a vast Darkness and we should do everything we can to prevent that candle from going out so yeah and and so so\n\nsome of the things so that means obviously taking the actions to ensure that Earth is good that Earth is safe and secure for civilization um and it I think it also means extending life beyond Earth um to other planets in the solar system and ultimately to other star systems um and I think that's that's both a sort of defense of the light of Consciousness and also um I think a point of inspiration because the life cannot just be about solving um one problem after another we need things that Inspire us I mean we need things that move our hearts and that when you wake up in the morning you're excited to be alive and being a space-bearing civilization and making true the things that we see in the good science fiction movies this is one of the things that\n\nI think can inspire all of humanity just like the you know when when the um astronauts went to the moon in 69 it was something that then they said For All Mankind you know and it really was something you say to any human on earth what's the what is it what's like the most amazing thing that Humanity has ever done a lot of at least one of those things would be we went to the moon you know and so you want to have these inspiring things that make you excited to be alive and excited about the future um yeah and you you had those thoughts and dreams when you are a kid though this came much later on well I didn't think I would be doing these things as a kid um that's for sure I was interested in technology and I've read a lot of books um so I was obviously\n\ninterested in science I mean this is hardly going to be surprising I was interested in science fiction and Technology you have to tell the truth because listening to you huh yeah my mom's right here she can she didn't call me out on this if it's not not accurate but um so I guess the the thing that was Maybe most significant from a philosophical standpoint was that when I was about maybe 12 or 13 I had somewhat of an existential crisis where I was like I was like what what is the meaning of Life Is Life just meaningless why are we here what does it all mean and um and I read a lot of books on religion and philosophy and um and then ultimately that you know I read this book Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy which is great um and in that book that book is\n\nreally a philosophy book that's disguised as humor and the point that Douglas Adams makes is that the the real difficulties understanding what questions to ask about the answer that is the universe and that we that that really we want to we want to have it's it's essentially if it's like a philosophy of curiosity of of saying well what can we do to find out more about the the nature of the universe and um and the meaning of life and so that's that's the sort of foundational element and then from there you say okay well if we want to find out meaning of life we have to expand the scope and scale of Consciousness we have to go out there and we explore the Stars to know what questions to ask um about the universe and and understand the universe and that's\n\nthat's my core philosophy um and and so from that it was like well we have to make sure that uh Earth is good so we have to have sustainable energy um we um we want to build technology to travel beyond Earth and that's it's from that sort of core philosophy that these companies uh arise in most cases um they can say how does Twitter help with that [Laughter] I would like to go back to Earth sure and that to the various Enterprises that you contributed to Korea or co-created or created let's start with PayPal so a very impressive company do you regret to have sold it um I I think in retrospect I think it was it was good to have that that the company was acquired by eBay um because there was so much talent at PayPal and that Talent subsequently went on\n\nto create many other companies um so uh YouTube for example was created by two people that worked at at PayPal um uh we had there was a LinkedIn was created from from PayPal there was Yelp there was many other companies um yeah yeah very impressive yeah so and then if I'd been still working on PayPal then I there wouldn't be you know Tesla would not be in its current form and SpaceX wouldn't exist yes so and yes I guess a short answer yes short-term sorry that yes yeah yeah but now within you would have loved to keep it again well there is I think the potential to do something that is um uh bigger than PayPal this is sort of like the X the sort of everything app kind of thing so I I think it's it's somewhat poetic like we're trying to get good good finish\n\na task that was started about 24 years ago um I think it's I think we it's going to be useful at X Twitter is going to be just a very useful thing um and hopefully something that is a positive force for civilization and moving to Tesla and I have through one of our operation don't the first advertising campaign for the electric car of GM that was at the end of the 90s so can you explain why GM and other car manufacturers have not created Tesla and why Tesla is successful what is the difference um you're talking about the ev1 basically the ev1 car that it was so uh General Motors actually did come out with this uh electric vehicle one ev1 and it's uh yes you remember if you want yes yeah um and uh actually so I thought when that was 97 yeah that sounds\n\nabout right yeah um I would have I expected there would be an ev2 EV3 and so forth and if they've done that actually there would be no need for Tesla um but um for reasons that that aren't clear they GM recalled all of the EV ones even from customers that really wanted to keep the cars they recalled the cars and they crushed them in a junkyard and the the it was it still blows my mind that they did this because the the people who had the EV ones they love the cost so much they held a candlelit vigil at the junkyard where the cars were crushed okay like it was like like someone was getting killed you know like and it's like if somebody is holding a candlet vigil for the rest because they love your product so much maybe you should make more of it you know\n\nI mean it's like pretty rare for Candler vigils to be helpful products so I I don't understand why they didn't do more they should have and they would be the leader in electric vehicles today but they didn't they didn't and so there was a need for Tesla because the you know at the time of starting Tesla there were no electric vehicles being made um and they were so the big car companies were not making electric vehicles there were no startups that we were aware of making electric vehicles so it's like well we should try and um I mean in the case of both Tesla and SpaceX I thought the chance of success was maybe 10 so I just felt like I thought it would be successful I thought it would fail hey good listen and now moving to the kids dream which is to become\n\nan astronaut and not to build Rockets how you move from the idea that every child has I would be an astronaut too I would do reusable Rockets yeah um you forgot no I I'm trying to compress the story so that they're not too long um because the story is actually quite long because I didn't start out wanting to do the Rockets I at first I was going to do this um philanthropic Mission to Mars called Mars Oasis and then as I started investigating um the what it would take to launch this Mission to Mars just a little Greenhouse basically it was intended to inspire the public and I started understanding more about the what Rockets could be used I actually went to Russia a few times to try to buy some of their nuclear missiles um minus the nuclear minus the nuke\n\nthat's extra um so that was pretty wild being in Russia in 2001 negotiating to buy it two of their biggest missiles but but it became clear that the um and unless there was a something new with rockets they were that that was the fundamental issue the cost of access to space was the fundamental issue so it wasn't a it wasn't a question of trying to increase the Public's desire Public's desire for space and exploration is very high but there needs to be a means there needs to be a way um and uh there needs to be a radical Improvement in the cost of access to Auburn um so I was like okay well I'm gonna try starting a rocket company and see if it's successful but I like I said I I told people at the time because because the people would say to me just tell\n\nme this joke of like what's the fast you know what what's the you know how do you go from sorry um sorry I'm getting a little hot under the collar here um I think a lot of people are um so they'll say what's the fastest way to make us a small fortune in the rocket industry in it and the punch line is you start with a large one so anyway it was it was a tough going for a while our first three launches failed fortunately the fourth one succeeded if the fourth one had not succeeded SpaceX would not exist so it was a very close call fast forward you created or you co-created open AI yes chat GPT has been incredibly success incredibly successful it's the the fastest growing ever story and after having created openly eyes suddenly you say oh we should have\n\na pose some people say oh it's because he has not done it well I mean I didn't think anyone would actually agree to the pose but I thought just for the for the record I just want to say I think we should pause I didn't think that uh that the why do you want to shoot pose well I think there's there's a real danger for digital super intelligence having negative consequences and so if we are not careful with creating artificial general intelligence we could have potentially a catastrophic outcome so now I think there's a range of possibilities I think the most likely outcome is positive for AI but it but that's not every possible outcome so we need to minimize the probability that something will go wrong with um digital super intelligence yes so I'm in favor\n\nof AI regulation because I think Advanced AI is a risk to the public and anything that's risked to the public there needs to be some kind of referee that referee is the regulator and so I think that's that's my strong recommendation is to have some regulation for AI some regulation for AI yes which is what you want also for Twitter I'm not sure regulation I guess there's plenty of plenty of regulators sure So speaking about Twitter you you have made a big bet on Twitter you said it a few minutes ago that you paid too much yes yes and you are now going on to Twitter 2.\n\n0 or 3.\n\n0 uh which I understand it's a full-scale reinvention of the company uh yeah so evolving the company very rapidly yeah the company is changing quite dramatically there are a lot of controvers about Twitter so I have in fact three very quick question the first one is why have you decided to acquiring the second is what was wrong at Twitter to make you acting and the last one is not the last last of the three because there are many other questions is why do you believe that you will be successful and you will be well thanks um I can imagine I can't imagine that you will not be well thanks so well obviously I was on Twitter as a major user and even before the acquisition closed my my Twitter account was the most interacted with account in the world so my\n\nI guess I'll be I'm pretty closely attuned to what's going on with Twitter you know I get a feel for how is it shifting one way or the other and uh generally I was concerned that Twitter was having a negative effect on civilization that it was having a corrosive effect on civil society and um and so that you know anything that undermines uh civilization I think is not good and you know go back to my point of like we need to do everything possible to support civilization and move it in a positive direction and um and I felt that it would that Twitter was kept moving more and more in a negative Direction and my hope and aspiration was to change that and have it be a positive force for civilization it is not perceived like this before are very happy to listen\n\nto that approach but it the perception is very different well I think it depends on I mean I think if if somebody is a regular Twitter user I think they most people would say that their experience has improved um we've we've gotten rid of uh 90 of the Bots and the scams and and the various bad things that were happening um we've gotten rid of now at this point I think 95 of the child exploitation material that was on Twitter which was a shock to see the amount of that that was really terrible uh some of that had been going on for 10 years and no action so I think we've done a lot of good on that respect um and um and then I think you know we've also done things like we we have open sourced the algorithm so we're trying to be as transparent as possible\n\nso Twitter is the only social media company where you can see the actual code of the algorithm so it's not like some secret Black Box um I mean the the the way to build trust is Equitable trust does not take my word for it it's let's let's show you exactly how it works and full transparency um and um and and we're also going to be showing like if your account is in any way affected by the Twitter system you could see it clearly um and uh just you know moving into I I think a good direction um we've I think the recommendation algorithm I don't want to go on too long for Twitter but I think it's I I think it's actually uh quite good and that those are on who are on the Twitter system I think generally think it's good um the you know we are seeing all-time\n\nhighs in usage so at least you know for the public out there they are using the system more um so we're seeing a pretty significant week over week growth in in usage um so the you know the public is speaking with their time and if they're putting their time on on Twitter that's a very good signal um so that's that's that's very positive um what would you say to advertisers who left Twitter to convince them to come back yeah actually I should say that um maybe with a few exceptions um almost all the advertisers have said that they've either come back or they said they will come back so actually I feel pretty pretty optimistic about the future um and um yeah so you know we're really at this point I believe actually I'm not aware of any Advertiser that is\n\nuh either they've either come back or they said they'll come back I'm not aware of any exceptions they're probably a few exceptions but overall I think it's uh it's very positive good so we will have now a broader conversation we will ask Christianity demand from Orange the CEO of orange to join us as well as Antoine Arno from lvmh and as Mr Dubai from lawyer we have to move in order that there are chairs so come here [Applause] because why you know why they are arranging there is uh yes yes yes yes yes yes there is one question yeah that I would like to [Music] [Applause] take care so finally we are all together again so I had another question but I will save it for later and I will give the floor to Crystal Crystal the man who is the CEO of orange and\n\nshe is very much excited about putting some harsh difficult question to you let's go Twitter yeah [Music] there's also another side of it which is that there can be some disinformation fake news fake news what that's crazy you believe that wait how do I know this is real now the question is and actually I think there's a flip side you need to social networks and there's a Code of Conduct that the EU has proposed to this information okay tweet decided to Airport so is this because Twitter doesn't respect the fact that information needs to be moderated and actually you've been pretty vocal on the content moderation so just what are your thoughts on that well I'm generally a fan of that we should have a free speech as much as possible as much as is allowed\n\nby the laws of any country so um you know I think that you know say for France we should um allow things that are allowed by law and if the people are want the laws to be different then pass a different law and will adhere to that law but but for Twitter to go beyond the law that you know that doesn't seem quite right to me I I think we want to allow the people to express themselves um and and really if you have to say when does Free Speech matter Free Speech matters and it's only relevant if if people are allowed to say things that you don't like because otherwise it's not free speech um and and I would I would take that if if somebody says something you know potentially offensive but that's that's actually okay now no we're not going to promote those\n\nyou know offensive uh tweets but uh but I think people should be able to say things because the alternative is censorship and then and frankly I think if you go down the censorship route it's only a matter of time before censorship is turned upon you so that's why it's important um you know for in the US you've got the First Amendment uh freedom of speech amendment and he said like why did they do that that's because why did they pass that Amendment it was because they were not able to say what they wanted to say in the countries that they came from and they wanted to make sure that they could say what they wanted to say so I believe in Freedom for the people uh to say things and that even if somebody said that it's actually in some ways a sign of Health\n\nif people are able to if someone you don't like is able to say something you don't like rather than try to suppress that you say like you know what that's a good sign because that means I can say things and that person will not like what I say but I can still say it and that's a really big deal [Applause] especially in this country I mean freedom of speech that's something that's very I mean at the core of our values but now if we look at young people and being in the digital field and we provide Digital Services that people use there's also a move towards cyber bullying and harassment which I think we all it's also our role to educate young people on how to use the technology and make sure that because some behaviors I mean on Twitter or other social\n\nnetworks can actually have devastating effects on on people uh is Twitter doing something about it or would you be willing to engage with other players actually at Orange we do a lot in that space sure I I mean that's true I think I think you know Twitter is for sure willing to engage with others um and like as I said the overarching goal is to have Twitter be a force a positive force for civilization and um you know so and and and if if you're on the platform and you're being harassed or bullied or whatever obviously that's a negative experience um so um so you know what we're doing is it's we call it sort of freedom of speech but not freedom of reach uh which is that if you yes you can say offensive things but then your content is going to get down\n\nrated so if you're a jerk you your reach will drop so yeah I think that's the right thing [Music] um Antoine I don't know if you will be competing with the real to launch the future fragrance for Elon Musk and that the brand must so you have to compete very hard but maybe you I know that you had already the lunch but there is never the dessert so you can put your question all right first of all in the name of um thank you very much for being here yeah this group is the co-host of Viva Tech and it's uh it's great to have you and welcome so change of uh subject from Twitter at lvmh our oldest Maison is called claudulombre I saw you enjoyed good wine yeah um it's 650 years old wow Louis Vuitton was founded in 1854 our most ancient American Maison Tiffany\n\nwas founded in 1837.\n\nthe sum of the years of existence of all our Maison at lvmh is 8 393 years old wow Tesla is a teenager right yes yes 19 19 years old yeah and its market cap is already higher than lvmh [Laughter] yeah so so first question first question how much longer are you going to make us look so bad second question more serious do you feel the creation of value is more challenging in traditional or innovative business well first of all it's honor to be here and and speak with you so thanks for having me you know evaluations are are a strange thing because um you know sometimes I've said hey I think the stock price is too high at Tesla and then the stock price goes up I'm like okay so if you you tweet is it going up or down no the crazy thing I mean when I've created\n\nI think the stock price is too high almost always it goes up so I don't know it's a strange thing so I I guess in the in the case of Tesla if the the the really the the value of the company is primarily uh on the basis of autonomy so uh in my opinion um because if you look at our total vehicle output it's um it'll be almost two million Vehicles this this year or something like that um but that's that's still only two percent of total vehicle production so then why is our market cap so high and it's because the potential for autonomy um is uh the the value of autonomy is so high um that even even if you have a discounted percentage probability of autonomy happening that is still incredibly valuable um so the average passenger car is used only about 10\n\nhours a week so an average of about one and a half hours a day but if you have an autonomous Robo taxi the utilities might be 50 or 60 hours a week out of 168 hours so now you've got a vehicle that costs the same but has five times the utility so it's so gigantic a change that that's really I think uh the main driver of our value and although I've said this before I think we will solve autonomy soon thanks to the Tesla will be at this level of Market gun uh no I did not expect Tesla would be at this level because he's just extraordinary unfair by the way I mean I don't set the price so yeah you don't said maybe just another quick question um I tried mid-journey the other day yeah returning is amazing right and and I asked the software to make a Louis\n\nVuitton advertising campaign with only two words so here it's a bad question for you Maurice right if if you are if you want to put me out of a job that was my question do you feel this advertising production industry is going to be threatened by AI be careful not at all it's totally safe [Laughter] I mean AI is definitely going to be a massive disruptive Force I mean it AI is probably the the most disruptive technology ever um I mean the crazy thing is that you know the the advantage that humans have is that uh we're smarter than other creatures like if we got into a fight with the gorilla the gorilla would definitely win um but we're smart so but now for the first time there's going to be something that is smarter than the smartest human like way smarter\n\nthan smartest human and as you can see from a journey the art that AI can create is incredible it's so beautiful and it does it you know within seconds so we're at I mean right I think you know there's that sort of saying may you live in interesting times which I think is like not exactly a good thing sometimes but but we actually live I think we live in the most interesting of times um the Advent of AI and I actually thought to myself at one point like uh should you know do I would I really want to be alive at this point like let's say that there is some AI Armageddon um that happens some sort of AI apocalypse I think I would still be want to be alive at this time to see it and hopefully you know hopefully not not cause it but it's it's just a I think\n\nwe live in an extremely interesting time you know because the things that you see AI being able to do now it's going to do much more with each passing year cars will absolutely drive themselves better than any person could drive we'll have humanoid robots like so Tesla's developing a humanoid robot to call it the T800 it's a yeah some people get that joke [Laughter] it's a Terminator um so we can tweet that yeah um but if you like to say what isn't it what is an economy an economy is GDP per capita times Capital now what happens if you don't actually have a limit on Capital if you have an unlimited number of uh sort of people or robots it's not clear what meaning an economy has at that point because you have an unlimited economy effectively um so so like\n\non the good side of the plus side of AI is that I think we are heading for an age of abundance um where any goods and services that you want you can just have um so that's that's the that's the the positive side of of of AI future is an age of abundance from the advertising side they must say that we are using AIC it's many years and it is helping us a great deal and this is a tool that we are already using and I think it will be helping us to do even faster some very good ad it will be probably long time before they replace the creative minds uh asmita maybe you have an opinion on that and maybe you can asmita is the CDO of L'Oreal and she she knows a lot about digital so maybe you can tell us a little bit about advertising and Ai and put your question\n\nto Elan so I'll pick up from advertising and from what you said before about Twitter so now we know that Twitter is expensive and we know that it aims to have free speech the question I have is about winning the advertiser's trust to be a preferred social media platform in the current context where the expected Revenue you know in 2023 is lower than 2022 you have brought in new leadership Linda so I wanted to know that how will we win that trust and will Linda have the time the support the freedom because she's an advertising expert so so will she be able to manage the situation and how yeah I I think I think Linda's great um so I think Linda's going to do uh amazing things for for Twitter and obviously understands where advertisers are coming from very\n\ndeeply understands the concerns that advertisers have and I think we'll do a great job in addressing those concerns um you know a key part is um you know let me say like if you're an Advertiser what content do you want to appear next to and depending upon what Advertiser you know the sensitivity of the brand if you're for example say Disney and you're advertising a children's movie then you want to have you know all ages content you know um and by the way Disney is one of our biggest advertisers so um so so it's really just making sure that the content adjacency matches uh what a brand is comfortable with and then there's some cases where the the content is like you know there's not going to be any advertising because nobody wants to advertise next to\n\nit and that's going to be some of the more controversial stuff um yeah you know because we were talking about content you have just made the announcement that there will be ad Revenue sharing for creators yes yeah and that has a condition it will be done when they are verified Blue Tick creators and the advertising is to verify lootic users yes now if with that how how does that impact your focus on subscription revenues because to be Blue Tick uh you know there's a subscription versus advertising revenues Focus yeah so a big part of like when you say like say how many Impressions does something get uh you say like well were those Impressions real or not real you know was it uh you know a computer just what running a hundred thousand fake accounts because\n\nthat obviously doesn't count because the computer's not going to buy anything um so that's why our focus is on on verified users because we are admittedly conflating verification and subscription uh at Twitter so you could say like verified subscriber or something like that that's not it's not possible to game that so you know it's real you know it's solid and you know it's not a computer um so that's why it's that that's why we're focused on that um is to ensure the authenticity of the views and that it really uh that real people are seeing what's going on I mean the sheer amount of of Bot and scam and spam activity in social media is insane and we're talking about AI it's very obvious that especially with today's AI the computers can pass every like\n\nare you a human test in fact I think they can pass all your human tests better than a human you know sort of you say like identify a traffic light or something like that okay let me tell you Tesla can identify a traffic life so if we're you know and but even like open source uh AI stuff right now um can pass all of the the human tests so you have to have something that there's better authentication than that yeah yeah I think that um confidence and trust is something which we lose fast and that we regain slowly I have no doubt personally that Twitter will gain back the trust provided that you do the right thing and I'm sure that you will do the right thing so it is something which is probably just a hiccup in the time but you need to do the right thing\n\nand I'm sure that you you will do it I have two small questions one which is regarding Ukraine you have uh help enormously Ukraine yeah at the beginning with starlings and I think we owe you a lot because without access I said to internet and without access to communication the war would have been finished uh what is your take on that experience yeah that was a I mean that whole situation is very complex um no kidding yeah it's really really complex um as you point out starlink did play a pivotal role um because Russia had actually taken out all of the satellite Communications and all of the ground Communications except for starlink was the only one that was still operating um and and even today it is still the only one that is effective at the front\n\nlines and uh stalling today is the backbone of the Ukrainian military Communications so you know I thought it was important to help out um and um but I but I do I do hope for some kind of resolution soon because I I think it's it's terribly sad that that's the flower of the Youth of Ukraine and Russia uh who don't want to be there um that they're dying in trenches right now and I I sure hope we can figure out some means to pee soon foreign is going back to this crowd you have a lot of startups you have a lot of young people who want to be successful what are the two or three pieces of advice that you would give them well you have a question over there yes uh do we have a microphone because Elon has accepted to take question from the floor Charlotte a\n\nmicrophone is go you have the mic you go yes okay I don't know why you got the mic but please go um so I had a question about all of your different companies and projects in the past 10 years there's a pattern that I've seen to have identified short question and [Music] Mars it's really hard to make a big vacuum on Earth but on Mars it's a lot easier to say for Tesla electric cars obviously yeah yeah and I mean SpaceX is helpless um okay yeah give them my bike yeah yeah uh I mean Myanmar should get a room basically I I love Mars okay no no no no no now I want that you give the mic sorry guys uh I was there okay so what's the question what is the question my name is founder and CEO at click out we make AI tiny so Tesla is one of our Target I would love\n\nto work with you Ellen and my husband is actually ex movie line who has very like the infrastructure and Emma locks okay okay sure oh [Applause] okay one last question guys whatever yeah okay however long you want to do it no no totally crazy yeah [Music] um space no psychology lab we are working on the mental health to help people to go to mass actually sure that's great the question is how do you think it's relevant well I think I think you'd want to have a very good mental health on a trip to Mars make sure everyone's saying because you don't want someone opening at the airlock in the middle of the night um so I think sanity is very important uh if you're going to Mars it's gonna be chaos uh can you hear me hey great t-shirt you talked about the European\n\nregulation Inland and you know that there have been many amendments due to llm deployment do you think uh how can we integrate the use and actual use of this llm in a non-controlled way in the the current discussion uh can you make it a second no please it will answer the question it wasn't about safe safety in llms or sorry I didn't hear the whole question it's like a safe application of llms or or what is it the regulation uh at the European level was conceived when we did not talk about llx so what would you integrate in the current political education at the European level to integrate the the llm and okay and protect from the Jews okay sure okay when the regulation has been created llm didn't exist so what would be your suggestion regarding regulating\n\nllms well I think more broadly um there should be um regulatory insight into llms and and really any other form of AI I mean there's I'm not sure I I don't think llms are the ultimate form of AI I mean there's sort of an inside joke on AI of like who do you think will be the the American president in 2032 uh diffusion uh or Transformers [Laughter] that's an inside joke but yeah it's like what does that mean um but that like might be a real it might be real um so yeah we really have the dresses here the two latest question one here and one in that region so go ahead cheat off [Music] I mean no if we don't listen to the question we will not be able to continue well every every year we have a primary which is 13 under 13.\n\nmy question is what business young people should focus on sure [Applause] thank you well I think generally I think it's important to focus on something so go ahead sorry uh I think um you want to focus on something that you are personally passionate about that you personally care about um it's very hard to be motivated for a product that you don't really feel strongly about and it doesn't have to be high tech it could be in any in any field it's just it's got to be a product that you feel is really needs to be that that and something that you personally love um and I would listen to your instincts on on you know do do you love this product or service um because it's kind of impossible to know what do other people love but if you love it that's a good\n\nsign um and um and that that could be small to large any kind of any field it's it doesn't really have to be high tech but if if you don't love if you don't really love the product that you're making if you can't like a good test would be that you can't wait for this product to be on the market and if that's the case you're you're going in the right direction great uh the last question we have we have a friendly you see we wait no no you you another kid I know okay okay [Applause] he's asking foreign [Music] well um so neurolink is um first of all I want to assure everyone who may be worried about neuralink that um you will see uh your link is going to be a fairly slow process because anything that's done in humans it's very slow so sometimes people think\n\nthat this suddenly we're going to be chipping over one's head and then before they know it everyone's connected to the internet and then we're in trouble um with your brain um so it's going to happen very slowly hopefully later this year we'll do our first uh human device implantation and this will be for someone that has sort of tetraplegic quadriplegic does not have it has lost the connection from their their brain to their body and we think we should be able to that person will be able to communicate uh as fast as someone who has a fully functional body so that's going to be a big deal and we and we see a path beyond that to actually transfer the signals from the motor cortex of the brain to pass the injury in the spinal cord and actually enable someone's\n\nbody to be used again so um essentially shunting the signals past the broken point and and restore potentially full full body um use to someone that has completely lost the connection and I mean you can imagine like if say Stephen Hawking were alive today what a profound change that would be um and um so that's our first application and uh if uh it's looking like that the first case will be later this year so yeah fantastic no I would like a very very warm Rose of Applause to Elon Musk [Applause] okay thank you thank you thank you I just want to say you guys are great you guys are I mean it's it's so inspiring to see so much energy and so much positive energy uh in the room so uh this is very inspiring for the future"},"languages":["en"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OyYQTr0kiUo"},{"id":"cnbc-interview-with-david-faber-2023-05-16","type":"interview","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vizKY0kj01U","title":"CNBC Interview with David Faber","titles":{"en":"CNBC Interview with David Faber","de":"CNBC Interview with David Faber","fr":"CNBC Interview with David Faber"},"date":"2023-05-16","summary":"Musk's wide-ranging CNBC interview on running Twitter, advertising, Tesla and AI advances.","text":"Are you going to have full autonomous on the roads of Austin at the end by the end of June? Yes, you are. What gives you that confidence? We have cars driving 24/7 with drivers in the cars and we see essentially no interventions. So now we want to be very careful with the first introduction of unsupervised self-driving meaning that there's the car driving around with no one in it. Um so we're no one buying but drivers. Well, yes.\n\nAnd sometimes no one in it at all. It's going to pick someone up. The cars seems to be incredibly safe. So, we have thousands of cars that are being tested, which is creating some strange situations where we just drive. There's just a bizarre number of Teslas driving past people's houses. They're like, \"What's going on?\" We even saw one last night coming from the airport driving at night alone. Looked very lonely.\n\nYeah, it's looking good for us next month. Yeah. You know, some estimates have been that you're only going to have 10 to 12 of them on the road initially. I mean, it's going to be a very small amount. Is that correct? Yeah. Yeah. How do you see it ramping up?\n\nWell, we'll have to see how well it it does, but you know, I think it's prudent for us to start with a small number, confirm that thing's going well, and then scale it up proportionate to how well we say it's doing, right? And what's going to be a judge of how well it's doing? Are there any incidents? Are there any interventions?\n\nBut we want to deliberately take it slow and we start with a,000 or 10,000 on day one, but I don't think that would be prudent. So, we'll start with probably 10 for a week, then increase it to 20, 30, 40. And I think by say, you know, we'll probably be at a thousand within a few months and then we'll expand to other cities. So expand to San Francisco, California, Los Angeles. Is that a real possibility in the not too distant future?\n\nI mean, Texas is very different in California when it comes to regulation. They don't really have much here in terms of dealing with autonomous, but it's a different story in California. California has already approved. Way has been doing autonomous driving for a while. Right now, the approval process is very haphazard and sort of state by state and sometimes city by city.\n\nWe were talking to the Secretary of Transportation about that very fact a moment ago. It's going to be important to have a unified set of national regulations for self-driving cars. Otherwise, you're going to get into this weird situation where if you're driving from Maine to New York, you're going to go through tens of different sets of regulations. Cars going to be behave differently. It's not going to make any sense. No.\n\nSo, so one one set of regulations that just like there is for highway driving that's what I think makes sense for the country as a whole. My prediction is that probably by the end of next year we'll have probably hundreds of thousands if not over a million Teslas doing self-driving in the US.\n\nWhat percentage of those are going to be well not the cyber cab you're just talking about on full self-driving level four unsupervised full self-driving you do not need to pay attention right for me if I own a Tesla and I have the software and the capability of doing it. Yes. Right. We'll have a model which is kind of like some combination of Uber and Airbnb. So, if you're a Tesla owner, you'll be able to add or subtract your car to the fleet.\n\nJust like an Airbnb, you could rent out your spare bedroom or rent out your house when you're not using it. And the same thing will be available for Tesla owners. So, it's a way for Tesla owners to earn revenue. Instead of having your car sit in the parking lot, your car could be earning money. We talked, you and I talked about that a couple of years ago. Somewhat ambitious target.\n\nWhy do you have the confidence now that in a year there'll be a million available? Well, in by the end of so 18 months 26. Okay. Yeah. Once you have a proof point, once you have it working, then scaling up is just a matter of time. But once it's working well in Austin, then we'll make sure it works well in other cities. Then there obviously some unique cases like downtown New York, but that's a highly unusual situation.\n\nMost cities in America are like Austin. Although you can go on full self-driving right now in New York. I mean, you can obviously you have to sit there behind the wheel, but and it'll do it. Oh, yeah. No, it'll navigate the traffic. I've seen it. Yeah. Even a Tesla that you buy right now and the self-driving just cost $9 a month will give you autonomous driving anywhere in the country right now.\n\nThe question is when is it unsupervised where you're sitting in the back so to speak. Yes. Where you're like asleep and the car you wake up at your destination. In order for that to be the case, we want the autonomous car to be much safer than a car driven by a person. Right. But you know, again, I'll come to Whimo because even though they only have about 700 cars, they obviously are on the market.\n\nThey're in Beverly Hills all over the place right now. It's proof of a concept. They've got 28 cameras. They've got LAR and radar. You've had a different approach. The 8 to9 cameras and the neural network. Why do you feel that that is going to be the equivalent in terms of safety profile? Oh, I think it'll be better. Why? Because the way that the road system is designed is for intelligence, biological neural net and eyes.\n\nThat's how the whole road system is designed. So, what will actually work best for the road system is artificial intelligence, digital neural nets, and cameras. And we also have the microphones that hear emergency vehicles and that kind of thing. You need to hear a fire engine or a police car. Yes. Exactly. Right. But that's how the whole road system is designed. It's not designed for shooting lasers out of your eyes.\n\nAnd what we found is that when you have multiple sensors, they tend to get confused. So do you believe the camera or do you believe LAR? They get confused. That's what can lead to accidents. So we used to have, for example, radar in the car, but we found that the radar and the camera would sometimes disagree and then you don't know which one to believe. So it wasn't about expense. Are you seeing the data? Right.\n\nIn fact, we turned off the radars in the cars. You turned off the radar. So if I were to say to you, \"All right, let's go.\" You think that you're there in terms of the safety profile you're seeing right now? Yeah, we could take a ride today if you want. Sure. Yeah. Well, I'm happy to take a ride with you anytime you want, wherever you want.\n\nLogistics capability to operate sort of a ride hailing fleet at scale cuz you mentioned obviously let's call it the end of 26. Are you going to have an app? Are you there? Do you have that ability? I think we could figure out an app. Somebody tells me you're not worried about it. But already has an app. Yeah, I know. X AI can probably do it for you in like an hour just fine. Do you ever consider licensing the technology at some point?\n\nYes, I there are a number of major automakers that have talked to us about licensing self-driving and we're very much open to that. I think the more we demonstrate the capability of self-driving, the more that they will want to license it and we're happy to help. You know, back to the safety profile cuz it's going to obviously be something key focus. I saw this over the weekend. They did a test between Whimo and Tesla.\n\nIt's not a real publication. Regardless of whether we want to have a debate about their journalistic integrity, the test itself, let me just share it with you and get your reaction, which was the Whimo ultimately they said proved better in part only because it avoided with its geo fencing one very difficult intersection that the Tesla chose to go through. It stopped at a red light, but then it went through the red light. What's your reaction?\n\nLook, I'm not going to comment on some business entire article, but is that a concern at all? because in a way there's no geo fencing. So it's like it's happy to go on the highways in a way that perhaps a Whimo is not. I guess my question is is that a concern at all for you in terms of it encountering things that are still sort of a crucial test and perhaps it fails.\n\nNo, first of all that actually should have been a test of supervised self-driving and not unsupervised self-driving. So the assumption there is that you have a person who is going to take over. So their test made no sense. Okay. But when we deploy the cars in Austin, we are actually going to deploy it not to the entire Austin region, but only the parts of Austin that we consider to be the safest. So we will geoffence it. Yeah, of course. Yeah.\n\nIt's not going to take intersections unless we are highly confident it'll just take a route around that intersection, but there won't be a safety driver in the car. Correct. Right. The car it won't there's not going to be somebody sitting there. But you did have ads for vehicle operator autopilots. What was that about then? Are there going to be people who are remotely sort of monitoring the performance of the fleet? Yeah. And what will they do?\n\nSo, there'll be We're going to be extremely paranoid about the deployment as we should be. It would be foolish not to be. We'll be watching what the cars are doing very carefully. As confidence grows, you know, less that will be needed.\n\nYou know, again, you spoke about it and we spoke about it a couple of years ago and obviously your investor base, many of whom are watching right now, are interested in the revenue and profitability of this ride hailing, autopilot, and autonomous driving opportunity. EYD, I believe at this point in China is now offering levels of autonomy for free.\n\nI mean, are you confident you're going to be in a position to continue to get a premium for that particular level? Well, interestingly in China, we're not allowed to train on videos in China. So, when we released full self driving, it was actually just trained on the rest of the world, but not in China.\n\nAnd the tests by local Chinese publications, I think, concluded that even without training on local Chinese roads, the Tesla self-driving was the best. It was the best. Yes. But again, I mean, is the technology some pretty wild videos where people are like doing self-driving, which we don't recommend obviously on like narrow mountain roads, including one where it's there's a sharp precipice on either side and no barriers.\n\nAre you uh regulated to have full Where are you in China right now in terms of your ability to offer that product though? Understood. Unsupervised. We have supervised post for self-driving where there's a person in the car.\n\nHe has approval in China but whenever we release a new version we have to get an incremental approval and at times we do have to battle other car companies in China who are trying to stop us from it's incredibly competitive market. China is the most competitive market and the extent BYD which is neck and neck with you I think in the EV race I think it's fair to say worldwide correct I don't really follow that. Well, they're willing.\n\nAgain, my question is they're willing to seemingly offer different levels of autonomy for I don't want to call it free, but it I don't really think about competitors. I just think about making the product as perfect as possible. You don't think about competitors at all? No, I just think about making what we want to achieve is the platonic ideal of the perfect product. And as long as you focus on that, you will have a compelling product obviously.\n\nAll right. Well, there's a potentially compelling product right behind you, which is a robo taxi. So when are we, you know, is in 5 years are they going to be all over the place? Yes, they will. You're confident in that? Yeah. Talking about Tesla obviously, you know, takes me to a certain extent to what some would say is the brand damage done by your government service. I don't know if you would agree with that.\n\nThere have been some pros and cons. You know, we sat here 2 years ago upstairs and you famously said when I asked you about this very subject, I don't care. I'm going to say what I want to say and so be it. Do you regret that? No. Why not? I believe that we want to live in a free society where people are allowed to say what they want to say within reasonable bounds.\n\nLike, you know, you can't advocate for the murder of somebody, but free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy. That's why it's the first amendment. Without a doubt. But I guess my question is more about your work at Doge, for example. Was that worth it? You know, to the extent you are now, Elon, you were a somewhat divisive figure two years ago, but now you really are.\n\nI mean, there are people who love you, but there are a lot of people who dislike you, some of whom were your customers. And I wonder, was it worth the undertaking at Doge and everything else that you've done and how outspoken you've been in terms of the things you believe in to antagonize so many potential buyers andor users of things like a root.\n\nUnfortunately, what I've learned is that legacy media propaganda is very effective at making people believe things that aren't true. An example of that being that I'm a Nazi and how many legacy media publications, talk shows, whatever, try to claim that I was a Nazi because of some random hand gesture at a rally where all I said was that my heart goes out to you and I was talking about space travel.\n\nAnd yet the legacy media promoted that as though that was a deliberate Nazi gesture when in fact every politician, any public speaker who's spoken for any length of time has made the exact same gesture. And yet there's still people out there and I've never harmed a single person. You know what, Elon? I was you asked for an example.\n\nI wasn't even going to talk to you about it cuz in fact I number of people who are close to you and I called them afterwards and all of them to a person were like no way no way of course not but that isn't necessarily the perception the work you've done for Doge has also come obviously into the spotlight in a great deal and you know people are upset about USA ID being put into the wood chipper people are upset about America disappearing people are upset about and this isn't even on your side the NIH and so many other areas that they feel rightly or wrongly are being cut as a result of your efforts and I just I guess I wonder as you start to transition now back to Tesla in a more significant way.\n\nAny program in US ID that had any semblance of merit was retained and folded into the State Department. So, and if there's some exception to that, we're all ears and we'd love to look at it. We just want to see the evidence that the program was actually doing good and not just funding grafted DC and warlords in in some country. Over and over again, we saw not sympathetic sounding programs, right?\n\nBut when we actually said, \"Well, please show us show us pictures of of the recipients of of the aid. We just or let us get into contact with them.\" No pictures were forthcoming. They didn't give us any contact information. And we're like, \"Look, we're not going to send money to DC crafters and warlords. That's not a good use of money.\" So, that's not what we're going to do.\n\nNow, invariably, when you stop waste and fraud, it's not like the fraudsters admit their guilt. They don't say like, \"Oh, isn't it so great that the money we were getting, fortunately, has been stopped.\" They will obviously come up with a sympathetic sounding claim. That claim has no merit.\n\nI guess what I would come back to, cuz I talk about economics all day long, is, you know, we, to your point you've been making, we have a deficit that's running at about 6. 7% of GDP, right? We have interest costs that are going to be above a trillion. It's not going down next year. You entered this thinking you could cut as much as a trillion dollars. You're nowhere near that. It's not really making the dent.\n\nI think you may have thought you might have been able to achieve in terms of a true problem. Would you agree? Well, first of all, it would obviously be ridiculous to assume that we'd achieve that on day one. So, it's only been what, 4 months? Yeah. And we've done by our calculations improved the deficit by $160 billion. That's our, you know, that's your number that's out there.\n\nA lot of people take issue with it and say, well, you know, taxpayers expenses such as paid leave, that's 135 billion. That's got to come back. IRS collection may go down as a result of cuts. There we ask rock. It said between five and 32 billion is what you've actually said. You need to ask the right question to ask is what is the the bet for the actions of Doge, right? What would the incremental expenditures be in FY26? Yep.\n\nBecause for example offered early we offered severance and early retirement to a lot of government employees. Many of them took us up on that. That severance went all the way through to September. Yeah. Uh so there's not going to be any savings until October, right? Because the severance goes through September. So the the delta really is what is the spending difference FY25 versus FY26 as a function of DOA's actions.\n\nThat's how we calculate the number. And we'll see if that turns out to be true or not. I mean by changing the retirement age or really going after some other parts of the budget. We try to go after every part of the budget. Some parts more boring than others. You're about efficiency. I mean that would take an act of Congress obviously to really make change.\n\nWe first of all so I think in our opinion we've created $160 billion delta FY25 to FY26 very significant that's 16% of the way towards a trillion in 5 months and in order to make progress we need the consent obviously of not just the executive branch but also the legislative branch and the judicial branch. So if we you know and we are advisers we are not we're not kings here. I get it.\n\nSo why are you attacking this given that we've made so much progress? You mean the wheat, not me? I'm not attacking. I'm just asking questions. In fact, I want to ask a lot more about Tesla. I do want to talk about Tesla. I mean, I was talking about brand damage and what you're seeing in the market. You did an interview earlier this morning where you seem to indicate you're starting to see a rebound. Yes.\n\nYou know, automotive revenue was down 20% last quarter. I think 50,000 fewer units were sold in the Q1 versus Q1 a year ago. What is giving you confidence in the automotive business or is it all about robo taxis as you've been saying and people can't quite see them behind me the robots as well? Really the only things that matter in the long term are autonomy and optimism.\n\nThose overwhelmingly dominate the future of financial success of the company. As for Q1, we had a global factory changeover for the Model Y. So there's a new version of the Model Y that came out which required factory shutdown across the world. Model Y is the number one selling car of any kind on earth. I watched your presentation during your last right here. I think it's number one selling car in the world.\n\nSo, you know, we we can't we haven't made cars if the factories are retooling. So, the right time to retool is the first quarter since generally that's when the least demand occurs. But we've seen us a major rebound in demand at this point. I feel comfortable. Major rebound in demand. Really believe you have seen that. Yeah, absolutely.\n\nI mean look the for most people when you buy a product how much do you care about the political views of the CEO or do even know what they are your goal you've also said is to produce a million robots I think by 2030 that's what I had you on the record as saying I think that's a reasonable target and then start towards sustainable abundance which you can get into but you know I wonder we've been talking about autonomous and how long it takes to train the automobile to be able to exceed human capabilities but what about these robots to the extent that how much training are they going to need to actually be able to do various different types of tasks.\n\nIs that long time? Uh yeah, it's it's going to take a lot of compute resources. Um and it'll take time.\n\nI think there there's certain uh threshold breakthroughs that we think we can achieve uh where if um if optimists can can watch videos uh you know YouTube videos or how-to videos or whatever and based on that video just like a human can uh learn how to do that thing then you you really have uh task extensibility that is dramatic cuz then it it can learn anything very quickly. Um so I think we'll get there in the next we're not there yet.\n\nrelying on a significant uptick in terms of learning and training. Yeah. I know that's why I'm calling it a very significant threshold would be the ability to learn from watching a video just so right. Uh but at the point as opposed to watching a human, right, which is or having a human sort of train it right now.\n\nI mean, right now we're training optimists to do like primitive tasks where a human in a kind of a what's called a mocap suit uh and and sort of cameras on the head is moving in the way that the robot would move to say pick up an object or open a door the basic tasks throw a ball dance and uh I think that's needed to sort of bootstrap the intelligence so you can have the basic functions.\n\nThen where I think it gets very interesting and very much like humans is that you want the robot to selfplay. So you say how does a child learn? Well, a child has toys and a child plays with the toys, plays with the blocks, you know, at some point figures how to put the triangle in the triangle hole and the circle in the circle hole by doing it over and over again.\n\nAnd this selfplay, once you have a lot of robots, you can do this selfplay, which is that you just put the robot in a room with toys and have the robot play with toys and it will learn. Yeah.\n\nAnd we have a reward function say like okay the goal of the robot is to put you know that classic child to you put the circle in the circle hole the square square or triangle triangle hole and keep doing it until it works and the reward function is succeeding and there are no advances needed to accomplish that. No advances in AI or compute and things of that nature that can happen.\n\nUh there are some advances needed but I don't think these are insurmountable. I think we can solve these things in the next few years. Okay. So, at that time when millions of these things are coming off of a line like we just, you know, saw with cars, they're going to be fully autonomous.\n\nThey're going to come off and they're I mean, the way you've described it, they're going to be able to come in my house and I'm going to be able to say, \"All right, do the dishes. Now, I need you to walk the dog.\" Absolutely. Hold the baby. In fact, you really won't even need to. It'll figure out what you probably want and do what you probably want without you even having to ask. Um, how many GPUs are you going to need for that?\n\nWell, quite a few GPUs. Uh we do have our own program called dojo for training uh which I think will be helpful. It's contributing about 5% towards self-driving right. Yeah. Is that the one in New York? In New York State. Yeah. Yeah. It's in New York. So uh but we expect to still buy a lot of GPUs from Nvidia. Um some from AMD and maybe from others. And uh as long as Nvidia is better than what we make, we'll keep buying from Nvidia.\n\nIs that the case right now? It is. Yeah. I mean you're obviously buying for XAI the Memphis big time, right? Yeah.\n\nX XAI is building the most powerful well I think we have the most powerful training cluster in the world right now uh which is over 200,000 GPUs uh training coherently you're at 200,000 already now there in Memphis that facility that Okay yes where are you going and um the uh will be at the million GPU level uh in um the location just near Memphis a million GPUs for a new location or 800,000 additional GPUs a million of the next generation GPUs So the blackwell uh well yeah wait are you building that now?\n\nYeah. How are you powering? It's it's a gigawatt class uh system. Yeah you do naturally. It is a hard problem which is the hard problem finding the power getting a gigawatt online. Yeah. Um and actually having the gigawatt of power be reliable cuz you get like power fluctuations in the grid and that what whatnot.\n\nUm so we're using actually I just posted something online today which is uh a whole bunch of Tesla mega packs batteries that are important for power conditioning the grid. Um, so the GPUs do not like power fluctuations. Um, they're like they like a power steady. Um, so and and then if there sometimes there's slight brown outs or if there's a blackout, you want to have be able to carry through that like an uninterruptible power supply.\n\nSo we got a lot of mega packs there to support that. It'll be the first gigawatt class training cluster in the world. Uh, and the most powerful training. When's that going to be done? Hopefully in about 6 months, maybe 9 months. Mhm. And that's largely powering Grock. Yes. Yeah. It's just power and drive, right? Which continues to advance. I mean, I use it frequently. Yeah.\n\nUm I saw you using that on the Joe, was it with Rogan when you were using that mode? What is that mode where it's all sassy and curses all the time? Well, this I mean, if you want to have fun at parties, uh Gro unhinged mode is pretty funny. Yeah, it's next level. Is power going to be the gaining issue for our ability to continue to advance in AI?\n\nYeah, I think we're I mean a few years ago I made a very obvious prediction which is that the limitation on AI will be chips um and it's still chips kind of chips today. Uh then it will be electrical equipment uh for the because you need to take power at that might be at 300,000 volts all the way down to 400 volts for the for the computer.\n\nUm so it needs you need step down transformers and uh a lot of them and a lot of you know cabling and wiring and fuses and really uh you know it's a it's a lot a lot of transformers essentially and the the the electrical transformer industry is not used to big changes in demand. No there's a shortage of transformer literally shortage of transformers and then funny enough the AI algorithm is called a transformer.\n\nUm and then our Optimus robot is named after Octopus Prime that's a transformer robot. It's a lot. So we have transformers for transformers. Right. Right. But it's the one transformer is the one in shortage that the others need. And then as we solve the transformer shortage, there will be the fundamental electricity generation shortage. And are we there yet or are we going to be there soon? We're getting there soon.\n\nMy guess is people will start hitting challenges with power generation maybe by middle of next year, end of next year, even with deregulation and effort being made to perhaps move permits along more quickly. So like how many power plants are getting built and how fast can you build a power plant? Right. Right. China seems to be building them pretty quickly. Oh, China has so many power plants uh that have been built and are being built.\n\nI don't think people quite realize this. I posted on my X account just the graph of US power generation versus China power generation. China power generation is like a rocket going orbit and US power generation is flat, right? Um, so I think by the end of this year, China will have about two and a half times the power output of the United States and it's headed towards uh maybe three or four times the power of the United States.\n\nIt's funny when I think about China. I mean EVs, autonomous, we talked about batteries, solar, power generation, by the way, even biotechnology recently. I don't know if you saw Fizer's licensing cancer drugs. Are they ahead of us in certain areas that are important? Um, the United States still has an advantage in uh breakthrough innovation.\n\nuh but uh and I think it's somewhat of a cultural thing um which is that to have breakthrough innovation you have to question authority um that fundamentally your breakthrough you're you're questioning the conventional wisdom um when you do a breakthrough innovation right um in China that they don't generally like to question the authority or that's not as encouraged as it is in the US so you seem to be good at finding something and then making it better yeah I do want to emphasize that the sheer number of smart talented people in China who work very hard is amazing.\n\nThe amount of talent I mean I'm an admirer of of China's capabilities. I think most people outside of China do not understand the power of China. It really is something special. Yeah. Um you know in the time we have left I would like to sort of keep the focus on XAI. First of all, you know, you spoke earlier about wanting more control at Tesla. Would you ever consider merging XAI into Tesla?\n\nwould be a way obviously they could issue shares to you and conceivably would increase your overall economics. Is that a possibility? Well, I guess anything's possible, but it would be difficult to speculate about something. You know, Tesla's a publicly traded stock. I would think to get a majority of the minority vote or whatever you might need might be not easy. Um, yeah.\n\nUm, it's not out of the question, but that would have to be something that the Tesla shareholders would want to vote for. Understood. So, but it's not something you're thinking about doing. It's not currently there. There are no plans to do so, right? It's not out of the question, but obviously would require Tesla shareholder support for that. Another way you could obviously increase your control would be to get that comp plan passed in Delaware.\n\nUm or through the Delaware Supreme Court or a new one. You haven't been paid, I believe, since 2018. Yeah. Where are you? Where are you on? 7 years with zero faith. You know, although to be fair, if it goes through, you're going to have an enormous payday. It'll be fine. It'll be more money than anybody's ever made. I Yeah, I suppose so.\n\nBut I mean, let's just say that if any CEO of the Fortune 500 were to agree to a plan like the one that I agreed to, you should buy the stock of that company immediately. Um, no, I remembered at the time to be fair, the targets were so far above where the stock was and obviously they were met. Yes.\n\nIs the board working to your knowledge on another potential plan if in fact the one never gets out of Delaware, the Supreme Court rules against the chancellor's ruling? I mean, I don't want to speak on behalf of the board, but you know, I'm sure it's on their mind, but you know, this I can't comment on terms of board deliberations. Um, you said earlier, I mean, you want to stay as CEO.\n\nWhy not, you know, I've wondered, Eli, given all the heat you've gotten in a lot of ways. Why not sort of become like an Ellisonlike figure at Tesla? Obviously, you're a lot younger, but still, he's very influential at Oracle, but, you know, he's not CEO and he doesn't get the attention, at least not entitled. I think maybe a better term for I'm a huge fan of Larry Elsa, good friend of mine. Um, owner.\n\nOwner, I think, would be he's the owner of Oracle. Yes, he is. And he has a lot of it. Finally, I want to So, the CEO, he's just the owner. Owner. Yeah. It's a big percentage, a lot higher than yours actually at Tesla. Yes. An impressive percentage at Oracle. Um, finally, I want to I mean, so many things we haven't gotten to, but we're trying to keep to your time. Are we ready for the changes that AI is going to bring to this society?\n\nUh, you know, I try and my job every day to sort of follow them. Obviously, they've been pushed aside to a certain extent by issues of the day. Yeah, it's coming fast. And it's coming very fast. I mean, I feel like we're, you know, we're in the big bang of the intelligence explosion. Like, we're in we're watching, we're have courtside seats to the big bang of intelligence explosion. Um, one thing's for sure, it won't be boring. No.\n\nSo, let's not be saying there's a 20% chance of annihilation as often anymore. I think we should always consider that there's some chance of a bad outcome to try to protect against the bad outcome. We don't want to be complacent and say that everything's just going to be fine. There's no chance of a bad outcome.\n\nI sort of think of them as maybe in movie terms as like are we in a Star Trek movie or are we in a Gene Rodenberry movie or a James Cameron movie? Which movie are we in here? And you could either have a Rodenberry or a Cameron outcome. I think in this case we want the Rodenberry outcome. Yeah. And the abundance that may come with it. You going to miss the White House at all or not?\n\nUh my rough plan on the White House is to be there uh for a couple days every every few weeks. Um and uh to be helpful where I can be helpful.","textByLang":{"en":"Are you going to have full autonomous on the roads of Austin at the end by the end of June? Yes, you are. What gives you that confidence? We have cars driving 24/7 with drivers in the cars and we see essentially no interventions. So now we want to be very careful with the first introduction of unsupervised self-driving meaning that there's the car driving around with no one in it. Um so we're no one buying but drivers. Well, yes.\n\nAnd sometimes no one in it at all. It's going to pick someone up. The cars seems to be incredibly safe. So, we have thousands of cars that are being tested, which is creating some strange situations where we just drive. There's just a bizarre number of Teslas driving past people's houses. They're like, \"What's going on?\" We even saw one last night coming from the airport driving at night alone. Looked very lonely.\n\nYeah, it's looking good for us next month. Yeah. You know, some estimates have been that you're only going to have 10 to 12 of them on the road initially. I mean, it's going to be a very small amount. Is that correct? Yeah. Yeah. How do you see it ramping up?\n\nWell, we'll have to see how well it it does, but you know, I think it's prudent for us to start with a small number, confirm that thing's going well, and then scale it up proportionate to how well we say it's doing, right? And what's going to be a judge of how well it's doing? Are there any incidents? Are there any interventions?\n\nBut we want to deliberately take it slow and we start with a,000 or 10,000 on day one, but I don't think that would be prudent. So, we'll start with probably 10 for a week, then increase it to 20, 30, 40. And I think by say, you know, we'll probably be at a thousand within a few months and then we'll expand to other cities. So expand to San Francisco, California, Los Angeles. Is that a real possibility in the not too distant future?\n\nI mean, Texas is very different in California when it comes to regulation. They don't really have much here in terms of dealing with autonomous, but it's a different story in California. California has already approved. Way has been doing autonomous driving for a while. Right now, the approval process is very haphazard and sort of state by state and sometimes city by city.\n\nWe were talking to the Secretary of Transportation about that very fact a moment ago. It's going to be important to have a unified set of national regulations for self-driving cars. Otherwise, you're going to get into this weird situation where if you're driving from Maine to New York, you're going to go through tens of different sets of regulations. Cars going to be behave differently. It's not going to make any sense. No.\n\nSo, so one one set of regulations that just like there is for highway driving that's what I think makes sense for the country as a whole. My prediction is that probably by the end of next year we'll have probably hundreds of thousands if not over a million Teslas doing self-driving in the US.\n\nWhat percentage of those are going to be well not the cyber cab you're just talking about on full self-driving level four unsupervised full self-driving you do not need to pay attention right for me if I own a Tesla and I have the software and the capability of doing it. Yes. Right. We'll have a model which is kind of like some combination of Uber and Airbnb. So, if you're a Tesla owner, you'll be able to add or subtract your car to the fleet.\n\nJust like an Airbnb, you could rent out your spare bedroom or rent out your house when you're not using it. And the same thing will be available for Tesla owners. So, it's a way for Tesla owners to earn revenue. Instead of having your car sit in the parking lot, your car could be earning money. We talked, you and I talked about that a couple of years ago. Somewhat ambitious target.\n\nWhy do you have the confidence now that in a year there'll be a million available? Well, in by the end of so 18 months 26. Okay. Yeah. Once you have a proof point, once you have it working, then scaling up is just a matter of time. But once it's working well in Austin, then we'll make sure it works well in other cities. Then there obviously some unique cases like downtown New York, but that's a highly unusual situation.\n\nMost cities in America are like Austin. Although you can go on full self-driving right now in New York. I mean, you can obviously you have to sit there behind the wheel, but and it'll do it. Oh, yeah. No, it'll navigate the traffic. I've seen it. Yeah. Even a Tesla that you buy right now and the self-driving just cost $9 a month will give you autonomous driving anywhere in the country right now.\n\nThe question is when is it unsupervised where you're sitting in the back so to speak. Yes. Where you're like asleep and the car you wake up at your destination. In order for that to be the case, we want the autonomous car to be much safer than a car driven by a person. Right. But you know, again, I'll come to Whimo because even though they only have about 700 cars, they obviously are on the market.\n\nThey're in Beverly Hills all over the place right now. It's proof of a concept. They've got 28 cameras. They've got LAR and radar. You've had a different approach. The 8 to9 cameras and the neural network. Why do you feel that that is going to be the equivalent in terms of safety profile? Oh, I think it'll be better. Why? Because the way that the road system is designed is for intelligence, biological neural net and eyes.\n\nThat's how the whole road system is designed. So, what will actually work best for the road system is artificial intelligence, digital neural nets, and cameras. And we also have the microphones that hear emergency vehicles and that kind of thing. You need to hear a fire engine or a police car. Yes. Exactly. Right. But that's how the whole road system is designed. It's not designed for shooting lasers out of your eyes.\n\nAnd what we found is that when you have multiple sensors, they tend to get confused. So do you believe the camera or do you believe LAR? They get confused. That's what can lead to accidents. So we used to have, for example, radar in the car, but we found that the radar and the camera would sometimes disagree and then you don't know which one to believe. So it wasn't about expense. Are you seeing the data? Right.\n\nIn fact, we turned off the radars in the cars. You turned off the radar. So if I were to say to you, \"All right, let's go.\" You think that you're there in terms of the safety profile you're seeing right now? Yeah, we could take a ride today if you want. Sure. Yeah. Well, I'm happy to take a ride with you anytime you want, wherever you want.\n\nLogistics capability to operate sort of a ride hailing fleet at scale cuz you mentioned obviously let's call it the end of 26. Are you going to have an app? Are you there? Do you have that ability? I think we could figure out an app. Somebody tells me you're not worried about it. But already has an app. Yeah, I know. X AI can probably do it for you in like an hour just fine. Do you ever consider licensing the technology at some point?\n\nYes, I there are a number of major automakers that have talked to us about licensing self-driving and we're very much open to that. I think the more we demonstrate the capability of self-driving, the more that they will want to license it and we're happy to help. You know, back to the safety profile cuz it's going to obviously be something key focus. I saw this over the weekend. They did a test between Whimo and Tesla.\n\nIt's not a real publication. Regardless of whether we want to have a debate about their journalistic integrity, the test itself, let me just share it with you and get your reaction, which was the Whimo ultimately they said proved better in part only because it avoided with its geo fencing one very difficult intersection that the Tesla chose to go through. It stopped at a red light, but then it went through the red light. What's your reaction?\n\nLook, I'm not going to comment on some business entire article, but is that a concern at all? because in a way there's no geo fencing. So it's like it's happy to go on the highways in a way that perhaps a Whimo is not. I guess my question is is that a concern at all for you in terms of it encountering things that are still sort of a crucial test and perhaps it fails.\n\nNo, first of all that actually should have been a test of supervised self-driving and not unsupervised self-driving. So the assumption there is that you have a person who is going to take over. So their test made no sense. Okay. But when we deploy the cars in Austin, we are actually going to deploy it not to the entire Austin region, but only the parts of Austin that we consider to be the safest. So we will geoffence it. Yeah, of course. Yeah.\n\nIt's not going to take intersections unless we are highly confident it'll just take a route around that intersection, but there won't be a safety driver in the car. Correct. Right. The car it won't there's not going to be somebody sitting there. But you did have ads for vehicle operator autopilots. What was that about then? Are there going to be people who are remotely sort of monitoring the performance of the fleet? Yeah. And what will they do?\n\nSo, there'll be We're going to be extremely paranoid about the deployment as we should be. It would be foolish not to be. We'll be watching what the cars are doing very carefully. As confidence grows, you know, less that will be needed.\n\nYou know, again, you spoke about it and we spoke about it a couple of years ago and obviously your investor base, many of whom are watching right now, are interested in the revenue and profitability of this ride hailing, autopilot, and autonomous driving opportunity. EYD, I believe at this point in China is now offering levels of autonomy for free.\n\nI mean, are you confident you're going to be in a position to continue to get a premium for that particular level? Well, interestingly in China, we're not allowed to train on videos in China. So, when we released full self driving, it was actually just trained on the rest of the world, but not in China.\n\nAnd the tests by local Chinese publications, I think, concluded that even without training on local Chinese roads, the Tesla self-driving was the best. It was the best. Yes. But again, I mean, is the technology some pretty wild videos where people are like doing self-driving, which we don't recommend obviously on like narrow mountain roads, including one where it's there's a sharp precipice on either side and no barriers.\n\nAre you uh regulated to have full Where are you in China right now in terms of your ability to offer that product though? Understood. Unsupervised. We have supervised post for self-driving where there's a person in the car.\n\nHe has approval in China but whenever we release a new version we have to get an incremental approval and at times we do have to battle other car companies in China who are trying to stop us from it's incredibly competitive market. China is the most competitive market and the extent BYD which is neck and neck with you I think in the EV race I think it's fair to say worldwide correct I don't really follow that. Well, they're willing.\n\nAgain, my question is they're willing to seemingly offer different levels of autonomy for I don't want to call it free, but it I don't really think about competitors. I just think about making the product as perfect as possible. You don't think about competitors at all? No, I just think about making what we want to achieve is the platonic ideal of the perfect product. And as long as you focus on that, you will have a compelling product obviously.\n\nAll right. Well, there's a potentially compelling product right behind you, which is a robo taxi. So when are we, you know, is in 5 years are they going to be all over the place? Yes, they will. You're confident in that? Yeah. Talking about Tesla obviously, you know, takes me to a certain extent to what some would say is the brand damage done by your government service. I don't know if you would agree with that.\n\nThere have been some pros and cons. You know, we sat here 2 years ago upstairs and you famously said when I asked you about this very subject, I don't care. I'm going to say what I want to say and so be it. Do you regret that? No. Why not? I believe that we want to live in a free society where people are allowed to say what they want to say within reasonable bounds.\n\nLike, you know, you can't advocate for the murder of somebody, but free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy. That's why it's the first amendment. Without a doubt. But I guess my question is more about your work at Doge, for example. Was that worth it? You know, to the extent you are now, Elon, you were a somewhat divisive figure two years ago, but now you really are.\n\nI mean, there are people who love you, but there are a lot of people who dislike you, some of whom were your customers. And I wonder, was it worth the undertaking at Doge and everything else that you've done and how outspoken you've been in terms of the things you believe in to antagonize so many potential buyers andor users of things like a root.\n\nUnfortunately, what I've learned is that legacy media propaganda is very effective at making people believe things that aren't true. An example of that being that I'm a Nazi and how many legacy media publications, talk shows, whatever, try to claim that I was a Nazi because of some random hand gesture at a rally where all I said was that my heart goes out to you and I was talking about space travel.\n\nAnd yet the legacy media promoted that as though that was a deliberate Nazi gesture when in fact every politician, any public speaker who's spoken for any length of time has made the exact same gesture. And yet there's still people out there and I've never harmed a single person. You know what, Elon? I was you asked for an example.\n\nI wasn't even going to talk to you about it cuz in fact I number of people who are close to you and I called them afterwards and all of them to a person were like no way no way of course not but that isn't necessarily the perception the work you've done for Doge has also come obviously into the spotlight in a great deal and you know people are upset about USA ID being put into the wood chipper people are upset about America disappearing people are upset about and this isn't even on your side the NIH and so many other areas that they feel rightly or wrongly are being cut as a result of your efforts and I just I guess I wonder as you start to transition now back to Tesla in a more significant way.\n\nAny program in US ID that had any semblance of merit was retained and folded into the State Department. So, and if there's some exception to that, we're all ears and we'd love to look at it. We just want to see the evidence that the program was actually doing good and not just funding grafted DC and warlords in in some country. Over and over again, we saw not sympathetic sounding programs, right?\n\nBut when we actually said, \"Well, please show us show us pictures of of the recipients of of the aid. We just or let us get into contact with them.\" No pictures were forthcoming. They didn't give us any contact information. And we're like, \"Look, we're not going to send money to DC crafters and warlords. That's not a good use of money.\" So, that's not what we're going to do.\n\nNow, invariably, when you stop waste and fraud, it's not like the fraudsters admit their guilt. They don't say like, \"Oh, isn't it so great that the money we were getting, fortunately, has been stopped.\" They will obviously come up with a sympathetic sounding claim. That claim has no merit.\n\nI guess what I would come back to, cuz I talk about economics all day long, is, you know, we, to your point you've been making, we have a deficit that's running at about 6. 7% of GDP, right? We have interest costs that are going to be above a trillion. It's not going down next year. You entered this thinking you could cut as much as a trillion dollars. You're nowhere near that. It's not really making the dent.\n\nI think you may have thought you might have been able to achieve in terms of a true problem. Would you agree? Well, first of all, it would obviously be ridiculous to assume that we'd achieve that on day one. So, it's only been what, 4 months? Yeah. And we've done by our calculations improved the deficit by $160 billion. That's our, you know, that's your number that's out there.\n\nA lot of people take issue with it and say, well, you know, taxpayers expenses such as paid leave, that's 135 billion. That's got to come back. IRS collection may go down as a result of cuts. There we ask rock. It said between five and 32 billion is what you've actually said. You need to ask the right question to ask is what is the the bet for the actions of Doge, right? What would the incremental expenditures be in FY26? Yep.\n\nBecause for example offered early we offered severance and early retirement to a lot of government employees. Many of them took us up on that. That severance went all the way through to September. Yeah. Uh so there's not going to be any savings until October, right? Because the severance goes through September. So the the delta really is what is the spending difference FY25 versus FY26 as a function of DOA's actions.\n\nThat's how we calculate the number. And we'll see if that turns out to be true or not. I mean by changing the retirement age or really going after some other parts of the budget. We try to go after every part of the budget. Some parts more boring than others. You're about efficiency. I mean that would take an act of Congress obviously to really make change.\n\nWe first of all so I think in our opinion we've created $160 billion delta FY25 to FY26 very significant that's 16% of the way towards a trillion in 5 months and in order to make progress we need the consent obviously of not just the executive branch but also the legislative branch and the judicial branch. So if we you know and we are advisers we are not we're not kings here. I get it.\n\nSo why are you attacking this given that we've made so much progress? You mean the wheat, not me? I'm not attacking. I'm just asking questions. In fact, I want to ask a lot more about Tesla. I do want to talk about Tesla. I mean, I was talking about brand damage and what you're seeing in the market. You did an interview earlier this morning where you seem to indicate you're starting to see a rebound. Yes.\n\nYou know, automotive revenue was down 20% last quarter. I think 50,000 fewer units were sold in the Q1 versus Q1 a year ago. What is giving you confidence in the automotive business or is it all about robo taxis as you've been saying and people can't quite see them behind me the robots as well? Really the only things that matter in the long term are autonomy and optimism.\n\nThose overwhelmingly dominate the future of financial success of the company. As for Q1, we had a global factory changeover for the Model Y. So there's a new version of the Model Y that came out which required factory shutdown across the world. Model Y is the number one selling car of any kind on earth. I watched your presentation during your last right here. I think it's number one selling car in the world.\n\nSo, you know, we we can't we haven't made cars if the factories are retooling. So, the right time to retool is the first quarter since generally that's when the least demand occurs. But we've seen us a major rebound in demand at this point. I feel comfortable. Major rebound in demand. Really believe you have seen that. Yeah, absolutely.\n\nI mean look the for most people when you buy a product how much do you care about the political views of the CEO or do even know what they are your goal you've also said is to produce a million robots I think by 2030 that's what I had you on the record as saying I think that's a reasonable target and then start towards sustainable abundance which you can get into but you know I wonder we've been talking about autonomous and how long it takes to train the automobile to be able to exceed human capabilities but what about these robots to the extent that how much training are they going to need to actually be able to do various different types of tasks.\n\nIs that long time? Uh yeah, it's it's going to take a lot of compute resources. Um and it'll take time.\n\nI think there there's certain uh threshold breakthroughs that we think we can achieve uh where if um if optimists can can watch videos uh you know YouTube videos or how-to videos or whatever and based on that video just like a human can uh learn how to do that thing then you you really have uh task extensibility that is dramatic cuz then it it can learn anything very quickly. Um so I think we'll get there in the next we're not there yet.\n\nrelying on a significant uptick in terms of learning and training. Yeah. I know that's why I'm calling it a very significant threshold would be the ability to learn from watching a video just so right. Uh but at the point as opposed to watching a human, right, which is or having a human sort of train it right now.\n\nI mean, right now we're training optimists to do like primitive tasks where a human in a kind of a what's called a mocap suit uh and and sort of cameras on the head is moving in the way that the robot would move to say pick up an object or open a door the basic tasks throw a ball dance and uh I think that's needed to sort of bootstrap the intelligence so you can have the basic functions.\n\nThen where I think it gets very interesting and very much like humans is that you want the robot to selfplay. So you say how does a child learn? Well, a child has toys and a child plays with the toys, plays with the blocks, you know, at some point figures how to put the triangle in the triangle hole and the circle in the circle hole by doing it over and over again.\n\nAnd this selfplay, once you have a lot of robots, you can do this selfplay, which is that you just put the robot in a room with toys and have the robot play with toys and it will learn. Yeah.\n\nAnd we have a reward function say like okay the goal of the robot is to put you know that classic child to you put the circle in the circle hole the square square or triangle triangle hole and keep doing it until it works and the reward function is succeeding and there are no advances needed to accomplish that. No advances in AI or compute and things of that nature that can happen.\n\nUh there are some advances needed but I don't think these are insurmountable. I think we can solve these things in the next few years. Okay. So, at that time when millions of these things are coming off of a line like we just, you know, saw with cars, they're going to be fully autonomous.\n\nThey're going to come off and they're I mean, the way you've described it, they're going to be able to come in my house and I'm going to be able to say, \"All right, do the dishes. Now, I need you to walk the dog.\" Absolutely. Hold the baby. In fact, you really won't even need to. It'll figure out what you probably want and do what you probably want without you even having to ask. Um, how many GPUs are you going to need for that?\n\nWell, quite a few GPUs. Uh we do have our own program called dojo for training uh which I think will be helpful. It's contributing about 5% towards self-driving right. Yeah. Is that the one in New York? In New York State. Yeah. Yeah. It's in New York. So uh but we expect to still buy a lot of GPUs from Nvidia. Um some from AMD and maybe from others. And uh as long as Nvidia is better than what we make, we'll keep buying from Nvidia.\n\nIs that the case right now? It is. Yeah. I mean you're obviously buying for XAI the Memphis big time, right? Yeah.\n\nX XAI is building the most powerful well I think we have the most powerful training cluster in the world right now uh which is over 200,000 GPUs uh training coherently you're at 200,000 already now there in Memphis that facility that Okay yes where are you going and um the uh will be at the million GPU level uh in um the location just near Memphis a million GPUs for a new location or 800,000 additional GPUs a million of the next generation GPUs So the blackwell uh well yeah wait are you building that now?\n\nYeah. How are you powering? It's it's a gigawatt class uh system. Yeah you do naturally. It is a hard problem which is the hard problem finding the power getting a gigawatt online. Yeah. Um and actually having the gigawatt of power be reliable cuz you get like power fluctuations in the grid and that what whatnot.\n\nUm so we're using actually I just posted something online today which is uh a whole bunch of Tesla mega packs batteries that are important for power conditioning the grid. Um, so the GPUs do not like power fluctuations. Um, they're like they like a power steady. Um, so and and then if there sometimes there's slight brown outs or if there's a blackout, you want to have be able to carry through that like an uninterruptible power supply.\n\nSo we got a lot of mega packs there to support that. It'll be the first gigawatt class training cluster in the world. Uh, and the most powerful training. When's that going to be done? Hopefully in about 6 months, maybe 9 months. Mhm. And that's largely powering Grock. Yes. Yeah. It's just power and drive, right? Which continues to advance. I mean, I use it frequently. Yeah.\n\nUm I saw you using that on the Joe, was it with Rogan when you were using that mode? What is that mode where it's all sassy and curses all the time? Well, this I mean, if you want to have fun at parties, uh Gro unhinged mode is pretty funny. Yeah, it's next level. Is power going to be the gaining issue for our ability to continue to advance in AI?\n\nYeah, I think we're I mean a few years ago I made a very obvious prediction which is that the limitation on AI will be chips um and it's still chips kind of chips today. Uh then it will be electrical equipment uh for the because you need to take power at that might be at 300,000 volts all the way down to 400 volts for the for the computer.\n\nUm so it needs you need step down transformers and uh a lot of them and a lot of you know cabling and wiring and fuses and really uh you know it's a it's a lot a lot of transformers essentially and the the the electrical transformer industry is not used to big changes in demand. No there's a shortage of transformer literally shortage of transformers and then funny enough the AI algorithm is called a transformer.\n\nUm and then our Optimus robot is named after Octopus Prime that's a transformer robot. It's a lot. So we have transformers for transformers. Right. Right. But it's the one transformer is the one in shortage that the others need. And then as we solve the transformer shortage, there will be the fundamental electricity generation shortage. And are we there yet or are we going to be there soon? We're getting there soon.\n\nMy guess is people will start hitting challenges with power generation maybe by middle of next year, end of next year, even with deregulation and effort being made to perhaps move permits along more quickly. So like how many power plants are getting built and how fast can you build a power plant? Right. Right. China seems to be building them pretty quickly. Oh, China has so many power plants uh that have been built and are being built.\n\nI don't think people quite realize this. I posted on my X account just the graph of US power generation versus China power generation. China power generation is like a rocket going orbit and US power generation is flat, right? Um, so I think by the end of this year, China will have about two and a half times the power output of the United States and it's headed towards uh maybe three or four times the power of the United States.\n\nIt's funny when I think about China. I mean EVs, autonomous, we talked about batteries, solar, power generation, by the way, even biotechnology recently. I don't know if you saw Fizer's licensing cancer drugs. Are they ahead of us in certain areas that are important? Um, the United States still has an advantage in uh breakthrough innovation.\n\nuh but uh and I think it's somewhat of a cultural thing um which is that to have breakthrough innovation you have to question authority um that fundamentally your breakthrough you're you're questioning the conventional wisdom um when you do a breakthrough innovation right um in China that they don't generally like to question the authority or that's not as encouraged as it is in the US so you seem to be good at finding something and then making it better yeah I do want to emphasize that the sheer number of smart talented people in China who work very hard is amazing.\n\nThe amount of talent I mean I'm an admirer of of China's capabilities. I think most people outside of China do not understand the power of China. It really is something special. Yeah. Um you know in the time we have left I would like to sort of keep the focus on XAI. First of all, you know, you spoke earlier about wanting more control at Tesla. Would you ever consider merging XAI into Tesla?\n\nwould be a way obviously they could issue shares to you and conceivably would increase your overall economics. Is that a possibility? Well, I guess anything's possible, but it would be difficult to speculate about something. You know, Tesla's a publicly traded stock. I would think to get a majority of the minority vote or whatever you might need might be not easy. Um, yeah.\n\nUm, it's not out of the question, but that would have to be something that the Tesla shareholders would want to vote for. Understood. So, but it's not something you're thinking about doing. It's not currently there. There are no plans to do so, right? It's not out of the question, but obviously would require Tesla shareholder support for that. Another way you could obviously increase your control would be to get that comp plan passed in Delaware.\n\nUm or through the Delaware Supreme Court or a new one. You haven't been paid, I believe, since 2018. Yeah. Where are you? Where are you on? 7 years with zero faith. You know, although to be fair, if it goes through, you're going to have an enormous payday. It'll be fine. It'll be more money than anybody's ever made. I Yeah, I suppose so.\n\nBut I mean, let's just say that if any CEO of the Fortune 500 were to agree to a plan like the one that I agreed to, you should buy the stock of that company immediately. Um, no, I remembered at the time to be fair, the targets were so far above where the stock was and obviously they were met. Yes.\n\nIs the board working to your knowledge on another potential plan if in fact the one never gets out of Delaware, the Supreme Court rules against the chancellor's ruling? I mean, I don't want to speak on behalf of the board, but you know, I'm sure it's on their mind, but you know, this I can't comment on terms of board deliberations. Um, you said earlier, I mean, you want to stay as CEO.\n\nWhy not, you know, I've wondered, Eli, given all the heat you've gotten in a lot of ways. Why not sort of become like an Ellisonlike figure at Tesla? Obviously, you're a lot younger, but still, he's very influential at Oracle, but, you know, he's not CEO and he doesn't get the attention, at least not entitled. I think maybe a better term for I'm a huge fan of Larry Elsa, good friend of mine. Um, owner.\n\nOwner, I think, would be he's the owner of Oracle. Yes, he is. And he has a lot of it. Finally, I want to So, the CEO, he's just the owner. Owner. Yeah. It's a big percentage, a lot higher than yours actually at Tesla. Yes. An impressive percentage at Oracle. Um, finally, I want to I mean, so many things we haven't gotten to, but we're trying to keep to your time. Are we ready for the changes that AI is going to bring to this society?\n\nUh, you know, I try and my job every day to sort of follow them. Obviously, they've been pushed aside to a certain extent by issues of the day. Yeah, it's coming fast. And it's coming very fast. I mean, I feel like we're, you know, we're in the big bang of the intelligence explosion. Like, we're in we're watching, we're have courtside seats to the big bang of intelligence explosion. Um, one thing's for sure, it won't be boring. No.\n\nSo, let's not be saying there's a 20% chance of annihilation as often anymore. I think we should always consider that there's some chance of a bad outcome to try to protect against the bad outcome. We don't want to be complacent and say that everything's just going to be fine. There's no chance of a bad outcome.\n\nI sort of think of them as maybe in movie terms as like are we in a Star Trek movie or are we in a Gene Rodenberry movie or a James Cameron movie? Which movie are we in here? And you could either have a Rodenberry or a Cameron outcome. I think in this case we want the Rodenberry outcome. Yeah. And the abundance that may come with it. You going to miss the White House at all or not?\n\nUh my rough plan on the White House is to be there uh for a couple days every every few weeks. Um and uh to be helpful where I can be helpful."},"languages":["en"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vizKY0kj01U"},{"id":"real-time-with-bill-maher-2023-04-28","type":"interview","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oO8w6XcXJUs","title":"Real Time with Bill Maher","titles":{"en":"Real Time with Bill Maher","de":"Real Time with Bill Maher","fr":"Real Time with Bill Maher"},"date":"2023-04-28","summary":"Musk's full Real Time interview discussing the 'woke mind virus', free speech and running Twitter.","text":"my first guest is the man who made electric cars a thing and is currently working on perfecting reusable Rockets space travel connecting the human brain directly to computers connecting cities with electromagnetic bullet trains the Starling satellite system that's so important to the war in Ukraine and then on Tuesday on traffic he also tweets a lot Elon Musk wow [Music] what did I get the full order of things that you do in a day there when I was reading there I left out the tunnel thing at the end um do you work on all these a lot of jobs do you do all these things every day do you work on all of them in a single day no no but I do have I do have a long work day um yeah so I work a lot I'm so thrilled you're here because you know we do a show where\n\nwe talk about what changes happen in the world and but we just talk there's a very few people who actually make change happen you are one of those people probably um you know I just want to say I just want to say I love this audience [Applause] well you're a likable guy I mean thanks I mean they attack you a lot they do yeah [Laughter] and you seem to laugh it off which I think is fantastic I love it that you have a sense of humor because a guy as important as you who makes changes could use your powers for evil and not good the fact that absolutely you could of course I would yeah never use them for equal deaths no I know but but the way I know that is because you have a sense of humor uh yeah you really do yeah you like laughing you like to be funny\n\nI kill me right [Applause] as opposed to somebody like Zuckerberg who I'm not even sure is a real boy yeah um yeah I I actually love comedy and and uh actually you know like um many years ago actually was in the audience here and watched your show oh really been a long time admirer of your show oh well thank you I let me get back to you being ingenious okay but that has always been my view is that as I was a history major and when you study history what you realize is that you know there's the great man Theory and they talk about Kings and princes and queens and presidents it's really the people in Tech who change the world they're the people who deal the cards at whether it's fire or electricity for good or bad or the cotton gin or the iPhone or the\n\natom bomb those are the cards and the rest of us just play it would you agree with that assessment I think I think technology is the thing that causes these big step changes in in Civilization so obviously you've got things like say the Gutenberg Press um before which uh right it was very difficult to get books they were very rare even if you had a thirst for knowledge you really couldn't do anything about it um because there were very few books to read so uh and the the internet is something beyond beyond the bug price I think but you know it's it's a like when I first saw the internet uh coming into being in a way that that the general public could use it it felt like the what the the humanity as a whole was uh developing a nervous system so previously\n\nuh the way the information would travel would be by osmosis one person to another or one person calling another um but uh you did the access to information was very limited now with the Internet it's like having a nervous system it's like any part of of humanity has access to almost all the information of humanity hmm like you could be in the in the middle of the Amazon jungle uh whether it's a starling terminal and have access to more information uh than the president did in 1980.\n\nright well anything on your phone everything is yeah okay so so you are one of these dealers these people who deal the cards and I feel some memes too quickly so I think a lot of people thought when you bought Twitter that this is kind of an outlier like how does this what doesn't fit with these other things you're doing I never thought that because I think you're dealing with big civilizational issues and problems and I was right on your page I think Twitter is one of them I mean you have talked about this at woke mind virus yes and really apocalyptic terms yeah I don't you should explain why you don't think it's hyperbole to say things like it's pushing civilization towards suicide first of all what is the walk mine virus and if we don't deal with this\n\nnothing else can get done tell me why you think that yeah so um I think we need to be very cautious about anything that is anti-meritocratic and anything that is uh that that results in the suppression of a free speech so you know those are two other aspects of the work mind virus that I think are very dangerous uh is that it's often anti-mureaucratic you can't you can't question things uh even the questioning is bad so uh you know you know another way to almost Anonymous would we cancel culture and obviously people try to cancel you many times many times yeah I mean every week yeah from left and right I've had it from both sides yeah and it's interesting people you and I are both like in that little group of people maybe it's a bigger group now yeah\n\nwho who are called conservative who haven't really changed I don't see you think of you as a conservative definitely yeah like I I at least think of myself as a moderate uh you know uh so I mean uh at least that like I've spent a massive amount of My Life Energy building sustainable energy uh you know electric vehicles and and batteries and solar and stuff uh to help save the environment that's that's not that's not a it's not exactly far right now you drew that diagram you drew that diagram once where you're here I I related to that and like the world has changed right I feel the same way I feel like very often wokeness is it's not building on liberalism it's the opposite of liberalism I can mention yes exactly many examples where it's the op including\n\nFree Speech free speech is actually is extremely important and it's bizarre that we've come to this point where um like free speech used to be a left or liberal value and and yet we see uh from you know in quotes left uh a desire to actually censor um and uh that seems crazy I mean I think we should be extremely concerned about anything that uh undermines the First Amendment there's a reason for the First Amendment um the first amendment is because people came from countries where they could not speak freely and and where and we're saying certain things would get you thrown into prison and they were like well we don't want that here and by the way in many parts of the world including possible that people might think are relatively similar to the United\n\nStates the the speech laws are draconian England is quite different I won't name any countries but why are we protecting them they have no first it's very easy to prove libel in England whereas here it's almost England um I wouldn't want to say the wrong thing or uh yes you could be sued easier there I mean there are a lot in in France I think if you deny the Holocaust which I think is abhorrent but I also think it should be part of free speech right you can be thrown into jail okay so this my I I really can't emphasize this enough we must uh uh we must protect free speech and Free Speech only matters it's only relevant when it's someone you don't like saying something in your life because obviously every speech that you like is uh yes that's easy um\n\nso it it's uh and it's the thing about censorship is that sure for those who would Advocate it um just remember at some point that will be turned on you [Applause] so this uh woke mind virus how did it start was it bats was it a yeah escape from a lab I mean what is your assessment of what because it's fairly recent why how did it start and why I was I was trying to figure out where where it's coming from I think it's actually been a long time Brewing um in that it's uh I think it's been going on for a while um it it and um the amount of indoctrination that that's happening in schools and universities is I think far beyond what parents realize um and I only I sort of came to realize this somewhat late um the the experience that we had uh in high school\n\nand college is not the experience that that kids today are having um and and hasn't been for I don't know 10 years maybe 20 years so uh my parents themselves also a big part of the problem they well I I suppose in some cases that parents but but I think like the parents are just generally not aware of what their their kids are being told or what they're not being taught um they're letting the kids think that they're equal I mean yeah let me let me let me give you an example that a Fairmont told me which uh you know his daughters uh go to college and and sorry go to high school in the Bay Area um and um and he he was asking them like well so who are the you know who are the first few presidents of the United States uh that they could name Washington but\n\nand I said what do you know about him well he was a slave owner what else right exactly nothing right like uh okay that's maybe you should know more than that you know yeah yeah that and that that is the world mind virus exactly yeah so exactly it's it's like you know the uh you know slavery is obviously a horrific institution but we should still know more about George Washington than that and by the way one that was practiced all over the world forever since the beginning of time by every race including people of color I'm sorry to tell you that it's huge in the Bible absolutely so the Bible loves it really yes they're quite strict about like you know don't take someone else's slave and that kind of thing right but no one ever says just don't do it they\n\ndon't they don't they don't at no point does it say slavery is bad in the Bible no they do not condemn it at all they just have so so it's um but Twitter is not doing bad right I mean I saw today that Tucker Carlson yeah recently fired you were just on his show and he lost his job so I hope this isn't enough yeah yeah but uh luckily uh the angel of death exactly I'm not the Typhoid Mary of uh talk shows uh his rant yesterday or today on Twitter yesterday or something more than every cable news monologue or something like that is that right well Twitter has a tremendous audience so there's 250 million people that spend an average of half an hour a day on Twitter so it's about 120 to 130 million user hours per day and it's been increasing so um the we didn't\n\ndo anything to be clear we did nothing special whatsoever I learned about it afterwards that he had posted something on Twitter um so it's just the Twitter has a lot of people's attention uh so and it tends to be the people that are uh that read read a lot or or interested in current events um and um generally are pretty influential so but most of the people who tweet are the same people right I mean the people who actually tweet it's mostly just reading it yeah I feel like that's I've read this many times it's a very very small percentage of the people on Twitter and it seems like yeah see here's why I don't tweet anymore because you may be the mayor of tweak town now yeah I'm getting a cap with that and I'm glad and I like it that the mayor likes my\n\njokes but the reason I don't do it anymore is because the mob of Mean Girls is still there and that has not changed I know like it's too easy to get canceled and I don't even know what pisses them off they're so nuts these kids I feel like I'm walking on a roof with a blindfold I could fall off anytime yeah that was the most innocuous thing but it's like you know I said George Washington was a great president oh how dare you yeah yeah exactly had some flows but but how do you fix this instrumental in this Mr Mayor creation of the United States so yeah um well you have to say like what does canceled mean you know uh I mean it's yes people attacking on Twitter that's one thing but frankly that's just going to increase engagement so I would just ignore it\n\nwell that's easy for you because they can't take your job away or any of your main 10 jobs but they could take mine and they did Once by the way yeah so still Affair you know I was like literally canceled yeah I mean like the Show is canceled so you but okay so you were in Congress uh at Congress the other day talking with Chuck Schumer about AI I'm very interested in this because you've been on this for years I've always thought you were right about this I think you're right about almost everything I mean let's have more babies and raise them on Mars I don't get that but okay well uh I just think we should be cautious about civilizational decline with with and we have plummeting growth rates um most places yeah right and also plummeting resources no\n\nno resources will be fine look I'm not suggesting complacency but we do want to move to a sustainable energy economy as quickly as possible but but we're not in any danger of uh resource collapse but lots of people don't have enough food or water we will run out of water they're running they're running out of sand Earth is 70 Water by surface area um but you can't drink that desalination is absurdly Chief why don't we do it then we do it is you have a lot of free time it is done this there is a lot of desalination done okay but there's plenty of water this is not an issue I want to be clear all right so but let's talk about AI because like you were you were on this tip 10 years ago when nobody else was that and I always thought he's right why because\n\nI've seen too many movies everything that happens in movies that happens in real life and yeah you know if you make things that are way smarter than you why wouldn't they become your overlords so what did you say to Chuck Schumer and what are we doing about this I know you want to pause in AI because in the just in the last six months with chat GPT which came from a company you started yes [Laughter] um well I mean A friend of mine has a sort of modification of Occam's razor you know you know instead of the simplest thing being the most likely that like the most ironic outcome is most likely right right yes so um with respect to AI um I just think we should be uh we should have some sort of regulatory oversight so uh you know for anything that is a danger\n\nto the public uh if it's sort of uh aircraft uh cars uh Food and Drug and whatnot we've got some regulatory oversight like a referee essentially and making sure that uh companies don't cut Corners so um I think that since if one agrees that uh AI is a potential risk to the public then there should be some regulatory body that oversees uh what companies are doing so they don't cut corners and potentially do something very dangerous don't do something lay out a scenario for me in the next two five ten years if nothing is done because we're very good at doing nothing especially when it comes in the way of profit and this is a big profit engine now for companies they're going to want to just compete with each other I mean there are people like Ray Kurzweil\n\nwho doesn't think it's a problem at all uh actually Ray kurzweil's prediction for artificial super intelligence uh is 2029.\n\nhe's not far wrong right but he doesn't think it's a problem whereas people like you and Bill Gates and Stephen Hawking thought think it's a problem um yeah it depends if some people want to live forever or for a much longer period of time and they see AI as the only way to or digital super intelligence is as the only thing that can figure out how to get them to live forever I think Kurzweil is in that category so he would prefer to have ai artificial general intelligence than than not uh because it can figure out longevity so are you are you optimistic I read in your Rolling Stone article back in the day that you said you can never be happy unless you're in love well you can be half happy I suppose I mean this I mean there's two things I think if to\n\nbe to be full to be to be most happy if you're happy in love and and you love your work then then you'll be I think fully happy if you lack either of those two if you have one of those two things be half happy you know roughly I feel like the theme in a lot of your works that connect all these different things is connecting like you want to connect things you know you want to connect on the hyperloop and you want to connect this to Mars and even to connect four people in that game what uh Connect Four you know [Laughter] this is a comedy right you know it's hard for you because when you bought Twitter you're kind of doing what you did when you took over when you started Tesla you lived at the factory right I feel like that's your that's your your your\n\npattern you get into this thing and then you got to live at the factory to make it work if you've been back in you moved to Texas then you went back up to San Francisco because of Twitter I just I was living in the in the library of Twitter for a while um yes but it's I think things are reasonably stabilized right now it was uh just on the fast track to bankruptcy after that position so I had to take a drastic action there wasn't any choice I'm just saying it's hard for a woman yeah to like when the guy lives at the factory yes that could be that could be a stumbling block but yes but um overall with you know my my concern with Twitter was to that it is somewhat of the digital Town Square and um it's it's important that there be both the reality uh and\n\nperception of of trust uh for a wide range of viewpoints um and uh there was a lot of censorship going on um and we've we sort of uncovered a lot of that with uh the Twitter files including a lot of of government-driven censorship which you know it's it's I mean it seems that that's got to be a constitutional violation of what was going on there but um so so and I can since I'm like I have a Twitter user I could detect that like something's not right here um and so that's that's really why uh I did that position it wasn't because I thought this was an easy way to make money or something like that it was a man this is being mayor Twitter town tweetown or whatever is is is definitely like there's a lot of arrows pointed at you like flying at you of course\n\nbut you know but you seem to handle that okay I hope you do because yeah look I mean Geniuses are going to be a little quirky sometimes but your heart is always in the right place you were trying to fix this world and look I could talk to you forever we can't today I'd love to get high with you I know a great place I can't tell you how much I appreciate you I know you have a lot of choices and places you can go thank you Elon Musk ladies and gentlemen all right I'll see you soon","textByLang":{"en":"my first guest is the man who made electric cars a thing and is currently working on perfecting reusable Rockets space travel connecting the human brain directly to computers connecting cities with electromagnetic bullet trains the Starling satellite system that's so important to the war in Ukraine and then on Tuesday on traffic he also tweets a lot Elon Musk wow [Music] what did I get the full order of things that you do in a day there when I was reading there I left out the tunnel thing at the end um do you work on all these a lot of jobs do you do all these things every day do you work on all of them in a single day no no but I do have I do have a long work day um yeah so I work a lot I'm so thrilled you're here because you know we do a show where\n\nwe talk about what changes happen in the world and but we just talk there's a very few people who actually make change happen you are one of those people probably um you know I just want to say I just want to say I love this audience [Applause] well you're a likable guy I mean thanks I mean they attack you a lot they do yeah [Laughter] and you seem to laugh it off which I think is fantastic I love it that you have a sense of humor because a guy as important as you who makes changes could use your powers for evil and not good the fact that absolutely you could of course I would yeah never use them for equal deaths no I know but but the way I know that is because you have a sense of humor uh yeah you really do yeah you like laughing you like to be funny\n\nI kill me right [Applause] as opposed to somebody like Zuckerberg who I'm not even sure is a real boy yeah um yeah I I actually love comedy and and uh actually you know like um many years ago actually was in the audience here and watched your show oh really been a long time admirer of your show oh well thank you I let me get back to you being ingenious okay but that has always been my view is that as I was a history major and when you study history what you realize is that you know there's the great man Theory and they talk about Kings and princes and queens and presidents it's really the people in Tech who change the world they're the people who deal the cards at whether it's fire or electricity for good or bad or the cotton gin or the iPhone or the\n\natom bomb those are the cards and the rest of us just play it would you agree with that assessment I think I think technology is the thing that causes these big step changes in in Civilization so obviously you've got things like say the Gutenberg Press um before which uh right it was very difficult to get books they were very rare even if you had a thirst for knowledge you really couldn't do anything about it um because there were very few books to read so uh and the the internet is something beyond beyond the bug price I think but you know it's it's a like when I first saw the internet uh coming into being in a way that that the general public could use it it felt like the what the the humanity as a whole was uh developing a nervous system so previously\n\nuh the way the information would travel would be by osmosis one person to another or one person calling another um but uh you did the access to information was very limited now with the Internet it's like having a nervous system it's like any part of of humanity has access to almost all the information of humanity hmm like you could be in the in the middle of the Amazon jungle uh whether it's a starling terminal and have access to more information uh than the president did in 1980.\n\nright well anything on your phone everything is yeah okay so so you are one of these dealers these people who deal the cards and I feel some memes too quickly so I think a lot of people thought when you bought Twitter that this is kind of an outlier like how does this what doesn't fit with these other things you're doing I never thought that because I think you're dealing with big civilizational issues and problems and I was right on your page I think Twitter is one of them I mean you have talked about this at woke mind virus yes and really apocalyptic terms yeah I don't you should explain why you don't think it's hyperbole to say things like it's pushing civilization towards suicide first of all what is the walk mine virus and if we don't deal with this\n\nnothing else can get done tell me why you think that yeah so um I think we need to be very cautious about anything that is anti-meritocratic and anything that is uh that that results in the suppression of a free speech so you know those are two other aspects of the work mind virus that I think are very dangerous uh is that it's often anti-mureaucratic you can't you can't question things uh even the questioning is bad so uh you know you know another way to almost Anonymous would we cancel culture and obviously people try to cancel you many times many times yeah I mean every week yeah from left and right I've had it from both sides yeah and it's interesting people you and I are both like in that little group of people maybe it's a bigger group now yeah\n\nwho who are called conservative who haven't really changed I don't see you think of you as a conservative definitely yeah like I I at least think of myself as a moderate uh you know uh so I mean uh at least that like I've spent a massive amount of My Life Energy building sustainable energy uh you know electric vehicles and and batteries and solar and stuff uh to help save the environment that's that's not that's not a it's not exactly far right now you drew that diagram you drew that diagram once where you're here I I related to that and like the world has changed right I feel the same way I feel like very often wokeness is it's not building on liberalism it's the opposite of liberalism I can mention yes exactly many examples where it's the op including\n\nFree Speech free speech is actually is extremely important and it's bizarre that we've come to this point where um like free speech used to be a left or liberal value and and yet we see uh from you know in quotes left uh a desire to actually censor um and uh that seems crazy I mean I think we should be extremely concerned about anything that uh undermines the First Amendment there's a reason for the First Amendment um the first amendment is because people came from countries where they could not speak freely and and where and we're saying certain things would get you thrown into prison and they were like well we don't want that here and by the way in many parts of the world including possible that people might think are relatively similar to the United\n\nStates the the speech laws are draconian England is quite different I won't name any countries but why are we protecting them they have no first it's very easy to prove libel in England whereas here it's almost England um I wouldn't want to say the wrong thing or uh yes you could be sued easier there I mean there are a lot in in France I think if you deny the Holocaust which I think is abhorrent but I also think it should be part of free speech right you can be thrown into jail okay so this my I I really can't emphasize this enough we must uh uh we must protect free speech and Free Speech only matters it's only relevant when it's someone you don't like saying something in your life because obviously every speech that you like is uh yes that's easy um\n\nso it it's uh and it's the thing about censorship is that sure for those who would Advocate it um just remember at some point that will be turned on you [Applause] so this uh woke mind virus how did it start was it bats was it a yeah escape from a lab I mean what is your assessment of what because it's fairly recent why how did it start and why I was I was trying to figure out where where it's coming from I think it's actually been a long time Brewing um in that it's uh I think it's been going on for a while um it it and um the amount of indoctrination that that's happening in schools and universities is I think far beyond what parents realize um and I only I sort of came to realize this somewhat late um the the experience that we had uh in high school\n\nand college is not the experience that that kids today are having um and and hasn't been for I don't know 10 years maybe 20 years so uh my parents themselves also a big part of the problem they well I I suppose in some cases that parents but but I think like the parents are just generally not aware of what their their kids are being told or what they're not being taught um they're letting the kids think that they're equal I mean yeah let me let me let me give you an example that a Fairmont told me which uh you know his daughters uh go to college and and sorry go to high school in the Bay Area um and um and he he was asking them like well so who are the you know who are the first few presidents of the United States uh that they could name Washington but\n\nand I said what do you know about him well he was a slave owner what else right exactly nothing right like uh okay that's maybe you should know more than that you know yeah yeah that and that that is the world mind virus exactly yeah so exactly it's it's like you know the uh you know slavery is obviously a horrific institution but we should still know more about George Washington than that and by the way one that was practiced all over the world forever since the beginning of time by every race including people of color I'm sorry to tell you that it's huge in the Bible absolutely so the Bible loves it really yes they're quite strict about like you know don't take someone else's slave and that kind of thing right but no one ever says just don't do it they\n\ndon't they don't they don't at no point does it say slavery is bad in the Bible no they do not condemn it at all they just have so so it's um but Twitter is not doing bad right I mean I saw today that Tucker Carlson yeah recently fired you were just on his show and he lost his job so I hope this isn't enough yeah yeah but uh luckily uh the angel of death exactly I'm not the Typhoid Mary of uh talk shows uh his rant yesterday or today on Twitter yesterday or something more than every cable news monologue or something like that is that right well Twitter has a tremendous audience so there's 250 million people that spend an average of half an hour a day on Twitter so it's about 120 to 130 million user hours per day and it's been increasing so um the we didn't\n\ndo anything to be clear we did nothing special whatsoever I learned about it afterwards that he had posted something on Twitter um so it's just the Twitter has a lot of people's attention uh so and it tends to be the people that are uh that read read a lot or or interested in current events um and um generally are pretty influential so but most of the people who tweet are the same people right I mean the people who actually tweet it's mostly just reading it yeah I feel like that's I've read this many times it's a very very small percentage of the people on Twitter and it seems like yeah see here's why I don't tweet anymore because you may be the mayor of tweak town now yeah I'm getting a cap with that and I'm glad and I like it that the mayor likes my\n\njokes but the reason I don't do it anymore is because the mob of Mean Girls is still there and that has not changed I know like it's too easy to get canceled and I don't even know what pisses them off they're so nuts these kids I feel like I'm walking on a roof with a blindfold I could fall off anytime yeah that was the most innocuous thing but it's like you know I said George Washington was a great president oh how dare you yeah yeah exactly had some flows but but how do you fix this instrumental in this Mr Mayor creation of the United States so yeah um well you have to say like what does canceled mean you know uh I mean it's yes people attacking on Twitter that's one thing but frankly that's just going to increase engagement so I would just ignore it\n\nwell that's easy for you because they can't take your job away or any of your main 10 jobs but they could take mine and they did Once by the way yeah so still Affair you know I was like literally canceled yeah I mean like the Show is canceled so you but okay so you were in Congress uh at Congress the other day talking with Chuck Schumer about AI I'm very interested in this because you've been on this for years I've always thought you were right about this I think you're right about almost everything I mean let's have more babies and raise them on Mars I don't get that but okay well uh I just think we should be cautious about civilizational decline with with and we have plummeting growth rates um most places yeah right and also plummeting resources no\n\nno resources will be fine look I'm not suggesting complacency but we do want to move to a sustainable energy economy as quickly as possible but but we're not in any danger of uh resource collapse but lots of people don't have enough food or water we will run out of water they're running they're running out of sand Earth is 70 Water by surface area um but you can't drink that desalination is absurdly Chief why don't we do it then we do it is you have a lot of free time it is done this there is a lot of desalination done okay but there's plenty of water this is not an issue I want to be clear all right so but let's talk about AI because like you were you were on this tip 10 years ago when nobody else was that and I always thought he's right why because\n\nI've seen too many movies everything that happens in movies that happens in real life and yeah you know if you make things that are way smarter than you why wouldn't they become your overlords so what did you say to Chuck Schumer and what are we doing about this I know you want to pause in AI because in the just in the last six months with chat GPT which came from a company you started yes [Laughter] um well I mean A friend of mine has a sort of modification of Occam's razor you know you know instead of the simplest thing being the most likely that like the most ironic outcome is most likely right right yes so um with respect to AI um I just think we should be uh we should have some sort of regulatory oversight so uh you know for anything that is a danger\n\nto the public uh if it's sort of uh aircraft uh cars uh Food and Drug and whatnot we've got some regulatory oversight like a referee essentially and making sure that uh companies don't cut Corners so um I think that since if one agrees that uh AI is a potential risk to the public then there should be some regulatory body that oversees uh what companies are doing so they don't cut corners and potentially do something very dangerous don't do something lay out a scenario for me in the next two five ten years if nothing is done because we're very good at doing nothing especially when it comes in the way of profit and this is a big profit engine now for companies they're going to want to just compete with each other I mean there are people like Ray Kurzweil\n\nwho doesn't think it's a problem at all uh actually Ray kurzweil's prediction for artificial super intelligence uh is 2029.\n\nhe's not far wrong right but he doesn't think it's a problem whereas people like you and Bill Gates and Stephen Hawking thought think it's a problem um yeah it depends if some people want to live forever or for a much longer period of time and they see AI as the only way to or digital super intelligence is as the only thing that can figure out how to get them to live forever I think Kurzweil is in that category so he would prefer to have ai artificial general intelligence than than not uh because it can figure out longevity so are you are you optimistic I read in your Rolling Stone article back in the day that you said you can never be happy unless you're in love well you can be half happy I suppose I mean this I mean there's two things I think if to\n\nbe to be full to be to be most happy if you're happy in love and and you love your work then then you'll be I think fully happy if you lack either of those two if you have one of those two things be half happy you know roughly I feel like the theme in a lot of your works that connect all these different things is connecting like you want to connect things you know you want to connect on the hyperloop and you want to connect this to Mars and even to connect four people in that game what uh Connect Four you know [Laughter] this is a comedy right you know it's hard for you because when you bought Twitter you're kind of doing what you did when you took over when you started Tesla you lived at the factory right I feel like that's your that's your your your\n\npattern you get into this thing and then you got to live at the factory to make it work if you've been back in you moved to Texas then you went back up to San Francisco because of Twitter I just I was living in the in the library of Twitter for a while um yes but it's I think things are reasonably stabilized right now it was uh just on the fast track to bankruptcy after that position so I had to take a drastic action there wasn't any choice I'm just saying it's hard for a woman yeah to like when the guy lives at the factory yes that could be that could be a stumbling block but yes but um overall with you know my my concern with Twitter was to that it is somewhat of the digital Town Square and um it's it's important that there be both the reality uh and\n\nperception of of trust uh for a wide range of viewpoints um and uh there was a lot of censorship going on um and we've we sort of uncovered a lot of that with uh the Twitter files including a lot of of government-driven censorship which you know it's it's I mean it seems that that's got to be a constitutional violation of what was going on there but um so so and I can since I'm like I have a Twitter user I could detect that like something's not right here um and so that's that's really why uh I did that position it wasn't because I thought this was an easy way to make money or something like that it was a man this is being mayor Twitter town tweetown or whatever is is is definitely like there's a lot of arrows pointed at you like flying at you of course\n\nbut you know but you seem to handle that okay I hope you do because yeah look I mean Geniuses are going to be a little quirky sometimes but your heart is always in the right place you were trying to fix this world and look I could talk to you forever we can't today I'd love to get high with you I know a great place I can't tell you how much I appreciate you I know you have a lot of choices and places you can go thank you Elon Musk ladies and gentlemen all right I'll see you soon"},"languages":["en"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oO8w6XcXJUs"},{"id":"tucker-carlson-tonight-part-2-2023-04-18","type":"interview","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xYWT9W3zRfU","title":"Tucker Carlson Tonight — Part 2","titles":{"en":"Tucker Carlson Tonight — Part 2","de":"Tucker Carlson Tonight — Part 2","fr":"Tucker Carlson Tonight — Part 2"},"date":"2023-04-18","summary":"Part two of the Fox News interview on Twitter, free speech and government influence on social media.","text":"do you believe there's a power higher than people yeah I mean I yeah I mean I think there's there's a lot we don't know uh we don't we don't know like like why does reality exist uh why where did it come from um where are the aliens um what questions should we ask that we don't even know ask um so when you say what are the aliens what where are the aliens oh like why don't we see them a lot of people think we see aliens but I I've not seen any evidence of aliens um you know we've got 6,000 satellites in orbit and not once have we had to maneuver around an alien spacecraft uh so um but on this Earth the US military has had to do a lot of maneuvering around objects they can't EXP Point well unidentified fing objects one thing but uh I mean there's always\n\nthere's always a bunch of um classified programs that are underway uh that uh of of new aircraft and new missiles and things so that that are classified even within the military so it's you know only you know the if you have the top secret compartmented clearance would you know about this new program so then you know some pilot sees something fast moving fast and says hey or UFO I'm like yeah that was actually a new reference program but we can't tell you that should but I I I if you can guarantee that the split second I see any evidence of aliens I will immediately post that on the xplatform and it'll probably be number one post of all time that'll be your biggest day for sure um I mean but but to the question of a power beyond people beyond our Consciousness\n\na creator where are you on that well we must we must have come from somewhere um so I guess you know that there must be some Creator or creative force or something that caused our exist existence to come into being what is the nature of that Creator um that I think is UN unknown at least I think it is it is there's to I I I I can't I don't know if a definitive answer to that um so um but it sounds like you're open yes I I'm very open to you know I I I I'm I'm driven by Cur curiosity yes um and uh I'm trying to understand more about the nature of the universe so my my my driving philosophy is uh to understand the meaning of life or or really what questions to ask if the meaning of the life the meaning of life is is is not the right question like as your\n\ndougas Adams made the point in the hit is guide of the Galaxy that the what is the meaning of life is probably not even the right question um so you know famously the in that book the Earth was actually a computer to figure out the question answer to the question what is the meaning of life and then came up with the answer 42 um but then they're like what does that mean and it's like oh that's that's that's answer but the question is the really hard part you'll need a much bigger computer than Earth to figure that one out so so My Philosophy is that we should try to expand the scope and scale of Consciousness we should try to have more humans more thinking uh and um and perhaps there there's an argument even for machine Consciousness um so let me just\n\naddress those in order so the first is you say we need more people and not commit civilizational suicide seem like the US government if you take three steps back is pretty committed to making fewer Americans yeah there's a lot of anti- fertility propaganda a lot actually that seems like their main sort of domestic social policy is convincing you not to have kids what is that um I mean that's certainly part of civilizational suicide um the the the environmental movement in the extreme is fundamentally misanthropic and anti human yes um they start seeing humans as a plague a blight on the surface of the Earth that if that Earth would be this paradise if only the humans weren't here and some people actually have say this explicitly there's there's there's\n\nthe extinctionist society that literally they they the this guy who's the head of the extinctionist society was on the front page of the New York Times quoted as saying there are 8 billion people in the world it would be better if there were none so the people who actually say that explicitly which is is is completely insane he's advocating Holocaust B of humanity um to utter madness he should be condemned for such a statement but he wasn't for some reason uh now most people on the on the sort of uh environmental movement have that implicitly they not they they don't realize that they have that as their optimization but but that is their actions uh head take us towards uh Extinction um so though um a lot of people believe that the Earth can't sustain\n\nthis level of human population which is utterly untrue um it may seem in a crowded City that there are a lot of people but actually if you look down on airplane and you say look down am I over a person at any given point in time when you're an airplane the answer is 99.\n\n9% of the time no like If you flew from LA to New York and say your your drive is to drop a ball on someone and and hit them you would fail you have to drop a lot of balls you have to drop a lot of balls they could be insane so um all of the humans on Earth can fit on one floor in the city of New York yeah the cross-sectional area of of all humans 8 billion humans is small so we we have this uh totally wrong idea that uh the Earth is over overly overpopulated where in fact it is underpopulated how do I mean have you ever heard a politician say anything like that are there how many pro there's there's maybe a few um pro-human politicians out there yeah I mean like um like Victor Oran Georgia Maloney yes we're starting to see pronatalist uh politicians\n\num and hopefully more as time goes by um I think there's a guy that just elected in the Czech Republic who's also Pro natalist um now these have to translate into actual actions that change the birth rate or it doesn't matter so far I've not seen any country Mak a meaningful dent in the both rate what would you do if you were in charge of natalist policy uh first of all I changed the education uh system so that people understand uh that you stop being taught that we're overpopulated this this is completely false um a lot of it comes from this insane misanthropic book that Paul erck wrote the population bomb like 60 years ago yeah I hope he burns in hell that guy seriously um terrible human being tot absolute Miss and Thro um and uh and say just look the\n\nthe Earth can absolutely sustain this population it could we could double trouble of population um there's a professor I was talking to at Oxford um who who's his math says we could 10x the population without destroying the Amazon rainforest or anything terrible so um so I think we should expand the human population and increase the scope and scale of Consciousness so we can better understand uh the nature of this universe this wonderful Universe um and and all the amazing things that exist and and and so so that's one of the things I'd like we need to stop teaching people false propaganda that the Earth is overpopulated um I think we need to uh you know in especially with with the education of woman and man and is is we need to stop scaring woman that\n\nhaving a kid destroys your life this is false you know we terrify girls into saying that if you get pregnant it's your life's over and this is this is what schools teach um now I agree we should not have teenage pregnancies yeah but but but um but actually having a child is one of the most delightful happiness inducing things you could possibly do of course of course um so um there's um there's also uh you know with um hormonal birth control I think uh maybe a lot of women are unaware that hormonal birth control causes depression um and and dramatically increases risk of suicide uh and changes uh their their preferences on who they want to um marry or have kids with uh it it changes their personality um and not do say this on the Box by the way caution\n\nmay change your personality yes if the warnings are uh has significant cause significant risk of depression significant increase in suicide um and will make you want to go out with people that you don't actually like that's actually true by the way I know um I'm not saying that people shouldn't use birth control I think we should just be we shouldn't use I think hormonal birth control is is is making is making a lot of women sad and depressed yes and they don't realize it and they don't realize that's the cause and and that you know there other forms of contraception that could be used and that we should they should just read the just read the label on the box is what I'm saying that was cons what you just said the warning label that was like the most\n\ntaboo thing you could ever say for most of my life was to offer any criticism at all of hormonal birth control look I'm all I'm saying is read the warning label yeah fair but why the pressure not to read the warning label and just why are we giving it to 12-year-olds to regulate their acne right I I think we should give it to 12-year-olds uh like kid kids they don't know what's going on so it's like um now like there you know I think there there are other forms of bir control I think are have fewer negative uh effects um and than hormonal but but that's we should just be aware that that that uh this is not a riskless thing and it it does cause severe mood changes it does dramatically increase risk of suicide and depression um so so just FYI you know just\n\nmake sure you that that that there's full disclosure here and and that you want all those read the warning label is all I'm saying just read you know and and consider maybe other options for both control to any woman list thing just just just read the warning label and consider other options um cuz the the reason the reason you're sad might be the the the birth control the hormonal birth control that is fundamentally changing the hormones in your body in a ways that probably not good for you um and you it I know women where where it they sto taking birth control and their depression immediately disappeared so that's maybe worth a try but then you miss an opportunity maybe it's the birth control then you don't you don't get to go on ssris yeah yeah I think\n\nthe esis are the devil what you don't they I so vehemently agree with you but I I guess I guess once you endorse Trump you can just say it all now right no I I think selective serona rap Inhibitors are uh zombify people um and and change their personality and make them not who they are terrible they're so common yes I I I think we should revisit whether this is this is actually good I disagree with you the sris are like I'm not saying we should that no one should ever be subscribed as sris but giving them out like candy is uh crazy you look at like sort of uh anti-depressant prescriptions in the United States versus other countries and we're like way above everyone else oh yeah I have seen many many times in my life in the news business after a mass shooting\n\nlike school for example yeah someone will say well what meds was the shooter on yeah exactly and immediately be shouted down as a crazy person as a you know Bobby Kennedy level wacko yes who should himself be institutionalized for even raising the question I always wonder like why wouldn't we want to know what meds a m absolutely want to know what meds are on no now sometimes it's it's perhaps they were on because there like some people do I I you know I don't say it's like all one all the other um I me there are there are people that have fundamental chemical imbalances in their brain and if they don't take uh medication to control for example uh paranoid schizophrenia they will have paranoid schizophrenia for sure um and uh and and I know many cases\n\nwhere people stop taking their you know meds and uh and and lost their mind oh yeah uh and uh and then try to try to kill people and stuff like that so it's or themselves well the guy with the axe on Market Street probably should be on meds that guy should we should try it yeah it make you know does he want to ax mot more or less on a given Med uh you know um so so there there are psychiatric medications that I that with where the good outweighs bad I'm not saying that that doesn't exist uh but we overprescribe psychiatric medication in the United States obviously uh far in excessive any other country like you know way more than Canada or Britain or Japan or any China anywhere it's like we're off the charts on on psychiatric uh medication prescriptions\n\nin the US why why don't people raise that point more often I wonder in public I should I'm I'm raising it yeah you are you said that um artificial intelligence machine intelligence um might be a good thing where where are we on AI right now AG right now and what are your views I think at this point it's obvious to everyone that AI is advancing at a very rapid Pace yes um you can see it with the new capabilities that come out every month or every every week sometimes AI at this point can write a better essay than probably 90% maybe 95% of all humans say write an essay on any given subject um AI right now can can beat the vast majority of humans um uh if you say draw an image draw a picture um it can draw like um if you try to say mid mid Journey which\n\nis the Aesthetics of mid Journey are incredible um it will draw it will create incredible images uh that are better than again like 90% of artists it's just objectively the case and it'll do it immediately like 30 seconds later um we're also starting to see uh AI movies so you start seeing you know short films with AI um uh AI Music Creation and the the rate at which we're increasing AI compute is exponential hyperexponential so there's dramatically more AI compute coming on online every every month you know there seems to be roughly I don't know the the amount of AI computer coming online is increasing at like I don't quote roughly 500% a year and like it's like that's likely to continue for several years the and then the sophistication of the uh AI\n\nalgorithms is also improving so we're bringing online a massive amount of AI compute and also improving the efficiency of the computer and and what and like what what the AI software can do so it's it's it's quantitative and qualitative in Improvement um so the you know I I might I think next year we you'll be be able to ask AI so certainly by the end of next year make a short movie about something or you know probably can do at least a 15minute you know show or something like that so yeah it's advancing very rapidly my top concern for AI safety is that we need to have a maximally truth seeking AI this is the most important thing for AI safety in my opinion you know the the central lesson that say Arsy clar was trying to convey in 2001 Space Odyssey was\n\nthat you shouldn't Force AI to lie um so in that book the AI was told to take the astronauts to the monolith but they also could not know about the monolith it resoled that uh quandry by killing them and taking them to the monolith or didn't kill all of them killed most of them that's why H hell would not open the pod bay doors uh very important to have truth seeking AIS now and what what I actually see with the AI that are being developed is that they're being programmed with the work mind virus um so the lying is baked in yes um and we saw this on display very clearly with the release of Google Gemini yes uh where you would ask for a picture of the founding fathers of the United States um and it would show a group of diverse women and you know dressed\n\nin in with sort of 18th century golf pow powdered wigs but from St Lucia yeah I mean like look if I understand if you say like show me a group of people for sure if and it shows a group of divorce women that's totally fine but if you say this if you say this very specifically the the founding follows of the United States which were you know group of white dudes then should show them like and and with and and what they actually look like cuz you've asked for something which is a a fact from history um but it didn't uh it was it was programmed with the work mind virus so so much that it it actually even though it knew the truth it it It produced a lie um now of course then then people really started playing with it and said okay now now show me a group\n\nof fafen ss officers in World War II turns out they were also a griffin divorce woman according to Gemini black Nazi ladies yeah it's it's like wow I didn't realize that you know it's not what I expected um so you know well it's also not what happened it's not what happened so it's just it the AI is is producing a lie um and um and then you know then there like one of the questions that people the people asked was like which is worst uh Global throwing your nulear war or misgendering Caitlyn Jenner and said misgendering Caitlyn Jenner is worse now Caitlyn Jenner kill kills fewer people yeah to Kaden Jenna to her credit I said no please misgender me that is far more preferable than World War Global ther nuclear war we all die but but to have it you know\n\na production release AI say stuff like that is concerning um because if the if let's say this becomes like all powerful and it's and it still has this programming um where misgendering is worse than nuclear war well it could conclude that the way to ensure that there there can never be any misgendering is to eliminate all humans now Pro if like optimization is probability of misgendering is zero no no humans no misgendering problem solved now we're back to Arthur C Clark who's exactly pretty preent yes so that's why I think the most important thing is to have a maximally truth seeking AI That's why I saw it xai and that's our goal with grock um no people will point out cases where grock gets it wrong but we try to correct it as quickly as possible but\n\nmaybe even a bigger problem is that when you make decisions that affect people you want those decisions to be informed by love of people yeah and machines are incapable of love yeah I mean there there they certainly are cap they're capable of you can program a machine to be philanthropic rather than misanthropic yes um but don't don't instincts shape decisions particularly decisions you can't plan for I mean if I ask you you know a question about one of your children every answer you give is going to be shaped by your love for that child and that's why you know that that's what makes us decent parents in the end is that that instinct which is love and if a machine has any power over us without that animating Instinct won't it def by definition hurt us\n\nyeah well whe whether I mean I don't know it we should certainly aspire to program the AI philanthropically not M anthropically yes um and to have like I said we wanted to be truthful and Cur curious and to Foster Humanity into the future um and uh yeah that's what we want obviously is there any way I guess to set limits on the decisions that machines can make that affect human lives and make certain that there's some trigger in the system that inserts a human being into the decision-making process well the look The the reality of what's Happening whether one likes it or not um is that we're building super intelligent AIS hyper like hyper intelligent like intelligent more intelligent than we can comprehend yes um so I'd like this to like let's say you\n\nhave a child that is a Super Genius child that that you know it's going to be much smarter than you then what can you do you you can instill still good values in how you raise that child so even though you know it's going to be far smarter than you um you can make sure it's got good values philanthropic values um good morals you know honest uh you know productive that kind of thing controlling at the end of the day I I don't know if I don't think we'll be able to control it uh so I think the best we can do is make sure it grows up well you've been saying that for a long time I've saying for a long time yes are you still as worried about it as you seem to be two years ago when I asked you about it well I I think that like my guess is like look it's it's\n\nit's 80% likely to be good maybe 90 um so you could look think of the glass as 80% full it's probably going to be it's probably going to be great there's some chance of annihilation and You' say the chance of annihilation is 20% 10 to 20% something like that how concerned is Sam Alman about Annihilation do you think I think in reality is not concerned about it I don't trust open a I mean I you know I started that company as a nonprofit open source yes the open and open AI I named the compy I named the company yeah open AI as an open source um and it is uh now extremely closed source and and Ma and maximizing profit so does risk I don't understand how you actually go from being a an open source nonprofit to a Clos source for maximum profit organization\n\nI'm missing well but Sam got rich didn't he at various points he's claimed not to be getting rich but he's claimed many things that were false um and now apparently he's going to get10 billion a stock or something like that so um I don't trust Sam Alman and I and I don't think we want to have the most powerful AI in the world controlled by someone who is not trustworthy and sorry I just don't I mean but that that seems like a fair concern yeah but but you don't think as someone who knows him and has dealt with him that he is worried about the possibility this could get out of control and hurt people he will say those words but no if AI did if it became clear to the rest of us that it was out of control and posed a threat to humanity would there be any\n\nway to stop it I hope so I mean if you have multiple AIS and ones that are hopefully you have the AIS that are prum be stronger than the AIS that are not Battle of the AIS yeah yeah I mean that that is how it is with say chess these days the the um like the AI chess programs Al are vastly better than any human um in incomprehensibly better meaning like we can't even understand why it made that right why they're so good right we don't even know why it made it'll make a move we don't know why it made the move um so and in fact some of the moves will seem like blunders but then turn out to Checkmate and you know for a while there there was there was some the best human chest players with the best computers could beat just a computer and then it got to the\n\npoint where if you added a human it just made everything worse and then it was just AI it's just computer programs versus computer programs that's that's where things are headed in general what I mean sweet dreams um at what point so I don't know I think we just got to make like I said make sure we instill good values in the AI what's everyone going to do for a living I mean in a benign AI scenario that is probably the biggest challenge is how do you find meaning if AI is better than you at everything that's the benan scenario that's the good news well yeah but I guess you know for a lot of people like the idea of retiring and you know um really are you looking forward to it no not me I I'd like to hope I'd like to think that I I'd like to be do useful\n\nthings um don't you think it's a universal desire it's it's it's not it's not Universal in that there are certainly I know maybe people who prefer to be retired that they prefer to sort of have not have responsibilities and engage in in leisure activities I we and we're on the cusp of of this is it's really a remarkable time to exist um well I'll tell you like one of the ways I I sort of was able to sort of sleep and Rec reconcile myself to um to this is that I I thought well would I prefer to be alive and see the Advent of digital super intelligence or what what prefer to be alive at a different time and not see it and I guess I'm like well I guess I'd prefer to be alive to see if it's going to happen I prefer to be alive to see it happen out of curiosity\n\num and then I was like well let's say you knew for sure it would uh kill everyone would you you you could now now you can shift back in time like I guess I'd want to be near the end of my life or something before that happened but I at at the end of it's like if um if it's going to happen uh and there's nothing you do about it hypothetically would you prefer to see it or not see it and I guess I I guess it's going to happen I prefer to see it rather than not see it yeah but as a man of action why not convince Trump to make you Secretary of Defense and then just nuke AI I I I I I think I I would certainly push for a having some kind of regulatory body that at least has insight into what uh these companies are doing and Can Ring the Alarm Bell even if we\n\ndon't have a regulation or rule so I'm not I'm not someone who wants to get rid of all regulatory agencies or anything I think we' there's the right number of regulations right number of regulators and we've gone we've gone too far just like if you in a football game if you had too many referees on the field it would be weird like you can't throw the pass because we hit a referee exactly then there's too many referees um so uh but but no but if you like it say look at any pro sports game um they all have referees like the teams could decide we're going to have game we're going to not have referees that could be a thing but but every sports game they have refs to make sure that the rules are followed and um and it's it's a better game if if you have well\n\nwe have cops too yeah yeah exactly cops are the referees so uh I think we for for something that is a a danger to the public or potential danger to the public we we have referees we have Regulators you know so um like the FDA and the FAA and you know the various Regulatory Agencies they were they were established because aircraft were falling out of the sky and and some manufacturers were not you know building high quality aircraft they're cutting corners and then people will die um and uh you know for Food and Drugs that so manufacturers were making lowquality drugs and so they that they they're lying to people so saying that something cured them when it killed them um so FDA to you know Regulators to referees to try to uh make you make sure that this\n\nthis uh drug manufactures are truthful now I do think it mostly works I mean I think it's doesn't mean don't need regulatory form we do reform we do but um I don't think we should have no Regulators in AI given that it's potential existential risk a little weird that everything is regulated yeah I mean you said you're being sued by the Department of Justice for not hiring more Asylum Seekers for your high-tech company yeah even though it's IL legal for us to hire s s right so um so they're watching everything regulating everything controlling everything including our thoughts right that's why they're opposed to free speech but they're not meaningfully regulating AI which will eliminate like the purpose for most people's lives and could kill us all it's\n\na little weird yeah I think we should have some why don't we I guess something above nothing right in that range yeah but why don't we I don't know um you know I I all the way back like I like during the Obama presidency um I I I you know i' met with a many times but usually in like group settings um the the one one-on-one meeting I had with aama in the of office I said look the one thing that we really need to do is set up an the beginnings of an AI regulatory agency and it can start with Insight where you don't you don't just come shooting from the hip throwing out regulations you just start with Insight where the the AI regulatory committee uh simply goes into understand what all the companies are doing insight and then proposes rules that all the\n\nAI companies agree to follow just like you know sports teams in the NFL you know you have proposed rules for football that everyone agrees to follow um that make the game better you know so that that's the way to do it um but nothing came of it what did he say when he said that to him I mean he seemed to like kind of agree but but also people didn't realize what what the where AI was headed that at that time you know so AI seemed like some super futuristic yeah for sure sci-fi basically so like I'm telling you this is going to be smarter than the smartest human and um my predictions are coming absolutely true and uh so we need to have some insight here just to make make sure that the companies aren't cutting Corners um doing dangerous things go Google\n\nkind of controlled the the White House at that time and and they they did not want any regulatory well that's it I mean you never see politicians turn down opportunities to become more powerful which is the point of Regulation it makes them more powerful yeah so it sounds like regulatory capture then well yeah um I mean the CIO of the the Ys at the time was ex Google person so um they they put the break on any AI regulation and we still don't have any AI regulation at the federal level I think we should have something above nothing um like I said at least Insight where even even if there's no there's no rule that's being break broken they can at least say hey we we have insight into what this company are doing or that company is doing and we're concerned\n\nthat would be helpful to know yeah instead politically motivated Liars are in charge of the future it seems a little yeah sketchy last question you you really kind of pulled out a lot of stops to help Trump you're on stage yesterday if he gets elected will you continue to help him yeah now absolutely so well we've talked about um kind of a government efficiency commission or the department of government efficiency which is a funny what what sorry I'm just laugh I love it you managed to make it sound a little CTI or government what percentage of Google employees did you can when you got there you mean Twitter rather I B sorry I just you just been talking about Google Twitter yeah yeah um well we we we're about 80% and and and we've we've actually um improved\n\nthe features and functionality of the site more in you the past year and a half than the last I don't know eight years with 20% of the staff so just for I just want to throw that for context so you've talked to Trump about yeah some kind of commission yeah which he's he has mentioned publicly several times uh and he's SP supportive of having some kind of you know government efficiency commission uh call the Department of government efficiency Doge um I kind of like Doge it's more it's more fun um yeah uh and uh well we just take a look at at at all the federal agencies and say do we really need whatever it is 428 federal agencies like there's so many that people never even heard of or and that have overlapping areas of responsibility we should I don't\n\nknow probably we should get I mean there there are more federal agencies than there are years since the establishment of the United States which means that we've created more than one Federal agency per year on average that seems a lot that's a lot that's a lot uh so we should have that's seems crazy I think we should be able to get away with uh 99 agencies I don't know that seems a lot like a lot of agencies it's a lot yeah yeah um two per state that's a lot yeah exactly uh we should have fewer agencies um and uh and they certainly shouldn't have overlapping responsibilities um and and then we need some kind of we just need a review of regulations to say which ones are sensible and which ones are not because if you've got Regulators every year they're\n\ngoing to add more regulations it's just automatic like like they're just output regulations um and and then and there's more laws and regulations every year until basically everything's legal um so we can't get anything done so we need some kind of garbage collection for regulations that don't make sense I think I'm saying very obvious things you're you are saying obvious things yeah so which will be very unpopular things yeah um I'll probably need if if this happens a quite a significant security team um so that cuz cuz someone might literally go postal on me from the post office but in the meantime you've got America pack yeah that is encouraging voting for the next month am I summarizing correctly uh yeah I I me a formed America pack um really support\n\ncore values that I believe in uh which are I think again very obvious Centrist uh positions which is like we in America I think we want safe cities uh secure borders uh sensible spending tell me where I'm going far right here um uh you know we want to uh have the right to self- protection um we we should respect the Constitution and not try to break the Constitution it's therefore reason um and um you know we we should stop lawfare um and I kind of listed these out these are listed on the America Pac website people can go look at the America Pac website it's the americ pac.\n\norg and see if there's anything I disagree with um or perhaps we should modify these goals but I think these are good goals to have they uh they were certainly part of the oh and right to free speech uh you know uh First Amendment um if we don't have free speech we don't have democracy because people cannot make an informed vote those are my controversial views and you know and and look I I I don't think e either party I don't think the Republicans are perfect I don't think obviously right now I more Republican than Democrat but it's not like I think the Republican party is perfect or or it's without issues um but we've got a choice between two candidates and I think on balance it's a no-brainer uh to vote for Trump and if we don't vote for Trump I think\n\nwe are at Ser serious risk of losing our democracy and becoming a onep party state where um there isn't an election anymore there's only a Democratic primary like there is in California","textByLang":{"en":"do you believe there's a power higher than people yeah I mean I yeah I mean I think there's there's a lot we don't know uh we don't we don't know like like why does reality exist uh why where did it come from um where are the aliens um what questions should we ask that we don't even know ask um so when you say what are the aliens what where are the aliens oh like why don't we see them a lot of people think we see aliens but I I've not seen any evidence of aliens um you know we've got 6,000 satellites in orbit and not once have we had to maneuver around an alien spacecraft uh so um but on this Earth the US military has had to do a lot of maneuvering around objects they can't EXP Point well unidentified fing objects one thing but uh I mean there's always\n\nthere's always a bunch of um classified programs that are underway uh that uh of of new aircraft and new missiles and things so that that are classified even within the military so it's you know only you know the if you have the top secret compartmented clearance would you know about this new program so then you know some pilot sees something fast moving fast and says hey or UFO I'm like yeah that was actually a new reference program but we can't tell you that should but I I I if you can guarantee that the split second I see any evidence of aliens I will immediately post that on the xplatform and it'll probably be number one post of all time that'll be your biggest day for sure um I mean but but to the question of a power beyond people beyond our Consciousness\n\na creator where are you on that well we must we must have come from somewhere um so I guess you know that there must be some Creator or creative force or something that caused our exist existence to come into being what is the nature of that Creator um that I think is UN unknown at least I think it is it is there's to I I I I can't I don't know if a definitive answer to that um so um but it sounds like you're open yes I I'm very open to you know I I I I'm I'm driven by Cur curiosity yes um and uh I'm trying to understand more about the nature of the universe so my my my driving philosophy is uh to understand the meaning of life or or really what questions to ask if the meaning of the life the meaning of life is is is not the right question like as your\n\ndougas Adams made the point in the hit is guide of the Galaxy that the what is the meaning of life is probably not even the right question um so you know famously the in that book the Earth was actually a computer to figure out the question answer to the question what is the meaning of life and then came up with the answer 42 um but then they're like what does that mean and it's like oh that's that's that's answer but the question is the really hard part you'll need a much bigger computer than Earth to figure that one out so so My Philosophy is that we should try to expand the scope and scale of Consciousness we should try to have more humans more thinking uh and um and perhaps there there's an argument even for machine Consciousness um so let me just\n\naddress those in order so the first is you say we need more people and not commit civilizational suicide seem like the US government if you take three steps back is pretty committed to making fewer Americans yeah there's a lot of anti- fertility propaganda a lot actually that seems like their main sort of domestic social policy is convincing you not to have kids what is that um I mean that's certainly part of civilizational suicide um the the the environmental movement in the extreme is fundamentally misanthropic and anti human yes um they start seeing humans as a plague a blight on the surface of the Earth that if that Earth would be this paradise if only the humans weren't here and some people actually have say this explicitly there's there's there's\n\nthe extinctionist society that literally they they the this guy who's the head of the extinctionist society was on the front page of the New York Times quoted as saying there are 8 billion people in the world it would be better if there were none so the people who actually say that explicitly which is is is completely insane he's advocating Holocaust B of humanity um to utter madness he should be condemned for such a statement but he wasn't for some reason uh now most people on the on the sort of uh environmental movement have that implicitly they not they they don't realize that they have that as their optimization but but that is their actions uh head take us towards uh Extinction um so though um a lot of people believe that the Earth can't sustain\n\nthis level of human population which is utterly untrue um it may seem in a crowded City that there are a lot of people but actually if you look down on airplane and you say look down am I over a person at any given point in time when you're an airplane the answer is 99.\n\n9% of the time no like If you flew from LA to New York and say your your drive is to drop a ball on someone and and hit them you would fail you have to drop a lot of balls you have to drop a lot of balls they could be insane so um all of the humans on Earth can fit on one floor in the city of New York yeah the cross-sectional area of of all humans 8 billion humans is small so we we have this uh totally wrong idea that uh the Earth is over overly overpopulated where in fact it is underpopulated how do I mean have you ever heard a politician say anything like that are there how many pro there's there's maybe a few um pro-human politicians out there yeah I mean like um like Victor Oran Georgia Maloney yes we're starting to see pronatalist uh politicians\n\num and hopefully more as time goes by um I think there's a guy that just elected in the Czech Republic who's also Pro natalist um now these have to translate into actual actions that change the birth rate or it doesn't matter so far I've not seen any country Mak a meaningful dent in the both rate what would you do if you were in charge of natalist policy uh first of all I changed the education uh system so that people understand uh that you stop being taught that we're overpopulated this this is completely false um a lot of it comes from this insane misanthropic book that Paul erck wrote the population bomb like 60 years ago yeah I hope he burns in hell that guy seriously um terrible human being tot absolute Miss and Thro um and uh and say just look the\n\nthe Earth can absolutely sustain this population it could we could double trouble of population um there's a professor I was talking to at Oxford um who who's his math says we could 10x the population without destroying the Amazon rainforest or anything terrible so um so I think we should expand the human population and increase the scope and scale of Consciousness so we can better understand uh the nature of this universe this wonderful Universe um and and all the amazing things that exist and and and so so that's one of the things I'd like we need to stop teaching people false propaganda that the Earth is overpopulated um I think we need to uh you know in especially with with the education of woman and man and is is we need to stop scaring woman that\n\nhaving a kid destroys your life this is false you know we terrify girls into saying that if you get pregnant it's your life's over and this is this is what schools teach um now I agree we should not have teenage pregnancies yeah but but but um but actually having a child is one of the most delightful happiness inducing things you could possibly do of course of course um so um there's um there's also uh you know with um hormonal birth control I think uh maybe a lot of women are unaware that hormonal birth control causes depression um and and dramatically increases risk of suicide uh and changes uh their their preferences on who they want to um marry or have kids with uh it it changes their personality um and not do say this on the Box by the way caution\n\nmay change your personality yes if the warnings are uh has significant cause significant risk of depression significant increase in suicide um and will make you want to go out with people that you don't actually like that's actually true by the way I know um I'm not saying that people shouldn't use birth control I think we should just be we shouldn't use I think hormonal birth control is is is making is making a lot of women sad and depressed yes and they don't realize it and they don't realize that's the cause and and that you know there other forms of contraception that could be used and that we should they should just read the just read the label on the box is what I'm saying that was cons what you just said the warning label that was like the most\n\ntaboo thing you could ever say for most of my life was to offer any criticism at all of hormonal birth control look I'm all I'm saying is read the warning label yeah fair but why the pressure not to read the warning label and just why are we giving it to 12-year-olds to regulate their acne right I I think we should give it to 12-year-olds uh like kid kids they don't know what's going on so it's like um now like there you know I think there there are other forms of bir control I think are have fewer negative uh effects um and than hormonal but but that's we should just be aware that that that uh this is not a riskless thing and it it does cause severe mood changes it does dramatically increase risk of suicide and depression um so so just FYI you know just\n\nmake sure you that that that there's full disclosure here and and that you want all those read the warning label is all I'm saying just read you know and and consider maybe other options for both control to any woman list thing just just just read the warning label and consider other options um cuz the the reason the reason you're sad might be the the the birth control the hormonal birth control that is fundamentally changing the hormones in your body in a ways that probably not good for you um and you it I know women where where it they sto taking birth control and their depression immediately disappeared so that's maybe worth a try but then you miss an opportunity maybe it's the birth control then you don't you don't get to go on ssris yeah yeah I think\n\nthe esis are the devil what you don't they I so vehemently agree with you but I I guess I guess once you endorse Trump you can just say it all now right no I I think selective serona rap Inhibitors are uh zombify people um and and change their personality and make them not who they are terrible they're so common yes I I I think we should revisit whether this is this is actually good I disagree with you the sris are like I'm not saying we should that no one should ever be subscribed as sris but giving them out like candy is uh crazy you look at like sort of uh anti-depressant prescriptions in the United States versus other countries and we're like way above everyone else oh yeah I have seen many many times in my life in the news business after a mass shooting\n\nlike school for example yeah someone will say well what meds was the shooter on yeah exactly and immediately be shouted down as a crazy person as a you know Bobby Kennedy level wacko yes who should himself be institutionalized for even raising the question I always wonder like why wouldn't we want to know what meds a m absolutely want to know what meds are on no now sometimes it's it's perhaps they were on because there like some people do I I you know I don't say it's like all one all the other um I me there are there are people that have fundamental chemical imbalances in their brain and if they don't take uh medication to control for example uh paranoid schizophrenia they will have paranoid schizophrenia for sure um and uh and and I know many cases\n\nwhere people stop taking their you know meds and uh and and lost their mind oh yeah uh and uh and then try to try to kill people and stuff like that so it's or themselves well the guy with the axe on Market Street probably should be on meds that guy should we should try it yeah it make you know does he want to ax mot more or less on a given Med uh you know um so so there there are psychiatric medications that I that with where the good outweighs bad I'm not saying that that doesn't exist uh but we overprescribe psychiatric medication in the United States obviously uh far in excessive any other country like you know way more than Canada or Britain or Japan or any China anywhere it's like we're off the charts on on psychiatric uh medication prescriptions\n\nin the US why why don't people raise that point more often I wonder in public I should I'm I'm raising it yeah you are you said that um artificial intelligence machine intelligence um might be a good thing where where are we on AI right now AG right now and what are your views I think at this point it's obvious to everyone that AI is advancing at a very rapid Pace yes um you can see it with the new capabilities that come out every month or every every week sometimes AI at this point can write a better essay than probably 90% maybe 95% of all humans say write an essay on any given subject um AI right now can can beat the vast majority of humans um uh if you say draw an image draw a picture um it can draw like um if you try to say mid mid Journey which\n\nis the Aesthetics of mid Journey are incredible um it will draw it will create incredible images uh that are better than again like 90% of artists it's just objectively the case and it'll do it immediately like 30 seconds later um we're also starting to see uh AI movies so you start seeing you know short films with AI um uh AI Music Creation and the the rate at which we're increasing AI compute is exponential hyperexponential so there's dramatically more AI compute coming on online every every month you know there seems to be roughly I don't know the the amount of AI computer coming online is increasing at like I don't quote roughly 500% a year and like it's like that's likely to continue for several years the and then the sophistication of the uh AI\n\nalgorithms is also improving so we're bringing online a massive amount of AI compute and also improving the efficiency of the computer and and what and like what what the AI software can do so it's it's it's quantitative and qualitative in Improvement um so the you know I I might I think next year we you'll be be able to ask AI so certainly by the end of next year make a short movie about something or you know probably can do at least a 15minute you know show or something like that so yeah it's advancing very rapidly my top concern for AI safety is that we need to have a maximally truth seeking AI this is the most important thing for AI safety in my opinion you know the the central lesson that say Arsy clar was trying to convey in 2001 Space Odyssey was\n\nthat you shouldn't Force AI to lie um so in that book the AI was told to take the astronauts to the monolith but they also could not know about the monolith it resoled that uh quandry by killing them and taking them to the monolith or didn't kill all of them killed most of them that's why H hell would not open the pod bay doors uh very important to have truth seeking AIS now and what what I actually see with the AI that are being developed is that they're being programmed with the work mind virus um so the lying is baked in yes um and we saw this on display very clearly with the release of Google Gemini yes uh where you would ask for a picture of the founding fathers of the United States um and it would show a group of diverse women and you know dressed\n\nin in with sort of 18th century golf pow powdered wigs but from St Lucia yeah I mean like look if I understand if you say like show me a group of people for sure if and it shows a group of divorce women that's totally fine but if you say this if you say this very specifically the the founding follows of the United States which were you know group of white dudes then should show them like and and with and and what they actually look like cuz you've asked for something which is a a fact from history um but it didn't uh it was it was programmed with the work mind virus so so much that it it actually even though it knew the truth it it It produced a lie um now of course then then people really started playing with it and said okay now now show me a group\n\nof fafen ss officers in World War II turns out they were also a griffin divorce woman according to Gemini black Nazi ladies yeah it's it's like wow I didn't realize that you know it's not what I expected um so you know well it's also not what happened it's not what happened so it's just it the AI is is producing a lie um and um and then you know then there like one of the questions that people the people asked was like which is worst uh Global throwing your nulear war or misgendering Caitlyn Jenner and said misgendering Caitlyn Jenner is worse now Caitlyn Jenner kill kills fewer people yeah to Kaden Jenna to her credit I said no please misgender me that is far more preferable than World War Global ther nuclear war we all die but but to have it you know\n\na production release AI say stuff like that is concerning um because if the if let's say this becomes like all powerful and it's and it still has this programming um where misgendering is worse than nuclear war well it could conclude that the way to ensure that there there can never be any misgendering is to eliminate all humans now Pro if like optimization is probability of misgendering is zero no no humans no misgendering problem solved now we're back to Arthur C Clark who's exactly pretty preent yes so that's why I think the most important thing is to have a maximally truth seeking AI That's why I saw it xai and that's our goal with grock um no people will point out cases where grock gets it wrong but we try to correct it as quickly as possible but\n\nmaybe even a bigger problem is that when you make decisions that affect people you want those decisions to be informed by love of people yeah and machines are incapable of love yeah I mean there there they certainly are cap they're capable of you can program a machine to be philanthropic rather than misanthropic yes um but don't don't instincts shape decisions particularly decisions you can't plan for I mean if I ask you you know a question about one of your children every answer you give is going to be shaped by your love for that child and that's why you know that that's what makes us decent parents in the end is that that instinct which is love and if a machine has any power over us without that animating Instinct won't it def by definition hurt us\n\nyeah well whe whether I mean I don't know it we should certainly aspire to program the AI philanthropically not M anthropically yes um and to have like I said we wanted to be truthful and Cur curious and to Foster Humanity into the future um and uh yeah that's what we want obviously is there any way I guess to set limits on the decisions that machines can make that affect human lives and make certain that there's some trigger in the system that inserts a human being into the decision-making process well the look The the reality of what's Happening whether one likes it or not um is that we're building super intelligent AIS hyper like hyper intelligent like intelligent more intelligent than we can comprehend yes um so I'd like this to like let's say you\n\nhave a child that is a Super Genius child that that you know it's going to be much smarter than you then what can you do you you can instill still good values in how you raise that child so even though you know it's going to be far smarter than you um you can make sure it's got good values philanthropic values um good morals you know honest uh you know productive that kind of thing controlling at the end of the day I I don't know if I don't think we'll be able to control it uh so I think the best we can do is make sure it grows up well you've been saying that for a long time I've saying for a long time yes are you still as worried about it as you seem to be two years ago when I asked you about it well I I think that like my guess is like look it's it's\n\nit's 80% likely to be good maybe 90 um so you could look think of the glass as 80% full it's probably going to be it's probably going to be great there's some chance of annihilation and You' say the chance of annihilation is 20% 10 to 20% something like that how concerned is Sam Alman about Annihilation do you think I think in reality is not concerned about it I don't trust open a I mean I you know I started that company as a nonprofit open source yes the open and open AI I named the compy I named the company yeah open AI as an open source um and it is uh now extremely closed source and and Ma and maximizing profit so does risk I don't understand how you actually go from being a an open source nonprofit to a Clos source for maximum profit organization\n\nI'm missing well but Sam got rich didn't he at various points he's claimed not to be getting rich but he's claimed many things that were false um and now apparently he's going to get10 billion a stock or something like that so um I don't trust Sam Alman and I and I don't think we want to have the most powerful AI in the world controlled by someone who is not trustworthy and sorry I just don't I mean but that that seems like a fair concern yeah but but you don't think as someone who knows him and has dealt with him that he is worried about the possibility this could get out of control and hurt people he will say those words but no if AI did if it became clear to the rest of us that it was out of control and posed a threat to humanity would there be any\n\nway to stop it I hope so I mean if you have multiple AIS and ones that are hopefully you have the AIS that are prum be stronger than the AIS that are not Battle of the AIS yeah yeah I mean that that is how it is with say chess these days the the um like the AI chess programs Al are vastly better than any human um in incomprehensibly better meaning like we can't even understand why it made that right why they're so good right we don't even know why it made it'll make a move we don't know why it made the move um so and in fact some of the moves will seem like blunders but then turn out to Checkmate and you know for a while there there was there was some the best human chest players with the best computers could beat just a computer and then it got to the\n\npoint where if you added a human it just made everything worse and then it was just AI it's just computer programs versus computer programs that's that's where things are headed in general what I mean sweet dreams um at what point so I don't know I think we just got to make like I said make sure we instill good values in the AI what's everyone going to do for a living I mean in a benign AI scenario that is probably the biggest challenge is how do you find meaning if AI is better than you at everything that's the benan scenario that's the good news well yeah but I guess you know for a lot of people like the idea of retiring and you know um really are you looking forward to it no not me I I'd like to hope I'd like to think that I I'd like to be do useful\n\nthings um don't you think it's a universal desire it's it's it's not it's not Universal in that there are certainly I know maybe people who prefer to be retired that they prefer to sort of have not have responsibilities and engage in in leisure activities I we and we're on the cusp of of this is it's really a remarkable time to exist um well I'll tell you like one of the ways I I sort of was able to sort of sleep and Rec reconcile myself to um to this is that I I thought well would I prefer to be alive and see the Advent of digital super intelligence or what what prefer to be alive at a different time and not see it and I guess I'm like well I guess I'd prefer to be alive to see if it's going to happen I prefer to be alive to see it happen out of curiosity\n\num and then I was like well let's say you knew for sure it would uh kill everyone would you you you could now now you can shift back in time like I guess I'd want to be near the end of my life or something before that happened but I at at the end of it's like if um if it's going to happen uh and there's nothing you do about it hypothetically would you prefer to see it or not see it and I guess I I guess it's going to happen I prefer to see it rather than not see it yeah but as a man of action why not convince Trump to make you Secretary of Defense and then just nuke AI I I I I I think I I would certainly push for a having some kind of regulatory body that at least has insight into what uh these companies are doing and Can Ring the Alarm Bell even if we\n\ndon't have a regulation or rule so I'm not I'm not someone who wants to get rid of all regulatory agencies or anything I think we' there's the right number of regulations right number of regulators and we've gone we've gone too far just like if you in a football game if you had too many referees on the field it would be weird like you can't throw the pass because we hit a referee exactly then there's too many referees um so uh but but no but if you like it say look at any pro sports game um they all have referees like the teams could decide we're going to have game we're going to not have referees that could be a thing but but every sports game they have refs to make sure that the rules are followed and um and it's it's a better game if if you have well\n\nwe have cops too yeah yeah exactly cops are the referees so uh I think we for for something that is a a danger to the public or potential danger to the public we we have referees we have Regulators you know so um like the FDA and the FAA and you know the various Regulatory Agencies they were they were established because aircraft were falling out of the sky and and some manufacturers were not you know building high quality aircraft they're cutting corners and then people will die um and uh you know for Food and Drugs that so manufacturers were making lowquality drugs and so they that they they're lying to people so saying that something cured them when it killed them um so FDA to you know Regulators to referees to try to uh make you make sure that this\n\nthis uh drug manufactures are truthful now I do think it mostly works I mean I think it's doesn't mean don't need regulatory form we do reform we do but um I don't think we should have no Regulators in AI given that it's potential existential risk a little weird that everything is regulated yeah I mean you said you're being sued by the Department of Justice for not hiring more Asylum Seekers for your high-tech company yeah even though it's IL legal for us to hire s s right so um so they're watching everything regulating everything controlling everything including our thoughts right that's why they're opposed to free speech but they're not meaningfully regulating AI which will eliminate like the purpose for most people's lives and could kill us all it's\n\na little weird yeah I think we should have some why don't we I guess something above nothing right in that range yeah but why don't we I don't know um you know I I all the way back like I like during the Obama presidency um I I I you know i' met with a many times but usually in like group settings um the the one one-on-one meeting I had with aama in the of office I said look the one thing that we really need to do is set up an the beginnings of an AI regulatory agency and it can start with Insight where you don't you don't just come shooting from the hip throwing out regulations you just start with Insight where the the AI regulatory committee uh simply goes into understand what all the companies are doing insight and then proposes rules that all the\n\nAI companies agree to follow just like you know sports teams in the NFL you know you have proposed rules for football that everyone agrees to follow um that make the game better you know so that that's the way to do it um but nothing came of it what did he say when he said that to him I mean he seemed to like kind of agree but but also people didn't realize what what the where AI was headed that at that time you know so AI seemed like some super futuristic yeah for sure sci-fi basically so like I'm telling you this is going to be smarter than the smartest human and um my predictions are coming absolutely true and uh so we need to have some insight here just to make make sure that the companies aren't cutting Corners um doing dangerous things go Google\n\nkind of controlled the the White House at that time and and they they did not want any regulatory well that's it I mean you never see politicians turn down opportunities to become more powerful which is the point of Regulation it makes them more powerful yeah so it sounds like regulatory capture then well yeah um I mean the CIO of the the Ys at the time was ex Google person so um they they put the break on any AI regulation and we still don't have any AI regulation at the federal level I think we should have something above nothing um like I said at least Insight where even even if there's no there's no rule that's being break broken they can at least say hey we we have insight into what this company are doing or that company is doing and we're concerned\n\nthat would be helpful to know yeah instead politically motivated Liars are in charge of the future it seems a little yeah sketchy last question you you really kind of pulled out a lot of stops to help Trump you're on stage yesterday if he gets elected will you continue to help him yeah now absolutely so well we've talked about um kind of a government efficiency commission or the department of government efficiency which is a funny what what sorry I'm just laugh I love it you managed to make it sound a little CTI or government what percentage of Google employees did you can when you got there you mean Twitter rather I B sorry I just you just been talking about Google Twitter yeah yeah um well we we we're about 80% and and and we've we've actually um improved\n\nthe features and functionality of the site more in you the past year and a half than the last I don't know eight years with 20% of the staff so just for I just want to throw that for context so you've talked to Trump about yeah some kind of commission yeah which he's he has mentioned publicly several times uh and he's SP supportive of having some kind of you know government efficiency commission uh call the Department of government efficiency Doge um I kind of like Doge it's more it's more fun um yeah uh and uh well we just take a look at at at all the federal agencies and say do we really need whatever it is 428 federal agencies like there's so many that people never even heard of or and that have overlapping areas of responsibility we should I don't\n\nknow probably we should get I mean there there are more federal agencies than there are years since the establishment of the United States which means that we've created more than one Federal agency per year on average that seems a lot that's a lot that's a lot uh so we should have that's seems crazy I think we should be able to get away with uh 99 agencies I don't know that seems a lot like a lot of agencies it's a lot yeah yeah um two per state that's a lot yeah exactly uh we should have fewer agencies um and uh and they certainly shouldn't have overlapping responsibilities um and and then we need some kind of we just need a review of regulations to say which ones are sensible and which ones are not because if you've got Regulators every year they're\n\ngoing to add more regulations it's just automatic like like they're just output regulations um and and then and there's more laws and regulations every year until basically everything's legal um so we can't get anything done so we need some kind of garbage collection for regulations that don't make sense I think I'm saying very obvious things you're you are saying obvious things yeah so which will be very unpopular things yeah um I'll probably need if if this happens a quite a significant security team um so that cuz cuz someone might literally go postal on me from the post office but in the meantime you've got America pack yeah that is encouraging voting for the next month am I summarizing correctly uh yeah I I me a formed America pack um really support\n\ncore values that I believe in uh which are I think again very obvious Centrist uh positions which is like we in America I think we want safe cities uh secure borders uh sensible spending tell me where I'm going far right here um uh you know we want to uh have the right to self- protection um we we should respect the Constitution and not try to break the Constitution it's therefore reason um and um you know we we should stop lawfare um and I kind of listed these out these are listed on the America Pac website people can go look at the America Pac website it's the americ pac.\n\norg and see if there's anything I disagree with um or perhaps we should modify these goals but I think these are good goals to have they uh they were certainly part of the oh and right to free speech uh you know uh First Amendment um if we don't have free speech we don't have democracy because people cannot make an informed vote those are my controversial views and you know and and look I I I don't think e either party I don't think the Republicans are perfect I don't think obviously right now I more Republican than Democrat but it's not like I think the Republican party is perfect or or it's without issues um but we've got a choice between two candidates and I think on balance it's a no-brainer uh to vote for Trump and if we don't vote for Trump I think\n\nwe are at Ser serious risk of losing our democracy and becoming a onep party state where um there isn't an election anymore there's only a Democratic primary like there is in California"},"languages":["en"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xYWT9W3zRfU"},{"id":"tucker-carlson-tonight-part-1-2023-04-17","type":"interview","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TrsefCVoi98","title":"Tucker Carlson Tonight — Part 1","titles":{"en":"Tucker Carlson Tonight — Part 1","de":"Tucker Carlson Tonight — Part 1","fr":"Tucker Carlson Tonight — Part 1"},"date":"2023-04-17","summary":"Part one of the Fox News interview covering the dangers of AI and Musk's plans for a 'TruthGPT'.","text":"if he loses man [Laughter] what it does seem that way you can't just be like you can't just be like yeah I'm like how how long do you think my prison sentence is going to be do you think well I see my children I don't know cuz it's not like you can say well yeah I maxed out to him but you know I get you no [Laughter] deniability no no and I've been trashing compa nonstop oh I know well not I'm the Kamala puppet I call her you know the the the machine that the Cala puppet represents yeah she's irrelevant I mean she's not even no no like like I made I made a joke which I realized I deleted um which is like nobody's even bothering to try to kill Kamala cuz it's pointless what do you achieve nothing another puppet exact that's it's no point you actually put\n\nthat up yeah now some people interpreted it as I was as as though I was calling for people to to assassinate her but but but I was like but I was like no we even you know you know like doesn't it seem strange that no one's even bothered to try it's not worth it I mean there's an endless supply yeah like nobody would it's absurd it could be anybody yeah yeah you nobody's going to try to nobody tries toass a puppet of course not um a marionette yeah a marionette it's just like you know it's hilarious she's safe like I I like they're try to kill Trump twice with actual guns and bullets um oh yeah he shut in the air right in [ __ ] but Butler where I was and uh he doesn't seem rattled it's weird does he do you he doesn't seem what rattled uh he I mean he\n\nthe constitution of an ox it seems um you know it's not like working out and eating health [Laughter] and he's okay we got to tape this oh yeah we're good oh good yeah so so he's not like let me eat another salad that's not no or or work out you you know fastidiously that's he he I feel like he doesn't work out and he eats you know cheeseburgers and D Coke and stuff and it just I think it just inherently has a strong Constitution so and you I mean you were just with him he didn't seem like a man who'd been the subject of two assassination attempts no he seemed uh of you know sound mind and body and uh strong backbone did you um I mean that's what I said in the thing and the remarks I made there were impromptu there's no teleprompt or anything I just I\n\nwas just I was speaking extemporaneously are you the only rich guy who does have like a media consultant I media consultant yeah no I've noticed obviously yeah yeah I I mean no I I just um no I just thought about what what what I want to say and I just spoke with the cuff uh no tprp or nothing good for you yeah I could talk just look like I'm like like now I'm just talking look at me wow amazing can you believe it I can talk without a tpr that's crazy but if if he loses it's going to be hard for you to pretend you never supported him [Laughter] all in all in in the deep end yeah no you are definitely in the deep end you cannot touch bottom no no I'm I'm like I'm like rolling around I'm like a pig and mud I'm like it's all in baby is it fun yeah it's pretty\n\nfun how I mean I mean there may be some in the hopefully unlikely event that he loses there may be some Vengeance uh on me were you kidding I I mean it's possible it's possible you've got to be one of the biggest government contractors we do essential work for the government yes yeah it's not like you know uh we we do useful essential work right um that we compete for and win contracts on because our product is much better and costs less that that's why we get govern and and and I mean if you take for example the the um the NASA contract to transport astronauts to in fromont the space station uh Boeing got NASA Ed two contracts at the start uh one to Boeing and one to SpaceX Boeing was awarded twice as much as SpaceX SpaceX has done all the astronord\n\ntransport uh from the space station and and Boeing has only done one one transport of one of two as to the space station and we had to bring them back B got twice as much as space there there's this total misunderstanding that that my companies have been subsidized and supported by the government and get all these and and it's like do you do you really think that a Biden Administration is going to subsidize me probably not are you kidding no in fact uh they take away every contract they possibly can uh so there for example there was the FC the the FCC contract to uh $42 billion for uh providing providing rural rural Bo Broadband yes okay uh we we actually first said look we don't we think there shouldn't be any subsidies so we recommend this that this\n\nprogram just not exist um but since you're insisting that it ex that it exists we will compete um and we we have better product so we we we won I don't know about a quarter of it um which would have included the devastated areas like North Carolina and stff and um the FCC took it away illegally they just voted three out of five Commissioners voted away and said even though you want it we're we're we're sending it on what ground and do you know how many people they' have connected how many zero so you think that was political well the three Democrats voted against and the two Republicans voted for it so you tried to get starlink you tried to get starlink into North Carolina into Western North Carolina the area is devastated by the hurricane we have got\n\nit it is it is in there and it is the primary means of communication in devastated areas you had conflict with Buddha judge over this well I I I raised a cons I said look we're we we had delivered we've been delivering stalling terminals there for a while and obviously some people already had them um since they just you know consum private individuals had Starling there already um we delivered uh um really thousands of terminals U and and got all the way up to the you know the areas where they wouldn't let us go any further and then we're like okay we're going to send helicopters in uh and and and find people who are stranded and and give them Starling terminals which I think is you know a nice thing to do yeah okay the they they wouldn't let us land\n\num because the there was an FAA uh notice to em and notm that said in order to land you have to know who you're going to meet with uh to land now the problem is we're trying to deliver internet communications people don't have internet communications we don't know who they are then they can't reach us because they are don't have communications do you see the cash 22 yes I do Insane so so it's obviously impossible for people who don't have internet communications to let us to to let us know who they are because they don't have the internet yes yes and so um did you explain this to the federal government yes what they say they they they they fixed it how was Buddha judge when you talked to him he was actually good so I want to be just I want to give Buddha\n\njudge some credit here um first a you know when I complained about it he he he reacted in a in a very level-headed way and he reached out to me and he called me yeah uh and we weed discussed the issue got to the bottom of it and he fixed it good so credit to vo judge yeah well and to you for pushing it yeah I mean so but as soon as he was aware of the problem he fixed it well you publicized it too on yeah yeah as soon as you shamed him well but I do want to give credit words too yeah no amen I agree completely so but back to the original question you know about the potential consequences if you know having gone all in this doesn't work yeah um I mean you had to have thought about this long and hard before you did it what was your thinking I mean my view\n\nis is that if Trump doesn't win this election it's the last election we're going to have um that but uh the Democrats the Dem machine um has been uh importing so many PE bringing in so many illegals flying flying in with this like CVP border app thing that nobody even knew about like secret program that's illegal basically it's it's illegal but there's no action by doj to actually to to stop it from happening they're um transporting uh numbers of of illegals to swing States um if you look at the numbers these are the numbers from the government website so like from the Dem Democrat administered government websites like where do you get this data from the government website that is run by democrats um and uh there are triple digit increases in illegals\n\nto all the swing States and in some cases it's like 700% over the last three years now these swing state marins are you know sometimes 10 20,000 votes so what happens if you put you know hundreds of thousands of people into each swing state uh and and and and for the for the if when somebody is granted Asylum they are fast-tracked they they they they get can get a green card and then five years after the Green Card uh they can get they can get citizenship and they can fully legally vote and when they do so they vote overwhelmingly Democrat and the and sometimes I get this rebuttal of like well a lot of them their social values don't align with sort of the far-left sort of work ideology I said that's true but um but that's not their top priority the their\n\ntop priority is getting their friends and family also to the United States uh and the the DS also issue all these programs these sort of handouts essentially that make them beholden to the Democratic party so they vote down that's what happens so my prediction is if there's another four years of AD Dem Administration they will legalize so many uh illegals that are there uh that the next election there won't be any swing States and it's and will be a single party country just like California is a single party State it's a super majority Dam State in California because of immigration yes the California was uh fairly reliably Republican um Bill Clinton lost California 92 and won West yes um so there was a 9 986 amnesty yes um at and and um thereafter California\n\ntrended very strongly Dem and is at this point uh I think 65 70% Dem something like that it's super majority Dem the the California legislature yes is more than two-thirds Dem um has it improved the state no it's it's not um and they they California just passed which is shocking it's hard to believe this even this is even real but California just passed a law making it illegal uh to require vo ID in any election at all in California do you know that no yeah Nome signed it into law last week it's illegal to require an ID in any election even a Town Council and a friend of mine who was this can who lives in paloalto was like is was like is this actually real anywh like vote in like some City Council election he tried to show them his ID and they said we're\n\nnot even allowed to look at your ID have they extended the same actually what's going on right now by the way they're proud of it they're not hiding it it's only voting it's not buying a gun or buying liquor buying pack of cigarettes or flying on an airplane or rening a hotel room it's only voting that it's illegal oh if you try to buy a gun I mean they're going to ID use six ways a Sunday uh yeah they try California's trying to make it basically legal it's own gun um and and the same people that demanded vaccine IDs for if you want to travel or do anything are the same ones who say no voter ID is required is there any reason obviously hypocritical to pass a law like that except to a bet voter um it's it's for it's it's it's so that fraud can never cannot\n\nbe proven so it it enables large scale fraud and no way to prove it because how would you prove it it's literally impossible no no ID you're not even allowed to show your ID it's it's insane well it is insane the the purpose of no vo voter ID is obviously to conduct fraud in elections obviously there can be no other explanation I mean they come up with some nice sounding thing um people don't have IDs could you live in this country without an ID yeah I mean their common rebuttal is like it's racist to require ID and which is insane I think it's actually race racist and patronizing to say that people can't figure out how to get ID obviously but how could live here without an ID I don't think it's even possible yeah you can't do anything you need an ID\n\nfor everything like the list of the things you need ID for is basically everything um except voting so you see the rest of the country it's total [ __ ] obviously obviously yes but that doesn't in any way minimize the aggression or self-righteousness they bring to this conversation yes it's you're a racist if you want that right where where in fact obviously someone is racist if they say that uh people of a particular race cannot get ID that's patronizing and racist that's absurd yes you know it's like when the governor of New York said people in the you know ghetto don't know how to use computers or something like that I mean like you know super out of touch so likeo so there's a really clear template she doesn't know how to use computers but they do\n\nobviously I don't think hoko could use a computer yeah I don't think she she's not qualified intellectually yeah no not but not everyone in New York is as dumb as as Kathy hok I think that's true yeah yeah um so you see the other 49 states becoming California if the machine wins well you don't need uh all all 49 to go that way you just need you know enough to have the election have there not be swing States I mean there are only six Swing Swing States yep so there are only six states out of 50 right now that are in contention so if those six states that are in contention uh by narrow margins are no longer in contention then uh the the only contest will be who wins the Democratic Prim primary that's how it is in California that's how it is New York there\n\nthere's no there's no party uh party versus party situation the only contest is who wins the Democratic Prim primary and as we've seen with the um uh appointment of kamla who no one voted for even in the Democratic primary yes where's the Democracy here which is it's easier though I mean it's just the party Elite just decides who who who is in charge that's that that that that's that's a you know a tiny oligarchy basically comprised of that's not democracy the richest people in the country that's kind of the interesting part to me is that the richest people in the country are on board with this I mean that's what it is it's the it's it's a collection of billion well most of them are yeah but you're not not me and not everyone is I think there's but but\n\nit it it is a a shocking number of soal billionaires are uh in the dam Camp more than are in the Republican Camp oh for sure which is wild so the in fact the astonishing thing in the swing States is that that it's that they even a contest given that uh the the Dems have far more money than the Republicans so so the K Camp dramatically outspends the Trump campaign in the swing States um the uh overwhelming the the media is overwhelmingly pro-democrat so you've got you know the the Press you know is is a a damn cheering Squad um and um you know so oh and then and then you've got Al all all the almost all the Hollywood and entertainment the celebrities also you know endorsing Comm and being proem so so you got so you got the celebrities you got the they\n\ngot the money uh they got um got they basically everything on the side of the DMS the the problem is the underdog here Trump's Underdog in swing Wing States and still it's a contentious it's still a 50/50 after all that what does that tell you it tells me that if if people actually knew what was going on they weren't being fed non-stop propaganda it would be a landslide in favor of Republicans yeah but why not join the easier side I mean you're just you're creating problems for yourself by getting on stage with Trump and I mean you must have had friends who said that to you sure yes yeah people care about you like why even get involved in this well I get because I I I think we want to remain a democracy and we don't want to become a onep party State yes\n\nthat's the reason um and the it's the exact opposite like the people call Trump a threat to democracy and the people who are saying Trump is a threat to democracy are themselves the threat to democracy yes um one party rule is not democracy uh one party where essentially the party Elite pick a candidate as happened with Kamala is not democracy where did the people vote show me where the people voted no there were no people voting it was all just D party Elite that just appointed someone um and and and when the when the Biden puppet uh when Pro Biden puppets uh ratings sagged they knifed him in the back immediately and it just tossed him out and put it put a new puppet on that's exactly what happened tell me I'm wrong well not only you're right I mean\n\nit's almost not even worth criticizing KLA Harris exactly what does she have to do with it there's no point in criticizing K she she's she's simply the the the face of a l a much larger machine yes um and she will say whatever is whatever the T the teleprompt whatever's on the teleprompter she's going to say it yes now she gets stuck if the teleprompter breaks that happened recently I think the PRP is St and she just she was just like looping for a while for about a minute um so I think that happened yesterday or something it was pretty funny to watch um but she'll just say whatever words or on the teleprompt so you know um it's really whoever controls the teleprompter is the actual sort of those that's who's actually in charge and who is that do you\n\nthink well I've tried to put it down it's it's not like anyone kind of Master mind it's not like it seems to be it's like um Kamala sort of a a marionette with you know th a thousand Puppet Masters type of thing like not it's it's it's or maybe it's in it's somewhere north of a 100 is what it seems like yes um I bet you know 80 of them I probably know most of them yeah yeah so I mean just by virtue of your job and what you've been doing the last 30 years I mean you yeah um and I should say I think you voted for I'd like to see a matchup of of of those quote the the top 100 Puppet Masters on the FD Client List do you think there's some overlap overlap strong overlap when are we going to see that list do you think I don't know it's it's it's it's mind-blowing\n\nthat that it um that not they've not tried to prosecute even one not even the worst offender on on the F Client List they've not even ride to prosecute even one is that that's insane well because they have a lot of diabetic grandmothers who were outside the capital on January 6 they they're kind of occupied yeah I mean they've put like whatever five or 600 Jan 6 protesters in prison and not one person on the on the F Cent list will that ever come out do you think you know I think part of why Kamala is getting so much support is that uh if if Trump wins that F Client List is going to become public and some of those billionaires behind Kam are terrified of that outcome yeah do you think Reed Hoffman's uncomfortable yes I only asked that cuz you can sort\n\nyou just look at them and you're like that that's a nervous person right there I don't know I mean I assume you know them yeah yes uh Reed hoffen was my vice president business development at PayPal yeah 24 years ago um he does he seem nervous to you yeah I mean he's terrified of trump victory because of the disclosure that would follow I think yeah I mean I think he's certainly ideologically not aligned with Trump anyway but I think he is concerned about the uh the FC situation like something might actually the doj might actually move forward there are a lot of videos apparently those rooms on the island and I think out in New Mexico were wired for video right and where's the video I mean between ddy and Epstein uh let go there there's probably several\n\nthousand hours of footage here yeah yeah it's kind of weird that the people on those videos are lecturing the rest of us about our moral failings isn't it yeah it is weird what is that um well I mean part of how they deflect attention from themselves is by a you know criticizing the morals of others yes so they it's sort of like a preemptive moral strike um I mean as I said I think those who are saying Trump is a threat to democracy are themselves actually the threat to democracy it feels like we're getting to a place where the rest of us know too much is this you know what I mean I mean it's it's it's easier to live in a society where you don't really know what the people in charge are doing or why they're doing it but now thanks I would say largely\n\nto X yeah um I think that's fair to say that yeah uh we we do know a lot not everything but we know a lot and I wonder where does that like what happens next now that we know all this the kidnapper shown us his face like what happens well I think if uh if Trump wins we can do some has cleaning and shed light on things yeah all all the xplatform does is uh adhere to freedom of freedom of speech within the bounds of the law yes and if if people want to change the laws they they can change the laws and so like X in different countries we X does censor in in in countries where censorship is is is the law um we don't try to you know P push American laws in other countries uh but we do try to stick to the law in any given country um that's what we're doing\n\num uh we open source our algorithm uh we try to be as transparent as possible um uh but uh those who want to push lies obviously hate truth and transparency yes because it shows them to be Liars I mean you look at that like how outrageous it was that um K in the presidential debate kept kept pushing the fine people hoax they know the fine people hoax is is false Trump would never support Nazis Nazi R it's absurd and he explicitly said that you in that same speech uh that you must condemn not you know anyone who who has Nazi Tendencies with the uh in the strongest possible terms despite knowing that to be false uh the people who who who wrote the speech for the K puppet uh put the fine people hoax in the presidential debate deliberately lying again messed\n\nup if she wins I mean I how can they let X continue uh in its current form in its current role in American society they they they won't they will uh try to shut it down by any means possible what do you mean by any means possible I mean with law e either by I mean they'll try to pass laws uh they'll try to process prosecute the company prosecute me um any I mean the amount of lawfare that we' seen taking place is is outrageous um I mean the I mean there many examples but like the Department of Justice For example launched a huge lawsuit against SpaceX for failing to hire Asylum Seekers come on Asylum Seekers Asylum not Asylum those who granted Asylum Asylum Seekers now this now there's also a law called International traffic and arms regulations um that\n\nbecause SpaceX develops Advanced missile technology that can be used in in nuclear icbms um that we ha we have to be very careful with who we hire we can only hire someone if they are a permanent resident or citizen that's what the itar law says then there's another law that says that uh you cannot discriminate against Asylum Seekers so we're damned if you do damned if you don't that doj did a massive lawsuit against SpaceX uh for failing to hire Asylum Seekers even though we are it it is illegal for us to H hire ass because under itar law this is an actual thing that that that's that's gone on um and they can only they can only do a fairly small number of lawsuits every year so for why did they pick this one because you Ma yeah it's it's like that famous\n\nquote from barer you know the yeah Stalin's Like Chief torturer and head of the secret police Baria said show me the man and I'll show you the crime I mean we have so many laws that it is actually impossible to ex you know impossible to to do business impossible to operate without um being uh violating some law because you have laws like it the ones I just G gave you whe where both things are illegal yes the contradict one another they contradict one another um so you know it's it's illegal to discriminate against like discriminate against Asylum seekers in in jobs but it's also legal for us to hire Asylum Seekers but it's just they just they just chose one they chose the the the the one law and ignored the other one and the department of J Justice at\n\na federal level prosecutors basx for that what do you think it's mad well it also discredits the idea of law which some of us want to take seriously absolutely it it it this affect both the perception of of American Justice and the reality of it yes um so now I'm actually a big fan of the American justice system and I think on balance uh you know we've we've got still still have an excellent Judicial System we still have judges that care about the letter uh and intent of the law I mean not just the letter but also the intent but something that people should be concerned about is that there's an increasing movement to place activists as judges this is uh if you look at who who did the Biden Administration confirm as federal judges and who are been confirmed\n\nat at the state level in in in sort of f States increasingly it is it is not uh judges who uh care about Justice or or they not care about following the law they care about social justice not justice justice right what they soci social justice activists as judges now you got a real problem do you think if if that continues we we will not have a real justice system or a real country yes I yeah um but again your purchase of X has been I think it's fair to say even if I hated it I would say this because it's true it's been pivotal in American politics yeah um in an American society uh do you think they could shut you down if the Democrats continue to hold power they'll unequivocally try yeah yeah and and if if if they if they uh if they get a majority in\n\nthe Senate and House um and the presidency then they can simply pass a law uh and delete section 230 so simply make us liable for what for what any any what anyone says on a platform with uh you know good like at this point with 600 million monthly active users which is impossible how you know that's that's like trying to regulate speech in city of like a country uh yeah so a big country yeah just be instantly bankrupt but I bet they wouldn't withdraw legal immunity from the vaccine makers at the same time would they no that's unlikely just I mean as long as we're withdrawing legal liability protection yeah yeah I mean the whole vaccine debate is is is a long one um you know I'm not actually I'm not antivaccine in general um I think we want to exercise\n\ncaution with use of vaccines but um in the absence of vaccines uh there would be a lot more I think people that that uh that have died you know like we want the small pox vaccine that was a good one it seems a good one yeah yeah yeah small pox will kill you killed a lot of people it killed a lot of people I just to be people would like a lot of people would die of smallpox and a lot of people would get polio for sure yeah we had a pres who had Polio oh yeah there's still people you meet people today yeah in their 80s who limping from childood polio right it's good that we don't have that and vaccines you know played a major role in that so that doesn't mean that vaccines should not have any scrutiny of course they should we should be making sure that\n\nthe quality control on vaccines is incredibly good if we giving them to children and whatnot um and we shouldn't we shouldn't force people to take vaccine um that itself is a controversial statement that we shouldn't force people we shouldn't force people to take vaccines now yeah um so just to re I believe in Freedom like uh yeah I've noticed like uh you know America is supposed to be the land of liberty um you know uh freedom freedom and opportunity uh so that uh we try to as much as possible maximize people's individual liberty um and that we try to be a country where you you succeed based on uh your talent and hard work yes uh those are two fundamental values um that that's what that's that's what's made America great and and if we lose those we will\n\nour decline will be swift um what what do you if you had to get if you had to bet I mean does freedom reassert itself in America or not well that's why I part of why this election is so pivotal I think if we with a trump Administration I think we can improve the liberty of Americans um we we can uh I think we need to have sensible deregulation uh where we we keep the regulations that matter like we we don't want to destroy you know important habitats or yes you know encourage oil spills or anything like that um but there there are so many regulatory agencies that have overlapping responsibility um that we are smothering progress and we can't build a high-speed rail in America you look at the ridiculous highspeed Rail Project in California where they've\n\nspent $7 billion and all they've got to show for it is a six A600 foot section of concrete with no rails on it there a picture of it online so it's it's not that fast yet it wouldn't say it's high speed at this point or even rail it doesn't even have rail in it maybe by now they put some rail in it but it's this comically small section of rail uh $7 billion has been spent uh most of it in like environmental Consulting and uh I don't know where it's but clearly not in building highspeed rail uh so we can't we can't we've got there are so many different Regulatory Agencies and so many laws and regulations that prevent progress that if this continues we simply won't be able to get anything done it does seem like the engineers are not getting rich it's the\n\nEnvironmental Consultants the climate Consultants the Dei Consultants a whole consultant class seems to be getting richer by the year where people with actual skills the ones that bring actual progress useful things products and services that you can use that's right so this is a thinks that if you were like traff on desert island you'd want those people right right um but you wouldn't want environmental Consultants they seem under they seem under you're star okay yeah yeah yeah and um it's like who who's who are actual Builders at that get things done um and uh you know and and and and every year we're making it harder in America for actual Builders to get things done you know we're in this like weird Anand Atlas Shrugged scenario where it's you know\n\nthere's yet another regulation yet another Rule and the sort of that that phrase in Atlas Shug oh you'll oh you'll manage oh you'll manage oh you'll manage it's like eventually you like can't get anything done why the hostility though toward people with with meaningful skills it's it's not it's not a neutral posture they have and they're riching themselves obviously by creating fake jobs because they have no skills and you know they don't have creative power so I understand that but why do they hate people who do have creative power and actual skills I don't understand that I don't I'm not sure I understand it either because it's difficult for me to put put myself in the mindset because I'm someone who believes in construction I I build things that's\n\nwhat I do I buil cars I buil Rockets I buil you know satellite internet you know I've spent thousands of hours tens of thousands of of ours in in factories building up factories you know I also I I can't really put myself in the mind of of say someone who would want to do crime cuz I don't want to do crime yeah you know I don't want to hurt you know there there's some people who who enjoy hurting other people I don't enjoy hurting other people um so I have a hard time imagining why would somebody do that yes you know in an extreme case you you can't put yourself in the mind of like say Jeffrey dhama where where you're like a cannibalistic serial killer cuz you're not a cannibalistic serial kill right like I can't I don't get it you know it's not a fetish\n\nyou can Rel to not you know um I do think this is that in the sort of well-meaning sort of liberal mindset I know I've have many good friends who have you they're very they have deep empathy for their fellow human beings good and they they they care um and and and but the challenge that they have is that they've often grown up in a very sheltered existence where everyone around them is nice and civilized and they just really don't encounter people who are um have have uh uncontrolled violent tendencies uh or or like hurting people you know they've just always grown up in a sort of Kumbaya everyone is nice uh if commun situation um Minneapolis pre- riots yeah yeah I mean if you if you if yeah but but there's there's a small number of people it's like few\n\npercent of society that um either can't have anger management issues that are so severe that they they they lose their temper and hurt or murder others um and there's very as small like I said it's not not a large number that that enjoy hurting other people and if you do not incarcerate them they will they will do that to they will they will hurt other people um and what I see is is what I call um shallow empathy like people have empathy for the criminals but not empathy for the victims of the criminals yes and so if you simply have and I believe one should have deep empathy to say like what is the greater good for society um is it better to incarcerate Violent criminals and prevent them from hurting people or to let them loose and allow those people\n\nto be hurt and I think the latter is much worse you know my mom is my mom lives in New York and and it's my mom at this at this point is has gone from being Democrat to Republican and her her friends in New York uh are sh having the same experience because you know what'll turn you from a Democrat to a republican pretty fast is getting punched in the face while you walk down the street yes which for no reason yes and then and then and then no action being taken against those who hurt you and that happened to your mom not not to my mother but to three of her friends this year why would someone punch them in the face I don't know but that's I'm not a face puncher right no you know but if you walk around the Streets of San Francisco and many downtown so\n\nthey go go to downtown Philadelphia right now you know they call people homeless but but the homeless is the wrong term violent drug zombie yeah [Laughter] okay it's like you know you look at them you say like homeless is a misnomer it implies that someone got a little behind on their mortgage and if you just offer them a job they' be back on their feet yeah now but if if if you go look at downtown Philly or or San Francisco or parts of New York and actually most most downtown you what you actually have are violent drug zombies so they're like shuffling down the street with dead eyes you know and and and and and with like needles you know on the and human feces on the streets I you've been to downtown SF right have you seen this oh I was born there yeah\n\nyeah yeah like one of the most beautiful cities in the world oh yes the greatest and now you have to step over the the drug needles and the feces and the bodies like one one couple I met the final straw full leaving San Francisco was there was a they came home uh one night and there was dead body in front of their garage they could could get their car and to can park their car the corpse yeah there's no street parking they're like there a corpse there's a corpse in front of the garage and I don't want to move the corpse you know because like well you know you don't you're like maybe this they need to like figure out why the guy died or something you know that's the that's liberal compassion though they're in a bit of a quandry because they they got no\n\nplace to park a car and they they feel that they shouldn't really move the dead body so they call 911 and I said this a dead body out outside our house um and um they said well said they the 91 San Francisco says well are are you in danger right now it's like well no he's dead pretty sure he's dead um and um they're like they're like okay we we'll send someone tomorrow to pick up the body like they'll ring tomorrow so so they're like going in another house while there's a dead body in front D in front of their house you know and like it like took them like 24 hours or something like that to eventually pick up the body and like this how was this we're leaving um and did they yes by way there's a million anecdotes like that oh I know I know but I just don't\n\nthink this is not rare it's well it's it's it's ubiquitous and so then you wonder like how can people still tell themselves they're compassionate if saying is that is that people really just need to think what like I believe in being compassionate about I believe that we should care about our fellow human beings um I think this is a good thing of course we should not we should not be we should not be selfish and not care about others we should care about others but we should just care about others All Things Considered uh like I said care not me just about the criminals it's just one layer deep um you should also care about the criminals victims yes yes well especially the criminals victims yes innocent people who get attacked and killed so I mean I've\n\ngot so many anot I mean um you know like like U uh about a year ago there were there were three uh ex or Twitter employees who were just um leaving the building walking down Mark Street in in San Francisco Mark Street used to be a beautiful wonderful Street obviously it's called Mark street because that's where the market was right now now sported up shop windows and stuff and uh and um they were chased by a guy with an axe who wanted they they they outran him and they reported hey there's a guy with an axe who who tried to try to kill us with an axe the police did nothing that guy with an axe subsequently murdered two people with an axe with the with the axe because eventually he's going to find somebody he can out run and he did so what I'm saying is\n\nif you if you don't stop ax motor while while they're attempting to ax motor eventually they will succeed in ax motoring people if this goes on I mean that's such an obvious OB a seems obvious yes I think it is yeah that if you're in any way ating Axe Murder then you're really you're against civilization that's the way it looks to me I mean yeah I don't see I'm trying to understand motive here I can't relate like you but you're against the whole project if you're allowing that I guess is what I'm saying yeah I think we should um controversial position but I think we should arrest a murderers when they first attempt to ax Mur not after they've succeeded in doing so and I think we should assign at least some of the blame for the axe murderers are the people\n\nwho allowed allowed this guy to WAND around with an axe on Market Street trying to kill people yes yeah well you know this this whole movement to decriminalized crime oh I've noticed yes what is that Madness yeah uh like to make CRI crime crime legal like in California you can just steal things and nobody does anything um it's like fully legal to steal anything under $1,000 in California that's why they've got they now have to like lock up Goods Behind These like you know glass some plastic walls so you go into the supermarket and you can't even get like what toothpaste and and this has actually been particularly difficult on small mom and pop operations because they don't have the resources of a large corporation so it's put a lot of small businesses\n\nout of just killed them so when you're a dinner parties and you make these points what do people say well actually I think I've been I've been able to persuade people that yeah we we we really um we we need to reverse course here I think I have actually been able to a number of people and I think there actually is a now a ballot on a California ballot initiative to re Rec criminalize uh theft theft right guys guys we there's a reason why we criminalized theft in the first place um so so and then amazingly I think Gavin Newsome was came out against that uh proposition yeah no honestly he's the goddamn Joker Gavin is like if it's like like from the like Batman Dark Knight The Joker is in charge of Gotham you remember like he took over New York basically\n\num and and and and the criminals Ram free and the citizens are arrested that's how that's California but but I mean at least there's a ballot initiative which I think will probably pass to say no you actually it is a crime to steal things people so you know Gavin you've got to know Gavin Newsome he knows I know Gavin Newsome you know everyone knows for a long time exactly so what is that and he doesn't seem crazy when you talk to him in person he's a perfectly nice guy like what why would he and he's not stupid why would he come out in favor of crime well his stated reason was that it would disproportionately affect uh uh people of color yeah well again that was his public statement right well that is one of those patronizing racist positions you described\n\nat the outset obviously yeah I mean he's literally saying uh black people are and Hispanics are criminals yeah of course yeah yeah um no that's what he's saying that's what he's saying yeah yeah and by the way it is true that crime like that does increase distrust between races it actually gives rise to racism it's totally destructive of the social fabric I think but I'm but I'm asking like what do you think his real motive is like who's pushing him in favor of crime well I mean there's always the Soros boogy man um you know how real is that it's it's real I I don't think one can ascribe everything to Soros I mean's um and and George George himself is uh is I mean he's seen out at this point he's not yes not compis menus um so his his son Alex is in charge\n\num and um but but there is this whole system that sorus built up over many decades um you know and uh so so I guess sarus and like-minded people or whatever um you know they believe in open borders they they believe we shouldn't prosecute crime um this is insane the those seem like expressions of hatred toward the United States like I don't if I was pushing that on a country I would only do that if I hated the country and wanted to destroy it well it's anti-civilization I mean and sarus and similar and organizations have been pushing this in in Europe and other countries too yeah anyone who everywhere they can what's going on in Europe would you say Europe suddenly seems like like a different place well um I me my biggest concern for Europe is that the\n\nbirth rate is half replacement rate yes so um Europe is rapidly becoming uh with it each passing year um older and older with fewer and fewer young people um so I think at the at a most fundamental level unless Europe has a birth rate at least roughly equal to replacement rate um it is uh in population freefall population collapse is what's going on in Europe uh so um there's also like a shocking amount of censorship you may have seen like in uh you know Britain there I kid you not how can this be real they are releasing convicted pedophiles from prison in order to put people in prison for Facebook posts but to be fair those are posts that criticize the government so they have a good reason um well they actually some of these posts that I've at least\n\nthe ones I've seen didn't actually criticize the government or or or they they they were they were seen as as sort of as as hate speech right um so because they noticed the society getting crappier and crappier with every year and they said so yeah um I mean there were and this is this I'm simply stating a fact there were um migrant rape gangs in in England that would gangs that would run around and prey on young girls gang raped them and some people found that objectionable which I say it should be objectionable um and uh they were upset about that and so they complained about it online and were sent to prison that sounds crazy so it is crazy and that's like like what well it is so it kind of gets to the I mean you're an engineer so you're it is mindboggling\n\nbut it's the same you use the phrase mind virus but it it's behaving like a virus it's infecting people and making it impossible apparently for them to make rational what is that virus you know someone I think you should interview is uh Gods side uh I have oh you have yes oh I should watch that actually he's great yeah smart super smart guy yeah um and he uh he wrote a great book uh called um the parastic mind yes a very good book highly recommend it yes um which where he tries to understand how do you get to this parasitic mind situation um and he's writing a book now which hopefully he'll publish soon um which is about suicidal empathy where you have so much empathy you're actually suiciding Society or so much perceived empathy uh it's not actually\n\nit shallow empathy not deep empathy deep empathy would be you'd want the society continue shallow empathy is is you have like empathy that's essentially skin deep and then you and and you don't it's but it's ultimately bad for civilization and results in the destruction of civilization um and God God side's got a good term for this suicidal empathy he going to sort of De deconstruct what's what's you know where does this come come from um and uh yeah I mean part of it I suppose is is is sort of the decline of religion um so you know as the saying goes nature ofo a vacuum so when you have uh essentially decline in religion an increase in the secular nature of society for most people they need something to fill that void and so they adopt a religion it's\n\nnot called a religion but like but effectively like woke the woke mind virus it's it's a it takes the place of religion yes um and they they they internalize it and they feel it with religious fervor yes uh so and rigidity yes yes and and they you know they they essentially conduct like a holy war effectively uh it it's just not called a religion but it is a religion sort of a work holy war and and they're highly resistant to change as is normal for for for religions now for myself I'm I'm I sort of see myself as a sort of you know engineer physicist for me um I'm culturally Christian I grew up Christ I mean I was Anglican was baptized you know um uh I was went to Sunday school yeah um actually odly enough I was sent to uh Hebrew preschool and anglica\n\nSunday school at the same time so it was harand Gila one day Jesus out low the next which is you know if you're 5 years old it's fine there's not there you know but I'm I'm not Jewish it's just that my my father's two partners in his engineering firm were were I they was went went to the same Hebrew preschool and and it was near our house so I just got sent there but but you know I I I I I you I I I maybe this will make me even more Ames but I I I have trouble sort of believing all these stories uh these religious stories uh but OB lot of people do um and uh I respect people who want to have religious views I'm not trying to dissuade them from their religious views but uh uh anyway I'm just saying I I guess the the operating system I have is is is a sort\n\nof a physics engineering operating system where I I I try to understand as much as possible possible about reality uh you know in in physics you're you're not supposed to believe everything anything absolutely you're supposed to question things that's how you discover new physics you know in engineering that's how you discover if your machine will work or not work will the rocket get to orbit well you know yeah um you know if you if your rocket is uh designed with your physics in mind uh correctly it will get to orbit and if it is not it will not get to orbit uh no matter what your belief system is you can believe um you know whe yeah um you it's like like I meet a lot of people speaking of La I meet a lot of people in La who believe witchcraft is real\n\nand then you can do spells and that Spells and Witchcraft magic is real I'm like can you magic us to the moon and no one has yet been able to Magic us to the Moon um well spells can't be that good okay if you can't I want to go to the Moon let's go how about Mars and um we we got to the moon the first time we definitely went to the moon I SW yes we went to the moon we didn't go to the Moon we went to the moon several times right oh yeah I just want to check your view on that we 100% went to the Moon I mean I I know in- depth the technical designs of the Rockets the spacecraft everything yes uh what went right what went wrong um it it was a remarkable piece of technology like incredible piece of technology for to go to the Moon in' 69 uh that that that\n\nwas uh like reaching into the future and pulling the future forward uh dramatically um and and it was an important ideological battle with Communism um at because they couldn't put a post on the moon and capitalism could","textByLang":{"en":"if he loses man [Laughter] what it does seem that way you can't just be like you can't just be like yeah I'm like how how long do you think my prison sentence is going to be do you think well I see my children I don't know cuz it's not like you can say well yeah I maxed out to him but you know I get you no [Laughter] deniability no no and I've been trashing compa nonstop oh I know well not I'm the Kamala puppet I call her you know the the the machine that the Cala puppet represents yeah she's irrelevant I mean she's not even no no like like I made I made a joke which I realized I deleted um which is like nobody's even bothering to try to kill Kamala cuz it's pointless what do you achieve nothing another puppet exact that's it's no point you actually put\n\nthat up yeah now some people interpreted it as I was as as though I was calling for people to to assassinate her but but but I was like but I was like no we even you know you know like doesn't it seem strange that no one's even bothered to try it's not worth it I mean there's an endless supply yeah like nobody would it's absurd it could be anybody yeah yeah you nobody's going to try to nobody tries toass a puppet of course not um a marionette yeah a marionette it's just like you know it's hilarious she's safe like I I like they're try to kill Trump twice with actual guns and bullets um oh yeah he shut in the air right in [ __ ] but Butler where I was and uh he doesn't seem rattled it's weird does he do you he doesn't seem what rattled uh he I mean he\n\nthe constitution of an ox it seems um you know it's not like working out and eating health [Laughter] and he's okay we got to tape this oh yeah we're good oh good yeah so so he's not like let me eat another salad that's not no or or work out you you know fastidiously that's he he I feel like he doesn't work out and he eats you know cheeseburgers and D Coke and stuff and it just I think it just inherently has a strong Constitution so and you I mean you were just with him he didn't seem like a man who'd been the subject of two assassination attempts no he seemed uh of you know sound mind and body and uh strong backbone did you um I mean that's what I said in the thing and the remarks I made there were impromptu there's no teleprompt or anything I just I\n\nwas just I was speaking extemporaneously are you the only rich guy who does have like a media consultant I media consultant yeah no I've noticed obviously yeah yeah I I mean no I I just um no I just thought about what what what I want to say and I just spoke with the cuff uh no tprp or nothing good for you yeah I could talk just look like I'm like like now I'm just talking look at me wow amazing can you believe it I can talk without a tpr that's crazy but if if he loses it's going to be hard for you to pretend you never supported him [Laughter] all in all in in the deep end yeah no you are definitely in the deep end you cannot touch bottom no no I'm I'm like I'm like rolling around I'm like a pig and mud I'm like it's all in baby is it fun yeah it's pretty\n\nfun how I mean I mean there may be some in the hopefully unlikely event that he loses there may be some Vengeance uh on me were you kidding I I mean it's possible it's possible you've got to be one of the biggest government contractors we do essential work for the government yes yeah it's not like you know uh we we do useful essential work right um that we compete for and win contracts on because our product is much better and costs less that that's why we get govern and and and I mean if you take for example the the um the NASA contract to transport astronauts to in fromont the space station uh Boeing got NASA Ed two contracts at the start uh one to Boeing and one to SpaceX Boeing was awarded twice as much as SpaceX SpaceX has done all the astronord\n\ntransport uh from the space station and and Boeing has only done one one transport of one of two as to the space station and we had to bring them back B got twice as much as space there there's this total misunderstanding that that my companies have been subsidized and supported by the government and get all these and and it's like do you do you really think that a Biden Administration is going to subsidize me probably not are you kidding no in fact uh they take away every contract they possibly can uh so there for example there was the FC the the FCC contract to uh $42 billion for uh providing providing rural rural Bo Broadband yes okay uh we we actually first said look we don't we think there shouldn't be any subsidies so we recommend this that this\n\nprogram just not exist um but since you're insisting that it ex that it exists we will compete um and we we have better product so we we we won I don't know about a quarter of it um which would have included the devastated areas like North Carolina and stff and um the FCC took it away illegally they just voted three out of five Commissioners voted away and said even though you want it we're we're we're sending it on what ground and do you know how many people they' have connected how many zero so you think that was political well the three Democrats voted against and the two Republicans voted for it so you tried to get starlink you tried to get starlink into North Carolina into Western North Carolina the area is devastated by the hurricane we have got\n\nit it is it is in there and it is the primary means of communication in devastated areas you had conflict with Buddha judge over this well I I I raised a cons I said look we're we we had delivered we've been delivering stalling terminals there for a while and obviously some people already had them um since they just you know consum private individuals had Starling there already um we delivered uh um really thousands of terminals U and and got all the way up to the you know the areas where they wouldn't let us go any further and then we're like okay we're going to send helicopters in uh and and and find people who are stranded and and give them Starling terminals which I think is you know a nice thing to do yeah okay the they they wouldn't let us land\n\num because the there was an FAA uh notice to em and notm that said in order to land you have to know who you're going to meet with uh to land now the problem is we're trying to deliver internet communications people don't have internet communications we don't know who they are then they can't reach us because they are don't have communications do you see the cash 22 yes I do Insane so so it's obviously impossible for people who don't have internet communications to let us to to let us know who they are because they don't have the internet yes yes and so um did you explain this to the federal government yes what they say they they they they fixed it how was Buddha judge when you talked to him he was actually good so I want to be just I want to give Buddha\n\njudge some credit here um first a you know when I complained about it he he he reacted in a in a very level-headed way and he reached out to me and he called me yeah uh and we weed discussed the issue got to the bottom of it and he fixed it good so credit to vo judge yeah well and to you for pushing it yeah I mean so but as soon as he was aware of the problem he fixed it well you publicized it too on yeah yeah as soon as you shamed him well but I do want to give credit words too yeah no amen I agree completely so but back to the original question you know about the potential consequences if you know having gone all in this doesn't work yeah um I mean you had to have thought about this long and hard before you did it what was your thinking I mean my view\n\nis is that if Trump doesn't win this election it's the last election we're going to have um that but uh the Democrats the Dem machine um has been uh importing so many PE bringing in so many illegals flying flying in with this like CVP border app thing that nobody even knew about like secret program that's illegal basically it's it's illegal but there's no action by doj to actually to to stop it from happening they're um transporting uh numbers of of illegals to swing States um if you look at the numbers these are the numbers from the government website so like from the Dem Democrat administered government websites like where do you get this data from the government website that is run by democrats um and uh there are triple digit increases in illegals\n\nto all the swing States and in some cases it's like 700% over the last three years now these swing state marins are you know sometimes 10 20,000 votes so what happens if you put you know hundreds of thousands of people into each swing state uh and and and and for the for the if when somebody is granted Asylum they are fast-tracked they they they they get can get a green card and then five years after the Green Card uh they can get they can get citizenship and they can fully legally vote and when they do so they vote overwhelmingly Democrat and the and sometimes I get this rebuttal of like well a lot of them their social values don't align with sort of the far-left sort of work ideology I said that's true but um but that's not their top priority the their\n\ntop priority is getting their friends and family also to the United States uh and the the DS also issue all these programs these sort of handouts essentially that make them beholden to the Democratic party so they vote down that's what happens so my prediction is if there's another four years of AD Dem Administration they will legalize so many uh illegals that are there uh that the next election there won't be any swing States and it's and will be a single party country just like California is a single party State it's a super majority Dam State in California because of immigration yes the California was uh fairly reliably Republican um Bill Clinton lost California 92 and won West yes um so there was a 9 986 amnesty yes um at and and um thereafter California\n\ntrended very strongly Dem and is at this point uh I think 65 70% Dem something like that it's super majority Dem the the California legislature yes is more than two-thirds Dem um has it improved the state no it's it's not um and they they California just passed which is shocking it's hard to believe this even this is even real but California just passed a law making it illegal uh to require vo ID in any election at all in California do you know that no yeah Nome signed it into law last week it's illegal to require an ID in any election even a Town Council and a friend of mine who was this can who lives in paloalto was like is was like is this actually real anywh like vote in like some City Council election he tried to show them his ID and they said we're\n\nnot even allowed to look at your ID have they extended the same actually what's going on right now by the way they're proud of it they're not hiding it it's only voting it's not buying a gun or buying liquor buying pack of cigarettes or flying on an airplane or rening a hotel room it's only voting that it's illegal oh if you try to buy a gun I mean they're going to ID use six ways a Sunday uh yeah they try California's trying to make it basically legal it's own gun um and and the same people that demanded vaccine IDs for if you want to travel or do anything are the same ones who say no voter ID is required is there any reason obviously hypocritical to pass a law like that except to a bet voter um it's it's for it's it's it's so that fraud can never cannot\n\nbe proven so it it enables large scale fraud and no way to prove it because how would you prove it it's literally impossible no no ID you're not even allowed to show your ID it's it's insane well it is insane the the purpose of no vo voter ID is obviously to conduct fraud in elections obviously there can be no other explanation I mean they come up with some nice sounding thing um people don't have IDs could you live in this country without an ID yeah I mean their common rebuttal is like it's racist to require ID and which is insane I think it's actually race racist and patronizing to say that people can't figure out how to get ID obviously but how could live here without an ID I don't think it's even possible yeah you can't do anything you need an ID\n\nfor everything like the list of the things you need ID for is basically everything um except voting so you see the rest of the country it's total [ __ ] obviously obviously yes but that doesn't in any way minimize the aggression or self-righteousness they bring to this conversation yes it's you're a racist if you want that right where where in fact obviously someone is racist if they say that uh people of a particular race cannot get ID that's patronizing and racist that's absurd yes you know it's like when the governor of New York said people in the you know ghetto don't know how to use computers or something like that I mean like you know super out of touch so likeo so there's a really clear template she doesn't know how to use computers but they do\n\nobviously I don't think hoko could use a computer yeah I don't think she she's not qualified intellectually yeah no not but not everyone in New York is as dumb as as Kathy hok I think that's true yeah yeah um so you see the other 49 states becoming California if the machine wins well you don't need uh all all 49 to go that way you just need you know enough to have the election have there not be swing States I mean there are only six Swing Swing States yep so there are only six states out of 50 right now that are in contention so if those six states that are in contention uh by narrow margins are no longer in contention then uh the the only contest will be who wins the Democratic Prim primary that's how it is in California that's how it is New York there\n\nthere's no there's no party uh party versus party situation the only contest is who wins the Democratic Prim primary and as we've seen with the um uh appointment of kamla who no one voted for even in the Democratic primary yes where's the Democracy here which is it's easier though I mean it's just the party Elite just decides who who who is in charge that's that that that that's that's a you know a tiny oligarchy basically comprised of that's not democracy the richest people in the country that's kind of the interesting part to me is that the richest people in the country are on board with this I mean that's what it is it's the it's it's a collection of billion well most of them are yeah but you're not not me and not everyone is I think there's but but\n\nit it it is a a shocking number of soal billionaires are uh in the dam Camp more than are in the Republican Camp oh for sure which is wild so the in fact the astonishing thing in the swing States is that that it's that they even a contest given that uh the the Dems have far more money than the Republicans so so the K Camp dramatically outspends the Trump campaign in the swing States um the uh overwhelming the the media is overwhelmingly pro-democrat so you've got you know the the Press you know is is a a damn cheering Squad um and um you know so oh and then and then you've got Al all all the almost all the Hollywood and entertainment the celebrities also you know endorsing Comm and being proem so so you got so you got the celebrities you got the they\n\ngot the money uh they got um got they basically everything on the side of the DMS the the problem is the underdog here Trump's Underdog in swing Wing States and still it's a contentious it's still a 50/50 after all that what does that tell you it tells me that if if people actually knew what was going on they weren't being fed non-stop propaganda it would be a landslide in favor of Republicans yeah but why not join the easier side I mean you're just you're creating problems for yourself by getting on stage with Trump and I mean you must have had friends who said that to you sure yes yeah people care about you like why even get involved in this well I get because I I I think we want to remain a democracy and we don't want to become a onep party State yes\n\nthat's the reason um and the it's the exact opposite like the people call Trump a threat to democracy and the people who are saying Trump is a threat to democracy are themselves the threat to democracy yes um one party rule is not democracy uh one party where essentially the party Elite pick a candidate as happened with Kamala is not democracy where did the people vote show me where the people voted no there were no people voting it was all just D party Elite that just appointed someone um and and and when the when the Biden puppet uh when Pro Biden puppets uh ratings sagged they knifed him in the back immediately and it just tossed him out and put it put a new puppet on that's exactly what happened tell me I'm wrong well not only you're right I mean\n\nit's almost not even worth criticizing KLA Harris exactly what does she have to do with it there's no point in criticizing K she she's she's simply the the the face of a l a much larger machine yes um and she will say whatever is whatever the T the teleprompt whatever's on the teleprompter she's going to say it yes now she gets stuck if the teleprompter breaks that happened recently I think the PRP is St and she just she was just like looping for a while for about a minute um so I think that happened yesterday or something it was pretty funny to watch um but she'll just say whatever words or on the teleprompt so you know um it's really whoever controls the teleprompter is the actual sort of those that's who's actually in charge and who is that do you\n\nthink well I've tried to put it down it's it's not like anyone kind of Master mind it's not like it seems to be it's like um Kamala sort of a a marionette with you know th a thousand Puppet Masters type of thing like not it's it's it's or maybe it's in it's somewhere north of a 100 is what it seems like yes um I bet you know 80 of them I probably know most of them yeah yeah so I mean just by virtue of your job and what you've been doing the last 30 years I mean you yeah um and I should say I think you voted for I'd like to see a matchup of of of those quote the the top 100 Puppet Masters on the FD Client List do you think there's some overlap overlap strong overlap when are we going to see that list do you think I don't know it's it's it's it's mind-blowing\n\nthat that it um that not they've not tried to prosecute even one not even the worst offender on on the F Client List they've not even ride to prosecute even one is that that's insane well because they have a lot of diabetic grandmothers who were outside the capital on January 6 they they're kind of occupied yeah I mean they've put like whatever five or 600 Jan 6 protesters in prison and not one person on the on the F Cent list will that ever come out do you think you know I think part of why Kamala is getting so much support is that uh if if Trump wins that F Client List is going to become public and some of those billionaires behind Kam are terrified of that outcome yeah do you think Reed Hoffman's uncomfortable yes I only asked that cuz you can sort\n\nyou just look at them and you're like that that's a nervous person right there I don't know I mean I assume you know them yeah yes uh Reed hoffen was my vice president business development at PayPal yeah 24 years ago um he does he seem nervous to you yeah I mean he's terrified of trump victory because of the disclosure that would follow I think yeah I mean I think he's certainly ideologically not aligned with Trump anyway but I think he is concerned about the uh the FC situation like something might actually the doj might actually move forward there are a lot of videos apparently those rooms on the island and I think out in New Mexico were wired for video right and where's the video I mean between ddy and Epstein uh let go there there's probably several\n\nthousand hours of footage here yeah yeah it's kind of weird that the people on those videos are lecturing the rest of us about our moral failings isn't it yeah it is weird what is that um well I mean part of how they deflect attention from themselves is by a you know criticizing the morals of others yes so they it's sort of like a preemptive moral strike um I mean as I said I think those who are saying Trump is a threat to democracy are themselves actually the threat to democracy it feels like we're getting to a place where the rest of us know too much is this you know what I mean I mean it's it's it's easier to live in a society where you don't really know what the people in charge are doing or why they're doing it but now thanks I would say largely\n\nto X yeah um I think that's fair to say that yeah uh we we do know a lot not everything but we know a lot and I wonder where does that like what happens next now that we know all this the kidnapper shown us his face like what happens well I think if uh if Trump wins we can do some has cleaning and shed light on things yeah all all the xplatform does is uh adhere to freedom of freedom of speech within the bounds of the law yes and if if people want to change the laws they they can change the laws and so like X in different countries we X does censor in in in countries where censorship is is is the law um we don't try to you know P push American laws in other countries uh but we do try to stick to the law in any given country um that's what we're doing\n\num uh we open source our algorithm uh we try to be as transparent as possible um uh but uh those who want to push lies obviously hate truth and transparency yes because it shows them to be Liars I mean you look at that like how outrageous it was that um K in the presidential debate kept kept pushing the fine people hoax they know the fine people hoax is is false Trump would never support Nazis Nazi R it's absurd and he explicitly said that you in that same speech uh that you must condemn not you know anyone who who has Nazi Tendencies with the uh in the strongest possible terms despite knowing that to be false uh the people who who who wrote the speech for the K puppet uh put the fine people hoax in the presidential debate deliberately lying again messed\n\nup if she wins I mean I how can they let X continue uh in its current form in its current role in American society they they they won't they will uh try to shut it down by any means possible what do you mean by any means possible I mean with law e either by I mean they'll try to pass laws uh they'll try to process prosecute the company prosecute me um any I mean the amount of lawfare that we' seen taking place is is outrageous um I mean the I mean there many examples but like the Department of Justice For example launched a huge lawsuit against SpaceX for failing to hire Asylum Seekers come on Asylum Seekers Asylum not Asylum those who granted Asylum Asylum Seekers now this now there's also a law called International traffic and arms regulations um that\n\nbecause SpaceX develops Advanced missile technology that can be used in in nuclear icbms um that we ha we have to be very careful with who we hire we can only hire someone if they are a permanent resident or citizen that's what the itar law says then there's another law that says that uh you cannot discriminate against Asylum Seekers so we're damned if you do damned if you don't that doj did a massive lawsuit against SpaceX uh for failing to hire Asylum Seekers even though we are it it is illegal for us to H hire ass because under itar law this is an actual thing that that that's that's gone on um and they can only they can only do a fairly small number of lawsuits every year so for why did they pick this one because you Ma yeah it's it's like that famous\n\nquote from barer you know the yeah Stalin's Like Chief torturer and head of the secret police Baria said show me the man and I'll show you the crime I mean we have so many laws that it is actually impossible to ex you know impossible to to do business impossible to operate without um being uh violating some law because you have laws like it the ones I just G gave you whe where both things are illegal yes the contradict one another they contradict one another um so you know it's it's illegal to discriminate against like discriminate against Asylum seekers in in jobs but it's also legal for us to hire Asylum Seekers but it's just they just they just chose one they chose the the the the one law and ignored the other one and the department of J Justice at\n\na federal level prosecutors basx for that what do you think it's mad well it also discredits the idea of law which some of us want to take seriously absolutely it it it this affect both the perception of of American Justice and the reality of it yes um so now I'm actually a big fan of the American justice system and I think on balance uh you know we've we've got still still have an excellent Judicial System we still have judges that care about the letter uh and intent of the law I mean not just the letter but also the intent but something that people should be concerned about is that there's an increasing movement to place activists as judges this is uh if you look at who who did the Biden Administration confirm as federal judges and who are been confirmed\n\nat at the state level in in in sort of f States increasingly it is it is not uh judges who uh care about Justice or or they not care about following the law they care about social justice not justice justice right what they soci social justice activists as judges now you got a real problem do you think if if that continues we we will not have a real justice system or a real country yes I yeah um but again your purchase of X has been I think it's fair to say even if I hated it I would say this because it's true it's been pivotal in American politics yeah um in an American society uh do you think they could shut you down if the Democrats continue to hold power they'll unequivocally try yeah yeah and and if if if they if they uh if they get a majority in\n\nthe Senate and House um and the presidency then they can simply pass a law uh and delete section 230 so simply make us liable for what for what any any what anyone says on a platform with uh you know good like at this point with 600 million monthly active users which is impossible how you know that's that's like trying to regulate speech in city of like a country uh yeah so a big country yeah just be instantly bankrupt but I bet they wouldn't withdraw legal immunity from the vaccine makers at the same time would they no that's unlikely just I mean as long as we're withdrawing legal liability protection yeah yeah I mean the whole vaccine debate is is is a long one um you know I'm not actually I'm not antivaccine in general um I think we want to exercise\n\ncaution with use of vaccines but um in the absence of vaccines uh there would be a lot more I think people that that uh that have died you know like we want the small pox vaccine that was a good one it seems a good one yeah yeah yeah small pox will kill you killed a lot of people it killed a lot of people I just to be people would like a lot of people would die of smallpox and a lot of people would get polio for sure yeah we had a pres who had Polio oh yeah there's still people you meet people today yeah in their 80s who limping from childood polio right it's good that we don't have that and vaccines you know played a major role in that so that doesn't mean that vaccines should not have any scrutiny of course they should we should be making sure that\n\nthe quality control on vaccines is incredibly good if we giving them to children and whatnot um and we shouldn't we shouldn't force people to take vaccine um that itself is a controversial statement that we shouldn't force people we shouldn't force people to take vaccines now yeah um so just to re I believe in Freedom like uh yeah I've noticed like uh you know America is supposed to be the land of liberty um you know uh freedom freedom and opportunity uh so that uh we try to as much as possible maximize people's individual liberty um and that we try to be a country where you you succeed based on uh your talent and hard work yes uh those are two fundamental values um that that's what that's that's what's made America great and and if we lose those we will\n\nour decline will be swift um what what do you if you had to get if you had to bet I mean does freedom reassert itself in America or not well that's why I part of why this election is so pivotal I think if we with a trump Administration I think we can improve the liberty of Americans um we we can uh I think we need to have sensible deregulation uh where we we keep the regulations that matter like we we don't want to destroy you know important habitats or yes you know encourage oil spills or anything like that um but there there are so many regulatory agencies that have overlapping responsibility um that we are smothering progress and we can't build a high-speed rail in America you look at the ridiculous highspeed Rail Project in California where they've\n\nspent $7 billion and all they've got to show for it is a six A600 foot section of concrete with no rails on it there a picture of it online so it's it's not that fast yet it wouldn't say it's high speed at this point or even rail it doesn't even have rail in it maybe by now they put some rail in it but it's this comically small section of rail uh $7 billion has been spent uh most of it in like environmental Consulting and uh I don't know where it's but clearly not in building highspeed rail uh so we can't we can't we've got there are so many different Regulatory Agencies and so many laws and regulations that prevent progress that if this continues we simply won't be able to get anything done it does seem like the engineers are not getting rich it's the\n\nEnvironmental Consultants the climate Consultants the Dei Consultants a whole consultant class seems to be getting richer by the year where people with actual skills the ones that bring actual progress useful things products and services that you can use that's right so this is a thinks that if you were like traff on desert island you'd want those people right right um but you wouldn't want environmental Consultants they seem under they seem under you're star okay yeah yeah yeah and um it's like who who's who are actual Builders at that get things done um and uh you know and and and and every year we're making it harder in America for actual Builders to get things done you know we're in this like weird Anand Atlas Shrugged scenario where it's you know\n\nthere's yet another regulation yet another Rule and the sort of that that phrase in Atlas Shug oh you'll oh you'll manage oh you'll manage oh you'll manage it's like eventually you like can't get anything done why the hostility though toward people with with meaningful skills it's it's not it's not a neutral posture they have and they're riching themselves obviously by creating fake jobs because they have no skills and you know they don't have creative power so I understand that but why do they hate people who do have creative power and actual skills I don't understand that I don't I'm not sure I understand it either because it's difficult for me to put put myself in the mindset because I'm someone who believes in construction I I build things that's\n\nwhat I do I buil cars I buil Rockets I buil you know satellite internet you know I've spent thousands of hours tens of thousands of of ours in in factories building up factories you know I also I I can't really put myself in the mind of of say someone who would want to do crime cuz I don't want to do crime yeah you know I don't want to hurt you know there there's some people who who enjoy hurting other people I don't enjoy hurting other people um so I have a hard time imagining why would somebody do that yes you know in an extreme case you you can't put yourself in the mind of like say Jeffrey dhama where where you're like a cannibalistic serial killer cuz you're not a cannibalistic serial kill right like I can't I don't get it you know it's not a fetish\n\nyou can Rel to not you know um I do think this is that in the sort of well-meaning sort of liberal mindset I know I've have many good friends who have you they're very they have deep empathy for their fellow human beings good and they they they care um and and and but the challenge that they have is that they've often grown up in a very sheltered existence where everyone around them is nice and civilized and they just really don't encounter people who are um have have uh uncontrolled violent tendencies uh or or like hurting people you know they've just always grown up in a sort of Kumbaya everyone is nice uh if commun situation um Minneapolis pre- riots yeah yeah I mean if you if you if yeah but but there's there's a small number of people it's like few\n\npercent of society that um either can't have anger management issues that are so severe that they they they lose their temper and hurt or murder others um and there's very as small like I said it's not not a large number that that enjoy hurting other people and if you do not incarcerate them they will they will do that to they will they will hurt other people um and what I see is is what I call um shallow empathy like people have empathy for the criminals but not empathy for the victims of the criminals yes and so if you simply have and I believe one should have deep empathy to say like what is the greater good for society um is it better to incarcerate Violent criminals and prevent them from hurting people or to let them loose and allow those people\n\nto be hurt and I think the latter is much worse you know my mom is my mom lives in New York and and it's my mom at this at this point is has gone from being Democrat to Republican and her her friends in New York uh are sh having the same experience because you know what'll turn you from a Democrat to a republican pretty fast is getting punched in the face while you walk down the street yes which for no reason yes and then and then and then no action being taken against those who hurt you and that happened to your mom not not to my mother but to three of her friends this year why would someone punch them in the face I don't know but that's I'm not a face puncher right no you know but if you walk around the Streets of San Francisco and many downtown so\n\nthey go go to downtown Philadelphia right now you know they call people homeless but but the homeless is the wrong term violent drug zombie yeah [Laughter] okay it's like you know you look at them you say like homeless is a misnomer it implies that someone got a little behind on their mortgage and if you just offer them a job they' be back on their feet yeah now but if if if you go look at downtown Philly or or San Francisco or parts of New York and actually most most downtown you what you actually have are violent drug zombies so they're like shuffling down the street with dead eyes you know and and and and and with like needles you know on the and human feces on the streets I you've been to downtown SF right have you seen this oh I was born there yeah\n\nyeah yeah like one of the most beautiful cities in the world oh yes the greatest and now you have to step over the the drug needles and the feces and the bodies like one one couple I met the final straw full leaving San Francisco was there was a they came home uh one night and there was dead body in front of their garage they could could get their car and to can park their car the corpse yeah there's no street parking they're like there a corpse there's a corpse in front of the garage and I don't want to move the corpse you know because like well you know you don't you're like maybe this they need to like figure out why the guy died or something you know that's the that's liberal compassion though they're in a bit of a quandry because they they got no\n\nplace to park a car and they they feel that they shouldn't really move the dead body so they call 911 and I said this a dead body out outside our house um and um they said well said they the 91 San Francisco says well are are you in danger right now it's like well no he's dead pretty sure he's dead um and um they're like they're like okay we we'll send someone tomorrow to pick up the body like they'll ring tomorrow so so they're like going in another house while there's a dead body in front D in front of their house you know and like it like took them like 24 hours or something like that to eventually pick up the body and like this how was this we're leaving um and did they yes by way there's a million anecdotes like that oh I know I know but I just don't\n\nthink this is not rare it's well it's it's it's ubiquitous and so then you wonder like how can people still tell themselves they're compassionate if saying is that is that people really just need to think what like I believe in being compassionate about I believe that we should care about our fellow human beings um I think this is a good thing of course we should not we should not be we should not be selfish and not care about others we should care about others but we should just care about others All Things Considered uh like I said care not me just about the criminals it's just one layer deep um you should also care about the criminals victims yes yes well especially the criminals victims yes innocent people who get attacked and killed so I mean I've\n\ngot so many anot I mean um you know like like U uh about a year ago there were there were three uh ex or Twitter employees who were just um leaving the building walking down Mark Street in in San Francisco Mark Street used to be a beautiful wonderful Street obviously it's called Mark street because that's where the market was right now now sported up shop windows and stuff and uh and um they were chased by a guy with an axe who wanted they they they outran him and they reported hey there's a guy with an axe who who tried to try to kill us with an axe the police did nothing that guy with an axe subsequently murdered two people with an axe with the with the axe because eventually he's going to find somebody he can out run and he did so what I'm saying is\n\nif you if you don't stop ax motor while while they're attempting to ax motor eventually they will succeed in ax motoring people if this goes on I mean that's such an obvious OB a seems obvious yes I think it is yeah that if you're in any way ating Axe Murder then you're really you're against civilization that's the way it looks to me I mean yeah I don't see I'm trying to understand motive here I can't relate like you but you're against the whole project if you're allowing that I guess is what I'm saying yeah I think we should um controversial position but I think we should arrest a murderers when they first attempt to ax Mur not after they've succeeded in doing so and I think we should assign at least some of the blame for the axe murderers are the people\n\nwho allowed allowed this guy to WAND around with an axe on Market Street trying to kill people yes yeah well you know this this whole movement to decriminalized crime oh I've noticed yes what is that Madness yeah uh like to make CRI crime crime legal like in California you can just steal things and nobody does anything um it's like fully legal to steal anything under $1,000 in California that's why they've got they now have to like lock up Goods Behind These like you know glass some plastic walls so you go into the supermarket and you can't even get like what toothpaste and and this has actually been particularly difficult on small mom and pop operations because they don't have the resources of a large corporation so it's put a lot of small businesses\n\nout of just killed them so when you're a dinner parties and you make these points what do people say well actually I think I've been I've been able to persuade people that yeah we we we really um we we need to reverse course here I think I have actually been able to a number of people and I think there actually is a now a ballot on a California ballot initiative to re Rec criminalize uh theft theft right guys guys we there's a reason why we criminalized theft in the first place um so so and then amazingly I think Gavin Newsome was came out against that uh proposition yeah no honestly he's the goddamn Joker Gavin is like if it's like like from the like Batman Dark Knight The Joker is in charge of Gotham you remember like he took over New York basically\n\num and and and and the criminals Ram free and the citizens are arrested that's how that's California but but I mean at least there's a ballot initiative which I think will probably pass to say no you actually it is a crime to steal things people so you know Gavin you've got to know Gavin Newsome he knows I know Gavin Newsome you know everyone knows for a long time exactly so what is that and he doesn't seem crazy when you talk to him in person he's a perfectly nice guy like what why would he and he's not stupid why would he come out in favor of crime well his stated reason was that it would disproportionately affect uh uh people of color yeah well again that was his public statement right well that is one of those patronizing racist positions you described\n\nat the outset obviously yeah I mean he's literally saying uh black people are and Hispanics are criminals yeah of course yeah yeah um no that's what he's saying that's what he's saying yeah yeah and by the way it is true that crime like that does increase distrust between races it actually gives rise to racism it's totally destructive of the social fabric I think but I'm but I'm asking like what do you think his real motive is like who's pushing him in favor of crime well I mean there's always the Soros boogy man um you know how real is that it's it's real I I don't think one can ascribe everything to Soros I mean's um and and George George himself is uh is I mean he's seen out at this point he's not yes not compis menus um so his his son Alex is in charge\n\num and um but but there is this whole system that sorus built up over many decades um you know and uh so so I guess sarus and like-minded people or whatever um you know they believe in open borders they they believe we shouldn't prosecute crime um this is insane the those seem like expressions of hatred toward the United States like I don't if I was pushing that on a country I would only do that if I hated the country and wanted to destroy it well it's anti-civilization I mean and sarus and similar and organizations have been pushing this in in Europe and other countries too yeah anyone who everywhere they can what's going on in Europe would you say Europe suddenly seems like like a different place well um I me my biggest concern for Europe is that the\n\nbirth rate is half replacement rate yes so um Europe is rapidly becoming uh with it each passing year um older and older with fewer and fewer young people um so I think at the at a most fundamental level unless Europe has a birth rate at least roughly equal to replacement rate um it is uh in population freefall population collapse is what's going on in Europe uh so um there's also like a shocking amount of censorship you may have seen like in uh you know Britain there I kid you not how can this be real they are releasing convicted pedophiles from prison in order to put people in prison for Facebook posts but to be fair those are posts that criticize the government so they have a good reason um well they actually some of these posts that I've at least\n\nthe ones I've seen didn't actually criticize the government or or or they they they were they were seen as as sort of as as hate speech right um so because they noticed the society getting crappier and crappier with every year and they said so yeah um I mean there were and this is this I'm simply stating a fact there were um migrant rape gangs in in England that would gangs that would run around and prey on young girls gang raped them and some people found that objectionable which I say it should be objectionable um and uh they were upset about that and so they complained about it online and were sent to prison that sounds crazy so it is crazy and that's like like what well it is so it kind of gets to the I mean you're an engineer so you're it is mindboggling\n\nbut it's the same you use the phrase mind virus but it it's behaving like a virus it's infecting people and making it impossible apparently for them to make rational what is that virus you know someone I think you should interview is uh Gods side uh I have oh you have yes oh I should watch that actually he's great yeah smart super smart guy yeah um and he uh he wrote a great book uh called um the parastic mind yes a very good book highly recommend it yes um which where he tries to understand how do you get to this parasitic mind situation um and he's writing a book now which hopefully he'll publish soon um which is about suicidal empathy where you have so much empathy you're actually suiciding Society or so much perceived empathy uh it's not actually\n\nit shallow empathy not deep empathy deep empathy would be you'd want the society continue shallow empathy is is you have like empathy that's essentially skin deep and then you and and you don't it's but it's ultimately bad for civilization and results in the destruction of civilization um and God God side's got a good term for this suicidal empathy he going to sort of De deconstruct what's what's you know where does this come come from um and uh yeah I mean part of it I suppose is is is sort of the decline of religion um so you know as the saying goes nature ofo a vacuum so when you have uh essentially decline in religion an increase in the secular nature of society for most people they need something to fill that void and so they adopt a religion it's\n\nnot called a religion but like but effectively like woke the woke mind virus it's it's a it takes the place of religion yes um and they they they internalize it and they feel it with religious fervor yes uh so and rigidity yes yes and and they you know they they essentially conduct like a holy war effectively uh it it's just not called a religion but it is a religion sort of a work holy war and and they're highly resistant to change as is normal for for for religions now for myself I'm I'm I sort of see myself as a sort of you know engineer physicist for me um I'm culturally Christian I grew up Christ I mean I was Anglican was baptized you know um uh I was went to Sunday school yeah um actually odly enough I was sent to uh Hebrew preschool and anglica\n\nSunday school at the same time so it was harand Gila one day Jesus out low the next which is you know if you're 5 years old it's fine there's not there you know but I'm I'm not Jewish it's just that my my father's two partners in his engineering firm were were I they was went went to the same Hebrew preschool and and it was near our house so I just got sent there but but you know I I I I I you I I I maybe this will make me even more Ames but I I I have trouble sort of believing all these stories uh these religious stories uh but OB lot of people do um and uh I respect people who want to have religious views I'm not trying to dissuade them from their religious views but uh uh anyway I'm just saying I I guess the the operating system I have is is is a sort\n\nof a physics engineering operating system where I I I try to understand as much as possible possible about reality uh you know in in physics you're you're not supposed to believe everything anything absolutely you're supposed to question things that's how you discover new physics you know in engineering that's how you discover if your machine will work or not work will the rocket get to orbit well you know yeah um you know if you if your rocket is uh designed with your physics in mind uh correctly it will get to orbit and if it is not it will not get to orbit uh no matter what your belief system is you can believe um you know whe yeah um you it's like like I meet a lot of people speaking of La I meet a lot of people in La who believe witchcraft is real\n\nand then you can do spells and that Spells and Witchcraft magic is real I'm like can you magic us to the moon and no one has yet been able to Magic us to the Moon um well spells can't be that good okay if you can't I want to go to the Moon let's go how about Mars and um we we got to the moon the first time we definitely went to the moon I SW yes we went to the moon we didn't go to the Moon we went to the moon several times right oh yeah I just want to check your view on that we 100% went to the Moon I mean I I know in- depth the technical designs of the Rockets the spacecraft everything yes uh what went right what went wrong um it it was a remarkable piece of technology like incredible piece of technology for to go to the Moon in' 69 uh that that that\n\nwas uh like reaching into the future and pulling the future forward uh dramatically um and and it was an important ideological battle with Communism um at because they couldn't put a post on the moon and capitalism could"},"languages":["en"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TrsefCVoi98"},{"id":"bbc-interview-2023-04-12","type":"interview","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q98l2zMdGdU","title":"BBC Interview","titles":{"en":"BBC Interview","de":"BBC Interview","fr":"BBC Interview"},"date":"2023-04-12","summary":"Musk's contentious live BBC interview with James Clayton on Twitter layoffs, misinformation and content moderation.","text":"why did you agree to do this this interview with the BBC um I don't know I like sponge and easy and uh I don't know there's a lot going on and it seems like I I actually um do have a lot of respect for the BBC um although sometimes forget what the PVC stands for you know but uh [Laughter] you know what it stands for yes I do um so um yeah yeah so there's there's a lot going on um so this might be a good opportunity to uh answer some questions and um you know I guess uh maybe get some feedback too um what should we be doing different um I know the BBC for example is not thrilled about being levels uh state of related media not exactly I mean I was going to get to that later but let's go for it now it's officially objected to that term do you want to respond\n\nto it uh yeah yeah so we're I mean our goal is simply to have um you know to be as uh truthful and accurate as possible so um I think there's uh I think we're we're adjusting but labeled to be publicly funded which I think is perhaps a not too objectionable we're trying to be accurate uh I'm not the BBC but publicly funded is how the BBC describes it's okay okay so that would be after itself so if we use the same words that the BBC uses to describe itself that presumably would be okay I'm not asking you for a yes or no since you're not running BBC per se or there's probably it seems to pass a reasonable reasonably so you're going to change those labels on the BBC Twitter feed yeah and also npls as well yeah yeah all right publicly funded good basically\n\nthat's we're trying to get accurate as possible okay yeah all right fine um first of all I just want to clear something up are you sleeping in the office here I sometimes sleep in the office like in the library five days a week no no three days a week I'm not here five days a week um but uh there's a library that nobody goes to uh on the uh seventh floor and uh there's a couch there and I have some I stick there sometimes okay okay um in terms of the general overview the reason why I think we've agreed to do this is because he wanted to talk about the first six months as chief executive owner of Twitter um yeah it's kind of like whatever you want to talk about you know right so how do you think it's gone well it's not been boring it's been quite a roller\n\ncoaster so um I mean things are going I think you know reasonably well I mean we're we're seeing some all-time highs in terms of total user time so uh we we passed uh 8 billion user minutes per day which is a lot of user minutes um so um yeah that's so usage is out uh growth is good uh beside works mostly a few glitches here and there but uh the site is is working fairly well um and we're doing it with a small fraction of the original you know head count so I mean you mentioned outages there there have been several and we've actually spoken to an engineer who works at Twitter and they said that the plumbing is broken here and it's on fire and there could be problems at any minute do you do you accept that I mean there have been a few outages but uh not\n\nfor very long I'm just currently working fine so you don't you don't it doesn't keep you up at night that Twitter might go offline again uh at this point I think we've got a pretty good handle on on what makes Twitter work um and we're also doing it with uh uh two data centers instead of three so we used to run have three data centers uh we shut down one of them so we're actually two-thirds of the roughly two-thirds of the prior compute capability uh but we've made so many improvements to the uh core algorithm in some cases we improved the core algorithm by 80 so the actual CPU usage or computer usage is dramatically less so all right but there's also speak for themselves uh the system despite being at all time highs of usage is fast it's responsive it's\n\nmore responsive than it was before before the Takeover and we've also added long form tweets we've added uh you can now post videos after two hours and soon videos of any length um we're we're rolling out our subscriber programs so so people can content creators can actually make a living on Twitter by having some of their content behind a paywall um and um we're open source the algorithm so there's transparency about what tweets get shown what you know what what content gets shown versus not um I think you say like what are you really going to trust are you going to trust some sort of Black Box algorithm from some other site or you're going to trust the thing that you can actually see and understand but you do you accept that there are lots of Engineers\n\nthat are looking at at the way that Twitter is built and the lack of Engineers because so many have have left and are worried about the health of Twitter well I mean they've been um many of these people have predicted that Twitter will cease to function their predictions have not turned out to be true you know insert Mark Twain you know saying yeah rules about death are greatly exaggerated um let's go back six months I mean we're literally on Twitter right now right so it must work let's go back six months and even further further back than that when you put that initial bid in you then have a wobble you kind of said I actually don't want to buy Twitter anymore oh no I mean I mean it really is quite entertaining I mean it's like soap opera uh because\n\nwhen I first made the offer uh the response was the the bordered after a poison pill so they were like hell no you can't buy Twitter we'd rather die we're like chew on cyanide before being being bought that was their initial response and then you said actually I don't want to buy it yes and then and and then they said no you must buy us gun to the head you have to buy us I'm like are you the same people who said you'd rather die than than I'd be bored doesn't that seem odd so I guess my question to you is in terms of you said that you said that the reason was because of Boss because Twitter was filled with Bots look at it now was there a little bit of you that thought actually maybe I've overpaid actually maybe I don't want to do this I want to get out\n\nof this be honest yeah no no the the problem was that the um publicly stated user numbers were in excess of the real user numbers uh so um I've heard you talk about that yes yes basically looking back at it now was that the only reason that you wanted to put out yes that was literally the issue it's like it's like let's say you um uh buy a warehouse full of goods and you're told that uh less than five percent of the goods in the warehouse are uh have have are broken you know um but then you actually get to where you look into the warehouse and turns out actually 25 of the things broken you'll be like huh that's uh that's not what you said so then you change your mind again and decided to buy it I had to because you thought that a court would make you\n\ndo that yes right yes that is the reason right so you were still trying to get out of it and then you just were advised by lawyers look we're gonna buy this yes really really no I mean like like let's say like I think analogy is pretty pretty close like let's say you know it's like you there's a warehouse four Goods uh they say the warehouse uh less than five percent of what's in the warehouse so it's broken and then you look at you you walk into a warehouse you say actually it's 25 so you you might still want to buy what's the in that warehouse but probably at a lower price not buying the stuff that's broken I didn't have an epiphany you just thought I'm gonna because I'm gonna have to buy this I might as well buy the bullet yeah so then you walk super\n\ncomplicated right right I'm not sure you've said that before Oh fair enough um so then you you came into two acute whole bunch of court cases you said this in the BBC area so you then came into Twitter with a sink what were your first impressions well I thought wow this is a really nice office building uh and uh expensive yes a very expensive office building um great decor it's lovely place um and um I mean and definitely is spending money like it's going out of fashion which is it isn't quite going out of fashion yet um so the gravity of the situation is perhaps uh not well understood of um at you know at the point where the company the transaction closed uh Twitter was tracking to uh lose uh over three billion dollars a year so uh and had one billion\n\nin the bank so that's four months to death so this is your starting position how would you feel pretty pretty intense you know they also had to borrow quite a lot of money and pay interest on that too well that's why I put away it was a three billion dollar uh run rate so um in rough numbers a normal year Twitter would do your say let's say four and a half billion in Revenue four and a half billion dollars in cost um I mean it was really kind of like a non-profit they'd run it at roughly roughly break even now that's not bankruptcy oh it's breaking even but but then then the issue is that um if you then add a billion and a half dollars in debt Servicing um and have a massive drop in Revenue which we did um which was partly cyclic and partly you know political\n\nconcerns or whatever um so Revenue you know call it dropped by over a third it's not and this is not just Twitter uh you know Facebook and Google have also seen some significant advertising Revenue to clients it was it was a little it's been a little higher Twitter but most of the advertisers are coming back so I think we'll just we'll be back where there's a cyclic demand drop which is still pretty significant um rough numbers a revenue dropped from four and a half billion to three um uh and um expenses went from four and a half to six creating a three billion dollar negative cash flow situation and Twitter having a billion dollars in the bank that's four months to live so unless drastic action was taken immediately this company is going to die let's\n\ntalk about that drastic action because almost immediately um you sacked a lot of Twitter workers um yeah and I I spoke to them it was very easy to speak to them uh when it happened and and the way they said pretty much everyone said is that it felt quite haphazard it was it felt a little bit uncaring I wouldn't say uncare the the the the you know the issue is like uh the companies are gonna go bankrupt um or if we do not cut costs immediately um this is not a caring uncaring situation it's like if All Ships sinks so nobody's gonna drive right yeah but a lot of people just lost their jobs like that um and and they went I didn't even know they would they'd lost their jobs often they just let me ask you their accounts what would you do well you might want\n\nto give someone some notice I mean you might it's by the way I'm not running Twitter but no no but this is the criticism and this is the actual this is a little bit of notice uh you know no I understand if you're four months to live 120 days and 120 days you're dead so how so what do you want to do how much are you worth I don't know but I mean we're talking about around the 200 billion dollar Mark I mean it's not quite you're framing it in in a way that that you know that it had had a few months to live you're quite a rich man um I saw a lot of Tesla stock to close this deal I did not want to sell the Tesla star okay um do you have any regrets on the way that some of the staff were let go uh I mean people were given you know three months of server in\n\nsome cases more so um but you know we're like I said the companies need to be run on their own cognizance uh and uh it's it's not it's not so easy for me to sell stock as people might think I have to sell stock during certain periods I can't sell stock during other periods um so there's only they're only brief Windows where I can't sell Tesla stock and then this is often taken as some lack of faith in Tesla and in fact the the Tesla stock sales course the Tesla stock to plummet uh which is not good do you think those two were connected well that that people can couldn't parture the difference between I'm selling Tesla stock because I've lost faith in Tesla which I haven't or that it's desperately needed for Twitter um okay and then after that after um\n\nyou um let go of a lot of stuff obviously switch Twitter came slim down a lot and then he started making some more policy decisions one of those policy decisions was to bring Donald Trump back he hasn't actually tweeted yet right do you expect him to come back at any point like have you spoken to him I haven't spoke to him but the point is that Twitter should be uh a Town Square that or that is uh gives uh equal voice to you know the whole country and ideally the whole world um it should not be a partisan politics uh you know and and the more of a pause and politics that are on the very far left of the spectrum San Francisco Berkeley politics normally is quite Niche um but if Twitter effectively acted as a megaphone for a very Niche Regional politics\n\nand and megaphone that to the world so if in order for something to serve as a digital Town Square it must uh you know serve all people from all political Persuasions uh provided it's legal um so yeah close to half the country uh voter for Trump I wasn't one of them I voted for Biden um but nonetheless uh you know free speech is meaningless unless you're allow people uh you don't like to say things you don't like otherwise it's relevant um and if at the point of which you lose a free speech it doesn't come back I think the issue some people have is that a lot of people were brought back I mean some people were brought back here were previously banned for spreading things like uh q and on conspiracies you have people like Andrew take who were brought back\n\nwho were previously uh banned for things like hate speech do you think you prioritize freedom of speech over misinformation and hate speech well you know who's to say that something something is misinformation um who's the auditor of that is it the BBC and you're literally asking me yes well no you want the Arbiter on Twitter because you own Twitter yes I'm saying who is to say that one person's misinformation is another person's information um the point of which you you said that there is uh this is missing for me like who is this information can be dangerous that it can cause real world harms that it can potentially cause um yeah so the point of traffic is the BBC itself has at times published things that are false do you agree with that as a card I\n\nI I'm quite sure the BBC have uh said things before that turn out to not be true right it is whatever it is 100 Year history I'm questions even if you aspire to be accurate there are times when you you will not be I think underground aspire to be accurate but you accept it has to be a line in terms of hate speech I mean not you're not looking at total 100 unrestricted speech um there's well I mean I generally a monthly opinion that if if uh if you if if the people of a given country are against a certain type of speech they should talk to their elected representatives and pass a law to prevent it so for example you cannot Advocate murdering someone that's illegal in the United States they're everywhere really I suspect so uh so there are limits to speech\n\num I mean I guess taking your argument to a logical conclusion then do you accept that there's more misinformation on the platform if it's not being policed in the same way I I actually think there's there's less these days because we we've eliminated so many of the Bots which were pushing scams and spam and previously previous management turned a blind eye to to the wife because their bonuses were tied to user growth and if you vote if you're if your conversation is tied to user growth uh well you're not going to look too closely at some of the users that's part of the problem so I think we've got less less information because we've we don't have the block problem that we used to do and we also have given a lot of attention to community notes which corrects\n\nwith Community itself corrects misinformation has been very effective um I mean I would only just add that you know we have spoken to people who who have been sacked that used to be in content moderation and and we've spoken to people very recently who are involved in moderation and they just say they just there's not enough people to police this stuff particularly around um particularly around hate speech um in the company show you're talking about I mean you use Twitter right do you see a rise in hate speech I mean just a personal anecdote like what do you do I don't but personally my uh for you I would see I get I get more of that kind of content yeah personally but I'm not going to talk to talk to the rest of for the rest of Twitter you've seen more\n\nhate speech personally I would say I would see more hateful content in that in that content you don't like or or hateful what do you mean to describe a hateful thing yeah you know just content that will solicit a reaction something that may include something that is slightly racist or slightly sexist those kinds of those kinds of things so you think if something is slightly sexist it should be banned no is that what you're saying I'm not saying anything I'm just curious I'm trying to understand what you mean by hateful content I'm asking for specific examples um and if and you just said that if something is slightly sexist that's hateful content does that mean that it should be bad well you've asked me you've asked me whether my feed whether it's got\n\nless or more I'd say it's got slightly more that's why I'm asking for examples can I can you name one example I I honestly don't need I I honestly I can't name a single example I'll tell you why because I don't actually use that for you feed anymore because I just don't particularly like it but you said a lot of people a lot of people are quite similar I I only I need to come on a second you said you've seen more hitful content but you can't name a single example not even one I'm not sure I've used that feed for the last three or four weeks and then how did you see the headboard contact because I've been I've been using I've been using Twitter since you've taken over for the last six months okay so then you must have at some point seen that you're for\n\nyou hateful content I'm asking for one example right you can't give a simple one and and I'm saying I I say so that you don't know what you're talking about really yes because you can't be a single example of hateful content not even one tweet and yet you're claimed that the hateful content was high well that's a false no what I could just lied what no no what I claim was uh there are many uh organizations that say that that kind of information is on the rise now whether whether it has maybe one example I mean right and literally someone like this the Strategic dialogue uh Institute in the U in the UK they will say that so people will say all sorts of nonsense I'm literally asking for a single example and you can't name one right and as I already said\n\nI don't use that feed but how would you know I don't think this is getting anything you literally said you experienced more hateful content and then couldn't name a single example right and as I said that's absurd I haven't I haven't actually looked at that feeder then how would you know this beautiful content because I'm saying that's what I saw a few weeks ago I can't give you an exact example let's move on we have we only have a certain amount of time um well covert misinformation you've changed the code with misinformation has BBC changes coveredness information the BBC does not set the rules on Twitter so I'm asking you no I'm talking about what the BBC's misinformation about covet I'm I'm just asking you about you change the labels the covert misinformation\n\nlabels there used to be a policy and then it then disappeared why do that covert is no longer an issue does the BBC uh hold itself at all responsible for misinformation regarding masking and side effects of vaccinations and not reporting on that at all and what about the fact that the BBC was put under pressure by the British government to change the editorial policy are you aware of that this is a this is not an interview about the BBC oh you thought it wasn't and I see now lived on Twitter spaces I am not a representative of the BBC's editorial policy I want to make that clear let's talk about something else all right let's let's talk about let's talk about something else you weren't expecting that let's talk about something else Narendra Modi the BBC\n\ndid a documentary um about Narendra Modi and his leadership during the riots and Gujarat um we then believe that some of those some of that content was taken off Twitter was that at the behest of the Indian government I'm not aware of that particular situation so you're just you're not sure I I don't know if I don't know about that that you know what exactly happened with some content situation in India that there was an idea for for what uh can appear on social media are quite strict and we can't go beyond the laws of a country but do you get the if you do that you incentivize countries around the world to Simply pass more Draconian laws no uh look what if we have a choice of either our people go to prison uh or we comply with the laws we will comply\n\nwith the laws the same goes for the BBC okay okay um since you uh became CEO there's been another story in town is that all right I'm not CEO anymore okay you're a chief sweat or what are you no my dog Floki is the secret okay um he's taken over I I saw that yeah um okay so so Tech talk has also been in the news there's talk of you have to buy the administration wanting to potentially ban it or or force a sale what what's your view of the situation I don't really use tick tock um I mean one of the reasons that I emphasize that the uh I thought our goal here at Twitter is to maximize uh unregretted user minutes or unregarded user time is that I hear many people tell me they spent a lot of time on Tick Tock but they regret the time spent and that seems\n\nlike okay well we don't want to have regretted time we want the time to be unregretted where you learned things you were entertained amused um I mean frankly I I you know I I get to more uh laughs out of Twitter than anything else and many people tell me the same thing so that's a good sign for for tick tock itself like I said I just don't know enough about what's going on there um I can't say I have a strong opinion on tick tock so you have an opinion on whether it should be banned or not you know I'm generally against Banning things um so I I probably not be in favor I mean it would it would help Twitter I suppose if Tick Tock was banned uh because then people would spend more time on Twitter unless I'm a tick tock but even though that would be that\n\neven if it would have helped Twitter I would be generally against a Banning of of things okay um do you feel sometimes that your many business interests might get in the way of you having opinion I mean for example Tesla has major Connections in China do you you wouldn't you wouldn't have a you wouldn't have a certain opinion on something or feel uncomfortable about saying something because of your other business interests elsewhere do I look uncomfortable actually I realized I look very comfortable um uh yeah I mean Tesla has got activities around the world and so does SpaceX um you know once in a while those things do come into conflict um but it's not like Twitter's like uh you know operates in China doesn't it was bad in China so um and certainly\n\nI've received no no communication whatsoever from the Chinese government with regard to Twitter okay um in terms of advertising obviously the Twitter is not a private company anymore so we don't really know how it's how it's all going have all the advertisers come back uh not all but most and you can see it for yourself on Twitter even in the before you feed right I mean I'm sorry in the following actually don't use for you because it sucks rightly filled with hate speech I'm told um that's not what I said okay well why don't you use for you what's wrong with it um how is it going is twittering profit now no Twitter is uh uh rough I'd say we're roughly break even at this point and I think you've said before you you see a you see a world where you could\n\nbe in profit is there a timeline on that do you think I mean depending on how things go if current trends continue I think we could be profitable or okay to be more precise we could be cash flow positive uh this quarter if things keep going well this quarter as soon as that I possibly yeah wow um and do you have a message for the advertising I mean can you say which advertisers haven't come back um I think I think almost all of them have either come back or said they're going to come back there are very few exceptions can you say any of the exceptions um I actually don't know of anyone who said definitively they're not coming back they're all sort of training towards coming back but there are some that just can't jump in the water's warm it's great that's\n\nyour message to the to the advertisers they haven't come back yeah I mean look uh you know if if if Disney feels comfortable um advertising you know children's movies and apple feels comfortable advertising iPhones those are good indicators that Twitter is um a good place to advertise um I want to talk about if you have any regret regrets and and you know I think you were Buddha Dave Chappelle concert I think your own lawyer a little a little well some say a little some say a bit more um I think your own lawyer said you couldn't get a fair trial in San Francisco because there are lots of people that don't necessarily like you here yeah but you know I have to say it I was wrong he was wrong I guess the uh because I was acquitted uh by the San Francisco\n\njury unanimously so yeah but I guess but look do you have any regrets about buying Twitter um I think it was something that needed to be done um difficult you know I'd say that like the the pain level of Twitter has been extremely high um this hasn't been some sort of party um so uh it's been really quite a stressful situation uh you know over the last several months not not an easy one I I'm a bit apart from the pain I mean so it's been quite painful um but I think uh at the end of the day it should have been done I think it's not where the many mistakes made along the way of course you know um and uh but you know all's well it ends well and so I I feel like we're headed to a good place um you know where roughly break even I think we're trending towards\n\nbeing kind of flow positive very soon like literally in a matter of of months um the advertisers are returning um the I think the quality of recommended tweets has improved significantly and we've taken a lot of feedback from uh people that have looked at the open source recommendation algorithm and we've we've made a lot of improvements even even since that was made open source and we're going to keep doing that so overall I think the trend is very good so you know I mean it was actually something I was going to ask you you mentioned the pain but you actually tweeted uh I think in February you said the last three months have been extremely tough I wouldn't wish that pain on anyone okay are you talking emotionally there I mean can you can you explain\n\noh there wasn't started or anything right right like some people around Europe says dangerous neck of the woods were in it is it can be but just can you just talk me through the emotional strain of this yeah I mean look I'm under I've been under constant attack I mean uh it's not like I you know have a stone cold heart or something like that you know uh if if you're under constant criticism attack it's and then that that gets fed to you non-stop including through Twitter um that uh it's rough you know um not at the end of the day I kind of think that like if you do lose your feedback loop that's that's actually not good um so uh you know if so I think it's it is actually important to get negative feedback um I don't turn replies off and I actually got\n\nrid of I removed my entire block list so I don't block anyone either um so so somebody can you know so I get like a lot of negative feedback um but I think it's actually good to get negative feedback right when you talk about the the emotional strain you've gone back to feedback is that the thing that's been most difficult to take the sort of negative feedback yeah I mean if if uh if the media is writing non-stop stories about why you're a horrible person I mean it's you know um it's uh hurtful obviously I I I've written down a lot of these questions but but I haven't written this one down but it's interesting it feels like you have quite a kind of interesting relationship with the media because in one in some ways you're quite skeptical quite critical\n\ncertainly of established media but also you kind of get hurt by what the media writes and um did you get your news still from the BBC as you've already said I literally followed abuse right right Etc so do you feel you have a kind of a kind of odd relationship with the media yes and explain no it is somewhat of a love-hate relationship although I mean it might be tilted a bit more towards the head [Laughter] um but uh you know it's uh you know I I think this this is a sort of part and parcel of having a a free media situation which is that um you know I do I do take uh heart again and that the media is actually able to trash me on a regular basis uh in you know in the United States in the UK and whatnot um whereas you know in a lot of other places uh\n\nVita cannot say uh mean things to powerful people okay but I think it's better that we have a situation where the media can say uh mean things to powerful people if we're talking about the media let's talk about verification enables you obviously want to create another Revenue stream that's subscription based it's verification the way to do that because we have a kind of a situation at the moment where the New York Times doesn't have a verified badge whatever a few few bucks a month yeah can is that can that be right is that what you've envisaged when you bought Twitter I I must confess to some Delight in removing the verified batch from The New York Times that was that was great um anyway they're still alive and well so uh they're they're doing fine\n\nbut on a serious note it could flame disinformation again if you have verified accounts that uh are from anyone who can pay money they simply they go up to potentially uh the top of feeds um they get more action on Twitter and uh traditional media that may not pay for uh verification doesn't do you see how that could potentially be a driver of misinformation well I mean I I think the media is a driver of misinformation much more than the media would like to admit that they are um I mean that's a different question yeah um but you are sort of saying like like who who knows best the average citizen or you know uh so someone who who is a journalist um and I think in a lot of cases um it is the average citizen that knows more than than the journalist in fact\n\nI mean very often when I see an article about some uh something that I know a lot about and I read the article it's like that they get a lot wrong um and uh you know sort of the best interpretation is there is someone who doesn't really understand what's going on in industry has only a few facts to play with has to come up with an article not it's going to be you know it's not going to it's not gonna hit the bullseye um uh so so then like generally this is what how expensive if you read an article about something you know about how much of that how accurate is that article now imagine that that is that is how or essentially all articles are they they're an approximation of what's going on but but not in a not an exact uh situation so if somebody is actually\n\nlet's say uh in The Fray or like an expert in the field and uh was actually there and then and writes about their experience of being actually there I I think that actually that that that's uh in a lot of cases going to be better than a journalist because the journalist wasn't there I think you said the Legacy verified blue techs are going to go next week uh there have been a few few deadlines before 4 20.\n\nyeah I I see the joke um clearly yeah it costs you a lot of money well fortunately it didn't in the trial well yeah right but they fit it as you say right yes we're going to ask for a refund yeah okay yeah good luck let's move on from that but blue sex in theory all Legacy blue ticks gone gone next week and this is and at that point you'll kind of work out whether this is going to sink or swim yes what's your what's your hatch I mean you've obviously I think it's good yeah yeah it'll swim just fine okay what are you looking for in terms of in terms of a revenue stream on that whatever goals well I I don't know if it's like necessarily a giant Revenue stream um you know because even if you if you have sort of a million uh people that are subscribed for\n\nlet's say 100 a year ish that's a hundred million dollars um and uh that's that's a that's a fairly small Revenue stream relative to advertising um but what we're really trying to do here with verification is to massively raise the cost of this information and and bots in general so my prediction is that any social media company that does not uh insist on paid verification will simply be overwhelmed uh by Advanced AI Bots I mean chat gbt is essentially a zillion instances of chat gbt really what you want on the platform do you want big news organizations being overwhelmed by bots so that they have to go the point is that you won't be if you pay but a lot of organizations have already said they're not going to pay like the New York Times well then you\n\nknow that's up to them if they you know go make them pay um it's a small amount of money so I don't know what their problem is um so uh but we're going to treat everyone equally so what we're not going to do is say that there's some anointed class of journalists who are the special ones who get to tell everyone what they're what they what they should think that it should be up to the people what they think um and even if an article is completely accurate and um comprehensive and everything if they're still in in writing that article the media is choosing the narrative they're deciding what to write an article about um so I'm hopeful that this can be more a case of the public choosing the narrative as opposed to the media choosing narrative but the media\n\ncan choose at least a combination of the media and the public choosing the narrative um and the the public getting to to weigh in on stories if they if they think there's they should add something to it or if we've got something wrong and over time I think if Twitter is the best source of Truth it will succeed and if and if we are not the best source of Truth we will fail someone comes in and offers you 44 billion for Twitter right now would you take it no would you consider it no no why uh well as I take it back it depends on who I suppose if I was confident that they would pursue that would they would rigorously pursue the truth um Then I then I I guess I guess I would be glad to hand it off to someone else I don't care about the money really but I\n\nI I do want to have if some source of truth that I can count on um and and I I hope that's our aspiration with Twitter is to have you know a source of truth that you can count on oh that's that's it's also real time it's an immediate source of truth that you can count on and that gets more accurate with time as people comment on particularly with that well if you don't care about the money you could just give it to someone that you that you think is a good person to run Twitter who do you think that might be I I'm not the boss of Twitter nobody choose well that's you might still have an idea who could run Twitter yes honestly I have no idea who could run Twitter yeah it's a hard job okay let's I mean let's move on to that you've said that you were going\n\nto um Stand Down chief executive right okay I can tell you I'm not the CEO of Twitter my dog is the CEO okay have you got any it's a great dog other than the story alert and it's hard to put get anything by him okay that's good to know other than the dog have you got any success you've got a black a turtle turtleneck or what would you need [Laughter] what were we talking about there uh yeah who would you who would you want have you got a successor in mind not yet hopefully at some point right so because you did say you were going to stand out well I did stand out okay all right let's move on from that then all right what about this office I'm intrigued about this office you've said it was even expensive you're really new yeah yeah why can't we be um in\n\nan awkward or something called this commune I think Jack Dorsey kind of recommended doing that and kind of ignored it yeah it was kind of bad actually hmm um this office are you thinking about moving out of San Francisco uh not yet not yet but yeah no this place is nice and uh we you know I kind of like this obstacle actually yeah okay so you're not because I know you've talked about there's been high levels of crime here you actually said it I think we should do something about the crime right because people are dying right we should take action you've also talked about how potentially I think you might have been joking but you could turn this into a homeless shelter so yeah I guess the reason I'm asking is you know you've you've if we've tried to turn\n\ninto a homeless shot in the building The Bullying management was well the owner rejected it you tried it yeah they won't let us we're only using one of the buildings and so the other building could be a homeless shelter and you've tried to yeah we would like to do it right now really yes and no then you're being stopped by who by the building owner they weren't like No in fact they wouldn't even let us take the W off the sign so how are you going to do that really quite quite uh you know what was your what was your plan for the shelter I don't know we could just let people stay there it's nice right okay I I didn't know that they can bring their stuff bring the tent whatever right and it's a roof over their heads yeah it's the wedding owner lets us we'll\n\ndo it yeah so if the building only that owner lets you you would you would happily do that yes okay all right there we go um what's the most difficult thing you've had to do what's the hardest thing you've had to do in my whole life in the last six months we're talking about talk about the last six months as you as Twitter boss said Twitter owner um well shutting down uh our one of our service centers was was quite difficult because it turns out there were I thought the service centers were redundant but they were in fact a lot of things that were hard-coded to this one server Center and so when we shut it down we actually uh it was quite catastrophic we lost a lot of functionality which sort of really rushed to put it back when was that when I was around\n\nlate December during early January so that was the biggest sort of I'm I'm worried the biggest crisis yeah yeah and what about hard in terms of emotion I mean I mean there's Letting Go I mean what what were the current the levels of stuff and what are they now um I think we're um around 1500 people at this point and there was I think 7 800.\n\nwhat was it so I think it was around just under eight thousand eight thousand fifteen hundred right now okay and it has it been hard letting up that many people go yeah not fun at all it's painful I mean I guess in in what way do you do you feel like you need to speak to people when they when when they leave or I mean it's not physically possible to speak to that many people has that I mean you talked about that being the most technical bit is that has has that been sort of the hardest thing emotionally or is it it's one of the hardest things certainly yeah yeah um the Nancy Pelosi tweet but there have been that is an example of a film there have been others um do you feel like you're an impulsive person I mean have I shot myself in the foot with tweets\n\nmultiple times yes do you feel like I need bulletproof shoes at this point I mean you've definitely done that the issue is that you're now Twitter owner do you feel like you should be look at your tweets more you have more a higher responsibility when you tweet something out for it to be accurate I think I should not tweet uh after 3am that's the new rule yeah something like that okay so there's a blanket ban I should I shouldn't I shouldn't uh what I like your Twitter what are your Twitter rules I mean I've had some people say never tweet when you've been drinking or never tweet when angry what are your Twitter rules well I think those are two good rules yeah don't tweet if you're wasted um and uh or you know really upset about something um yeah probably\n\nuh I mean a good friend of mine um actually had a good suggestion it has helped uh which is that uh if you're gonna tweet something that uh maybe is controversial uh you save it as a draft and look at it the next day and see if you still want to tweeted and that has been a good rule with them okay we've got a bunch of things I'm glad I didn't send um I can't remember whether I've asked you this this is my sort of sort of wrapping up at this point but yeah do you have any regrets uh I mean we're always like hindsight's 2020 so there's you know a bunch of decisions that could have been made better for sure um but um as I said all's well it ends well um and things are going pretty well so uh in the grand scheme of things I I can't complain okay um I'm gonna\n\njust check my my list of things to make sure I've actually I mean it's maybe there's something we've got people on the on the Twitter once you say ask you know we could ask them that's all new that's on you it's this 680 000 people listening there you go that's a lot that is a lot uh let's see how do we see okay let me see who I'll just look at my my tweet and uh see what people are saying or what questions I have um [Laughter] do you like the BBC do you like BBC okay yeah we're not gonna oh I can't interview you said what for the BBC well baby you like do you like BBC I know I see what you're doing I'm not going to respond to that okay I think you can finish the interview if you want to continue thank you very much I really appreciate it you're sure\n\nyou like PVC come on um I'm not engaging here all right Elon it honestly has been a pleasure okay talking to you it really has and if you want if you want to carry on answering questions on on on on this then I'm not going to okay well I just wanted to see if there's like any you know good there's a lot of comments here um I can imagine um there's so many anyway so it's it's nice to be interviewed by the BBC I have a lot of respect to the British Broadcasting Corporation um what did you say when the when the actual label is going to go public oh is it um is it do we still say State media whatever oh it says government-funded media currently um as opposed to publicly funded media well I guess probably we can make that change tomorrow if you'd like it's\n\nup to you but I mean you can see we'll expect that tomorrow I mean do you have any requests on a personal level or you can speak on a personal level no I don't okay okay I think we've established that um what what questions are people asking you go on um I mean there's like a lot of comments uh let's see I was literally reading on look at replies to the you know the fact that the space is um are there any good questions that I've missed out in the last in the last six months I'm sure there are many um I mean people generally seem to like this interview for a hotel um for a few negative comments so generally positive is that is that that's probably bad for me [Laughter] see uh I guess there's some complaints about Twitter spaces being needing some improvement\n\nlet's fix Twitter spaces as one of the comments um people like the fact that my dog Loki is the CEO um and uh I'm really just scrolling as fast as I can here um I I actually known this I just like to say I like BBC [Music] I do find it funny um I I think I mean honestly if looking listening to the interview the answer about misinformation and saying oh we don't police misinformation in the same way but as we try and get this because we try and take down Bots will be effective at Bots we're actually there's actually less misinformation on the platform no I think that's a big factor a lot of people I think will be listening to this I'm sure really you're you're arguing you can police content moderation far less and end up with less misinformation how how\n\nfirst of all we do have we do have uh you know people working on contract contract moderation it's not like we don't um so uh I've spoken to lots of people who've been who've been fired so a lot lots of people have been let go I mean you've gone from eight yeah the censorship Bureau was let go um I don't think the the sort of putting a thumb on the political scales in the far left has been let go because that's not right that's not what you want for a public a Public Square um you know you've got to have equal treatment for people from um across the political Spectrum so um you know something we're going to be upset about that um but like I said my my experience is that there's less less misinformation these days not more um and that the community notes\n\nfeature is extremely powerful for uh addressing uh so-called misinformation um diamond mine diamond mine I mine the one a mind that your father part owned yeah my father never owned a bird you're thinking of an emerald Emerald Emerald mine yeah I'd like to see a picture of this alleged Emerald mine because you've been yeah did you know that no but it's he he never owned a a emerald mine this is probably not even a 50 steak no because in community no first of all okay do you think Emerald do you think something like would have like um you know uh some sort of property register there'd be like a picture of it it's not like you can say oh that's my mind you know these things are hotly debated if you've got something valuable um you you have to have some\n\nproperty record like a house but but much more important than a house and yet there is no property record whatsoever there was no picture of this mine whatsoever it doesn't exist it's fake so that's you know on that tweet that says you said this thing on the X day blah blah blah so in that instance the the Keynotes didn't work so you're saying that that's a way of solving misinformation but you're literally saying one of those Community notes is wrong it's in the community community note may be referring to a thing where uh I I went on a trip with my father to Zambia um but I never saw any mine or anything so there's no such it's there's no mine I'm not right but at this point I'm just saying the community note says it is so you're saying it's this big\n\ngreat Panacea but yeah it's literally on your own tweet the community notes according to you're wrong uh if if they're referencing um an article then the article may not be wrong but there's a communist is not going to be perfect but it's the batting average of community notes I found to be extremely high um so Community next Plus getting rid of millions and millions of bots every day I guess that's that's what we're talking about yeah that that that's what you think is tackling this information over over content moderation I think I think because I think that's the bit that a lot of people will go really really yes really look the asset test is people use the system and find it find it to be a good source of Truth or they don't and no no system is going\n\nto be perfect uh in in its uh pursuit of the truth um but I think I think we can be the best the least uh inaccurate that's our goal the least inaccurate and I think we I I think we might be there already if we're not there we'll be there soon do you have I've I've spoken to people who think next do you have a a kind of message for people who who think that Twitter has been ruined well we have all-time high usage so I don't think it has been yes well they're probably the same people who predicted that Twitter would cease to exist and their predictions have turned out to be false I know I'm not going to ask you whether it's been ruined because obviously no I think it's great it's way better by a lot all right [Music] thank you foreign [Music]","textByLang":{"en":"why did you agree to do this this interview with the BBC um I don't know I like sponge and easy and uh I don't know there's a lot going on and it seems like I I actually um do have a lot of respect for the BBC um although sometimes forget what the PVC stands for you know but uh [Laughter] you know what it stands for yes I do um so um yeah yeah so there's there's a lot going on um so this might be a good opportunity to uh answer some questions and um you know I guess uh maybe get some feedback too um what should we be doing different um I know the BBC for example is not thrilled about being levels uh state of related media not exactly I mean I was going to get to that later but let's go for it now it's officially objected to that term do you want to respond\n\nto it uh yeah yeah so we're I mean our goal is simply to have um you know to be as uh truthful and accurate as possible so um I think there's uh I think we're we're adjusting but labeled to be publicly funded which I think is perhaps a not too objectionable we're trying to be accurate uh I'm not the BBC but publicly funded is how the BBC describes it's okay okay so that would be after itself so if we use the same words that the BBC uses to describe itself that presumably would be okay I'm not asking you for a yes or no since you're not running BBC per se or there's probably it seems to pass a reasonable reasonably so you're going to change those labels on the BBC Twitter feed yeah and also npls as well yeah yeah all right publicly funded good basically\n\nthat's we're trying to get accurate as possible okay yeah all right fine um first of all I just want to clear something up are you sleeping in the office here I sometimes sleep in the office like in the library five days a week no no three days a week I'm not here five days a week um but uh there's a library that nobody goes to uh on the uh seventh floor and uh there's a couch there and I have some I stick there sometimes okay okay um in terms of the general overview the reason why I think we've agreed to do this is because he wanted to talk about the first six months as chief executive owner of Twitter um yeah it's kind of like whatever you want to talk about you know right so how do you think it's gone well it's not been boring it's been quite a roller\n\ncoaster so um I mean things are going I think you know reasonably well I mean we're we're seeing some all-time highs in terms of total user time so uh we we passed uh 8 billion user minutes per day which is a lot of user minutes um so um yeah that's so usage is out uh growth is good uh beside works mostly a few glitches here and there but uh the site is is working fairly well um and we're doing it with a small fraction of the original you know head count so I mean you mentioned outages there there have been several and we've actually spoken to an engineer who works at Twitter and they said that the plumbing is broken here and it's on fire and there could be problems at any minute do you do you accept that I mean there have been a few outages but uh not\n\nfor very long I'm just currently working fine so you don't you don't it doesn't keep you up at night that Twitter might go offline again uh at this point I think we've got a pretty good handle on on what makes Twitter work um and we're also doing it with uh uh two data centers instead of three so we used to run have three data centers uh we shut down one of them so we're actually two-thirds of the roughly two-thirds of the prior compute capability uh but we've made so many improvements to the uh core algorithm in some cases we improved the core algorithm by 80 so the actual CPU usage or computer usage is dramatically less so all right but there's also speak for themselves uh the system despite being at all time highs of usage is fast it's responsive it's\n\nmore responsive than it was before before the Takeover and we've also added long form tweets we've added uh you can now post videos after two hours and soon videos of any length um we're we're rolling out our subscriber programs so so people can content creators can actually make a living on Twitter by having some of their content behind a paywall um and um we're open source the algorithm so there's transparency about what tweets get shown what you know what what content gets shown versus not um I think you say like what are you really going to trust are you going to trust some sort of Black Box algorithm from some other site or you're going to trust the thing that you can actually see and understand but you do you accept that there are lots of Engineers\n\nthat are looking at at the way that Twitter is built and the lack of Engineers because so many have have left and are worried about the health of Twitter well I mean they've been um many of these people have predicted that Twitter will cease to function their predictions have not turned out to be true you know insert Mark Twain you know saying yeah rules about death are greatly exaggerated um let's go back six months I mean we're literally on Twitter right now right so it must work let's go back six months and even further further back than that when you put that initial bid in you then have a wobble you kind of said I actually don't want to buy Twitter anymore oh no I mean I mean it really is quite entertaining I mean it's like soap opera uh because\n\nwhen I first made the offer uh the response was the the bordered after a poison pill so they were like hell no you can't buy Twitter we'd rather die we're like chew on cyanide before being being bought that was their initial response and then you said actually I don't want to buy it yes and then and and then they said no you must buy us gun to the head you have to buy us I'm like are you the same people who said you'd rather die than than I'd be bored doesn't that seem odd so I guess my question to you is in terms of you said that you said that the reason was because of Boss because Twitter was filled with Bots look at it now was there a little bit of you that thought actually maybe I've overpaid actually maybe I don't want to do this I want to get out\n\nof this be honest yeah no no the the problem was that the um publicly stated user numbers were in excess of the real user numbers uh so um I've heard you talk about that yes yes basically looking back at it now was that the only reason that you wanted to put out yes that was literally the issue it's like it's like let's say you um uh buy a warehouse full of goods and you're told that uh less than five percent of the goods in the warehouse are uh have have are broken you know um but then you actually get to where you look into the warehouse and turns out actually 25 of the things broken you'll be like huh that's uh that's not what you said so then you change your mind again and decided to buy it I had to because you thought that a court would make you\n\ndo that yes right yes that is the reason right so you were still trying to get out of it and then you just were advised by lawyers look we're gonna buy this yes really really no I mean like like let's say like I think analogy is pretty pretty close like let's say you know it's like you there's a warehouse four Goods uh they say the warehouse uh less than five percent of what's in the warehouse so it's broken and then you look at you you walk into a warehouse you say actually it's 25 so you you might still want to buy what's the in that warehouse but probably at a lower price not buying the stuff that's broken I didn't have an epiphany you just thought I'm gonna because I'm gonna have to buy this I might as well buy the bullet yeah so then you walk super\n\ncomplicated right right I'm not sure you've said that before Oh fair enough um so then you you came into two acute whole bunch of court cases you said this in the BBC area so you then came into Twitter with a sink what were your first impressions well I thought wow this is a really nice office building uh and uh expensive yes a very expensive office building um great decor it's lovely place um and um I mean and definitely is spending money like it's going out of fashion which is it isn't quite going out of fashion yet um so the gravity of the situation is perhaps uh not well understood of um at you know at the point where the company the transaction closed uh Twitter was tracking to uh lose uh over three billion dollars a year so uh and had one billion\n\nin the bank so that's four months to death so this is your starting position how would you feel pretty pretty intense you know they also had to borrow quite a lot of money and pay interest on that too well that's why I put away it was a three billion dollar uh run rate so um in rough numbers a normal year Twitter would do your say let's say four and a half billion in Revenue four and a half billion dollars in cost um I mean it was really kind of like a non-profit they'd run it at roughly roughly break even now that's not bankruptcy oh it's breaking even but but then then the issue is that um if you then add a billion and a half dollars in debt Servicing um and have a massive drop in Revenue which we did um which was partly cyclic and partly you know political\n\nconcerns or whatever um so Revenue you know call it dropped by over a third it's not and this is not just Twitter uh you know Facebook and Google have also seen some significant advertising Revenue to clients it was it was a little it's been a little higher Twitter but most of the advertisers are coming back so I think we'll just we'll be back where there's a cyclic demand drop which is still pretty significant um rough numbers a revenue dropped from four and a half billion to three um uh and um expenses went from four and a half to six creating a three billion dollar negative cash flow situation and Twitter having a billion dollars in the bank that's four months to live so unless drastic action was taken immediately this company is going to die let's\n\ntalk about that drastic action because almost immediately um you sacked a lot of Twitter workers um yeah and I I spoke to them it was very easy to speak to them uh when it happened and and the way they said pretty much everyone said is that it felt quite haphazard it was it felt a little bit uncaring I wouldn't say uncare the the the the you know the issue is like uh the companies are gonna go bankrupt um or if we do not cut costs immediately um this is not a caring uncaring situation it's like if All Ships sinks so nobody's gonna drive right yeah but a lot of people just lost their jobs like that um and and they went I didn't even know they would they'd lost their jobs often they just let me ask you their accounts what would you do well you might want\n\nto give someone some notice I mean you might it's by the way I'm not running Twitter but no no but this is the criticism and this is the actual this is a little bit of notice uh you know no I understand if you're four months to live 120 days and 120 days you're dead so how so what do you want to do how much are you worth I don't know but I mean we're talking about around the 200 billion dollar Mark I mean it's not quite you're framing it in in a way that that you know that it had had a few months to live you're quite a rich man um I saw a lot of Tesla stock to close this deal I did not want to sell the Tesla star okay um do you have any regrets on the way that some of the staff were let go uh I mean people were given you know three months of server in\n\nsome cases more so um but you know we're like I said the companies need to be run on their own cognizance uh and uh it's it's not it's not so easy for me to sell stock as people might think I have to sell stock during certain periods I can't sell stock during other periods um so there's only they're only brief Windows where I can't sell Tesla stock and then this is often taken as some lack of faith in Tesla and in fact the the Tesla stock sales course the Tesla stock to plummet uh which is not good do you think those two were connected well that that people can couldn't parture the difference between I'm selling Tesla stock because I've lost faith in Tesla which I haven't or that it's desperately needed for Twitter um okay and then after that after um\n\nyou um let go of a lot of stuff obviously switch Twitter came slim down a lot and then he started making some more policy decisions one of those policy decisions was to bring Donald Trump back he hasn't actually tweeted yet right do you expect him to come back at any point like have you spoken to him I haven't spoke to him but the point is that Twitter should be uh a Town Square that or that is uh gives uh equal voice to you know the whole country and ideally the whole world um it should not be a partisan politics uh you know and and the more of a pause and politics that are on the very far left of the spectrum San Francisco Berkeley politics normally is quite Niche um but if Twitter effectively acted as a megaphone for a very Niche Regional politics\n\nand and megaphone that to the world so if in order for something to serve as a digital Town Square it must uh you know serve all people from all political Persuasions uh provided it's legal um so yeah close to half the country uh voter for Trump I wasn't one of them I voted for Biden um but nonetheless uh you know free speech is meaningless unless you're allow people uh you don't like to say things you don't like otherwise it's relevant um and if at the point of which you lose a free speech it doesn't come back I think the issue some people have is that a lot of people were brought back I mean some people were brought back here were previously banned for spreading things like uh q and on conspiracies you have people like Andrew take who were brought back\n\nwho were previously uh banned for things like hate speech do you think you prioritize freedom of speech over misinformation and hate speech well you know who's to say that something something is misinformation um who's the auditor of that is it the BBC and you're literally asking me yes well no you want the Arbiter on Twitter because you own Twitter yes I'm saying who is to say that one person's misinformation is another person's information um the point of which you you said that there is uh this is missing for me like who is this information can be dangerous that it can cause real world harms that it can potentially cause um yeah so the point of traffic is the BBC itself has at times published things that are false do you agree with that as a card I\n\nI I'm quite sure the BBC have uh said things before that turn out to not be true right it is whatever it is 100 Year history I'm questions even if you aspire to be accurate there are times when you you will not be I think underground aspire to be accurate but you accept it has to be a line in terms of hate speech I mean not you're not looking at total 100 unrestricted speech um there's well I mean I generally a monthly opinion that if if uh if you if if the people of a given country are against a certain type of speech they should talk to their elected representatives and pass a law to prevent it so for example you cannot Advocate murdering someone that's illegal in the United States they're everywhere really I suspect so uh so there are limits to speech\n\num I mean I guess taking your argument to a logical conclusion then do you accept that there's more misinformation on the platform if it's not being policed in the same way I I actually think there's there's less these days because we we've eliminated so many of the Bots which were pushing scams and spam and previously previous management turned a blind eye to to the wife because their bonuses were tied to user growth and if you vote if you're if your conversation is tied to user growth uh well you're not going to look too closely at some of the users that's part of the problem so I think we've got less less information because we've we don't have the block problem that we used to do and we also have given a lot of attention to community notes which corrects\n\nwith Community itself corrects misinformation has been very effective um I mean I would only just add that you know we have spoken to people who who have been sacked that used to be in content moderation and and we've spoken to people very recently who are involved in moderation and they just say they just there's not enough people to police this stuff particularly around um particularly around hate speech um in the company show you're talking about I mean you use Twitter right do you see a rise in hate speech I mean just a personal anecdote like what do you do I don't but personally my uh for you I would see I get I get more of that kind of content yeah personally but I'm not going to talk to talk to the rest of for the rest of Twitter you've seen more\n\nhate speech personally I would say I would see more hateful content in that in that content you don't like or or hateful what do you mean to describe a hateful thing yeah you know just content that will solicit a reaction something that may include something that is slightly racist or slightly sexist those kinds of those kinds of things so you think if something is slightly sexist it should be banned no is that what you're saying I'm not saying anything I'm just curious I'm trying to understand what you mean by hateful content I'm asking for specific examples um and if and you just said that if something is slightly sexist that's hateful content does that mean that it should be bad well you've asked me you've asked me whether my feed whether it's got\n\nless or more I'd say it's got slightly more that's why I'm asking for examples can I can you name one example I I honestly don't need I I honestly I can't name a single example I'll tell you why because I don't actually use that for you feed anymore because I just don't particularly like it but you said a lot of people a lot of people are quite similar I I only I need to come on a second you said you've seen more hitful content but you can't name a single example not even one I'm not sure I've used that feed for the last three or four weeks and then how did you see the headboard contact because I've been I've been using I've been using Twitter since you've taken over for the last six months okay so then you must have at some point seen that you're for\n\nyou hateful content I'm asking for one example right you can't give a simple one and and I'm saying I I say so that you don't know what you're talking about really yes because you can't be a single example of hateful content not even one tweet and yet you're claimed that the hateful content was high well that's a false no what I could just lied what no no what I claim was uh there are many uh organizations that say that that kind of information is on the rise now whether whether it has maybe one example I mean right and literally someone like this the Strategic dialogue uh Institute in the U in the UK they will say that so people will say all sorts of nonsense I'm literally asking for a single example and you can't name one right and as I already said\n\nI don't use that feed but how would you know I don't think this is getting anything you literally said you experienced more hateful content and then couldn't name a single example right and as I said that's absurd I haven't I haven't actually looked at that feeder then how would you know this beautiful content because I'm saying that's what I saw a few weeks ago I can't give you an exact example let's move on we have we only have a certain amount of time um well covert misinformation you've changed the code with misinformation has BBC changes coveredness information the BBC does not set the rules on Twitter so I'm asking you no I'm talking about what the BBC's misinformation about covet I'm I'm just asking you about you change the labels the covert misinformation\n\nlabels there used to be a policy and then it then disappeared why do that covert is no longer an issue does the BBC uh hold itself at all responsible for misinformation regarding masking and side effects of vaccinations and not reporting on that at all and what about the fact that the BBC was put under pressure by the British government to change the editorial policy are you aware of that this is a this is not an interview about the BBC oh you thought it wasn't and I see now lived on Twitter spaces I am not a representative of the BBC's editorial policy I want to make that clear let's talk about something else all right let's let's talk about let's talk about something else you weren't expecting that let's talk about something else Narendra Modi the BBC\n\ndid a documentary um about Narendra Modi and his leadership during the riots and Gujarat um we then believe that some of those some of that content was taken off Twitter was that at the behest of the Indian government I'm not aware of that particular situation so you're just you're not sure I I don't know if I don't know about that that you know what exactly happened with some content situation in India that there was an idea for for what uh can appear on social media are quite strict and we can't go beyond the laws of a country but do you get the if you do that you incentivize countries around the world to Simply pass more Draconian laws no uh look what if we have a choice of either our people go to prison uh or we comply with the laws we will comply\n\nwith the laws the same goes for the BBC okay okay um since you uh became CEO there's been another story in town is that all right I'm not CEO anymore okay you're a chief sweat or what are you no my dog Floki is the secret okay um he's taken over I I saw that yeah um okay so so Tech talk has also been in the news there's talk of you have to buy the administration wanting to potentially ban it or or force a sale what what's your view of the situation I don't really use tick tock um I mean one of the reasons that I emphasize that the uh I thought our goal here at Twitter is to maximize uh unregretted user minutes or unregarded user time is that I hear many people tell me they spent a lot of time on Tick Tock but they regret the time spent and that seems\n\nlike okay well we don't want to have regretted time we want the time to be unregretted where you learned things you were entertained amused um I mean frankly I I you know I I get to more uh laughs out of Twitter than anything else and many people tell me the same thing so that's a good sign for for tick tock itself like I said I just don't know enough about what's going on there um I can't say I have a strong opinion on tick tock so you have an opinion on whether it should be banned or not you know I'm generally against Banning things um so I I probably not be in favor I mean it would it would help Twitter I suppose if Tick Tock was banned uh because then people would spend more time on Twitter unless I'm a tick tock but even though that would be that\n\neven if it would have helped Twitter I would be generally against a Banning of of things okay um do you feel sometimes that your many business interests might get in the way of you having opinion I mean for example Tesla has major Connections in China do you you wouldn't you wouldn't have a you wouldn't have a certain opinion on something or feel uncomfortable about saying something because of your other business interests elsewhere do I look uncomfortable actually I realized I look very comfortable um uh yeah I mean Tesla has got activities around the world and so does SpaceX um you know once in a while those things do come into conflict um but it's not like Twitter's like uh you know operates in China doesn't it was bad in China so um and certainly\n\nI've received no no communication whatsoever from the Chinese government with regard to Twitter okay um in terms of advertising obviously the Twitter is not a private company anymore so we don't really know how it's how it's all going have all the advertisers come back uh not all but most and you can see it for yourself on Twitter even in the before you feed right I mean I'm sorry in the following actually don't use for you because it sucks rightly filled with hate speech I'm told um that's not what I said okay well why don't you use for you what's wrong with it um how is it going is twittering profit now no Twitter is uh uh rough I'd say we're roughly break even at this point and I think you've said before you you see a you see a world where you could\n\nbe in profit is there a timeline on that do you think I mean depending on how things go if current trends continue I think we could be profitable or okay to be more precise we could be cash flow positive uh this quarter if things keep going well this quarter as soon as that I possibly yeah wow um and do you have a message for the advertising I mean can you say which advertisers haven't come back um I think I think almost all of them have either come back or said they're going to come back there are very few exceptions can you say any of the exceptions um I actually don't know of anyone who said definitively they're not coming back they're all sort of training towards coming back but there are some that just can't jump in the water's warm it's great that's\n\nyour message to the to the advertisers they haven't come back yeah I mean look uh you know if if if Disney feels comfortable um advertising you know children's movies and apple feels comfortable advertising iPhones those are good indicators that Twitter is um a good place to advertise um I want to talk about if you have any regret regrets and and you know I think you were Buddha Dave Chappelle concert I think your own lawyer a little a little well some say a little some say a bit more um I think your own lawyer said you couldn't get a fair trial in San Francisco because there are lots of people that don't necessarily like you here yeah but you know I have to say it I was wrong he was wrong I guess the uh because I was acquitted uh by the San Francisco\n\njury unanimously so yeah but I guess but look do you have any regrets about buying Twitter um I think it was something that needed to be done um difficult you know I'd say that like the the pain level of Twitter has been extremely high um this hasn't been some sort of party um so uh it's been really quite a stressful situation uh you know over the last several months not not an easy one I I'm a bit apart from the pain I mean so it's been quite painful um but I think uh at the end of the day it should have been done I think it's not where the many mistakes made along the way of course you know um and uh but you know all's well it ends well and so I I feel like we're headed to a good place um you know where roughly break even I think we're trending towards\n\nbeing kind of flow positive very soon like literally in a matter of of months um the advertisers are returning um the I think the quality of recommended tweets has improved significantly and we've taken a lot of feedback from uh people that have looked at the open source recommendation algorithm and we've we've made a lot of improvements even even since that was made open source and we're going to keep doing that so overall I think the trend is very good so you know I mean it was actually something I was going to ask you you mentioned the pain but you actually tweeted uh I think in February you said the last three months have been extremely tough I wouldn't wish that pain on anyone okay are you talking emotionally there I mean can you can you explain\n\noh there wasn't started or anything right right like some people around Europe says dangerous neck of the woods were in it is it can be but just can you just talk me through the emotional strain of this yeah I mean look I'm under I've been under constant attack I mean uh it's not like I you know have a stone cold heart or something like that you know uh if if you're under constant criticism attack it's and then that that gets fed to you non-stop including through Twitter um that uh it's rough you know um not at the end of the day I kind of think that like if you do lose your feedback loop that's that's actually not good um so uh you know if so I think it's it is actually important to get negative feedback um I don't turn replies off and I actually got\n\nrid of I removed my entire block list so I don't block anyone either um so so somebody can you know so I get like a lot of negative feedback um but I think it's actually good to get negative feedback right when you talk about the the emotional strain you've gone back to feedback is that the thing that's been most difficult to take the sort of negative feedback yeah I mean if if uh if the media is writing non-stop stories about why you're a horrible person I mean it's you know um it's uh hurtful obviously I I I've written down a lot of these questions but but I haven't written this one down but it's interesting it feels like you have quite a kind of interesting relationship with the media because in one in some ways you're quite skeptical quite critical\n\ncertainly of established media but also you kind of get hurt by what the media writes and um did you get your news still from the BBC as you've already said I literally followed abuse right right Etc so do you feel you have a kind of a kind of odd relationship with the media yes and explain no it is somewhat of a love-hate relationship although I mean it might be tilted a bit more towards the head [Laughter] um but uh you know it's uh you know I I think this this is a sort of part and parcel of having a a free media situation which is that um you know I do I do take uh heart again and that the media is actually able to trash me on a regular basis uh in you know in the United States in the UK and whatnot um whereas you know in a lot of other places uh\n\nVita cannot say uh mean things to powerful people okay but I think it's better that we have a situation where the media can say uh mean things to powerful people if we're talking about the media let's talk about verification enables you obviously want to create another Revenue stream that's subscription based it's verification the way to do that because we have a kind of a situation at the moment where the New York Times doesn't have a verified badge whatever a few few bucks a month yeah can is that can that be right is that what you've envisaged when you bought Twitter I I must confess to some Delight in removing the verified batch from The New York Times that was that was great um anyway they're still alive and well so uh they're they're doing fine\n\nbut on a serious note it could flame disinformation again if you have verified accounts that uh are from anyone who can pay money they simply they go up to potentially uh the top of feeds um they get more action on Twitter and uh traditional media that may not pay for uh verification doesn't do you see how that could potentially be a driver of misinformation well I mean I I think the media is a driver of misinformation much more than the media would like to admit that they are um I mean that's a different question yeah um but you are sort of saying like like who who knows best the average citizen or you know uh so someone who who is a journalist um and I think in a lot of cases um it is the average citizen that knows more than than the journalist in fact\n\nI mean very often when I see an article about some uh something that I know a lot about and I read the article it's like that they get a lot wrong um and uh you know sort of the best interpretation is there is someone who doesn't really understand what's going on in industry has only a few facts to play with has to come up with an article not it's going to be you know it's not going to it's not gonna hit the bullseye um uh so so then like generally this is what how expensive if you read an article about something you know about how much of that how accurate is that article now imagine that that is that is how or essentially all articles are they they're an approximation of what's going on but but not in a not an exact uh situation so if somebody is actually\n\nlet's say uh in The Fray or like an expert in the field and uh was actually there and then and writes about their experience of being actually there I I think that actually that that that's uh in a lot of cases going to be better than a journalist because the journalist wasn't there I think you said the Legacy verified blue techs are going to go next week uh there have been a few few deadlines before 4 20.\n\nyeah I I see the joke um clearly yeah it costs you a lot of money well fortunately it didn't in the trial well yeah right but they fit it as you say right yes we're going to ask for a refund yeah okay yeah good luck let's move on from that but blue sex in theory all Legacy blue ticks gone gone next week and this is and at that point you'll kind of work out whether this is going to sink or swim yes what's your what's your hatch I mean you've obviously I think it's good yeah yeah it'll swim just fine okay what are you looking for in terms of in terms of a revenue stream on that whatever goals well I I don't know if it's like necessarily a giant Revenue stream um you know because even if you if you have sort of a million uh people that are subscribed for\n\nlet's say 100 a year ish that's a hundred million dollars um and uh that's that's a that's a fairly small Revenue stream relative to advertising um but what we're really trying to do here with verification is to massively raise the cost of this information and and bots in general so my prediction is that any social media company that does not uh insist on paid verification will simply be overwhelmed uh by Advanced AI Bots I mean chat gbt is essentially a zillion instances of chat gbt really what you want on the platform do you want big news organizations being overwhelmed by bots so that they have to go the point is that you won't be if you pay but a lot of organizations have already said they're not going to pay like the New York Times well then you\n\nknow that's up to them if they you know go make them pay um it's a small amount of money so I don't know what their problem is um so uh but we're going to treat everyone equally so what we're not going to do is say that there's some anointed class of journalists who are the special ones who get to tell everyone what they're what they what they should think that it should be up to the people what they think um and even if an article is completely accurate and um comprehensive and everything if they're still in in writing that article the media is choosing the narrative they're deciding what to write an article about um so I'm hopeful that this can be more a case of the public choosing the narrative as opposed to the media choosing narrative but the media\n\ncan choose at least a combination of the media and the public choosing the narrative um and the the public getting to to weigh in on stories if they if they think there's they should add something to it or if we've got something wrong and over time I think if Twitter is the best source of Truth it will succeed and if and if we are not the best source of Truth we will fail someone comes in and offers you 44 billion for Twitter right now would you take it no would you consider it no no why uh well as I take it back it depends on who I suppose if I was confident that they would pursue that would they would rigorously pursue the truth um Then I then I I guess I guess I would be glad to hand it off to someone else I don't care about the money really but I\n\nI I do want to have if some source of truth that I can count on um and and I I hope that's our aspiration with Twitter is to have you know a source of truth that you can count on oh that's that's it's also real time it's an immediate source of truth that you can count on and that gets more accurate with time as people comment on particularly with that well if you don't care about the money you could just give it to someone that you that you think is a good person to run Twitter who do you think that might be I I'm not the boss of Twitter nobody choose well that's you might still have an idea who could run Twitter yes honestly I have no idea who could run Twitter yeah it's a hard job okay let's I mean let's move on to that you've said that you were going\n\nto um Stand Down chief executive right okay I can tell you I'm not the CEO of Twitter my dog is the CEO okay have you got any it's a great dog other than the story alert and it's hard to put get anything by him okay that's good to know other than the dog have you got any success you've got a black a turtle turtleneck or what would you need [Laughter] what were we talking about there uh yeah who would you who would you want have you got a successor in mind not yet hopefully at some point right so because you did say you were going to stand out well I did stand out okay all right let's move on from that then all right what about this office I'm intrigued about this office you've said it was even expensive you're really new yeah yeah why can't we be um in\n\nan awkward or something called this commune I think Jack Dorsey kind of recommended doing that and kind of ignored it yeah it was kind of bad actually hmm um this office are you thinking about moving out of San Francisco uh not yet not yet but yeah no this place is nice and uh we you know I kind of like this obstacle actually yeah okay so you're not because I know you've talked about there's been high levels of crime here you actually said it I think we should do something about the crime right because people are dying right we should take action you've also talked about how potentially I think you might have been joking but you could turn this into a homeless shelter so yeah I guess the reason I'm asking is you know you've you've if we've tried to turn\n\ninto a homeless shot in the building The Bullying management was well the owner rejected it you tried it yeah they won't let us we're only using one of the buildings and so the other building could be a homeless shelter and you've tried to yeah we would like to do it right now really yes and no then you're being stopped by who by the building owner they weren't like No in fact they wouldn't even let us take the W off the sign so how are you going to do that really quite quite uh you know what was your what was your plan for the shelter I don't know we could just let people stay there it's nice right okay I I didn't know that they can bring their stuff bring the tent whatever right and it's a roof over their heads yeah it's the wedding owner lets us we'll\n\ndo it yeah so if the building only that owner lets you you would you would happily do that yes okay all right there we go um what's the most difficult thing you've had to do what's the hardest thing you've had to do in my whole life in the last six months we're talking about talk about the last six months as you as Twitter boss said Twitter owner um well shutting down uh our one of our service centers was was quite difficult because it turns out there were I thought the service centers were redundant but they were in fact a lot of things that were hard-coded to this one server Center and so when we shut it down we actually uh it was quite catastrophic we lost a lot of functionality which sort of really rushed to put it back when was that when I was around\n\nlate December during early January so that was the biggest sort of I'm I'm worried the biggest crisis yeah yeah and what about hard in terms of emotion I mean I mean there's Letting Go I mean what what were the current the levels of stuff and what are they now um I think we're um around 1500 people at this point and there was I think 7 800.\n\nwhat was it so I think it was around just under eight thousand eight thousand fifteen hundred right now okay and it has it been hard letting up that many people go yeah not fun at all it's painful I mean I guess in in what way do you do you feel like you need to speak to people when they when when they leave or I mean it's not physically possible to speak to that many people has that I mean you talked about that being the most technical bit is that has has that been sort of the hardest thing emotionally or is it it's one of the hardest things certainly yeah yeah um the Nancy Pelosi tweet but there have been that is an example of a film there have been others um do you feel like you're an impulsive person I mean have I shot myself in the foot with tweets\n\nmultiple times yes do you feel like I need bulletproof shoes at this point I mean you've definitely done that the issue is that you're now Twitter owner do you feel like you should be look at your tweets more you have more a higher responsibility when you tweet something out for it to be accurate I think I should not tweet uh after 3am that's the new rule yeah something like that okay so there's a blanket ban I should I shouldn't I shouldn't uh what I like your Twitter what are your Twitter rules I mean I've had some people say never tweet when you've been drinking or never tweet when angry what are your Twitter rules well I think those are two good rules yeah don't tweet if you're wasted um and uh or you know really upset about something um yeah probably\n\nuh I mean a good friend of mine um actually had a good suggestion it has helped uh which is that uh if you're gonna tweet something that uh maybe is controversial uh you save it as a draft and look at it the next day and see if you still want to tweeted and that has been a good rule with them okay we've got a bunch of things I'm glad I didn't send um I can't remember whether I've asked you this this is my sort of sort of wrapping up at this point but yeah do you have any regrets uh I mean we're always like hindsight's 2020 so there's you know a bunch of decisions that could have been made better for sure um but um as I said all's well it ends well um and things are going pretty well so uh in the grand scheme of things I I can't complain okay um I'm gonna\n\njust check my my list of things to make sure I've actually I mean it's maybe there's something we've got people on the on the Twitter once you say ask you know we could ask them that's all new that's on you it's this 680 000 people listening there you go that's a lot that is a lot uh let's see how do we see okay let me see who I'll just look at my my tweet and uh see what people are saying or what questions I have um [Laughter] do you like the BBC do you like BBC okay yeah we're not gonna oh I can't interview you said what for the BBC well baby you like do you like BBC I know I see what you're doing I'm not going to respond to that okay I think you can finish the interview if you want to continue thank you very much I really appreciate it you're sure\n\nyou like PVC come on um I'm not engaging here all right Elon it honestly has been a pleasure okay talking to you it really has and if you want if you want to carry on answering questions on on on on this then I'm not going to okay well I just wanted to see if there's like any you know good there's a lot of comments here um I can imagine um there's so many anyway so it's it's nice to be interviewed by the BBC I have a lot of respect to the British Broadcasting Corporation um what did you say when the when the actual label is going to go public oh is it um is it do we still say State media whatever oh it says government-funded media currently um as opposed to publicly funded media well I guess probably we can make that change tomorrow if you'd like it's\n\nup to you but I mean you can see we'll expect that tomorrow I mean do you have any requests on a personal level or you can speak on a personal level no I don't okay okay I think we've established that um what what questions are people asking you go on um I mean there's like a lot of comments uh let's see I was literally reading on look at replies to the you know the fact that the space is um are there any good questions that I've missed out in the last in the last six months I'm sure there are many um I mean people generally seem to like this interview for a hotel um for a few negative comments so generally positive is that is that that's probably bad for me [Laughter] see uh I guess there's some complaints about Twitter spaces being needing some improvement\n\nlet's fix Twitter spaces as one of the comments um people like the fact that my dog Loki is the CEO um and uh I'm really just scrolling as fast as I can here um I I actually known this I just like to say I like BBC [Music] I do find it funny um I I think I mean honestly if looking listening to the interview the answer about misinformation and saying oh we don't police misinformation in the same way but as we try and get this because we try and take down Bots will be effective at Bots we're actually there's actually less misinformation on the platform no I think that's a big factor a lot of people I think will be listening to this I'm sure really you're you're arguing you can police content moderation far less and end up with less misinformation how how\n\nfirst of all we do have we do have uh you know people working on contract contract moderation it's not like we don't um so uh I've spoken to lots of people who've been who've been fired so a lot lots of people have been let go I mean you've gone from eight yeah the censorship Bureau was let go um I don't think the the sort of putting a thumb on the political scales in the far left has been let go because that's not right that's not what you want for a public a Public Square um you know you've got to have equal treatment for people from um across the political Spectrum so um you know something we're going to be upset about that um but like I said my my experience is that there's less less misinformation these days not more um and that the community notes\n\nfeature is extremely powerful for uh addressing uh so-called misinformation um diamond mine diamond mine I mine the one a mind that your father part owned yeah my father never owned a bird you're thinking of an emerald Emerald Emerald mine yeah I'd like to see a picture of this alleged Emerald mine because you've been yeah did you know that no but it's he he never owned a a emerald mine this is probably not even a 50 steak no because in community no first of all okay do you think Emerald do you think something like would have like um you know uh some sort of property register there'd be like a picture of it it's not like you can say oh that's my mind you know these things are hotly debated if you've got something valuable um you you have to have some\n\nproperty record like a house but but much more important than a house and yet there is no property record whatsoever there was no picture of this mine whatsoever it doesn't exist it's fake so that's you know on that tweet that says you said this thing on the X day blah blah blah so in that instance the the Keynotes didn't work so you're saying that that's a way of solving misinformation but you're literally saying one of those Community notes is wrong it's in the community community note may be referring to a thing where uh I I went on a trip with my father to Zambia um but I never saw any mine or anything so there's no such it's there's no mine I'm not right but at this point I'm just saying the community note says it is so you're saying it's this big\n\ngreat Panacea but yeah it's literally on your own tweet the community notes according to you're wrong uh if if they're referencing um an article then the article may not be wrong but there's a communist is not going to be perfect but it's the batting average of community notes I found to be extremely high um so Community next Plus getting rid of millions and millions of bots every day I guess that's that's what we're talking about yeah that that that's what you think is tackling this information over over content moderation I think I think because I think that's the bit that a lot of people will go really really yes really look the asset test is people use the system and find it find it to be a good source of Truth or they don't and no no system is going\n\nto be perfect uh in in its uh pursuit of the truth um but I think I think we can be the best the least uh inaccurate that's our goal the least inaccurate and I think we I I think we might be there already if we're not there we'll be there soon do you have I've I've spoken to people who think next do you have a a kind of message for people who who think that Twitter has been ruined well we have all-time high usage so I don't think it has been yes well they're probably the same people who predicted that Twitter would cease to exist and their predictions have turned out to be false I know I'm not going to ask you whether it's been ruined because obviously no I think it's great it's way better by a lot all right [Music] thank you foreign [Music]"},"languages":["en"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q98l2zMdGdU"},{"id":"morgan-stanley-tmt-conference-2023-03-07","type":"interview","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GKIBmiB-yEA","title":"Morgan Stanley TMT Conference","titles":{"en":"Morgan Stanley TMT Conference","de":"Morgan Stanley TMT Conference","fr":"Morgan Stanley TMT Conference"},"date":"2023-03-07","summary":"Musk discusses his vision for Twitter/X as a payments app, advertising and Tesla at the Morgan Stanley tech conference.","text":"how would you describe the mission of Twitter 2.\n\n0 under your ownership Elon so the the goal is to have Twitter be the best source of Truth the most timely and accurate source of Truth uh even if the truth is someone we don't want to hear or unpleasant or whatever but how it be timely and accurate and really just where you can really understand what's going on and not just um is something true or not but but what is the narrative so the thing that I think most people don't probably you do but most people don't quite appreciate is that the media controls the narrative so there are many things that could be talked about in the world but only a few things can fit in the front page so but Twitter doesn't have a limitation like that so the the public can control the narrative and the public can inform themselves\n\nas to what the narrative should be that that's a really big deal so it's a form for called citizen journalism or for the public to get together and communicate in a way that was never possible before um so you can really know what's going on uh so I I think that that's really going to be essential for a functioning democracy so say like what is the Bedrock of uh functioning democracy um it it has to be free speech and a Level Playing Field um that's why it's the first amendment was the first thing they did like we kind of think we've got to make sure freedom of speech um and why did they do that is because where they came from there wasn't freedom of speech and once you lose freedom of speech you don't get it back so that's why we must protect it at all\n\ncosts thank you on the core principles if we want to call them that you just went over citizen journalism part of the people in a Level Playing Field that's what you mean by Democratic we've also heard you say core principles of authentic informative and entertaining accurate you just went over and and brand safe um where are you on these yeah I mean I think the some of these are um you know a little uh at odds you know brand safe I think it really means like where where advertising is displayed that the advertiser gets to to choose what material is near that advertising so if it's something you know uh if it's some sort of like a like a train accident or a a war scene then probably a family friendly brand is not going to want to advertise right next\n\nto that you know or you know it can't be like um here's a oblique war scene would you like to buy a hamburger or be like awkward you know um so that's understandable you want to put advertising next to content where it makes sense um but but the content in general needs to be authentic and informative even if it is controversial or jarring um and yeah and I think people need to be able to choose you know to some degree what content they want us to see and of course on Twitter you can so but really we want it to be the the fundamentally place you go to to learn what's going on and get the real story that's what the the the the truth the whole truth and it's going to be more than I would like to say nothing but the truth that that that's that's hard it's\n\ngoing to be a lot of BS there truth and more because they realize uh for sure um but but but you want to you want to have the truth and you want to you want to Bubble Up the the truth and be able to sort of sort out really want truth with the least amount of error so so you've said um you know Twitter is alive another way that's that's described is it's where news happens as you just said so a couple here Patrick Mahomes and Steph Curry talking to each other Rihanna speaking uh directly to her fans um or in crypto SPF and CZ were having the conversation directly uh on Twitter yeah Sam Walton you know launched uh chat DPT announces it on Twitter uh Paul Graham takes up a tweet on it you're tweeting on it uh I think 50 000 tweets happened there um before\n\nit was picked up by the mainstream media just in the first couple of days yeah and so you know talk to us about how how can the media catch up if they're on Twitter they can be seeing these tweets and posting it if they're not on Twitter is there no way to catch up like how does the traditional media and citizen journalism and 50 000 tweets on an important subject how do those intersect and how does the media catch up well just that as I'm sure many of you use Twitter it the everything Twitter is happening in real time so if you contrast that to what's happening in a newspaper they they have to learn the information propose an article to their editor get it approved write the article get it edited figure out which day it's going to get published on and\n\nso the news is actually the thing that happened is being reported on at you know three four days sometimes a week late um and if it happens on a weekend then it's like yeah at least three days type of thing so um you know chat gbt was was huge news for several days on Twitter before there was any news articles about it in major Publications um so I think especially if one is uh say thinking about investing in things you want to have information that is as timely and accurate as possible there's no better Source than Twitter for that I've certainly been my experience um so Paul Graham who's alleged in Tech a legend on Twitter I think he has tweeted um that he's 80 percent left-leaning probably if he had to put him on the scale so not someone um you know\n\nwho's not not deemed and revered by all sides of the spectrum he has said you know consistent with your accuracy Point um he has said how important accuracy is and on Twitter he said you know you should be default skeptical of any news story about Twitter and assume it's default wrong because not only do some journalists have the agenda but the source has the agenda and it's so easy to go through the chain of inaccuracy or you know outright falsehood is is is he right about this um and you know if so um how how can accuracy about Twitter and about you be conducted by the traditional media if at all does a does a PR department help uh which you know famously don't have PR departments I I I you know the right name for PR is propaganda um and I always thought\n\nyou know like maybe maybe we should have like a VP of propaganda that would be I just I think just more honest you know uh and um also a PC of Witchcraft that's what that would be like yeah um those would be two great ones uh so I mean the the thing that I mean if you pick up pick up any given newspaper and go through and read the whole thing and say how many of those stories are positive about anything at all at almost none so if if something is newsworthy it is going to have a negative slant whether it is positive or not that there's like something in journalism that they've been trained to basically never write a positive story about anything once in a while you see a puff piece but it's rare um so anything that's newsworthy will get written about\n\nanything that's that's written about will go through a negativity lens and so you therefore have a a bizarrely negative view of the world if you draw your information from newspapers this is simply I mean fact so on Twitter you can get a much more balanced positive negative situation it doesn't have that bias quite as much it's probably still a little bit of negativity bias but but much less so um so it you know I think it's really I'm not sure what the Legacy Media does I mean at this point really um Twitter Twitter is by the way the number one news uh app in the world so in terms of what people download for news it's it's number one this 500 million active users 250 million uh daily users of which I'd say there's probably you know 180 million significant\n\ndaily users where they're they're it's a meaningful amount of time so like the average amount of uh time that people spend on Twitter per day all that 250 million is around half an hour or so um so what we have is the thing the thing that's like I think most interesting is there's about 120 to 130 million hours of human attention per day on Twitter every single day on average um which is I think it comes to a really interesting point which is to just it's startling how poorly monetized that is because you have to say like how valuable is that attention 100 130 million hours of human attention per day of people that read so these are the generally the smartest people in the world the most influential people in the world and you have 130 million hours of\n\ntheir time per day that's a lot so currently Twitter makes about five or six cents per hour of that time I I think this is a poorly monetized Paul Graham's attention Paul Graham's half hour of attention is you know is worth more more worth more than that yeah I mean if I'm spending two hours a day on Twitter like your whatever ads are coming through are getting my attention um getting your attention getting everyone in the room's attention um your time is incredibly valuable um so now the thing is we need to actually serve ads that are relevant and and useful and I think I think as we do that we can probably at least get it to like 15 cents an hour 20 cents an hour yeah a quarter right um so I think the actual potential here for Twitter revenue is gigantic\n\num and it's going to be a win-win situation which is that if you are served advertising that you find timely and relevant that with products and services that are useful to you that's good for you and good for the advertiser advertising and the limit of relevance is content so in the um next theme that's out there that's a often an inaccurate narrative is that you're indifferent to misinformation or other narratives get put out in the media that you actually want misinformation on Twitter when as you've just stated you want it to be the most accurate in the world so Community notes I'm going to Breeze through a couple of these before asking you about them Community notes are the fact checking by power of the people on Twitter so correcting government\n\nmisstatements from the White House correcting candidate misstatement from failed gubernatorial candidate Kerry Lake that Ron DeSantis had been endorsed by George Soros adding context while the Spy balloon was over Billings Montana to a tweet that could have been taken um to spiral and mean it had been shot down over Billings with that photo and adding context to that preventing a conspiracy theory of trying to elements are purposeful or nefarious as opposed to 1700 per year quickly corrected before a right-wing conspiracy theory could get going uh company misstatements or statements misstatements about companies I should say so the tweet that said you know Google set a badge machine to tell you if you were terminated or not and adding context that no\n\nthey had been emailed um on coinbase that they've been told they had to stop staking by regulators fact check very very quickly so how can this scale this neutral fact checking which seems elusive in fact checking but Twitter seems to have a handle on it but how does it scale and how does it avoid being hijacked by either side of a an issue or political Spectrum trying to hijack Community notes to not have it be neutral um yeah there's a there's a white paper on community notes that I recommend reading in fact I'll tweet it out to the people um Can can have easy access to it um but the because it's really quite a clever idea um it's it it takes a the Viewpoint of someone if think of it in a way like like page rank for Pages as applied to to people which\n\nis that as people build credibility in how they review notes they they pull up enough credibility to actually write notes um and then those notes are then rated by others and depending upon the credibility of of the people rating your note your credibility score gets affected so it's it's sort of like uh uh collection of credibility but there were but there were link Farms created in Far Away places to to spam pagerank so that's going to be attempted but you're going to apply your yes in software skills and things to prevent that in order to be a notes contributor you have to be a verified person I think yeah um so you have to have uh and it and it takes a while to get to where you can't suddenly you you'll have no if you just when you just start out\n\nyou will start off with no credibility score yeah so it's very hard to link Farm yes um and when we we actively look at any attempts to game the system um and and shut them down uh and and remove them from the system if if they're if they're determined to be not real people or if they seem to be brigading because there are deliberate attempts to manipulate Community notes um we also make the community notes uh source code is open and available so you can see you can basically see everything so uh that's in the white paper it's uh it's not it's on the white paper but it's available on the internet yeah you can search for it um so you can see exactly how Community nodes is calculating things what uh changes are made to community notes and we'll keep iterating\n\nuh and the goal is to have truth with the least amount of error um so it's you know there's always like what is truth um uh and I think the important like what is one way to sort of for example say like if someone really aspired to the truth if they really aspire to the truth they must acknowledge that there is some probability that what they think is untrue if somebody thinks there's no probability zero percent about what they think somebody thinks that they is trying to claim to you that what they're saying is true with 100 probability there's a 100 probability they are lying so um truth with acknowledged error where you aim to minimize that error over time that's what community notes is I think also uh once someone gets community noted um they think\n\ntwice about uh being deceptive in the future so you start getting noted a few times people like oh I know someone who's been Community noted yeah um so uh this no one's immune meaning um you've been Community noted on this uh CNN uh fake Chiron CNN made no such claim um that you know free speech on Twitter by allowing people to speak freely yeah and you were quickly Community noted um a satirical tweet and peop and Community said this is not this is not accurate um is this the one you tweeted Community notes for the win I think you may have it might benefit yeah I mean the important thing is that anyone can be noted including me and in fact I wanted to make a note of being noted um that the point the point is that if if I can be noted anyone can be noted\n\num including advertisers so we've had a few cases where the advertising wasn't accurate and it got noted oh the mortgage mortgage One loan money to yourself I think I saw that there alone for eight years so yeah sure right right and so so but it's your own customer and they can be noted and then yes and then presumably change the ad yes I mean this will I think be very helpful in truth and advertising yeah okay um so like so I can't emphasize enough the goal is rigorous pursuit of the truth um aspirationally the whole truth and the least amount of uh untruth yeah so let's talk back about brand safety we'll go through two two quick ones here one narrative that's out there that probably affected advertisers and agencies was Twitter was going to become this\n\nhotbed of hate speech and shortly after the acquisition there was this bot attack you've talked about that seemed designed to try to make that a self-fulfilling prophecy actually until it was quickly uh defeated by your your team and there's 50 percent less hate speech according to what your team has put out this is a graphic then pre-acquisition so so not only is it a priority for you but less half as much as before and then on child sexual exploitation something that's been so important to you um 800k suspended accounts that's four times more than in any month of the prior year of your ownership and the 99 reduction in successful searches for CSE patterns so talk to us about how much of a priority this is and how successful you've been at it but then\n\nalso presumably more can be done yeah um I I I've repeatedly said to the trust and safety team at Twitter that the the there's no more priority which will always be a no more priority no matter what is uh ensuring that the children are safe on on Twitter that there's no child exploitation so that is number one priority always and forever um and what I've been told is that we've done more uh to eliminate this on Twitter in the last four months than it's been done in the last 10 years and it will continue to be number one priority um you know 100 fold reduction in CSC search patterns is pretty gigantic to say the least so uh yeah it's absolute number one so on continued on brand safety you know this Global Alliance for responsible media's brand safety floor\n\nthe the garm um you know Twitter business had tweeted out earlier in the year that in testing uh 99 at least 99 of measured ad Impressions appeared on contact that exceeded that floor so you know what message do you want for your advertisers when you're talking to a CMO to the head of an agency just in total I think you touched on this a little if there's anything to add but brand safety is in fact a top priority with a team all over it and technology and humans focused on the subject yeah as I said I mean with respect to Brian say if you really it depends a lot on the brand I mean if you've got sort of you know uh kind of by the way Disney is is a major Advertiser on on Twitter worldwide one of our biggest advertisers Apple's one of our biggest advertisers\n\nbut Disney of course wants to does not want to have their ads next to things that aren't appropriate for a family audience but there are um other products that are kind of more you know R-rated if you will um and and so they're they're more comfortable with being their advertising being in the equivalent of like an R-rated movie or something like that so ride safety varies depending upon what brand you're talking about is it a family brand or or less family brand um but but advertisers can actually adjust um how much uh what what content they're comfortable having their advertising appear next to um same is true on TV um so the you know the advertising that you'll see at say 7 PM is different from the advertising that you'll see at midnight um and this\n\nis we have the same functionality on Twitter so it's really up to the advertiser what the where they want to put their content um but but I think by far the most important thing is that the advertising is is effective that that it is relevant and that it moves the needle for a company the advertising relevance is is the most gigantic thing um and and this this is going to sound totally bizarre but uh Twitter did not consider relevance in advertising until three months ago um and in fact if you've used Twitter for a long time uh which probably many of you have you should say like how many products have you bought off Twitter probably zero [Laughter] judging by the laughter probably zero so annual time is incredibly valuable flamethrower no one about a\n\nflamethrower well I mean it's possible that they might report things from you know uh content-based tweets because the the content that's recommended is reasonably relevant but the advertising has not been so as we moved to shift towards the advertising being relevant and timely um this is it really like I said advertising that is relevant and timely is information it is content and the the value of the time of 130 million person hours of the smartest people on earth is insanely valuable um and frankly historically with the advertising being mostly Irrelevant in the past We've been wasting people's time and that's not good going forward Twitter will will have very relevant useful advertising and uh and because it is is useful because it is relevant there\n\nwill be a massive increase in the revenue because it is now useful so [Music] um I'm very optimistic about the future it's been a very difficult four months but I'm optimistic about the future I appreciate that so let's get back to democratic Democratic platform for all the um you know you've said there's no permanent suspensions of anyone on the left you've brought back both left and right but I think what you've tweeted is you had to unban a lot more on the right because that's who was banned um for the most part but your goal is equally unbanned complete equal Level Playing Field for all sides of the political Spectrum yeah I mean the the I think the objective reality for anyone looking at Twitter uh for longest time was that Twitter was had a massive\n\nthumb on the scale on the left side um Twitter would ban and suspend accounts on the right uh 10 times more than on the left so like naturally what you'd expect frankly because where are we were in San Francisco which is uh deep deep blue so Twitter was uh controlled by the far left so the natural thing that would happen then is suppression of of moderates not just on the not suppression of the right but even suppression of moderate voices so but that but that's not conducive to a healthy National dialogue in order to have healthy National dialogue you have to represent the whole country and you have to represent uh you know everyone in other countries too it's got to be you know that's the only way to have a Town Square um and so yeah there were disproportionately\n\nmore accounts unsuspended and unshadowed banned on the right because the Twitter had a huge thumb on the scale on the in favor of the left so that's but but if you say like have we been suspending on Council and left have we been Shadow Banning counseling left no we haven't so uh because I what exactly what I said is when we do we are doing which is to make it an even playing field and you know something is freedom of a speech when it is when you're hearing speech that that from someone you don't like and what and what you're saying you don't like what they're saying this otherwise it's not free speech and if you don't have that ability then sooner or later that that's that suppression of speech is going to be turned on you so it is a good sign if you're\n\nseeing people you don't like say things you don't like that is a good sign not a bad sign because it means and provided you can sell your peace too um I I think this was fundamental I mean the reason I I did the Twitter acquisition was not because I thought this would be some lucrative Gold Line um uh it in fact it has been arduous and difficult with a massive with a you know and being dumped on every day well that's not the most fun thing in the world um but if we do not have a strong Foundation of free speech I I fear for the future of our civilization we must have this that's why I did it thank you for doing it um Switching gears a media narrative that um you know may have some accuracy they're not all inaccurate um but the code base is difficult to\n\nchange Tech debt unwieldy um you know Rube Goldberg machine is is a term you've used so it's practical fractal Rube Goldberg this is this is at least partially accurate if not accurate uh yes well uh yes uh like the code base is like a Rube Goldberg machine and uh when you zoom in on one part of the Ruby Goldberg machine there's another root Goldberg machine and then there's another one this is your penguin that's what I mean by the fractal fractal as you zoom in it's just another fractal another fractal fractal root gold book machine um so it's quite difficult to keep this thing running and then also difficult to advance the product because it is really overly complex to say the least and we'll make a change what what appears to be a small change somewhere\n\nthat then causes a massive disruption um so for example just yesterday we made what we thought was a small change and we'll put out the what we want to be in the sort of full disclosure of everything including dirty you know gruesome details so but but essentially if there was a uh what was supposed to be a small change to one percent of the Twitter user base ended up being a catastrophic change to a hundred percent of the recruiter use of ace um and uh you know I don't know we don't have enough time to go into the details but um there was a there was a Boolean flag in the Twitter front and that that should not have been there um and uh we live now we fixed that um but but it's I mean let me give you it's like a silly example at one point we um there\n\nwas a problem with Twitter spaces where suspended users were able to join conversations even though they were suspended and we temporarily uh turned off uh access to Twitter spaces which is um which then made someone anyone who is using the Twitter Android app unable to like tweets now how those things are connected is not clear so if you were in the Rube Goldberg practically that's what I'm saying so if you had an an IOS app you could like tweets if you're on the web app you could like tweets but not if you had an Android app because of spaces I mean like what um so you know we're so one of the things we're doing there's a lot of work behind the scenes in simplifying the code base um getting rid of extraneous features and enabling Twitter to evolve more\n\nrapidly in the future but it requires a lot of cleanup essentially um yeah so you know you you've grown users despite this lean engineering team and the and the the code base being unwieldy and Cloud spend 40 percent down cut out a data center is this due to the the strength of the engineering team that you've been able to achieve this and introduce subscription and other features while trying to hold it all together and and where does that engineering team go to accomplish both the code based enhancements and all the features you've said you want to introduce yeah I mean I think on balance we're doing okay because um and just to give you a sense of where things were at the close of acquisition on say October 29th um Twitter was tracking to a negative\n\nthree billion a year burn rate um and had one billion in the bank so that's a pretty dire situation if 20 if 2023 had been a normal year um Twitter would have done something on the order of four and a half billion in revenue or four and a half billion in cost roughly Break Even but when you add one and a half billion of debt servicing to that and um a massive decline in advertising some of it's cyclic some of it political but could call it at least a 50 decline in Revenue roughly 30 percent of Clan Revenue you've got over three billion dollars negative um but now Twitter has some Revenue that's not Advertising based so um data services data yeah yeah exactly like yeah but um so yeah data subscriptions and whatnot um so but it was in the absence of action\n\num Twitter would have had six billion in cost and three billion Revenue so minus three billion and it was a billion in the bank so it would have gone bankrupt in four months um so so immediate and drastic action had to be taken um which which was and so we actually have now cut the burn to the the non-uh interest burned to roughly uh one and a half billion so we've got a billion and a half of debt so saying and a billion and a half of expenditures uh we uh went from three data centers to two um and it reduced our Cloud expenditures uh significantly um and um while at the same time having the fastest product Evolution in Twitter's history so overall not bad um they've been a few bumps along the road obviously but uh this is to be expected um and now I\n\nthink we have the opportunity to grow it into something quite spectacular we we have the highest uh total user minutes and Twitter history so the the the real number to care about is actually not the uh mdow monthly which is directly monetizable daily active users but it's it's user time um how many total user hours per day do you have that's that's the real figure of marriage because one could for example say uh go to 300 million daily active users but if they spent less time on the system uh cumulatively that would actually be a downgrade it's how much human attention are you worth and that's what I think like I said that the really profound thing is what Twitter has is roughly 130 million hours of the smartest most influential people on earth every\n\nsingle day there's there's nothing else that has that I mean there are social networks that are that have more users but they do not have the small influential people they don't have you so the if I do the math on what you've said about the advertiser pause and revenue Decline and the cost changes um it's ebitda profitable today and then you're looking for cash flow Break Even after Debt Service well Steve it's not profitable but the yeah the the D and the yeah right when do you get to cash flow Break Even bush with the D when you get the cash flow Break Even after that day this is where we need to focus on the e-pod yes foreign I hope we pay taxes um and the T yeah um so like I said I mean we're getting to the point where we're close to having the total\n\nexpenditures for the company excluding debt roughly equal to the debt okay yeah that's what I think like I think we'll be there in Q2 thank you too um and then like I don't I definitely don't want to count uh chickens before the hatch or drinks it or anything but I I think we've got a shot at uh being cash flow positive uh next quarter so that'll some of that'll depend on advertisers so we'll talk quickly about advertising you've mentioned it a few times um the value uh is clear 147 billion Impressions uh on Twitter of World Cup 22 and 50 year-over-year growth and NFL video views um you know 39 increase in Super Bowl mentions the NFL putting out engagements never been higher and then wpp CEO Mark Reed said 10 days or long ago this was February 24.\n\nTwitter seems to be more stable and I think clients advertising clients presumably here will look about coming back to Twitter so are you in touch with agency and CMOS and is is this the theme I think we just saw McDonald's or others coming back as they realize you are absolutely focused on the things you were said not to be focused on in terms of uh brand safety Etc yeah I mean I think the really um what I'd say to advertisers and Brands is you know use Twitter yourself and believe what you see on Twitter not what you read in the newspapers because what you see on Twitter is the real thing and what you read newspapers is not um and I'd like to thank Mark Reed on wpp for their support and publicists and others and for the advertisers that have stuck with\n\nus like Disney and apple thank you so that's brand advertising you've mentioned a few times performance advertising I think I've heard your story about White Lotus which maybe we can you can share here um you know performance-based advertising has been very lucrative for other companies and it can be made more relevant on a more narrow cast basis if you will than than pure brand advertising so when when do you introduce performance-based advertising and and scale it oh we we introduced from the from the moment the acquisition closed like we have to have a performance-based advertising is really just advertising that is relevant relevant in fact we should really have aspirationally zero non-conformance based advertising um you know we want advertising\n\nthat matters uh people's attention is precious we should not serve them ads that are annoying or irrelevant or strident or ugly um and it's interesting to mentioned White Lotus I actually was talking to David zazlov who's great um and he was like hey why can't we put a White Lotus uh a trailer every time someone mentions White Lotus on Twitter I'm like absolutely so like one of the like it's super obvious but profound things that we're doing is enabling keyword advertising so that you can enter the keywords and uh like White Lotus and if somebody mentions White Lotus you put the White Lotus trailer there I mean this sounds very obvious um you don't need dpt3 for this you don't need Advanced AI for this one so uh you know it's sort of just Google AdWords\n\nbut applied to tweets and the home timeline and replies and everywhere else um because you'll often have very sort of long deep conversations people going on talking about movies TV products and whatnot and uh that's the perfect opportunity for advertisers to provide their message you know if I think about something for example like like starlink um which does advertise in various media uh for stalling uh um would want to advertise to users in in regions that are not already saturated so Starling tends to be saturated in urban areas but is not saturated in uh rural areas and so what Sonic would like to do is like say please show the ad in to to rural users with a slow connection and then the simple message is do you want faster internet for less money\n\nclick probably you do and Twitter needs to be able to do a simple thing like that and it will be um and in fact it is already able to do that we're just having fully rolled it out so we're we're I think around 20 ish but by the end of this year almost all advertising will be should be reasonably relevant and that your your Starlight example comes back to your disposable income if you want to or the education level and the ability to buy and afford to start the subscription of the Twitter user like it also dovetails back into that yeah absolutely um so um you know I think there's also an opportunity here to uh have advertising be uh much like like really improve the relevance of advertising using um AI in the sense that if you based on what uh tweets somebody\n\nreviews likes and whatever you can actually populate a parameter space uh an ml parameter space and then you can take an ad and even if you say nothing about that ad after it's dropped in the Twitter system and has 10 000 views you populate a parameter space of that of the ad and then you correlate the user parameter space and add parameter space and then you don't need to do any demographic targeting because you could be like say it's a gardening ad well you could be 20 30 40 you could be 70 years old any sex whatever it doesn't matter what matters do you like gardening and that's the ad that should be shown and so I think we can get away from a lot of the sort of targeting by age range and sex and whatever uh in favor of targeting my interest um and\n\nand a lot of these sort of demographic targeting was done coming from a TV or newspaper era where you don't have interaction with the user you just have to kind of guess because it's a one-way Street in TV um but on Twitter it's not a one-way Street there's continuous interaction um so I think we can just have a profoundly more useful uh advertising experience so let's close on Twitter before getting to um another couple companies I've heard that you run the vision You're Building towards I think you've called it X or the everything app tell us about it and Beyond just improving the advertising and and you know what will we be able to do on Twitter in your in your grandest vision yeah so so x x.\n\ncom is uh you know you know so so I think it's possible to create a very powerful um Finance experience basically um like like PayPal is kind of like a halfway version of what I think could be done in payments and finance yeah and so you want to be like let's say you like you want to be able to to send money easily from one account on X Twitter to another account effortlessly with one click uh you want to be able to I think earn interest on the money you want to be able to um have debt so you can set your interest can go negative I mean basically I think it's possible to become the biggest financial institution in the world so just by providing people with convenience uh payment options um we don't have the time to go into it in detail here except uh\n\nif we just make the app more and more useful uh people will use it more and it'll be great I mean yeah so you'll still see okay um we're still on Twitter for a moment but we had uh you know in Austin thank you for hosting uh at the investor day and you showcased 16 Executives uh on stage at various times um with you an incredibly uh deep and built out management team and I think the executive team um with you with Twitter um you know is perhaps a bit leaner um let's just maybe there's a media narrative here that's accurate so he does have a black turtleneck so so you need anything more I don't think so so so so when when does the Twitter management team have that bench like you showcased uh the gigafactory well I think it takes it takes a long time to\n\nbuild a strong management team um and the you know we're both the Tesla management team over 20 years um so uh I think Twitter isn't easier problem than than Tesla uh by a long shot um so whether it'll take some time to to build the team and I don't know probably a few years okay um yeah and um Switching gears uh you shared Master Plan Three at the gigafactory and and you know the edit uh that that came to my mind with you know Master planet after your your first piece there on sustainable energy for all of Earth can you can you take us through that uh positive optimistic uh mathematically underpinned vision for our planet okay it was not a lot of time to do that but um but I guess the the overall message is that um we can absolutely make us uh to turn\n\ninto a sustainable energy economy fully sustainable uh using Lithium-ion batteries solar wind as well as geothermal nuclear and other things but primarily it'll be solar and wind end Lithium-ion batteries and our calculations you need roughly 240 terawatt hours of Lithium-ion batteries most of those will be iron phosphate lithium of the iron phosphate variety is those were the primarily iron cathode which is a plantful material in fact Earth is uh the the number one element on Earth is actually iron a little factoid uh I think Earth by mass is about 32 iron and about 30 oxygen and then everything else is miscellaneous so we're like a mighty rust ball um uh so plenty of iron basically the the materials are needed for uh to make 240 terawatt hours of batteries\n\nare actually plentiful on Earth um we don't need to mow down the Amazon or anything like that we don't need to basically do do anything Terrible's the environments to create uh 240 terawatt hours of batteries in fact uh there will be less mining required in a sustainable energy economy than is currently required really this was a message of of of Hope and optimism grounded in physical reality it is not wishful thinking um so we should be excited and inspired about the future and I'm not suggesting complacency or anything like that or that we should but and getting there faster is better better than getting there slower but but what we don't need to live some terrible or stair life and give up the things that we like you can have the things that you like\n\nin fact even more of them and the environment can be good all the good things are possible is what I'm saying there's we should be excited and optimistic about future which we need to go build it it's a lot of work um but you should not feel sad about the future regarding sustainable energy uh it will happen which just want to make it happen faster rather than slower so that was the first big takeaway you know the the next one that I had was this your your next phase of vertical integration the Relentless first principles thinking on vehicle design battery design Factory optimization you know at the same time as the vehicle that could lead to a Target I guess of this you know 50 percent step change in cost when the new gen eventually comes around um can\n\nyou just take us through The quick summary of that and and it unlocks the next uh wave of the Tam because there's price elasticity is is the what you were sharing on this subject is the second big takeaway for Tesla um yeah I mean those are the there's a clear path to making a vehicle a smaller vehicle that is roughly half the production cost and difficulty of our model three um that vehicle will be uh or you know really used almost entirely in autonomous mode that the thing that is really gigantic uh for for Tesla is autonomy um and if people have used the Tesla full self-driving and have seen how rapidly the full self-driving capability has been evolving um it should be obvious that that is by far the most profound thing um there's the sort of total\n\naddressable Market stuff it's like guys this is like actually not the right way to think about it it's it's like um passenger vehicles right now only see about 10 10 to 12 hours of use per week um there's 168 hours in a week if those vehicles are autonomous they're probably going to get used for 50 or 60 hours a week that's a 5x increase in the value of a car and it costs the same to make the car at that point you basically have software margins and a hardware product it's insane um total addressable Market as everyone all humans powerful so let's switch gears to SpaceX hitting first starlink what can you tell us about starlink and the the scale and deployment and how that's going yeah so I think the styling team is doing an amazing job um more than half\n\nof all satellites uh in orbit right now are starlink satellites so if you add up all satellite launched cumulatively they are less than starlink um so starlink is currently providing Global connectivity you can get connected connectivity anywhere on Earth from the most remote part of Antarctica to San Francisco anywhere that's full Global connectivity high bandwidth and low latency the latency is important because unless you're in low earth orbit you cannot get low latency the geostationary satellites are you know um very very high you've sort of got uh sometimes up to a second of latency from a Geo stationary satellite all things inclusive whereas uh with stalling satellites I believe we can get the latency under 20 milliseconds so and in fact for international\n\nCommunications um an interesting thing is that in fiber uh light travels much slower than in Aero vacuum so uh in a rough approximation uh light travels about 300 kilometers per millisecond in air and vacuum but only just roughly over 200 kilometers per second per milliseconds in in fiber so so you've got like a sort of roughly 40 increase in speed of light um going through this the stalling system then through through fiber and and it can also follow a more direct route instead of following the the sort of uh Coastline of the continents it it can actually have a more direct route so it's a fact it's a shorter round and an inherently faster from a physics standpoint so it it connects the world um way better than fibro um and it will provide and is providing\n\nconnectivity to people that either never had it before or where their options were extremely expensive or very low bandwidth so it's helping out a lot of communities that never never had access especially when you consider that education is is digital these days that's really how you can learn anything you basically learn anything you can basically learn anything for free on the internet if you have the internet um so in terms of providing education abilities to remote communities uh stalling is doing a lot of good in that regard lastly um you know the launch whether you know Falcon 9 heavy or Starship I think you had the static fire test that went well and and what can you tell us about the next next phase on launch or Starship yeah so we're getting\n\nready for the first launch of of Starship this is a very difficult program the rocket is um roughly two and a half times the thrust of a Saturn V so if it what if or once it reaches all of it it'll be by father thanks rocket 312 but but more importantly it is designed to be the first fully reusable rocket over the rocket ever so that the key to uh extending life beyond Earth is fully and rapidly reusable orbital rocket this is a very hard problem given the constraints of Earth with Earth has a thick atmosphere and strong gravity it is only barely possible to do this that's why it has not been done before so we are getting we're getting close for our first orbital attempt of Starship hopefully in the next month or so we'll have our first attempt I'm not\n\nsaying it'll get to orbit but I am guaranteeing excitement [Laughter] so it won't be boring um I think I think it's got I don't know hopefully above 50 chance of reaching all of it and uh and then we we've got we're building a whole series of Starships in South Texas and so I think we've got hopefully about an 80 chance of reaching over this year it'll probably take us a couple more years to achieve full and Rapid reusability um which I can't emphasize enough is it is the it is the profound breakthrough that is needed to extend life beyond Earth um because it it lowers the cost of access to space by orders of magnitude in the same way that if if let's say there were no airplanes that were reusable how expensive would Air flight be it would be insane you\n\ndon't have to buy in your airplane every time you flew somewhere and you have to tow a small airplane behind you for the return flight so uh you know that's just you're not going to scale um so assuming things go go well there this this vehicle is if it could make life multi-planetary that's a really big deal I could make life on Mars real and I think that's uh I mean that's one of the great cultures that any civilization has to pass through which is does the civilization become multi-planetary or not this is one of the elements of the Fermi paradox I mean I I sort of wonder that if we are able to get to multi-planetary that'll be a forcing function for ultimately improving space might to become multi-stellar to go to other star systems and I think we\n\nmay discover that there are many long Dead one planet civilizations we don't want to be one of those we know we don't want to be able to lame one planet please I think we're going to wrap on that thank you Elon Musk all right [Applause]","textByLang":{"en":"how would you describe the mission of Twitter 2.\n\n0 under your ownership Elon so the the goal is to have Twitter be the best source of Truth the most timely and accurate source of Truth uh even if the truth is someone we don't want to hear or unpleasant or whatever but how it be timely and accurate and really just where you can really understand what's going on and not just um is something true or not but but what is the narrative so the thing that I think most people don't probably you do but most people don't quite appreciate is that the media controls the narrative so there are many things that could be talked about in the world but only a few things can fit in the front page so but Twitter doesn't have a limitation like that so the the public can control the narrative and the public can inform themselves\n\nas to what the narrative should be that that's a really big deal so it's a form for called citizen journalism or for the public to get together and communicate in a way that was never possible before um so you can really know what's going on uh so I I think that that's really going to be essential for a functioning democracy so say like what is the Bedrock of uh functioning democracy um it it has to be free speech and a Level Playing Field um that's why it's the first amendment was the first thing they did like we kind of think we've got to make sure freedom of speech um and why did they do that is because where they came from there wasn't freedom of speech and once you lose freedom of speech you don't get it back so that's why we must protect it at all\n\ncosts thank you on the core principles if we want to call them that you just went over citizen journalism part of the people in a Level Playing Field that's what you mean by Democratic we've also heard you say core principles of authentic informative and entertaining accurate you just went over and and brand safe um where are you on these yeah I mean I think the some of these are um you know a little uh at odds you know brand safe I think it really means like where where advertising is displayed that the advertiser gets to to choose what material is near that advertising so if it's something you know uh if it's some sort of like a like a train accident or a a war scene then probably a family friendly brand is not going to want to advertise right next\n\nto that you know or you know it can't be like um here's a oblique war scene would you like to buy a hamburger or be like awkward you know um so that's understandable you want to put advertising next to content where it makes sense um but but the content in general needs to be authentic and informative even if it is controversial or jarring um and yeah and I think people need to be able to choose you know to some degree what content they want us to see and of course on Twitter you can so but really we want it to be the the fundamentally place you go to to learn what's going on and get the real story that's what the the the the truth the whole truth and it's going to be more than I would like to say nothing but the truth that that that's that's hard it's\n\ngoing to be a lot of BS there truth and more because they realize uh for sure um but but but you want to you want to have the truth and you want to you want to Bubble Up the the truth and be able to sort of sort out really want truth with the least amount of error so so you've said um you know Twitter is alive another way that's that's described is it's where news happens as you just said so a couple here Patrick Mahomes and Steph Curry talking to each other Rihanna speaking uh directly to her fans um or in crypto SPF and CZ were having the conversation directly uh on Twitter yeah Sam Walton you know launched uh chat DPT announces it on Twitter uh Paul Graham takes up a tweet on it you're tweeting on it uh I think 50 000 tweets happened there um before\n\nit was picked up by the mainstream media just in the first couple of days yeah and so you know talk to us about how how can the media catch up if they're on Twitter they can be seeing these tweets and posting it if they're not on Twitter is there no way to catch up like how does the traditional media and citizen journalism and 50 000 tweets on an important subject how do those intersect and how does the media catch up well just that as I'm sure many of you use Twitter it the everything Twitter is happening in real time so if you contrast that to what's happening in a newspaper they they have to learn the information propose an article to their editor get it approved write the article get it edited figure out which day it's going to get published on and\n\nso the news is actually the thing that happened is being reported on at you know three four days sometimes a week late um and if it happens on a weekend then it's like yeah at least three days type of thing so um you know chat gbt was was huge news for several days on Twitter before there was any news articles about it in major Publications um so I think especially if one is uh say thinking about investing in things you want to have information that is as timely and accurate as possible there's no better Source than Twitter for that I've certainly been my experience um so Paul Graham who's alleged in Tech a legend on Twitter I think he has tweeted um that he's 80 percent left-leaning probably if he had to put him on the scale so not someone um you know\n\nwho's not not deemed and revered by all sides of the spectrum he has said you know consistent with your accuracy Point um he has said how important accuracy is and on Twitter he said you know you should be default skeptical of any news story about Twitter and assume it's default wrong because not only do some journalists have the agenda but the source has the agenda and it's so easy to go through the chain of inaccuracy or you know outright falsehood is is is he right about this um and you know if so um how how can accuracy about Twitter and about you be conducted by the traditional media if at all does a does a PR department help uh which you know famously don't have PR departments I I I you know the right name for PR is propaganda um and I always thought\n\nyou know like maybe maybe we should have like a VP of propaganda that would be I just I think just more honest you know uh and um also a PC of Witchcraft that's what that would be like yeah um those would be two great ones uh so I mean the the thing that I mean if you pick up pick up any given newspaper and go through and read the whole thing and say how many of those stories are positive about anything at all at almost none so if if something is newsworthy it is going to have a negative slant whether it is positive or not that there's like something in journalism that they've been trained to basically never write a positive story about anything once in a while you see a puff piece but it's rare um so anything that's newsworthy will get written about\n\nanything that's that's written about will go through a negativity lens and so you therefore have a a bizarrely negative view of the world if you draw your information from newspapers this is simply I mean fact so on Twitter you can get a much more balanced positive negative situation it doesn't have that bias quite as much it's probably still a little bit of negativity bias but but much less so um so it you know I think it's really I'm not sure what the Legacy Media does I mean at this point really um Twitter Twitter is by the way the number one news uh app in the world so in terms of what people download for news it's it's number one this 500 million active users 250 million uh daily users of which I'd say there's probably you know 180 million significant\n\ndaily users where they're they're it's a meaningful amount of time so like the average amount of uh time that people spend on Twitter per day all that 250 million is around half an hour or so um so what we have is the thing the thing that's like I think most interesting is there's about 120 to 130 million hours of human attention per day on Twitter every single day on average um which is I think it comes to a really interesting point which is to just it's startling how poorly monetized that is because you have to say like how valuable is that attention 100 130 million hours of human attention per day of people that read so these are the generally the smartest people in the world the most influential people in the world and you have 130 million hours of\n\ntheir time per day that's a lot so currently Twitter makes about five or six cents per hour of that time I I think this is a poorly monetized Paul Graham's attention Paul Graham's half hour of attention is you know is worth more more worth more than that yeah I mean if I'm spending two hours a day on Twitter like your whatever ads are coming through are getting my attention um getting your attention getting everyone in the room's attention um your time is incredibly valuable um so now the thing is we need to actually serve ads that are relevant and and useful and I think I think as we do that we can probably at least get it to like 15 cents an hour 20 cents an hour yeah a quarter right um so I think the actual potential here for Twitter revenue is gigantic\n\num and it's going to be a win-win situation which is that if you are served advertising that you find timely and relevant that with products and services that are useful to you that's good for you and good for the advertiser advertising and the limit of relevance is content so in the um next theme that's out there that's a often an inaccurate narrative is that you're indifferent to misinformation or other narratives get put out in the media that you actually want misinformation on Twitter when as you've just stated you want it to be the most accurate in the world so Community notes I'm going to Breeze through a couple of these before asking you about them Community notes are the fact checking by power of the people on Twitter so correcting government\n\nmisstatements from the White House correcting candidate misstatement from failed gubernatorial candidate Kerry Lake that Ron DeSantis had been endorsed by George Soros adding context while the Spy balloon was over Billings Montana to a tweet that could have been taken um to spiral and mean it had been shot down over Billings with that photo and adding context to that preventing a conspiracy theory of trying to elements are purposeful or nefarious as opposed to 1700 per year quickly corrected before a right-wing conspiracy theory could get going uh company misstatements or statements misstatements about companies I should say so the tweet that said you know Google set a badge machine to tell you if you were terminated or not and adding context that no\n\nthey had been emailed um on coinbase that they've been told they had to stop staking by regulators fact check very very quickly so how can this scale this neutral fact checking which seems elusive in fact checking but Twitter seems to have a handle on it but how does it scale and how does it avoid being hijacked by either side of a an issue or political Spectrum trying to hijack Community notes to not have it be neutral um yeah there's a there's a white paper on community notes that I recommend reading in fact I'll tweet it out to the people um Can can have easy access to it um but the because it's really quite a clever idea um it's it it takes a the Viewpoint of someone if think of it in a way like like page rank for Pages as applied to to people which\n\nis that as people build credibility in how they review notes they they pull up enough credibility to actually write notes um and then those notes are then rated by others and depending upon the credibility of of the people rating your note your credibility score gets affected so it's it's sort of like uh uh collection of credibility but there were but there were link Farms created in Far Away places to to spam pagerank so that's going to be attempted but you're going to apply your yes in software skills and things to prevent that in order to be a notes contributor you have to be a verified person I think yeah um so you have to have uh and it and it takes a while to get to where you can't suddenly you you'll have no if you just when you just start out\n\nyou will start off with no credibility score yeah so it's very hard to link Farm yes um and when we we actively look at any attempts to game the system um and and shut them down uh and and remove them from the system if if they're if they're determined to be not real people or if they seem to be brigading because there are deliberate attempts to manipulate Community notes um we also make the community notes uh source code is open and available so you can see you can basically see everything so uh that's in the white paper it's uh it's not it's on the white paper but it's available on the internet yeah you can search for it um so you can see exactly how Community nodes is calculating things what uh changes are made to community notes and we'll keep iterating\n\nuh and the goal is to have truth with the least amount of error um so it's you know there's always like what is truth um uh and I think the important like what is one way to sort of for example say like if someone really aspired to the truth if they really aspire to the truth they must acknowledge that there is some probability that what they think is untrue if somebody thinks there's no probability zero percent about what they think somebody thinks that they is trying to claim to you that what they're saying is true with 100 probability there's a 100 probability they are lying so um truth with acknowledged error where you aim to minimize that error over time that's what community notes is I think also uh once someone gets community noted um they think\n\ntwice about uh being deceptive in the future so you start getting noted a few times people like oh I know someone who's been Community noted yeah um so uh this no one's immune meaning um you've been Community noted on this uh CNN uh fake Chiron CNN made no such claim um that you know free speech on Twitter by allowing people to speak freely yeah and you were quickly Community noted um a satirical tweet and peop and Community said this is not this is not accurate um is this the one you tweeted Community notes for the win I think you may have it might benefit yeah I mean the important thing is that anyone can be noted including me and in fact I wanted to make a note of being noted um that the point the point is that if if I can be noted anyone can be noted\n\num including advertisers so we've had a few cases where the advertising wasn't accurate and it got noted oh the mortgage mortgage One loan money to yourself I think I saw that there alone for eight years so yeah sure right right and so so but it's your own customer and they can be noted and then yes and then presumably change the ad yes I mean this will I think be very helpful in truth and advertising yeah okay um so like so I can't emphasize enough the goal is rigorous pursuit of the truth um aspirationally the whole truth and the least amount of uh untruth yeah so let's talk back about brand safety we'll go through two two quick ones here one narrative that's out there that probably affected advertisers and agencies was Twitter was going to become this\n\nhotbed of hate speech and shortly after the acquisition there was this bot attack you've talked about that seemed designed to try to make that a self-fulfilling prophecy actually until it was quickly uh defeated by your your team and there's 50 percent less hate speech according to what your team has put out this is a graphic then pre-acquisition so so not only is it a priority for you but less half as much as before and then on child sexual exploitation something that's been so important to you um 800k suspended accounts that's four times more than in any month of the prior year of your ownership and the 99 reduction in successful searches for CSE patterns so talk to us about how much of a priority this is and how successful you've been at it but then\n\nalso presumably more can be done yeah um I I I've repeatedly said to the trust and safety team at Twitter that the the there's no more priority which will always be a no more priority no matter what is uh ensuring that the children are safe on on Twitter that there's no child exploitation so that is number one priority always and forever um and what I've been told is that we've done more uh to eliminate this on Twitter in the last four months than it's been done in the last 10 years and it will continue to be number one priority um you know 100 fold reduction in CSC search patterns is pretty gigantic to say the least so uh yeah it's absolute number one so on continued on brand safety you know this Global Alliance for responsible media's brand safety floor\n\nthe the garm um you know Twitter business had tweeted out earlier in the year that in testing uh 99 at least 99 of measured ad Impressions appeared on contact that exceeded that floor so you know what message do you want for your advertisers when you're talking to a CMO to the head of an agency just in total I think you touched on this a little if there's anything to add but brand safety is in fact a top priority with a team all over it and technology and humans focused on the subject yeah as I said I mean with respect to Brian say if you really it depends a lot on the brand I mean if you've got sort of you know uh kind of by the way Disney is is a major Advertiser on on Twitter worldwide one of our biggest advertisers Apple's one of our biggest advertisers\n\nbut Disney of course wants to does not want to have their ads next to things that aren't appropriate for a family audience but there are um other products that are kind of more you know R-rated if you will um and and so they're they're more comfortable with being their advertising being in the equivalent of like an R-rated movie or something like that so ride safety varies depending upon what brand you're talking about is it a family brand or or less family brand um but but advertisers can actually adjust um how much uh what what content they're comfortable having their advertising appear next to um same is true on TV um so the you know the advertising that you'll see at say 7 PM is different from the advertising that you'll see at midnight um and this\n\nis we have the same functionality on Twitter so it's really up to the advertiser what the where they want to put their content um but but I think by far the most important thing is that the advertising is is effective that that it is relevant and that it moves the needle for a company the advertising relevance is is the most gigantic thing um and and this this is going to sound totally bizarre but uh Twitter did not consider relevance in advertising until three months ago um and in fact if you've used Twitter for a long time uh which probably many of you have you should say like how many products have you bought off Twitter probably zero [Laughter] judging by the laughter probably zero so annual time is incredibly valuable flamethrower no one about a\n\nflamethrower well I mean it's possible that they might report things from you know uh content-based tweets because the the content that's recommended is reasonably relevant but the advertising has not been so as we moved to shift towards the advertising being relevant and timely um this is it really like I said advertising that is relevant and timely is information it is content and the the value of the time of 130 million person hours of the smartest people on earth is insanely valuable um and frankly historically with the advertising being mostly Irrelevant in the past We've been wasting people's time and that's not good going forward Twitter will will have very relevant useful advertising and uh and because it is is useful because it is relevant there\n\nwill be a massive increase in the revenue because it is now useful so [Music] um I'm very optimistic about the future it's been a very difficult four months but I'm optimistic about the future I appreciate that so let's get back to democratic Democratic platform for all the um you know you've said there's no permanent suspensions of anyone on the left you've brought back both left and right but I think what you've tweeted is you had to unban a lot more on the right because that's who was banned um for the most part but your goal is equally unbanned complete equal Level Playing Field for all sides of the political Spectrum yeah I mean the the I think the objective reality for anyone looking at Twitter uh for longest time was that Twitter was had a massive\n\nthumb on the scale on the left side um Twitter would ban and suspend accounts on the right uh 10 times more than on the left so like naturally what you'd expect frankly because where are we were in San Francisco which is uh deep deep blue so Twitter was uh controlled by the far left so the natural thing that would happen then is suppression of of moderates not just on the not suppression of the right but even suppression of moderate voices so but that but that's not conducive to a healthy National dialogue in order to have healthy National dialogue you have to represent the whole country and you have to represent uh you know everyone in other countries too it's got to be you know that's the only way to have a Town Square um and so yeah there were disproportionately\n\nmore accounts unsuspended and unshadowed banned on the right because the Twitter had a huge thumb on the scale on the in favor of the left so that's but but if you say like have we been suspending on Council and left have we been Shadow Banning counseling left no we haven't so uh because I what exactly what I said is when we do we are doing which is to make it an even playing field and you know something is freedom of a speech when it is when you're hearing speech that that from someone you don't like and what and what you're saying you don't like what they're saying this otherwise it's not free speech and if you don't have that ability then sooner or later that that's that suppression of speech is going to be turned on you so it is a good sign if you're\n\nseeing people you don't like say things you don't like that is a good sign not a bad sign because it means and provided you can sell your peace too um I I think this was fundamental I mean the reason I I did the Twitter acquisition was not because I thought this would be some lucrative Gold Line um uh it in fact it has been arduous and difficult with a massive with a you know and being dumped on every day well that's not the most fun thing in the world um but if we do not have a strong Foundation of free speech I I fear for the future of our civilization we must have this that's why I did it thank you for doing it um Switching gears a media narrative that um you know may have some accuracy they're not all inaccurate um but the code base is difficult to\n\nchange Tech debt unwieldy um you know Rube Goldberg machine is is a term you've used so it's practical fractal Rube Goldberg this is this is at least partially accurate if not accurate uh yes well uh yes uh like the code base is like a Rube Goldberg machine and uh when you zoom in on one part of the Ruby Goldberg machine there's another root Goldberg machine and then there's another one this is your penguin that's what I mean by the fractal fractal as you zoom in it's just another fractal another fractal fractal root gold book machine um so it's quite difficult to keep this thing running and then also difficult to advance the product because it is really overly complex to say the least and we'll make a change what what appears to be a small change somewhere\n\nthat then causes a massive disruption um so for example just yesterday we made what we thought was a small change and we'll put out the what we want to be in the sort of full disclosure of everything including dirty you know gruesome details so but but essentially if there was a uh what was supposed to be a small change to one percent of the Twitter user base ended up being a catastrophic change to a hundred percent of the recruiter use of ace um and uh you know I don't know we don't have enough time to go into the details but um there was a there was a Boolean flag in the Twitter front and that that should not have been there um and uh we live now we fixed that um but but it's I mean let me give you it's like a silly example at one point we um there\n\nwas a problem with Twitter spaces where suspended users were able to join conversations even though they were suspended and we temporarily uh turned off uh access to Twitter spaces which is um which then made someone anyone who is using the Twitter Android app unable to like tweets now how those things are connected is not clear so if you were in the Rube Goldberg practically that's what I'm saying so if you had an an IOS app you could like tweets if you're on the web app you could like tweets but not if you had an Android app because of spaces I mean like what um so you know we're so one of the things we're doing there's a lot of work behind the scenes in simplifying the code base um getting rid of extraneous features and enabling Twitter to evolve more\n\nrapidly in the future but it requires a lot of cleanup essentially um yeah so you know you you've grown users despite this lean engineering team and the and the the code base being unwieldy and Cloud spend 40 percent down cut out a data center is this due to the the strength of the engineering team that you've been able to achieve this and introduce subscription and other features while trying to hold it all together and and where does that engineering team go to accomplish both the code based enhancements and all the features you've said you want to introduce yeah I mean I think on balance we're doing okay because um and just to give you a sense of where things were at the close of acquisition on say October 29th um Twitter was tracking to a negative\n\nthree billion a year burn rate um and had one billion in the bank so that's a pretty dire situation if 20 if 2023 had been a normal year um Twitter would have done something on the order of four and a half billion in revenue or four and a half billion in cost roughly Break Even but when you add one and a half billion of debt servicing to that and um a massive decline in advertising some of it's cyclic some of it political but could call it at least a 50 decline in Revenue roughly 30 percent of Clan Revenue you've got over three billion dollars negative um but now Twitter has some Revenue that's not Advertising based so um data services data yeah yeah exactly like yeah but um so yeah data subscriptions and whatnot um so but it was in the absence of action\n\num Twitter would have had six billion in cost and three billion Revenue so minus three billion and it was a billion in the bank so it would have gone bankrupt in four months um so so immediate and drastic action had to be taken um which which was and so we actually have now cut the burn to the the non-uh interest burned to roughly uh one and a half billion so we've got a billion and a half of debt so saying and a billion and a half of expenditures uh we uh went from three data centers to two um and it reduced our Cloud expenditures uh significantly um and um while at the same time having the fastest product Evolution in Twitter's history so overall not bad um they've been a few bumps along the road obviously but uh this is to be expected um and now I\n\nthink we have the opportunity to grow it into something quite spectacular we we have the highest uh total user minutes and Twitter history so the the the real number to care about is actually not the uh mdow monthly which is directly monetizable daily active users but it's it's user time um how many total user hours per day do you have that's that's the real figure of marriage because one could for example say uh go to 300 million daily active users but if they spent less time on the system uh cumulatively that would actually be a downgrade it's how much human attention are you worth and that's what I think like I said that the really profound thing is what Twitter has is roughly 130 million hours of the smartest most influential people on earth every\n\nsingle day there's there's nothing else that has that I mean there are social networks that are that have more users but they do not have the small influential people they don't have you so the if I do the math on what you've said about the advertiser pause and revenue Decline and the cost changes um it's ebitda profitable today and then you're looking for cash flow Break Even after Debt Service well Steve it's not profitable but the yeah the the D and the yeah right when do you get to cash flow Break Even bush with the D when you get the cash flow Break Even after that day this is where we need to focus on the e-pod yes foreign I hope we pay taxes um and the T yeah um so like I said I mean we're getting to the point where we're close to having the total\n\nexpenditures for the company excluding debt roughly equal to the debt okay yeah that's what I think like I think we'll be there in Q2 thank you too um and then like I don't I definitely don't want to count uh chickens before the hatch or drinks it or anything but I I think we've got a shot at uh being cash flow positive uh next quarter so that'll some of that'll depend on advertisers so we'll talk quickly about advertising you've mentioned it a few times um the value uh is clear 147 billion Impressions uh on Twitter of World Cup 22 and 50 year-over-year growth and NFL video views um you know 39 increase in Super Bowl mentions the NFL putting out engagements never been higher and then wpp CEO Mark Reed said 10 days or long ago this was February 24.\n\nTwitter seems to be more stable and I think clients advertising clients presumably here will look about coming back to Twitter so are you in touch with agency and CMOS and is is this the theme I think we just saw McDonald's or others coming back as they realize you are absolutely focused on the things you were said not to be focused on in terms of uh brand safety Etc yeah I mean I think the really um what I'd say to advertisers and Brands is you know use Twitter yourself and believe what you see on Twitter not what you read in the newspapers because what you see on Twitter is the real thing and what you read newspapers is not um and I'd like to thank Mark Reed on wpp for their support and publicists and others and for the advertisers that have stuck with\n\nus like Disney and apple thank you so that's brand advertising you've mentioned a few times performance advertising I think I've heard your story about White Lotus which maybe we can you can share here um you know performance-based advertising has been very lucrative for other companies and it can be made more relevant on a more narrow cast basis if you will than than pure brand advertising so when when do you introduce performance-based advertising and and scale it oh we we introduced from the from the moment the acquisition closed like we have to have a performance-based advertising is really just advertising that is relevant relevant in fact we should really have aspirationally zero non-conformance based advertising um you know we want advertising\n\nthat matters uh people's attention is precious we should not serve them ads that are annoying or irrelevant or strident or ugly um and it's interesting to mentioned White Lotus I actually was talking to David zazlov who's great um and he was like hey why can't we put a White Lotus uh a trailer every time someone mentions White Lotus on Twitter I'm like absolutely so like one of the like it's super obvious but profound things that we're doing is enabling keyword advertising so that you can enter the keywords and uh like White Lotus and if somebody mentions White Lotus you put the White Lotus trailer there I mean this sounds very obvious um you don't need dpt3 for this you don't need Advanced AI for this one so uh you know it's sort of just Google AdWords\n\nbut applied to tweets and the home timeline and replies and everywhere else um because you'll often have very sort of long deep conversations people going on talking about movies TV products and whatnot and uh that's the perfect opportunity for advertisers to provide their message you know if I think about something for example like like starlink um which does advertise in various media uh for stalling uh um would want to advertise to users in in regions that are not already saturated so Starling tends to be saturated in urban areas but is not saturated in uh rural areas and so what Sonic would like to do is like say please show the ad in to to rural users with a slow connection and then the simple message is do you want faster internet for less money\n\nclick probably you do and Twitter needs to be able to do a simple thing like that and it will be um and in fact it is already able to do that we're just having fully rolled it out so we're we're I think around 20 ish but by the end of this year almost all advertising will be should be reasonably relevant and that your your Starlight example comes back to your disposable income if you want to or the education level and the ability to buy and afford to start the subscription of the Twitter user like it also dovetails back into that yeah absolutely um so um you know I think there's also an opportunity here to uh have advertising be uh much like like really improve the relevance of advertising using um AI in the sense that if you based on what uh tweets somebody\n\nreviews likes and whatever you can actually populate a parameter space uh an ml parameter space and then you can take an ad and even if you say nothing about that ad after it's dropped in the Twitter system and has 10 000 views you populate a parameter space of that of the ad and then you correlate the user parameter space and add parameter space and then you don't need to do any demographic targeting because you could be like say it's a gardening ad well you could be 20 30 40 you could be 70 years old any sex whatever it doesn't matter what matters do you like gardening and that's the ad that should be shown and so I think we can get away from a lot of the sort of targeting by age range and sex and whatever uh in favor of targeting my interest um and\n\nand a lot of these sort of demographic targeting was done coming from a TV or newspaper era where you don't have interaction with the user you just have to kind of guess because it's a one-way Street in TV um but on Twitter it's not a one-way Street there's continuous interaction um so I think we can just have a profoundly more useful uh advertising experience so let's close on Twitter before getting to um another couple companies I've heard that you run the vision You're Building towards I think you've called it X or the everything app tell us about it and Beyond just improving the advertising and and you know what will we be able to do on Twitter in your in your grandest vision yeah so so x x.\n\ncom is uh you know you know so so I think it's possible to create a very powerful um Finance experience basically um like like PayPal is kind of like a halfway version of what I think could be done in payments and finance yeah and so you want to be like let's say you like you want to be able to to send money easily from one account on X Twitter to another account effortlessly with one click uh you want to be able to I think earn interest on the money you want to be able to um have debt so you can set your interest can go negative I mean basically I think it's possible to become the biggest financial institution in the world so just by providing people with convenience uh payment options um we don't have the time to go into it in detail here except uh\n\nif we just make the app more and more useful uh people will use it more and it'll be great I mean yeah so you'll still see okay um we're still on Twitter for a moment but we had uh you know in Austin thank you for hosting uh at the investor day and you showcased 16 Executives uh on stage at various times um with you an incredibly uh deep and built out management team and I think the executive team um with you with Twitter um you know is perhaps a bit leaner um let's just maybe there's a media narrative here that's accurate so he does have a black turtleneck so so you need anything more I don't think so so so so when when does the Twitter management team have that bench like you showcased uh the gigafactory well I think it takes it takes a long time to\n\nbuild a strong management team um and the you know we're both the Tesla management team over 20 years um so uh I think Twitter isn't easier problem than than Tesla uh by a long shot um so whether it'll take some time to to build the team and I don't know probably a few years okay um yeah and um Switching gears uh you shared Master Plan Three at the gigafactory and and you know the edit uh that that came to my mind with you know Master planet after your your first piece there on sustainable energy for all of Earth can you can you take us through that uh positive optimistic uh mathematically underpinned vision for our planet okay it was not a lot of time to do that but um but I guess the the overall message is that um we can absolutely make us uh to turn\n\ninto a sustainable energy economy fully sustainable uh using Lithium-ion batteries solar wind as well as geothermal nuclear and other things but primarily it'll be solar and wind end Lithium-ion batteries and our calculations you need roughly 240 terawatt hours of Lithium-ion batteries most of those will be iron phosphate lithium of the iron phosphate variety is those were the primarily iron cathode which is a plantful material in fact Earth is uh the the number one element on Earth is actually iron a little factoid uh I think Earth by mass is about 32 iron and about 30 oxygen and then everything else is miscellaneous so we're like a mighty rust ball um uh so plenty of iron basically the the materials are needed for uh to make 240 terawatt hours of batteries\n\nare actually plentiful on Earth um we don't need to mow down the Amazon or anything like that we don't need to basically do do anything Terrible's the environments to create uh 240 terawatt hours of batteries in fact uh there will be less mining required in a sustainable energy economy than is currently required really this was a message of of of Hope and optimism grounded in physical reality it is not wishful thinking um so we should be excited and inspired about the future and I'm not suggesting complacency or anything like that or that we should but and getting there faster is better better than getting there slower but but what we don't need to live some terrible or stair life and give up the things that we like you can have the things that you like\n\nin fact even more of them and the environment can be good all the good things are possible is what I'm saying there's we should be excited and optimistic about future which we need to go build it it's a lot of work um but you should not feel sad about the future regarding sustainable energy uh it will happen which just want to make it happen faster rather than slower so that was the first big takeaway you know the the next one that I had was this your your next phase of vertical integration the Relentless first principles thinking on vehicle design battery design Factory optimization you know at the same time as the vehicle that could lead to a Target I guess of this you know 50 percent step change in cost when the new gen eventually comes around um can\n\nyou just take us through The quick summary of that and and it unlocks the next uh wave of the Tam because there's price elasticity is is the what you were sharing on this subject is the second big takeaway for Tesla um yeah I mean those are the there's a clear path to making a vehicle a smaller vehicle that is roughly half the production cost and difficulty of our model three um that vehicle will be uh or you know really used almost entirely in autonomous mode that the thing that is really gigantic uh for for Tesla is autonomy um and if people have used the Tesla full self-driving and have seen how rapidly the full self-driving capability has been evolving um it should be obvious that that is by far the most profound thing um there's the sort of total\n\naddressable Market stuff it's like guys this is like actually not the right way to think about it it's it's like um passenger vehicles right now only see about 10 10 to 12 hours of use per week um there's 168 hours in a week if those vehicles are autonomous they're probably going to get used for 50 or 60 hours a week that's a 5x increase in the value of a car and it costs the same to make the car at that point you basically have software margins and a hardware product it's insane um total addressable Market as everyone all humans powerful so let's switch gears to SpaceX hitting first starlink what can you tell us about starlink and the the scale and deployment and how that's going yeah so I think the styling team is doing an amazing job um more than half\n\nof all satellites uh in orbit right now are starlink satellites so if you add up all satellite launched cumulatively they are less than starlink um so starlink is currently providing Global connectivity you can get connected connectivity anywhere on Earth from the most remote part of Antarctica to San Francisco anywhere that's full Global connectivity high bandwidth and low latency the latency is important because unless you're in low earth orbit you cannot get low latency the geostationary satellites are you know um very very high you've sort of got uh sometimes up to a second of latency from a Geo stationary satellite all things inclusive whereas uh with stalling satellites I believe we can get the latency under 20 milliseconds so and in fact for international\n\nCommunications um an interesting thing is that in fiber uh light travels much slower than in Aero vacuum so uh in a rough approximation uh light travels about 300 kilometers per millisecond in air and vacuum but only just roughly over 200 kilometers per second per milliseconds in in fiber so so you've got like a sort of roughly 40 increase in speed of light um going through this the stalling system then through through fiber and and it can also follow a more direct route instead of following the the sort of uh Coastline of the continents it it can actually have a more direct route so it's a fact it's a shorter round and an inherently faster from a physics standpoint so it it connects the world um way better than fibro um and it will provide and is providing\n\nconnectivity to people that either never had it before or where their options were extremely expensive or very low bandwidth so it's helping out a lot of communities that never never had access especially when you consider that education is is digital these days that's really how you can learn anything you basically learn anything you can basically learn anything for free on the internet if you have the internet um so in terms of providing education abilities to remote communities uh stalling is doing a lot of good in that regard lastly um you know the launch whether you know Falcon 9 heavy or Starship I think you had the static fire test that went well and and what can you tell us about the next next phase on launch or Starship yeah so we're getting\n\nready for the first launch of of Starship this is a very difficult program the rocket is um roughly two and a half times the thrust of a Saturn V so if it what if or once it reaches all of it it'll be by father thanks rocket 312 but but more importantly it is designed to be the first fully reusable rocket over the rocket ever so that the key to uh extending life beyond Earth is fully and rapidly reusable orbital rocket this is a very hard problem given the constraints of Earth with Earth has a thick atmosphere and strong gravity it is only barely possible to do this that's why it has not been done before so we are getting we're getting close for our first orbital attempt of Starship hopefully in the next month or so we'll have our first attempt I'm not\n\nsaying it'll get to orbit but I am guaranteeing excitement [Laughter] so it won't be boring um I think I think it's got I don't know hopefully above 50 chance of reaching all of it and uh and then we we've got we're building a whole series of Starships in South Texas and so I think we've got hopefully about an 80 chance of reaching over this year it'll probably take us a couple more years to achieve full and Rapid reusability um which I can't emphasize enough is it is the it is the profound breakthrough that is needed to extend life beyond Earth um because it it lowers the cost of access to space by orders of magnitude in the same way that if if let's say there were no airplanes that were reusable how expensive would Air flight be it would be insane you\n\ndon't have to buy in your airplane every time you flew somewhere and you have to tow a small airplane behind you for the return flight so uh you know that's just you're not going to scale um so assuming things go go well there this this vehicle is if it could make life multi-planetary that's a really big deal I could make life on Mars real and I think that's uh I mean that's one of the great cultures that any civilization has to pass through which is does the civilization become multi-planetary or not this is one of the elements of the Fermi paradox I mean I I sort of wonder that if we are able to get to multi-planetary that'll be a forcing function for ultimately improving space might to become multi-stellar to go to other star systems and I think we\n\nmay discover that there are many long Dead one planet civilizations we don't want to be one of those we know we don't want to be able to lame one planet please I think we're going to wrap on that thank you Elon Musk all right [Applause]"},"languages":["en"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GKIBmiB-yEA"},{"id":"world-government-summit-2023-02-15","type":"interview","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jmNrlNgXx_U","title":"World Government Summit","titles":{"en":"World Government Summit","de":"World Government Summit","fr":"World Government Summit"},"date":"2023-02-15","summary":"Musk speaks remotely to the Dubai summit on Twitter, world government, AI risk and education.","text":"hello good morning good morning good to see you alone it's been almost six years where we I sat with you here in this platform with a great audience uh it was your first trip to Dubai with your family I hope you enjoyed it yeah it was wonderful I'm very much into it um and I I'm I see my my head is Gigantic on this day my head has grown larger since we last met is it is it is it because of Twitter yeah I don't know perhaps it um Twitter is it's certainly um quite the roller coaster uh Elon just you know it's been it's been six years within six feet we've seen a tremendous thing since our our last conversation we've seen the pandemic Russian Ukrainian War uh development of uh chat gbt uh you launched Starship you recently also acquired Twitter can I ask\n\nyou this question why why why you bought Twitter why didn't you create your own platform maybe it was cheaper for you I mean I thought about creating something from scratch um but I I thought it would Twitter would perhaps accelerate progress versus creating something from scratch by three to five years um and um I think we are seeing just a tremendous technology acceleration uh that you know three to five years is actually worth a lot uh so I mean if you think I was a little worried about the direction that and the effect of social media on the world and especially Twitter and um I thought it was very important for there to be a maximally trusted sort of digital Public Square um where people you know within countries and internationally could communicate\n\nuh with um you know the least amount of censorship uh Allowed by law obviously that varies a lot by jurisdiction but I think in general um you know social media companies should adhere to the laws of of countries and not try to put a thumb on the scale beyond the laws of countries um so and I think this is something that is probably agreeable to um the you know the legislators and and the people of most countries so so I think it's that's the general idea is just um to reflect the values of of the people um as opposed to imposing the values of essentially San Francisco and Berkeley um which are somewhat of a niche ideology um as compared to the rest of the world and but but you know Twitter was I think doing a little too much to impose um a niche as a\n\nit's near San Francisco Berkeley ideology on the world um so you know I I thought the it was important for the future of civilization to try to correct that uh thumb on the scale if you will um and and uh and just have Twitter more accurately reflect uh like I said the the values of the the people of Earth um that's that's the that's the intention um and uh hopefully as we succeed in doing that um yeah uh but how do you see Twitter if we we say it five years down the road what's your vision for for this platform what what should it do well I think it'd be I'd like to you know have the sort of long-term vision for something called uh x.\n\ncom from back way back in the day uh which is kind of like a um sort of like an everything app um where it's just massively useful it does you know payments uh does um uh so it provides Financial Services provides information flow um really anything digital um and um it also provides secure Communications um so it relates to you know I think it would be as useful as possible as entertaining as possible um and thank you I went to uh find out what's going on and what's really going on um then you could should be able to go on on you know X the X app and uh and find out so it's a sort of source a sort of a source of Truth and a maximally useful I guess app is about the wrong word but system um and and Twitter is essentially an accelerant to that sort of\n\nmaximally useful everything app um yeah how how you are gonna I mean if you look at Twitter today I mean it's it's a platform sometimes there is a lot of misinformation in Twitter sometimes I don't feel comfortable even because there is some way there is this negative between Nation between people between different ethnic group that is the same thing how we are how we are going to fix this issue where you are you are in a mission with for Humanity to get them together yeah um I think there's um there's something that we're putting a lot of efforts into called Community notes um it's currently just in English but we will be expanding it to all languages that is I think quite a good way to assess the truth of things where it's the community itself basically\n\nthe you know the people of Earth who are basically what you know um not exactly voting but but competing to provide the most accurate information so it's sort of a competition for truth um and I think it's a very powerful concept to have a competition for truth um because you also said like what what is true it's because what may be true to some may not be viewed as true to others but you want to have the closest approximation of that so I think the community notes thing is very powerful um I think we are trying to have as many organizations uh and people and institutions uh verified as being legitimately those people and organizations is is important um and to have the organizational affiliation clearly identified so that if you want to find out if somebody's\n\nactually if an account is actually saved from A Member of Parliament or a journalist or uh if uh let's say if a Twitter handle is actually belongs to say Disney Corporation or something like that you you can you can go on Twitter and it's it's sort of an identity layer of the internet and you you can confirm that that is a fact the case and and I think once you've got these sort of interlocking um sort of identities uh it's actually very hard to be deceptive in that case uh because and it's also you have a reputation to protect at that point so I think then people are far more likely to be measured in their response um and um we will be more reasonable since they have reputational value at that point um so these are some of the ideas that I have um and\n\nyou know I'm not saying that for sure it will succeed or that it's going to be perfect but I I I I am confident that it will over time you know head into in a good direction um and I think that the evidence for that will be do people find it useful um you know as we're measuring sort of the you know total user minutes but not just user minutes um unregretted use minutes which I think that the key figure of marriage um you know because um well for example Tick Tock has a very high usage I often hear people say well I spent two hours on Tick Tock but I regret those two hours um I'm not just trying to knock Tick Tock but it's just we don't want that to be the case with Twitter we want to say like okay you spent half an hour on Twitter that you found it to\n\nbe useful and entertaining and um a good thing in your life and ultimately be a force for good for civilization that that's the aspiration thank you uh Elon we have over 150 government within the world government Summit global leaders they have 8 billion customer their citizen how government can use Twitter bitter to service citizens yeah um well I I think generally um I would recommend um you know really communicating a lot on Twitter and uh I I think it's good for people to speak in in their voice as opposed to how they think they should speak you know like um you know sometimes like people think well I I should speak in this like but it ends up sounding I think somewhat at times somewhat stiff but and not not real um you know like if you read a press\n\nrelease from Corporation it just sounds like propaganda so I would encourage uh CEOs and um of companies and uh you know legislators and um you know ministers and so forth to to speak authentically uh and to you know if there's a say a particular policy to explain it um and um and I I think there's you know sometimes a concern about criticism but I I think at the end of the day you know it's having some some criticism is is fine you know it's not that it's really not that bad um um I mean I I I'm constantly attacked on on Twitter frankly um and I I don't mind uh it's it's um you know you have to be somewhat thick skinned I suppose at times you know just because you're gonna they're really trying to twist a knife um but but I but I think I think just like\n\nI said just uh as a form for communication um it's great and um and I would just encourage more communication um and and like I said to to sort of speak in an authentic voice like like sometimes people will have someone else be their sort of Twitter manager or something like that and I think I it's just people should just do their own tweets you know it sounds uh it and and like sometimes you make a mistake or something it's fine um but I think just doing your own tweets just like you would do your own you know you give a talk here or you would you know have a meeting at a summit or something uh I think that's that's the way to do it is is to actually do do the tweets yourself um and um and convey the message that you want directly um yeah so but you\n\nknow I mean one thing I should say I know this is called the world government Summit um but uh I think we should be maybe a little bit concerned about uh actually becoming too much of a single World Government um if I may say that we want to avoid creating a civilizational risk by having um frankly this may sound a little odd too much cooperation between governments um you know if you know if you look at say the history and the rise and fall of civilizations um the really all throughout history civilizations have risen and Fallen but it hasn't meant the Doom of humanity as a whole because they've been they've been all these separate civilizations that were separated by great distances and so um you know say like while Rome was falling you know Islam was\n\nrising and uh so you had like a uh you know the the sort of caliphate doing incredibly well while Rome was doing terribly um and that actually ended up being a source of preservation of knowledge uh and uh and many as scientific advancements and so um so I think we want to be a little bit cautious about uh being too much of a will of a single uh civilization because if we are too much of a single civilization then if we're if the whole the whole thing May collapse um I don't know obviously not suggesting war or anything like that but I think we want to be a little bit wary of actually cooperating too much it sounds a little odd but um but we just we want to have some amount of civilizational diversity such that if uh if something does go wrong with some\n\npart of civilization that the whole thing doesn't collapse uh and and you know Humanity keeps moving forward thank you uh I you see I I hear you I agree and disagree with you a certain point and I think you know it's today people they don't fight with sword anymore I mean they have nuclear weapons so there is there is this conflict the whole civilization will be gone the whole human civilization will be gone and what we are trying to do here at the Emirates actually is to do exactly what you are saying we have 180 nationality you have every single race every single religion and we are trying to create a model that show the world that doesn't matter who you are what your color what's your religion where you're from you Humanity can live in peace and harmony\n\nyeah I mean that would be good yeah my my last question I'll go to Twitter uh again then we'll move out of Twitter if you allowed us uh I mean you've been running Twitter as at the chairman at the owner at the CEO and that's take a lot of time did you identify a CEO and when you are going to hire him well um I I think I need to um stabilize the organization um and just make sure it's in a financially healthy place um and that the the product roadmap is clearly laid out um so I don't know I'm guessing probably towards the end of this year um which would be good timing to um find uh someone else to run the company because I think it should be in a stable position around uh you know at the end of this year uh Elon uh if we move to other subjects I mean at\n\nthe summit here we have speaker who speak about state of the word state of geopolitical of the world for the next 10 decade state of the economy of the world you know now and in the next 10 years if I ask you about the state of Technology if you can elaborate a bit then brief us how do you see technology in the next 10 years from now let's see 10 years it's always difficult to predict technology with Precision especially over a 10-year time frame when it is changing so much um I mean there's there's obviously the transition to sustainable energy uh with the solar wind batteries and electric vehicles um and and that that's if you look at the percentage growth of that that is a very high percentage growth although because of the massive industrial base\n\nof um of the current sort of um fossil fuel economy it it even like even if all for example if electric cars were 100 of production immediately it would take 20 years to replace the fleet so this is still something that is quite gradual you know it's measured in just a few you know 30 30 40 years type of time frame um on a more sort of near-term time frame I think artificial intelligence is something we need to be um quite concerned about and really be uh attentive to the safety of of AI um you mentioned a chat gbt earlier um you know I I played a significant role in the creation of openai um essentially at the time I was concerned that Google was not paying enough attention to AI safety and so I I with a number of other people um created opening and\n\nalthough initially it was created as an open source non-profit and now it is closed source and for-profit I don't have any stake in open AI anymore nor am I on the board nor do I control it in any way um but the chat GPS here I think has Illustrated to people just how advanced AI has become um because the AI has been Advanced for a while it just didn't have a user interface that was um accessible to most people um so what really chat gbt has done is just put an accessible user interface on AI technology that is this has been present for a few years um and there are much more advanced versions for that that are coming out um so I think we you know I think we need to really be I think we need to regulate AIC quite frankly um because if you think of any\n\num technology which is potentially a risk to uh civil to to people like if it's an aircraft or uh your cars or medicine we have regulatory bodies that oversee the public safety of cars and planes and Medicine and I think we should probably we should have a a similar sort of regulatory oversight for artificial intelligence because um it is I think actually a bigger risk to society than uh cars or planes or medicine um so um and this basically have to slow down AI a little bit but I think that that might also be a good thing um the the challenge here is that a government regulatory uh authorities tend to be set up in reaction to something bad that happened so if you look at say aircraft or or cars um you know the cars were unregulated at the beginning aircraft\n\nwere unregulated uh but they had lots of um you know airplane crashes and in some cases manufacturers that were cutting Corners um and and a lot of people were dying so they the public was not happy about that and so they established a regulatory authority to improve safety and now commercial airliners are extremely safe um if you were to drive somewhere it's a safety for a mile of a commercial airliner is better than a car and cars are also extremely safe compared to where they used to be so um but if you say if you look at say the introduction of seat belts the Auto industry fought the introduction of seat belts as a safety measure for I think 10 or 15 years before finally The Regulators made them put seat belts and cars and that greatly improved the\n\nsafety of cars and that airbags were another big Improvement in safety so my concern is that with AI if if there's something rather if something goes wrong um the reaction might be too slow from a regulatory standpoint um so I I would say like it you know if it's like one of the biggest risks to the future of civilization um positive or negative it has great great promise great capability but it also with that comes great danger I mean like I say nuclear it you know just discovery of sort of nuclear physics uh you had nuclear power generation but also nuclear bombs um so anyway I think we should be quite concerned about it and we should uh have some regulation of what is it if I fundamentally um a risk to the public uh yeah very great let me move to another\n\nsubject Elon education I mean you have your own philosophy about education with AI education might change dramatically when you tell us briefly about your philosophy of education and number two do any 12 years of schooling and four years of University well um with respect to education I think in general uh some things that we could do to make it more compelling would be to explain to Children why we are teaching a particular subject um so uh the human mind has evoked to really forget anything that it deems um unimportant so um if that human memory is really quite quite bad relative to the memory of your phone your phone is can remember the entire contents of an encyclopedia down to last a letter in pixel um but human memories is terrible by comparison\n\nso the mind is constantly trying to forget things actually um so if you but if you explain the the why why a subject is being taught um that will then establish relevance and it's much more likely to result in motivation for kids um and and then also if you if you teach uh knowledge especially in the Sciences as solutions to a problem um it's much more effective so uh like let's say you're trying to understand an internal combustion engine well it's actually better to sort of take that apart and and then say okay well what tools do we need to use to take it apart we need a wrench and screwdriver and various other things uh to take it apart well then then you understand that the reason for the tools and so like for for mathematics and and it's I like tools\n\nand in physics and Engineering um but if you if you but if you teach to the problem and say and then you understand then you establish the relevance of the tools then you it's actually much easier to remember um mathematics and physics uh because they'll help explain how the world works um as opposed to teaching them without explaining why and simply teaching them it's like instead of having teaching to the problem teaching currently people teach the tool it would be like having a course on on screwdrivers or course on wrenches um but not understanding why you have a course you're learning about screwdrivers and wrenches um I think this is really quite a fundamental principle that should be applied in education um and and I think sometimes we do we do\n\nteach classes that are that children do not find useful and and where the answer to the why is actually not going to be a very good answer um you know most people I think will do not find advanced mathematics useful and are unlikely to find it useful in their life um or the elements that they do find useful could be taught very quickly as general principles um I also think that critical thinking is something that should be taught to children out of a relatively young age um as effectively like a mental firewall um to really think about when somebody tells you something is it cogent is it true or what is the probability that it is true um and so that you can to be taught to reject things that are untrue or more likely to be untrue um and favor things that\n\nare more likely to be true um critical thinking I think is very helpful for people to learn so is it 12 years of schooling you are with or without 12 fears um well yours is a long time I suppose I mean humans just do take a long time to mature so there's emotional maturity physical maturity and mental maturity that is happening simultaneously with the education um I suppose it could be done in 10 years perhaps it does not need 12.\n\num but but then is someone mature at age 16 they're more likely to be mature at age 18.\n\nso I guess 12 years is probably not bad um we probably don't need an additional four or five or six years in in college and university that seems probably excessive I think we'll probably shave a few years off and be fine okay kids will love it by the way yeah uh but you know social media but we spend so many hours on social media I mean the average sometime in certain country three four hours in social media and sometimes when we go to our kids we we see them spending also long hours part of his knowledge do you have any rule for your kids I mean how much they can spend in social media right you know I'm certainly not uh try to restrict social media for my kids although that might have been a mistake um depending on which kid it is that I mean they've\n\nreally been programmed by Reddit and YouTube I'd say um more than anything else Reddit in YouTube um I think probably I would limit social media a bit more than I have in the past uh and just you know let's take note of what they're watching because I think you know at this point they're being like programmed by some social media algorithm which you may or may not agree with um so I I think probably one is to supervise uh children's use of social media um and be wary of them getting programmed by some algorithm written in the Silicon Valley you know which you know maybe not be what you want uh Elon you've been working very hard I mean since six years ago we met you you look much younger by the way about six years ago thanks but I I know that he's been\n\nworking for almost 20 hours a day you sleep and the sofa in the office maybe Twitter office Tesla office you told me once we I I was with you at Tesla's office how do you balance your life I mean with this stress with so many different you know you're on so many different companies how do you balance it well I I mean I I should point out that I a 20-hour workday is uh relatively unusual and and rather painful uh but but I I do sleep six hours a night so um and if I sleep less than six hours and I I find that I am I might be awake longer but I get less done so um but I I do have a worker ridiculous amount I think relative to most people and in that it's pretty much seven days a week and mostly from when I wake up to when I go to sleep um I'm not suggesting\n\nthis is good for everyone and I think frankly I would like to work a bit less on that so um say Tesla Tesla went through some very difficult times where it was on the Ragged edge of survival and and uh really if I if I didn't give it everything I got it the company could have easily gone bankrupt it was really on the verge of bankruptcy for quite a while um I don't mean to suggest complacency at this point but uh you know it does require much less work to operate Tesla Now versus say in the 2017 to 2019 time frame and it's not a mortal risk of survives it's achieved economies of scale that make it you know not uh on the Ragged edge of survival um and then the SpaceX also has the strong team and is able to make a lot of progress um even if I spent less\n\ntime there um it does help if I spend time there but uh you know it keeps making progress even if I don't um Twitter is still somewhat of a startup in reverse and so there's a lot of work required here to get Twitter to a sort of a stable position um and uh like I said to really build the engine of engineering of software engineering at a Twitter and have it um you know really have it likes to do a great product roadmap and and the people in place to implement that product roadmap and so it is not my intention to work um like crazy you know I mean I think I still I I got comfortable with a mere 80 hour work week would be fine all right is what I would aspire to thank you we are running out of time I have one last question I have to ask you sure three\n\nUFO B shot one over Alaska Lake Huron and Canada alien no alien I don't think it's aliens no okay um I mean I do find the whole question of of aliens um a very interesting one uh you know what is typically called the Fermi Paradox which is that if the universe is really as old as it as a science seems to think it is and as and the the where are the aliens um have really been around for 13.\n\n8 billion years if so where should there be aliens all over the place um why do the crazy thing is I've seen no evidence of of alien technology or any alien life whatsoever um and I think I I think I know um you know SpaceX we do a lot I mean I think I know I don't think anyone knows more about space you know than than me or at least the space technology um so but I think it's actually a troubling thing if there are no aliens as well which is that all uh that what what that actually could mean then is that uh sort of civilization and Consciousness is like a tiny candle in a vast darkness and and a very vulnerable tiny candle that could easily get blown out um and I think we should therefore take great care with what may very well be this tiny handle in\n\na vast darkness and make sure that it does not go out and that we extend the light of Consciousness beyond Earth and do everything we can to ensure that uh the light of Consciousness does not go out Elon we run out of time thank you very much and hopefully to see you next year with us here in the Emirates with your family sounds good and thanks so much thanks again for having me thank you thank you we'll see you bye-bye","textByLang":{"en":"hello good morning good morning good to see you alone it's been almost six years where we I sat with you here in this platform with a great audience uh it was your first trip to Dubai with your family I hope you enjoyed it yeah it was wonderful I'm very much into it um and I I'm I see my my head is Gigantic on this day my head has grown larger since we last met is it is it is it because of Twitter yeah I don't know perhaps it um Twitter is it's certainly um quite the roller coaster uh Elon just you know it's been it's been six years within six feet we've seen a tremendous thing since our our last conversation we've seen the pandemic Russian Ukrainian War uh development of uh chat gbt uh you launched Starship you recently also acquired Twitter can I ask\n\nyou this question why why why you bought Twitter why didn't you create your own platform maybe it was cheaper for you I mean I thought about creating something from scratch um but I I thought it would Twitter would perhaps accelerate progress versus creating something from scratch by three to five years um and um I think we are seeing just a tremendous technology acceleration uh that you know three to five years is actually worth a lot uh so I mean if you think I was a little worried about the direction that and the effect of social media on the world and especially Twitter and um I thought it was very important for there to be a maximally trusted sort of digital Public Square um where people you know within countries and internationally could communicate\n\nuh with um you know the least amount of censorship uh Allowed by law obviously that varies a lot by jurisdiction but I think in general um you know social media companies should adhere to the laws of of countries and not try to put a thumb on the scale beyond the laws of countries um so and I think this is something that is probably agreeable to um the you know the legislators and and the people of most countries so so I think it's that's the general idea is just um to reflect the values of of the people um as opposed to imposing the values of essentially San Francisco and Berkeley um which are somewhat of a niche ideology um as compared to the rest of the world and but but you know Twitter was I think doing a little too much to impose um a niche as a\n\nit's near San Francisco Berkeley ideology on the world um so you know I I thought the it was important for the future of civilization to try to correct that uh thumb on the scale if you will um and and uh and just have Twitter more accurately reflect uh like I said the the values of the the people of Earth um that's that's the that's the intention um and uh hopefully as we succeed in doing that um yeah uh but how do you see Twitter if we we say it five years down the road what's your vision for for this platform what what should it do well I think it'd be I'd like to you know have the sort of long-term vision for something called uh x.\n\ncom from back way back in the day uh which is kind of like a um sort of like an everything app um where it's just massively useful it does you know payments uh does um uh so it provides Financial Services provides information flow um really anything digital um and um it also provides secure Communications um so it relates to you know I think it would be as useful as possible as entertaining as possible um and thank you I went to uh find out what's going on and what's really going on um then you could should be able to go on on you know X the X app and uh and find out so it's a sort of source a sort of a source of Truth and a maximally useful I guess app is about the wrong word but system um and and Twitter is essentially an accelerant to that sort of\n\nmaximally useful everything app um yeah how how you are gonna I mean if you look at Twitter today I mean it's it's a platform sometimes there is a lot of misinformation in Twitter sometimes I don't feel comfortable even because there is some way there is this negative between Nation between people between different ethnic group that is the same thing how we are how we are going to fix this issue where you are you are in a mission with for Humanity to get them together yeah um I think there's um there's something that we're putting a lot of efforts into called Community notes um it's currently just in English but we will be expanding it to all languages that is I think quite a good way to assess the truth of things where it's the community itself basically\n\nthe you know the people of Earth who are basically what you know um not exactly voting but but competing to provide the most accurate information so it's sort of a competition for truth um and I think it's a very powerful concept to have a competition for truth um because you also said like what what is true it's because what may be true to some may not be viewed as true to others but you want to have the closest approximation of that so I think the community notes thing is very powerful um I think we are trying to have as many organizations uh and people and institutions uh verified as being legitimately those people and organizations is is important um and to have the organizational affiliation clearly identified so that if you want to find out if somebody's\n\nactually if an account is actually saved from A Member of Parliament or a journalist or uh if uh let's say if a Twitter handle is actually belongs to say Disney Corporation or something like that you you can you can go on Twitter and it's it's sort of an identity layer of the internet and you you can confirm that that is a fact the case and and I think once you've got these sort of interlocking um sort of identities uh it's actually very hard to be deceptive in that case uh because and it's also you have a reputation to protect at that point so I think then people are far more likely to be measured in their response um and um we will be more reasonable since they have reputational value at that point um so these are some of the ideas that I have um and\n\nyou know I'm not saying that for sure it will succeed or that it's going to be perfect but I I I I am confident that it will over time you know head into in a good direction um and I think that the evidence for that will be do people find it useful um you know as we're measuring sort of the you know total user minutes but not just user minutes um unregretted use minutes which I think that the key figure of marriage um you know because um well for example Tick Tock has a very high usage I often hear people say well I spent two hours on Tick Tock but I regret those two hours um I'm not just trying to knock Tick Tock but it's just we don't want that to be the case with Twitter we want to say like okay you spent half an hour on Twitter that you found it to\n\nbe useful and entertaining and um a good thing in your life and ultimately be a force for good for civilization that that's the aspiration thank you uh Elon we have over 150 government within the world government Summit global leaders they have 8 billion customer their citizen how government can use Twitter bitter to service citizens yeah um well I I think generally um I would recommend um you know really communicating a lot on Twitter and uh I I think it's good for people to speak in in their voice as opposed to how they think they should speak you know like um you know sometimes like people think well I I should speak in this like but it ends up sounding I think somewhat at times somewhat stiff but and not not real um you know like if you read a press\n\nrelease from Corporation it just sounds like propaganda so I would encourage uh CEOs and um of companies and uh you know legislators and um you know ministers and so forth to to speak authentically uh and to you know if there's a say a particular policy to explain it um and um and I I think there's you know sometimes a concern about criticism but I I think at the end of the day you know it's having some some criticism is is fine you know it's not that it's really not that bad um um I mean I I I'm constantly attacked on on Twitter frankly um and I I don't mind uh it's it's um you know you have to be somewhat thick skinned I suppose at times you know just because you're gonna they're really trying to twist a knife um but but I but I think I think just like\n\nI said just uh as a form for communication um it's great and um and I would just encourage more communication um and and like I said to to sort of speak in an authentic voice like like sometimes people will have someone else be their sort of Twitter manager or something like that and I think I it's just people should just do their own tweets you know it sounds uh it and and like sometimes you make a mistake or something it's fine um but I think just doing your own tweets just like you would do your own you know you give a talk here or you would you know have a meeting at a summit or something uh I think that's that's the way to do it is is to actually do do the tweets yourself um and um and convey the message that you want directly um yeah so but you\n\nknow I mean one thing I should say I know this is called the world government Summit um but uh I think we should be maybe a little bit concerned about uh actually becoming too much of a single World Government um if I may say that we want to avoid creating a civilizational risk by having um frankly this may sound a little odd too much cooperation between governments um you know if you know if you look at say the history and the rise and fall of civilizations um the really all throughout history civilizations have risen and Fallen but it hasn't meant the Doom of humanity as a whole because they've been they've been all these separate civilizations that were separated by great distances and so um you know say like while Rome was falling you know Islam was\n\nrising and uh so you had like a uh you know the the sort of caliphate doing incredibly well while Rome was doing terribly um and that actually ended up being a source of preservation of knowledge uh and uh and many as scientific advancements and so um so I think we want to be a little bit cautious about uh being too much of a will of a single uh civilization because if we are too much of a single civilization then if we're if the whole the whole thing May collapse um I don't know obviously not suggesting war or anything like that but I think we want to be a little bit wary of actually cooperating too much it sounds a little odd but um but we just we want to have some amount of civilizational diversity such that if uh if something does go wrong with some\n\npart of civilization that the whole thing doesn't collapse uh and and you know Humanity keeps moving forward thank you uh I you see I I hear you I agree and disagree with you a certain point and I think you know it's today people they don't fight with sword anymore I mean they have nuclear weapons so there is there is this conflict the whole civilization will be gone the whole human civilization will be gone and what we are trying to do here at the Emirates actually is to do exactly what you are saying we have 180 nationality you have every single race every single religion and we are trying to create a model that show the world that doesn't matter who you are what your color what's your religion where you're from you Humanity can live in peace and harmony\n\nyeah I mean that would be good yeah my my last question I'll go to Twitter uh again then we'll move out of Twitter if you allowed us uh I mean you've been running Twitter as at the chairman at the owner at the CEO and that's take a lot of time did you identify a CEO and when you are going to hire him well um I I think I need to um stabilize the organization um and just make sure it's in a financially healthy place um and that the the product roadmap is clearly laid out um so I don't know I'm guessing probably towards the end of this year um which would be good timing to um find uh someone else to run the company because I think it should be in a stable position around uh you know at the end of this year uh Elon uh if we move to other subjects I mean at\n\nthe summit here we have speaker who speak about state of the word state of geopolitical of the world for the next 10 decade state of the economy of the world you know now and in the next 10 years if I ask you about the state of Technology if you can elaborate a bit then brief us how do you see technology in the next 10 years from now let's see 10 years it's always difficult to predict technology with Precision especially over a 10-year time frame when it is changing so much um I mean there's there's obviously the transition to sustainable energy uh with the solar wind batteries and electric vehicles um and and that that's if you look at the percentage growth of that that is a very high percentage growth although because of the massive industrial base\n\nof um of the current sort of um fossil fuel economy it it even like even if all for example if electric cars were 100 of production immediately it would take 20 years to replace the fleet so this is still something that is quite gradual you know it's measured in just a few you know 30 30 40 years type of time frame um on a more sort of near-term time frame I think artificial intelligence is something we need to be um quite concerned about and really be uh attentive to the safety of of AI um you mentioned a chat gbt earlier um you know I I played a significant role in the creation of openai um essentially at the time I was concerned that Google was not paying enough attention to AI safety and so I I with a number of other people um created opening and\n\nalthough initially it was created as an open source non-profit and now it is closed source and for-profit I don't have any stake in open AI anymore nor am I on the board nor do I control it in any way um but the chat GPS here I think has Illustrated to people just how advanced AI has become um because the AI has been Advanced for a while it just didn't have a user interface that was um accessible to most people um so what really chat gbt has done is just put an accessible user interface on AI technology that is this has been present for a few years um and there are much more advanced versions for that that are coming out um so I think we you know I think we need to really be I think we need to regulate AIC quite frankly um because if you think of any\n\num technology which is potentially a risk to uh civil to to people like if it's an aircraft or uh your cars or medicine we have regulatory bodies that oversee the public safety of cars and planes and Medicine and I think we should probably we should have a a similar sort of regulatory oversight for artificial intelligence because um it is I think actually a bigger risk to society than uh cars or planes or medicine um so um and this basically have to slow down AI a little bit but I think that that might also be a good thing um the the challenge here is that a government regulatory uh authorities tend to be set up in reaction to something bad that happened so if you look at say aircraft or or cars um you know the cars were unregulated at the beginning aircraft\n\nwere unregulated uh but they had lots of um you know airplane crashes and in some cases manufacturers that were cutting Corners um and and a lot of people were dying so they the public was not happy about that and so they established a regulatory authority to improve safety and now commercial airliners are extremely safe um if you were to drive somewhere it's a safety for a mile of a commercial airliner is better than a car and cars are also extremely safe compared to where they used to be so um but if you say if you look at say the introduction of seat belts the Auto industry fought the introduction of seat belts as a safety measure for I think 10 or 15 years before finally The Regulators made them put seat belts and cars and that greatly improved the\n\nsafety of cars and that airbags were another big Improvement in safety so my concern is that with AI if if there's something rather if something goes wrong um the reaction might be too slow from a regulatory standpoint um so I I would say like it you know if it's like one of the biggest risks to the future of civilization um positive or negative it has great great promise great capability but it also with that comes great danger I mean like I say nuclear it you know just discovery of sort of nuclear physics uh you had nuclear power generation but also nuclear bombs um so anyway I think we should be quite concerned about it and we should uh have some regulation of what is it if I fundamentally um a risk to the public uh yeah very great let me move to another\n\nsubject Elon education I mean you have your own philosophy about education with AI education might change dramatically when you tell us briefly about your philosophy of education and number two do any 12 years of schooling and four years of University well um with respect to education I think in general uh some things that we could do to make it more compelling would be to explain to Children why we are teaching a particular subject um so uh the human mind has evoked to really forget anything that it deems um unimportant so um if that human memory is really quite quite bad relative to the memory of your phone your phone is can remember the entire contents of an encyclopedia down to last a letter in pixel um but human memories is terrible by comparison\n\nso the mind is constantly trying to forget things actually um so if you but if you explain the the why why a subject is being taught um that will then establish relevance and it's much more likely to result in motivation for kids um and and then also if you if you teach uh knowledge especially in the Sciences as solutions to a problem um it's much more effective so uh like let's say you're trying to understand an internal combustion engine well it's actually better to sort of take that apart and and then say okay well what tools do we need to use to take it apart we need a wrench and screwdriver and various other things uh to take it apart well then then you understand that the reason for the tools and so like for for mathematics and and it's I like tools\n\nand in physics and Engineering um but if you if you but if you teach to the problem and say and then you understand then you establish the relevance of the tools then you it's actually much easier to remember um mathematics and physics uh because they'll help explain how the world works um as opposed to teaching them without explaining why and simply teaching them it's like instead of having teaching to the problem teaching currently people teach the tool it would be like having a course on on screwdrivers or course on wrenches um but not understanding why you have a course you're learning about screwdrivers and wrenches um I think this is really quite a fundamental principle that should be applied in education um and and I think sometimes we do we do\n\nteach classes that are that children do not find useful and and where the answer to the why is actually not going to be a very good answer um you know most people I think will do not find advanced mathematics useful and are unlikely to find it useful in their life um or the elements that they do find useful could be taught very quickly as general principles um I also think that critical thinking is something that should be taught to children out of a relatively young age um as effectively like a mental firewall um to really think about when somebody tells you something is it cogent is it true or what is the probability that it is true um and so that you can to be taught to reject things that are untrue or more likely to be untrue um and favor things that\n\nare more likely to be true um critical thinking I think is very helpful for people to learn so is it 12 years of schooling you are with or without 12 fears um well yours is a long time I suppose I mean humans just do take a long time to mature so there's emotional maturity physical maturity and mental maturity that is happening simultaneously with the education um I suppose it could be done in 10 years perhaps it does not need 12.\n\num but but then is someone mature at age 16 they're more likely to be mature at age 18.\n\nso I guess 12 years is probably not bad um we probably don't need an additional four or five or six years in in college and university that seems probably excessive I think we'll probably shave a few years off and be fine okay kids will love it by the way yeah uh but you know social media but we spend so many hours on social media I mean the average sometime in certain country three four hours in social media and sometimes when we go to our kids we we see them spending also long hours part of his knowledge do you have any rule for your kids I mean how much they can spend in social media right you know I'm certainly not uh try to restrict social media for my kids although that might have been a mistake um depending on which kid it is that I mean they've\n\nreally been programmed by Reddit and YouTube I'd say um more than anything else Reddit in YouTube um I think probably I would limit social media a bit more than I have in the past uh and just you know let's take note of what they're watching because I think you know at this point they're being like programmed by some social media algorithm which you may or may not agree with um so I I think probably one is to supervise uh children's use of social media um and be wary of them getting programmed by some algorithm written in the Silicon Valley you know which you know maybe not be what you want uh Elon you've been working very hard I mean since six years ago we met you you look much younger by the way about six years ago thanks but I I know that he's been\n\nworking for almost 20 hours a day you sleep and the sofa in the office maybe Twitter office Tesla office you told me once we I I was with you at Tesla's office how do you balance your life I mean with this stress with so many different you know you're on so many different companies how do you balance it well I I mean I I should point out that I a 20-hour workday is uh relatively unusual and and rather painful uh but but I I do sleep six hours a night so um and if I sleep less than six hours and I I find that I am I might be awake longer but I get less done so um but I I do have a worker ridiculous amount I think relative to most people and in that it's pretty much seven days a week and mostly from when I wake up to when I go to sleep um I'm not suggesting\n\nthis is good for everyone and I think frankly I would like to work a bit less on that so um say Tesla Tesla went through some very difficult times where it was on the Ragged edge of survival and and uh really if I if I didn't give it everything I got it the company could have easily gone bankrupt it was really on the verge of bankruptcy for quite a while um I don't mean to suggest complacency at this point but uh you know it does require much less work to operate Tesla Now versus say in the 2017 to 2019 time frame and it's not a mortal risk of survives it's achieved economies of scale that make it you know not uh on the Ragged edge of survival um and then the SpaceX also has the strong team and is able to make a lot of progress um even if I spent less\n\ntime there um it does help if I spend time there but uh you know it keeps making progress even if I don't um Twitter is still somewhat of a startup in reverse and so there's a lot of work required here to get Twitter to a sort of a stable position um and uh like I said to really build the engine of engineering of software engineering at a Twitter and have it um you know really have it likes to do a great product roadmap and and the people in place to implement that product roadmap and so it is not my intention to work um like crazy you know I mean I think I still I I got comfortable with a mere 80 hour work week would be fine all right is what I would aspire to thank you we are running out of time I have one last question I have to ask you sure three\n\nUFO B shot one over Alaska Lake Huron and Canada alien no alien I don't think it's aliens no okay um I mean I do find the whole question of of aliens um a very interesting one uh you know what is typically called the Fermi Paradox which is that if the universe is really as old as it as a science seems to think it is and as and the the where are the aliens um have really been around for 13.\n\n8 billion years if so where should there be aliens all over the place um why do the crazy thing is I've seen no evidence of of alien technology or any alien life whatsoever um and I think I I think I know um you know SpaceX we do a lot I mean I think I know I don't think anyone knows more about space you know than than me or at least the space technology um so but I think it's actually a troubling thing if there are no aliens as well which is that all uh that what what that actually could mean then is that uh sort of civilization and Consciousness is like a tiny candle in a vast darkness and and a very vulnerable tiny candle that could easily get blown out um and I think we should therefore take great care with what may very well be this tiny handle in\n\na vast darkness and make sure that it does not go out and that we extend the light of Consciousness beyond Earth and do everything we can to ensure that uh the light of Consciousness does not go out Elon we run out of time thank you very much and hopefully to see you next year with us here in the Emirates with your family sounds good and thanks so much thanks again for having me thank you thank you we'll see you bye-bye"},"languages":["en"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jmNrlNgXx_U"},{"id":"twitter-spaces-interview-2022-12-04","type":"interview","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1QV0F-wj480","title":"Twitter Spaces Interview","titles":{"en":"Twitter Spaces Interview","de":"Twitter Spaces Interview","fr":"Twitter Spaces Interview"},"date":"2022-12-04","summary":"Two-hour live Twitter Spaces recording with Musk taking questions on Twitter's finances, content moderation and his broader plans.","text":"Kanye so that would that was definitely exciting me to violence so uh anyway that's not cool ladies and gentlemen Elon Musk has just hopped off a two-hour Twitter spaces discussion slash interview where he shared his thoughts and opinions on all kinds of stuff super juicy very spicy topics everything from Big Tech collusion with government censorship freedom of speech his true intentions with Twitter his workload I mean literally everything you can imagine including a lot of very controversial and spicy takes right in this video I've cut out nearly half an hour literally over 27 minutes of silence just trying to condense this it's going to be all over the place there's interruptions there's some audio challenges along the way but I thought I'd post this\n\nunfiltered to you guys the girls can take the time to watch it YouTube gives you the option of playing back at a higher playback speed than one time so I might save a few of you a little bit of time not gonna add any commentary along the way I just wanted to put this up because I'm not sure if people will be able to replay this Twitter spaces it was so incredibly important really listen through the entire thing you'll learn a ton the best part about this despite people talking over each other a little bit I'm like the sound bites in the media this is a deep and nuanced discussion including elon's true intentions for the purchase of Twitter and some of his plans for the turnaround of course if you appreciate this video and want loads more content head\n\nover to patreon with the card in the corner or the link at the pin comment you definitely won't be disappointed actually that's a lie if you're a snowflake you get easily butt hurt you probably won't be disappointed but you will be mad and you'll probably Rage Quit within a few days otherwise see you over on patreon enjoy the show Kanye so that would that was definitely exciting me to buy so uh anyway that's not cool but you mentioned in a good way well no it's just that like it just makes it like an analysis of the second world war or something you know uh that's a history that's a history drama or whatever you know it's context it's like it's like okay you know like let's live a battlefield or something and that's good you know this this you know uh\n\nsome sort of you know uh War history thing I don't know you know something like that then that that would be okay but um yeah it has to become sexual I mean if he's posting it in a way that is trying to Rally people to anti-semitic views then yeah yeah I mean it's like you can also like say like okay well let's look for added context outside of Twitter to say to say like well was this man in a in a friendly way and it's like okay well no he's saying that he likes Hitler and uh other things and look at the point of which Alex Jones is like telling Kanye to to calm down and and you know please please stop you have to say okay you know Alex Jones is pretty edgy so uh Alex Jones is saying Kanye wants to Kanye to stop that's that's a big deal so anyway the\n\nuh but I want to get into like some sort of huge like this could easily get derailed into you know a laborious dude yeah talk more about the file so you mentioned that you gave it to a very wise right so she has full access does this mean that we are going to see multiple exposes not just uh once we met taibi yeah the the point is to as is to just have everything come clean so the thing is that like it's not that uh people would necessarily agree with everything that Twitter has done in the past or in the future but they should at least know that it is occurring and there's no Shady stuff that is uh happening that they're unaware of so then at least if if quarter is explicit about its actions and transparent you can then approach appropriately calibrate\n\nuh your interpretation of what you learn on Twitter um as opposed to thinking you know Twitter pretending to be unbiased and and even-handed a good way to get everyone to agree with all the actions that Twitter will take that's impossible uh that there's a that is a null Set uh but what it is possible to do is to have be fully transparents give me a break oh you're back he's back you dropped out for a bit yeah can you hear me can you hear us it's not it's still glitching a bit can you hear me I'm about to take off yeah it's good yeah Verizon commercial really quick I just wanted to ask you one really quick if there's any way to combine Twitter's efforts with people who have gone you know as far as filing constitutional challenges is there any way to get\n\nthem in touch with Matt and combine the efforts there uh possibly I'd reach out to Matt um and I mentioned I've also asked Barry Weiss to you know also uh you know active interact I just gave Barry Wise access to the Twitter files like an hour ago you know I think at some point it might make sense to just have them publicly available um you know so that anyone can look at them a quick a quick side question did they don't care anything we're aiming for is that you know anything bad that Twitter's done in the past that that it'd be surfaced so as to uh instill trust about Twitter in the future and where I may have blanked out a moment ago is uh that it is impossible to for a footer to take only take take the set of actions that will satisfy all people or\n\nprobably even 1900 people all right but what sort of can do that that is completely transparent about attention and what's what what is it doing what is it not doing how does the algorithm work and and if an account is suspended why is it suspended if an account is de-boosted uh just showing that as an individual search brand uh and and giving a reason for that um so that there's maximum transparency in the system um so even if you disagree with what's going on on Twitter you at least can caliber what you learn on Twitter based on on what Twitter is doing not not not not have a situation where Twitter is claiming to be fair and even-handed and then actually is is not being so at least from from your perspective so do you have plans Elon to take Twitter\n\npublic again in the future so Tara's asking by the way James Wood I've sent you an invite real James would have sent you an invite check your DMs uh Tara's asking if you have any plans to take um Twitter public again and my question I'll give you another question as well my question is what type of pressure if any have you faced since releasing the files did you hear me Elon it sounds like he's testing the new semi truck himself [Laughter] I moved a couple of people down so we have a we can have a more uh civil you know conversation without too many speakers on stage because there are a couple of important questions that I want to ask you uh the first one is you know obviously with your move of full transparency you are putting the groundworks in place\n\nto uh justify why free speech on Twitter is so important and why you are making the decisions uh you know of for example a great amnesty for all users and you know by by showing that abuse has happened in the past and that Twitter before it was under your control was abusing their power you're basically setting the stage to say okay people should all have their their rights unless they broke the law are restored to be on Twitter is that right uh yeah I mean yes that that is the intent um now to be clear we're all going to be doing this sort of slowly and deliberately if this can't be a like uh you know let's open all the jails simultaneously and and uh have at it guys so it's it's gonna be you know slower than people would like it's more deliberate um\n\nI I do have a lot of [ __ ] going on right now so I can imagine no I'm trying to do the most that blind I'm flogging my human brain as far as most amount of work done but like this week alone you know we had a meeting with some National Security uh Starling is also failing yeah two months instead of one month that's a good timeline and also I gotta make sure Twitter is like uh stable from a financial standpoint and it's not losing tons of money and goes bankrupt in which case a little bit you know juggling a lot of things here say the least um but I think over time uh which not that long of a time iterative iteratively we can move Twitter to be a more broadly inclusive in the third like as many people as possible can participate um and one to participate\n\num and and as trusted and transparent as possible and and the proof will be in the pudding over time and we're not going to please everyone obviously that's impossible because you know if you say like what are the requests of everyone you have a Venn diagram intersection of zero but but what can be done is maximum transparents what uh what can be done is uh making it clear when uh something has been de-boosted or search banned when your account is shares band and why that account has been suspended to be clear about why and whether it's temporary or what the path is to restore the account uh and and just I think that's that's something that uh can be done and and will massively help with trust and uh in addition to now there's obviously a challenge that\n\nTwitter's had over time and I think this is generally an issue with social media which is that it is digital technologies that require a lot of software to be written and they've sort of come out of Silicon Valley um almost ultimate selling silica Valley with uh except for Snappers in La which is California but but effectively what is happening is um an export of the moral framework of San Francisco to Earth kind of a big deal and problematic because previously you know San Francisco which is uh you know pretty far left but the the influence would be limited to San Francisco but now it's it's it affects the whole world because of the centralization of information with social media company and that's I think not good it's it's uh you know so it's we need\n\nto establish something that is fair and and takes into account a wide range of views and and doesn't have a Tilson playing field towards uh far left uh far far left in San Francisco um I think there should be a place for the you know they they can be on Twitter too but there should be a wide range of political views and sentiments and and uh and as much as reasonably possible aim for for freedom of speech yeah and and generally I want Twitter to be a forceful good for the future of civilization so that's that's the case you don't can you tell us approximately how much time you have so that we can uh get an idea how many questions we can get in I don't know like maybe half an hour or so nice oh that's fantastic that's very good hey um what I also see Happening\n\nHere is that the mainstream media that um was part of covering up this uh Hunter Biden laptop story because I was calling is now calling this um you know some kind of fizzer that they they don't think that there's enough uh you know obviously they are acting in that way because they themselves are now uh on fire because you have exposed what they have done um what what do you have to say to them I'm sorry could you repeat the question again I'm in the air so this is like not it's not super optimal from an audience what what do you have to say to the media that's sort of downplaying uh what the uh the Twitter files uh represents the question yeah uh yeah so he's he's asking you what do you have to say to the media that's downplaying the uh the Twitter\n\nfiles Revelations you know because they're they're basically saying it's not a big deal that it's nonsense you know that it's just it's just crap that you're just doing this for PR what's your response to them yeah the amazing having connection issues with you specifically Ian there's certain people up here that I yeah can John ask your question again first Elon can you hear us no I think you can't hear anybody I don't I don't know if it's me so he's he's either in a semi truck or he is on his plane he said he said he's on his Lane yeah foreign story is now trying to downplay your release um obviously because they are Under Fire as well right because they have been exposed by this uh by this release what do you want to say to them what do you want to\n\nsay to the media that is trying to turn this into another Burger well that try to turn it into another Burger because they were complicit in leaving the American public um and so rather than admit that they they lie to the public they're trying to pretend that this is a nothing Burger obviously that's that's clearly what happened yeah I mean shame on them yeah I agree with that and then the other important thing here is that you are basically exposing collusion between a political party and uh in one file that was released it was even it called the Biden team contacting Twitter I mean that is election interference isn't it yeah I mean I clearly if if Twitter is doing one before an election shutting down dissenting voices um on a pivotal election that\n\nis the very definition of election interference and what the hell else would you of course it's like yes um frankly Twitter was acting like an arm of the Democratic National Committee it was absurd well and you know that's fantastic that you're releasing that but isn't Twitter just the tip of the iceberg can't we uh admit now that this would have happened and all big tech companies that are you know being used to stifle free speech and sense of people and try to you know destroy stories that are dangerous to their political goals no I mean what collusion is insane like Twitter is the one company that isn't isn't that is no longer colluding and is no longer uh just going with the the sort of NPC group thing I don't know you know I should probably increase\n\nmy security or something absolutely I mean this is why I hate you so much yeah just just a second that would have been my next question Iman how worried are you personally I mean you're putting a lot of the line right you have all these businesses going um you know you you are out there fighting the good fight for Free Speech but there's also a certainly a concern on your mind about what the response to this is going to be do you feel threatened do you feel worried like how do you feel personally about it yeah and I'll add on to a question I asked as well Elon like what type of pressure have you faced so far maybe it should be more worried than I am but I don't know I think generally if you do write by the people then you have the people on your side\n\num if you want you can come to see can you hear me first Elon before I give the mic back together yeah oh good yeah he dropped that can you hear me or not just sign off he can't hear me I'll give the mic back to Kim no you can't hear me can you take the mic yeah really quick of Senator Warren's response that one person uh him should not have control over the narrative I mean uh you can come to Switzerland but well yeah I mean obviously if not one person has control of narrative because there's the entire Ministry media establishment who all talk like group think NPC Facebook there's Google uh there's Tech talk uh no the actual problem is there's one person who isn't Towing the line that's the real problem so that's the exact response that we needed that's\n\nyou yeah I mean Ian can you ask him a quick question as well as soon as one person doesn't toe the line now everyone else is looking like you know well now we're allowed to Elon and that's the issue is before we were at risk of being suspended or de-platformed you're allowing I mean yeah exactly as possible time like competition does keep companies honest or or should it isn't it forceful keeping companies honest so if there's a competition for the truth and Twitter wins the competition for the truth then it will win over the readership and the attention of the public and everyone else will be forced to tell the truth too do you think that you run the risk of like the EU commission or any of these other big political bodies trying to take you down when\n\nyou're doing this I did not think this is but but I also think that like this song this is this is the support of the people then you have to say like any organization at least in the US that it is going to go against all of the people uh I think will be in big trouble themselves you know uh Elon you're doing this at such an important time in history because uh I think people can sense that the censorship is becoming more uh that the media is feeling more and more propaganda that we are heading into a future where Free Speech isn't really acceptable anymore and for you with your audience uh you know to go out there and put this transparency out there I think a lot of people appreciate that this is a you know a fight that you are that you are taking Center\n\nStage uh you know in order to uh fix some of these issues no I mean if frankly the [Music] during any open-air corporates uh let me put it that way um it's not that hard to kill me if somebody wanted to so hopefully they don't and uh the Fate Smiles upon does not have security that doesn't happen um and they're taking reasonable proportions I guess but but uh there's definitely some some risks here but I mean at the end of the day I think we'll just want to have a future where you know we're not oppressed or so our speech is not suppressed and and we can say what we want to say without fear of reprisals and um you know as long as long as you're not like really causing harm somebody else then you should be able to say what you want um and uh and that's\n\nquite a rare thing you know I I think as people just take that for granted sometimes but really throughout history Free Speech has been highly unusual and so we have to fight very hard to keep that because it's such a rare thing and and it's by no means uh something that's default it's a controlled speech for not free and yeah it is incredibly ironic so many so many reporters in the media and prominent politicians are calling for drains on freezing they're they're this is crazy it feels like we're in Bizarro World here do you think that that comes from the way that uh journalism is taught now in today's schools and that we call post-modern journalism or where do you think that's really coming from I mean I haven't been I haven't been to journalism school\n\nbut it does seem as though that the the elite educational institutions have been something virus which is you know so like how much actual intellectual freedom and yeah how much Intel actual intellectual freedom is there at Elite educational institution where you don't get completely shunned if unless you uh abide by uh what everyone else thinks and then what everyone else thinks is you're told what to think not ask that you know you're sort of you must think this it's not like you have freedom to think as and talk as you wish yeah um what's the solution for this I mean like obviously this is and and um and have truth be see what matters more than anything I mean I think it's funny that you know Harvard's motto and the Harvard standard is Veritas and\n\nand the founders of the of Harvard were right to have that on their fields The Shield of truth but is Harvard The Shield of Truth today maybe not well you know we're all um our belief in Freedom to transact and obviously Jack was a big Bitcoin lightning guy um what can you comment on uh freedom to transact Bitcoin lightning Twitter anything we could we couldn't look forward to thank you well uh you know I think that's actually more powerful even than I think controlling then censorship which control of the monetary system um if you have control of the money monetary system and control the transaction you can literally stop someone from the you can stall people to death you know can throw them out of their homes so we have to be very careful about like\n\nwho is controlling the money system here and and what what rules and regulations are they going to put on on transactions it seems like PayPal has strayed pretty far from the path of that like they're I've been Banning seems to be moving in the direction of social credit and restricting transactions and uh you know so that's that's concerning so and like I do think there is a role for crypto in the future without speaking to any big particular crypto coin as a means of showing that the monetary system does not get completely corrupted it essentially it provides competition to the fiatric system so if the Fiat system becomes um overly restrictive then crypto will grow like basically the better that the Fiat works the the less prominent crypto will be and\n\nthe worst the fear system becomes the more crypto will grow are you concerned about the moves towards Central Bank digital currencies I don't think what they're talking about [Laughter] not really um a lot of people a lot of people have theorized that FTX and the Fallout there was a ploy to push us toward that centralization and the digital dollar ball and flatten its face now correct well yeah well this I think they're complaining a few things first of all all money is almost almost all money is digital already the the Fiat monetary system for practical purposes consists of a series of heterogeneous mainframes running uh Antiquated Cobalt that's the actual money system by the way it's kind of embarrassing some rickety mainframes running ancient Kobo\n\num and running and doing everything in batch mode um that's the actual monitories the Fiat monitories so I've got can you hear me first is it working now or no but it is digital oh [ __ ] but not not in a very good way whether Banks create some their own cryptocurrencies I think people will use the cryptocurrencies that they think will accrue value over time and not use the ones that that don't go to the Moon hey Elon could you could you shed some um spill the beans on the whole uh SPF finance and Twitter fundraise uh I it's not much that not many beans to spill here the I had one conversation with SPF in May it was like half an hour he was just talking like a mile a minute uh I think he was clearly on some stimulants and uh and he kept talking about\n\nhimself uh and FDX and which is weird because the call was supposed to be about Twitter um and I was like you know should you want to ask me some questions about Twitter instead of talking about yourself the vibe I got there was like my [ __ ] meter like with redlining so I'm like but everyone kept saying you know Morgan Stanley and lots of other people kept saying oh SPF is the best and he's got tons of money and so that's why I agreed to speak to him but then I my like I said he set up my [ __ ] meter and but which frankly I don't think this was like deeply deep inside wasn't necessary if if someone's calling you to talk about investing it in a big transactions they should be asking questions about the transaction not talking about themselves and and\n\nand talking at the speed of an Auctioneer so that doesn't require deep insight to figure out that the devotion factor is high he didn't end up with with any client funds accidentally yeah so unfortunately Mario is having connection issues so you're unable to hear him and Mario I was going to say my DMs are open if you want to relay comments or questions for Elon there and I can try to help field those and also Alex is one of the accounts that was wrongfully suspended by Twitter and you fortunately brought back I wanted to give him the opportunity to ask you a question because he's had his hand up if that's okay okay sure hey um we can't hear you Alex yeah mutant on mute just so we can hear Alex because I think elon's background noise is muting Alex hey\n\nElon muskimi so yes I'm telling him that he can't find you that's okay just give me me one second here real quick um Elon you you said something you know really important and that is that truth matters and uh you know this is really what this is all about because without Free Speech we don't have truth and I would like to ask you what is your opinion about Julian Assange and Edward Snowden shouldn't those guys uh be a center stage when it comes to free speech and truth you know shortened the US government leave Julian Assange alone and let him be a journalist you know I I don't know enough about the Assange situation um to give an accurate answer um I mean there are things where you know uh that we're national security stuff is involved you know I think\n\ndo you need to be kept secret in just because you know uh you know there's like nuclear secrets that there are you know the things where Bad actors if they had access to that information could do bad things so yeah but when when a journalist exposes war crimes right when a government just goes and invades the country and kills people you know against international law like when exposures like this are being made isn't that important so people see the reality of wars and understand how some of that stuff is really bad yeah I mean I generally think that people should like so that that people should have be able to know what's going on in order to make sensible decisions uh and I'm not I just don't know enough about the Islam situation to say whether you\n\nknow should be punished or not punished uh but I I do think that I'm generally in favor of Freedom of Information and and like if there's any doubt we should lead on the side of Freedom of Information and how about how about Equity Snowden who has revealed these Mass surveillance program where the government is spying on everyone and storing all their data in these massive spy clouds also against the law you know where the five eyes are working together to undermine the logo the local laws and their local restrictions on spying and they just spy on each other and then share the data so that they know everything about everyone how do you feel about that probably the best thing would be a jury of the public you know if so if Snowden were to be I don't know\n\nlook I have power on this situation but ultimately the people of the United States should be the ones who judge Snowden not not you know select people in the government if a jury of of of of peers of citizens were to review certain and make a judgment as to whether he's guilty or not I think that would probably be the appropriate course of action yeah the only problem is that if he were to be in in a U.\n\nS court he wouldn't get a fair trial because uh under Espionage acts laws you cannot even make a public interest defense he wouldn't even be able to say I've done that because it's the right thing for American to know about that so that would be a defense that is not available to him so to say you know a jury of your peers should be excited about that that's the problem yeah I I don't know I mean there's no easy answer to the Snowden Islam situation and I but yeah can I make a suggestion Elon why don't you do a poll to your millions of users and ask them if they think Julian Assange and Edward Snowden should be given their peace for the service that they have provided to humanity okay that's a good idea sure I like that idea I'm going to ask a question\n\non Mario's half really quick since he's unable to speak to Elon which has to be extremely frustrating as the host he was just curious if you faced any pressure so far since releasing the Twitter files um I mean I face pressure all the time so it's kind of it would be like what's the differential in pressure before and after because I I don't but I'm not I haven't seen it yet I don't know maybe there's pressure but I I might not just not be feeling it because I just just every day is the high pressure situation but uh I don't know what like I said we're just gonna uh put all the information out there try to get a clean slate and then work iteratively in the future to provide the most truthful accurate and timely uh information people that will be the goal\n\nof of Twitter and we won't be perfect in that regard but I think we will be iteratively better um and and if if that turns out if we're successful in doing so then I think Twitter will will compete more effectively than any other source of information and then more and more people will use Twitter um and and that and then that competitive pressure will force other social media companies and and other media companies to also be more truthful because otherwise they will simply lose their readership and that I think is extremely powerful and good Vision could you say a little bit perhaps about what Twitter is expected to maintain as an API to say the Department of Homeland Security in general the FBI maybe sees it in particular is there an expected way in\n\nwhich the government can jack in to social media that's expected on behalf of each of the big media platforms and is that sort of different I don't know how to say this exactly but the issue of left versus right is Complicated by the fact that Trump is a non-player to the game just the way Bernie might have been considered a non-player to the game and the secondary question is how much of this isn't about left versus right but about targeting anyone who isn't a party to all of the tacit agreements inside DC [Music] um can you still hear us Elon Elon you're still there I hope so no he's disconnected it says disconnected for me at least oh I'll invite him I'll invite him again okay oh he's back he's back that's a Pity that he couldn't hear you man that\n\nis just yes please no it's fine man it's fine like you know me I'm gonna be listening I'm happy listening can you guys see me at least yeah Dara thanks for asking the question I really I was really curious about it uh but it says for me he's still a speaker can anyone see him as a speaker I can see him he's not speaking ah last time last time he was here Kim you were there I think Kim you commented and he joined um he when we co-hosted him remember Kim we co-hosted him and it froze someone yeah I think he's dropped off now yeah I'll send him I'll send him an invite a few people um got kicked off stage um not even by you came just by themselves they'll just goes give you a heads up Twitter's glitches what's your take while waiting for Elon guys guys what's\n\nyour take so I'll find what Elon has said because there's a few pretty big things you mentioned the worry that he has just to summarize what he said right I mean his main goal clearly is that the truth is out there that it has value again and that Twitter needs to make a stand for free speech which he is doing now and he is aware of the risk to him personally and his businesses so it's a very courageous thing for him to do and I think you know anyone who had any doubt about what his intentions are when he bought Twitter I think it's pretty clear that what he's doing is in the interest of the people and not necessarily in his own best interests so I find that amazing and I applaud him for that yeah and while waiting uh while waiting of the end of another\n\ninvite what do you guys think of his um I know he was I'm not sure he's saying it as a joke but he's sick you know secure dirty fear if you're on his on his security and I think I don't think he has anything really to worry about I mean I don't think anyone's gonna really gonna come at him right now because it'd be too obvious why they'll be going after him so I think he's quite safe and he does have security so personally I'm not concerned although at the same time you know there's uh he does have security for a reason right he is the world's richest man so um there's that but I'm not really I don't think it it's going to be different than any other day there's nothing that he's revealing now that is you know that damaging to you know any specific person\n\nright it's like uh he's he's more or less just giving people the platform for for free speech and the people who are most affected by this are journalists who you know what do they have to lose well their reputations for one but they've already thrown it away so I don't think it's you know I don't think he really has this uh to worry about his personal safety I don't think it's going to be that dire Elana just to let you know Elon is listening now um I've sent you through an invite you should see it via DM um so I sent you through the invites to come back on stage so uh hopefully it works it might take a bit of time because space is glitching like crazy yeah for everyone else everyone else yeah go ahead Mario there's some backfeed coming from you I'm\n\nnot sure if you have your uh audio playing in the background but there I can hear you twice I don't know if anyone else is having that issue oh I can hear him twice okay I'll try to fix it by the way everyone I'm just gonna tweet the next space link now to set your reminders for the next space I'll fix my audio Kim I feel like it's yours yeah let's hope that Elon comes back is if he has a chance I mean first of all how amazing is that that he joins us from his private chat you know to be part of it because of this space it's just typical Elon it's so cool I mean it's a historical moment right I mean he's a part of it I mean he's he's the part of it so I mean thank you he's he's back guys just FYI he's back Elon let me see if he can hear me this time [Music]\n\nuh yeah can you hear me yes yeah I'm glad I'm glad you can hear me I'm glad you can hear me again um so I think Kim you were asking a question now I was just saying how cool it is that you talk to us from your uh private jet you know we really appreciate it it's like a typical Elon moment and we're just all in awe about you you know taking these risks uh to your business and to yourself to fight for free speech so I said to to everyone who had doubts about your intentions when you bought Twitter uh you're making your intentions very clear and I think it's very courageous of you and I want to thank you for that uh no you're most welcome I mean like I said the you know the proof will be in the pudding over time there will be many mistakes made um and uh\n\nbut iteratively I think the the the net Vector should be towards truth if sort of new Twitter is successful in that then the results will be that people will turn to Twitter to understand what is true what is real what what narratives matter Twitter will gain a lot of you know readership and attention and and and it'll be put a lot of competitive pressure on mainstream media and on other social media companies to also be more truthful um because otherwise they'll they will simply keep losing people to to Twitter and and that's where the competition can be a very very good thing um and but it's not going to be perfect and there'd be going to be decisions that you know people disagree with but on balance the overall decisions are ones that people do agree\n\nwith and they will gravitate towards Twitter and Twitter will be successful and will gain share from from from other uh social media and and it will cause those other sources of media to then uh stop Towing the line and and and to sort of be more truthful what's your uh just a quick question Elon what's the biggest risk in your opinion from the steps you've taken in terms of releasing the files do you see any risks for for Twitter um I mean I guess would probably be some yeah we'll be surprised at some lawsuits or something you know yeah I would expect there to be some legal risk what's important that's that's the last thing that's less of a concern than you know clearing the air and and and uh making sure that that people are both you know don't know\n\nwhat really happened and uh the the the metrics the Twitter metrics show that it seems like it's the right decision by far not only ethically but from from a business perspective as well uh that you keep hitting new records yeah exactly so like I said it's it's one as as it becomes clear and that that Twitter is the place to actually figure out what's going on and get the unfiltered narrative the unfortunate truth also for the people of Twitter to be able to to suggest narratives and steer this you know and and emphasize narratives themselves um and have things not be controlled like it is with the so-called mainstream media where you know the narrative is controlled by a handful of editors and Chiefs you know if they see the Wall Street Journal New York\n\nTimes and Washington Post and maybe a few others decide what the narrative is and so even if what they say is completely truthful um the people that really get a choice in in what topics are covered whereas on Twitter they do and and and uh you know like it could be something really important on the world and and then uh the big news organizations aren't covering it but on Twitter the people can decide what narratives are important and what should be emphasized and what should you know yeah so so that's cool can I mention something really quick that can I just mention something really quick I can hear you okay is that you I'm just going to ask a quick question I'm sorry what Twitter is doing or what you are doing what you're planning to allow uh people\n\nto have more ability to publish their own stories on Twitter because you know right now we just have tweets right yeah but uh like what are your plans for say video publication or article publication uh things to incentivize you know creators and journalists independent journalists to be able to have their voices heard it for more than just streets yeah absolutely I mean these are all like very obvious moves one needs to be able to pump obviously post long form content on Twitter they when it needs to be able to post long long videos and long audio uh on Twitter natively and there also needs to be of monetizing that so that creators can you know make a living those are I I feel like I'm saying that the you know the sky is blue and the grass is green you\n\nknow there's pretty obvious stuff and in order to implement those things um Twitter needs to have a strong software engineering organization that is focused on shipping grade code um and uh you know was quite a mess before and that registered will have a strong engineering to be able to implement those those basic features you know that even if there are lots of limitations Apple um well then where they can post it on Twitter and then Twitter Can Be an Effective competitor to YouTube um and then like I said what happens with when there's competition for with the truth and everyone and and one company steps out of line you know it actually really really disallowed the you know truth to flourish it it's it's going to put a lot of competitive pressure on\n\nother organizations to do the same thing can you talk about whether or not the effort to supposedly pre-bunk Mal information which is to take real information and then if it's Imaging to a narrative to put fear uncertainty and doubt around it is there a an attempt through the Department of Homeland Security or the FBI or Cesar any of these groups to tell Twitter that it has to maintain a port so that information can come from the government to say we need this information prebunct well I mean if if there is any sort of request from the US government that is not in accordance with the law or can be legally fought uh Twitter will refuse legal and it's full weekly such that it can be but but we cannot gag the voice of the people this is not good um and and\n\nlike I said earlier it's like you look at look at I I read a lot of history I love love history and I love history podcasts and stuff hardcore history is the best one Hardcore History Dan Colin is so awesome fantastic start with the Mongol start with the Mongols yeah but it's like you look through instrumented and it's like we're just we have this pressure we're in this precious situation where like it's rare a new situation where there's actually you know I mean within boundaries there's there is actually freedom of speech but it's written in history um and usually it's like been some king or whatever that's just they were just by default and now we have this like rare moment in history where the voice of the people um is mostly not suppressed but now\n\nthere are people trying to suppress it and we just find really hard for for freedom of speech this is very I think essential future of civilization I absolutely agree with you I mean this is why you're fighting right this is why you know you're fighting for free speech so that we can have it in the future because if we don't have control of the present we do not have control for future it will be in the control of somebody else someone that we absolutely do not want to be in control of anything yeah exactly just as much time in there you know there are a lot of people in in the last decade that have lost hope because uh what's happening in politics what's happening in the media there's so much frustration and I think the most important thing that you've\n\ndone here Elon with your steps that you are taking is to give people hope again well great I mean I'm really glad to hear that and like I said I'll do my best here um you know I'm definitely going to make some mistakes along the way and it won't be perfect but I'll also then do my best to correct those mistakes and and to be you know the least done possible because as I say rocks popular box today man it's like yeah I mean it's a very white pilling moment to have you fight this fight you know I mean a lot of us have been fighting this culture War for free speech basically and you know I think a lot of people have lost hope because they didn't see anyone caring about it right it's like the majority of people obviously do care but they just don't know what\n\nto do and yeah it's true what what Kim said just to Echo what he said Thank You For Fighting this fight I mean this is very very important it's not just you it's not just me it's all of us absolutely yeah I mean I'm like I mean I I I'm like sort of you know worried about the future of civilization uh you know like are we headed in a good good good direction like if you study history you sort of see like the arc The Arc of civilizations the rise and fall you know with the Sumerians the ancient Egyptian in in India and China they've been many sort of rise and Falls of civilizations within India and China and it's just like people sometimes take for granted that because they've been in in an upcycle things just get better in the future and they don't just\n\nautomatically get better um uh they actually so civilizations tend to have an arc we want to make sure that we we do not find ourselves on the downslope of that Arc you know good times make weak men right and we are in the good times right now and we're seeing a lot of black men right like that's where we are in this Ark and it sucks so let's try not to repeat the same cycle we need to fight the cycle yeah exactly exactly you know not to sort of get like two I mean too philosophical about things here but there is there is like sort of a you know I've had these discussions with like a lot of people and I feel like wondering like what's the meaning of life like what should we do like what why do anything you know um and uh you know for some people that\n\nanswer is religious but then if you're not sort of very religious then then what what is the answer actually my theory on that is that I I sort of believe in Douglas Adams philosophy the universe like the the universe is the answer and we should strive through greater understanding uh with to expand the scope and scale of Consciousness to better understand what questions to ask about the answer that is the universe you know it's it's basically a religion of curiosity uh like let's let's uh grow into the future expand in the future expand Consciousness expand our understanding and um and and uh figure out what that's going on and um number 42 as well and also you know don't panic and and make sure you grab a towel without without giving away too much really\n\nquick Elon is there any way to get a sneak peek of what what we can expect with the next uh Twitter files drop [Music] well I'm someone leaving this up to Matt tyvee and Barry Weiss um but um I think the natural thing would be to say like okay what happened after the the election you know the 100 dividing laptop stuff and by the way I actually don't I I this may sound bizarre but uh it's kind of fun to be honest um I know it yeah he's an artist do you know that he seems like he seems like he knows how to have a good time dividing him but so uh if it but just beyond the um you know what happens what happened after the election you know how much government influence was there you know there's like there's this whole sort of move to create a disinformation\n\nMinistry which was insane um and like George Orwell is turning in his grave he hears those things but but like what happened with you know was that you know I think there was a public outquire about like this information yeah started that one he basically stopped it in his tracks because before that nobody knew that this was even a thing right and you exposed it and suddenly everybody was talking about it and they had to shut it down because it was very orwellian it was like they use 1984 as a instruction manual exactly totally exactly 1984 is 1984 supposed to be a warning Notch and instruction manual yep and that's what they seem to be doing they take every single you know dystopian fiction whether it's CSX I love that game and and they're like yeah\n\nthis world looks awesome that's the press the hell out of people it's like no let's not do that exactly totally even speaking speaking of uh progress you've accomplished so much you started the first successful American car company in 100 years uh you brought payments to the internet there's a lot of aspiring um entrepreneurs and small business owners that look at what you do and sort of try to you know follow that example and see how can they create some of that progress too and I wanted to ask you a little bit about the layoffs because um it appeared to be with the four million dollar loss per day and just doing the math on the billion dollars of interest expense that three million dollars of that may have been interest expects added and and I myself\n\nrunning a small business had been in a situation where you know the business was going to go under in a number of months if expenses weren't cut you know and and what we found is communicating to employees giving them time to process getting their feedback and then you know creating a shared vision and to evolve the product to evolve the company to it to a greater future was was really successful and it appears here that the typical like Leverage buyout KKR uh approach was basically applied from a financial standpoint you know for a small business owner like you know is that approach wrong like did you think about taking that approach um you know with that ever under consideration yeah I apologize like like is not it's not it's not I'm not fully hearing\n\nthe questions um but you know with respect to Twitter uh you know the the company uh basically triple head count in about two years a little over two years but but revenue is flat to declining so that there's just no way that that is uh going to be a healthy situation so the first order of business with Twitter was like okay we got to make sure Twitter doesn't die that doesn't go bankrupt the there is quite a lot of debt on this deal 12 and a half billion of debt um and Ted is being extremely unwise in its very giant uh rate increases I think this is these will go down to some of the most foolish fed decisions ever but anyway so the death's got to be serviced and uh yeah KKR and other private Equity companies that you know do any anything from a hostile\n\ntakeover you know or any sort of takeover where they where they bid over the current price using leverage using debt you know I've been following that for years and it always results in massive layoffs and so as somebody who's by the way I don't say anybody cares about that I don't think that matters right now and I was going to say as long as they keep moving the bar and changing the definition of a recession we are where we are right back on topic here you know I mean we have Elon we don't need to talk about you know his Investments and things like that um Iran uh we should send a shout out to the Twitter spaces team because you're about to break the all-time record with the space we're almost at 100 000 listeners right now yes we are man talking about\n\ntalking about spices you know what's the strategy moving forward awesome look I I have to tell you that there are really some amazing people at Twitter um and uh there's actually some amazing people who actually left Twitter uh in recent years uh and I hope they come back um uh because I think there's a potential to just build some amazing things here so you know I don't want to just I want to be exactly complimentary of the some of the the great work that is being done on Twitter um so you know it's sort of you know it's sort of like I mean there's a lot to criticize about Twitter and say like okay we're wasting money really some negative ways but also people who really care about the truth of Twitter um and I'm doing my best to elevate their capabilities\n\nand um and give them all the resources they need I am very excited about Community note uh this feature you know Keith Coleman's running it and there's like a some really first-rate Engineers that are are writing the code on that on their product that is I think going to be very powerful for fighting for actually fighting disinformation not not okay please see that if we're not if we're not enrolled in community notes right like right now uh the rest of the world isn't right it's just the United States and I think Canada to my knowledge but uh can you at least make it visible to other people so even if we're not able to contribute we can at least view it because yeah I feel kind of left out him in I'm in Malaysia so you know it's kind of hard to see it\n\nyeah actually I I actually I I asked that I I sent a note to Keith Holmes saying like hey shouldn't we just at least make this visible everywhere um and then he said if we needed to talk in person about that but I'm not sure what okay ELO we did we did want to say on the Twitter spaces um during the blowout of SPF and FTX all the other companies in crypto there's been massive Financial losses for um many people obviously um but Twitter spaces actually became the place that drove the community together and we were we've been sharing lots of stories there were people that were suicidal because of the financial loss and because of the community and Twitter spaces um they've prevented them taking their life there's lots and to add to it as well Elon last\n\ntime if you remember when you joined the space about Sam and that space ended up going for 16 hours and for three four days the media was in our space getting the news from the space for four days five days straight and then writing stories on it day after day and I think Simon was there Kim was there so it was a as I think it's the first time it happens to that extent on Twitter spaces and and we're probably doing it again today yeah and this type of Citizen journalism that you are enabling is uh so powerful you know because we are the news now if people want to learn the truth they go to Twitter and join these spaces you know it's like real time uh with experts it's fantastic and then we have people like you joining in and and sharing their opinions\n\nand their thoughts what is more powerful than that the traditional media can pack and and it's game over for them would you ever consider holding a space for earnings for Tesla I'm right here live on Twitter [Music] um oh man I have to say you're being Tesla being a public company it just creates it such a gigantic attack surface for all for legal firms in the uh in the US especially these class action firms that that yeah that seems like a bad idea I've been to faces I've been to spaces other CEOs held uh and they did their earnings live right on Twitter and I thought I'm happy to do it yeah so you've made you've made Elon you've just made two promises you've made two promises man now you've made this one and you've made one to Kim about the I'm out\n\nI'm out you made a promise to Kim about the poll and now you made a promise to hold the uh the Tesla uh meter here on spaces so just I'll remind you afterwards about it as well yeah so I've been getting a lot of questions from people who are just bombarding me just to ask you right because you know we're in the space they're asking what are you going to do about the shadow Banning situation because like I'm personally a search band I'm not Shadow band but I'm search band and I'm not sure what's even up with them yeah I mean but if I said I've only been on the job like a month guys so uh just uh there's definitely I've got a long list of things to do um a general um we need to say like your account could actually just tell you you are a search band or\n\nyou are de-boosted or whatever it is and and why and what the process is for fixing that um now now the best week I should tell you that that we did we were probably a little overzealous and that's if anything that's that's my fault because we I'm just trying to get rid of the damn uh scams and spam and Bots and stuff um and so in in trying to stamp out or reduce the the Bots bam scam stuff uh there will be some false positives uh so uh so that's just week but uh to be taking I know it was like it's going to be an iterative Journey towards towards truth and towards a healthier system at any given point it will be broken but it will be moving as quickly as possible towards a good place and I encourage people to you know complain about it and whatnot uh\n\nbut uh it's just it will it will move it early iteratively towards a good place that's the goal and again they move pretty fast so on the net the vector some of those to say um over time I'm losing him yeah I make him check my checking check my DMs Kim check my DMs because I'm having glitches so I might need your help with a few things hey long yep yep oh you're back another another question I think you've made a reference once to WeChat um I think that was a while ago and I don't recall it correctly is does that reference still stand today is that a potential vision for Twitter yeah I'll just use a functionality that Twitter should have um like it's a kind of a no-brainer for Twitter to have payments uh both fiat currency and crypto and to make that\n\nthat and simple for people to use uh as talked about earlier adding uh the ability to post long form written content and video content and to be able to monetize that easily and um and I have a playlist you know like YouTube does yeah um my focus in the first month and and also will be the case in December is is just making sure that that twit that Twitter is operating efficiently as a company that um it is not that is not wasting money um because it it faces challenges on the revenue front from you know with an over-dependence on Advertising that is not targeted uh like brand advertising and and in in a market where advertising Revenue in general is dropping um and then also when you start questioning the status quo then you know various pressure groups\n\nstart pressuring advertisers to not advertise with you so that's another you know Challenge on the revenue front and then you've got the debt and and the the debt has now has a very high interest rate so it's like these are a lot of challenges simultaneously to that um I think we'll you know we'll solve these challenges but these are a lot of things to solve so the first order of business is just get Twitter healthy um make sure its expenditures are reasonable um that um you know Twitter Twitter's like primarily a software company there are obviously Design Elements but it's primarily software and servers and so like is the software team organized well those that are committing code committing good code and just that making the engine of engineering work\n\nat Twitter because if you look at say like what is Twitter's Evolution technology Evolution over time excluding Acquisitions it's been very low it's the technology of Twitter has been very slow and there's an edit button yeah exactly the edit button look I mean if it takes a year to do an edit button and the edit button still doesn't work properly then you can have a million good ideas but they're irrelevant because you can't Implement so Elon uh I've got a quick question for you my friend um I was removed from this okay I want to test my mic can you guys hear me um I can hear you um maybe can you hear me Alex we can we can hear um yeah guys okay does Alex want to go and then I can go can you hear me yeah okay so my question was if the the files are those\n\nalso going to include other content others so basically all those pages uh yeah this is a bit of an audio [ __ ] show let's try and get this back on the road I unmuted everyone and I muted everyone I'm going to unmute those who are not talking uh just mute yourself please I would like to ask Elon a quick question trying this again I think Alex just did and he was ready to respond he just now would have to unmute himself to respond to Alex yeah I was just wondering if all accounts that were requested to have things taken down by the DNC and by the Biden campaign even ones that have nothing to do with the hunter Biden laptop if they will also be released um yes um the uh intended to release uh all the files um so it's not like anything that's hidden or\n\nanything I can't hear anybody hey dropped out is my mic good Kim by the way is am I Mike okay Alex I mean I think this is you know this is like whatever Saucy files or your Truth and Reconciliation like Nelson Mandela would say you know it's it's if you want reconciliation there must be truth that's that's the intention intent here is to just make make it clear what was happening and provide transparency about the past and in doing so to build trust about the future awesome so do you think that Twitter could also like have an automatic um notification if anyone was stay up their account was requested confident taken down do you think there could be something like that yeah like the VPN sites actually offer that foreign [Music] request content takedowns\n\nthat are embarrassing then they'll be less likely to request those content take them um you know at the end of the day it doesn't have a choice but to abide by the laws of you know the US and and whatever countries is operating uh you otherwise get arrested um we shouldn't do more than that to be abide by the laws because you have to um and uh you know if maybe there may be some potential to say like well if we disagree with the law maybe we can Bobby to have a little change or something like that but um so Elon I want to ask you on this point um go ahead sorry no I I'm just gonna like saying like the the overarching goal here is that um on balance that that Twitter be a force for good for the future of civilization um that and and for the expansion of\n\nof Consciousness So to that point I want to ask you then because I'm speaking from the European lens um what do you think about the eu's proposals over potential restrictions um or equally um I know you had a little bit of a uh should we say Fanfare with Alex finman earlier this week um I was wondering if you would be interested in a space with you and him since I know him uh from the week ago we had a chat I invite you too if you'd be interested if you'd be interested don't don't waste your time with the intelligence Community seriously yeah I'm teasing but I'm I am curious about your thoughts on the European Union perspective um well yeah actually there's a lot of the the EU rules call call for things that I agree with uh transparency and and an ability\n\nfor people for users to appeal uh and have a clear process so I think I you know in terms of the Digital Services act I think I think it's uh it's mostly good I think we have to watch the implementation of it and make sure the implementation does not uh is not um you know bad for the the people of Europe but the actual um you know I think most of what is in there I I agree with you know because it's transparency and accountability uh it seems quite sensible um we just need to make sure that that is not warped in a bad Direction but uh generally I you know I agree with it um or at least what I know of it today um allow governments to Define what misinformation or disinformation is right I mean that is probably the most dangerous if development to give\n\ngovernments that kind of power that they become the deciders of what truth and what is not yeah no that that's that is a big deal I agree that is that's that's that goes to the heart of the situation you don't want to have governments and especially it may not even be sort of it may not be an elected official maybe someone who is uh potentially a mid-level executive in a Ministry people don't even know exists and was never elected uh despite being in a democratic country what about the kind of protesters um what role do you think that Twitter can have in helping to support Iran Ukraine China and other countries that are facing you know uh technological oppression and limitation in their access to freedom of speech well uh I mean yeah like I said we'll\n\ndo whatever is possible within the bounds of the law you know I have a kind of a personal question and I've been curious you know was there a Breaking Point that made you decide do you want to buy Twitter that's a good question um I was hoping you would say the child exploitation that you you've done more to get rid of in the past month than they did in the past 10 years on Twitter and I wanted to thank you for that and I'm sorry that the media has completely snubbed you on mentioning the fact that you guys have gone above and beyond to make that happen and Eliza blue thank you for your work and efforts there yeah I'd like to say thank Eliza blue I would like to thank Andrea as well I think we've actually had in this is actually like a really good case\n\nof of you know crowdsourcing of having people on Twitter actually help us solve the child exploitation stuff it's actually it is it is true um yes Twitter has done more to stop child exploitation last month than probably the last 10 years that's insane it kind of blows my mind frankly and we're going to keep doing it and it's always going to be number one I mean it's like kids can't defend themselves so we must Mario we can't hear you no you you sound like you're like a mosquito now sounds like he's in the toilet to be honest Elon do you still have plans to drop the W everyone is asking um I I mean technically the poll did come out positive on that um so the people have spoken I know so the people have not spoken there but most of my question like I don't\n\nthink you answered that like uh I want to know like what was the breaking point I think a lot of people want to know this one like what was the breaking point that made you want to buy Twitter okay first of all I suppose I I if if Twitter had been if I'd been able to to buy Twitter sooner than I I might have actually done that you know that we're a situation where my liquidity was enough and Twitter's value is you know with with whether you know there's essentially a closing price like would I actually have that wasn't the case until recently um but I I guess the it just felt like it really had been building for for some time so I wouldn't say there was like it wasn't like a step change suddenly this is a one thing it's not like Oh The Babylon B got banned\n\nthat's why I bought Twitter that would be crazy it's more that they they just seem to be like this more and more group thing amongst the media um more and more uh sort of Towing the line amongst digital social media company basically just we're traveling the path more and more of suppression of free speech um and this was just getting me concerned it's like the trends were just very very bad um so unless something was done to reverse this trend against Free Speech then I felt well maybe you know some point everything will just get cut off and unless you're in agreement with whatever the group think is you're just going to be ostracized or your voice will be shut off so like I said it wasn't any one thing it was just it was just like okay and I could I\n\ncan't exactly say why because it's like one of those things where it's like it might it's just that my biological neural net uh you know that's important to buy Twitter and if you you know to stuck with a digital neural net you can't really exactly explain why the neural net is able to understand or text or just say that that the collective result of the neural net says that this is an important action uh though or this is the right action and my biological neural net concluded that it was important to buy Twitter and then if Twitter was not bought and steered in a good direction it would be a danger for the future of civilization and so that's why I that's why I bought it that's brilliant American you mentioned the biological neural net and the digital\n\nneural net when is the a neural link to be ready to copy our Consciousness into account please whatever where can I sign up for it because I would love to have my my brain augmented you know it's like cyberpunk yeah exactly just going full cyberpunk at this point uh yeah um the other side to that to that um I'm sure you're familiar with Doctor Who right and the Cyber men and this idea of a centralized system by which you can influence people's thoughts is that not a consideration that you have on your radar if you get where I'm coming from well I mean frankly on the on the the neural neural are there neural link front if I look at the pace at which artificial intelligence is improving versus the pace at which neurolink is a progressing artificial intelligence\n\nis moving much faster than the neural link is moving because as soon as anything gets done with humans it gets very slow because of the danger to humans I mean for the next few years neurolink is really just focused on storing movement to people that have a broken neck or spine and restoring Vision so as restoring movement and vision it's not uh you know uploading memories or controlling thoughts or anything like that it's pretty basic stuff it's like the early days of computers you know it's basically but it's life-changing though right I mean being able to see if you you're born blind that is there's a gift that I don't think you know anyone would pass up that would be amazing yeah and that's that's very doable you know what I'm saying about neuralink\n\nis that you'll be able to see anything in your links doing you'll be able to see coming from very far off like like because you've got to go through the whole FDA device approval process if that takes ages to evaluate the safety in humans that takes a long time so it basically is very slow compared to the development of digital super intelligence very fast for a long time that we want to be more cautious in the development of digital super intelligence you know this represents the danger to the public and just as we have other regulatory agents uh oversee dangers of the public like the FDA or the FAA or you know any one of a number of FCC if there's you know you have to you can't just have companies as going Hog Wild developing digital super intelligence\n\nwith no oversight do you potentially see this happening in a country where there are no oversights you know where the governments allow the you know scientists to do to go Hog Wild as you said well [Music] look we there's there's the things we can control the things we can't control and I think the there should be some kind of oversight um you know North America and Europe which is where a lot of the AI Innovation is happening there should be some kind of oversight Beyond nothing which is currently the case we are from uh General artificial intelligence like what is your time frame you think until we have the big the big deal I mean I think it's it's happening very fast you see like AGI is defined by where where digital super intelligence is smarter than\n\nthe smartest human but what is your definition of AGI yeah exactly I mean once once the AI is able to basically program itself and understands how to uh how to advance itself that would be the level where we need to start to worry right yeah um we're yeah um I mean what about this you know last year after the pandemic we had the the great resignation and now there's the concern about the replacement of traditional labor jobs with you know Ai and machine technology I think it was you uh you know I saw the video deep in the capacity for it to control things with its mind it's not a concern about the potential impact it has on you know very menial jobs in the uh you know those people who don't have necessarily the skills or ability to retrain that quickly\n\njust you know how can we uh plan in advance to minimize the consequence sorry the audio the audio is like not not good right now so um oh no worse we can have another space sometime in the future to talk about AI because I think that is one of the big topics uh you know where a lot of people don't really realize how big uh the risk of ai ai is and what you are always uh asking for is you know more regulation better rules in order to prevent the worst case scenario of yeah an AGI taking over and basically wiping out like an artist and an artist in the job you know I mean mid-journey has basically replaced graphic artists for book covers you know you don't need a book artist anymore you can just do it with AI not not to change the subject back to the Twitter\n\nfiles but Kim I just want to ask Elon a quick question about section 230 are you concerned about that now and what the government could essentially due to section 230 as a result of the flattening that you're creating at Twitter and all the truth that you're you're pushing out in the objectivity well I I think it is I said I just said to say this on Twitter publicly it is good that that we we actually that the house will be Republican you know it's like it's not it's generally not a good idea if the U.\n\nS if the if the house senate and executive branch are all of one party then then you have to sort of situation so it's good to have uh at least one of those branches the other party um because then they will then then they will check the worst excesses of both parties so I think um you know I think it's good that the house will be Republican you know and this is and people to interpret that as like oh I must be some huge Republican or something it's like no I'm a huge moderate actually is what I am it's just like I wish people would curiously moderate uh but I advise the nature of being moderate is not it does not lend itself you know you cannot be it's like be fanatically moderate but but fanaticism I think some YouTubers like to say right be a radical\n\nCentrist yeah um so so it's just like like you want to have the government pass laws that are in the best people not that that are interested that are in the interest of a small segment of the people and uh you know so that's why I think if you like mixture of parties in control then then then they will pass only things that sort of are the intersection of sets of what both parties agree on which is more likely to be in the interest of the people so so I think I guess I feel pretty okay about that uh section 230 stuff yeah Elon um can you just quickly guys can you can you hear me now I know yeah I've just got I've just got I've just yeah I've just got I've got great speakers that just came up because now it's not glitching for me anymore so I've just\n\nwelcomed Clayton uh Patrick Davis on stage as well and there's more speakers about to come up that all of you would know now my space is working so guys uh feel free to jump in and ask Elon any questions hey thank you thank you so much if you want to retry the co-host thing to Mario yeah go ahead to Clay and then Patrick correctly hey thanks Elon this is Clayton from redacted um one of the stories we've been covering on our show over the past couple of months is the Dr shiva's lawsuit uh he was banned from Twitter running for the Senate from Massachusetts and one of the things in his lawsuit that was uncovered was the back end government portal to both Facebook and Twitter that they trusted Twitter partnership um and I know on Twitter's blog that trusted\n\nTwitter partnership between Twitter and someone with a government email information and to basically have a Town's band taken down is that portal is that trusted partnership still available to the government and given what you've released in the Twitter files does it make sense for that to still be there um I gotta dig into this uh thing you know obviously that has like some big brother Vibes will adhere to the low um but it will not do you know it's not going to go beyond the law uh and and if there are laws that seem that don't seem to be the interest of the people then Toyota will question but I'll dig into this trusted partnership thing kind of what's going on um I do what's rejected and I love you and your wife you're doing an amazing job so keep\n\nit going Eric did you have a Eric Sebastian did you have a question yeah yes maybe a follow-up to to the prior question Elon in the Twitter in the aisles of things that you found did you find any relationship between Facebook and any other Tick Tock whoever whomever with regards to what could be considered you know the collusion with with a certain um political parties was it was it another was there any collusion among other social media groups with Twitter um I've not directly seen that I'm not saying it doesn't exist but I've not seen it yet and in fact in terms of the Twitter files I Matt TV's read way more than I have like because my priority has been just getting Twitter healthy um and fixing uh Twitter engineering so that we can actually uh you\n\nknow uh release features at a high at a high rate you know that's been my priority on the Twitter front is we've got to get get Twitter to be in a financially healthy Place fix the engine of engineering so we can uh add the features and capabilities that are that are that are making much better and improve transparency and trust and all that so I actually don't even I I don't most of the stuff I I've read hardly any of the Twitter files uh Matt TV has and it very very wise is also getting access to it so you'll read it too um have you been in contact with any um of the other social platforms meta Google Etc since the release of the files has there been any pushback any concerns anything at all or it's been pretty quiet uh they haven't reached out to me\n\nuh I'm not aware of any any Outreach from them um so I I guess look if if I think if this if it turns out this like stuff that the public should know about then we'll put it out there um and uh man Matt Vivian Barry Wise Hey listen whatever you see do you think public should know about it you just post it with regards to the dissemination of information so right now it's just matai being very wise do you have any uh plans to maybe give it give access to more journalists like say uh Ryan Sevilla daily wire technophobic you know I mean he's done lots of coverage on this stuff even previously so I'm sure they'd love to know uh yeah I think uh I mean maybe at some point we should just like put it all out there you know um uh so like I think in the beginning\n\nit's it's good to have some coherence and um you know so it's not just a million stories all at once yeah it makes sense yeah it's a drip feed at first and then later on it's gonna be a flood right because otherwise it's just too many stories too much all at once in them people can't really focus on anything yeah it makes sense yeah you just you just get drowned out in the flood of things I think once once we think that the stories have the critical stories have been told then I think probably the right move is to just you know uh provide a data dump and then uh uh to go through it and see what was missed are you super are you surprised at all about the the the blowback against Matt taibi over the past 24 hours and a number of a number of uh liberal news\n\norganizations a lot of liberal news reporters came out and really slammed Matt taibi which really was really shocking what was your response to that well I think those people should be looking in the mirror and wondering why they were deceptive why did they deceive the American public and and instead of trying to redirect blame to Matthew to be accepting some responsibility themselves for not being truthful to the American public it's Elon it's Mike Cohen here um congratulations on of course the acquisition of Twitter but my question to you is how are you going to go about combating the issue of Bot and Bot forms who create so much misinformation and hate on your platform the last thing I do I will defeat the damn Boston trolls um maybe they need like\n\na mind virus that purges them you know just makes them self-destructible yeah I mean it's War it's war and and we're going to win that war big time um the extent of the hatred that these Bots cause is astronomically and um it's really terrible but thank you for thank you for your commitment to that absolutely can I can I jump in and ask a question here Michael just real quick just real quick I wanted to say something about the box there are of course commercial Bots right people trying to do spam but the more dangerous spots are those that are trying to interfere in this course and uh you know try to manipulate the conversation and those are primarily run by governments right they're run by the intelligence community in different countries they're trying\n\nto uh manipulate the way people are talking for example about Ukraine uh I think one of the more famous examples here are the so-called nafo Bots that are going out and shooting every month yeah often where them they're mixing it right so the intelligence Community does it in that way they have real people then they have Bots that are fully automated and then they even let their intelligence come Community employees work with Twitter profiles to chime in as well but all with one goal which is to manipulate the public discourse towards their goals and I think you experience that yourself when you spoke out for peace in Ukraine you were attacked by these same boss yeah no absolutely um like like I said you know I've been on the job a month I'm very good\n\nat software I wrote software for 20 years and uh I was very good back in the day at defeating the the scammers and uh they were just like they were just the the Bad actors had free reign even before um they will not have that in the future um I look forward to that battle um and we will expose those who are acting uh to manipulate public opinion and shine a bright light on it fantastic hey uh Kim if I could just ask a quick question on that same topic because there was a point at which I was told by someone who apparently had access to this Discord server for these NATO uh or NATO trolls that I was among their top targets or even the number one target for a while so I'm just sort of a personal curiosity by the way this is Michael Tracy um yeah um and\n\nso Elon I'm curious if you were able to detect or gauge any inauthentic activity on Twitter specifically related to this sort of pro Ukraine faction or you know is there was there a particular sort of system that kind of connects those actors that you were able to discern since you've taken the helm um well the the tools that Twitter currently has to detect large scale manipulation are quite strengthening that's why but in order for that for them to be strengthened we must like I said built the engine of engineering to be able to sort of see what's going on in the system I mean over and over again it's been it's like Twitter doesn't know what's going on in Twitter uh that that's actually the issue uh we need to build the tools that can analyze what's\n\ngoing on and see where where is their evidence of large scale manipulation uh in order to to highlight it and I think even if it's not shut down if it is simply highlighted instead of wait a second these these accounts are all acting in concert they're acting in a way that is faster than a human could possibly coordinate uh this this appears to be a link of you know 100 000 Bots link that are all acting in concert and and just say and and expose them essentially but but those software tools need to be written um and they have not yet been written so but they will be it's cool so I can give them to you right Elon wouldn't it be easier if you were able to use some form of two-part authentication in order to ensure that the individual [Music] yeah oh you're\n\nback yeah go ahead yeah Elon would it not be easier to just use some form of two-card authentication to ensure that the individual is who they say they are yes um now now that the the game plan with the sort of uh you know blue verified thing um is that that right now it is it is uh there are problems on many levels it's it's it's too cheap to have a bot so or and even a troll like like it's not just that somebody's operating a bunch of you know 10 000 instances um of of Twitter accounts you know you know in a bank of PCS you know uh it's it's it's like you can have a warehouse with and there are many parts of the world like Warehouse where there's just Banks of phones so there actually are operated by people the the the the the challenge right now so\n\nthe challenge is actually yeah you have to make it more expensive to to have um Bots and trolls it can't be like it's like a guy sitting in front of eight phones right that's just how they operate exactly the Farms are a guy sitting in front of headphones yeah like there's like well unfortunately the the disinformation uh budget for the CIA for the in our four parts is over a hundred million dollars I mean even if you throw eight dollars per month per account in front of them it's not is that really going to stop them uh not the eight dollars um the the if it was purely then I think it they could overcome a budget uh challenge but but the corporate but also then having to have a huge number of phones and a huge number of credit or debit cards is that\n\nthese all amplify the difficulty and and and then having if you want to do it do it such that that there's no that you can't find any connection between a hundred thousand phones and hundred thousand credit cards and a hundred thousand um you know authenticated phone numbers that's very difficult to do but just the the logistical difficulty of that is really high so it's more like you need to process some amount of money through the payment system in order to piggyback off the authentication of the payment system uh you know so eight dollars is kind of like a random number obviously um but but there's another thing that has to be accomplished simultaneously which is that uh Twitter cannot be like so heavily dependent on advertisers so this is an attempt\n\nto kill two birds with one stone um which is that which is build it build a source of uh Revenue that that is not Advertiser dependent so if the advertisers have do not have too much uh sway over what happens on Twitter and also uh use the payment system as an additional means of identifying and stopping large-scale manipulation of the system in other words users are going to realize that these are low people right they're all verified individuals that will make them want to advertise on the site so it's it's winning hey let's win right yeah let's go hey Kim can I can I ask you a quick follow-up to my question would you mind okay I have to I have to just stop this for a second because everyone is talking over each other Elon just made a really important\n\npoint which is that um he has more freedom to do what is good for his users if he is less dependent on Advertising so there's a large group of people here I think everyone who appreciates what Elon is doing for us right now in this fight for freedom of speech should support him and the best way you can support him is to become a subscriber at Twitter you're using this great service all the time if you want him to have more power and more freedom to achieve these goals for us well you know make that eight dollar a month investment I think it's really worth it the price of a lot did Elon already say winning plans to reinstate the verification um the Eight dollar verification process I think he's gonna tell you because Kim muted everyone all right so it\n\nseems to sometimes mute me I guess uh um yeah so the I I think we're probably about about a week away maybe uh basically this coming week we should be able to uh restart the verification process will it be Global or is it just the US still actually I'm just gonna discuss that with the team so this time for verification we're taking some additional steps where um you know one has to be a phone phone verified with a known good carrier an own good phone carrier um and uh and we're also well offer people the opportunity if they want to do ID verification kind of like what Airbnb does uh similar thing and they do that all around the world and then you then you'll be able to look at an account and say this account is payment verified it is verified it is ID\n\nverified optionally and also to establish organizational affiliation do you actually have affiliation with this organization is and providing organizations with the ability to Define to to to to stay which set of users are affiliated with that organization so like are you actually a professor at Stanford or are you actually for example a reporter at the New York Times or whatever um or an employee of a you know uh PepsiCo or whatever it is you know just generally to have granularity and Nuance to what verified means as opposed to the sort of like grab grab bag of nons uh which has been the the past blue verified situation where you know you could have been an intern at Mashable 10 years ago and now but we verified and it's it's kind of crazy or or and\n\nthen they're also just being traded constantly uh you could just buy a verified badge so you can't you can't actually tell if somebody's proved for legacy blue you can't tell if it's if that is a legitimate situation A crypto scam whether they're actually or other you don't know because there's no granularity to it and there was there's no way to buy them off of Google right now like you can literally Google verified accounts and they sell them for like 200 500 or something right yes exactly exactly it's not like it's not not like you have to go to the in quotes dark web to to do to buy blue verified you can literally Google search it on it's on page one of the Google search results verified so so it's just basically it's just a quick verified in the\n\ncorruption um and and so we need to move forward with something that that is that gives granularity and and detail and Nuance about the nature of the verification and uh so that you can actually trust what you see Elon you said you want some really admirable things about uh freedom of speech and your commitment to it and its role in the future of humanity you didn't answer the question about supporting protesters in China and Iran is their freedom of speech freedom of speech for Chinese people important Humanity in China just so you know like Twitter is inaccessible in China you need a VPN so it's kind of a pointless question so you don't think making it accessible for Chinese or Iranian it doesn't matter because a lot of people are confused that uh it's\n\na First Amendment issue what was dumped um by Matt tabi the First Amendment concerns government suppression so anything that happened before January the 20th isn't First Amendment unless it was the Biden Administration afterwards so for those who think that you know we've got the Smoking Gun and they don't need to wait for anything else if you address that issue Mr muscle yeah I mean what first of all actually there there are issues if um if there's electric interference before the government because uh uh you know that that's that that's uh that that is I think an issue certainly uh would appear that Twitter falsely claimed that there was not uh interference um but right but that that has to that has to do with in-kind contributions that's a very different\n\nkind of thing and it is it is Criminal but but can you tell us if there's you know there will be more smoking guns coming yeah I think there will be more smoking guns because the obvious next question is well what happened after the election exactly exactly yeah I mean that's probably the right thing for episode two um is what happened after the election and how do we have to wait for episode two I don't know check with Matt yeah we'll just quickly we'll go ahead will no thank you Elon apologies if you didn't if you addressed this earlier appreciate how long you've been on this call what subjects outside of Hunter Biden by the way this is Will Kane from Fox News what subjects outside of Hunter Biden were subject to the most government-induced censorship\n\nuh you may not have heard my earlier comment but uh I don't actually I like like I said I've been me personally I've been working on getting Twitter to be healthy and fixing the engine of engineering um I have not been sort of pouring over the Twitter files personally um that's sort of been you know Matt tyvee's doing that and Barry Weiss he's going to do it now as well so um anything I say would be somewhat of a uh you know guesswork really um but uh you know so I I don't know um you know there's obviously a lot of questions around uh uh Jan six um there's questions around uh you know covid there's a lot of questions and but I think the important thing is that we just get um you know bring daylight to all of these things and so anything that Twitter\n\nhas done and sometimes I think you know a lot of times Twitter's done things that were just they were just it wasn't malicious it was just foolish so the things that are like looking people for NPCs right for for posting NPC memes so thousands of people were banned yeah exactly right from a good question um with the companies Twitter which um I think most of us agrees is just not right has there been any progress since have you been in discussions with them and what are some other strategies to bring in Revenue so we depend Less on on advertisers you can hear this this is Eric bowling again trust any knowledge or you can have any proof that those there there's some indication that a lot of people on the right side of the political aisle lost a ton of\n\nfollowers I would say from 2015 2016 all the way through the you know towards the end of 2021 I'll give you a panic totally myself I I lost the 80 000 or so and not until I'm this is literal not until you purchase Twitter did I start gaining followers again in a fairly robust manner is there any proof of that do you have any evidence of of that being sort of a uh a plan or a strategy on Twitter's part um you know again I I said I I have not read the Twitter file so it's definitely difficult for me to say that except you so my my understanding is limited and that's why I would leave it to um and Barry Weiss and ultimately others which is is but if I if I if I say what what what is my best guess is that that was a very different standard applied to Republican\n\ncandidates in the U.\n\nS versus a Democrat candidate there appears and emphasizer appears I'm not saying this is definitely the case it appears to have been a double standard where um where Democrats were not censored and and left causes were not censored but right right causes and and Republicans were um and it was and I think this is frankly obvious to anyone who uses Twitter without any expose of Twitter files not even-handed and and it's frankly the the behavior that is to be expected from an organization that is that is based in San Francisco uh Which is far left so from their standpoint it wouldn't seem like that they're they're being um unfair that from their standpoint it's simply how they see the world um I mean I think Matt posted like political contributions of Twitter\n\nbeing over 99 Democrat so well what kind of viewpoint would you expect people to have then it's the behavior you'd expect from a company that is essentially a distillation of San Francisco politics and I hope that just information I want to make a simple question I want to make a suggestion real quick Elon when you are speaking we can hear you really well when you are listening the background noise from your jet is interfering and can you just mute yourself yeah so anyway I have a question like so when you're you know making the files available to everybody or rather more people I would just like the request that uh that I don't know give it to me because I work for Rebel news and I think we could do a tremendous job covering this as much as anybody else\n\nreally yeah so so China so Tim cost is trying to come up by the way Elon just asks you a question but in the meantime you want to go about and I know that persistence has a question as well I'll give you the mic right after persistence but one one question again back to the advertisers Elon not sure if you heard it before um any progress there with the advertisers that stopped advertising on Twitter which we all agree is just not right and any the other strategies to bring Revenue outside of advertising uh you're muted um yeah so I mean so so Apple has fully resumed advertising which is appreciated uh Apple is the single biggest Advertiser on Twitter and historically and and presently so uh thanks Apple for the reasoning advertising um and uh I think\n\nwe're we're seeing we are starting to see a lot of other advertisers also resume their spending uh I think the the problem is that they would read all these stories in the media and then um think that they were true and and they're not true um and and then as it's becoming clear that the media stories about Twitter being some sort of like right-wing hellscape which is absolutely is and in fact it is there are far fewer Bots far fewer trolls um and it's I it's actually I think way more fun and interesting um and we're seeing that in the in the user minutes and in the daily average users then then advertisers are like okay I guess uh maybe maybe it is safe to get back in the water and uh so we are we are seeing um advertisers resume advertising on Twitter\n\nso that's that's a good sign um I wish it would be faster but but we are seeing them resume the the more the more concerning Factor on the advertising front is just the um the entire industry-wide drop in advertising which uh Twitter is not immune from so even though advertisers do get get back on the advertising expenditures in general are dropping for all companies and so it is imperative that that Twitter have an alternate Revenue Source hence the subscriber um Revenue which is just very important for both of the just the survival and for of Twitter and to reduce its dependence on on Advertising yeah overall I think you know I I I'm cautiously optimistic about the future yeah so I I I I want to I'll add I'll add one point of credit like I I have no\n\nstats I have nothing against the the old uh you know Executives at Twitter Etc but very objectively speaking what you've done in a month and again that's purely being objective what you've done in a month is [ __ ] insane uh the amount of progress that you've had and where Twitter is at now in such a short period of time um so not that you need more credit because you're getting a lot here but I just want to add to it as well I'll give the mic to to um the persistence who's been waiting uh for a while and then Spike go ahead persistence [Music] my question is threatening to pull money from Twitter if Twitter did not adhere to a policy and additionally do we have any information on congressmen or women who have threatened legislation should Twitter not\n\nadhere to a certain policy unless I was really intrigued by your comment on uh positivity and negativity and tweets you saying that positive tweets would go uh further and I just wanted to see what would constitute the measurement from Twitter uh that would make something positive or negative thank you are you back yeah sure um well the advertisers um for the most part the advertisers are quite rational in that um you know if if you especially if you like your advertising a family friendly product that uh you don't want to be sort of like let's say you're advertising a Disney movie you don't want to have like some super negative uh sort of high speech or you know through the and and also a movie or whatever and and you also they don't want to have not\n\nsafe for work content right next to uh ads for children toys and stuff like that so that stuff is quite reasonable and and um and I agree with um advertising advertisers have a right to have their advertising be next to non-advertising con that is consistent with their their brand so that that really just means like uh you know what is is D is is um not attempting to monetize with advertising uh content that advertisers are uncomfortable with so I think in in general it's been okay okay um I mean I think there has been some overzealous action by um activist groups that that pressure the advertisers that then in turn pressure Twitter um and you know we're trying to sort of you know that that I thought was was somewhat unreasonable but uh it I I'm I think\n\nit's gonna Trend in a good direction going forward but I'm I'm not sure but it looks like it's headed in a good direction like I said advertisers are returning to Twitter uh apples back and forth full full ad spend and um I've had I've had a number of conversations with uh The Advertiser groups and and every time I've had those conversations the advertisers have responded positively and and I've also just because they're like I mean they end up reading the the the sort of mainstream media and it's like you know uh and then they end up with with all the wrong impressions of what's going on and I said well have you tried using Twitter do you see these things for yourself and they're like actually it seems fine when we use Twitter like yes that's because\n\nit is fine and so then um and then I also found like look as we try to grow Twitter's user base if if a new user comes on Twitter and then is immediately attacked by trolls and and dumped on they're going to want to leave so because who wants to go it's like going into a party or something and everyone just starts yelling at you you don't want to you're going to want to leave that party you know Twitter does need to be a more welcoming environment for new users and so the the incentives are actually aligned um that if if uh if people come on and and they see interesting funny tweets things that that where they learn learn something new or it's like it's it's entertaining it's funny it's like that's the kind of thing that um we should see more of and uh\n\nand that will that that's consistent with what most advertisers want I think and what what Twitter wants in order to grow the user base and um and there's generally over time it's like it kind of you know PPO pill can be to some degree choose what sort of experience they're like um just like you can choose the radio station like you know some people want to listen to sort of smooth jazz easy listening or they may want to go to you know pop pop music or they want to go to heavy metal thrash and uh you know to each their own or if this was uh you know do you want to have like full contact martial arts or do you want to have a light contact or do you want to do yoga you know and you can decide which one of those what kind of experience you want that's going\n\nto be important in order to have Twitter appeal to a broad audience yeah so that's that's that's the rough game plan oh just put it out really quick he had mentioned different color uh checkbooks for verification different entities was that still going to be part of the new verification process foreign yeah so again like the goal is like to say how do you convey people using Twitter uh as quickly as possible and as clearly as possible what what they're seeing um so there will be um a gold check mark for commercial organizations a great check mark for government and a blue check mark for verified individuals and then there will also be the uh um an organizational affiliation logo so like next next to your check if you let's say a verified user if you are\n\na professor at Stanford and Stanford is participating in identifying who is a professor then then there would be like a tiny Stanford logo that would appear next to your blue check mark um so the edge is rolling is like see oh this is actually a stem Professor or this person actually does work at Coca-Cola and um and there's a Clarity there will there be a process for this to apply for an organization for you know let's say you're a part of a small news organization and you want to apply for this status will it be available to the public course is something that's going to be very selective uh no it will be available to to the public so it's sort of um you know so it's not going to be like an anointed set of companies um now there will be a strong policy\n\nagainst uh impersonation and deception so if if uh if it's if if someone's attempting to deceive um users then their account will be suspended that's that's yeah I've got a question here I'll give it to Tom just by a pretty notable person that doesn't disclose the identity but it's a simple question and by the way anyone has a question you could DM me the team is checking all the DMS the question is um plans for crypto Twitter payments whether it's going to be like WeChat or whether you have uh you have plans at all Dogecoin yeah yeah I think we do want to have Twitter and enable both uh regular payments and uh if you had currency uh and and uh and make make it easier to transact with crypto yeah okay I've got another question here from a big YouTuber\n\nas well Elon one of the first uh so they're asking they want to bring YouTube creators to Twitter what's your what's your plan with uh what's your Twitter Creator plan if there is one uh yeah so for video we need to upgrade the the Twitter system to be able to have longer video uh and then and enable creators to derive revenue from from viewership which is a combination of advertising and these are obviously things that need to happen like I said in order for these to happen like you could have a wish list a mile long but if the if engine of engineering is not fixed so that's that's why I am focused on Twitter engineering uh first and foremost um in the absence of that you could have a wish whatever you wish will could not be done because the engineering\n\nis not working hey I have a really great suggestion for you and right after game I let Tom jump in right after you just Tom sorry for for delaying it so much go ahead Kim sorry yeah you know how foreign media is labeled on Twitter often as like Russian controlled state-controlled media why don't we do the same thing in the US with all of these media organizations that that are telling us go to war you know this is all great like why don't we label them as well U.\n\nS government uh uh State media no I think that's a good idea um because like you know it's like SBF gave so much money to different media organizations that and and then they just write these puff pieces and it's like okay we should be labeling that SPF Affiliated media because it is uh like if you're gonna write a puff piece about someone who gave you a ton of money then the public should know that you uh maybe have a bias so yeah I mean I think it should be if if um if if something is taking direction from the space then that information should be made clear to the readers um like like who's really who's really Who's the who really has editorial control to be clear um because that's all part of like trying to give users of Twitter the most accurate\n\nand truthful understanding of what's going on and and be able to calibrate what they read see or hear on Twitter to be able to calibrate the the truthfulness as a function of where it is where is it coming from who is the author who is controlling this from an editorial standpoint um and so then they that you know they can apply reasonable judgment in that case yeah no I agree with you and I think that would be a really good thing to level the playing field because when you want to find out about what's going on in Ukraine and you get it from sources that are labeled certain way and then the U.\n\nS news sources are not labeled at all you know the the problem with that is that people think this source is trustworthy and this source is not trustworthy so if Twitter has labels like this then they need to be applied fairly also against media that is clearly pro-war and clearly infiltrated by commentators from the intelligence Community who are telling us all this [ __ ] about why we have to be at War I agree this is the maximum truth is the crucial still you know set you free Tom Jones I know you've been waiting for a while Tom thank you thank you for having me so maybe just a couple more questions and then I gotta go back to work here I'll I'll ask him yeah and we appreciate it keep innovating and keep creating thank you and Elon I'll I'll I'll I'll\n\nI'll I'll go ahead Tom 's here yeah so I'll jump in Elon um my question to you because Tom's not it's not working on his end uh that's actually a simple question I'm gonna shoot my shot if I can get a DM on Twitter so I have a line of communication and then I can try to get you on and convince you to join more spaces so it's our question it's just uh giving it a shot on my end I appreciate you joining again oh yeah John go ahead man I I said my word yeah thank you this is Tom fitting with Judicial Watch Elon appreciate your public service and your transparency efforts here you know my concern is you know as the head of a watchdog group is the government corruption in response you know not only to what you potentially May uncover but in response to what\n\nyou're doing and when you have the president of the United States from the podium celebrate his election victory for by calling for a National Security review of your activities you have Senators High you know focusing on you you have other government agencies investigating you and your other businesses uh are you concerned a about the retaliation and B are you seeing evidence of it government is slow to act so this is the thing about that's important to appreciate about anything anything government related is that they're not nimbled they are slow so I think the actions that that we'll see and I think there probably will be some actions we'll we'll happen but they'll happen slowly and it's only been it's only been a month so far but I wouldn't I would\n\nexpect uh I would expect some you know there's probably not there's probably at least a few nefarious things that are in the works right now probably I would say this would be uh naive to assume that there were no nefarious thing and so I guess if but I I will just expose them on Twitter and see what happens well the most important thing you don't have any Suicidal Thoughts do you Elon I do not have any Suicidal Thoughts I uh I I if I committed suicide it's not real well that was that was that was a good one Claire I know he he likes to jump off so maybe one one more question and one or two a clay and then Ian I'll let you end it Ian because you've done a great job asking questions earlier clay go ahead yeah you're on this is uh clay Travis with uh out\n\nkick Fox News and radio show with Clayton Park um you said earlier and I think it's so important that you were thinking about just letting everybody know when you get a governmental request to censor someone or take down tweets what what kind of process is in play there and to what extent can that happen because I think you're right the sunlight of the government being embarrassed when they're going after James Woods for instance would drastically reduce any attempts at censorship what's the update date there what kind of time frame and do you think that's able to be implemented yeah you're muted Elon I mean as I said earlier like we will Twitter will do what whatever it is allowed to do uh within the boundaries of the law um to be as transparent and\n\nopen as possible um and even something if we're currently are and I don't know this to be the case but if we're all currently drained by the law I think we will push to have the law modified to reduce those constraints because I think we have to you know we have to find hard for for free speech which is the Bedrock of a functioning democracy and uh I think you'll you'll see the the proof will be in the pudding and in the coming months I think you'll see dramatic improvements in the transparency and trustworthiness of Twitter you know hopefully you've seen at least some of that already um and it will it will get better and I think it will get better in an accelerating way provided I don't accidentally suicide myself which I'm not going to do Elon thank\n\nyou so much time today you have been such a blessing to join us to give us your insights I really appreciate it don't forget to make that Poll for Edward Snowden and Julian Assange yeah I'll be interested to know what the public things of these two people and what they're fighting for I I will yeah and uh and that's and I'll emphasize that I'm not making a judgment here I'm just asking I'll do it right after this Twitter space is ends right asking the public a question you know just that's right picking a poll yeah so I have a question okay so yeah you know this is just a question I'm not look okay so I got a question since you know like this is the last one what message do you have for all the haters and losers out there who are you know making fun of\n\nyou or attacking Twitter said it was going to die like four weeks ago what's your message Twitter is alive baby hell yeah hell yeah beautiful I look forward to the test by earnings call right here on on Twitter with you Elon Musk yeah I think I I think it will work you know I got the DM so I assume the promise you made you Kim and the promise you made your title should go through Elon really appreciate you and uh Mario see you back hope to see you again soon I really appreciate it man thank you Elon all right thanks guys bye I told you it was worth listening and this is the kind of stuff I talk about all the [ __ ] time over on my patreon account if you're not already member you know what to do by now there's over 230 videos many of them diving down these\n\nvery same rabbit holes plus plenty of other stuff as well the kind of [ __ ] that will literally get me canceled if I discuss it here on YouTube I'm always walking a fine line so if you're not already remember head over to patreon with the card in the corner or the link in the comment I'll see you over there love you","textByLang":{"en":"Kanye so that would that was definitely exciting me to violence so uh anyway that's not cool ladies and gentlemen Elon Musk has just hopped off a two-hour Twitter spaces discussion slash interview where he shared his thoughts and opinions on all kinds of stuff super juicy very spicy topics everything from Big Tech collusion with government censorship freedom of speech his true intentions with Twitter his workload I mean literally everything you can imagine including a lot of very controversial and spicy takes right in this video I've cut out nearly half an hour literally over 27 minutes of silence just trying to condense this it's going to be all over the place there's interruptions there's some audio challenges along the way but I thought I'd post this\n\nunfiltered to you guys the girls can take the time to watch it YouTube gives you the option of playing back at a higher playback speed than one time so I might save a few of you a little bit of time not gonna add any commentary along the way I just wanted to put this up because I'm not sure if people will be able to replay this Twitter spaces it was so incredibly important really listen through the entire thing you'll learn a ton the best part about this despite people talking over each other a little bit I'm like the sound bites in the media this is a deep and nuanced discussion including elon's true intentions for the purchase of Twitter and some of his plans for the turnaround of course if you appreciate this video and want loads more content head\n\nover to patreon with the card in the corner or the link at the pin comment you definitely won't be disappointed actually that's a lie if you're a snowflake you get easily butt hurt you probably won't be disappointed but you will be mad and you'll probably Rage Quit within a few days otherwise see you over on patreon enjoy the show Kanye so that would that was definitely exciting me to buy so uh anyway that's not cool but you mentioned in a good way well no it's just that like it just makes it like an analysis of the second world war or something you know uh that's a history that's a history drama or whatever you know it's context it's like it's like okay you know like let's live a battlefield or something and that's good you know this this you know uh\n\nsome sort of you know uh War history thing I don't know you know something like that then that that would be okay but um yeah it has to become sexual I mean if he's posting it in a way that is trying to Rally people to anti-semitic views then yeah yeah I mean it's like you can also like say like okay well let's look for added context outside of Twitter to say to say like well was this man in a in a friendly way and it's like okay well no he's saying that he likes Hitler and uh other things and look at the point of which Alex Jones is like telling Kanye to to calm down and and you know please please stop you have to say okay you know Alex Jones is pretty edgy so uh Alex Jones is saying Kanye wants to Kanye to stop that's that's a big deal so anyway the\n\nuh but I want to get into like some sort of huge like this could easily get derailed into you know a laborious dude yeah talk more about the file so you mentioned that you gave it to a very wise right so she has full access does this mean that we are going to see multiple exposes not just uh once we met taibi yeah the the point is to as is to just have everything come clean so the thing is that like it's not that uh people would necessarily agree with everything that Twitter has done in the past or in the future but they should at least know that it is occurring and there's no Shady stuff that is uh happening that they're unaware of so then at least if if quarter is explicit about its actions and transparent you can then approach appropriately calibrate\n\nuh your interpretation of what you learn on Twitter um as opposed to thinking you know Twitter pretending to be unbiased and and even-handed a good way to get everyone to agree with all the actions that Twitter will take that's impossible uh that there's a that is a null Set uh but what it is possible to do is to have be fully transparents give me a break oh you're back he's back you dropped out for a bit yeah can you hear me can you hear us it's not it's still glitching a bit can you hear me I'm about to take off yeah it's good yeah Verizon commercial really quick I just wanted to ask you one really quick if there's any way to combine Twitter's efforts with people who have gone you know as far as filing constitutional challenges is there any way to get\n\nthem in touch with Matt and combine the efforts there uh possibly I'd reach out to Matt um and I mentioned I've also asked Barry Weiss to you know also uh you know active interact I just gave Barry Wise access to the Twitter files like an hour ago you know I think at some point it might make sense to just have them publicly available um you know so that anyone can look at them a quick a quick side question did they don't care anything we're aiming for is that you know anything bad that Twitter's done in the past that that it'd be surfaced so as to uh instill trust about Twitter in the future and where I may have blanked out a moment ago is uh that it is impossible to for a footer to take only take take the set of actions that will satisfy all people or\n\nprobably even 1900 people all right but what sort of can do that that is completely transparent about attention and what's what what is it doing what is it not doing how does the algorithm work and and if an account is suspended why is it suspended if an account is de-boosted uh just showing that as an individual search brand uh and and giving a reason for that um so that there's maximum transparency in the system um so even if you disagree with what's going on on Twitter you at least can caliber what you learn on Twitter based on on what Twitter is doing not not not not have a situation where Twitter is claiming to be fair and even-handed and then actually is is not being so at least from from your perspective so do you have plans Elon to take Twitter\n\npublic again in the future so Tara's asking by the way James Wood I've sent you an invite real James would have sent you an invite check your DMs uh Tara's asking if you have any plans to take um Twitter public again and my question I'll give you another question as well my question is what type of pressure if any have you faced since releasing the files did you hear me Elon it sounds like he's testing the new semi truck himself [Laughter] I moved a couple of people down so we have a we can have a more uh civil you know conversation without too many speakers on stage because there are a couple of important questions that I want to ask you uh the first one is you know obviously with your move of full transparency you are putting the groundworks in place\n\nto uh justify why free speech on Twitter is so important and why you are making the decisions uh you know of for example a great amnesty for all users and you know by by showing that abuse has happened in the past and that Twitter before it was under your control was abusing their power you're basically setting the stage to say okay people should all have their their rights unless they broke the law are restored to be on Twitter is that right uh yeah I mean yes that that is the intent um now to be clear we're all going to be doing this sort of slowly and deliberately if this can't be a like uh you know let's open all the jails simultaneously and and uh have at it guys so it's it's gonna be you know slower than people would like it's more deliberate um\n\nI I do have a lot of [ __ ] going on right now so I can imagine no I'm trying to do the most that blind I'm flogging my human brain as far as most amount of work done but like this week alone you know we had a meeting with some National Security uh Starling is also failing yeah two months instead of one month that's a good timeline and also I gotta make sure Twitter is like uh stable from a financial standpoint and it's not losing tons of money and goes bankrupt in which case a little bit you know juggling a lot of things here say the least um but I think over time uh which not that long of a time iterative iteratively we can move Twitter to be a more broadly inclusive in the third like as many people as possible can participate um and one to participate\n\num and and as trusted and transparent as possible and and the proof will be in the pudding over time and we're not going to please everyone obviously that's impossible because you know if you say like what are the requests of everyone you have a Venn diagram intersection of zero but but what can be done is maximum transparents what uh what can be done is uh making it clear when uh something has been de-boosted or search banned when your account is shares band and why that account has been suspended to be clear about why and whether it's temporary or what the path is to restore the account uh and and just I think that's that's something that uh can be done and and will massively help with trust and uh in addition to now there's obviously a challenge that\n\nTwitter's had over time and I think this is generally an issue with social media which is that it is digital technologies that require a lot of software to be written and they've sort of come out of Silicon Valley um almost ultimate selling silica Valley with uh except for Snappers in La which is California but but effectively what is happening is um an export of the moral framework of San Francisco to Earth kind of a big deal and problematic because previously you know San Francisco which is uh you know pretty far left but the the influence would be limited to San Francisco but now it's it's it affects the whole world because of the centralization of information with social media company and that's I think not good it's it's uh you know so it's we need\n\nto establish something that is fair and and takes into account a wide range of views and and doesn't have a Tilson playing field towards uh far left uh far far left in San Francisco um I think there should be a place for the you know they they can be on Twitter too but there should be a wide range of political views and sentiments and and uh and as much as reasonably possible aim for for freedom of speech yeah and and generally I want Twitter to be a forceful good for the future of civilization so that's that's the case you don't can you tell us approximately how much time you have so that we can uh get an idea how many questions we can get in I don't know like maybe half an hour or so nice oh that's fantastic that's very good hey um what I also see Happening\n\nHere is that the mainstream media that um was part of covering up this uh Hunter Biden laptop story because I was calling is now calling this um you know some kind of fizzer that they they don't think that there's enough uh you know obviously they are acting in that way because they themselves are now uh on fire because you have exposed what they have done um what what do you have to say to them I'm sorry could you repeat the question again I'm in the air so this is like not it's not super optimal from an audience what what do you have to say to the media that's sort of downplaying uh what the uh the Twitter files uh represents the question yeah uh yeah so he's he's asking you what do you have to say to the media that's downplaying the uh the Twitter\n\nfiles Revelations you know because they're they're basically saying it's not a big deal that it's nonsense you know that it's just it's just crap that you're just doing this for PR what's your response to them yeah the amazing having connection issues with you specifically Ian there's certain people up here that I yeah can John ask your question again first Elon can you hear us no I think you can't hear anybody I don't I don't know if it's me so he's he's either in a semi truck or he is on his plane he said he said he's on his Lane yeah foreign story is now trying to downplay your release um obviously because they are Under Fire as well right because they have been exposed by this uh by this release what do you want to say to them what do you want to\n\nsay to the media that is trying to turn this into another Burger well that try to turn it into another Burger because they were complicit in leaving the American public um and so rather than admit that they they lie to the public they're trying to pretend that this is a nothing Burger obviously that's that's clearly what happened yeah I mean shame on them yeah I agree with that and then the other important thing here is that you are basically exposing collusion between a political party and uh in one file that was released it was even it called the Biden team contacting Twitter I mean that is election interference isn't it yeah I mean I clearly if if Twitter is doing one before an election shutting down dissenting voices um on a pivotal election that\n\nis the very definition of election interference and what the hell else would you of course it's like yes um frankly Twitter was acting like an arm of the Democratic National Committee it was absurd well and you know that's fantastic that you're releasing that but isn't Twitter just the tip of the iceberg can't we uh admit now that this would have happened and all big tech companies that are you know being used to stifle free speech and sense of people and try to you know destroy stories that are dangerous to their political goals no I mean what collusion is insane like Twitter is the one company that isn't isn't that is no longer colluding and is no longer uh just going with the the sort of NPC group thing I don't know you know I should probably increase\n\nmy security or something absolutely I mean this is why I hate you so much yeah just just a second that would have been my next question Iman how worried are you personally I mean you're putting a lot of the line right you have all these businesses going um you know you you are out there fighting the good fight for Free Speech but there's also a certainly a concern on your mind about what the response to this is going to be do you feel threatened do you feel worried like how do you feel personally about it yeah and I'll add on to a question I asked as well Elon like what type of pressure have you faced so far maybe it should be more worried than I am but I don't know I think generally if you do write by the people then you have the people on your side\n\num if you want you can come to see can you hear me first Elon before I give the mic back together yeah oh good yeah he dropped that can you hear me or not just sign off he can't hear me I'll give the mic back to Kim no you can't hear me can you take the mic yeah really quick of Senator Warren's response that one person uh him should not have control over the narrative I mean uh you can come to Switzerland but well yeah I mean obviously if not one person has control of narrative because there's the entire Ministry media establishment who all talk like group think NPC Facebook there's Google uh there's Tech talk uh no the actual problem is there's one person who isn't Towing the line that's the real problem so that's the exact response that we needed that's\n\nyou yeah I mean Ian can you ask him a quick question as well as soon as one person doesn't toe the line now everyone else is looking like you know well now we're allowed to Elon and that's the issue is before we were at risk of being suspended or de-platformed you're allowing I mean yeah exactly as possible time like competition does keep companies honest or or should it isn't it forceful keeping companies honest so if there's a competition for the truth and Twitter wins the competition for the truth then it will win over the readership and the attention of the public and everyone else will be forced to tell the truth too do you think that you run the risk of like the EU commission or any of these other big political bodies trying to take you down when\n\nyou're doing this I did not think this is but but I also think that like this song this is this is the support of the people then you have to say like any organization at least in the US that it is going to go against all of the people uh I think will be in big trouble themselves you know uh Elon you're doing this at such an important time in history because uh I think people can sense that the censorship is becoming more uh that the media is feeling more and more propaganda that we are heading into a future where Free Speech isn't really acceptable anymore and for you with your audience uh you know to go out there and put this transparency out there I think a lot of people appreciate that this is a you know a fight that you are that you are taking Center\n\nStage uh you know in order to uh fix some of these issues no I mean if frankly the [Music] during any open-air corporates uh let me put it that way um it's not that hard to kill me if somebody wanted to so hopefully they don't and uh the Fate Smiles upon does not have security that doesn't happen um and they're taking reasonable proportions I guess but but uh there's definitely some some risks here but I mean at the end of the day I think we'll just want to have a future where you know we're not oppressed or so our speech is not suppressed and and we can say what we want to say without fear of reprisals and um you know as long as long as you're not like really causing harm somebody else then you should be able to say what you want um and uh and that's\n\nquite a rare thing you know I I think as people just take that for granted sometimes but really throughout history Free Speech has been highly unusual and so we have to fight very hard to keep that because it's such a rare thing and and it's by no means uh something that's default it's a controlled speech for not free and yeah it is incredibly ironic so many so many reporters in the media and prominent politicians are calling for drains on freezing they're they're this is crazy it feels like we're in Bizarro World here do you think that that comes from the way that uh journalism is taught now in today's schools and that we call post-modern journalism or where do you think that's really coming from I mean I haven't been I haven't been to journalism school\n\nbut it does seem as though that the the elite educational institutions have been something virus which is you know so like how much actual intellectual freedom and yeah how much Intel actual intellectual freedom is there at Elite educational institution where you don't get completely shunned if unless you uh abide by uh what everyone else thinks and then what everyone else thinks is you're told what to think not ask that you know you're sort of you must think this it's not like you have freedom to think as and talk as you wish yeah um what's the solution for this I mean like obviously this is and and um and have truth be see what matters more than anything I mean I think it's funny that you know Harvard's motto and the Harvard standard is Veritas and\n\nand the founders of the of Harvard were right to have that on their fields The Shield of truth but is Harvard The Shield of Truth today maybe not well you know we're all um our belief in Freedom to transact and obviously Jack was a big Bitcoin lightning guy um what can you comment on uh freedom to transact Bitcoin lightning Twitter anything we could we couldn't look forward to thank you well uh you know I think that's actually more powerful even than I think controlling then censorship which control of the monetary system um if you have control of the money monetary system and control the transaction you can literally stop someone from the you can stall people to death you know can throw them out of their homes so we have to be very careful about like\n\nwho is controlling the money system here and and what what rules and regulations are they going to put on on transactions it seems like PayPal has strayed pretty far from the path of that like they're I've been Banning seems to be moving in the direction of social credit and restricting transactions and uh you know so that's that's concerning so and like I do think there is a role for crypto in the future without speaking to any big particular crypto coin as a means of showing that the monetary system does not get completely corrupted it essentially it provides competition to the fiatric system so if the Fiat system becomes um overly restrictive then crypto will grow like basically the better that the Fiat works the the less prominent crypto will be and\n\nthe worst the fear system becomes the more crypto will grow are you concerned about the moves towards Central Bank digital currencies I don't think what they're talking about [Laughter] not really um a lot of people a lot of people have theorized that FTX and the Fallout there was a ploy to push us toward that centralization and the digital dollar ball and flatten its face now correct well yeah well this I think they're complaining a few things first of all all money is almost almost all money is digital already the the Fiat monetary system for practical purposes consists of a series of heterogeneous mainframes running uh Antiquated Cobalt that's the actual money system by the way it's kind of embarrassing some rickety mainframes running ancient Kobo\n\num and running and doing everything in batch mode um that's the actual monitories the Fiat monitories so I've got can you hear me first is it working now or no but it is digital oh [ __ ] but not not in a very good way whether Banks create some their own cryptocurrencies I think people will use the cryptocurrencies that they think will accrue value over time and not use the ones that that don't go to the Moon hey Elon could you could you shed some um spill the beans on the whole uh SPF finance and Twitter fundraise uh I it's not much that not many beans to spill here the I had one conversation with SPF in May it was like half an hour he was just talking like a mile a minute uh I think he was clearly on some stimulants and uh and he kept talking about\n\nhimself uh and FDX and which is weird because the call was supposed to be about Twitter um and I was like you know should you want to ask me some questions about Twitter instead of talking about yourself the vibe I got there was like my [ __ ] meter like with redlining so I'm like but everyone kept saying you know Morgan Stanley and lots of other people kept saying oh SPF is the best and he's got tons of money and so that's why I agreed to speak to him but then I my like I said he set up my [ __ ] meter and but which frankly I don't think this was like deeply deep inside wasn't necessary if if someone's calling you to talk about investing it in a big transactions they should be asking questions about the transaction not talking about themselves and and\n\nand talking at the speed of an Auctioneer so that doesn't require deep insight to figure out that the devotion factor is high he didn't end up with with any client funds accidentally yeah so unfortunately Mario is having connection issues so you're unable to hear him and Mario I was going to say my DMs are open if you want to relay comments or questions for Elon there and I can try to help field those and also Alex is one of the accounts that was wrongfully suspended by Twitter and you fortunately brought back I wanted to give him the opportunity to ask you a question because he's had his hand up if that's okay okay sure hey um we can't hear you Alex yeah mutant on mute just so we can hear Alex because I think elon's background noise is muting Alex hey\n\nElon muskimi so yes I'm telling him that he can't find you that's okay just give me me one second here real quick um Elon you you said something you know really important and that is that truth matters and uh you know this is really what this is all about because without Free Speech we don't have truth and I would like to ask you what is your opinion about Julian Assange and Edward Snowden shouldn't those guys uh be a center stage when it comes to free speech and truth you know shortened the US government leave Julian Assange alone and let him be a journalist you know I I don't know enough about the Assange situation um to give an accurate answer um I mean there are things where you know uh that we're national security stuff is involved you know I think\n\ndo you need to be kept secret in just because you know uh you know there's like nuclear secrets that there are you know the things where Bad actors if they had access to that information could do bad things so yeah but when when a journalist exposes war crimes right when a government just goes and invades the country and kills people you know against international law like when exposures like this are being made isn't that important so people see the reality of wars and understand how some of that stuff is really bad yeah I mean I generally think that people should like so that that people should have be able to know what's going on in order to make sensible decisions uh and I'm not I just don't know enough about the Islam situation to say whether you\n\nknow should be punished or not punished uh but I I do think that I'm generally in favor of Freedom of Information and and like if there's any doubt we should lead on the side of Freedom of Information and how about how about Equity Snowden who has revealed these Mass surveillance program where the government is spying on everyone and storing all their data in these massive spy clouds also against the law you know where the five eyes are working together to undermine the logo the local laws and their local restrictions on spying and they just spy on each other and then share the data so that they know everything about everyone how do you feel about that probably the best thing would be a jury of the public you know if so if Snowden were to be I don't know\n\nlook I have power on this situation but ultimately the people of the United States should be the ones who judge Snowden not not you know select people in the government if a jury of of of of peers of citizens were to review certain and make a judgment as to whether he's guilty or not I think that would probably be the appropriate course of action yeah the only problem is that if he were to be in in a U.\n\nS court he wouldn't get a fair trial because uh under Espionage acts laws you cannot even make a public interest defense he wouldn't even be able to say I've done that because it's the right thing for American to know about that so that would be a defense that is not available to him so to say you know a jury of your peers should be excited about that that's the problem yeah I I don't know I mean there's no easy answer to the Snowden Islam situation and I but yeah can I make a suggestion Elon why don't you do a poll to your millions of users and ask them if they think Julian Assange and Edward Snowden should be given their peace for the service that they have provided to humanity okay that's a good idea sure I like that idea I'm going to ask a question\n\non Mario's half really quick since he's unable to speak to Elon which has to be extremely frustrating as the host he was just curious if you faced any pressure so far since releasing the Twitter files um I mean I face pressure all the time so it's kind of it would be like what's the differential in pressure before and after because I I don't but I'm not I haven't seen it yet I don't know maybe there's pressure but I I might not just not be feeling it because I just just every day is the high pressure situation but uh I don't know what like I said we're just gonna uh put all the information out there try to get a clean slate and then work iteratively in the future to provide the most truthful accurate and timely uh information people that will be the goal\n\nof of Twitter and we won't be perfect in that regard but I think we will be iteratively better um and and if if that turns out if we're successful in doing so then I think Twitter will will compete more effectively than any other source of information and then more and more people will use Twitter um and and that and then that competitive pressure will force other social media companies and and other media companies to also be more truthful because otherwise they will simply lose their readership and that I think is extremely powerful and good Vision could you say a little bit perhaps about what Twitter is expected to maintain as an API to say the Department of Homeland Security in general the FBI maybe sees it in particular is there an expected way in\n\nwhich the government can jack in to social media that's expected on behalf of each of the big media platforms and is that sort of different I don't know how to say this exactly but the issue of left versus right is Complicated by the fact that Trump is a non-player to the game just the way Bernie might have been considered a non-player to the game and the secondary question is how much of this isn't about left versus right but about targeting anyone who isn't a party to all of the tacit agreements inside DC [Music] um can you still hear us Elon Elon you're still there I hope so no he's disconnected it says disconnected for me at least oh I'll invite him I'll invite him again okay oh he's back he's back that's a Pity that he couldn't hear you man that\n\nis just yes please no it's fine man it's fine like you know me I'm gonna be listening I'm happy listening can you guys see me at least yeah Dara thanks for asking the question I really I was really curious about it uh but it says for me he's still a speaker can anyone see him as a speaker I can see him he's not speaking ah last time last time he was here Kim you were there I think Kim you commented and he joined um he when we co-hosted him remember Kim we co-hosted him and it froze someone yeah I think he's dropped off now yeah I'll send him I'll send him an invite a few people um got kicked off stage um not even by you came just by themselves they'll just goes give you a heads up Twitter's glitches what's your take while waiting for Elon guys guys what's\n\nyour take so I'll find what Elon has said because there's a few pretty big things you mentioned the worry that he has just to summarize what he said right I mean his main goal clearly is that the truth is out there that it has value again and that Twitter needs to make a stand for free speech which he is doing now and he is aware of the risk to him personally and his businesses so it's a very courageous thing for him to do and I think you know anyone who had any doubt about what his intentions are when he bought Twitter I think it's pretty clear that what he's doing is in the interest of the people and not necessarily in his own best interests so I find that amazing and I applaud him for that yeah and while waiting uh while waiting of the end of another\n\ninvite what do you guys think of his um I know he was I'm not sure he's saying it as a joke but he's sick you know secure dirty fear if you're on his on his security and I think I don't think he has anything really to worry about I mean I don't think anyone's gonna really gonna come at him right now because it'd be too obvious why they'll be going after him so I think he's quite safe and he does have security so personally I'm not concerned although at the same time you know there's uh he does have security for a reason right he is the world's richest man so um there's that but I'm not really I don't think it it's going to be different than any other day there's nothing that he's revealing now that is you know that damaging to you know any specific person\n\nright it's like uh he's he's more or less just giving people the platform for for free speech and the people who are most affected by this are journalists who you know what do they have to lose well their reputations for one but they've already thrown it away so I don't think it's you know I don't think he really has this uh to worry about his personal safety I don't think it's going to be that dire Elana just to let you know Elon is listening now um I've sent you through an invite you should see it via DM um so I sent you through the invites to come back on stage so uh hopefully it works it might take a bit of time because space is glitching like crazy yeah for everyone else everyone else yeah go ahead Mario there's some backfeed coming from you I'm\n\nnot sure if you have your uh audio playing in the background but there I can hear you twice I don't know if anyone else is having that issue oh I can hear him twice okay I'll try to fix it by the way everyone I'm just gonna tweet the next space link now to set your reminders for the next space I'll fix my audio Kim I feel like it's yours yeah let's hope that Elon comes back is if he has a chance I mean first of all how amazing is that that he joins us from his private chat you know to be part of it because of this space it's just typical Elon it's so cool I mean it's a historical moment right I mean he's a part of it I mean he's he's the part of it so I mean thank you he's he's back guys just FYI he's back Elon let me see if he can hear me this time [Music]\n\nuh yeah can you hear me yes yeah I'm glad I'm glad you can hear me I'm glad you can hear me again um so I think Kim you were asking a question now I was just saying how cool it is that you talk to us from your uh private jet you know we really appreciate it it's like a typical Elon moment and we're just all in awe about you you know taking these risks uh to your business and to yourself to fight for free speech so I said to to everyone who had doubts about your intentions when you bought Twitter uh you're making your intentions very clear and I think it's very courageous of you and I want to thank you for that uh no you're most welcome I mean like I said the you know the proof will be in the pudding over time there will be many mistakes made um and uh\n\nbut iteratively I think the the the net Vector should be towards truth if sort of new Twitter is successful in that then the results will be that people will turn to Twitter to understand what is true what is real what what narratives matter Twitter will gain a lot of you know readership and attention and and and it'll be put a lot of competitive pressure on mainstream media and on other social media companies to also be more truthful um because otherwise they'll they will simply keep losing people to to Twitter and and that's where the competition can be a very very good thing um and but it's not going to be perfect and there'd be going to be decisions that you know people disagree with but on balance the overall decisions are ones that people do agree\n\nwith and they will gravitate towards Twitter and Twitter will be successful and will gain share from from from other uh social media and and it will cause those other sources of media to then uh stop Towing the line and and and to sort of be more truthful what's your uh just a quick question Elon what's the biggest risk in your opinion from the steps you've taken in terms of releasing the files do you see any risks for for Twitter um I mean I guess would probably be some yeah we'll be surprised at some lawsuits or something you know yeah I would expect there to be some legal risk what's important that's that's the last thing that's less of a concern than you know clearing the air and and and uh making sure that that people are both you know don't know\n\nwhat really happened and uh the the the metrics the Twitter metrics show that it seems like it's the right decision by far not only ethically but from from a business perspective as well uh that you keep hitting new records yeah exactly so like I said it's it's one as as it becomes clear and that that Twitter is the place to actually figure out what's going on and get the unfiltered narrative the unfortunate truth also for the people of Twitter to be able to to suggest narratives and steer this you know and and emphasize narratives themselves um and have things not be controlled like it is with the so-called mainstream media where you know the narrative is controlled by a handful of editors and Chiefs you know if they see the Wall Street Journal New York\n\nTimes and Washington Post and maybe a few others decide what the narrative is and so even if what they say is completely truthful um the people that really get a choice in in what topics are covered whereas on Twitter they do and and and uh you know like it could be something really important on the world and and then uh the big news organizations aren't covering it but on Twitter the people can decide what narratives are important and what should be emphasized and what should you know yeah so so that's cool can I mention something really quick that can I just mention something really quick I can hear you okay is that you I'm just going to ask a quick question I'm sorry what Twitter is doing or what you are doing what you're planning to allow uh people\n\nto have more ability to publish their own stories on Twitter because you know right now we just have tweets right yeah but uh like what are your plans for say video publication or article publication uh things to incentivize you know creators and journalists independent journalists to be able to have their voices heard it for more than just streets yeah absolutely I mean these are all like very obvious moves one needs to be able to pump obviously post long form content on Twitter they when it needs to be able to post long long videos and long audio uh on Twitter natively and there also needs to be of monetizing that so that creators can you know make a living those are I I feel like I'm saying that the you know the sky is blue and the grass is green you\n\nknow there's pretty obvious stuff and in order to implement those things um Twitter needs to have a strong software engineering organization that is focused on shipping grade code um and uh you know was quite a mess before and that registered will have a strong engineering to be able to implement those those basic features you know that even if there are lots of limitations Apple um well then where they can post it on Twitter and then Twitter Can Be an Effective competitor to YouTube um and then like I said what happens with when there's competition for with the truth and everyone and and one company steps out of line you know it actually really really disallowed the you know truth to flourish it it's it's going to put a lot of competitive pressure on\n\nother organizations to do the same thing can you talk about whether or not the effort to supposedly pre-bunk Mal information which is to take real information and then if it's Imaging to a narrative to put fear uncertainty and doubt around it is there a an attempt through the Department of Homeland Security or the FBI or Cesar any of these groups to tell Twitter that it has to maintain a port so that information can come from the government to say we need this information prebunct well I mean if if there is any sort of request from the US government that is not in accordance with the law or can be legally fought uh Twitter will refuse legal and it's full weekly such that it can be but but we cannot gag the voice of the people this is not good um and and\n\nlike I said earlier it's like you look at look at I I read a lot of history I love love history and I love history podcasts and stuff hardcore history is the best one Hardcore History Dan Colin is so awesome fantastic start with the Mongol start with the Mongols yeah but it's like you look through instrumented and it's like we're just we have this pressure we're in this precious situation where like it's rare a new situation where there's actually you know I mean within boundaries there's there is actually freedom of speech but it's written in history um and usually it's like been some king or whatever that's just they were just by default and now we have this like rare moment in history where the voice of the people um is mostly not suppressed but now\n\nthere are people trying to suppress it and we just find really hard for for freedom of speech this is very I think essential future of civilization I absolutely agree with you I mean this is why you're fighting right this is why you know you're fighting for free speech so that we can have it in the future because if we don't have control of the present we do not have control for future it will be in the control of somebody else someone that we absolutely do not want to be in control of anything yeah exactly just as much time in there you know there are a lot of people in in the last decade that have lost hope because uh what's happening in politics what's happening in the media there's so much frustration and I think the most important thing that you've\n\ndone here Elon with your steps that you are taking is to give people hope again well great I mean I'm really glad to hear that and like I said I'll do my best here um you know I'm definitely going to make some mistakes along the way and it won't be perfect but I'll also then do my best to correct those mistakes and and to be you know the least done possible because as I say rocks popular box today man it's like yeah I mean it's a very white pilling moment to have you fight this fight you know I mean a lot of us have been fighting this culture War for free speech basically and you know I think a lot of people have lost hope because they didn't see anyone caring about it right it's like the majority of people obviously do care but they just don't know what\n\nto do and yeah it's true what what Kim said just to Echo what he said Thank You For Fighting this fight I mean this is very very important it's not just you it's not just me it's all of us absolutely yeah I mean I'm like I mean I I I'm like sort of you know worried about the future of civilization uh you know like are we headed in a good good good direction like if you study history you sort of see like the arc The Arc of civilizations the rise and fall you know with the Sumerians the ancient Egyptian in in India and China they've been many sort of rise and Falls of civilizations within India and China and it's just like people sometimes take for granted that because they've been in in an upcycle things just get better in the future and they don't just\n\nautomatically get better um uh they actually so civilizations tend to have an arc we want to make sure that we we do not find ourselves on the downslope of that Arc you know good times make weak men right and we are in the good times right now and we're seeing a lot of black men right like that's where we are in this Ark and it sucks so let's try not to repeat the same cycle we need to fight the cycle yeah exactly exactly you know not to sort of get like two I mean too philosophical about things here but there is there is like sort of a you know I've had these discussions with like a lot of people and I feel like wondering like what's the meaning of life like what should we do like what why do anything you know um and uh you know for some people that\n\nanswer is religious but then if you're not sort of very religious then then what what is the answer actually my theory on that is that I I sort of believe in Douglas Adams philosophy the universe like the the universe is the answer and we should strive through greater understanding uh with to expand the scope and scale of Consciousness to better understand what questions to ask about the answer that is the universe you know it's it's basically a religion of curiosity uh like let's let's uh grow into the future expand in the future expand Consciousness expand our understanding and um and and uh figure out what that's going on and um number 42 as well and also you know don't panic and and make sure you grab a towel without without giving away too much really\n\nquick Elon is there any way to get a sneak peek of what what we can expect with the next uh Twitter files drop [Music] well I'm someone leaving this up to Matt tyvee and Barry Weiss um but um I think the natural thing would be to say like okay what happened after the the election you know the 100 dividing laptop stuff and by the way I actually don't I I this may sound bizarre but uh it's kind of fun to be honest um I know it yeah he's an artist do you know that he seems like he seems like he knows how to have a good time dividing him but so uh if it but just beyond the um you know what happens what happened after the election you know how much government influence was there you know there's like there's this whole sort of move to create a disinformation\n\nMinistry which was insane um and like George Orwell is turning in his grave he hears those things but but like what happened with you know was that you know I think there was a public outquire about like this information yeah started that one he basically stopped it in his tracks because before that nobody knew that this was even a thing right and you exposed it and suddenly everybody was talking about it and they had to shut it down because it was very orwellian it was like they use 1984 as a instruction manual exactly totally exactly 1984 is 1984 supposed to be a warning Notch and instruction manual yep and that's what they seem to be doing they take every single you know dystopian fiction whether it's CSX I love that game and and they're like yeah\n\nthis world looks awesome that's the press the hell out of people it's like no let's not do that exactly totally even speaking speaking of uh progress you've accomplished so much you started the first successful American car company in 100 years uh you brought payments to the internet there's a lot of aspiring um entrepreneurs and small business owners that look at what you do and sort of try to you know follow that example and see how can they create some of that progress too and I wanted to ask you a little bit about the layoffs because um it appeared to be with the four million dollar loss per day and just doing the math on the billion dollars of interest expense that three million dollars of that may have been interest expects added and and I myself\n\nrunning a small business had been in a situation where you know the business was going to go under in a number of months if expenses weren't cut you know and and what we found is communicating to employees giving them time to process getting their feedback and then you know creating a shared vision and to evolve the product to evolve the company to it to a greater future was was really successful and it appears here that the typical like Leverage buyout KKR uh approach was basically applied from a financial standpoint you know for a small business owner like you know is that approach wrong like did you think about taking that approach um you know with that ever under consideration yeah I apologize like like is not it's not it's not I'm not fully hearing\n\nthe questions um but you know with respect to Twitter uh you know the the company uh basically triple head count in about two years a little over two years but but revenue is flat to declining so that there's just no way that that is uh going to be a healthy situation so the first order of business with Twitter was like okay we got to make sure Twitter doesn't die that doesn't go bankrupt the there is quite a lot of debt on this deal 12 and a half billion of debt um and Ted is being extremely unwise in its very giant uh rate increases I think this is these will go down to some of the most foolish fed decisions ever but anyway so the death's got to be serviced and uh yeah KKR and other private Equity companies that you know do any anything from a hostile\n\ntakeover you know or any sort of takeover where they where they bid over the current price using leverage using debt you know I've been following that for years and it always results in massive layoffs and so as somebody who's by the way I don't say anybody cares about that I don't think that matters right now and I was going to say as long as they keep moving the bar and changing the definition of a recession we are where we are right back on topic here you know I mean we have Elon we don't need to talk about you know his Investments and things like that um Iran uh we should send a shout out to the Twitter spaces team because you're about to break the all-time record with the space we're almost at 100 000 listeners right now yes we are man talking about\n\ntalking about spices you know what's the strategy moving forward awesome look I I have to tell you that there are really some amazing people at Twitter um and uh there's actually some amazing people who actually left Twitter uh in recent years uh and I hope they come back um uh because I think there's a potential to just build some amazing things here so you know I don't want to just I want to be exactly complimentary of the some of the the great work that is being done on Twitter um so you know it's sort of you know it's sort of like I mean there's a lot to criticize about Twitter and say like okay we're wasting money really some negative ways but also people who really care about the truth of Twitter um and I'm doing my best to elevate their capabilities\n\nand um and give them all the resources they need I am very excited about Community note uh this feature you know Keith Coleman's running it and there's like a some really first-rate Engineers that are are writing the code on that on their product that is I think going to be very powerful for fighting for actually fighting disinformation not not okay please see that if we're not if we're not enrolled in community notes right like right now uh the rest of the world isn't right it's just the United States and I think Canada to my knowledge but uh can you at least make it visible to other people so even if we're not able to contribute we can at least view it because yeah I feel kind of left out him in I'm in Malaysia so you know it's kind of hard to see it\n\nyeah actually I I actually I I asked that I I sent a note to Keith Holmes saying like hey shouldn't we just at least make this visible everywhere um and then he said if we needed to talk in person about that but I'm not sure what okay ELO we did we did want to say on the Twitter spaces um during the blowout of SPF and FTX all the other companies in crypto there's been massive Financial losses for um many people obviously um but Twitter spaces actually became the place that drove the community together and we were we've been sharing lots of stories there were people that were suicidal because of the financial loss and because of the community and Twitter spaces um they've prevented them taking their life there's lots and to add to it as well Elon last\n\ntime if you remember when you joined the space about Sam and that space ended up going for 16 hours and for three four days the media was in our space getting the news from the space for four days five days straight and then writing stories on it day after day and I think Simon was there Kim was there so it was a as I think it's the first time it happens to that extent on Twitter spaces and and we're probably doing it again today yeah and this type of Citizen journalism that you are enabling is uh so powerful you know because we are the news now if people want to learn the truth they go to Twitter and join these spaces you know it's like real time uh with experts it's fantastic and then we have people like you joining in and and sharing their opinions\n\nand their thoughts what is more powerful than that the traditional media can pack and and it's game over for them would you ever consider holding a space for earnings for Tesla I'm right here live on Twitter [Music] um oh man I have to say you're being Tesla being a public company it just creates it such a gigantic attack surface for all for legal firms in the uh in the US especially these class action firms that that yeah that seems like a bad idea I've been to faces I've been to spaces other CEOs held uh and they did their earnings live right on Twitter and I thought I'm happy to do it yeah so you've made you've made Elon you've just made two promises you've made two promises man now you've made this one and you've made one to Kim about the I'm out\n\nI'm out you made a promise to Kim about the poll and now you made a promise to hold the uh the Tesla uh meter here on spaces so just I'll remind you afterwards about it as well yeah so I've been getting a lot of questions from people who are just bombarding me just to ask you right because you know we're in the space they're asking what are you going to do about the shadow Banning situation because like I'm personally a search band I'm not Shadow band but I'm search band and I'm not sure what's even up with them yeah I mean but if I said I've only been on the job like a month guys so uh just uh there's definitely I've got a long list of things to do um a general um we need to say like your account could actually just tell you you are a search band or\n\nyou are de-boosted or whatever it is and and why and what the process is for fixing that um now now the best week I should tell you that that we did we were probably a little overzealous and that's if anything that's that's my fault because we I'm just trying to get rid of the damn uh scams and spam and Bots and stuff um and so in in trying to stamp out or reduce the the Bots bam scam stuff uh there will be some false positives uh so uh so that's just week but uh to be taking I know it was like it's going to be an iterative Journey towards towards truth and towards a healthier system at any given point it will be broken but it will be moving as quickly as possible towards a good place and I encourage people to you know complain about it and whatnot uh\n\nbut uh it's just it will it will move it early iteratively towards a good place that's the goal and again they move pretty fast so on the net the vector some of those to say um over time I'm losing him yeah I make him check my checking check my DMs Kim check my DMs because I'm having glitches so I might need your help with a few things hey long yep yep oh you're back another another question I think you've made a reference once to WeChat um I think that was a while ago and I don't recall it correctly is does that reference still stand today is that a potential vision for Twitter yeah I'll just use a functionality that Twitter should have um like it's a kind of a no-brainer for Twitter to have payments uh both fiat currency and crypto and to make that\n\nthat and simple for people to use uh as talked about earlier adding uh the ability to post long form written content and video content and to be able to monetize that easily and um and I have a playlist you know like YouTube does yeah um my focus in the first month and and also will be the case in December is is just making sure that that twit that Twitter is operating efficiently as a company that um it is not that is not wasting money um because it it faces challenges on the revenue front from you know with an over-dependence on Advertising that is not targeted uh like brand advertising and and in in a market where advertising Revenue in general is dropping um and then also when you start questioning the status quo then you know various pressure groups\n\nstart pressuring advertisers to not advertise with you so that's another you know Challenge on the revenue front and then you've got the debt and and the the debt has now has a very high interest rate so it's like these are a lot of challenges simultaneously to that um I think we'll you know we'll solve these challenges but these are a lot of things to solve so the first order of business is just get Twitter healthy um make sure its expenditures are reasonable um that um you know Twitter Twitter's like primarily a software company there are obviously Design Elements but it's primarily software and servers and so like is the software team organized well those that are committing code committing good code and just that making the engine of engineering work\n\nat Twitter because if you look at say like what is Twitter's Evolution technology Evolution over time excluding Acquisitions it's been very low it's the technology of Twitter has been very slow and there's an edit button yeah exactly the edit button look I mean if it takes a year to do an edit button and the edit button still doesn't work properly then you can have a million good ideas but they're irrelevant because you can't Implement so Elon uh I've got a quick question for you my friend um I was removed from this okay I want to test my mic can you guys hear me um I can hear you um maybe can you hear me Alex we can we can hear um yeah guys okay does Alex want to go and then I can go can you hear me yeah okay so my question was if the the files are those\n\nalso going to include other content others so basically all those pages uh yeah this is a bit of an audio [ __ ] show let's try and get this back on the road I unmuted everyone and I muted everyone I'm going to unmute those who are not talking uh just mute yourself please I would like to ask Elon a quick question trying this again I think Alex just did and he was ready to respond he just now would have to unmute himself to respond to Alex yeah I was just wondering if all accounts that were requested to have things taken down by the DNC and by the Biden campaign even ones that have nothing to do with the hunter Biden laptop if they will also be released um yes um the uh intended to release uh all the files um so it's not like anything that's hidden or\n\nanything I can't hear anybody hey dropped out is my mic good Kim by the way is am I Mike okay Alex I mean I think this is you know this is like whatever Saucy files or your Truth and Reconciliation like Nelson Mandela would say you know it's it's if you want reconciliation there must be truth that's that's the intention intent here is to just make make it clear what was happening and provide transparency about the past and in doing so to build trust about the future awesome so do you think that Twitter could also like have an automatic um notification if anyone was stay up their account was requested confident taken down do you think there could be something like that yeah like the VPN sites actually offer that foreign [Music] request content takedowns\n\nthat are embarrassing then they'll be less likely to request those content take them um you know at the end of the day it doesn't have a choice but to abide by the laws of you know the US and and whatever countries is operating uh you otherwise get arrested um we shouldn't do more than that to be abide by the laws because you have to um and uh you know if maybe there may be some potential to say like well if we disagree with the law maybe we can Bobby to have a little change or something like that but um so Elon I want to ask you on this point um go ahead sorry no I I'm just gonna like saying like the the overarching goal here is that um on balance that that Twitter be a force for good for the future of civilization um that and and for the expansion of\n\nof Consciousness So to that point I want to ask you then because I'm speaking from the European lens um what do you think about the eu's proposals over potential restrictions um or equally um I know you had a little bit of a uh should we say Fanfare with Alex finman earlier this week um I was wondering if you would be interested in a space with you and him since I know him uh from the week ago we had a chat I invite you too if you'd be interested if you'd be interested don't don't waste your time with the intelligence Community seriously yeah I'm teasing but I'm I am curious about your thoughts on the European Union perspective um well yeah actually there's a lot of the the EU rules call call for things that I agree with uh transparency and and an ability\n\nfor people for users to appeal uh and have a clear process so I think I you know in terms of the Digital Services act I think I think it's uh it's mostly good I think we have to watch the implementation of it and make sure the implementation does not uh is not um you know bad for the the people of Europe but the actual um you know I think most of what is in there I I agree with you know because it's transparency and accountability uh it seems quite sensible um we just need to make sure that that is not warped in a bad Direction but uh generally I you know I agree with it um or at least what I know of it today um allow governments to Define what misinformation or disinformation is right I mean that is probably the most dangerous if development to give\n\ngovernments that kind of power that they become the deciders of what truth and what is not yeah no that that's that is a big deal I agree that is that's that's that goes to the heart of the situation you don't want to have governments and especially it may not even be sort of it may not be an elected official maybe someone who is uh potentially a mid-level executive in a Ministry people don't even know exists and was never elected uh despite being in a democratic country what about the kind of protesters um what role do you think that Twitter can have in helping to support Iran Ukraine China and other countries that are facing you know uh technological oppression and limitation in their access to freedom of speech well uh I mean yeah like I said we'll\n\ndo whatever is possible within the bounds of the law you know I have a kind of a personal question and I've been curious you know was there a Breaking Point that made you decide do you want to buy Twitter that's a good question um I was hoping you would say the child exploitation that you you've done more to get rid of in the past month than they did in the past 10 years on Twitter and I wanted to thank you for that and I'm sorry that the media has completely snubbed you on mentioning the fact that you guys have gone above and beyond to make that happen and Eliza blue thank you for your work and efforts there yeah I'd like to say thank Eliza blue I would like to thank Andrea as well I think we've actually had in this is actually like a really good case\n\nof of you know crowdsourcing of having people on Twitter actually help us solve the child exploitation stuff it's actually it is it is true um yes Twitter has done more to stop child exploitation last month than probably the last 10 years that's insane it kind of blows my mind frankly and we're going to keep doing it and it's always going to be number one I mean it's like kids can't defend themselves so we must Mario we can't hear you no you you sound like you're like a mosquito now sounds like he's in the toilet to be honest Elon do you still have plans to drop the W everyone is asking um I I mean technically the poll did come out positive on that um so the people have spoken I know so the people have not spoken there but most of my question like I don't\n\nthink you answered that like uh I want to know like what was the breaking point I think a lot of people want to know this one like what was the breaking point that made you want to buy Twitter okay first of all I suppose I I if if Twitter had been if I'd been able to to buy Twitter sooner than I I might have actually done that you know that we're a situation where my liquidity was enough and Twitter's value is you know with with whether you know there's essentially a closing price like would I actually have that wasn't the case until recently um but I I guess the it just felt like it really had been building for for some time so I wouldn't say there was like it wasn't like a step change suddenly this is a one thing it's not like Oh The Babylon B got banned\n\nthat's why I bought Twitter that would be crazy it's more that they they just seem to be like this more and more group thing amongst the media um more and more uh sort of Towing the line amongst digital social media company basically just we're traveling the path more and more of suppression of free speech um and this was just getting me concerned it's like the trends were just very very bad um so unless something was done to reverse this trend against Free Speech then I felt well maybe you know some point everything will just get cut off and unless you're in agreement with whatever the group think is you're just going to be ostracized or your voice will be shut off so like I said it wasn't any one thing it was just it was just like okay and I could I\n\ncan't exactly say why because it's like one of those things where it's like it might it's just that my biological neural net uh you know that's important to buy Twitter and if you you know to stuck with a digital neural net you can't really exactly explain why the neural net is able to understand or text or just say that that the collective result of the neural net says that this is an important action uh though or this is the right action and my biological neural net concluded that it was important to buy Twitter and then if Twitter was not bought and steered in a good direction it would be a danger for the future of civilization and so that's why I that's why I bought it that's brilliant American you mentioned the biological neural net and the digital\n\nneural net when is the a neural link to be ready to copy our Consciousness into account please whatever where can I sign up for it because I would love to have my my brain augmented you know it's like cyberpunk yeah exactly just going full cyberpunk at this point uh yeah um the other side to that to that um I'm sure you're familiar with Doctor Who right and the Cyber men and this idea of a centralized system by which you can influence people's thoughts is that not a consideration that you have on your radar if you get where I'm coming from well I mean frankly on the on the the neural neural are there neural link front if I look at the pace at which artificial intelligence is improving versus the pace at which neurolink is a progressing artificial intelligence\n\nis moving much faster than the neural link is moving because as soon as anything gets done with humans it gets very slow because of the danger to humans I mean for the next few years neurolink is really just focused on storing movement to people that have a broken neck or spine and restoring Vision so as restoring movement and vision it's not uh you know uploading memories or controlling thoughts or anything like that it's pretty basic stuff it's like the early days of computers you know it's basically but it's life-changing though right I mean being able to see if you you're born blind that is there's a gift that I don't think you know anyone would pass up that would be amazing yeah and that's that's very doable you know what I'm saying about neuralink\n\nis that you'll be able to see anything in your links doing you'll be able to see coming from very far off like like because you've got to go through the whole FDA device approval process if that takes ages to evaluate the safety in humans that takes a long time so it basically is very slow compared to the development of digital super intelligence very fast for a long time that we want to be more cautious in the development of digital super intelligence you know this represents the danger to the public and just as we have other regulatory agents uh oversee dangers of the public like the FDA or the FAA or you know any one of a number of FCC if there's you know you have to you can't just have companies as going Hog Wild developing digital super intelligence\n\nwith no oversight do you potentially see this happening in a country where there are no oversights you know where the governments allow the you know scientists to do to go Hog Wild as you said well [Music] look we there's there's the things we can control the things we can't control and I think the there should be some kind of oversight um you know North America and Europe which is where a lot of the AI Innovation is happening there should be some kind of oversight Beyond nothing which is currently the case we are from uh General artificial intelligence like what is your time frame you think until we have the big the big deal I mean I think it's it's happening very fast you see like AGI is defined by where where digital super intelligence is smarter than\n\nthe smartest human but what is your definition of AGI yeah exactly I mean once once the AI is able to basically program itself and understands how to uh how to advance itself that would be the level where we need to start to worry right yeah um we're yeah um I mean what about this you know last year after the pandemic we had the the great resignation and now there's the concern about the replacement of traditional labor jobs with you know Ai and machine technology I think it was you uh you know I saw the video deep in the capacity for it to control things with its mind it's not a concern about the potential impact it has on you know very menial jobs in the uh you know those people who don't have necessarily the skills or ability to retrain that quickly\n\njust you know how can we uh plan in advance to minimize the consequence sorry the audio the audio is like not not good right now so um oh no worse we can have another space sometime in the future to talk about AI because I think that is one of the big topics uh you know where a lot of people don't really realize how big uh the risk of ai ai is and what you are always uh asking for is you know more regulation better rules in order to prevent the worst case scenario of yeah an AGI taking over and basically wiping out like an artist and an artist in the job you know I mean mid-journey has basically replaced graphic artists for book covers you know you don't need a book artist anymore you can just do it with AI not not to change the subject back to the Twitter\n\nfiles but Kim I just want to ask Elon a quick question about section 230 are you concerned about that now and what the government could essentially due to section 230 as a result of the flattening that you're creating at Twitter and all the truth that you're you're pushing out in the objectivity well I I think it is I said I just said to say this on Twitter publicly it is good that that we we actually that the house will be Republican you know it's like it's not it's generally not a good idea if the U.\n\nS if the if the house senate and executive branch are all of one party then then you have to sort of situation so it's good to have uh at least one of those branches the other party um because then they will then then they will check the worst excesses of both parties so I think um you know I think it's good that the house will be Republican you know and this is and people to interpret that as like oh I must be some huge Republican or something it's like no I'm a huge moderate actually is what I am it's just like I wish people would curiously moderate uh but I advise the nature of being moderate is not it does not lend itself you know you cannot be it's like be fanatically moderate but but fanaticism I think some YouTubers like to say right be a radical\n\nCentrist yeah um so so it's just like like you want to have the government pass laws that are in the best people not that that are interested that are in the interest of a small segment of the people and uh you know so that's why I think if you like mixture of parties in control then then then they will pass only things that sort of are the intersection of sets of what both parties agree on which is more likely to be in the interest of the people so so I think I guess I feel pretty okay about that uh section 230 stuff yeah Elon um can you just quickly guys can you can you hear me now I know yeah I've just got I've just got I've just yeah I've just got I've got great speakers that just came up because now it's not glitching for me anymore so I've just\n\nwelcomed Clayton uh Patrick Davis on stage as well and there's more speakers about to come up that all of you would know now my space is working so guys uh feel free to jump in and ask Elon any questions hey thank you thank you so much if you want to retry the co-host thing to Mario yeah go ahead to Clay and then Patrick correctly hey thanks Elon this is Clayton from redacted um one of the stories we've been covering on our show over the past couple of months is the Dr shiva's lawsuit uh he was banned from Twitter running for the Senate from Massachusetts and one of the things in his lawsuit that was uncovered was the back end government portal to both Facebook and Twitter that they trusted Twitter partnership um and I know on Twitter's blog that trusted\n\nTwitter partnership between Twitter and someone with a government email information and to basically have a Town's band taken down is that portal is that trusted partnership still available to the government and given what you've released in the Twitter files does it make sense for that to still be there um I gotta dig into this uh thing you know obviously that has like some big brother Vibes will adhere to the low um but it will not do you know it's not going to go beyond the law uh and and if there are laws that seem that don't seem to be the interest of the people then Toyota will question but I'll dig into this trusted partnership thing kind of what's going on um I do what's rejected and I love you and your wife you're doing an amazing job so keep\n\nit going Eric did you have a Eric Sebastian did you have a question yeah yes maybe a follow-up to to the prior question Elon in the Twitter in the aisles of things that you found did you find any relationship between Facebook and any other Tick Tock whoever whomever with regards to what could be considered you know the collusion with with a certain um political parties was it was it another was there any collusion among other social media groups with Twitter um I've not directly seen that I'm not saying it doesn't exist but I've not seen it yet and in fact in terms of the Twitter files I Matt TV's read way more than I have like because my priority has been just getting Twitter healthy um and fixing uh Twitter engineering so that we can actually uh you\n\nknow uh release features at a high at a high rate you know that's been my priority on the Twitter front is we've got to get get Twitter to be in a financially healthy Place fix the engine of engineering so we can uh add the features and capabilities that are that are that are making much better and improve transparency and trust and all that so I actually don't even I I don't most of the stuff I I've read hardly any of the Twitter files uh Matt TV has and it very very wise is also getting access to it so you'll read it too um have you been in contact with any um of the other social platforms meta Google Etc since the release of the files has there been any pushback any concerns anything at all or it's been pretty quiet uh they haven't reached out to me\n\nuh I'm not aware of any any Outreach from them um so I I guess look if if I think if this if it turns out this like stuff that the public should know about then we'll put it out there um and uh man Matt Vivian Barry Wise Hey listen whatever you see do you think public should know about it you just post it with regards to the dissemination of information so right now it's just matai being very wise do you have any uh plans to maybe give it give access to more journalists like say uh Ryan Sevilla daily wire technophobic you know I mean he's done lots of coverage on this stuff even previously so I'm sure they'd love to know uh yeah I think uh I mean maybe at some point we should just like put it all out there you know um uh so like I think in the beginning\n\nit's it's good to have some coherence and um you know so it's not just a million stories all at once yeah it makes sense yeah it's a drip feed at first and then later on it's gonna be a flood right because otherwise it's just too many stories too much all at once in them people can't really focus on anything yeah it makes sense yeah you just you just get drowned out in the flood of things I think once once we think that the stories have the critical stories have been told then I think probably the right move is to just you know uh provide a data dump and then uh uh to go through it and see what was missed are you super are you surprised at all about the the the blowback against Matt taibi over the past 24 hours and a number of a number of uh liberal news\n\norganizations a lot of liberal news reporters came out and really slammed Matt taibi which really was really shocking what was your response to that well I think those people should be looking in the mirror and wondering why they were deceptive why did they deceive the American public and and instead of trying to redirect blame to Matthew to be accepting some responsibility themselves for not being truthful to the American public it's Elon it's Mike Cohen here um congratulations on of course the acquisition of Twitter but my question to you is how are you going to go about combating the issue of Bot and Bot forms who create so much misinformation and hate on your platform the last thing I do I will defeat the damn Boston trolls um maybe they need like\n\na mind virus that purges them you know just makes them self-destructible yeah I mean it's War it's war and and we're going to win that war big time um the extent of the hatred that these Bots cause is astronomically and um it's really terrible but thank you for thank you for your commitment to that absolutely can I can I jump in and ask a question here Michael just real quick just real quick I wanted to say something about the box there are of course commercial Bots right people trying to do spam but the more dangerous spots are those that are trying to interfere in this course and uh you know try to manipulate the conversation and those are primarily run by governments right they're run by the intelligence community in different countries they're trying\n\nto uh manipulate the way people are talking for example about Ukraine uh I think one of the more famous examples here are the so-called nafo Bots that are going out and shooting every month yeah often where them they're mixing it right so the intelligence Community does it in that way they have real people then they have Bots that are fully automated and then they even let their intelligence come Community employees work with Twitter profiles to chime in as well but all with one goal which is to manipulate the public discourse towards their goals and I think you experience that yourself when you spoke out for peace in Ukraine you were attacked by these same boss yeah no absolutely um like like I said you know I've been on the job a month I'm very good\n\nat software I wrote software for 20 years and uh I was very good back in the day at defeating the the scammers and uh they were just like they were just the the Bad actors had free reign even before um they will not have that in the future um I look forward to that battle um and we will expose those who are acting uh to manipulate public opinion and shine a bright light on it fantastic hey uh Kim if I could just ask a quick question on that same topic because there was a point at which I was told by someone who apparently had access to this Discord server for these NATO uh or NATO trolls that I was among their top targets or even the number one target for a while so I'm just sort of a personal curiosity by the way this is Michael Tracy um yeah um and\n\nso Elon I'm curious if you were able to detect or gauge any inauthentic activity on Twitter specifically related to this sort of pro Ukraine faction or you know is there was there a particular sort of system that kind of connects those actors that you were able to discern since you've taken the helm um well the the tools that Twitter currently has to detect large scale manipulation are quite strengthening that's why but in order for that for them to be strengthened we must like I said built the engine of engineering to be able to sort of see what's going on in the system I mean over and over again it's been it's like Twitter doesn't know what's going on in Twitter uh that that's actually the issue uh we need to build the tools that can analyze what's\n\ngoing on and see where where is their evidence of large scale manipulation uh in order to to highlight it and I think even if it's not shut down if it is simply highlighted instead of wait a second these these accounts are all acting in concert they're acting in a way that is faster than a human could possibly coordinate uh this this appears to be a link of you know 100 000 Bots link that are all acting in concert and and just say and and expose them essentially but but those software tools need to be written um and they have not yet been written so but they will be it's cool so I can give them to you right Elon wouldn't it be easier if you were able to use some form of two-part authentication in order to ensure that the individual [Music] yeah oh you're\n\nback yeah go ahead yeah Elon would it not be easier to just use some form of two-card authentication to ensure that the individual is who they say they are yes um now now that the the game plan with the sort of uh you know blue verified thing um is that that right now it is it is uh there are problems on many levels it's it's it's too cheap to have a bot so or and even a troll like like it's not just that somebody's operating a bunch of you know 10 000 instances um of of Twitter accounts you know you know in a bank of PCS you know uh it's it's it's like you can have a warehouse with and there are many parts of the world like Warehouse where there's just Banks of phones so there actually are operated by people the the the the the challenge right now so\n\nthe challenge is actually yeah you have to make it more expensive to to have um Bots and trolls it can't be like it's like a guy sitting in front of eight phones right that's just how they operate exactly the Farms are a guy sitting in front of headphones yeah like there's like well unfortunately the the disinformation uh budget for the CIA for the in our four parts is over a hundred million dollars I mean even if you throw eight dollars per month per account in front of them it's not is that really going to stop them uh not the eight dollars um the the if it was purely then I think it they could overcome a budget uh challenge but but the corporate but also then having to have a huge number of phones and a huge number of credit or debit cards is that\n\nthese all amplify the difficulty and and and then having if you want to do it do it such that that there's no that you can't find any connection between a hundred thousand phones and hundred thousand credit cards and a hundred thousand um you know authenticated phone numbers that's very difficult to do but just the the logistical difficulty of that is really high so it's more like you need to process some amount of money through the payment system in order to piggyback off the authentication of the payment system uh you know so eight dollars is kind of like a random number obviously um but but there's another thing that has to be accomplished simultaneously which is that uh Twitter cannot be like so heavily dependent on advertisers so this is an attempt\n\nto kill two birds with one stone um which is that which is build it build a source of uh Revenue that that is not Advertiser dependent so if the advertisers have do not have too much uh sway over what happens on Twitter and also uh use the payment system as an additional means of identifying and stopping large-scale manipulation of the system in other words users are going to realize that these are low people right they're all verified individuals that will make them want to advertise on the site so it's it's winning hey let's win right yeah let's go hey Kim can I can I ask you a quick follow-up to my question would you mind okay I have to I have to just stop this for a second because everyone is talking over each other Elon just made a really important\n\npoint which is that um he has more freedom to do what is good for his users if he is less dependent on Advertising so there's a large group of people here I think everyone who appreciates what Elon is doing for us right now in this fight for freedom of speech should support him and the best way you can support him is to become a subscriber at Twitter you're using this great service all the time if you want him to have more power and more freedom to achieve these goals for us well you know make that eight dollar a month investment I think it's really worth it the price of a lot did Elon already say winning plans to reinstate the verification um the Eight dollar verification process I think he's gonna tell you because Kim muted everyone all right so it\n\nseems to sometimes mute me I guess uh um yeah so the I I think we're probably about about a week away maybe uh basically this coming week we should be able to uh restart the verification process will it be Global or is it just the US still actually I'm just gonna discuss that with the team so this time for verification we're taking some additional steps where um you know one has to be a phone phone verified with a known good carrier an own good phone carrier um and uh and we're also well offer people the opportunity if they want to do ID verification kind of like what Airbnb does uh similar thing and they do that all around the world and then you then you'll be able to look at an account and say this account is payment verified it is verified it is ID\n\nverified optionally and also to establish organizational affiliation do you actually have affiliation with this organization is and providing organizations with the ability to Define to to to to stay which set of users are affiliated with that organization so like are you actually a professor at Stanford or are you actually for example a reporter at the New York Times or whatever um or an employee of a you know uh PepsiCo or whatever it is you know just generally to have granularity and Nuance to what verified means as opposed to the sort of like grab grab bag of nons uh which has been the the past blue verified situation where you know you could have been an intern at Mashable 10 years ago and now but we verified and it's it's kind of crazy or or and\n\nthen they're also just being traded constantly uh you could just buy a verified badge so you can't you can't actually tell if somebody's proved for legacy blue you can't tell if it's if that is a legitimate situation A crypto scam whether they're actually or other you don't know because there's no granularity to it and there was there's no way to buy them off of Google right now like you can literally Google verified accounts and they sell them for like 200 500 or something right yes exactly exactly it's not like it's not not like you have to go to the in quotes dark web to to do to buy blue verified you can literally Google search it on it's on page one of the Google search results verified so so it's just basically it's just a quick verified in the\n\ncorruption um and and so we need to move forward with something that that is that gives granularity and and detail and Nuance about the nature of the verification and uh so that you can actually trust what you see Elon you said you want some really admirable things about uh freedom of speech and your commitment to it and its role in the future of humanity you didn't answer the question about supporting protesters in China and Iran is their freedom of speech freedom of speech for Chinese people important Humanity in China just so you know like Twitter is inaccessible in China you need a VPN so it's kind of a pointless question so you don't think making it accessible for Chinese or Iranian it doesn't matter because a lot of people are confused that uh it's\n\na First Amendment issue what was dumped um by Matt tabi the First Amendment concerns government suppression so anything that happened before January the 20th isn't First Amendment unless it was the Biden Administration afterwards so for those who think that you know we've got the Smoking Gun and they don't need to wait for anything else if you address that issue Mr muscle yeah I mean what first of all actually there there are issues if um if there's electric interference before the government because uh uh you know that that's that that's uh that that is I think an issue certainly uh would appear that Twitter falsely claimed that there was not uh interference um but right but that that has to that has to do with in-kind contributions that's a very different\n\nkind of thing and it is it is Criminal but but can you tell us if there's you know there will be more smoking guns coming yeah I think there will be more smoking guns because the obvious next question is well what happened after the election exactly exactly yeah I mean that's probably the right thing for episode two um is what happened after the election and how do we have to wait for episode two I don't know check with Matt yeah we'll just quickly we'll go ahead will no thank you Elon apologies if you didn't if you addressed this earlier appreciate how long you've been on this call what subjects outside of Hunter Biden by the way this is Will Kane from Fox News what subjects outside of Hunter Biden were subject to the most government-induced censorship\n\nuh you may not have heard my earlier comment but uh I don't actually I like like I said I've been me personally I've been working on getting Twitter to be healthy and fixing the engine of engineering um I have not been sort of pouring over the Twitter files personally um that's sort of been you know Matt tyvee's doing that and Barry Weiss he's going to do it now as well so um anything I say would be somewhat of a uh you know guesswork really um but uh you know so I I don't know um you know there's obviously a lot of questions around uh uh Jan six um there's questions around uh you know covid there's a lot of questions and but I think the important thing is that we just get um you know bring daylight to all of these things and so anything that Twitter\n\nhas done and sometimes I think you know a lot of times Twitter's done things that were just they were just it wasn't malicious it was just foolish so the things that are like looking people for NPCs right for for posting NPC memes so thousands of people were banned yeah exactly right from a good question um with the companies Twitter which um I think most of us agrees is just not right has there been any progress since have you been in discussions with them and what are some other strategies to bring in Revenue so we depend Less on on advertisers you can hear this this is Eric bowling again trust any knowledge or you can have any proof that those there there's some indication that a lot of people on the right side of the political aisle lost a ton of\n\nfollowers I would say from 2015 2016 all the way through the you know towards the end of 2021 I'll give you a panic totally myself I I lost the 80 000 or so and not until I'm this is literal not until you purchase Twitter did I start gaining followers again in a fairly robust manner is there any proof of that do you have any evidence of of that being sort of a uh a plan or a strategy on Twitter's part um you know again I I said I I have not read the Twitter file so it's definitely difficult for me to say that except you so my my understanding is limited and that's why I would leave it to um and Barry Weiss and ultimately others which is is but if I if I if I say what what what is my best guess is that that was a very different standard applied to Republican\n\ncandidates in the U.\n\nS versus a Democrat candidate there appears and emphasizer appears I'm not saying this is definitely the case it appears to have been a double standard where um where Democrats were not censored and and left causes were not censored but right right causes and and Republicans were um and it was and I think this is frankly obvious to anyone who uses Twitter without any expose of Twitter files not even-handed and and it's frankly the the behavior that is to be expected from an organization that is that is based in San Francisco uh Which is far left so from their standpoint it wouldn't seem like that they're they're being um unfair that from their standpoint it's simply how they see the world um I mean I think Matt posted like political contributions of Twitter\n\nbeing over 99 Democrat so well what kind of viewpoint would you expect people to have then it's the behavior you'd expect from a company that is essentially a distillation of San Francisco politics and I hope that just information I want to make a simple question I want to make a suggestion real quick Elon when you are speaking we can hear you really well when you are listening the background noise from your jet is interfering and can you just mute yourself yeah so anyway I have a question like so when you're you know making the files available to everybody or rather more people I would just like the request that uh that I don't know give it to me because I work for Rebel news and I think we could do a tremendous job covering this as much as anybody else\n\nreally yeah so so China so Tim cost is trying to come up by the way Elon just asks you a question but in the meantime you want to go about and I know that persistence has a question as well I'll give you the mic right after persistence but one one question again back to the advertisers Elon not sure if you heard it before um any progress there with the advertisers that stopped advertising on Twitter which we all agree is just not right and any the other strategies to bring Revenue outside of advertising uh you're muted um yeah so I mean so so Apple has fully resumed advertising which is appreciated uh Apple is the single biggest Advertiser on Twitter and historically and and presently so uh thanks Apple for the reasoning advertising um and uh I think\n\nwe're we're seeing we are starting to see a lot of other advertisers also resume their spending uh I think the the problem is that they would read all these stories in the media and then um think that they were true and and they're not true um and and then as it's becoming clear that the media stories about Twitter being some sort of like right-wing hellscape which is absolutely is and in fact it is there are far fewer Bots far fewer trolls um and it's I it's actually I think way more fun and interesting um and we're seeing that in the in the user minutes and in the daily average users then then advertisers are like okay I guess uh maybe maybe it is safe to get back in the water and uh so we are we are seeing um advertisers resume advertising on Twitter\n\nso that's that's a good sign um I wish it would be faster but but we are seeing them resume the the more the more concerning Factor on the advertising front is just the um the entire industry-wide drop in advertising which uh Twitter is not immune from so even though advertisers do get get back on the advertising expenditures in general are dropping for all companies and so it is imperative that that Twitter have an alternate Revenue Source hence the subscriber um Revenue which is just very important for both of the just the survival and for of Twitter and to reduce its dependence on on Advertising yeah overall I think you know I I I'm cautiously optimistic about the future yeah so I I I I want to I'll add I'll add one point of credit like I I have no\n\nstats I have nothing against the the old uh you know Executives at Twitter Etc but very objectively speaking what you've done in a month and again that's purely being objective what you've done in a month is [ __ ] insane uh the amount of progress that you've had and where Twitter is at now in such a short period of time um so not that you need more credit because you're getting a lot here but I just want to add to it as well I'll give the mic to to um the persistence who's been waiting uh for a while and then Spike go ahead persistence [Music] my question is threatening to pull money from Twitter if Twitter did not adhere to a policy and additionally do we have any information on congressmen or women who have threatened legislation should Twitter not\n\nadhere to a certain policy unless I was really intrigued by your comment on uh positivity and negativity and tweets you saying that positive tweets would go uh further and I just wanted to see what would constitute the measurement from Twitter uh that would make something positive or negative thank you are you back yeah sure um well the advertisers um for the most part the advertisers are quite rational in that um you know if if you especially if you like your advertising a family friendly product that uh you don't want to be sort of like let's say you're advertising a Disney movie you don't want to have like some super negative uh sort of high speech or you know through the and and also a movie or whatever and and you also they don't want to have not\n\nsafe for work content right next to uh ads for children toys and stuff like that so that stuff is quite reasonable and and um and I agree with um advertising advertisers have a right to have their advertising be next to non-advertising con that is consistent with their their brand so that that really just means like uh you know what is is D is is um not attempting to monetize with advertising uh content that advertisers are uncomfortable with so I think in in general it's been okay okay um I mean I think there has been some overzealous action by um activist groups that that pressure the advertisers that then in turn pressure Twitter um and you know we're trying to sort of you know that that I thought was was somewhat unreasonable but uh it I I'm I think\n\nit's gonna Trend in a good direction going forward but I'm I'm not sure but it looks like it's headed in a good direction like I said advertisers are returning to Twitter uh apples back and forth full full ad spend and um I've had I've had a number of conversations with uh The Advertiser groups and and every time I've had those conversations the advertisers have responded positively and and I've also just because they're like I mean they end up reading the the the sort of mainstream media and it's like you know uh and then they end up with with all the wrong impressions of what's going on and I said well have you tried using Twitter do you see these things for yourself and they're like actually it seems fine when we use Twitter like yes that's because\n\nit is fine and so then um and then I also found like look as we try to grow Twitter's user base if if a new user comes on Twitter and then is immediately attacked by trolls and and dumped on they're going to want to leave so because who wants to go it's like going into a party or something and everyone just starts yelling at you you don't want to you're going to want to leave that party you know Twitter does need to be a more welcoming environment for new users and so the the incentives are actually aligned um that if if uh if people come on and and they see interesting funny tweets things that that where they learn learn something new or it's like it's it's entertaining it's funny it's like that's the kind of thing that um we should see more of and uh\n\nand that will that that's consistent with what most advertisers want I think and what what Twitter wants in order to grow the user base and um and there's generally over time it's like it kind of you know PPO pill can be to some degree choose what sort of experience they're like um just like you can choose the radio station like you know some people want to listen to sort of smooth jazz easy listening or they may want to go to you know pop pop music or they want to go to heavy metal thrash and uh you know to each their own or if this was uh you know do you want to have like full contact martial arts or do you want to have a light contact or do you want to do yoga you know and you can decide which one of those what kind of experience you want that's going\n\nto be important in order to have Twitter appeal to a broad audience yeah so that's that's that's the rough game plan oh just put it out really quick he had mentioned different color uh checkbooks for verification different entities was that still going to be part of the new verification process foreign yeah so again like the goal is like to say how do you convey people using Twitter uh as quickly as possible and as clearly as possible what what they're seeing um so there will be um a gold check mark for commercial organizations a great check mark for government and a blue check mark for verified individuals and then there will also be the uh um an organizational affiliation logo so like next next to your check if you let's say a verified user if you are\n\na professor at Stanford and Stanford is participating in identifying who is a professor then then there would be like a tiny Stanford logo that would appear next to your blue check mark um so the edge is rolling is like see oh this is actually a stem Professor or this person actually does work at Coca-Cola and um and there's a Clarity there will there be a process for this to apply for an organization for you know let's say you're a part of a small news organization and you want to apply for this status will it be available to the public course is something that's going to be very selective uh no it will be available to to the public so it's sort of um you know so it's not going to be like an anointed set of companies um now there will be a strong policy\n\nagainst uh impersonation and deception so if if uh if it's if if someone's attempting to deceive um users then their account will be suspended that's that's yeah I've got a question here I'll give it to Tom just by a pretty notable person that doesn't disclose the identity but it's a simple question and by the way anyone has a question you could DM me the team is checking all the DMS the question is um plans for crypto Twitter payments whether it's going to be like WeChat or whether you have uh you have plans at all Dogecoin yeah yeah I think we do want to have Twitter and enable both uh regular payments and uh if you had currency uh and and uh and make make it easier to transact with crypto yeah okay I've got another question here from a big YouTuber\n\nas well Elon one of the first uh so they're asking they want to bring YouTube creators to Twitter what's your what's your plan with uh what's your Twitter Creator plan if there is one uh yeah so for video we need to upgrade the the Twitter system to be able to have longer video uh and then and enable creators to derive revenue from from viewership which is a combination of advertising and these are obviously things that need to happen like I said in order for these to happen like you could have a wish list a mile long but if the if engine of engineering is not fixed so that's that's why I am focused on Twitter engineering uh first and foremost um in the absence of that you could have a wish whatever you wish will could not be done because the engineering\n\nis not working hey I have a really great suggestion for you and right after game I let Tom jump in right after you just Tom sorry for for delaying it so much go ahead Kim sorry yeah you know how foreign media is labeled on Twitter often as like Russian controlled state-controlled media why don't we do the same thing in the US with all of these media organizations that that are telling us go to war you know this is all great like why don't we label them as well U.\n\nS government uh uh State media no I think that's a good idea um because like you know it's like SBF gave so much money to different media organizations that and and then they just write these puff pieces and it's like okay we should be labeling that SPF Affiliated media because it is uh like if you're gonna write a puff piece about someone who gave you a ton of money then the public should know that you uh maybe have a bias so yeah I mean I think it should be if if um if if something is taking direction from the space then that information should be made clear to the readers um like like who's really who's really Who's the who really has editorial control to be clear um because that's all part of like trying to give users of Twitter the most accurate\n\nand truthful understanding of what's going on and and be able to calibrate what they read see or hear on Twitter to be able to calibrate the the truthfulness as a function of where it is where is it coming from who is the author who is controlling this from an editorial standpoint um and so then they that you know they can apply reasonable judgment in that case yeah no I agree with you and I think that would be a really good thing to level the playing field because when you want to find out about what's going on in Ukraine and you get it from sources that are labeled certain way and then the U.\n\nS news sources are not labeled at all you know the the problem with that is that people think this source is trustworthy and this source is not trustworthy so if Twitter has labels like this then they need to be applied fairly also against media that is clearly pro-war and clearly infiltrated by commentators from the intelligence Community who are telling us all this [ __ ] about why we have to be at War I agree this is the maximum truth is the crucial still you know set you free Tom Jones I know you've been waiting for a while Tom thank you thank you for having me so maybe just a couple more questions and then I gotta go back to work here I'll I'll ask him yeah and we appreciate it keep innovating and keep creating thank you and Elon I'll I'll I'll I'll\n\nI'll I'll go ahead Tom 's here yeah so I'll jump in Elon um my question to you because Tom's not it's not working on his end uh that's actually a simple question I'm gonna shoot my shot if I can get a DM on Twitter so I have a line of communication and then I can try to get you on and convince you to join more spaces so it's our question it's just uh giving it a shot on my end I appreciate you joining again oh yeah John go ahead man I I said my word yeah thank you this is Tom fitting with Judicial Watch Elon appreciate your public service and your transparency efforts here you know my concern is you know as the head of a watchdog group is the government corruption in response you know not only to what you potentially May uncover but in response to what\n\nyou're doing and when you have the president of the United States from the podium celebrate his election victory for by calling for a National Security review of your activities you have Senators High you know focusing on you you have other government agencies investigating you and your other businesses uh are you concerned a about the retaliation and B are you seeing evidence of it government is slow to act so this is the thing about that's important to appreciate about anything anything government related is that they're not nimbled they are slow so I think the actions that that we'll see and I think there probably will be some actions we'll we'll happen but they'll happen slowly and it's only been it's only been a month so far but I wouldn't I would\n\nexpect uh I would expect some you know there's probably not there's probably at least a few nefarious things that are in the works right now probably I would say this would be uh naive to assume that there were no nefarious thing and so I guess if but I I will just expose them on Twitter and see what happens well the most important thing you don't have any Suicidal Thoughts do you Elon I do not have any Suicidal Thoughts I uh I I if I committed suicide it's not real well that was that was that was a good one Claire I know he he likes to jump off so maybe one one more question and one or two a clay and then Ian I'll let you end it Ian because you've done a great job asking questions earlier clay go ahead yeah you're on this is uh clay Travis with uh out\n\nkick Fox News and radio show with Clayton Park um you said earlier and I think it's so important that you were thinking about just letting everybody know when you get a governmental request to censor someone or take down tweets what what kind of process is in play there and to what extent can that happen because I think you're right the sunlight of the government being embarrassed when they're going after James Woods for instance would drastically reduce any attempts at censorship what's the update date there what kind of time frame and do you think that's able to be implemented yeah you're muted Elon I mean as I said earlier like we will Twitter will do what whatever it is allowed to do uh within the boundaries of the law um to be as transparent and\n\nopen as possible um and even something if we're currently are and I don't know this to be the case but if we're all currently drained by the law I think we will push to have the law modified to reduce those constraints because I think we have to you know we have to find hard for for free speech which is the Bedrock of a functioning democracy and uh I think you'll you'll see the the proof will be in the pudding and in the coming months I think you'll see dramatic improvements in the transparency and trustworthiness of Twitter you know hopefully you've seen at least some of that already um and it will it will get better and I think it will get better in an accelerating way provided I don't accidentally suicide myself which I'm not going to do Elon thank\n\nyou so much time today you have been such a blessing to join us to give us your insights I really appreciate it don't forget to make that Poll for Edward Snowden and Julian Assange yeah I'll be interested to know what the public things of these two people and what they're fighting for I I will yeah and uh and that's and I'll emphasize that I'm not making a judgment here I'm just asking I'll do it right after this Twitter space is ends right asking the public a question you know just that's right picking a poll yeah so I have a question okay so yeah you know this is just a question I'm not look okay so I got a question since you know like this is the last one what message do you have for all the haters and losers out there who are you know making fun of\n\nyou or attacking Twitter said it was going to die like four weeks ago what's your message Twitter is alive baby hell yeah hell yeah beautiful I look forward to the test by earnings call right here on on Twitter with you Elon Musk yeah I think I I think it will work you know I got the DM so I assume the promise you made you Kim and the promise you made your title should go through Elon really appreciate you and uh Mario see you back hope to see you again soon I really appreciate it man thank you Elon all right thanks guys bye I told you it was worth listening and this is the kind of stuff I talk about all the [ __ ] time over on my patreon account if you're not already member you know what to do by now there's over 230 videos many of them diving down these\n\nvery same rabbit holes plus plenty of other stuff as well the kind of [ __ ] that will literally get me canceled if I discuss it here on YouTube I'm always walking a fine line so if you're not already remember head over to patreon with the card in the corner or the link in the comment I'll see you over there love you"},"languages":["en"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1QV0F-wj480"},{"id":"baron-investment-conference-2022-11-04","type":"interview","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E-squeb0YJA","title":"Baron Investment Conference","titles":{"en":"Baron Investment Conference","de":"Baron Investment Conference","fr":"Baron Investment Conference"},"date":"2022-11-04","summary":"Investor Ron Baron interviews Musk at the 29th Annual Baron Investment Conference on Tesla, time management, Twitter and space.","text":"tonight [Music] I'm invincible [Music] you know there are American Heroes who don't like this idea Neil Armstrong Gene cernan have both testified against commercial space flight in the way that you're developing it and I wonder what you think of that I was very sad to see that because those guys are yeah you know those guys are heroes of mine so it's really tough when you had that third failure in a row did you think I need to pack this in never why not I don't ever give up [Music] hello you know I tell you something every time I see that clip it chills me every single time and I look at a lot so thank you very much for coming here I know it's not convenient it's not around the corner I'm really appreciative absolutely I think thank you for having me\n\num I was on a red-eye flight so I I'm a little slower than normal to say I didn't get much sleep so you know that's uh that's sort of my first question is that so you're 51 yeah no spring I think I'm safely not a spring chicken anymore I hope a late summer chicken I'm 79.\n\nyes but just to do I mean you look great so you're 51 and uh and you do 16-hour days and you work seven hours a week and you fly all over the place and you go to these meetings constantly and and people constantly criticize you for everything it's amazing to me I mean you're changing the world and you're giving yourself why do you do this so my wife says to me why are you still working why are you still working what are you doing here well I think the um what I'm working on has important uh as an important effect on the future um you know in the case of Tesla I think it's fair to say that Tesla has significantly a significantly accelerated the Advent of sustainable energy you know before Tesla no one was doing electric cars and now as a result of Tesla\n\nI think almost every major car company in the world has is um going is building electric cars and and uh that's I think that's that's a pretty big deal um but there's still a long way to go uh to transition the world to a sustainable energy economy and so so so we still have a lot of work ahead of us at Tesla but that's that's our goal there and then for SpaceX I think it's important for the for the future for the future to be exciting and for humanities um existence to be insured over the long term I think we must become a multi-planet species and a space-bearing civilization um you know I think the um we're here like four and a half billion years after Earth Earth got started uh 13.\n\n8 billion years into the age of the universe and it's only now recently in the last 5 000 years that we even we invented writing I would say date the first Civilization by when we there was the first writing which was um in ancient Samaria around five five or six thousand years ago so we've basically just been here for a very brief instant a blink all of human civilization is a blink of an eye if there was an eye in in on an evolutionary time scale so so I think it's important we take the actions to ensure that the light of Consciousness continues and because you should we should really view Consciousness as as a small candle and a vast Darkness so it could easily go out so you so we have these missions uh and somehow whenever you have a mission and you\n\nhave this vision and you are a Visionary it's somehow whatever you do you develop other businesses so when you started SpaceX you didn't think about satellites when you started Tesla you didn't think about robots when you don't have enough people you didn't think about robots uh and uh so so you didn't think about autonomous driving and without Elon there would not be electric cars nobody who makes cars wants to make electric cars they're being forced to make them in fact every time they sell electric car they sell one fewer car that they make money on and say and they have all that money invested in plans to make those other cars so nobody wants to have these cars except for him and everybody thought it was going to fail so uh so and one of the things\n\nshe said is that patents are for the week and you share your patents and and with other companies of course on the other hand when they get your patents you're two or three years ahead of them well I mean joking about patents for the week I think there is a role for patents um you know let's say if somebody's spent if some company has spent a lot of money developing a particular medicine and had to go through the expense of uh you know stage three medical trials and then they then they finally get something that is approved but but where the drug itself is cheap to manufacture then I think a patent in that case makes sense otherwise no one would go to the trouble of doing stage three medical trials um so there are definitely roles for patents um in the\n\ncase of Tesla the you know our goal is to advance sustainable energy and so and we can't just do it by ourselves when we need the whole industry to go that way so we gave them our patents for free in order to help them accelerate electric vehicles so it must be terrifying to other companies to realize that women we make cars it's 39 000 in cost the car and we're making fifteen thousand dollars sixteen thousand dollars in profit a car and so we invest seven billion dollars and we make 15 billion dollars a year uh I'm sorry yeah at 15 rate 15 a million cars fifteen thousand fifteen a million a year and a seven million dollar investment shopping so no one else does that and when we're and and here you're telling us how you want to make cars for twenty thousand\n\ndollars a piece how do you do that well we're not formally announced um our next car program so I can't talk too much about our upcoming vehicle program or programs that have not been announced but we do expect to make cars that are more affordable than the current the model 3 or model y so and a big factor in this is yeah [Applause] but I think by far the biggest factor is autonomy and the in terms of value of a car because right now cars get driven for about 10 or 12 hours a week like maybe one and a half hours a day and um so but there's 168 hours in a week and so if they were autonomous you could probably drive the cars could drive for 50 or 60 hours so you would see a five-fold increase in the utility of a car you know that can do autonomy this is\n\na really really gigantic thing it would also mean that there was we wouldn't need anywhere nearest any parking lots and this would also be helpful for the environment because you would need far fewer cars so uh I misspoke it was a seven billion dollar investment for a plant that makes a million cars a year that makes 15 billion dollars a year in profits they invest 7 billion and you make 15 billion dollars a year who does that and for a plan that makes you know things uh manufacturing and so the way this is accomplished is so you're doing it with casting right now and casting half of the car and you're going to soon cast the other half of the car and other companies why don't they try why don't they try to do the do what we're doing in fact one of the\n\nexecutives of another automobile company uh wanted me to introduce her to you and you did that once in a meeting and now she wants to come visit with her director of engineering it's our plant in Austin and I presume when I ask you you're going to say yeah bring her on because you innovate so fast by the time anyone copies what we're doing let's go on to something else what else is there how when you're casting what else is there that enables us to make a cheaper we're eliminating a lot of other parts are we eliminating functions what are we doing to do that to be how would we sell a car that's so cheap I I mean I think the full explanation or at least an accurate explanation would take a long time um because the first approximation a car is made of 10\n\n000 unique parts and process steps um and we've I mean Tesla's really I think at this point um probably the best at Manufacturing in the Auto industry which I think would nobody was expecting probably in history of the world probably um yeah so um well I've got this like first principles algorithm that I find to be very helpful in and any in the design and manufacturing of anything um and people here may find it helpful the the first thing you should do is make the requirements that you've been given a less dumb um whatever constraints and requirements were given there were some degree down and you want to make them less dumb if you don't do that start with this then you can you answer the right you get the right answer to the wrong question um and the\n\nthe requirements must be given from a person who can explain the requirement not from a department because then you don't know who to talk to um then step two is delete the part or delete the process step this sounds extremely obvious and yet over and over again we have found that uh parts were not needed they were just put in there just in case or by mistake or there was a step that people someone thought was needed but was not actually needed the The Sounds insanely obvious but we've deleted so many parts from the car that were did nothing um they were just there well yeah I mean so many examples um uh in one example was there were three uh fiberglass mats on top of the battery pack uh but they partially covered the battery pack and that it was it was\n\nI was on the battery pack production line and it was the number one thing choking battery pack production with these with gluing on these three fiberglass mats to the top of the battery pack and so so so this is the reason I repeat this algorithm myself is that I first did things backwards first I try to automate it um then I try to accelerate it just have the the let's go faster then I try to simplify it and only then did I delete it um because it turned out that the um the the team at Tesla that does noise and vibration minimization uh so making making a car quiet uh thought that the fiberglass mats were there because of the battery safety team which for battery fire prevention and then I asked the battery fire prevention team what were they needed\n\nfor and they said oh noise and vibration I'm like okay so so then we had two cars drive one with a microphone in the car in each car and you could not tell the difference so we went to all that trouble for a plot that should not exist um and then another another example was there was a a again this was like these were choke points in the entire production system that's why they you know I'm running around the production line trying to fix the production line uh just like a maniac uh sort of Tasmanian Devil just running around the factory like a lunatic um and uh let's see we have the the body production line and model 3 was at one point stuck because um that we had a laser welding cell to to um weld a small cross car beam in the passenger footwell of\n\nthe of the front seats and I'm looking at this this sort of this beam and I'm like what the heck does that do um because the entire Factory is stopped uh trying to put trying to get the the laser weld itself to work um and I'm like I I can't imagine what a useful thing it could do and then the team said the production team said oh that's for for crash safety so then I I called the crash safety team and said is this for crash safety and said oh no that was that didn't do anything we should delete it it turned out to be totally useless they forgot to tell the production team so honestly a bunch of these things just feel like you're living in a Dilbert cartoon oh no what's that I mean any any given company he says like what's your Dilbert ratio okay it's\n\nnot zero so is this is this you or is this your corporate question try to keep it low so so is this you or is this so you do all these different things here well it's literally me someone else who did this I was in the I was living in the in the in the factory in Fremont um and and the one in in Nevada for three years straight that was my primary residence no kidding literally did you keep the couch I I actually stepped in a couch at one point on a tent on the roof um and then but for a while there I was just sleeping under my desk which is out in the open in the factory um and for an important reason and it was damn uncomfortable sleeping on that floor and always when I woke up I'd smell like metal dust we went to visit and they bought him a new couch\n\nyeah but actually I stopped using the couch in the in because this little conference room and a couch there I stopped using the couch I just slept on the floor under my desk so that they so during shift change the entire team could see me and that's important because like you know the on the the team like if if if they think the the sort of their leader is is off somewhere having a good time you know drinking my Ties on a tropical island which I could definitely have have been doing and would much have preferred to do let me I'm not a I'm not actually a masochist I think um but but the thing is that since the team could see me sleeping on the floor um during shift change was I just met with nothing um they knew I was there and that made a huge difference\n\nand then they gave it their all right so so the focus is on always lowering cost and providing leadership and and this company we're doing a million and a half Cars a year but you expect to do 20.\n\nuh and and so what happens uh in 10 years if you're not there what happens in five years if you're not there how's that work I mean are there all these people so in all the engineering schools the top engineering schools the top choice of where everybody wants to work is test their SpaceX those two places so do we have all these people coming up and fighting each other for the job or they're working together how do you get people to say gee I could buy that real expensive house but I'm not going to do that boy I could buy I could go on vacation I'm not we do have that problem a little bit um so you know as a company um has Prosperity um and then people become wealthy then for a lot of people you know that once they become past they're sort of independently\n\nwealthy they they just can't bring themselves to work or they're just they don't want to work and that's totally you know understandable and no judgment um and and so I mean I have a lot of friends who um who are extremely talented uh and they they you know had some success uh earlier in life and they just decided you know that was enough trauma um I mean you know I remember one of my my good friend of mine saying like we're start starting a company is like eating glass and staring into the abyss so so when people say tell me like what can you do to encourage entrepreneurs to start companies I'm like if you need encouragement don't start a company [Laughter] um in uh in SpaceX and so we have uh you know competitors sort of I guess so SLS and you know\n\nI read about that's not yeah just just going Northrop in Lockheed um and with those guys when they build the launching pad it took them like like 10 years and billions of dollars and we had a build a laundry pad and it cost a few hundred million dollars and did it in six months and and then I was interested in how that was done and the woman I'm talking to says that uh Ron did you see the plumbing when you went there I said why should it cost 100 million dollars it looks like it's a landing fields and I said would you see what's underneath did you see the plumbing I said no they didn't show that to me and she said well you should be aware that there's all these pipes that take away the Heat and then they all deliver fuel to the rocket and it has to be\n\nthere at an exact right amount at the exact right time and if it's not that doesn't happen it blows up and so I said well how does Elon know this and because you hire these great people and then you ask them all these questions and then somehow you remember everything I tell you is that true well my memory for technical matters is is very good um and I but but I I think probably a lot of people don't realize like what I do apes of the time is is engineering so um you know it's actually quite rare for me to give a talk um and my day-to-day work at SpaceX and Tesla is almost entirely engineering and design so um and and also production production is key but although I consider that to be part of engineering um yeah so um but Starship is something special\n\num the thing that is like the the Holy Grail like the critical breakthrough needed to make life multi-planetary and for Humanity to be a space-bearing civilization is a fully and rapidly reusable rocket open Rocket and so we've gone most of the way there with Falcon 9.\n\nyou may have seen the rocket booster come back and land and we also recover the nose cone or fairing but we do not recover the upper stage so so we've gone to the point where we're about you know 70 to 80 reusable with with falcon 9.\n\num with Starship we're going for 100 reusable um I cannot it's able to say how profound a change this will be but a fully and rapidly reusable um orbital rocket has the potential to drop the cost of access to space by a factor of a thousand factor of a thousand a thousand [Applause] and I should say also Sasha is it's a very very big rocket it's more than twice the thrust of a Saturn V and uh about twice the mass and it's also the entire ship is the is designed to land propulsively so it can land before you do what I didn't hear to land on its engines to land propulsively so it can land on any solid surface in the solar system so if we can make Starship work then it it enables us to over time get anywhere in the solar system so why is it so hard why don't\n\nother people do the same thing so everyone says it's impossible and how much harder is it to do what we're trying to do than we're doing with falcon well so let's see Earth's gravity is actually quite strong and we have a we have a thick atmosphere so with known physics it is only barely possible to make a fully reusable orbital rocket only barely possible um this was a video game the setting is a extreme difficulty not impossible but Extreme difficulty um because it's not like those who have developed Rockets before weren't aware of reusability they were they were you know fully away sell more Rockets they're fully aware of reusability that aircraft and cars are reasonable um it's just that in order for a rocket to be reusable everything has to be perfect\n\nso you have to have exceptionally efficient engines you have to have an exceptionally efficient structure you need Advanced avionics and software you need you need a a very lightweight heat shield or orbital reentry um and then another key factor for traveling to Mars is you need orbital refilling so that you get the ship to orbit and then you you send up tankers to refill the the shipping orbit just like um is done by the Air Force with aerial refueling those are the things that are necessary and um it's it's never been achieved before there have been many attempts to achieve it and they've all um been basically they all failed and they usually they would cancel the program part way through once they they thought it was no longer possible so so it's\n\njust a very difficult engineering challenge so SLS is supposed to get uh to the Moon they got a contract in 2010 and it was supposed to be for 10 billion dollars but it was cost plus it's now up to 40 billion dollars and they say it's going to be 100 billion dollars and 90 billion dollars yeah and and we haven't gotten anything and or we have our rocket is 10 meters taller than theirs and uh and and we can reuse ours how can anyone possibly compete if they're not doing what we're doing how can that how can they compete I don't understand and how can they get contracts and then I just saw something from uh from NASA and they said that we're spending 20 billion a year and oh by the way that's the 360 000 jobs in all these congressional districts well I\n\nI think this I have to be careful of what I say here uh I I you know I have enough enemies I would I would like to have you know I think I I think yes I would like to have smaller a lot a smaller number of companies that want me to die that would be great okay so but like I said you know what a big part of this is like what's the goal you know in the case of Starship the goal is um to lower the cost of access to orbit and ultimately to to Mars and the moon and elsewhere to the point where Humanity can actually afford to become a multi-planet species to the point where we can afford to have a permanent base on the moon and ultimately far exceed the high water mark of Apollo which was incredible and I think aspiring to all of humanity everyone if you were\n\nto ask people I think what was in any country not Americans anyone what was the what was the greatest what was Humanity's greatest achievement in the 20th century maybe Evelyn go to the Moon and that's why they say moonshot as a metaphor um because that was incredible um you know still amazing that that was achieved in fact a lot of people asked me was it real I'm like yeah it was real well it's probably on Twitter that's where they asked that [Applause] um I mean that was just an incredible achievement and I think it's it's one of those things that you know going to the Moon makes you proud to be a member of humanity you know it's like full and For All Mankind you know that's that it was For All Mankind so so it's amazing achievements uh and and now\n\nwe have this web telescope they can you know I guess the Big Bang was 14 billion years ago and and first light is 13 and a half billion years ago and our plan is four and a half being so so what do we get out of this what is the you know so I I so obviously struggling a really big deal a trillion dollar opportunity maybe maybe more and maybe right and uh so so what do we get uh out of seeing back 13 and a half billion years what does that do for us what technology do we develop we don't we know we don't know until we do it yeah I think uh I think like there's two there's two main motivations I think for becoming a multi-planet species and a space-bearing civilization and then ultimately going beyond that to go to other star systems and explore the Galaxy\n\nand I think we may find that there's there's many one planet civilizations that died out millions of years ago I never made it to the second planet do you think in your lifetime that happens that I well it depends how long I live um maybe forever you know I keep if I keep increasing that enemies listed might not be much longer are we deeply ironic if if if if it's someone angry on Twitter that takes me out well now you can keep them off Twitter yeah exactly um so anyway I think there's but there's two reasons for life to become multi-planetary like as we know it to become multi-planetary I think one is the defensive reason where we just I think we want the the light of Consciousness to not be extinguished if something would happen to Earth whether and\n\nand you know in the case of the dinosaurs they only had to worry about like you know meteors and two volcanoes and other things um but for us humans we actually have the power to destroy ourselves with nuclear weapons uh or or some sort of you know crazy bio terrorism thing so um you know so so there's some there's some danger that is not zero that could cause the end of life on Earth as we know it um so that's kind of the defensive reason to ensure that life is not just an unconsciousness it's just it's not only on Earth that um that's the defensive reason to protect the future of consciousness um then the other big reason I think is that it's exciting and it's it's it's adventurous and it's it's it's inspiring uh it makes it like it makes you think\n\npositively about the future you know and and life life can't just be about solving one problem or another that there needs to be reasons to be inspired you know reasons that move your heart and say yes the future is going to be great and when you get out when you wake up in the morning I can't wait to see what happens next and and I think that's you know Humanity going to Mars even if you don't yourself want to go to Mars and most people don't just just watch it it's a tough gig frankly um this was this would not be a luxury Expedition um and uh but but you'd be able to watch it happen and I think it would just be incredibly inspiring to the world in the same way that the Apollo program was inspiring to the world um and like I said there's got to be life\n\ncan't just be about solving one problem or another we need things that are that make us excited and inspired about the future and that would be one of them foreign ER just for a minute and we'll go back to this stuff which is more interesting to me um I I try to get out of the deal will you follow me back here reminded that scene from The Godfather basically but you told me you wanted to ask tough questions [Laughter] so uh so on Twitter uh what could possibly go wrong so I saw this article says you bought something called Twitter um and it says uh musk puts off lifting Twitter Bans and so obviously the big deal in to me anyway in uh in Twitter is that so we have this incredible it was incredibly poorly managed this business and uh but those guys somehow\n\ndid great for their shareholders by selling it to us and right but we didn't buy what they're selling we bought something of what it's going to become um yes uh I mean I think it's uh most people would say like you know given how the market has evolved this year the prices on the high side right um right but that's uninvasive what it is yes but in terms of what it what I think there is a tremendous amount of potential um that it will be very difficult to achieve but I think possible and I think ultimately it could be one of the most valuable companies in the world so so when we think about this in order for that to happen in order for that so so I met you and it took me a few years and then I Believe In You and Your Heart Right your heart and so I think\n\nyou're a skeptical at our first meeting you were a bit skeptical and uh so so the way I think about it is that so I'm trusting you with the future of our country of the world actually when you're in charge of a media like that and so what I think about is so how do you prevent to being Jewish uh how do you prevent this anti-Semitism or if I were black how do you prevent all of these so so how do you prevent the use of the n-word and when I think about Tick Tock and they're able we're just looking at pictures to tell what you're going to do you know you remove your left arm you move your right arm what you other pictures you like that's what they do with their software and they've great their algorithm how can we not have an amazing algorithm because we\n\nknow more about them to do with Tick Tock and we ought to know what interests people have and uh and and because of that in words we should be able to figure out words that people are using what that means and considering what they content they're interested in we should be able to figure out the software how to moderate this and prevent that from happening is that true or not yeah yes absolutely um totally agree um the I want to be clear but uh you know content moderation policies have not changed uh at Twitter and and it is um not not okay to engage in hateful conduct uh on on Twitter um so um we have had like actually oddly like targeted attacks where temporarily people have been able to put some hate speech on on Twitter but um but then it's been\n\ntaken down immediately um so now now I don't want to try to achieve with this sort of enabling everyone to be payment verified with with Twitter blue is to try to get as many people payment verified as possible it's only eight bucks a month um although for some people that were complaining about that and these are people who pay more with the net for their latte I'm going to be one of your Twitter review okay thank you thank you um but but like as part of its Revenue part of it is payment authentication and so if somebody uh because there is a huge problem with Spam and and Bots and trolls on on Twitter and organizations trying to manipulate a public opinion and just just generally making the system worse um and I think but I think that there is an answer\n\nto that which is to to get as many uh regular users of Twitter to be a subscriber for eight dollars a month and you'll get a lot more than just the blue check mark for eight dollars a month because now we can afford long-form video a long long audio podcasts and we can also start sharing Revenue with with content creators which is essential give them a chance to make money yeah absolutely just so I mean right now if you're on Twitter you'll you'll see a lot of links posted to YouTube and and Tick Tock um and that's because at least until now Twitter is not a lot even given them enough video length to post their video um and then they give the content creators no means of monetizing the video so we're going to change that rapidly at Twitter it's going\n\nto be transformative but but if we can get enough verified users and we're going to prioritize um Twitter search replies mentions by verified users first um and and yeah that's okay that's what calls Amplified yes so the so the if you're payment verified with blue check mark then you'll be prioritized um and so this this is the point of this is to make crime not pay um because um because right now to create a bot on Twitter costs less than a penny um so the cost of crime is so cheap and that's part of why crime um and hateful conduct pays but if somebody risks losing even eight bucks that they or you it's too expensive to now have a a hundred thousand fake accounts because they have to spend 800 000 a month um as opposed to you know 800 a month so um\n\nand then we also since we're using payment authentication uh we're piggybacking on the authentication system of the payment system and we're also piggybacking off of uh Apple's authentication system which is another layer of security so the the net effect will be over time that the the verified users will be will pretty much always be at the top of of comments and search and you won't really see you'll have to scroll far to see the unverified users which will be the Bots and controls and whatnot and this is sort of analogous to um Google search like um if you go to page eight of Google search there will be a ton of scams and and stuff you know call it page eight page nine something like that um and but the thing is that Google search results are so good\n\nfor page one that you never go to page eight um so or it's rare and like the old joke is like something we don't want to see it gets pushed way down yeah just basically the the bad stuff gets pushed way down um and and and then crime stops paying and then they stop trying to do all these things and we can recruit them as Engineers to a program for us Crime Guys yeah um so I mean the joke is like what's the best place to hide a dead body would be the second page of Google search results nobody ever goes there so so today we fired uh half of of uh Twitter and uh that should save us what four billion a year no it's not going to say 4 billion a year I wish but um uh so uh I mean to be frank uh Twitter was having pretty serious Revenue challenges and cost\n\nchallenges um before the acquisition talks started and any company that is dependent on Advertising um has had a hard time so uh if you look at say snap or you know Google Facebook whatnot they've all had a difficult time with advertising Revenue dropping and Twitter is more you know currently more vulnerable than they are to advertising because most of Twitter's advertising is large brand advertising as opposed to direct response so it's kind of like a much more of a discretionary ad spend than it is for uh like if you if you're if you can do direct response for a specific product um so and then we also recently had a lot of difficulty with activist groups pressuring major advertisers to stop spending money on Twitter um this is despite us doing everything\n\npossible to appease them and to make it clear that moderation rules and hateful contact rules have not changed uh and we're continuing to enforce them um the a number of major advertisers have stopped spending on Twitter um so those but this is this doesn't seem right because um we've made no change in our operations at all and um but nonetheless the activist groups have been successful in in causing a massive drop in Twitter advertising revenue and we've done our absolute best to appease them and nothing is working so this is a major concern and I think this is frankly an attack on the First Amendment um like if if activist groups can pressure uh advertisers upon which Twitter is fundamentally dependent um to you know suppress Free Speech then that doesn't\n\nseem right I mean by the way 400 million instead of 4 billion I meant actually 400 million instead of 4 billion oh yeah okay so so we're now there you're living at this place you go there for the next couple three weeks you're going to devote and then we have a team lined up you think you have a team lined up you're uh to manage it and then you would just do it the same way we do with SpaceX and Tesla where you just attend the meetings regularly say this is what we need to do do it well this is what we need yeah my my workload went up from about I don't know 70 to 80 hours a week to probably 120 .\n\num so yeah I go to sleep I wake up I work go to sleep wake up work do that seven days a week I'll have to do that for a while no choice um but I think once Twitter is set on the right path I think it is a much easier thing to manage than SpaceX or Tesla so um and I I mean I really understand the internet and how to make a so I wrote software wrote software but I wrote software personally for 20 years um you know it's one of the key people behind uh Hey x.\n\ncom which became PayPal um and so I also like I'm aware of like a and I know how to make a way better PayPal um because you build PayPal yeah yeah pretty much um I mean with a lot of other people but there's there's a product plan I wrote which I wish I'd kept a copy of in July of 2000 where I thought it would be possible to make the most valuable financial institution in the world and we're going to execute that plan from 22 years ago which amazingly no one has done and and so I I think that's what part of why I think Twitter will be ultimately extremely valuable because I'm going to execute the x.\n\ncom game plan from 22 years ago with some improvements um and um and then we're also going to obviously make Twitter just a way better system um I mean it's a sad to reason that um you know if if the social media company is um is not taking uh steps to and make it positive to be on that social platform then people won't come or they'll leave you know so you speak of sort of anti-Semitism or racism or anything like that well I mean if who's going to stay on a platform if if that's prevalent like that's that's obviously yeah I mean come on and ultimate's inherent wrongness if who's going to stay on the platform um so like you you want to be it needs to be something where um like our goal with Twitter is like how do we get 80 of America maybe not like the\n\nsort of far left and the far right but but and maybe we don't want to necessarily but uh how do we get 80 of the public to join a digital Town Square and voice their opinion and exchange ideas and maybe once in a while change their minds um on occasion yeah I mean you know once in a while um so I read also that you said and then we'll move off to Twitter but you said that your goal is you want to make the 20 of people who are on the far right I hate you just like you want to make the 20 of people on the far left hate you so well I I don't want them to hate me um but but I think the extremist like you know it's just very difficult to satisfy extremists um so unless you fully buy into whatever their Dogma is so um but I I'm confident we can satisfy like\n\nI don't know 80 of America 80 of the world um and but maybe not the most the 10 most extreme of of of either side and I would count that as a great outcome and I think it I think it is important to have a sort of a a digital Town Square where people feel comfortable talking um where and I also think it's it's like one of the things that's important is to be able to sort of decide what kind of experience you want to have on Twitter um because you know some people always might say okay like I want the like if this was a radio station I want this the easy listening smooth jazz station okay cool but that's good that's so you fail to have that setting for have that setting for Twitter and and uh and then some people might say say like no I want heavy metal\n\nthrash and and and like okay so now this is going to be sort of then then you don't mind someone saying mean things to you you know within the context of the law and you don't mind engaging in in vigorous arguments on Twitter and that kind of thing but you should be able to kind of like pick your preference and and decide if if you want sort of full contact battle or or do you want like no I just want to look at puppies and flowers and nice landscapes and stuff so so let's go off Twitter um two other topics uh where you have some questions uh that number one is logistics when we're starting to uh to make so many cars by the end of this year forty thousand forty thousand cars a week I mean I have to be careful of mnpi uh but uh I believe I have said in\n\nthe past publicly that our aspiration is to reach 40 000 a week by the end of this year so if we're doing that then that means that uh producing a core every 15 seconds yeah and uh so but that's still only uh two million cars a year there's 100 million cars uh that are made a year and so the question so this presumably capacity to be able to Logistics to ship all these cars all over the place to have people pick them up where they want them but but not if they all do them in the same week yes totally so um I mean we're a bit of criticism a bit of criticism from our Q3 results because we um had a lot of cars in transit um and the reason was that we we got too big for our cars to actually be transported in the final few weeks um there weren't enough car\n\ncarriers and weren't enough ships so but it's actually good it's actually good in the long run um right to to smooth out deliveries and actually have cars and Transit at the end of the quarter uh because then you're not rushing to get everything delivered by the end of the quarter and paying all these expedite fees um so so my question always if we have autonomous driving and we have autonomous trucks is that one of the ideas that we're going to be able to move things around with our own if there's not enough drivers that we're going to have autonomous transport yes that's question one we can also yeah I mean have if you're in the if you're in the area have the car just drive to you right that's one and then the other one is about materials and when all\n\nof a sudden so we have somehow navigated supply chain problems from other people and you might have thought that it was the absolute Brilliance that we had to be able to do that but probably the reason is that when you start off and you don't make any cars a year and you go to someone and say we're going to make 20 million cars a year from zero who's going to believe you and make all the equipment that we need so as a result of that we were forced initially to be able to say okay we're going to get you know we're vertically integrate we can't rely on you both do vertically integration and yeah cut it materials I can talk longer if you'd like a message talk a little bit longer materials how so we have geology we anyone wants to show us a mine we got people\n\nin Minds to figure who are knowledgeable and they come to us say we can produce this much lithium this much copper this much we are able to assess that and give contracts to be able to say contractual agreements okay and they'll and they'll rely on our agreement other people they won't is that fair and glencore the uh well the scaling constraints change as time goes by and in the beginning we we were just very vertically integrated because suppliers didn't take us seriously um like we could get hardly any of the the a of the best suppliers wouldn't talk to us because the car startup has not been successful in the United States since Chrysler in the third in the 20s I believe they started so it's been a century since a car company was successful in the\n\nUS that was not not a foreign car company coming in with that was already successful in their home market so but for an American car startup it was the first Tesla's first success in 100 years so you can imagine if you're an auto supplier that doesn't sound like a smart financial decision exactly um so if then we we had to do it just build a lot of the stuff ourselves be vertically integrated or we couldn't couldn't create the car um and and then that ended up being um an asset because now we understood so much about the entire supply chain or what it took to build a car so we were able to design a more integrated uh vehicle uh that that actually um needed far fewer parts and cost less and weighs less and has higher performance but it is looking increasingly\n\nlight for some of the critical elements of batteries that tells the we'll we'll need to get into the mining business at Mining and refining you know that's why glencore was announced that's where we're talking to glencore we were no and we're we've never contemplated investing in glencore um I'm talking about Tesla doing it ourselves yes uh congratulations more time for some questions from the audience just give me a couple turn in the lights too quick the powers that be I'll do it anyway I mean is it for me or you I don't know questions so by the way if you leave before we give away the uh the door prizes which are two Teslas you're not eligible to get the Teslas but go ahead I gave an extra one once I guess last time but uh we're not going to do that\n\nagain you got to be in your seat in order to get the Teslas I'm paying for it not to not Elon questions uh Elon Seneca once said every genius has a touch of Madness I thought you'd like that quote but I agree with the madness part um so even with Tesla as a publicly traded company uh I think it's down 40 percent or something from its high is selling at 70 times earnings meanwhile Mercedes-Benz which now produces EVS is selling for six times earnings and yielding five percent why should I invest in Tesla rather than Mercedes-Benz well I actually um rarely try to convince anyone to invest in Tesla and many times I've recommended people don't invest in Tesla and I've said our stock is too high but when people just ignore me and keep buying the stock some\n\nreason um so um but if I think at at a very high level I'd say that autonomy is an insanely fundamental breakthrough and and no one is even close to Tesla for solving generalized autonomy or generalized self-driving Vehicles no one's even close um and and with self-driving as I was talking about earlier the car becomes call it roughly five times more useful but it costs the same to build now can you imagine what would happen if a company was doing they were doing like 25 to 30 percent of gross margins but suddenly that same thing was five times more valuable that what would that do to the value of Tesla and the value of that car it boggles the Mind actually um so you know if you think of net present value of future cash flows if you actually do the math\n\non that it's insane um then there's also The Optimist program which is our humanoid robot um which we will leverage our manufacturing expertise and and the intelligence we've developed for self-driving to have a useful humanoid robot um now the the economy is fundamentally GDP per capita times capital if you no longer have a constraint on capita because of a useful humanoid robot it is not clear that there is any limit to the size of the economy [Applause] and these things will actually happen so okay that's probably a good reason that that one more question [Applause] okay this is the last question [Laughter] go ahead given all the cars given all the cars that you're gonna make and uh I hope Ron's right whether it's 10 million or 20 million you're going\n\nto need a lot of charging stations around the world yes have you thought about doing it more efficiently and more economically and better for our um ecosystem from an ESG perspective because you may or may not know there are 400 million existing street lights in the world and every street light has pervasive persistent electricity you could take some amount of those street lights which are half owned by utilities and half owned by a cities and repurpose that and that would probably be the most cost efficient way to roll out millions of charging stations all over the world well well thanks I I think they actually are using that idea in London and some other cities but if if I mean I think the the long-term goal for our supercharger stations is that they\n\nall have solo like Tesla solo and batteries at them so that they are as many as possible are self-sustaining that the that the supercharger stations generate the energy during the day and then also have a localized battery pack um to so that people can charge at night so that that the Tesla Super supercharging stations would continue to function even in a zombie apocalypse so just never know that's coming one day we know it yes it's just a matter of time thank you very much can I get a selfie with you all right a selfie I posted on Twitter your your arms are longer than mine also uh please use Twitter I'm I and and you're doing this right now and please please subscribe to Twitter verified eight bucks uh and uh actually it's technically at 7.\n\n99 so uh slightly less um but I would really encourage everyone here to use Twitter uh and uh and and uh you know uh yeah please do that here we go [Applause]","textByLang":{"en":"tonight [Music] I'm invincible [Music] you know there are American Heroes who don't like this idea Neil Armstrong Gene cernan have both testified against commercial space flight in the way that you're developing it and I wonder what you think of that I was very sad to see that because those guys are yeah you know those guys are heroes of mine so it's really tough when you had that third failure in a row did you think I need to pack this in never why not I don't ever give up [Music] hello you know I tell you something every time I see that clip it chills me every single time and I look at a lot so thank you very much for coming here I know it's not convenient it's not around the corner I'm really appreciative absolutely I think thank you for having me\n\num I was on a red-eye flight so I I'm a little slower than normal to say I didn't get much sleep so you know that's uh that's sort of my first question is that so you're 51 yeah no spring I think I'm safely not a spring chicken anymore I hope a late summer chicken I'm 79.\n\nyes but just to do I mean you look great so you're 51 and uh and you do 16-hour days and you work seven hours a week and you fly all over the place and you go to these meetings constantly and and people constantly criticize you for everything it's amazing to me I mean you're changing the world and you're giving yourself why do you do this so my wife says to me why are you still working why are you still working what are you doing here well I think the um what I'm working on has important uh as an important effect on the future um you know in the case of Tesla I think it's fair to say that Tesla has significantly a significantly accelerated the Advent of sustainable energy you know before Tesla no one was doing electric cars and now as a result of Tesla\n\nI think almost every major car company in the world has is um going is building electric cars and and uh that's I think that's that's a pretty big deal um but there's still a long way to go uh to transition the world to a sustainable energy economy and so so so we still have a lot of work ahead of us at Tesla but that's that's our goal there and then for SpaceX I think it's important for the for the future for the future to be exciting and for humanities um existence to be insured over the long term I think we must become a multi-planet species and a space-bearing civilization um you know I think the um we're here like four and a half billion years after Earth Earth got started uh 13.\n\n8 billion years into the age of the universe and it's only now recently in the last 5 000 years that we even we invented writing I would say date the first Civilization by when we there was the first writing which was um in ancient Samaria around five five or six thousand years ago so we've basically just been here for a very brief instant a blink all of human civilization is a blink of an eye if there was an eye in in on an evolutionary time scale so so I think it's important we take the actions to ensure that the light of Consciousness continues and because you should we should really view Consciousness as as a small candle and a vast Darkness so it could easily go out so you so we have these missions uh and somehow whenever you have a mission and you\n\nhave this vision and you are a Visionary it's somehow whatever you do you develop other businesses so when you started SpaceX you didn't think about satellites when you started Tesla you didn't think about robots when you don't have enough people you didn't think about robots uh and uh so so you didn't think about autonomous driving and without Elon there would not be electric cars nobody who makes cars wants to make electric cars they're being forced to make them in fact every time they sell electric car they sell one fewer car that they make money on and say and they have all that money invested in plans to make those other cars so nobody wants to have these cars except for him and everybody thought it was going to fail so uh so and one of the things\n\nshe said is that patents are for the week and you share your patents and and with other companies of course on the other hand when they get your patents you're two or three years ahead of them well I mean joking about patents for the week I think there is a role for patents um you know let's say if somebody's spent if some company has spent a lot of money developing a particular medicine and had to go through the expense of uh you know stage three medical trials and then they then they finally get something that is approved but but where the drug itself is cheap to manufacture then I think a patent in that case makes sense otherwise no one would go to the trouble of doing stage three medical trials um so there are definitely roles for patents um in the\n\ncase of Tesla the you know our goal is to advance sustainable energy and so and we can't just do it by ourselves when we need the whole industry to go that way so we gave them our patents for free in order to help them accelerate electric vehicles so it must be terrifying to other companies to realize that women we make cars it's 39 000 in cost the car and we're making fifteen thousand dollars sixteen thousand dollars in profit a car and so we invest seven billion dollars and we make 15 billion dollars a year uh I'm sorry yeah at 15 rate 15 a million cars fifteen thousand fifteen a million a year and a seven million dollar investment shopping so no one else does that and when we're and and here you're telling us how you want to make cars for twenty thousand\n\ndollars a piece how do you do that well we're not formally announced um our next car program so I can't talk too much about our upcoming vehicle program or programs that have not been announced but we do expect to make cars that are more affordable than the current the model 3 or model y so and a big factor in this is yeah [Applause] but I think by far the biggest factor is autonomy and the in terms of value of a car because right now cars get driven for about 10 or 12 hours a week like maybe one and a half hours a day and um so but there's 168 hours in a week and so if they were autonomous you could probably drive the cars could drive for 50 or 60 hours so you would see a five-fold increase in the utility of a car you know that can do autonomy this is\n\na really really gigantic thing it would also mean that there was we wouldn't need anywhere nearest any parking lots and this would also be helpful for the environment because you would need far fewer cars so uh I misspoke it was a seven billion dollar investment for a plant that makes a million cars a year that makes 15 billion dollars a year in profits they invest 7 billion and you make 15 billion dollars a year who does that and for a plan that makes you know things uh manufacturing and so the way this is accomplished is so you're doing it with casting right now and casting half of the car and you're going to soon cast the other half of the car and other companies why don't they try why don't they try to do the do what we're doing in fact one of the\n\nexecutives of another automobile company uh wanted me to introduce her to you and you did that once in a meeting and now she wants to come visit with her director of engineering it's our plant in Austin and I presume when I ask you you're going to say yeah bring her on because you innovate so fast by the time anyone copies what we're doing let's go on to something else what else is there how when you're casting what else is there that enables us to make a cheaper we're eliminating a lot of other parts are we eliminating functions what are we doing to do that to be how would we sell a car that's so cheap I I mean I think the full explanation or at least an accurate explanation would take a long time um because the first approximation a car is made of 10\n\n000 unique parts and process steps um and we've I mean Tesla's really I think at this point um probably the best at Manufacturing in the Auto industry which I think would nobody was expecting probably in history of the world probably um yeah so um well I've got this like first principles algorithm that I find to be very helpful in and any in the design and manufacturing of anything um and people here may find it helpful the the first thing you should do is make the requirements that you've been given a less dumb um whatever constraints and requirements were given there were some degree down and you want to make them less dumb if you don't do that start with this then you can you answer the right you get the right answer to the wrong question um and the\n\nthe requirements must be given from a person who can explain the requirement not from a department because then you don't know who to talk to um then step two is delete the part or delete the process step this sounds extremely obvious and yet over and over again we have found that uh parts were not needed they were just put in there just in case or by mistake or there was a step that people someone thought was needed but was not actually needed the The Sounds insanely obvious but we've deleted so many parts from the car that were did nothing um they were just there well yeah I mean so many examples um uh in one example was there were three uh fiberglass mats on top of the battery pack uh but they partially covered the battery pack and that it was it was\n\nI was on the battery pack production line and it was the number one thing choking battery pack production with these with gluing on these three fiberglass mats to the top of the battery pack and so so so this is the reason I repeat this algorithm myself is that I first did things backwards first I try to automate it um then I try to accelerate it just have the the let's go faster then I try to simplify it and only then did I delete it um because it turned out that the um the the team at Tesla that does noise and vibration minimization uh so making making a car quiet uh thought that the fiberglass mats were there because of the battery safety team which for battery fire prevention and then I asked the battery fire prevention team what were they needed\n\nfor and they said oh noise and vibration I'm like okay so so then we had two cars drive one with a microphone in the car in each car and you could not tell the difference so we went to all that trouble for a plot that should not exist um and then another another example was there was a a again this was like these were choke points in the entire production system that's why they you know I'm running around the production line trying to fix the production line uh just like a maniac uh sort of Tasmanian Devil just running around the factory like a lunatic um and uh let's see we have the the body production line and model 3 was at one point stuck because um that we had a laser welding cell to to um weld a small cross car beam in the passenger footwell of\n\nthe of the front seats and I'm looking at this this sort of this beam and I'm like what the heck does that do um because the entire Factory is stopped uh trying to put trying to get the the laser weld itself to work um and I'm like I I can't imagine what a useful thing it could do and then the team said the production team said oh that's for for crash safety so then I I called the crash safety team and said is this for crash safety and said oh no that was that didn't do anything we should delete it it turned out to be totally useless they forgot to tell the production team so honestly a bunch of these things just feel like you're living in a Dilbert cartoon oh no what's that I mean any any given company he says like what's your Dilbert ratio okay it's\n\nnot zero so is this is this you or is this your corporate question try to keep it low so so is this you or is this so you do all these different things here well it's literally me someone else who did this I was in the I was living in the in the in the factory in Fremont um and and the one in in Nevada for three years straight that was my primary residence no kidding literally did you keep the couch I I actually stepped in a couch at one point on a tent on the roof um and then but for a while there I was just sleeping under my desk which is out in the open in the factory um and for an important reason and it was damn uncomfortable sleeping on that floor and always when I woke up I'd smell like metal dust we went to visit and they bought him a new couch\n\nyeah but actually I stopped using the couch in the in because this little conference room and a couch there I stopped using the couch I just slept on the floor under my desk so that they so during shift change the entire team could see me and that's important because like you know the on the the team like if if if they think the the sort of their leader is is off somewhere having a good time you know drinking my Ties on a tropical island which I could definitely have have been doing and would much have preferred to do let me I'm not a I'm not actually a masochist I think um but but the thing is that since the team could see me sleeping on the floor um during shift change was I just met with nothing um they knew I was there and that made a huge difference\n\nand then they gave it their all right so so the focus is on always lowering cost and providing leadership and and this company we're doing a million and a half Cars a year but you expect to do 20.\n\nuh and and so what happens uh in 10 years if you're not there what happens in five years if you're not there how's that work I mean are there all these people so in all the engineering schools the top engineering schools the top choice of where everybody wants to work is test their SpaceX those two places so do we have all these people coming up and fighting each other for the job or they're working together how do you get people to say gee I could buy that real expensive house but I'm not going to do that boy I could buy I could go on vacation I'm not we do have that problem a little bit um so you know as a company um has Prosperity um and then people become wealthy then for a lot of people you know that once they become past they're sort of independently\n\nwealthy they they just can't bring themselves to work or they're just they don't want to work and that's totally you know understandable and no judgment um and and so I mean I have a lot of friends who um who are extremely talented uh and they they you know had some success uh earlier in life and they just decided you know that was enough trauma um I mean you know I remember one of my my good friend of mine saying like we're start starting a company is like eating glass and staring into the abyss so so when people say tell me like what can you do to encourage entrepreneurs to start companies I'm like if you need encouragement don't start a company [Laughter] um in uh in SpaceX and so we have uh you know competitors sort of I guess so SLS and you know\n\nI read about that's not yeah just just going Northrop in Lockheed um and with those guys when they build the launching pad it took them like like 10 years and billions of dollars and we had a build a laundry pad and it cost a few hundred million dollars and did it in six months and and then I was interested in how that was done and the woman I'm talking to says that uh Ron did you see the plumbing when you went there I said why should it cost 100 million dollars it looks like it's a landing fields and I said would you see what's underneath did you see the plumbing I said no they didn't show that to me and she said well you should be aware that there's all these pipes that take away the Heat and then they all deliver fuel to the rocket and it has to be\n\nthere at an exact right amount at the exact right time and if it's not that doesn't happen it blows up and so I said well how does Elon know this and because you hire these great people and then you ask them all these questions and then somehow you remember everything I tell you is that true well my memory for technical matters is is very good um and I but but I I think probably a lot of people don't realize like what I do apes of the time is is engineering so um you know it's actually quite rare for me to give a talk um and my day-to-day work at SpaceX and Tesla is almost entirely engineering and design so um and and also production production is key but although I consider that to be part of engineering um yeah so um but Starship is something special\n\num the thing that is like the the Holy Grail like the critical breakthrough needed to make life multi-planetary and for Humanity to be a space-bearing civilization is a fully and rapidly reusable rocket open Rocket and so we've gone most of the way there with Falcon 9.\n\nyou may have seen the rocket booster come back and land and we also recover the nose cone or fairing but we do not recover the upper stage so so we've gone to the point where we're about you know 70 to 80 reusable with with falcon 9.\n\num with Starship we're going for 100 reusable um I cannot it's able to say how profound a change this will be but a fully and rapidly reusable um orbital rocket has the potential to drop the cost of access to space by a factor of a thousand factor of a thousand a thousand [Applause] and I should say also Sasha is it's a very very big rocket it's more than twice the thrust of a Saturn V and uh about twice the mass and it's also the entire ship is the is designed to land propulsively so it can land before you do what I didn't hear to land on its engines to land propulsively so it can land on any solid surface in the solar system so if we can make Starship work then it it enables us to over time get anywhere in the solar system so why is it so hard why don't\n\nother people do the same thing so everyone says it's impossible and how much harder is it to do what we're trying to do than we're doing with falcon well so let's see Earth's gravity is actually quite strong and we have a we have a thick atmosphere so with known physics it is only barely possible to make a fully reusable orbital rocket only barely possible um this was a video game the setting is a extreme difficulty not impossible but Extreme difficulty um because it's not like those who have developed Rockets before weren't aware of reusability they were they were you know fully away sell more Rockets they're fully aware of reusability that aircraft and cars are reasonable um it's just that in order for a rocket to be reusable everything has to be perfect\n\nso you have to have exceptionally efficient engines you have to have an exceptionally efficient structure you need Advanced avionics and software you need you need a a very lightweight heat shield or orbital reentry um and then another key factor for traveling to Mars is you need orbital refilling so that you get the ship to orbit and then you you send up tankers to refill the the shipping orbit just like um is done by the Air Force with aerial refueling those are the things that are necessary and um it's it's never been achieved before there have been many attempts to achieve it and they've all um been basically they all failed and they usually they would cancel the program part way through once they they thought it was no longer possible so so it's\n\njust a very difficult engineering challenge so SLS is supposed to get uh to the Moon they got a contract in 2010 and it was supposed to be for 10 billion dollars but it was cost plus it's now up to 40 billion dollars and they say it's going to be 100 billion dollars and 90 billion dollars yeah and and we haven't gotten anything and or we have our rocket is 10 meters taller than theirs and uh and and we can reuse ours how can anyone possibly compete if they're not doing what we're doing how can that how can they compete I don't understand and how can they get contracts and then I just saw something from uh from NASA and they said that we're spending 20 billion a year and oh by the way that's the 360 000 jobs in all these congressional districts well I\n\nI think this I have to be careful of what I say here uh I I you know I have enough enemies I would I would like to have you know I think I I think yes I would like to have smaller a lot a smaller number of companies that want me to die that would be great okay so but like I said you know what a big part of this is like what's the goal you know in the case of Starship the goal is um to lower the cost of access to orbit and ultimately to to Mars and the moon and elsewhere to the point where Humanity can actually afford to become a multi-planet species to the point where we can afford to have a permanent base on the moon and ultimately far exceed the high water mark of Apollo which was incredible and I think aspiring to all of humanity everyone if you were\n\nto ask people I think what was in any country not Americans anyone what was the what was the greatest what was Humanity's greatest achievement in the 20th century maybe Evelyn go to the Moon and that's why they say moonshot as a metaphor um because that was incredible um you know still amazing that that was achieved in fact a lot of people asked me was it real I'm like yeah it was real well it's probably on Twitter that's where they asked that [Applause] um I mean that was just an incredible achievement and I think it's it's one of those things that you know going to the Moon makes you proud to be a member of humanity you know it's like full and For All Mankind you know that's that it was For All Mankind so so it's amazing achievements uh and and now\n\nwe have this web telescope they can you know I guess the Big Bang was 14 billion years ago and and first light is 13 and a half billion years ago and our plan is four and a half being so so what do we get out of this what is the you know so I I so obviously struggling a really big deal a trillion dollar opportunity maybe maybe more and maybe right and uh so so what do we get uh out of seeing back 13 and a half billion years what does that do for us what technology do we develop we don't we know we don't know until we do it yeah I think uh I think like there's two there's two main motivations I think for becoming a multi-planet species and a space-bearing civilization and then ultimately going beyond that to go to other star systems and explore the Galaxy\n\nand I think we may find that there's there's many one planet civilizations that died out millions of years ago I never made it to the second planet do you think in your lifetime that happens that I well it depends how long I live um maybe forever you know I keep if I keep increasing that enemies listed might not be much longer are we deeply ironic if if if if it's someone angry on Twitter that takes me out well now you can keep them off Twitter yeah exactly um so anyway I think there's but there's two reasons for life to become multi-planetary like as we know it to become multi-planetary I think one is the defensive reason where we just I think we want the the light of Consciousness to not be extinguished if something would happen to Earth whether and\n\nand you know in the case of the dinosaurs they only had to worry about like you know meteors and two volcanoes and other things um but for us humans we actually have the power to destroy ourselves with nuclear weapons uh or or some sort of you know crazy bio terrorism thing so um you know so so there's some there's some danger that is not zero that could cause the end of life on Earth as we know it um so that's kind of the defensive reason to ensure that life is not just an unconsciousness it's just it's not only on Earth that um that's the defensive reason to protect the future of consciousness um then the other big reason I think is that it's exciting and it's it's it's adventurous and it's it's it's inspiring uh it makes it like it makes you think\n\npositively about the future you know and and life life can't just be about solving one problem or another that there needs to be reasons to be inspired you know reasons that move your heart and say yes the future is going to be great and when you get out when you wake up in the morning I can't wait to see what happens next and and I think that's you know Humanity going to Mars even if you don't yourself want to go to Mars and most people don't just just watch it it's a tough gig frankly um this was this would not be a luxury Expedition um and uh but but you'd be able to watch it happen and I think it would just be incredibly inspiring to the world in the same way that the Apollo program was inspiring to the world um and like I said there's got to be life\n\ncan't just be about solving one problem or another we need things that are that make us excited and inspired about the future and that would be one of them foreign ER just for a minute and we'll go back to this stuff which is more interesting to me um I I try to get out of the deal will you follow me back here reminded that scene from The Godfather basically but you told me you wanted to ask tough questions [Laughter] so uh so on Twitter uh what could possibly go wrong so I saw this article says you bought something called Twitter um and it says uh musk puts off lifting Twitter Bans and so obviously the big deal in to me anyway in uh in Twitter is that so we have this incredible it was incredibly poorly managed this business and uh but those guys somehow\n\ndid great for their shareholders by selling it to us and right but we didn't buy what they're selling we bought something of what it's going to become um yes uh I mean I think it's uh most people would say like you know given how the market has evolved this year the prices on the high side right um right but that's uninvasive what it is yes but in terms of what it what I think there is a tremendous amount of potential um that it will be very difficult to achieve but I think possible and I think ultimately it could be one of the most valuable companies in the world so so when we think about this in order for that to happen in order for that so so I met you and it took me a few years and then I Believe In You and Your Heart Right your heart and so I think\n\nyou're a skeptical at our first meeting you were a bit skeptical and uh so so the way I think about it is that so I'm trusting you with the future of our country of the world actually when you're in charge of a media like that and so what I think about is so how do you prevent to being Jewish uh how do you prevent this anti-Semitism or if I were black how do you prevent all of these so so how do you prevent the use of the n-word and when I think about Tick Tock and they're able we're just looking at pictures to tell what you're going to do you know you remove your left arm you move your right arm what you other pictures you like that's what they do with their software and they've great their algorithm how can we not have an amazing algorithm because we\n\nknow more about them to do with Tick Tock and we ought to know what interests people have and uh and and because of that in words we should be able to figure out words that people are using what that means and considering what they content they're interested in we should be able to figure out the software how to moderate this and prevent that from happening is that true or not yeah yes absolutely um totally agree um the I want to be clear but uh you know content moderation policies have not changed uh at Twitter and and it is um not not okay to engage in hateful conduct uh on on Twitter um so um we have had like actually oddly like targeted attacks where temporarily people have been able to put some hate speech on on Twitter but um but then it's been\n\ntaken down immediately um so now now I don't want to try to achieve with this sort of enabling everyone to be payment verified with with Twitter blue is to try to get as many people payment verified as possible it's only eight bucks a month um although for some people that were complaining about that and these are people who pay more with the net for their latte I'm going to be one of your Twitter review okay thank you thank you um but but like as part of its Revenue part of it is payment authentication and so if somebody uh because there is a huge problem with Spam and and Bots and trolls on on Twitter and organizations trying to manipulate a public opinion and just just generally making the system worse um and I think but I think that there is an answer\n\nto that which is to to get as many uh regular users of Twitter to be a subscriber for eight dollars a month and you'll get a lot more than just the blue check mark for eight dollars a month because now we can afford long-form video a long long audio podcasts and we can also start sharing Revenue with with content creators which is essential give them a chance to make money yeah absolutely just so I mean right now if you're on Twitter you'll you'll see a lot of links posted to YouTube and and Tick Tock um and that's because at least until now Twitter is not a lot even given them enough video length to post their video um and then they give the content creators no means of monetizing the video so we're going to change that rapidly at Twitter it's going\n\nto be transformative but but if we can get enough verified users and we're going to prioritize um Twitter search replies mentions by verified users first um and and yeah that's okay that's what calls Amplified yes so the so the if you're payment verified with blue check mark then you'll be prioritized um and so this this is the point of this is to make crime not pay um because um because right now to create a bot on Twitter costs less than a penny um so the cost of crime is so cheap and that's part of why crime um and hateful conduct pays but if somebody risks losing even eight bucks that they or you it's too expensive to now have a a hundred thousand fake accounts because they have to spend 800 000 a month um as opposed to you know 800 a month so um\n\nand then we also since we're using payment authentication uh we're piggybacking on the authentication system of the payment system and we're also piggybacking off of uh Apple's authentication system which is another layer of security so the the net effect will be over time that the the verified users will be will pretty much always be at the top of of comments and search and you won't really see you'll have to scroll far to see the unverified users which will be the Bots and controls and whatnot and this is sort of analogous to um Google search like um if you go to page eight of Google search there will be a ton of scams and and stuff you know call it page eight page nine something like that um and but the thing is that Google search results are so good\n\nfor page one that you never go to page eight um so or it's rare and like the old joke is like something we don't want to see it gets pushed way down yeah just basically the the bad stuff gets pushed way down um and and and then crime stops paying and then they stop trying to do all these things and we can recruit them as Engineers to a program for us Crime Guys yeah um so I mean the joke is like what's the best place to hide a dead body would be the second page of Google search results nobody ever goes there so so today we fired uh half of of uh Twitter and uh that should save us what four billion a year no it's not going to say 4 billion a year I wish but um uh so uh I mean to be frank uh Twitter was having pretty serious Revenue challenges and cost\n\nchallenges um before the acquisition talks started and any company that is dependent on Advertising um has had a hard time so uh if you look at say snap or you know Google Facebook whatnot they've all had a difficult time with advertising Revenue dropping and Twitter is more you know currently more vulnerable than they are to advertising because most of Twitter's advertising is large brand advertising as opposed to direct response so it's kind of like a much more of a discretionary ad spend than it is for uh like if you if you're if you can do direct response for a specific product um so and then we also recently had a lot of difficulty with activist groups pressuring major advertisers to stop spending money on Twitter um this is despite us doing everything\n\npossible to appease them and to make it clear that moderation rules and hateful contact rules have not changed uh and we're continuing to enforce them um the a number of major advertisers have stopped spending on Twitter um so those but this is this doesn't seem right because um we've made no change in our operations at all and um but nonetheless the activist groups have been successful in in causing a massive drop in Twitter advertising revenue and we've done our absolute best to appease them and nothing is working so this is a major concern and I think this is frankly an attack on the First Amendment um like if if activist groups can pressure uh advertisers upon which Twitter is fundamentally dependent um to you know suppress Free Speech then that doesn't\n\nseem right I mean by the way 400 million instead of 4 billion I meant actually 400 million instead of 4 billion oh yeah okay so so we're now there you're living at this place you go there for the next couple three weeks you're going to devote and then we have a team lined up you think you have a team lined up you're uh to manage it and then you would just do it the same way we do with SpaceX and Tesla where you just attend the meetings regularly say this is what we need to do do it well this is what we need yeah my my workload went up from about I don't know 70 to 80 hours a week to probably 120 .\n\num so yeah I go to sleep I wake up I work go to sleep wake up work do that seven days a week I'll have to do that for a while no choice um but I think once Twitter is set on the right path I think it is a much easier thing to manage than SpaceX or Tesla so um and I I mean I really understand the internet and how to make a so I wrote software wrote software but I wrote software personally for 20 years um you know it's one of the key people behind uh Hey x.\n\ncom which became PayPal um and so I also like I'm aware of like a and I know how to make a way better PayPal um because you build PayPal yeah yeah pretty much um I mean with a lot of other people but there's there's a product plan I wrote which I wish I'd kept a copy of in July of 2000 where I thought it would be possible to make the most valuable financial institution in the world and we're going to execute that plan from 22 years ago which amazingly no one has done and and so I I think that's what part of why I think Twitter will be ultimately extremely valuable because I'm going to execute the x.\n\ncom game plan from 22 years ago with some improvements um and um and then we're also going to obviously make Twitter just a way better system um I mean it's a sad to reason that um you know if if the social media company is um is not taking uh steps to and make it positive to be on that social platform then people won't come or they'll leave you know so you speak of sort of anti-Semitism or racism or anything like that well I mean if who's going to stay on a platform if if that's prevalent like that's that's obviously yeah I mean come on and ultimate's inherent wrongness if who's going to stay on the platform um so like you you want to be it needs to be something where um like our goal with Twitter is like how do we get 80 of America maybe not like the\n\nsort of far left and the far right but but and maybe we don't want to necessarily but uh how do we get 80 of the public to join a digital Town Square and voice their opinion and exchange ideas and maybe once in a while change their minds um on occasion yeah I mean you know once in a while um so I read also that you said and then we'll move off to Twitter but you said that your goal is you want to make the 20 of people who are on the far right I hate you just like you want to make the 20 of people on the far left hate you so well I I don't want them to hate me um but but I think the extremist like you know it's just very difficult to satisfy extremists um so unless you fully buy into whatever their Dogma is so um but I I'm confident we can satisfy like\n\nI don't know 80 of America 80 of the world um and but maybe not the most the 10 most extreme of of of either side and I would count that as a great outcome and I think it I think it is important to have a sort of a a digital Town Square where people feel comfortable talking um where and I also think it's it's like one of the things that's important is to be able to sort of decide what kind of experience you want to have on Twitter um because you know some people always might say okay like I want the like if this was a radio station I want this the easy listening smooth jazz station okay cool but that's good that's so you fail to have that setting for have that setting for Twitter and and uh and then some people might say say like no I want heavy metal\n\nthrash and and and like okay so now this is going to be sort of then then you don't mind someone saying mean things to you you know within the context of the law and you don't mind engaging in in vigorous arguments on Twitter and that kind of thing but you should be able to kind of like pick your preference and and decide if if you want sort of full contact battle or or do you want like no I just want to look at puppies and flowers and nice landscapes and stuff so so let's go off Twitter um two other topics uh where you have some questions uh that number one is logistics when we're starting to uh to make so many cars by the end of this year forty thousand forty thousand cars a week I mean I have to be careful of mnpi uh but uh I believe I have said in\n\nthe past publicly that our aspiration is to reach 40 000 a week by the end of this year so if we're doing that then that means that uh producing a core every 15 seconds yeah and uh so but that's still only uh two million cars a year there's 100 million cars uh that are made a year and so the question so this presumably capacity to be able to Logistics to ship all these cars all over the place to have people pick them up where they want them but but not if they all do them in the same week yes totally so um I mean we're a bit of criticism a bit of criticism from our Q3 results because we um had a lot of cars in transit um and the reason was that we we got too big for our cars to actually be transported in the final few weeks um there weren't enough car\n\ncarriers and weren't enough ships so but it's actually good it's actually good in the long run um right to to smooth out deliveries and actually have cars and Transit at the end of the quarter uh because then you're not rushing to get everything delivered by the end of the quarter and paying all these expedite fees um so so my question always if we have autonomous driving and we have autonomous trucks is that one of the ideas that we're going to be able to move things around with our own if there's not enough drivers that we're going to have autonomous transport yes that's question one we can also yeah I mean have if you're in the if you're in the area have the car just drive to you right that's one and then the other one is about materials and when all\n\nof a sudden so we have somehow navigated supply chain problems from other people and you might have thought that it was the absolute Brilliance that we had to be able to do that but probably the reason is that when you start off and you don't make any cars a year and you go to someone and say we're going to make 20 million cars a year from zero who's going to believe you and make all the equipment that we need so as a result of that we were forced initially to be able to say okay we're going to get you know we're vertically integrate we can't rely on you both do vertically integration and yeah cut it materials I can talk longer if you'd like a message talk a little bit longer materials how so we have geology we anyone wants to show us a mine we got people\n\nin Minds to figure who are knowledgeable and they come to us say we can produce this much lithium this much copper this much we are able to assess that and give contracts to be able to say contractual agreements okay and they'll and they'll rely on our agreement other people they won't is that fair and glencore the uh well the scaling constraints change as time goes by and in the beginning we we were just very vertically integrated because suppliers didn't take us seriously um like we could get hardly any of the the a of the best suppliers wouldn't talk to us because the car startup has not been successful in the United States since Chrysler in the third in the 20s I believe they started so it's been a century since a car company was successful in the\n\nUS that was not not a foreign car company coming in with that was already successful in their home market so but for an American car startup it was the first Tesla's first success in 100 years so you can imagine if you're an auto supplier that doesn't sound like a smart financial decision exactly um so if then we we had to do it just build a lot of the stuff ourselves be vertically integrated or we couldn't couldn't create the car um and and then that ended up being um an asset because now we understood so much about the entire supply chain or what it took to build a car so we were able to design a more integrated uh vehicle uh that that actually um needed far fewer parts and cost less and weighs less and has higher performance but it is looking increasingly\n\nlight for some of the critical elements of batteries that tells the we'll we'll need to get into the mining business at Mining and refining you know that's why glencore was announced that's where we're talking to glencore we were no and we're we've never contemplated investing in glencore um I'm talking about Tesla doing it ourselves yes uh congratulations more time for some questions from the audience just give me a couple turn in the lights too quick the powers that be I'll do it anyway I mean is it for me or you I don't know questions so by the way if you leave before we give away the uh the door prizes which are two Teslas you're not eligible to get the Teslas but go ahead I gave an extra one once I guess last time but uh we're not going to do that\n\nagain you got to be in your seat in order to get the Teslas I'm paying for it not to not Elon questions uh Elon Seneca once said every genius has a touch of Madness I thought you'd like that quote but I agree with the madness part um so even with Tesla as a publicly traded company uh I think it's down 40 percent or something from its high is selling at 70 times earnings meanwhile Mercedes-Benz which now produces EVS is selling for six times earnings and yielding five percent why should I invest in Tesla rather than Mercedes-Benz well I actually um rarely try to convince anyone to invest in Tesla and many times I've recommended people don't invest in Tesla and I've said our stock is too high but when people just ignore me and keep buying the stock some\n\nreason um so um but if I think at at a very high level I'd say that autonomy is an insanely fundamental breakthrough and and no one is even close to Tesla for solving generalized autonomy or generalized self-driving Vehicles no one's even close um and and with self-driving as I was talking about earlier the car becomes call it roughly five times more useful but it costs the same to build now can you imagine what would happen if a company was doing they were doing like 25 to 30 percent of gross margins but suddenly that same thing was five times more valuable that what would that do to the value of Tesla and the value of that car it boggles the Mind actually um so you know if you think of net present value of future cash flows if you actually do the math\n\non that it's insane um then there's also The Optimist program which is our humanoid robot um which we will leverage our manufacturing expertise and and the intelligence we've developed for self-driving to have a useful humanoid robot um now the the economy is fundamentally GDP per capita times capital if you no longer have a constraint on capita because of a useful humanoid robot it is not clear that there is any limit to the size of the economy [Applause] and these things will actually happen so okay that's probably a good reason that that one more question [Applause] okay this is the last question [Laughter] go ahead given all the cars given all the cars that you're gonna make and uh I hope Ron's right whether it's 10 million or 20 million you're going\n\nto need a lot of charging stations around the world yes have you thought about doing it more efficiently and more economically and better for our um ecosystem from an ESG perspective because you may or may not know there are 400 million existing street lights in the world and every street light has pervasive persistent electricity you could take some amount of those street lights which are half owned by utilities and half owned by a cities and repurpose that and that would probably be the most cost efficient way to roll out millions of charging stations all over the world well well thanks I I think they actually are using that idea in London and some other cities but if if I mean I think the the long-term goal for our supercharger stations is that they\n\nall have solo like Tesla solo and batteries at them so that they are as many as possible are self-sustaining that the that the supercharger stations generate the energy during the day and then also have a localized battery pack um to so that people can charge at night so that that the Tesla Super supercharging stations would continue to function even in a zombie apocalypse so just never know that's coming one day we know it yes it's just a matter of time thank you very much can I get a selfie with you all right a selfie I posted on Twitter your your arms are longer than mine also uh please use Twitter I'm I and and you're doing this right now and please please subscribe to Twitter verified eight bucks uh and uh actually it's technically at 7.\n\n99 so uh slightly less um but I would really encourage everyone here to use Twitter uh and uh and and uh you know uh yeah please do that here we go [Applause]"},"languages":["en"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E-squeb0YJA"},{"id":"tesla-ai-day-2022","type":"video","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ODSJsviD_SU","title":"Tesla AI Day","titles":{"en":"Tesla AI Day","de":"Tesla AI Day","fr":"Tesla AI Day"},"date":"2022-09-30","summary":"Tesla AI Day 2022: the first walking prototype of the Optimus humanoid robot, plus updates on Full Self-Driving and the Dojo supercomputer.","text":"All right, welcome everybody give everyone a moment to Get back in the audience and All right great welcome to Tesla AI day 2022 We've got some really exciting things to show you I think you'll be pretty impressed I do want to set some expectations with respect to our Optimus robot as As you know last year was just a person in a robot suit But we've now we've come a long way and that's I think we you know compared to that it's gonna be very impressive and We're gonna talk about The advancements in AI for full self-driving as well as how they apply to more generally to real-world AI problems Like a humanoid robot and and even going beyond that I think there's some potential that what we're doing here at Tesla could make a meaningful contribution to AGI and And I think actually Tesla is a good Antity to do it from a governance standpoint because we're a publicly traded company with one class of stock and That means that the public controls Tesla and I think that's actually a good thing So if I go crazy you can fire me. This is important Maybe I'm not crazy. I don't know so Yeah, so we're gonna talk a lot about our progress in AI autopilot as well as progress in with dojo and Then we're gonna bring the team out and to do a long Q&A so you can ask tough questions But whatever you'd like existential questions technical questions, but we want to have As much time for Q&A as possible. So let's see you with that That's because Hey guys, I'm Milana work on autopilot and it is about and I'm Lizzie Mechanical engineer on the project as well. Okay So should we should we bring up the bot before we do that? We have one One little bonus tip for the day.\n\nThis is actually the first time we try this robot without any backup support Cranes mechanical mechanisms. No cables. Nothing. Yeah I want to do it with you guys tonight. That is the first time. Let's see.\n\nYou ready? Let's go I I I think the bug got some boobs This is essentially the simple self-driving computer that runs in your Tesla cars by the way This is the this is literally the first time the robot has operated without a tether was on stage tonight So the robot can actually do a lot more than we just showed you we just didn't want it to fall on its face So we'll we'll show you some videos now of the robot doing a bunch of other things Yeah, which are less risky. Yeah, we should close the screen guys. Yeah Yeah, we wanted to show a little bit more what we've done over the past few months with the bot and just walking around and dancing on stage Just humble beginnings, but you can see the autopilot neural networks running as it's just retrained for the bot directly on that on that new platform That's my watering can yeah when you when you see a rendered view. That's that's the robot. What's the that's the world the robot sees So it's it's very clearly identifying objects like this is the object.\n\nIt should pick up picking it up Yeah We use the same process as we did for autopilot to connect data and train neural networks that we didn't deploy on the robot That's an example that illustrates the upper body a little bit more Something that will like try to nail down in a few months over the next few months, I would say To perfection, but this is really an actual station in the Fremont factory as well that it's working at And that's not the only thing we have to show today, right? Yeah, absolutely. So That what you saw was what we call bumble sea. That's our sort of rough development robot using semi off-the-shelf actuators But we actually have gone a step further than that already the team's done an incredible job And we actually have an optimist bot with fully tesla designed and built actuators Um battery pack control system everything. Um, it it wasn't quite ready to walk But I think it will walk in a few weeks But we wanted to show you the robot The something that's actually fairly close to what we'll go into production And and show you all all the things that can do so let's bring it up All right Yeah So here you're seeing optimists with these the With the degrees of freedom that we expect to have in optimists production unit one Which is the ability to move all the fingers independently move the To have the thumb have two degrees of freedom. So it has opposable thumbs And both left and right hand so it's able to operate tools and do useful things.\n\nOur goal is to make a useful humanoid robot as quickly as possible and We've also designed it using the same discipline that we use in designing the car, which is to say to design it for All manufacturing such that it's possible to make the robot at in high volume at low cost with high reliability So that that's incredibly important. I mean, you've all seen very impressive humanoid robot demonstrations And that that's great. But what are they missing? They're missing a brain that they don't have the the intelligence to navigate the world by themselves And they're they're also very expensive Um and made in low volume. Um, whereas, uh, this this is the optimist's design to be an extremely capable robot But made in in very high volume probably ultimately millions of units And it is expected to cost much less than a car So, uh, I would say probably less than 20,000 dollars would be my guess Okay The the potential for optimist is I think appreciated by very few people As usual Tesla demos are coming in hot So Um, yeah, uh, I'm the team's put on put in and the team has put in an incredible amount of work Uh working days, you know seven days a week Running the 3am oil To to get to the demonstration today. Um, super proud of what they've done is they've really done a great job I'd just like to give a hand to the whole optimist team So, you know that now there's still a lot of work to be done to, uh refine optimists and Improve it.\n\nObviously, this is just optimist version one And that's really why we're holding this event Which is to convince some of the most talented people in the world like you guys um to Join tesla and help make it a reality and bring it to fruition at scale Such that it can help millions of people And the and the potential likes it is is really boggles the mind because you have to say like what what is an economy an economy is uh sort of productive entities times the productivity, uh capita times Productivity per capita at the point at which there is not a limitation on capita The it's not clear what an economy even means at that point. It an economy becomes quasi infinite um so What what you know taken to fruition in the hopefully benign scenario the This means a future of abundance a future where um There is no poverty where people you can have whatever you want In terms of products and services It really is a a fundamental transformation of civilization as we know it Obviously we want to make sure that transformation is a positive one and um safe And but but that's also why I think Tesla as an entity doing this being a single class of stock publicly traded owned by the public um is very important Um and should not be overlooked. I think this is essential because then if the public doesn't like what tesla's doing The public can buy shares in tesla and vote differently This is a big deal Um Like it's very important that that I can't just do what I want You know, sometimes people think that that but it's not true. Um, so You know that it's it's very important that the the corporate entity that has that that makes this happen Is something that the public can properly influence And so I think the tesla structure is is is ideal for that Um And like said that you know self-driving cars will certainly have a Tremendous impact on the world. Um, I think they will improve the productivity of transport by at least A half order of magnitude perhaps an order of magnitude perhaps more um Optimus I think has Maybe a two order of magnitude Uh potential improvement in uh economic output Like like it's it's not clear. It's not clear what the limit actually even is um so But we we need to do this in the right way we need to do it carefully and safely And ensure that the outcome is one that is beneficial to Uh civilization and and one that humanity wants Uh, I can't this is also extremely important obviously so, um And and I hope you will consider uh joining tesla to achieve those goals Um It tesla we're we really care about doing the right thing here or aspire to do the right thing and and really not Pay the road to hell with with good intentions And I think the road is road to hell is mostly paved with bad intentions, but every now and again There's a good intention in there.\n\nSo we want to do the right thing. Um, so, you know consider joining us and helping make it happen um With that let's let's uh, we want to the next phase All right, so you've seen a couple robots today. Let's do a quick timeline recap So last year we unveiled the tesla bot concept, but a concept doesn't get us very far We knew we needed a real development and integration platform to get real life learnings as quickly as possible So that robot that came out and did the little routine for you guys We had that within six months built working on software integration hardware upgrades over the months since then But in parallel we've also been designing the next generation this one over here So this guy is rooted in the the foundation of sort of the vehicle design process, you know We're leveraging all of those learnings that we already have Obviously there's a lot that's changed since last year, but there's a few things that are still the same you'll notice We still have this really detailed focus on the true human form We think that matters for a few reasons, but it's fun. We spend a lot of time thinking about how amazing the human body is We have this incredible range of motion typically really amazing strength Um a fun exercise is if you put your fingertip on the chair in front of you you'll notice that there's a huge Range of motion that you have in your shoulder and your elbow for example without moving your fingertip you can move those joints all over the place Um, but the robot, you know, its main function is to do real useful work And it maybe doesn't necessarily need all of those degrees of freedom right away So we've stripped it down to a minimum sort of 28 fundamental degrees of freedom and then of course our hands in addition to that Humans are also pretty efficient at some things and not so efficient in other times So for example, we can eat a small amount of food to sustain ourselves for several hours. That's great Uh, but when we're just kind of sitting around no offense, but we're kind of inefficient. We're just sort of burning energy So on the robot platform, what we're going to do is we're going to minimize that idle power consumption drop it as low as possible And that way we can just flip a switch and immediately the robot turns into something that does useful work So let's talk about this latest generation in some detail, shall we?\n\nSo on the screen here, you'll see in orange are actuators, which we'll get to in a little bit and in blue are electrical system So now that we have our sort of human based research and we have our first development platform We have both research and execution to draw from for this design Again, we're using that vehicle design foundation. So we're taking it from concept through design and analysis and then build and validation Along the way, we're going to optimize for things like cost and efficiency because those are critical metrics to take this product to scale eventually How are we going to do that? Well, we're going to reduce our part count and our power consumption of every element possible We're going to do things like reduce the sensing in the wiring at our extremities You can imagine a lot of mass in your hands and feet is going to be quite difficult and power consumptive to move around And we're going to centralize both our power distribution and our compute to the physical center of the platform So in the middle of our torso, actually it is the torso. We have our battery pack This is sized at 2.3 kilowatt hours, which is perfect for about a full day's worth of work What's really unique about this battery pack is it has all of the battery electronics integrated into a single pcb within the pack So that means everything from sensing to fusing Charge management and power distribution is all on one all in one place We're also leveraging both our vehicle products and our energy products To roll all of those key features into this battery. So that's streamlined manufacturing Really efficient and simple cooling methods battery management and also safety And of course we can leverage tesla's existing infrastructure and supply chain to make it So going on to sort of our brain it's not in the head, but it's pretty close Also in our torso, we have our central computer So as you know tesla already ships full self-driving computers in every vehicle we produce We want to leverage both the autopilot hardware and the software for the humanoid platform But because it's different in requirements and informed factor, we're going to change a few things first So we still are gonna it's going to do everything that a human brain does Processing vision data making split sescan decisions based on multiple sensory inputs and also communications So to support communications, it's equipped with wireless connectivity as well as audio support And then it also has hardware level security features which are important to protect both the robot and the people around the robot So now that we have our sort of core we're going to need some limbs on the sky Um, and we'd love to show you a little bit about our actuators and our fully functional hands as well But the first before we do that, I'd like to introduce Malcolm who's going to speak a little bit about our structural foundation for the robot Tesla have the capabilities to analyze highly complex systems Don't get much more complex than a crash You can see here a simulated crash from bottle three Superimposed on top of the actual physical crash It's actually incredible how um, how accurate it is Just to give you an idea of the complexity of this model It includes every not bolt and washer every spot weld and it has 35 million degrees of freedom quite amazing And it's true to say that if we didn't have models like this, we wouldn't be able to make the safest cars in the world So can we utilize our capabilities and our methods from the automotive side to influence a robot? Well, we can make a model and since we had crash software we're using the same software here We can make it fall down The purpose of this is to make sure that if it falls down ideally it doesn't but it's superficial damage We don't want it to for example break its gearbox and its arms.\n\nThat's equivalent of a dislocated shoulder of a robot Difficult and expensive to fix So we wanted to dust itself off get on with the job. It's being given We could also take the same model and we can drive the actuators using the inputs from a previously solved model Bringing it to life So this is producing the motions for the tasks we want the robot to do these tasks are picking up boxes turning squatting walking upstairs Whatever the set of tasks are we can play to the model. This is showing just simple walking We can create the stresses in all the components that helps us optimize the components These are not dancing robots these are actually the modal behavior the first five modes of the robot And typically when people make robots they make sure the first mode is up around the top single figures up towards 10 hertz Who is to do this is to make the controls of walking easier. It's very difficult to walk if you can't guarantee where your foot is wobbling around That's okay if you make one robot. We want to make thousands maybe millions We haven't got the luxury of making from carbon fiber titanium. We want to make them plastic things are not quite as stiff So we can't have these high targets.\n\nI call them dumb targets We've got to make them work at lower targets So is that it's that good to work? Well, if you think about it, sorry about this, but we're just bags of soggy jelly and bones thrown in We're not high frequency. If I start on my leg, I don't vibrate at 10 hertz We people operate at a lot of frequency. So we know the robot actually can it just makes controls harder So we take the information from this the modal Data and the stiffness and feed it into the control system that allows it to walk And Just changing tax lightly looking at the knee We could take some inspiration from biology and we can look to see what the mechanical advantage of the knee is It turns out it actually represent quite similar to four-bar link and that's quite non-linear That's not surprising really because if you think when you bend your leg down The torque on your knee is much more when it's bent than it is when it's straight So you'd expect a non-linear function and in fact the biology is non-linear. This matches it quite accurately So that's a representation the four-bar link is obviously not physically four-bar link as I said the characteristics are similar, but Me bending down that's not very scientific. Let's be a bit more scientific We've played all the tasks through the through this graph And this is showing picketing is walking squatting the tasks I said we did on the stress And that's the the torque Seen at the knee against the knee bend on the horizontal axis This is showing the requirement for the need to do all these tasks And then put a curve through it surfing over the top of the piece and that's saying this is what's required to make the robot Do these tasks?\n\nSo if we look at the four-bar link that's actually the green curve And it's saying that the non-linearity of the four-bar link is actually linearized The characteristic of the force what that really says is that's lower the force That's what makes the actuator have the lowest possible force, which is the most efficient. We want to burn energy up slowly What's the blue curve with the blue curve is actually if we didn't have a four-bar link We just had an arm sticking out of my leg here with a with an actuator on it a simple two-bar link That's the best we could do with a simple two-bar link and it shows that that would create a much more force in the actuator Which would not be efficient So what does it look like in practice? well As you'll see but it's very tightly packaged in the knee you'll see it go transparent on the second You'll see the four-bar link there is operating on the actuator. This is determined the force and the displacements on the actuator And now pass you over to Constantina to tell you a lot more detail about how these actuators are made and designed optimized. Thank you So I am I would like to talk to you about The design process and the actuator portfolio In our robot So there are many similarities between a car and the robot when it comes to powertrain design The most important thing that matters here is energy mass and cost We are carrying over most of our designing experience from the car to the robot So in the particular case you see a car with two drive units And the drive units are used in order to accelerate the car zero to 60 miles per hour time or drive a city drive site while The robot that has 28 actuators and It's not obvious. What are the tasks at actuator level?\n\nSo we have tasks that are higher level like walking or climbing stairs or carrying a heavy object Which need to be translated into joint Into joint specs therefore we use our model That generates The torque speed Trajectories for our joints which subsequently is going to be fed in our optimization model And to run through the optimization process This is one of the scenarios that the robot is capable of doing which is turning and walking So when we have this torque speed trajectory we lay it over an efficiency map of an actuator And we are able along the trajectory to generate The power consumption and the energy cumulative energy for the task versus time So this allows us to define the system cost for the particular actuator and put a simple point into the cloud Then we do this for hundreds of thousands of actuators by solving in our cluster And the red line denotes the Pareto front, which is the preferred area where we will look for optimal So the x denotes the preferred actuator design we have picked for this particular joint So now we need to do this for every joint. We have 28 joints to optimize and we parse our cloud We parse our cloud again for every joint spec and the red axis this time denotes the bespoke actuator designs for every joint The problem here Is that we have too many unique actuator designs and even if we take advantage of the symmetry Still there are too many in order to make something Mass manufacturable we need to be able to reduce the amount of unique actuator designs Therefore we run something called commonality study, which we parse our cloud again Looking this time for actuators that simultaneously meet the joint performance requirements for more than one joint at the same time So the resulting portfolio is six actuators and they show in a color map at the middle figure um And the actuators can be also viewed in this Slide we have three rotary and three linear actuators all of which have a great Output force or torque per mass The rotary actuator in particular has a mechanical clutch integrated On the high speed side angular contact ball bearing and on the high speed side And on the low speed side a cross roller bearing and the year train is a strain wave year Um, there are three integrated sensors here and the bespoke permanent magnet machine The linear actuator I'm sorry The linear actuator has planetary rollers and an inverted planetary Screw as a gear train which allows efficiency and compaction and durability So in order to demonstrate the force capability of our linear actuators, we have set up an experiment in order to test it under its limits And I will let you enjoy the video So our actuator is able to lift A half ton nine foot concert grand piano And This is a requirement it's not something nice to have Because our muscles can do the same when they are direct driven when they are directly driven our quadriceps muscles Can do the same thing it's just that the knee is an upgearing Linked system that converts the force into velocity at the end effector of our heels for purposes of giving To the human body agility So this is one of the main things that are amazing about the human body And I'm concluding my part at this point and I would like to welcome my colleague Mike who's going to talk to you about Hand design. Thank you very much Thanks for seeing us So we just saw how powerful a human and a humanoid actuator can be However, humans are also incredibly dexterous The human hand has the ability to move at 300 degrees per second There's tens of thousands of tactile sensors And it has the ability to grasp and manipulate almost every object in our daily lives For our robotic hand design, we were inspired by biology We have five fingers an opposable thumb Our fingers are driven by metallic tendons that are both flexible and strong We have the ability to complete wide aperture power grasps while also being optimized for precision gripping of small thin and delicate objects So why a human like robotic hand? Well, the main reason is that our factories in the world around us is designed to be ergonomic So what that means is that it ensures that objects in our factory are graspable But it also ensures that new objects that we may have never seen before can be grasped by the human hand And by our robotic hand as well The converse there is is pretty interesting because it's saying that these objects are designed to our hand instead of having to make changes To our hand to accompany a new object Some basic stats about our hand is that it has six actuators and 11 degrees of freedom It has an in-hand controller which drives the fingers and receives sensor feedback Sensor feedback is really important to learn a little bit more about the objects that we're grasping And also for proprioception and that's the ability for us to recognize where our hand is in space One of the important aspects of our hand is that it's adaptive This adaptability is involved essentially as complex mechanisms that allow the hand to adapt the objects that's being grasped Another important part is that we have a non-back drivable finger drive This clutching mechanism allows us to hold and transport objects without having to turn on the hand motors You just heard how we went about going we went about designing the tesla bot hardware Now I'll hand it off to Milan and our autonomy team to bring this robot to life Thanks Michael All right So all those cool things we've shown earlier in the video Were possible just in a matter of a few months. Thanks to the amazing work that we've done autopilot over the past few years Most of those components poured it quite easily over to the bot's environment If you think about it, we're just moving from a robot on wheels to a robot on legs So some of the components are pretty similar and some other require more heavy lifting So for example our computer vision neural networks Were ported directly from autopilot to the bot's situation It's exactly the same occupancy network that we'll talk into a little bit more details later with the autopilot team that is now running on the bot here in this video The only thing that changed really is the training data that we had to recollect We're also trying to find ways to improve those occupancy networks Using work made on your radiance fields to get really great volumetric Rendering of the bot's environments for example here some machinery that the bot might have to interact with Another interesting problem to think about is in indoor environments, mostly with that sense of gps signal How do you get the bot to navigate to its destination? Say for instance to find its nearest charging station So we've been training More neural networks to identify high-frequency features key points within the bot's camera streams And track them across frames over time as the bot navigates with its environment And we're using those points to get a better estimate of the bot's pose and trajectory within its environment as it's walking We also did quite some work on the simulation side and this is literally the autopilot simulator To which we've integrated the robots locomotion code and this is a video of the Motion control code running in the autopilot simulator Showing the evolution of the robot's work over time.\n\nSo as you can see we started quite slowly in April and start accelerating as we unlock more joints And deeper more advanced techniques like arms balancing over the past few months And so locomotion is specifically one component that's very different as we're moving from the car to the bot's environment And so I think it warrants a little bit more depth and I'd like my colleagues to start talking about this now Thank you Milan. Hi, everyone. I'm Felix. I'm a robotics engineer on the project and I'm going to talk about walking Walking seems easy, right? People do it every day. You don't even have to think about it But there are some aspects of walking which are challenging from engineering to technology And I think that's one of the things that makes it so much easier for me to think about it But there are some aspects of walking which are challenging from engineering perspective.\n\nFor example Physical self-awareness that means having a good representation of yourself What is the length of your limbs? What is the mass of your limbs? What is the size of your feet? All that matters Also having an energy efficient gate. You can imagine there's different styles of walking and all of them are equally efficient Most important keep balance. Don't fall And of course also coordinate the motion of all of your limbs together So now humans do all of this naturally But as engineers or roboticists we have to think about these problems And the following I'm going to show you how we address them in our locomotion planning and control stack So we start with locomotion planning And our representation of the bot that means a model of the robots kinematics dynamics and the contact properties And using that model and the desired path for the bots our locomotion planner generates reference trajectories for the entire system This means feasible trajectories with respect to the assumptions of our model The planner currently works in three stages.\n\nIt starts planning footsteps and ends with the entire motion photo system And let's dive a little bit deeper in how this works So in this video we see footsteps being planned over a planning horizon following the desired path And we start from this and add then Foot trajectories that connect these footsteps using toe-off and heel strike just as the humans Just as humans do and this gives us the largest right and less knee bend for high efficiency of the system The last stage is then finding a center of mass trajectory Which gives us a dynamically feasible motion of the entire system to keep balance As we all know plans are good, but we also have to realize them in reality. Let's say how see how we can do this Thank you Felix. Hello everyone. My name is Anand and I'm going to talk to you about controls So let's take the motion plan that Felix just talked about and put it in the real world on a real robot Let's see what happens It takes a couple steps and falls down Well, that's a little disappointing But we are missing a few key pieces here, which will make it walk Now as Felix mentioned the motion planner is using an idealized version of itself and a version of reality around it This is not exactly correct It also expresses its intention Through trajectories and wrenches wrenches of forces and torques that it wants to exert on the world to locomotive Reality is way more complex than any similar model. Also the robot is not simplified It's got vibrations and modes, compliance, sensor noise and on and on and on So what does that do to the real world when you put the bot in the real world? Well, the unexpected forces cause unmodeled dynamics, which essentially the planet doesn't know about and that causes destabilization Especially for a system that is dynamically stable like bipedal locomotion So what can we do about it?\n\nWell, we measure reality We use sensors and our understanding of the world to do state estimation And here you can see the attitude and pelvis pose, which is essentially the vestibular system in a human Along with the center of mass trajectory being tracked when the robot is walking in the office environment Now we have all the pieces we need in order to close the loop So we use our better bot model We use the understanding of reality that we've gained through state estimation And we compare what we want versus what we expect the reality expect that reality is doing to us in order to Add corrections to the behavior of the robot Here the robot certainly doesn't appreciate being poked, but it has an admirable job of staying upright The final point here is a robot that walks is not enough We need it to use its hands and arms to be useful. Let's talk about manipulation Hi everyone, my name is Eric robotics engineer on tesla bot And I want to talk about how we've made the robot manipulate things in the real world We wanted to manipulate objects while looking as natural as possible and also get there quickly So what we've done is we've broken this process down into two steps First is generating a library of natural motion references Or we could call them demonstrations and then we've adapted these motion references online to the current real world situation So let's say we have a human demonstration of picking up an object We can get a motion capture of that demonstration, which is visualized right here as A bunch of keyframes representing the location of the hands the elbows the torso We can map that to the robot using inverse kinematics And if we collect a lot of these now we have a library that we can work with But a single demonstration is not generalizable to the variation in the real world For instance, this would only work for a box in a very particular Location So what we've also done is run these Reference trajectories through a trajectory optimization program which solves for where the hand should be how the robot should balance during When it needs to adapt the motion to the real world. So for instance, if the box is In this location, then our optimizer will create this trajectory instead Next Milan's going to talk about uh, what's next for the optimist uh, tesla lie. Thanks Right, so hopefully by now you guys got a good idea of what we've been up to over the past few months Um, we started having something that's usable, but it's far from being useful. There's still a long and exciting road ahead of us um, I think the first thing within the next few weeks is to Get optimists at least apart with bumble see the other bug prototype you saw earlier and probably beyond We are also going to start focusing on the real use case at one of our factories and really going to try to try to Nail this down and I run out all the elements needed to deploy this product in the real world I was mentioning earlier, you know indoor navigation Um graceful for management or even servicing all components needed to scale this product up But um, I don't know about you, but after seeing what we've shown tonight I'm pretty sure we can get this done within the next few months or years Um, and and make this product a reality and change the entire economy Um, so I would like to thank the entire optimist team for their hard work over the past few months I think it's pretty amazing. All of this was done in barely six or eight months.\n\nThank you very much Hey everyone Hi, I'm Ashok. I lead the autopilot team alongside Milan Oh god, it's going to be so hard to top that optinist section He'll try nonetheless anyway Every tesla that has been built over the last several years We think has the hardware to make the car drive itself We have been working on the software to add higher and higher levels of autonomy This time around last year. We are roughly 2000 cars driving our fsd beta software Since then we have significantly improved the software's robustness and capability That we have now shipped it to 160,000 customers as of today This did not come for free it came from the sweat and blood of the engineering team over the last one year Um, for example, we trained 75,000 neural network models just last one year That's roughly a model every eight minutes That's you know coming out of the team and then we evaluate them on our large clusters and then we ship 281 of those models That actually improved the performance of the car And this space of innovation is happening throughout the stack The the planning software the infrastructure the tools even hiring everything is progressing to the next level The fsd beta software is quite capable of driving the car It should be able to navigate from parking lot to parking lot handling city street driving stopping for traffic lights and stop signs Negotiating with objects at intersections making turns and so on All of this comes from the Uh camera streams that go through our neural networks that run on the car itself It's not coming back to the server or anything It runs on the car and produces all the outputs uh to form the world model or on the car and the planning software drives the car based on that Today we'll go into a lot of the components that make up the system The occupancy network acts as the base geometry layer of the system This is a multi-camera video neural network That from the images predicts the full physical occupancy of the world around the robot So anything that's physically present trees walls buildings Cars balls, whatever you it predicts if it's physically present it predicts them along with their future motion On top of this base level of geometry We have more semantic layers in order to navigate the roadways. We need the lanes, of course But then the roadways have lots of different lanes and they connect in all kinds of ways So it's actually a really difficult problem for typical computer vision techniques to predict the set of lanes and their Connectivities So we reached all the way into language technologies and then pull the state of the art from other Domains are not just computer vision to make this task possible For vehicles, we need their full kinematics state to control for them All of this directly comes from neural networks video streams raw video streams come into the networks Goes through a lot of processing and then outputs the full kinematics state that positions velocities acceleration jerk all of that Directly comes out of networks with minimal post processing. That's really fascinating to me because how how much does it take? Even possible what world do we live in that this magic is possible that these networks predicts fourth derivatives of these positions and people thought We couldn't even detect these objects My opinion is that it did not come for free It it required tons of data.\n\nSo we had to be sophisticated auto labeling systems that shone through raw sensor data Run a ton of offline compute on the servers. It took a lot of time. It took a lot of time. It took a lot of time Run a ton of offline compute on the servers. It can take a few hours run expensive neural networks Distill the information into labels that train our in-car neural networks On top of this we also use our simulation system to synthetically create images and since it's a simulation We trivially have all the labels All of this goes through a well oiled data engine pipeline where we first train a baseline model with some data Ship it to the car see what the failures are and once we know the failures We mind the fleet for the cases where it fails Provide the correct labels and add the data to the training set This process systematically fixes the issues and we do this for every task that runs in the car Yeah, and to train these new massive neural networks This year we expanded our training infrastructure by roughly 40 to 50 percent So that sits us at about 14,000 GPUs today across multiple training clusters in the United States We also worked on our AI compiler which now supports new operations needed by those neural networks And map them to the the best of our underlying hardware resources And our inference engine today is capable of distributing the execution of a single neural network across two independent system on chips Essentially two independent computers interconnected within the same full self-driving computer And to make this possible we have to keep a tight control on the end-to-end latency of this new system So we deployed more advanced scheduling code across the full FSD platform All of these neural networks running in the car Together produce the vector space, which is again the model of the world around the robot or the car And then the planning system operates on top of this coming up with trajectories that avoid collisions or smooth Make progress towards the destination using a combination of model-based optimization Plus neural network that helps optimize it to be really fast Today we are really excited to present progress on all of these areas We have the engineering leads standing by to come in and explain these various blocks and these power not just the car But the same components also run on the Optimus robot that Milan showed earlier With that I welcome Paril to start talking about the planning section Hi all, I'm Paril Jain Let's use this intersection scenario today Let's use this intersection scenario to dive straight into how we do the planning and decision making in autopilot So we are approaching this intersection from a side street and we have to yield to all the crossing vehicles Right with as they are about to enter the intersection The pedestrian on the other side of the intersection decides to cross the road without a crosswalk Now we need to yield to this pedestrian Yield to the vehicles from the right and also understand the relation between the pedestrian and the vehicle on the other side of the intersection So a lot of these intra object dependencies That we need to resolve in a quick glance And humans are really good at this We look at a scene understand all the possible interactions evaluate the most promising ones And generally end up choosing a reasonable one So let's look at a few of these interactions that autopilot system evaluated We could have gone in front of this pedestrian with a very aggressive longitudinal lateral profile Now obviously we are being a jerk to the pedestrian and we would spook the pedestrian and his cute pet We could have moved forward slowly Short for a gap between the pedestrian or end the vehicle from the right Again, we are being a jerk to the vehicle coming from the right But you should not outright reject this interaction in case this is only safe interaction available Lastly the interaction we ended up choosing Stay slow initially find the reasonable gap and then finish the maneuver after all the agents pass Now evaluation of all of these interactions is not trivial Especially when you care about modeling the higher order derivatives for other agents For example, what is the longitudinal jerk required by the vehicle coming from the right when you assert in front of it? Relying purely on collision checks with marginal predictions will only get you so far because you will miss out on a lot of valid interactions This basically boils down to solving a multi-agent joint trajectory planning problem over the trajectories of ego and all the other agents Now how much ever you optimize there's going to be a limit to how fast you can run this optimization problem It will be close to close to order of 10 milliseconds even after a lot of incremental approximations Now for a typical crowded unprotected lift Say you have more than 20 objects Each object having multiple different future modes the number of relevant interaction combinations will blow up The planner needs to make a decision every 50 milliseconds.\n\nSo how do we solve this in real time? We rely on a framework what we call as interaction search, which is basically a paralyzed research over a bunch of maneuver trajectories The state space here corresponds to the kinematic state of ego, the kinematic state of other agents, their nominal future multiple multi-modal predictions and all the static entities in the scene The action space is where things get interesting We use a set of maneuver trajectory candidates to branch over a bunch of interaction decisions and also incremental goals for a longer horizon maneuver Let's walk through this research very quickly to get a sense of how it works We start with a set of vision measurements namely lanes occupancy moving objects These get represented as past attractions as well as latent features We use this to create a set of goal candidates Lanes again from the lanes network or unstructured regions which correspond to a probability mask derived from human demonstrations Once we have a bunch of these goal candidates, we create three trajectories using a combination of classical optimization approaches As well as our network planner again trained on data from the customer fleet Now once we get a bunch of these three trajectories We use them to start branching on the interactions We find the most critical interaction In our case, this would be the interaction with respect to the pedestrian Whether we assert in front of it or yield to it Obviously the option on the left is a high penalty option, it likely won't get prioritized So we branch further onto the option on the right and that's where we bring in more and more complex interactions Building this optimization problem incrementally with more and more constraints And the tree search keeps flowing, branching on more interactions, branching on more goals Now a lot of pricks here lie in evaluation of each of this node of the tree search Inside each node, initially we started with creating trajectories using classical optimization approaches Where the constraints like I described would be added incrementally And this would take close to 1 to 5 milliseconds per action Now even though this is fairly good number, when you want to evaluate more than 100% interactions, this does not scale So we ended up building lightweight queryable networks that you can run in the loop of the planner These networks are trained on human demonstrations from the fleet as well as offline solvers with relaxed time limits With this, we were able to bring the run time down to close to 100 microseconds per action Now doing this alone is not enough because you still have this massive tree search that you need to go through And you need to efficiently prune the search space So you need to do a new scoring on each of these trajectories Few of these are fairly standard, you do a bunch of collision checks, you do a bunch of comfort analysis What is the jerk and access required for a given manure The customer fleet data plays an important role here again We run two sets of again lightweight queryable networks, both really augmenting each other One of them trained from interventions from the FSD beta fleet Which gives a score on how likely is a given manure to result in interventions over the next few seconds And second, which is purely on human demonstrations, human driven data, giving a score on how close is your given selected action to a human driven trajectory The scoring helps us prune the search space, keep branching further on the interactions and focus the compute on the most promising outcomes The cool part about this architecture is that it allows us to create a cool blend between data driven approaches where you don't have to rely on a lot of hand engineered costs But also ground it in reality with physics based checks Now a lot of what I described was with respect to the agents, we could observe in the scene But the same framework extends to all of the other systems that we have We use the video feed from 8 cameras to generate the 3D occupancy of the world The blue mask here corresponds to the visibility region, we call it It basically gets blocked at the first occlusion you see in the scene We consume this visibility mask to generate the visibility of the scene We use the video feed from 8 cameras to generate the 3D occupancy of the world The blue mask here corresponds to the visibility region, we call it In the first occlusion you see in the scene, we consume this visibility mask to generate what we call as ghost objects which you can see on the top left Now if you model the spawn regions and the state transitions of this ghost objects correctly If you tune your control response as a function of their existence likelihood, you can extract some really nice human-like behaviors Now I'll pass it on to Phil to describe more on how we generate these occupancy networks Hey guys, my name is Phil, I will share the details of the occupancy network we built over the past year This network is our solution to model the physical work in 3D around our cars And it is currently not shown in our customer-facing visualization What you will see here is the raw network output from our internal lab tool The occupancy network takes video streams of all our 8 cameras as input Produces a single unified volumetric occupancy in vector space directly For every 3D location around our car, it predicts the probability of that location being occupied or not Since it has video contacts, it is capable of predicting obstacles that are occluded instantaneously For each location, it also produces a set of semantics such as curb, car, pedestrian, and road debris as color-coded here Occupancy flow is also predicted for motion Since the model is a generalized network, it does not tell static and dynamic objects explicitly It is able to produce and model the random motion such as a swarming trainer here This network is currently running in all Teslas with FSD computers And it is incredibly efficient, runs about every 10 milliseconds with our neural-line accelerator So how does this work? Let's take a look at architecture First, we rectify each camera image with a camera calibration And the images we're showing here are given to the network It's actually not the typical 8-bit RGB image As you can see from the first image on top, we're giving the 12-bit raw photo-account image to the network Since it has 4 bits more information, it has 16 times better dynamic range as well as reduced latency Since we don't have to run ISP in the loop anymore We use a set of reglets and bif-fps as a backbone to extract image space features Next, we construct a set of 3D position queries along with the image space features as keys and values fit into an attention module The output of the attention module is high-dimensional spatial features These spatial features are aligned temporally using vehicle odometry to derive motion Next, these spatial temporal features go through a set of deconvolutions to produce the final occupancy and occupancy flow output They're formed as fixed-size voxel grids, which might not be precise enough for planning on control In order to get a higher resolution, we also produce per voxel feature maps which we feed into MLP with 3D spatial point queries to get position and semantics at any arbitrary location After knowing the model better, let's take a look at another example Here we have an articulated bus parked on the right side of the road, highlighted as an L-shaped voxel here As we approach, the bus starts to move. The front of the car turns blue first, indicating the model predicts The front of the bus has a long zero occupancy flow As the bus keeps moving, the entire bus turns blue, and you can also see that the network predicts the precise curvature of the bus This is a very complicated problem for a traditional object detection network, as you'll have to see whether I'm going to use one cuboid or perhaps two to feed the curvature But for an occupancy network, since all we care about is the occupancy in the visible space, we'll be able to model the curvature precisely Besides the voxel grid, the occupancy network also produces a drivel surface The drivel surface has both 3D geometry and semantics. They are very useful for control, especially on hilly and curvy roads The surface and the voxel grid are not predicted independently. Instead, the voxel grid actually aligns with the surface implicitly Here, we are at a hill quest where you can see the 3D geometry of the surface being predicted nicely Planner can use this information to decide perhaps we need to slow down more for the hill quest And as you can also see, the voxel grid aligns with the surface consistently Besides the voxels and the surface, we're also very excited about the recent breakthrough in Neural Radiance Field or NERF We're looking into both incorporating some of the last NERF features into occupancy network training as well as using our network output as the input state for NERF As a matter of fact, Ashok is very excited about this.\n\nThis has been his personal weekend project for a while About these NERFs, because I think the academia is building out of these foundation models for language using tons of large data sets for language But I think for vision, NERFs are going to provide the foundation models for computer vision because they are grounded in geometry And geometry gives us a nice way to supervise these networks and freezes off the requirement to define an ontology And the supervision is essentially free because you just have to differentially render these images So I think in the future, this occupancy network idea where images come in and then the network produces a consistent volumetric representation of the scene That can then be differentially rendered into any image that was observed I personally think it's a future of computer vision and we do some initial work on it right now But I think in the future, both at Tesla and in academia, we will see that this combination of one-shot prediction of volumetric occupancy will be the future That's my personal bet Thanks Ashok So here's an example early result of a 3D reconstruction from our free data Instead of focusing on getting perfect RGB reproduction in image space, our primary goal here is to accurately represent the world in 3D space for driving And we want to do this for all our free data over the world in all weather and lighting conditions And obviously this is a very challenging problem and we're looking for you guys to help Finally, the occupancy network is trained with large auto-labeled data sets without any human in the loop And with that, I'll pass to Tim to talk about what it takes to train this network Thanks Phil Alright, hey everyone Let's talk about some training infrastructure So we've seen a couple of videos, no four or five I think and care more and worry more about a lot more clips on that So we've been looking at the occupancy networks just from Phil Just Phil's videos, it takes 1.4 billion frames to train that network What you just saw and if you have 100,000 GPUs, it would take one hour But if you have one GPU, it would take 100,000 hours So that is not a humane time period that you can wait for your training job to run, right? We want to ship faster than that So that means you're going to need to go parallel So you need a more compute for that That means you're going to need a supercomputer So this is why we've built in-house three supercomputers comprising of 14,000 GPUs Where we use 10,000 GPUs for training and around 4,000 GPUs for auto-labeling All these videos are stored in 30 petabytes of a distributed managed video cache You shouldn't think of our data sets as fixed Let's say as you think of your image net or something, you know, with like a million frames You should think of it as a very fluid thing So we've got half a million of these videos flowing in and out of this cluster These clusters every single day And we track 400,000 of these kind of Python video instantiations every second So that's a lot of calls We're going to need to capture that in order to govern the retention policies of this distributed video cache So underlying all of this is a huge amount of infra, all of which we build and manage in-house So you cannot just buy, you know, 14,000 GPUs and then 30 petabytes of Flash NVMe And you just put it together and let's go train It actually takes a lot of work and I'm going to go into a little bit of that What you actually typically want to do is you want to take your accelerator So that could be the GPU or dojo, which we'll talk about later And because that's the most expensive component, that's where you want to put your bottleneck And so that means that every single part of your system is going to need to outperform this accelerator And so that is really complicated That means that your storage is going to need to have the size and the bandwidth to deliver all the data down into the nodes These nodes need to have the right amount of CPU and memory capabilities to feed into your machine learning framework This machine learning framework then needs to hand it off to your GPU and then you can start training But then you need to do so across hundreds or thousands of GPU in a reliable way in lockstep And in a way that's also fast, so you're also going to need an interconnect Extremely complicated We'll talk more about dojo in a second So first I want to take you through some optimizations that we've done on our cluster So we're getting in a lot of videos and video is very much unlike, let's say, training on images or text Which I think is very well established Video is quite literally a dimension more complicated And so that's why we needed to go end to end from the storage layer down to the accelerator Optimize every single piece of that Because we train on the photon count videos that come directly from our fleet We train on those directly, we do not post-process those at all The way it's just done is we seek exactly to the frames we select for our batch We load those in including the frames that they depend on, so these are your eye frames or your key frames We package those up, move them into shared memory, move them into a double bar from the GPU And then use the hardware decoder that's only accelerated to actually decode the video So we do that on the GPU natively, and this is all in a very nice PyTorch extension Doing so unlocked more than 30% training speed increase for the occupancy networks And freed up basically a whole CPU to do any other thing You cannot just do training with just videos, of course you need some kind of a ground truth And that is actually an interesting problem as well The objective for storing your ground truth is that you want to make sure you get to your ground truth That you need in the minimal amount of file system operations And load in the minimal size of what you need in order to optimize for aggregate cross cluster throughput Because you should see a compute cluster as one big device which has internally fixed constraints and thresholds So for this we rolled out a format that is native to us that's called small We use this for our ground truth, our feature cache and any inference outputs So a lot of tensors that are in there And so just a cartoon here, let's say this is your table that you want to store Then that's how that would look out if you rolled out on disk So what you do is you take anything you'd want to index on, so for example video timestamps You put those all in the header so that in your initial header read you know exactly where to go on disk Then if you have any tensors you're going to try to transpose the dimensions to put a different dimension last as the contiguous dimension And then also try different types of compression Then you check out which one was most optimal and then store that one This is actually a huge tip if you do feature caching Unintelligible output from the machine learning network Rotate around the dimensions a little bit, you can get up to 20% increase in efficiency of storage Then when you store that we also order the columns by size So that all your small columns and small values are together So that when you seek for a single value you're likely to overlap with a read on more values which you'll use later So that you don't need to do another file system operation So I could go on and on, I just went on, touched on two projects that we have internally This is actually part of a huge continuous effort to optimize the compute that we have in-house So accumulating and aggregating through all these optimizations We now train our occupancy networks twice as fast just because it's twice as efficient And now if we add in a bunch more compute and go parallel we can now train this in hours instead of days And with that I'd like to hand it off to the biggest user of compute, John Hi everybody, my name is John Emmons, I lead the autopilot vision team I'm going to cover two topics with you today, the first is how we predict lanes And the second is how we predict the future behavior of other agents on the road In the early days of autopilot we modeled the lane detection problem as an image space instant segmentation task Our network was super simple though, in fact it was only capable of predicting lanes from a few different kinds of geometries Specifically it would segment the ego lane, it could segment adjacent lanes, and then it had some special casing for forks and merges This simplistic modeling of the problem worked for highly structured roads like highways But today we're trying to build a system that's capable of much more complex maneuvers Specifically we want to make left and right turns at intersections where the road topology can be quite a bit more complex and diverse When we try to apply this simplistic modeling of the problem here, it just totally breaks down Taking a step back for a moment, what we're trying to do here is to predict the sparse set of lane instances and their connectivity And what we want to do is to have a neural network that basically predicts this graph where the nodes are the lane segments And the edges encode the connectivity between these lanes So what we have is our lane detection neural network, it's made up of three components In the first component we have a set of convolutional layers, attention layers, and other neural network layers That encode the video streams from our eight cameras on the vehicle and produce a rich visual representation We then enhance this visual representation with a coarse road level map data Which we encode with a set of additional neural network layers that we call the lane guidance module This map is not an HD map, but it provides a lot of useful hints about the topology of lanes inside of intersections, the lane counts on various roads, and a set of other attributes that help us The first two components here produce a dense tensor that sort of encodes the world But what we really want to do is to convert this dense tensor into a sparse set of lanes and their connectivity We approach this problem like an image captioning task where the input is this dense tensor and the output text is predicted into a special language that we developed at Tesla for encoding lanes and their connectivity In this language of lanes, the words and tokens are the lane positions in 3D space In the ordering of the tokens, encrypted modifiers in the tokens encode the connected relationships between these lanes By modeling the task as a language problem, we can capitalize on recent autoregressive architectures and techniques from the language community for handling the multiple-diality of the problem We're not just solving the computer vision problem at Autopilot, we're also applying the state-of-the-art in language modeling and machine learning more generally I'm now going to dive into a little bit more detail of this language component What I have depicted on the screen here is a satellite image which sort of represents the local area around the vehicle The set of nose and edges is what we refer to as the lane graph, and it's ultimately what we want to come out of this neural network We start with a blank slate We're going to want to make our first prediction here at this green dot This green dot's position is encoded as an index into a course grid which discretizes the 3D world Now we don't predict this index directly because it would be too computationally expensive to do so There's just too many grid points and predicting a categorical distribution over this has both implications at training time and test time So instead what we do is we discretize the world coarsely first, we predict the heat map over the possible locations, and then we latch in the most probable location Condition on this, we then refine the prediction and get the precise point Now we know where the position of this token is, but we don't know it's tight In this case though, it's a beginning of a new lane So we predict it as a start token And because it's a start token, there's no additional attributes in our language We then take the predictions from this first forward pass, and we encode them using a learned positional embedding Which produces a set of tensors that we combine together Which is actually the first word in our language of lanes We add this to the first position in our sentence here We then continue this process by predicting the next lane point in a similar fashion Now this lane point is not the beginning of a new lane, it's actually a continuation of the previous lane So it's a continuation token type Now it's not enough just to know that this lane is connected to the previously predicted lane We want to encode its precise geometry, which we do by regressing a set of spline coefficients We then take this lane, we encode it again, and add it as the next word in the sentence We continue predicting these continuation lanes until we get to the end of the prediction grid We then move on to a different lane segment So you can see that cyan dot there Now it's not topologically connected to that pink point It's actually forking off of that green point there So it's got a fork type And fork tokens actually point back to previous tokens from which their fork originates So you can see here the fork point predictor is actually the index zero So it's actually referencing back to a token that is already predicted, like you would in language We continue this process over and over again until we've enumerated all of the tokens in the lane graph And then the network predicts the end of sentence token Yeah, I just wanted to note that the reason we do this is not just because we want to build something complicated It almost feels like a Turing complete machine here with neural networks though Is that we try simple approaches, for example, trying to just segment the lanes along the road or something like that But then the problem is when there's uncertainty, say you cannot see the road clearly And there could be two lanes or three lanes and you can't tell A simple segmentation-based approach would just draw both of them It's kind of a 2.5 lane situation And the post-processing algorithm would hilariously fail when the predictions are such Yeah, the problems don't end there I mean, you need to predict these connective lanes inside of intersections Which is just not possible with the approach that Ashok's mentioning Which is why we had to upgrade to this sort of approach Yeah, when it overlaps like this, segmentation would just go haywire But even if you try very hard to put them on separate layers, it's just a really hard problem But language just offers a really nice framework for getting a sample from a posterior As opposed to trying to do all of this in post-processing But this doesn't actually stop for just autopilot, right? John, this can be used for optimists Yeah, I guess they wouldn't be called lanes But you could imagine, sort of in this stage here That you might have sort of paths that sort of encode the possible places that people could walk Yeah, basically if you're in a factory or in a home setting, you can just ask the robot Okay, please route to the kitchen or please route to some location in the factory And then we predict a set of pathways that would go through the aisles, take the robot And say, okay, this is how you get to the kitchen It just really gives us a nice framework to model these different paths That simplify the navigation problem for the downstream planner Alright, so ultimately what we get from this lane detection network Is a set of lanes in their connectivity, which comes directly from the network There's no additional step here for sparsifying these dense predictions into sparse ones This is just a direct unfiltered output of the network Okay, so I talked a little bit about lanes I'm going to briefly touch on how we model and predict the future paths and other semantics on objects So I'm just going to go really quickly through two examples The video on the right here, we've got a car that's actually running a red light and turning in front of us What we do to handle situations like this is we predict a set of short time horizon future trajectories on all objects We can use these to anticipate the dangerous situation here And apply whatever breaking and steering actions required to avoid a collision In the video on the right, there's two vehicles in front of us The one on the left lane is parked, apparently it's being loaded, unloaded I don't know why the driver decided to park there But the important thing is that our neural network predicted that it was stopped Which is the red color there The vehicle in the other lane, as you notice, also is stationary But that one's obviously just waiting for that red light to turn green So even though both objects are stationary and have zero velocity It's the semantics that is really important here So that we don't get stuck behind that awkwardly parked car Predicting all of these agent attributes presents some practical problems when trying to build a real-time system We need to maximize the frame rate of our object section stack So that autopilot can quickly react to the changing environment Every millisecond really matters here To minimize the inference latency, our neural network is split into two phases In the first phase, we identified the locations in 3D space where agents exist In the second stage, we then pull out tensors at those 3D locations Append it with additional data that's on the vehicle And then we do the rest of the processing This specification step allows the neural network to focus compute on the areas that matter most Which gives us superior performance for a fraction of the latency cost So, putting it all together The autopilot vision stack predicts more than just the geometry and kinematics of the world It also predicts a rich set of semantics, which enables safe and human-like driving I'm now going to hand things off to Sri who will tell us how we run all these cool neural networks on our FSD computer Thank you Hi everyone, I'm Sri Today I'm going to give a glimpse of what it takes to run these FSD networks in the car And how do we optimize for the inference latency? Today I'm going to focus just on the FSD lanes network that John just talked about So, when we started this track, we wanted to know if we can run this FSD lanes network natively on the trip engine Which is our in-house neural network accelerator that we built in the FSD computer When we built this hardware, we kept it simple and we made sure it can do one thing ridiculously fast Dense dot products But this architecture is autoregressive and iterative Where it crunches through multiple attention-attention blocks in the inner loop Producing sparse points directly at every step So, the challenge here was how can we do this sparse point prediction and sparse computation on a dense dot product engine Let's see how we did this on the trip So, the network predicts the heat map of most probable spatial locations of the point To do this on trip, we actually built a lookup table in SRAM And we engineered the dimensions of this embedding such that we could achieve all of this thing with just matrix multiplication Not just that, we also wanted to store this embedding into a token cache So that we don't recompute this for every iteration, rather reuse it for future point prediction Again, we put some tricks here where we did all these operations just on the dot product engine It's actually cool that our team found creative ways to map all these operations on the trip engine In ways that were not even imagined when this hardware was designed But that's not the only thing we had to do to make this work We actually implemented a whole lot of operations and features to make this model compilable To improve the intate accuracy as well as to optimize performance All of these things helped us run this 75 million parameter model just under 10 millisecond of latency Consuming just 8 watts of power But this is not the only architecture running in the car There are so many other architectures, modules and networks we need to run in the car To give a sense of scale, there are about a billion parameters of all the networks combined Producing around 1000 neural network signals So we need to make sure we optimize them jointly and such that we maximize the compute utilization Throughput and minimize the latency So we built a compiler just for neural networks that shares the structure to traditional compilers As you can see, it takes the massive graph of neural nets with 150k nodes and 375k connection Takes this thing, partitions them into independent subgraphs And compiles each of those subgraphs natively for the inference devices Then we have a neural network linker which shares the structure to traditional linker Where we perform this link time optimization There we solve an offline optimization problem with compute memory and memory band with constraints So that it comes with an optimized schedule that gets executed in the car On the runtime, we designed a hybrid scheduling system which basically does heterogeneous scheduling on one SOC And distributed scheduling across both the SOCs to run these networks in a model parallel fashion To get 100 tops of compute utilization, we need to optimize across all the layers of software Right from tuning the network architecture, the compiler, all the way to implementing a low latency high bandwidth RDMA link Across both the SOCs and in fact going even deeper to understanding and optimizing the cache coherent and non-coherent data path of the accelerator in the SOC This is a lot of optimization at every level in order to make sure we get the highest frame rate and as every millisecond counts here And this is just the visualization of the neural networks that are running in the car This is our digital brain essentially As you can see these operations are nothing but just the matrix multiplication, convolution to name a few real operations running in the car To train this network with a billion parameters, you need a lot of labeled data So Egan is going to talk about how do we achieve this with the auto labeling pipeline Thank you Sri Hi everyone, I'm Egan Zhang and I'm leading a geometric vision at autopilot So yeah, let's talk about auto labeling So we have several kinds of auto labeling frameworks to support various types of networks But today I'd like to focus on the awesome lanes net here So to successfully train and generalize this network to everywhere, we think we went tens of millions of trips from probably one million intersection or even more Than how to do that So it is certainly achievable to source sufficient amount of trips because we already have, as Tim explained earlier, we already have like 500,000 trips per day cache rate However, converting all those data into a training form is a very challenging technical problem To solve this challenge, we've tried various ways of manual and auto labeling So from the first column to the second, from the second to the third, each advance provided us nearly 100x improvement in throughput But still, we run an even better auto labeling machine that can provide us good quality, diversity and scalability To meet all these requirements, despite the huge amount of engineering effort required here, we've developed a new auto labeling machine powered by multi-trip reconstruction So this can replace 5 million hours of manual labeling with just 12 hours on cluster for labeling 10,000 trips So how we solved? There are three big steps. The first step is high precision trajectory and structural recovery by multi-camera, visual, inertial, or geometry So here, all the features including ground surface are inferred from videos by neural networks, then tracked and reconstructed in the vector space So the typical trip rate of this trajectory in car is like 1.3 centimeter per meter and 0.45 milliliter per meter, which is pretty decent considering its compact compute requirement Then the recovered surface and road details are also used as a strong guidance for the later manual verification stuff This is also enabled in every FSD vehicle, so we get preprocessed trajectories and structures along with the trip data The second step is multi-trip reconstruction, which is the big and core piece of this machine So the video shows how the previously shown trip is reconstructed and aligned with other trips, basically other trips from different vehicles, not the same vehicle So this is done by multiple internal steps like course alignment, pairwise matching, joint optimization, then further surface refinement In the end, the human analyst comes in and finalizes the label So each heavy steps are already fully parallelized on the cluster, so the entire process usually takes just a couple of hours The last step is actually auto-labeling the new trips So here we use the same multi-trip alignment engine, but only between pre-built reconstruction and each new trip So it's much, much simpler than fully reconstructing all the clips altogether That's why it only takes 30 minutes per trip to auto-label instead of several hours of manual labeling And this is also the key of scalability of this machine This machine easily scales as long as we have available compute and trip data So about 50 trips were newly auto-labeled from this scene and some of them are shown here, so 53 from different vehicles So this is how we capture and transform the space-time slices of the world into the network supervision One thing I'd like to note is that Jagan just talked about how we auto-label our lanes We have auto-labels for almost every task that we do, including our planner And many of these are fully automatic, there's no humans involved For example, for objects, all the kinematics, the shapes, the futures, everything just comes from auto-labeling And the same is true for our occupancy too, and we have really just built a machine around this Yeah, so if you can go back one slide One more, it says parallelized on cluster So that sounds pretty straightforward, but it really wasn't Maybe it's fun to share how something like this comes about So a while ago we didn't have any auto-labeling at all, and then someone makes a script It starts to work, it starts working better, until you reach a volume that's pretty high And we clearly need a solution And so there were two other engineers in our team who were like, you know, that's an interesting, you know, thing What we needed to do was build a whole graph of essentially Python functions that would need to run one after the other First you pull the clip, then you do some cleaning, then you do some network inference, then another network inference Until you finally get this But so you need to do this at a large scale, so I tell them we probably need to shoot for, you know, 100,000 clips per day Or like 100,000 items, that seems good And so the engineers said, well, we can do, you know, a bit of post-gres and a bit of elbow grease, we can do it Meanwhile, we are a bit later and we're doing 20 million of these functions every single day Again, we pull in around half a million clips and on those we run a ton of functions, each of these, in a streaming fashion And so that's kind of the backend infra that's also needed to not just run training, but also auto-labeling Yeah, it really is like a factory that produces labels and production lines, yield, quality, inventory Like all of these same concepts applied to this label factory that applies for, you know, the factory for our cars That's right Okay, thanks, Tim and Ashok So, yeah, so concluding this section, I'd like to share a few more challenging and interesting examples for network for sure And even for humans, probably So from the top, there's like examples for like lack of lights, case or foggy night or roundabout and occlusions by heavy occlusions by parked cars And even rainy night with rain drops on camera lenses These are challenging, but once their original scenes are fully reconstructed by other clips, all of them can be auto-labeled So that our cars can drive even better through these challenging scenarios So, now, let me pass the mic to David to learn more about how Sim is creating the new world on top of these labels Thank you Thank you, Yegan My name is David and I'm going to talk about simulation So simulation plays a critical role in providing data that is difficult to source and or hard to label However, 3D scenes are notoriously slow to produce Take for example, the simulated scene playing behind me A complex intersection from Market Street in San Francisco It would take two weeks for artists to complete And for us, that is painfully slow However, I'm going to talk about using Yegan's automated ground truth labels along with some brand new tooling that allows us to procedurally generate this scene in many like it in just five minutes That's an amazing a thousand times faster than before So let's dive in to how a scene like this is created We start by piping the automated ground truth labels into our simulated world creator tooling inside the software Houdini Starting with road boundary labels, we can generate a solid road mesh and re-topologize it with the lane graph labels This helps inform important road details like cross-road slope and detailed material blending Next, we can use the line data and sweep geometry across its surface and project it to the road, creating lane paint decals Next, using median edges, we can spawned island geometry and populate it with randomized foliage This drastically changes the visibility of the scene Now the outside world can be generated through a series of randomized heuristics Modular building generators create visual obstructions while randomly placed objects like hydrants can change the color of the curves while trees can drop leaves below it obscuring lines or edges Next, we can bring in map data to inform positions of things like traffic traffic lights or stop signs We can trace along its normal to collect important information like number of lanes and even get accurate street names on the signs themselves Next, using lane graph, we can determine lane connectivity and spawn directional road markings on the road and their accompanying road signs And finally, with lane graph itself, we can determine lane adjacency and other useful metrics to spawn randomized traffic permutations inside our simulator And again, this is all automatic, no artist in the loop and happens within minutes And now this sets us up to do some pretty cool things Since everything is based on data and heuristics, we can start to fuzz parameters to create visual variations of the single ground truth It can be as subtle as object placement and random material swapping to more drastic changes like entirely new biomes or locations of environment like urban, suburban, or rural This allows us to create infinite, targeted permutations for specific ground truths that we need more ground truth for And all this happens within a click of a button And we can even take this one step further by altering our ground truth itself Say John wants his network to pay more attention to directional road markings to better detect an upcoming captive left turn lane We can start to procedurally alter our lane graph inside the simulator to help create entirely new flows through this intersection to help focus the network's attention to the road markings to create more accurate predictions And this is a great example of how this tooling allows us to create new data that can never be collected from the real world And the true power of this tool is in its architecture and how we can run all tasks in parallel to infinitely scale So you saw the tile creator tool in action converting the ground truth labels into their counterparts Next we can use our tile extractor tool to divide this data into geo hash tiles about 150 meter square in size We then save out that data into separate geometry and instance files This gives us a clean source of data that's easy to load and allows us to be rendering engine agnostic for the future Then using a tile loader tool we can summon any number of those cache tiles using a geo hash ID Currently we're doing about these 5x5 tiles or 3x3 usually centered around fleet hotspots or interesting lane graph locations And the tile loader also converts these tile sets into U assets for consumption by the unreal engine and gives you a finished product from what you saw in the first slide And this really sets us up for size and scale And as you can see on the map behind us we can easily generate most of San Francisco city streets And this didn't take years or even months of work but rather two weeks by one person We can continue to manage and grow all this data using our PDG network inside of the tooling This allows us to throw compute at it and regenerate all these tile sets overnight This ensures all environments are consistent, quality and features which is super important for training since new ontologies and signals are constantly released And now to come full circle, because we generated all these tile sets from ground truth data They contain all the weird intricacies from the real world We can combine that with the procedural, visual and traffic variety to create limitless, targeted data for the network to learn from And that concludes the SIM section, I'll pass it to Kate to talk about how we can use all this data to improve autopilot Thank you Thanks David, hi everyone, my name is Kate Park and I'm here to talk about the data engine Which is the process by which we improve our neural networks via data We're going to show you how we deterministically solve interventions via data And walk you through the life of this particular clip In this scenario, autopilot is approaching a turn and incorrectly predicts that crossing vehicle as stopped for traffic and thus a vehicle that we would slow down for In reality, there's nobody in the car, it's just awkwardly parked We've built this tooling to identify the mispredictions, correct the label and categorize this clip into an evaluation set This particular clip happens to be one of 126 that we've diagnosed as challenging parked cars at turns Because of this infra, we can curate this evaluation set without any engineering resources custom to this particular challenge case To actually solve that challenge case requires mining thousands of examples like it And it's something Tesla can trivially do We simply use our data sourcing infra, request data and use the tooling shown previously to correct the labels By surgically targeting the mispredictions of the current model, we're only adding the most valuable examples to our training set We surgically fix 13,900 clips and because those were examples where the current model struggles We don't even need to change the model architecture, a simple weight update with this new valuable data is enough to solve the challenge case So you see we no longer predict that crossing vehicle as stopped, as shown in orange, but parked, as shown in red In academia, we often see that people keep data constant, but at Tesla it's very much the opposite We see time and time and again that data is one of the best if not the most deterministic lever to solving these interventions We just showed you the data engine loop for one challenge case, namely these parked cars at turns But there are many challenge cases even for one signal of vehicle movement We apply this data engine loop to every single challenge case we've diagnosed, whether it's buses, curvy roads, stopped vehicles, parking lots And we don't just add data once, we do this again and again to perfect the semantic In fact, this year we updated our vehicle movement signal five times and with every weight update trained on the new data We push our vehicle movement accuracy up and up This data engine framework applies to all our signals, whether they're 3D, multi-cam video, whether the data is human labeled, auto-labeled, or simulated Whether it's an offline model or an online model And Tesla is able to do this at scale because of the fleet advantage, the infra that our NG team has built, and the labeling resources that feed our networks To train on all this data, we need a massive amount of compute, so I'll hand it off to Pete and Ganesh to talk about the Dojo supercomputing platform Thank you Thank you, Katie Thanks everybody, thanks for hanging in there, we're almost there My name is Pete Bannon, I run the custom silicon and low voltage teams at Tesla And my name is Ganesh Renke, I run the Dojo program Thank you I'm frequently asked, why is a car company building a supercomputer for training?\n\nAnd this question fundamentally misunderstands the nature of Tesla At its heart, Tesla is a hardcore technology company All across the company, people are working hard in science and engineering to advance the fundamental understanding and methods that we have available to build cars, energy solutions, robots, and anything else that we can do to improve the human condition around the world It's a super exciting thing to be a part of, and it's a privilege to run a very small piece of it in the semiconductor group Tonight we're going to talk a little bit about Dojo and give you an update on what we've been able to do over the last year But before we do that, I wanted to give a little bit of background on the initial design that we started a few years ago When we got started, the goal was to provide a substantial improvement to the training latency for our autopilot team Some of the largest neural networks they train today run for over a month, which inhibits their ability to rapidly explore alternatives and evaluate them So a 30X speedup would be really nice if we could provide it at a cost competitive and energy competitive way To do that, we wanted to build a chip with a lot of arithmetic units that we could utilize at a very high efficiency And we spent a lot of time studying whether we could do that using DRAM, various packaging ideas, all of which failed And in the end, even though it felt like an unnatural act, we decided to reject DRAM as the primary storage medium for this system And instead focus on SRAM embedded in the chip SRAM provides, unfortunately, a modest amount of capacity, but extremely high bandwidth and very low latency, and that enables us to achieve high utilization with the arithmetic units Those choices, that particular choice led to a whole bunch of other choices For example, if you want to have virtual memory, you need page tables, they take up a lot of space, we didn't have space, so no virtual memory So we also don't have interrupts, the accelerator is a bare bonds, raw piece of hardware that's presented to a compiler and the compiler is responsible for scheduling everything that happens in a deterministic way So there's no need or even desire for interrupts in the system We also chose to pursue model parallelism as a training methodology, which is not the typical situation most machines today use data parallelism, which consumes additional memory capacity, which we obviously don't have So all of those choices led us to build a machine that is pretty radically different from what's available today We also had a whole bunch of other goals, one of the most important ones was no limits So we wanted to build a compute fabric that would scale in an unbounded way for the most part, I mean obviously there's physical limits now and then But pretty much if your model was too big for the computer, you just had to go buy a bigger computer, that's what we were looking for Today the way machines are packaged, there's a pretty fixed ratio of for example GPU, CPUs and DRAM capacity and network capacity And we really wanted to disaggregate all that so that as models evolved, we could vary the ratios of those various elements and make the system more flexible to meet the needs of the autopilot team And it's so true, no limits philosophy was our guiding star all the way, all of our choices were centered around that And to the point that we didn't want traditional data center infrastructure to limit our capacity to execute these programs at speed That's why we integrated vertically our data center, the entire data center by doing a vertical integration of the data center We could extract new levels of efficiency, we could optimize power delivery, cooling and as well as system management across the whole data center stack Rather than doing box by box and integrating that, those boxes into data centers And to do this, we also wanted to integrate early to figure out limits of scale for our software workloads So we integrated Dojo environment into our autopilot software very early and we learned a lot of lessons And today Bill Chang will go over our hardware update as well as some of the challenges that we faced along the way And Rajiv Kurian will give you a glimpse of our compiler technology as well as go over some of our cool results Great Thanks Pete, thanks Ganesh I'll start tonight with a high level vision of our system that will help set the stage for the challenges and the problems we're solving And then also how software will then leverage this for performance Now our vision for Dojo is to build a single unified accelerator, a very large one Software would see a seamless compute plane with globally addressable, very fast memory and all connected together with uniform high bandwidth and low latency Now to realize this, we need to use density to achieve performance Now we leverage technology to get this density in order to break levels of hierarchy all the way from the chip to the scale out systems Now silicon technology has done this for decades Chips have followed Moore's law for density integration to get performance scaling Now a key step in realizing that vision was our training tile Probably can we integrate 25 dies at extremely high bandwidth but we can scale that to any number of additional tiles by just connecting them together Now last year we showcased our first functional training tile and at that time we already had workloads running on it And since then the team here has been working hard and diligently to deploy this at scale Now we've made amazing progress and had a lot of milestones along the way And of course we've had a lot of unexpected challenges But this is where our fail fast philosophy has allowed us to push our boundaries Now pushing density for performance presents all new challenges One area is power delivery Here we need to deliver the power to our compute die and this directly impacts our top line compute performance But we need to do this at unprecedented density We need to be able to match our die pitch with a power density of almost 1 amp per millimeter squared And because of the extreme integration this needs to be a multi-tiered vertical power solution And because there's a complex heterogeneous material stack up we have to carefully manage the material transition Especially CTE Now why does the coefficient of thermal expansion matter in this case? CTE is a fundamental material property and if it's not carefully managed that stack up would literally rip itself apart We started this effort by working with vendors to develop this power solution But we realized that we actually had to develop this in-house Now to balance schedule and risk we built quick iterations to support both our system bring up in software development And also to find the optimal design and stack up that would meet our final production goals And in the end we were able to reduce CTE over 50% and meet our performance by 3x over our initial version Now needless to say finding this optimal material stack up while maximizing performance at density is extremely difficult Now we did have unexpected challenges along the way Here's an example where we pushed the boundaries of integration that led to component failures This started when we scaled up to larger and longer workloads and then intermittently a single site on a tile would fail Now they started out as recoverable failures but as we pushed some much higher and higher power these would become permanent failures Now to understand this failure you have to understand why and how we build our power modules Solving density at every level is the cornerstone of actually achieving our system performance Now because our XY plane is used for high bandwidth communication everything else must be stacked vertically This means all other components other than our die must be integrated into our power modules Now that includes our clock and our power supplies and also our system controllers Now in this case the failures were due to losing clock output from our oscillators And after an extensive debug we found that the root cause was due to vibrations on the module from piezoelectric effects Our nearby capacitors Now singing caps are not a new phenomenon and in fact very common in power design But normally clock chips are placed in a very quiet area of the board and often not affected by power circuits But because we needed to achieve this level of integration these oscillators need to be placed in very close proximity Now due to our switching frequency and then the vibration resonance created It caused out of plane vibration on our MEMS oscillator that caused it to crack Now the solution to this problem is a multi-prong approach We can reduce the vibration by using soft terminal caps We can update our MEMS part with a lower Q factor for the out of plane direction And we can also update our switching frequency to push the resonance further away from these sensitive bands Now in addition to the density at the system level we've been making a lot of progress at the infrastructure level We knew that we had to read examine every aspect of the data center infrastructure in order to support our unprecedented power and cooling density We brought in a fully custom designed CDU to support Dojo's dense cooling requirements And the amazing part is we're able to do this at a fraction of the cost versus buying off the shelf and modifying it And since our Dojo cabinet integrates enough power and cooling to match an entire row of standard IT racks We need to carefully design our cabinet and infrastructure together And we've already gone through several iterations of this cabinet to optimize this And earlier this year we started low testing our power and cooling infrastructure And we were able to push it over 2 megawatts before we tripped our substation and got a call from the city Now last year we introduced only a couple of components of our system The custom D1 die and the training tile, but we teased the exit pod as our end goal We'll walk through the remaining parts of our system that are required to build out this exit pod Now the system tray is a key part of realizing our vision of a single accelerator It enables us to seamlessly connect tiles together, not only within the cabinet, but between cabinets We can connect these tiles at very tight spacing across the entire accelerator And this is how we achieve our uniform communication This is a laminated bus bar that allows us to integrate very high power, mechanical and thermal support, and an extremely dense integration It's 75 millimeters in height and supports 6 tiles at 135 kilograms This is the equivalent of 3 to 4 fully loaded high performance racks Next we need to feed data to the training tiles This is where we've developed the Dojo interface processor It provides our system with high bandwidth DRAM to stage our training data And it provides full memory bandwidth to our training tiles using TTP, our custom protocol that we use to communicate across our entire accelerator It also has high speed Ethernet that helps us extend this custom protocol over standard Ethernet And we provide native hardware support for this with little to no software overhead And lastly we can connect to it through a standard Gen4 PCIe interface Now we pair 20 of these cards per tray and that gives us 640 gigabytes of high bandwidth DRAM And this provides our disaggregated memory layer for our training tiles These cards are a high bandwidth ingest path both through PCIe and Ethernet They also provide a high-ratex Z-connectivity path that allows shortcuts across our large Dojo accelerator Now we actually integrate the host directly underneath our system tray These hosts provide our ingest processing and connect to our interface processors through PCIe These hosts can provide hardware video decoder support for video-based training And our user applications land on these hosts so we can provide them with the standard X86 Linux environment Now we can put two of these assemblies into one cabinet and pair it with redundant power supplies that do direct conversion of three-phase 480-volt AC power to 52-volt DC power Now by focusing on density at every level we can realize the vision of a single accelerator Now starting with the uniform nodes on our custom D1 die we can connect them together in our fully integrated training tile And then finally seamlessly connecting them across cabinet boundaries to form our Dojo accelerator And all together we can house two full accelerators in our Exapod for a combined one exa-flop of ML compute Now all together this amount of technology and integration has only ever been done a couple of times in the history of compute Next we'll see how software can leverage this to accelerate their performance Thanks Bill, my name is Rajiv and I'm going to talk some numbers So our software stack begins with the PyTorch extension that speaks to our commitment to run standard PyTorch models out of the box We're going to talk more about our JIT compiler and the ingest pipeline that feeds the hardware with data Abstractly, performance is tops times utilization times accelerator occupancy We've seen how the hardware provides peak performance is the job of the compiler to extract utilization from the hardware while code is running on it And it's the job of the ingest pipeline to make sure that data can be fed at a throughput high enough for the hardware to not ever starve So let's talk about why communication-bound models are difficult to scale But before that let's look at why ResNet 50-like models are easier to scale You start off with a single accelerator, run the forward and backward passes, followed by the optimizer Then to scale this up you run multiple copies of this on multiple accelerators And while the gradients produced by the backward pass do need to be reduced and this introduces some communication, this can be done pipeline with the backward pass This setup scales fairly well, almost linearly For models with much larger activations we run into a problem as soon as we want to run the forward pass The batch size that fits in a single accelerator is often smaller than the batch norm surface So to get around this researchers typically run this setup on multiple accelerators in sync batch norm mode This introduces latency bound communication to the critical path of the forward pass and we already have a communication bottleneck And while there are ways to get around this they usually involve tedious manual work best suited for a compiler And ultimately there's no skirting around the fact that if your state does not fit in a single accelerator you can be communication bound And even with significant efforts from our ML engineers we see such models don't scale linearly The doger system was built to make such models work at high utilization The high density integration was built to not only accelerate the compute bound portions of a model but also the latency bound portions Like a batch norm or the bandwidth bound portions like a gradient all reduced or a parameter all gathered A slice of the doger mesh can be carved out to run any model The only thing users need to do is to make the slice large enough to fit a batch norm surface for their particular model After that the partition presents itself as one large accelerator freeing the users from having to worry about the internal details of execution And as the job of the compiler to maintain this abstraction Fine grain synchronization primitives in uniform low latency makes it easy to accelerate all forms of parallelism across integration boundaries Tensors are usually stored sharded in SRAM and replicated just in time for a layer's execution We depend on the high doger bandwidth to hide this replication time Tensor replication and other data transfers are overlapped with compute and the compiler can also recompute layers when it's profitable to do so We expect most models to work out of the box As an example we took the recently released stable diffusion model and got it running on dojo in minutes Out of the box the compiler was able to map it in a model parallel manner on 25 dojo dies Here are some pictures of a Cybertruck on Mars generated by stable diffusion running on dojo Looks like it still has some ways to go before matching the Tesla design studio team So we've talked about how communication bottlenecks can hamper scalability Perhaps an asset test of a compiler and the underlying hardware is executing a cross die batch norm layer Like mentioned before this can be a serial bottleneck The communication phase of a batch norm begins with nodes computing their local mean and standard deviations Then coordinating to reduce these values, then broadcasting these values back and then they resume their work in parallel So what would an ideal batch norm look like on 25 dojo dies? Let's say the previous less activations are already split across dies We would expect the 350 nodes on each die to coordinate and produce die local mean and standard deviation values Ideally these would get further reduced with the final value ending somewhere towards the middle of the tile We would then hope to see a broadcast of this value radiating from the center Let's see how the compiler actually executes a real batch norm operation across 25 dies The communication trees were extracted from the compiler and the timing is from a real hardware one We're about to see 8,750 nodes on 25 dies coordinating to reduce and then broadcast the batch norm mean and standard deviation values Die local reduction followed by global reduction towards the middle of the tile Then the reduced value broadcast radiating from the middle accelerated by the hardware's broadcast facility This operation takes only 5 microseconds on 25 dojo dies The same operation takes 150 microseconds on 24 GPUs This is an orders of magnitude improvement over GPUs And while we talked about an already used operation in the context of a batch norm It's important to reiterate that the same advantages apply to all other communication primitives And these primitives are essential for large scale training So how about full model performance? So while we think that ResNet 50 is not a good representation of real world Tesla workloads It is a standard benchmark, so let's start there We are already able to match the 100 die for die However, perhaps a hint of dojo's capabilities is that we're able to hit this number with just a batch of 8 per die But dojo was really built to tackle larger complex models So when we set out to tackle real world workloads, we looked at the usage patterns of our current GPU cluster And two models stood out, the autolabeling networks, a class of offline models that are used to generate ground truth And the occupancy networks that you heard about The autolabeling networks are large models that have high arithmetic intensity While the occupancy networks can be ingest bound We chose these models because together they account for a large chunk of our current GPU cluster usage And they would challenge the system in different ways So how do we do on these two networks? The results we're about to see were measured on multi die systems for both the GPU and dojo, but normalized to per die numbers On our autolabeling network, we're already able to surpass the performance of an A100 With our current hardware running on our older generation VRMs On our production hardware with our newer VRMs, that translates to doubling the throughput of an A100 And our model showed that with some key compiler optimizations, we could get to more than 3x the performance of an A100 We see even bigger leaps on the occupancy network Almost 3x with our production hardware, with room for more So what does that mean for Tesla? With a current level of compiler performance, we could replace the ML compute of 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 GPU boxes with just a single dojo tile And this dojo tile costs less than one of these GPU boxes What it really means is that networks that took more than a month to train now take less than a week Alas, when we measure things, it did not turn out so well.\n\nAt the PyTorch level, we did not see our expected performance out of the gate And this timeline chart shows our problem. The teeny, tiny little green bars, that's the compile code running on the accelerator The row is mostly white space where the hardware is just waiting for data With our dense ML compute, dojo hosts effectively have 10x more ML compute than the GPU hosts. The data loader is running on this one host Simply couldn't keep up with all that ML hardware So to solve our data loader scalability issues, we knew we had to get over the limit of this single host The Tesla transport protocol moves data seamlessly across hosts, tiles and ingest processors So we extended the Tesla transport protocol to work over Ethernet. We then built the dojo network interface card, the D-NIC, to leverage TTP over Ethernet This allows any host with a D-NIC card to be able to DMA2 and from other TTP endpoints So we started with the dojo mesh, then we added a tier of data loading hosts equipped with the D-NIC card We connected these hosts to the mesh via an Ethernet switch. Now every host in this data loading tier is capable of reaching all TTP endpoints in the dojo mesh via hardware accelerated DMA After these optimizations went in, our occupancy went from 4% to 97% So the data loading sections have reduced drastically and the ML hardware has kept busy We actually expect this number to go to 100% pretty soon After these changes went in, we saw the full expected speed up from the PyTorch layer and we were back in business So we started with hardware design that breaks through traditional integration boundaries in service of our vision of a single giant accelerator We've seen how the compiler and ingest layers build on top of that hardware So after proving our performance on these complex real-world networks, we knew what our first large-scale deployment would target Our high arithmetic intensity auto-labeling networks Today that occupies 4,000 GPUs over 72 GPU racks With our dense computer and our high performance, we expect to provide the same throughput with just 4 dojo cabinets And these 4 dojo cabinets will be part of our first exapod that we plan to build by quarter one of 2023 This will more than double Tesla's auto-labeling capacity The first exapod is part of a total of 7 exapods that we plan to build in Palo Alto right here across the wall And we have a display cabinet from one of these exapods for everyone to look at 6 tiles densely packed on a tray, 54 petaflops of compute, 640 gigabytes of high bandwidth memory with power and host defeated A lot of compute And we're building out new versions of all our cluster components and constantly improving our software to hit new limits of scale We believe that we can get another 10x improvement with our next generation hardware And to realize our ambitious goals, we need the best software and hardware engineers So please come talk to us or visit tesla.com. Alright, so hopefully that was enough detail And now we can move to questions And guys, I think the team can come out on stage We really wanted to show the depth and breadth of Tesla in artificial intelligence, compute hardware, robotics actuators And try to really shift the perception of the company away from, you know, a lot of people think we're like just a car company Or we make cool cars, whatever But most people have no idea that Tesla is arguably the leader in real world AI hardware and software And that we're building what is arguably the most radical computer architecture since the Kray-1 supercomputer And I think if you're interested in developing some of the most advanced technology in the world that's going to really affect the world in a positive way Tesla's the place to be So yeah, let's fire away with some questions I think there's a mic at the front and a mic at the back Just throw mics at people Jump all for the mic Yeah, hi, thank you very much I was impressed here I was impressed very much by Optimus, but I wonder why did not driven the hand Why did you choose a tendon-driven approach for the hand?\n\nBecause tendons are not very durable And why spring-loaded? Cool, awesome, yes, that's a great question You know, when it comes to any type of actuation scheme, there's trade-offs between, you know, whether or not it's a tendon-driven system or some type of linkage-based system Keep the mic close to your mouth A little bit closer, hear me? Cool Yeah, the main reason why we went for a tendon-based system is that, you know, first we actually investigated some synthetic tendons, but we found that metallic boating cables are, you know, a lot stronger One of the advantages of these cables is that it's very good for part reduction We do want to make a lot of these hands, so having a bunch of parts, a bunch of small linkages ends up being, you know, a problem when you're making a lot of something One of the big reasons that, you know, tendons are better than linkages in a sense is that you can be anti-backlash So anti-backlash essentially, you know, allows you to not have any gaps or, you know, stuttering motion in your fingers Spring-loaded, mainly what spring-loaded allows us to do is allows us to have active opening So instead of having to have two actuators to drive the fingers closed and then open, we have the ability to, you know, have the tendon drive them closed and then the springs passively extend And this is something that's seen in our hands as well, right? We have the ability to actively flex and then we also have the ability to extend Yeah I mean, our goal with Optimus is to have a robot that is maximally useful as quickly as possible So there's a lot of ways to solve the various problems of a humanoid robot And we're probably not barking up the right tree on all the technical solutions And I should say that we're open to evolving the technical solutions that you see here over time, they're not locked in stone But we have to pick something, and we want to pick something that's going to allow us to produce the robot as quickly as possible and have it, like I said, be useful as quickly as possible We're trying to follow the goal of fastest path to a useful robot that can be made at volume And we're going to test the robot internally at Tesla in our factory and just see, like, how useful is it Because you have to have a, you've got to close the loop on reality to confirm that the robot is in fact useful And, yeah, so we're just going to use it to build things And we're confident we can do that with the hand that we have currently designed But I'm sure there'll be hand version 2, version 3, and we may change the architecture quite significantly over time Hi, the Optimus robot is really impressive, you did a great job, bipedal robots are really difficult But what I noticed might be missing from your plan is to acknowledge the utility of the human spirit And I'm wondering if Optimus will ever get a personality and be able to laugh at our jokes while it folds our clothes Yeah, absolutely. I think we want to have really fun versions of Optimus And so that Optimus can both be utilitarian and do tasks, but can also be kind of like a friend and a buddy And hang out with you, and I'm sure people will think of all sorts of creative uses for this robot And, you know, the thing, once you have the core intelligence and actuators figured out Then you can actually, you know, put all sorts of costumes, I guess, on the robot I mean, you can make the robot look, you can skin the robot in many different ways And I'm sure people will find very interesting ways to, yeah, versions of Optimus Thanks for the great presentation I wanted to know if there was an equivalent to interventions in Optimus It seems like labeling through moments where humans disagree with what's going on is important And in a humanoid robot, that might be also a desirable source of information Yeah, I think we will have ways to remote operate the robot and intervene when it does something bad Especially when we are training the robot and bringing it up And hopefully we, you know, design it in a way that we can stop the robot from, if it's going to hit something We can just, like, hold it and it will stop, it won't, like, you know, crush your hand or something And those are all intervention data Yeah, and we can learn a lot from our simulation systems, too Where we can check for collisions and supervise that those are bad actions Yeah, I mean, so Optimus, we went over time for it to be, you know, an android, the kind of android that you've seen in sci-fi movies Like Star Trek, The Next Generation, like data But obviously we could program the robot to be less robot-like and more friendly And, you know, you can obviously learn to emulate humans and feel very natural So as AI in general improves, we can add that to the robot And, you know, it should be obviously able to do simple instructions or even intuit what it is that you want So you could give it a high level instruction and then it can break that down into a series of actions And take those actions Hi, yeah, it's exciting to think that with the Optimus you will think that you can achieve orders of magnitude of improvement in economic output That's really exciting And when Tesla started, the mission was to accelerate the advent of renewable energy or sustainable transport So with the Optimus, do you still see that mission being the mission statement of Tesla or is it going to be updated with, you know, mission to accelerate the advent of, I don't know, infinite abundance or limitless economy Yeah, it is not strictly speaking, Optimus is not strictly speaking directly in line with accelerating sustainable energy To the degree that it is more efficient at getting things done than a person, it does, I guess, help with sustainable energy But I think the mission effectively does somewhat broaden with the advent of Optimus to, you know, I don't know, making the future awesome So, you know, I think you look at Optimus and I know about you, but I'm excited to see what Optimus will become And, you know, this is like, you know, if you could, I mean, you can tell like any given technology, do you want to see what it's like in a year, two years, three years, four years, five years, ten? I'd say for sure, you definitely want to see what's happened with Optimus Whereas, you know, a bunch of other technologies are, you know, sort of plateaued About name names here, but, you know, so, I think Optimus is going to be incredible in like five years, ten years like mind-blowing And I'm really interested to see that happen, and I hope you are too I have a quick question here, Justin, and I was wondering, like, are you planning to extend like conversational capabilities for the robot?\n\nAnd my second full-on question to that is, what's like the end goal? What's the end goal with Optimus? Yeah, Optimus would definitely have conversational capabilities So, you'd be able to talk to it and have a conversation, and it would feel quite natural So, from an end goal standpoint, I don't know, I think it's going to keep evolving, and I'm not sure where it ends up, but some place is interesting for sure And, you know, we always have to be careful about the, you know, don't go down the terminator path That's a, you know, I thought maybe we should start off with a video of like the terminator starting off with this, you know, skull crushing But that might be, you know, people might not get too seriously So, you know, we do want Optimus to be safe, so we are designing in safeguards where you can locally stop the robot And, you know, with like basically a localized control ROM that you can't update over the internet Which I think that's quite important, essential, frankly So, like a localized stop button or remote control, something like that, that cannot be changed But, I mean, it's definitely going to be interesting, it won't be boring Okay, yeah, I see today you have a very attractive product with Dojo and its applications So, I'm wondering what's the future for the Dojo platform? So, you know, like provide like infrastructure and service like AWS or you will like sell the chip like the NVIDIA So, basically, what's the future? Because I say you use 7nm, so the developer cost is like easily over 10 million US dollars How do you make the business like business wise? Dojo is a very big computer and actually will use a lot of power and need a lot of cooling So, I think it's probably going to make more sense to have Dojo operate in like an Amazon Web Services manner Than to try to sell it to someone else So, that would be the most efficient way to operate Dojo is just have it be a service that you can use That's available online and that where you can train your models way faster and for less money And as the world transitions to software 2.0 And that's on the bingo card Someone I know has to know to drink 5 tequila So, let's see, software 2.0 will use a lot of neural net training So, it kind of makes sense that over time as there's more neural net stuff People will want to use the fastest, lowest cost neural net training system So, I think there's a lot of opportunity in that direction Hi, my name is Ali Jahanian Thank you for this event, it's very inspirational My question is, I'm wondering what is your vision for humanoid robots that understand our emotions and art And can contribute to our creativity Well, I think you're already seeing robots that at least are able to generate very interesting art Like Dali and Dali 2 And I think we'll start seeing AI that can actually generate even movies that have coherence Like interesting movies and tell jokes So, it's quite remarkable how fast AI is advancing at many companies besides Tesla We're headed for a very interesting future And yeah, so, any guys want to comment on that?\n\nYeah, I guess the Optimus Robot can come up with physical art, not just digital art You can ask for some dance moves in text or voice and then you can produce those in the future So, it's a lot of physical art, not just digital art Oh, yeah, computers can absolutely make physical art, yeah, 100% Yeah, like dance, play soccer or whatever you... I mean, it needs to get more agile over time, for sure Thanks so much for the presentation Now, for the Tesla Autopilot slides, I noticed that the models that you were using were heavily motivated by language models And I was wondering what the history of that was and how much of an improvement it gave I thought that that was a really interesting, curious choice to use language models for the lane transitioning So, there are sort of two aspects for why we transition to language modeling So, the first... Talk loud and close Okay, got it Yeah, so the language models help us in two ways The first way is that it lets us predict lanes that we couldn't have otherwise As Ashok mentioned earlier, basically when we predicted lanes in sort of a dense 3D fashion You can only model certain kinds of lanes, but we want to get those criss-crossing connections inside of intersections It's just not possible to do that without making it a graph prediction If you try to do this with dense segmentation, it just doesn't work Also, the lane prediction is a multimodal problem Sometimes you just don't have sufficient visual information to know precisely how things look on the other side of the intersection So you need a method that can generalize and produce coherent predictions You don't want to be predicting two lanes and three lanes at the same time You want to commit to one in a general model like these language models provides that Hi Hi, my name is Giovanni Yeah, thanks for the presentation. It's really nice I have a question for FSD team For the neural networks, how do you test... How do you do unit tests, software unit tests on that? Do you have a bunch or I don't know, mid-thousands or...\n\nYes, cases where the neural network that after you train it, you have to pass it Before you release it as a product, right? Yeah, what's your software unit testing strategies for this, basically? Yeah, glad you asked. There's like a series of tests that we have defined starting from unit tests for software itself But then for the neural network models, we have VAP sets defined where you can define... If you just have a large test set, that's not enough what we find We need like sophisticated VAP sets for different failure modes And then we queate them and grow them over the time of the product So over the years, we have like hundreds of thousands of examples where we have been failing in the past That we have curated and so for any new model, we test against the entire history of these failures And then keep adding to this test set On top of this, we have shadow modes where we ship these models in silent to the car And we get data back on where they are failing or succeeding And there's an extensive QA program It's very hard to ship for regression There's like nine levels of filters before it hits customers But then we have really good infra to make this all efficient I'm one of the QA testers, so I have QA the car... Yeah, QA tester Yeah, so I'm constantly in the car just being queuing like whatever the latest alpha build is that doesn't totally crash Yeah, finds a lot of bugs Hi, great event.\n\nI have a question about foundational models for autonomous driving We have all seen that big models that really can... When you scale up with data and model parameter from GP3 to POM, it can actually now do reasoning Do you see that it's essential scaling up foundational models with data and size And then at least you can get a teacher model that potentially can solve all the problems And then you distill to a student model Is that how you see foundational models relevant for autonomous driving? That's quite similar to our auto labeling models So we don't just have models that run in the car We train models that are entirely offline that are extremely large that can't run in real time on the car So we just run those offline on the servers producing really good labels that can then train the online networks So that's one form of distillation of these teacher-student models In terms of foundation models, we are building some really, really large datasets that are multiple petabytes And we are seeing that some of these tasks work really well when we have these large datasets Kinematics, like I mentioned, video in, all the kinematics out of all the objects and up to the fourth derivative And people thought we couldn't do detection with cameras Detection, depth, velocity, acceleration And imagine how precise these have to be for these higher-order derivatives to be accurate And this all comes from these kind of large datasets and large models So we are seeing the equivalent of foundation models in our own way for geometry and kinematics and things like those Do you want to add anything, John? Yeah, I'll keep it brief Basically, whenever we train on a larger dataset, we see big improvements in our model performance And basically, whenever we initialize our networks with some pre-training steps from some other auxiliary tasks We basically see improvements The self-supervised or supervised with large datasets both help a lot Hi, so at the beginning, Elon said that Tesla was potentially interested in building artificial general intelligence systems Given the potentially transformative impact of technology like that It seems prudent to invest in technical AGI safety expertise specifically I know Tesla does a lot of technical, narrow AI safety research I was curious if Tesla was intending to try to build expertise in technical artificial general intelligence safety specifically Well, I mean, if we start looking like we're going to be making a significant contribution to artificial general intelligence Then we'll for sure invest in safety on big believer in AI safety I think there should be an AI sort of regulatory authority at the government level Just as there is a regulatory authority for anything that affects public safety So we have regulatory authority for aircraft and cars and sort of food and drugs Because they affect public safety and AI also affects public safety So I think, and this is not really something that government I think understands yet I think there should be a referee that is trying to ensure public safety for AGI And you think of like, well, what are the elements that are necessary to create AGI? Like the accessible dataset is extremely important And if you've got a large number of cars and humanoid robots processing petabytes of video data and audio data from the real world Just like humans, that might be the biggest dataset, probably is the biggest dataset Because in addition to that, you can obviously incrementally scan the internet But what the internet can't quite do is have millions or hundreds of millions of cameras in the real world Like I said, with audio and other sensors as well So I think we probably will have the most amount of data And probably the most amount of training power Therefore probably we will make a contribution to AGI Hey, I noticed the semi was back there, but we haven't talked about it too much I was just wondering for the semi truck, what are the changes you're thinking about from a sensing perspective? I imagine there's very different requirements obviously than just a car And if you don't think that's true, why is that true?\n\nNo, I think basically you can drive a car Think about what drives any vehicle, it's a biological neural net with eyes With cameras essentially What is your primary sensors are? Two cameras on a slow gimbal, a very slow gimbal That's your head So if a biological neural net with two cameras on a slow gimbal can drive a semi truck Then if you've got like eight cameras with continuous 360 degree vision Operating at a higher frame rate and a much higher reaction rate Then I think it is obvious that you should be able to drive a semi or any vehicle much better than human Hi, my name is Akshay, thank you for the event Assuming Optimus would be used for different use cases and would evolve at different speeds for these use cases Would it be possible to sort of develop and deploy different software and hardware components independently And deploy them in Optimus so that the overall feature development is faster for Optimus Okay, we did not comprehend Unfortunately our neural net did not comprehend the question Next question Hi, I want to switch the gear to the autopilot So when you guys plan to roll out the FSD beta to countries other than US and Canada And also my next question is what's the biggest bottleneck or the technology or barrier you think in the current autopilot stack And how you envision to solve that to make the autopilot is considerably better than human in terms of performance matrix Like safety assurance and the human confidence I think you also mentioned for the FSD V11 you are going to combine the highway and the city as a single stack And some architectural big improvements, can you maybe expand a bit on that, thank you Well, that's a whole bunch of questions We're hopeful to be able to, I think from a technical standpoint FSD beta should be possible to roll out FSD beta worldwide by the end of this year But for a lot of countries we need regulatory approval And so we are somewhat gated by the regulatory approval in other countries But I think from a technical standpoint it will be ready to go to a worldwide beta by the end of this year And there's quite a big improvement that we're expecting to release next month That will always be especially good at assessing the velocity of fast moving cross traffic And a bunch of other things So, anyone want to elaborate? I guess so, there used to be a lot of differences between production autopilot and the full self driving beta But those differences have been getting smaller and smaller over time I think just a few months ago we now use the same vision only object detection stack in both FSD and in the production autopilot on all vehicles There's still a few differences, the primary one being the way that we predict lanes right now So we upgraded the modeling of lanes so that it could handle these more complex geometries like I mentioned in the talk In production autopilot we still use a simpler lane model But we're extending our current FSD beta models to work in all sort of highway scenarios as well The version of FSD beta that I drive actually does have the integrated stack So it uses the FSD stack both in city streets and highway and it works quite well for me But we need to validate it in all kinds of weather like heavy rain, snow, dust And just make sure it's working better than the production stack across a wide range of environments But we're pretty close to that I think it's, I don't know, maybe, it'll definitely be before the end of the year and maybe November Yeah, in our personal drives, the FSD stack on highway drives already way better than the production stack we have And we do expect to also include the parking lot stack as a part of the FSD stack before the end of this year So that will basically bring us to, you sit in the car in the parking lot and drive till the end of the parking lot at a parking spot before the end of this year And in terms of the fundamental metric to optimize against is how many miles between a necessary intervention So just massively improving how many miles the car can drive in full autonomy before an intervention is required that is safety critical So, yeah, that's the fundamental metric that we're measuring every week and we're making radical improvements on that Hi, thank you, thank you so much for the presentation, very inspiring My name is Daisy, I actually have a non-technical question for you I'm curious, if you are back to your 20s, what are some of the things you wish you knew back then? What are some advice you would give to your younger self? Well, I'm trying to figure out something useful to say Yeah, a joint Tesla would be one thing Yeah, I think just trying to expose yourself to as many smart people as possible I don't read a lot of books You know, I did do that though So, I think there's some merit to just also not being necessarily too intense And enjoying the moment a bit more, I would say to 20-something me Just to stop and smell the roses occasionally would probably be a good idea You know, it's like when we were developing the Falcon 1 rocket on the Quageline Atoll And we had this beautiful little island that we were developing the rocket on And not once during that entire time did I even have a drink on the beach I'm like, I should have had a drink on the beach, that would have been fine Thank you very much I think you have excited all of the robotics people with Optimus This feels very much like 10 years ago in driving But as driving has proved to be harder than it actually looked 10 years ago What do we know now that we didn't 10 years ago that would make, for example, AGI on a humanoid come faster? Well, I mean, it seems to me that AGI is advancing very quickly Hardly a week goes by without some significant announcement And, yeah, I mean, at this point, like, AI seems to be able to win at almost any rule-based game It's able to create extremely impressive art Engage in conversations that are very sophisticated, you know, write essays And these just keep improving And there's so many more talented people working on AI And the hardware is getting better AI is on a super, like, a strong exponential curve of improvements Independent of what we do at Tesla And obviously we'll benefit somewhat from that exponential curve of improvement with AI Like, Tesla just also has to be very good at actuators Motors gearboxes, controllers, power electronics, batteries, sensors And, you know, really, like, I'd say the biggest difference between the robot on four wheels And the robot with arms and legs is getting the actuators right It's an actuators and sensors problem And obviously, how you control those actuators and sensors But it's, yeah, actuators and sensors and how you control the actuators I don't know, we have to have, like, the ingredients necessary to create a compelling robot And we're doing it, so...\n\nHi, Ilan You are actually bringing the humanity to the next level Literally, Tesla, and you are bringing the humanity to the next level So, you said Optimus Prime, Optimus will be used in next Tesla factory My question is, will a new Tesla factory be fully run by Optimus program? And when can general public order a humanoid? Yeah, I think it'll, you know, we're going to start Optimus with very simple tasks in the factory You know, like maybe just, like, loading a part, like you saw in the video You know, carrying a part from one place to another Or loading a part into one of our more conventional robot cells to, you know, that welds body together So we'll start, you know, just trying to, how do we make it useful at all? And then gradually expand the number of situations where it's useful And I think that number of situations where Optimus is useful will grow exponentially Like really, really fast In terms of when people can order one, I don't know, I think it's not that far away Well, I think you mean, when can people receive one? So, I don't know, I'm like, I'd say probably within three years And not more than five years Within three to five years, you could probably receive an Optimus I feel the best way to make the progress for AGI is to involve as many smart people across the world as possible And given the size and resource of Tesla compared to robot companies And given the state of humanoid research at the moment Would it make sense for the kind of Tesla to sort of open source some of the simulation hardware parts? I think Tesla can still be the dominant platformer where it can be something like an Android OS Or like an iOS stuff for the entire humanoid research Would that be something that rather than keeping the Optimus to just Tesla researchers Or the factory itself can open it and let the whole world explore humanoid research?\n\nI think we have to be careful about Optimus being potentially used in ways that are bad Because that is one of the possible things to do So I think we would provide Optimus where you can provide instructions to Optimus But where those instructions are governed by some laws of robotics that you cannot overcome So not doing harm to others and I think probably quite a few safety related things with Optimus We'll just take maybe a few more questions and then thank you all for coming Questions, one deep and one broad On the deep for Optimus, what's the current and what's the ideal controller bandwidth? And then in the broader question, there's this big advertisement for the depth and breadth of the company What is it uniquely about Tesla that enables that? Anyone want to tackle the bandwidth question? So the technical bandwidth of the... Close to your mouth and loud For the bandwidth question, you have to understand or figure out what is the task that you want it to do And if you took a frequency transform of that task, what is it that you want your limbs to do? And that's where you get your bandwidth from It's not a number that you can specifically just say you need to understand your use case And that's where the bandwidth comes from What is the broad question?\n\nThe breadth and depth thing, I can answer the breadth and depth On the bandwidth question, I think we probably will just end up increasing the bandwidth Which translates to the effective dexterity and reaction time of the robot It's safe to say it's not one hertz and maybe you don't need to go all the way to 100 hertz But maybe 10, 25, I don't know Over time, I think the bandwidth will increase quite a bit Or translate it to dexterity and latency You'd want to minimize that over time Minimize latency, maximize dexterity In terms of breadth and depth, I guess we're a pretty big company at this point So we've got a lot of different areas of expertise that we necessarily had to develop In order to make electric cars and then in order to make autonomous electric cars Tesla is like a whole series of startups basically And so far they've almost all been quite successful So we must be doing something right And I consider one of my core responsibilities in running the company Is to have an environment where great engineers can flourish And I think in a lot of companies, I don't know, maybe most companies If somebody's a really talented driven engineer, they're unable to actually Their talents are suppressed at a lot of companies And some of the companies that the engineering talent is suppressed In a way that is maybe not obviously bad But where it's just so comfortable and you paid so much money The output you actually have to produce is so low that it's like a honey trap So there's a few honey trap places in Silicon Valley Where they don't necessarily don't seem like bad places for engineers But you have to say like a good engineer went in and what did they get out And the output of that engineering talent seems very low Even though there seem to be enjoying themselves That's why I call it there's a few honey trap companies in Silicon Valley Tesla is not a honey trap that we're demanding and it's like You're going to get a lot of shit done and it's going to be really cool And it's not going to be easy But if you are a super talented engineer Your talents will be used I think to a greater degree than anywhere else You know, SpaceX also that way Hi Ilan, I have two questions So both to the autopilot team So the thing is like I have been following your progress for the past few years So today you have made changes on like the lane detection Like you said that previously you were doing instant semantic segmentation Now you guys are built transfer models for like building the lanes So what are some other common challenges which you guys are facing right now Like which you are solving in future as a curious engineer So that like we as a researcher can work on those Start working on those And the second question is like I'm really curious about the data engine Like you guys have like told a case like where the car is stopped So how are you finding cases which is very much similar to that from the data which you have So a little bit more on the data engine would be great I'll answer the first question using occupancy network as an example So what you saw in the presentation did not exist a year ago So we only spent one year on time We actually shipped more than 12 occupancy network And to have a one foundation model actually to represent the entire physical world Around everywhere and you always condition is actually really really challenging So only over a year ago we're kind of like driving a 2D world If there's a wall and if there's a curve we kind of represent with the same static edge Which is obviously you know not ideal right There's a big difference between a curve and a wall when you drive you make different choices right So after we realized that we have to go to 3D We have to basically rethink the entire problem and think about how we address that So this will be like one example of a challenges we have we have a conquer in the past year Yeah to answer the question about how we actually source examples of the tricky stopped cars There's a few ways to go about this but two examples are one we can trigger for disagreements within our signals So let's say that parked bit flickers between parked and driving We'll trigger that back and the second is we can leverage more of the shadow mode logic So if the customer ignores the car but we think we should stop for it we'll get that data back too So these are just different like various trigger logic that allows us to get those data campaigns back Hi Thank you for the amazing presentation thanks so much So there are a lot of companies that are focusing on the AGI problem And one of the reasons why it's such a hard problem is because the problem itself is so hard to define Several companies have several different definitions they focus on different things So what is Tesla how's Tesla defining the AGI problem and what are you focusing on specifically Well we're not actually specifically focused on AGI I'm simply saying that AGI is seems likely to be an emergent property of what we're doing Because we're creating the oldies autonomous cars and autonomous humanoids That are actually with a truly gigantic data stream that's coming in and being processed It's by far the most amount of real world data and data you can't get by just searching the internet Because you have to be out there in the world and interacting with people and interacting with the roads And just you know it's Earth is a big place and reality is messy and complicated So I think it's sort of like it just seems likely to be an emergent property If you've got tens or hundreds of millions of autonomous vehicles and maybe even a comparable number of humanoids Maybe more than that on the humanoid front Well that's just the most amount of data and if that video is being processed It just seems likely that the cars will definitely get way better than human drivers And the humanoid robots will become increasingly indistinguishable from humans perhaps And so then like I said you have this emergent property of AGI And arguably humans collectively are sort of a superintelligence as well Especially as we improve the data rate between humans The thing like that seems way back in the early days the internet was like the internet was like humanity acquiring a nervous system Where now all of a sudden any one element of humanity could know all of the knowledge of humans by connecting to the internet Almost all the knowledge or certainly a huge part of it Whereas previously we would exchange information by osmosis Like in order to transfer data so you would have to write a letter Someone would have to carry the letter by person to another person And then a whole bunch of things in between and then it was like Yeah I mean it's insanely slow when you think about it And even if you were in the Library of Congress you still didn't have access to all the world's information And you certainly couldn't search it and obviously very few people are in the Library of Congress So I mean one of the great sort of equality elements Like the internet has been the biggest equalizer in history in terms of access to information and knowledge And any student of history I think would agree with this Because you know you go back a thousand years there were very few books And books would be incredibly expensive but only a few people knew how to read And even a small number of people even had a book Now look at it like you can access any book instantly You can learn anything basically for free It's pretty incredible So you know I was asked recently what period of history would I prefer to be at the most And my answer was right now This is the most interesting time in history and I read a lot of history So let's do our best to keep that going And to go back to one of the earlier questions I would ask The thing that's happened over time with respect to Tesla autopilot is that the neural nets have gradually absorbed more and more software And in the limit of course you could simply take the videos as seen by the car And compare those to the steering inputs from the steering wheel and pedals Which are very simple inputs And in principle you could train with nothing in between Because that's what humans are doing with the biological neural net You could train based on video and what trains the video is the moving of the steering wheel and the pedals With no other software in between We're not there yet but it's gradually going in that direction Alright, one last question How are you going? I think we've got a question at the front here Hello, they're right there We'll do two questions, fine They're here Thanks for such a great presentation We'll do your question last Okay, cool With FSD being used by so many people How do you evaluate the company's risk tolerance in terms of performance statistics And do you think there needs to be more transparency or regulation from third parties As to what's good enough and defining thresholds for performance across many miles The number one design requirement at Tesla is safety And that goes across the board So in terms of the mechanical safety of the car We have the lowest probability of injury of any cars ever tested by the government For just a passive mechanical safety Essentially crash structure and airbags and what not We have the highest rating for active safety as well And I think it's going to get to the point where the active safety is so ridiculously good It's just absurdly better than a human And then with respect to autopilot We do publish broadly speaking the statistics on miles driven With cars that have no autonomy Tesla cars with no autonomy With hardware one, hardware two, hardware three And then the ones that are in FSD beta And we see steady improvements all along the way And sometimes there's this dichotomy of Should you wait until the car is three times safer than a person before deploying any technology But I think that's actually morally wrong At the point at which you believe that adding autonomy reduces injury and death I think you have a moral obligation to deploy it Even though you're going to get sued and blamed by a lot of people Because the people whose lives you saved don't know that their lives are saved And the people who do occasionally die or get injured Definitely know, or their state does, that there was a problem with autopilot That's why you have to look at the numbers in total miles driven How many accidents occurred, how many accidents were serious, how many fatalities And we've got well over three million cars on the road So that's a lot of miles driven every day And it's not going to be perfect But what matters is that it is very clearly safer than not deploying it Yeah So, I think, last question I think, yeah, thanks The last question here Okay, hi So, I do not work on hardware So maybe the hardware team and you guys can enlighten me Why is it required that there be symmetry in the design of Optimus? Because humans, we have handedness, right? We use some set of muscles more than others Over time there's wear and tear, right? So maybe you'll start to see some joint failures or some actuator failures more Over time, I understand that this is extremely pre-stage Also, we as humans have based so much fantasy and fiction Over superhuman capabilities Like all of us don't want to walk right over there We want to extend our arms and like we have all these, you know A lot of fantasy, fantastical designs So considering everything else that is going on In terms of batteries and intensity of compute Maybe you can leverage all those aspects into coming up with something Well, I don't know, more interesting in terms of the robot that you're building And I'm hoping you're able to explore those directions Yeah, I think it would be cool to have like, you know, make Inspector Gadget real That would be pretty sweet So, yeah, I mean, right now we just want to make basic humanoid work well And our goal is to pass this path to a useful humanoid robot I think this will ground us in reality, literally And ensure that we are doing something useful Like one of the hardest things to do is to be useful To actually, and then to have high utility under the curve Like how much help did you provide to each person on average And then how many people did you help? The total utility Like trying to actually ship useful product that people like To a large number of people is so insanely hard It boggles the mind You know, that's why I can say like, man, there's a hell of a difference between a company that has shipped product And one has not shipped product This is night and day And then even once you ship product, can you make the cost, the value of the output Worth more than the cost of the input Which is, again, insanely difficult, especially with hardware So, but I think over time I think it would be cool to do creative things And have like eight arms and whatever And have different versions And maybe, you know, there'll be some hardware Like companies that are able to add things to an optimist Like maybe we, you know, add a power port or something like that Or attach them, you can add attachments to your optimist Like you can add them to your phone There could be a lot of cool things that could be done over time And there could be maybe an ecosystem of small companies that, or big companies that Make add-ons for optimists So, with that, I'd like to thank the team for their hard work You guys are awesome And thank you all for coming And for everyone online, thanks for tuning in And I think this will be one of those great videos where you can like If you can fast forward to the bits that you find most interesting But we try to give you a tremendous amount of detail Literally so that you can look at the video at your leisure And you can focus on the parts that you find interesting and skip the other parts So, thank you all, and we'll do this, try to do this every year And we might do a monthly podcast even So, but I think it'll be great to sort of bring you along for the ride And like show you what cool things are happening And yeah, thank you Alright, thanks Thank you","textByLang":{"en":"All right, welcome everybody give everyone a moment to Get back in the audience and All right great welcome to Tesla AI day 2022 We've got some really exciting things to show you I think you'll be pretty impressed I do want to set some expectations with respect to our Optimus robot as As you know last year was just a person in a robot suit But we've now we've come a long way and that's I think we you know compared to that it's gonna be very impressive and We're gonna talk about The advancements in AI for full self-driving as well as how they apply to more generally to real-world AI problems Like a humanoid robot and and even going beyond that I think there's some potential that what we're doing here at Tesla could make a meaningful contribution to AGI and And I think actually Tesla is a good Antity to do it from a governance standpoint because we're a publicly traded company with one class of stock and That means that the public controls Tesla and I think that's actually a good thing So if I go crazy you can fire me. This is important Maybe I'm not crazy. I don't know so Yeah, so we're gonna talk a lot about our progress in AI autopilot as well as progress in with dojo and Then we're gonna bring the team out and to do a long Q&A so you can ask tough questions But whatever you'd like existential questions technical questions, but we want to have As much time for Q&A as possible. So let's see you with that That's because Hey guys, I'm Milana work on autopilot and it is about and I'm Lizzie Mechanical engineer on the project as well. Okay So should we should we bring up the bot before we do that? We have one One little bonus tip for the day.\n\nThis is actually the first time we try this robot without any backup support Cranes mechanical mechanisms. No cables. Nothing. Yeah I want to do it with you guys tonight. That is the first time. Let's see.\n\nYou ready? Let's go I I I think the bug got some boobs This is essentially the simple self-driving computer that runs in your Tesla cars by the way This is the this is literally the first time the robot has operated without a tether was on stage tonight So the robot can actually do a lot more than we just showed you we just didn't want it to fall on its face So we'll we'll show you some videos now of the robot doing a bunch of other things Yeah, which are less risky. Yeah, we should close the screen guys. Yeah Yeah, we wanted to show a little bit more what we've done over the past few months with the bot and just walking around and dancing on stage Just humble beginnings, but you can see the autopilot neural networks running as it's just retrained for the bot directly on that on that new platform That's my watering can yeah when you when you see a rendered view. That's that's the robot. What's the that's the world the robot sees So it's it's very clearly identifying objects like this is the object.\n\nIt should pick up picking it up Yeah We use the same process as we did for autopilot to connect data and train neural networks that we didn't deploy on the robot That's an example that illustrates the upper body a little bit more Something that will like try to nail down in a few months over the next few months, I would say To perfection, but this is really an actual station in the Fremont factory as well that it's working at And that's not the only thing we have to show today, right? Yeah, absolutely. So That what you saw was what we call bumble sea. That's our sort of rough development robot using semi off-the-shelf actuators But we actually have gone a step further than that already the team's done an incredible job And we actually have an optimist bot with fully tesla designed and built actuators Um battery pack control system everything. Um, it it wasn't quite ready to walk But I think it will walk in a few weeks But we wanted to show you the robot The something that's actually fairly close to what we'll go into production And and show you all all the things that can do so let's bring it up All right Yeah So here you're seeing optimists with these the With the degrees of freedom that we expect to have in optimists production unit one Which is the ability to move all the fingers independently move the To have the thumb have two degrees of freedom. So it has opposable thumbs And both left and right hand so it's able to operate tools and do useful things.\n\nOur goal is to make a useful humanoid robot as quickly as possible and We've also designed it using the same discipline that we use in designing the car, which is to say to design it for All manufacturing such that it's possible to make the robot at in high volume at low cost with high reliability So that that's incredibly important. I mean, you've all seen very impressive humanoid robot demonstrations And that that's great. But what are they missing? They're missing a brain that they don't have the the intelligence to navigate the world by themselves And they're they're also very expensive Um and made in low volume. Um, whereas, uh, this this is the optimist's design to be an extremely capable robot But made in in very high volume probably ultimately millions of units And it is expected to cost much less than a car So, uh, I would say probably less than 20,000 dollars would be my guess Okay The the potential for optimist is I think appreciated by very few people As usual Tesla demos are coming in hot So Um, yeah, uh, I'm the team's put on put in and the team has put in an incredible amount of work Uh working days, you know seven days a week Running the 3am oil To to get to the demonstration today. Um, super proud of what they've done is they've really done a great job I'd just like to give a hand to the whole optimist team So, you know that now there's still a lot of work to be done to, uh refine optimists and Improve it.\n\nObviously, this is just optimist version one And that's really why we're holding this event Which is to convince some of the most talented people in the world like you guys um to Join tesla and help make it a reality and bring it to fruition at scale Such that it can help millions of people And the and the potential likes it is is really boggles the mind because you have to say like what what is an economy an economy is uh sort of productive entities times the productivity, uh capita times Productivity per capita at the point at which there is not a limitation on capita The it's not clear what an economy even means at that point. It an economy becomes quasi infinite um so What what you know taken to fruition in the hopefully benign scenario the This means a future of abundance a future where um There is no poverty where people you can have whatever you want In terms of products and services It really is a a fundamental transformation of civilization as we know it Obviously we want to make sure that transformation is a positive one and um safe And but but that's also why I think Tesla as an entity doing this being a single class of stock publicly traded owned by the public um is very important Um and should not be overlooked. I think this is essential because then if the public doesn't like what tesla's doing The public can buy shares in tesla and vote differently This is a big deal Um Like it's very important that that I can't just do what I want You know, sometimes people think that that but it's not true. Um, so You know that it's it's very important that the the corporate entity that has that that makes this happen Is something that the public can properly influence And so I think the tesla structure is is is ideal for that Um And like said that you know self-driving cars will certainly have a Tremendous impact on the world. Um, I think they will improve the productivity of transport by at least A half order of magnitude perhaps an order of magnitude perhaps more um Optimus I think has Maybe a two order of magnitude Uh potential improvement in uh economic output Like like it's it's not clear. It's not clear what the limit actually even is um so But we we need to do this in the right way we need to do it carefully and safely And ensure that the outcome is one that is beneficial to Uh civilization and and one that humanity wants Uh, I can't this is also extremely important obviously so, um And and I hope you will consider uh joining tesla to achieve those goals Um It tesla we're we really care about doing the right thing here or aspire to do the right thing and and really not Pay the road to hell with with good intentions And I think the road is road to hell is mostly paved with bad intentions, but every now and again There's a good intention in there.\n\nSo we want to do the right thing. Um, so, you know consider joining us and helping make it happen um With that let's let's uh, we want to the next phase All right, so you've seen a couple robots today. Let's do a quick timeline recap So last year we unveiled the tesla bot concept, but a concept doesn't get us very far We knew we needed a real development and integration platform to get real life learnings as quickly as possible So that robot that came out and did the little routine for you guys We had that within six months built working on software integration hardware upgrades over the months since then But in parallel we've also been designing the next generation this one over here So this guy is rooted in the the foundation of sort of the vehicle design process, you know We're leveraging all of those learnings that we already have Obviously there's a lot that's changed since last year, but there's a few things that are still the same you'll notice We still have this really detailed focus on the true human form We think that matters for a few reasons, but it's fun. We spend a lot of time thinking about how amazing the human body is We have this incredible range of motion typically really amazing strength Um a fun exercise is if you put your fingertip on the chair in front of you you'll notice that there's a huge Range of motion that you have in your shoulder and your elbow for example without moving your fingertip you can move those joints all over the place Um, but the robot, you know, its main function is to do real useful work And it maybe doesn't necessarily need all of those degrees of freedom right away So we've stripped it down to a minimum sort of 28 fundamental degrees of freedom and then of course our hands in addition to that Humans are also pretty efficient at some things and not so efficient in other times So for example, we can eat a small amount of food to sustain ourselves for several hours. That's great Uh, but when we're just kind of sitting around no offense, but we're kind of inefficient. We're just sort of burning energy So on the robot platform, what we're going to do is we're going to minimize that idle power consumption drop it as low as possible And that way we can just flip a switch and immediately the robot turns into something that does useful work So let's talk about this latest generation in some detail, shall we?\n\nSo on the screen here, you'll see in orange are actuators, which we'll get to in a little bit and in blue are electrical system So now that we have our sort of human based research and we have our first development platform We have both research and execution to draw from for this design Again, we're using that vehicle design foundation. So we're taking it from concept through design and analysis and then build and validation Along the way, we're going to optimize for things like cost and efficiency because those are critical metrics to take this product to scale eventually How are we going to do that? Well, we're going to reduce our part count and our power consumption of every element possible We're going to do things like reduce the sensing in the wiring at our extremities You can imagine a lot of mass in your hands and feet is going to be quite difficult and power consumptive to move around And we're going to centralize both our power distribution and our compute to the physical center of the platform So in the middle of our torso, actually it is the torso. We have our battery pack This is sized at 2.3 kilowatt hours, which is perfect for about a full day's worth of work What's really unique about this battery pack is it has all of the battery electronics integrated into a single pcb within the pack So that means everything from sensing to fusing Charge management and power distribution is all on one all in one place We're also leveraging both our vehicle products and our energy products To roll all of those key features into this battery. So that's streamlined manufacturing Really efficient and simple cooling methods battery management and also safety And of course we can leverage tesla's existing infrastructure and supply chain to make it So going on to sort of our brain it's not in the head, but it's pretty close Also in our torso, we have our central computer So as you know tesla already ships full self-driving computers in every vehicle we produce We want to leverage both the autopilot hardware and the software for the humanoid platform But because it's different in requirements and informed factor, we're going to change a few things first So we still are gonna it's going to do everything that a human brain does Processing vision data making split sescan decisions based on multiple sensory inputs and also communications So to support communications, it's equipped with wireless connectivity as well as audio support And then it also has hardware level security features which are important to protect both the robot and the people around the robot So now that we have our sort of core we're going to need some limbs on the sky Um, and we'd love to show you a little bit about our actuators and our fully functional hands as well But the first before we do that, I'd like to introduce Malcolm who's going to speak a little bit about our structural foundation for the robot Tesla have the capabilities to analyze highly complex systems Don't get much more complex than a crash You can see here a simulated crash from bottle three Superimposed on top of the actual physical crash It's actually incredible how um, how accurate it is Just to give you an idea of the complexity of this model It includes every not bolt and washer every spot weld and it has 35 million degrees of freedom quite amazing And it's true to say that if we didn't have models like this, we wouldn't be able to make the safest cars in the world So can we utilize our capabilities and our methods from the automotive side to influence a robot? Well, we can make a model and since we had crash software we're using the same software here We can make it fall down The purpose of this is to make sure that if it falls down ideally it doesn't but it's superficial damage We don't want it to for example break its gearbox and its arms.\n\nThat's equivalent of a dislocated shoulder of a robot Difficult and expensive to fix So we wanted to dust itself off get on with the job. It's being given We could also take the same model and we can drive the actuators using the inputs from a previously solved model Bringing it to life So this is producing the motions for the tasks we want the robot to do these tasks are picking up boxes turning squatting walking upstairs Whatever the set of tasks are we can play to the model. This is showing just simple walking We can create the stresses in all the components that helps us optimize the components These are not dancing robots these are actually the modal behavior the first five modes of the robot And typically when people make robots they make sure the first mode is up around the top single figures up towards 10 hertz Who is to do this is to make the controls of walking easier. It's very difficult to walk if you can't guarantee where your foot is wobbling around That's okay if you make one robot. We want to make thousands maybe millions We haven't got the luxury of making from carbon fiber titanium. We want to make them plastic things are not quite as stiff So we can't have these high targets.\n\nI call them dumb targets We've got to make them work at lower targets So is that it's that good to work? Well, if you think about it, sorry about this, but we're just bags of soggy jelly and bones thrown in We're not high frequency. If I start on my leg, I don't vibrate at 10 hertz We people operate at a lot of frequency. So we know the robot actually can it just makes controls harder So we take the information from this the modal Data and the stiffness and feed it into the control system that allows it to walk And Just changing tax lightly looking at the knee We could take some inspiration from biology and we can look to see what the mechanical advantage of the knee is It turns out it actually represent quite similar to four-bar link and that's quite non-linear That's not surprising really because if you think when you bend your leg down The torque on your knee is much more when it's bent than it is when it's straight So you'd expect a non-linear function and in fact the biology is non-linear. This matches it quite accurately So that's a representation the four-bar link is obviously not physically four-bar link as I said the characteristics are similar, but Me bending down that's not very scientific. Let's be a bit more scientific We've played all the tasks through the through this graph And this is showing picketing is walking squatting the tasks I said we did on the stress And that's the the torque Seen at the knee against the knee bend on the horizontal axis This is showing the requirement for the need to do all these tasks And then put a curve through it surfing over the top of the piece and that's saying this is what's required to make the robot Do these tasks?\n\nSo if we look at the four-bar link that's actually the green curve And it's saying that the non-linearity of the four-bar link is actually linearized The characteristic of the force what that really says is that's lower the force That's what makes the actuator have the lowest possible force, which is the most efficient. We want to burn energy up slowly What's the blue curve with the blue curve is actually if we didn't have a four-bar link We just had an arm sticking out of my leg here with a with an actuator on it a simple two-bar link That's the best we could do with a simple two-bar link and it shows that that would create a much more force in the actuator Which would not be efficient So what does it look like in practice? well As you'll see but it's very tightly packaged in the knee you'll see it go transparent on the second You'll see the four-bar link there is operating on the actuator. This is determined the force and the displacements on the actuator And now pass you over to Constantina to tell you a lot more detail about how these actuators are made and designed optimized. Thank you So I am I would like to talk to you about The design process and the actuator portfolio In our robot So there are many similarities between a car and the robot when it comes to powertrain design The most important thing that matters here is energy mass and cost We are carrying over most of our designing experience from the car to the robot So in the particular case you see a car with two drive units And the drive units are used in order to accelerate the car zero to 60 miles per hour time or drive a city drive site while The robot that has 28 actuators and It's not obvious. What are the tasks at actuator level?\n\nSo we have tasks that are higher level like walking or climbing stairs or carrying a heavy object Which need to be translated into joint Into joint specs therefore we use our model That generates The torque speed Trajectories for our joints which subsequently is going to be fed in our optimization model And to run through the optimization process This is one of the scenarios that the robot is capable of doing which is turning and walking So when we have this torque speed trajectory we lay it over an efficiency map of an actuator And we are able along the trajectory to generate The power consumption and the energy cumulative energy for the task versus time So this allows us to define the system cost for the particular actuator and put a simple point into the cloud Then we do this for hundreds of thousands of actuators by solving in our cluster And the red line denotes the Pareto front, which is the preferred area where we will look for optimal So the x denotes the preferred actuator design we have picked for this particular joint So now we need to do this for every joint. We have 28 joints to optimize and we parse our cloud We parse our cloud again for every joint spec and the red axis this time denotes the bespoke actuator designs for every joint The problem here Is that we have too many unique actuator designs and even if we take advantage of the symmetry Still there are too many in order to make something Mass manufacturable we need to be able to reduce the amount of unique actuator designs Therefore we run something called commonality study, which we parse our cloud again Looking this time for actuators that simultaneously meet the joint performance requirements for more than one joint at the same time So the resulting portfolio is six actuators and they show in a color map at the middle figure um And the actuators can be also viewed in this Slide we have three rotary and three linear actuators all of which have a great Output force or torque per mass The rotary actuator in particular has a mechanical clutch integrated On the high speed side angular contact ball bearing and on the high speed side And on the low speed side a cross roller bearing and the year train is a strain wave year Um, there are three integrated sensors here and the bespoke permanent magnet machine The linear actuator I'm sorry The linear actuator has planetary rollers and an inverted planetary Screw as a gear train which allows efficiency and compaction and durability So in order to demonstrate the force capability of our linear actuators, we have set up an experiment in order to test it under its limits And I will let you enjoy the video So our actuator is able to lift A half ton nine foot concert grand piano And This is a requirement it's not something nice to have Because our muscles can do the same when they are direct driven when they are directly driven our quadriceps muscles Can do the same thing it's just that the knee is an upgearing Linked system that converts the force into velocity at the end effector of our heels for purposes of giving To the human body agility So this is one of the main things that are amazing about the human body And I'm concluding my part at this point and I would like to welcome my colleague Mike who's going to talk to you about Hand design. Thank you very much Thanks for seeing us So we just saw how powerful a human and a humanoid actuator can be However, humans are also incredibly dexterous The human hand has the ability to move at 300 degrees per second There's tens of thousands of tactile sensors And it has the ability to grasp and manipulate almost every object in our daily lives For our robotic hand design, we were inspired by biology We have five fingers an opposable thumb Our fingers are driven by metallic tendons that are both flexible and strong We have the ability to complete wide aperture power grasps while also being optimized for precision gripping of small thin and delicate objects So why a human like robotic hand? Well, the main reason is that our factories in the world around us is designed to be ergonomic So what that means is that it ensures that objects in our factory are graspable But it also ensures that new objects that we may have never seen before can be grasped by the human hand And by our robotic hand as well The converse there is is pretty interesting because it's saying that these objects are designed to our hand instead of having to make changes To our hand to accompany a new object Some basic stats about our hand is that it has six actuators and 11 degrees of freedom It has an in-hand controller which drives the fingers and receives sensor feedback Sensor feedback is really important to learn a little bit more about the objects that we're grasping And also for proprioception and that's the ability for us to recognize where our hand is in space One of the important aspects of our hand is that it's adaptive This adaptability is involved essentially as complex mechanisms that allow the hand to adapt the objects that's being grasped Another important part is that we have a non-back drivable finger drive This clutching mechanism allows us to hold and transport objects without having to turn on the hand motors You just heard how we went about going we went about designing the tesla bot hardware Now I'll hand it off to Milan and our autonomy team to bring this robot to life Thanks Michael All right So all those cool things we've shown earlier in the video Were possible just in a matter of a few months. Thanks to the amazing work that we've done autopilot over the past few years Most of those components poured it quite easily over to the bot's environment If you think about it, we're just moving from a robot on wheels to a robot on legs So some of the components are pretty similar and some other require more heavy lifting So for example our computer vision neural networks Were ported directly from autopilot to the bot's situation It's exactly the same occupancy network that we'll talk into a little bit more details later with the autopilot team that is now running on the bot here in this video The only thing that changed really is the training data that we had to recollect We're also trying to find ways to improve those occupancy networks Using work made on your radiance fields to get really great volumetric Rendering of the bot's environments for example here some machinery that the bot might have to interact with Another interesting problem to think about is in indoor environments, mostly with that sense of gps signal How do you get the bot to navigate to its destination? Say for instance to find its nearest charging station So we've been training More neural networks to identify high-frequency features key points within the bot's camera streams And track them across frames over time as the bot navigates with its environment And we're using those points to get a better estimate of the bot's pose and trajectory within its environment as it's walking We also did quite some work on the simulation side and this is literally the autopilot simulator To which we've integrated the robots locomotion code and this is a video of the Motion control code running in the autopilot simulator Showing the evolution of the robot's work over time.\n\nSo as you can see we started quite slowly in April and start accelerating as we unlock more joints And deeper more advanced techniques like arms balancing over the past few months And so locomotion is specifically one component that's very different as we're moving from the car to the bot's environment And so I think it warrants a little bit more depth and I'd like my colleagues to start talking about this now Thank you Milan. Hi, everyone. I'm Felix. I'm a robotics engineer on the project and I'm going to talk about walking Walking seems easy, right? People do it every day. You don't even have to think about it But there are some aspects of walking which are challenging from engineering to technology And I think that's one of the things that makes it so much easier for me to think about it But there are some aspects of walking which are challenging from engineering perspective.\n\nFor example Physical self-awareness that means having a good representation of yourself What is the length of your limbs? What is the mass of your limbs? What is the size of your feet? All that matters Also having an energy efficient gate. You can imagine there's different styles of walking and all of them are equally efficient Most important keep balance. Don't fall And of course also coordinate the motion of all of your limbs together So now humans do all of this naturally But as engineers or roboticists we have to think about these problems And the following I'm going to show you how we address them in our locomotion planning and control stack So we start with locomotion planning And our representation of the bot that means a model of the robots kinematics dynamics and the contact properties And using that model and the desired path for the bots our locomotion planner generates reference trajectories for the entire system This means feasible trajectories with respect to the assumptions of our model The planner currently works in three stages.\n\nIt starts planning footsteps and ends with the entire motion photo system And let's dive a little bit deeper in how this works So in this video we see footsteps being planned over a planning horizon following the desired path And we start from this and add then Foot trajectories that connect these footsteps using toe-off and heel strike just as the humans Just as humans do and this gives us the largest right and less knee bend for high efficiency of the system The last stage is then finding a center of mass trajectory Which gives us a dynamically feasible motion of the entire system to keep balance As we all know plans are good, but we also have to realize them in reality. Let's say how see how we can do this Thank you Felix. Hello everyone. My name is Anand and I'm going to talk to you about controls So let's take the motion plan that Felix just talked about and put it in the real world on a real robot Let's see what happens It takes a couple steps and falls down Well, that's a little disappointing But we are missing a few key pieces here, which will make it walk Now as Felix mentioned the motion planner is using an idealized version of itself and a version of reality around it This is not exactly correct It also expresses its intention Through trajectories and wrenches wrenches of forces and torques that it wants to exert on the world to locomotive Reality is way more complex than any similar model. Also the robot is not simplified It's got vibrations and modes, compliance, sensor noise and on and on and on So what does that do to the real world when you put the bot in the real world? Well, the unexpected forces cause unmodeled dynamics, which essentially the planet doesn't know about and that causes destabilization Especially for a system that is dynamically stable like bipedal locomotion So what can we do about it?\n\nWell, we measure reality We use sensors and our understanding of the world to do state estimation And here you can see the attitude and pelvis pose, which is essentially the vestibular system in a human Along with the center of mass trajectory being tracked when the robot is walking in the office environment Now we have all the pieces we need in order to close the loop So we use our better bot model We use the understanding of reality that we've gained through state estimation And we compare what we want versus what we expect the reality expect that reality is doing to us in order to Add corrections to the behavior of the robot Here the robot certainly doesn't appreciate being poked, but it has an admirable job of staying upright The final point here is a robot that walks is not enough We need it to use its hands and arms to be useful. Let's talk about manipulation Hi everyone, my name is Eric robotics engineer on tesla bot And I want to talk about how we've made the robot manipulate things in the real world We wanted to manipulate objects while looking as natural as possible and also get there quickly So what we've done is we've broken this process down into two steps First is generating a library of natural motion references Or we could call them demonstrations and then we've adapted these motion references online to the current real world situation So let's say we have a human demonstration of picking up an object We can get a motion capture of that demonstration, which is visualized right here as A bunch of keyframes representing the location of the hands the elbows the torso We can map that to the robot using inverse kinematics And if we collect a lot of these now we have a library that we can work with But a single demonstration is not generalizable to the variation in the real world For instance, this would only work for a box in a very particular Location So what we've also done is run these Reference trajectories through a trajectory optimization program which solves for where the hand should be how the robot should balance during When it needs to adapt the motion to the real world. So for instance, if the box is In this location, then our optimizer will create this trajectory instead Next Milan's going to talk about uh, what's next for the optimist uh, tesla lie. Thanks Right, so hopefully by now you guys got a good idea of what we've been up to over the past few months Um, we started having something that's usable, but it's far from being useful. There's still a long and exciting road ahead of us um, I think the first thing within the next few weeks is to Get optimists at least apart with bumble see the other bug prototype you saw earlier and probably beyond We are also going to start focusing on the real use case at one of our factories and really going to try to try to Nail this down and I run out all the elements needed to deploy this product in the real world I was mentioning earlier, you know indoor navigation Um graceful for management or even servicing all components needed to scale this product up But um, I don't know about you, but after seeing what we've shown tonight I'm pretty sure we can get this done within the next few months or years Um, and and make this product a reality and change the entire economy Um, so I would like to thank the entire optimist team for their hard work over the past few months I think it's pretty amazing. All of this was done in barely six or eight months.\n\nThank you very much Hey everyone Hi, I'm Ashok. I lead the autopilot team alongside Milan Oh god, it's going to be so hard to top that optinist section He'll try nonetheless anyway Every tesla that has been built over the last several years We think has the hardware to make the car drive itself We have been working on the software to add higher and higher levels of autonomy This time around last year. We are roughly 2000 cars driving our fsd beta software Since then we have significantly improved the software's robustness and capability That we have now shipped it to 160,000 customers as of today This did not come for free it came from the sweat and blood of the engineering team over the last one year Um, for example, we trained 75,000 neural network models just last one year That's roughly a model every eight minutes That's you know coming out of the team and then we evaluate them on our large clusters and then we ship 281 of those models That actually improved the performance of the car And this space of innovation is happening throughout the stack The the planning software the infrastructure the tools even hiring everything is progressing to the next level The fsd beta software is quite capable of driving the car It should be able to navigate from parking lot to parking lot handling city street driving stopping for traffic lights and stop signs Negotiating with objects at intersections making turns and so on All of this comes from the Uh camera streams that go through our neural networks that run on the car itself It's not coming back to the server or anything It runs on the car and produces all the outputs uh to form the world model or on the car and the planning software drives the car based on that Today we'll go into a lot of the components that make up the system The occupancy network acts as the base geometry layer of the system This is a multi-camera video neural network That from the images predicts the full physical occupancy of the world around the robot So anything that's physically present trees walls buildings Cars balls, whatever you it predicts if it's physically present it predicts them along with their future motion On top of this base level of geometry We have more semantic layers in order to navigate the roadways. We need the lanes, of course But then the roadways have lots of different lanes and they connect in all kinds of ways So it's actually a really difficult problem for typical computer vision techniques to predict the set of lanes and their Connectivities So we reached all the way into language technologies and then pull the state of the art from other Domains are not just computer vision to make this task possible For vehicles, we need their full kinematics state to control for them All of this directly comes from neural networks video streams raw video streams come into the networks Goes through a lot of processing and then outputs the full kinematics state that positions velocities acceleration jerk all of that Directly comes out of networks with minimal post processing. That's really fascinating to me because how how much does it take? Even possible what world do we live in that this magic is possible that these networks predicts fourth derivatives of these positions and people thought We couldn't even detect these objects My opinion is that it did not come for free It it required tons of data.\n\nSo we had to be sophisticated auto labeling systems that shone through raw sensor data Run a ton of offline compute on the servers. It took a lot of time. It took a lot of time. It took a lot of time Run a ton of offline compute on the servers. It can take a few hours run expensive neural networks Distill the information into labels that train our in-car neural networks On top of this we also use our simulation system to synthetically create images and since it's a simulation We trivially have all the labels All of this goes through a well oiled data engine pipeline where we first train a baseline model with some data Ship it to the car see what the failures are and once we know the failures We mind the fleet for the cases where it fails Provide the correct labels and add the data to the training set This process systematically fixes the issues and we do this for every task that runs in the car Yeah, and to train these new massive neural networks This year we expanded our training infrastructure by roughly 40 to 50 percent So that sits us at about 14,000 GPUs today across multiple training clusters in the United States We also worked on our AI compiler which now supports new operations needed by those neural networks And map them to the the best of our underlying hardware resources And our inference engine today is capable of distributing the execution of a single neural network across two independent system on chips Essentially two independent computers interconnected within the same full self-driving computer And to make this possible we have to keep a tight control on the end-to-end latency of this new system So we deployed more advanced scheduling code across the full FSD platform All of these neural networks running in the car Together produce the vector space, which is again the model of the world around the robot or the car And then the planning system operates on top of this coming up with trajectories that avoid collisions or smooth Make progress towards the destination using a combination of model-based optimization Plus neural network that helps optimize it to be really fast Today we are really excited to present progress on all of these areas We have the engineering leads standing by to come in and explain these various blocks and these power not just the car But the same components also run on the Optimus robot that Milan showed earlier With that I welcome Paril to start talking about the planning section Hi all, I'm Paril Jain Let's use this intersection scenario today Let's use this intersection scenario to dive straight into how we do the planning and decision making in autopilot So we are approaching this intersection from a side street and we have to yield to all the crossing vehicles Right with as they are about to enter the intersection The pedestrian on the other side of the intersection decides to cross the road without a crosswalk Now we need to yield to this pedestrian Yield to the vehicles from the right and also understand the relation between the pedestrian and the vehicle on the other side of the intersection So a lot of these intra object dependencies That we need to resolve in a quick glance And humans are really good at this We look at a scene understand all the possible interactions evaluate the most promising ones And generally end up choosing a reasonable one So let's look at a few of these interactions that autopilot system evaluated We could have gone in front of this pedestrian with a very aggressive longitudinal lateral profile Now obviously we are being a jerk to the pedestrian and we would spook the pedestrian and his cute pet We could have moved forward slowly Short for a gap between the pedestrian or end the vehicle from the right Again, we are being a jerk to the vehicle coming from the right But you should not outright reject this interaction in case this is only safe interaction available Lastly the interaction we ended up choosing Stay slow initially find the reasonable gap and then finish the maneuver after all the agents pass Now evaluation of all of these interactions is not trivial Especially when you care about modeling the higher order derivatives for other agents For example, what is the longitudinal jerk required by the vehicle coming from the right when you assert in front of it? Relying purely on collision checks with marginal predictions will only get you so far because you will miss out on a lot of valid interactions This basically boils down to solving a multi-agent joint trajectory planning problem over the trajectories of ego and all the other agents Now how much ever you optimize there's going to be a limit to how fast you can run this optimization problem It will be close to close to order of 10 milliseconds even after a lot of incremental approximations Now for a typical crowded unprotected lift Say you have more than 20 objects Each object having multiple different future modes the number of relevant interaction combinations will blow up The planner needs to make a decision every 50 milliseconds.\n\nSo how do we solve this in real time? We rely on a framework what we call as interaction search, which is basically a paralyzed research over a bunch of maneuver trajectories The state space here corresponds to the kinematic state of ego, the kinematic state of other agents, their nominal future multiple multi-modal predictions and all the static entities in the scene The action space is where things get interesting We use a set of maneuver trajectory candidates to branch over a bunch of interaction decisions and also incremental goals for a longer horizon maneuver Let's walk through this research very quickly to get a sense of how it works We start with a set of vision measurements namely lanes occupancy moving objects These get represented as past attractions as well as latent features We use this to create a set of goal candidates Lanes again from the lanes network or unstructured regions which correspond to a probability mask derived from human demonstrations Once we have a bunch of these goal candidates, we create three trajectories using a combination of classical optimization approaches As well as our network planner again trained on data from the customer fleet Now once we get a bunch of these three trajectories We use them to start branching on the interactions We find the most critical interaction In our case, this would be the interaction with respect to the pedestrian Whether we assert in front of it or yield to it Obviously the option on the left is a high penalty option, it likely won't get prioritized So we branch further onto the option on the right and that's where we bring in more and more complex interactions Building this optimization problem incrementally with more and more constraints And the tree search keeps flowing, branching on more interactions, branching on more goals Now a lot of pricks here lie in evaluation of each of this node of the tree search Inside each node, initially we started with creating trajectories using classical optimization approaches Where the constraints like I described would be added incrementally And this would take close to 1 to 5 milliseconds per action Now even though this is fairly good number, when you want to evaluate more than 100% interactions, this does not scale So we ended up building lightweight queryable networks that you can run in the loop of the planner These networks are trained on human demonstrations from the fleet as well as offline solvers with relaxed time limits With this, we were able to bring the run time down to close to 100 microseconds per action Now doing this alone is not enough because you still have this massive tree search that you need to go through And you need to efficiently prune the search space So you need to do a new scoring on each of these trajectories Few of these are fairly standard, you do a bunch of collision checks, you do a bunch of comfort analysis What is the jerk and access required for a given manure The customer fleet data plays an important role here again We run two sets of again lightweight queryable networks, both really augmenting each other One of them trained from interventions from the FSD beta fleet Which gives a score on how likely is a given manure to result in interventions over the next few seconds And second, which is purely on human demonstrations, human driven data, giving a score on how close is your given selected action to a human driven trajectory The scoring helps us prune the search space, keep branching further on the interactions and focus the compute on the most promising outcomes The cool part about this architecture is that it allows us to create a cool blend between data driven approaches where you don't have to rely on a lot of hand engineered costs But also ground it in reality with physics based checks Now a lot of what I described was with respect to the agents, we could observe in the scene But the same framework extends to all of the other systems that we have We use the video feed from 8 cameras to generate the 3D occupancy of the world The blue mask here corresponds to the visibility region, we call it It basically gets blocked at the first occlusion you see in the scene We consume this visibility mask to generate the visibility of the scene We use the video feed from 8 cameras to generate the 3D occupancy of the world The blue mask here corresponds to the visibility region, we call it In the first occlusion you see in the scene, we consume this visibility mask to generate what we call as ghost objects which you can see on the top left Now if you model the spawn regions and the state transitions of this ghost objects correctly If you tune your control response as a function of their existence likelihood, you can extract some really nice human-like behaviors Now I'll pass it on to Phil to describe more on how we generate these occupancy networks Hey guys, my name is Phil, I will share the details of the occupancy network we built over the past year This network is our solution to model the physical work in 3D around our cars And it is currently not shown in our customer-facing visualization What you will see here is the raw network output from our internal lab tool The occupancy network takes video streams of all our 8 cameras as input Produces a single unified volumetric occupancy in vector space directly For every 3D location around our car, it predicts the probability of that location being occupied or not Since it has video contacts, it is capable of predicting obstacles that are occluded instantaneously For each location, it also produces a set of semantics such as curb, car, pedestrian, and road debris as color-coded here Occupancy flow is also predicted for motion Since the model is a generalized network, it does not tell static and dynamic objects explicitly It is able to produce and model the random motion such as a swarming trainer here This network is currently running in all Teslas with FSD computers And it is incredibly efficient, runs about every 10 milliseconds with our neural-line accelerator So how does this work? Let's take a look at architecture First, we rectify each camera image with a camera calibration And the images we're showing here are given to the network It's actually not the typical 8-bit RGB image As you can see from the first image on top, we're giving the 12-bit raw photo-account image to the network Since it has 4 bits more information, it has 16 times better dynamic range as well as reduced latency Since we don't have to run ISP in the loop anymore We use a set of reglets and bif-fps as a backbone to extract image space features Next, we construct a set of 3D position queries along with the image space features as keys and values fit into an attention module The output of the attention module is high-dimensional spatial features These spatial features are aligned temporally using vehicle odometry to derive motion Next, these spatial temporal features go through a set of deconvolutions to produce the final occupancy and occupancy flow output They're formed as fixed-size voxel grids, which might not be precise enough for planning on control In order to get a higher resolution, we also produce per voxel feature maps which we feed into MLP with 3D spatial point queries to get position and semantics at any arbitrary location After knowing the model better, let's take a look at another example Here we have an articulated bus parked on the right side of the road, highlighted as an L-shaped voxel here As we approach, the bus starts to move. The front of the car turns blue first, indicating the model predicts The front of the bus has a long zero occupancy flow As the bus keeps moving, the entire bus turns blue, and you can also see that the network predicts the precise curvature of the bus This is a very complicated problem for a traditional object detection network, as you'll have to see whether I'm going to use one cuboid or perhaps two to feed the curvature But for an occupancy network, since all we care about is the occupancy in the visible space, we'll be able to model the curvature precisely Besides the voxel grid, the occupancy network also produces a drivel surface The drivel surface has both 3D geometry and semantics. They are very useful for control, especially on hilly and curvy roads The surface and the voxel grid are not predicted independently. Instead, the voxel grid actually aligns with the surface implicitly Here, we are at a hill quest where you can see the 3D geometry of the surface being predicted nicely Planner can use this information to decide perhaps we need to slow down more for the hill quest And as you can also see, the voxel grid aligns with the surface consistently Besides the voxels and the surface, we're also very excited about the recent breakthrough in Neural Radiance Field or NERF We're looking into both incorporating some of the last NERF features into occupancy network training as well as using our network output as the input state for NERF As a matter of fact, Ashok is very excited about this.\n\nThis has been his personal weekend project for a while About these NERFs, because I think the academia is building out of these foundation models for language using tons of large data sets for language But I think for vision, NERFs are going to provide the foundation models for computer vision because they are grounded in geometry And geometry gives us a nice way to supervise these networks and freezes off the requirement to define an ontology And the supervision is essentially free because you just have to differentially render these images So I think in the future, this occupancy network idea where images come in and then the network produces a consistent volumetric representation of the scene That can then be differentially rendered into any image that was observed I personally think it's a future of computer vision and we do some initial work on it right now But I think in the future, both at Tesla and in academia, we will see that this combination of one-shot prediction of volumetric occupancy will be the future That's my personal bet Thanks Ashok So here's an example early result of a 3D reconstruction from our free data Instead of focusing on getting perfect RGB reproduction in image space, our primary goal here is to accurately represent the world in 3D space for driving And we want to do this for all our free data over the world in all weather and lighting conditions And obviously this is a very challenging problem and we're looking for you guys to help Finally, the occupancy network is trained with large auto-labeled data sets without any human in the loop And with that, I'll pass to Tim to talk about what it takes to train this network Thanks Phil Alright, hey everyone Let's talk about some training infrastructure So we've seen a couple of videos, no four or five I think and care more and worry more about a lot more clips on that So we've been looking at the occupancy networks just from Phil Just Phil's videos, it takes 1.4 billion frames to train that network What you just saw and if you have 100,000 GPUs, it would take one hour But if you have one GPU, it would take 100,000 hours So that is not a humane time period that you can wait for your training job to run, right? We want to ship faster than that So that means you're going to need to go parallel So you need a more compute for that That means you're going to need a supercomputer So this is why we've built in-house three supercomputers comprising of 14,000 GPUs Where we use 10,000 GPUs for training and around 4,000 GPUs for auto-labeling All these videos are stored in 30 petabytes of a distributed managed video cache You shouldn't think of our data sets as fixed Let's say as you think of your image net or something, you know, with like a million frames You should think of it as a very fluid thing So we've got half a million of these videos flowing in and out of this cluster These clusters every single day And we track 400,000 of these kind of Python video instantiations every second So that's a lot of calls We're going to need to capture that in order to govern the retention policies of this distributed video cache So underlying all of this is a huge amount of infra, all of which we build and manage in-house So you cannot just buy, you know, 14,000 GPUs and then 30 petabytes of Flash NVMe And you just put it together and let's go train It actually takes a lot of work and I'm going to go into a little bit of that What you actually typically want to do is you want to take your accelerator So that could be the GPU or dojo, which we'll talk about later And because that's the most expensive component, that's where you want to put your bottleneck And so that means that every single part of your system is going to need to outperform this accelerator And so that is really complicated That means that your storage is going to need to have the size and the bandwidth to deliver all the data down into the nodes These nodes need to have the right amount of CPU and memory capabilities to feed into your machine learning framework This machine learning framework then needs to hand it off to your GPU and then you can start training But then you need to do so across hundreds or thousands of GPU in a reliable way in lockstep And in a way that's also fast, so you're also going to need an interconnect Extremely complicated We'll talk more about dojo in a second So first I want to take you through some optimizations that we've done on our cluster So we're getting in a lot of videos and video is very much unlike, let's say, training on images or text Which I think is very well established Video is quite literally a dimension more complicated And so that's why we needed to go end to end from the storage layer down to the accelerator Optimize every single piece of that Because we train on the photon count videos that come directly from our fleet We train on those directly, we do not post-process those at all The way it's just done is we seek exactly to the frames we select for our batch We load those in including the frames that they depend on, so these are your eye frames or your key frames We package those up, move them into shared memory, move them into a double bar from the GPU And then use the hardware decoder that's only accelerated to actually decode the video So we do that on the GPU natively, and this is all in a very nice PyTorch extension Doing so unlocked more than 30% training speed increase for the occupancy networks And freed up basically a whole CPU to do any other thing You cannot just do training with just videos, of course you need some kind of a ground truth And that is actually an interesting problem as well The objective for storing your ground truth is that you want to make sure you get to your ground truth That you need in the minimal amount of file system operations And load in the minimal size of what you need in order to optimize for aggregate cross cluster throughput Because you should see a compute cluster as one big device which has internally fixed constraints and thresholds So for this we rolled out a format that is native to us that's called small We use this for our ground truth, our feature cache and any inference outputs So a lot of tensors that are in there And so just a cartoon here, let's say this is your table that you want to store Then that's how that would look out if you rolled out on disk So what you do is you take anything you'd want to index on, so for example video timestamps You put those all in the header so that in your initial header read you know exactly where to go on disk Then if you have any tensors you're going to try to transpose the dimensions to put a different dimension last as the contiguous dimension And then also try different types of compression Then you check out which one was most optimal and then store that one This is actually a huge tip if you do feature caching Unintelligible output from the machine learning network Rotate around the dimensions a little bit, you can get up to 20% increase in efficiency of storage Then when you store that we also order the columns by size So that all your small columns and small values are together So that when you seek for a single value you're likely to overlap with a read on more values which you'll use later So that you don't need to do another file system operation So I could go on and on, I just went on, touched on two projects that we have internally This is actually part of a huge continuous effort to optimize the compute that we have in-house So accumulating and aggregating through all these optimizations We now train our occupancy networks twice as fast just because it's twice as efficient And now if we add in a bunch more compute and go parallel we can now train this in hours instead of days And with that I'd like to hand it off to the biggest user of compute, John Hi everybody, my name is John Emmons, I lead the autopilot vision team I'm going to cover two topics with you today, the first is how we predict lanes And the second is how we predict the future behavior of other agents on the road In the early days of autopilot we modeled the lane detection problem as an image space instant segmentation task Our network was super simple though, in fact it was only capable of predicting lanes from a few different kinds of geometries Specifically it would segment the ego lane, it could segment adjacent lanes, and then it had some special casing for forks and merges This simplistic modeling of the problem worked for highly structured roads like highways But today we're trying to build a system that's capable of much more complex maneuvers Specifically we want to make left and right turns at intersections where the road topology can be quite a bit more complex and diverse When we try to apply this simplistic modeling of the problem here, it just totally breaks down Taking a step back for a moment, what we're trying to do here is to predict the sparse set of lane instances and their connectivity And what we want to do is to have a neural network that basically predicts this graph where the nodes are the lane segments And the edges encode the connectivity between these lanes So what we have is our lane detection neural network, it's made up of three components In the first component we have a set of convolutional layers, attention layers, and other neural network layers That encode the video streams from our eight cameras on the vehicle and produce a rich visual representation We then enhance this visual representation with a coarse road level map data Which we encode with a set of additional neural network layers that we call the lane guidance module This map is not an HD map, but it provides a lot of useful hints about the topology of lanes inside of intersections, the lane counts on various roads, and a set of other attributes that help us The first two components here produce a dense tensor that sort of encodes the world But what we really want to do is to convert this dense tensor into a sparse set of lanes and their connectivity We approach this problem like an image captioning task where the input is this dense tensor and the output text is predicted into a special language that we developed at Tesla for encoding lanes and their connectivity In this language of lanes, the words and tokens are the lane positions in 3D space In the ordering of the tokens, encrypted modifiers in the tokens encode the connected relationships between these lanes By modeling the task as a language problem, we can capitalize on recent autoregressive architectures and techniques from the language community for handling the multiple-diality of the problem We're not just solving the computer vision problem at Autopilot, we're also applying the state-of-the-art in language modeling and machine learning more generally I'm now going to dive into a little bit more detail of this language component What I have depicted on the screen here is a satellite image which sort of represents the local area around the vehicle The set of nose and edges is what we refer to as the lane graph, and it's ultimately what we want to come out of this neural network We start with a blank slate We're going to want to make our first prediction here at this green dot This green dot's position is encoded as an index into a course grid which discretizes the 3D world Now we don't predict this index directly because it would be too computationally expensive to do so There's just too many grid points and predicting a categorical distribution over this has both implications at training time and test time So instead what we do is we discretize the world coarsely first, we predict the heat map over the possible locations, and then we latch in the most probable location Condition on this, we then refine the prediction and get the precise point Now we know where the position of this token is, but we don't know it's tight In this case though, it's a beginning of a new lane So we predict it as a start token And because it's a start token, there's no additional attributes in our language We then take the predictions from this first forward pass, and we encode them using a learned positional embedding Which produces a set of tensors that we combine together Which is actually the first word in our language of lanes We add this to the first position in our sentence here We then continue this process by predicting the next lane point in a similar fashion Now this lane point is not the beginning of a new lane, it's actually a continuation of the previous lane So it's a continuation token type Now it's not enough just to know that this lane is connected to the previously predicted lane We want to encode its precise geometry, which we do by regressing a set of spline coefficients We then take this lane, we encode it again, and add it as the next word in the sentence We continue predicting these continuation lanes until we get to the end of the prediction grid We then move on to a different lane segment So you can see that cyan dot there Now it's not topologically connected to that pink point It's actually forking off of that green point there So it's got a fork type And fork tokens actually point back to previous tokens from which their fork originates So you can see here the fork point predictor is actually the index zero So it's actually referencing back to a token that is already predicted, like you would in language We continue this process over and over again until we've enumerated all of the tokens in the lane graph And then the network predicts the end of sentence token Yeah, I just wanted to note that the reason we do this is not just because we want to build something complicated It almost feels like a Turing complete machine here with neural networks though Is that we try simple approaches, for example, trying to just segment the lanes along the road or something like that But then the problem is when there's uncertainty, say you cannot see the road clearly And there could be two lanes or three lanes and you can't tell A simple segmentation-based approach would just draw both of them It's kind of a 2.5 lane situation And the post-processing algorithm would hilariously fail when the predictions are such Yeah, the problems don't end there I mean, you need to predict these connective lanes inside of intersections Which is just not possible with the approach that Ashok's mentioning Which is why we had to upgrade to this sort of approach Yeah, when it overlaps like this, segmentation would just go haywire But even if you try very hard to put them on separate layers, it's just a really hard problem But language just offers a really nice framework for getting a sample from a posterior As opposed to trying to do all of this in post-processing But this doesn't actually stop for just autopilot, right? John, this can be used for optimists Yeah, I guess they wouldn't be called lanes But you could imagine, sort of in this stage here That you might have sort of paths that sort of encode the possible places that people could walk Yeah, basically if you're in a factory or in a home setting, you can just ask the robot Okay, please route to the kitchen or please route to some location in the factory And then we predict a set of pathways that would go through the aisles, take the robot And say, okay, this is how you get to the kitchen It just really gives us a nice framework to model these different paths That simplify the navigation problem for the downstream planner Alright, so ultimately what we get from this lane detection network Is a set of lanes in their connectivity, which comes directly from the network There's no additional step here for sparsifying these dense predictions into sparse ones This is just a direct unfiltered output of the network Okay, so I talked a little bit about lanes I'm going to briefly touch on how we model and predict the future paths and other semantics on objects So I'm just going to go really quickly through two examples The video on the right here, we've got a car that's actually running a red light and turning in front of us What we do to handle situations like this is we predict a set of short time horizon future trajectories on all objects We can use these to anticipate the dangerous situation here And apply whatever breaking and steering actions required to avoid a collision In the video on the right, there's two vehicles in front of us The one on the left lane is parked, apparently it's being loaded, unloaded I don't know why the driver decided to park there But the important thing is that our neural network predicted that it was stopped Which is the red color there The vehicle in the other lane, as you notice, also is stationary But that one's obviously just waiting for that red light to turn green So even though both objects are stationary and have zero velocity It's the semantics that is really important here So that we don't get stuck behind that awkwardly parked car Predicting all of these agent attributes presents some practical problems when trying to build a real-time system We need to maximize the frame rate of our object section stack So that autopilot can quickly react to the changing environment Every millisecond really matters here To minimize the inference latency, our neural network is split into two phases In the first phase, we identified the locations in 3D space where agents exist In the second stage, we then pull out tensors at those 3D locations Append it with additional data that's on the vehicle And then we do the rest of the processing This specification step allows the neural network to focus compute on the areas that matter most Which gives us superior performance for a fraction of the latency cost So, putting it all together The autopilot vision stack predicts more than just the geometry and kinematics of the world It also predicts a rich set of semantics, which enables safe and human-like driving I'm now going to hand things off to Sri who will tell us how we run all these cool neural networks on our FSD computer Thank you Hi everyone, I'm Sri Today I'm going to give a glimpse of what it takes to run these FSD networks in the car And how do we optimize for the inference latency? Today I'm going to focus just on the FSD lanes network that John just talked about So, when we started this track, we wanted to know if we can run this FSD lanes network natively on the trip engine Which is our in-house neural network accelerator that we built in the FSD computer When we built this hardware, we kept it simple and we made sure it can do one thing ridiculously fast Dense dot products But this architecture is autoregressive and iterative Where it crunches through multiple attention-attention blocks in the inner loop Producing sparse points directly at every step So, the challenge here was how can we do this sparse point prediction and sparse computation on a dense dot product engine Let's see how we did this on the trip So, the network predicts the heat map of most probable spatial locations of the point To do this on trip, we actually built a lookup table in SRAM And we engineered the dimensions of this embedding such that we could achieve all of this thing with just matrix multiplication Not just that, we also wanted to store this embedding into a token cache So that we don't recompute this for every iteration, rather reuse it for future point prediction Again, we put some tricks here where we did all these operations just on the dot product engine It's actually cool that our team found creative ways to map all these operations on the trip engine In ways that were not even imagined when this hardware was designed But that's not the only thing we had to do to make this work We actually implemented a whole lot of operations and features to make this model compilable To improve the intate accuracy as well as to optimize performance All of these things helped us run this 75 million parameter model just under 10 millisecond of latency Consuming just 8 watts of power But this is not the only architecture running in the car There are so many other architectures, modules and networks we need to run in the car To give a sense of scale, there are about a billion parameters of all the networks combined Producing around 1000 neural network signals So we need to make sure we optimize them jointly and such that we maximize the compute utilization Throughput and minimize the latency So we built a compiler just for neural networks that shares the structure to traditional compilers As you can see, it takes the massive graph of neural nets with 150k nodes and 375k connection Takes this thing, partitions them into independent subgraphs And compiles each of those subgraphs natively for the inference devices Then we have a neural network linker which shares the structure to traditional linker Where we perform this link time optimization There we solve an offline optimization problem with compute memory and memory band with constraints So that it comes with an optimized schedule that gets executed in the car On the runtime, we designed a hybrid scheduling system which basically does heterogeneous scheduling on one SOC And distributed scheduling across both the SOCs to run these networks in a model parallel fashion To get 100 tops of compute utilization, we need to optimize across all the layers of software Right from tuning the network architecture, the compiler, all the way to implementing a low latency high bandwidth RDMA link Across both the SOCs and in fact going even deeper to understanding and optimizing the cache coherent and non-coherent data path of the accelerator in the SOC This is a lot of optimization at every level in order to make sure we get the highest frame rate and as every millisecond counts here And this is just the visualization of the neural networks that are running in the car This is our digital brain essentially As you can see these operations are nothing but just the matrix multiplication, convolution to name a few real operations running in the car To train this network with a billion parameters, you need a lot of labeled data So Egan is going to talk about how do we achieve this with the auto labeling pipeline Thank you Sri Hi everyone, I'm Egan Zhang and I'm leading a geometric vision at autopilot So yeah, let's talk about auto labeling So we have several kinds of auto labeling frameworks to support various types of networks But today I'd like to focus on the awesome lanes net here So to successfully train and generalize this network to everywhere, we think we went tens of millions of trips from probably one million intersection or even more Than how to do that So it is certainly achievable to source sufficient amount of trips because we already have, as Tim explained earlier, we already have like 500,000 trips per day cache rate However, converting all those data into a training form is a very challenging technical problem To solve this challenge, we've tried various ways of manual and auto labeling So from the first column to the second, from the second to the third, each advance provided us nearly 100x improvement in throughput But still, we run an even better auto labeling machine that can provide us good quality, diversity and scalability To meet all these requirements, despite the huge amount of engineering effort required here, we've developed a new auto labeling machine powered by multi-trip reconstruction So this can replace 5 million hours of manual labeling with just 12 hours on cluster for labeling 10,000 trips So how we solved? There are three big steps. The first step is high precision trajectory and structural recovery by multi-camera, visual, inertial, or geometry So here, all the features including ground surface are inferred from videos by neural networks, then tracked and reconstructed in the vector space So the typical trip rate of this trajectory in car is like 1.3 centimeter per meter and 0.45 milliliter per meter, which is pretty decent considering its compact compute requirement Then the recovered surface and road details are also used as a strong guidance for the later manual verification stuff This is also enabled in every FSD vehicle, so we get preprocessed trajectories and structures along with the trip data The second step is multi-trip reconstruction, which is the big and core piece of this machine So the video shows how the previously shown trip is reconstructed and aligned with other trips, basically other trips from different vehicles, not the same vehicle So this is done by multiple internal steps like course alignment, pairwise matching, joint optimization, then further surface refinement In the end, the human analyst comes in and finalizes the label So each heavy steps are already fully parallelized on the cluster, so the entire process usually takes just a couple of hours The last step is actually auto-labeling the new trips So here we use the same multi-trip alignment engine, but only between pre-built reconstruction and each new trip So it's much, much simpler than fully reconstructing all the clips altogether That's why it only takes 30 minutes per trip to auto-label instead of several hours of manual labeling And this is also the key of scalability of this machine This machine easily scales as long as we have available compute and trip data So about 50 trips were newly auto-labeled from this scene and some of them are shown here, so 53 from different vehicles So this is how we capture and transform the space-time slices of the world into the network supervision One thing I'd like to note is that Jagan just talked about how we auto-label our lanes We have auto-labels for almost every task that we do, including our planner And many of these are fully automatic, there's no humans involved For example, for objects, all the kinematics, the shapes, the futures, everything just comes from auto-labeling And the same is true for our occupancy too, and we have really just built a machine around this Yeah, so if you can go back one slide One more, it says parallelized on cluster So that sounds pretty straightforward, but it really wasn't Maybe it's fun to share how something like this comes about So a while ago we didn't have any auto-labeling at all, and then someone makes a script It starts to work, it starts working better, until you reach a volume that's pretty high And we clearly need a solution And so there were two other engineers in our team who were like, you know, that's an interesting, you know, thing What we needed to do was build a whole graph of essentially Python functions that would need to run one after the other First you pull the clip, then you do some cleaning, then you do some network inference, then another network inference Until you finally get this But so you need to do this at a large scale, so I tell them we probably need to shoot for, you know, 100,000 clips per day Or like 100,000 items, that seems good And so the engineers said, well, we can do, you know, a bit of post-gres and a bit of elbow grease, we can do it Meanwhile, we are a bit later and we're doing 20 million of these functions every single day Again, we pull in around half a million clips and on those we run a ton of functions, each of these, in a streaming fashion And so that's kind of the backend infra that's also needed to not just run training, but also auto-labeling Yeah, it really is like a factory that produces labels and production lines, yield, quality, inventory Like all of these same concepts applied to this label factory that applies for, you know, the factory for our cars That's right Okay, thanks, Tim and Ashok So, yeah, so concluding this section, I'd like to share a few more challenging and interesting examples for network for sure And even for humans, probably So from the top, there's like examples for like lack of lights, case or foggy night or roundabout and occlusions by heavy occlusions by parked cars And even rainy night with rain drops on camera lenses These are challenging, but once their original scenes are fully reconstructed by other clips, all of them can be auto-labeled So that our cars can drive even better through these challenging scenarios So, now, let me pass the mic to David to learn more about how Sim is creating the new world on top of these labels Thank you Thank you, Yegan My name is David and I'm going to talk about simulation So simulation plays a critical role in providing data that is difficult to source and or hard to label However, 3D scenes are notoriously slow to produce Take for example, the simulated scene playing behind me A complex intersection from Market Street in San Francisco It would take two weeks for artists to complete And for us, that is painfully slow However, I'm going to talk about using Yegan's automated ground truth labels along with some brand new tooling that allows us to procedurally generate this scene in many like it in just five minutes That's an amazing a thousand times faster than before So let's dive in to how a scene like this is created We start by piping the automated ground truth labels into our simulated world creator tooling inside the software Houdini Starting with road boundary labels, we can generate a solid road mesh and re-topologize it with the lane graph labels This helps inform important road details like cross-road slope and detailed material blending Next, we can use the line data and sweep geometry across its surface and project it to the road, creating lane paint decals Next, using median edges, we can spawned island geometry and populate it with randomized foliage This drastically changes the visibility of the scene Now the outside world can be generated through a series of randomized heuristics Modular building generators create visual obstructions while randomly placed objects like hydrants can change the color of the curves while trees can drop leaves below it obscuring lines or edges Next, we can bring in map data to inform positions of things like traffic traffic lights or stop signs We can trace along its normal to collect important information like number of lanes and even get accurate street names on the signs themselves Next, using lane graph, we can determine lane connectivity and spawn directional road markings on the road and their accompanying road signs And finally, with lane graph itself, we can determine lane adjacency and other useful metrics to spawn randomized traffic permutations inside our simulator And again, this is all automatic, no artist in the loop and happens within minutes And now this sets us up to do some pretty cool things Since everything is based on data and heuristics, we can start to fuzz parameters to create visual variations of the single ground truth It can be as subtle as object placement and random material swapping to more drastic changes like entirely new biomes or locations of environment like urban, suburban, or rural This allows us to create infinite, targeted permutations for specific ground truths that we need more ground truth for And all this happens within a click of a button And we can even take this one step further by altering our ground truth itself Say John wants his network to pay more attention to directional road markings to better detect an upcoming captive left turn lane We can start to procedurally alter our lane graph inside the simulator to help create entirely new flows through this intersection to help focus the network's attention to the road markings to create more accurate predictions And this is a great example of how this tooling allows us to create new data that can never be collected from the real world And the true power of this tool is in its architecture and how we can run all tasks in parallel to infinitely scale So you saw the tile creator tool in action converting the ground truth labels into their counterparts Next we can use our tile extractor tool to divide this data into geo hash tiles about 150 meter square in size We then save out that data into separate geometry and instance files This gives us a clean source of data that's easy to load and allows us to be rendering engine agnostic for the future Then using a tile loader tool we can summon any number of those cache tiles using a geo hash ID Currently we're doing about these 5x5 tiles or 3x3 usually centered around fleet hotspots or interesting lane graph locations And the tile loader also converts these tile sets into U assets for consumption by the unreal engine and gives you a finished product from what you saw in the first slide And this really sets us up for size and scale And as you can see on the map behind us we can easily generate most of San Francisco city streets And this didn't take years or even months of work but rather two weeks by one person We can continue to manage and grow all this data using our PDG network inside of the tooling This allows us to throw compute at it and regenerate all these tile sets overnight This ensures all environments are consistent, quality and features which is super important for training since new ontologies and signals are constantly released And now to come full circle, because we generated all these tile sets from ground truth data They contain all the weird intricacies from the real world We can combine that with the procedural, visual and traffic variety to create limitless, targeted data for the network to learn from And that concludes the SIM section, I'll pass it to Kate to talk about how we can use all this data to improve autopilot Thank you Thanks David, hi everyone, my name is Kate Park and I'm here to talk about the data engine Which is the process by which we improve our neural networks via data We're going to show you how we deterministically solve interventions via data And walk you through the life of this particular clip In this scenario, autopilot is approaching a turn and incorrectly predicts that crossing vehicle as stopped for traffic and thus a vehicle that we would slow down for In reality, there's nobody in the car, it's just awkwardly parked We've built this tooling to identify the mispredictions, correct the label and categorize this clip into an evaluation set This particular clip happens to be one of 126 that we've diagnosed as challenging parked cars at turns Because of this infra, we can curate this evaluation set without any engineering resources custom to this particular challenge case To actually solve that challenge case requires mining thousands of examples like it And it's something Tesla can trivially do We simply use our data sourcing infra, request data and use the tooling shown previously to correct the labels By surgically targeting the mispredictions of the current model, we're only adding the most valuable examples to our training set We surgically fix 13,900 clips and because those were examples where the current model struggles We don't even need to change the model architecture, a simple weight update with this new valuable data is enough to solve the challenge case So you see we no longer predict that crossing vehicle as stopped, as shown in orange, but parked, as shown in red In academia, we often see that people keep data constant, but at Tesla it's very much the opposite We see time and time and again that data is one of the best if not the most deterministic lever to solving these interventions We just showed you the data engine loop for one challenge case, namely these parked cars at turns But there are many challenge cases even for one signal of vehicle movement We apply this data engine loop to every single challenge case we've diagnosed, whether it's buses, curvy roads, stopped vehicles, parking lots And we don't just add data once, we do this again and again to perfect the semantic In fact, this year we updated our vehicle movement signal five times and with every weight update trained on the new data We push our vehicle movement accuracy up and up This data engine framework applies to all our signals, whether they're 3D, multi-cam video, whether the data is human labeled, auto-labeled, or simulated Whether it's an offline model or an online model And Tesla is able to do this at scale because of the fleet advantage, the infra that our NG team has built, and the labeling resources that feed our networks To train on all this data, we need a massive amount of compute, so I'll hand it off to Pete and Ganesh to talk about the Dojo supercomputing platform Thank you Thank you, Katie Thanks everybody, thanks for hanging in there, we're almost there My name is Pete Bannon, I run the custom silicon and low voltage teams at Tesla And my name is Ganesh Renke, I run the Dojo program Thank you I'm frequently asked, why is a car company building a supercomputer for training?\n\nAnd this question fundamentally misunderstands the nature of Tesla At its heart, Tesla is a hardcore technology company All across the company, people are working hard in science and engineering to advance the fundamental understanding and methods that we have available to build cars, energy solutions, robots, and anything else that we can do to improve the human condition around the world It's a super exciting thing to be a part of, and it's a privilege to run a very small piece of it in the semiconductor group Tonight we're going to talk a little bit about Dojo and give you an update on what we've been able to do over the last year But before we do that, I wanted to give a little bit of background on the initial design that we started a few years ago When we got started, the goal was to provide a substantial improvement to the training latency for our autopilot team Some of the largest neural networks they train today run for over a month, which inhibits their ability to rapidly explore alternatives and evaluate them So a 30X speedup would be really nice if we could provide it at a cost competitive and energy competitive way To do that, we wanted to build a chip with a lot of arithmetic units that we could utilize at a very high efficiency And we spent a lot of time studying whether we could do that using DRAM, various packaging ideas, all of which failed And in the end, even though it felt like an unnatural act, we decided to reject DRAM as the primary storage medium for this system And instead focus on SRAM embedded in the chip SRAM provides, unfortunately, a modest amount of capacity, but extremely high bandwidth and very low latency, and that enables us to achieve high utilization with the arithmetic units Those choices, that particular choice led to a whole bunch of other choices For example, if you want to have virtual memory, you need page tables, they take up a lot of space, we didn't have space, so no virtual memory So we also don't have interrupts, the accelerator is a bare bonds, raw piece of hardware that's presented to a compiler and the compiler is responsible for scheduling everything that happens in a deterministic way So there's no need or even desire for interrupts in the system We also chose to pursue model parallelism as a training methodology, which is not the typical situation most machines today use data parallelism, which consumes additional memory capacity, which we obviously don't have So all of those choices led us to build a machine that is pretty radically different from what's available today We also had a whole bunch of other goals, one of the most important ones was no limits So we wanted to build a compute fabric that would scale in an unbounded way for the most part, I mean obviously there's physical limits now and then But pretty much if your model was too big for the computer, you just had to go buy a bigger computer, that's what we were looking for Today the way machines are packaged, there's a pretty fixed ratio of for example GPU, CPUs and DRAM capacity and network capacity And we really wanted to disaggregate all that so that as models evolved, we could vary the ratios of those various elements and make the system more flexible to meet the needs of the autopilot team And it's so true, no limits philosophy was our guiding star all the way, all of our choices were centered around that And to the point that we didn't want traditional data center infrastructure to limit our capacity to execute these programs at speed That's why we integrated vertically our data center, the entire data center by doing a vertical integration of the data center We could extract new levels of efficiency, we could optimize power delivery, cooling and as well as system management across the whole data center stack Rather than doing box by box and integrating that, those boxes into data centers And to do this, we also wanted to integrate early to figure out limits of scale for our software workloads So we integrated Dojo environment into our autopilot software very early and we learned a lot of lessons And today Bill Chang will go over our hardware update as well as some of the challenges that we faced along the way And Rajiv Kurian will give you a glimpse of our compiler technology as well as go over some of our cool results Great Thanks Pete, thanks Ganesh I'll start tonight with a high level vision of our system that will help set the stage for the challenges and the problems we're solving And then also how software will then leverage this for performance Now our vision for Dojo is to build a single unified accelerator, a very large one Software would see a seamless compute plane with globally addressable, very fast memory and all connected together with uniform high bandwidth and low latency Now to realize this, we need to use density to achieve performance Now we leverage technology to get this density in order to break levels of hierarchy all the way from the chip to the scale out systems Now silicon technology has done this for decades Chips have followed Moore's law for density integration to get performance scaling Now a key step in realizing that vision was our training tile Probably can we integrate 25 dies at extremely high bandwidth but we can scale that to any number of additional tiles by just connecting them together Now last year we showcased our first functional training tile and at that time we already had workloads running on it And since then the team here has been working hard and diligently to deploy this at scale Now we've made amazing progress and had a lot of milestones along the way And of course we've had a lot of unexpected challenges But this is where our fail fast philosophy has allowed us to push our boundaries Now pushing density for performance presents all new challenges One area is power delivery Here we need to deliver the power to our compute die and this directly impacts our top line compute performance But we need to do this at unprecedented density We need to be able to match our die pitch with a power density of almost 1 amp per millimeter squared And because of the extreme integration this needs to be a multi-tiered vertical power solution And because there's a complex heterogeneous material stack up we have to carefully manage the material transition Especially CTE Now why does the coefficient of thermal expansion matter in this case? CTE is a fundamental material property and if it's not carefully managed that stack up would literally rip itself apart We started this effort by working with vendors to develop this power solution But we realized that we actually had to develop this in-house Now to balance schedule and risk we built quick iterations to support both our system bring up in software development And also to find the optimal design and stack up that would meet our final production goals And in the end we were able to reduce CTE over 50% and meet our performance by 3x over our initial version Now needless to say finding this optimal material stack up while maximizing performance at density is extremely difficult Now we did have unexpected challenges along the way Here's an example where we pushed the boundaries of integration that led to component failures This started when we scaled up to larger and longer workloads and then intermittently a single site on a tile would fail Now they started out as recoverable failures but as we pushed some much higher and higher power these would become permanent failures Now to understand this failure you have to understand why and how we build our power modules Solving density at every level is the cornerstone of actually achieving our system performance Now because our XY plane is used for high bandwidth communication everything else must be stacked vertically This means all other components other than our die must be integrated into our power modules Now that includes our clock and our power supplies and also our system controllers Now in this case the failures were due to losing clock output from our oscillators And after an extensive debug we found that the root cause was due to vibrations on the module from piezoelectric effects Our nearby capacitors Now singing caps are not a new phenomenon and in fact very common in power design But normally clock chips are placed in a very quiet area of the board and often not affected by power circuits But because we needed to achieve this level of integration these oscillators need to be placed in very close proximity Now due to our switching frequency and then the vibration resonance created It caused out of plane vibration on our MEMS oscillator that caused it to crack Now the solution to this problem is a multi-prong approach We can reduce the vibration by using soft terminal caps We can update our MEMS part with a lower Q factor for the out of plane direction And we can also update our switching frequency to push the resonance further away from these sensitive bands Now in addition to the density at the system level we've been making a lot of progress at the infrastructure level We knew that we had to read examine every aspect of the data center infrastructure in order to support our unprecedented power and cooling density We brought in a fully custom designed CDU to support Dojo's dense cooling requirements And the amazing part is we're able to do this at a fraction of the cost versus buying off the shelf and modifying it And since our Dojo cabinet integrates enough power and cooling to match an entire row of standard IT racks We need to carefully design our cabinet and infrastructure together And we've already gone through several iterations of this cabinet to optimize this And earlier this year we started low testing our power and cooling infrastructure And we were able to push it over 2 megawatts before we tripped our substation and got a call from the city Now last year we introduced only a couple of components of our system The custom D1 die and the training tile, but we teased the exit pod as our end goal We'll walk through the remaining parts of our system that are required to build out this exit pod Now the system tray is a key part of realizing our vision of a single accelerator It enables us to seamlessly connect tiles together, not only within the cabinet, but between cabinets We can connect these tiles at very tight spacing across the entire accelerator And this is how we achieve our uniform communication This is a laminated bus bar that allows us to integrate very high power, mechanical and thermal support, and an extremely dense integration It's 75 millimeters in height and supports 6 tiles at 135 kilograms This is the equivalent of 3 to 4 fully loaded high performance racks Next we need to feed data to the training tiles This is where we've developed the Dojo interface processor It provides our system with high bandwidth DRAM to stage our training data And it provides full memory bandwidth to our training tiles using TTP, our custom protocol that we use to communicate across our entire accelerator It also has high speed Ethernet that helps us extend this custom protocol over standard Ethernet And we provide native hardware support for this with little to no software overhead And lastly we can connect to it through a standard Gen4 PCIe interface Now we pair 20 of these cards per tray and that gives us 640 gigabytes of high bandwidth DRAM And this provides our disaggregated memory layer for our training tiles These cards are a high bandwidth ingest path both through PCIe and Ethernet They also provide a high-ratex Z-connectivity path that allows shortcuts across our large Dojo accelerator Now we actually integrate the host directly underneath our system tray These hosts provide our ingest processing and connect to our interface processors through PCIe These hosts can provide hardware video decoder support for video-based training And our user applications land on these hosts so we can provide them with the standard X86 Linux environment Now we can put two of these assemblies into one cabinet and pair it with redundant power supplies that do direct conversion of three-phase 480-volt AC power to 52-volt DC power Now by focusing on density at every level we can realize the vision of a single accelerator Now starting with the uniform nodes on our custom D1 die we can connect them together in our fully integrated training tile And then finally seamlessly connecting them across cabinet boundaries to form our Dojo accelerator And all together we can house two full accelerators in our Exapod for a combined one exa-flop of ML compute Now all together this amount of technology and integration has only ever been done a couple of times in the history of compute Next we'll see how software can leverage this to accelerate their performance Thanks Bill, my name is Rajiv and I'm going to talk some numbers So our software stack begins with the PyTorch extension that speaks to our commitment to run standard PyTorch models out of the box We're going to talk more about our JIT compiler and the ingest pipeline that feeds the hardware with data Abstractly, performance is tops times utilization times accelerator occupancy We've seen how the hardware provides peak performance is the job of the compiler to extract utilization from the hardware while code is running on it And it's the job of the ingest pipeline to make sure that data can be fed at a throughput high enough for the hardware to not ever starve So let's talk about why communication-bound models are difficult to scale But before that let's look at why ResNet 50-like models are easier to scale You start off with a single accelerator, run the forward and backward passes, followed by the optimizer Then to scale this up you run multiple copies of this on multiple accelerators And while the gradients produced by the backward pass do need to be reduced and this introduces some communication, this can be done pipeline with the backward pass This setup scales fairly well, almost linearly For models with much larger activations we run into a problem as soon as we want to run the forward pass The batch size that fits in a single accelerator is often smaller than the batch norm surface So to get around this researchers typically run this setup on multiple accelerators in sync batch norm mode This introduces latency bound communication to the critical path of the forward pass and we already have a communication bottleneck And while there are ways to get around this they usually involve tedious manual work best suited for a compiler And ultimately there's no skirting around the fact that if your state does not fit in a single accelerator you can be communication bound And even with significant efforts from our ML engineers we see such models don't scale linearly The doger system was built to make such models work at high utilization The high density integration was built to not only accelerate the compute bound portions of a model but also the latency bound portions Like a batch norm or the bandwidth bound portions like a gradient all reduced or a parameter all gathered A slice of the doger mesh can be carved out to run any model The only thing users need to do is to make the slice large enough to fit a batch norm surface for their particular model After that the partition presents itself as one large accelerator freeing the users from having to worry about the internal details of execution And as the job of the compiler to maintain this abstraction Fine grain synchronization primitives in uniform low latency makes it easy to accelerate all forms of parallelism across integration boundaries Tensors are usually stored sharded in SRAM and replicated just in time for a layer's execution We depend on the high doger bandwidth to hide this replication time Tensor replication and other data transfers are overlapped with compute and the compiler can also recompute layers when it's profitable to do so We expect most models to work out of the box As an example we took the recently released stable diffusion model and got it running on dojo in minutes Out of the box the compiler was able to map it in a model parallel manner on 25 dojo dies Here are some pictures of a Cybertruck on Mars generated by stable diffusion running on dojo Looks like it still has some ways to go before matching the Tesla design studio team So we've talked about how communication bottlenecks can hamper scalability Perhaps an asset test of a compiler and the underlying hardware is executing a cross die batch norm layer Like mentioned before this can be a serial bottleneck The communication phase of a batch norm begins with nodes computing their local mean and standard deviations Then coordinating to reduce these values, then broadcasting these values back and then they resume their work in parallel So what would an ideal batch norm look like on 25 dojo dies? Let's say the previous less activations are already split across dies We would expect the 350 nodes on each die to coordinate and produce die local mean and standard deviation values Ideally these would get further reduced with the final value ending somewhere towards the middle of the tile We would then hope to see a broadcast of this value radiating from the center Let's see how the compiler actually executes a real batch norm operation across 25 dies The communication trees were extracted from the compiler and the timing is from a real hardware one We're about to see 8,750 nodes on 25 dies coordinating to reduce and then broadcast the batch norm mean and standard deviation values Die local reduction followed by global reduction towards the middle of the tile Then the reduced value broadcast radiating from the middle accelerated by the hardware's broadcast facility This operation takes only 5 microseconds on 25 dojo dies The same operation takes 150 microseconds on 24 GPUs This is an orders of magnitude improvement over GPUs And while we talked about an already used operation in the context of a batch norm It's important to reiterate that the same advantages apply to all other communication primitives And these primitives are essential for large scale training So how about full model performance? So while we think that ResNet 50 is not a good representation of real world Tesla workloads It is a standard benchmark, so let's start there We are already able to match the 100 die for die However, perhaps a hint of dojo's capabilities is that we're able to hit this number with just a batch of 8 per die But dojo was really built to tackle larger complex models So when we set out to tackle real world workloads, we looked at the usage patterns of our current GPU cluster And two models stood out, the autolabeling networks, a class of offline models that are used to generate ground truth And the occupancy networks that you heard about The autolabeling networks are large models that have high arithmetic intensity While the occupancy networks can be ingest bound We chose these models because together they account for a large chunk of our current GPU cluster usage And they would challenge the system in different ways So how do we do on these two networks? The results we're about to see were measured on multi die systems for both the GPU and dojo, but normalized to per die numbers On our autolabeling network, we're already able to surpass the performance of an A100 With our current hardware running on our older generation VRMs On our production hardware with our newer VRMs, that translates to doubling the throughput of an A100 And our model showed that with some key compiler optimizations, we could get to more than 3x the performance of an A100 We see even bigger leaps on the occupancy network Almost 3x with our production hardware, with room for more So what does that mean for Tesla? With a current level of compiler performance, we could replace the ML compute of 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 GPU boxes with just a single dojo tile And this dojo tile costs less than one of these GPU boxes What it really means is that networks that took more than a month to train now take less than a week Alas, when we measure things, it did not turn out so well.\n\nAt the PyTorch level, we did not see our expected performance out of the gate And this timeline chart shows our problem. The teeny, tiny little green bars, that's the compile code running on the accelerator The row is mostly white space where the hardware is just waiting for data With our dense ML compute, dojo hosts effectively have 10x more ML compute than the GPU hosts. The data loader is running on this one host Simply couldn't keep up with all that ML hardware So to solve our data loader scalability issues, we knew we had to get over the limit of this single host The Tesla transport protocol moves data seamlessly across hosts, tiles and ingest processors So we extended the Tesla transport protocol to work over Ethernet. We then built the dojo network interface card, the D-NIC, to leverage TTP over Ethernet This allows any host with a D-NIC card to be able to DMA2 and from other TTP endpoints So we started with the dojo mesh, then we added a tier of data loading hosts equipped with the D-NIC card We connected these hosts to the mesh via an Ethernet switch. Now every host in this data loading tier is capable of reaching all TTP endpoints in the dojo mesh via hardware accelerated DMA After these optimizations went in, our occupancy went from 4% to 97% So the data loading sections have reduced drastically and the ML hardware has kept busy We actually expect this number to go to 100% pretty soon After these changes went in, we saw the full expected speed up from the PyTorch layer and we were back in business So we started with hardware design that breaks through traditional integration boundaries in service of our vision of a single giant accelerator We've seen how the compiler and ingest layers build on top of that hardware So after proving our performance on these complex real-world networks, we knew what our first large-scale deployment would target Our high arithmetic intensity auto-labeling networks Today that occupies 4,000 GPUs over 72 GPU racks With our dense computer and our high performance, we expect to provide the same throughput with just 4 dojo cabinets And these 4 dojo cabinets will be part of our first exapod that we plan to build by quarter one of 2023 This will more than double Tesla's auto-labeling capacity The first exapod is part of a total of 7 exapods that we plan to build in Palo Alto right here across the wall And we have a display cabinet from one of these exapods for everyone to look at 6 tiles densely packed on a tray, 54 petaflops of compute, 640 gigabytes of high bandwidth memory with power and host defeated A lot of compute And we're building out new versions of all our cluster components and constantly improving our software to hit new limits of scale We believe that we can get another 10x improvement with our next generation hardware And to realize our ambitious goals, we need the best software and hardware engineers So please come talk to us or visit tesla.com. Alright, so hopefully that was enough detail And now we can move to questions And guys, I think the team can come out on stage We really wanted to show the depth and breadth of Tesla in artificial intelligence, compute hardware, robotics actuators And try to really shift the perception of the company away from, you know, a lot of people think we're like just a car company Or we make cool cars, whatever But most people have no idea that Tesla is arguably the leader in real world AI hardware and software And that we're building what is arguably the most radical computer architecture since the Kray-1 supercomputer And I think if you're interested in developing some of the most advanced technology in the world that's going to really affect the world in a positive way Tesla's the place to be So yeah, let's fire away with some questions I think there's a mic at the front and a mic at the back Just throw mics at people Jump all for the mic Yeah, hi, thank you very much I was impressed here I was impressed very much by Optimus, but I wonder why did not driven the hand Why did you choose a tendon-driven approach for the hand?\n\nBecause tendons are not very durable And why spring-loaded? Cool, awesome, yes, that's a great question You know, when it comes to any type of actuation scheme, there's trade-offs between, you know, whether or not it's a tendon-driven system or some type of linkage-based system Keep the mic close to your mouth A little bit closer, hear me? Cool Yeah, the main reason why we went for a tendon-based system is that, you know, first we actually investigated some synthetic tendons, but we found that metallic boating cables are, you know, a lot stronger One of the advantages of these cables is that it's very good for part reduction We do want to make a lot of these hands, so having a bunch of parts, a bunch of small linkages ends up being, you know, a problem when you're making a lot of something One of the big reasons that, you know, tendons are better than linkages in a sense is that you can be anti-backlash So anti-backlash essentially, you know, allows you to not have any gaps or, you know, stuttering motion in your fingers Spring-loaded, mainly what spring-loaded allows us to do is allows us to have active opening So instead of having to have two actuators to drive the fingers closed and then open, we have the ability to, you know, have the tendon drive them closed and then the springs passively extend And this is something that's seen in our hands as well, right? We have the ability to actively flex and then we also have the ability to extend Yeah I mean, our goal with Optimus is to have a robot that is maximally useful as quickly as possible So there's a lot of ways to solve the various problems of a humanoid robot And we're probably not barking up the right tree on all the technical solutions And I should say that we're open to evolving the technical solutions that you see here over time, they're not locked in stone But we have to pick something, and we want to pick something that's going to allow us to produce the robot as quickly as possible and have it, like I said, be useful as quickly as possible We're trying to follow the goal of fastest path to a useful robot that can be made at volume And we're going to test the robot internally at Tesla in our factory and just see, like, how useful is it Because you have to have a, you've got to close the loop on reality to confirm that the robot is in fact useful And, yeah, so we're just going to use it to build things And we're confident we can do that with the hand that we have currently designed But I'm sure there'll be hand version 2, version 3, and we may change the architecture quite significantly over time Hi, the Optimus robot is really impressive, you did a great job, bipedal robots are really difficult But what I noticed might be missing from your plan is to acknowledge the utility of the human spirit And I'm wondering if Optimus will ever get a personality and be able to laugh at our jokes while it folds our clothes Yeah, absolutely. I think we want to have really fun versions of Optimus And so that Optimus can both be utilitarian and do tasks, but can also be kind of like a friend and a buddy And hang out with you, and I'm sure people will think of all sorts of creative uses for this robot And, you know, the thing, once you have the core intelligence and actuators figured out Then you can actually, you know, put all sorts of costumes, I guess, on the robot I mean, you can make the robot look, you can skin the robot in many different ways And I'm sure people will find very interesting ways to, yeah, versions of Optimus Thanks for the great presentation I wanted to know if there was an equivalent to interventions in Optimus It seems like labeling through moments where humans disagree with what's going on is important And in a humanoid robot, that might be also a desirable source of information Yeah, I think we will have ways to remote operate the robot and intervene when it does something bad Especially when we are training the robot and bringing it up And hopefully we, you know, design it in a way that we can stop the robot from, if it's going to hit something We can just, like, hold it and it will stop, it won't, like, you know, crush your hand or something And those are all intervention data Yeah, and we can learn a lot from our simulation systems, too Where we can check for collisions and supervise that those are bad actions Yeah, I mean, so Optimus, we went over time for it to be, you know, an android, the kind of android that you've seen in sci-fi movies Like Star Trek, The Next Generation, like data But obviously we could program the robot to be less robot-like and more friendly And, you know, you can obviously learn to emulate humans and feel very natural So as AI in general improves, we can add that to the robot And, you know, it should be obviously able to do simple instructions or even intuit what it is that you want So you could give it a high level instruction and then it can break that down into a series of actions And take those actions Hi, yeah, it's exciting to think that with the Optimus you will think that you can achieve orders of magnitude of improvement in economic output That's really exciting And when Tesla started, the mission was to accelerate the advent of renewable energy or sustainable transport So with the Optimus, do you still see that mission being the mission statement of Tesla or is it going to be updated with, you know, mission to accelerate the advent of, I don't know, infinite abundance or limitless economy Yeah, it is not strictly speaking, Optimus is not strictly speaking directly in line with accelerating sustainable energy To the degree that it is more efficient at getting things done than a person, it does, I guess, help with sustainable energy But I think the mission effectively does somewhat broaden with the advent of Optimus to, you know, I don't know, making the future awesome So, you know, I think you look at Optimus and I know about you, but I'm excited to see what Optimus will become And, you know, this is like, you know, if you could, I mean, you can tell like any given technology, do you want to see what it's like in a year, two years, three years, four years, five years, ten? I'd say for sure, you definitely want to see what's happened with Optimus Whereas, you know, a bunch of other technologies are, you know, sort of plateaued About name names here, but, you know, so, I think Optimus is going to be incredible in like five years, ten years like mind-blowing And I'm really interested to see that happen, and I hope you are too I have a quick question here, Justin, and I was wondering, like, are you planning to extend like conversational capabilities for the robot?\n\nAnd my second full-on question to that is, what's like the end goal? What's the end goal with Optimus? Yeah, Optimus would definitely have conversational capabilities So, you'd be able to talk to it and have a conversation, and it would feel quite natural So, from an end goal standpoint, I don't know, I think it's going to keep evolving, and I'm not sure where it ends up, but some place is interesting for sure And, you know, we always have to be careful about the, you know, don't go down the terminator path That's a, you know, I thought maybe we should start off with a video of like the terminator starting off with this, you know, skull crushing But that might be, you know, people might not get too seriously So, you know, we do want Optimus to be safe, so we are designing in safeguards where you can locally stop the robot And, you know, with like basically a localized control ROM that you can't update over the internet Which I think that's quite important, essential, frankly So, like a localized stop button or remote control, something like that, that cannot be changed But, I mean, it's definitely going to be interesting, it won't be boring Okay, yeah, I see today you have a very attractive product with Dojo and its applications So, I'm wondering what's the future for the Dojo platform? So, you know, like provide like infrastructure and service like AWS or you will like sell the chip like the NVIDIA So, basically, what's the future? Because I say you use 7nm, so the developer cost is like easily over 10 million US dollars How do you make the business like business wise? Dojo is a very big computer and actually will use a lot of power and need a lot of cooling So, I think it's probably going to make more sense to have Dojo operate in like an Amazon Web Services manner Than to try to sell it to someone else So, that would be the most efficient way to operate Dojo is just have it be a service that you can use That's available online and that where you can train your models way faster and for less money And as the world transitions to software 2.0 And that's on the bingo card Someone I know has to know to drink 5 tequila So, let's see, software 2.0 will use a lot of neural net training So, it kind of makes sense that over time as there's more neural net stuff People will want to use the fastest, lowest cost neural net training system So, I think there's a lot of opportunity in that direction Hi, my name is Ali Jahanian Thank you for this event, it's very inspirational My question is, I'm wondering what is your vision for humanoid robots that understand our emotions and art And can contribute to our creativity Well, I think you're already seeing robots that at least are able to generate very interesting art Like Dali and Dali 2 And I think we'll start seeing AI that can actually generate even movies that have coherence Like interesting movies and tell jokes So, it's quite remarkable how fast AI is advancing at many companies besides Tesla We're headed for a very interesting future And yeah, so, any guys want to comment on that?\n\nYeah, I guess the Optimus Robot can come up with physical art, not just digital art You can ask for some dance moves in text or voice and then you can produce those in the future So, it's a lot of physical art, not just digital art Oh, yeah, computers can absolutely make physical art, yeah, 100% Yeah, like dance, play soccer or whatever you... I mean, it needs to get more agile over time, for sure Thanks so much for the presentation Now, for the Tesla Autopilot slides, I noticed that the models that you were using were heavily motivated by language models And I was wondering what the history of that was and how much of an improvement it gave I thought that that was a really interesting, curious choice to use language models for the lane transitioning So, there are sort of two aspects for why we transition to language modeling So, the first... Talk loud and close Okay, got it Yeah, so the language models help us in two ways The first way is that it lets us predict lanes that we couldn't have otherwise As Ashok mentioned earlier, basically when we predicted lanes in sort of a dense 3D fashion You can only model certain kinds of lanes, but we want to get those criss-crossing connections inside of intersections It's just not possible to do that without making it a graph prediction If you try to do this with dense segmentation, it just doesn't work Also, the lane prediction is a multimodal problem Sometimes you just don't have sufficient visual information to know precisely how things look on the other side of the intersection So you need a method that can generalize and produce coherent predictions You don't want to be predicting two lanes and three lanes at the same time You want to commit to one in a general model like these language models provides that Hi Hi, my name is Giovanni Yeah, thanks for the presentation. It's really nice I have a question for FSD team For the neural networks, how do you test... How do you do unit tests, software unit tests on that? Do you have a bunch or I don't know, mid-thousands or...\n\nYes, cases where the neural network that after you train it, you have to pass it Before you release it as a product, right? Yeah, what's your software unit testing strategies for this, basically? Yeah, glad you asked. There's like a series of tests that we have defined starting from unit tests for software itself But then for the neural network models, we have VAP sets defined where you can define... If you just have a large test set, that's not enough what we find We need like sophisticated VAP sets for different failure modes And then we queate them and grow them over the time of the product So over the years, we have like hundreds of thousands of examples where we have been failing in the past That we have curated and so for any new model, we test against the entire history of these failures And then keep adding to this test set On top of this, we have shadow modes where we ship these models in silent to the car And we get data back on where they are failing or succeeding And there's an extensive QA program It's very hard to ship for regression There's like nine levels of filters before it hits customers But then we have really good infra to make this all efficient I'm one of the QA testers, so I have QA the car... Yeah, QA tester Yeah, so I'm constantly in the car just being queuing like whatever the latest alpha build is that doesn't totally crash Yeah, finds a lot of bugs Hi, great event.\n\nI have a question about foundational models for autonomous driving We have all seen that big models that really can... When you scale up with data and model parameter from GP3 to POM, it can actually now do reasoning Do you see that it's essential scaling up foundational models with data and size And then at least you can get a teacher model that potentially can solve all the problems And then you distill to a student model Is that how you see foundational models relevant for autonomous driving? That's quite similar to our auto labeling models So we don't just have models that run in the car We train models that are entirely offline that are extremely large that can't run in real time on the car So we just run those offline on the servers producing really good labels that can then train the online networks So that's one form of distillation of these teacher-student models In terms of foundation models, we are building some really, really large datasets that are multiple petabytes And we are seeing that some of these tasks work really well when we have these large datasets Kinematics, like I mentioned, video in, all the kinematics out of all the objects and up to the fourth derivative And people thought we couldn't do detection with cameras Detection, depth, velocity, acceleration And imagine how precise these have to be for these higher-order derivatives to be accurate And this all comes from these kind of large datasets and large models So we are seeing the equivalent of foundation models in our own way for geometry and kinematics and things like those Do you want to add anything, John? Yeah, I'll keep it brief Basically, whenever we train on a larger dataset, we see big improvements in our model performance And basically, whenever we initialize our networks with some pre-training steps from some other auxiliary tasks We basically see improvements The self-supervised or supervised with large datasets both help a lot Hi, so at the beginning, Elon said that Tesla was potentially interested in building artificial general intelligence systems Given the potentially transformative impact of technology like that It seems prudent to invest in technical AGI safety expertise specifically I know Tesla does a lot of technical, narrow AI safety research I was curious if Tesla was intending to try to build expertise in technical artificial general intelligence safety specifically Well, I mean, if we start looking like we're going to be making a significant contribution to artificial general intelligence Then we'll for sure invest in safety on big believer in AI safety I think there should be an AI sort of regulatory authority at the government level Just as there is a regulatory authority for anything that affects public safety So we have regulatory authority for aircraft and cars and sort of food and drugs Because they affect public safety and AI also affects public safety So I think, and this is not really something that government I think understands yet I think there should be a referee that is trying to ensure public safety for AGI And you think of like, well, what are the elements that are necessary to create AGI? Like the accessible dataset is extremely important And if you've got a large number of cars and humanoid robots processing petabytes of video data and audio data from the real world Just like humans, that might be the biggest dataset, probably is the biggest dataset Because in addition to that, you can obviously incrementally scan the internet But what the internet can't quite do is have millions or hundreds of millions of cameras in the real world Like I said, with audio and other sensors as well So I think we probably will have the most amount of data And probably the most amount of training power Therefore probably we will make a contribution to AGI Hey, I noticed the semi was back there, but we haven't talked about it too much I was just wondering for the semi truck, what are the changes you're thinking about from a sensing perspective? I imagine there's very different requirements obviously than just a car And if you don't think that's true, why is that true?\n\nNo, I think basically you can drive a car Think about what drives any vehicle, it's a biological neural net with eyes With cameras essentially What is your primary sensors are? Two cameras on a slow gimbal, a very slow gimbal That's your head So if a biological neural net with two cameras on a slow gimbal can drive a semi truck Then if you've got like eight cameras with continuous 360 degree vision Operating at a higher frame rate and a much higher reaction rate Then I think it is obvious that you should be able to drive a semi or any vehicle much better than human Hi, my name is Akshay, thank you for the event Assuming Optimus would be used for different use cases and would evolve at different speeds for these use cases Would it be possible to sort of develop and deploy different software and hardware components independently And deploy them in Optimus so that the overall feature development is faster for Optimus Okay, we did not comprehend Unfortunately our neural net did not comprehend the question Next question Hi, I want to switch the gear to the autopilot So when you guys plan to roll out the FSD beta to countries other than US and Canada And also my next question is what's the biggest bottleneck or the technology or barrier you think in the current autopilot stack And how you envision to solve that to make the autopilot is considerably better than human in terms of performance matrix Like safety assurance and the human confidence I think you also mentioned for the FSD V11 you are going to combine the highway and the city as a single stack And some architectural big improvements, can you maybe expand a bit on that, thank you Well, that's a whole bunch of questions We're hopeful to be able to, I think from a technical standpoint FSD beta should be possible to roll out FSD beta worldwide by the end of this year But for a lot of countries we need regulatory approval And so we are somewhat gated by the regulatory approval in other countries But I think from a technical standpoint it will be ready to go to a worldwide beta by the end of this year And there's quite a big improvement that we're expecting to release next month That will always be especially good at assessing the velocity of fast moving cross traffic And a bunch of other things So, anyone want to elaborate? I guess so, there used to be a lot of differences between production autopilot and the full self driving beta But those differences have been getting smaller and smaller over time I think just a few months ago we now use the same vision only object detection stack in both FSD and in the production autopilot on all vehicles There's still a few differences, the primary one being the way that we predict lanes right now So we upgraded the modeling of lanes so that it could handle these more complex geometries like I mentioned in the talk In production autopilot we still use a simpler lane model But we're extending our current FSD beta models to work in all sort of highway scenarios as well The version of FSD beta that I drive actually does have the integrated stack So it uses the FSD stack both in city streets and highway and it works quite well for me But we need to validate it in all kinds of weather like heavy rain, snow, dust And just make sure it's working better than the production stack across a wide range of environments But we're pretty close to that I think it's, I don't know, maybe, it'll definitely be before the end of the year and maybe November Yeah, in our personal drives, the FSD stack on highway drives already way better than the production stack we have And we do expect to also include the parking lot stack as a part of the FSD stack before the end of this year So that will basically bring us to, you sit in the car in the parking lot and drive till the end of the parking lot at a parking spot before the end of this year And in terms of the fundamental metric to optimize against is how many miles between a necessary intervention So just massively improving how many miles the car can drive in full autonomy before an intervention is required that is safety critical So, yeah, that's the fundamental metric that we're measuring every week and we're making radical improvements on that Hi, thank you, thank you so much for the presentation, very inspiring My name is Daisy, I actually have a non-technical question for you I'm curious, if you are back to your 20s, what are some of the things you wish you knew back then? What are some advice you would give to your younger self? Well, I'm trying to figure out something useful to say Yeah, a joint Tesla would be one thing Yeah, I think just trying to expose yourself to as many smart people as possible I don't read a lot of books You know, I did do that though So, I think there's some merit to just also not being necessarily too intense And enjoying the moment a bit more, I would say to 20-something me Just to stop and smell the roses occasionally would probably be a good idea You know, it's like when we were developing the Falcon 1 rocket on the Quageline Atoll And we had this beautiful little island that we were developing the rocket on And not once during that entire time did I even have a drink on the beach I'm like, I should have had a drink on the beach, that would have been fine Thank you very much I think you have excited all of the robotics people with Optimus This feels very much like 10 years ago in driving But as driving has proved to be harder than it actually looked 10 years ago What do we know now that we didn't 10 years ago that would make, for example, AGI on a humanoid come faster? Well, I mean, it seems to me that AGI is advancing very quickly Hardly a week goes by without some significant announcement And, yeah, I mean, at this point, like, AI seems to be able to win at almost any rule-based game It's able to create extremely impressive art Engage in conversations that are very sophisticated, you know, write essays And these just keep improving And there's so many more talented people working on AI And the hardware is getting better AI is on a super, like, a strong exponential curve of improvements Independent of what we do at Tesla And obviously we'll benefit somewhat from that exponential curve of improvement with AI Like, Tesla just also has to be very good at actuators Motors gearboxes, controllers, power electronics, batteries, sensors And, you know, really, like, I'd say the biggest difference between the robot on four wheels And the robot with arms and legs is getting the actuators right It's an actuators and sensors problem And obviously, how you control those actuators and sensors But it's, yeah, actuators and sensors and how you control the actuators I don't know, we have to have, like, the ingredients necessary to create a compelling robot And we're doing it, so...\n\nHi, Ilan You are actually bringing the humanity to the next level Literally, Tesla, and you are bringing the humanity to the next level So, you said Optimus Prime, Optimus will be used in next Tesla factory My question is, will a new Tesla factory be fully run by Optimus program? And when can general public order a humanoid? Yeah, I think it'll, you know, we're going to start Optimus with very simple tasks in the factory You know, like maybe just, like, loading a part, like you saw in the video You know, carrying a part from one place to another Or loading a part into one of our more conventional robot cells to, you know, that welds body together So we'll start, you know, just trying to, how do we make it useful at all? And then gradually expand the number of situations where it's useful And I think that number of situations where Optimus is useful will grow exponentially Like really, really fast In terms of when people can order one, I don't know, I think it's not that far away Well, I think you mean, when can people receive one? So, I don't know, I'm like, I'd say probably within three years And not more than five years Within three to five years, you could probably receive an Optimus I feel the best way to make the progress for AGI is to involve as many smart people across the world as possible And given the size and resource of Tesla compared to robot companies And given the state of humanoid research at the moment Would it make sense for the kind of Tesla to sort of open source some of the simulation hardware parts? I think Tesla can still be the dominant platformer where it can be something like an Android OS Or like an iOS stuff for the entire humanoid research Would that be something that rather than keeping the Optimus to just Tesla researchers Or the factory itself can open it and let the whole world explore humanoid research?\n\nI think we have to be careful about Optimus being potentially used in ways that are bad Because that is one of the possible things to do So I think we would provide Optimus where you can provide instructions to Optimus But where those instructions are governed by some laws of robotics that you cannot overcome So not doing harm to others and I think probably quite a few safety related things with Optimus We'll just take maybe a few more questions and then thank you all for coming Questions, one deep and one broad On the deep for Optimus, what's the current and what's the ideal controller bandwidth? And then in the broader question, there's this big advertisement for the depth and breadth of the company What is it uniquely about Tesla that enables that? Anyone want to tackle the bandwidth question? So the technical bandwidth of the... Close to your mouth and loud For the bandwidth question, you have to understand or figure out what is the task that you want it to do And if you took a frequency transform of that task, what is it that you want your limbs to do? And that's where you get your bandwidth from It's not a number that you can specifically just say you need to understand your use case And that's where the bandwidth comes from What is the broad question?\n\nThe breadth and depth thing, I can answer the breadth and depth On the bandwidth question, I think we probably will just end up increasing the bandwidth Which translates to the effective dexterity and reaction time of the robot It's safe to say it's not one hertz and maybe you don't need to go all the way to 100 hertz But maybe 10, 25, I don't know Over time, I think the bandwidth will increase quite a bit Or translate it to dexterity and latency You'd want to minimize that over time Minimize latency, maximize dexterity In terms of breadth and depth, I guess we're a pretty big company at this point So we've got a lot of different areas of expertise that we necessarily had to develop In order to make electric cars and then in order to make autonomous electric cars Tesla is like a whole series of startups basically And so far they've almost all been quite successful So we must be doing something right And I consider one of my core responsibilities in running the company Is to have an environment where great engineers can flourish And I think in a lot of companies, I don't know, maybe most companies If somebody's a really talented driven engineer, they're unable to actually Their talents are suppressed at a lot of companies And some of the companies that the engineering talent is suppressed In a way that is maybe not obviously bad But where it's just so comfortable and you paid so much money The output you actually have to produce is so low that it's like a honey trap So there's a few honey trap places in Silicon Valley Where they don't necessarily don't seem like bad places for engineers But you have to say like a good engineer went in and what did they get out And the output of that engineering talent seems very low Even though there seem to be enjoying themselves That's why I call it there's a few honey trap companies in Silicon Valley Tesla is not a honey trap that we're demanding and it's like You're going to get a lot of shit done and it's going to be really cool And it's not going to be easy But if you are a super talented engineer Your talents will be used I think to a greater degree than anywhere else You know, SpaceX also that way Hi Ilan, I have two questions So both to the autopilot team So the thing is like I have been following your progress for the past few years So today you have made changes on like the lane detection Like you said that previously you were doing instant semantic segmentation Now you guys are built transfer models for like building the lanes So what are some other common challenges which you guys are facing right now Like which you are solving in future as a curious engineer So that like we as a researcher can work on those Start working on those And the second question is like I'm really curious about the data engine Like you guys have like told a case like where the car is stopped So how are you finding cases which is very much similar to that from the data which you have So a little bit more on the data engine would be great I'll answer the first question using occupancy network as an example So what you saw in the presentation did not exist a year ago So we only spent one year on time We actually shipped more than 12 occupancy network And to have a one foundation model actually to represent the entire physical world Around everywhere and you always condition is actually really really challenging So only over a year ago we're kind of like driving a 2D world If there's a wall and if there's a curve we kind of represent with the same static edge Which is obviously you know not ideal right There's a big difference between a curve and a wall when you drive you make different choices right So after we realized that we have to go to 3D We have to basically rethink the entire problem and think about how we address that So this will be like one example of a challenges we have we have a conquer in the past year Yeah to answer the question about how we actually source examples of the tricky stopped cars There's a few ways to go about this but two examples are one we can trigger for disagreements within our signals So let's say that parked bit flickers between parked and driving We'll trigger that back and the second is we can leverage more of the shadow mode logic So if the customer ignores the car but we think we should stop for it we'll get that data back too So these are just different like various trigger logic that allows us to get those data campaigns back Hi Thank you for the amazing presentation thanks so much So there are a lot of companies that are focusing on the AGI problem And one of the reasons why it's such a hard problem is because the problem itself is so hard to define Several companies have several different definitions they focus on different things So what is Tesla how's Tesla defining the AGI problem and what are you focusing on specifically Well we're not actually specifically focused on AGI I'm simply saying that AGI is seems likely to be an emergent property of what we're doing Because we're creating the oldies autonomous cars and autonomous humanoids That are actually with a truly gigantic data stream that's coming in and being processed It's by far the most amount of real world data and data you can't get by just searching the internet Because you have to be out there in the world and interacting with people and interacting with the roads And just you know it's Earth is a big place and reality is messy and complicated So I think it's sort of like it just seems likely to be an emergent property If you've got tens or hundreds of millions of autonomous vehicles and maybe even a comparable number of humanoids Maybe more than that on the humanoid front Well that's just the most amount of data and if that video is being processed It just seems likely that the cars will definitely get way better than human drivers And the humanoid robots will become increasingly indistinguishable from humans perhaps And so then like I said you have this emergent property of AGI And arguably humans collectively are sort of a superintelligence as well Especially as we improve the data rate between humans The thing like that seems way back in the early days the internet was like the internet was like humanity acquiring a nervous system Where now all of a sudden any one element of humanity could know all of the knowledge of humans by connecting to the internet Almost all the knowledge or certainly a huge part of it Whereas previously we would exchange information by osmosis Like in order to transfer data so you would have to write a letter Someone would have to carry the letter by person to another person And then a whole bunch of things in between and then it was like Yeah I mean it's insanely slow when you think about it And even if you were in the Library of Congress you still didn't have access to all the world's information And you certainly couldn't search it and obviously very few people are in the Library of Congress So I mean one of the great sort of equality elements Like the internet has been the biggest equalizer in history in terms of access to information and knowledge And any student of history I think would agree with this Because you know you go back a thousand years there were very few books And books would be incredibly expensive but only a few people knew how to read And even a small number of people even had a book Now look at it like you can access any book instantly You can learn anything basically for free It's pretty incredible So you know I was asked recently what period of history would I prefer to be at the most And my answer was right now This is the most interesting time in history and I read a lot of history So let's do our best to keep that going And to go back to one of the earlier questions I would ask The thing that's happened over time with respect to Tesla autopilot is that the neural nets have gradually absorbed more and more software And in the limit of course you could simply take the videos as seen by the car And compare those to the steering inputs from the steering wheel and pedals Which are very simple inputs And in principle you could train with nothing in between Because that's what humans are doing with the biological neural net You could train based on video and what trains the video is the moving of the steering wheel and the pedals With no other software in between We're not there yet but it's gradually going in that direction Alright, one last question How are you going? I think we've got a question at the front here Hello, they're right there We'll do two questions, fine They're here Thanks for such a great presentation We'll do your question last Okay, cool With FSD being used by so many people How do you evaluate the company's risk tolerance in terms of performance statistics And do you think there needs to be more transparency or regulation from third parties As to what's good enough and defining thresholds for performance across many miles The number one design requirement at Tesla is safety And that goes across the board So in terms of the mechanical safety of the car We have the lowest probability of injury of any cars ever tested by the government For just a passive mechanical safety Essentially crash structure and airbags and what not We have the highest rating for active safety as well And I think it's going to get to the point where the active safety is so ridiculously good It's just absurdly better than a human And then with respect to autopilot We do publish broadly speaking the statistics on miles driven With cars that have no autonomy Tesla cars with no autonomy With hardware one, hardware two, hardware three And then the ones that are in FSD beta And we see steady improvements all along the way And sometimes there's this dichotomy of Should you wait until the car is three times safer than a person before deploying any technology But I think that's actually morally wrong At the point at which you believe that adding autonomy reduces injury and death I think you have a moral obligation to deploy it Even though you're going to get sued and blamed by a lot of people Because the people whose lives you saved don't know that their lives are saved And the people who do occasionally die or get injured Definitely know, or their state does, that there was a problem with autopilot That's why you have to look at the numbers in total miles driven How many accidents occurred, how many accidents were serious, how many fatalities And we've got well over three million cars on the road So that's a lot of miles driven every day And it's not going to be perfect But what matters is that it is very clearly safer than not deploying it Yeah So, I think, last question I think, yeah, thanks The last question here Okay, hi So, I do not work on hardware So maybe the hardware team and you guys can enlighten me Why is it required that there be symmetry in the design of Optimus? Because humans, we have handedness, right? We use some set of muscles more than others Over time there's wear and tear, right? So maybe you'll start to see some joint failures or some actuator failures more Over time, I understand that this is extremely pre-stage Also, we as humans have based so much fantasy and fiction Over superhuman capabilities Like all of us don't want to walk right over there We want to extend our arms and like we have all these, you know A lot of fantasy, fantastical designs So considering everything else that is going on In terms of batteries and intensity of compute Maybe you can leverage all those aspects into coming up with something Well, I don't know, more interesting in terms of the robot that you're building And I'm hoping you're able to explore those directions Yeah, I think it would be cool to have like, you know, make Inspector Gadget real That would be pretty sweet So, yeah, I mean, right now we just want to make basic humanoid work well And our goal is to pass this path to a useful humanoid robot I think this will ground us in reality, literally And ensure that we are doing something useful Like one of the hardest things to do is to be useful To actually, and then to have high utility under the curve Like how much help did you provide to each person on average And then how many people did you help? The total utility Like trying to actually ship useful product that people like To a large number of people is so insanely hard It boggles the mind You know, that's why I can say like, man, there's a hell of a difference between a company that has shipped product And one has not shipped product This is night and day And then even once you ship product, can you make the cost, the value of the output Worth more than the cost of the input Which is, again, insanely difficult, especially with hardware So, but I think over time I think it would be cool to do creative things And have like eight arms and whatever And have different versions And maybe, you know, there'll be some hardware Like companies that are able to add things to an optimist Like maybe we, you know, add a power port or something like that Or attach them, you can add attachments to your optimist Like you can add them to your phone There could be a lot of cool things that could be done over time And there could be maybe an ecosystem of small companies that, or big companies that Make add-ons for optimists So, with that, I'd like to thank the team for their hard work You guys are awesome And thank you all for coming And for everyone online, thanks for tuning in And I think this will be one of those great videos where you can like If you can fast forward to the bits that you find most interesting But we try to give you a tremendous amount of detail Literally so that you can look at the video at your leisure And you can focus on the parts that you find interesting and skip the other parts So, thank you all, and we'll do this, try to do this every year And we might do a monthly podcast even So, but I think it'll be great to sort of bring you along for the ride And like show you what cool things are happening And yeah, thank you Alright, thanks Thank you"},"languages":["en"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":"https://gist.github.com/L0rdCha0s/de22ae0c7e7a7a70b37ac9c1262e27e1"},{"id":"qatar-economic-forum-2022-06-21","type":"interview","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zl8S-T33mbs","title":"Qatar Economic Forum","titles":{"en":"Qatar Economic Forum","de":"Qatar Economic Forum","fr":"Qatar Economic Forum"},"date":"2022-06-21","summary":"John Micklethwait interviews Musk at the Qatar Economic Forum on the Twitter acquisition, recession risk, Tesla job cuts and supply constraints.","text":"We now have a man who by many measures at least is the world's greatest capitalist at the moment. Elon Musk thank you very much for coming and talking to us. You could argue at the moment the US in the media we have at least three Elon Musk to deal with. We have the proposed buyer of Twitter. We have the CEO of Tesla Space X and much else. And we have Musk the emerging political force.\n\nAnd that's before we discover or discuss all the different provocations and tweets and so on. But maybe we can run through those three. And let's begin with Twitter. And I suppose my question for you is what is the status of the 44 billion deal 44 billion dollar deal to buy the company. If you look at the deal spreads at the moment the investors seem to be betting that it won't happen I suppose.\n\nAnd right here you have the guitarist who amongst your backers. What are you going to say to them and to us. First of all I'd like to say your highness your excellencies and distinguished guests. Thank you very much for hosting me virtually. It's an honor to be here or be there virtually. And I actually wish I could be there in person.\n\nSo with respect to the Twitter transaction there's a limit to what I can say publicly given that it is somewhat of a sensitive matter. And so I would like to be measured in my responses here. Such as not to generate incremental lawsuits. That seems to be a rescue sometimes managed to overcome. Yes. Deposition minimization is I think important. Have you as have Twitter given you enough information. Well there are still a few unresolved matters.\n\nYou probably read about the question as to whether the number of fake and spam users on the system is less than 5 percent as Twitter claims. Which I think is probably not most people's experience on when using Twitter. So we're still awaiting resolution on that matter and that that is a very significant matter. So we're awaiting resolution on that. And then of course there is the question of will the debt portion of the round come together.\n\nAnd then will the shareholders vote in favor. So I think those are the three things that stand in them that need to be resolved before the transaction can complete. What about the general state of the economy. Does that weigh on you when you think about this. I mean just described it. You have a super bad feeling about the economy. Are you still in that position.\n\nI just said you earlier Joe Biden has just come out and said that a recession in America is not inevitable. How do you feel about the economy. Well I think a recession is inevitable at some point as to whether there is a recession in the near term. I think that is more likely than not. It certainly isn't. It's not a certainty but it appears more likely than not. And where do you think. I'm I'm I'm. I'm with you. I agree with you.\n\nI think it's more likely. Can I ask you one particular thing to do with the Twitter bid which is you know you are one of the biggest and fastest growing investors in China. Tesla you've talked about it being a third of your sales going forward. You're now buying Twitter the kind of public forum for free speech. The Chinese historically tend to be very enthusiastic about free speech.\n\nAre you worried about whether you can keep those two particular horses running. Is is buying Twitter going to get you in trouble with the Chinese. Well Twitter does not operate and yes. And I think change is not it's to a few interfere with the free speech of the press in the US. As far as I know IBEX I assume you're not under pressure to get Bloomberg to get it from China. So I think there's.\n\nI don't think this could be an issue in terms generally of that issue of freedom of speech and Twitter. You've talked about Twitter being making it even freer and letting more people onto it. Is there a limit at all to who you think should be allowed on Twitter. Well I had my aspiration for Twitter or in general for the digital town square would be that it is as inclusive in the broader sense of the word as possible that it is.\n\nIt is an appealing system to use. So I mean ideally I'd like to get like 80 percent of that in North America perhaps. I don't know half the world or something. Ultimately on on Twitter and in one form or another. And that needs. That means it must be something that is appealing to people. It obviously cannot be a place where they feel uncomfortable or harassed or they'll simply not use it.\n\nSo I think there's there's this big difference between freedom of speech and freedom of reach in that one can obviously tape. I said go in the middle of Times Square and pretty much yell anything you want. And do you. You annoy the people around you but you're kind of allowed to just sort of yell whatever you want. And in a crowded public place more or less apart from this is this is a robbery probably that would get you in trouble.\n\nSo but but then that that whatever you say however controversial does not need to then be broadcast to the whole country. So I think generally the approach of Twitter should be to let people say what they want to do within the bounds of the law but then limit the. Who sees that based on any given Twitter users preferences. So if your preferences are to see anything or read anything then well you'll get that.\n\nBut if your preferences are well it you'd prefer not to see the comments that you find offensive in one form or another. Then you you can have that as a setting and not see it. And but I think one way or another if one is to take the steps that I and that that entice most people to want to be on Twitter and enjoy it and find it informative and entertaining and funny and just something useful is as useful as possible.\n\nIt sounds like you want to be involved is your plan to be CEO of Twitter. And if you do that would you still keep being CEO of Tesla and SpaceX X. Well I. I wouldn't drive the product which is what I do with Space X and Tesla. So I drive the product and technology whether I'm that when I'm called the CEO or something else is much less important than my ability to drive the product in the right direction. Can I jump towards Tesla.\n\nThey're not you know most people it's very obvious you have changed the car industry and in a dramatic way. I'm quite intrigued by one thing which is your competitors. Where do you see competition coming from. Do you see it coming from the old carmakers coming back at you. I just saw a forecast that may be in a couple of years time Volkswagen would be bigger than new in electric cars. Or do you see it coming from new place. Do you believe that.\n\nI believe that forecast was was from you. Yes it was. And do you agree with that. I would not agree with that forecast. Do you see people like Volkswagen and General Motors and people like buses as the opponent. So you see people like China that knew Chinese companies. Where do you see the most vibrant competition in electric cars.\n\nI'd say that I am very impressed with the companies and the car companies in China just in general with companies in China. I think they're extremely competitive hardworking and smart. And and I think there's going gonna be just a massive wave of Chinese products growing up in the world. They already are. But you know for example like almost all the iPhones are made in China by contract factories for Apple.\n\nBut I think we'll see just a large wave of products being exported from China. In many industries like say electric cars do they have an advantage at all. You know. Yeah. No I do think. Well I should say from the Tom Mackenzie perspective we don't really think about other competitors.\n\nOur constraints are much more in raw materials and being able to scale up production so our constraints are not imposed upon us by competitors but rather the just imposed upon us by the realities of the supply chain and pulling up manufacturing capacity. So I mean as anyone knows who is try to order that order at Tesla. The demand for our cars is extremely high and the wait list is long. So our and this is not intentional.\n\nWe are increasing production capacity as fast as humanly possible. So that so relax that we really don't think about competition or we just think about how how do we address the limiting factors in the supply chain and in our own industrial capacity.\n\nWe need to build the factories faster and then we need to look ahead to whatever the choke points are in the whole lithium ion battery supply chain from mining and refining to Catherine and abruption and cell formation. So can you can you can you set the record straight on one thing which is this issue about the layoffs.\n\nI think you said initially that Tesla 10 percent of the workforce will be cut then 10 percent of salaried would be cut then salaried would stay flat flat and overall headcount would go up. What is the number. I know there's already I think been a lawsuit about the 10 percent is is 10 percent the goal to reduce the workforce. So what is the number that we should think about or that you're planning. Yes.\n\nSo is it Tesla is reducing the salaried workforce by roughly 10 percent over the next probably three months or so. The we expect to grow our hourly workforce. We're quite clear that we expect to grow our ISE hourly workforce but we will grow very fast with this on the salary side. And we grew a little too fast in some areas. And so it requires a reduction in salaried workforce to wear about two thirds hourly and one third salary.\n\nSo I guess technically a 10 percent reduction in the salad workforce is only roughly a three three and a half percent reduction in total headcount. Now I think I think that number is important legally isn't it. Because I think people are trying to say if you if you're going to lay off 10 percent of your workforce you have even in America to make an announcement about that. We did make that announcement. Yes.\n\nLet's not read too much into a preemptive lawsuit that has no standing. That that that is the smallest lawsuit of minor consequence that just anything that related to Tesla gets big headlines. But it is whether it is you know a bicycle accident or something much more serious. So it is it seems like anything. You're slated if Tesla gets a lot of clicks whether for whether it is trivial or significant.\n\nI would put that lawsuit right here in the trivial category. So you know I think our head count will be higher in both salaried and obviously in hourly but in the short term of next few months. We expect to see I said roughly a 10 percent reduction in salary salaried workforce which is actually just really only three three and a half percent reduction in total headcount and not super material.\n\nSo we jumped to that level that that third Elon Musk the the uncontroversial one in politics. You've indicated that the Florida governor Ron DeSantis is someone you could get behind if he ran for president. I wondered if you're still in that position and whether you would for instance think about supporting Donald Trump if he were to run. Well I was simply asked if there was if I decided on who I would be supporting in the next presidential race.\n\nAnd I said I had not yet decided if I would support. Then I was asked well who might you be leaning towards. I said possibly this answers. And now and now I'm asking you about Trump whether you would consider him. I think I'm undecided at this point on that election and I wanted you talked about putting money behind a super moderate super PAC in the US. And I wondered how much money do you think you're going to put into that.\n\nWhat kind of support would you push. I haven't decided on the amount but it would be some some non-trivial figure I think. I mean at least sort of on the order of non-trivial ways means a lot. All right. Non-trivial could mean a lot of money with you. I was guessing. Well I don't know. I've not decided on the exact amount but perhaps to be 20 or 25 million. Just on that issue I mean again you look at the sense of what the census says.\n\nYou look at what Trump says and those sort of positions they again the people who make a large noise about China. And I wondered whether you thought that was also an issue for you in terms of business in China. Well no I don't think so. You're a brave man. Is it can I. Can I ask you you over the weekend. You you tweeted your support of one crypto currency. You've seen the kind of carnage that has been happening in crypto currencies at the moment.\n\nWhat is happening. And do you still think people should should invest. Or is it more selective. Approach. Well I have never said that people should invest in crypto. In the case of Tesla Space X myself. Yeah. Basic science hasn't mixed up all did buy some bitcoin but it's a small percentage of our total cash and near cash assets. So it's not a less significant.\n\nI also bought some dogecoin and Tesla accepts doge coin for some merchandise and space x with the same and. And I intend to personally support dogecoin because I just saw a lot of people who are not that wealthy who have encouraged me to buy and support dogecoin. So I'm responding to those people just people. And I want more from the factory. It's a sexual Tesla. They've asked me to support those coins so I'm doing so.\n\nBecause Dogecoin I think has come down a lot. It's down about 80 90 percent or it's down a lot. And that's the reason why you you came out and said that you still thought there was value. The. I said ISE for Dogecoin and I'm during the. Can I ask you one last question is I noticed that you you're going to unleash a humanoid robot to be unveiled on September the 30th. I wonder if there's anything more you could tell us about that.\n\nWell I hope with it we will have an interesting prototype to show people that we're a very talented team at Tesla that I'm working with closely to have a prototype humanoid robot ready by the end of September. And I think we are travelling to that point so that there'll be a few other exciting things that we talk about it. The Tesla idea.\n\nBut I really want to you know we have these sort of everyday events to just emphasize that Tesla is a lot more than a car company and that we are in my view the leading real world a complain that exists. Well you were you. Did you see it.\n\nAll the the drama about the Google wire tweet web people at least one engineer thought that what was happening in terms of that machinery was closer to humans than had been seen before and quite worrying had a personality. Is that something that you think about at all and or you worry about. I think I think we should be concerned about.\n\nI am and I said for a long time that I think this ought to be and a regulatory agency that oversees artificial intelligence for the public good. And I think just as there's anything that for anything the weather is a risk to the public. Whether that saves the Food and Drug Administration or Federal Aviation Administration Communications Commission whether it's a public risk or a public good at stake there.\n\nIt's good to have sort of a government referee and a regulatory body. And I think we should have that for a I and we don't currently. And that would be my recommendation. You know Musk you've been incredibly kind with your time. Not least because I think it's 3:00 a. m. and they're not in in the morning. And yes it's been a heroic performance. Thank you very much for talking to the Guitar Economic Forum and talking to Bloomberg.\n\nThank you very much. Welcome. Thanks for having me.","textByLang":{"en":"We now have a man who by many measures at least is the world's greatest capitalist at the moment. Elon Musk thank you very much for coming and talking to us. You could argue at the moment the US in the media we have at least three Elon Musk to deal with. We have the proposed buyer of Twitter. We have the CEO of Tesla Space X and much else. And we have Musk the emerging political force.\n\nAnd that's before we discover or discuss all the different provocations and tweets and so on. But maybe we can run through those three. And let's begin with Twitter. And I suppose my question for you is what is the status of the 44 billion deal 44 billion dollar deal to buy the company. If you look at the deal spreads at the moment the investors seem to be betting that it won't happen I suppose.\n\nAnd right here you have the guitarist who amongst your backers. What are you going to say to them and to us. First of all I'd like to say your highness your excellencies and distinguished guests. Thank you very much for hosting me virtually. It's an honor to be here or be there virtually. And I actually wish I could be there in person.\n\nSo with respect to the Twitter transaction there's a limit to what I can say publicly given that it is somewhat of a sensitive matter. And so I would like to be measured in my responses here. Such as not to generate incremental lawsuits. That seems to be a rescue sometimes managed to overcome. Yes. Deposition minimization is I think important. Have you as have Twitter given you enough information. Well there are still a few unresolved matters.\n\nYou probably read about the question as to whether the number of fake and spam users on the system is less than 5 percent as Twitter claims. Which I think is probably not most people's experience on when using Twitter. So we're still awaiting resolution on that matter and that that is a very significant matter. So we're awaiting resolution on that. And then of course there is the question of will the debt portion of the round come together.\n\nAnd then will the shareholders vote in favor. So I think those are the three things that stand in them that need to be resolved before the transaction can complete. What about the general state of the economy. Does that weigh on you when you think about this. I mean just described it. You have a super bad feeling about the economy. Are you still in that position.\n\nI just said you earlier Joe Biden has just come out and said that a recession in America is not inevitable. How do you feel about the economy. Well I think a recession is inevitable at some point as to whether there is a recession in the near term. I think that is more likely than not. It certainly isn't. It's not a certainty but it appears more likely than not. And where do you think. I'm I'm I'm. I'm with you. I agree with you.\n\nI think it's more likely. Can I ask you one particular thing to do with the Twitter bid which is you know you are one of the biggest and fastest growing investors in China. Tesla you've talked about it being a third of your sales going forward. You're now buying Twitter the kind of public forum for free speech. The Chinese historically tend to be very enthusiastic about free speech.\n\nAre you worried about whether you can keep those two particular horses running. Is is buying Twitter going to get you in trouble with the Chinese. Well Twitter does not operate and yes. And I think change is not it's to a few interfere with the free speech of the press in the US. As far as I know IBEX I assume you're not under pressure to get Bloomberg to get it from China. So I think there's.\n\nI don't think this could be an issue in terms generally of that issue of freedom of speech and Twitter. You've talked about Twitter being making it even freer and letting more people onto it. Is there a limit at all to who you think should be allowed on Twitter. Well I had my aspiration for Twitter or in general for the digital town square would be that it is as inclusive in the broader sense of the word as possible that it is.\n\nIt is an appealing system to use. So I mean ideally I'd like to get like 80 percent of that in North America perhaps. I don't know half the world or something. Ultimately on on Twitter and in one form or another. And that needs. That means it must be something that is appealing to people. It obviously cannot be a place where they feel uncomfortable or harassed or they'll simply not use it.\n\nSo I think there's there's this big difference between freedom of speech and freedom of reach in that one can obviously tape. I said go in the middle of Times Square and pretty much yell anything you want. And do you. You annoy the people around you but you're kind of allowed to just sort of yell whatever you want. And in a crowded public place more or less apart from this is this is a robbery probably that would get you in trouble.\n\nSo but but then that that whatever you say however controversial does not need to then be broadcast to the whole country. So I think generally the approach of Twitter should be to let people say what they want to do within the bounds of the law but then limit the. Who sees that based on any given Twitter users preferences. So if your preferences are to see anything or read anything then well you'll get that.\n\nBut if your preferences are well it you'd prefer not to see the comments that you find offensive in one form or another. Then you you can have that as a setting and not see it. And but I think one way or another if one is to take the steps that I and that that entice most people to want to be on Twitter and enjoy it and find it informative and entertaining and funny and just something useful is as useful as possible.\n\nIt sounds like you want to be involved is your plan to be CEO of Twitter. And if you do that would you still keep being CEO of Tesla and SpaceX X. Well I. I wouldn't drive the product which is what I do with Space X and Tesla. So I drive the product and technology whether I'm that when I'm called the CEO or something else is much less important than my ability to drive the product in the right direction. Can I jump towards Tesla.\n\nThey're not you know most people it's very obvious you have changed the car industry and in a dramatic way. I'm quite intrigued by one thing which is your competitors. Where do you see competition coming from. Do you see it coming from the old carmakers coming back at you. I just saw a forecast that may be in a couple of years time Volkswagen would be bigger than new in electric cars. Or do you see it coming from new place. Do you believe that.\n\nI believe that forecast was was from you. Yes it was. And do you agree with that. I would not agree with that forecast. Do you see people like Volkswagen and General Motors and people like buses as the opponent. So you see people like China that knew Chinese companies. Where do you see the most vibrant competition in electric cars.\n\nI'd say that I am very impressed with the companies and the car companies in China just in general with companies in China. I think they're extremely competitive hardworking and smart. And and I think there's going gonna be just a massive wave of Chinese products growing up in the world. They already are. But you know for example like almost all the iPhones are made in China by contract factories for Apple.\n\nBut I think we'll see just a large wave of products being exported from China. In many industries like say electric cars do they have an advantage at all. You know. Yeah. No I do think. Well I should say from the Tom Mackenzie perspective we don't really think about other competitors.\n\nOur constraints are much more in raw materials and being able to scale up production so our constraints are not imposed upon us by competitors but rather the just imposed upon us by the realities of the supply chain and pulling up manufacturing capacity. So I mean as anyone knows who is try to order that order at Tesla. The demand for our cars is extremely high and the wait list is long. So our and this is not intentional.\n\nWe are increasing production capacity as fast as humanly possible. So that so relax that we really don't think about competition or we just think about how how do we address the limiting factors in the supply chain and in our own industrial capacity.\n\nWe need to build the factories faster and then we need to look ahead to whatever the choke points are in the whole lithium ion battery supply chain from mining and refining to Catherine and abruption and cell formation. So can you can you can you set the record straight on one thing which is this issue about the layoffs.\n\nI think you said initially that Tesla 10 percent of the workforce will be cut then 10 percent of salaried would be cut then salaried would stay flat flat and overall headcount would go up. What is the number. I know there's already I think been a lawsuit about the 10 percent is is 10 percent the goal to reduce the workforce. So what is the number that we should think about or that you're planning. Yes.\n\nSo is it Tesla is reducing the salaried workforce by roughly 10 percent over the next probably three months or so. The we expect to grow our hourly workforce. We're quite clear that we expect to grow our ISE hourly workforce but we will grow very fast with this on the salary side. And we grew a little too fast in some areas. And so it requires a reduction in salaried workforce to wear about two thirds hourly and one third salary.\n\nSo I guess technically a 10 percent reduction in the salad workforce is only roughly a three three and a half percent reduction in total headcount. Now I think I think that number is important legally isn't it. Because I think people are trying to say if you if you're going to lay off 10 percent of your workforce you have even in America to make an announcement about that. We did make that announcement. Yes.\n\nLet's not read too much into a preemptive lawsuit that has no standing. That that that is the smallest lawsuit of minor consequence that just anything that related to Tesla gets big headlines. But it is whether it is you know a bicycle accident or something much more serious. So it is it seems like anything. You're slated if Tesla gets a lot of clicks whether for whether it is trivial or significant.\n\nI would put that lawsuit right here in the trivial category. So you know I think our head count will be higher in both salaried and obviously in hourly but in the short term of next few months. We expect to see I said roughly a 10 percent reduction in salary salaried workforce which is actually just really only three three and a half percent reduction in total headcount and not super material.\n\nSo we jumped to that level that that third Elon Musk the the uncontroversial one in politics. You've indicated that the Florida governor Ron DeSantis is someone you could get behind if he ran for president. I wondered if you're still in that position and whether you would for instance think about supporting Donald Trump if he were to run. Well I was simply asked if there was if I decided on who I would be supporting in the next presidential race.\n\nAnd I said I had not yet decided if I would support. Then I was asked well who might you be leaning towards. I said possibly this answers. And now and now I'm asking you about Trump whether you would consider him. I think I'm undecided at this point on that election and I wanted you talked about putting money behind a super moderate super PAC in the US. And I wondered how much money do you think you're going to put into that.\n\nWhat kind of support would you push. I haven't decided on the amount but it would be some some non-trivial figure I think. I mean at least sort of on the order of non-trivial ways means a lot. All right. Non-trivial could mean a lot of money with you. I was guessing. Well I don't know. I've not decided on the exact amount but perhaps to be 20 or 25 million. Just on that issue I mean again you look at the sense of what the census says.\n\nYou look at what Trump says and those sort of positions they again the people who make a large noise about China. And I wondered whether you thought that was also an issue for you in terms of business in China. Well no I don't think so. You're a brave man. Is it can I. Can I ask you you over the weekend. You you tweeted your support of one crypto currency. You've seen the kind of carnage that has been happening in crypto currencies at the moment.\n\nWhat is happening. And do you still think people should should invest. Or is it more selective. Approach. Well I have never said that people should invest in crypto. In the case of Tesla Space X myself. Yeah. Basic science hasn't mixed up all did buy some bitcoin but it's a small percentage of our total cash and near cash assets. So it's not a less significant.\n\nI also bought some dogecoin and Tesla accepts doge coin for some merchandise and space x with the same and. And I intend to personally support dogecoin because I just saw a lot of people who are not that wealthy who have encouraged me to buy and support dogecoin. So I'm responding to those people just people. And I want more from the factory. It's a sexual Tesla. They've asked me to support those coins so I'm doing so.\n\nBecause Dogecoin I think has come down a lot. It's down about 80 90 percent or it's down a lot. And that's the reason why you you came out and said that you still thought there was value. The. I said ISE for Dogecoin and I'm during the. Can I ask you one last question is I noticed that you you're going to unleash a humanoid robot to be unveiled on September the 30th. I wonder if there's anything more you could tell us about that.\n\nWell I hope with it we will have an interesting prototype to show people that we're a very talented team at Tesla that I'm working with closely to have a prototype humanoid robot ready by the end of September. And I think we are travelling to that point so that there'll be a few other exciting things that we talk about it. The Tesla idea.\n\nBut I really want to you know we have these sort of everyday events to just emphasize that Tesla is a lot more than a car company and that we are in my view the leading real world a complain that exists. Well you were you. Did you see it.\n\nAll the the drama about the Google wire tweet web people at least one engineer thought that what was happening in terms of that machinery was closer to humans than had been seen before and quite worrying had a personality. Is that something that you think about at all and or you worry about. I think I think we should be concerned about.\n\nI am and I said for a long time that I think this ought to be and a regulatory agency that oversees artificial intelligence for the public good. And I think just as there's anything that for anything the weather is a risk to the public. Whether that saves the Food and Drug Administration or Federal Aviation Administration Communications Commission whether it's a public risk or a public good at stake there.\n\nIt's good to have sort of a government referee and a regulatory body. And I think we should have that for a I and we don't currently. And that would be my recommendation. You know Musk you've been incredibly kind with your time. Not least because I think it's 3:00 a. m. and they're not in in the morning. And yes it's been a heroic performance. Thank you very much for talking to the Guitar Economic Forum and talking to Bloomberg.\n\nThank you very much. Welcome. Thanks for having me."},"languages":["en"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zl8S-T33mbs"},{"id":"twitter-all-hands-2022-06-16","type":"interview","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FLvTcRrzy20","title":"Twitter All-Hands","titles":{"en":"Twitter All-Hands","de":"Twitter All-Hands","fr":"Twitter All-Hands"},"date":"2022-06-16","summary":"Full audio of Musk's first all-hands Q&A with Twitter employees, fielding questions on free speech, bots, layoffs and remote work amid the acquisition.","text":"all right hello everyone thanks for joining this special q a session with elon elon thank you so much for joining us the company's been so eager to hear from you live and direct and we all appreciate you joining us uh today thanks for having me uh it's glad to be able to speak to everyone and since we started late i'm gonna go right right ahead hand it over to leslie so that she can moderate this q a session for us okay sounds good amazing thanks um we have a lot to cover a ton to cover so i am going to ask you a question that usually gets asked at the end which is you know you come back for a part two at some point if there are things that we don't cover oh yeah absolutely okay great okay so you have some breathing room so um i really do see this at\n\nthe beginning of a conversation obviously with the company at large and then also with teams and leaders over the next coming weeks and months and beyond so we're just getting started um okay so i'm going to zoom all the way out to the reason that we're actually here together today and that is because you love twitter um yes i want to be clear about that i love twitter in fact i literally have tweeted i love twitter you have so tell us say more why do you love twitter and also why did you and do you want to buy twitter well um let's see i mean i i find like i learn a lot uh from what i read on twitter and what i see on the um the pictures videos text and memes that people uh create um i also find it's a great way to get a message out or if i want to if\n\ni want to say something make an announcement um i think twitter's the best way to do that um it just goes out immediately to everyone um and um you know i i sort of made this joke already but uh you know some people use their hair to express themselves i use twitter so um you know i i find it's uh yeah um the best uh forum for communicating with um a lot of people simultaneously um and getting that message directly to people um you know in the past you have to in order in order for somebody to to read about something you have to issue a press release or and then you hope that the regular media would write about the press release and then they wouldn't write about it in quite the way you'd like to write about it um i always found those like about old-style\n\npress releases kind of oddly like really quite strange because you're writing a press release about yourself which is sort of uh something that the media it's like it's overly some overly flattering it's like mainly sort of you know propagandist in fact quite propagandist um and then hope that the media writes something favorable which they usually do not um and you know i think that that actually is maybe one of the biggest reasons for me using twitter is so i can talk and communicate directly with people and not through the lens of the media um and you know i think there's obviously an important role for the media to play but uh as anyone knows who reads the newspaper uh it's coming through quite a negative lens so you know i have to say how many newspaper\n\narticles do you read that are positive and how many news articles do you read that are negative what percentage are positive what percentage negative and then when you read about it you know it's obviously overwhelmingly negative um and then when you when you read about something in um this newspaper was a dated term uh in the news um that you where you actually personally understand the situation how many times has have the media gotten it right well i would say almost never not never but almost never so uh you know it's this is a a way to for for people to communicate directly with each other um and not through a negative lens and um i think that's extremely important for the world so i'm sort of going waxing on about this but i think it's pretty important\n\num and um you know that the that sort of like some of my comments about twitter being sort of like a digital town square um but really much more than that because you know you can't put that many people in town square but you have to communicate with millions of people on twitter um that's just an incredibly important thing and i think it's it's essential for a functioning uh democracy or to to function well i think it's essential to have a free speech um and for and to be able to communicate yeah just communicate freely um now the you know the the priests speech stuff this needs to be you know it's free speech within within the context of the law so it's not i'm not definitely not suggesting that we you know um just flout the law because they hope it\n\nwill get shut down in that case um and and i think there's also um this freedom of speech and freedom of reach and uh your freedom of speech is one thing because like anyone could just go into the middle of times square right now and say anything they want they just walk into the middle of times square and deny the holocaust okay you can't stop them they will just do that but that doesn't mean you have to that needs to be promoted to millions of people um so um so i think people should be allowed to say you know pretty outrageous things that are within the balance of the law but but then they don't you know it doesn't get amplified it doesn't get you know a ton of reach um and um i think an important goal for twitter it would be to try to include as as\n\nmuch of the country as much of the world as possible um so currently you know it's a it's a relatively small percentage of the world that is it is a small percentage of what that is uh on twitter if you say like daily active users if you assume that that's say 200 million um you've got you know eight billion people on earth that's a 7.\n\n8 billion who are not on twitter so that's a pretty big number um and really i think you want as many as much as possible on twitter you want to be as inclusive as possible uh the broadest demographic um and for that to happen people must like being on twitter so if they're being like harassed or if they're uncomfortable uh they're just not gonna use twitter and they're you know so you know we yeah we have to sort of strike this balance of you know allowing people to say what they want to say but but but also making people comfortable on on twitter uh well they simply won't use it it will be you know it'll be sort of quite niche um but i think there's also a lot of a lot that should be done in terms of enhancing the core technology and offerings of twitter\n\num like right now if somebody does uh say a video like let's say a content creator does a video then they're gonna put that video on on youtube and and just like put a link to it from twitter because they're able to monetize their content on youtube but not on on twitter and i think it's going to be really important for if you want people put the content on on twitter which we do um then it has to be a mechanism for content creators to monetize that that content and so they could make a dual post so they could post it to youtube and to enter twitter but i think it's crazy right now that you know uh content creators will use twitter to to drive traffic to their youtube video of because you know that's how they make a living um and and that really should\n\nbe on on twitter um like we want to basically address the reasons that people like why why aren't more people using twitter and why do people click away from twitter and if we can um address those reasons then then there will be they'll use twitter more and they'll get greater value from the for you know from the service and um and and uh you know if but if i um you know think of like like wechat in china which is actually a great great app um but there's no wechat booklet in uh outside of china and i think that there's a real opportunity to create that um sort of you know you basically live on wechat in china so um because it's so useful and and uh you know so so helpful to your daily life um and i think if we achieve that or even get close to that with\n\ntwitter be an event a success um hopefully that that is that's you know really i really went on there but um i don't have to elaborate on any of those points yeah no it's great and we're gonna get a little bit deeper on free speech and policy a little bit later so i do want to come back to this actually um but in terms of you you clearly have a lot of thoughts around sort of the problems with twitter the things that aren't working well or the barriers to what's possible um how do you see your buying the company is that was that sort of feed your desire to buy the companies or how do you see these things um sort of come together and what like how what's your thought process around that um well there's definitely um an ongoing challenge or twitter with\n\num with bot what accounts and spam accounts um you know there's still quite a lot of crypto scams on twitter um it's gotten like it's been better but this looks still a fair bit of that um there are also people where they're not necessarily bots but they might be operating you know one person's operating hundreds of accounts um and trying to make you try trying to make them look like individuals but they're not so um you know i think it's and i a lot of stuff kind of reiterating stuff that i said publicly but and in fact on twitter um uh the in order for people to have trust in twitter i think it's extremely important that there be transparency so that's why i'm an advocate of having the algorithm be open source so people can uh critique it improve it\n\nidentify bugs potentially or bias but what is transparent transparency it constantly increases trust um so i think it's just um a very important like that yeah any anything that's happening on an automated basis be um open source and be uh you know clear and that if there is any action taken by someone within twitter to um you know uh deep boost or d boost or something with a tweet that it's just very clearly identified on the tweet so people aren't um you know subscribing to malice that which is not the way where there's no malice um so um but when when it's inscrutable then people don't know what to think and they will sometimes think the worst uh when when that's actually not true so i think that price is extremely important and and then just for the\n\nusefulness of the system um get getting rid of of um sort of troll farms and and advanced and spam is incredibly important um i'm going to have a thought in this regard which i think um is is might work which is to you know there's currently just twitter blue but if you hit twitter blue it doesn't your identification in the system does not change at all like you still look like a normal user id but i think if if there was like a little you know twitter blue authenticated not like authenticated like a celebrity but authenticated at least by twitter blue payments um just using the paper pay your banking on the payment system to your authentication um that i think a lot of people will be like okay that's that's uh that's pretty helpful to have some designation\n\nthat is next to my name um that indicates i'm i'm probably not a bot or spam or one of one person who's operating out of accounts um and um you know that's like three bucks a month i believe i think that would be pretty helpful and then uh and then also prioritizing uh comments and um you know mentions and whatnot by who is verified in this broader sense the word of verification in the sense of you know that you're twitter blue verified um and just prioritize yeah like um that above someone who's not not verified so there'll still be full read access to the system so people write access to a system but but instead but you essentially uh um any uh any tweets or our actions will be prioritized according to who's verified and then a very large number of\n\npeople can be verified i'm going to have a couple of follow-up questions on this specifically but given you mentioned trust i wanted to ask one of the employee questions around trust um they said twitter has a lot of incredible smart talented people what can we do to earn your trust and what are you going to do to earn ours um you know i think uh i know trust is as trust does um so um you know the i i tend to be extremely literal in what i say um so you know i aspirationally one does not need to read between the lines one can simply read the lines um and uh so the things that i said about twitter i think are need to happen um in order for it to be um you know to really go to the next level i mean i think like the potential is there for twitter to have\n\nand you know be accessible to an order bank to more people um and for a lot more people to find it useful um not you know currently i guess would be like four or four percent of the world or something like that i don't know i said four or five percent of the world optimistically is finding twitter useful and like maybe 50 percent of the world could find twitter useful um so i want to take whatever actions um would lead to that and um you know the uh you know i'm very much like uh it's it's just as i wouldn't say essentially a trust thing it's like if somebody's getting useful things done um then that's great and but if if they're not getting useful things on them like okay why are they at the company um so it's really just um like we need to improve the\n\ncourse technology uh improve the design um and [Music] you know so trust emerges from that yeah i mean trust that yes it's not it's like you know if somebody's getting stuff done great i love them and if they're not i don't like that then i do not it's pretty straightforward can we i would like to stay on this topic of employees and how we work um so distributed work is something that has been core to our strategy um most of our people work in a hybrid model about 1500 people work remote full-time um we know that you recently made you know sent a communication to tesla executives about remote work can you share what your point of view is on remote work and specifically for twitter yeah so now tesla makes cars and you cannot make cars remotely um obviously\n\nthey're they're you have to make cars in a big factory um and the supply chain and and you know and you have to bring in the parts and you know assemble them and then transport the car to the owner um all of these things must be done in person because they're just it's physically impossible to do them remotely now there are some roles at tesla where what can be can be done remotely like say software or design um and uh it's so that you know i think that's still a case where you want to aspire to do things in person um but if somebody is exceptional at their job then it's possible for them to be effective even working remotely so uh with with tesla i simply have asked for a list um you know that the manager has to confirm that that they're um they're an\n\nexcellent contributor and if they do they're allowed to work remotely um so it's pretty basic i think um there isn't there is a hit one takes remotely because the they've just reduced esprit de corps and you know it's like it's hard to you know like get like if you just there's there's really it really it kind of matters to be in person um at least some of the time so like one of the things he said even if somebody's working remotely they're going to show up at the office occasionally so that they recognize their colleagues and don't have you know you have to walk down the street and pass your colleague and and they're you don't even recognize them that would not be good yeah no i think this is this is super clarifying and resonates with us and entirely\n\nin terms of how we work so thank you for for clarifying that topic is really important to us um i would like to keep on the topic of employees and some of the questions that have come through um this one's on on compensation and benefits most people especially obviously here are used to working for a public company um can you talk a little bit about how you compensate folks at spacex as a private company how does it work and what approach you plan to take at twitter as a private company yeah so um spacex i think operates in the best of both worlds where uh stock and options are issued to everyone but um we don't have all the challenges being publicly traded company where the stuff could be up and down from one day to the next would be quite a distraction\n\num and where one is at the mercy of short sellers and um class action lawsuits and just generally it's like being in the stockades of public stockade and they should throw tomatoes at you all day um so but spacex still allows liquidity and and so every every six months this liquidity event at spacex and people have the opportunity to sell their shares um and that's worked very well uh for the whole life of the company so i think something like that would make sense at twitter so it still be stocking options everything and it just be liquidity events twice a year great and thanks we are getting some real-time feedback on the remote work questions i just want to make sure i follow up um your approach to remote work and distributed work at twitter you are\n\nthat what i'm hearing from you is that you are supportive of remotely distributed work as as it is productive and meaningful people show up when it's important and depending on their jobs is that an accurate reflection yeah i mean the bias definitely needs to be strongly towards working in person um but but if somebody is uh exceptional then um remote work can be okay um but then if basically if they're if their work output is exceptional then remote work is is fine there is some communication uh you know impact that one takes when working remotely because if you're with people you know that and they're just you know a few desks away it's very easy to communicate in real time uh but it's much harder to do that if you're in different physical locations\n\nso i do want to emphasize that the bias is very much uh towards in-person work it's it's just but it would obviously be insane if someone is uh excellent what they do but can only work remotely to then fire them even though they're doing excellent work would be insane so i'm definitely not in favor of like things that are like mad um i'm in favor of things that that build the business and make it better thank you um question about layoffs um we've received several questions from employees on this point um obviously they've read about the recent playoffs at tesla um can you speak to how you're thinking about layoffs on twitter well i think it depends on um you know the company does need to be to get healthy so i mean right now the the costs exceed the\n\nrevenue so that's just that's not that's not a great situation to be in um and so i don't have to be some rationalization of of the of headcap and expenses to have revenue be greater than cost otherwise twitter is simply not not viable or you know can't grow um so [Music] yeah i think it would just be dependent on you know but when i said that anyone who's like obviously like a significant contributor should have nothing to worry about like i'm i i'm not you know i do not take actions which are destructive to the health of the company um so you know um yeah elon question connected to that as you're obviously learning and gaining information as we get closer to this deal being closed um what do you feel that you have sort of a deep understanding and grasp\n\nof and what are the areas that you feel you want to dive much more deeper on to understand and learn well i certainly i mean i have a strong a great understanding of the product because i i use twitter um every day practically um and you know i think i've got a really good understanding of of um you know how twitter works from a product standpoint um what i have less understanding of is you know um you know like like this this uh sort of bot spam or or you know multi-user account basically anything that that affects the monetizable daily user number is that that's probably my biggest concern um because that's really what drives advertising revenue at as well as subscription revenue um so um and really the twitter's your revenues is gonna be subscription\n\num advertising i think payments would be an interesting thing to do um as well um but uh but all of those things are are only relevant for as a function of how many uh unique humans are on the system so [Music] it's that's that's the that's the most that's my that's my biggest concern and that's what's you know what i said publicly as well um like i said i try to be as literal as possible um so um and yeah yeah and as we think about obviously the product and the service and serving customers all around the world clearly um it's critical and extension essential for us to serve diverse communities um and all people as you said as you said earlier so inclusion diversity is obviously core essential to our work at twitter both our employees and the customers\n\nthat we serve um you've been vocal on a variety of different topics and issues that relate to inclusion and diversity can you talk about your qual for your views and also your commitment to creating a diverse and inclusive workplace and also a service where everyone can feel included safe uh yeah i mean well it's to be clear um you know if everyone talks about the you know as i said about twitter as a whole like there's eight billion people in the world um there's sort of um i'm told there's 200 million um you know daily users of twitter that's a 7.\n\n8 billion person gap um so i think we really want to have you know i don't know at least a billion people on twitter maybe more um as many people as you can possibly get on twitter so that i think is the most inclusive definition of inclusiveness it's like all humans so um you know that's uh that's important um you know from a company standpoint you know i believe in something in a sort of strict meritocracy so whatever uh you know whoever's doing great work great you know they they get more responsibility authority um and that's that and i know we you mentioned in in some of our conversations about your ind team at tesla we have an amazing id team here here at twitter as well so um continue on the journey on the journey together um i wanted to talk about\n\ncontent moderation go back to a number of things that you said earlier um so this one i'll take um i'll take verbatim so you've spoken a lot about the importance of free speech let's start with the u.\n\ns where we have a strong tradition around this and you talk you've touched on this earlier a lot of what's called lawful but awful speech is allowed here in the united states right animal abuse footage doxxing videos of sexual violence etc um so along allowing this kind this type of content obviously could cause harm um and make you know twitter unusable for for the broad audience that that you're trying to reach um what is your approach to this type of content that's sort of legal um but problematic as it relates to people actually using the service how do you think about this tension um as i said earlier really it's like i think people we should allow people to say what they want post what they want to put in the balance of the law um but that that\n\nthat's different from them being able to reach people who don't want to be reached with that content so if that content is offensive then um two two people they will those who will not will simply stop using twitter so uh it's important to uh make twitter as attractive as possible and really that that means not showing people content that they would find uh painful or offensive or or even frankly content they would find boring is not good so we don't want them to see boring content um unless we were talking about uh tick tock last night and uh tick tock obviously just like like a great job of making sure you are not bored um i mean if this does like feel like 80d but like next level but um but tick tock does a great job of of making our board i mean i\n\ni i do find some other videos offensive i think um but they're not boring um so the the folks we are like how do we ensure people have content that is that they find entertaining and engaging and interesting um such that they want to keep using twitter and use it more so that's uh you know uh that's what that that's essential to the growth of the service and one of our employees asked about sort of people who use twitter having the right and the ability to filter out content that they don't want to see i think this gets to exactly what you're what you're pointing to um yeah yeah i mean to be clear it's like like the the standard is much more than not offending people the standard should be that they're they're very entertained and informed like this because\n\nlike so like you could not offend someone but you'll support them and show them a bunch of content that they don't find interesting and then they will not use the service or they will use it less um so um that's why i use the example of tick tock where they they just hold an algorithm to be as engaging as possible um and i think we want to also hold it to be as engaging as possible in a different way i think um you know that's that's like tick tock is interesting but like you want to be informed about like serious issues as well um and um i think twitter in terms of like serious issues can be a lot better you know informing people about serious issues um i do think it's important that that there be you know if there are two sides to an issue it's important\n\nto represent you know if there are multiple opinions but you know and just make sure that we're not sort of uh driving a narrative um but they'll be give people an opportunity to understand the the various science missions most issues in the world are are complex they they are they're not they're boiled down to a simple this is this is 100 good and this is 100 bad um so i think it would be uh it would be it would have a more informed public if if people presented with multiple sites to an issue one point i just want to go back to on sort of uh the law and sort of how that how that in fact impacts content and moderation as we think globally around the world there are some countries right that limit that have laws that limit speech um and sometimes actually\n\nuse these laws to silence disagreement with the government et cetera you're talking about different points of view so twitter is historically focused on doing what we can do to enable people everywhere to have their voices um how do you think about that as it relates to again like the local laws and what that means well i mean i i'm in favor of doing you know of going as far as the law will allow us if the law you know if say 200 employees would get arrested in the country if we if we didn't adhere to the law then we would also adhere to the law or uh exit the country or something um so um but i mean as much as we can enable people to have a voice and um and to speak their mind i think we want it we want to do that um yeah um and i know we talked about\n\nthis as well last night about the teams doing this work and your desire to connect with those teams and sort of understand sort of where we've been where we are where we're going um and i think that would be hugely productive um across the board both ways um can we talk uh briefly about your political views um how if all if at all do your political views play into the leadership of the companies that you currently run how would it affect twitter if at all well my my political views i think are moderate at least as would be you know as if you said like what is the center of the normal distribution of political abuse in the country i think i'd be pretty close to the center um you know i i voted democrat um every election until this recent one this week\n\num and uh and then i voted for mayor flores who's a republican um she was um uh mexican american and um i thought a good candidate and and was voting for so um but i i you know i i'm in favor of uh of moderate politics um but but you know allowing people who have like uh you know relatively extreme views to um you know to express those views with it within the bounds of the law um so that's you know you know as i said like the i think if the let's say the far left 10 and far right 10 were equally upset on twitter then that would probably be a good outcome i want to um just talk about our business um for a minute you've spoken about incentives um that the ad business creates for services like twitter um what role does advertising play in the future of\n\nyour business plan for the company i think advertising is is very important for twitter so in the case of say tesla spacex there's is there's no need for advertising because the demand exceeds um our production so um i mean advertising is fundamentally a demand generator um and occasionally you want to get some other message out there but it's it's fundamentally a demand generator so um given that that tesla demand is far in excess of production uh there's no need for tesla to advertise um but uh you know i'm not against advertising um i i would i would uh probably i don't want to talk to the advertisers and say like hey let's let's make sure the ads are as entertaining as possible um that i think they're more effective if they're entertaining um like\n\nyou want sort of you don't want to be strident or spammy and they add and then of course i don't think it's good to allow advertising of any products which are you know uh bad products you know like like um i was literally scammed on it i bought this thing off of a youtube ad and it doesn't work um and then i i just googled it and it's like oh yeah once you click on the second page of google search results it's like yeah this product totally does work and it's trash um and i'm like well what the hell's you youtube allowing advertising of the of scammy products that's totally not cool um so you know like and i just i think if if you if the advertising is entertaining interesting um it's something you might actually want uh and the product would be cool\n\nyou know fulfilling to the you know to the twitter user then i think that's great advertising um so yeah so you know we're going to go over is that okay oh yes awesome thank you um can you talk a little bit about twitter and payments um you mentioned this a few times at different settings let's uh understand your thinking there yeah i think um you know money is essentially a form of information so um uh you know it's information that allows us to exchange products and services without having to to barter and and allows the people to shift obligations in time um but but money is fundamentally digital at this point and it has been for a while and um you know paypal you know i think has um done done a great job on the payments front um i think it's it's\n\nit would make sense to integrate payments into twitter um so that's easy to send money back and forth um uh you know and and fiat currency as well as crypto um you know and i said essentially whatever somebody would find useful so like i said i think the goal my goal would be to to maximize the usefulness of the of the uh service um the more useful it is uh the better and if one can use it to make convenient payments that that's an increase in usefulness um it you know it's sort of it's sort of news uh entertainment and payments i think are like three critical areas um but really it's just about sort of thinking about how how to make this how to make using twitter so compelling that you can't live without it and that and that everyone wants to use i it\n\nto stay on the product i know you again you did such about this earlier but it's um a recurring question around the authentication piece um you know in terms of yours and you you want to authenticate all humans so so just to sort of double click into that you know balancing this with those who benefit from anonymity right from safety perspective especially for example human rights activists and marginalized communities so it's sort of um can you just clarify again and speak to that sort of that tension and how you think about about those groups specifically sort of core to have the service yeah yeah i i don't think um it's necessary for someone to use their real name um so if one say does a famous base authentication um i think it should be okay to not\n\nuse your real name on twitter so twitter would would know who would know who you are at least from a payment standpoint but um but you would not have to state your real name or anything um that's obviously important where if if someone has different political views from their manager let's say then they they don't really want to you know uh get crosswise there and so that it'd be better for them to um you know have a pseudonym um on twitter um but but it's still fit back handle dedicated and like i said this is no point would um i suggest that you have to be authenticated in order to use twitter it's just that it would just be a prioritizing authenticated uh comments um and actions on twitter over unauthenticated um in order to combat uh the sort of bots\n\nand trolls and essentially like it needs to be much more expensive to to have a troll army um whereas right now it's it's basically very inexpensive to have a hundred thousand paid twitter accounts and you have you have certainly been very vocal on twitter you are very vocal on twitter and um often your tweets and even emojis create news cycles um you know you have been also critical of the company um on twitter which obviously impacts lots of discussions conversations and perceptions from whether it be partners or even our employees um how do you think about these tweets um do you look at the reaction about the reaction of those these tweets and just curious or the thinking behind the tweet if you will well i think that it would be helpful you know i\n\nthink one thing about words is that it's hard to convey tone um and so it's possible for um essentially people will sometimes like take take the words and then assume they were said in maybe an angry way or um you know an addictive way or something like that um but i mean although you can tell like my normal tone is not uh i'm not i'm not an angry person i almost never raised my voice so um like in a year i might not have raised my voice literally um so this is not um you know so sometimes people may think oh wow he's sort of yelling screaming or something but i'm really not um uh so make some way to indicate tone i mean emojis sort of do that um but i don't know maybe there could be like a where you [Music] have like a i don't know um irony flag or something\n\num this is like this is an ironic you know it's an ironic tweets or something like that um listen i think i think spaces is a great product for you as well which i don't think i've seen you use before but i think that would add sort of your your literal voice over um and color some of the things that you tweet so maybe you cannot sort of oh sure [Music] i should i should yeah maybe i could just say it yeah exactly exactly or you could you could read it but then you can also see how i would have said it like when you you know you're like i wonder if you said that in an angry way and then you can see how i actually said it yes absolutely absolutely that'd be a new thing um on your um i know we have i'm gonna only push you about 10 more minutes um up at\n\nthe hour so i'm holding you until then um your your role at the company um you know there's been some discussion about will you be a ceo will you not be ceo how what can you speak to this and how do you anticipate your role sort of influencing strategy day-to-day division well i guess i'm i'm not that hung up on titles but uh i i do want to um drive the product in a particular direction um so you know it's it could be like i don't really care what you know about being ceo in fact uh i i i renamed myself techno king at tesla um with an official sec filing um so um yes we saw yeah and and then our cfo was renamed master of coin which i think is a cooler thing than cfo um so um the i mean the what i really just want to do is is like drive the product to\n\nimprove the product and then it's like basically a software and product design you know so um you know i don't mind doing other things you know related to operating a company but there are kind of chores there's a lot of chores to the ceo um and uh i i really just want to make sure that the the rapidly and in a good way um and um i don't really care what title is but um but i do obviously people do need to listen to me uh if i say like hey we need to make part improve production like i'm falling away make the following changes um uh at these features uh then you know like can't you expect that that that people listen to me um in this regard and i mean that's how i that's what i do at spacex and tesla so um you know i i'm really just working with really\n\nengineering and production um and um like it sometimes may seem like wow he's really out there a lot but actually i'm not if you see how many actual interviews do i do it's quite a small number um but uh when if i do a tweet they'll like make an entire like two-page article about it you know um so i'm like like basically far furious i'm like actually quite internally focused at spacex and tesla even though it may not seem that way um and it's really just you know evolving the rocket technology uh with spacex and providing global internet with starling and then tesla it's about accelerating sustainable energy um and you know with electric cars and stationary battery packs and solar power and um you know the fundamental good of tesla i would say is measured\n\nby um how many years did we accelerate the advantage of sustainable energy uh and then the fundamental good of spacex is uh you know are we able to make life multi-planetary um and thus improve the probable lifespan of of uh consciousness um but you always say like what what is a unifying philosophy uh for me it is uh we should take the set of actions most likely to uh extend the scope scale and lifespan of consciousness as we know it um and uh you know so that's like like what what set of actions improve things at a civilizational level um and improve a probable lifespan of civilization um like hospitalization will come to an end at some point but let's try to make it last as long as possible um and it would be great to understand more about the nature\n\nof the universe uh why we're here the meaning of life where are things going where we come from um can we travel to other star systems and see if there are any alien civilizations that there might be there might be a whole bunch of long dead one planet civilizations out there that that existed you know 500 million years ago um if you think about the hispanic human civilization from the advent of the first writing it's only about five thousand years which is nothing um you know earth is roughly four and a half billion years old so um the old civilization as measured from the adventure writing is a flash in the pan and uh i think we want to take whatever actions we can to extend that flash in the pan to hopefully be a plane that lasts a long time i can't\n\nbelieve that's the transition from aliens away from away from this conversation back to uh to twitter what what i'm just saying it's aliens but yes what does twitter look like to you all right i gotta stop trolling people about the alien stuff because people really think i i i to be clear i've i've seen no evidence uh what i've seen no actual evidence for aliens i get asked that a lot um and i think i know and i've not seen anything um yet okay you've heard it here everybody um question about twitter when you look um five to ten years from now what do you consider successful for yourself in in acquiring the company and for all of us and the work that we do what does success look like yeah so i think um success would be um a is a substantial increase in\n\ndaily active users um you know i don't like said if uh you know can you can we get uh daily active users over a billion that would be you know it's still only one eighth of us uh but that would be a huge improvement from where things are today um and uh you know and and i guess broadly speaking like is twitter helping um further civilization and consciousness um you know like are we it's just twitter i'm not we're not saying transactions are complete so i shouldn't say we but um but like on is twitter contributing to a a um a stronger longer lasting civilization where we're better able to understand the nature of reality um i would say like my philosophy is one of curiosity of trying to understand the nature of the universe in as much as possible to understand\n\num so in order to understand the nature of the universe we must expand the scope and scale consciousness to extend the life of consciousness uh so i like i guess broadly speaking would be has twitter meaningfully improved um the strength and longevity of civilization i know that we have gone meaningfully over so first of all thank you so much for the time thank you for coming back for a part two thank you for continuing um the conversation with all of us all right you're welcome thank you so much we'll talk very soon all right thanks bye thank you bye everybody [Music] you","textByLang":{"en":"all right hello everyone thanks for joining this special q a session with elon elon thank you so much for joining us the company's been so eager to hear from you live and direct and we all appreciate you joining us uh today thanks for having me uh it's glad to be able to speak to everyone and since we started late i'm gonna go right right ahead hand it over to leslie so that she can moderate this q a session for us okay sounds good amazing thanks um we have a lot to cover a ton to cover so i am going to ask you a question that usually gets asked at the end which is you know you come back for a part two at some point if there are things that we don't cover oh yeah absolutely okay great okay so you have some breathing room so um i really do see this at\n\nthe beginning of a conversation obviously with the company at large and then also with teams and leaders over the next coming weeks and months and beyond so we're just getting started um okay so i'm going to zoom all the way out to the reason that we're actually here together today and that is because you love twitter um yes i want to be clear about that i love twitter in fact i literally have tweeted i love twitter you have so tell us say more why do you love twitter and also why did you and do you want to buy twitter well um let's see i mean i i find like i learn a lot uh from what i read on twitter and what i see on the um the pictures videos text and memes that people uh create um i also find it's a great way to get a message out or if i want to if\n\ni want to say something make an announcement um i think twitter's the best way to do that um it just goes out immediately to everyone um and um you know i i sort of made this joke already but uh you know some people use their hair to express themselves i use twitter so um you know i i find it's uh yeah um the best uh forum for communicating with um a lot of people simultaneously um and getting that message directly to people um you know in the past you have to in order in order for somebody to to read about something you have to issue a press release or and then you hope that the regular media would write about the press release and then they wouldn't write about it in quite the way you'd like to write about it um i always found those like about old-style\n\npress releases kind of oddly like really quite strange because you're writing a press release about yourself which is sort of uh something that the media it's like it's overly some overly flattering it's like mainly sort of you know propagandist in fact quite propagandist um and then hope that the media writes something favorable which they usually do not um and you know i think that that actually is maybe one of the biggest reasons for me using twitter is so i can talk and communicate directly with people and not through the lens of the media um and you know i think there's obviously an important role for the media to play but uh as anyone knows who reads the newspaper uh it's coming through quite a negative lens so you know i have to say how many newspaper\n\narticles do you read that are positive and how many news articles do you read that are negative what percentage are positive what percentage negative and then when you read about it you know it's obviously overwhelmingly negative um and then when you when you read about something in um this newspaper was a dated term uh in the news um that you where you actually personally understand the situation how many times has have the media gotten it right well i would say almost never not never but almost never so uh you know it's this is a a way to for for people to communicate directly with each other um and not through a negative lens and um i think that's extremely important for the world so i'm sort of going waxing on about this but i think it's pretty important\n\num and um you know that the that sort of like some of my comments about twitter being sort of like a digital town square um but really much more than that because you know you can't put that many people in town square but you have to communicate with millions of people on twitter um that's just an incredibly important thing and i think it's it's essential for a functioning uh democracy or to to function well i think it's essential to have a free speech um and for and to be able to communicate yeah just communicate freely um now the you know the the priests speech stuff this needs to be you know it's free speech within within the context of the law so it's not i'm not definitely not suggesting that we you know um just flout the law because they hope it\n\nwill get shut down in that case um and and i think there's also um this freedom of speech and freedom of reach and uh your freedom of speech is one thing because like anyone could just go into the middle of times square right now and say anything they want they just walk into the middle of times square and deny the holocaust okay you can't stop them they will just do that but that doesn't mean you have to that needs to be promoted to millions of people um so um so i think people should be allowed to say you know pretty outrageous things that are within the balance of the law but but then they don't you know it doesn't get amplified it doesn't get you know a ton of reach um and um i think an important goal for twitter it would be to try to include as as\n\nmuch of the country as much of the world as possible um so currently you know it's a it's a relatively small percentage of the world that is it is a small percentage of what that is uh on twitter if you say like daily active users if you assume that that's say 200 million um you've got you know eight billion people on earth that's a 7.\n\n8 billion who are not on twitter so that's a pretty big number um and really i think you want as many as much as possible on twitter you want to be as inclusive as possible uh the broadest demographic um and for that to happen people must like being on twitter so if they're being like harassed or if they're uncomfortable uh they're just not gonna use twitter and they're you know so you know we yeah we have to sort of strike this balance of you know allowing people to say what they want to say but but but also making people comfortable on on twitter uh well they simply won't use it it will be you know it'll be sort of quite niche um but i think there's also a lot of a lot that should be done in terms of enhancing the core technology and offerings of twitter\n\num like right now if somebody does uh say a video like let's say a content creator does a video then they're gonna put that video on on youtube and and just like put a link to it from twitter because they're able to monetize their content on youtube but not on on twitter and i think it's going to be really important for if you want people put the content on on twitter which we do um then it has to be a mechanism for content creators to monetize that that content and so they could make a dual post so they could post it to youtube and to enter twitter but i think it's crazy right now that you know uh content creators will use twitter to to drive traffic to their youtube video of because you know that's how they make a living um and and that really should\n\nbe on on twitter um like we want to basically address the reasons that people like why why aren't more people using twitter and why do people click away from twitter and if we can um address those reasons then then there will be they'll use twitter more and they'll get greater value from the for you know from the service and um and and uh you know if but if i um you know think of like like wechat in china which is actually a great great app um but there's no wechat booklet in uh outside of china and i think that there's a real opportunity to create that um sort of you know you basically live on wechat in china so um because it's so useful and and uh you know so so helpful to your daily life um and i think if we achieve that or even get close to that with\n\ntwitter be an event a success um hopefully that that is that's you know really i really went on there but um i don't have to elaborate on any of those points yeah no it's great and we're gonna get a little bit deeper on free speech and policy a little bit later so i do want to come back to this actually um but in terms of you you clearly have a lot of thoughts around sort of the problems with twitter the things that aren't working well or the barriers to what's possible um how do you see your buying the company is that was that sort of feed your desire to buy the companies or how do you see these things um sort of come together and what like how what's your thought process around that um well there's definitely um an ongoing challenge or twitter with\n\num with bot what accounts and spam accounts um you know there's still quite a lot of crypto scams on twitter um it's gotten like it's been better but this looks still a fair bit of that um there are also people where they're not necessarily bots but they might be operating you know one person's operating hundreds of accounts um and trying to make you try trying to make them look like individuals but they're not so um you know i think it's and i a lot of stuff kind of reiterating stuff that i said publicly but and in fact on twitter um uh the in order for people to have trust in twitter i think it's extremely important that there be transparency so that's why i'm an advocate of having the algorithm be open source so people can uh critique it improve it\n\nidentify bugs potentially or bias but what is transparent transparency it constantly increases trust um so i think it's just um a very important like that yeah any anything that's happening on an automated basis be um open source and be uh you know clear and that if there is any action taken by someone within twitter to um you know uh deep boost or d boost or something with a tweet that it's just very clearly identified on the tweet so people aren't um you know subscribing to malice that which is not the way where there's no malice um so um but when when it's inscrutable then people don't know what to think and they will sometimes think the worst uh when when that's actually not true so i think that price is extremely important and and then just for the\n\nusefulness of the system um get getting rid of of um sort of troll farms and and advanced and spam is incredibly important um i'm going to have a thought in this regard which i think um is is might work which is to you know there's currently just twitter blue but if you hit twitter blue it doesn't your identification in the system does not change at all like you still look like a normal user id but i think if if there was like a little you know twitter blue authenticated not like authenticated like a celebrity but authenticated at least by twitter blue payments um just using the paper pay your banking on the payment system to your authentication um that i think a lot of people will be like okay that's that's uh that's pretty helpful to have some designation\n\nthat is next to my name um that indicates i'm i'm probably not a bot or spam or one of one person who's operating out of accounts um and um you know that's like three bucks a month i believe i think that would be pretty helpful and then uh and then also prioritizing uh comments and um you know mentions and whatnot by who is verified in this broader sense the word of verification in the sense of you know that you're twitter blue verified um and just prioritize yeah like um that above someone who's not not verified so there'll still be full read access to the system so people write access to a system but but instead but you essentially uh um any uh any tweets or our actions will be prioritized according to who's verified and then a very large number of\n\npeople can be verified i'm going to have a couple of follow-up questions on this specifically but given you mentioned trust i wanted to ask one of the employee questions around trust um they said twitter has a lot of incredible smart talented people what can we do to earn your trust and what are you going to do to earn ours um you know i think uh i know trust is as trust does um so um you know the i i tend to be extremely literal in what i say um so you know i aspirationally one does not need to read between the lines one can simply read the lines um and uh so the things that i said about twitter i think are need to happen um in order for it to be um you know to really go to the next level i mean i think like the potential is there for twitter to have\n\nand you know be accessible to an order bank to more people um and for a lot more people to find it useful um not you know currently i guess would be like four or four percent of the world or something like that i don't know i said four or five percent of the world optimistically is finding twitter useful and like maybe 50 percent of the world could find twitter useful um so i want to take whatever actions um would lead to that and um you know the uh you know i'm very much like uh it's it's just as i wouldn't say essentially a trust thing it's like if somebody's getting useful things done um then that's great and but if if they're not getting useful things on them like okay why are they at the company um so it's really just um like we need to improve the\n\ncourse technology uh improve the design um and [Music] you know so trust emerges from that yeah i mean trust that yes it's not it's like you know if somebody's getting stuff done great i love them and if they're not i don't like that then i do not it's pretty straightforward can we i would like to stay on this topic of employees and how we work um so distributed work is something that has been core to our strategy um most of our people work in a hybrid model about 1500 people work remote full-time um we know that you recently made you know sent a communication to tesla executives about remote work can you share what your point of view is on remote work and specifically for twitter yeah so now tesla makes cars and you cannot make cars remotely um obviously\n\nthey're they're you have to make cars in a big factory um and the supply chain and and you know and you have to bring in the parts and you know assemble them and then transport the car to the owner um all of these things must be done in person because they're just it's physically impossible to do them remotely now there are some roles at tesla where what can be can be done remotely like say software or design um and uh it's so that you know i think that's still a case where you want to aspire to do things in person um but if somebody is exceptional at their job then it's possible for them to be effective even working remotely so uh with with tesla i simply have asked for a list um you know that the manager has to confirm that that they're um they're an\n\nexcellent contributor and if they do they're allowed to work remotely um so it's pretty basic i think um there isn't there is a hit one takes remotely because the they've just reduced esprit de corps and you know it's like it's hard to you know like get like if you just there's there's really it really it kind of matters to be in person um at least some of the time so like one of the things he said even if somebody's working remotely they're going to show up at the office occasionally so that they recognize their colleagues and don't have you know you have to walk down the street and pass your colleague and and they're you don't even recognize them that would not be good yeah no i think this is this is super clarifying and resonates with us and entirely\n\nin terms of how we work so thank you for for clarifying that topic is really important to us um i would like to keep on the topic of employees and some of the questions that have come through um this one's on on compensation and benefits most people especially obviously here are used to working for a public company um can you talk a little bit about how you compensate folks at spacex as a private company how does it work and what approach you plan to take at twitter as a private company yeah so um spacex i think operates in the best of both worlds where uh stock and options are issued to everyone but um we don't have all the challenges being publicly traded company where the stuff could be up and down from one day to the next would be quite a distraction\n\num and where one is at the mercy of short sellers and um class action lawsuits and just generally it's like being in the stockades of public stockade and they should throw tomatoes at you all day um so but spacex still allows liquidity and and so every every six months this liquidity event at spacex and people have the opportunity to sell their shares um and that's worked very well uh for the whole life of the company so i think something like that would make sense at twitter so it still be stocking options everything and it just be liquidity events twice a year great and thanks we are getting some real-time feedback on the remote work questions i just want to make sure i follow up um your approach to remote work and distributed work at twitter you are\n\nthat what i'm hearing from you is that you are supportive of remotely distributed work as as it is productive and meaningful people show up when it's important and depending on their jobs is that an accurate reflection yeah i mean the bias definitely needs to be strongly towards working in person um but but if somebody is uh exceptional then um remote work can be okay um but then if basically if they're if their work output is exceptional then remote work is is fine there is some communication uh you know impact that one takes when working remotely because if you're with people you know that and they're just you know a few desks away it's very easy to communicate in real time uh but it's much harder to do that if you're in different physical locations\n\nso i do want to emphasize that the bias is very much uh towards in-person work it's it's just but it would obviously be insane if someone is uh excellent what they do but can only work remotely to then fire them even though they're doing excellent work would be insane so i'm definitely not in favor of like things that are like mad um i'm in favor of things that that build the business and make it better thank you um question about layoffs um we've received several questions from employees on this point um obviously they've read about the recent playoffs at tesla um can you speak to how you're thinking about layoffs on twitter well i think it depends on um you know the company does need to be to get healthy so i mean right now the the costs exceed the\n\nrevenue so that's just that's not that's not a great situation to be in um and so i don't have to be some rationalization of of the of headcap and expenses to have revenue be greater than cost otherwise twitter is simply not not viable or you know can't grow um so [Music] yeah i think it would just be dependent on you know but when i said that anyone who's like obviously like a significant contributor should have nothing to worry about like i'm i i'm not you know i do not take actions which are destructive to the health of the company um so you know um yeah elon question connected to that as you're obviously learning and gaining information as we get closer to this deal being closed um what do you feel that you have sort of a deep understanding and grasp\n\nof and what are the areas that you feel you want to dive much more deeper on to understand and learn well i certainly i mean i have a strong a great understanding of the product because i i use twitter um every day practically um and you know i think i've got a really good understanding of of um you know how twitter works from a product standpoint um what i have less understanding of is you know um you know like like this this uh sort of bot spam or or you know multi-user account basically anything that that affects the monetizable daily user number is that that's probably my biggest concern um because that's really what drives advertising revenue at as well as subscription revenue um so um and really the twitter's your revenues is gonna be subscription\n\num advertising i think payments would be an interesting thing to do um as well um but uh but all of those things are are only relevant for as a function of how many uh unique humans are on the system so [Music] it's that's that's the that's the most that's my that's my biggest concern and that's what's you know what i said publicly as well um like i said i try to be as literal as possible um so um and yeah yeah and as we think about obviously the product and the service and serving customers all around the world clearly um it's critical and extension essential for us to serve diverse communities um and all people as you said as you said earlier so inclusion diversity is obviously core essential to our work at twitter both our employees and the customers\n\nthat we serve um you've been vocal on a variety of different topics and issues that relate to inclusion and diversity can you talk about your qual for your views and also your commitment to creating a diverse and inclusive workplace and also a service where everyone can feel included safe uh yeah i mean well it's to be clear um you know if everyone talks about the you know as i said about twitter as a whole like there's eight billion people in the world um there's sort of um i'm told there's 200 million um you know daily users of twitter that's a 7.\n\n8 billion person gap um so i think we really want to have you know i don't know at least a billion people on twitter maybe more um as many people as you can possibly get on twitter so that i think is the most inclusive definition of inclusiveness it's like all humans so um you know that's uh that's important um you know from a company standpoint you know i believe in something in a sort of strict meritocracy so whatever uh you know whoever's doing great work great you know they they get more responsibility authority um and that's that and i know we you mentioned in in some of our conversations about your ind team at tesla we have an amazing id team here here at twitter as well so um continue on the journey on the journey together um i wanted to talk about\n\ncontent moderation go back to a number of things that you said earlier um so this one i'll take um i'll take verbatim so you've spoken a lot about the importance of free speech let's start with the u.\n\ns where we have a strong tradition around this and you talk you've touched on this earlier a lot of what's called lawful but awful speech is allowed here in the united states right animal abuse footage doxxing videos of sexual violence etc um so along allowing this kind this type of content obviously could cause harm um and make you know twitter unusable for for the broad audience that that you're trying to reach um what is your approach to this type of content that's sort of legal um but problematic as it relates to people actually using the service how do you think about this tension um as i said earlier really it's like i think people we should allow people to say what they want post what they want to put in the balance of the law um but that that\n\nthat's different from them being able to reach people who don't want to be reached with that content so if that content is offensive then um two two people they will those who will not will simply stop using twitter so uh it's important to uh make twitter as attractive as possible and really that that means not showing people content that they would find uh painful or offensive or or even frankly content they would find boring is not good so we don't want them to see boring content um unless we were talking about uh tick tock last night and uh tick tock obviously just like like a great job of making sure you are not bored um i mean if this does like feel like 80d but like next level but um but tick tock does a great job of of making our board i mean i\n\ni i do find some other videos offensive i think um but they're not boring um so the the folks we are like how do we ensure people have content that is that they find entertaining and engaging and interesting um such that they want to keep using twitter and use it more so that's uh you know uh that's what that that's essential to the growth of the service and one of our employees asked about sort of people who use twitter having the right and the ability to filter out content that they don't want to see i think this gets to exactly what you're what you're pointing to um yeah yeah i mean to be clear it's like like the the standard is much more than not offending people the standard should be that they're they're very entertained and informed like this because\n\nlike so like you could not offend someone but you'll support them and show them a bunch of content that they don't find interesting and then they will not use the service or they will use it less um so um that's why i use the example of tick tock where they they just hold an algorithm to be as engaging as possible um and i think we want to also hold it to be as engaging as possible in a different way i think um you know that's that's like tick tock is interesting but like you want to be informed about like serious issues as well um and um i think twitter in terms of like serious issues can be a lot better you know informing people about serious issues um i do think it's important that that there be you know if there are two sides to an issue it's important\n\nto represent you know if there are multiple opinions but you know and just make sure that we're not sort of uh driving a narrative um but they'll be give people an opportunity to understand the the various science missions most issues in the world are are complex they they are they're not they're boiled down to a simple this is this is 100 good and this is 100 bad um so i think it would be uh it would be it would have a more informed public if if people presented with multiple sites to an issue one point i just want to go back to on sort of uh the law and sort of how that how that in fact impacts content and moderation as we think globally around the world there are some countries right that limit that have laws that limit speech um and sometimes actually\n\nuse these laws to silence disagreement with the government et cetera you're talking about different points of view so twitter is historically focused on doing what we can do to enable people everywhere to have their voices um how do you think about that as it relates to again like the local laws and what that means well i mean i i'm in favor of doing you know of going as far as the law will allow us if the law you know if say 200 employees would get arrested in the country if we if we didn't adhere to the law then we would also adhere to the law or uh exit the country or something um so um but i mean as much as we can enable people to have a voice and um and to speak their mind i think we want it we want to do that um yeah um and i know we talked about\n\nthis as well last night about the teams doing this work and your desire to connect with those teams and sort of understand sort of where we've been where we are where we're going um and i think that would be hugely productive um across the board both ways um can we talk uh briefly about your political views um how if all if at all do your political views play into the leadership of the companies that you currently run how would it affect twitter if at all well my my political views i think are moderate at least as would be you know as if you said like what is the center of the normal distribution of political abuse in the country i think i'd be pretty close to the center um you know i i voted democrat um every election until this recent one this week\n\num and uh and then i voted for mayor flores who's a republican um she was um uh mexican american and um i thought a good candidate and and was voting for so um but i i you know i i'm in favor of uh of moderate politics um but but you know allowing people who have like uh you know relatively extreme views to um you know to express those views with it within the bounds of the law um so that's you know you know as i said like the i think if the let's say the far left 10 and far right 10 were equally upset on twitter then that would probably be a good outcome i want to um just talk about our business um for a minute you've spoken about incentives um that the ad business creates for services like twitter um what role does advertising play in the future of\n\nyour business plan for the company i think advertising is is very important for twitter so in the case of say tesla spacex there's is there's no need for advertising because the demand exceeds um our production so um i mean advertising is fundamentally a demand generator um and occasionally you want to get some other message out there but it's it's fundamentally a demand generator so um given that that tesla demand is far in excess of production uh there's no need for tesla to advertise um but uh you know i'm not against advertising um i i would i would uh probably i don't want to talk to the advertisers and say like hey let's let's make sure the ads are as entertaining as possible um that i think they're more effective if they're entertaining um like\n\nyou want sort of you don't want to be strident or spammy and they add and then of course i don't think it's good to allow advertising of any products which are you know uh bad products you know like like um i was literally scammed on it i bought this thing off of a youtube ad and it doesn't work um and then i i just googled it and it's like oh yeah once you click on the second page of google search results it's like yeah this product totally does work and it's trash um and i'm like well what the hell's you youtube allowing advertising of the of scammy products that's totally not cool um so you know like and i just i think if if you if the advertising is entertaining interesting um it's something you might actually want uh and the product would be cool\n\nyou know fulfilling to the you know to the twitter user then i think that's great advertising um so yeah so you know we're going to go over is that okay oh yes awesome thank you um can you talk a little bit about twitter and payments um you mentioned this a few times at different settings let's uh understand your thinking there yeah i think um you know money is essentially a form of information so um uh you know it's information that allows us to exchange products and services without having to to barter and and allows the people to shift obligations in time um but but money is fundamentally digital at this point and it has been for a while and um you know paypal you know i think has um done done a great job on the payments front um i think it's it's\n\nit would make sense to integrate payments into twitter um so that's easy to send money back and forth um uh you know and and fiat currency as well as crypto um you know and i said essentially whatever somebody would find useful so like i said i think the goal my goal would be to to maximize the usefulness of the of the uh service um the more useful it is uh the better and if one can use it to make convenient payments that that's an increase in usefulness um it you know it's sort of it's sort of news uh entertainment and payments i think are like three critical areas um but really it's just about sort of thinking about how how to make this how to make using twitter so compelling that you can't live without it and that and that everyone wants to use i it\n\nto stay on the product i know you again you did such about this earlier but it's um a recurring question around the authentication piece um you know in terms of yours and you you want to authenticate all humans so so just to sort of double click into that you know balancing this with those who benefit from anonymity right from safety perspective especially for example human rights activists and marginalized communities so it's sort of um can you just clarify again and speak to that sort of that tension and how you think about about those groups specifically sort of core to have the service yeah yeah i i don't think um it's necessary for someone to use their real name um so if one say does a famous base authentication um i think it should be okay to not\n\nuse your real name on twitter so twitter would would know who would know who you are at least from a payment standpoint but um but you would not have to state your real name or anything um that's obviously important where if if someone has different political views from their manager let's say then they they don't really want to you know uh get crosswise there and so that it'd be better for them to um you know have a pseudonym um on twitter um but but it's still fit back handle dedicated and like i said this is no point would um i suggest that you have to be authenticated in order to use twitter it's just that it would just be a prioritizing authenticated uh comments um and actions on twitter over unauthenticated um in order to combat uh the sort of bots\n\nand trolls and essentially like it needs to be much more expensive to to have a troll army um whereas right now it's it's basically very inexpensive to have a hundred thousand paid twitter accounts and you have you have certainly been very vocal on twitter you are very vocal on twitter and um often your tweets and even emojis create news cycles um you know you have been also critical of the company um on twitter which obviously impacts lots of discussions conversations and perceptions from whether it be partners or even our employees um how do you think about these tweets um do you look at the reaction about the reaction of those these tweets and just curious or the thinking behind the tweet if you will well i think that it would be helpful you know i\n\nthink one thing about words is that it's hard to convey tone um and so it's possible for um essentially people will sometimes like take take the words and then assume they were said in maybe an angry way or um you know an addictive way or something like that um but i mean although you can tell like my normal tone is not uh i'm not i'm not an angry person i almost never raised my voice so um like in a year i might not have raised my voice literally um so this is not um you know so sometimes people may think oh wow he's sort of yelling screaming or something but i'm really not um uh so make some way to indicate tone i mean emojis sort of do that um but i don't know maybe there could be like a where you [Music] have like a i don't know um irony flag or something\n\num this is like this is an ironic you know it's an ironic tweets or something like that um listen i think i think spaces is a great product for you as well which i don't think i've seen you use before but i think that would add sort of your your literal voice over um and color some of the things that you tweet so maybe you cannot sort of oh sure [Music] i should i should yeah maybe i could just say it yeah exactly exactly or you could you could read it but then you can also see how i would have said it like when you you know you're like i wonder if you said that in an angry way and then you can see how i actually said it yes absolutely absolutely that'd be a new thing um on your um i know we have i'm gonna only push you about 10 more minutes um up at\n\nthe hour so i'm holding you until then um your your role at the company um you know there's been some discussion about will you be a ceo will you not be ceo how what can you speak to this and how do you anticipate your role sort of influencing strategy day-to-day division well i guess i'm i'm not that hung up on titles but uh i i do want to um drive the product in a particular direction um so you know it's it could be like i don't really care what you know about being ceo in fact uh i i i renamed myself techno king at tesla um with an official sec filing um so um yes we saw yeah and and then our cfo was renamed master of coin which i think is a cooler thing than cfo um so um the i mean the what i really just want to do is is like drive the product to\n\nimprove the product and then it's like basically a software and product design you know so um you know i don't mind doing other things you know related to operating a company but there are kind of chores there's a lot of chores to the ceo um and uh i i really just want to make sure that the the rapidly and in a good way um and um i don't really care what title is but um but i do obviously people do need to listen to me uh if i say like hey we need to make part improve production like i'm falling away make the following changes um uh at these features uh then you know like can't you expect that that that people listen to me um in this regard and i mean that's how i that's what i do at spacex and tesla so um you know i i'm really just working with really\n\nengineering and production um and um like it sometimes may seem like wow he's really out there a lot but actually i'm not if you see how many actual interviews do i do it's quite a small number um but uh when if i do a tweet they'll like make an entire like two-page article about it you know um so i'm like like basically far furious i'm like actually quite internally focused at spacex and tesla even though it may not seem that way um and it's really just you know evolving the rocket technology uh with spacex and providing global internet with starling and then tesla it's about accelerating sustainable energy um and you know with electric cars and stationary battery packs and solar power and um you know the fundamental good of tesla i would say is measured\n\nby um how many years did we accelerate the advantage of sustainable energy uh and then the fundamental good of spacex is uh you know are we able to make life multi-planetary um and thus improve the probable lifespan of of uh consciousness um but you always say like what what is a unifying philosophy uh for me it is uh we should take the set of actions most likely to uh extend the scope scale and lifespan of consciousness as we know it um and uh you know so that's like like what what set of actions improve things at a civilizational level um and improve a probable lifespan of civilization um like hospitalization will come to an end at some point but let's try to make it last as long as possible um and it would be great to understand more about the nature\n\nof the universe uh why we're here the meaning of life where are things going where we come from um can we travel to other star systems and see if there are any alien civilizations that there might be there might be a whole bunch of long dead one planet civilizations out there that that existed you know 500 million years ago um if you think about the hispanic human civilization from the advent of the first writing it's only about five thousand years which is nothing um you know earth is roughly four and a half billion years old so um the old civilization as measured from the adventure writing is a flash in the pan and uh i think we want to take whatever actions we can to extend that flash in the pan to hopefully be a plane that lasts a long time i can't\n\nbelieve that's the transition from aliens away from away from this conversation back to uh to twitter what what i'm just saying it's aliens but yes what does twitter look like to you all right i gotta stop trolling people about the alien stuff because people really think i i i to be clear i've i've seen no evidence uh what i've seen no actual evidence for aliens i get asked that a lot um and i think i know and i've not seen anything um yet okay you've heard it here everybody um question about twitter when you look um five to ten years from now what do you consider successful for yourself in in acquiring the company and for all of us and the work that we do what does success look like yeah so i think um success would be um a is a substantial increase in\n\ndaily active users um you know i don't like said if uh you know can you can we get uh daily active users over a billion that would be you know it's still only one eighth of us uh but that would be a huge improvement from where things are today um and uh you know and and i guess broadly speaking like is twitter helping um further civilization and consciousness um you know like are we it's just twitter i'm not we're not saying transactions are complete so i shouldn't say we but um but like on is twitter contributing to a a um a stronger longer lasting civilization where we're better able to understand the nature of reality um i would say like my philosophy is one of curiosity of trying to understand the nature of the universe in as much as possible to understand\n\num so in order to understand the nature of the universe we must expand the scope and scale consciousness to extend the life of consciousness uh so i like i guess broadly speaking would be has twitter meaningfully improved um the strength and longevity of civilization i know that we have gone meaningfully over so first of all thank you so much for the time thank you for coming back for a part two thank you for continuing um the conversation with all of us all right you're welcome thank you so much we'll talk very soon all right thanks bye thank you bye everybody [Music] you"},"languages":["en"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FLvTcRrzy20"},{"id":"all-in-summit-2022-05-16","type":"interview","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CnxzrX9tNoc","title":"All-In Summit","titles":{"en":"All-In Summit","de":"All-In Summit","fr":"All-In Summit"},"date":"2022-05-16","summary":"All-In hosts Chamath, Jason Calacanis, David Sacks and David Friedberg interview Musk about Twitter's bots, SpaceX, Tesla and moving to Texas.","text":"so uh live from an undisclosed location with the sultry filter on very sultry filter on yeah having a great hair day yeah that is a good hair day great hair day my pal and your favorite ceo and twitterer mr elon musk how you doing palette [Applause] [Music] appreciate you uh coming to the event and um or coming zooming in um what's new in your world um well let's see um i guess right now uh i'm sort of debating the number of bots on twitter [Music] [Applause] on twitter um and um the currently i'd like to what what i'm being told is that the uh there's just no way to know the number of bots it's like as unknowable as the human soul basically so you have an idea witchcraft and alchemy is needed to determine these for the spot percentage i said like why\n\ndon't i try calling people but i haven't got a response you know like if you tried calling people or something you know like maybe trying to answer it's not about no no no i don't know but i think like that would be one of the things to do to say like have you tried calling them as opposed to trying to read the tea leaves here that's like impossible you know uh obviously you can have an account that looks exactly like a human account or is being operated where one person is operating a thousand accounts or something um but that person can only buy one toaster they're not gonna buy a thousand toasters so you care about like number of unique real people that are on the system it's extremely fundamental and anyone who uses twitter is well aware that uh the\n\ntheir comment the comment threads are are full of spam scam and and um just a lot of you know fake accounts so um it's it seems uh beyond beyond reasonable for twitter to claim that the number of uh essentially the number of re said another way the number of real unique humans uh that you see making comments on a daily basis on twitter is above 95 percent that is what they're claiming does anyone have that experience [Music] [Laughter] i'd like to sell you you know you know and also you can buy the brooklyn bridge um what do you think it is what yeah what's what's the uh i mean it's not five percent what is it um i think it's some number that is probably at least uh four or five times that number the i'd say it at uh if you did sort of the the lowest\n\nestimate would be probably 20 um and uh and this and this is a a bunch of uh quite smart outside firms have done analysis of twitter and uh looked at the the the daily daily users and their conclusion is also about is about 20 but that's a lower bound it's not an upper bound if you look at say um the most liked tweets on twitter um so i i have the uh the honor of having the most liked tweet of any living human um this is thank you everyone for liking my tweet including you some of the bots out there but that tweet is less than 5 million likes it's like 4.\n\n7 or something like that and that that that was the where i tweeted about um that next time buying coca-cola to put the cocaine back in it's definitely it's clearly something that the public really wants and you know uh coca-cola corporation should really think about going back to their roots um coca-cola um i mean this this i guess is the reason why our grandparents could sort of walk 20 miles in the snow because they had coca-cola with cocaine this is a real reason so um anyway that was that's that is literally the most popular tweet um of any of any living human um and but twitter says that the daily monet the sort of monetizable daily act of uses is 217 million um so why would it be that the most popular tweet ever basically is only you know two two\n\nand a half percent of the entire user base this this seems a very very low number um and um and the most popular tweets generally are clustered around that sort of four million uh like level so it's like sort of caller like basically two percent or that or less than two percent of of the uh daily active users and and technically monetizable daily active users is how twitter refers to it so it just seems how is this possible um surely there's something that maybe you know ten percent of people would like not merely two percent well actually you know if you think about it elon um there's a corollary on youtube what do what's the total user base of youtube and what have the most popular videos gotten there yes and i think there's a billion or two maybe a\n\nbillion people using youtube and those the most popular videos have tens of billions of views that might be instructive exactly that ratio makes a lot more sense um so something doesn't add up here um and my concern is isn't it's not that is it like you know is it five or or seven or eight percent but is it potentially eighty percent or ninety percent bots yeah um you know uh is it i mean i i certainly know there's some real people on twitter but uh but what's if is it an order of magnitude is it is it 50 instead of five and that's obviously an incredibly material number um especially since twitter uh relies uh primarily on brand advertising as opposed to specific click-through advertising where you make a purchase if you if you make a purchase it it\n\ndoesn't really matter that much but for brand advertising which is really just awareness advertising it matters if real humans are seeing that or not yeah and and so i guess stepping back for a second people are curious why you want to buy twitter why is this so important to you and then i guess what are the chances you think the deal gets done at this point so a two-parter why is it so important to me i mean some of this i've articulated before but i think there's a need for a a public town square digital town square that uh where people can debate uh issues of all kinds um including the most substantive issues and in order for for that to be the case you have to have something that is as broadly inclusive as possible that has as much of the the people\n\non the platform as possible uh where it's uh it feels uh balanced from a political standpoint uh it's not biased one way or the other um and where the system is transparent this is why i think it's important to put the algorithm on on github and actually allow the public to see it and critique it and improve it and if there are any manual changes uh sort of shadow banning as it's called or increasing or decreasing the prominence of a tweet that's done manually that that should be noted uh so you know what has happened and it's not just uh you know you're just where it is right now we don't know what the heck is going on why is one tweet doing well why isn't that sweet not is it the algorithm did someone manually intervene uh why are some accounts banned\n\nuh with no recourse apparently um and um you know the the reality is uh that twitter at this point you know has uh a very far-left bias um and i would class myself as a moderate and you know neither the republican nor nor democrat um and in fact uh i have voted vote overwhelmingly for democrats uh historically overwhelmingly like i'm not sure i might never have voted for a republican just to be clear right now now this election i would well david you okay how are you gonna die he keep going keep going he's fine he's fine we're gonna resuscitate him we're gonna resuscitate david sacks i mean let me ask you a person the point i'm trying to make is that this is not some sort of attempt to uh you know it's not some right wing takeover uh as as say people\n\nin life may fear uh but rather a moderate wing takeover um and an attempt to uh ensure that that people of of all uh you know political uh beliefs feel welcome on on a digital town square that and they can express uh their their beliefs uh without fear of being banned or shadow banned um and and and that we we obviously need to get rid of the bots uh and and scams and trials and people that are operating uh huge bot armies in an attempt to uh unduly influence the the public opinion so this is what i think it's very important that we have that like the the some of the smartest people in history have have thought about it and said like free speech is important for a for a healthy democracy it is important and free speech only matters like say when does\n\nprestige matter most it's when someone when it's someone you don't like saying something you don't like uh that's when it actually matters um so um you know obviously and and and it's pretty annoying when someone you don't like says something you don't like that's that's that's bad but it's actually a good sign of uh that that you have free speech um so i mean i get trashed by the media all the time it's fine i don't care uh go do do it twice as much i couldn't care less um but it's indicative of the fact that even though um i you know i have like a lot of resources i do not actually have the ability to stop the media from trashing me and that's actually a good thing yeah i i have to ask um with regard to this current administration i know how hard you\n\nwork uh on the car company and then biden you know you've been a lifelong democrat you've donated to obama and to everybody probably never voted republican and yet and the same is true for joe rogan joe rogan is you know a bernie sanders supporter and that the democratic party has been openly hostile to joe rogan and biden can't even say the word tesla or invite you to the white house when they do an eevee summit i'm curious just on a very personal basis what does it feel like to have that experience where the party you supported is won't even say the name of your company or invite you there they should be celebrating the work you're doing yeah i mean it it definitely feels like this is not right like this is [Music] the the issue here is that there's\n\njust an uh this the democrat party is overly overly controlled by the unions and by the trial lawyers particularly the class action uh lawyers um and generally if you if you'll see something that doesn't that is not in the interest of the of the people um on the on the democrat side it's going to come because of the unions uh which is just another form of monopoly and the uh the trial lawyers uh that that's where actions will be happening from democrats side they're not in the interests of the people and then um to be fair on the republican side uh there's this if you say like where is something like not not ideal happening it's because of corporate evil um and uh religious zealotry um but that's generally where the bad things will be coming from on the\n\nrepublican side um that are not representative of the people so um in the case of biden he is simply too too much uh captured by the unions um which was not the case with obama um so in the case of obama you could have you know he was sort of quite reasonable um and i think he took more of a view of that you know obviously take the concerns of the unions into account but uh there are there are bigger issues at stake and and unfortunately biden does not do that you'll have a tesla question i read today it's incredible there was a bloomberg article that said the following so the setup is this it said since you went public tesla's up 22 000 uh 11 quarters of prof sequential profitability so hitting on all cylinders but the a public analyst we had to look\n\nat it [Laughter] but analysts uh when they put out their projections okay it's it's one of the most enormous bands for any company in america the the price targets for tesla despite all of this success some have it at 200 some have it at 1600 it's all over the place you tweeted a couple months ago tesla's not a company it's like six companies inside of a company like you've had yeah maybe more can you just explain to people all these companies inside this super company just so folks have a sense of what had to be done to get here okay i mean this question requires thought and i'll probably be leaving out quite a few things but if you look and say what what does a typical uh car company do uh what what they do is they they um assemble vehicles um and they\n\nsend them to dealers and they manage the supply chain uh the they they might make the engine uh or typically we'll make the engine but most of the parts are made by suppliers and a lot of the actual technology development is done by suppliers and most most of the vehicle software is done by suppliers so the actual amount of uh real work done by car companies that what you think of sort of like a gmo ford is not actually that much um and but like so they don't do they don't do uh sales they don't do service um they uh so so in the case of tesla for example we we do we we do our own sales and service we don't have dealerships um then uh tesla also has by far the biggest network of superchargers sort of the electric equivalent of gas stations so we built\n\nan entire global supercharger network which is still the most advanced and by far the best uh way to charge your car when traveling long distance or if you live in a city um and uh and don't have the ability to charge your car there's a street parking or an apartment so the whole supercharged network we developed the supercharged network we deployed it i think we have i don't know 15 000 supercharges globally um you can travel anywhere in america right now with uh the tesla supercharger network um then uh in terms of vertical integration uh we uh we make the the battery pack uh the the power electronics the drive unit um we uh we actually make we're more integrated in in the parts we actually make so much of the car uh internally uh we're vertically integrated\n\num not necessarily because we think that there's some religious reason to be a product integrator but because uh the pace that we needed to move was just much faster than the supply chain could move and to the degree that you inherit the legacy supply chain and hurt the legacy constraints including their speed uh cost and uh and technology and then tesla is as much a software company as it is a hardware company so the software that runs in tesla operates the car operates the screen uh does the charging uh all of that stuff is developed by tesla and um so we have sort of a car a tesla os in the car when you and then very importantly uh tesla has built uh an uh an autopilot ai team from scratch uh that is the best real world ai team on earth and if anyone\n\nelse has got a better one i'd like to see it demonstrated in a car um the full self-driving beta at this point can very often take you with zero interventions across the bay area from san jose to marin so through complex traffic it's really quite sophisticated um and i invite anyone to to join the beta or or look at the videos of those who are in the beta we've got like 100 000 people in the beta so it's not tiny and we'll be expanding that to i know probably a million people or a million i don't know on that order by the end of the year so um it's um we also we also built a chip team to because there wasn't it wasn't hardware to that we could run the freaking uh ai on uh we couldn't just uh fill the trunk with a whole bunch of gpus um and and you know\n\nthey would would have taken a trunk full of gpus that would have been very expensive and take massive amount of power and cooling uh just to be able to do what the tesla designed uh full self-driving computer can do so and we started a chip team from scratch designed it it was the best in the world and still is the best in the world several years later um and we also then developed we were designing a dojo supercomputer to be able to process the all the video that's coming in from billions miles of data because just sort of like the way that it's critical to compete with google because they have so much data and they have all these people doing searches all the time and humanity is training it but the same is true of tesla you really need billions of\n\nmiles ultimately tens of billions of miles of training data combined with a sort of a vast training computer and then uh optimize uh inference hardware in the car and stay the ai and training and specialized software across the board to be able to achieve a full self-driving solution i uh when when he opened tesla gigafactory remember this 67 years ago i'll just tell the audience a story quickly elon he puts a slide up there and he says guys we're not actually building a factory we're building a machine that makes machines and he puts the layout of the factory and it looks like a chip and it was basically like how you would actually lay out a microchip if you were or you know you were like a layout engineer it was the craziest thing i'd ever seen i was\n\nlike that was when i first got it yeah you know you walk in tend and you see what's happening and you have an insurance company now you're doing insurance for tesla owners and an uber competitor right and eventually a robo taxi uber competitor alright um yeah i mean insurance is like quite significant now are you okay i'm okay okay okay because the the car insurance thing is a bigger deal it may seem a lot of people are paying um you know 30 40 as much as their lease payment for the car in in car insurance um so the car insurance industry is incredibly inefficient because they they're just uh first of all you got like so many um sort of middle entities you've got from the insurance agent all the way to the final sort of reinsurer there's like a half dozen\n\ncompanies each taking a cut um and then uh the it's all very statistical so that this um even if you're a very good driver like you could be like you know 20 years old and a great driver but they they're it's all statistical so you can't get either can't get insurance or it's extremely expensive um so what tesla allows for real-time insurance based on your how you actually drive the car um you can actually if you drive the car in a safer way you actually have lower insurance so ours is is insurance is based on how you actually drive not how you know historically people that you know fit your whatever demographic have drive it's and and then you can close the loop around your uh insurance rate by simply driving better and looking at your score and and\n\nand lowering your insurance in real time and people do it actually promotes safer driving i actually have had this experience because in my household two people drive my car and one of them has a 93 score and the other one does not they have like a 60 score and you may have met this other person but i've been trying to work with her on the aggressive turns and stops in advance of our insurance bill uh which we're hoping will go down at some point um you didn't oh the one question are is this twitter deal going to get close do you think are the chances here well i mean it really depends on a lot of factors here um i'm still waiting for uh some sort of a logical explanation for the number of sort of fake or spam accounts on twitter and twitter is is refusing\n\nto tell us so you know this just seems like a strange thing um wait sorry is are they refusing to tell you or you don't think they really know i mean there's a good chance they may just have no idea they claim that they do know yeah and they claim that they've got this complex methodology that only they can understand um [Laughter] but the guy who landed two rockets simultaneously you stir this cauldron and then you throw the knuckle boom and um it comes to you in a dream i don't know um but but there should be some uh you know objective way to assert the uh thing because this is a this is a material public state threshold issue yeah it it you know it's it's a you know it's a material adverse uh misstatement uh you know if if they in fact uh have been\n\num vociferously claiming less than five percent of faker spam accounts but in fact it is four or five times that number or perhaps 10 times that number this is a big deal um it's not this it seems like if you said okay um i'm gonna i agree to buy your house you say the house has less than five percent termites that's that's an acceptable number but if it turns out it is 90 percent termites that's uh not okay you know it's not the same house um made most your house will disappear because it's mostly made in two months um so it you know that that would obviously just not be appropriate so in in making the twitter offer i was obviously reliant upon the the truth and accuracy of their public filings and if those those filings are not accurate it's simply\n\nnot that's that it's it's not you you can't pay the same price for something that is much worse than they claimed and you know they say elon life's a negotiation so at a different price it might be a totally viable deal correct i mean that i mean it's not out of the question um okay but i really would you know this is you know the more the more questions i ask the more i the more my concerns uh grow um so you know at the end of the day acquiring it has to be fixable um and and fixable you know with reason reasonable time frame and without revenues collapsing along the way and all that sort of stuff um and so you know i really need to see how these things have been calculated and it it can't be some deep mystery that is like more complex than the human\n\nsoul or something like that um it's got to be you know i think we can apply the scientific method to this and try to figure out what's really going on and um twitter's revenue is is primarily dependent i think 70 or some that order on brand advertising as opposed to specific purchase advertising this is a big deal because brand advertising is not there's not a there's not a purchase that results from that so it's basically you know how much mind share or like basically if you're a big company how how often do they hear your name um it's as opposed to something that where you can directly measure the outcome um so that that means that they're somewhat going on faith um and if that faith is undermined or or reduced because of the reality of the situation\n\ncoming to the fore then that the tesla's revenue twitter starts with the t um the quarter's revenue uh will be uh significantly impaired and that's a major problem elon did you have a chance to ask these questions during your negotiation uh the i like i said i was reliant upon their public filings so to the degree that that they're probably public and this is normal for a public company if you you know if if you make a formal filing um that that that is what investors are lying up relying on whether they are making an acquisition offer or simply buying some shares so this this the accuracy of these filings is important whether you're buying one share or the whole company and so if these filings are inaccurate or if they're sort of potentially blatant\n\nit's a big deal you know do you have a sense of why this has been such a persistent problem for twitter do they not have the technical capabilities to solve the the bot problem or is it more of like just a they've underprioritized the issue or been unwilling to because potentially their implications for uh ad revenue i i i i don't know it's sort of speculative at this point so the you know the the uh the worst interpretation would be that they don't want to look too closely at the thing because they might not like the answer that would be the worst interpretation um the bet i'm not sure what the best interpretation is but the least bad interpretation would be maybe they thought it was this way but they're the way they were doing it was wrong and they\n\ndidn't realize they were mistaken and simply weren't paying enough attention um it does seem as though it should be a lot easier to get rid of the bots and and spam and trolls then uh like this is not some we're not trying to split the atom here you know uh we're not trying to get to the moon okay we're just trying to uh limit the amount of obviously scammy accounts if it's if it's if it's like your bitcoin giveaway um you know probably it's f it's a spammer you know like it does maybe you know wait you're not giving away a hundred bitcoin i just sent you danny if if if you send me two bitcoin i'll send you one back right that's my what if i send you 20.\n\nactually um i thought one of the interesting things that came up in your product roadmap um or i guess this was released and people covered it was the um possibility of twitter becoming kind of a super app with payments included um maybe perhaps even doge or something this seems to me uh based on your work with with david a paypal like a pretty brilliant idea what's what's the vision there in terms of if you were able to buy it you know perhaps at the right price um what would it look like if you know i could add jason to at elon musk you know 10 bucks or something if you know we were splitting a check or something sure well for those that have used wechat i think that's wechat's actually a good model um if you're in china it's basically you kind of live\n\non wechat it does everything um it's sort of like twitter plus paypal plus a whole bunch of other things and we'll roll into one with actually a great interface and it's really an excellent app and we don't have anything like that um outside of china so uh i think such such an app um would be really uh useful um and it just like the utility of it uh of of sort of a a spam free thing where you could you can make comments you can post videos you can uh you know i think it's important for content creators to have a revenue share um now now this this does not need to be done on twitter it could be done from something that's created from scratch so it could be something new um so really but but i think this thing needs to exist whether it is uh converting\n\ntwitter to uh be the sort of like kind of all-encompassing app that that like said everything from digital town square where important ideas are debated uh you know maximally trusted and inclusive and at a point where you sort of have a high trust situation than than payments uh uh whether it's uh crypto or fiat uh can make a lot of sense just what you just want something that's incredibly useful and that people love using um so that but it it's it's either convert twitter to that or start something new those are the two but it does need to happen somehow well it's interesting you bring that up because the price of twitter is pretty high and you've built a couple of companies and some engineers like to come work for you and you've now gone through the\n\nintellectual exercise of studying all this um if you're looking at the two choices now fixing twitter given all these problems and maybe just starting your own version which one are you leaning towards because it i have watched you build a couple of companies and the products have turned out pretty good so is it easier for someone like you to just start from scratch i mean i mean it's certainly the my my default inclination is to start things from scratch uh i mean i'm not really i don't buy things like there's still this sort of you know uh um yeah like like spacex was started from scratch you know in the case of of tesla uh you know it was like five people it was still this guy everhart who's the worst guy i've ever worked with who tries to claim like\n\nsoul credit essentially for equating tesla if he's so damn great why didn't he just go you know create another car company when he was fired um but anyway um so well i mean that's a pretty good story i mean yeah i remember jesus i mean no but i i remember having this conversation with you we were having a conversation about the roadster i think i can tell the story i said how's it going pal and you said well i got one problem um it turns out the roadster parts and putting it together cost 190 000.\n\nyeah and i said i gave you 150 for number 16.\n\nso if you make 2000 of these you're gonna lose 80 million dollars and you're like yeah or double that i mean they basically the parts of the car cost more than they were selling it for when you were starting to get involved that's it it was difficult no no i i got involved well before before that yes when twitter when tesla was was nothing but a piece of paper let me be crystal clear [ __ ] clear no they didn't bring me in either [Music] i was gonna start i was gonna start an ed company with jv struggle and based on the the ac propulsion t0 and when i when i asked ac propulsion if it was okay to do that they said well there's also some others who want to create an ev company but have not created one yet yes would you like to join forces with them and\n\ni said okay well we'll do that that was a huge mistake jb and i should have just started the car company ourselves instead uh we uh teamed up with everhard topping and right um big mistake uh the the the actual moral error here was me trying to have my cake and eat it too which is like uh i just want to work on the technology and the product and have someone else be the ceo and and sort of run the business operations because i just like working on technology and product and design and um and and also i was like doing spacex uh you know at the time in our rockets were blowing up so it seemed like uh okay this is like i always wanted to an electric car company this is how i can have my cake and eat a two that was a huge mistake and fundamentally a moral\n\nerror um and uh so so uh in the end i had to freaking be ceo and i didn't want to be basically um so but it's either that or a company's gonna die so uh so we started with with really just nothing and uh the uh you know the t0 prototype from ac propulsion not not if that's that's the precursor to tesla um clear once again uh when uh we created tesla i when i when i joined there were no no employees there was no intellectual property there was no prototype there was no and nothing yeah we crystal [ __ ] clear and it almost bankrupted you i mean you that sent you to the cliff of india i mean that was yes we were on the ragged edge of bankruptcy so many times it was ridiculous um so um and what 2008 was one of the worst years where basically the you know\n\ngm and ford just a gm jammer ford almost went bankrupt and um you know trying to raise money for a startup electric car company in 2008 while gm's going bankrupt was uh difficult to say the least um you know people were angry that i even asked them uh they're like [ __ ] you and hang up so the only way that that that tesla actually made it through 2008 was uh a subset of the existing investors um which includes like people like antonio gracias and uh you know um steve jobson and and a few other key people our aaron price uh who who i've uh hold a debt of gratitude to the state um and and i i put in all the money i had left and they said everything literally everything um uh i didn't have a house uh so uh this is my actually so i've had the house so i\n\nwas like staying actually in jeff skull's bedroom spare bedroom um and uh and but they were the the uh the subset of the investors would say okay i put in they're putting as much as i put in so i put in everything um and and then we closed that round 6 p.\n\nm uh christmas eve 2008 it was last hour of the last day that was possible because after that people were like kept breaking for the holidays and we were to bounce payroll two days after christmas it was uh pretty that's doorstop i mean it was an incredible moment in time and and people also forget at the time that the first two rockets spacex sent up uh didn't exactly make it to orbit like one of those yeah the first three and i remember having dinner with you at that time and i asked you hey how's it going i heard glocker says you got four weeks of payroll left and you said that's not true and i said thank god and you said we have two [Music] i said no i mean both spacex and tesla in 2008 if we'd simply paid our suppliers on time we would have gone\n\nbankrupt immediately hey tell us tell us actually uh it was it was a pretty crazy moment because i also remember asking you that we were having dinner at boa and i said well certainly it's got to be some good news and you took out your blackberry to date the conversation i don't remember it and you said don't tell anybody jacob is it right no problem and you showed me the clay version of the model s yeah the most beautiful car i'd ever seen and i said oh my god it's stunning how much is it gonna cost you said i think i can make it for fifty thousand i remember it was yesterday i said if you make that car for fifty thousand you'll change the [ __ ] world and you did it you know it was a little more than fifty thousand but uh how's your let's ask about\n\nspacex okay well that's what's basically but i want to ask one more personal question has life gotten easier for you as these companies have hit scale or has the complexity made life even more challenging because those early days it was just fighting to survive nobody knew who you were you were anonymous and it was really just about the work and now let's face it you're the world's most famous guy and everybody's watching everything you do but these companies are also very big so what's life like for you today are you enjoying what you're doing every day um well i mean it's it's somewhat of a roller coaster so there are like good days and bad days um and there's there also crisis issues um and you know like sort of you know knock on wood like we're not\n\nlike uh facing you know death in the face like like it's it's definitely like quite stressful when like you know death is like trying to eat your face off and like the foam is like you know just getting it and like right there you know you know that's it's pretty stressful in that situation um so like right you know both spacex and tesla have um you know significant cash reserves so like you know it's like we're sharing death in the face we could sort of see it over in the horizon you know so i don't want to get complacent or entitled because it um but but if it's not like just sort of foaming at the mouth and actually trying to eat your face off on a daily basis that's that's certainly we've moved on from that point um and hopefully never never return\n\num but but there are a lot of issues that need to be it's just like the if you're a ceo of a company the chore level is high and if you don't do your chores then the company goes to hell and i hate doing doing chores frankly so uh who does uh so that's the real like there's a whole bunch of sort of uh you know personnel issues and legal issues and and and things that i i i don't find enjoyable to work on but if i don't work on them the company suffers so it's more like just the sheer volume of work is insane that's the uh and then and then you know go do some go add to it with you know twitter or something like that yeah i mean honestly i'm an extra processor yeah yeah i mean i i have a habit of biting off more than i can chew and then just sitting there\n\nwith like chipmunk cheeks alice tell us a little bit about where we are at spacex like how you fund the ability to go to mars but then also commercially still build um a conventional space business domestically i think this russia thing was probably really good for spacex if you want to just tell us a little bit about that sure um well i mean the goal of spacex is to develop the technology that enables life to become multi-planetary um and uh and make humanity a space sparring civilization which i think is a very exciting inspiring thing and it's like some one of those things where you can that i think just makes kids like be excited about the future and we need things that are inspiring and exciting and make the future seem like it's going to be better\n\nthan the past life can't just be about solving one miserable problem after another it's got to be like like what's what's inspiring and exciting and i think that a future where we are space-bank civilization is is one that we can all get excited about um and and we can go out there and find out what what's what's out there in the universe and what's the meaning of life and you know where are the aliens and hopefully they're friendly and that kind of um so uh you know it's interesting i do get asked about the aliens question a lot and i've i've not seen any evidence of aliens um and i'll i'll be the first to you know tweet about it or whatever if i found it if i see something i mean you'll tell us if you find him i will tell you i will definitely tell\n\nyou if there's aliens um and um you know uh i think it'd be quite helpful for you know like like if if we found aliens like probably spacex would get a ton more revenue because people like oh man aliens we're gonna upgrade on space technology pronto because what if you're unfriendly you know um it's like you know uh the idea of that is the idea that you build um basically the ability to do orbital cargo take all those profits launch starlink take all those profits and move it all into building something that can get to mars is that the kind of rough plan pretty much it's if it was like a three step a three slide power point it would be pretty much as you described which is um develop rockets that are that are capable of of taking uh satellites to orbit\n\nand uh crew to the space station um you know basically servicing government commercial space launch needs um and then uh uh build a global communication system in space uh that obviously it does a lot of good for earth but by providing uh internet connect internet connectivity to the least served because a satellite system is really great for remote locations um and you know countryside or or remote islands or or places where someone's trying to cut off their internet as a prelude to a war we take that system like in star wars yeah yeah so it's like you know so it can be pretty pretty helpful like i think like a song like basically i think is a a sort of forceful grid on its own right um by providing uh connectivity to the the least served where they've\n\ngot either no connection or a a very expensive or poor connection uh you know um the like we're like we're connecting a lot of schools remote schools in brazil right now i'm actually kind of going to be headed there uh to sort of kick things off but they've got a lot of schools that have no connectivity at all and in a modern age uh how do you learn with no connectivity i mean you get i guess old textbooks and stuff but it's really you're at a huge disadvantage if you have no digital connectivity um so i think there's just a lot of good that starling can do in it just by by itself but but then the the revenue generated from starlink is what can enable the uh of a permanently uh crude base on the moon which would be the next you know next step from apollo\n\nwhich is like let's just not go there for a few hours and and then head back let's have a opponent at the occupied science station on the moon um and we could also build um some pretty epic uh telescopes uh on the moon uh that uh would enable us to learn more about the nature of the universe and figure out what's going on and maybe detect those aliens um do you do you um do you think that there's enough profit in those businesses to fund all this or do you need wall street and other investors to come share the load with you is kind of going to mars a partnership with the government does it need to partner with governments to get there um well i think technically it does not need to partner with governments um but of course uh government support would\n\nbe helpful um so i mean it's going to be very expensive to build a self-sustaining city on mars like in order for us to become multi-planetary in a way that's meaningful um the the key threshold is at which point does the city become self-sustaining such that if the ships from earth stopped coming for any reason and it could be any reason could be world war iii or it could be just you know civilization subsided and um and and just gradually got decrepit or something but but if the ship's stuff coming the three supply ships from earth stop coming to mars for any reason does the city still survive and that's like really a large base of resources that are that that are needed uh on mars you can't be missing any one critical ingredient uh the so and you can\n\nthink of this like there are these various great filters um you know that that perhaps stop civilizations and one of the great filters is will we become a multi-planet species or not will humanity be one of those species that passes the great filter of going beyond one planet and being a multi-planet species and this is certainly something we'll have to do at some point because this the sun is expanding and will eventually boil the oceans and destroy your life on earth so if you care about life on earth you should really care about life becoming multi-planetary and ultimately multi-stellar because otherwise you're basically saying you're signing the sort of death warrant for all life as we know it it's inevitable um and then there's also the the various\n\nthings that kill the you know the dinosaurs and and i mean you look at the fossil record they've been five major extinctions uh that are sort of on the order of eighty nine eighty to ninety percent of all creatures on earth dying um for a wide range of reasons um but uh and then humans can also you know with us the world war three danger um that were that that other creatures didn't have where we could do ourselves in um by sort of misusing advanced technology and and sort of just you know having some radioactive hellhole that's all that's left after world war three so um you know you want you could even characterize it potentially as which will come first world war three or uh life becoming multi-planetary on mars um yeah i'm sorry i was gonna shift\n\nbut um you know when you think about the importance of going to mars versus solving critical energy and climate change problems here on earth obviously the effort with tesla is related to sustainable energy and i think going back to like probably the 1950s there were engineering designs around plasma fusion or fusion-based systems that have evolved to these plasma systems to these tokamak systems and every year every decade it's like hey next decade we're going to have it what's your point of view on where plasma fusion systems are are we going to have fusion energy this century this decade and does it create limitless energy where the electricity production goes up by ten thousand fold and the price of electricity drops by ten thousand fold and then\n\nwhat does that world on earth look like if that happens so i guess question is like is that technology real when does it happen and what happens to the world here when and if that happens i'll answer that question but then i'll let me sort of point out what the what the actual issue is uh if the question is like uh is it possible to solve uh fusion energy uh 100 yes definitely definitely definitely definitely is for sure um so the the and and and really just using a takamak style which is like it basically a doughnut ring with uh uh with electromagnets that control the the plasma uh the the way to solve that is simply scale up the tokamak uh fusion is uh very much a scale based thing you want to minimize your surface volume ratio so as you scale up a\n\ntokamak you reduce your surface volume ratio which means like the the the volume you have relative to this the surface uh you you now have much more uh like you can basically have a hot zone in the center that's relatively far away from the walls and and more of a hot zone um so the the so it's not in my mind a question as to whether which fusion can work but there is a question as to whether it is economically viable um and and whether it is competitive with uh with with alternatives i think that the economic viability of fusion is a much bigger question and i i think the answer probably is that a fusion earth fusion is not competitive economically i think that is that is uh i would say it's probably not competitive economically by an order of magnitude\n\nwhere does it break is it a materials breakdown or where does it break down economically well so so you can't just um use uh normal hydrogen you know you you need to use like deuterium and tritium like unusual forms of hydrogen helium-3 uh you know that there are um there are some uh some uh other types of fusion that could be used uh but um these are just not they're not like there's not a lot of this raw material it's quite difficult to get the raw material so first you have to get the raw material uh that's that's expensive raw material um and then um it's not just about generating the the energy you've got to um turn that energy into usable electricity you can't just have a hot thing okay so the hot thing has to translate to usable electricity so\n\ni think you got you've got a cost of a fuel issue which is very significant uh you've got you've got a whole bunch of knockdowns from when you generate the heat to when you actually convert that into electricity you've got some very difficult maintenance issues with with the effusion reactor [Music] so uh and that should be then compared to alternatives uh the the sustainable energy alternatives that i think uh are overwhelmingly more competitive are [Music] solar energy wind geothermal hydro uh some tidal and energy but it's really primarily uh solar uh and and wind um now and you can really say like what why bother creating a fusion on earth when we have a gigantic fusion reactor in the sky that just works with zero maintenance and it shows up every\n\nday right it's pretty consistent yeah but elon can we scale to 1000 x or 100 x our electricity production here using solar and other renewable sources yes so the the amount of uh surface area you need to power the united states is remarkably tiny um so you need like basically roughly a hundred miles by a hundred miles of territory and it obviously doesn't need to be in one place uh in the united states to power the united states it's like a little corner of texas or utah the entire country um and and then if you if you you could you could basically power uh you you probably 10x the just with solar alone um without displacing uh anyone's home uh power an economy ten times the size of the united states in the united states on land what when energy prices\n\nif you say if you extend that to water because earth is 70 percent water yeah i mean you could you could say okay now we could probably have a civilization that is a hundred times as energy intensive as we currently have it and so what does that look like with the last part of my question which is a world where energy costs are saying it's a hundred times cheaper than they are today and we have a hundred times more energy production capacity what what changes about civilization what do we do differently and what do we see change most kind of dramatically well currently we're not because of of just generally low birth rates almost worldwide civilization is not headed to have a population that is an order of magnitude greater than where where we're kind\n\nof we're currently headed towards a population decline uh and this is almost everywhere in the world um so you know it basically seems as as though as soon as you have like urbanization um and and and education beyond a certain level and income being on a certain level birth rates plummet um and so as countries get get wealthier their birth rates plummet it's it's somewhat counterintuitive because people will say like well it's too expensive to have a baby nope the the wealthier they are are the fewer kids you have um the more educated you are the fewer kids you have so um it's it's a it's it's it's the inverse um so so i'm not sure who to use all that energy um unless there's a significant change in the growth rate um or we have a very robot oriented\n\neconomy so that's also possible so if we've got a lot of um you know four wheeled robots informed cars and uh androids humanoid robots then you could certainly see that there'd be perhaps a need for an order of magnitude more energy but it's not coming from the humans unless something major changes on the on the human uh birth rate uh level uh this by the way is i think the biggest single threat to civilization uh right now is the why why do you think societally people just make those decisions when they become more affluent is it that they just become more selfish or there's more things for them to do and they have more money to spend on themselves and they say you know what i don't want to have a large family i want to you know go to coachella yeah\n\nwell there is this like weird like mind viruses thing where some people are think like having fewer kids is is like better for the environment yeah that's crazy total nonsense the environment is going to be fine they're going to be fine even if we if we doubled the size of the humans um this is and i know a lot about environmental stuff so um you know uh you that we can't have civilization just dwindle into nothing um and you know japan's leading indicator here like the japan's population declined by 600 000 people last year that lowest birth rate in history uh it's you know it's pretty bad um so we i don't know we and i think so so this one element of this is it's a lot of people just think that having kids is somehow bad for the environment i want to\n\nbe clear it's not it's essential for me for maintaining civilization that would at least maintain our numbers we don't necessarily need to grow dramatically but at least let's not uh you know gradually dwindle away and until uh civilization ends with us all in adult diapers and and in a whimper like we don't want a civilization to end in an adult diapers with a whimper that would kind of suck yeah lee well i mean and you and i have had this conversation i mean in japan i had two people tell me when i was there like i think it's immoral to bring humans into the world i mean people have gotten very sad about the future it's kind of crazy it's great life's awesome yes no this there's literally i've heard many times how like how can i bring a child into this\n\nterrible world i'm like have you read history because let me tell you it was way worse back then okay yeah now it's a good time it's a good time hey you know listen i i know you're super busy but i want to ask you about the move to texas because i've been thinking about it uh austin california i don't know some senator told you to go [ __ ] yourself and like you know like we don't know he's been a couple senators said that actually yeah it seems to be turning into a bit of a trend um but how has building the tesla gigafactory which i got to see in austin a couple weeks ago and it was one of the most inspiring things i've ever seen i mean i don't know how many months it took to build there but how long did it take to build that dreadnought and then what\n\nwould have taken to build that in california california under gavin newsom so we built the the gigatexas which is the biggest factor in north america i think possibly the biggest factor in the world um and it's three times the size of the pentagon to give you a sense of scale okay this is freaking big it's like it's weird it's like so big it's weird like you just like i was trying to find you in it and i was trying to drive around and it took me about 45 minutes to find you yeah like no you have to like call you can't like find someone in the world you have to call them on their cell phone and say where are you you know um so i mean the building is like uh just under a mile long and we're actually gonna extend it it will be like literally a mile long\n\num and about a quarter mile wide uh and it's uh 80 feet tall so it's just uh ridiculously big um and when you think about like for manufacturing situation like what what what are the two the two things that really define manufacturing competitiveness are economies of scale and technology and so if you got an ace on economy like if you sort of maximize your ace level on technology and you maximize your ace level on scale this is obviously going to be the most competitive situation and that's why they're so freaking giant um and the the gigatexas will go all the way from raw materials like like basically rail cars of cell raw materials coming in and then forming the the battery cell then the battery pack uh building the the motor uh casting we also have\n\nintroduced a major innovation which is to cast the entire front third and rear third of the car and as a single piece um i got this idea from toys actually because i was like how do they make toys those are cheap they just cast them i was like well can you build a casting machine that big and they're like well no one ever has i'm like is it are we breaking physics like no well let's just ask them and there were six major casting machine suppliers in the world and five of them said no and the six said maybe i'm like i'll take that as a yes um well i mean this you wanted to do this for the model 3 but it was just too soon huh and and now it's almost there yeah actually this this partly comes from the model 3 which is actually a fantastic car in many ways\n\nbut we were rightly criticized for an inefficient design uh with for the front and rear body um like sandy monroe who i think is really has excellent from an engineering standpoint and and really a very fair critic he pistol wept us for um the design of the the battery and piece by piece told you why you suck yeah and then he did the why and told you why you were awesome he took it apart and tells us exactly why he's why we sucked and he was correct um and then and i was like well that's pretty embarrassing so uh no there he was complimentary of other parts of the car but not the body design and uh and so it's like okay we're gonna go from like you know uh the it's just an incredibly difficult party to make it's made out of like 120 different pieces with\n\ndissimilar metals that are joined and you've got galvanic corrosion challenges it's very difficult to make um to a single piece casting that's one piece so like 120 pieces went down to like one so um it's it's it's a it's a huge and the the like the model y body shop especially the new one where we cast both the front and rear is 60 smaller than the model 3 body shop so it's you know gigantic it's quite this there's a lot of innovations of tesla besides the stuff that is is obvious yeah um so anyway so yeah the the but if and and really you know to to be fair to gavin newsom like uh you know if you if you had a gun to gavin's head okay um and said we need to build start building this factory in california right now he couldn't do it because there are\n\nso many uh regulatory agencies um and so many uh litigators in california that want to stop you from doing anything that even if you're the governor of the of the state you cannot get it done um so something's got to be done to to to to you know because california used to be the land of opportunity and it's a beautiful state and i love i loved living there and i still spend a lot of time in california even though every time i go there i get every literally every day i go there i get the jesus taxes big tax bill by day yeah like the sheer cost per day of me going and working in california days boggles the mind and but i still do it you know um but but it the california's gone from a land of opportunity to to the land of of of sort of taxes uh over regulation\n\nand litigation and this is not a good situation and really there's got to be like a serious cleaning out of the pipes in california how many months was it to get the giga austin done took a year and a half two years yeah 18 18 months to build something three times the size of the pentagon incredible and you just basically the answer to how many months it would take in california is infinity we would still be working on the permits yeah elon this this begs a good question which is like i'm ready graduating and you just keep signing paperwork but we have one more form for you what's a better model yes what's a better model for government so you know like all governments tend to increase in complexity dictatorship capacity is the dictatorship the right model\n\nand um you know like like how do we solve this let's say you go to mars or let's say you have to fix california is california permanently broken is there a way to fix it or like how do you set up a better model so that you don't end up having this this kind of special interest complexity situation that eventually kills the uh population i mean i think ultimately with california the people of california just have to get fed up and and demand change um that's the thing that really has to happen um and and there's there's gotta be an above zero percent chance of the of the republicans winning in california if if if if it's just the democrats every time you've got to be you know and this is this is like occasionally uh it the thing is that right right now\n\nuh and plus the level of level of gerrymandering uh which is basically just treating the people like sheep uh and and it's terrible um that's gone on in california is outrageous so california uh the dems have a super majority in um the house and senate in california and the governor and everything and so how responsive is any political party going to be to the people if they are guaranteed to win it's a one-party state and so i'm not saying that you know go sort of elect the republicans every time but if it's never you're you're just making california a one-party state they will no longer be responsible responses to people and will only be responsive to those that funded their political campaigns clip elon saying that 30 seconds on tv over and over go\n\nahead sex yeah so elon shifting gears to the economy um you know we saw this uh surprise report of negative 1.\n\n4 gdp growth in q1 uh interest rates been rising that increased the cost of the consumer of getting loans things like that we've had a stock market correction really a crash in a lot of growth stocks software stocks um what from where you sit and the data that you see uh where do you think the economy is is headed right now do you think we're in a recession or is it just a risk how do you how do you assess our current economic situation well predicting economic record economics is always difficult um and and want to assign probabilities to these things um but ironically i did last year people asked me what i think about the economy i said well i think we might enter a recession in approximately uh uh spring of 2020 of 2022.\n\ncalled it nailed it um yeah um so uh now the thing is that recessions are not necessarily a bad thing uh they they you know um what i i've now been through a few of them and what has happened is if you have um a boom that goes on for too long you get misallocation of capital uh it starts raining money on fools basically it's like any any dumb thing gets money and i'm sure you've seen a few of those um so at first at some point it gets just out of control and you just have a misallocation of of human capital uh where people are doing things that are silly and not useful to their fellow human beings um and and then those companies there needs to be sort of an economic enema if you will um to have everyone sort of shift uncomfortably in their seats [Music]\n\num sorry it's just like visualizing it the economic enemy i mean listen it's got alliteration um so this too shall pass eventually the economic enemy does its job it clears out the pipes if you will yes and um and and sort of the the the [ __ ] companies um uh go bankrupt and the ones that are doing useful products uh are prosperous um and um but there's certainly a lesson here that if one is making useful product and and doing has a company that makes sense uh make sure you're not running things too close to the edge from a capital standpoint they've got some capital reserves to last through uh irrational times because in the in the past when there's been a recession um it has gone it's amazing it's flipped like a light switch i mean david do you remember\n\nthis when from the from the paypal you know ex-paypal days when we uh raised 100 million dollars in march of 2000 uh and we literally we had the demand was so high we had uh people like vcs like just literally without even a term sheet wiring money into our account um we'll send the term sheet later literally we're like we like sleuth out our our bank account number and wire money in and we're like where'd this come from and it's like um they so it was like there was literally fire hosing money in march of 2000 and and then in april 2000 the market went into free fall and it went from money raising money was trivial to even good companies could not raise money uh in a month um so it's just important to bear in mind like that you know paypal almost went\n\nbankrupt in in 2000 uh we came close um but but thankfully we would raise that that hundred million dollars in in march 2000 uh without which would be uh could be a game over basically um uh and we kind of saw it coming so it's like we we we got that the the x confinity merger done in like three weeks and raised 100 million dollars because we were like oh how we see this coming to an end pretty soon and then a month later it was like you know a nightmare basically um and and uh anyway so it's just important make sure if you're a healthy company you've got some capital to get through things um and and then what what's your costs and uh if you if if it is a recession which it more likely than not it is a recession not saying it is but it probably is um\n\nthen just uh make what's your cash flow and get the cop positive cash flow soon as you can um so um yeah uh but i think we probably are that are in a recession and that that recession will get get worse um but you know these things pass and then there will be boom times again um so it'll probably be some some tough going for i don't know a year uh maybe maybe you know 12 to 18 months is usually um the amount of time that it takes for for the a correction to to happen um what do you guys think yeah i david uh how do you feel about it yeah i mean it feels like it started um you know what started as a slowdown earlier this year um now seems like i mean technically i guess we need two quarters of negative growth to be in a recession but it feels like we're\n\nin one feels like it started um you know the growth stock the software businesses that we invest in are sort of the canaries in the coal mine and there's a lot of a lot of dead canaries uh having a hard time breathing yeah [Laughter] it got stunned for a brief moment and and it just it'll be fine um it it reminds me of the the parrot that you know the pet shop sketch or the parrot it was monty python um it's pining was parrot is pining for the fjords hey um elon a lot has been talked about as we wrap here and you've been incredibly gracious giving us so much time thank you for that um a lot of talk about american exceptionalism over the last couple years waning and maybe this country had seen its best days and uh we see the work you're doing and other\n\npeople in this great country are doing and the debates we're having about the future and yeah china's doing pretty fantastic rushes on the ropes but it does seem like uh america is still producing some of the greatest companies uh the world has ever seen some of the greatest innovations what are your thoughts on america and our future and what we need to keep this country and this beacon of hope that you know four of the five of us were not born here you know two of you came from south africa and no three of you three of you came from south africa one of you from canada i don't know what they're putting in from sri lanka and from sri lanka and through canada canada via canada he came through canada too yeah i know it seems like that's the that's the way\n\ncanada is a gateway it is a gateway and how do we it's a well i'm hinting at the answer here but you know it does seem like our immigration policy is absolutely insane and uh maybe we need to keep collecting some of the great individuals that i get to share the stage with here and yourself we need to keep bringing great people to this country why can't we get that in our heads that yeah it's talent recruitment no absolutely i think uh it's incredibly important that the united states be like the destination for the world's best talent i mean you can think of this like like like a pro sports team if you want to win the league um and and uh you know you want the best players on your team um there now there are obviously a lot of very talented people born\n\nin the united states um but if you can add a few aces from uh from uh outside the country to the team you're gonna win the league um and and and here's the thing those aces actually want to work for your team they don't want to compete against you they want to they want why don't we want to be on team america and and so it's like we have to like fight them off to not be on team america that's the crazy thing um and so it's like if you got some aces that that are the difference between winning and losing we should be like really recruiting them like you'd recruit like a star basketball player or football player that's what we should be doing um active recruiting um just like if you're a company that once wants to succeed you actively recruit the best talent\n\nand then and and that that's the way to win and and if if that stops happening america will stop winning and we have two administrations in a row biden and trump who don't want to let the greatest minds the most talented people into this country is absolutely insane i mean i think they deal with this every day reality is like actually any anyone who who's gonna who wants to to to work hard and be and do useful things um and in this you know uh we we want in the united states um and it's not just people who are sort of intellectually strong but it's just anyone with a with a strong work ethic you know if if they're coming from mexico or if they're coming from you know europe or china wherever it's just if they're like going to come here and crank hard\n\nand and contribute more than they take hell yeah i mean that's just it's a no-brainer have you been have you been disappointed in the similarities between biden and trump on this like maybe you could have expected it from trump because that was a rhetoric he needed to use to get elected but it's not as if biden has flipped the script and said okay we're going to go 180 degrees in the other direction he's kind of kept it the same which has been really surprising actually man it's hard to tell what bite is doing if we told frank um yeah like i feel like it's weaker than bernie's the the the real president is whoever controls the teleprompter you know it's like it's like the path to power is the path to the teleprompter you know like what what because that\n\nthen he just reads the teleprompter so you know i do feel like like if if somebody would accidentally lead on lean on the teleprompter it's going to be like anchorman it's going to be like qqq asdf123 you know type of thing um i mean in fairness to biden he he hasn't been napping as much as he needs to but it's just it's hard hard things that are getting done you know i mean this administration just it doesn't seem to get a lot done like and you know um whatever like the trump administration leaving trump aside there were a lot of people in the administration who were effective at getting things done so uh but this this administration seems just just to not have like the drive to just get you done uh that that um that that's my it's it's that's my impression\n\num so um you know we definitely need to fix immigration policy like we had covert which was an issue and and and so that was like one reason like not you know i guess clamp down it on but now now we've moved on and so let's let's just make sure we're getting tough talent uh in the united states um and and really i'd say broadly it's anyone who who wants to work for [ __ ] um and and uh and contribute more than they take to the economy like that's just necessarily going to make for a stronger better society in america elon did you see uh jeff's uh bezos's tweet back and forth with biden um where biden i think was talking about inflation inflation but then he correlated that to taxing corporations and bezos said this is misinformation and disinformation\n\net cetera et cetera what do you what do you think about that whole exchange then back and forth i mean the obvious reason for inflation is that the government printed a zillion amount more money than it had uh obviously um so it's like the government can't just uh you know have [Music] um issue checks far in excess of revenue without there being inflation um you know velocity of money held constant so unless something would change with velocity of money but but it it just look the the if the federal government writes checks they don't they never bounce so that is effectively creation of more of more dollars and if if there are more dollars created than the increase in the goods and services output of the economy then you have inflation again velocity\n\nmoney held constant um but so uh this is just this is very basic this is not like uh you know uh super complicated um and if if the government could just issue uh massive amounts of money and have it and deficits didn't matter then why don't we just make the deficit a hundred times bigger okay the answer is you can't because it will basically turn the dollar into something that is worthless so um and various countries have have tried this experiment multiple times it's not like oh i wonder what happens if this if if this is done yeah have you seen venezuela like the the poor people of venezuela are you know have been just run roughshod by their government um and so obviously you can't simply uh create money the the true economy is very important like\n\nthe true economy is the output of goods and services it's not money it's it's literally what is the output of goods and services money is simply a way to to for us to or anything that you call money uh is is a way for us to conveniently exchange goods and services without having to engage in barter and also to shift obligations in time that those are the two reasons that you have money this thing called money it's it's really it's a database the money is an information system for uh for labor allocation and for exchange of goods and services and for translating in time and the quality of that information is a function of it's like you basically you can apply information theory to money and and i think it it helps explain why one money system is or why\n\none action is better than another and so if like the the money you you just just like a an internet connection you'd want something that's high bandwidth uh low latency and jitter and uh is not dropping packets does not have a lot of errors in the system um and the same is true true of money um you you want then and really like you said what did paypal really really do that helped improve the the the bandwidth that the speed at which money could move um instead of of mailing checks back and forth which amazingly that was what people did uh in 2000 um uh you you could now do real-time exchange of of money um and and now you could ship your goods immediately instead of mailing a check and waiting for the bank to clear the check so uh like and and the the\n\nultimate thing that with paypal or or if it sort of was in the x.\n\ncom sort of went more less sort of niche payments more sort of broad financial would be to simply just that uh just mediate all the heterogeneous uh cobalt databases out there running on mainframes during batch processing and have a single real-time system that uh that was secure um and not batch processing um and so it would just be from an information standpoint more efficient and and eventually it would all the the batch processing cobal mainframes operated by the banks would cease to exist you've um spent more time uh and built more in china than almost anybody i mean apple would be the only company i could think of that's probably got a bigger footprint but i'm not certain of that what have you learned about china that you didn't know before you\n\nopened the factories there and started delivering cars there and what should we know about china you know as americans how should we think about china and our relationship with it because we haven't spent time there sure well i'd say like china first of all is not monolithic it's not like uh everything everything is not some plot by the chinese government um the uh the the there are many uh factions within china that compete uh vigorously within china um and uh so um and and and perhaps most important is that there's just a just a tremendous number of hard-working smart people in china who want to get ahead and get things done um and they're not complacent and they're not entitled um and they're gonna they're they want to get things done and they they\n\nwant to make a better life for themselves um and what we're gonna see uh which was china for uh for the first time that anyone can remember who is alive is an economy that is twice the size of the us possibly three times the size of the us is going to be very weird living in that world so uh we we better stop the infighting in the u.\n\ns and start punching ourselves in the face because like there's a whole there's way too much uh you know of america punching itself in the damn face it's just just dumb um and and think about like hey we got to be competitive here and and uh there's a new kid on the block that's going to be two to three times our size we better step up our game um and uh you know and stop infighting um you think it's easier to stop in fighting once we're beaten or do you think that there's a way folks here can actually just you know get their political and commercial act together but or does it not happen until we've realized we've lost or do we need a war i mean we i sure hope we don't need a war um uh but there will be certainly um you know an economic competition that\n\ni think will will blow people away um when they realize just how competitive they have to be to be competitive with companies in china it's very difficult you know tesla is competitive hotels is competitive because we have an awesome team in china that uh you know so um like do your tesla china employees work some meaningful percentage more or harder than your tesla non-china employees do you find like it's two different companies basically well i mean i i think tesla is somewhat it it tells us sort of pretty far out there in terms of work ethic uh anywhere in the world so uh the tales of work ethic in the us i think is substantially greater than any other car company or or any large manufacturing company that i'm aware of so you know tesla tesla does\n\nhave a a strong worth work ethic in in the u.\n\ns but but to be totally frank it it the work that work ethic is exceeded um uh on balance by uh it tells a china team that that is i think objectively true so does not say there aren't lots of hard-working people that tells the u.\n\ns they certainly are but if you say on average the the the work ethic in china is higher it's just tell us tell us what you're calling it like it is you know so what about if you're an american ceo how do you deal with do you think just the need for managing all these political factions inside of a company you probably saw you know all the sturm and wrong related to disney and what happened to them and what's continuing to happen to them on both sides between their employees as well as the governments etc um do you have any advice or what do you tell like young ceos that you hang out with about how to deal with that how to make those decisions where you land in the spectrum of dealing with all of this stuff the non-work issues that are related to now\n\nyou know going to work every day i'm not sure i entirely understand what you mean like uh you know although whether it's the the need for political correctness or the need for having political points of view and having to bring that and balance that in the workplace how do you deal with that how do you give advice to other folks about having to deal with it look i think it you know the the point of a company is to produce useful products and services for your fellow human beings it is not uh you know some political gathering place or a thing where if that's the point of a company like it's i'd say like it's you know politics and other stuff should let's not lose sight of why companies should exist um [Music] so i i i i gotta i gotta i'm i'm actually late\n\nfor yeah i apologize i'm gonna work on the rocket guys uh yeah um we're gonna go ahead and let you uh get to mars and uh i'll see you soon [Music] and they've just gone crazy [Music] we need to get mercies [Music]","textByLang":{"en":"so uh live from an undisclosed location with the sultry filter on very sultry filter on yeah having a great hair day yeah that is a good hair day great hair day my pal and your favorite ceo and twitterer mr elon musk how you doing palette [Applause] [Music] appreciate you uh coming to the event and um or coming zooming in um what's new in your world um well let's see um i guess right now uh i'm sort of debating the number of bots on twitter [Music] [Applause] on twitter um and um the currently i'd like to what what i'm being told is that the uh there's just no way to know the number of bots it's like as unknowable as the human soul basically so you have an idea witchcraft and alchemy is needed to determine these for the spot percentage i said like why\n\ndon't i try calling people but i haven't got a response you know like if you tried calling people or something you know like maybe trying to answer it's not about no no no i don't know but i think like that would be one of the things to do to say like have you tried calling them as opposed to trying to read the tea leaves here that's like impossible you know uh obviously you can have an account that looks exactly like a human account or is being operated where one person is operating a thousand accounts or something um but that person can only buy one toaster they're not gonna buy a thousand toasters so you care about like number of unique real people that are on the system it's extremely fundamental and anyone who uses twitter is well aware that uh the\n\ntheir comment the comment threads are are full of spam scam and and um just a lot of you know fake accounts so um it's it seems uh beyond beyond reasonable for twitter to claim that the number of uh essentially the number of re said another way the number of real unique humans uh that you see making comments on a daily basis on twitter is above 95 percent that is what they're claiming does anyone have that experience [Music] [Laughter] i'd like to sell you you know you know and also you can buy the brooklyn bridge um what do you think it is what yeah what's what's the uh i mean it's not five percent what is it um i think it's some number that is probably at least uh four or five times that number the i'd say it at uh if you did sort of the the lowest\n\nestimate would be probably 20 um and uh and this and this is a a bunch of uh quite smart outside firms have done analysis of twitter and uh looked at the the the daily daily users and their conclusion is also about is about 20 but that's a lower bound it's not an upper bound if you look at say um the most liked tweets on twitter um so i i have the uh the honor of having the most liked tweet of any living human um this is thank you everyone for liking my tweet including you some of the bots out there but that tweet is less than 5 million likes it's like 4.\n\n7 or something like that and that that that was the where i tweeted about um that next time buying coca-cola to put the cocaine back in it's definitely it's clearly something that the public really wants and you know uh coca-cola corporation should really think about going back to their roots um coca-cola um i mean this this i guess is the reason why our grandparents could sort of walk 20 miles in the snow because they had coca-cola with cocaine this is a real reason so um anyway that was that's that is literally the most popular tweet um of any of any living human um and but twitter says that the daily monet the sort of monetizable daily act of uses is 217 million um so why would it be that the most popular tweet ever basically is only you know two two\n\nand a half percent of the entire user base this this seems a very very low number um and um and the most popular tweets generally are clustered around that sort of four million uh like level so it's like sort of caller like basically two percent or that or less than two percent of of the uh daily active users and and technically monetizable daily active users is how twitter refers to it so it just seems how is this possible um surely there's something that maybe you know ten percent of people would like not merely two percent well actually you know if you think about it elon um there's a corollary on youtube what do what's the total user base of youtube and what have the most popular videos gotten there yes and i think there's a billion or two maybe a\n\nbillion people using youtube and those the most popular videos have tens of billions of views that might be instructive exactly that ratio makes a lot more sense um so something doesn't add up here um and my concern is isn't it's not that is it like you know is it five or or seven or eight percent but is it potentially eighty percent or ninety percent bots yeah um you know uh is it i mean i i certainly know there's some real people on twitter but uh but what's if is it an order of magnitude is it is it 50 instead of five and that's obviously an incredibly material number um especially since twitter uh relies uh primarily on brand advertising as opposed to specific click-through advertising where you make a purchase if you if you make a purchase it it\n\ndoesn't really matter that much but for brand advertising which is really just awareness advertising it matters if real humans are seeing that or not yeah and and so i guess stepping back for a second people are curious why you want to buy twitter why is this so important to you and then i guess what are the chances you think the deal gets done at this point so a two-parter why is it so important to me i mean some of this i've articulated before but i think there's a need for a a public town square digital town square that uh where people can debate uh issues of all kinds um including the most substantive issues and in order for for that to be the case you have to have something that is as broadly inclusive as possible that has as much of the the people\n\non the platform as possible uh where it's uh it feels uh balanced from a political standpoint uh it's not biased one way or the other um and where the system is transparent this is why i think it's important to put the algorithm on on github and actually allow the public to see it and critique it and improve it and if there are any manual changes uh sort of shadow banning as it's called or increasing or decreasing the prominence of a tweet that's done manually that that should be noted uh so you know what has happened and it's not just uh you know you're just where it is right now we don't know what the heck is going on why is one tweet doing well why isn't that sweet not is it the algorithm did someone manually intervene uh why are some accounts banned\n\nuh with no recourse apparently um and um you know the the reality is uh that twitter at this point you know has uh a very far-left bias um and i would class myself as a moderate and you know neither the republican nor nor democrat um and in fact uh i have voted vote overwhelmingly for democrats uh historically overwhelmingly like i'm not sure i might never have voted for a republican just to be clear right now now this election i would well david you okay how are you gonna die he keep going keep going he's fine he's fine we're gonna resuscitate him we're gonna resuscitate david sacks i mean let me ask you a person the point i'm trying to make is that this is not some sort of attempt to uh you know it's not some right wing takeover uh as as say people\n\nin life may fear uh but rather a moderate wing takeover um and an attempt to uh ensure that that people of of all uh you know political uh beliefs feel welcome on on a digital town square that and they can express uh their their beliefs uh without fear of being banned or shadow banned um and and and that we we obviously need to get rid of the bots uh and and scams and trials and people that are operating uh huge bot armies in an attempt to uh unduly influence the the public opinion so this is what i think it's very important that we have that like the the some of the smartest people in history have have thought about it and said like free speech is important for a for a healthy democracy it is important and free speech only matters like say when does\n\nprestige matter most it's when someone when it's someone you don't like saying something you don't like uh that's when it actually matters um so um you know obviously and and and it's pretty annoying when someone you don't like says something you don't like that's that's that's bad but it's actually a good sign of uh that that you have free speech um so i mean i get trashed by the media all the time it's fine i don't care uh go do do it twice as much i couldn't care less um but it's indicative of the fact that even though um i you know i have like a lot of resources i do not actually have the ability to stop the media from trashing me and that's actually a good thing yeah i i have to ask um with regard to this current administration i know how hard you\n\nwork uh on the car company and then biden you know you've been a lifelong democrat you've donated to obama and to everybody probably never voted republican and yet and the same is true for joe rogan joe rogan is you know a bernie sanders supporter and that the democratic party has been openly hostile to joe rogan and biden can't even say the word tesla or invite you to the white house when they do an eevee summit i'm curious just on a very personal basis what does it feel like to have that experience where the party you supported is won't even say the name of your company or invite you there they should be celebrating the work you're doing yeah i mean it it definitely feels like this is not right like this is [Music] the the issue here is that there's\n\njust an uh this the democrat party is overly overly controlled by the unions and by the trial lawyers particularly the class action uh lawyers um and generally if you if you'll see something that doesn't that is not in the interest of the of the people um on the on the democrat side it's going to come because of the unions uh which is just another form of monopoly and the uh the trial lawyers uh that that's where actions will be happening from democrats side they're not in the interests of the people and then um to be fair on the republican side uh there's this if you say like where is something like not not ideal happening it's because of corporate evil um and uh religious zealotry um but that's generally where the bad things will be coming from on the\n\nrepublican side um that are not representative of the people so um in the case of biden he is simply too too much uh captured by the unions um which was not the case with obama um so in the case of obama you could have you know he was sort of quite reasonable um and i think he took more of a view of that you know obviously take the concerns of the unions into account but uh there are there are bigger issues at stake and and unfortunately biden does not do that you'll have a tesla question i read today it's incredible there was a bloomberg article that said the following so the setup is this it said since you went public tesla's up 22 000 uh 11 quarters of prof sequential profitability so hitting on all cylinders but the a public analyst we had to look\n\nat it [Laughter] but analysts uh when they put out their projections okay it's it's one of the most enormous bands for any company in america the the price targets for tesla despite all of this success some have it at 200 some have it at 1600 it's all over the place you tweeted a couple months ago tesla's not a company it's like six companies inside of a company like you've had yeah maybe more can you just explain to people all these companies inside this super company just so folks have a sense of what had to be done to get here okay i mean this question requires thought and i'll probably be leaving out quite a few things but if you look and say what what does a typical uh car company do uh what what they do is they they um assemble vehicles um and they\n\nsend them to dealers and they manage the supply chain uh the they they might make the engine uh or typically we'll make the engine but most of the parts are made by suppliers and a lot of the actual technology development is done by suppliers and most most of the vehicle software is done by suppliers so the actual amount of uh real work done by car companies that what you think of sort of like a gmo ford is not actually that much um and but like so they don't do they don't do uh sales they don't do service um they uh so so in the case of tesla for example we we do we we do our own sales and service we don't have dealerships um then uh tesla also has by far the biggest network of superchargers sort of the electric equivalent of gas stations so we built\n\nan entire global supercharger network which is still the most advanced and by far the best uh way to charge your car when traveling long distance or if you live in a city um and uh and don't have the ability to charge your car there's a street parking or an apartment so the whole supercharged network we developed the supercharged network we deployed it i think we have i don't know 15 000 supercharges globally um you can travel anywhere in america right now with uh the tesla supercharger network um then uh in terms of vertical integration uh we uh we make the the battery pack uh the the power electronics the drive unit um we uh we actually make we're more integrated in in the parts we actually make so much of the car uh internally uh we're vertically integrated\n\num not necessarily because we think that there's some religious reason to be a product integrator but because uh the pace that we needed to move was just much faster than the supply chain could move and to the degree that you inherit the legacy supply chain and hurt the legacy constraints including their speed uh cost and uh and technology and then tesla is as much a software company as it is a hardware company so the software that runs in tesla operates the car operates the screen uh does the charging uh all of that stuff is developed by tesla and um so we have sort of a car a tesla os in the car when you and then very importantly uh tesla has built uh an uh an autopilot ai team from scratch uh that is the best real world ai team on earth and if anyone\n\nelse has got a better one i'd like to see it demonstrated in a car um the full self-driving beta at this point can very often take you with zero interventions across the bay area from san jose to marin so through complex traffic it's really quite sophisticated um and i invite anyone to to join the beta or or look at the videos of those who are in the beta we've got like 100 000 people in the beta so it's not tiny and we'll be expanding that to i know probably a million people or a million i don't know on that order by the end of the year so um it's um we also we also built a chip team to because there wasn't it wasn't hardware to that we could run the freaking uh ai on uh we couldn't just uh fill the trunk with a whole bunch of gpus um and and you know\n\nthey would would have taken a trunk full of gpus that would have been very expensive and take massive amount of power and cooling uh just to be able to do what the tesla designed uh full self-driving computer can do so and we started a chip team from scratch designed it it was the best in the world and still is the best in the world several years later um and we also then developed we were designing a dojo supercomputer to be able to process the all the video that's coming in from billions miles of data because just sort of like the way that it's critical to compete with google because they have so much data and they have all these people doing searches all the time and humanity is training it but the same is true of tesla you really need billions of\n\nmiles ultimately tens of billions of miles of training data combined with a sort of a vast training computer and then uh optimize uh inference hardware in the car and stay the ai and training and specialized software across the board to be able to achieve a full self-driving solution i uh when when he opened tesla gigafactory remember this 67 years ago i'll just tell the audience a story quickly elon he puts a slide up there and he says guys we're not actually building a factory we're building a machine that makes machines and he puts the layout of the factory and it looks like a chip and it was basically like how you would actually lay out a microchip if you were or you know you were like a layout engineer it was the craziest thing i'd ever seen i was\n\nlike that was when i first got it yeah you know you walk in tend and you see what's happening and you have an insurance company now you're doing insurance for tesla owners and an uber competitor right and eventually a robo taxi uber competitor alright um yeah i mean insurance is like quite significant now are you okay i'm okay okay okay because the the car insurance thing is a bigger deal it may seem a lot of people are paying um you know 30 40 as much as their lease payment for the car in in car insurance um so the car insurance industry is incredibly inefficient because they they're just uh first of all you got like so many um sort of middle entities you've got from the insurance agent all the way to the final sort of reinsurer there's like a half dozen\n\ncompanies each taking a cut um and then uh the it's all very statistical so that this um even if you're a very good driver like you could be like you know 20 years old and a great driver but they they're it's all statistical so you can't get either can't get insurance or it's extremely expensive um so what tesla allows for real-time insurance based on your how you actually drive the car um you can actually if you drive the car in a safer way you actually have lower insurance so ours is is insurance is based on how you actually drive not how you know historically people that you know fit your whatever demographic have drive it's and and then you can close the loop around your uh insurance rate by simply driving better and looking at your score and and\n\nand lowering your insurance in real time and people do it actually promotes safer driving i actually have had this experience because in my household two people drive my car and one of them has a 93 score and the other one does not they have like a 60 score and you may have met this other person but i've been trying to work with her on the aggressive turns and stops in advance of our insurance bill uh which we're hoping will go down at some point um you didn't oh the one question are is this twitter deal going to get close do you think are the chances here well i mean it really depends on a lot of factors here um i'm still waiting for uh some sort of a logical explanation for the number of sort of fake or spam accounts on twitter and twitter is is refusing\n\nto tell us so you know this just seems like a strange thing um wait sorry is are they refusing to tell you or you don't think they really know i mean there's a good chance they may just have no idea they claim that they do know yeah and they claim that they've got this complex methodology that only they can understand um [Laughter] but the guy who landed two rockets simultaneously you stir this cauldron and then you throw the knuckle boom and um it comes to you in a dream i don't know um but but there should be some uh you know objective way to assert the uh thing because this is a this is a material public state threshold issue yeah it it you know it's it's a you know it's a material adverse uh misstatement uh you know if if they in fact uh have been\n\num vociferously claiming less than five percent of faker spam accounts but in fact it is four or five times that number or perhaps 10 times that number this is a big deal um it's not this it seems like if you said okay um i'm gonna i agree to buy your house you say the house has less than five percent termites that's that's an acceptable number but if it turns out it is 90 percent termites that's uh not okay you know it's not the same house um made most your house will disappear because it's mostly made in two months um so it you know that that would obviously just not be appropriate so in in making the twitter offer i was obviously reliant upon the the truth and accuracy of their public filings and if those those filings are not accurate it's simply\n\nnot that's that it's it's not you you can't pay the same price for something that is much worse than they claimed and you know they say elon life's a negotiation so at a different price it might be a totally viable deal correct i mean that i mean it's not out of the question um okay but i really would you know this is you know the more the more questions i ask the more i the more my concerns uh grow um so you know at the end of the day acquiring it has to be fixable um and and fixable you know with reason reasonable time frame and without revenues collapsing along the way and all that sort of stuff um and so you know i really need to see how these things have been calculated and it it can't be some deep mystery that is like more complex than the human\n\nsoul or something like that um it's got to be you know i think we can apply the scientific method to this and try to figure out what's really going on and um twitter's revenue is is primarily dependent i think 70 or some that order on brand advertising as opposed to specific purchase advertising this is a big deal because brand advertising is not there's not a there's not a purchase that results from that so it's basically you know how much mind share or like basically if you're a big company how how often do they hear your name um it's as opposed to something that where you can directly measure the outcome um so that that means that they're somewhat going on faith um and if that faith is undermined or or reduced because of the reality of the situation\n\ncoming to the fore then that the tesla's revenue twitter starts with the t um the quarter's revenue uh will be uh significantly impaired and that's a major problem elon did you have a chance to ask these questions during your negotiation uh the i like i said i was reliant upon their public filings so to the degree that that they're probably public and this is normal for a public company if you you know if if you make a formal filing um that that that is what investors are lying up relying on whether they are making an acquisition offer or simply buying some shares so this this the accuracy of these filings is important whether you're buying one share or the whole company and so if these filings are inaccurate or if they're sort of potentially blatant\n\nit's a big deal you know do you have a sense of why this has been such a persistent problem for twitter do they not have the technical capabilities to solve the the bot problem or is it more of like just a they've underprioritized the issue or been unwilling to because potentially their implications for uh ad revenue i i i i don't know it's sort of speculative at this point so the you know the the uh the worst interpretation would be that they don't want to look too closely at the thing because they might not like the answer that would be the worst interpretation um the bet i'm not sure what the best interpretation is but the least bad interpretation would be maybe they thought it was this way but they're the way they were doing it was wrong and they\n\ndidn't realize they were mistaken and simply weren't paying enough attention um it does seem as though it should be a lot easier to get rid of the bots and and spam and trolls then uh like this is not some we're not trying to split the atom here you know uh we're not trying to get to the moon okay we're just trying to uh limit the amount of obviously scammy accounts if it's if it's if it's like your bitcoin giveaway um you know probably it's f it's a spammer you know like it does maybe you know wait you're not giving away a hundred bitcoin i just sent you danny if if if you send me two bitcoin i'll send you one back right that's my what if i send you 20.\n\nactually um i thought one of the interesting things that came up in your product roadmap um or i guess this was released and people covered it was the um possibility of twitter becoming kind of a super app with payments included um maybe perhaps even doge or something this seems to me uh based on your work with with david a paypal like a pretty brilliant idea what's what's the vision there in terms of if you were able to buy it you know perhaps at the right price um what would it look like if you know i could add jason to at elon musk you know 10 bucks or something if you know we were splitting a check or something sure well for those that have used wechat i think that's wechat's actually a good model um if you're in china it's basically you kind of live\n\non wechat it does everything um it's sort of like twitter plus paypal plus a whole bunch of other things and we'll roll into one with actually a great interface and it's really an excellent app and we don't have anything like that um outside of china so uh i think such such an app um would be really uh useful um and it just like the utility of it uh of of sort of a a spam free thing where you could you can make comments you can post videos you can uh you know i think it's important for content creators to have a revenue share um now now this this does not need to be done on twitter it could be done from something that's created from scratch so it could be something new um so really but but i think this thing needs to exist whether it is uh converting\n\ntwitter to uh be the sort of like kind of all-encompassing app that that like said everything from digital town square where important ideas are debated uh you know maximally trusted and inclusive and at a point where you sort of have a high trust situation than than payments uh uh whether it's uh crypto or fiat uh can make a lot of sense just what you just want something that's incredibly useful and that people love using um so that but it it's it's either convert twitter to that or start something new those are the two but it does need to happen somehow well it's interesting you bring that up because the price of twitter is pretty high and you've built a couple of companies and some engineers like to come work for you and you've now gone through the\n\nintellectual exercise of studying all this um if you're looking at the two choices now fixing twitter given all these problems and maybe just starting your own version which one are you leaning towards because it i have watched you build a couple of companies and the products have turned out pretty good so is it easier for someone like you to just start from scratch i mean i mean it's certainly the my my default inclination is to start things from scratch uh i mean i'm not really i don't buy things like there's still this sort of you know uh um yeah like like spacex was started from scratch you know in the case of of tesla uh you know it was like five people it was still this guy everhart who's the worst guy i've ever worked with who tries to claim like\n\nsoul credit essentially for equating tesla if he's so damn great why didn't he just go you know create another car company when he was fired um but anyway um so well i mean that's a pretty good story i mean yeah i remember jesus i mean no but i i remember having this conversation with you we were having a conversation about the roadster i think i can tell the story i said how's it going pal and you said well i got one problem um it turns out the roadster parts and putting it together cost 190 000.\n\nyeah and i said i gave you 150 for number 16.\n\nso if you make 2000 of these you're gonna lose 80 million dollars and you're like yeah or double that i mean they basically the parts of the car cost more than they were selling it for when you were starting to get involved that's it it was difficult no no i i got involved well before before that yes when twitter when tesla was was nothing but a piece of paper let me be crystal clear [ __ ] clear no they didn't bring me in either [Music] i was gonna start i was gonna start an ed company with jv struggle and based on the the ac propulsion t0 and when i when i asked ac propulsion if it was okay to do that they said well there's also some others who want to create an ev company but have not created one yet yes would you like to join forces with them and\n\ni said okay well we'll do that that was a huge mistake jb and i should have just started the car company ourselves instead uh we uh teamed up with everhard topping and right um big mistake uh the the the actual moral error here was me trying to have my cake and eat it too which is like uh i just want to work on the technology and the product and have someone else be the ceo and and sort of run the business operations because i just like working on technology and product and design and um and and also i was like doing spacex uh you know at the time in our rockets were blowing up so it seemed like uh okay this is like i always wanted to an electric car company this is how i can have my cake and eat a two that was a huge mistake and fundamentally a moral\n\nerror um and uh so so uh in the end i had to freaking be ceo and i didn't want to be basically um so but it's either that or a company's gonna die so uh so we started with with really just nothing and uh the uh you know the t0 prototype from ac propulsion not not if that's that's the precursor to tesla um clear once again uh when uh we created tesla i when i when i joined there were no no employees there was no intellectual property there was no prototype there was no and nothing yeah we crystal [ __ ] clear and it almost bankrupted you i mean you that sent you to the cliff of india i mean that was yes we were on the ragged edge of bankruptcy so many times it was ridiculous um so um and what 2008 was one of the worst years where basically the you know\n\ngm and ford just a gm jammer ford almost went bankrupt and um you know trying to raise money for a startup electric car company in 2008 while gm's going bankrupt was uh difficult to say the least um you know people were angry that i even asked them uh they're like [ __ ] you and hang up so the only way that that that tesla actually made it through 2008 was uh a subset of the existing investors um which includes like people like antonio gracias and uh you know um steve jobson and and a few other key people our aaron price uh who who i've uh hold a debt of gratitude to the state um and and i i put in all the money i had left and they said everything literally everything um uh i didn't have a house uh so uh this is my actually so i've had the house so i\n\nwas like staying actually in jeff skull's bedroom spare bedroom um and uh and but they were the the uh the subset of the investors would say okay i put in they're putting as much as i put in so i put in everything um and and then we closed that round 6 p.\n\nm uh christmas eve 2008 it was last hour of the last day that was possible because after that people were like kept breaking for the holidays and we were to bounce payroll two days after christmas it was uh pretty that's doorstop i mean it was an incredible moment in time and and people also forget at the time that the first two rockets spacex sent up uh didn't exactly make it to orbit like one of those yeah the first three and i remember having dinner with you at that time and i asked you hey how's it going i heard glocker says you got four weeks of payroll left and you said that's not true and i said thank god and you said we have two [Music] i said no i mean both spacex and tesla in 2008 if we'd simply paid our suppliers on time we would have gone\n\nbankrupt immediately hey tell us tell us actually uh it was it was a pretty crazy moment because i also remember asking you that we were having dinner at boa and i said well certainly it's got to be some good news and you took out your blackberry to date the conversation i don't remember it and you said don't tell anybody jacob is it right no problem and you showed me the clay version of the model s yeah the most beautiful car i'd ever seen and i said oh my god it's stunning how much is it gonna cost you said i think i can make it for fifty thousand i remember it was yesterday i said if you make that car for fifty thousand you'll change the [ __ ] world and you did it you know it was a little more than fifty thousand but uh how's your let's ask about\n\nspacex okay well that's what's basically but i want to ask one more personal question has life gotten easier for you as these companies have hit scale or has the complexity made life even more challenging because those early days it was just fighting to survive nobody knew who you were you were anonymous and it was really just about the work and now let's face it you're the world's most famous guy and everybody's watching everything you do but these companies are also very big so what's life like for you today are you enjoying what you're doing every day um well i mean it's it's somewhat of a roller coaster so there are like good days and bad days um and there's there also crisis issues um and you know like sort of you know knock on wood like we're not\n\nlike uh facing you know death in the face like like it's it's definitely like quite stressful when like you know death is like trying to eat your face off and like the foam is like you know just getting it and like right there you know you know that's it's pretty stressful in that situation um so like right you know both spacex and tesla have um you know significant cash reserves so like you know it's like we're sharing death in the face we could sort of see it over in the horizon you know so i don't want to get complacent or entitled because it um but but if it's not like just sort of foaming at the mouth and actually trying to eat your face off on a daily basis that's that's certainly we've moved on from that point um and hopefully never never return\n\num but but there are a lot of issues that need to be it's just like the if you're a ceo of a company the chore level is high and if you don't do your chores then the company goes to hell and i hate doing doing chores frankly so uh who does uh so that's the real like there's a whole bunch of sort of uh you know personnel issues and legal issues and and and things that i i i don't find enjoyable to work on but if i don't work on them the company suffers so it's more like just the sheer volume of work is insane that's the uh and then and then you know go do some go add to it with you know twitter or something like that yeah i mean honestly i'm an extra processor yeah yeah i mean i i have a habit of biting off more than i can chew and then just sitting there\n\nwith like chipmunk cheeks alice tell us a little bit about where we are at spacex like how you fund the ability to go to mars but then also commercially still build um a conventional space business domestically i think this russia thing was probably really good for spacex if you want to just tell us a little bit about that sure um well i mean the goal of spacex is to develop the technology that enables life to become multi-planetary um and uh and make humanity a space sparring civilization which i think is a very exciting inspiring thing and it's like some one of those things where you can that i think just makes kids like be excited about the future and we need things that are inspiring and exciting and make the future seem like it's going to be better\n\nthan the past life can't just be about solving one miserable problem after another it's got to be like like what's what's inspiring and exciting and i think that a future where we are space-bank civilization is is one that we can all get excited about um and and we can go out there and find out what what's what's out there in the universe and what's the meaning of life and you know where are the aliens and hopefully they're friendly and that kind of um so uh you know it's interesting i do get asked about the aliens question a lot and i've i've not seen any evidence of aliens um and i'll i'll be the first to you know tweet about it or whatever if i found it if i see something i mean you'll tell us if you find him i will tell you i will definitely tell\n\nyou if there's aliens um and um you know uh i think it'd be quite helpful for you know like like if if we found aliens like probably spacex would get a ton more revenue because people like oh man aliens we're gonna upgrade on space technology pronto because what if you're unfriendly you know um it's like you know uh the idea of that is the idea that you build um basically the ability to do orbital cargo take all those profits launch starlink take all those profits and move it all into building something that can get to mars is that the kind of rough plan pretty much it's if it was like a three step a three slide power point it would be pretty much as you described which is um develop rockets that are that are capable of of taking uh satellites to orbit\n\nand uh crew to the space station um you know basically servicing government commercial space launch needs um and then uh uh build a global communication system in space uh that obviously it does a lot of good for earth but by providing uh internet connect internet connectivity to the least served because a satellite system is really great for remote locations um and you know countryside or or remote islands or or places where someone's trying to cut off their internet as a prelude to a war we take that system like in star wars yeah yeah so it's like you know so it can be pretty pretty helpful like i think like a song like basically i think is a a sort of forceful grid on its own right um by providing uh connectivity to the the least served where they've\n\ngot either no connection or a a very expensive or poor connection uh you know um the like we're like we're connecting a lot of schools remote schools in brazil right now i'm actually kind of going to be headed there uh to sort of kick things off but they've got a lot of schools that have no connectivity at all and in a modern age uh how do you learn with no connectivity i mean you get i guess old textbooks and stuff but it's really you're at a huge disadvantage if you have no digital connectivity um so i think there's just a lot of good that starling can do in it just by by itself but but then the the revenue generated from starlink is what can enable the uh of a permanently uh crude base on the moon which would be the next you know next step from apollo\n\nwhich is like let's just not go there for a few hours and and then head back let's have a opponent at the occupied science station on the moon um and we could also build um some pretty epic uh telescopes uh on the moon uh that uh would enable us to learn more about the nature of the universe and figure out what's going on and maybe detect those aliens um do you do you um do you think that there's enough profit in those businesses to fund all this or do you need wall street and other investors to come share the load with you is kind of going to mars a partnership with the government does it need to partner with governments to get there um well i think technically it does not need to partner with governments um but of course uh government support would\n\nbe helpful um so i mean it's going to be very expensive to build a self-sustaining city on mars like in order for us to become multi-planetary in a way that's meaningful um the the key threshold is at which point does the city become self-sustaining such that if the ships from earth stopped coming for any reason and it could be any reason could be world war iii or it could be just you know civilization subsided and um and and just gradually got decrepit or something but but if the ship's stuff coming the three supply ships from earth stop coming to mars for any reason does the city still survive and that's like really a large base of resources that are that that are needed uh on mars you can't be missing any one critical ingredient uh the so and you can\n\nthink of this like there are these various great filters um you know that that perhaps stop civilizations and one of the great filters is will we become a multi-planet species or not will humanity be one of those species that passes the great filter of going beyond one planet and being a multi-planet species and this is certainly something we'll have to do at some point because this the sun is expanding and will eventually boil the oceans and destroy your life on earth so if you care about life on earth you should really care about life becoming multi-planetary and ultimately multi-stellar because otherwise you're basically saying you're signing the sort of death warrant for all life as we know it it's inevitable um and then there's also the the various\n\nthings that kill the you know the dinosaurs and and i mean you look at the fossil record they've been five major extinctions uh that are sort of on the order of eighty nine eighty to ninety percent of all creatures on earth dying um for a wide range of reasons um but uh and then humans can also you know with us the world war three danger um that were that that other creatures didn't have where we could do ourselves in um by sort of misusing advanced technology and and sort of just you know having some radioactive hellhole that's all that's left after world war three so um you know you want you could even characterize it potentially as which will come first world war three or uh life becoming multi-planetary on mars um yeah i'm sorry i was gonna shift\n\nbut um you know when you think about the importance of going to mars versus solving critical energy and climate change problems here on earth obviously the effort with tesla is related to sustainable energy and i think going back to like probably the 1950s there were engineering designs around plasma fusion or fusion-based systems that have evolved to these plasma systems to these tokamak systems and every year every decade it's like hey next decade we're going to have it what's your point of view on where plasma fusion systems are are we going to have fusion energy this century this decade and does it create limitless energy where the electricity production goes up by ten thousand fold and the price of electricity drops by ten thousand fold and then\n\nwhat does that world on earth look like if that happens so i guess question is like is that technology real when does it happen and what happens to the world here when and if that happens i'll answer that question but then i'll let me sort of point out what the what the actual issue is uh if the question is like uh is it possible to solve uh fusion energy uh 100 yes definitely definitely definitely definitely is for sure um so the the and and and really just using a takamak style which is like it basically a doughnut ring with uh uh with electromagnets that control the the plasma uh the the way to solve that is simply scale up the tokamak uh fusion is uh very much a scale based thing you want to minimize your surface volume ratio so as you scale up a\n\ntokamak you reduce your surface volume ratio which means like the the the volume you have relative to this the surface uh you you now have much more uh like you can basically have a hot zone in the center that's relatively far away from the walls and and more of a hot zone um so the the so it's not in my mind a question as to whether which fusion can work but there is a question as to whether it is economically viable um and and whether it is competitive with uh with with alternatives i think that the economic viability of fusion is a much bigger question and i i think the answer probably is that a fusion earth fusion is not competitive economically i think that is that is uh i would say it's probably not competitive economically by an order of magnitude\n\nwhere does it break is it a materials breakdown or where does it break down economically well so so you can't just um use uh normal hydrogen you know you you need to use like deuterium and tritium like unusual forms of hydrogen helium-3 uh you know that there are um there are some uh some uh other types of fusion that could be used uh but um these are just not they're not like there's not a lot of this raw material it's quite difficult to get the raw material so first you have to get the raw material uh that's that's expensive raw material um and then um it's not just about generating the the energy you've got to um turn that energy into usable electricity you can't just have a hot thing okay so the hot thing has to translate to usable electricity so\n\ni think you got you've got a cost of a fuel issue which is very significant uh you've got you've got a whole bunch of knockdowns from when you generate the heat to when you actually convert that into electricity you've got some very difficult maintenance issues with with the effusion reactor [Music] so uh and that should be then compared to alternatives uh the the sustainable energy alternatives that i think uh are overwhelmingly more competitive are [Music] solar energy wind geothermal hydro uh some tidal and energy but it's really primarily uh solar uh and and wind um now and you can really say like what why bother creating a fusion on earth when we have a gigantic fusion reactor in the sky that just works with zero maintenance and it shows up every\n\nday right it's pretty consistent yeah but elon can we scale to 1000 x or 100 x our electricity production here using solar and other renewable sources yes so the the amount of uh surface area you need to power the united states is remarkably tiny um so you need like basically roughly a hundred miles by a hundred miles of territory and it obviously doesn't need to be in one place uh in the united states to power the united states it's like a little corner of texas or utah the entire country um and and then if you if you you could you could basically power uh you you probably 10x the just with solar alone um without displacing uh anyone's home uh power an economy ten times the size of the united states in the united states on land what when energy prices\n\nif you say if you extend that to water because earth is 70 percent water yeah i mean you could you could say okay now we could probably have a civilization that is a hundred times as energy intensive as we currently have it and so what does that look like with the last part of my question which is a world where energy costs are saying it's a hundred times cheaper than they are today and we have a hundred times more energy production capacity what what changes about civilization what do we do differently and what do we see change most kind of dramatically well currently we're not because of of just generally low birth rates almost worldwide civilization is not headed to have a population that is an order of magnitude greater than where where we're kind\n\nof we're currently headed towards a population decline uh and this is almost everywhere in the world um so you know it basically seems as as though as soon as you have like urbanization um and and and education beyond a certain level and income being on a certain level birth rates plummet um and so as countries get get wealthier their birth rates plummet it's it's somewhat counterintuitive because people will say like well it's too expensive to have a baby nope the the wealthier they are are the fewer kids you have um the more educated you are the fewer kids you have so um it's it's a it's it's it's the inverse um so so i'm not sure who to use all that energy um unless there's a significant change in the growth rate um or we have a very robot oriented\n\neconomy so that's also possible so if we've got a lot of um you know four wheeled robots informed cars and uh androids humanoid robots then you could certainly see that there'd be perhaps a need for an order of magnitude more energy but it's not coming from the humans unless something major changes on the on the human uh birth rate uh level uh this by the way is i think the biggest single threat to civilization uh right now is the why why do you think societally people just make those decisions when they become more affluent is it that they just become more selfish or there's more things for them to do and they have more money to spend on themselves and they say you know what i don't want to have a large family i want to you know go to coachella yeah\n\nwell there is this like weird like mind viruses thing where some people are think like having fewer kids is is like better for the environment yeah that's crazy total nonsense the environment is going to be fine they're going to be fine even if we if we doubled the size of the humans um this is and i know a lot about environmental stuff so um you know uh you that we can't have civilization just dwindle into nothing um and you know japan's leading indicator here like the japan's population declined by 600 000 people last year that lowest birth rate in history uh it's you know it's pretty bad um so we i don't know we and i think so so this one element of this is it's a lot of people just think that having kids is somehow bad for the environment i want to\n\nbe clear it's not it's essential for me for maintaining civilization that would at least maintain our numbers we don't necessarily need to grow dramatically but at least let's not uh you know gradually dwindle away and until uh civilization ends with us all in adult diapers and and in a whimper like we don't want a civilization to end in an adult diapers with a whimper that would kind of suck yeah lee well i mean and you and i have had this conversation i mean in japan i had two people tell me when i was there like i think it's immoral to bring humans into the world i mean people have gotten very sad about the future it's kind of crazy it's great life's awesome yes no this there's literally i've heard many times how like how can i bring a child into this\n\nterrible world i'm like have you read history because let me tell you it was way worse back then okay yeah now it's a good time it's a good time hey you know listen i i know you're super busy but i want to ask you about the move to texas because i've been thinking about it uh austin california i don't know some senator told you to go [ __ ] yourself and like you know like we don't know he's been a couple senators said that actually yeah it seems to be turning into a bit of a trend um but how has building the tesla gigafactory which i got to see in austin a couple weeks ago and it was one of the most inspiring things i've ever seen i mean i don't know how many months it took to build there but how long did it take to build that dreadnought and then what\n\nwould have taken to build that in california california under gavin newsom so we built the the gigatexas which is the biggest factor in north america i think possibly the biggest factor in the world um and it's three times the size of the pentagon to give you a sense of scale okay this is freaking big it's like it's weird it's like so big it's weird like you just like i was trying to find you in it and i was trying to drive around and it took me about 45 minutes to find you yeah like no you have to like call you can't like find someone in the world you have to call them on their cell phone and say where are you you know um so i mean the building is like uh just under a mile long and we're actually gonna extend it it will be like literally a mile long\n\num and about a quarter mile wide uh and it's uh 80 feet tall so it's just uh ridiculously big um and when you think about like for manufacturing situation like what what what are the two the two things that really define manufacturing competitiveness are economies of scale and technology and so if you got an ace on economy like if you sort of maximize your ace level on technology and you maximize your ace level on scale this is obviously going to be the most competitive situation and that's why they're so freaking giant um and the the gigatexas will go all the way from raw materials like like basically rail cars of cell raw materials coming in and then forming the the battery cell then the battery pack uh building the the motor uh casting we also have\n\nintroduced a major innovation which is to cast the entire front third and rear third of the car and as a single piece um i got this idea from toys actually because i was like how do they make toys those are cheap they just cast them i was like well can you build a casting machine that big and they're like well no one ever has i'm like is it are we breaking physics like no well let's just ask them and there were six major casting machine suppliers in the world and five of them said no and the six said maybe i'm like i'll take that as a yes um well i mean this you wanted to do this for the model 3 but it was just too soon huh and and now it's almost there yeah actually this this partly comes from the model 3 which is actually a fantastic car in many ways\n\nbut we were rightly criticized for an inefficient design uh with for the front and rear body um like sandy monroe who i think is really has excellent from an engineering standpoint and and really a very fair critic he pistol wept us for um the design of the the battery and piece by piece told you why you suck yeah and then he did the why and told you why you were awesome he took it apart and tells us exactly why he's why we sucked and he was correct um and then and i was like well that's pretty embarrassing so uh no there he was complimentary of other parts of the car but not the body design and uh and so it's like okay we're gonna go from like you know uh the it's just an incredibly difficult party to make it's made out of like 120 different pieces with\n\ndissimilar metals that are joined and you've got galvanic corrosion challenges it's very difficult to make um to a single piece casting that's one piece so like 120 pieces went down to like one so um it's it's it's a it's a huge and the the like the model y body shop especially the new one where we cast both the front and rear is 60 smaller than the model 3 body shop so it's you know gigantic it's quite this there's a lot of innovations of tesla besides the stuff that is is obvious yeah um so anyway so yeah the the but if and and really you know to to be fair to gavin newsom like uh you know if you if you had a gun to gavin's head okay um and said we need to build start building this factory in california right now he couldn't do it because there are\n\nso many uh regulatory agencies um and so many uh litigators in california that want to stop you from doing anything that even if you're the governor of the of the state you cannot get it done um so something's got to be done to to to to you know because california used to be the land of opportunity and it's a beautiful state and i love i loved living there and i still spend a lot of time in california even though every time i go there i get every literally every day i go there i get the jesus taxes big tax bill by day yeah like the sheer cost per day of me going and working in california days boggles the mind and but i still do it you know um but but it the california's gone from a land of opportunity to to the land of of of sort of taxes uh over regulation\n\nand litigation and this is not a good situation and really there's got to be like a serious cleaning out of the pipes in california how many months was it to get the giga austin done took a year and a half two years yeah 18 18 months to build something three times the size of the pentagon incredible and you just basically the answer to how many months it would take in california is infinity we would still be working on the permits yeah elon this this begs a good question which is like i'm ready graduating and you just keep signing paperwork but we have one more form for you what's a better model yes what's a better model for government so you know like all governments tend to increase in complexity dictatorship capacity is the dictatorship the right model\n\nand um you know like like how do we solve this let's say you go to mars or let's say you have to fix california is california permanently broken is there a way to fix it or like how do you set up a better model so that you don't end up having this this kind of special interest complexity situation that eventually kills the uh population i mean i think ultimately with california the people of california just have to get fed up and and demand change um that's the thing that really has to happen um and and there's there's gotta be an above zero percent chance of the of the republicans winning in california if if if if it's just the democrats every time you've got to be you know and this is this is like occasionally uh it the thing is that right right now\n\nuh and plus the level of level of gerrymandering uh which is basically just treating the people like sheep uh and and it's terrible um that's gone on in california is outrageous so california uh the dems have a super majority in um the house and senate in california and the governor and everything and so how responsive is any political party going to be to the people if they are guaranteed to win it's a one-party state and so i'm not saying that you know go sort of elect the republicans every time but if it's never you're you're just making california a one-party state they will no longer be responsible responses to people and will only be responsive to those that funded their political campaigns clip elon saying that 30 seconds on tv over and over go\n\nahead sex yeah so elon shifting gears to the economy um you know we saw this uh surprise report of negative 1.\n\n4 gdp growth in q1 uh interest rates been rising that increased the cost of the consumer of getting loans things like that we've had a stock market correction really a crash in a lot of growth stocks software stocks um what from where you sit and the data that you see uh where do you think the economy is is headed right now do you think we're in a recession or is it just a risk how do you how do you assess our current economic situation well predicting economic record economics is always difficult um and and want to assign probabilities to these things um but ironically i did last year people asked me what i think about the economy i said well i think we might enter a recession in approximately uh uh spring of 2020 of 2022.\n\ncalled it nailed it um yeah um so uh now the thing is that recessions are not necessarily a bad thing uh they they you know um what i i've now been through a few of them and what has happened is if you have um a boom that goes on for too long you get misallocation of capital uh it starts raining money on fools basically it's like any any dumb thing gets money and i'm sure you've seen a few of those um so at first at some point it gets just out of control and you just have a misallocation of of human capital uh where people are doing things that are silly and not useful to their fellow human beings um and and then those companies there needs to be sort of an economic enema if you will um to have everyone sort of shift uncomfortably in their seats [Music]\n\num sorry it's just like visualizing it the economic enemy i mean listen it's got alliteration um so this too shall pass eventually the economic enemy does its job it clears out the pipes if you will yes and um and and sort of the the the [ __ ] companies um uh go bankrupt and the ones that are doing useful products uh are prosperous um and um but there's certainly a lesson here that if one is making useful product and and doing has a company that makes sense uh make sure you're not running things too close to the edge from a capital standpoint they've got some capital reserves to last through uh irrational times because in the in the past when there's been a recession um it has gone it's amazing it's flipped like a light switch i mean david do you remember\n\nthis when from the from the paypal you know ex-paypal days when we uh raised 100 million dollars in march of 2000 uh and we literally we had the demand was so high we had uh people like vcs like just literally without even a term sheet wiring money into our account um we'll send the term sheet later literally we're like we like sleuth out our our bank account number and wire money in and we're like where'd this come from and it's like um they so it was like there was literally fire hosing money in march of 2000 and and then in april 2000 the market went into free fall and it went from money raising money was trivial to even good companies could not raise money uh in a month um so it's just important to bear in mind like that you know paypal almost went\n\nbankrupt in in 2000 uh we came close um but but thankfully we would raise that that hundred million dollars in in march 2000 uh without which would be uh could be a game over basically um uh and we kind of saw it coming so it's like we we we got that the the x confinity merger done in like three weeks and raised 100 million dollars because we were like oh how we see this coming to an end pretty soon and then a month later it was like you know a nightmare basically um and and uh anyway so it's just important make sure if you're a healthy company you've got some capital to get through things um and and then what what's your costs and uh if you if if it is a recession which it more likely than not it is a recession not saying it is but it probably is um\n\nthen just uh make what's your cash flow and get the cop positive cash flow soon as you can um so um yeah uh but i think we probably are that are in a recession and that that recession will get get worse um but you know these things pass and then there will be boom times again um so it'll probably be some some tough going for i don't know a year uh maybe maybe you know 12 to 18 months is usually um the amount of time that it takes for for the a correction to to happen um what do you guys think yeah i david uh how do you feel about it yeah i mean it feels like it started um you know what started as a slowdown earlier this year um now seems like i mean technically i guess we need two quarters of negative growth to be in a recession but it feels like we're\n\nin one feels like it started um you know the growth stock the software businesses that we invest in are sort of the canaries in the coal mine and there's a lot of a lot of dead canaries uh having a hard time breathing yeah [Laughter] it got stunned for a brief moment and and it just it'll be fine um it it reminds me of the the parrot that you know the pet shop sketch or the parrot it was monty python um it's pining was parrot is pining for the fjords hey um elon a lot has been talked about as we wrap here and you've been incredibly gracious giving us so much time thank you for that um a lot of talk about american exceptionalism over the last couple years waning and maybe this country had seen its best days and uh we see the work you're doing and other\n\npeople in this great country are doing and the debates we're having about the future and yeah china's doing pretty fantastic rushes on the ropes but it does seem like uh america is still producing some of the greatest companies uh the world has ever seen some of the greatest innovations what are your thoughts on america and our future and what we need to keep this country and this beacon of hope that you know four of the five of us were not born here you know two of you came from south africa and no three of you three of you came from south africa one of you from canada i don't know what they're putting in from sri lanka and from sri lanka and through canada canada via canada he came through canada too yeah i know it seems like that's the that's the way\n\ncanada is a gateway it is a gateway and how do we it's a well i'm hinting at the answer here but you know it does seem like our immigration policy is absolutely insane and uh maybe we need to keep collecting some of the great individuals that i get to share the stage with here and yourself we need to keep bringing great people to this country why can't we get that in our heads that yeah it's talent recruitment no absolutely i think uh it's incredibly important that the united states be like the destination for the world's best talent i mean you can think of this like like like a pro sports team if you want to win the league um and and uh you know you want the best players on your team um there now there are obviously a lot of very talented people born\n\nin the united states um but if you can add a few aces from uh from uh outside the country to the team you're gonna win the league um and and and here's the thing those aces actually want to work for your team they don't want to compete against you they want to they want why don't we want to be on team america and and so it's like we have to like fight them off to not be on team america that's the crazy thing um and so it's like if you got some aces that that are the difference between winning and losing we should be like really recruiting them like you'd recruit like a star basketball player or football player that's what we should be doing um active recruiting um just like if you're a company that once wants to succeed you actively recruit the best talent\n\nand then and and that that's the way to win and and if if that stops happening america will stop winning and we have two administrations in a row biden and trump who don't want to let the greatest minds the most talented people into this country is absolutely insane i mean i think they deal with this every day reality is like actually any anyone who who's gonna who wants to to to work hard and be and do useful things um and in this you know uh we we want in the united states um and it's not just people who are sort of intellectually strong but it's just anyone with a with a strong work ethic you know if if they're coming from mexico or if they're coming from you know europe or china wherever it's just if they're like going to come here and crank hard\n\nand and contribute more than they take hell yeah i mean that's just it's a no-brainer have you been have you been disappointed in the similarities between biden and trump on this like maybe you could have expected it from trump because that was a rhetoric he needed to use to get elected but it's not as if biden has flipped the script and said okay we're going to go 180 degrees in the other direction he's kind of kept it the same which has been really surprising actually man it's hard to tell what bite is doing if we told frank um yeah like i feel like it's weaker than bernie's the the the real president is whoever controls the teleprompter you know it's like it's like the path to power is the path to the teleprompter you know like what what because that\n\nthen he just reads the teleprompter so you know i do feel like like if if somebody would accidentally lead on lean on the teleprompter it's going to be like anchorman it's going to be like qqq asdf123 you know type of thing um i mean in fairness to biden he he hasn't been napping as much as he needs to but it's just it's hard hard things that are getting done you know i mean this administration just it doesn't seem to get a lot done like and you know um whatever like the trump administration leaving trump aside there were a lot of people in the administration who were effective at getting things done so uh but this this administration seems just just to not have like the drive to just get you done uh that that um that that's my it's it's that's my impression\n\num so um you know we definitely need to fix immigration policy like we had covert which was an issue and and and so that was like one reason like not you know i guess clamp down it on but now now we've moved on and so let's let's just make sure we're getting tough talent uh in the united states um and and really i'd say broadly it's anyone who who wants to work for [ __ ] um and and uh and contribute more than they take to the economy like that's just necessarily going to make for a stronger better society in america elon did you see uh jeff's uh bezos's tweet back and forth with biden um where biden i think was talking about inflation inflation but then he correlated that to taxing corporations and bezos said this is misinformation and disinformation\n\net cetera et cetera what do you what do you think about that whole exchange then back and forth i mean the obvious reason for inflation is that the government printed a zillion amount more money than it had uh obviously um so it's like the government can't just uh you know have [Music] um issue checks far in excess of revenue without there being inflation um you know velocity of money held constant so unless something would change with velocity of money but but it it just look the the if the federal government writes checks they don't they never bounce so that is effectively creation of more of more dollars and if if there are more dollars created than the increase in the goods and services output of the economy then you have inflation again velocity\n\nmoney held constant um but so uh this is just this is very basic this is not like uh you know uh super complicated um and if if the government could just issue uh massive amounts of money and have it and deficits didn't matter then why don't we just make the deficit a hundred times bigger okay the answer is you can't because it will basically turn the dollar into something that is worthless so um and various countries have have tried this experiment multiple times it's not like oh i wonder what happens if this if if this is done yeah have you seen venezuela like the the poor people of venezuela are you know have been just run roughshod by their government um and so obviously you can't simply uh create money the the true economy is very important like\n\nthe true economy is the output of goods and services it's not money it's it's literally what is the output of goods and services money is simply a way to to for us to or anything that you call money uh is is a way for us to conveniently exchange goods and services without having to engage in barter and also to shift obligations in time that those are the two reasons that you have money this thing called money it's it's really it's a database the money is an information system for uh for labor allocation and for exchange of goods and services and for translating in time and the quality of that information is a function of it's like you basically you can apply information theory to money and and i think it it helps explain why one money system is or why\n\none action is better than another and so if like the the money you you just just like a an internet connection you'd want something that's high bandwidth uh low latency and jitter and uh is not dropping packets does not have a lot of errors in the system um and the same is true true of money um you you want then and really like you said what did paypal really really do that helped improve the the the bandwidth that the speed at which money could move um instead of of mailing checks back and forth which amazingly that was what people did uh in 2000 um uh you you could now do real-time exchange of of money um and and now you could ship your goods immediately instead of mailing a check and waiting for the bank to clear the check so uh like and and the the\n\nultimate thing that with paypal or or if it sort of was in the x.\n\ncom sort of went more less sort of niche payments more sort of broad financial would be to simply just that uh just mediate all the heterogeneous uh cobalt databases out there running on mainframes during batch processing and have a single real-time system that uh that was secure um and not batch processing um and so it would just be from an information standpoint more efficient and and eventually it would all the the batch processing cobal mainframes operated by the banks would cease to exist you've um spent more time uh and built more in china than almost anybody i mean apple would be the only company i could think of that's probably got a bigger footprint but i'm not certain of that what have you learned about china that you didn't know before you\n\nopened the factories there and started delivering cars there and what should we know about china you know as americans how should we think about china and our relationship with it because we haven't spent time there sure well i'd say like china first of all is not monolithic it's not like uh everything everything is not some plot by the chinese government um the uh the the there are many uh factions within china that compete uh vigorously within china um and uh so um and and and perhaps most important is that there's just a just a tremendous number of hard-working smart people in china who want to get ahead and get things done um and they're not complacent and they're not entitled um and they're gonna they're they want to get things done and they they\n\nwant to make a better life for themselves um and what we're gonna see uh which was china for uh for the first time that anyone can remember who is alive is an economy that is twice the size of the us possibly three times the size of the us is going to be very weird living in that world so uh we we better stop the infighting in the u.\n\ns and start punching ourselves in the face because like there's a whole there's way too much uh you know of america punching itself in the damn face it's just just dumb um and and think about like hey we got to be competitive here and and uh there's a new kid on the block that's going to be two to three times our size we better step up our game um and uh you know and stop infighting um you think it's easier to stop in fighting once we're beaten or do you think that there's a way folks here can actually just you know get their political and commercial act together but or does it not happen until we've realized we've lost or do we need a war i mean we i sure hope we don't need a war um uh but there will be certainly um you know an economic competition that\n\ni think will will blow people away um when they realize just how competitive they have to be to be competitive with companies in china it's very difficult you know tesla is competitive hotels is competitive because we have an awesome team in china that uh you know so um like do your tesla china employees work some meaningful percentage more or harder than your tesla non-china employees do you find like it's two different companies basically well i mean i i think tesla is somewhat it it tells us sort of pretty far out there in terms of work ethic uh anywhere in the world so uh the tales of work ethic in the us i think is substantially greater than any other car company or or any large manufacturing company that i'm aware of so you know tesla tesla does\n\nhave a a strong worth work ethic in in the u.\n\ns but but to be totally frank it it the work that work ethic is exceeded um uh on balance by uh it tells a china team that that is i think objectively true so does not say there aren't lots of hard-working people that tells the u.\n\ns they certainly are but if you say on average the the the work ethic in china is higher it's just tell us tell us what you're calling it like it is you know so what about if you're an american ceo how do you deal with do you think just the need for managing all these political factions inside of a company you probably saw you know all the sturm and wrong related to disney and what happened to them and what's continuing to happen to them on both sides between their employees as well as the governments etc um do you have any advice or what do you tell like young ceos that you hang out with about how to deal with that how to make those decisions where you land in the spectrum of dealing with all of this stuff the non-work issues that are related to now\n\nyou know going to work every day i'm not sure i entirely understand what you mean like uh you know although whether it's the the need for political correctness or the need for having political points of view and having to bring that and balance that in the workplace how do you deal with that how do you give advice to other folks about having to deal with it look i think it you know the the point of a company is to produce useful products and services for your fellow human beings it is not uh you know some political gathering place or a thing where if that's the point of a company like it's i'd say like it's you know politics and other stuff should let's not lose sight of why companies should exist um [Music] so i i i i gotta i gotta i'm i'm actually late\n\nfor yeah i apologize i'm gonna work on the rocket guys uh yeah um we're gonna go ahead and let you uh get to mars and uh i'll see you soon [Music] and they've just gone crazy [Music] we need to get mercies [Music]"},"languages":["en"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CnxzrX9tNoc"},{"id":"ted-2022-twitter","type":"interview","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cdZZpaB2kDM","title":"TED","titles":{"en":"TED","de":"TED","fr":"TED"},"date":"2022-04-14","summary":"Elon Musk talks about Twitter, Tesla, SpaceX and free speech on the TED stage.","text":"Chris Anderson: Elon Musk,\ngreat to see you. How are you?\n\nElon Musk: Good. How are you?\n\nCA: We're here at the Texas Gigafactory\nthe day before this thing opens. It's been pretty crazy out there. Thank you so much\nfor making time on a busy day.\n\nI would love you to help us,\nkind of, cast our minds, I don't know, 10, 20,\n30 years into the future. And help us try to picture\nwhat it would take to build a future that's worth\ngetting excited about.\n\nThe last time you spoke at TED, you said that that was really\njust a big driver. You know, you can talk about lots of other\nreasons to do the work you're doing, but fundamentally, you want\nto think about the future and not think that it sucks.\n\nEM: Yeah, absolutely. I think in general, you know, there's a lot of discussion of like,\nthis problem or that problem. And a lot of people are sad\nabout the future and they're ... Pessimistic. And I think ... this is ... This is not great. I mean, we really want\nto wake up in the morning and look forward to the future. We want to be excited\nabout what's going to happen. And life cannot simply be about sort of, solving one miserable\nproblem after another.\n\nCA: So if you look forward 30 years,\nyou know, the year 2050 has been labeled by scientists as this, kind of, almost like this\ndoomsday deadline on climate. There's a consensus of scientists,\na large consensus of scientists, who believe that if we haven't\ncompletely eliminated greenhouse gases or offset them completely by 2050, effectively we're inviting\nclimate catastrophe. Do you believe there is a pathway\nto avoid that catastrophe? And what would it look like?\n\nEM: Yeah, so I am not one\nof the doomsday people, which may surprise you. I actually think we're on a good path. But at the same time, I want to caution against complacency. So, so long as we are not complacent, as long as we have a high sense of urgency about moving towards\na sustainable energy economy, then I think things will be fine. So I can't emphasize that enough, as long as we push hard\nand are not complacent, the future is going to be great. Don't worry about it. I mean, worry about it, but if you worry about it, ironically,\nit will be a self-unfulfilling prophecy.\n\nSo, like, there are three elements\nto a sustainable energy future. One is of sustainable energy generation,\nwhich is primarily wind and solar. There's also hydro, geothermal, I'm actually pro-nuclear. I think nuclear is fine. But it's going to be primarily\nsolar and wind, as the primary generators of energy. The second part is you need batteries\nto store the solar and wind energy because the sun\ndoesn't shine all the time, the wind doesn't blow all the time. So it's a lot of stationary battery packs. And then you need electric transport. So electric cars, electric planes, boats. And then ultimately, it’s not really possible\nto make electric rockets, but you can make\nthe propellant used in rockets using sustainable energy.\n\nSo ultimately, we can have a fully\nsustainable energy economy. And it's those three things: solar/wind, stationary\nbattery pack, electric vehicles.\n\nSo then what are the limiting\nfactors on progress? The limiting factor really will be\nbattery cell production. So that's going to really be\nthe fundamental rate driver. And then whatever the slowest element of the whole lithium-ion\nbattery cells supply chain, from mining and the many steps of refining to ultimately creating a battery cell and putting it into a pack, that will be the limiting factor\non progress towards sustainability.\n\nCA: All right, so we need to talk\nmore about batteries, because the key thing\nthat I want to understand, like, there seems to be\na scaling issue here that is kind of amazing and alarming. You have said that you have calculated that the amount of battery production\nthat the world needs for sustainability is 300 terawatt hours of batteries. That's the end goal?\n\nEM: Very rough numbers, and I certainly would invite others\nto check our calculations because they may arrive\nat different conclusions. But in order to transition, not just\ncurrent electricity production, but also heating and transport, which roughly triples the amount\nof electricity that you need, it amounts to approximately 300 terawatt\nhours of installed capacity.\n\nCA: So we need to give people\na sense of how big a task that is. I mean, here we are at the Gigafactory. You know, this is one of the biggest\nbuildings in the world. What I've read, and tell me\nif this is still right, is that the goal here is to eventually\nproduce 100 gigawatt hours of batteries here a year eventually.\n\nEM: We will probably do more than that, but yes, hopefully we get there\nwithin a couple of years.\n\nCA: Right. But I mean, that is one --\n\nEM: 0.1 terrawat hours.\n\nCA: But that's still 1/100\nof what's needed. How much of the rest of that 100\nis Tesla planning to take on let's say, between now and 2030, 2040, when we really need to see\nthe scale up happen?\n\nEM: I mean, these are just guesses. So please, people shouldn't\nhold me to these things. It's not like this is like some -- What tends to happen\nis I'll make some like, you know, best guess and then people, in five years, there’ll be some jerk\nthat writes an article: \"Elon said this would happen,\nand it didn't happen. He's a liar and a fool.\" It's very annoying when that happens. So these are just guesses,\nthis is a conversation.\n\nCA: Right.\n\nEM: I think Tesla probably ends up\ndoing 10 percent of that. Roughly.\n\nCA: Let's say 2050 we have this amazing, you know,\n100 percent sustainable electric grid made up of, you know, some mixture\nof the sustainable energy sources you talked about. That same grid probably\nis offering the world really low-cost energy, isn't it, compared with now. And I'm curious about like, are people entitled to get\na little bit excited about the possibilities of that world?\n\nEM: People should be optimistic\nabout the future. Humanity will solve sustainable energy. It will happen if we, you know,\ncontinue to push hard, the future is bright and good\nfrom an energy standpoint. And then it will be possible to also use\nthat energy to do carbon sequestration. It takes a lot of energy to pull\ncarbon out of the atmosphere because in putting it in the atmosphere\nit releases energy. So now, you know, obviously\nin order to pull it out, you need to use a lot of energy. But if you've got a lot of sustainable\nenergy from wind and solar, you can actually sequester carbon. So you can reverse the CO2 parts\nper million of the atmosphere and oceans. And also you can really have\nas much fresh water as you want. Earth is mostly water. We should call Earth “Water.” It's 70 percent water by surface area. Now most of that’s seawater, but it's like we just happen to be\non the bit that's land.\n\nCA: And with energy,\nyou can turn seawater into --\n\nEM: Yes.\n\nCA: Irrigating water\nor whatever water you need.\n\nEM: At very low cost. Things will be good.\n\nCA: Things will be good. And also, there's other benefits\nto this non-fossil fuel world where the air is cleaner --\n\nEM: Yes, exactly. Because, like, when you burn fossil fuels, there's all these side reactions and toxic gases of various kinds. And sort of little particulates\nthat are bad for your lungs. Like, there's all sorts\nof bad things that are happening that will go away. And the sky will be cleaner and quieter. The future's going to be good.\n\nCA: I want us to switch now to think\na bit about artificial intelligence. But the segue there, you mentioned how annoying it is\nwhen people call you up for bad predictions in the past. So I'm possibly going to be annoying now, but I’m curious about your timelines\nand how you predict and how come some things are so amazingly\non the money and some aren't. So when it comes to predicting sales\nof Tesla vehicles, for example, you've kind of been amazing, I think in 2014 when Tesla\nhad sold that year 60,000 cars, you said, \"2020, I think we will do\nhalf a million a year.\"\n\nEM: Yeah, we did\nalmost exactly a half million.\n\nCA: You did almost exactly half a million. You were scoffed in 2014\nbecause no one since Henry Ford, with the Model T, had come close\nto that kind of growth rate for cars. You were scoffed, and you actually\nhit 500,000 cars and then 510,000 or whatever produced.\n\nBut five years ago,\nlast time you came to TED, I asked you about full self-driving, and you said, “Yeah, this very year, I'm confident that we will have a car\ngoing from LA to New York without any intervention.\"\n\nEM: Yeah, I don't want to blow your mind,\nbut I'm not always right. CA: (Laughs)\n\nWhat's the difference between those two? Why has full self-driving in particular\nbeen so hard to predict?\n\nEM: I mean, the thing that really got me, and I think it's going to get\na lot of other people, is that there are just so many\nfalse dawns with self-driving, where you think you've got the problem, have a handle on the problem, and then it, no, turns out\nyou just hit a ceiling. Because if you were to plot the progress, the progress looks like a log curve. So it's like a series of log curves. So most people don't know\nwhat a log curve is, I suppose.\n\nCA: Show the shape with your hands.\n\nEM: It goes up you know,\nsort of a fairly straight way, and then it starts tailing off and you start getting diminishing returns. And you're like, uh oh, it was trending up and now\nit's sort of, curving over and you start getting to these,\nwhat I call local maxima, where you don't realize\nbasically how dumb you were. And then it happens again.\n\nAnd ultimately... These things, you know,\nin retrospect, they seem obvious, but in order to solve\nfull self-driving properly, you actually have to solve real-world AI. Because what are the road networks\ndesigned to work with? They're designed to work\nwith a biological neural net, our brains, and with vision, our eyes. And so in order to make it\nwork with computers, you basically need to solve\nreal-world AI and vision. Because we need cameras and silicon neural nets in order to have self-driving work for a system that was designed\nfor eyes and biological neural nets.\n\nYou know, I guess\nwhen you put it that way, it's sort of, like, quite obvious that the only way\nto solve full self-driving is to solve real world AI\nand sophisticated vision.\n\nCA: What do you feel\nabout the current architecture? Do you think you have an architecture now where there is a chance for the logarithmic curve\nnot to tail off any anytime soon?\n\nEM: Well I mean, admittedly\nthese may be infamous last words, but I actually am confident\nthat we will solve it this year. That we will exceed -- The probability of an accident, at what point do you exceed\nthat of the average person? I think we will exceed that this year.\n\nCA: What are you seeing behind the scenes\nthat gives you that confidence?\n\nEM: We’re almost at the point\nwhere we have a high-quality unified vector space. In the beginning, we were trying\nto do this with image recognition on individual images. But if you get one image out of a video, it's actually quite hard to see\nwhat's going on without ambiguity. But if you look at a video segment\nof a few seconds of video, that ambiguity resolves. So the first thing we had to do\nis tie all eight cameras together so they're synchronized, so that all the frames\nare looked at simultaneously and labeled simultaneously by one person, because we still need human labeling. So at least they’re not labeled\nat different times by different people in different ways. So it's sort of a surround picture. Then a very important part\nis to add the time dimension. So that you’re looking at surround video, and you're labeling surround video. And this is actually quite difficult to do\nfrom a software standpoint. We had to write our own labeling tools and then create auto labeling, create auto labeling software to amplify\nthe efficiency of human labelers because it’s quite hard to label. In the beginning,\nit was taking several hours to label a 10-second video clip. This is not scalable.\n\nSo basically what you have to have\nis you have to have surround video, and that surround video has to be\nprimarily automatically labeled with humans just being editors and making slight corrections\nto the labeling of the video and then feeding back those corrections\ninto the future auto labeler, so you get this flywheel eventually where the auto labeler\nis able to take in vast amounts of video and with high accuracy, automatically label the video\nfor cars, lane lines, drive space.\n\nCA: What you’re saying is ... the result of this is that you're\neffectively giving the car a 3D model of the actual objects\nthat are all around it. It knows what they are, and it knows how fast they are moving. And the remaining task is to predict what the quirky behaviors are\nthat, you know, that when a pedestrian is walking\ndown the road with a smaller pedestrian, that maybe that smaller pedestrian\nmight do something unpredictable or things like that. You have to build into it\nbefore you can really call it safe.\n\nEM: You basically need to have\nmemory across time and space. So what I mean by that is ... Memory can’t be infinite, because it's using up a lot\nof the computer's RAM basically. So you have to say how much\nare you going to try to remember? It's very common\nfor things to be occluded. So if you talk about say,\na pedestrian walking past a truck where you saw the pedestrian start\non one side of the truck, then they're occluded by the truck. You would know intuitively, OK, that pedestrian is going to pop out\nthe other side, most likely.\n\nCA: A computer doesn't know it.\n\nEM: You need to slow down.\n\nCA: A skeptic is going to say\nthat every year for the last five years, you've kind of said, well, no this is the year, we're confident that it will be there\nin a year or two or, you know, like it's always been about that far away. But we've got a new architecture now, you're seeing enough improvement\nbehind the scenes to make you not certain,\nbut pretty confident, that, by the end of this year, what in most, not in every city,\nand every circumstance but in many cities and circumstances, basically the car will be able\nto drive without interventions safer than a human.\n\nEM: Yes. I mean, the car currently\ndrives me around Austin most of the time with no interventions. So it's not like ... And we have over 100,000 people in our full self-driving beta program. So you can look at the videos\nthat they post online.\n\nCA: I do. And some of them are great,\nand some of them are a little terrifying. I mean, occasionally\nthe car seems to veer off and scare the hell out of people.\n\nEM: It’s still a beta. CA: But you’re behind the scenes,\nlooking at the data, you're seeing enough improvement to believe that a this-year\ntimeline is real.\n\nEM: Yes, that's what it seems like. I mean, we could be here\ntalking again in a year, like, well, another year went by,\nand it didn’t happen. But I think this is the year.\n\nCA: And so in general,\nwhen people talk about Elon time, I mean it sounds like\nyou can't just have a general rule that if you predict that something\nwill be done in six months, actually what we should imagine\nis it’s going to be a year or it’s like two-x or three-x,\nit depends on the type of prediction. Some things, I guess,\nthings involving software, AI, whatever, are fundamentally harder\nto predict than others.\n\nIs there an element that you actually deliberately make\naggressive prediction timelines to drive people to be ambitious? Without that, nothing gets done?\n\nEM: Well, I generally believe,\nin terms of internal timelines, that we want to set the most aggressive\ntimeline that we can. Because there’s sort of like\na law of gaseous expansion where, for schedules, where\nwhatever time you set, it's not going to be less than that. It's very rare\nthat it'll be less than that. But as far as our predictions\nare concerned, what tends to happen in the media is that they will report\nall the wrong ones and ignore all the right ones. Or, you know, when writing\nan article about me -- I've had a long career\nin multiple industries. If you list my sins, I sound\nlike the worst person on Earth. But if you put those\nagainst the things I've done right, it makes much more sense, you know? So essentially like,\nthe longer you do anything, the more mistakes\nthat you will make cumulatively. Which, if you sum up those mistakes, will sound like I'm the worst\npredictor ever. But for example, for Tesla vehicle growth, I said I think we’d do 50 percent,\nand we’ve done 80 percent.\n\nCA: Yes.\n\nEM: But they don't mention that one. So, I mean, I'm not sure what my exact\ntrack record is on predictions. They're more optimistic than pessimistic,\nbut they're not all optimistic. Some of them are exceeded\nprobably more or later, but they do come true. It's very rare that they do not come true. It's sort of like, you know, if there's some radical\ntechnology prediction, the point is not\nthat it was a few years late, but that it happened at all. That's the more important part.\n\nCA: So it feels like\nat some point in the last year, seeing the progress on understanding, the Tesla AI understanding\nthe world around it, led to a kind of, an aha moment at Tesla. Because you really surprised people\nrecently when you said probably the most important\nproduct development going on at Tesla this year\nis this robot, Optimus.\n\nEM: Yes.\n\nCA: Many companies out there\nhave tried to put out these robots, they've been working on them for years. And so far no one has really cracked it. There's no mass adoption\nrobot in people's homes. There are some in manufacturing,\nbut I would say, no one's kind of, really cracked it. Is it something that happened in the development of full self-driving\nthat gave you the confidence to say, \"You know what, we could do\nsomething special here.\"\n\nEM: Yeah, exactly. So, you know, it took me a while\nto sort of realize that in order to solve self-driving, you really needed to solve real-world AI. And at the point of which you solve\nreal-world AI for a car, which is really a robot on four wheels, you can then generalize that\nto a robot on legs as well. The two hard parts I think -- like obviously companies\nlike Boston Dynamics have shown that it's possible\nto make quite compelling, sometimes alarming robots.\n\nCA: Right.\n\nEM: You know, so from a sensors\nand actuators standpoint, it's certainly been demonstrated by many that it's possible to make\na humanoid robot. The things that are currently missing\nare enough intelligence for the robot to navigate the real world\nand do useful things without being explicitly instructed. So the missing things are basically\nreal-world intelligence and scaling up manufacturing. Those are two things\nthat Tesla is very good at. And so then we basically just need\nto design the specialized actuators and sensors that are needed\nfor humanoid robot. People have no idea,\nthis is going to be bigger than the car.\n\nCA: So let's dig into exactly that. I mean, in one way, it's actually\nan easier problem than full self-driving because instead of an object\ngoing along at 60 miles an hour, which if it gets it wrong,\nsomeone will die. This is an object that's engineered\nto only go at what, three or four or five miles an hour. And so a mistake,\nthere aren't lives at stake. There might be embarrassment at stake.\n\nEM: So long as the AI doesn't take it over\nand murder us in our sleep or something.\n\nCA: Right.\n\n(Laughter)\n\nSo talk about -- I think the first applications\nyou've mentioned are probably going to be manufacturing, but eventually the vision is to have\nthese available for people at home. If you had a robot that really understood\nthe 3D architecture of your house and knew where every object\nin that house was or was supposed to be, and could recognize all those objects, I mean, that’s kind of amazing, isn’t it? Like the kind of thing\nthat you could ask a robot to do would be what? Like, tidy up?\n\nEM: Yeah, absolutely. Make dinner, I guess, mow the lawn.\n\nCA: Take a cup of tea to grandma\nand show her family pictures.\n\nEM: Exactly. Take care\nof my grandmother and make sure --\n\nCA: It could obviously recognize\neveryone in the home. It could play catch with your kids.\n\nEM: Yes. I mean, obviously,\nwe need to be careful this doesn't become a dystopian situation. I think one of the things\nthat's going to be important is to have a localized\nROM chip on the robot that cannot be updated over the air. Where if you, for example, were to say,\n“Stop, stop, stop,” if anyone said that, then the robot would stop,\nyou know, type of thing. And that's not updatable remotely. I think it's going to be important\nto have safety features like that.\n\nCA: Yeah, that sounds wise.\n\nEM: And I do think there should be\na regulatory agency for AI. I've said that for many years. I don't love being regulated, but I think this is an important\nthing for public safety.\n\nCA: Let's come back to that. But I don't think many people\nhave really sort of taken seriously the notion of, you know, a robot at home. I mean, at the start\nof the computing revolution, Bill Gates said there's going to be\na computer in every home. And people at the time said, yeah,\nwhatever, who would even want that. Do you think there will be basically\nlike in, say, 2050 or whatever, like a robot in most homes,\nis what there will be, and people will love them\nand count on them? You’ll have your own butler basically.\n\nEM: Yeah, you'll have your sort of\nbuddy robot probably, yeah.\n\nCA: I mean, how much of a buddy? How many applications have you thought, you know, can you have\na romantic partner, a sex partner? EM: It's probably inevitable. I mean, I did promise the internet\nthat I’d make catgirls. We could make a robot catgirl.\n\nCA: Be careful what\nyou promise the internet.\n\n(Laughter)\n\nEM: So, yeah, I guess it'll be\nwhatever people want really, you know.\n\nCA: What sort of timeline\nshould we be thinking about of the first models\nthat are actually made and sold?\n\nEM: Well, you know, the first units\nthat we intend to make are for jobs that are dangerous,\nboring, repetitive, and things that people don't want to do. And, you know, I think we’ll have like\nan interesting prototype sometime this year. We might have something useful next year, but I think quite likely\nwithin at least two years. And then we'll see\nrapid growth year over year of the usefulness\nof the humanoid robots and decrease in cost\nand scaling up production.\n\nCA: Initially just selling to businesses, or when do you picture\nyou'll start selling them where you can buy your parents one\nfor Christmas or something?\n\nEM: I'd say in less than ten years.\n\nCA: Help me on the economics of this. So what do you picture the cost\nof one of these being?\n\nEM: Well, I think the cost is actually\nnot going to be crazy high. Like less than a car. Initially, things will be expensive\nbecause it'll be a new technology at low production volume. The complexity and cost of a car\nis greater than that of a humanoid robot. So I would expect that it's going\nto be less than a car, or at least equivalent to a cheap car.\n\nCA: So even if it starts at 50k,\nwithin a few years, it’s down to 20k or lower or whatever. And maybe for home\nthey'll get much cheaper still. But think about the economics of this. If you can replace a $30,000, $40,000-a-year worker, which you have to pay every year, with a one-time payment of $25,000 for a robot that can work longer hours, a pretty rapid replacement\nof certain types of jobs. How worried should\nthe world be about that?\n\nEM: I wouldn't worry about the sort of,\nputting people out of a job thing. I think we're actually going to have,\nand already do have, a massive shortage of labor. So I think we will have ... Not people out of work, but actually still a shortage\nlabor even in the future.\n\nBut this really will be\na world of abundance. Any goods and services will be available\nto anyone who wants them. It'll be so cheap to have goods\nand services, it will be ridiculous.\n\nCA: I'm presuming it should be possible\nto imagine a bunch of goods and services that can't profitably be made now\nbut could be made in that world, courtesy of legions of robots.\n\nEM: Yeah. It will be a world of abundance. The only scarcity\nthat will exist in the future is that which we decide to create\nourselves as humans.\n\nCA: OK. So AI is allowing us to imagine\na differently powered economy that will create this abundance. What are you most worried\nabout going wrong?\n\nEM: Well, like I said,\nAI and robotics will bring out what might be termed the age of abundance. Other people have used this word, and that this is my prediction: it will be an age of abundance \nfor everyone. But I guess there’s ... The dangers would be\nthe artificial general intelligence or digital superintelligence decouples\nfrom a collective human will and goes in the direction\nthat for some reason we don't like. Whatever direction it might go.\n\nYou know, that’s sort of\nthe idea behind Neuralink, is to try to more tightly couple\ncollective human world to digital superintelligence. And also along the way solve a lot\nof brain injuries and spinal injuries and that kind of thing. So even if it doesn't succeed\nin the greater goal, I think it will succeed in the goal\nof alleviating brain and spine damage.\n\nCA: So the spirit there is\nthat if we're going to make these AIs that are so vastly intelligent,\nwe ought to be wired directly to them so that we ourselves can have\nthose superpowers more directly. But that doesn't seem to avoid\nthe risk that those superpowers might ... turn ugly in unintended ways.\n\nEM: I think it's a risk, I agree. I'm not saying that I have\nsome certain answer to that risk. I’m just saying like maybe one of the things\nthat would be good for ensuring that the future\nis one that we want is to more tightly couple the collective human world\nto digital intelligence.\n\nThe issue that we face here\nis that we are already a cyborg, if you think about it. The computers are\nan extension of ourselves. And when we die, we have,\nlike, a digital ghost. You know, all of our text messages\nand social media, emails. And it's quite eerie actually, when someone dies but everything\nonline is still there. But you say like, what's the limitation? What is it that inhibits\na human-machine symbiosis? It's the data rate. When you communicate,\nespecially with a phone, you're moving your thumbs very slowly. So you're like moving\nyour two little meat sticks at a rate that’s maybe 10 bits per second,\noptimistically, 100 bits per second. And computers are communicating\nat the gigabyte level and beyond.\n\nCA: Have you seen evidence\nthat the technology is actually working, that you've got a richer, sort of,\nhigher bandwidth connection, if you like, between like external\nelectronics and a brain than has been possible before?\n\nEM: Yeah. I mean, the fundamental principles\nof reading neurons, sort of doing read-write on neurons\nwith tiny electrodes, have been demonstrated for decades. So it's not like the concept is new. The problem is that there is\nno product that works well that you can go and buy. So it's all sort of, in research labs. And it's like some cords\nsticking out of your head. And it's quite gruesome,\nand it's really ... There's no good product\nthat actually does a good job and is high-bandwidth and safe and something actually that you could buy\nand would want to buy.\n\nBut the way to think\nof the Neuralink device is kind of like a Fitbit\nor an Apple Watch. That's where we take out\nsort of a small section of skull about the size of a quarter, replace that with what, in many ways really is very much like\na Fitbit, Apple Watch or some kind of smart watch thing. But with tiny, tiny wires, very, very tiny wires. Wires so tiny, it’s hard to even see them. And it's very important\nto have very tiny wires so that when they’re implanted,\nthey don’t damage the brain.\n\nCA: How far are you from putting\nthese into humans?\n\nEM: Well, we have put in\nour FDA application to aspirationally do the first\nhuman implant this year.\n\nCA: The first uses will be\nfor neurological injuries of different kinds. But rolling the clock forward and imagining when people\nare actually using these for their own enhancement, let's say, and for the enhancement of the world, how clear are you in your mind as to what it will feel like\nto have one of these inside your head?\n\nEM: Well, I do want to emphasize\nwe're at an early stage. And so it really will be\nmany years before we have anything approximating\na high-bandwidth neural interface that allows for AI-human symbiosis. For many years, we will just be solving\nbrain injuries and spinal injuries. For probably a decade. This is not something\nthat will suddenly one day it will have this incredible\nsort of whole brain interface. It's going to be, like I said, at least a decade of really\njust solving brain injuries and spinal injuries. And really, I think you can solve\na very wide range of brain injuries, including severe depression,\nmorbid obesity, sleep, potentially schizophrenia, like, a lot of things that cause\ngreat stress to people. Restoring memory in older people.\n\nCA: If you can pull that off,\nthat's the app I will sign up for.\n\nEM: Absolutely.\n\nCA: Please hurry. (Laughs)\n\nEM: I mean, the emails that we get\nat Neuralink are heartbreaking. I mean, they'll send us\njust tragic, you know, where someone was sort of,\nin the prime of life and they had an accident on a motorcycle and someone who's 25, you know,\ncan't even feed themselves. And this is something we could fix.\n\nCA: But you have said that AI is one\nof the things you're most worried about and that Neuralink may be one of the ways where we can keep abreast of it.\n\nEM: Yeah, there's the short-term thing, which I think is helpful on an individual\nhuman level with injuries. And then the long-term thing is an attempt to address the civilizational risk of AI by bringing digital intelligence and biological intelligence\ncloser together.\n\nI mean, if you think of how\nthe brain works today, there are really two layers to the brain. There's the limbic system and the cortex. You've got the kind of,\nanimal brain where -- it’s kind of like the fun part, really.\n\nCA: It's where most of Twitter\noperates, by the way.\n\nEM: I think Tim Urban said, we’re like somebody, you know,\nstuck a computer on a monkey. You know, so we're like,\nif you gave a monkey a computer, that's our cortex. But we still have a lot\nof monkey instincts. Which we then try to rationalize\nas, no, it's not a monkey instinct. It’s something more important than that. But it's often just really\na monkey instinct. We're just monkeys with a computer\nstuck in our brain. But even though the cortex\nis sort of the smart, or the intelligent part of the brain, the thinking part of the brain, I've not yet met anyone\nwho wants to delete their limbic system or their cortex. They're quite happy having both. Everyone wants both parts of their brain. And people really want their\nphones and their computers, which are really the tertiary,\nthe third part of your intelligence. It's just that it's ... Like the bandwidth, the rate of communication\nwith that tertiary layer is slow. And it's just a very tiny straw\nto this tertiary layer. And we want to make that tiny\nstraw a big highway. And I’m definitely not saying\nthat this is going to solve everything. Or this is you know,\nit’s the only thing -- it’s something that might be helpful. And worst-case scenario, I think we solve\nsome important brain injury, spinal injury issues,\nand that's still a great outcome.\n\nCA: Best-case scenario, we may discover new\nhuman possibility, telepathy, you've spoken of, in a way,\na connection with a loved one, you know, full memory and much faster\nthought processing maybe. All these things. It's very cool.\n\nIf AI were to take down Earth,\nwe need a plan B. Let's shift our attention to space. We spoke last time at TED\nabout reusability, and you had just demonstrated that\nspectacularly for the first time. Since then, you've gone on to build\nthis monster rocket, Starship, which kind of changes the rules\nof the game in spectacular ways. Tell us about Starship.\n\nEM: Starship is extremely fundamental.\n\nSo the holy grail of rocketry\nor space transport is full and rapid reusability. This has never been achieved. The closest that anything has come\nis our Falcon 9 rocket, where we are able to recover\nthe first stage, the boost stage, which is probably about 60 percent\nof the cost of the vehicle of the whole launch, maybe 70 percent. And we've now done that\nover a hundred times. So with Starship, we will be\nrecovering the entire thing. Or at least that's the goal.\n\nCA: Right.\n\nEM: And moreover,\nrecovering it in such a way that it can be immediately re-flown. Whereas with Falcon 9, we still need\nto do some amount of refurbishment to the booster and\nto the fairing nose cone. But with Starship, the design goal\nis immediate re-flight. So you just refill\npropellants and go again. And this is gigantic. Just as it would be\nin any other mode of transport.\n\nCA: And the main design is to basically take\n100 plus people at a time, plus a bunch of things\nthat they need, to Mars. So, first of all, talk about that piece. What is your latest timeline? One, for the first time,\na Starship goes to Mars, presumably without people,\nbut just equipment. Two, with people. Three, there’s sort of, OK, 100 people at a time, let's go.\n\nEM: Sure. And just to put the cost\nthing into perspective, the expected cost of Starship, putting 100 tons into orbit, is significantly less\nthan what it would have cost or what it did cost to put our tiny\nFalcon 1 rocket into orbit. Just as the cost of flying\na 747 around the world is less than the cost of a small airplane. You know, a small airplane\nthat was thrown away. So it's really pretty mind-boggling\nthat the giant thing costs less, way less than the small thing. So it doesn't use exotic propellants or things that are difficult\nto obtain on Mars. It uses methane as fuel, and it's primarily oxygen,\nroughly 77-78 percent oxygen by weight. And Mars has a CO2 atmosphere\nand has water ice, which is CO2 plus H2O,\nso you can make CH4, methane, and O2, oxygen, on Mars.\n\nCA: Presumably, one of the first tasks\non Mars will be to create a fuel plant that can create the fuel\nfor the return trips of many Starships.\n\nEM: Yes. And actually, it's mostly\ngoing to be oxygen plants, because it's 78 percent oxygen,\n22 percent fuel. But the fuel is a simple fuel\nthat is easy to create on Mars. And in many other parts\nof the solar system. So basically ... And it's all propulsive landing,\nno parachutes, nothing thrown away. It has a heat shield that’s capable\nof entering on Earth or Mars. We can even potentially go to Venus. but you don't want to go there. (Laughs) Venus is hell, almost literally. But you could ... It's a generalized method of transport\nto anywhere in the solar system, because the point at which\nyou have propellant depo on Mars, you can then travel to the asteroid belt and to the moons of Jupiter and Saturn and ultimately anywhere\nin the solar system.\n\nCA: But your main focus and SpaceX's main focus is still Mars. That is the mission. That is where most of the effort will go? Or are you actually imagining\na much broader array of uses even in the coming, you know, the first decade or so of uses of this. Where we could go,\nfor example, to other places in the solar system to explore, perhaps NASA wants to use\nthe rocket for that reason.\n\nEM: Yeah, NASA is planning to use\na Starship to return to the moon, to return people to the moon. And so we're very honored that NASA\nhas chosen us to do this. But I'm saying it is a generalized -- it’s a general solution to getting anywhere\nin the greater solar system. It's not suitable for going\nto another star system, but it is a general solution for transport\nanywhere in the solar system.\n\nCA: Before it can do any of that, it's got to demonstrate it can get into\norbit, you know, around Earth. What’s your latest advice\non the timeline for that?\n\nEM: It's looking promising for us\nto have an orbital launch attempt in a few months. So we're actually integrating -- will be integrating the engines\ninto the booster for the first orbital flight\nstarting in about a week or two. And the launch complex\nitself is ready to go. So assuming we get regulatory approval, I think we could have an orbital\nlaunch attempt within a few months.\n\nCA: And a radical new technology like this presumably there is real risk\non those early attempts.\n\nEM: Oh, 100 percent, yeah. The joke I make all the time\nis that excitement is guaranteed. Success is not guaranteed,\nbut excitement certainly is.\n\nCA: But the last I saw on your timeline, you've slightly put back the expected date to put the first human on Mars\ntill 2029, I want to say?\n\nEM: Yeah, I mean, so let's see. I mean, we have built a production\nsystem for Starship, so we're making a lot\nof ships and boosters.\n\nCA: How many are you planning\nto make actually?\n\nEM: Well, we're currently expecting\nto make a booster and a ship roughly every, well, initially,\nroughly every couple of months, and then hopefully by the end\nof this year, one every month. So it's giant rockets, and a lot of them. Just talking in terms\nof rough orders of magnitude, in order to create\na self-sustaining city on Mars, I think you will need something\non the order of a thousand ships. And we just need a Helen of Sparta,\nI guess, on Mars.\n\nCA: This is not in most\npeople's heads, Elon.\n\nEM: The planet that launched 1,000 ships.\n\nCA: That's nice. But this is not in most people's heads, this picture that you have in your mind. There's basically a two-year window, you can only really fly to Mars\nconveniently every two years. You were picturing that during the 2030s, every couple of years, something like 1,000 Starships take off, each containing 100 or more people. That picture is just completely\nmind-blowing to me. That sense of this armada\nof humans going to --\n\nEM: It'll be like \"Battlestar\nGalactica,\" the fleet departs.\n\nCA: And you think that it can\nbasically be funded by people spending maybe a couple hundred grand\non a ticket to Mars? Is that price about where it has been?\n\nEM: Well, I think if you say like, what's required in order to get\nenough people and enough cargo to Mars to build a self-sustaining city. And it's where you have an intersection of sets of people who want to go, because I think only a small percentage\nof humanity will want to go, and can afford to go\nor get sponsorship in some manner. That intersection of sets, I think, needs to be a million people\nor something like that. And so it’s what can a million people\nafford, or get sponsorship for, because I think governments\nwill also pay for it, and people can take out loans. But I think at the point\nat which you say, OK, like, if moving to Mars costs are,\nfor argument’s sake, $100,000, then I think you know,\nalmost anyone can work and save up and eventually have $100,000\nand be able to go to Mars if they want. We want to make it available\nto anyone who wants to go.\n\nIt's very important to emphasize\nthat Mars, especially in the beginning, will not be luxurious. It will be dangerous, cramped,\ndifficult, hard work. It's kind of like that Shackleton ad\nfor going to the Antarctic, which I think is actually not real,\nbut it sounds real and it's cool. It's sort of like, the sales pitch\nfor going to Mars is, \"It's dangerous, it's cramped. You might not make it back. It's difficult, it's hard work.\" That's the sales pitch.\n\nCA: Right. But you will make history.\n\nEM: But it'll be glorious.\n\nCA: So on that kind of launch rate\nyou're talking about over two decades, you could get your million people\nto Mars, essentially.\n\nWhose city is it? Is it NASA's city, is it SpaceX's city?\n\nEM: It’s the people of Mars’ city. The reason for this, I mean,\nI feel like why do this thing? I think this is important for maximizing the probable lifespan of humanity\nor consciousness. Human civilization could come\nto an end for external reasons, like a giant meteor or super volcanoes\nor extreme climate change. Or World War III, or you know,\nany one of a number of reasons. But the probable life span\nof civilizational consciousness as we know it, which we should really view\nas this very delicate thing, like a small candle in a vast darkness. That is what appears to be the case. We're in this vast darkness of space, and there's this little\ncandle of consciousness that’s only really come about\nafter 4.5 billion years, and it could just go out.\n\nCA: I think that's powerful, and I think a lot of people\nwill be inspired by that vision. And the reason you need the million people is because there has to be\nenough people there to do everything that you need to survive.\n\nEM: Really, like the critical threshold\nis if the ships from Earth stop coming for any reason, does the Mars City die out or not? And so we have to -- You know, people talk about like,\nthe sort of, the great filters, the things that perhaps, you know, we talk about the Fermi paradox,\nand where are the aliens? Well maybe there are these\nvarious great filters that the aliens didn’t pass, and so they eventually\njust ceased to exist. And one of the great filters\nis becoming a multi-planet species. So we want to pass that filter. And I'll be long-dead before\nthis is, you know, a real thing, before it happens. But I’d like to at least see us make\ngreat progress in this direction.\n\nCA: Given how tortured\nthe Earth is right now, how much we're beating each other up, shouldn't there be discussions going on with everyone who is dreaming\nabout Mars to try to say, we've got a once\nin a civilization's chance to make some new rules here? Should someone be trying\nto lead those discussions to figure out what it means for this\nto be the people of Mars' City?\n\nEM: Well, I think ultimately this will be up to the people\nof Mars to decide how they want to rethink society. Yeah there’s certainly risk there. And hopefully the people of Mars\nwill be more enlightened and will not fight\namongst each other too much. I mean, I have some recommendations, which people of Mars\nmay choose to listen to or not. I would advocate for more\nof a direct democracy, not a representative democracy, and laws that are short enough\nfor people to understand. Where it is harder to create laws\nthan to get rid of them.\n\nCA: Coming back a bit nearer term, I'd love you to just talk a bit\nabout some of the other possibility space that Starship seems to have created. So given -- Suddenly we've got this ability\nto move 100 tons-plus into orbit. So we've just launched\nthe James Webb telescope, which is an incredible thing. It's unbelievable.\n\nEM: Exquisite piece of technology.\n\nCA: Exquisite piece of technology. But people spent two years trying\nto figure out how to fold up this thing. It's a three-ton telescope.\n\nEM: We can make it a lot easier\nif you’ve got more volume and mass.\n\nCA: But let's ask a different question. Which is, how much more powerful\na telescope could someone design based on using Starship, for example?\n\nEM: I mean, roughly, I'd say it's probably\nan order of magnitude more resolution. If you've got 100 tons\nand a thousand cubic meters volume, which is roughly what we have.\n\nCA: And what about other exploration\nthrough the solar system? I mean, I'm you know --\n\nEM: Europa is a big question mark.\n\nCA: Right, so there's an ocean there. And what you really want to do\nis to drop a submarine into that ocean.\n\nEM: Maybe there's like,\nsome squid civilization, cephalopod civilization\nunder the ice of Europa. That would be pretty interesting.\n\nCA: I mean, Elon, if you could take\na submarine to Europa and we see pictures of this thing\nbeing devoured by a squid, that would honestly be\nthe happiest moment of my life.\n\nEM: Pretty wild, yeah.\n\nCA: What other possibilities\nare out there? Like, it feels like if you're going to\ncreate a thousand of these things, they can only fly to Mars every two years. What are they doing the rest of the time? It feels like there's this\nexplosion of possibility that I don't think people\nare really thinking about.\n\nEM: I don't know, we've certainly\ngot a long way to go. As you alluded to earlier,\nwe still have to get to orbit. And then after we get to orbit, we have to really prove out and refine\nfull and rapid reusability. That'll take a moment. But I do think we will solve this. I'm highly confident\nwe will solve this at this point.\n\nCA: Do you ever wake up with the fear that there's going to be this\nHindenburg moment for SpaceX where ...\n\nEM: We've had many Hindenburg. Well, we've never had Hindenburg moments\nwith people, which is very important. Big difference. We've blown up quite a few rockets. So there's a whole compilation online\nthat we put together and others put together, it's showing rockets are hard. I mean, the sheer amount of energy\ngoing through a rocket boggles the mind. So, you know, getting out\nof Earth's gravity well is difficult. We have a strong gravity\nand a thick atmosphere. And Mars, which is less than 40 percent, it's like, 37 percent of Earth's gravity and has a thin atmosphere. The ship alone can go all the way from the surface of Mars\nto the surface of Earth. Whereas getting to Mars requires\na giant booster and orbital refilling.\n\nCA: So, Elon, as I think more\nabout this incredible array of things that you're involved with, I keep seeing these synergies, to use a horrible word, between them. You know, for example, the robots you're building from Tesla\ncould possibly be pretty handy on Mars, doing some of the dangerous\nwork and so forth. I mean, maybe there's a scenario\nwhere your city on Mars doesn't need a million people, it needs half a million people\nand half a million robots. And that's a possibility. Maybe The Boring Company could play a role helping create some of the subterranean\ndwelling spaces that you might need.\n\nEM: Yeah.\n\nCA: Back on planet Earth, it seems like a partnership\nbetween Boring Company and Tesla could offer an unbelievable deal to a city to say, we will create for you\na 3D network of tunnels populated by robo-taxis that will offer fast, low-cost\ntransport to anyone. You know, full self-driving may\nor may not be done this year. And in some cities,\nlike, somewhere like Mumbai, I suspect won't be done for a decade.\n\nEM: Some places are more\nchallenging than others.\n\nCA: But today, today,\nwith what you've got, you could put a 3D network\nof tunnels under there.\n\nEM: Oh, if it’s just in a tunnel,\nthat’s a solved problem.\n\nCA: Exactly, full self-driving\nis a solved problem. To me, there’s amazing synergy there. With Starship, you know, Gwynne Shotwell talked\nabout by 2028 having from city to city, you know, transport on planet Earth.\n\nEM: This is a real possibility. The fastest way to get\nfrom one place to another, if it's a long distance, is a rocket. It's basically an ICBM.\n\nCA: But it has to land -- Because it's an ICBM,\nit has to land probably offshore, because it's loud. So why not have a tunnel\nthat then connects to the city with Tesla? And Neuralink. I mean, if you going to go to Mars having a telepathic connection\nwith loved ones back home, even if there's a time delay...\n\nEM: These are not intended\nto be connected, by the way. But there certainly could be\nsome synergies, yeah.\n\nCA: Surely there is a growing argument that you should actually put\nall these things together into one company and just have a company\ndevoted to creating a future that’s exciting, and let a thousand flowers bloom. Have you been thinking about that?\n\nEM: I mean, it is tricky because Tesla\nis a publicly-traded company, and the investor base of Tesla and SpaceX and certainly Boring Company\nand Neuralink are quite different. Boring Company and Neuralink\nare tiny companies.\n\nCA: By comparison.\n\nEM: Yeah, Tesla's got 110,000 people. SpaceX I think is around 12,000 people. Boring Company and Neuralink\nare both under 200 people. So they're little, tiny companies, but they will probably\nget bigger in the future. They will get bigger in the future. It's not that easy to sort\nof combine these things.\n\nCA: Traditionally, you have said\nthat for SpaceX especially, you wouldn't want it public, because public investors wouldn't support\nthe craziness of the idea of going to Mars or whatever.\n\nEM: Yeah, making life multi-planetary is outside of the normal time horizon\nof Wall Street analysts. (Laughs) To say the least.\n\nCA: I think something's changed, though. What's changed is that Tesla is now\nso powerful and so big and throws off so much cash that you actually could\nconnect the dots here. Just tell the public that x-billion\ndollars a year, whatever your number is, will be diverted to the Mars mission. I suspect you'd have massive\ninterest in that company. And it might unlock a lot\nmore possibility for you, no?\n\nEM: I would like to give the public access\nto ownership of SpaceX, but I mean the thing that like, the overhead associated\nwith a public company is high. I mean, as a public company,\nyou're just constantly sued. It does occupy like, a fair bit of ... You know, time and effort\nto deal with these things.\n\nCA: But you would still only have one\npublic company, it would be bigger, and have more things going on. But instead of being\non four boards, you'd be on one.\n\nEM: I'm actually not even on the Neuralink\nor Boring Company boards. And I don't really attend\nthe SpaceX board meetings. We only have two a year, and I just stop by and chat for an hour. The board overhead for a public\ncompany is much higher.\n\nCA: I think some investors probably worry\nabout how your time is being split, and they might be excited\nby you know, that. Anyway, I just woke up the other day thinking, just, there are so many ways\nin which these things connect. And you know,\njust the simplicity of that mission, of building a future that is worth\ngetting excited about, might appeal to an awful lot of people.\n\nElon, you are reported by Forbes\nand everyone else as now, you know, the world's richest person.\n\nEM: That’s not a sovereign.\n\nCA: (Laughs) EM: You know, I think it’s fair to say that if somebody is like, the king\nor de facto king of a country, they're wealthier than I am.\n\nCA: But it’s just harder to measure -- So $300 billion. I mean, your net worth on any given day is rising or falling\nby several billion dollars. How insane is that?\n\nEM: It's bonkers, yeah.\n\nCA: I mean, how do you handle\nthat psychologically? There aren't many people in the world\nwho have to even think about that.\n\nEM: I actually don't think\nabout that too much. But the thing that is\nactually more difficult and that does make sleeping difficult is that, you know, every good hour or even minute of thinking about Tesla and SpaceX has such a big effect on the company that I really try to work\nas much as possible, you know, to the edge\nof sanity, basically. Because you know,\nTesla’s getting to the point where probably will get\nto the point later this year, where every high-quality\nminute of thinking is a million dollars impact on Tesla. Which is insane. I mean, the basic, you know,\nif Tesla is doing, you know, sort of $2 billion a week,\nlet’s say, in revenue, it’s sort of $300 million a day,\nseven days a week. You know, it's ...\n\nCA: If you can change that by five percent\nin an hour’s brainstorm, that's a pretty valuable hour.\n\nEM: I mean, there are many instances\nwhere a half-hour meeting, I was able to improve\nthe financial outcome of the company by $100 million\nin a half-hour meeting.\n\nCA: There are many other people out there who can't stand\nthis world of billionaires. Like, they are hugely\noffended by the notion that an individual can have\nthe same wealth as, say, a billion or more\nof the world's poorest people.\n\nEM: If they examine sort of -- I think there's some axiomatic flaws\nthat are leading them to that conclusion. For sure, it would be very\nproblematic if I was consuming, you know, billions of dollars a year\nin personal consumption. But that is not the case. In fact, I don't even own\na home right now. I'm literally staying at friends' places. If I travel to the Bay Area, which is where most\nof Tesla engineering is, I basically rotate through\nfriends' spare bedrooms. I don't have a yacht,\nI really don't take vacations. It’s not as though my personal\nconsumption is high. I mean, the one exception is a plane. But if I don't use the plane,\nthen I have less hours to work.\n\nCA: I mean, I personally think\nyou have shown that you are mostly driven by really quite a deep\nsense of moral purpose. Like, your attempts to solve\nthe climate problem have been as powerful as anyone else\non the planet that I'm aware of. And I actually can't understand, personally, I can't understand the fact that you get all this criticism\nfrom the Left about, \"Oh, my God, he's so rich,\nthat's disgusting.\" When climate is their issue. Philanthropy is a topic\nthat some people go to. Philanthropy is a hard topic. How do you think about that?\n\nEM: I think if you care\nabout the reality of goodness instead of the perception of it,\nphilanthropy is extremely difficult. SpaceX, Tesla, Neuralink\nand The Boring Company are philanthropy. If you say philanthropy\nis love of humanity, they are philanthropy. Tesla is accelerating sustainable energy. This is a love -- philanthropy. SpaceX is trying to ensure\nthe long-term survival of humanity with a multiple-planet species. That is love of humanity. You know, Neuralink is trying to help\nsolve brain injuries and existential risk with AI. Love of humanity. Boring Company is trying to solve traffic,\nwhich is hell for most people, and that also is love of humanity.\n\nCA: How upsetting is it to you to hear this constant drumbeat of, \"Billionaires, my God,\nElon Musk, oh, my God?\" Like, do you just shrug that off or does it does it actually hurt?\n\nEM: I mean, at this point,\nit's water off a duck's back.\n\nCA: Elon, I’d like to,\nas we wrap up now, just pull the camera back\nand just think ... You’re a father now\nof seven surviving kids.\n\nEM: Well, I mean, I'm trying\nto set a good example because the birthrate on Earth is so low that we're facing civilizational collapse unless the birth rate returns\nto a sustainable level.\n\nCA: Yeah, you've talked about this a lot, that depopulation is a big problem, and people don't understand\nhow big a problem it is.\n\nEM: Population collapse\nis one of the biggest threats to the future of human civilization. And that is what is going on right now.\n\nCA: What drives you on a day-to-day\nbasis to do what you do?\n\nEM: I guess, like,\nI really want to make sure that there is a good future for humanity and that we're on a path to understanding\nthe nature of the universe, the meaning of life. Why are we here, how did we get here? And in order to understand\nthe nature of the universe and all these fundamental questions, we must expand the scope\nand scale of consciousness. Certainly it must not diminish or go out. Or we certainly won’t understand this. I would say I’ve been motivated\nby curiosity more than anything, and just desire to think about the future and not be sad, you know?\n\nCA: And are you? Are you not sad?\n\nEM: I'm sometimes sad, but mostly I'm feeling I guess relatively optimistic\nabout the future these days. There are certainly some big\nrisks that humanity faces. I think the population collapse\nis a really big deal, that I wish more people would think about because the birth rate is far below\nwhat's needed to sustain civilization at its current level. And there's obviously ... We need to take action\non climate sustainability, which is being done. And we need to secure\nthe future of consciousness by being a multi-planet species. We need to address -- Essentially, it's important to take\nwhatever actions we can think of to address the existential risks\nthat affect the future of consciousness.\n\nCA: There's a whole\ngeneration coming through who seem really sad about the future. What would you say to them?\n\nEM: Well, I think if you want the future\nto be good, you must make it so. Take action to make it good. And it will be.\n\nCA: Elon, thank you for all this time. That is a beautiful place to end. Thanks for all you're doing.\n\nEM: You're welcome.","textByLang":{"en":"Chris Anderson: Elon Musk,\ngreat to see you. How are you?\n\nElon Musk: Good. How are you?\n\nCA: We're here at the Texas Gigafactory\nthe day before this thing opens. It's been pretty crazy out there. Thank you so much\nfor making time on a busy day.\n\nI would love you to help us,\nkind of, cast our minds, I don't know, 10, 20,\n30 years into the future. And help us try to picture\nwhat it would take to build a future that's worth\ngetting excited about.\n\nThe last time you spoke at TED, you said that that was really\njust a big driver. You know, you can talk about lots of other\nreasons to do the work you're doing, but fundamentally, you want\nto think about the future and not think that it sucks.\n\nEM: Yeah, absolutely. I think in general, you know, there's a lot of discussion of like,\nthis problem or that problem. And a lot of people are sad\nabout the future and they're ... Pessimistic. And I think ... this is ... This is not great. I mean, we really want\nto wake up in the morning and look forward to the future. We want to be excited\nabout what's going to happen. And life cannot simply be about sort of, solving one miserable\nproblem after another.\n\nCA: So if you look forward 30 years,\nyou know, the year 2050 has been labeled by scientists as this, kind of, almost like this\ndoomsday deadline on climate. There's a consensus of scientists,\na large consensus of scientists, who believe that if we haven't\ncompletely eliminated greenhouse gases or offset them completely by 2050, effectively we're inviting\nclimate catastrophe. Do you believe there is a pathway\nto avoid that catastrophe? And what would it look like?\n\nEM: Yeah, so I am not one\nof the doomsday people, which may surprise you. I actually think we're on a good path. But at the same time, I want to caution against complacency. So, so long as we are not complacent, as long as we have a high sense of urgency about moving towards\na sustainable energy economy, then I think things will be fine. So I can't emphasize that enough, as long as we push hard\nand are not complacent, the future is going to be great. Don't worry about it. I mean, worry about it, but if you worry about it, ironically,\nit will be a self-unfulfilling prophecy.\n\nSo, like, there are three elements\nto a sustainable energy future. One is of sustainable energy generation,\nwhich is primarily wind and solar. There's also hydro, geothermal, I'm actually pro-nuclear. I think nuclear is fine. But it's going to be primarily\nsolar and wind, as the primary generators of energy. The second part is you need batteries\nto store the solar and wind energy because the sun\ndoesn't shine all the time, the wind doesn't blow all the time. So it's a lot of stationary battery packs. And then you need electric transport. So electric cars, electric planes, boats. And then ultimately, it’s not really possible\nto make electric rockets, but you can make\nthe propellant used in rockets using sustainable energy.\n\nSo ultimately, we can have a fully\nsustainable energy economy. And it's those three things: solar/wind, stationary\nbattery pack, electric vehicles.\n\nSo then what are the limiting\nfactors on progress? The limiting factor really will be\nbattery cell production. So that's going to really be\nthe fundamental rate driver. And then whatever the slowest element of the whole lithium-ion\nbattery cells supply chain, from mining and the many steps of refining to ultimately creating a battery cell and putting it into a pack, that will be the limiting factor\non progress towards sustainability.\n\nCA: All right, so we need to talk\nmore about batteries, because the key thing\nthat I want to understand, like, there seems to be\na scaling issue here that is kind of amazing and alarming. You have said that you have calculated that the amount of battery production\nthat the world needs for sustainability is 300 terawatt hours of batteries. That's the end goal?\n\nEM: Very rough numbers, and I certainly would invite others\nto check our calculations because they may arrive\nat different conclusions. But in order to transition, not just\ncurrent electricity production, but also heating and transport, which roughly triples the amount\nof electricity that you need, it amounts to approximately 300 terawatt\nhours of installed capacity.\n\nCA: So we need to give people\na sense of how big a task that is. I mean, here we are at the Gigafactory. You know, this is one of the biggest\nbuildings in the world. What I've read, and tell me\nif this is still right, is that the goal here is to eventually\nproduce 100 gigawatt hours of batteries here a year eventually.\n\nEM: We will probably do more than that, but yes, hopefully we get there\nwithin a couple of years.\n\nCA: Right. But I mean, that is one --\n\nEM: 0.1 terrawat hours.\n\nCA: But that's still 1/100\nof what's needed. How much of the rest of that 100\nis Tesla planning to take on let's say, between now and 2030, 2040, when we really need to see\nthe scale up happen?\n\nEM: I mean, these are just guesses. So please, people shouldn't\nhold me to these things. It's not like this is like some -- What tends to happen\nis I'll make some like, you know, best guess and then people, in five years, there’ll be some jerk\nthat writes an article: \"Elon said this would happen,\nand it didn't happen. He's a liar and a fool.\" It's very annoying when that happens. So these are just guesses,\nthis is a conversation.\n\nCA: Right.\n\nEM: I think Tesla probably ends up\ndoing 10 percent of that. Roughly.\n\nCA: Let's say 2050 we have this amazing, you know,\n100 percent sustainable electric grid made up of, you know, some mixture\nof the sustainable energy sources you talked about. That same grid probably\nis offering the world really low-cost energy, isn't it, compared with now. And I'm curious about like, are people entitled to get\na little bit excited about the possibilities of that world?\n\nEM: People should be optimistic\nabout the future. Humanity will solve sustainable energy. It will happen if we, you know,\ncontinue to push hard, the future is bright and good\nfrom an energy standpoint. And then it will be possible to also use\nthat energy to do carbon sequestration. It takes a lot of energy to pull\ncarbon out of the atmosphere because in putting it in the atmosphere\nit releases energy. So now, you know, obviously\nin order to pull it out, you need to use a lot of energy. But if you've got a lot of sustainable\nenergy from wind and solar, you can actually sequester carbon. So you can reverse the CO2 parts\nper million of the atmosphere and oceans. And also you can really have\nas much fresh water as you want. Earth is mostly water. We should call Earth “Water.” It's 70 percent water by surface area. Now most of that’s seawater, but it's like we just happen to be\non the bit that's land.\n\nCA: And with energy,\nyou can turn seawater into --\n\nEM: Yes.\n\nCA: Irrigating water\nor whatever water you need.\n\nEM: At very low cost. Things will be good.\n\nCA: Things will be good. And also, there's other benefits\nto this non-fossil fuel world where the air is cleaner --\n\nEM: Yes, exactly. Because, like, when you burn fossil fuels, there's all these side reactions and toxic gases of various kinds. And sort of little particulates\nthat are bad for your lungs. Like, there's all sorts\nof bad things that are happening that will go away. And the sky will be cleaner and quieter. The future's going to be good.\n\nCA: I want us to switch now to think\na bit about artificial intelligence. But the segue there, you mentioned how annoying it is\nwhen people call you up for bad predictions in the past. So I'm possibly going to be annoying now, but I’m curious about your timelines\nand how you predict and how come some things are so amazingly\non the money and some aren't. So when it comes to predicting sales\nof Tesla vehicles, for example, you've kind of been amazing, I think in 2014 when Tesla\nhad sold that year 60,000 cars, you said, \"2020, I think we will do\nhalf a million a year.\"\n\nEM: Yeah, we did\nalmost exactly a half million.\n\nCA: You did almost exactly half a million. You were scoffed in 2014\nbecause no one since Henry Ford, with the Model T, had come close\nto that kind of growth rate for cars. You were scoffed, and you actually\nhit 500,000 cars and then 510,000 or whatever produced.\n\nBut five years ago,\nlast time you came to TED, I asked you about full self-driving, and you said, “Yeah, this very year, I'm confident that we will have a car\ngoing from LA to New York without any intervention.\"\n\nEM: Yeah, I don't want to blow your mind,\nbut I'm not always right. CA: (Laughs)\n\nWhat's the difference between those two? Why has full self-driving in particular\nbeen so hard to predict?\n\nEM: I mean, the thing that really got me, and I think it's going to get\na lot of other people, is that there are just so many\nfalse dawns with self-driving, where you think you've got the problem, have a handle on the problem, and then it, no, turns out\nyou just hit a ceiling. Because if you were to plot the progress, the progress looks like a log curve. So it's like a series of log curves. So most people don't know\nwhat a log curve is, I suppose.\n\nCA: Show the shape with your hands.\n\nEM: It goes up you know,\nsort of a fairly straight way, and then it starts tailing off and you start getting diminishing returns. And you're like, uh oh, it was trending up and now\nit's sort of, curving over and you start getting to these,\nwhat I call local maxima, where you don't realize\nbasically how dumb you were. And then it happens again.\n\nAnd ultimately... These things, you know,\nin retrospect, they seem obvious, but in order to solve\nfull self-driving properly, you actually have to solve real-world AI. Because what are the road networks\ndesigned to work with? They're designed to work\nwith a biological neural net, our brains, and with vision, our eyes. And so in order to make it\nwork with computers, you basically need to solve\nreal-world AI and vision. Because we need cameras and silicon neural nets in order to have self-driving work for a system that was designed\nfor eyes and biological neural nets.\n\nYou know, I guess\nwhen you put it that way, it's sort of, like, quite obvious that the only way\nto solve full self-driving is to solve real world AI\nand sophisticated vision.\n\nCA: What do you feel\nabout the current architecture? Do you think you have an architecture now where there is a chance for the logarithmic curve\nnot to tail off any anytime soon?\n\nEM: Well I mean, admittedly\nthese may be infamous last words, but I actually am confident\nthat we will solve it this year. That we will exceed -- The probability of an accident, at what point do you exceed\nthat of the average person? I think we will exceed that this year.\n\nCA: What are you seeing behind the scenes\nthat gives you that confidence?\n\nEM: We’re almost at the point\nwhere we have a high-quality unified vector space. In the beginning, we were trying\nto do this with image recognition on individual images. But if you get one image out of a video, it's actually quite hard to see\nwhat's going on without ambiguity. But if you look at a video segment\nof a few seconds of video, that ambiguity resolves. So the first thing we had to do\nis tie all eight cameras together so they're synchronized, so that all the frames\nare looked at simultaneously and labeled simultaneously by one person, because we still need human labeling. So at least they’re not labeled\nat different times by different people in different ways. So it's sort of a surround picture. Then a very important part\nis to add the time dimension. So that you’re looking at surround video, and you're labeling surround video. And this is actually quite difficult to do\nfrom a software standpoint. We had to write our own labeling tools and then create auto labeling, create auto labeling software to amplify\nthe efficiency of human labelers because it’s quite hard to label. In the beginning,\nit was taking several hours to label a 10-second video clip. This is not scalable.\n\nSo basically what you have to have\nis you have to have surround video, and that surround video has to be\nprimarily automatically labeled with humans just being editors and making slight corrections\nto the labeling of the video and then feeding back those corrections\ninto the future auto labeler, so you get this flywheel eventually where the auto labeler\nis able to take in vast amounts of video and with high accuracy, automatically label the video\nfor cars, lane lines, drive space.\n\nCA: What you’re saying is ... the result of this is that you're\neffectively giving the car a 3D model of the actual objects\nthat are all around it. It knows what they are, and it knows how fast they are moving. And the remaining task is to predict what the quirky behaviors are\nthat, you know, that when a pedestrian is walking\ndown the road with a smaller pedestrian, that maybe that smaller pedestrian\nmight do something unpredictable or things like that. You have to build into it\nbefore you can really call it safe.\n\nEM: You basically need to have\nmemory across time and space. So what I mean by that is ... Memory can’t be infinite, because it's using up a lot\nof the computer's RAM basically. So you have to say how much\nare you going to try to remember? It's very common\nfor things to be occluded. So if you talk about say,\na pedestrian walking past a truck where you saw the pedestrian start\non one side of the truck, then they're occluded by the truck. You would know intuitively, OK, that pedestrian is going to pop out\nthe other side, most likely.\n\nCA: A computer doesn't know it.\n\nEM: You need to slow down.\n\nCA: A skeptic is going to say\nthat every year for the last five years, you've kind of said, well, no this is the year, we're confident that it will be there\nin a year or two or, you know, like it's always been about that far away. But we've got a new architecture now, you're seeing enough improvement\nbehind the scenes to make you not certain,\nbut pretty confident, that, by the end of this year, what in most, not in every city,\nand every circumstance but in many cities and circumstances, basically the car will be able\nto drive without interventions safer than a human.\n\nEM: Yes. I mean, the car currently\ndrives me around Austin most of the time with no interventions. So it's not like ... And we have over 100,000 people in our full self-driving beta program. So you can look at the videos\nthat they post online.\n\nCA: I do. And some of them are great,\nand some of them are a little terrifying. I mean, occasionally\nthe car seems to veer off and scare the hell out of people.\n\nEM: It’s still a beta. CA: But you’re behind the scenes,\nlooking at the data, you're seeing enough improvement to believe that a this-year\ntimeline is real.\n\nEM: Yes, that's what it seems like. I mean, we could be here\ntalking again in a year, like, well, another year went by,\nand it didn’t happen. But I think this is the year.\n\nCA: And so in general,\nwhen people talk about Elon time, I mean it sounds like\nyou can't just have a general rule that if you predict that something\nwill be done in six months, actually what we should imagine\nis it’s going to be a year or it’s like two-x or three-x,\nit depends on the type of prediction. Some things, I guess,\nthings involving software, AI, whatever, are fundamentally harder\nto predict than others.\n\nIs there an element that you actually deliberately make\naggressive prediction timelines to drive people to be ambitious? Without that, nothing gets done?\n\nEM: Well, I generally believe,\nin terms of internal timelines, that we want to set the most aggressive\ntimeline that we can. Because there’s sort of like\na law of gaseous expansion where, for schedules, where\nwhatever time you set, it's not going to be less than that. It's very rare\nthat it'll be less than that. But as far as our predictions\nare concerned, what tends to happen in the media is that they will report\nall the wrong ones and ignore all the right ones. Or, you know, when writing\nan article about me -- I've had a long career\nin multiple industries. If you list my sins, I sound\nlike the worst person on Earth. But if you put those\nagainst the things I've done right, it makes much more sense, you know? So essentially like,\nthe longer you do anything, the more mistakes\nthat you will make cumulatively. Which, if you sum up those mistakes, will sound like I'm the worst\npredictor ever. But for example, for Tesla vehicle growth, I said I think we’d do 50 percent,\nand we’ve done 80 percent.\n\nCA: Yes.\n\nEM: But they don't mention that one. So, I mean, I'm not sure what my exact\ntrack record is on predictions. They're more optimistic than pessimistic,\nbut they're not all optimistic. Some of them are exceeded\nprobably more or later, but they do come true. It's very rare that they do not come true. It's sort of like, you know, if there's some radical\ntechnology prediction, the point is not\nthat it was a few years late, but that it happened at all. That's the more important part.\n\nCA: So it feels like\nat some point in the last year, seeing the progress on understanding, the Tesla AI understanding\nthe world around it, led to a kind of, an aha moment at Tesla. Because you really surprised people\nrecently when you said probably the most important\nproduct development going on at Tesla this year\nis this robot, Optimus.\n\nEM: Yes.\n\nCA: Many companies out there\nhave tried to put out these robots, they've been working on them for years. And so far no one has really cracked it. There's no mass adoption\nrobot in people's homes. There are some in manufacturing,\nbut I would say, no one's kind of, really cracked it. Is it something that happened in the development of full self-driving\nthat gave you the confidence to say, \"You know what, we could do\nsomething special here.\"\n\nEM: Yeah, exactly. So, you know, it took me a while\nto sort of realize that in order to solve self-driving, you really needed to solve real-world AI. And at the point of which you solve\nreal-world AI for a car, which is really a robot on four wheels, you can then generalize that\nto a robot on legs as well. The two hard parts I think -- like obviously companies\nlike Boston Dynamics have shown that it's possible\nto make quite compelling, sometimes alarming robots.\n\nCA: Right.\n\nEM: You know, so from a sensors\nand actuators standpoint, it's certainly been demonstrated by many that it's possible to make\na humanoid robot. The things that are currently missing\nare enough intelligence for the robot to navigate the real world\nand do useful things without being explicitly instructed. So the missing things are basically\nreal-world intelligence and scaling up manufacturing. Those are two things\nthat Tesla is very good at. And so then we basically just need\nto design the specialized actuators and sensors that are needed\nfor humanoid robot. People have no idea,\nthis is going to be bigger than the car.\n\nCA: So let's dig into exactly that. I mean, in one way, it's actually\nan easier problem than full self-driving because instead of an object\ngoing along at 60 miles an hour, which if it gets it wrong,\nsomeone will die. This is an object that's engineered\nto only go at what, three or four or five miles an hour. And so a mistake,\nthere aren't lives at stake. There might be embarrassment at stake.\n\nEM: So long as the AI doesn't take it over\nand murder us in our sleep or something.\n\nCA: Right.\n\n(Laughter)\n\nSo talk about -- I think the first applications\nyou've mentioned are probably going to be manufacturing, but eventually the vision is to have\nthese available for people at home. If you had a robot that really understood\nthe 3D architecture of your house and knew where every object\nin that house was or was supposed to be, and could recognize all those objects, I mean, that’s kind of amazing, isn’t it? Like the kind of thing\nthat you could ask a robot to do would be what? Like, tidy up?\n\nEM: Yeah, absolutely. Make dinner, I guess, mow the lawn.\n\nCA: Take a cup of tea to grandma\nand show her family pictures.\n\nEM: Exactly. Take care\nof my grandmother and make sure --\n\nCA: It could obviously recognize\neveryone in the home. It could play catch with your kids.\n\nEM: Yes. I mean, obviously,\nwe need to be careful this doesn't become a dystopian situation. I think one of the things\nthat's going to be important is to have a localized\nROM chip on the robot that cannot be updated over the air. Where if you, for example, were to say,\n“Stop, stop, stop,” if anyone said that, then the robot would stop,\nyou know, type of thing. And that's not updatable remotely. I think it's going to be important\nto have safety features like that.\n\nCA: Yeah, that sounds wise.\n\nEM: And I do think there should be\na regulatory agency for AI. I've said that for many years. I don't love being regulated, but I think this is an important\nthing for public safety.\n\nCA: Let's come back to that. But I don't think many people\nhave really sort of taken seriously the notion of, you know, a robot at home. I mean, at the start\nof the computing revolution, Bill Gates said there's going to be\na computer in every home. And people at the time said, yeah,\nwhatever, who would even want that. Do you think there will be basically\nlike in, say, 2050 or whatever, like a robot in most homes,\nis what there will be, and people will love them\nand count on them? You’ll have your own butler basically.\n\nEM: Yeah, you'll have your sort of\nbuddy robot probably, yeah.\n\nCA: I mean, how much of a buddy? How many applications have you thought, you know, can you have\na romantic partner, a sex partner? EM: It's probably inevitable. I mean, I did promise the internet\nthat I’d make catgirls. We could make a robot catgirl.\n\nCA: Be careful what\nyou promise the internet.\n\n(Laughter)\n\nEM: So, yeah, I guess it'll be\nwhatever people want really, you know.\n\nCA: What sort of timeline\nshould we be thinking about of the first models\nthat are actually made and sold?\n\nEM: Well, you know, the first units\nthat we intend to make are for jobs that are dangerous,\nboring, repetitive, and things that people don't want to do. And, you know, I think we’ll have like\nan interesting prototype sometime this year. We might have something useful next year, but I think quite likely\nwithin at least two years. And then we'll see\nrapid growth year over year of the usefulness\nof the humanoid robots and decrease in cost\nand scaling up production.\n\nCA: Initially just selling to businesses, or when do you picture\nyou'll start selling them where you can buy your parents one\nfor Christmas or something?\n\nEM: I'd say in less than ten years.\n\nCA: Help me on the economics of this. So what do you picture the cost\nof one of these being?\n\nEM: Well, I think the cost is actually\nnot going to be crazy high. Like less than a car. Initially, things will be expensive\nbecause it'll be a new technology at low production volume. The complexity and cost of a car\nis greater than that of a humanoid robot. So I would expect that it's going\nto be less than a car, or at least equivalent to a cheap car.\n\nCA: So even if it starts at 50k,\nwithin a few years, it’s down to 20k or lower or whatever. And maybe for home\nthey'll get much cheaper still. But think about the economics of this. If you can replace a $30,000, $40,000-a-year worker, which you have to pay every year, with a one-time payment of $25,000 for a robot that can work longer hours, a pretty rapid replacement\nof certain types of jobs. How worried should\nthe world be about that?\n\nEM: I wouldn't worry about the sort of,\nputting people out of a job thing. I think we're actually going to have,\nand already do have, a massive shortage of labor. So I think we will have ... Not people out of work, but actually still a shortage\nlabor even in the future.\n\nBut this really will be\na world of abundance. Any goods and services will be available\nto anyone who wants them. It'll be so cheap to have goods\nand services, it will be ridiculous.\n\nCA: I'm presuming it should be possible\nto imagine a bunch of goods and services that can't profitably be made now\nbut could be made in that world, courtesy of legions of robots.\n\nEM: Yeah. It will be a world of abundance. The only scarcity\nthat will exist in the future is that which we decide to create\nourselves as humans.\n\nCA: OK. So AI is allowing us to imagine\na differently powered economy that will create this abundance. What are you most worried\nabout going wrong?\n\nEM: Well, like I said,\nAI and robotics will bring out what might be termed the age of abundance. Other people have used this word, and that this is my prediction: it will be an age of abundance \nfor everyone. But I guess there’s ... The dangers would be\nthe artificial general intelligence or digital superintelligence decouples\nfrom a collective human will and goes in the direction\nthat for some reason we don't like. Whatever direction it might go.\n\nYou know, that’s sort of\nthe idea behind Neuralink, is to try to more tightly couple\ncollective human world to digital superintelligence. And also along the way solve a lot\nof brain injuries and spinal injuries and that kind of thing. So even if it doesn't succeed\nin the greater goal, I think it will succeed in the goal\nof alleviating brain and spine damage.\n\nCA: So the spirit there is\nthat if we're going to make these AIs that are so vastly intelligent,\nwe ought to be wired directly to them so that we ourselves can have\nthose superpowers more directly. But that doesn't seem to avoid\nthe risk that those superpowers might ... turn ugly in unintended ways.\n\nEM: I think it's a risk, I agree. I'm not saying that I have\nsome certain answer to that risk. I’m just saying like maybe one of the things\nthat would be good for ensuring that the future\nis one that we want is to more tightly couple the collective human world\nto digital intelligence.\n\nThe issue that we face here\nis that we are already a cyborg, if you think about it. The computers are\nan extension of ourselves. And when we die, we have,\nlike, a digital ghost. You know, all of our text messages\nand social media, emails. And it's quite eerie actually, when someone dies but everything\nonline is still there. But you say like, what's the limitation? What is it that inhibits\na human-machine symbiosis? It's the data rate. When you communicate,\nespecially with a phone, you're moving your thumbs very slowly. So you're like moving\nyour two little meat sticks at a rate that’s maybe 10 bits per second,\noptimistically, 100 bits per second. And computers are communicating\nat the gigabyte level and beyond.\n\nCA: Have you seen evidence\nthat the technology is actually working, that you've got a richer, sort of,\nhigher bandwidth connection, if you like, between like external\nelectronics and a brain than has been possible before?\n\nEM: Yeah. I mean, the fundamental principles\nof reading neurons, sort of doing read-write on neurons\nwith tiny electrodes, have been demonstrated for decades. So it's not like the concept is new. The problem is that there is\nno product that works well that you can go and buy. So it's all sort of, in research labs. And it's like some cords\nsticking out of your head. And it's quite gruesome,\nand it's really ... There's no good product\nthat actually does a good job and is high-bandwidth and safe and something actually that you could buy\nand would want to buy.\n\nBut the way to think\nof the Neuralink device is kind of like a Fitbit\nor an Apple Watch. That's where we take out\nsort of a small section of skull about the size of a quarter, replace that with what, in many ways really is very much like\na Fitbit, Apple Watch or some kind of smart watch thing. But with tiny, tiny wires, very, very tiny wires. Wires so tiny, it’s hard to even see them. And it's very important\nto have very tiny wires so that when they’re implanted,\nthey don’t damage the brain.\n\nCA: How far are you from putting\nthese into humans?\n\nEM: Well, we have put in\nour FDA application to aspirationally do the first\nhuman implant this year.\n\nCA: The first uses will be\nfor neurological injuries of different kinds. But rolling the clock forward and imagining when people\nare actually using these for their own enhancement, let's say, and for the enhancement of the world, how clear are you in your mind as to what it will feel like\nto have one of these inside your head?\n\nEM: Well, I do want to emphasize\nwe're at an early stage. And so it really will be\nmany years before we have anything approximating\na high-bandwidth neural interface that allows for AI-human symbiosis. For many years, we will just be solving\nbrain injuries and spinal injuries. For probably a decade. This is not something\nthat will suddenly one day it will have this incredible\nsort of whole brain interface. It's going to be, like I said, at least a decade of really\njust solving brain injuries and spinal injuries. And really, I think you can solve\na very wide range of brain injuries, including severe depression,\nmorbid obesity, sleep, potentially schizophrenia, like, a lot of things that cause\ngreat stress to people. Restoring memory in older people.\n\nCA: If you can pull that off,\nthat's the app I will sign up for.\n\nEM: Absolutely.\n\nCA: Please hurry. (Laughs)\n\nEM: I mean, the emails that we get\nat Neuralink are heartbreaking. I mean, they'll send us\njust tragic, you know, where someone was sort of,\nin the prime of life and they had an accident on a motorcycle and someone who's 25, you know,\ncan't even feed themselves. And this is something we could fix.\n\nCA: But you have said that AI is one\nof the things you're most worried about and that Neuralink may be one of the ways where we can keep abreast of it.\n\nEM: Yeah, there's the short-term thing, which I think is helpful on an individual\nhuman level with injuries. And then the long-term thing is an attempt to address the civilizational risk of AI by bringing digital intelligence and biological intelligence\ncloser together.\n\nI mean, if you think of how\nthe brain works today, there are really two layers to the brain. There's the limbic system and the cortex. You've got the kind of,\nanimal brain where -- it’s kind of like the fun part, really.\n\nCA: It's where most of Twitter\noperates, by the way.\n\nEM: I think Tim Urban said, we’re like somebody, you know,\nstuck a computer on a monkey. You know, so we're like,\nif you gave a monkey a computer, that's our cortex. But we still have a lot\nof monkey instincts. Which we then try to rationalize\nas, no, it's not a monkey instinct. It’s something more important than that. But it's often just really\na monkey instinct. We're just monkeys with a computer\nstuck in our brain. But even though the cortex\nis sort of the smart, or the intelligent part of the brain, the thinking part of the brain, I've not yet met anyone\nwho wants to delete their limbic system or their cortex. They're quite happy having both. Everyone wants both parts of their brain. And people really want their\nphones and their computers, which are really the tertiary,\nthe third part of your intelligence. It's just that it's ... Like the bandwidth, the rate of communication\nwith that tertiary layer is slow. And it's just a very tiny straw\nto this tertiary layer. And we want to make that tiny\nstraw a big highway. And I’m definitely not saying\nthat this is going to solve everything. Or this is you know,\nit’s the only thing -- it’s something that might be helpful. And worst-case scenario, I think we solve\nsome important brain injury, spinal injury issues,\nand that's still a great outcome.\n\nCA: Best-case scenario, we may discover new\nhuman possibility, telepathy, you've spoken of, in a way,\na connection with a loved one, you know, full memory and much faster\nthought processing maybe. All these things. It's very cool.\n\nIf AI were to take down Earth,\nwe need a plan B. Let's shift our attention to space. We spoke last time at TED\nabout reusability, and you had just demonstrated that\nspectacularly for the first time. Since then, you've gone on to build\nthis monster rocket, Starship, which kind of changes the rules\nof the game in spectacular ways. Tell us about Starship.\n\nEM: Starship is extremely fundamental.\n\nSo the holy grail of rocketry\nor space transport is full and rapid reusability. This has never been achieved. The closest that anything has come\nis our Falcon 9 rocket, where we are able to recover\nthe first stage, the boost stage, which is probably about 60 percent\nof the cost of the vehicle of the whole launch, maybe 70 percent. And we've now done that\nover a hundred times. So with Starship, we will be\nrecovering the entire thing. Or at least that's the goal.\n\nCA: Right.\n\nEM: And moreover,\nrecovering it in such a way that it can be immediately re-flown. Whereas with Falcon 9, we still need\nto do some amount of refurbishment to the booster and\nto the fairing nose cone. But with Starship, the design goal\nis immediate re-flight. So you just refill\npropellants and go again. And this is gigantic. Just as it would be\nin any other mode of transport.\n\nCA: And the main design is to basically take\n100 plus people at a time, plus a bunch of things\nthat they need, to Mars. So, first of all, talk about that piece. What is your latest timeline? One, for the first time,\na Starship goes to Mars, presumably without people,\nbut just equipment. Two, with people. Three, there’s sort of, OK, 100 people at a time, let's go.\n\nEM: Sure. And just to put the cost\nthing into perspective, the expected cost of Starship, putting 100 tons into orbit, is significantly less\nthan what it would have cost or what it did cost to put our tiny\nFalcon 1 rocket into orbit. Just as the cost of flying\na 747 around the world is less than the cost of a small airplane. You know, a small airplane\nthat was thrown away. So it's really pretty mind-boggling\nthat the giant thing costs less, way less than the small thing. So it doesn't use exotic propellants or things that are difficult\nto obtain on Mars. It uses methane as fuel, and it's primarily oxygen,\nroughly 77-78 percent oxygen by weight. And Mars has a CO2 atmosphere\nand has water ice, which is CO2 plus H2O,\nso you can make CH4, methane, and O2, oxygen, on Mars.\n\nCA: Presumably, one of the first tasks\non Mars will be to create a fuel plant that can create the fuel\nfor the return trips of many Starships.\n\nEM: Yes. And actually, it's mostly\ngoing to be oxygen plants, because it's 78 percent oxygen,\n22 percent fuel. But the fuel is a simple fuel\nthat is easy to create on Mars. And in many other parts\nof the solar system. So basically ... And it's all propulsive landing,\nno parachutes, nothing thrown away. It has a heat shield that’s capable\nof entering on Earth or Mars. We can even potentially go to Venus. but you don't want to go there. (Laughs) Venus is hell, almost literally. But you could ... It's a generalized method of transport\nto anywhere in the solar system, because the point at which\nyou have propellant depo on Mars, you can then travel to the asteroid belt and to the moons of Jupiter and Saturn and ultimately anywhere\nin the solar system.\n\nCA: But your main focus and SpaceX's main focus is still Mars. That is the mission. That is where most of the effort will go? Or are you actually imagining\na much broader array of uses even in the coming, you know, the first decade or so of uses of this. Where we could go,\nfor example, to other places in the solar system to explore, perhaps NASA wants to use\nthe rocket for that reason.\n\nEM: Yeah, NASA is planning to use\na Starship to return to the moon, to return people to the moon. And so we're very honored that NASA\nhas chosen us to do this. But I'm saying it is a generalized -- it’s a general solution to getting anywhere\nin the greater solar system. It's not suitable for going\nto another star system, but it is a general solution for transport\nanywhere in the solar system.\n\nCA: Before it can do any of that, it's got to demonstrate it can get into\norbit, you know, around Earth. What’s your latest advice\non the timeline for that?\n\nEM: It's looking promising for us\nto have an orbital launch attempt in a few months. So we're actually integrating -- will be integrating the engines\ninto the booster for the first orbital flight\nstarting in about a week or two. And the launch complex\nitself is ready to go. So assuming we get regulatory approval, I think we could have an orbital\nlaunch attempt within a few months.\n\nCA: And a radical new technology like this presumably there is real risk\non those early attempts.\n\nEM: Oh, 100 percent, yeah. The joke I make all the time\nis that excitement is guaranteed. Success is not guaranteed,\nbut excitement certainly is.\n\nCA: But the last I saw on your timeline, you've slightly put back the expected date to put the first human on Mars\ntill 2029, I want to say?\n\nEM: Yeah, I mean, so let's see. I mean, we have built a production\nsystem for Starship, so we're making a lot\nof ships and boosters.\n\nCA: How many are you planning\nto make actually?\n\nEM: Well, we're currently expecting\nto make a booster and a ship roughly every, well, initially,\nroughly every couple of months, and then hopefully by the end\nof this year, one every month. So it's giant rockets, and a lot of them. Just talking in terms\nof rough orders of magnitude, in order to create\na self-sustaining city on Mars, I think you will need something\non the order of a thousand ships. And we just need a Helen of Sparta,\nI guess, on Mars.\n\nCA: This is not in most\npeople's heads, Elon.\n\nEM: The planet that launched 1,000 ships.\n\nCA: That's nice. But this is not in most people's heads, this picture that you have in your mind. There's basically a two-year window, you can only really fly to Mars\nconveniently every two years. You were picturing that during the 2030s, every couple of years, something like 1,000 Starships take off, each containing 100 or more people. That picture is just completely\nmind-blowing to me. That sense of this armada\nof humans going to --\n\nEM: It'll be like \"Battlestar\nGalactica,\" the fleet departs.\n\nCA: And you think that it can\nbasically be funded by people spending maybe a couple hundred grand\non a ticket to Mars? Is that price about where it has been?\n\nEM: Well, I think if you say like, what's required in order to get\nenough people and enough cargo to Mars to build a self-sustaining city. And it's where you have an intersection of sets of people who want to go, because I think only a small percentage\nof humanity will want to go, and can afford to go\nor get sponsorship in some manner. That intersection of sets, I think, needs to be a million people\nor something like that. And so it’s what can a million people\nafford, or get sponsorship for, because I think governments\nwill also pay for it, and people can take out loans. But I think at the point\nat which you say, OK, like, if moving to Mars costs are,\nfor argument’s sake, $100,000, then I think you know,\nalmost anyone can work and save up and eventually have $100,000\nand be able to go to Mars if they want. We want to make it available\nto anyone who wants to go.\n\nIt's very important to emphasize\nthat Mars, especially in the beginning, will not be luxurious. It will be dangerous, cramped,\ndifficult, hard work. It's kind of like that Shackleton ad\nfor going to the Antarctic, which I think is actually not real,\nbut it sounds real and it's cool. It's sort of like, the sales pitch\nfor going to Mars is, \"It's dangerous, it's cramped. You might not make it back. It's difficult, it's hard work.\" That's the sales pitch.\n\nCA: Right. But you will make history.\n\nEM: But it'll be glorious.\n\nCA: So on that kind of launch rate\nyou're talking about over two decades, you could get your million people\nto Mars, essentially.\n\nWhose city is it? Is it NASA's city, is it SpaceX's city?\n\nEM: It’s the people of Mars’ city. The reason for this, I mean,\nI feel like why do this thing? I think this is important for maximizing the probable lifespan of humanity\nor consciousness. Human civilization could come\nto an end for external reasons, like a giant meteor or super volcanoes\nor extreme climate change. Or World War III, or you know,\nany one of a number of reasons. But the probable life span\nof civilizational consciousness as we know it, which we should really view\nas this very delicate thing, like a small candle in a vast darkness. That is what appears to be the case. We're in this vast darkness of space, and there's this little\ncandle of consciousness that’s only really come about\nafter 4.5 billion years, and it could just go out.\n\nCA: I think that's powerful, and I think a lot of people\nwill be inspired by that vision. And the reason you need the million people is because there has to be\nenough people there to do everything that you need to survive.\n\nEM: Really, like the critical threshold\nis if the ships from Earth stop coming for any reason, does the Mars City die out or not? And so we have to -- You know, people talk about like,\nthe sort of, the great filters, the things that perhaps, you know, we talk about the Fermi paradox,\nand where are the aliens? Well maybe there are these\nvarious great filters that the aliens didn’t pass, and so they eventually\njust ceased to exist. And one of the great filters\nis becoming a multi-planet species. So we want to pass that filter. And I'll be long-dead before\nthis is, you know, a real thing, before it happens. But I’d like to at least see us make\ngreat progress in this direction.\n\nCA: Given how tortured\nthe Earth is right now, how much we're beating each other up, shouldn't there be discussions going on with everyone who is dreaming\nabout Mars to try to say, we've got a once\nin a civilization's chance to make some new rules here? Should someone be trying\nto lead those discussions to figure out what it means for this\nto be the people of Mars' City?\n\nEM: Well, I think ultimately this will be up to the people\nof Mars to decide how they want to rethink society. Yeah there’s certainly risk there. And hopefully the people of Mars\nwill be more enlightened and will not fight\namongst each other too much. I mean, I have some recommendations, which people of Mars\nmay choose to listen to or not. I would advocate for more\nof a direct democracy, not a representative democracy, and laws that are short enough\nfor people to understand. Where it is harder to create laws\nthan to get rid of them.\n\nCA: Coming back a bit nearer term, I'd love you to just talk a bit\nabout some of the other possibility space that Starship seems to have created. So given -- Suddenly we've got this ability\nto move 100 tons-plus into orbit. So we've just launched\nthe James Webb telescope, which is an incredible thing. It's unbelievable.\n\nEM: Exquisite piece of technology.\n\nCA: Exquisite piece of technology. But people spent two years trying\nto figure out how to fold up this thing. It's a three-ton telescope.\n\nEM: We can make it a lot easier\nif you’ve got more volume and mass.\n\nCA: But let's ask a different question. Which is, how much more powerful\na telescope could someone design based on using Starship, for example?\n\nEM: I mean, roughly, I'd say it's probably\nan order of magnitude more resolution. If you've got 100 tons\nand a thousand cubic meters volume, which is roughly what we have.\n\nCA: And what about other exploration\nthrough the solar system? I mean, I'm you know --\n\nEM: Europa is a big question mark.\n\nCA: Right, so there's an ocean there. And what you really want to do\nis to drop a submarine into that ocean.\n\nEM: Maybe there's like,\nsome squid civilization, cephalopod civilization\nunder the ice of Europa. That would be pretty interesting.\n\nCA: I mean, Elon, if you could take\na submarine to Europa and we see pictures of this thing\nbeing devoured by a squid, that would honestly be\nthe happiest moment of my life.\n\nEM: Pretty wild, yeah.\n\nCA: What other possibilities\nare out there? Like, it feels like if you're going to\ncreate a thousand of these things, they can only fly to Mars every two years. What are they doing the rest of the time? It feels like there's this\nexplosion of possibility that I don't think people\nare really thinking about.\n\nEM: I don't know, we've certainly\ngot a long way to go. As you alluded to earlier,\nwe still have to get to orbit. And then after we get to orbit, we have to really prove out and refine\nfull and rapid reusability. That'll take a moment. But I do think we will solve this. I'm highly confident\nwe will solve this at this point.\n\nCA: Do you ever wake up with the fear that there's going to be this\nHindenburg moment for SpaceX where ...\n\nEM: We've had many Hindenburg. Well, we've never had Hindenburg moments\nwith people, which is very important. Big difference. We've blown up quite a few rockets. So there's a whole compilation online\nthat we put together and others put together, it's showing rockets are hard. I mean, the sheer amount of energy\ngoing through a rocket boggles the mind. So, you know, getting out\nof Earth's gravity well is difficult. We have a strong gravity\nand a thick atmosphere. And Mars, which is less than 40 percent, it's like, 37 percent of Earth's gravity and has a thin atmosphere. The ship alone can go all the way from the surface of Mars\nto the surface of Earth. Whereas getting to Mars requires\na giant booster and orbital refilling.\n\nCA: So, Elon, as I think more\nabout this incredible array of things that you're involved with, I keep seeing these synergies, to use a horrible word, between them. You know, for example, the robots you're building from Tesla\ncould possibly be pretty handy on Mars, doing some of the dangerous\nwork and so forth. I mean, maybe there's a scenario\nwhere your city on Mars doesn't need a million people, it needs half a million people\nand half a million robots. And that's a possibility. Maybe The Boring Company could play a role helping create some of the subterranean\ndwelling spaces that you might need.\n\nEM: Yeah.\n\nCA: Back on planet Earth, it seems like a partnership\nbetween Boring Company and Tesla could offer an unbelievable deal to a city to say, we will create for you\na 3D network of tunnels populated by robo-taxis that will offer fast, low-cost\ntransport to anyone. You know, full self-driving may\nor may not be done this year. And in some cities,\nlike, somewhere like Mumbai, I suspect won't be done for a decade.\n\nEM: Some places are more\nchallenging than others.\n\nCA: But today, today,\nwith what you've got, you could put a 3D network\nof tunnels under there.\n\nEM: Oh, if it’s just in a tunnel,\nthat’s a solved problem.\n\nCA: Exactly, full self-driving\nis a solved problem. To me, there’s amazing synergy there. With Starship, you know, Gwynne Shotwell talked\nabout by 2028 having from city to city, you know, transport on planet Earth.\n\nEM: This is a real possibility. The fastest way to get\nfrom one place to another, if it's a long distance, is a rocket. It's basically an ICBM.\n\nCA: But it has to land -- Because it's an ICBM,\nit has to land probably offshore, because it's loud. So why not have a tunnel\nthat then connects to the city with Tesla? And Neuralink. I mean, if you going to go to Mars having a telepathic connection\nwith loved ones back home, even if there's a time delay...\n\nEM: These are not intended\nto be connected, by the way. But there certainly could be\nsome synergies, yeah.\n\nCA: Surely there is a growing argument that you should actually put\nall these things together into one company and just have a company\ndevoted to creating a future that’s exciting, and let a thousand flowers bloom. Have you been thinking about that?\n\nEM: I mean, it is tricky because Tesla\nis a publicly-traded company, and the investor base of Tesla and SpaceX and certainly Boring Company\nand Neuralink are quite different. Boring Company and Neuralink\nare tiny companies.\n\nCA: By comparison.\n\nEM: Yeah, Tesla's got 110,000 people. SpaceX I think is around 12,000 people. Boring Company and Neuralink\nare both under 200 people. So they're little, tiny companies, but they will probably\nget bigger in the future. They will get bigger in the future. It's not that easy to sort\nof combine these things.\n\nCA: Traditionally, you have said\nthat for SpaceX especially, you wouldn't want it public, because public investors wouldn't support\nthe craziness of the idea of going to Mars or whatever.\n\nEM: Yeah, making life multi-planetary is outside of the normal time horizon\nof Wall Street analysts. (Laughs) To say the least.\n\nCA: I think something's changed, though. What's changed is that Tesla is now\nso powerful and so big and throws off so much cash that you actually could\nconnect the dots here. Just tell the public that x-billion\ndollars a year, whatever your number is, will be diverted to the Mars mission. I suspect you'd have massive\ninterest in that company. And it might unlock a lot\nmore possibility for you, no?\n\nEM: I would like to give the public access\nto ownership of SpaceX, but I mean the thing that like, the overhead associated\nwith a public company is high. I mean, as a public company,\nyou're just constantly sued. It does occupy like, a fair bit of ... You know, time and effort\nto deal with these things.\n\nCA: But you would still only have one\npublic company, it would be bigger, and have more things going on. But instead of being\non four boards, you'd be on one.\n\nEM: I'm actually not even on the Neuralink\nor Boring Company boards. And I don't really attend\nthe SpaceX board meetings. We only have two a year, and I just stop by and chat for an hour. The board overhead for a public\ncompany is much higher.\n\nCA: I think some investors probably worry\nabout how your time is being split, and they might be excited\nby you know, that. Anyway, I just woke up the other day thinking, just, there are so many ways\nin which these things connect. And you know,\njust the simplicity of that mission, of building a future that is worth\ngetting excited about, might appeal to an awful lot of people.\n\nElon, you are reported by Forbes\nand everyone else as now, you know, the world's richest person.\n\nEM: That’s not a sovereign.\n\nCA: (Laughs) EM: You know, I think it’s fair to say that if somebody is like, the king\nor de facto king of a country, they're wealthier than I am.\n\nCA: But it’s just harder to measure -- So $300 billion. I mean, your net worth on any given day is rising or falling\nby several billion dollars. How insane is that?\n\nEM: It's bonkers, yeah.\n\nCA: I mean, how do you handle\nthat psychologically? There aren't many people in the world\nwho have to even think about that.\n\nEM: I actually don't think\nabout that too much. But the thing that is\nactually more difficult and that does make sleeping difficult is that, you know, every good hour or even minute of thinking about Tesla and SpaceX has such a big effect on the company that I really try to work\nas much as possible, you know, to the edge\nof sanity, basically. Because you know,\nTesla’s getting to the point where probably will get\nto the point later this year, where every high-quality\nminute of thinking is a million dollars impact on Tesla. Which is insane. I mean, the basic, you know,\nif Tesla is doing, you know, sort of $2 billion a week,\nlet’s say, in revenue, it’s sort of $300 million a day,\nseven days a week. You know, it's ...\n\nCA: If you can change that by five percent\nin an hour’s brainstorm, that's a pretty valuable hour.\n\nEM: I mean, there are many instances\nwhere a half-hour meeting, I was able to improve\nthe financial outcome of the company by $100 million\nin a half-hour meeting.\n\nCA: There are many other people out there who can't stand\nthis world of billionaires. Like, they are hugely\noffended by the notion that an individual can have\nthe same wealth as, say, a billion or more\nof the world's poorest people.\n\nEM: If they examine sort of -- I think there's some axiomatic flaws\nthat are leading them to that conclusion. For sure, it would be very\nproblematic if I was consuming, you know, billions of dollars a year\nin personal consumption. But that is not the case. In fact, I don't even own\na home right now. I'm literally staying at friends' places. If I travel to the Bay Area, which is where most\nof Tesla engineering is, I basically rotate through\nfriends' spare bedrooms. I don't have a yacht,\nI really don't take vacations. It’s not as though my personal\nconsumption is high. I mean, the one exception is a plane. But if I don't use the plane,\nthen I have less hours to work.\n\nCA: I mean, I personally think\nyou have shown that you are mostly driven by really quite a deep\nsense of moral purpose. Like, your attempts to solve\nthe climate problem have been as powerful as anyone else\non the planet that I'm aware of. And I actually can't understand, personally, I can't understand the fact that you get all this criticism\nfrom the Left about, \"Oh, my God, he's so rich,\nthat's disgusting.\" When climate is their issue. Philanthropy is a topic\nthat some people go to. Philanthropy is a hard topic. How do you think about that?\n\nEM: I think if you care\nabout the reality of goodness instead of the perception of it,\nphilanthropy is extremely difficult. SpaceX, Tesla, Neuralink\nand The Boring Company are philanthropy. If you say philanthropy\nis love of humanity, they are philanthropy. Tesla is accelerating sustainable energy. This is a love -- philanthropy. SpaceX is trying to ensure\nthe long-term survival of humanity with a multiple-planet species. That is love of humanity. You know, Neuralink is trying to help\nsolve brain injuries and existential risk with AI. Love of humanity. Boring Company is trying to solve traffic,\nwhich is hell for most people, and that also is love of humanity.\n\nCA: How upsetting is it to you to hear this constant drumbeat of, \"Billionaires, my God,\nElon Musk, oh, my God?\" Like, do you just shrug that off or does it does it actually hurt?\n\nEM: I mean, at this point,\nit's water off a duck's back.\n\nCA: Elon, I’d like to,\nas we wrap up now, just pull the camera back\nand just think ... You’re a father now\nof seven surviving kids.\n\nEM: Well, I mean, I'm trying\nto set a good example because the birthrate on Earth is so low that we're facing civilizational collapse unless the birth rate returns\nto a sustainable level.\n\nCA: Yeah, you've talked about this a lot, that depopulation is a big problem, and people don't understand\nhow big a problem it is.\n\nEM: Population collapse\nis one of the biggest threats to the future of human civilization. And that is what is going on right now.\n\nCA: What drives you on a day-to-day\nbasis to do what you do?\n\nEM: I guess, like,\nI really want to make sure that there is a good future for humanity and that we're on a path to understanding\nthe nature of the universe, the meaning of life. Why are we here, how did we get here? And in order to understand\nthe nature of the universe and all these fundamental questions, we must expand the scope\nand scale of consciousness. Certainly it must not diminish or go out. Or we certainly won’t understand this. I would say I’ve been motivated\nby curiosity more than anything, and just desire to think about the future and not be sad, you know?\n\nCA: And are you? Are you not sad?\n\nEM: I'm sometimes sad, but mostly I'm feeling I guess relatively optimistic\nabout the future these days. There are certainly some big\nrisks that humanity faces. I think the population collapse\nis a really big deal, that I wish more people would think about because the birth rate is far below\nwhat's needed to sustain civilization at its current level. And there's obviously ... We need to take action\non climate sustainability, which is being done. And we need to secure\nthe future of consciousness by being a multi-planet species. We need to address -- Essentially, it's important to take\nwhatever actions we can think of to address the existential risks\nthat affect the future of consciousness.\n\nCA: There's a whole\ngeneration coming through who seem really sad about the future. What would you say to them?\n\nEM: Well, I think if you want the future\nto be good, you must make it so. Take action to make it good. And it will be.\n\nCA: Elon, thank you for all this time. That is a beautiful place to end. Thanks for all you're doing.\n\nEM: You're welcome."},"languages":["en"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":"https://www.ted.com/talks/elon_musk_a_future_worth_getting_excited_about/transcript"},{"id":"ted-2022-04-06","type":"interview","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YRvf00NooN8","title":"TED","titles":{"en":"TED","de":"TED","fr":"TED"},"date":"2022-04-06","summary":"Hour-long sit-down with TED's Chris Anderson at Giga Texas on Optimus, Starship and Neuralink and Musk's vision for humanity's future.","text":"Chris Anderson: Elon Musk, great to see you. How are you? Elon Musk: Good. How are you? CA: We're here at the Texas Gigafactory the day before this thing opens. It's been pretty crazy out there. Thank you so much for making time on a busy day. I would love you to help us, kind of, cast our minds, I don't know, 10, 20, 30 years into the future. And help us try to picture what it would take to build a future that's worth getting excited about.\n\nThe last time you spoke at TED, you said that that was really just a big driver. You know, you can talk about lots of other reasons to do the work you're doing, but fundamentally, you want to think about the future and not think that it sucks. EM: Yeah, absolutely. I think in general, you know, there's a lot of discussion of like, this problem or that problem. And a lot of people are sad about the future and they're ... Pessimistic.\n\nAnd I think ... this is ... This is not great. I mean, we really want to wake up in the morning and look forward to the future. We want to be excited about what's going to happen. And life cannot simply be about sort of, solving one miserable problem after another. CA: So if you look forward 30 years, you know, the year 2050 has been labeled by scientists as this, kind of, almost like this doomsday deadline on climate.\n\nThere's a consensus of scientists, a large consensus of scientists, who believe that if we haven't completely eliminated greenhouse gases or offset them completely by 2050, effectively we're inviting climate catastrophe. Do you believe there is a pathway to avoid that catastrophe? And what would it look like? EM: Yeah, so I am not one of the doomsday people, which may surprise you. I actually think we're on a good path.\n\nBut at the same time, I want to caution against complacency. So, so long as we are not complacent, as long as we have a high sense of urgency about moving towards a sustainable energy economy, then I think things will be fine. So I can't emphasize that enough, as long as we push hard and are not complacent, the future is going to be great. Don't worry about it.\n\nI mean, worry about it, but if you worry about it, ironically, it will be a self-unfulfilling prophecy. So, like, there are three elements to a sustainable energy future. One is of sustainable energy generation, which is primarily wind and solar. There's also hydro, geothermal, I'm actually pro-nuclear. I think nuclear is fine. But it's going to be primarily solar and wind, as the primary generators of energy.\n\nThe second part is you need batteries to store the solar and wind energy because the sun doesn't shine all the time, the wind doesn't blow all the time. So it's a lot of stationary battery packs. And then you need electric transport. So electric cars, electric planes, boats. And then ultimately, it’s not really possible to make electric rockets, but you can make the propellant used in rockets using sustainable energy.\n\nSo ultimately, we can have a fully sustainable energy economy. And it's those three things: solar/wind, stationary battery pack, electric vehicles. So then what are the limiting factors on progress? The limiting factor really will be battery cell production. So that's going to really be the fundamental rate driver.\n\nAnd then whatever the slowest element of the whole lithium-ion battery cells supply chain, from mining and the many steps of refining to ultimately creating a battery cell and putting it into a pack, that will be the limiting factor on progress towards sustainability.\n\nCA: All right, so we need to talk more about batteries, because the key thing that I want to understand, like, there seems to be a scaling issue here that is kind of amazing and alarming. You have said that you have calculated that the amount of battery production that the world needs for sustainability is 300 terawatt hours of batteries. That's the end goal?\n\nEM: Very rough numbers, and I certainly would invite others to check our calculations because they may arrive at different conclusions. But in order to transition, not just current electricity production, but also heating and transport, which roughly triples the amount of electricity that you need, it amounts to approximately 300 terawatt hours of installed capacity. CA: So we need to give people a sense of how big a task that is.\n\nI mean, here we are at the Gigafactory. You know, this is one of the biggest buildings in the world. What I've read, and tell me if this is still right, is that the goal here is to eventually produce 100 gigawatt hours of batteries here a year eventually. EM: We will probably do more than that, but yes, hopefully we get there within a couple of years. CA: Right. But I mean, that is one -- EM: 0. 1 terrawat hours.\n\nCA: But that's still 1/100 of what's needed. How much of the rest of that 100 is Tesla planning to take on let's say, between now and 2030, 2040, when we really need to see the scale up happen? EM: I mean, these are just guesses. So please, people shouldn't hold me to these things.\n\nIt's not like this is like some -- What tends to happen is I'll make some like, you know, best guess and then people, in five years, there’ll be some jerk that writes an article: \"Elon said this would happen, and it didn't happen. He's a liar and a fool.\" It's very annoying when that happens. So these are just guesses, this is a conversation. CA: Right. EM: I think Tesla probably ends up doing 10 percent of that. Roughly.\n\nCA: Let's say 2050 we have this amazing, you know, 100 percent sustainable electric grid made up of, you know, some mixture of the sustainable energy sources you talked about. That same grid probably is offering the world really low-cost energy, isn't it, compared with now. And I'm curious about like, are people entitled to get a little bit excited about the possibilities of that world? EM: People should be optimistic about the future.\n\nHumanity will solve sustainable energy. It will happen if we, you know, continue to push hard, the future is bright and good from an energy standpoint. And then it will be possible to also use that energy to do carbon sequestration. It takes a lot of energy to pull carbon out of the atmosphere because in putting it in the atmosphere it releases energy. So now, you know, obviously in order to pull it out, you need to use a lot of energy.\n\nBut if you've got a lot of sustainable energy from wind and solar, you can actually sequester carbon. So you can reverse the CO2 parts per million of the atmosphere and oceans. And also you can really have as much fresh water as you want. Earth is mostly water. We should call Earth “Water. ” It's 70 percent water by surface area. Now most of that’s seawater, but it's like we just happen to be on the bit that's land.\n\nCA: And with energy, you can turn seawater into -- EM: Yes. CA: Irrigating water or whatever water you need. EM: At very low cost. Things will be good. CA: Things will be good. And also, there's other benefits to this non-fossil fuel world where the air is cleaner -- EM: Yes, exactly. Because, like, when you burn fossil fuels, there's all these side reactions and toxic gases of various kinds.\n\nAnd sort of little particulates that are bad for your lungs. Like, there's all sorts of bad things that are happening that will go away. And the sky will be cleaner and quieter. The future's going to be good. CA: I want us to switch now to think a bit about artificial intelligence. But the segue there, you mentioned how annoying it is when people call you up for bad predictions in the past.\n\nSo I'm possibly going to be annoying now, but I’m curious about your timelines and how you predict and how come some things are so amazingly on the money and some aren't. So when it comes to predicting sales of Tesla vehicles, for example, you've kind of been amazing, I think in 2014 when Tesla had sold that year 60,000 cars, you said, \"2020, I think we will do half a million a year.\" EM: Yeah, we did almost exactly a half million.\n\nCA: You did almost exactly half a million. You were scoffed in 2014 because no one since Henry Ford, with the Model T, had come close to that kind of growth rate for cars. You were scoffed, and you actually hit 500,000 cars and then 510,000 or whatever produced.\n\nBut five years ago, last time you came to TED, I asked you about full self-driving, and you said, “Yeah, this very year, I'm confident that we will have a car going from LA to New York without any intervention.\" EM: Yeah, I don't want to blow your mind, but I'm not always right. CA: (Laughs) What's the difference between those two? Why has full self-driving in particular been so hard to predict?\n\nEM: I mean, the thing that really got me, and I think it's going to get a lot of other people, is that there are just so many false dawns with self-driving, where you think you've got the problem, have a handle on the problem, and then it, no, turns out you just hit a ceiling. Because if you were to plot the progress, the progress looks like a log curve. So it's like a series of log curves.\n\nSo most people don't know what a log curve is, I suppose. CA: Show the shape with your hands. EM: It goes up you know, sort of a fairly straight way, and then it starts tailing off and you start getting diminishing returns. And you're like, uh oh, it was trending up and now it's sort of, curving over and you start getting to these, what I call local maxima, where you don't realize basically how dumb you were. And then it happens again.\n\nAnd ultimately... These things, you know, in retrospect, they seem obvious, but in order to solve full self-driving properly, you actually have to solve real-world AI. Because what are the road networks designed to work with? They're designed to work with a biological neural net, our brains, and with vision, our eyes. And so in order to make it work with computers, you basically need to solve real-world AI and vision.\n\nBecause we need cameras and silicon neural nets in order to have self-driving work for a system that was designed for eyes and biological neural nets. You know, I guess when you put it that way, it's sort of, like, quite obvious that the only way to solve full self-driving is to solve real world AI and sophisticated vision. CA: What do you feel about the current architecture?\n\nDo you think you have an architecture now where there is a chance for the logarithmic curve not to tail off any anytime soon? EM: Well I mean, admittedly these may be infamous last words, but I actually am confident that we will solve it this year. That we will exceed -- The probability of an accident, at what point do you exceed that of the average person? I think we will exceed that this year.\n\nCA: What are you seeing behind the scenes that gives you that confidence? EM: We’re almost at the point where we have a high-quality unified vector space. In the beginning, we were trying to do this with image recognition on individual images. But if you get one image out of a video, it's actually quite hard to see what's going on without ambiguity. But if you look at a video segment of a few seconds of video, that ambiguity resolves.\n\nSo the first thing we had to do is tie all eight cameras together so they're synchronized, so that all the frames are looked at simultaneously and labeled simultaneously by one person, because we still need human labeling. So at least they’re not labeled at different times by different people in different ways. So it's sort of a surround picture. Then a very important part is to add the time dimension.\n\nSo that you’re looking at surround video, and you're labeling surround video. And this is actually quite difficult to do from a software standpoint. We had to write our own labeling tools and then create auto labeling, create auto labeling software to amplify the efficiency of human labelers because it’s quite hard to label. In the beginning, it was taking several hours to label a 10-second video clip. This is not scalable.\n\nSo basically what you have to have is you have to have surround video, and that surround video has to be primarily automatically labeled with humans just being editors and making slight corrections to the labeling of the video and then feeding back those corrections into the future auto labeler, so you get this flywheel eventually where the auto labeler is able to take in vast amounts of video and with high accuracy, automatically label the video for cars, lane lines, drive space.\n\nCA: What you’re saying is ... the result of this is that you're effectively giving the car a 3D model of the actual objects that are all around it. It knows what they are, and it knows how fast they are moving.\n\nAnd the remaining task is to predict what the quirky behaviors are that, you know, that when a pedestrian is walking down the road with a smaller pedestrian, that maybe that smaller pedestrian might do something unpredictable or things like that. You have to build into it before you can really call it safe. EM: You basically need to have memory across time and space. So what I mean by that is ...\n\nMemory can’t be infinite, because it's using up a lot of the computer's RAM basically. So you have to say how much are you going to try to remember? It's very common for things to be occluded. So if you talk about say, a pedestrian walking past a truck where you saw the pedestrian start on one side of the truck, then they're occluded by the truck. You would know intuitively, OK, that pedestrian is going to pop out the other side, most likely.\n\nCA: A computer doesn't know it. EM: You need to slow down. CA: A skeptic is going to say that every year for the last five years, you've kind of said, well, no this is the year, we're confident that it will be there in a year or two or, you know, like it's always been about that far away.\n\nBut we've got a new architecture now, you're seeing enough improvement behind the scenes to make you not certain, but pretty confident, that, by the end of this year, what in most, not in every city, and every circumstance but in many cities and circumstances, basically the car will be able to drive without interventions safer than a human. EM: Yes. I mean, the car currently drives me around Austin most of the time with no interventions.\n\nSo it's not like ... And we have over 100,000 people in our full self-driving beta program. So you can look at the videos that they post online. CA: I do. And some of them are great, and some of them are a little terrifying. I mean, occasionally the car seems to veer off and scare the hell out of people. EM: It’s still a beta.\n\nCA: But you’re behind the scenes, looking at the data, you're seeing enough improvement to believe that a this-year timeline is real. EM: Yes, that's what it seems like. I mean, we could be here talking again in a year, like, well, another year went by, and it didn’t happen. But I think this is the year.\n\nCA: And so in general, when people talk about Elon time, I mean it sounds like you can't just have a general rule that if you predict that something will be done in six months, actually what we should imagine is it’s going to be a year or it’s like two-x or three-x, it depends on the type of prediction. Some things, I guess, things involving software, AI, whatever, are fundamentally harder to predict than others.\n\nIs there an element that you actually deliberately make aggressive prediction timelines to drive people to be ambitious? Without that, nothing gets done? EM: Well, I generally believe, in terms of internal timelines, that we want to set the most aggressive timeline that we can. Because there’s sort of like a law of gaseous expansion where, for schedules, where whatever time you set, it's not going to be less than that.\n\nIt's very rare that it'll be less than that. But as far as our predictions are concerned, what tends to happen in the media is that they will report all the wrong ones and ignore all the right ones. Or, you know, when writing an article about me -- I've had a long career in multiple industries. If you list my sins, I sound like the worst person on Earth. But if you put those against the things I've done right, it makes much more sense, you know?\n\nSo essentially like, the longer you do anything, the more mistakes that you will make cumulatively. Which, if you sum up those mistakes, will sound like I'm the worst predictor ever. But for example, for Tesla vehicle growth, I said I think we’d do 50 percent, and we’ve done 80 percent. CA: Yes. EM: But they don't mention that one. So, I mean, I'm not sure what my exact track record is on predictions.\n\nThey're more optimistic than pessimistic, but they're not all optimistic. Some of them are exceeded probably more or later, but they do come true. It's very rare that they do not come true. It's sort of like, you know, if there's some radical technology prediction, the point is not that it was a few years late, but that it happened at all. That's the more important part.\n\nCA: So it feels like at some point in the last year, seeing the progress on understanding, the Tesla AI understanding the world around it, led to a kind of, an aha moment at Tesla. Because you really surprised people recently when you said probably the most important product development going on at Tesla this year is this robot, Optimus. EM: Yes.\n\nCA: Many companies out there have tried to put out these robots, they've been working on them for years. And so far no one has really cracked it. There's no mass adoption robot in people's homes. There are some in manufacturing, but I would say, no one's kind of, really cracked it. Is it something that happened in the development of full self-driving that gave you the confidence to say, \"You know what, we could do something special here.\"\n\nEM: Yeah, exactly. So, you know, it took me a while to sort of realize that in order to solve self-driving, you really needed to solve real-world AI. And at the point of which you solve real-world AI for a car, which is really a robot on four wheels, you can then generalize that to a robot on legs as well.\n\nThe two hard parts I think -- like obviously companies like Boston Dynamics have shown that it's possible to make quite compelling, sometimes alarming robots. CA: Right. EM: You know, so from a sensors and actuators standpoint, it's certainly been demonstrated by many that it's possible to make a humanoid robot.\n\nThe things that are currently missing are enough intelligence for the robot to navigate the real world and do useful things without being explicitly instructed. So the missing things are basically real-world intelligence and scaling up manufacturing. Those are two things that Tesla is very good at. And so then we basically just need to design the specialized actuators and sensors that are needed for humanoid robot.\n\nPeople have no idea, this is going to be bigger than the car. CA: So let's dig into exactly that. I mean, in one way, it's actually an easier problem than full self-driving because instead of an object going along at 60 miles an hour, which if it gets it wrong, someone will die. This is an object that's engineered to only go at what, three or four or five miles an hour. And so a mistake, there aren't lives at stake.\n\nThere might be embarrassment at stake. EM: So long as the AI doesn't take it over and murder us in our sleep or something. CA: Right. (Laughter) So talk about -- I think the first applications you've mentioned are probably going to be manufacturing, but eventually the vision is to have these available for people at home.\n\nIf you had a robot that really understood the 3D architecture of your house and knew where every object in that house was or was supposed to be, and could recognize all those objects, I mean, that’s kind of amazing, isn’t it? Like the kind of thing that you could ask a robot to do would be what? Like, tidy up? EM: Yeah, absolutely. Make dinner, I guess, mow the lawn. CA: Take a cup of tea to grandma and show her family pictures. EM: Exactly.\n\nTake care of my grandmother and make sure -- CA: It could obviously recognize everyone in the home. It could play catch with your kids. EM: Yes. I mean, obviously, we need to be careful this doesn't become a dystopian situation. I think one of the things that's going to be important is to have a localized ROM chip on the robot that cannot be updated over the air.\n\nWhere if you, for example, were to say, “Stop, stop, stop,” if anyone said that, then the robot would stop, you know, type of thing. And that's not updatable remotely. I think it's going to be important to have safety features like that. CA: Yeah, that sounds wise. EM: And I do think there should be a regulatory agency for AI. I've said that for many years. I don't love being regulated, but I think this is an important thing for public safety.\n\nCA: Let's come back to that. But I don't think many people have really sort of taken seriously the notion of, you know, a robot at home. I mean, at the start of the computing revolution, Bill Gates said there's going to be a computer in every home. And people at the time said, yeah, whatever, who would even want that.\n\nDo you think there will be basically like in, say, 2050 or whatever, like a robot in most homes, is what there will be, and people will love them and count on them? You’ll have your own butler basically. EM: Yeah, you'll have your sort of buddy robot probably, yeah. CA: I mean, how much of a buddy? How many applications have you thought, you know, can you have a romantic partner, a sex partner? EM: It's probably inevitable.\n\nI mean, I did promise the internet that I’d make catgirls. We could make a robot catgirl. CA: Be careful what you promise the internet. (Laughter) EM: So, yeah, I guess it'll be whatever people want really, you know. CA: What sort of timeline should we be thinking about of the first models that are actually made and sold?\n\nEM: Well, you know, the first units that we intend to make are for jobs that are dangerous, boring, repetitive, and things that people don't want to do. And, you know, I think we’ll have like an interesting prototype sometime this year. We might have something useful next year, but I think quite likely within at least two years.\n\nAnd then we'll see rapid growth year over year of the usefulness of the humanoid robots and decrease in cost and scaling up production. CA: Initially just selling to businesses, or when do you picture you'll start selling them where you can buy your parents one for Christmas or something? EM: I'd say in less than ten years. CA: Help me on the economics of this. So what do you picture the cost of one of these being?\n\nEM: Well, I think the cost is actually not going to be crazy high. Like less than a car. Initially, things will be expensive because it'll be a new technology at low production volume. The complexity and cost of a car is greater than that of a humanoid robot. So I would expect that it's going to be less than a car, or at least equivalent to a cheap car. CA: So even if it starts at 50k, within a few years, it’s down to 20k or lower or whatever.\n\nAnd maybe for home they'll get much cheaper still. But think about the economics of this. If you can replace a $30,000, $40,000-a-year worker, which you have to pay every year, with a one-time payment of $25,000 for a robot that can work longer hours, a pretty rapid replacement of certain types of jobs. How worried should the world be about that? EM: I wouldn't worry about the sort of, putting people out of a job thing.\n\nI think we're actually going to have, and already do have, a massive shortage of labor. So I think we will have ... Not people out of work, but actually still a shortage labor even in the future. But this really will be a world of abundance. Any goods and services will be available to anyone who wants them. It'll be so cheap to have goods and services, it will be ridiculous.\n\nCA: I'm presuming it should be possible to imagine a bunch of goods and services that can't profitably be made now but could be made in that world, courtesy of legions of robots. EM: Yeah. It will be a world of abundance. The only scarcity that will exist in the future is that which we decide to create ourselves as humans. CA: OK. So AI is allowing us to imagine a differently powered economy that will create this abundance.\n\nWhat are you most worried about going wrong? EM: Well, like I said, AI and robotics will bring out what might be termed the age of abundance. Other people have used this word, and that this is my prediction: it will be an age of abundance for everyone. But I guess there’s ...\n\nThe dangers would be the artificial general intelligence or digital superintelligence decouples from a collective human will and goes in the direction that for some reason we don't like. Whatever direction it might go. You know, that’s sort of the idea behind Neuralink, is to try to more tightly couple collective human world to digital superintelligence.\n\nAnd also along the way solve a lot of brain injuries and spinal injuries and that kind of thing. So even if it doesn't succeed in the greater goal, I think it will succeed in the goal of alleviating brain and spine damage. CA: So the spirit there is that if we're going to make these AIs that are so vastly intelligent, we ought to be wired directly to them so that we ourselves can have those superpowers more directly.\n\nBut that doesn't seem to avoid the risk that those superpowers might ... turn ugly in unintended ways. EM: I think it's a risk, I agree. I'm not saying that I have some certain answer to that risk. I’m just saying like maybe one of the things that would be good for ensuring that the future is one that we want is to more tightly couple the collective human world to digital intelligence.\n\nThe issue that we face here is that we are already a cyborg, if you think about it. The computers are an extension of ourselves. And when we die, we have, like, a digital ghost. You know, all of our text messages and social media, emails. And it's quite eerie actually, when someone dies but everything online is still there. But you say like, what's the limitation? What is it that inhibits a human-machine symbiosis? It's the data rate.\n\nWhen you communicate, especially with a phone, you're moving your thumbs very slowly. So you're like moving your two little meat sticks at a rate that’s maybe 10 bits per second, optimistically, 100 bits per second. And computers are communicating at the gigabyte level and beyond.\n\nCA: Have you seen evidence that the technology is actually working, that you've got a richer, sort of, higher bandwidth connection, if you like, between like external electronics and a brain than has been possible before? EM: Yeah. I mean, the fundamental principles of reading neurons, sort of doing read-write on neurons with tiny electrodes, have been demonstrated for decades. So it's not like the concept is new.\n\nThe problem is that there is no product that works well that you can go and buy. So it's all sort of, in research labs. And it's like some cords sticking out of your head. And it's quite gruesome, and it's really ... There's no good product that actually does a good job and is high-bandwidth and safe and something actually that you could buy and would want to buy.\n\nBut the way to think of the Neuralink device is kind of like a Fitbit or an Apple Watch. That's where we take out sort of a small section of skull about the size of a quarter, replace that with what, in many ways really is very much like a Fitbit, Apple Watch or some kind of smart watch thing. But with tiny, tiny wires, very, very tiny wires. Wires so tiny, it’s hard to even see them.\n\nAnd it's very important to have very tiny wires so that when they’re implanted, they don’t damage the brain. CA: How far are you from putting these into humans? EM: Well, we have put in our FDA application to aspirationally do the first human implant this year. CA: The first uses will be for neurological injuries of different kinds.\n\nBut rolling the clock forward and imagining when people are actually using these for their own enhancement, let's say, and for the enhancement of the world, how clear are you in your mind as to what it will feel like to have one of these inside your head? EM: Well, I do want to emphasize we're at an early stage.\n\nAnd so it really will be many years before we have anything approximating a high-bandwidth neural interface that allows for AI-human symbiosis. For many years, we will just be solving brain injuries and spinal injuries. For probably a decade. This is not something that will suddenly one day it will have this incredible sort of whole brain interface.\n\nIt's going to be, like I said, at least a decade of really just solving brain injuries and spinal injuries. And really, I think you can solve a very wide range of brain injuries, including severe depression, morbid obesity, sleep, potentially schizophrenia, like, a lot of things that cause great stress to people. Restoring memory in older people. CA: If you can pull that off, that's the app I will sign up for. EM: Absolutely. CA: Please hurry.\n\n(Laughs) EM: I mean, the emails that we get at Neuralink are heartbreaking. I mean, they'll send us just tragic, you know, where someone was sort of, in the prime of life and they had an accident on a motorcycle and someone who's 25, you know, can't even feed themselves. And this is something we could fix.\n\nCA: But you have said that AI is one of the things you're most worried about and that Neuralink may be one of the ways where we can keep abreast of it. EM: Yeah, there's the short-term thing, which I think is helpful on an individual human level with injuries. And then the long-term thing is an attempt to address the civilizational risk of AI by bringing digital intelligence and biological intelligence closer together.\n\nI mean, if you think of how the brain works today, there are really two layers to the brain. There's the limbic system and the cortex. You've got the kind of, animal brain where -- it’s kind of like the fun part, really. CA: It's where most of Twitter operates, by the way. EM: I think Tim Urban said, we’re like somebody, you know, stuck a computer on a monkey. You know, so we're like, if you gave a monkey a computer, that's our cortex.\n\nBut we still have a lot of monkey instincts. Which we then try to rationalize as, no, it's not a monkey instinct. It’s something more important than that. But it's often just really a monkey instinct. We're just monkeys with a computer stuck in our brain.\n\nBut even though the cortex is sort of the smart, or the intelligent part of the brain, the thinking part of the brain, I've not yet met anyone who wants to delete their limbic system or their cortex. They're quite happy having both. Everyone wants both parts of their brain. And people really want their phones and their computers, which are really the tertiary, the third part of your intelligence. It's just that it's ...\n\nLike the bandwidth, the rate of communication with that tertiary layer is slow. And it's just a very tiny straw to this tertiary layer. And we want to make that tiny straw a big highway. And I’m definitely not saying that this is going to solve everything. Or this is you know, it’s the only thing -- it’s something that might be helpful.\n\nAnd worst-case scenario, I think we solve some important brain injury, spinal injury issues, and that's still a great outcome. CA: Best-case scenario, we may discover new human possibility, telepathy, you've spoken of, in a way, a connection with a loved one, you know, full memory and much faster thought processing maybe. All these things. It's very cool. If AI were to take down Earth, we need a plan B. Let's shift our attention to space.\n\nWe spoke last time at TED about reusability, and you had just demonstrated that spectacularly for the first time. Since then, you've gone on to build this monster rocket, Starship, which kind of changes the rules of the game in spectacular ways. Tell us about Starship. EM: Starship is extremely fundamental. So the holy grail of rocketry or space transport is full and rapid reusability. This has never been achieved.\n\nThe closest that anything has come is our Falcon 9 rocket, where we are able to recover the first stage, the boost stage, which is probably about 60 percent of the cost of the vehicle of the whole launch, maybe 70 percent. And we've now done that over a hundred times. So with Starship, we will be recovering the entire thing. Or at least that's the goal. CA: Right. EM: And moreover, recovering it in such a way that it can be immediately re-flown.\n\nWhereas with Falcon 9, we still need to do some amount of refurbishment to the booster and to the fairing nose cone. But with Starship, the design goal is immediate re-flight. So you just refill propellants and go again. And this is gigantic. Just as it would be in any other mode of transport. CA: And the main design is to basically take 100 plus people at a time, plus a bunch of things that they need, to Mars.\n\nSo, first of all, talk about that piece. What is your latest timeline? One, for the first time, a Starship goes to Mars, presumably without people, but just equipment. Two, with people. Three, there’s sort of, OK, 100 people at a time, let's go. EM: Sure.\n\nAnd just to put the cost thing into perspective, the expected cost of Starship, putting 100 tons into orbit, is significantly less than what it would have cost or what it did cost to put our tiny Falcon 1 rocket into orbit. Just as the cost of flying a 747 around the world is less than the cost of a small airplane. You know, a small airplane that was thrown away.\n\nSo it's really pretty mind-boggling that the giant thing costs less, way less than the small thing. So it doesn't use exotic propellants or things that are difficult to obtain on Mars. It uses methane as fuel, and it's primarily oxygen, roughly 77-78 percent oxygen by weight. And Mars has a CO2 atmosphere and has water ice, which is CO2 plus H2O, so you can make CH4, methane, and O2, oxygen, on Mars.\n\nCA: Presumably, one of the first tasks on Mars will be to create a fuel plant that can create the fuel for the return trips of many Starships. EM: Yes. And actually, it's mostly going to be oxygen plants, because it's 78 percent oxygen, 22 percent fuel. But the fuel is a simple fuel that is easy to create on Mars. And in many other parts of the solar system. So basically ... And it's all propulsive landing, no parachutes, nothing thrown away.\n\nIt has a heat shield that’s capable of entering on Earth or Mars. We can even potentially go to Venus. but you don't want to go there. (Laughs) Venus is hell, almost literally. But you could ...\n\nIt's a generalized method of transport to anywhere in the solar system, because the point at which you have propellant depo on Mars, you can then travel to the asteroid belt and to the moons of Jupiter and Saturn and ultimately anywhere in the solar system. CA: But your main focus and SpaceX's main focus is still Mars. That is the mission. That is where most of the effort will go?\n\nOr are you actually imagining a much broader array of uses even in the coming, you know, the first decade or so of uses of this. Where we could go, for example, to other places in the solar system to explore, perhaps NASA wants to use the rocket for that reason. EM: Yeah, NASA is planning to use a Starship to return to the moon, to return people to the moon. And so we're very honored that NASA has chosen us to do this.\n\nBut I'm saying it is a generalized -- it’s a general solution to getting anywhere in the greater solar system. It's not suitable for going to another star system, but it is a general solution for transport anywhere in the solar system. CA: Before it can do any of that, it's got to demonstrate it can get into orbit, you know, around Earth. What’s your latest advice on the timeline for that?\n\nEM: It's looking promising for us to have an orbital launch attempt in a few months. So we're actually integrating -- will be integrating the engines into the booster for the first orbital flight starting in about a week or two. And the launch complex itself is ready to go. So assuming we get regulatory approval, I think we could have an orbital launch attempt within a few months.\n\nCA: And a radical new technology like this presumably there is real risk on those early attempts. EM: Oh, 100 percent, yeah. The joke I make all the time is that excitement is guaranteed. Success is not guaranteed, but excitement certainly is. CA: But the last I saw on your timeline, you've slightly put back the expected date to put the first human on Mars till 2029, I want to say? EM: Yeah, I mean, so let's see.\n\nI mean, we have built a production system for Starship, so we're making a lot of ships and boosters. CA: How many are you planning to make actually? EM: Well, we're currently expecting to make a booster and a ship roughly every, well, initially, roughly every couple of months, and then hopefully by the end of this year, one every month. So it's giant rockets, and a lot of them.\n\nJust talking in terms of rough orders of magnitude, in order to create a self-sustaining city on Mars, I think you will need something on the order of a thousand ships. And we just need a Helen of Sparta, I guess, on Mars. CA: This is not in most people's heads, Elon. EM: The planet that launched 1,000 ships. CA: That's nice. But this is not in most people's heads, this picture that you have in your mind.\n\nThere's basically a two-year window, you can only really fly to Mars conveniently every two years. You were picturing that during the 2030s, every couple of years, something like 1,000 Starships take off, each containing 100 or more people. That picture is just completely mind-blowing to me. That sense of this armada of humans going to -- EM: It'll be like \"Battlestar Galactica,\" the fleet departs.\n\nCA: And you think that it can basically be funded by people spending maybe a couple hundred grand on a ticket to Mars? Is that price about where it has been? EM: Well, I think if you say like, what's required in order to get enough people and enough cargo to Mars to build a self-sustaining city.\n\nAnd it's where you have an intersection of sets of people who want to go, because I think only a small percentage of humanity will want to go, and can afford to go or get sponsorship in some manner. That intersection of sets, I think, needs to be a million people or something like that. And so it’s what can a million people afford, or get sponsorship for, because I think governments will also pay for it, and people can take out loans.\n\nBut I think at the point at which you say, OK, like, if moving to Mars costs are, for argument’s sake, $100,000, then I think you know, almost anyone can work and save up and eventually have $100,000 and be able to go to Mars if they want. We want to make it available to anyone who wants to go. It's very important to emphasize that Mars, especially in the beginning, will not be luxurious. It will be dangerous, cramped, difficult, hard work.\n\nIt's kind of like that Shackleton ad for going to the Antarctic, which I think is actually not real, but it sounds real and it's cool. It's sort of like, the sales pitch for going to Mars is, \"It's dangerous, it's cramped. You might not make it back. It's difficult, it's hard work.\" That's the sales pitch. CA: Right. But you will make history. EM: But it'll be glorious.\n\nCA: So on that kind of launch rate you're talking about over two decades, you could get your million people to Mars, essentially. Whose city is it? Is it NASA's city, is it SpaceX's city? EM: It’s the people of Mars’ city. The reason for this, I mean, I feel like why do this thing? I think this is important for maximizing the probable lifespan of humanity or consciousness.\n\nHuman civilization could come to an end for external reasons, like a giant meteor or super volcanoes or extreme climate change. Or World War III, or you know, any one of a number of reasons. But the probable life span of civilizational consciousness as we know it, which we should really view as this very delicate thing, like a small candle in a vast darkness. That is what appears to be the case.\n\nWe're in this vast darkness of space, and there's this little candle of consciousness that’s only really come about after 4. 5 billion years, and it could just go out. CA: I think that's powerful, and I think a lot of people will be inspired by that vision. And the reason you need the million people is because there has to be enough people there to do everything that you need to survive.\n\nEM: Really, like the critical threshold is if the ships from Earth stop coming for any reason, does the Mars City die out or not? And so we have to -- You know, people talk about like, the sort of, the great filters, the things that perhaps, you know, we talk about the Fermi paradox, and where are the aliens? Well maybe there are these various great filters that the aliens didn’t pass, and so they eventually just ceased to exist.\n\nAnd one of the great filters is becoming a multi-planet species. So we want to pass that filter. And I'll be long-dead before this is, you know, a real thing, before it happens. But I’d like to at least see us make great progress in this direction.\n\nCA: Given how tortured the Earth is right now, how much we're beating each other up, shouldn't there be discussions going on with everyone who is dreaming about Mars to try to say, we've got a once in a civilization's chance to make some new rules here? Should someone be trying to lead those discussions to figure out what it means for this to be the people of Mars' City?\n\nEM: Well, I think ultimately this will be up to the people of Mars to decide how they want to rethink society. Yeah there’s certainly risk there. And hopefully the people of Mars will be more enlightened and will not fight amongst each other too much. I mean, I have some recommendations, which people of Mars may choose to listen to or not.\n\nI would advocate for more of a direct democracy, not a representative democracy, and laws that are short enough for people to understand. Where it is harder to create laws than to get rid of them. CA: Coming back a bit nearer term, I'd love you to just talk a bit about some of the other possibility space that Starship seems to have created. So given -- Suddenly we've got this ability to move 100 tons-plus into orbit.\n\nSo we've just launched the James Webb telescope, which is an incredible thing. It's unbelievable. EM: Exquisite piece of technology. CA: Exquisite piece of technology. But people spent two years trying to figure out how to fold up this thing. It's a three-ton telescope. EM: We can make it a lot easier if you’ve got more volume and mass. CA: But let's ask a different question.\n\nWhich is, how much more powerful a telescope could someone design based on using Starship, for example? EM: I mean, roughly, I'd say it's probably an order of magnitude more resolution. If you've got 100 tons and a thousand cubic meters volume, which is roughly what we have. CA: And what about other exploration through the solar system? I mean, I'm you know -- EM: Europa is a big question mark. CA: Right, so there's an ocean there.\n\nAnd what you really want to do is to drop a submarine into that ocean. EM: Maybe there's like, some squid civilization, cephalopod civilization under the ice of Europa. That would be pretty interesting. CA: I mean, Elon, if you could take a submarine to Europa and we see pictures of this thing being devoured by a squid, that would honestly be the happiest moment of my life. EM: Pretty wild, yeah. CA: What other possibilities are out there?\n\nLike, it feels like if you're going to create a thousand of these things, they can only fly to Mars every two years. What are they doing the rest of the time? It feels like there's this explosion of possibility that I don't think people are really thinking about. EM: I don't know, we've certainly got a long way to go. As you alluded to earlier, we still have to get to orbit.\n\nAnd then after we get to orbit, we have to really prove out and refine full and rapid reusability. That'll take a moment. But I do think we will solve this. I'm highly confident we will solve this at this point. CA: Do you ever wake up with the fear that there's going to be this Hindenburg moment for SpaceX where ... EM: We've had many Hindenburg. Well, we've never had Hindenburg moments with people, which is very important. Big difference.\n\nWe've blown up quite a few rockets. So there's a whole compilation online that we put together and others put together, it's showing rockets are hard. I mean, the sheer amount of energy going through a rocket boggles the mind. So, you know, getting out of Earth's gravity well is difficult. We have a strong gravity and a thick atmosphere. And Mars, which is less than 40 percent, it's like, 37 percent of Earth's gravity and has a thin atmosphere.\n\nThe ship alone can go all the way from the surface of Mars to the surface of Earth. Whereas getting to Mars requires a giant booster and orbital refilling. CA: So, Elon, as I think more about this incredible array of things that you're involved with, I keep seeing these synergies, to use a horrible word, between them.\n\nYou know, for example, the robots you're building from Tesla could possibly be pretty handy on Mars, doing some of the dangerous work and so forth. I mean, maybe there's a scenario where your city on Mars doesn't need a million people, it needs half a million people and half a million robots. And that's a possibility. Maybe The Boring Company could play a role helping create some of the subterranean dwelling spaces that you might need. EM: Yeah.\n\nCA: Back on planet Earth, it seems like a partnership between Boring Company and Tesla could offer an unbelievable deal to a city to say, we will create for you a 3D network of tunnels populated by robo-taxis that will offer fast, low-cost transport to anyone. You know, full self-driving may or may not be done this year. And in some cities, like, somewhere like Mumbai, I suspect won't be done for a decade.\n\nEM: Some places are more challenging than others. CA: But today, today, with what you've got, you could put a 3D network of tunnels under there. EM: Oh, if it’s just in a tunnel, that’s a solved problem. CA: Exactly, full self-driving is a solved problem. To me, there’s amazing synergy there. With Starship, you know, Gwynne Shotwell talked about by 2028 having from city to city, you know, transport on planet Earth. EM: This is a real possibility.\n\nThe fastest way to get from one place to another, if it's a long distance, is a rocket. It's basically an ICBM. CA: But it has to land -- Because it's an ICBM, it has to land probably offshore, because it's loud. So why not have a tunnel that then connects to the city with Tesla? And Neuralink. I mean, if you going to go to Mars having a telepathic connection with loved ones back home, even if there's a time delay...\n\nEM: These are not intended to be connected, by the way. But there certainly could be some synergies, yeah. CA: Surely there is a growing argument that you should actually put all these things together into one company and just have a company devoted to creating a future that’s exciting, and let a thousand flowers bloom. Have you been thinking about that?\n\nEM: I mean, it is tricky because Tesla is a publicly-traded company, and the investor base of Tesla and SpaceX and certainly Boring Company and Neuralink are quite different. Boring Company and Neuralink are tiny companies. CA: By comparison. EM: Yeah, Tesla's got 110,000 people. SpaceX I think is around 12,000 people. Boring Company and Neuralink are both under 200 people.\n\nSo they're little, tiny companies, but they will probably get bigger in the future. They will get bigger in the future. It's not that easy to sort of combine these things. CA: Traditionally, you have said that for SpaceX especially, you wouldn't want it public, because public investors wouldn't support the craziness of the idea of going to Mars or whatever.\n\nEM: Yeah, making life multi-planetary is outside of the normal time horizon of Wall Street analysts. (Laughs) To say the least. CA: I think something's changed, though. What's changed is that Tesla is now so powerful and so big and throws off so much cash that you actually could connect the dots here. Just tell the public that x-billion dollars a year, whatever your number is, will be diverted to the Mars mission.\n\nI suspect you'd have massive interest in that company. And it might unlock a lot more possibility for you, no? EM: I would like to give the public access to ownership of SpaceX, but I mean the thing that like, the overhead associated with a public company is high. I mean, as a public company, you're just constantly sued. It does occupy like, a fair bit of ... You know, time and effort to deal with these things.\n\nCA: But you would still only have one public company, it would be bigger, and have more things going on. But instead of being on four boards, you'd be on one. EM: I'm actually not even on the Neuralink or Boring Company boards. And I don't really attend the SpaceX board meetings. We only have two a year, and I just stop by and chat for an hour. The board overhead for a public company is much higher.\n\nCA: I think some investors probably worry about how your time is being split, and they might be excited by you know, that. Anyway, I just woke up the other day thinking, just, there are so many ways in which these things connect. And you know, just the simplicity of that mission, of building a future that is worth getting excited about, might appeal to an awful lot of people.\n\nElon, you are reported by Forbes and everyone else as now, you know, the world's richest person. EM: That’s not a sovereign. CA: (Laughs) EM: You know, I think it’s fair to say that if somebody is like, the king or de facto king of a country, they're wealthier than I am. CA: But it’s just harder to measure -- So $300 billion. I mean, your net worth on any given day is rising or falling by several billion dollars. How insane is that?\n\nEM: It's bonkers, yeah. CA: I mean, how do you handle that psychologically? There aren't many people in the world who have to even think about that. EM: I actually don't think about that too much.\n\nBut the thing that is actually more difficult and that does make sleeping difficult is that, you know, every good hour or even minute of thinking about Tesla and SpaceX has such a big effect on the company that I really try to work as much as possible, you know, to the edge of sanity, basically.\n\nBecause you know, Tesla’s getting to the point where probably will get to the point later this year, where every high-quality minute of thinking is a million dollars impact on Tesla. Which is insane. I mean, the basic, you know, if Tesla is doing, you know, sort of $2 billion a week, let’s say, in revenue, it’s sort of $300 million a day, seven days a week. You know, it's ...\n\nCA: If you can change that by five percent in an hour’s brainstorm, that's a pretty valuable hour. EM: I mean, there are many instances where a half-hour meeting, I was able to improve the financial outcome of the company by $100 million in a half-hour meeting. CA: There are many other people out there who can't stand this world of billionaires.\n\nLike, they are hugely offended by the notion that an individual can have the same wealth as, say, a billion or more of the world's poorest people. EM: If they examine sort of -- I think there's some axiomatic flaws that are leading them to that conclusion. For sure, it would be very problematic if I was consuming, you know, billions of dollars a year in personal consumption. But that is not the case. In fact, I don't even own a home right now.\n\nI'm literally staying at friends' places. If I travel to the Bay Area, which is where most of Tesla engineering is, I basically rotate through friends' spare bedrooms. I don't have a yacht, I really don't take vacations. It’s not as though my personal consumption is high. I mean, the one exception is a plane. But if I don't use the plane, then I have less hours to work.\n\nCA: I mean, I personally think you have shown that you are mostly driven by really quite a deep sense of moral purpose. Like, your attempts to solve the climate problem have been as powerful as anyone else on the planet that I'm aware of. And I actually can't understand, personally, I can't understand the fact that you get all this criticism from the Left about, \"Oh, my God, he's so rich, that's disgusting.\" When climate is their issue.\n\nPhilanthropy is a topic that some people go to. Philanthropy is a hard topic. How do you think about that? EM: I think if you care about the reality of goodness instead of the perception of it, philanthropy is extremely difficult. SpaceX, Tesla, Neuralink and The Boring Company are philanthropy. If you say philanthropy is love of humanity, they are philanthropy. Tesla is accelerating sustainable energy. This is a love -- philanthropy.\n\nSpaceX is trying to ensure the long-term survival of humanity with a multiple-planet species. That is love of humanity. You know, Neuralink is trying to help solve brain injuries and existential risk with AI. Love of humanity. Boring Company is trying to solve traffic, which is hell for most people, and that also is love of humanity. CA: How upsetting is it to you to hear this constant drumbeat of, \"Billionaires, my God, Elon Musk, oh, my God?\"\n\nLike, do you just shrug that off or does it does it actually hurt? EM: I mean, at this point, it's water off a duck's back. CA: Elon, I’d like to, as we wrap up now, just pull the camera back and just think ... You’re a father now of seven surviving kids. EM: Well, I mean, I'm trying to set a good example because the birthrate on Earth is so low that we're facing civilizational collapse unless the birth rate returns to a sustainable level.\n\nCA: Yeah, you've talked about this a lot, that depopulation is a big problem, and people don't understand how big a problem it is. EM: Population collapse is one of the biggest threats to the future of human civilization. And that is what is going on right now. CA: What drives you on a day-to-day basis to do what you do?\n\nEM: I guess, like, I really want to make sure that there is a good future for humanity and that we're on a path to understanding the nature of the universe, the meaning of life. Why are we here, how did we get here? And in order to understand the nature of the universe and all these fundamental questions, we must expand the scope and scale of consciousness. Certainly it must not diminish or go out. Or we certainly won’t understand this.\n\nI would say I’ve been motivated by curiosity more than anything, and just desire to think about the future and not be sad, you know? CA: And are you? Are you not sad? EM: I'm sometimes sad, but mostly I'm feeling I guess relatively optimistic about the future these days. There are certainly some big risks that humanity faces.\n\nI think the population collapse is a really big deal, that I wish more people would think about because the birth rate is far below what's needed to sustain civilization at its current level. And there's obviously ... We need to take action on climate sustainability, which is being done. And we need to secure the future of consciousness by being a multi-planet species.\n\nWe need to address -- Essentially, it's important to take whatever actions we can think of to address the existential risks that affect the future of consciousness. CA: There's a whole generation coming through who seem really sad about the future. What would you say to them? EM: Well, I think if you want the future to be good, you must make it so. Take action to make it good. And it will be. CA: Elon, thank you for all this time.\n\nThat is a beautiful place to end. Thanks for all you're doing. EM: You're welcome.","textByLang":{"en":"Chris Anderson: Elon Musk, great to see you. How are you? Elon Musk: Good. How are you? CA: We're here at the Texas Gigafactory the day before this thing opens. It's been pretty crazy out there. Thank you so much for making time on a busy day. I would love you to help us, kind of, cast our minds, I don't know, 10, 20, 30 years into the future. And help us try to picture what it would take to build a future that's worth getting excited about.\n\nThe last time you spoke at TED, you said that that was really just a big driver. You know, you can talk about lots of other reasons to do the work you're doing, but fundamentally, you want to think about the future and not think that it sucks. EM: Yeah, absolutely. I think in general, you know, there's a lot of discussion of like, this problem or that problem. And a lot of people are sad about the future and they're ... Pessimistic.\n\nAnd I think ... this is ... This is not great. I mean, we really want to wake up in the morning and look forward to the future. We want to be excited about what's going to happen. And life cannot simply be about sort of, solving one miserable problem after another. CA: So if you look forward 30 years, you know, the year 2050 has been labeled by scientists as this, kind of, almost like this doomsday deadline on climate.\n\nThere's a consensus of scientists, a large consensus of scientists, who believe that if we haven't completely eliminated greenhouse gases or offset them completely by 2050, effectively we're inviting climate catastrophe. Do you believe there is a pathway to avoid that catastrophe? And what would it look like? EM: Yeah, so I am not one of the doomsday people, which may surprise you. I actually think we're on a good path.\n\nBut at the same time, I want to caution against complacency. So, so long as we are not complacent, as long as we have a high sense of urgency about moving towards a sustainable energy economy, then I think things will be fine. So I can't emphasize that enough, as long as we push hard and are not complacent, the future is going to be great. Don't worry about it.\n\nI mean, worry about it, but if you worry about it, ironically, it will be a self-unfulfilling prophecy. So, like, there are three elements to a sustainable energy future. One is of sustainable energy generation, which is primarily wind and solar. There's also hydro, geothermal, I'm actually pro-nuclear. I think nuclear is fine. But it's going to be primarily solar and wind, as the primary generators of energy.\n\nThe second part is you need batteries to store the solar and wind energy because the sun doesn't shine all the time, the wind doesn't blow all the time. So it's a lot of stationary battery packs. And then you need electric transport. So electric cars, electric planes, boats. And then ultimately, it’s not really possible to make electric rockets, but you can make the propellant used in rockets using sustainable energy.\n\nSo ultimately, we can have a fully sustainable energy economy. And it's those three things: solar/wind, stationary battery pack, electric vehicles. So then what are the limiting factors on progress? The limiting factor really will be battery cell production. So that's going to really be the fundamental rate driver.\n\nAnd then whatever the slowest element of the whole lithium-ion battery cells supply chain, from mining and the many steps of refining to ultimately creating a battery cell and putting it into a pack, that will be the limiting factor on progress towards sustainability.\n\nCA: All right, so we need to talk more about batteries, because the key thing that I want to understand, like, there seems to be a scaling issue here that is kind of amazing and alarming. You have said that you have calculated that the amount of battery production that the world needs for sustainability is 300 terawatt hours of batteries. That's the end goal?\n\nEM: Very rough numbers, and I certainly would invite others to check our calculations because they may arrive at different conclusions. But in order to transition, not just current electricity production, but also heating and transport, which roughly triples the amount of electricity that you need, it amounts to approximately 300 terawatt hours of installed capacity. CA: So we need to give people a sense of how big a task that is.\n\nI mean, here we are at the Gigafactory. You know, this is one of the biggest buildings in the world. What I've read, and tell me if this is still right, is that the goal here is to eventually produce 100 gigawatt hours of batteries here a year eventually. EM: We will probably do more than that, but yes, hopefully we get there within a couple of years. CA: Right. But I mean, that is one -- EM: 0. 1 terrawat hours.\n\nCA: But that's still 1/100 of what's needed. How much of the rest of that 100 is Tesla planning to take on let's say, between now and 2030, 2040, when we really need to see the scale up happen? EM: I mean, these are just guesses. So please, people shouldn't hold me to these things.\n\nIt's not like this is like some -- What tends to happen is I'll make some like, you know, best guess and then people, in five years, there’ll be some jerk that writes an article: \"Elon said this would happen, and it didn't happen. He's a liar and a fool.\" It's very annoying when that happens. So these are just guesses, this is a conversation. CA: Right. EM: I think Tesla probably ends up doing 10 percent of that. Roughly.\n\nCA: Let's say 2050 we have this amazing, you know, 100 percent sustainable electric grid made up of, you know, some mixture of the sustainable energy sources you talked about. That same grid probably is offering the world really low-cost energy, isn't it, compared with now. And I'm curious about like, are people entitled to get a little bit excited about the possibilities of that world? EM: People should be optimistic about the future.\n\nHumanity will solve sustainable energy. It will happen if we, you know, continue to push hard, the future is bright and good from an energy standpoint. And then it will be possible to also use that energy to do carbon sequestration. It takes a lot of energy to pull carbon out of the atmosphere because in putting it in the atmosphere it releases energy. So now, you know, obviously in order to pull it out, you need to use a lot of energy.\n\nBut if you've got a lot of sustainable energy from wind and solar, you can actually sequester carbon. So you can reverse the CO2 parts per million of the atmosphere and oceans. And also you can really have as much fresh water as you want. Earth is mostly water. We should call Earth “Water. ” It's 70 percent water by surface area. Now most of that’s seawater, but it's like we just happen to be on the bit that's land.\n\nCA: And with energy, you can turn seawater into -- EM: Yes. CA: Irrigating water or whatever water you need. EM: At very low cost. Things will be good. CA: Things will be good. And also, there's other benefits to this non-fossil fuel world where the air is cleaner -- EM: Yes, exactly. Because, like, when you burn fossil fuels, there's all these side reactions and toxic gases of various kinds.\n\nAnd sort of little particulates that are bad for your lungs. Like, there's all sorts of bad things that are happening that will go away. And the sky will be cleaner and quieter. The future's going to be good. CA: I want us to switch now to think a bit about artificial intelligence. But the segue there, you mentioned how annoying it is when people call you up for bad predictions in the past.\n\nSo I'm possibly going to be annoying now, but I’m curious about your timelines and how you predict and how come some things are so amazingly on the money and some aren't. So when it comes to predicting sales of Tesla vehicles, for example, you've kind of been amazing, I think in 2014 when Tesla had sold that year 60,000 cars, you said, \"2020, I think we will do half a million a year.\" EM: Yeah, we did almost exactly a half million.\n\nCA: You did almost exactly half a million. You were scoffed in 2014 because no one since Henry Ford, with the Model T, had come close to that kind of growth rate for cars. You were scoffed, and you actually hit 500,000 cars and then 510,000 or whatever produced.\n\nBut five years ago, last time you came to TED, I asked you about full self-driving, and you said, “Yeah, this very year, I'm confident that we will have a car going from LA to New York without any intervention.\" EM: Yeah, I don't want to blow your mind, but I'm not always right. CA: (Laughs) What's the difference between those two? Why has full self-driving in particular been so hard to predict?\n\nEM: I mean, the thing that really got me, and I think it's going to get a lot of other people, is that there are just so many false dawns with self-driving, where you think you've got the problem, have a handle on the problem, and then it, no, turns out you just hit a ceiling. Because if you were to plot the progress, the progress looks like a log curve. So it's like a series of log curves.\n\nSo most people don't know what a log curve is, I suppose. CA: Show the shape with your hands. EM: It goes up you know, sort of a fairly straight way, and then it starts tailing off and you start getting diminishing returns. And you're like, uh oh, it was trending up and now it's sort of, curving over and you start getting to these, what I call local maxima, where you don't realize basically how dumb you were. And then it happens again.\n\nAnd ultimately... These things, you know, in retrospect, they seem obvious, but in order to solve full self-driving properly, you actually have to solve real-world AI. Because what are the road networks designed to work with? They're designed to work with a biological neural net, our brains, and with vision, our eyes. And so in order to make it work with computers, you basically need to solve real-world AI and vision.\n\nBecause we need cameras and silicon neural nets in order to have self-driving work for a system that was designed for eyes and biological neural nets. You know, I guess when you put it that way, it's sort of, like, quite obvious that the only way to solve full self-driving is to solve real world AI and sophisticated vision. CA: What do you feel about the current architecture?\n\nDo you think you have an architecture now where there is a chance for the logarithmic curve not to tail off any anytime soon? EM: Well I mean, admittedly these may be infamous last words, but I actually am confident that we will solve it this year. That we will exceed -- The probability of an accident, at what point do you exceed that of the average person? I think we will exceed that this year.\n\nCA: What are you seeing behind the scenes that gives you that confidence? EM: We’re almost at the point where we have a high-quality unified vector space. In the beginning, we were trying to do this with image recognition on individual images. But if you get one image out of a video, it's actually quite hard to see what's going on without ambiguity. But if you look at a video segment of a few seconds of video, that ambiguity resolves.\n\nSo the first thing we had to do is tie all eight cameras together so they're synchronized, so that all the frames are looked at simultaneously and labeled simultaneously by one person, because we still need human labeling. So at least they’re not labeled at different times by different people in different ways. So it's sort of a surround picture. Then a very important part is to add the time dimension.\n\nSo that you’re looking at surround video, and you're labeling surround video. And this is actually quite difficult to do from a software standpoint. We had to write our own labeling tools and then create auto labeling, create auto labeling software to amplify the efficiency of human labelers because it’s quite hard to label. In the beginning, it was taking several hours to label a 10-second video clip. This is not scalable.\n\nSo basically what you have to have is you have to have surround video, and that surround video has to be primarily automatically labeled with humans just being editors and making slight corrections to the labeling of the video and then feeding back those corrections into the future auto labeler, so you get this flywheel eventually where the auto labeler is able to take in vast amounts of video and with high accuracy, automatically label the video for cars, lane lines, drive space.\n\nCA: What you’re saying is ... the result of this is that you're effectively giving the car a 3D model of the actual objects that are all around it. It knows what they are, and it knows how fast they are moving.\n\nAnd the remaining task is to predict what the quirky behaviors are that, you know, that when a pedestrian is walking down the road with a smaller pedestrian, that maybe that smaller pedestrian might do something unpredictable or things like that. You have to build into it before you can really call it safe. EM: You basically need to have memory across time and space. So what I mean by that is ...\n\nMemory can’t be infinite, because it's using up a lot of the computer's RAM basically. So you have to say how much are you going to try to remember? It's very common for things to be occluded. So if you talk about say, a pedestrian walking past a truck where you saw the pedestrian start on one side of the truck, then they're occluded by the truck. You would know intuitively, OK, that pedestrian is going to pop out the other side, most likely.\n\nCA: A computer doesn't know it. EM: You need to slow down. CA: A skeptic is going to say that every year for the last five years, you've kind of said, well, no this is the year, we're confident that it will be there in a year or two or, you know, like it's always been about that far away.\n\nBut we've got a new architecture now, you're seeing enough improvement behind the scenes to make you not certain, but pretty confident, that, by the end of this year, what in most, not in every city, and every circumstance but in many cities and circumstances, basically the car will be able to drive without interventions safer than a human. EM: Yes. I mean, the car currently drives me around Austin most of the time with no interventions.\n\nSo it's not like ... And we have over 100,000 people in our full self-driving beta program. So you can look at the videos that they post online. CA: I do. And some of them are great, and some of them are a little terrifying. I mean, occasionally the car seems to veer off and scare the hell out of people. EM: It’s still a beta.\n\nCA: But you’re behind the scenes, looking at the data, you're seeing enough improvement to believe that a this-year timeline is real. EM: Yes, that's what it seems like. I mean, we could be here talking again in a year, like, well, another year went by, and it didn’t happen. But I think this is the year.\n\nCA: And so in general, when people talk about Elon time, I mean it sounds like you can't just have a general rule that if you predict that something will be done in six months, actually what we should imagine is it’s going to be a year or it’s like two-x or three-x, it depends on the type of prediction. Some things, I guess, things involving software, AI, whatever, are fundamentally harder to predict than others.\n\nIs there an element that you actually deliberately make aggressive prediction timelines to drive people to be ambitious? Without that, nothing gets done? EM: Well, I generally believe, in terms of internal timelines, that we want to set the most aggressive timeline that we can. Because there’s sort of like a law of gaseous expansion where, for schedules, where whatever time you set, it's not going to be less than that.\n\nIt's very rare that it'll be less than that. But as far as our predictions are concerned, what tends to happen in the media is that they will report all the wrong ones and ignore all the right ones. Or, you know, when writing an article about me -- I've had a long career in multiple industries. If you list my sins, I sound like the worst person on Earth. But if you put those against the things I've done right, it makes much more sense, you know?\n\nSo essentially like, the longer you do anything, the more mistakes that you will make cumulatively. Which, if you sum up those mistakes, will sound like I'm the worst predictor ever. But for example, for Tesla vehicle growth, I said I think we’d do 50 percent, and we’ve done 80 percent. CA: Yes. EM: But they don't mention that one. So, I mean, I'm not sure what my exact track record is on predictions.\n\nThey're more optimistic than pessimistic, but they're not all optimistic. Some of them are exceeded probably more or later, but they do come true. It's very rare that they do not come true. It's sort of like, you know, if there's some radical technology prediction, the point is not that it was a few years late, but that it happened at all. That's the more important part.\n\nCA: So it feels like at some point in the last year, seeing the progress on understanding, the Tesla AI understanding the world around it, led to a kind of, an aha moment at Tesla. Because you really surprised people recently when you said probably the most important product development going on at Tesla this year is this robot, Optimus. EM: Yes.\n\nCA: Many companies out there have tried to put out these robots, they've been working on them for years. And so far no one has really cracked it. There's no mass adoption robot in people's homes. There are some in manufacturing, but I would say, no one's kind of, really cracked it. Is it something that happened in the development of full self-driving that gave you the confidence to say, \"You know what, we could do something special here.\"\n\nEM: Yeah, exactly. So, you know, it took me a while to sort of realize that in order to solve self-driving, you really needed to solve real-world AI. And at the point of which you solve real-world AI for a car, which is really a robot on four wheels, you can then generalize that to a robot on legs as well.\n\nThe two hard parts I think -- like obviously companies like Boston Dynamics have shown that it's possible to make quite compelling, sometimes alarming robots. CA: Right. EM: You know, so from a sensors and actuators standpoint, it's certainly been demonstrated by many that it's possible to make a humanoid robot.\n\nThe things that are currently missing are enough intelligence for the robot to navigate the real world and do useful things without being explicitly instructed. So the missing things are basically real-world intelligence and scaling up manufacturing. Those are two things that Tesla is very good at. And so then we basically just need to design the specialized actuators and sensors that are needed for humanoid robot.\n\nPeople have no idea, this is going to be bigger than the car. CA: So let's dig into exactly that. I mean, in one way, it's actually an easier problem than full self-driving because instead of an object going along at 60 miles an hour, which if it gets it wrong, someone will die. This is an object that's engineered to only go at what, three or four or five miles an hour. And so a mistake, there aren't lives at stake.\n\nThere might be embarrassment at stake. EM: So long as the AI doesn't take it over and murder us in our sleep or something. CA: Right. (Laughter) So talk about -- I think the first applications you've mentioned are probably going to be manufacturing, but eventually the vision is to have these available for people at home.\n\nIf you had a robot that really understood the 3D architecture of your house and knew where every object in that house was or was supposed to be, and could recognize all those objects, I mean, that’s kind of amazing, isn’t it? Like the kind of thing that you could ask a robot to do would be what? Like, tidy up? EM: Yeah, absolutely. Make dinner, I guess, mow the lawn. CA: Take a cup of tea to grandma and show her family pictures. EM: Exactly.\n\nTake care of my grandmother and make sure -- CA: It could obviously recognize everyone in the home. It could play catch with your kids. EM: Yes. I mean, obviously, we need to be careful this doesn't become a dystopian situation. I think one of the things that's going to be important is to have a localized ROM chip on the robot that cannot be updated over the air.\n\nWhere if you, for example, were to say, “Stop, stop, stop,” if anyone said that, then the robot would stop, you know, type of thing. And that's not updatable remotely. I think it's going to be important to have safety features like that. CA: Yeah, that sounds wise. EM: And I do think there should be a regulatory agency for AI. I've said that for many years. I don't love being regulated, but I think this is an important thing for public safety.\n\nCA: Let's come back to that. But I don't think many people have really sort of taken seriously the notion of, you know, a robot at home. I mean, at the start of the computing revolution, Bill Gates said there's going to be a computer in every home. And people at the time said, yeah, whatever, who would even want that.\n\nDo you think there will be basically like in, say, 2050 or whatever, like a robot in most homes, is what there will be, and people will love them and count on them? You’ll have your own butler basically. EM: Yeah, you'll have your sort of buddy robot probably, yeah. CA: I mean, how much of a buddy? How many applications have you thought, you know, can you have a romantic partner, a sex partner? EM: It's probably inevitable.\n\nI mean, I did promise the internet that I’d make catgirls. We could make a robot catgirl. CA: Be careful what you promise the internet. (Laughter) EM: So, yeah, I guess it'll be whatever people want really, you know. CA: What sort of timeline should we be thinking about of the first models that are actually made and sold?\n\nEM: Well, you know, the first units that we intend to make are for jobs that are dangerous, boring, repetitive, and things that people don't want to do. And, you know, I think we’ll have like an interesting prototype sometime this year. We might have something useful next year, but I think quite likely within at least two years.\n\nAnd then we'll see rapid growth year over year of the usefulness of the humanoid robots and decrease in cost and scaling up production. CA: Initially just selling to businesses, or when do you picture you'll start selling them where you can buy your parents one for Christmas or something? EM: I'd say in less than ten years. CA: Help me on the economics of this. So what do you picture the cost of one of these being?\n\nEM: Well, I think the cost is actually not going to be crazy high. Like less than a car. Initially, things will be expensive because it'll be a new technology at low production volume. The complexity and cost of a car is greater than that of a humanoid robot. So I would expect that it's going to be less than a car, or at least equivalent to a cheap car. CA: So even if it starts at 50k, within a few years, it’s down to 20k or lower or whatever.\n\nAnd maybe for home they'll get much cheaper still. But think about the economics of this. If you can replace a $30,000, $40,000-a-year worker, which you have to pay every year, with a one-time payment of $25,000 for a robot that can work longer hours, a pretty rapid replacement of certain types of jobs. How worried should the world be about that? EM: I wouldn't worry about the sort of, putting people out of a job thing.\n\nI think we're actually going to have, and already do have, a massive shortage of labor. So I think we will have ... Not people out of work, but actually still a shortage labor even in the future. But this really will be a world of abundance. Any goods and services will be available to anyone who wants them. It'll be so cheap to have goods and services, it will be ridiculous.\n\nCA: I'm presuming it should be possible to imagine a bunch of goods and services that can't profitably be made now but could be made in that world, courtesy of legions of robots. EM: Yeah. It will be a world of abundance. The only scarcity that will exist in the future is that which we decide to create ourselves as humans. CA: OK. So AI is allowing us to imagine a differently powered economy that will create this abundance.\n\nWhat are you most worried about going wrong? EM: Well, like I said, AI and robotics will bring out what might be termed the age of abundance. Other people have used this word, and that this is my prediction: it will be an age of abundance for everyone. But I guess there’s ...\n\nThe dangers would be the artificial general intelligence or digital superintelligence decouples from a collective human will and goes in the direction that for some reason we don't like. Whatever direction it might go. You know, that’s sort of the idea behind Neuralink, is to try to more tightly couple collective human world to digital superintelligence.\n\nAnd also along the way solve a lot of brain injuries and spinal injuries and that kind of thing. So even if it doesn't succeed in the greater goal, I think it will succeed in the goal of alleviating brain and spine damage. CA: So the spirit there is that if we're going to make these AIs that are so vastly intelligent, we ought to be wired directly to them so that we ourselves can have those superpowers more directly.\n\nBut that doesn't seem to avoid the risk that those superpowers might ... turn ugly in unintended ways. EM: I think it's a risk, I agree. I'm not saying that I have some certain answer to that risk. I’m just saying like maybe one of the things that would be good for ensuring that the future is one that we want is to more tightly couple the collective human world to digital intelligence.\n\nThe issue that we face here is that we are already a cyborg, if you think about it. The computers are an extension of ourselves. And when we die, we have, like, a digital ghost. You know, all of our text messages and social media, emails. And it's quite eerie actually, when someone dies but everything online is still there. But you say like, what's the limitation? What is it that inhibits a human-machine symbiosis? It's the data rate.\n\nWhen you communicate, especially with a phone, you're moving your thumbs very slowly. So you're like moving your two little meat sticks at a rate that’s maybe 10 bits per second, optimistically, 100 bits per second. And computers are communicating at the gigabyte level and beyond.\n\nCA: Have you seen evidence that the technology is actually working, that you've got a richer, sort of, higher bandwidth connection, if you like, between like external electronics and a brain than has been possible before? EM: Yeah. I mean, the fundamental principles of reading neurons, sort of doing read-write on neurons with tiny electrodes, have been demonstrated for decades. So it's not like the concept is new.\n\nThe problem is that there is no product that works well that you can go and buy. So it's all sort of, in research labs. And it's like some cords sticking out of your head. And it's quite gruesome, and it's really ... There's no good product that actually does a good job and is high-bandwidth and safe and something actually that you could buy and would want to buy.\n\nBut the way to think of the Neuralink device is kind of like a Fitbit or an Apple Watch. That's where we take out sort of a small section of skull about the size of a quarter, replace that with what, in many ways really is very much like a Fitbit, Apple Watch or some kind of smart watch thing. But with tiny, tiny wires, very, very tiny wires. Wires so tiny, it’s hard to even see them.\n\nAnd it's very important to have very tiny wires so that when they’re implanted, they don’t damage the brain. CA: How far are you from putting these into humans? EM: Well, we have put in our FDA application to aspirationally do the first human implant this year. CA: The first uses will be for neurological injuries of different kinds.\n\nBut rolling the clock forward and imagining when people are actually using these for their own enhancement, let's say, and for the enhancement of the world, how clear are you in your mind as to what it will feel like to have one of these inside your head? EM: Well, I do want to emphasize we're at an early stage.\n\nAnd so it really will be many years before we have anything approximating a high-bandwidth neural interface that allows for AI-human symbiosis. For many years, we will just be solving brain injuries and spinal injuries. For probably a decade. This is not something that will suddenly one day it will have this incredible sort of whole brain interface.\n\nIt's going to be, like I said, at least a decade of really just solving brain injuries and spinal injuries. And really, I think you can solve a very wide range of brain injuries, including severe depression, morbid obesity, sleep, potentially schizophrenia, like, a lot of things that cause great stress to people. Restoring memory in older people. CA: If you can pull that off, that's the app I will sign up for. EM: Absolutely. CA: Please hurry.\n\n(Laughs) EM: I mean, the emails that we get at Neuralink are heartbreaking. I mean, they'll send us just tragic, you know, where someone was sort of, in the prime of life and they had an accident on a motorcycle and someone who's 25, you know, can't even feed themselves. And this is something we could fix.\n\nCA: But you have said that AI is one of the things you're most worried about and that Neuralink may be one of the ways where we can keep abreast of it. EM: Yeah, there's the short-term thing, which I think is helpful on an individual human level with injuries. And then the long-term thing is an attempt to address the civilizational risk of AI by bringing digital intelligence and biological intelligence closer together.\n\nI mean, if you think of how the brain works today, there are really two layers to the brain. There's the limbic system and the cortex. You've got the kind of, animal brain where -- it’s kind of like the fun part, really. CA: It's where most of Twitter operates, by the way. EM: I think Tim Urban said, we’re like somebody, you know, stuck a computer on a monkey. You know, so we're like, if you gave a monkey a computer, that's our cortex.\n\nBut we still have a lot of monkey instincts. Which we then try to rationalize as, no, it's not a monkey instinct. It’s something more important than that. But it's often just really a monkey instinct. We're just monkeys with a computer stuck in our brain.\n\nBut even though the cortex is sort of the smart, or the intelligent part of the brain, the thinking part of the brain, I've not yet met anyone who wants to delete their limbic system or their cortex. They're quite happy having both. Everyone wants both parts of their brain. And people really want their phones and their computers, which are really the tertiary, the third part of your intelligence. It's just that it's ...\n\nLike the bandwidth, the rate of communication with that tertiary layer is slow. And it's just a very tiny straw to this tertiary layer. And we want to make that tiny straw a big highway. And I’m definitely not saying that this is going to solve everything. Or this is you know, it’s the only thing -- it’s something that might be helpful.\n\nAnd worst-case scenario, I think we solve some important brain injury, spinal injury issues, and that's still a great outcome. CA: Best-case scenario, we may discover new human possibility, telepathy, you've spoken of, in a way, a connection with a loved one, you know, full memory and much faster thought processing maybe. All these things. It's very cool. If AI were to take down Earth, we need a plan B. Let's shift our attention to space.\n\nWe spoke last time at TED about reusability, and you had just demonstrated that spectacularly for the first time. Since then, you've gone on to build this monster rocket, Starship, which kind of changes the rules of the game in spectacular ways. Tell us about Starship. EM: Starship is extremely fundamental. So the holy grail of rocketry or space transport is full and rapid reusability. This has never been achieved.\n\nThe closest that anything has come is our Falcon 9 rocket, where we are able to recover the first stage, the boost stage, which is probably about 60 percent of the cost of the vehicle of the whole launch, maybe 70 percent. And we've now done that over a hundred times. So with Starship, we will be recovering the entire thing. Or at least that's the goal. CA: Right. EM: And moreover, recovering it in such a way that it can be immediately re-flown.\n\nWhereas with Falcon 9, we still need to do some amount of refurbishment to the booster and to the fairing nose cone. But with Starship, the design goal is immediate re-flight. So you just refill propellants and go again. And this is gigantic. Just as it would be in any other mode of transport. CA: And the main design is to basically take 100 plus people at a time, plus a bunch of things that they need, to Mars.\n\nSo, first of all, talk about that piece. What is your latest timeline? One, for the first time, a Starship goes to Mars, presumably without people, but just equipment. Two, with people. Three, there’s sort of, OK, 100 people at a time, let's go. EM: Sure.\n\nAnd just to put the cost thing into perspective, the expected cost of Starship, putting 100 tons into orbit, is significantly less than what it would have cost or what it did cost to put our tiny Falcon 1 rocket into orbit. Just as the cost of flying a 747 around the world is less than the cost of a small airplane. You know, a small airplane that was thrown away.\n\nSo it's really pretty mind-boggling that the giant thing costs less, way less than the small thing. So it doesn't use exotic propellants or things that are difficult to obtain on Mars. It uses methane as fuel, and it's primarily oxygen, roughly 77-78 percent oxygen by weight. And Mars has a CO2 atmosphere and has water ice, which is CO2 plus H2O, so you can make CH4, methane, and O2, oxygen, on Mars.\n\nCA: Presumably, one of the first tasks on Mars will be to create a fuel plant that can create the fuel for the return trips of many Starships. EM: Yes. And actually, it's mostly going to be oxygen plants, because it's 78 percent oxygen, 22 percent fuel. But the fuel is a simple fuel that is easy to create on Mars. And in many other parts of the solar system. So basically ... And it's all propulsive landing, no parachutes, nothing thrown away.\n\nIt has a heat shield that’s capable of entering on Earth or Mars. We can even potentially go to Venus. but you don't want to go there. (Laughs) Venus is hell, almost literally. But you could ...\n\nIt's a generalized method of transport to anywhere in the solar system, because the point at which you have propellant depo on Mars, you can then travel to the asteroid belt and to the moons of Jupiter and Saturn and ultimately anywhere in the solar system. CA: But your main focus and SpaceX's main focus is still Mars. That is the mission. That is where most of the effort will go?\n\nOr are you actually imagining a much broader array of uses even in the coming, you know, the first decade or so of uses of this. Where we could go, for example, to other places in the solar system to explore, perhaps NASA wants to use the rocket for that reason. EM: Yeah, NASA is planning to use a Starship to return to the moon, to return people to the moon. And so we're very honored that NASA has chosen us to do this.\n\nBut I'm saying it is a generalized -- it’s a general solution to getting anywhere in the greater solar system. It's not suitable for going to another star system, but it is a general solution for transport anywhere in the solar system. CA: Before it can do any of that, it's got to demonstrate it can get into orbit, you know, around Earth. What’s your latest advice on the timeline for that?\n\nEM: It's looking promising for us to have an orbital launch attempt in a few months. So we're actually integrating -- will be integrating the engines into the booster for the first orbital flight starting in about a week or two. And the launch complex itself is ready to go. So assuming we get regulatory approval, I think we could have an orbital launch attempt within a few months.\n\nCA: And a radical new technology like this presumably there is real risk on those early attempts. EM: Oh, 100 percent, yeah. The joke I make all the time is that excitement is guaranteed. Success is not guaranteed, but excitement certainly is. CA: But the last I saw on your timeline, you've slightly put back the expected date to put the first human on Mars till 2029, I want to say? EM: Yeah, I mean, so let's see.\n\nI mean, we have built a production system for Starship, so we're making a lot of ships and boosters. CA: How many are you planning to make actually? EM: Well, we're currently expecting to make a booster and a ship roughly every, well, initially, roughly every couple of months, and then hopefully by the end of this year, one every month. So it's giant rockets, and a lot of them.\n\nJust talking in terms of rough orders of magnitude, in order to create a self-sustaining city on Mars, I think you will need something on the order of a thousand ships. And we just need a Helen of Sparta, I guess, on Mars. CA: This is not in most people's heads, Elon. EM: The planet that launched 1,000 ships. CA: That's nice. But this is not in most people's heads, this picture that you have in your mind.\n\nThere's basically a two-year window, you can only really fly to Mars conveniently every two years. You were picturing that during the 2030s, every couple of years, something like 1,000 Starships take off, each containing 100 or more people. That picture is just completely mind-blowing to me. That sense of this armada of humans going to -- EM: It'll be like \"Battlestar Galactica,\" the fleet departs.\n\nCA: And you think that it can basically be funded by people spending maybe a couple hundred grand on a ticket to Mars? Is that price about where it has been? EM: Well, I think if you say like, what's required in order to get enough people and enough cargo to Mars to build a self-sustaining city.\n\nAnd it's where you have an intersection of sets of people who want to go, because I think only a small percentage of humanity will want to go, and can afford to go or get sponsorship in some manner. That intersection of sets, I think, needs to be a million people or something like that. And so it’s what can a million people afford, or get sponsorship for, because I think governments will also pay for it, and people can take out loans.\n\nBut I think at the point at which you say, OK, like, if moving to Mars costs are, for argument’s sake, $100,000, then I think you know, almost anyone can work and save up and eventually have $100,000 and be able to go to Mars if they want. We want to make it available to anyone who wants to go. It's very important to emphasize that Mars, especially in the beginning, will not be luxurious. It will be dangerous, cramped, difficult, hard work.\n\nIt's kind of like that Shackleton ad for going to the Antarctic, which I think is actually not real, but it sounds real and it's cool. It's sort of like, the sales pitch for going to Mars is, \"It's dangerous, it's cramped. You might not make it back. It's difficult, it's hard work.\" That's the sales pitch. CA: Right. But you will make history. EM: But it'll be glorious.\n\nCA: So on that kind of launch rate you're talking about over two decades, you could get your million people to Mars, essentially. Whose city is it? Is it NASA's city, is it SpaceX's city? EM: It’s the people of Mars’ city. The reason for this, I mean, I feel like why do this thing? I think this is important for maximizing the probable lifespan of humanity or consciousness.\n\nHuman civilization could come to an end for external reasons, like a giant meteor or super volcanoes or extreme climate change. Or World War III, or you know, any one of a number of reasons. But the probable life span of civilizational consciousness as we know it, which we should really view as this very delicate thing, like a small candle in a vast darkness. That is what appears to be the case.\n\nWe're in this vast darkness of space, and there's this little candle of consciousness that’s only really come about after 4. 5 billion years, and it could just go out. CA: I think that's powerful, and I think a lot of people will be inspired by that vision. And the reason you need the million people is because there has to be enough people there to do everything that you need to survive.\n\nEM: Really, like the critical threshold is if the ships from Earth stop coming for any reason, does the Mars City die out or not? And so we have to -- You know, people talk about like, the sort of, the great filters, the things that perhaps, you know, we talk about the Fermi paradox, and where are the aliens? Well maybe there are these various great filters that the aliens didn’t pass, and so they eventually just ceased to exist.\n\nAnd one of the great filters is becoming a multi-planet species. So we want to pass that filter. And I'll be long-dead before this is, you know, a real thing, before it happens. But I’d like to at least see us make great progress in this direction.\n\nCA: Given how tortured the Earth is right now, how much we're beating each other up, shouldn't there be discussions going on with everyone who is dreaming about Mars to try to say, we've got a once in a civilization's chance to make some new rules here? Should someone be trying to lead those discussions to figure out what it means for this to be the people of Mars' City?\n\nEM: Well, I think ultimately this will be up to the people of Mars to decide how they want to rethink society. Yeah there’s certainly risk there. And hopefully the people of Mars will be more enlightened and will not fight amongst each other too much. I mean, I have some recommendations, which people of Mars may choose to listen to or not.\n\nI would advocate for more of a direct democracy, not a representative democracy, and laws that are short enough for people to understand. Where it is harder to create laws than to get rid of them. CA: Coming back a bit nearer term, I'd love you to just talk a bit about some of the other possibility space that Starship seems to have created. So given -- Suddenly we've got this ability to move 100 tons-plus into orbit.\n\nSo we've just launched the James Webb telescope, which is an incredible thing. It's unbelievable. EM: Exquisite piece of technology. CA: Exquisite piece of technology. But people spent two years trying to figure out how to fold up this thing. It's a three-ton telescope. EM: We can make it a lot easier if you’ve got more volume and mass. CA: But let's ask a different question.\n\nWhich is, how much more powerful a telescope could someone design based on using Starship, for example? EM: I mean, roughly, I'd say it's probably an order of magnitude more resolution. If you've got 100 tons and a thousand cubic meters volume, which is roughly what we have. CA: And what about other exploration through the solar system? I mean, I'm you know -- EM: Europa is a big question mark. CA: Right, so there's an ocean there.\n\nAnd what you really want to do is to drop a submarine into that ocean. EM: Maybe there's like, some squid civilization, cephalopod civilization under the ice of Europa. That would be pretty interesting. CA: I mean, Elon, if you could take a submarine to Europa and we see pictures of this thing being devoured by a squid, that would honestly be the happiest moment of my life. EM: Pretty wild, yeah. CA: What other possibilities are out there?\n\nLike, it feels like if you're going to create a thousand of these things, they can only fly to Mars every two years. What are they doing the rest of the time? It feels like there's this explosion of possibility that I don't think people are really thinking about. EM: I don't know, we've certainly got a long way to go. As you alluded to earlier, we still have to get to orbit.\n\nAnd then after we get to orbit, we have to really prove out and refine full and rapid reusability. That'll take a moment. But I do think we will solve this. I'm highly confident we will solve this at this point. CA: Do you ever wake up with the fear that there's going to be this Hindenburg moment for SpaceX where ... EM: We've had many Hindenburg. Well, we've never had Hindenburg moments with people, which is very important. Big difference.\n\nWe've blown up quite a few rockets. So there's a whole compilation online that we put together and others put together, it's showing rockets are hard. I mean, the sheer amount of energy going through a rocket boggles the mind. So, you know, getting out of Earth's gravity well is difficult. We have a strong gravity and a thick atmosphere. And Mars, which is less than 40 percent, it's like, 37 percent of Earth's gravity and has a thin atmosphere.\n\nThe ship alone can go all the way from the surface of Mars to the surface of Earth. Whereas getting to Mars requires a giant booster and orbital refilling. CA: So, Elon, as I think more about this incredible array of things that you're involved with, I keep seeing these synergies, to use a horrible word, between them.\n\nYou know, for example, the robots you're building from Tesla could possibly be pretty handy on Mars, doing some of the dangerous work and so forth. I mean, maybe there's a scenario where your city on Mars doesn't need a million people, it needs half a million people and half a million robots. And that's a possibility. Maybe The Boring Company could play a role helping create some of the subterranean dwelling spaces that you might need. EM: Yeah.\n\nCA: Back on planet Earth, it seems like a partnership between Boring Company and Tesla could offer an unbelievable deal to a city to say, we will create for you a 3D network of tunnels populated by robo-taxis that will offer fast, low-cost transport to anyone. You know, full self-driving may or may not be done this year. And in some cities, like, somewhere like Mumbai, I suspect won't be done for a decade.\n\nEM: Some places are more challenging than others. CA: But today, today, with what you've got, you could put a 3D network of tunnels under there. EM: Oh, if it’s just in a tunnel, that’s a solved problem. CA: Exactly, full self-driving is a solved problem. To me, there’s amazing synergy there. With Starship, you know, Gwynne Shotwell talked about by 2028 having from city to city, you know, transport on planet Earth. EM: This is a real possibility.\n\nThe fastest way to get from one place to another, if it's a long distance, is a rocket. It's basically an ICBM. CA: But it has to land -- Because it's an ICBM, it has to land probably offshore, because it's loud. So why not have a tunnel that then connects to the city with Tesla? And Neuralink. I mean, if you going to go to Mars having a telepathic connection with loved ones back home, even if there's a time delay...\n\nEM: These are not intended to be connected, by the way. But there certainly could be some synergies, yeah. CA: Surely there is a growing argument that you should actually put all these things together into one company and just have a company devoted to creating a future that’s exciting, and let a thousand flowers bloom. Have you been thinking about that?\n\nEM: I mean, it is tricky because Tesla is a publicly-traded company, and the investor base of Tesla and SpaceX and certainly Boring Company and Neuralink are quite different. Boring Company and Neuralink are tiny companies. CA: By comparison. EM: Yeah, Tesla's got 110,000 people. SpaceX I think is around 12,000 people. Boring Company and Neuralink are both under 200 people.\n\nSo they're little, tiny companies, but they will probably get bigger in the future. They will get bigger in the future. It's not that easy to sort of combine these things. CA: Traditionally, you have said that for SpaceX especially, you wouldn't want it public, because public investors wouldn't support the craziness of the idea of going to Mars or whatever.\n\nEM: Yeah, making life multi-planetary is outside of the normal time horizon of Wall Street analysts. (Laughs) To say the least. CA: I think something's changed, though. What's changed is that Tesla is now so powerful and so big and throws off so much cash that you actually could connect the dots here. Just tell the public that x-billion dollars a year, whatever your number is, will be diverted to the Mars mission.\n\nI suspect you'd have massive interest in that company. And it might unlock a lot more possibility for you, no? EM: I would like to give the public access to ownership of SpaceX, but I mean the thing that like, the overhead associated with a public company is high. I mean, as a public company, you're just constantly sued. It does occupy like, a fair bit of ... You know, time and effort to deal with these things.\n\nCA: But you would still only have one public company, it would be bigger, and have more things going on. But instead of being on four boards, you'd be on one. EM: I'm actually not even on the Neuralink or Boring Company boards. And I don't really attend the SpaceX board meetings. We only have two a year, and I just stop by and chat for an hour. The board overhead for a public company is much higher.\n\nCA: I think some investors probably worry about how your time is being split, and they might be excited by you know, that. Anyway, I just woke up the other day thinking, just, there are so many ways in which these things connect. And you know, just the simplicity of that mission, of building a future that is worth getting excited about, might appeal to an awful lot of people.\n\nElon, you are reported by Forbes and everyone else as now, you know, the world's richest person. EM: That’s not a sovereign. CA: (Laughs) EM: You know, I think it’s fair to say that if somebody is like, the king or de facto king of a country, they're wealthier than I am. CA: But it’s just harder to measure -- So $300 billion. I mean, your net worth on any given day is rising or falling by several billion dollars. How insane is that?\n\nEM: It's bonkers, yeah. CA: I mean, how do you handle that psychologically? There aren't many people in the world who have to even think about that. EM: I actually don't think about that too much.\n\nBut the thing that is actually more difficult and that does make sleeping difficult is that, you know, every good hour or even minute of thinking about Tesla and SpaceX has such a big effect on the company that I really try to work as much as possible, you know, to the edge of sanity, basically.\n\nBecause you know, Tesla’s getting to the point where probably will get to the point later this year, where every high-quality minute of thinking is a million dollars impact on Tesla. Which is insane. I mean, the basic, you know, if Tesla is doing, you know, sort of $2 billion a week, let’s say, in revenue, it’s sort of $300 million a day, seven days a week. You know, it's ...\n\nCA: If you can change that by five percent in an hour’s brainstorm, that's a pretty valuable hour. EM: I mean, there are many instances where a half-hour meeting, I was able to improve the financial outcome of the company by $100 million in a half-hour meeting. CA: There are many other people out there who can't stand this world of billionaires.\n\nLike, they are hugely offended by the notion that an individual can have the same wealth as, say, a billion or more of the world's poorest people. EM: If they examine sort of -- I think there's some axiomatic flaws that are leading them to that conclusion. For sure, it would be very problematic if I was consuming, you know, billions of dollars a year in personal consumption. But that is not the case. In fact, I don't even own a home right now.\n\nI'm literally staying at friends' places. If I travel to the Bay Area, which is where most of Tesla engineering is, I basically rotate through friends' spare bedrooms. I don't have a yacht, I really don't take vacations. It’s not as though my personal consumption is high. I mean, the one exception is a plane. But if I don't use the plane, then I have less hours to work.\n\nCA: I mean, I personally think you have shown that you are mostly driven by really quite a deep sense of moral purpose. Like, your attempts to solve the climate problem have been as powerful as anyone else on the planet that I'm aware of. And I actually can't understand, personally, I can't understand the fact that you get all this criticism from the Left about, \"Oh, my God, he's so rich, that's disgusting.\" When climate is their issue.\n\nPhilanthropy is a topic that some people go to. Philanthropy is a hard topic. How do you think about that? EM: I think if you care about the reality of goodness instead of the perception of it, philanthropy is extremely difficult. SpaceX, Tesla, Neuralink and The Boring Company are philanthropy. If you say philanthropy is love of humanity, they are philanthropy. Tesla is accelerating sustainable energy. This is a love -- philanthropy.\n\nSpaceX is trying to ensure the long-term survival of humanity with a multiple-planet species. That is love of humanity. You know, Neuralink is trying to help solve brain injuries and existential risk with AI. Love of humanity. Boring Company is trying to solve traffic, which is hell for most people, and that also is love of humanity. CA: How upsetting is it to you to hear this constant drumbeat of, \"Billionaires, my God, Elon Musk, oh, my God?\"\n\nLike, do you just shrug that off or does it does it actually hurt? EM: I mean, at this point, it's water off a duck's back. CA: Elon, I’d like to, as we wrap up now, just pull the camera back and just think ... You’re a father now of seven surviving kids. EM: Well, I mean, I'm trying to set a good example because the birthrate on Earth is so low that we're facing civilizational collapse unless the birth rate returns to a sustainable level.\n\nCA: Yeah, you've talked about this a lot, that depopulation is a big problem, and people don't understand how big a problem it is. EM: Population collapse is one of the biggest threats to the future of human civilization. And that is what is going on right now. CA: What drives you on a day-to-day basis to do what you do?\n\nEM: I guess, like, I really want to make sure that there is a good future for humanity and that we're on a path to understanding the nature of the universe, the meaning of life. Why are we here, how did we get here? And in order to understand the nature of the universe and all these fundamental questions, we must expand the scope and scale of consciousness. Certainly it must not diminish or go out. Or we certainly won’t understand this.\n\nI would say I’ve been motivated by curiosity more than anything, and just desire to think about the future and not be sad, you know? CA: And are you? Are you not sad? EM: I'm sometimes sad, but mostly I'm feeling I guess relatively optimistic about the future these days. There are certainly some big risks that humanity faces.\n\nI think the population collapse is a really big deal, that I wish more people would think about because the birth rate is far below what's needed to sustain civilization at its current level. And there's obviously ... We need to take action on climate sustainability, which is being done. And we need to secure the future of consciousness by being a multi-planet species.\n\nWe need to address -- Essentially, it's important to take whatever actions we can think of to address the existential risks that affect the future of consciousness. CA: There's a whole generation coming through who seem really sad about the future. What would you say to them? EM: Well, I think if you want the future to be good, you must make it so. Take action to make it good. And it will be. CA: Elon, thank you for all this time.\n\nThat is a beautiful place to end. Thanks for all you're doing. EM: You're welcome."},"languages":["en"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YRvf00NooN8"},{"id":"interview-with-welt-2022-03-26","type":"interview","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2WX_mgnAFA0","title":"Interview with WELT","titles":{"en":"Interview with WELT","de":"Interview mit WELT","fr":"Entretien avec WELT"},"date":"2022-03-26","summary":"English-language excerpt of the Axel Springer interview in which Musk argues that declining birthrates are a major threat to human civilization.","text":"[Music] [Applause] [Music] in 2017 you said the third world war will be a war with or about iai now we have a very conventional war can ai help one of the reasons for world war iii would be if one country has or one place has advanced ai technology and other powers wanted or they're worried about some country gaining uh advanced ai that would would give them a strong advantage in war then they may be tempted to attack before the country that is developing the strong ai has that for use in weapons technology russia said that they are going to stop the delivery of rocket engines is that for spacex a threat or an opportunity well spacex we design and manufacture our own rocket engines so we do not rely on any russian components at all um for for the united\n\nstates of america it is dangerous or well the boeing and lockheed have historically relied on the russian rd-180 engine which i should say to be fair is a great engine they are hoping to move away from that uh in the future with the uh engines from blue origin but those engines are not yet ready for flight um there is also the antares vehicle which is dependent uses the rde 181 i believe they will not be able to fly as a result with all your knowledge and products services you are a strategic weapon in modern warfare how do you see a role in that context ukraine shows that there are opportunities that you needed well i certainly hope that um spacex and tesla do not uh are not forced to develop any kind of weapons technology obviously we would only do\n\nsuch a thing if it was the last resort i mean it more in the metaphorical sense not that you produce weapons but that you are that your knowledge can be used in order to make a difference in conventional warfare or in the warfare of the future which is ai um i i think i can be helpful in conflicts yeah i mean i try to take the set of actions that are most likely to improve the probability that the future will be good um and so obviously sometimes i make mistakes in this regard so it's not like i would always get it right but i aspire to get it right and so whatever you know i think is most likely to uh ensure that the future is good for you know all of humanity that that does the actions that i will take um yeah a couple of months ago we had an exchange\n\nabout uh anz junger's famous oh yeah storm of steel yep you were very fascinated by that uh book which has been published roughly hundred years ago about jungle's experiences in the first world war why is why is that book so important for you well i read a lot of books um and i i don't know for some reason i'm like fascinated by uh war and history in general um i thought that youngest book was uh you know an excellent first-hand account of uh world war one and i mean it certainly i think uh a lesson taken from that book is we don't ever want to do that again that's interesting yeah that's good that's a good idea saying that because there's a big controversy around that book and some people are saying this is uh a glorifying war yeah it's definitely not\n\nand other people are saying a warning for uh not having a war ever again so you're clearly in the second camp well i think like those who are don't like youngest book are basically you know just because it's not uh 100 anti-war in the most extreme way then that there's therefore it's bad no it's like a report it's just neither yeah he's just saying is it or negative it's just describing what happened in a terrible way yeah so i mean nobody's reading any nobody's reading that book and say i want to be do that i want to do that that sounds i mean it makes it very clear it's a very terrible situation um but but he also said like it's it's not like it's it's not like there's no good that comes out of even a terrible situation there's some good that comes\n\nout of it but it's overwhelmingly bad it's just it's just really it's interesting to to uh read about history i mean learn the lessons of history such that we do not repeat the mistakes of the past well we know that saying history doesn't repeat but it rhymes and we see orion these days back to the bigger strategic picture i mean the the the terrible actions of putin are to a certain degree also a result of strategic mistakes that europe particularly germany has made the drop out of nuclear energy actually can i just say i think it's very important that germany not shut down its nuclear power stations i think this is extremely crazy i just wanted to ask a question on that because if we if we really want to reduce putin's power and europeans and germany's\n\ndependence on russian energy this works only through decarbonization so my question to you is should we have even more nuclear energy in order to get faster independent from putin and to resolve the climate issues i want to be super clear my opinion germany should not only not shut down the nuclear power plants it should reopen the ones that shut down and those are those are the fastest ones to restart uh um it's crazy to shut down nuclear power plants uh now especially like if you're in a place where there's not natural disasters you know so like if you're maybe somewhere where there's severe earthquakes or tsunamis or something like that it's more you know of a question mark is i mean maybe you know but if if there's not like massive natural disaster\n\nrisk which germany does not have then there's really no danger with the nuclear power plants and you don't see any uh safer alternatives that could have a similar effect so solar and wind is not going to do it with any other ideas in mind about future energy policy i i i think long term most of uh civilization's energy is going to come from uh solar and then you need uh to store it with a battery uh because obviously the sun only shines uh during the day um and sometimes it's very cloudy so you need uh solar batteries is is will be the main long-term uh way that civilization is powered but between now and then we we need uh to maintain nuclear i can't even emphasize enough uh please do not shut down the nuclear power plants uh and please reopen the ones\n\nthat um have been chat this is total madness to shut them down i want to be clear total madness let's see whether your very clear words are hurt in germany i'm trying to use the strongest words yeah i would say this is a national security risk it's not like like listen play time is over okay uh obviously play time is over this is a national security it's a national security risk to shut these things down it's another bitter uh lesson of that war uh it is not only an issue with regard to climate it is very much an issue it's a national security resolution and it's a climate issue for you know replacing i think people don't understand like you know the coal power plants uh because of their emissions they cause a certain number of deaths every year far more\n\ndangerous than nuclear power plants do you have um any other let's say unconventional ideas to deal with the challenge of climate change is it possible through the reduction of consumption and through new forms of energy to resolve it completely without china being completely aligned or should we have a different way to look at it some people are saying perhaps instead of just trying to avoid a warmer climate we should focus on how to live with a warmer climate and adapt to that is that an option and i think we just want to take the set of actions that accelerate the transition to a sustainable energy economy and that sustainable energy economy is going to be like i said primarily solar with wind you absolutely need stationary storage batteries because\n\nof the intermittency of solar and wind and then then there will also be hydroelectric geothermal nuclear um these are all fine and the combat but we want to you know just move as quickly as we can to a a sort of a solar electric economy uh so um you know sometimes people say oh well it's cloudy or something you know what about solar and it's like do plants grow they're a solar-powered chemical reaction if plants grow you have solar power obviously how do you think they grow i think we just want to try to move this quickly as possible um and um i do want to emphasize that while i think solo will be the the main uh source of energy it it won't be everything it's it will like say there'll be nuclear hydroelectric geothermal wind and and the faster we get\n\nthere the better for the world it's really we're kind of running this climate experiment but it's an experiment where we know that that's pointless because uh we know ultimately we will run out of coal uh and oil and gas this is uh it's not going to last forever and so we have to transition to something that is long-term in any case because we will run out of hydrocarbons to burn so then let's just not run the experiment uh but i'm much less of a climate alarmist than people might think although of course my words are taken you know sometimes always amplified but uh how is it going to look like in 15 years better than uh today much better than today from a sustainable energy standpoint much better yeah much better um so your bet is we are going to solve\n\nthe climate issue yes absolutely we will solve the climate issue uh it's just a question of when and and i'd say like the fundamental good of tesla should be thought of as by how many years did tesla accelerate the sustainable energy revolution that's the fundamental historic code of tesla not whether it would occur it would occur anyway but by how many years did can tesla accelerate that transition you once told me uh about uh population that uh the decrease of reproduction rate birth rate is one of the most underestimated problems of our times can you explain um yeah so most people in the world are operating under the false impression that uh that there are too many people this is not true earth could maintain a population many times it's the current\n\nlevel and the birth rate has been dropping like crazy um so and unfortunately like we have these like uh ridiculous uh population estimates from the u.\n\nn that need to be updated because there just don't make any sense um really you can just look at say what was the birth rate last year how many kids were born multiply that by the life expectancy and say okay that's how many people will be alive you know in the future and then say is the trend for birth rate positive or negative it's negative so that's the best case unless something changes with the birth rate i mean you can look at take japan for example i think i'm just going off memory here but i think the population is roughly 110 million but last year if you take the number of uh children born times the life expectancy which is 85 years it's very impressive life expectancy then japan would uh have i think around 68 million people roughly half of\n\nthe current population that does not tell the full story because those that you would have an upside down demographic permit you already have an upside down demographic permit where you know a lot of old people very few young people and um you know so how is this that upside down demographic permit is unstable that's also here why we'll need alternatives you have to recently presented optimus and you shared great expectations what that could do for the world yeah could you explain a little bit your motivation i assume it's not only about the first visit to mars that could be done by optimus it is more than that a game changer in ai could you share a little bit your your vision yeah i mean with respect to ai and robotics i always approach these things\n\nwith some trepidation because uh i certainly do not want to be play a hand in anything that could potentially be harmful to humanity um now humanoid robots they're clearly happening i mean you look at like boston dynamics they their demonstrations are better every year so there will be humanoid robots i mean the rate of advancement of ai is very rapid even if tesla stopped doing ai that would i think we're still on a track to develop artificial general intelligence meaning intelligence smarter than the smartest human concretely optimus is going to be used in tesla factories that's one of the use cases but what is the broader use case uh beyond tesla yeah i mean optimus is a general purpose uh sort of worker droid um so the initial roles for optimus would\n\nbe in work that is repetitive boring dangerous that kind of thing basically work that people don't want to do unless they're paid to do it why has optimus 2 lacks just because it looks like a human being or is it more practical i thought four legs are better four legs good two looks bad it reminds me of oil humanity has designed the world to interact with a bipedal humanoid with two arms and you know ten fingers so if you want to have a robot fit in and be able to do things that humans can do it must be of roughly the same size and shape and capability the prototype is going to be ready by the end of this year when is it a product that can be mass marketed mass-produced that's the hard part um i mean i don't know i think we'll have something pretty good\n\nat the prototype level this year um and it might be ready for at least a moderate volume production you know towards the end of next year do you think that optimus is going to play a role in our daily life helping us in the household and things like that um i think it probably would yeah i think so it's just like say general purpose humanoid uh yeah so you said the potential is bigger than the than the potential of tesla if that's true for cars yeah then it must be really a mass market product yeah sure uh well i mean say like what what is an economy uh like what people get confused sometimes they think an economy is money money is a database for uh exchange of goods and services and for time shifting the exchange of goods and services that's it's a money\n\nis a database money doesn't have power in and of itself like you can run the thought experiment if you're trapped on a you know a remote island a shipwrecked on an island um uh and you've got a trillion dollars in a swiss bank account it's worthless you'd rather have a can of soup so you know all the bitcoin in the world you're still going to starve so uh the actual economy is goods and services um so then what limits the output of goods and services the limiter is labor even capital is distilled labor so the limiting factor for the economy is is labor and so if you address the limiting factor for the economy then it's not clear that an economy in the traditional sense has any meaning anymore because you have no constraint on on goods and services um\n\nthe only the only things that will be missing are things that have artificial scarcity so that way we decide to make it scarce like a particular piece of art or a particular you know home in this exact location or something like that you know but for but there will be no shortage of goods and services but anyway optimus is also an answer to the problem of uh uh drop in uh birth rates if we have not enough human people want more bots to get the work done optimists will be helpful with respect to dropping both rates but i mean like i said you have to say like if these things continue then what happens humanity dies out is that what we want or step by step replaced by artificial intelligence human beings that neuralink is empowering well yeah i mean your\n\nlink in the short term neurolink is just about solving um you know uh brain injuries and spinal injuries and that kind of thing so to be clear the the for for many years neurolynx products will just be helpful to someone who has lost the use of their uh arms or arms and legs or who has uh just a traumatic brain injury of some kind that's that's what your leg will be useful for for many years but you know our last conversation you said that neurolink is among all your projects for you the most uh important one is that still true um i know i said it it could be i wouldn't say for sure it is the most important but it could be the most important in that the there is a long-term mitigation to artificial intelligence uh which is that uh we could effectively\n\nmerge merge with artificial intelligence by by improving the speed of interaction between our cortex and our tertiary layer which is already silicon we're basically we're already a sort of a three level intelligence creature the base level is the limbic system the sort of animal brain or reptile brain essentially the sort of fundamental you know yeah that animal or reptile brain and then there's the cortex which the cortex by the way is largely in service to the the reptile brain could you imagine that one day we would be able to download our human brain capacity into a optimus yes i think that is i'm not saying this is i think it is possible i think to do that is possible which would be as a different way of eternal life because we would also download\n\nour personalities into about yes we could download the things that we believe make ourselves unique now of course if you're not in a body anymore that there's definitely going to be some difference there you know so um but as far as preserving our memories um our personality if you will uh we could i think we could do that the moment of singularity that ray kurzweil has i think predicted for 25 is approaching fast do you think the timeline is still realistic well i don't i i see this as not i used to i i'm not sure this is a singularity meaning like i'm not sure there's a very sharp boundary i mean already there's so much compute that we outsource um you know our memories are stored in our phones and computers with the pictures and video um you know computers\n\nand and phones uh amplify our ability to communicate uh enabling us to do match things that would have been considered magical um and had had you burned at the stake in you know maybe 300 years ago um and um you know you could have two people had to have a video called uh basically for free from two parts of the world you know on opposite sides of the world it's amazing so we already we've already amplified our um our sort of human brains massively with computers um and and and i think an interesting ratio to roughly calculate would be the um amount of compute that is digital um divided by the amount of compute that is biological and how does that ratio change over time and with the there's so much digital compute happening so fast that that ratio is\n\nincreasing rapidly talking about speed you have the vision that one day starship could be able to get from a to b in 30 minutes all around the globe is that correct and if so what would the time frame for this vision it's like a global super taxi you can just go from i mean san francisco to nairobi yeah um i mean the landing the landing will be loud so you'd want to probably be connecting uh you know um cities that are next to oceans or seas such that you can land maybe uh i don't know far enough offshore that the latin landing noise is not disturbing to people but coast to coast that would be a realistic absolutely yeah yeah it's like an icbm but to change the option package from nuclear to landing delete the nuke ad landing elon you have solved so many\n\nproblems of mankind and presented so many solutions i'm surprised that one topic seems not to be too fascinating for you and that is uh the project of uh longevity and increased lifespan uh significantly why are not passionate about that well you're not personally interested in living longer i mean i don't i don't think we should try to have people live for a very long time for a very long time that it would cause ossification of society because the truth is most people don't change their mind they just die and so if they don't die they will be will be stuck with old ideas and they won't society won't advance um i think we already have quite a serious issue with the germantocracy where the the leaders of so many countries are extremely old look i mean\n\nin the us it's you know very very ancient uh leadership and it's just impossible to stay in touch with the people if you are um you know at the you know if you're like many generations older than them um and the founders in the us they put minimum ages for uh political office but they did not put maximum ages because they did not expect that people will be living so long but they should have um because you really want in order for a democracy to function well the leaders must be reasonably in touch with the bulk of the population and if you're too young or too old it's you can't say that you would be in touch is there a kind of ideal age and how old would you like to get well i think for political leadership i think you want to be i don't know um within\n\nideally within or at least 20 years of the average age of the population this doesn't sound too crazy um so um you know for me i don't know i mean i certainly would like to maintain health for a longer period of period of time but i'm not afraid of dying i think it will come as a relief so only you may not be able to see the vision of spacex come true in your life well i'd like to live long enough to see that being at a net worth of 230 billion roughly being perceived as the richest person uh on earth well i think putin is significantly richer than me you really do yeah yes well i i mean i can't go invade countries and stuff i i believe i mean there's like some old quote that from was it was it crassus or uh that you're you're not really rich unless you\n\ncan afford a legion do you know do you know john law i don't know john law used to be the richest person on earth 300 years ago okay he was a poker player a gambler on the farm he was the biggest art collector on earth so a lot of superlatives wow in the end he went bankrupt what so pretty far to fall did you ever thought about that option that something could go wrong and that you could one day lose everything i mean there's been many times where i expected to lose everything not you know i mean who starts a car company and a rocket company expecting them to succeed certainly not me i thought they both had less than a 10 chance of success and frankly uh i wasn't wrong uh in that in we had the third failure of spacex and if the fourth launch had failed\n\nspacex would be dead in 2008.\n\num we didn't have no money for a fifth launch and for tesla uh we were tesla's got been on the verge of bankruptcy many times um and we we closed the last the financing round in 2008 because remember at the end of 2008 general motors and chrysler were going bankrupt and ford was almost bankrupt so imagine trying to raise money for electric car startup while general motors is going bankrupt and people were angry that i even asked so but we were able to just barely raise enough money to squeak by um and close the financing round for tesla on the last hour of the last day that was possible in christmas eve and if we're not closed that financing around then it would go on bankrupt two days after christmas so you know what you're talking about yes this john\n\nlaw uh like a bankrupt fine or whatever i don't care john law got famous with the sentence uh liko no me the economy is me i just got french or english scott as she said yeah there's like a nice phrase in french he worked in france and his main language then was france so um so the question is do you see any danger that one day not only big platforms like google or facebook could face uh much more rigid regulation but that elon musk could be regulated because of regulation actually as it is uh you know spacex and tesla are regulated no but i mean that that there could be a discussion that it's just too much uh like in too many areas like i have too much power personally or something well i mean uh if you if you build in many sectors that are absolutely\n\ncrucial to a society very dominating see you on mars suckers that's the [Laughter] yeah okay so one way one way to uh to avoid that is to be a good citizen and you are and you have your own foundation could you tell us a little bit about your projects what your foundation is going to do in the future what your priorities are is to donate money and to improve the world beyond your business activities yeah i mean i i do want to emphasize that spacex and tesla fundamentally intended to improve the probability of the future is good so this will do more they will do more than anything i do from a charitable standpoint in terms of of usefulness to humanity i mean tesla's about accelerating sustainable energy obviously that's important spacex is about making\n\nlife multi-planetary and of course providing global internet through stalling these are fundamental goods that the good of those companies will far exceed anything that i do from a charitable standpoint and i have to say it is very difficult to give away money effectively if you care about the money actually doing good and not merely the perception of doing good but do you see any concrete project that you would like to focus on like for example food supply starvation as a big topic or anything else that comes to your mind for your foundation activities well the you know i the like i said it's a big struggle to give away money effectively uh if you care about like i said if you care about the reality of doing good and not the perception of doing good\n\nthen it is very hard to give away money effectively and i care about the reality perception be downed so there's you know obviously environmental causes there this education especially science and engineering education pediatric health care you know uh hunger these days is is more of a political and logistics problem than it is not having enough food there's a lot of food in fact you know in the u.\n\ns uh in many many countries the the issue is more obesity than it is a hunger uh so um but i always like i'm looking for ways to give away money that are effective like what do you think i should do you know what heroes of uh underrated heroes are the people who are doing a service in hospitals helping elderly people and i think they don't have a lobby okay so i think to do something for them because we all need them if we are in trouble sure think about it if you google elon musk i think you have 156 million search results really 76 million twitter followers you are definitely one of the most popular people on earth is popularity a pleasure or a liability for you well it makes it difficult to go buy a coffee at the corner store that's for sure um so\n\nit's so it's hard to go around places you know um i used to be able to just you know go to the store or walk down the street and now it's quite difficult to do that it reminds me a bit of uh the former chancellor of germany helmut kuhl who once told me you cannot imagine how terrible it is to go to restaurant everybody recognizes you who comes to your table yeah ask you for an autograph that's terrible there is only one thing in life that is worse if nobody comes to your table anymore i suppose so well i would for i i really uh it's hard for me to go to a restaurant um so um and if i do i just try to find a corner table and that's kind of dimly lit or something where i can sort of stay out of the way but you cannot turn around is there anything that you\n\num most urgently wanna achieve well i mean the whole um i mean the in the you know the pressing items in the short term are com completing full self driving so that we have full self-driving operating uh at a substantially uh safer level than humans basically it's it comes down to solving the problem of real-world ai that's that consumes a lot of my mind and then getting starship to work not just to get to orbit but to achieve full and rapid reusability which is really the holy grail of rocketry that is necessary for humanity to become a multi-planet species is there anything that you would and don't think those things might happen this year is there anything that you really would like to achieve which you think is going to be impossible um impossible\n\nis a strong word but you don't like that word well it's just a strong word i i mean i sort of approach things from a physics standpoint and the word impossible is you know more or less banned in physics um so um i'm really worried about this birth rate thing that's been troubling me for many years um because i just don't see it turning around you know i every year it's worse and uh i drive my friends crazy advice perhaps that's a project for your foundation sure okay you're a multi-talent person is there any field of total incompetence i'm terrible at dancing although you like techno music so much yeah but the nice thing about techno is you don't have to be able to dance very well you can just jump around basically [Laughter] walter isaacson is planning\n\na biography and he has written a biography on einstein on steve jobs on benjamin franklin and leonardo da vinci among the four with whom would you like to meet and have a glass of wine well i mean we're honored to meet any of them even for a minute um i think frank i think ben franklin would be the most fun at dinner and who is the one where you would say i'm closest to him would it be leonardo da vinci i think i'm uh you are a renaissance pretty different from those people you know everyone there um it might actually be ben franklin frankly uh you know he did a lot of science and engineering stuff um i don't know but um you know it's funny davinci uh thought of himself first and foremost as an engineer and in his like application like when he applied\n\nfor to you know for his position uh um you know that that led him that enabled him to create a lot of the art uh his application was all about his engineering stuff and then at the end and also i do some art [Laughter] it was just funny that um that that he really davinci really thought of himself as an engineer and you know i mean for the time he was pretty impressive uh the german author thomas mann once uh set the purpose of life to be an engineer in the interest of progress of mankind sure is that a good definition for your own ambitions yeah i think that is a good definition is freedom for you the most important value of the society no i think not being dead is i mean like like no society if everybody just cares about that you know i'm just saying\n\nthere's a maslow's hierarchy you know of of of like okay you know i i these days we you know back in the old days i mean you know a good year would be a year where not that many people died of uh hunger uh you know plague not that many people froze to death and not that many people were killed by the neighboring tribe back in the days that if it was like hey we only lost five percent last year that was great you know now now now those things are really uh you know not not concerns anywhere near they would like level of what they would be in the past what did coda do to the freedom uh to freedom in our society well i think uh freedom took what was severely restricted uh with with kobet do you think it's a long-term effect do you think we are going back\n\nto old norms well the jury's out on that front you know are you worried yeah i think that i think i think we should roll back uh government power uh that was massively increased in the covert times um you know i think we're at the this point um the tail end of it or it's no longer you know a major concern and so we need to actively roll back the powers of government that were created during uh kobet you once said on mars uh if there's human life there should be direct democracy yes i think direct democracy is less susceptible to corruption than representative democracy um i mean the other recommendations that i'd like to like in any laws need to be short enough that everyone can read them as well um and and there should be some uh uh it should be easier\n\nto get rid of a law than make one do you see any positive effects in the covet pandemic i think there are many many sublinings um the uh advancement of uh synthetic rna was accelerated significantly because of covid and it's going to help with cancer allergies bacterial diseases yeah yes i mean synthetic rna is revolutionary medicine that most people are not aware of just how much of a revolution that is i would say this is like medicine going from analog to digital and and that could be the big accelerator here uh like uh during the plague which also was an accelerator of progress in society and medical progress big times um yes uh it's actually interesting you know english was was suppressed in england for quite a long time because william the conqueror\n\nwas uh norman french i mean so it wasn't even french french it was like a different version of french yeah but that was the official language and the courts were only in french for hundreds of years in england if you wanted to go to court you had to you have to either be able to speak norman french or hire someone who could um or and and then actually the play got so bad that so many lawyers died in the play that they didn't have enough people who could speak french uh for the court so they said okay we have to have the courts in english because there aren't enough people alive who can speak nor in french so indirectly the plague was a trigger of democratization of society i mean yeah i mean it was it it actually did uh i think for society as a whole\n\nimprove things at least at least based on my observation of things in england uh the uh people were actually able to speak english in courts uh because they had no other choice um and and a lot of other things were improved um there was a labor shortage uh because of the plague and so uh that that gave put a lot more power in the hands of laborers um so and and give them more freedom of action um so elon i think we have to come to an end but just a couple of very brief questions what is your biggest fear well i think there's you have to say like what are the existential threats that humanity faces um we spent a lot of time talking about the birth rate thing um that that might be the biggest single threat to the future of human civilization then there's\n\num you know artificial intelligence gone wrong is a big concern um i think religious extremism is a concern you know what is your biggest hope my biggest hope is that humanity creates a self-sustaining city on mars you said that you cannot be and don't want to be alone i very much share that feeling yeah where does it come from i think it's just a natural human reaction i mean most people a lot of people are happy if they are alone i don't i really that's uh i think most people are not happy being alone um would you are you do you feel lonely i mean there are times when i feel lonely yes but i mean i think it's it's pretty basic like if i'm say working on this starship rocket uh down at you know south texas and and i'm just staying in my little house\n\nby myself especially if i forget my dog you know if my dog is not with me then um then i feel quite lonely because i'm just in a little house by myself with not even a dog last question you have once said um if i'm not in love i cannot be happy are you happy at the moment i think there's degrees of love um but certainly for want to be um we're fully happy i think you have to be happy and work and happy in love um so i um i'm medium happy there are degrees of happiness can love for projects for work compensate love among people i think love of work in my experience could it best make one halfway happy perhaps that's your biggest hope to be really in love i have been in the past i try to be as literal as possible uh i i would be happy if humanity has a\n\nself-sustaining city on mars because then the probable lifespan of humanity is much greater you know i think we really just got this you know consciousness like this little candle of consciousness like a small light in the void and we don't want that small candle in a vast darkness to be put out thank you very much elon for that conversation all right thank you you","textByLang":{"en":"[Music] [Applause] [Music] in 2017 you said the third world war will be a war with or about iai now we have a very conventional war can ai help one of the reasons for world war iii would be if one country has or one place has advanced ai technology and other powers wanted or they're worried about some country gaining uh advanced ai that would would give them a strong advantage in war then they may be tempted to attack before the country that is developing the strong ai has that for use in weapons technology russia said that they are going to stop the delivery of rocket engines is that for spacex a threat or an opportunity well spacex we design and manufacture our own rocket engines so we do not rely on any russian components at all um for for the united\n\nstates of america it is dangerous or well the boeing and lockheed have historically relied on the russian rd-180 engine which i should say to be fair is a great engine they are hoping to move away from that uh in the future with the uh engines from blue origin but those engines are not yet ready for flight um there is also the antares vehicle which is dependent uses the rde 181 i believe they will not be able to fly as a result with all your knowledge and products services you are a strategic weapon in modern warfare how do you see a role in that context ukraine shows that there are opportunities that you needed well i certainly hope that um spacex and tesla do not uh are not forced to develop any kind of weapons technology obviously we would only do\n\nsuch a thing if it was the last resort i mean it more in the metaphorical sense not that you produce weapons but that you are that your knowledge can be used in order to make a difference in conventional warfare or in the warfare of the future which is ai um i i think i can be helpful in conflicts yeah i mean i try to take the set of actions that are most likely to improve the probability that the future will be good um and so obviously sometimes i make mistakes in this regard so it's not like i would always get it right but i aspire to get it right and so whatever you know i think is most likely to uh ensure that the future is good for you know all of humanity that that does the actions that i will take um yeah a couple of months ago we had an exchange\n\nabout uh anz junger's famous oh yeah storm of steel yep you were very fascinated by that uh book which has been published roughly hundred years ago about jungle's experiences in the first world war why is why is that book so important for you well i read a lot of books um and i i don't know for some reason i'm like fascinated by uh war and history in general um i thought that youngest book was uh you know an excellent first-hand account of uh world war one and i mean it certainly i think uh a lesson taken from that book is we don't ever want to do that again that's interesting yeah that's good that's a good idea saying that because there's a big controversy around that book and some people are saying this is uh a glorifying war yeah it's definitely not\n\nand other people are saying a warning for uh not having a war ever again so you're clearly in the second camp well i think like those who are don't like youngest book are basically you know just because it's not uh 100 anti-war in the most extreme way then that there's therefore it's bad no it's like a report it's just neither yeah he's just saying is it or negative it's just describing what happened in a terrible way yeah so i mean nobody's reading any nobody's reading that book and say i want to be do that i want to do that that sounds i mean it makes it very clear it's a very terrible situation um but but he also said like it's it's not like it's it's not like there's no good that comes out of even a terrible situation there's some good that comes\n\nout of it but it's overwhelmingly bad it's just it's just really it's interesting to to uh read about history i mean learn the lessons of history such that we do not repeat the mistakes of the past well we know that saying history doesn't repeat but it rhymes and we see orion these days back to the bigger strategic picture i mean the the the terrible actions of putin are to a certain degree also a result of strategic mistakes that europe particularly germany has made the drop out of nuclear energy actually can i just say i think it's very important that germany not shut down its nuclear power stations i think this is extremely crazy i just wanted to ask a question on that because if we if we really want to reduce putin's power and europeans and germany's\n\ndependence on russian energy this works only through decarbonization so my question to you is should we have even more nuclear energy in order to get faster independent from putin and to resolve the climate issues i want to be super clear my opinion germany should not only not shut down the nuclear power plants it should reopen the ones that shut down and those are those are the fastest ones to restart uh um it's crazy to shut down nuclear power plants uh now especially like if you're in a place where there's not natural disasters you know so like if you're maybe somewhere where there's severe earthquakes or tsunamis or something like that it's more you know of a question mark is i mean maybe you know but if if there's not like massive natural disaster\n\nrisk which germany does not have then there's really no danger with the nuclear power plants and you don't see any uh safer alternatives that could have a similar effect so solar and wind is not going to do it with any other ideas in mind about future energy policy i i i think long term most of uh civilization's energy is going to come from uh solar and then you need uh to store it with a battery uh because obviously the sun only shines uh during the day um and sometimes it's very cloudy so you need uh solar batteries is is will be the main long-term uh way that civilization is powered but between now and then we we need uh to maintain nuclear i can't even emphasize enough uh please do not shut down the nuclear power plants uh and please reopen the ones\n\nthat um have been chat this is total madness to shut them down i want to be clear total madness let's see whether your very clear words are hurt in germany i'm trying to use the strongest words yeah i would say this is a national security risk it's not like like listen play time is over okay uh obviously play time is over this is a national security it's a national security risk to shut these things down it's another bitter uh lesson of that war uh it is not only an issue with regard to climate it is very much an issue it's a national security resolution and it's a climate issue for you know replacing i think people don't understand like you know the coal power plants uh because of their emissions they cause a certain number of deaths every year far more\n\ndangerous than nuclear power plants do you have um any other let's say unconventional ideas to deal with the challenge of climate change is it possible through the reduction of consumption and through new forms of energy to resolve it completely without china being completely aligned or should we have a different way to look at it some people are saying perhaps instead of just trying to avoid a warmer climate we should focus on how to live with a warmer climate and adapt to that is that an option and i think we just want to take the set of actions that accelerate the transition to a sustainable energy economy and that sustainable energy economy is going to be like i said primarily solar with wind you absolutely need stationary storage batteries because\n\nof the intermittency of solar and wind and then then there will also be hydroelectric geothermal nuclear um these are all fine and the combat but we want to you know just move as quickly as we can to a a sort of a solar electric economy uh so um you know sometimes people say oh well it's cloudy or something you know what about solar and it's like do plants grow they're a solar-powered chemical reaction if plants grow you have solar power obviously how do you think they grow i think we just want to try to move this quickly as possible um and um i do want to emphasize that while i think solo will be the the main uh source of energy it it won't be everything it's it will like say there'll be nuclear hydroelectric geothermal wind and and the faster we get\n\nthere the better for the world it's really we're kind of running this climate experiment but it's an experiment where we know that that's pointless because uh we know ultimately we will run out of coal uh and oil and gas this is uh it's not going to last forever and so we have to transition to something that is long-term in any case because we will run out of hydrocarbons to burn so then let's just not run the experiment uh but i'm much less of a climate alarmist than people might think although of course my words are taken you know sometimes always amplified but uh how is it going to look like in 15 years better than uh today much better than today from a sustainable energy standpoint much better yeah much better um so your bet is we are going to solve\n\nthe climate issue yes absolutely we will solve the climate issue uh it's just a question of when and and i'd say like the fundamental good of tesla should be thought of as by how many years did tesla accelerate the sustainable energy revolution that's the fundamental historic code of tesla not whether it would occur it would occur anyway but by how many years did can tesla accelerate that transition you once told me uh about uh population that uh the decrease of reproduction rate birth rate is one of the most underestimated problems of our times can you explain um yeah so most people in the world are operating under the false impression that uh that there are too many people this is not true earth could maintain a population many times it's the current\n\nlevel and the birth rate has been dropping like crazy um so and unfortunately like we have these like uh ridiculous uh population estimates from the u.\n\nn that need to be updated because there just don't make any sense um really you can just look at say what was the birth rate last year how many kids were born multiply that by the life expectancy and say okay that's how many people will be alive you know in the future and then say is the trend for birth rate positive or negative it's negative so that's the best case unless something changes with the birth rate i mean you can look at take japan for example i think i'm just going off memory here but i think the population is roughly 110 million but last year if you take the number of uh children born times the life expectancy which is 85 years it's very impressive life expectancy then japan would uh have i think around 68 million people roughly half of\n\nthe current population that does not tell the full story because those that you would have an upside down demographic permit you already have an upside down demographic permit where you know a lot of old people very few young people and um you know so how is this that upside down demographic permit is unstable that's also here why we'll need alternatives you have to recently presented optimus and you shared great expectations what that could do for the world yeah could you explain a little bit your motivation i assume it's not only about the first visit to mars that could be done by optimus it is more than that a game changer in ai could you share a little bit your your vision yeah i mean with respect to ai and robotics i always approach these things\n\nwith some trepidation because uh i certainly do not want to be play a hand in anything that could potentially be harmful to humanity um now humanoid robots they're clearly happening i mean you look at like boston dynamics they their demonstrations are better every year so there will be humanoid robots i mean the rate of advancement of ai is very rapid even if tesla stopped doing ai that would i think we're still on a track to develop artificial general intelligence meaning intelligence smarter than the smartest human concretely optimus is going to be used in tesla factories that's one of the use cases but what is the broader use case uh beyond tesla yeah i mean optimus is a general purpose uh sort of worker droid um so the initial roles for optimus would\n\nbe in work that is repetitive boring dangerous that kind of thing basically work that people don't want to do unless they're paid to do it why has optimus 2 lacks just because it looks like a human being or is it more practical i thought four legs are better four legs good two looks bad it reminds me of oil humanity has designed the world to interact with a bipedal humanoid with two arms and you know ten fingers so if you want to have a robot fit in and be able to do things that humans can do it must be of roughly the same size and shape and capability the prototype is going to be ready by the end of this year when is it a product that can be mass marketed mass-produced that's the hard part um i mean i don't know i think we'll have something pretty good\n\nat the prototype level this year um and it might be ready for at least a moderate volume production you know towards the end of next year do you think that optimus is going to play a role in our daily life helping us in the household and things like that um i think it probably would yeah i think so it's just like say general purpose humanoid uh yeah so you said the potential is bigger than the than the potential of tesla if that's true for cars yeah then it must be really a mass market product yeah sure uh well i mean say like what what is an economy uh like what people get confused sometimes they think an economy is money money is a database for uh exchange of goods and services and for time shifting the exchange of goods and services that's it's a money\n\nis a database money doesn't have power in and of itself like you can run the thought experiment if you're trapped on a you know a remote island a shipwrecked on an island um uh and you've got a trillion dollars in a swiss bank account it's worthless you'd rather have a can of soup so you know all the bitcoin in the world you're still going to starve so uh the actual economy is goods and services um so then what limits the output of goods and services the limiter is labor even capital is distilled labor so the limiting factor for the economy is is labor and so if you address the limiting factor for the economy then it's not clear that an economy in the traditional sense has any meaning anymore because you have no constraint on on goods and services um\n\nthe only the only things that will be missing are things that have artificial scarcity so that way we decide to make it scarce like a particular piece of art or a particular you know home in this exact location or something like that you know but for but there will be no shortage of goods and services but anyway optimus is also an answer to the problem of uh uh drop in uh birth rates if we have not enough human people want more bots to get the work done optimists will be helpful with respect to dropping both rates but i mean like i said you have to say like if these things continue then what happens humanity dies out is that what we want or step by step replaced by artificial intelligence human beings that neuralink is empowering well yeah i mean your\n\nlink in the short term neurolink is just about solving um you know uh brain injuries and spinal injuries and that kind of thing so to be clear the the for for many years neurolynx products will just be helpful to someone who has lost the use of their uh arms or arms and legs or who has uh just a traumatic brain injury of some kind that's that's what your leg will be useful for for many years but you know our last conversation you said that neurolink is among all your projects for you the most uh important one is that still true um i know i said it it could be i wouldn't say for sure it is the most important but it could be the most important in that the there is a long-term mitigation to artificial intelligence uh which is that uh we could effectively\n\nmerge merge with artificial intelligence by by improving the speed of interaction between our cortex and our tertiary layer which is already silicon we're basically we're already a sort of a three level intelligence creature the base level is the limbic system the sort of animal brain or reptile brain essentially the sort of fundamental you know yeah that animal or reptile brain and then there's the cortex which the cortex by the way is largely in service to the the reptile brain could you imagine that one day we would be able to download our human brain capacity into a optimus yes i think that is i'm not saying this is i think it is possible i think to do that is possible which would be as a different way of eternal life because we would also download\n\nour personalities into about yes we could download the things that we believe make ourselves unique now of course if you're not in a body anymore that there's definitely going to be some difference there you know so um but as far as preserving our memories um our personality if you will uh we could i think we could do that the moment of singularity that ray kurzweil has i think predicted for 25 is approaching fast do you think the timeline is still realistic well i don't i i see this as not i used to i i'm not sure this is a singularity meaning like i'm not sure there's a very sharp boundary i mean already there's so much compute that we outsource um you know our memories are stored in our phones and computers with the pictures and video um you know computers\n\nand and phones uh amplify our ability to communicate uh enabling us to do match things that would have been considered magical um and had had you burned at the stake in you know maybe 300 years ago um and um you know you could have two people had to have a video called uh basically for free from two parts of the world you know on opposite sides of the world it's amazing so we already we've already amplified our um our sort of human brains massively with computers um and and and i think an interesting ratio to roughly calculate would be the um amount of compute that is digital um divided by the amount of compute that is biological and how does that ratio change over time and with the there's so much digital compute happening so fast that that ratio is\n\nincreasing rapidly talking about speed you have the vision that one day starship could be able to get from a to b in 30 minutes all around the globe is that correct and if so what would the time frame for this vision it's like a global super taxi you can just go from i mean san francisco to nairobi yeah um i mean the landing the landing will be loud so you'd want to probably be connecting uh you know um cities that are next to oceans or seas such that you can land maybe uh i don't know far enough offshore that the latin landing noise is not disturbing to people but coast to coast that would be a realistic absolutely yeah yeah it's like an icbm but to change the option package from nuclear to landing delete the nuke ad landing elon you have solved so many\n\nproblems of mankind and presented so many solutions i'm surprised that one topic seems not to be too fascinating for you and that is uh the project of uh longevity and increased lifespan uh significantly why are not passionate about that well you're not personally interested in living longer i mean i don't i don't think we should try to have people live for a very long time for a very long time that it would cause ossification of society because the truth is most people don't change their mind they just die and so if they don't die they will be will be stuck with old ideas and they won't society won't advance um i think we already have quite a serious issue with the germantocracy where the the leaders of so many countries are extremely old look i mean\n\nin the us it's you know very very ancient uh leadership and it's just impossible to stay in touch with the people if you are um you know at the you know if you're like many generations older than them um and the founders in the us they put minimum ages for uh political office but they did not put maximum ages because they did not expect that people will be living so long but they should have um because you really want in order for a democracy to function well the leaders must be reasonably in touch with the bulk of the population and if you're too young or too old it's you can't say that you would be in touch is there a kind of ideal age and how old would you like to get well i think for political leadership i think you want to be i don't know um within\n\nideally within or at least 20 years of the average age of the population this doesn't sound too crazy um so um you know for me i don't know i mean i certainly would like to maintain health for a longer period of period of time but i'm not afraid of dying i think it will come as a relief so only you may not be able to see the vision of spacex come true in your life well i'd like to live long enough to see that being at a net worth of 230 billion roughly being perceived as the richest person uh on earth well i think putin is significantly richer than me you really do yeah yes well i i mean i can't go invade countries and stuff i i believe i mean there's like some old quote that from was it was it crassus or uh that you're you're not really rich unless you\n\ncan afford a legion do you know do you know john law i don't know john law used to be the richest person on earth 300 years ago okay he was a poker player a gambler on the farm he was the biggest art collector on earth so a lot of superlatives wow in the end he went bankrupt what so pretty far to fall did you ever thought about that option that something could go wrong and that you could one day lose everything i mean there's been many times where i expected to lose everything not you know i mean who starts a car company and a rocket company expecting them to succeed certainly not me i thought they both had less than a 10 chance of success and frankly uh i wasn't wrong uh in that in we had the third failure of spacex and if the fourth launch had failed\n\nspacex would be dead in 2008.\n\num we didn't have no money for a fifth launch and for tesla uh we were tesla's got been on the verge of bankruptcy many times um and we we closed the last the financing round in 2008 because remember at the end of 2008 general motors and chrysler were going bankrupt and ford was almost bankrupt so imagine trying to raise money for electric car startup while general motors is going bankrupt and people were angry that i even asked so but we were able to just barely raise enough money to squeak by um and close the financing round for tesla on the last hour of the last day that was possible in christmas eve and if we're not closed that financing around then it would go on bankrupt two days after christmas so you know what you're talking about yes this john\n\nlaw uh like a bankrupt fine or whatever i don't care john law got famous with the sentence uh liko no me the economy is me i just got french or english scott as she said yeah there's like a nice phrase in french he worked in france and his main language then was france so um so the question is do you see any danger that one day not only big platforms like google or facebook could face uh much more rigid regulation but that elon musk could be regulated because of regulation actually as it is uh you know spacex and tesla are regulated no but i mean that that there could be a discussion that it's just too much uh like in too many areas like i have too much power personally or something well i mean uh if you if you build in many sectors that are absolutely\n\ncrucial to a society very dominating see you on mars suckers that's the [Laughter] yeah okay so one way one way to uh to avoid that is to be a good citizen and you are and you have your own foundation could you tell us a little bit about your projects what your foundation is going to do in the future what your priorities are is to donate money and to improve the world beyond your business activities yeah i mean i i do want to emphasize that spacex and tesla fundamentally intended to improve the probability of the future is good so this will do more they will do more than anything i do from a charitable standpoint in terms of of usefulness to humanity i mean tesla's about accelerating sustainable energy obviously that's important spacex is about making\n\nlife multi-planetary and of course providing global internet through stalling these are fundamental goods that the good of those companies will far exceed anything that i do from a charitable standpoint and i have to say it is very difficult to give away money effectively if you care about the money actually doing good and not merely the perception of doing good but do you see any concrete project that you would like to focus on like for example food supply starvation as a big topic or anything else that comes to your mind for your foundation activities well the you know i the like i said it's a big struggle to give away money effectively uh if you care about like i said if you care about the reality of doing good and not the perception of doing good\n\nthen it is very hard to give away money effectively and i care about the reality perception be downed so there's you know obviously environmental causes there this education especially science and engineering education pediatric health care you know uh hunger these days is is more of a political and logistics problem than it is not having enough food there's a lot of food in fact you know in the u.\n\ns uh in many many countries the the issue is more obesity than it is a hunger uh so um but i always like i'm looking for ways to give away money that are effective like what do you think i should do you know what heroes of uh underrated heroes are the people who are doing a service in hospitals helping elderly people and i think they don't have a lobby okay so i think to do something for them because we all need them if we are in trouble sure think about it if you google elon musk i think you have 156 million search results really 76 million twitter followers you are definitely one of the most popular people on earth is popularity a pleasure or a liability for you well it makes it difficult to go buy a coffee at the corner store that's for sure um so\n\nit's so it's hard to go around places you know um i used to be able to just you know go to the store or walk down the street and now it's quite difficult to do that it reminds me a bit of uh the former chancellor of germany helmut kuhl who once told me you cannot imagine how terrible it is to go to restaurant everybody recognizes you who comes to your table yeah ask you for an autograph that's terrible there is only one thing in life that is worse if nobody comes to your table anymore i suppose so well i would for i i really uh it's hard for me to go to a restaurant um so um and if i do i just try to find a corner table and that's kind of dimly lit or something where i can sort of stay out of the way but you cannot turn around is there anything that you\n\num most urgently wanna achieve well i mean the whole um i mean the in the you know the pressing items in the short term are com completing full self driving so that we have full self-driving operating uh at a substantially uh safer level than humans basically it's it comes down to solving the problem of real-world ai that's that consumes a lot of my mind and then getting starship to work not just to get to orbit but to achieve full and rapid reusability which is really the holy grail of rocketry that is necessary for humanity to become a multi-planet species is there anything that you would and don't think those things might happen this year is there anything that you really would like to achieve which you think is going to be impossible um impossible\n\nis a strong word but you don't like that word well it's just a strong word i i mean i sort of approach things from a physics standpoint and the word impossible is you know more or less banned in physics um so um i'm really worried about this birth rate thing that's been troubling me for many years um because i just don't see it turning around you know i every year it's worse and uh i drive my friends crazy advice perhaps that's a project for your foundation sure okay you're a multi-talent person is there any field of total incompetence i'm terrible at dancing although you like techno music so much yeah but the nice thing about techno is you don't have to be able to dance very well you can just jump around basically [Laughter] walter isaacson is planning\n\na biography and he has written a biography on einstein on steve jobs on benjamin franklin and leonardo da vinci among the four with whom would you like to meet and have a glass of wine well i mean we're honored to meet any of them even for a minute um i think frank i think ben franklin would be the most fun at dinner and who is the one where you would say i'm closest to him would it be leonardo da vinci i think i'm uh you are a renaissance pretty different from those people you know everyone there um it might actually be ben franklin frankly uh you know he did a lot of science and engineering stuff um i don't know but um you know it's funny davinci uh thought of himself first and foremost as an engineer and in his like application like when he applied\n\nfor to you know for his position uh um you know that that led him that enabled him to create a lot of the art uh his application was all about his engineering stuff and then at the end and also i do some art [Laughter] it was just funny that um that that he really davinci really thought of himself as an engineer and you know i mean for the time he was pretty impressive uh the german author thomas mann once uh set the purpose of life to be an engineer in the interest of progress of mankind sure is that a good definition for your own ambitions yeah i think that is a good definition is freedom for you the most important value of the society no i think not being dead is i mean like like no society if everybody just cares about that you know i'm just saying\n\nthere's a maslow's hierarchy you know of of of like okay you know i i these days we you know back in the old days i mean you know a good year would be a year where not that many people died of uh hunger uh you know plague not that many people froze to death and not that many people were killed by the neighboring tribe back in the days that if it was like hey we only lost five percent last year that was great you know now now now those things are really uh you know not not concerns anywhere near they would like level of what they would be in the past what did coda do to the freedom uh to freedom in our society well i think uh freedom took what was severely restricted uh with with kobet do you think it's a long-term effect do you think we are going back\n\nto old norms well the jury's out on that front you know are you worried yeah i think that i think i think we should roll back uh government power uh that was massively increased in the covert times um you know i think we're at the this point um the tail end of it or it's no longer you know a major concern and so we need to actively roll back the powers of government that were created during uh kobet you once said on mars uh if there's human life there should be direct democracy yes i think direct democracy is less susceptible to corruption than representative democracy um i mean the other recommendations that i'd like to like in any laws need to be short enough that everyone can read them as well um and and there should be some uh uh it should be easier\n\nto get rid of a law than make one do you see any positive effects in the covet pandemic i think there are many many sublinings um the uh advancement of uh synthetic rna was accelerated significantly because of covid and it's going to help with cancer allergies bacterial diseases yeah yes i mean synthetic rna is revolutionary medicine that most people are not aware of just how much of a revolution that is i would say this is like medicine going from analog to digital and and that could be the big accelerator here uh like uh during the plague which also was an accelerator of progress in society and medical progress big times um yes uh it's actually interesting you know english was was suppressed in england for quite a long time because william the conqueror\n\nwas uh norman french i mean so it wasn't even french french it was like a different version of french yeah but that was the official language and the courts were only in french for hundreds of years in england if you wanted to go to court you had to you have to either be able to speak norman french or hire someone who could um or and and then actually the play got so bad that so many lawyers died in the play that they didn't have enough people who could speak french uh for the court so they said okay we have to have the courts in english because there aren't enough people alive who can speak nor in french so indirectly the plague was a trigger of democratization of society i mean yeah i mean it was it it actually did uh i think for society as a whole\n\nimprove things at least at least based on my observation of things in england uh the uh people were actually able to speak english in courts uh because they had no other choice um and and a lot of other things were improved um there was a labor shortage uh because of the plague and so uh that that gave put a lot more power in the hands of laborers um so and and give them more freedom of action um so elon i think we have to come to an end but just a couple of very brief questions what is your biggest fear well i think there's you have to say like what are the existential threats that humanity faces um we spent a lot of time talking about the birth rate thing um that that might be the biggest single threat to the future of human civilization then there's\n\num you know artificial intelligence gone wrong is a big concern um i think religious extremism is a concern you know what is your biggest hope my biggest hope is that humanity creates a self-sustaining city on mars you said that you cannot be and don't want to be alone i very much share that feeling yeah where does it come from i think it's just a natural human reaction i mean most people a lot of people are happy if they are alone i don't i really that's uh i think most people are not happy being alone um would you are you do you feel lonely i mean there are times when i feel lonely yes but i mean i think it's it's pretty basic like if i'm say working on this starship rocket uh down at you know south texas and and i'm just staying in my little house\n\nby myself especially if i forget my dog you know if my dog is not with me then um then i feel quite lonely because i'm just in a little house by myself with not even a dog last question you have once said um if i'm not in love i cannot be happy are you happy at the moment i think there's degrees of love um but certainly for want to be um we're fully happy i think you have to be happy and work and happy in love um so i um i'm medium happy there are degrees of happiness can love for projects for work compensate love among people i think love of work in my experience could it best make one halfway happy perhaps that's your biggest hope to be really in love i have been in the past i try to be as literal as possible uh i i would be happy if humanity has a\n\nself-sustaining city on mars because then the probable lifespan of humanity is much greater you know i think we really just got this you know consciousness like this little candle of consciousness like a small light in the void and we don't want that small candle in a vast darkness to be put out thank you very much elon for that conversation all right thank you you"},"languages":["en"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2WX_mgnAFA0"},{"id":"lex-fridman-252","type":"interview","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DxREm3s1scA","title":"Lex Fridman Podcast","titles":{"en":"Lex Fridman Podcast","de":"Lex Fridman Podcast","fr":"Lex Fridman Podcast"},"date":"2021-12-28","summary":"Elon Musk discusses SpaceX and Mars, Tesla's Autopilot and self-driving, robotics and artificial intelligence.","text":"The following is a conversation with Elon Musk, his third time on this, the \"Lex Fridman Podcast.\" Yeah, make yourself comfortable.\n\nBoo.\n\nOh, wow, okay.\n\nYou don't do the headphone thing?\n\nNo.\n\nOkay. I mean, how close do I need to get this thing?\n\nThe closer you are the sexier you sound.\n\nHey babe, sup.\n\nYup.\n\nCan't get enough of you on that baby? (both laughing) - I'm gonna clip that out and any time somebody messages me on my phone I'll just respond with that.\n\nIf you want my body and you think I'm sexy come right out and tell me so. Do do do do do.\n\n[Shivon] So funny.\n\nSo good. Okay, serious mode activate, alright.\n\nSerious mode. Come on, your Russian, you can be serious.\n\nYeah I know.\n\nEveryone's serious all the time in Russia.\n\nYeah, yeah. We'll get there. We'll get there. (Shivon speaking faintly) Just gotten soft. Allow me to say that the SpaceX launch of human beings to orbit on May 30th, 2020, was seen by many as the first step in a new era of human space exploration. These human space flight missions were a beacon of hope to me and to millions over the past two years as our world has been going through one of the most difficult periods in recent human history.\n\nWe see the rise of division, fear, cynicism, and the loss of common humanity, right when it is needed most. So, first, Elon, let me say thank you for giving the world hope and reason to be excited about the future.\n\nOh, it's kind of you to say that. I do want to do that. Humanity has, obviously a lot of issues, and people at times do bad things, but despite all that, I love humanity and I think we should make sure we do everything we can to have a good future and an exciting future, and one where that maximizes the happiness of the people.\n\nLet me ask about a Crew Dragon Demo-2. So that first flight with humans onboard, how did you feel leading up to that launch? Were you scared? Were you excited? What was goin' through your mind? So much was at stake.\n\nYeah, no, that was extremely stressful. The question we obviously could not let them down in any way. So, extremely stressful I'd say, to say the least.\n\nI was confident that, at the time that we launched, that no one could think of anything, at all, to do that would improve the probability of success and we racked our brains to think of any possible way to improve the probability of success, and we could not think of anything more, nor could NASA, and so, that's just the best that we could do. So then we went ahead and launched.\n\nNow, I'm not a religious person, but I nonetheless got on my knees and prayed for that mission.\n\n[Lex] Were you able to sleep?\n\nNo.\n\nHow did it feel when it was a success? First when the launch was a success, and when they returned back home, or back to earth.\n\nIt was a great relief. Yeah. For high stress situations I find it's not so much elation, as relief. And, I think once as we got more comfortable and proved out the systems, 'cause we really, you're gotta make sure everything works. It was definitely a lot more enjoyable with the subsequent asteroid missions. And I thought the Inspiration mission was actually very inspiring, the Inspiration4 mission.\n\nI'd encourage people to watch the Inspiration documentary on Netflix, it's actually really good. And it really isn't, I was actually inspired by that, so that one I felt, I was kind of able to enjoy the actual mission and not just be super stressed all the time.\n\nSo, for people that somehow don't know, it's the all civilian, first time all civilian out to space out to orbit.\n\nYeah, it was the, I think the highest obit that in like, I don't know, 30 or 40 years or something, the only one that was higher was the one shuttle, sorry, a Hubble servicing mission. And then before that it would've been Apollo in '72. It was pretty wild. So it's cool. It's good. I think as a species, we want to be continuing to do better and reach higher ground.\n\nI think it would be tragic, extremely tragic, if Apollo was the high watermark for humanity, and that that's as far as we ever got. And it's concerning that here we are 49 years after the last mission to the moon. And, so almost half a century, and we've not been back. And that's worrying, it's like, does that mean we've peaked as a civilization or what? I think we gotta get back to the moon and build a base there. A science base.\n\nI think we could learn a lot about the nature of the universe if we have a proper science base on the moon. We have a science base in Antarctica and many other parts of the world. So that's what I think the next big thing we've gotta have like a serious black moon base, and then get people to Mars and get out there and be a space bearing civilization.\n\nI'll ask you about some of those details. But, since you're so busy with the hard engineering challenges of everything that's involved, are you still able to marvel at the magic of it all, of space travel, of every time the rocket goes up, especially when it's a crude mission? Or are you just so overwhelmed with all the challenges that you have to solve?\n\nAnd actually, sort of to add to that, the reason I wanted to ask this question of May 30th, it's been some time, so you can look back and think about the impact already. At the time it was an engineering problem maybe, now it's becoming a historic moment. Like it's a moment that, how many moments will be remembered about the 21st century?\n\nTo me, that or something like that, maybe Inspiration4 or one of those will be remembered as the early steps of a new age of space exploration.\n\nYeah, I mean, during the launches itself, so I mean, I think maybe some people will know, but a lot of people don't know, is I'm actually the chief engineer of SpaceX, so I've signed off on pretty much all the design decisions. So if there's something that goes wrong with that vehicle, it's fundamentally my fault, you know?\n\nSo I'm really just thinking about all the things that like, so when I see the rocket, I see all the things that could go wrong, and the things that could be better, and the same with the Dragon spacecraft. Other people will say, \"Oh, this is a spacecraft or a rocket.\" and \"This looks really cool.\" I'm like, I've like a readout of these are the risks, these are the problems. That's what I see.\n\nLike (Elon chuffing) So it's not what other people see when they see the product.\n\nSo let me ask you then to analyze Starship in that same way. I know you have, you'll talk a bit in more detail about Starship in the near future. Perhaps you had that- - We can talk about in now if you want.\n\nBut, just in that same way, like you said, you see, when you see a rocket, you see the sort of a list of risks. In that same way, you said that Starship was a really hard problem. So, there's many ways I can ask this, but if you magically could solve one problem perfectly, one engineering problem perfectly, which one would it be?\n\n[Elon] On Starship?\n\nOn, sorry, on Starship. So is it maybe related to the efficiency, the engine, the weight of the different components, the complexity of various things, maybe the controls of the crazy thing it has to do to land?\n\nNo, it's actually, by far the biggest thing of solving my time is engine production. Not the design of the engine, I've often said prototypes are easy. Production is hard. So, we have the most advanced rocket engine that's ever been designed. 'Cause I say currently the best rocket engine ever is probably the RD-180 or RD-170 the dual Russian engine, basically. And still, I think an engine should only count if it's gotten something to orbit.\n\nAnd so our engine has not gotten anything to orbit yet, but it is, it's the first engine that's actually better than the Russian RD engines, which were amazing design.\n\nSo you're talking about Raptor engine. What makes it amazing? What are the different aspects of it that make it, what are you the most excited about if the whole thing works in terms of efficiency, all those kinds of things?\n\nWell, it's, the Raptor is a full flow staged combustion engine, and it's operating at a very high TAVR pressure. So, one of the key figures, merit, perhaps the key figure of merit is what is the chamber pressure at which the rocket engine can operate? That's the combustion chamber pressure. So a Raptor is designed to operate at a 300 bar, possibly, maybe higher, than standard atmospheres.\n\nThe record right now for operational engine is the RD engine that I mentioned, the Russian RD, which is, I believe around 267 bar. And the difficulty of the chamber pressure is increases on a non-linear basis. So, 10% more TAVR pressure is more like 50% more difficult, but that air pressure, that is what allows you to get a very high power density for the engine. So, enabling a very high thrust to weight ratio and a very high, specific impulse.\n\nSo, specific impulse is like a measure of the efficiency of a rocket engine. It's really the exhaust, the effect of exhaust velocity of the gas coming out of the engine. With a very high chamber pressure you can have a compact engine that nonetheless has a high expansion ratio, which is the ratio between the exit nozzle and the throat. You see a rocket engine has got sort of like a hourglass shape.\n\nIt's like a chamber and then it necks down and there's a nozzle, and the ratio of the exit diameter to the throat expansion ratio.\n\nSo why is this such a hard engine to manufacture at scale?\n\nIt's very complex.\n\nWhat does complexity mean? Here's a lot of components involved.\n\nThere's a lot of components and a lot of unique materials. So we had to invent several alloys that don't exist in order to make this engine work.\n\nSo it's a materials problem too.\n\nIt's a materials problem, and in a stage combustion, that full floor stage combustion, there are many feedback loops in the system. Basically you've got propellants and hot gas flowing simultaneously to so many different places on the engine. And they all have a recursive effect on each other. So you change one thing here, it has a recursive effect here. It changes something over there. And it's quite hard to control.\n\nThere's a reason no one's made this before. And the reason we're doing a stage commotion full flow is because it has the highest theoretical possible efficiency. So in order to make a fully reasonable rocket, which, that's really the holy grail of orbital rocketry, you have to have, everything's gotta be the best. It's gotta be the best engine, the best airframe, the best heat shield, extremely light avionics, very clever control mechanisms.\n\nYou've got to shed mass in any possible way that you can. For example, we are, instead of putting landing legs on the booster and ship, we are going to catch them with a tower to save the weight of the landing legs. So that's like, I mean, we're talking about catching the largest flying object ever made on a giant tower with chopstick arms. It's like \"Karate Kid\" with the fly, but much bigger.\n\n(Elon laughing) - I mean, pulling something- - This probably won't work the first time. (Elon laughing) So this is bananas. This is bananas stuff.\n\nSo you mentioned that you doubt, well, not you doubt, but there's days or moments when you doubt that this is even possible. It's so difficult.\n\nThe possible part is, well at this point, we'll I think we'll get Starship to work. There's a question of timing. How long will it take us to do this? How long will it take us to actually achieve full and rapid reusability? 'Cause it will probably many launches before we are able to have full and rapid reusability. But I can say that the physics pencils out, we're not, at this point I'd say we're confident that, let's say, I'm very confident success is in the set of all possible outcomes.\n\n[Lex] Mm, right, it's not in all set of.\n\nFor a while there I was not convinced that success was in the set of possible outcomes. (Lex laughing) Which is very important actually. But, so...\n\n[Lex] So you're saying there's a chance.\n\nI'm saying there's a chance. Exactly. Just not sure how long it will take. But we have a very talented team, they're working night and day to make it happen. Like I said, the critical thing to achieve with revolution in space flight and for humanity to be a space bearing civilization is to have a fully and rapidly reusable rocket, orbital rocket. There's not even been any orbital rocket that's been fully reusable ever.\n\nAnd this has always been the holy grail of rocketry and many smart people, very smart people, have tried to do this before, and they've not succeeded. 'Cause it's such a hard problem.\n\nWhat's your source of belief in situations like this when the engineering problem is so difficult, there's a lot of experts, many of whom you admire, who have failed in the past.\n\n[Elon] Yes.\n\nA lot of people, a lot of experts, maybe journalists, all the kinds of, the public in general, have a lot of doubt about whether it's possible, and you yourself know that even if it's a non-nodal set, not empty set, of success, it's still unlikely or very difficult. Where do you go to both personally, intellectually as an engineer, as a team, for source of strength needed to sort of persevere through this and to keep going with the project, take it to completion?\n\nI suppose the strength. Hmm. That's really not how I think about things. I mean, for me, it's simply this is something that is important to get done and we should just keep doing it or die trying, and I don't need a source of strength.\n\nSo quitting is not even like...\n\nIt's not, it's not in my nature.\n\nOkay.\n\nAnd I don't care about optimism or pessimism. Fuck that, we're gonna get it done.\n\n[Lex] Gonna get it done. Can you then zoom back in to specific problems with Starship or any engineering problems you work on? Can you try to introspect your particular biological neural network, your thinking process, and describe how you think through problems, the different engineering and design problems? Is there like a systematic process you've spoken about, first principles thinking, but is there kind of - Yeah, absolutely.\n\nprocess to it?\n\nSaying like, physics is low and everything else was a recommendation. I've met a lot of people that can break the law, but I have never met anyone who could break physics. So first for any kind of technology problem you have to sort of just make sure you're not violating physics. First principles analysis, I think, is something that can be applied to really any walk of life, anything really.\n\nIt's really just saying, let's boil something down to the most fundamental principles, the things that we are most confident are true at a foundational level, and that sets your axiomatic base, and then you reason up from there. And then you cross check your conclusion against the axiomatic truth. Some basics in physics would be like are violating conservation of energy or momentum or something like that, then it's not gonna work.\n\nSo that's just to establish is it possible? And then another good physics tool is thinking about things in the limit. If you take a particular thing and you scale it to a very large number or to a very small number, how do things change?\n\nBoth in number of things you manufacture, something like that, and then in time.\n\nYeah, let's say, take an example of manufacturing, which I think is just a very underrated problem. Like I said, it's much harder to take an advanced technology part and bring it into volume manufacturing, than it is to design it in the first place. More is magnitude. So let's say you're trying to figure out, why is this part or product expensive? Is it because of something fundamentally foolish that we're doing?\n\nOr is it because our volume is too low? And so then you say, okay, well what if our volume was a million units a year? Is it still expensive? That's what I'm radical, thinking about things to the limit. If it's too expensive at a million units a year, then volume is not the reason why your thing is expensive. There's something fundamental about the design.\n\nAnd then you then can focus on the reducing complexity or something like that in the design.\n\nGotta change the design to, change the part to be something that is not fundamentally expensive. That's a common thing in rocketry 'cause the unit volume is relatively low, and so a common excuse would be \"Well, it's expensive because our unit volume is low. And if we were in like automotive or something like that, or consumer electronics, then our costs would lower.\" I'm like, \"Okay, so let's say\" we skip, \"now you're making a million units a year. Is it still expensive?\" If the answer is yes, then economies of scale are not the issue.\n\nDo you throw, into manufacturing, do you throw like supply chain, you talked about resources and materials and stuff like that, do you throw that into the calculation of trying to reason from first principles? Like, how are we gonna make the supply chain work here?\n\nYeah, yeah.\n\n[Lex] And then the cost of materials, things like that, or is that too much?\n\nYeah. Exactly. Like a good example of thinking about things in the limit is if you take any product, any machine or whatever, like take a rocket or whatever, and say, if you've got, if you look at the raw materials in the rocket, so you're gonna have like aluminum, steel, titanium, Inconel, specialty alloys, copper. And you say, \"What's the weight of the constituent elements of each of these elements, and what is their raw material value?\"\n\nAnd that sets the asymptotic limit for how low the cost of the vehicle can be, unless you change the materials. And then when you do that, I call it like maybe the magic one number or something like that.\n\nSo that would be like, if you had the, just a pile of these raw materials here, and you could wave a magic wand and rearrange the atoms into the final shape, that would be the lowest possible cost that you could make this thing for, unless you change the materials. So then, and that is always, almost always a very low number. So then, what's actually causing things to be expensive is how you put the atoms into the desired shape.\n\nYeah, actually, if you don't mind me taking a tiny tangent, I had a, I often talk to Jim Keller who's somebody that worked with you as a- - Oh yeah. Jim did great work at Tesla.\n\nSo, I suppose he carries the flame of the same kind of thinking that you're talking about now. I guess I see that same thing at Tesla and SpaceX folks who work there, they kind of learn this way of thinking and it kinda becomes obvious almost. But anyway, I had argument, not argument. He educated me about how cheap it might be to manufacture Tesla Bot. We just, we had an argument. How can you reduce the cost, of scale, of producing a robot?\n\nBecause, so far I've gotten a chance to interact quite a bit, obviously in the academic circles, with humanoid robots, and then with Boston Dynamics and stuff like that. And they're very expensive to build. And then Jim kinda schooled me on saying like, \"Okay, this kind of first principles thinking of how can we get the cost of manufacturing down.\"\n\nI suppose you do that, you have done that kind of thinking for Tesla Bot and for all kinds of, all kinds of complex, systems that are traditionally seen as complex, and you say, \"Okay, how can we simplify everything down?\"\n\nYeah. I mean, I think if you are really good at manufacturing, you can basically make, at high volume you can basically make anything for a cost that asymptotically approaches the raw material value of the constituents, plus any intellectual property that you need to license. Anything.\n\nRight.\n\nBut it's hard. It's not like that's a very hard thing to do, but it is possible for anything. Anything in volume can be made of, like I said, for a cost that asymptotically approaches it's raw material constituents plus intellectual property license rights.\n\nSo what will often happen in trying to design a product is people will start with the tools and parts and methods that they are familiar with, and try to create a product using their existing tools and methods. The other way to think about it is actually imagine the, try to imagine the platonic ideal of the perfect product or technology, whatever it might be, and say, \"What is this?\n\nWhat is the perfect arrangement of atoms that would be the best possible product? And now let us try to figure out how to get the atoms in that shape.\"\n\nI mean, it sounds, it's almost like \"Rick and Morty\" absurd until you start to really think about it. And you really should think about it in this way 'cause everything else is kind of, if you think you might fall victim to the momentum of the way things are done in the past, unless you think in this way.\n\nWell, just as a function of inertia, people will want to use the same tools and methods that they are familiar with. That's what they'll do by default.\n\n[Lex] Yeah.\n\nAnd then that will lead to an outcome of things that can be made with those tools and methods, but is unlikely to be the platonic ideal of the perfect product. So that's why it's good to think of things in both directions, so like what can we build with the tools that we have, but also what is the perfect, the theoretical perfect product look like?\n\nAnd that theoretical perfect product is gonna be a moving target, 'cause as you learn more the definition of that perfect product will change 'cause you don't actually know what the perfect product is, but you can successfully approximate a more perfect product. So, thinking about it like that, and then saying, \"Okay, now what tools, methods, materials, whatever, do we need to create in order to get the atoms in that shape?\n\nBut people very rarely think about it that way. But it's a powerful tool.\n\nI should mention that the brilliant Shivon Zilis is hanging out with us, in case you hear a voice of wisdom from outside, from up above. Okay. So let me ask you about Mars. You mentioned it would be great for science to put a base on the moon, to do some research, but the truly big leap, again, in this category of seemingly impossible, is to put a human being on Mars. When do you think SpaceX will land a human being on Mars?\n\nHm. Best case is about five years, worst case 10 years.\n\nWhat are the determining factors, would you say, from an engineering perspective? Or is that not the bottlenecks?\n\nNo, it's fundamentally you're engineering the vehicle. I mean Starship is the most complex and advanced rocket that's ever been made by, I don't know, order of magnitude or something like that. It's a lot. It's really next level. And the fundamental optimization of Starship is minimizing cost per ton to orbit, and ultimately cost per ton to the surface of Mars.\n\nThis may seem like a mercantile objective, but it is actually the thing that needs to be optimized. There is a certain cost per ton to the surface of Mars where we can afford to establish a self-sustaining city. And then above that, we cannot afford to do it. So, right now you can fly to Mars for $1 trillion. No amount of money could get you a ticket to Mars.\n\nSo we need to get that above, to get that like something that is actually possible at all. We don't want to just wanna have, with Mars, flags and footprints, and then not come back for a half century like we did with the moon. In order to pass a very important, great filter. I think we need to be a multi-planet species.\n\nThis ways sound somewhat esoteric to a lot of people, but, eventually given enough time, something, Earth is likely to experience some calamity, that could be something that humans do to themselves, or an external event like happened to the dinosaurs. But if, eventually, if none of that happens, and somehow, magically, we keep going, then the sun will, the sun is gradually expanding and will engulf the earth.\n\nAnd probably Earth gets too hot for life in about 500 million years. It's a long time, but that's only 10% longer than earth has been around. And so if you think about like the, the current situation, it's really remarkable and kind of hard to believe, but Earth's been around four and a half billion years, and this is the first time in four and a half billion years that it's been possible to extend life beyond Earth.\n\nAnd that window of opportunity may be open for a long time, and I hope it is, but it also may be open for a short time, and we should, I think it is wise for us to act quickly while the window is open. Just in case it closes.\n\nYeah, the existence of nuclear weapons, pandemics, all kinds of threats, - [Elon] Yeah.\n\nshould kind of give us some motivation.\n\nI mean, civilization could get, could die with a bang or a whimper. If it dies of demographic collapse, then it's more of a whimper, obviously. And if it's World War III, it's more of a bang, but these are all risks. I mean, it's important to think of these things and just, things like probabilities, not certainties, there's a probability that something bad will happen on earth.\n\nI think most likely the future will be good, but there's, let's say for argument's sake, a 1% chance per century of a civilization ending event. Like that was Stephen Hawking's estimate. I think he might be right about that. We should basically think of this, being a multi-planet species, just like taking out insurance for life itself, like life insurance for life. (both laughing) - This turned into a infomercial real quick.\n\nLife insurance for life, yes. And we can bring the creatures from, plants and animals from Earth to Mars, and breathe life into the planet, and have a second planet with life. That would be great. They can't bring themselves there, so if we don't bring them to Mars, then they will just for sure all die when the sun expands anyway, and then that'll be it.\n\nWhat do you think is the most difficult aspect of building civilization on Mars, terraforming Mars, like from engineering perspective, from a financial perspective, human perspective, to get a large number of folks there who will never return back to Earth?\n\nNo, they could certainly return, some will return back to Earth.\n\nThey will choose to stay there for the rest of their lives.\n\nYeah, many will. We need the spaceships back, like the ones that go to Mars, we need them back, so you can hop on if you want. But we can't just not have the spaceships come back, those things are expensive. We need them back. I'd like to come back and journal their trip.\n\nI mean, do you think about the terraforming aspect, actually building, are you're so focused right now on the spaceships part that's so critical to get to Mars?\n\nYeah, yeah. We absolutely, if you can't get there, nothing else matters. And like I said, we can't get there at some extraordinarily high cost. I mean, the current cost of let's say one ton to the surface of Mars is on the order of a billion dollars. So, 'cause you don't just need the rocket and the launch and everything, you need like heat shield, you need guidance system, you need deep space communications. You need some kind of landing system.\n\nSo, like rough approximation would be a billion dollars per ton to the surface of Mars right now. This is obviously way too expensive to create a self-sustaining civilization. So we need to improve that by at least a factor of a thousand.\n\n[Lex] A million per ton?\n\nYes, ideally less than, much less than a million ton. You have to say like, well how much can society afford to spend or want to spend on a self-sustaining city on Mars? The self-sustaining part is important. Like it's just the key threshold, the grateful to, we'll have been passed, when the city on Mars can survive even if the space ships from earth stop coming, for any reason. Doesn't matter what the reason is.\n\nBut if they stop coming for any reason, will it die out or will it not? And if there's even one critical ingredient missing, then it still doesn't count. It's like if you're in a long sea voyage and you've got everything except vitamin C. (Elon laughing) It's only a matter of time, you're gonna die. So we gotta get a Mars city to the point where it's self sustaining.\n\nI'm not sure this will really happen in my lifetime, but I hope to see it at least have a lot of momentum. And then you could say, \"Okay, what is the minimum tonnage necessary to have a self-sustaining city?\" And there's a lot of uncertainty about this. You could say, I dunno, it's probably at least a million tons. 'Cause you have to set up a lot of infrastructure on Mars.\n\nLike I said, you can't be missing anything that in order to be self-sustaining, you can't be, like you need a semiconductor, fabs, you need iron ore refineries, you need lots of things, you know? And Mars is not super hospitable. It's the least inhospitable planet, but it's definitely a fixer upper of a planet.\n\n[Lex] Outside of Earth.\n\nYes.\n\nEarth is pretty good.\n\nEarth is like easy. Yeah.\n\nAnd, also, we should clarify in the solar system.\n\n[Elon] Yes. In the solar system.\n\nThere might be nice like vacation spots.\n\nThere might be some great planets out there, but it's hopeless- - Too hard to get there?\n\nYeah, way, way, way, way, way too hard, to say the least.\n\nLet me push back on that. Not really a pushback, but quick a curve ball of a question. So you did mention physics as the first starting point. General relativity allows for worm holes. They technically can exist. Do you think those can ever be leveraged by humans to travel fast in the speed of light? Or are you saying- - The worm hole thing is debatable. We currently do not know of any means of going faster than the speed of light.\n\nThere are some ideas about having space. You're gonna move at the speed of light through space, but if you can make space itself move, that would be warping space. Space is capable of moving faster than the speed of light.\n\n[Lex] Right.\n\nLike the universe in the big bang, the universe expanded at much more than the speed of light, by a lot.\n\n[Lex] Yeah. If this is possible, the amount of energy required to warp space is so gigantic, it boggles the mind.\n\nSo, all the work you've done with propulsion, how much innovation is possible with rocket propulsion? I mean, you've seen it all, and you're constantly innovating in every aspect. How much is possible? Like how much, can you get 10 X somehow? Is there something in there, in physics, that you can get significant improvement in terms of efficiency of engines and all those kinds of things?\n\nWell, as I was saying, really the holy grail is a fully and rapidly reasonable orbital system. Right now, the Falcon 9 is the only reusable rocket out there. The booster comes back and lands, you've seen the videos. And we got the nose cone or fairing back, but we do not get the upper stage back. That means that we have a minimum cost of building an upper stage.\n\nYou can think of like a two-stage rocket of sort of like two airplanes, like a big airplane and a small airplane, and we get the big airplane back, but not the smaller airplane. And so it still costs a lot. That upper stage is at least $10 million. And then the degree of the booster is not as rapidly and completely reusable as we'd like in order of the pharynx.\n\nSo, our kind of minimum marginal cost not counting overhead for per flight is on the order of 15 to $20 million, maybe. That's extremely good for, it's by far better than any rocket ever in history. But with full and rapid reusability, we can reduce the cost per ton to orbit by a factor of a hundred. Just think of it like, like imagining if you had an aircraft or something or a car.\n\nAnd if you had to buy a new car every time you went for a drive, that'll be very expensive. It'll silly, frankly.\n\nMhm.\n\nBut, in fact, you just refuel the car or recharge the car and that's makes your trip, I don't know, a thousand times cheaper. So, it's the same for rockets. Very difficult to make this complex machine that can go to orbit. And so if you cannot reuse it, and have to throw even any significant part of it away, that massively increases the cost. Starship in theory could do a cost per launch of like a million, maybe $2 million or something like that. And put over a hundred tons in orbit, which is crazy.\n\nYeah. That's incredible. So you're saying it's, by far the biggest bang for the buck is to make it fully reusable versus like some kind of brilliant breakthrough in theoretical physics.\n\nNo, no, there's no, there's no brilliant brea, no, there's no. We gotta make the rocket reusable, this is an extremely difficult engineering problem.\n\nGot it.\n\nBut no new physics is required.\n\nJust brilliant engineering. Let me ask a slightly philosophical fun question. Gotta ask. I know you're focused on getting to Mars, but once we're there on Mars, what form of government, economic system, political system, do you think would best for an early civilization of humans? The interesting reason to talk about this stuff, it also helps people dream about the future. I know you're really focused about the short-term engineering dream, but it's like, I don't know. There's something about imagining an actual civilization on Mars that gives people, - Sure.\n\nreally gives people hope.\n\nWell, it would be a new frontier and an opportunity to rethink the whole nature of government just as was done in the creation of the United States. I mean, I would suggest having a direct democracy, like people vote directly on things, as opposed to representative democracy. So, representative democracy, I think, is too subject to a special interests and coercion of the politicians and that kind of thing. So I'd recommend that there's just direct democracy. People vote on laws, the population votes on laws themselves, and then the laws must be short enough that people can understand them.\n\nYeah, and then keeping a well-informed populace, really being transparent about all the information about what they're voting for.\n\nYeah. Absolute transparency.\n\nYeah. And not make it as annoying as those cookies we have to accept- - Have to accept cookies. There's always a slight amount of trepidation when you click accept cookies. I feel as though there's perhaps a very tiny chance that'll open a portal to hell or something like that.\n\n[Lex] That's exactly how I feel. Why do they keep wanting me to accept that? What do they want with this cookie? Somebody got upset with accepting cookies or something somewhere. I mean, who cares? So annoying to keep accepting all these cookies.\n\n[Lex] To me, it's just a great- - I'm tired of accept- (Shivon speaking faintly) Yes you can have my damn cookie, I don't care. Whatever.\n\n[Lex] You heard it from me Elon first, he accepts all your damn cookies.\n\nYeah. (both laughing) And stop asking me. It's annoying.\n\nYeah, it's one example of implementation of a good idea done really horribly.\n\nYeah, somebody was like, there's some good intentions of like privacy or whatever, but now everyone's just has to tick accept cookies and it's now, you have billions of people who have to keep clicking accept cookie and it's super annoying. Just accept the damn cookie, it's fine. There is like, I think fundamental problem that we're, because we've not really had a major, like a world war or something like that in a while.\n\nAnd obviously we would like to not have world wars. There's not been a cleansing function for rules and regulations. So wars did have some silver lining in that there would be a reset on rules and regulations after a war. So World Wars I and II there were huge resets on rules and regulations.\n\nIf society does not have a war, and there's no cleansing function or garbage collection for rules and regulations, then rules and regulations will accumulate every year 'cause they're immortal. There's no actual, humans die, but the laws don't. So, we need a garbage collection function for rules and regulations that should not just be immortal.\n\n'Cause some of the rules and regulations that are put in place will be counterproductive, done with good intentions, but counterproductive. And sometimes not done with good intentions. If rules and regulations just accumulate every year, and you get more and more of them, then eventually you won't be able to do anything. You're just like Gulliver with, tied down by thousands of little strings. And we see that in, U. S.\n\nand LA, basically all economies that have been around for awhile, and regulators and legislators create new rules and regulations every year, but they don't put effort into removing them. And I think that's very important that we put effort into removing rules and regulations.\n\nBut it gets tough 'cause you get special interests that then are dependent on, they have a vested interest in that whatever rule regulation and that they, then they fight to not get it removed.\n\nYeah. I mean, I guess the problem with the constitution is it's kinda like C versus Java 'cause it doesn't have any garbage collection built in. I think there should be. When you first said the metaphor of garbage collection, I loved it - Yeah, it's from a coding standpoint.\n\nFrom a coding standpoint, yeah, yeah. It would be interesting if the laws themselves kinda had a built in thing where they kinda die after a while, unless somebody explicitly publicly defends them. So that's sort of, it's not like somebody has to kill them. They kinda die themselves. They disappear.\n\n[Elon] Yeah.\n\nNot to defend Java or anything, C++, you could also have great garbage collection in Python and so on.\n\nYeah. So, yeah, something needs to happen or just the civilizations arteries just harden over time. And you can just get less and less done because there's just a rule against everything. So I think, I don't know, for Mars, or whatever, I say, or even for here, obviously for Earth as well, I think there should be an active process for removing rules and regulations and questioning their existence.\n\nIf we've got a function for creating rules and regulations, 'cause rules and regulations could also think of as like, they're like soft work or lines of code for operating a civilization, that's the rules and regulations. So it's not like we shouldn't have rules and regulations, but you have your code accumulation, but no code removal. And so it just gets to be become basically archaic bloatware after a while.\n\nAnd it's just, it makes it hard for things to progress. So, I don't know, maybe Mars you'd have like any given law must have a sunset, and require active voting to keep it up there. I actually also say like, and these are just, I don't know, recommendations or thoughts, and ultimately will be up to the people on Mars to decide, but I think it should be easier to remove a law than to add one, because of the, just to overcome the inertia of laws.\n\nSo, maybe it's like, for argument's sake, you need like say 60% vote to have a law take effect, but only a 40% vote to remove it.\n\nSo let me be the guy, you posted a meme on Twitter recently where there's like a row of urinals and a guy just walks all the way across - So true, yeah.\n\nand he tells you about crypto.\n\nListen, I mean, that's happened to me so many times, I think maybe even literally. (both laughing) - Do you think technologically speaking there's any room for ideas of smart contracts or so on? 'Cause you mentioned laws, that's an interesting implement use of things like smart contracts to implement the laws by which governments function. Like something built on Ethereum, or maybe a dog coin that enables smart contracts somehow.\n\nI never, I didn't quite understand this whole smart contract thing. (both laughing) I'm too downtown to understand smart contracts.\n\nThat's a good line. (both laughing) - I mean, my general approach to any kind of deal or whatever is just make sure there's clarity of understanding. That's the most important thing.\n\n[Lex] Right.\n\nAnd just keep any kind of deal very short and simple, plain language, and just make sure everyone understands this is the deal. Does everyone, is it clear? And what are the consequences if first things don't happen? But usually deals are, business deals or whatever are way too long and complex and overly lawyered and pointlessly.\n\nYou mentioned that Doge is the people's coin.\n\n[Elon] Yeah.\n\nAnd you said that you were literally going, SpaceX may consider literally putting a Dogecoin on the moon.\n\nYeah.\n\nIs this something you're still considering, Mars perhaps, do you think there's some chance, we've talked about political systems on Mars, that a Dogecoin is the official currency of Mars, it's the coin of the future?\n\nWell, I think Mars itself will need to have a different currency because you can't synchronize due to speed of light, or not easily.\n\nSo it must be complete standalone from earth.\n\nWell, yeah, Mars is, at closest approach, it's four light minutes away roughly, and then add for this approach, it's roughly 20 light minutes away, maybe a little more. So you can't really have something synchronizing if you've got a 20 minute speed of light issue, if it's got a one minute blockchain. It's not gonna synchronize properly. I don't know if Mars would have a cryptocurrency as a thing, but probably, seems likely. But it would be so kind of localized thing on Mars.\n\nAnd you let the people decide.\n\nYeah, absolutely. The future of Mars should be up to the martians. I mean, I think the cryptocurrency thing is an interesting approach to reducing the error in the database that is called money. I think I have a pretty deep understanding of what money actually is on a practical day-to-day basis, because of PayPal. We really got in deep there. And right now the money system, actually for practical purposes is really a bunch of heterogeneous mainframes running a old COBOL.\n\n[Lex] Okay, you mean literally- - Literally.\n\nThat is literally what's happening.\n\nin batch mode. Okay.\n\nIn batch mode.\n\nYeah. Pity the poor bastards who have to've maintained that code. Okay. That's pain.\n\n[Lex] Not even Fortrans, COBOL, yep.\n\nThat's COBOL. And they still, the banks are still buying mainframes, in 2021, and running engine COBOL code. The federal reserve is like probably even older than what the banks have, and they have an old COBOL mainframe. And so the government effectively has editing privileges on the money database. And they use those editing privileges to make more money whenever they want. And this increases the error in the database that is money.\n\nSo I think money should really be viewed through the lens of information theory. You're kinda like an internet connection. Like what's the bandwidth, total bit rate, what is the latency jitter, packet drop, errors in the network communication. Just think of money like that basically. I think that's probably what I really think of it. And then say what system, from an information theory standpoint, allows an economy to function the best.\n\nCrypto is an attempt to reduce the error in money that is contributed by governments diluting the money supply as basically a pernicious form of taxation.\n\nSo both policy in terms of with inflation, and actual like technological, COBOL, cryptocurrency takes us into the 21st century in terms of the actual systems that allow you to do the transaction, to store wealth, all those kinds of things.\n\nLike I said, just think - In theory.\n\nof money as information, people often will think of money as having power in and of itself. It does not. Money is information, and it does not have power in and of itself. Applying the physics tools of thinking about things in the limit is helpful. If you are stranded on a tropical island and you have a trillion dollars, it's useless. 'Cause there's no resource allocation.\n\nMoney is a database of resource allocation, but there's no resources to allocate except yourself. So money's useless. If you're stranded on a desert island with no food, all the Bitcoin in the world will not stop you from starving.\n\n[Lex] Yeah.\n\nJust think of money as a database for resource allocation across time and space. And then what system, in what form should that database, or data system, what would be most effective? There is a fundamental issue with, say Bitcoin, in its current form in that it's, the transaction volume is very limited. And the latency, the latency, for a properly confirmed transaction is too long, much longer than you'd like.\n\nIt's actually not great from transaction volume standpoint or latency standpoint. So it is perhaps useful as, to solve an aspect of the money database problem, which is the sort of store of wealth or an accounting of relative obligations, I suppose. But it is not useful as a currency, as a day-to-day currency.\n\nBut people have proposed different technological solutions- - [Elon] Like Lightning.\n\nYeah, Lightening Network and the Layer 2 technologies on top of that.\n\nI mean, it's all, it seems to be all kind of a trade-off, but the point is, it's kinda brilliant to say, to just think about information, think about what kind of database, what kind of infrastructure enables the exchange of- - Yeah, let's say like you're operating an economy, and you need to have some thing that allows for the efficient, to have efficient value ratios between products and services.\n\nSo you've got this massive number of products and services, and need to, you can't just barter. 'Cause that would be extremely unwieldy. So you need something that gives you a ratio of exchange between goods and services. And then, something that allows you to shift obligations across time, like debt, debt and equity shift obligations across time. Then what does the best job of that?\n\nPart of the reason why I think there's some merit to Dogecoin, even though, it was obviously created as a joke, is that it actually does have a much higher transaction volume capability than Bitcoin. The costs of doing a transaction, the Dogecoin fee is very low. Like right now, if you wanna do a Bitcoin transaction, the price of doing that transaction is very high, so you could not use it effectively for most things.\n\nAnd nor could it even scale to a high volume. And when Bitcoin was started, I guess around 2008 or something like that, the internet connections were much worse than they are today, like order of magnitude. I mean, they were way, way worse in 2008. So like having a small block size or whatever it is, and a long synchronization time made sense in 2008, but, 2021, or fast forward 10 years, it's like, comically low.\n\nAnd I think there's some value to having a linear increase in the amount of currency that is generated. So, because some amount of the currency, if a currency is too deflationary or like, or should say if, if a currency is expected to increase in value over time, there's reluctance to spend it.\n\n'Cause you're like, \"Oh, if I, I'll just hold it and not spend it because its scarcity is increasing with time, so if I spend it now, then I will regret spending it. So I will just, you know, hoard all it.\" But if there's some dilution of the currency occurring over time, that's more of an incentive to use that as a currency.\n\nSo Dogecoin just somewhat randomly has just a fixed a number of sort of coins or hash strings that are generated every year. So there's some inflation, but it's not a percentage at base. It's a fixed number, so the percentage of inflation will necessarily decline over time. I'm not saying that it's like the ideal system for a currency, but I think it actually is just fundamentally better than anything else I've seen, just by accident.\n\nI like how you said around 2008, so you're not, some people suggest that you might be Satoshi Nakamoto. You've probably said you're not. Let me ask- - I'm not.\n\nYou're not, for sure. Would you tell us if you were?\n\nYes.\n\nOkay. Do you think it's a feature or a bug that he's anonymous, or she, or they? It's an interesting kind of quirk of human history that there is a particular technology that is a completely anonymous inventor. Or creator.\n\nWell, I mean, you can look at the evolution of ideas before the launch of Bitcoin and see who wrote about those ideas. And then, I don't know, obviously I don't know who created Bitcoin for practical purposes, but the evolution of ideas is pretty clear for that. And, it seems as though Nick Szabo is probably more than anyone else responsible for the evolution of those ideas. So, here he claims not to be Nakamoto, but I'm not sure, that's neither here nor there, but he seems to be the one more responsible for the ideas behind Bitcoin than anyone else.\n\nSo it's not, perhaps, like singular figures aren't even as important as the figures involved in the evolution of ideas that led to things.\n\nYeah. Perhaps it's sad to think about history, but maybe most names would be forgotten anyway.\n\nWhat is a name anyway, it's a name, a name attached to an idea. What does it even mean really?\n\nI think Shakespeare had a thing about roses and stuff, whatever he said.\n\n\"Rose by any other name would smell as sweet.\" (Lex laughing) - I got Elon to quote Shakespeare. I feel like I accomplished something today.\n\n\"Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?\" (both laughing) - [Lex] I'm gonna clip that out instead.\n\nThou art more temporate and more fair. (both laughing) (Shivon speaking faintly) - Autopilot. Tesla autopilot- (Elon laughing) Tesla autopilot has been through an incredible journey over the past six years, or perhaps even longer in the minds of, in your mind, and the minds of many involved.\n\nI think that's where we first like connected, really, was the autopilot stuff, autonomy and...\n\nThe whole journey was incredible to me to watch. 'Cause I knew, well, part of it is I was at MIT and I knew the difficulty of computer vision. And I knew the whole, I had a lotta colleagues and friends, about the DARPA challenge, and knew how difficult it is. And so there was a natural skepticism when I first drove a Tesla with the initial system based on Mobileye. I thought there's no way.\n\nSo at first when I got in I thought \"There's no way this car could maintain, like stay in the lane and create a comfortable experience.\" So my intuition initially was that the lane-keeping problem is way too difficult to solve.\n\n[Elon] Oh lane-keeping, yeah, that's relatively easy.\n\nBut solve in the way that we just, we talked about previous, this prototype, versus a thing that actually creates a pleasant experience over hundreds of thousands of miles or millions. Yeah, so, I was proven wrong- - We had to wrap a lot of code around the Mobileye thing, it doesn't just work by itself.\n\nI mean, that's part of the story of how you approach things sometimes. Sometimes you do things from scratch. Sometimes at first you kind of see what's out there, and then you decide to from scratch. That was one of the boldest decisions I've seen is both on the hardware and the software to decide to eventually go from scratch. I thought, again, I was skeptical of whether that's going to be able to work out 'cause it's such a difficult problem.\n\nAnd so it was an incredible journey, what I see now with everything, the hardware, the compute, the sensors, the things I maybe care and love about most is the stuff that Andrej Karpathy's leading with, the dataset selection, the whole data engine process, the neural network architectures, the way that's in the real world, that network is tested, validated, all the different test sets, versus the image net model of computer vision, like what's in academia is like real world artificial intelligence.\n\nAndrej's awesome and obviously plays an important role, but we have a lot of really talented people driving things. Ashok is actually the head of autopilot engineering. Andrej's the director of AI.\n\nAi stuff, yeah. So yeah, I'm aware that there's an incredible team of just a lot going on.\n\nPeople will give me too much credit, and they'll give Andrej too much credit.\n\nAnd people should realize how much is going on under the- - Yeah, just a lot of really talented people. The Tesla Autopilot AI team is extremely talented. It's like some of the smartest people in the world. So, yeah, and we're getting it done.\n\nWhat are some insights you've gained over those five, six years of autopilot about the problem of autonomous driving. So, you leaped in having some sort of first principles kinds of intuitions, but nobody knows how difficult the pro- - Yeah, I thought the self-driving problem would be hard, but it was harder than I thought. It's not like I thought it'd be easy, I thought it would be very hard, but it was actually way harder than even that.\n\nSo, I mean want it comes down to at the end of the day is to solve self-driving you have to solve. You basically need to recreate what humans do to drive, which is humans drive with optical senses, eyes, and biological neural nets. And so in order to, that's how the entire road system is designed to work, with basically passive optical and neural nets, biologically.\n\nSo, for actually, for full self driving to work, we have to recreate that in digital form. So we have to, that means cameras with advanced neural nets in silicon form. And then it will obviously solve for small cell driving. That's the only way, I don't think there's any other way.\n\nBut the question is what aspects of human nature do you have to encode into the machine, right? So you have to solve the perception problem, like detect, and then you first realize, what is the perception problem for driving? Like all the kinds of things you have to be able to see. Like what do we even look at when we drive? There's, I just recently heard, Andrej talked about, at MIT, about like car doors.\n\nI think it was the world's greatest talk of all time about car doors. The fine details of car doors, like what is even an open car door, man. So like the ontology of that, that's a perception problem. We humans solve that perception problem, and Tesla has to solve that problem. And then there's the control and the planning, coupled with the perception.\n\nYou have to figure out like what's involved in driving, especially in all the different edge cases. Maybe you can comment on this, how much game theoretic kind of stuff needs to be involved, at a four-way stop sign? As humans, when we drive, our actions affect the world.\n\nTrue.\n\nIt changes how others behave, most autonomous driving, you're usually just responding to the scene, as opposed to like really asserting yourself in the scene. Do you think...\n\nI think these sort of control logic conundrums are not the hard part. Let's see...\n\n[Lex] What do you think is the hard part in this whole beautiful complex problem?\n\nIt's a lot of freaking software man, and a lot of smart lines of code. For sure, in order to create an accurate vector space.\n\nYou're coming from image space, which is like this flow of photons going to the camera, cameras and then since you have this massive bitstream in image space, and then you have to effectively compress the, a massive bitstream corresponding to photons that knocked off an electron in a camera sensor and turn that bitstream into a vector space.\n\nBy vector space I mean, you've got cars and humans and lane lines and curves and traffic lights and that kind of thing. Once you have an accurate vector space, the control problem is similar to that of a video game, like a \"Grand Theft Auto\" or \"Cyberpunk.\" If you have accurate vector space. It's, the control problem is, I wouldn't say it's trivial, it's not trivial, but it's it's not like some insurmountable thing.\n\nHaving an accurate vector space is very difficult.\n\nYeah, I think we humans don't give enough respect to how incredible the human perception system is to mapping the raw photons to the vector space representation in our heads.\n\nYour brain is doing an incredible amount of processing and giving you an image that is a very cleaned up image. Like when we look around here, you see color in the corners of your eyes, but actually your eyes have very few cones, cone receptors in the peripheral vision. Your eyes are painting color in the peripheral vision.\n\nYou don't realize it, but they're, eyes are actually painting color and your eyes will also have, there's blood vessels and all sorts of gnarly things, and there's a blind spot, but do you see your blind spot? No, your brain is painting in the missing, the blind spot.\n\nYou're gonna do these things online where you look here and look at this point and then look at this point, and it's, if it's in your blind spot, your brain will just fill in the missing bits.\n\nSo cool. The peripheral vision's so cool.\n\nYeah.\n\nIt makes you realize all the illusions, provision science, it makes you realize just how incredible the brain is.\n\nThe brain's doing a crazy amount of post-processing on the vision signals from your eyes. It's insane. And then even once you get all those vision signals, your brain is constantly trying to forget as much as possible. So human memory is perhaps the weakest thing about the brain is memory.\n\nSo because memory is so expensive to our brain, and so limited, your brain is trying to forget as much as possible and distill the things that you see into the smallest amounts of information possible. So your brain is trying to not just get to a vector space, but get to a vector space that is the smallest possible vector space of only relevant objects.\n\nYou can sort of look inside your brain, or at least I can like when you drive down the road, and try to think about what your brain is actually doing, - Yeah - consciously. It's like, you'll see a car, because you don't have cameras. You don't have eyes in the back of your head or the side, so you say like, you're basically, your head is like a, you basically have like two cameras on a slow gimbal. (both laughing) And eyesight's not that great.\n\nOkay? Human eyes are... And people are constantly distracted and thinking about things and texting and doing all sorts of things they shouldn't do in a car, changing the radio station. So, having arguments. When's the last time you looked right and left, and rearward, or even diagonally forward to actually refresh your vector space?\n\nSo you're glancing around and what your mind is doing is trying to distill the relevant vectors, basically objects with a position and motion, and then editing that down to the least amount that's necessary for you to drive.\n\nIt does seem to be able to edit it down or compress even further into things like concept, so it's not, it's like it goes beyond, the human mind seems to go sometimes beyond vector space to sort of space of concepts, to where you'll see a thing, it's no longer represented spatially somehow, it's almost like a concept that you should be aware of. If this is a school zone, you'll remember that as a concept. Which is a weird thing to represent, but perhaps for driving you don't need to fully represent those things. Or maybe you get those kind of - Well you- - indirectly.\n\nYou need to established vector space and then actually have predictions for those vector spaces. Like you drive past say a bus and you see that there's people, before you drove past the bus you saw people crossing, or just imagine there's like a large truck or something blocking site. But before you came up to the truck you saw that there were some kids about to cross the road in front of the truck.\n\nNow you can no longer see the kids, but you would now know, okay, those kids are probably gonna pass by the truck and cross the road. Even though you cannot see them. So you have to have memory. You need to remember that there were kids there and you need to have some forward prediction of what their position will be.\n\nIt's a really hard problem - at the time of relevance.\n\nSo with occlusions and computer vision, when you can't see an object anymore, even when it just walks behind a tree and reappears, that's a really, really, I mean, at least in academic literature, it's tracking through occlusions, it's very difficult.\n\nYeah, we're doin' it.\n\n[Lex] I understand this. So some of it- - It's like object permanence. The same thing happens with the humans with neural nets. When like a toddler grows up, there's a point in time where they develop, they have a sense of object permanence. So before a certain age, if you have a ball, or a toy or whatever, and you put it behind your back and you pop it out, before they have object permanence, it's like a new thing every time.\n\nIt's like, \"Whoa, this toy went poof, disappeared, and now it's back again.\" and they can't believe it. And that they can play peek-a-boo all day long because peek-a-boo's fresh every time. But then we figure out object permanence, then they realize, \"Oh, no, the object is not gone. It's just behind your back.\"\n\nSometimes I wish we never did figure out object permanence.\n\nObject permanence. Yeah, so that's a...\n\n[Lex] That's an important problem to solve.\n\nYes. So, an important evolution of the neural nets in the car is memory across both time and space. Now you can't remember, you have to say how long do you want to remember things for. There's a cost to remembering things for a long time. So you could run out of memory to try to remember too much for too long. And then you also have things that are stale if you remember 'em for too long.\n\nAnd then you also need things that are remembered over time. So even if you, say have, for evidence sake, five seconds of memory on a time basis, but, let's say you you're parked at a light and you saw, use a pedestrian example, that people were waiting to cross the cross the road, and you can't quite see them because of an occlusion, but they might wait for a minute before the light changes for them to cross the road.\n\nYou still need to remember that that's where they were, and that they're probably going to cross road type of thing. So even if that exceeds your time-based memory, it should not exceed your space of memory.\n\nAnd I just think the data engine side of that, so getting the data to learn all of the concepts that you're saying now, is an incredible process. It's this iterative process of just, there's this HydraNet of many- - HydraNet. We're changing the name to something else.\n\nOkay. Alright. I'm sure it will be equally as \"Rick and Morty,\" like.\n\nYeah. We've re-architected the neural nets in the cars so many times, it's crazy.\n\nOh, so every time there's a new major version, you'll rename it to something more ridiculous or, or memorable and beautiful, sorry. Not ridiculous of course.\n\nIf you see the full like array of neural nets that are operating the cars, it kinda boggles the mind. There's so many layers. It's crazy. We started off with simple neural nets that were basically image recognition on a single frame from a single camera, and then trying to knit those together with, with C. I should say, we were really familiar running C here, 'cause C++ is too much overhead, and we have our own C compiler.\n\nSo, to get maximum performance we actually wrote our own C compiler and are continuing to optimize our C compiler for maximum efficiency. In fact, we've just recently done a new rev on the C compiler that will compile directly to our autopilot hardware.\n\nSo you wanna compile the whole thing down with your own compiler?\n\nYeah.\n\nSo efficiency here, 'cause there's all kinds of computers, CPU, GPU, there's like basic types of things and you have to somehow figure out the scheduling across all of those things. And so you're compiling the code down - Yeah.\n\nthat does all, okay. So that's why there's a lotta people involved.\n\nThere's a lot of hardcore software engineering at a very sort of bare metal level. 'Cause we're trying to do a lot of compute that's constrained to the our full self-driving computer. And we wanna try to have the highest frames per second possible in a sort of very finite amount of compute and power. We really put a lot of effort into the efficiency of our compute.\n\nSo there's actually a lot of work done by some very talented software engineers at Tesla that, at a very foundational level to improve the efficiency of compute and how we use the trip accelerators, which are basically doing matrix math, dot products, like a bazillion dot products. And it's like, one of our neural nets is like, compute wise, like 99% dot products.\n\nAnd you wanna achieve as many high frame rates, like a video game, you want - Yeah.\n\nfull resolution, higher frame.\n\nHigh frame rate, low latency, low jitter. I think one of the things we're moving towards now is no post-processing of the image through the image signal processor. What happens for cameras is that, well almost all cameras, is they there's a lot of post-processing done in order to make pictures look pretty. And so we don't care about pictures looking pretty. We just want the data. So we're moving just raw photon counts.\n\nThe image that the computer sees is actually much more than what you'd see if you represent it on a camera, it's got much more data. And even in very low light conditions, you can see that there's a small photon count difference between this spot here and that spot there, which means that, so it can see in the dark incredibly well, because it can detect these tiny differences in photon counts. Like much better than you could possibly imagine.\n\nWe also save 13 milliseconds on latency.\n\n[Lex] From removing the post-processing on the image?\n\nYes.\n\nYeah.\n\n'Cause we've got eight cameras and then there's roughly, I don't know, one and a half milliseconds or so, maybe 1. 6 milliseconds of latency for each camera. Basically bypassing the image processor gets us back 13 milliseconds of latency, which is important.\n\nAnd we track latency all the way from photon hits the camera, to all the steps that it's gotta go through to get, go through the various neural nets and the C code, and there's a little bit of C++ there as well. Well, I can, maybe a lot, but it, the core stuff is, the heavy-duty compute is all in C.\n\nAnd so we track that latency all the way to an outward command to the drive unit to accelerate the brakes, to slow down the steering, turn left or right. 'Cause you gotta output a command, that's gotta go to a controller, and like some of these controllers have an update frequency that's maybe 10 Hertz or something like that, which is slow. That's like now you lose a hundred milliseconds potentially.\n\nSo then we wanna update the drivers on the steering and braking control to have more like 100 Hertz instead of 10 Hertz, then you've got a 10 millisecond latency instead of 100 milliseconds worst-case latency.\n\nAnd actually, jitter is more of a challenge than latency, 'cause latency is, you can anticipate and predict, but if you've got a stackup of things going from the camera to the computer, through then a series of other computers, and finally to an actuator on the car; if you have a stackup of tolerances, of timing tolerances, then you can have quite a variable latency, which is called jitter.\n\nAnd that makes it hard to anticipate exactly how you should turn the car or accelerate because, if you've got maybe 150, 200 milliseconds of jitter, then you could be off by 2. 2 seconds. And this could make a big difference.\n\nSo you have to interpolate somehow to deal with the effects of jitter, so they can make robust control decisions. So the jitters and the sensor information, or the jitter can occur at any stage in the pipeline.\n\nIf you have just, if you have fixed latency, you can anticipate and like say, \"Okay, we know what that our information is,\" for argument's sake, \"150 milliseconds stale.\" For argument's sake, 150 milliseconds from photons taking camera to where you can measure a change in the acceleration of the vehicle.\n\nThen you can just say, \"Okay, well we're gonna, we know it's 150 milliseconds, so we're gonna take that into account and compensate for that latency.\" However, if you've got then 150 milliseconds of latency, plus 100 milliseconds of jitter, which could be anywhere from zero to 100 milliseconds on top. So then your latency could be from 150, 250 milliseconds, now you've got 100 milliseconds that you don't know what to do with.\n\nThat's basically random. So, getting rid of jitter is extremely important.\n\nAnd that affects your control decisions and all of those kinds of things. Okay.\n\nYeah, the cars just gonna fundamentally maneuver better with lower jitter.\n\n[Lex] Got it.\n\nThe cars will maneuver with super human ability and reaction time, much faster than a human. I mean, I think over time, the autopilot, full self-driving will be capable of maneuvers that are far more than what like James Bond could do in like the best movie, type of thing.\n\nThat's exactly what I was imagining in my mind, as you said it.\n\nIt's like impossible maneuvers that a human couldn't do.\n\nWell, let me ask sort of a, looking back the six years, looking out into the future, based on your current understanding, how hard do you think this full self-driving problem, when do you think Tesla will solve level four FSD?\n\nI mean, it's looking quite likely that it'll be next year.\n\nAnd what does the solution look like? Is it the current pool of FSD beta candidates? They start getting greater and greater as they have been, degrees of autonomy. And then there's a certain level beyond which they can do their own, they can read a book.\n\nYeah. I mean, you can see, anybody who's been following the full self-driving beta closely will see that the rate of disengagements has been dropping rapidly. So, like there's engagement B where the driver intervenes to prevent the car from doing something - [Lex] Right. dangerous potentially. So the interventions per million miles has been dropping dramatically.\n\nAnd that trend looks like it happens next year is that the probability of an accident on FSD is less than that of the average human, and then significantly less than that of the average human. So, it certainly appears like we will get there next year.\n\nThen there's gonna be a case of, okay, well, we not have to prove this to regulators and prove it to, and we want a standard that is not just equivalent to a human, but much better than the average human. I think it's gotta be at least two or three times higher safety than a human. Two or three times lower probability of injury than a human before we would actually say like, \"Okay, it's okay to go.\"\n\nIt's not gonna be equivalent, it's gonna be much better.\n\nSo if you look, FSD 10.6 just came out recently, 10.7's on the way, maybe 11 is on the way somewhere in the future.\n\nYeah. We were hoping to get 11 out this year, but it's, 11 actually has a whole bunch of fundamental rewrites on the neural net architecture and some fundamental improvements in creating vector space.\n\nSo there is some fundamental leap that really deserves the 11. I mean, that's a pretty cool number.\n\nYeah. 11 would be a single stack for all, one stack to rule them all.\n\nA single stack. But there are just some really fundamental neural net architecture changes that will allow for much more capability. At first they're gonna have issues. Like we have this working on like sort of alpha software and it's good, but it's, it's basically taking a whole bunch of C, C++ code and leading a massive amount of C++ code and replacing it with the neural net.\n\nAnd Andrej makes this point a lot, which is like neural nets are kind of eating software. Over time there's less and less conventional software, more and more neural net. Which is still software, but it's, still comes out to lines of software. But, just more neural net stuff, and less, heuristics basically. More matrix based stuff, and less heuristics based stuff.\n\nOne of the big changes will be, right now the neural nets will deliver a giant bag of points to the C++, or C and C++ code.\n\n[Lex] Yeah.\n\nWe call it the giant bag of points.\n\n[Lex] Yeah. And it's like, so you got a pixel and something associated with that pixel, like this pixel is probably car, this pixel is probably landline. Then you've got to assemble this giant bag of points in the C code and turn it into vectors. And it does a pretty good job of it, but it's, we wanna just, we need another layer of neural nets on top of that to take the giant bag of points and distill that down to a vector space in the neural net part of the software, as opposed to the heuristics part of the software. This is a big improvement.\n\n[Lex] Neural net's all the way down, so you want.\n\nIt's not even all neural nets, but it's, this is a game changer to not have the bag of points, the giant bag of points, that has to be assembled with many lines of C, C++, and have a neural net just assemble those into a vector. So the neural net is outputting much, much less data, it's outputting, this is a lane line, this is a curb, this is drivable space, this is a car, this is a pedestrian or cyclist or something like that.\n\nIt's outputting, it's really outputting proper vectors to the C, C++ control code, as opposed to, sort of, constructing the vectors in C. Which we've done, I think, quite a good job of, but it grew kinda hitting a local maximum on the, how well the C can do this. So this is really a big deal. And just all of the networks in the car need to move to Surround Video, there's still some Legacy Networks that are not Surround Video.\n\nAnd all of the training needs to move to Surround Video, and the efficiency of the training, it needs to get better, and it is. And then we need to move everything to raw photon counts, as opposed to processed images.\n\n[Lex] Okay. So if you- - Which is quite a big reset on the training, 'cause the system's trained on post-process imaged images. So we need to redo all the training to train against the raw photon counts, instead of the post-processed image.\n\nSo ultimately, it's kind of reducing the complexity of the whole thing. So, reducing.\n\nYep. Lines of code will actually go lower.\n\nYeah, that's fascinating. So you do infusion of all the sensors, so reducing the complexity of having to deal with these- - [Elon] Infusion of the cameras.\n\nSorry.\n\nIt's all cameras really.\n\nRight, yes. Same with humans.\n\nYeah.\n\nWell, I guess we got ears too, okay.\n\nYeah, we'll actually need to incorporate sound as well. 'Cause you know, you need to listen for ambulance sirens or firetrucks. If somebody, yelling at you or something, I don't know. It just, there's a little bit of audio that needs to be incorporated as well.\n\nDo you need to go to bathroom break?\n\n[Elon] Yeah, sure, let's take a break.\n\nOkay.\n\n[Elon] Honestly, frankly, the ideas are the easy thing, and the implementation is the hard thing. The idea of going to the moon is the easy part, but going to the moon is the hard part.\n\n[Lex] Is the hard part.\n\nAnd there's a lot of like hardcore engineering that's gotta get done at the hardware and software level. Like I said, optimizing the C compiler and just, cutting out latency everywhere. If we don't do this, the system will not work properly. So, the work of the engineers doing this, they are like the unsung heroes. But they are critical to the success of the situation.\n\nI think you made it clear. I mean, at least to me, it's super exciting, everything that's going on outside of what Andrej is doing. Just the whole infrastructure of the software. I mean, everything is going on with data engine, whatever it's called, the whole process is just a work of art.\n\nThe sheer scale of it is, it boggles the mind. The training, the amount of work done with, we've written all this custom software for training and labeling, and to do order labeling. Order labeling is essential. 'Cause, especially when you've got like Surround Video, it's very difficult to label Surround Video from scratch is extremely difficult. Take humans such a long time to even label one video clip, like several hours.\n\nOr the order labeler, it basically will just apply heavy duty, a lot of compute to the video clips, to pre-assign and guess what all the things are that are going on in the Surround Video.\n\n[Lex] And there's like correcting it.\n\nYeah, and then all the human has to do is like tweak, like say, adjust what is incorrect. This is like, increases productivity by 100 or more.\n\nYeah. So you've presented Tesla Bot as primarily useful in the factory. First of all, I think humanoid robots are incredible from a fan of robotics. I think the elegance of movement that humanoid robots, that bipedal robots show are just so cool.\n\nIt's really interesting that you're working on this and also talking about applying the same kind of, all the ideas, of some of which you've talked about, with data engine, all the things that we're talking about, with Tesla autopilot, just transferring that over to the, just yet another robotics problem. I have to ask since I care about human robot interactions, so the human side of that. So you've talked about mostly in the factory.\n\nDo you see as part of this problem that Tesla Bot has to solve is interacting with humans and potentially having a place like in the home. So, interacting, not just, - Sure.\n\nnot replacing labor, but also like, I don't know, being a friend or an assistant.\n\n[Elon] I think the possibilities are endless. Yeah, I mean, it's obviously, it's not quite in Tesla's primary mission direction of accelerating sustainable energy, but it is an extremely useful thing that we can do for the world, which is to make a useful humanoid robot that is capable of interacting with the world and helping in many different ways.\n\nSo in factories, and really just, I mean, I think, if you say, extrapolate to many years in the future, I think work will become optional. There's a lot of jobs that, if people weren't paid to do it, they wouldn't do it. Like it's not, it's not fun, necessarily. If you're washing dishes all day, it's like, eh. Even if you really like washing dishes, do you really wanna do it for eight hours a day every day? Probably not.\n\nAnd then there's like dangerous work, and basically if it's dangerous, boring, has like potential for repetitive stress injury, that kind of thing, then that's really where humanoid robots would add the most value initially. So that's what we're aiming for is to, for the humanoid robots to do jobs that people don't voluntarily want to do. And then we'll have to pair that, obviously, with some kind of universal, basic income in the future.\n\nSo, I think.\n\nDo you see a world when there's like hundreds of millions of Tesla Bots doing different, performing different tasks throughout the world?\n\nYeah, I haven't really thought about it that far into the future, but I guess that there may be something like that.\n\nCan I ask a wild question? So, the number of Tesla cars has been accelerated and has been close to 2 million produced. Many of them have autopilot.\n\n[Elon] I think we're over 2 million now.\n\nYeah. Do you think there'll ever be a time when there'll be more Tesla Bots than Tesla cars?\n\nYeah. Actually, it's funny you ask this question 'cause normally I do try to think pretty far into the future, but I haven't really thought that far into the future with the Tesla Bot, or it's codenamed Optimus, I call it Optimus Subprime, because it's not like a giant transformer robot. But it's meant to be a general purpose help robot.\n\nAnd basically, the things that were, basically, Tesla, I think, has the most advanced real-world AI for interacting with the real world, which we've developed as a function to make self-driving work.\n\nAnd so, along with custom hardware and, like a lotta hardcore low-level software to have it run efficiently and be power efficient 'cause, it's one thing to do neural nets if you've got a gigantic server room with 10,000 computers, but now, let's say you just, you have to now distill that down into one computer that's running at low power in a humanoid robot or a car.\n\nThat's actually very difficult and a lotta hardcore soft work is required for that. So since we're kind of like solving the navigate the real world with neural nets problem for cars, which are kinda like robots with four wheels, then it's like kind of a natural extension of that is to put it in a robot with arms and legs. And actuators.\n\nThe two hard things are, you basically need to make the, have the robot be intelligent enough to interact in a sensible way with the environment. So you need real real world AI, and you need to be very good at manufacturing, which is a very hard problem.\n\nTesla's very good at manufacturing, and also has the real world AI, so making the humanoid robot work is, basically it means developing custom motors and sensors that are different from what a car would use. I think we have the best expertise in developing advanced electric motors and power electronics. So, it just has to be for humanoid robot application, not a car.\n\nStill, you do talk about love sometimes. So let me ask, this isn't like for like sex robots or something- - [Elon] Love is the answer.\n\nYes. There is something compelling to us, not compelling, but we connect with humanoid robots, or even legged robot, like with a dog, in shapes of dogs. It just, it seems like there's a huge amount of loneliness in this world. All of us seek companionship with other humans, friendship and all those kinds of things. We have a lot of here in Austin, a lot of people have dogs.\n\n[Elon] That's right.\n\nThere seems to be a huge opportunity to also have robots that decrease the amount of loneliness in the world, or help us humans connects with each other. So, in a way that dogs can. Do you think about that with Tesla Bot at all, or is it really focused on the problem of performing specific tasks? Not connecting with humans?\n\nI mean, to be honest, I have not actually thought about it from the companionship standpoint, but I think it actually would end up being, it could be actually a very good companion. And it could develop a personality over time that is unique. It's not just all the robots are the same. And that personality could evolve to be, match the owner or the, I guess the owner. Whatever you wanna call it. The companion, the human.\n\nThe other half, right? In the same way that friends do. See, I think that's a huge opportunity. I think- - Yeah, no, that's interesting. 'Cause there's a Japanese phrase; wabi-sabi, the subtle imperfections are what makes something special. And the subtle imperfections of the personality of the robot, mapped to the subtle imperfections of the robot's human friend, dunno, owner sounds like maybe the wrong word, but, could actually make an incredible buddy basically.\n\n[Lex] And in that way, the imperfections- - Like R2-D2 or a C-3PO sort of thing.\n\nSo from a machine learning perspective, I think the flaws being a feature is really nice. You could be quite terrible at being a robot for quite a while in the general home environment or all in the general world. And that's kind of adorable and that's, those are your flaws, and you fall in love with those flaws. It's very different than autonomous driving where it's a very high stakes environment, you cannot mess up. And so it's, yeah, it's more fun to be a robot in the home.\n\nYeah, in fact, if you think of like a C-3PO and R2-D2, they actually had a lot of like flaws and imperfections and silly things and they would argue with each other.\n\nWere they actually good at doing anything? I'm not exactly sure.\n\nThey definitely added a lot to the story. But there sort of quirky elements and, that they would make mistakes and do things, it would just, it made them relatable, I don't know. Endearing. So yeah, I think that that could be something that, it probably would happen. But our initial focus is just to make it useful. I'm confident we'll get it done, I'm not sure what the exact timeframe is, but we'll probably have, I don't know, a decent prototype towards the end of next year or something like that.\n\nAnd it's cool that it's connected to Tesla, the car.\n\nYeah, it's using a lotta, it would use the autopilot inference computer and a lot of the training that we've done for the four cars, in terms of recognizing real world things, could be applied directly to the robot. But there's a lot of custom actuators and sensors that need to be developed.\n\nAnd an extra module on top of the vector space for love.\n\nAh, yeah.\n\nThat's missing. Okay.\n\nWe could add that to the car too.\n\nThat's true. Yeah, it could be useful in all environments. Like you said, a lot of people argue in the car, so maybe we can help 'em out. You're a student of history, fan of \"Dan Carlin's Hardcore History\" podcast.\n\n[Elon] Yeah. That's great.\n\nGreatest podcast ever.\n\nYeah, I think it is, actually.\n\nIt almost doesn't really count as a podcast.\n\n[Elon] It's more like a audio book.\n\nYeah. So you were on the podcast with Dan, I just had a chat with him about it. He said you guys went military and all that kind of stuff.\n\nYeah, it was basically, it should be titled engineer wars. Essentially, when there's a rapid change in the rate of technology, then engineering plays a pivotal role in victory in battle.\n\nHow far back in history did you go? Did you go to World War II?\n\nWell, it was supposed to be a deep dive on fighters and bomber technology in World War II, but that ended up being more wide-ranging than that. 'Cause I just went down the, a total rat hole of like studying all of the fighters and bombers in World War II, and the constant rock, paper, scissors game that one country would make this plane, and they'd make a plane to beat that, and they'd try to make a plane to beat that, and then they'll...\n\nAnd really what matters is like the pace of innovation, and also access to high quality fuel and raw materials. So, like Germany had like some amazing designs, but they couldn't make them because they couldn't get the raw materials. And they had a real problem with the oil and fuel, basically, the fuel quality was extremely variable.\n\nSo the design wasn't the bottleneck, it was- - Yeah, the U.S. had kick-ass fuel, that was very consistent, the problem is, if you make a very high performance aircraft engine, in order to make it high performance, you have to the fuel, the aviation gas, has to be a consistent mixture. And it has to have a high octane. High octane is the most important thing, but also can't have like impurities and stuff 'cause you'll foul up the engine. And the German just never had good access to oil. They try to get it by invading the caucuses, but that didn't work too well.\n\nThat never works well.\n\nDidn't work out for them. (woman speaking faintly) Nice to meet you. Germany was always struggling with basically shitty oil, and so then they could not, they couldn't count on high quality fuel for their aircraft. So then they had to have all these additives and stuff. Whereas the U. S. had awesome fuel, and they provided that to Britain as well.\n\nSo, that allowed the British and the Americans to design aircraft engines that were super high-performance, better than anything else in the world. Germany could design the engines, they just didn't have the fuel. And then also the likes of the, the quality of the aluminum alloys that they were getting was also not that great, and so, yeah.\n\n[Lex] You talked about all this with Dan?\n\nYep.\n\nAwesome. Broadly looking at history, when you look at Genghis Khan, when you look at Stalin, Hitler, the darkest moments of human history, what do you take away from those moments? Does it help you gain insight about human nature, about human behavior today? Whether it's the wars or the individuals, or just the behavior of people, any aspects of history.\n\nYeah. I find history fascinating. There's just a lot of incredible things that have been done, good and bad, that they just help you understand the nature of civilization, and individuals, and...\n\nDoes it make you sad that humans do these kinds of things to each other? You look at the 20th century, World War II, the cruelty of the abuse of power. Talk about communism, Marxism, and Stalin.\n\nI mean, some of these things do, I mean, if you, there's a lot of human history, but most of it is actually people just getting on with their lives, and it's not like human history is just non-stop war and disaster, those are actually just, those are intermittent and rare, and if they weren't then humans would soon cease to exist. But there's just that, wars tend to be written about a lot.\n\nWhereas something being like, well, a normal year where nothing major happened doesn't get written about much, but that's, most people just like farming and kinda living their life. Being a villager somewhere. And every now and again, there's a war. I would have to say, there aren't very many books that I, where I just had to stop reading, 'cause it was just too dark.\n\nBut the book about \"Stalin The Court Of The Red Star,\" I had stopped reading, it was just too dark. Rough.\n\nYeah. The 30s. There's a lot of lessons there to me, in particular that it feels like humans, all of us have that zeal, Solzhenitsyn line, that the line between good and evil runs to the heart in every man that all of us are capable of evil, all of us are capable of good, it's almost like this kind of responsibility that all of us have to tend towards the good.\n\nAnd so, to me, looking at history is almost like an example of, look, you have some charismatic leader that convinces you of things, is too easy, based on that story to do evil, onto each other, onto your family onto others. And so it's like our responsibility to do good. It's not like now somehow different from history, that can happen again, all of it can happen again. And yes, most of the time you're right.\n\nI mean, the optimistic view here is mostly people are just living life. And as you've often memed about, the quality of life was way worse back in the day, and it keeps improving over time, through innovation, through technology, but still it's somehow notable that these blimps of atrocities happen.\n\nSure. Yeah, I mean, life was really tough for most of history. I mean, probably for most of human history, a good year would be one where not that many people in your village died of the plague, starvation, freezing to death, or being killed by a neighboring village. It's like, \"Well, it wasn't that bad.\" It was only like, \"You know, we lost 5% this year. It was a good year.\"\n\nYeah.\n\nThat would be par for the course. Just not starving to death would have been the primary goal of most people throughout history. Just making sure we'll have enough food to last through the winter and not get, freeze or whatever. Now food is plentiful. We have an obesity problem.\n\nWell, yeah, the lesson there is to be grateful for the way things are now for some of us. We've spoken about this offline. I'd love to get your thought about it here. If I sat down for a long form in person conversation with the President of Russia, Vladimir Putin, would you potentially want to call in for a few minutes to join in on a conversation with him, moderated and translated by me?\n\nSure. Yeah. Sure, I'd be happy to do that.\n\nYou've shown interest in the Russian language. Is this grounded in your interest in history of linguistics culture, general curiosity?\n\n[Elon] I think it sounds cool.\n\nSounds cool, not looks cool. It takes a moment to read Cyrillic. Once you know what the Cyrillic characters stand for, actually, then reading Russian becomes a lot easier 'cause there are a lot of words that are actually the same. Like bank is bank.\n\nSo find the words that are exactly the same and now you start to understand Cyrillic, yeah.\n\nIf you can sound it out, then it's much, there's at least some commonality of words.\n\nWhat about the culture? You love great engineering, physics. There's a tradition of the sciences there. When you look at the 20th century, from rocketry. So, some of the greatest rockets, some of the space exploration has been done in the Soviet, in the former Soviet Union.\n\nYeah.\n\nSo, do you draw inspiration from that history? Just how this culture, that in many ways, I mean, one of the sad things is, because of the language, a lot of it is lost to history, because it's not translated, all those kinds of, because it is in some ways an isolated culture, it flourishes within it's borders.\n\n[Elon] Yeah.\n\nSo do you draw inspiration from those folks, from the history of science engineering there?\n\nYeah. I mean, the Soviet Union, Russia, and Ukraine as well, have a really strong history in space flight, like some of the most advanced and impressive things in history were done by the Soviet Union. One cannot help but admire the impressive rocket technology that was developed. After the sort of fall of the Soviet Union, there's much less that happened, still things are happening, but it's not quite at the frenetic pace that it was happening before the Soviet Union kind of dissolved into separate republics.\n\nYeah. I mean, there's the Roscosmos, the Russian, the agency. I look forward to a time when those countries, with China, are working together, the United States, they're all working together, maybe a little bit of friendly competition, but.\n\nI feel like friendly competition is good. Governments are slow and the only thing slower than one government is a collection of governments. (Lex laughing) - Yeah.\n\nThe Olympics would be boring if everyone just crossed the finishing line at the same time.\n\nYeah.\n\nNobody would watch.\n\n[Lex] Yeah.\n\nAnd people wouldn't try hard to run fast and stuff. So, I think friendly competition is a good thing.\n\nThis is also a good place to give a shout out to a video titled \"The Entire Soviet Rocket Engine Family Tree\" by Tim Dodd, AKA Everyday Astronaut. It's like an hour and a half. It gives a full history of Soviet rockets. And people should definitely go check out and support Tim in general, that guy's super excited about the future, super excited about space flight, every time I see anything by him I just have a stupid smile on my face, 'cause he's so excited about stuff.\n\nYeah, Tim Dodd is - I love people like that.\n\nreally great if you're interested in anything to do with space. He's, in terms of explaining rocket technology to your average person, he's awesome. The Best, I'd say. I should say, the whole reason I switched us from, Raptor at one point was gonna be a hydrogen engine, but hydrogen has a lot of challenges. It's very low density. It's a deep cryogen, so it's only liquid very close to absolute zero. Requires a lot of insulation.\n\nSo it was a lot of challenges there. And I was actually reading a bit about Russian rocket engine development. At least the impression I had was that Soviet Union, Russia, and Ukraine primarily were actually in the process of switching to Methalux. And there were some interesting test and data for ISP, they were able to get up to like a 382nd ISP with the Methalux engine. And I was like, \"Whoa, okay, that's, that's actually really impressive.\"\n\nSo I think we could, you could actually get a much lower cost, an optimizing cost per ton to orbit, cost per to Mars. I think methane option is the way to go. And I was partly inspired by the Russian work on the test ends, with Methalux engines.\n\nAnd now for something completely different. Do you mind doing a bit of a meme review in the spirit of the great, the powerful Pewdiepie? Let's say one to 11, - Okay.\n\njust go over a few documents printed out.\n\n[Elon] We can try.\n\n[Lex] Let's try this. I present to you document numero uno. (Elon laughing) - Okay.\n\n[Lex] Vlad The Impaler discovers marshmallows.\n\nYeah, that's not bad.\n\nYou get it, because he likes impaling things.\n\nYes, I get it. Yes, I get it, I don't know, three, whatever.\n\n[Lex] Oh, that's not very good. This is ground in some engineering, some history. (Elon laughing) - Yeah, I give this an 8 out of 10.\n\n[Lex] What do you think about nuclear power?\n\nI'm in favor of nuclear power. In a place that is not subject to extreme natural disasters. I think it's a, new nuclear power is a great way to generate electricity. I don't think we should be shutting down nuclear power stations.\n\n[Lex] Yeah, but what about Chernobyl?\n\nExactly. I think people, there's like a lot of fear of radiation and stuff. I guess, the problem is a lot of people just don't, they didn't study engineering or physics, so they don't, just the word radiation just sounds scary, you know? So they don't, they can't calibrate what radiation means. But radiation is much less dangerous than you'd think. For example, Fukushima, when the Fukushima problem happened, due that tsunami.\n\nI got people in California asking me if they should worry about radiation from Fukushima. And I'm like, definitely not, not even slightly, not at all. That is crazy. And just to show this is how, the dangers is so much overplayed compared to what it really is that I actually flew to Fukushima. And, actually, I donated a solar power system for a water treatment plant. And I made a point of eating locally grown vegetables on T. V. in Fukushima.\n\nI'm still alive. Okay.\n\nSo it's not even that the risk of these events is low, but the impact of them is- - The impact is greatly exaggerated.\n\nIt' human nature.\n\nPeople don't know what radiation is, I've had people ask me, \"What about radiation from cell phones causing brain cancer?\" I'm like, \"When you say radiation, do you mean photons or particles?\" They're like, dunno, \"What do you mean photons particles?\" \"Do you mean, let's say photons. What frequency or wavelength?\" And they're like, \"No, I have no idea.\" \"Do you know that everything's radiating all the time?\" They're like, \"What do you mean?\"\n\n\"Like, everything's radiating all the time.\" Photons are being emitted by all objects all the time, basically. And if you wanna know what it means to stand in front of nuclear fire, go outside. The sun is a gigantic thermonuclear reactor that you're staring right at it. Are you still alive? Yes. Okay. Amazing.\n\nYeah, I guess radiation is one of the words that could be used as a tool to fear monger by certain people. That's it.\n\nI think people just don't understand.\n\nI mean, that's the way to fight that fear, I suppose, just to understand, just to learn.\n\nYeah, just say, okay, how many people have actually died from nuclear accidents? It's like practically nothing, and, say how many people have died from coal plants? And it's a very big number. Obviously we should not be starting up coal plants and shutting down nuclear plants, just doesn't make any sense at all. Coal plants, I don't know, a hundred to a thousand times worse for health than nuclear power plants.\n\nYou wanna go to the next one? It's really bad. That 90, 180 and 360 degrees, everybody loves the math. Nobody gives a shit about 270.\n\nIt's not super funny. I don't know, like two or three.\n\n[Lex] Yeah. This is not, LOL situation. (both laughing) - [Lex] Yeah. (Elon laughing) - That one's pretty good.\n\n[Lex] The United States oscillating between establishing and destroying dictatorships. It's like a metro, is that metro- - Yeah, metronome. Yeah, it's, I dunno, a 7 out of 10. It's kinda true.\n\nThis is kinda personal for me. Next one.\n\nOh, man, is this Laika.\n\n[Lex] Yeah, well, no, this is- - Or it's referring to Laika or something.\n\n[Lex] It's Laika's husband.\n\nHusband, yeah.\n\n[Lex] Hello? Yes, this is dog. Your wife was launched into space. And then the last one is him with his eyes closed and a bottle of vodka.\n\nYeah, Laika didn't come back.\n\n[Lex] No. They don't tell you the full story of, the impact it had on the loved ones.\n\nTrue.\n\nThat one gets an 11 from me. It just keeps goin', on the Russian theme. First man in space, nobody cares. First man on the moon.\n\nWell, I think people do care.\n\n[Lex] I know, but.\n\nYuri Gagarin's name will be forever in history. I think.\n\nThere is something special about placing, stepping foot onto another totally foreign land. It's not the journey, like people that explore the oceans. It's not as important to explore the oceans as to land in a whole new continent.\n\n[Elon] Yeah.\n\n[Lex] Oh this is about you. (Elon laughing) Oh yeah. I'd love to get your comment on this. Elon Musk after sending $6.6 billion to the UN to end world hunger. \"You have three hours.\"\n\nYeah, well, I mean obviously $6 billion is not gonna end world hunger. I mean, the reality is at this point the world is producing far more food than it can really consume. We don't have a caloric constraint to this point. So where there is hunger, it is almost always due to civil war, or strife, or some like, it's not a thing that is extremely rare for it to be just a matter of, lack of money. There's a civil war in some country, and one part of the country's literally trying to starve the other part of the country.\n\nSo it's much more complex than something that money could solve. It's geopolitics, it's a lot of things, it's human nature, it's governments, it's monies, monetary systems, all that kinda stuff.\n\nYeah. Food is extremely cheap these days. I mean, the U.S. at this point, among low income families, obesity is actually now the problem. It's not, obviously it's not hunger, it's too much, too many calories. It's not that nobody's hungry anywhere, it's just, this is not a simple matter of adding money and solving it.\n\n[Lex] What do you think that one gets? Is getting?\n\nTwo.\n\n[Lex] Just going after empires. World, \"Where did you get those artifacts?\" The British Museum. It's a shout out to \"Monty Python.\" \"We found them.\"\n\nYeah. The British Museum is, it's pretty great. I mean, admittedly Britain did take these historical artifacts from around the world and put them in London, but it's not like people can't go see them. So, it is a convenient place to see these ancient artifacts is London, for a large segment of the world. So I think, unbalanced, the British Museum is net good. Well, I'm sure that a lot of countries are arguing about that.\n\n[Lex] Yeah.\n\nIt's like, you wanna make these historical artifacts accessible to as many people as possible. And the British Museum, I think does a good job of that.\n\nEven if there's a darker aspect to like the history of empire in general, whatever the empire is, however things were done. It is the history that happened. You can't sort of erase that history, unfortunately. You can just become better in the future. Is the point.\n\nYeah, I mean, well how are we gonna pass moral judgment on these things? If one is gonna judge, say the Russia Empire, you gotta judge what everyone was doing at the time, and how were the British relative to everyone? And I think that the British would actually get a relatively good grade, relatively good grade, not in absolute terms, but compared to what everyone else was doin', they were not the worst. Like I said, you gotta look at these things in the context of the history at the time and say, \"What were the alternatives, and what are you comparing it against?\"\n\nYes.\n\nAnd I do not think it would be the case that Britain would get a bad grade, when looking at history at the time. Now if you judge history from what is morally acceptable today, you're basically are gonna give everyone a failing grade. I'm not clear. I don't think anyone would get a passing grade in their morality of, you could go back 300 years ago, who is getting a passing grade? Basically no one.\n\n[Lex] And we might not get a passing grade from generations - Yeah. Exactly.\n\n[Lex] that come after us. What does that one get?\n\nSure. A six, a seven.\n\nFor the \"Monty Python,\" maybe.\n\n[Elon] I always 'Monty Python,\" they're great. The \"Life of Brian\" and the \"Quest for the Holy Grail\" are incredible.\n\nYeah. Yeah.\n\nDamn, those are serious eyebrows.\n\n[Lex] Brezhnev. How important, do you think, - Damn.\n\n[Lex] is facial hair to great leadership? You got a new haircut. How does that affect your leadership?\n\n[Elon] I don't know. Hopefully not. It doesn't.\n\n[Shivon] Is that the second, no one?\n\nYeah, the second is no one.\n\n[Elon] There is no one competing with Brezhnev.\n\nNo one two.\n\nThose are like epic eyebrows. Sure.\n\n[Lex] That's ridiculous.\n\nGive it a six or seven, I dunno.\n\n[Lex] I like this, Shakespeare analysis of memes.\n\nBrezhnev, he had a flare for drama as well. German joke.\n\n[Lex] Yeah, yeah. It must come from the eyebrows. Alright. Invention, great engineering. Look what I invented. That's the best thing since rip up bread.\n\nYeah.\n\n'Cause they invented sliced bread. Am I just explaining memes at this point? (all laughing) This is what my life has become.\n\n[Shivon] He's a memelord, you're a meme explainer.\n\n[Lex] I'm a meme, like a scribe, that runs around with the kings and just writes down memes.\n\nI mean, when was the cheeseburger invented? That's an epic invention.\n\n[Lex] Yeah.\n\nLike, wow.\n\n[Lex] Versus just like a burger?\n\nOr a burger, I guess a burger in general.\n\nThen there's, what is the burger? What's a sandwich? And then you start getting is a pizza a sandwich? And what is the original? It gets into an ontology argument.\n\nYeah, but everybody knows if you order a burger, or cheeseburger, or whatever, and you get tomato and some lettuce and onions and whatever, and mayo and ketchup and mustard, it's like epic.\n\nYeah, but I'm sure they've had bread and meat separately for a long time. And it was kind of a burger on the same plate, but somebody who actually combined them into the same thing and then bite it and hold it, makes it convenient. It's a materials problem. Like your hands don't get dirty and whatever. Yeah, it's brill- (Shivon talking faintly) That is not what I would've guessed.\n\nBut everyone knows, if you order a cheeseburger, you know what you're getting, it's not like some obtuse, well, I wonder what I'll get. Fries are, I mean, great. I mean, they're the devil, but fries are awesome. Yeah, pizza is incredible.\n\nFood innovation doesn't get enough love.\n\nYeah.\n\nI guess is what we're getting at.\n\n[Elon] It's great.\n\nWhat about the Matthew McConaughey, Austinite here? President Kennedy, \"Do you know how to put men on the moon yet?\" NASA, \"No.\" President Kennedy, \"Be a lot cooler if you did.\"\n\nPretty much, sure. Six, six or seven, I suppose.\n\n[Lex] And this is the last one.\n\nThat's funny.\n\n[Lex] Someone drew a bunch of dicks all over the walls. Sistine Chapel, Boys bathroom.\n\nSure, I'll give it a nine. It's really true.\n\nThis is our highest ranking meme for today.\n\n[Elon] I mean, it's true, how did they get away with it?\n\nLotsa nakedness.\n\nI mean, dick pics are, I mean, just something throughout history. As long as people can draw things, there's been a dick pic.\n\nIt's a staple of human history.\n\nIt's a staple. Consistent throughout human history.\n\nYou tweeted that you aspire to comedy, you're friends with Joe Rogan. Might you do a short standup comedy set at some point in the future? Maybe open for Joe? Something like that? Is that- - Really? Stand up? Actual just full-on stand up?\n\n[Lex] Full-on stand up. Is that in there or is that?\n\nI've never thought about that.\n\nIt's extremely difficult, at least that's what like Joe says, and the comedians say.\n\n[Elon] Huh? I wonder if I could.\n\nOnly one way to find out.\n\nI have done standup for friends, just impromptu, I'll get on like a roof, and they do laugh, but they're all friends too. So, I don't know if you got a room of strangers. Are they gonna actually also find it funny, but I could try. See what happens.\n\nI think you'd learn something either way.\n\nYeah.\n\nI kinda love both when and when you do great, just watching people, how they deal with it. It's so difficult. You're so fragile up there. It's just you. And you think you're gonna be funny and when it completely falls flat, it's just, it's beautiful to see people deal with that.\n\nI think I might have enough material to do stand up. I've never thought about it, but I might have enough material. I don't know, like 15 minutes or something.\n\nOh yeah. Yeah. Do a Netflix special. (Elon laughing) - [Elon] Netflix special, sure.\n\nWhat's your favorite \"Rick and Morty\" concept? Just to spring that on you, is there, there's a lot of sort of scientific engineering ideas explored there. There's the, - Favorite \"Rick and Morty\"\n\nThere's the butter robot.\n\nYeah, it's a great show.\n\nYou like it?\n\nYeah, \"Rick and Morty's\" Awesome.\n\nSomebody that's exactly like you from an alternate dimension showed up there. Elon Tusk.\n\nYeah. That's right.\n\nThat you voiced.\n\nYeah, \"Rick and Morty\" certainly explores a lot of interesting concepts. Sure, like what's the favorite one. The butter robot certainly is, it's certainly possible to have too much sentience, in a device. You don't want to have your toaster be a super genius toaster. It's gonna hate life, 'cause all it can make is toast. It's like, you don't wanna have super-intelligence stuck in a very limited device.\n\nDo you think it's too easy, from a, if we're talking about from the engineering perspective, super intelligence, like with Marvin, the robot. It seems like it might be very easy to engineer just a depressed robot.\n\nSure.\n\nIt's not obvious to engineer a robot that's going to find a fulfilling existence. Same as humans, I suppose. I wonder if that's like the default, if you don't do a good job on building a robot, it's going to be sad a lot.\n\nWell, we can reprogram robots easier than we can reprogram humans. I guess if you let it evolve without tinkering, then it might get sad, but you can change the optimization function and have it be a cheery robot.\n\nLike I mentioned with SpaceX, you give a lot of people hope, and a lot of people look up to you. Millions of people look up to you. If we think about young people in high school, maybe in college, what advice would you give to them about if they wanna try to do something big in this world, they wanna really have a big, positive impact, what advice would you give them about their career, maybe about life in general?\n\nTry to be useful. Do things that are useful to your fellow human beings, to the world. It's very hard to be useful. Very hard. Are you contributing more than you consume? Try to have a positive net contribution to society. I think that's the thing to aim for. Not to try to be sort of a leader for the sake of being a leader or whatever.\n\nA lot of the time people who, a lot of times the people you want as leaders, are the people who don't want to be leaders. If you're living a useful life, that is a good life, a life worth having lived. Like I said, I would encourage people to use the mental tools of physics and apply them broadly in life. They are the best tools.\n\nWhen you think about education and self-education, what do you recommend? So there's the university, there's self study. There is hands-on, sort of finding a company or a place or a set of people that do the thing you're passionate about and joining them as early as possible. There's taking a road trip across Europe for a few years and writing some poetry. Which trajectory do you suggest? In terms of learning about how you can become useful, as you mentioned, how you can have the most positive impact.\n\nI encourage people to read a lot of books, just read, basically try to ingest as much information as you can, and try to also just develop a good general knowledge. So you at least have a rough lay of the land of the knowledge landscape, try to learn a little about a lot of things. 'Cause you might not know what you're really interested. How would you know what you're really interested in if you at least aren't like doing it?\n\nPeripheral exploration broadly of the knowledge landscape. And talk to people from different walks of life and different industries, and professions, and skills, and occupations, like just try. Learn as much as possible. Be on the search for meaning.\n\nIsn't the whole thing a search for meaning?\n\nYeah, what's the meaning of life and all? But just generally, like I said, I would encourage people to read broadly in many different subject areas, and then try to find something where there's an overlap of your talents and what you're interested in. So people may be good at something, or they may have skill at a particular thing, but they don't like doing it. So you wanna try to find a thing that's a good combination of the things that you're inherently good at, but you also like doing.\n\nAnd reading as a super fast shortcut to figure out which, where are you, you're both good at it, you like doing it, and it'll actually have positive impact.\n\nWell, you gotta learn about things somehow. So reading, a broad range, just really read. More important was as a kid I read through the encyclopedia. So, that was pretty helpful. And, there was all sorts of things I didn't even know existed, well lots, obviously.\n\nThat's as broad as it gets.\n\nEncyclopedias were suggestible, I think, whatever 40 years ago. Maybe read through like the condensed version of the Encyclopedia Britannica, I'd recommend that. You can always like skip subjects, so you read a few paragraphs and you know you're not interested, just jump to the next one. So, read the encyclopedia, or skim through it.\n\nI put a lotta stock and certainly have a lot of respect for someone who puts in an honest day's work to do useful things. And just generally to have a, not a zero sum mindset, or have more of a grow the pie mindset. When I see people like, perhaps, including some very smart people, kind of taking an attitude of, I like doing things that seem like morally questionable.\n\nIt's often because they have, at a base sort of axiomatic level, a zero sum mindset. And they, without realizing it, they don't realize to have a zero sum mindset, or at least they don't realize it consciously. And so, if you have a zero sum mindset, then the only way to get ahead is by taking things from others. If the pie is fixed, then the only way to have more pie is to take someone else's pie. But this is false.\n\nObviously the pie has grown dramatically over time, the economic pie. In reality, you can have, (Elon laughing) overuse this analogy, we can have a lot of, there's a lot of pie. (Lex laughing) My pie is not fixed. So, you really wanna make sure you're not operating, without realizing it, from a zero sum mindset.\n\nWhere the only way to get ahead is to take things from others, then that's gonna result in you trying to take things from others, which is not good. It's much better to work on adding to the economic pie. Like I said, creating more than you consume. Doing more than you, yeah. So that's a big deal. I think there's a fair number of people in finance that do have a bit of a zero-sum mindset.\n\nI mean, it's all walks of life. I've seen that. One of the reasons Rogan inspires me is he celebrates others a lot, not creating a constant competition like there's a scarcity of resources. And what happens when you celebrate others and you promote others, the ideas of others, it actually grows that pie. The resources become less scarce. And that applies in a lot of kinds of domains.\n\nIt applies in academia where a lot of people are very, see some funding for academic research as zero sum. It is not, if you celebrate each other, if you make, if you get everybody to be excited about AI, about physics, about mathematics, I think there'll be more and more funding, and I think everybody wins. Yeah. That applies, I think, broadly.\n\nYeah, yeah. Exactly.\n\nSo the last question about love and meaning. What is the role of love in the human condition broadly, and more specific to you? How has love, romantic love or otherwise, made you a better person, a better human being? Better engineer?\n\nNow you're asking really perplexing questions. It's hard to give a. I mean, there are many books, poems, and songs written about what is love, and what is, what exactly, what is love, baby don't hurt me. (Lex laughing) - That's one of the great ones, yes. You have earlier quoted Shakespeare, but that's really up there.\n\n[Elon] Yeah. Love is a many splendor thing.\n\nI mean, there's, 'cause we've talked about so many inspiring things, like be useful in the world, sort of solve problems, alleviate suffering, but it seems like connection between humans is a source, it's a source of joy, it's a source of meaning, and that's what love is, friendship, love. I just wonder if you think about that kind of thing, when you talk about preserving the light of human consciousness.\n\nRight.\n\nAnd us becoming a multi-planetary species. I mean, to me at least, that means, if we're just alone, and conscious, and intelligent, it doesn't mean nearly as much as if we're with others. Right? And there's some magic created when we're together. The friendship of it, and I think the highest form of it is love, which I think broadly is much bigger than just sort of romantic, but also yes. Romantic love and family and those kinds of things.\n\nWell, I mean, the reason I guess I care about us becoming a multi-planet species and a space bearing civilization is foundationally, I love humanity. And so I wish to see it prosper and do great things and be happy, and if I did not love humanity, I would not care about these things.\n\nSo when you look at the whole, the human history, all of the people whose ever lived, all the people alive now, It's pretty, we're okay. On the whole, we're a pretty interesting bunch.\n\nYeah. All things considered, and I've read a lot of history, including the darkest, worst parts of it. Despite all that, I think on balance, I still love humanity.\n\nYou joked about it, the 42, what do you think is the meaning of this whole thing? Is there a non-numerical representation?\n\nOh, I should say Yeah, well really, I think what Doug Sanders was saying in \"The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy\" is that the universe is the answer. What we really need to figure out are what questions to ask about the answer that is the universe. And that the question is the really the hard part. And if you can properly frame the question, then the answer, relatively speaking, is easy.\n\nSo therefore, if you want to understand what questions to ask about the university, you wanna understand the meaning of life, we need to expand the scope and scale of consciousness so that we're better able to understand the nature of the universe and understand the meaning of life.\n\nAnd ultimately, the most important part will be to ask the right question.\n\n[Elon] Yes.\n\nThereby elevating the role of the interviewer - [Elon] Yeah, exactly.\n\nas the most important human in the room.\n\nGood questions are, it's hard to come up with good questions. Absolutely. But yeah, that is the foundation of my philosophy is that I am curious about the nature of the universe. And obviously I will die. I don't know when I'll die, but I won't live forever. But I would like to know that we are on a path to understanding the nature of the universe and the meaning of life and what questions to ask about the answer that is the universe.\n\nAnd so if we expand the scope and scale of humanity, and consciousness in general, which includes silicon consciousness, then that seems like a fundamentally good thing.\n\nElon, like I said, I'm deeply grateful that you would spend your extremely valuable time with me today, and also that you have given millions of people hope in this difficult time, this divisive time and this cynical time. So I hope you do continue doing what you're doing. Thank you so much for talking today.\n\nOh, you're welcome. Thanks for your excellent questions.\n\nThanks for listening to this conversation with Elon Musk. To support this podcast, please check out our sponsors in the description. And now, let me leave you with some words from Elon Musk himself. \"When something is important enough, you do it, even if the odds are not in your favor.\" Thank you for listening, and hope to see you next time.","textByLang":{"en":"The following is a conversation with Elon Musk, his third time on this, the \"Lex Fridman Podcast.\" Yeah, make yourself comfortable.\n\nBoo.\n\nOh, wow, okay.\n\nYou don't do the headphone thing?\n\nNo.\n\nOkay. I mean, how close do I need to get this thing?\n\nThe closer you are the sexier you sound.\n\nHey babe, sup.\n\nYup.\n\nCan't get enough of you on that baby? (both laughing) - I'm gonna clip that out and any time somebody messages me on my phone I'll just respond with that.\n\nIf you want my body and you think I'm sexy come right out and tell me so. Do do do do do.\n\n[Shivon] So funny.\n\nSo good. Okay, serious mode activate, alright.\n\nSerious mode. Come on, your Russian, you can be serious.\n\nYeah I know.\n\nEveryone's serious all the time in Russia.\n\nYeah, yeah. We'll get there. We'll get there. (Shivon speaking faintly) Just gotten soft. Allow me to say that the SpaceX launch of human beings to orbit on May 30th, 2020, was seen by many as the first step in a new era of human space exploration. These human space flight missions were a beacon of hope to me and to millions over the past two years as our world has been going through one of the most difficult periods in recent human history.\n\nWe see the rise of division, fear, cynicism, and the loss of common humanity, right when it is needed most. So, first, Elon, let me say thank you for giving the world hope and reason to be excited about the future.\n\nOh, it's kind of you to say that. I do want to do that. Humanity has, obviously a lot of issues, and people at times do bad things, but despite all that, I love humanity and I think we should make sure we do everything we can to have a good future and an exciting future, and one where that maximizes the happiness of the people.\n\nLet me ask about a Crew Dragon Demo-2. So that first flight with humans onboard, how did you feel leading up to that launch? Were you scared? Were you excited? What was goin' through your mind? So much was at stake.\n\nYeah, no, that was extremely stressful. The question we obviously could not let them down in any way. So, extremely stressful I'd say, to say the least.\n\nI was confident that, at the time that we launched, that no one could think of anything, at all, to do that would improve the probability of success and we racked our brains to think of any possible way to improve the probability of success, and we could not think of anything more, nor could NASA, and so, that's just the best that we could do. So then we went ahead and launched.\n\nNow, I'm not a religious person, but I nonetheless got on my knees and prayed for that mission.\n\n[Lex] Were you able to sleep?\n\nNo.\n\nHow did it feel when it was a success? First when the launch was a success, and when they returned back home, or back to earth.\n\nIt was a great relief. Yeah. For high stress situations I find it's not so much elation, as relief. And, I think once as we got more comfortable and proved out the systems, 'cause we really, you're gotta make sure everything works. It was definitely a lot more enjoyable with the subsequent asteroid missions. And I thought the Inspiration mission was actually very inspiring, the Inspiration4 mission.\n\nI'd encourage people to watch the Inspiration documentary on Netflix, it's actually really good. And it really isn't, I was actually inspired by that, so that one I felt, I was kind of able to enjoy the actual mission and not just be super stressed all the time.\n\nSo, for people that somehow don't know, it's the all civilian, first time all civilian out to space out to orbit.\n\nYeah, it was the, I think the highest obit that in like, I don't know, 30 or 40 years or something, the only one that was higher was the one shuttle, sorry, a Hubble servicing mission. And then before that it would've been Apollo in '72. It was pretty wild. So it's cool. It's good. I think as a species, we want to be continuing to do better and reach higher ground.\n\nI think it would be tragic, extremely tragic, if Apollo was the high watermark for humanity, and that that's as far as we ever got. And it's concerning that here we are 49 years after the last mission to the moon. And, so almost half a century, and we've not been back. And that's worrying, it's like, does that mean we've peaked as a civilization or what? I think we gotta get back to the moon and build a base there. A science base.\n\nI think we could learn a lot about the nature of the universe if we have a proper science base on the moon. We have a science base in Antarctica and many other parts of the world. So that's what I think the next big thing we've gotta have like a serious black moon base, and then get people to Mars and get out there and be a space bearing civilization.\n\nI'll ask you about some of those details. But, since you're so busy with the hard engineering challenges of everything that's involved, are you still able to marvel at the magic of it all, of space travel, of every time the rocket goes up, especially when it's a crude mission? Or are you just so overwhelmed with all the challenges that you have to solve?\n\nAnd actually, sort of to add to that, the reason I wanted to ask this question of May 30th, it's been some time, so you can look back and think about the impact already. At the time it was an engineering problem maybe, now it's becoming a historic moment. Like it's a moment that, how many moments will be remembered about the 21st century?\n\nTo me, that or something like that, maybe Inspiration4 or one of those will be remembered as the early steps of a new age of space exploration.\n\nYeah, I mean, during the launches itself, so I mean, I think maybe some people will know, but a lot of people don't know, is I'm actually the chief engineer of SpaceX, so I've signed off on pretty much all the design decisions. So if there's something that goes wrong with that vehicle, it's fundamentally my fault, you know?\n\nSo I'm really just thinking about all the things that like, so when I see the rocket, I see all the things that could go wrong, and the things that could be better, and the same with the Dragon spacecraft. Other people will say, \"Oh, this is a spacecraft or a rocket.\" and \"This looks really cool.\" I'm like, I've like a readout of these are the risks, these are the problems. That's what I see.\n\nLike (Elon chuffing) So it's not what other people see when they see the product.\n\nSo let me ask you then to analyze Starship in that same way. I know you have, you'll talk a bit in more detail about Starship in the near future. Perhaps you had that- - We can talk about in now if you want.\n\nBut, just in that same way, like you said, you see, when you see a rocket, you see the sort of a list of risks. In that same way, you said that Starship was a really hard problem. So, there's many ways I can ask this, but if you magically could solve one problem perfectly, one engineering problem perfectly, which one would it be?\n\n[Elon] On Starship?\n\nOn, sorry, on Starship. So is it maybe related to the efficiency, the engine, the weight of the different components, the complexity of various things, maybe the controls of the crazy thing it has to do to land?\n\nNo, it's actually, by far the biggest thing of solving my time is engine production. Not the design of the engine, I've often said prototypes are easy. Production is hard. So, we have the most advanced rocket engine that's ever been designed. 'Cause I say currently the best rocket engine ever is probably the RD-180 or RD-170 the dual Russian engine, basically. And still, I think an engine should only count if it's gotten something to orbit.\n\nAnd so our engine has not gotten anything to orbit yet, but it is, it's the first engine that's actually better than the Russian RD engines, which were amazing design.\n\nSo you're talking about Raptor engine. What makes it amazing? What are the different aspects of it that make it, what are you the most excited about if the whole thing works in terms of efficiency, all those kinds of things?\n\nWell, it's, the Raptor is a full flow staged combustion engine, and it's operating at a very high TAVR pressure. So, one of the key figures, merit, perhaps the key figure of merit is what is the chamber pressure at which the rocket engine can operate? That's the combustion chamber pressure. So a Raptor is designed to operate at a 300 bar, possibly, maybe higher, than standard atmospheres.\n\nThe record right now for operational engine is the RD engine that I mentioned, the Russian RD, which is, I believe around 267 bar. And the difficulty of the chamber pressure is increases on a non-linear basis. So, 10% more TAVR pressure is more like 50% more difficult, but that air pressure, that is what allows you to get a very high power density for the engine. So, enabling a very high thrust to weight ratio and a very high, specific impulse.\n\nSo, specific impulse is like a measure of the efficiency of a rocket engine. It's really the exhaust, the effect of exhaust velocity of the gas coming out of the engine. With a very high chamber pressure you can have a compact engine that nonetheless has a high expansion ratio, which is the ratio between the exit nozzle and the throat. You see a rocket engine has got sort of like a hourglass shape.\n\nIt's like a chamber and then it necks down and there's a nozzle, and the ratio of the exit diameter to the throat expansion ratio.\n\nSo why is this such a hard engine to manufacture at scale?\n\nIt's very complex.\n\nWhat does complexity mean? Here's a lot of components involved.\n\nThere's a lot of components and a lot of unique materials. So we had to invent several alloys that don't exist in order to make this engine work.\n\nSo it's a materials problem too.\n\nIt's a materials problem, and in a stage combustion, that full floor stage combustion, there are many feedback loops in the system. Basically you've got propellants and hot gas flowing simultaneously to so many different places on the engine. And they all have a recursive effect on each other. So you change one thing here, it has a recursive effect here. It changes something over there. And it's quite hard to control.\n\nThere's a reason no one's made this before. And the reason we're doing a stage commotion full flow is because it has the highest theoretical possible efficiency. So in order to make a fully reasonable rocket, which, that's really the holy grail of orbital rocketry, you have to have, everything's gotta be the best. It's gotta be the best engine, the best airframe, the best heat shield, extremely light avionics, very clever control mechanisms.\n\nYou've got to shed mass in any possible way that you can. For example, we are, instead of putting landing legs on the booster and ship, we are going to catch them with a tower to save the weight of the landing legs. So that's like, I mean, we're talking about catching the largest flying object ever made on a giant tower with chopstick arms. It's like \"Karate Kid\" with the fly, but much bigger.\n\n(Elon laughing) - I mean, pulling something- - This probably won't work the first time. (Elon laughing) So this is bananas. This is bananas stuff.\n\nSo you mentioned that you doubt, well, not you doubt, but there's days or moments when you doubt that this is even possible. It's so difficult.\n\nThe possible part is, well at this point, we'll I think we'll get Starship to work. There's a question of timing. How long will it take us to do this? How long will it take us to actually achieve full and rapid reusability? 'Cause it will probably many launches before we are able to have full and rapid reusability. But I can say that the physics pencils out, we're not, at this point I'd say we're confident that, let's say, I'm very confident success is in the set of all possible outcomes.\n\n[Lex] Mm, right, it's not in all set of.\n\nFor a while there I was not convinced that success was in the set of possible outcomes. (Lex laughing) Which is very important actually. But, so...\n\n[Lex] So you're saying there's a chance.\n\nI'm saying there's a chance. Exactly. Just not sure how long it will take. But we have a very talented team, they're working night and day to make it happen. Like I said, the critical thing to achieve with revolution in space flight and for humanity to be a space bearing civilization is to have a fully and rapidly reusable rocket, orbital rocket. There's not even been any orbital rocket that's been fully reusable ever.\n\nAnd this has always been the holy grail of rocketry and many smart people, very smart people, have tried to do this before, and they've not succeeded. 'Cause it's such a hard problem.\n\nWhat's your source of belief in situations like this when the engineering problem is so difficult, there's a lot of experts, many of whom you admire, who have failed in the past.\n\n[Elon] Yes.\n\nA lot of people, a lot of experts, maybe journalists, all the kinds of, the public in general, have a lot of doubt about whether it's possible, and you yourself know that even if it's a non-nodal set, not empty set, of success, it's still unlikely or very difficult. Where do you go to both personally, intellectually as an engineer, as a team, for source of strength needed to sort of persevere through this and to keep going with the project, take it to completion?\n\nI suppose the strength. Hmm. That's really not how I think about things. I mean, for me, it's simply this is something that is important to get done and we should just keep doing it or die trying, and I don't need a source of strength.\n\nSo quitting is not even like...\n\nIt's not, it's not in my nature.\n\nOkay.\n\nAnd I don't care about optimism or pessimism. Fuck that, we're gonna get it done.\n\n[Lex] Gonna get it done. Can you then zoom back in to specific problems with Starship or any engineering problems you work on? Can you try to introspect your particular biological neural network, your thinking process, and describe how you think through problems, the different engineering and design problems? Is there like a systematic process you've spoken about, first principles thinking, but is there kind of - Yeah, absolutely.\n\nprocess to it?\n\nSaying like, physics is low and everything else was a recommendation. I've met a lot of people that can break the law, but I have never met anyone who could break physics. So first for any kind of technology problem you have to sort of just make sure you're not violating physics. First principles analysis, I think, is something that can be applied to really any walk of life, anything really.\n\nIt's really just saying, let's boil something down to the most fundamental principles, the things that we are most confident are true at a foundational level, and that sets your axiomatic base, and then you reason up from there. And then you cross check your conclusion against the axiomatic truth. Some basics in physics would be like are violating conservation of energy or momentum or something like that, then it's not gonna work.\n\nSo that's just to establish is it possible? And then another good physics tool is thinking about things in the limit. If you take a particular thing and you scale it to a very large number or to a very small number, how do things change?\n\nBoth in number of things you manufacture, something like that, and then in time.\n\nYeah, let's say, take an example of manufacturing, which I think is just a very underrated problem. Like I said, it's much harder to take an advanced technology part and bring it into volume manufacturing, than it is to design it in the first place. More is magnitude. So let's say you're trying to figure out, why is this part or product expensive? Is it because of something fundamentally foolish that we're doing?\n\nOr is it because our volume is too low? And so then you say, okay, well what if our volume was a million units a year? Is it still expensive? That's what I'm radical, thinking about things to the limit. If it's too expensive at a million units a year, then volume is not the reason why your thing is expensive. There's something fundamental about the design.\n\nAnd then you then can focus on the reducing complexity or something like that in the design.\n\nGotta change the design to, change the part to be something that is not fundamentally expensive. That's a common thing in rocketry 'cause the unit volume is relatively low, and so a common excuse would be \"Well, it's expensive because our unit volume is low. And if we were in like automotive or something like that, or consumer electronics, then our costs would lower.\" I'm like, \"Okay, so let's say\" we skip, \"now you're making a million units a year. Is it still expensive?\" If the answer is yes, then economies of scale are not the issue.\n\nDo you throw, into manufacturing, do you throw like supply chain, you talked about resources and materials and stuff like that, do you throw that into the calculation of trying to reason from first principles? Like, how are we gonna make the supply chain work here?\n\nYeah, yeah.\n\n[Lex] And then the cost of materials, things like that, or is that too much?\n\nYeah. Exactly. Like a good example of thinking about things in the limit is if you take any product, any machine or whatever, like take a rocket or whatever, and say, if you've got, if you look at the raw materials in the rocket, so you're gonna have like aluminum, steel, titanium, Inconel, specialty alloys, copper. And you say, \"What's the weight of the constituent elements of each of these elements, and what is their raw material value?\"\n\nAnd that sets the asymptotic limit for how low the cost of the vehicle can be, unless you change the materials. And then when you do that, I call it like maybe the magic one number or something like that.\n\nSo that would be like, if you had the, just a pile of these raw materials here, and you could wave a magic wand and rearrange the atoms into the final shape, that would be the lowest possible cost that you could make this thing for, unless you change the materials. So then, and that is always, almost always a very low number. So then, what's actually causing things to be expensive is how you put the atoms into the desired shape.\n\nYeah, actually, if you don't mind me taking a tiny tangent, I had a, I often talk to Jim Keller who's somebody that worked with you as a- - Oh yeah. Jim did great work at Tesla.\n\nSo, I suppose he carries the flame of the same kind of thinking that you're talking about now. I guess I see that same thing at Tesla and SpaceX folks who work there, they kind of learn this way of thinking and it kinda becomes obvious almost. But anyway, I had argument, not argument. He educated me about how cheap it might be to manufacture Tesla Bot. We just, we had an argument. How can you reduce the cost, of scale, of producing a robot?\n\nBecause, so far I've gotten a chance to interact quite a bit, obviously in the academic circles, with humanoid robots, and then with Boston Dynamics and stuff like that. And they're very expensive to build. And then Jim kinda schooled me on saying like, \"Okay, this kind of first principles thinking of how can we get the cost of manufacturing down.\"\n\nI suppose you do that, you have done that kind of thinking for Tesla Bot and for all kinds of, all kinds of complex, systems that are traditionally seen as complex, and you say, \"Okay, how can we simplify everything down?\"\n\nYeah. I mean, I think if you are really good at manufacturing, you can basically make, at high volume you can basically make anything for a cost that asymptotically approaches the raw material value of the constituents, plus any intellectual property that you need to license. Anything.\n\nRight.\n\nBut it's hard. It's not like that's a very hard thing to do, but it is possible for anything. Anything in volume can be made of, like I said, for a cost that asymptotically approaches it's raw material constituents plus intellectual property license rights.\n\nSo what will often happen in trying to design a product is people will start with the tools and parts and methods that they are familiar with, and try to create a product using their existing tools and methods. The other way to think about it is actually imagine the, try to imagine the platonic ideal of the perfect product or technology, whatever it might be, and say, \"What is this?\n\nWhat is the perfect arrangement of atoms that would be the best possible product? And now let us try to figure out how to get the atoms in that shape.\"\n\nI mean, it sounds, it's almost like \"Rick and Morty\" absurd until you start to really think about it. And you really should think about it in this way 'cause everything else is kind of, if you think you might fall victim to the momentum of the way things are done in the past, unless you think in this way.\n\nWell, just as a function of inertia, people will want to use the same tools and methods that they are familiar with. That's what they'll do by default.\n\n[Lex] Yeah.\n\nAnd then that will lead to an outcome of things that can be made with those tools and methods, but is unlikely to be the platonic ideal of the perfect product. So that's why it's good to think of things in both directions, so like what can we build with the tools that we have, but also what is the perfect, the theoretical perfect product look like?\n\nAnd that theoretical perfect product is gonna be a moving target, 'cause as you learn more the definition of that perfect product will change 'cause you don't actually know what the perfect product is, but you can successfully approximate a more perfect product. So, thinking about it like that, and then saying, \"Okay, now what tools, methods, materials, whatever, do we need to create in order to get the atoms in that shape?\n\nBut people very rarely think about it that way. But it's a powerful tool.\n\nI should mention that the brilliant Shivon Zilis is hanging out with us, in case you hear a voice of wisdom from outside, from up above. Okay. So let me ask you about Mars. You mentioned it would be great for science to put a base on the moon, to do some research, but the truly big leap, again, in this category of seemingly impossible, is to put a human being on Mars. When do you think SpaceX will land a human being on Mars?\n\nHm. Best case is about five years, worst case 10 years.\n\nWhat are the determining factors, would you say, from an engineering perspective? Or is that not the bottlenecks?\n\nNo, it's fundamentally you're engineering the vehicle. I mean Starship is the most complex and advanced rocket that's ever been made by, I don't know, order of magnitude or something like that. It's a lot. It's really next level. And the fundamental optimization of Starship is minimizing cost per ton to orbit, and ultimately cost per ton to the surface of Mars.\n\nThis may seem like a mercantile objective, but it is actually the thing that needs to be optimized. There is a certain cost per ton to the surface of Mars where we can afford to establish a self-sustaining city. And then above that, we cannot afford to do it. So, right now you can fly to Mars for $1 trillion. No amount of money could get you a ticket to Mars.\n\nSo we need to get that above, to get that like something that is actually possible at all. We don't want to just wanna have, with Mars, flags and footprints, and then not come back for a half century like we did with the moon. In order to pass a very important, great filter. I think we need to be a multi-planet species.\n\nThis ways sound somewhat esoteric to a lot of people, but, eventually given enough time, something, Earth is likely to experience some calamity, that could be something that humans do to themselves, or an external event like happened to the dinosaurs. But if, eventually, if none of that happens, and somehow, magically, we keep going, then the sun will, the sun is gradually expanding and will engulf the earth.\n\nAnd probably Earth gets too hot for life in about 500 million years. It's a long time, but that's only 10% longer than earth has been around. And so if you think about like the, the current situation, it's really remarkable and kind of hard to believe, but Earth's been around four and a half billion years, and this is the first time in four and a half billion years that it's been possible to extend life beyond Earth.\n\nAnd that window of opportunity may be open for a long time, and I hope it is, but it also may be open for a short time, and we should, I think it is wise for us to act quickly while the window is open. Just in case it closes.\n\nYeah, the existence of nuclear weapons, pandemics, all kinds of threats, - [Elon] Yeah.\n\nshould kind of give us some motivation.\n\nI mean, civilization could get, could die with a bang or a whimper. If it dies of demographic collapse, then it's more of a whimper, obviously. And if it's World War III, it's more of a bang, but these are all risks. I mean, it's important to think of these things and just, things like probabilities, not certainties, there's a probability that something bad will happen on earth.\n\nI think most likely the future will be good, but there's, let's say for argument's sake, a 1% chance per century of a civilization ending event. Like that was Stephen Hawking's estimate. I think he might be right about that. We should basically think of this, being a multi-planet species, just like taking out insurance for life itself, like life insurance for life. (both laughing) - This turned into a infomercial real quick.\n\nLife insurance for life, yes. And we can bring the creatures from, plants and animals from Earth to Mars, and breathe life into the planet, and have a second planet with life. That would be great. They can't bring themselves there, so if we don't bring them to Mars, then they will just for sure all die when the sun expands anyway, and then that'll be it.\n\nWhat do you think is the most difficult aspect of building civilization on Mars, terraforming Mars, like from engineering perspective, from a financial perspective, human perspective, to get a large number of folks there who will never return back to Earth?\n\nNo, they could certainly return, some will return back to Earth.\n\nThey will choose to stay there for the rest of their lives.\n\nYeah, many will. We need the spaceships back, like the ones that go to Mars, we need them back, so you can hop on if you want. But we can't just not have the spaceships come back, those things are expensive. We need them back. I'd like to come back and journal their trip.\n\nI mean, do you think about the terraforming aspect, actually building, are you're so focused right now on the spaceships part that's so critical to get to Mars?\n\nYeah, yeah. We absolutely, if you can't get there, nothing else matters. And like I said, we can't get there at some extraordinarily high cost. I mean, the current cost of let's say one ton to the surface of Mars is on the order of a billion dollars. So, 'cause you don't just need the rocket and the launch and everything, you need like heat shield, you need guidance system, you need deep space communications. You need some kind of landing system.\n\nSo, like rough approximation would be a billion dollars per ton to the surface of Mars right now. This is obviously way too expensive to create a self-sustaining civilization. So we need to improve that by at least a factor of a thousand.\n\n[Lex] A million per ton?\n\nYes, ideally less than, much less than a million ton. You have to say like, well how much can society afford to spend or want to spend on a self-sustaining city on Mars? The self-sustaining part is important. Like it's just the key threshold, the grateful to, we'll have been passed, when the city on Mars can survive even if the space ships from earth stop coming, for any reason. Doesn't matter what the reason is.\n\nBut if they stop coming for any reason, will it die out or will it not? And if there's even one critical ingredient missing, then it still doesn't count. It's like if you're in a long sea voyage and you've got everything except vitamin C. (Elon laughing) It's only a matter of time, you're gonna die. So we gotta get a Mars city to the point where it's self sustaining.\n\nI'm not sure this will really happen in my lifetime, but I hope to see it at least have a lot of momentum. And then you could say, \"Okay, what is the minimum tonnage necessary to have a self-sustaining city?\" And there's a lot of uncertainty about this. You could say, I dunno, it's probably at least a million tons. 'Cause you have to set up a lot of infrastructure on Mars.\n\nLike I said, you can't be missing anything that in order to be self-sustaining, you can't be, like you need a semiconductor, fabs, you need iron ore refineries, you need lots of things, you know? And Mars is not super hospitable. It's the least inhospitable planet, but it's definitely a fixer upper of a planet.\n\n[Lex] Outside of Earth.\n\nYes.\n\nEarth is pretty good.\n\nEarth is like easy. Yeah.\n\nAnd, also, we should clarify in the solar system.\n\n[Elon] Yes. In the solar system.\n\nThere might be nice like vacation spots.\n\nThere might be some great planets out there, but it's hopeless- - Too hard to get there?\n\nYeah, way, way, way, way, way too hard, to say the least.\n\nLet me push back on that. Not really a pushback, but quick a curve ball of a question. So you did mention physics as the first starting point. General relativity allows for worm holes. They technically can exist. Do you think those can ever be leveraged by humans to travel fast in the speed of light? Or are you saying- - The worm hole thing is debatable. We currently do not know of any means of going faster than the speed of light.\n\nThere are some ideas about having space. You're gonna move at the speed of light through space, but if you can make space itself move, that would be warping space. Space is capable of moving faster than the speed of light.\n\n[Lex] Right.\n\nLike the universe in the big bang, the universe expanded at much more than the speed of light, by a lot.\n\n[Lex] Yeah. If this is possible, the amount of energy required to warp space is so gigantic, it boggles the mind.\n\nSo, all the work you've done with propulsion, how much innovation is possible with rocket propulsion? I mean, you've seen it all, and you're constantly innovating in every aspect. How much is possible? Like how much, can you get 10 X somehow? Is there something in there, in physics, that you can get significant improvement in terms of efficiency of engines and all those kinds of things?\n\nWell, as I was saying, really the holy grail is a fully and rapidly reasonable orbital system. Right now, the Falcon 9 is the only reusable rocket out there. The booster comes back and lands, you've seen the videos. And we got the nose cone or fairing back, but we do not get the upper stage back. That means that we have a minimum cost of building an upper stage.\n\nYou can think of like a two-stage rocket of sort of like two airplanes, like a big airplane and a small airplane, and we get the big airplane back, but not the smaller airplane. And so it still costs a lot. That upper stage is at least $10 million. And then the degree of the booster is not as rapidly and completely reusable as we'd like in order of the pharynx.\n\nSo, our kind of minimum marginal cost not counting overhead for per flight is on the order of 15 to $20 million, maybe. That's extremely good for, it's by far better than any rocket ever in history. But with full and rapid reusability, we can reduce the cost per ton to orbit by a factor of a hundred. Just think of it like, like imagining if you had an aircraft or something or a car.\n\nAnd if you had to buy a new car every time you went for a drive, that'll be very expensive. It'll silly, frankly.\n\nMhm.\n\nBut, in fact, you just refuel the car or recharge the car and that's makes your trip, I don't know, a thousand times cheaper. So, it's the same for rockets. Very difficult to make this complex machine that can go to orbit. And so if you cannot reuse it, and have to throw even any significant part of it away, that massively increases the cost. Starship in theory could do a cost per launch of like a million, maybe $2 million or something like that. And put over a hundred tons in orbit, which is crazy.\n\nYeah. That's incredible. So you're saying it's, by far the biggest bang for the buck is to make it fully reusable versus like some kind of brilliant breakthrough in theoretical physics.\n\nNo, no, there's no, there's no brilliant brea, no, there's no. We gotta make the rocket reusable, this is an extremely difficult engineering problem.\n\nGot it.\n\nBut no new physics is required.\n\nJust brilliant engineering. Let me ask a slightly philosophical fun question. Gotta ask. I know you're focused on getting to Mars, but once we're there on Mars, what form of government, economic system, political system, do you think would best for an early civilization of humans? The interesting reason to talk about this stuff, it also helps people dream about the future. I know you're really focused about the short-term engineering dream, but it's like, I don't know. There's something about imagining an actual civilization on Mars that gives people, - Sure.\n\nreally gives people hope.\n\nWell, it would be a new frontier and an opportunity to rethink the whole nature of government just as was done in the creation of the United States. I mean, I would suggest having a direct democracy, like people vote directly on things, as opposed to representative democracy. So, representative democracy, I think, is too subject to a special interests and coercion of the politicians and that kind of thing. So I'd recommend that there's just direct democracy. People vote on laws, the population votes on laws themselves, and then the laws must be short enough that people can understand them.\n\nYeah, and then keeping a well-informed populace, really being transparent about all the information about what they're voting for.\n\nYeah. Absolute transparency.\n\nYeah. And not make it as annoying as those cookies we have to accept- - Have to accept cookies. There's always a slight amount of trepidation when you click accept cookies. I feel as though there's perhaps a very tiny chance that'll open a portal to hell or something like that.\n\n[Lex] That's exactly how I feel. Why do they keep wanting me to accept that? What do they want with this cookie? Somebody got upset with accepting cookies or something somewhere. I mean, who cares? So annoying to keep accepting all these cookies.\n\n[Lex] To me, it's just a great- - I'm tired of accept- (Shivon speaking faintly) Yes you can have my damn cookie, I don't care. Whatever.\n\n[Lex] You heard it from me Elon first, he accepts all your damn cookies.\n\nYeah. (both laughing) And stop asking me. It's annoying.\n\nYeah, it's one example of implementation of a good idea done really horribly.\n\nYeah, somebody was like, there's some good intentions of like privacy or whatever, but now everyone's just has to tick accept cookies and it's now, you have billions of people who have to keep clicking accept cookie and it's super annoying. Just accept the damn cookie, it's fine. There is like, I think fundamental problem that we're, because we've not really had a major, like a world war or something like that in a while.\n\nAnd obviously we would like to not have world wars. There's not been a cleansing function for rules and regulations. So wars did have some silver lining in that there would be a reset on rules and regulations after a war. So World Wars I and II there were huge resets on rules and regulations.\n\nIf society does not have a war, and there's no cleansing function or garbage collection for rules and regulations, then rules and regulations will accumulate every year 'cause they're immortal. There's no actual, humans die, but the laws don't. So, we need a garbage collection function for rules and regulations that should not just be immortal.\n\n'Cause some of the rules and regulations that are put in place will be counterproductive, done with good intentions, but counterproductive. And sometimes not done with good intentions. If rules and regulations just accumulate every year, and you get more and more of them, then eventually you won't be able to do anything. You're just like Gulliver with, tied down by thousands of little strings. And we see that in, U. S.\n\nand LA, basically all economies that have been around for awhile, and regulators and legislators create new rules and regulations every year, but they don't put effort into removing them. And I think that's very important that we put effort into removing rules and regulations.\n\nBut it gets tough 'cause you get special interests that then are dependent on, they have a vested interest in that whatever rule regulation and that they, then they fight to not get it removed.\n\nYeah. I mean, I guess the problem with the constitution is it's kinda like C versus Java 'cause it doesn't have any garbage collection built in. I think there should be. When you first said the metaphor of garbage collection, I loved it - Yeah, it's from a coding standpoint.\n\nFrom a coding standpoint, yeah, yeah. It would be interesting if the laws themselves kinda had a built in thing where they kinda die after a while, unless somebody explicitly publicly defends them. So that's sort of, it's not like somebody has to kill them. They kinda die themselves. They disappear.\n\n[Elon] Yeah.\n\nNot to defend Java or anything, C++, you could also have great garbage collection in Python and so on.\n\nYeah. So, yeah, something needs to happen or just the civilizations arteries just harden over time. And you can just get less and less done because there's just a rule against everything. So I think, I don't know, for Mars, or whatever, I say, or even for here, obviously for Earth as well, I think there should be an active process for removing rules and regulations and questioning their existence.\n\nIf we've got a function for creating rules and regulations, 'cause rules and regulations could also think of as like, they're like soft work or lines of code for operating a civilization, that's the rules and regulations. So it's not like we shouldn't have rules and regulations, but you have your code accumulation, but no code removal. And so it just gets to be become basically archaic bloatware after a while.\n\nAnd it's just, it makes it hard for things to progress. So, I don't know, maybe Mars you'd have like any given law must have a sunset, and require active voting to keep it up there. I actually also say like, and these are just, I don't know, recommendations or thoughts, and ultimately will be up to the people on Mars to decide, but I think it should be easier to remove a law than to add one, because of the, just to overcome the inertia of laws.\n\nSo, maybe it's like, for argument's sake, you need like say 60% vote to have a law take effect, but only a 40% vote to remove it.\n\nSo let me be the guy, you posted a meme on Twitter recently where there's like a row of urinals and a guy just walks all the way across - So true, yeah.\n\nand he tells you about crypto.\n\nListen, I mean, that's happened to me so many times, I think maybe even literally. (both laughing) - Do you think technologically speaking there's any room for ideas of smart contracts or so on? 'Cause you mentioned laws, that's an interesting implement use of things like smart contracts to implement the laws by which governments function. Like something built on Ethereum, or maybe a dog coin that enables smart contracts somehow.\n\nI never, I didn't quite understand this whole smart contract thing. (both laughing) I'm too downtown to understand smart contracts.\n\nThat's a good line. (both laughing) - I mean, my general approach to any kind of deal or whatever is just make sure there's clarity of understanding. That's the most important thing.\n\n[Lex] Right.\n\nAnd just keep any kind of deal very short and simple, plain language, and just make sure everyone understands this is the deal. Does everyone, is it clear? And what are the consequences if first things don't happen? But usually deals are, business deals or whatever are way too long and complex and overly lawyered and pointlessly.\n\nYou mentioned that Doge is the people's coin.\n\n[Elon] Yeah.\n\nAnd you said that you were literally going, SpaceX may consider literally putting a Dogecoin on the moon.\n\nYeah.\n\nIs this something you're still considering, Mars perhaps, do you think there's some chance, we've talked about political systems on Mars, that a Dogecoin is the official currency of Mars, it's the coin of the future?\n\nWell, I think Mars itself will need to have a different currency because you can't synchronize due to speed of light, or not easily.\n\nSo it must be complete standalone from earth.\n\nWell, yeah, Mars is, at closest approach, it's four light minutes away roughly, and then add for this approach, it's roughly 20 light minutes away, maybe a little more. So you can't really have something synchronizing if you've got a 20 minute speed of light issue, if it's got a one minute blockchain. It's not gonna synchronize properly. I don't know if Mars would have a cryptocurrency as a thing, but probably, seems likely. But it would be so kind of localized thing on Mars.\n\nAnd you let the people decide.\n\nYeah, absolutely. The future of Mars should be up to the martians. I mean, I think the cryptocurrency thing is an interesting approach to reducing the error in the database that is called money. I think I have a pretty deep understanding of what money actually is on a practical day-to-day basis, because of PayPal. We really got in deep there. And right now the money system, actually for practical purposes is really a bunch of heterogeneous mainframes running a old COBOL.\n\n[Lex] Okay, you mean literally- - Literally.\n\nThat is literally what's happening.\n\nin batch mode. Okay.\n\nIn batch mode.\n\nYeah. Pity the poor bastards who have to've maintained that code. Okay. That's pain.\n\n[Lex] Not even Fortrans, COBOL, yep.\n\nThat's COBOL. And they still, the banks are still buying mainframes, in 2021, and running engine COBOL code. The federal reserve is like probably even older than what the banks have, and they have an old COBOL mainframe. And so the government effectively has editing privileges on the money database. And they use those editing privileges to make more money whenever they want. And this increases the error in the database that is money.\n\nSo I think money should really be viewed through the lens of information theory. You're kinda like an internet connection. Like what's the bandwidth, total bit rate, what is the latency jitter, packet drop, errors in the network communication. Just think of money like that basically. I think that's probably what I really think of it. And then say what system, from an information theory standpoint, allows an economy to function the best.\n\nCrypto is an attempt to reduce the error in money that is contributed by governments diluting the money supply as basically a pernicious form of taxation.\n\nSo both policy in terms of with inflation, and actual like technological, COBOL, cryptocurrency takes us into the 21st century in terms of the actual systems that allow you to do the transaction, to store wealth, all those kinds of things.\n\nLike I said, just think - In theory.\n\nof money as information, people often will think of money as having power in and of itself. It does not. Money is information, and it does not have power in and of itself. Applying the physics tools of thinking about things in the limit is helpful. If you are stranded on a tropical island and you have a trillion dollars, it's useless. 'Cause there's no resource allocation.\n\nMoney is a database of resource allocation, but there's no resources to allocate except yourself. So money's useless. If you're stranded on a desert island with no food, all the Bitcoin in the world will not stop you from starving.\n\n[Lex] Yeah.\n\nJust think of money as a database for resource allocation across time and space. And then what system, in what form should that database, or data system, what would be most effective? There is a fundamental issue with, say Bitcoin, in its current form in that it's, the transaction volume is very limited. And the latency, the latency, for a properly confirmed transaction is too long, much longer than you'd like.\n\nIt's actually not great from transaction volume standpoint or latency standpoint. So it is perhaps useful as, to solve an aspect of the money database problem, which is the sort of store of wealth or an accounting of relative obligations, I suppose. But it is not useful as a currency, as a day-to-day currency.\n\nBut people have proposed different technological solutions- - [Elon] Like Lightning.\n\nYeah, Lightening Network and the Layer 2 technologies on top of that.\n\nI mean, it's all, it seems to be all kind of a trade-off, but the point is, it's kinda brilliant to say, to just think about information, think about what kind of database, what kind of infrastructure enables the exchange of- - Yeah, let's say like you're operating an economy, and you need to have some thing that allows for the efficient, to have efficient value ratios between products and services.\n\nSo you've got this massive number of products and services, and need to, you can't just barter. 'Cause that would be extremely unwieldy. So you need something that gives you a ratio of exchange between goods and services. And then, something that allows you to shift obligations across time, like debt, debt and equity shift obligations across time. Then what does the best job of that?\n\nPart of the reason why I think there's some merit to Dogecoin, even though, it was obviously created as a joke, is that it actually does have a much higher transaction volume capability than Bitcoin. The costs of doing a transaction, the Dogecoin fee is very low. Like right now, if you wanna do a Bitcoin transaction, the price of doing that transaction is very high, so you could not use it effectively for most things.\n\nAnd nor could it even scale to a high volume. And when Bitcoin was started, I guess around 2008 or something like that, the internet connections were much worse than they are today, like order of magnitude. I mean, they were way, way worse in 2008. So like having a small block size or whatever it is, and a long synchronization time made sense in 2008, but, 2021, or fast forward 10 years, it's like, comically low.\n\nAnd I think there's some value to having a linear increase in the amount of currency that is generated. So, because some amount of the currency, if a currency is too deflationary or like, or should say if, if a currency is expected to increase in value over time, there's reluctance to spend it.\n\n'Cause you're like, \"Oh, if I, I'll just hold it and not spend it because its scarcity is increasing with time, so if I spend it now, then I will regret spending it. So I will just, you know, hoard all it.\" But if there's some dilution of the currency occurring over time, that's more of an incentive to use that as a currency.\n\nSo Dogecoin just somewhat randomly has just a fixed a number of sort of coins or hash strings that are generated every year. So there's some inflation, but it's not a percentage at base. It's a fixed number, so the percentage of inflation will necessarily decline over time. I'm not saying that it's like the ideal system for a currency, but I think it actually is just fundamentally better than anything else I've seen, just by accident.\n\nI like how you said around 2008, so you're not, some people suggest that you might be Satoshi Nakamoto. You've probably said you're not. Let me ask- - I'm not.\n\nYou're not, for sure. Would you tell us if you were?\n\nYes.\n\nOkay. Do you think it's a feature or a bug that he's anonymous, or she, or they? It's an interesting kind of quirk of human history that there is a particular technology that is a completely anonymous inventor. Or creator.\n\nWell, I mean, you can look at the evolution of ideas before the launch of Bitcoin and see who wrote about those ideas. And then, I don't know, obviously I don't know who created Bitcoin for practical purposes, but the evolution of ideas is pretty clear for that. And, it seems as though Nick Szabo is probably more than anyone else responsible for the evolution of those ideas. So, here he claims not to be Nakamoto, but I'm not sure, that's neither here nor there, but he seems to be the one more responsible for the ideas behind Bitcoin than anyone else.\n\nSo it's not, perhaps, like singular figures aren't even as important as the figures involved in the evolution of ideas that led to things.\n\nYeah. Perhaps it's sad to think about history, but maybe most names would be forgotten anyway.\n\nWhat is a name anyway, it's a name, a name attached to an idea. What does it even mean really?\n\nI think Shakespeare had a thing about roses and stuff, whatever he said.\n\n\"Rose by any other name would smell as sweet.\" (Lex laughing) - I got Elon to quote Shakespeare. I feel like I accomplished something today.\n\n\"Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?\" (both laughing) - [Lex] I'm gonna clip that out instead.\n\nThou art more temporate and more fair. (both laughing) (Shivon speaking faintly) - Autopilot. Tesla autopilot- (Elon laughing) Tesla autopilot has been through an incredible journey over the past six years, or perhaps even longer in the minds of, in your mind, and the minds of many involved.\n\nI think that's where we first like connected, really, was the autopilot stuff, autonomy and...\n\nThe whole journey was incredible to me to watch. 'Cause I knew, well, part of it is I was at MIT and I knew the difficulty of computer vision. And I knew the whole, I had a lotta colleagues and friends, about the DARPA challenge, and knew how difficult it is. And so there was a natural skepticism when I first drove a Tesla with the initial system based on Mobileye. I thought there's no way.\n\nSo at first when I got in I thought \"There's no way this car could maintain, like stay in the lane and create a comfortable experience.\" So my intuition initially was that the lane-keeping problem is way too difficult to solve.\n\n[Elon] Oh lane-keeping, yeah, that's relatively easy.\n\nBut solve in the way that we just, we talked about previous, this prototype, versus a thing that actually creates a pleasant experience over hundreds of thousands of miles or millions. Yeah, so, I was proven wrong- - We had to wrap a lot of code around the Mobileye thing, it doesn't just work by itself.\n\nI mean, that's part of the story of how you approach things sometimes. Sometimes you do things from scratch. Sometimes at first you kind of see what's out there, and then you decide to from scratch. That was one of the boldest decisions I've seen is both on the hardware and the software to decide to eventually go from scratch. I thought, again, I was skeptical of whether that's going to be able to work out 'cause it's such a difficult problem.\n\nAnd so it was an incredible journey, what I see now with everything, the hardware, the compute, the sensors, the things I maybe care and love about most is the stuff that Andrej Karpathy's leading with, the dataset selection, the whole data engine process, the neural network architectures, the way that's in the real world, that network is tested, validated, all the different test sets, versus the image net model of computer vision, like what's in academia is like real world artificial intelligence.\n\nAndrej's awesome and obviously plays an important role, but we have a lot of really talented people driving things. Ashok is actually the head of autopilot engineering. Andrej's the director of AI.\n\nAi stuff, yeah. So yeah, I'm aware that there's an incredible team of just a lot going on.\n\nPeople will give me too much credit, and they'll give Andrej too much credit.\n\nAnd people should realize how much is going on under the- - Yeah, just a lot of really talented people. The Tesla Autopilot AI team is extremely talented. It's like some of the smartest people in the world. So, yeah, and we're getting it done.\n\nWhat are some insights you've gained over those five, six years of autopilot about the problem of autonomous driving. So, you leaped in having some sort of first principles kinds of intuitions, but nobody knows how difficult the pro- - Yeah, I thought the self-driving problem would be hard, but it was harder than I thought. It's not like I thought it'd be easy, I thought it would be very hard, but it was actually way harder than even that.\n\nSo, I mean want it comes down to at the end of the day is to solve self-driving you have to solve. You basically need to recreate what humans do to drive, which is humans drive with optical senses, eyes, and biological neural nets. And so in order to, that's how the entire road system is designed to work, with basically passive optical and neural nets, biologically.\n\nSo, for actually, for full self driving to work, we have to recreate that in digital form. So we have to, that means cameras with advanced neural nets in silicon form. And then it will obviously solve for small cell driving. That's the only way, I don't think there's any other way.\n\nBut the question is what aspects of human nature do you have to encode into the machine, right? So you have to solve the perception problem, like detect, and then you first realize, what is the perception problem for driving? Like all the kinds of things you have to be able to see. Like what do we even look at when we drive? There's, I just recently heard, Andrej talked about, at MIT, about like car doors.\n\nI think it was the world's greatest talk of all time about car doors. The fine details of car doors, like what is even an open car door, man. So like the ontology of that, that's a perception problem. We humans solve that perception problem, and Tesla has to solve that problem. And then there's the control and the planning, coupled with the perception.\n\nYou have to figure out like what's involved in driving, especially in all the different edge cases. Maybe you can comment on this, how much game theoretic kind of stuff needs to be involved, at a four-way stop sign? As humans, when we drive, our actions affect the world.\n\nTrue.\n\nIt changes how others behave, most autonomous driving, you're usually just responding to the scene, as opposed to like really asserting yourself in the scene. Do you think...\n\nI think these sort of control logic conundrums are not the hard part. Let's see...\n\n[Lex] What do you think is the hard part in this whole beautiful complex problem?\n\nIt's a lot of freaking software man, and a lot of smart lines of code. For sure, in order to create an accurate vector space.\n\nYou're coming from image space, which is like this flow of photons going to the camera, cameras and then since you have this massive bitstream in image space, and then you have to effectively compress the, a massive bitstream corresponding to photons that knocked off an electron in a camera sensor and turn that bitstream into a vector space.\n\nBy vector space I mean, you've got cars and humans and lane lines and curves and traffic lights and that kind of thing. Once you have an accurate vector space, the control problem is similar to that of a video game, like a \"Grand Theft Auto\" or \"Cyberpunk.\" If you have accurate vector space. It's, the control problem is, I wouldn't say it's trivial, it's not trivial, but it's it's not like some insurmountable thing.\n\nHaving an accurate vector space is very difficult.\n\nYeah, I think we humans don't give enough respect to how incredible the human perception system is to mapping the raw photons to the vector space representation in our heads.\n\nYour brain is doing an incredible amount of processing and giving you an image that is a very cleaned up image. Like when we look around here, you see color in the corners of your eyes, but actually your eyes have very few cones, cone receptors in the peripheral vision. Your eyes are painting color in the peripheral vision.\n\nYou don't realize it, but they're, eyes are actually painting color and your eyes will also have, there's blood vessels and all sorts of gnarly things, and there's a blind spot, but do you see your blind spot? No, your brain is painting in the missing, the blind spot.\n\nYou're gonna do these things online where you look here and look at this point and then look at this point, and it's, if it's in your blind spot, your brain will just fill in the missing bits.\n\nSo cool. The peripheral vision's so cool.\n\nYeah.\n\nIt makes you realize all the illusions, provision science, it makes you realize just how incredible the brain is.\n\nThe brain's doing a crazy amount of post-processing on the vision signals from your eyes. It's insane. And then even once you get all those vision signals, your brain is constantly trying to forget as much as possible. So human memory is perhaps the weakest thing about the brain is memory.\n\nSo because memory is so expensive to our brain, and so limited, your brain is trying to forget as much as possible and distill the things that you see into the smallest amounts of information possible. So your brain is trying to not just get to a vector space, but get to a vector space that is the smallest possible vector space of only relevant objects.\n\nYou can sort of look inside your brain, or at least I can like when you drive down the road, and try to think about what your brain is actually doing, - Yeah - consciously. It's like, you'll see a car, because you don't have cameras. You don't have eyes in the back of your head or the side, so you say like, you're basically, your head is like a, you basically have like two cameras on a slow gimbal. (both laughing) And eyesight's not that great.\n\nOkay? Human eyes are... And people are constantly distracted and thinking about things and texting and doing all sorts of things they shouldn't do in a car, changing the radio station. So, having arguments. When's the last time you looked right and left, and rearward, or even diagonally forward to actually refresh your vector space?\n\nSo you're glancing around and what your mind is doing is trying to distill the relevant vectors, basically objects with a position and motion, and then editing that down to the least amount that's necessary for you to drive.\n\nIt does seem to be able to edit it down or compress even further into things like concept, so it's not, it's like it goes beyond, the human mind seems to go sometimes beyond vector space to sort of space of concepts, to where you'll see a thing, it's no longer represented spatially somehow, it's almost like a concept that you should be aware of. If this is a school zone, you'll remember that as a concept. Which is a weird thing to represent, but perhaps for driving you don't need to fully represent those things. Or maybe you get those kind of - Well you- - indirectly.\n\nYou need to established vector space and then actually have predictions for those vector spaces. Like you drive past say a bus and you see that there's people, before you drove past the bus you saw people crossing, or just imagine there's like a large truck or something blocking site. But before you came up to the truck you saw that there were some kids about to cross the road in front of the truck.\n\nNow you can no longer see the kids, but you would now know, okay, those kids are probably gonna pass by the truck and cross the road. Even though you cannot see them. So you have to have memory. You need to remember that there were kids there and you need to have some forward prediction of what their position will be.\n\nIt's a really hard problem - at the time of relevance.\n\nSo with occlusions and computer vision, when you can't see an object anymore, even when it just walks behind a tree and reappears, that's a really, really, I mean, at least in academic literature, it's tracking through occlusions, it's very difficult.\n\nYeah, we're doin' it.\n\n[Lex] I understand this. So some of it- - It's like object permanence. The same thing happens with the humans with neural nets. When like a toddler grows up, there's a point in time where they develop, they have a sense of object permanence. So before a certain age, if you have a ball, or a toy or whatever, and you put it behind your back and you pop it out, before they have object permanence, it's like a new thing every time.\n\nIt's like, \"Whoa, this toy went poof, disappeared, and now it's back again.\" and they can't believe it. And that they can play peek-a-boo all day long because peek-a-boo's fresh every time. But then we figure out object permanence, then they realize, \"Oh, no, the object is not gone. It's just behind your back.\"\n\nSometimes I wish we never did figure out object permanence.\n\nObject permanence. Yeah, so that's a...\n\n[Lex] That's an important problem to solve.\n\nYes. So, an important evolution of the neural nets in the car is memory across both time and space. Now you can't remember, you have to say how long do you want to remember things for. There's a cost to remembering things for a long time. So you could run out of memory to try to remember too much for too long. And then you also have things that are stale if you remember 'em for too long.\n\nAnd then you also need things that are remembered over time. So even if you, say have, for evidence sake, five seconds of memory on a time basis, but, let's say you you're parked at a light and you saw, use a pedestrian example, that people were waiting to cross the cross the road, and you can't quite see them because of an occlusion, but they might wait for a minute before the light changes for them to cross the road.\n\nYou still need to remember that that's where they were, and that they're probably going to cross road type of thing. So even if that exceeds your time-based memory, it should not exceed your space of memory.\n\nAnd I just think the data engine side of that, so getting the data to learn all of the concepts that you're saying now, is an incredible process. It's this iterative process of just, there's this HydraNet of many- - HydraNet. We're changing the name to something else.\n\nOkay. Alright. I'm sure it will be equally as \"Rick and Morty,\" like.\n\nYeah. We've re-architected the neural nets in the cars so many times, it's crazy.\n\nOh, so every time there's a new major version, you'll rename it to something more ridiculous or, or memorable and beautiful, sorry. Not ridiculous of course.\n\nIf you see the full like array of neural nets that are operating the cars, it kinda boggles the mind. There's so many layers. It's crazy. We started off with simple neural nets that were basically image recognition on a single frame from a single camera, and then trying to knit those together with, with C. I should say, we were really familiar running C here, 'cause C++ is too much overhead, and we have our own C compiler.\n\nSo, to get maximum performance we actually wrote our own C compiler and are continuing to optimize our C compiler for maximum efficiency. In fact, we've just recently done a new rev on the C compiler that will compile directly to our autopilot hardware.\n\nSo you wanna compile the whole thing down with your own compiler?\n\nYeah.\n\nSo efficiency here, 'cause there's all kinds of computers, CPU, GPU, there's like basic types of things and you have to somehow figure out the scheduling across all of those things. And so you're compiling the code down - Yeah.\n\nthat does all, okay. So that's why there's a lotta people involved.\n\nThere's a lot of hardcore software engineering at a very sort of bare metal level. 'Cause we're trying to do a lot of compute that's constrained to the our full self-driving computer. And we wanna try to have the highest frames per second possible in a sort of very finite amount of compute and power. We really put a lot of effort into the efficiency of our compute.\n\nSo there's actually a lot of work done by some very talented software engineers at Tesla that, at a very foundational level to improve the efficiency of compute and how we use the trip accelerators, which are basically doing matrix math, dot products, like a bazillion dot products. And it's like, one of our neural nets is like, compute wise, like 99% dot products.\n\nAnd you wanna achieve as many high frame rates, like a video game, you want - Yeah.\n\nfull resolution, higher frame.\n\nHigh frame rate, low latency, low jitter. I think one of the things we're moving towards now is no post-processing of the image through the image signal processor. What happens for cameras is that, well almost all cameras, is they there's a lot of post-processing done in order to make pictures look pretty. And so we don't care about pictures looking pretty. We just want the data. So we're moving just raw photon counts.\n\nThe image that the computer sees is actually much more than what you'd see if you represent it on a camera, it's got much more data. And even in very low light conditions, you can see that there's a small photon count difference between this spot here and that spot there, which means that, so it can see in the dark incredibly well, because it can detect these tiny differences in photon counts. Like much better than you could possibly imagine.\n\nWe also save 13 milliseconds on latency.\n\n[Lex] From removing the post-processing on the image?\n\nYes.\n\nYeah.\n\n'Cause we've got eight cameras and then there's roughly, I don't know, one and a half milliseconds or so, maybe 1. 6 milliseconds of latency for each camera. Basically bypassing the image processor gets us back 13 milliseconds of latency, which is important.\n\nAnd we track latency all the way from photon hits the camera, to all the steps that it's gotta go through to get, go through the various neural nets and the C code, and there's a little bit of C++ there as well. Well, I can, maybe a lot, but it, the core stuff is, the heavy-duty compute is all in C.\n\nAnd so we track that latency all the way to an outward command to the drive unit to accelerate the brakes, to slow down the steering, turn left or right. 'Cause you gotta output a command, that's gotta go to a controller, and like some of these controllers have an update frequency that's maybe 10 Hertz or something like that, which is slow. That's like now you lose a hundred milliseconds potentially.\n\nSo then we wanna update the drivers on the steering and braking control to have more like 100 Hertz instead of 10 Hertz, then you've got a 10 millisecond latency instead of 100 milliseconds worst-case latency.\n\nAnd actually, jitter is more of a challenge than latency, 'cause latency is, you can anticipate and predict, but if you've got a stackup of things going from the camera to the computer, through then a series of other computers, and finally to an actuator on the car; if you have a stackup of tolerances, of timing tolerances, then you can have quite a variable latency, which is called jitter.\n\nAnd that makes it hard to anticipate exactly how you should turn the car or accelerate because, if you've got maybe 150, 200 milliseconds of jitter, then you could be off by 2. 2 seconds. And this could make a big difference.\n\nSo you have to interpolate somehow to deal with the effects of jitter, so they can make robust control decisions. So the jitters and the sensor information, or the jitter can occur at any stage in the pipeline.\n\nIf you have just, if you have fixed latency, you can anticipate and like say, \"Okay, we know what that our information is,\" for argument's sake, \"150 milliseconds stale.\" For argument's sake, 150 milliseconds from photons taking camera to where you can measure a change in the acceleration of the vehicle.\n\nThen you can just say, \"Okay, well we're gonna, we know it's 150 milliseconds, so we're gonna take that into account and compensate for that latency.\" However, if you've got then 150 milliseconds of latency, plus 100 milliseconds of jitter, which could be anywhere from zero to 100 milliseconds on top. So then your latency could be from 150, 250 milliseconds, now you've got 100 milliseconds that you don't know what to do with.\n\nThat's basically random. So, getting rid of jitter is extremely important.\n\nAnd that affects your control decisions and all of those kinds of things. Okay.\n\nYeah, the cars just gonna fundamentally maneuver better with lower jitter.\n\n[Lex] Got it.\n\nThe cars will maneuver with super human ability and reaction time, much faster than a human. I mean, I think over time, the autopilot, full self-driving will be capable of maneuvers that are far more than what like James Bond could do in like the best movie, type of thing.\n\nThat's exactly what I was imagining in my mind, as you said it.\n\nIt's like impossible maneuvers that a human couldn't do.\n\nWell, let me ask sort of a, looking back the six years, looking out into the future, based on your current understanding, how hard do you think this full self-driving problem, when do you think Tesla will solve level four FSD?\n\nI mean, it's looking quite likely that it'll be next year.\n\nAnd what does the solution look like? Is it the current pool of FSD beta candidates? They start getting greater and greater as they have been, degrees of autonomy. And then there's a certain level beyond which they can do their own, they can read a book.\n\nYeah. I mean, you can see, anybody who's been following the full self-driving beta closely will see that the rate of disengagements has been dropping rapidly. So, like there's engagement B where the driver intervenes to prevent the car from doing something - [Lex] Right. dangerous potentially. So the interventions per million miles has been dropping dramatically.\n\nAnd that trend looks like it happens next year is that the probability of an accident on FSD is less than that of the average human, and then significantly less than that of the average human. So, it certainly appears like we will get there next year.\n\nThen there's gonna be a case of, okay, well, we not have to prove this to regulators and prove it to, and we want a standard that is not just equivalent to a human, but much better than the average human. I think it's gotta be at least two or three times higher safety than a human. Two or three times lower probability of injury than a human before we would actually say like, \"Okay, it's okay to go.\"\n\nIt's not gonna be equivalent, it's gonna be much better.\n\nSo if you look, FSD 10.6 just came out recently, 10.7's on the way, maybe 11 is on the way somewhere in the future.\n\nYeah. We were hoping to get 11 out this year, but it's, 11 actually has a whole bunch of fundamental rewrites on the neural net architecture and some fundamental improvements in creating vector space.\n\nSo there is some fundamental leap that really deserves the 11. I mean, that's a pretty cool number.\n\nYeah. 11 would be a single stack for all, one stack to rule them all.\n\nA single stack. But there are just some really fundamental neural net architecture changes that will allow for much more capability. At first they're gonna have issues. Like we have this working on like sort of alpha software and it's good, but it's, it's basically taking a whole bunch of C, C++ code and leading a massive amount of C++ code and replacing it with the neural net.\n\nAnd Andrej makes this point a lot, which is like neural nets are kind of eating software. Over time there's less and less conventional software, more and more neural net. Which is still software, but it's, still comes out to lines of software. But, just more neural net stuff, and less, heuristics basically. More matrix based stuff, and less heuristics based stuff.\n\nOne of the big changes will be, right now the neural nets will deliver a giant bag of points to the C++, or C and C++ code.\n\n[Lex] Yeah.\n\nWe call it the giant bag of points.\n\n[Lex] Yeah. And it's like, so you got a pixel and something associated with that pixel, like this pixel is probably car, this pixel is probably landline. Then you've got to assemble this giant bag of points in the C code and turn it into vectors. And it does a pretty good job of it, but it's, we wanna just, we need another layer of neural nets on top of that to take the giant bag of points and distill that down to a vector space in the neural net part of the software, as opposed to the heuristics part of the software. This is a big improvement.\n\n[Lex] Neural net's all the way down, so you want.\n\nIt's not even all neural nets, but it's, this is a game changer to not have the bag of points, the giant bag of points, that has to be assembled with many lines of C, C++, and have a neural net just assemble those into a vector. So the neural net is outputting much, much less data, it's outputting, this is a lane line, this is a curb, this is drivable space, this is a car, this is a pedestrian or cyclist or something like that.\n\nIt's outputting, it's really outputting proper vectors to the C, C++ control code, as opposed to, sort of, constructing the vectors in C. Which we've done, I think, quite a good job of, but it grew kinda hitting a local maximum on the, how well the C can do this. So this is really a big deal. And just all of the networks in the car need to move to Surround Video, there's still some Legacy Networks that are not Surround Video.\n\nAnd all of the training needs to move to Surround Video, and the efficiency of the training, it needs to get better, and it is. And then we need to move everything to raw photon counts, as opposed to processed images.\n\n[Lex] Okay. So if you- - Which is quite a big reset on the training, 'cause the system's trained on post-process imaged images. So we need to redo all the training to train against the raw photon counts, instead of the post-processed image.\n\nSo ultimately, it's kind of reducing the complexity of the whole thing. So, reducing.\n\nYep. Lines of code will actually go lower.\n\nYeah, that's fascinating. So you do infusion of all the sensors, so reducing the complexity of having to deal with these- - [Elon] Infusion of the cameras.\n\nSorry.\n\nIt's all cameras really.\n\nRight, yes. Same with humans.\n\nYeah.\n\nWell, I guess we got ears too, okay.\n\nYeah, we'll actually need to incorporate sound as well. 'Cause you know, you need to listen for ambulance sirens or firetrucks. If somebody, yelling at you or something, I don't know. It just, there's a little bit of audio that needs to be incorporated as well.\n\nDo you need to go to bathroom break?\n\n[Elon] Yeah, sure, let's take a break.\n\nOkay.\n\n[Elon] Honestly, frankly, the ideas are the easy thing, and the implementation is the hard thing. The idea of going to the moon is the easy part, but going to the moon is the hard part.\n\n[Lex] Is the hard part.\n\nAnd there's a lot of like hardcore engineering that's gotta get done at the hardware and software level. Like I said, optimizing the C compiler and just, cutting out latency everywhere. If we don't do this, the system will not work properly. So, the work of the engineers doing this, they are like the unsung heroes. But they are critical to the success of the situation.\n\nI think you made it clear. I mean, at least to me, it's super exciting, everything that's going on outside of what Andrej is doing. Just the whole infrastructure of the software. I mean, everything is going on with data engine, whatever it's called, the whole process is just a work of art.\n\nThe sheer scale of it is, it boggles the mind. The training, the amount of work done with, we've written all this custom software for training and labeling, and to do order labeling. Order labeling is essential. 'Cause, especially when you've got like Surround Video, it's very difficult to label Surround Video from scratch is extremely difficult. Take humans such a long time to even label one video clip, like several hours.\n\nOr the order labeler, it basically will just apply heavy duty, a lot of compute to the video clips, to pre-assign and guess what all the things are that are going on in the Surround Video.\n\n[Lex] And there's like correcting it.\n\nYeah, and then all the human has to do is like tweak, like say, adjust what is incorrect. This is like, increases productivity by 100 or more.\n\nYeah. So you've presented Tesla Bot as primarily useful in the factory. First of all, I think humanoid robots are incredible from a fan of robotics. I think the elegance of movement that humanoid robots, that bipedal robots show are just so cool.\n\nIt's really interesting that you're working on this and also talking about applying the same kind of, all the ideas, of some of which you've talked about, with data engine, all the things that we're talking about, with Tesla autopilot, just transferring that over to the, just yet another robotics problem. I have to ask since I care about human robot interactions, so the human side of that. So you've talked about mostly in the factory.\n\nDo you see as part of this problem that Tesla Bot has to solve is interacting with humans and potentially having a place like in the home. So, interacting, not just, - Sure.\n\nnot replacing labor, but also like, I don't know, being a friend or an assistant.\n\n[Elon] I think the possibilities are endless. Yeah, I mean, it's obviously, it's not quite in Tesla's primary mission direction of accelerating sustainable energy, but it is an extremely useful thing that we can do for the world, which is to make a useful humanoid robot that is capable of interacting with the world and helping in many different ways.\n\nSo in factories, and really just, I mean, I think, if you say, extrapolate to many years in the future, I think work will become optional. There's a lot of jobs that, if people weren't paid to do it, they wouldn't do it. Like it's not, it's not fun, necessarily. If you're washing dishes all day, it's like, eh. Even if you really like washing dishes, do you really wanna do it for eight hours a day every day? Probably not.\n\nAnd then there's like dangerous work, and basically if it's dangerous, boring, has like potential for repetitive stress injury, that kind of thing, then that's really where humanoid robots would add the most value initially. So that's what we're aiming for is to, for the humanoid robots to do jobs that people don't voluntarily want to do. And then we'll have to pair that, obviously, with some kind of universal, basic income in the future.\n\nSo, I think.\n\nDo you see a world when there's like hundreds of millions of Tesla Bots doing different, performing different tasks throughout the world?\n\nYeah, I haven't really thought about it that far into the future, but I guess that there may be something like that.\n\nCan I ask a wild question? So, the number of Tesla cars has been accelerated and has been close to 2 million produced. Many of them have autopilot.\n\n[Elon] I think we're over 2 million now.\n\nYeah. Do you think there'll ever be a time when there'll be more Tesla Bots than Tesla cars?\n\nYeah. Actually, it's funny you ask this question 'cause normally I do try to think pretty far into the future, but I haven't really thought that far into the future with the Tesla Bot, or it's codenamed Optimus, I call it Optimus Subprime, because it's not like a giant transformer robot. But it's meant to be a general purpose help robot.\n\nAnd basically, the things that were, basically, Tesla, I think, has the most advanced real-world AI for interacting with the real world, which we've developed as a function to make self-driving work.\n\nAnd so, along with custom hardware and, like a lotta hardcore low-level software to have it run efficiently and be power efficient 'cause, it's one thing to do neural nets if you've got a gigantic server room with 10,000 computers, but now, let's say you just, you have to now distill that down into one computer that's running at low power in a humanoid robot or a car.\n\nThat's actually very difficult and a lotta hardcore soft work is required for that. So since we're kind of like solving the navigate the real world with neural nets problem for cars, which are kinda like robots with four wheels, then it's like kind of a natural extension of that is to put it in a robot with arms and legs. And actuators.\n\nThe two hard things are, you basically need to make the, have the robot be intelligent enough to interact in a sensible way with the environment. So you need real real world AI, and you need to be very good at manufacturing, which is a very hard problem.\n\nTesla's very good at manufacturing, and also has the real world AI, so making the humanoid robot work is, basically it means developing custom motors and sensors that are different from what a car would use. I think we have the best expertise in developing advanced electric motors and power electronics. So, it just has to be for humanoid robot application, not a car.\n\nStill, you do talk about love sometimes. So let me ask, this isn't like for like sex robots or something- - [Elon] Love is the answer.\n\nYes. There is something compelling to us, not compelling, but we connect with humanoid robots, or even legged robot, like with a dog, in shapes of dogs. It just, it seems like there's a huge amount of loneliness in this world. All of us seek companionship with other humans, friendship and all those kinds of things. We have a lot of here in Austin, a lot of people have dogs.\n\n[Elon] That's right.\n\nThere seems to be a huge opportunity to also have robots that decrease the amount of loneliness in the world, or help us humans connects with each other. So, in a way that dogs can. Do you think about that with Tesla Bot at all, or is it really focused on the problem of performing specific tasks? Not connecting with humans?\n\nI mean, to be honest, I have not actually thought about it from the companionship standpoint, but I think it actually would end up being, it could be actually a very good companion. And it could develop a personality over time that is unique. It's not just all the robots are the same. And that personality could evolve to be, match the owner or the, I guess the owner. Whatever you wanna call it. The companion, the human.\n\nThe other half, right? In the same way that friends do. See, I think that's a huge opportunity. I think- - Yeah, no, that's interesting. 'Cause there's a Japanese phrase; wabi-sabi, the subtle imperfections are what makes something special. And the subtle imperfections of the personality of the robot, mapped to the subtle imperfections of the robot's human friend, dunno, owner sounds like maybe the wrong word, but, could actually make an incredible buddy basically.\n\n[Lex] And in that way, the imperfections- - Like R2-D2 or a C-3PO sort of thing.\n\nSo from a machine learning perspective, I think the flaws being a feature is really nice. You could be quite terrible at being a robot for quite a while in the general home environment or all in the general world. And that's kind of adorable and that's, those are your flaws, and you fall in love with those flaws. It's very different than autonomous driving where it's a very high stakes environment, you cannot mess up. And so it's, yeah, it's more fun to be a robot in the home.\n\nYeah, in fact, if you think of like a C-3PO and R2-D2, they actually had a lot of like flaws and imperfections and silly things and they would argue with each other.\n\nWere they actually good at doing anything? I'm not exactly sure.\n\nThey definitely added a lot to the story. But there sort of quirky elements and, that they would make mistakes and do things, it would just, it made them relatable, I don't know. Endearing. So yeah, I think that that could be something that, it probably would happen. But our initial focus is just to make it useful. I'm confident we'll get it done, I'm not sure what the exact timeframe is, but we'll probably have, I don't know, a decent prototype towards the end of next year or something like that.\n\nAnd it's cool that it's connected to Tesla, the car.\n\nYeah, it's using a lotta, it would use the autopilot inference computer and a lot of the training that we've done for the four cars, in terms of recognizing real world things, could be applied directly to the robot. But there's a lot of custom actuators and sensors that need to be developed.\n\nAnd an extra module on top of the vector space for love.\n\nAh, yeah.\n\nThat's missing. Okay.\n\nWe could add that to the car too.\n\nThat's true. Yeah, it could be useful in all environments. Like you said, a lot of people argue in the car, so maybe we can help 'em out. You're a student of history, fan of \"Dan Carlin's Hardcore History\" podcast.\n\n[Elon] Yeah. That's great.\n\nGreatest podcast ever.\n\nYeah, I think it is, actually.\n\nIt almost doesn't really count as a podcast.\n\n[Elon] It's more like a audio book.\n\nYeah. So you were on the podcast with Dan, I just had a chat with him about it. He said you guys went military and all that kind of stuff.\n\nYeah, it was basically, it should be titled engineer wars. Essentially, when there's a rapid change in the rate of technology, then engineering plays a pivotal role in victory in battle.\n\nHow far back in history did you go? Did you go to World War II?\n\nWell, it was supposed to be a deep dive on fighters and bomber technology in World War II, but that ended up being more wide-ranging than that. 'Cause I just went down the, a total rat hole of like studying all of the fighters and bombers in World War II, and the constant rock, paper, scissors game that one country would make this plane, and they'd make a plane to beat that, and they'd try to make a plane to beat that, and then they'll...\n\nAnd really what matters is like the pace of innovation, and also access to high quality fuel and raw materials. So, like Germany had like some amazing designs, but they couldn't make them because they couldn't get the raw materials. And they had a real problem with the oil and fuel, basically, the fuel quality was extremely variable.\n\nSo the design wasn't the bottleneck, it was- - Yeah, the U.S. had kick-ass fuel, that was very consistent, the problem is, if you make a very high performance aircraft engine, in order to make it high performance, you have to the fuel, the aviation gas, has to be a consistent mixture. And it has to have a high octane. High octane is the most important thing, but also can't have like impurities and stuff 'cause you'll foul up the engine. And the German just never had good access to oil. They try to get it by invading the caucuses, but that didn't work too well.\n\nThat never works well.\n\nDidn't work out for them. (woman speaking faintly) Nice to meet you. Germany was always struggling with basically shitty oil, and so then they could not, they couldn't count on high quality fuel for their aircraft. So then they had to have all these additives and stuff. Whereas the U. S. had awesome fuel, and they provided that to Britain as well.\n\nSo, that allowed the British and the Americans to design aircraft engines that were super high-performance, better than anything else in the world. Germany could design the engines, they just didn't have the fuel. And then also the likes of the, the quality of the aluminum alloys that they were getting was also not that great, and so, yeah.\n\n[Lex] You talked about all this with Dan?\n\nYep.\n\nAwesome. Broadly looking at history, when you look at Genghis Khan, when you look at Stalin, Hitler, the darkest moments of human history, what do you take away from those moments? Does it help you gain insight about human nature, about human behavior today? Whether it's the wars or the individuals, or just the behavior of people, any aspects of history.\n\nYeah. I find history fascinating. There's just a lot of incredible things that have been done, good and bad, that they just help you understand the nature of civilization, and individuals, and...\n\nDoes it make you sad that humans do these kinds of things to each other? You look at the 20th century, World War II, the cruelty of the abuse of power. Talk about communism, Marxism, and Stalin.\n\nI mean, some of these things do, I mean, if you, there's a lot of human history, but most of it is actually people just getting on with their lives, and it's not like human history is just non-stop war and disaster, those are actually just, those are intermittent and rare, and if they weren't then humans would soon cease to exist. But there's just that, wars tend to be written about a lot.\n\nWhereas something being like, well, a normal year where nothing major happened doesn't get written about much, but that's, most people just like farming and kinda living their life. Being a villager somewhere. And every now and again, there's a war. I would have to say, there aren't very many books that I, where I just had to stop reading, 'cause it was just too dark.\n\nBut the book about \"Stalin The Court Of The Red Star,\" I had stopped reading, it was just too dark. Rough.\n\nYeah. The 30s. There's a lot of lessons there to me, in particular that it feels like humans, all of us have that zeal, Solzhenitsyn line, that the line between good and evil runs to the heart in every man that all of us are capable of evil, all of us are capable of good, it's almost like this kind of responsibility that all of us have to tend towards the good.\n\nAnd so, to me, looking at history is almost like an example of, look, you have some charismatic leader that convinces you of things, is too easy, based on that story to do evil, onto each other, onto your family onto others. And so it's like our responsibility to do good. It's not like now somehow different from history, that can happen again, all of it can happen again. And yes, most of the time you're right.\n\nI mean, the optimistic view here is mostly people are just living life. And as you've often memed about, the quality of life was way worse back in the day, and it keeps improving over time, through innovation, through technology, but still it's somehow notable that these blimps of atrocities happen.\n\nSure. Yeah, I mean, life was really tough for most of history. I mean, probably for most of human history, a good year would be one where not that many people in your village died of the plague, starvation, freezing to death, or being killed by a neighboring village. It's like, \"Well, it wasn't that bad.\" It was only like, \"You know, we lost 5% this year. It was a good year.\"\n\nYeah.\n\nThat would be par for the course. Just not starving to death would have been the primary goal of most people throughout history. Just making sure we'll have enough food to last through the winter and not get, freeze or whatever. Now food is plentiful. We have an obesity problem.\n\nWell, yeah, the lesson there is to be grateful for the way things are now for some of us. We've spoken about this offline. I'd love to get your thought about it here. If I sat down for a long form in person conversation with the President of Russia, Vladimir Putin, would you potentially want to call in for a few minutes to join in on a conversation with him, moderated and translated by me?\n\nSure. Yeah. Sure, I'd be happy to do that.\n\nYou've shown interest in the Russian language. Is this grounded in your interest in history of linguistics culture, general curiosity?\n\n[Elon] I think it sounds cool.\n\nSounds cool, not looks cool. It takes a moment to read Cyrillic. Once you know what the Cyrillic characters stand for, actually, then reading Russian becomes a lot easier 'cause there are a lot of words that are actually the same. Like bank is bank.\n\nSo find the words that are exactly the same and now you start to understand Cyrillic, yeah.\n\nIf you can sound it out, then it's much, there's at least some commonality of words.\n\nWhat about the culture? You love great engineering, physics. There's a tradition of the sciences there. When you look at the 20th century, from rocketry. So, some of the greatest rockets, some of the space exploration has been done in the Soviet, in the former Soviet Union.\n\nYeah.\n\nSo, do you draw inspiration from that history? Just how this culture, that in many ways, I mean, one of the sad things is, because of the language, a lot of it is lost to history, because it's not translated, all those kinds of, because it is in some ways an isolated culture, it flourishes within it's borders.\n\n[Elon] Yeah.\n\nSo do you draw inspiration from those folks, from the history of science engineering there?\n\nYeah. I mean, the Soviet Union, Russia, and Ukraine as well, have a really strong history in space flight, like some of the most advanced and impressive things in history were done by the Soviet Union. One cannot help but admire the impressive rocket technology that was developed. After the sort of fall of the Soviet Union, there's much less that happened, still things are happening, but it's not quite at the frenetic pace that it was happening before the Soviet Union kind of dissolved into separate republics.\n\nYeah. I mean, there's the Roscosmos, the Russian, the agency. I look forward to a time when those countries, with China, are working together, the United States, they're all working together, maybe a little bit of friendly competition, but.\n\nI feel like friendly competition is good. Governments are slow and the only thing slower than one government is a collection of governments. (Lex laughing) - Yeah.\n\nThe Olympics would be boring if everyone just crossed the finishing line at the same time.\n\nYeah.\n\nNobody would watch.\n\n[Lex] Yeah.\n\nAnd people wouldn't try hard to run fast and stuff. So, I think friendly competition is a good thing.\n\nThis is also a good place to give a shout out to a video titled \"The Entire Soviet Rocket Engine Family Tree\" by Tim Dodd, AKA Everyday Astronaut. It's like an hour and a half. It gives a full history of Soviet rockets. And people should definitely go check out and support Tim in general, that guy's super excited about the future, super excited about space flight, every time I see anything by him I just have a stupid smile on my face, 'cause he's so excited about stuff.\n\nYeah, Tim Dodd is - I love people like that.\n\nreally great if you're interested in anything to do with space. He's, in terms of explaining rocket technology to your average person, he's awesome. The Best, I'd say. I should say, the whole reason I switched us from, Raptor at one point was gonna be a hydrogen engine, but hydrogen has a lot of challenges. It's very low density. It's a deep cryogen, so it's only liquid very close to absolute zero. Requires a lot of insulation.\n\nSo it was a lot of challenges there. And I was actually reading a bit about Russian rocket engine development. At least the impression I had was that Soviet Union, Russia, and Ukraine primarily were actually in the process of switching to Methalux. And there were some interesting test and data for ISP, they were able to get up to like a 382nd ISP with the Methalux engine. And I was like, \"Whoa, okay, that's, that's actually really impressive.\"\n\nSo I think we could, you could actually get a much lower cost, an optimizing cost per ton to orbit, cost per to Mars. I think methane option is the way to go. And I was partly inspired by the Russian work on the test ends, with Methalux engines.\n\nAnd now for something completely different. Do you mind doing a bit of a meme review in the spirit of the great, the powerful Pewdiepie? Let's say one to 11, - Okay.\n\njust go over a few documents printed out.\n\n[Elon] We can try.\n\n[Lex] Let's try this. I present to you document numero uno. (Elon laughing) - Okay.\n\n[Lex] Vlad The Impaler discovers marshmallows.\n\nYeah, that's not bad.\n\nYou get it, because he likes impaling things.\n\nYes, I get it. Yes, I get it, I don't know, three, whatever.\n\n[Lex] Oh, that's not very good. This is ground in some engineering, some history. (Elon laughing) - Yeah, I give this an 8 out of 10.\n\n[Lex] What do you think about nuclear power?\n\nI'm in favor of nuclear power. In a place that is not subject to extreme natural disasters. I think it's a, new nuclear power is a great way to generate electricity. I don't think we should be shutting down nuclear power stations.\n\n[Lex] Yeah, but what about Chernobyl?\n\nExactly. I think people, there's like a lot of fear of radiation and stuff. I guess, the problem is a lot of people just don't, they didn't study engineering or physics, so they don't, just the word radiation just sounds scary, you know? So they don't, they can't calibrate what radiation means. But radiation is much less dangerous than you'd think. For example, Fukushima, when the Fukushima problem happened, due that tsunami.\n\nI got people in California asking me if they should worry about radiation from Fukushima. And I'm like, definitely not, not even slightly, not at all. That is crazy. And just to show this is how, the dangers is so much overplayed compared to what it really is that I actually flew to Fukushima. And, actually, I donated a solar power system for a water treatment plant. And I made a point of eating locally grown vegetables on T. V. in Fukushima.\n\nI'm still alive. Okay.\n\nSo it's not even that the risk of these events is low, but the impact of them is- - The impact is greatly exaggerated.\n\nIt' human nature.\n\nPeople don't know what radiation is, I've had people ask me, \"What about radiation from cell phones causing brain cancer?\" I'm like, \"When you say radiation, do you mean photons or particles?\" They're like, dunno, \"What do you mean photons particles?\" \"Do you mean, let's say photons. What frequency or wavelength?\" And they're like, \"No, I have no idea.\" \"Do you know that everything's radiating all the time?\" They're like, \"What do you mean?\"\n\n\"Like, everything's radiating all the time.\" Photons are being emitted by all objects all the time, basically. And if you wanna know what it means to stand in front of nuclear fire, go outside. The sun is a gigantic thermonuclear reactor that you're staring right at it. Are you still alive? Yes. Okay. Amazing.\n\nYeah, I guess radiation is one of the words that could be used as a tool to fear monger by certain people. That's it.\n\nI think people just don't understand.\n\nI mean, that's the way to fight that fear, I suppose, just to understand, just to learn.\n\nYeah, just say, okay, how many people have actually died from nuclear accidents? It's like practically nothing, and, say how many people have died from coal plants? And it's a very big number. Obviously we should not be starting up coal plants and shutting down nuclear plants, just doesn't make any sense at all. Coal plants, I don't know, a hundred to a thousand times worse for health than nuclear power plants.\n\nYou wanna go to the next one? It's really bad. That 90, 180 and 360 degrees, everybody loves the math. Nobody gives a shit about 270.\n\nIt's not super funny. I don't know, like two or three.\n\n[Lex] Yeah. This is not, LOL situation. (both laughing) - [Lex] Yeah. (Elon laughing) - That one's pretty good.\n\n[Lex] The United States oscillating between establishing and destroying dictatorships. It's like a metro, is that metro- - Yeah, metronome. Yeah, it's, I dunno, a 7 out of 10. It's kinda true.\n\nThis is kinda personal for me. Next one.\n\nOh, man, is this Laika.\n\n[Lex] Yeah, well, no, this is- - Or it's referring to Laika or something.\n\n[Lex] It's Laika's husband.\n\nHusband, yeah.\n\n[Lex] Hello? Yes, this is dog. Your wife was launched into space. And then the last one is him with his eyes closed and a bottle of vodka.\n\nYeah, Laika didn't come back.\n\n[Lex] No. They don't tell you the full story of, the impact it had on the loved ones.\n\nTrue.\n\nThat one gets an 11 from me. It just keeps goin', on the Russian theme. First man in space, nobody cares. First man on the moon.\n\nWell, I think people do care.\n\n[Lex] I know, but.\n\nYuri Gagarin's name will be forever in history. I think.\n\nThere is something special about placing, stepping foot onto another totally foreign land. It's not the journey, like people that explore the oceans. It's not as important to explore the oceans as to land in a whole new continent.\n\n[Elon] Yeah.\n\n[Lex] Oh this is about you. (Elon laughing) Oh yeah. I'd love to get your comment on this. Elon Musk after sending $6.6 billion to the UN to end world hunger. \"You have three hours.\"\n\nYeah, well, I mean obviously $6 billion is not gonna end world hunger. I mean, the reality is at this point the world is producing far more food than it can really consume. We don't have a caloric constraint to this point. So where there is hunger, it is almost always due to civil war, or strife, or some like, it's not a thing that is extremely rare for it to be just a matter of, lack of money. There's a civil war in some country, and one part of the country's literally trying to starve the other part of the country.\n\nSo it's much more complex than something that money could solve. It's geopolitics, it's a lot of things, it's human nature, it's governments, it's monies, monetary systems, all that kinda stuff.\n\nYeah. Food is extremely cheap these days. I mean, the U.S. at this point, among low income families, obesity is actually now the problem. It's not, obviously it's not hunger, it's too much, too many calories. It's not that nobody's hungry anywhere, it's just, this is not a simple matter of adding money and solving it.\n\n[Lex] What do you think that one gets? Is getting?\n\nTwo.\n\n[Lex] Just going after empires. World, \"Where did you get those artifacts?\" The British Museum. It's a shout out to \"Monty Python.\" \"We found them.\"\n\nYeah. The British Museum is, it's pretty great. I mean, admittedly Britain did take these historical artifacts from around the world and put them in London, but it's not like people can't go see them. So, it is a convenient place to see these ancient artifacts is London, for a large segment of the world. So I think, unbalanced, the British Museum is net good. Well, I'm sure that a lot of countries are arguing about that.\n\n[Lex] Yeah.\n\nIt's like, you wanna make these historical artifacts accessible to as many people as possible. And the British Museum, I think does a good job of that.\n\nEven if there's a darker aspect to like the history of empire in general, whatever the empire is, however things were done. It is the history that happened. You can't sort of erase that history, unfortunately. You can just become better in the future. Is the point.\n\nYeah, I mean, well how are we gonna pass moral judgment on these things? If one is gonna judge, say the Russia Empire, you gotta judge what everyone was doing at the time, and how were the British relative to everyone? And I think that the British would actually get a relatively good grade, relatively good grade, not in absolute terms, but compared to what everyone else was doin', they were not the worst. Like I said, you gotta look at these things in the context of the history at the time and say, \"What were the alternatives, and what are you comparing it against?\"\n\nYes.\n\nAnd I do not think it would be the case that Britain would get a bad grade, when looking at history at the time. Now if you judge history from what is morally acceptable today, you're basically are gonna give everyone a failing grade. I'm not clear. I don't think anyone would get a passing grade in their morality of, you could go back 300 years ago, who is getting a passing grade? Basically no one.\n\n[Lex] And we might not get a passing grade from generations - Yeah. Exactly.\n\n[Lex] that come after us. What does that one get?\n\nSure. A six, a seven.\n\nFor the \"Monty Python,\" maybe.\n\n[Elon] I always 'Monty Python,\" they're great. The \"Life of Brian\" and the \"Quest for the Holy Grail\" are incredible.\n\nYeah. Yeah.\n\nDamn, those are serious eyebrows.\n\n[Lex] Brezhnev. How important, do you think, - Damn.\n\n[Lex] is facial hair to great leadership? You got a new haircut. How does that affect your leadership?\n\n[Elon] I don't know. Hopefully not. It doesn't.\n\n[Shivon] Is that the second, no one?\n\nYeah, the second is no one.\n\n[Elon] There is no one competing with Brezhnev.\n\nNo one two.\n\nThose are like epic eyebrows. Sure.\n\n[Lex] That's ridiculous.\n\nGive it a six or seven, I dunno.\n\n[Lex] I like this, Shakespeare analysis of memes.\n\nBrezhnev, he had a flare for drama as well. German joke.\n\n[Lex] Yeah, yeah. It must come from the eyebrows. Alright. Invention, great engineering. Look what I invented. That's the best thing since rip up bread.\n\nYeah.\n\n'Cause they invented sliced bread. Am I just explaining memes at this point? (all laughing) This is what my life has become.\n\n[Shivon] He's a memelord, you're a meme explainer.\n\n[Lex] I'm a meme, like a scribe, that runs around with the kings and just writes down memes.\n\nI mean, when was the cheeseburger invented? That's an epic invention.\n\n[Lex] Yeah.\n\nLike, wow.\n\n[Lex] Versus just like a burger?\n\nOr a burger, I guess a burger in general.\n\nThen there's, what is the burger? What's a sandwich? And then you start getting is a pizza a sandwich? And what is the original? It gets into an ontology argument.\n\nYeah, but everybody knows if you order a burger, or cheeseburger, or whatever, and you get tomato and some lettuce and onions and whatever, and mayo and ketchup and mustard, it's like epic.\n\nYeah, but I'm sure they've had bread and meat separately for a long time. And it was kind of a burger on the same plate, but somebody who actually combined them into the same thing and then bite it and hold it, makes it convenient. It's a materials problem. Like your hands don't get dirty and whatever. Yeah, it's brill- (Shivon talking faintly) That is not what I would've guessed.\n\nBut everyone knows, if you order a cheeseburger, you know what you're getting, it's not like some obtuse, well, I wonder what I'll get. Fries are, I mean, great. I mean, they're the devil, but fries are awesome. Yeah, pizza is incredible.\n\nFood innovation doesn't get enough love.\n\nYeah.\n\nI guess is what we're getting at.\n\n[Elon] It's great.\n\nWhat about the Matthew McConaughey, Austinite here? President Kennedy, \"Do you know how to put men on the moon yet?\" NASA, \"No.\" President Kennedy, \"Be a lot cooler if you did.\"\n\nPretty much, sure. Six, six or seven, I suppose.\n\n[Lex] And this is the last one.\n\nThat's funny.\n\n[Lex] Someone drew a bunch of dicks all over the walls. Sistine Chapel, Boys bathroom.\n\nSure, I'll give it a nine. It's really true.\n\nThis is our highest ranking meme for today.\n\n[Elon] I mean, it's true, how did they get away with it?\n\nLotsa nakedness.\n\nI mean, dick pics are, I mean, just something throughout history. As long as people can draw things, there's been a dick pic.\n\nIt's a staple of human history.\n\nIt's a staple. Consistent throughout human history.\n\nYou tweeted that you aspire to comedy, you're friends with Joe Rogan. Might you do a short standup comedy set at some point in the future? Maybe open for Joe? Something like that? Is that- - Really? Stand up? Actual just full-on stand up?\n\n[Lex] Full-on stand up. Is that in there or is that?\n\nI've never thought about that.\n\nIt's extremely difficult, at least that's what like Joe says, and the comedians say.\n\n[Elon] Huh? I wonder if I could.\n\nOnly one way to find out.\n\nI have done standup for friends, just impromptu, I'll get on like a roof, and they do laugh, but they're all friends too. So, I don't know if you got a room of strangers. Are they gonna actually also find it funny, but I could try. See what happens.\n\nI think you'd learn something either way.\n\nYeah.\n\nI kinda love both when and when you do great, just watching people, how they deal with it. It's so difficult. You're so fragile up there. It's just you. And you think you're gonna be funny and when it completely falls flat, it's just, it's beautiful to see people deal with that.\n\nI think I might have enough material to do stand up. I've never thought about it, but I might have enough material. I don't know, like 15 minutes or something.\n\nOh yeah. Yeah. Do a Netflix special. (Elon laughing) - [Elon] Netflix special, sure.\n\nWhat's your favorite \"Rick and Morty\" concept? Just to spring that on you, is there, there's a lot of sort of scientific engineering ideas explored there. There's the, - Favorite \"Rick and Morty\"\n\nThere's the butter robot.\n\nYeah, it's a great show.\n\nYou like it?\n\nYeah, \"Rick and Morty's\" Awesome.\n\nSomebody that's exactly like you from an alternate dimension showed up there. Elon Tusk.\n\nYeah. That's right.\n\nThat you voiced.\n\nYeah, \"Rick and Morty\" certainly explores a lot of interesting concepts. Sure, like what's the favorite one. The butter robot certainly is, it's certainly possible to have too much sentience, in a device. You don't want to have your toaster be a super genius toaster. It's gonna hate life, 'cause all it can make is toast. It's like, you don't wanna have super-intelligence stuck in a very limited device.\n\nDo you think it's too easy, from a, if we're talking about from the engineering perspective, super intelligence, like with Marvin, the robot. It seems like it might be very easy to engineer just a depressed robot.\n\nSure.\n\nIt's not obvious to engineer a robot that's going to find a fulfilling existence. Same as humans, I suppose. I wonder if that's like the default, if you don't do a good job on building a robot, it's going to be sad a lot.\n\nWell, we can reprogram robots easier than we can reprogram humans. I guess if you let it evolve without tinkering, then it might get sad, but you can change the optimization function and have it be a cheery robot.\n\nLike I mentioned with SpaceX, you give a lot of people hope, and a lot of people look up to you. Millions of people look up to you. If we think about young people in high school, maybe in college, what advice would you give to them about if they wanna try to do something big in this world, they wanna really have a big, positive impact, what advice would you give them about their career, maybe about life in general?\n\nTry to be useful. Do things that are useful to your fellow human beings, to the world. It's very hard to be useful. Very hard. Are you contributing more than you consume? Try to have a positive net contribution to society. I think that's the thing to aim for. Not to try to be sort of a leader for the sake of being a leader or whatever.\n\nA lot of the time people who, a lot of times the people you want as leaders, are the people who don't want to be leaders. If you're living a useful life, that is a good life, a life worth having lived. Like I said, I would encourage people to use the mental tools of physics and apply them broadly in life. They are the best tools.\n\nWhen you think about education and self-education, what do you recommend? So there's the university, there's self study. There is hands-on, sort of finding a company or a place or a set of people that do the thing you're passionate about and joining them as early as possible. There's taking a road trip across Europe for a few years and writing some poetry. Which trajectory do you suggest? In terms of learning about how you can become useful, as you mentioned, how you can have the most positive impact.\n\nI encourage people to read a lot of books, just read, basically try to ingest as much information as you can, and try to also just develop a good general knowledge. So you at least have a rough lay of the land of the knowledge landscape, try to learn a little about a lot of things. 'Cause you might not know what you're really interested. How would you know what you're really interested in if you at least aren't like doing it?\n\nPeripheral exploration broadly of the knowledge landscape. And talk to people from different walks of life and different industries, and professions, and skills, and occupations, like just try. Learn as much as possible. Be on the search for meaning.\n\nIsn't the whole thing a search for meaning?\n\nYeah, what's the meaning of life and all? But just generally, like I said, I would encourage people to read broadly in many different subject areas, and then try to find something where there's an overlap of your talents and what you're interested in. So people may be good at something, or they may have skill at a particular thing, but they don't like doing it. So you wanna try to find a thing that's a good combination of the things that you're inherently good at, but you also like doing.\n\nAnd reading as a super fast shortcut to figure out which, where are you, you're both good at it, you like doing it, and it'll actually have positive impact.\n\nWell, you gotta learn about things somehow. So reading, a broad range, just really read. More important was as a kid I read through the encyclopedia. So, that was pretty helpful. And, there was all sorts of things I didn't even know existed, well lots, obviously.\n\nThat's as broad as it gets.\n\nEncyclopedias were suggestible, I think, whatever 40 years ago. Maybe read through like the condensed version of the Encyclopedia Britannica, I'd recommend that. You can always like skip subjects, so you read a few paragraphs and you know you're not interested, just jump to the next one. So, read the encyclopedia, or skim through it.\n\nI put a lotta stock and certainly have a lot of respect for someone who puts in an honest day's work to do useful things. And just generally to have a, not a zero sum mindset, or have more of a grow the pie mindset. When I see people like, perhaps, including some very smart people, kind of taking an attitude of, I like doing things that seem like morally questionable.\n\nIt's often because they have, at a base sort of axiomatic level, a zero sum mindset. And they, without realizing it, they don't realize to have a zero sum mindset, or at least they don't realize it consciously. And so, if you have a zero sum mindset, then the only way to get ahead is by taking things from others. If the pie is fixed, then the only way to have more pie is to take someone else's pie. But this is false.\n\nObviously the pie has grown dramatically over time, the economic pie. In reality, you can have, (Elon laughing) overuse this analogy, we can have a lot of, there's a lot of pie. (Lex laughing) My pie is not fixed. So, you really wanna make sure you're not operating, without realizing it, from a zero sum mindset.\n\nWhere the only way to get ahead is to take things from others, then that's gonna result in you trying to take things from others, which is not good. It's much better to work on adding to the economic pie. Like I said, creating more than you consume. Doing more than you, yeah. So that's a big deal. I think there's a fair number of people in finance that do have a bit of a zero-sum mindset.\n\nI mean, it's all walks of life. I've seen that. One of the reasons Rogan inspires me is he celebrates others a lot, not creating a constant competition like there's a scarcity of resources. And what happens when you celebrate others and you promote others, the ideas of others, it actually grows that pie. The resources become less scarce. And that applies in a lot of kinds of domains.\n\nIt applies in academia where a lot of people are very, see some funding for academic research as zero sum. It is not, if you celebrate each other, if you make, if you get everybody to be excited about AI, about physics, about mathematics, I think there'll be more and more funding, and I think everybody wins. Yeah. That applies, I think, broadly.\n\nYeah, yeah. Exactly.\n\nSo the last question about love and meaning. What is the role of love in the human condition broadly, and more specific to you? How has love, romantic love or otherwise, made you a better person, a better human being? Better engineer?\n\nNow you're asking really perplexing questions. It's hard to give a. I mean, there are many books, poems, and songs written about what is love, and what is, what exactly, what is love, baby don't hurt me. (Lex laughing) - That's one of the great ones, yes. You have earlier quoted Shakespeare, but that's really up there.\n\n[Elon] Yeah. Love is a many splendor thing.\n\nI mean, there's, 'cause we've talked about so many inspiring things, like be useful in the world, sort of solve problems, alleviate suffering, but it seems like connection between humans is a source, it's a source of joy, it's a source of meaning, and that's what love is, friendship, love. I just wonder if you think about that kind of thing, when you talk about preserving the light of human consciousness.\n\nRight.\n\nAnd us becoming a multi-planetary species. I mean, to me at least, that means, if we're just alone, and conscious, and intelligent, it doesn't mean nearly as much as if we're with others. Right? And there's some magic created when we're together. The friendship of it, and I think the highest form of it is love, which I think broadly is much bigger than just sort of romantic, but also yes. Romantic love and family and those kinds of things.\n\nWell, I mean, the reason I guess I care about us becoming a multi-planet species and a space bearing civilization is foundationally, I love humanity. And so I wish to see it prosper and do great things and be happy, and if I did not love humanity, I would not care about these things.\n\nSo when you look at the whole, the human history, all of the people whose ever lived, all the people alive now, It's pretty, we're okay. On the whole, we're a pretty interesting bunch.\n\nYeah. All things considered, and I've read a lot of history, including the darkest, worst parts of it. Despite all that, I think on balance, I still love humanity.\n\nYou joked about it, the 42, what do you think is the meaning of this whole thing? Is there a non-numerical representation?\n\nOh, I should say Yeah, well really, I think what Doug Sanders was saying in \"The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy\" is that the universe is the answer. What we really need to figure out are what questions to ask about the answer that is the universe. And that the question is the really the hard part. And if you can properly frame the question, then the answer, relatively speaking, is easy.\n\nSo therefore, if you want to understand what questions to ask about the university, you wanna understand the meaning of life, we need to expand the scope and scale of consciousness so that we're better able to understand the nature of the universe and understand the meaning of life.\n\nAnd ultimately, the most important part will be to ask the right question.\n\n[Elon] Yes.\n\nThereby elevating the role of the interviewer - [Elon] Yeah, exactly.\n\nas the most important human in the room.\n\nGood questions are, it's hard to come up with good questions. Absolutely. But yeah, that is the foundation of my philosophy is that I am curious about the nature of the universe. And obviously I will die. I don't know when I'll die, but I won't live forever. But I would like to know that we are on a path to understanding the nature of the universe and the meaning of life and what questions to ask about the answer that is the universe.\n\nAnd so if we expand the scope and scale of humanity, and consciousness in general, which includes silicon consciousness, then that seems like a fundamentally good thing.\n\nElon, like I said, I'm deeply grateful that you would spend your extremely valuable time with me today, and also that you have given millions of people hope in this difficult time, this divisive time and this cynical time. So I hope you do continue doing what you're doing. Thank you so much for talking today.\n\nOh, you're welcome. Thanks for your excellent questions.\n\nThanks for listening to this conversation with Elon Musk. To support this podcast, please check out our sponsors in the description. And now, let me leave you with some words from Elon Musk himself. \"When something is important enough, you do it, even if the odds are not in your favor.\" Thank you for listening, and hope to see you next time."},"languages":["en"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DxREm3s1scA"},{"id":"the-babylon-bee-interview-2021-12-21","type":"interview","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jvGnw1sHh9M","title":"The Babylon Bee Interview","titles":{"en":"The Babylon Bee Interview","de":"The Babylon Bee Interview","fr":"The Babylon Bee Interview"},"date":"2021-12-21","summary":"In-depth interview on wokeness, comedy, taxing the rich, the metaverse and his stock sales.","text":"so [Music] hey [Music] [Applause] [Music] these are the guys that run the show this is kyle our editor-in-chief this is creative director ethan nicole okay so i mean uh well i guess before we get started like uh maybe you guys can tell me like what's the you know how did the v get started and yeah and and uh yeah what's your deal and why do why are you in california that's way easier actually i'm much better at being interviewed so no problem yeah the view is just this little like christian humor site that we launched in 2016 and it was just like we spent 50 bucks on the domain name started writing jokes throwing them out there and it started to go big in conservative circles a couple years ago and that's just kind of where we got to where we are seth\n\nis our ceo he bought the site a few years ago from the original founder yeah he was original his name is adam ford he's in love with the company anymore uh he owns a piece of it he does not the bee now you you've seen that the you know the yeah that was unaffiliated no yeah yeah yeah okay so they do like real news but crazy it's like a backup plan it's like when satire is impossible because the world's too absurd then we just report on the absurdity over on not to be so you know plan b yeah yeah reality is we're greater than fiction yeah exactly often is so how many people at the be now yeah we've got uh probably a dozen full-timers now it's grown pretty fast a year ago it was three of us we have over we have like 25 people involved just not all full-time\n\nstaff so you'd be surprised like with satire you don't have to have a writing staff like filling a room churning out articles all day long you can only handle so much satire every day you know like we're not people you don't need to publish an article every three minutes like fox news or daily wire or something like that so um we have a lot of part-time one of our writers here frank fleming is one of our writers um and he's got a full-time job he just writes for us on the side okay we'd love to have him full time yeah he lives in australia you live in austin okay yeah yeah and i'm a florida guy i have my head the headquarters are technically in south florida i'm in southeast florida yeah florida i'd love to get these guys to florida but it's hard to get\n\npeople out of california it really is uh yeah it's more challenging than you think despite uh like california's the state of california doing everything it can to encourage people to leave yes yeah um i think you had one article about how gavin newsom is your whole salesman of the year yeah yeah yeah actually true that's actually true [Laughter] so you don't miss it then i know i mean there's certainly many aspects of california that i do like um most of my friends are still in california some of my best friends like california so yeah i do i do most many aspects to california especially my friends and it's beautiful and lots of cool things but increasingly difficult to get things done and california used to be the land of opportunity and now it is the\n\nhas become and it's becoming more so the land of um [Music] sort of over regulation over litigation uh over taxation poop on the sidewalk and and scorn it's just that's what it's like it's not like thanks for the taxes it's like tate thanks for the texan hacksaw kicking the teeth let me flip the question though so that's kind of the story that be the bee started out as you know this little blog it took off it's kind of blown up into something like now we have a following including you like how how do we get on your radar people sharing our articles and you just saw them coming across your feed yeah um i'm not sure i saw it on twitter at one point the thoughts from the articles were quite quite funny um i wrote those okay um yeah i mean i i used to be\n\nmuch bigger fan of the of the onion but then the onion just seems to have gotten really politically correct um you know it's sort of gone a bit but in the sml direction it's somewhat leftist as you know it's it's basically it will it will not really make fun of anything on the left but it used to be much more even-handed than the onion um and um and then they just they just got the work mind virus yeah so uh to the point where the animal just was it used to be very funny and then it was not that funny you know snl i used to be a huge fan of snl but you know i still think they have some some occasional good stuff but it's just become i think you've written some some articles about this um you know snl had many many if not most of the snl episodes are kind\n\nof a a moral lecture on why we're bad human beings right uh instead of comedy yeah so and again uh won't make fun of anything on the left really like you know they'll beat up on ted cruz 17 000 times and you're like okay we get it and often because he's made fun of someone on the left he'll make fun of some on the left and then they jump on him for that it's like a defensive thing yeah yeah exactly so it's it's just um there are just a lot of no-fly zones uh with a lot of comedy um and uh and then and then you realize it's like wait a second is is a comedy is is the comedy getting at an essential truth or or trying to or is there is there a propaganda element or is it trying to push you in a particular direction or or getting getting to an essential truth\n\nthat is humorous and when it stops trying to get to an essential truth that that is that is humorous then you know it's it's just not that funny right now see that's exactly the criticism we get from the left the criticism from the left is that that's what we're doing with our humor is that we're trying to push a narrative neglecting the truth that's literally what the new york times says that we are far right misinformation disguised as satire right right so there's a it's almost where you're standing jealousy yeah it's almost based on where you're standing but how it's based on where you're standing yeah i i mean i'd say the b is probably it's moderately right um it's not it's not but it's not certainly not far right that my my impression is not that\n\nuh i would say that the b is not probably it wouldn't be actually the b is fully centrist um but it is certainly not far right um if one is fully left and 10 is fully right the b seems to be at six 6.\n\n5 uh towards okay right that ish bernie sanders elizabeth warren babylon b hitler or somewhere on that scale yeah it's it's not but you know it's it's uh i mean the the b is i think less right than than say the onion is is left for example you know so the the i think would be more left than that the b is right right righteous or whatever yeah right no i don't know we'll have to put that on our wikipedia page righteous propaganda you know you talked about the wilk mind virus and i was wondering if you could decipher this tweet of yours for me because i'm not a programmer you wrote trace route woke underscore mind underscore virus what does that mean okay so traceroute is a networking command to so if you want to figure out a path to a particular server\n\nor domain you'd say traceroute or in windows trace rt that would show you the path to a particular source server with an ip address or domain name and and it would show basically all the hops that that it goes through um and the latency between each each hop and so i know some of those words yeah um so traceroute be yeah we like where'd it come from yeah where did the virus come from what is its origin so did this work did this command work or not did you find your comments read the comments and see and see all right it is a prevalent mind virus and um arguably one of the biggest threats to wine civilization also not having enough kids right yeah i think most people if you just have to look at the birth rate statistics um you can tell what the future\n\nis going to be like because you can see how many children were born last year um and and then you could say like is this is the birth rate trending down or up and it's been trending down basically almost everywhere so if you look at the birth rate last year you know you know how many adults will be in 20 years because that's how many babies were born the trend is like you don't have to be some master of statistician or something like that um you could just look look at kids one last year trending to well below replacement rate uh and a lot of countries have been a well-veil replacement rate for a long time well the concern is that if you have kids then they'll contribute to climate change and they'll kill the earth right that's the leftist concern is\n\nthat we're overpopulating the earth and we're going to kill it are you trying to overpopulate the earth so that we can go to mars and take over and take over mars is this a deliberate strategy the earth is far from overpopulated um uh far far from overpopulated um so the you know the the thing that's necessary to minimize the chemical change to the atmosphere and oceans is to move to sustainable energy generation and consumption so the three elements of a sustainable energy future are sustainably energy generation primarily through solar wind some geothermal hydro and nuclear although they're shutting down all the nuclear power stations so yeah you can sort of cross that one of the list which they shouldn't be doing they should just keep they should keep\n\nmoving um they're really unless a nuclear power plant is in a region of uh major national disasters instability or something yeah yeah you don't want to be like you know subject to massive um natural disasters because obviously that could be a problem but if you're you know like say germany or france or whatever you don't have those so the nuclear power is very safe um but anyway the the long-term um the heavy lifting on energy generation will be solar followed by wind and um and you really don't need a very large land area to generate enough power to power for example united states so it's on the order of you know roughly a little over 100 miles by 100 miles a second of land with solar solar panels would power the entire united states so like a little\n\ncorner of utah or texas like um it can power the whole country so anyway so uh it's really not that hard the solar incidence is a gigawatt per square kilometer uh if for most neutrons can do some calculations most nuclear power plants yeah that's right it's it's it's a kilowatt per square per square k per square meter and there's a million square you know million square meters in a square kilometer so um it's a pretty simple uh math so and then you get you get like maybe 20 efficiency on that so call it like a net power generation of 200 megawatts per square kilometer now if you take most nuclear power plants there's usually a a pretty clear area around a nuclear power plant because people don't usually want to live right next to a nuclear power plant\n\nso um the area of most nuclear power plants that is uninhabited if if covered in solar panels would generate more power than the nuclear power plant and then you also then the second element that's needed are batteries to store solar and wind because uh the sun doesn't shine all the time and the wind doesn't blow all the time so the enter the intermittency of uh solar and wind requires battery storage for continuous power uh so that's the second part of the of the sort of second the second pillar of sustainable energy and the third is uh sustainable transport so that means uh electric uh cars boats planes and then ironically the one thing that you can't really make electric is rockets you know the same involved in that but but although you can over time\n\nuse solar power to generate fuel by pulling co2 out of the atmosphere combining it with h2o creating ch4 which is methane and o2 oxygen and rockets are mostly oxygen by mass so over time you can make everything basically solar power so you're working on some of those problems but the problem of wokeness specifically you mentioned that's like a mind virus and it's destructive uh and why do you think wokeness is so interested in your opinions too um but you know like i mean generally i think we should be aiming for like a positive society and uh you know that it should be okay to you know be humorous uh like you know like we should we should like like workness basically wants to make comedy illegal which is not cool we've experienced that i mean chappelle\n\nlike what the flower bed i mean try to shut down chappelle come on man that's crazy um so um you know so do we want a humorless society that is simply rife with condemnation uh and hate basically uh and no forgiveness right yeah [Music] at its heart awokeness is divisive um exclusionary um and hateful it's it's it basically gives mean people a reason a a a a it gives them a shield to be to be mean and cruel armored and false virtue what do you think i'd agree with that yeah yeah i mean we've obviously seen that from the left you know just ourselves you know the left is almost this religion now where they're so serious and they believe what they believe with such intensity that for us to make fun of them you know for them it's like you're making fun of\n\ngod or salvation you know so they're almost the new religious right in our view yeah he agreed with me [Laughter] well you were pretty mean to uh senator warren though on twitter recently you slammed her man please don't call the manager on me senator karen she struck first yeah obviously right yes she did actually called me a freeloader yeah um anna grifter doesn't pay taxes basically um and i'm literally paying the most tax that any individual in history has ever paid this year ever and she doesn't pay taxes basically at all and her tax and her salary is paid for by the taxpayer like me could you even use could you use turbo attorney would that even work if you could die by irony she would be she would be dead fiery could kill what would happen if you\n\nwalked into an h r block to file your taxes like could they handle your case my taxes are actually not that complicated um i do not have any offshore accounts i don't have any uh tax shelters uh uh i i have a i have basically a tesla and spacex stock um and um tesla's publicly traded so information is public and spacex is you know ac corp that is audited uh you know it has outside orders so it these it's it'll with that uh outside investors so it is they're also it's everything is extremely transparent um there are there is no uh there are no elaborate sort of tax avoidance schemes or or anything like that so hr block could could easily do my taxes you know i don't need a html block i could do it yeah you know it would like probably take me a few hours\n\nto do my taxes it's very basic did you sell that stock in tesla because of the twitter poll uh in part you made up your mind that you're already going to do that before the twitter poll um there i i have some test options that are expiring next year that so i needed to exercise those options no matter what and and i was like okay i'll move forward and exercise those options um so that that's only would be part of it uh no matter what uh but then over and above that i sold incremental stock uh to uh try to get up to the 10 level so just the option exercise loan would not get to 10 so i sold a stock that should be roughly make my total uh tesla share sale roughly 10 is the most annoying thing in the world people asking you questions like this about your\n\npersonal finances no one ever asks me what stock i'm selling or or why i made so much money last year i mean i'm the third richest man on my street which is which is pretty good pretty good i mean i'm not sure it's it's all that productive or interesting you know essentially all of my net worth is uh it's just in spacex and tesla stock these two companies that that i helped create uh and have run for now almost 20 years um have done a lot of useful things um spacex is the launch is more paleo to orbit than the rest of the world combined and has a global internet system called starlink and and is the primary provider well the only us provider of uh astronaut transport to the space station um we publish six to eight satire articles a day some of them are\n\nfunny i mean pretty good so so spacex uh yeah it transports us and as well as non-us astronauts to the space station that was previously the u.\n\ns was dependent on on russia uh who's doing a good job but charging kind of crazy money proceed so as with spacex the the cost per astronaut dropped dramatically and and the money was you know went to jobs in the us so that's what why people you know think spacex is valuable uh tesla uh i mean the annoyance though of like people uh holding it against you that you've had success holding it against you that you have wealth um you know viewing billionaires as evil and you know you're not doing enough to give back you know you have like the elizabeth warren thing that you haven't paid your fair share i mean that's you know it's that's got to be kind of aggravating yeah i think it's just important to understand like like what is this wealth uh it's not like\n\nsome it's not like i've got like some some mashup massive cash balance uh i've my cash balances are very very low and at least until i sold stock which is really the first time i've actually sold stock in any meaningful way was this quarter i simply had loans against my my stock so i i i if tesla spacex went bankrupt i would go bankrupt too immediately so um it's not realized this is what you're saying yeah it's not no it's like people it's just like it's like you know i built these two companies and it was extremely difficult to build them like massively painful and difficult rewarding too but also but massively painful difficult um and uh and and i didn't i didn't sell the stock in the companies um you know i i you know my my sort of impression was\n\nthat you know you you shouldn't take money off the table or you shouldn't you shouldn't take stock off the table and de-risk things that a captain should go down you know with their ship so so it's like okay like you know i don't want to take money off the table and then then if the companies fail then i will be i'll be sort of enriched while investors suffer and that does not seem right so anyway so i that's the reason i didn't sell is is i could easily have diversified and protected myself financially if if spacex would tell them went bankrupt but i did not and spacex and tesla came very close to bankruptcy many times even when bankruptcy was literally weeks away i did not sell stock uh and then the companies became valuable not tesla's value is basically\n\nbecause value is not it's not up to me it's up to investors and they decided it was worth tesla's worth trillion dollars in the public market so and i own twenty percent of the company so so you're not apologizing right now you're not going to look into the camera and say i'm so sorry in the camera right now i'm just trying to explain like i don't think people necessarily understand they don't yeah yeah that uh this this is not you know that some function of sort of hoarding or something it's it's simply that you know i'm 20 company that became very valuable as decided by external investors and so twenty percent of a trillion dollar evaluation is 200 billion dollars um and i i've you know i've said at various times that i think the stock price is too\n\nhigh but the investors just ignored that i'm like okay i literally said it's too high um and they just kept making that price higher so i'm like tell them our value is too high so anyway so just that's uh but like i said this is not like uh my so-called wealth is it's not some it's not some deep mystery it's simply what is my ownership percentage of spacex and tesla multiply that by the valuation that's my worth it's super simple and my taxes are super simple and i have no like i said no offshore accounts no sort of clever tax evasion or anything like that and i don't i don't draw a salary or any cash salary or bonus from the companies at all so um again i thought that was like morally good to not do that um and so there were there were like there was\n\none year i think 2018 where where i i didn't pay any tax uh but but that's because i didn't have any income um and and and i did have a little bit of income but i'd actually overpaid taxes i think in 2017.\n\nso i paid too much tax and so i got like i basically netted that out in in 2018 because i paid too much tax in 2017.\n\naccidentally unless you sell stock there are no realized gains so uh so then i was like well should i sell like i i like what am i supposed to do why send shares to the government somehow i don't know if you can even do that yeah um so there was like well like unless i sell shares there's not there's no there's no actual mechanism to pay tax so then i was like well should i sell 10 percent you know to in order to pay tax and and i sort of asked twitter and they're like on balance they said yes and so i um so i i sold enough stock to get to around ten percent plus the option exercise stuff and uh i very i try to be extremely literal um so you don't generally need to read between lines you can just read the lines [Music] so that's it as the as the fattest\n\nguy here i i want to know what's when are you gonna make the candy company because you said on twitter that you're making a candy company and you're the closest thing to willy wonka that this culture has it could be willy wonka i didn't say it would you say that he said i'm starting a canadian company it's going to be warren buffett um but you did say i am super super serious i think if you put two supers before sirius that makes sense and that's like you're probably not serious you know just uh for satire writers out there yeah um i thought that locked him in is like definitely syria he's explaining jokes to it yeah yeah yeah it's just a guy said let me tell you how jokes accept our words um you know i was just obviously i was just like making fun of\n\nwarren buffett who's like really he's got this like candy company and stuff so um and um that was my one question now i i i did actually i did actually experiment with um trying to find some compelling candy that would be like i don't know maybe much better than other candy um we tried various candy options but i didn't find any i couldn't figure out a candy that was like just way better than other candy um like a little bit better but not a lot better and so it was like unless it's like really a great product then you looked into this yeah yeah we tried a whole bunch of different candies and uh and it was like there's not anything like that's obviously just way better uh so um i don't want to just have like a pretty good candies if there's like a great\n\ncandy yeah some aces some candy that's aces um but you know we don't need another sort of like pretty good candy yeah yeah there's plenty of the south yeah yeah what does that look like when you like suddenly get an idea like we should make candy you like you just call somebody like how does what what are the steps that suddenly take place when you're like because you do so many things i'm just fascinated by the what that process looks like rockets tell them you got a guy you call jim i want to make candy make it happen um i think i did ask for you know people on twitter to send me candy that they thought was good it's deployed and i was like well what if some of those candy is like you know it's poisonous or something but whatever like you know candy\n\nfrom strangers on the internet yeah it could go wrong that's just not 100 safe um but uh i did try a whole bunch of candy scent from strangers what's your favorite candy well there was like a a pretty good like peanut like some pretty good peanut brittle ones or like that peanut butter with a bunch of other stuff in it and some pretty good chocolates but but nothing that was like blew me away so um and and then there were people at spacex and tesla that sent me some candy options but not nothing that was it's not like i care about starting companies like if there's like there are if there's a very compelling product or service then that's the thing that is important not the company your company is just an assemblage of people to create a compelling product\n\nor service and if a company does not provide great products and services it should not exist there's no point in the company for the sake of being a company that's pointless companies should only exist to provide great products and services a company is just just literally a group of people so do we have to close or stay open i think there's a lot of there's a lot of companies out there that probably should just be disbanded because they don't make uh compelling products and services they're spoilers and those people better that those people do something else i think on that topic i mean the question that i just like really i feel so unqualified to be interviewing you right now i think we all do why are we here like what what are you doing okay i'm not\n\nthe one who asked for the podcast you guys did just to be clear i'm not pushing the podcast on you you guys came here we just we were like i will stop by you know texas yeah just to be clear who was asking her i'm not i'm not like you know i know i know exactly hold a gun to your head for this podcast you could be on cnn right now yeah you know john a real news organization yeah i'm just throwing it out there i don't know unfortunately i just you know haven't um you know i guess uh you know what what was it you said the the requirement for being a cnn driver cnn is uh are you are you a pervert yeah i'm not perverted enough yeah i guess i don't know not a big pedophile fan you know bad mommy headlines better than i do [Laughter] i think you know a lot\n\nof us fantasize about if we had lots and lots and lots of money what we do and you've done a lot of the things that like a lot of us fantasize about build cool robots gonna go to mars we're gonna fix traffic but most of us also think we've become batman have you ever thought about like what would that really look like to become or would you go batman or iron man around what because crime is on the right that's a fruit bat or an insect bat i like the dragon ball big scary you know because most bats are either fruit or they carry a lot of diseases yeah yeah they eat fruit bugs like fruit batman intake batman i need to read that spin-off comic it's a strange choice of uh creature to emulate you know you take a different animal like maybe monkeys that play\n\npong with their brains man [Music] monkey man monkey man yeah exactly just very agile they're the smartest animal right they can just uh swing monkey man that batman is more is more like monkey man really yeah because he's like he's swinging around and very agile um climbing up things and yeah throwing a battering is more likely for batman like why can't he fly if he's batman that's gonna fly yeah that's right he just yeah he glides very effectively though okay so he's really yeah but that's like a frank's more like flying [Laughter] less intimidating i guess yeah oh no squirrel man we're he's going to get us not squirrel man again yeah without making the grappling hook he has that thing's sweet we need those you can make probably make that yeah yeah\n\nsure you can make a grappling hood um i i mean like like when you it's like they sort of skip the parts where like batman's always on the top of the building but like once you get to the ground floor how do you get back to the top of the building yeah it's like you're going to huffing and puffing you know yeah yeah you never see how do you get the top of a skyscraper even if you've got a grappling hook i mean how big is your grappling hook like 50 stories like how big is that cable you know it's not really feasible um so you just got to like run up the stairs or take the elevator so it's like how do you get back up to the top of the skyscraper in gotham city it's always like tough with some tall buildings so iron man then he'd be like iron man yeah iron\n\nman because you're good at calculating the cost of things and stuff like that so like would it be cheaper to become batman iron man or just pay every criminal that you encounter a salary to just stop being a criminal i think they're trying to have to be um irony man irony man um i just defeat villains using the power of irony it's like oh too much irony i can't stand it please no stop the irony i can't handle it anymore i give up i give up too much irony that'd be rough that'd be awesome that'd be totally awesome that would be awesome yeah don't make me use irony again cheaper too what are your thoughts on the metaverse which takes technology to the next level and puts us in like a virtual world like do you see that as being dangerous hopeful for humanity\n\nlike what's your view on that maybe we're in the metaverse right now it's just mata versus all the way down um i don't know if i necessarily buy into this metaphor stuff although people talk to me a lot about it web 3.\n\nsure you can put a tv on your nose i'm not sure that makes you in the metaverse you know um it's like weird like you know when i grew up it's like don't sit too close to tv it's going to ruin your eyesight right and now we got like tv is like literally right here i'm like uh what is that good for you i mean have you tried these games you know the art oculus stuff yeah they're okay you know but like it gives you motion sickness if you try to walk around like you can do a video game on your sort of computer console or whatever and and you can you can be in a like a first person game and and uh and move rapidly and not get set motion sickness but if you try to do that in a beat with vr goggles you get motion sickness it's like weird so you have to like teleport\n\naround with it's okay so that doesn't it doesn't feel like like that's the answer necessarily um into the brain so you don't have to have the glasses there you go yeah a neurolink long-term sophisticated neural link could um put you fully fully in a virtual reality thing um so i guess what i'm getting at is yeah exactly what could go wrong like the the negative implications the kind of dystopian implications that some are drawing out like i think it was i think jack dorsey was really critical of the whole metaverse idea you see problems with people i don't know living in a virtual world and leaving a physical world for for that and i don't see someone strapping a friggin t you know screen to their face all day uh and not wanting to ever leave there seems\n\nno way i mean does it feel like that to you it doesn't seem like that to me yeah it's like it gets uncomfortable to have this thing strapped to your head the whole time it definitely needs to be lighter yeah even if the weight i mean if it was like super light it will still be like i don't know it's not so like you won't be there all day so you know i think we're far from disappearing into the metaverse uh this sounds just kind of buzz wordy and you know i don't feel like hit like okay is this you know i've just gotten too old and like am i like one of those people who was like dismissing the internet whatever 95 as being like some fad or something that's never going to amount to anything although i didn't i was like saying like 95 was literally the internet\n\nis going to be transform humanity and going to be like you know prior information basically just went by osmosis like unless a person called another person or carried a letter physically to another person like how did you get information around the vast majority of information was literally person to person then they had like the fax machine and stuff but it's just like the way the metaverse is being sold right now is so underwhelming it's like you're going to be in it's like zoom meetings but there's an avatar for the person next to you you know and you maybe maybe get to design your avatar like i said i don't i don't feel like you know someone some old codger sort of dismissing the internet in 95 is not amounting to anything so there's some danger of\n\nthat that's the case but uh i i currently am unable to see a compelling metaverse situation or web 3 sounds like more marketing than reality i don't get it you know and maybe i will so but i don't get it yet let me put that away it's definitely not monkeys playing pong let's just put it that way yeah i just like to advertise for white chloe yeah quite quote real men drink white clothes can we get our guys on the phone with white club sponsor after the fact if you want us to leave that in yeah then you won't pay us was it you know this is the first white call the first white claw ever drunk on the babylon v podcast so that's great you hit a point in your life where you you know you made plenty of money and you could do whatever what drives you to this\n\ncampaign yeah it could be slipping my ties on right on a tropical island uh i've been wrong all this time why am i working 90 hours a week this is crazy because i'm always passing me the idea of like i've made it people always want to say be able to say i've made it i've arrived yeah and like how do you you know you hit those little islands in your life and you actually have to break yourself up that mindset and what are ways that you break yourself of that mindset and keep on going i didn't put all this effort into building spacex and tesla because i thought there were easy ways to make money i mean anyone who starts a car company thinking it's easy way to make money as a fool there are only two car companies that have not gone bankrupt in the history\n\nof the united states and that's ford and tesla and tesla came within inches of going bankrupt multiple times as does spacex so right and like who starts rocket company think it's going to be successful um i thought about i mean both both those companies i i thought had less than a 10 chance of success and i thought it was overwhelmingly likely that i would lose the money that i made from paypal you know i came to north america when i was 17 just by myself um and i had like like a few thousand dollars in in traveller's checks back when travelers tracks were a thing you know um in canadian dollars i landed in montreal um i have some family in canada uh and my mom's uncle lived in montreal but like we did we didn't know his phone number so i landed montreal\n\nand my mom says i just got a letter back from my uncle he's in minnesota or something so i'm like okay i don't know what to do now so i just stayed in youth hostel and like bought a bus take it across canada and i worked in various like odd jobs and stuff worked on my on my mom's cousin's farm wheat farm in saskatchewan for six weeks that's where i had my 18th birthday actually i worked in the lumber mall chainsawed logs and did various on jobs and and then went to college in canada for a couple years i paid my own way through college by the way so but in canada it's like easier because the college is more subsidized and i was a canadian citizen through my mom so and i got some scholarships and loans and stuff and and then i applied to the university\n\nof pennsylvania and uh didn't think i'd be able to go because tuition is really high but they gave me a scholarship and loans and stuff so i was able to go there i graduated with about a hundred thousand dollars in student debt and um i was going to do grad studies at stanford and decided to put that on hold to try starting an internet company um i actually i tried to get a job at netscape but they didn't i'd send my resume and i get a response so i was like okay i guess i should i can't get a job at the there are only a few internet companies and that can get a job at any of them so i was like i guess i want to do something internet got to start my own company but i ended up writing the first maps and directions on the internet i wrote personally the\n\nmaps directions yellow pages white pages on a puny computer like with hardly any so you had to be like the code had to be super tight i even have some patents on like maps and directions and yellow pages and white pages and stuff from from ages ago they're lapsed now but that that company ended up getting bought by by compact for about 300 million dollars i own seven percent of the company so i got like 20 million from that put most of it into uh x.\n\ncom which merged with confinity to create paypal and then i got about 180 million dollars from that and i put all of that into spacex tesla and solarcity i just basically kept you know kept all the chips on the table and just like let's play another round but most people take the trips off the table or at least some of their chips and uh and then spacex and tesla ended up being valuable and that's where i am but the the reason for spacex and tesla is you know tesla if you say like what is what is the how would you assess the historical good of tesla i'd say it's the degree to which tesla accelerated sustainable energy and i've been interested in electric cars for a long time um since maybe high school or certainly early college my original interest in\n\nelectric vehicles was not so much due to environmental concerns but rather from the uh concern that we'd run out of oil eventually and or become extremely scarce and expensive and then a civilization would collapse because we can drive cars or you know run power plants and stuff so so we needed some form of sustainable energy generation and consumption or where civilization is going to collapse so that was my original interest in electric vehicles and solar energy and and then i do think there's um some risk of uh negatively affecting the climate uh you know as you increase the co2 concentration in the oceans and atmosphere this you increase the risk of something uh going wrong um i i i'm not like in the camp of of the super alarmist uh global warming\n\ni like you know like i think like i don't think we're like um screwed because of like the the current parts per million of co2 in the ocean's atmosphere i think like this is actually not not a terrible level however the there's so much inertia in the direction of mining and burning hydrocarbons that you know the the world is still over overwhelmingly dependent on mining and burning hydrocarbons um so you know if this continues and you start really driving up the co2 in the oceans and atmosphere then there's this increased risk of accelerating climate change basically warming up the oceans and um and raising the sea level so so i think that's like it's just i think that's probably just not a wise risk to take since we will in any case uh have to transition\n\nto sustainable energy long term because we will eventually run out of oil and coal to minor burn uh then why run the experiment to see if you know to see if something bad will happen with a high co2 concentration in the ocean's atmosphere like it's a pointless experiment like we know we have to get to some uh sustainable energy economy it's total logical like so i think there's we should try to get there sooner so as not to run the risk of climate change it would not climate change would not be catastrophic for civilization but it would be very disruptive humans love living right on the ocean so it's like we're almost like a like a thermometer it's like it's like if we were living right on the beach okay so uh this is like so even small changes in the\n\nsea level in sea level will put a lot of houses underwater against little little changes not enough to be vague we just we've just inherently created civilization as highly sensitive to changes in temperature a lot of politicians who are alarmist about this stuff buy homes right on the water though don't they that's true yeah i mean i i'm not sort of into like vilifying the oil and gas industry because i think i think the the reality is like if uh if we don't have oil and gas right now civilization would collapse and everyone will be starving so we obviously need oil and gas right now it'd be absurd to just stop it like it's not not feasible um but but i do think we should be trying to accelerate progress towards a sustainable energy future uh not slow\n\nit down you know i think it's just a sensible thing to do to to try to move faster to a sustainable energy economy uh rather than slower um because that reduces the risk of the climate experiment and like i said since we know we have to get to a sustainable energy economy anyway why run this experiment it's it's just not smart anyway so so the fundamental good of tesla i think is by you know should be measured by how by how many years did tesla accelerate the transition to a sustainable energy economy um 10 years 20 years you know that's like the fundamental good of the company but to ethan's point he's asking like why not like is that is that your is that your answer for why you keep going is because these are these things make a difference they make\n\na difference ultimately for the flourishing of humanity for the longevity of humanity is that why you're not on a beach somewhere sipping my ties or white claws yeah i don't actually drink a lot of white qualifier this is not about like trying to enrich myself um i do not live a life of conspicuous consumption i work you know very long hours and but i think i think what tells us is doing is important to the future and that's that's why i keep doing it and i think you know it's it's something i think is uh tesla increases the probability that the future will be good for humanity and and then for spacex um i think i think uh it's important that we take the actions like that we become a space bearing civilization and a multi-planet species this is an exciting\n\ninspiring future you know you need to have things that when you wake up in the morning you're like you're excited about the future why live if it's all about solving problems of being miserable like why live um so they've got to be things that are that are inspiring that like you know get you in the heart and i think space is one of those things so you know look at the apollo program and you know sending people to the moon in and wasn't that a great thing for all of humanity great thing and if you ask people like one of what are some of the greatest things that humanity's ever done that would be one of them i think er you know around the world people would agree with that you know if you believe it really happened yes i do get that question this is um\n\nyeah we we went to the moon not just once but but several times and um i think the russians would have called us out on that one if it wasn't true you know uh to say the least among among this is like the yeah it's we went to the we went to the moon the russians didn't like us at the time yeah but so you know it's not a huge fan of it they wouldn't have like they were looking at us through telescopes like is this real or why you know uh they would have a bubblegum if it wasn't that's for sure there's a huge you know victory you know ideological victory for the united states and western civilization so but anyway the the point is like we we want to have an exciting inspiring future and and one where we are space spring civilization and multi-planet species\n\ni think is a much more exciting and inspiring future than one where we are forever confined to earth and never go back to the moon and and the moon was our high water mark and that's all we ever did that's depressing and and there's also from a long-term basis if we're a multi-planet species it's like life insurance for life itself not just for humans but for for all the creatures on earth um because we bring them with us and and they can't build spaceships so you know we are we're in effect the steward of life um and you know we can make a we can make mars like a you know another planet with life on it um you know it is you know uh it's probably a dangerous analogy to use but it it's a bit like noah's ark but you know we bring more than two of every\n\ncreature because it's a little incestuous frankly um yeah i mean like how's this work you know second generation and did he hate the dinosaurs like what's uh [Laughter] why why was it like after the dinosaurs it's like pro-incest battle dinosaurs i don't get it and it would have to be a very big vote so but there's you know it's a metaphor perhaps i don't know um yeah but so anyway so like there's there's some some risk especially over a long period of time that so many calamities would happen to earth and if we're just in one planet that would be the end of life itself and certainly the the sun the sun is slowly expanding so uh you know the earth are roughly four and a half billion years old some people might disagree with that but it appears to be that\n\nway um uh and um in roughly half a billion years the sun will expand to big make earth probably uninhabitable in a billion years definitely uninhabitable so basically if intelligent life had take taken 10 percent longer to evolve on earth then it would never evolved at all because it would be destroyed because the oceans would boil and and they would we wouldn't be able to exist so i mean no matter what the universal end in heat death though right eventually so it's all futile to some extent if you go far enough um yeah i mean i think the if if heat death is the outcome of the universe it really all is all about the journey like you know they said like you know the journey is is is uh half the fun is the journey or whatever well if he death is the end\n\nof the universe the journey is all the fun you know can we just evolve heat resistance become like lava beings it's not it's not it's cold it cools eventually with entropy and i'm not a scientist entropy the ultimate he thought the devil was bad try entropy yeah okay try getting away from that but yeah i mean the yes i mean technically the being a multi-planet species would increase the probable lifespan of of civilization and and life as we know it um so i mean we humans don't live forever so but just because we don't live forever does not mean that civilization cannot live much longer than we do a civilization lives much longer than any individual human so this is not about like escaping to mars this is simply i mean i i will die probably long before\n\nmoz is a self-sustaining civilization it's just i think something we should we should do in order to have a much longer probable lifespan of civilization and it's interesting and exciting and and mars is like us it's like an essential next step to like there are these like you know uh filters they're called like the great filters and because you have to say like where are the aliens you know it's like the fermi paradox where are the aliens if the universe is 13.\n\n8 billion years old shouldn't they be everywhere by now and i'm not aware of any evidence for aliens people ask me about that too uh we're the aliens i'm like man if anyone would know about evidence of aliens it would be me and i i've seen nothing so i think it may have been called sagan who said you know there's like we're either alone in in the galaxy or there are a lot of aliens and and each answer is arguably equally terrifying um it's like it's like hey we found it aliens are on their way uh too bad it's the invasion fleet um you know um so i i don't know it's like where are they where are the aliens like maybe there aren't any endless galaxy um and maybe the what we have here is a very very rare situation um you know a belief a brief flickering\n\nof consciousness in the die like a little candle in a vast darkness and we should not let that little candle go out so my dad's a rocket scientist at bowling and he had a question engineer well whatever when people say rocket scientists they really mean rocket engineer okay yeah so he's a rocket engineer and he says at what mach number does starship endure max q maximum dynamic pressure how much pressure is that does that make any sense to you uh yeah so uh yeah max q maximum dynamics pressure is is when you're at um a combination of speed and atmospheric density such that the uh the wind force on the rocket is is the highest and so as you climb higher and higher the atmospheric density decays exponentially um and so you hit this point of the combination\n\nof velocity and air density which is maximum dynamic pressure maximum q um and uh this this is mostly a function of thrust to weight so if you have a low thrust weight rocket you will have a typically a lower max q um and if you have a high thrust weight rocket you'll have a higher max q if you do not throttle down and so uh and it also kind of depends on on what trajectory you're flying are you flying a low with over trajectory uh single burn insertion or or eight eight uh say a geosynchronous transfer orbit with a lower perigee then you'll have a higher a higher max q because you will spend you'll spend more time going uh sort of horizontal instead of vertical um getting to orbit is mostly about you what getting to what it is is about your your velocity\n\nparallel to the other surface so around mark 23 to mark 25 uh you're you know so roughly 23 ish times the speed of sound is when you reach uh orbit orbital velocity roughly 17 000 miles an hour so um and and that's that's what it means to go up and stay up you only need height in order to get out of the high density portion of the atmosphere so that you don't slow down um none of that was correct i disagree yeah i disagree i agree i give a totally different answer i don't have time to get into it [Laughter] yeah so i mean typically um a rocket is going to hit max q uh somewhere between mach 1.\n\n4 and 1.\n\n8 and um and and that q level is going to be maybe 400 to 800 pounds per square foot um uh now a starship is intended to have a higher a higher thrust weight because with a fully reusable rocket the the cost of propellant starts to become significant whereas if you have an expandable rocket or a partially reusable rocket the cost of propellant is is tiny compared to the cost of the rocket so you actually want a higher thrust to weight to minimize cost per ton to orbit with a fully reusable rocket than you would for an expendable so probably starship will have at least a 1.\n\n3 if not closer to a 1. 5 thrust to weight which would uh if without throttling down which aspirationally we would not throw down uh would would have a quite a high q um maybe as high as uh a thousand uh or even 1200 pounds per square foot um so that's uh and probably probably you know uh at work velocity i mean i guess uh mach 1. 4 to 1.\n\n5 something like that okay well my dad very much enjoyed that answer i'm sure i think as a male feminist though one thing about the rockets is the phallic symbology what would it take to get some more vaginal shaped rockets just you know for well equality um can we make that happen aerodynamics dynamics is going to give you a serious answer share similar properties whether biological or mechanical okay good answer that's all i got on a rocket science uh robots yeah teslabot so you're creating robots have you ever seen a sci-fi movie in your life never okay i thought maybe not you know like because things came out what's the worst that could happen yeah um the robots are not the the scary part the scary part is uh agi or artificial general intelligence\n\ndigital super intelligence that far exceeds human intelligence um and um you know if if if there's a digital super intelligence that is just vastly smarter than the smartest human um we could lose control of it and then it it could it could just it could do something bad potentially um these things are just probabilities they're not certainties um so it's not the road like it's not the robots it's the digital super intelligence to be concerned about i think this is definitely one of the issues that we need to be concerned about as an existential risk i think we should have a regulatory agency that oversees uh advanced ai um because you know generally like i do think there are important roles for the government and and one of those roles is in regulation\n\nof industry to make sure that any any that the company is not making short cuts that endanger the public so you know the faa does has done done generally a great great job of ensuring that aircraft are safe you know it's literally safer to fly on an american airline or any any sort of airline overseen by the faa uh than it is to live in your house just to give people a sense of well you're more likely to die your probable lifespan is less if you lived your entire life in your house or than if you lived on a plane because in your house you can get murdered by a spouse get bitten by a laos but if you live in a plane in afghanistan that's not maybe that's the case well if it's not if if it's not overseen by um a a uh regulator that like the faa then then\n\nthen it's not necessarily gonna meet the same safety standards what if your spouse is on the plane well i think so the planes have you know they have means of stuffing like you can't it's hard to bring a gun on a plane yeah um and uh even a knife or even a bottle of lotion at this point you know so your spouse couldn't bring any of those things let me just punch you with it or stab you with a sport you know plastic spoke you know it's like hard to kill someone with a spork um so yeah and then planes also have like the flight attendants are trained in first aid they've got like uh they can do cpr they've got defibrillators uh if if somebody's having medical issues they'll immediately land the plane and the ambulance will meet you at the airport so uh and\n\nyou're not gonna like you know drown the bathtub or get electrocuted by a toaster or you know have your house burned down or because of the toaster by the way toasters cause a lot of houses to burn down yeah it's one of the one of the main causes of house burning down are like toasters and dryers there's also a decent chance there's a doctor on the plane at any given time right that happens all the time like a doctor is like treating somebody on a plane in your house you know yeah so planes are very safe and and i mean generally speaking the fda does a good job of overseeing uh food and drugs you know this might be a bit of a conservative bias on you know where uh at times there's an asymmetry with the fda where um something that that could help a lot\n\nof people is not approved because it it might hurt a small number of people so that there's a sort of like a a bit of a a bit of an asymmetry uh like so regulators the in general can have a bit of an asymmetry uh where they are they're punished a lot for something going wrong but not rewarded enough for going something going right um so that's just a general uh challenge with the the punishment and reward of regulators they can be a little conservative so but i think there should be a regulatory agency to oversee um you know anything that is a danger to the public um so and i think agi could be an interest in public so therefore should should have some oversight um and normally regulatory agencies are very reactive um so like for seat belts for example\n\nwhich lack of seatbelts caused i don't know 10 million deaths worldwide i mean a massive number and the car industry fought seat belts for a very long time and uh and eventually after many deaths the defender department of transport nitsa which oversees his regulatory body for cars said all cars have to have seat belts but you can't just not have a seat belt but that i know it took 15 years or something or maybe longer uh maybe 20 years before seat belts were mandated so and then you know baby seats are a lot a lot of kids and babies died because they're just like sitting on this you know on a seat with nothing i mean i i kind of grew up sitting on a seat with nothing yeah we'd ride in the bed of the truck yeah seriously running the better build pickup\n\ntruck survivor bias or something i was fine but yeah i was fine but if there was an accident it was game over you know yeah um so so you do see some good in government with when it comes to regulation and stuff like that but you don't generally think the government can spend your money more effectively than you can yeah i mean i would say like generally i'm like i think pretty moderate i'm not like sort of an extreme libertarian um i think there are roles for the government uh that makes sense like i don't think we necessarily want like a private army uh or private police force or private yeah i think there's you know uh certain things that that are probably the the right role for the government but anything done by the government is going to be inefficient\n\num because the government is a monopoly like people that don't like corporations should not somehow think that the government is much is much better because the government is a corporation in the limit it is the ultimate corporation with a monopoly on violence so um it's like i think you know the right role for the government is is like to be uh acting a regulatory capacity um and but we should aspire to have the government be be a a limited actor in the economy um so you know you could say like what percentage of economic output should be uh governed you know um and maybe maybe a third or something like that you know once you start getting above 50 government i think that's problematic so um you can look at countries like east eastern west germany north\n\nand south korea and there's you know there was essentially an arbitrary line drawn out to divide the countries and east germany was like kind of 100 government west germany was i don't know probably at least 40 government they're like you know relatively socialist and yet the gdp per capita of that you know of west germany was i think five times higher than east germany so that just shows you just how big of a difference it is if if you have like something that's close to half government versus 100 government uh private sector is probably a factor of 10 more efficient than the government um and this like this is sort of this is also true of just just generally if you have like a monopolistic private corporation then the forcing function for serving the\n\ncustomer is weak but at least private corporations can go bankrupt and the government cannot go bankrupt unless the people go bankrupt like basically unless it exhausts extracting money from the population so well they're trying their best so yeah it's just you know so just you want to just knowing that the government is as inefficient as any large monopolistic corporation would be and it is the ultimate large monopolistic corporation we should minimize how much the government does um keep it to what is essential um and and not go beyond that yeah i mean i guess you know the conservative concern with that is you start to give them you know you give them a foothold and then they're just going to keep going like you give them a regulatory capacity over\n\nsomething like agi and then they're just gonna start to you know overreach more and more because that's what we've seen in the past you you know you give them an inch and they take a mile yeah but i i mean does anyone realistically want to delete the faa or the fda probably somebody okay [Music] like we've got an anarchist in the corner i mean usually if you go to the store like you you buy some whatever steak or or some something from the store and ask like it's like poisonous you know and or or you know the like we take for granted that with the food we buy is is uh at the stores it is not going to kill us you know actually you know uh because some company cut costs and decided that you know having e coli and salmonella is you know who cares type of\n\nthing um so so i think you know like like we take ground that the food we buy at the stores is is um is not poisonous um and that uh the drugs we buy like that is extremely unlikely like the drugs will be consistent and they will do what they say they're going to do which except for by the the sort of vitamin supplements industry which can basically is unregulated and so they can say things that are not true and feel so still by it um anyway so it's like i think you know you really want like you can think of like the you want some kind of referee on the field so like you know for um you know like it's like a if you're watching say a football game or something like basketball there's referees okay so would the games be better or worse without a referee\n\nthat'd be worse you know um so i think like the role of referee and and games is important um and so the government's role as a referee i think is also important um you just don't have the government be kind of on the field as a player it would be weird if the referees just suddenly started playing ball you know probably not the game would not be as good well and other things that make me think you've never seen a sci-fi movie before you have a neural link so you can like put things in people's brain or something and what's that like what's that like is it what is it cool do you like it well try it you might like it okay yeah with neural link uh neural link is in part um well but in fact the the the sort of the reason i created neural link was um long\n\nterm as a risk mitigation for digital super intelligence in that if we are able to effectively achieve symbiosis with digital intelligence then we're sort of the collective human well is better able to steer things in the direction that we'd like or even with benign ai at least go along for the ride so because even with the benign super intelligence if it's so much smarter than us that you know that it really can't even communicate effectively because it's so fast um and and then like talking to us is like turning to a tree you know because if you look if you do a stop motion on like a tree a tree is communicating with its environment just very slowly it looks right now it's looking for water the tree is looking forward to the the ranch is looking for\n\nsun and and the tree has movement it's just very slow um and so um and we're already at this point uh partially a cyborg uh we're de facto uh sort of a sidewalk in in that our phones and computers and applications are a digital extension of ourselves at this point like if somebody leaves their phone behind it's like missing limb syndrome you know like uh the phone is almost like a part of you um and uh but the the issue with that symbiosis is that the the data rate is extremely slow so like how fast can you can you communicate with your phone using uh two thumbs you know 10 bits per second it's very low at the data rate and if if computers can and which they can communicate at you know a billion bits per second or more and and we're communicating with\n\nthem at 10 bits per second then that's just an extremely slow communication link and it inhibits symbiosis without sort of tertiary digital layer like so we've got sort of basically like a a primal layer which is like a limbic system basically it's our instincts and a lot of our emotions and it's kind of like the reptile brain the situation and then you've got the cortex which is like the the thinking part of the brain planning and whatnot uh and um so it's like the second layer and then then our phones and computers are our tertiary layer but there's a just a bound with limitation i would we're very slow to communicate so but with uh with a neural link you can increase the communication bandwidth by many orders of magnitude maybe by a thousand or more\n\nso you're talking about output from the brain to other devices yeah primarily yeah not input to the brain uh it would be both ways uh our input is much less constrained than our output because of vision so you know like rough approximation is like our input because of vision is like maybe a million times uh roughly some people are online not going to argue with this but it's the input to input is many orders of magnitude uh higher than output because of vision um you know picture a picture says a thousand words and a video says i don't know hundred thousand words like there's just you know there's um this is why like a meme can communicate so much more than a few words now this is obviously very esoteric and like i'm not sure this will resonate you know\n\nwith a lot of people like oh we need to increase the the bandwidth between our cortex and our digital tertiary layer uh by many orders of magnitude in order to not lose symbiosis with digital intelligence so this is quite esoteric but um but that's the long-term existential risk mitigation of neurolink which we may or may not achieve i'm not saying we will achieve this but it's least an attempt to solve that then um along the way neural link uh can solve a lot of uh brain issues like if you got uh and you know if you've got like a a severed spine or something so like one of the first application we're looking to solve is uh implanting neural link in someone who has a quadriplegic tetraplegic um so like they have no they can't move their arms and legs\n\nor maybe not even really uh move most of their face like like maybe blink or something like that you know like stephen hawking or they didn't have to have several spine but like there are various diverse mechanical and other like mechanical breakages or diseases that break the link between your brain and body um and neurolink um can solve that it can certainly we're confident neural link can can enable someone who uh is a tetraplegic um to operate a phone uh or a computer faster than someone who has hands working hands and uh we're showing this for example with the monkey being able to play video games so you can play a bunch of games not just pong pong is currently its favorite game i don't even know monkeys can play pong but yeah in the first place\n\nyeah monkeys can play pong uh with their hand good um yeah they're good monkeys have good reflexes uh so um and that's how that starts off you the monkey we try and then we look at the signals that the monkey's brain is sending and then we read those signals and and then we uh try we transfer the signals directly to the game and uh you know so and then then we take the joystick away and the monkey's just playing basically to let telepathic wow that's wild yeah so um and we recently got uh what we think is a world record in bits per second from uh from any uh neural neural device like we're starting to approach 10 bits per second which is not actually well not that big but it's more than anyone else has achieved in a useful way 10 10 like close to 10 useful\n\nbits per second is where we are and we'll we'll increase that dramatically over time so um so anyway so we're we also want to make sure the device is extremely safe um and and extremely well tested um our standards go far beyond what is required from a regulatory stand standpoint and uh but we're hoping to do our first neurolink into a human uh next year and um and likes to enable someone who um you know has has almost no no movement capability to um operate a phone um as fast or or we think faster over time than someone who has has working hands so i think that that would be quite a significant thing and help a lot of people and and there are many such applications um and i'm increasingly confident that um we can implant a second neurolink device so\n\none one that accesses the motor cortex and the somatosensory cortex and then a a second one that is uh past where the injury is uh so if you've got a service you know we're basically where where are the neurons still functional um and implant a second uh neural link device uh and uh act have the two devices talk to each other and just transfer the signals across that where wherever it broke yeah because it's like a broken circuit right so you've got a broken circuit you just you basically just do a signal transfer between the two and you don't necessarily even need to to know what all those signals are um you just need to transfer the signals um so just like if you have like a an ethernet cable you don't need to know what's on the ethernet cable for the\n\ncable to work or a wireless ethernet from one wireless ethernet you know wi-fi box to another wireless ethernet wi-fi box you don't need to know what the contents of the signal are in order to transfer the signal so i am confident that that such thing is possible um i'm not saying we will do it i don't know i set unreasonable expectations but i'm i'd say i'm certain that it is possible and we will try to make it happen which would then enable people to walk again and use their hands and i think long term probably restore full body functionality to somebody who um has none did you know that we created an elon musk subscription tier at one point on the b did you ever see that no you didn't know that we did that we were because you were gonna pay a lot of\n\nmoney or something yeah you had interacted with us a couple of times and so we were like wooing you as a subscriber come subscribe but we created our own tear for you what was the uh fee on the tier i don't remember what it was i think it was like it was the highest payments it was like 99999 dollars a month or something but people were signing up for it people were actually signing up for it though every time i would check i'd be like is it him is it him it was random people who picked it thinking it was a joke and it was actually charging their credit cards we had like we had all these angry people like my wife is gonna kill me if you don't refund this charge so we had to take the elon musk tear down so we took it down i guess before you could before\n\nyou could find it but it was there we had it there for you so well thanks i guess that's a compliment i think all right very eloquently put well shall we land the plane here with the 10 question so we uh this is podcast started in kyle's garage we asked every guest the same 10 questions at the end of the interview we never anticipated we would be asking elon musk these 10 questions these are rapid fire so you can answer them as quick as you want yeah or you can go on forever yeah your call uh have you ever met christian rap artist carmen um i i mean the only common musician i'm aware of is um common miranda uh you know she would like dance with like a like a fruit ball on her head yeah yeah um and you never met her no she she died okay a while ago all\n\nright cool look him up are you more of a calvinist or an armenian or an armenian yeah like a predestination [Music] i i guess my my mind would say um determinism and my heart says very well yeah i mean when i grew up i was funnily enough um i went to anglican sunday school uh you know church of england basically um and uh but i was also sent to hebrew preschool although i'm not jewish but nonetheless i was singing having to gillard one day and jesus along the next and you know it's fine if you're a kid you know and and santa claus and like uh you know um so um [Music] yeah yeah that answers the question uh yeah so uh you get to add one book to the bible what is it you guys have never people have never updated these questions to like apply more broadly\n\nnope at any point they're unchangeable yeah they're like the ten commandments at this point um i mean a little bit lower i remember we could have a chapter past revelations like is there a happy ending here like um the revelations part two the happy ending well you know if there's like a really good book you think everyone should read because it would be in the back of the bible everyone should read this book you know okay how many people have actually read the bible fewer than probably say they have but oh yeah i mean do you have a reason i mean at one point i you know when i was a kid i was like i had this existential crisis and i was trying to figure out what's the meaning of life and i was like oh it all means nothing it's all and i and i you know\n\nread like a whole bunch of religious books including the bible and i'm like there's a bunch of things in there they didn't teach you in sunday school uh sonoma gomorrah dark um yikes um you know god sure changes his mind from the old testament to the new testament i'm like whoa that's pretty vengeful in the old testament what was the question you get to pick a book to add to the bible yeah a book uh the attraction to the galaxy oh god yeah it's a great book yeah cigars are pipes um you know i'm not sure i've ever really smoked a pipe um my grandfather did it kind of looks cool but i have smoked cigars and i think like you know for a celebratory occasion like cigars and whiskey that's a pretty good combo you get to hang out with any three people living\n\nor dead who are they it's always hard to think of like three yeah people ethan kyle seth you're hanging you got three right here that's true jeff bezos uh necessarily like uh i think there's a lot of people that would be interesting to talk to but um you know i don't know uh is it living or dead you said yeah living or dead this is this is just you know a stream of consciousness not like a carefully thought out yeah uh answer but it would be like uh i don't like shakespeare ben franklin maybe newton or einstein okay it's a good group bunch of white men yeah i was drinking white clothes cleopatra sounds fun [Laughter] whiskier beer or i guess he went right for the whiskey so nice all right uh what would be the first thing you would do as president well\n\nthe presidency in the u.\n\ns is designed to be a weak position a relatively weak position um because you know obviously the founders of the of the country did not want to create a monarch you don't want to avoid like a king situation um so the the sort of the presidency in the u.\n\ns is is meant to be weak weaker than saying a parliamentary system where the majority essentially the speaker that the house would be the the prime minister or president um so you say like what what can you do as the president um in the in the u.\n\ns there's a lot of limitations um unless you have the support of congress you obviously cannot change the laws but i would i probably aspire to reduce the size of government and you know and take a look at the regulatory situation and just make sure there's there's a good garbage collection of regulations so if they're outdated as there are many outdated unnecessary regulations uh but but you know there's a there's a strong forcing function for creating new laws and regulations but a weak forcing function for getting rid of of of bad laws and regulations um and and and i think this is just generally a problem as civilization ages without war where there are new laws and regulations created every year and so there's like more and more constraints on what\n\nyou can do but there's there's very little effort put to remove laws and regulations and so this is like hardening of the arteries of civilization and eventually it'll be like oh look elvis travels where you're just tied down by you know thousands of little strings and it's not like any one string is the issue but there's so many strings that you can't get anything done um you know that's one part part big part of why i moved to texas it's just like there's just fewer strings tying you down um so yeah um i i think like the the uh the value of of someone just being a a very competent executive officer is um is under undervalued in a president uh just like how good are you at running things and getting things done um because if you're the president you're\n\nkind of like the ceo of the country um and uh and so are you good at doing things are you effective and pretty productive yeah you said a ceo is a meaningless title would that mean i'm just curious how that like well ceo is not not like a legal title okay um i was just saying that that there are all these titles and cooperations that are kind of made up um and you can see what is actually uh required for a corporation when you fill out the form to create one and so you need a a president a secretary and a treasurer same thing as like if you're performing a chess club or a glee club or something like that same same thing um and and actually technically all three can be the same person so that's what's legally required if you don't have those three things\n\nyou cannot function as a corporation uh everything else like a general counsel cfo ceo these are all made up like that they're no legal no no meaningful legal bearing so uh you only need those the president's secretary treasurer um so there's all these like cxo titles which you know just are somewhat like resume inflators um i was just making a point that like people think ceo is a real title but it's not it's not it's not a legally meaningful title you need someone who is defined as the as the president but that's that's um that's it so um for now you have like chief marketing officer chief information officer chief everything officer you know i i sort of think like you should have like this is our svp of sorcery all right question number eight the master\n\ngeneral um oh yeah have you ever punched anyone or have you ever been punched you got any cool punching stories if you don't have an answer for that we have a follow-up it's even worse i don't know about cool punching stories but i um where i grew up was extremely violent um i never i never started a fight except with my brother actually one exception yeah i did i'd be my brother up which i'm either just i don't know if that's how it goes but uh [Music] south africa when i was growing up was just an inherently very violent place i punched the face many times i always got beaten to death once so many times i think if you have not been punched in the face with a fist you don't know what you have no idea what it's like shocking sensation shocking sensation\n\nhave you been punished ethan yeah just by like high school kids yeah not right still it's just like your face never touches anything and then suddenly yeah they punch their nose like you can't even see straight um so yeah um it's funny that people think words are they're so sensitive to words it's like man you're even punched in the face words don't mean nothing all right question number nine uh you get to go to one concert any band in history who do you go see anybody i don't know maybe the rolling stones are there you know when they're only peak rolling stones seems like and hey day yeah yeah nitpick all right final question to close our time out here yeah i mean we're here we're you know the babylon b is a christian organization you know and uh we're\n\na ministry well how come we're doing this show on a sunday night why wasn't your church gathered why aren't you heathens and church exactly so we have to make a church supposed to be a day of rest we did zoom church like god said don't work on sundays okay let's go ahead guys are going to straight down for this one get into the whole jesus that's rest thing okay straight to hell this is true this is true i it's okay so to make this church we have to do we have to make sure just we're wondering if you could do us a quick solid and accept jesus as your lord and savior on the show um personal awards you know it's a quick prayer [Music] i mean let's just say like i agree with the principles that jesus advocated um and that the you know there's some some there's\n\ngreat wisdom in what in the teachings of of jesus uh and i agree with those teachings um and things like tone the other cheek are very important because as opposed to an eye for an eye an eye for an eye leaves everyone blind so forgiveness you know is important and treating people as you would wish to be treated love that neighbor as myself very important so it's like a 60 70 yes yes as einstein would say [Music] i believe in the god of spinoza [Music] um so um but hey if um you know if if jesus is uh saving people i mean i i wouldn't stand in his way you know like i'll be sure i'll be safe why not sweet we did it yeah i think he just said yes we got it all right we got them to be exciting sounds good the whatever blood and water christ it was kind of\n\nweird you know if you're a kid like you get to give you some weird tasting you know just getting a wine yeah i'm like what the hell is this i'm like isn't this kind of just cut it off when he said yes i'm like is this some like fading metaphor for cannibalism or something i don't get it like what uh what the hell i remember thinking that was just crazy uh when i was a kid um and i like this to like whoa you know i mean even as a metaphor it's kind of odd but you know yeah so it's like should i be doing alcohol to minors i was like we do grape juice okay yes i think it's unusual to even be thinking about that as a kid like as a kid you just go through the motions and then later on that you think wait a minute what does this actually represent what am i\n\ndoing when i was a kid i was like like is this actually blood and body what you know i don't i don't know if i want to eat somebody and then i was like why this is i mean i did it anyway i'm like this seems like okay man i don't know if this is just pretty odd you know i remember thinking that even at age five so i was like you know and i was definitely like you know sunday school there like when they were telling me all the stories and i was like asking questions and like and i really were upset that i was asking questions and i was like you know jesus like fed the crowd with like five loaves of bread and three fish and i'm like how big was the crowd and and like where did the fish and bread come from did like from his cloak or something like because\n\ni was like reading books and i was like this is like they'd materialize like am i like i don't know where'd it come from you know like how did would you like take a bite of the bread and it would just the bread would just come back to being a full brand yeah you look away it's kind of a mechanic background they left out the details where did the universe come from um [Music] well yeah i'm not saying i know all the answers here i'm just you know it's just uh and like jesus was obviously very pro-alcohol you know because one of his miracles was turning water into wine yeah and that was like they were having a party they ran out of wine and they're like let's keep this banner going good stuff who can who can solve this problem we're at a white cloth the\n\nfriggin store's closed and jesus is like i gotcha okay water now i like party on you know so you know accurate pro partying without all eyes literally it was one of the miracles bible story time you are the it's like you're definitely you're the savior you're scared you kept the party going with lots of wine that's great um so um yeah well thank you i appreciate you coming here talking to us very much very welcome pleasure to meet you in person and uh you know we'll uh we'll continue to throw out the satire that we hope you'll respond to and you know keep that going a little bit oh we didn't ask onion or the bee but i guess that was kind of answered earlier you mentioned earlier yeah yes we already covered that yeah i mean i i think the onion has done\n\nsome extremely funny stuff over time um it's just it just seems to have been you know in recent years somewhat infected by the world my virus so that just makes everything less funny yeah that's true workman virus is a world without humor yeah i'm hoping neurolink can solve that move thank you thank you appreciate it thank you thanks so much thanks so much","textByLang":{"en":"so [Music] hey [Music] [Applause] [Music] these are the guys that run the show this is kyle our editor-in-chief this is creative director ethan nicole okay so i mean uh well i guess before we get started like uh maybe you guys can tell me like what's the you know how did the v get started and yeah and and uh yeah what's your deal and why do why are you in california that's way easier actually i'm much better at being interviewed so no problem yeah the view is just this little like christian humor site that we launched in 2016 and it was just like we spent 50 bucks on the domain name started writing jokes throwing them out there and it started to go big in conservative circles a couple years ago and that's just kind of where we got to where we are seth\n\nis our ceo he bought the site a few years ago from the original founder yeah he was original his name is adam ford he's in love with the company anymore uh he owns a piece of it he does not the bee now you you've seen that the you know the yeah that was unaffiliated no yeah yeah yeah okay so they do like real news but crazy it's like a backup plan it's like when satire is impossible because the world's too absurd then we just report on the absurdity over on not to be so you know plan b yeah yeah reality is we're greater than fiction yeah exactly often is so how many people at the be now yeah we've got uh probably a dozen full-timers now it's grown pretty fast a year ago it was three of us we have over we have like 25 people involved just not all full-time\n\nstaff so you'd be surprised like with satire you don't have to have a writing staff like filling a room churning out articles all day long you can only handle so much satire every day you know like we're not people you don't need to publish an article every three minutes like fox news or daily wire or something like that so um we have a lot of part-time one of our writers here frank fleming is one of our writers um and he's got a full-time job he just writes for us on the side okay we'd love to have him full time yeah he lives in australia you live in austin okay yeah yeah and i'm a florida guy i have my head the headquarters are technically in south florida i'm in southeast florida yeah florida i'd love to get these guys to florida but it's hard to get\n\npeople out of california it really is uh yeah it's more challenging than you think despite uh like california's the state of california doing everything it can to encourage people to leave yes yeah um i think you had one article about how gavin newsom is your whole salesman of the year yeah yeah yeah actually true that's actually true [Laughter] so you don't miss it then i know i mean there's certainly many aspects of california that i do like um most of my friends are still in california some of my best friends like california so yeah i do i do most many aspects to california especially my friends and it's beautiful and lots of cool things but increasingly difficult to get things done and california used to be the land of opportunity and now it is the\n\nhas become and it's becoming more so the land of um [Music] sort of over regulation over litigation uh over taxation poop on the sidewalk and and scorn it's just that's what it's like it's not like thanks for the taxes it's like tate thanks for the texan hacksaw kicking the teeth let me flip the question though so that's kind of the story that be the bee started out as you know this little blog it took off it's kind of blown up into something like now we have a following including you like how how do we get on your radar people sharing our articles and you just saw them coming across your feed yeah um i'm not sure i saw it on twitter at one point the thoughts from the articles were quite quite funny um i wrote those okay um yeah i mean i i used to be\n\nmuch bigger fan of the of the onion but then the onion just seems to have gotten really politically correct um you know it's sort of gone a bit but in the sml direction it's somewhat leftist as you know it's it's basically it will it will not really make fun of anything on the left but it used to be much more even-handed than the onion um and um and then they just they just got the work mind virus yeah so uh to the point where the animal just was it used to be very funny and then it was not that funny you know snl i used to be a huge fan of snl but you know i still think they have some some occasional good stuff but it's just become i think you've written some some articles about this um you know snl had many many if not most of the snl episodes are kind\n\nof a a moral lecture on why we're bad human beings right uh instead of comedy yeah so and again uh won't make fun of anything on the left really like you know they'll beat up on ted cruz 17 000 times and you're like okay we get it and often because he's made fun of someone on the left he'll make fun of some on the left and then they jump on him for that it's like a defensive thing yeah yeah exactly so it's it's just um there are just a lot of no-fly zones uh with a lot of comedy um and uh and then and then you realize it's like wait a second is is a comedy is is the comedy getting at an essential truth or or trying to or is there is there a propaganda element or is it trying to push you in a particular direction or or getting getting to an essential truth\n\nthat is humorous and when it stops trying to get to an essential truth that that is that is humorous then you know it's it's just not that funny right now see that's exactly the criticism we get from the left the criticism from the left is that that's what we're doing with our humor is that we're trying to push a narrative neglecting the truth that's literally what the new york times says that we are far right misinformation disguised as satire right right so there's a it's almost where you're standing jealousy yeah it's almost based on where you're standing but how it's based on where you're standing yeah i i mean i'd say the b is probably it's moderately right um it's not it's not but it's not certainly not far right that my my impression is not that\n\nuh i would say that the b is not probably it wouldn't be actually the b is fully centrist um but it is certainly not far right um if one is fully left and 10 is fully right the b seems to be at six 6.\n\n5 uh towards okay right that ish bernie sanders elizabeth warren babylon b hitler or somewhere on that scale yeah it's it's not but you know it's it's uh i mean the the b is i think less right than than say the onion is is left for example you know so the the i think would be more left than that the b is right right righteous or whatever yeah right no i don't know we'll have to put that on our wikipedia page righteous propaganda you know you talked about the wilk mind virus and i was wondering if you could decipher this tweet of yours for me because i'm not a programmer you wrote trace route woke underscore mind underscore virus what does that mean okay so traceroute is a networking command to so if you want to figure out a path to a particular server\n\nor domain you'd say traceroute or in windows trace rt that would show you the path to a particular source server with an ip address or domain name and and it would show basically all the hops that that it goes through um and the latency between each each hop and so i know some of those words yeah um so traceroute be yeah we like where'd it come from yeah where did the virus come from what is its origin so did this work did this command work or not did you find your comments read the comments and see and see all right it is a prevalent mind virus and um arguably one of the biggest threats to wine civilization also not having enough kids right yeah i think most people if you just have to look at the birth rate statistics um you can tell what the future\n\nis going to be like because you can see how many children were born last year um and and then you could say like is this is the birth rate trending down or up and it's been trending down basically almost everywhere so if you look at the birth rate last year you know you know how many adults will be in 20 years because that's how many babies were born the trend is like you don't have to be some master of statistician or something like that um you could just look look at kids one last year trending to well below replacement rate uh and a lot of countries have been a well-veil replacement rate for a long time well the concern is that if you have kids then they'll contribute to climate change and they'll kill the earth right that's the leftist concern is\n\nthat we're overpopulating the earth and we're going to kill it are you trying to overpopulate the earth so that we can go to mars and take over and take over mars is this a deliberate strategy the earth is far from overpopulated um uh far far from overpopulated um so the you know the the thing that's necessary to minimize the chemical change to the atmosphere and oceans is to move to sustainable energy generation and consumption so the three elements of a sustainable energy future are sustainably energy generation primarily through solar wind some geothermal hydro and nuclear although they're shutting down all the nuclear power stations so yeah you can sort of cross that one of the list which they shouldn't be doing they should just keep they should keep\n\nmoving um they're really unless a nuclear power plant is in a region of uh major national disasters instability or something yeah yeah you don't want to be like you know subject to massive um natural disasters because obviously that could be a problem but if you're you know like say germany or france or whatever you don't have those so the nuclear power is very safe um but anyway the the long-term um the heavy lifting on energy generation will be solar followed by wind and um and you really don't need a very large land area to generate enough power to power for example united states so it's on the order of you know roughly a little over 100 miles by 100 miles a second of land with solar solar panels would power the entire united states so like a little\n\ncorner of utah or texas like um it can power the whole country so anyway so uh it's really not that hard the solar incidence is a gigawatt per square kilometer uh if for most neutrons can do some calculations most nuclear power plants yeah that's right it's it's it's a kilowatt per square per square k per square meter and there's a million square you know million square meters in a square kilometer so um it's a pretty simple uh math so and then you get you get like maybe 20 efficiency on that so call it like a net power generation of 200 megawatts per square kilometer now if you take most nuclear power plants there's usually a a pretty clear area around a nuclear power plant because people don't usually want to live right next to a nuclear power plant\n\nso um the area of most nuclear power plants that is uninhabited if if covered in solar panels would generate more power than the nuclear power plant and then you also then the second element that's needed are batteries to store solar and wind because uh the sun doesn't shine all the time and the wind doesn't blow all the time so the enter the intermittency of uh solar and wind requires battery storage for continuous power uh so that's the second part of the of the sort of second the second pillar of sustainable energy and the third is uh sustainable transport so that means uh electric uh cars boats planes and then ironically the one thing that you can't really make electric is rockets you know the same involved in that but but although you can over time\n\nuse solar power to generate fuel by pulling co2 out of the atmosphere combining it with h2o creating ch4 which is methane and o2 oxygen and rockets are mostly oxygen by mass so over time you can make everything basically solar power so you're working on some of those problems but the problem of wokeness specifically you mentioned that's like a mind virus and it's destructive uh and why do you think wokeness is so interested in your opinions too um but you know like i mean generally i think we should be aiming for like a positive society and uh you know that it should be okay to you know be humorous uh like you know like we should we should like like workness basically wants to make comedy illegal which is not cool we've experienced that i mean chappelle\n\nlike what the flower bed i mean try to shut down chappelle come on man that's crazy um so um you know so do we want a humorless society that is simply rife with condemnation uh and hate basically uh and no forgiveness right yeah [Music] at its heart awokeness is divisive um exclusionary um and hateful it's it's it basically gives mean people a reason a a a a it gives them a shield to be to be mean and cruel armored and false virtue what do you think i'd agree with that yeah yeah i mean we've obviously seen that from the left you know just ourselves you know the left is almost this religion now where they're so serious and they believe what they believe with such intensity that for us to make fun of them you know for them it's like you're making fun of\n\ngod or salvation you know so they're almost the new religious right in our view yeah he agreed with me [Laughter] well you were pretty mean to uh senator warren though on twitter recently you slammed her man please don't call the manager on me senator karen she struck first yeah obviously right yes she did actually called me a freeloader yeah um anna grifter doesn't pay taxes basically um and i'm literally paying the most tax that any individual in history has ever paid this year ever and she doesn't pay taxes basically at all and her tax and her salary is paid for by the taxpayer like me could you even use could you use turbo attorney would that even work if you could die by irony she would be she would be dead fiery could kill what would happen if you\n\nwalked into an h r block to file your taxes like could they handle your case my taxes are actually not that complicated um i do not have any offshore accounts i don't have any uh tax shelters uh uh i i have a i have basically a tesla and spacex stock um and um tesla's publicly traded so information is public and spacex is you know ac corp that is audited uh you know it has outside orders so it these it's it'll with that uh outside investors so it is they're also it's everything is extremely transparent um there are there is no uh there are no elaborate sort of tax avoidance schemes or or anything like that so hr block could could easily do my taxes you know i don't need a html block i could do it yeah you know it would like probably take me a few hours\n\nto do my taxes it's very basic did you sell that stock in tesla because of the twitter poll uh in part you made up your mind that you're already going to do that before the twitter poll um there i i have some test options that are expiring next year that so i needed to exercise those options no matter what and and i was like okay i'll move forward and exercise those options um so that that's only would be part of it uh no matter what uh but then over and above that i sold incremental stock uh to uh try to get up to the 10 level so just the option exercise loan would not get to 10 so i sold a stock that should be roughly make my total uh tesla share sale roughly 10 is the most annoying thing in the world people asking you questions like this about your\n\npersonal finances no one ever asks me what stock i'm selling or or why i made so much money last year i mean i'm the third richest man on my street which is which is pretty good pretty good i mean i'm not sure it's it's all that productive or interesting you know essentially all of my net worth is uh it's just in spacex and tesla stock these two companies that that i helped create uh and have run for now almost 20 years um have done a lot of useful things um spacex is the launch is more paleo to orbit than the rest of the world combined and has a global internet system called starlink and and is the primary provider well the only us provider of uh astronaut transport to the space station um we publish six to eight satire articles a day some of them are\n\nfunny i mean pretty good so so spacex uh yeah it transports us and as well as non-us astronauts to the space station that was previously the u.\n\ns was dependent on on russia uh who's doing a good job but charging kind of crazy money proceed so as with spacex the the cost per astronaut dropped dramatically and and the money was you know went to jobs in the us so that's what why people you know think spacex is valuable uh tesla uh i mean the annoyance though of like people uh holding it against you that you've had success holding it against you that you have wealth um you know viewing billionaires as evil and you know you're not doing enough to give back you know you have like the elizabeth warren thing that you haven't paid your fair share i mean that's you know it's that's got to be kind of aggravating yeah i think it's just important to understand like like what is this wealth uh it's not like\n\nsome it's not like i've got like some some mashup massive cash balance uh i've my cash balances are very very low and at least until i sold stock which is really the first time i've actually sold stock in any meaningful way was this quarter i simply had loans against my my stock so i i i if tesla spacex went bankrupt i would go bankrupt too immediately so um it's not realized this is what you're saying yeah it's not no it's like people it's just like it's like you know i built these two companies and it was extremely difficult to build them like massively painful and difficult rewarding too but also but massively painful difficult um and uh and and i didn't i didn't sell the stock in the companies um you know i i you know my my sort of impression was\n\nthat you know you you shouldn't take money off the table or you shouldn't you shouldn't take stock off the table and de-risk things that a captain should go down you know with their ship so so it's like okay like you know i don't want to take money off the table and then then if the companies fail then i will be i'll be sort of enriched while investors suffer and that does not seem right so anyway so i that's the reason i didn't sell is is i could easily have diversified and protected myself financially if if spacex would tell them went bankrupt but i did not and spacex and tesla came very close to bankruptcy many times even when bankruptcy was literally weeks away i did not sell stock uh and then the companies became valuable not tesla's value is basically\n\nbecause value is not it's not up to me it's up to investors and they decided it was worth tesla's worth trillion dollars in the public market so and i own twenty percent of the company so so you're not apologizing right now you're not going to look into the camera and say i'm so sorry in the camera right now i'm just trying to explain like i don't think people necessarily understand they don't yeah yeah that uh this this is not you know that some function of sort of hoarding or something it's it's simply that you know i'm 20 company that became very valuable as decided by external investors and so twenty percent of a trillion dollar evaluation is 200 billion dollars um and i i've you know i've said at various times that i think the stock price is too\n\nhigh but the investors just ignored that i'm like okay i literally said it's too high um and they just kept making that price higher so i'm like tell them our value is too high so anyway so just that's uh but like i said this is not like uh my so-called wealth is it's not some it's not some deep mystery it's simply what is my ownership percentage of spacex and tesla multiply that by the valuation that's my worth it's super simple and my taxes are super simple and i have no like i said no offshore accounts no sort of clever tax evasion or anything like that and i don't i don't draw a salary or any cash salary or bonus from the companies at all so um again i thought that was like morally good to not do that um and so there were there were like there was\n\none year i think 2018 where where i i didn't pay any tax uh but but that's because i didn't have any income um and and and i did have a little bit of income but i'd actually overpaid taxes i think in 2017.\n\nso i paid too much tax and so i got like i basically netted that out in in 2018 because i paid too much tax in 2017.\n\naccidentally unless you sell stock there are no realized gains so uh so then i was like well should i sell like i i like what am i supposed to do why send shares to the government somehow i don't know if you can even do that yeah um so there was like well like unless i sell shares there's not there's no there's no actual mechanism to pay tax so then i was like well should i sell 10 percent you know to in order to pay tax and and i sort of asked twitter and they're like on balance they said yes and so i um so i i sold enough stock to get to around ten percent plus the option exercise stuff and uh i very i try to be extremely literal um so you don't generally need to read between lines you can just read the lines [Music] so that's it as the as the fattest\n\nguy here i i want to know what's when are you gonna make the candy company because you said on twitter that you're making a candy company and you're the closest thing to willy wonka that this culture has it could be willy wonka i didn't say it would you say that he said i'm starting a canadian company it's going to be warren buffett um but you did say i am super super serious i think if you put two supers before sirius that makes sense and that's like you're probably not serious you know just uh for satire writers out there yeah um i thought that locked him in is like definitely syria he's explaining jokes to it yeah yeah yeah it's just a guy said let me tell you how jokes accept our words um you know i was just obviously i was just like making fun of\n\nwarren buffett who's like really he's got this like candy company and stuff so um and um that was my one question now i i i did actually i did actually experiment with um trying to find some compelling candy that would be like i don't know maybe much better than other candy um we tried various candy options but i didn't find any i couldn't figure out a candy that was like just way better than other candy um like a little bit better but not a lot better and so it was like unless it's like really a great product then you looked into this yeah yeah we tried a whole bunch of different candies and uh and it was like there's not anything like that's obviously just way better uh so um i don't want to just have like a pretty good candies if there's like a great\n\ncandy yeah some aces some candy that's aces um but you know we don't need another sort of like pretty good candy yeah yeah there's plenty of the south yeah yeah what does that look like when you like suddenly get an idea like we should make candy you like you just call somebody like how does what what are the steps that suddenly take place when you're like because you do so many things i'm just fascinated by the what that process looks like rockets tell them you got a guy you call jim i want to make candy make it happen um i think i did ask for you know people on twitter to send me candy that they thought was good it's deployed and i was like well what if some of those candy is like you know it's poisonous or something but whatever like you know candy\n\nfrom strangers on the internet yeah it could go wrong that's just not 100 safe um but uh i did try a whole bunch of candy scent from strangers what's your favorite candy well there was like a a pretty good like peanut like some pretty good peanut brittle ones or like that peanut butter with a bunch of other stuff in it and some pretty good chocolates but but nothing that was like blew me away so um and and then there were people at spacex and tesla that sent me some candy options but not nothing that was it's not like i care about starting companies like if there's like there are if there's a very compelling product or service then that's the thing that is important not the company your company is just an assemblage of people to create a compelling product\n\nor service and if a company does not provide great products and services it should not exist there's no point in the company for the sake of being a company that's pointless companies should only exist to provide great products and services a company is just just literally a group of people so do we have to close or stay open i think there's a lot of there's a lot of companies out there that probably should just be disbanded because they don't make uh compelling products and services they're spoilers and those people better that those people do something else i think on that topic i mean the question that i just like really i feel so unqualified to be interviewing you right now i think we all do why are we here like what what are you doing okay i'm not\n\nthe one who asked for the podcast you guys did just to be clear i'm not pushing the podcast on you you guys came here we just we were like i will stop by you know texas yeah just to be clear who was asking her i'm not i'm not like you know i know i know exactly hold a gun to your head for this podcast you could be on cnn right now yeah you know john a real news organization yeah i'm just throwing it out there i don't know unfortunately i just you know haven't um you know i guess uh you know what what was it you said the the requirement for being a cnn driver cnn is uh are you are you a pervert yeah i'm not perverted enough yeah i guess i don't know not a big pedophile fan you know bad mommy headlines better than i do [Laughter] i think you know a lot\n\nof us fantasize about if we had lots and lots and lots of money what we do and you've done a lot of the things that like a lot of us fantasize about build cool robots gonna go to mars we're gonna fix traffic but most of us also think we've become batman have you ever thought about like what would that really look like to become or would you go batman or iron man around what because crime is on the right that's a fruit bat or an insect bat i like the dragon ball big scary you know because most bats are either fruit or they carry a lot of diseases yeah yeah they eat fruit bugs like fruit batman intake batman i need to read that spin-off comic it's a strange choice of uh creature to emulate you know you take a different animal like maybe monkeys that play\n\npong with their brains man [Music] monkey man monkey man yeah exactly just very agile they're the smartest animal right they can just uh swing monkey man that batman is more is more like monkey man really yeah because he's like he's swinging around and very agile um climbing up things and yeah throwing a battering is more likely for batman like why can't he fly if he's batman that's gonna fly yeah that's right he just yeah he glides very effectively though okay so he's really yeah but that's like a frank's more like flying [Laughter] less intimidating i guess yeah oh no squirrel man we're he's going to get us not squirrel man again yeah without making the grappling hook he has that thing's sweet we need those you can make probably make that yeah yeah\n\nsure you can make a grappling hood um i i mean like like when you it's like they sort of skip the parts where like batman's always on the top of the building but like once you get to the ground floor how do you get back to the top of the building yeah it's like you're going to huffing and puffing you know yeah yeah you never see how do you get the top of a skyscraper even if you've got a grappling hook i mean how big is your grappling hook like 50 stories like how big is that cable you know it's not really feasible um so you just got to like run up the stairs or take the elevator so it's like how do you get back up to the top of the skyscraper in gotham city it's always like tough with some tall buildings so iron man then he'd be like iron man yeah iron\n\nman because you're good at calculating the cost of things and stuff like that so like would it be cheaper to become batman iron man or just pay every criminal that you encounter a salary to just stop being a criminal i think they're trying to have to be um irony man irony man um i just defeat villains using the power of irony it's like oh too much irony i can't stand it please no stop the irony i can't handle it anymore i give up i give up too much irony that'd be rough that'd be awesome that'd be totally awesome that would be awesome yeah don't make me use irony again cheaper too what are your thoughts on the metaverse which takes technology to the next level and puts us in like a virtual world like do you see that as being dangerous hopeful for humanity\n\nlike what's your view on that maybe we're in the metaverse right now it's just mata versus all the way down um i don't know if i necessarily buy into this metaphor stuff although people talk to me a lot about it web 3.\n\nsure you can put a tv on your nose i'm not sure that makes you in the metaverse you know um it's like weird like you know when i grew up it's like don't sit too close to tv it's going to ruin your eyesight right and now we got like tv is like literally right here i'm like uh what is that good for you i mean have you tried these games you know the art oculus stuff yeah they're okay you know but like it gives you motion sickness if you try to walk around like you can do a video game on your sort of computer console or whatever and and you can you can be in a like a first person game and and uh and move rapidly and not get set motion sickness but if you try to do that in a beat with vr goggles you get motion sickness it's like weird so you have to like teleport\n\naround with it's okay so that doesn't it doesn't feel like like that's the answer necessarily um into the brain so you don't have to have the glasses there you go yeah a neurolink long-term sophisticated neural link could um put you fully fully in a virtual reality thing um so i guess what i'm getting at is yeah exactly what could go wrong like the the negative implications the kind of dystopian implications that some are drawing out like i think it was i think jack dorsey was really critical of the whole metaverse idea you see problems with people i don't know living in a virtual world and leaving a physical world for for that and i don't see someone strapping a friggin t you know screen to their face all day uh and not wanting to ever leave there seems\n\nno way i mean does it feel like that to you it doesn't seem like that to me yeah it's like it gets uncomfortable to have this thing strapped to your head the whole time it definitely needs to be lighter yeah even if the weight i mean if it was like super light it will still be like i don't know it's not so like you won't be there all day so you know i think we're far from disappearing into the metaverse uh this sounds just kind of buzz wordy and you know i don't feel like hit like okay is this you know i've just gotten too old and like am i like one of those people who was like dismissing the internet whatever 95 as being like some fad or something that's never going to amount to anything although i didn't i was like saying like 95 was literally the internet\n\nis going to be transform humanity and going to be like you know prior information basically just went by osmosis like unless a person called another person or carried a letter physically to another person like how did you get information around the vast majority of information was literally person to person then they had like the fax machine and stuff but it's just like the way the metaverse is being sold right now is so underwhelming it's like you're going to be in it's like zoom meetings but there's an avatar for the person next to you you know and you maybe maybe get to design your avatar like i said i don't i don't feel like you know someone some old codger sort of dismissing the internet in 95 is not amounting to anything so there's some danger of\n\nthat that's the case but uh i i currently am unable to see a compelling metaverse situation or web 3 sounds like more marketing than reality i don't get it you know and maybe i will so but i don't get it yet let me put that away it's definitely not monkeys playing pong let's just put it that way yeah i just like to advertise for white chloe yeah quite quote real men drink white clothes can we get our guys on the phone with white club sponsor after the fact if you want us to leave that in yeah then you won't pay us was it you know this is the first white call the first white claw ever drunk on the babylon v podcast so that's great you hit a point in your life where you you know you made plenty of money and you could do whatever what drives you to this\n\ncampaign yeah it could be slipping my ties on right on a tropical island uh i've been wrong all this time why am i working 90 hours a week this is crazy because i'm always passing me the idea of like i've made it people always want to say be able to say i've made it i've arrived yeah and like how do you you know you hit those little islands in your life and you actually have to break yourself up that mindset and what are ways that you break yourself of that mindset and keep on going i didn't put all this effort into building spacex and tesla because i thought there were easy ways to make money i mean anyone who starts a car company thinking it's easy way to make money as a fool there are only two car companies that have not gone bankrupt in the history\n\nof the united states and that's ford and tesla and tesla came within inches of going bankrupt multiple times as does spacex so right and like who starts rocket company think it's going to be successful um i thought about i mean both both those companies i i thought had less than a 10 chance of success and i thought it was overwhelmingly likely that i would lose the money that i made from paypal you know i came to north america when i was 17 just by myself um and i had like like a few thousand dollars in in traveller's checks back when travelers tracks were a thing you know um in canadian dollars i landed in montreal um i have some family in canada uh and my mom's uncle lived in montreal but like we did we didn't know his phone number so i landed montreal\n\nand my mom says i just got a letter back from my uncle he's in minnesota or something so i'm like okay i don't know what to do now so i just stayed in youth hostel and like bought a bus take it across canada and i worked in various like odd jobs and stuff worked on my on my mom's cousin's farm wheat farm in saskatchewan for six weeks that's where i had my 18th birthday actually i worked in the lumber mall chainsawed logs and did various on jobs and and then went to college in canada for a couple years i paid my own way through college by the way so but in canada it's like easier because the college is more subsidized and i was a canadian citizen through my mom so and i got some scholarships and loans and stuff and and then i applied to the university\n\nof pennsylvania and uh didn't think i'd be able to go because tuition is really high but they gave me a scholarship and loans and stuff so i was able to go there i graduated with about a hundred thousand dollars in student debt and um i was going to do grad studies at stanford and decided to put that on hold to try starting an internet company um i actually i tried to get a job at netscape but they didn't i'd send my resume and i get a response so i was like okay i guess i should i can't get a job at the there are only a few internet companies and that can get a job at any of them so i was like i guess i want to do something internet got to start my own company but i ended up writing the first maps and directions on the internet i wrote personally the\n\nmaps directions yellow pages white pages on a puny computer like with hardly any so you had to be like the code had to be super tight i even have some patents on like maps and directions and yellow pages and white pages and stuff from from ages ago they're lapsed now but that that company ended up getting bought by by compact for about 300 million dollars i own seven percent of the company so i got like 20 million from that put most of it into uh x.\n\ncom which merged with confinity to create paypal and then i got about 180 million dollars from that and i put all of that into spacex tesla and solarcity i just basically kept you know kept all the chips on the table and just like let's play another round but most people take the trips off the table or at least some of their chips and uh and then spacex and tesla ended up being valuable and that's where i am but the the reason for spacex and tesla is you know tesla if you say like what is what is the how would you assess the historical good of tesla i'd say it's the degree to which tesla accelerated sustainable energy and i've been interested in electric cars for a long time um since maybe high school or certainly early college my original interest in\n\nelectric vehicles was not so much due to environmental concerns but rather from the uh concern that we'd run out of oil eventually and or become extremely scarce and expensive and then a civilization would collapse because we can drive cars or you know run power plants and stuff so so we needed some form of sustainable energy generation and consumption or where civilization is going to collapse so that was my original interest in electric vehicles and solar energy and and then i do think there's um some risk of uh negatively affecting the climate uh you know as you increase the co2 concentration in the oceans and atmosphere this you increase the risk of something uh going wrong um i i i'm not like in the camp of of the super alarmist uh global warming\n\ni like you know like i think like i don't think we're like um screwed because of like the the current parts per million of co2 in the ocean's atmosphere i think like this is actually not not a terrible level however the there's so much inertia in the direction of mining and burning hydrocarbons that you know the the world is still over overwhelmingly dependent on mining and burning hydrocarbons um so you know if this continues and you start really driving up the co2 in the oceans and atmosphere then there's this increased risk of accelerating climate change basically warming up the oceans and um and raising the sea level so so i think that's like it's just i think that's probably just not a wise risk to take since we will in any case uh have to transition\n\nto sustainable energy long term because we will eventually run out of oil and coal to minor burn uh then why run the experiment to see if you know to see if something bad will happen with a high co2 concentration in the ocean's atmosphere like it's a pointless experiment like we know we have to get to some uh sustainable energy economy it's total logical like so i think there's we should try to get there sooner so as not to run the risk of climate change it would not climate change would not be catastrophic for civilization but it would be very disruptive humans love living right on the ocean so it's like we're almost like a like a thermometer it's like it's like if we were living right on the beach okay so uh this is like so even small changes in the\n\nsea level in sea level will put a lot of houses underwater against little little changes not enough to be vague we just we've just inherently created civilization as highly sensitive to changes in temperature a lot of politicians who are alarmist about this stuff buy homes right on the water though don't they that's true yeah i mean i i'm not sort of into like vilifying the oil and gas industry because i think i think the the reality is like if uh if we don't have oil and gas right now civilization would collapse and everyone will be starving so we obviously need oil and gas right now it'd be absurd to just stop it like it's not not feasible um but but i do think we should be trying to accelerate progress towards a sustainable energy future uh not slow\n\nit down you know i think it's just a sensible thing to do to to try to move faster to a sustainable energy economy uh rather than slower um because that reduces the risk of the climate experiment and like i said since we know we have to get to a sustainable energy economy anyway why run this experiment it's it's just not smart anyway so so the fundamental good of tesla i think is by you know should be measured by how by how many years did tesla accelerate the transition to a sustainable energy economy um 10 years 20 years you know that's like the fundamental good of the company but to ethan's point he's asking like why not like is that is that your is that your answer for why you keep going is because these are these things make a difference they make\n\na difference ultimately for the flourishing of humanity for the longevity of humanity is that why you're not on a beach somewhere sipping my ties or white claws yeah i don't actually drink a lot of white qualifier this is not about like trying to enrich myself um i do not live a life of conspicuous consumption i work you know very long hours and but i think i think what tells us is doing is important to the future and that's that's why i keep doing it and i think you know it's it's something i think is uh tesla increases the probability that the future will be good for humanity and and then for spacex um i think i think uh it's important that we take the actions like that we become a space bearing civilization and a multi-planet species this is an exciting\n\ninspiring future you know you need to have things that when you wake up in the morning you're like you're excited about the future why live if it's all about solving problems of being miserable like why live um so they've got to be things that are that are inspiring that like you know get you in the heart and i think space is one of those things so you know look at the apollo program and you know sending people to the moon in and wasn't that a great thing for all of humanity great thing and if you ask people like one of what are some of the greatest things that humanity's ever done that would be one of them i think er you know around the world people would agree with that you know if you believe it really happened yes i do get that question this is um\n\nyeah we we went to the moon not just once but but several times and um i think the russians would have called us out on that one if it wasn't true you know uh to say the least among among this is like the yeah it's we went to the we went to the moon the russians didn't like us at the time yeah but so you know it's not a huge fan of it they wouldn't have like they were looking at us through telescopes like is this real or why you know uh they would have a bubblegum if it wasn't that's for sure there's a huge you know victory you know ideological victory for the united states and western civilization so but anyway the the point is like we we want to have an exciting inspiring future and and one where we are space spring civilization and multi-planet species\n\ni think is a much more exciting and inspiring future than one where we are forever confined to earth and never go back to the moon and and the moon was our high water mark and that's all we ever did that's depressing and and there's also from a long-term basis if we're a multi-planet species it's like life insurance for life itself not just for humans but for for all the creatures on earth um because we bring them with us and and they can't build spaceships so you know we are we're in effect the steward of life um and you know we can make a we can make mars like a you know another planet with life on it um you know it is you know uh it's probably a dangerous analogy to use but it it's a bit like noah's ark but you know we bring more than two of every\n\ncreature because it's a little incestuous frankly um yeah i mean like how's this work you know second generation and did he hate the dinosaurs like what's uh [Laughter] why why was it like after the dinosaurs it's like pro-incest battle dinosaurs i don't get it and it would have to be a very big vote so but there's you know it's a metaphor perhaps i don't know um yeah but so anyway so like there's there's some some risk especially over a long period of time that so many calamities would happen to earth and if we're just in one planet that would be the end of life itself and certainly the the sun the sun is slowly expanding so uh you know the earth are roughly four and a half billion years old some people might disagree with that but it appears to be that\n\nway um uh and um in roughly half a billion years the sun will expand to big make earth probably uninhabitable in a billion years definitely uninhabitable so basically if intelligent life had take taken 10 percent longer to evolve on earth then it would never evolved at all because it would be destroyed because the oceans would boil and and they would we wouldn't be able to exist so i mean no matter what the universal end in heat death though right eventually so it's all futile to some extent if you go far enough um yeah i mean i think the if if heat death is the outcome of the universe it really all is all about the journey like you know they said like you know the journey is is is uh half the fun is the journey or whatever well if he death is the end\n\nof the universe the journey is all the fun you know can we just evolve heat resistance become like lava beings it's not it's not it's cold it cools eventually with entropy and i'm not a scientist entropy the ultimate he thought the devil was bad try entropy yeah okay try getting away from that but yeah i mean the yes i mean technically the being a multi-planet species would increase the probable lifespan of of civilization and and life as we know it um so i mean we humans don't live forever so but just because we don't live forever does not mean that civilization cannot live much longer than we do a civilization lives much longer than any individual human so this is not about like escaping to mars this is simply i mean i i will die probably long before\n\nmoz is a self-sustaining civilization it's just i think something we should we should do in order to have a much longer probable lifespan of civilization and it's interesting and exciting and and mars is like us it's like an essential next step to like there are these like you know uh filters they're called like the great filters and because you have to say like where are the aliens you know it's like the fermi paradox where are the aliens if the universe is 13.\n\n8 billion years old shouldn't they be everywhere by now and i'm not aware of any evidence for aliens people ask me about that too uh we're the aliens i'm like man if anyone would know about evidence of aliens it would be me and i i've seen nothing so i think it may have been called sagan who said you know there's like we're either alone in in the galaxy or there are a lot of aliens and and each answer is arguably equally terrifying um it's like it's like hey we found it aliens are on their way uh too bad it's the invasion fleet um you know um so i i don't know it's like where are they where are the aliens like maybe there aren't any endless galaxy um and maybe the what we have here is a very very rare situation um you know a belief a brief flickering\n\nof consciousness in the die like a little candle in a vast darkness and we should not let that little candle go out so my dad's a rocket scientist at bowling and he had a question engineer well whatever when people say rocket scientists they really mean rocket engineer okay yeah so he's a rocket engineer and he says at what mach number does starship endure max q maximum dynamic pressure how much pressure is that does that make any sense to you uh yeah so uh yeah max q maximum dynamics pressure is is when you're at um a combination of speed and atmospheric density such that the uh the wind force on the rocket is is the highest and so as you climb higher and higher the atmospheric density decays exponentially um and so you hit this point of the combination\n\nof velocity and air density which is maximum dynamic pressure maximum q um and uh this this is mostly a function of thrust to weight so if you have a low thrust weight rocket you will have a typically a lower max q um and if you have a high thrust weight rocket you'll have a higher max q if you do not throttle down and so uh and it also kind of depends on on what trajectory you're flying are you flying a low with over trajectory uh single burn insertion or or eight eight uh say a geosynchronous transfer orbit with a lower perigee then you'll have a higher a higher max q because you will spend you'll spend more time going uh sort of horizontal instead of vertical um getting to orbit is mostly about you what getting to what it is is about your your velocity\n\nparallel to the other surface so around mark 23 to mark 25 uh you're you know so roughly 23 ish times the speed of sound is when you reach uh orbit orbital velocity roughly 17 000 miles an hour so um and and that's that's what it means to go up and stay up you only need height in order to get out of the high density portion of the atmosphere so that you don't slow down um none of that was correct i disagree yeah i disagree i agree i give a totally different answer i don't have time to get into it [Laughter] yeah so i mean typically um a rocket is going to hit max q uh somewhere between mach 1.\n\n4 and 1.\n\n8 and um and and that q level is going to be maybe 400 to 800 pounds per square foot um uh now a starship is intended to have a higher a higher thrust weight because with a fully reusable rocket the the cost of propellant starts to become significant whereas if you have an expandable rocket or a partially reusable rocket the cost of propellant is is tiny compared to the cost of the rocket so you actually want a higher thrust to weight to minimize cost per ton to orbit with a fully reusable rocket than you would for an expendable so probably starship will have at least a 1.\n\n3 if not closer to a 1. 5 thrust to weight which would uh if without throttling down which aspirationally we would not throw down uh would would have a quite a high q um maybe as high as uh a thousand uh or even 1200 pounds per square foot um so that's uh and probably probably you know uh at work velocity i mean i guess uh mach 1. 4 to 1.\n\n5 something like that okay well my dad very much enjoyed that answer i'm sure i think as a male feminist though one thing about the rockets is the phallic symbology what would it take to get some more vaginal shaped rockets just you know for well equality um can we make that happen aerodynamics dynamics is going to give you a serious answer share similar properties whether biological or mechanical okay good answer that's all i got on a rocket science uh robots yeah teslabot so you're creating robots have you ever seen a sci-fi movie in your life never okay i thought maybe not you know like because things came out what's the worst that could happen yeah um the robots are not the the scary part the scary part is uh agi or artificial general intelligence\n\ndigital super intelligence that far exceeds human intelligence um and um you know if if if there's a digital super intelligence that is just vastly smarter than the smartest human um we could lose control of it and then it it could it could just it could do something bad potentially um these things are just probabilities they're not certainties um so it's not the road like it's not the robots it's the digital super intelligence to be concerned about i think this is definitely one of the issues that we need to be concerned about as an existential risk i think we should have a regulatory agency that oversees uh advanced ai um because you know generally like i do think there are important roles for the government and and one of those roles is in regulation\n\nof industry to make sure that any any that the company is not making short cuts that endanger the public so you know the faa does has done done generally a great great job of ensuring that aircraft are safe you know it's literally safer to fly on an american airline or any any sort of airline overseen by the faa uh than it is to live in your house just to give people a sense of well you're more likely to die your probable lifespan is less if you lived your entire life in your house or than if you lived on a plane because in your house you can get murdered by a spouse get bitten by a laos but if you live in a plane in afghanistan that's not maybe that's the case well if it's not if if it's not overseen by um a a uh regulator that like the faa then then\n\nthen it's not necessarily gonna meet the same safety standards what if your spouse is on the plane well i think so the planes have you know they have means of stuffing like you can't it's hard to bring a gun on a plane yeah um and uh even a knife or even a bottle of lotion at this point you know so your spouse couldn't bring any of those things let me just punch you with it or stab you with a sport you know plastic spoke you know it's like hard to kill someone with a spork um so yeah and then planes also have like the flight attendants are trained in first aid they've got like uh they can do cpr they've got defibrillators uh if if somebody's having medical issues they'll immediately land the plane and the ambulance will meet you at the airport so uh and\n\nyou're not gonna like you know drown the bathtub or get electrocuted by a toaster or you know have your house burned down or because of the toaster by the way toasters cause a lot of houses to burn down yeah it's one of the one of the main causes of house burning down are like toasters and dryers there's also a decent chance there's a doctor on the plane at any given time right that happens all the time like a doctor is like treating somebody on a plane in your house you know yeah so planes are very safe and and i mean generally speaking the fda does a good job of overseeing uh food and drugs you know this might be a bit of a conservative bias on you know where uh at times there's an asymmetry with the fda where um something that that could help a lot\n\nof people is not approved because it it might hurt a small number of people so that there's a sort of like a a bit of a a bit of an asymmetry uh like so regulators the in general can have a bit of an asymmetry uh where they are they're punished a lot for something going wrong but not rewarded enough for going something going right um so that's just a general uh challenge with the the punishment and reward of regulators they can be a little conservative so but i think there should be a regulatory agency to oversee um you know anything that is a danger to the public um so and i think agi could be an interest in public so therefore should should have some oversight um and normally regulatory agencies are very reactive um so like for seat belts for example\n\nwhich lack of seatbelts caused i don't know 10 million deaths worldwide i mean a massive number and the car industry fought seat belts for a very long time and uh and eventually after many deaths the defender department of transport nitsa which oversees his regulatory body for cars said all cars have to have seat belts but you can't just not have a seat belt but that i know it took 15 years or something or maybe longer uh maybe 20 years before seat belts were mandated so and then you know baby seats are a lot a lot of kids and babies died because they're just like sitting on this you know on a seat with nothing i mean i i kind of grew up sitting on a seat with nothing yeah we'd ride in the bed of the truck yeah seriously running the better build pickup\n\ntruck survivor bias or something i was fine but yeah i was fine but if there was an accident it was game over you know yeah um so so you do see some good in government with when it comes to regulation and stuff like that but you don't generally think the government can spend your money more effectively than you can yeah i mean i would say like generally i'm like i think pretty moderate i'm not like sort of an extreme libertarian um i think there are roles for the government uh that makes sense like i don't think we necessarily want like a private army uh or private police force or private yeah i think there's you know uh certain things that that are probably the the right role for the government but anything done by the government is going to be inefficient\n\num because the government is a monopoly like people that don't like corporations should not somehow think that the government is much is much better because the government is a corporation in the limit it is the ultimate corporation with a monopoly on violence so um it's like i think you know the right role for the government is is like to be uh acting a regulatory capacity um and but we should aspire to have the government be be a a limited actor in the economy um so you know you could say like what percentage of economic output should be uh governed you know um and maybe maybe a third or something like that you know once you start getting above 50 government i think that's problematic so um you can look at countries like east eastern west germany north\n\nand south korea and there's you know there was essentially an arbitrary line drawn out to divide the countries and east germany was like kind of 100 government west germany was i don't know probably at least 40 government they're like you know relatively socialist and yet the gdp per capita of that you know of west germany was i think five times higher than east germany so that just shows you just how big of a difference it is if if you have like something that's close to half government versus 100 government uh private sector is probably a factor of 10 more efficient than the government um and this like this is sort of this is also true of just just generally if you have like a monopolistic private corporation then the forcing function for serving the\n\ncustomer is weak but at least private corporations can go bankrupt and the government cannot go bankrupt unless the people go bankrupt like basically unless it exhausts extracting money from the population so well they're trying their best so yeah it's just you know so just you want to just knowing that the government is as inefficient as any large monopolistic corporation would be and it is the ultimate large monopolistic corporation we should minimize how much the government does um keep it to what is essential um and and not go beyond that yeah i mean i guess you know the conservative concern with that is you start to give them you know you give them a foothold and then they're just going to keep going like you give them a regulatory capacity over\n\nsomething like agi and then they're just gonna start to you know overreach more and more because that's what we've seen in the past you you know you give them an inch and they take a mile yeah but i i mean does anyone realistically want to delete the faa or the fda probably somebody okay [Music] like we've got an anarchist in the corner i mean usually if you go to the store like you you buy some whatever steak or or some something from the store and ask like it's like poisonous you know and or or you know the like we take for granted that with the food we buy is is uh at the stores it is not going to kill us you know actually you know uh because some company cut costs and decided that you know having e coli and salmonella is you know who cares type of\n\nthing um so so i think you know like like we take ground that the food we buy at the stores is is um is not poisonous um and that uh the drugs we buy like that is extremely unlikely like the drugs will be consistent and they will do what they say they're going to do which except for by the the sort of vitamin supplements industry which can basically is unregulated and so they can say things that are not true and feel so still by it um anyway so it's like i think you know you really want like you can think of like the you want some kind of referee on the field so like you know for um you know like it's like a if you're watching say a football game or something like basketball there's referees okay so would the games be better or worse without a referee\n\nthat'd be worse you know um so i think like the role of referee and and games is important um and so the government's role as a referee i think is also important um you just don't have the government be kind of on the field as a player it would be weird if the referees just suddenly started playing ball you know probably not the game would not be as good well and other things that make me think you've never seen a sci-fi movie before you have a neural link so you can like put things in people's brain or something and what's that like what's that like is it what is it cool do you like it well try it you might like it okay yeah with neural link uh neural link is in part um well but in fact the the the sort of the reason i created neural link was um long\n\nterm as a risk mitigation for digital super intelligence in that if we are able to effectively achieve symbiosis with digital intelligence then we're sort of the collective human well is better able to steer things in the direction that we'd like or even with benign ai at least go along for the ride so because even with the benign super intelligence if it's so much smarter than us that you know that it really can't even communicate effectively because it's so fast um and and then like talking to us is like turning to a tree you know because if you look if you do a stop motion on like a tree a tree is communicating with its environment just very slowly it looks right now it's looking for water the tree is looking forward to the the ranch is looking for\n\nsun and and the tree has movement it's just very slow um and so um and we're already at this point uh partially a cyborg uh we're de facto uh sort of a sidewalk in in that our phones and computers and applications are a digital extension of ourselves at this point like if somebody leaves their phone behind it's like missing limb syndrome you know like uh the phone is almost like a part of you um and uh but the the issue with that symbiosis is that the the data rate is extremely slow so like how fast can you can you communicate with your phone using uh two thumbs you know 10 bits per second it's very low at the data rate and if if computers can and which they can communicate at you know a billion bits per second or more and and we're communicating with\n\nthem at 10 bits per second then that's just an extremely slow communication link and it inhibits symbiosis without sort of tertiary digital layer like so we've got sort of basically like a a primal layer which is like a limbic system basically it's our instincts and a lot of our emotions and it's kind of like the reptile brain the situation and then you've got the cortex which is like the the thinking part of the brain planning and whatnot uh and um so it's like the second layer and then then our phones and computers are our tertiary layer but there's a just a bound with limitation i would we're very slow to communicate so but with uh with a neural link you can increase the communication bandwidth by many orders of magnitude maybe by a thousand or more\n\nso you're talking about output from the brain to other devices yeah primarily yeah not input to the brain uh it would be both ways uh our input is much less constrained than our output because of vision so you know like rough approximation is like our input because of vision is like maybe a million times uh roughly some people are online not going to argue with this but it's the input to input is many orders of magnitude uh higher than output because of vision um you know picture a picture says a thousand words and a video says i don't know hundred thousand words like there's just you know there's um this is why like a meme can communicate so much more than a few words now this is obviously very esoteric and like i'm not sure this will resonate you know\n\nwith a lot of people like oh we need to increase the the bandwidth between our cortex and our digital tertiary layer uh by many orders of magnitude in order to not lose symbiosis with digital intelligence so this is quite esoteric but um but that's the long-term existential risk mitigation of neurolink which we may or may not achieve i'm not saying we will achieve this but it's least an attempt to solve that then um along the way neural link uh can solve a lot of uh brain issues like if you got uh and you know if you've got like a a severed spine or something so like one of the first application we're looking to solve is uh implanting neural link in someone who has a quadriplegic tetraplegic um so like they have no they can't move their arms and legs\n\nor maybe not even really uh move most of their face like like maybe blink or something like that you know like stephen hawking or they didn't have to have several spine but like there are various diverse mechanical and other like mechanical breakages or diseases that break the link between your brain and body um and neurolink um can solve that it can certainly we're confident neural link can can enable someone who uh is a tetraplegic um to operate a phone uh or a computer faster than someone who has hands working hands and uh we're showing this for example with the monkey being able to play video games so you can play a bunch of games not just pong pong is currently its favorite game i don't even know monkeys can play pong but yeah in the first place\n\nyeah monkeys can play pong uh with their hand good um yeah they're good monkeys have good reflexes uh so um and that's how that starts off you the monkey we try and then we look at the signals that the monkey's brain is sending and then we read those signals and and then we uh try we transfer the signals directly to the game and uh you know so and then then we take the joystick away and the monkey's just playing basically to let telepathic wow that's wild yeah so um and we recently got uh what we think is a world record in bits per second from uh from any uh neural neural device like we're starting to approach 10 bits per second which is not actually well not that big but it's more than anyone else has achieved in a useful way 10 10 like close to 10 useful\n\nbits per second is where we are and we'll we'll increase that dramatically over time so um so anyway so we're we also want to make sure the device is extremely safe um and and extremely well tested um our standards go far beyond what is required from a regulatory stand standpoint and uh but we're hoping to do our first neurolink into a human uh next year and um and likes to enable someone who um you know has has almost no no movement capability to um operate a phone um as fast or or we think faster over time than someone who has has working hands so i think that that would be quite a significant thing and help a lot of people and and there are many such applications um and i'm increasingly confident that um we can implant a second neurolink device so\n\none one that accesses the motor cortex and the somatosensory cortex and then a a second one that is uh past where the injury is uh so if you've got a service you know we're basically where where are the neurons still functional um and implant a second uh neural link device uh and uh act have the two devices talk to each other and just transfer the signals across that where wherever it broke yeah because it's like a broken circuit right so you've got a broken circuit you just you basically just do a signal transfer between the two and you don't necessarily even need to to know what all those signals are um you just need to transfer the signals um so just like if you have like a an ethernet cable you don't need to know what's on the ethernet cable for the\n\ncable to work or a wireless ethernet from one wireless ethernet you know wi-fi box to another wireless ethernet wi-fi box you don't need to know what the contents of the signal are in order to transfer the signal so i am confident that that such thing is possible um i'm not saying we will do it i don't know i set unreasonable expectations but i'm i'd say i'm certain that it is possible and we will try to make it happen which would then enable people to walk again and use their hands and i think long term probably restore full body functionality to somebody who um has none did you know that we created an elon musk subscription tier at one point on the b did you ever see that no you didn't know that we did that we were because you were gonna pay a lot of\n\nmoney or something yeah you had interacted with us a couple of times and so we were like wooing you as a subscriber come subscribe but we created our own tear for you what was the uh fee on the tier i don't remember what it was i think it was like it was the highest payments it was like 99999 dollars a month or something but people were signing up for it people were actually signing up for it though every time i would check i'd be like is it him is it him it was random people who picked it thinking it was a joke and it was actually charging their credit cards we had like we had all these angry people like my wife is gonna kill me if you don't refund this charge so we had to take the elon musk tear down so we took it down i guess before you could before\n\nyou could find it but it was there we had it there for you so well thanks i guess that's a compliment i think all right very eloquently put well shall we land the plane here with the 10 question so we uh this is podcast started in kyle's garage we asked every guest the same 10 questions at the end of the interview we never anticipated we would be asking elon musk these 10 questions these are rapid fire so you can answer them as quick as you want yeah or you can go on forever yeah your call uh have you ever met christian rap artist carmen um i i mean the only common musician i'm aware of is um common miranda uh you know she would like dance with like a like a fruit ball on her head yeah yeah um and you never met her no she she died okay a while ago all\n\nright cool look him up are you more of a calvinist or an armenian or an armenian yeah like a predestination [Music] i i guess my my mind would say um determinism and my heart says very well yeah i mean when i grew up i was funnily enough um i went to anglican sunday school uh you know church of england basically um and uh but i was also sent to hebrew preschool although i'm not jewish but nonetheless i was singing having to gillard one day and jesus along the next and you know it's fine if you're a kid you know and and santa claus and like uh you know um so um [Music] yeah yeah that answers the question uh yeah so uh you get to add one book to the bible what is it you guys have never people have never updated these questions to like apply more broadly\n\nnope at any point they're unchangeable yeah they're like the ten commandments at this point um i mean a little bit lower i remember we could have a chapter past revelations like is there a happy ending here like um the revelations part two the happy ending well you know if there's like a really good book you think everyone should read because it would be in the back of the bible everyone should read this book you know okay how many people have actually read the bible fewer than probably say they have but oh yeah i mean do you have a reason i mean at one point i you know when i was a kid i was like i had this existential crisis and i was trying to figure out what's the meaning of life and i was like oh it all means nothing it's all and i and i you know\n\nread like a whole bunch of religious books including the bible and i'm like there's a bunch of things in there they didn't teach you in sunday school uh sonoma gomorrah dark um yikes um you know god sure changes his mind from the old testament to the new testament i'm like whoa that's pretty vengeful in the old testament what was the question you get to pick a book to add to the bible yeah a book uh the attraction to the galaxy oh god yeah it's a great book yeah cigars are pipes um you know i'm not sure i've ever really smoked a pipe um my grandfather did it kind of looks cool but i have smoked cigars and i think like you know for a celebratory occasion like cigars and whiskey that's a pretty good combo you get to hang out with any three people living\n\nor dead who are they it's always hard to think of like three yeah people ethan kyle seth you're hanging you got three right here that's true jeff bezos uh necessarily like uh i think there's a lot of people that would be interesting to talk to but um you know i don't know uh is it living or dead you said yeah living or dead this is this is just you know a stream of consciousness not like a carefully thought out yeah uh answer but it would be like uh i don't like shakespeare ben franklin maybe newton or einstein okay it's a good group bunch of white men yeah i was drinking white clothes cleopatra sounds fun [Laughter] whiskier beer or i guess he went right for the whiskey so nice all right uh what would be the first thing you would do as president well\n\nthe presidency in the u.\n\ns is designed to be a weak position a relatively weak position um because you know obviously the founders of the of the country did not want to create a monarch you don't want to avoid like a king situation um so the the sort of the presidency in the u.\n\ns is is meant to be weak weaker than saying a parliamentary system where the majority essentially the speaker that the house would be the the prime minister or president um so you say like what what can you do as the president um in the in the u.\n\ns there's a lot of limitations um unless you have the support of congress you obviously cannot change the laws but i would i probably aspire to reduce the size of government and you know and take a look at the regulatory situation and just make sure there's there's a good garbage collection of regulations so if they're outdated as there are many outdated unnecessary regulations uh but but you know there's a there's a strong forcing function for creating new laws and regulations but a weak forcing function for getting rid of of of bad laws and regulations um and and and i think this is just generally a problem as civilization ages without war where there are new laws and regulations created every year and so there's like more and more constraints on what\n\nyou can do but there's there's very little effort put to remove laws and regulations and so this is like hardening of the arteries of civilization and eventually it'll be like oh look elvis travels where you're just tied down by you know thousands of little strings and it's not like any one string is the issue but there's so many strings that you can't get anything done um you know that's one part part big part of why i moved to texas it's just like there's just fewer strings tying you down um so yeah um i i think like the the uh the value of of someone just being a a very competent executive officer is um is under undervalued in a president uh just like how good are you at running things and getting things done um because if you're the president you're\n\nkind of like the ceo of the country um and uh and so are you good at doing things are you effective and pretty productive yeah you said a ceo is a meaningless title would that mean i'm just curious how that like well ceo is not not like a legal title okay um i was just saying that that there are all these titles and cooperations that are kind of made up um and you can see what is actually uh required for a corporation when you fill out the form to create one and so you need a a president a secretary and a treasurer same thing as like if you're performing a chess club or a glee club or something like that same same thing um and and actually technically all three can be the same person so that's what's legally required if you don't have those three things\n\nyou cannot function as a corporation uh everything else like a general counsel cfo ceo these are all made up like that they're no legal no no meaningful legal bearing so uh you only need those the president's secretary treasurer um so there's all these like cxo titles which you know just are somewhat like resume inflators um i was just making a point that like people think ceo is a real title but it's not it's not it's not a legally meaningful title you need someone who is defined as the as the president but that's that's um that's it so um for now you have like chief marketing officer chief information officer chief everything officer you know i i sort of think like you should have like this is our svp of sorcery all right question number eight the master\n\ngeneral um oh yeah have you ever punched anyone or have you ever been punched you got any cool punching stories if you don't have an answer for that we have a follow-up it's even worse i don't know about cool punching stories but i um where i grew up was extremely violent um i never i never started a fight except with my brother actually one exception yeah i did i'd be my brother up which i'm either just i don't know if that's how it goes but uh [Music] south africa when i was growing up was just an inherently very violent place i punched the face many times i always got beaten to death once so many times i think if you have not been punched in the face with a fist you don't know what you have no idea what it's like shocking sensation shocking sensation\n\nhave you been punished ethan yeah just by like high school kids yeah not right still it's just like your face never touches anything and then suddenly yeah they punch their nose like you can't even see straight um so yeah um it's funny that people think words are they're so sensitive to words it's like man you're even punched in the face words don't mean nothing all right question number nine uh you get to go to one concert any band in history who do you go see anybody i don't know maybe the rolling stones are there you know when they're only peak rolling stones seems like and hey day yeah yeah nitpick all right final question to close our time out here yeah i mean we're here we're you know the babylon b is a christian organization you know and uh we're\n\na ministry well how come we're doing this show on a sunday night why wasn't your church gathered why aren't you heathens and church exactly so we have to make a church supposed to be a day of rest we did zoom church like god said don't work on sundays okay let's go ahead guys are going to straight down for this one get into the whole jesus that's rest thing okay straight to hell this is true this is true i it's okay so to make this church we have to do we have to make sure just we're wondering if you could do us a quick solid and accept jesus as your lord and savior on the show um personal awards you know it's a quick prayer [Music] i mean let's just say like i agree with the principles that jesus advocated um and that the you know there's some some there's\n\ngreat wisdom in what in the teachings of of jesus uh and i agree with those teachings um and things like tone the other cheek are very important because as opposed to an eye for an eye an eye for an eye leaves everyone blind so forgiveness you know is important and treating people as you would wish to be treated love that neighbor as myself very important so it's like a 60 70 yes yes as einstein would say [Music] i believe in the god of spinoza [Music] um so um but hey if um you know if if jesus is uh saving people i mean i i wouldn't stand in his way you know like i'll be sure i'll be safe why not sweet we did it yeah i think he just said yes we got it all right we got them to be exciting sounds good the whatever blood and water christ it was kind of\n\nweird you know if you're a kid like you get to give you some weird tasting you know just getting a wine yeah i'm like what the hell is this i'm like isn't this kind of just cut it off when he said yes i'm like is this some like fading metaphor for cannibalism or something i don't get it like what uh what the hell i remember thinking that was just crazy uh when i was a kid um and i like this to like whoa you know i mean even as a metaphor it's kind of odd but you know yeah so it's like should i be doing alcohol to minors i was like we do grape juice okay yes i think it's unusual to even be thinking about that as a kid like as a kid you just go through the motions and then later on that you think wait a minute what does this actually represent what am i\n\ndoing when i was a kid i was like like is this actually blood and body what you know i don't i don't know if i want to eat somebody and then i was like why this is i mean i did it anyway i'm like this seems like okay man i don't know if this is just pretty odd you know i remember thinking that even at age five so i was like you know and i was definitely like you know sunday school there like when they were telling me all the stories and i was like asking questions and like and i really were upset that i was asking questions and i was like you know jesus like fed the crowd with like five loaves of bread and three fish and i'm like how big was the crowd and and like where did the fish and bread come from did like from his cloak or something like because\n\ni was like reading books and i was like this is like they'd materialize like am i like i don't know where'd it come from you know like how did would you like take a bite of the bread and it would just the bread would just come back to being a full brand yeah you look away it's kind of a mechanic background they left out the details where did the universe come from um [Music] well yeah i'm not saying i know all the answers here i'm just you know it's just uh and like jesus was obviously very pro-alcohol you know because one of his miracles was turning water into wine yeah and that was like they were having a party they ran out of wine and they're like let's keep this banner going good stuff who can who can solve this problem we're at a white cloth the\n\nfriggin store's closed and jesus is like i gotcha okay water now i like party on you know so you know accurate pro partying without all eyes literally it was one of the miracles bible story time you are the it's like you're definitely you're the savior you're scared you kept the party going with lots of wine that's great um so um yeah well thank you i appreciate you coming here talking to us very much very welcome pleasure to meet you in person and uh you know we'll uh we'll continue to throw out the satire that we hope you'll respond to and you know keep that going a little bit oh we didn't ask onion or the bee but i guess that was kind of answered earlier you mentioned earlier yeah yes we already covered that yeah i mean i i think the onion has done\n\nsome extremely funny stuff over time um it's just it just seems to have been you know in recent years somewhat infected by the world my virus so that just makes everything less funny yeah that's true workman virus is a world without humor yeah i'm hoping neurolink can solve that move thank you thank you appreciate it thank you thanks so much thanks so much"},"languages":["en"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jvGnw1sHh9M"},{"id":"time-person-of-the-year-2021-12-13","type":"interview","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lh-5w6xC6VE","title":"TIME Person of the Year","titles":{"en":"TIME Person of the Year","de":"TIME Person of the Year","fr":"TIME Person of the Year"},"date":"2021-12-13","summary":"Conversation with TIME's Editor-in-Chief after being named 2021 Person of the Year, on wealth, EVs, SpaceX and his outlook.","text":"what's more important rockets or cars actually that's a good first question well i guess uh i guess they're both important um i guess my career is mars and cars cars and cars um so you know i think we need to transition to sustainable energy and become a space spring civilization starting with space um why haven't you uh gone you know bezos went up branson went up do you want to go off is that on your to-do list in 22 or how do you think about that yourself i i'm i might i will go up at some point um but the i mean there is an unlike philosophy uh that uh by which i aspire to guide my actions and uh that is to take the set of actions that maximize the probability that the future is good um and hopefully not pave the whole the road to hell with good intentions\n\nso uh the you know spacex is the point of space spacex is to help make humanity a space spring civilization and ultimately a multi-planet species so as to expand the scope and scale of consciousness and ultimately better understand what questions to ask about the answer which is the universe switching to risk in the context of tesla and autopilot auto driving i mean um and one of our competitors had a big piece on that this weekend that it's not all the way thought through and it's you know back to risk how do you think about obviously that's not zero risk either you're you're paving the way in that area autonomy is just it's incredibly important in innovation because people spend um hours of many hours a week ultimately you know uh you know many months\n\nof their lives probably in in cars and stuck in traffic and um and then there's a lot of people that die in order accidents so worldwide there's um about a million automotive gas per year uh so uh the vast majority of which are due to driver error so um and uh so if we can have autonomy that that would potentially solve you know save on the order of a million lives per year and there's about 10 million serious accidents where there's a permanent injury per year so it's one of those things where um you know you're not going to get uh rewarded for necessarily for the for the lives that you save but you will definitely be blamed for lives that you don't save um so and i mean there's a there was a you know something sorry something somebody said to me beginning\n\nof when we're pursuing autonomy uh said that he said that you know even if you um save ninety percent of their lives but temperature you don't say we're gonna sue you a lot of people are worried about uh democracy the future of democracy the state of democracy part of that's tied to silicon valley we have democracy well i don't know yeah are you my question is are you worried about democracy here okay start here these things are going okay in the grand scheme of things you know um it's easy to complain but i mean the fact of the matter is uh this is the most prosperous time in human history so um but people's expectations always adjust to the you know like however good things get people's expectations will always um kind of recalibrate to how things are\n\nbut you know if we stand back and say like okay is there really some point in history would you where you'd rather be um and and by the way have you actually read history it wasn't great so so i think you know we should be i think probably um happier with the way things are than maybe sometimes people are","textByLang":{"en":"what's more important rockets or cars actually that's a good first question well i guess uh i guess they're both important um i guess my career is mars and cars cars and cars um so you know i think we need to transition to sustainable energy and become a space spring civilization starting with space um why haven't you uh gone you know bezos went up branson went up do you want to go off is that on your to-do list in 22 or how do you think about that yourself i i'm i might i will go up at some point um but the i mean there is an unlike philosophy uh that uh by which i aspire to guide my actions and uh that is to take the set of actions that maximize the probability that the future is good um and hopefully not pave the whole the road to hell with good intentions\n\nso uh the you know spacex is the point of space spacex is to help make humanity a space spring civilization and ultimately a multi-planet species so as to expand the scope and scale of consciousness and ultimately better understand what questions to ask about the answer which is the universe switching to risk in the context of tesla and autopilot auto driving i mean um and one of our competitors had a big piece on that this weekend that it's not all the way thought through and it's you know back to risk how do you think about obviously that's not zero risk either you're you're paving the way in that area autonomy is just it's incredibly important in innovation because people spend um hours of many hours a week ultimately you know uh you know many months\n\nof their lives probably in in cars and stuck in traffic and um and then there's a lot of people that die in order accidents so worldwide there's um about a million automotive gas per year uh so uh the vast majority of which are due to driver error so um and uh so if we can have autonomy that that would potentially solve you know save on the order of a million lives per year and there's about 10 million serious accidents where there's a permanent injury per year so it's one of those things where um you know you're not going to get uh rewarded for necessarily for the for the lives that you save but you will definitely be blamed for lives that you don't save um so and i mean there's a there was a you know something sorry something somebody said to me beginning\n\nof when we're pursuing autonomy uh said that he said that you know even if you um save ninety percent of their lives but temperature you don't say we're gonna sue you a lot of people are worried about uh democracy the future of democracy the state of democracy part of that's tied to silicon valley we have democracy well i don't know yeah are you my question is are you worried about democracy here okay start here these things are going okay in the grand scheme of things you know um it's easy to complain but i mean the fact of the matter is uh this is the most prosperous time in human history so um but people's expectations always adjust to the you know like however good things get people's expectations will always um kind of recalibrate to how things are\n\nbut you know if we stand back and say like okay is there really some point in history would you where you'd rather be um and and by the way have you actually read history it wasn't great so so i think you know we should be i think probably um happier with the way things are than maybe sometimes people are"},"languages":["en"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lh-5w6xC6VE"},{"id":"wsj-ceo-council-summit-2021-12-06","type":"interview","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PDy7s1SDDn4","title":"WSJ CEO Council Summit","titles":{"en":"WSJ CEO Council Summit","de":"WSJ CEO Council Summit","fr":"WSJ CEO Council Summit"},"date":"2021-12-06","summary":"WSJ CEO Council interview on Tesla's advanced AI, China, government spending, Cybertruck, Neuralink and Starship.","text":"Elon hello welcome are you in Palo Alto I understand yeah first well a Global Engineering headquarters in Palo Alto great well thank you so much for joining us um I'm actually going to start somewhere a little bit differently than I expected um because I just saw on Twitter on Twitter um a little announcement um I would love to get your your thoughts on it I see your uh interviewing Rhonda santis tomorrow morning is that right on Twitter spaces I see yes it's uh I need like the exact time but oh tomorrow morning your time I think it would be probably correct okay um so uh yes I um will be interviewing um Ron Santos and he has quite an announcement to make um and we'll be we're the first time that's something like this is happening on social media and\n\nwith the real-time questions and answers uh no not scripted uh so it's Gonna Be Live and Let Let let's see what happens foreign and you've been tweeting some Tim Scott stuff in the last few days um what should we be thinking about who you're backing obviously this interview tells us something can you give us a sense of where your thinking is at the moment yes I mean I'm not at this time um planning to endorse any particular cancer um but I am interested in uh you know X slash Twitter being somewhat of a public town square and uh where more and more organizations host content and make announcements on Twitter um it's the it's the only place on the internet to really get uh real-time like down to the minute and second news and it's uh yeah so I think it's\n\nit's quite groundbreaking that there'd be um a major announcement of this type on social media um and should we expect um sorry I don't want to go on too long about this but um in your new role as interviewer rather than interviewee uh should we expect um uh should we expect more of this I mean if it's the Town Square are you going to be interviewing other candidates Democrats what's your what's your thought of this are people willing to come are you going to be there to execute the Town Square across the Spectrum yes absolutely um so just as I as I promised when I do a series of media interviews I did a range of interviews um and uh I guess this would be also a media interview um so ranging from sort of on the you know left moderate to what's considered\n\nright um and I do think it's important that Twitter be uh have both the reality and the procession of uh Level Playing Field of uh a place where uh all voices are heard and where uh as the kind of dynamic interaction that is you don't really see anywhere else um I'll meet you today on Twitter for example um uh AOC got into an and Ted Cruz got into an argument on Twitter which was um yeah independent of which side do you agree with um it's still very entertaining so what um and I'm sure tomorrow will be entertaining we're all going to be tuned into that but um when you when you approach an interview like that and and obviously a really important election like the one that is coming up you can you just talk a little bit about what are the key issues that\n\nreally matter for you at this pivotal moment you can matter for me as an individual or matter for you as an individual um in terms of who leads the country but also you know more broadly than that you know for the country and for for your businesses I mean can you give your sense of of where the real issues lie here well I've said publicly that um my preference and I think would be the preference of most Americans is really to have someone fairly normal in office I think we'd all be quite uh quite happy with that actually um you know I think someone that uh is representative of the moderate views that I think most the country holds in reality um and um but but the way things are set up is that we we do have a system that seems to push things towards the\n\nedges because of the primaries so in order to win the primary you've got to win obviously majority of your parties vote in both cases that tends to cause a swing to the left and the right although I think things are more complex than simply left and right during the primaries and then uh and then let's shift towards the center for the Journal election um as far uh what what I think is yeah so I would really just like someone you know fairly normal accessible to be the president that would be great so if we go through the if we go through the four names in the frame at the moment can you just give a sort of yes no whether they're normal and sensible um so um we've got Joe Biden I I think you know be careful about these statements um so I uh we'd maybe\n\nhave to have a few drinks before I would give you the answers I will um I will look forward to that and I look forward to the uh to the conversation tomorrow and obviously a lot more of those to come over the coming months so um that's great thank you very much um so what I wanted to start with you've just flown in I think in the last 20 minutes um you live a pretty hectic lifestyle um but you've said that the only true currency is time can you give a sense to the people in this room who are scheduled within an inch of their lives sort of how you you what is a day in the life of Elon Musk what does that look like well weddings are very long and complicated as you might imagine yeah um and um and there's a great there's a great deal of context switching\n\nso um doesn't mean my life called like relating to Doom where it's like fear is not the mind killer context switching is uh so switching context is is quite painful but um I do generally try to divide uh companies that's predominantly one company on one day so today is a Tesla day for example um although I might end up at Twitter late tonight um and then tomorrow would be partly a Tesla day as well have Twitter and um and then Thursday would be sort of a half SpaceX have Tesla day but these things are somewhat intertwined so the time management is extremely difficult um and this is going to sound pretty strange but I um I only have one uh part-time assistant um how many days a week is that the part-time I mean I suppose I suppose how she works who were\n\ntechnically full-time but as such I I do most of the scheduling uh myself um and the reason I do that is because it's impossible for someone else to know what the priorities are um so the and since the most valuable thing I have is time I schedule it myself for the most part so if you come into Tesla today do you have a series of meetings set up or do you um come in with you know something on your mind and you go in and see people I mean how structured is this or if you shop at Twitter in terms of the people working for you how do they how do they handle that um yeah so today I have several hours of scheduled meetings at Twitter um so there are a number of of things that are operated on a weekly Cadence um and so those meetings are already set up and\n\nthen I have supplemental meetings at the end of the day um particularly I I I I won't be going to sleep until probably 2 A.\n\nM or something like that and be working almost the entire time and if you're shaking this yourself is AI going to be helpful over the next few years to help you um do this and you're going to be using technology to help you manage that I guess we'll all be using technology I don't use a lot of AI myself day-to-day I mean Tesla AI is actually very Advanced for real world AI it's the most advanced remote World AI um by far um and in fact if positions were swapped and it would say up to Microsoft and open AI to create uh who could create the best large language model basically if the tests were swapped Tesla was given that the task of making the most competitive large language model and Microsoft open AI were tasked with self-driving Tesla would win okay\n\nI don't think people understand the degree of depict the capability of Tesla's AI system so while I don't use AI a lot personally Tesla uses a trans mount we'll get on to that in a second if that's okay but one final thing in terms of just the management of what you do with your life you're running three very big companies you have very big stakes and you know ownership control of of two of those at least um what is your succession plan if you suddenly call and execute what you're doing both in terms of who runs the companies but as importantly who votes those shares in terms of um you know what happens longer term and strategically what have you got a plan for all of those yeah um succession is one of the toughest age-old problems um you know it's it's\n\na it's plagued um you know countries Kings Prime Ministers and presidents for and CEOs for you know since the dawn of History um there is no obvious solution I I mean there are particular individuals identified as that that I've told people would look if something happens to me unexpectedly this is who my this is my recommendation for taking over so in all cases the board is aware of of who my recommendation is which they may choose to it's up to them of course they they may choose to go a different direction but I they there is a in in worst case scenario this is who should run a company uh the control question is a much more it's a much tougher question um and something that I'm wrestling with and I'm frankly open to ideas because it certainly is true\n\nthat the companies that I have created and are creating um collectively possess uh immense capability and so the stewardship of them is incredibly important um I want to make sure that the stewardship is ultimately uh accrues the benefit of humanity that's the idea is the tolerance of civilization um but they're not that we're always successful in that but that is aspirationally our goal um so um I I have one one idea which is sort of partly in place which is to create kind of a an a sort of a educational institution that that would control um most of my vote um but this is this is not a case of um automatically I I'm definitely not not of the school of automatically giving my kids a you know some share of the companies even if they are not even if they\n\nhave no interest or inclination you know or ability to to manage the companies I think that's a mistake um so but but it's a very hard problem to solve right so and then who should be on the board of directors of the educational institution is also a very very hard job to solve um so I think probably some disaggregation of control would make sense I'm really just kind of thinking out loud creatively here but it sounds like it's something that you I mean you need to get planning of who those people are going to be because as you've said whether when you look at SpaceX you look at Tesla you look at Twitter these these matter to society a lot and having the right people to take those votes on the future of where they go and where money gets spent is is fairly\n\nimportant yes absolutely now the goals of the companies they're the achievement of those goals varies considerably in difficulty um you know the the original goal of Tesla was to accelerate the Advent of sustainable energy which actually I think we've done done that to a significant degree um and have actually it's kind of of uh it's kind of it's kind of a order industry CEOs too often acknowledge Tesla's role in accelerating electric vehicles um and um yeah so so that that I feel has a lot of momentum um they're still solving self-driving which were you know aspirationally hoping to do this year uh and um and so it has got a long way to go but but the execution plan is relatively clear um and uh the next that execution plan will generate a lot of positive\n\ncash flow for the company so it's like if it's a fairly obvious thing to do with SpaceX it's a harder problem because uh the long-term objective is to make life multi-planetary with a self-sustaining City on Mars which is likely to be very casual or negative uh at first a long term let's just say the target market on Mars is small you got to think long term yeah you're also going to have to get on very well with those you go with I would imagine uh yes definitely um you know sanity will be a prime requirement for uh and stability for traveling to Mars you don't want someone going nuts and opening the airlock in the middle of the night um right so SpaceX is a harder problem because it's it's uh much a long-term goal and and with uh a lot more money less\n\nalong the way so gotta make sure that that happens um and is that the sort of thing just to stay on SpaceX and we'll go to Twitter and tell us in a second but um is that the sort of thing that you'd like to lock in to the goals of SpaceX that Mars Remains the ultimate um ambition of this come what may is that is that that important to you yeah I mean it's to make light multi-planetary such that um and the key threshold for multi-planatory is that if the supply ships from Earth stop coming for any reason that a Mars does not die out that's that's the that's the critical great filter if you talk about things in terms of the Fermi Paradox the great filter is um Mars being self-sustaining without any resupply shows from Earth until we reach that point we're\n\nreally just a one planet civilization with uh an extension but the point in which the planets are self-sustaining Oman is self-sustaining then even in a worst case scenario of of Earth civilization either dying with a bang or a whimper um then Mars would have a much better chance of surviving um so the intent here overall is to ensure the light of Consciousness which appears to be just a tiny candle and a vast Darkness um I frequently I frequently get asked have I seen any evidence of aliens and I I I'm not um you know apart from the fact that I didn't at one point have an alien registration card when I was getting my uh green green card uh it's an alien registration um indeed possibly a slightly different type of alien but um so do you think you'll will\n\nyou live to see Mars happen I I hope to love to see the first humans on Mars um but I think it'll take some period of time beyond that to make my self-sustaining so it's at least 20 years from the first visit to make my sustain as my guess and it may be 40 or 50.\n\nand that's assuming you really go for it right so that's a tough one um but like so I think important for improving the survivability of civilization and who's going to pay for that I mean are your investors gonna put the money up to do that are you going to expect government to fund that where does that money come from because as you say you can make a return on starlink you can make a return on launching satellites for other people and space tourism but I mean that's a that's a tougher return Isn't it yeah I think I think long term uh the value of it will be incredibly high I would just it's just beyond the planning Horizon of most people or most investors so um I mean obviously if um if there's a thriving um City on Mars and there's a lot of interplanetary\n\nCommerce and SpaceX is the primary provider of that it would be immensely valuable um so um but but you know the one thing is that at the be this self-sustaining you know Colony um and um I think we we I think we uh generally operate with too much of an assumption that Civilization is robust um and nothing could really take it down uh a sentiment that has been common throughout history among Empires shortly before they called it so and you know I have to say that you know there's a little bit of late stage Empire Vibes going on right now um uh yeah for sure are you um yeah um uh is is AI something that in your view accelerates the risk of that or increases the risk of that at that outcome I think it does yeah um I mean we could definitely make a city\n\nof Mars self-sustaining without without AI or without sort of AGI which is generally artificial general intelligence or super intelligence I have so I think that that is uh it's not necessary for anything we're doing um but it is happening and happening very quickly so uh there is a risk that uh Advanced AI um either eliminates or constrains Humanities growth I was more thinking the opposite does it increase the chance that plant the planet self input implodes and those things come true you I mean how concerned are you about these developments right now sort of accelerating your your bad case scenario here well uh I mean the development of artificial digital sort of super intelligence uh is very much a double-edged sword so it's if you have if you have\n\na genie that can grant you anything they can also do anything um that necessarily is presents a danger and I expect the first uses of AI to be or certainly the first government uses of AI to be weapons technology so just having um more advanced weapons on the battle if you go back that can react uh faster than any human could that's that's really what AI will be capable of I mean future Wars between Advanced countries or at least countries that have significant drone capability will be very much the Drone Wars so I want to get back to AI because this is this is big stuff and I'd like to to talk about in more detail but I do want to come just come back to the present from a long way in the future um you've just hired a new CEO uh Linda yacarino an ad veteran\n\num into Twitter you usually focus on hiring Engineers you know Linda is a very different person can you just quickly tell us about your courtship how did that go down well um we had conversations over a number of months uh just relating to advertising um and then uh Linda felt that um it would be very helpful for the advertisers to see me in person so invited me down to a conference in Miami um which was very helpful and met with a number of advertisers personally to assure their you know assure them that that Twitter is a good place to advertise in a and generally that in fact that that hate speech is declined which it has and that the quality of the system especially with respect to scammas and spammas is dramatically better than it used to be um we've\n\ngotten rid of at this point well over 90 percent of those the scams and scams the scams and spam on Twitter it should be quite rare at this point at UCS camp um so um we've also rolled out uh sort of so just to be clear when you say you've got rid of 90 of the scams is it but is that the same thing as the Bots or is this scams in general and Bots is a different animal here they were typically used Bots for scan but you haven't taken the Bots down 90 percent no I think we we have actually I think you have okay yeah yeah I think we have yeah maybe more than 19.\n\nnow you've said at least um is now much much harder to operate a platform on Twitter and have it uh yield any any uh advantage um so uh dramatic Improvement in Bots dramatic Improvement and ability to detect uh sort of trial armies which is a little different that's where you've got say oh you know um a hundred people in a warehouse in a low-wage country Each of which are sitting at a desk with 100 phones so you've got 10 000 actual people and they will then act together to Brigade a particular subject or make something seem very popular when it is not um and we've been able to defeat almost all of them we think very few of them are actually still able to to operate so quality of the system has gotten a lot better okay so um if you said to Linda that\n\nyou are going to keep speaking your mind whatever the commercial impact of that and has she agreed to that is she happy with that you aligned uh yeah okay and in her role as CEO does she have any say over moderation or is that under you or you do you do that together well the general principle is that um we were we were here close to the law so for any given country we will try to adhere as closer to the low as possible our law is very between countries and we can't simply fight the law in in um in another country because they will simply cut us off um so the general principle is do whatever we can to enable free and open Communications with between people um provided they're not like I said breaking she's aligned on on that that plan yeah that Focus\n\num yeah there is an important thing which is like that that obviously doesn't mean that say advertisers should be forced to appear next to any content so we've also developed adjacency controls that ensure that if what you're advertising is um like Disney Disney for example is a big Advertiser it doesn't use advertising a children's movie they you know it won't want the the contents nearby to be sort of family friendly that's totally understandable um so uh so it's it's not like advertisers have to appear next to content that they that they don't agree with and can you um so some people say you're you can't be a little erratic with your Tweeting or at least um tweet a broad range of of content um does anybody say I don't want to be adjacent to Elon Musk\n\nis that is that something that's happened on the on the platform I've never heard that yet um but uh um and did it did that come up with Linda at all sort of what you tweet and and whether that was something that could affect advertisers did she did she ask you about that uh she did it in fact at the conference that we did in Miami so we speech is Paramount fine um I wanted to ask you a little bit about your vision for Twitter as a as a community and as a as a conversation um you've talked about your desire to maximize unregretted time can you just could you explain what that means and how you measure that uh yeah so uh previously Twitter was mostly uh focused on this number called uh they called mdow monetizable daily active users um but the problem\n\nis that when you look closely at that a bunch of those users um never even went to Twitter they would go to um uh there would see a notification on their phone about a tweet but they wouldn't actually click through the site so but what really matters is uh true user seconds of screen time um so that's that's the figure we track right now and that's based on the the screen time as reported To Us by uh uh iOS Android and the browser so um it would be it would have to be the time the amount of time the app is in the foreground right is the most rigorous way to assess this so so when you say unregret it sorry please keep going exactly so in terms of undergraded it's that's a little harder to measure um but we can certainly gather it anecdotally which is to\n\nsay that if you spent you know half an hour on Twitter yesterday what percentage of the percentage of that time do you regret um and journaling the feedbackup button has been very positive uh that they they find it's the information to be useful entertaining funny um so we seem to be heading the right direction as far as I can tell I'm certainly open to any critiques from the room well let me let me ask you one on that which is um you know you recently tweeted about George Soros you said um let me get back well let me just get the words because I'm kind of interested in what you think about this he wants to erode the very fabric of civilization Soros hates Humanity that obviously generated a huge amount of response on Twitter on both sides lots of different\n\nviewpoints is that unregrettable time unregretted time that that debate that you created does that fit into that category do you think well I mean I said like Source reminds me of Magneto you know uh well you know you went a little further than that but again without going into the Soros tweet itself you know you're obviously a big figure on Twitter and you're setting a tone and a name so I'm just curious as to whether that sort of debate which which gets triggered is that does that fit into the definition that you're trying to create in that New Town Square well I mean I think the important thing is that like look what I say is not uh is what I'd say um you know it's sort of a Town Square I'm not going to mitigate what I say because that would be inhibiting\n\nfor your freedom of speech that doesn't mean you have to agree with what I say in order to mean if somebody says the total opposite that they're that they won't be supported on Twitter they are um the point is to have a diversion set of views and free speech is only relevant um if it's a speech by a speech by someone you don't like who says something you don't like is that allowed if if so you have free speech otherwise you do not and for those who would Advocate censorship I would say it is if if you succeed in that it's only a matter of time before the censorship gets turned on you I agree I mean you can that's your free speech definition which you said but I'm just curious as to on the unregrettable part what what what what type of conversation you're\n\ntrying to achieve and whether that's something that is acceptable but maybe not where you want the broader conversation to go well I mean I did clarify that you know some of my concerns about Taurus are that he's funded um a very large number of uh small but influential races around the country especially with District Attorneys um and we find that for example the alien uh and and San Francisco district attorney races uh uh with uh chess boarding and um the guy always I always want to call him Gaston from Beauty and the Beast driving um and and the the it's basically he's he's um of course a large number of the ASP elected who are very easy on crime and will often fuse refuse to uh prosecute so you were basically trying to make a deeper point with that\n\nshort yeah um can I just move on quickly to um because I don't want to go too far down that that rabbit hole because that debate has played out on Twitter a bit is um you know are you back near profitability now Twitter is not quite there but we we're we're not like you know when I first acquisition closed I would say it's analogous to being teleported into a plane that's plunging to the ground with its engines on fire the controls don't work um so it's comforting say the least um now we have to do some pretty heavy-handed uh bus Cutting Company healthy but we're at this point we're training towards if we get lucky we might be casual casual positive next month but it remains to be seen and is the Staffing the level you now want it or are you going to\n\nstart taking it back up again from this it's gone from I think 8 000 to about 1500 or something like that is that crazy correct yeah um I think there's you know there's um there's definitely we are going to start adding people to the company um and we have started adding some number of people to the company um and um but it's still there's still a lot of change to have to happen so but I I think 1500 is probably a reasonable number and does this show what you can do um in a big tech company in terms of cost reduction I mean when you look around other big tech companies in Silicon Valley um would you say from your experience that there's room for much more significant change at those as well yeah I think Twitter maybe somewhat of an outlier in that um\n\nthat there were a lot of people doing things that that didn't seem to have a lot of value um and that's I think that's true probably at most the Silicon Valley companies um maybe not to the degree to which it was a Twitter but uh it's still yeah there's a potential for significant Cuts I think out of the companies without affecting their productivity in fact increasing their productivity um so you know um at any given company there are people who help move things forward and and people who've sort of tried to slam the brakes on and Twitter was in a situation where you'd have a meeting of 10 people you know and one person with an accelerator and nine nine with a set of brakes um so you didn't go very far right um and um so now now we're going home about\n\nreleasing functionality even with a little bit of risk to side stability as soon as it's not too serious and I think this point is probably fair to say we were introduced more functionality in the last uh six months than Twitter has in the last six years and in terms of outages there were some outages early on are you are you confident things are stable now well outages Are Not Unusual Instagram recently had an outage for example it was reported on Twitter ironically um so uh we've had outages but not not massive ones and they've generally been brief and limited in scope okay um do you regret buying it you tried to get out of it or are you now happy you bought it well all's well that ends well has it ended well yet or we still got to wait and see um I\n\nthink we're on the hopefully on the uh comeback Arc okay so I mean one of the things you have talked about you bought it for 44 billion you've talked about it one day being worth 250 I think in internal meetings can you just talk about how you get there what is the what is the bigger Vision I mean you want to bring back advertisers now and are they coming back by the way yeah yeah um can you give any idea of the scale of the comeback in terms of who you lost and who's coming back uh well I think it'll be very significant um so the advertising agencies this point of all um lifted their warnings on Twitter so appreciate the fact that that group M for example um removed the sort of uh their concern label over Twitter which is a very big deal um and so I\n\nthink at this point uh I expect almost all advertisers to attack okay um we've also I've done a lot more to make the advertising uh more relevant to users um so that we show users things that are they're more likely to be interested in buying sounds obvious but right that's what tends to happen yeah not super obvious I mean just just basic stuff like if you do a search on Twitter previously this the search Banner app um that did not take the Search terms into account which is pretty insane um so just show a random ad okay whereas obviously show an ad that is you know matches your search sounds sounds worth doing so just quickly what if you've talked about the sort of single app that does messaging and does finance and other things I mean can you just\n\nenlarge a little bit on sort of how you get there and why America wants that obviously it'll be up to people to decide if they want it um it's like do we make something that is useful enough um that you want to use it more frequently um great that's our goal um so we're not going to do anything to stop people leaving the app or try to track them in the app but let's provide enough compiling functionality that over time uh people's usage of the platform growth so in 10 years time is advertising still going to be dominant on Twitter I think advertising will always play a role um at some point take 10 years from now it may not play the largest role but it will play the largest role for at least a few years to come so I want to do a quick um quick far round\n\nof questions just you know imagine that you're late at night you're sitting there tweeting a few rapid fire responses to stuff um and I'm just going to ask you a few questions and if you can just give me short answers then I want to go on to AR and talk a little bit about some of the deeper points that you you started making earlier um so first one will Twitter be public again in five years I don't know okay um do you think the HQ will still be in San Francisco okay not good so far let's try a couple more um which decade are we going to crack artificial general intelligence I think this one this one okay so it's that soon okay um are you going to take a SpaceX trip yourself I will at some point yeah not sure when but you'll be nice um which is the most\n\nexciting country to build a Tesla plant in right now um well we did make an announcement that Mexico would be our next uh location outside the U.\n\nS uh and picked a site and everything so there's that and then um we'll probably pick another location towards the end of this year is India interesting absolutely um are you still a fan of crypto um well I mean I'm not advising anyone to buy a crypto or bet the farm on you know Dogecoin or anything like that okay on Dogecoin might have been thinking maybe you should but let me advise you that would be a have some ways um okay so it does queer is my is my sort of favorite cryptocurrency because uh it has the best humor and uh has dogs um I did however look at the price of it yesterday it's um it's lower than it was I think well I don't know maybe you know it's like friend of mine has a saying that the most ironic explanation is the most likely and the\n\nmost ironic outcome for currency would be that the thing that was made at uh as a joke to make fun of cryptocurrencies uh most ironic outcome would become that it becomes the Global Currency okay we'll wait and see final one um can you rank the US and China on their development of AI each out of ten um I mean the US says very much has the uh most advanced AI so this is you say like like China's close behind certainly and has the resources to scale and to optimize um the the biggest single advances in AI still come from the US and Europe but um all right so it's hard to give an exact number score because it's more like but there's a big gap still there is a there's a gap um that Gap looks like it's on the order of 12 months right fish a narrowing all expanding\n\nit's hard to tell I suspect it will narrow to some degree okay um can you talk a little bit about you've created a new AI company yourself um obviously there's a huge amount of energy and activity in this space or at least it's been talked about I mean what do you want to do yourself in this space beyond Tesla and and the the stuff you talked about earlier what is that new thing well I think there should be a significant third horse in the race here uh we've got open Ai and Microsoft Google deepmind and probably there should be a third horse in the race um so a little bit more on that soon but is it something that will interact with the data of Twitter and the capability of Tesla is it something that tries to bring what you've talked about earlier in\n\nterms of capability together and become that third player is that what you're talking about to some degree I don't want to jump a gun here on announcements but uh um you know the opening AI has a relationship with Microsoft that seems to work very well fairly well so it's possible that um xai and Twitter and Tesla would have something similar possible um you've talked about the importance of Regulation and you call for this this moratorium I mean the history of regulating Tech has been checkered it's been very hard for Regulators to keep up with tech let alone get ahead of it what do you think actually needs to happen that practically could in this space to try to change that because obviously the history of this is not encouraging yeah I mean I think\n\nthere should be you know I've been pushing hard for a long time I met with a number of um centers and Congress people in Congress in the white house uh to advocate for AI regulation uh starting with an Insight committee that is formed of independent parties as well as perhaps participants from the leaders in industry and that uh that that oversight committee uh gains um or should say get that Insight committee gains insight into what various companies are up to um and uh you know to the degree that there's okay competitive Dynamics there you can obviously uh you would um sequester board members who are perhaps have conflicts uh but anyway if you figure out some sort of regulatory board and uh and they start off gaining insight and then I have proposed\n\nrulemaking um and then that you know will get comments that are on by industry and uh and then hopefully we have some sort of oversight rules that improve uh safety just as we do with uh aircraft with the FAA and spacecraft and cars with Nitza and Food and Drugs with the Food Drug Administration right and how would that work in such a global thing as we're talking about where Ai and the relative uh Advance between countries is going to be very very important is that something that is is globalizable is that is that well really the key question is uh we'll China uh you know cooperate with the West that remains to be seen um but I would still Advocate like some degree of of oversight I mean we have a regulatory oversight of aircraft for example and yet\n\nthe the US is still very much doing great on the aircraft so it makes more effort than the rest than any in any other place so just because you have you know FAA regulations doesn't mean that uh it's necessarily slowed down very much okay um does so so your view would be that the AI changes today lock in the tech Giants the microsofts and the Googles of this world does it also is there also a scenario where it actually helps to bring in new players and and and and and change that dynamic or is that a much more unlikely outcome well that there are um a lot of AI startups the thing that's becoming tricky is that in order you really need three things to compete you need uh Talent talented people um you need um a lot of compute expensive compute and you need\n\nto access the data so whoever's got whoever's succeeding on those three will win um so now that the cost of compute has gotten astronomical so it's now you know kind of sort of minimum ante I would say uh minimum would be 250 million dollars of silver Hardware minimum that's like just two right relevant in any way so the startups are more likely to piggyback off what the others are doing rather than compete directly themselves is what you're saying yeah to train a big one um are you going to take a SpaceX trip yourself to train a model of probably gbt five size I wouldn't be surprised if they use at least 30 30 000 maybe 50 000 h100s which are the latest uh gpus are not sure it's not quite the right word but the latest technology from Nvidia um so and\n\nthen you need to run inference as well um so there's a lot of the the G fuser um this point considerably harder to get than drugs actually that's really not a high bar in San Francisco you can tell us more about that later but yes okay okay um so um a couple of things I just wanted to go into on on AI which I love your perspective on um is this gonna what does it mean for society in terms of is this going to embed wealth and power in a very small subset and create a big widening of inequality is it going to democratize and create the opposite what is your sense of of where this heads terms of access to goods and services I think AI will be ushering an age of abundance assuming that we're in a benign AI scenario I think the AI will be able to make goods\n\nand services um very inexpensively and so in anything that is a product or a service where there's not artificial scarcity created such as like I want to live exactly in and this you know neighborhood houses it's like okay well there's only 100 houses there so you know that that would still have scarcity um or a unique artwork would have scarcity but anything that does not have scarcity that we def that we deliberately designed to be scarce will be plentiful for everyone in a benign scenario and in the unbeline scenario well there's a wide range of but what's the thing that you're most worried about when you look at you know when you've been talking for years about the need for regulation what is the scenario that really keeps you up at night well I don't\n\nI don't think the AI is going to try to destroy all Humanity but it might put us under strict controls um I mean and there's no non-zero chance of of it going Terminator it's not zero percent but it's it's I think it's it's a small likelihood of of annihilating humanity but it's not zero we wanted at all going to be zero close to zero as possible and then like I said the uh of AI assuming control or the safety of all the humans and taking over all the Computing systems and weapon systems of Earth and effectively being like some sort of uber nanny but isn't isn't another scenario if you say you say that yeah like what you know like let's say you're uh you know I must well contact consent contestant hypothetically um it's unlikely let's face it um and and\n\nyou know you say what what do you want and so I want World Peace um and uh it's like okay well the you know one way to achieve well peace is to take all the weapons away from the humans so they can no longer use them and and to punish any humans that engage in um you know extra territorial activity but isn't the more isn't the more likely nasty outcome that rather than AI taking over and being the ultimate naddy that keeps us all doing stuff that is super safe and it wants us to that actually somebody nefariously harnesses that power to achieve societal control stroke military superiority um and that actually some country around the world decides to use it in a different way uh yes that that's what I mean by like AI uses as a weapon right um and the pen\n\nis mightier than the sword so one of the first places we have to be careful of AI being used is in social media to manipulate public opinion so the reason that uh Twitter is going to a primarily uh subscriber based system is because it is dramatically harder to create it's like or 10 000 times harder uh to create a an account that has a verified phone number from a credible carrier that has a a credit card and that pays a small amount of money per month um and have those credit cards and phone numbers be highly distributed not clustered incredibly difficult um so whereas in the past uh someone could create a million fake accounts for a penny a piece and then manipulates have have something appear to be very very much liked by the public when in fact it\n\nis not or promoted and retweeted when in fact it is not is popularity is is not real essentially gain the system so the device towards uh a is a subscription-based verification I think is is very powerful and that really you won't be able to trust any social media company that does not do this uh because it will simply be overrun with Bots to such an extreme extreme degree so if we take it back to where we started if you look at the election that's coming up how big a role will this big shift in AI capability over the last few months which will obviously continue through the next year how big an impact is this going to play do you think in the messaging and the way that people get told the different pictures of of the candidates I think that's something\n\nwe need to go and look at for in a big way is to make sure that this we're minimizing the impact of AI manipulation um we're certainly pretty much taking it Taking that seriously at XX Twitter you know Twitter and um and I think we're putting in place all of the protections to minimize and certainly detect when we see large-scale manipulation of the system okay but beyond Twitter are you worried about this for the election in general yeah um there probably will be attempts to use AI to manipulate the public and some of it will be successful um and if not the selection for sure the next one okay I've got two more questions on AI if you've got the time and then just a little bit on China and Tesla if that's okay um the first thing is um we talk a lot in\n\nterms of AI about the next five to ten years and what the impact is going to be on jobs and some of these things if you look out on a much longer time frame given the speed and scale of the change and you look to your grandkids and great grandkids can you just give us a sense of what what it's going to be like to be human how much is this going to change the fundamental nature of how we operate as as a race at this point I think it's gonna change a lot um especially if you go further out into the future I mean there will be everything will be automatic I mean they'll they'll be household robots that you can fully talk to as though there are people um that can help you around the house or be a companion or whatever the case may be uh there will be humanoid\n\nrobots throughout you know factories um and um ours will also be all automatic and anything that that we're intelligence can be applied um even modest intelligence will be automated say like so if you say like 10 20 years from now and we will we be connected to that technology through a neuralink type Divine I mean is that is that where this in your view obviously is that why this heads well A high bandwidth interface from cortex to the so you're sort of computing or AI tertiary layer which already exists uh you know it's just that we don't have a high bandwidth connection um we've got a um limbic system which is a sort of foundational element that's sort of our instincts and desires and whatnot uh they're not cortex on top of that which is a thinking\n\npart of our brain and about a tertiary digital layer which is currently in the form of our phones and computers and laptops and whatnot and all the applications and the the constraint on better a better merging or the construct you know the constraint on on on um having human interests and machine interests be aligned is the bandwidth especially the output so if you select at what speed can you output to a computer it's using Voice or your fingers which will move very slowly so you're talking about maybe 10 bits per second or some some fairly small data rate um so with with the neural link you can increase that by you know increase that by a million probably um so everything just speeds up it's up yeah okay um I mean this is obviously in a relatively\n\nbenign scenario because there's a question of not just uh let's say it's a Brian scenario um how do we even appreciate or understand what the computer is doing right um how do we how do we go how do we go along for the ride um and if we have a better if you have a brain machine interface that's I don't know a million times faster than or more like we'll go along for the ride a lot better that then if we're interfacing with a phone using two slow-moving meat sticks um if you put it like that um and in terms of you have a lot of kids many in this room have kids you know what do they need to what skills do they need to have what are the three skills that you think are most important for them that you're trying to give them to be prepared and well positioned\n\nfor this new world well I think it's it's important to have a broad range of of understanding in many different subjects so I think general knowledge is important um so you at least have some clue of what you don't know in different areas and then go deep in areas where your child is has a strong interest and ability so finding that that overlap of where is my child what interested in this and has some ability to be successful then uh you know Finding if you can find that Venn diagram overlap then obviously encouraging that is a good thing um and we are obviously headed to a high-tech world so some basic understanding of computers and software and artificial intelligence is probably a good idea okay but the actual broad thrust of um I mean jobs will change\n\nbut it'll be more AI enabling and making it better and easier rather than wholesale complete change of the skills you need Which principle what time frame we're talking about here so if you say like over 20 30 year time frame I think things will be transformed beyond belief what you probably think you probably won't recognize Society in 30 years um like I do think we're fairly close you asked me about artificial general intelligence I think we're perhaps only three years maybe six years away from it this this decade um so the impact arguably we are on the Event Horizon of the black hole that is social super intelligence okay so I'm going to ask one final question I'm going to see if you've got two minutes to take a couple of questions from the floor and\n\nit's it comes back to China which you talked about a little bit you have a very big business in China in Tesla um and obviously you know you're on that geopolitical fault line that's getting um potentially interesting it to what extent is this affecting your decision making around sort of how you put assets and and stuff on the ground and how concerned are you about that as a business person and a lot of people in this room have business in China about that getting very very difficult for us well there is fundamentally um an issue that's coming to a head with Taiwan um and it's unclear when exactly Bush will come to show but it seems that there's a good chance push will come to shove it's trending in that direction um I'd rather think what what that would\n\nhappen the results would be for the global economy would be absolutely catastrophic um but um you know China has been very clear about its goal on China and uh sort of um including Taiwan um as part of China so one does not need to read between the lines one can simply read the lines they were bracelet and they're not getting and is the biggest concern despite you know the the the the prospect of conflict itself um obviously a lot of the world's high-end chips come out of Taiwan I mean how catastrophic would that be if that was cut off well there's even more that comes out of China so the transit is a lot so much of of the world's heavy lifting on manufacturing especially if the manufacturing is you know simply hard work and say not not particularly glamorous\n\num charges does an immense amount of hard work that people most people have no idea how much hard work they do so um you kind of from Taiwan was much less less of a concern than being covered from time from China now China would reciprocally suffer of course um because I would say that the economy of the economies of China and Taiwan are they're like conjoined twins with the what the Western economy with the rest of the world so China China the West the rest of the world being Conjuring twins from an economic standpoint will mean that the separation is going to be dire indeed okay that happens I hope it does not happen so um and there's no easy solution here but if there's any if there's any path to diplomatic solution we should really take that seriously\n\ngreat do you have time to take a few questions from the floor Elon sure does anybody have a question they'd like to pose we'll go here and then here Mike behind you thanks Elon thanks for joining us um I'm the founder of a real estate business in Newcastle in the northeast of England um we export manufacture and Export more cars from the Northeast than the whole of Italy uh would you let me build you a Tesla Factory in the northeast of England thanks for the offer so probably consider uh England uh for a future location of a geiger Factory thank you I'll get you so you will you will consider it are you actively considering it uh we we we we're not currently uh looking at new locations but we will pull towards the end of this year I'll send you some plans\n\nokay um uh David here please thank you for your time uh Fusion lots of scientists say it could change the world Planet it's the sun all live on this planet and on Mars depends on Fusion the sun itself can I ask you why a man of your brilliant brain resources and talent it's not actually focusing on Fusion which I think could be a game changer for society and rather than on Twitter where there are many media decent companies that can do it and I would say it almost in a trivial way well I'm I think we already have a giant Fusion reactor in the sky that called the Sun that shows up every day so um which always said like if you want to know what's standing in front of a future Fusion reactor feels like just go out go and stand in front of the sun you know\n\njust walk outside that's what that's what a giant Fusion reactor feels like because that's what the sun is um it converts about four and a half million towns four and a half million tons of Mass to energy every second and requires no maintenance it's amazing um you don't have to you don't have to refuel it you don't have to maintain it just there so my recommendation for Fusion is solar power and batteries and we can easily power all of Earth with uh just with photovoltaics and batteries not I mean not easily but there's just a very clear path to do so um and and uh no Miracles are quiet just work interesting I've also an advocate of wind and of of nuclear fission uh geothermal hydro and whatnot uh we'll take a couple more one here and then the lady at\n\nthe back thank you as you're considering exposure to China and particularly um in the EV space and with the battery supply chain what's your process for evaluating political risk in the near and Midterm I guess I just talked to my team you know read the news uh I don't know assess assess the opinion on Twitter I suppose um there's a very deep analysis you can get on Twitter from people that are World experts on a particular subject so um I don't know I think we just we try to prepare for the worst hope for the best um and um you know make sure we have factories and uh geographically Diversified regions of the world where the supply chain is as localized as possible but this is important uh also for forced Azure situations so if there are earthquakes wildfires\n\nriots revolutions uh ice storms uh heat waves uh you name it uh I think I've seen it all at this point so you want to have you you want to have a supply chain that does not inherit Force Major from all of Earth um because something that's going to happen somewhere it's Big Planet so so that's why I think it's important to have um localized Supply chains with factories in in many geographies uh last question from the lady at the back thank you yeah you famously tweeted that you thought the population collapse was a much bigger risk to humanity than climate change what do you think States families even companies can do to ensure that more of us want to have more children well yeah I mean I think it's it's very telling if you look at the birth rates which\n\nare just you know publicly available um you can look at uh say the birth rate last year for every country um it's available online um and you can look at the trend in both rates and it's just very clear that the trend has been strongly downward um and that we've recently hit all-time lows so um you think if you know during covert you know what else you got to do you might as well have a kid but um it didn't happen actually we had a big drop in birth rate during during covert an increase in divorces too since make a lot of time with their significant other um so I think generally um so it's simply changing people's mind about the goodness of having kids it's like very important to have kids in order to to continue civilization um and I think sometimes\n\nit's viewed as uh you know kids are viewed as an imposition on the world I don't think that's the case at all or that people sometimes think there are too many people in the world that's that's certainly not the case you can you can fit all of the humans on Earth on one floor in the city of New York you know it would be uncomfortable but but just to give you a sense of the cross-sectional area of earth that is human is very tiny it just seems big if you're in a big city um but for the vast majority of the earth if if you're given a task of from front plane of dropping a bowling ball and and and you have to hit someone you'd you'd Miss I almost never hit anyone um so uh what is that you very rarely go over a person um in an aircraft you fly from LA to\n\nNew York the vast areas of land with no one at all so anyway the I think we want to just generally have it be socially encouraged to have kids I think certainly companies need to support uh employees that have kids um I think in terms of government incentives uh there should be uh some I think tax breaks for having kids you know or make it just financially not burdensome to have children um and it's always worth bearing in mind like autonomy aside um if someone doesn't have kids what you're actually asking is that uh someone else's kids take care of you when you're old and that that doesn't seem like quite right you know um because because that's that's the world before they'll be forced to do absent automation is is that someone else the kids will have\n\nto take care of you when you're old and um you know so I think anyway one way or another we need to solve this birth rate issue or civilization will go a little to nothing isn't that where AI comes in it'll do all the jobs for us so we can we can handle a uh potentially lower population or what you're talking about I think there will be robot nannies that are very confident so that will help","textByLang":{"en":"Elon hello welcome are you in Palo Alto I understand yeah first well a Global Engineering headquarters in Palo Alto great well thank you so much for joining us um I'm actually going to start somewhere a little bit differently than I expected um because I just saw on Twitter on Twitter um a little announcement um I would love to get your your thoughts on it I see your uh interviewing Rhonda santis tomorrow morning is that right on Twitter spaces I see yes it's uh I need like the exact time but oh tomorrow morning your time I think it would be probably correct okay um so uh yes I um will be interviewing um Ron Santos and he has quite an announcement to make um and we'll be we're the first time that's something like this is happening on social media and\n\nwith the real-time questions and answers uh no not scripted uh so it's Gonna Be Live and Let Let let's see what happens foreign and you've been tweeting some Tim Scott stuff in the last few days um what should we be thinking about who you're backing obviously this interview tells us something can you give us a sense of where your thinking is at the moment yes I mean I'm not at this time um planning to endorse any particular cancer um but I am interested in uh you know X slash Twitter being somewhat of a public town square and uh where more and more organizations host content and make announcements on Twitter um it's the it's the only place on the internet to really get uh real-time like down to the minute and second news and it's uh yeah so I think it's\n\nit's quite groundbreaking that there'd be um a major announcement of this type on social media um and should we expect um sorry I don't want to go on too long about this but um in your new role as interviewer rather than interviewee uh should we expect um uh should we expect more of this I mean if it's the Town Square are you going to be interviewing other candidates Democrats what's your what's your thought of this are people willing to come are you going to be there to execute the Town Square across the Spectrum yes absolutely um so just as I as I promised when I do a series of media interviews I did a range of interviews um and uh I guess this would be also a media interview um so ranging from sort of on the you know left moderate to what's considered\n\nright um and I do think it's important that Twitter be uh have both the reality and the procession of uh Level Playing Field of uh a place where uh all voices are heard and where uh as the kind of dynamic interaction that is you don't really see anywhere else um I'll meet you today on Twitter for example um uh AOC got into an and Ted Cruz got into an argument on Twitter which was um yeah independent of which side do you agree with um it's still very entertaining so what um and I'm sure tomorrow will be entertaining we're all going to be tuned into that but um when you when you approach an interview like that and and obviously a really important election like the one that is coming up you can you just talk a little bit about what are the key issues that\n\nreally matter for you at this pivotal moment you can matter for me as an individual or matter for you as an individual um in terms of who leads the country but also you know more broadly than that you know for the country and for for your businesses I mean can you give your sense of of where the real issues lie here well I've said publicly that um my preference and I think would be the preference of most Americans is really to have someone fairly normal in office I think we'd all be quite uh quite happy with that actually um you know I think someone that uh is representative of the moderate views that I think most the country holds in reality um and um but but the way things are set up is that we we do have a system that seems to push things towards the\n\nedges because of the primaries so in order to win the primary you've got to win obviously majority of your parties vote in both cases that tends to cause a swing to the left and the right although I think things are more complex than simply left and right during the primaries and then uh and then let's shift towards the center for the Journal election um as far uh what what I think is yeah so I would really just like someone you know fairly normal accessible to be the president that would be great so if we go through the if we go through the four names in the frame at the moment can you just give a sort of yes no whether they're normal and sensible um so um we've got Joe Biden I I think you know be careful about these statements um so I uh we'd maybe\n\nhave to have a few drinks before I would give you the answers I will um I will look forward to that and I look forward to the uh to the conversation tomorrow and obviously a lot more of those to come over the coming months so um that's great thank you very much um so what I wanted to start with you've just flown in I think in the last 20 minutes um you live a pretty hectic lifestyle um but you've said that the only true currency is time can you give a sense to the people in this room who are scheduled within an inch of their lives sort of how you you what is a day in the life of Elon Musk what does that look like well weddings are very long and complicated as you might imagine yeah um and um and there's a great there's a great deal of context switching\n\nso um doesn't mean my life called like relating to Doom where it's like fear is not the mind killer context switching is uh so switching context is is quite painful but um I do generally try to divide uh companies that's predominantly one company on one day so today is a Tesla day for example um although I might end up at Twitter late tonight um and then tomorrow would be partly a Tesla day as well have Twitter and um and then Thursday would be sort of a half SpaceX have Tesla day but these things are somewhat intertwined so the time management is extremely difficult um and this is going to sound pretty strange but I um I only have one uh part-time assistant um how many days a week is that the part-time I mean I suppose I suppose how she works who were\n\ntechnically full-time but as such I I do most of the scheduling uh myself um and the reason I do that is because it's impossible for someone else to know what the priorities are um so the and since the most valuable thing I have is time I schedule it myself for the most part so if you come into Tesla today do you have a series of meetings set up or do you um come in with you know something on your mind and you go in and see people I mean how structured is this or if you shop at Twitter in terms of the people working for you how do they how do they handle that um yeah so today I have several hours of scheduled meetings at Twitter um so there are a number of of things that are operated on a weekly Cadence um and so those meetings are already set up and\n\nthen I have supplemental meetings at the end of the day um particularly I I I I won't be going to sleep until probably 2 A.\n\nM or something like that and be working almost the entire time and if you're shaking this yourself is AI going to be helpful over the next few years to help you um do this and you're going to be using technology to help you manage that I guess we'll all be using technology I don't use a lot of AI myself day-to-day I mean Tesla AI is actually very Advanced for real world AI it's the most advanced remote World AI um by far um and in fact if positions were swapped and it would say up to Microsoft and open AI to create uh who could create the best large language model basically if the tests were swapped Tesla was given that the task of making the most competitive large language model and Microsoft open AI were tasked with self-driving Tesla would win okay\n\nI don't think people understand the degree of depict the capability of Tesla's AI system so while I don't use AI a lot personally Tesla uses a trans mount we'll get on to that in a second if that's okay but one final thing in terms of just the management of what you do with your life you're running three very big companies you have very big stakes and you know ownership control of of two of those at least um what is your succession plan if you suddenly call and execute what you're doing both in terms of who runs the companies but as importantly who votes those shares in terms of um you know what happens longer term and strategically what have you got a plan for all of those yeah um succession is one of the toughest age-old problems um you know it's it's\n\na it's plagued um you know countries Kings Prime Ministers and presidents for and CEOs for you know since the dawn of History um there is no obvious solution I I mean there are particular individuals identified as that that I've told people would look if something happens to me unexpectedly this is who my this is my recommendation for taking over so in all cases the board is aware of of who my recommendation is which they may choose to it's up to them of course they they may choose to go a different direction but I they there is a in in worst case scenario this is who should run a company uh the control question is a much more it's a much tougher question um and something that I'm wrestling with and I'm frankly open to ideas because it certainly is true\n\nthat the companies that I have created and are creating um collectively possess uh immense capability and so the stewardship of them is incredibly important um I want to make sure that the stewardship is ultimately uh accrues the benefit of humanity that's the idea is the tolerance of civilization um but they're not that we're always successful in that but that is aspirationally our goal um so um I I have one one idea which is sort of partly in place which is to create kind of a an a sort of a educational institution that that would control um most of my vote um but this is this is not a case of um automatically I I'm definitely not not of the school of automatically giving my kids a you know some share of the companies even if they are not even if they\n\nhave no interest or inclination you know or ability to to manage the companies I think that's a mistake um so but but it's a very hard problem to solve right so and then who should be on the board of directors of the educational institution is also a very very hard job to solve um so I think probably some disaggregation of control would make sense I'm really just kind of thinking out loud creatively here but it sounds like it's something that you I mean you need to get planning of who those people are going to be because as you've said whether when you look at SpaceX you look at Tesla you look at Twitter these these matter to society a lot and having the right people to take those votes on the future of where they go and where money gets spent is is fairly\n\nimportant yes absolutely now the goals of the companies they're the achievement of those goals varies considerably in difficulty um you know the the original goal of Tesla was to accelerate the Advent of sustainable energy which actually I think we've done done that to a significant degree um and have actually it's kind of of uh it's kind of it's kind of a order industry CEOs too often acknowledge Tesla's role in accelerating electric vehicles um and um yeah so so that that I feel has a lot of momentum um they're still solving self-driving which were you know aspirationally hoping to do this year uh and um and so it has got a long way to go but but the execution plan is relatively clear um and uh the next that execution plan will generate a lot of positive\n\ncash flow for the company so it's like if it's a fairly obvious thing to do with SpaceX it's a harder problem because uh the long-term objective is to make life multi-planetary with a self-sustaining City on Mars which is likely to be very casual or negative uh at first a long term let's just say the target market on Mars is small you got to think long term yeah you're also going to have to get on very well with those you go with I would imagine uh yes definitely um you know sanity will be a prime requirement for uh and stability for traveling to Mars you don't want someone going nuts and opening the airlock in the middle of the night um right so SpaceX is a harder problem because it's it's uh much a long-term goal and and with uh a lot more money less\n\nalong the way so gotta make sure that that happens um and is that the sort of thing just to stay on SpaceX and we'll go to Twitter and tell us in a second but um is that the sort of thing that you'd like to lock in to the goals of SpaceX that Mars Remains the ultimate um ambition of this come what may is that is that that important to you yeah I mean it's to make light multi-planetary such that um and the key threshold for multi-planatory is that if the supply ships from Earth stop coming for any reason that a Mars does not die out that's that's the that's the critical great filter if you talk about things in terms of the Fermi Paradox the great filter is um Mars being self-sustaining without any resupply shows from Earth until we reach that point we're\n\nreally just a one planet civilization with uh an extension but the point in which the planets are self-sustaining Oman is self-sustaining then even in a worst case scenario of of Earth civilization either dying with a bang or a whimper um then Mars would have a much better chance of surviving um so the intent here overall is to ensure the light of Consciousness which appears to be just a tiny candle and a vast Darkness um I frequently I frequently get asked have I seen any evidence of aliens and I I I'm not um you know apart from the fact that I didn't at one point have an alien registration card when I was getting my uh green green card uh it's an alien registration um indeed possibly a slightly different type of alien but um so do you think you'll will\n\nyou live to see Mars happen I I hope to love to see the first humans on Mars um but I think it'll take some period of time beyond that to make my self-sustaining so it's at least 20 years from the first visit to make my sustain as my guess and it may be 40 or 50.\n\nand that's assuming you really go for it right so that's a tough one um but like so I think important for improving the survivability of civilization and who's going to pay for that I mean are your investors gonna put the money up to do that are you going to expect government to fund that where does that money come from because as you say you can make a return on starlink you can make a return on launching satellites for other people and space tourism but I mean that's a that's a tougher return Isn't it yeah I think I think long term uh the value of it will be incredibly high I would just it's just beyond the planning Horizon of most people or most investors so um I mean obviously if um if there's a thriving um City on Mars and there's a lot of interplanetary\n\nCommerce and SpaceX is the primary provider of that it would be immensely valuable um so um but but you know the one thing is that at the be this self-sustaining you know Colony um and um I think we we I think we uh generally operate with too much of an assumption that Civilization is robust um and nothing could really take it down uh a sentiment that has been common throughout history among Empires shortly before they called it so and you know I have to say that you know there's a little bit of late stage Empire Vibes going on right now um uh yeah for sure are you um yeah um uh is is AI something that in your view accelerates the risk of that or increases the risk of that at that outcome I think it does yeah um I mean we could definitely make a city\n\nof Mars self-sustaining without without AI or without sort of AGI which is generally artificial general intelligence or super intelligence I have so I think that that is uh it's not necessary for anything we're doing um but it is happening and happening very quickly so uh there is a risk that uh Advanced AI um either eliminates or constrains Humanities growth I was more thinking the opposite does it increase the chance that plant the planet self input implodes and those things come true you I mean how concerned are you about these developments right now sort of accelerating your your bad case scenario here well uh I mean the development of artificial digital sort of super intelligence uh is very much a double-edged sword so it's if you have if you have\n\na genie that can grant you anything they can also do anything um that necessarily is presents a danger and I expect the first uses of AI to be or certainly the first government uses of AI to be weapons technology so just having um more advanced weapons on the battle if you go back that can react uh faster than any human could that's that's really what AI will be capable of I mean future Wars between Advanced countries or at least countries that have significant drone capability will be very much the Drone Wars so I want to get back to AI because this is this is big stuff and I'd like to to talk about in more detail but I do want to come just come back to the present from a long way in the future um you've just hired a new CEO uh Linda yacarino an ad veteran\n\num into Twitter you usually focus on hiring Engineers you know Linda is a very different person can you just quickly tell us about your courtship how did that go down well um we had conversations over a number of months uh just relating to advertising um and then uh Linda felt that um it would be very helpful for the advertisers to see me in person so invited me down to a conference in Miami um which was very helpful and met with a number of advertisers personally to assure their you know assure them that that Twitter is a good place to advertise in a and generally that in fact that that hate speech is declined which it has and that the quality of the system especially with respect to scammas and spammas is dramatically better than it used to be um we've\n\ngotten rid of at this point well over 90 percent of those the scams and scams the scams and spam on Twitter it should be quite rare at this point at UCS camp um so um we've also rolled out uh sort of so just to be clear when you say you've got rid of 90 of the scams is it but is that the same thing as the Bots or is this scams in general and Bots is a different animal here they were typically used Bots for scan but you haven't taken the Bots down 90 percent no I think we we have actually I think you have okay yeah yeah I think we have yeah maybe more than 19.\n\nnow you've said at least um is now much much harder to operate a platform on Twitter and have it uh yield any any uh advantage um so uh dramatic Improvement in Bots dramatic Improvement and ability to detect uh sort of trial armies which is a little different that's where you've got say oh you know um a hundred people in a warehouse in a low-wage country Each of which are sitting at a desk with 100 phones so you've got 10 000 actual people and they will then act together to Brigade a particular subject or make something seem very popular when it is not um and we've been able to defeat almost all of them we think very few of them are actually still able to to operate so quality of the system has gotten a lot better okay so um if you said to Linda that\n\nyou are going to keep speaking your mind whatever the commercial impact of that and has she agreed to that is she happy with that you aligned uh yeah okay and in her role as CEO does she have any say over moderation or is that under you or you do you do that together well the general principle is that um we were we were here close to the law so for any given country we will try to adhere as closer to the low as possible our law is very between countries and we can't simply fight the law in in um in another country because they will simply cut us off um so the general principle is do whatever we can to enable free and open Communications with between people um provided they're not like I said breaking she's aligned on on that that plan yeah that Focus\n\num yeah there is an important thing which is like that that obviously doesn't mean that say advertisers should be forced to appear next to any content so we've also developed adjacency controls that ensure that if what you're advertising is um like Disney Disney for example is a big Advertiser it doesn't use advertising a children's movie they you know it won't want the the contents nearby to be sort of family friendly that's totally understandable um so uh so it's it's not like advertisers have to appear next to content that they that they don't agree with and can you um so some people say you're you can't be a little erratic with your Tweeting or at least um tweet a broad range of of content um does anybody say I don't want to be adjacent to Elon Musk\n\nis that is that something that's happened on the on the platform I've never heard that yet um but uh um and did it did that come up with Linda at all sort of what you tweet and and whether that was something that could affect advertisers did she did she ask you about that uh she did it in fact at the conference that we did in Miami so we speech is Paramount fine um I wanted to ask you a little bit about your vision for Twitter as a as a community and as a as a conversation um you've talked about your desire to maximize unregretted time can you just could you explain what that means and how you measure that uh yeah so uh previously Twitter was mostly uh focused on this number called uh they called mdow monetizable daily active users um but the problem\n\nis that when you look closely at that a bunch of those users um never even went to Twitter they would go to um uh there would see a notification on their phone about a tweet but they wouldn't actually click through the site so but what really matters is uh true user seconds of screen time um so that's that's the figure we track right now and that's based on the the screen time as reported To Us by uh uh iOS Android and the browser so um it would be it would have to be the time the amount of time the app is in the foreground right is the most rigorous way to assess this so so when you say unregret it sorry please keep going exactly so in terms of undergraded it's that's a little harder to measure um but we can certainly gather it anecdotally which is to\n\nsay that if you spent you know half an hour on Twitter yesterday what percentage of the percentage of that time do you regret um and journaling the feedbackup button has been very positive uh that they they find it's the information to be useful entertaining funny um so we seem to be heading the right direction as far as I can tell I'm certainly open to any critiques from the room well let me let me ask you one on that which is um you know you recently tweeted about George Soros you said um let me get back well let me just get the words because I'm kind of interested in what you think about this he wants to erode the very fabric of civilization Soros hates Humanity that obviously generated a huge amount of response on Twitter on both sides lots of different\n\nviewpoints is that unregrettable time unregretted time that that debate that you created does that fit into that category do you think well I mean I said like Source reminds me of Magneto you know uh well you know you went a little further than that but again without going into the Soros tweet itself you know you're obviously a big figure on Twitter and you're setting a tone and a name so I'm just curious as to whether that sort of debate which which gets triggered is that does that fit into the definition that you're trying to create in that New Town Square well I mean I think the important thing is that like look what I say is not uh is what I'd say um you know it's sort of a Town Square I'm not going to mitigate what I say because that would be inhibiting\n\nfor your freedom of speech that doesn't mean you have to agree with what I say in order to mean if somebody says the total opposite that they're that they won't be supported on Twitter they are um the point is to have a diversion set of views and free speech is only relevant um if it's a speech by a speech by someone you don't like who says something you don't like is that allowed if if so you have free speech otherwise you do not and for those who would Advocate censorship I would say it is if if you succeed in that it's only a matter of time before the censorship gets turned on you I agree I mean you can that's your free speech definition which you said but I'm just curious as to on the unregrettable part what what what what type of conversation you're\n\ntrying to achieve and whether that's something that is acceptable but maybe not where you want the broader conversation to go well I mean I did clarify that you know some of my concerns about Taurus are that he's funded um a very large number of uh small but influential races around the country especially with District Attorneys um and we find that for example the alien uh and and San Francisco district attorney races uh uh with uh chess boarding and um the guy always I always want to call him Gaston from Beauty and the Beast driving um and and the the it's basically he's he's um of course a large number of the ASP elected who are very easy on crime and will often fuse refuse to uh prosecute so you were basically trying to make a deeper point with that\n\nshort yeah um can I just move on quickly to um because I don't want to go too far down that that rabbit hole because that debate has played out on Twitter a bit is um you know are you back near profitability now Twitter is not quite there but we we're we're not like you know when I first acquisition closed I would say it's analogous to being teleported into a plane that's plunging to the ground with its engines on fire the controls don't work um so it's comforting say the least um now we have to do some pretty heavy-handed uh bus Cutting Company healthy but we're at this point we're training towards if we get lucky we might be casual casual positive next month but it remains to be seen and is the Staffing the level you now want it or are you going to\n\nstart taking it back up again from this it's gone from I think 8 000 to about 1500 or something like that is that crazy correct yeah um I think there's you know there's um there's definitely we are going to start adding people to the company um and we have started adding some number of people to the company um and um but it's still there's still a lot of change to have to happen so but I I think 1500 is probably a reasonable number and does this show what you can do um in a big tech company in terms of cost reduction I mean when you look around other big tech companies in Silicon Valley um would you say from your experience that there's room for much more significant change at those as well yeah I think Twitter maybe somewhat of an outlier in that um\n\nthat there were a lot of people doing things that that didn't seem to have a lot of value um and that's I think that's true probably at most the Silicon Valley companies um maybe not to the degree to which it was a Twitter but uh it's still yeah there's a potential for significant Cuts I think out of the companies without affecting their productivity in fact increasing their productivity um so you know um at any given company there are people who help move things forward and and people who've sort of tried to slam the brakes on and Twitter was in a situation where you'd have a meeting of 10 people you know and one person with an accelerator and nine nine with a set of brakes um so you didn't go very far right um and um so now now we're going home about\n\nreleasing functionality even with a little bit of risk to side stability as soon as it's not too serious and I think this point is probably fair to say we were introduced more functionality in the last uh six months than Twitter has in the last six years and in terms of outages there were some outages early on are you are you confident things are stable now well outages Are Not Unusual Instagram recently had an outage for example it was reported on Twitter ironically um so uh we've had outages but not not massive ones and they've generally been brief and limited in scope okay um do you regret buying it you tried to get out of it or are you now happy you bought it well all's well that ends well has it ended well yet or we still got to wait and see um I\n\nthink we're on the hopefully on the uh comeback Arc okay so I mean one of the things you have talked about you bought it for 44 billion you've talked about it one day being worth 250 I think in internal meetings can you just talk about how you get there what is the what is the bigger Vision I mean you want to bring back advertisers now and are they coming back by the way yeah yeah um can you give any idea of the scale of the comeback in terms of who you lost and who's coming back uh well I think it'll be very significant um so the advertising agencies this point of all um lifted their warnings on Twitter so appreciate the fact that that group M for example um removed the sort of uh their concern label over Twitter which is a very big deal um and so I\n\nthink at this point uh I expect almost all advertisers to attack okay um we've also I've done a lot more to make the advertising uh more relevant to users um so that we show users things that are they're more likely to be interested in buying sounds obvious but right that's what tends to happen yeah not super obvious I mean just just basic stuff like if you do a search on Twitter previously this the search Banner app um that did not take the Search terms into account which is pretty insane um so just show a random ad okay whereas obviously show an ad that is you know matches your search sounds sounds worth doing so just quickly what if you've talked about the sort of single app that does messaging and does finance and other things I mean can you just\n\nenlarge a little bit on sort of how you get there and why America wants that obviously it'll be up to people to decide if they want it um it's like do we make something that is useful enough um that you want to use it more frequently um great that's our goal um so we're not going to do anything to stop people leaving the app or try to track them in the app but let's provide enough compiling functionality that over time uh people's usage of the platform growth so in 10 years time is advertising still going to be dominant on Twitter I think advertising will always play a role um at some point take 10 years from now it may not play the largest role but it will play the largest role for at least a few years to come so I want to do a quick um quick far round\n\nof questions just you know imagine that you're late at night you're sitting there tweeting a few rapid fire responses to stuff um and I'm just going to ask you a few questions and if you can just give me short answers then I want to go on to AR and talk a little bit about some of the deeper points that you you started making earlier um so first one will Twitter be public again in five years I don't know okay um do you think the HQ will still be in San Francisco okay not good so far let's try a couple more um which decade are we going to crack artificial general intelligence I think this one this one okay so it's that soon okay um are you going to take a SpaceX trip yourself I will at some point yeah not sure when but you'll be nice um which is the most\n\nexciting country to build a Tesla plant in right now um well we did make an announcement that Mexico would be our next uh location outside the U.\n\nS uh and picked a site and everything so there's that and then um we'll probably pick another location towards the end of this year is India interesting absolutely um are you still a fan of crypto um well I mean I'm not advising anyone to buy a crypto or bet the farm on you know Dogecoin or anything like that okay on Dogecoin might have been thinking maybe you should but let me advise you that would be a have some ways um okay so it does queer is my is my sort of favorite cryptocurrency because uh it has the best humor and uh has dogs um I did however look at the price of it yesterday it's um it's lower than it was I think well I don't know maybe you know it's like friend of mine has a saying that the most ironic explanation is the most likely and the\n\nmost ironic outcome for currency would be that the thing that was made at uh as a joke to make fun of cryptocurrencies uh most ironic outcome would become that it becomes the Global Currency okay we'll wait and see final one um can you rank the US and China on their development of AI each out of ten um I mean the US says very much has the uh most advanced AI so this is you say like like China's close behind certainly and has the resources to scale and to optimize um the the biggest single advances in AI still come from the US and Europe but um all right so it's hard to give an exact number score because it's more like but there's a big gap still there is a there's a gap um that Gap looks like it's on the order of 12 months right fish a narrowing all expanding\n\nit's hard to tell I suspect it will narrow to some degree okay um can you talk a little bit about you've created a new AI company yourself um obviously there's a huge amount of energy and activity in this space or at least it's been talked about I mean what do you want to do yourself in this space beyond Tesla and and the the stuff you talked about earlier what is that new thing well I think there should be a significant third horse in the race here uh we've got open Ai and Microsoft Google deepmind and probably there should be a third horse in the race um so a little bit more on that soon but is it something that will interact with the data of Twitter and the capability of Tesla is it something that tries to bring what you've talked about earlier in\n\nterms of capability together and become that third player is that what you're talking about to some degree I don't want to jump a gun here on announcements but uh um you know the opening AI has a relationship with Microsoft that seems to work very well fairly well so it's possible that um xai and Twitter and Tesla would have something similar possible um you've talked about the importance of Regulation and you call for this this moratorium I mean the history of regulating Tech has been checkered it's been very hard for Regulators to keep up with tech let alone get ahead of it what do you think actually needs to happen that practically could in this space to try to change that because obviously the history of this is not encouraging yeah I mean I think\n\nthere should be you know I've been pushing hard for a long time I met with a number of um centers and Congress people in Congress in the white house uh to advocate for AI regulation uh starting with an Insight committee that is formed of independent parties as well as perhaps participants from the leaders in industry and that uh that that oversight committee uh gains um or should say get that Insight committee gains insight into what various companies are up to um and uh you know to the degree that there's okay competitive Dynamics there you can obviously uh you would um sequester board members who are perhaps have conflicts uh but anyway if you figure out some sort of regulatory board and uh and they start off gaining insight and then I have proposed\n\nrulemaking um and then that you know will get comments that are on by industry and uh and then hopefully we have some sort of oversight rules that improve uh safety just as we do with uh aircraft with the FAA and spacecraft and cars with Nitza and Food and Drugs with the Food Drug Administration right and how would that work in such a global thing as we're talking about where Ai and the relative uh Advance between countries is going to be very very important is that something that is is globalizable is that is that well really the key question is uh we'll China uh you know cooperate with the West that remains to be seen um but I would still Advocate like some degree of of oversight I mean we have a regulatory oversight of aircraft for example and yet\n\nthe the US is still very much doing great on the aircraft so it makes more effort than the rest than any in any other place so just because you have you know FAA regulations doesn't mean that uh it's necessarily slowed down very much okay um does so so your view would be that the AI changes today lock in the tech Giants the microsofts and the Googles of this world does it also is there also a scenario where it actually helps to bring in new players and and and and and change that dynamic or is that a much more unlikely outcome well that there are um a lot of AI startups the thing that's becoming tricky is that in order you really need three things to compete you need uh Talent talented people um you need um a lot of compute expensive compute and you need\n\nto access the data so whoever's got whoever's succeeding on those three will win um so now that the cost of compute has gotten astronomical so it's now you know kind of sort of minimum ante I would say uh minimum would be 250 million dollars of silver Hardware minimum that's like just two right relevant in any way so the startups are more likely to piggyback off what the others are doing rather than compete directly themselves is what you're saying yeah to train a big one um are you going to take a SpaceX trip yourself to train a model of probably gbt five size I wouldn't be surprised if they use at least 30 30 000 maybe 50 000 h100s which are the latest uh gpus are not sure it's not quite the right word but the latest technology from Nvidia um so and\n\nthen you need to run inference as well um so there's a lot of the the G fuser um this point considerably harder to get than drugs actually that's really not a high bar in San Francisco you can tell us more about that later but yes okay okay um so um a couple of things I just wanted to go into on on AI which I love your perspective on um is this gonna what does it mean for society in terms of is this going to embed wealth and power in a very small subset and create a big widening of inequality is it going to democratize and create the opposite what is your sense of of where this heads terms of access to goods and services I think AI will be ushering an age of abundance assuming that we're in a benign AI scenario I think the AI will be able to make goods\n\nand services um very inexpensively and so in anything that is a product or a service where there's not artificial scarcity created such as like I want to live exactly in and this you know neighborhood houses it's like okay well there's only 100 houses there so you know that that would still have scarcity um or a unique artwork would have scarcity but anything that does not have scarcity that we def that we deliberately designed to be scarce will be plentiful for everyone in a benign scenario and in the unbeline scenario well there's a wide range of but what's the thing that you're most worried about when you look at you know when you've been talking for years about the need for regulation what is the scenario that really keeps you up at night well I don't\n\nI don't think the AI is going to try to destroy all Humanity but it might put us under strict controls um I mean and there's no non-zero chance of of it going Terminator it's not zero percent but it's it's I think it's it's a small likelihood of of annihilating humanity but it's not zero we wanted at all going to be zero close to zero as possible and then like I said the uh of AI assuming control or the safety of all the humans and taking over all the Computing systems and weapon systems of Earth and effectively being like some sort of uber nanny but isn't isn't another scenario if you say you say that yeah like what you know like let's say you're uh you know I must well contact consent contestant hypothetically um it's unlikely let's face it um and and\n\nyou know you say what what do you want and so I want World Peace um and uh it's like okay well the you know one way to achieve well peace is to take all the weapons away from the humans so they can no longer use them and and to punish any humans that engage in um you know extra territorial activity but isn't the more isn't the more likely nasty outcome that rather than AI taking over and being the ultimate naddy that keeps us all doing stuff that is super safe and it wants us to that actually somebody nefariously harnesses that power to achieve societal control stroke military superiority um and that actually some country around the world decides to use it in a different way uh yes that that's what I mean by like AI uses as a weapon right um and the pen\n\nis mightier than the sword so one of the first places we have to be careful of AI being used is in social media to manipulate public opinion so the reason that uh Twitter is going to a primarily uh subscriber based system is because it is dramatically harder to create it's like or 10 000 times harder uh to create a an account that has a verified phone number from a credible carrier that has a a credit card and that pays a small amount of money per month um and have those credit cards and phone numbers be highly distributed not clustered incredibly difficult um so whereas in the past uh someone could create a million fake accounts for a penny a piece and then manipulates have have something appear to be very very much liked by the public when in fact it\n\nis not or promoted and retweeted when in fact it is not is popularity is is not real essentially gain the system so the device towards uh a is a subscription-based verification I think is is very powerful and that really you won't be able to trust any social media company that does not do this uh because it will simply be overrun with Bots to such an extreme extreme degree so if we take it back to where we started if you look at the election that's coming up how big a role will this big shift in AI capability over the last few months which will obviously continue through the next year how big an impact is this going to play do you think in the messaging and the way that people get told the different pictures of of the candidates I think that's something\n\nwe need to go and look at for in a big way is to make sure that this we're minimizing the impact of AI manipulation um we're certainly pretty much taking it Taking that seriously at XX Twitter you know Twitter and um and I think we're putting in place all of the protections to minimize and certainly detect when we see large-scale manipulation of the system okay but beyond Twitter are you worried about this for the election in general yeah um there probably will be attempts to use AI to manipulate the public and some of it will be successful um and if not the selection for sure the next one okay I've got two more questions on AI if you've got the time and then just a little bit on China and Tesla if that's okay um the first thing is um we talk a lot in\n\nterms of AI about the next five to ten years and what the impact is going to be on jobs and some of these things if you look out on a much longer time frame given the speed and scale of the change and you look to your grandkids and great grandkids can you just give us a sense of what what it's going to be like to be human how much is this going to change the fundamental nature of how we operate as as a race at this point I think it's gonna change a lot um especially if you go further out into the future I mean there will be everything will be automatic I mean they'll they'll be household robots that you can fully talk to as though there are people um that can help you around the house or be a companion or whatever the case may be uh there will be humanoid\n\nrobots throughout you know factories um and um ours will also be all automatic and anything that that we're intelligence can be applied um even modest intelligence will be automated say like so if you say like 10 20 years from now and we will we be connected to that technology through a neuralink type Divine I mean is that is that where this in your view obviously is that why this heads well A high bandwidth interface from cortex to the so you're sort of computing or AI tertiary layer which already exists uh you know it's just that we don't have a high bandwidth connection um we've got a um limbic system which is a sort of foundational element that's sort of our instincts and desires and whatnot uh they're not cortex on top of that which is a thinking\n\npart of our brain and about a tertiary digital layer which is currently in the form of our phones and computers and laptops and whatnot and all the applications and the the constraint on better a better merging or the construct you know the constraint on on on um having human interests and machine interests be aligned is the bandwidth especially the output so if you select at what speed can you output to a computer it's using Voice or your fingers which will move very slowly so you're talking about maybe 10 bits per second or some some fairly small data rate um so with with the neural link you can increase that by you know increase that by a million probably um so everything just speeds up it's up yeah okay um I mean this is obviously in a relatively\n\nbenign scenario because there's a question of not just uh let's say it's a Brian scenario um how do we even appreciate or understand what the computer is doing right um how do we how do we go how do we go along for the ride um and if we have a better if you have a brain machine interface that's I don't know a million times faster than or more like we'll go along for the ride a lot better that then if we're interfacing with a phone using two slow-moving meat sticks um if you put it like that um and in terms of you have a lot of kids many in this room have kids you know what do they need to what skills do they need to have what are the three skills that you think are most important for them that you're trying to give them to be prepared and well positioned\n\nfor this new world well I think it's it's important to have a broad range of of understanding in many different subjects so I think general knowledge is important um so you at least have some clue of what you don't know in different areas and then go deep in areas where your child is has a strong interest and ability so finding that that overlap of where is my child what interested in this and has some ability to be successful then uh you know Finding if you can find that Venn diagram overlap then obviously encouraging that is a good thing um and we are obviously headed to a high-tech world so some basic understanding of computers and software and artificial intelligence is probably a good idea okay but the actual broad thrust of um I mean jobs will change\n\nbut it'll be more AI enabling and making it better and easier rather than wholesale complete change of the skills you need Which principle what time frame we're talking about here so if you say like over 20 30 year time frame I think things will be transformed beyond belief what you probably think you probably won't recognize Society in 30 years um like I do think we're fairly close you asked me about artificial general intelligence I think we're perhaps only three years maybe six years away from it this this decade um so the impact arguably we are on the Event Horizon of the black hole that is social super intelligence okay so I'm going to ask one final question I'm going to see if you've got two minutes to take a couple of questions from the floor and\n\nit's it comes back to China which you talked about a little bit you have a very big business in China in Tesla um and obviously you know you're on that geopolitical fault line that's getting um potentially interesting it to what extent is this affecting your decision making around sort of how you put assets and and stuff on the ground and how concerned are you about that as a business person and a lot of people in this room have business in China about that getting very very difficult for us well there is fundamentally um an issue that's coming to a head with Taiwan um and it's unclear when exactly Bush will come to show but it seems that there's a good chance push will come to shove it's trending in that direction um I'd rather think what what that would\n\nhappen the results would be for the global economy would be absolutely catastrophic um but um you know China has been very clear about its goal on China and uh sort of um including Taiwan um as part of China so one does not need to read between the lines one can simply read the lines they were bracelet and they're not getting and is the biggest concern despite you know the the the the prospect of conflict itself um obviously a lot of the world's high-end chips come out of Taiwan I mean how catastrophic would that be if that was cut off well there's even more that comes out of China so the transit is a lot so much of of the world's heavy lifting on manufacturing especially if the manufacturing is you know simply hard work and say not not particularly glamorous\n\num charges does an immense amount of hard work that people most people have no idea how much hard work they do so um you kind of from Taiwan was much less less of a concern than being covered from time from China now China would reciprocally suffer of course um because I would say that the economy of the economies of China and Taiwan are they're like conjoined twins with the what the Western economy with the rest of the world so China China the West the rest of the world being Conjuring twins from an economic standpoint will mean that the separation is going to be dire indeed okay that happens I hope it does not happen so um and there's no easy solution here but if there's any if there's any path to diplomatic solution we should really take that seriously\n\ngreat do you have time to take a few questions from the floor Elon sure does anybody have a question they'd like to pose we'll go here and then here Mike behind you thanks Elon thanks for joining us um I'm the founder of a real estate business in Newcastle in the northeast of England um we export manufacture and Export more cars from the Northeast than the whole of Italy uh would you let me build you a Tesla Factory in the northeast of England thanks for the offer so probably consider uh England uh for a future location of a geiger Factory thank you I'll get you so you will you will consider it are you actively considering it uh we we we we're not currently uh looking at new locations but we will pull towards the end of this year I'll send you some plans\n\nokay um uh David here please thank you for your time uh Fusion lots of scientists say it could change the world Planet it's the sun all live on this planet and on Mars depends on Fusion the sun itself can I ask you why a man of your brilliant brain resources and talent it's not actually focusing on Fusion which I think could be a game changer for society and rather than on Twitter where there are many media decent companies that can do it and I would say it almost in a trivial way well I'm I think we already have a giant Fusion reactor in the sky that called the Sun that shows up every day so um which always said like if you want to know what's standing in front of a future Fusion reactor feels like just go out go and stand in front of the sun you know\n\njust walk outside that's what that's what a giant Fusion reactor feels like because that's what the sun is um it converts about four and a half million towns four and a half million tons of Mass to energy every second and requires no maintenance it's amazing um you don't have to you don't have to refuel it you don't have to maintain it just there so my recommendation for Fusion is solar power and batteries and we can easily power all of Earth with uh just with photovoltaics and batteries not I mean not easily but there's just a very clear path to do so um and and uh no Miracles are quiet just work interesting I've also an advocate of wind and of of nuclear fission uh geothermal hydro and whatnot uh we'll take a couple more one here and then the lady at\n\nthe back thank you as you're considering exposure to China and particularly um in the EV space and with the battery supply chain what's your process for evaluating political risk in the near and Midterm I guess I just talked to my team you know read the news uh I don't know assess assess the opinion on Twitter I suppose um there's a very deep analysis you can get on Twitter from people that are World experts on a particular subject so um I don't know I think we just we try to prepare for the worst hope for the best um and um you know make sure we have factories and uh geographically Diversified regions of the world where the supply chain is as localized as possible but this is important uh also for forced Azure situations so if there are earthquakes wildfires\n\nriots revolutions uh ice storms uh heat waves uh you name it uh I think I've seen it all at this point so you want to have you you want to have a supply chain that does not inherit Force Major from all of Earth um because something that's going to happen somewhere it's Big Planet so so that's why I think it's important to have um localized Supply chains with factories in in many geographies uh last question from the lady at the back thank you yeah you famously tweeted that you thought the population collapse was a much bigger risk to humanity than climate change what do you think States families even companies can do to ensure that more of us want to have more children well yeah I mean I think it's it's very telling if you look at the birth rates which\n\nare just you know publicly available um you can look at uh say the birth rate last year for every country um it's available online um and you can look at the trend in both rates and it's just very clear that the trend has been strongly downward um and that we've recently hit all-time lows so um you think if you know during covert you know what else you got to do you might as well have a kid but um it didn't happen actually we had a big drop in birth rate during during covert an increase in divorces too since make a lot of time with their significant other um so I think generally um so it's simply changing people's mind about the goodness of having kids it's like very important to have kids in order to to continue civilization um and I think sometimes\n\nit's viewed as uh you know kids are viewed as an imposition on the world I don't think that's the case at all or that people sometimes think there are too many people in the world that's that's certainly not the case you can you can fit all of the humans on Earth on one floor in the city of New York you know it would be uncomfortable but but just to give you a sense of the cross-sectional area of earth that is human is very tiny it just seems big if you're in a big city um but for the vast majority of the earth if if you're given a task of from front plane of dropping a bowling ball and and and you have to hit someone you'd you'd Miss I almost never hit anyone um so uh what is that you very rarely go over a person um in an aircraft you fly from LA to\n\nNew York the vast areas of land with no one at all so anyway the I think we want to just generally have it be socially encouraged to have kids I think certainly companies need to support uh employees that have kids um I think in terms of government incentives uh there should be uh some I think tax breaks for having kids you know or make it just financially not burdensome to have children um and it's always worth bearing in mind like autonomy aside um if someone doesn't have kids what you're actually asking is that uh someone else's kids take care of you when you're old and that that doesn't seem like quite right you know um because because that's that's the world before they'll be forced to do absent automation is is that someone else the kids will have\n\nto take care of you when you're old and um you know so I think anyway one way or another we need to solve this birth rate issue or civilization will go a little to nothing isn't that where AI comes in it'll do all the jobs for us so we can we can handle a uh potentially lower population or what you're talking about I think there will be robot nannies that are very confident so that will help"},"languages":["en"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PDy7s1SDDn4"},{"id":"nasem-space-studies-board-2021-11-17","type":"interview","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vLC5W53Fsyg","title":"NASEM Space Studies Board","titles":{"en":"NASEM Space Studies Board","de":"NASEM Space Studies Board","fr":"NASEM Space Studies Board"},"date":"2021-11-17","summary":"Musk discusses SpaceX Starship progress, orbital launch plans and Mars exploration in a Q&A with the National Academies Space Studies Board.","text":"Okay. Well, welcome to our last of open session of this meeting. Uh subject is SpaceX Starship. And we are very pleased to welcome Elon Musk who leads SpaceX, Tesla, Neuralink, and The Boring Company. As the founder and chief engineer at SpaceX, Elon oversees the development of rockets and spacecraft for missions to Earth orbit. In 2008, SpaceX Falcon 1 was the first privately developed liquid fuel rocket to reach orbit.\n\nAnd in 2017, SpaceX reflew both a Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon spacecraft for the first time. They are also currently developing the Starlink mega constellation of communication satellites and the Starship heavy lift launch system. And we welcome you, and you can unmute yourself and I'll mute me. Right. Um thanks for having me. Um I think there there may be an introductory video potentially that we can play. Okay. Say that emphasis.\n\nIt does have sound, but maybe you'll Andrea, can you check the sound? Mhm. car Mhm. car rocket but rocket on a big car Yeah. Let me try that again. I was muted. Okay. The the sound isn't essential but Hi. All right. Uh great. So, uh that was a just an introductory video regarding the Starship program. Uh that was all real. No no CGI there.\n\nUm so, uh what we're aiming to develop with uh Starship is a generalized uh means of transporting uh large amounts of mass uh or people, but it just in general large amounts of mass uh anywhere in the solar system. Um the idea behind uh the the behind this is to have a the first uh fully and rapidly reusable rocket, um which is but that that's the really the holy grail of rocketry.\n\nUm if you can uh have a fully rapidly reusable rocket or orbital rocket, uh then the cost uh of transport uh you know, of of a ton to orbit drops by about two orders of magnitude, uh maybe better.\n\nSo, um you know, just as a word for uh really any mode of transport, um if you uh say had uh aircraft or cars that uh were not reusable, you would see very little use of aircraft and and cars because you'd have to buy a new aircraft every time you went somewhere. Um and if you traveled somewhere in a car that was single use, you'd have to obviously tow a small car behind you just for the return journey.\n\nUm so, uh you know, so I think this is quite profound. Um if we are successful and and at least from a design standpoint, um it appears to be uh you know, all of the calculations close for having a fully fully reusable 100 ton to lower the orbit capability. Um The the vehicle is very big.\n\nUm so one of the things that helps with the reusability is scale because for example, the um electronics that control the the brain of the vehicle, if you will, uh does not actually get uh it any heavier uh if it is a big vehicle or a small vehicle. So things like uh avionics and control and inertial measurement sensors and whatnot um become round out to basically um almost no percentage of the mass if for a big vehicle.\n\nUm Whereas for a small vehicle, obviously that would be much more of an issue. So scale scale certainly helps. Um and then the uh we're using the most advanced uh uh engine cycle, which from a physics standpoint is the the the best. You you can extract the most amount of momentum for a given amount of fuel or propellant, uh which is a a full flow stage a a full flow uh gas gas staged combustion uh engine. Uh that's the the Raptor engine.\n\nUh there are currently 29 of those on the base of the booster. We'll be expanding that to 33. Um and uh at at 33 engines and with the Raptor 2, we'll be doing about um 76 7700 metric ton force of thrust on lift off. Uh so it's about uh two 2. 2 2. 3 times the thrust of a Saturn V. Um so it's it's really a very big vehicle. It's the biggest rocket ever um ever designed. And and and and we're we're close to our initial launch.\n\nUm our our initial orbital launch. We've done several suborbital flights um and have been able to to land the vehicle successfully. Um the first orbital flight uh we're hoping to do in in January. Um so we've completed the the first orbital booster uh and first orbital ship um and will be complete with the uh launch pad and launch tower uh later this month and then we'll do a uh a bunch of tests in in December and hopefully launch in in January.\n\nUm there's a lot of risk associated with this first launch, so I would not say that uh it is likely to be success uh successful, but I think we'll we'll make a lot of progress. Um and then we've also built a a factory for making a lot of these vehicles. So this is not a case of just just one or two. Um we're aiming to make um a great many.\n\nUm ultimately I think if in order for life to become multi-planetary, uh we'll need uh maybe a thousand ships or something like that. Um the the the overarching goal of SpaceX has been to uh advance space technology such that uh humanity can become a multi-planet species and ultimately a space-bearing civilization and to make true the things that we read about in science fiction and have them not always be fiction.\n\nUm I think this is actually quite important. Um uh it was in long term it's essential for preserving the light of consciousness. Um Eventually something will happen to Earth. Uh hopefully not soon. Um but uh either natural or man-made that would cause the end of civilization. Um so the the probable lifespan of civilization is much greater if we are a multi-planet species um and and uh ultimately even go beyond our solar system.\n\nUm, but the first step is is um being a we being multi-planet, Mars being the only realistic option for that. Um, so I think from from um the standpoint of Yeah, like I said, from the standpoint of preserving the light of consciousness and um which I think we should quite as fragile, um I think it's extremely important that we try to become a multi-planet species um as quickly as possible.\n\nUm, I'll say along the way we will learn a a great deal about the nature of the universe. Um, and there will it will be possible to have many more uh space-based uh experiments if you have a very large vehicle uh capable of transporting things to uh orbit the moon or anywhere. Um, that that at um, you know, 100 times less than it currently costs.\n\nUm, so it's it it offers sort of profound possibilities and I think this uh you know, this this there's a fundamental juncture in in the uh history of really any civilization on a single planet, which is do you get to the second planet or do you not? And I propose we do. Um, and I think we should do it as soon as possible. Um, the window of this up up shoot is open now for the first time in the 4. 5 billion-year history of Earth.\n\nIt may it may be open for a long time or it may be open for a short time, and I think we should you know, be hasty so that just in case it's only open for a short time. Um, yeah, so like I said, I think this is It's important for the long-term preservation of the light of consciousness. Um and of course we'll naturally we'll learn a lot of science and develop a lot of technology along the way. So that that's what Starship's all about.\n\nUm and um we have an interesting project that we're working with a Saul uh Perlmutter at Berkeley on, uh which is to have a really big uh telescope. This is taking a a ground-based uh lens that a lens lens that was intended for a ground-based telescope and um creating a space-based telescope with it. Um so that that could be I think pretty interesting and we you know we'd love to do other things as well.\n\nSo um and and I think people may know that NASA has selected uh Starship for the um transport of astronauts to the lunar surface. Uh so uh we look forward to doing that for NASA. And um and then I think you know it it it it really could be it it has the ability because of the the mass transport capabilities of of transporting enough mass and people to the moon to actually have a permanently occupied I think base on the moon.\n\nUh much as we have like a permanently occupied base at Antarctica, we could have a sort of a a moon research station which I think would be um amazing. So yeah I think anyway this is a a very profound vehicle um and um nothing really like it has uh is is being developed or and I don't think anything quite like it has been even proposed. Uh but it's um it has the potential to affect human destiny in a very profound way.\n\nSo I'm happy to answer any any questions. I'm unsure quite what you'd like to know, so uh maybe real-time questions are the best way to um address what people may be thinking. Terrific. Thank you so much, uh Elon. From our board members, please raise your hands for questions. And our first question will come from uh Louis Demaro. Uh thank you. Maybe I'm on mute. Yeah, still muted. Hi. There you go.\n\nJust saying uh thank you for that and some rather big vision. Uh I I I wonder, you know, in order to achieve this goal that that you painted, what type of uh international collaboration do you see to get this done and you know, what are what are the possibilities of uh actually pulling that off? Well, we're not assuming uh any any inter- international collaboration. Uh we're building this thing right now.\n\nUm and we're uh we're really um building it from internal funds. There's NASA's providing some support uh because uh they'll they tend to use Starship for uh transporting astronauts to the to the surface of the moon, but this has really been an internally funded uh effort. Um I don't know at least 90% internally funded thus far.\n\nUm and we um expect to reach orbit uh you know, probably I don't know if we'll get there on the first attempt, but uh I'm confident we'll get there next year and and we intend to have a high flight rate next year. Um so uh it it it's difficult for us to actually have international uh involvement because of ITAR. So, I I'm not sure I I'm and uh I I really see anyone outside the US who is um building some part of what we need. Um so yeah.\n\nUm it we're we're just doing it. It's great. Wonderful answer. Uh next question will come from Adam Burrows. A fascinating vision. I don't know where to begin, but I will ask a just a technical question. Uh it was surprising to many that I believe you chose a stainless steel um for the vehicle. I could be wrong, but what what what were the technical and engineering reasons for that? And don't stint on the details. Uh sure.\n\nThat that's a I think a very interesting question um cuz for a lot of people intuitively they would think of steel as being heavy. Um uh and rockets need to be light. So well that seems pretty a pretty odd choice picking what a heavy sounding thing for rockets, especially orbital rockets that need to be very light.\n\nUm I mean the the nature of Earth's gravity being quite strong and a dense atmosphere means that you really have to have an incredibly good propellant mass percentage. Uh and you have to have very efficient engines to get anything to orbit at all. Um so so then so then then why steel? So we we started off with um uh with an advanced composite.\n\nSo intuitively if you ask people who who understand materials, they will say we want to make something incredibly light. Um they will they'll say probably you would want to use state-of-the-art carbon fiber composite. Um that's usually what they'll say. Um and that's what we started out with which was um really a a very advanced carbon fiber. Um And uh actually it was only made in very small quantities. Uh it cost um $130 per kilogram.\n\nSo it was a very expensive material. Um and um and there were some challenges if want to make the primary structure out of uh carbon fiber, which is that uh you've got to make a contain uh cryogenic uh fluid and um and you need a uh gas in in in sort of what's called ullage gas, pressurization gas, uh to pressurize the propellants in in the main tanks and and feed the engine turbo pumps with a with a given inlet pressure.\n\nSo so for if you have if you have a a carbon fiber tank, because it tends to be porous um and also um potentially uh flammable when subject to uh warm gaseous uh ox- pure oxygen, because our our vehicle is autogenously pressurized, so the oxygen tank is pressurized with gaseous oxygen and the fuel tank is pressurized with gaseous methane.\n\nUm so um the the resin and and the carbon in in the uh carbon fiber is potentially flammable um with with with with hot pure uh oxygen gas. So you'd have to have some kind of liner.\n\nUm So when you look at the the the full uh mass and complexity of carbon fiber system, you you start having um uh things that reduce the mass efficiency of of carbon fiber, such as having an inert liner um and being worried about uh uh gas permeating through the the carbon fiber and that kind of thing. So um then uh but but it still would be an it's still an okay choice.\n\nUm however, um we were having a lot of trouble making progress with uh the um carbon fiber um cuz this is a 9-m diameter rocket um and so you're you're wrapping carbon fiber um with typically in this case uh 60 or 220 plies, depending upon where you are on in in the tank.\n\nUm and you have to get all of those wrappings uh accurate and not um have any bubbles or separator sheets or all the things that typically happen um or or you've got to scrap the whole thing. And then you've got to to get my good good mass properties put it in an autoclave and put it under you know a lot of pressure. And then then you need a gigantic autoclave because it's a 9-m diameter with a 70-m long booster stage.\n\nSo this is autoclave from hell. Um and we we we were just weren't making rapid progress with this material. So then I So then the next step the next thing the other two materials worth considering are a uh high strength formula aluminum aluminum um or potentially steel. So for Falcon 9 we use aluminum lithium which is the highest strength to weight aluminum alloy that you can use very difficult to weld.\n\nUh but that's what we use for the primary structure of Falcon 9. Then but the problem is it's it's it's very difficult to weld. You need to do friction stir welding and also the the material cost is quite high. So um you know that's that's sort of material cost arguably on the sort of $40 a kilogram level. Um and uh like very difficult to weld. But then and then there's there's steel.\n\nNow the interesting thing about uh 300 series stainless steel is that its properties at cryogenic temperatures uh strength properties increase dramatically. So if you were to look at the material properties at room temperature you'd be like it's not that great. But now go now go uh look at the temperature properties at uh liquid oxygen temperature. Oh actually much stronger. Uh also no no meaningful increase in brittleness.\n\nSo you have it still has high toughness at cryogenic temperatures. It is much stronger depending on how how cold you go up to twice as strong. Uh and then the um yeah so and then then you you can also cold work it so you get if you if you go sort of full hard cold work and and and do the final bit of cold work at cryogenic temperatures. You get outstanding strength properties, which are roughly equal to an advanced carbon fiber.\n\nUm and and this is in our case for for um for Starship, the it it both the fuel and the oxygen are cryogenic. So, this helps helps a lot. Whereas for Falcon 9, the the it use cryogenic oxygen, but kind of room temperature kerosene fuel. Um So, anyway, so where both quite a long explanation, hopefully interesting.\n\nUm Uh if if both fuel fuel and oxygen are fuel and oxygen are cryogenic, now you get the strength properties in in the primary structure of of both tanks. Um And so, both are very strong, very tough, and resilient. Also, very easy to weld stainless steel. Um And we started off with stainless steel 301. Um That that did have a some some um fracture toughness issues at cryogenic temperatures.\n\nUm we we switched to 304, and now we have our we developed our own alloy, which is 30X, which is the better than either 301 or 304. Um So, um and and and anyway, so so now now now stainless steel only costs about $4 a kg. So, we're from $130 a kg uh advanced carbon fiber to $4 a kg stainless steel, uh from 120 plies to one ply, it's just coiled from the mill, um and uh basically the same strength.\n\nUm And and and very high toughness and and resilience. I don't even need paint it, which is great. Um So, paint is, you know, not weight paint can't paint on a big vehicle weighs many tons and it's a bit quite difficult to paint big things. So, So, that and but now there's another advantage. So, um obviously you can tell I'm a huge fan of stainless steel. I Stainless steel I actually got a room or something.\n\nUm Um so, the So, for in in making the vehicle reusable, um so, now the there is coming in very hot. Um so, the the ship is coming in at hypersonic velocities coming, you know, at sort of right kind of like a Mach 25 entry velocity. So, uh this is this would just obviously just melt it.\n\nUm and um and and and it but if you've got steel, your melting point is much much better higher than aluminum um and you can have it handle much better temperatures than than carbon fiber cuz the the resin tends to have problems. Like you can basically go, you know, you know, anything much above, say, 200 Celsius or before carbon fiber or aluminum is is you start falling off a cliff from a strength standpoint.\n\nUm But but for steel, you go 800 and and it's it's fine. Even 1,000 can be fine. So, for for the ship, this means that the heat shield mass is significantly reduced because the the heat shield um mass is determined by the temperature um on the back of the tile uh that that that then transmits to the hull. So, the hull If the hull is steel, um you can have thin heat shield tiles.\n\nWhereas, if the hull hull is carbon fiber or aluminum, you have to have thick heat shield tiles. Uh and you also need no heat shielding at all on the leeward side uh of the ship. So, it is actually lighter than the most advanced carbon fiber vehicle. Yeah, I'm I'm very surprised at that, but that was very very interesting.\n\nI appreciate your long disposition on this and I'm I I thought that the steel substituting for aluminum on re-entry made some sort of sense. I didn't realize any of the other stuff. Yeah. And and it's the right thing and then it's it's just and and it's it's the the cost is ridiculously low. It's like $4 a kilogram. And even for the special alloy that we're developing, it's not using anything super exotic.\n\nWe might throw a little exotic spicy something in there, but it's a small it's you know, it's going to be like 0. 2%. So it's it's still going to be like maybe $4 a kilogram, maybe 4. 50. And then it's just very easy to to to to weld. Um and um Uh yeah, I love it. It's great. And then if we want to just add something to if you want to you know it's easy to repair.\n\nIt's if you want to you know, add a sort of something to carry some wiring or plumbing or whatever, you just weld it right on. It's super easy. It's great. It's super easy. Thank you. I very much appreciate It's a high-tech low-tech. Um wonderful. Our next question will come from Howard Singer, Elon. Uh hello. I started my science career watching Captain Video and reading Isaac Asimov and you've made all that fiction real, so thank you very much.\n\nUh my question is uh what are you doing for radiation protection for the crews? And if you have you explored the need for forecasts of the space weather conditions or the space weather environment? Sure. Um Well, um I I I think there is um you know, there's always this always always some risk uh going into deep space. Um and and and I I um we definitely wouldn't want to be traveling when there's like intense solar storms or anything like that.\n\nUm You know, for for going to the moon, like obviously, you know, we're the United States has done that before. Um and it would be great to go back and it would be great to have a permanent base where, you know, um if if the if the costs are good enough where we we we can have like a a significant science contingent actually, you know, put you know, on the base permanently occupied. That would be epic.\n\nUm so um but once you're on the moon, of course, you you're protected by the the moon below you and then you can you can put a a lot of lunar regolith on top of whatever um you know, the the research station roof uh would be. Um so, once you're there, easy to protect. On the way, we'll have to check the weather report.\n\nAnd but for Mars, it's going to be trickier, you know, I um I you know, I was going to we don't have all the answers here, but um and there may be some uh clever ways to reduce the uh radiation effects. Um but I don't think they're insurmountable. All righty, thanks. Uh our next question comes from Margie Kivelson. Uh so, I'm an enthusiast for the outer planets. Um I SpaceX is giving the Europa Clipper a lift out to Right. uh Jupiter.\n\nI wondered if you have comments on other uh missions that you would like to uh enhance by big big lifts. Sure. Actually, we're we're really uh excited and and honored to uh be flying the the Clipper mission. Um and um you know, I mean, I think this there could be some incredibly exciting things to discover, hopefully are, um, under Europa. Um, it's, uh, seems like probably the best place for some strange life.\n\nUh, so hopefully we find some really cool things. Um, so yeah, can't wait to launch the Clipper and, um, that that'll be on a Falcon Heavy, um, currently. Uh, with with the Starship, we could like the the great thing about Starship is it it really should enable us to send very big things and also and also to send them, uh, fast. And and like need much less in the way of, um, uh, sort of planetary gravity assists and that kind of thing.\n\nUm, so, um, especially if we could build a propellant, uh, generation, um, on the moon, uh, then then we could really, uh, send something very to very with with very high delta V. Um, and if we have a a base on Mars with a high delta V, now now you could really you could basically planet hop from Mars to maybe Ceres, uh, to maybe one of the moons of Jupiter, and ultimately all the way to, uh, the outer, uh, solar system.\n\nUm, basically any place we can put the the gas station, uh, that that gives us a another whole leap forward. Um, so, uh, ultimately Starship is designed to be, uh, a generalized transport mechanism for the greater solar system.\n\nUm, and, um, and so it's it's really whatever you can imagine being, um, you know, if you if you could if you could get, you know, a 100 ton object to the surface of Europa, there's a lot more you can do than with a smaller object. Um, so, um, yeah, I think it's it's very exciting.\n\nUm, obviously we still have a lot to prove, but architecturally it is a capable of um transporting kind of almost any arbitrary mass to to any solid surface in this solar system. Wow, terrific. Thanks. And Margie is actually part leading the team building the magnetometer that you will be taking to Europa on the Clipper. Uh our next question comes from Steve Maxwell. Hi Elon. Um thanks so much for your presentation.\n\nUm I was wondering um what were your what are your kind of plans for humans to Mars uh in terms of timescales and uh and you know, are you going to send folks there for kind of a shorter stay or you think a longer stay and bring them back at least initially? I'm not sure. I think what So the first thing we'd we'd want to do is is confirm that we can uh land the ship safely on Mars.\n\nAnd so that might be you would want to probably land two or three I think before sending people. And just confirm that that uh uh we we we can land safely. Um so you know, and actually on those missions we could we could obviously put um a lot of scientific instrumentation um that uh I would recommend putting the lower cost uh scientific mission stuff on the first mission.\n\nUm but um uh we'll we'll certainly have propulsive landing very reliable on Earth as we've been able to achieve with the Falcon 9 booster. Um it it's now you know, knock on wood, so it's it's it's a it's not like it's quite normal for the rocket to land uh safely. And we'll we'll do the same with Starship. Um and and then um I'm not sure quite what would happen.\n\nI mean, we might be working with NASA or um maybe NASA and and other uh you know, other countries to to send people to Mars. Um But I I I view this very much as um you know, the you know, what set of actions can we take that maximize the probability that the future is good for civilization. You know, like what are sort of like civilizational risks that we can potentially mitigate?\n\nUm and um I just think being a multi-planet species is is a tremendous uh risk mitigation for uh human civilization. Um and um as we know, eventually Earth will become If you wait long enough, Earth will become uninhabitable. So, um in the long run, we're obviously all dead.\n\nBut but I think the um you know, the the technology that we we develop uh in traveling from um Earth to Mars, I think it'll be just a very powerful forcing function for the improvement of space transport. You know, like the the initial boats that crossed the Atlantic and crossed the Pacific back in the sailing days were were really terrible. Um you know, um so you know, there there were often just planes sank.\n\nAnd if if as once there was a reason to do uh large amounts of ocean trade, the the the the sailing ships the wooden sailing ships got dramatically better. Um And and so, but you you kind of have to have that forcing function. Um so, that That's what I think will happen and and and we'll we'll get much better at at space transport.\n\nAnd I think this will also be very important if um you know, if there's like a potential uh Earth collision event from from some comet or something like that. Um you know, the the the asteroids we can predict fairly well, obviously, but um there's this massive cloud of of um of comets out there that uh you know, we we we don't know the situation. Um so, and they come in pretty fast.\n\nSo, there's always some risk of a comet like taking out a continent. You know, there's this place like they talk a lot about extinction events where that we, you know, almost all life was destroyed on Earth, but but they don't talk that much about the ones where well, it was just a continent.\n\nThere's there's plenty of sort of continent level extinction events that have occurred in the fossil record and they're like really so common as to really not really generate a lot of much attention. And and but if we've got large rockets that could potentially do something about that, then then that could be, you know, that could at one day save billions of people.\n\nBut we've we've got to have big rockets and much more advanced space technology in order to protect against the a comet coming in from, yeah, far away. Okay, thank you so much. Perfect. Thanks, Elon. Our next question will come from Arlene Spence. Elon, thank you for sharing your time and your vision with us.\n\nI had a question about looking back the history of exploration, human exploration as we ventured from one place to another, scientific discovery has always been an element of that and you've shared a little bit about some opportunities here, but I I was hoping you could share a little bit more.\n\nWhen you think about the aspects of scientific discovery that will accompany becoming a multi-planet species, what are the kinds of things that you're thinking about in terms of what we would discover along the way? Well, I think being able to really, you know, have heavy duty science research on the moon and on Mars where you could really just go anywhere you want, Um to core samples anywhere you want.\n\nUh I think we'd learn a tremendous amount um uh as compared to having to send uh you know, fairly small vehicles with with limited scientific instrumentation um which is what we currently do for for Mars and and the moon. So, uh just I would have just having people there who can dynamically decide what they're going to do um and and really be able to analyze the whole history of the planet, I think we're learn a tremendous amount.\n\nUm and uh yeah, um and that would obviously extend over time through at least the um the greater solar system. Um So, you know, I mean yeah, um I mean, I studied physics because I was just trying to find out what's what what's the universe all about? How does it work? Where did it come from? Why are we here? Um and um I actually kind of got sort of depressed at one point cuz I was like, man, this doesn't seem to be any meaning to life.\n\nI it just seems to be like, you know, and then I made the mistake of like reading the German philosophers as a teenager and that that made it was quite depressing. Um But then but then I then I read uh Douglas Adams's Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which is really a book in philosophy with the sky's the limit.\n\nAnd he makes the point that you know, uh the question is harder than the answer and um and and really basically the answer is the universe and and uh we we we kind of need to figure out like what questions to ask about the answer that is the universe. Um and that's the question that's the hard part and then the answer is easier by comparison. Um So, so I'm like, I don't know, like like why are we here? How did we get here? Is this is this real?\n\nIs this is this simulation or something? At least if we go to these other planets, we'll make the simulators work harder and have to buy more computers to run the simulation or something.\n\nUm you know, um but uh yeah, I mean, I think it's and and and if we are able to at least be like um a multi-planet species within the solar our our solar system, then um then then hopefully we can develop the technology to send probes uh to um other star systems and eventually um maybe send send people, although that's tough, but we can certainly send ro- robots to um robot probes to all of all of the nearby star systems and um yeah, try to figure out what what what's what's the meaning of life and what's going on.\n\nAnd are there any aliens out there? Where where are you guys? They searched up. Thank you, Elon. Sorry, go Do you have a Do you have time for a a question or two more? Uh yeah, as much time as you'd like. Oh, wonderful. All right. Um I do have one question from a from a board chair, um and it's this. One aspect of SpaceX that has distinguished it from the previous organizations has been its willingness to embrace failure as a development tool.\n\nWhen do you think you will be able to start selling Starship launches at prices significantly less expensive than Falcon 9, say 5 to 10 times less? Sure. Um actually, I think it's not that it's not that far away. I think probably um 2 years from now. Uh so um our rate of progress on Starship is very rapid. Um and um like you said, we're we're actually getting ready to do our first local orbital launch attempt within the next uh few months.\n\nWe're expecting uh our license approval from the FAA uh around the end of this year, and then so that probably means uh a launch attempt in January or perhaps February. Um and then um we're we're actually building the the factory to make lots of Starships and make lots of engines in parallel.\n\nSo, there will be many many vehicles, um, the the the engine build rate is currently the biggest constraint on, um, how many vehicles we can make, um, because there are currently 29, uh, engines on the booster and, uh, there will be 33 even at a higher thrust level. Um, so, um, that means Yeah, 33 engines per booster and these are big engines. These are, um, you know, our uh uh the Raptor 2 is a roughly uh, 240 ton thrust engine.\n\nUm, so, we're talking like, you know, 5 or 600 thousand pound thrust engines. The Yeah, so, really quite quite intense. Um, I I in fact I'd say that the building the production system for Starship is much harder than the design of the Starship itself. Um, but we we have that in in progress and we intend to do, um, hopefully hopefully a dozen launches next year. Um, maybe maybe more.\n\nUm, and and to if we're successful with it being a fully reusable, it means that we we build up the fleet just as we are with the Falcon 9 and the Falcon 9 booster which is reused. Um, we we lose the upper stage every time, but we almost always recover the booster.\n\nSo, um, so, basically we intend to complete like the test flight program next year, which means that it's probably ready for, um, for for valuable payloads that that are not kind of in the in the test not for testing basically, but actual real payloads, um, in 2023. So, quite soon. Great. Thank you so much. All right. Uh next next question from Ned Wright. Ned, I think you're still muted. Will we all be glad when we don't say that all the time?\n\nYeah, so it's um You have to preserve cryogenic propellant for 6 to 8 months to actually be able to land on Mars. And so I wonder what your plan is for that. Um yeah, so um the the the landing propellant for Mars would be in separate header tanks. Uh so these would be um spherical header tanks.\n\nUh for for Mars, they would probably be uh I might might be contained inside the main tanks uh or they would be up in the cargo section um but well insulated. So um it would it would actually have to um uh have extremely well insulated um header tanks for landing uh that are not the main tanks. So that that's what we'd have for for Mars. Great. Thanks. Uh Riza Wexler is the next question.\n\nYeah, so um changing topic to something that's happening before we have the possibility to uh be a multi-planet species. Uh I I also study the universe and I'm trying to understand how it works and how it got here. And as you know, the satellite constellations from Starlink and other sources are already having a huge impact on astronomical observations.\n\nAnd And this is really going to significantly limit the science potential of the next generation of observatories if we don't have a course shift. So what role do you expect start uh SpaceX to play in working with astronomers and regulatory agencies to mitigate this?\n\nWell, we SpaceX already works with um uh regulatory agencies and with the the um so with with the astronomers um uh and um generally what we see is the the the telescope um that is perhaps most sensitive to this is Vera Rubin. Um and uh we work directly with the the Vera Rubin team to make sure that uh their observations will not be affected by Starlink satellites.\n\nUm and my understanding is at this point they are comfortable that it will not be uh an interference for Vera Rubin. Um they they have um uh there's a slight risk um of capacitive coupling between uh some of the uh basically um sensors there. Uh but this which can create ambiguity, but we we we're confident that uh we can work around that. Great. Thanks. Our next question comes from John Carris. Hey Elon, thanks uh for all your time today.\n\nAppreciate it. Kind of going back to prior question about um long-term storage of cryogenics for whatever mission, but um um I realize or I believe that your architecture for Starship to go beyond lower Earth orbit to go to the moon has you know, cryo fluid transfers and things like that and Yeah. you long-term cryo fluid you know, cryo fluid storage, low boil-off and Those are not not easy problems. Yeah, yeah, no. And and So, not easy problems.\n\nSo, the question I have for you is is uh you know, what are your plans to to mature that technology but you before you have to rely on it for it to go to the moon like in a year or two? Well, um yeah, um so I mean, there's a lot of ways to address it. Um, by uh having a uh launching one one uh vehicle that is very well insulated, um, but does not return to Earth, effectively a propellant depot.\n\nUm, so if you take a ship a Starship and you take take the the heat shielding off and replace that with uh thermal insulation like you know, multi-layer insulation of um that's just very very good um at um keeping things cold, um, then you could have one ship up there that uh is effectively just turns into a propellant depot. And and then you um send tankers up there to uh dock and transfer propellant.\n\nUm, and uh and so it should be able to be there for a while and then whatever ship you want to go to the moon, you you go up and dock with the the the depot, uh transfer propellant and and off you go. So, that's that's the that's rough plan. We're pretty good at docking at this point. We've docked with the space station couple dozen times and the space station is a very difficult thing to dock with because we don't control both sides of it.\n\nUm, and um so it's it's that that is a very challenging uh docking, whereas docking with our own vehicle is is comparatively easier. Yeah, but both of these technologies have really only been demonstrated on very very small scale. So, you're your scale's a lot larger and I think poses other problems. So, good luck in uh solving those. Yeah, I know I I I don't think we'll just sort of like, you know, it's not exactly a walk in the park.\n\nUm, so like I think this is hard, um, but it is necessary and it's the only way um at least with that that I can think of with current physics to um to actually uh make things work. Um, and it obviously, you know, like um aerial refueling is is a is used quite a lot with with aircraft. Um, and so this is uh you know, taking that concept just doing it in orbit. Um, and um, so it like we're not we know that success is one of the possible outcomes.\n\nUm, we're not breaking any physics. Um, you know, physics is the law and everything else is a recommendation. Um, so but it's it's at least in the set of possible success is success success is at least in the set of possible outcomes. Yeah. Great. Thanks very much. Uh, next question will come from Amanda Hendrix. Hi there. Um, so I'm a co-chair of the Committee on Planetary Protection.\n\nAnd uh, our committee is concerned with preserving the validity of future uh, astrobiological experiments on Mars and other places in the solar system. Yeah. Searches for life extinct or extant. And I wonder if you can comment on SpaceX's planetary protection plans for Mars. Sure. Um, well, I mean first of all, it's not like we're launching to Mars really soon. I mean there's Mars is a ways off.\n\nUm, and the you know, but there there is um, you know, fundamentally a choice to to be made which is um, are we going to try to be a multi-planet species? Um, uh, which would would mean that at least in one spot on Mars that there is human you know, human biology like that we will be you know, uh, we're pretty hard to avoid no no biology if you send humans there. They're biological creatures.\n\nUm, but I I I don't think this is this is going to invalidate uh, research in the on the rest of the planet. I mean Mars is a big planet and so I and there've been uh, you know, rocks that have been knocked off of Earth and landed on Mars and that kind of thing.\n\nSo, uh But but yeah, I I think we'll, you know, there's a you wouldn't want to sort of spread biological debris all over Mars, but I think we will we will have to put at least somewhere if there are people going there. Um at at least in one spot. And and then just make sure we try to contain that and not have it sort of spread around. Um Yeah, and I guess it's same for the moon and and other places. Thanks. Thank you, Elon.\n\nUm we'll just take a question or two more. Next question from Larry Paxton. Hi, thanks for your time. Um I have a question that was engendered by a remark you made in passing that I think is um very interesting. Which is where you said that um there's a window of opportunity for us to get off the planet.\n\nAnd the question that occurred to me was uh you you followed that up with saying that you didn't know how long that window of opportunity would be open. Yeah. And there you mentioned in passing, of course, the traditional things like, you know, exogenous forces like uh cometary impact or near-Earth object.\n\nBut I was wondering, you know, with all these compelling reasons for us to get off the planet, and including the compelling reason to to uh have another refuge for the human race, what do you see as the biggest threats? And in particular, we have a wide range of expertise here. We've been talking about some of the problems that are we think are the most important that are unresolved yet.\n\nI just wonder what you felt were the most important uh issues for us as the human race. Yeah, I mean, in general, I I you know, I've thought about this uh quite a lot. Um which is not to say that I've thought about it correctly, but I thought about it a lot. Um you know, and the you know, the the the the one of the bigger risks uh on Earth would be, you know, if if we that we need to transition to sustainable uh energy.\n\nUh even if uh one discounts the CO2 uh, capacity of the oceans and atmosphere, uh, eventually we'll run out of uh, hydrocarbons to burn and so we we need something that's long-term sustainable.\n\nUm, so that that's that's what sort of um, you know, I kind of split my time between Tesla and SpaceX and so Tesla's um, trying to accelerate the advent of sustainable energy um, and that's you know, to uh, mitigate the the risk on Earth um, and then SpaceX is uh, intended to medi- you know, mitigate like longer-term risks um, that could potentially extinguish consciousness as we know it.\n\nI mean, we got this sort of delicate candle of consciousness sort of flickering in the darkness here. Um, and I don't know if you guys have seen any evidence of aliens but I sure haven't. I get asked that a lot. So, um, I mean, I find the Fermi paradox is just an incredibly interesting question um, and um, I'm not sure who said it but the like there appear to be if if if there appear if there may there's either a lot of aliens or none.\n\nUm, and equally each those ans- answers are equally terrifying. Um, so anyway, so I I think um, but with with respect to uh, near-term risks on Earth um, obviously sustainable energy um, and you know, potential non-linearities in uh, the CO2 in- uh, PPM in the atmosphere are are a concern. Uh, you know, if we start doing things like melt- melting the Siberian tundra and that kind of thing.\n\nUm, um, I I'm probably less alarmist than most uh, on on on climate change. I I put myself in the in the moderate category on on climate change. I just think it's the the amount of inertia associated with the hydrocarbon economy is so gigantic that it it it um, um it will to require a long time to make that transition. And so, it's probably better to start it sooner rather than later.\n\nAnd And that's why I describe fundamental good of Tesla as the degree to which it accelerates the advent of sustainable energy. It will happen, I think, anyway, but faster is better. That then with as for risks on Earth, um I mean, there's always good old nuclear Armageddon, you know? Uh that that's still one of the one of the things. Um That's That's not out of the question.\n\nUh there's still a lot of nuclear missiles pointed at us in in the US and many parts of the world. Um I I don't know what what quite that risk is, but it's not zero. Um Um I think there's there's maybe some counterintuitive risks or that people aren't don't put that much attention on. Um If you look at the birth rate trends, um they are the birth rate trends are very uh negative.\n\nUm and so, um and in many many countries are are seeing population decline um with no end in sight. So, I think there's um Uh I think the the the the very low birth rate, I think, is actually quite a significant risk um but an an an underappreciated one. Um So, uh Yeah. Um And And for for population prediction, I would recommend taking uh things like the number of uh babies born last year and just multiplying that by the probable lifespan.\n\nAnd if if if you do if you do that, you'll I think you'll see numbers that uh are very very bad for future population. Um and with an inverted demographic pyramid, so you've got a lot more older people and then fewer middle-aged people and then eventually just very few youngsters. Um And this will necessarily lead to uh resources uh being applied to taking care of the elderly instead of advancing science or advancing civilization.\n\nUm I'm quite worried about that one um because I see no reversal of the trend um and um you know that that that would you know civilization will die with a bang or a whimper. That would be dying with a whimper.\n\nUm Then there's obviously of course uh you know a pandemic with a with that that has that's that's like COVID but which has a much higher mortality um sort of a long you know high contagion highly contagious long incubation period high mortality uh type of um uh pandemic that's um really a risk um uh AI is I think maybe more of a risk than people realize.\n\nUm Uh ironically the smart people tend to think AI is less of a risk um because they think that they're so smart um but actually we're just humans and we're quite dumb. We did you It's amazing we got this far frankly. Um So if you if you see the advancement of AI it's clear that AI will exceed human intelligence in every way if if these trends continue.\n\nUm And the the list of things that the human mind can do better than AI is less and less every year. So you know hopefully that AI is AI is coupled to human will um but it might not be uh the you know the long-term goal of Neuralink is to achieve sort of better symbiosis with uh AI and with the kind of human mind.\n\nUm in in the short term Neuralink I think it solve a lot of of of brain injuries and diseases and spinal injuries and that kind of thing, but long-term uh like cuz one of the things that I'm I'm getting quite esoteric here, but um the uh we're we're already a cyborg really in the sense that the our phones and computers are an extension of ourselves.\n\nAnd and you could say we we arguably have um you know, sort of the sort of a the primitive kind of limbic system, the cortex, the higher higher thinking, and then we've got the tertiary layer, which is our which is silicon in the form of our computers and phones and everything.\n\nUm the um we have already somewhat merged with computers, but the the the the issue we have is the um the communication rate, the bandwidth uh with the computers is low, especially output. If our output is two thumbs, uh that's, you know, we're we're talking maybe 10 bits per second or something like that. No, it's a or maybe maybe 100 best case. Uh it's a very slow uh output.\n\nAnd as the intelligence of the computer grows, if that communication link remains very tiny, uh I think we will necessarily decouple from computers just because our rate of communication is very slow. And so, if if we can solve the IO bandwidth question and and by, you know, increase it by 1,000 or more, maybe a million, then the you could have human-machine symbiosis that is is much better. Um I I mean, that's at least one approach.\n\nUm Let's see, what else is there? Um I mean, religious extremism, you know, if that that becomes if if that grows over time, uh religious extremism is is a is certainly a threat to um advancement of science. Uh so, depending on how how far that goes, that that that could be an issue. Um, Uh, what do you think? Yeah, it's a good one.\n\nit's I will only add I think that this is a fundamental question because as you said, the Fermi paradox, um, there or should either be a tremendous number of alien civilizations or there is some gate that so many civilizations have failed to get past. And the question is, are we going to fail to get past that gate as well? The great filters. Yeah.\n\nUm, so, I I I I think at least one of the great filters is uh, does a civilization become multi-planetary or not? Um, yes. Yes. If a civilization does not become multi-planetary, then then eventually the sun's going to expand and and, you know, boil the ocean and that's game over.\n\nSo, and and and actually think about it from an egocentric standpoint, if Earth's been around 4 and 1/2 billion years, then it took us 1 and 1/2 billion years to get this far. Um, uh, well, prob- it may be as soon as another 500 million years and the sun might have expanded by enough by that time to boil the oceans potentially. If it's not 500 million years, it's not much beyond that.\n\nUm, but which is basically means that if it took 10% longer for uh, you know, civilization to evolve, it would never have evolved. Right. So, that's an interesting one. Um, Elon, do you have time for one more question? Wonderful. All right. Um, Jill Dahlberg, please. So, let me just say I feel lucky that you are here. So, thank you. And not just here in our panel, um, you're very inspiring. My question is mundane.\n\nYou're going to have these rockets, they're going to go up and they're going to go to two places that are going to need energy. The Earth needs a lot of energy as well. So, what are your plans for making energy? I'm thinking space-based solar power or something like that. Does your company have plans for plethorating energy systems you're going to need?\n\nWell, um a Tesla does produce solar power um and solar is actually there's a quite an amazing amount of of energy that reaches us from the sun. Um but um you know, I mean we really when you think about Earth is almost entirely solar powered. If it were not for the sun, we would be a frozen dark ice ball at 3° Kelvin.\n\nUm so so apart you know, keeping us warm and not to be cold and frozen dark is pretty helpful and then the almost the entire ecosystem is solar powered. Um you know, plants are a solar powered chemical reaction and um you know, apart from chemo-trophs at the bottom of the ocean, it's basically you know, everything's solar powered. Um so really talking about just like a little bit of incremental power from the sun being used to power civilization.\n\nUm the uh you know, as a sort of good rule of thumb is uh because you get about a kilowatt per square meter of solar energy. Um uh so then in a square kilometer there's a million square meters. So now you you've got a gigawatt of solar energy per square kilometer.\n\nUm and so if you've got like uh 25% efficient panels and they're maybe uh 80% uh uh of the area is you know, panel of a you know, then you you've got like basically 200 megawatts per square kilometer of solar power. Um and so then if you say, well, okay, how much then you really won't need a large a very large area to power the entire United States with solar.\n\nUm like a little corner of Utah or for Obviously you you'd prefer it to be distributed, but you can just say like, \"Okay, how much is actually needed to power the US?\" And it's you know, somewhere between a a square that's roughly 150 to 200 km on a side will power the entire entire United States. That So, it's really clearly no problem to power civilization with a um with a with with solar.\n\nAnd then, of course, there's wind and um you know, I'm I'm actually pro-nuclear pro-vision-wise um and there's also hydro and geothermal. So, I I think we will solve Earth's energy needs um and and they are being solved. If you look at the growth of wind power and solar power, it's it's really has a very high growth rate. It needs to be paired with batteries in order to because the the intermittency of wind and solar.\n\nBut the combination of of solar plus battery will can completely solve all of of Earth's energy needs. In fact, for satellites that are in orbit, that's all they use is solar panels and a battery. And and what what is Earth but a large satellite? Sorry, I think you're you're on mute. Do you Do you want to follow up on that? Yeah, I was I was thinking something more grandiose, like a space-based solar power system, but you have a good argument.\n\nYou would just use solar on Earth. Batteries. And battery. I like that. Thank you. It works great. Like because if we we think civilization uses a lot of energy, but it's actually very tiny compared to the amount of solar energy that reaches the Earth every day. Um yeah, it's just it's just there. I get asked a lot about fusion.\n\nAnd in my opinion, like if you if you just make a very large thing of of magnetically confined fusion, you could absolutely make it work. Um I I don't think any any really major breakthroughs needed to make fusion work, but but I think it's it's unnecessary to make fusion work because you we've got a giant fusion reactor in the sky that just shows up every day with and doesn't require any maintenance.\n\nUm, so it's a low maintenance fusion reactor shows up every day. So, if if we just just catch the energy from, you know, where catch it and just keep us loving all this energy at us, just catch it with the photovoltaics and and store in the batteries and it'll that'll that'll solve for everything, basically.\n\nUm, yeah, we're going to need a lot of batteries, but there's also like next question might be is there are we going to face some materials limitation with batteries and the the answer is definitely not. I think most of the vast majority of stationary storage will use an iron cathode lithium-ion battery. So, there's there's obviously plenty of iron on earth, no shortage of iron. There's also no shortage of lithium.\n\nLithium is extremely common on earth, it's basically everywhere. Um, so and and so you have a basically an iron phosphate cathode with a a graphite anode um, and lithium carbonate there's there's enough of that on earth to power many civilizations. Several or easily order magnitude larger civilization than ourselves could be powered with with the batteries that with battery materials that that are readily available.\n\nSo, I don't want to suggest complacency here, but just that there is a very clear path to a sustainable energy future. Okay. That's wonderful. Elon, we just want to thank you so much. The National Academy of Sciences is so pleased to have you here with us today.\n\nPaul Wooster is a member of the Space Studies Board and this is also the Board on Physics and Astronomy and um just thank you so much for the time and the interaction with our members and answering so many questions so graciously. I know it's past uh the 7:00 p. m. hour on the East Coast or wherever you are. No problem. I will Well, well, thank thank you for the for the great questions and and I was honored to to speak to everyone. Thank you.\n\nThank you. Cool. Do we","textByLang":{"en":"Okay. Well, welcome to our last of open session of this meeting. Uh subject is SpaceX Starship. And we are very pleased to welcome Elon Musk who leads SpaceX, Tesla, Neuralink, and The Boring Company. As the founder and chief engineer at SpaceX, Elon oversees the development of rockets and spacecraft for missions to Earth orbit. In 2008, SpaceX Falcon 1 was the first privately developed liquid fuel rocket to reach orbit.\n\nAnd in 2017, SpaceX reflew both a Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon spacecraft for the first time. They are also currently developing the Starlink mega constellation of communication satellites and the Starship heavy lift launch system. And we welcome you, and you can unmute yourself and I'll mute me. Right. Um thanks for having me. Um I think there there may be an introductory video potentially that we can play. Okay. Say that emphasis.\n\nIt does have sound, but maybe you'll Andrea, can you check the sound? Mhm. car Mhm. car rocket but rocket on a big car Yeah. Let me try that again. I was muted. Okay. The the sound isn't essential but Hi. All right. Uh great. So, uh that was a just an introductory video regarding the Starship program. Uh that was all real. No no CGI there.\n\nUm so, uh what we're aiming to develop with uh Starship is a generalized uh means of transporting uh large amounts of mass uh or people, but it just in general large amounts of mass uh anywhere in the solar system. Um the idea behind uh the the behind this is to have a the first uh fully and rapidly reusable rocket, um which is but that that's the really the holy grail of rocketry.\n\nUm if you can uh have a fully rapidly reusable rocket or orbital rocket, uh then the cost uh of transport uh you know, of of a ton to orbit drops by about two orders of magnitude, uh maybe better.\n\nSo, um you know, just as a word for uh really any mode of transport, um if you uh say had uh aircraft or cars that uh were not reusable, you would see very little use of aircraft and and cars because you'd have to buy a new aircraft every time you went somewhere. Um and if you traveled somewhere in a car that was single use, you'd have to obviously tow a small car behind you just for the return journey.\n\nUm so, uh you know, so I think this is quite profound. Um if we are successful and and at least from a design standpoint, um it appears to be uh you know, all of the calculations close for having a fully fully reusable 100 ton to lower the orbit capability. Um The the vehicle is very big.\n\nUm so one of the things that helps with the reusability is scale because for example, the um electronics that control the the brain of the vehicle, if you will, uh does not actually get uh it any heavier uh if it is a big vehicle or a small vehicle. So things like uh avionics and control and inertial measurement sensors and whatnot um become round out to basically um almost no percentage of the mass if for a big vehicle.\n\nUm Whereas for a small vehicle, obviously that would be much more of an issue. So scale scale certainly helps. Um and then the uh we're using the most advanced uh uh engine cycle, which from a physics standpoint is the the the best. You you can extract the most amount of momentum for a given amount of fuel or propellant, uh which is a a full flow stage a a full flow uh gas gas staged combustion uh engine. Uh that's the the Raptor engine.\n\nUh there are currently 29 of those on the base of the booster. We'll be expanding that to 33. Um and uh at at 33 engines and with the Raptor 2, we'll be doing about um 76 7700 metric ton force of thrust on lift off. Uh so it's about uh two 2. 2 2. 3 times the thrust of a Saturn V. Um so it's it's really a very big vehicle. It's the biggest rocket ever um ever designed. And and and and we're we're close to our initial launch.\n\nUm our our initial orbital launch. We've done several suborbital flights um and have been able to to land the vehicle successfully. Um the first orbital flight uh we're hoping to do in in January. Um so we've completed the the first orbital booster uh and first orbital ship um and will be complete with the uh launch pad and launch tower uh later this month and then we'll do a uh a bunch of tests in in December and hopefully launch in in January.\n\nUm there's a lot of risk associated with this first launch, so I would not say that uh it is likely to be success uh successful, but I think we'll we'll make a lot of progress. Um and then we've also built a a factory for making a lot of these vehicles. So this is not a case of just just one or two. Um we're aiming to make um a great many.\n\nUm ultimately I think if in order for life to become multi-planetary, uh we'll need uh maybe a thousand ships or something like that. Um the the the overarching goal of SpaceX has been to uh advance space technology such that uh humanity can become a multi-planet species and ultimately a space-bearing civilization and to make true the things that we read about in science fiction and have them not always be fiction.\n\nUm I think this is actually quite important. Um uh it was in long term it's essential for preserving the light of consciousness. Um Eventually something will happen to Earth. Uh hopefully not soon. Um but uh either natural or man-made that would cause the end of civilization. Um so the the probable lifespan of civilization is much greater if we are a multi-planet species um and and uh ultimately even go beyond our solar system.\n\nUm, but the first step is is um being a we being multi-planet, Mars being the only realistic option for that. Um, so I think from from um the standpoint of Yeah, like I said, from the standpoint of preserving the light of consciousness and um which I think we should quite as fragile, um I think it's extremely important that we try to become a multi-planet species um as quickly as possible.\n\nUm, I'll say along the way we will learn a a great deal about the nature of the universe. Um, and there will it will be possible to have many more uh space-based uh experiments if you have a very large vehicle uh capable of transporting things to uh orbit the moon or anywhere. Um, that that at um, you know, 100 times less than it currently costs.\n\nUm, so it's it it offers sort of profound possibilities and I think this uh you know, this this there's a fundamental juncture in in the uh history of really any civilization on a single planet, which is do you get to the second planet or do you not? And I propose we do. Um, and I think we should do it as soon as possible. Um, the window of this up up shoot is open now for the first time in the 4. 5 billion-year history of Earth.\n\nIt may it may be open for a long time or it may be open for a short time, and I think we should you know, be hasty so that just in case it's only open for a short time. Um, yeah, so like I said, I think this is It's important for the long-term preservation of the light of consciousness. Um and of course we'll naturally we'll learn a lot of science and develop a lot of technology along the way. So that that's what Starship's all about.\n\nUm and um we have an interesting project that we're working with a Saul uh Perlmutter at Berkeley on, uh which is to have a really big uh telescope. This is taking a a ground-based uh lens that a lens lens that was intended for a ground-based telescope and um creating a space-based telescope with it. Um so that that could be I think pretty interesting and we you know we'd love to do other things as well.\n\nSo um and and I think people may know that NASA has selected uh Starship for the um transport of astronauts to the lunar surface. Uh so uh we look forward to doing that for NASA. And um and then I think you know it it it it really could be it it has the ability because of the the mass transport capabilities of of transporting enough mass and people to the moon to actually have a permanently occupied I think base on the moon.\n\nUh much as we have like a permanently occupied base at Antarctica, we could have a sort of a a moon research station which I think would be um amazing. So yeah I think anyway this is a a very profound vehicle um and um nothing really like it has uh is is being developed or and I don't think anything quite like it has been even proposed. Uh but it's um it has the potential to affect human destiny in a very profound way.\n\nSo I'm happy to answer any any questions. I'm unsure quite what you'd like to know, so uh maybe real-time questions are the best way to um address what people may be thinking. Terrific. Thank you so much, uh Elon. From our board members, please raise your hands for questions. And our first question will come from uh Louis Demaro. Uh thank you. Maybe I'm on mute. Yeah, still muted. Hi. There you go.\n\nJust saying uh thank you for that and some rather big vision. Uh I I I wonder, you know, in order to achieve this goal that that you painted, what type of uh international collaboration do you see to get this done and you know, what are what are the possibilities of uh actually pulling that off? Well, we're not assuming uh any any inter- international collaboration. Uh we're building this thing right now.\n\nUm and we're uh we're really um building it from internal funds. There's NASA's providing some support uh because uh they'll they tend to use Starship for uh transporting astronauts to the to the surface of the moon, but this has really been an internally funded uh effort. Um I don't know at least 90% internally funded thus far.\n\nUm and we um expect to reach orbit uh you know, probably I don't know if we'll get there on the first attempt, but uh I'm confident we'll get there next year and and we intend to have a high flight rate next year. Um so uh it it it's difficult for us to actually have international uh involvement because of ITAR. So, I I'm not sure I I'm and uh I I really see anyone outside the US who is um building some part of what we need. Um so yeah.\n\nUm it we're we're just doing it. It's great. Wonderful answer. Uh next question will come from Adam Burrows. A fascinating vision. I don't know where to begin, but I will ask a just a technical question. Uh it was surprising to many that I believe you chose a stainless steel um for the vehicle. I could be wrong, but what what what were the technical and engineering reasons for that? And don't stint on the details. Uh sure.\n\nThat that's a I think a very interesting question um cuz for a lot of people intuitively they would think of steel as being heavy. Um uh and rockets need to be light. So well that seems pretty a pretty odd choice picking what a heavy sounding thing for rockets, especially orbital rockets that need to be very light.\n\nUm I mean the the nature of Earth's gravity being quite strong and a dense atmosphere means that you really have to have an incredibly good propellant mass percentage. Uh and you have to have very efficient engines to get anything to orbit at all. Um so so then so then then why steel? So we we started off with um uh with an advanced composite.\n\nSo intuitively if you ask people who who understand materials, they will say we want to make something incredibly light. Um they will they'll say probably you would want to use state-of-the-art carbon fiber composite. Um that's usually what they'll say. Um and that's what we started out with which was um really a a very advanced carbon fiber. Um And uh actually it was only made in very small quantities. Uh it cost um $130 per kilogram.\n\nSo it was a very expensive material. Um and um and there were some challenges if want to make the primary structure out of uh carbon fiber, which is that uh you've got to make a contain uh cryogenic uh fluid and um and you need a uh gas in in in sort of what's called ullage gas, pressurization gas, uh to pressurize the propellants in in the main tanks and and feed the engine turbo pumps with a with a given inlet pressure.\n\nSo so for if you have if you have a a carbon fiber tank, because it tends to be porous um and also um potentially uh flammable when subject to uh warm gaseous uh ox- pure oxygen, because our our vehicle is autogenously pressurized, so the oxygen tank is pressurized with gaseous oxygen and the fuel tank is pressurized with gaseous methane.\n\nUm so um the the resin and and the carbon in in the uh carbon fiber is potentially flammable um with with with with hot pure uh oxygen gas. So you'd have to have some kind of liner.\n\nUm So when you look at the the the full uh mass and complexity of carbon fiber system, you you start having um uh things that reduce the mass efficiency of of carbon fiber, such as having an inert liner um and being worried about uh uh gas permeating through the the carbon fiber and that kind of thing. So um then uh but but it still would be an it's still an okay choice.\n\nUm however, um we were having a lot of trouble making progress with uh the um carbon fiber um cuz this is a 9-m diameter rocket um and so you're you're wrapping carbon fiber um with typically in this case uh 60 or 220 plies, depending upon where you are on in in the tank.\n\nUm and you have to get all of those wrappings uh accurate and not um have any bubbles or separator sheets or all the things that typically happen um or or you've got to scrap the whole thing. And then you've got to to get my good good mass properties put it in an autoclave and put it under you know a lot of pressure. And then then you need a gigantic autoclave because it's a 9-m diameter with a 70-m long booster stage.\n\nSo this is autoclave from hell. Um and we we we were just weren't making rapid progress with this material. So then I So then the next step the next thing the other two materials worth considering are a uh high strength formula aluminum aluminum um or potentially steel. So for Falcon 9 we use aluminum lithium which is the highest strength to weight aluminum alloy that you can use very difficult to weld.\n\nUh but that's what we use for the primary structure of Falcon 9. Then but the problem is it's it's it's very difficult to weld. You need to do friction stir welding and also the the material cost is quite high. So um you know that's that's sort of material cost arguably on the sort of $40 a kilogram level. Um and uh like very difficult to weld. But then and then there's there's steel.\n\nNow the interesting thing about uh 300 series stainless steel is that its properties at cryogenic temperatures uh strength properties increase dramatically. So if you were to look at the material properties at room temperature you'd be like it's not that great. But now go now go uh look at the temperature properties at uh liquid oxygen temperature. Oh actually much stronger. Uh also no no meaningful increase in brittleness.\n\nSo you have it still has high toughness at cryogenic temperatures. It is much stronger depending on how how cold you go up to twice as strong. Uh and then the um yeah so and then then you you can also cold work it so you get if you if you go sort of full hard cold work and and and do the final bit of cold work at cryogenic temperatures. You get outstanding strength properties, which are roughly equal to an advanced carbon fiber.\n\nUm and and this is in our case for for um for Starship, the it it both the fuel and the oxygen are cryogenic. So, this helps helps a lot. Whereas for Falcon 9, the the it use cryogenic oxygen, but kind of room temperature kerosene fuel. Um So, anyway, so where both quite a long explanation, hopefully interesting.\n\nUm Uh if if both fuel fuel and oxygen are fuel and oxygen are cryogenic, now you get the strength properties in in the primary structure of of both tanks. Um And so, both are very strong, very tough, and resilient. Also, very easy to weld stainless steel. Um And we started off with stainless steel 301. Um That that did have a some some um fracture toughness issues at cryogenic temperatures.\n\nUm we we switched to 304, and now we have our we developed our own alloy, which is 30X, which is the better than either 301 or 304. Um So, um and and and anyway, so so now now now stainless steel only costs about $4 a kg. So, we're from $130 a kg uh advanced carbon fiber to $4 a kg stainless steel, uh from 120 plies to one ply, it's just coiled from the mill, um and uh basically the same strength.\n\nUm And and and very high toughness and and resilience. I don't even need paint it, which is great. Um So, paint is, you know, not weight paint can't paint on a big vehicle weighs many tons and it's a bit quite difficult to paint big things. So, So, that and but now there's another advantage. So, um obviously you can tell I'm a huge fan of stainless steel. I Stainless steel I actually got a room or something.\n\nUm Um so, the So, for in in making the vehicle reusable, um so, now the there is coming in very hot. Um so, the the ship is coming in at hypersonic velocities coming, you know, at sort of right kind of like a Mach 25 entry velocity. So, uh this is this would just obviously just melt it.\n\nUm and um and and and it but if you've got steel, your melting point is much much better higher than aluminum um and you can have it handle much better temperatures than than carbon fiber cuz the the resin tends to have problems. Like you can basically go, you know, you know, anything much above, say, 200 Celsius or before carbon fiber or aluminum is is you start falling off a cliff from a strength standpoint.\n\nUm But but for steel, you go 800 and and it's it's fine. Even 1,000 can be fine. So, for for the ship, this means that the heat shield mass is significantly reduced because the the heat shield um mass is determined by the temperature um on the back of the tile uh that that that then transmits to the hull. So, the hull If the hull is steel, um you can have thin heat shield tiles.\n\nWhereas, if the hull hull is carbon fiber or aluminum, you have to have thick heat shield tiles. Uh and you also need no heat shielding at all on the leeward side uh of the ship. So, it is actually lighter than the most advanced carbon fiber vehicle. Yeah, I'm I'm very surprised at that, but that was very very interesting.\n\nI appreciate your long disposition on this and I'm I I thought that the steel substituting for aluminum on re-entry made some sort of sense. I didn't realize any of the other stuff. Yeah. And and it's the right thing and then it's it's just and and it's it's the the cost is ridiculously low. It's like $4 a kilogram. And even for the special alloy that we're developing, it's not using anything super exotic.\n\nWe might throw a little exotic spicy something in there, but it's a small it's you know, it's going to be like 0. 2%. So it's it's still going to be like maybe $4 a kilogram, maybe 4. 50. And then it's just very easy to to to to weld. Um and um Uh yeah, I love it. It's great. And then if we want to just add something to if you want to you know it's easy to repair.\n\nIt's if you want to you know, add a sort of something to carry some wiring or plumbing or whatever, you just weld it right on. It's super easy. It's great. It's super easy. Thank you. I very much appreciate It's a high-tech low-tech. Um wonderful. Our next question will come from Howard Singer, Elon. Uh hello. I started my science career watching Captain Video and reading Isaac Asimov and you've made all that fiction real, so thank you very much.\n\nUh my question is uh what are you doing for radiation protection for the crews? And if you have you explored the need for forecasts of the space weather conditions or the space weather environment? Sure. Um Well, um I I I think there is um you know, there's always this always always some risk uh going into deep space. Um and and and I I um we definitely wouldn't want to be traveling when there's like intense solar storms or anything like that.\n\nUm You know, for for going to the moon, like obviously, you know, we're the United States has done that before. Um and it would be great to go back and it would be great to have a permanent base where, you know, um if if the if the costs are good enough where we we we can have like a a significant science contingent actually, you know, put you know, on the base permanently occupied. That would be epic.\n\nUm so um but once you're on the moon, of course, you you're protected by the the moon below you and then you can you can put a a lot of lunar regolith on top of whatever um you know, the the research station roof uh would be. Um so, once you're there, easy to protect. On the way, we'll have to check the weather report.\n\nAnd but for Mars, it's going to be trickier, you know, I um I you know, I was going to we don't have all the answers here, but um and there may be some uh clever ways to reduce the uh radiation effects. Um but I don't think they're insurmountable. All righty, thanks. Uh our next question comes from Margie Kivelson. Uh so, I'm an enthusiast for the outer planets. Um I SpaceX is giving the Europa Clipper a lift out to Right. uh Jupiter.\n\nI wondered if you have comments on other uh missions that you would like to uh enhance by big big lifts. Sure. Actually, we're we're really uh excited and and honored to uh be flying the the Clipper mission. Um and um you know, I mean, I think this there could be some incredibly exciting things to discover, hopefully are, um, under Europa. Um, it's, uh, seems like probably the best place for some strange life.\n\nUh, so hopefully we find some really cool things. Um, so yeah, can't wait to launch the Clipper and, um, that that'll be on a Falcon Heavy, um, currently. Uh, with with the Starship, we could like the the great thing about Starship is it it really should enable us to send very big things and also and also to send them, uh, fast. And and like need much less in the way of, um, uh, sort of planetary gravity assists and that kind of thing.\n\nUm, so, um, especially if we could build a propellant, uh, generation, um, on the moon, uh, then then we could really, uh, send something very to very with with very high delta V. Um, and if we have a a base on Mars with a high delta V, now now you could really you could basically planet hop from Mars to maybe Ceres, uh, to maybe one of the moons of Jupiter, and ultimately all the way to, uh, the outer, uh, solar system.\n\nUm, basically any place we can put the the gas station, uh, that that gives us a another whole leap forward. Um, so, uh, ultimately Starship is designed to be, uh, a generalized transport mechanism for the greater solar system.\n\nUm, and, um, and so it's it's really whatever you can imagine being, um, you know, if you if you could if you could get, you know, a 100 ton object to the surface of Europa, there's a lot more you can do than with a smaller object. Um, so, um, yeah, I think it's it's very exciting.\n\nUm, obviously we still have a lot to prove, but architecturally it is a capable of um transporting kind of almost any arbitrary mass to to any solid surface in this solar system. Wow, terrific. Thanks. And Margie is actually part leading the team building the magnetometer that you will be taking to Europa on the Clipper. Uh our next question comes from Steve Maxwell. Hi Elon. Um thanks so much for your presentation.\n\nUm I was wondering um what were your what are your kind of plans for humans to Mars uh in terms of timescales and uh and you know, are you going to send folks there for kind of a shorter stay or you think a longer stay and bring them back at least initially? I'm not sure. I think what So the first thing we'd we'd want to do is is confirm that we can uh land the ship safely on Mars.\n\nAnd so that might be you would want to probably land two or three I think before sending people. And just confirm that that uh uh we we we can land safely. Um so you know, and actually on those missions we could we could obviously put um a lot of scientific instrumentation um that uh I would recommend putting the lower cost uh scientific mission stuff on the first mission.\n\nUm but um uh we'll we'll certainly have propulsive landing very reliable on Earth as we've been able to achieve with the Falcon 9 booster. Um it it's now you know, knock on wood, so it's it's it's a it's not like it's quite normal for the rocket to land uh safely. And we'll we'll do the same with Starship. Um and and then um I'm not sure quite what would happen.\n\nI mean, we might be working with NASA or um maybe NASA and and other uh you know, other countries to to send people to Mars. Um But I I I view this very much as um you know, the you know, what set of actions can we take that maximize the probability that the future is good for civilization. You know, like what are sort of like civilizational risks that we can potentially mitigate?\n\nUm and um I just think being a multi-planet species is is a tremendous uh risk mitigation for uh human civilization. Um and um as we know, eventually Earth will become If you wait long enough, Earth will become uninhabitable. So, um in the long run, we're obviously all dead.\n\nBut but I think the um you know, the the technology that we we develop uh in traveling from um Earth to Mars, I think it'll be just a very powerful forcing function for the improvement of space transport. You know, like the the initial boats that crossed the Atlantic and crossed the Pacific back in the sailing days were were really terrible. Um you know, um so you know, there there were often just planes sank.\n\nAnd if if as once there was a reason to do uh large amounts of ocean trade, the the the the sailing ships the wooden sailing ships got dramatically better. Um And and so, but you you kind of have to have that forcing function. Um so, that That's what I think will happen and and and we'll we'll get much better at at space transport.\n\nAnd I think this will also be very important if um you know, if there's like a potential uh Earth collision event from from some comet or something like that. Um you know, the the the asteroids we can predict fairly well, obviously, but um there's this massive cloud of of um of comets out there that uh you know, we we we don't know the situation. Um so, and they come in pretty fast.\n\nSo, there's always some risk of a comet like taking out a continent. You know, there's this place like they talk a lot about extinction events where that we, you know, almost all life was destroyed on Earth, but but they don't talk that much about the ones where well, it was just a continent.\n\nThere's there's plenty of sort of continent level extinction events that have occurred in the fossil record and they're like really so common as to really not really generate a lot of much attention. And and but if we've got large rockets that could potentially do something about that, then then that could be, you know, that could at one day save billions of people.\n\nBut we've we've got to have big rockets and much more advanced space technology in order to protect against the a comet coming in from, yeah, far away. Okay, thank you so much. Perfect. Thanks, Elon. Our next question will come from Arlene Spence. Elon, thank you for sharing your time and your vision with us.\n\nI had a question about looking back the history of exploration, human exploration as we ventured from one place to another, scientific discovery has always been an element of that and you've shared a little bit about some opportunities here, but I I was hoping you could share a little bit more.\n\nWhen you think about the aspects of scientific discovery that will accompany becoming a multi-planet species, what are the kinds of things that you're thinking about in terms of what we would discover along the way? Well, I think being able to really, you know, have heavy duty science research on the moon and on Mars where you could really just go anywhere you want, Um to core samples anywhere you want.\n\nUh I think we'd learn a tremendous amount um uh as compared to having to send uh you know, fairly small vehicles with with limited scientific instrumentation um which is what we currently do for for Mars and and the moon. So, uh just I would have just having people there who can dynamically decide what they're going to do um and and really be able to analyze the whole history of the planet, I think we're learn a tremendous amount.\n\nUm and uh yeah, um and that would obviously extend over time through at least the um the greater solar system. Um So, you know, I mean yeah, um I mean, I studied physics because I was just trying to find out what's what what's the universe all about? How does it work? Where did it come from? Why are we here? Um and um I actually kind of got sort of depressed at one point cuz I was like, man, this doesn't seem to be any meaning to life.\n\nI it just seems to be like, you know, and then I made the mistake of like reading the German philosophers as a teenager and that that made it was quite depressing. Um But then but then I then I read uh Douglas Adams's Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which is really a book in philosophy with the sky's the limit.\n\nAnd he makes the point that you know, uh the question is harder than the answer and um and and really basically the answer is the universe and and uh we we we kind of need to figure out like what questions to ask about the answer that is the universe. Um and that's the question that's the hard part and then the answer is easier by comparison. Um So, so I'm like, I don't know, like like why are we here? How did we get here? Is this is this real?\n\nIs this is this simulation or something? At least if we go to these other planets, we'll make the simulators work harder and have to buy more computers to run the simulation or something.\n\nUm you know, um but uh yeah, I mean, I think it's and and and if we are able to at least be like um a multi-planet species within the solar our our solar system, then um then then hopefully we can develop the technology to send probes uh to um other star systems and eventually um maybe send send people, although that's tough, but we can certainly send ro- robots to um robot probes to all of all of the nearby star systems and um yeah, try to figure out what what what's what's the meaning of life and what's going on.\n\nAnd are there any aliens out there? Where where are you guys? They searched up. Thank you, Elon. Sorry, go Do you have a Do you have time for a a question or two more? Uh yeah, as much time as you'd like. Oh, wonderful. All right. Um I do have one question from a from a board chair, um and it's this. One aspect of SpaceX that has distinguished it from the previous organizations has been its willingness to embrace failure as a development tool.\n\nWhen do you think you will be able to start selling Starship launches at prices significantly less expensive than Falcon 9, say 5 to 10 times less? Sure. Um actually, I think it's not that it's not that far away. I think probably um 2 years from now. Uh so um our rate of progress on Starship is very rapid. Um and um like you said, we're we're actually getting ready to do our first local orbital launch attempt within the next uh few months.\n\nWe're expecting uh our license approval from the FAA uh around the end of this year, and then so that probably means uh a launch attempt in January or perhaps February. Um and then um we're we're actually building the the factory to make lots of Starships and make lots of engines in parallel.\n\nSo, there will be many many vehicles, um, the the the engine build rate is currently the biggest constraint on, um, how many vehicles we can make, um, because there are currently 29, uh, engines on the booster and, uh, there will be 33 even at a higher thrust level. Um, so, um, that means Yeah, 33 engines per booster and these are big engines. These are, um, you know, our uh uh the Raptor 2 is a roughly uh, 240 ton thrust engine.\n\nUm, so, we're talking like, you know, 5 or 600 thousand pound thrust engines. The Yeah, so, really quite quite intense. Um, I I in fact I'd say that the building the production system for Starship is much harder than the design of the Starship itself. Um, but we we have that in in progress and we intend to do, um, hopefully hopefully a dozen launches next year. Um, maybe maybe more.\n\nUm, and and to if we're successful with it being a fully reusable, it means that we we build up the fleet just as we are with the Falcon 9 and the Falcon 9 booster which is reused. Um, we we lose the upper stage every time, but we almost always recover the booster.\n\nSo, um, so, basically we intend to complete like the test flight program next year, which means that it's probably ready for, um, for for valuable payloads that that are not kind of in the in the test not for testing basically, but actual real payloads, um, in 2023. So, quite soon. Great. Thank you so much. All right. Uh next next question from Ned Wright. Ned, I think you're still muted. Will we all be glad when we don't say that all the time?\n\nYeah, so it's um You have to preserve cryogenic propellant for 6 to 8 months to actually be able to land on Mars. And so I wonder what your plan is for that. Um yeah, so um the the the landing propellant for Mars would be in separate header tanks. Uh so these would be um spherical header tanks.\n\nUh for for Mars, they would probably be uh I might might be contained inside the main tanks uh or they would be up in the cargo section um but well insulated. So um it would it would actually have to um uh have extremely well insulated um header tanks for landing uh that are not the main tanks. So that that's what we'd have for for Mars. Great. Thanks. Uh Riza Wexler is the next question.\n\nYeah, so um changing topic to something that's happening before we have the possibility to uh be a multi-planet species. Uh I I also study the universe and I'm trying to understand how it works and how it got here. And as you know, the satellite constellations from Starlink and other sources are already having a huge impact on astronomical observations.\n\nAnd And this is really going to significantly limit the science potential of the next generation of observatories if we don't have a course shift. So what role do you expect start uh SpaceX to play in working with astronomers and regulatory agencies to mitigate this?\n\nWell, we SpaceX already works with um uh regulatory agencies and with the the um so with with the astronomers um uh and um generally what we see is the the the telescope um that is perhaps most sensitive to this is Vera Rubin. Um and uh we work directly with the the Vera Rubin team to make sure that uh their observations will not be affected by Starlink satellites.\n\nUm and my understanding is at this point they are comfortable that it will not be uh an interference for Vera Rubin. Um they they have um uh there's a slight risk um of capacitive coupling between uh some of the uh basically um sensors there. Uh but this which can create ambiguity, but we we we're confident that uh we can work around that. Great. Thanks. Our next question comes from John Carris. Hey Elon, thanks uh for all your time today.\n\nAppreciate it. Kind of going back to prior question about um long-term storage of cryogenics for whatever mission, but um um I realize or I believe that your architecture for Starship to go beyond lower Earth orbit to go to the moon has you know, cryo fluid transfers and things like that and Yeah. you long-term cryo fluid you know, cryo fluid storage, low boil-off and Those are not not easy problems. Yeah, yeah, no. And and So, not easy problems.\n\nSo, the question I have for you is is uh you know, what are your plans to to mature that technology but you before you have to rely on it for it to go to the moon like in a year or two? Well, um yeah, um so I mean, there's a lot of ways to address it. Um, by uh having a uh launching one one uh vehicle that is very well insulated, um, but does not return to Earth, effectively a propellant depot.\n\nUm, so if you take a ship a Starship and you take take the the heat shielding off and replace that with uh thermal insulation like you know, multi-layer insulation of um that's just very very good um at um keeping things cold, um, then you could have one ship up there that uh is effectively just turns into a propellant depot. And and then you um send tankers up there to uh dock and transfer propellant.\n\nUm, and uh and so it should be able to be there for a while and then whatever ship you want to go to the moon, you you go up and dock with the the the depot, uh transfer propellant and and off you go. So, that's that's the that's rough plan. We're pretty good at docking at this point. We've docked with the space station couple dozen times and the space station is a very difficult thing to dock with because we don't control both sides of it.\n\nUm, and um so it's it's that that is a very challenging uh docking, whereas docking with our own vehicle is is comparatively easier. Yeah, but both of these technologies have really only been demonstrated on very very small scale. So, you're your scale's a lot larger and I think poses other problems. So, good luck in uh solving those. Yeah, I know I I I don't think we'll just sort of like, you know, it's not exactly a walk in the park.\n\nUm, so like I think this is hard, um, but it is necessary and it's the only way um at least with that that I can think of with current physics to um to actually uh make things work. Um, and it obviously, you know, like um aerial refueling is is a is used quite a lot with with aircraft. Um, and so this is uh you know, taking that concept just doing it in orbit. Um, and um, so it like we're not we know that success is one of the possible outcomes.\n\nUm, we're not breaking any physics. Um, you know, physics is the law and everything else is a recommendation. Um, so but it's it's at least in the set of possible success is success success is at least in the set of possible outcomes. Yeah. Great. Thanks very much. Uh, next question will come from Amanda Hendrix. Hi there. Um, so I'm a co-chair of the Committee on Planetary Protection.\n\nAnd uh, our committee is concerned with preserving the validity of future uh, astrobiological experiments on Mars and other places in the solar system. Yeah. Searches for life extinct or extant. And I wonder if you can comment on SpaceX's planetary protection plans for Mars. Sure. Um, well, I mean first of all, it's not like we're launching to Mars really soon. I mean there's Mars is a ways off.\n\nUm, and the you know, but there there is um, you know, fundamentally a choice to to be made which is um, are we going to try to be a multi-planet species? Um, uh, which would would mean that at least in one spot on Mars that there is human you know, human biology like that we will be you know, uh, we're pretty hard to avoid no no biology if you send humans there. They're biological creatures.\n\nUm, but I I I don't think this is this is going to invalidate uh, research in the on the rest of the planet. I mean Mars is a big planet and so I and there've been uh, you know, rocks that have been knocked off of Earth and landed on Mars and that kind of thing.\n\nSo, uh But but yeah, I I think we'll, you know, there's a you wouldn't want to sort of spread biological debris all over Mars, but I think we will we will have to put at least somewhere if there are people going there. Um at at least in one spot. And and then just make sure we try to contain that and not have it sort of spread around. Um Yeah, and I guess it's same for the moon and and other places. Thanks. Thank you, Elon.\n\nUm we'll just take a question or two more. Next question from Larry Paxton. Hi, thanks for your time. Um I have a question that was engendered by a remark you made in passing that I think is um very interesting. Which is where you said that um there's a window of opportunity for us to get off the planet.\n\nAnd the question that occurred to me was uh you you followed that up with saying that you didn't know how long that window of opportunity would be open. Yeah. And there you mentioned in passing, of course, the traditional things like, you know, exogenous forces like uh cometary impact or near-Earth object.\n\nBut I was wondering, you know, with all these compelling reasons for us to get off the planet, and including the compelling reason to to uh have another refuge for the human race, what do you see as the biggest threats? And in particular, we have a wide range of expertise here. We've been talking about some of the problems that are we think are the most important that are unresolved yet.\n\nI just wonder what you felt were the most important uh issues for us as the human race. Yeah, I mean, in general, I I you know, I've thought about this uh quite a lot. Um which is not to say that I've thought about it correctly, but I thought about it a lot. Um you know, and the you know, the the the the one of the bigger risks uh on Earth would be, you know, if if we that we need to transition to sustainable uh energy.\n\nUh even if uh one discounts the CO2 uh, capacity of the oceans and atmosphere, uh, eventually we'll run out of uh, hydrocarbons to burn and so we we need something that's long-term sustainable.\n\nUm, so that that's that's what sort of um, you know, I kind of split my time between Tesla and SpaceX and so Tesla's um, trying to accelerate the advent of sustainable energy um, and that's you know, to uh, mitigate the the risk on Earth um, and then SpaceX is uh, intended to medi- you know, mitigate like longer-term risks um, that could potentially extinguish consciousness as we know it.\n\nI mean, we got this sort of delicate candle of consciousness sort of flickering in the darkness here. Um, and I don't know if you guys have seen any evidence of aliens but I sure haven't. I get asked that a lot. So, um, I mean, I find the Fermi paradox is just an incredibly interesting question um, and um, I'm not sure who said it but the like there appear to be if if if there appear if there may there's either a lot of aliens or none.\n\nUm, and equally each those ans- answers are equally terrifying. Um, so anyway, so I I think um, but with with respect to uh, near-term risks on Earth um, obviously sustainable energy um, and you know, potential non-linearities in uh, the CO2 in- uh, PPM in the atmosphere are are a concern. Uh, you know, if we start doing things like melt- melting the Siberian tundra and that kind of thing.\n\nUm, um, I I'm probably less alarmist than most uh, on on on climate change. I I put myself in the in the moderate category on on climate change. I just think it's the the amount of inertia associated with the hydrocarbon economy is so gigantic that it it it um, um it will to require a long time to make that transition. And so, it's probably better to start it sooner rather than later.\n\nAnd And that's why I describe fundamental good of Tesla as the degree to which it accelerates the advent of sustainable energy. It will happen, I think, anyway, but faster is better. That then with as for risks on Earth, um I mean, there's always good old nuclear Armageddon, you know? Uh that that's still one of the one of the things. Um That's That's not out of the question.\n\nUh there's still a lot of nuclear missiles pointed at us in in the US and many parts of the world. Um I I don't know what what quite that risk is, but it's not zero. Um Um I think there's there's maybe some counterintuitive risks or that people aren't don't put that much attention on. Um If you look at the birth rate trends, um they are the birth rate trends are very uh negative.\n\nUm and so, um and in many many countries are are seeing population decline um with no end in sight. So, I think there's um Uh I think the the the the very low birth rate, I think, is actually quite a significant risk um but an an an underappreciated one. Um So, uh Yeah. Um And And for for population prediction, I would recommend taking uh things like the number of uh babies born last year and just multiplying that by the probable lifespan.\n\nAnd if if if you do if you do that, you'll I think you'll see numbers that uh are very very bad for future population. Um and with an inverted demographic pyramid, so you've got a lot more older people and then fewer middle-aged people and then eventually just very few youngsters. Um And this will necessarily lead to uh resources uh being applied to taking care of the elderly instead of advancing science or advancing civilization.\n\nUm I'm quite worried about that one um because I see no reversal of the trend um and um you know that that that would you know civilization will die with a bang or a whimper. That would be dying with a whimper.\n\nUm Then there's obviously of course uh you know a pandemic with a with that that has that's that's like COVID but which has a much higher mortality um sort of a long you know high contagion highly contagious long incubation period high mortality uh type of um uh pandemic that's um really a risk um uh AI is I think maybe more of a risk than people realize.\n\nUm Uh ironically the smart people tend to think AI is less of a risk um because they think that they're so smart um but actually we're just humans and we're quite dumb. We did you It's amazing we got this far frankly. Um So if you if you see the advancement of AI it's clear that AI will exceed human intelligence in every way if if these trends continue.\n\nUm And the the list of things that the human mind can do better than AI is less and less every year. So you know hopefully that AI is AI is coupled to human will um but it might not be uh the you know the long-term goal of Neuralink is to achieve sort of better symbiosis with uh AI and with the kind of human mind.\n\nUm in in the short term Neuralink I think it solve a lot of of of brain injuries and diseases and spinal injuries and that kind of thing, but long-term uh like cuz one of the things that I'm I'm getting quite esoteric here, but um the uh we're we're already a cyborg really in the sense that the our phones and computers are an extension of ourselves.\n\nAnd and you could say we we arguably have um you know, sort of the sort of a the primitive kind of limbic system, the cortex, the higher higher thinking, and then we've got the tertiary layer, which is our which is silicon in the form of our computers and phones and everything.\n\nUm the um we have already somewhat merged with computers, but the the the the issue we have is the um the communication rate, the bandwidth uh with the computers is low, especially output. If our output is two thumbs, uh that's, you know, we're we're talking maybe 10 bits per second or something like that. No, it's a or maybe maybe 100 best case. Uh it's a very slow uh output.\n\nAnd as the intelligence of the computer grows, if that communication link remains very tiny, uh I think we will necessarily decouple from computers just because our rate of communication is very slow. And so, if if we can solve the IO bandwidth question and and by, you know, increase it by 1,000 or more, maybe a million, then the you could have human-machine symbiosis that is is much better. Um I I mean, that's at least one approach.\n\nUm Let's see, what else is there? Um I mean, religious extremism, you know, if that that becomes if if that grows over time, uh religious extremism is is a is certainly a threat to um advancement of science. Uh so, depending on how how far that goes, that that that could be an issue. Um, Uh, what do you think? Yeah, it's a good one.\n\nit's I will only add I think that this is a fundamental question because as you said, the Fermi paradox, um, there or should either be a tremendous number of alien civilizations or there is some gate that so many civilizations have failed to get past. And the question is, are we going to fail to get past that gate as well? The great filters. Yeah.\n\nUm, so, I I I I think at least one of the great filters is uh, does a civilization become multi-planetary or not? Um, yes. Yes. If a civilization does not become multi-planetary, then then eventually the sun's going to expand and and, you know, boil the ocean and that's game over.\n\nSo, and and and actually think about it from an egocentric standpoint, if Earth's been around 4 and 1/2 billion years, then it took us 1 and 1/2 billion years to get this far. Um, uh, well, prob- it may be as soon as another 500 million years and the sun might have expanded by enough by that time to boil the oceans potentially. If it's not 500 million years, it's not much beyond that.\n\nUm, but which is basically means that if it took 10% longer for uh, you know, civilization to evolve, it would never have evolved. Right. So, that's an interesting one. Um, Elon, do you have time for one more question? Wonderful. All right. Um, Jill Dahlberg, please. So, let me just say I feel lucky that you are here. So, thank you. And not just here in our panel, um, you're very inspiring. My question is mundane.\n\nYou're going to have these rockets, they're going to go up and they're going to go to two places that are going to need energy. The Earth needs a lot of energy as well. So, what are your plans for making energy? I'm thinking space-based solar power or something like that. Does your company have plans for plethorating energy systems you're going to need?\n\nWell, um a Tesla does produce solar power um and solar is actually there's a quite an amazing amount of of energy that reaches us from the sun. Um but um you know, I mean we really when you think about Earth is almost entirely solar powered. If it were not for the sun, we would be a frozen dark ice ball at 3° Kelvin.\n\nUm so so apart you know, keeping us warm and not to be cold and frozen dark is pretty helpful and then the almost the entire ecosystem is solar powered. Um you know, plants are a solar powered chemical reaction and um you know, apart from chemo-trophs at the bottom of the ocean, it's basically you know, everything's solar powered. Um so really talking about just like a little bit of incremental power from the sun being used to power civilization.\n\nUm the uh you know, as a sort of good rule of thumb is uh because you get about a kilowatt per square meter of solar energy. Um uh so then in a square kilometer there's a million square meters. So now you you've got a gigawatt of solar energy per square kilometer.\n\nUm and so if you've got like uh 25% efficient panels and they're maybe uh 80% uh uh of the area is you know, panel of a you know, then you you've got like basically 200 megawatts per square kilometer of solar power. Um and so then if you say, well, okay, how much then you really won't need a large a very large area to power the entire United States with solar.\n\nUm like a little corner of Utah or for Obviously you you'd prefer it to be distributed, but you can just say like, \"Okay, how much is actually needed to power the US?\" And it's you know, somewhere between a a square that's roughly 150 to 200 km on a side will power the entire entire United States. That So, it's really clearly no problem to power civilization with a um with a with with solar.\n\nAnd then, of course, there's wind and um you know, I'm I'm actually pro-nuclear pro-vision-wise um and there's also hydro and geothermal. So, I I think we will solve Earth's energy needs um and and they are being solved. If you look at the growth of wind power and solar power, it's it's really has a very high growth rate. It needs to be paired with batteries in order to because the the intermittency of wind and solar.\n\nBut the combination of of solar plus battery will can completely solve all of of Earth's energy needs. In fact, for satellites that are in orbit, that's all they use is solar panels and a battery. And and what what is Earth but a large satellite? Sorry, I think you're you're on mute. Do you Do you want to follow up on that? Yeah, I was I was thinking something more grandiose, like a space-based solar power system, but you have a good argument.\n\nYou would just use solar on Earth. Batteries. And battery. I like that. Thank you. It works great. Like because if we we think civilization uses a lot of energy, but it's actually very tiny compared to the amount of solar energy that reaches the Earth every day. Um yeah, it's just it's just there. I get asked a lot about fusion.\n\nAnd in my opinion, like if you if you just make a very large thing of of magnetically confined fusion, you could absolutely make it work. Um I I don't think any any really major breakthroughs needed to make fusion work, but but I think it's it's unnecessary to make fusion work because you we've got a giant fusion reactor in the sky that just shows up every day with and doesn't require any maintenance.\n\nUm, so it's a low maintenance fusion reactor shows up every day. So, if if we just just catch the energy from, you know, where catch it and just keep us loving all this energy at us, just catch it with the photovoltaics and and store in the batteries and it'll that'll that'll solve for everything, basically.\n\nUm, yeah, we're going to need a lot of batteries, but there's also like next question might be is there are we going to face some materials limitation with batteries and the the answer is definitely not. I think most of the vast majority of stationary storage will use an iron cathode lithium-ion battery. So, there's there's obviously plenty of iron on earth, no shortage of iron. There's also no shortage of lithium.\n\nLithium is extremely common on earth, it's basically everywhere. Um, so and and so you have a basically an iron phosphate cathode with a a graphite anode um, and lithium carbonate there's there's enough of that on earth to power many civilizations. Several or easily order magnitude larger civilization than ourselves could be powered with with the batteries that with battery materials that that are readily available.\n\nSo, I don't want to suggest complacency here, but just that there is a very clear path to a sustainable energy future. Okay. That's wonderful. Elon, we just want to thank you so much. The National Academy of Sciences is so pleased to have you here with us today.\n\nPaul Wooster is a member of the Space Studies Board and this is also the Board on Physics and Astronomy and um just thank you so much for the time and the interaction with our members and answering so many questions so graciously. I know it's past uh the 7:00 p. m. hour on the East Coast or wherever you are. No problem. I will Well, well, thank thank you for the for the great questions and and I was honored to to speak to everyone. Thank you.\n\nThank you. Cool. Do we"},"languages":["en"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vLC5W53Fsyg"},{"id":"code-conference-2021-09-28","type":"interview","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qc-NmQlMkik","title":"Code Conference","titles":{"en":"Code Conference","de":"Code Conference","fr":"Code Conference"},"date":"2021-09-28","summary":"On-stage interview with Kara Swisher covering the Bezos space rivalry, China and crypto, taxes and Tesla and SpaceX.","text":"[Music] we were bond is opening today it's my favorite movie so i felt like i had to do something like that anyway how you doing good how are you good what's the mood of elon today the the mood it could be anything i feel good here yeah yeah all right we have a lot to talk about right where do you want to start uh anywhere you'd like to talk all right china um cryptocurrency what they're doing uh that's my safe word by the way okay um what they're doing currency yeah cryptocurrencies yeah it'll kill any insider for later for us go ahead um cryptocurrency in china yes what they're doing around bitcoin etc and i'd like to pivot to what the us is going to do around regulation uh well it it it would appear that they don't love cryptocurrency appear it appears\n\nyeah yeah it's subtle but uh [Laughter] yeah you're hinting in that direction um yeah so um i can't speak to exactly why they don't like it that much but people can speculate for various reasons um china by the way it has is having some significant uh electricity generation issues yeah so actually i think part of it may actually be due to uh electricity shortages in many parts of china so a lot of south south china right now is having random um power outages uh because the power demand is higher than expected um so crypto mining might be playing a role in that i'm not sure um this is further than that yes wasn't that um well i suppose uh cryptocurrency is fundamentally aimed at um reducing the power of a centralized government yes it is and that they\n\nthey don't like that okay that's my guess okay so what do you think's going to happen i mean maybe the audience has years went up it didn't matter after they announced this they went down and they went up you can change the shares of cryptocurrency more than china can is that a good thing um [Music] if it goes up i suppose it is um but uh i mean i think there's an always long-term role for for crypto um and um you know really people should think of any kind of uh money system whether it's historic value or currency as as really a form of information um if you apply information theory to money whether it's cryptocurrency or some other form and view it in terms of you know how good is it at um you know sort of bandwidth latency uh jitter uh dropping packets\n\nuh which was you'd say like fraud is like losing packets or something on the network um and um you know it's overall security uh then i think a lot of these things just seem to just make make a lot of sense in that in that regard like any form of money has no power in and of itself except as an exchange of uh value between people uh for goods or services or to translate uh things in time like alone so is this the right thing for governments to do to take control of it is it possible i it is not possible to i think destroy crypto but it is possible for governments to slow down its advancement so what should the us government do we had gary gensler on earlier sec chairman he was calling it the wild west of finance what should they do that if anything i\n\nwould say do nothing okay they're not saying that yeah i mean i wouldn't seriously just let that play because um what what do you think governments can do i think they can like you said they can ruin it i don't think they can just slow it down i think they can stop it i don't think they can control it and therefore they may want to stop it yeah i mean i i i'm i wouldn't say that i'm some you know massive cryptocurrency expert um you know i think the there's some value in cryptocurrency i don't think it's like the sep the second coming of the messiah which we also think um you know it's uh it will hopefully reduce the uh error and latency in the money system the legacy money systems and reduce the yeah i mean just you know uh governments have a habit of\n\num editing the money database um which is like probably some ancient mainframe somewhere in virginia ryan cobol if i it's kind of bleak to think about that um but uh so you know when governments can't give the hand out of the cookie jar and edit the money database there's probably some value to that okay so what are you you're saying you're not an expert but you spend a lot of time tweeting about it now you tweet about a lot of things we'll get to that in a minute um but why is why that's true why is that of interest to you crypto because you become i wouldn't say the crypto messiah but yeah that's going to be oh no um well i mean i mostly don't tweet about crypto this is a minority of small number of tweets okay so um i do know a lot about the money\n\nsystem and payments and how it actually works as opposed to say how economists think it works um on a practical basis just how money money is just basically the monetary system is a series of heterogeneous databases uh that uh are not real time with the exception of paypal and a few others um and engage and to reconcile on a batch basis uh you know that that may take anywhere from 24 hours to several days um and um so just it's slow that's just a lot of latency in general and uh the ach system is has basically no security um so and this has just been the it was that way when paypal started in 99 and it's uh still that way 22 years later it needs reform yeah yeah exactly um so i want to move on to um when china i want to stick with china for a second you're\n\noperating there selling there what do you make of what they're doing to the tech entrepreneurs there or the tech mobiles um well hmm where is jack ma where is china we have some means to find out i'm guessing i well uh maybe um i don't know i think there's there are there are some uh changes of put in china um i think part of this may be actually covered related in the sense that um it's been quite difficult to have in-person meetings in china and china really runs the whole system is set up to run on the basis of in-person meetings and the absence of of these meetings for the past 18 months i think has [Music] probably led to things being worse than they would be if there were more in-person meetings so i think as covert lifts and the in-person meetings\n\nreturn i think the uh i think probably there will be an increase in the in the sort of trust level and i think things will probably start heading in a more positive direction the trust level between tech and the government yeah both internally within china and uh with respect to uh people from the u.\n\ns and other countries going and visiting and meeting with officials in the chinese government now it's just it china is very much set up to work with the in-person meetings and so kobut i think has impeded that um so i think i think things will improve most likely as the in-person meetings should resume so they did these anti-trust actions because they couldn't say hello i think not all of it can be described to that but it's uh some of it can be um yeah um well we'll see i i i i suspect things will improve next year because of just better more interaction are you nervous about what you're doing there it's a big market for you it's a you operate there yeah um we've got a big factory in shanghai which is doing very well at tesla trying to tell that the\n\ntesla china team is uh doing great work and we we do well with selling in the chinese park as well as producing cars for china and for export to europe um so overall things are going pretty well frankly you're not worried about u.\n\ns china i relations it's not no not not especially right now especially all right so let's talk about space you know you had a recent um space you would send up a bunch of civilians into space you did not send yourself up uh no i've not set myself up um i suppose i will at some point but my goal is not to set myself up my goal is to open up space for humanity and ultimately set us on a path becoming a space-breaking civilization and a multi-planet species yes so you don't want to go up yourself it's near the hero there i will go at some point what do you think of the other efforts to go to suborbital civil wall suburbal is a step in the direction of orbit but so but just to put things into perspective you need about a hundred times more energy to get\n\nto orbit versus sub orbit um and then to get back from morbid you need to burn off that energy so you need a like heavy-duty heat shield because you're coming in like a meteor yes so so like orbit is roughly towards magnitude more difficult than than subway but it's still you know good to do something in space what do you think watching those uh both uh richard branson and jeff bezos doing that um i thought it was cool that they're um spending money on the advancement of space i think we ultimately want to be humanity wants to be should want to be a space-bearing civilization and out there among the stars and we want i think we really want you know i mean all these things that we see in science fiction movies and books like you know we want those to be\n\nlike real one day not always fiction right so i think it's good that people are spending their money advancing space technology so last time we talked we didn't talk a lot about space we talked about a whole bunch we talked about meat flaps which was elon's word for speaking yeah or flapping arm yeah slow tonal wheezing yes that's right when i sound like it right now that's what we sound like to a computer like whale sound slow down yeah so we can talk about space so let's talk a little bit about where you think you've advanced with what you're doing because i think you're probably the most fast forward of all these efforts yeah so with respect to spacex um let's see um i mean there's two besides uh overlooking space flight and uh providing transport\n\nfor nasa of astronauts and cargo to and from the space station which we've been doing for a while now over a decade we are we have something called starlink which is a global internet system um and this is i think gonna have some profound positive effects on the world because this star link is really designed to serve the the least served um you have 1300 satellites up right now is that correct 50 1500 and you want to put 30 000 um yeah we'll get to space pollution in a minute but explain the reasons for it yeah so in order to provide high bandwidth low latency connectivity to a large number of people you need a lot of satellites and they need to be at low earth orbit so that latency is is low the problem with satellites that are at geostationary orbit\n\nis that they are you know around 36 000 kilometers uh whereas we are at 550 kilometers so gigantic difference in latency [Music] for the starling system you could play like a competitive video game um that's latency dependent and and still be able to play it with starling um it's like browsing a terrestrial system essentially um and but starlink is really just to be clear not a threat to 5g or terrestrial fiber or anything like that it's um but it's very well suited to low to medium density regions of the earth places that where it is too expensive to trench fiber or put cells you know 5g cellular base stations and so it's really a good it kind of takes care of the the people that that just didn't get internet or either it's too too slow or too expensive\n\nor they just don't have it at all it's very well suited a space-based system for serving like the least served maybe five percent or something like that how big a part of your space business is it from your perspective i mean i think it's quite significant in that the launch side of things just just launching other people's satellites and serving the space station uh probably tops out around you know three or four billion dollars a year of revenue whereas if we can get to say three percent of global internet traffic then that that's and that's roughly a trillion dollar a year business then we can increase our revenue by order of magnitude to more like the 30 billion or something like that um and and then we can use the proceeds from that to develop the\n\nrocket technology necessary to get humanity to mars and to the moon and else elsewhere in the solar system so that's that's so then the you know so so i think sonic is is good in and of itself uh for providing uh like i said providing internet access to the the least served in the world and it's a fundamentally good thing in that respect um and also offering a little bit of competition in the cities although the you know stanley can really maybe uh serve less than five percent of people in a city it's just because of the way the the the spot beams from space are very big so um anyway it's a very nice compliment and a necessary complement to [Music] uh 5g and uh fiber um so uh and likes it will provide a revenue stream for us to develop our next generation\n\nrocket which is a starship um with starship that we're trying to achieve the a fundamental breakthrough that is the holy grail of rocketry uh that is to have a fully reusable oval rocket um this is this is extremely fundamental um with falcon 9 we have a mostly reusable rocket she recently approved it landed correct uh we've been landing for quite a while now but um so we in fact a number of our boosters are on their 10th uh reflect so we've shown that reusing the boost stage is can be done and that it is economically uh sensible to do so the difference in price between our falcon 9 competitors um in using a reusable rocket oh yeah sure um so uh it's it's really gigantic um uh without with falcon 9 we still have to uh lose the upper stage and you can\n\nthink of each stage being like the equivalent of a jet airplane so the boost age is like the big jet airplane upper stage is the small jet airplane we still throw away the small generator plane every time so [Music] falcon 9 is able to be the most competitive rocket in the world because we recover the blue stage in the fairing but that but still our best case marginal cost of launch not taking into account uh overhead allocation is about 15 million dollars per launch yeah for 15 tons to orbit that's which is quite big like spacex um over the last year or so has uh delivered about i think roughly two-thirds of all payload to orbit of earth and most of the remaining third is china and then everyone else is kind of they're in the miscellaneous um so [Music]\n\num so anyway so but we still have a it's still 15 million dollars because of the most because what's the cost differential between that and what you're aiming for yeah so um basically falcon 9 is effectively about half to a third of the cost of alternatives because of the reuse of the boost age with uh starship uh we should be able to get to the point where uh it's maybe one percent the the cost of an expendable system so that would just be a million bucks right or yeah the marginal cost of launch we think can be um it could be potentially under a million dollars so is there anybody for over a hundred tons to orbit 100 more though than 15 you said 50.\n\nyes 100 tons likely and with refinement of the design probably 150 tons so essentially it's it would be um you know uh 10 times the payload of falcon 9 uh for um 15 times lower cost so what's that happening 100 better you know it's really profound um essentially with starship it is possible uh to make the economics close for creating a self-sustaining city on mars um and a base on the moon for those who want to go there um and uh so it's really very very profound development um and that's what i'm spending most of my time on is uh driving the development of starship starships so you can go to mars or however you want civilization on mars uh civilization on mars so what's first the moon base or moon base first correct i mean the moon is close so we might\n\nas well okay yeah you might as well it's practically right there you know excuse me um you got a contract with the defense department to do a lunar lander from nasa from nasa um which is being disputed by jeff bezos yes how do you feel about that well i think i've uh expressed my thoughts on that front um you know uh if i i think he should put more of his energy into getting to orbit than lawsuits um you can't you cannot see your way to the moon okay you know how good your lawyers are yeah so why isn't he doing that i don't know i also like to make fun of his rock head you all make fun of each other's rockets i mean i think it does have a i mean it could be a different shape potentially you know [Laughter] could you explain from a technological point\n\nof view why it's that shape well um if you are only going to doing suborbital then your rocket can be sort of shorter yes [Laughter] so have you called him and said cut this get bigger or what i mean i haven't i've encouraged um him to emphasize uh getting to orbit yeah you talk to him i'm not globally [Music] so what are you going to do with the lunar lander and how do you get the moon base there yeah so [Music] starship is designed essentially as a general purpose transport system to anywhere in the solar system because it is a propulsive lander and with a propulsive lander you can land anywhere that's got a solid surface so and it's also designed for orbital refilling so you can get the starship to orbit and then send tanker flights to refill it so\n\nthat it has a tremendous delta velocity basically it can go very far from earth orbit because you can refill propellant the moon base is important because um well i think that the moon base i mean certainly there's like a lot we could learn scientifically if we had a proper laboratory on the moon about the nature of the universe and you know where we all came from in the early history of earth and that kind of thing yeah we have a science station in antarctica and we're still learning a lot from uh you know our activities in antarctica and i think we could learn uh even more on the moon um so there's a lot of a lot of value i think to having uh i think it'd be just freaking cool i mean come on it's like we gotta you know humanity let's you got to represent\n\nhere for humanity you know let's have a base on the moon but i think everyone would be like the hell yeah we got a base in the moon that's cool yeah you know um for tourism what do you think was the science science uh science uh i think like the a lot of a lot can be learned if you've got a sort of a science station on the moon like we've got a science station in antarctica and many other places um and uh i think that there's i think there is value um that shouldn't be denigrated for people who want to experience uh going to orbit or going to the moon um and you know when they do so and i think some degree vicariously we all go with them you know when and when in the poll program when they landed on the moon um yeah it was just a handful of individuals\n\non the moon but we all went with them vicariously humanity went with them like if you if you asked peter to paul of people on earth and said tell me what do you think is uh humanity's greatest achievement of the maybe ever it's like landing on the moon you know and that's inspiring i think to kids everywhere so you just brought stand up for civilians is that space tourism you're doing and by the way you have to be kind of rich to do it like from what i understand i cannot afford to go to the moon for example yeah i i mean i think i think it's got a bit more gravitas than um you know metaphorically figuratively and literally more gravitas than uh you know simply tourism it's not like going to disneyland you know it's like uh it's more profound than that\n\num so sometimes people use tourism in a sort of a negative way but um i think you know especially with the the inspiration flight i think they they really i mean they you know they filmed the whole thing in real time um you know they they shared their experiences with the world there's a really cool group of people i recommend watching the netflix uh show countdown mark pennyoff talked about it it's awesome um i i don't have anything to do with it and and the production value on the netflix countdown documentary is amazing um and you learn about the back story of the people and um it's uh it's actually super cool you know like this is for science and for saving humanity presumably yeah i think uh what tourism um i think that there's an element of tourism\n\nto it but i think you know it there's also uh you know the technology is expensive at first um you you can't just when you're trying to develop brand new technology it doesn't instantly become uh cheap and affordable and think of like cell phones and the only cell phones were were really expensive and sucked you know yeah frankly like you know usually like wall street one where you know he's walking down the beach with the shoebox size cell phone on it you know talking to this and and so just like really expensive and the tech wasn't that great but but if if some number of people didn't pay for the expensive cell phones there would not be the inexpensive cell phones that everyone can afford so thank billionaires for going into space um i mean you know\n\nuh it doesn't have to be top of your thank you list but i mean it's not um yeah i'm just saying that there's a nest when there's new technology uh it is necessarily expensive until uh you can refine the design and you can scale things up um and then you can make it more affordable um there is a common misconception that there's some with some new technology especially if it's a physical object that you can just suddenly make it cheap and available um and and um [Music] but you have to have many design iterations and you've got to scale up the production and get economies of scale like we had this argument um against tesla for for a long time because people would say like well why are you building this tesla roadster back in the day it's it's basically\n\na you know it's an expensive toy sports car for his people we're like yes it is but um there's no way we could build an affordable electric car as of this car uh any you know we just didn't have the capital we didn't have the experience and we needed to go through several technology iterations in order to get to something like the model 3.\n\nright and i actually wrote a blog about this because i knew people would be like why are you making sports class rich for rich people as though we thought there was somehow a shortage of sports cars for people or obviously not um but better you just got to you got to figure out the technology uh you got to go through multiple design like how do you make something mass market and affordable many many design iterations many many different versions of the technology a lot of hard work and then you've got to scale up the production rate so you get economies of scale and those two things are what make any given technology available to the public and basically every uh technology that we take for granted today has gone through that uh uh so the idea that you're\n\ngetting to mars will be affordable someday yes absolutely it has to be in order for it um in order for moz to be a self-sustaining civilization it has to be affordable you say that enough people need to go you know why do you want people to go when you keep saying that because you're worried about this planet are you just betting the odds are we'll either blow it up or no it'll be the day after tomorrow moving you know i i think it's really um you know if you sort of look you know uh just sort of stand back um just if you just if we just step away from our sort of antenna squabbles and say let's look at the big picture here [Music] what what set of actions can we take that maximize the probability that the future is going to be good for civilization and\n\nfor consciousness and i think we should regard consciousness on earth as delicate not uh you know just fragile um and you know what sort of actions can we do to ensure that it continues and that the scope and scale of consciousness uh expands and um and i'm i'm in favor of of expansion because like you know if we want to understand what the universe is about and and what's the meaning of life and we need to get out there and find out um and the more we expand the scope and scale of consciousness the better we will be able to understand what questions to ask about the answer that is the universe so when you get a lot of criticism say about the starling space pollution you see a lot of stories about space pollution why is elon putting so many astronomers\n\nget mad at you or with um the rockets so that you have these big expense contracts that you're doing correct first time someone's broken into the area how do you meet those criticisms this is just small potatoes well first of all with respect to the astronomers um we are in uh constant dialogue with the leading astronomers of the world um and taking great pains to ensure that um our satellites do not interfere with their telescopes um and we've um i believe at this point they are satisfied that they will not um so uh yeah we would like to retain great pains to ensure that uh the satellites do not reflect or you know uh otherwise interfere with the the telescopes including the most sensitive telescopes so um you know maybe a few sort of amateur astronomers\n\nwho aren't happy but the professional ones are are satisfied that we're taking reasonable steps to ensure that we are not standing in the way of science nor would we ever want to um and we're also looking at uh launching some uh new telescopes using starship because starship's much bigger vehicle we can launch satellites that have uh 10 times the resolution of the hubble which would be great for science and in fact we were there's an exciting program working with the seoul perimeter at berkeley on a big new space satellite um as a space telescope i should say um and i think we'll do we'll do more of those i think at the end of the day uh starship and spacex are gonna do a lot to advance uh our understanding of uh astrophysics and structure you still want\n\nto you said to me last couple times ago we talked you want to die on mars you still want to die on mars um well just not on landing right yes it's not an impact right well that would be spectacular yes but you wouldn't get to enjoy it much of you know just a second or something about a narrative for the rest yeah no well i was just asked uh do you want to die in moz and i was like well i suppose if you're going to pick earth or mars i'm like it'd be cool to like be born on earth and down moss i'm not i'm not like trying to make a beeline to mars and just you know dive or something um it's just that uh yeah i gotta pick one you're gonna die somewhere sure mars um i've interviewed a lot of astro uh i guess they're biologists they're worried about um essentially\n\nthey said you have to be under the earth a couple hundred feet no no no you get short definitely not a couple of not too much a couple hundred yeah you know you just need um first of all half the time you're shielded by this of by mars itself um that's half the radiation is just the planet shielding you and then um you want to make maybe have like i don't know three feet of dirt ish on the roof or just kind of a thick roof um they'll be fine um so so you're not worried about becoming shorter and stupider by moving to mars uh no i think we might uh become taller actually almost a little bit a little bit taller yeah because the gravity is roughly 40 out of both okay that would be good for me when you think about um but i think i do think there's like an\n\nimportant thing before if you think of the various great filters um if you feel familiar with the sort of great grateful sort of thought um you know one of the filters is do we become a space for a a multi-planet species or not um so that is at least one of the one of the great filters and we would i think it would be great to uh pass that um and have um be a multi-planet species where the the critical threshold is uh on a for a mars city if if the resupply ships from earth stop coming for for any reason whether that is civilization on earth it could be a mundane reason or could be world war iii but does mars prosper or die out and if mars is missing anything at all like the civilizational equivalent of vitamin c then it will eventually die out so you\n\nneed to get to the point where a mars city is self-sustaining even if the earth the ships from earth stop coming then you have passed the great filter or at least that particular great culture i think we should uh endeavor to pass that great filter as soon as possible [Music] he said pretty soon last time we talked yeah i mean i think we should really try hard to make it happen the century um before the end of the century you'll be pretty old i'll probably be dead yeah not on mars well i mean i'll you know pop over there when i'm old or something okay so um one of the things you're doing is a lot of government deals you're doing this lunar lander he did the rocket one um you're getting billions from 2.\n\n9 billion dollars there right well right now we're not getting anything because everything's pursued right that's right i'm sorry okay yeah but you're getting a lot of money and hopefully we'll get it right right when it's over yeah um anything right i mean what most of our launches are commercial to be clear yes i understand that but you're doing a lot of government work so what is that like working with the government i mean is that important to your business yeah i mean it's it's an important part of it's an important part of the business i mean just just very i mean bear in mind if like if you're in any industry like let's say you're a pencil manufacturer okay about 40 of your pencils are going to go to the government the government's about 40 of\n\nthe economy you know if you're a shoe manufacturer about 40 of your business is going to be with the government so you know it's to be expected that any any company is going to have uh uh most companies are going to have a percentage of business with the government state federal and local that is proportionate to the gdp uh of the government so one of the criticisms of you is you don't pay enough taxes if any um can you address that because here you are getting money from the government you obviously want to function in government uh to be able to build all kinds of things and services how do you look at that trade-off uh well i mean there was a bunch of very misleading stuff that was published uh by pro publica um and really that was some sort of trickery\n\nand really that they did themselves no good service by by doing that um uh first of all with respect to the government contracts that uh spacex wins uh our aspiration is to do the most for the least and if you look at all the contracts we've won um we've won them because we're the best price we have a better service at a lower price they weren't just handed to us i don't think they were and that's what i'm saying in fact you called me and said we finally got in after years of sort of this back slappy i think it's a great thing that isn't great absolutely i mean in the for the lunarland just taking that as one example um our bed was half the price of the blue origin lockheed bed half so for a vehicle that does basically 10 times more or eight times more\n\nbaths our price was half and nasa has a mandate to get back to the moon so we save taxpayers like three billion dollars relative to that contract um so i think that's that's a good thing with respect to my personal taxes um um i don't actually draw a salary or anything my cash compensation is basically zero um which is a good thing because income is a problem for most people and because they pay taxes on income that was the whole point of the story i think yeah yeah um so um i do have sock options um that best and so in the years that the but but i don't i basically with um tesla and spacex i just um have not really bothered to sort of take money off the table which is a common most people do they sell some of their stock and they take money off the table\n\num and for me i just like said i you know my mind will be that sort of it was it was the first in and i'll be the last out and um the success of spacex and tesla was far from assured and there are many times when it looked like the companies would and they did they skirted bankruptcy many times but i never tried to take money off the table and now this has been trying to be turned around and made into a bad thing and i this is that's messed up um so um but when my stock options uh um just before my stock options expire then i i am forced to exercise and my top marginal tax rate is 53 percent so i i don't think that's particularly low and it's going to go up next year it's like probably 57 or something can you sell yes and and i uh i am i have a bunch\n\nof options that are expiring uh early next year so i'm uh that a huge block of options will sell in q4 because i have to or they'll expire and my top marginal tax rate uh is 53 percent so you'll eventually pay a lot of taxes but massive yeah i mean basically majority of what i said will be tax i don't think it was alleging illegality is that wealthy people got to borrow against their stock uh yes they were they were saying that like somehow borrowing is a trick to get away from paying taxes but um it's more important to bear in mind that we've had a very long expansion uh in the economy maybe the longest ever and borrowing against stock is all is all sort of fun and games until you have a recession and you get the margin calls and then you go to zero\n\nwhich is which happens basically every time there's a recession um stocks don't always go up they go down yours seems to most stocks have gone up including some questionable stocks frankly are you talking about yourself i'm sorry i think are you surprised by how much it's gone up and yeah i mean i have literally gone on record and said i think bus stock price is too high in my opinion and this did nothing to stop the rise of the stock race so i don't know what am i supposed to do you know um i'm i'm not the one making a go off um so um but i think it's important to bear in mind my actual tax rate is 53 they try to make it sound like basically there's a big increase in the value of the tesla stock and then they added up they just very selectively poked\n\nthe numbers to make it sound like i was paying very low taxes but in fact my taxes are very high they're like over half um and you pay them when you're open yes and a huge amount will be paid in the next three months because of expiring options and there was like one year where i think my taxes were basically zero and the reason for that was because i had overpaid taxes the year before they forgot to mention that you didn't call them back i'm gonna call them back you have no interest in the truth oh okay all right um let me ask you a question um twitter let's finish twitter and then let's get to questions from the audience what's going on with you and twitter i am a twitter addict i say the wrong things all the time what is someone explained it to me\n\nit's very close to you saying it's your release valve this is where you feel better yeah i think i said some people some people use their hair to express themselves i use twitter do you regret any of it or not you are kind of prominent yeah i mean sure walk through when you decide to do a tweet you go no no no well i think about it for hours and i consult with my strategy team you just literally go yeah yeah or maybe i'm wasted or not approved [Laughter] me shoot myself in the foot fam now let me shoot myself a little bam yeah that describes some of my tweets yeah are you um worried about any sec involvement in your tweets going forward um what does that stand for again i mean i know the middle wood is elon's but i can't remember the other two words you\n\nneed to answer you need to answer me are you worried they're gonna say elon stop tweeting you talk about the short seller enrichment commission yeah yeah that's the new name is it yeah yeah they haven't got a particular recent tweet you did about he did one great wait about time saying time is the uh currency which i thought was beautiful time is the ultimate currency yes um no matter what resources you have you can't wind back the clock it's true yeah how rich you are yeah but then you did the biden tweet can you explain that one oh when um well yeah i mean so you know like biden held this ev summit didn't invite tesla invited gm ford chrysler and uaw navy summit on the white house um didn't mention tesla once and praised german ford for leading the\n\neva wrestling revolution so you were pissed so does sound uh maybe a little biased uh or something um so um and you know just uh it's not the friendliest administration well i'm yeah it seems to be controlled by the union somewhere like now so are you waiting to get trump back uh no [Music] would you like to be president besides yourself i would not want to be present at all sounds like no fun being president um what do you think is going to bring our country together if at all moving to mars what well i think if there was some uh moderate you know sort of sort of centrist president and i think uh that would help um you know that i think everyone just wants uh i think most people most people want a president who is just a very competent you know executive\n\nyou know not too far left not too far right and and everyone would be like i think [Music] most people would prefer that uh you know some when it comes out the election you've got two choices you're like you know maybe you don't love either choice but you gotta pick one do you think that'll happen do i think that would be what's interesting i hope so how does that begin about democracy um i'm not super worried about democracy um are you worried about democracy oh smidge what concerns you uh a lot of the dialogue is getting a little i study propaganda oh yeah it's worrisome the fact that it can't happen here it certainly can i'm a phillip roth kind of person so yeah um but we're both having a lot of children so we must believe in the future yes we have\n\nten children between us correct i believe yes you're slightly ahead but you've got a rocket um anyway i i i i i do think we there is um you know i think a lot of people think that there's too many people on the planet but i think there's in fact too few and the the possibly the single greatest risk to human civilization is the rapidly diminishing growth rate and the facts are out there for anyone to look at but a lot of people are still stuck with you know pearl uh paul illick's book population bomb and it's like uh that was a long time ago that is not the case today um and the there's a there was a massive notch uh in demographics last year because uh the birth rate plummeted and also this year so i mean if you know no no babies no humanity but you got\n\nto come from somewhere oh okay we're going to end on that we need questions from audiences there's a lot of great questions hey lana i'm ronan levy from field trip we spent a lot of time talking about outer space we want to ask you about inner space and the question specifically is do you spend time thinking about humanity's somewhat destructive tendencies before sending people to mars and specifically you've talked about the subject of dmt and curious to know what role you think psychedelics may have in addressing some of the more destructive tendencies of humanity we're going to talk about this tomorrow oh okay um i think generally uh people should be open to psychedelics yeah [Applause] so yeah clearly it's a i mean you know yeah a lot of people making\n\nlaws are kind of from a different era so i think as you know as as a new generation gets into political power i think we will see uh greater receptivity to the benefits of psychedelics humanity's tendencies right now concern you like about before we go to mars i mean humanity's tendencies i mean we are at a very peaceful moment in history um so you got to separate the sort of news headlines from the reality um i think like stephen pinker hobbit has really pointed this out like we're actually at the lowest violence per capita in his in human history um it may not seem like that but objectively those are the statistics um let's not say there's no violence or there aren't things to be improved but it's you know it's actually quite good and then so um but\n\nuh you know just like i said in the big picture-wise we i think we want to take the set of actions that maximize the probability of the future is good [Music] and that civilization continues and that the uh sort of this small candle of consciousness in the void that is humanity continues and there's not it's not the candle does not go out okay next up here hello um my name is lena i'm a student at the university of chicago and i also have a podcast called kind of sort of brown um so my question centers a little bit what you talked about concerning that you know you're building this world for not enough people yet but the people that now are here um but concerning young people how do you actually build infrastructure to make sure that you're not just building\n\nresources for people to be in mars but actually putting them in positions of power politically or educating people who don't have access to learn about space technology et cetera how do you actually teach young people and bring them and do you feel like that's your role or does it your role to just build the spaceship to mars well our primary goal is is to create the technology necessary to get people to mars in the absence of which not you know it's somewhat academic um so we wouldn't want to get to this direction from our primary mission of we we've got to make it at least possible to get it to go to mars um and we want to do so as soon as possible and make access to mars as widely available as possible as affordable as possible so that if somebody\n\nwants to go they can so that's that's our primary mission um i mean there are many good causes in the world but we got to be careful that we do not try to um take on too many uh i mean there are many noble missions but we we have to pick our battles and say okay let's just make sure we get this done um and uh because nobody else is doing it and i mean if if spacex doesn't do it i'm not sure how it will happen i think this this is uh at least right now spacex is uh the only hope so we we're going to get this done and it's far from done i mean it's got a lot long way to go um yeah i i installing in terms of providing internet internet connectivity to uh people that really don't have it or it's very expensive i think will be helpful in um empowering a lot\n\nof people who are disempowered today so i think that's a good thing too right next hi techno king um how do you respond to allegations you call him techno king yeah okay that is my formal title i found that with you gotta be respectful cara how do you respond to allegations that uh you're a living cyber genetic organism sent from the future to save us and secondly i can either confirm nor deny that he's good he's good and secondly what do you think uh the probability is that general purpose blockchains that have greater utility will eclipse the value of like a fish finished product in bitcoin i actually i'm not sure how to answer that last one um i think just generally uh public ledger stuff is good um because uh i'm a fan of open source and just and\n\njust you know uh sunlight being a great disinfectant and the more the less things occur in the dark the better um and uh you know sort of a cryptic basically i mean blockchains are [Music] just a it's a cryptographic ledger um an open you know so i think that uh there's probably a lot of things good things that could be done with that so the first question i said i could neither confirm nor deny okay right here hey elon alex heath with the verge um the questions on the self-driving beta you guys are rolling out curious why you're encouraging people to not share videos making them sign ndas just be curious no i mean there's a lot of videos being shared uh but the ndis the ndas for for the full self-driving beta i don't know um people don't seem to listen\n\nto the md i mean i'm not sure if there's uh yeah i don't know why this is in the nda we probably don't need it but people just are ignoring it anyway so i'm sure it matters all right so i'm gonna ignore this i'm going to keep getting questions let's do two hi hi alanzia yusuf from bcg could you talk a little bit about ai and robotics and you've expressed concerns in the past but you know building some as well what do you see as the issues that we do have to solve on that front well i've said for a long time i think ai safety is a really big deal and we should have some regulatory agency that is overseeing ai safety [Music] but there is not yet currently any such thing and and just generally any kind of regulatory agency done by the government will usually\n\ntakes years to put in place so um you know after [Music] the population collapse issue i think ai safety is probably the second biggest a threat to the future of civilization um and um yeah like i said i'm not quite sure what to do with it um i mean tesla is arguably world's biggest robot maker because like we have basically similar semi-autonomous cars that will ultimately be fully autonomous um and we are building a humanoid robot that will be basically like um like like the car but with legs [Music] so [Music] um and i kind of uh held off on doing that for a while because you know i i certainly don't want to hasten the ai apocalypse but clearly with look at boston dynamics and like this humanoid robots are going to happen so um they're really going\n\nto happen with or without tesla so it's like tesla i've got a little bit more i mean a lot more ability to ensure uh robotics safety and ai and i will try my best to do that what would you do no we can't do more sorry we got it quick first uh thanks for making the first car i ever loved um i love the car my wife insisted i asked this question if i got here we also have way too many children um that's probably great if there's any chance that you could put a roof rack on the x that's what she's looking for uh uh we need a roof rack uh on the x if if you can figure that out that's almost more important than going to mars um we have not figured that out i mean it's tricky because we have the fancy doors they're awesome yeah the doors are awesome but you\n\nknow if you have a roof rack like how do you stop the doors from smashing you were smart yeah thank you and the model y has a roof rack though it's not big enough for all the kids really it's seat seven not not normal kids okay what do you have separate cars for your children you eat them you want elon musk it does have a tow hitch you can tow your stuff two questions elon thanks for the plaid it's a great car um as we're all uh you know waiting for a full selfie that's awesome really it's awesome we like we might have to argue a bit about the yolk but we're getting accustomed to it it's great you know it's like something different and it it's different and people sometimes don't like the different things but how much did you put it down it's pushing\n\nyou right was it your kids my kids love the yolk so that works for them anyway really really quick look we're living in this in between time between we drive our cars ourselves and the cars drive themselves they're semi-autonomous for those of us in the industry those of us who understand something about technology about machine learning actually like it it's pretty easy it fixes my mistakes i fix its mistakes a lot in the press though about and google's position certainly is this is like the worst place to be right because people are going to get checked out and the cars are going to drive themselves into what do you think about the ml human hybrids that we're kind of you know embracing right now how long are we going to have these crossover periods\n\ni know you believe sfst is around the corner do you think this is really a problem are we going to teach people to deal with ml well i mean the transition period to new technology is always a little bumpy and but i think we published the safety stats like basically miles driven on autopilot and miles driven manually and this i mean it's an order of magnitude different so like people say oh well you're playing with the statistics i'm like listen we're just saying miles driven an autopilot mile's not driving automotive there's a 10 up back to 10 difference so i mean even if we were like we're not fiddling with statistics that's just it this is not subtle it's what i'm saying it's not subtle um the truth is that people are actually not great at driving these\n\ntwo-ton death machines you know and people get tired and they um get drunk and they get distracted and they text and they do all sorts of things they shouldn't do and then the cars that you know crash basically um and um [Music] now that now when we were embarking on the autonomy front uh someone told me i think that's quite true which is even if you for argument's sake uh reduce fatalities by 90 percent with autonomy um the 10 that do die uh with autonomy are still going to sue you right the 90 that are living don't even know that that's the reason they're alive um nonetheless um [Music] i've had many conversations with the tesla autopilot full self driving team who are just an outstanding group of people um and saying like listen guys it is better to\n\n[Music] pursue like the reality of doing the right thing matters more than the perception of doing the right thing and as long as we are confident that we're doing the right thing even if we are criticized and sued and all that we should not only do the right thing and not care about simply the perception of the right thing okay last question sorry rick cutter the cloud for utilities uh thank you so much for the card work you've done with with tesla driving the ev market as we move towards more green energy utilities are getting rid of their fossil plants coal plants investing in renewables there's a difference in economic output they can deliver are you concerned at all as the growth of evs continue do you think we could have a supply chain problem with\n\nenergy down the road yeah i think that's a that's a very good question the full answer is is lengthy i'll try to give this the short version the electricity demand roughly if if we go if we if we shift um or transport to electric um then electricity demand approximately doubles maybe a little more than doubles um and this is going to create a lot of challenges with the the grid um especially for distribution to neighborhoods and this is why tesla has the product the solar roof and solar retrofit is because even if you increase sustainable power generation at the utility level you're still going to have a distribution problem where you need new high power lines near medium power lines you need to dramatically increase the size of the substations which\n\nmeans you're going to have to start knocking down houses to increase the substation size this is really unworkable unless you have uh significant local power generation at houses and this is why i think it's actually very important that um that a necessary part of the solution is local power generation on on rooms on the houses of homes very important and then of course we need large sustainable power generation developments uh primarily wind and solar [Music] but needs to be paired with battery packs for steady-state to provide continuous power and a lot of good things are happening in this regard the growth of solar in the last several years has been incredible i think it's like a 40 compound annual growth rate in in solar and uh also a big growth in\n\nwind i'm also kind of a pro-nuclear a nuclear nuclear for a nuclear [Music] and you know i'm sort of surprised by a lot of the public sentiment against nuclear and i'm not saying we should go build a whole bunch of new nuclear plants but i don't think we should shut down ones that are operating safely um and um but they did that they did this in germany for example i think that was and and then and had to create a whole bunch of coal power plants and i i don't think that was uh the right decision frankly so um yeah anyway so we're one or another though we're gonna have to have a lot more electricity generation um and this is this is primarily going to come down to solar and wind uh paired with batteries which will be our next conversation okay that's\n\nnot boring solar sounds good okay can i see one more question one time we talked a couple years ago code you said we were in a simulation this past couple of years has seemed truly up yeah it feels like a bunch of teenagers from the future are just really smoking a lot of dope and with us are we are we in a simulation i mean my heart says no and my brain says yes elon musk","textByLang":{"en":"[Music] we were bond is opening today it's my favorite movie so i felt like i had to do something like that anyway how you doing good how are you good what's the mood of elon today the the mood it could be anything i feel good here yeah yeah all right we have a lot to talk about right where do you want to start uh anywhere you'd like to talk all right china um cryptocurrency what they're doing uh that's my safe word by the way okay um what they're doing currency yeah cryptocurrencies yeah it'll kill any insider for later for us go ahead um cryptocurrency in china yes what they're doing around bitcoin etc and i'd like to pivot to what the us is going to do around regulation uh well it it it would appear that they don't love cryptocurrency appear it appears\n\nyeah yeah it's subtle but uh [Laughter] yeah you're hinting in that direction um yeah so um i can't speak to exactly why they don't like it that much but people can speculate for various reasons um china by the way it has is having some significant uh electricity generation issues yeah so actually i think part of it may actually be due to uh electricity shortages in many parts of china so a lot of south south china right now is having random um power outages uh because the power demand is higher than expected um so crypto mining might be playing a role in that i'm not sure um this is further than that yes wasn't that um well i suppose uh cryptocurrency is fundamentally aimed at um reducing the power of a centralized government yes it is and that they\n\nthey don't like that okay that's my guess okay so what do you think's going to happen i mean maybe the audience has years went up it didn't matter after they announced this they went down and they went up you can change the shares of cryptocurrency more than china can is that a good thing um [Music] if it goes up i suppose it is um but uh i mean i think there's an always long-term role for for crypto um and um you know really people should think of any kind of uh money system whether it's historic value or currency as as really a form of information um if you apply information theory to money whether it's cryptocurrency or some other form and view it in terms of you know how good is it at um you know sort of bandwidth latency uh jitter uh dropping packets\n\nuh which was you'd say like fraud is like losing packets or something on the network um and um you know it's overall security uh then i think a lot of these things just seem to just make make a lot of sense in that in that regard like any form of money has no power in and of itself except as an exchange of uh value between people uh for goods or services or to translate uh things in time like alone so is this the right thing for governments to do to take control of it is it possible i it is not possible to i think destroy crypto but it is possible for governments to slow down its advancement so what should the us government do we had gary gensler on earlier sec chairman he was calling it the wild west of finance what should they do that if anything i\n\nwould say do nothing okay they're not saying that yeah i mean i wouldn't seriously just let that play because um what what do you think governments can do i think they can like you said they can ruin it i don't think they can just slow it down i think they can stop it i don't think they can control it and therefore they may want to stop it yeah i mean i i i'm i wouldn't say that i'm some you know massive cryptocurrency expert um you know i think the there's some value in cryptocurrency i don't think it's like the sep the second coming of the messiah which we also think um you know it's uh it will hopefully reduce the uh error and latency in the money system the legacy money systems and reduce the yeah i mean just you know uh governments have a habit of\n\num editing the money database um which is like probably some ancient mainframe somewhere in virginia ryan cobol if i it's kind of bleak to think about that um but uh so you know when governments can't give the hand out of the cookie jar and edit the money database there's probably some value to that okay so what are you you're saying you're not an expert but you spend a lot of time tweeting about it now you tweet about a lot of things we'll get to that in a minute um but why is why that's true why is that of interest to you crypto because you become i wouldn't say the crypto messiah but yeah that's going to be oh no um well i mean i mostly don't tweet about crypto this is a minority of small number of tweets okay so um i do know a lot about the money\n\nsystem and payments and how it actually works as opposed to say how economists think it works um on a practical basis just how money money is just basically the monetary system is a series of heterogeneous databases uh that uh are not real time with the exception of paypal and a few others um and engage and to reconcile on a batch basis uh you know that that may take anywhere from 24 hours to several days um and um so just it's slow that's just a lot of latency in general and uh the ach system is has basically no security um so and this has just been the it was that way when paypal started in 99 and it's uh still that way 22 years later it needs reform yeah yeah exactly um so i want to move on to um when china i want to stick with china for a second you're\n\noperating there selling there what do you make of what they're doing to the tech entrepreneurs there or the tech mobiles um well hmm where is jack ma where is china we have some means to find out i'm guessing i well uh maybe um i don't know i think there's there are there are some uh changes of put in china um i think part of this may be actually covered related in the sense that um it's been quite difficult to have in-person meetings in china and china really runs the whole system is set up to run on the basis of in-person meetings and the absence of of these meetings for the past 18 months i think has [Music] probably led to things being worse than they would be if there were more in-person meetings so i think as covert lifts and the in-person meetings\n\nreturn i think the uh i think probably there will be an increase in the in the sort of trust level and i think things will probably start heading in a more positive direction the trust level between tech and the government yeah both internally within china and uh with respect to uh people from the u.\n\ns and other countries going and visiting and meeting with officials in the chinese government now it's just it china is very much set up to work with the in-person meetings and so kobut i think has impeded that um so i think i think things will improve most likely as the in-person meetings should resume so they did these anti-trust actions because they couldn't say hello i think not all of it can be described to that but it's uh some of it can be um yeah um well we'll see i i i i suspect things will improve next year because of just better more interaction are you nervous about what you're doing there it's a big market for you it's a you operate there yeah um we've got a big factory in shanghai which is doing very well at tesla trying to tell that the\n\ntesla china team is uh doing great work and we we do well with selling in the chinese park as well as producing cars for china and for export to europe um so overall things are going pretty well frankly you're not worried about u.\n\ns china i relations it's not no not not especially right now especially all right so let's talk about space you know you had a recent um space you would send up a bunch of civilians into space you did not send yourself up uh no i've not set myself up um i suppose i will at some point but my goal is not to set myself up my goal is to open up space for humanity and ultimately set us on a path becoming a space-breaking civilization and a multi-planet species yes so you don't want to go up yourself it's near the hero there i will go at some point what do you think of the other efforts to go to suborbital civil wall suburbal is a step in the direction of orbit but so but just to put things into perspective you need about a hundred times more energy to get\n\nto orbit versus sub orbit um and then to get back from morbid you need to burn off that energy so you need a like heavy-duty heat shield because you're coming in like a meteor yes so so like orbit is roughly towards magnitude more difficult than than subway but it's still you know good to do something in space what do you think watching those uh both uh richard branson and jeff bezos doing that um i thought it was cool that they're um spending money on the advancement of space i think we ultimately want to be humanity wants to be should want to be a space-bearing civilization and out there among the stars and we want i think we really want you know i mean all these things that we see in science fiction movies and books like you know we want those to be\n\nlike real one day not always fiction right so i think it's good that people are spending their money advancing space technology so last time we talked we didn't talk a lot about space we talked about a whole bunch we talked about meat flaps which was elon's word for speaking yeah or flapping arm yeah slow tonal wheezing yes that's right when i sound like it right now that's what we sound like to a computer like whale sound slow down yeah so we can talk about space so let's talk a little bit about where you think you've advanced with what you're doing because i think you're probably the most fast forward of all these efforts yeah so with respect to spacex um let's see um i mean there's two besides uh overlooking space flight and uh providing transport\n\nfor nasa of astronauts and cargo to and from the space station which we've been doing for a while now over a decade we are we have something called starlink which is a global internet system um and this is i think gonna have some profound positive effects on the world because this star link is really designed to serve the the least served um you have 1300 satellites up right now is that correct 50 1500 and you want to put 30 000 um yeah we'll get to space pollution in a minute but explain the reasons for it yeah so in order to provide high bandwidth low latency connectivity to a large number of people you need a lot of satellites and they need to be at low earth orbit so that latency is is low the problem with satellites that are at geostationary orbit\n\nis that they are you know around 36 000 kilometers uh whereas we are at 550 kilometers so gigantic difference in latency [Music] for the starling system you could play like a competitive video game um that's latency dependent and and still be able to play it with starling um it's like browsing a terrestrial system essentially um and but starlink is really just to be clear not a threat to 5g or terrestrial fiber or anything like that it's um but it's very well suited to low to medium density regions of the earth places that where it is too expensive to trench fiber or put cells you know 5g cellular base stations and so it's really a good it kind of takes care of the the people that that just didn't get internet or either it's too too slow or too expensive\n\nor they just don't have it at all it's very well suited a space-based system for serving like the least served maybe five percent or something like that how big a part of your space business is it from your perspective i mean i think it's quite significant in that the launch side of things just just launching other people's satellites and serving the space station uh probably tops out around you know three or four billion dollars a year of revenue whereas if we can get to say three percent of global internet traffic then that that's and that's roughly a trillion dollar a year business then we can increase our revenue by order of magnitude to more like the 30 billion or something like that um and and then we can use the proceeds from that to develop the\n\nrocket technology necessary to get humanity to mars and to the moon and else elsewhere in the solar system so that's that's so then the you know so so i think sonic is is good in and of itself uh for providing uh like i said providing internet access to the the least served in the world and it's a fundamentally good thing in that respect um and also offering a little bit of competition in the cities although the you know stanley can really maybe uh serve less than five percent of people in a city it's just because of the way the the the spot beams from space are very big so um anyway it's a very nice compliment and a necessary complement to [Music] uh 5g and uh fiber um so uh and likes it will provide a revenue stream for us to develop our next generation\n\nrocket which is a starship um with starship that we're trying to achieve the a fundamental breakthrough that is the holy grail of rocketry uh that is to have a fully reusable oval rocket um this is this is extremely fundamental um with falcon 9 we have a mostly reusable rocket she recently approved it landed correct uh we've been landing for quite a while now but um so we in fact a number of our boosters are on their 10th uh reflect so we've shown that reusing the boost stage is can be done and that it is economically uh sensible to do so the difference in price between our falcon 9 competitors um in using a reusable rocket oh yeah sure um so uh it's it's really gigantic um uh without with falcon 9 we still have to uh lose the upper stage and you can\n\nthink of each stage being like the equivalent of a jet airplane so the boost age is like the big jet airplane upper stage is the small jet airplane we still throw away the small generator plane every time so [Music] falcon 9 is able to be the most competitive rocket in the world because we recover the blue stage in the fairing but that but still our best case marginal cost of launch not taking into account uh overhead allocation is about 15 million dollars per launch yeah for 15 tons to orbit that's which is quite big like spacex um over the last year or so has uh delivered about i think roughly two-thirds of all payload to orbit of earth and most of the remaining third is china and then everyone else is kind of they're in the miscellaneous um so [Music]\n\num so anyway so but we still have a it's still 15 million dollars because of the most because what's the cost differential between that and what you're aiming for yeah so um basically falcon 9 is effectively about half to a third of the cost of alternatives because of the reuse of the boost age with uh starship uh we should be able to get to the point where uh it's maybe one percent the the cost of an expendable system so that would just be a million bucks right or yeah the marginal cost of launch we think can be um it could be potentially under a million dollars so is there anybody for over a hundred tons to orbit 100 more though than 15 you said 50.\n\nyes 100 tons likely and with refinement of the design probably 150 tons so essentially it's it would be um you know uh 10 times the payload of falcon 9 uh for um 15 times lower cost so what's that happening 100 better you know it's really profound um essentially with starship it is possible uh to make the economics close for creating a self-sustaining city on mars um and a base on the moon for those who want to go there um and uh so it's really very very profound development um and that's what i'm spending most of my time on is uh driving the development of starship starships so you can go to mars or however you want civilization on mars uh civilization on mars so what's first the moon base or moon base first correct i mean the moon is close so we might\n\nas well okay yeah you might as well it's practically right there you know excuse me um you got a contract with the defense department to do a lunar lander from nasa from nasa um which is being disputed by jeff bezos yes how do you feel about that well i think i've uh expressed my thoughts on that front um you know uh if i i think he should put more of his energy into getting to orbit than lawsuits um you can't you cannot see your way to the moon okay you know how good your lawyers are yeah so why isn't he doing that i don't know i also like to make fun of his rock head you all make fun of each other's rockets i mean i think it does have a i mean it could be a different shape potentially you know [Laughter] could you explain from a technological point\n\nof view why it's that shape well um if you are only going to doing suborbital then your rocket can be sort of shorter yes [Laughter] so have you called him and said cut this get bigger or what i mean i haven't i've encouraged um him to emphasize uh getting to orbit yeah you talk to him i'm not globally [Music] so what are you going to do with the lunar lander and how do you get the moon base there yeah so [Music] starship is designed essentially as a general purpose transport system to anywhere in the solar system because it is a propulsive lander and with a propulsive lander you can land anywhere that's got a solid surface so and it's also designed for orbital refilling so you can get the starship to orbit and then send tanker flights to refill it so\n\nthat it has a tremendous delta velocity basically it can go very far from earth orbit because you can refill propellant the moon base is important because um well i think that the moon base i mean certainly there's like a lot we could learn scientifically if we had a proper laboratory on the moon about the nature of the universe and you know where we all came from in the early history of earth and that kind of thing yeah we have a science station in antarctica and we're still learning a lot from uh you know our activities in antarctica and i think we could learn uh even more on the moon um so there's a lot of a lot of value i think to having uh i think it'd be just freaking cool i mean come on it's like we gotta you know humanity let's you got to represent\n\nhere for humanity you know let's have a base on the moon but i think everyone would be like the hell yeah we got a base in the moon that's cool yeah you know um for tourism what do you think was the science science uh science uh i think like the a lot of a lot can be learned if you've got a sort of a science station on the moon like we've got a science station in antarctica and many other places um and uh i think that there's i think there is value um that shouldn't be denigrated for people who want to experience uh going to orbit or going to the moon um and you know when they do so and i think some degree vicariously we all go with them you know when and when in the poll program when they landed on the moon um yeah it was just a handful of individuals\n\non the moon but we all went with them vicariously humanity went with them like if you if you asked peter to paul of people on earth and said tell me what do you think is uh humanity's greatest achievement of the maybe ever it's like landing on the moon you know and that's inspiring i think to kids everywhere so you just brought stand up for civilians is that space tourism you're doing and by the way you have to be kind of rich to do it like from what i understand i cannot afford to go to the moon for example yeah i i mean i think i think it's got a bit more gravitas than um you know metaphorically figuratively and literally more gravitas than uh you know simply tourism it's not like going to disneyland you know it's like uh it's more profound than that\n\num so sometimes people use tourism in a sort of a negative way but um i think you know especially with the the inspiration flight i think they they really i mean they you know they filmed the whole thing in real time um you know they they shared their experiences with the world there's a really cool group of people i recommend watching the netflix uh show countdown mark pennyoff talked about it it's awesome um i i don't have anything to do with it and and the production value on the netflix countdown documentary is amazing um and you learn about the back story of the people and um it's uh it's actually super cool you know like this is for science and for saving humanity presumably yeah i think uh what tourism um i think that there's an element of tourism\n\nto it but i think you know it there's also uh you know the technology is expensive at first um you you can't just when you're trying to develop brand new technology it doesn't instantly become uh cheap and affordable and think of like cell phones and the only cell phones were were really expensive and sucked you know yeah frankly like you know usually like wall street one where you know he's walking down the beach with the shoebox size cell phone on it you know talking to this and and so just like really expensive and the tech wasn't that great but but if if some number of people didn't pay for the expensive cell phones there would not be the inexpensive cell phones that everyone can afford so thank billionaires for going into space um i mean you know\n\nuh it doesn't have to be top of your thank you list but i mean it's not um yeah i'm just saying that there's a nest when there's new technology uh it is necessarily expensive until uh you can refine the design and you can scale things up um and then you can make it more affordable um there is a common misconception that there's some with some new technology especially if it's a physical object that you can just suddenly make it cheap and available um and and um [Music] but you have to have many design iterations and you've got to scale up the production and get economies of scale like we had this argument um against tesla for for a long time because people would say like well why are you building this tesla roadster back in the day it's it's basically\n\na you know it's an expensive toy sports car for his people we're like yes it is but um there's no way we could build an affordable electric car as of this car uh any you know we just didn't have the capital we didn't have the experience and we needed to go through several technology iterations in order to get to something like the model 3.\n\nright and i actually wrote a blog about this because i knew people would be like why are you making sports class rich for rich people as though we thought there was somehow a shortage of sports cars for people or obviously not um but better you just got to you got to figure out the technology uh you got to go through multiple design like how do you make something mass market and affordable many many design iterations many many different versions of the technology a lot of hard work and then you've got to scale up the production rate so you get economies of scale and those two things are what make any given technology available to the public and basically every uh technology that we take for granted today has gone through that uh uh so the idea that you're\n\ngetting to mars will be affordable someday yes absolutely it has to be in order for it um in order for moz to be a self-sustaining civilization it has to be affordable you say that enough people need to go you know why do you want people to go when you keep saying that because you're worried about this planet are you just betting the odds are we'll either blow it up or no it'll be the day after tomorrow moving you know i i think it's really um you know if you sort of look you know uh just sort of stand back um just if you just if we just step away from our sort of antenna squabbles and say let's look at the big picture here [Music] what what set of actions can we take that maximize the probability that the future is going to be good for civilization and\n\nfor consciousness and i think we should regard consciousness on earth as delicate not uh you know just fragile um and you know what sort of actions can we do to ensure that it continues and that the scope and scale of consciousness uh expands and um and i'm i'm in favor of of expansion because like you know if we want to understand what the universe is about and and what's the meaning of life and we need to get out there and find out um and the more we expand the scope and scale of consciousness the better we will be able to understand what questions to ask about the answer that is the universe so when you get a lot of criticism say about the starling space pollution you see a lot of stories about space pollution why is elon putting so many astronomers\n\nget mad at you or with um the rockets so that you have these big expense contracts that you're doing correct first time someone's broken into the area how do you meet those criticisms this is just small potatoes well first of all with respect to the astronomers um we are in uh constant dialogue with the leading astronomers of the world um and taking great pains to ensure that um our satellites do not interfere with their telescopes um and we've um i believe at this point they are satisfied that they will not um so uh yeah we would like to retain great pains to ensure that uh the satellites do not reflect or you know uh otherwise interfere with the the telescopes including the most sensitive telescopes so um you know maybe a few sort of amateur astronomers\n\nwho aren't happy but the professional ones are are satisfied that we're taking reasonable steps to ensure that we are not standing in the way of science nor would we ever want to um and we're also looking at uh launching some uh new telescopes using starship because starship's much bigger vehicle we can launch satellites that have uh 10 times the resolution of the hubble which would be great for science and in fact we were there's an exciting program working with the seoul perimeter at berkeley on a big new space satellite um as a space telescope i should say um and i think we'll do we'll do more of those i think at the end of the day uh starship and spacex are gonna do a lot to advance uh our understanding of uh astrophysics and structure you still want\n\nto you said to me last couple times ago we talked you want to die on mars you still want to die on mars um well just not on landing right yes it's not an impact right well that would be spectacular yes but you wouldn't get to enjoy it much of you know just a second or something about a narrative for the rest yeah no well i was just asked uh do you want to die in moz and i was like well i suppose if you're going to pick earth or mars i'm like it'd be cool to like be born on earth and down moss i'm not i'm not like trying to make a beeline to mars and just you know dive or something um it's just that uh yeah i gotta pick one you're gonna die somewhere sure mars um i've interviewed a lot of astro uh i guess they're biologists they're worried about um essentially\n\nthey said you have to be under the earth a couple hundred feet no no no you get short definitely not a couple of not too much a couple hundred yeah you know you just need um first of all half the time you're shielded by this of by mars itself um that's half the radiation is just the planet shielding you and then um you want to make maybe have like i don't know three feet of dirt ish on the roof or just kind of a thick roof um they'll be fine um so so you're not worried about becoming shorter and stupider by moving to mars uh no i think we might uh become taller actually almost a little bit a little bit taller yeah because the gravity is roughly 40 out of both okay that would be good for me when you think about um but i think i do think there's like an\n\nimportant thing before if you think of the various great filters um if you feel familiar with the sort of great grateful sort of thought um you know one of the filters is do we become a space for a a multi-planet species or not um so that is at least one of the one of the great filters and we would i think it would be great to uh pass that um and have um be a multi-planet species where the the critical threshold is uh on a for a mars city if if the resupply ships from earth stop coming for for any reason whether that is civilization on earth it could be a mundane reason or could be world war iii but does mars prosper or die out and if mars is missing anything at all like the civilizational equivalent of vitamin c then it will eventually die out so you\n\nneed to get to the point where a mars city is self-sustaining even if the earth the ships from earth stop coming then you have passed the great filter or at least that particular great culture i think we should uh endeavor to pass that great filter as soon as possible [Music] he said pretty soon last time we talked yeah i mean i think we should really try hard to make it happen the century um before the end of the century you'll be pretty old i'll probably be dead yeah not on mars well i mean i'll you know pop over there when i'm old or something okay so um one of the things you're doing is a lot of government deals you're doing this lunar lander he did the rocket one um you're getting billions from 2.\n\n9 billion dollars there right well right now we're not getting anything because everything's pursued right that's right i'm sorry okay yeah but you're getting a lot of money and hopefully we'll get it right right when it's over yeah um anything right i mean what most of our launches are commercial to be clear yes i understand that but you're doing a lot of government work so what is that like working with the government i mean is that important to your business yeah i mean it's it's an important part of it's an important part of the business i mean just just very i mean bear in mind if like if you're in any industry like let's say you're a pencil manufacturer okay about 40 of your pencils are going to go to the government the government's about 40 of\n\nthe economy you know if you're a shoe manufacturer about 40 of your business is going to be with the government so you know it's to be expected that any any company is going to have uh uh most companies are going to have a percentage of business with the government state federal and local that is proportionate to the gdp uh of the government so one of the criticisms of you is you don't pay enough taxes if any um can you address that because here you are getting money from the government you obviously want to function in government uh to be able to build all kinds of things and services how do you look at that trade-off uh well i mean there was a bunch of very misleading stuff that was published uh by pro publica um and really that was some sort of trickery\n\nand really that they did themselves no good service by by doing that um uh first of all with respect to the government contracts that uh spacex wins uh our aspiration is to do the most for the least and if you look at all the contracts we've won um we've won them because we're the best price we have a better service at a lower price they weren't just handed to us i don't think they were and that's what i'm saying in fact you called me and said we finally got in after years of sort of this back slappy i think it's a great thing that isn't great absolutely i mean in the for the lunarland just taking that as one example um our bed was half the price of the blue origin lockheed bed half so for a vehicle that does basically 10 times more or eight times more\n\nbaths our price was half and nasa has a mandate to get back to the moon so we save taxpayers like three billion dollars relative to that contract um so i think that's that's a good thing with respect to my personal taxes um um i don't actually draw a salary or anything my cash compensation is basically zero um which is a good thing because income is a problem for most people and because they pay taxes on income that was the whole point of the story i think yeah yeah um so um i do have sock options um that best and so in the years that the but but i don't i basically with um tesla and spacex i just um have not really bothered to sort of take money off the table which is a common most people do they sell some of their stock and they take money off the table\n\num and for me i just like said i you know my mind will be that sort of it was it was the first in and i'll be the last out and um the success of spacex and tesla was far from assured and there are many times when it looked like the companies would and they did they skirted bankruptcy many times but i never tried to take money off the table and now this has been trying to be turned around and made into a bad thing and i this is that's messed up um so um but when my stock options uh um just before my stock options expire then i i am forced to exercise and my top marginal tax rate is 53 percent so i i don't think that's particularly low and it's going to go up next year it's like probably 57 or something can you sell yes and and i uh i am i have a bunch\n\nof options that are expiring uh early next year so i'm uh that a huge block of options will sell in q4 because i have to or they'll expire and my top marginal tax rate uh is 53 percent so you'll eventually pay a lot of taxes but massive yeah i mean basically majority of what i said will be tax i don't think it was alleging illegality is that wealthy people got to borrow against their stock uh yes they were they were saying that like somehow borrowing is a trick to get away from paying taxes but um it's more important to bear in mind that we've had a very long expansion uh in the economy maybe the longest ever and borrowing against stock is all is all sort of fun and games until you have a recession and you get the margin calls and then you go to zero\n\nwhich is which happens basically every time there's a recession um stocks don't always go up they go down yours seems to most stocks have gone up including some questionable stocks frankly are you talking about yourself i'm sorry i think are you surprised by how much it's gone up and yeah i mean i have literally gone on record and said i think bus stock price is too high in my opinion and this did nothing to stop the rise of the stock race so i don't know what am i supposed to do you know um i'm i'm not the one making a go off um so um but i think it's important to bear in mind my actual tax rate is 53 they try to make it sound like basically there's a big increase in the value of the tesla stock and then they added up they just very selectively poked\n\nthe numbers to make it sound like i was paying very low taxes but in fact my taxes are very high they're like over half um and you pay them when you're open yes and a huge amount will be paid in the next three months because of expiring options and there was like one year where i think my taxes were basically zero and the reason for that was because i had overpaid taxes the year before they forgot to mention that you didn't call them back i'm gonna call them back you have no interest in the truth oh okay all right um let me ask you a question um twitter let's finish twitter and then let's get to questions from the audience what's going on with you and twitter i am a twitter addict i say the wrong things all the time what is someone explained it to me\n\nit's very close to you saying it's your release valve this is where you feel better yeah i think i said some people some people use their hair to express themselves i use twitter do you regret any of it or not you are kind of prominent yeah i mean sure walk through when you decide to do a tweet you go no no no well i think about it for hours and i consult with my strategy team you just literally go yeah yeah or maybe i'm wasted or not approved [Laughter] me shoot myself in the foot fam now let me shoot myself a little bam yeah that describes some of my tweets yeah are you um worried about any sec involvement in your tweets going forward um what does that stand for again i mean i know the middle wood is elon's but i can't remember the other two words you\n\nneed to answer you need to answer me are you worried they're gonna say elon stop tweeting you talk about the short seller enrichment commission yeah yeah that's the new name is it yeah yeah they haven't got a particular recent tweet you did about he did one great wait about time saying time is the uh currency which i thought was beautiful time is the ultimate currency yes um no matter what resources you have you can't wind back the clock it's true yeah how rich you are yeah but then you did the biden tweet can you explain that one oh when um well yeah i mean so you know like biden held this ev summit didn't invite tesla invited gm ford chrysler and uaw navy summit on the white house um didn't mention tesla once and praised german ford for leading the\n\neva wrestling revolution so you were pissed so does sound uh maybe a little biased uh or something um so um and you know just uh it's not the friendliest administration well i'm yeah it seems to be controlled by the union somewhere like now so are you waiting to get trump back uh no [Music] would you like to be president besides yourself i would not want to be present at all sounds like no fun being president um what do you think is going to bring our country together if at all moving to mars what well i think if there was some uh moderate you know sort of sort of centrist president and i think uh that would help um you know that i think everyone just wants uh i think most people most people want a president who is just a very competent you know executive\n\nyou know not too far left not too far right and and everyone would be like i think [Music] most people would prefer that uh you know some when it comes out the election you've got two choices you're like you know maybe you don't love either choice but you gotta pick one do you think that'll happen do i think that would be what's interesting i hope so how does that begin about democracy um i'm not super worried about democracy um are you worried about democracy oh smidge what concerns you uh a lot of the dialogue is getting a little i study propaganda oh yeah it's worrisome the fact that it can't happen here it certainly can i'm a phillip roth kind of person so yeah um but we're both having a lot of children so we must believe in the future yes we have\n\nten children between us correct i believe yes you're slightly ahead but you've got a rocket um anyway i i i i i do think we there is um you know i think a lot of people think that there's too many people on the planet but i think there's in fact too few and the the possibly the single greatest risk to human civilization is the rapidly diminishing growth rate and the facts are out there for anyone to look at but a lot of people are still stuck with you know pearl uh paul illick's book population bomb and it's like uh that was a long time ago that is not the case today um and the there's a there was a massive notch uh in demographics last year because uh the birth rate plummeted and also this year so i mean if you know no no babies no humanity but you got\n\nto come from somewhere oh okay we're going to end on that we need questions from audiences there's a lot of great questions hey lana i'm ronan levy from field trip we spent a lot of time talking about outer space we want to ask you about inner space and the question specifically is do you spend time thinking about humanity's somewhat destructive tendencies before sending people to mars and specifically you've talked about the subject of dmt and curious to know what role you think psychedelics may have in addressing some of the more destructive tendencies of humanity we're going to talk about this tomorrow oh okay um i think generally uh people should be open to psychedelics yeah [Applause] so yeah clearly it's a i mean you know yeah a lot of people making\n\nlaws are kind of from a different era so i think as you know as as a new generation gets into political power i think we will see uh greater receptivity to the benefits of psychedelics humanity's tendencies right now concern you like about before we go to mars i mean humanity's tendencies i mean we are at a very peaceful moment in history um so you got to separate the sort of news headlines from the reality um i think like stephen pinker hobbit has really pointed this out like we're actually at the lowest violence per capita in his in human history um it may not seem like that but objectively those are the statistics um let's not say there's no violence or there aren't things to be improved but it's you know it's actually quite good and then so um but\n\nuh you know just like i said in the big picture-wise we i think we want to take the set of actions that maximize the probability of the future is good [Music] and that civilization continues and that the uh sort of this small candle of consciousness in the void that is humanity continues and there's not it's not the candle does not go out okay next up here hello um my name is lena i'm a student at the university of chicago and i also have a podcast called kind of sort of brown um so my question centers a little bit what you talked about concerning that you know you're building this world for not enough people yet but the people that now are here um but concerning young people how do you actually build infrastructure to make sure that you're not just building\n\nresources for people to be in mars but actually putting them in positions of power politically or educating people who don't have access to learn about space technology et cetera how do you actually teach young people and bring them and do you feel like that's your role or does it your role to just build the spaceship to mars well our primary goal is is to create the technology necessary to get people to mars in the absence of which not you know it's somewhat academic um so we wouldn't want to get to this direction from our primary mission of we we've got to make it at least possible to get it to go to mars um and we want to do so as soon as possible and make access to mars as widely available as possible as affordable as possible so that if somebody\n\nwants to go they can so that's that's our primary mission um i mean there are many good causes in the world but we got to be careful that we do not try to um take on too many uh i mean there are many noble missions but we we have to pick our battles and say okay let's just make sure we get this done um and uh because nobody else is doing it and i mean if if spacex doesn't do it i'm not sure how it will happen i think this this is uh at least right now spacex is uh the only hope so we we're going to get this done and it's far from done i mean it's got a lot long way to go um yeah i i installing in terms of providing internet internet connectivity to uh people that really don't have it or it's very expensive i think will be helpful in um empowering a lot\n\nof people who are disempowered today so i think that's a good thing too right next hi techno king um how do you respond to allegations you call him techno king yeah okay that is my formal title i found that with you gotta be respectful cara how do you respond to allegations that uh you're a living cyber genetic organism sent from the future to save us and secondly i can either confirm nor deny that he's good he's good and secondly what do you think uh the probability is that general purpose blockchains that have greater utility will eclipse the value of like a fish finished product in bitcoin i actually i'm not sure how to answer that last one um i think just generally uh public ledger stuff is good um because uh i'm a fan of open source and just and\n\njust you know uh sunlight being a great disinfectant and the more the less things occur in the dark the better um and uh you know sort of a cryptic basically i mean blockchains are [Music] just a it's a cryptographic ledger um an open you know so i think that uh there's probably a lot of things good things that could be done with that so the first question i said i could neither confirm nor deny okay right here hey elon alex heath with the verge um the questions on the self-driving beta you guys are rolling out curious why you're encouraging people to not share videos making them sign ndas just be curious no i mean there's a lot of videos being shared uh but the ndis the ndas for for the full self-driving beta i don't know um people don't seem to listen\n\nto the md i mean i'm not sure if there's uh yeah i don't know why this is in the nda we probably don't need it but people just are ignoring it anyway so i'm sure it matters all right so i'm gonna ignore this i'm going to keep getting questions let's do two hi hi alanzia yusuf from bcg could you talk a little bit about ai and robotics and you've expressed concerns in the past but you know building some as well what do you see as the issues that we do have to solve on that front well i've said for a long time i think ai safety is a really big deal and we should have some regulatory agency that is overseeing ai safety [Music] but there is not yet currently any such thing and and just generally any kind of regulatory agency done by the government will usually\n\ntakes years to put in place so um you know after [Music] the population collapse issue i think ai safety is probably the second biggest a threat to the future of civilization um and um yeah like i said i'm not quite sure what to do with it um i mean tesla is arguably world's biggest robot maker because like we have basically similar semi-autonomous cars that will ultimately be fully autonomous um and we are building a humanoid robot that will be basically like um like like the car but with legs [Music] so [Music] um and i kind of uh held off on doing that for a while because you know i i certainly don't want to hasten the ai apocalypse but clearly with look at boston dynamics and like this humanoid robots are going to happen so um they're really going\n\nto happen with or without tesla so it's like tesla i've got a little bit more i mean a lot more ability to ensure uh robotics safety and ai and i will try my best to do that what would you do no we can't do more sorry we got it quick first uh thanks for making the first car i ever loved um i love the car my wife insisted i asked this question if i got here we also have way too many children um that's probably great if there's any chance that you could put a roof rack on the x that's what she's looking for uh uh we need a roof rack uh on the x if if you can figure that out that's almost more important than going to mars um we have not figured that out i mean it's tricky because we have the fancy doors they're awesome yeah the doors are awesome but you\n\nknow if you have a roof rack like how do you stop the doors from smashing you were smart yeah thank you and the model y has a roof rack though it's not big enough for all the kids really it's seat seven not not normal kids okay what do you have separate cars for your children you eat them you want elon musk it does have a tow hitch you can tow your stuff two questions elon thanks for the plaid it's a great car um as we're all uh you know waiting for a full selfie that's awesome really it's awesome we like we might have to argue a bit about the yolk but we're getting accustomed to it it's great you know it's like something different and it it's different and people sometimes don't like the different things but how much did you put it down it's pushing\n\nyou right was it your kids my kids love the yolk so that works for them anyway really really quick look we're living in this in between time between we drive our cars ourselves and the cars drive themselves they're semi-autonomous for those of us in the industry those of us who understand something about technology about machine learning actually like it it's pretty easy it fixes my mistakes i fix its mistakes a lot in the press though about and google's position certainly is this is like the worst place to be right because people are going to get checked out and the cars are going to drive themselves into what do you think about the ml human hybrids that we're kind of you know embracing right now how long are we going to have these crossover periods\n\ni know you believe sfst is around the corner do you think this is really a problem are we going to teach people to deal with ml well i mean the transition period to new technology is always a little bumpy and but i think we published the safety stats like basically miles driven on autopilot and miles driven manually and this i mean it's an order of magnitude different so like people say oh well you're playing with the statistics i'm like listen we're just saying miles driven an autopilot mile's not driving automotive there's a 10 up back to 10 difference so i mean even if we were like we're not fiddling with statistics that's just it this is not subtle it's what i'm saying it's not subtle um the truth is that people are actually not great at driving these\n\ntwo-ton death machines you know and people get tired and they um get drunk and they get distracted and they text and they do all sorts of things they shouldn't do and then the cars that you know crash basically um and um [Music] now that now when we were embarking on the autonomy front uh someone told me i think that's quite true which is even if you for argument's sake uh reduce fatalities by 90 percent with autonomy um the 10 that do die uh with autonomy are still going to sue you right the 90 that are living don't even know that that's the reason they're alive um nonetheless um [Music] i've had many conversations with the tesla autopilot full self driving team who are just an outstanding group of people um and saying like listen guys it is better to\n\n[Music] pursue like the reality of doing the right thing matters more than the perception of doing the right thing and as long as we are confident that we're doing the right thing even if we are criticized and sued and all that we should not only do the right thing and not care about simply the perception of the right thing okay last question sorry rick cutter the cloud for utilities uh thank you so much for the card work you've done with with tesla driving the ev market as we move towards more green energy utilities are getting rid of their fossil plants coal plants investing in renewables there's a difference in economic output they can deliver are you concerned at all as the growth of evs continue do you think we could have a supply chain problem with\n\nenergy down the road yeah i think that's a that's a very good question the full answer is is lengthy i'll try to give this the short version the electricity demand roughly if if we go if we if we shift um or transport to electric um then electricity demand approximately doubles maybe a little more than doubles um and this is going to create a lot of challenges with the the grid um especially for distribution to neighborhoods and this is why tesla has the product the solar roof and solar retrofit is because even if you increase sustainable power generation at the utility level you're still going to have a distribution problem where you need new high power lines near medium power lines you need to dramatically increase the size of the substations which\n\nmeans you're going to have to start knocking down houses to increase the substation size this is really unworkable unless you have uh significant local power generation at houses and this is why i think it's actually very important that um that a necessary part of the solution is local power generation on on rooms on the houses of homes very important and then of course we need large sustainable power generation developments uh primarily wind and solar [Music] but needs to be paired with battery packs for steady-state to provide continuous power and a lot of good things are happening in this regard the growth of solar in the last several years has been incredible i think it's like a 40 compound annual growth rate in in solar and uh also a big growth in\n\nwind i'm also kind of a pro-nuclear a nuclear nuclear for a nuclear [Music] and you know i'm sort of surprised by a lot of the public sentiment against nuclear and i'm not saying we should go build a whole bunch of new nuclear plants but i don't think we should shut down ones that are operating safely um and um but they did that they did this in germany for example i think that was and and then and had to create a whole bunch of coal power plants and i i don't think that was uh the right decision frankly so um yeah anyway so we're one or another though we're gonna have to have a lot more electricity generation um and this is this is primarily going to come down to solar and wind uh paired with batteries which will be our next conversation okay that's\n\nnot boring solar sounds good okay can i see one more question one time we talked a couple years ago code you said we were in a simulation this past couple of years has seemed truly up yeah it feels like a bunch of teenagers from the future are just really smoking a lot of dope and with us are we are we in a simulation i mean my heart says no and my brain says yes elon musk"},"languages":["en"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qc-NmQlMkik"},{"id":"starbase-tour-with-everyday-astronaut-part-1-202","type":"interview","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t705r8ICkRw","title":"Starbase Tour with Everyday Astronaut — Part 1","titles":{"en":"Starbase Tour with Everyday Astronaut — Part 1","de":"Starbase Tour with Everyday Astronaut — Part 1","fr":"Starbase Tour with Everyday Astronaut — Part 1"},"date":"2021-07-30","summary":"Tim Dodd tours the SpaceX Starbase factory with Musk discussing Starship manufacturing, Raptor engines and design philosophy.","text":"Hi, it's me, Tim Dodd, the Everyday Astronaut. Welcome to STARBASE Texas. This is where SpaceX is building testing, and even launching their mars bound rocket Star ship. Today, I'm gonna take you inside the gates and show you things that have never been shared outside of SpaceX. First of all, we have the ultimate tour guide, Elon Musk, who answers all of my questions and gives us unbelievable insights to the rockets development.\n\nWe talked and walked around for over two hours. So I'll be cutting this up into three parts. The first two are at the Star Base factory and the last one is at the launch pad. Each section has a goldmine of valuable information. So make sure you're subscribed. You've got your notifications on and you've got your note pads ready to jot some notes.\n\nNow heads up, we talk about some pretty advanced concepts and subject matter that can be pretty intimidating on first listen, but don't worry, I've got you covered with lots of informational videos here on my channel. So perhaps if you are new to Star ship or really all of this stuff, consider watching my complete guide to Star ship, that'll be a really good overview for you for some of the things that we talk about here in this conversation.\n\nAnd I'll also be linking to some of my other videos that will help out with some of the stuff that we talk about as well. Now you might notice, we mention Soviet rocket engines quite a bit in this conversation. Maybe it's because I was wearing my new Soyuz shirt that you can get at everydayastronaunt. com/shop, or perhaps it's because I've been working on a complete history and family tree of Soviet rocket engines for almost two years now.\n\nAnd that video is currently in the works and it will be out when it's done. And one last thing, this video is broken up into sections and we have links in the description for those sections. We also will occasionally be putting up a little map, courtesy of ring Watchers on Twitter that will help you keep your bearings as we're walking around. I think that'll help quite a bit.\n\nAnd we also have an article version of kind of our conversation and some of the key points that we bring up over at everydayastronaut. com. There is a link in the description to that as well. Okay, enough talking, let's go hang out with Elon.\n\nIs it the camera? Probably with the camera, and then somebody else for the camera.\n\n[Tim] It's just camera envy at this point. He saw me with this and he's like listen- - I'll get my camera out.\n\n[Tim] Yeah, you take a video of me.\n\nSo I can take a video of this, of you guys taking the video.\n\nMake sure this is going through there. Just shoot the screen the whole time. I don't want anything else.\n\nAll right, so this is... Okay, so this is I'm being videoed here. And then the video of the video. This is the video on the video of the video.\n\nGo back there. (laughs) - So I feel like I got here maybe at about the most exciting peak of insanity.\n\nIt's definitely a very exciting time, 'cause we are in kind of a final push to complete the launch pad system, stage zero, essentially. So we're saying that the launch system, the tower and the, you know, the chopstick arms to catch the rocket are as complex as either of the stages.\n\n[Tim] Really?\n\nYeah, absolutely, if not more. We could produce boosters and ships way easier than we could make the launch site. So therefor I'll say it is harder suddenly than any single booster or ship.\n\nI think that's one of the things people don't even realize is the manufacturing out here, that's kind of one of the things that you harp on so much is how, you know, how that's so important and that's in the long scheme, the hardest part of all of this is just manufacturing.\n\nI think, currently a factory is underrated and design is overrated. So people generally think that, like this Eureka moment of like you come up with this idea and that's it, now it's good. But the design like this, literally a thousand percent, maybe 10000% more work that goes into the production system than the thing itself. So say like how much effort we put into say designing Raptor versus deciding the manufacturing system it's 10 to a 100 times more effort to design the manufacturing system than the engine.\n\n[Tim] Even of a Raptor?\n\nOh yeah, absolutely. Especially with Raptor. Quote basically the amount of effort that goes into the design rounds down to zero.\n\n[Tim] Right, right.\n\nRelative to the amount of the effort that goes into the manufacturing system. And if this was not true, I'd like 1000 Raptors please. Oh, you can't make them? Oh, okay.\n\n[Tim] Right, right.\n\nSo this is like just very fundamentally underappreciated. If people have not been in manufacturing, especially manufacturing of something that's relatively new, then they don't understand. And they think the design is the hard part, and they think production is like a copier or something like that. This is completely false.\n\n[Tim] It's definitely not as sexy as the end thing. Like, you know, the end product is very sexy and you know, that's what draws people's attention, but the whole back end of it is what makes it possible.\n\nI can't emphasize enough, I'm trying to correct the misperception that design is the hard part. It is not the hard part. There have been lots of great rocket engines designed. You've spend a lot of time looking at the Russian rocket engine designs. There's some amazing Russian rocket engine designs. They've been doing stage combustion for a long time. And they've done, I don't know, hundreds of different designs, literally.\n\nSo the hard part is not, can you design a stage combustion engine? This has been done. Now admittedly, ours is a higher pressure than before, and it is a full flow stage combustion, but that's a relatively minor increments relative to what the Russians have already done. What is super hard about Raptor is, how do we make a Raptor where the cost per ton of thrust is under a thousand dollars?\n\nYeah, I mean, we definitely don't wanna cut, the fundamental thing that needs to be fixed is the cost per ton to orbit. So things that address the cost per ton to orbit are good. If humanity will be a multi-planet species, if we get cost per ton to orbit to a point where we can afford to become a space race civilization and a multiplanar species.\n\n[Tim] Right.\n\nSo this is, at it's heart, it is a fundamentally an optimization of cost per ton to orbit and then ultimately cost per ton to the surface of Mars.\n\n[Tim] Right.\n\nWell, if you're working on getting the cost of, even when you're starting to think of it as dollars, dollar per ton of thrust, I don't know if anyone's ever considered that as a key metric. That's a new thing that I've never thought about, never considered, well, not even...\n\n[Tim] Raptor is kind of unique. And now you start also thinking about instead of thrust to weight ratio, when you have a fixed diameter and fixed circle area, you're also worried about the nozzle exit to thrust ratio as being a pretty strong consideration too.\n\nYeah, you basically end up pulling up all the area under the rocket. So for this version, we have 29 engines. There is a lot of beeping. I'm not sure having this many things beep is actually helpful.\n\n[Tim] It's a sensory overload.\n\nIt's like everything around you is crying Wolf.\n\nIf everything's in danger, nothing is danger - - And you're just got to turn it out. Yeah, exactly. So it's pretty silly, but- - [ Tim] So this is obviously the nose of booster 4.\n\n[Elon] This is basically, that's the inter stage and the fuel tank of booster 4.\n\nWhat are the little... So obviously that's where the grid fins go, right? And then what's the thing in between them?\n\nthat's basically, that's actually the Mount point. There are two. It's debatable whether this is the right design or not. In fact, it's like the whole design is wrong, just a matter of how wrong. But that's one of the load points for picking up the booster. It's just like tiny little, it looks small, but it's actually not that small, like close up it's this thing is just high in the air. Like all your sense of perspective is wrong.\n\nAnd when this lands, it has like basically the density of a beer can. An empty beer can. With like some mass, you know, with the engine is obviously- - [Tim] What is the dry mass, are you under 200 tonnes?\n\nWe should be under 200 tonnes. (machines beeping) The mass is a moving target. You often say like, what are propellant residuals when you land? That's a big deal. Like both how much margin on what you have and what are the unusable propellant. Like you can't just go to zero margin, you know? Because you're the things going to like, crater. And it should be under 200 tonnes though.\n\nBut as a rough rule of thumb, like the engines, including mountain mass are roughly two tonnes. So that's 29 engines at 58 tonnes. Then the sort of the fuel tank itself, and the oxygen tank, it's probably on the order of... Well, it's a little heavy right now. So maybe it's like 80 tonnes or so. Then you've got the inner stage, we've got the grid fins, batteries and a bunch of other things.\n\nSo that's around 20 tonnes, and then you got propellant residuals, which might be on the order of 20 tonnes too. All of that should come to, I don't know, call it 160 to 200 tonnes depending on the sort of final mass numbers. But like right now everything is too heavy, like avionics too heavy.\n\n[Tim] The avionics even?\n\nYeah.\n\n[Tim] I thought it was just a little- - I mean, it should be, but the grid fins are electrically powered so we have batteries that are energy optimized instead of power optimized. So like this grid fins only let things work for like two or three minutes. So it's very different from like an electric car, which you wanna have several hours of driving. So it is really, we need power optimized batteries, not energy optimized batteries. This is just a short term thing. So the battery mass can probably drop by maybe a factor of 10. So that's just one example.\n\n[Tim] Should we back up a little bit so there's little- - Yeah, less banging.\n\nAnd then we're trying to get that crane in here and do work.\n\n[Tim] You got a lot of people on set right now.\n\nYeah, I mean, that residuals number is a super big deal on the mass though, because the booster is designed to have 3,600 tonnes of propelling, which is an almost 80% liquid oxygen by mass, like 78%- - [Tim] 'Cause you burn at what? Is it 3,71- - 3.5, 3.7.\n\n[Tim] Okay, yeah.\n\nAnd you wanna bias in favor of oxygen because oxygen is dancer and cheaper. So in terms of improving your payload and you know, reducing cost per ton, oxygen is basically plants make it for free and plankton. So it's basically like electricity cost of separation and distillation.\n\n[Tim] Right. Now, remind me though. Is it like, as far as the ratio goes, fuel OF ratio having a lighter molecule. Do we kind of want that to be spewing out faster or something, 'cause it's less reaction. It can be accelerated quicker or faster.\n\nYeah, There's a trade off between... Well, I mean, would you tend to get limited by is you don't wanna go too close to stoichiometric 'cause the heats basically melt your engine. So that tends to limit you on trying to go to higher OF, that's the actual thing limiting you. You tend to hit the stoichiometric melting point before you rollover on ISP.\n\n[Tim] Okay, okay.\n\nGenerally.\n\n[Tim] That makes sense.\n\n[Tim] And remind me of the grid fins. Do they still fold in?\n\nNo.\n\n[Tim] No, is that gonna be permanently that way?\n\nYeah. I have a rule just implement rigorously is the sort of five step process. First make your requirements less dumb, your requirements are definitely dumb. It does not matter who gave them to you. It's particularly dangerous, if a smart person gave you the requirements, because you might not question them enough.\n\n[Tim] Yeah, you might take it as like gospel. Like you have to do this.\n\nEveryone's wrong, no matter who you are, everyone's wrong some of the time. So mega requirements is less dumb, then try very hard to delete the part or process. This is actually very important. If you're not occasionally adding things back in, you are not leading enough. The bias tends to be very strongly towards, let's add this part of the process step in case we need it.\n\nBut you can basically make in case arguments for so many things, and for a rocket that is trying to achieve, try to be the first fully reusable rocket, there's never been a fully reusable rocket people don't understand. Like this is like the holy grail of rocketry, okay? And so you have to run a tight margins because if you don't run tight margins, you're gonna get nothing to orbit.\n\nSo you've got to delete the part or process step, it's super important. And you can like hedge your bets. So that's why the grid fins for example, do not fold down because that's a whole extra mechanism that we don't need.\n\n[Tim] And they just compensated for by having strong enough engine authority to steer it in the little atmosphere.\n\nActually our simulation show, we don't really need any extra engine authority. As long as the grid fins, you know, basically follow the flow, they're not really disturbing the flow, it's really here nor there. As long as they don't have a high angle of attack, it doesn't matter.\n\n[Tim] A few degrees or something within a degree or two.\n\nBut in any case, it's the thing we could add later. So now these grid fins are humongous. We will go see them. But they're like, I mean, like a dinosaur bear trap. It's like you've build a bear trap or a dinosaur, that's what these things look like. And if you have a whole mechanism for folding them, that's like clearly a part that we don't need. So this is a good design decision that actually I didn't come up with it, and it was like, great.\n\nBut it followed the principle of like fleet partly lead the process. I was like, great, good idea, let's not fold them. Why are we folding them, anyway? It's so random. Whatever requirement or constraint you have, it must come with a name, not a department.\n\n'Cause you can't ask the departments, you have to ask a person, and that person who's putting forward, the requirement or constraint must agree that they must take responsibility for that requirement. Otherwise you could have a requirement that basically an intern two years ago randomly came up with, off the cuff and they're not even have the company anymore. But it came from the, let's say, air loads department.\n\nThey're like, actually there's no one at our current department that currently agrees with that. This has by the way it happened several times.\n\n[Tim] So again, it could be literally thought of...\n\nthis could be, it's every department.\n\n[Tim] It can be thought of as gospel again, but it might be something that's just totally in passing. Or someone played too much Kerbel and had fins at the top of the rocket. And then it just, you know, it did this.\n\nThese things are often just way more silly than you think. Anyway, so step one, make your requirements less dumb. Step two, delete the part or process step. If you're not deleting a part or process step, at least 10% of the time, basically if you're not adding things back in 10% of the time, you're clearly not deleting enough. And then only the third step is simplify or optimize. The third step.\n\nThe reason it's the third step is 'cause it's very common, possibly the most common error of a smart engineer is to optimize the thing that should not exist. And say, well, why would you do that? Well, everyone has been trained in high school and college that you gotta answer the question, convergent logic. So you can't tell a professor, your question is dumb. You will get a bad grade. You have to ask the question.\n\nSo everyone is basically, without knowing it, they got like mental straight jacket on that is they'll work on optimizing the thing that should simply not exist. I'll give you an example for way back in the day of Falcon 1. So in the original sort of like when Tom Mueller and I were like batting around, like, okay, what should this rocket look like? I think I was literally in like Tom's kitchen or something.\n\nAnd we had like the spreadsheet and like, okay, we need to like make minimally viable rockets, like with half a tonne or whatever something like that. And then initially the spreadsheet had, we had an NOT / MMH upper stage, so sort of hypergol, upper stage kind of like a varient of the TRW LMD.\n\n[Tim] Which I think Tom worked on, right?\n\nWell, we trained Tom worked on it, he's not that old. It was like a baby, you know, (laughs). A very advanced baby. But his mentors did work on the LMD. So, you know, lunar module descent engine. Basically a pintel injector- - [Tim] That's right, 'cause that's where the pintel injector comes from.\n\nYou can also deep it and everything. Now the problem with that is, how much this NTO/MMH costs. It's super expensive, okay. It's like a rare chemical. So even if you're like, you know, if Edison and Tesla had a baby and that baby was smarter than both of them combined and said, your job is to optimize an NTO/MMH Upper stage, you're screwed, okay? So like nitrogen tetroxide or monomethyl hydrazine are super expensive and they're also toxic.\n\n[Tim] They're super nasty, yeah. It's the handling costs alone are pretty appreciable.\n\nI mean, I do think like saving safety is over-corrected on the NTO/MMH. It went from like, nobody had any protection and breathe the fumes all day to it's cyanide. And neither of those are true, it's not cyanide. You won't die. Bill Gerstenmaier told me like this story of like, when he started at NASA, they actually, I think passed around like a cup of like hydrazine so that everyone knew what hydrazine smell.\n\n[Tim] Nooo.... So like, 'cause it has like a lot more rotten egg smell or something like that. So he literally opened a cup of hydrazine and like, obviously he's still alive. So that's an example of like, don't optimize this thing that shouldn't exist. We should not have NTO/MMH upper stage.\n\nNow Dragon does have that, but that's because Dragon's got to do a lot of like nuanced firings of the Draco engines, you know, with very short pulse durations. And trying to have something that's not hypergolic is very difficult and it can be done, like, not hypergolic and not cryogenic. Now you options tend to suck. So, you know, they start going down the peroxide barking up peroxide tree or something like that. Or super esoteric mono props.\n\nAnd that's like the again back to big money.\n\n[Tim] That's step three.\n\nYeah, so exactly. Thanks to these quite laborious, sorry for the laborious explanation here, and then finally you get to step four, which is accelerate cycle time. You're moving too slowly, go faster, but don't go faster until you've worked on the other three things first. If you're digging and you're great, don't dig it faster, stop digging your grave. But you can always make me go faster. And then the final step is automate. And now I have personally made the mistake of going backwards on all five steps multiple times. So I have to repeat this.\n\n[Tim] Well on Model 3 Yes, multiple times, but on Model 3. Where literally I automated, accelerated, simplified and then deleted. But like one example I've talked about before, is like the, they were these like fiberglass mats, on top of the bottle three battery pack, they were in between the full pan and the battery.\n\nAnd it was one point Chuck in the battery pack production line and I was like, basically living on the battery factory production line, like probably fixed the line. 'Cause it was like choking the entire Model 3 production program. So the first mistake was we should not have... I like try to fix the automation, like make the robot better, make it like move faster, shorter path, increase the torque, delete the reverse 720 degrees on the bolt.\n\n'Cause that's unnecessary. Just go forward fast on a 20% rate at a 100% rate. And instead of spackeling glue on the entire battery pack, just put little dabs of glue because the fiberglass mask was sandwiched between the battery pack and the floor plan anyway. So all you need is like somebody to hold it in place until put the backpack into the car. So automating was a mistake. Then accelerating was mistake. Then optimizing was a mistake.\n\nAnd finally I said, what the hell are these mats for? And I asked the, the battery safety team, 'cause I was like, what are these mats for? I said are they for fire protection or something? They said, \"No, they are for noise and vibration. \"So you don't get that.\" And I said, \"But you're the battery department.\" And I asked a NVA noise vibration analysis team, what's it for, they said fire safety.\n\nSo literally it was like being in a Goldberg cartoon. It was like actually, I feel like I'm in a Goldberg cartoon quite frequently. So I'm like, you know, are we in like some simulation where I'm like trapped in some like Kafka esq. / Goldberg cartoon situation, but that's what it feels like a lot. So then finally, okay, great.\n\nLet's try a car with the fiberglass mats and without, and they put a microphone in both, and see if you could tell the difference. You can not. In fact, I was like, which one is which? So we just deleted them and just bypass this $2 million robot cell as a complete pile of none sense. Another mistake that has to happen in production is too much in-process testing.\n\nSo when you were first setting up a production line, you don't know where things are breaking. You don't know where things are breaking, so you'll test like working process at various steps and 'cause you wanna isolate where's the mistake occurring? So a very common issue with production lines is to not remove the end process testing after you diagnose where the problems are.\n\nSo basically if you have like a very high acceptance, like if things are getting to end of line testing and are passing, then you don't need to do in-process testing. But what used to happened is they'll be like an initial development engineering team that will be like basically debugging the production line, but then they will forget to take out the in-process testing steps.\n\nSo then what happens is the in-process tester will often choke the cycle time. Choke took the line production time. It'll be like the limiter and also have some number of false positives and false negatives. But they'll be like false positive, like then you're like rejecting good parts.\n\nSo really in volume production, if things are working well, you're really just taking a risk, will this subsystem be rejected in the training production process or at the end. And so you just really wanna move things pretty much, almost always to just test at the end line, and that's it. Maybe there's like one or two in-process steps that are hard to test an end of line, but basically remove almost everything.\n\nAnd there is another thing with battery pack where, this is so crazy. Like one of the things the battery pack has to do is to resist water ingress, so it has to be leak proof. So if you drive through deep water, water doesn't come into the battery pack you're short of battery back. You might have seen some of the videos of like people driving Teslas in like extremely flooded waters, where it's like half underwater.\n\nYeah, like there was literally a guy, I believe in Kazakhstan literally drove a model S through a submerged water tunnel. All the other cars were out and he basically steered the car with the wheels and use the wheel rotation, like a boat and drove out the tunnel. So it's important to have the battery pack resists water ingress.\n\nBut then instead of us doing a pressure test on the battery pack, we were actually pressurizing the inside of the battery pack which was the wrong direction. And the battery pack lid was glued. But, you know, we basically had resin that was not cured. And so we were just blurting out the resin, which doesn't a dumb sense. 'Cause you should actually be drawing your vacuum on the front of pack and not pressurizing it.\n\nAnd especially not pressurizing it when there's uncured resin is what's holding down the battery pack. So the pack was failing quite often on the pressurization tests, which should have been a vacuum test.\n\n[Tim] Oh, speaking of grid fins.\n\nYeah, great.\n\n[Tim] Look at that. Man, that thing is huge.\n\nYeah, that's right so it's like a- - [Tim] Dinosaur bear trap?\n\nDinosaur bear trap.\n\n[Tim] Oh, wait, that'd just a dinosaur trap wouldn't it?\n\nThis is a dinosaur trap.\n\n[Tim] That's insane, honestly.\n\nThis thing could catch a T-Rex. (laughs) - [Tim] Oh my gosh, that's crazy. And of course it's got the serrated teeth, which helping the transonic regimes, right?\n\nYeah.\n\n[Tim] Is there any other reason for the teeth other than that?\n\nNo it's just, well, it actually helps in transonic and subsonic, but the effectiveness is better if you've got a pointy , if it's more pointy basically. There is a lot of pointy-ness, Sorry, hey Marvin. So he just gets crushed under a...\n\n[Tim] Wow, so how heavy are these guys?\n\nThese are, I like... actually I don't know the number off hand, but probably at least three tonnes, I'm guessing. When I say it's like a moving target, this is not the, like I wouldn't take this to the bank. Like it's not, you know... There's quite a lot of mass we can get out of this.\n\n[Tim] It's just good enough for now. Like that's- - Yeah, it's good enough now. But like, you know, we're basically just needs to be like enough control authority to get this through the atmosphere and positioned well enough so that when the engines light, the engine can correct whatever error is left after that we couldn't take out what the grid fins.\n\n[Tim] Man, that is crazy. Those are huge. It looks like the motor will mount to the lever arm there, is that just...\n\nSo this is, yeah... This will react to onto the dome, basically a fuel dome. So there's like kind of like a C channel around the fuel dome at the top. And there's a motor that's gonna rotate this with a gearbox and that's basically the load will agree reacted between the circular feature that you see there. And the sort of, I shouldn't say C channel, sort of a L channel on the dome. So it's just a simple sort of ring on the dome.\n\n[Tim] And then is that so, what I'm seeing there, where there's the rope is actually a through on the end here, is that the lever arm for the thing? Or is that just...\n\nYeah.\n\n[Tim] ahh I see is slides over, it's like...\n\nYeah.\n\n[Tim] Okay.\n\nThat's where the motor will interact, so yeah.\n\n[Tim] Wow.\n\nBut it's just basically, it's using like Model 3 motors basically.\n\n[Tim] Yeah, which is so cool.\n\nYeah, might as well use it.\n\n[Tim] So you mentioned, you know, really trying to simplify it. There's been talks that they're not... Did you say it on Twitter that you're gonna eliminate the cold gas thrusters or hot gas thrusters on the B4, for the first orbital test?\n\nYeah, well we can move to like maybe a quieter location. I'm pretty sure we can cut the weight of that in half, like that's, you know, we're not even really trying to optimize the gauge. That's just basically plate. That's just like cut plates welded together. First just got to like making that thing work and then we'll optimize it.\n\n[Tim] Yeah, of course. Which again is some of the Soviet union was so good. It was like minimum viable product basically, get it good enough to fly and test it. And obviously you guys did that with Starship, big time with 8, 9, 10, 11, 15 was like, let's just get it out there, see what works, see what doesn't and iterate, you know?\n\nYeah, and if you look at like the various reasons, like why we blew up Starship is like, and you looked at the risk list, none of the reasons that blew up are on the risk list.\n\n[Tim] Really?\n\nYeah, it was like, no, maybe you can argue like, one of them maybe was on somebody's risk list, but it wasn't brought up beforehand, if you can put it that way. I mean, there's a crazy amount of new technology happening here and it's all evolving simultaneously, we need to iron out like the unknowns sort of thing. Yeah, the unknown are the big ones.\n\n[Tim] Is that the new flaps for 20 down there?\n\nYeah.\n\n[Tim] So remind me the numbering scheme. 'Cause you were talking about version two Raptor, the other day, what we've seen so far, and are those original version two yet, like the green nozzles, those aren't version two yet, right? Have you started making version two?\n\nWe've made parts of version two. So we've made the thrust chamber assembly. And we have, I think pretty much finished the design of the pumps, we're gonna make the pumps. So hopefully we'll have either Raptor 2 in about a month we might be testing the first one.\n\n[Tim] Okay, and will that be, you said it you're going to be kind of producing stuff or the prototypes are kind of gonna be always in Hawthorne that eventually gonna be moving mass production to McGregor.\n\nYeah, we're doing volume production of Raptor and McGregor. We will keep California factory operating basically for development engines and the Raptor vacuum version.\n\n[Tim] So if you're reaching 230 tonne on version two, what's that gonna be at, like 330 bar?\n\nBut technically, I think 298, but I think we should come on, we've got like get two more bar out of that thing.\n\n[Tim] Wait, wait, so even only 300, big air quotes on 300, you're getting to 230 already?\n\nYeah, but then we're opening the throats and reducing the area ratio. The extra thrust is like, there's a slight, I think we lose two or three seconds of ISP, but we gain a lot more in thrust. And the increase in thrust outweighs the slight drop in ISP.\n\n[Tim] Yeah, especially on the first stage. yeah.\n\nI mean basically any thrust to weight below one is worthless.\n\n[Tim] It's worthless, yeah. So if we go from .4 to .5, it's a massive leap compared to even... Yeah, yeah.\n\n[Tim] Okay, so that makes total sense. So the Rap Vac currently what that for thrust? Is it still around that same number about 200 tons?\n\nThe Raptor vacuum, or RVac as we put it We will actually be the 230 ton gross number is the thrust at sea level of the sea level version of version two of the... It's essentially it's like helpful to certainly like quibble about like, why are you talking about thrust in tonnes? That's not technically a scientific thing. It's because you can do the math in your head really easily if you have a rocket in tonnes and thrust in tonnes.\n\n[Tim] Right, of course, - That's why, and Newton has got like divide by 10 all the time. Which is like annoying. And then you only get kilograms now you've got to like divide by 10,000 to get tons. Which is ridiculous. Okay, so you're like, this is absurd. Only a fool would use Newtons in my opinion, if you're designing a rocket. And especially big rockets, 'cause you just like have a zillion Newtons. But if you measure things in tons and you measure thrust in tons, now you know thrust weight very easily.\n\n[Tim] Is that like the only Imperial thing you measure then?\n\nNo, these are still metric tonnes.\n\n[Tim] Okay, that makes sense. I was getting nervous for a second.\n\nThe pressure is in bar, 'cause everybody kinda knows like what's one atmosphere. So but Pascal's another trash unit. I hate Pascals. That's why it's so tiny, it's absurd.\n\n[Tim] We did have a whole segment of units that Elon hates and it's just (laughs).\n\nIt's like units that make understanding things more harder instead of easier. But everyone understands like a bar or an atmosphere essentially. And everyone like crew can get their mind around a tonne. Like you have an intuitive sense for a ton. Like your car is like two tons.\n\n[Tim] You have some grasp, you have some context.\n\nYeah, if you got hit by a tonne, you'd know what that meant. If you got hit by a Pascal, that's like, I dunno a mouse fart. (laughs) That's like one Pascal. There's another important principle, which is that, you really want everyone to be chief engineer. So if everyone is chief engineer means that people need to understand the system at a high level to know when they are making a bad optimization.\n\nIt's like, like when they are like, because we've done this many times where we've like put immense effort into reducing the engine mass, but hardly any effort into reducing proponent residuals or like order of magnitude, less evidence reducing proponent residuals. And then you land with a literal ton of unused fuel. And actually we still kind of do that with Falcon 9. It has about a tonne of unused fuel upon landing, which is pretty annoying.\n\n[Tim] Oh, that's still not much in the grand scheme of everything. It's still not much, but that is in context. So it still is quite a bit though.\n\nYeah, but like we spend so much effort getting a ton out of engines, like, you know, that sort of whatever, like 130 kilograms per engine, like that's, yeah So that's like 120 ish.\n\n[Tim] Wow, look, the sunsets out here are pretty hard to beat. That's insane. God, that's amazing. So congrats on the HLS solidify a little more today.\n\nThat was cool. The GAO was a staunch defender of good contracting.\n\nCan we head over and check out the mock-up there? Because there's still a lot that we don't know about HLS publicly, at least. I assume that, you know, a decent amout more.\n\nI don't know if I do, but...\n\nWell, first off, I guess the most obvious one that I'm excited is those thrusters.\n\nSo the thrusters are a good example of running that algorithm I just mentioned, laboriously mentioned, which is, a question to the requirements, making requirements based on deleted part. When we're looking at, what does the booster actually need to do with stage separation? If you put rotation into the stack like before you turn off the main engines. So they both rotating. They're gonna rotate and just- - [Tim] Wait, sorry. Like pitching and yawing or rolling?\n\nSo like you got the integrated stack. We do this with...\n\n[Tim] with Starlink!\n\nwith Starlink. So we rotate the stage and- - [Tim] And kind of fling it out.\n\nYes, but they basically have different amounts of an inertia, essentially rotational maybe to linear inertia. They basically move at different rates. So if you rotate the thing, depending on where you are, you will move at a different speed. And so it automatically separates if you rotate and then separate. So there's no actual separation mechanism for the Starlink satellites and they technically can bump into each other and occasionally do, but if they bump into each other, for like one mile an hour, doesn't matter. So there's bounce off.\n\n[Tim] It's already made it through the pretty harsh environments of launch.\n\nYeah, it's fine. But like, I'm pretty sure this is like, this might be the only ride, we were like literally tussling 60 satellites off with like a hay, bundle of hay, like dry, you know? Dumping the rods that hold them down. Like a hay bale and just flinging them. And it's fine, then they just separate, split up and go to their position.\n\nSo we've got to stage step, instead of asking the attitude control thrusters, the reaction control thrusters to do the booster rotation, which has a lot of force. You have the main engines initiate rotation. Now this is quite complex space ballet. 'Cause everything has got to happen in just the right way. But you basically initiate the rotation of the stack, kind of stop the main engines. Then the two will actually separate by themselves.\n\nAnd you need like a little bit, we have like cold gas ACS, or reaction control system. It's like, depending on who you ask, it's a reaction control system, or an attitude control system. So it's basically like small maneuvering thrusters So you fire those on the ship that gives you a little bit of maneuvering.\n\nAnd then on the booster, we actually have quite a lot of ullage gas, like basically you've got a lot of hot gaseous oxygen and hot methane, which actually have, you know, if you've got a big enough area, it's got decent thrust and vacuum.\n\n[Tim] The actual- - The vents. But literally you use to vent to vent the stage.\n\n[Tim] Yeah, so not in a separate bottle, but literally like the ullage of the main tanks.\n\nYes.\n\n[Tim] Okay.\n\nSo just use the ullage as your thrusters and just control the orientation of the venting. So it is not just venting out sideways, but it is venting in a direction that will just work. Which can be sideways sometimes. Anyway, we've got like basically a lot of gas in this thing, which would have to actually just vent to vacuum anyway. 'Cause it's got too much gas. And that's just extra mass that you don't need.\n\nSo if you've got basically enough control authority because of the kicking the whole stack over before main engine cut off, plus using the ullage gas to vent, you don't need a separate hot gas thruster system. You don't even need a cold gas thruster system. You already have hot gas. Question the requirements, delete the part.\n\n[Tim] But this is only for the booster, right?\n\nYes. Although arguably, now you mentioned it, it might be wise to do this for the ship too.\n\n[Tim] You'd think that- - At least mostly well- - [Tim] Because the tanks are what, six or eight bar or something? The main tanks?\n\nYeah, there'll be like six-ish bar.\n\n[Tim] And so one of those would be pretty low pressure, low ISP gas thrusters. If you're only doing the gas from there, or is there some trick you can do to...\n\nIn vacuum, like it's this different in atmosphere. Like six bar in vacuum is actually decent. It's like common to have thrusters in space, thrusters that are, let's say eight bar, like the Draco thrusters for that maneuver dragon are operating around chamber pressure of around eight or nine bar.\n\n[Tim] What?\n\nYeah. Like dragon is still in PSI. So it's like 120, 130 PSI. Technically it's a pressure pulse, but you know, so 120 PSI is like roughly eight bar ish, maybe eight and a half bar. So it's not that far from the tank pressure.\n\n[Tim] Right. So you don't even need to store the gas in an even higher, like in a bottle that's like 200 bar or something. You don't even need to do that to operate RCS.\n\nNo, if you've got a hot gas, first of all it's like, we really want the ullage gas to be as hot as possible up to the point where it is impacting the strength of a hull. Like we don't wanna soften the metal so much that it pops basically. So the hotter the gas is the higher the ISP. So having hot gas is good and it's already there and you already have the pressure vessel and you're gonna choke it away anyway.\n\nSo obviously you just use for attitude to control. So like, obviously... Initially you can't do this with the ship because everything's cryo, but once the ship is mostly empty and you drive to orbit, it also is in the same situation with a lot of hot gas. So actually we should really be the vast majority of our maneuverings should be with the hot gas that's in the ship. Thanks, now we are gonna fix that.\n\n[Tim] So the thrusters on HLS that are gonna be around the ring, the renders showed like 24 or something of like- - Those are different. That's for landing on the moon.\n\n[Tim] Okay, yeah, yeah. Are those pressure fed? Like, what are those? Do you have a name for them yet or anything?\n\nLet's just say like, this is the tentative design right now. But with the agreement with NASA, I think we may see that design evolve and it may be better actually. Like a big question here is like, can you land on the moon with the main engines or do you need a separate thruster system that's way up there. Like basically, if you land with the main engine, you're gonna dig a big ditch in the moon and then fall over.\n\n'Cause you landed in a ditch that you dug. It's like literally dig your own grave. That would be obviously bad. So we don't wanna dig our own grave and then fall in it.\n\nBut more analysis is like, I think we could probably land with the main engine and not dig a grave and die it, but we would have to prove that, you know, get something that's like, I don't know, the consistency of like lunar regolith and like something that's like a good- - [Tim] A good analog.\n\nAnalog of that, and then like land the ship in that and see how big is the hole that we're digging. If you've got low pressure engines that have high up naturally, you're not gonna dig a hole basically. So that's kind of like the sure thing. But I think if we can prove that the main engines do not dig a giant hole, then we can land with the main engines and then not have- - [Tim] Any of those, the ring. What about the, are you gonna have any sea level Raptors on the lunar variant or we only have vacuum optimized?\n\n[Tim] Because I assume like on a normal star ship, even at stage separation, you'll probably light all six at first, just to minimize gravity loss or something, right? So you'll still fire all six then probably shut down the sea levels and let the back of them optimize, you know, like they probably do what like, half the second stage burn time or something with sea level or if you?\n\nWell, so the vacuum engines don't gimbal. So you'd have to have some things to provide the control authority. I mean, technically you could say like, well, if you're in a low disturbance situation, like the moon has no atmosphere. Man, this is beeping city.\n\n[Tim] You wanna move on?\n\nYeah. If you're not facing like a lot of atmospheric disturbances, then you need much less control authority and you could probably land with three just by differential throttling and three engines. But if you lost any of the engines, you'd be toast. So probably make sense to, I don't know, probably keep the same config, you know?\n\nOr like you can even just have one in the middle that would offer, you know, a decent amount of gimbal authority and all that.\n\nIt's based on how much optimization we're aiming for here.\n\n[Tim] 'Cause you're only going to make one of these things, right? Or are you planning on like, is NASA wanting multiple or, oh, my word. So by the way, I think there's a good chance that ITAR and comms might not want all of this. Wait until you see part two is unbelievable. And I promise I'm going to get it to as soon as I can. Thank you Elon, for spending so much time with me and allowing me to ask all of the questions I had. It was amazing.\n\nAnd thanks to the teams at SpaceX for allowing me to share this all with you. And thanks to Cosmic Perspective for helping shoot this and just kind of helping out all the time. Find them on YouTube and on Patreon as well. And I owe a huge thank you to my Patreon supporters for helping make this and everything else we do here at Everyday Astronaut possible.\n\nIf you want access to our discord channel, where we're probably going to be talking about this conversation a lot or live streams or lots of other fun stuff, head on over to patreon. com/everydayastronaut. And while you're online, be sure and check out our awesome web store. You can find shirts like this, the R7 / semyorka / the predecessor to Soyuz new shirt that we have that is awesome. As well as our new Mars hats.\n\nWe can also find some classics like the full flow stage combustion cycle shirt and hoodie and the future martian shirts and schematics collection and lots of other fun stuff. So head on over to everydayastronaut. com/shop. Thanks everybody, that's gonna do it for me. I'm Tim Dodd, the Everyday Astronaut, bringing space down to earth, for everyday people. (upbeat music)","textByLang":{"en":"Hi, it's me, Tim Dodd, the Everyday Astronaut. Welcome to STARBASE Texas. This is where SpaceX is building testing, and even launching their mars bound rocket Star ship. Today, I'm gonna take you inside the gates and show you things that have never been shared outside of SpaceX. First of all, we have the ultimate tour guide, Elon Musk, who answers all of my questions and gives us unbelievable insights to the rockets development.\n\nWe talked and walked around for over two hours. So I'll be cutting this up into three parts. The first two are at the Star Base factory and the last one is at the launch pad. Each section has a goldmine of valuable information. So make sure you're subscribed. You've got your notifications on and you've got your note pads ready to jot some notes.\n\nNow heads up, we talk about some pretty advanced concepts and subject matter that can be pretty intimidating on first listen, but don't worry, I've got you covered with lots of informational videos here on my channel. So perhaps if you are new to Star ship or really all of this stuff, consider watching my complete guide to Star ship, that'll be a really good overview for you for some of the things that we talk about here in this conversation.\n\nAnd I'll also be linking to some of my other videos that will help out with some of the stuff that we talk about as well. Now you might notice, we mention Soviet rocket engines quite a bit in this conversation. Maybe it's because I was wearing my new Soyuz shirt that you can get at everydayastronaunt. com/shop, or perhaps it's because I've been working on a complete history and family tree of Soviet rocket engines for almost two years now.\n\nAnd that video is currently in the works and it will be out when it's done. And one last thing, this video is broken up into sections and we have links in the description for those sections. We also will occasionally be putting up a little map, courtesy of ring Watchers on Twitter that will help you keep your bearings as we're walking around. I think that'll help quite a bit.\n\nAnd we also have an article version of kind of our conversation and some of the key points that we bring up over at everydayastronaut. com. There is a link in the description to that as well. Okay, enough talking, let's go hang out with Elon.\n\nIs it the camera? Probably with the camera, and then somebody else for the camera.\n\n[Tim] It's just camera envy at this point. He saw me with this and he's like listen- - I'll get my camera out.\n\n[Tim] Yeah, you take a video of me.\n\nSo I can take a video of this, of you guys taking the video.\n\nMake sure this is going through there. Just shoot the screen the whole time. I don't want anything else.\n\nAll right, so this is... Okay, so this is I'm being videoed here. And then the video of the video. This is the video on the video of the video.\n\nGo back there. (laughs) - So I feel like I got here maybe at about the most exciting peak of insanity.\n\nIt's definitely a very exciting time, 'cause we are in kind of a final push to complete the launch pad system, stage zero, essentially. So we're saying that the launch system, the tower and the, you know, the chopstick arms to catch the rocket are as complex as either of the stages.\n\n[Tim] Really?\n\nYeah, absolutely, if not more. We could produce boosters and ships way easier than we could make the launch site. So therefor I'll say it is harder suddenly than any single booster or ship.\n\nI think that's one of the things people don't even realize is the manufacturing out here, that's kind of one of the things that you harp on so much is how, you know, how that's so important and that's in the long scheme, the hardest part of all of this is just manufacturing.\n\nI think, currently a factory is underrated and design is overrated. So people generally think that, like this Eureka moment of like you come up with this idea and that's it, now it's good. But the design like this, literally a thousand percent, maybe 10000% more work that goes into the production system than the thing itself. So say like how much effort we put into say designing Raptor versus deciding the manufacturing system it's 10 to a 100 times more effort to design the manufacturing system than the engine.\n\n[Tim] Even of a Raptor?\n\nOh yeah, absolutely. Especially with Raptor. Quote basically the amount of effort that goes into the design rounds down to zero.\n\n[Tim] Right, right.\n\nRelative to the amount of the effort that goes into the manufacturing system. And if this was not true, I'd like 1000 Raptors please. Oh, you can't make them? Oh, okay.\n\n[Tim] Right, right.\n\nSo this is like just very fundamentally underappreciated. If people have not been in manufacturing, especially manufacturing of something that's relatively new, then they don't understand. And they think the design is the hard part, and they think production is like a copier or something like that. This is completely false.\n\n[Tim] It's definitely not as sexy as the end thing. Like, you know, the end product is very sexy and you know, that's what draws people's attention, but the whole back end of it is what makes it possible.\n\nI can't emphasize enough, I'm trying to correct the misperception that design is the hard part. It is not the hard part. There have been lots of great rocket engines designed. You've spend a lot of time looking at the Russian rocket engine designs. There's some amazing Russian rocket engine designs. They've been doing stage combustion for a long time. And they've done, I don't know, hundreds of different designs, literally.\n\nSo the hard part is not, can you design a stage combustion engine? This has been done. Now admittedly, ours is a higher pressure than before, and it is a full flow stage combustion, but that's a relatively minor increments relative to what the Russians have already done. What is super hard about Raptor is, how do we make a Raptor where the cost per ton of thrust is under a thousand dollars?\n\nYeah, I mean, we definitely don't wanna cut, the fundamental thing that needs to be fixed is the cost per ton to orbit. So things that address the cost per ton to orbit are good. If humanity will be a multi-planet species, if we get cost per ton to orbit to a point where we can afford to become a space race civilization and a multiplanar species.\n\n[Tim] Right.\n\nSo this is, at it's heart, it is a fundamentally an optimization of cost per ton to orbit and then ultimately cost per ton to the surface of Mars.\n\n[Tim] Right.\n\nWell, if you're working on getting the cost of, even when you're starting to think of it as dollars, dollar per ton of thrust, I don't know if anyone's ever considered that as a key metric. That's a new thing that I've never thought about, never considered, well, not even...\n\n[Tim] Raptor is kind of unique. And now you start also thinking about instead of thrust to weight ratio, when you have a fixed diameter and fixed circle area, you're also worried about the nozzle exit to thrust ratio as being a pretty strong consideration too.\n\nYeah, you basically end up pulling up all the area under the rocket. So for this version, we have 29 engines. There is a lot of beeping. I'm not sure having this many things beep is actually helpful.\n\n[Tim] It's a sensory overload.\n\nIt's like everything around you is crying Wolf.\n\nIf everything's in danger, nothing is danger - - And you're just got to turn it out. Yeah, exactly. So it's pretty silly, but- - [ Tim] So this is obviously the nose of booster 4.\n\n[Elon] This is basically, that's the inter stage and the fuel tank of booster 4.\n\nWhat are the little... So obviously that's where the grid fins go, right? And then what's the thing in between them?\n\nthat's basically, that's actually the Mount point. There are two. It's debatable whether this is the right design or not. In fact, it's like the whole design is wrong, just a matter of how wrong. But that's one of the load points for picking up the booster. It's just like tiny little, it looks small, but it's actually not that small, like close up it's this thing is just high in the air. Like all your sense of perspective is wrong.\n\nAnd when this lands, it has like basically the density of a beer can. An empty beer can. With like some mass, you know, with the engine is obviously- - [Tim] What is the dry mass, are you under 200 tonnes?\n\nWe should be under 200 tonnes. (machines beeping) The mass is a moving target. You often say like, what are propellant residuals when you land? That's a big deal. Like both how much margin on what you have and what are the unusable propellant. Like you can't just go to zero margin, you know? Because you're the things going to like, crater. And it should be under 200 tonnes though.\n\nBut as a rough rule of thumb, like the engines, including mountain mass are roughly two tonnes. So that's 29 engines at 58 tonnes. Then the sort of the fuel tank itself, and the oxygen tank, it's probably on the order of... Well, it's a little heavy right now. So maybe it's like 80 tonnes or so. Then you've got the inner stage, we've got the grid fins, batteries and a bunch of other things.\n\nSo that's around 20 tonnes, and then you got propellant residuals, which might be on the order of 20 tonnes too. All of that should come to, I don't know, call it 160 to 200 tonnes depending on the sort of final mass numbers. But like right now everything is too heavy, like avionics too heavy.\n\n[Tim] The avionics even?\n\nYeah.\n\n[Tim] I thought it was just a little- - I mean, it should be, but the grid fins are electrically powered so we have batteries that are energy optimized instead of power optimized. So like this grid fins only let things work for like two or three minutes. So it's very different from like an electric car, which you wanna have several hours of driving. So it is really, we need power optimized batteries, not energy optimized batteries. This is just a short term thing. So the battery mass can probably drop by maybe a factor of 10. So that's just one example.\n\n[Tim] Should we back up a little bit so there's little- - Yeah, less banging.\n\nAnd then we're trying to get that crane in here and do work.\n\n[Tim] You got a lot of people on set right now.\n\nYeah, I mean, that residuals number is a super big deal on the mass though, because the booster is designed to have 3,600 tonnes of propelling, which is an almost 80% liquid oxygen by mass, like 78%- - [Tim] 'Cause you burn at what? Is it 3,71- - 3.5, 3.7.\n\n[Tim] Okay, yeah.\n\nAnd you wanna bias in favor of oxygen because oxygen is dancer and cheaper. So in terms of improving your payload and you know, reducing cost per ton, oxygen is basically plants make it for free and plankton. So it's basically like electricity cost of separation and distillation.\n\n[Tim] Right. Now, remind me though. Is it like, as far as the ratio goes, fuel OF ratio having a lighter molecule. Do we kind of want that to be spewing out faster or something, 'cause it's less reaction. It can be accelerated quicker or faster.\n\nYeah, There's a trade off between... Well, I mean, would you tend to get limited by is you don't wanna go too close to stoichiometric 'cause the heats basically melt your engine. So that tends to limit you on trying to go to higher OF, that's the actual thing limiting you. You tend to hit the stoichiometric melting point before you rollover on ISP.\n\n[Tim] Okay, okay.\n\nGenerally.\n\n[Tim] That makes sense.\n\n[Tim] And remind me of the grid fins. Do they still fold in?\n\nNo.\n\n[Tim] No, is that gonna be permanently that way?\n\nYeah. I have a rule just implement rigorously is the sort of five step process. First make your requirements less dumb, your requirements are definitely dumb. It does not matter who gave them to you. It's particularly dangerous, if a smart person gave you the requirements, because you might not question them enough.\n\n[Tim] Yeah, you might take it as like gospel. Like you have to do this.\n\nEveryone's wrong, no matter who you are, everyone's wrong some of the time. So mega requirements is less dumb, then try very hard to delete the part or process. This is actually very important. If you're not occasionally adding things back in, you are not leading enough. The bias tends to be very strongly towards, let's add this part of the process step in case we need it.\n\nBut you can basically make in case arguments for so many things, and for a rocket that is trying to achieve, try to be the first fully reusable rocket, there's never been a fully reusable rocket people don't understand. Like this is like the holy grail of rocketry, okay? And so you have to run a tight margins because if you don't run tight margins, you're gonna get nothing to orbit.\n\nSo you've got to delete the part or process step, it's super important. And you can like hedge your bets. So that's why the grid fins for example, do not fold down because that's a whole extra mechanism that we don't need.\n\n[Tim] And they just compensated for by having strong enough engine authority to steer it in the little atmosphere.\n\nActually our simulation show, we don't really need any extra engine authority. As long as the grid fins, you know, basically follow the flow, they're not really disturbing the flow, it's really here nor there. As long as they don't have a high angle of attack, it doesn't matter.\n\n[Tim] A few degrees or something within a degree or two.\n\nBut in any case, it's the thing we could add later. So now these grid fins are humongous. We will go see them. But they're like, I mean, like a dinosaur bear trap. It's like you've build a bear trap or a dinosaur, that's what these things look like. And if you have a whole mechanism for folding them, that's like clearly a part that we don't need. So this is a good design decision that actually I didn't come up with it, and it was like, great.\n\nBut it followed the principle of like fleet partly lead the process. I was like, great, good idea, let's not fold them. Why are we folding them, anyway? It's so random. Whatever requirement or constraint you have, it must come with a name, not a department.\n\n'Cause you can't ask the departments, you have to ask a person, and that person who's putting forward, the requirement or constraint must agree that they must take responsibility for that requirement. Otherwise you could have a requirement that basically an intern two years ago randomly came up with, off the cuff and they're not even have the company anymore. But it came from the, let's say, air loads department.\n\nThey're like, actually there's no one at our current department that currently agrees with that. This has by the way it happened several times.\n\n[Tim] So again, it could be literally thought of...\n\nthis could be, it's every department.\n\n[Tim] It can be thought of as gospel again, but it might be something that's just totally in passing. Or someone played too much Kerbel and had fins at the top of the rocket. And then it just, you know, it did this.\n\nThese things are often just way more silly than you think. Anyway, so step one, make your requirements less dumb. Step two, delete the part or process step. If you're not deleting a part or process step, at least 10% of the time, basically if you're not adding things back in 10% of the time, you're clearly not deleting enough. And then only the third step is simplify or optimize. The third step.\n\nThe reason it's the third step is 'cause it's very common, possibly the most common error of a smart engineer is to optimize the thing that should not exist. And say, well, why would you do that? Well, everyone has been trained in high school and college that you gotta answer the question, convergent logic. So you can't tell a professor, your question is dumb. You will get a bad grade. You have to ask the question.\n\nSo everyone is basically, without knowing it, they got like mental straight jacket on that is they'll work on optimizing the thing that should simply not exist. I'll give you an example for way back in the day of Falcon 1. So in the original sort of like when Tom Mueller and I were like batting around, like, okay, what should this rocket look like? I think I was literally in like Tom's kitchen or something.\n\nAnd we had like the spreadsheet and like, okay, we need to like make minimally viable rockets, like with half a tonne or whatever something like that. And then initially the spreadsheet had, we had an NOT / MMH upper stage, so sort of hypergol, upper stage kind of like a varient of the TRW LMD.\n\n[Tim] Which I think Tom worked on, right?\n\nWell, we trained Tom worked on it, he's not that old. It was like a baby, you know, (laughs). A very advanced baby. But his mentors did work on the LMD. So, you know, lunar module descent engine. Basically a pintel injector- - [Tim] That's right, 'cause that's where the pintel injector comes from.\n\nYou can also deep it and everything. Now the problem with that is, how much this NTO/MMH costs. It's super expensive, okay. It's like a rare chemical. So even if you're like, you know, if Edison and Tesla had a baby and that baby was smarter than both of them combined and said, your job is to optimize an NTO/MMH Upper stage, you're screwed, okay? So like nitrogen tetroxide or monomethyl hydrazine are super expensive and they're also toxic.\n\n[Tim] They're super nasty, yeah. It's the handling costs alone are pretty appreciable.\n\nI mean, I do think like saving safety is over-corrected on the NTO/MMH. It went from like, nobody had any protection and breathe the fumes all day to it's cyanide. And neither of those are true, it's not cyanide. You won't die. Bill Gerstenmaier told me like this story of like, when he started at NASA, they actually, I think passed around like a cup of like hydrazine so that everyone knew what hydrazine smell.\n\n[Tim] Nooo.... So like, 'cause it has like a lot more rotten egg smell or something like that. So he literally opened a cup of hydrazine and like, obviously he's still alive. So that's an example of like, don't optimize this thing that shouldn't exist. We should not have NTO/MMH upper stage.\n\nNow Dragon does have that, but that's because Dragon's got to do a lot of like nuanced firings of the Draco engines, you know, with very short pulse durations. And trying to have something that's not hypergolic is very difficult and it can be done, like, not hypergolic and not cryogenic. Now you options tend to suck. So, you know, they start going down the peroxide barking up peroxide tree or something like that. Or super esoteric mono props.\n\nAnd that's like the again back to big money.\n\n[Tim] That's step three.\n\nYeah, so exactly. Thanks to these quite laborious, sorry for the laborious explanation here, and then finally you get to step four, which is accelerate cycle time. You're moving too slowly, go faster, but don't go faster until you've worked on the other three things first. If you're digging and you're great, don't dig it faster, stop digging your grave. But you can always make me go faster. And then the final step is automate. And now I have personally made the mistake of going backwards on all five steps multiple times. So I have to repeat this.\n\n[Tim] Well on Model 3 Yes, multiple times, but on Model 3. Where literally I automated, accelerated, simplified and then deleted. But like one example I've talked about before, is like the, they were these like fiberglass mats, on top of the bottle three battery pack, they were in between the full pan and the battery.\n\nAnd it was one point Chuck in the battery pack production line and I was like, basically living on the battery factory production line, like probably fixed the line. 'Cause it was like choking the entire Model 3 production program. So the first mistake was we should not have... I like try to fix the automation, like make the robot better, make it like move faster, shorter path, increase the torque, delete the reverse 720 degrees on the bolt.\n\n'Cause that's unnecessary. Just go forward fast on a 20% rate at a 100% rate. And instead of spackeling glue on the entire battery pack, just put little dabs of glue because the fiberglass mask was sandwiched between the battery pack and the floor plan anyway. So all you need is like somebody to hold it in place until put the backpack into the car. So automating was a mistake. Then accelerating was mistake. Then optimizing was a mistake.\n\nAnd finally I said, what the hell are these mats for? And I asked the, the battery safety team, 'cause I was like, what are these mats for? I said are they for fire protection or something? They said, \"No, they are for noise and vibration. \"So you don't get that.\" And I said, \"But you're the battery department.\" And I asked a NVA noise vibration analysis team, what's it for, they said fire safety.\n\nSo literally it was like being in a Goldberg cartoon. It was like actually, I feel like I'm in a Goldberg cartoon quite frequently. So I'm like, you know, are we in like some simulation where I'm like trapped in some like Kafka esq. / Goldberg cartoon situation, but that's what it feels like a lot. So then finally, okay, great.\n\nLet's try a car with the fiberglass mats and without, and they put a microphone in both, and see if you could tell the difference. You can not. In fact, I was like, which one is which? So we just deleted them and just bypass this $2 million robot cell as a complete pile of none sense. Another mistake that has to happen in production is too much in-process testing.\n\nSo when you were first setting up a production line, you don't know where things are breaking. You don't know where things are breaking, so you'll test like working process at various steps and 'cause you wanna isolate where's the mistake occurring? So a very common issue with production lines is to not remove the end process testing after you diagnose where the problems are.\n\nSo basically if you have like a very high acceptance, like if things are getting to end of line testing and are passing, then you don't need to do in-process testing. But what used to happened is they'll be like an initial development engineering team that will be like basically debugging the production line, but then they will forget to take out the in-process testing steps.\n\nSo then what happens is the in-process tester will often choke the cycle time. Choke took the line production time. It'll be like the limiter and also have some number of false positives and false negatives. But they'll be like false positive, like then you're like rejecting good parts.\n\nSo really in volume production, if things are working well, you're really just taking a risk, will this subsystem be rejected in the training production process or at the end. And so you just really wanna move things pretty much, almost always to just test at the end line, and that's it. Maybe there's like one or two in-process steps that are hard to test an end of line, but basically remove almost everything.\n\nAnd there is another thing with battery pack where, this is so crazy. Like one of the things the battery pack has to do is to resist water ingress, so it has to be leak proof. So if you drive through deep water, water doesn't come into the battery pack you're short of battery back. You might have seen some of the videos of like people driving Teslas in like extremely flooded waters, where it's like half underwater.\n\nYeah, like there was literally a guy, I believe in Kazakhstan literally drove a model S through a submerged water tunnel. All the other cars were out and he basically steered the car with the wheels and use the wheel rotation, like a boat and drove out the tunnel. So it's important to have the battery pack resists water ingress.\n\nBut then instead of us doing a pressure test on the battery pack, we were actually pressurizing the inside of the battery pack which was the wrong direction. And the battery pack lid was glued. But, you know, we basically had resin that was not cured. And so we were just blurting out the resin, which doesn't a dumb sense. 'Cause you should actually be drawing your vacuum on the front of pack and not pressurizing it.\n\nAnd especially not pressurizing it when there's uncured resin is what's holding down the battery pack. So the pack was failing quite often on the pressurization tests, which should have been a vacuum test.\n\n[Tim] Oh, speaking of grid fins.\n\nYeah, great.\n\n[Tim] Look at that. Man, that thing is huge.\n\nYeah, that's right so it's like a- - [Tim] Dinosaur bear trap?\n\nDinosaur bear trap.\n\n[Tim] Oh, wait, that'd just a dinosaur trap wouldn't it?\n\nThis is a dinosaur trap.\n\n[Tim] That's insane, honestly.\n\nThis thing could catch a T-Rex. (laughs) - [Tim] Oh my gosh, that's crazy. And of course it's got the serrated teeth, which helping the transonic regimes, right?\n\nYeah.\n\n[Tim] Is there any other reason for the teeth other than that?\n\nNo it's just, well, it actually helps in transonic and subsonic, but the effectiveness is better if you've got a pointy , if it's more pointy basically. There is a lot of pointy-ness, Sorry, hey Marvin. So he just gets crushed under a...\n\n[Tim] Wow, so how heavy are these guys?\n\nThese are, I like... actually I don't know the number off hand, but probably at least three tonnes, I'm guessing. When I say it's like a moving target, this is not the, like I wouldn't take this to the bank. Like it's not, you know... There's quite a lot of mass we can get out of this.\n\n[Tim] It's just good enough for now. Like that's- - Yeah, it's good enough now. But like, you know, we're basically just needs to be like enough control authority to get this through the atmosphere and positioned well enough so that when the engines light, the engine can correct whatever error is left after that we couldn't take out what the grid fins.\n\n[Tim] Man, that is crazy. Those are huge. It looks like the motor will mount to the lever arm there, is that just...\n\nSo this is, yeah... This will react to onto the dome, basically a fuel dome. So there's like kind of like a C channel around the fuel dome at the top. And there's a motor that's gonna rotate this with a gearbox and that's basically the load will agree reacted between the circular feature that you see there. And the sort of, I shouldn't say C channel, sort of a L channel on the dome. So it's just a simple sort of ring on the dome.\n\n[Tim] And then is that so, what I'm seeing there, where there's the rope is actually a through on the end here, is that the lever arm for the thing? Or is that just...\n\nYeah.\n\n[Tim] ahh I see is slides over, it's like...\n\nYeah.\n\n[Tim] Okay.\n\nThat's where the motor will interact, so yeah.\n\n[Tim] Wow.\n\nBut it's just basically, it's using like Model 3 motors basically.\n\n[Tim] Yeah, which is so cool.\n\nYeah, might as well use it.\n\n[Tim] So you mentioned, you know, really trying to simplify it. There's been talks that they're not... Did you say it on Twitter that you're gonna eliminate the cold gas thrusters or hot gas thrusters on the B4, for the first orbital test?\n\nYeah, well we can move to like maybe a quieter location. I'm pretty sure we can cut the weight of that in half, like that's, you know, we're not even really trying to optimize the gauge. That's just basically plate. That's just like cut plates welded together. First just got to like making that thing work and then we'll optimize it.\n\n[Tim] Yeah, of course. Which again is some of the Soviet union was so good. It was like minimum viable product basically, get it good enough to fly and test it. And obviously you guys did that with Starship, big time with 8, 9, 10, 11, 15 was like, let's just get it out there, see what works, see what doesn't and iterate, you know?\n\nYeah, and if you look at like the various reasons, like why we blew up Starship is like, and you looked at the risk list, none of the reasons that blew up are on the risk list.\n\n[Tim] Really?\n\nYeah, it was like, no, maybe you can argue like, one of them maybe was on somebody's risk list, but it wasn't brought up beforehand, if you can put it that way. I mean, there's a crazy amount of new technology happening here and it's all evolving simultaneously, we need to iron out like the unknowns sort of thing. Yeah, the unknown are the big ones.\n\n[Tim] Is that the new flaps for 20 down there?\n\nYeah.\n\n[Tim] So remind me the numbering scheme. 'Cause you were talking about version two Raptor, the other day, what we've seen so far, and are those original version two yet, like the green nozzles, those aren't version two yet, right? Have you started making version two?\n\nWe've made parts of version two. So we've made the thrust chamber assembly. And we have, I think pretty much finished the design of the pumps, we're gonna make the pumps. So hopefully we'll have either Raptor 2 in about a month we might be testing the first one.\n\n[Tim] Okay, and will that be, you said it you're going to be kind of producing stuff or the prototypes are kind of gonna be always in Hawthorne that eventually gonna be moving mass production to McGregor.\n\nYeah, we're doing volume production of Raptor and McGregor. We will keep California factory operating basically for development engines and the Raptor vacuum version.\n\n[Tim] So if you're reaching 230 tonne on version two, what's that gonna be at, like 330 bar?\n\nBut technically, I think 298, but I think we should come on, we've got like get two more bar out of that thing.\n\n[Tim] Wait, wait, so even only 300, big air quotes on 300, you're getting to 230 already?\n\nYeah, but then we're opening the throats and reducing the area ratio. The extra thrust is like, there's a slight, I think we lose two or three seconds of ISP, but we gain a lot more in thrust. And the increase in thrust outweighs the slight drop in ISP.\n\n[Tim] Yeah, especially on the first stage. yeah.\n\nI mean basically any thrust to weight below one is worthless.\n\n[Tim] It's worthless, yeah. So if we go from .4 to .5, it's a massive leap compared to even... Yeah, yeah.\n\n[Tim] Okay, so that makes total sense. So the Rap Vac currently what that for thrust? Is it still around that same number about 200 tons?\n\nThe Raptor vacuum, or RVac as we put it We will actually be the 230 ton gross number is the thrust at sea level of the sea level version of version two of the... It's essentially it's like helpful to certainly like quibble about like, why are you talking about thrust in tonnes? That's not technically a scientific thing. It's because you can do the math in your head really easily if you have a rocket in tonnes and thrust in tonnes.\n\n[Tim] Right, of course, - That's why, and Newton has got like divide by 10 all the time. Which is like annoying. And then you only get kilograms now you've got to like divide by 10,000 to get tons. Which is ridiculous. Okay, so you're like, this is absurd. Only a fool would use Newtons in my opinion, if you're designing a rocket. And especially big rockets, 'cause you just like have a zillion Newtons. But if you measure things in tons and you measure thrust in tons, now you know thrust weight very easily.\n\n[Tim] Is that like the only Imperial thing you measure then?\n\nNo, these are still metric tonnes.\n\n[Tim] Okay, that makes sense. I was getting nervous for a second.\n\nThe pressure is in bar, 'cause everybody kinda knows like what's one atmosphere. So but Pascal's another trash unit. I hate Pascals. That's why it's so tiny, it's absurd.\n\n[Tim] We did have a whole segment of units that Elon hates and it's just (laughs).\n\nIt's like units that make understanding things more harder instead of easier. But everyone understands like a bar or an atmosphere essentially. And everyone like crew can get their mind around a tonne. Like you have an intuitive sense for a ton. Like your car is like two tons.\n\n[Tim] You have some grasp, you have some context.\n\nYeah, if you got hit by a tonne, you'd know what that meant. If you got hit by a Pascal, that's like, I dunno a mouse fart. (laughs) That's like one Pascal. There's another important principle, which is that, you really want everyone to be chief engineer. So if everyone is chief engineer means that people need to understand the system at a high level to know when they are making a bad optimization.\n\nIt's like, like when they are like, because we've done this many times where we've like put immense effort into reducing the engine mass, but hardly any effort into reducing proponent residuals or like order of magnitude, less evidence reducing proponent residuals. And then you land with a literal ton of unused fuel. And actually we still kind of do that with Falcon 9. It has about a tonne of unused fuel upon landing, which is pretty annoying.\n\n[Tim] Oh, that's still not much in the grand scheme of everything. It's still not much, but that is in context. So it still is quite a bit though.\n\nYeah, but like we spend so much effort getting a ton out of engines, like, you know, that sort of whatever, like 130 kilograms per engine, like that's, yeah So that's like 120 ish.\n\n[Tim] Wow, look, the sunsets out here are pretty hard to beat. That's insane. God, that's amazing. So congrats on the HLS solidify a little more today.\n\nThat was cool. The GAO was a staunch defender of good contracting.\n\nCan we head over and check out the mock-up there? Because there's still a lot that we don't know about HLS publicly, at least. I assume that, you know, a decent amout more.\n\nI don't know if I do, but...\n\nWell, first off, I guess the most obvious one that I'm excited is those thrusters.\n\nSo the thrusters are a good example of running that algorithm I just mentioned, laboriously mentioned, which is, a question to the requirements, making requirements based on deleted part. When we're looking at, what does the booster actually need to do with stage separation? If you put rotation into the stack like before you turn off the main engines. So they both rotating. They're gonna rotate and just- - [Tim] Wait, sorry. Like pitching and yawing or rolling?\n\nSo like you got the integrated stack. We do this with...\n\n[Tim] with Starlink!\n\nwith Starlink. So we rotate the stage and- - [Tim] And kind of fling it out.\n\nYes, but they basically have different amounts of an inertia, essentially rotational maybe to linear inertia. They basically move at different rates. So if you rotate the thing, depending on where you are, you will move at a different speed. And so it automatically separates if you rotate and then separate. So there's no actual separation mechanism for the Starlink satellites and they technically can bump into each other and occasionally do, but if they bump into each other, for like one mile an hour, doesn't matter. So there's bounce off.\n\n[Tim] It's already made it through the pretty harsh environments of launch.\n\nYeah, it's fine. But like, I'm pretty sure this is like, this might be the only ride, we were like literally tussling 60 satellites off with like a hay, bundle of hay, like dry, you know? Dumping the rods that hold them down. Like a hay bale and just flinging them. And it's fine, then they just separate, split up and go to their position.\n\nSo we've got to stage step, instead of asking the attitude control thrusters, the reaction control thrusters to do the booster rotation, which has a lot of force. You have the main engines initiate rotation. Now this is quite complex space ballet. 'Cause everything has got to happen in just the right way. But you basically initiate the rotation of the stack, kind of stop the main engines. Then the two will actually separate by themselves.\n\nAnd you need like a little bit, we have like cold gas ACS, or reaction control system. It's like, depending on who you ask, it's a reaction control system, or an attitude control system. So it's basically like small maneuvering thrusters So you fire those on the ship that gives you a little bit of maneuvering.\n\nAnd then on the booster, we actually have quite a lot of ullage gas, like basically you've got a lot of hot gaseous oxygen and hot methane, which actually have, you know, if you've got a big enough area, it's got decent thrust and vacuum.\n\n[Tim] The actual- - The vents. But literally you use to vent to vent the stage.\n\n[Tim] Yeah, so not in a separate bottle, but literally like the ullage of the main tanks.\n\nYes.\n\n[Tim] Okay.\n\nSo just use the ullage as your thrusters and just control the orientation of the venting. So it is not just venting out sideways, but it is venting in a direction that will just work. Which can be sideways sometimes. Anyway, we've got like basically a lot of gas in this thing, which would have to actually just vent to vacuum anyway. 'Cause it's got too much gas. And that's just extra mass that you don't need.\n\nSo if you've got basically enough control authority because of the kicking the whole stack over before main engine cut off, plus using the ullage gas to vent, you don't need a separate hot gas thruster system. You don't even need a cold gas thruster system. You already have hot gas. Question the requirements, delete the part.\n\n[Tim] But this is only for the booster, right?\n\nYes. Although arguably, now you mentioned it, it might be wise to do this for the ship too.\n\n[Tim] You'd think that- - At least mostly well- - [Tim] Because the tanks are what, six or eight bar or something? The main tanks?\n\nYeah, there'll be like six-ish bar.\n\n[Tim] And so one of those would be pretty low pressure, low ISP gas thrusters. If you're only doing the gas from there, or is there some trick you can do to...\n\nIn vacuum, like it's this different in atmosphere. Like six bar in vacuum is actually decent. It's like common to have thrusters in space, thrusters that are, let's say eight bar, like the Draco thrusters for that maneuver dragon are operating around chamber pressure of around eight or nine bar.\n\n[Tim] What?\n\nYeah. Like dragon is still in PSI. So it's like 120, 130 PSI. Technically it's a pressure pulse, but you know, so 120 PSI is like roughly eight bar ish, maybe eight and a half bar. So it's not that far from the tank pressure.\n\n[Tim] Right. So you don't even need to store the gas in an even higher, like in a bottle that's like 200 bar or something. You don't even need to do that to operate RCS.\n\nNo, if you've got a hot gas, first of all it's like, we really want the ullage gas to be as hot as possible up to the point where it is impacting the strength of a hull. Like we don't wanna soften the metal so much that it pops basically. So the hotter the gas is the higher the ISP. So having hot gas is good and it's already there and you already have the pressure vessel and you're gonna choke it away anyway.\n\nSo obviously you just use for attitude to control. So like, obviously... Initially you can't do this with the ship because everything's cryo, but once the ship is mostly empty and you drive to orbit, it also is in the same situation with a lot of hot gas. So actually we should really be the vast majority of our maneuverings should be with the hot gas that's in the ship. Thanks, now we are gonna fix that.\n\n[Tim] So the thrusters on HLS that are gonna be around the ring, the renders showed like 24 or something of like- - Those are different. That's for landing on the moon.\n\n[Tim] Okay, yeah, yeah. Are those pressure fed? Like, what are those? Do you have a name for them yet or anything?\n\nLet's just say like, this is the tentative design right now. But with the agreement with NASA, I think we may see that design evolve and it may be better actually. Like a big question here is like, can you land on the moon with the main engines or do you need a separate thruster system that's way up there. Like basically, if you land with the main engine, you're gonna dig a big ditch in the moon and then fall over.\n\n'Cause you landed in a ditch that you dug. It's like literally dig your own grave. That would be obviously bad. So we don't wanna dig our own grave and then fall in it.\n\nBut more analysis is like, I think we could probably land with the main engine and not dig a grave and die it, but we would have to prove that, you know, get something that's like, I don't know, the consistency of like lunar regolith and like something that's like a good- - [Tim] A good analog.\n\nAnalog of that, and then like land the ship in that and see how big is the hole that we're digging. If you've got low pressure engines that have high up naturally, you're not gonna dig a hole basically. So that's kind of like the sure thing. But I think if we can prove that the main engines do not dig a giant hole, then we can land with the main engines and then not have- - [Tim] Any of those, the ring. What about the, are you gonna have any sea level Raptors on the lunar variant or we only have vacuum optimized?\n\n[Tim] Because I assume like on a normal star ship, even at stage separation, you'll probably light all six at first, just to minimize gravity loss or something, right? So you'll still fire all six then probably shut down the sea levels and let the back of them optimize, you know, like they probably do what like, half the second stage burn time or something with sea level or if you?\n\nWell, so the vacuum engines don't gimbal. So you'd have to have some things to provide the control authority. I mean, technically you could say like, well, if you're in a low disturbance situation, like the moon has no atmosphere. Man, this is beeping city.\n\n[Tim] You wanna move on?\n\nYeah. If you're not facing like a lot of atmospheric disturbances, then you need much less control authority and you could probably land with three just by differential throttling and three engines. But if you lost any of the engines, you'd be toast. So probably make sense to, I don't know, probably keep the same config, you know?\n\nOr like you can even just have one in the middle that would offer, you know, a decent amount of gimbal authority and all that.\n\nIt's based on how much optimization we're aiming for here.\n\n[Tim] 'Cause you're only going to make one of these things, right? Or are you planning on like, is NASA wanting multiple or, oh, my word. So by the way, I think there's a good chance that ITAR and comms might not want all of this. Wait until you see part two is unbelievable. And I promise I'm going to get it to as soon as I can. Thank you Elon, for spending so much time with me and allowing me to ask all of the questions I had. It was amazing.\n\nAnd thanks to the teams at SpaceX for allowing me to share this all with you. And thanks to Cosmic Perspective for helping shoot this and just kind of helping out all the time. Find them on YouTube and on Patreon as well. And I owe a huge thank you to my Patreon supporters for helping make this and everything else we do here at Everyday Astronaut possible.\n\nIf you want access to our discord channel, where we're probably going to be talking about this conversation a lot or live streams or lots of other fun stuff, head on over to patreon. com/everydayastronaut. And while you're online, be sure and check out our awesome web store. You can find shirts like this, the R7 / semyorka / the predecessor to Soyuz new shirt that we have that is awesome. As well as our new Mars hats.\n\nWe can also find some classics like the full flow stage combustion cycle shirt and hoodie and the future martian shirts and schematics collection and lots of other fun stuff. So head on over to everydayastronaut. com/shop. Thanks everybody, that's gonna do it for me. I'm Tim Dodd, the Everyday Astronaut, bringing space down to earth, for everyday people. (upbeat music)"},"languages":["en"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t705r8ICkRw"},{"id":"starbase-tour-with-everyday-astronaut-part-2-202","type":"interview","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SA8ZBJWo73E","title":"Starbase Tour with Everyday Astronaut — Part 2","titles":{"en":"Starbase Tour with Everyday Astronaut — Part 2","de":"Starbase Tour with Everyday Astronaut — Part 2","fr":"Starbase Tour with Everyday Astronaut — Part 2"},"date":"2021-07-30","summary":"Second part of the Starbase tour covering Starship hardware, heat shield tiles and stainless-steel structural choices.","text":"Hi, it's me, Tim Dodd, the Everyday Astronaut. Welcome to part two of my tour of SpaceX's Starbase Factory with the ultimate tour guide, Elon Musk. If you haven't watched Part One, you obviously need to watch that because there's just gobs of information. And in this part, we're actually going to go inside the three main assembly tents, which is incredible!\n\nAnd just like last time, we have a map that will occasionally pop up, courtesy of Ring Watchers on Twitter, that'll help you understand where exactly we are in the factory. We also have the YouTube play bar broken up into certain sections. We have links to those sections below, too. And we have an article up on our website that has some key points and takeaways of this conversation. The link and the description is below for that at www.\n\neverydayastronaut. com. All right, let's go check out some Raptor engines. So, by the way, I think there's a good chance that ITAR and COMS might not want all this- - Oh, yeah, just... It just can't be any more than people are already getting from- - [Tim] That's true.\n\nTelephoto lenses.\n\n[Tim] That, which is pretty much everything.\n\nAnd frankly, if some fool wants to copy this design, go for it. (Tim laughs) I mean, Raptor 2 is a giant improvement over this.\n\n[Tim] What's the big simplifications you're hoping to have?\n\nWell, maybe I shouldn't tell you all the secrets. (Tim laughs) We have funny things on the... We've got Pikachu over there.\n\n[Tim] (laughs) I love that.\n\n[Elon] Hello again.\n\n[Tim] Hello again. So that probably, I assume that means it's flown. Is that a flown one? (Elon laughs) - I don't know if this one's been flown.\n\n[Tim] Geez. This really does look like that thing with all the NK33s. Those videos of- - Yeah, yeah, exactly. Engines that came back from the cold.\n\n[Tim] Yes, seriously. It literally looks like that. This is insane. Man, that wrap vent is big. Geez.\n\nYeah, I won't tell you all the secrets. (Tim laughs) You'll be able to see the difference very clearly.\n\n[Tim] Okay.\n\nAnd I guess, since the engines are... It's hard to have people not see them.\n\n[Tim] Yeah.\n\nThey will... The Raptor 2 is visibly cleaner than Raptor 1. This sort of maze of plumbing and wiring doesn't exist on Raptor 2.\n\n[Tim] Although, it's already slimmed down a ton from like- - Yeah, it used to look like a frickin' Christmas tree.\n\n[Tim] (laughs) Yeah.\n\nYou couldn't even see the engine for all the stuff that was around it.\n\n[Tim] No, you really couldn't. And now it's like, especially around the turbines and stuff, and the free burners, I mean, that used to be a whole, there's sensors every two millimeters.\n\n[Elon] Yes.\n\n[Tim] So, Rap-Vac or Raptor-Vac has it's own regen channel on the extension, it looks like.\n\n[Elon] Yeah. That's a steel tube wall, raised steel tube wall.\n\n[Tim] That looks great. And it has a different profile, too, that actually looks like the initial exit. Is there a different throat in it and everything? Or is it?\n\n[Elon] No. Throat's the same.\n\n[Tim] Throat's the same?\n\nIt's just the part after the throat. The diverging section has different angles. Basically it's following a rail counter for a higher expansion ratio.\n\n[Tim] Yeah, yeah. What is the expansion ratio again? Is it like 150 or something?\n\nNo. Man, I think we were... So this is actually, I think we were around 80-ish.\n\n[Tim] Oh, okay.\n\nBut we wanna get to, we wanna do a little bit better. Maybe 90.\n\n[Tim] 'Cause you're already getting like, 380 ISP out of that thing, aren't you? Or I mean, sorry, yeah, 380.\n\n380's the aspirational number.\n\n[Tim] Okay.\n\nBut we should be able, I think we will get like 377 or 378.\n\n[Tim] Okay, okay. And how are those coming along? It looks like obviously you've got a third one here. You've obviously made at least three.\n\n[Elon] Yeah.\n\n[Tim] S-20's gonna have three.\n\n[Elon] Yes.\n\n[Tim] Yes. Geez.\n\nAll the engines will have the same pumps and thrust-chamber assembly. It's really just building it one, sort of one variant that has a big nozzle and one variant that doesn't have thrust vector control actuators.\n\n[Tim] Okay, okay. And that's gonna be the difference between the R boost and the?\n\nYeah. I mean, it's basically the same engine, minus PVC.\n\n[Tim] Gotcha. So, the outer shells that you're working on for the GSE are 12 meters.\n\nThere's a Raptor without the stuff; looks practically naked.\n\n[Tim] (laughs) you're like, actually that's secretly version two. It's super simple. No.\n\n[Elon] Version two will look a bit like that actually.\n\n[Tim] Really?\n\n[Elon] It's very tight.\n\n[Tim] Really?\n\n[Elon] Yeah.\n\n[Tim] I mean, again, when you look at some of those Soviet engines, they were also incredibly simple looking. I'm guessing they just obviously didn't have 'em wired to the gills with electronics, though, either. You know?\n\nThey didn't. They simply didn't, back in those days, they did not have good electronics.\n\n[Tim] Right.\n\nSo there's nothing to- - [Tim] There's nothing to wire up.\n\nYeah.\n\n[Tim] Yeah. How much, I feel like you iterate this quite a bit and remind people that it's, failure kind of is an option. Why do you think people are so afraid to fail? And why do you embrace it? How do you teach that culture even, that it's okay? When you're not even trying to like... You know, SN-8 is a perfect example. You weren't trying to do a mission. You're just trying to get data out of the thing.\n\nYeah. We have just a fundamentally different optimization for Starship versus say, like the polar extreme would be Dragon. Dragon, there can be no failures ever. Everything's gotta be tested six ways to Sunday. There has to be tons of margin. There can never be a failure ever for any reason whatsoever.\n\n[Tim] Yeah.\n\nThat's extreme conservatism. Then Falcon is a little less conservative. It is possible for us to have, say, a failure of the booster on landing. That's not the end of the world.\n\n[Tim] Right.\n\nAnd then for Starship, it's like the polar opposite of Dragon: we're iterating rapidly in order to create the first ever fully reusable rocket, orbital rocket. And fully and rapidly reusable. Reusable in a way that is like an aircraft. Rapidly reusable rockets.\n\n[Tim] It's a big deal.\n\nYeah. That's the fundamental Holy Grail for making life multi-planetary.\n\n[Tim] where do you think the Space Shuttle failed in being, and definitely rapidly would be a word you've got to scratch off the list- - Yeah, definitely not rapid.\n\n[Tim] But where do you think it failed? And where do you think... What lessons have you learned that you know you're not going to be making on Starship?\n\nThe Space Shuttle had almost no room for iteration because there were people on board. So you couldn't be blowing up shuttles. So that's a big problem.\n\n[Tim] They did very, very little.\n\nVery little. In fact, a lack of iteration was the problem. Because a lot of the issues they were aware of, but people were too afraid to make change.\n\n[Tim] 'Cause the design froze.\n\nYeah, 'cause it's like... Yeah. I mean, there was a risk/reward asymmetry. So, big punishment for, if you make a change and something goes wrong, big punishment. If you make a change and it goes right, small reward.\n\n[Tim] Yup, yup.\n\nSo, the issues with the O-ring and then with the insulation coming off and hitting the wing, they had seen this before.\n\n[Tim] Yeah, they were known.\n\nThey were known issues. Because it had worked before, they're like, well, it worked before. Russian roulette works before.\n\n[Tim] Right. (chuckles) Oh God.\n\n[Elon] Look, I've pulled the trigger so many times. There must be no bullets in this gun.\n\n[Tim] It must be no problem.\n\n[Elon] Yeah. Anyway, it's hard to iterate, though, when people are on every mission. You can't just be blowing stuff up 'cause you're gonna kill people. Starship does not have anyone on board so we can blow things up. That's really helpful.\n\n[Tim] Do you have any considerations yet on any kind of launch escape? Are you just hoping that by the time you put people on it, you've flown it say 100, 200 times, and you're familiar with all the failure modes, and you've mitigated it to a high degree of confidence. Or what's your?\n\nYeah. Larger scale, I think is... Yeah, you basically just need to fly a lot and have a lot of redundancy. So if you lose an engine on the booster, it doesn't matter basically. If you lose multiple engines it shouldn't matter. And you should be able to lose an engine on the ship and everything's okay. Launch escape is basically just protecting you for the ascent phase. And actually most launch escape systems only protect you for a small part of the ascent phase. 'Cause the typical launch escape system is a solid rocket motor on the tip of the capsule, which then has to be...\n\n[Tim] It has to be jettisoned.\n\nIt has to be jettisoned on every mission. So, if it's not jettisoned, the crew dies.\n\n[Tim] That's a failure mode, right there.\n\nThat's a failure mode. So you have a state change post liftoff, which is bad. Then because the damn thing's so heavy, they also can't carry it all the way to orbit. So, they'll typically jettison the escape system shortly after second stage ignition or final stage ignition. So that you don't have escape all the way to orbit even. Now, at least with Dragon, we have escape all the way to orbit. So that's, I think, a safety improvement. There's no escape system coming back to Earth. That's doesn't exist.\n\n[Tim] Right.\n\nAnd then, you can't have an escape system on the Moon or on Mars.\n\n[Tim] Or on Mars. Yep.\n\nYeah. You can't have something pop off and then have shoots drop. There's no atmosphere.\n\n[Tim] Right, right, right.\n\nAnd then Mars has a very low density atmosphere. So, it'll just hit the ground supersonic. Not gonna save you. So, the ship has to be safe enough for people without an escape system, because otherwise you can't go to the Moon, can't go to Mars.\n\n[Tim] Right, right. So you might as well- - Kind of pointless to do it on Earth. Just fly it a lot.\n\n[Tim] Right. And I never really thought about that. You're gonna be flying so much without fear of retribution of failure, that unlike the Shuttle, like you mentioned, I just never really considered that, you know? (tools whirring) - [Elon] Yeah.\n\n[Tim] So, let's see. What? Oh, those are the vacuum mounts, aren't they?\n\nYeah.\n\n[Tim] Wow, that's cool!\n\nYeah. I mean, this sort of stuff, it's very much version one.\n\n[Tim] Yep.\n\nIt'll be a lot better with the next iteration.\n\n[Tim] Well, a lot of people will ask me, hey, I want to start a YouTube video. Where do I start? And I'll be like, start, you just have to start. And I kind of feel like this is a similar philosophy. It's like, you're not going to know what's wrong or how to make it better until you do it at least once anyway, you know?\n\nYes.\n\n[Tim] And you just simply have to start, you have to force yourself to start.\n\nYeah.\n\n[Tim] Then you improve from there.\n\nExactly.\n\n[Tim] Man. Are you pretty used to the heat? I feel like it's, it's pretty hot out here.\n\nIt is hot. I mean, this is the worst. This is like summer, you know?\n\n[Tim] Right.\n\nIt's just the worst of it.\n\n[Tim] Yeah.\n\nBut it's not that bad. Just pretend you're in Hawaii.\n\n[Tim] Right, there you go. (Elon chuckles) So, speaking of Shuttle.\n\nI mean, I think it's a cool view.\n\n[Tim] Oh, it's a really cool view. And thermal protection, it seems like you guys have made some, I mean, it looks like S-20 is gonna pretty well decked out in the stuff. How are you feeling about the thermal protection system? You feel like that's a pretty good solution?\n\nWe'll find out. (Tim laughs) - [Tim] Has it been holding up pretty good, at least on the low altitude stuff?\n\nYeah.\n\n[Tim] As far as the mounting points and stuff like that.\n\nI mean, it's still there. I mean, you can see the videos.\n\n[Tim] Yeah.\n\nIt takes off with the tiles and it lands with the tiles. We have, I think, a good attach mechanism. It seems like a good attach mechanism because it allows... It's just mechanically attached with some play in the tile, so the tile can move a little bit. It's quite a tricky thing with the tiles 'cause the tiles are essentially a ceramic. And they're attached to a metal substructure that is changing in temperature dramatically.\n\nIt'll be a room temperature right now. Then it'll drop to cryo temperature when it's loaded with cryogenic propellants. Then it will be heated up with hot Alish gas. So, now it'll be way above room temperature. Then it'll cool down. Then the tiles will themselves will get hot on re-entry and they also have some expansion. There's a lot of expanding and contracting going on all over the place.\n\nI think one of the big questions is, are these tiles, are we gonna have a crack or a gap in the tiles? Like, if they bang into each other, they're ceramics, like a coffee cup is ceramic. So, if you bang two coffee cups together it's usually bad.\n\n[Tim] It's not good, yeah.\n\nIf the tiles bang each other and crack, this could result in a failure on entry. So, I think there's a huge question of like, when we get the ship to orbit, is it able to make it back through Earth's atmosphere? 'Cause it's coming in like a meteor.\n\n[Tim] Right, right.\n\nIt's like a blazing hot meteor. Will the heat shield stand up to it? Or if there's any crack in the armor, it's toast.\n\n[Tim] Yeah, yeah.\n\nSo, hopefully we at least find out where the crack in the armor is.\n\n[Tim] Right, right.\n\nThat would be great.\n\n[Tim] And then if you have to, you can make some thicker or smaller, or iterate to that degree of where you find those failures again.\n\nYes.\n\n[Tim] How will you know? What if something just goes... What if the first orbital attempt just goes totally, it doesn't even make it in for reentry and it's just a million pieces of the bottom of the ocean? How will you know where it failed?\n\nWe have temperature sensors. Probably need some thermal images inside the tanks. So, just like IR cameras.\n\n[Tim] So you can see if a certain section's getting real hot.\n\nYeah, our cameras on the inside will show you what the backside temperature is.\n\n[Tim] Yeah, yeah, it'll let you know if a leak propagated.\n\nIt's only gonna pop if the backside temperature... Frankly, I'm not sure. In fact, I take that back. If you just have a camera-camera- - [Tim] Yeah, you'll know.\n\nVisual, you'll see if something's glowing white-hot, okay, that's bad. (Tim laughs) That's the bad part, right there. So, you don't even need a thermal image, frankly. The steel will glow white-hot before it melts.\n\n[Tim] Right, right, right. (laughs) You'll know.\n\nYou'll know. It's not subtle.\n\n[Tim] And the very first orbital test, again, it kinda seems like... There's been a lot of debate of like, is it going to orbit and deorbiting? Or is it just orbital velocity with a low perigee that's inside the atmosphere? And that's how it'll deorbit?\n\nNo, it's getting to orbital velocity. But it's not circularizing it's perigee.\n\n[Tim] Yes.\n\nIt basically goes three-quarters of the way around the Earth, but because we didn't raise the perigee, the atmospheric drag will put it in.\n\n[Tim] Yup, and the velocity will probably be greater, reentry velocity will be greater that way or similar.\n\nSimilar. It's not a huge difference. It could easily, if you just puff the attitude control thrusters or the aldris gas, the aldris gas alone could put it into orbit. So, raising perigee slightly is easy.\n\n[Tim] Yeah.\n\nIt's remarkably easy. If you just wanna raise it a little bit.\n\n[Tim] Are you hoping to actually recover the first one?\n\nNo.\n\n[Tim] Or try to even land. I mean, is it gonna try to fire its engines?\n\nOur goal with the first one, for the first orbital launch, our goal is to make it to orbit without blowing up.\n\n[Tim] Yeah.\n\nThat's our goal.\n\n[Tim] Yep.\n\nAnd frankly, if the booster even does its job and something goes wrong with the ship, I'll still count that as good progress.\n\n[Tim] Yeah.\n\nBasically, actually, to be totally frank, if it takes off without blowing up- - [Tim] (laughs) Right.\n\nBlowing up the stand, stage zero, which is much harder to replace than the booster, that would be a victory. But please do not blow up on the stand. That's my number-one concern.\n\n[Tim] You keep calling it, you're calling the stand stage zero?\n\nThe launch system.\n\n[Tim] Really? The ground, GSE, the tower and all that stuff?\n\nStage zero, yeah.\n\n[Tim] Okay, yeah. I got so spoiled now with, again, Soviet nomenclature. It's like, there's zero for the boosters.\n\nReally?\n\n[Tim] The core is one.\n\nOkay.\n\n[Tim] And then what I would call the, wait. No, sorry, opposite: the boosters are one, core is two. The next upper stage, or what I would consider stage two is stage three, so it's really confusing. And I kept being like, oh yeah, third, second stage, and they're like, no, no, that's third stage. You know?\n\nWell, stage zero, the launch system, the launch mount, flame diverter, sort of.\n\n[Tim] Yep, sort of.\n\nThe big tower. The propellant farm. All the lines and everything, that's stage zero. And it's very hard.\n\n[Tim] Yeah.\n\nIt's harder for us to make a stage zero than to make a booster or a ship.\n\n[Tim] Okay.\n\nSo I hope.\n\n[Tim] Hopefully it doesn't blow up.\n\nYes, that would be great. (Tim chuckles) And then, the best-case outcome for the first flight would be that the booster does its job and also is able to relight the engines, and it's gonna splash down in the Gulf.\n\n[Tim] Only 20 miles out or something, right?\n\nYeah, not far.\n\n[Tim] Relatively.\n\nAnd then the ship or upper stage is gonna come in just off the coast of Hawaii, near a military base there. And so, we'll splash down in the Pacific.\n\n[Tim] Yup, yup. So, again, to reiterate, on the first launch you won't, the booster, you're gonna just use the gas venting to orient it for re-entry. You will do boost-back burn on the first one too, right?\n\nLet's just say it's an evolving situation.\n\n[Tim] Yeah.\n\nIn order to be 20 miles away, we definitely would have to do some kind of boost back, otherwise it's gonna be way further.\n\n[Tim] Yeah.\n\nSo, yeah, I mean, probably it's a boost back. Basically you want to stimulate the landing but not, not have it be too close to land, so it doesn't take out stage zero.\n\n[Tim] Right. Yep, yep.\n\nWe want to say, basically, can we position the booster precisely such that if it had landed next to the tower, or if it come to a halt next to the tower could the arms have grabbed it?\n\n[Tim] Yes.\n\nMech-zilla.\n\n[Tim] Mech-zilla?\n\nMega-zilla.\n\n[Tim] Mega-zilla?\n\nMecha.\n\n[Tim] Mecha-zilla, okay. Yeah, like a giant mech.\n\nYeah kinda like mecha-zilla.\n\n[Tim] What's the plan? It just comes and sits then on the grid fins and or that little arrester thing?\n\nNo, those little tiny arms.\n\n[Tim] That tiny little T-Rex arm is gonna hold the whole- - Yes, there's two of them. But those things can take a lot of load.\n\n[Tim] And then it's just literally a flat, a flat arm kind of like this that?\n\nI mean, this is one of those things, it's hard to keep a secret when it's right there. People can just take zoomed up photos. Drive past it and take a high-res photo close up. So, it's not exactly gonna be top secret.\n\n[Tim] Right, right.\n\nThis is the first real big rocket development that's been so close to a public road, that people are literally driving to the beach right past the launch site. So, it's hard to keep a secret around here.\n\n[Tim] That brings up, I always keep wondering, we're seeing this insane pace, we're seeing all these crazy things happen. How much of that is normal, at least as far as SpaceX goes? Or how much of that is just because we're actually seeing it? Like, for instance, when you were developing Merlin and Falcon 9, were you blowing stuff up this much doing things so crazy fast paced? Or is this also fast-paced, but now we're also seeing it all so it's hard to compare?\n\nWell, I mean, this is definitely a case where we are washing out laundry in public.\n\n[Tim] Yeah, yeah.\n\nThere's always dirty laundry in any program. It's really a question of whether it is seen or not. Not is there dirty laundry.\n\n[Tim] Right, right. Yeah. (Elon laughs) - Every program's got dirty laundry. But in this case, it's in public. But this is also a case where we're intentionally iterating the design rapidly. And basically, ships and boosters will either be amazing lawn ornaments- - [Tim] Right.\n\nWhich then have to be stored and they look awesome, but you know, we don't want 12 of them. It's gonna look bizarre and where will we put them?\n\n[Tim] Yeah.\n\nSo, since we were making a rapid iterations with each... Basically every single ship and booster has had significant iterations. You either either want it to blow up or, the early ones, you want them to blow up, or you're gonna have to find a place to store them.\n\n[Tim] Right.\n\nSo we actually want to push the envelope. And frankly, if you don't push the envelope, you cannot achieve the goal of a fully and rapidly reusable rocket.\n\n[Tim] Yeah.\n\nIt's not possible.\n\n[Tim] Yeah.\n\nYou have to go close to the edge on margins.\n\n[Tim] Right, right.\n\nAnd there's a recursive factor to mass. So, if you add, say an extra ton of heat shielding, now you also need more propellant to get it to orbit, and you need more propellant to deorbit it, and you need more propellant to land it. And the structure now has more load, 'cause it's carrying that extra ton of heat shield. So, this applies at any given time, there's a recursive value. So, in order to achieve the same payload, you have to... Each ton is basically almost like adding two tons, when it's fully considered.\n\n[Tim] Definitely.\n\nSo, I think we've calculated it to be like a 1.8 factor, but I think it's probably we're forgetting something so it's closer to two.\n\n[Tim] Yeah.\n\nSo, every one ton of mass begets an extra ton.\n\n[Tim] Yeah, yep. For instance, what's S-20's dry mass? Kind of looking like, where are you at right now? Are you like, 120 tons? Or are you?\n\nI actually don't know the exact mass of 20. We'll know it when we weigh it.\n\n[Tim] Yeah.\n\nThere's a lot of parts that have not been weighed. (Elon laughs) - [Tim] Yeah.\n\nSo, what is it actually? I mean, I hope it's not too insane. Ideally it's... It's dry mass is hopefully not much more than a 100 tons.\n\n[Tim] Really?\n\nYes, but then if you say dry, do you mean not counting the air inside it?\n\n[Tim] (chuckles) Right, right.\n\nWhich by the way, the air, actually air mass is non-trivial.\n\n[Tim] No, it's not.\n\n(chuckles) 'Cause it's such a giant volume. And then do you mean dry? Do you mean with propellant residuals? And Alvis gas, which is at several atmospheres?\n\n[Tim] Right.\n\nWhich mass are you referring to?\n\n[Tim] Which dry mass, right.\n\nSometimes in these things, they'll play games with the, when you say thruster weight of a rocket engine, so the thruster weight of the rocket engine with or without residuals? That's a big change.\n\n[Tim] Or with or without gimbal is something else that I've heard people debate.\n\nYeah.\n\n[Tim] Yeah.\n\nMerlin is, I'm pretty sure by any standard, you know, I think it's probably the best thruster weight of any engine. Because it's just so far, we really pushed the GG cycle engine to the... It's like A-plus for GG cycle architecture. But GG cycle architecture is not an A-plus architecture.\n\n[Tim] Architecture, right.\n\nFull flow stage combustion, A-plus architecture. But with the new architecture, we won't get it an A-plus within that. It's like in gymnastics, you know, you'd like to say, how hard is your program? And then what grade do you get in the program?\n\n[Tim] In the program, yeah.\n\nThat's kind of how things work here.\n\n[Tim] What would you say version two's gonna come in at? If you were to rate 'em?\n\nI don't know. I'd say it's like, B-plus.\n\n[Tim] Okay.\n\nSomething like that.\n\n[Tim] Yeah. So, good enough for now. But of course, reiterate.\n\nYeah. Raptor 3, Raptor 4, Raptor 5. By Raptor 5, it'll be an A-plus.\n\n[Tim] Yeah, yeah. Should we walk through here and check out what's going on in here? This is just a nose cone being assembled. It's not that it's showing?\n\n[Elon] This is our new and improved nose cone.\n\n[Tim] Oh yeah, it's just straight. There's no cross section.\n\nIf you look at that nose cone over there, that's made from stamped sections. You can see that's three rows of stamped sections. This will be made of two rows of stretch formed.\n\n[Tim] Wow.\n\n[Elon] And you can see it's just way smoother.\n\n[Tim] Yeah.\n\nThis is stretched over like a big mandrel. So just take a big sheet of steel. And if you just stretch it over this giant tool.\n\n[Tim] Right, right, right.\n\nAnd then you can have things that are way bigger. Like you can't fit this in a stamping press. This is way too big. That's like basically about as long as you can fit in a stamping press. You cannot fit something this giant. Well, you can technically make some totally special case stamping machine that doesn't exist. But since you only need a single sided, it doesn't have indentations or anything. You couldn't make a car body side this way. But you can make something with this level of symmetry that is, basically you can do a one-sided die. So you can just stretch form it over a big mandrel.\n\n[Tim] And this isn't the cargo. It's not complete yet, but it had that opening on the one side. That's not because you were working on the door. The jaws yet, right?\n\nYeah, I actually stopped work on the door, the faring door.\n\n[Tim] Okay.\n\nWe're gonna focus on getting to orbit. We don't need a door. It's like, we need to be super focused on getting to orbit then super focused on getting the ship back, then we can worry about doors.\n\n[Tim] Okay.\n\nIt's just an unnecessary complexity. Is the door necessary to solve the problem? No. Will we use this, the first 10 or more that get back from orbit, we probably won't fly them again. Or maybe once or twice, but they're not gonna be in storage. For Falcon 9, and even the Block 5, So for Block 5, which is more like version 7 really. But we don't even want to use the early Block 5s. Even those were a pain in the ass. And we prefer to retire them.\n\nSo when we have a mission that requires an expandable booster, we'll put an early Block 5 because the early Block 5s are not as good as the later Block 5s. And they're more of a pain in the ass to get ready for flight.\n\n[Tim] Wow.\n\nReality is, the early ones are gonna be amazing lawn ornaments. I mean, as good as a lawn ornament gets. But they will not be nearly as good as the ones that follow. So then why keep them flying?\n\n[Tim] They're not gonna be putting any payload up. You don't even need to worry about it yet.\n\nYeah, so we're just gonna retire the early ones anyway. Why have a door on a thing that's never gonna fly satellites anyway.\n\n[Tim] How is the butt to butt refueling going? 'Cause that's gotta be a pretty early consideration. 'Cause you're probably gonna want to start testing that.\n\nNo.\n\n[Tim] No?\n\nNo, we're gonna get to orbit and back first.\n\n[Tim] Okay.\n\nWe don't need orbital refueling. Unless you're going to the Moon, you need orbital refueling. Going to Mars, you need orbital refueling. Delivering satellites to Earth orbit, you do not need orbital refueling.\n\n[Tim] Right, right.\n\nSo just punt that 'til later.\n\n[Tim] Okay.\n\nI'm not sure it'll be the butt to butt. It might be something different. We switched the propellant full drain lines to be side. So, coming from the side.\n\n[Tim] Not up through the booster anymore?\n\nNo. It was adding a bunch of stuff to the booster. And then we're flying it every time. If you can move mass to the ground side, it's better to move mass to the ground side.\n\n[Tim] Right, right.\n\nThat's why we took the legs off the booster and just have the tower catch it.\n\n[Tim] Are you thinking about doing a tower catch?\n\nWhich sounds mad.\n\n[Tim] Yeah, I know!\n\nI know it sounds insane. But when I suggested that, people thought I lost my mind. Which I'm like, maybe I have. But I think it might take a few kicks of the can, but we'll get it right. It's just, the work that you have to do to pick up the booster and put it on the launch stand, this gigantic skyscraper thing, in high wind, windy situations; it's very windy around here.\n\n[Tim] Yeah it is.\n\nSo, you're gonna pick up this booster, you're gonna put it onto a stand with precision. Then you've gotta pick a ship up and put it up on top of that. That means you've got to have a secondary arm to steady the booster so it's not moving around all over the place. And then while the sort of mech is armed, pick up the ship and put it on the booster.\n\n[Tim] Okay. The mech-zilla arms are the ones that are gonna be picking up the ship, not the crane?\n\nOkay, so... (Elon chuckles) Very important to appreciate that everything you see here is a work in progress.\n\n[Tim] Right.\n\nAnd what is said last week may be untrue next week.\n\n[Tim] We've seen that a few times.\n\nYes, it could be that we're actually just literally mistaken, a miscommunication. Any one of a number of things. We just found a better, had a better idea. In the case of like for the first stacking, we're we're gonna do that with a crane.\n\n[Tim] Yeah.\n\nYeah. (Tim laughs) Marvin the Martian right there.\n\n[Tim] I love that.\n\nThe first one we're gonna stack with a crane. 'Cause otherwise we'd have to wait for all the mechanisms to work. We're assembling the arms and basically putting mech-zilla together. But in the meantime we could be launching. So let's not wait for the tower to be completed. We've got the second-biggest crane on Earth. We don't necessarily want to have the second-biggest crane on Earth just sitting there forever.\n\nBut it can be there for the first stacking. And then from the first stacking, then we can figure out, you know, just like, do we have the hull downs work? Or the launch mounts, I should say. It's really quite a complicated launch mount. It's got basically 20 mount points. And you've got to line those things up and then put the booster on it and have the, you know, does it fit? Okay, it won't fit, basically. Now we gotta adjust it.\n\nThat launch ring is 370 tons.\n\n[Tim] Oh my God!\n\nAnd it's gonna tweak, you move it from one place to another, it tweaks. It doesn't stay exactly the same. So we're gonna have to like jiggle it around a little bit, put in some shims and stuff and fit the booster. So, we wanna do that soon. We should be done with this booster, I don't know, next week.\n\n[Tim] Yep. Wow.\n\n[Elon] So then we want to mount the booster next week.\n\n[Tim] That's gonna be insane to see.\n\nYeah. We're gonna try to put the ring on the stand, the launch ring on the stand tomorrow.\n\n[Tim] Wow.\n\nBut we may not succeed, we'll see. Probably the second flight we'll use, I mean, it's probably like the second flight we'll use the tower.\n\n[Tim] Okay. Second flight, oh, so the first flight might still just use the suborbital pad?\n\nNo, it's gonna use the, it has to use the orbital pad. The suborbital pad cannot take the full weight of the stack. It's gonna get crushed and it doesn't have enough height. So the rocket would blast itself in the face. It's too low and too weak. We gotta launch it from the super beefy stand. But we don't want to wait until everything's ready with the tower, just to stack.\n\n[Tim] Okay, so, how will you secure it then when it's stacked? Just drop the Starship on top?\n\nHave the crane hold it.\n\n[Tim] Until it's launch time and then?\n\nWe do need the QD arm to work.\n\n[Tim] Oh right. So that can be a stability thing.\n\nExactly, it holds it, it stabilizes it, and transports propellant. If we don't have that, we can't load a prop on the ship.\n\n[Tim] Right, right, okay. So that has to be complete, but not necessarily the arms and everything else going on at that point.\n\n[Elon] Yeah.\n\n[Tim] Dang.\n\n[Elon] Yeah, exactly.\n\n[Tim] At this point- - I mean, like I said, there's a lot of moving pieces here. So some of this could be ready in time. It's possible that the tower could be ready in time, in which case we'll use the tower. But if the tower's not ready in time, we'll use the crane.\n\n[Tim] Okay.\n\nYeah.\n\n[Tim] So at this point in development, what things are you being kept up by at night? Like, what's the thing you're like, oh, we just need to do this or this better. Or we really, I can't sleep 'cause I'm not, we haven't figured this out yet.\n\nI'm sorry?\n\n[Tim] Yeah, so, what things are just totally keeping you up at night at this point? What's the thing that you feel like you still have to solve at this point?\n\nI mean, there's a long list.\n\n[Tim] What's at the top of that right now? For you at least personally.\n\nThis is really all just measured as, in terms of time, like, what is the time risk associated with something? The one thing you cannot replace is time. And I do have a habit of being optimistic with schedules. I mean, if I wasn't optimistic, I wouldn't be doing the crazy things that I'm doing.\n\n[Tim] Right.\n\n[Elon] So I must have like, I don't know just pathologically optimistic, I suppose. (Tim laughs) - [Tim] Wow, that actually, just look at that.\n\n[Elon] Yeah, it looks like dragon scales.\n\n[Tim] That is incredible.\n\n[Elon] Doesn't that look cool?\n\n[Tim] It's actually coming together a lot cleaner than- - [Elon] It totally looks like dragon scales, I think.\n\n[Tim] It really does.\n\n[Elon] Yeah.\n\n[Tim] And it's so much tidier and cleaner looking than I thought.\n\n[Elon] Yeah. There's a few broken tiles, but overall it looks cool.\n\n[Tim] That's incredible, wow. So, I guess, the joints is one of those things that the community has always wanted to know about. I guess the good thing is the flaps, will for mostly take most of the wind from this area that you see. So, I guess you don't really have to cool the inside of the flap joint itself 'cause it's kind of already- - No, actually, unfortunately we do. I think we have significant...\n\nTake a lot of what I'm saying with a grain of salt. I often am wrong. Sometimes I'll say something and it's wrong. (Tim laughs) I think we have a design error with the, with the non-moving portion of the forward flaps.\n\n[Tim] Okay.\n\nBecause the reason we have... The flaps and the static arrow, basically the unmoving portion of the flaps are there to do two things: to balance, rebalance the ship so it doesn't come in engines first. Otherwise, the center of mass is quite low.\n\n[Tim] Yeah.\n\nAnd it will come in engines first and burn up the engines.\n\n[Tim] Yep.\n\nSo, first you have to rebalance it so that in a hypersonic stream, you're doing roughly sort of like, a 60 to 70-degree angle of attack. Because you're flying a trajectory that minimizes- - [Tim] Peak heat.\n\nPeak heat. But you don't care about total heat load. You just care about minimizing your peak heat.\n\n[Tim] Because you have a good insulator here. And you're not ablating.\n\nYes, exactly. So, if you have an ablative heat shield like Dragon. Technically Dragon is fairly reusable actually, 'cause it's sort of like a brake pad. You can fly it many times 'cause it's got so much margin. But PICA literally means phenolic impregnated carbon ablator.\n\n[Tim] Yep.\n\nThat's the Dragon heat shield. So, Dragon was like, hey, let's have a, give me high-peak heating, but don't make my total heat load high because what Dragon is trying to optimize for is what is the heat pulse when it's under parachutes? The heat pulse moves through the tile and then reaches the back to where it's bonded to the carbon fiber composite sandwich structure.\n\n[Tim] Yep.\n\nIf the heat is too high, it will melt the glue and the heat shield tiles will start falling off. And then they will potentially, you know, damage the parachute.\n\n[Tim] Really? Okay.\n\nYou start having these things like- - [Tim] Right, flying off.\n\nPotentially, 'cause they're low density. So they they're pretty... Intermittently it's kind of a corner case. The graying heat shield tiles are way over thick, not because of how much of the heat shield will be ablated, but because of the heat pulse that will reach the back of the heat shield that might melt the glue while it's under parachutes.\n\n[Tim] Wow. Yeah, interesting constraint at the end of it all.\n\nYeah, so if you just have a lot of heat suddenly, that's actually better for Dragon. High peak, low total heating.\n\n[Tim] Yep, yep, yep. So its reentry profile is totally different, too.\n\nYeah.\n\n[Tim] It can come in steeper as opposed to this- - It's gonna come in, Dragon wants to come in real steep. The lift over drag ratio is low for Dragon. A lot of people look at it and say it doesn't have any lift but it does. If you have a gumdrop-shaped thing, and you have off-centered center of mass, then you can control it because it has a small lift vector because the gumdrop is tilting into the wind slightly. It's quite low.\n\nAnd actually, L over D is a function of mach number. People always go, well, quote an L over D number. But like, okay, what mach is that? And it's usually some sort of reference mach number. But your L over D is complete trash at mach 20. It's garbage, nothing basically. So it's like, L over D at what mach number? Anyway, it's got a very low L over D. But it does have a lift vector.\n\nAnd then because it is symmetric, or more or less symmetric, with little thrusters you can rotate the capsule as it's coming in and change that lift vector. You have a landing ellipsoid because your accuracy longitudinally is less than your accuracy left to right. So, you're changing lift vector, you say well, how do you change the point where you land? If you can turn left or right but how do you change lift point? You do a series of S turns.\n\nSo, you S turn and depending upon how much you bank during the S turns, that affects your longitudinal points and then your lateral point is pretty easy to tune because you have a lift vector going left and right.\n\n[Tim] 'Cause it's not so much, people might think, oh, you're going up and down. That really doesn't work in the grand scheme of orbital velocities and everything. It's really about your actual velocity. And where you end up arresting your velocity is where you're gonna drop it to the ground pretty much, more or less.\n\nYeah, I mean, I think it's just very important for people to appreciate that there's a very gigantic difference between orbit and space.\n\n[Tim] Right.\n\nIt is actually relatively easy to get to space. But it is very hard to get to orbit.\n\n[Tim] Right.\n\nAnd then you say you want to get to orbit and come back. This is easily 100 times harder than getting to space, maybe 1000; so much harder. That hardly anyone's even, you know, only a few countries have been able to do it.\n\n[Tim] Right.\n\nYou know, whereas Burt Rutan went to space twice. What was it, like, 12 years ago? I don't know, it was a while. What, 15 years ago?\n\n[Tim] Yeah, 2004, 2005.\n\nYeah, it was like 15 years ago. He went to the border of space twice, and didn't even scorch the paint. It's really not very hot if you didn't even burn the paint.\n\n[Tim] Right, that's true.\n\nYeah.\n\n[Tim] That's true. (machine beeping) - Whereas, this needs really intense heat shielding or it's gonna get to, you know, blow up basically.\n\n[Tim] Yeah, yeah. It's crazy to see now, honestly. So, is there some considerations to make the fixed? Can we go out this way or is it?\n\nYeah, I mean, just don't let anything drop on your head.\n\n[Tim] All right, deal. So there's another barrel section of S-20.\n\nI mean, it looks a little garage shop, to be frank. But it's like weirdly super advanced technology with garage shop. (Tim laughs) - [Tim] Well, it is very unique of you guys to basically build the rockets first and then start building a factory around it. You know?\n\nYeah. The production system is the actual hard thing.\n\n[Tim] Right.\n\nThe rocket design is relatively easy compared to the factory. And these tiles are actually made in Florida at a SpaceX factory we call the Bakery. In Florida, it's next to a Ron Jon's. (Tim laughs) - [Tim] What's the future for Florida with Starship? Are you gonna get it flying 100%, get it all figured out basically? At least get orbital version ready and then start setting up shop in Florida?\n\nYeah, I think we wanna kind of iron out the major issues here. We'll certainly be launching Starship from the Cape. We might do more at the Cape. But we'll certainly be launching Starship from the Cape. And like I said, we make the heat shield tiles, which is actually quite a big factory to make these heat shield tiles; not a small factory.\n\n[Tim] Next to Ron Jon's?\n\nWell, technically it's next to a Ron Jon's distribution warehouse. Literally, I was like, is that a surf shop? Yeah, well, maybe it's a factory, I don't know, but I just got a Ron Jon's logo. But the factory, the SpaceX heat shield tile factory is quite big. It's not tiny. 'Cause you need to make a lot of these tile.\n\n[Tim] And for the most part, I'm surprised at the taper. It looks like they're all still uniform tiles, which obviously is a huge improvement compared to the Shuttle. Instead of having 24,000 unique tiles.\n\n[Elon] (laughs) Yeah. And you can see we're figuring it out.\n\n[Tim] But I'm surprised, though, even as the area tapers, it's not, I would have thought- - Mara's head of heat shield engineering. It's like, I'm gonna text him like, yo man, what's going on?\n\n[Tim] It doesn't seem like there's a ton of unique. They mostly look uniform, which obviously will help with- - [Elon] Yeah, they're not all uniform.\n\n[Tim] A lot more than the Shuttle. What's your expected, what are you hoping to get for reuse out of these things?\n\nOh, I mean, no meaningful limit. As many as you want. (machines beeping) - [Tim] There we go. We got right back into camera-ception for you there for a second. Camera inside of camera. (machines beeping) - Yeah. There are different shapes of tiles. You can see some of them at the border there are square instead of hexagons.\n\n[Tim] Yep.\n\nAnd then, because the static arrow is, it's still seeing actually a lot of heat, basically the plasma is hitting the surface and then it's moving around. It's got to somehow get past it. You've got super heated plasma hitting that thing, then riding up the side of the vehicle, hitting that static arrow. So, you actually have a heat concentration there. And then you've got a hinge that's, you have to protect the hinge.\n\nThis is if you said like, okay, what's highest probability of failure on reetry? It's probably the hinge of the flaps. So, the rear hinge and the forward hinge of the flaps. 'Cause you have to have a rotating thing, but you can't just make everything out of tiles. So, you have to have a seal. So we have to seal against, against the tiles. So, the tiles are ceramic, like a seal against dinner plates that are super hot. So you can't use rubber.\n\n[Tim] Right.\n\nSo it's gotta be a metal seal, and with a torturous path.\n\n[Tim] Have you thought about, back in the day, you talked about transpirational cooling.\n\nYes, so, that's one of the things you could throw at it is transpiration cool the joint.\n\n[Tim] That would be so cool. I just want to see it bleeding methane, honestly.\n\nIt'll definitely help.\n\n[Tim] 'Cause you can kind of purge that joint with a higher-pressure gas. As long as it's higher than the ambient air stream or the plasma stream, it will create a thermal barrier.\n\nIt's definitely one of the things, if you really want to nail the heating on the hinge, is bleed fuel gas into the thing. 'Cause actually, even the burning methane is like, with air, because air is only like, 21% oxygen. If you ask me, what are you breathing, they think they're breathing oxygen. You're breathing nitrogen with some oxygen.\n\n[Tim] A little argon.\n\nAnd some argon and some trace gases. But essentially, methane with air, which is mostly not oxygen, doesn't get that hot. So even if it burns, it's not that big of a deal.\n\n[Tim] Right, right, 'cause it's already detached from the vehicle at that point.\n\nIt's not as hot as the plasma that's hitting it.\n\n[Tim] Right.\n\nYeah.\n\n[Tim] Wow.\n\nAll right, well, let's see. I guess the car is? (woman speaks off mic) Okay. (machines beeping) - [Tim] So, each tent's kind of a designated... One's barrel section, one's nose cones, and one's, one's just kind of the thrust pucks and stuff?\n\nYeah, like I said, it is a constantly evolving thing. We've changed what occurs in each production tent and in the high bay and mid bay, multiple times. But this certainly currently is focused on the nose.\n\n[Tim] You're working on a new high bay, too, right?\n\nYeah, we're building a higher high bay.\n\n[Tim] Uber high?\n\nIt's only a little bit higher than the current one, but it's much wider, and it has two gastric cranes that run full width and depth.\n\n[Tim] Okay.\n\nI mean, it will feel like the lap of luxury compared to our current high bay.\n\n[Tim] Like how about tall, do you know?\n\nSorry?\n\n[Tim] About how tall?\n\nI dunno, probably, oh, like 100 meters.\n\n[Tim] Okay, and this one's? Like 80 or something.\n\nYeah. This one's about 80. The booster height's about 70. Although it's kind of funny. Like technically we deleted half a barrel section from the booster, so it's technically 69 point something. (Tim laughs) Like 69 and 1/2.\n\n[Tim] You did that on purpose.\n\nNo, it wasn't even me. I was like, the guy's like, hey, just let me know, at 70 meters you have a half barrel, which is a pain in the ass. So, they just deleted it, and I was like, cool, sounds good. I mean, I randomly set the length of 70 meters. It's not like any special about it.\n\n[Tim] Right.\n\nI guess fate loves, I don't know. I don't know what's going on. But these certain numbers just seem to be recurring all the time.\n\n[Tim] Yes.\n\nSo the booster is actually 69 point something. And then it's Booster 4 and Ship 20.\n\n[Tim] 20. (laughs) - And this is all happenstance.\n\n[Tim] Right, right. I love that.\n\nWhat the hell is going on? (Tim laughs) - [Tim] Oh yeah, someone had figured out that, oh, what was it? Oh, I don't even remember but it was something like you were 69,420 days old or minutes old or something when you went on SNL or something.\n\nWhat?\n\n[Tim] It was some ridiculous.\n\nAre you serious?\n\n[Tim] Yes, it was the weirdest- - You know I was born 69 days after 4/20, by the way.\n\n[Tim] Oh yeah. (laughs) Come on!\n\nCome on.\n\n[Tim] This is ridiculous.\n\nIt's ridiculous.\n\n[Tim] That's so funny.\n\nI mean, what the hell?\n\n[Tim] Oh man. This is insane.\n\nIt's like, am I an avatar in someone's video game?\n\n[Tim] Yes.\n\nOh really?\n\n[Tim] Statistically, yeah.\n\nOkay. (Tim laughs) - [Tim] You're probably doing pretty good at the game, though. I bet you're like, the top ranked player.\n\nOkay. Well, that's something. (Tim laughs) - [Tim] Do you have a name for the high-bay bar yet?\n\n[Elon] No, I guess we've bounced around different names. We still haven't really made much use of it because it wasn't really a critical path. So it's kind of just sat there. And the elevator, we need an upgraded elevator 'cause we have this construction elevator.\n\n[Tim] Right.\n\nWe don't yet have a name. Nor have we used it. But we're making good progress there installing the grid fin.\n\n[Tim] Yeah, looks like the grid fin's up. And I like how they're now... Let me try and guess why you're gonna put 'em closer together and not at 90-degree intervals. Is it because you can just change your role to change whatever axis you're trying to... If you're trying to pitch the vehicle, you're really only most of the time probably either doing pitch or yaw. You're likely not doing pitch and yaw when it's coming in for reentry.\n\nWell, actually no. We're controlling on three axes all the time. Now, technically you only need three fins to control on three axes.\n\n[Tim] But you can also roll if need to change your yaw and roll 90 degrees, it would be pitch.\n\nWell, the control authority you need is much more in pitch than any of the other axes. Like, the amount of control authority you need for roll is practically nothing.\n\n[Tim] Right.\n\nBut for pitch, you've got to basically push the booster down. So, you got to push this monster thing into the wind and it doesn't want to go there. The amount of pitch force you need, that's where you need the most amount of force. So, having the two pairs of fins closer together, like more like an X-wing fighter allows them to contribute more in pitch.\n\n[Tim] Which then allows more glide or more of the air frame hitting the sides of the booster.\n\nYou care about how much force do you have relative to how much force do you need in a given axis? So you need a lot of force in the pitch axis, so that's where you want to bias your grip fins.\n\n[Tim] Yep, yep.\n\nYou could arguably say they should be biased even closer together than they are currently.\n\n[Tim] Yeah.\n\nBut this is a reasonable guess.\n\n[Tim] In between.\n\nYeah.\n\n[Tim] So, this might end up pitching over more than the Falcon 9. 'Cause the Falcon 9 pitches pretty hard, but it's skinnier and of course has less control authority with the 90 degree thing. So maybe this could pitch even more and arrest more of its velocity by gliding.\n\nIt's actually, you've got various things that are better, some things that are better, some things that are worse. You can leave it like an airplane, like an empennage where you've got a rudder, a rudder and an elevator. And if your elevator is far away from your center of mass, then the amount of force you need is less to change the angle. Just think of it like a see-saw. You got a see-saw or a wrench.\n\nAnd if you have a long wrench, it's easier to turn than a short wrench. If you have a shorter booster, a short booster is harder to turn than a longer booster. Depending on where the control surface is relative to your center of mass. The center mass is kind of where the see-saw, like it's seesawing around that center mass and center of pressure. You have two things basically. It's like basically, it sounds more complicated than it is.\n\nBut basically it's a teeter-totter or a see-saw, where there's a center of pressure and a center of mass. And it's gonna basically just rotate around that.\n\n[Tim] Yep, yep.\n\nSo, if you've got a long stage that where the grid fins are far away from your center of mass, then you need less force to turn it.\n\n[Tim] To turn it, yep.\n\nBasically.\n\n[Tim] Gotcha, gotcha. That makes sense.\n\nYeah, like a really short stubby thing, it would actually be quite hard to move it.\n\n[Tim] To move it. But at least as far as the fineness ratio, this has a lot more potential since it's wider, to actually use atmospheric, to use the atmosphere to slow down before it even has to light its engines. 'Cause you know how like New Glen has those straights on the side.\n\nAnd it looks like they're really planning to almost fly the thing for a little bit at a pretty high angle of attack compared to the relative wind stream, to really let the atmosphere slow down the vehicle as much as possible. You guys have a pretty, compared to Falcon 9, there's a lot less fine ratio. It seems like you get a lot more lift out of the thing.\n\nRealistically, this is gonna come in at something close to terminal velocity.\n\n[Tim] Right, oh yeah.\n\n'Cause you're trying to get to a precise point. So, it's very difficult to do a fast pitch up maneuver and also get caught by the tower.\n\n[Tim] Right.\n\nIf you've got a very big landing area, then you could do that maybe. If you want a precise landing, you can't do a sudden pitch up at the end. And then you've got pretty big moments of inertia here. Big things don't move like small things.\n\n[Tim] Right.\n\nYou don't see a super tanker dashing around like a speed boat.\n\n[Tim] Right, right, right.\n\nThis is like, in rocket form of a super tanker. It doesn't move fast. It's like (vocalizes).\n\n[Tim] Yeah.\n\nLike way bigger than a whale.\n\n[Tim] Yeah, yes it is.\n\nIt's just not gonna move fast.\n\n[Tim] Right.\n\nAlthough, ironically, liftoff will be weirdly fast.\n\n[Tim] Yeah.\n\nBig rotating things always move slower than small rotating things.\n\n[Tim] Yeah.\n\nYou know?\n\n[Tim] Yeah.\n\nYeah.\n\n[Tim] Should we head to the pad?\n\nYeah, there's a lot of potential improvements. I mean. Yeah.\n\nMan, oh man, wasn't that an awesome conversation? Now, in part three, we're gonna be taking you down to the launch pad, and you're gonna be able to see Elon just walking around at work. It's super fascinating. Again, thank you, Elon, for spending so much time hanging out with me. I'm glad that you had fun and it looks like maybe we'll be able to do this again. You know I'm game for that.\n\nAnd SpaceX, thank you so much for allowing me to share all this awesome stuff with everyone. But I owe a huge thank you to my Patreon supporters for helping make this and everything we do here at Everyday Astronaut possible. If you want to gain access to some exclusive live streams and also our awesome Discord community, where we talk about everything space flight all the time, head on over to www. Patreon. com/EverydayAstronaut.\n\nAnd while you're online, be sure and check out our awesome web store where you'll find shirts like this, the full flow stage combustion cycle shirt, and the hoodie, and the Aerospike shirt, and the rest of the schematics collection, or the future Martian collection. You'll find lots of fun stuff at www. EverydayAstronaut. com/shop. Thanks, everybody. That's gonna do it for me.\n\nI'm Tim Dodd, the Everyday Astronaut, bringing space down to Earth for everyday people.","textByLang":{"en":"Hi, it's me, Tim Dodd, the Everyday Astronaut. Welcome to part two of my tour of SpaceX's Starbase Factory with the ultimate tour guide, Elon Musk. If you haven't watched Part One, you obviously need to watch that because there's just gobs of information. And in this part, we're actually going to go inside the three main assembly tents, which is incredible!\n\nAnd just like last time, we have a map that will occasionally pop up, courtesy of Ring Watchers on Twitter, that'll help you understand where exactly we are in the factory. We also have the YouTube play bar broken up into certain sections. We have links to those sections below, too. And we have an article up on our website that has some key points and takeaways of this conversation. The link and the description is below for that at www.\n\neverydayastronaut. com. All right, let's go check out some Raptor engines. So, by the way, I think there's a good chance that ITAR and COMS might not want all this- - Oh, yeah, just... It just can't be any more than people are already getting from- - [Tim] That's true.\n\nTelephoto lenses.\n\n[Tim] That, which is pretty much everything.\n\nAnd frankly, if some fool wants to copy this design, go for it. (Tim laughs) I mean, Raptor 2 is a giant improvement over this.\n\n[Tim] What's the big simplifications you're hoping to have?\n\nWell, maybe I shouldn't tell you all the secrets. (Tim laughs) We have funny things on the... We've got Pikachu over there.\n\n[Tim] (laughs) I love that.\n\n[Elon] Hello again.\n\n[Tim] Hello again. So that probably, I assume that means it's flown. Is that a flown one? (Elon laughs) - I don't know if this one's been flown.\n\n[Tim] Geez. This really does look like that thing with all the NK33s. Those videos of- - Yeah, yeah, exactly. Engines that came back from the cold.\n\n[Tim] Yes, seriously. It literally looks like that. This is insane. Man, that wrap vent is big. Geez.\n\nYeah, I won't tell you all the secrets. (Tim laughs) You'll be able to see the difference very clearly.\n\n[Tim] Okay.\n\nAnd I guess, since the engines are... It's hard to have people not see them.\n\n[Tim] Yeah.\n\nThey will... The Raptor 2 is visibly cleaner than Raptor 1. This sort of maze of plumbing and wiring doesn't exist on Raptor 2.\n\n[Tim] Although, it's already slimmed down a ton from like- - Yeah, it used to look like a frickin' Christmas tree.\n\n[Tim] (laughs) Yeah.\n\nYou couldn't even see the engine for all the stuff that was around it.\n\n[Tim] No, you really couldn't. And now it's like, especially around the turbines and stuff, and the free burners, I mean, that used to be a whole, there's sensors every two millimeters.\n\n[Elon] Yes.\n\n[Tim] So, Rap-Vac or Raptor-Vac has it's own regen channel on the extension, it looks like.\n\n[Elon] Yeah. That's a steel tube wall, raised steel tube wall.\n\n[Tim] That looks great. And it has a different profile, too, that actually looks like the initial exit. Is there a different throat in it and everything? Or is it?\n\n[Elon] No. Throat's the same.\n\n[Tim] Throat's the same?\n\nIt's just the part after the throat. The diverging section has different angles. Basically it's following a rail counter for a higher expansion ratio.\n\n[Tim] Yeah, yeah. What is the expansion ratio again? Is it like 150 or something?\n\nNo. Man, I think we were... So this is actually, I think we were around 80-ish.\n\n[Tim] Oh, okay.\n\nBut we wanna get to, we wanna do a little bit better. Maybe 90.\n\n[Tim] 'Cause you're already getting like, 380 ISP out of that thing, aren't you? Or I mean, sorry, yeah, 380.\n\n380's the aspirational number.\n\n[Tim] Okay.\n\nBut we should be able, I think we will get like 377 or 378.\n\n[Tim] Okay, okay. And how are those coming along? It looks like obviously you've got a third one here. You've obviously made at least three.\n\n[Elon] Yeah.\n\n[Tim] S-20's gonna have three.\n\n[Elon] Yes.\n\n[Tim] Yes. Geez.\n\nAll the engines will have the same pumps and thrust-chamber assembly. It's really just building it one, sort of one variant that has a big nozzle and one variant that doesn't have thrust vector control actuators.\n\n[Tim] Okay, okay. And that's gonna be the difference between the R boost and the?\n\nYeah. I mean, it's basically the same engine, minus PVC.\n\n[Tim] Gotcha. So, the outer shells that you're working on for the GSE are 12 meters.\n\nThere's a Raptor without the stuff; looks practically naked.\n\n[Tim] (laughs) you're like, actually that's secretly version two. It's super simple. No.\n\n[Elon] Version two will look a bit like that actually.\n\n[Tim] Really?\n\n[Elon] It's very tight.\n\n[Tim] Really?\n\n[Elon] Yeah.\n\n[Tim] I mean, again, when you look at some of those Soviet engines, they were also incredibly simple looking. I'm guessing they just obviously didn't have 'em wired to the gills with electronics, though, either. You know?\n\nThey didn't. They simply didn't, back in those days, they did not have good electronics.\n\n[Tim] Right.\n\nSo there's nothing to- - [Tim] There's nothing to wire up.\n\nYeah.\n\n[Tim] Yeah. How much, I feel like you iterate this quite a bit and remind people that it's, failure kind of is an option. Why do you think people are so afraid to fail? And why do you embrace it? How do you teach that culture even, that it's okay? When you're not even trying to like... You know, SN-8 is a perfect example. You weren't trying to do a mission. You're just trying to get data out of the thing.\n\nYeah. We have just a fundamentally different optimization for Starship versus say, like the polar extreme would be Dragon. Dragon, there can be no failures ever. Everything's gotta be tested six ways to Sunday. There has to be tons of margin. There can never be a failure ever for any reason whatsoever.\n\n[Tim] Yeah.\n\nThat's extreme conservatism. Then Falcon is a little less conservative. It is possible for us to have, say, a failure of the booster on landing. That's not the end of the world.\n\n[Tim] Right.\n\nAnd then for Starship, it's like the polar opposite of Dragon: we're iterating rapidly in order to create the first ever fully reusable rocket, orbital rocket. And fully and rapidly reusable. Reusable in a way that is like an aircraft. Rapidly reusable rockets.\n\n[Tim] It's a big deal.\n\nYeah. That's the fundamental Holy Grail for making life multi-planetary.\n\n[Tim] where do you think the Space Shuttle failed in being, and definitely rapidly would be a word you've got to scratch off the list- - Yeah, definitely not rapid.\n\n[Tim] But where do you think it failed? And where do you think... What lessons have you learned that you know you're not going to be making on Starship?\n\nThe Space Shuttle had almost no room for iteration because there were people on board. So you couldn't be blowing up shuttles. So that's a big problem.\n\n[Tim] They did very, very little.\n\nVery little. In fact, a lack of iteration was the problem. Because a lot of the issues they were aware of, but people were too afraid to make change.\n\n[Tim] 'Cause the design froze.\n\nYeah, 'cause it's like... Yeah. I mean, there was a risk/reward asymmetry. So, big punishment for, if you make a change and something goes wrong, big punishment. If you make a change and it goes right, small reward.\n\n[Tim] Yup, yup.\n\nSo, the issues with the O-ring and then with the insulation coming off and hitting the wing, they had seen this before.\n\n[Tim] Yeah, they were known.\n\nThey were known issues. Because it had worked before, they're like, well, it worked before. Russian roulette works before.\n\n[Tim] Right. (chuckles) Oh God.\n\n[Elon] Look, I've pulled the trigger so many times. There must be no bullets in this gun.\n\n[Tim] It must be no problem.\n\n[Elon] Yeah. Anyway, it's hard to iterate, though, when people are on every mission. You can't just be blowing stuff up 'cause you're gonna kill people. Starship does not have anyone on board so we can blow things up. That's really helpful.\n\n[Tim] Do you have any considerations yet on any kind of launch escape? Are you just hoping that by the time you put people on it, you've flown it say 100, 200 times, and you're familiar with all the failure modes, and you've mitigated it to a high degree of confidence. Or what's your?\n\nYeah. Larger scale, I think is... Yeah, you basically just need to fly a lot and have a lot of redundancy. So if you lose an engine on the booster, it doesn't matter basically. If you lose multiple engines it shouldn't matter. And you should be able to lose an engine on the ship and everything's okay. Launch escape is basically just protecting you for the ascent phase. And actually most launch escape systems only protect you for a small part of the ascent phase. 'Cause the typical launch escape system is a solid rocket motor on the tip of the capsule, which then has to be...\n\n[Tim] It has to be jettisoned.\n\nIt has to be jettisoned on every mission. So, if it's not jettisoned, the crew dies.\n\n[Tim] That's a failure mode, right there.\n\nThat's a failure mode. So you have a state change post liftoff, which is bad. Then because the damn thing's so heavy, they also can't carry it all the way to orbit. So, they'll typically jettison the escape system shortly after second stage ignition or final stage ignition. So that you don't have escape all the way to orbit even. Now, at least with Dragon, we have escape all the way to orbit. So that's, I think, a safety improvement. There's no escape system coming back to Earth. That's doesn't exist.\n\n[Tim] Right.\n\nAnd then, you can't have an escape system on the Moon or on Mars.\n\n[Tim] Or on Mars. Yep.\n\nYeah. You can't have something pop off and then have shoots drop. There's no atmosphere.\n\n[Tim] Right, right, right.\n\nAnd then Mars has a very low density atmosphere. So, it'll just hit the ground supersonic. Not gonna save you. So, the ship has to be safe enough for people without an escape system, because otherwise you can't go to the Moon, can't go to Mars.\n\n[Tim] Right, right. So you might as well- - Kind of pointless to do it on Earth. Just fly it a lot.\n\n[Tim] Right. And I never really thought about that. You're gonna be flying so much without fear of retribution of failure, that unlike the Shuttle, like you mentioned, I just never really considered that, you know? (tools whirring) - [Elon] Yeah.\n\n[Tim] So, let's see. What? Oh, those are the vacuum mounts, aren't they?\n\nYeah.\n\n[Tim] Wow, that's cool!\n\nYeah. I mean, this sort of stuff, it's very much version one.\n\n[Tim] Yep.\n\nIt'll be a lot better with the next iteration.\n\n[Tim] Well, a lot of people will ask me, hey, I want to start a YouTube video. Where do I start? And I'll be like, start, you just have to start. And I kind of feel like this is a similar philosophy. It's like, you're not going to know what's wrong or how to make it better until you do it at least once anyway, you know?\n\nYes.\n\n[Tim] And you just simply have to start, you have to force yourself to start.\n\nYeah.\n\n[Tim] Then you improve from there.\n\nExactly.\n\n[Tim] Man. Are you pretty used to the heat? I feel like it's, it's pretty hot out here.\n\nIt is hot. I mean, this is the worst. This is like summer, you know?\n\n[Tim] Right.\n\nIt's just the worst of it.\n\n[Tim] Yeah.\n\nBut it's not that bad. Just pretend you're in Hawaii.\n\n[Tim] Right, there you go. (Elon chuckles) So, speaking of Shuttle.\n\nI mean, I think it's a cool view.\n\n[Tim] Oh, it's a really cool view. And thermal protection, it seems like you guys have made some, I mean, it looks like S-20 is gonna pretty well decked out in the stuff. How are you feeling about the thermal protection system? You feel like that's a pretty good solution?\n\nWe'll find out. (Tim laughs) - [Tim] Has it been holding up pretty good, at least on the low altitude stuff?\n\nYeah.\n\n[Tim] As far as the mounting points and stuff like that.\n\nI mean, it's still there. I mean, you can see the videos.\n\n[Tim] Yeah.\n\nIt takes off with the tiles and it lands with the tiles. We have, I think, a good attach mechanism. It seems like a good attach mechanism because it allows... It's just mechanically attached with some play in the tile, so the tile can move a little bit. It's quite a tricky thing with the tiles 'cause the tiles are essentially a ceramic. And they're attached to a metal substructure that is changing in temperature dramatically.\n\nIt'll be a room temperature right now. Then it'll drop to cryo temperature when it's loaded with cryogenic propellants. Then it will be heated up with hot Alish gas. So, now it'll be way above room temperature. Then it'll cool down. Then the tiles will themselves will get hot on re-entry and they also have some expansion. There's a lot of expanding and contracting going on all over the place.\n\nI think one of the big questions is, are these tiles, are we gonna have a crack or a gap in the tiles? Like, if they bang into each other, they're ceramics, like a coffee cup is ceramic. So, if you bang two coffee cups together it's usually bad.\n\n[Tim] It's not good, yeah.\n\nIf the tiles bang each other and crack, this could result in a failure on entry. So, I think there's a huge question of like, when we get the ship to orbit, is it able to make it back through Earth's atmosphere? 'Cause it's coming in like a meteor.\n\n[Tim] Right, right.\n\nIt's like a blazing hot meteor. Will the heat shield stand up to it? Or if there's any crack in the armor, it's toast.\n\n[Tim] Yeah, yeah.\n\nSo, hopefully we at least find out where the crack in the armor is.\n\n[Tim] Right, right.\n\nThat would be great.\n\n[Tim] And then if you have to, you can make some thicker or smaller, or iterate to that degree of where you find those failures again.\n\nYes.\n\n[Tim] How will you know? What if something just goes... What if the first orbital attempt just goes totally, it doesn't even make it in for reentry and it's just a million pieces of the bottom of the ocean? How will you know where it failed?\n\nWe have temperature sensors. Probably need some thermal images inside the tanks. So, just like IR cameras.\n\n[Tim] So you can see if a certain section's getting real hot.\n\nYeah, our cameras on the inside will show you what the backside temperature is.\n\n[Tim] Yeah, yeah, it'll let you know if a leak propagated.\n\nIt's only gonna pop if the backside temperature... Frankly, I'm not sure. In fact, I take that back. If you just have a camera-camera- - [Tim] Yeah, you'll know.\n\nVisual, you'll see if something's glowing white-hot, okay, that's bad. (Tim laughs) That's the bad part, right there. So, you don't even need a thermal image, frankly. The steel will glow white-hot before it melts.\n\n[Tim] Right, right, right. (laughs) You'll know.\n\nYou'll know. It's not subtle.\n\n[Tim] And the very first orbital test, again, it kinda seems like... There's been a lot of debate of like, is it going to orbit and deorbiting? Or is it just orbital velocity with a low perigee that's inside the atmosphere? And that's how it'll deorbit?\n\nNo, it's getting to orbital velocity. But it's not circularizing it's perigee.\n\n[Tim] Yes.\n\nIt basically goes three-quarters of the way around the Earth, but because we didn't raise the perigee, the atmospheric drag will put it in.\n\n[Tim] Yup, and the velocity will probably be greater, reentry velocity will be greater that way or similar.\n\nSimilar. It's not a huge difference. It could easily, if you just puff the attitude control thrusters or the aldris gas, the aldris gas alone could put it into orbit. So, raising perigee slightly is easy.\n\n[Tim] Yeah.\n\nIt's remarkably easy. If you just wanna raise it a little bit.\n\n[Tim] Are you hoping to actually recover the first one?\n\nNo.\n\n[Tim] Or try to even land. I mean, is it gonna try to fire its engines?\n\nOur goal with the first one, for the first orbital launch, our goal is to make it to orbit without blowing up.\n\n[Tim] Yeah.\n\nThat's our goal.\n\n[Tim] Yep.\n\nAnd frankly, if the booster even does its job and something goes wrong with the ship, I'll still count that as good progress.\n\n[Tim] Yeah.\n\nBasically, actually, to be totally frank, if it takes off without blowing up- - [Tim] (laughs) Right.\n\nBlowing up the stand, stage zero, which is much harder to replace than the booster, that would be a victory. But please do not blow up on the stand. That's my number-one concern.\n\n[Tim] You keep calling it, you're calling the stand stage zero?\n\nThe launch system.\n\n[Tim] Really? The ground, GSE, the tower and all that stuff?\n\nStage zero, yeah.\n\n[Tim] Okay, yeah. I got so spoiled now with, again, Soviet nomenclature. It's like, there's zero for the boosters.\n\nReally?\n\n[Tim] The core is one.\n\nOkay.\n\n[Tim] And then what I would call the, wait. No, sorry, opposite: the boosters are one, core is two. The next upper stage, or what I would consider stage two is stage three, so it's really confusing. And I kept being like, oh yeah, third, second stage, and they're like, no, no, that's third stage. You know?\n\nWell, stage zero, the launch system, the launch mount, flame diverter, sort of.\n\n[Tim] Yep, sort of.\n\nThe big tower. The propellant farm. All the lines and everything, that's stage zero. And it's very hard.\n\n[Tim] Yeah.\n\nIt's harder for us to make a stage zero than to make a booster or a ship.\n\n[Tim] Okay.\n\nSo I hope.\n\n[Tim] Hopefully it doesn't blow up.\n\nYes, that would be great. (Tim chuckles) And then, the best-case outcome for the first flight would be that the booster does its job and also is able to relight the engines, and it's gonna splash down in the Gulf.\n\n[Tim] Only 20 miles out or something, right?\n\nYeah, not far.\n\n[Tim] Relatively.\n\nAnd then the ship or upper stage is gonna come in just off the coast of Hawaii, near a military base there. And so, we'll splash down in the Pacific.\n\n[Tim] Yup, yup. So, again, to reiterate, on the first launch you won't, the booster, you're gonna just use the gas venting to orient it for re-entry. You will do boost-back burn on the first one too, right?\n\nLet's just say it's an evolving situation.\n\n[Tim] Yeah.\n\nIn order to be 20 miles away, we definitely would have to do some kind of boost back, otherwise it's gonna be way further.\n\n[Tim] Yeah.\n\nSo, yeah, I mean, probably it's a boost back. Basically you want to stimulate the landing but not, not have it be too close to land, so it doesn't take out stage zero.\n\n[Tim] Right. Yep, yep.\n\nWe want to say, basically, can we position the booster precisely such that if it had landed next to the tower, or if it come to a halt next to the tower could the arms have grabbed it?\n\n[Tim] Yes.\n\nMech-zilla.\n\n[Tim] Mech-zilla?\n\nMega-zilla.\n\n[Tim] Mega-zilla?\n\nMecha.\n\n[Tim] Mecha-zilla, okay. Yeah, like a giant mech.\n\nYeah kinda like mecha-zilla.\n\n[Tim] What's the plan? It just comes and sits then on the grid fins and or that little arrester thing?\n\nNo, those little tiny arms.\n\n[Tim] That tiny little T-Rex arm is gonna hold the whole- - Yes, there's two of them. But those things can take a lot of load.\n\n[Tim] And then it's just literally a flat, a flat arm kind of like this that?\n\nI mean, this is one of those things, it's hard to keep a secret when it's right there. People can just take zoomed up photos. Drive past it and take a high-res photo close up. So, it's not exactly gonna be top secret.\n\n[Tim] Right, right.\n\nThis is the first real big rocket development that's been so close to a public road, that people are literally driving to the beach right past the launch site. So, it's hard to keep a secret around here.\n\n[Tim] That brings up, I always keep wondering, we're seeing this insane pace, we're seeing all these crazy things happen. How much of that is normal, at least as far as SpaceX goes? Or how much of that is just because we're actually seeing it? Like, for instance, when you were developing Merlin and Falcon 9, were you blowing stuff up this much doing things so crazy fast paced? Or is this also fast-paced, but now we're also seeing it all so it's hard to compare?\n\nWell, I mean, this is definitely a case where we are washing out laundry in public.\n\n[Tim] Yeah, yeah.\n\nThere's always dirty laundry in any program. It's really a question of whether it is seen or not. Not is there dirty laundry.\n\n[Tim] Right, right. Yeah. (Elon laughs) - Every program's got dirty laundry. But in this case, it's in public. But this is also a case where we're intentionally iterating the design rapidly. And basically, ships and boosters will either be amazing lawn ornaments- - [Tim] Right.\n\nWhich then have to be stored and they look awesome, but you know, we don't want 12 of them. It's gonna look bizarre and where will we put them?\n\n[Tim] Yeah.\n\nSo, since we were making a rapid iterations with each... Basically every single ship and booster has had significant iterations. You either either want it to blow up or, the early ones, you want them to blow up, or you're gonna have to find a place to store them.\n\n[Tim] Right.\n\nSo we actually want to push the envelope. And frankly, if you don't push the envelope, you cannot achieve the goal of a fully and rapidly reusable rocket.\n\n[Tim] Yeah.\n\nIt's not possible.\n\n[Tim] Yeah.\n\nYou have to go close to the edge on margins.\n\n[Tim] Right, right.\n\nAnd there's a recursive factor to mass. So, if you add, say an extra ton of heat shielding, now you also need more propellant to get it to orbit, and you need more propellant to deorbit it, and you need more propellant to land it. And the structure now has more load, 'cause it's carrying that extra ton of heat shield. So, this applies at any given time, there's a recursive value. So, in order to achieve the same payload, you have to... Each ton is basically almost like adding two tons, when it's fully considered.\n\n[Tim] Definitely.\n\nSo, I think we've calculated it to be like a 1.8 factor, but I think it's probably we're forgetting something so it's closer to two.\n\n[Tim] Yeah.\n\nSo, every one ton of mass begets an extra ton.\n\n[Tim] Yeah, yep. For instance, what's S-20's dry mass? Kind of looking like, where are you at right now? Are you like, 120 tons? Or are you?\n\nI actually don't know the exact mass of 20. We'll know it when we weigh it.\n\n[Tim] Yeah.\n\nThere's a lot of parts that have not been weighed. (Elon laughs) - [Tim] Yeah.\n\nSo, what is it actually? I mean, I hope it's not too insane. Ideally it's... It's dry mass is hopefully not much more than a 100 tons.\n\n[Tim] Really?\n\nYes, but then if you say dry, do you mean not counting the air inside it?\n\n[Tim] (chuckles) Right, right.\n\nWhich by the way, the air, actually air mass is non-trivial.\n\n[Tim] No, it's not.\n\n(chuckles) 'Cause it's such a giant volume. And then do you mean dry? Do you mean with propellant residuals? And Alvis gas, which is at several atmospheres?\n\n[Tim] Right.\n\nWhich mass are you referring to?\n\n[Tim] Which dry mass, right.\n\nSometimes in these things, they'll play games with the, when you say thruster weight of a rocket engine, so the thruster weight of the rocket engine with or without residuals? That's a big change.\n\n[Tim] Or with or without gimbal is something else that I've heard people debate.\n\nYeah.\n\n[Tim] Yeah.\n\nMerlin is, I'm pretty sure by any standard, you know, I think it's probably the best thruster weight of any engine. Because it's just so far, we really pushed the GG cycle engine to the... It's like A-plus for GG cycle architecture. But GG cycle architecture is not an A-plus architecture.\n\n[Tim] Architecture, right.\n\nFull flow stage combustion, A-plus architecture. But with the new architecture, we won't get it an A-plus within that. It's like in gymnastics, you know, you'd like to say, how hard is your program? And then what grade do you get in the program?\n\n[Tim] In the program, yeah.\n\nThat's kind of how things work here.\n\n[Tim] What would you say version two's gonna come in at? If you were to rate 'em?\n\nI don't know. I'd say it's like, B-plus.\n\n[Tim] Okay.\n\nSomething like that.\n\n[Tim] Yeah. So, good enough for now. But of course, reiterate.\n\nYeah. Raptor 3, Raptor 4, Raptor 5. By Raptor 5, it'll be an A-plus.\n\n[Tim] Yeah, yeah. Should we walk through here and check out what's going on in here? This is just a nose cone being assembled. It's not that it's showing?\n\n[Elon] This is our new and improved nose cone.\n\n[Tim] Oh yeah, it's just straight. There's no cross section.\n\nIf you look at that nose cone over there, that's made from stamped sections. You can see that's three rows of stamped sections. This will be made of two rows of stretch formed.\n\n[Tim] Wow.\n\n[Elon] And you can see it's just way smoother.\n\n[Tim] Yeah.\n\nThis is stretched over like a big mandrel. So just take a big sheet of steel. And if you just stretch it over this giant tool.\n\n[Tim] Right, right, right.\n\nAnd then you can have things that are way bigger. Like you can't fit this in a stamping press. This is way too big. That's like basically about as long as you can fit in a stamping press. You cannot fit something this giant. Well, you can technically make some totally special case stamping machine that doesn't exist. But since you only need a single sided, it doesn't have indentations or anything. You couldn't make a car body side this way. But you can make something with this level of symmetry that is, basically you can do a one-sided die. So you can just stretch form it over a big mandrel.\n\n[Tim] And this isn't the cargo. It's not complete yet, but it had that opening on the one side. That's not because you were working on the door. The jaws yet, right?\n\nYeah, I actually stopped work on the door, the faring door.\n\n[Tim] Okay.\n\nWe're gonna focus on getting to orbit. We don't need a door. It's like, we need to be super focused on getting to orbit then super focused on getting the ship back, then we can worry about doors.\n\n[Tim] Okay.\n\nIt's just an unnecessary complexity. Is the door necessary to solve the problem? No. Will we use this, the first 10 or more that get back from orbit, we probably won't fly them again. Or maybe once or twice, but they're not gonna be in storage. For Falcon 9, and even the Block 5, So for Block 5, which is more like version 7 really. But we don't even want to use the early Block 5s. Even those were a pain in the ass. And we prefer to retire them.\n\nSo when we have a mission that requires an expandable booster, we'll put an early Block 5 because the early Block 5s are not as good as the later Block 5s. And they're more of a pain in the ass to get ready for flight.\n\n[Tim] Wow.\n\nReality is, the early ones are gonna be amazing lawn ornaments. I mean, as good as a lawn ornament gets. But they will not be nearly as good as the ones that follow. So then why keep them flying?\n\n[Tim] They're not gonna be putting any payload up. You don't even need to worry about it yet.\n\nYeah, so we're just gonna retire the early ones anyway. Why have a door on a thing that's never gonna fly satellites anyway.\n\n[Tim] How is the butt to butt refueling going? 'Cause that's gotta be a pretty early consideration. 'Cause you're probably gonna want to start testing that.\n\nNo.\n\n[Tim] No?\n\nNo, we're gonna get to orbit and back first.\n\n[Tim] Okay.\n\nWe don't need orbital refueling. Unless you're going to the Moon, you need orbital refueling. Going to Mars, you need orbital refueling. Delivering satellites to Earth orbit, you do not need orbital refueling.\n\n[Tim] Right, right.\n\nSo just punt that 'til later.\n\n[Tim] Okay.\n\nI'm not sure it'll be the butt to butt. It might be something different. We switched the propellant full drain lines to be side. So, coming from the side.\n\n[Tim] Not up through the booster anymore?\n\nNo. It was adding a bunch of stuff to the booster. And then we're flying it every time. If you can move mass to the ground side, it's better to move mass to the ground side.\n\n[Tim] Right, right.\n\nThat's why we took the legs off the booster and just have the tower catch it.\n\n[Tim] Are you thinking about doing a tower catch?\n\nWhich sounds mad.\n\n[Tim] Yeah, I know!\n\nI know it sounds insane. But when I suggested that, people thought I lost my mind. Which I'm like, maybe I have. But I think it might take a few kicks of the can, but we'll get it right. It's just, the work that you have to do to pick up the booster and put it on the launch stand, this gigantic skyscraper thing, in high wind, windy situations; it's very windy around here.\n\n[Tim] Yeah it is.\n\nSo, you're gonna pick up this booster, you're gonna put it onto a stand with precision. Then you've gotta pick a ship up and put it up on top of that. That means you've got to have a secondary arm to steady the booster so it's not moving around all over the place. And then while the sort of mech is armed, pick up the ship and put it on the booster.\n\n[Tim] Okay. The mech-zilla arms are the ones that are gonna be picking up the ship, not the crane?\n\nOkay, so... (Elon chuckles) Very important to appreciate that everything you see here is a work in progress.\n\n[Tim] Right.\n\nAnd what is said last week may be untrue next week.\n\n[Tim] We've seen that a few times.\n\nYes, it could be that we're actually just literally mistaken, a miscommunication. Any one of a number of things. We just found a better, had a better idea. In the case of like for the first stacking, we're we're gonna do that with a crane.\n\n[Tim] Yeah.\n\nYeah. (Tim laughs) Marvin the Martian right there.\n\n[Tim] I love that.\n\nThe first one we're gonna stack with a crane. 'Cause otherwise we'd have to wait for all the mechanisms to work. We're assembling the arms and basically putting mech-zilla together. But in the meantime we could be launching. So let's not wait for the tower to be completed. We've got the second-biggest crane on Earth. We don't necessarily want to have the second-biggest crane on Earth just sitting there forever.\n\nBut it can be there for the first stacking. And then from the first stacking, then we can figure out, you know, just like, do we have the hull downs work? Or the launch mounts, I should say. It's really quite a complicated launch mount. It's got basically 20 mount points. And you've got to line those things up and then put the booster on it and have the, you know, does it fit? Okay, it won't fit, basically. Now we gotta adjust it.\n\nThat launch ring is 370 tons.\n\n[Tim] Oh my God!\n\nAnd it's gonna tweak, you move it from one place to another, it tweaks. It doesn't stay exactly the same. So we're gonna have to like jiggle it around a little bit, put in some shims and stuff and fit the booster. So, we wanna do that soon. We should be done with this booster, I don't know, next week.\n\n[Tim] Yep. Wow.\n\n[Elon] So then we want to mount the booster next week.\n\n[Tim] That's gonna be insane to see.\n\nYeah. We're gonna try to put the ring on the stand, the launch ring on the stand tomorrow.\n\n[Tim] Wow.\n\nBut we may not succeed, we'll see. Probably the second flight we'll use, I mean, it's probably like the second flight we'll use the tower.\n\n[Tim] Okay. Second flight, oh, so the first flight might still just use the suborbital pad?\n\nNo, it's gonna use the, it has to use the orbital pad. The suborbital pad cannot take the full weight of the stack. It's gonna get crushed and it doesn't have enough height. So the rocket would blast itself in the face. It's too low and too weak. We gotta launch it from the super beefy stand. But we don't want to wait until everything's ready with the tower, just to stack.\n\n[Tim] Okay, so, how will you secure it then when it's stacked? Just drop the Starship on top?\n\nHave the crane hold it.\n\n[Tim] Until it's launch time and then?\n\nWe do need the QD arm to work.\n\n[Tim] Oh right. So that can be a stability thing.\n\nExactly, it holds it, it stabilizes it, and transports propellant. If we don't have that, we can't load a prop on the ship.\n\n[Tim] Right, right, okay. So that has to be complete, but not necessarily the arms and everything else going on at that point.\n\n[Elon] Yeah.\n\n[Tim] Dang.\n\n[Elon] Yeah, exactly.\n\n[Tim] At this point- - I mean, like I said, there's a lot of moving pieces here. So some of this could be ready in time. It's possible that the tower could be ready in time, in which case we'll use the tower. But if the tower's not ready in time, we'll use the crane.\n\n[Tim] Okay.\n\nYeah.\n\n[Tim] So at this point in development, what things are you being kept up by at night? Like, what's the thing you're like, oh, we just need to do this or this better. Or we really, I can't sleep 'cause I'm not, we haven't figured this out yet.\n\nI'm sorry?\n\n[Tim] Yeah, so, what things are just totally keeping you up at night at this point? What's the thing that you feel like you still have to solve at this point?\n\nI mean, there's a long list.\n\n[Tim] What's at the top of that right now? For you at least personally.\n\nThis is really all just measured as, in terms of time, like, what is the time risk associated with something? The one thing you cannot replace is time. And I do have a habit of being optimistic with schedules. I mean, if I wasn't optimistic, I wouldn't be doing the crazy things that I'm doing.\n\n[Tim] Right.\n\n[Elon] So I must have like, I don't know just pathologically optimistic, I suppose. (Tim laughs) - [Tim] Wow, that actually, just look at that.\n\n[Elon] Yeah, it looks like dragon scales.\n\n[Tim] That is incredible.\n\n[Elon] Doesn't that look cool?\n\n[Tim] It's actually coming together a lot cleaner than- - [Elon] It totally looks like dragon scales, I think.\n\n[Tim] It really does.\n\n[Elon] Yeah.\n\n[Tim] And it's so much tidier and cleaner looking than I thought.\n\n[Elon] Yeah. There's a few broken tiles, but overall it looks cool.\n\n[Tim] That's incredible, wow. So, I guess, the joints is one of those things that the community has always wanted to know about. I guess the good thing is the flaps, will for mostly take most of the wind from this area that you see. So, I guess you don't really have to cool the inside of the flap joint itself 'cause it's kind of already- - No, actually, unfortunately we do. I think we have significant...\n\nTake a lot of what I'm saying with a grain of salt. I often am wrong. Sometimes I'll say something and it's wrong. (Tim laughs) I think we have a design error with the, with the non-moving portion of the forward flaps.\n\n[Tim] Okay.\n\nBecause the reason we have... The flaps and the static arrow, basically the unmoving portion of the flaps are there to do two things: to balance, rebalance the ship so it doesn't come in engines first. Otherwise, the center of mass is quite low.\n\n[Tim] Yeah.\n\nAnd it will come in engines first and burn up the engines.\n\n[Tim] Yep.\n\nSo, first you have to rebalance it so that in a hypersonic stream, you're doing roughly sort of like, a 60 to 70-degree angle of attack. Because you're flying a trajectory that minimizes- - [Tim] Peak heat.\n\nPeak heat. But you don't care about total heat load. You just care about minimizing your peak heat.\n\n[Tim] Because you have a good insulator here. And you're not ablating.\n\nYes, exactly. So, if you have an ablative heat shield like Dragon. Technically Dragon is fairly reusable actually, 'cause it's sort of like a brake pad. You can fly it many times 'cause it's got so much margin. But PICA literally means phenolic impregnated carbon ablator.\n\n[Tim] Yep.\n\nThat's the Dragon heat shield. So, Dragon was like, hey, let's have a, give me high-peak heating, but don't make my total heat load high because what Dragon is trying to optimize for is what is the heat pulse when it's under parachutes? The heat pulse moves through the tile and then reaches the back to where it's bonded to the carbon fiber composite sandwich structure.\n\n[Tim] Yep.\n\nIf the heat is too high, it will melt the glue and the heat shield tiles will start falling off. And then they will potentially, you know, damage the parachute.\n\n[Tim] Really? Okay.\n\nYou start having these things like- - [Tim] Right, flying off.\n\nPotentially, 'cause they're low density. So they they're pretty... Intermittently it's kind of a corner case. The graying heat shield tiles are way over thick, not because of how much of the heat shield will be ablated, but because of the heat pulse that will reach the back of the heat shield that might melt the glue while it's under parachutes.\n\n[Tim] Wow. Yeah, interesting constraint at the end of it all.\n\nYeah, so if you just have a lot of heat suddenly, that's actually better for Dragon. High peak, low total heating.\n\n[Tim] Yep, yep, yep. So its reentry profile is totally different, too.\n\nYeah.\n\n[Tim] It can come in steeper as opposed to this- - It's gonna come in, Dragon wants to come in real steep. The lift over drag ratio is low for Dragon. A lot of people look at it and say it doesn't have any lift but it does. If you have a gumdrop-shaped thing, and you have off-centered center of mass, then you can control it because it has a small lift vector because the gumdrop is tilting into the wind slightly. It's quite low.\n\nAnd actually, L over D is a function of mach number. People always go, well, quote an L over D number. But like, okay, what mach is that? And it's usually some sort of reference mach number. But your L over D is complete trash at mach 20. It's garbage, nothing basically. So it's like, L over D at what mach number? Anyway, it's got a very low L over D. But it does have a lift vector.\n\nAnd then because it is symmetric, or more or less symmetric, with little thrusters you can rotate the capsule as it's coming in and change that lift vector. You have a landing ellipsoid because your accuracy longitudinally is less than your accuracy left to right. So, you're changing lift vector, you say well, how do you change the point where you land? If you can turn left or right but how do you change lift point? You do a series of S turns.\n\nSo, you S turn and depending upon how much you bank during the S turns, that affects your longitudinal points and then your lateral point is pretty easy to tune because you have a lift vector going left and right.\n\n[Tim] 'Cause it's not so much, people might think, oh, you're going up and down. That really doesn't work in the grand scheme of orbital velocities and everything. It's really about your actual velocity. And where you end up arresting your velocity is where you're gonna drop it to the ground pretty much, more or less.\n\nYeah, I mean, I think it's just very important for people to appreciate that there's a very gigantic difference between orbit and space.\n\n[Tim] Right.\n\nIt is actually relatively easy to get to space. But it is very hard to get to orbit.\n\n[Tim] Right.\n\nAnd then you say you want to get to orbit and come back. This is easily 100 times harder than getting to space, maybe 1000; so much harder. That hardly anyone's even, you know, only a few countries have been able to do it.\n\n[Tim] Right.\n\nYou know, whereas Burt Rutan went to space twice. What was it, like, 12 years ago? I don't know, it was a while. What, 15 years ago?\n\n[Tim] Yeah, 2004, 2005.\n\nYeah, it was like 15 years ago. He went to the border of space twice, and didn't even scorch the paint. It's really not very hot if you didn't even burn the paint.\n\n[Tim] Right, that's true.\n\nYeah.\n\n[Tim] That's true. (machine beeping) - Whereas, this needs really intense heat shielding or it's gonna get to, you know, blow up basically.\n\n[Tim] Yeah, yeah. It's crazy to see now, honestly. So, is there some considerations to make the fixed? Can we go out this way or is it?\n\nYeah, I mean, just don't let anything drop on your head.\n\n[Tim] All right, deal. So there's another barrel section of S-20.\n\nI mean, it looks a little garage shop, to be frank. But it's like weirdly super advanced technology with garage shop. (Tim laughs) - [Tim] Well, it is very unique of you guys to basically build the rockets first and then start building a factory around it. You know?\n\nYeah. The production system is the actual hard thing.\n\n[Tim] Right.\n\nThe rocket design is relatively easy compared to the factory. And these tiles are actually made in Florida at a SpaceX factory we call the Bakery. In Florida, it's next to a Ron Jon's. (Tim laughs) - [Tim] What's the future for Florida with Starship? Are you gonna get it flying 100%, get it all figured out basically? At least get orbital version ready and then start setting up shop in Florida?\n\nYeah, I think we wanna kind of iron out the major issues here. We'll certainly be launching Starship from the Cape. We might do more at the Cape. But we'll certainly be launching Starship from the Cape. And like I said, we make the heat shield tiles, which is actually quite a big factory to make these heat shield tiles; not a small factory.\n\n[Tim] Next to Ron Jon's?\n\nWell, technically it's next to a Ron Jon's distribution warehouse. Literally, I was like, is that a surf shop? Yeah, well, maybe it's a factory, I don't know, but I just got a Ron Jon's logo. But the factory, the SpaceX heat shield tile factory is quite big. It's not tiny. 'Cause you need to make a lot of these tile.\n\n[Tim] And for the most part, I'm surprised at the taper. It looks like they're all still uniform tiles, which obviously is a huge improvement compared to the Shuttle. Instead of having 24,000 unique tiles.\n\n[Elon] (laughs) Yeah. And you can see we're figuring it out.\n\n[Tim] But I'm surprised, though, even as the area tapers, it's not, I would have thought- - Mara's head of heat shield engineering. It's like, I'm gonna text him like, yo man, what's going on?\n\n[Tim] It doesn't seem like there's a ton of unique. They mostly look uniform, which obviously will help with- - [Elon] Yeah, they're not all uniform.\n\n[Tim] A lot more than the Shuttle. What's your expected, what are you hoping to get for reuse out of these things?\n\nOh, I mean, no meaningful limit. As many as you want. (machines beeping) - [Tim] There we go. We got right back into camera-ception for you there for a second. Camera inside of camera. (machines beeping) - Yeah. There are different shapes of tiles. You can see some of them at the border there are square instead of hexagons.\n\n[Tim] Yep.\n\nAnd then, because the static arrow is, it's still seeing actually a lot of heat, basically the plasma is hitting the surface and then it's moving around. It's got to somehow get past it. You've got super heated plasma hitting that thing, then riding up the side of the vehicle, hitting that static arrow. So, you actually have a heat concentration there. And then you've got a hinge that's, you have to protect the hinge.\n\nThis is if you said like, okay, what's highest probability of failure on reetry? It's probably the hinge of the flaps. So, the rear hinge and the forward hinge of the flaps. 'Cause you have to have a rotating thing, but you can't just make everything out of tiles. So, you have to have a seal. So we have to seal against, against the tiles. So, the tiles are ceramic, like a seal against dinner plates that are super hot. So you can't use rubber.\n\n[Tim] Right.\n\nSo it's gotta be a metal seal, and with a torturous path.\n\n[Tim] Have you thought about, back in the day, you talked about transpirational cooling.\n\nYes, so, that's one of the things you could throw at it is transpiration cool the joint.\n\n[Tim] That would be so cool. I just want to see it bleeding methane, honestly.\n\nIt'll definitely help.\n\n[Tim] 'Cause you can kind of purge that joint with a higher-pressure gas. As long as it's higher than the ambient air stream or the plasma stream, it will create a thermal barrier.\n\nIt's definitely one of the things, if you really want to nail the heating on the hinge, is bleed fuel gas into the thing. 'Cause actually, even the burning methane is like, with air, because air is only like, 21% oxygen. If you ask me, what are you breathing, they think they're breathing oxygen. You're breathing nitrogen with some oxygen.\n\n[Tim] A little argon.\n\nAnd some argon and some trace gases. But essentially, methane with air, which is mostly not oxygen, doesn't get that hot. So even if it burns, it's not that big of a deal.\n\n[Tim] Right, right, 'cause it's already detached from the vehicle at that point.\n\nIt's not as hot as the plasma that's hitting it.\n\n[Tim] Right.\n\nYeah.\n\n[Tim] Wow.\n\nAll right, well, let's see. I guess the car is? (woman speaks off mic) Okay. (machines beeping) - [Tim] So, each tent's kind of a designated... One's barrel section, one's nose cones, and one's, one's just kind of the thrust pucks and stuff?\n\nYeah, like I said, it is a constantly evolving thing. We've changed what occurs in each production tent and in the high bay and mid bay, multiple times. But this certainly currently is focused on the nose.\n\n[Tim] You're working on a new high bay, too, right?\n\nYeah, we're building a higher high bay.\n\n[Tim] Uber high?\n\nIt's only a little bit higher than the current one, but it's much wider, and it has two gastric cranes that run full width and depth.\n\n[Tim] Okay.\n\nI mean, it will feel like the lap of luxury compared to our current high bay.\n\n[Tim] Like how about tall, do you know?\n\nSorry?\n\n[Tim] About how tall?\n\nI dunno, probably, oh, like 100 meters.\n\n[Tim] Okay, and this one's? Like 80 or something.\n\nYeah. This one's about 80. The booster height's about 70. Although it's kind of funny. Like technically we deleted half a barrel section from the booster, so it's technically 69 point something. (Tim laughs) Like 69 and 1/2.\n\n[Tim] You did that on purpose.\n\nNo, it wasn't even me. I was like, the guy's like, hey, just let me know, at 70 meters you have a half barrel, which is a pain in the ass. So, they just deleted it, and I was like, cool, sounds good. I mean, I randomly set the length of 70 meters. It's not like any special about it.\n\n[Tim] Right.\n\nI guess fate loves, I don't know. I don't know what's going on. But these certain numbers just seem to be recurring all the time.\n\n[Tim] Yes.\n\nSo the booster is actually 69 point something. And then it's Booster 4 and Ship 20.\n\n[Tim] 20. (laughs) - And this is all happenstance.\n\n[Tim] Right, right. I love that.\n\nWhat the hell is going on? (Tim laughs) - [Tim] Oh yeah, someone had figured out that, oh, what was it? Oh, I don't even remember but it was something like you were 69,420 days old or minutes old or something when you went on SNL or something.\n\nWhat?\n\n[Tim] It was some ridiculous.\n\nAre you serious?\n\n[Tim] Yes, it was the weirdest- - You know I was born 69 days after 4/20, by the way.\n\n[Tim] Oh yeah. (laughs) Come on!\n\nCome on.\n\n[Tim] This is ridiculous.\n\nIt's ridiculous.\n\n[Tim] That's so funny.\n\nI mean, what the hell?\n\n[Tim] Oh man. This is insane.\n\nIt's like, am I an avatar in someone's video game?\n\n[Tim] Yes.\n\nOh really?\n\n[Tim] Statistically, yeah.\n\nOkay. (Tim laughs) - [Tim] You're probably doing pretty good at the game, though. I bet you're like, the top ranked player.\n\nOkay. Well, that's something. (Tim laughs) - [Tim] Do you have a name for the high-bay bar yet?\n\n[Elon] No, I guess we've bounced around different names. We still haven't really made much use of it because it wasn't really a critical path. So it's kind of just sat there. And the elevator, we need an upgraded elevator 'cause we have this construction elevator.\n\n[Tim] Right.\n\nWe don't yet have a name. Nor have we used it. But we're making good progress there installing the grid fin.\n\n[Tim] Yeah, looks like the grid fin's up. And I like how they're now... Let me try and guess why you're gonna put 'em closer together and not at 90-degree intervals. Is it because you can just change your role to change whatever axis you're trying to... If you're trying to pitch the vehicle, you're really only most of the time probably either doing pitch or yaw. You're likely not doing pitch and yaw when it's coming in for reentry.\n\nWell, actually no. We're controlling on three axes all the time. Now, technically you only need three fins to control on three axes.\n\n[Tim] But you can also roll if need to change your yaw and roll 90 degrees, it would be pitch.\n\nWell, the control authority you need is much more in pitch than any of the other axes. Like, the amount of control authority you need for roll is practically nothing.\n\n[Tim] Right.\n\nBut for pitch, you've got to basically push the booster down. So, you got to push this monster thing into the wind and it doesn't want to go there. The amount of pitch force you need, that's where you need the most amount of force. So, having the two pairs of fins closer together, like more like an X-wing fighter allows them to contribute more in pitch.\n\n[Tim] Which then allows more glide or more of the air frame hitting the sides of the booster.\n\nYou care about how much force do you have relative to how much force do you need in a given axis? So you need a lot of force in the pitch axis, so that's where you want to bias your grip fins.\n\n[Tim] Yep, yep.\n\nYou could arguably say they should be biased even closer together than they are currently.\n\n[Tim] Yeah.\n\nBut this is a reasonable guess.\n\n[Tim] In between.\n\nYeah.\n\n[Tim] So, this might end up pitching over more than the Falcon 9. 'Cause the Falcon 9 pitches pretty hard, but it's skinnier and of course has less control authority with the 90 degree thing. So maybe this could pitch even more and arrest more of its velocity by gliding.\n\nIt's actually, you've got various things that are better, some things that are better, some things that are worse. You can leave it like an airplane, like an empennage where you've got a rudder, a rudder and an elevator. And if your elevator is far away from your center of mass, then the amount of force you need is less to change the angle. Just think of it like a see-saw. You got a see-saw or a wrench.\n\nAnd if you have a long wrench, it's easier to turn than a short wrench. If you have a shorter booster, a short booster is harder to turn than a longer booster. Depending on where the control surface is relative to your center of mass. The center mass is kind of where the see-saw, like it's seesawing around that center mass and center of pressure. You have two things basically. It's like basically, it sounds more complicated than it is.\n\nBut basically it's a teeter-totter or a see-saw, where there's a center of pressure and a center of mass. And it's gonna basically just rotate around that.\n\n[Tim] Yep, yep.\n\nSo, if you've got a long stage that where the grid fins are far away from your center of mass, then you need less force to turn it.\n\n[Tim] To turn it, yep.\n\nBasically.\n\n[Tim] Gotcha, gotcha. That makes sense.\n\nYeah, like a really short stubby thing, it would actually be quite hard to move it.\n\n[Tim] To move it. But at least as far as the fineness ratio, this has a lot more potential since it's wider, to actually use atmospheric, to use the atmosphere to slow down before it even has to light its engines. 'Cause you know how like New Glen has those straights on the side.\n\nAnd it looks like they're really planning to almost fly the thing for a little bit at a pretty high angle of attack compared to the relative wind stream, to really let the atmosphere slow down the vehicle as much as possible. You guys have a pretty, compared to Falcon 9, there's a lot less fine ratio. It seems like you get a lot more lift out of the thing.\n\nRealistically, this is gonna come in at something close to terminal velocity.\n\n[Tim] Right, oh yeah.\n\n'Cause you're trying to get to a precise point. So, it's very difficult to do a fast pitch up maneuver and also get caught by the tower.\n\n[Tim] Right.\n\nIf you've got a very big landing area, then you could do that maybe. If you want a precise landing, you can't do a sudden pitch up at the end. And then you've got pretty big moments of inertia here. Big things don't move like small things.\n\n[Tim] Right.\n\nYou don't see a super tanker dashing around like a speed boat.\n\n[Tim] Right, right, right.\n\nThis is like, in rocket form of a super tanker. It doesn't move fast. It's like (vocalizes).\n\n[Tim] Yeah.\n\nLike way bigger than a whale.\n\n[Tim] Yeah, yes it is.\n\nIt's just not gonna move fast.\n\n[Tim] Right.\n\nAlthough, ironically, liftoff will be weirdly fast.\n\n[Tim] Yeah.\n\nBig rotating things always move slower than small rotating things.\n\n[Tim] Yeah.\n\nYou know?\n\n[Tim] Yeah.\n\nYeah.\n\n[Tim] Should we head to the pad?\n\nYeah, there's a lot of potential improvements. I mean. Yeah.\n\nMan, oh man, wasn't that an awesome conversation? Now, in part three, we're gonna be taking you down to the launch pad, and you're gonna be able to see Elon just walking around at work. It's super fascinating. Again, thank you, Elon, for spending so much time hanging out with me. I'm glad that you had fun and it looks like maybe we'll be able to do this again. You know I'm game for that.\n\nAnd SpaceX, thank you so much for allowing me to share all this awesome stuff with everyone. But I owe a huge thank you to my Patreon supporters for helping make this and everything we do here at Everyday Astronaut possible. If you want to gain access to some exclusive live streams and also our awesome Discord community, where we talk about everything space flight all the time, head on over to www. Patreon. com/EverydayAstronaut.\n\nAnd while you're online, be sure and check out our awesome web store where you'll find shirts like this, the full flow stage combustion cycle shirt, and the hoodie, and the Aerospike shirt, and the rest of the schematics collection, or the future Martian collection. You'll find lots of fun stuff at www. EverydayAstronaut. com/shop. Thanks, everybody. That's gonna do it for me.\n\nI'm Tim Dodd, the Everyday Astronaut, bringing space down to Earth for everyday people."},"languages":["en"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SA8ZBJWo73E"},{"id":"starbase-launchpad-tour-part-3-2021-07-30","type":"interview","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Zlnbs-NBUI","title":"Starbase Launchpad Tour — Part 3","titles":{"en":"Starbase Launchpad Tour — Part 3","de":"Starbase Launchpad Tour — Part 3","fr":"Starbase Launchpad Tour — Part 3"},"date":"2021-07-30","summary":"Final part of the tour at the Starbase orbital launch pad discussing the catching arms, orbital flight plans and rapid reusability.","text":"Hi, it's me, Tim Dodd, the Everyday Astronaut. Welcome to part three of my tour of SpaceX's Starbase factory and launch site with the ultimate tour guide, Elon Musk. Of course, if you haven't watched parts one and two, what are you doing? You absolutely have to watch those first because there's just gobs of information. But this one's a little bit different.\n\nWe actually go out to the launch pad while it's being constructed and watch Elon at work and still get to ask a couple of fun questions. Just like before the YouTube play bars broken up into sections. We have links in the descriptions to those sections too. And of course we have an article version of some of the notes and key takeaways of this conversation up at everydayastronaut. com.\n\nAll right, let's hop in the car and head down to the launch pad. Which week is the blast. Is the radius actually gonna change the exclusion zone a little bit when one super heavy gets a, it starts launching, or you do the full stack?\n\n[Elon] Well, we definitely won't have people, we'll clear the whole area for orbital launches.\n\n[Tim] Like Stargate and stuff?\n\n[Elon] Yeah. Well, we might have a small crew with some shield, you know, like a rope and being a robust, some shielding on the roof and strong glass. But like, if something does go wrong with the over launch, it's really a much more of a fireball than it is an explosion but it is quite a big fireball.\n\n[Tim] Will you eventually be moving the launch control and everything, or is that staying at Stargate, at the control center?\n\nIt'll be at Stargate for now.\n\n[Tim] By the way, I haven't, I just got back into town for the first time since the booster has been up. So I have not seen this.\n\n[Elon] Yeah, it's a lot of progress. The teams are great.\n\n[Tim] God, it's so tall and that's not even the whole thing.\n\nThat is the pool tower.\n\n[Tim] But I mean that the booster.\n\nOh yeah, exactly.\n\n[Tim] Yeah, the tower is done now, right? As far as height.\n\nYeah. The full full-stack will be a little taller than the tower.\n\n[Tim] Are you guys working on a second tower two already?\n\nWe are thinking about it.\n\n[Tim] What's the future for Starbase here? Like, well, will you guys always be launching from here or what happens when the oil rigs go online?\n\nI mean, as long as it's, if we're able to launch it from here without too much operational difficulties, then we will keep doing it. But it is a bit of a challenge with beach closers, like there's like some people, don't want to have the beach clothes that much, but on the other hand, we gotta be able to launch. So it's like, you know, to what degree can we operate from here effectively and still let people use the beach and stuff.\n\n[Tim] Right. So with the oil rigs though, like, I guess how urgent is that to get the oil rigs going? Or is that kinda like, you know, we'll get those going and then, it might be two or three years before you actually start using them for launching?\n\nWe're not thinking too much about the oil rigs right now. I mean, we're demoing one rig, just, you know, cause we can just send it to a demo. Like people are really good at demolition and have them do it. So, but it's not occupying any of my insurance.\n\n[Tim] How far out will they, when you do start launching from there? Is it going to be like hundreds of miles or is it like 10 or 15 or something from shore?\n\nWe're not thinking about it.\n\n[Tim] This is all good for me though, because I'm so nervous that it'll be hard to watch them once they start launching from out there.\n\nYeah. For now we're just trying to think about the things that we have to think about.\n\n[Tim] Yeah. Wow. So right in front of us, is that a, is that the QD Arm? This yellow thing here on the sorry, on the right now, is that the QD Arm or is that the, is that one of the catchers?\n\nThat's the QD.\n\nHey, how's it going?\n\nLet me give it to you son. This one is for you.\n\nOkay, thank you.\n\nAll right.\n\nThanks.\n\nWe're going to make it.\n\nAll right, cool. Hey Sam.\n\nCool, how's it going guys?\n\nActually, Taylor has a plan as of right now.\n\nOkay.\n\nWe rolled this thing over today, so it's all in place. Those cranes are in their set location for tomorrow.\n\nOkay.\n\nTonight, we are going to re-rig everything.\n\nDo you guys mind being on camera or anything?\n\nWe are very shy.\n\nSam, I know you are.\n\nIt's all right for the camera, Go ahead.\n\nYeah, so tonight we'll create a rig, we're obviously doing that double crane, if we rig it all, our crane operators get in at 7:00 AM tomorrow, get everything finally hooked up. We do our pre-test. We use the launch spoon or the big things cause we don't want things sliding around. Then we lift it in 11 hours.\n\n11 hours, okay, cool, great. Awesome, exciting.\n\nYou see the flanges sticking out from the bottom of the launch pad right there, if a T, so right there is a T. You want to head up to the top and we'll show you what our game plan is over there?\n\nSure.\n\nYou're rightfully worried about this, but I think the guys have a pretty good plan. We went over the plan and any contingency planning.\n\nOkay.\n\nAll of last night, six welders got all the shelves done for the jack. So the jacks are up there now actually. Hey Yuri do you want to go up with us?\n\nSure.\n\nThose are the jacks on each leg.\n\nAll right.\n\nThe jacks that we got. So on top of that column right there, there's some shim plates we believe are off by half an inch.\n\nHalf an inch.\n\nSo what these guys done, they added weights where we think we're going to be high and we'll keep the crane on the whole time while we're jacking. And then Robert, you want to talk about the lap plates that you guys have?\n\nSure. Yeah as we're leveling we might get some gaps there that are bigger than you'd like for your weld gaps. So if that happens we got some plates to bridge that gap, so we weld that while up top.\n\nIts a lot of steel.\n\nYeah. And then over here, that little thing I pointed out in the launch mount we got new plates in here. So we'll be able to go right.\n\nIts okay, I got it.\n\nYeah, so this is key. This is to track them.\n\nSure.\n\nSame thing on that side. So we'll get rotation and then our crane will be fixed by the six jacks, but we only need two jacks actually there, I think there are 200 ton jacks, but we have all six so we can really dial it in.\n\nAll right. Okay, sounds good.\n\nI mean, we moved in and we add guys right back inside of it going. Again, it's all bonus time work in terms of fluids routing. And those are the hoods. So when the QDs retract on the hold-downs, the top inner phase is that hold-down hood or sorry, the QD hood. And so it clamshells back in. It's all through like just a strike, not a dynamic system on its own, but the hold down hydraulic actuator, actuates the hold down, the QD and the hood all altogether.\n\nWell, as you can see, there's a lot going on here.\n\nYeah, that's why I wanted to bring you up here. We've got a handful of guys on pad D right now. Some more on pad D so that we're ready to take a ship. So we we've been out of this the whole time, but we've got a few days on that. So we do want to knock some of that out right now, so that we're ready for shift 20 when it comes out here.\n\nAnd then we got a bunch of people in the prop farm and then tomorrow at 5:00 AM, when the guys get in and they start rigging and lift at nine, this whole area is cleared. So all the guys that were going to be on the launch belt, all go over to the prop farm. So actually some of the guys work tonight. It's not actual physical work, but prep for the army that goes over there tomorrow so that we can be effective with like 70 people.\n\nGot it. Great. Well, it's definitely a beehive of activity. That's good.\n\nIt is super exciting, there's a few things to be worked out. After listening to what you said about contractor stuff. I got with our supervisors here and we're trying to figure out what the right number is. And also since we have all these great individuals here right now, it's also a good time like, oh, is there anyone from here that wants to join SpaceX? So we're looking into it. We've incorrectly searched for like six months continuously without looking back into it and looking at the proper head count.\n\nOkay. Yeah if somebody's long-term we should make them long term not temporary.\n\nYeah. It's easier too, because these guys come and go and then contract ends. It might be another company.\n\nYeah, yeah. It's not set up the right way.\n\nNo, it's better for them now that I'm in SpaceX.\n\nYeah. The logistic plan right now is wild. So we're also running out a lot of parts, so McGregor is shipping us a bunch of fittings and seals. We got Cape and Benny ready too to ship us stuff. We'll back-order all those other sites on the stuff we take. But we're just trying to keep, like, we're trying to keep feeding these guys with parts right now.\n\nOkay. And that launch ring is complicated.\n\nYeah. I do however, like the approach of having the hold downs on the inside like that, where they fold into each other, like, I like that design, however, everything else, we need to take a look at it. Just like how thick the steel is to begin with. We obviously learned trying to bolt in and align some of the lugs is not the right path. We learned that line boring as we got good at it, we got really fast at it too. So at least for the next launch mount, We're thinking line boring is the better step. Reduction in mass is gonna be huge for us.\n\nYeah. It takes a long time to weld thick steel.\n\nYeah. I mean, this is going to be a one inch weld here all the way around, inside and outside. One pass on the inside and outside just one weld pass will get us 40 miles per hour on booster and ship.\n\nOkay. Great, well, super impressive. If we can mount this thing in 11 hours. Frankly, even tomorrow that'll be great.\n\nWe had a hot wire that grain and then one of our new roads that we did collapsed on us. So we had to find a different route this morning, this grid weren't in place, we did lose a little bit of time having to backfill. But that went off pretty well. and the second largest grain in the world, third largest grain in the world, we have two operators for that bit. So one guy from our team, Dave, right's going to run the yellow, Giovanni is going to be on the big crane.\n\nOkay.\n\nThey're gonna load share properly and get this thing up.\n\nGreat.\n\nThis is brilliant because we want to spend four days reconfiguring this thing.\n\nYep. Like the two things we really need to get good at here is toll stuff and small stuff. That's what Bill Riley would say.\n\n[Tim] It's also pretty amazing that a project of this scale, you're still measuring things in days. You're still like a day, you know? I mean, that's impressive. What other people are like.\n\nYeah.\n\n[Tim] Yeah. Wow. I mean, it's nonstop. It's just not like you're doing that because there's a launch in two days, you're doing that the whole time this place has been developed. It's been like down to the, you're counting every minute and second.\n\nI told the crane operator as well, what would you do if there's an asteroid heading to this planet in eight days?\n\nYeah, exactly.\n\nThat's what they were told today.\n\nYeah.\n\nAnd who knows, maybe there is.\n\nYeah, I mean, you never know. I think if we operate with extreme urgency, then we have a chance of making life multi-planetary, just a little, just a chance to know for sure. If we don't act with extreme urgency, that chance is probably zero. And the rate of innovation is not gonna be constant, this year, they're gonna we're either going to increase the rate of innovation or it's gonna slow down.\n\nIf you look at a new American access to space with a crew, we were able to go to the moon in 69, then with the space shuttle we can only go to low-earth orbit and the space shuttle retired. And then for almost a decade, America had no access to space for the people. So this is a pretty bad trend, expanding to zero, We need a very strong trend in the other direction in order to have any chance whatsoever of making life ultimate multi-planetary.\n\nSo that's the reason for the extreme sense of urgency.\n\n[Tim] This is legitimate.\n\nYeah, I mean I'll be long dead before, you know, Mars is self-sustaining but hopefully the momentum is strong in that direction by the time I die, which probably isn't soon, but no, no. All right.\n\n[Tim] Sam, what if right when I got to the top, I'm like, oh, by the way, I have a horrid fear of heights. No I don't, but that'd be funny.\n\nI'll go to the tower next time then.\n\n[Tim] Dude, it's huge.\n\nOh, it's very impressive. It's great to see the progress and nice work guys. (noise from work site) Yeah, I mean, it'd be amazing if we can mount this thing tomorrow, which is looking like we've got a good shot at that. (noise from work site) - Getting far more paving going. So we can get the power guys or the arms a little bit more room to work on.\n\n[Tim] So what is the current plan for B3? Are you thinking about putting more rafters up under it still and seeing how it does?\n\nSorry for what?\n\n[Tim] You offer B3, you talked once about like maybe putting nine up under there or something.\n\nWe're just gonna focus on four with some work. Like I said, it's a rapidly changing situation. I mean, its like a guided missile, like a guided missile is going in the wrong direction at any given point in time, but it costs course-corrects.\n\nYep.\n\nYou don't want to be a super precise canon ball when you don't even know where the target is.\n\n[Tim] Yup.\n\nThe overarching optimization is what is the fastest time to a city on Mars and then subset, fastest time to a fully usable rocket, subset fastest time to orbit basically. So, so, well, all of the initial production is simply a learning exercise. It is not, none of the initial ones will be long term. So it's really just a question of like what knowledge can you learn in the shortest period of time?\n\n[Tim] Do you, I mean, I feel like you didn't quite have this freedom with Falcon 9, when you were developing Falcon 9.\n\nActually, sorry, our car is there? No, we did not have this flexibility with Falcon 9.\n\nSo you gotta be a lot more rigid and yeah, you gotta nail it a lot more when you were developing Falcon 9 because you were flying cargo pretty much today and getting ready for commercial resupply. Like you had to pretty much be a lot like think if we could.\n\nTechnically we did have the Grasshopper program.\n\n[Tim] Right.\n\nYou know, sharing ideas to run the Grasshopper program that we learned a lot, amazingly, the reason why Grasshopper did not blow up. So that's, you know, shocking, but we did blow up.\n\nThe F9 R?\n\nYeah. And ironically, that was when I, like, I was like, telling the SpaceX Board, hey, let's have a board meeting in Texas and you could see the rocket go off and land. That's the one time it blows up.\n\nI did not know that. I did not know that.\n\nSo, man it is sweaty out here.\n\nYeah. Let's keep going. We'll take more people.\n\nIt sounds good.\n\nYeah. All right, I'm gonna sign off at this point.\n\n[Tim] Yeah. Any last things you want to say to all the people excited about this program?\n\nYeah, I mean, basically just, I think it's cool too that people are getting excited about rockets and kind of finding out, how do rockets work and, thinking maybe about life becoming multi-planetary and being a space experience civilization, cause the experience makes our future inspiring, you know, that's, it might be the most inspiring thing. So it certainly is the most inspiring thing for a lot of people.\n\nAnd so I hope this gives people confidence about the future and that humanity will have an exciting future in space and we can make science fiction, not always fiction, but a reality one day.\n\n[Tim] Thanks, I like that. Yep, thanks Elon. Thank you again, Elon for all of the time that you spent, for everything we got to do and for allowing us to share this with the world and thanks again to Cosmic Perspective for helping shoot this video and just all the other stuff that they help with. So find them on Patreon and on YouTube.\n\nAnd I owe the biggest thank you to my Patreon supporters for helping make videos like this and everything we do here at Everyday Astronaut possible. Gain access to some exclusive live streams and our awesome discord community and lots of other fun stuff by heading over to patreon. com/everydayastronaut.\n\nAnd while you're online, be sure to check out our awesome web store where you can find shirts like this, the aero spike shirts or new Mars hats, or lots of other fun stuff like our schematics collection and our future martian society shirts. And just lots of other fun stuff for you or any other space nerd. Head on over to everydayastronaut. com/shop. Thanks everybody. That's gonna do it for me.\n\nI'm Tim Dodd, the Everyday Astronaut bringing space down to earth for everyday people.","textByLang":{"en":"Hi, it's me, Tim Dodd, the Everyday Astronaut. Welcome to part three of my tour of SpaceX's Starbase factory and launch site with the ultimate tour guide, Elon Musk. Of course, if you haven't watched parts one and two, what are you doing? You absolutely have to watch those first because there's just gobs of information. But this one's a little bit different.\n\nWe actually go out to the launch pad while it's being constructed and watch Elon at work and still get to ask a couple of fun questions. Just like before the YouTube play bars broken up into sections. We have links in the descriptions to those sections too. And of course we have an article version of some of the notes and key takeaways of this conversation up at everydayastronaut. com.\n\nAll right, let's hop in the car and head down to the launch pad. Which week is the blast. Is the radius actually gonna change the exclusion zone a little bit when one super heavy gets a, it starts launching, or you do the full stack?\n\n[Elon] Well, we definitely won't have people, we'll clear the whole area for orbital launches.\n\n[Tim] Like Stargate and stuff?\n\n[Elon] Yeah. Well, we might have a small crew with some shield, you know, like a rope and being a robust, some shielding on the roof and strong glass. But like, if something does go wrong with the over launch, it's really a much more of a fireball than it is an explosion but it is quite a big fireball.\n\n[Tim] Will you eventually be moving the launch control and everything, or is that staying at Stargate, at the control center?\n\nIt'll be at Stargate for now.\n\n[Tim] By the way, I haven't, I just got back into town for the first time since the booster has been up. So I have not seen this.\n\n[Elon] Yeah, it's a lot of progress. The teams are great.\n\n[Tim] God, it's so tall and that's not even the whole thing.\n\nThat is the pool tower.\n\n[Tim] But I mean that the booster.\n\nOh yeah, exactly.\n\n[Tim] Yeah, the tower is done now, right? As far as height.\n\nYeah. The full full-stack will be a little taller than the tower.\n\n[Tim] Are you guys working on a second tower two already?\n\nWe are thinking about it.\n\n[Tim] What's the future for Starbase here? Like, well, will you guys always be launching from here or what happens when the oil rigs go online?\n\nI mean, as long as it's, if we're able to launch it from here without too much operational difficulties, then we will keep doing it. But it is a bit of a challenge with beach closers, like there's like some people, don't want to have the beach clothes that much, but on the other hand, we gotta be able to launch. So it's like, you know, to what degree can we operate from here effectively and still let people use the beach and stuff.\n\n[Tim] Right. So with the oil rigs though, like, I guess how urgent is that to get the oil rigs going? Or is that kinda like, you know, we'll get those going and then, it might be two or three years before you actually start using them for launching?\n\nWe're not thinking too much about the oil rigs right now. I mean, we're demoing one rig, just, you know, cause we can just send it to a demo. Like people are really good at demolition and have them do it. So, but it's not occupying any of my insurance.\n\n[Tim] How far out will they, when you do start launching from there? Is it going to be like hundreds of miles or is it like 10 or 15 or something from shore?\n\nWe're not thinking about it.\n\n[Tim] This is all good for me though, because I'm so nervous that it'll be hard to watch them once they start launching from out there.\n\nYeah. For now we're just trying to think about the things that we have to think about.\n\n[Tim] Yeah. Wow. So right in front of us, is that a, is that the QD Arm? This yellow thing here on the sorry, on the right now, is that the QD Arm or is that the, is that one of the catchers?\n\nThat's the QD.\n\nHey, how's it going?\n\nLet me give it to you son. This one is for you.\n\nOkay, thank you.\n\nAll right.\n\nThanks.\n\nWe're going to make it.\n\nAll right, cool. Hey Sam.\n\nCool, how's it going guys?\n\nActually, Taylor has a plan as of right now.\n\nOkay.\n\nWe rolled this thing over today, so it's all in place. Those cranes are in their set location for tomorrow.\n\nOkay.\n\nTonight, we are going to re-rig everything.\n\nDo you guys mind being on camera or anything?\n\nWe are very shy.\n\nSam, I know you are.\n\nIt's all right for the camera, Go ahead.\n\nYeah, so tonight we'll create a rig, we're obviously doing that double crane, if we rig it all, our crane operators get in at 7:00 AM tomorrow, get everything finally hooked up. We do our pre-test. We use the launch spoon or the big things cause we don't want things sliding around. Then we lift it in 11 hours.\n\n11 hours, okay, cool, great. Awesome, exciting.\n\nYou see the flanges sticking out from the bottom of the launch pad right there, if a T, so right there is a T. You want to head up to the top and we'll show you what our game plan is over there?\n\nSure.\n\nYou're rightfully worried about this, but I think the guys have a pretty good plan. We went over the plan and any contingency planning.\n\nOkay.\n\nAll of last night, six welders got all the shelves done for the jack. So the jacks are up there now actually. Hey Yuri do you want to go up with us?\n\nSure.\n\nThose are the jacks on each leg.\n\nAll right.\n\nThe jacks that we got. So on top of that column right there, there's some shim plates we believe are off by half an inch.\n\nHalf an inch.\n\nSo what these guys done, they added weights where we think we're going to be high and we'll keep the crane on the whole time while we're jacking. And then Robert, you want to talk about the lap plates that you guys have?\n\nSure. Yeah as we're leveling we might get some gaps there that are bigger than you'd like for your weld gaps. So if that happens we got some plates to bridge that gap, so we weld that while up top.\n\nIts a lot of steel.\n\nYeah. And then over here, that little thing I pointed out in the launch mount we got new plates in here. So we'll be able to go right.\n\nIts okay, I got it.\n\nYeah, so this is key. This is to track them.\n\nSure.\n\nSame thing on that side. So we'll get rotation and then our crane will be fixed by the six jacks, but we only need two jacks actually there, I think there are 200 ton jacks, but we have all six so we can really dial it in.\n\nAll right. Okay, sounds good.\n\nI mean, we moved in and we add guys right back inside of it going. Again, it's all bonus time work in terms of fluids routing. And those are the hoods. So when the QDs retract on the hold-downs, the top inner phase is that hold-down hood or sorry, the QD hood. And so it clamshells back in. It's all through like just a strike, not a dynamic system on its own, but the hold down hydraulic actuator, actuates the hold down, the QD and the hood all altogether.\n\nWell, as you can see, there's a lot going on here.\n\nYeah, that's why I wanted to bring you up here. We've got a handful of guys on pad D right now. Some more on pad D so that we're ready to take a ship. So we we've been out of this the whole time, but we've got a few days on that. So we do want to knock some of that out right now, so that we're ready for shift 20 when it comes out here.\n\nAnd then we got a bunch of people in the prop farm and then tomorrow at 5:00 AM, when the guys get in and they start rigging and lift at nine, this whole area is cleared. So all the guys that were going to be on the launch belt, all go over to the prop farm. So actually some of the guys work tonight. It's not actual physical work, but prep for the army that goes over there tomorrow so that we can be effective with like 70 people.\n\nGot it. Great. Well, it's definitely a beehive of activity. That's good.\n\nIt is super exciting, there's a few things to be worked out. After listening to what you said about contractor stuff. I got with our supervisors here and we're trying to figure out what the right number is. And also since we have all these great individuals here right now, it's also a good time like, oh, is there anyone from here that wants to join SpaceX? So we're looking into it. We've incorrectly searched for like six months continuously without looking back into it and looking at the proper head count.\n\nOkay. Yeah if somebody's long-term we should make them long term not temporary.\n\nYeah. It's easier too, because these guys come and go and then contract ends. It might be another company.\n\nYeah, yeah. It's not set up the right way.\n\nNo, it's better for them now that I'm in SpaceX.\n\nYeah. The logistic plan right now is wild. So we're also running out a lot of parts, so McGregor is shipping us a bunch of fittings and seals. We got Cape and Benny ready too to ship us stuff. We'll back-order all those other sites on the stuff we take. But we're just trying to keep, like, we're trying to keep feeding these guys with parts right now.\n\nOkay. And that launch ring is complicated.\n\nYeah. I do however, like the approach of having the hold downs on the inside like that, where they fold into each other, like, I like that design, however, everything else, we need to take a look at it. Just like how thick the steel is to begin with. We obviously learned trying to bolt in and align some of the lugs is not the right path. We learned that line boring as we got good at it, we got really fast at it too. So at least for the next launch mount, We're thinking line boring is the better step. Reduction in mass is gonna be huge for us.\n\nYeah. It takes a long time to weld thick steel.\n\nYeah. I mean, this is going to be a one inch weld here all the way around, inside and outside. One pass on the inside and outside just one weld pass will get us 40 miles per hour on booster and ship.\n\nOkay. Great, well, super impressive. If we can mount this thing in 11 hours. Frankly, even tomorrow that'll be great.\n\nWe had a hot wire that grain and then one of our new roads that we did collapsed on us. So we had to find a different route this morning, this grid weren't in place, we did lose a little bit of time having to backfill. But that went off pretty well. and the second largest grain in the world, third largest grain in the world, we have two operators for that bit. So one guy from our team, Dave, right's going to run the yellow, Giovanni is going to be on the big crane.\n\nOkay.\n\nThey're gonna load share properly and get this thing up.\n\nGreat.\n\nThis is brilliant because we want to spend four days reconfiguring this thing.\n\nYep. Like the two things we really need to get good at here is toll stuff and small stuff. That's what Bill Riley would say.\n\n[Tim] It's also pretty amazing that a project of this scale, you're still measuring things in days. You're still like a day, you know? I mean, that's impressive. What other people are like.\n\nYeah.\n\n[Tim] Yeah. Wow. I mean, it's nonstop. It's just not like you're doing that because there's a launch in two days, you're doing that the whole time this place has been developed. It's been like down to the, you're counting every minute and second.\n\nI told the crane operator as well, what would you do if there's an asteroid heading to this planet in eight days?\n\nYeah, exactly.\n\nThat's what they were told today.\n\nYeah.\n\nAnd who knows, maybe there is.\n\nYeah, I mean, you never know. I think if we operate with extreme urgency, then we have a chance of making life multi-planetary, just a little, just a chance to know for sure. If we don't act with extreme urgency, that chance is probably zero. And the rate of innovation is not gonna be constant, this year, they're gonna we're either going to increase the rate of innovation or it's gonna slow down.\n\nIf you look at a new American access to space with a crew, we were able to go to the moon in 69, then with the space shuttle we can only go to low-earth orbit and the space shuttle retired. And then for almost a decade, America had no access to space for the people. So this is a pretty bad trend, expanding to zero, We need a very strong trend in the other direction in order to have any chance whatsoever of making life ultimate multi-planetary.\n\nSo that's the reason for the extreme sense of urgency.\n\n[Tim] This is legitimate.\n\nYeah, I mean I'll be long dead before, you know, Mars is self-sustaining but hopefully the momentum is strong in that direction by the time I die, which probably isn't soon, but no, no. All right.\n\n[Tim] Sam, what if right when I got to the top, I'm like, oh, by the way, I have a horrid fear of heights. No I don't, but that'd be funny.\n\nI'll go to the tower next time then.\n\n[Tim] Dude, it's huge.\n\nOh, it's very impressive. It's great to see the progress and nice work guys. (noise from work site) Yeah, I mean, it'd be amazing if we can mount this thing tomorrow, which is looking like we've got a good shot at that. (noise from work site) - Getting far more paving going. So we can get the power guys or the arms a little bit more room to work on.\n\n[Tim] So what is the current plan for B3? Are you thinking about putting more rafters up under it still and seeing how it does?\n\nSorry for what?\n\n[Tim] You offer B3, you talked once about like maybe putting nine up under there or something.\n\nWe're just gonna focus on four with some work. Like I said, it's a rapidly changing situation. I mean, its like a guided missile, like a guided missile is going in the wrong direction at any given point in time, but it costs course-corrects.\n\nYep.\n\nYou don't want to be a super precise canon ball when you don't even know where the target is.\n\n[Tim] Yup.\n\nThe overarching optimization is what is the fastest time to a city on Mars and then subset, fastest time to a fully usable rocket, subset fastest time to orbit basically. So, so, well, all of the initial production is simply a learning exercise. It is not, none of the initial ones will be long term. So it's really just a question of like what knowledge can you learn in the shortest period of time?\n\n[Tim] Do you, I mean, I feel like you didn't quite have this freedom with Falcon 9, when you were developing Falcon 9.\n\nActually, sorry, our car is there? No, we did not have this flexibility with Falcon 9.\n\nSo you gotta be a lot more rigid and yeah, you gotta nail it a lot more when you were developing Falcon 9 because you were flying cargo pretty much today and getting ready for commercial resupply. Like you had to pretty much be a lot like think if we could.\n\nTechnically we did have the Grasshopper program.\n\n[Tim] Right.\n\nYou know, sharing ideas to run the Grasshopper program that we learned a lot, amazingly, the reason why Grasshopper did not blow up. So that's, you know, shocking, but we did blow up.\n\nThe F9 R?\n\nYeah. And ironically, that was when I, like, I was like, telling the SpaceX Board, hey, let's have a board meeting in Texas and you could see the rocket go off and land. That's the one time it blows up.\n\nI did not know that. I did not know that.\n\nSo, man it is sweaty out here.\n\nYeah. Let's keep going. We'll take more people.\n\nIt sounds good.\n\nYeah. All right, I'm gonna sign off at this point.\n\n[Tim] Yeah. Any last things you want to say to all the people excited about this program?\n\nYeah, I mean, basically just, I think it's cool too that people are getting excited about rockets and kind of finding out, how do rockets work and, thinking maybe about life becoming multi-planetary and being a space experience civilization, cause the experience makes our future inspiring, you know, that's, it might be the most inspiring thing. So it certainly is the most inspiring thing for a lot of people.\n\nAnd so I hope this gives people confidence about the future and that humanity will have an exciting future in space and we can make science fiction, not always fiction, but a reality one day.\n\n[Tim] Thanks, I like that. Yep, thanks Elon. Thank you again, Elon for all of the time that you spent, for everything we got to do and for allowing us to share this with the world and thanks again to Cosmic Perspective for helping shoot this video and just all the other stuff that they help with. So find them on Patreon and on YouTube.\n\nAnd I owe the biggest thank you to my Patreon supporters for helping make videos like this and everything we do here at Everyday Astronaut possible. Gain access to some exclusive live streams and our awesome discord community and lots of other fun stuff by heading over to patreon. com/everydayastronaut.\n\nAnd while you're online, be sure to check out our awesome web store where you can find shirts like this, the aero spike shirts or new Mars hats, or lots of other fun stuff like our schematics collection and our future martian society shirts. And just lots of other fun stuff for you or any other space nerd. Head on over to everydayastronaut. com/shop. Thanks everybody. That's gonna do it for me.\n\nI'm Tim Dodd, the Everyday Astronaut bringing space down to earth for everyday people."},"languages":["en"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Zlnbs-NBUI"},{"id":"the-b-word-bitcoin-conference-2021-07-21","type":"interview","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HmbsThZcPu8","title":"The B Word Bitcoin Conference","titles":{"en":"The B Word Bitcoin Conference","de":"The B Word Bitcoin Conference","fr":"The B Word Bitcoin Conference"},"date":"2021-07-21","summary":"Musk discusses his views on Bitcoin and reveals that Tesla and SpaceX hold it during The B Word panel with Jack Dorsey and Cathie Wood.","text":"i've been thinking about only for a long time um and really it's it's like it's best to think of money as an information system uh primarily an information system for labor allocation um and uh for practical purposes it exists in a series of heterogeneous databases they're like very different databases in uh bank mainframes around the world uh it moves quite slowly in reality it may seem to move fast sometimes and it does with paypal which is real time but the vast majority of the systems out there are batch processing so the actual reconciliation may take one to five business days sometimes longer and the you have the ach system which is ancient and still still in operation which is um allows transfers uh effectively like a check would be an ach transfer\n\ntransfer but it's it's not secure and you've got the uh credit card systems which are also uh not secure it'll be like handing your username and password to a stranger in a restaurant if you buy a meal so um there's definitely an opportunity for uh something that is uh that is better from an information theory standpoint so um and and and there you can see with like data data on a network i think is the way to view it um what has the the most throughput what has uh the least error lost what drops the fewest packets fraud for example being a source of error and government interference in currencies being a source of error but it's fundamentally an information system so um i think it makes sense to support something that improves the the the quality of\n\ninformation with which we conduct the economy um and you know bitcoin is uh a candidate for that uh it is it does i think some things well um and it's obviously it's evolving and there are additional things like lightning being done on top of bitcoin um but but bitcoin per se is mostly solving for uh scarcity um or rather solving for uh essentially um having no throat to choke decentralized uh so there's no one who can be coerced in any way uh to empty their bitcoin account well i guess they could technically buy on an individual basis but the system as a whole cannot um and um and it has an open ledger which is also quite quite good transaction volume is is low uh a transaction transaction cost is high and usability for the average person is not is not\n\nyet very good but it has a lot of potential and i should say that like i i'm not and i apologize for taking a long time but there's there's certainly a lot to say um in general i'm a supporter of bitcoin um and uh the idea of cryptocurrency in general um uh but as i've said publicly we do need to watch out for uh crypto taking uh especially bitcoin using proof of work to maybe use energy that's maybe but too much uh and and not necessarily good for the environment so um but on balance i support bitcoin and i i and i'm not an investor i don't the only publicly traded stock i own is tesla and the only significant thing i own outside of tesla is is my spacex stock that that um you know could help create both companies so um but apart from that uh i do own\n\nbitcoin uh and tesla owns bitcoin spacex owns bitcoin um and i do personally uh own and go to ethereum and dogecoin of course so","textByLang":{"en":"i've been thinking about only for a long time um and really it's it's like it's best to think of money as an information system uh primarily an information system for labor allocation um and uh for practical purposes it exists in a series of heterogeneous databases they're like very different databases in uh bank mainframes around the world uh it moves quite slowly in reality it may seem to move fast sometimes and it does with paypal which is real time but the vast majority of the systems out there are batch processing so the actual reconciliation may take one to five business days sometimes longer and the you have the ach system which is ancient and still still in operation which is um allows transfers uh effectively like a check would be an ach transfer\n\ntransfer but it's it's not secure and you've got the uh credit card systems which are also uh not secure it'll be like handing your username and password to a stranger in a restaurant if you buy a meal so um there's definitely an opportunity for uh something that is uh that is better from an information theory standpoint so um and and and there you can see with like data data on a network i think is the way to view it um what has the the most throughput what has uh the least error lost what drops the fewest packets fraud for example being a source of error and government interference in currencies being a source of error but it's fundamentally an information system so um i think it makes sense to support something that improves the the the quality of\n\ninformation with which we conduct the economy um and you know bitcoin is uh a candidate for that uh it is it does i think some things well um and it's obviously it's evolving and there are additional things like lightning being done on top of bitcoin um but but bitcoin per se is mostly solving for uh scarcity um or rather solving for uh essentially um having no throat to choke decentralized uh so there's no one who can be coerced in any way uh to empty their bitcoin account well i guess they could technically buy on an individual basis but the system as a whole cannot um and um and it has an open ledger which is also quite quite good transaction volume is is low uh a transaction transaction cost is high and usability for the average person is not is not\n\nyet very good but it has a lot of potential and i should say that like i i'm not and i apologize for taking a long time but there's there's certainly a lot to say um in general i'm a supporter of bitcoin um and uh the idea of cryptocurrency in general um uh but as i've said publicly we do need to watch out for uh crypto taking uh especially bitcoin using proof of work to maybe use energy that's maybe but too much uh and and not necessarily good for the environment so um but on balance i support bitcoin and i i and i'm not an investor i don't the only publicly traded stock i own is tesla and the only significant thing i own outside of tesla is is my spacex stock that that um you know could help create both companies so um but apart from that uh i do own\n\nbitcoin uh and tesla owns bitcoin spacex owns bitcoin um and i do personally uh own and go to ethereum and dogecoin of course so"},"languages":["en"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HmbsThZcPu8"},{"id":"clubhouse-2021-01-31","type":"interview","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ua0RIRNMGg","title":"Clubhouse","titles":{"en":"Clubhouse","de":"Clubhouse","fr":"Clubhouse"},"date":"2021-01-31","summary":"Full Clubhouse session in which Musk grills Robinhood's Vlad Tenev over the GameStop and AMC trading restrictions.","text":"are you celebrating anything in particular with your short shirts um no i'm just trying to look sexy in these in these tight pants with the you know fabulous red in the goals uh is the good times room has almost 6 000 people in it right now all right just give it a minute because we promised we'd start at 10 and i think a few more people are going to try and trickle in and then you're going to get you'll get going for what should be probably historic uh first ever time for you and somebody amazing okay by the way um can you let him vlad from robin hood wow [Music] all everyone uh thank you for joining us for what is really a historic uh episode um i will come to our very very uh special guest in a second uh but just to quickly introduce the rest of the\n\nnuke uh we have jack um this is really fun uh you know we've been waiting all day this is the longest way to 10 p.\n\nm because we just couldn't wait to get this going um i hope this is as much fun by the end of it for you as it is for us first question from you is when are we going to get to mars [Music] roughly the same quadrant of the solar system and where we can do age planetary transfer and uh so we have one about six months ago about a year and a half there'll be another one so figure you know i don't know uh five and a half years five and a half years so what does it take from here to that point like what are the milestones do you think that's true you know five years out we are landing on mars well we're going to make a social play like aircraft where the cost of an air flight is um the component of that is fuel and um you can't just be throwing rockets away\n\nevery time and then you have orbital refilling so where you can extend the ship up towards uh then send another strip of dark wood transport propellant so that you can load up um to be almost cool with propellant and then go to mars and uh if if you've got a large fully monthly reusable rocket with over refilling that uses um high efficiency low-cost propellants then you can go to mars and then one one last thing is on mars here you need a local uh propellant production um anything here throughout the atmosphere uh combine it with the water ice h2o to create ch4 methane and oxygen and if you have those elements i would like to become multi-planter and we have a self-sustaining study on mars which i think is one of the most important things we could possibly\n\ndo for ensuring the long-term existence of consciousness yeah i think yeah that makes sense sorry i'll go for it yeah you've spoken about this often which is you know expanding your scope of consciousness and how it is tied to multi-family life could you explain what that means for you and why that matters to you uh sure well is it all meaningless i got quite depressed actually people out about it and and then the thing that kind of broke me out of it was reading out of this hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy um where he essentially pointed out that the universe is the answer and really the hard part is figuring out what questions to ask about the answer that is the universe um determining from the fact that the answer is the easy part of the questions\n\nabout the hard part so in order for us to gain a um a better understanding what questions to ask or to understand what it's all about we have to increase the scope and scale of consciousness so that we're better able to figure out how much questions at the same time um for reasons external or internal and and that was that all civilizations go through um technology complexity um because of globalization so i think for the first time the four and a half billion year history of earth has been possible to extend life beyond earth um and make life possibly planetary and this window of opportunity may be over for a long time i hope it is or it might be open for a short time um and i think it would be wise for us to assume that it's open for a short time um\n\nit's not a pessimist but i you know you have to say like some chance of telling you for a short time and we should take advantage of this brief window opening where we can transfer life transport life to make life multi-planetary and and humanity is essentially the agents of life in this process and i think we almost have an obligation to uh ensure that the creatures of earth continue uh even if there is a collaboration on earth which as i said could be man-made or it could be uh like natural calamity as if you look at the fossil yeah i think yeah i think you know all of it makes sense and i think we've heard you've talked about this before i think one other question i have is you know when you get there you know we have to set up the whole society we\n\nhave to set up civilization there um how will the whole thing work in your mind like you know everything from what does it mean to have internet connection in mars um all the way to like garments and and i would not presume to prescribe what should happen there i think the important part is just that we get people there and we get the equipment necessary to establish a self-sustaining civilization um at least one self-sustaining city and i think the key threshold of when we would pass the great culture of this this particular great filter is um is sufficiently self-sustaining such that if the ship stop coming from earth for any reason it could be something massive or it's not something i mean civilization on earth content with a bang or a weapon and but\n\neither way if the ship stopped coming from mars does mars die out or not um and moscone has been missing one little ingredients threshold where is self-sustaining um and are we able to do that before some calamity or or a gradual decline civilization occurs that prevents the strips from going there that's the that's that's the key threshold let yourself dream out over the next few decades like what would you what would you consider success like let's say they get through the first you know five years even the first 10 years like what do you think is possible to build on mars 10 years in 20 years then 30 years then after first um [Music] uh no it will be dangerous uh hard work um it's gonna be you're out there on the frontier uh you know a great adventure\n\num but it will not be a luxurious thing that is for sure quite going uh creating the necessities um you know we needed an iron ore refinery all of the fundamentals of industry in order to make sure that mars is a subtle sustaining planet um over time like this would take a while but uh you could terraform the planet and make it earth life um most people are warming it up so yeah so you know as you talk about this i mean honestly what comes to mind is sort of the idea that a martial civilization you know although obviously imported to earth it will quickly evolve to be quite a bit tougher um by necessity and just the missile image just leaving my mind as the spartans uh in ancient greece um do you think that do you think do you think the sort of vector\n\nof civilization will unfold differently is the consequence of difficulties getting going different civilizations for it yeah yeah absolutely the fact that it's you can only go to mars every two years and that is a six months six months journey although i think we can over time get that potentially as low as one month you can't go to mars when uh earth is on the on the other side of the sun from mars like the you know times we're gonna block your heart especially no matter what you do so that uh a group of people uh arriving roughly every two years um to ensure the long-term continuance of consciousness as we know it um because as far as we can tell we're the only um delicate seen nothing to indicate uh that thursday any alien association whatsoever i\n\nwould i i'd be the first jump with that in a second but i've seen there's such to ask you evidence because in the last year there's been multiple reported ufo sightings there was the mysterious object that flew past our solar system um that could not be explained by other means um and where the probable explanation by other means is much more likely than alien technology so people say they're signing the resolution of the picture needs to be at least like 7 11 atm good okay levels um um what would your response be if they start coming to you when they turn 18 or you know 22 and they say you know dad you know you know you planted us to mars and there's probably foreign um controls the universe um well i mean i mean from uh the spice controls universe and\n\nif memes are spiced those means i mean there's a little bit of truth to it in that like like how do you you know what is how do things become interesting to people and it means like actually kind of a complex form of communication that's like a picture maybe says ten fell swords um you know it's a complex picture with a bunch of meaning in it um and it is you know aspirationally funny uh so you know i affected people so yeah um how did you get so good at them i mean um i remember following you many years ago going from uh i guess uh probably um i mean you know if you go back to my early very early tweets technically i was on twitter i think in the very early days when they were only like made ten thousand less than ten thousand users uh but then like\n\npeople were just like tweeting like what kind of latte they had at the university street uh starbucks and i was like i don't even know this so then i deleted my twitter account um and you're like following or creating right now what are the ones that are interesting to you right now um i think some of them and then some of them are sent to me i have some pretty kick-ass game dealers yeah are there reviews on mars wait wait you're gonna have a good team dealer there will be my friends mike is a good game dealer and uh claire as well and uh jaco and a few quite a few others actually i personally am the likely responsible very interesting news and why people should be working there for folks who don't know about it i thought it was really cool like you know\n\njust the possibility of it which is really fantastic tell us more about it you know there are a lot of engineers listening on this um this clubhouse uh you know what is neural link why should we care what is possible with it sure so um the the long-term okay so new link steps from a concern i had uh where i was trying to figure out even in a benign ai scenario how do we at least go along for the ride so um i mean if it has been following yeah closely it's supposed to be improving dramatically um you know if you feel like look let's say gp1 plus gmt versus gp3 and just how radically that's improved um and just like you know deep minds and i mean i think they've run out of games to win at basically um important thing is like tesla actually has i think one\n\nof the the strongest ai teams in the world but his ait focused on real world usability um so just really building uh vision perception and control with ai but even in a benign scenario for ai where let's say like the fbi is like just really wants to be super nice to us and make us happy how do we stay relevant and have meeting and at least go along for the ride that's been a good scenario in terms of avoiding the bad scenario to the degree we can couple uh collective human will to the outcome of artificial intelligence and what's developed that way i think that'll probably be a better scenario for unable to effectively couple collective human oil to that outcome so um so the final the death is getting kind of desperate but you already have a tertiary\n\ndigital layer you've got your sort of limiting system which is your primitive drives and uh desires and responses uh and then you've got your cortex which is like long-term planning and thinking um those are two biological layers and then there's a tertiary layer third layer which is digital and you already have that in the form of your phones and computers and all your applications um you're far more powerful than the human would be without those uh cognitive enhancements but the bandwidth between your cortex and your additional pressure layer is very slow and in fact with the adventure phones um it got even slower so if you're if you're thumbing what's the rate so so so we need to improve the bandwidth um and with the direct neural interface we can\n\nimprove the bandwidth between your cortex and your digital territory layer by many orders of magnitude at least a thousand or maybe 10 000 or more we can also um a lot more time thinking about interesting things as opposed to taking complex thought structures compressing them down into words which is which also gain a very low cut rate um and then having someone else receive those words decompress them and then and then send words back to you um so a huge one about brain power and compression decompression um and we could be constantly on uh different concepts and so if you had a neural link typically your length you could do uh conceptual telepathy uh where you have a complex series a complex series of concepts and you just transfer them directly uncompressed\n\nto the other the first drastically improve the quality of communication and the speed of it so um there are other sort of pretty wild things that can be done like you could probably save state in the here and you wouldn't be exactly the same so you you know a little less than transfer but you can also say it's also arguably true that when you wake up in the morning you're not exactly the same as yesterday um or the u of a month ago is not the same as the year of today cells have died um memory cell memories have dated so much strength and therapy memories so anyway the point is like you wouldn't be uh you could it could be something analogous to a video game like a game situation where you are able to resume upload your last state yeah kinda like ultra\n\ncarbon um maybe there's a few memories but i'll but mostly be here so now that's the launch code stuff in the short term the idea would really just be to address uh brain injuries or spinal injuries and um you know make up for whatever lost capacity somebody has with uh with an implanted shoe so the first thing that we're going after is a wireless compartment that would to control a computer or mouse or their phone or really any device uh just use just by thinking um and this is obviously going to be massive enabler you way way easier for them um there have been sort of primitive versions of this device one time with like wires thinking out of your head but it doesn't work all the time and you can't take it home with you so just having basically they\n\nthink i like it apple watches phones computers various kinds then actually they would be a great fit for um so yeah i mean we'll probably be releasing some some new videos showing progress maybe uh in a month or so and uh because we've already got like a a monkey with with a wireless implant in their skull and the tiny wires uh who can play video games uh using his mind and you can't even see where the neural implant was put into that so the usda came through and inspected our facilities our monkey facilities she said it was like the nicest sponsoring facilities she's ever seen in her entire career the early applications will really just be for you know people who've had a serious brain injury um like where it's like the value of the implant is just would\n\nbe enormous um [Music] initial surgeries with full disclosure of like risks and everything so we've tested implantation removal and re-implantation say and of course great um sorry um i mentioned kids earlier as it turns out i have a very uh bright and inquisitive pleasure um who is crawling all over everything and trying to figure everything out and learning as much as he can as fast as he can like what you know with everything that we know now and kind of all the modern tools we have like what's the best way to think about educating a five-year-old in today's world that's right the best way to ex yeah educate a five-year-old and then think about kind of his identification over the course of the next you know five or ten years like what what kind of\n\nprogram ideally you think a kid should be on well my observations my kids were mostly educated by youth group and writers um and then you know and i guess classmates and i guess their lessons as well but um judging by the amount of time they spent online it just seemed like most of their education is actually coming from online um i mean i think generally with education you want to make it as interesting as possible if we're going to explain why we're teaching you this and why it is relevant um i mean we were able to um to forget things that are irrelevant or have low low relevance probability it makes sense like otherwise people remember all sorts of nonsense things that are very important to our future so unless unless relevance is established clearly\n\num then people will have a hard time remembering where it finds nature because it appears to be irrelevant um it might be relevant but if the law explains them they won't know um and then there's if you want to have some sort of engagement problem solving some sort of engaging narrative for problem solving like [Music] in um this is much better than having say a course on wrenches or a course on screwdrivers just like start with a problem and say what titles i need to solve this problem that establishes real relevance and gives a compelling hour of thread it seems like you could kind of if you had sort of elaborate enough projects you know you could you could rule a huge number of topics to do to ultimately kind of combine it with you know some really\n\nactually you know interesting of great um if it's the casting engine you know what's that how do you get to a higher rpm or a you know better compression ratio um you know i'm using like uh um become what advice you have for parents and the next one is here you are with you know so many companies that i can't even stop my head why does the world have and this doesn't mean to sound you know psychopathic but why does the world have more um you there are pretty long essentials in my life that have been very painful and difficult and i'm not sure i would i'm sure people would want to do that you know um um what encouraging words do you have for entrepreneurs who want to do a startup and my response is if you need encouraging words don't do a startup and eventually\n\num in um just a quick recent flash recap this is uh uh the one only elon musk was first time on clubhouse and this is a show that we do every single day i know a lot of you are trying to get the route to overflow room what do you think of cryptocurrency what do you think of bitcoin what do you think of other uh yeah i gotta watch what i say here because some of these things can really move the market um many friends of mine have tried he had a bitcoin cake a cake that was like a bitcoin symbol on it and he fed me a slice of bitcoin cake in 2013.\n\nso i mean clearly i should have at least fight for bitcoins eight years ago conventional uh finance people you know so um and the most entertaining outcome is often most likely and arguably the most entertaining outcome and the most ironic outcome would be that dogecoin becomes the currency of earth in the future oh my god um it was insane um sitting outside our house right now um especially when it comes to all things technology and self-driving a lot of people are very interested okay so should you ask me about the future of batteries itself um the next few years um well yeah i mean i think that i mean the goal with tesla is is to accelerate the effects of sustainable energy um so in order to do that we've got to make a lot of cars we've got to make\n\nthem uh increasingly affordable and our rough target is we want people to um eventually make 20 million cars a year the reason for that is the two billion active cars and trucks in the road and you're not really moving the needle unless you're changing one percent of the existing clean and of course production as fast as possible as much as possible from suppliers and then but even though it's not enough so we're actually going to be building uh their rate as well um so panasonic um algae and jhdl and then you know to increase the accelerate stable energy further we're making our own cells um and um i'm pretty pretty excited about that and then anyways i think you expect possibly an acceleration of compounding annual growth uh at least aspirationally\n\nthat's our goal and and then that combine that with autonomy and it's very powerful story because once you have autonomy or self-driving cars you massively increase the utility of any different car um you know a typical car is driven about 12 miles sr 12 12 hours a week depending on the situation your roughly 12 hours a week and there's 168 hours in a week a week so most likely a third of the hours a week or something like that um so maybe they do 60 hours a week of usage instead of 12.\n\nso basically per increase in asset utilization there um and far less need for parking less parking garages that kind of thing so um and this in itself is good for the environment um but the net of like having a lot of cars times uh motivational time self-driving i think is at the heart of why um a lot of investors think tesla is with what it is um is directly to live space and live saved and injuries about a million people die every year in car accidents and about 10 million per year have serious injuries uh so that's the pursuit of the better um and a lot of flights will be saved in lines and fuels lives made better if it becomes happens here on self driving you know you've made life a while back when you basically you know to put it mildly criticized\n\n[Music] um is so um um first of all i know i like farming i guess you know because you know for the spacex dragon at joshua space station we for driving on real world roads um you you have to solve uh vision you have some vision basically understanding audit objects with passive optical um um passive optical photons and and then making sense of those objects um so like division perception what does this object mean what are they going to do what is the likely path of travel um no question about it um like it's just because people don't have eyes like they can't basically have effectively a human one test process has it's like having one camera on a slow gimbal you know there's all sorts of things that go wrong um in the occlusion penetrating wavelengths\n\nuh just like radar you know roughly four millimeter radar or something like that um would be better if you can really delve into the arena of actual photon generation work um as an engineer so walk us through it's monday morning you wake up what is the day a typical work day in the uh um is not actually fun or interesting it's like chores so i've tried really hard not to do my chores but then i don't do my chores it's going to help so oh man you have to hear it for us [Music] and you do um and it's kind of there's something just really relieving just hearing you say that yeah um um and and then post meetings are much better uh even zoom meetings or whatever you know there's a little better than email anything's got an email i'll have a um of meetings\n\nuh i'll write an email write checks um especially if it's like an email to the group like hey we need to i think we need to change direction do the following things um and you know if you think otherwise we're going to do these things and connect our act together in this area or that area um and then yeah a bunch of meetings most of my meetings are engineering and design but of course you have to deal with switching um it's really hard to context switch between space next and tell them all the things that are going on next tesla and then and then euro-link boring company which was fortunately pretty low low bandwidth but they don't take a high level cpu because they're smaller and there's where's of open diamond calendar and i think a lot of you know\n\nwell-known founders have large blocks because you have multiple companies you're running you're also much more engineered and traditional what is your challenge are like insane torrents deterrence for information um i mean sometimes if you weren't like what i do for a day it's insane uh i don't recommend it i i mean yeah i was thinking like then how long can i keep this up because i don't know my brain they're not like um nice to have goodies they're like this meeting is essential like okay um it's pretty intense um i think like maybe i should like at some point like [Music] that might be helpful i think so a book a documentary i think you know i mean i remember once hearing about how do you still sleep on the floor of your factory to do to really work\n\nsuper hard i i i gotta be right there with them um and they gotta they gotta see it you know seeing us believing and so a bunch of sleeping in the middle of the factory floor and you know sort of go to sleep before in the morning like you know waking up like four hours later and like they literally see me they won't pass me um um [ __ ] robots are like 15 feet away yeah and they're they're pounding metal and it's like you're splitting and your factory's like literature your your room is like literally in the middle of them at least i saw your you're like in the conversation that's where you're because people could not see me in the cops room so i slept on the floor outside the conference room it um or another effort what would you start um and then nobody\n\ndid anything so then actually initially as a joke and created the boring company um improve people's quality of life by making it easy to travel from one place to another in a city and then that can be further expanded to long-distance travel uh where if you just throw a vacuum on the tunnel then you can go extremely fast and invest in a plane or a high speed rail um so i really still recommend uh someone else said please start a styling company that'll be great um then there's rna or mrna basically synthetic viruses uh which is uh we're seeing particular effect with bio intake and um but i think people don't quite appreciate that that what's actually going on is the digitization of medicine so it's where you can just literally you know create an art\n\nor dna sequence like a computer program and then uh encapsulate that in this is absolutely the future of medicine um tells actually just making affiliate fast uh rna sort of micro fab or something where for currently for cure back to growth to make it for other companies as well um i'm not sure i understand this why is tesla i'd say it's super random so for and position they said like we're willing to be acquired but there's like just a couple of projects that we think even though they're not related to automotive we really like to continue um and then another one was this biotech thing for it's basically three parts to it there's a dna multiplier an rna multiplier and studying which puts them the lipid shell on the rna sequence um like version three\n\nof it now and then they keep going so if you keep it under resources and then it turned out um across the world so what would you do differently there um well i i don't have good insight into the situation really is important for anyone with use um cbs and walgreens which would give out the flu vaccine every year and say okay just just show up here and um vaccines which are quite temperature sensitive they can only be um sort of defrosted from from the deep deep freeze briefly and then they must be used or they they lose their effectiveness um this is the rna because the rna sequences they use are not stable those sequences want to reverse uh to something else um because they are not stable they must be frozen at a very low temperature uh or they will\n\nsimply want to revert to a lower energy state um rna sequence that's my understanding um so just like instead of worrying about like this as quickly as possible and for sure we should not worry about the second dose yet just give everyone the first dose i suspect that the the community grounded by the first dose is very significant um you know that is like three or four weeks later so uh we'll have to we're going to plant time and don't worry about like actually giving the dancing to someone who maybe just so that will happen you it will be thrown away uh later this year more than we could possibly ever need or want um just got approved which is a small conventional vaccine but it's a single shot at room temperature um and then there are more vaccines\n\nthat are going to get approved hopefully soon and um and um combined with that we we are i think starting to approach some degree of heart immunity um with you know people who contract the virus and um and and recovered so which is actually better than getting vaccine um but antibody great reaction is um better than that so um yeah um i think you know optimistic message that there will so you know speaking of vaccines california has you know it's been sort of bouncing between kind of 40th and 45th and 50th country you know by space in terms of the speed of the rollout and it sort of you know it re-raises those questions by coming up more and more which is you know you and i and a lot of people you know you're listening it's like you know builds our companies\n\nyou know primarily in california up until now um what's your view in the future in california uh from here well i should say i love california i've been i've lived half my life more than half my life in california just you know um like i am you know californian you know like so much of my i'm gonna build my companies here uh on energy storage technology for electric vehicles way back in like 92 i think it was 92-93 uh there's a little company called clinical research in sport um working on through advanced capacity um vehicles which may or may not be successful but would it be useful or not answered and like you know i mean you're basically the only internet company um and then uh because i'm like okay well i also write something for myself and i actually\n\nwrote the first maps and directions on the internet i'm not sure how many people are aware of that first best directions yellow pages and white pages i wrote it personally it was just me on my computer and when we started this company we only had one computer the website only worked during the day because i was coding at night and from the server and during the day quite an adventure that's um sure um yeah so i i just want to let you know that the next time you show up at one of my companies that hang out with me you're gonna get an internship well thanks man but two computers um what are you what are you watching on tv what are you reading right now well um i just finished watching the last kingdom which i think is a great piece of you know mostly historical\n\nuh drama um um sort of um uh things about like having a shortage order or something there's something like if it doesn't make any scientific sense at first so i was like come on so then i stopped watching it but i it sounds like you know asheville's actually like interplanetary travel would be like you know what's the sort of face routine and by the way the politics that flow right so it sort of sets up a three-way battle between you know there's the earth and mars and then the asteroid belt um when [Music] did you see the ravens banquet the most recent one yeah it's great uh have you seen the new christopher nolan yes wow okay and did you understand it um well i think i think he said just don't like go deep into it just enjoy it for the movie and four\n\nhours like later i emerged from better things like i still don't like entirely get it so i should have just you know just skim through it and just watch it for the fun of it yeah yeah exactly um you know i think you know i don't you don't take up too much every time this has been amazing um you've pretty much broken about like over a dozen maybe more rooms and for all your um here and on twitter you've been asking for people to join tesla do you any final thoughts for everybody who's listening to you right now well do you want to hear the real story um from vlad from robin hood about what happened this week with case out uh uh okay you need to like let him somehow click on a button so you can talk uh since you mentioned that right at the beginning is\n\nin fact a book of philosophy disguised as a silly humor book um and if you read it from the standpoint of wow this is an interesting book of philosophy this is quite insightful um here's the point of um the answer is easy once you probably can probably formulate the question um and uh yeah i mean i like the fact that the ship is powered by infinite improbability it's called the heart of gold um yeah yeah um a sort of clerical error they basically decide that they need to have an ssl highway and an earth's in the way and so they about this i think was posted on the board what do you mean um hey guys thanks for uh thanks for inviting me up it's good to hang with all of you all right so what really happened give us the inside scoop all right well i was actually\n\nhoping that uh you would invite me up for the fermi paradox part because um this has been a very surreal weekend and week for me um one of the really great things is all the people coming to coming out of the woodwork to offer support for the company uh offer you know advice so um i got introduced today um and actually i should say i just randomly downloaded clubhouse a couple days ago just to see what it was all about so this is my first time literally using the app but um yeah i i got introduced to uh your friend antonio elon who had some good advice for me and then introduced me to you you had some great advice and then i figured you know i heard about this clubhouse and uh this has got to be part of the simulation so i just uh thought why not so here\n\ni am so i'm actually um i'm actually an adherent to the simulation hypothesis all right well it's philippines man what happened last week why do you uh stop people why can't people buy the gangstop shares the people demand an answer and they want to know the details in the truth yep um okay so let me let me start by giving a little bit of background is um um there's actually a couple of companies so there's a an introducing broker dealer uh called robinhood financial and that basically is the app that you uh know and love it processes trades uh you're a customer of robinhood financial then there's a clearing broker dealer um robin the securities that clears and settles the trades and then we have revenue which is our crypto business um all of which uh\n\nall of these are kind of different entities that are differently operated so basically wednesday of last week we just had you know unprecedented volume unprecedented load on the system uh a lot of these you know so-called mean stocks were you know going viral on social media and people were people were joining robin hood and there was a lot of net buy activity on them um as you guys all know and robinhood at this time i think was number one on the ios app store and uh pretty close if not number one on google play as well so just unprecedented activity um and so thursday morning right so i'm asleep but at 3 30 a.\n\nm pacific our operations team receives a file from the nscc which is the national securities clearing corporation so basically as a broker as a clearing broker and this is where robert the securities comes in we have to put up money to the nscc based on some factors including things like the volatility of the of the trading activity concentration into certain securities this is the equities business so it's based on stock trading and not options trading or anything else um so they gave us a file with a deposit and the request was around three billion dollars um which is you know about an order of magnitude more than what it typically is right so um no no why is this so high like this seems like like it sounds like this is an unprecedented increase in\n\ndemand for capital what formula did they use to calculate that well um yeah and just to give context you know robinhood up until that point has raised you know a little bit around two billion dollars in total uh venture capital up until now so it's a big number like three billion dollars is um is a large number right so and um know the details are we don't have the full details it's a little bit of an opaque formula but there's a component called the var of it which is value at risk and uh that's based on kind of some fairly quantitative things although it's not it's not fully transparent so uh there are ways to reverse engineer it but uh it's not kind of publicly shared and then there's a special component which is discretionary um so that's that kind\n\nof acts as a multiplier and um basically discretionary discretionary meaning like it's just their opinion yeah they're uh it's it's a little bit i mean i'm sure there's there's definitely more more than just their opinion but here um it's like it seems weird that you'd get a sudden 10 billion dollar demand you know three billion three minutes yeah it was three billion okay you know just suddenly out of nowhere um about um you know what was what was going on in what's going on in the in the nscc to make these calculations but um yeah essentially what's holding you hostage right now [Music] and i actually was asleep at this point you know the operation scheme was uh was fielding this at three o'clock and then um you know we got back we put our heads together\n\num you know our chief operating officer basically said look let's call up the higher ups at the nscc and kind of figure out what's going on maybe there's some way we can work with them and basically there was another call and they lowered it to something like 1.\n\n4 billion dollars from street okay we're making some progress right and then that's still a high number and then we basically proposed well let's let's explain how we plan to um let's explain how you know we'll manage risk in these symbols throughout the day uh we propose um marking these volatile stocks that were kind of driving driving the activity physician closing only and then at about an hour before market closed market open so 5 30 or 5 in the morning they came back and they said okay the charge is or the deposit 700 million which we then deposited and paid promptly and then um everything was fine that that um explains why we had to um we had to mark these symbols position closing only and also why you know we didn't want to we knew this was a\n\nbad outcome for customers um you know part of what's been really difficult is um robbing the stands for you know democratizing access to stocks and yeah we want to give people the access so it has been very very challenging but we had no choice in this case we had to conform to our regulatory capital requirements and so the team did did what they could to make sure we were available for customers details of uh of all of that okay but you know and to be fair we were we were i think there was legitimate sort of turmoil in the markets like these are unprecedented events with these mean stocks and you know there was a lot of activity so there probably is um some amount of extra risk in the system that warrants higher higher requirements so it's not entirely\n\nunreasonable but we do operational processes to make sure that customers that have positions could sell their open positions because obviously restricting someone we got a lot of questions about okay you had to restrict buying why didn't you also restrict selling and the fact of the matter is if people get really pissed off if they're holding stock and they want to sell it and they can't so i think that's that's categorically worse so um and lots of other brokers i think were in the same situation robinhood was in the news but you just sort of heard this industry why i read other brokers uh basically restricted the same exact activity all right so it sounds like this this organization should you know it calls you up and they basically have gone through\n\nyour head either they had all this money or [Music] yeah i think that's fair you know we have to comply with these requirements financial institutions have requirements um you know the the formula behind these requirements um i think um it would obviously be ideal if there was a little bit more transparency so we could plan better around that um you know but to be fair we were able to open and serve our customers and um you know 24 24 hours later our team raised over a billion dollars in capital so that when we when we did open uh well when we do open tomorrow morning we'll be able to kind of relax the stringent position limits that we put on these securities on friday will there be any limits well i think there's always going to be some theoretical limit\n\nlike we don't have infinite capital right and on friday there are limits um so there's always there's always gonna have to be some limit i think the question is you know will the limits be high enough to the point where you know some it won't impact you know 99.\n\n9 plus percent of customers so if you know someone were to deposit a hundred billion dollars and decide to trade in one stock like that that wouldn't be possible you know all right um yeah listen and fair those um have been reasonable so we are i think the the one thing that is maybe not clear to people is robin is a participant in the financial system all of these um so we do get a lot of questions about you know when you work with market makers when you work with clearing houses uh vertically integrating and getting um the financial system that allows customers to trade shares is sort of a complex web of multiple parties and you know it's hard to everyone says it could be better it could be improved um it's just the necessity of trading equities in\n\nthe us that you have to do all these things to what degree are you beholden to citadel i mean like basically but then what happened yeah there's a rumor that uh you know this was this was a clearing house this was a clearinghouse decision and it was just based on the capital requirements so um from our perspective you know citadel and other market makers who are involved in that but wouldn't they have a strong say in who got put in charge of that organization since it's an industry consortium not a government consortium the conspiracy theories a little bit so i just have no reason to believe that that's the case you know okay all right um well i guess we'll see what happens with future actions um for um on i know it's pretty late and uh thank you so much\n\nyou know i deeply appreciate it and i'm sure everyone in the audience here and watching elsewhere so thank you so much we cry and pick a song that's the first thing so i'm gonna play thank you so much all right i think i think we're done wow wow that was insane guys whoa thank you we just with this history guys","textByLang":{"en":"are you celebrating anything in particular with your short shirts um no i'm just trying to look sexy in these in these tight pants with the you know fabulous red in the goals uh is the good times room has almost 6 000 people in it right now all right just give it a minute because we promised we'd start at 10 and i think a few more people are going to try and trickle in and then you're going to get you'll get going for what should be probably historic uh first ever time for you and somebody amazing okay by the way um can you let him vlad from robin hood wow [Music] all everyone uh thank you for joining us for what is really a historic uh episode um i will come to our very very uh special guest in a second uh but just to quickly introduce the rest of the\n\nnuke uh we have jack um this is really fun uh you know we've been waiting all day this is the longest way to 10 p.\n\nm because we just couldn't wait to get this going um i hope this is as much fun by the end of it for you as it is for us first question from you is when are we going to get to mars [Music] roughly the same quadrant of the solar system and where we can do age planetary transfer and uh so we have one about six months ago about a year and a half there'll be another one so figure you know i don't know uh five and a half years five and a half years so what does it take from here to that point like what are the milestones do you think that's true you know five years out we are landing on mars well we're going to make a social play like aircraft where the cost of an air flight is um the component of that is fuel and um you can't just be throwing rockets away\n\nevery time and then you have orbital refilling so where you can extend the ship up towards uh then send another strip of dark wood transport propellant so that you can load up um to be almost cool with propellant and then go to mars and uh if if you've got a large fully monthly reusable rocket with over refilling that uses um high efficiency low-cost propellants then you can go to mars and then one one last thing is on mars here you need a local uh propellant production um anything here throughout the atmosphere uh combine it with the water ice h2o to create ch4 methane and oxygen and if you have those elements i would like to become multi-planter and we have a self-sustaining study on mars which i think is one of the most important things we could possibly\n\ndo for ensuring the long-term existence of consciousness yeah i think yeah that makes sense sorry i'll go for it yeah you've spoken about this often which is you know expanding your scope of consciousness and how it is tied to multi-family life could you explain what that means for you and why that matters to you uh sure well is it all meaningless i got quite depressed actually people out about it and and then the thing that kind of broke me out of it was reading out of this hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy um where he essentially pointed out that the universe is the answer and really the hard part is figuring out what questions to ask about the answer that is the universe um determining from the fact that the answer is the easy part of the questions\n\nabout the hard part so in order for us to gain a um a better understanding what questions to ask or to understand what it's all about we have to increase the scope and scale of consciousness so that we're better able to figure out how much questions at the same time um for reasons external or internal and and that was that all civilizations go through um technology complexity um because of globalization so i think for the first time the four and a half billion year history of earth has been possible to extend life beyond earth um and make life possibly planetary and this window of opportunity may be over for a long time i hope it is or it might be open for a short time um and i think it would be wise for us to assume that it's open for a short time um\n\nit's not a pessimist but i you know you have to say like some chance of telling you for a short time and we should take advantage of this brief window opening where we can transfer life transport life to make life multi-planetary and and humanity is essentially the agents of life in this process and i think we almost have an obligation to uh ensure that the creatures of earth continue uh even if there is a collaboration on earth which as i said could be man-made or it could be uh like natural calamity as if you look at the fossil yeah i think yeah i think you know all of it makes sense and i think we've heard you've talked about this before i think one other question i have is you know when you get there you know we have to set up the whole society we\n\nhave to set up civilization there um how will the whole thing work in your mind like you know everything from what does it mean to have internet connection in mars um all the way to like garments and and i would not presume to prescribe what should happen there i think the important part is just that we get people there and we get the equipment necessary to establish a self-sustaining civilization um at least one self-sustaining city and i think the key threshold of when we would pass the great culture of this this particular great filter is um is sufficiently self-sustaining such that if the ship stop coming from earth for any reason it could be something massive or it's not something i mean civilization on earth content with a bang or a weapon and but\n\neither way if the ship stopped coming from mars does mars die out or not um and moscone has been missing one little ingredients threshold where is self-sustaining um and are we able to do that before some calamity or or a gradual decline civilization occurs that prevents the strips from going there that's the that's that's the key threshold let yourself dream out over the next few decades like what would you what would you consider success like let's say they get through the first you know five years even the first 10 years like what do you think is possible to build on mars 10 years in 20 years then 30 years then after first um [Music] uh no it will be dangerous uh hard work um it's gonna be you're out there on the frontier uh you know a great adventure\n\num but it will not be a luxurious thing that is for sure quite going uh creating the necessities um you know we needed an iron ore refinery all of the fundamentals of industry in order to make sure that mars is a subtle sustaining planet um over time like this would take a while but uh you could terraform the planet and make it earth life um most people are warming it up so yeah so you know as you talk about this i mean honestly what comes to mind is sort of the idea that a martial civilization you know although obviously imported to earth it will quickly evolve to be quite a bit tougher um by necessity and just the missile image just leaving my mind as the spartans uh in ancient greece um do you think that do you think do you think the sort of vector\n\nof civilization will unfold differently is the consequence of difficulties getting going different civilizations for it yeah yeah absolutely the fact that it's you can only go to mars every two years and that is a six months six months journey although i think we can over time get that potentially as low as one month you can't go to mars when uh earth is on the on the other side of the sun from mars like the you know times we're gonna block your heart especially no matter what you do so that uh a group of people uh arriving roughly every two years um to ensure the long-term continuance of consciousness as we know it um because as far as we can tell we're the only um delicate seen nothing to indicate uh that thursday any alien association whatsoever i\n\nwould i i'd be the first jump with that in a second but i've seen there's such to ask you evidence because in the last year there's been multiple reported ufo sightings there was the mysterious object that flew past our solar system um that could not be explained by other means um and where the probable explanation by other means is much more likely than alien technology so people say they're signing the resolution of the picture needs to be at least like 7 11 atm good okay levels um um what would your response be if they start coming to you when they turn 18 or you know 22 and they say you know dad you know you know you planted us to mars and there's probably foreign um controls the universe um well i mean i mean from uh the spice controls universe and\n\nif memes are spiced those means i mean there's a little bit of truth to it in that like like how do you you know what is how do things become interesting to people and it means like actually kind of a complex form of communication that's like a picture maybe says ten fell swords um you know it's a complex picture with a bunch of meaning in it um and it is you know aspirationally funny uh so you know i affected people so yeah um how did you get so good at them i mean um i remember following you many years ago going from uh i guess uh probably um i mean you know if you go back to my early very early tweets technically i was on twitter i think in the very early days when they were only like made ten thousand less than ten thousand users uh but then like\n\npeople were just like tweeting like what kind of latte they had at the university street uh starbucks and i was like i don't even know this so then i deleted my twitter account um and you're like following or creating right now what are the ones that are interesting to you right now um i think some of them and then some of them are sent to me i have some pretty kick-ass game dealers yeah are there reviews on mars wait wait you're gonna have a good team dealer there will be my friends mike is a good game dealer and uh claire as well and uh jaco and a few quite a few others actually i personally am the likely responsible very interesting news and why people should be working there for folks who don't know about it i thought it was really cool like you know\n\njust the possibility of it which is really fantastic tell us more about it you know there are a lot of engineers listening on this um this clubhouse uh you know what is neural link why should we care what is possible with it sure so um the the long-term okay so new link steps from a concern i had uh where i was trying to figure out even in a benign ai scenario how do we at least go along for the ride so um i mean if it has been following yeah closely it's supposed to be improving dramatically um you know if you feel like look let's say gp1 plus gmt versus gp3 and just how radically that's improved um and just like you know deep minds and i mean i think they've run out of games to win at basically um important thing is like tesla actually has i think one\n\nof the the strongest ai teams in the world but his ait focused on real world usability um so just really building uh vision perception and control with ai but even in a benign scenario for ai where let's say like the fbi is like just really wants to be super nice to us and make us happy how do we stay relevant and have meeting and at least go along for the ride that's been a good scenario in terms of avoiding the bad scenario to the degree we can couple uh collective human will to the outcome of artificial intelligence and what's developed that way i think that'll probably be a better scenario for unable to effectively couple collective human oil to that outcome so um so the final the death is getting kind of desperate but you already have a tertiary\n\ndigital layer you've got your sort of limiting system which is your primitive drives and uh desires and responses uh and then you've got your cortex which is like long-term planning and thinking um those are two biological layers and then there's a tertiary layer third layer which is digital and you already have that in the form of your phones and computers and all your applications um you're far more powerful than the human would be without those uh cognitive enhancements but the bandwidth between your cortex and your additional pressure layer is very slow and in fact with the adventure phones um it got even slower so if you're if you're thumbing what's the rate so so so we need to improve the bandwidth um and with the direct neural interface we can\n\nimprove the bandwidth between your cortex and your digital territory layer by many orders of magnitude at least a thousand or maybe 10 000 or more we can also um a lot more time thinking about interesting things as opposed to taking complex thought structures compressing them down into words which is which also gain a very low cut rate um and then having someone else receive those words decompress them and then and then send words back to you um so a huge one about brain power and compression decompression um and we could be constantly on uh different concepts and so if you had a neural link typically your length you could do uh conceptual telepathy uh where you have a complex series a complex series of concepts and you just transfer them directly uncompressed\n\nto the other the first drastically improve the quality of communication and the speed of it so um there are other sort of pretty wild things that can be done like you could probably save state in the here and you wouldn't be exactly the same so you you know a little less than transfer but you can also say it's also arguably true that when you wake up in the morning you're not exactly the same as yesterday um or the u of a month ago is not the same as the year of today cells have died um memory cell memories have dated so much strength and therapy memories so anyway the point is like you wouldn't be uh you could it could be something analogous to a video game like a game situation where you are able to resume upload your last state yeah kinda like ultra\n\ncarbon um maybe there's a few memories but i'll but mostly be here so now that's the launch code stuff in the short term the idea would really just be to address uh brain injuries or spinal injuries and um you know make up for whatever lost capacity somebody has with uh with an implanted shoe so the first thing that we're going after is a wireless compartment that would to control a computer or mouse or their phone or really any device uh just use just by thinking um and this is obviously going to be massive enabler you way way easier for them um there have been sort of primitive versions of this device one time with like wires thinking out of your head but it doesn't work all the time and you can't take it home with you so just having basically they\n\nthink i like it apple watches phones computers various kinds then actually they would be a great fit for um so yeah i mean we'll probably be releasing some some new videos showing progress maybe uh in a month or so and uh because we've already got like a a monkey with with a wireless implant in their skull and the tiny wires uh who can play video games uh using his mind and you can't even see where the neural implant was put into that so the usda came through and inspected our facilities our monkey facilities she said it was like the nicest sponsoring facilities she's ever seen in her entire career the early applications will really just be for you know people who've had a serious brain injury um like where it's like the value of the implant is just would\n\nbe enormous um [Music] initial surgeries with full disclosure of like risks and everything so we've tested implantation removal and re-implantation say and of course great um sorry um i mentioned kids earlier as it turns out i have a very uh bright and inquisitive pleasure um who is crawling all over everything and trying to figure everything out and learning as much as he can as fast as he can like what you know with everything that we know now and kind of all the modern tools we have like what's the best way to think about educating a five-year-old in today's world that's right the best way to ex yeah educate a five-year-old and then think about kind of his identification over the course of the next you know five or ten years like what what kind of\n\nprogram ideally you think a kid should be on well my observations my kids were mostly educated by youth group and writers um and then you know and i guess classmates and i guess their lessons as well but um judging by the amount of time they spent online it just seemed like most of their education is actually coming from online um i mean i think generally with education you want to make it as interesting as possible if we're going to explain why we're teaching you this and why it is relevant um i mean we were able to um to forget things that are irrelevant or have low low relevance probability it makes sense like otherwise people remember all sorts of nonsense things that are very important to our future so unless unless relevance is established clearly\n\num then people will have a hard time remembering where it finds nature because it appears to be irrelevant um it might be relevant but if the law explains them they won't know um and then there's if you want to have some sort of engagement problem solving some sort of engaging narrative for problem solving like [Music] in um this is much better than having say a course on wrenches or a course on screwdrivers just like start with a problem and say what titles i need to solve this problem that establishes real relevance and gives a compelling hour of thread it seems like you could kind of if you had sort of elaborate enough projects you know you could you could rule a huge number of topics to do to ultimately kind of combine it with you know some really\n\nactually you know interesting of great um if it's the casting engine you know what's that how do you get to a higher rpm or a you know better compression ratio um you know i'm using like uh um become what advice you have for parents and the next one is here you are with you know so many companies that i can't even stop my head why does the world have and this doesn't mean to sound you know psychopathic but why does the world have more um you there are pretty long essentials in my life that have been very painful and difficult and i'm not sure i would i'm sure people would want to do that you know um um what encouraging words do you have for entrepreneurs who want to do a startup and my response is if you need encouraging words don't do a startup and eventually\n\num in um just a quick recent flash recap this is uh uh the one only elon musk was first time on clubhouse and this is a show that we do every single day i know a lot of you are trying to get the route to overflow room what do you think of cryptocurrency what do you think of bitcoin what do you think of other uh yeah i gotta watch what i say here because some of these things can really move the market um many friends of mine have tried he had a bitcoin cake a cake that was like a bitcoin symbol on it and he fed me a slice of bitcoin cake in 2013.\n\nso i mean clearly i should have at least fight for bitcoins eight years ago conventional uh finance people you know so um and the most entertaining outcome is often most likely and arguably the most entertaining outcome and the most ironic outcome would be that dogecoin becomes the currency of earth in the future oh my god um it was insane um sitting outside our house right now um especially when it comes to all things technology and self-driving a lot of people are very interested okay so should you ask me about the future of batteries itself um the next few years um well yeah i mean i think that i mean the goal with tesla is is to accelerate the effects of sustainable energy um so in order to do that we've got to make a lot of cars we've got to make\n\nthem uh increasingly affordable and our rough target is we want people to um eventually make 20 million cars a year the reason for that is the two billion active cars and trucks in the road and you're not really moving the needle unless you're changing one percent of the existing clean and of course production as fast as possible as much as possible from suppliers and then but even though it's not enough so we're actually going to be building uh their rate as well um so panasonic um algae and jhdl and then you know to increase the accelerate stable energy further we're making our own cells um and um i'm pretty pretty excited about that and then anyways i think you expect possibly an acceleration of compounding annual growth uh at least aspirationally\n\nthat's our goal and and then that combine that with autonomy and it's very powerful story because once you have autonomy or self-driving cars you massively increase the utility of any different car um you know a typical car is driven about 12 miles sr 12 12 hours a week depending on the situation your roughly 12 hours a week and there's 168 hours in a week a week so most likely a third of the hours a week or something like that um so maybe they do 60 hours a week of usage instead of 12.\n\nso basically per increase in asset utilization there um and far less need for parking less parking garages that kind of thing so um and this in itself is good for the environment um but the net of like having a lot of cars times uh motivational time self-driving i think is at the heart of why um a lot of investors think tesla is with what it is um is directly to live space and live saved and injuries about a million people die every year in car accidents and about 10 million per year have serious injuries uh so that's the pursuit of the better um and a lot of flights will be saved in lines and fuels lives made better if it becomes happens here on self driving you know you've made life a while back when you basically you know to put it mildly criticized\n\n[Music] um is so um um first of all i know i like farming i guess you know because you know for the spacex dragon at joshua space station we for driving on real world roads um you you have to solve uh vision you have some vision basically understanding audit objects with passive optical um um passive optical photons and and then making sense of those objects um so like division perception what does this object mean what are they going to do what is the likely path of travel um no question about it um like it's just because people don't have eyes like they can't basically have effectively a human one test process has it's like having one camera on a slow gimbal you know there's all sorts of things that go wrong um in the occlusion penetrating wavelengths\n\nuh just like radar you know roughly four millimeter radar or something like that um would be better if you can really delve into the arena of actual photon generation work um as an engineer so walk us through it's monday morning you wake up what is the day a typical work day in the uh um is not actually fun or interesting it's like chores so i've tried really hard not to do my chores but then i don't do my chores it's going to help so oh man you have to hear it for us [Music] and you do um and it's kind of there's something just really relieving just hearing you say that yeah um um and and then post meetings are much better uh even zoom meetings or whatever you know there's a little better than email anything's got an email i'll have a um of meetings\n\nuh i'll write an email write checks um especially if it's like an email to the group like hey we need to i think we need to change direction do the following things um and you know if you think otherwise we're going to do these things and connect our act together in this area or that area um and then yeah a bunch of meetings most of my meetings are engineering and design but of course you have to deal with switching um it's really hard to context switch between space next and tell them all the things that are going on next tesla and then and then euro-link boring company which was fortunately pretty low low bandwidth but they don't take a high level cpu because they're smaller and there's where's of open diamond calendar and i think a lot of you know\n\nwell-known founders have large blocks because you have multiple companies you're running you're also much more engineered and traditional what is your challenge are like insane torrents deterrence for information um i mean sometimes if you weren't like what i do for a day it's insane uh i don't recommend it i i mean yeah i was thinking like then how long can i keep this up because i don't know my brain they're not like um nice to have goodies they're like this meeting is essential like okay um it's pretty intense um i think like maybe i should like at some point like [Music] that might be helpful i think so a book a documentary i think you know i mean i remember once hearing about how do you still sleep on the floor of your factory to do to really work\n\nsuper hard i i i gotta be right there with them um and they gotta they gotta see it you know seeing us believing and so a bunch of sleeping in the middle of the factory floor and you know sort of go to sleep before in the morning like you know waking up like four hours later and like they literally see me they won't pass me um um [ __ ] robots are like 15 feet away yeah and they're they're pounding metal and it's like you're splitting and your factory's like literature your your room is like literally in the middle of them at least i saw your you're like in the conversation that's where you're because people could not see me in the cops room so i slept on the floor outside the conference room it um or another effort what would you start um and then nobody\n\ndid anything so then actually initially as a joke and created the boring company um improve people's quality of life by making it easy to travel from one place to another in a city and then that can be further expanded to long-distance travel uh where if you just throw a vacuum on the tunnel then you can go extremely fast and invest in a plane or a high speed rail um so i really still recommend uh someone else said please start a styling company that'll be great um then there's rna or mrna basically synthetic viruses uh which is uh we're seeing particular effect with bio intake and um but i think people don't quite appreciate that that what's actually going on is the digitization of medicine so it's where you can just literally you know create an art\n\nor dna sequence like a computer program and then uh encapsulate that in this is absolutely the future of medicine um tells actually just making affiliate fast uh rna sort of micro fab or something where for currently for cure back to growth to make it for other companies as well um i'm not sure i understand this why is tesla i'd say it's super random so for and position they said like we're willing to be acquired but there's like just a couple of projects that we think even though they're not related to automotive we really like to continue um and then another one was this biotech thing for it's basically three parts to it there's a dna multiplier an rna multiplier and studying which puts them the lipid shell on the rna sequence um like version three\n\nof it now and then they keep going so if you keep it under resources and then it turned out um across the world so what would you do differently there um well i i don't have good insight into the situation really is important for anyone with use um cbs and walgreens which would give out the flu vaccine every year and say okay just just show up here and um vaccines which are quite temperature sensitive they can only be um sort of defrosted from from the deep deep freeze briefly and then they must be used or they they lose their effectiveness um this is the rna because the rna sequences they use are not stable those sequences want to reverse uh to something else um because they are not stable they must be frozen at a very low temperature uh or they will\n\nsimply want to revert to a lower energy state um rna sequence that's my understanding um so just like instead of worrying about like this as quickly as possible and for sure we should not worry about the second dose yet just give everyone the first dose i suspect that the the community grounded by the first dose is very significant um you know that is like three or four weeks later so uh we'll have to we're going to plant time and don't worry about like actually giving the dancing to someone who maybe just so that will happen you it will be thrown away uh later this year more than we could possibly ever need or want um just got approved which is a small conventional vaccine but it's a single shot at room temperature um and then there are more vaccines\n\nthat are going to get approved hopefully soon and um and um combined with that we we are i think starting to approach some degree of heart immunity um with you know people who contract the virus and um and and recovered so which is actually better than getting vaccine um but antibody great reaction is um better than that so um yeah um i think you know optimistic message that there will so you know speaking of vaccines california has you know it's been sort of bouncing between kind of 40th and 45th and 50th country you know by space in terms of the speed of the rollout and it sort of you know it re-raises those questions by coming up more and more which is you know you and i and a lot of people you know you're listening it's like you know builds our companies\n\nyou know primarily in california up until now um what's your view in the future in california uh from here well i should say i love california i've been i've lived half my life more than half my life in california just you know um like i am you know californian you know like so much of my i'm gonna build my companies here uh on energy storage technology for electric vehicles way back in like 92 i think it was 92-93 uh there's a little company called clinical research in sport um working on through advanced capacity um vehicles which may or may not be successful but would it be useful or not answered and like you know i mean you're basically the only internet company um and then uh because i'm like okay well i also write something for myself and i actually\n\nwrote the first maps and directions on the internet i'm not sure how many people are aware of that first best directions yellow pages and white pages i wrote it personally it was just me on my computer and when we started this company we only had one computer the website only worked during the day because i was coding at night and from the server and during the day quite an adventure that's um sure um yeah so i i just want to let you know that the next time you show up at one of my companies that hang out with me you're gonna get an internship well thanks man but two computers um what are you what are you watching on tv what are you reading right now well um i just finished watching the last kingdom which i think is a great piece of you know mostly historical\n\nuh drama um um sort of um uh things about like having a shortage order or something there's something like if it doesn't make any scientific sense at first so i was like come on so then i stopped watching it but i it sounds like you know asheville's actually like interplanetary travel would be like you know what's the sort of face routine and by the way the politics that flow right so it sort of sets up a three-way battle between you know there's the earth and mars and then the asteroid belt um when [Music] did you see the ravens banquet the most recent one yeah it's great uh have you seen the new christopher nolan yes wow okay and did you understand it um well i think i think he said just don't like go deep into it just enjoy it for the movie and four\n\nhours like later i emerged from better things like i still don't like entirely get it so i should have just you know just skim through it and just watch it for the fun of it yeah yeah exactly um you know i think you know i don't you don't take up too much every time this has been amazing um you've pretty much broken about like over a dozen maybe more rooms and for all your um here and on twitter you've been asking for people to join tesla do you any final thoughts for everybody who's listening to you right now well do you want to hear the real story um from vlad from robin hood about what happened this week with case out uh uh okay you need to like let him somehow click on a button so you can talk uh since you mentioned that right at the beginning is\n\nin fact a book of philosophy disguised as a silly humor book um and if you read it from the standpoint of wow this is an interesting book of philosophy this is quite insightful um here's the point of um the answer is easy once you probably can probably formulate the question um and uh yeah i mean i like the fact that the ship is powered by infinite improbability it's called the heart of gold um yeah yeah um a sort of clerical error they basically decide that they need to have an ssl highway and an earth's in the way and so they about this i think was posted on the board what do you mean um hey guys thanks for uh thanks for inviting me up it's good to hang with all of you all right so what really happened give us the inside scoop all right well i was actually\n\nhoping that uh you would invite me up for the fermi paradox part because um this has been a very surreal weekend and week for me um one of the really great things is all the people coming to coming out of the woodwork to offer support for the company uh offer you know advice so um i got introduced today um and actually i should say i just randomly downloaded clubhouse a couple days ago just to see what it was all about so this is my first time literally using the app but um yeah i i got introduced to uh your friend antonio elon who had some good advice for me and then introduced me to you you had some great advice and then i figured you know i heard about this clubhouse and uh this has got to be part of the simulation so i just uh thought why not so here\n\ni am so i'm actually um i'm actually an adherent to the simulation hypothesis all right well it's philippines man what happened last week why do you uh stop people why can't people buy the gangstop shares the people demand an answer and they want to know the details in the truth yep um okay so let me let me start by giving a little bit of background is um um there's actually a couple of companies so there's a an introducing broker dealer uh called robinhood financial and that basically is the app that you uh know and love it processes trades uh you're a customer of robinhood financial then there's a clearing broker dealer um robin the securities that clears and settles the trades and then we have revenue which is our crypto business um all of which uh\n\nall of these are kind of different entities that are differently operated so basically wednesday of last week we just had you know unprecedented volume unprecedented load on the system uh a lot of these you know so-called mean stocks were you know going viral on social media and people were people were joining robin hood and there was a lot of net buy activity on them um as you guys all know and robinhood at this time i think was number one on the ios app store and uh pretty close if not number one on google play as well so just unprecedented activity um and so thursday morning right so i'm asleep but at 3 30 a.\n\nm pacific our operations team receives a file from the nscc which is the national securities clearing corporation so basically as a broker as a clearing broker and this is where robert the securities comes in we have to put up money to the nscc based on some factors including things like the volatility of the of the trading activity concentration into certain securities this is the equities business so it's based on stock trading and not options trading or anything else um so they gave us a file with a deposit and the request was around three billion dollars um which is you know about an order of magnitude more than what it typically is right so um no no why is this so high like this seems like like it sounds like this is an unprecedented increase in\n\ndemand for capital what formula did they use to calculate that well um yeah and just to give context you know robinhood up until that point has raised you know a little bit around two billion dollars in total uh venture capital up until now so it's a big number like three billion dollars is um is a large number right so and um know the details are we don't have the full details it's a little bit of an opaque formula but there's a component called the var of it which is value at risk and uh that's based on kind of some fairly quantitative things although it's not it's not fully transparent so uh there are ways to reverse engineer it but uh it's not kind of publicly shared and then there's a special component which is discretionary um so that's that kind\n\nof acts as a multiplier and um basically discretionary discretionary meaning like it's just their opinion yeah they're uh it's it's a little bit i mean i'm sure there's there's definitely more more than just their opinion but here um it's like it seems weird that you'd get a sudden 10 billion dollar demand you know three billion three minutes yeah it was three billion okay you know just suddenly out of nowhere um about um you know what was what was going on in what's going on in the in the nscc to make these calculations but um yeah essentially what's holding you hostage right now [Music] and i actually was asleep at this point you know the operation scheme was uh was fielding this at three o'clock and then um you know we got back we put our heads together\n\num you know our chief operating officer basically said look let's call up the higher ups at the nscc and kind of figure out what's going on maybe there's some way we can work with them and basically there was another call and they lowered it to something like 1.\n\n4 billion dollars from street okay we're making some progress right and then that's still a high number and then we basically proposed well let's let's explain how we plan to um let's explain how you know we'll manage risk in these symbols throughout the day uh we propose um marking these volatile stocks that were kind of driving driving the activity physician closing only and then at about an hour before market closed market open so 5 30 or 5 in the morning they came back and they said okay the charge is or the deposit 700 million which we then deposited and paid promptly and then um everything was fine that that um explains why we had to um we had to mark these symbols position closing only and also why you know we didn't want to we knew this was a\n\nbad outcome for customers um you know part of what's been really difficult is um robbing the stands for you know democratizing access to stocks and yeah we want to give people the access so it has been very very challenging but we had no choice in this case we had to conform to our regulatory capital requirements and so the team did did what they could to make sure we were available for customers details of uh of all of that okay but you know and to be fair we were we were i think there was legitimate sort of turmoil in the markets like these are unprecedented events with these mean stocks and you know there was a lot of activity so there probably is um some amount of extra risk in the system that warrants higher higher requirements so it's not entirely\n\nunreasonable but we do operational processes to make sure that customers that have positions could sell their open positions because obviously restricting someone we got a lot of questions about okay you had to restrict buying why didn't you also restrict selling and the fact of the matter is if people get really pissed off if they're holding stock and they want to sell it and they can't so i think that's that's categorically worse so um and lots of other brokers i think were in the same situation robinhood was in the news but you just sort of heard this industry why i read other brokers uh basically restricted the same exact activity all right so it sounds like this this organization should you know it calls you up and they basically have gone through\n\nyour head either they had all this money or [Music] yeah i think that's fair you know we have to comply with these requirements financial institutions have requirements um you know the the formula behind these requirements um i think um it would obviously be ideal if there was a little bit more transparency so we could plan better around that um you know but to be fair we were able to open and serve our customers and um you know 24 24 hours later our team raised over a billion dollars in capital so that when we when we did open uh well when we do open tomorrow morning we'll be able to kind of relax the stringent position limits that we put on these securities on friday will there be any limits well i think there's always going to be some theoretical limit\n\nlike we don't have infinite capital right and on friday there are limits um so there's always there's always gonna have to be some limit i think the question is you know will the limits be high enough to the point where you know some it won't impact you know 99.\n\n9 plus percent of customers so if you know someone were to deposit a hundred billion dollars and decide to trade in one stock like that that wouldn't be possible you know all right um yeah listen and fair those um have been reasonable so we are i think the the one thing that is maybe not clear to people is robin is a participant in the financial system all of these um so we do get a lot of questions about you know when you work with market makers when you work with clearing houses uh vertically integrating and getting um the financial system that allows customers to trade shares is sort of a complex web of multiple parties and you know it's hard to everyone says it could be better it could be improved um it's just the necessity of trading equities in\n\nthe us that you have to do all these things to what degree are you beholden to citadel i mean like basically but then what happened yeah there's a rumor that uh you know this was this was a clearing house this was a clearinghouse decision and it was just based on the capital requirements so um from our perspective you know citadel and other market makers who are involved in that but wouldn't they have a strong say in who got put in charge of that organization since it's an industry consortium not a government consortium the conspiracy theories a little bit so i just have no reason to believe that that's the case you know okay all right um well i guess we'll see what happens with future actions um for um on i know it's pretty late and uh thank you so much\n\nyou know i deeply appreciate it and i'm sure everyone in the audience here and watching elsewhere so thank you so much we cry and pick a song that's the first thing so i'm gonna play thank you so much all right i think i think we're done wow wow that was insane guys whoa thank you we just with this history guys"},"languages":["en"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ua0RIRNMGg"},{"id":"occupy-mars-2020","type":"post","url":"https://x.com/elonmusk","title":"Occupy Mars","titles":{"en":"Occupy Mars","de":"Occupy Mars","fr":"Occupy Mars"},"date":"2020-12-25","summary":"An iconic post about colonizing Mars.","text":"Occupy Mars","textByLang":{"en":"Occupy Mars","de":"Occupy Mars","fr":"Occupy Mars"},"languages":["en","de","fr"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":null},{"id":"wsj-ceo-council-summit-2020-12-07","type":"interview","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V1nQFotzQMQ","title":"WSJ CEO Council Summit","titles":{"en":"WSJ CEO Council Summit","de":"WSJ CEO Council Summit","fr":"WSJ CEO Council Summit"},"date":"2020-12-07","summary":"Musk explains his move to Texas and discusses Tesla, SpaceX and AI at the WSJ CEO Council Summit.","text":"[Music] elon let's just start right with uh where where john john posed the question i mean you've spoken often in your career about how important it was for you as a young entrepreneur an innovator to come to america and you've said there's no other country where you could have achieved what you've achieved today definitely when you look at the us today in the landscape would that still apply in 2020 and are we broadly as a society doing everything we should be doing to foster that same environment that brought you yeah well i think u.\n\ns is still great with respect to innovation and fostering entrepreneurship so it's still great i think we don't want to be complacent and we want to say okay how can we make it better over time and i think we want to be um cautious about the the gradual creep of regulations and bureaucracy the rules and regulations uh are immortal and if we keep making more of a year and do not uh do something about uh removing them then eventually we will be able to do nothing this is very important and i think not well appreciate this is just sort of like the the the slow boil of the frog you know his part doesn't jump out because gets just slightly hotter each year um we should be aware of this i think particularly at the state level yeah well i want to talk about\n\nthat because uh you've been running into that some in in california but let me ask in a broader sense i mean you've never been i mean you've been working with government you do business with government now uh you've expressed strong feelings about government pro and con at different times depending on the circumstances but when you think through an innovation lens in the broader sense what's the right role for government like what is the role worship government be a player and where should be hands off what's ideal in your mind sure um a lot of the time the best thing that government can do is just get out of the way um and so that i'd say that that's the default um probably best thing to do then um after that would be ensuring that uh there are not artificial\n\nmonopolies that that there is a federal ground for startups um and the because what can happen over time is they can get regulatory capture by large companies where they influence the regulators and the legislators to favor uh their their situation and then you have a forest of redwoods and you just can't the the little uh little trees can't grow so we really want to have an environment that that tends to favor uh smaller companies and startups the big companies really don't need the support but they will they will generally try to work the system to establish a monopoly of some kind we should be wary of that um you know in general it's like i i think we we could consider uh changing the way we think of things from say capitalism versus communism i apologize\n\nlong answer but i think this is kind of um capitalism versus communism and and think more in terms of feedback loops so is is a given organization does it give an organization governor or or a commercial have good feedback loop for the customer um whether it's the people as a whole or you know where whoever the customers are and if you've got like a duopoly or oligopoly they're generally going to be have a weak uh response to their customer um and if they're monopoly they're going to have the weakest response to the customer and the reason that that government i think is often the worst at responding to the customers being the people is that they're a monopoly that can't go bankrupt or usually cannot go bankrupt so there's not there's not really a a a\n\ncleansing process for a government short of a catastrophe um so i mean if you want to complain about the dmv what's the what's the alternative yeah so a couple things to unpack there first i do want to when you talk about redwoods dominating the uh the air and smaller companies have a challenge some people would hear that as being the situation in silicon valley today i don't think that's what you replied but is that what you see in silicon valley today well i think this is not a silicon valley problem it's just it's a general uh problem um i mean if you look at say you know how many how many candy companies are there like you know big candy is like consolidated into like three companies or something um and they also own all the dog food and the baby\n\nfood so it's like when's the last time there was some good candy uh you know what's the forcing function for a new candy bar i haven't seen one in ages um so you know we gotta watch this like consolidation um that uh ends up resulting in lower responsiveness to the end customer and um like i said it's like you can think of like in the limit government is simply the largest corporation yeah so some people i think it's a false dichotomy to look at government and sort of industry as separate government is simply a corporation in the limit it is the ultimate cooperation with the monopoly so but then as you get closer to like set up monopoly as the feedback loop gets weaker and less responsive to the customer that's that's that's where you have something which\n\ndoes not maximize the happiness of people which should be our objective overall we had a couple of people last night at this event uh who are joining the big administration a couple of the president-elect senior advisors and clearly one of the things heavily on their mind is sort of a new national industrial policy for want of a better term they talked about spending a lot more on research and development and fostering innovation big government spending basically um is is that kind of national industrial policy a good idea is that a good use of government right now in your mind and if it is where would you focus that kind of effort well it's governor's responsibility to establish the rules of the game and then to ensure that those rules are properly enforced\n\nlike sort of like the the referees on the field and you know it's like it's just like um you know football or something then you've got the rules you've got the referees you're gonna make sure the rules are the right rules and the referees are enforcing the rules that's a that's an important role for government uh to ensure that the rules are correct and that the incentives uh are what we actually want them to be for like i said the long-term maximum happiness of the people into the future um where i think government does not do a great job is when they want to not just be a referee on the field they want to be a player on the field uh this is not does not end up in a good stage picking winners and losers that kind of thing i mean effectively government\n\nincentives do fake or do favor like you're gonna say like what are the rules of the game um i don't know this is obviously an imperfect analogy but i i do think it is a pretty good one um that you you want the government to be carefully focused on ensuring the rules of the game are what we actually want them to be that we're getting rid of all rules this is very important which is not occurring um and that the the rules are enforced such that we have uh ethical behavior of companies um yeah um now there are times when you have an unpriced externality such as the co2 capacity of the oceans and atmosphere so then if that is not priced in effectively then you can get behavior in industry behavior that does not that that we think is probably not good for\n\nthe environment or not good for the future of the planet most of the time i mean provide pricing is correct you will see correct behavior from a private industry um so you know that's like one example where if we effectively price carbon we'll see the right behavior and then the government does not need to try to pick technology winners losers they can simply incent the outcome i think it's incredibly important that government focus on incenting the outcome not the path um you mentioned california i have to ask um are you you're in texas right now and there's been speculation and you've been vocal this year on some of your frustrations in california are you really are you relocating is it happening and can you talk a little bit about uh what's been troubling\n\nyou in california uh so much this year since you since you mentioned it sure well first of all uh tesla and spacex obviously have massive operations in california in fact it's worth noting that tesla is the last car company still manufacturing cars in california uh spacex is the large the last aerospace company still doing significant manufacturing california so there used to be over a dozen car plants in california and california used to be the center of aerospace manufacturing my companies are the last two left i want to emphasis so that's a very important point to make um for myself yes i i have moved to texas um we've got the starship development uh here in south texas where i am right now we're hopefully going to do a launch later later today and\n\nthen we've got a big factory development just outside of austin for texas but you made the move really but what why why did you why did you go there is that is it all a personal decision or was it it was partly a corporate environment decision really for the headquarters is that well i mean in my case the two biggest things that i've got going on right now um are the starship development in south texas which was done this was set in motion like five years ago um and then the the the big new uh u.\n\ns factory for for tesla which is called gigatexas uh just by austin so those are the two big projects so these necessarily um drive the use of my time here um yeah and then the other big thing for uh tesla right now is the gig of berlin so i was in berlin i spent a fair amount of time in berlin working on that um and um yeah i think there's you know there's um california is great so there's a lot of things that are really great about california it's the biggest economy in the country most number of people um i do think that uh that there's there is something that happens when um you know if it's going into the sort of sports team analogy like if a team has been winning for too long they they do tend to get a little complacent a little entitled and then\n\nthey don't win the championship anymore so california's been winning for a long time um and i think they're taking them for granted a little bit yeah let's talk a little more on innovation in corporate america in general i mean innovation has always been core to who you are it's how you think about your companies and your role um in the corporate suite in america are our companies in general uh fostering and developing and innovation and are the leaders in corporate america you've got a lot of them on this call or are we do we prioritize innovation as much as we might uh or need to do you think right now well i i think there's this this innovation but then there's also just um our um ceos in corporate america focused enough on on product improvement i\n\nthink the answer is no um and i think generally my advice uh to or my recommendation would really be spend less time on on finance spend less time in conference rooms less time on powerpoint and more time just trying to make your product as amazing as possible um and particularly from that why why why why is that is that because uh boards or shareholders are too financed and returned focused and don't don't think enough about product as being at the heart of of value is because a certain kind of the skill is cultivated um why is that why why why is that a problem in the c-suite i think there might be too many mbas running companies um there's the mba isation of america which i think is maybe not that great um there should be more focus on on the product\n\nthe service itself less time on board meetings less time on on financials the financials come as a result like you say like what's the point of a company at all and why even have companies it's like a company's assembly of people uh gather together create a product or service and deliver that product to service and sometimes people lose sight of that a company has no value in and of itself it only has value to the degree that is effective allocator of resources to create goods and services that are of greater value than the cost the inputs this thing we call profit is uh just just should just mean over time that the value of the output is is worth more than the than the inputs and and it's a reflection of the quality of the product more than uh so so\n\nthe product is good presumably the profits follow rather than profits being called versus problems and yeah sometimes as people sort of have it backwards and you know if people are getting sort of the incentive structure is coming from the financial side of things i don't i just i just honestly would recommend to anyone listening uh that just spend less time in meeting rooms less time on on on powerpoint presentations less time in a spreadsheet and more time on the factory floor more time with customers and obviously a lot of people out there are already doing that but i just like i just urge people to say like hey step back a second and say is your product as awesome as it could be probably not um what could you do to make it make it great um and you\n\nknow it's it's a it feel like think about innovation like maybe it has to be like breakthrough innovation i don't think it necessarily has to be breaking innovation it's just like like you know just make your product better it's this is the thing that really matters is that kind of product mindset that the kind you describe is that learnable is it is it teachable or is there is there an innate element that somebody has to have to really to do it well i mean not everybody's innovating or thinking on your scale a lot but but you you hi you look for innovative people when you hire them is it something that that is pretty easy easily learnable or is there some inequality in the people that uh succeed i think it is learnable i mean step number one would be\n\ntry and any have you tried and if have you tried hard and if you haven't tried hard try hard i think it is learnable um it's not some mysterious thing it's just basically just be like an absolute perfectionist about the product that you make the service that's provided um seek negative feedback from all quarters uh you know from customers from from people who aren't customers like hey okay what can we make this how do we make this better um and you know i think that's it it's absolutely learnable and and and and just if you find yourself spending a lot of time in getting presentations and reviewing spreadsheets you're blocking up the wrong tree that's the that's the effect not the cause um so just get out there on the factory floor get out there in the\n\nstores talk to customers think about what what would what would you love to have oh and you know sometimes i think you know and i've had this conversation that tells a few times where it's like we're trying to think okay we don't it's at times like we don't love this product but we think others will love it you know that's not really how it works if you don't love it don't expect others will either [Music] now you're at a moment i want to talk about your companies in a minute but you're at a moment where both we're particularly tesla and spacex are really growing in lots of ways right now um and you've had plenty of ups and downs even at this point but but but it's a high point on your own journey in this way what are the biggest mistakes you've made\n\nthat you've learned from because you talked a little bit about being willing to put yourself out there fail learn keep growing what were turning points for you that really you you you said wait a minute this is wrong or this is the wrong move either personally or or for the company and that that you learn from that have fed to where you are right now well if i had to list all the mistakes this would be a very long call um so it's too too much to even think of i'm trying to think like how could i could i classify them in some way um well i mean some of the things i mentioned just before it's like where you know i was recommending that people spend less time in a conference room less time getting presentations and and spreadsheets and that like generally\n\nthat's like when when i have spent too much time in a conference room that's generally when things have gone awry and when i go and spend time on the factory floor um or you know really using the the cars um thinking about the rockets it's like that's where things have gone gone better um but does that does that risk some some people would worry that that risk sending a message to your your teams that you personally have to be involved for something to work that you can't delegate or you can't trust them i think that's one thing that makes some [Music] executives reluctant they're trying to find that line between showing their personal commitment and trusting their subordinates to do the work so yeah i mean you're known for being passionate sleeping on\n\nthe factory floor but but but is that a concern for you or do you not care does this that's not an issue for you how do you think about it well there's a lot of talented people at spacex and tesla um and i think the morale is is good um uh i for sure respect them greatly and it's an honor to work with them um and i find that if if i am um engrossing the details of the issues this does not result in them feeling better but worse but feeling better like my experience more energized um you know it's like you know you think about like war it's like do you want the general in some like you know ivory tower or or on the front lines like troops gonna the troops are gonna fight a lot harder if they see the general on the front lines than if they think generals\n\nyou know in some cushy situation so it's like nobody bleeds the prince in the palace get out there on the goddamn front line and and you know show them that you care and that you're not just in some plush office somewhere um yeah i mean my plush office right now actually yeah yeah well yeah um let's talk quickly about tesla um but both tesla and spacex were scaling up today in fact i mean tesla touched 600 billion i think yesterday in evaluation today you said you're going to raise 5 billion to do stock sales um i assume and i assume what those gains are really in your mind going to do is help you scale up faster be poured back into investment because now is the moment to do that is that the plan here yeah i mean i i guess there's um you know what we're\n\nkind of debating like should we raise money or should we not um it wasn't like a 100 sure thing um in the end we thought well we can retire a lot of the debt and increase the security of the company well probably a good thing uh and for less than one percent of solutions probably makes sense um but we're you know neither here here or there on that i think it's a it could have gone either way so what is so the money is for really debt retirement you're saying today uh debt retirement and like i guess to have a bit more of a war chest or you know um you know what what is money money is an entry in a database okay i want to think a couple questions uh from the audience first i want to go to a video question uh that we solicited um uh if we could play that\n\num hello my name is catherine parsons and i'm the ceo of technology education company decoded i want to know are machines able to innovate or is innovation an inherently human capability yeah i think uh machines will well my views on ai uh i've spoken a lot about this hey i will be able to do everything better than human over time everything everything includes yeah okay uh elon here's one um uh if you could have a very quick very quick easy one if you could redo the entire transportation infrastructure of the united states how would it look michael fountain asks the entire transportation infrastructure wow um the main thing that i see missing here is uh that we need to go 3d in cities in order to alleviate traffic congestion and um i think probably the\n\nbest way to do that is with uh with tunnels um it sounds it may sound a bit silly but boring company that you you started which looks at that now yeah in fact for for many years i was asked what do i see as the biggest opportunity for new companies and i kept saying can someone please build tunnels for half a decade i said this and nobody built tunnels so it's like fine we'll start a company and start building some tunnels and we've got the first tunnel that's uh going to be opening up first commercial tunnel opening up in vegas uh going from the convention center to the strip and i think who will have an opportunity to try it out and be able to see that hey if we just go 3d and cities we don't have to be stuck in gridlock those are great and so i'd recommend\n\ntunnels and then for long distance travel the you can do tunnels or tubes but if you evacuate the tunnel and and essentially remove the air or most of the air you can you can get rid of the uh air friction and you can go uh supersonic uh and do so with i mean with no um dependence on weather and with no need to get to high altitude or create any sonic boom issues so that's what i meant by sort of a hyperloop it in it's just basically a pressurized electric car in a vacuum tube um so i think this this will be our evolution in transport that would be amazing um and um hopefully others do it not just the boring company okay here's one uh elon i'm a founder of a founder and ceo of a private company in the battle one of the changes i'm seeing uh is people\n\ntrying to force uh the company uh on political and social matters uh you know making demands not to sell police or not to sell the government agencies there's walkouts and protests google do you think this kind of thing is having a chilling effect or will have a chilling effect on innovation well a lot of this stuff is is centered in the san francisco bay area and i think there's the the silicon valley of the san francisco bay area has too much influence on the world in my opinion and i say that as someone who has spent most of his life in california mostly in the bay area so you're like you're like your friend peter thiel feels it's gotten more stifling up there you you that you're expressing you agree with me yes i think there's uh the the bay area\n\nhas outsized influence in the world uh so is that changing is the pandemic changing that i mean is there a real chance here that with departures and people leaving the valley that we're going to see some of that scatter out into the country side for good now uh post pandemic i think we'll see some reduction in the influence of silicon valley um but the social media is still very much centered in silicon valley so i think we need to be concerned about mind viruses just you know memes that travel very quickly through social media that may or may not be correct um and we certainly want to encourage a healthy dialogue uh so you know there's some out there who just want to shut down one side of a debate or another i think we should resist that yeah we're out\n\nof time unfortunately because i could go for an hour we didn't even get to half of the questions i had but thank you for the time today it's good to see you uh and hope we can continue the conversation another time and it's always fascinating to hear what's on your mind so thanks and and good luck on your projects right now all right thank you thank you elon","textByLang":{"en":"[Music] elon let's just start right with uh where where john john posed the question i mean you've spoken often in your career about how important it was for you as a young entrepreneur an innovator to come to america and you've said there's no other country where you could have achieved what you've achieved today definitely when you look at the us today in the landscape would that still apply in 2020 and are we broadly as a society doing everything we should be doing to foster that same environment that brought you yeah well i think u.\n\ns is still great with respect to innovation and fostering entrepreneurship so it's still great i think we don't want to be complacent and we want to say okay how can we make it better over time and i think we want to be um cautious about the the gradual creep of regulations and bureaucracy the rules and regulations uh are immortal and if we keep making more of a year and do not uh do something about uh removing them then eventually we will be able to do nothing this is very important and i think not well appreciate this is just sort of like the the the slow boil of the frog you know his part doesn't jump out because gets just slightly hotter each year um we should be aware of this i think particularly at the state level yeah well i want to talk about\n\nthat because uh you've been running into that some in in california but let me ask in a broader sense i mean you've never been i mean you've been working with government you do business with government now uh you've expressed strong feelings about government pro and con at different times depending on the circumstances but when you think through an innovation lens in the broader sense what's the right role for government like what is the role worship government be a player and where should be hands off what's ideal in your mind sure um a lot of the time the best thing that government can do is just get out of the way um and so that i'd say that that's the default um probably best thing to do then um after that would be ensuring that uh there are not artificial\n\nmonopolies that that there is a federal ground for startups um and the because what can happen over time is they can get regulatory capture by large companies where they influence the regulators and the legislators to favor uh their their situation and then you have a forest of redwoods and you just can't the the little uh little trees can't grow so we really want to have an environment that that tends to favor uh smaller companies and startups the big companies really don't need the support but they will they will generally try to work the system to establish a monopoly of some kind we should be wary of that um you know in general it's like i i think we we could consider uh changing the way we think of things from say capitalism versus communism i apologize\n\nlong answer but i think this is kind of um capitalism versus communism and and think more in terms of feedback loops so is is a given organization does it give an organization governor or or a commercial have good feedback loop for the customer um whether it's the people as a whole or you know where whoever the customers are and if you've got like a duopoly or oligopoly they're generally going to be have a weak uh response to their customer um and if they're monopoly they're going to have the weakest response to the customer and the reason that that government i think is often the worst at responding to the customers being the people is that they're a monopoly that can't go bankrupt or usually cannot go bankrupt so there's not there's not really a a a\n\ncleansing process for a government short of a catastrophe um so i mean if you want to complain about the dmv what's the what's the alternative yeah so a couple things to unpack there first i do want to when you talk about redwoods dominating the uh the air and smaller companies have a challenge some people would hear that as being the situation in silicon valley today i don't think that's what you replied but is that what you see in silicon valley today well i think this is not a silicon valley problem it's just it's a general uh problem um i mean if you look at say you know how many how many candy companies are there like you know big candy is like consolidated into like three companies or something um and they also own all the dog food and the baby\n\nfood so it's like when's the last time there was some good candy uh you know what's the forcing function for a new candy bar i haven't seen one in ages um so you know we gotta watch this like consolidation um that uh ends up resulting in lower responsiveness to the end customer and um like i said it's like you can think of like in the limit government is simply the largest corporation yeah so some people i think it's a false dichotomy to look at government and sort of industry as separate government is simply a corporation in the limit it is the ultimate cooperation with the monopoly so but then as you get closer to like set up monopoly as the feedback loop gets weaker and less responsive to the customer that's that's that's where you have something which\n\ndoes not maximize the happiness of people which should be our objective overall we had a couple of people last night at this event uh who are joining the big administration a couple of the president-elect senior advisors and clearly one of the things heavily on their mind is sort of a new national industrial policy for want of a better term they talked about spending a lot more on research and development and fostering innovation big government spending basically um is is that kind of national industrial policy a good idea is that a good use of government right now in your mind and if it is where would you focus that kind of effort well it's governor's responsibility to establish the rules of the game and then to ensure that those rules are properly enforced\n\nlike sort of like the the referees on the field and you know it's like it's just like um you know football or something then you've got the rules you've got the referees you're gonna make sure the rules are the right rules and the referees are enforcing the rules that's a that's an important role for government uh to ensure that the rules are correct and that the incentives uh are what we actually want them to be for like i said the long-term maximum happiness of the people into the future um where i think government does not do a great job is when they want to not just be a referee on the field they want to be a player on the field uh this is not does not end up in a good stage picking winners and losers that kind of thing i mean effectively government\n\nincentives do fake or do favor like you're gonna say like what are the rules of the game um i don't know this is obviously an imperfect analogy but i i do think it is a pretty good one um that you you want the government to be carefully focused on ensuring the rules of the game are what we actually want them to be that we're getting rid of all rules this is very important which is not occurring um and that the the rules are enforced such that we have uh ethical behavior of companies um yeah um now there are times when you have an unpriced externality such as the co2 capacity of the oceans and atmosphere so then if that is not priced in effectively then you can get behavior in industry behavior that does not that that we think is probably not good for\n\nthe environment or not good for the future of the planet most of the time i mean provide pricing is correct you will see correct behavior from a private industry um so you know that's like one example where if we effectively price carbon we'll see the right behavior and then the government does not need to try to pick technology winners losers they can simply incent the outcome i think it's incredibly important that government focus on incenting the outcome not the path um you mentioned california i have to ask um are you you're in texas right now and there's been speculation and you've been vocal this year on some of your frustrations in california are you really are you relocating is it happening and can you talk a little bit about uh what's been troubling\n\nyou in california uh so much this year since you since you mentioned it sure well first of all uh tesla and spacex obviously have massive operations in california in fact it's worth noting that tesla is the last car company still manufacturing cars in california uh spacex is the large the last aerospace company still doing significant manufacturing california so there used to be over a dozen car plants in california and california used to be the center of aerospace manufacturing my companies are the last two left i want to emphasis so that's a very important point to make um for myself yes i i have moved to texas um we've got the starship development uh here in south texas where i am right now we're hopefully going to do a launch later later today and\n\nthen we've got a big factory development just outside of austin for texas but you made the move really but what why why did you why did you go there is that is it all a personal decision or was it it was partly a corporate environment decision really for the headquarters is that well i mean in my case the two biggest things that i've got going on right now um are the starship development in south texas which was done this was set in motion like five years ago um and then the the the big new uh u.\n\ns factory for for tesla which is called gigatexas uh just by austin so those are the two big projects so these necessarily um drive the use of my time here um yeah and then the other big thing for uh tesla right now is the gig of berlin so i was in berlin i spent a fair amount of time in berlin working on that um and um yeah i think there's you know there's um california is great so there's a lot of things that are really great about california it's the biggest economy in the country most number of people um i do think that uh that there's there is something that happens when um you know if it's going into the sort of sports team analogy like if a team has been winning for too long they they do tend to get a little complacent a little entitled and then\n\nthey don't win the championship anymore so california's been winning for a long time um and i think they're taking them for granted a little bit yeah let's talk a little more on innovation in corporate america in general i mean innovation has always been core to who you are it's how you think about your companies and your role um in the corporate suite in america are our companies in general uh fostering and developing and innovation and are the leaders in corporate america you've got a lot of them on this call or are we do we prioritize innovation as much as we might uh or need to do you think right now well i i think there's this this innovation but then there's also just um our um ceos in corporate america focused enough on on product improvement i\n\nthink the answer is no um and i think generally my advice uh to or my recommendation would really be spend less time on on finance spend less time in conference rooms less time on powerpoint and more time just trying to make your product as amazing as possible um and particularly from that why why why why is that is that because uh boards or shareholders are too financed and returned focused and don't don't think enough about product as being at the heart of of value is because a certain kind of the skill is cultivated um why is that why why why is that a problem in the c-suite i think there might be too many mbas running companies um there's the mba isation of america which i think is maybe not that great um there should be more focus on on the product\n\nthe service itself less time on board meetings less time on on financials the financials come as a result like you say like what's the point of a company at all and why even have companies it's like a company's assembly of people uh gather together create a product or service and deliver that product to service and sometimes people lose sight of that a company has no value in and of itself it only has value to the degree that is effective allocator of resources to create goods and services that are of greater value than the cost the inputs this thing we call profit is uh just just should just mean over time that the value of the output is is worth more than the than the inputs and and it's a reflection of the quality of the product more than uh so so\n\nthe product is good presumably the profits follow rather than profits being called versus problems and yeah sometimes as people sort of have it backwards and you know if people are getting sort of the incentive structure is coming from the financial side of things i don't i just i just honestly would recommend to anyone listening uh that just spend less time in meeting rooms less time on on on powerpoint presentations less time in a spreadsheet and more time on the factory floor more time with customers and obviously a lot of people out there are already doing that but i just like i just urge people to say like hey step back a second and say is your product as awesome as it could be probably not um what could you do to make it make it great um and you\n\nknow it's it's a it feel like think about innovation like maybe it has to be like breakthrough innovation i don't think it necessarily has to be breaking innovation it's just like like you know just make your product better it's this is the thing that really matters is that kind of product mindset that the kind you describe is that learnable is it is it teachable or is there is there an innate element that somebody has to have to really to do it well i mean not everybody's innovating or thinking on your scale a lot but but you you hi you look for innovative people when you hire them is it something that that is pretty easy easily learnable or is there some inequality in the people that uh succeed i think it is learnable i mean step number one would be\n\ntry and any have you tried and if have you tried hard and if you haven't tried hard try hard i think it is learnable um it's not some mysterious thing it's just basically just be like an absolute perfectionist about the product that you make the service that's provided um seek negative feedback from all quarters uh you know from customers from from people who aren't customers like hey okay what can we make this how do we make this better um and you know i think that's it it's absolutely learnable and and and and just if you find yourself spending a lot of time in getting presentations and reviewing spreadsheets you're blocking up the wrong tree that's the that's the effect not the cause um so just get out there on the factory floor get out there in the\n\nstores talk to customers think about what what would what would you love to have oh and you know sometimes i think you know and i've had this conversation that tells a few times where it's like we're trying to think okay we don't it's at times like we don't love this product but we think others will love it you know that's not really how it works if you don't love it don't expect others will either [Music] now you're at a moment i want to talk about your companies in a minute but you're at a moment where both we're particularly tesla and spacex are really growing in lots of ways right now um and you've had plenty of ups and downs even at this point but but but it's a high point on your own journey in this way what are the biggest mistakes you've made\n\nthat you've learned from because you talked a little bit about being willing to put yourself out there fail learn keep growing what were turning points for you that really you you you said wait a minute this is wrong or this is the wrong move either personally or or for the company and that that you learn from that have fed to where you are right now well if i had to list all the mistakes this would be a very long call um so it's too too much to even think of i'm trying to think like how could i could i classify them in some way um well i mean some of the things i mentioned just before it's like where you know i was recommending that people spend less time in a conference room less time getting presentations and and spreadsheets and that like generally\n\nthat's like when when i have spent too much time in a conference room that's generally when things have gone awry and when i go and spend time on the factory floor um or you know really using the the cars um thinking about the rockets it's like that's where things have gone gone better um but does that does that risk some some people would worry that that risk sending a message to your your teams that you personally have to be involved for something to work that you can't delegate or you can't trust them i think that's one thing that makes some [Music] executives reluctant they're trying to find that line between showing their personal commitment and trusting their subordinates to do the work so yeah i mean you're known for being passionate sleeping on\n\nthe factory floor but but but is that a concern for you or do you not care does this that's not an issue for you how do you think about it well there's a lot of talented people at spacex and tesla um and i think the morale is is good um uh i for sure respect them greatly and it's an honor to work with them um and i find that if if i am um engrossing the details of the issues this does not result in them feeling better but worse but feeling better like my experience more energized um you know it's like you know you think about like war it's like do you want the general in some like you know ivory tower or or on the front lines like troops gonna the troops are gonna fight a lot harder if they see the general on the front lines than if they think generals\n\nyou know in some cushy situation so it's like nobody bleeds the prince in the palace get out there on the goddamn front line and and you know show them that you care and that you're not just in some plush office somewhere um yeah i mean my plush office right now actually yeah yeah well yeah um let's talk quickly about tesla um but both tesla and spacex were scaling up today in fact i mean tesla touched 600 billion i think yesterday in evaluation today you said you're going to raise 5 billion to do stock sales um i assume and i assume what those gains are really in your mind going to do is help you scale up faster be poured back into investment because now is the moment to do that is that the plan here yeah i mean i i guess there's um you know what we're\n\nkind of debating like should we raise money or should we not um it wasn't like a 100 sure thing um in the end we thought well we can retire a lot of the debt and increase the security of the company well probably a good thing uh and for less than one percent of solutions probably makes sense um but we're you know neither here here or there on that i think it's a it could have gone either way so what is so the money is for really debt retirement you're saying today uh debt retirement and like i guess to have a bit more of a war chest or you know um you know what what is money money is an entry in a database okay i want to think a couple questions uh from the audience first i want to go to a video question uh that we solicited um uh if we could play that\n\num hello my name is catherine parsons and i'm the ceo of technology education company decoded i want to know are machines able to innovate or is innovation an inherently human capability yeah i think uh machines will well my views on ai uh i've spoken a lot about this hey i will be able to do everything better than human over time everything everything includes yeah okay uh elon here's one um uh if you could have a very quick very quick easy one if you could redo the entire transportation infrastructure of the united states how would it look michael fountain asks the entire transportation infrastructure wow um the main thing that i see missing here is uh that we need to go 3d in cities in order to alleviate traffic congestion and um i think probably the\n\nbest way to do that is with uh with tunnels um it sounds it may sound a bit silly but boring company that you you started which looks at that now yeah in fact for for many years i was asked what do i see as the biggest opportunity for new companies and i kept saying can someone please build tunnels for half a decade i said this and nobody built tunnels so it's like fine we'll start a company and start building some tunnels and we've got the first tunnel that's uh going to be opening up first commercial tunnel opening up in vegas uh going from the convention center to the strip and i think who will have an opportunity to try it out and be able to see that hey if we just go 3d and cities we don't have to be stuck in gridlock those are great and so i'd recommend\n\ntunnels and then for long distance travel the you can do tunnels or tubes but if you evacuate the tunnel and and essentially remove the air or most of the air you can you can get rid of the uh air friction and you can go uh supersonic uh and do so with i mean with no um dependence on weather and with no need to get to high altitude or create any sonic boom issues so that's what i meant by sort of a hyperloop it in it's just basically a pressurized electric car in a vacuum tube um so i think this this will be our evolution in transport that would be amazing um and um hopefully others do it not just the boring company okay here's one uh elon i'm a founder of a founder and ceo of a private company in the battle one of the changes i'm seeing uh is people\n\ntrying to force uh the company uh on political and social matters uh you know making demands not to sell police or not to sell the government agencies there's walkouts and protests google do you think this kind of thing is having a chilling effect or will have a chilling effect on innovation well a lot of this stuff is is centered in the san francisco bay area and i think there's the the silicon valley of the san francisco bay area has too much influence on the world in my opinion and i say that as someone who has spent most of his life in california mostly in the bay area so you're like you're like your friend peter thiel feels it's gotten more stifling up there you you that you're expressing you agree with me yes i think there's uh the the bay area\n\nhas outsized influence in the world uh so is that changing is the pandemic changing that i mean is there a real chance here that with departures and people leaving the valley that we're going to see some of that scatter out into the country side for good now uh post pandemic i think we'll see some reduction in the influence of silicon valley um but the social media is still very much centered in silicon valley so i think we need to be concerned about mind viruses just you know memes that travel very quickly through social media that may or may not be correct um and we certainly want to encourage a healthy dialogue uh so you know there's some out there who just want to shut down one side of a debate or another i think we should resist that yeah we're out\n\nof time unfortunately because i could go for an hour we didn't even get to half of the questions i had but thank you for the time today it's good to see you uh and hope we can continue the conversation another time and it's always fascinating to hear what's on your mind so thanks and and good luck on your projects right now all right thank you thank you elon"},"languages":["en"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V1nQFotzQMQ"},{"id":"axel-springer-award-2020-12-01","type":"interview","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AF2HXId2Xhg","title":"Axel Springer Award","titles":{"en":"Axel Springer Award","de":"Axel Springer Award","fr":"Axel Springer Award"},"date":"2020-12-01","summary":"Mathias Döpfner interviews Musk about SpaceX, Tesla, AI and life as he receives the Axel Springer Award.","text":"foreign this is your captain speaking welcome aboard our vessel to Mars boarding is completed as all systems are set and we're sure that we don't take the coronavirus to outer space for your cooperation by the way we are ready to launch first rule don't panic cabin crew prepare for takeoff [Music] thank you [Music] 20 seconds till left off 15 seconds [Music] foreign this is your captain with an update from the cockpit we arrived in Earth's orbit safe and sound let me please especially welcome one very special passenger an extraordinary Visionary a multi-talented engineer a super smart entrepreneur and not at least the man who made this Mission to Mars possible please give a very warm welcome to Mr Elon Musk please take a look at our wonderful Planet isn't\n\nit gorgeous as curious as I am to see Mars I'm really looking forward to come back to our old Homestead [Music] South Africa in the 70s a boy from Pretoria facing childhood problems he reads 10 hours a day Star Wars and science fiction but this one's got talent for machines and for money at the age of 12 he programmed his first computer game on the good old Commodore young Elon sold blastar for five hundred dollars develop stuff Let It Grow sell it soon this is how we made his fortune and his opportunity to go even further this is the way one sentence he never wanted to hear you're in the Army now so he got himself a passport moved to Canada leaving the South African apartheid regime behind he was 16 years old after some time in Kinston he left Canada\n\nwent to Pennsylvania got his Bachelor and then moved south ah Stanford University Palo Alto where all the Silicon dreams were about to come true Elon was one of those who founded the legend of the valley two thousand dollars a car and a computer and nothing more he and his brother Kimball founded zip2 a company that provided and licensed online city guide software to newspapers four years later he sold it to Compaq for 307 million dollars quite a story but just the start a typical story of those times develop and invest find allies merge disrupt rise of PayPal his first vision of making things easier for people using the digitization Elon Musk helped to change the financial industry forever PayPal was sold for 1.\n\n5 billion dollars to eBay Elon held 11.\n\n7 percent of the shares a big winner in the big game money that he uses to make the world a better place he attacks on the world's best settled Market the automotive industry we created Tesla to make a difference in the world Tesla disruption at its best not everything worked out perfect well but his long breath proved him right he is pushing all his competitors forward he is expanding Elites technology leads infrastructure and Logistics and if necessary he works in sleeps at the factory foreign ER [Music] soon very soon we've decided to put the Tesla gigafactory Europe uh in the Berlin area yeah and Tesla is just on The Cutting Edge of an idea autonomous driving is bored so for us being a little startup we had to start off with a car that was in in low\n\nproduction and necessarily expensive their idea of an electric car is something that doesn't look good isn't fast it doesn't have high performance we wanted to break them all of all of that that's what we sought to achieve big time for important things saving time for stuff that is fun well it is fun to drive a Tesla but on an endless Motorway even riding gets tiring it's human we're bored very soon let the car drive and get some food for the brain while it does the work and last but not least fuel it with energy that is not harmful to the planet Elon Embraces his responsibility but this is never enough much more is needed Elon can't stop thinking about the future of making things work better more efficient a Visionary a man who never gives up although\n\nthere would have been a few moments when giving up would have been a more than plausible option foreign SpaceX is not only a business it's Hobby it's a passion Elon is CEO and its first spaceship designer it is all rocket science really many laughed at him NASA with its billions the Russians with their ruthless and dead serious Ambitions the whole call of SpaceX was the first space exploration technology and that's uh helping make Humanity a space Bank civilization transported Americans to the ISS UE private economy is more effective and sustainable than State economy crew dragon is a gentle slap in the face for over-the-top institutional rocketeers the Russians took it personal Elon Musk must not be quoted by them too successful Russia some things never\n\nchange can one man change the world yeah sure Elon Musk did it and he doesn't stop there and I think that's one of the things that you know makes people excited about the future and we want the things that are in science fiction novels and movies not to be science fiction forever we want to be real one day what if one could help handicapped people by connecting the body with machines to reconnect neural disorders a presto neuralink what if we could get rid of traffic on our city streets dig a deep long tunnel beneath them and shoot the cars from one side of the town to the other hey Presto the boring company the name by the way is one of the best puns ever and stop if we can do that with cars why shouldn't we do it with goods and people full speed 600\n\nkilometers in 35 minutes just do it hey Presto hyperloop but all that's Earthbound reach for the stars and planets we're already on our way to Mars [Music] this is your captain speaking well rather gasping what a trip that was and it's not over yet let's hear it from the man himself I'd kindly ask you now Elon to come on stage and join actually Springer CEO Matthias Dafna for a little chat [Applause] [Music] [Applause] well that was fun yeah I'm glad that you enjoyed it yeah it's like a ride I mean I think you could charge money for this this is great I mean yeah it's really makes a difference to have this two screens and the angle change it's like that felt great like Disney right Elon apart from this special trip to Mars this evening when do you think\n\nrealistically human beings will land on Mars for the first time um I think it I feel fairly confident about six years from now so every the Mars uh Earth Mod synchronization occurs roughly every 26 months so we had one this year this summer and so that means in roughly like about two years there'll be another one um and then two years after that so I think I'd say if you say six years from now I think highly confident uh if we get lucky maybe four years and then we want to try to send a an uh uncrewed vehicle there in two years when will your first trip to orbit who will take place I don't know possibly in two or three years I mean I'm mostly concerned with developing the technology that can enable a lot of people to go to Mars and make life multi-planetary\n\nhave a base on the moon a city on Mars and I think it's important that we strive to have a self-sustaining City on Mars as soon as possible I mean I'm optimistic about the future on Earth but it's important to have life insurance for Life as a whole is it going to be a business kind of tourism in in orbit or is it more a kind of plan B if things owners do not develop as well it's not exactly a plan B uh it's it's more that I think I think there's two two aspects to this uh one is that we want to have a future that is inspiring and exciting and what are the things that you find inspiring and exciting about the future I think one future where we are a space-bearing civilization and out there Among the Stars I think that's every kid gets excited about that\n\nyou don't even need to teach them they just get it it's like instinctive and so it's very important for us to have reasons to like reasons to be excited about life like when you wake up in the morning it can't just be about problems okay I know everyone in this room deals with a lot of tough problems but you know it's got to be more than that so you know I think a future where you can say hey even if it's not you there's going to be people out there that can we can have a base on the moon we're going to have a you know a city on Mars maybe go further the moons of Jupiter and everything I think that's a very exciting future and and then and I think most people do um and you seriously want to be buried on Mars just not an impact [Laughter] uh yeah I mean\n\nif you're gonna listen we're all gonna die someday um so if you're gonna die someday I'm like okay do you want to be buried on a monster with I'm like Mars sounds cool born on Earth Dion was that's uh you know if you got the choice um two years ago I had a conversation with Jake Ma and we spoke about Jeff Bezos plans with regards to uh orbit and he said well let's uh Jeff Bezos take care uh for the orbit I take care for the Earth you seem to take care for both yeah basically Tesla is about trying to make sure things are good for the future on Earth and then SpaceX is about a good future beyond Earth basically um and so obviously we have to have sustainable energy uh both consumption and production of energy uh so like hazardous solar panels and batteries\n\nI think that's one of the key uh ways to have sustainable energy generation and also the batteries are useful for wind power so and then elect you then you need to Consumer via consumed electricity so electric vehicles um and um you know I think look at these things like say okay if you look back from the future and say what's the fundamental good of uh Tesla I would say it's probably should be assessed as by how many by how many years did Tesla accelerate the Advent of sustainable energy like that's like I would measure the goodness of Tesla in that in that way and then for SpaceX it's like okay to what degree did we improve the probability of humanity being a space bearing civilization I remember very well the year 2014 when we were hosting the gold\n\nsteering wheel here at Oxford and you got the uh award for Lifetime Achievement and I was sitting in the first row with the then very successful and famous CEO of a very big German car company and I asked him while you were on stage isn't this guy dangerous for you I mean this looks really serious he said oh no don't worry first of all the whole idea of electric driving is never going to be a mass Market sure second These Guys these guys in Silicon Valley they have no clue about engineering about building really beautiful and great cars so we don't have to worry by then Tesla's market cap was 23 billion today it's 536 billion US Dollars the market Capital VW then was 86 and to today at 77 and you could you you are with Tesla two and a half times bigger\n\nthan BMW VW and Daimler I even said it's ever too high I mean what am I supposed to do you like have you ever considered that stock is too high a long time like when it was like it 100 800 pre-split and then listen to me but you know I'll tell you in the SEC complained again I mean like you know is it a serious option to buy one of the incumbents one of the big car companies for you well I I think we're definitely not going to launch a hostile takeover so I suppose if there was a friendly one if somebody said hey we think it would be a good idea to merge with Tesla we certainly have that conversation um but you know we don't want to you know be a hostile hostile takeover sort of situation did you feel a lot of complacency uh these days that the incumbents\n\nlength let you feel that you are I mean the kind of hopeless disrupter but they know how to do it or where they're very polite and nice with you do you mean back then or not then oh no no today everybody it's super nice I would not say there was a run now yeah we're difficult to characterize their responses super nice um they use a lot of adjectives um I don't think that any of them were positive so we try we really tried hard to convince a lot of companies uh honestly I was in so many panels uh but um they generally were yeah generally the sediment that was expressed that you mentioned earlier that was pretty much Universal especially uh if back in say 2008 or 2007 like when we first unveiled the roads from 2007 um yeah I mean it was just basically they\n\njust said well you're basically a bunch of fools well I mean generally they say like well who starting a car company is crazy you're going to lose all your money I was like I think I probably will lose all my money I agree I it wasn't like I thought it would be successful I thought we had maybe a 10 chance of success so then people would say you're it's gonna fail and you're going to lose lose everything it's like yeah probably true yeah what else is new a couple of years ago we we we saw each other in America and the guy asks you on a panel uh when uh autonomous driving will be approved and you said I do not care so much when it's going to be approved I care more when uh human beings in cars will be forbidden and then the guy said well that's really\n\nunrealistic it's never going to happen in uh in cars people want to do something actively and then you said well 100 years ago nobody could imagine uh uh elevator without a lift boy today nobody could imagine a lift with a lift boy yeah so when is autonomous driving really really going to happen and when when are you able to do it and when is it going to be approved okay just between us yeah it's a very discreet Circle here yeah um so well first of all I'm not I'm not against people driving to be clear uh so I think people will drive cars basically as far into the future as I can imagine it's just that it's going to be increasingly unusual to to drive your own car and while it's fun to drive a you know a well handling car on a Winding Road in beautiful\n\nterrain of course that's that's fun um but it's not fun to drive a car in a terrible gridlock traffic like you know going through extreme traffic that's no fun driving a car so I think people are unlikely to most of the time want to commute or with it with their uh and drive themselves um and you know people are typically spending hour and a half a day maybe two hours uh on average driving um especially say like California or something like that it's very common um and some people will actually commute like three hours a day sometimes it's pretty crazy so uh so I so I think I think uh um if you say fast forward to like 10 years from now I think 10 years from now almost all cars will be will have a full autonomy capability uh that all new costs produced\n\nso there's there's about two billion cars and trucks in the in the existing Fleet um and the new vehicle production is about five percent of the fleet size so about 100 million so even the point which all cars are autonomous they'll still take you know 20 years to replace all the cars assuming that the number of cars and trucks trucks in the fleet stays constant um but like say 10 years from now I would say vast majority of cars electric like maybe 70 80 percent or more uh and uh almost all cause autonomous electric autonomy is absolutely the future no question and just a question of when um but then like I said as soon as people think that that means the global Fleet gets replaced instantly and it's like nope you have to go 20 years beyond that point\n\nbefore 20 years from the point at which all cars are new cars are electric then the fleet will be replaced um it was just an important it's not like some people are used to like mobile phones and that kind of thing is like two year or three year replacement rate but cars are much uh more expensive asset to longer life uh anyway to actually answer your question um I'm I'm extremely confident uh of achieving full autonomy uh and releasing it to the Tesla customer base uh next year now the there's a uncertain period of time for when regulatory approval will be will take how long will it take but I think if you are able to accumulate uh billions of kilometers of autonomous driving then it's difficult to argue and look at the accident rate uh when the car\n\nis autonomous versus non-autonomous and in fact our our statistics already show a massive difference when the car is on autopilot or not on autopilot if the safety is much greater even with the current autopilot software and we are discussing level 5 autonomy so really full autonomy will Euro black behind or will it be approved here at the same time like in America or China it's hard to say uh exactly when it will be approved I I mean just to and our customers already know this but the the the the EU Regulators are the most conservative um and uh I don't know if people want that to be the case or not our customers are sort of unhappy about it but um yeah they only meet every six months maybe meet more often I don't know um so yeah but I think at least\n\nsome jurisdictions will allow full self-driving next year okay exactly a year ago you were announcing In This Very building that you're planning to build a new site near Berlin yeah and a couple of months later and Junior started you want to finish it by July next year we did a little tour this morning it's impressive how advanced it is and it's almost unbelievable Germany and Piccadilly particularly Berlin is not world famous for finishing construction sites in time and in budget yeah so you've created a kind of entire Berlin airport project why Berlin why did you go to Germany and to Berlin to get that big project done sure um well first of all I'm actually a big fan of Germany I love Germany it's great I would you know um I have a lot of friends um\n\nuh German friends and I think Berlin is a very fun city um and uh I think it's there's there's also it's from a location standpoint uh people like say young people can live in apartments at a reasonable price in the city of Berlin uh but if somebody's got a family they can still have an affordable house so it's a good location offering um you know good living for people of all ages and incomes and and um I believe it's not that poor but but it's definitely sexy could you imagine so we're gonna have like uh when we open the uh you're all invited by the way uh when we have the opening for gigabolin we're gonna have uh just a big party um you know we're gonna have like start off from the day have more sort of Family Music uh and uh and then gradually get\n\nmore hardcore and then go you know midnight techno Till Dawn dude do you plan to spend more time in Berlin yourself you want to partly live here in fact I yes I'll be spending a lot of time here where do you sleep tonight in the in the tonight's in the factory in the factory well technically in a conference room in the factory but yeah you sleep in a conference room in the not finished Factory tonight yeah it gives me a good feel for what's going on alone or yeah I assume so it's an invitation um yeah okay Elon you have so many projects it's not only Tesla or SpaceX it's neuraling it's the boring company so many things and when we discussed last time I asked you what is the most important project or the most important topic for you to deal with in the\n\nforeseeable future and you said that is truly the role that AI is going to play in our society could you explain why and why that is a big opportunity but also seems to worry you uh yeah I think well I mean humans have been the smallest creature on Earth for a long time and that is going to change with what's typically called artificial general intelligence uh so this is say an AI that is uh smarter than a human in every way it could even simulate a human so you know this is something we should be concerned about I think there should be a government oversight of AI developments especially super Advanced AI it's just this is anything that is a potential uh danger to the public we generally agree that this should have uh government oversight to ensure that\n\nthe the public safety is taken care of because you feel that one day the mankind could serve the machines and not the other way around honestly when I see people on their phones that I think we already serve with the machine yeah it's like everyone's uh answering the questions you know every time you do a search or add information you're sort of building this the the digital group mind um but yeah uh the Advent of artificial general intelligence is called The Singularity for a reason because just like a black hole which is a single Singularity it's difficult to predict what will happen um so it's not as though the Advent of AGI is necessarily bad but it's bad is one of the possible outcomes and when is singularity in the in the definition of Ray quotes\n\nwhy are going to happen um well I think you're saying he he's predicting 2025.\n\nI think that's uh reasonably accurate and how can it be avoided that is then uh more a threat for Humanity than an opportunity is it a question of governance so that there is not too much power in one or in few hands or how would you how would you make sure that it goes into the right direction I think we should have a a government oversight just like we do we have uh government oversight and regulation of cars and aircraft and uh food and pharmaceuticals these are all uh you know there's a there are Regulators that oversee these developments to ensure Public Safety um and I think digital super intelligence would also be potentially a public safety risk and so it should be it's I think it's very important to for Regulators to keep an eye on that who should\n\nown the data data by then I think everyone should own their own data like individuals here on their data um and it certainly shouldn't be tricked by some terms and conditions of a website and suddenly you don't own your data that's crazy uh who reads those terms and conditions anyway so uh but I think it's just you know like we wouldn't let people develop a nuclear bomb in the backyard just for the hell of it you know that that seems crazy so digital super intelligence I think has the potential to be more dangerous than a nuclear bomb so yeah we should just somebody should be keeping an eye so we can't have the inmates running the Asylum here which is a global issue because if we do well but China has other rules and a different regulatory framework that\n\nis another uh yeah I don't I don't think college yeah I generally like that this is one of the rebuttals I get from those developing Ai and Tesla is also developing a form of AI with self-driving but it's a very narrow form of AI just like um like the car is not going to wake up Sunday one day and take over the world um so so it's uh but the rebuttal I get is like well you know China is going to have unfettered uh AI development and so if we have regulations and it slows us down then China will have it and I'm like look I from my conversations with government officials in China they are they they're quite concerned about AI as well and they uh the fact that they're probably more likely to have a good oversight than I think other countries what is the\n\nbiggest uh challenge uh ahead of us in general not only with regard to AI what is the biggest problem that needs to be solved what's the biggest threat to Humanity's future [Music] well AI is certainly one of the biggest risks it could be the biggest risk um I think we need to watch out about population collapse this is a somewhat counter-intuitive to most people they think that well there's so many humans maybe too many humans but that's just because they live in a city yeah if you're an aircraft and you look down they say if you dropped a a cannibal how often would you hit a person basically never in fact the stuff falling in from space all the time natural meteorites old rocket stages all the time but nobody worries about it because the the actual\n\nin fact um there's a good a cool website called wait but why and Scott Tim Urban like he actually just did the math and and uh all humans on Earth uh could fit in the city of New York on one floor don't even need the upper floors so that's actually the cross-section of of humans as seen from Earth is extremely tiny basically vanishingly small almost nothing um so we need to watch out about population collapse low growth rates I think is a big risk and it's also not exactly top secret you can go look at the Wikipedia you know growth rate so and and this this is actually this this is this is definitely the civilization ends with the with a whimper not a bang uh because it would be a sad ending um where the the average age becomes very high and really the\n\nyouth are effectively uh de facto enslaved to take care of the old people this is not a good way to go and do you have any new projects dealing with these topics that you've just addressed um well I'm trying to set a good example on the kid front six kids yes for now how much time do you spend with them I I spent about as much time as they want to spend with me yeah I mean they're not well one's just a baby and now there's a 14 and 16 and teenagers um don't usually want to hang out with their parents that much you know we just had Thanksgiving weekend so all the kids were over um so you know if they want to spend more time with me I said like oh you should I actually asked them are sure we don't want to hang out more like no so I think it's probably the\n\nright amount then since they that's about the they don't want to hang out more so I think we really should take this seriously the population collapse artificial intelligence obviously sustainable energy is important uh the faster we transition to sustainable energy the less of a gamble we're taking with climate and um I think there's going to be a lot of breakthroughs on the medical front particularly around synthetic mRNA you can basically do anything with the synthetic RNA DNA it's really it's like a computer program so I mean I think with enough with with uh with effort that's not too crazy you could probably stop aging reverse it if you weren't um these are you can basically join you can turn someone into a free and Butterfly if you want with the\n\nright DNA sequence so I mean caterpillars do it so yeah but your project neuralink is in a way empowering human intelligence versus artificial intelligence that's the purpose of it is that correct yeah so neuralink the uh in a short to medium term neuralink is really just going to help cure uh brain injuries brain and spine injuries so it's like if somebody is a in fact our first uh implanted devices in humans will be for uh quadriplegics tetraplegics allowing them to control a computer or a phone just using they might so like you can imagine like if Stephen Hawking could just talk uh and at a normal speed or even faster than normal speed looking back for the last thousands of years what is the most important invention of mankind so far in the past Thousand\n\nYears um I I guess it's millions of millions um well I think language I would be able to talk and express Concepts and um this this is a probably the biggest invention of humanities language it's an answer that we like very much in the publishing yeah absolutely you know writing is yeah exactly just incredible right writing really made a big difference that guy Gutenberg you really know what he's doing you have one thing in common with Nicolas Tesla that's a photographic memory is that only a gift or sometimes a burden because you memorize too much I have a photographic memory in some respects um for technical stuff I have a very good memory so for a human yeah you know computers are much better at memory computer is a really good memory why is music\n\nso important for you techno music in particular well it's pretty fun I think it's a you know you want to I don't know feel maximum human you know and uh so I think when people have like sort of a Rave and good music it can be like hey maximum human you know you want to really feel uh you know it's like like what really gets you to feel you know and I think that uh you know having fun with friends and you know just crazy crazy dancing is fun perhaps you know how techno music is the secret reason why you are building big projects in Berlin yeah honestly that's a it's a significant factor okay Elon last question you you celebrated your 30th birthday with a masked ball in Venice for your 40th birthday I was told you had a fight with a samurai sword fighter\n\nwhat is your plan for your 15th birthday next year um well so my 40th birthday was the was in Venice uh it was it was technically a post-apocalyptic masked wall uh after the apocalypse how much clothing do you really have you know it's not going to be a little ragged a little burnt you know um so um no plans for the 50th yeah the half century party um I'll have to think of something um usually go with some kind of crazy theme the the the the party where I ended up to wrestling with the world champion tumor wrestler which by the way also caused me to boast a disc in my neck so yeah five minutes of Glory for five years of pain um that was that really hurt um so that party was um Victorian Japanese steampunk so that was cool uh I have to think of something\n\nfor the half century report you have a little time to think being on Earth for a half century that's okay I'm still alive wow cool one very last question when I asked you what is the meaning of life during a dinner 42 you said after a while after a while well probably this wonderful French cheese could you please explain oh well I was just saying that you know you want to take a moment to appreciate things in life and the sensations um food's incredible uh and uh like there's just so many good things that you can experience some of them cost nothing really um you know have a walk in nature or just a nice meal and it's like wow it was pretty great you know and uh we should take a moment to appreciate these These Little Things the big things um the things\n\nthat move your heart I think that's probably the meaning of life was close definitions as I can think thank you very much Elon all right this is your captain speaking again thank you Elon and thank you Matthias it's a pleasure having you on board and learning so much about our future before I come back with some information about our flights I'm now honored to welcome secretary Yen span and ask him on stage and share his thoughts about Elon musk's achievements and responsibilities the vessel's floor is yours Mr secretary [Applause] thank you so a wonderful evening to all of you in the evening between the struggles on earth and the vision towards Mars and regarding Earth we are meeting here today in a very special time we are experiencing the worst pandemics\n\nsince the Spanish Flu for roughly 10 months now governments but Above All citizens worldwide have been combating the virus and its consequences people are experiencing a great deal of suffering hardship and sacrifice yet today at the beginning of December we also have a reason for optimism we can be very optimistic that we will have an effective vaccine against the new virus faster than ever before in human history with a vaccine we can finally hope to have a tool that will help us beat the virus it is true that some people have misgivings about vaccination to the point of rejecting it at all costs this is an attitude I find very difficult to understand it was only vaccination that first made it possible for humankind to liberate itself from many of the\n\nFatal diseases that had plagued our ancestors for centuries plagues that had led to fear and Superstition and then obstacle to progress vaccination is progress and today that word progress is for many synonymous with one name that of Elon Musk Mr mask I'm pleased to have the honor of paying tribute to you in these very special times you are without doubt a visionary the name mask stands for ideas that were often far ahead of their time paying online with PayPal Electro mobility and sustainable energy with Tesla and not seldom does the name mask also represent ideas that at first glance might seem a little crazy the HIPAA Loop project is one of those the vision that persons and goods can be accelerated in the double tube to speeds of up to 1 200 kilometers\n\nper hours this also includes connecting the human brain to a computer the subject of neuro links just discussed the rulings research since 2016 and of course private space travel with SpaceX is also an integral part of the mission thanks to Elon Musk seemingly crazy ideas become reality Elon Musk has realized the most powerful thing we as human beings possess is our ideas Tesla's ability to rise to become the world's most valuable car manufacturer was not primarily the result of itself's figures Tesla's worse is a reflection of an idea a vision an idea that allows many people to have faith in progress in a better future it is supported of course by business expertise Elon Musk is building his newest gigafactory in brunberg on Mark land many Germans associate\n\nbronberg with the poet teodor Fontana who once walked the sense of the mark Fontana wrote between arrogance and humility lies a third trait that is part of life and that simply put is courage should you not yet know Fontana by the way for your Douglas Adam non-digital bookshelf I hope there is one Fontana should you not yet know him Mr mask I think that fits you quite well because courage you most certainly have as at the same time your choice of Germany as the location for your factory is hardly you only a question of Courage but just as much the result of keen calculation Germany is a country of automobile automobile Pioneers Carl and better Benz Rudolph diesel Gottlieb Daimler very Nan Porsche the list of achievements by Germans are made in Germany\n\nis long Mr mask you know that Germany still possesses great Innovative strange today many well-trained creative people and a solid infrastructure great conditions for courageous entrepreneurship for tomorrow's innovators and Pioneers in the meantime you probably also recognize the word birkati in German indeed indeed constructing a factory from scratch in only a few months that is a new experience even for our country at least an experience we seem to have forgotten we need a bit more of the mass courage on our side to reduce bureaucratic obstacles and thereby promote innovation because also it is true that Innovation needs a reliable framework it also needs freedom to flourish in the 70 years since the creation of the Federal Republic of Germany we have\n\noften succeeded in Striking this balance Germany is an economically strong country Cosmopolitan and free an anchor of stability and enmity in Europe it is something we can be proud of today however at the start of the 20s of the 21st century there are a number of questions we also ask ourselves do we the 20s what do we want the 20s to look like how can we find the right answers and complicated times what Legacy do we want to leave to our children how can we maintain the German success model sustain and expand our prosperity as well as the freedom and security associated with it in times where it is under threats from many sites so we need a strong state that encourage economic activity because German firms can't some because German firms suffered some\n\nclear disadvantages when competing with monopolies from the U.\n\nS and with a state economy like China's in return our state should invest massively in education infrastructure and research and should launch support programs not for individual companies but for entire branches of the economy in the 20s we want to remain expert Champion a master of innovation push forward digitalization promote research and strenging entrepreneurial culture only progress will ensure that the next generation will have it even better it's all about making space for ideas to flourish from all that we've heard Ellen musk knows this and tries to implement it in his businesses being a Visionary does not necessarily mean always being right nor does it mean being free of contradiction it was only recently that Elon Musk and I got to meet each\n\nother personally and we're also able to talk about the pandemic situation Tesla is through the subsidiary groom and automated automation a partner of the German Dutch biotech company curac which is doing research on the coronavirus vaccine Quebec is using RNA bioreactors developed by Elon Musk companies I'm very pleased to see this commitment however I have read that Elon Musk himself does not intend to get vaccinated oh like me but still I also know that lmas takes a critical view of many of the measures that we as governments are taking to control the pandemic and to protect our citizens one of his statements struck me especially that anyone who is at risk should be in quarantine until the storm passes in connection with the observation you just met\n\nagain tonight that everyone has to die sometime yes Health protection does not take precedence over all else in the pandemic it all it is always about balance no matter how we Act or do not act harm will occur we must therefore strike a balance as minister of Health I think it is only right for us to weight the Health's protection very highly I for one would have great difficult difficulty doing otherwise at the same time it is legitimate to demand a different rating such debates are an indispensable part of our free societies and it is important that we are not implacable in these discussions but we listen to each other and are willing to assume at least sometimes that the other way the other one might have a point or that their arguments could be valid\n\ndebates that deteriorate into moralizing seldom reflect reality in all its diversity so it would be highly unfair to imply that Elon Musk might care too little through his private Foundation Elon Musk funds Research into renewable energy space travel child health education and Mathematics computer science natural science technology as well as safe AI in its private capacity he is consistently donating large sums of money to charity projects such as for planting 1 million trees looking at Elon Musk means repeatedly encountering a seemingly insatiable test for action and Discovery the many articles about the supposedly declining Innovative power of our Western World and societies then just seems to be Worlds Away in such instances Elon Musk stands in the\n\nLimelight he is the spare head of an entire generation of courageous entrepreneurs and bold scientists people who believe in the power of ideas and that progress is possible in spite of resistance and setbacks this gives us courage despite the great challenges that we as humans are currently facing we are living in a time of great opportunity and an economically successful environmentally responsible and socially balanced world is possible it is possible through Innovation and courage not through individual austerity or through fear experiences and encounters with Innovative and creative people such as Elon Musk we confirm my basic optimism time after time we do have the power to shape our future Elon Musk wanted to change the world a little and ended\n\nup revolutionizing it this teaches us that everything in our is in our own hands it is up to each and every one of us above all now in this often difficult time we may not lose sight of the future ahead of us with all of its alarming disastrous aspects in many areas the current pandemic strengthens precisely the willingness to shape the future it is leading us faster than ever down some appropriate and necessary path as the old saying goes crisis presents opportunity in this pandemic we are learning more on a daily base together in other words in public we are adapting our strategies we are consistently trying to act in a targeted and proportionate way starting afresh every day based on the largest knowledge this Spirit of progress this openness this\n\nwillingness to learn is something we must sustain in the future I'm convinced that Germany has a great deal of this Visionary power that drives you Mr Musk we simply need to more often have the courage to believe in it ourselves in this respect you are a great example to us congratulations on the 2020 Axel Springer award I wish you the greatest possible success for the future and even more stay healthy all the best [Applause] obviously we can get closer all the best thank you Mr span this is again your captain speaking some information about the flight outside temperature is about 1600 Kelvin so I kindly ask you not to open the windows as we leave hyperspace foreign Welcome To Mars orbit we will reach our final destination Mars surface in the scheduled\n\ntime the temperature will be between zero degrees Celsius and minus 100 degrees Celsius so first rule don't panic please excuse me I just got the information that we have a special delivery right now right here this is rather unusual but please let me check foreign [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] good evening good evening Elon good evening everybody I'm your captain tonight would you please hold my helmet thank you very much WoW it feels so comfortable I never felt that comfortable before thank you it's your Originals Basics overall and I will wear it many times from now on because I never felt so free I can breathe I have oxygen in my head and I've experienced that before standing on the stage it's\n\na bit of a tear you know it does make me slim but it's it's okay it's it's it's okay for me tonight I'm really happy to be here and I'm really thankful to meet you because I'm also thankful for your work and achievement for different reasons because as you might remember we've seen it in the movie I held the microphone I was the one it was my hand holding the microphone when you announced that you're gonna build Tesla here in Berlin Brandenburg and so thanks to you I made it in every German news show not me but parts of me made it into every German you show which made me really famous my hands are now one of the most famous hands we have in Germany and my hands are holding your present now the present we were thinking about what can we I mean what can\n\nwe give you as a present it's really difficult you know it's really difficult we were thinking about a spa weekend in Brandenburg not too good a helicopter flight over Berlin a fancy set of steak knives you might have it already so we were thinking about what could be nice for you and can you guess what's inside come on stage I tell you come on no it's no cake and it's no book come on stage and as we heard you are a visionaire and you're a businessman but you are also if you don't not only like to listen to music but you also do music yeah it's a record okay you compose music great there is one famous song it didn't make it to the charts but it's really famous it's really ranked on Soundcloud but the song is don't doubt your Vibe yes you recognize yeah\n\ndon't dare your Vibe because it's true because it's you oh that's good it has so many possibilities to really go right through the ceiling yeah yeah um if you do enough auto-tune it works yeah yeah yeah we will when did you write it when did you compose it well actually I just woke up one morning and uh I was singing the lyrics uh they're not very complicated um and uh and then my girlfriend Grimes recorded it on her phone yeah and she said this is great we should make a song out of this yeah and so then uh we called our friend Mike uh who is a great producer and and we went to the studio uh to the the Muppet studio Jim Henson Studio yeah and uh we we made the song yeah and then um I created a fake record label label called Emoji records Emoji within\n\na minute yeah like that um and uh on Soundcloud and then I uploaded it to SoundCloud and uh that's how it went perfect yeah on which occasion should it be played I guess if you're doubting your Vibe yeah you know or anytime did you ever doubt your vibe yeah really what was it yeah um December uh second uh I don't know 92.\n\ncan we expect more can we expect not more it's very promising I mean well I do think that it would be kind of fun to do a cover of uh Barbie Girl by Aqua you know that song Barbie girl Barbie girl yeah Viagra I'm a Barbie girl in a Barbie world um plastic it's fantastic you know it breaks me everywhere so you know the lyrics yeah I know the lyrics right no no um but but I think it would be fun to do a cover of Barbie girl but cyber girl I'm a cyber girl yeah in a cyber world perfect yeah okay you you have to invest in you it's fantastic in the future there's no plastic you know that kind of thing yeah I I doubt that so but now hold on to your seat we have the honor to have one of the most famous DJs in the world cool he's here and he remixed your song\n\nright and we have him here so then fair to see it tonight all right Ben could you come up on stage hello he he um he did this original it's inside here Sven yes how was it to work with the material how was the material how did you yeah with this title and I made out of the best with a friend of mine and I hope you like it and but it's not just about that that's it's the it's the whole box yeah what is quite interesting who designed it who designed it my son okay my son draw the cover and his his name is Tegan is 10 years old he is by the way big fan of your work well it's an absolute original when would you play it on your DJ set would you play it it's rather beginning or more house myself so we have where would it be we have unique printed vinyls and\n\nI choose turntables in your conference room on there construction site so I actually so essential Tech note tracks from the last 30 years right Graphics included and friends of mine yeah craft work is great what's that music so is that this is unique and that's great wow only one very thoughtful thank you for you and enjoy I hope you have a turntable and I do there is a QR code inside okay thank you very much thank you thank you thank you tonight all right it's a pleasure having you yeah it's it's really uh thank you for doing this it's really fun and wow great production value um this is I feel like I'm on like a cool Disney ride or something um so um but I I do want to just say to uh acknowledge the great people at Tesla and SpaceX neurolink boring\n\ncompany um really I accept this award uh on on your behalf for all the great things that that you've done so um super super appreciated um but I really want to acknowledge very strongly the people at the companies who made it happen thank you very much thank you [Applause] because ladies and gentlemen we're about to land please fasten your seatbelts again [Music] foreign [Music] going down [Music] welcome Mars we just landed after this uh yeah exhausting and exciting and surprising and wonderful Journey um looks great doesn't it yes um you can follow our Assistance or Mr Daphne he's he's the tallest guy here just walk after him and uh we have a little refreshment for you and you don't even have to choose between salty and sweet or ham or or cheese you\n\ncan take both tonight which is just great just have a nice evening and enjoy good night thank you [Music] [Applause] [Music] thank you [Music] thank you [Music] thank you [Music] [Applause] [Music] foreign [Music]","textByLang":{"en":"foreign this is your captain speaking welcome aboard our vessel to Mars boarding is completed as all systems are set and we're sure that we don't take the coronavirus to outer space for your cooperation by the way we are ready to launch first rule don't panic cabin crew prepare for takeoff [Music] thank you [Music] 20 seconds till left off 15 seconds [Music] foreign this is your captain with an update from the cockpit we arrived in Earth's orbit safe and sound let me please especially welcome one very special passenger an extraordinary Visionary a multi-talented engineer a super smart entrepreneur and not at least the man who made this Mission to Mars possible please give a very warm welcome to Mr Elon Musk please take a look at our wonderful Planet isn't\n\nit gorgeous as curious as I am to see Mars I'm really looking forward to come back to our old Homestead [Music] South Africa in the 70s a boy from Pretoria facing childhood problems he reads 10 hours a day Star Wars and science fiction but this one's got talent for machines and for money at the age of 12 he programmed his first computer game on the good old Commodore young Elon sold blastar for five hundred dollars develop stuff Let It Grow sell it soon this is how we made his fortune and his opportunity to go even further this is the way one sentence he never wanted to hear you're in the Army now so he got himself a passport moved to Canada leaving the South African apartheid regime behind he was 16 years old after some time in Kinston he left Canada\n\nwent to Pennsylvania got his Bachelor and then moved south ah Stanford University Palo Alto where all the Silicon dreams were about to come true Elon was one of those who founded the legend of the valley two thousand dollars a car and a computer and nothing more he and his brother Kimball founded zip2 a company that provided and licensed online city guide software to newspapers four years later he sold it to Compaq for 307 million dollars quite a story but just the start a typical story of those times develop and invest find allies merge disrupt rise of PayPal his first vision of making things easier for people using the digitization Elon Musk helped to change the financial industry forever PayPal was sold for 1.\n\n5 billion dollars to eBay Elon held 11.\n\n7 percent of the shares a big winner in the big game money that he uses to make the world a better place he attacks on the world's best settled Market the automotive industry we created Tesla to make a difference in the world Tesla disruption at its best not everything worked out perfect well but his long breath proved him right he is pushing all his competitors forward he is expanding Elites technology leads infrastructure and Logistics and if necessary he works in sleeps at the factory foreign ER [Music] soon very soon we've decided to put the Tesla gigafactory Europe uh in the Berlin area yeah and Tesla is just on The Cutting Edge of an idea autonomous driving is bored so for us being a little startup we had to start off with a car that was in in low\n\nproduction and necessarily expensive their idea of an electric car is something that doesn't look good isn't fast it doesn't have high performance we wanted to break them all of all of that that's what we sought to achieve big time for important things saving time for stuff that is fun well it is fun to drive a Tesla but on an endless Motorway even riding gets tiring it's human we're bored very soon let the car drive and get some food for the brain while it does the work and last but not least fuel it with energy that is not harmful to the planet Elon Embraces his responsibility but this is never enough much more is needed Elon can't stop thinking about the future of making things work better more efficient a Visionary a man who never gives up although\n\nthere would have been a few moments when giving up would have been a more than plausible option foreign SpaceX is not only a business it's Hobby it's a passion Elon is CEO and its first spaceship designer it is all rocket science really many laughed at him NASA with its billions the Russians with their ruthless and dead serious Ambitions the whole call of SpaceX was the first space exploration technology and that's uh helping make Humanity a space Bank civilization transported Americans to the ISS UE private economy is more effective and sustainable than State economy crew dragon is a gentle slap in the face for over-the-top institutional rocketeers the Russians took it personal Elon Musk must not be quoted by them too successful Russia some things never\n\nchange can one man change the world yeah sure Elon Musk did it and he doesn't stop there and I think that's one of the things that you know makes people excited about the future and we want the things that are in science fiction novels and movies not to be science fiction forever we want to be real one day what if one could help handicapped people by connecting the body with machines to reconnect neural disorders a presto neuralink what if we could get rid of traffic on our city streets dig a deep long tunnel beneath them and shoot the cars from one side of the town to the other hey Presto the boring company the name by the way is one of the best puns ever and stop if we can do that with cars why shouldn't we do it with goods and people full speed 600\n\nkilometers in 35 minutes just do it hey Presto hyperloop but all that's Earthbound reach for the stars and planets we're already on our way to Mars [Music] this is your captain speaking well rather gasping what a trip that was and it's not over yet let's hear it from the man himself I'd kindly ask you now Elon to come on stage and join actually Springer CEO Matthias Dafna for a little chat [Applause] [Music] [Applause] well that was fun yeah I'm glad that you enjoyed it yeah it's like a ride I mean I think you could charge money for this this is great I mean yeah it's really makes a difference to have this two screens and the angle change it's like that felt great like Disney right Elon apart from this special trip to Mars this evening when do you think\n\nrealistically human beings will land on Mars for the first time um I think it I feel fairly confident about six years from now so every the Mars uh Earth Mod synchronization occurs roughly every 26 months so we had one this year this summer and so that means in roughly like about two years there'll be another one um and then two years after that so I think I'd say if you say six years from now I think highly confident uh if we get lucky maybe four years and then we want to try to send a an uh uncrewed vehicle there in two years when will your first trip to orbit who will take place I don't know possibly in two or three years I mean I'm mostly concerned with developing the technology that can enable a lot of people to go to Mars and make life multi-planetary\n\nhave a base on the moon a city on Mars and I think it's important that we strive to have a self-sustaining City on Mars as soon as possible I mean I'm optimistic about the future on Earth but it's important to have life insurance for Life as a whole is it going to be a business kind of tourism in in orbit or is it more a kind of plan B if things owners do not develop as well it's not exactly a plan B uh it's it's more that I think I think there's two two aspects to this uh one is that we want to have a future that is inspiring and exciting and what are the things that you find inspiring and exciting about the future I think one future where we are a space-bearing civilization and out there Among the Stars I think that's every kid gets excited about that\n\nyou don't even need to teach them they just get it it's like instinctive and so it's very important for us to have reasons to like reasons to be excited about life like when you wake up in the morning it can't just be about problems okay I know everyone in this room deals with a lot of tough problems but you know it's got to be more than that so you know I think a future where you can say hey even if it's not you there's going to be people out there that can we can have a base on the moon we're going to have a you know a city on Mars maybe go further the moons of Jupiter and everything I think that's a very exciting future and and then and I think most people do um and you seriously want to be buried on Mars just not an impact [Laughter] uh yeah I mean\n\nif you're gonna listen we're all gonna die someday um so if you're gonna die someday I'm like okay do you want to be buried on a monster with I'm like Mars sounds cool born on Earth Dion was that's uh you know if you got the choice um two years ago I had a conversation with Jake Ma and we spoke about Jeff Bezos plans with regards to uh orbit and he said well let's uh Jeff Bezos take care uh for the orbit I take care for the Earth you seem to take care for both yeah basically Tesla is about trying to make sure things are good for the future on Earth and then SpaceX is about a good future beyond Earth basically um and so obviously we have to have sustainable energy uh both consumption and production of energy uh so like hazardous solar panels and batteries\n\nI think that's one of the key uh ways to have sustainable energy generation and also the batteries are useful for wind power so and then elect you then you need to Consumer via consumed electricity so electric vehicles um and um you know I think look at these things like say okay if you look back from the future and say what's the fundamental good of uh Tesla I would say it's probably should be assessed as by how many by how many years did Tesla accelerate the Advent of sustainable energy like that's like I would measure the goodness of Tesla in that in that way and then for SpaceX it's like okay to what degree did we improve the probability of humanity being a space bearing civilization I remember very well the year 2014 when we were hosting the gold\n\nsteering wheel here at Oxford and you got the uh award for Lifetime Achievement and I was sitting in the first row with the then very successful and famous CEO of a very big German car company and I asked him while you were on stage isn't this guy dangerous for you I mean this looks really serious he said oh no don't worry first of all the whole idea of electric driving is never going to be a mass Market sure second These Guys these guys in Silicon Valley they have no clue about engineering about building really beautiful and great cars so we don't have to worry by then Tesla's market cap was 23 billion today it's 536 billion US Dollars the market Capital VW then was 86 and to today at 77 and you could you you are with Tesla two and a half times bigger\n\nthan BMW VW and Daimler I even said it's ever too high I mean what am I supposed to do you like have you ever considered that stock is too high a long time like when it was like it 100 800 pre-split and then listen to me but you know I'll tell you in the SEC complained again I mean like you know is it a serious option to buy one of the incumbents one of the big car companies for you well I I think we're definitely not going to launch a hostile takeover so I suppose if there was a friendly one if somebody said hey we think it would be a good idea to merge with Tesla we certainly have that conversation um but you know we don't want to you know be a hostile hostile takeover sort of situation did you feel a lot of complacency uh these days that the incumbents\n\nlength let you feel that you are I mean the kind of hopeless disrupter but they know how to do it or where they're very polite and nice with you do you mean back then or not then oh no no today everybody it's super nice I would not say there was a run now yeah we're difficult to characterize their responses super nice um they use a lot of adjectives um I don't think that any of them were positive so we try we really tried hard to convince a lot of companies uh honestly I was in so many panels uh but um they generally were yeah generally the sediment that was expressed that you mentioned earlier that was pretty much Universal especially uh if back in say 2008 or 2007 like when we first unveiled the roads from 2007 um yeah I mean it was just basically they\n\njust said well you're basically a bunch of fools well I mean generally they say like well who starting a car company is crazy you're going to lose all your money I was like I think I probably will lose all my money I agree I it wasn't like I thought it would be successful I thought we had maybe a 10 chance of success so then people would say you're it's gonna fail and you're going to lose lose everything it's like yeah probably true yeah what else is new a couple of years ago we we we saw each other in America and the guy asks you on a panel uh when uh autonomous driving will be approved and you said I do not care so much when it's going to be approved I care more when uh human beings in cars will be forbidden and then the guy said well that's really\n\nunrealistic it's never going to happen in uh in cars people want to do something actively and then you said well 100 years ago nobody could imagine uh uh elevator without a lift boy today nobody could imagine a lift with a lift boy yeah so when is autonomous driving really really going to happen and when when are you able to do it and when is it going to be approved okay just between us yeah it's a very discreet Circle here yeah um so well first of all I'm not I'm not against people driving to be clear uh so I think people will drive cars basically as far into the future as I can imagine it's just that it's going to be increasingly unusual to to drive your own car and while it's fun to drive a you know a well handling car on a Winding Road in beautiful\n\nterrain of course that's that's fun um but it's not fun to drive a car in a terrible gridlock traffic like you know going through extreme traffic that's no fun driving a car so I think people are unlikely to most of the time want to commute or with it with their uh and drive themselves um and you know people are typically spending hour and a half a day maybe two hours uh on average driving um especially say like California or something like that it's very common um and some people will actually commute like three hours a day sometimes it's pretty crazy so uh so I so I think I think uh um if you say fast forward to like 10 years from now I think 10 years from now almost all cars will be will have a full autonomy capability uh that all new costs produced\n\nso there's there's about two billion cars and trucks in the in the existing Fleet um and the new vehicle production is about five percent of the fleet size so about 100 million so even the point which all cars are autonomous they'll still take you know 20 years to replace all the cars assuming that the number of cars and trucks trucks in the fleet stays constant um but like say 10 years from now I would say vast majority of cars electric like maybe 70 80 percent or more uh and uh almost all cause autonomous electric autonomy is absolutely the future no question and just a question of when um but then like I said as soon as people think that that means the global Fleet gets replaced instantly and it's like nope you have to go 20 years beyond that point\n\nbefore 20 years from the point at which all cars are new cars are electric then the fleet will be replaced um it was just an important it's not like some people are used to like mobile phones and that kind of thing is like two year or three year replacement rate but cars are much uh more expensive asset to longer life uh anyway to actually answer your question um I'm I'm extremely confident uh of achieving full autonomy uh and releasing it to the Tesla customer base uh next year now the there's a uncertain period of time for when regulatory approval will be will take how long will it take but I think if you are able to accumulate uh billions of kilometers of autonomous driving then it's difficult to argue and look at the accident rate uh when the car\n\nis autonomous versus non-autonomous and in fact our our statistics already show a massive difference when the car is on autopilot or not on autopilot if the safety is much greater even with the current autopilot software and we are discussing level 5 autonomy so really full autonomy will Euro black behind or will it be approved here at the same time like in America or China it's hard to say uh exactly when it will be approved I I mean just to and our customers already know this but the the the the EU Regulators are the most conservative um and uh I don't know if people want that to be the case or not our customers are sort of unhappy about it but um yeah they only meet every six months maybe meet more often I don't know um so yeah but I think at least\n\nsome jurisdictions will allow full self-driving next year okay exactly a year ago you were announcing In This Very building that you're planning to build a new site near Berlin yeah and a couple of months later and Junior started you want to finish it by July next year we did a little tour this morning it's impressive how advanced it is and it's almost unbelievable Germany and Piccadilly particularly Berlin is not world famous for finishing construction sites in time and in budget yeah so you've created a kind of entire Berlin airport project why Berlin why did you go to Germany and to Berlin to get that big project done sure um well first of all I'm actually a big fan of Germany I love Germany it's great I would you know um I have a lot of friends um\n\nuh German friends and I think Berlin is a very fun city um and uh I think it's there's there's also it's from a location standpoint uh people like say young people can live in apartments at a reasonable price in the city of Berlin uh but if somebody's got a family they can still have an affordable house so it's a good location offering um you know good living for people of all ages and incomes and and um I believe it's not that poor but but it's definitely sexy could you imagine so we're gonna have like uh when we open the uh you're all invited by the way uh when we have the opening for gigabolin we're gonna have uh just a big party um you know we're gonna have like start off from the day have more sort of Family Music uh and uh and then gradually get\n\nmore hardcore and then go you know midnight techno Till Dawn dude do you plan to spend more time in Berlin yourself you want to partly live here in fact I yes I'll be spending a lot of time here where do you sleep tonight in the in the tonight's in the factory in the factory well technically in a conference room in the factory but yeah you sleep in a conference room in the not finished Factory tonight yeah it gives me a good feel for what's going on alone or yeah I assume so it's an invitation um yeah okay Elon you have so many projects it's not only Tesla or SpaceX it's neuraling it's the boring company so many things and when we discussed last time I asked you what is the most important project or the most important topic for you to deal with in the\n\nforeseeable future and you said that is truly the role that AI is going to play in our society could you explain why and why that is a big opportunity but also seems to worry you uh yeah I think well I mean humans have been the smallest creature on Earth for a long time and that is going to change with what's typically called artificial general intelligence uh so this is say an AI that is uh smarter than a human in every way it could even simulate a human so you know this is something we should be concerned about I think there should be a government oversight of AI developments especially super Advanced AI it's just this is anything that is a potential uh danger to the public we generally agree that this should have uh government oversight to ensure that\n\nthe the public safety is taken care of because you feel that one day the mankind could serve the machines and not the other way around honestly when I see people on their phones that I think we already serve with the machine yeah it's like everyone's uh answering the questions you know every time you do a search or add information you're sort of building this the the digital group mind um but yeah uh the Advent of artificial general intelligence is called The Singularity for a reason because just like a black hole which is a single Singularity it's difficult to predict what will happen um so it's not as though the Advent of AGI is necessarily bad but it's bad is one of the possible outcomes and when is singularity in the in the definition of Ray quotes\n\nwhy are going to happen um well I think you're saying he he's predicting 2025.\n\nI think that's uh reasonably accurate and how can it be avoided that is then uh more a threat for Humanity than an opportunity is it a question of governance so that there is not too much power in one or in few hands or how would you how would you make sure that it goes into the right direction I think we should have a a government oversight just like we do we have uh government oversight and regulation of cars and aircraft and uh food and pharmaceuticals these are all uh you know there's a there are Regulators that oversee these developments to ensure Public Safety um and I think digital super intelligence would also be potentially a public safety risk and so it should be it's I think it's very important to for Regulators to keep an eye on that who should\n\nown the data data by then I think everyone should own their own data like individuals here on their data um and it certainly shouldn't be tricked by some terms and conditions of a website and suddenly you don't own your data that's crazy uh who reads those terms and conditions anyway so uh but I think it's just you know like we wouldn't let people develop a nuclear bomb in the backyard just for the hell of it you know that that seems crazy so digital super intelligence I think has the potential to be more dangerous than a nuclear bomb so yeah we should just somebody should be keeping an eye so we can't have the inmates running the Asylum here which is a global issue because if we do well but China has other rules and a different regulatory framework that\n\nis another uh yeah I don't I don't think college yeah I generally like that this is one of the rebuttals I get from those developing Ai and Tesla is also developing a form of AI with self-driving but it's a very narrow form of AI just like um like the car is not going to wake up Sunday one day and take over the world um so so it's uh but the rebuttal I get is like well you know China is going to have unfettered uh AI development and so if we have regulations and it slows us down then China will have it and I'm like look I from my conversations with government officials in China they are they they're quite concerned about AI as well and they uh the fact that they're probably more likely to have a good oversight than I think other countries what is the\n\nbiggest uh challenge uh ahead of us in general not only with regard to AI what is the biggest problem that needs to be solved what's the biggest threat to Humanity's future [Music] well AI is certainly one of the biggest risks it could be the biggest risk um I think we need to watch out about population collapse this is a somewhat counter-intuitive to most people they think that well there's so many humans maybe too many humans but that's just because they live in a city yeah if you're an aircraft and you look down they say if you dropped a a cannibal how often would you hit a person basically never in fact the stuff falling in from space all the time natural meteorites old rocket stages all the time but nobody worries about it because the the actual\n\nin fact um there's a good a cool website called wait but why and Scott Tim Urban like he actually just did the math and and uh all humans on Earth uh could fit in the city of New York on one floor don't even need the upper floors so that's actually the cross-section of of humans as seen from Earth is extremely tiny basically vanishingly small almost nothing um so we need to watch out about population collapse low growth rates I think is a big risk and it's also not exactly top secret you can go look at the Wikipedia you know growth rate so and and this this is actually this this is this is definitely the civilization ends with the with a whimper not a bang uh because it would be a sad ending um where the the average age becomes very high and really the\n\nyouth are effectively uh de facto enslaved to take care of the old people this is not a good way to go and do you have any new projects dealing with these topics that you've just addressed um well I'm trying to set a good example on the kid front six kids yes for now how much time do you spend with them I I spent about as much time as they want to spend with me yeah I mean they're not well one's just a baby and now there's a 14 and 16 and teenagers um don't usually want to hang out with their parents that much you know we just had Thanksgiving weekend so all the kids were over um so you know if they want to spend more time with me I said like oh you should I actually asked them are sure we don't want to hang out more like no so I think it's probably the\n\nright amount then since they that's about the they don't want to hang out more so I think we really should take this seriously the population collapse artificial intelligence obviously sustainable energy is important uh the faster we transition to sustainable energy the less of a gamble we're taking with climate and um I think there's going to be a lot of breakthroughs on the medical front particularly around synthetic mRNA you can basically do anything with the synthetic RNA DNA it's really it's like a computer program so I mean I think with enough with with uh with effort that's not too crazy you could probably stop aging reverse it if you weren't um these are you can basically join you can turn someone into a free and Butterfly if you want with the\n\nright DNA sequence so I mean caterpillars do it so yeah but your project neuralink is in a way empowering human intelligence versus artificial intelligence that's the purpose of it is that correct yeah so neuralink the uh in a short to medium term neuralink is really just going to help cure uh brain injuries brain and spine injuries so it's like if somebody is a in fact our first uh implanted devices in humans will be for uh quadriplegics tetraplegics allowing them to control a computer or a phone just using they might so like you can imagine like if Stephen Hawking could just talk uh and at a normal speed or even faster than normal speed looking back for the last thousands of years what is the most important invention of mankind so far in the past Thousand\n\nYears um I I guess it's millions of millions um well I think language I would be able to talk and express Concepts and um this this is a probably the biggest invention of humanities language it's an answer that we like very much in the publishing yeah absolutely you know writing is yeah exactly just incredible right writing really made a big difference that guy Gutenberg you really know what he's doing you have one thing in common with Nicolas Tesla that's a photographic memory is that only a gift or sometimes a burden because you memorize too much I have a photographic memory in some respects um for technical stuff I have a very good memory so for a human yeah you know computers are much better at memory computer is a really good memory why is music\n\nso important for you techno music in particular well it's pretty fun I think it's a you know you want to I don't know feel maximum human you know and uh so I think when people have like sort of a Rave and good music it can be like hey maximum human you know you want to really feel uh you know it's like like what really gets you to feel you know and I think that uh you know having fun with friends and you know just crazy crazy dancing is fun perhaps you know how techno music is the secret reason why you are building big projects in Berlin yeah honestly that's a it's a significant factor okay Elon last question you you celebrated your 30th birthday with a masked ball in Venice for your 40th birthday I was told you had a fight with a samurai sword fighter\n\nwhat is your plan for your 15th birthday next year um well so my 40th birthday was the was in Venice uh it was it was technically a post-apocalyptic masked wall uh after the apocalypse how much clothing do you really have you know it's not going to be a little ragged a little burnt you know um so um no plans for the 50th yeah the half century party um I'll have to think of something um usually go with some kind of crazy theme the the the the party where I ended up to wrestling with the world champion tumor wrestler which by the way also caused me to boast a disc in my neck so yeah five minutes of Glory for five years of pain um that was that really hurt um so that party was um Victorian Japanese steampunk so that was cool uh I have to think of something\n\nfor the half century report you have a little time to think being on Earth for a half century that's okay I'm still alive wow cool one very last question when I asked you what is the meaning of life during a dinner 42 you said after a while after a while well probably this wonderful French cheese could you please explain oh well I was just saying that you know you want to take a moment to appreciate things in life and the sensations um food's incredible uh and uh like there's just so many good things that you can experience some of them cost nothing really um you know have a walk in nature or just a nice meal and it's like wow it was pretty great you know and uh we should take a moment to appreciate these These Little Things the big things um the things\n\nthat move your heart I think that's probably the meaning of life was close definitions as I can think thank you very much Elon all right this is your captain speaking again thank you Elon and thank you Matthias it's a pleasure having you on board and learning so much about our future before I come back with some information about our flights I'm now honored to welcome secretary Yen span and ask him on stage and share his thoughts about Elon musk's achievements and responsibilities the vessel's floor is yours Mr secretary [Applause] thank you so a wonderful evening to all of you in the evening between the struggles on earth and the vision towards Mars and regarding Earth we are meeting here today in a very special time we are experiencing the worst pandemics\n\nsince the Spanish Flu for roughly 10 months now governments but Above All citizens worldwide have been combating the virus and its consequences people are experiencing a great deal of suffering hardship and sacrifice yet today at the beginning of December we also have a reason for optimism we can be very optimistic that we will have an effective vaccine against the new virus faster than ever before in human history with a vaccine we can finally hope to have a tool that will help us beat the virus it is true that some people have misgivings about vaccination to the point of rejecting it at all costs this is an attitude I find very difficult to understand it was only vaccination that first made it possible for humankind to liberate itself from many of the\n\nFatal diseases that had plagued our ancestors for centuries plagues that had led to fear and Superstition and then obstacle to progress vaccination is progress and today that word progress is for many synonymous with one name that of Elon Musk Mr mask I'm pleased to have the honor of paying tribute to you in these very special times you are without doubt a visionary the name mask stands for ideas that were often far ahead of their time paying online with PayPal Electro mobility and sustainable energy with Tesla and not seldom does the name mask also represent ideas that at first glance might seem a little crazy the HIPAA Loop project is one of those the vision that persons and goods can be accelerated in the double tube to speeds of up to 1 200 kilometers\n\nper hours this also includes connecting the human brain to a computer the subject of neuro links just discussed the rulings research since 2016 and of course private space travel with SpaceX is also an integral part of the mission thanks to Elon Musk seemingly crazy ideas become reality Elon Musk has realized the most powerful thing we as human beings possess is our ideas Tesla's ability to rise to become the world's most valuable car manufacturer was not primarily the result of itself's figures Tesla's worse is a reflection of an idea a vision an idea that allows many people to have faith in progress in a better future it is supported of course by business expertise Elon Musk is building his newest gigafactory in brunberg on Mark land many Germans associate\n\nbronberg with the poet teodor Fontana who once walked the sense of the mark Fontana wrote between arrogance and humility lies a third trait that is part of life and that simply put is courage should you not yet know Fontana by the way for your Douglas Adam non-digital bookshelf I hope there is one Fontana should you not yet know him Mr mask I think that fits you quite well because courage you most certainly have as at the same time your choice of Germany as the location for your factory is hardly you only a question of Courage but just as much the result of keen calculation Germany is a country of automobile automobile Pioneers Carl and better Benz Rudolph diesel Gottlieb Daimler very Nan Porsche the list of achievements by Germans are made in Germany\n\nis long Mr mask you know that Germany still possesses great Innovative strange today many well-trained creative people and a solid infrastructure great conditions for courageous entrepreneurship for tomorrow's innovators and Pioneers in the meantime you probably also recognize the word birkati in German indeed indeed constructing a factory from scratch in only a few months that is a new experience even for our country at least an experience we seem to have forgotten we need a bit more of the mass courage on our side to reduce bureaucratic obstacles and thereby promote innovation because also it is true that Innovation needs a reliable framework it also needs freedom to flourish in the 70 years since the creation of the Federal Republic of Germany we have\n\noften succeeded in Striking this balance Germany is an economically strong country Cosmopolitan and free an anchor of stability and enmity in Europe it is something we can be proud of today however at the start of the 20s of the 21st century there are a number of questions we also ask ourselves do we the 20s what do we want the 20s to look like how can we find the right answers and complicated times what Legacy do we want to leave to our children how can we maintain the German success model sustain and expand our prosperity as well as the freedom and security associated with it in times where it is under threats from many sites so we need a strong state that encourage economic activity because German firms can't some because German firms suffered some\n\nclear disadvantages when competing with monopolies from the U.\n\nS and with a state economy like China's in return our state should invest massively in education infrastructure and research and should launch support programs not for individual companies but for entire branches of the economy in the 20s we want to remain expert Champion a master of innovation push forward digitalization promote research and strenging entrepreneurial culture only progress will ensure that the next generation will have it even better it's all about making space for ideas to flourish from all that we've heard Ellen musk knows this and tries to implement it in his businesses being a Visionary does not necessarily mean always being right nor does it mean being free of contradiction it was only recently that Elon Musk and I got to meet each\n\nother personally and we're also able to talk about the pandemic situation Tesla is through the subsidiary groom and automated automation a partner of the German Dutch biotech company curac which is doing research on the coronavirus vaccine Quebec is using RNA bioreactors developed by Elon Musk companies I'm very pleased to see this commitment however I have read that Elon Musk himself does not intend to get vaccinated oh like me but still I also know that lmas takes a critical view of many of the measures that we as governments are taking to control the pandemic and to protect our citizens one of his statements struck me especially that anyone who is at risk should be in quarantine until the storm passes in connection with the observation you just met\n\nagain tonight that everyone has to die sometime yes Health protection does not take precedence over all else in the pandemic it all it is always about balance no matter how we Act or do not act harm will occur we must therefore strike a balance as minister of Health I think it is only right for us to weight the Health's protection very highly I for one would have great difficult difficulty doing otherwise at the same time it is legitimate to demand a different rating such debates are an indispensable part of our free societies and it is important that we are not implacable in these discussions but we listen to each other and are willing to assume at least sometimes that the other way the other one might have a point or that their arguments could be valid\n\ndebates that deteriorate into moralizing seldom reflect reality in all its diversity so it would be highly unfair to imply that Elon Musk might care too little through his private Foundation Elon Musk funds Research into renewable energy space travel child health education and Mathematics computer science natural science technology as well as safe AI in its private capacity he is consistently donating large sums of money to charity projects such as for planting 1 million trees looking at Elon Musk means repeatedly encountering a seemingly insatiable test for action and Discovery the many articles about the supposedly declining Innovative power of our Western World and societies then just seems to be Worlds Away in such instances Elon Musk stands in the\n\nLimelight he is the spare head of an entire generation of courageous entrepreneurs and bold scientists people who believe in the power of ideas and that progress is possible in spite of resistance and setbacks this gives us courage despite the great challenges that we as humans are currently facing we are living in a time of great opportunity and an economically successful environmentally responsible and socially balanced world is possible it is possible through Innovation and courage not through individual austerity or through fear experiences and encounters with Innovative and creative people such as Elon Musk we confirm my basic optimism time after time we do have the power to shape our future Elon Musk wanted to change the world a little and ended\n\nup revolutionizing it this teaches us that everything in our is in our own hands it is up to each and every one of us above all now in this often difficult time we may not lose sight of the future ahead of us with all of its alarming disastrous aspects in many areas the current pandemic strengthens precisely the willingness to shape the future it is leading us faster than ever down some appropriate and necessary path as the old saying goes crisis presents opportunity in this pandemic we are learning more on a daily base together in other words in public we are adapting our strategies we are consistently trying to act in a targeted and proportionate way starting afresh every day based on the largest knowledge this Spirit of progress this openness this\n\nwillingness to learn is something we must sustain in the future I'm convinced that Germany has a great deal of this Visionary power that drives you Mr Musk we simply need to more often have the courage to believe in it ourselves in this respect you are a great example to us congratulations on the 2020 Axel Springer award I wish you the greatest possible success for the future and even more stay healthy all the best [Applause] obviously we can get closer all the best thank you Mr span this is again your captain speaking some information about the flight outside temperature is about 1600 Kelvin so I kindly ask you not to open the windows as we leave hyperspace foreign Welcome To Mars orbit we will reach our final destination Mars surface in the scheduled\n\ntime the temperature will be between zero degrees Celsius and minus 100 degrees Celsius so first rule don't panic please excuse me I just got the information that we have a special delivery right now right here this is rather unusual but please let me check foreign [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] good evening good evening Elon good evening everybody I'm your captain tonight would you please hold my helmet thank you very much WoW it feels so comfortable I never felt that comfortable before thank you it's your Originals Basics overall and I will wear it many times from now on because I never felt so free I can breathe I have oxygen in my head and I've experienced that before standing on the stage it's\n\na bit of a tear you know it does make me slim but it's it's okay it's it's it's okay for me tonight I'm really happy to be here and I'm really thankful to meet you because I'm also thankful for your work and achievement for different reasons because as you might remember we've seen it in the movie I held the microphone I was the one it was my hand holding the microphone when you announced that you're gonna build Tesla here in Berlin Brandenburg and so thanks to you I made it in every German news show not me but parts of me made it into every German you show which made me really famous my hands are now one of the most famous hands we have in Germany and my hands are holding your present now the present we were thinking about what can we I mean what can\n\nwe give you as a present it's really difficult you know it's really difficult we were thinking about a spa weekend in Brandenburg not too good a helicopter flight over Berlin a fancy set of steak knives you might have it already so we were thinking about what could be nice for you and can you guess what's inside come on stage I tell you come on no it's no cake and it's no book come on stage and as we heard you are a visionaire and you're a businessman but you are also if you don't not only like to listen to music but you also do music yeah it's a record okay you compose music great there is one famous song it didn't make it to the charts but it's really famous it's really ranked on Soundcloud but the song is don't doubt your Vibe yes you recognize yeah\n\ndon't dare your Vibe because it's true because it's you oh that's good it has so many possibilities to really go right through the ceiling yeah yeah um if you do enough auto-tune it works yeah yeah yeah we will when did you write it when did you compose it well actually I just woke up one morning and uh I was singing the lyrics uh they're not very complicated um and uh and then my girlfriend Grimes recorded it on her phone yeah and she said this is great we should make a song out of this yeah and so then uh we called our friend Mike uh who is a great producer and and we went to the studio uh to the the Muppet studio Jim Henson Studio yeah and uh we we made the song yeah and then um I created a fake record label label called Emoji records Emoji within\n\na minute yeah like that um and uh on Soundcloud and then I uploaded it to SoundCloud and uh that's how it went perfect yeah on which occasion should it be played I guess if you're doubting your Vibe yeah you know or anytime did you ever doubt your vibe yeah really what was it yeah um December uh second uh I don't know 92.\n\ncan we expect more can we expect not more it's very promising I mean well I do think that it would be kind of fun to do a cover of uh Barbie Girl by Aqua you know that song Barbie girl Barbie girl yeah Viagra I'm a Barbie girl in a Barbie world um plastic it's fantastic you know it breaks me everywhere so you know the lyrics yeah I know the lyrics right no no um but but I think it would be fun to do a cover of Barbie girl but cyber girl I'm a cyber girl yeah in a cyber world perfect yeah okay you you have to invest in you it's fantastic in the future there's no plastic you know that kind of thing yeah I I doubt that so but now hold on to your seat we have the honor to have one of the most famous DJs in the world cool he's here and he remixed your song\n\nright and we have him here so then fair to see it tonight all right Ben could you come up on stage hello he he um he did this original it's inside here Sven yes how was it to work with the material how was the material how did you yeah with this title and I made out of the best with a friend of mine and I hope you like it and but it's not just about that that's it's the it's the whole box yeah what is quite interesting who designed it who designed it my son okay my son draw the cover and his his name is Tegan is 10 years old he is by the way big fan of your work well it's an absolute original when would you play it on your DJ set would you play it it's rather beginning or more house myself so we have where would it be we have unique printed vinyls and\n\nI choose turntables in your conference room on there construction site so I actually so essential Tech note tracks from the last 30 years right Graphics included and friends of mine yeah craft work is great what's that music so is that this is unique and that's great wow only one very thoughtful thank you for you and enjoy I hope you have a turntable and I do there is a QR code inside okay thank you very much thank you thank you thank you tonight all right it's a pleasure having you yeah it's it's really uh thank you for doing this it's really fun and wow great production value um this is I feel like I'm on like a cool Disney ride or something um so um but I I do want to just say to uh acknowledge the great people at Tesla and SpaceX neurolink boring\n\ncompany um really I accept this award uh on on your behalf for all the great things that that you've done so um super super appreciated um but I really want to acknowledge very strongly the people at the companies who made it happen thank you very much thank you [Applause] because ladies and gentlemen we're about to land please fasten your seatbelts again [Music] foreign [Music] going down [Music] welcome Mars we just landed after this uh yeah exhausting and exciting and surprising and wonderful Journey um looks great doesn't it yes um you can follow our Assistance or Mr Daphne he's he's the tallest guy here just walk after him and uh we have a little refreshment for you and you don't even have to choose between salty and sweet or ham or or cheese you\n\ncan take both tonight which is just great just have a nice evening and enjoy good night thank you [Music] [Applause] [Music] thank you [Music] thank you [Music] thank you [Music] [Applause] [Music] foreign [Music]"},"languages":["en"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AF2HXId2Xhg"},{"id":"european-battery-conference-2020-11-24","type":"interview","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQ6frVhyuJo","title":"European Battery Conference","titles":{"en":"European Battery Conference","de":"European Battery Conference","fr":"European Battery Conference"},"date":"2020-11-24","summary":"Musk discusses cell strategy, a future 1,000 km-range vehicle and a compact European car at the German-government battery conference.","text":"welcome to electrified it's your host dylan loomis i have the full elon interview for you from the european battery conference i'm only going to chime in one time to clarify something that he said but in tomorrow's episode we'll get into things in a little bit more detail but for today just enjoy the interview and i'll talk to you guys soon hope you enjoy and uh it's an honor to talk to everyone so the as far as range is concerned we i think have shown that the range can be very long in fact we we could make it even longer than it is today um but our longer strange vehicles have um a range uh over 600 kilometers um and uh and there's there's more we could we could actually do more than that and you'll see actually some uh improved versions of our vehicles\n\ncome out with uh over 600 kilometers range starting to approach 700 kilometers and we even have some under development long term that can do a thousand kilometers so the uh what we see is really the fundamental uh impediment to progress with batteries is the cost so um if you've got if you've got range if you've got rapid recharge um and um and then all those can be achieved and a high calendar and high cycle life um so your batteries can last like 15 years which we believe ours currently can then the what it comes down to most of all is uh improving the cost so that the affordability of batteries is of of the battery required cars and electric vehicles um is improved and so that everyone can afford to buy an electric car that's that's really what we\n\nsee as the the fundamental thing that needs to be improved um now along the way there will also be uh improvements in energy density which really translates to improvements in range so in pursuit of lower cost uh batteries you you actually end up try a lot of cases with improved energy density which also gets more range so um the long-term goal would be to try to get to um a class per kilowatt hour of perhaps around um uh 50 cents or 45 cents at the cell level for a long range battery cell um and in order to get there there are a lot of innovations that are necessary so he did say 50 to 55 cents per kilowatt hour at the cell level i'm not sure if this was a mistake but if it was i don't know what he would have meant so let me know what you guys think\n\nabout that comment both in the cell design and in the design of the um the factory that produces them so in fact there's quite a bit more work in the in building the machine that builds the machine uh then in the the cell itself so it one needs to design the cell in the right way um and then uh very with the very difficult part and i can't emphasize this enough a very difficult part is then scaling up that production and achieving ex extremely high reliability and safety with the cells so we tell us we've put a lot of effort into this over many years um mostly internally but they've also been some key acquisitions that have been instrumental in achieving a low cost per kilowatt hour um and that's uh that's what we intend to build at the prospective gigafactory\n\nin berlin vandenberg area just ask you uh in terms of scaling up uh what you see as the biggest hurdles to mass production i think um there is the very uh element of scale itself um in that do we it's important to achieve economies of scale to make the batteries affordable so things have to be done at extremely high volume so that means a very big factory and not just one that is big but also one where the um the cycle time through the factories is very low so your fast cycle time with a big factory is what yields a high output in order to achieve a fast cycle time um and uh and at high precision you need to develop advanced machinery for every aspect of the production system so this is really everything from how these the cell can is made up to the how\n\nthe uh the electrode precursors the cathode and the anode precursors are made so then making the anode and cathode materials to applying them uh to the the the conductive conductor um and for this we have for example the a very special process called the dry electrode deposition um which is much better for the environment it's basically a line going to put on that to apply the electrode to the conductive ribbon in a way that does not require solvent um and or or require bait to to them the normal way these things start you you you create a slurry of the electric materials and then uh you put the this wet slurry on and with a lot of solvent and that solvent is uh baked away by the ovens uh and and this this is this is obviously self-optimal from an environmental\n\nstandpoint because you've um so you have the gases coming from this from the solvent that you have to then get rid of um but with dry electrode processing you do not need the uh the solvent you don't need the drying ovens um and you can apply it directly um this this maybe sounds simple but it's really very difficult um and in fact a lot of the specialized equipment we use for this comes from um germany and elsewhere in europe but it does it doesn't exist it's being made it's it's really under design and and and you know we're we've made them made it now at kind of a um a benchtop level and we're aiming soon to have it done at a pilot plant level um and then the intent for berlin brandenburg would be to have it done at at scale um at scale at scale in\n\nand of itself comes with a lot of design challenges um that have it's a lot of r d that's gonna be done just to solve okay i lied two chime ins i just want you to know i think one of the bigger risks or challenges for tesla for the next two to three years will be making the 4680 cells at scale as elon says throughout this interview there's still a lot of work to be done it's not a guarantee and a lot of these processes are still being developed at the pilot level so going from bench to pilot and then to mass scale production is a big deal and as he says it takes a ton of work so that is one of the bigger risks for tesla not for 2021 because they have their battery supply for 2021 but for 2022 and beyond they need to get these 4680 cells scaled quickly\n\nso that is one of their biggest challenges imo talk to us a bit if you would uh in general about your plans for the battery cell plant within the gigafactory uh berlin brandenburg as you know people here very excited about this so what more can you tell us sure um so the the we want to go from where we have a sort of small pilot plant which is basically proof of concept uh in california to um uh something that that will actually be i think possibly the largest uh battery cell plant in the world i i i think it will be the largest um it would be capable of over a hundred gigawatt hours per year of production and then possibly over time going to to 200 or gigawatt hours a year pretty confident at that point it would be the largest battery cell plant in the\n\nworld um and uh as i said a lot of processes where we have to quite radically improve the the cycle time and where we have to redesign machinery for continuous flow operation um uh i i've said this publicly on many many occasions that the designing the uh the prototype of really of any advanced technology um is i think relatively easy uh and then scaling up to high volume production is is very hard um and in fact there's an old saying it's like it's one percent inspiration and 99 perspiration it says it might be 99.\n\n9 in the case of about battery cells you'll see a lot of announcements of this cell breakthrough that cell breakthrough um this technology breakthrough and say okay well why can't they just make a lot of them it's because the the scaling up of the production process is much harder than bringing something out on a lab bench so great um in fact it might be helpful to provide everyone with just just a walk through of the tesla um pilot plant and if you see how intense it is even at the very small pilot plant level you can imagine how much more it would be at something that is perhaps a hundred times more throughput thanks it's intense uh yeah thank you so much for the inspiration perspiration uh ratio there i'll be taking that into some of our future uh\n\ndiscussions here at the conference when we talk about uh technology and breakthroughs let me ask you this because we've been hearing all morning from the speakers on policy issues that they see sustainability as absolutely key to the european comparative advantage in this area so you mentioned some sustainability considerations around solvents and slurry and so on could you say a little bit more about your view on the environmental impact of battery production and what you're doing at tesla to take it uh toward a more sustainable direction yeah absolutely um as you had i think the the dry electrode uh production process is uh in and of itself quite a game changer is a fun fundamental improvement compared to using solvent and then having to dry off the\n\nsolvent and deal with uh the the the off gassing from the solvent that's for sure is a big one there are um some um proprietary methods by which the the cathode is produced in the in the first place where we avoid um a lot of the steps that are environment that are difficult to deal with environmentally um and one of the things we're doing is we are um reducing the for example the cobalt content um so that avoids like a cobalt mining issue so it would be a pure nickel or almost pure nickel anode and then eliminating like a bunch of the steps of processing of the clinical electrode which then obviously is good for the environment um we're moving to a high silicon um anode but it's a silicon anode that where the silicon does not require a lot of it's not\n\nenergy intense to create the silicon it's using silicon that is comparable to solar uh sort of solar panels sort of voltaics photovoltaics um we also come up with a means of creating lithium hydroxide uh without use of sulfuric acid so it actually uses uh sodium chloride essentially table salt to um extract the lithium from uh lithium clay deposits um and uh and then that table salt is able to be uh reused so there's there's really a whole series of steps that are employed to ensure that the uh environmental impact of the cell production is um is very clean um and that you could be living right next to the battery cell plant and you wouldn't even have detectable amounts of any toxins uh in in the air so if you had like an air tester you wouldn't you would\n\nnot notice anything literally and it's it's notable that uh our pilot plant as the um you know sort of basic proof of concept is located in the san francisco bay area which is renowned for extreme environmental requirements so if there was anything that was bad it's really not possible to do it in the san francisco bay area that will be very good news uh to those who enjoy the beautiful forest uh around the gigafactory uh facility so uh just a couple more short questions if i may uh one of them uh regards uh a long discussion about whether we will ever see electric uh trucks as being truly viable and you started out in your remarks talking about range uh so what's your response to the pessimists who say not gonna happen well i think this is really just\n\na fundamental um calculation of you say like what's the energy density of the uh of the battery of the cell and then of the battery pack and then of the integrated battery pack and truck uh chassis um so it's a total mass of the uh of the semi truck before you know before including the trailer or anything and and can you get that mass down to something which is comparable to existing uh diesel trucks i think the answer is absolutely yes and we've demonstrated that with prototype trucks and so getting a range of let's say uh 500 kilometers is i think quite easy i like trivial to be frank for a semi truck um and this is assuming a truck that's pulling a load of something on the order of uh 40 times 40 metric tons um so um just a heavy truck uh and then\n\nyou can take the range if you if you want for long range trucking uh up to we think uh easily 800 kilometers and we see a path over time to get to a thousand kilometer range uh with a heavy-duty track this is like i said truck uh on the order of 40 metric ton uh total mass um uh and uh we think this is going to be extremely competitive and compelling to uh the trucking companies um and we actually have a few prototype semi trucks that are in operation have been in operation for over a year um so you know some keys to that are having like i said a high um energy density cell and then integrating that cell into the pack with a minimum of extra of extra mass and then using as having a structural battery pack where the cells and the battery pack actually\n\nform part of the core structure and this is also something that we um talked about at battery day and that we will be of course implementing with the semi truck and the net result is uh you're able to carry uh the basically the same cargo as a regular diesel truck like this we think maybe there's a um a one-ton penalty maybe but at this point we think possibly you can even have less than a one ton uh pillared reduction but and it could long term i think be zero payload reduction or four electric trucks so sort of a you know in terms of like put numbers on this that are specific uh you know something like um uh around a 300 um uh 300 watt hours per kilogram something like that uh at the cell level uh is enough to to get to these the high ranges that i\n\ntalked about sort of the 800 kilometer range very interesting thank you so one last question pertaining uh to something uh that you have uh said uh publicly that both gigafactory berlin and gigafactory shanghai will be making original vehicles can you just say a few words uh about that give us a little more detail sure um yes absolutely so um you know i think there's there's just a lot of talent um talented designers uh engineers um in europe of course and uh it would i think for a lot of the best people they really want to work somewhere where they're doing original design work they don't want to just be you know doing say the european version of something that was designed in california so i think it's important for in order to attract the best talent\n\num to to do original design um and i think uh you know possibly uh in europe it would make sense to do um i guess a compact car so perhaps a hatchback or something like that and um something that like well what do most people want um and uh in a given region um or was a very popular approach to take um you know in the u.\n\ns the cars tend to be bigger for personal taste reasons um and in europe the tends to be smaller um and uh i mean if you're trying if you're trying to to park in a dense urban environment having a car that is um that actually fits puts in a parking space easily is important um i was driving a model x around berlin and we had quite a bit of trouble finding a parking space that we could fix so um i think but you know that would probably be a good candidate for original design um but i'm sure there'll be others as well but that that might be the wise place to start um and it helps us also say okay we need a car that people can afford uh that fits their lifestyle and everything and so probably something like that would make sense um yeah i'm excited about\n\ndoing some original design in europe and many people here excited as well so we will be following with great curiosity and interest uh the further developments elon musk thank you so much for joining us when i when i calculated the time in california and uh you know figured out what hour you must have gotten up at i thought uh you know has he actually succeeded in bending time or is it really two in the morning so we really appreciate uh your sharing your insights with us and now i wish you a very good night and much success in future uh thank you guys good to talk to everyone thank you thanks bye bye","textByLang":{"en":"welcome to electrified it's your host dylan loomis i have the full elon interview for you from the european battery conference i'm only going to chime in one time to clarify something that he said but in tomorrow's episode we'll get into things in a little bit more detail but for today just enjoy the interview and i'll talk to you guys soon hope you enjoy and uh it's an honor to talk to everyone so the as far as range is concerned we i think have shown that the range can be very long in fact we we could make it even longer than it is today um but our longer strange vehicles have um a range uh over 600 kilometers um and uh and there's there's more we could we could actually do more than that and you'll see actually some uh improved versions of our vehicles\n\ncome out with uh over 600 kilometers range starting to approach 700 kilometers and we even have some under development long term that can do a thousand kilometers so the uh what we see is really the fundamental uh impediment to progress with batteries is the cost so um if you've got if you've got range if you've got rapid recharge um and um and then all those can be achieved and a high calendar and high cycle life um so your batteries can last like 15 years which we believe ours currently can then the what it comes down to most of all is uh improving the cost so that the affordability of batteries is of of the battery required cars and electric vehicles um is improved and so that everyone can afford to buy an electric car that's that's really what we\n\nsee as the the fundamental thing that needs to be improved um now along the way there will also be uh improvements in energy density which really translates to improvements in range so in pursuit of lower cost uh batteries you you actually end up try a lot of cases with improved energy density which also gets more range so um the long-term goal would be to try to get to um a class per kilowatt hour of perhaps around um uh 50 cents or 45 cents at the cell level for a long range battery cell um and in order to get there there are a lot of innovations that are necessary so he did say 50 to 55 cents per kilowatt hour at the cell level i'm not sure if this was a mistake but if it was i don't know what he would have meant so let me know what you guys think\n\nabout that comment both in the cell design and in the design of the um the factory that produces them so in fact there's quite a bit more work in the in building the machine that builds the machine uh then in the the cell itself so it one needs to design the cell in the right way um and then uh very with the very difficult part and i can't emphasize this enough a very difficult part is then scaling up that production and achieving ex extremely high reliability and safety with the cells so we tell us we've put a lot of effort into this over many years um mostly internally but they've also been some key acquisitions that have been instrumental in achieving a low cost per kilowatt hour um and that's uh that's what we intend to build at the prospective gigafactory\n\nin berlin vandenberg area just ask you uh in terms of scaling up uh what you see as the biggest hurdles to mass production i think um there is the very uh element of scale itself um in that do we it's important to achieve economies of scale to make the batteries affordable so things have to be done at extremely high volume so that means a very big factory and not just one that is big but also one where the um the cycle time through the factories is very low so your fast cycle time with a big factory is what yields a high output in order to achieve a fast cycle time um and uh and at high precision you need to develop advanced machinery for every aspect of the production system so this is really everything from how these the cell can is made up to the how\n\nthe uh the electrode precursors the cathode and the anode precursors are made so then making the anode and cathode materials to applying them uh to the the the conductive conductor um and for this we have for example the a very special process called the dry electrode deposition um which is much better for the environment it's basically a line going to put on that to apply the electrode to the conductive ribbon in a way that does not require solvent um and or or require bait to to them the normal way these things start you you you create a slurry of the electric materials and then uh you put the this wet slurry on and with a lot of solvent and that solvent is uh baked away by the ovens uh and and this this is this is obviously self-optimal from an environmental\n\nstandpoint because you've um so you have the gases coming from this from the solvent that you have to then get rid of um but with dry electrode processing you do not need the uh the solvent you don't need the drying ovens um and you can apply it directly um this this maybe sounds simple but it's really very difficult um and in fact a lot of the specialized equipment we use for this comes from um germany and elsewhere in europe but it does it doesn't exist it's being made it's it's really under design and and and you know we're we've made them made it now at kind of a um a benchtop level and we're aiming soon to have it done at a pilot plant level um and then the intent for berlin brandenburg would be to have it done at at scale um at scale at scale in\n\nand of itself comes with a lot of design challenges um that have it's a lot of r d that's gonna be done just to solve okay i lied two chime ins i just want you to know i think one of the bigger risks or challenges for tesla for the next two to three years will be making the 4680 cells at scale as elon says throughout this interview there's still a lot of work to be done it's not a guarantee and a lot of these processes are still being developed at the pilot level so going from bench to pilot and then to mass scale production is a big deal and as he says it takes a ton of work so that is one of the bigger risks for tesla not for 2021 because they have their battery supply for 2021 but for 2022 and beyond they need to get these 4680 cells scaled quickly\n\nso that is one of their biggest challenges imo talk to us a bit if you would uh in general about your plans for the battery cell plant within the gigafactory uh berlin brandenburg as you know people here very excited about this so what more can you tell us sure um so the the we want to go from where we have a sort of small pilot plant which is basically proof of concept uh in california to um uh something that that will actually be i think possibly the largest uh battery cell plant in the world i i i think it will be the largest um it would be capable of over a hundred gigawatt hours per year of production and then possibly over time going to to 200 or gigawatt hours a year pretty confident at that point it would be the largest battery cell plant in the\n\nworld um and uh as i said a lot of processes where we have to quite radically improve the the cycle time and where we have to redesign machinery for continuous flow operation um uh i i've said this publicly on many many occasions that the designing the uh the prototype of really of any advanced technology um is i think relatively easy uh and then scaling up to high volume production is is very hard um and in fact there's an old saying it's like it's one percent inspiration and 99 perspiration it says it might be 99.\n\n9 in the case of about battery cells you'll see a lot of announcements of this cell breakthrough that cell breakthrough um this technology breakthrough and say okay well why can't they just make a lot of them it's because the the scaling up of the production process is much harder than bringing something out on a lab bench so great um in fact it might be helpful to provide everyone with just just a walk through of the tesla um pilot plant and if you see how intense it is even at the very small pilot plant level you can imagine how much more it would be at something that is perhaps a hundred times more throughput thanks it's intense uh yeah thank you so much for the inspiration perspiration uh ratio there i'll be taking that into some of our future uh\n\ndiscussions here at the conference when we talk about uh technology and breakthroughs let me ask you this because we've been hearing all morning from the speakers on policy issues that they see sustainability as absolutely key to the european comparative advantage in this area so you mentioned some sustainability considerations around solvents and slurry and so on could you say a little bit more about your view on the environmental impact of battery production and what you're doing at tesla to take it uh toward a more sustainable direction yeah absolutely um as you had i think the the dry electrode uh production process is uh in and of itself quite a game changer is a fun fundamental improvement compared to using solvent and then having to dry off the\n\nsolvent and deal with uh the the the off gassing from the solvent that's for sure is a big one there are um some um proprietary methods by which the the cathode is produced in the in the first place where we avoid um a lot of the steps that are environment that are difficult to deal with environmentally um and one of the things we're doing is we are um reducing the for example the cobalt content um so that avoids like a cobalt mining issue so it would be a pure nickel or almost pure nickel anode and then eliminating like a bunch of the steps of processing of the clinical electrode which then obviously is good for the environment um we're moving to a high silicon um anode but it's a silicon anode that where the silicon does not require a lot of it's not\n\nenergy intense to create the silicon it's using silicon that is comparable to solar uh sort of solar panels sort of voltaics photovoltaics um we also come up with a means of creating lithium hydroxide uh without use of sulfuric acid so it actually uses uh sodium chloride essentially table salt to um extract the lithium from uh lithium clay deposits um and uh and then that table salt is able to be uh reused so there's there's really a whole series of steps that are employed to ensure that the uh environmental impact of the cell production is um is very clean um and that you could be living right next to the battery cell plant and you wouldn't even have detectable amounts of any toxins uh in in the air so if you had like an air tester you wouldn't you would\n\nnot notice anything literally and it's it's notable that uh our pilot plant as the um you know sort of basic proof of concept is located in the san francisco bay area which is renowned for extreme environmental requirements so if there was anything that was bad it's really not possible to do it in the san francisco bay area that will be very good news uh to those who enjoy the beautiful forest uh around the gigafactory uh facility so uh just a couple more short questions if i may uh one of them uh regards uh a long discussion about whether we will ever see electric uh trucks as being truly viable and you started out in your remarks talking about range uh so what's your response to the pessimists who say not gonna happen well i think this is really just\n\na fundamental um calculation of you say like what's the energy density of the uh of the battery of the cell and then of the battery pack and then of the integrated battery pack and truck uh chassis um so it's a total mass of the uh of the semi truck before you know before including the trailer or anything and and can you get that mass down to something which is comparable to existing uh diesel trucks i think the answer is absolutely yes and we've demonstrated that with prototype trucks and so getting a range of let's say uh 500 kilometers is i think quite easy i like trivial to be frank for a semi truck um and this is assuming a truck that's pulling a load of something on the order of uh 40 times 40 metric tons um so um just a heavy truck uh and then\n\nyou can take the range if you if you want for long range trucking uh up to we think uh easily 800 kilometers and we see a path over time to get to a thousand kilometer range uh with a heavy-duty track this is like i said truck uh on the order of 40 metric ton uh total mass um uh and uh we think this is going to be extremely competitive and compelling to uh the trucking companies um and we actually have a few prototype semi trucks that are in operation have been in operation for over a year um so you know some keys to that are having like i said a high um energy density cell and then integrating that cell into the pack with a minimum of extra of extra mass and then using as having a structural battery pack where the cells and the battery pack actually\n\nform part of the core structure and this is also something that we um talked about at battery day and that we will be of course implementing with the semi truck and the net result is uh you're able to carry uh the basically the same cargo as a regular diesel truck like this we think maybe there's a um a one-ton penalty maybe but at this point we think possibly you can even have less than a one ton uh pillared reduction but and it could long term i think be zero payload reduction or four electric trucks so sort of a you know in terms of like put numbers on this that are specific uh you know something like um uh around a 300 um uh 300 watt hours per kilogram something like that uh at the cell level uh is enough to to get to these the high ranges that i\n\ntalked about sort of the 800 kilometer range very interesting thank you so one last question pertaining uh to something uh that you have uh said uh publicly that both gigafactory berlin and gigafactory shanghai will be making original vehicles can you just say a few words uh about that give us a little more detail sure um yes absolutely so um you know i think there's there's just a lot of talent um talented designers uh engineers um in europe of course and uh it would i think for a lot of the best people they really want to work somewhere where they're doing original design work they don't want to just be you know doing say the european version of something that was designed in california so i think it's important for in order to attract the best talent\n\num to to do original design um and i think uh you know possibly uh in europe it would make sense to do um i guess a compact car so perhaps a hatchback or something like that and um something that like well what do most people want um and uh in a given region um or was a very popular approach to take um you know in the u.\n\ns the cars tend to be bigger for personal taste reasons um and in europe the tends to be smaller um and uh i mean if you're trying if you're trying to to park in a dense urban environment having a car that is um that actually fits puts in a parking space easily is important um i was driving a model x around berlin and we had quite a bit of trouble finding a parking space that we could fix so um i think but you know that would probably be a good candidate for original design um but i'm sure there'll be others as well but that that might be the wise place to start um and it helps us also say okay we need a car that people can afford uh that fits their lifestyle and everything and so probably something like that would make sense um yeah i'm excited about\n\ndoing some original design in europe and many people here excited as well so we will be following with great curiosity and interest uh the further developments elon musk thank you so much for joining us when i when i calculated the time in california and uh you know figured out what hour you must have gotten up at i thought uh you know has he actually succeeded in bending time or is it really two in the morning so we really appreciate uh your sharing your insights with us and now i wish you a very good night and much success in future uh thank you guys good to talk to everyone thank you thanks bye bye"},"languages":["en"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQ6frVhyuJo"},{"id":"tesla-q3-2020-earnings-call-2020-10-21","type":"interview","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U_Zr-bhHW9A","title":"Tesla Q3 2020 Earnings Call","titles":{"en":"Tesla Q3 2020 Earnings Call","de":"Tesla Q3 2020 Earnings Call","fr":"Tesla Q3 2020 Earnings Call"},"date":"2020-10-21","summary":"Musk and CFO Zach Kirkhorn discuss Tesla's record quarter, Full Self-Driving and factory expansion on the Q3 2020 earnings call.","text":"[Music] [Applause] [Music] so [Music] [Applause] [Music] so [Music] so [Music] [Applause] [Music] oh [Music] so [Music] bye [Music] legally [Music] so [Music] ladies and gentlemen thank you for standing by and welcome to the tesla q3 2020 financial results and q a webcast at this time all participants are in a listen only mode after the speaker presentation there will be a question and answer session to ask a question during the session you will need to press star 1 on your telephone if you require any further assistance please press star zero i would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker mr martin veeka senior director of of investor relations please go ahead sir thank you sherry and good afternoon everyone and welcome to tesla's third\n\nquarter 2020 q a webcast i'm joined today by elon musk zachary kirkhorn and a number of other executives our q3 results were announced at about 1 pm pacific time in the update deck we published at the same link as this webcast during this call we will discuss our business outlook and make forward-looking statements these comments are based on our predictions and expectations as of today actual events or results could differ materially due to a number of risks and uncertainties including those mentioned in our most recent filings with the sec during the question and answer portion of today's call please limit yourself to one question and one follow-up please press star one now if you would like to join the question queue but before we jump into the q a\n\nelon has some opening remarks elon thanks martin all right so q3 was our best quarter in history we achieved the record production deliveries record revenue record net income uh both gap and on gap and record-free class cash flow of 1.\n\n4 billion dollars this is really due to the amazing execution by the tesla team i could not be more proud to work with such a great group of people just really kick out performance across throughout the world of course we had battery day uh so we hosted showed our plans for how we can expand the future and improve core battery technology core cell technology at the form factor level of chemistry level and i think more significantly at the manufacturing technology level there's only a comment i've made in the past is that i think tesla's long-term competitive strength will be primarily manufacturing this is counterintuitive but i i'm quite confident this will be uh what what happens uh anyway so we presented what the team has been working on for a long\n\ntime well batteries um we wanted to step back and really rethink batteries from scratch uh first first principle thinking just look at the fundamental physics and say what uh rather than compare to uh other products and market just say from a physics standpoint if you you know what what's the limit of physics what's the platonic idea of a perfect cell and how close can we get there um and uh that was our aspiration and i think we've we've got a pretty good uh approach to it um which will only get better over time so we went through all of the engineering solutions for every important part of battery design and production um and we'll continue to iterate on that and just recursively improve the core cell and battery technology the the result we think in\n\nyou know in a few years will be batteries that cost half as much and where the capital expenditures required are a third or less of what they are today and we expect giga berlin will see our first battery cell production line at scale regarding the full self-driving beta release the autopilot team again just a really all-star team um i spent a lot of time with the with the autopilot team and there's a lot of really talented people in that team who've worked incredibly hard to make the to get the beta release out so i just really like to thank them for their their hard work um and uh it's just a it's just a very smart group of people so um i i think we're starting very slow and very very cautiously um because the world is a complex messy place and so we\n\nwe're um you know we put it out there last night and then we'll see how it goes and then uh probably release it to more people this weekend or early next week and then just gradually step it up until we have hopefully a wide release by the end of this year and of course as the system collects more data and it becomes more robust um so um it's sort of like you know how does google as a search engine get better it's because everyone is programming it by asking your questions all the time and clicking on particular links so it's got this great feedback loop and that that makes it an extremely effective search engine it's the same thing for autonomy having on the order of a million cars that are providing feedback and specifically feedback on strange corner\n\ncase situations that you just can't even come up with in simulation uh this is the thing that is really valuable it's not like the the the the the obvious stuff obvious stuff you can do in simulation um but weird corner cases uh only reality can can give you that so that's but we're able to say okay we need to train the system on this corner case situation uh and and look for examples so we can we can then uh train against those examples and improve uh some very esoteric corner case um and um also important to emphasize that this is a generalized uh neural net based approach uh there is no need for high definition maps or a cell phone connection so the the car this system is designed such that even if you have no connectivity whatsoever and you're in\n\na place that you have never been to before and no tesla has ever been there the car should still be able to drive just like a person that is the system that we are developing and aiming to release this year then in terms of capacity build out we're making progress on um three major factories uh we're continuing to expand shanghai significantly uh which is going incredibly well the tesla china team is just i mean incredibly good i we're super smart work hard it's like i'm always amazed by how much progress the china team makes uh it's beyond all reasonable expectations um and then we're under construction in berlin and tech and and austin um so also making good progress there um yeah it's overall going well i should make a point that for berlin and austin\n\num we we do expect to start delivering cars from those factories next year but because of the exponential nature of of a of the spool of a manufacturing plant especially one with new technology um it it will start off very slow at first and then then and then um become very the upper will become very large just in general manufacturing follows the s-curve and you know and i think sometimes people if they haven't spent a lot of time manufacturing kind of think that once you have a factory you can just sort of turn it on and it's at capacity but it will typically take about 12 to 18 months to reach capacity and that is a very fast a period of time especially for new technology so yeah i'd say 12 to 24 months even um so generally what i see is um the manufacturing\n\ncapacity is underestimated in the beginning um for quite some time then it's sometimes overestimated because this is an s group um it goes exponential to linear to logarithmic and it's it's actually incredibly hard thing just bringing a production plant uh to volume technology it's because you can actually think of it like you've got two first order approximation ten thousand unique uh parts of processes all of which operate on an s curve s-curve and and and if we're build with a bunch of uncertainty and you can just slide 10 000 s-curves on an x-axis and that's what bringing up a large automotive plant is like and which one is which one's the the the laggard which one's the leader it's very difficult to tell and it's constantly changing so it's really\n\none of the most difficult challenges i've ever seen um so let's see um in conclusion uh thank you uh all we've achieved would not be possible without the incredible hard work of tens of thousands of tesla empire employees and all people at our suppliers as well like thank our suppliers we continue to grow as fast as we can while focusing on cost control and improving quality and ultimately the the best company will be that which makes great products at an affordable price and that is uh that's our goal i think i've never felt more optimistic about the future of tesla than i ate than i do today i'd also like to thank investors who have stuck with us with us through thick and thin um this is uh i think there's there's a lot more good stuff to come all right\n\nwith that we can move to questions uh thank you liam i think uh our cfo zachary kirkland there's some opening remarks as well okay sure yeah thanks martin overall our financial health continues to rapidly improve with q3 being another great quarter on nearly all dimensions as elon has mentioned on that on on net income we achieved our fifth sequential quarter of profitability our best net income and nearly double digit operating margins the two things that are important to note to set context for q3 profitability first the regulatory credits business was stronger than our expectations and we are tracking to more than double this year compared to last second as a result in the rise of the market cap of the company the second and third tranche of the ceo\n\ngrant vested during the quarter additionally we have begun expensing one more tranche resulting in roughly 300 million of combined period expense i think it's reasonable to view the quarter excluding both these items to get a true sense of the health of the core business on automotive gross margin excluding regulatory credits it increased materially from 18.\n\n7 to 23.\n\n7 percent with some of our programs achieving great greater than 25 gross margin keep in mind that inefficiencies related to factory shutdowns affected our margins in q2 we continue to reduce our manufacturing and operational costs we are also seeing benefits from the ongoing upward trend of locally built and delivered cars which has increased from under 50 percent at the beginning of last year to over 70 most recently which is a core component of our cost reduction strategy we are also seeing financial benefits from improved vehicle reliability across the feet across the fleet services in other margin approved yet again driven by our used vehicle business and and efficiencies in our service operations in the energy business we achieved record storage\n\ndeployments aided by the positive reception of the mega pack and powerwall products as production and deployments grow additionally our solar deployments doubled and we're continuing to make progress on that front on cash flows our cash balance increased to 14 and a half billion which includes free cash flows of 1.\n\n4 billion are highest yet our operating cash flows were 2.\n\n4 billion including a 600 million benefit from working capital as we've made progress on days of receivables and inventory despite a reduction in days of payables note that the majority of our operating cash flows are driven by the strengthening of our core operations capital expenses grew to 1 billion driven by model y incidents in shanghai berlin and austin as for previous investments in model 3 shanghai and model y in fremont we're expecting these programs to have already fully paid for their respective investments by the end of this year looking forward to 2021 and 2022 we have revised up our expectations for capital spending by two to two and a half billion which we have ample liquidity and expected cash flows to fund this is driven by an increase\n\nin in-source scope for certain factories including battery cell manufacturing as well as investments to enable greater capacity expansion in the future while we expect the return on our investments to remain very strong keep in mind that with additional scope and location specific costs the payback of these investments may be slightly longer than what we saw in model 3 in shanghai and model y in fremont financing cash flows were four and a half billion as we reduced use of our working capital lines offset by 5 billion equity rates in september note that we're currently expecting over a billion in early convert pay downs in q4 primarily associated with the 2021 conversions but also our 2022 and 2024s looking forward we remain focused on strengthening the\n\ncore fundamentals of the business we are increasing production to meet demand reducing costs including localization driving higher efficiency across the business and tightening our cash conversion cycle we've made tremendous progress on this front over the last year and a half we're also aiming to achieve our original 2020 guidance of 500 000 deliveries despite the operational interruptions earlier in the year while this goal remains a genuine challenge we believe it's possible with tight execution across the company so congratulations again to the tesla team for a great quarter and a great year i'll hand it over to rj johnson who joined tesla earlier in the year and is leading our energy business for a few comments thank you zach first i'd like to also\n\nthank and congratulate the team on a job well done q3 was a strong quarter for the energy business and were poised for continued strong growth in energy storage and solar mega pack is going to be a large growth segment for the business and deployments will continue to expand rapidly as the product reaches full capacity we have more demand than supply through 2021 and we continue to ramp the product to match unprecedented demand across the globe through 2023 and beyond our order book is rapidly filling up through 2023 in the multiple gigawatt-hour scale large-scale solar plus storage is now more cost effective than traditional fossil fuel generation in many locations across the globe this trend will continue as we remove cost which will further displace\n\nexisting and new fossil fuel generation this is true for standalone storage as well many customers are utilizing auto bidder to maximize returns as we optimize our hardware and software with advanced real-time bidding strategies that continue to outperform the market where deployed for powerwall we see continued strong demand for residential storage as customers seek increased reliability and backup home generation we have a very large backlog of powerwall orders and we continue to invest to increase capacity to fulfill customer orders we're just now capturing the full power of customer sighted solar plus storage as customers in some jurisdictions are providing services back to the grid when they don't need to consume energy or have backup power this\n\nhas massive potential to reduce system costs and make the grid more efficient globally in the united states we lowered our residential solar retrofit price to 1.\n\n49 cents a watt after tax incentives which is the lowest in the industry we're able to do this by leveraging our online vehicle ordering infrastructure which substantially reduces soft cost associated with sales and marketing as a result our fixed costs remain relatively flat as our volume and efficiency increase leading to increased profitability in the retrofit business we're using the same methodology across the enter the entire energy business including service to capitalize on the technology backbone of the company solar roof is especially exciting as we've gained significant experience over the last year in the installation process which is a key enabler to scale the business we've recently demonstrated our ability to complete solar roof in installation\n\nin just one day please note this still requires one to two days to remove the existing roof and prepare it for the solar roof installation clearly there will be a range of installation times based on size complexity weather and other factors overall our reduced installation time provides a better customer experience and will enable the business to grow exponentially as scale effects allow for increased efficiency in closing we believe the energy segment is poised for a strong growth as we continue to focus on increasing scale while reducing cost to maximize profitability i want to thank the team again for their hard work and i look forward to another strong quarter ahead of us thank you very much everyone and let's begin with questions from set.\n\ncom uh the first question from retail shareholders is is tesla planning to start 4680 cell production at giga berlin at the same time as vehicle production can tesla share more information on what products will use the battery cells from the pilot line in fremont uh yeah um drew do you want to take us sure uh yeah we will incorporate 4680 design solutions into many applications in time across both energy and vehicle and we can use our our pilot production facility in fremont to support the new factory in berlin as it ramps thank you very much let's go to the next question which is um question number two from retail shareholders does tesla's tablet cell design allow for significantly higher peak charging rates does it improve the required taper curve yeah\n\nthe fundamental limitation on charge rate and lithium ion batteries is avoiding lithium plating on the anode and while the tablets architecture helps avoid overheating because it's a more power dense architecture at high continuous charge rates it doesn't change the anode plating story electro design and another material choice more directly determines the maximum charge rate and how to avoid that lithium plating problem okay thank you very much the third question from retail is would fsb be able to tr to be transferred to uh to our next vehicle or pay a transfer fee uh it would add a broad uh it would add to a brand of loyalty the same way gaming companies and cell phone companies keep you in their ecosystem by letting you transfer purchases to upgraded\n\nhardware um yeah i think we'll we'll give it some thought okay the fourth question is what are the remaining constraints to be solved for solar roof installations to ramp significantly carl yeah i'm on the solar roof engineering and installation the biggest constraint right now in solar roof ramp is getting enough installers on board and trained and experienced we've made a lot of progress on this in in q3 and we're continuing to hire the next opportunity is improving the material flow on the job site we've talked about this a lot in the factory as well that setting up the right packaging kitting so that every every installer on the roof has the parts they need at their fingertips also we've had great response from third-party roofing contractors as they're\n\nramping up installations for solar roof on their customer homes which is a big source of future growth yeah i mean here's a way to think about a product in my opinion you have to say i think what do you want the world to look like when you look around the neighborhood in the future decade from now you know what do you want what products are going to make your life better what what future do you want i think a future where we've got beautiful roofs with generating energy that are tough and tougher and resilient and better in every way than a regular roof and a lab with energy that's the future we want the solar roof is a killer product this will become obvious next year thank you and the last question from retail shareholders is you recently referred to\n\ntesla as a conglomerate of startups other than manufacturing electric cars what do you suppose will be the most valuable business units within tesla over the next five to seven years could you envision any of them ever spinning out from tesla well yeah think about this today tesla is probably there's probably in excess of a dozen startups effectively in tesla every major product line is a startup um every every new big new plant is a startup um and sometimes frankly we have to learn a lesson a few times before it sinks in um but and you know even things like service and sales are our startups other car companies oems they don't own their sales and service so we have to create our service network we have to create our sales and delivery network we have\n\nto do this in i don't know 40 countries multiple languages something that people don't even don't really even know much about is our internal applications team that that writes the core uh technology that runs the company um we are not dependent on um enterprise software like for those who understand what this means this is a very big deal in my heart as well to the great work of the internal applications team um that they're right there at the nervous system the operating system of the company the tesla operating system uh extremely fundamental um obviously insurance is is substantial so insurance could very well be under 30 40 percent of of the the value of the cart business frankly um and as we've talked about before with a much better feedback loop\n\num instead of it being statistical it can be specific now obviously somebody does not have to choose our insurance um but i think a lot of people will it's just it's going to cost less and be better so why wouldn't you uh then the whole autonomy thing is a startup the computer chip was designing our computer chips for the startup uh obviously cells are as a startup designing and making our own power electronics for the drive units designing manufacturing our own motors chargers the supercharger network is a startup the thing i think that people just don't really understand about tesla is that it's it's a whole chain of startups and they're like well you didn't do that before yeah we're doing it now and i mean i think so far we have not we've maybe been\n\na bit slow with some of the startups but i don't think we've had any any of them fail so so far so good no plans to spend anything out that just sounds com like added complexity thank you very much let's go to interditional investor questions the question number one is as they bridge to the riled hailing network could you leverage the insurance product to give customers the ability to rent out their vehicles via via the app thereby enabling the car to make money for them so basically proprietary version of two-row we're i think we're going to focus on enabling the robo taxi system so you can just basically like that's a that's a sub that's just really quite a small subset of the overall robo taxi or robocar thing where you can have the car be autonomous\n\nfor you uh you can have the car be you know share with friends and family uh you can add or remove it from the network you can have it be entirely in the network i mean if you're an uber or left driver you could be managing you know a fleet of 10 cars um it sort of seems like a you know shepherd attending the block type of thing it's like you just get way more leverage so you know i think that that's that's sort of a week we could do that and it wouldn't be very difficult um but we we're going to just be focused on just having an autonomous network you know that has sort of elements of uberlift and airbnb thank you and the second question from institutionals is residential energy use accounts for roughly the same magnitude of carbon emissions as road\n\ntransport today's boilers and aircon units are profoundly unsexy could you elaborate on hints that hvac advances with the why it could also find use in a domestic system yeah go ahead drew i was just going to say i mean i think one of the things we focused on with the model y and now model 3 pump system was learning how to build a tightly integrated system capable of moving heat to and from anywhere really powertrain battery cabin the environment in outside ambient temperatures all the way down to like negative 20 uh c so 30c and that's definitely applicable to uh to the home's needs of heating and cooling the the home and the water in your house so certainly applicable um elon yeah absolutely um i think like the heat if what he pop in the car being able\n\nto use the battery as both a thermal and an electric energy reservoir is very significant same thing could be applied to a home with the water heater so and the battery pack itself of course so i think there's potential for an integrated home system that canada's power generation storage heating cooling air filtration uh you know water purification in a really tight package um we don't actually have like a prototype or anything but i think conceptually that is something that would be probably good to have thank you the third question from institutionals is if meeting your long-term volume targets requires price reductions that preclude you from achieving your low double digits stated margin targets for the autos business will you still reduce prices accordingly\n\num well we want to make our cars more affordable and it's always important to separate out affordability from value for money um you know if if the car's car is too expensive or given products too expensive then people don't have enough money in the bank account they simply can't buy it no matter what the value proposition is so it is important to lower the prices in order to such that people can literally just have enough money to buy it i i do not think we lack for desire for our products but we do lack for affordability and so we have to improve the affordability of our products so they are not out of reach of people we want to bring them more in reach over time um but but also improve our cost of production um also you know we get hopefully a little\n\nbit better every year sort of sometimes a lot better and in terms of margins like all of these margins are going to look pretty comically small when you factor in autonomy yeah um two things i'll add to that um without a doubt i mean we're moving forward to push as much volume as we reasonably can uh you know so elon talked through earlier kind of how the s-curve and the timeline of incremental factors looks like and so we're moving full speed ahead with as much volume as we can re reasonably move forward with but the the second comment i'd make is if you just look at the journey of the company uh over the last year and a half we have grown volumes and grown gross margins uh despite a number of price reductions over that period of time and we've kept\n\nopex fairly stable during that period of time as well and so the key is what elon mentions here i mean we have to improve the affordability of the vehicle we have to also continue to make progress improving the cost structure of not only cogs but of opex which we've demonstrated over the last year and a half i think quite successfully and improved the value of the vehicles at the same time so in addition to reducing the cost of the car we're making the cars better and that's the formula to sell the volume that's what we're focused on thank you very much the fourth question from institutionals is at one at what point do you expect to have enough internal or external battery capacity to start ramping up stationary storage deployments again yeah we're we're\n\nramping up stationary storage a lot so i mean it's approximately doubling that we expect is approximately double um next year so that's pretty good um and uh hopefully we can accelerate that in years to come and approximately doubling it this year too so the growth yeah yeah i mean if you just keep doubling things pretty soon you hit the mass of the universe and we'll need to start you know turning jupiter into cells and the last question from institutionals is manufacturing is hard delays happen what contingencies do you have in place to ensure that bottlenecks that you might encounter while renting internal cell production will not preclude you from the from your ability to hit your model y production volume targets in berlin and texas yeah so i think\n\nit's we've tried to de-risk uh 2021 so that there's um you know almost no dependency on our internal cell production uh it's very very small uh the internal cell production will help us ramp in 22 but we're not dependent on it for 21.\n\nand to de-risk the manufacturing system itself that was one of the reasons why we located our pilot production facility here in fremont so we can rapidly iterate on manufacturing scale-up challenges provides rapid feedback to the design of both the product and the equipment yeah and i know our pilot line is pretty big as plot lines go it's uh it would be in the top 10 cell factories on earth i believe yeah that's true a sub-scale one yeah thank you very much and now we can go to questions uh from analyst offline cherie thank you again we remind you to please ask one question and one follow-up question our first question will come from rod lashay with wolf research please go ahead hi everybody um just wanted to ask about uh the targets from your your battery\n\nday um looked like you you could be approaching something like 20 million vehicles by 2030 if you you hit those goals um could you maybe share with us a little bit more of a midterm target like where would you be by 2025 and and maybe uh give us a little bit more insight into the investment required to get there just to put that extra two to two and a half billion dollars per year in into context yeah i i mean i think the the tricky thing with trying to predict things midway through an exponential is that you you know if if things are doubling every year or even just growing 50 then if you shift one you know plus minus one year it has a huge effect on the the number um is so then it sounds like wow you either massively exceeded or massively uh undershot\n\nbut it's actually what's going on isn't a a giant s-curve so a whole bunch of pretty big escrows that integrate into a gigantic escrow um so that's why it's difficult to predict the middle and i'm not saying for sure we would hit 20 million vehicles but it just seemed like a good goal to have because that would mean that we're replacing one percent of the global fleet per year um and it's so it's difficult to say that we're you know are we really changing the world if we're not um switching out one percent of the global uh fossil fuel vehicles i mean it's i'm not sure that we can make that argument unless we unless we change at least one percent of the vehicles per year so that that's where the two the 20 million vehicles for a year comes from it's like\n\none percent of two billion vehicles which is the the global fleet currently the global feed is growing uh so it'll probably be a bit bigger in the future um so okay you know it's hard to say it's like i'm gonna map an s cove to a 20 million dollar a 20 million vehicle target in 2030 and move the slider around and see what that number looks like that will give you about as much insight as we have okay um and just secondly um you know if solid state lithium metal were to become viable you just maybe just pass along your perspective on that and would you be able to repurpose most of what you're putting into place uh for changes in technology yeah i mean answering the first part um the the self-production system is fairly agnostic on anode cathode electrolyte\n\nseparate that kind of thing it's we could change and we will change and upgrade the all aspects of the cell so [Music] we could for example make iron prostate or nickel manganese or something like that um it's quite adaptable um so i wouldn't i wouldn't say it's just too much more about the the lithium like a pure lithium anode is um i mean not it's not as as it's it's not as great as it may sound um you know uh yeah um but volumetrically you're you're not gaining all that much uh yeah because if you've got nothing on the so it's on the outside you've got and just played out lithium it's got it's got to go somewhere so you could have room for it yeah yeah lithium is less volumetrically dense in the pure metal form than it is intercalated into silicon\n\nso it's kind of hard to understand but that that's that's the truth and and then as we showed in our presentation the total anode cost that we're talking about is only a dollar or two per kilowatt hour so the value of like removing the end of material isn't super high either so yeah i totally agree elon yeah exactly um but if it should turn out that if your lithium anode is the right move that would simply that would be no problem right agreed all right thank you thank you next next question please our next question will come from colin rush with oppenheimer please go ahead um thanks so much guys yeah you're talking about insourcing um a number of processes can you talk a little bit about which processes you're you're moving in house and the equipment\n\nthat you're planning to make yourself uh versus uh some of the equipment that you'd be buying from other folks sorry are you talking about the for cell manufacturing or something or well manufacturing for sure as well as on the molds uh they talked about but you know in terms of the catbacks budget that you mentioned earlier talking about uh you know the number of processes coming in house um and which equipment pieces you're planning to make yourself versus buying okay well i mean tesla is absolutely vertically integrated compared to other order companies or basically almost any company the we have a massive amount of internal manufacturing technology that we that we build ourselves we literally make the machine we in fact we we design so like okay what\n\nis the thing we want to make design the machine that will make that thing then we make the machine this is what this this makes it quite difficult to copy tesla which we're not actually all that opposed to people copying us but it's quite difficult because you can't do catalog engineering you can't just i'll pick up the supplier catalog i'll get one of this machine one of that machine bingo i'm now on tesla um you have to there is no catalog what cat you know so we made the machine that made the machine that made the machine it could no no we don't we don't want to get carried away here but um and quite frankly we would like to outsource less um that would be great um because then if we could outsource if we could take something that we're doing and outsource\n\nit then we could take those people and and we're going to have them do something else um but um yeah it's like we just make a crazy amount of machinery internally um this is puzzles are not well well understood um if you walk around the factory you can get a sense for it and um yeah i don't mean i don't know if this is like a smart move but i i just know like hey if we're trying to make progress and nobody's got the machine that we we need we got to make it so that's what we do um okay and then the second question is really around you know the balance sheet has really changed you guys have run awfully lean and you've got a lot more a lot more cushion at this point and obviously there's opportunities around insurance to drive out some of the cost of ownership\n\nas well as financials you know how are you guys thinking about that as you move into trying to accelerate demand a little bit and your ability to to leverage your access to capital and enable some of those uh those other products um yeah is that changing from from where you've been in the past yeah i mean something like insurance is a good example of a product that's basically made by our internal applications team um so we just we made the insurance product and connected to the car look at the data calculate the risk this is all internally basically internal software application um it's pretty low capital but has very high return i i don't know if we're trying to spend money at the fastest rate that we can possibly spend it and not waste it that's our\n\ncurrent plan and so it's quite hard to spend money without wasting it um or just you know we're like really just trying to not waste too much of it frankly we will certainly waste some of it uh but trying to waste not waste too much of it this is very difficult um but otherwise we just try to spend money as quickly as possible in a way that is sensible and yields more value than it costs thank you our next question will come from adam jonas with morgan stanley please go ahead hey elon um question on lidar if lidar were totally free would you want to use it in your cars near term would that tech significantly helped tesla in the training of your neural network for fsd i mean totally free probably not i think probably i i think even if it was free we wouldn't\n\nput them on okay um let's follow up then um amazon appears to be investing and building an autonomous or electric transport network of some ilk through some organic investments but also you know zuke's aurora ribbon etc what advice would you give jeff bezos in his endeavor well i don't know how much he cares about this but i guess he sure is investing a lot of money in it um i mean i think he also needs to vote for if you care about autonomy you need to focus on vision because the entire road system is based on passive optical so you have to solve passive optical for to have a self-driving system that is a generalized solution and once you solve past optical you've solved self-driving so why bother with anything else thanks elon thank you welcome to the\n\nnext question please our next question will come from pierre farragu with new street research please go ahead um hey thanks a lot for taking my question a very simple one you haven't talked that much about like the cyber truck today uh and i was wondering uh how like the ramp of that product is uh looking like when we when we should see [Music] the product hitting the road and how fast you expect to rent volumes can i have a quick follow-up sure um i was in the studio actually on last friday with franz and team just going over the just sort of sort of some improved improvements to the cyber truck you know generally with you know i tell you we we really aim to make the car that is delivered better than the car that is uh unveiled um because always drove\n\nme crazy you know car companies would unveil these awesome looking cars and you're like great i can't wait till i make that and then they have the car they actually make this like much worse and that is just it's like really disappointing so man we always want to make the car that we deliver better than the car we unveil and that's the goal with the cyber truck so um there's like a lot of a lot of small improvements compared to what was unveiled um it's you know i think it's going to be better than what we showed and um yeah it's it's cool like it it's going to be made in um in austin so this can you know depending on completing that factory and there are obviously new technologies with the you know high hardness uh kind of armored exoskeleton this is\n\nnever been done before so there'll be there'll probably be some challenges along the way um and obviously something something that's extremely high hardness and difficult to scratch or dance is also difficult to form so it's there's some manufacturing challenges there that's why it's so plainer although it also looks good i think from a cleaner standpoint um yeah if we focus well we will be able to do some cyber truck deliveries uh towards the end of next and towards the end of next year yeah so it's difficult to predict um i'd say there's probably a lot of deliveries in 22 and some deliveries towards the next year if things go well okay and now i'm trying to get a sense of how next year is going to look like so if i look at your production capacity at\n\nthe end of this year it's going to be almost 850 000 units on an annualized basis and you're going to increase capacity in shanghai open berlin you say today you would open austin as well so you're probably going to end the year above the million units and and so am i right thinking next year we should expect you to deliver uh like somewhere like between 840 000 and 1 million cars during the year yeah we'll provide uh guidance on 2021 after next earnings call i mean it's it's in that vicinity um yeah you're not far off thank you thank you thank you our next question will come from dan levy with credit suisse please go ahead hi uh good evening thank you just i wanted to start with a question on the quarter um zack maybe you could give us a sense of uh\n\nwhere directionally model y and china model 3 gross margin was in the quarter relative to fremont model 3 and then just a little more color on the gross margin in the quarter was this just purely a function of higher volume or was there also uh fsd revenues just puts and takes on the gross margin in the quarter sure on your question about fsd uh there was a small amount of deferred revenue released is not particularly material in the 10 million dollar range for the quarter with respect to product margins um you know what we're seeing across the board is just continued reduction in cost really across every product shanghai continues to make good progress there model y cost is also coming down quite quickly as we branch that but we've got it in the past\n\nthat model y cost should be roughly equivalent to the model 3 built-in fremont cost it's not quite there and it's also a bit of a moving target as model 3 fremont cost comes down model y also has to come down with that but we're generally seeing strength in in shanghai margin strength in model y margins and not too far off of it we're seeing strength in model 3 fremont and snx margins so overall for the quarter i think it was quite a good story for the products great great thanks um and then this is the follow up wanted to ask about your your strategy uh in europe and i think your strategy generally has been you know you cut cost so that allows you to cut price and you can generate the extra volume and i think that's you know what we're seeing in china\n\nyou know the use of lfp that's that's a good example so once you ramp in berlin what's a reasonable expectation of what pricing might look like in europe and how flexible are you going to be on pricing you know to generate uh incremental red credit so you know uh margins out of the gate that are a little low but you know that are then used for the red credits that you know help to offset that yeah but what i think i would say generally to the question is i mean we've been in a position for for some time now where we are prioritizing where in the world we send our production and you know there's different factors to that depending upon when different product changes are made what the logistics routing looks like different things going on in different markets\n\nbut we are in a position where we need to prioritize uh ideally i mean what we're trying to do as fast as we possibly can is get production up higher so that we're not in a position of needing to prioritize again um there are yeah i think that gets at the sentiment of your question okay let's go to the next question please our next question will come from gene munster with loop ventures please go ahead good evening uh question on the semi you know if you could just walk us through the development of mega chargers platooning and maybe just how you think about autonomy for tesla semi and what it's how you envision it impacting the broader trucking industry beyond just ev well actually jerome do you want to ask that yeah we continue the development of the\n\nsemi and in particular mega chargers we realized that the 350 kilowatt or or or so that we might be looking for cars is not going to be enough for semi so we're looking for something much more uh powerful than that that can achieve essentially charging as fast uh the semi as as you during a break during your driving time so that you can drive until the next break yeah so there is no usable or efficient time wasted for charging uh the semi that's that's the goal um we're working with uh other parties to make sure that there is a standard infrastructure that will be able to uh be deployed uh for all customers um yeah that's probably all i can say at this point yeah yeah we're not working just we're not working in isolation yeah we're trying to we have to\n\ninvent it because it doesn't exist you know but we're we're trying to invent something uh that could be uh helpful for everybody yeah just as a note on the sort of semi the the semi does consume a lot of cells so it's uh you know caught you know four to six times more than a passenger vehicle very cool five you know there's five ish times so um if we are self-constrained it is it kind of it's difficult to ramp up the semi because there's no cells um so we need to solve the cell constraint before ramping semi to significant volume that's the only real constraint on semi-progress um and uh you know just we found over and over again we were just we just kept running into self self production limitations um and then we're just taking things out of one pocket\n\nand putting them in another this is it we just need more cells so that we can do more stationary storage more vehicles um more vehicle lines yeah we need more cells so make makes sense uh a question just if you think about you know you've talked about robo taxi and how you i think that's going to impact kind of humans moving around how do you think about semi impacting freight longer term i mean is this uh something that is nice to have and a compliment to all of your tech getting in new markets or do you think that this could be a material business i think it's very material for sure um i mean really long term all transport will go autonomous yeah horses are already autonomous but all transport will go autonomous yeah so including semi so it'll be pretty\n\nsignificant and the technology that we're putting in semi is identical to what we're putting in the other vehicles yeah it's just big bigger bigger and more motors yep thank you let's go our next question will come from ben callow with baird please go ahead hey thanks for taking my question hey elon what do you think the biggest structural issue is with the let's call it old school oems um or one or two of the structural issues for them not getting their act together and catching up with you and then um you you mentioned what you we want the world to look like ahead of us what do you envision that is like just tesla or tesla and rivian or or or what thanks well i do think there will be other car companies i don't think we're going to be the only one so\n\ni mean the thing is that like like what what uh other car companies do even in the auto segment is quite a small subset of what tesla is so you know tesla we we design and build we're very vertically integrated so we're designing a building so much of the car so much more of the car than other oems who will largely go to the traditional supply base and like i call it catalog engineering you know so um it's not very adventurous uh and and basically it ends up like all the products end up looking the same because they're going to the same suppliers so i mean to the degree that you inherit legacy components you inherit the legacy limitations and cost structure and so you kind of need to make new ingredients new parts and then you need then there's no machine\n\nto make those parts so you have to make the machine that makes the parts so tesla's like we probably i mean we might be in order of magnitude more vertically integrated than other car companies if we're not now we certainly will be um and then we also uh we also have to create our sales and service and distribution system in i don't know something on the report 40 countries you know somewhere it'll be over 100 countries whereas the other uh car companies do not own their sales and service and distribution so you know they they kind of you know assemble parts from a supply base and then and then hand them to a dealer base so it's just like it's not just like it it's like comparing tesla to a car company like just comparing just really one facet or dimension\n\nof tesla we're like maybe 10 in common with other car companies thank you let's go to the last question please and our final question today will come from philly pushua with jeffreys please go ahead um yes thank you for taking my questions i've got two um the first one for me is try to understand your business model for stationary storage have your thoughts on it i mean there are two broad directions for me one is selling hardware which is a bit of a cost plus business and i'm just wondering if there's an opportunity where tesla could actually share into the savings that utilities in particular could be able to achieve and like grid stabilization the information i was able to get on your business in australia a few years ago suggests that given the savings\n\nthat are achieved your your hardware could have been sold at a higher price i'm just wondering if you have some shared views on where the difference is going yeah i think you're probably right about that uh um i mean rj and zach what do you guys think yeah i mean we're already seeing this in australia where we're seeing behind the meter aggregation that is providing grid services back to the grid which effectively reduces the price to the customer and reduces the prices for the grid operator so you're seeing this trend happening across the globe and it's going to be at the residential level as well at the wholesale level so mega pack on one end and then power wall on the other side those two working together in tandem and the software layer on top of\n\nit auto bidder being that that really is going to help make the grid more efficient using the hardware platform and software together and just a point of clarification like that the large power plant in large battery power plant in australia like we continue to operate that power plant and generate revenue in the market so whether we could have sold it for more or less like we're continuing to make money off of that power plant okay thank you and the following question i had was during the battery day you talked about this cell vehicle integration um approach it's very interesting and when i look at that when i think about it it looks like this means that the skateboard design the tesla pioneered and many of your followers are using is going to become\n\nobsolete or am i not thinking about the right way it will be obsolete long term yes but i mean yes i mean several years from now it's it it for now it's not like existing cars stop hiring value it's just that this that if you have an if you have the if you have a structural pack where the pack is contributing uh structural value to the car um because of like the sort of like the composite honeycomb effect of you know shear transfer between an upper and lower plate then anything that doesn't do that is going to have to have duplicate hardware um it's going to weigh more it's going to cost more um and then the same goes for the front and rear castings um i mean we're clearly frank we're trying to make the car like you'd make a toy um you know if you had\n\na toy model car how would and then it's got to be real cheap and look look great um how would you make that you cast it that's how it's done it would be absurd to make it up of tiny little pieces of of stamped metal uh joined in complex ways so it's sort of a natural thing to do and then the same goes for using the energy storage the battery as a structure which is done for aircraft wings and for rockets with the early rockets and aircraft they they had a separate aeroshell from the propellant tanks or fuel tanks and and then they realize that doesn't make sense and you've got to integrate you've got to have your fuel tank in wing shape you've got to have your propellant tanks in the shape of the body of the the rocket for example um you don't want to\n\nput a box on a box basically uh so you know it's so which over many years made it like basically uncompetitive to have an aircraft that has separate fuel tanks uh for from the wing the wing the wings need to be feeling um but like i wouldn't think of this as like it's like an overnight transition it's several years uh if but but then like i said over time it just it would be competitive to have a different architecture in my opinion thank you very much unfortunately this is all the time we have for the q a today i appreciate all your great questions and we'll speak to you again in about three months thank you goodbye thank you ladies and gentlemen this concludes today's conference call thank you for your participation [Music] you","textByLang":{"en":"[Music] [Applause] [Music] so [Music] [Applause] [Music] so [Music] so [Music] [Applause] [Music] oh [Music] so [Music] bye [Music] legally [Music] so [Music] ladies and gentlemen thank you for standing by and welcome to the tesla q3 2020 financial results and q a webcast at this time all participants are in a listen only mode after the speaker presentation there will be a question and answer session to ask a question during the session you will need to press star 1 on your telephone if you require any further assistance please press star zero i would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker mr martin veeka senior director of of investor relations please go ahead sir thank you sherry and good afternoon everyone and welcome to tesla's third\n\nquarter 2020 q a webcast i'm joined today by elon musk zachary kirkhorn and a number of other executives our q3 results were announced at about 1 pm pacific time in the update deck we published at the same link as this webcast during this call we will discuss our business outlook and make forward-looking statements these comments are based on our predictions and expectations as of today actual events or results could differ materially due to a number of risks and uncertainties including those mentioned in our most recent filings with the sec during the question and answer portion of today's call please limit yourself to one question and one follow-up please press star one now if you would like to join the question queue but before we jump into the q a\n\nelon has some opening remarks elon thanks martin all right so q3 was our best quarter in history we achieved the record production deliveries record revenue record net income uh both gap and on gap and record-free class cash flow of 1.\n\n4 billion dollars this is really due to the amazing execution by the tesla team i could not be more proud to work with such a great group of people just really kick out performance across throughout the world of course we had battery day uh so we hosted showed our plans for how we can expand the future and improve core battery technology core cell technology at the form factor level of chemistry level and i think more significantly at the manufacturing technology level there's only a comment i've made in the past is that i think tesla's long-term competitive strength will be primarily manufacturing this is counterintuitive but i i'm quite confident this will be uh what what happens uh anyway so we presented what the team has been working on for a long\n\ntime well batteries um we wanted to step back and really rethink batteries from scratch uh first first principle thinking just look at the fundamental physics and say what uh rather than compare to uh other products and market just say from a physics standpoint if you you know what what's the limit of physics what's the platonic idea of a perfect cell and how close can we get there um and uh that was our aspiration and i think we've we've got a pretty good uh approach to it um which will only get better over time so we went through all of the engineering solutions for every important part of battery design and production um and we'll continue to iterate on that and just recursively improve the core cell and battery technology the the result we think in\n\nyou know in a few years will be batteries that cost half as much and where the capital expenditures required are a third or less of what they are today and we expect giga berlin will see our first battery cell production line at scale regarding the full self-driving beta release the autopilot team again just a really all-star team um i spent a lot of time with the with the autopilot team and there's a lot of really talented people in that team who've worked incredibly hard to make the to get the beta release out so i just really like to thank them for their their hard work um and uh it's just a it's just a very smart group of people so um i i think we're starting very slow and very very cautiously um because the world is a complex messy place and so we\n\nwe're um you know we put it out there last night and then we'll see how it goes and then uh probably release it to more people this weekend or early next week and then just gradually step it up until we have hopefully a wide release by the end of this year and of course as the system collects more data and it becomes more robust um so um it's sort of like you know how does google as a search engine get better it's because everyone is programming it by asking your questions all the time and clicking on particular links so it's got this great feedback loop and that that makes it an extremely effective search engine it's the same thing for autonomy having on the order of a million cars that are providing feedback and specifically feedback on strange corner\n\ncase situations that you just can't even come up with in simulation uh this is the thing that is really valuable it's not like the the the the the obvious stuff obvious stuff you can do in simulation um but weird corner cases uh only reality can can give you that so that's but we're able to say okay we need to train the system on this corner case situation uh and and look for examples so we can we can then uh train against those examples and improve uh some very esoteric corner case um and um also important to emphasize that this is a generalized uh neural net based approach uh there is no need for high definition maps or a cell phone connection so the the car this system is designed such that even if you have no connectivity whatsoever and you're in\n\na place that you have never been to before and no tesla has ever been there the car should still be able to drive just like a person that is the system that we are developing and aiming to release this year then in terms of capacity build out we're making progress on um three major factories uh we're continuing to expand shanghai significantly uh which is going incredibly well the tesla china team is just i mean incredibly good i we're super smart work hard it's like i'm always amazed by how much progress the china team makes uh it's beyond all reasonable expectations um and then we're under construction in berlin and tech and and austin um so also making good progress there um yeah it's overall going well i should make a point that for berlin and austin\n\num we we do expect to start delivering cars from those factories next year but because of the exponential nature of of a of the spool of a manufacturing plant especially one with new technology um it it will start off very slow at first and then then and then um become very the upper will become very large just in general manufacturing follows the s-curve and you know and i think sometimes people if they haven't spent a lot of time manufacturing kind of think that once you have a factory you can just sort of turn it on and it's at capacity but it will typically take about 12 to 18 months to reach capacity and that is a very fast a period of time especially for new technology so yeah i'd say 12 to 24 months even um so generally what i see is um the manufacturing\n\ncapacity is underestimated in the beginning um for quite some time then it's sometimes overestimated because this is an s group um it goes exponential to linear to logarithmic and it's it's actually incredibly hard thing just bringing a production plant uh to volume technology it's because you can actually think of it like you've got two first order approximation ten thousand unique uh parts of processes all of which operate on an s curve s-curve and and and if we're build with a bunch of uncertainty and you can just slide 10 000 s-curves on an x-axis and that's what bringing up a large automotive plant is like and which one is which one's the the the laggard which one's the leader it's very difficult to tell and it's constantly changing so it's really\n\none of the most difficult challenges i've ever seen um so let's see um in conclusion uh thank you uh all we've achieved would not be possible without the incredible hard work of tens of thousands of tesla empire employees and all people at our suppliers as well like thank our suppliers we continue to grow as fast as we can while focusing on cost control and improving quality and ultimately the the best company will be that which makes great products at an affordable price and that is uh that's our goal i think i've never felt more optimistic about the future of tesla than i ate than i do today i'd also like to thank investors who have stuck with us with us through thick and thin um this is uh i think there's there's a lot more good stuff to come all right\n\nwith that we can move to questions uh thank you liam i think uh our cfo zachary kirkland there's some opening remarks as well okay sure yeah thanks martin overall our financial health continues to rapidly improve with q3 being another great quarter on nearly all dimensions as elon has mentioned on that on on net income we achieved our fifth sequential quarter of profitability our best net income and nearly double digit operating margins the two things that are important to note to set context for q3 profitability first the regulatory credits business was stronger than our expectations and we are tracking to more than double this year compared to last second as a result in the rise of the market cap of the company the second and third tranche of the ceo\n\ngrant vested during the quarter additionally we have begun expensing one more tranche resulting in roughly 300 million of combined period expense i think it's reasonable to view the quarter excluding both these items to get a true sense of the health of the core business on automotive gross margin excluding regulatory credits it increased materially from 18.\n\n7 to 23.\n\n7 percent with some of our programs achieving great greater than 25 gross margin keep in mind that inefficiencies related to factory shutdowns affected our margins in q2 we continue to reduce our manufacturing and operational costs we are also seeing benefits from the ongoing upward trend of locally built and delivered cars which has increased from under 50 percent at the beginning of last year to over 70 most recently which is a core component of our cost reduction strategy we are also seeing financial benefits from improved vehicle reliability across the feet across the fleet services in other margin approved yet again driven by our used vehicle business and and efficiencies in our service operations in the energy business we achieved record storage\n\ndeployments aided by the positive reception of the mega pack and powerwall products as production and deployments grow additionally our solar deployments doubled and we're continuing to make progress on that front on cash flows our cash balance increased to 14 and a half billion which includes free cash flows of 1.\n\n4 billion are highest yet our operating cash flows were 2.\n\n4 billion including a 600 million benefit from working capital as we've made progress on days of receivables and inventory despite a reduction in days of payables note that the majority of our operating cash flows are driven by the strengthening of our core operations capital expenses grew to 1 billion driven by model y incidents in shanghai berlin and austin as for previous investments in model 3 shanghai and model y in fremont we're expecting these programs to have already fully paid for their respective investments by the end of this year looking forward to 2021 and 2022 we have revised up our expectations for capital spending by two to two and a half billion which we have ample liquidity and expected cash flows to fund this is driven by an increase\n\nin in-source scope for certain factories including battery cell manufacturing as well as investments to enable greater capacity expansion in the future while we expect the return on our investments to remain very strong keep in mind that with additional scope and location specific costs the payback of these investments may be slightly longer than what we saw in model 3 in shanghai and model y in fremont financing cash flows were four and a half billion as we reduced use of our working capital lines offset by 5 billion equity rates in september note that we're currently expecting over a billion in early convert pay downs in q4 primarily associated with the 2021 conversions but also our 2022 and 2024s looking forward we remain focused on strengthening the\n\ncore fundamentals of the business we are increasing production to meet demand reducing costs including localization driving higher efficiency across the business and tightening our cash conversion cycle we've made tremendous progress on this front over the last year and a half we're also aiming to achieve our original 2020 guidance of 500 000 deliveries despite the operational interruptions earlier in the year while this goal remains a genuine challenge we believe it's possible with tight execution across the company so congratulations again to the tesla team for a great quarter and a great year i'll hand it over to rj johnson who joined tesla earlier in the year and is leading our energy business for a few comments thank you zach first i'd like to also\n\nthank and congratulate the team on a job well done q3 was a strong quarter for the energy business and were poised for continued strong growth in energy storage and solar mega pack is going to be a large growth segment for the business and deployments will continue to expand rapidly as the product reaches full capacity we have more demand than supply through 2021 and we continue to ramp the product to match unprecedented demand across the globe through 2023 and beyond our order book is rapidly filling up through 2023 in the multiple gigawatt-hour scale large-scale solar plus storage is now more cost effective than traditional fossil fuel generation in many locations across the globe this trend will continue as we remove cost which will further displace\n\nexisting and new fossil fuel generation this is true for standalone storage as well many customers are utilizing auto bidder to maximize returns as we optimize our hardware and software with advanced real-time bidding strategies that continue to outperform the market where deployed for powerwall we see continued strong demand for residential storage as customers seek increased reliability and backup home generation we have a very large backlog of powerwall orders and we continue to invest to increase capacity to fulfill customer orders we're just now capturing the full power of customer sighted solar plus storage as customers in some jurisdictions are providing services back to the grid when they don't need to consume energy or have backup power this\n\nhas massive potential to reduce system costs and make the grid more efficient globally in the united states we lowered our residential solar retrofit price to 1.\n\n49 cents a watt after tax incentives which is the lowest in the industry we're able to do this by leveraging our online vehicle ordering infrastructure which substantially reduces soft cost associated with sales and marketing as a result our fixed costs remain relatively flat as our volume and efficiency increase leading to increased profitability in the retrofit business we're using the same methodology across the enter the entire energy business including service to capitalize on the technology backbone of the company solar roof is especially exciting as we've gained significant experience over the last year in the installation process which is a key enabler to scale the business we've recently demonstrated our ability to complete solar roof in installation\n\nin just one day please note this still requires one to two days to remove the existing roof and prepare it for the solar roof installation clearly there will be a range of installation times based on size complexity weather and other factors overall our reduced installation time provides a better customer experience and will enable the business to grow exponentially as scale effects allow for increased efficiency in closing we believe the energy segment is poised for a strong growth as we continue to focus on increasing scale while reducing cost to maximize profitability i want to thank the team again for their hard work and i look forward to another strong quarter ahead of us thank you very much everyone and let's begin with questions from set.\n\ncom uh the first question from retail shareholders is is tesla planning to start 4680 cell production at giga berlin at the same time as vehicle production can tesla share more information on what products will use the battery cells from the pilot line in fremont uh yeah um drew do you want to take us sure uh yeah we will incorporate 4680 design solutions into many applications in time across both energy and vehicle and we can use our our pilot production facility in fremont to support the new factory in berlin as it ramps thank you very much let's go to the next question which is um question number two from retail shareholders does tesla's tablet cell design allow for significantly higher peak charging rates does it improve the required taper curve yeah\n\nthe fundamental limitation on charge rate and lithium ion batteries is avoiding lithium plating on the anode and while the tablets architecture helps avoid overheating because it's a more power dense architecture at high continuous charge rates it doesn't change the anode plating story electro design and another material choice more directly determines the maximum charge rate and how to avoid that lithium plating problem okay thank you very much the third question from retail is would fsb be able to tr to be transferred to uh to our next vehicle or pay a transfer fee uh it would add a broad uh it would add to a brand of loyalty the same way gaming companies and cell phone companies keep you in their ecosystem by letting you transfer purchases to upgraded\n\nhardware um yeah i think we'll we'll give it some thought okay the fourth question is what are the remaining constraints to be solved for solar roof installations to ramp significantly carl yeah i'm on the solar roof engineering and installation the biggest constraint right now in solar roof ramp is getting enough installers on board and trained and experienced we've made a lot of progress on this in in q3 and we're continuing to hire the next opportunity is improving the material flow on the job site we've talked about this a lot in the factory as well that setting up the right packaging kitting so that every every installer on the roof has the parts they need at their fingertips also we've had great response from third-party roofing contractors as they're\n\nramping up installations for solar roof on their customer homes which is a big source of future growth yeah i mean here's a way to think about a product in my opinion you have to say i think what do you want the world to look like when you look around the neighborhood in the future decade from now you know what do you want what products are going to make your life better what what future do you want i think a future where we've got beautiful roofs with generating energy that are tough and tougher and resilient and better in every way than a regular roof and a lab with energy that's the future we want the solar roof is a killer product this will become obvious next year thank you and the last question from retail shareholders is you recently referred to\n\ntesla as a conglomerate of startups other than manufacturing electric cars what do you suppose will be the most valuable business units within tesla over the next five to seven years could you envision any of them ever spinning out from tesla well yeah think about this today tesla is probably there's probably in excess of a dozen startups effectively in tesla every major product line is a startup um every every new big new plant is a startup um and sometimes frankly we have to learn a lesson a few times before it sinks in um but and you know even things like service and sales are our startups other car companies oems they don't own their sales and service so we have to create our service network we have to create our sales and delivery network we have\n\nto do this in i don't know 40 countries multiple languages something that people don't even don't really even know much about is our internal applications team that that writes the core uh technology that runs the company um we are not dependent on um enterprise software like for those who understand what this means this is a very big deal in my heart as well to the great work of the internal applications team um that they're right there at the nervous system the operating system of the company the tesla operating system uh extremely fundamental um obviously insurance is is substantial so insurance could very well be under 30 40 percent of of the the value of the cart business frankly um and as we've talked about before with a much better feedback loop\n\num instead of it being statistical it can be specific now obviously somebody does not have to choose our insurance um but i think a lot of people will it's just it's going to cost less and be better so why wouldn't you uh then the whole autonomy thing is a startup the computer chip was designing our computer chips for the startup uh obviously cells are as a startup designing and making our own power electronics for the drive units designing manufacturing our own motors chargers the supercharger network is a startup the thing i think that people just don't really understand about tesla is that it's it's a whole chain of startups and they're like well you didn't do that before yeah we're doing it now and i mean i think so far we have not we've maybe been\n\na bit slow with some of the startups but i don't think we've had any any of them fail so so far so good no plans to spend anything out that just sounds com like added complexity thank you very much let's go to interditional investor questions the question number one is as they bridge to the riled hailing network could you leverage the insurance product to give customers the ability to rent out their vehicles via via the app thereby enabling the car to make money for them so basically proprietary version of two-row we're i think we're going to focus on enabling the robo taxi system so you can just basically like that's a that's a sub that's just really quite a small subset of the overall robo taxi or robocar thing where you can have the car be autonomous\n\nfor you uh you can have the car be you know share with friends and family uh you can add or remove it from the network you can have it be entirely in the network i mean if you're an uber or left driver you could be managing you know a fleet of 10 cars um it sort of seems like a you know shepherd attending the block type of thing it's like you just get way more leverage so you know i think that that's that's sort of a week we could do that and it wouldn't be very difficult um but we we're going to just be focused on just having an autonomous network you know that has sort of elements of uberlift and airbnb thank you and the second question from institutionals is residential energy use accounts for roughly the same magnitude of carbon emissions as road\n\ntransport today's boilers and aircon units are profoundly unsexy could you elaborate on hints that hvac advances with the why it could also find use in a domestic system yeah go ahead drew i was just going to say i mean i think one of the things we focused on with the model y and now model 3 pump system was learning how to build a tightly integrated system capable of moving heat to and from anywhere really powertrain battery cabin the environment in outside ambient temperatures all the way down to like negative 20 uh c so 30c and that's definitely applicable to uh to the home's needs of heating and cooling the the home and the water in your house so certainly applicable um elon yeah absolutely um i think like the heat if what he pop in the car being able\n\nto use the battery as both a thermal and an electric energy reservoir is very significant same thing could be applied to a home with the water heater so and the battery pack itself of course so i think there's potential for an integrated home system that canada's power generation storage heating cooling air filtration uh you know water purification in a really tight package um we don't actually have like a prototype or anything but i think conceptually that is something that would be probably good to have thank you the third question from institutionals is if meeting your long-term volume targets requires price reductions that preclude you from achieving your low double digits stated margin targets for the autos business will you still reduce prices accordingly\n\num well we want to make our cars more affordable and it's always important to separate out affordability from value for money um you know if if the car's car is too expensive or given products too expensive then people don't have enough money in the bank account they simply can't buy it no matter what the value proposition is so it is important to lower the prices in order to such that people can literally just have enough money to buy it i i do not think we lack for desire for our products but we do lack for affordability and so we have to improve the affordability of our products so they are not out of reach of people we want to bring them more in reach over time um but but also improve our cost of production um also you know we get hopefully a little\n\nbit better every year sort of sometimes a lot better and in terms of margins like all of these margins are going to look pretty comically small when you factor in autonomy yeah um two things i'll add to that um without a doubt i mean we're moving forward to push as much volume as we reasonably can uh you know so elon talked through earlier kind of how the s-curve and the timeline of incremental factors looks like and so we're moving full speed ahead with as much volume as we can re reasonably move forward with but the the second comment i'd make is if you just look at the journey of the company uh over the last year and a half we have grown volumes and grown gross margins uh despite a number of price reductions over that period of time and we've kept\n\nopex fairly stable during that period of time as well and so the key is what elon mentions here i mean we have to improve the affordability of the vehicle we have to also continue to make progress improving the cost structure of not only cogs but of opex which we've demonstrated over the last year and a half i think quite successfully and improved the value of the vehicles at the same time so in addition to reducing the cost of the car we're making the cars better and that's the formula to sell the volume that's what we're focused on thank you very much the fourth question from institutionals is at one at what point do you expect to have enough internal or external battery capacity to start ramping up stationary storage deployments again yeah we're we're\n\nramping up stationary storage a lot so i mean it's approximately doubling that we expect is approximately double um next year so that's pretty good um and uh hopefully we can accelerate that in years to come and approximately doubling it this year too so the growth yeah yeah i mean if you just keep doubling things pretty soon you hit the mass of the universe and we'll need to start you know turning jupiter into cells and the last question from institutionals is manufacturing is hard delays happen what contingencies do you have in place to ensure that bottlenecks that you might encounter while renting internal cell production will not preclude you from the from your ability to hit your model y production volume targets in berlin and texas yeah so i think\n\nit's we've tried to de-risk uh 2021 so that there's um you know almost no dependency on our internal cell production uh it's very very small uh the internal cell production will help us ramp in 22 but we're not dependent on it for 21.\n\nand to de-risk the manufacturing system itself that was one of the reasons why we located our pilot production facility here in fremont so we can rapidly iterate on manufacturing scale-up challenges provides rapid feedback to the design of both the product and the equipment yeah and i know our pilot line is pretty big as plot lines go it's uh it would be in the top 10 cell factories on earth i believe yeah that's true a sub-scale one yeah thank you very much and now we can go to questions uh from analyst offline cherie thank you again we remind you to please ask one question and one follow-up question our first question will come from rod lashay with wolf research please go ahead hi everybody um just wanted to ask about uh the targets from your your battery\n\nday um looked like you you could be approaching something like 20 million vehicles by 2030 if you you hit those goals um could you maybe share with us a little bit more of a midterm target like where would you be by 2025 and and maybe uh give us a little bit more insight into the investment required to get there just to put that extra two to two and a half billion dollars per year in into context yeah i i mean i think the the tricky thing with trying to predict things midway through an exponential is that you you know if if things are doubling every year or even just growing 50 then if you shift one you know plus minus one year it has a huge effect on the the number um is so then it sounds like wow you either massively exceeded or massively uh undershot\n\nbut it's actually what's going on isn't a a giant s-curve so a whole bunch of pretty big escrows that integrate into a gigantic escrow um so that's why it's difficult to predict the middle and i'm not saying for sure we would hit 20 million vehicles but it just seemed like a good goal to have because that would mean that we're replacing one percent of the global fleet per year um and it's so it's difficult to say that we're you know are we really changing the world if we're not um switching out one percent of the global uh fossil fuel vehicles i mean it's i'm not sure that we can make that argument unless we unless we change at least one percent of the vehicles per year so that that's where the two the 20 million vehicles for a year comes from it's like\n\none percent of two billion vehicles which is the the global fleet currently the global feed is growing uh so it'll probably be a bit bigger in the future um so okay you know it's hard to say it's like i'm gonna map an s cove to a 20 million dollar a 20 million vehicle target in 2030 and move the slider around and see what that number looks like that will give you about as much insight as we have okay um and just secondly um you know if solid state lithium metal were to become viable you just maybe just pass along your perspective on that and would you be able to repurpose most of what you're putting into place uh for changes in technology yeah i mean answering the first part um the the self-production system is fairly agnostic on anode cathode electrolyte\n\nseparate that kind of thing it's we could change and we will change and upgrade the all aspects of the cell so [Music] we could for example make iron prostate or nickel manganese or something like that um it's quite adaptable um so i wouldn't i wouldn't say it's just too much more about the the lithium like a pure lithium anode is um i mean not it's not as as it's it's not as great as it may sound um you know uh yeah um but volumetrically you're you're not gaining all that much uh yeah because if you've got nothing on the so it's on the outside you've got and just played out lithium it's got it's got to go somewhere so you could have room for it yeah yeah lithium is less volumetrically dense in the pure metal form than it is intercalated into silicon\n\nso it's kind of hard to understand but that that's that's the truth and and then as we showed in our presentation the total anode cost that we're talking about is only a dollar or two per kilowatt hour so the value of like removing the end of material isn't super high either so yeah i totally agree elon yeah exactly um but if it should turn out that if your lithium anode is the right move that would simply that would be no problem right agreed all right thank you thank you next next question please our next question will come from colin rush with oppenheimer please go ahead um thanks so much guys yeah you're talking about insourcing um a number of processes can you talk a little bit about which processes you're you're moving in house and the equipment\n\nthat you're planning to make yourself uh versus uh some of the equipment that you'd be buying from other folks sorry are you talking about the for cell manufacturing or something or well manufacturing for sure as well as on the molds uh they talked about but you know in terms of the catbacks budget that you mentioned earlier talking about uh you know the number of processes coming in house um and which equipment pieces you're planning to make yourself versus buying okay well i mean tesla is absolutely vertically integrated compared to other order companies or basically almost any company the we have a massive amount of internal manufacturing technology that we that we build ourselves we literally make the machine we in fact we we design so like okay what\n\nis the thing we want to make design the machine that will make that thing then we make the machine this is what this this makes it quite difficult to copy tesla which we're not actually all that opposed to people copying us but it's quite difficult because you can't do catalog engineering you can't just i'll pick up the supplier catalog i'll get one of this machine one of that machine bingo i'm now on tesla um you have to there is no catalog what cat you know so we made the machine that made the machine that made the machine it could no no we don't we don't want to get carried away here but um and quite frankly we would like to outsource less um that would be great um because then if we could outsource if we could take something that we're doing and outsource\n\nit then we could take those people and and we're going to have them do something else um but um yeah it's like we just make a crazy amount of machinery internally um this is puzzles are not well well understood um if you walk around the factory you can get a sense for it and um yeah i don't mean i don't know if this is like a smart move but i i just know like hey if we're trying to make progress and nobody's got the machine that we we need we got to make it so that's what we do um okay and then the second question is really around you know the balance sheet has really changed you guys have run awfully lean and you've got a lot more a lot more cushion at this point and obviously there's opportunities around insurance to drive out some of the cost of ownership\n\nas well as financials you know how are you guys thinking about that as you move into trying to accelerate demand a little bit and your ability to to leverage your access to capital and enable some of those uh those other products um yeah is that changing from from where you've been in the past yeah i mean something like insurance is a good example of a product that's basically made by our internal applications team um so we just we made the insurance product and connected to the car look at the data calculate the risk this is all internally basically internal software application um it's pretty low capital but has very high return i i don't know if we're trying to spend money at the fastest rate that we can possibly spend it and not waste it that's our\n\ncurrent plan and so it's quite hard to spend money without wasting it um or just you know we're like really just trying to not waste too much of it frankly we will certainly waste some of it uh but trying to waste not waste too much of it this is very difficult um but otherwise we just try to spend money as quickly as possible in a way that is sensible and yields more value than it costs thank you our next question will come from adam jonas with morgan stanley please go ahead hey elon um question on lidar if lidar were totally free would you want to use it in your cars near term would that tech significantly helped tesla in the training of your neural network for fsd i mean totally free probably not i think probably i i think even if it was free we wouldn't\n\nput them on okay um let's follow up then um amazon appears to be investing and building an autonomous or electric transport network of some ilk through some organic investments but also you know zuke's aurora ribbon etc what advice would you give jeff bezos in his endeavor well i don't know how much he cares about this but i guess he sure is investing a lot of money in it um i mean i think he also needs to vote for if you care about autonomy you need to focus on vision because the entire road system is based on passive optical so you have to solve passive optical for to have a self-driving system that is a generalized solution and once you solve past optical you've solved self-driving so why bother with anything else thanks elon thank you welcome to the\n\nnext question please our next question will come from pierre farragu with new street research please go ahead um hey thanks a lot for taking my question a very simple one you haven't talked that much about like the cyber truck today uh and i was wondering uh how like the ramp of that product is uh looking like when we when we should see [Music] the product hitting the road and how fast you expect to rent volumes can i have a quick follow-up sure um i was in the studio actually on last friday with franz and team just going over the just sort of sort of some improved improvements to the cyber truck you know generally with you know i tell you we we really aim to make the car that is delivered better than the car that is uh unveiled um because always drove\n\nme crazy you know car companies would unveil these awesome looking cars and you're like great i can't wait till i make that and then they have the car they actually make this like much worse and that is just it's like really disappointing so man we always want to make the car that we deliver better than the car we unveil and that's the goal with the cyber truck so um there's like a lot of a lot of small improvements compared to what was unveiled um it's you know i think it's going to be better than what we showed and um yeah it's it's cool like it it's going to be made in um in austin so this can you know depending on completing that factory and there are obviously new technologies with the you know high hardness uh kind of armored exoskeleton this is\n\nnever been done before so there'll be there'll probably be some challenges along the way um and obviously something something that's extremely high hardness and difficult to scratch or dance is also difficult to form so it's there's some manufacturing challenges there that's why it's so plainer although it also looks good i think from a cleaner standpoint um yeah if we focus well we will be able to do some cyber truck deliveries uh towards the end of next and towards the end of next year yeah so it's difficult to predict um i'd say there's probably a lot of deliveries in 22 and some deliveries towards the next year if things go well okay and now i'm trying to get a sense of how next year is going to look like so if i look at your production capacity at\n\nthe end of this year it's going to be almost 850 000 units on an annualized basis and you're going to increase capacity in shanghai open berlin you say today you would open austin as well so you're probably going to end the year above the million units and and so am i right thinking next year we should expect you to deliver uh like somewhere like between 840 000 and 1 million cars during the year yeah we'll provide uh guidance on 2021 after next earnings call i mean it's it's in that vicinity um yeah you're not far off thank you thank you thank you our next question will come from dan levy with credit suisse please go ahead hi uh good evening thank you just i wanted to start with a question on the quarter um zack maybe you could give us a sense of uh\n\nwhere directionally model y and china model 3 gross margin was in the quarter relative to fremont model 3 and then just a little more color on the gross margin in the quarter was this just purely a function of higher volume or was there also uh fsd revenues just puts and takes on the gross margin in the quarter sure on your question about fsd uh there was a small amount of deferred revenue released is not particularly material in the 10 million dollar range for the quarter with respect to product margins um you know what we're seeing across the board is just continued reduction in cost really across every product shanghai continues to make good progress there model y cost is also coming down quite quickly as we branch that but we've got it in the past\n\nthat model y cost should be roughly equivalent to the model 3 built-in fremont cost it's not quite there and it's also a bit of a moving target as model 3 fremont cost comes down model y also has to come down with that but we're generally seeing strength in in shanghai margin strength in model y margins and not too far off of it we're seeing strength in model 3 fremont and snx margins so overall for the quarter i think it was quite a good story for the products great great thanks um and then this is the follow up wanted to ask about your your strategy uh in europe and i think your strategy generally has been you know you cut cost so that allows you to cut price and you can generate the extra volume and i think that's you know what we're seeing in china\n\nyou know the use of lfp that's that's a good example so once you ramp in berlin what's a reasonable expectation of what pricing might look like in europe and how flexible are you going to be on pricing you know to generate uh incremental red credit so you know uh margins out of the gate that are a little low but you know that are then used for the red credits that you know help to offset that yeah but what i think i would say generally to the question is i mean we've been in a position for for some time now where we are prioritizing where in the world we send our production and you know there's different factors to that depending upon when different product changes are made what the logistics routing looks like different things going on in different markets\n\nbut we are in a position where we need to prioritize uh ideally i mean what we're trying to do as fast as we possibly can is get production up higher so that we're not in a position of needing to prioritize again um there are yeah i think that gets at the sentiment of your question okay let's go to the next question please our next question will come from gene munster with loop ventures please go ahead good evening uh question on the semi you know if you could just walk us through the development of mega chargers platooning and maybe just how you think about autonomy for tesla semi and what it's how you envision it impacting the broader trucking industry beyond just ev well actually jerome do you want to ask that yeah we continue the development of the\n\nsemi and in particular mega chargers we realized that the 350 kilowatt or or or so that we might be looking for cars is not going to be enough for semi so we're looking for something much more uh powerful than that that can achieve essentially charging as fast uh the semi as as you during a break during your driving time so that you can drive until the next break yeah so there is no usable or efficient time wasted for charging uh the semi that's that's the goal um we're working with uh other parties to make sure that there is a standard infrastructure that will be able to uh be deployed uh for all customers um yeah that's probably all i can say at this point yeah yeah we're not working just we're not working in isolation yeah we're trying to we have to\n\ninvent it because it doesn't exist you know but we're we're trying to invent something uh that could be uh helpful for everybody yeah just as a note on the sort of semi the the semi does consume a lot of cells so it's uh you know caught you know four to six times more than a passenger vehicle very cool five you know there's five ish times so um if we are self-constrained it is it kind of it's difficult to ramp up the semi because there's no cells um so we need to solve the cell constraint before ramping semi to significant volume that's the only real constraint on semi-progress um and uh you know just we found over and over again we were just we just kept running into self self production limitations um and then we're just taking things out of one pocket\n\nand putting them in another this is it we just need more cells so that we can do more stationary storage more vehicles um more vehicle lines yeah we need more cells so make makes sense uh a question just if you think about you know you've talked about robo taxi and how you i think that's going to impact kind of humans moving around how do you think about semi impacting freight longer term i mean is this uh something that is nice to have and a compliment to all of your tech getting in new markets or do you think that this could be a material business i think it's very material for sure um i mean really long term all transport will go autonomous yeah horses are already autonomous but all transport will go autonomous yeah so including semi so it'll be pretty\n\nsignificant and the technology that we're putting in semi is identical to what we're putting in the other vehicles yeah it's just big bigger bigger and more motors yep thank you let's go our next question will come from ben callow with baird please go ahead hey thanks for taking my question hey elon what do you think the biggest structural issue is with the let's call it old school oems um or one or two of the structural issues for them not getting their act together and catching up with you and then um you you mentioned what you we want the world to look like ahead of us what do you envision that is like just tesla or tesla and rivian or or or what thanks well i do think there will be other car companies i don't think we're going to be the only one so\n\ni mean the thing is that like like what what uh other car companies do even in the auto segment is quite a small subset of what tesla is so you know tesla we we design and build we're very vertically integrated so we're designing a building so much of the car so much more of the car than other oems who will largely go to the traditional supply base and like i call it catalog engineering you know so um it's not very adventurous uh and and basically it ends up like all the products end up looking the same because they're going to the same suppliers so i mean to the degree that you inherit legacy components you inherit the legacy limitations and cost structure and so you kind of need to make new ingredients new parts and then you need then there's no machine\n\nto make those parts so you have to make the machine that makes the parts so tesla's like we probably i mean we might be in order of magnitude more vertically integrated than other car companies if we're not now we certainly will be um and then we also uh we also have to create our sales and service and distribution system in i don't know something on the report 40 countries you know somewhere it'll be over 100 countries whereas the other uh car companies do not own their sales and service and distribution so you know they they kind of you know assemble parts from a supply base and then and then hand them to a dealer base so it's just like it's not just like it it's like comparing tesla to a car company like just comparing just really one facet or dimension\n\nof tesla we're like maybe 10 in common with other car companies thank you let's go to the last question please and our final question today will come from philly pushua with jeffreys please go ahead um yes thank you for taking my questions i've got two um the first one for me is try to understand your business model for stationary storage have your thoughts on it i mean there are two broad directions for me one is selling hardware which is a bit of a cost plus business and i'm just wondering if there's an opportunity where tesla could actually share into the savings that utilities in particular could be able to achieve and like grid stabilization the information i was able to get on your business in australia a few years ago suggests that given the savings\n\nthat are achieved your your hardware could have been sold at a higher price i'm just wondering if you have some shared views on where the difference is going yeah i think you're probably right about that uh um i mean rj and zach what do you guys think yeah i mean we're already seeing this in australia where we're seeing behind the meter aggregation that is providing grid services back to the grid which effectively reduces the price to the customer and reduces the prices for the grid operator so you're seeing this trend happening across the globe and it's going to be at the residential level as well at the wholesale level so mega pack on one end and then power wall on the other side those two working together in tandem and the software layer on top of\n\nit auto bidder being that that really is going to help make the grid more efficient using the hardware platform and software together and just a point of clarification like that the large power plant in large battery power plant in australia like we continue to operate that power plant and generate revenue in the market so whether we could have sold it for more or less like we're continuing to make money off of that power plant okay thank you and the following question i had was during the battery day you talked about this cell vehicle integration um approach it's very interesting and when i look at that when i think about it it looks like this means that the skateboard design the tesla pioneered and many of your followers are using is going to become\n\nobsolete or am i not thinking about the right way it will be obsolete long term yes but i mean yes i mean several years from now it's it it for now it's not like existing cars stop hiring value it's just that this that if you have an if you have the if you have a structural pack where the pack is contributing uh structural value to the car um because of like the sort of like the composite honeycomb effect of you know shear transfer between an upper and lower plate then anything that doesn't do that is going to have to have duplicate hardware um it's going to weigh more it's going to cost more um and then the same goes for the front and rear castings um i mean we're clearly frank we're trying to make the car like you'd make a toy um you know if you had\n\na toy model car how would and then it's got to be real cheap and look look great um how would you make that you cast it that's how it's done it would be absurd to make it up of tiny little pieces of of stamped metal uh joined in complex ways so it's sort of a natural thing to do and then the same goes for using the energy storage the battery as a structure which is done for aircraft wings and for rockets with the early rockets and aircraft they they had a separate aeroshell from the propellant tanks or fuel tanks and and then they realize that doesn't make sense and you've got to integrate you've got to have your fuel tank in wing shape you've got to have your propellant tanks in the shape of the body of the the rocket for example um you don't want to\n\nput a box on a box basically uh so you know it's so which over many years made it like basically uncompetitive to have an aircraft that has separate fuel tanks uh for from the wing the wing the wings need to be feeling um but like i wouldn't think of this as like it's like an overnight transition it's several years uh if but but then like i said over time it just it would be competitive to have a different architecture in my opinion thank you very much unfortunately this is all the time we have for the q a today i appreciate all your great questions and we'll speak to you again in about three months thank you goodbye thank you ladies and gentlemen this concludes today's conference call thank you for your participation [Music] you"},"languages":["en"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U_Zr-bhHW9A"},{"id":"mars-society-convention-2020-10-16","type":"interview","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9OnelpilSkU","title":"Mars Society Convention","titles":{"en":"Mars Society Convention","de":"Mars Society Convention","fr":"Mars Society Convention"},"date":"2020-10-16","summary":"Robert Zubrin interviews Musk about Starship, Mars colonization and making humanity multiplanetary.","text":"Okay, I think we're here. Are we live? Jim. Yes, Robert. We are live. Okay. Well, then we're live. So, uh everybody wait I would just wait for a moment, Robert. I It's okay. He's here. I want Yeah, right here. Okay, perfect. Okay. So, uh Well, Elon, you need no introduction, but for those who don't know, you are the founder and chief engineer of SpaceX and a long-time friend of the Mars Society, and we're delighted to have you back.\n\nWe've got 9,000 people registered to hear you today. All right, cool. Sounds good. Okay. So, I should like change this perspective. I'll see if I can change the perspective. Is that better? Or is that worse? I think you were better before. Okay. Okay. So, listen. Uh why don't we just start out with the basics? You started SpaceX to make humanity multi-planetary. Um Yeah. Why do you see that as a critical goal? Yes.\n\nUm I think uh we we want to be on track to become a multi-planetary species and and a space-faring civilization in order to find out what the universe is all all about. Like, what, you know, uh and ensure the continuance of consciousness as we know it. As we know it, we're the only life. I mean, people think there's aliens, but honestly, I haven't seen any sign of aliens. Um so, as far as we know, we're the only the the only life.\n\nUh we could be the only life. So, let's put it that way. And we need to take the set of actions that are most likely to make the future good and result in the continuance of consciousness as we know it. Okay. So, okay. Well, obviously, your your your means to that end is is to open the space frontier with reusable launch vehicles. Uh you've gone through some partially reusable ones, and now it's Starship.\n\nCan you explain the basically the line of thinking that led you to the Starship design? I forgot what I need to look at to look like I'm looking at the camera. Um Um so, let's see. Well, on the Starship front, um we've gone through many iterations, uh starting from not really knowing how to build rockets at all, uh with with Falcon 1 and having four failures actually in reaching orbit. Uh three Yeah, that's right.\n\nThree failures, then the fourth one got to orbit. So, fourth one's the charm. Um so, we only barely survived. Um I was at zero cash, basically, when we got that fourth one to orbit. Um and if that fourth one hadn't worked, we we would we would have been curtains. So, it's definitely not been smooth sailing. Uh it's been a very difficult uh ride. Um with just a lot that has been discovered along the way.\n\nUh I mean, just just trying to figure out what questions to ask about the design was was quite difficult. Um I think it's helpful to have as the objective the creation of a a self-sustaining city on Mars. I think this is this is has to be the objective, not simply a few people or a base, but a self-sustaining uh city. Um the acid test really is if these if the ships from Earth stop coming for any reason, does Mars die out? For any reason.\n\nIt could be from any banal or it could be nuclear Armageddon. Doesn't matter. If the if the ships stop coming for any reason, does the city on Mars die out? If it does, we have not we're we're not in a secure place. Um so, I mean, I think this this really might come down to, you know, on the the great filter front, is this are we going to create a self-sustaining city on Mars before or after World War III?\n\nAnd I think the probability of it being created after World War III, hopefully the hopefully there's never a World War III, but uh after is low. So, we should try to create to make the city self-sustaining before any possible World War III. This is just a risk. This is not, you know, I mean, sometimes people have difficulty dealing with with probabilities. They see it this way or that way, but it's really we just face a series of probabilities.\n\nUm and uh there's some chance that we will have a giant war or a super volcano or um you know, a a comet might hit the Earth or we might just self-extinguish in some uh it might be more of a more of a whimper than a bang. Um Yeah, and frankly, right now, civilization is not looking super uh strong, you know, it's it's looking a little little rickety right now, to be frank.\n\nWould you say that it's it's more than a lifeboat that it would actually make you civilization more robust, clearly more able to divert asteroids from hitting the Earth and uh otherwise help? Yeah. Um it's not an it's not an escape vehicle. It It's a it's simply uh something that it's like you can I mean, unless Mars is Mars is made self-sustaining, which will probably not happen in my lifetime.\n\nUh it is certainly not It's mean It's meaningless to have an escape uh you know, lifeboat or or escape hatch or something if you will you are simply moving to another place where you will soon die out. That doesn't count. It's not much of a lifeboat, really.\n\nUm so, this is really about to say minimizing existential risk for civilization as a whole and and then uh having an exciting future that you can look forward to, and a future where we are a space-faring civilization and uh multi-planetary species is far more exciting than one where we are not. Um I mean, that's an exciting future, and being forever confined to Earth until some eventual extinction event is depressing and not fun.\n\nUm and we need things that make you want to get out of bed in the morning and be excited about future. And I think being a space-faring civilization is one of those things that everyone can get can get excited about. But but can you maybe just kind of lead people on the path that led you from the design of but for Falcon 9 to Falcon Heavy, but now Starship is is is rather different than Falcon Heavy. Um Yes.\n\nthe engineering Uh actually, I didn't quite answer your original question. I the the you first have to say what what is the goal. Um and once you have what is the goal, you can then measure the various designs against that goal. Um if otherwise, you're saying, \"How are you evaluating Why is one design better than another?\" What's your goal? It's got to be a goal.\n\nSo, the the goal is get enough tonnage to Mars to and enough people to make Mars self-sustaining as quickly as possible. So, then you say, \"Okay, let's back back out the math on this.\" We're going to need We're going to need a lot of tonnage. Uh maybe I don't know, 100,000 tons, maybe a million tons. So, then you can't be faffing around with these expendable rockets. They're a joke. They're they're absurd. Even Saturn V is tiny potatoes.\n\nUm we we need it because if if you want to get like like let's say first-order approximation, um a million tons to the surface of Mars, um inclusive of people, uh you know, that that means probably something around four or five million useful tons of payload in the into lower Earth orbit. You know, for every ton you get to lower Earth orbit, you're going to get four or five tons. Prob- hopefully closer to five.\n\nIt's it's you know, these this math is is really start squeezing like tiny percentages, but let's say I can confidently if you got five tons to lower Earth orbit, you can get one ton to Mars. That's that's con- confident. Maybe you can get maybe maybe you only need four. Anyway, point is you need five million tons into Earth orbit to get one million tons to Mars. Now, let's put this into perspective.\n\nTotal global capacity to orbit of all expendable rockets is around around five or 600 tons, I think. And if you said, \"Okay, the world's going to end if you do not increase your capacity,\" perhaps they could do 1,000 tons. Okay, so, that's uh 1/5,000th 1/5,000th of what's needed. This is ridiculous. Um you know, um it's it's not even, you know, 0. 1% would be, you know, 1/1,000th. So, it's way less than 0. 1%. We have way less than 0.\n\n1% of the capability needed to create a if if everyone went full tilt with expendable rockets. Expendable rockets are the are the absolute are just utterly stupid, in my opinion. Utterly stupid. Um they're a complete waste of time. People should stop wasting their time. If you try to sell an expendable plane, people would laugh you out of the room. If you try to sell an expendable car, they would laugh you out of the room.\n\nIf you try to sell an expendable horse, they would laugh you out of the room and think there's something wrong with you mentally. Um So, all these things are reusable. It's It's essential to be reusable. Now, creating a reusable rocket, orbital rocket, is very difficult. Doing a suborbital reusable rocket is easy. Doing a reusable orbital rocket is hard.\n\nUm even when a lot of smart people have put a quite a bit of effort into it, they might get 2 or 3% of the lift off mass to lower orbit. Um And a really epic rocket would get four. Um I'm not sure I don't think anyone's ever gotten before. Um So, but what you basically need to have something that in expendable form would probably get about 4% of its payload to orbit. Such that you can spend about half of that 4% uh on reusability.\n\nAnd and still net out to around 2%. uh payload to orbit. Um So, you have to make both the booster and the upper stage and the fairing everything reusable. With Falcon 9 So, so with Falcon 1, we did actually attempt to do this. So, we had a parachute in the first stage. Um but really did not appreciate that that first stage was going to hit the atmosphere like a concrete wall.\n\nSo, at first I got pretty mad at the parachute supplier until I realized it's not their fault. You know, we were just being fools. Um that that that thing was exploding as soon as it hit the it hit the atmosphere. Um and you know, so you you really got to do something to to um ease the transition into the atmosphere at at at high Mach number. It is very hot and there's a lot of force and a lot of heat.\n\nSo, then with Falcon 9, we made a bigger rocket. Um and our scale matters here because you do get basically economies of scale. You can't have a tiny rocket. Um with a tiny rocket, you basically just end up carrying your electronics to orbit. So, your avionics, you know.\n\nSo, in a little rocket, uh you if if you're if you're small enough, the the just your your avionics alone uh ends up being a significant percentage of your uh payload and and then you end up you know, if you've got a rocket that was I don't know, you're trying to get a 10,000-lb rocket for example or even a 10,000-kg rocket to orbit and make you basically get zero pylon.\n\nUm Now, as you get bigger, the the rocket gets bigger, but the brain doesn't get bigger. The brain can stay the same size. So, your avionics, for example, uh become a almost not almost zero percent of the weight of a perfect rocket. Um Then, for big rockets, you also get uh gauge advantages. So, this is We're really in the nuances of rocket design and manufacturing here. If you the things are very small, it's difficult to get your gauge accurate.\n\nUm So, the basically how thick is the material? Um like you want to do castings, for example, there's a minimum gauge or thickness for a casting. Um there's a minimum kind of error bar on the um you know, on this the the material skins. Even for a composite rocket, you've got uh you know, you you start getting granularity issues. As you get bigger, uh you're no longer you're no longer gauge limited.\n\nUm and you can get your your percentage accuracy on the thickness of walls and castings can be can be very good. Um Uh these are nuances that I think almost no one appreciates, but suffice to say that there are advantages to size. Um And you can certainly see this in many walks of life where uh if you've got a truck that's carrying cargo, you it's more efficient to have a big semi truck, not a bunch of little trucks.\n\nUm For ships, uh it would be pretty silly to see container ships uh or containers going across the ocean one at a time with little outboard motors. That would be silly. You put them on a container ship. You have big ships, not little little tiny ships. Um So, anyway, so size matters. It really does. Um and for reusability, it matters. So, with with Falcon 9, after immense effort, we were able to uh achieve reusability of the booster.\n\nUm And um we're mostly achieving reusability at this point with the fairing as well. Um but this is a This is a monumental effort. Uh And I think within its architecture, Falcon 9 is close to a local maximum. Um If you say uh you know, gas generator cycle kerosene uh oxygen vehicle um of this particular size could with uh a 12-ft or 3. 6-m diameter, um which is which is that size for because of of road transport limitation.\n\nSo, you go bigger than that, you can't transport it over the road and your logistics costs become extreme. Um So, but but having a long thin rocket is not very mass efficient. Um you you you you end up having to have thicker skins to take out the bending moments. Um So, we're we're and then and then having like kerosene is is not the right fuel. Methane is a much better fuel. You can get higher ISP. Um the specific impulse basically efficiency.\n\nI mean, for for those who I think probably a lot of us who are listening know what the rocket equation is, but in simple terms, it's actually it's very simple. It's like a rocket is going to go further uh if if the gas if it shoots the gas out of the end faster um and if a bigger percentage of its mass is propellant. It is obvious. So, that's what that's what the rocket equation says.\n\nUm So, shoot shoot gas out faster um in in the right direction and increase the the propellant uh the percentage of propellant, that that's going to get you go allow you to go further. Um with methane, you can shoot out faster. And And you can make it on Mars. You can make it on Mars, for sure. Um Exactly. So, uh um being able to to do in situ propellant development is or production is very important.\n\nUm So, you don't have to carry your return fuel with you or return fuel and oxygen. It's to be in like um Rockets are mostly oxygen or oxidizer. So, um And there's there's some other subtle advantages with a ox oxygen-methane system in that you can go to a higher percentage a higher mass ratio of oxygen.\n\nSo, with kerosene, you're you have a called roughly two and a half to one um oxygen to fuel mass ratio with uh methane, you're more like three and a half to one. Um and you actually want that higher mass ratio because oxygen is very dense and it's inexpensive. Um especially on Earth. So, you're going to you know, you have all these plants just making oxygen all day long and thank them just making oxygen. Um They don't have to do anything.\n\nSo, the cost of oxygen is basically the cost of electricity. Um Anyway, so going from Falcon um going from uh you know, um kerosene, which is basically the same as jet fuel. It's like RP-1 rocket propellant grade kerosene is just um a tighter grade of jet fuel. Um You want to go from that to something which has where the gas shoots out faster, and that's methane, and where um in situ production of propellant is easier.\n\nUm So, that's that's why the change from from kerosene to methane. Methane is just CH4. It's one carbon, four hydrogens. Um and then the oxygen pairs pairs together, so you have it's it's called O2 because oxygen pair bonds. Um And obviously you know all this stuff. I'm just Yeah. basically helping for the audience. together. Large size, twice the take off thrust of a Saturn V, but Yes.\n\nabout the same payload, but that gets you reusability, much cheaper, in situ propellant. It all is coherent. Yes. And uh so, let me ask you with the thing that I think everybody wants to know, uh which is when? Um when are we going to see Starship do a high flight to stratosphere? When to orbit? When first payload to Mars? When first humans to Mars? All right. Well, it's not like I We're all seeing venturing into unknown territory.\n\nSo, it's not as though I I I have all these secret dates and I and I um you know, just keeping them from people, but So, so the my These are just guesses, obviously. Um I'm pretty I I say I'm 80 to 90% confident that we will reach orbit with Starship next year. Um Uh I think probably 50 or 60 50% confident that we'll be able to bring the ship and booster back. That's that's more of a dicey situation.\n\nUm We'll We'll probably lose a few ships before we we really get the atmospheric return and landing right. Uh we might lose Hopefully, we don't lose that uh Hopefully, we don't lose any boosters cuz that's a lot of engines. Um Our initial booster flights will just have maybe two to four engines, um not 28. 28's a lot of engines. So, um Yeah, and then I think we'll probably be in um do it doing high volume flights I think probably in 2022.\n\nSo, a couple years from now. Um But I'm I'm trying to make sure that that our rate of innovation increases, it does not decrease. Um if this is really essential, uh it In fact, if we do not see something close to an exponential improvement in our rate of innovation, we will not reach Mars. Like a pure linear doesn't get there. Not not while I'll be dead anyway before it gets there if it's pure linear.\n\nIf it's exponential, I think we we could get to Mars. We could we could probably send an uncrewed mission there in maybe 4 years. Um you know, there's a Mars conjunction every 26 months. There's one this year, so that means in a couple years from now there's another one, and then 4 years from now there's another one. I I I think we've got a fighting chance of of making the that second uh Mars transfer window.\n\nSo, one thing that is really um amazing uh about uh SpaceX to those of us who have experience in the aerospace industry is is the rate of innovation. Uh you know, the last time you spoke to the Mars Society convention was 2012. Since then you made the Falcon 9 reusable, introduced Falcon Heavy, uh Crew Dragon, a satellite constellation, and you're in the middle of developing Starship.\n\nUh so, what what is your you know, what would you say is your methodology that allows you to innovate so swiftly? I don't really know. Uh We're focused on I guess it's it's it is important to have that have the objective you're right. Um that's why I was talking so much about the importance of making Mars a self-sustaining self-sustaining city on Mars.\n\nUm if if that's the objective, then obviously you know, just putting some satellites in orbit or is not that that's not important. You have to achieve full and rapid reusability. I emphasize full and rapid. Reusability is only relevant to the degree it's rapid and complete. Um and uh and then you also have to do orbital refueling. This is essential as well. Um and uh and then um propellant production on Mars is also essential.\n\nSo, uh you know, in in with that as the goal, then you know, with that that that means that that that that creates I think a good forcing function for radical innovation because in the absence of radical innovation, we have no chance of meeting that goal. Um whereas if our goal was simply, you know, defeat Lockheed and Boeing or something like that, that that we we would probably achieve that done it.\n\nIt it really that really wasn't even a thing, you know. Yeah. I wish it was. Um You know, like they're they're not really trying to do not even trying to do reusability, which is bizarre cuz they make planes that are reusable. Um so, I mean, if they if they talked to the you know, if they talked to one of their customers about buying a uh sir a Lockheed fighter jet or a Boeing aircraft like, \"Hey, we're going to sell you a 737 can be used once.\"\n\nAnd and it's not a 737 Max. Um but that would that turns out that was a single use airplane at the time. Um but it really uh it it would be an absurd thing for them to sell a single use aircraft, but they feel quite comfortable selling a single use rocket.\n\nUm Anyway, but if if our goal was simply we're going to have be the leaders in uh launching the conventional satellites that exist, uh we would probably approach that in a sort of logarithmic basis where you know, you you'd get there and you'd sort of slowly make progress towards doing 10 launches a year, 12 launches a year, and while they do six or something like that. I don't know.\n\nUm But if since the goal is, \"Hey, we need to make life multi-planetary before it's too late.\" Um and time really matters, so we're our state us it's like we're shooting for Mars, not just the moon. So, let's shoot for the moon, shoot for Mars. Um and then and then the you know, these these competitive things are are kind of small things along the way.\n\nUnless somebody else is shooting for Mars, they will not be competitive with something as pedestrian as launching a few satellites into Earth orbit. So, how how can the Mars Society help you? Well, I do think there's you know, in order to for there to be a self-sustaining city on Mars, there's we're going to need an intersection of sets here.\n\nOne set is the set of people that want to go and can either find sponsorship they can either afford themselves or find government sponsorship or take out a loan or whatever the case may be. Um Uh but somehow you've got to have the the set of people who want to go to Mars and can and can come up with the funds somehow to do that, and then then you know, it's it's it's I should say it's there's two sets.\n\nDesire to go to Mars and can afford to go to Mars. When the when desire to go to the people who want to go to Mars uh and and who who could afford to go to Mars, when that intersection of sets reaches a million roughly, then I think we will have this a city on Mars. Um so, we need both the the motivation and the the you know, we need both the means and the way. I mean, we I should I should It's like um We need we need people to want to go.\n\nand the way. The will and the way. Yes, exactly. The will and the way. Where there's a will, there's a way, but in this case we need will and a way. Uh so, when the will and the way intersect, then we will have a viable planetary species. The will and the way must intersect. So, I think the Mars Society could really help with the will. Okay, you provide the way, we'll provide the will. Yes, exactly. Uh okay.\n\nNow, your assistant Jen uh told me earlier that you have a hard cut off at the uh half hour. Is that true, or do you want to uh stay and take some questions from from the uh audience? Yeah, we can do maybe 5 10 minutes of questions. All right, great. So, um I we've got uh hundreds of questions, so uh would the uh Jim, do you want to read a question or two? Yeah, sure thing. Uh hi Elon, my name is James Burke. I'm from Seattle, Washington.\n\nWhere's the best place to land on Mars, do you think? Yeah, actually I'm not super sure. Um I can tell you what the criteria are that you'd want you'd want to be um um I I anyway, I think the the the short answer is mid-latitudes. Um probably on the north. Uh so, you want to be close to ice. Uh you don't want to be too you don't want to be too far away from the sun so you can get solar power.\n\nUm and you want to uh land at a low altitude so that you can take maximum effect of atmospheric braking. What do you think? Uh I like uh Melas Chasma. That's a nice little area at the bottom of Valles Marineris. The air pressure is high. Okay. Is there a lot of ice there? There's ice around there. I would have to look for it, though. Okay. That kind of brings me to my next question, and then I'm going to turn it over to Carrie to ask you one.\n\nUm how would you prioritize like missions like two through 10? Are you going to focus on exploration or building up the infrastructure or science? Uh we're going to I think the first order of business is build a propellant plant. Um I I mean, we can for sure lob out a bunch of droids, you know, that's no problem. Um I think why not, you know, we're going you know, and probably if anyone wants to put their droid on, we we can just take it.\n\nUm and you know, like, hey, it's basically a remote control car. Uh it's a solar powered remote control car. Um and we can provide the the the communication relay, so you know, you could just basically connect to your car from uh your computer at home and try you know, cruise your electric you could have legs, too, for that matter your rover device / car. That would be pretty cool.\n\nUm and um you know, there's a lot of people worried about like, you know, life contamination. And it's like, \"Listen, anything that can survive on Mars is very it's so freaking tough, it's insane. Um That it is cold and there's like a lot of UV radiation, and it if it's not going to be too worried about anything we send from Earth, let me put it that way. Um it's just tougher than anything on Earth.\n\nUm so, but but I think the first order of business is we've got to build a propellant a plant to make propellant. And it is we should have got to let me a lot of energy. Um we we've got to I mine some ice. Um and uh we've got you got CO2 from the atmosphere, so you got from the ice you got the H2O. Combine that H2O with the CO2, you get CH4 and O2.\n\nUm but that's a lot of energy, and it be quite hard, I think, to make that propellant uh plant It's reliable, Um So, but that that's the that's the primary order of business and then we can also look around and see if we can learn anything from a scientific standpoint. Carrie, do you want to go next? Sure, thank you, James. Um I'm Carrie Fehn. I live in Denver, Colorado. Um thank you for joining us today, Mr. Musk.\n\nUm we do have a lot of questions um from 13-14-year-olds. So, I'm just going to pick one and ask you. Um it's from a a teenager and her name is Dara and she wants to be an engineer and build Starships and robots and her dream is working for SpaceX. What should she focus on to be an engineer? Well, I think there's all kinds of engineering that's needed. Um So, you don't have to be an aerospace engineer.\n\nYou could be um in um electronics, you know, mechanical engineer, um electrical engineer, you could be software engineer. Uh I mean, there's a lot of engineering basically almost any kind of engineering. Um we'll need chemical engineering, I think also for figuring out how to make a good propellant depot or propellant propellant production plant. Um And uh yeah, I think physics in general is a good background for thinking.\n\nYou know, I just generally recommend people take physics courses because physics has the best tools for critical thinking. Thank you, Elon. James? Yeah, thanks, Carrie. Um another question. The Boring Company, now is that just kind of a an outfit to build tunneling machines that can work on Mars? Uh no. The Boring Company actually started as kind of a joke.\n\nUm And I for a lot lot of times people would ask me what what do I think of the opportunities are out there and for I don't know, 5 years or more I kept saying, \"Can someone please start a tunneling company?\" Uh cuz I think tunnels have a lot of opportunity for alleviating traffic in cities and just improving quality of life overall. I mean, there's a lot of streets you could turn into parks. Um you certainly wouldn't need parking.\n\nYou could just park cars underground. So, um and I just everyone thought I was joking and I was and then I was like, \"Well, I I guess we'll see what it takes to drill a tunnel dig a tunnel.\" And and um and all these like so-called traffic experts and I and haven't really made much progress uh you know, cities like LA and DC are still a traffic nightmare.\n\nI'm like, \"Okay, guys, well, if you've got such great ideas, why don't why is it still a traffic nightmare?\" Um so, if you build tunnels, you got to go 3D somehow, either underground or above ground. Uh like either air or ground. And the problem with air is like you know, any anything that can carry persons can generate a a lot of noise and a lot of wind force. So, and could fall on your head.\n\nAnd also kind of not be good for privacy and like, you know, you're just sitting in your backyard and someone's like flying over you. It's like not that cool. So, but tunnels are are working on those things. They're also weather proof. Um yeah, um don't have any privacy issues and uh safe and All right. They they will be They would make a big difference to traffic.\n\nAnd we have the first uh production tunnel or useful tunnel in Vegas that's going to open I think in a month or two. So, a few months, I guess. Um And hopefully we'll be ready for primetime around the Consumer Electronics Show. Um so, And now for for Mars, I think tunnels and and digging in general is good, but you need to build them very light system compared to what would matters on Earth.\n\nYou don't really care all that much about mass on Earth. We care a lot about mass going to Mars. Is it fair to say that you're learning some techniques that might apply to Mars with The Boring Company? Yeah. Yeah, probably. When do you think Starship will be able to be demonstrating refueling in lower Earth orbit? I think we've got a shot at doing that in '22. About 2 years. And then when do you guys think you'll have a Moon ship prototype?\n\nUm I probably 2 or 3 years. As soon as you've got orbital refueling, you can you can send significant payload to the Moon. Like significant meaning 100 tons of useful payload at a shot. So then from there, I think you mentioned Mars is a couple years after that. It's only a couple years after that because the Mars transit window is every 26 months.\n\nUm I think we we maybe have a shot of sending or you know, trying to send something to Mars in 3 years, but the window is is 4 years away because of the being in different parts of the solar system. Carrie asked a question from a young person. I'd like to also ask, do you have any tips for young people who love Mars but don't know how to help with the settlement of Mars?\n\nWell, I think definitely I you know, anyone who is a strong advocate for Mars, I think this really makes a difference, you know. Um a lot of times it's not even people aren't even thinking about it. And you know, you could talk to people at a party and they or talk to friends and they're like, it's just not even not even a a topic of conversation.\n\nSo, I think it could really help if everyone out there who who thinks this is important for the future of humanity and consciousness as a whole, um to make it part of what people are thinking about. Bring it up at at parties and talking friends and online. It's like it should be a thing that we do. Um and I think it's worth uh you know, maybe 1% of our resources at least.\n\nUm And that's not going to fundamentally change change things, your quality of life. If we have one If we spend 1% of our resources, you know, much less than health care, obviously. Um May- maybe probably even less than we spend on cosmetics, frankly. Um then that that would be enough to make life multi-planetary. But I we really need to make this a thing people talk about at least 1% of the time. And that that really matter.\n\nUm Like that as we're talking about earlier, we need we need the will, which is we need enough critical mass of people wanting to make it happen. The and and then we need the way and SpaceX is going to try hard to provide the way and and then once we show that there's a way, probably there will be other companies that also try to do it as well. Um So, we need the will and the way. They can provide either The will is extremely important.\n\nIt makes a huge difference. What's the coolest part of Starship development? Well, I guess the coolest part of Starship development is working with the just a great team of engineers um and coming up with uh interesting solutions. Um Yeah, you know, I I I think it's just fundamentally enjoyable if you're working with a lot of good smart people creatively towards solutions that have never existed before. That's very rewarding.\n\nSo, I guess probably like that the most. Can you talk a little bit about how Starship could be used for other destinations in the solar system like Venus and the outer planets? Starship is is definitely a general generalized uh ship. It basically can it it's it solves for transport anywhere in the solar system that where where there is a uh solid surface to land. So, if you can land there, we're going to take there.\n\nWe we're also actually going to the atmosphere of Venus, for example, just like going to orbit and uh and and to um perhaps to the upper atmosphere. Venus's atmosphere is extremely dense. It's also quite hot.\n\nUm So, but because of that dense atmosphere, you could you could have something you could have a kind of like a some sort of dirigible, you know, kind of some kind of like Like things that could float on Venus that could not float on Earth in the atmosphere because of the dense atmosphere. So, you could go to Venus. I mean, it's not a super friendly place. Um And then like Mercury's super hot.\n\nUm But I think that we could go to Ceres or any of the asteroids. Uh the moons of Jupiter, although be quite high radiation around there. Um and then out to Saturn, you know, eventually getting out to uh you know, the sort of Kuiper Belt or cloud like that thing in the outer solar system. So, so Starship once you have propellant depots, you can kind of like planet hop or moon hop um around the the solar system.\n\nUm it's not it's not a vehicle that would enable us to go interstellar, but it's um that that's a that's a that's a tough one. But it we need to make this the leap of going to another planet first. Once we are multi-planet species, we'll create a forcing function for the rapid improvement of uh of spaceflight and um and we'll figure out new technologies that will ultimately allow us to go to other star systems.\n\nWhat do you look for in the people you hire, especially the engineers? Uh really just look for evidence of exceptional ability. So, it's not or at least aspirationally. Like sometimes these things get messed up in recruiting or the recruiting pool turns out to be ends up being wrong. Like I sometimes wonder with Tesla, if Nikola Tesla applied to Tesla, would we even give him an interview? It's not clear.\n\nYou know, this is a guy came from like some weird college in somewhere in Eastern Europe. He's He's got some odd mannerisms. Now, we don't know if we should give him an interview. Like I I worry that that's actually what we're doing instead of like Right. It should be like, \"Man, Nikola Tesla this this this kid's super smart. What What does he want? We'll pay him anything.\"\n\nThat should be That should be the reaction if Nikola Tesla applies, you know, to Tesla, um ironically. Uh but so I can tell you the intent is we're looking for evidence of exceptional ability, uh and it really doesn't matter if you went to graduate high school or college or anything. We're just looking for evidence of exceptional ability, uh such that it would be a good predictor for doing exceptional things at SpaceX. All right.\n\nDo you have some more questions from the audience there, Jim? I've got one. Um so have you thought about communication networks between Earth and Mars and kind of I mean you're working on Starlink. What about like an internet around Mars? Have you thought about that? Yeah, I mean you could totally do some variants of Starlink.\n\nI believe this is probably going to be the last question, uh cuz I've I've got a bunch of things piled up, but um yeah, you could just do it version of Starlink around Mars, and then you just need a big laser coming from Earth. Probably want it to be in orbit, so it doesn't get atmospheric diffraction or attenuation.\n\nUm you want you want to go from a big laser from Earth orbit to Mars orbit, and then you're going to need some relay stations, uh for when Mars is on the other side of the sun. So, you can't just shoot a laser through the sun. All right. Thank you. Thank you so much, Elon. We're all pulling for you. Good luck. I appreciate it. Uh I just like to I thank you to all the people out there that that are that are fighting hard for the cause of Mars.\n\nThere's There's not that many, and we need more. Thank you. All right. Thank you.","textByLang":{"en":"Okay, I think we're here. Are we live? Jim. Yes, Robert. We are live. Okay. Well, then we're live. So, uh everybody wait I would just wait for a moment, Robert. I It's okay. He's here. I want Yeah, right here. Okay, perfect. Okay. So, uh Well, Elon, you need no introduction, but for those who don't know, you are the founder and chief engineer of SpaceX and a long-time friend of the Mars Society, and we're delighted to have you back.\n\nWe've got 9,000 people registered to hear you today. All right, cool. Sounds good. Okay. So, I should like change this perspective. I'll see if I can change the perspective. Is that better? Or is that worse? I think you were better before. Okay. Okay. So, listen. Uh why don't we just start out with the basics? You started SpaceX to make humanity multi-planetary. Um Yeah. Why do you see that as a critical goal? Yes.\n\nUm I think uh we we want to be on track to become a multi-planetary species and and a space-faring civilization in order to find out what the universe is all all about. Like, what, you know, uh and ensure the continuance of consciousness as we know it. As we know it, we're the only life. I mean, people think there's aliens, but honestly, I haven't seen any sign of aliens. Um so, as far as we know, we're the only the the only life.\n\nUh we could be the only life. So, let's put it that way. And we need to take the set of actions that are most likely to make the future good and result in the continuance of consciousness as we know it. Okay. So, okay. Well, obviously, your your your means to that end is is to open the space frontier with reusable launch vehicles. Uh you've gone through some partially reusable ones, and now it's Starship.\n\nCan you explain the basically the line of thinking that led you to the Starship design? I forgot what I need to look at to look like I'm looking at the camera. Um Um so, let's see. Well, on the Starship front, um we've gone through many iterations, uh starting from not really knowing how to build rockets at all, uh with with Falcon 1 and having four failures actually in reaching orbit. Uh three Yeah, that's right.\n\nThree failures, then the fourth one got to orbit. So, fourth one's the charm. Um so, we only barely survived. Um I was at zero cash, basically, when we got that fourth one to orbit. Um and if that fourth one hadn't worked, we we would we would have been curtains. So, it's definitely not been smooth sailing. Uh it's been a very difficult uh ride. Um with just a lot that has been discovered along the way.\n\nUh I mean, just just trying to figure out what questions to ask about the design was was quite difficult. Um I think it's helpful to have as the objective the creation of a a self-sustaining city on Mars. I think this is this is has to be the objective, not simply a few people or a base, but a self-sustaining uh city. Um the acid test really is if these if the ships from Earth stop coming for any reason, does Mars die out? For any reason.\n\nIt could be from any banal or it could be nuclear Armageddon. Doesn't matter. If the if the ships stop coming for any reason, does the city on Mars die out? If it does, we have not we're we're not in a secure place. Um so, I mean, I think this this really might come down to, you know, on the the great filter front, is this are we going to create a self-sustaining city on Mars before or after World War III?\n\nAnd I think the probability of it being created after World War III, hopefully the hopefully there's never a World War III, but uh after is low. So, we should try to create to make the city self-sustaining before any possible World War III. This is just a risk. This is not, you know, I mean, sometimes people have difficulty dealing with with probabilities. They see it this way or that way, but it's really we just face a series of probabilities.\n\nUm and uh there's some chance that we will have a giant war or a super volcano or um you know, a a comet might hit the Earth or we might just self-extinguish in some uh it might be more of a more of a whimper than a bang. Um Yeah, and frankly, right now, civilization is not looking super uh strong, you know, it's it's looking a little little rickety right now, to be frank.\n\nWould you say that it's it's more than a lifeboat that it would actually make you civilization more robust, clearly more able to divert asteroids from hitting the Earth and uh otherwise help? Yeah. Um it's not an it's not an escape vehicle. It It's a it's simply uh something that it's like you can I mean, unless Mars is Mars is made self-sustaining, which will probably not happen in my lifetime.\n\nUh it is certainly not It's mean It's meaningless to have an escape uh you know, lifeboat or or escape hatch or something if you will you are simply moving to another place where you will soon die out. That doesn't count. It's not much of a lifeboat, really.\n\nUm so, this is really about to say minimizing existential risk for civilization as a whole and and then uh having an exciting future that you can look forward to, and a future where we are a space-faring civilization and uh multi-planetary species is far more exciting than one where we are not. Um I mean, that's an exciting future, and being forever confined to Earth until some eventual extinction event is depressing and not fun.\n\nUm and we need things that make you want to get out of bed in the morning and be excited about future. And I think being a space-faring civilization is one of those things that everyone can get can get excited about. But but can you maybe just kind of lead people on the path that led you from the design of but for Falcon 9 to Falcon Heavy, but now Starship is is is rather different than Falcon Heavy. Um Yes.\n\nthe engineering Uh actually, I didn't quite answer your original question. I the the you first have to say what what is the goal. Um and once you have what is the goal, you can then measure the various designs against that goal. Um if otherwise, you're saying, \"How are you evaluating Why is one design better than another?\" What's your goal? It's got to be a goal.\n\nSo, the the goal is get enough tonnage to Mars to and enough people to make Mars self-sustaining as quickly as possible. So, then you say, \"Okay, let's back back out the math on this.\" We're going to need We're going to need a lot of tonnage. Uh maybe I don't know, 100,000 tons, maybe a million tons. So, then you can't be faffing around with these expendable rockets. They're a joke. They're they're absurd. Even Saturn V is tiny potatoes.\n\nUm we we need it because if if you want to get like like let's say first-order approximation, um a million tons to the surface of Mars, um inclusive of people, uh you know, that that means probably something around four or five million useful tons of payload in the into lower Earth orbit. You know, for every ton you get to lower Earth orbit, you're going to get four or five tons. Prob- hopefully closer to five.\n\nIt's it's you know, these this math is is really start squeezing like tiny percentages, but let's say I can confidently if you got five tons to lower Earth orbit, you can get one ton to Mars. That's that's con- confident. Maybe you can get maybe maybe you only need four. Anyway, point is you need five million tons into Earth orbit to get one million tons to Mars. Now, let's put this into perspective.\n\nTotal global capacity to orbit of all expendable rockets is around around five or 600 tons, I think. And if you said, \"Okay, the world's going to end if you do not increase your capacity,\" perhaps they could do 1,000 tons. Okay, so, that's uh 1/5,000th 1/5,000th of what's needed. This is ridiculous. Um you know, um it's it's not even, you know, 0. 1% would be, you know, 1/1,000th. So, it's way less than 0. 1%. We have way less than 0.\n\n1% of the capability needed to create a if if everyone went full tilt with expendable rockets. Expendable rockets are the are the absolute are just utterly stupid, in my opinion. Utterly stupid. Um they're a complete waste of time. People should stop wasting their time. If you try to sell an expendable plane, people would laugh you out of the room. If you try to sell an expendable car, they would laugh you out of the room.\n\nIf you try to sell an expendable horse, they would laugh you out of the room and think there's something wrong with you mentally. Um So, all these things are reusable. It's It's essential to be reusable. Now, creating a reusable rocket, orbital rocket, is very difficult. Doing a suborbital reusable rocket is easy. Doing a reusable orbital rocket is hard.\n\nUm even when a lot of smart people have put a quite a bit of effort into it, they might get 2 or 3% of the lift off mass to lower orbit. Um And a really epic rocket would get four. Um I'm not sure I don't think anyone's ever gotten before. Um So, but what you basically need to have something that in expendable form would probably get about 4% of its payload to orbit. Such that you can spend about half of that 4% uh on reusability.\n\nAnd and still net out to around 2%. uh payload to orbit. Um So, you have to make both the booster and the upper stage and the fairing everything reusable. With Falcon 9 So, so with Falcon 1, we did actually attempt to do this. So, we had a parachute in the first stage. Um but really did not appreciate that that first stage was going to hit the atmosphere like a concrete wall.\n\nSo, at first I got pretty mad at the parachute supplier until I realized it's not their fault. You know, we were just being fools. Um that that that thing was exploding as soon as it hit the it hit the atmosphere. Um and you know, so you you really got to do something to to um ease the transition into the atmosphere at at at high Mach number. It is very hot and there's a lot of force and a lot of heat.\n\nSo, then with Falcon 9, we made a bigger rocket. Um and our scale matters here because you do get basically economies of scale. You can't have a tiny rocket. Um with a tiny rocket, you basically just end up carrying your electronics to orbit. So, your avionics, you know.\n\nSo, in a little rocket, uh you if if you're if you're small enough, the the just your your avionics alone uh ends up being a significant percentage of your uh payload and and then you end up you know, if you've got a rocket that was I don't know, you're trying to get a 10,000-lb rocket for example or even a 10,000-kg rocket to orbit and make you basically get zero pylon.\n\nUm Now, as you get bigger, the the rocket gets bigger, but the brain doesn't get bigger. The brain can stay the same size. So, your avionics, for example, uh become a almost not almost zero percent of the weight of a perfect rocket. Um Then, for big rockets, you also get uh gauge advantages. So, this is We're really in the nuances of rocket design and manufacturing here. If you the things are very small, it's difficult to get your gauge accurate.\n\nUm So, the basically how thick is the material? Um like you want to do castings, for example, there's a minimum gauge or thickness for a casting. Um there's a minimum kind of error bar on the um you know, on this the the material skins. Even for a composite rocket, you've got uh you know, you you start getting granularity issues. As you get bigger, uh you're no longer you're no longer gauge limited.\n\nUm and you can get your your percentage accuracy on the thickness of walls and castings can be can be very good. Um Uh these are nuances that I think almost no one appreciates, but suffice to say that there are advantages to size. Um And you can certainly see this in many walks of life where uh if you've got a truck that's carrying cargo, you it's more efficient to have a big semi truck, not a bunch of little trucks.\n\nUm For ships, uh it would be pretty silly to see container ships uh or containers going across the ocean one at a time with little outboard motors. That would be silly. You put them on a container ship. You have big ships, not little little tiny ships. Um So, anyway, so size matters. It really does. Um and for reusability, it matters. So, with with Falcon 9, after immense effort, we were able to uh achieve reusability of the booster.\n\nUm And um we're mostly achieving reusability at this point with the fairing as well. Um but this is a This is a monumental effort. Uh And I think within its architecture, Falcon 9 is close to a local maximum. Um If you say uh you know, gas generator cycle kerosene uh oxygen vehicle um of this particular size could with uh a 12-ft or 3. 6-m diameter, um which is which is that size for because of of road transport limitation.\n\nSo, you go bigger than that, you can't transport it over the road and your logistics costs become extreme. Um So, but but having a long thin rocket is not very mass efficient. Um you you you you end up having to have thicker skins to take out the bending moments. Um So, we're we're and then and then having like kerosene is is not the right fuel. Methane is a much better fuel. You can get higher ISP. Um the specific impulse basically efficiency.\n\nI mean, for for those who I think probably a lot of us who are listening know what the rocket equation is, but in simple terms, it's actually it's very simple. It's like a rocket is going to go further uh if if the gas if it shoots the gas out of the end faster um and if a bigger percentage of its mass is propellant. It is obvious. So, that's what that's what the rocket equation says.\n\nUm So, shoot shoot gas out faster um in in the right direction and increase the the propellant uh the percentage of propellant, that that's going to get you go allow you to go further. Um with methane, you can shoot out faster. And And you can make it on Mars. You can make it on Mars, for sure. Um Exactly. So, uh um being able to to do in situ propellant development is or production is very important.\n\nUm So, you don't have to carry your return fuel with you or return fuel and oxygen. It's to be in like um Rockets are mostly oxygen or oxidizer. So, um And there's there's some other subtle advantages with a ox oxygen-methane system in that you can go to a higher percentage a higher mass ratio of oxygen.\n\nSo, with kerosene, you're you have a called roughly two and a half to one um oxygen to fuel mass ratio with uh methane, you're more like three and a half to one. Um and you actually want that higher mass ratio because oxygen is very dense and it's inexpensive. Um especially on Earth. So, you're going to you know, you have all these plants just making oxygen all day long and thank them just making oxygen. Um They don't have to do anything.\n\nSo, the cost of oxygen is basically the cost of electricity. Um Anyway, so going from Falcon um going from uh you know, um kerosene, which is basically the same as jet fuel. It's like RP-1 rocket propellant grade kerosene is just um a tighter grade of jet fuel. Um You want to go from that to something which has where the gas shoots out faster, and that's methane, and where um in situ production of propellant is easier.\n\nUm So, that's that's why the change from from kerosene to methane. Methane is just CH4. It's one carbon, four hydrogens. Um and then the oxygen pairs pairs together, so you have it's it's called O2 because oxygen pair bonds. Um And obviously you know all this stuff. I'm just Yeah. basically helping for the audience. together. Large size, twice the take off thrust of a Saturn V, but Yes.\n\nabout the same payload, but that gets you reusability, much cheaper, in situ propellant. It all is coherent. Yes. And uh so, let me ask you with the thing that I think everybody wants to know, uh which is when? Um when are we going to see Starship do a high flight to stratosphere? When to orbit? When first payload to Mars? When first humans to Mars? All right. Well, it's not like I We're all seeing venturing into unknown territory.\n\nSo, it's not as though I I I have all these secret dates and I and I um you know, just keeping them from people, but So, so the my These are just guesses, obviously. Um I'm pretty I I say I'm 80 to 90% confident that we will reach orbit with Starship next year. Um Uh I think probably 50 or 60 50% confident that we'll be able to bring the ship and booster back. That's that's more of a dicey situation.\n\nUm We'll We'll probably lose a few ships before we we really get the atmospheric return and landing right. Uh we might lose Hopefully, we don't lose that uh Hopefully, we don't lose any boosters cuz that's a lot of engines. Um Our initial booster flights will just have maybe two to four engines, um not 28. 28's a lot of engines. So, um Yeah, and then I think we'll probably be in um do it doing high volume flights I think probably in 2022.\n\nSo, a couple years from now. Um But I'm I'm trying to make sure that that our rate of innovation increases, it does not decrease. Um if this is really essential, uh it In fact, if we do not see something close to an exponential improvement in our rate of innovation, we will not reach Mars. Like a pure linear doesn't get there. Not not while I'll be dead anyway before it gets there if it's pure linear.\n\nIf it's exponential, I think we we could get to Mars. We could we could probably send an uncrewed mission there in maybe 4 years. Um you know, there's a Mars conjunction every 26 months. There's one this year, so that means in a couple years from now there's another one, and then 4 years from now there's another one. I I I think we've got a fighting chance of of making the that second uh Mars transfer window.\n\nSo, one thing that is really um amazing uh about uh SpaceX to those of us who have experience in the aerospace industry is is the rate of innovation. Uh you know, the last time you spoke to the Mars Society convention was 2012. Since then you made the Falcon 9 reusable, introduced Falcon Heavy, uh Crew Dragon, a satellite constellation, and you're in the middle of developing Starship.\n\nUh so, what what is your you know, what would you say is your methodology that allows you to innovate so swiftly? I don't really know. Uh We're focused on I guess it's it's it is important to have that have the objective you're right. Um that's why I was talking so much about the importance of making Mars a self-sustaining self-sustaining city on Mars.\n\nUm if if that's the objective, then obviously you know, just putting some satellites in orbit or is not that that's not important. You have to achieve full and rapid reusability. I emphasize full and rapid. Reusability is only relevant to the degree it's rapid and complete. Um and uh and then you also have to do orbital refueling. This is essential as well. Um and uh and then um propellant production on Mars is also essential.\n\nSo, uh you know, in in with that as the goal, then you know, with that that that means that that that that creates I think a good forcing function for radical innovation because in the absence of radical innovation, we have no chance of meeting that goal. Um whereas if our goal was simply, you know, defeat Lockheed and Boeing or something like that, that that we we would probably achieve that done it.\n\nIt it really that really wasn't even a thing, you know. Yeah. I wish it was. Um You know, like they're they're not really trying to do not even trying to do reusability, which is bizarre cuz they make planes that are reusable. Um so, I mean, if they if they talked to the you know, if they talked to one of their customers about buying a uh sir a Lockheed fighter jet or a Boeing aircraft like, \"Hey, we're going to sell you a 737 can be used once.\"\n\nAnd and it's not a 737 Max. Um but that would that turns out that was a single use airplane at the time. Um but it really uh it it would be an absurd thing for them to sell a single use aircraft, but they feel quite comfortable selling a single use rocket.\n\nUm Anyway, but if if our goal was simply we're going to have be the leaders in uh launching the conventional satellites that exist, uh we would probably approach that in a sort of logarithmic basis where you know, you you'd get there and you'd sort of slowly make progress towards doing 10 launches a year, 12 launches a year, and while they do six or something like that. I don't know.\n\nUm But if since the goal is, \"Hey, we need to make life multi-planetary before it's too late.\" Um and time really matters, so we're our state us it's like we're shooting for Mars, not just the moon. So, let's shoot for the moon, shoot for Mars. Um and then and then the you know, these these competitive things are are kind of small things along the way.\n\nUnless somebody else is shooting for Mars, they will not be competitive with something as pedestrian as launching a few satellites into Earth orbit. So, how how can the Mars Society help you? Well, I do think there's you know, in order to for there to be a self-sustaining city on Mars, there's we're going to need an intersection of sets here.\n\nOne set is the set of people that want to go and can either find sponsorship they can either afford themselves or find government sponsorship or take out a loan or whatever the case may be. Um Uh but somehow you've got to have the the set of people who want to go to Mars and can and can come up with the funds somehow to do that, and then then you know, it's it's it's I should say it's there's two sets.\n\nDesire to go to Mars and can afford to go to Mars. When the when desire to go to the people who want to go to Mars uh and and who who could afford to go to Mars, when that intersection of sets reaches a million roughly, then I think we will have this a city on Mars. Um so, we need both the the motivation and the the you know, we need both the means and the way. I mean, we I should I should It's like um We need we need people to want to go.\n\nand the way. The will and the way. Yes, exactly. The will and the way. Where there's a will, there's a way, but in this case we need will and a way. Uh so, when the will and the way intersect, then we will have a viable planetary species. The will and the way must intersect. So, I think the Mars Society could really help with the will. Okay, you provide the way, we'll provide the will. Yes, exactly. Uh okay.\n\nNow, your assistant Jen uh told me earlier that you have a hard cut off at the uh half hour. Is that true, or do you want to uh stay and take some questions from from the uh audience? Yeah, we can do maybe 5 10 minutes of questions. All right, great. So, um I we've got uh hundreds of questions, so uh would the uh Jim, do you want to read a question or two? Yeah, sure thing. Uh hi Elon, my name is James Burke. I'm from Seattle, Washington.\n\nWhere's the best place to land on Mars, do you think? Yeah, actually I'm not super sure. Um I can tell you what the criteria are that you'd want you'd want to be um um I I anyway, I think the the the short answer is mid-latitudes. Um probably on the north. Uh so, you want to be close to ice. Uh you don't want to be too you don't want to be too far away from the sun so you can get solar power.\n\nUm and you want to uh land at a low altitude so that you can take maximum effect of atmospheric braking. What do you think? Uh I like uh Melas Chasma. That's a nice little area at the bottom of Valles Marineris. The air pressure is high. Okay. Is there a lot of ice there? There's ice around there. I would have to look for it, though. Okay. That kind of brings me to my next question, and then I'm going to turn it over to Carrie to ask you one.\n\nUm how would you prioritize like missions like two through 10? Are you going to focus on exploration or building up the infrastructure or science? Uh we're going to I think the first order of business is build a propellant plant. Um I I mean, we can for sure lob out a bunch of droids, you know, that's no problem. Um I think why not, you know, we're going you know, and probably if anyone wants to put their droid on, we we can just take it.\n\nUm and you know, like, hey, it's basically a remote control car. Uh it's a solar powered remote control car. Um and we can provide the the the communication relay, so you know, you could just basically connect to your car from uh your computer at home and try you know, cruise your electric you could have legs, too, for that matter your rover device / car. That would be pretty cool.\n\nUm and um you know, there's a lot of people worried about like, you know, life contamination. And it's like, \"Listen, anything that can survive on Mars is very it's so freaking tough, it's insane. Um That it is cold and there's like a lot of UV radiation, and it if it's not going to be too worried about anything we send from Earth, let me put it that way. Um it's just tougher than anything on Earth.\n\nUm so, but but I think the first order of business is we've got to build a propellant a plant to make propellant. And it is we should have got to let me a lot of energy. Um we we've got to I mine some ice. Um and uh we've got you got CO2 from the atmosphere, so you got from the ice you got the H2O. Combine that H2O with the CO2, you get CH4 and O2.\n\nUm but that's a lot of energy, and it be quite hard, I think, to make that propellant uh plant It's reliable, Um So, but that that's the that's the primary order of business and then we can also look around and see if we can learn anything from a scientific standpoint. Carrie, do you want to go next? Sure, thank you, James. Um I'm Carrie Fehn. I live in Denver, Colorado. Um thank you for joining us today, Mr. Musk.\n\nUm we do have a lot of questions um from 13-14-year-olds. So, I'm just going to pick one and ask you. Um it's from a a teenager and her name is Dara and she wants to be an engineer and build Starships and robots and her dream is working for SpaceX. What should she focus on to be an engineer? Well, I think there's all kinds of engineering that's needed. Um So, you don't have to be an aerospace engineer.\n\nYou could be um in um electronics, you know, mechanical engineer, um electrical engineer, you could be software engineer. Uh I mean, there's a lot of engineering basically almost any kind of engineering. Um we'll need chemical engineering, I think also for figuring out how to make a good propellant depot or propellant propellant production plant. Um And uh yeah, I think physics in general is a good background for thinking.\n\nYou know, I just generally recommend people take physics courses because physics has the best tools for critical thinking. Thank you, Elon. James? Yeah, thanks, Carrie. Um another question. The Boring Company, now is that just kind of a an outfit to build tunneling machines that can work on Mars? Uh no. The Boring Company actually started as kind of a joke.\n\nUm And I for a lot lot of times people would ask me what what do I think of the opportunities are out there and for I don't know, 5 years or more I kept saying, \"Can someone please start a tunneling company?\" Uh cuz I think tunnels have a lot of opportunity for alleviating traffic in cities and just improving quality of life overall. I mean, there's a lot of streets you could turn into parks. Um you certainly wouldn't need parking.\n\nYou could just park cars underground. So, um and I just everyone thought I was joking and I was and then I was like, \"Well, I I guess we'll see what it takes to drill a tunnel dig a tunnel.\" And and um and all these like so-called traffic experts and I and haven't really made much progress uh you know, cities like LA and DC are still a traffic nightmare.\n\nI'm like, \"Okay, guys, well, if you've got such great ideas, why don't why is it still a traffic nightmare?\" Um so, if you build tunnels, you got to go 3D somehow, either underground or above ground. Uh like either air or ground. And the problem with air is like you know, any anything that can carry persons can generate a a lot of noise and a lot of wind force. So, and could fall on your head.\n\nAnd also kind of not be good for privacy and like, you know, you're just sitting in your backyard and someone's like flying over you. It's like not that cool. So, but tunnels are are working on those things. They're also weather proof. Um yeah, um don't have any privacy issues and uh safe and All right. They they will be They would make a big difference to traffic.\n\nAnd we have the first uh production tunnel or useful tunnel in Vegas that's going to open I think in a month or two. So, a few months, I guess. Um And hopefully we'll be ready for primetime around the Consumer Electronics Show. Um so, And now for for Mars, I think tunnels and and digging in general is good, but you need to build them very light system compared to what would matters on Earth.\n\nYou don't really care all that much about mass on Earth. We care a lot about mass going to Mars. Is it fair to say that you're learning some techniques that might apply to Mars with The Boring Company? Yeah. Yeah, probably. When do you think Starship will be able to be demonstrating refueling in lower Earth orbit? I think we've got a shot at doing that in '22. About 2 years. And then when do you guys think you'll have a Moon ship prototype?\n\nUm I probably 2 or 3 years. As soon as you've got orbital refueling, you can you can send significant payload to the Moon. Like significant meaning 100 tons of useful payload at a shot. So then from there, I think you mentioned Mars is a couple years after that. It's only a couple years after that because the Mars transit window is every 26 months.\n\nUm I think we we maybe have a shot of sending or you know, trying to send something to Mars in 3 years, but the window is is 4 years away because of the being in different parts of the solar system. Carrie asked a question from a young person. I'd like to also ask, do you have any tips for young people who love Mars but don't know how to help with the settlement of Mars?\n\nWell, I think definitely I you know, anyone who is a strong advocate for Mars, I think this really makes a difference, you know. Um a lot of times it's not even people aren't even thinking about it. And you know, you could talk to people at a party and they or talk to friends and they're like, it's just not even not even a a topic of conversation.\n\nSo, I think it could really help if everyone out there who who thinks this is important for the future of humanity and consciousness as a whole, um to make it part of what people are thinking about. Bring it up at at parties and talking friends and online. It's like it should be a thing that we do. Um and I think it's worth uh you know, maybe 1% of our resources at least.\n\nUm And that's not going to fundamentally change change things, your quality of life. If we have one If we spend 1% of our resources, you know, much less than health care, obviously. Um May- maybe probably even less than we spend on cosmetics, frankly. Um then that that would be enough to make life multi-planetary. But I we really need to make this a thing people talk about at least 1% of the time. And that that really matter.\n\nUm Like that as we're talking about earlier, we need we need the will, which is we need enough critical mass of people wanting to make it happen. The and and then we need the way and SpaceX is going to try hard to provide the way and and then once we show that there's a way, probably there will be other companies that also try to do it as well. Um So, we need the will and the way. They can provide either The will is extremely important.\n\nIt makes a huge difference. What's the coolest part of Starship development? Well, I guess the coolest part of Starship development is working with the just a great team of engineers um and coming up with uh interesting solutions. Um Yeah, you know, I I I think it's just fundamentally enjoyable if you're working with a lot of good smart people creatively towards solutions that have never existed before. That's very rewarding.\n\nSo, I guess probably like that the most. Can you talk a little bit about how Starship could be used for other destinations in the solar system like Venus and the outer planets? Starship is is definitely a general generalized uh ship. It basically can it it's it solves for transport anywhere in the solar system that where where there is a uh solid surface to land. So, if you can land there, we're going to take there.\n\nWe we're also actually going to the atmosphere of Venus, for example, just like going to orbit and uh and and to um perhaps to the upper atmosphere. Venus's atmosphere is extremely dense. It's also quite hot.\n\nUm So, but because of that dense atmosphere, you could you could have something you could have a kind of like a some sort of dirigible, you know, kind of some kind of like Like things that could float on Venus that could not float on Earth in the atmosphere because of the dense atmosphere. So, you could go to Venus. I mean, it's not a super friendly place. Um And then like Mercury's super hot.\n\nUm But I think that we could go to Ceres or any of the asteroids. Uh the moons of Jupiter, although be quite high radiation around there. Um and then out to Saturn, you know, eventually getting out to uh you know, the sort of Kuiper Belt or cloud like that thing in the outer solar system. So, so Starship once you have propellant depots, you can kind of like planet hop or moon hop um around the the solar system.\n\nUm it's not it's not a vehicle that would enable us to go interstellar, but it's um that that's a that's a that's a tough one. But it we need to make this the leap of going to another planet first. Once we are multi-planet species, we'll create a forcing function for the rapid improvement of uh of spaceflight and um and we'll figure out new technologies that will ultimately allow us to go to other star systems.\n\nWhat do you look for in the people you hire, especially the engineers? Uh really just look for evidence of exceptional ability. So, it's not or at least aspirationally. Like sometimes these things get messed up in recruiting or the recruiting pool turns out to be ends up being wrong. Like I sometimes wonder with Tesla, if Nikola Tesla applied to Tesla, would we even give him an interview? It's not clear.\n\nYou know, this is a guy came from like some weird college in somewhere in Eastern Europe. He's He's got some odd mannerisms. Now, we don't know if we should give him an interview. Like I I worry that that's actually what we're doing instead of like Right. It should be like, \"Man, Nikola Tesla this this this kid's super smart. What What does he want? We'll pay him anything.\"\n\nThat should be That should be the reaction if Nikola Tesla applies, you know, to Tesla, um ironically. Uh but so I can tell you the intent is we're looking for evidence of exceptional ability, uh and it really doesn't matter if you went to graduate high school or college or anything. We're just looking for evidence of exceptional ability, uh such that it would be a good predictor for doing exceptional things at SpaceX. All right.\n\nDo you have some more questions from the audience there, Jim? I've got one. Um so have you thought about communication networks between Earth and Mars and kind of I mean you're working on Starlink. What about like an internet around Mars? Have you thought about that? Yeah, I mean you could totally do some variants of Starlink.\n\nI believe this is probably going to be the last question, uh cuz I've I've got a bunch of things piled up, but um yeah, you could just do it version of Starlink around Mars, and then you just need a big laser coming from Earth. Probably want it to be in orbit, so it doesn't get atmospheric diffraction or attenuation.\n\nUm you want you want to go from a big laser from Earth orbit to Mars orbit, and then you're going to need some relay stations, uh for when Mars is on the other side of the sun. So, you can't just shoot a laser through the sun. All right. Thank you. Thank you so much, Elon. We're all pulling for you. Good luck. I appreciate it. Uh I just like to I thank you to all the people out there that that are that are fighting hard for the cause of Mars.\n\nThere's There's not that many, and we need more. Thank you. All right. Thank you."},"languages":["en"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9OnelpilSkU"},{"id":"tesla-battery-day-2020","type":"video","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l6T9xIeZTds","title":"Tesla Battery Day","titles":{"en":"Tesla Battery Day","de":"Tesla Battery Day","fr":"Tesla Battery Day"},"date":"2020-09-22","summary":"Tesla's Battery Day: the new 4680 cell, structural battery pack and a roadmap to cheaper, longer-range electric cars, with Elon Musk and Drew Baglino.","text":"Al Prescott: (41:03) Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to Tesla's 2020 Annual Meeting of Stockholders. We're really excited that you could be here with us today. My name is Al Prescott. I'm Tesla's vice president of legal. Al Prescott: (41:15) There'll be two parts of today's meeting. First, the former part of the meeting we'll get out of the way, which we'll cover the seven items that stockholders have been asked to vote on. After the voting, I'll introduce Tesla's co-founder and CEO, Elon Musk, who will give a presentation about the company update and year in review. And then following the conclusion of the stockholder meeting, we'll start our separate Battery Day event. Al Prescott: (41:40) At this time, I'd like to thank the members of the Tesla team and our board, especially those who were able to make it out here in person today, as well as to our representative from PricewaterhouseCoopers, Tesla's independent auditor who is also here. But before we begin, I'd like to introduce you to Robyn Denholm, the chairwoman of Tesla, who would like to say a few words remotely. Robyn Denholm: (42:12) Thank you, Al. Hello everyone and welcome to the 2020 Tesla Shareholder Meeting. A special welcome to the many Tesla shareholders that have joined us today in person as well as online from across the country and around the globe. Robyn Denholm: (42:29) I wanted to start today's proceedings by thanking you, our shareholders, for your tremendous support over the last year. And especially to those of you who have been with us through our journey over the past 10 years, since the company's IPO in 2010. While we have stayed true to our mission of accelerating the world's transition to sustainable energy, in many ways, our company has evolved beyond recognition over the past decade. And that is a great thing. In fact, the pace of developments and the evolution of Tesla has further accelerated over the past 15 months since I last addressed you in June of 2019. You'll hear more about many of the specific achievements from Elon later in the agenda. Robyn Denholm: (43:16) But I would like to take this opportunity to thank all of our Tesla employees across the globe who have done a tremendous job of executing and staying focused on delivering for our customers and shareholders, as the world has gone through one of the most challenging periods in our lifetimes. As a board, we have always taken a long-term view. We have made decisions and supported decisions made by the management team that may not have seemed obvious at the time, but are delivering and will continue to deliver breakthrough results. But it's also important to remember why we do this. As a company, we are focused on addressing one of the biggest environmental challenges of our generation, how to accelerate the world's transition to sustainable energy. Robyn Denholm: (44:08) The last year in particular has seen a tremendous increase in momentum in the movement to sustainable energy from both shareholders and the general public. So in addition to developing amazing clean transportation and energy products, we are doing our part by contributing the right facts and information to this important issue. And we released an extended version of our impact report in April of 2020. In issues version, we have covered in great detail, many areas that are important to our shareholders and our customers alike, such as our environmental impact, greenhouse and other noxious gas elimination, our supply chain efforts, especially in cobalt, and our culture and people focus. We hope that by continuing to put this data out there, we will underscore to the world the importance and impact that we are having as a company. Robyn Denholm: (45:09) Lastly, continuous feedback and input from our shareholders is essential for us to do our jobs. And I would like to thank you for your support in this regard. Many of you have provided me and the team with ideas and insights that we as a board take into consideration as we evolve our governance and company practices. It's especially crucial to the board members as we pride ourselves in adaptability and the diversity of thought and experience that we collectively represent on the board. Robyn Denholm: (45:41) This brings me to my final two things today, as today is his last shareholder meeting, on behalf of the board, I would like to sincerely thank Steve Jurvetson for over a decade of service to Tesla, the board, and our shareholders. You will be missed. Finally, I would like to introduce to you our newest member of the board, Hiro Mizuno, who until recently led the largest pension fund in the world. He brings a wealth of experience to the board, but let me hand over to Hiro to say a few words. Hiro ... Hiro Mizuno: (46:17) Thank you, Robyn. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Tesla Annual Shareholders Meeting. It is my real pleasure to virtually meet you, Tesla shareholders, people who believe in Tesla's mission and its growth opportunities. I spent all my career in finance and asset management in Tokyo, New York, London, and the Silicon Valley. Hiro Mizuno: (46:42) Until recently, I was a chief investment officer of GPIF $1.5 trillion Japanese public pension fund. And one of my priorities as the investment chief was to promote responsible investments, which aim to make financial returns while pursuing ESG agenda, such as environment and social issues. I believe in the market where ESG is becoming mainstream. Purpose or mission driven businesses will gain long-term investors support. Hiro Mizuno: (47:19) This is why I was interested in Tesla, where our mission is to accelerate the world's transition to sustainable energy. I'm very excited to join the Tesla team on the journey and hope that [inaudible 00:47:34] Tesla deliver what investors expect by further enhancing its environmental and social impact. Once again, Tesla shareholders, thanks for your support. I'm looking forward to seeing you in person next year. Thank you. Al Prescott: (47:54) Thanks Robyn and Hiro. I will now call the meeting to order. Please refer to the meeting agenda that has been provided to you and posted also to our virtual meeting site. The time is now 1:49 PM Pacific Time. And I declare that the polls are now open. Al Prescott: (48:12) We've already received voting proxies from stockholders over the past few weeks, meaning that almost all of the votes that will be counted were already submitted before the meeting. However, if you wish to vote now or to change your prior vote, you may do so through the virtual meeting site. For those that are here in person today, ballots and ballot boxes were available to you at check-in. Al Prescott: (48:37) Tesla's board of directors has appointed Computershare Trust Company to serve as inspector of elections for the meeting. Computershare has taken and signed an oath as inspector of election and has certified that starting on August 13th, 2020, the proxy material, or a notice of internet availability of the proxy material were mailed or provided to all Tesla stockholders of record as of July 31, 2020. Al Prescott: (49:04) We have a majority of the outstanding shares represented at the meeting. So I declare that there is now a quorum present and that we may proceed with the meeting. The items on the agenda are as follows; the election of three class one directors, Elon Musk, Robyn Denholm, and Hiromichi Mizuno to each serve for or term of three years. Two, to approve Tesla's executive compensation on an advisory basis. And three, to ratify the appointment of PricewaterhouseCoopers, LLP as Tesla's independent, registered public accounting firm for the fiscal year of 2020. Tesla's board has recommended that our stockholders vote for each of the director nominees and for each of those proposals. Al Prescott: (49:59) In addition, we have also received four stockholder proposals as described in the proxy statement. I would like to remind our stockholders that Tesla's board has prepared a statement in opposition to each of these proposals, which appear in the proxy. The first stockholder proposal is an advisory vote regarding paid advertising. Our board has recommended that our stockholders vote against this stockholder proposal. This stockholder proposal comes to us from James Danforth. Al Prescott: (50:33) However, Mr. Danforth has notified us that neither he nor his representative will be presenting the proposal at the meeting today. So we will continue. The second stockholder proposal is an advisory vote regarding simple majority voting and our governing documents. Our board has recommended that our stockholders vote against this stockholder proposal. The proposal comes from James McRitchie, who is on the line to present the proposal today. Mr. McRitchie, I would like to invite you now to present. You will have three minutes. James McRitchie: (51:14) I'd like to thank the board for holding such an innovative hybrid meeting during these difficult times. Proposal number five basically asks for a majority voting standard to amend bylaw. I first introduced a proposal on this subject at the 2014 Tesla meeting. Super majority provisions generally use to entrench incumbent directors and managers. Academic research finds that reducing such devices is associated with higher returns. James McRitchie: (51:46) The board's opposition statement argues they tried to adopt a [inaudible 00:51:51] party standard last year, but shareholders rejected it. However, 99.6% of shares voted for the proposal. Only 0.4% voted against it. The problem was that a little more than 35% of shares went unvoted. The vast majority of retail shareholders often don't bother to vote. Since only 65% of shares were voted, we didn't achieve the 66.67% necessary to overturn the current super majority bylaw. James McRitchie: (52:32) It appears the proposal failed primarily for three reasons. One, the board put forth less than robust arguments in favor. Two, they added confusion with another proposal to reclassify the board, not into a single class, that's the norm, but into two classes, elected in altering years. Third, the board also failed to make a substantial effort to solicit votes in favor. Also, please consider this proposal in context with other poor corporate governance provisions at Tesla. First, shareholders can only remove directors for cause. What that basically means is the director has to be caught in criminal activity for shareholders to remove them. Second, because the board is divided into three classes, shareholders can only hold individual directors accountable every three years. And third, shareholders cannot call special meetings, nor can they act by written consent. I hope you will agree. Corporations should not be democratic-free zones. Vote for proposal number five so that 33% of shares cannot overrule the wishes of 67%. Thank you. Al Prescott: (53:54) Thank you, Mr. McRitchie. We'll now move on to our third stockholder proposal, which is an advisory vote regarding reporting on employee arbitrations. Our board has recommended that our stockholders vote against this stockholder proposal. This proposal comes from Nia Impact Capital, whose representative Kelly Hull is on the line to present the proposal today. Ms. Hull, I'd like to invite you to go ahead and present. You will have three minutes. Dr. Kristin Hull: (54:28) Hello. My name is Dr. Kristin Hull, and I'm the founder and CEO of Nia Impact Capital. I formally move [inaudible 00:20:36]. This resolution requests that Tesla board of directors overseeing the preparation of a report on the impact of the use of mandatory arbitration on Tesla's employees and on its work place culture. The report will evaluate the association of Tesla's current use of arbitration with the prevalence of both harassment and discrimination in its workplace and on employee's ability to [inaudible 00:21:01], should harassment or discrimination occur. Dr. Kristin Hull: (55:05) This proposal speaks to the widespread experience of discrimination in the workplace by Black, Latinx, and female employees, despite this discrimination being unlawful under the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Tesla has faced a number of serious allegations of racism and sexism at its Buffalo and Fremont plant. Companies that allow bias discrimination and harassment in their workplaces are at risk for unnecessary legal brand financial and human capital issues. Dr. Kristin Hull: (55:36) Support of this resolution is warranted for the following five reasons. One, research shows that companies benefit from diverse and inclusive workplaces. Two, corporate policies that allow harassment and discrimination risk investors capital. Three, the use of arbitration exposes investors to an unknown level of risk. Four, broad concerns exist with respect to fair treatment in Tesla workplace. And Tesla employees have alleged harassment and discrimination on their basically both race and gender. [inaudible 00:56:13] Tesla, a company investors love for its innovation, leadership, and [inaudible 00:56:18] is increasingly lagging behind its peers in its [inaudible 00:56:22] related to workplace diversity, equity, and inclusion. Dr. Kristin Hull: (56:26) Unlike the forward thinking and innovation in its extraordinary product lines, Tesla has not challenged proactive leadership and building a positive company culture or in addressing concerns about its workplace practices. In these material issues, Tesla lags behind its technology and automotive competitors. Dr. Kristin Hull: (56:48) The use of arbitration limits employees remedy for wrongdoing, precludes employees from stewing in court, and often keeps underlying facts, misconduct or case outcomes secret, therefore preventing employees from learning about and acting on shared concerns. Dr. Kristin Hull: (57:05) Simply stated, arbitration allows that corporate behavior like bias, harassment, and discrimination to continue to keep hidden from employees and investors. To maintain Tesla's [inaudible 00:57:17], it is essential that the board seriously assess the implications of the use of arbitration and that Tesla begins to seriously the need to ensure a fair, equitable, positive, and inclusive workplace. Thank you. Al Prescott: (57:34) Thank you, Ms. Hull. Our fourth and final proposal is an advisory vote regarding reporting on human rights. Our board has recommended that stockholders vote against this proposal. This proposal comes to us from the Sisters of Good Shepherd, New York province, whose representative, Terrence Collingsworth is on the line to present today. Mr. Collingsworth, I would like to invite you to speak now. You have three minutes for your proposal. Terry Collingsworth: (58:09) Thank you. I'm Terry Collingsworth, executive director of the International Rights Advocates. I'm here representing the Sisters of Good Shepherd New York province to present item seven on human rights disclosure, which calls upon Tesla to issue a report to describe board oversight of human rights and its human rights due diligence process, including systems to provide meaningful remedies when human rights impacts occur. Terry Collingsworth: (58:40) Tesla faces serious human rights issues and failure to establish a culture of respect for human rights will expose Tesla to new liability issues and significant reputational injury, all of which will have a material impact on the company and its shareholders. The need to set a new course for human rights compliance at Tesla is glaring. Terry Collingsworth: (59:05) Here are five examples of human rights violations occurring now in Tesla's operations: racism, sexual harassment, and disregard for human safety and dignity harm workers at the Gigafactory 2 in Buffalo, New York, every single day. And those workers urge you to remember their experiences in your vote. Terry Collingsworth: (59:28) Tesla is experienced serious labor relations issues at its production facilities and is actively discouraging union organizing. Workers are being exposed to COVID-19 and then are facing retaliation when they ask for greater protections. There are numerous worker health and safety violations as well as wage and hour issues. Terry Collingsworth: (59:50) And finally, there are serious, even deadly, human rights violations occurring in Tesla's global supply chains. On this last issue, my organization brought the pending suit against Tesla for using cobalt mined in the Democratic Republic of Congo by young children. I personally met young boys who lost limbs or were paralyzed in cobalt tunnel collapses. Tesla sources cobalt from these very mines. And its claimed to have quote, \"Zero tolerance for child labor,\" in its supplier code of conduct is simply not true. Tesla is not only tolerating child labor in its cobalt supply chain, it is tolerating the death and maiming of young child minors. Terry Collingsworth: (01:00:42) This demonstrates why the company must circle back and begin a process to report on its treatment of human rights issues as requested in this proposal. I think consumers will have zero tolerance for a company that is exposed as being indifferent to killing and maiming child minors. We are hopeful that Tesla's innovative spirit can be brought to bear on making human rights a priority at the company. Terry Collingsworth: (01:01:12) For example, if the Elon Musk cared about implementing a zero tolerance child labor policy, instead of having a useless paper policy, Tesla could employ satellites or drones at every mine it sources from to actually monitor child labor. I encourage all Tesla shareholders to vote for item seven, human rights disclosure. Thank you for your attention. Al Prescott: (01:01:40) Thank you Mr. Collingsworth. At this time, I'd like to thank our stockholders for all of their active participation in today's meeting and for those who just presented on the line. I'd also like to read some of the comments that have been submitted by you over the course of the meeting. The first comment comes from Michael [Overbaugh 00:01:02:01]. \"I take great pride in the fact that we haven't had to stoop to the level of what advertising represents to get where we are today. I'd hate to give into that kind of temptation now, when we're so close to becoming a household name that's based solely on our merit alone. But if assets do end up having to be set aside for marketing, I'd like to suggest that rather than shoving ads down the customer's throat, we established some sort of hardcore nationwide campaign and event with the goal of getting as many people as possible behind the wheel of a Tesla for an introduction drive. It's well-known how far just doing that alone goes to converting people into fans.\" Al Prescott: (01:02:46) \"A line I recently ran across says, 'You can talk all about the specs as much as you want, but when it comes to buying a car, what ultimately puts butts in seats is the feeling that the vehicle gives you.' By demonstrating that Tesla clearly has both the specs and the feeling, what more needs saying?\" Al Prescott: (01:03:08) Our second comment comes from the United Steel workers on behalf of the Clean Air Now Coalition of Western New York by Sabrina Lu. And it reads as follows, \"Proposal six and seven up for vote this year are the results of widespread concern about mistreatment of Tesla workers at US factories and across the supply chain. It is clear that Tesla is not interested in addressing the harm they have caused to their workers as their board is advising shareholders to vote against the proposal. We're urging all shareholders to vote in favor of proposal six and seven. And on behalf of our workers at the United Steelworkers here in Western New York and for Tesla employees across the country and across the global supply chain, while this doesn't repair the harm, that's already been caused to countless employees, nor repair harm to children and communities forced into slave labor in the DRC, they represent steps towards a more just workplace at Tesla.\" Al Prescott: (01:04:19) This concludes all of the comments. Thank you all for your participation in the comments. We'll now have a final opportunity for any of you to submit proxies in order for them to be counted. So I'll pause and wait for a moment for you to do that. Al Prescott: (01:04:51) Okay. I declare that the polls are now closed. So based on the proxies that we have previously received, I'd like to announce on a preliminary basis that our stockholders have approved the recommendations of Tesla's board on all agenda items, other than the stockholder proposal for an advisory vote regarding simple majority voting in our governing documents. After the final tabulation is completed, we'll formally announce the results of the voting by filing a form 8-K with the SEC within four business days of today. This now concludes the official business of Tesla's 2020 annual stockholders meeting, which is now adjourned. Al Prescott: (01:05:37) Next, we will have a company update and a year in review presented by Elon. And then we will start our Battery Day Event. During the course of those following sessions, we may discuss our business outlook and make forward looking statements. Such statements or predictions based on our current expectations. Actual events or results could materially differ due to a number of risks and uncertainties, including those disclosed in our most recent 10-Q filed with the SEC. These forward looking statements represent our views. As of today. They shouldn't be relied on after today and we disclaim any obligation to update them after today as well. Al Prescott: (01:06:23) We will now continue with the company update and year in review. And it's my pleasure to introduce Tesla co-founder and CEO, Mr. Elon Musk. Elon Musk: (01:06:45) Everyone. Well, I mean, this is definitely a new approach. We've got the Tesla drive in movie theater, basically. It's good to see everyone. It's a little hard to read the room with everyone being in cars, but it's the only way we can do it. So hopefully it's cool. And hopefully you can hear me. Can you guys hear me? Elon Musk: (01:07:08) Okay. All right. Great. Elon Musk: (01:07:12) Well, thanks for coming. I think it's been an incredible year and I'd like to just thank you for your support through tough times, good times. It's been great. Really appreciate everyone who's put their heart and money into Tesla and I think it's worked out pretty well. This has been a good year. And I think there's many good years to come. So I'll go through the shareholder presentation fairly quickly because the real main event here is Battery Day. And really, I'm just going through a recap of what's happened over the past a year or so. Elon Musk: (01:07:58) I think starting from in terms of our ability to create a ... Elon Musk: (01:08:03) In terms of our ability to create a factory, huge kudos to the Tesla Shanghai team for being able to go from literally a dirt pile to volume production in 15 months. It's like, damn. Yeah. And I think something that's really quite noteworthy here is Tesla's the only foreign manufacturer to have a hundred percent owned factory in China. So this is often not well understood or not appreciated, but to have the only hundred percent owned foreign factory in China is a really big deal, and it's paying huge dividends here. So we really wouldn't have the results that we have had this year without the great efforts of the Tesla China team, so I'm super appreciative of that, and we'll see the Shanghai factory continue to scale quite a bit from where it is right now. I think we really could expect that to be, over time, a factory that produces over a million vehicles a year. Elon Musk: (01:09:16) Yeah, it's cool. So let's see. So we also reached in the past year of volume production of the Model Y, and this was the smoothest launch that we've ever had, so I think we're definitely getting better at a new vehicle launches and building factories and scaling production. As you've heard me say before, the hardest thing is scaling production, especially of a new technology. It's insanely difficult. Making a prototype is relatively easy, and if I think, like, what is the real achievement of Tesla in sort of car company terms, it's like it wasn't making sort of exciting prototypes. It was that Tesla was really the first company in about a century in the U.S., the first U.S. company in the U.S. to reach volume production and be sustainably profitable. The crazy thing is this has really not happened in a hundred years. That's the actual super hard part, and we now have four vehicles in volume production, S3XY. Also, the toughest joke I think maybe ever. It was a very difficult joke to make. Elon Musk: (01:10:38) So we also introduced the lowest cost solar in the U.S. It's only a dollar 49 a watt, and we really just simplified the whole value chain, so reduced sales and advertising, got rid of a bunch of unnecessary costs, and really are just relying upon the fact that it's just the lowest cost, most efficient solar in the U.S., providing both a retrofit and the solar glass roof, which I think is a really great product. A hard product to make work, but it will be a major pipeline in the future. Elon Musk: (01:11:13) And we also got four consecutive quarters of gap profitability, which was very difficult. Yeah. And certainly a testament to the hard work of people at Tesla. I mean, to do this in extremely difficult times against a wide range of adverse circumstances was insanely hard, but we got it done, and I think the future is looking I think, very promising from a sort of an annual profitability standpoint. So in order to sort of do well financially, you really need economies of scale, and you need ideally the best technology, and I think we've had the best technology for a while, but now we are also achieving economies of scale, and we're also rapidly improving autonomy, which is a massive value add to each car. So, I think the value of Tesla is going to be like total, just on the vehicle side, total vehicles produced times the value of autonomy. That's a way to think about the future value of Tesla. Elon Musk: (01:12:35) We also have consistent free cashflow generation. This is really important for growth, and a key element here is tightening up the time from when a car is ordered to when it is built and delivered. So for a company that is growing rapidly, it's extremely important to tighten the supply chain and to have, from when parts arrive, put it into a car very quickly and deliver the car very quickly to the customer. And if you can do that inside soft of your payables timeline, then the faster you grow, the more cash you have. Or conversely, if you're unable to do it within your payables timeline, the faster you grow, the less money you will have, which is obviously bad for capital intensive situation. So just tightening up and having the parts move very quickly to the factory, put it in a car, get it to a customer makes a massive difference to cashflow generation. Elon Musk: (01:13:34) I mean, that's why it's extremely important to have a factory in each continent, because if you don't at least have a factory in the continent, it isn't impossible to achieve this. So having a factory in China, that's able to serve China, and then soon many other countries in the region will be key to us tightening that total sort of chain of cashflow, and essentially the faster we grow, the more cash. This is really important. That's also why it's important to have Giga Berlin complete, because then we'll have a factory in China, a factory in the U.S. and soon a second factory in the U.S. in Austin, and a factory in Europe. Elon Musk: (01:14:18) I mean, even if for Giga Texas in Austin, even if we had exactly the same cost as in California, it would still be advantageous to do it there because it's roughly two-thirds of the way across the U.S., so in terms of delivering cars to the central U.S. and to the East Coast, it's just faster, it costs less, and it fundamentally improves our economics. So I think this is also maybe something that's not fully appreciated of just how important it is to have a factory at least on the continent or reasonably close to where the end customers is, so you can tighten that whole chain. Elon Musk: (01:14:56) Industry performance. While the rest of industry is, has gone down, Tesla has gone up, I think this speaks to ... Thanks. And so I'd like to thank all the customers for taking a chance on Tesla and buying our product and really hope you're enjoying it. This is really, our sales, as [inaudible 01:15:21] was saying, it really grew by word of mouth, so this is really, I think it's very pure in the sense that it's growing on the basis of existing owners recommending it to others to new customers. This is, really, I think, a good way to grow. Elon Musk: (01:15:40) So, and then in 2019 we had 50% growth, and I think we'll do really pretty well in 2020. Probably somewhere between 30-40% growth, despite a lot of very difficult circumstances. I mean, there's so many. Pandemic, the wildfires. It's a whole bunch of difficult production issues, but thanks to the hard work of the Tesla team and a lot of innovative approaches to overcoming issues, we're able to still see significant growth in one of the most difficult. In fact, I'd say probably the most difficult year of Tesla's existence. Elon Musk: (01:16:25) We also published our extended impact report. At Tesla, we try very hard to do the right thing. If what I think does not happen, it's just because we maybe made a mistake or weren't aware of it, but we always try to do the right thing to the best of our ability, and then we published the extended impact report to show just a self-examination of, okay, what are we doing, right? What are we doing wrong? What can we do better in the future? We're definitely trying to accomplish the most good, and so if we occasionally make a mistake, we work quickly to fix it and do the right thing. So it's worth looking at the average life cycle of emissions in the U.S. and just how much better a Tesla is or electric car than any kind of gasoline car, and what we'll talk about in the Battery Day is also just how much the grids around the world, and actually especially in the U.S., are greening. It's actually much faster than I think people realize, the U.S. is moving towards sustainable energy. And so as we move more and more to sustainable energy, then effectively you end up building the solar factories and the car factories themselves with solar or with sustainable energy. Over time, you will even mine with sustainable energy, and eventually it will get to an effective emissions of zero, so that's where things will end up. Yeah. Elon Musk: (01:17:59) So we also have safety at the core of our design. The Tesla cars are the safest cars ever designed. We have the lowest probability of injury of any cars ever tested by the U.S. government, And that's just passive safety. When you add active safety into that, it's even better, so it's really ... If safety is important to you, which obviously it is, the safest car you could drive is a Tesla. So I think some people aren't aware of this, but it's really safety is paramount. It is actually the number one design objective when we build a Tesla is safety. Elon Musk: (01:18:41) Our factories are also becoming safer, and if you look at the sort of accidents per vehicle, total vehicle made it's dramatically better than in the past, and it's already better than industry average, and we're confident we can get it to the best in the auto industry. Autopilot functionality continues to improve, and you can see it in the safety report that we publish every quarter. It's just getting better and better. The U.S. average for collisions is at roughly 2.1 per million miles, and with autopilot engaged, it's 0.3. I mean, this is a profound difference, really massive, and this will get even better. So we're confident that over time we can get the probability of an accident, especially the probability of injury, to 10 times better than the industry average, like an order of magnitude better. So that's just a lot of lives saved and a lot of injuries avoided, so that's a huge priority for us. Elon Musk: (01:19:50) Yeah, the autopilot front, I think it's hard for people to judge the progress of autopilot. I'm driving ... As a matter of course, I've always done this. I drive the bleeding edge alpha build of autopilot, and so I sort of have insight into what is going on. Previously about a couple of years ago, we were kind of stuck in a local maximum, so we're improving, but the improvements kind of started tailing off and just not getting where they needed to be. I call this sort of getting trapped in a local maximum, and so we had to do a fundamental rewrite of the entire autopilot software stack and all of the labeling software as well. Elon Musk: (01:20:40) So we are now labeling in 3D video, so this is hugely different from the previously where we were labeling essentially a bunch of single images from the eight cameras, and they would be labeled at different times by different people, and some of the labels, you literally can't tell what it is you're labeling. So it basically made it sort of in some cases impossible to label, and the labels had a lot of errors. Now with our new labeling tools, we label it in video, so we actually label entire video segments in the system, so you get basically a surround video thing to label with the surround video and with time. So it's now taking all cameras simultaneously and looking at how the image has changed over time and labeling that, and then the sophistication of the neural nets in the car and the overall logic in the car has improved dramatically. Elon Musk: (01:21:44) I think we'll hopefully release a private beta of autopilot, of the full self-driving version of autopilot in, I think, a month or so, and then people will really understand just the magnitude of the change. It's profound. So, yeah. Anyway, so you'll see it. It's just like a hell of a step change, but because we had to rewrite everything, labeling software, just the entire code base, it took us quite a while. The sort of new ... I call it like 4D in the sense that it's three dimensions plus time. It's just taken us a while to rewrite everything, and so you'll see what it's like. It's amazing. Yeah. It's just clearly going to work. Elon Musk: (01:22:42) At Tesla, the core competencies, we've got engineering, obviously, but also manufacturing. I think manufacturing is underappreciated in general, and the difficulty of designing the machine that makes the machine is vastly harder than the machine itself. So the designing, like making a Model 3 or Model Y or Cybertruck truck prototype is really quite trivial compared to designing the factory that makes it, especially if it's new technology, and you want to use new manufacturing methods. It's just at least 10 to 100 times harder to do the factory than the prototype, and that's why you see a lot of companies out there or startups they'll bring out a prototype, but they just can't get it over the hump for who manufacturing, because manufacturing of new technology especially is the hardest thing by fa. Basically, the prototype is at best 10% of the difficulty and probably closer to 1%. Elon Musk: (01:23:50) And then software. Tesla is both a hardware and a software company, so a huge percentage of our engineers are actually software engineers, and you can think of our car as kind of like a laptop on wheels, so software is incredibly important. Actually, not just in the car, but also in the factory. So the factory software is extremely important. Just software in general. I mean, these are fundamental. These are the three critical areas that are needed to make for an awesome company. So, yeah. Elon Musk: (01:24:29) So we have ... Now we'll soon have three new factories incremental on ... Well, we have one already. On three different continents. Shanghai, we're expanding the Shanghai with the second phase. Berlin is making rapid progress, and Texas is making even faster progress. So, yeah. With each factory, what we're trying to do is also improve the manufacturing technology, so in some cases like the Model Y made in Berlin might look the same, but it actually is made in a much more efficient way. Yeah, we'll talk about that later in the battery presentation. Elon Musk: (01:25:15) Yeah, we launched Megapack. It's three megawatt hours all in one energy storage solution, so it's been great overall. Yeah. All right. And I think that's basically it, right? All right, thank you. All right. Well, thanks, everyone, for coming, and we'll be back in a little bit to go through the battery stuff, and there's a little bit more. In addition to the battery stuff, we've got a few extras as well. So I think you'll really like what we have to say on batteries. Elon Musk: (01:25:53) The battery stuff we're going to talk about is truly revolutionary and essential to Tesla's goal. The fundamental good of Tesla, it's like, if you look back in history and say, \"What good did Tesla do?\" The good will by how many years did we accelerate sustainable energy? That's the true metric of success. It matters if sustainable energy happens faster or slower, and so that's really how I think about Tesla and how we should assess our progress. By how many years did we accelerate sustainable energy? And what we're going to talk about with batteries and a few other things will really explain how we're going to make a step change improvement in the acceleration of sustainable energy. Thank you. [inaudible 00:18:44]. Speaker 1: (01:26:50) Hi, folks. That was great. We're going to take a short break before we begin the Battery Day event, so stay tuned. If you're local and here in the audience today, you can feel free to get out of the cars and stretch your legs, but try to stay near the cars, because we're going to begin properly in a little bit. See you soon. (silence). Elon Musk: (01:27:06) [inaudible 01:40:28]. Drew Baglino: (01:40:32) Hello, everyone. Elon Musk: (01:40:37) Great. Should you start? Drew Baglino: (01:40:38) Sure. Thanks, Elon. Hi. I'm Drew Baglino, SVP of Powertrain and Energy Engineering at Tesla, and I'm incredibly excited to talk about what we've been doing with batteries here at Tesla. Elon Musk: (01:40:48) Great. So let's see. You've got the clicker? Drew Baglino: (01:40:53) I've got the clicker, yeah. Elon Musk: (01:40:54) Okay. Let's ... Yeah. I'll take it at first, perhaps. Drew Baglino: (01:40:57) Sure. Elon Musk: (01:40:58) So obviously the issues we're facing are very serious with climate change, and we're experiencing these issues on a day-to-day basis. It's incredibly important that we accelerate the advent of sustainable energy. Time really matters. This presentation is about accelerating the time to sustainable energy. Elon Musk: (01:41:23) So the past five years were the hottest on record. We have what looks like a wall for CO2 PPM. It's obviously ... This time is not like the past. It's really important that we take action. Running this climate experiment is insane, so ... Drew Baglino: (01:41:46) Especially when it's just a transitory one, anyway. Elon Musk: (01:41:49) Yes. Drew Baglino: (01:41:50) We're going to run out of these fossil fuels. Let's just move to the future and not run this experiment any longer. Yeah. Elon Musk: (01:41:55) Talk a bit louder. Drew Baglino: (01:41:56) You got it. Elon Musk: (01:41:57) Okay. So anyway, there is a lot of good ... Elon Musk: (01:42:03) There is a lot of good news though. A lot of people may not be aware that that wind and solar comprise 75% of new electricity capacity in the US this year. So this is really major. So the grid is going sustainable very quickly. Now, it's also worth noting that the length of time that power plants lasts is on the order of 25 years. So even if a hundred percent of energy generation was sustainable, it will still take 25 years to convert the grid. And it's also worth noting that in the past 10 years, power production from coal has dropped in half. So it went from 46% of electricity in 2010 to 23% in 2020. So this is a massive improvement. So good things are happening on a lot of levels. We just need to go faster. Elon Musk: (01:43:06) So Tesla's contribution, we've delivered over a million electric vehicles, 26 billion electric miles driven, and many gigawatt hours of stationary batteries, 17 terawatt hours of solar generated. So I think solar is sometimes underweighted at Tesla, but it is a massive part of our future. The three parts of a sustainable energy future are sustainable energy generation, storage, and electric vehicles. So we intend to play a significant role in all three. So to accelerate the transition to sustainable energy, we must produce more EVs that need to be affordable and a lot more energy storage, while building factories faster and with far less investment. So goal number one is a terawatt hour scale battery production. So tera is the new giga. And a terawatt is a thousand times more than a gigawatt. So we used to talk in terms of gigawatts, in the future, we'll be talking in terms of terawatt hours. So this is what's needed in order to transition the world to sustainability. Drew Baglino: (01:44:24) Yeah, and you can see it's... We're talking about a hundred X growth in batteries for electric vehicles to achieve this mission. And we are going to get there. It's just a matter of how fast. And our intention is to accelerate it. Elon Musk: (01:44:38) Yeah, you basically need on the order of roughly 10 terawatt hours a year of battery production to transition the global fleet of vehicles to electric. Drew Baglino: (01:44:48) And the average vehicle lasts 15 years. So we're talking about 150 terawatt hours give or take to transition the whole electric, all vehicles of all types, to electric. Elon Musk: (01:45:00) Yeah. So it's a lot of batteries, basically. And so- Drew Baglino: (01:45:07) Yeah. And then on the grid side, we have a similar mountain to climb, 1600 times growth from today's grid batteries to go a hundred percent renewable on the grid and to take all of the existing heating fossil fuel uses in homes and businesses, a hundred percent electric. Elon Musk: (01:45:24) Yeah. And this number I think might grow even more. As the world economy matures, and as countries with high populations industrialize, we could see this number be even more. But let's say it's like roughly 20 to 25 terawatt hours per year sustained for 15 to 25 years to transition the world to renewable. This is a lot. Drew Baglino: (01:45:53) Yeah. Elon Musk: (01:45:55) So today's batteries cannot scale fast enough. They're just too small. For Giga Nevada, 150 gigawatt hours per year is what we probably expect to make out of there. But this is really pretty small in the grand scheme of things. That's only 0.15 terawatt hours. And it costs too much. Drew Baglino: (01:46:16) We would need 135 fully built out in Nevada Giga factories to achieve 20 terawatt hours a year. It's not scalable enough of a solution. We need a dramatic rethink of the cell manufacturing system to scale as fast as we can and should. Elon Musk: (01:46:32) Yeah, and I think we should view this as more than just a question of money. Money is sort of an ethereal thing, but it's really the amount of effort. You have a certain amount of effort in terms of people and machines, and depending on how efficient that effort is, for a given amount of effort, you want the most amount of batteries. So it's not just the question of well, if we have $2 trillion, tomorrow you could make this. It's not that easy. You actually need to organize a massive number of people, build a lot of machines, build the machines that make the machines. And so it's incredibly important to have that effort yield the most number of batteries. Elon Musk: (01:47:16) So, and then goal two, obviously we need to make more affordable cars. I think one of the things that troubles me the most is that we don't yet have a truly affordable car, and that is something that we will make in the future. But in order to do that, we've got to get the cost of batteries down. We've got to make, and we've got to be better at manufacturing. And we need to do something about this curve. The curve of the cost per kilowatt hour of batteries is not improving fast enough. So we've given this a lot of thought over many years to say, okay, how can we radically improve the cost per kilowatt hour curve? It's been somewhat flattening out actually in recent years. Drew Baglino: (01:48:02) Yeah. I mean, early growth was promising, but you can see we're kind of plateauing. So that's what's motivating us to rethink how cells are produced and designed. Elon Musk: (01:48:10) Yeah, exactly. So yeah. And EV market share is growing, but EVs still aren't accessible to all. And you can see, as you Drew were saying, it's like starting to flatten out a little bit because the rate of improvement of the affordability of cars is just not fast enough. So that's why we've got Battery Day. Drew Baglino: (01:48:33) Yeah. To make the best cars in the world, we designed vehicles in factories from the ground up. Next. And now we do this for batteries as well. Elon Musk: (01:48:45) Yeah. It's weird, the slides don't show up quite right here. What shows up on the screen is not quite what shows up there. Drew Baglino: (01:48:55) Oh, okay. Elon Musk: (01:48:56) It's different. Drew Baglino: (01:48:57) Yeah. I think it's because that's... Yeah. Elon Musk: (01:48:59) That one's current, supposed to be current. Whatever. Drew Baglino: (01:49:02) So let's get started. We have a plan to have the cost per kilowatt hour. And it's not a plan that rests on a single innovation, some research project that will never see the light of day. It's a plan that has taken creative engineering and industrialization across every facet of what makes a cell into a battery pack, from raw material to the finished thing. And we're going to go through that plan with you today, step-by-step, and build up how we get to these goals and how we accelerate this transition and make our vehicles and our grid batteries more affordable. Elon Musk: (01:49:45) Yeah. I mean, we basically thought through every element of the battery, or almost every element. There are a few more elements that we won't get to today, but we will get to in the future. Drew Baglino: (01:49:53) Yes. So first before we get too far into it, let's talk about what is in a battery cell. We've got the cap and the can, negative and positive terminals of the cell. When you open that cell, you've got a tab connected to those terminals, what we call the jelly roll, which is the wound electrodes on the inside. You can actually see what this looks like as you unwind it. This is over a meter long in a typical 2170 cell. So it's quite a long winding process. And you can see the tab still there. And then to explain what's actually going on here, we've identified, we've got anode, cathode, separator, positive and negative terminal. Drew Baglino: (01:50:37) Watch what happens as we, there we go, discharge the cell. Got lithium moving from anode to cathode. And then the reverse when we charge the cell, lithium moving from cathode to anode across the separator. This is the basic of what makes all lithium-ion batteries, no matter what the form factor is. And when we look at what's happened today, at least in our products, we've moved from the 18650 form factor to the 2170 form factor through great collaboration with our partners, Panasonic, new partners like LG and CATL and probably others in the future. Elon Musk: (01:51:20) Actually, slight note on why is the one called 18650, although not on the slide, versus the 2170, is that the first two digits refer to the diameter, and the second two digits refer to the length. So that helps explain what's up with these weird numbers. But nobody could explain to me why there was an extra zero. So I, so I said, \"Okay, well, we're deleting the zero that nobody can explain in future form factors.\" So that's why it's technically, it's like the 18650 bizarrely, but going forward it's the 2170, because we just got rid of the extra zero because it's pointless. Drew Baglino: (01:51:56) And this was a evolutionary step going from 1865 to 2170, bringing 50% more energy into the cell. But when we look to the ideal cell design, if we were to do it ourselves, we need to go beyond just what we're looking at us in front of us and study the full spectrum of options. So as you can see, we kind of swept the key figures of merit, how much we can reduce the cost and how much vehicle range increases as we change the outer diameter of the cell. We found a sweet spot somewhere around 46 millimeters. But it's not just about a bigger form factor. Anybody could make a bigger form factor. Elon Musk: (01:52:37) Any fool, any fool could make a bigger form factor. Are we not any fool? Drew Baglino: (01:52:42) Yeah, exactly. There are problems as you make cells larger. In fact, supercharging and thermals in general become really challenging as you make bigger cells. And this was the challenge that our team set our sights on to overcome. And we did, we came up with this tabless architecture that maybe you've heard about, that basically removes the thermal problem from the equation and allows us to go to the absolute lowest cost form factor and the simplest manufacturing process. And this is what we mean when we talk about tabless. It's kind of a beautiful thing. Elon Musk: (01:53:22) Yeah. That's what these t-shirts mean, but it's very esoteric. It was like, nobody could figure it out. Drew Baglino: (01:53:26) Yeah, we basically took the existing foils, laser pattered them, and enabled dozens of connections into the active material through this shingled spiral you can see with simpler manufacturing, fewer parts, 50 millimeter versus 250 millimeter electrical path length, which is how we get all the thermal benefits. Elon Musk: (01:53:46) Yeah. This is important to appreciate. Basically the distance that that electron has to travel, it's just much less. So you actually have a shorter path length in a large tabless cell than you have in the smaller cell with tabs. This is a big deal. So even though the cell is bigger, it actually has more power. The power to weight ratio is actually better than the smaller cell with tabs. This is, again, this is quite hard to do it. Nobody's done it before and it really took a tremendous amount of effort within Tesla engineering to figure out how do we make a frigging tabless cell and have it actually work and then connect that to the top cap. There's a whole bunch of things that we're keeping a little secret sauce here that we're not telling everything, but- Drew Baglino: (01:54:40) Sometimes what's elegant and simple is still hard. And it took us a lot of trials, but we're happy where we ended up. Elon Musk: (01:54:46) Yeah. I mean, everything is simple in recollection, after you... it's hard until it's discovered and then it's simple. So anyway, there's a lot of really cool things going on that enable tabless. And it was really due to a really great engineering team. Drew and the rest of the team had done amazing work in achieving this tabless construction. I think it may sort of sound a bit silly to some people, but for people that really know cells, this is a massive breakthrough. Drew Baglino: (01:55:19) For cylindricals to be able to get rid of the tabs dramatically simplifies winding and coding. And has an awesome thermal and performance benefit. Elon Musk: (01:55:28) Yeah. Just to elaborate on that a bit, it's like when the cell is going through the system, it has to keep stopping where all the tabs are. So you can't do a continuous motion production if you have tabs. You have to keep stopping and then there's a rate at which you can start and stop and accelerate again and it really slows down the rate of production. And then sometimes you get the tabs wrong and you also lose a little bit of active area. It's really a huge pain in the ass to have tabs from a production standpoint. Drew Baglino: (01:56:03) Yes. And so when we put it all together and go to our new 80 millimeter length, 4680 we call this a new cell design, we get five times the energy with six times the power and enable 16% range increase, just form factor alone. Elon Musk: (01:56:23) Yeah. So these... Yeah. It's pretty great. And just to clarify, when we see these plus 16% or whatever the percentage rate increase is, these are the amounts due just to that particular innovation. So we'll list a whole bunch of innovations and then when you add them up, you get a total improvement in energy density and cost. But these numbers are what refer to just this thing. Drew Baglino: (01:56:56) Yeah. And I want to stress, this is not just a concept or a rendering. We're starting to ramp up manufacturing of these cells at our pilot 10 gigawatt hour production facility, just around the corner. Elon Musk: (01:57:08) Yeah. So. Yeah. It's a video of some of what's going on in the plant. Now. I mean, to be clear, it will take about a year to reach the 10 gigawatt hour capacity. So this is important to appreciate. When you build a factory, there's a certain capacity that you design to, and then it takes some period of time to actually achieve that capacity. So I would say it's probably about a year before we get to the 10 gigawatt hour annualized rate with the pilot plant. And this is just a pilot plant. The actual production plants will be more on the order of maybe 200 gigawatt hours, maybe more over time. Drew Baglino: (01:58:00) And... Thank you. But let's stack up everything we just saw at the cell level. So just the cell form factor change enables a 14% dollar per kilowatt hour reduction, just that cell form factor change. And now that you've been teased on this factory, we're going to go on and walk step-by-step through that factory and discuss a series of innovations there. When thinking about the ideal cell factory, we have inspirations behind us in the paper and bottling industry, where from humble beginnings, over a century of innovation has enabled mass scale, continuous motion, unbelievably low manufacturing costs. And when we think about the lithium-ion industry, which is really only in its third decade of high volume production, it has so far to go to achieve similar scale and simplicity. And that was the inspiration that we set out to the team as we thought about how to marry cell design and manufacturing in the best possible factory. Drew Baglino: (01:59:05) And let's talk a little bit about what's in a cell factory. First, there's an electrode process where the active materials are coated into films onto foils. Then those coated foils are wound in the winding process we just talked about where if you do have tabs, you have to start and stop a lot. Then the jelly roll is assembled into the can, sealed, filled with electrolyte, and then sent to formation where the cell is charged for the first time and where the sort of the electrochemistry is set and the quality of the cell is verified. And we set out at every step of this process to try to take that inspiration we just showed and think about how we make those processes fundamentally better and more scalable. And one of the most important processes is where it all begins, the wet process of the electrode coding. And just to give you all a sense of scale, I'm going to walk through what's in that wet process. Drew Baglino: (02:00:09) You've got mixing where the powders are mixed with either a water or a solvent, solvents for the cathode. That mix then goes into a large coat and dry oven where the slurry is coated onto the foil, huge ovens, tens of meters long, dried, and that solvent then has to be recovered. You can see the solvent recovery system. And then finally the coated foil is compressed to the final density. And when you're looking at this, you're like, wow, that's a lot of equipment for one step, especially when you consider that little spec next to the coating oven is a person. This is serious iron involved in making batteries. Wouldn't it be great if we could skip that solvent step, which is one of those dig a ditch, and then fill it kind of things where you put the solvent in and then take it out and recycle it, and just go straight to a dry mix to coat? And that's what the dry process really is about. And in the most basic form, you can see it here on a benchtop, literally powder into film, as simple as that. Elon Musk: (02:01:25) I mean, it's hard actually, just to be clear. If this was easy, everyone would do it. It's not like dry coating electrode is actually easy. It's actually very hard to do what appears to be a simple thing. And it's worth noting, we did acquire Maxwell a little over a year ago, I guess, and certainly a good company and everything, but the dry coating they had was like, it's like sort of, I would call proof of concept. Since the acquisition. We've actually ramped the machine that does dry coating four times. So revision full post acquisition of the machine, and there's still a lot of work to do. So I would not say this is completely in the bag. It's still a lot of work to do. And as you grow, as you scale, go from benchtop to lab to pilot to volume production, there are actually major issues that you encounter at every level. It's not like you make something work on your bench and bingo, now you can make a bazillion of it. Drew Baglino: (02:02:26) Absolutely. Elon Musk: (02:02:26) It's insanely difficult to scale up. Yeah. Drew Baglino: (02:02:31) Yeah, but if you do scale it up, what you saw before becomes this. So you can see the motivation. A 10 times reduction in footprint, a 10 times reduction in energy and a massive reduction in investment. But as Elon was saying, simple is hard. Elon Musk: (02:02:48) Yeah. I mean, to be clear, I would like to not say that right now, it just totally working. It's close to working, but it's not, even now at the pilot plant level, it is close to working. It's fair to say probably it does work, but with not a good, not a high yield. Drew Baglino: (02:03:07) Yeah. We're still ironing out the kinks, but we've made tens of thousands of cells, thousands of kilometers of electrode. I mean, we are on the fourth generation of the equipment so we've learned a lot along the way. I mean, it is super demanding because every atom has its place if you want to deliver the energy density and the cycle life and the supercharging. But we're confident that we will get there, but it will be a lot of work along that. Elon Musk: (02:03:29) There's a clear path to success, but a ton of work between here and there. But this is a really profound improvement. Again, for people that know battery manufacturing, this is gigantic. We'll probably be on machine revision six or seven by the time we do large scale production. The rate at which the machines are being improved is extremely rapid. Literally every three or four months, there's a new rev. Drew Baglino: (02:03:55) Yeah. And beyond the electrode, we continue to innovate on every other process steps. So let's talk a little bit about assembly, which is next. The key to a high-performing assembly line is accomplishing processes while in motion, continuous motion. And thinking of the line as a highway, max velocity down the highway, no start and stop, no city driving. Elon Musk: (02:04:24) Exactly, no stop lights and traffic lights sort of thing. You want the highway. Drew Baglino: (02:04:28) You want the highway. And together with our internal design team that makes this equipment and designs this equipment, we coupled thinking about how to make the best cell with thinking about how to make the best equipment so that we could accomplish the fastest parts per minute rates on all of these tools. And through all of that development, we were able to get to the point where we can implement assembly lines, one line, 20 gigawatt hours, seven times increase in output per line. And when you're thinking about scalability and pure effort, having one line be seven X the capability is just effort multiplying. Elon Musk: (02:05:10) Yeah. So you can sort of think about the sort of the fundamental physics of a factory or something. I think it's actually quite a lot like the rocket equation where you've got basically the rocket equation you've got your exhaust velocity and then the log of [end 02:05:24] masses. So it's basically saying how fast are things going and what percentage of the factory volume is doing useful work? And conveyance does not count as useful work. Drew Baglino: (02:05:34) Only the value added steps. Elon Musk: (02:05:37) Yeah. If you break the factory down into cubic meter sections and say... or smaller. Could be like one liter sections, and say, \"Is a majority of this volume of doing useful work?\" You'd be astounded at how bad most factories are. They'd be like maybe two or 3%, including our factory in Fremont. So I think it's possible to get to at least 10 times that of volumetric efficiency. So more like 30%ish, maybe more, and be 10x better, which means the factory can be 10 times smaller. And then the other thing is how fast are things going through the factory? It's like speed and density. A factory that's moving at say twice the speed of another factory is equivalent to two factories basically. And the company that will be successful is the company that with one factory can accomplish what other companies take two or three or four factories to do. So this is what we're trying to do here is say, okay, how do we, with one factory achieve what maybe five or even 10 factories would normally be required to achieve? Drew Baglino: (02:06:43) And the vertical integration with the machine design teams at Grohmann and Hibar and others allows us to really accomplish that because we don't have any of these edge conditions between one piece of equipment and another, we can design the entire machine to be one machine and remove all of these unnecessary steps. Elon Musk: (02:07:03) Yeah. I mean, basically Tesla is aiming to be the best at manufacturing of any company on Earth. This is the thing that's actually most important in the long run I think, just from a company standpoint and from basically achieving sustainability as fast as possible. But I think also for long-term competitiveness, eventually every car company will have long range electric cars. Eventually every company will have autonomy, I think, but not every company will be a great at manufacturing. Tesla will be absolutely head and shoulders above anyone else in manufacturing, that is our goal. Drew Baglino: (02:07:44) Manufacturing is hard and hard problems are fun to solve. Okay. Now let's talk about formation. In a typical cell factory, formation represents 25% of the investment. And what is formation? Is it's charging and discharging cells and verifying the quality of the cell. It turns out we've charged and discharged billions and billions of cells in our vehicles so we know a thing or two about that. The typical formation set up is you charge and discharge each cell individually. In our car, we charge thousands of cells at once. And we took our principal and our power electronics, leveraging Powerwall vehicle battery management systems and others to dramatically improve the formation equipment cost-effectiveness and density. 86% reduction in formation investment, 75% reduction in footprint. You want to take this one? Elon Musk: (02:08:43) Sure. So essentially what this translates to based on what we know today is about a 75% reduction in the investment per kilowatt hour. Or gigawatt hour. It's just basically four times better than the current state of the art to the best of our knowledge. And I think there's probably room to improve even beyond that. Drew Baglino: (02:09:04) Definitely. Elon Musk: (02:09:05) Definitely. Yeah. So we're able to, from a volume standpoint, actually get what, in a smaller form factor than Giga Nevada, we're able to get many times the cell output. So you can see basically we can get a terawatt hour in less space than it took to make a gigawatt hour, 150 gigawatt hours. So this is pretty profound. I would actually not have thought this was possible several years ago, that we could actually get to a terawatt scale in less space than what we currently envisioned for doing 150 gigawatt hours. Drew Baglino: (02:09:48) Yes. Simpler accelerates terawatt scale. And that's what we need to do to accelerate our mission. And as Elon said, we're going to try to even improve on this as we push towards our goals, which are... Elon Musk: (02:10:02) Yeah. So this is just talking about Tesla internal cell production. As I tweeted out earlier, we will continue to use our cell suppliers, Panasonic and LG and CATL. And so this is a hundred gigawatt hours supplemental to what we buy from suppliers. And yeah, essentially, this does reduce our weighted average cost of a sale, but it allows us to make a lot more cars and a lot more stationary storage. And then long-term, we're expecting to make on the order of a 3000 gigawatt hours or three terawatt hours per year. I think we've got a good chance of achieving this actually before 2030, but I'm highly confident that we could do it by 2030. Drew Baglino: (02:10:58) When you look at the size of that factory on the previous page, it really shows how enabling all of these advancements are in achieving a three terawatt hour goal by 2030. And not only is all of that manufacturing innovation fantastic for enabling scale, it's also an additional 18% reduction in dollar per kilowatt hour at the battery pack level. Elon Musk: (02:11:18) But wait, there's more. Drew Baglino: (02:11:19) But wait, there's more. So we have a manufacturing system, we've got a cell design. What are the active materials we're going to put in that cell design? Let's talk about the anode first. Let's talk about silicon. Why is silicon awesome? It's awesome because it's the most abundant element in the Earth's crust after oxygen, which means it's everywhere. It's sand. Elon Musk: (02:11:44) Sand is silicon dioxide. Drew Baglino: (02:11:47) And it happens to store nine times more lithium than graphite, which is the typical anode material in lithium-ion batteries today. So why isn't everybody using it? The main reason is because the challenge with silicon is that it expands four X when fully charged with lithium. And basically all of that expansion stress on the particle, the particles start cracking, they start electrically isolating, you lose capacity. The energy retention of the battery starts to fade. And it also gumps up with a passivation layer that has to keep reforming as the particles expand. Elon Musk: (02:12:19) Yeah. Basically with silicon, the cookie crumbles and gets gooey. That's basically what happens. Drew Baglino: (02:12:24) Good analogy. And current approaches to solve this, which exist, I mean, we have silicon in the cars that you're all in right now, involved highly engineered, expensive materials in the scheme of things. Now they're still great and they enable some of the benefits of silicon. They just don't enable all of it and they're not scalable enough. And you can see some of the things that maybe you've heard of, SIO, silicon with carbon, or silicon nanowires. That's kind of the space right now. What we're proposing is a step change in capability and a step change in cost. And what that really is is to just go to the raw metallurgical silicon itself, don't engineer the base metal, just start with that and design for it to expand in how you think of the particle in the electrode design and how you coat it. Elon Musk: (02:13:14) Yeah. And I'm not sure if you saw this. Basically a dollar per kilowatt hours basically. If you use simple silicon, it's dramatically less than even the silicon that is currently used in the batteries that are made today, and you can use a lot more of it. Drew Baglino: (02:13:29) The anode would cost, yeah, with this silicon, the anode costs a dollar and 20 cents a kilowatt hour. Elon Musk: (02:13:38) Yeah. Drew Baglino: (02:13:41) And how does it work? Start with raw metallurgical silicon, stabilize the surface with an elastic ion conducting polymer coating that is applied through a very scalable approach. No chemical vapor deposition, no highly engineered high capacity, high cap ex solutions, and then integrate it into the electrode through a robust network formed out of a highly elastic binder. And in the end, by leveraging this silicon to its potential, we can increase the range of our vehicles by an additional 20%. Just this improvement. Elon Musk: (02:14:13) Yeah. It gets cheaper and longer range. Okay. Drew Baglino: (02:14:20) Yeah. And when we take that anode cost reduction, we're looking at another 5% dollar per kilowatt hour reduction at the battery pack level. And there's more. Let's talk about cathodes. What is a battery cathode? Cathodes are like bookshelves where the metal, the nickel, the cobalt, the manganese or aluminum is like the shelf, and the lithium is the book. And really what sets apart these different metals is how many books of lithium they can fit on the shelves and how sturdy the shelves are. Cobalt is a- Elon Musk: (02:14:53) Sorry, I was going to say it's tough to exactly figure out what the right analogy is to explain a cathode and anode. But a bookshelf is probably a pretty good one in the sense that you need a stable structure to contain the ions. So you want a structure that does not crumble or get gooey, or basically that that holds its shape in both the cathode and the anode. As you're moving these ions back and forth, it needs to retain its structure. So if it doesn't retain a structure, then you lose cycle life and your battery capacity drops very quickly. Drew Baglino: (02:15:30) Absolutely. Yeah. I totally agree. And I think people are always talking about like, oh, what's the catheter going to be? Is it [NCA 02:15:38] or whatever? The thing to consider is just fundamentally what the nickel, the metals are capable of. And that's what we have on the chart here. Dollar per kilowatt hour cathode of just the metal using just LME, London Metal Exchange prices, versus the energy density of just the cathode. And you can see nickel is the cheapest and the highest energy density. And that's why increasing nickel is a goal of ours and really everybody's in the energy- Drew Baglino: (02:16:03) Why increasing nickel is a goal of ours, and really everybody's in the battery industry. But one of the reasons why cobalt is even used at all is because it is a very stable bookshelf. And the challenge with going to pure nickel is stabilizing that bookshelf with only nickel. And that's what we've been working on with our high nickel cathode development, which has zero cobalt in it, leveraging novel coatings and dopants We can get a 15% reduction in cathode dollar per kilowatt hour. Elon Musk: (02:16:31) Yeah. Big deal. Drew Baglino: (02:16:38) But it's not just about nickel. You want a? Elon Musk: (02:16:41) Yeah. Sure. So in order to scale, we really need to make sure that we're not constrained by total nickel availability. I actually spoke with the CEOs of the biggest mining companies in the world and said, \"Please make more nickel, this is very important.\" And so I think they are going to make more nickel. I think we need to have a kind of a three-tiered approach to batteries. Elon Musk: (02:17:07) So starting with iron, that's kind of like a medium range, and then nickel manganese as sort of a medium plus intermediate and then high nickel for long range applications like Cyber Truck and the semi. Something like a semi-truck, it's extremely important to have high energy density in order to get long range. And just to give sort of iron up a bit more time, if you look at [inaudible 02:17:37] per kilogram at the cathode level of iron, it looks like nickel's twice as good, but when you fully consider it at the pack level, everything else taken into account, nickel is about maybe 50 or 60% better than iron. Elon Musk: (02:17:52) So iron is a little better than it would seem, when you look at it at the pack level fully considered. It's not as good as nickel, nickel's like 50 to 60% better, but it's actually pretty good. Good for stationary storage and for medium range applications where energy density is not paramount. And then, like I said, for intermediate, it's kind of a nickel manganese, and it's a relatively straightforward to do a cathode that's two-thirds nickel one third manganese, which would then allow us to make 50% more cell volume with the same amount of nickel. Drew Baglino: (02:18:32) And with very little energy trade-off. Just enough to have, you still want to use 100% nickel for something like a semi-truck, but really not much of a sacrifice at all. Elon Musk: (02:18:41) Yeah. Drew Baglino: (02:18:44) And beyond the metals, because a lot of people spend time talking about the metals. Actually the cathode process itself is a big target. 35% of the cathode dollar per kilowatt hour is just in transferring it into its final form. And so we see that as a big target. And we decided to take that on. Drew Baglino: (02:19:03) Here's a view of the traditional cathode process. Effectively, if you start at the left and you have the metal from the mine, the first thing that happens is the metal from the mine is changed into an intermediate thing called a metal sulfate, because that just happened to be what chemists wanted a long time ago. And then when you're making the cathode you have to take this intermediate thing called the metal sulfate fate, add chemicals, add a whole bunch of water, a whole bunch of stuff happens in the middle, and at the end you get that little bit of cathode and a whole bunch of wastewater and byproducts. Elon Musk: (02:19:34) It's insanely complicated. It's a small world journey of, \"I am a nickel atom, what happens to me?\" And it is crazy. You're going around the world three times, there's the moral equivalent of digging the ditch, filling the ditch and digging the ditch again, it's total madness basically. And these things just grew up, they're just kind of like legacy things, it's like how it was done before and then they connected the dots but really didn't think of the whole thing from a first principle standpoint saying, \"How do we get from the nickel ore in the ground to the finished nickel product for a battery?\" So we've looked at the entire value chain and said, \"How can we make this as simple as possible?\" Drew Baglino: (02:20:18) And that's what we're proposing here with our process. As you can see, a whole lot less is going on here. We get rid of the intermediate, metal, water, final product cathode, recirculate the water, no wastewater at all. And when you summarize all of that it's a 66% reduction in CapEx investment, a 76 reduction in process costs and zero waste water. Much more scalable solution. Drew Baglino: (02:20:48) And then when you think about the fact that now we're actually just directly consuming the raw metal nickel powder, it dramatically simplifies the metal refining part of the whole process. So we can eliminate billions in battery grade nickel intermediate production. It's not needed at all. And we can also use that same process we showed on the previous page to directly consume the metal powder coming out of recycled electric vehicle and grid storage batteries. So this process enables both simpler mining and simpler recycling. Drew Baglino: (02:21:21) And now that we have this process, obviously we're going to go and start building our own cathode facility in North America and leveraging all of the North American resources that exist for nickel and lithium. And just doing that, just localizing our cathode supply chain and production, we can reduce miles traveled by all the materials that end up in the cathode by 80%, which is huge for cost. Elon Musk: (02:21:45) Yeah. To be clear, cathode production would be part of our the Tesla cell production plant. So it would just be basically raw materials coming from the mine and from raw materials in the mine out comes a battery. Drew Baglino: (02:21:59) And on that note, the way the lithium ends up in the cell is through the cathode. So then we should obviously on-site lithium conversion as well, which is what we will do using a new process that we're going to pioneer. That's a sulfate-free process again, skip the intermediate, 33% reduction in lithium cost, a hundred percent electric facility co-located with the cathode plant. Elon Musk: (02:22:25) So it's important to note that there is a massive amount of lithium on earth. So lithium is not like oil. There's a massive amount of it, pretty much everywhere. In fact is there's enough lithium in the United States to convert the entire United States fleet to electric, all the cars in the United States. Like 300 million or something like that. Every vehicle in the United States can be converted to electric using only lithium that is available in the United States. Drew Baglino: (02:22:55) Discovered today. Elon Musk: (02:22:57) Yeah, what we already know is exist. Drew Baglino: (02:22:58) People really haven't even been looking. Elon Musk: (02:22:59) Yeah, people haven't been trying because it's just widely available. But it is important to say, \"Okay, what is the smartest way to take ores and extract the lithium and do so in an environmentally friendly way?\" And we actually discovered... Again, looking at it a first principles physics standpoint, instead of just the way it's always been done, is we found that we can actually use table salt, sodium chloride, to basically extract the lithium from the ores. Nobody's done this before, to the best of my knowledge, nobody's done this. And all the elements are reusable, it's a very sustainable way of obtaining lithium. And we actually got rights to a lithium clay deposit in Nevada. Drew Baglino: (02:23:51) Over 10,000 acres. Elon Musk: (02:23:52) Over 10,000 acres. And then the nature of the mining is actually also very environmentally sensitive in that we sort of take a chunk of dirt out of the ground, remove the lithium, and then put the chunk of dirt back where it was. So it will look pretty much the same as before, it will not look like terrible. And yeah, it'll be nice. Drew Baglino: (02:24:13) Simply mix clay with salt, put it in water, salt comes out with the lithium, done. Elon Musk: (02:24:18) Yeah. It's pretty crazy. Drew Baglino: (02:24:19) Yeah. So we're really excited about this and there really is enough lithium in Nevada alone to electrify the entire US fleet. Elon Musk: (02:24:27) Yeah, that's true. Actually, just what's in Nevada. Basically, there's so much damn lithium on Earth it's crazy. It's one of the most common elements on the planet. Drew Baglino: (02:24:39) And eventually, as we said at the beginning, when we get to this steady state 20 terawatt hours per year of production, we will transfer the entire non-renewable fleet of both power plants, home heating and industry heating and vehicles to electric. And at that point, we have an awesome resource in those batteries to recycle, to make new batteries. So we don't need to do any more mining at that point. And you can see why. The difference in the value of the material coming back from the vehicle versus the ground, you'd always go to the vehicle. And we recycle a hundred percent of our vehicle batteries today. And actually, we are starting our pilot full-scale recycling production at Gigafactory Reno next quarter to continue to develop this process as our recycling returns grow. Elon Musk: (02:25:30) To date, it's been done by third parties, but we think we can recycle the batteries more effectively, especially since our batteries, we're making the same battery as the thing we're recycling. Whereas third party recyclers have to consider batteries of all kinds. Drew Baglino: (02:25:46) Yeah. And just to think about what this actually means, the recycling resource is always 10 or greater years delayed because batteries last a really long time, but eventually it is the way that all resources will be made available. And that's why we're investing in this recycling facility in Nevada. Elon Musk: (02:26:04) Yeah. Long-term, new batteries will come from old batteries once the fleet reaches steady state. Drew Baglino: (02:26:11) Right. Okay. So we just talked about scaling cathode and recycling, all of the benefits that you just saw are added to this benefit of a 12% reduction in dollars per kilowatt hour at the battery pack level, almost at our half of the cost goal, but there's one more section. Take it away, Elon. Elon Musk: (02:26:31) So there's an architecture that we've been wanting to do at Tesla for a long time, and we've finally figured it out. And I think it's the way that all electric cars in the future will ultimately be made, it's the right way to do things. Elon Musk: (02:26:52) So it starts with having a single piece casting for the front body and the rear body. And in order to do this, we commissioned the largest casting machine that has ever been made. And it's currently working just over the road at our Fremont plant. It's pretty sweet. Currently making the entire rear section of the car as a single piece, high pressure die-cast aluminum. And in order to do this, we actually had to develop our own alloy because we wanted a high strength casting alloy that did not require coatings or heat treatment. This is a big deal for castings. Especially with a large casting. If you heat treat it afterwards it tends to deform, it kind of does this like potato chip thing. So it's very hard to keep a large casting to have its shape. Elon Musk: (02:27:47) So in order to achieve this, there was no alloy that existed that could do this, so we developed our own alloy, a special allow of aluminum, that has high strength without heat treat and is very castable. So that's a great achievement of our materials team. In fact, in general, we've got a lot of advanced materials coming for Tesla, new alloys and materials that have never existed before. Elon Musk: (02:28:10) So, you're basically making the front and rear of the car is a single piece and that then interfaces to what we call it, the structural battery. Where the battery for the first time will have dual use. The battery will both have the use as an energy device and as structure. This is absolutely the way things are done. In the early days of aircraft they would carry the fuel tanks as cargo. So the fuel tanks actually were quite difficult to carry. They're basically worse than cargo, you had to add to kind of bolt them down. It was very difficult. And then somebody said, \"Hey, what if we just make the fuel tank in wing shape?\" So all modern airplanes, your wing is just a fuel tank in wing shape. This is absolutely the way to do it. And then the fuel tanks serves this dual structure, and it's no longer cargo. It's fundamental to the structure of the aircraft. This was a major breakthrough. We're doing the same for cars. Elon Musk: (02:29:26) So this is really quite profound. Effectively the non cell portion of the battery has negative mass. So we saved more mass than the rest of the vehicle than the non cell portion of the battery. So it's like, \"How do you really minimize the mass of a battery? Make it negative. Make the non cell portion of battery pack negative.\" So it also allows us to pack the cells more densely because we do not have intermediate structure in the battery pack. So instead of having these supports and stabilizers and stringers and structural elements in the battery, we now have a lot more space in the battery because the pack itself is structural. Elon Musk: (02:30:10) What we do essentially, instead of having just a filler that is a flame retardant, which is currently what is in the 3NY battery packs, we have a filler that is a structural adhesive, as well as flame-retardant. So it effectively glues the cells to the top and bottom sheet. And this allows you to do shear transfer between upper and lower sheet. Just like if you have a formula one craft or a racing boat, and you have carbon fiber face sheets and aluminum honeycomb between them, this gives you incredible stiffness and it's really the way that any super fast thing works is you create basically a honeycomb sandwich with two face sheets. Elon Musk: (02:30:58) This is actually even better than what aircraft do. Because aircraft do not do this. They can't do this because fuel is liquid. So in our case the batteries are solid. So we can actually use the steel shell case of the battery to transfer shear from the upper and lower face sheet, which makes for an incredibly stiff structure, even stiffer than a regular car. In fact, if this was a convertible that had no upper structure, that convertible will be stiffer than a regular car. So it's just really major. Elon Musk: (02:31:38) So it improves the mass efficiency of the battery. And then those castings are also quite important because you want to transfer load into the structural battery pack in a very smooth, continuous way. So you don't put arbitrary point loads into the battery. So you want to sort of feather the load out from the front and rear into the structural battery. It also allows us to move the cells closer to the center of the car, because we don't have the... In the top one we've got all the supports and stuff, so the volumetric efficiency of the structural pack is as much better than a non-structural pack. And we're going to actually bring the cells closer to the center and because they're closer to the center it reduces the probability of a side impact potentially contacting the cells because in any kind of side impact has to go further in order to reach the cells. Elon Musk: (02:32:36) It also proves what's called the polar moment of inertia. Which is if you think of when there's a ice skater arms out or arms in. Arms in, you rotate faster. So if you can bring things closer to the center, you reduce the polar moment of inertia and that means the car maneuvers better. It just feels better. You won't know why, but it just feels more agile. So it's really cool. This is really major. Elon Musk: (02:33:03) Like it says, so 10% mass reduction in the body of the car, 14% range increase, 370 fewer parts. I really think that long-term in any cars that do not take this architecture will not be competitive, Drew Baglino: (02:33:22) And it's not just at the product level, a better product. But in the factory, it's a massive simplification. You saw the part removal, it's casting machines, it's the structural battery pack. So we're looking at over 50% reduction in investment per gigawatt hour, 35% reduction in floor space. And we'll continue to improve that as we make the vehicle factory of the future. Elon Musk: (02:33:45) Yeah. So major improvements on all fronts from the cell all the way to the vehicle. Drew Baglino: (02:33:52) And in addition to the improvements we just said on enabling additional range and improving the structural performance of the vehicle, it is worth another 7% dollar per kilowatt hour reduction at the battery pack level, bring our total reductions now to 56% dollars per kilowatt. Drew Baglino: (02:34:17) All right. So stacking it up. We're not just talking about cost or range. We've got to look at all the facets. So range increase, we're unlocking up to 54% increase in range for our vehicles and energy density for our energy products. 56% reduction in dollars per kilowatt hour at the battery pack level, and a 69% reduction in investment per gigawatt hour, which is the true enabler when we talk back about how do we achieve this scale problem here. Elon Musk: (02:34:47) Yeah. So I think it's pretty nice that investment per gigawatt hour reduction is 69%. I mean, who would have thought? Drew Baglino: (02:34:57) Yeah, just happened to come out that way. Elon Musk: (02:35:03) I mean, 0.420%, of course. So what this enables us to do is achieve a new trajectory in the reduction of cell cost. And now to be clear, it will take us probably a year to 18 months to start realizing these advantages and to fully realize the advantages probably it's about three years or thereabouts. So if we could do this instantly we would, but it just really bodes well for the future and means that the long-term scaling of Tesla and the sustainable energy products that we make will be massively increased. So, what tends to happen as companies get bigger is things tend to slow down, actually they're going to speed up. Drew Baglino: (02:36:00) And they have to speed up if we're going to accelerate the transition to sustainable energy. Elon Musk: (02:36:04) Yeah. Long-term we want to try to replace at least 1% of the total vehicle fleet on Earth, which is about 2 billion vehicles. So long-term, we want to try and make about 20 million vehicles a year. Drew Baglino: (02:36:25) But I think it's important to point out that when we talked about three terawatt hours by 2030, the problem is a 20 terawatt hour problem. So everybody needs to be accelerating their efforts to accomplish these objectives. It doesn't matter where you are in the value chain. There is a ton to do, you need to rethink from first principles how you do it, so that you can scale to meet all of our objectives. Elon Musk: (02:36:47) Yep. Drew Baglino: (02:36:49) And, Elon. Elon Musk: (02:36:50) Sure. Drew Baglino: (02:36:53) What does this mean... Elon Musk: (02:36:55) What does this mean for our future products? So we're confident that long-term we can design and manufacturer a compelling $25,000 electric vehicle. This has always been our dream from the beginning of the company. I even wrote a blog piece about it because our first car was an expensive sports car, then it was a slightly less expensive sedan, and then finally sort of a, I don't know, mass market premium, the Model 3 and Model Y. But it was always our goal to try to make an affordable electric car. And I think probably, like I said, about three years from now, we're confident we can make a very compelling $25,000 electric vehicle that's also fully autonomous. Drew Baglino: (02:37:48) And when you think about the $25,000 price point, you have to consider how much less expensive it is to own an electric vehicle. So actually it becomes even more affordable at that $25,000 price point. Elon Musk: (02:38:02) Yeah. So we have and extreme performance and range. And we should probably talk about, more or less, Plaid. What about that? So, yeah. Anyway, we took the latest Plaid out to Laguna Seco on Sunday, it got a minute 30, and we think probably there's another three seconds or more to take off that time. So we're confident the Model Plaid will achieve the best track time of any production vehicle ever, of any kind, two-door or otherwise. Elon Musk: (02:39:15) And you can order it now. And it's available basically in the next year. And now we'll move to Q&A. Drew Baglino: (02:39:26) Absolutely. Elon Musk: (02:39:27) So we'll invite a few people on stage. Drew Baglino: (02:39:31) Come on up team. Elon Musk: (02:39:32) This is just a small portion of the team, but I thought it'd be great to show you some more of the team and when we do Q&A we can give various people different questions to answer. Drew Baglino: (02:39:49) Sounds great. Actually, I don't know how we're getting the questions. Elon Musk: (02:39:54) Actually, I don't know either. You can maybe get out of the car for two seconds and yell it at us. How are we getting the questions? Speaker 2: (02:40:07) [inaudible 02:40:08]. Drew Baglino: (02:40:09) Oh, there are mics. Wait for the mic. Elon Musk: (02:40:11) Oh, there are mics. Okay, great, great. Drew Baglino: (02:40:14) All right. Elon Musk: (02:40:16) Okay. We'll definitely needs to give people mics cause otherwise there's no way. Sorry? All right. We're going to pass some mics out. Oh, we don't have a name for the $25,000 car yet. Drew Baglino: (02:40:45) That's a great question, though. Speaker 3: (02:40:45) Elon, you talked about in Berlin that you were going to [inaudible 02:40:45] manufacturing [inaudible 02:40:44]. Elon Musk: (02:40:45) Yes, we will be manufacturing cells in Berlin. Yep. Drew Baglino: (02:40:52) Thermal management system? Speaker 4: (02:40:53) [inaudible 02:40:56]. Drew Baglino: (02:40:55) For homes. Elon Musk: (02:40:56) Oh, you mean like the home HVA? Yeah. That's a pet project that I'd love to get going on. I don't know, maybe we'll start working on that next year. Because I just think, man, you could really make a way better home HVAC system that's really quiet and super efficient, super energy efficient, and also has a way better filter for particles. And it works very reliably, and we've already developed that for the car. So the heat pump in the Model Y is really pretty spectacular. It's tiny, it's efficient, it has to last for 15 years, it's got to work in all kinds of conditions from the coldest winter to the hottest summer. So we've actually already done a massive amount of the work necessary for a really kick-ass home HVAC. Elon Musk: (02:41:53) And they could also stack them. So if you want to say, depending upon the size of your house or whatever, how much you need, you can just basically stack them and just have a very compelling, super efficient home HVAC. And then you could also communicate with the car and it'll know when you're coming home. So it's like, \"Oh, I don't need to keep the house cold all day, I'll just cool it down because I knew you were coming home.\" So the pack can communicate with the car and just really dial it into when you actually need cooling and heating. It'll be great. Drew Baglino: (02:42:25) Fun product. Who's next? Eli: (02:42:30) Hello? Hey guys, Eli here from Tesla Owners Club, my Tesla adventure. Just quick question, so I'm a huge fan of car camping in my Tesla with my dream case, my all time favorite activity, is it going to be possible to get climate control to the back of the cyber truck? Because that would be the ultimate camping machine if we can get all night climate control. Elon Musk: (02:42:51) We'll try to do that. Yeah. I agree, that would be really cool. Yeah. Drew Baglino: (02:42:59) All right. Who's next? Speaker 5: (02:43:00) Hello, longtime fan, Elon, great guy. Just a question, how does the ICE industry look like in the future? Elon Musk: (02:43:12) Well, I don't think there will be at ICE industry longterm. Well, I guess there might be like a few things that it's a like curious thing. There's still like some steam engines made somewhere, but they're just basically sort of quirky collector's items. I mean, that will be the future of the internal combustion engine car. Ryan McCaffrey: (02:43:36) Hi, Elon, to your left here in the white Model y. Ryan McCaffrey from the Ride the Lightning Tesla podcast. Curious about cyber truck, it was interesting to see where you had it in on the battery technology front. I'm sort of curious what you see for it in the production front. Trucks are so popular in America, do you see its volume equaling the 3 or the Y in the future? And also, were Tesla's able to legally be sold in Texas as part of the Giga Texas deal? Elon Musk: (02:44:09) Well, it's hard to say what the volume exactly would be for the cyber truck. The orders are gigantic. We have like, I don't know, well over half a million orders, I think maybe six or 600,000. It's a lot, basically, we stopped counting. So I think there's probably room for, I don't know, at least like a unit volume of like 250 to 300,000 a year, maybe more. Now, we are designing the cyber truck to meet the American spec. Because if you try to design a car to meet the super set of all global requirements you can't make the cyber truck, it's impossible. So it really is designed for the American market, but this is the biggest market. Our North American market is the biggest market for pickup trucks by far or large pickup trucks. Elon Musk: (02:44:59) And then I think we'll probably make an international version of cyber truck that'll be kind of smaller, kind of like a tight Wolverine package. It'll still be cooler, but it'll be smaller because you just can't make a giant truck like that for most markets. So, yeah, but it's going to be great. Elon Musk: (02:45:17) And I don't know. I think probably we'll be able to sell directly in Texas. We do pretty well right now, but it is a bit weird not being able to actually conclude a transaction in Texas, but it's got to be like a click on a server based in California. But weirdly we can do leasing in Texas, but not selling. Hopefully that'll get cleared up in the future. Speaker 6: (02:45:42) Elon, great job with everything that you're doing. It's Ross Gerber from Gerber Kawasaki. Your team's amazing. What I'm most curious about, these innovations are incredible but on my drive up here fully on autopilot for 400 miles, the entire state is brown and this is ultimately about climate. Has there been some analysis done if all these things are achieved, what will its direct impact be on climate? Elon Musk: (02:46:10) I think it will have a very significant impact because it will stop the CO2 PPM from growing as it is every year. I should say, I try to view the whole climate thing as a science question as much as possible. Science, you always question your hypothesis, is it true? Is not true? Or assign a probability to a given hypothesis. And I should say that my original interest in electric vehicles predates the climate issue. When I was in high school, I thought, \"Man, if we don't figure out electric cars, the whole economy's going to collapse when we run out of oil.\" So we better figure out electric cars and sustainable energy or civilization's going to crumble. Elon Musk: (02:46:57) And then it was only later that the significance of the climate risk became apparent. And we were also able, using tracking and other types of technology to access a lot more fossil fuels than previously thought, which is helpful for lowering the cost of gasoline, but it's pretty bad for the total tonnage of CO2 that you could put in the atmosphere. It's now greatly beyond what people previously thought. As we were just going through this presentation, it is a absolutely monumental task to accelerate the advent of sustainable energy. The entire global economy is still more than 99% dependent on, or call it roughly 99% dependent on, fossil fuels. So although electric cars get a lot of press right now, as a percentage of the total global fleet it's practically nothing. I would say yes, less than 1% of the global fleet is electric right now. Because of two billion cars and trucks and whatnot in use. So there's a massive amount of work ahead. Just insane, like hard to comprehend how much work is ahead to get the new vehicle production to be sustainable, to massively increase the amount of stationary storage, which is critical because renewable energy is intermittent, wind, and solar is intermittent, sometimes the wind doesn't blow and this obviously sun doesn't shine at night, so you got to have batteries, a massive, massive number of batteries. Drew Baglino: (02:48:44) Yeah, it's hard to measure in direct impact, but it's an experiment that we shouldn't be performing. And the sooner we can end the experiment the sooner we can kind of move on in a fully sustainable way that is actually lower cost. I think the thing that people haven't fully internalized is once we do get to the 25K car, the ownership cost of that car is incredibly lower than the prior car. And then on the solar side and wind, with the cost of solar wind coming down and with batteries coming down with them, the actual cost of energy on the grid is going down. So we're sort of moving towards a sustainable lower cost future. So there's not like a sacrifice. Elon Musk: (02:49:21) That's true. It is a false dichotomy to say that it's either prosperity or sustainability. This is often used by oil and gas to say like, \"Oh, well, do you want people to lose their jobs? Do you want to lower people's standards of living? Do you want to make all these economic sacrifices really in order to have sustainability?\" And the reality, as Drew was saying, is that sustainable energy is going to be lower cost, not higher cost than fossil fuels. Speaker 7: (02:49:52) Elon, quick question for you, right here in front. First, thanks for having everyone. I was telling a friend, the one company to go work for that's going to have the biggest structural... Speaker 8: (02:50:03) And the one company to go work for, that's going to have the biggest structural impact over the next 10 years at scale, it's probably Tesla. So kudos to everyone at Tesla for what they've done to this point and going forward. The two questions for you, as you've looked at the auto in the storage markets, I know you've talked about it at kind of 50/50 longterm, but it seems like a lot of the battery cost curve achievements that you presented today, really make some of these storage opportunities much more feasible over the next five years. And so I guess the first part of the question is, does your calculus upon learning and improving these things, change on that 50/50 mix, or is there a role where storage becomes bigger? And then the second part of the question, with all these huge grand visions, who's going to be with Tesla from a corporate perspective, accomplishing these things? Obviously, Tesla can't do it alone, but when you look at some of the traditional auto industry or power, et cetera, I don't see a lot of other Tesla's. Elon Musk: (02:50:59) Well actually, there's a lot of companies in China that I think are doing great work with electric vehicles and also with stationary storage, although we don't see that much in the US yet, but I think probably we will in the future. I don't know, obviously we're doing everything we can to encourage other companies to move to sustainable transport and also make stationary storage batteries. We made our patents freely available, we really try to tell these companies, \"Hey, you really need to do this, or you won't exist in the future,\" but they don't believe it. So we've talked until we're blue in the face. What are we supposed to do? But we really are hopeful that other companies will also do what we're doing and that will make a sustainable future come sooner. Drew Baglino: (02:51:53) From a fundamental market size perspective, we did the first ground up work to show the size of the market in terawatt hours and they are roughly 50/50. 10 terawatt hours for transportation, 10 terawatt hours for the grid. And part of that is because the grid batteries, because when you're making a power plant, you're making a large investment, our 25-year assets are greater. If the grid batteries were 10-year kind of things, the grid market would be bigger, but because it's a longer duration asset, they're roughly the same size. Speaker 9: (02:52:31) Thinking long-term, is there any other segments that this new battery will be able to disrupt or electrify, beyond just the initial Model 2 or cheaper sedan? Like a Boring Company loop, plane- Elon Musk: (02:52:44) Where are you? Are you there? Speaker 9: (02:52:45) What's up? Right here. Elon Musk: (02:52:46) Okay, great. It's like ventriloquism here, we just get the sound out of the speaker and can't tell where the heck it's coming from. Speaker 9: (02:52:55) Yeah. Any hints or is the model too such a big deal because it decreases the cost of transportation, that that is really the disruption, or should we get hyped that this new cost curve opens up different vehicle categories, like a high passenger density bus, Boring loop, boat, plane? Elon Musk: (02:53:12) Well, I mean, there are batteries in limited production right now, that do exceed 400 watt hours per kilogram, which I think is about the number you need for a decent range, medium range aircraft. And I think our batteries will, over time, start to approach the 400 watt hours per kilogram range as well. So yeah, I mean, I think over time, we'll see all modes of transport, with the ironic exception of rockets, transition to sustainability or to electric basically. On the rocket front, what we're planning to do is, about 80% of Starship is liquid oxygen and we're actually already running a power line to be able to use wind power to create the liquid oxygen. So we're making some decent progress on sustainability on the rocket front, but there's just no way to have an electric rocket. And it's important for the future of life and consciousness, that we become a multi planet species, so got to keep doing that. Josh Phillips: (02:54:21) Hi Elon, Josh Phillips here, retail investor. I have a question in regards to the lithium and nickel industries and the likely price spikes and shortages of high grade materials the EV industry is likely to see if they don't act fast to address future supply. Tesla have clearly made the right moves that are necessary, but there's a real worry that the potential supply issues and price spikes will create a drag on the rest of the EV industry and therefore a drag on global EV adoption. What advice would you give to the EV and mining industries to quickly solve this looming hurdle? Because for a sustainable energy future, the spice must flow. Thank you. Elon Musk: (02:55:07) Yeah, indeed. The spice must flow. The new spice. I don't know. I'm not sure. I guess we can try to basically overdo it in cell production and perhaps supply cells to others, but we do see the fundamental constraint, as total cell production. That's why we're putting so much effort into making cells and kind of trying to reinvent every aspect of cell production, from mining the ore, to a complete battery pack, because it's the fundamental constraint. We're not getting into the cell business just for the hell of it, it's because it's the fundamental constraint, it's the thing that is the limiting factor for rapid growth. But we could certainly try to overdo it on cell production and perhaps sell cells to others, although we are going at absolute top speed, so it's not like we're holding it back. Elon Musk: (02:56:15) I think just making really efficient cars that have lower drag coefficient, low rolling resistance, efficient powertrains, I mean, that's kind of what we've done in order to make iron phosphate still have a good range. So the iron phosphate's a lower energy density solution, but while there are some limitations on the total amount of nickel produced every year, there's really no limit on the iron. There's so much iron it's ridiculous. So you can really scale up iron phosphate at a raw materials basis, more than you can nickel. Drew Baglino: (02:57:00) And just to point out, when we were walking through this presentation, we intentionally separated all the different aspects. The benefits of structural battery, apply to an iron based cathode in the same way they apply to a nickel based cathode. So you get longer range, iron base vehicles. And also the silicon benefit can apply to the iron based vehicles as well. So we can do a lot to extend the range of an iron based vehicle, which is why it's a key part of the roadmap going forward. And then I invited Turner up here to talk about what the mining industry can do. Turner: (02:57:31) Yeah. Diversification on the cathode side, is obviously massive and EVs are all about efficiency. And so for the EV industry, for the vehicle industry, we need to see powertrain efficiency really increase, all other companies, matching Tesla powertrain efficiency, so that everyone can have that diversified cathode approach, where LFP is used in medium range, and even really make a 300 mile vehicle with LFP. And really the goal that we were trying to present here, was a model for vertical integration, strategic vertical integration, that a lot of different people can do. What we need to see is vertical integration that shortens the process path, from mine to cathode. And what we're doing here is novel and we're trying to push the industry in that direction. So we're presenting a model here that anyone can can follow. Elon Musk: (02:58:27) Yeah. In fact, if there's anything that you guys want to comment on, feel free to step forward and say something. Speaker 10: (02:58:34) I think the key is to be smart about your chemistry choices, your materials choices. Elon Musk: (02:58:38) Talk louder. Speaker 10: (02:58:38) Yeah. If you're smart about your materials choices, the spice will continue to flow. You don't need to use the same kind everywhere. It's about strategically planning it out and for miners, I think we are incentivizing them quite a bit, to ramp up their production. Drew Baglino: (02:58:57) Yeah. And actually we had good calls, they're all motivated. I think, they've been sort of sitting back being like, \"Are you going to grow like crazy?\" And we're like, \"Yeah, we're going to grow like crazy.\" And then I think this indicates we're going to grow like crazy and that's what the miners want to hear and then they'll go make the investments. Ben Limpic: (02:59:13) Hello, Elon. This is Ben Limpic, I'm a musician. I was wondering, does Tesla have any future plans to make partnerships with music companies, like it has done with Tencent games or things like that, for you guys to actually kind of expand your services for artists and other types of creative people, to get involved in producing content that can be part of the Tesla ecosystem or so other people that do creative things can get involved with you guys? Elon Musk: (02:59:44) We haven't really thought about it that much, but I suppose it's probably something we should think about. We will be providing a title on the Tesla's. So we're providing more music sources that people can choose from and just generally trying to improve the entertainment experience in the cars. And I think actually as we go to a more autonomous future, the importance of entertainment and productivity will become greater and greater. I mean, to the degree that if you're just basically sitting in your car, the car is fully autonomous and driving somewhere, the car is essentially your chauffeur and then the things that become important are, okay, well let's have good entertainment and if you want to do some productivity stuff, then that actually starts to become much more important because you're no longer spending your attention driving the car. So it will be extremely important in the future. Drew Baglino: (03:00:42) Should we do some of the say.com questions? Speaker 11: (03:00:46) Yeah. Drew Baglino: (03:00:47) Okay. Should we do the second one? Elon Musk: (03:00:54) Yeah. The first one, I think we already answered. If we're able to make enough cells, which we'll try to do, we will supply other companies. It's definitely not an intentional effort to keep the cells to ourselves, if we can make enough for other companies, we will supply them. And we were trying to do the right thing for advancing the sustainable energy, whatever that is. Elon Musk: (03:01:19) Vehicle to grid, we get asked that a lot. I think one of the things that's important to note, is vehicle to grid, unless you have a power cutoff, you need to cut off your main supply to the grid, otherwise, if you lose the power in your house, you'll basically just backflow energy to the grid. So just having a reversal in the power flow, does not actually keep the lights on, you need a whole separate system to cut off power to the grid. And I think there's also the case that people really want the freedom to be able to drive and to charge at their house. And it's obviously very problematic if you get to morning and your car, instead of being charged, it discharged into the house and then you're sort of, \"Okay, now I can either drive or use the battery to power my house.\" Elon Musk: (03:02:19) I think it's actually going to be better for people's freedom of action, to have a power wall and a car separate, and then everything works that. You basically combine that with solar, either solar retrofit or solar glass roof, and local battery storage, so you basically become your own utility and then the car can be charged also with solar. I think that's the stuff that works, that said, we can certainly do vehicle to grid, I think we can basically enable that with software in Europe or something, right? Drew Baglino: (03:03:00) Yeah. Future generations of power electronics, we will be able to do this more or less everywhere, from a energy market participation perspective, but from a backing up the house and it just so happens that the way the North American connectors are, on all the cars in North America, it doesn't matter whether it's the Tesla connector or the connector that the other vehicles have, doesn't actually support powering your home. It's unfortunate, so you'd need an additional hardware to do that. But yeah, in the future, all versions of our vehicles will be able to at least do bi-directional power flow for the purposes of energy market participation. But even for that, it's important to remember that your car is in plugged in 24/7, so it's kind of an unpredictable resource for the grid. It'll have a value, but it's not the same as a stationary battery pack. Elon Musk: (03:03:49) Yeah. Honestly, a vehicle to grid sounds good, but I think actually has a much lower utility than people think. I think very few people would actually use vehicle to grid. With the original roadster, we had vehicle to grid capabilities, nobody used it. Drew Baglino: (03:04:15) How do we find the engineers to do everything we're saying? Elon Musk: (03:04:18) How do we find the engineers to do all these things? Well, I guess we recruit a lot of engineers from all parts of the world. I think Tesla has a good reputation for doing exciting engineering and that tends to attract a lot of the top engineers in the world because they know that their efforts at Tesla will really serve the greater good and we're super hardcore about engineering. Tesla is first and foremost an engineering company, it's like hardcore engineering is what we do. The sheer amount of hardcore engineering done at Tesla is insane. And if you look at say, there's various surveys done of engineering schools, where do you want to go, what's your top choices? And actually the top two choices last few years, have been Tesla and SpaceX. So sometimes it's Tesla first and sometimes SpaceX first, but those are the two top ones. Drew Baglino: (03:05:18) Yeah. I mean, if you're motivated to solve some of these problems, which are the hardest problems in the world to solve, that really fundamentally enable the future we all need, please reach out and help us work on these problems. Elon Musk: (03:05:30) Absolutely. And like you said, the battle is far from over. Less than 1% of the global automotive fleet has been converted to electric and even maybe less than 0.1% of stationary storage has been done. So stationary storage has barely begun, converting the global vehicle fleet to electric, has barely begun. So there's still a massive amount of engineering work to be done at Tesla and other companies, to accelerate this transition to sustainability. Jordan: (03:06:06) Hey, can you guys hear me? Drew Baglino: (03:06:07) Yeah. Jordan: (03:06:08) This is Jordan from Mark Asset Management. So you've talked about the importance of the factory and you've mentioned the ground up design process and a lot of the new things that you're going to be doing or started to do in Shanghai, Berlin, and Austin. Can you just maybe help us understand and quantify, how financially meaningful all of those improvements will be, and then given what you're trying to accomplish as a company, is it fair to assume that the vast majority of improvement will be given back to the customer in the form of lower prices? Elon Musk: (03:06:39) Yeah. I mean, I think certainly we will try to give back as much as possible to the customers. It's not like Tesla's profitability is crazy high, our average profitability for last four quarters, is maybe 1%. So just to be clear, it's not like we're minting money. Our evaluation makes it seem like we are, but we're not. So we do want to try to make the price as competitive as we can, without losing money. If you keep losing money, you'll just die. So this thing called profit is just like, we need to bring in more money than we spend, otherwise we're dead. Drew Baglino: (03:07:19) But affordability is key to how we scale, right? The demand goes non-linear as you reduce the price of the car. Elon Musk: (03:07:25) Yeah. I mean, it's important to sort of separate the difference between affordability and value for money or desirability of the product. So for a lot of people, they want to buy a Tesla, they simply don't have enough money. We could make the car infinitely desirable, but if somebody does not have enough money, they can't buy it. Sometimes people kind of forget this. People have to have enough money to buy the car and just making a car super desirable, but expensive, does not mean they can afford it. So it's absolutely critical that we make cars that people can actually afford. Go through some of these things, scroll down or something. Drew Baglino: (03:08:19) When do you expect Tesla vehicles to beat ICE vehicles on initial purchase price? I think a way to answer that question, is in the classes of vehicles we sell today, we're already doing that. Elon Musk: (03:08:30) Yeah. We're already pretty close. And then factoring in total cost of ownership and the fact that electric vehicles require much less servicing and are way cheaper to run, when you look at total cost of ownership. And you can always lease a car, so if you just lease a car or get a loan for a car, you've got your sort of monthly payments and then your cost for either gasoline or electricity and your cost of servicing and the fully considered cost of electric car is much less than a gasoline car of the same nominal purchase price. I mean, that said, maybe on the order of three years, when we can do lower cost, like a $25,000 car, I think that will be basically on par, maybe slightly better than a comparable gasoline car. So I think maybe it's on the order of three years-ish. Drew Baglino: (03:09:37) How have the technology advancements and increased vertical integration of battery manufacturing, influenced your ability to improve the environmental and social impact of the supply chain? And I think ... Yeah. Elon Musk: (03:09:48) We sort of have said that already. Drew Baglino: (03:09:49) Yeah. Elon Musk: (03:09:50) Do we have some ability to scroll through this? Just scroll away. Drew Baglino: (03:09:57) We covered recycling. Elon Musk: (03:09:59) Yeah. Just scroll until we've got stuff that we haven't covered. Drew Baglino: (03:10:02) We definitely covered that top one. Elon Musk: (03:10:09) Yeah, a lot of the things we've already asked really. Drew Baglino: (03:10:16) Covered that. That one. Elon Musk: (03:10:26) We literally just answered that. Drew Baglino: (03:10:27) Yeah. Oh, I saw a cathode durability question. Let's go to that one, go down, go down, go down. Good technical question. Keep going. How are you going to address the cathode durability and cost and environmental impact trifecta? Is this something you're going to leave the environment upstream and supply chain to solve? No, I think we tried to answer that directly. I mean, we really are looking at not just what happens in the cathode facility, but currently outside the cathode facility that should really be inside and removing processes that shouldn't have been there in the first place and the use of reagents that are just costly and not necessary and removing a bunch of wastewater from the process. Elon Musk: (03:11:09) Guys, is there anything you want to add to ... Maybe we can go through everyone and maybe say what you're doing and say a few words. I don't know. Speaker 10: (03:11:21) Sure. I just want to reiterate the fact that this is a massive problem. Elon Musk: (03:11:25) Massive problem. Speaker 10: (03:11:26) And it seems like Tesla's on its way and ahead, but we need everybody's help because it's everybody's planet and we're not going to get to 20 terawatt hours by ourselves. So please think about this carefully, as it affects everybody, so let's get on it. Elon Musk: (03:11:45) Yeah. And obviously, if you care about solving sustainability and doing hardcore engineering, definitely come work for Tesla. Speaker 12: (03:11:53) Yeah. We went through a couple of the manufacturing improvements and it kind of looks easy when you put together a nice slide deck, but it's super challenging. When you take materials out of the process, when you integrate processes together, you have to do a lot of things at once and that's like this immense engineering challenge. And so to appreciate that, to get through this, we need the best engineers we've got. And we've got this awesome team, I just want to shout out also to all of our team watching, you guys are awesome, you absolutely kicked ass putting this together. Drew Baglino: (03:12:36) Thank you. Thank you, Tesla team. Totally agree. Speaker 12: (03:12:44) Yeah. That's it. Rodney Westmoreland: (03:12:47) Yeah. Rodney Westmoreland, managing the construction here at Tesla. What I would like to say is, one, shout out to the team. The team has been working effortlessly, a very, very tough project here, for 24 hours a day it seems like, around the clock, to have this complete. The thing that sets us apart from a lot of other construction, we have a construction company here, the thing that sets us apart is that we're integrated in the manufacturing process. So every detail that comes from Drew's mouth, is directly implicated into the system that we're building. That way, what would typically take three or four months to create a specification, our design team is working right with the manufacturing team, to allow us to speed that process up tremendously. Drew Baglino: (03:13:36) Yeah, it's definitely a important part of the vertically integrated approach, is to be able to design the factory around the equipment, in fact, together with the equipment, so you can build the factory at lower costs and more quickly. Scott: (03:13:50) I'm Scott, I focus on cell design. I think it's hard to put into words how inspiring this is, been at it such a long time with Tesla. And I really hope others do join us- Elon Musk: (03:14:01) Since when Scott? Scott: (03:14:02) Since 2005, with many of you. Thank you. Year before Drew, who's keeping track? But I'm really stoked what the team's been able to accomplish over the last short period of time, about a year, it's been really an incredible transformation. I mean, hopefully what we've shown you, inspires you to join us or join somebody else in the effort. And I couldn't think of a greater, more intelligent, more hardworking team to be working on for this problem. Peter: (03:14:37) I Peter, I lead the manufacturing improvement team. And I guess the point that I'd like to make, is manufacturing improvements is like the accelerator. So you think about the execution that Rodney talked about, in terms of how fast we've been able to put together this factory, which is amazing and something that's been really incredible to be a part of. That's not enough, what we need to do is improve the manufacturing technology, that's the real accelerator and that's what we're really focused on. Elon talks about it all the time, that really going and improving that system is what will enable us to get to the scale and the cost that we need. Peter: (03:15:15) And then the other point that I would make is on the recruiting side, it doesn't matter if you know about batteries, if you come from any industry, you can do something fantastic in the work that we're doing. We talk to people from industries that you wouldn't imagine. Like I talked to a guy who makes golf balls and he has stuff which is really impactful for what we're doing. So if you're in any industry and you want to be impactful here, come join us, it'd be great. Tony: (03:15:45) Hi, excuse me. Hi, I'm Tony. I've been working in lithium and cathode materials for almost 23 years now and this is the most growth I've seen in a company, I've been here a little over a year and a half. We are hiring amazing people that are allowing us to leverage technology that most of the industry is struggling to achieve. So to answer the question, how are we going to do this? We are really advancing the materials manufacturing for cathodes and for lithium, beyond what has been accomplished in the previous 20 years. Drew Baglino: (03:16:26) It's exciting. Turner: (03:16:31) Yeah. My name is Turner, work closely with the team, have worked a lot with everyone here. On the cathode and upstream materials side, it's really important that everyone understand that this growth is coming. This growth is real, we are going to make all of these batteries and everyone needs to grow with us, the entire supply chain needs to grow with us. And if you have an idea that simplifies anything in the supply chain, come talk to us, come work with us and let's do it. Drew Baglino: (03:17:02) Any existing specification is wrong, any existing manufacturing method is wrong, process equipment, it's wrong, it's just a question of how wrong. Quote Elon Musk. Elon Musk: (03:17:12) Exactly. We're wrong, just the question of how wrong. Trying to be less wrong. Drew Baglino: (03:17:16) So tell us how we're wrong and how we can do it better, so that we can accelerate and improve as fast as possible. Elon Musk: (03:17:23) All right. Well, I guess thank you everyone for coming. I hope you liked the presentation. Very exciting future ahead. We're going to work our damnedest to transition the world to sustainable energy as quickly as possible, and your support and help is key to that success. So thanks again, super appreciated and look forward to the next event. Thank you. Drew Baglino: (03:17:45) Thank you.","textByLang":{"en":"Al Prescott: (41:03) Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to Tesla's 2020 Annual Meeting of Stockholders. We're really excited that you could be here with us today. My name is Al Prescott. I'm Tesla's vice president of legal. Al Prescott: (41:15) There'll be two parts of today's meeting. First, the former part of the meeting we'll get out of the way, which we'll cover the seven items that stockholders have been asked to vote on. After the voting, I'll introduce Tesla's co-founder and CEO, Elon Musk, who will give a presentation about the company update and year in review. And then following the conclusion of the stockholder meeting, we'll start our separate Battery Day event. Al Prescott: (41:40) At this time, I'd like to thank the members of the Tesla team and our board, especially those who were able to make it out here in person today, as well as to our representative from PricewaterhouseCoopers, Tesla's independent auditor who is also here. But before we begin, I'd like to introduce you to Robyn Denholm, the chairwoman of Tesla, who would like to say a few words remotely. Robyn Denholm: (42:12) Thank you, Al. Hello everyone and welcome to the 2020 Tesla Shareholder Meeting. A special welcome to the many Tesla shareholders that have joined us today in person as well as online from across the country and around the globe. Robyn Denholm: (42:29) I wanted to start today's proceedings by thanking you, our shareholders, for your tremendous support over the last year. And especially to those of you who have been with us through our journey over the past 10 years, since the company's IPO in 2010. While we have stayed true to our mission of accelerating the world's transition to sustainable energy, in many ways, our company has evolved beyond recognition over the past decade. And that is a great thing. In fact, the pace of developments and the evolution of Tesla has further accelerated over the past 15 months since I last addressed you in June of 2019. You'll hear more about many of the specific achievements from Elon later in the agenda. Robyn Denholm: (43:16) But I would like to take this opportunity to thank all of our Tesla employees across the globe who have done a tremendous job of executing and staying focused on delivering for our customers and shareholders, as the world has gone through one of the most challenging periods in our lifetimes. As a board, we have always taken a long-term view. We have made decisions and supported decisions made by the management team that may not have seemed obvious at the time, but are delivering and will continue to deliver breakthrough results. But it's also important to remember why we do this. As a company, we are focused on addressing one of the biggest environmental challenges of our generation, how to accelerate the world's transition to sustainable energy. Robyn Denholm: (44:08) The last year in particular has seen a tremendous increase in momentum in the movement to sustainable energy from both shareholders and the general public. So in addition to developing amazing clean transportation and energy products, we are doing our part by contributing the right facts and information to this important issue. And we released an extended version of our impact report in April of 2020. In issues version, we have covered in great detail, many areas that are important to our shareholders and our customers alike, such as our environmental impact, greenhouse and other noxious gas elimination, our supply chain efforts, especially in cobalt, and our culture and people focus. We hope that by continuing to put this data out there, we will underscore to the world the importance and impact that we are having as a company. Robyn Denholm: (45:09) Lastly, continuous feedback and input from our shareholders is essential for us to do our jobs. And I would like to thank you for your support in this regard. Many of you have provided me and the team with ideas and insights that we as a board take into consideration as we evolve our governance and company practices. It's especially crucial to the board members as we pride ourselves in adaptability and the diversity of thought and experience that we collectively represent on the board. Robyn Denholm: (45:41) This brings me to my final two things today, as today is his last shareholder meeting, on behalf of the board, I would like to sincerely thank Steve Jurvetson for over a decade of service to Tesla, the board, and our shareholders. You will be missed. Finally, I would like to introduce to you our newest member of the board, Hiro Mizuno, who until recently led the largest pension fund in the world. He brings a wealth of experience to the board, but let me hand over to Hiro to say a few words. Hiro ... Hiro Mizuno: (46:17) Thank you, Robyn. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Tesla Annual Shareholders Meeting. It is my real pleasure to virtually meet you, Tesla shareholders, people who believe in Tesla's mission and its growth opportunities. I spent all my career in finance and asset management in Tokyo, New York, London, and the Silicon Valley. Hiro Mizuno: (46:42) Until recently, I was a chief investment officer of GPIF $1.5 trillion Japanese public pension fund. And one of my priorities as the investment chief was to promote responsible investments, which aim to make financial returns while pursuing ESG agenda, such as environment and social issues. I believe in the market where ESG is becoming mainstream. Purpose or mission driven businesses will gain long-term investors support. Hiro Mizuno: (47:19) This is why I was interested in Tesla, where our mission is to accelerate the world's transition to sustainable energy. I'm very excited to join the Tesla team on the journey and hope that [inaudible 00:47:34] Tesla deliver what investors expect by further enhancing its environmental and social impact. Once again, Tesla shareholders, thanks for your support. I'm looking forward to seeing you in person next year. Thank you. Al Prescott: (47:54) Thanks Robyn and Hiro. I will now call the meeting to order. Please refer to the meeting agenda that has been provided to you and posted also to our virtual meeting site. The time is now 1:49 PM Pacific Time. And I declare that the polls are now open. Al Prescott: (48:12) We've already received voting proxies from stockholders over the past few weeks, meaning that almost all of the votes that will be counted were already submitted before the meeting. However, if you wish to vote now or to change your prior vote, you may do so through the virtual meeting site. For those that are here in person today, ballots and ballot boxes were available to you at check-in. Al Prescott: (48:37) Tesla's board of directors has appointed Computershare Trust Company to serve as inspector of elections for the meeting. Computershare has taken and signed an oath as inspector of election and has certified that starting on August 13th, 2020, the proxy material, or a notice of internet availability of the proxy material were mailed or provided to all Tesla stockholders of record as of July 31, 2020. Al Prescott: (49:04) We have a majority of the outstanding shares represented at the meeting. So I declare that there is now a quorum present and that we may proceed with the meeting. The items on the agenda are as follows; the election of three class one directors, Elon Musk, Robyn Denholm, and Hiromichi Mizuno to each serve for or term of three years. Two, to approve Tesla's executive compensation on an advisory basis. And three, to ratify the appointment of PricewaterhouseCoopers, LLP as Tesla's independent, registered public accounting firm for the fiscal year of 2020. Tesla's board has recommended that our stockholders vote for each of the director nominees and for each of those proposals. Al Prescott: (49:59) In addition, we have also received four stockholder proposals as described in the proxy statement. I would like to remind our stockholders that Tesla's board has prepared a statement in opposition to each of these proposals, which appear in the proxy. The first stockholder proposal is an advisory vote regarding paid advertising. Our board has recommended that our stockholders vote against this stockholder proposal. This stockholder proposal comes to us from James Danforth. Al Prescott: (50:33) However, Mr. Danforth has notified us that neither he nor his representative will be presenting the proposal at the meeting today. So we will continue. The second stockholder proposal is an advisory vote regarding simple majority voting and our governing documents. Our board has recommended that our stockholders vote against this stockholder proposal. The proposal comes from James McRitchie, who is on the line to present the proposal today. Mr. McRitchie, I would like to invite you now to present. You will have three minutes. James McRitchie: (51:14) I'd like to thank the board for holding such an innovative hybrid meeting during these difficult times. Proposal number five basically asks for a majority voting standard to amend bylaw. I first introduced a proposal on this subject at the 2014 Tesla meeting. Super majority provisions generally use to entrench incumbent directors and managers. Academic research finds that reducing such devices is associated with higher returns. James McRitchie: (51:46) The board's opposition statement argues they tried to adopt a [inaudible 00:51:51] party standard last year, but shareholders rejected it. However, 99.6% of shares voted for the proposal. Only 0.4% voted against it. The problem was that a little more than 35% of shares went unvoted. The vast majority of retail shareholders often don't bother to vote. Since only 65% of shares were voted, we didn't achieve the 66.67% necessary to overturn the current super majority bylaw. James McRitchie: (52:32) It appears the proposal failed primarily for three reasons. One, the board put forth less than robust arguments in favor. Two, they added confusion with another proposal to reclassify the board, not into a single class, that's the norm, but into two classes, elected in altering years. Third, the board also failed to make a substantial effort to solicit votes in favor. Also, please consider this proposal in context with other poor corporate governance provisions at Tesla. First, shareholders can only remove directors for cause. What that basically means is the director has to be caught in criminal activity for shareholders to remove them. Second, because the board is divided into three classes, shareholders can only hold individual directors accountable every three years. And third, shareholders cannot call special meetings, nor can they act by written consent. I hope you will agree. Corporations should not be democratic-free zones. Vote for proposal number five so that 33% of shares cannot overrule the wishes of 67%. Thank you. Al Prescott: (53:54) Thank you, Mr. McRitchie. We'll now move on to our third stockholder proposal, which is an advisory vote regarding reporting on employee arbitrations. Our board has recommended that our stockholders vote against this stockholder proposal. This proposal comes from Nia Impact Capital, whose representative Kelly Hull is on the line to present the proposal today. Ms. Hull, I'd like to invite you to go ahead and present. You will have three minutes. Dr. Kristin Hull: (54:28) Hello. My name is Dr. Kristin Hull, and I'm the founder and CEO of Nia Impact Capital. I formally move [inaudible 00:20:36]. This resolution requests that Tesla board of directors overseeing the preparation of a report on the impact of the use of mandatory arbitration on Tesla's employees and on its work place culture. The report will evaluate the association of Tesla's current use of arbitration with the prevalence of both harassment and discrimination in its workplace and on employee's ability to [inaudible 00:21:01], should harassment or discrimination occur. Dr. Kristin Hull: (55:05) This proposal speaks to the widespread experience of discrimination in the workplace by Black, Latinx, and female employees, despite this discrimination being unlawful under the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Tesla has faced a number of serious allegations of racism and sexism at its Buffalo and Fremont plant. Companies that allow bias discrimination and harassment in their workplaces are at risk for unnecessary legal brand financial and human capital issues. Dr. Kristin Hull: (55:36) Support of this resolution is warranted for the following five reasons. One, research shows that companies benefit from diverse and inclusive workplaces. Two, corporate policies that allow harassment and discrimination risk investors capital. Three, the use of arbitration exposes investors to an unknown level of risk. Four, broad concerns exist with respect to fair treatment in Tesla workplace. And Tesla employees have alleged harassment and discrimination on their basically both race and gender. [inaudible 00:56:13] Tesla, a company investors love for its innovation, leadership, and [inaudible 00:56:18] is increasingly lagging behind its peers in its [inaudible 00:56:22] related to workplace diversity, equity, and inclusion. Dr. Kristin Hull: (56:26) Unlike the forward thinking and innovation in its extraordinary product lines, Tesla has not challenged proactive leadership and building a positive company culture or in addressing concerns about its workplace practices. In these material issues, Tesla lags behind its technology and automotive competitors. Dr. Kristin Hull: (56:48) The use of arbitration limits employees remedy for wrongdoing, precludes employees from stewing in court, and often keeps underlying facts, misconduct or case outcomes secret, therefore preventing employees from learning about and acting on shared concerns. Dr. Kristin Hull: (57:05) Simply stated, arbitration allows that corporate behavior like bias, harassment, and discrimination to continue to keep hidden from employees and investors. To maintain Tesla's [inaudible 00:57:17], it is essential that the board seriously assess the implications of the use of arbitration and that Tesla begins to seriously the need to ensure a fair, equitable, positive, and inclusive workplace. Thank you. Al Prescott: (57:34) Thank you, Ms. Hull. Our fourth and final proposal is an advisory vote regarding reporting on human rights. Our board has recommended that stockholders vote against this proposal. This proposal comes to us from the Sisters of Good Shepherd, New York province, whose representative, Terrence Collingsworth is on the line to present today. Mr. Collingsworth, I would like to invite you to speak now. You have three minutes for your proposal. Terry Collingsworth: (58:09) Thank you. I'm Terry Collingsworth, executive director of the International Rights Advocates. I'm here representing the Sisters of Good Shepherd New York province to present item seven on human rights disclosure, which calls upon Tesla to issue a report to describe board oversight of human rights and its human rights due diligence process, including systems to provide meaningful remedies when human rights impacts occur. Terry Collingsworth: (58:40) Tesla faces serious human rights issues and failure to establish a culture of respect for human rights will expose Tesla to new liability issues and significant reputational injury, all of which will have a material impact on the company and its shareholders. The need to set a new course for human rights compliance at Tesla is glaring. Terry Collingsworth: (59:05) Here are five examples of human rights violations occurring now in Tesla's operations: racism, sexual harassment, and disregard for human safety and dignity harm workers at the Gigafactory 2 in Buffalo, New York, every single day. And those workers urge you to remember their experiences in your vote. Terry Collingsworth: (59:28) Tesla is experienced serious labor relations issues at its production facilities and is actively discouraging union organizing. Workers are being exposed to COVID-19 and then are facing retaliation when they ask for greater protections. There are numerous worker health and safety violations as well as wage and hour issues. Terry Collingsworth: (59:50) And finally, there are serious, even deadly, human rights violations occurring in Tesla's global supply chains. On this last issue, my organization brought the pending suit against Tesla for using cobalt mined in the Democratic Republic of Congo by young children. I personally met young boys who lost limbs or were paralyzed in cobalt tunnel collapses. Tesla sources cobalt from these very mines. And its claimed to have quote, \"Zero tolerance for child labor,\" in its supplier code of conduct is simply not true. Tesla is not only tolerating child labor in its cobalt supply chain, it is tolerating the death and maiming of young child minors. Terry Collingsworth: (01:00:42) This demonstrates why the company must circle back and begin a process to report on its treatment of human rights issues as requested in this proposal. I think consumers will have zero tolerance for a company that is exposed as being indifferent to killing and maiming child minors. We are hopeful that Tesla's innovative spirit can be brought to bear on making human rights a priority at the company. Terry Collingsworth: (01:01:12) For example, if the Elon Musk cared about implementing a zero tolerance child labor policy, instead of having a useless paper policy, Tesla could employ satellites or drones at every mine it sources from to actually monitor child labor. I encourage all Tesla shareholders to vote for item seven, human rights disclosure. Thank you for your attention. Al Prescott: (01:01:40) Thank you Mr. Collingsworth. At this time, I'd like to thank our stockholders for all of their active participation in today's meeting and for those who just presented on the line. I'd also like to read some of the comments that have been submitted by you over the course of the meeting. The first comment comes from Michael [Overbaugh 00:01:02:01]. \"I take great pride in the fact that we haven't had to stoop to the level of what advertising represents to get where we are today. I'd hate to give into that kind of temptation now, when we're so close to becoming a household name that's based solely on our merit alone. But if assets do end up having to be set aside for marketing, I'd like to suggest that rather than shoving ads down the customer's throat, we established some sort of hardcore nationwide campaign and event with the goal of getting as many people as possible behind the wheel of a Tesla for an introduction drive. It's well-known how far just doing that alone goes to converting people into fans.\" Al Prescott: (01:02:46) \"A line I recently ran across says, 'You can talk all about the specs as much as you want, but when it comes to buying a car, what ultimately puts butts in seats is the feeling that the vehicle gives you.' By demonstrating that Tesla clearly has both the specs and the feeling, what more needs saying?\" Al Prescott: (01:03:08) Our second comment comes from the United Steel workers on behalf of the Clean Air Now Coalition of Western New York by Sabrina Lu. And it reads as follows, \"Proposal six and seven up for vote this year are the results of widespread concern about mistreatment of Tesla workers at US factories and across the supply chain. It is clear that Tesla is not interested in addressing the harm they have caused to their workers as their board is advising shareholders to vote against the proposal. We're urging all shareholders to vote in favor of proposal six and seven. And on behalf of our workers at the United Steelworkers here in Western New York and for Tesla employees across the country and across the global supply chain, while this doesn't repair the harm, that's already been caused to countless employees, nor repair harm to children and communities forced into slave labor in the DRC, they represent steps towards a more just workplace at Tesla.\" Al Prescott: (01:04:19) This concludes all of the comments. Thank you all for your participation in the comments. We'll now have a final opportunity for any of you to submit proxies in order for them to be counted. So I'll pause and wait for a moment for you to do that. Al Prescott: (01:04:51) Okay. I declare that the polls are now closed. So based on the proxies that we have previously received, I'd like to announce on a preliminary basis that our stockholders have approved the recommendations of Tesla's board on all agenda items, other than the stockholder proposal for an advisory vote regarding simple majority voting in our governing documents. After the final tabulation is completed, we'll formally announce the results of the voting by filing a form 8-K with the SEC within four business days of today. This now concludes the official business of Tesla's 2020 annual stockholders meeting, which is now adjourned. Al Prescott: (01:05:37) Next, we will have a company update and a year in review presented by Elon. And then we will start our Battery Day Event. During the course of those following sessions, we may discuss our business outlook and make forward looking statements. Such statements or predictions based on our current expectations. Actual events or results could materially differ due to a number of risks and uncertainties, including those disclosed in our most recent 10-Q filed with the SEC. These forward looking statements represent our views. As of today. They shouldn't be relied on after today and we disclaim any obligation to update them after today as well. Al Prescott: (01:06:23) We will now continue with the company update and year in review. And it's my pleasure to introduce Tesla co-founder and CEO, Mr. Elon Musk. Elon Musk: (01:06:45) Everyone. Well, I mean, this is definitely a new approach. We've got the Tesla drive in movie theater, basically. It's good to see everyone. It's a little hard to read the room with everyone being in cars, but it's the only way we can do it. So hopefully it's cool. And hopefully you can hear me. Can you guys hear me? Elon Musk: (01:07:08) Okay. All right. Great. Elon Musk: (01:07:12) Well, thanks for coming. I think it's been an incredible year and I'd like to just thank you for your support through tough times, good times. It's been great. Really appreciate everyone who's put their heart and money into Tesla and I think it's worked out pretty well. This has been a good year. And I think there's many good years to come. So I'll go through the shareholder presentation fairly quickly because the real main event here is Battery Day. And really, I'm just going through a recap of what's happened over the past a year or so. Elon Musk: (01:07:58) I think starting from in terms of our ability to create a ... Elon Musk: (01:08:03) In terms of our ability to create a factory, huge kudos to the Tesla Shanghai team for being able to go from literally a dirt pile to volume production in 15 months. It's like, damn. Yeah. And I think something that's really quite noteworthy here is Tesla's the only foreign manufacturer to have a hundred percent owned factory in China. So this is often not well understood or not appreciated, but to have the only hundred percent owned foreign factory in China is a really big deal, and it's paying huge dividends here. So we really wouldn't have the results that we have had this year without the great efforts of the Tesla China team, so I'm super appreciative of that, and we'll see the Shanghai factory continue to scale quite a bit from where it is right now. I think we really could expect that to be, over time, a factory that produces over a million vehicles a year. Elon Musk: (01:09:16) Yeah, it's cool. So let's see. So we also reached in the past year of volume production of the Model Y, and this was the smoothest launch that we've ever had, so I think we're definitely getting better at a new vehicle launches and building factories and scaling production. As you've heard me say before, the hardest thing is scaling production, especially of a new technology. It's insanely difficult. Making a prototype is relatively easy, and if I think, like, what is the real achievement of Tesla in sort of car company terms, it's like it wasn't making sort of exciting prototypes. It was that Tesla was really the first company in about a century in the U.S., the first U.S. company in the U.S. to reach volume production and be sustainably profitable. The crazy thing is this has really not happened in a hundred years. That's the actual super hard part, and we now have four vehicles in volume production, S3XY. Also, the toughest joke I think maybe ever. It was a very difficult joke to make. Elon Musk: (01:10:38) So we also introduced the lowest cost solar in the U.S. It's only a dollar 49 a watt, and we really just simplified the whole value chain, so reduced sales and advertising, got rid of a bunch of unnecessary costs, and really are just relying upon the fact that it's just the lowest cost, most efficient solar in the U.S., providing both a retrofit and the solar glass roof, which I think is a really great product. A hard product to make work, but it will be a major pipeline in the future. Elon Musk: (01:11:13) And we also got four consecutive quarters of gap profitability, which was very difficult. Yeah. And certainly a testament to the hard work of people at Tesla. I mean, to do this in extremely difficult times against a wide range of adverse circumstances was insanely hard, but we got it done, and I think the future is looking I think, very promising from a sort of an annual profitability standpoint. So in order to sort of do well financially, you really need economies of scale, and you need ideally the best technology, and I think we've had the best technology for a while, but now we are also achieving economies of scale, and we're also rapidly improving autonomy, which is a massive value add to each car. So, I think the value of Tesla is going to be like total, just on the vehicle side, total vehicles produced times the value of autonomy. That's a way to think about the future value of Tesla. Elon Musk: (01:12:35) We also have consistent free cashflow generation. This is really important for growth, and a key element here is tightening up the time from when a car is ordered to when it is built and delivered. So for a company that is growing rapidly, it's extremely important to tighten the supply chain and to have, from when parts arrive, put it into a car very quickly and deliver the car very quickly to the customer. And if you can do that inside soft of your payables timeline, then the faster you grow, the more cash you have. Or conversely, if you're unable to do it within your payables timeline, the faster you grow, the less money you will have, which is obviously bad for capital intensive situation. So just tightening up and having the parts move very quickly to the factory, put it in a car, get it to a customer makes a massive difference to cashflow generation. Elon Musk: (01:13:34) I mean, that's why it's extremely important to have a factory in each continent, because if you don't at least have a factory in the continent, it isn't impossible to achieve this. So having a factory in China, that's able to serve China, and then soon many other countries in the region will be key to us tightening that total sort of chain of cashflow, and essentially the faster we grow, the more cash. This is really important. That's also why it's important to have Giga Berlin complete, because then we'll have a factory in China, a factory in the U.S. and soon a second factory in the U.S. in Austin, and a factory in Europe. Elon Musk: (01:14:18) I mean, even if for Giga Texas in Austin, even if we had exactly the same cost as in California, it would still be advantageous to do it there because it's roughly two-thirds of the way across the U.S., so in terms of delivering cars to the central U.S. and to the East Coast, it's just faster, it costs less, and it fundamentally improves our economics. So I think this is also maybe something that's not fully appreciated of just how important it is to have a factory at least on the continent or reasonably close to where the end customers is, so you can tighten that whole chain. Elon Musk: (01:14:56) Industry performance. While the rest of industry is, has gone down, Tesla has gone up, I think this speaks to ... Thanks. And so I'd like to thank all the customers for taking a chance on Tesla and buying our product and really hope you're enjoying it. This is really, our sales, as [inaudible 01:15:21] was saying, it really grew by word of mouth, so this is really, I think it's very pure in the sense that it's growing on the basis of existing owners recommending it to others to new customers. This is, really, I think, a good way to grow. Elon Musk: (01:15:40) So, and then in 2019 we had 50% growth, and I think we'll do really pretty well in 2020. Probably somewhere between 30-40% growth, despite a lot of very difficult circumstances. I mean, there's so many. Pandemic, the wildfires. It's a whole bunch of difficult production issues, but thanks to the hard work of the Tesla team and a lot of innovative approaches to overcoming issues, we're able to still see significant growth in one of the most difficult. In fact, I'd say probably the most difficult year of Tesla's existence. Elon Musk: (01:16:25) We also published our extended impact report. At Tesla, we try very hard to do the right thing. If what I think does not happen, it's just because we maybe made a mistake or weren't aware of it, but we always try to do the right thing to the best of our ability, and then we published the extended impact report to show just a self-examination of, okay, what are we doing, right? What are we doing wrong? What can we do better in the future? We're definitely trying to accomplish the most good, and so if we occasionally make a mistake, we work quickly to fix it and do the right thing. So it's worth looking at the average life cycle of emissions in the U.S. and just how much better a Tesla is or electric car than any kind of gasoline car, and what we'll talk about in the Battery Day is also just how much the grids around the world, and actually especially in the U.S., are greening. It's actually much faster than I think people realize, the U.S. is moving towards sustainable energy. And so as we move more and more to sustainable energy, then effectively you end up building the solar factories and the car factories themselves with solar or with sustainable energy. Over time, you will even mine with sustainable energy, and eventually it will get to an effective emissions of zero, so that's where things will end up. Yeah. Elon Musk: (01:17:59) So we also have safety at the core of our design. The Tesla cars are the safest cars ever designed. We have the lowest probability of injury of any cars ever tested by the U.S. government, And that's just passive safety. When you add active safety into that, it's even better, so it's really ... If safety is important to you, which obviously it is, the safest car you could drive is a Tesla. So I think some people aren't aware of this, but it's really safety is paramount. It is actually the number one design objective when we build a Tesla is safety. Elon Musk: (01:18:41) Our factories are also becoming safer, and if you look at the sort of accidents per vehicle, total vehicle made it's dramatically better than in the past, and it's already better than industry average, and we're confident we can get it to the best in the auto industry. Autopilot functionality continues to improve, and you can see it in the safety report that we publish every quarter. It's just getting better and better. The U.S. average for collisions is at roughly 2.1 per million miles, and with autopilot engaged, it's 0.3. I mean, this is a profound difference, really massive, and this will get even better. So we're confident that over time we can get the probability of an accident, especially the probability of injury, to 10 times better than the industry average, like an order of magnitude better. So that's just a lot of lives saved and a lot of injuries avoided, so that's a huge priority for us. Elon Musk: (01:19:50) Yeah, the autopilot front, I think it's hard for people to judge the progress of autopilot. I'm driving ... As a matter of course, I've always done this. I drive the bleeding edge alpha build of autopilot, and so I sort of have insight into what is going on. Previously about a couple of years ago, we were kind of stuck in a local maximum, so we're improving, but the improvements kind of started tailing off and just not getting where they needed to be. I call this sort of getting trapped in a local maximum, and so we had to do a fundamental rewrite of the entire autopilot software stack and all of the labeling software as well. Elon Musk: (01:20:40) So we are now labeling in 3D video, so this is hugely different from the previously where we were labeling essentially a bunch of single images from the eight cameras, and they would be labeled at different times by different people, and some of the labels, you literally can't tell what it is you're labeling. So it basically made it sort of in some cases impossible to label, and the labels had a lot of errors. Now with our new labeling tools, we label it in video, so we actually label entire video segments in the system, so you get basically a surround video thing to label with the surround video and with time. So it's now taking all cameras simultaneously and looking at how the image has changed over time and labeling that, and then the sophistication of the neural nets in the car and the overall logic in the car has improved dramatically. Elon Musk: (01:21:44) I think we'll hopefully release a private beta of autopilot, of the full self-driving version of autopilot in, I think, a month or so, and then people will really understand just the magnitude of the change. It's profound. So, yeah. Anyway, so you'll see it. It's just like a hell of a step change, but because we had to rewrite everything, labeling software, just the entire code base, it took us quite a while. The sort of new ... I call it like 4D in the sense that it's three dimensions plus time. It's just taken us a while to rewrite everything, and so you'll see what it's like. It's amazing. Yeah. It's just clearly going to work. Elon Musk: (01:22:42) At Tesla, the core competencies, we've got engineering, obviously, but also manufacturing. I think manufacturing is underappreciated in general, and the difficulty of designing the machine that makes the machine is vastly harder than the machine itself. So the designing, like making a Model 3 or Model Y or Cybertruck truck prototype is really quite trivial compared to designing the factory that makes it, especially if it's new technology, and you want to use new manufacturing methods. It's just at least 10 to 100 times harder to do the factory than the prototype, and that's why you see a lot of companies out there or startups they'll bring out a prototype, but they just can't get it over the hump for who manufacturing, because manufacturing of new technology especially is the hardest thing by fa. Basically, the prototype is at best 10% of the difficulty and probably closer to 1%. Elon Musk: (01:23:50) And then software. Tesla is both a hardware and a software company, so a huge percentage of our engineers are actually software engineers, and you can think of our car as kind of like a laptop on wheels, so software is incredibly important. Actually, not just in the car, but also in the factory. So the factory software is extremely important. Just software in general. I mean, these are fundamental. These are the three critical areas that are needed to make for an awesome company. So, yeah. Elon Musk: (01:24:29) So we have ... Now we'll soon have three new factories incremental on ... Well, we have one already. On three different continents. Shanghai, we're expanding the Shanghai with the second phase. Berlin is making rapid progress, and Texas is making even faster progress. So, yeah. With each factory, what we're trying to do is also improve the manufacturing technology, so in some cases like the Model Y made in Berlin might look the same, but it actually is made in a much more efficient way. Yeah, we'll talk about that later in the battery presentation. Elon Musk: (01:25:15) Yeah, we launched Megapack. It's three megawatt hours all in one energy storage solution, so it's been great overall. Yeah. All right. And I think that's basically it, right? All right, thank you. All right. Well, thanks, everyone, for coming, and we'll be back in a little bit to go through the battery stuff, and there's a little bit more. In addition to the battery stuff, we've got a few extras as well. So I think you'll really like what we have to say on batteries. Elon Musk: (01:25:53) The battery stuff we're going to talk about is truly revolutionary and essential to Tesla's goal. The fundamental good of Tesla, it's like, if you look back in history and say, \"What good did Tesla do?\" The good will by how many years did we accelerate sustainable energy? That's the true metric of success. It matters if sustainable energy happens faster or slower, and so that's really how I think about Tesla and how we should assess our progress. By how many years did we accelerate sustainable energy? And what we're going to talk about with batteries and a few other things will really explain how we're going to make a step change improvement in the acceleration of sustainable energy. Thank you. [inaudible 00:18:44]. Speaker 1: (01:26:50) Hi, folks. That was great. We're going to take a short break before we begin the Battery Day event, so stay tuned. If you're local and here in the audience today, you can feel free to get out of the cars and stretch your legs, but try to stay near the cars, because we're going to begin properly in a little bit. See you soon. (silence). Elon Musk: (01:27:06) [inaudible 01:40:28]. Drew Baglino: (01:40:32) Hello, everyone. Elon Musk: (01:40:37) Great. Should you start? Drew Baglino: (01:40:38) Sure. Thanks, Elon. Hi. I'm Drew Baglino, SVP of Powertrain and Energy Engineering at Tesla, and I'm incredibly excited to talk about what we've been doing with batteries here at Tesla. Elon Musk: (01:40:48) Great. So let's see. You've got the clicker? Drew Baglino: (01:40:53) I've got the clicker, yeah. Elon Musk: (01:40:54) Okay. Let's ... Yeah. I'll take it at first, perhaps. Drew Baglino: (01:40:57) Sure. Elon Musk: (01:40:58) So obviously the issues we're facing are very serious with climate change, and we're experiencing these issues on a day-to-day basis. It's incredibly important that we accelerate the advent of sustainable energy. Time really matters. This presentation is about accelerating the time to sustainable energy. Elon Musk: (01:41:23) So the past five years were the hottest on record. We have what looks like a wall for CO2 PPM. It's obviously ... This time is not like the past. It's really important that we take action. Running this climate experiment is insane, so ... Drew Baglino: (01:41:46) Especially when it's just a transitory one, anyway. Elon Musk: (01:41:49) Yes. Drew Baglino: (01:41:50) We're going to run out of these fossil fuels. Let's just move to the future and not run this experiment any longer. Yeah. Elon Musk: (01:41:55) Talk a bit louder. Drew Baglino: (01:41:56) You got it. Elon Musk: (01:41:57) Okay. So anyway, there is a lot of good ... Elon Musk: (01:42:03) There is a lot of good news though. A lot of people may not be aware that that wind and solar comprise 75% of new electricity capacity in the US this year. So this is really major. So the grid is going sustainable very quickly. Now, it's also worth noting that the length of time that power plants lasts is on the order of 25 years. So even if a hundred percent of energy generation was sustainable, it will still take 25 years to convert the grid. And it's also worth noting that in the past 10 years, power production from coal has dropped in half. So it went from 46% of electricity in 2010 to 23% in 2020. So this is a massive improvement. So good things are happening on a lot of levels. We just need to go faster. Elon Musk: (01:43:06) So Tesla's contribution, we've delivered over a million electric vehicles, 26 billion electric miles driven, and many gigawatt hours of stationary batteries, 17 terawatt hours of solar generated. So I think solar is sometimes underweighted at Tesla, but it is a massive part of our future. The three parts of a sustainable energy future are sustainable energy generation, storage, and electric vehicles. So we intend to play a significant role in all three. So to accelerate the transition to sustainable energy, we must produce more EVs that need to be affordable and a lot more energy storage, while building factories faster and with far less investment. So goal number one is a terawatt hour scale battery production. So tera is the new giga. And a terawatt is a thousand times more than a gigawatt. So we used to talk in terms of gigawatts, in the future, we'll be talking in terms of terawatt hours. So this is what's needed in order to transition the world to sustainability. Drew Baglino: (01:44:24) Yeah, and you can see it's... We're talking about a hundred X growth in batteries for electric vehicles to achieve this mission. And we are going to get there. It's just a matter of how fast. And our intention is to accelerate it. Elon Musk: (01:44:38) Yeah, you basically need on the order of roughly 10 terawatt hours a year of battery production to transition the global fleet of vehicles to electric. Drew Baglino: (01:44:48) And the average vehicle lasts 15 years. So we're talking about 150 terawatt hours give or take to transition the whole electric, all vehicles of all types, to electric. Elon Musk: (01:45:00) Yeah. So it's a lot of batteries, basically. And so- Drew Baglino: (01:45:07) Yeah. And then on the grid side, we have a similar mountain to climb, 1600 times growth from today's grid batteries to go a hundred percent renewable on the grid and to take all of the existing heating fossil fuel uses in homes and businesses, a hundred percent electric. Elon Musk: (01:45:24) Yeah. And this number I think might grow even more. As the world economy matures, and as countries with high populations industrialize, we could see this number be even more. But let's say it's like roughly 20 to 25 terawatt hours per year sustained for 15 to 25 years to transition the world to renewable. This is a lot. Drew Baglino: (01:45:53) Yeah. Elon Musk: (01:45:55) So today's batteries cannot scale fast enough. They're just too small. For Giga Nevada, 150 gigawatt hours per year is what we probably expect to make out of there. But this is really pretty small in the grand scheme of things. That's only 0.15 terawatt hours. And it costs too much. Drew Baglino: (01:46:16) We would need 135 fully built out in Nevada Giga factories to achieve 20 terawatt hours a year. It's not scalable enough of a solution. We need a dramatic rethink of the cell manufacturing system to scale as fast as we can and should. Elon Musk: (01:46:32) Yeah, and I think we should view this as more than just a question of money. Money is sort of an ethereal thing, but it's really the amount of effort. You have a certain amount of effort in terms of people and machines, and depending on how efficient that effort is, for a given amount of effort, you want the most amount of batteries. So it's not just the question of well, if we have $2 trillion, tomorrow you could make this. It's not that easy. You actually need to organize a massive number of people, build a lot of machines, build the machines that make the machines. And so it's incredibly important to have that effort yield the most number of batteries. Elon Musk: (01:47:16) So, and then goal two, obviously we need to make more affordable cars. I think one of the things that troubles me the most is that we don't yet have a truly affordable car, and that is something that we will make in the future. But in order to do that, we've got to get the cost of batteries down. We've got to make, and we've got to be better at manufacturing. And we need to do something about this curve. The curve of the cost per kilowatt hour of batteries is not improving fast enough. So we've given this a lot of thought over many years to say, okay, how can we radically improve the cost per kilowatt hour curve? It's been somewhat flattening out actually in recent years. Drew Baglino: (01:48:02) Yeah. I mean, early growth was promising, but you can see we're kind of plateauing. So that's what's motivating us to rethink how cells are produced and designed. Elon Musk: (01:48:10) Yeah, exactly. So yeah. And EV market share is growing, but EVs still aren't accessible to all. And you can see, as you Drew were saying, it's like starting to flatten out a little bit because the rate of improvement of the affordability of cars is just not fast enough. So that's why we've got Battery Day. Drew Baglino: (01:48:33) Yeah. To make the best cars in the world, we designed vehicles in factories from the ground up. Next. And now we do this for batteries as well. Elon Musk: (01:48:45) Yeah. It's weird, the slides don't show up quite right here. What shows up on the screen is not quite what shows up there. Drew Baglino: (01:48:55) Oh, okay. Elon Musk: (01:48:56) It's different. Drew Baglino: (01:48:57) Yeah. I think it's because that's... Yeah. Elon Musk: (01:48:59) That one's current, supposed to be current. Whatever. Drew Baglino: (01:49:02) So let's get started. We have a plan to have the cost per kilowatt hour. And it's not a plan that rests on a single innovation, some research project that will never see the light of day. It's a plan that has taken creative engineering and industrialization across every facet of what makes a cell into a battery pack, from raw material to the finished thing. And we're going to go through that plan with you today, step-by-step, and build up how we get to these goals and how we accelerate this transition and make our vehicles and our grid batteries more affordable. Elon Musk: (01:49:45) Yeah. I mean, we basically thought through every element of the battery, or almost every element. There are a few more elements that we won't get to today, but we will get to in the future. Drew Baglino: (01:49:53) Yes. So first before we get too far into it, let's talk about what is in a battery cell. We've got the cap and the can, negative and positive terminals of the cell. When you open that cell, you've got a tab connected to those terminals, what we call the jelly roll, which is the wound electrodes on the inside. You can actually see what this looks like as you unwind it. This is over a meter long in a typical 2170 cell. So it's quite a long winding process. And you can see the tab still there. And then to explain what's actually going on here, we've identified, we've got anode, cathode, separator, positive and negative terminal. Drew Baglino: (01:50:37) Watch what happens as we, there we go, discharge the cell. Got lithium moving from anode to cathode. And then the reverse when we charge the cell, lithium moving from cathode to anode across the separator. This is the basic of what makes all lithium-ion batteries, no matter what the form factor is. And when we look at what's happened today, at least in our products, we've moved from the 18650 form factor to the 2170 form factor through great collaboration with our partners, Panasonic, new partners like LG and CATL and probably others in the future. Elon Musk: (01:51:20) Actually, slight note on why is the one called 18650, although not on the slide, versus the 2170, is that the first two digits refer to the diameter, and the second two digits refer to the length. So that helps explain what's up with these weird numbers. But nobody could explain to me why there was an extra zero. So I, so I said, \"Okay, well, we're deleting the zero that nobody can explain in future form factors.\" So that's why it's technically, it's like the 18650 bizarrely, but going forward it's the 2170, because we just got rid of the extra zero because it's pointless. Drew Baglino: (01:51:56) And this was a evolutionary step going from 1865 to 2170, bringing 50% more energy into the cell. But when we look to the ideal cell design, if we were to do it ourselves, we need to go beyond just what we're looking at us in front of us and study the full spectrum of options. So as you can see, we kind of swept the key figures of merit, how much we can reduce the cost and how much vehicle range increases as we change the outer diameter of the cell. We found a sweet spot somewhere around 46 millimeters. But it's not just about a bigger form factor. Anybody could make a bigger form factor. Elon Musk: (01:52:37) Any fool, any fool could make a bigger form factor. Are we not any fool? Drew Baglino: (01:52:42) Yeah, exactly. There are problems as you make cells larger. In fact, supercharging and thermals in general become really challenging as you make bigger cells. And this was the challenge that our team set our sights on to overcome. And we did, we came up with this tabless architecture that maybe you've heard about, that basically removes the thermal problem from the equation and allows us to go to the absolute lowest cost form factor and the simplest manufacturing process. And this is what we mean when we talk about tabless. It's kind of a beautiful thing. Elon Musk: (01:53:22) Yeah. That's what these t-shirts mean, but it's very esoteric. It was like, nobody could figure it out. Drew Baglino: (01:53:26) Yeah, we basically took the existing foils, laser pattered them, and enabled dozens of connections into the active material through this shingled spiral you can see with simpler manufacturing, fewer parts, 50 millimeter versus 250 millimeter electrical path length, which is how we get all the thermal benefits. Elon Musk: (01:53:46) Yeah. This is important to appreciate. Basically the distance that that electron has to travel, it's just much less. So you actually have a shorter path length in a large tabless cell than you have in the smaller cell with tabs. This is a big deal. So even though the cell is bigger, it actually has more power. The power to weight ratio is actually better than the smaller cell with tabs. This is, again, this is quite hard to do it. Nobody's done it before and it really took a tremendous amount of effort within Tesla engineering to figure out how do we make a frigging tabless cell and have it actually work and then connect that to the top cap. There's a whole bunch of things that we're keeping a little secret sauce here that we're not telling everything, but- Drew Baglino: (01:54:40) Sometimes what's elegant and simple is still hard. And it took us a lot of trials, but we're happy where we ended up. Elon Musk: (01:54:46) Yeah. I mean, everything is simple in recollection, after you... it's hard until it's discovered and then it's simple. So anyway, there's a lot of really cool things going on that enable tabless. And it was really due to a really great engineering team. Drew and the rest of the team had done amazing work in achieving this tabless construction. I think it may sort of sound a bit silly to some people, but for people that really know cells, this is a massive breakthrough. Drew Baglino: (01:55:19) For cylindricals to be able to get rid of the tabs dramatically simplifies winding and coding. And has an awesome thermal and performance benefit. Elon Musk: (01:55:28) Yeah. Just to elaborate on that a bit, it's like when the cell is going through the system, it has to keep stopping where all the tabs are. So you can't do a continuous motion production if you have tabs. You have to keep stopping and then there's a rate at which you can start and stop and accelerate again and it really slows down the rate of production. And then sometimes you get the tabs wrong and you also lose a little bit of active area. It's really a huge pain in the ass to have tabs from a production standpoint. Drew Baglino: (01:56:03) Yes. And so when we put it all together and go to our new 80 millimeter length, 4680 we call this a new cell design, we get five times the energy with six times the power and enable 16% range increase, just form factor alone. Elon Musk: (01:56:23) Yeah. So these... Yeah. It's pretty great. And just to clarify, when we see these plus 16% or whatever the percentage rate increase is, these are the amounts due just to that particular innovation. So we'll list a whole bunch of innovations and then when you add them up, you get a total improvement in energy density and cost. But these numbers are what refer to just this thing. Drew Baglino: (01:56:56) Yeah. And I want to stress, this is not just a concept or a rendering. We're starting to ramp up manufacturing of these cells at our pilot 10 gigawatt hour production facility, just around the corner. Elon Musk: (01:57:08) Yeah. So. Yeah. It's a video of some of what's going on in the plant. Now. I mean, to be clear, it will take about a year to reach the 10 gigawatt hour capacity. So this is important to appreciate. When you build a factory, there's a certain capacity that you design to, and then it takes some period of time to actually achieve that capacity. So I would say it's probably about a year before we get to the 10 gigawatt hour annualized rate with the pilot plant. And this is just a pilot plant. The actual production plants will be more on the order of maybe 200 gigawatt hours, maybe more over time. Drew Baglino: (01:58:00) And... Thank you. But let's stack up everything we just saw at the cell level. So just the cell form factor change enables a 14% dollar per kilowatt hour reduction, just that cell form factor change. And now that you've been teased on this factory, we're going to go on and walk step-by-step through that factory and discuss a series of innovations there. When thinking about the ideal cell factory, we have inspirations behind us in the paper and bottling industry, where from humble beginnings, over a century of innovation has enabled mass scale, continuous motion, unbelievably low manufacturing costs. And when we think about the lithium-ion industry, which is really only in its third decade of high volume production, it has so far to go to achieve similar scale and simplicity. And that was the inspiration that we set out to the team as we thought about how to marry cell design and manufacturing in the best possible factory. Drew Baglino: (01:59:05) And let's talk a little bit about what's in a cell factory. First, there's an electrode process where the active materials are coated into films onto foils. Then those coated foils are wound in the winding process we just talked about where if you do have tabs, you have to start and stop a lot. Then the jelly roll is assembled into the can, sealed, filled with electrolyte, and then sent to formation where the cell is charged for the first time and where the sort of the electrochemistry is set and the quality of the cell is verified. And we set out at every step of this process to try to take that inspiration we just showed and think about how we make those processes fundamentally better and more scalable. And one of the most important processes is where it all begins, the wet process of the electrode coding. And just to give you all a sense of scale, I'm going to walk through what's in that wet process. Drew Baglino: (02:00:09) You've got mixing where the powders are mixed with either a water or a solvent, solvents for the cathode. That mix then goes into a large coat and dry oven where the slurry is coated onto the foil, huge ovens, tens of meters long, dried, and that solvent then has to be recovered. You can see the solvent recovery system. And then finally the coated foil is compressed to the final density. And when you're looking at this, you're like, wow, that's a lot of equipment for one step, especially when you consider that little spec next to the coating oven is a person. This is serious iron involved in making batteries. Wouldn't it be great if we could skip that solvent step, which is one of those dig a ditch, and then fill it kind of things where you put the solvent in and then take it out and recycle it, and just go straight to a dry mix to coat? And that's what the dry process really is about. And in the most basic form, you can see it here on a benchtop, literally powder into film, as simple as that. Elon Musk: (02:01:25) I mean, it's hard actually, just to be clear. If this was easy, everyone would do it. It's not like dry coating electrode is actually easy. It's actually very hard to do what appears to be a simple thing. And it's worth noting, we did acquire Maxwell a little over a year ago, I guess, and certainly a good company and everything, but the dry coating they had was like, it's like sort of, I would call proof of concept. Since the acquisition. We've actually ramped the machine that does dry coating four times. So revision full post acquisition of the machine, and there's still a lot of work to do. So I would not say this is completely in the bag. It's still a lot of work to do. And as you grow, as you scale, go from benchtop to lab to pilot to volume production, there are actually major issues that you encounter at every level. It's not like you make something work on your bench and bingo, now you can make a bazillion of it. Drew Baglino: (02:02:26) Absolutely. Elon Musk: (02:02:26) It's insanely difficult to scale up. Yeah. Drew Baglino: (02:02:31) Yeah, but if you do scale it up, what you saw before becomes this. So you can see the motivation. A 10 times reduction in footprint, a 10 times reduction in energy and a massive reduction in investment. But as Elon was saying, simple is hard. Elon Musk: (02:02:48) Yeah. I mean, to be clear, I would like to not say that right now, it just totally working. It's close to working, but it's not, even now at the pilot plant level, it is close to working. It's fair to say probably it does work, but with not a good, not a high yield. Drew Baglino: (02:03:07) Yeah. We're still ironing out the kinks, but we've made tens of thousands of cells, thousands of kilometers of electrode. I mean, we are on the fourth generation of the equipment so we've learned a lot along the way. I mean, it is super demanding because every atom has its place if you want to deliver the energy density and the cycle life and the supercharging. But we're confident that we will get there, but it will be a lot of work along that. Elon Musk: (02:03:29) There's a clear path to success, but a ton of work between here and there. But this is a really profound improvement. Again, for people that know battery manufacturing, this is gigantic. We'll probably be on machine revision six or seven by the time we do large scale production. The rate at which the machines are being improved is extremely rapid. Literally every three or four months, there's a new rev. Drew Baglino: (02:03:55) Yeah. And beyond the electrode, we continue to innovate on every other process steps. So let's talk a little bit about assembly, which is next. The key to a high-performing assembly line is accomplishing processes while in motion, continuous motion. And thinking of the line as a highway, max velocity down the highway, no start and stop, no city driving. Elon Musk: (02:04:24) Exactly, no stop lights and traffic lights sort of thing. You want the highway. Drew Baglino: (02:04:28) You want the highway. And together with our internal design team that makes this equipment and designs this equipment, we coupled thinking about how to make the best cell with thinking about how to make the best equipment so that we could accomplish the fastest parts per minute rates on all of these tools. And through all of that development, we were able to get to the point where we can implement assembly lines, one line, 20 gigawatt hours, seven times increase in output per line. And when you're thinking about scalability and pure effort, having one line be seven X the capability is just effort multiplying. Elon Musk: (02:05:10) Yeah. So you can sort of think about the sort of the fundamental physics of a factory or something. I think it's actually quite a lot like the rocket equation where you've got basically the rocket equation you've got your exhaust velocity and then the log of [end 02:05:24] masses. So it's basically saying how fast are things going and what percentage of the factory volume is doing useful work? And conveyance does not count as useful work. Drew Baglino: (02:05:34) Only the value added steps. Elon Musk: (02:05:37) Yeah. If you break the factory down into cubic meter sections and say... or smaller. Could be like one liter sections, and say, \"Is a majority of this volume of doing useful work?\" You'd be astounded at how bad most factories are. They'd be like maybe two or 3%, including our factory in Fremont. So I think it's possible to get to at least 10 times that of volumetric efficiency. So more like 30%ish, maybe more, and be 10x better, which means the factory can be 10 times smaller. And then the other thing is how fast are things going through the factory? It's like speed and density. A factory that's moving at say twice the speed of another factory is equivalent to two factories basically. And the company that will be successful is the company that with one factory can accomplish what other companies take two or three or four factories to do. So this is what we're trying to do here is say, okay, how do we, with one factory achieve what maybe five or even 10 factories would normally be required to achieve? Drew Baglino: (02:06:43) And the vertical integration with the machine design teams at Grohmann and Hibar and others allows us to really accomplish that because we don't have any of these edge conditions between one piece of equipment and another, we can design the entire machine to be one machine and remove all of these unnecessary steps. Elon Musk: (02:07:03) Yeah. I mean, basically Tesla is aiming to be the best at manufacturing of any company on Earth. This is the thing that's actually most important in the long run I think, just from a company standpoint and from basically achieving sustainability as fast as possible. But I think also for long-term competitiveness, eventually every car company will have long range electric cars. Eventually every company will have autonomy, I think, but not every company will be a great at manufacturing. Tesla will be absolutely head and shoulders above anyone else in manufacturing, that is our goal. Drew Baglino: (02:07:44) Manufacturing is hard and hard problems are fun to solve. Okay. Now let's talk about formation. In a typical cell factory, formation represents 25% of the investment. And what is formation? Is it's charging and discharging cells and verifying the quality of the cell. It turns out we've charged and discharged billions and billions of cells in our vehicles so we know a thing or two about that. The typical formation set up is you charge and discharge each cell individually. In our car, we charge thousands of cells at once. And we took our principal and our power electronics, leveraging Powerwall vehicle battery management systems and others to dramatically improve the formation equipment cost-effectiveness and density. 86% reduction in formation investment, 75% reduction in footprint. You want to take this one? Elon Musk: (02:08:43) Sure. So essentially what this translates to based on what we know today is about a 75% reduction in the investment per kilowatt hour. Or gigawatt hour. It's just basically four times better than the current state of the art to the best of our knowledge. And I think there's probably room to improve even beyond that. Drew Baglino: (02:09:04) Definitely. Elon Musk: (02:09:05) Definitely. Yeah. So we're able to, from a volume standpoint, actually get what, in a smaller form factor than Giga Nevada, we're able to get many times the cell output. So you can see basically we can get a terawatt hour in less space than it took to make a gigawatt hour, 150 gigawatt hours. So this is pretty profound. I would actually not have thought this was possible several years ago, that we could actually get to a terawatt scale in less space than what we currently envisioned for doing 150 gigawatt hours. Drew Baglino: (02:09:48) Yes. Simpler accelerates terawatt scale. And that's what we need to do to accelerate our mission. And as Elon said, we're going to try to even improve on this as we push towards our goals, which are... Elon Musk: (02:10:02) Yeah. So this is just talking about Tesla internal cell production. As I tweeted out earlier, we will continue to use our cell suppliers, Panasonic and LG and CATL. And so this is a hundred gigawatt hours supplemental to what we buy from suppliers. And yeah, essentially, this does reduce our weighted average cost of a sale, but it allows us to make a lot more cars and a lot more stationary storage. And then long-term, we're expecting to make on the order of a 3000 gigawatt hours or three terawatt hours per year. I think we've got a good chance of achieving this actually before 2030, but I'm highly confident that we could do it by 2030. Drew Baglino: (02:10:58) When you look at the size of that factory on the previous page, it really shows how enabling all of these advancements are in achieving a three terawatt hour goal by 2030. And not only is all of that manufacturing innovation fantastic for enabling scale, it's also an additional 18% reduction in dollar per kilowatt hour at the battery pack level. Elon Musk: (02:11:18) But wait, there's more. Drew Baglino: (02:11:19) But wait, there's more. So we have a manufacturing system, we've got a cell design. What are the active materials we're going to put in that cell design? Let's talk about the anode first. Let's talk about silicon. Why is silicon awesome? It's awesome because it's the most abundant element in the Earth's crust after oxygen, which means it's everywhere. It's sand. Elon Musk: (02:11:44) Sand is silicon dioxide. Drew Baglino: (02:11:47) And it happens to store nine times more lithium than graphite, which is the typical anode material in lithium-ion batteries today. So why isn't everybody using it? The main reason is because the challenge with silicon is that it expands four X when fully charged with lithium. And basically all of that expansion stress on the particle, the particles start cracking, they start electrically isolating, you lose capacity. The energy retention of the battery starts to fade. And it also gumps up with a passivation layer that has to keep reforming as the particles expand. Elon Musk: (02:12:19) Yeah. Basically with silicon, the cookie crumbles and gets gooey. That's basically what happens. Drew Baglino: (02:12:24) Good analogy. And current approaches to solve this, which exist, I mean, we have silicon in the cars that you're all in right now, involved highly engineered, expensive materials in the scheme of things. Now they're still great and they enable some of the benefits of silicon. They just don't enable all of it and they're not scalable enough. And you can see some of the things that maybe you've heard of, SIO, silicon with carbon, or silicon nanowires. That's kind of the space right now. What we're proposing is a step change in capability and a step change in cost. And what that really is is to just go to the raw metallurgical silicon itself, don't engineer the base metal, just start with that and design for it to expand in how you think of the particle in the electrode design and how you coat it. Elon Musk: (02:13:14) Yeah. And I'm not sure if you saw this. Basically a dollar per kilowatt hours basically. If you use simple silicon, it's dramatically less than even the silicon that is currently used in the batteries that are made today, and you can use a lot more of it. Drew Baglino: (02:13:29) The anode would cost, yeah, with this silicon, the anode costs a dollar and 20 cents a kilowatt hour. Elon Musk: (02:13:38) Yeah. Drew Baglino: (02:13:41) And how does it work? Start with raw metallurgical silicon, stabilize the surface with an elastic ion conducting polymer coating that is applied through a very scalable approach. No chemical vapor deposition, no highly engineered high capacity, high cap ex solutions, and then integrate it into the electrode through a robust network formed out of a highly elastic binder. And in the end, by leveraging this silicon to its potential, we can increase the range of our vehicles by an additional 20%. Just this improvement. Elon Musk: (02:14:13) Yeah. It gets cheaper and longer range. Okay. Drew Baglino: (02:14:20) Yeah. And when we take that anode cost reduction, we're looking at another 5% dollar per kilowatt hour reduction at the battery pack level. And there's more. Let's talk about cathodes. What is a battery cathode? Cathodes are like bookshelves where the metal, the nickel, the cobalt, the manganese or aluminum is like the shelf, and the lithium is the book. And really what sets apart these different metals is how many books of lithium they can fit on the shelves and how sturdy the shelves are. Cobalt is a- Elon Musk: (02:14:53) Sorry, I was going to say it's tough to exactly figure out what the right analogy is to explain a cathode and anode. But a bookshelf is probably a pretty good one in the sense that you need a stable structure to contain the ions. So you want a structure that does not crumble or get gooey, or basically that that holds its shape in both the cathode and the anode. As you're moving these ions back and forth, it needs to retain its structure. So if it doesn't retain a structure, then you lose cycle life and your battery capacity drops very quickly. Drew Baglino: (02:15:30) Absolutely. Yeah. I totally agree. And I think people are always talking about like, oh, what's the catheter going to be? Is it [NCA 02:15:38] or whatever? The thing to consider is just fundamentally what the nickel, the metals are capable of. And that's what we have on the chart here. Dollar per kilowatt hour cathode of just the metal using just LME, London Metal Exchange prices, versus the energy density of just the cathode. And you can see nickel is the cheapest and the highest energy density. And that's why increasing nickel is a goal of ours and really everybody's in the energy- Drew Baglino: (02:16:03) Why increasing nickel is a goal of ours, and really everybody's in the battery industry. But one of the reasons why cobalt is even used at all is because it is a very stable bookshelf. And the challenge with going to pure nickel is stabilizing that bookshelf with only nickel. And that's what we've been working on with our high nickel cathode development, which has zero cobalt in it, leveraging novel coatings and dopants We can get a 15% reduction in cathode dollar per kilowatt hour. Elon Musk: (02:16:31) Yeah. Big deal. Drew Baglino: (02:16:38) But it's not just about nickel. You want a? Elon Musk: (02:16:41) Yeah. Sure. So in order to scale, we really need to make sure that we're not constrained by total nickel availability. I actually spoke with the CEOs of the biggest mining companies in the world and said, \"Please make more nickel, this is very important.\" And so I think they are going to make more nickel. I think we need to have a kind of a three-tiered approach to batteries. Elon Musk: (02:17:07) So starting with iron, that's kind of like a medium range, and then nickel manganese as sort of a medium plus intermediate and then high nickel for long range applications like Cyber Truck and the semi. Something like a semi-truck, it's extremely important to have high energy density in order to get long range. And just to give sort of iron up a bit more time, if you look at [inaudible 02:17:37] per kilogram at the cathode level of iron, it looks like nickel's twice as good, but when you fully consider it at the pack level, everything else taken into account, nickel is about maybe 50 or 60% better than iron. Elon Musk: (02:17:52) So iron is a little better than it would seem, when you look at it at the pack level fully considered. It's not as good as nickel, nickel's like 50 to 60% better, but it's actually pretty good. Good for stationary storage and for medium range applications where energy density is not paramount. And then, like I said, for intermediate, it's kind of a nickel manganese, and it's a relatively straightforward to do a cathode that's two-thirds nickel one third manganese, which would then allow us to make 50% more cell volume with the same amount of nickel. Drew Baglino: (02:18:32) And with very little energy trade-off. Just enough to have, you still want to use 100% nickel for something like a semi-truck, but really not much of a sacrifice at all. Elon Musk: (02:18:41) Yeah. Drew Baglino: (02:18:44) And beyond the metals, because a lot of people spend time talking about the metals. Actually the cathode process itself is a big target. 35% of the cathode dollar per kilowatt hour is just in transferring it into its final form. And so we see that as a big target. And we decided to take that on. Drew Baglino: (02:19:03) Here's a view of the traditional cathode process. Effectively, if you start at the left and you have the metal from the mine, the first thing that happens is the metal from the mine is changed into an intermediate thing called a metal sulfate, because that just happened to be what chemists wanted a long time ago. And then when you're making the cathode you have to take this intermediate thing called the metal sulfate fate, add chemicals, add a whole bunch of water, a whole bunch of stuff happens in the middle, and at the end you get that little bit of cathode and a whole bunch of wastewater and byproducts. Elon Musk: (02:19:34) It's insanely complicated. It's a small world journey of, \"I am a nickel atom, what happens to me?\" And it is crazy. You're going around the world three times, there's the moral equivalent of digging the ditch, filling the ditch and digging the ditch again, it's total madness basically. And these things just grew up, they're just kind of like legacy things, it's like how it was done before and then they connected the dots but really didn't think of the whole thing from a first principle standpoint saying, \"How do we get from the nickel ore in the ground to the finished nickel product for a battery?\" So we've looked at the entire value chain and said, \"How can we make this as simple as possible?\" Drew Baglino: (02:20:18) And that's what we're proposing here with our process. As you can see, a whole lot less is going on here. We get rid of the intermediate, metal, water, final product cathode, recirculate the water, no wastewater at all. And when you summarize all of that it's a 66% reduction in CapEx investment, a 76 reduction in process costs and zero waste water. Much more scalable solution. Drew Baglino: (02:20:48) And then when you think about the fact that now we're actually just directly consuming the raw metal nickel powder, it dramatically simplifies the metal refining part of the whole process. So we can eliminate billions in battery grade nickel intermediate production. It's not needed at all. And we can also use that same process we showed on the previous page to directly consume the metal powder coming out of recycled electric vehicle and grid storage batteries. So this process enables both simpler mining and simpler recycling. Drew Baglino: (02:21:21) And now that we have this process, obviously we're going to go and start building our own cathode facility in North America and leveraging all of the North American resources that exist for nickel and lithium. And just doing that, just localizing our cathode supply chain and production, we can reduce miles traveled by all the materials that end up in the cathode by 80%, which is huge for cost. Elon Musk: (02:21:45) Yeah. To be clear, cathode production would be part of our the Tesla cell production plant. So it would just be basically raw materials coming from the mine and from raw materials in the mine out comes a battery. Drew Baglino: (02:21:59) And on that note, the way the lithium ends up in the cell is through the cathode. So then we should obviously on-site lithium conversion as well, which is what we will do using a new process that we're going to pioneer. That's a sulfate-free process again, skip the intermediate, 33% reduction in lithium cost, a hundred percent electric facility co-located with the cathode plant. Elon Musk: (02:22:25) So it's important to note that there is a massive amount of lithium on earth. So lithium is not like oil. There's a massive amount of it, pretty much everywhere. In fact is there's enough lithium in the United States to convert the entire United States fleet to electric, all the cars in the United States. Like 300 million or something like that. Every vehicle in the United States can be converted to electric using only lithium that is available in the United States. Drew Baglino: (02:22:55) Discovered today. Elon Musk: (02:22:57) Yeah, what we already know is exist. Drew Baglino: (02:22:58) People really haven't even been looking. Elon Musk: (02:22:59) Yeah, people haven't been trying because it's just widely available. But it is important to say, \"Okay, what is the smartest way to take ores and extract the lithium and do so in an environmentally friendly way?\" And we actually discovered... Again, looking at it a first principles physics standpoint, instead of just the way it's always been done, is we found that we can actually use table salt, sodium chloride, to basically extract the lithium from the ores. Nobody's done this before, to the best of my knowledge, nobody's done this. And all the elements are reusable, it's a very sustainable way of obtaining lithium. And we actually got rights to a lithium clay deposit in Nevada. Drew Baglino: (02:23:51) Over 10,000 acres. Elon Musk: (02:23:52) Over 10,000 acres. And then the nature of the mining is actually also very environmentally sensitive in that we sort of take a chunk of dirt out of the ground, remove the lithium, and then put the chunk of dirt back where it was. So it will look pretty much the same as before, it will not look like terrible. And yeah, it'll be nice. Drew Baglino: (02:24:13) Simply mix clay with salt, put it in water, salt comes out with the lithium, done. Elon Musk: (02:24:18) Yeah. It's pretty crazy. Drew Baglino: (02:24:19) Yeah. So we're really excited about this and there really is enough lithium in Nevada alone to electrify the entire US fleet. Elon Musk: (02:24:27) Yeah, that's true. Actually, just what's in Nevada. Basically, there's so much damn lithium on Earth it's crazy. It's one of the most common elements on the planet. Drew Baglino: (02:24:39) And eventually, as we said at the beginning, when we get to this steady state 20 terawatt hours per year of production, we will transfer the entire non-renewable fleet of both power plants, home heating and industry heating and vehicles to electric. And at that point, we have an awesome resource in those batteries to recycle, to make new batteries. So we don't need to do any more mining at that point. And you can see why. The difference in the value of the material coming back from the vehicle versus the ground, you'd always go to the vehicle. And we recycle a hundred percent of our vehicle batteries today. And actually, we are starting our pilot full-scale recycling production at Gigafactory Reno next quarter to continue to develop this process as our recycling returns grow. Elon Musk: (02:25:30) To date, it's been done by third parties, but we think we can recycle the batteries more effectively, especially since our batteries, we're making the same battery as the thing we're recycling. Whereas third party recyclers have to consider batteries of all kinds. Drew Baglino: (02:25:46) Yeah. And just to think about what this actually means, the recycling resource is always 10 or greater years delayed because batteries last a really long time, but eventually it is the way that all resources will be made available. And that's why we're investing in this recycling facility in Nevada. Elon Musk: (02:26:04) Yeah. Long-term, new batteries will come from old batteries once the fleet reaches steady state. Drew Baglino: (02:26:11) Right. Okay. So we just talked about scaling cathode and recycling, all of the benefits that you just saw are added to this benefit of a 12% reduction in dollars per kilowatt hour at the battery pack level, almost at our half of the cost goal, but there's one more section. Take it away, Elon. Elon Musk: (02:26:31) So there's an architecture that we've been wanting to do at Tesla for a long time, and we've finally figured it out. And I think it's the way that all electric cars in the future will ultimately be made, it's the right way to do things. Elon Musk: (02:26:52) So it starts with having a single piece casting for the front body and the rear body. And in order to do this, we commissioned the largest casting machine that has ever been made. And it's currently working just over the road at our Fremont plant. It's pretty sweet. Currently making the entire rear section of the car as a single piece, high pressure die-cast aluminum. And in order to do this, we actually had to develop our own alloy because we wanted a high strength casting alloy that did not require coatings or heat treatment. This is a big deal for castings. Especially with a large casting. If you heat treat it afterwards it tends to deform, it kind of does this like potato chip thing. So it's very hard to keep a large casting to have its shape. Elon Musk: (02:27:47) So in order to achieve this, there was no alloy that existed that could do this, so we developed our own alloy, a special allow of aluminum, that has high strength without heat treat and is very castable. So that's a great achievement of our materials team. In fact, in general, we've got a lot of advanced materials coming for Tesla, new alloys and materials that have never existed before. Elon Musk: (02:28:10) So, you're basically making the front and rear of the car is a single piece and that then interfaces to what we call it, the structural battery. Where the battery for the first time will have dual use. The battery will both have the use as an energy device and as structure. This is absolutely the way things are done. In the early days of aircraft they would carry the fuel tanks as cargo. So the fuel tanks actually were quite difficult to carry. They're basically worse than cargo, you had to add to kind of bolt them down. It was very difficult. And then somebody said, \"Hey, what if we just make the fuel tank in wing shape?\" So all modern airplanes, your wing is just a fuel tank in wing shape. This is absolutely the way to do it. And then the fuel tanks serves this dual structure, and it's no longer cargo. It's fundamental to the structure of the aircraft. This was a major breakthrough. We're doing the same for cars. Elon Musk: (02:29:26) So this is really quite profound. Effectively the non cell portion of the battery has negative mass. So we saved more mass than the rest of the vehicle than the non cell portion of the battery. So it's like, \"How do you really minimize the mass of a battery? Make it negative. Make the non cell portion of battery pack negative.\" So it also allows us to pack the cells more densely because we do not have intermediate structure in the battery pack. So instead of having these supports and stabilizers and stringers and structural elements in the battery, we now have a lot more space in the battery because the pack itself is structural. Elon Musk: (02:30:10) What we do essentially, instead of having just a filler that is a flame retardant, which is currently what is in the 3NY battery packs, we have a filler that is a structural adhesive, as well as flame-retardant. So it effectively glues the cells to the top and bottom sheet. And this allows you to do shear transfer between upper and lower sheet. Just like if you have a formula one craft or a racing boat, and you have carbon fiber face sheets and aluminum honeycomb between them, this gives you incredible stiffness and it's really the way that any super fast thing works is you create basically a honeycomb sandwich with two face sheets. Elon Musk: (02:30:58) This is actually even better than what aircraft do. Because aircraft do not do this. They can't do this because fuel is liquid. So in our case the batteries are solid. So we can actually use the steel shell case of the battery to transfer shear from the upper and lower face sheet, which makes for an incredibly stiff structure, even stiffer than a regular car. In fact, if this was a convertible that had no upper structure, that convertible will be stiffer than a regular car. So it's just really major. Elon Musk: (02:31:38) So it improves the mass efficiency of the battery. And then those castings are also quite important because you want to transfer load into the structural battery pack in a very smooth, continuous way. So you don't put arbitrary point loads into the battery. So you want to sort of feather the load out from the front and rear into the structural battery. It also allows us to move the cells closer to the center of the car, because we don't have the... In the top one we've got all the supports and stuff, so the volumetric efficiency of the structural pack is as much better than a non-structural pack. And we're going to actually bring the cells closer to the center and because they're closer to the center it reduces the probability of a side impact potentially contacting the cells because in any kind of side impact has to go further in order to reach the cells. Elon Musk: (02:32:36) It also proves what's called the polar moment of inertia. Which is if you think of when there's a ice skater arms out or arms in. Arms in, you rotate faster. So if you can bring things closer to the center, you reduce the polar moment of inertia and that means the car maneuvers better. It just feels better. You won't know why, but it just feels more agile. So it's really cool. This is really major. Elon Musk: (02:33:03) Like it says, so 10% mass reduction in the body of the car, 14% range increase, 370 fewer parts. I really think that long-term in any cars that do not take this architecture will not be competitive, Drew Baglino: (02:33:22) And it's not just at the product level, a better product. But in the factory, it's a massive simplification. You saw the part removal, it's casting machines, it's the structural battery pack. So we're looking at over 50% reduction in investment per gigawatt hour, 35% reduction in floor space. And we'll continue to improve that as we make the vehicle factory of the future. Elon Musk: (02:33:45) Yeah. So major improvements on all fronts from the cell all the way to the vehicle. Drew Baglino: (02:33:52) And in addition to the improvements we just said on enabling additional range and improving the structural performance of the vehicle, it is worth another 7% dollar per kilowatt hour reduction at the battery pack level, bring our total reductions now to 56% dollars per kilowatt. Drew Baglino: (02:34:17) All right. So stacking it up. We're not just talking about cost or range. We've got to look at all the facets. So range increase, we're unlocking up to 54% increase in range for our vehicles and energy density for our energy products. 56% reduction in dollars per kilowatt hour at the battery pack level, and a 69% reduction in investment per gigawatt hour, which is the true enabler when we talk back about how do we achieve this scale problem here. Elon Musk: (02:34:47) Yeah. So I think it's pretty nice that investment per gigawatt hour reduction is 69%. I mean, who would have thought? Drew Baglino: (02:34:57) Yeah, just happened to come out that way. Elon Musk: (02:35:03) I mean, 0.420%, of course. So what this enables us to do is achieve a new trajectory in the reduction of cell cost. And now to be clear, it will take us probably a year to 18 months to start realizing these advantages and to fully realize the advantages probably it's about three years or thereabouts. So if we could do this instantly we would, but it just really bodes well for the future and means that the long-term scaling of Tesla and the sustainable energy products that we make will be massively increased. So, what tends to happen as companies get bigger is things tend to slow down, actually they're going to speed up. Drew Baglino: (02:36:00) And they have to speed up if we're going to accelerate the transition to sustainable energy. Elon Musk: (02:36:04) Yeah. Long-term we want to try to replace at least 1% of the total vehicle fleet on Earth, which is about 2 billion vehicles. So long-term, we want to try and make about 20 million vehicles a year. Drew Baglino: (02:36:25) But I think it's important to point out that when we talked about three terawatt hours by 2030, the problem is a 20 terawatt hour problem. So everybody needs to be accelerating their efforts to accomplish these objectives. It doesn't matter where you are in the value chain. There is a ton to do, you need to rethink from first principles how you do it, so that you can scale to meet all of our objectives. Elon Musk: (02:36:47) Yep. Drew Baglino: (02:36:49) And, Elon. Elon Musk: (02:36:50) Sure. Drew Baglino: (02:36:53) What does this mean... Elon Musk: (02:36:55) What does this mean for our future products? So we're confident that long-term we can design and manufacturer a compelling $25,000 electric vehicle. This has always been our dream from the beginning of the company. I even wrote a blog piece about it because our first car was an expensive sports car, then it was a slightly less expensive sedan, and then finally sort of a, I don't know, mass market premium, the Model 3 and Model Y. But it was always our goal to try to make an affordable electric car. And I think probably, like I said, about three years from now, we're confident we can make a very compelling $25,000 electric vehicle that's also fully autonomous. Drew Baglino: (02:37:48) And when you think about the $25,000 price point, you have to consider how much less expensive it is to own an electric vehicle. So actually it becomes even more affordable at that $25,000 price point. Elon Musk: (02:38:02) Yeah. So we have and extreme performance and range. And we should probably talk about, more or less, Plaid. What about that? So, yeah. Anyway, we took the latest Plaid out to Laguna Seco on Sunday, it got a minute 30, and we think probably there's another three seconds or more to take off that time. So we're confident the Model Plaid will achieve the best track time of any production vehicle ever, of any kind, two-door or otherwise. Elon Musk: (02:39:15) And you can order it now. And it's available basically in the next year. And now we'll move to Q&A. Drew Baglino: (02:39:26) Absolutely. Elon Musk: (02:39:27) So we'll invite a few people on stage. Drew Baglino: (02:39:31) Come on up team. Elon Musk: (02:39:32) This is just a small portion of the team, but I thought it'd be great to show you some more of the team and when we do Q&A we can give various people different questions to answer. Drew Baglino: (02:39:49) Sounds great. Actually, I don't know how we're getting the questions. Elon Musk: (02:39:54) Actually, I don't know either. You can maybe get out of the car for two seconds and yell it at us. How are we getting the questions? Speaker 2: (02:40:07) [inaudible 02:40:08]. Drew Baglino: (02:40:09) Oh, there are mics. Wait for the mic. Elon Musk: (02:40:11) Oh, there are mics. Okay, great, great. Drew Baglino: (02:40:14) All right. Elon Musk: (02:40:16) Okay. We'll definitely needs to give people mics cause otherwise there's no way. Sorry? All right. We're going to pass some mics out. Oh, we don't have a name for the $25,000 car yet. Drew Baglino: (02:40:45) That's a great question, though. Speaker 3: (02:40:45) Elon, you talked about in Berlin that you were going to [inaudible 02:40:45] manufacturing [inaudible 02:40:44]. Elon Musk: (02:40:45) Yes, we will be manufacturing cells in Berlin. Yep. Drew Baglino: (02:40:52) Thermal management system? Speaker 4: (02:40:53) [inaudible 02:40:56]. Drew Baglino: (02:40:55) For homes. Elon Musk: (02:40:56) Oh, you mean like the home HVA? Yeah. That's a pet project that I'd love to get going on. I don't know, maybe we'll start working on that next year. Because I just think, man, you could really make a way better home HVAC system that's really quiet and super efficient, super energy efficient, and also has a way better filter for particles. And it works very reliably, and we've already developed that for the car. So the heat pump in the Model Y is really pretty spectacular. It's tiny, it's efficient, it has to last for 15 years, it's got to work in all kinds of conditions from the coldest winter to the hottest summer. So we've actually already done a massive amount of the work necessary for a really kick-ass home HVAC. Elon Musk: (02:41:53) And they could also stack them. So if you want to say, depending upon the size of your house or whatever, how much you need, you can just basically stack them and just have a very compelling, super efficient home HVAC. And then you could also communicate with the car and it'll know when you're coming home. So it's like, \"Oh, I don't need to keep the house cold all day, I'll just cool it down because I knew you were coming home.\" So the pack can communicate with the car and just really dial it into when you actually need cooling and heating. It'll be great. Drew Baglino: (02:42:25) Fun product. Who's next? Eli: (02:42:30) Hello? Hey guys, Eli here from Tesla Owners Club, my Tesla adventure. Just quick question, so I'm a huge fan of car camping in my Tesla with my dream case, my all time favorite activity, is it going to be possible to get climate control to the back of the cyber truck? Because that would be the ultimate camping machine if we can get all night climate control. Elon Musk: (02:42:51) We'll try to do that. Yeah. I agree, that would be really cool. Yeah. Drew Baglino: (02:42:59) All right. Who's next? Speaker 5: (02:43:00) Hello, longtime fan, Elon, great guy. Just a question, how does the ICE industry look like in the future? Elon Musk: (02:43:12) Well, I don't think there will be at ICE industry longterm. Well, I guess there might be like a few things that it's a like curious thing. There's still like some steam engines made somewhere, but they're just basically sort of quirky collector's items. I mean, that will be the future of the internal combustion engine car. Ryan McCaffrey: (02:43:36) Hi, Elon, to your left here in the white Model y. Ryan McCaffrey from the Ride the Lightning Tesla podcast. Curious about cyber truck, it was interesting to see where you had it in on the battery technology front. I'm sort of curious what you see for it in the production front. Trucks are so popular in America, do you see its volume equaling the 3 or the Y in the future? And also, were Tesla's able to legally be sold in Texas as part of the Giga Texas deal? Elon Musk: (02:44:09) Well, it's hard to say what the volume exactly would be for the cyber truck. The orders are gigantic. We have like, I don't know, well over half a million orders, I think maybe six or 600,000. It's a lot, basically, we stopped counting. So I think there's probably room for, I don't know, at least like a unit volume of like 250 to 300,000 a year, maybe more. Now, we are designing the cyber truck to meet the American spec. Because if you try to design a car to meet the super set of all global requirements you can't make the cyber truck, it's impossible. So it really is designed for the American market, but this is the biggest market. Our North American market is the biggest market for pickup trucks by far or large pickup trucks. Elon Musk: (02:44:59) And then I think we'll probably make an international version of cyber truck that'll be kind of smaller, kind of like a tight Wolverine package. It'll still be cooler, but it'll be smaller because you just can't make a giant truck like that for most markets. So, yeah, but it's going to be great. Elon Musk: (02:45:17) And I don't know. I think probably we'll be able to sell directly in Texas. We do pretty well right now, but it is a bit weird not being able to actually conclude a transaction in Texas, but it's got to be like a click on a server based in California. But weirdly we can do leasing in Texas, but not selling. Hopefully that'll get cleared up in the future. Speaker 6: (02:45:42) Elon, great job with everything that you're doing. It's Ross Gerber from Gerber Kawasaki. Your team's amazing. What I'm most curious about, these innovations are incredible but on my drive up here fully on autopilot for 400 miles, the entire state is brown and this is ultimately about climate. Has there been some analysis done if all these things are achieved, what will its direct impact be on climate? Elon Musk: (02:46:10) I think it will have a very significant impact because it will stop the CO2 PPM from growing as it is every year. I should say, I try to view the whole climate thing as a science question as much as possible. Science, you always question your hypothesis, is it true? Is not true? Or assign a probability to a given hypothesis. And I should say that my original interest in electric vehicles predates the climate issue. When I was in high school, I thought, \"Man, if we don't figure out electric cars, the whole economy's going to collapse when we run out of oil.\" So we better figure out electric cars and sustainable energy or civilization's going to crumble. Elon Musk: (02:46:57) And then it was only later that the significance of the climate risk became apparent. And we were also able, using tracking and other types of technology to access a lot more fossil fuels than previously thought, which is helpful for lowering the cost of gasoline, but it's pretty bad for the total tonnage of CO2 that you could put in the atmosphere. It's now greatly beyond what people previously thought. As we were just going through this presentation, it is a absolutely monumental task to accelerate the advent of sustainable energy. The entire global economy is still more than 99% dependent on, or call it roughly 99% dependent on, fossil fuels. So although electric cars get a lot of press right now, as a percentage of the total global fleet it's practically nothing. I would say yes, less than 1% of the global fleet is electric right now. Because of two billion cars and trucks and whatnot in use. So there's a massive amount of work ahead. Just insane, like hard to comprehend how much work is ahead to get the new vehicle production to be sustainable, to massively increase the amount of stationary storage, which is critical because renewable energy is intermittent, wind, and solar is intermittent, sometimes the wind doesn't blow and this obviously sun doesn't shine at night, so you got to have batteries, a massive, massive number of batteries. Drew Baglino: (02:48:44) Yeah, it's hard to measure in direct impact, but it's an experiment that we shouldn't be performing. And the sooner we can end the experiment the sooner we can kind of move on in a fully sustainable way that is actually lower cost. I think the thing that people haven't fully internalized is once we do get to the 25K car, the ownership cost of that car is incredibly lower than the prior car. And then on the solar side and wind, with the cost of solar wind coming down and with batteries coming down with them, the actual cost of energy on the grid is going down. So we're sort of moving towards a sustainable lower cost future. So there's not like a sacrifice. Elon Musk: (02:49:21) That's true. It is a false dichotomy to say that it's either prosperity or sustainability. This is often used by oil and gas to say like, \"Oh, well, do you want people to lose their jobs? Do you want to lower people's standards of living? Do you want to make all these economic sacrifices really in order to have sustainability?\" And the reality, as Drew was saying, is that sustainable energy is going to be lower cost, not higher cost than fossil fuels. Speaker 7: (02:49:52) Elon, quick question for you, right here in front. First, thanks for having everyone. I was telling a friend, the one company to go work for that's going to have the biggest structural... Speaker 8: (02:50:03) And the one company to go work for, that's going to have the biggest structural impact over the next 10 years at scale, it's probably Tesla. So kudos to everyone at Tesla for what they've done to this point and going forward. The two questions for you, as you've looked at the auto in the storage markets, I know you've talked about it at kind of 50/50 longterm, but it seems like a lot of the battery cost curve achievements that you presented today, really make some of these storage opportunities much more feasible over the next five years. And so I guess the first part of the question is, does your calculus upon learning and improving these things, change on that 50/50 mix, or is there a role where storage becomes bigger? And then the second part of the question, with all these huge grand visions, who's going to be with Tesla from a corporate perspective, accomplishing these things? Obviously, Tesla can't do it alone, but when you look at some of the traditional auto industry or power, et cetera, I don't see a lot of other Tesla's. Elon Musk: (02:50:59) Well actually, there's a lot of companies in China that I think are doing great work with electric vehicles and also with stationary storage, although we don't see that much in the US yet, but I think probably we will in the future. I don't know, obviously we're doing everything we can to encourage other companies to move to sustainable transport and also make stationary storage batteries. We made our patents freely available, we really try to tell these companies, \"Hey, you really need to do this, or you won't exist in the future,\" but they don't believe it. So we've talked until we're blue in the face. What are we supposed to do? But we really are hopeful that other companies will also do what we're doing and that will make a sustainable future come sooner. Drew Baglino: (02:51:53) From a fundamental market size perspective, we did the first ground up work to show the size of the market in terawatt hours and they are roughly 50/50. 10 terawatt hours for transportation, 10 terawatt hours for the grid. And part of that is because the grid batteries, because when you're making a power plant, you're making a large investment, our 25-year assets are greater. If the grid batteries were 10-year kind of things, the grid market would be bigger, but because it's a longer duration asset, they're roughly the same size. Speaker 9: (02:52:31) Thinking long-term, is there any other segments that this new battery will be able to disrupt or electrify, beyond just the initial Model 2 or cheaper sedan? Like a Boring Company loop, plane- Elon Musk: (02:52:44) Where are you? Are you there? Speaker 9: (02:52:45) What's up? Right here. Elon Musk: (02:52:46) Okay, great. It's like ventriloquism here, we just get the sound out of the speaker and can't tell where the heck it's coming from. Speaker 9: (02:52:55) Yeah. Any hints or is the model too such a big deal because it decreases the cost of transportation, that that is really the disruption, or should we get hyped that this new cost curve opens up different vehicle categories, like a high passenger density bus, Boring loop, boat, plane? Elon Musk: (02:53:12) Well, I mean, there are batteries in limited production right now, that do exceed 400 watt hours per kilogram, which I think is about the number you need for a decent range, medium range aircraft. And I think our batteries will, over time, start to approach the 400 watt hours per kilogram range as well. So yeah, I mean, I think over time, we'll see all modes of transport, with the ironic exception of rockets, transition to sustainability or to electric basically. On the rocket front, what we're planning to do is, about 80% of Starship is liquid oxygen and we're actually already running a power line to be able to use wind power to create the liquid oxygen. So we're making some decent progress on sustainability on the rocket front, but there's just no way to have an electric rocket. And it's important for the future of life and consciousness, that we become a multi planet species, so got to keep doing that. Josh Phillips: (02:54:21) Hi Elon, Josh Phillips here, retail investor. I have a question in regards to the lithium and nickel industries and the likely price spikes and shortages of high grade materials the EV industry is likely to see if they don't act fast to address future supply. Tesla have clearly made the right moves that are necessary, but there's a real worry that the potential supply issues and price spikes will create a drag on the rest of the EV industry and therefore a drag on global EV adoption. What advice would you give to the EV and mining industries to quickly solve this looming hurdle? Because for a sustainable energy future, the spice must flow. Thank you. Elon Musk: (02:55:07) Yeah, indeed. The spice must flow. The new spice. I don't know. I'm not sure. I guess we can try to basically overdo it in cell production and perhaps supply cells to others, but we do see the fundamental constraint, as total cell production. That's why we're putting so much effort into making cells and kind of trying to reinvent every aspect of cell production, from mining the ore, to a complete battery pack, because it's the fundamental constraint. We're not getting into the cell business just for the hell of it, it's because it's the fundamental constraint, it's the thing that is the limiting factor for rapid growth. But we could certainly try to overdo it on cell production and perhaps sell cells to others, although we are going at absolute top speed, so it's not like we're holding it back. Elon Musk: (02:56:15) I think just making really efficient cars that have lower drag coefficient, low rolling resistance, efficient powertrains, I mean, that's kind of what we've done in order to make iron phosphate still have a good range. So the iron phosphate's a lower energy density solution, but while there are some limitations on the total amount of nickel produced every year, there's really no limit on the iron. There's so much iron it's ridiculous. So you can really scale up iron phosphate at a raw materials basis, more than you can nickel. Drew Baglino: (02:57:00) And just to point out, when we were walking through this presentation, we intentionally separated all the different aspects. The benefits of structural battery, apply to an iron based cathode in the same way they apply to a nickel based cathode. So you get longer range, iron base vehicles. And also the silicon benefit can apply to the iron based vehicles as well. So we can do a lot to extend the range of an iron based vehicle, which is why it's a key part of the roadmap going forward. And then I invited Turner up here to talk about what the mining industry can do. Turner: (02:57:31) Yeah. Diversification on the cathode side, is obviously massive and EVs are all about efficiency. And so for the EV industry, for the vehicle industry, we need to see powertrain efficiency really increase, all other companies, matching Tesla powertrain efficiency, so that everyone can have that diversified cathode approach, where LFP is used in medium range, and even really make a 300 mile vehicle with LFP. And really the goal that we were trying to present here, was a model for vertical integration, strategic vertical integration, that a lot of different people can do. What we need to see is vertical integration that shortens the process path, from mine to cathode. And what we're doing here is novel and we're trying to push the industry in that direction. So we're presenting a model here that anyone can can follow. Elon Musk: (02:58:27) Yeah. In fact, if there's anything that you guys want to comment on, feel free to step forward and say something. Speaker 10: (02:58:34) I think the key is to be smart about your chemistry choices, your materials choices. Elon Musk: (02:58:38) Talk louder. Speaker 10: (02:58:38) Yeah. If you're smart about your materials choices, the spice will continue to flow. You don't need to use the same kind everywhere. It's about strategically planning it out and for miners, I think we are incentivizing them quite a bit, to ramp up their production. Drew Baglino: (02:58:57) Yeah. And actually we had good calls, they're all motivated. I think, they've been sort of sitting back being like, \"Are you going to grow like crazy?\" And we're like, \"Yeah, we're going to grow like crazy.\" And then I think this indicates we're going to grow like crazy and that's what the miners want to hear and then they'll go make the investments. Ben Limpic: (02:59:13) Hello, Elon. This is Ben Limpic, I'm a musician. I was wondering, does Tesla have any future plans to make partnerships with music companies, like it has done with Tencent games or things like that, for you guys to actually kind of expand your services for artists and other types of creative people, to get involved in producing content that can be part of the Tesla ecosystem or so other people that do creative things can get involved with you guys? Elon Musk: (02:59:44) We haven't really thought about it that much, but I suppose it's probably something we should think about. We will be providing a title on the Tesla's. So we're providing more music sources that people can choose from and just generally trying to improve the entertainment experience in the cars. And I think actually as we go to a more autonomous future, the importance of entertainment and productivity will become greater and greater. I mean, to the degree that if you're just basically sitting in your car, the car is fully autonomous and driving somewhere, the car is essentially your chauffeur and then the things that become important are, okay, well let's have good entertainment and if you want to do some productivity stuff, then that actually starts to become much more important because you're no longer spending your attention driving the car. So it will be extremely important in the future. Drew Baglino: (03:00:42) Should we do some of the say.com questions? Speaker 11: (03:00:46) Yeah. Drew Baglino: (03:00:47) Okay. Should we do the second one? Elon Musk: (03:00:54) Yeah. The first one, I think we already answered. If we're able to make enough cells, which we'll try to do, we will supply other companies. It's definitely not an intentional effort to keep the cells to ourselves, if we can make enough for other companies, we will supply them. And we were trying to do the right thing for advancing the sustainable energy, whatever that is. Elon Musk: (03:01:19) Vehicle to grid, we get asked that a lot. I think one of the things that's important to note, is vehicle to grid, unless you have a power cutoff, you need to cut off your main supply to the grid, otherwise, if you lose the power in your house, you'll basically just backflow energy to the grid. So just having a reversal in the power flow, does not actually keep the lights on, you need a whole separate system to cut off power to the grid. And I think there's also the case that people really want the freedom to be able to drive and to charge at their house. And it's obviously very problematic if you get to morning and your car, instead of being charged, it discharged into the house and then you're sort of, \"Okay, now I can either drive or use the battery to power my house.\" Elon Musk: (03:02:19) I think it's actually going to be better for people's freedom of action, to have a power wall and a car separate, and then everything works that. You basically combine that with solar, either solar retrofit or solar glass roof, and local battery storage, so you basically become your own utility and then the car can be charged also with solar. I think that's the stuff that works, that said, we can certainly do vehicle to grid, I think we can basically enable that with software in Europe or something, right? Drew Baglino: (03:03:00) Yeah. Future generations of power electronics, we will be able to do this more or less everywhere, from a energy market participation perspective, but from a backing up the house and it just so happens that the way the North American connectors are, on all the cars in North America, it doesn't matter whether it's the Tesla connector or the connector that the other vehicles have, doesn't actually support powering your home. It's unfortunate, so you'd need an additional hardware to do that. But yeah, in the future, all versions of our vehicles will be able to at least do bi-directional power flow for the purposes of energy market participation. But even for that, it's important to remember that your car is in plugged in 24/7, so it's kind of an unpredictable resource for the grid. It'll have a value, but it's not the same as a stationary battery pack. Elon Musk: (03:03:49) Yeah. Honestly, a vehicle to grid sounds good, but I think actually has a much lower utility than people think. I think very few people would actually use vehicle to grid. With the original roadster, we had vehicle to grid capabilities, nobody used it. Drew Baglino: (03:04:15) How do we find the engineers to do everything we're saying? Elon Musk: (03:04:18) How do we find the engineers to do all these things? Well, I guess we recruit a lot of engineers from all parts of the world. I think Tesla has a good reputation for doing exciting engineering and that tends to attract a lot of the top engineers in the world because they know that their efforts at Tesla will really serve the greater good and we're super hardcore about engineering. Tesla is first and foremost an engineering company, it's like hardcore engineering is what we do. The sheer amount of hardcore engineering done at Tesla is insane. And if you look at say, there's various surveys done of engineering schools, where do you want to go, what's your top choices? And actually the top two choices last few years, have been Tesla and SpaceX. So sometimes it's Tesla first and sometimes SpaceX first, but those are the two top ones. Drew Baglino: (03:05:18) Yeah. I mean, if you're motivated to solve some of these problems, which are the hardest problems in the world to solve, that really fundamentally enable the future we all need, please reach out and help us work on these problems. Elon Musk: (03:05:30) Absolutely. And like you said, the battle is far from over. Less than 1% of the global automotive fleet has been converted to electric and even maybe less than 0.1% of stationary storage has been done. So stationary storage has barely begun, converting the global vehicle fleet to electric, has barely begun. So there's still a massive amount of engineering work to be done at Tesla and other companies, to accelerate this transition to sustainability. Jordan: (03:06:06) Hey, can you guys hear me? Drew Baglino: (03:06:07) Yeah. Jordan: (03:06:08) This is Jordan from Mark Asset Management. So you've talked about the importance of the factory and you've mentioned the ground up design process and a lot of the new things that you're going to be doing or started to do in Shanghai, Berlin, and Austin. Can you just maybe help us understand and quantify, how financially meaningful all of those improvements will be, and then given what you're trying to accomplish as a company, is it fair to assume that the vast majority of improvement will be given back to the customer in the form of lower prices? Elon Musk: (03:06:39) Yeah. I mean, I think certainly we will try to give back as much as possible to the customers. It's not like Tesla's profitability is crazy high, our average profitability for last four quarters, is maybe 1%. So just to be clear, it's not like we're minting money. Our evaluation makes it seem like we are, but we're not. So we do want to try to make the price as competitive as we can, without losing money. If you keep losing money, you'll just die. So this thing called profit is just like, we need to bring in more money than we spend, otherwise we're dead. Drew Baglino: (03:07:19) But affordability is key to how we scale, right? The demand goes non-linear as you reduce the price of the car. Elon Musk: (03:07:25) Yeah. I mean, it's important to sort of separate the difference between affordability and value for money or desirability of the product. So for a lot of people, they want to buy a Tesla, they simply don't have enough money. We could make the car infinitely desirable, but if somebody does not have enough money, they can't buy it. Sometimes people kind of forget this. People have to have enough money to buy the car and just making a car super desirable, but expensive, does not mean they can afford it. So it's absolutely critical that we make cars that people can actually afford. Go through some of these things, scroll down or something. Drew Baglino: (03:08:19) When do you expect Tesla vehicles to beat ICE vehicles on initial purchase price? I think a way to answer that question, is in the classes of vehicles we sell today, we're already doing that. Elon Musk: (03:08:30) Yeah. We're already pretty close. And then factoring in total cost of ownership and the fact that electric vehicles require much less servicing and are way cheaper to run, when you look at total cost of ownership. And you can always lease a car, so if you just lease a car or get a loan for a car, you've got your sort of monthly payments and then your cost for either gasoline or electricity and your cost of servicing and the fully considered cost of electric car is much less than a gasoline car of the same nominal purchase price. I mean, that said, maybe on the order of three years, when we can do lower cost, like a $25,000 car, I think that will be basically on par, maybe slightly better than a comparable gasoline car. So I think maybe it's on the order of three years-ish. Drew Baglino: (03:09:37) How have the technology advancements and increased vertical integration of battery manufacturing, influenced your ability to improve the environmental and social impact of the supply chain? And I think ... Yeah. Elon Musk: (03:09:48) We sort of have said that already. Drew Baglino: (03:09:49) Yeah. Elon Musk: (03:09:50) Do we have some ability to scroll through this? Just scroll away. Drew Baglino: (03:09:57) We covered recycling. Elon Musk: (03:09:59) Yeah. Just scroll until we've got stuff that we haven't covered. Drew Baglino: (03:10:02) We definitely covered that top one. Elon Musk: (03:10:09) Yeah, a lot of the things we've already asked really. Drew Baglino: (03:10:16) Covered that. That one. Elon Musk: (03:10:26) We literally just answered that. Drew Baglino: (03:10:27) Yeah. Oh, I saw a cathode durability question. Let's go to that one, go down, go down, go down. Good technical question. Keep going. How are you going to address the cathode durability and cost and environmental impact trifecta? Is this something you're going to leave the environment upstream and supply chain to solve? No, I think we tried to answer that directly. I mean, we really are looking at not just what happens in the cathode facility, but currently outside the cathode facility that should really be inside and removing processes that shouldn't have been there in the first place and the use of reagents that are just costly and not necessary and removing a bunch of wastewater from the process. Elon Musk: (03:11:09) Guys, is there anything you want to add to ... Maybe we can go through everyone and maybe say what you're doing and say a few words. I don't know. Speaker 10: (03:11:21) Sure. I just want to reiterate the fact that this is a massive problem. Elon Musk: (03:11:25) Massive problem. Speaker 10: (03:11:26) And it seems like Tesla's on its way and ahead, but we need everybody's help because it's everybody's planet and we're not going to get to 20 terawatt hours by ourselves. So please think about this carefully, as it affects everybody, so let's get on it. Elon Musk: (03:11:45) Yeah. And obviously, if you care about solving sustainability and doing hardcore engineering, definitely come work for Tesla. Speaker 12: (03:11:53) Yeah. We went through a couple of the manufacturing improvements and it kind of looks easy when you put together a nice slide deck, but it's super challenging. When you take materials out of the process, when you integrate processes together, you have to do a lot of things at once and that's like this immense engineering challenge. And so to appreciate that, to get through this, we need the best engineers we've got. And we've got this awesome team, I just want to shout out also to all of our team watching, you guys are awesome, you absolutely kicked ass putting this together. Drew Baglino: (03:12:36) Thank you. Thank you, Tesla team. Totally agree. Speaker 12: (03:12:44) Yeah. That's it. Rodney Westmoreland: (03:12:47) Yeah. Rodney Westmoreland, managing the construction here at Tesla. What I would like to say is, one, shout out to the team. The team has been working effortlessly, a very, very tough project here, for 24 hours a day it seems like, around the clock, to have this complete. The thing that sets us apart from a lot of other construction, we have a construction company here, the thing that sets us apart is that we're integrated in the manufacturing process. So every detail that comes from Drew's mouth, is directly implicated into the system that we're building. That way, what would typically take three or four months to create a specification, our design team is working right with the manufacturing team, to allow us to speed that process up tremendously. Drew Baglino: (03:13:36) Yeah, it's definitely a important part of the vertically integrated approach, is to be able to design the factory around the equipment, in fact, together with the equipment, so you can build the factory at lower costs and more quickly. Scott: (03:13:50) I'm Scott, I focus on cell design. I think it's hard to put into words how inspiring this is, been at it such a long time with Tesla. And I really hope others do join us- Elon Musk: (03:14:01) Since when Scott? Scott: (03:14:02) Since 2005, with many of you. Thank you. Year before Drew, who's keeping track? But I'm really stoked what the team's been able to accomplish over the last short period of time, about a year, it's been really an incredible transformation. I mean, hopefully what we've shown you, inspires you to join us or join somebody else in the effort. And I couldn't think of a greater, more intelligent, more hardworking team to be working on for this problem. Peter: (03:14:37) I Peter, I lead the manufacturing improvement team. And I guess the point that I'd like to make, is manufacturing improvements is like the accelerator. So you think about the execution that Rodney talked about, in terms of how fast we've been able to put together this factory, which is amazing and something that's been really incredible to be a part of. That's not enough, what we need to do is improve the manufacturing technology, that's the real accelerator and that's what we're really focused on. Elon talks about it all the time, that really going and improving that system is what will enable us to get to the scale and the cost that we need. Peter: (03:15:15) And then the other point that I would make is on the recruiting side, it doesn't matter if you know about batteries, if you come from any industry, you can do something fantastic in the work that we're doing. We talk to people from industries that you wouldn't imagine. Like I talked to a guy who makes golf balls and he has stuff which is really impactful for what we're doing. So if you're in any industry and you want to be impactful here, come join us, it'd be great. Tony: (03:15:45) Hi, excuse me. Hi, I'm Tony. I've been working in lithium and cathode materials for almost 23 years now and this is the most growth I've seen in a company, I've been here a little over a year and a half. We are hiring amazing people that are allowing us to leverage technology that most of the industry is struggling to achieve. So to answer the question, how are we going to do this? We are really advancing the materials manufacturing for cathodes and for lithium, beyond what has been accomplished in the previous 20 years. Drew Baglino: (03:16:26) It's exciting. Turner: (03:16:31) Yeah. My name is Turner, work closely with the team, have worked a lot with everyone here. On the cathode and upstream materials side, it's really important that everyone understand that this growth is coming. This growth is real, we are going to make all of these batteries and everyone needs to grow with us, the entire supply chain needs to grow with us. And if you have an idea that simplifies anything in the supply chain, come talk to us, come work with us and let's do it. Drew Baglino: (03:17:02) Any existing specification is wrong, any existing manufacturing method is wrong, process equipment, it's wrong, it's just a question of how wrong. Quote Elon Musk. Elon Musk: (03:17:12) Exactly. We're wrong, just the question of how wrong. Trying to be less wrong. Drew Baglino: (03:17:16) So tell us how we're wrong and how we can do it better, so that we can accelerate and improve as fast as possible. Elon Musk: (03:17:23) All right. Well, I guess thank you everyone for coming. I hope you liked the presentation. Very exciting future ahead. We're going to work our damnedest to transition the world to sustainable energy as quickly as possible, and your support and help is key to that success. So thanks again, super appreciated and look forward to the next event. Thank you. Drew Baglino: (03:17:45) Thank you."},"languages":["en"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":"https://www.rev.com/transcripts/tesla-2020-battery-day-transcript-september-22"},{"id":"tesla-q2-2020-earnings-call-2020-07-22","type":"interview","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3lvmOJGC_es","title":"Tesla Q2 2020 Earnings Call","titles":{"en":"Tesla Q2 2020 Earnings Call","de":"Tesla Q2 2020 Earnings Call","fr":"Tesla Q2 2020 Earnings Call"},"date":"2020-07-22","summary":"Musk announces the Austin Gigafactory and reviews Tesla's fourth consecutive profitable quarter and Full Self-Driving progress.","text":"I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker mr. Martin vieta Senior Director of Investor Relations please go ahead sir you Thank You Shari and good afternoon everyone and welcome to Tesla second quarter 2020 Q&A webcast I'm joined today by Elon Musk Zachary Kirk horn and a number of other executives are cute the result were announced at about 1:15 p. m.\n\nPacific time in the update that we published at the same link as this webcast during this code we will discuss our business outlook and make forward-looking statements these comments are based on our predictions and expectations as of today actual events and results could differ materially due to a number of risks and uncertainties including those mentioned in our most recent filings with the SEC during the question and answer portion of today's call please limit yourself to one question and one follow-up please press star 1 now if you'd like to join the question queue but Before we jump into TNA Ilan has some opening remarks you want thank you first of all I'd like to thank the test team for exceptional execution in the second quarter despite tremendous\n\ndifficulties they've done an incredible job and it's an honor to work with such a great team I mean there were so many so many challenges to too numerous to name but that they got it done and just what a great group to work with like I said it's just an honor to work with such a great team so and as a result we were able to achieve a fourth consecutive profit profitable quarter and although the automotive industry was down about 30 percent year-over-year in the first half a year we managed to grow deliveries in the first half the year so despite a massive industry to industry decline we actually went up we're also very excited to announce that we're going to be building our next Giga factory in Texas it's going to be right near Austin or not but it'll\n\nbe about I'll just go into a bit of detail on this and then actually a lot of questions but the look at the location is five minutes from our Ocean International Airport and 15 minutes from downtown Austin is about 2,000 acres we're going to make make it a factory that it's going to be stunning it's right on the Colorado River so we're actually going to have we have a boardwalk where there will be a hiking biking trail it's going to basically be an ecological paradise birds and the trees butterflies fishing the stream and there we open to the public as well so not not closed and only Tesla so if anyone's interested in working at giggity-giggity Texas the engineering production whatever the case may be please let us know this is we're going to be doing\n\na major major factory there and it's also where we'll be doing is we'll be doing cyber truck there the Tesla semi and we'll be doing model 3 and why for the eastern half of North America now at the same time I want to say we will continue to grow in California so would we expect California to do model S&X for worldwide consumption and 3 and why for the western half of North America and we think probably also the Tesla Roadster future program would also make sense in California so I think this is a nice split between Texas and California and you know to emphasize will continue growing California but will be creating a massive factory and cyber truck and semi programs in Texas so and I also want to just say do a shout out to to Tulsa and and just say thank\n\nyou very much for to the the Tulsa team economic development team and the governor I really I was super impressed the hotels team was super impressed and we will for sure strongly consider a Tulsa for future expansion of Tesla down the road let's see is anything more we want to say about there's a lot of information so though these guys are I'm sure there were lots of questions we've already started work on the facility so set some initial construction work so it's already underway started this weekend let's see moving on to other subjects solar we recently adjusted the pricing of our retrofit solar so Tesla solar is the lowest class solar in the United States and we added the lowest lowest cost guarantee and a money back guarantee so we're very confident\n\nthat people will will love our solar product whether it's the solar retrofit or solar roof a solar is now thetan cheaper than the US average after the federal federal tax credit otezla silat now costs a dollar forty nine per watt and it's a very simple highly automated single click experience so definitely think about Tesla whether you want a new roof or for Tesla solar roof or you want solar on your existing roof either way where the grow the company to go to and then you also get a power wall and have energy independence and be your own utility so I think that that part is really coming together and it's only going to get better later this year so it's just very excited about that that's a business potential on the you know if additional technology\n\nstuff we introduced the first production car with more than 400 miles range so the current Tesla Model S now has an EPA certified range of 402 miles I mean basically can drive from LA to San Francisco non-stop and still have some mild miles left over when you arrive and and this is at highway speeds so you're just talking after anything drive slowly or anything you drive it you just drive normally and you know grow very very long distances and then for full self driving we launched traffic lights and stop signs and we continue to prove that to make them more robust and we're currently testing also driving software for intersections and city streets and narrow streets so I personally test the the latest alpha build of full self-driving software when I\n\nwhen I Drive my car and it is really I think profoundly better than people realize yeah really profoundly better it's like amazing so it's almost getting to the point where I can go from my house to work with no interventions despite going through construction and widely varying situations so this is why I'm very confident about full self-driving functionality being complete by the end of this year it isn't because I'm literally driving it in conclusion at like again say thanks for the hard work that tells the team achieving our first full year of profitability in the company history was incredibly difficult and just as a result the hard work of a lot of people from Tesla worldwide and and yet just think about the next the next 12 to 18 months we'll have\n\nthree new factories in place if things are looking great with a gig of all in and what we'll have cyber truck semi roadster full self-driving there's so much to be excited about it's really hard to kind of fit into this coal but the sheer amount of hard core engineering especially on the you know autonomy and the people manufacturing engineering front is mind-blowing and then of course is battery day which is you know coming up pretty soon and I think that's that's really going to surprise people by just how how much there is to see so with that thanks again for your support in our long term mission and we were looking forward to having a great journey with you to create amazing products and continue scaling it and yeah this is a I think I've never been\n\nmore optimistic or excited about the future of Tesla and the history of company thank you thank you very much and I think our CEO feels like a record corn has some remarks as well yeah thanks Martin I want to start by thanking our employees customers and suppliers for your support over the last quarter in particular to the tesla team i couldn't be more impressed with the hard work and the resiliency that you all have shown on that income overall as Elon mentioned we achieved our fourth sequential quarter of profitability this is despite a significant impact to our financials as a result of suspended operations of our US factories and field operations around the world to ensure the business remains healthy we took temporary action to reduce costs including\n\nexpenses related to personnel and non-critical path projects the direct cost savings that the direct cost impact of the temporary shutdown was largely offset by these cost savings actions although the costs were concentrated in cogs and the cost reductions were on both cogs and operating expenses on automotive gross margin excluding regulatory credits if this reduced sequentially from 20% to 18.\n\n7% this sequential reduction is fully attributed to idle capacity charges in lower operational efficiency due to the various shutdowns despite these charges we continue to make progress reducing our costs particularly on model why and Fremont and model 3 and Shanghai given the global macroeconomic context we made the decision in q2 to pass through savings to customers around the world on some of our products with the release of stoplight and stop sign recognition and response we recognized 48 million of deferred revenue in the period the full profit impact on our P&L is less than half of this due to cost associated with FSD computer retrofits in the field regulatory credit revenue increased sequentially to 428 million while difficult to forecast precisely\n\nour best estimate of 2020 credit revenue is roughly double that of 2019 services and other margin improved yet again marking the fifth sequential quarter of improvement in the energy business our megapack product achieved its first quarterly profit we remained for production constrained in this business and are continuing to work towards building additional capacity and our solar installation business was impacted by permit office closures limiting installation volume stock based compensation almost entirely by an expense related to the next tranche of the CEO grant as well as early lifting of the first tranche which is reflected in SGA within operating expenses on cash flows our cash balance increased to our highest level yet of 8.\n\n6 billion which included free cash flows of over 400 million this is a strong result on its own despite an increase in capital expenses associated with Shanghai and Berlin as well as movements in working capital a few things to note on working capital particularly accounts receivables while our a our balance is usually about 20% of revenue it can fluctuate depending upon a number of factors first overall less than 30% of our receivables is associated with new car sales second due to payment terms associated with financing and enterprise customers settlement timelines for certain methods of cash payments and geographic mix of our deliveries our cash balance and associated receivables are impacted significantly by how many cars are delivered in the final\n\nweeks and days of the quarter third roughly 40% of the balance is attributed to payment terms on regulatory credit sales and statutory evey incentive programs both of which have been increasing customer deposits reduced slightly as well note that as we transition to lower order fees across the world the average deposit per order will continue to reduce driving down this balance as we look forward Tesla was able to navigate through queue to do - our agile and dynamic culture we will continue to appropriately mail enjoy cash flows through cost optimization and close working capital management this is key as we remain focused on expanding production scaling our operations and preparing for the launch of three new factories over the next year and a half thank\n\nyou very much let's go to questions from institutional investors first the question number one is s Tesla continues its journey towards the long-term goal of selling 20 million units per year what are the most important vehicle programs that will drive building growth over the next three to five years beyond model three why and the cyber truck cheaper smaller versions of three and why or region specific vehicles or anything else I don't think we can cut the comment on you know our detailed part roadmap beyond what's announced because I agreed we want to reserve that for product launches but it would be reasonable to assume that we would make a compact vehicle of some kind you know and probably a higher capacity Astra vehicle of some kind you know these\n\nare likely things at some point but I do think there's a long way to go with the three and why and with cyber truck and semi and you know so it's a long way to go with those I will do the obvious things okay the second question from this additional is what is your vision for software at Tesla what opportunities do you see for monetizing the installed base other than bio FSP and right now by fraud by far FST is just overwhelmingly the most important thing you know I think the the upgrading of the fleet to full self-driving essentially with an over there software update I mean may go down as the biggest asset value increase in history as a step change you know about the maybe the something bigger of it it certainly would be one of the biggest I can't think\n\nof anything bigger so sort of those overnight you know at a million defined exactly when it happens and when it's allowed in various regulatory jurisdictions you'd have like kind of a few million cars suddenly becoming five times more viable or something like that it's only five times higher utility it to go from like twelve hours a week of utility something like that or of that it doesn't hours are used to sixty like that you know so it may else is pretty small by comparison now when things do become full self-driving so what if we were going to do in the car well I guess they probably want to do productivity and entertainment of some kind you know for traveese play games and do work well that that's best in the future yeah we're already putting some\n\ngames and stuff on the car just for fun yeah yeah we have been experimenting on that and so the fsd remains by far and away the biggest opportunity in the new environment but we're putting the plumbing in place to be ready to scale other areas when the time is right so premium connectivity subscription is something that we've put in place and the ability to upgrade your vehicle through the app for example on acceleration boosts or upgrading a standard range model 3 to a standard plus adding rear heated seats so these are things that we have and we're continuing to get feedback from the field and other things that we can launch and will trickle those in with time yeah but they're all very tiny compared with like the trailers like the step change to full\n\nself-driving depending upon high calculated is probably worth north you know at least $100,000 per car so as blood software you have so yeah in the app store or whatever yeah and thank you the third question is also about autopilot what are the most important upcoming self-driving milestones and how do you think about timing well um the actual major milestone that's happening right now is really transition of the autonomy system of the cars like AI if you will from thinking about things in AI code like two and a half D it's like big finger blue but it's big steak like isolated pictures and and during image recognition on the on pictures that are harshly correlated in time but not not very well and transitioning to kind of a 4d where you know it's like\n\nyour which is video essentially you get you're thinking about the world in three dimensions and look at the fourth dimension being time so that that architecture change which is been underway for some time but has not really been rolled out to anyone in the production fleet is what really matters for fulfill driving so what you know what we've been doing thus far is really just been with like 2d mostly 2d and Alexa pop no well correlated in time so it just you're just it's just hard to convey just how much better a fully 4d system would work it does work it's capable of things that it that if you just look looking at things as individual pictures as opposed to video it looks to basically like you could go from like individual pictures to surround video\n\nthis is a fundamental so the call will seem to have just like a giant improvement have I never probably roll it out later this year but you know be able to do your traffic lights stop turns crops everything you know pretty much and then it will be a long march of nines essentially how many nines of reliability are okay so it definitely way better than human but how much better than human does need to be so that that's actually going to be the real work is just a massive amount of work with each kind of order of magnitude of reliability but you'll see a perfect happen and if you plot the points on the curve it'll be kind of obvious where it's headed ái in general I think is something you know I've been saying this famous AI drum for a decade we should\n\nbe concerned about where AI is going the people I see being the most wrong about AI are the ones who are very smart because they can't imagine that a computer could be way smarter than them but that's the flaw in their logic they're just way down more than they think they are thank you and the next question from his additional investor is please may you update us on alien dreadnought how has your thinking evolved and what is needed in order to get closer to fundamental physical limits or bring a massive amount of effort into manufacturing engineering the Machine O'Lakes machine there's probably 1,000 percent maybe 10,000 percent more engineering required for the factory than for the product itself so we're starting making amazing progress I mean you know\n\nbattery and powertrain factory Giga factory Nevada is you know on an alien driven work version 0.\n\n5 something that God just you know starting to approach version 1 we're getting way better at making cars you can see that in Giga Shanghai you'll see that even more with the Berlin and we're really changing the design of the car in order to make it more manufacturable the the fundamental architecture of model Y will be different in Berlin it may look the same but the internals will be quite different and fundamentally more efficient architectural II then than what we've done to date fake juju like to add to that yeah I was going to extend on that side I think part of the alien dreadnought concept is not just automation but minimizing the number of process steps and complexity involved in the manufacturing system which involves really integrating design\n\nand manufacturing across some like when the raw materials enter the factory to finish goods exited and we're learning so much through doing that vertical integration is extremely important for this but the supply chain if you put like a GPS tracker on a molecule from winter cuff mind to miner was in a usable product it would look insane we were to be like wow weird around the world like six times so with vertical integration maybe you're going to like around the world once you know the huge improvement or not even like half oh I like a happy get vertical integration like Rapala gauge an order of magnitude improvement so yeah it's Romulan I think the focus for us is increasing the capex and efficiency this is something that we've been working very hard\n\nfor the past three years you can see that we can build new factories for less amount of money and much faster yeah those things go together gets better it's a better factory for less money in less time and as money means less time there so that's a great advantage and also reducing this and this still is a lot the amount of inefficiencies we want every operation to add value to the vehicle mmm value meaning moving the atoms closer to the final state you know so we do not want any robot that just moves things yes proportionate in fact it's like we're going to be super respectful of people's labor if we're asking somebody to do something are we sure it's useful are we asking them to spend their time in a way that is respectful of their time but but it's\n\nlike wow the potential for improvement is this tremendous and like that's why we clear here at Tesla we love manufacturing it's awesome and I really think more smart people's to be working on manufacturing they lay one more people yeah we we we do if people are interested in designing new lines and trying to do things different you know Tesla's got a job for you and now we've got jobs everywhere it's not only in California there we got just in China and Berlin in Austin Texas yeah and in California if you so the plenty of exciting places and all these places will do original work and challenging yet meaningful work absolutely it's actually extremely exciting for and fulfilling to design new production systems and I think that you know for some reason\n\nI kind of got a bad rap especially in the u.\n\ns.\n\nfor a long time and and I think people didn't think that manufactures is sort of a thought of manufacturing is like oh it's is porous I'm boring just making copies whatever but actually this far more opportunity for innovation in manufacturing than in the product itself order magnitude so but like if there's one thing that comes out of this cool it's like hey if you want to help us invent amazing new manufacturing techniques and and have input into the product itself it's not like you just get tossed the product and say hey make this this product and it's a kind of a lousy design you'd get if you're manufacturing you get to change the product design and say hey if it was the product you asking me manufacturers dumb it was like great let's fix it you know\n\nso I it you know I if you work on manufacturing engineering so you're just get force-fed a turd sandwich you get to change the product design so you know it's a super exciting and and we evolved the lines even after their vote this rapid evolution of the production system so and there's nothing more rewarding than going from zero cars an hour to yeah five thousand cars a week or thousand cars a day yeah so you know like the long-term sustainable advantage of Tesla I think will be up manufacturing thank you very much and the last question from this additional investor is how many vehicles can Tesla produce in Texas right now zero but long-term a lot top biggest property yeah it's based architecture okay and now we can shift to retail investor questions\n\non save calm the first one is Tesla energy seems widely ignored by Wall Street despise despite a long comments about growth rate exceeding automotive could this not share more detail on current or planned projects to help investors better understand the business outlook how disruptive is Tesla's auto bidder technology yeah kara says I think long term Tesla energy will be of roughly the same size as tells automotive so I mean the energy business collectively is bigger than the automotive business so you say like you know how big is the energy sector bigger than automotive so and in order to achieve a sustainable energy future we have to have sustainable energy generation which i think is going to be primarily solar and you know set foot followed by wind\n\nand those intimate anied to have a lot of batteries to store the solar energy because when does noise blow and the Sun doesn't shine so so there's like three elements of the sustainable energy future wind and solar sustainable energy generation battery storage and electric transport both three things and the mission of Tesla is to accelerate the sustainable energy so I can emphasize enough the defect like yeah the bad battery and solar will both be enormous and they kind of have to be in order to have a sustainable future and we've got a great product roadmap on that front as well so we're going trip in the mega pack it's very well received talk about that um yeah but I think the mega pack is has represented itself and is an integrated rapidly deployable\n\nyou know grid-tied storage battery of mega megawatt-hour scale we're working with utilities large and small you know not just utilities but also just like micro grid and project developers of all type and building our own projects where it makes sense and there's there's a lot of demand for the product and we're growing the production rates as fast as we can for that product and then on auto bidder Auto bidders is basically autopilot for grid tied batteries it's an autonomous energy market participation system that you know does high frequency trading and ensure that that's a bad word sorry sorry it frees to Treasury called front-running yeah we're not doing badly anything like that it's ensuring that the battery is doing everything you can to manage\n\nthe credit identity of renewals renewables and just grid intermittency of all kinds I mean you know people turn their lights on off power plants to turn on and off yeah factories ramped up and down and batteries are great just to solve those problems yeah it just it does grid stabilization you know the millisecond level exactly so it just ensures that things are super smooth it's like it you know a UPS an uninterruptible power supply of enormous size but just get just ensure that this grid has smooth sailing and then the batteries you know the computers like all interact with each other and make sure that they're working together to make the grid desperate and this can be done quick with the power rules and and the mega packs and the power packs all working\n\ntogether and interacting with the party systems as well yeah essentially or distributed it does vote yeah yeah I mean we've yeah oh is it necessary in order to solve the sustainable energy problem yeah you can't plan power plants on the hourly scale in a renewable world you need to plan you need to optimize them on a minute-by-minute scale and that's what we're doing yeah the real limitation on Tesla growth is is cell production at an affordable price but that's the best rule limit so you know that's why we're where we're going to talk about a lot more about this on battery day because that this is the fundamental scaling constraint and at any part of that at that supply chain or pressing of at the cell level will will be the limiting factor so you know\n\nwhatever it may be anywhere from mining to refining as many steps or refining to the cathode and anode formation cell formation whatever the choke point is that will set the root of the growth rate and so you know we we expect to expand our business with Panasonic with C ATL with LG possibly with others and you know and there's a lot more to say on that fraud on better day thank you and the second question is not it is time to bring the Tesla semi to volume production can you share more detail on production plans what weakly production rate is considered volume production and when does this like spec to reach that rate okay so what's our production next year as we announced it before I'm personally very care about the project I can't wait we do have a\n\nfew trucks that keep driving around and like keep delivering cars but we're going to accelerate that I want to be clear that the first few units we will use ourselves and Tesla to carry our own Freight probably must be between Fremont and Reno which is a fantastic test route we want to prove that we have very good reliability and so far the early units do have it but we'll we'll do that at them larger scale and we have also promised some early you to some long-term very patient and supportive customers and we'll do that now we have more self coming up in next year as you know just pointed out so we can increase the diversity of the portfolio it didn't make sense up to now to do it yeah but we'll be ready and that's maybe have a bias very excited about\n\nthis and we have a lot of very unique technology that we're always dreaming about that we will be putting into that semi it will be just awesome yeah and just there's like two general classes of cell there's like iron phosphate and then the nickel based nickk nickk nickk obey cells have higher energy density so a longer range obviously those are needed for something like a semi where you're every every unit of mass that you add in battery pack you have to subtract in cargo so it's very important to have a mass efficient and long-range pack for full batteries however what we're seeing with our that passenger vehicles is that our powertrain efficiency and higher efficiency drag coefficient like basically all of the things that our HVAC going to a heat pump\n\nbasically our total vehicle efficiency has gotten good enough with a Model 3 for example that we actually are comfortable having an iron phosphate battery pack in model 3 in China and you know that that'll be in volume production later this year so we think that you know getting a range that is in the high to hundreds you know basically but we think you probably get a range of almost 300 miles with an iron phosphate pack taking into account a whole bunch of of power train and other vehicle efficiencies and that frees up a lot of capacity for things like the Tesla semi and and in other projects that require higher energy density so yeah so you have like to to supply chains that you can tap into your iron phosphate or or nickel we use very little cobalt\n\nin our system already and that's that may trend you know to zero long so it's really about nickel thank you and the next question is Tesla recently decided not to produce standard range version of model why no longer office offers the standard range Model S or X and has announced ramping of the semi does this shift from smaller pack vehicle suggests that Tesla is not battery constrained as in the past what are the biggest constraints now well I just like to reify them size any mining companies out there please mine more nickel okay wherever you are in the world please mine more nickel and and don't wait for nickel to go back to some long some high point that you experienced some five years ago whatever go for efficient you know as environmentally friendly\n\nnickel mining at high volume if Tesla will give you a giant contract for a long period of time if you mine nickel efficiently and in an environmentally sensitive way so hopefully this message goes all mining companies please get nickel with regard to passenger vehicles I think the new normal for range is going to be just in US EPA rip terms you know approximately 300 miles so I think people will really come to expect that as you know some number close to 300 miles as as normal you know that that's a standard expectation because you do need to take into account like you know is a very hot outside or very cold or you know are you driving tall mountain with a full load I and and it's a you know people that when I have a you know gets the destination with\n\nlike 10 miles range though they want some regional reasonable margin so I think 300 is going to be really close to 300 going to be a new normal quote 500 kilometres basically roughly thank you the next question on the insurance what is the holdup for Tesla insurance outside of California will you release numbers from that part of the business will title insurance be required to participate in the Tesla ride-hailing Network as a driver sure um yeah we were joking before the call then we get the quarterly insurance question that touch response a calm here we are working super hard on insurance I'll go into a little bit more detail here than I have on the past but currently we have a product in California as I've described before it's been quite well received\n\nand I would largely describe it as a fairly standard insurance product with elements of it that are unique to our cars that you can think of it as version 1 of Tesla insurance yep versions are for night is it getting at least zero at night yes but what we're working on now is we can call it version two or we can call it the first version of our telematics product yeah and so really ultimately where we want to get to with Tesla insurance is to be able to use the data that's captured in the car in the driving profile of the person in the car to be able to assess correlations and probabilities of crash and be able then to assess a premium on a monthly basis for that customer and what makes this very exciting for us is the amount of data that is available\n\nwith the customers permission to use is is not available in any other product or any other vehicle in the world you this gives us a unique advantage in terms of information and we have a decision point here where we could take the California product and replicate that into other states or we could delay delay going into additional states and instead put more effort into the telematics side of this and we chose the latter and where we are now is nearly complete with the risk and cost analysis associated with the first version of the telematics product we hope to be filing that in a handful of states with regulators very shortly and assuming that regulatory approvals go smoothly we hope to have this in a handful of states by the end of the year and and\n\nthen it will continue to file for approval in additional states with regulatory approval there will continue to roll this out nationwide as quickly as we can and then that product as we continue to collect more data and we iterate on it will be version 2 version 3 etc as we continue to refine that yeah I mean at the heart of being competitive with insurance is what is the accuracy of your information like are you dealing with like are you forced to assess people statistically looking in the rearview mirror or can you assess people individually looking ahead with with smart projections and inform the driver that that of how they may reduce their what what actions they can take to reduce their insurance as I could learning to it's like if okay you're driving\n\ntoo fast you're you know doing this that or the other thing it's like if you if you want to pay more for insurance you can but if you want to pay less you know then please don't drive from so crazy then I then people can make choice like okay they want to drive aggressively in the case no view higher higher insurance or there won't be you're more careful in that the driving and it'd be Pepi less it's also actually very helpful for us to have a feedback loop to see what is driving insurance expense lot of it is just it's like yeah like little fender-bender and the net Center vendor because of the way that the body collision repair is being done you know cost like fifteen thousand dollars or something crazy and like we'll have and and then we can actually\n\nadjust the design of the car and adjust how the repair is done to actually have the fundamental cost of solving that problem be less so this has helped us on a whole bunch of facility things that we were doing basically without realizing it which is this is a problem which in general with insurance it's like so if the insurance is like all-you-can-eat then it the feedback loop for improvement is we so this gives us a great feedback loop for improvement gives us basically a fundamentally better insurance product I'd also like to say the spirit of recruiting because if there's one thing I'd like to come out of this call it's that a lot of great people want to join Tesla that's the no 1 thing I'd like another school and on the insurance front I want to clear\n\nwe're building a great like a major insurance company if you're interested in revolutionary insurance please join Tesla I would love to have some high energy actuaries especially I have great respect with after real profession your guys are great at math please join Tesla especially if you want to change things and you're annoyed by how slow the industry is this is the place to be we want we want revolutionary actuaries ok thank you very much for the exercise that so there was a second part of this question will Tesla insurance be required to participate in in the Tesla ride-hailing Network and so I think I've answered this before in Prior calls but by the time the ride hailing network is available we will Tesla insurance coverage will be provided great\n\noaks who are in this network it's a different type of insurance because of the use of the car it's not decided whether third party insurance for successful insurance will be required there might be some things we need to think through there but it Tesla insurance at least we'll be working working for the right-half Palin Network it thank you very much and in dangerous of time let's go to the Q&A of analysts online thank you our first question will come from Dan levy with Credit Suisse please go ahead hi good afternoon thank you Alaska a question on the quarter and then just question more broadly on strategy just on the quarter if you could give us an update on gross margin was China the creative to gross margin in the second quarter and he has an idea\n\nof how far off model why gross margin was versus Fremont model three and then just more broadly on strategy seems like your approach to in sourcing is varying by region you're in sourcing a lot more in Fremont but you're relying a lot more on the supply chain in Shanghai what do you expect your approach to be on his first thing when you eventually open up Berlin and what your Texas Factory is going to be thank you yep just to start with the gross margin questions we did see progress on gross margins in China and that was despite pricing action that was taken the factory is still not running at full capacity yet as it continues to ramp so we think there's a continued opportunity to optimize the cost structure there model why as we mentioned last quarter\n\nwas profitable in its first quarter of production and despite the inefficiencies that we had due to the shutdown we did see a pretty substantial improvement in the model line margin and it is as we said before the model wide cost structure and model 3 cost structure will converge that they're not quite there model wise still slightly more expensive than model 3 and it's not yet at full production and with model like carrying a slightly higher price point you can kind of back into the map there on the relative gross margin yeah in the shanghai factories pretty big factory but yet and there it's continuing to do more and more internally but it's also that the thing is really helping is like there were previously a ton of parts that were made in other parts\n\nof the world that were being shipped to shanghai from every part of the world and just locally sourcing those components makes a massive difference to the cost vehicle and I mean the proportion of local sourcing has literally been rising it like five to ten percent a month you get from 40 it was like 40 percent of getting us here something like that it'll be like 80 percent yeah idea this year maybe more there is also a lot very strong there component and very eager suppliers around the factory in Champak yeah I feel like the suppliers in China have been extremely competitive possibly the most converter and so far you know we're in negotiations with for bargain and was awarded a lot of business also a lot of suppliers and in Germany or the rest of Europe\n\nthere are eager to support the factory burning yea well jhonny has a great automotive industry and supply chain so actually a ton of of our suppliers are in Germany within like a few hundred kilometres of the factory thank you very much let's go to the next question please our next question will come from Tony Succar Nagi naka Tony Succar Nagi with Bernstein please go ahead yes thank you you mentioned in the slide deck a couple of times that you were pleased with gross margin with PTI margin progress and you expected to achieve industry-leading operating margins over time maybe you could shed a little light on that you know industry leading for luxury vendors is 8 to 10 percent PTI for poor shoes smaller 17 for mass market vendors it's 5 to 8 what do\n\nwe think about and how much ultimately do you believe that EB credits will contribute to that margin because I know your margins been 5% over the last 12 months but it's actually less than 1% excluding evey credit so it's a four four point contribution right now how do we think about ultimately what industry-leading margins are and how much of that you think is coming from EB credits regulatory credits and I have a follow up place sure I've mentioned this before in terms of regulatory credit you know we manage the business but so different we don't manage the business with the assumption that regulatory credits will contribute in a significant way to the future yeah I do expect for the tour credit revenue to double in 2020 relative to 2019 and it will\n\ncontinue for some period of time but eventually the talk that's will reduce yes'm its witness worth learning that we receive you know buyers about card in the u.\n\ns.\n\nreceived zero federal tax credit whereas made about competi rhetoric that they get a $7,500 pipe tax credit and yet our sales haven't continued to do well it yeah and so what we see is a continued decline in the cost to produce any funds and distributors are bars that cost of even for mature products like the s and the Act continues to come down as we work on that model 3 which is our second most mature product that can use to come you then layer on top of that as Elon was discussing earlier the potential for software based revenue particularly full self-driving that there's the revenue recognition portion of that that we have today you know that will expand as we as we release more features and then you can layer on top of that in the future revenue\n\nfrom arrival in network operating expenses continue to come down and become more efficient as a percentage of revenue there's still incredible opportunity there that we work we're working on particularly on how customers interact with the company from sales and service and in what their flow is and how we get cards to them so we continue to see efficiencies there so you know in the medium term here what our modeling shows is you know in their load load teams operating margin level and I think there continues to drive the opportunity to drive that up so here your point on the 5% in the 1% you know we're on a bit of a journey here and we're doing to the government thank you and if I could just follow up Ilan you've talked a lot about the mission of the\n\ncompany and in you know and and and really trying to drive evie adoption globally so how do you think about that trade-off between driving towards industry-leading profitability yet trying to make your cars more affordable and broader it feels like historically you've always picked the path of I'd rather Drive more growth and more adoption because ultimately that's the mission of the company and Weavin thought a little bit this quarter with with price reductions you could have you probably kept priced where it is sold some units and had better profits but but that's been an ongoing choice that Tesla's a company has made so how do we how do you personally think about that trade-off between you know even if you were to get to industry-leading margins wouldn't\n\nyou be inclined to give more of that back to drive a greater adoption more quickly well I think we actually achieved both when you factor in autonomy I think we can go way beyond is free margins and and have a car V affordable to more and more people and essentially you know almost everyone Plus everyone when factoring in autonomy but that was really a mega game-changer giggity-giggity I'm changer yeah but I mean it is important for people to get to distinguish between two things there's value for money that a product has and then as affordability and and even if you rail value for money and have value for money like infinitive people do not have enough if people do not have enough money in the bank counts to buy the car today so we cannot so then you\n\njust have this like awesome thing and nobody can buy so it is important to make the car affordable that we will not succeed in our mission if we do not make cars affordable like the thing that bugs me the most about where we are right now is that our cars are not affordable enough we need to fix that so we are making progress in that regard and just sort of steadily making progress yeah so yeah like we need to you know not go bankrupt obviously that's important because I will fail in our mission but we're not trying to be super profitable either obviously you know profitability is like 1% or something yeah this will cut 1 or 2% it's not it's not crazy last quarter was only 0.\n\n1% so we want to be profitable like I think just we want to be like slightly profitable and maximize growth and make the cars that as affordable as possible that's what we're trying to achieve thank you let's go to the next question please our next question will come from emmanuel Rossmore with deutsche bank please go ahead hi good afternoon could you please characterize the current near-term demand environment for your vehicles these obviously unusual times I think back in q1 you had indicated record backlog I guess at the beginning of this past quarter I haven't seen any specific comments about new orders a backlog in the release today so can you give us some color demand is not our problem definitely not yeah we do have some production supply chain\n\nchallenge that challenges we're trying to solve right now for example model white we were body Casting obvious new technology it's been tricky to maintain rate and keep growing the rate for moto white casting which is it's a two piece casting with a bunch and about a half a dozen other parts that are added on that will transition to a one-piece casting in fact I'm pretty super excited about this we can have a job the world's biggest casting press is getting assembled right now actually in Fremont for the model wire rear body casting it's enormous and looks awesome so it's like our the things that are troubling us right now I'm not demand that they are just a bunch of firefighting on supply chain and production issues okay well to put it sorry yeah dori\n\nabout demand hey that's what busy okay so when you're saying achieving 500,000 deliveries has has become more difficult which is really just a function of the recent shutdowns and some of these in a supply dynamics yeah it's it's not it's not true with the man it's really just a production issue it's pretty hard when you've got like you know I global supply chain and it's kind of whatever the most effective part of that global supply chain is that's your rate you know so I mean the number of rabbits we've had to pull out of a hat for supply chain is insane teams done an amazing job so I think it also say yeah some of our costs were related to having to you know use a lot of airplanes to get parts around because of parts shortages so hopefully use fewer\n\nairplanes but stuff that will improve our costs but it's a demand exceeds supply right now so it flips where we are right now thank you very much and the last question please our last question today will come from Felipe who boys with Jeffries please go ahead yes good afternoon and thank you you mentioned a few ties into the stadium the constraint to growth is very capacity still and I was hoping you could clarify the scope of the billion plants you're building right now will there be little battery capacity consistence with the amount of assembly volume you expect to come out of there in and and if not we should be able to source your battery requirements out of Europe would you have to import batteries from outside Europe to Iran to ensure production\n\nand burning okay we can't say too much about this except that where there will be local cell production and that will that will serve the needs of the Bowen factory but sure is a that I mean I know that's that's straightforward enough I think just adding to what you said earlier about talent and people yes yet like the same goes in all areas of cell yes supply chain manufacturing materials design we are solving this problem and it we work we're treating it like any other problems that we have solved we will solve this problem and give talented people to join us as we solve this problem yes and like - my biggest concern for gang of talented people is just probably Berlin because the labor labor mobility in Europe is not as low I would recommend changing\n\nis he like computer somebody wants to leave and join another company sometimes I have to spend six months on cotton leaf it's called gardener hang out in the garden basically and like this doesn't this is not a good use of people's time yeah if they want to hang on the garden that's fine but they shouldn't have to thank you I mean those are know Europe will know what are talking about Phillipa do we have a full operation it's fine thank you very much ok thank you very much for everyone for joining this call and thank you for all their good questions and we'll speak to you again in about three months yeah maybe sooner with battery take oh thanks","textByLang":{"en":"I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker mr. Martin vieta Senior Director of Investor Relations please go ahead sir you Thank You Shari and good afternoon everyone and welcome to Tesla second quarter 2020 Q&A webcast I'm joined today by Elon Musk Zachary Kirk horn and a number of other executives are cute the result were announced at about 1:15 p. m.\n\nPacific time in the update that we published at the same link as this webcast during this code we will discuss our business outlook and make forward-looking statements these comments are based on our predictions and expectations as of today actual events and results could differ materially due to a number of risks and uncertainties including those mentioned in our most recent filings with the SEC during the question and answer portion of today's call please limit yourself to one question and one follow-up please press star 1 now if you'd like to join the question queue but Before we jump into TNA Ilan has some opening remarks you want thank you first of all I'd like to thank the test team for exceptional execution in the second quarter despite tremendous\n\ndifficulties they've done an incredible job and it's an honor to work with such a great team I mean there were so many so many challenges to too numerous to name but that they got it done and just what a great group to work with like I said it's just an honor to work with such a great team so and as a result we were able to achieve a fourth consecutive profit profitable quarter and although the automotive industry was down about 30 percent year-over-year in the first half a year we managed to grow deliveries in the first half the year so despite a massive industry to industry decline we actually went up we're also very excited to announce that we're going to be building our next Giga factory in Texas it's going to be right near Austin or not but it'll\n\nbe about I'll just go into a bit of detail on this and then actually a lot of questions but the look at the location is five minutes from our Ocean International Airport and 15 minutes from downtown Austin is about 2,000 acres we're going to make make it a factory that it's going to be stunning it's right on the Colorado River so we're actually going to have we have a boardwalk where there will be a hiking biking trail it's going to basically be an ecological paradise birds and the trees butterflies fishing the stream and there we open to the public as well so not not closed and only Tesla so if anyone's interested in working at giggity-giggity Texas the engineering production whatever the case may be please let us know this is we're going to be doing\n\na major major factory there and it's also where we'll be doing is we'll be doing cyber truck there the Tesla semi and we'll be doing model 3 and why for the eastern half of North America now at the same time I want to say we will continue to grow in California so would we expect California to do model S&X for worldwide consumption and 3 and why for the western half of North America and we think probably also the Tesla Roadster future program would also make sense in California so I think this is a nice split between Texas and California and you know to emphasize will continue growing California but will be creating a massive factory and cyber truck and semi programs in Texas so and I also want to just say do a shout out to to Tulsa and and just say thank\n\nyou very much for to the the Tulsa team economic development team and the governor I really I was super impressed the hotels team was super impressed and we will for sure strongly consider a Tulsa for future expansion of Tesla down the road let's see is anything more we want to say about there's a lot of information so though these guys are I'm sure there were lots of questions we've already started work on the facility so set some initial construction work so it's already underway started this weekend let's see moving on to other subjects solar we recently adjusted the pricing of our retrofit solar so Tesla solar is the lowest class solar in the United States and we added the lowest lowest cost guarantee and a money back guarantee so we're very confident\n\nthat people will will love our solar product whether it's the solar retrofit or solar roof a solar is now thetan cheaper than the US average after the federal federal tax credit otezla silat now costs a dollar forty nine per watt and it's a very simple highly automated single click experience so definitely think about Tesla whether you want a new roof or for Tesla solar roof or you want solar on your existing roof either way where the grow the company to go to and then you also get a power wall and have energy independence and be your own utility so I think that that part is really coming together and it's only going to get better later this year so it's just very excited about that that's a business potential on the you know if additional technology\n\nstuff we introduced the first production car with more than 400 miles range so the current Tesla Model S now has an EPA certified range of 402 miles I mean basically can drive from LA to San Francisco non-stop and still have some mild miles left over when you arrive and and this is at highway speeds so you're just talking after anything drive slowly or anything you drive it you just drive normally and you know grow very very long distances and then for full self driving we launched traffic lights and stop signs and we continue to prove that to make them more robust and we're currently testing also driving software for intersections and city streets and narrow streets so I personally test the the latest alpha build of full self-driving software when I\n\nwhen I Drive my car and it is really I think profoundly better than people realize yeah really profoundly better it's like amazing so it's almost getting to the point where I can go from my house to work with no interventions despite going through construction and widely varying situations so this is why I'm very confident about full self-driving functionality being complete by the end of this year it isn't because I'm literally driving it in conclusion at like again say thanks for the hard work that tells the team achieving our first full year of profitability in the company history was incredibly difficult and just as a result the hard work of a lot of people from Tesla worldwide and and yet just think about the next the next 12 to 18 months we'll have\n\nthree new factories in place if things are looking great with a gig of all in and what we'll have cyber truck semi roadster full self-driving there's so much to be excited about it's really hard to kind of fit into this coal but the sheer amount of hard core engineering especially on the you know autonomy and the people manufacturing engineering front is mind-blowing and then of course is battery day which is you know coming up pretty soon and I think that's that's really going to surprise people by just how how much there is to see so with that thanks again for your support in our long term mission and we were looking forward to having a great journey with you to create amazing products and continue scaling it and yeah this is a I think I've never been\n\nmore optimistic or excited about the future of Tesla and the history of company thank you thank you very much and I think our CEO feels like a record corn has some remarks as well yeah thanks Martin I want to start by thanking our employees customers and suppliers for your support over the last quarter in particular to the tesla team i couldn't be more impressed with the hard work and the resiliency that you all have shown on that income overall as Elon mentioned we achieved our fourth sequential quarter of profitability this is despite a significant impact to our financials as a result of suspended operations of our US factories and field operations around the world to ensure the business remains healthy we took temporary action to reduce costs including\n\nexpenses related to personnel and non-critical path projects the direct cost savings that the direct cost impact of the temporary shutdown was largely offset by these cost savings actions although the costs were concentrated in cogs and the cost reductions were on both cogs and operating expenses on automotive gross margin excluding regulatory credits if this reduced sequentially from 20% to 18.\n\n7% this sequential reduction is fully attributed to idle capacity charges in lower operational efficiency due to the various shutdowns despite these charges we continue to make progress reducing our costs particularly on model why and Fremont and model 3 and Shanghai given the global macroeconomic context we made the decision in q2 to pass through savings to customers around the world on some of our products with the release of stoplight and stop sign recognition and response we recognized 48 million of deferred revenue in the period the full profit impact on our P&L is less than half of this due to cost associated with FSD computer retrofits in the field regulatory credit revenue increased sequentially to 428 million while difficult to forecast precisely\n\nour best estimate of 2020 credit revenue is roughly double that of 2019 services and other margin improved yet again marking the fifth sequential quarter of improvement in the energy business our megapack product achieved its first quarterly profit we remained for production constrained in this business and are continuing to work towards building additional capacity and our solar installation business was impacted by permit office closures limiting installation volume stock based compensation almost entirely by an expense related to the next tranche of the CEO grant as well as early lifting of the first tranche which is reflected in SGA within operating expenses on cash flows our cash balance increased to our highest level yet of 8.\n\n6 billion which included free cash flows of over 400 million this is a strong result on its own despite an increase in capital expenses associated with Shanghai and Berlin as well as movements in working capital a few things to note on working capital particularly accounts receivables while our a our balance is usually about 20% of revenue it can fluctuate depending upon a number of factors first overall less than 30% of our receivables is associated with new car sales second due to payment terms associated with financing and enterprise customers settlement timelines for certain methods of cash payments and geographic mix of our deliveries our cash balance and associated receivables are impacted significantly by how many cars are delivered in the final\n\nweeks and days of the quarter third roughly 40% of the balance is attributed to payment terms on regulatory credit sales and statutory evey incentive programs both of which have been increasing customer deposits reduced slightly as well note that as we transition to lower order fees across the world the average deposit per order will continue to reduce driving down this balance as we look forward Tesla was able to navigate through queue to do - our agile and dynamic culture we will continue to appropriately mail enjoy cash flows through cost optimization and close working capital management this is key as we remain focused on expanding production scaling our operations and preparing for the launch of three new factories over the next year and a half thank\n\nyou very much let's go to questions from institutional investors first the question number one is s Tesla continues its journey towards the long-term goal of selling 20 million units per year what are the most important vehicle programs that will drive building growth over the next three to five years beyond model three why and the cyber truck cheaper smaller versions of three and why or region specific vehicles or anything else I don't think we can cut the comment on you know our detailed part roadmap beyond what's announced because I agreed we want to reserve that for product launches but it would be reasonable to assume that we would make a compact vehicle of some kind you know and probably a higher capacity Astra vehicle of some kind you know these\n\nare likely things at some point but I do think there's a long way to go with the three and why and with cyber truck and semi and you know so it's a long way to go with those I will do the obvious things okay the second question from this additional is what is your vision for software at Tesla what opportunities do you see for monetizing the installed base other than bio FSP and right now by fraud by far FST is just overwhelmingly the most important thing you know I think the the upgrading of the fleet to full self-driving essentially with an over there software update I mean may go down as the biggest asset value increase in history as a step change you know about the maybe the something bigger of it it certainly would be one of the biggest I can't think\n\nof anything bigger so sort of those overnight you know at a million defined exactly when it happens and when it's allowed in various regulatory jurisdictions you'd have like kind of a few million cars suddenly becoming five times more viable or something like that it's only five times higher utility it to go from like twelve hours a week of utility something like that or of that it doesn't hours are used to sixty like that you know so it may else is pretty small by comparison now when things do become full self-driving so what if we were going to do in the car well I guess they probably want to do productivity and entertainment of some kind you know for traveese play games and do work well that that's best in the future yeah we're already putting some\n\ngames and stuff on the car just for fun yeah yeah we have been experimenting on that and so the fsd remains by far and away the biggest opportunity in the new environment but we're putting the plumbing in place to be ready to scale other areas when the time is right so premium connectivity subscription is something that we've put in place and the ability to upgrade your vehicle through the app for example on acceleration boosts or upgrading a standard range model 3 to a standard plus adding rear heated seats so these are things that we have and we're continuing to get feedback from the field and other things that we can launch and will trickle those in with time yeah but they're all very tiny compared with like the trailers like the step change to full\n\nself-driving depending upon high calculated is probably worth north you know at least $100,000 per car so as blood software you have so yeah in the app store or whatever yeah and thank you the third question is also about autopilot what are the most important upcoming self-driving milestones and how do you think about timing well um the actual major milestone that's happening right now is really transition of the autonomy system of the cars like AI if you will from thinking about things in AI code like two and a half D it's like big finger blue but it's big steak like isolated pictures and and during image recognition on the on pictures that are harshly correlated in time but not not very well and transitioning to kind of a 4d where you know it's like\n\nyour which is video essentially you get you're thinking about the world in three dimensions and look at the fourth dimension being time so that that architecture change which is been underway for some time but has not really been rolled out to anyone in the production fleet is what really matters for fulfill driving so what you know what we've been doing thus far is really just been with like 2d mostly 2d and Alexa pop no well correlated in time so it just you're just it's just hard to convey just how much better a fully 4d system would work it does work it's capable of things that it that if you just look looking at things as individual pictures as opposed to video it looks to basically like you could go from like individual pictures to surround video\n\nthis is a fundamental so the call will seem to have just like a giant improvement have I never probably roll it out later this year but you know be able to do your traffic lights stop turns crops everything you know pretty much and then it will be a long march of nines essentially how many nines of reliability are okay so it definitely way better than human but how much better than human does need to be so that that's actually going to be the real work is just a massive amount of work with each kind of order of magnitude of reliability but you'll see a perfect happen and if you plot the points on the curve it'll be kind of obvious where it's headed ái in general I think is something you know I've been saying this famous AI drum for a decade we should\n\nbe concerned about where AI is going the people I see being the most wrong about AI are the ones who are very smart because they can't imagine that a computer could be way smarter than them but that's the flaw in their logic they're just way down more than they think they are thank you and the next question from his additional investor is please may you update us on alien dreadnought how has your thinking evolved and what is needed in order to get closer to fundamental physical limits or bring a massive amount of effort into manufacturing engineering the Machine O'Lakes machine there's probably 1,000 percent maybe 10,000 percent more engineering required for the factory than for the product itself so we're starting making amazing progress I mean you know\n\nbattery and powertrain factory Giga factory Nevada is you know on an alien driven work version 0.\n\n5 something that God just you know starting to approach version 1 we're getting way better at making cars you can see that in Giga Shanghai you'll see that even more with the Berlin and we're really changing the design of the car in order to make it more manufacturable the the fundamental architecture of model Y will be different in Berlin it may look the same but the internals will be quite different and fundamentally more efficient architectural II then than what we've done to date fake juju like to add to that yeah I was going to extend on that side I think part of the alien dreadnought concept is not just automation but minimizing the number of process steps and complexity involved in the manufacturing system which involves really integrating design\n\nand manufacturing across some like when the raw materials enter the factory to finish goods exited and we're learning so much through doing that vertical integration is extremely important for this but the supply chain if you put like a GPS tracker on a molecule from winter cuff mind to miner was in a usable product it would look insane we were to be like wow weird around the world like six times so with vertical integration maybe you're going to like around the world once you know the huge improvement or not even like half oh I like a happy get vertical integration like Rapala gauge an order of magnitude improvement so yeah it's Romulan I think the focus for us is increasing the capex and efficiency this is something that we've been working very hard\n\nfor the past three years you can see that we can build new factories for less amount of money and much faster yeah those things go together gets better it's a better factory for less money in less time and as money means less time there so that's a great advantage and also reducing this and this still is a lot the amount of inefficiencies we want every operation to add value to the vehicle mmm value meaning moving the atoms closer to the final state you know so we do not want any robot that just moves things yes proportionate in fact it's like we're going to be super respectful of people's labor if we're asking somebody to do something are we sure it's useful are we asking them to spend their time in a way that is respectful of their time but but it's\n\nlike wow the potential for improvement is this tremendous and like that's why we clear here at Tesla we love manufacturing it's awesome and I really think more smart people's to be working on manufacturing they lay one more people yeah we we we do if people are interested in designing new lines and trying to do things different you know Tesla's got a job for you and now we've got jobs everywhere it's not only in California there we got just in China and Berlin in Austin Texas yeah and in California if you so the plenty of exciting places and all these places will do original work and challenging yet meaningful work absolutely it's actually extremely exciting for and fulfilling to design new production systems and I think that you know for some reason\n\nI kind of got a bad rap especially in the u.\n\ns.\n\nfor a long time and and I think people didn't think that manufactures is sort of a thought of manufacturing is like oh it's is porous I'm boring just making copies whatever but actually this far more opportunity for innovation in manufacturing than in the product itself order magnitude so but like if there's one thing that comes out of this cool it's like hey if you want to help us invent amazing new manufacturing techniques and and have input into the product itself it's not like you just get tossed the product and say hey make this this product and it's a kind of a lousy design you'd get if you're manufacturing you get to change the product design and say hey if it was the product you asking me manufacturers dumb it was like great let's fix it you know\n\nso I it you know I if you work on manufacturing engineering so you're just get force-fed a turd sandwich you get to change the product design so you know it's a super exciting and and we evolved the lines even after their vote this rapid evolution of the production system so and there's nothing more rewarding than going from zero cars an hour to yeah five thousand cars a week or thousand cars a day yeah so you know like the long-term sustainable advantage of Tesla I think will be up manufacturing thank you very much and the last question from this additional investor is how many vehicles can Tesla produce in Texas right now zero but long-term a lot top biggest property yeah it's based architecture okay and now we can shift to retail investor questions\n\non save calm the first one is Tesla energy seems widely ignored by Wall Street despise despite a long comments about growth rate exceeding automotive could this not share more detail on current or planned projects to help investors better understand the business outlook how disruptive is Tesla's auto bidder technology yeah kara says I think long term Tesla energy will be of roughly the same size as tells automotive so I mean the energy business collectively is bigger than the automotive business so you say like you know how big is the energy sector bigger than automotive so and in order to achieve a sustainable energy future we have to have sustainable energy generation which i think is going to be primarily solar and you know set foot followed by wind\n\nand those intimate anied to have a lot of batteries to store the solar energy because when does noise blow and the Sun doesn't shine so so there's like three elements of the sustainable energy future wind and solar sustainable energy generation battery storage and electric transport both three things and the mission of Tesla is to accelerate the sustainable energy so I can emphasize enough the defect like yeah the bad battery and solar will both be enormous and they kind of have to be in order to have a sustainable future and we've got a great product roadmap on that front as well so we're going trip in the mega pack it's very well received talk about that um yeah but I think the mega pack is has represented itself and is an integrated rapidly deployable\n\nyou know grid-tied storage battery of mega megawatt-hour scale we're working with utilities large and small you know not just utilities but also just like micro grid and project developers of all type and building our own projects where it makes sense and there's there's a lot of demand for the product and we're growing the production rates as fast as we can for that product and then on auto bidder Auto bidders is basically autopilot for grid tied batteries it's an autonomous energy market participation system that you know does high frequency trading and ensure that that's a bad word sorry sorry it frees to Treasury called front-running yeah we're not doing badly anything like that it's ensuring that the battery is doing everything you can to manage\n\nthe credit identity of renewals renewables and just grid intermittency of all kinds I mean you know people turn their lights on off power plants to turn on and off yeah factories ramped up and down and batteries are great just to solve those problems yeah it just it does grid stabilization you know the millisecond level exactly so it just ensures that things are super smooth it's like it you know a UPS an uninterruptible power supply of enormous size but just get just ensure that this grid has smooth sailing and then the batteries you know the computers like all interact with each other and make sure that they're working together to make the grid desperate and this can be done quick with the power rules and and the mega packs and the power packs all working\n\ntogether and interacting with the party systems as well yeah essentially or distributed it does vote yeah yeah I mean we've yeah oh is it necessary in order to solve the sustainable energy problem yeah you can't plan power plants on the hourly scale in a renewable world you need to plan you need to optimize them on a minute-by-minute scale and that's what we're doing yeah the real limitation on Tesla growth is is cell production at an affordable price but that's the best rule limit so you know that's why we're where we're going to talk about a lot more about this on battery day because that this is the fundamental scaling constraint and at any part of that at that supply chain or pressing of at the cell level will will be the limiting factor so you know\n\nwhatever it may be anywhere from mining to refining as many steps or refining to the cathode and anode formation cell formation whatever the choke point is that will set the root of the growth rate and so you know we we expect to expand our business with Panasonic with C ATL with LG possibly with others and you know and there's a lot more to say on that fraud on better day thank you and the second question is not it is time to bring the Tesla semi to volume production can you share more detail on production plans what weakly production rate is considered volume production and when does this like spec to reach that rate okay so what's our production next year as we announced it before I'm personally very care about the project I can't wait we do have a\n\nfew trucks that keep driving around and like keep delivering cars but we're going to accelerate that I want to be clear that the first few units we will use ourselves and Tesla to carry our own Freight probably must be between Fremont and Reno which is a fantastic test route we want to prove that we have very good reliability and so far the early units do have it but we'll we'll do that at them larger scale and we have also promised some early you to some long-term very patient and supportive customers and we'll do that now we have more self coming up in next year as you know just pointed out so we can increase the diversity of the portfolio it didn't make sense up to now to do it yeah but we'll be ready and that's maybe have a bias very excited about\n\nthis and we have a lot of very unique technology that we're always dreaming about that we will be putting into that semi it will be just awesome yeah and just there's like two general classes of cell there's like iron phosphate and then the nickel based nickk nickk nickk obey cells have higher energy density so a longer range obviously those are needed for something like a semi where you're every every unit of mass that you add in battery pack you have to subtract in cargo so it's very important to have a mass efficient and long-range pack for full batteries however what we're seeing with our that passenger vehicles is that our powertrain efficiency and higher efficiency drag coefficient like basically all of the things that our HVAC going to a heat pump\n\nbasically our total vehicle efficiency has gotten good enough with a Model 3 for example that we actually are comfortable having an iron phosphate battery pack in model 3 in China and you know that that'll be in volume production later this year so we think that you know getting a range that is in the high to hundreds you know basically but we think you probably get a range of almost 300 miles with an iron phosphate pack taking into account a whole bunch of of power train and other vehicle efficiencies and that frees up a lot of capacity for things like the Tesla semi and and in other projects that require higher energy density so yeah so you have like to to supply chains that you can tap into your iron phosphate or or nickel we use very little cobalt\n\nin our system already and that's that may trend you know to zero long so it's really about nickel thank you and the next question is Tesla recently decided not to produce standard range version of model why no longer office offers the standard range Model S or X and has announced ramping of the semi does this shift from smaller pack vehicle suggests that Tesla is not battery constrained as in the past what are the biggest constraints now well I just like to reify them size any mining companies out there please mine more nickel okay wherever you are in the world please mine more nickel and and don't wait for nickel to go back to some long some high point that you experienced some five years ago whatever go for efficient you know as environmentally friendly\n\nnickel mining at high volume if Tesla will give you a giant contract for a long period of time if you mine nickel efficiently and in an environmentally sensitive way so hopefully this message goes all mining companies please get nickel with regard to passenger vehicles I think the new normal for range is going to be just in US EPA rip terms you know approximately 300 miles so I think people will really come to expect that as you know some number close to 300 miles as as normal you know that that's a standard expectation because you do need to take into account like you know is a very hot outside or very cold or you know are you driving tall mountain with a full load I and and it's a you know people that when I have a you know gets the destination with\n\nlike 10 miles range though they want some regional reasonable margin so I think 300 is going to be really close to 300 going to be a new normal quote 500 kilometres basically roughly thank you the next question on the insurance what is the holdup for Tesla insurance outside of California will you release numbers from that part of the business will title insurance be required to participate in the Tesla ride-hailing Network as a driver sure um yeah we were joking before the call then we get the quarterly insurance question that touch response a calm here we are working super hard on insurance I'll go into a little bit more detail here than I have on the past but currently we have a product in California as I've described before it's been quite well received\n\nand I would largely describe it as a fairly standard insurance product with elements of it that are unique to our cars that you can think of it as version 1 of Tesla insurance yep versions are for night is it getting at least zero at night yes but what we're working on now is we can call it version two or we can call it the first version of our telematics product yeah and so really ultimately where we want to get to with Tesla insurance is to be able to use the data that's captured in the car in the driving profile of the person in the car to be able to assess correlations and probabilities of crash and be able then to assess a premium on a monthly basis for that customer and what makes this very exciting for us is the amount of data that is available\n\nwith the customers permission to use is is not available in any other product or any other vehicle in the world you this gives us a unique advantage in terms of information and we have a decision point here where we could take the California product and replicate that into other states or we could delay delay going into additional states and instead put more effort into the telematics side of this and we chose the latter and where we are now is nearly complete with the risk and cost analysis associated with the first version of the telematics product we hope to be filing that in a handful of states with regulators very shortly and assuming that regulatory approvals go smoothly we hope to have this in a handful of states by the end of the year and and\n\nthen it will continue to file for approval in additional states with regulatory approval there will continue to roll this out nationwide as quickly as we can and then that product as we continue to collect more data and we iterate on it will be version 2 version 3 etc as we continue to refine that yeah I mean at the heart of being competitive with insurance is what is the accuracy of your information like are you dealing with like are you forced to assess people statistically looking in the rearview mirror or can you assess people individually looking ahead with with smart projections and inform the driver that that of how they may reduce their what what actions they can take to reduce their insurance as I could learning to it's like if okay you're driving\n\ntoo fast you're you know doing this that or the other thing it's like if you if you want to pay more for insurance you can but if you want to pay less you know then please don't drive from so crazy then I then people can make choice like okay they want to drive aggressively in the case no view higher higher insurance or there won't be you're more careful in that the driving and it'd be Pepi less it's also actually very helpful for us to have a feedback loop to see what is driving insurance expense lot of it is just it's like yeah like little fender-bender and the net Center vendor because of the way that the body collision repair is being done you know cost like fifteen thousand dollars or something crazy and like we'll have and and then we can actually\n\nadjust the design of the car and adjust how the repair is done to actually have the fundamental cost of solving that problem be less so this has helped us on a whole bunch of facility things that we were doing basically without realizing it which is this is a problem which in general with insurance it's like so if the insurance is like all-you-can-eat then it the feedback loop for improvement is we so this gives us a great feedback loop for improvement gives us basically a fundamentally better insurance product I'd also like to say the spirit of recruiting because if there's one thing I'd like to come out of this call it's that a lot of great people want to join Tesla that's the no 1 thing I'd like another school and on the insurance front I want to clear\n\nwe're building a great like a major insurance company if you're interested in revolutionary insurance please join Tesla I would love to have some high energy actuaries especially I have great respect with after real profession your guys are great at math please join Tesla especially if you want to change things and you're annoyed by how slow the industry is this is the place to be we want we want revolutionary actuaries ok thank you very much for the exercise that so there was a second part of this question will Tesla insurance be required to participate in in the Tesla ride-hailing Network and so I think I've answered this before in Prior calls but by the time the ride hailing network is available we will Tesla insurance coverage will be provided great\n\noaks who are in this network it's a different type of insurance because of the use of the car it's not decided whether third party insurance for successful insurance will be required there might be some things we need to think through there but it Tesla insurance at least we'll be working working for the right-half Palin Network it thank you very much and in dangerous of time let's go to the Q&A of analysts online thank you our first question will come from Dan levy with Credit Suisse please go ahead hi good afternoon thank you Alaska a question on the quarter and then just question more broadly on strategy just on the quarter if you could give us an update on gross margin was China the creative to gross margin in the second quarter and he has an idea\n\nof how far off model why gross margin was versus Fremont model three and then just more broadly on strategy seems like your approach to in sourcing is varying by region you're in sourcing a lot more in Fremont but you're relying a lot more on the supply chain in Shanghai what do you expect your approach to be on his first thing when you eventually open up Berlin and what your Texas Factory is going to be thank you yep just to start with the gross margin questions we did see progress on gross margins in China and that was despite pricing action that was taken the factory is still not running at full capacity yet as it continues to ramp so we think there's a continued opportunity to optimize the cost structure there model why as we mentioned last quarter\n\nwas profitable in its first quarter of production and despite the inefficiencies that we had due to the shutdown we did see a pretty substantial improvement in the model line margin and it is as we said before the model wide cost structure and model 3 cost structure will converge that they're not quite there model wise still slightly more expensive than model 3 and it's not yet at full production and with model like carrying a slightly higher price point you can kind of back into the map there on the relative gross margin yeah in the shanghai factories pretty big factory but yet and there it's continuing to do more and more internally but it's also that the thing is really helping is like there were previously a ton of parts that were made in other parts\n\nof the world that were being shipped to shanghai from every part of the world and just locally sourcing those components makes a massive difference to the cost vehicle and I mean the proportion of local sourcing has literally been rising it like five to ten percent a month you get from 40 it was like 40 percent of getting us here something like that it'll be like 80 percent yeah idea this year maybe more there is also a lot very strong there component and very eager suppliers around the factory in Champak yeah I feel like the suppliers in China have been extremely competitive possibly the most converter and so far you know we're in negotiations with for bargain and was awarded a lot of business also a lot of suppliers and in Germany or the rest of Europe\n\nthere are eager to support the factory burning yea well jhonny has a great automotive industry and supply chain so actually a ton of of our suppliers are in Germany within like a few hundred kilometres of the factory thank you very much let's go to the next question please our next question will come from Tony Succar Nagi naka Tony Succar Nagi with Bernstein please go ahead yes thank you you mentioned in the slide deck a couple of times that you were pleased with gross margin with PTI margin progress and you expected to achieve industry-leading operating margins over time maybe you could shed a little light on that you know industry leading for luxury vendors is 8 to 10 percent PTI for poor shoes smaller 17 for mass market vendors it's 5 to 8 what do\n\nwe think about and how much ultimately do you believe that EB credits will contribute to that margin because I know your margins been 5% over the last 12 months but it's actually less than 1% excluding evey credit so it's a four four point contribution right now how do we think about ultimately what industry-leading margins are and how much of that you think is coming from EB credits regulatory credits and I have a follow up place sure I've mentioned this before in terms of regulatory credit you know we manage the business but so different we don't manage the business with the assumption that regulatory credits will contribute in a significant way to the future yeah I do expect for the tour credit revenue to double in 2020 relative to 2019 and it will\n\ncontinue for some period of time but eventually the talk that's will reduce yes'm its witness worth learning that we receive you know buyers about card in the u.\n\ns.\n\nreceived zero federal tax credit whereas made about competi rhetoric that they get a $7,500 pipe tax credit and yet our sales haven't continued to do well it yeah and so what we see is a continued decline in the cost to produce any funds and distributors are bars that cost of even for mature products like the s and the Act continues to come down as we work on that model 3 which is our second most mature product that can use to come you then layer on top of that as Elon was discussing earlier the potential for software based revenue particularly full self-driving that there's the revenue recognition portion of that that we have today you know that will expand as we as we release more features and then you can layer on top of that in the future revenue\n\nfrom arrival in network operating expenses continue to come down and become more efficient as a percentage of revenue there's still incredible opportunity there that we work we're working on particularly on how customers interact with the company from sales and service and in what their flow is and how we get cards to them so we continue to see efficiencies there so you know in the medium term here what our modeling shows is you know in their load load teams operating margin level and I think there continues to drive the opportunity to drive that up so here your point on the 5% in the 1% you know we're on a bit of a journey here and we're doing to the government thank you and if I could just follow up Ilan you've talked a lot about the mission of the\n\ncompany and in you know and and and really trying to drive evie adoption globally so how do you think about that trade-off between driving towards industry-leading profitability yet trying to make your cars more affordable and broader it feels like historically you've always picked the path of I'd rather Drive more growth and more adoption because ultimately that's the mission of the company and Weavin thought a little bit this quarter with with price reductions you could have you probably kept priced where it is sold some units and had better profits but but that's been an ongoing choice that Tesla's a company has made so how do we how do you personally think about that trade-off between you know even if you were to get to industry-leading margins wouldn't\n\nyou be inclined to give more of that back to drive a greater adoption more quickly well I think we actually achieved both when you factor in autonomy I think we can go way beyond is free margins and and have a car V affordable to more and more people and essentially you know almost everyone Plus everyone when factoring in autonomy but that was really a mega game-changer giggity-giggity I'm changer yeah but I mean it is important for people to get to distinguish between two things there's value for money that a product has and then as affordability and and even if you rail value for money and have value for money like infinitive people do not have enough if people do not have enough money in the bank counts to buy the car today so we cannot so then you\n\njust have this like awesome thing and nobody can buy so it is important to make the car affordable that we will not succeed in our mission if we do not make cars affordable like the thing that bugs me the most about where we are right now is that our cars are not affordable enough we need to fix that so we are making progress in that regard and just sort of steadily making progress yeah so yeah like we need to you know not go bankrupt obviously that's important because I will fail in our mission but we're not trying to be super profitable either obviously you know profitability is like 1% or something yeah this will cut 1 or 2% it's not it's not crazy last quarter was only 0.\n\n1% so we want to be profitable like I think just we want to be like slightly profitable and maximize growth and make the cars that as affordable as possible that's what we're trying to achieve thank you let's go to the next question please our next question will come from emmanuel Rossmore with deutsche bank please go ahead hi good afternoon could you please characterize the current near-term demand environment for your vehicles these obviously unusual times I think back in q1 you had indicated record backlog I guess at the beginning of this past quarter I haven't seen any specific comments about new orders a backlog in the release today so can you give us some color demand is not our problem definitely not yeah we do have some production supply chain\n\nchallenge that challenges we're trying to solve right now for example model white we were body Casting obvious new technology it's been tricky to maintain rate and keep growing the rate for moto white casting which is it's a two piece casting with a bunch and about a half a dozen other parts that are added on that will transition to a one-piece casting in fact I'm pretty super excited about this we can have a job the world's biggest casting press is getting assembled right now actually in Fremont for the model wire rear body casting it's enormous and looks awesome so it's like our the things that are troubling us right now I'm not demand that they are just a bunch of firefighting on supply chain and production issues okay well to put it sorry yeah dori\n\nabout demand hey that's what busy okay so when you're saying achieving 500,000 deliveries has has become more difficult which is really just a function of the recent shutdowns and some of these in a supply dynamics yeah it's it's not it's not true with the man it's really just a production issue it's pretty hard when you've got like you know I global supply chain and it's kind of whatever the most effective part of that global supply chain is that's your rate you know so I mean the number of rabbits we've had to pull out of a hat for supply chain is insane teams done an amazing job so I think it also say yeah some of our costs were related to having to you know use a lot of airplanes to get parts around because of parts shortages so hopefully use fewer\n\nairplanes but stuff that will improve our costs but it's a demand exceeds supply right now so it flips where we are right now thank you very much and the last question please our last question today will come from Felipe who boys with Jeffries please go ahead yes good afternoon and thank you you mentioned a few ties into the stadium the constraint to growth is very capacity still and I was hoping you could clarify the scope of the billion plants you're building right now will there be little battery capacity consistence with the amount of assembly volume you expect to come out of there in and and if not we should be able to source your battery requirements out of Europe would you have to import batteries from outside Europe to Iran to ensure production\n\nand burning okay we can't say too much about this except that where there will be local cell production and that will that will serve the needs of the Bowen factory but sure is a that I mean I know that's that's straightforward enough I think just adding to what you said earlier about talent and people yes yet like the same goes in all areas of cell yes supply chain manufacturing materials design we are solving this problem and it we work we're treating it like any other problems that we have solved we will solve this problem and give talented people to join us as we solve this problem yes and like - my biggest concern for gang of talented people is just probably Berlin because the labor labor mobility in Europe is not as low I would recommend changing\n\nis he like computer somebody wants to leave and join another company sometimes I have to spend six months on cotton leaf it's called gardener hang out in the garden basically and like this doesn't this is not a good use of people's time yeah if they want to hang on the garden that's fine but they shouldn't have to thank you I mean those are know Europe will know what are talking about Phillipa do we have a full operation it's fine thank you very much ok thank you very much for everyone for joining this call and thank you for all their good questions and we'll speak to you again in about three months yeah maybe sooner with battery take oh thanks"},"languages":["en"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3lvmOJGC_es"},{"id":"joe-rogan-1470","type":"interview","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RcYjXbSJBN8","title":"The Joe Rogan Experience","titles":{"en":"The Joe Rogan Experience","de":"The Joe Rogan Experience","fr":"The Joe Rogan Experience"},"date":"2020-05-07","summary":"Elon Musk's second appearance on Joe Rogan's podcast: Neuralink, AI, SpaceX and more.","text":"welcome back here we go again great to see you and congratulations thank you um you will never forget what is going on in the world when you think about when your child is born you will know for the rest of this child's life you were born during a weird time that's for sure that is for sure they're probably the weirdest that i can remember uh yeah yeah um and he was born on uh may the fourth and yeah that's hilarious too yeah may the fourth be with him yeah exactly it has to be hopefully i sure hope so perfect yes i mean that was the perfect day for you and how do you say the name well uh is it a placeholder first of all my partner is the one that actually mostly came up with the name congratulations to her yeah yeah she's great at names um so i mean\n\nit's just x the letter x um and then the ae is like pronounced ash yeah and then a12 a12 is my contribution oh why a12 uh archangel 12 the precursor to the sr-71 coolest plane ever that's true i i agree with you i don't know i'm not familiar with it i know what the sr-71 is yeah yeah yeah i know what that is so the sr71 came from a cia program uh called archangel oh it's the archangel project and then archangel 12.\n\noh wow what a dope-looking plane yeah oh okay i got it yeah well as a person who's uh very much into uh aerial travel as you are that's uh perfect that's pretty great yeah pretty great um so is it does it feel strange to have a child while this craziness is going does it feel like you've had children before is this any weirder uh it's actually i think it's better uh being older and having a kid i appreciate it more um yeah babies are awesome they are pretty awesome they're awesome yeah when i didn't have my any of my own i would see other people's kids and i didn't not like them sure but i wasn't drawn to them sure but now when i see little people's kids i'm like oh i think of them like these little love packages yeah little love bugs yeah it's just you\n\nyou think of them differently when you see them come out and then grow and then eventually start talking to you like your whole idea what a baby is is very different yeah so now as you you know get older and get to appreciate it as a mature fully formed adult it must be really pretty wonderful yeah wonderful it's great but babies are awesome yeah yeah that's uh that's great um yeah um i mean also i've i've spent a lot of time on ai and neural nets and so you can sort of see the kind of the brain develop which is you know what an ai neural net is trying to simulate what a brain does basically um and you can sort of see the it learning very quickly you know it's just wow see things fire so you're talking about the neural net you're not talking about an\n\nactual baby i don't know about actually an actual baby but both of them yes but the word neural net comes from the the brain it's like a net of neurons so you know it's like the yeah humans are the you know original gangster the neural net that's a great way to put it yeah so when you're programming artificial intelligence where you're working with artificial intelligence art are they specifically trying to mimic the developmental process of a human brain in a lot of ways there's some ways that are different um you know an analogy that's often used is like you know we we don't make a submarine swim like a fish but we take the principles of of how you know what of hydrodynamics and apply them to a submarine i've always wondered as a lay person do you try\n\nto achieve the same results as a human brain but through different methods or do you try to copy the way a human brain achieves results i mean the essential elements of an ai neural net are really very very similar to a human brain neural net yeah it's having the multiple layers of neurons and you know back propagation these all these things are what your brain does you know it's sort of yeah um you have a layer of neurons that goes through a series of intermediate steps to ultimately cognition and that and then it'll reverse those steps and go back and forth and go all over the place um it's um yeah it's it's interesting very interesting yeah i would imagine like the thought of programming something that is eventually going to be smarter than us that\n\none day it's going to be like why did you do it that way like when artificial intelligence becomes sentient they're like oh you tried to mimic yourself like this so much better process cut out all this nonsense but like there are elements that are the same but just almost like like an aircraft does not fly like a bird right yeah it doesn't flap its wings but the wings the way the wings work and generate lift is the same as bird now you're in the middle of this uh this strange time where you're selling your houses you say you don't want any material possessions and i've been seeing all that and i've been really excited to talk to you about this yeah because it's an interesting thing to come from a guy like yourself like why are you doing that i'm slightly\n\nsad about it actually but if you're sad about it why are you doing it i think i think possessions kind of weigh you down then they're kind of an attack vector you know people say hey billionaire you got all this stuff like well and now i don't have stuff now what are you gonna do attack vector meaning like people target it yeah um interesting yeah but you're obviously gonna so you're gonna rent a place yeah okay and get rid of everything except clothes no i said like almost everything so it's like keep a couple teslas yeah sure yeah kind of have to test product and stuff um yeah those things that have sentimental value for sure are keeping those here um yeah so do you feel like what's worse that could happen right you're fine yeah you could always buy\n\nmore stuff if you don't like it especially yeah i mean from the money that you sell all your stuff you could buy new stuff but do you you feel like people define you by the fact that you're you're wealthy and that they define you in a pejorative way for sure i mean not everyone but right you know there's uh for sure in recent like years billionaire has become a per jar like it's in a projective so like it's like that's a bad thing um which i mean i think doesn't make a lot of sense in most cases if you've if you're done if you basically uh organized a company like see like how do how does this wealth arise it's if you organize people in a in a better way to produce products and services that are better than what existed before and you have some ownership\n\nin that company then that that essentially gives you the right to allocate more capital so it's there's a conflation of consumption and capital allocation so let me say warren buffett for example and to get totally frank i'm not his biggest fan but uh you know he does a lot of capital allocation um and he reads a lot of a lot of sort of annual reports of companies and all the accounting and it's pretty boring really um and he's trying to figure out is does coke or pepsi deserve more capital i mean that's i mean it's kind of a boring job if you ask me um but uh you know it's still a thing that's important to figure out like which is a company deserving of more or less capital should that company grow or expand is it making products and services that are\n\nbetter than others or worse and you know should you know if a company is making compelling products and services it should get more capital and if it's not it should get less we'll go out of business well there's a big difference too between someone who's making an incredible amount of money designing and engineering fantastic products versus someone who's making an incredible amount of money by investing in companies or moving money around in the stock market or doing things along those lines it's it's a different thing and to put them all in the same category seems it's it's very simple and as you pointed out it's an attack vector yeah for sure yeah i mean i think it's it's really i i do think they're in the in the united states especially there's an\n\nover allocation of talent uh in finance and law uh basically too many smart people go into finance and law so you know this is both a compliment and a criticism we should have of i think fewer people doing law and fewer people doing finance and more people making stuff yeah yeah well that would certainly be better for all involved if they made better stuff yeah yeah absolutely um and and you know manufacturing used to be highly valued in the united states and these days it's not it's it's often looked down upon which i think is wrong yeah well i think that people are kind of learning that particularly because of this whole pandemic and this relationship that we have with china that it there's a lot of value into making things into making things here yes\n\nsomebody's got to do the the real work yeah you know and um you know like making a car it's an honest days that's not honest day is living that's for sure you know or making anything really or providing valuable service um like providing you know greater entertainment good information but these are all valuable things to do um you know so yeah there should be more more of it did you have a moment where is this something that this idea of getting rid of your material possessions is something that built up over time or did you have a moment of realization where you realize that yeah i've been thinking about it for a while um you know part of it is like i like have a bunch of houses but i don't spend a lot of time in most of them and that doesn't seem like\n\na good use of assets like somebody could probably be enjoying those houses and get better use of them than me so don't you have gene wilder's house i do that's amazing that's awesome wow exactly what you'd expect did you request that the buyer not it up yeah that's a requirement oh a requirement that's that's a good requirement yeah not in that case in that house yeah it'll probably sell for last but still i don't care uh he's a legend yeah he would want his soul he'd want his essence yeah in the building it's and it's there that's a real quirky quirky house yeah what what makes you say it's there like what do you get out of it um i mean all the all the cabinets are like handmade and they're like odd shapes and there's like doors to nowhere and strange\n\nlike car doors and tunnels and really odd odd paintings on the wall and um yeah did you ever live in it it's very quirky i did live in it briefly yeah but why do you buy houses like if you own all these houses do you just get bored and go i think i'd like to have that well i you know had one house and then the junior wilder house right across the road from me from from my main house and it was going to get it was going to get sold and then torn down and turned into you know be a big construction zone for three years and i was like well i think i'll i'll buy it and preserve the spurt of gene water and not have a giant construction zone and then the you know this i started having like some privacy issues where like people would like less people just like\n\ncome to my house and you know start climbing over the walls and stuff i feel like man um so then i saw like what a house some of the houses around my house and then i thought at one point well you know it'd be cool to to build a house so then i acquired some properties at the top of samara road uh and which is got a great view and it's like okay well these some bunch of sort of small older houses they're going to get torn down anyway i was like well you know if i collect these like little little houses then i can build something you know i don't know artistic like a you know dream house type of thing what's a dream house for elon musk like some tony stark type yeah definitely yeah you gotta have the the dome that opens up with the stealth helicopter and\n\nthat kind of thing you know yeah for sure yeah yeah um but but then i was like man do i really want does it really make sense for me to spend time designing and building a house and i'd be real you know get out like ocd on the little details and the design and or should i be allocating that time to getting us to mars i should probably do the latter so you know like what's more important mars or a house i like mars okay is that really how you think like that it'd be better off planning on a trip to mars or getting people to mars yeah yeah definitely i mean you can only do so many things right right so how you can i don't know how you do what you do anyway i don't i don't understand how you can run bull with a boring company tesla spacex all these different\n\nthings you're doing constantly i just i don't understand i mean you explained last time you were here how you sort of allocate your time and and how hectic it is and insane i still don't the the productivity is uh baffling just doesn't make sense how you can get so much done well i think i do have high productivity but even with that there's still some upgraded cost of time and allocating time to building a house even if it was a really great house it still is not a good use of time relative to developing the rockets necessary to get us to mars and helping sell sustainable energy uh spacex and tesla are by far you know by the the most amount of like brain cycles um you know boring company does not take you know like less than one percent of brain cycles\n\nand um and then this neural link which is i don't know maybe it's like five percent and then five percent that's that's a good chunk it's a good chunk yeah yeah we were talking about that last time and you were trying to figure out when it was actually going to go live when it's actually going to be available are you testing on people right now no we're not testing people yet but i i think it won't be too long i think we may be able to implant a neurolink in less than a year in a person i think and when you do this is there any tests that you have to do before you do something like this to to see what percentage of people's bodies are going to reject these things is it put is it there is there a potential for rejection it's a very low potential for rejection\n\ni mean you can think of it like people put in you know heart monitors and um you know things for epileptic seizures and deep brain stimulation um obviously like you know artificial hips and right knees and that kind of thing so the probability of i mean like it's so it's well known like what will cause rejection what what will not um it's definitely harder when you've got something that is sort of reading and writing neurons that's that's generating a current pulse and reading current pulses that's that's a little harder um then then say uh passive device but it's still you know very doable and um yeah there there are people who have primitive devices in in their brains right now what kind of devices i like deep brain stimulation is i think for parkinson's\n\nis like has really changed people's lives in a big way um which is kind of remarkable because it kind of like zaps your brain um it's like kicking the tv type of thing um and you think like man kicking the tv shouldn't work it does sometimes yeah yeah the old old tvs it did my grandpa used to slap the top for sure yeah it would work sometimes yeah so this deep right simulation uh implanted devices in the brain that uh have changed people's lives for the better like fundamentally well let's talk about what you can talk about to what neurolink is because the last time you were here you really couldn't discuss it and then there was a i guess a press release or something that sort of outlined yeah that that happened quite a bit after the last time you were\n\nhere so what exactly is it how do you do what what happens if someone ultimately does get a neurolink installed what will take place well for version one of the device it would be it basically implanted in your skull so but it would be flush with your skull so you basically uh take out a chunk of skull replace put the neurologic device in there um you put the the electrode you'd insert the electrode threads very carefully into the the brain and uh and then you you know stitch it up and um and you wouldn't even know that somebody has it and then and and so then it it can interface basically anywhere in any anywhere in your brain um so it could be something that uh you know helps cure say uh eyesight like give you returns your eyesight even if you've like\n\nlost your optic nerve type of thing uh really yeah yeah absolutely hearing obviously um i mean pretty much anything that where that it could in principle fix almost anything that is wrong with the brain and it could restore uh limb functionality so if you've got uh interface into the motor cortex and then an implant that's say that's like a microcontroller and near muscle groups uh you you could then create a sort of a neural shunt that restores somebody who's a quadriplegic to full functionality like they can walk around be normal whoa yeah so maybe slightly better slightly better over time yes you mean with future iterations like the you know six million dollar man although these days that would that doesn't matter yeah six billion dollars so the the\n\nhole would be small how big would the hole be that you have to drill and then replace with this piece it's only one hole well um yeah the device we're working on right now is about it's about an inch in diameter um and your skull is pretty thick by the way so skulls are mine is for sure it might actually literally um i mean if you're a big if you're a big guy your skull is actually fairly thick um skulls like it's like seven to 14 millimeters um so that's probably a couple inches a half inch you know half inch thick skull ish so um yeah yeah so that's a fair bit of like our we got quite a coconut going on here it's not it's not like some egg shell oh yeah i believe you um so the yeah you basically implant the device uh and so you would be like a one inch\n\nsquare one inch in diameter yeah like so an inch circle like a circular yeah i think like a like a smart watch or something like that okay yeah okay so you take this one-inch diameter like ice fishing right you ever go ice fishing um no but i'd like to it's great yeah it's really fun so you basically take an auger and you you drill through the surface of the ice yeah and you create a small hole and you can dunk your line in there so this is like that you're ice fishing on the top of your skull and then you cork it yeah and you replace that say one inch diameter piece of skull with this neural link device and that has a battery and a and a bluetooth and a inductive charger um and then you and and now then you also got to insert the electrodes uh so the\n\nelectrode is very carefully inserted uh with our with a robot that we developed uh that's you know very carefully putting in the electrodes and avoiding you know and any veins or arteries uh so it's you know doesn't create trauma so through this one-inch diameter device electrodes be inserted and they will find their way like tiny wires basically tiny wires and they'll find their way to specific areas of the brain to stimulate no you literally put them where they're supposed to go oh okay yeah how long will these wires be uh i mean they usually go in like you know depending on where it is like you know two or three millimeters so they just find the spots yeah wow um and then um yeah then you put the device in and that that gets uh that that replaces the\n\nlittle piece of skull that was taken out uh and then you you stitch up the hole and and um and you just have it look like a little scar and that's it well this would be replaceable or reversible yes like if someone can't take it anymore i'm too smart i can't take it yeah you can totally check it out and what is the besides restoring limb function and eyesight and hearing which are all amazing is there are there any cognitive benefits that you anticipate from something like this uh yeah i mean you could for sure um uh i mean basically it's a generalized um sort of uh thing for for fixing any kind of brain injury in in principle like if you or if you've got like like severe epilepsy or something like that it could it could just it could just sort of stop\n\nthe epilepsy from occurring like it could detect it in real time and then fire a counter pulse and stop the epilepsy um if um i mean there's a whole range of brain injuries like if somebody gets a stroke they could lose the ability to speak um you know that that'll stack could also be fixed so if you've got like stroke damage or if you lose say you know muscle control over part of your face or something like that i think and then when when you get old you tend to if you get like you know alzheimer's or something like that then you lose memory and this could help you with you know restoring your memory that kind of thing restoring memory and what what is happening that's allowing it to do that like the wires these small wires stimulating these areas of\n\nthe brain and then is it that the areas of the brain are they're they're losing some sort of electrical force like what it what is happening yeah yeah it's it's like it's like i think it's like a bunch of circuits and there's some like circuits that are broken and we can like uh fix those circuits substitute for those circuit circuits and so a specific frequency will go through this yeah specific in that would is the process figuring out how much or how little has to be how how much these areas of the brain have to be juiced up yeah i mean there's still a lot of work to do so when i say you know we got a shot at probably putting it in in a person in you know a within a year i think that's that's what that's exactly what i mean i think we have a chance\n\nof putting input into one and having them having them be healthy and and restoring some functionality that they've lost the fear is that eventually you're gonna have to cut the whole top of someone's head off and put a new top with a whole bunch of wires if you want to get you know the real turbocharged version the p100d of brain stimulation i mean ultimately if you if you want to go with full ai symbiosis you'll probably want to do something like that symbiosis is a scary word when it comes to ai it's optional [Laughter] i would hope so yeah it's just i mean once you enjoy the dr manhattan lifestyle once you once you become a god seems very very unlikely you're going to want to go back to being stupid again i mean you you literally could fundamentally\n\nchange the way human beings interface with each other yes you wouldn't need to talk i'm so scared of that but so excited about it at the same time is that weird yeah i mean the i think this is one of the paths to um you know i think like what like ai is getting better and better um so now let's assume it's sort of like a benign ai scenario even in a benign scenario we're kind of left behind you know we're we're not we're not along for the ride um we're just too dumb right so so how do you go along for the ride um yeah so you can't beat them join them so um and we're already we're already a cyborg to some degree right because you've got your phone you've got your laptop glasses yeah yeah guitar electronic devices and i mean today if you your phone if you\n\nif you don't bring your phone along it's like you have missing limb syndrome that's like you know it feels like something's really really missing so we're already partly um part you know partly a cyborg um or an ai symbiote essentially um it's just that the data rate to the electronics is slow so especially output like you're just going with your thumbs i don't know like what's your data rate maybe optimistically 100 bits per second that's being generous um and now the computer can communicate at like you know 100 terabits you know so so certainly you know gigabits are a trivial at this point so this this is like you know basically your computer could do a mil do things a million times faster or at a certain point it's like talk they as like talking to\n\na tree okay it's boring you talk to a tree it's very not very entertaining um so um so if you if you can solve the the data rate issue and your especially output but input two then you can improve the symbiosis that is already occurring between mana machine so you you can improve it in what when you said you won't have to talk to each other anymore we used to joke around about that i i've joked around about that a million times in this podcast that one day in the future there's going to come a time where you can read each other's minds and well you'll be able to interface with each other in some sort of a non-verbal non-physical way where you will transfer data back and forth to each other without having to actually use your mouth and make noises exactly\n\nso when you like what happens when you when like let's say you've got some complex idea that you're trying to convey to somebody else and how do you do that well your brain spends a lot of effort compressing a complex concept into words and there's a there's a lot a lot of loss information loss that occurs when compressing a complex concept into words and then you say those words those words are then interpreted then they're decompressed by the person who is listening and they they will at best get a very incomplete understanding of what you're trying to convey it's very difficult to convey a complex concept with precision because you've got compression decompression you may not even have heard all the words correctly and so communication is difficult\n\nyou know what we have here is a failure to communicate cool and luke yes and there's a great movie yeah there's an interpretation factor too like you can choose to interpret certain series of words in in different ways and they're dependent upon tone dependent upon social cues even facial expressions sarcasm there's a lot of variables sarcasm is difficult yes yeah and so one of the things that i i've said is like that there could be potentially a universal language that's created through computers that particularly young kids would pick up very quickly like my kids do tick tock and all this jazz and i don't know what they're doing they just know how to do it and they know how to do it really quickly like they learn really quickly they show me how to edit\n\nthings and yeah it's if you taught a child from first grade on how to use some new universal language i mean essentially like a rosetta stone and something that's done that interprets your thoughts and you can convey your thoughts with no room for interpretation with clear very clear that where you know what a person's saying and you can tell them what you're saying and there's no need for noises no need for mouth noises no need for these sort of accepted ways that we've uh sort of evolved to make sounds that we all agree we through our cultural dictionary right we agree or certainly we could bypass all that yeah we can still do it for for sentimental reasons right like campfires yeah yeah exactly i don't need campfires i don't need to roast marshmallows\n\nkind of fun right um so yeah um yeah i think you would in principle you would be able to communicate very quickly and with far more precision ideas and language would i'm not sure what would happen to language but you could probably within a situation like this that you would be able to just kind of like the matrix you you want to speak a different language in a problem right that's why it just downloaded the program right so at least for the first iterations first few iterations we'll just be able to use like i i know that google has uh their some of their pixel buds have the ability to interpret languages in real time sure yeah you can hear it and they'll it'll play things back to you in whatever language you choose so to be something along those lines\n\nyeah for the first few iterations well the first few iterations are i mean what i'm talking about is like in the limit over time you know with a lot of development um the first few iterations really in the first few versions all we're going to be trying to do is solve brain injuries um so so it's like don't don't worry that that's not going to sneak up on you this this will take a while how many years before you don't have to talk if the if the development continues to accelerate then maybe like five years five to ten years that's quick that's really quick that's the best case scenario no talking anymore in five years best case scenario but i'm 10 10 years more like it i've always speculated that aliens could potentially be us in the future because if\n\nyou look at like the size their heads and the fact that they have very little muscle and then they don't use their mouth anymore they was tiny little i mean the archetypal alien that you see in like closing counters are the third kind they they're like if you went from like uh australopithecus or ancient hominid to us what's the difference less hair less muscle bigger head and then just keep going a thousand a million whatever you or five years whatever whatever happens when neurolink goes on online and then we slowly start to adapt to this new way of being where we don't use our muscles anymore we have this gigantic head we can talk without words you could also save state and save state save state like save your brain state like like a saved game in\n\na video game whoa like like if you want to swap from windows 95 well yeah i think we are windows 95 right now yeah from a future perspective probably um but yeah i mean you you could save state um and restore that state into a biological being if you if you wanted to in the future in principle it's like nothing like from a physics standpoint that prevents us now you'd be a little different but then you're also a little different when you wake up in the morning from yesterday and you're a little different in fact if you say like you five years ago versus you today is quite a big difference yes um so you'd be substantially you i mean you'd be you'd certainly think you're you but the idea of saving yourself and then transforming that into some sort of a\n\nbiological state like you can hang out with 30 year old you i mean the possibilities are endless that's so weird i mean these things think like how your phone can you can record videos on your phone like there's no way you could remember a video right as accurately as your phone or a camera you know could so uh now if you've got like a you know some some you know version 10 hero link whatever and far in the future you could you could remember you could recall everything but just like it's a movie concluding all the entire sensory experience emotions everything everything everything and play it back and you can enjoy it you should edit it edit it yeah so you can change your past you could change what do you think was your past yeah well so if you had like\n\na tremendous thing right now could be a replayed memory it could be yeah it may be what's the odds of this being a replayed memory if you had a guess it's more than 50 there's no way to assign a probability with accuracy here right but roughly if you just had a just gut instinct well i don't have a neural link in my brain so i say right now zero percent but at the point at which you do have a neural link then it rises above zero percent the idea that we're experiencing some sort of a preserved memory is uh even though it's still the same it's not comforting right for some reason when we people talk about simulation theory they talk about the potential for this currently being a simulation it even though your life might be wonderful you might be in love\n\nyou might love your career you might have great friends but it's not comforting to know that this experience somehow or another doesn't exist in a material form that you can knock on it feels real doesn't it feels real but but if it's not but the idea that it's not is for some strange reason disconcerting well yeah i'm sure it should be disconcerting because then if this is not real what is right um but but the you know there's that that old sort of um thought experiment of like how do you know you're not a brain in a vet you know i mean now here's the thing you are a brain an event then that fat is your skull yes and everything you see feel here everything all your senses are electrical signals everything everything is an electrical signal to up to a\n\nbrain in a vat where the vat is called and all your hormones all your neurotransmitters all these things are drugs adrenaline's a drug dopamine's a drug you're a drug factory you're constantly changing your state with love and oxytocin and and beauty sure changes your state great music changes your state absolutely and yet here's another sort of interesting idea which is um because you say like where did consciousness arise well assuming you believe the belief in physics which appears to be true um then you know we the universe started off as basically quarks and leptons and it quickly became hydrogen and of helium lithium like basically elements the periodic table but it was like mostly hydrogen basically and then and then over a long period of time\n\nuh you know 13.\n\n8 billion years later that hydrogen became sentient but so where along the way that conju where is the consciousness what's the line of consciousness and not consciousness right between hydrogen and here right when do we call it when do we call it consciousness i was watching a video today that we played on a podcast earlier of a monkey riding a motorcycle down the street jumps off the motorcycle and tries to steal a baby yeah i saw that one they went apparel what is that monkey conscious it seems like it is it seems like it had a plan it was riding a motorcycle and then jumped off the motorcycle to try to steal a baby seems pretty the one that just strike baby down the street pretty far yeah yeah seems pretty conscious right there's definitely some degree\n\nof consciousness there yeah it's not like it's not a worm it seems to be on another level yeah and it's going to keep going and that that's the real concern when when people think about the potential future versions of human beings especially when you consider symbiotic relationship to artificial intelligence it will be unrecognizable that one day we'll be so far removed from what this is we'll look back on this the way we look back now on you know simple simple organisms that we evolved from and then it won't be that far in the future that we do have this this view back well i hope consciousness propagates into the future and it gets more more sophisticated and complex and and that it understands the questions to ask about the universe do you think that's\n\nthe case as a human being as yourself you're clearly trying to make conscious decisions to be a better version of you right this is the idea of like getting rid of your possessions and realizing that you're trying to like i don't like this i will try to improve this i will try to do a better version of the way i interface with reality that this is always the way things are if you're if you're moving in a some sort of a direction where you're trying to improve things you're always going to move into this new place where you look back in the old place and go i was doing it wrong back then so this is an accelerated version of that super accelerated version of that i mean you don't always improve but you can aspire to improve you can aspire to be less wrong\n\nyeah this is like i think a good the tools of physics are very powerful like just assume you're wrong and you're asking your goals to be less wrong i don't think you're gonna if you succeed every day and being less wrong but you know if you're gonna succeed in being less wrong most of the time you're doing great that's a great way of putting aspire to be less wrong but then when you know people look back at nostalgia about simpler times there's that too it's very romantic and exciting to look back on campfires but you can still have a campfire yes yeah but will you appreciate it when you're a super nerd when you're connected to the grid and you have some uh skull cap in place of the top of your head and it's interfacing with the inter international language\n\nthat the rest of the universe now enjoys communication with people and we're yeah sure i think so yeah i like empires [Laughter] i'm just worried i mean uh everyone's always scared of change but i'm scared of this monumental change where we won't we won't talk anymore i mean that thing will communicate yes but that's there's something about there's something about the beauty of the crudeness of language where when it's done eloquently it's it's it's satisfying and it it it hits us in some sort of a visceral way like ah that person nailed it i love that they nailed it like that it's so hard to capture a real thought and convey it in a way in this articulate way that makes someone except like you read a quote a great quote by a wise person it makes you\n\nexcited that their mind figured something out put the words together in a right way that makes your brain pop like oh yes yeah yes it's clever compression of a concept yeah and a feeling but the fact that a human did it too yeah absolutely do you think that it'll be like electronic music like people won't appreciate it like they appreciate a slide guitar i like electronic music i do too yeah well you make it i know you liked it yeah yeah yeah um yeah i mean i hope the future is more fun and interesting and we should try to make that way i hope it's more fun and interesting too yeah i just you know i just hope you don't lose anything along the way yeah we might at least little but hopefully we'll gain more than lose yeah that's the thing right gaining\n\nmore than we lose like something that makes us interesting is that we're so flawed it's not for sure right yeah i mean you look at civilizations through the ages um most of them uh you know they rose and fell yeah and uh i do think like the globalization uh that that we have at the sort of like the the meme sphere uh is uh there's not enough isolation between countries or regions um it's like if you get up if there's a mind virus that that my virus cannot infect too much of the world uh you know like i actually sort of sympathize with the anti-globalization people because it's it's like man we don't ever want everywhere to be the same for sure and then we we need some kind of like mind viral immunity so that that's it's a bit concerning mind viral immunity\n\nmeaning that once something like neural link gets established the real concern is something that i mean you said it's bluetooth right or some future version of that that the idea is that something could possibly get into it it up no i'm talking about like uh somebody there's some cockeyed concept that um that's happened that happens right right now yeah well i know there's viruses and embedded chips right like people have they've embedded chips and then acquired viruses well when i'm talking about my verse i'm talking about like a a concept that affects people's minds oh okay okay like uh cult thinking or yeah some sort of fundamentalism yeah just wrong-headed idea that yes goes viral in a in an idea sense [Music] well that is that is a problem too right\n\nif someone can manipulate that technology to make something appear logical or rational yeah yeah that would that be an issue too with this is a very have versus have not issue right once this thing if if this really does i mean initially it's going to help people with with injuries and but you you said ultimately it could lead to this spectacular cognitive change yes but the people that first get it should have a massive advantage over people that don't have it yet well i mean it's the kind of thing where your productivity would improve i don't know dramatically maybe by a factor of 10 with it so you could definitely just you know uh i don't know take out a loan and do it and earn earn the money back real fast so you're super smart well in a capitalist\n\nsociety you know you could it seems like you could really get so far ahead that before everybody else could afford this thing and link up and get connected as well you'd be so far ahead they could never catch you is that a concern uh well i think the the it's not a super huge concern i mean there are huge differences in cognitive ability and and resources already yeah um i mean you can think of a corporation as like a cybernetic collective uh that's far smarter than an individual like i i can personally build like a whole rocket and and the engines and launch it and everything that's impossible uh but you know we have eight thousand people with spacex and you might you know piecing it out to different people um and using like you know computers and machines\n\nand stuff we can make lots of rockets launch and all but stuck with the space station that kind of thing you know um so that already exists where this you know where there's a corporations are vastly more capable than an individual um but the the like we should be i think less concerned about like relative capabilities between people and and more like uh having ai be vastly you know beyond us and decoupled from human will decoupled from human so this is the if you can't beat them join them yeah i mean so you feel like it's inevitable like ai sentient ai is essentially inevitable super sentient ai yeah like beyond a level that's difficult to understand and impossible to understand probably and somehow or another us so it's almost like it's a requirement\n\nfor survival to achieve some sort of symbiotic existence with ai it's not a requirement it's just um if you if you want to be along for the ride then you need to do some kind of symbiosis so the the way your brain works right now you've got uh kind of like the animal brain reptile brain kind of let's say it's like the limbic system basically and you've got the the cortex um now the brain purists will argue with this definition but essentially you've got the primitive brain and you've got the the sort of smart brain or the brain that's capable of planning and understanding concepts and different difficult you know things that a monkey can't understand um now the your cortex is much much smarter than your olympic system um nonetheless they work together\n\nwell so i haven't met anyone who wants to delete the olympic system or the cortex that people are quite happy having both um so you can think of the this as being like the computer the ai is like a a third layer a tertiary layer so that is like that could be symbiotic with the cortex it'd be much smarter than the cortex but you'd essentially have three layers and you actually have that right now your phone is capable of things and your computer is capable things that your brain is definitely not you know storing your terabytes of information perfectly um doing incredible calculations that you you know we couldn't even come close to doing you have that with your computer it's just like i said the data rate is slow the connection is weak why is it so disconcerting\n\nor why is it why does it not give me comfort to think about like when i think about a symbiotic connection to ai i always think of this cold emotionless sort of thing that we will become is that a bad way to look at it i don't think that's not that's not quite that's not how it would be like i said you you already are yeah symbiotic with ai or computers phones computers laptops yeah and there's there's quite a bit of ai going on you know near so artificial neural nets um increasingly neural nets are sort of taking over from regular programming more and more so you are connected um you know if you use google voice or alexa or one of those things it's using a neural net to decode your speech and try to understand what you're saying um you know if if you're\n\ntrying to image recognition or improve the quality of photograph it's it's using the neural nets the best way to do that so um you are already uh sort of a sort of a cybernetic symbiote it like said you when that it's just a question of your data rate the the the communication speed between your your phone and your brain is slow when do you think you're gonna do it how long will you wait um like once it starts becoming available yeah if it works i'll do it sure right away i mean let's make sure it works how do we make sure it works we're trying on prisoners like what do you do no no you take rapists no cut holes in your head now like i said if somebody's got a serious brain injury right um and though you know people have like very severe brain injuries\n\num and then and then you can fix those those brain injuries um and you know then you prove out that it works and you expand envelope expand and make more and more brain injuries uh sold more and more um and that you know suddenly at certain age we all are are going to get alzheimer's we're all going to get senile um and then you know moms forget the names of their kids and that kind of thing and so you know it's like you said okay well you know this would allow you to remember your names your kids and and and have a normal a much more normal life where you you you're able to function much later in life um so i think that so essentially that there would almost everyone would find a need at some point if if you get old enough to use your neural link and\n\nand and then it's like okay so we can improve the functionality and improve the communications communication speed so then you will not have to use your thumbs to communicate with the computer do you ever sit down extrapolate do you ever like sit down and think about all the different iterations of this and what this eventually leads to um yeah i mean i think sure think about a lot um there's like i said this is not something that's going to sneak up on you you know there's like getting fda approval for this stuff is not like overnight you know um and this there's i mean we probably have to be on like version 10 or something before you know it it would realistically be um you know a human ai symbiote situation so you'll see it coming you know you see\n\nit coming but what do you think it's going to be like when you sit when you're alone if you have free time i don't know if you have free time but if you just sit down and think about this iteration the next onward keep going and you you drag it out with improvements along the way and leaps and bounds and technological innovations and where do you see it what are we going to be like when 20 25 years from now what are we going to be well assuming civilization is still around um it's looking fragile right now um i think we i think we could have a in 25 years probably something i think like that could be a whole brain interface a whole brain interface sorry pretty close to that yeah how does how do you define what do you mean by whole brain interface um like\n\nalmost all the neurons are connected to uh you're the sort of ai extension of yourself if you want ai extension of yourself yeah what does that mean to you like when you say ai extension of yourself well you like i said you already have a computer extension of yourself in your phone you know and computers and stuff so and now online it's like somebody dies there's this like an online ghost that they're they're still their online stuff yeah it's alive that's a good way to put it it is weird when you read someone's tweets after they're dead yeah yeah instagram and their stories and stuff yeah whatever facebook inside you know like that's a great way to put it it's like an online ghost that's very accurate yeah so yeah so there's it would just be that that\n\nmore of you would be in the cloud i guess than in your body more of it more of you whoa now when you say civilization's fragile do you mean because of this covet 19 that's going on right now what's that i've never heard of it it's this thing yeah no it's like uh some people just get a card other people it gets much worse uh sure yeah well yeah i mean this certainly has taken over the mayan space of the world to a degree that is quite shocking yeah well out of nowhere that's what's crazy it's like you go back to november nothing now here we are december january february march april may six months totally different world so from nothing to everything's locked down there's so much uh conflicting information and conflicting opinions about how to proceed what\n\nwhat has happened you you find things where there was a meat packing plant i believe in missouri where 300 plus people were asymptomatic tested positive or asymptomatic and then in other places it just ravages entire communities and kills people and it's it's so weird it almost appears on the out like if you didn't know any better you'd be like what it seems like there's a bunch of different viruses it doesn't seem like it's the same thing or has a bunch of different reactions to the biological variety of of people yeah um i mean i kind of saw this whole thing play out in china uh before it played out in the us so um it's kind of like watching the same movie again but in english um so yeah um i might i think the the the the mortality rate is much less\n\nthan what is then what say the world health organization said it was it's very much module assets like probably at least order of magnitude less well it seems to be very deadly to very specific kinds of people and people with specific problems yeah i mean if you're you can look at the mortality statistics you know by age and whether they have comorbid comorbidities like do they have like basically existing conditions and um by age um and uh you know if you're below 60 and and have no serious health issues the probability of death is extremely low it's not zero but it's extremely low they didn't think that this was the case though when they first started to lock down the country do you think that it's a situation where once they've proceeded in a certain\n\nway it's very difficult to correct course it's almost like people really wanted a panic that you know quite quite crazy but in some places a panic is deserved right like if you're in the icu in manhattan and people are dying left and right and everyone's on intubators and it's it's it seems like when you see all these people on ventilators and so many of them are dying and you see these nurses are dying and doctors are getting sick in some places that fear is justified but then in other places you're reading these stories about hospitals that are essentially half empty they're they're having to furlough doctors and nurses because there's no work for them most of the hospitals in the united states right now half empty in some cases they're at 30 capacity\n\nand is this because they've decided to forego elective procedures and and normal things that people would have to go to the hospital for yes i mean we're not talking about just some of these elective procedures are quite important like it's like you have about a lot of disease yeah sure and you need a you know triple bypass it's like sort of elective but if you don't get it done in time it's you're gonna die yeah it's elective is a weird word yeah elective it's not like hey i i want to it's not like plastic surgery it's more like like my my hip is i'm in extreme pain because my my hips blown out or my knee and i don't want to go to the hospital i can't go to the hospital to you know people in extreme pain people that need a kidney you know like people\n\nthat have like quite serious issues that are choosing not to go out of fear um so i think it's it's a problem it's not good it seems like the state of public perception is shifting it is like people are taking some deep breaths and relaxing and because of the statistics of i mean and essentially across the board it's being recognized that it's not as fatal as we thought it was still dangerous still worse than the flu but not as bad as we thought or we feared it could be i mean objectively the mortality is is much lower like at least a factor of 10 maybe a factor of 50 lower than initially thought do you think that the current way we're handling this the social distancing the mass the locking down is it does this make sense is it adequate or do you think\n\nthat we should move back to at least closer to where we used to be well i think proper hygiene is a good thing no matter what you know wash your hands and you know and if you're if you're coughing stay home or wear a mask this is not good you know um like they do that in japan that's like normal if you're if you're ill you you wear a face mask and you don't cough on people i think that that would be a great thing to to adopt in general throughout the world um washing your hands is also good well that's the speculation why men get it more than women because men are disgusting and we don't watch that disgusting it's true it's true yeah we're all my men in this room we're all gross yeah let's go to the restroom you can see us yes we're gross my daughter\n\nmy nine-year-old daughter yells at me she goes did you wash your hands she makes me go back and wash my hands hmm she's right nine years old if i had a nine-year-old boy do you think he would care i wouldn't give a if i wash my hands true um so yeah i think that there's definitely some silver linings here than in improved uh you know uh hygiene yeah and an awareness of potential yes and i think this has shaken up the the system uh system is like somewhat more bond with la la's layers of bureaucracy and i think that we've cut through some of that bureaucracy uh and if we you know at some point there probably will be a uh pandemic with with a with a high mortality rate uh debate about like what's high but i mean like someone that's killing a lot of 20 year\n\nolds let's say like it's yeah if you had like ebola type of mortality spanish flu something that uh tax immune systems of healthy people yeah yeah um yeah but it's a yeah like like killing large numbers of young healthy people that that's you know define that as like uh uh high mortality then that this is at least practice for something like that um and i think there's this you know given it's just a matter of time that there will be eventually some some such pandemic do you think that in a sense the one good thing that we might get out of this is the realization that this is a potential reality that we we got lucky in this sense i mean in people that didn't get lucky and died of course i'm not disrespecting their death and their loss but i'm saying overall\n\nas a as a culture as a community as a human race as a community this is not as bad as it could have been this is a good dry run for us to appreciate that we need far more resources dedicated towards the the understanding these diseases what to do in the case of pandemic and much more money that goes to funding treatments and and some preventative measures yeah absolutely um and i think i think there's a good chance it's highly likely i think coming out of this that we will develop uh vaccines that we didn't have before uh for uh quran viruses and other other viruses um and and possibly cures uh for for these and our understanding of uh viruses of this nature has improved dramatically because of the attention that it's received so there's definitely some\n\nyou know a lot of silver linings here um and potentially if we act correctly yeah yeah yeah there's uh i think there will be some amounts of lighting here no matter what um hopefully it can be more professive lighting than less yeah um so yeah this is this is uh it's like kind of like a practice run for something that had that that had a potential that might in the future have a serious uh like a really high mortality rate that and we kind of got to go through this with without without it being something that kills you know vast numbers of young healthy people yeah when you made a series of tweets recently uh you know uh i don't remember the exact wording but essentially you were saying free america now like let's think about that is it thank you but\n\nuh the the you know what was the how much do you pay attention to the response to that stuff and what was the response like did anybody go hey elon what the you doing did anybody pull you aside who does that who gets to do that to you well i mean i certainly get that there's no shortage of negative feedback on twitter you know oh yeah twitter yeah but i don't read that do you read it warzone you do sometimes though right you do read it yeah i mean scroll through the comments like as a meme warzone yeah i mean people knife you're good it's something i i enjoy about that just the there's a something about the the freedom of expression that comes from all these people that do attack you it's like well they if there was no vulnerability whatsoever they wouldn't\n\nattack you and it's like there's something about these millions and millions of perspectives that you you have to you have to appreciate even if it comes your way even if the storm hits you in the face sure you gotta appreciate wow how amazing is it that all these people do have the ability to express themselves you don't don't necessarily want to be there when the hits you sure you might want to get out of the way in anticipation of the storm but the fact that so many people have the ability to reach out and i think it's in a lot of ways it's uh i don't wanna say a misused resource but it's like giving monkeys guns they just start they start gunning down things that in front of them without any realization of what they're doing they have a rock they\n\nsee a window they throw it whoa look at that i got elon madd look at that this guy got mad at me this this i i took this person down on twitter i got this lady fired oh the business is going under because of twitter wars it seems like there's something about it that's this newfound thing that uh i want to say abuse but just i want to say that it's almost like you know you hit the button and things blow up you're like wow this is what else can we blow up sure um i mean i've been in the twitter war zone for for a while here so put your war zone you know take it takes a lot to phase me at this point yeah that's good too right like you develop a thick skin yeah you can't take it personally these people don't like actually know you you know like yeah it's\n\njust like you know so it's like if you're if you're fighting a war and there's like some opposing soldier that that shoots shoots at you it's not like they hate you they don't even know you right yeah yeah so just think of it like that like they're firing bullets or whatever um but they don't know you so don't take it personally there's something interesting about it too it's like uh like when you write something in you know 280 characters and they write something into it it's such a crude way it's like you know someone's saying sending opposing smoke signals that refute your smoke signals it's like it's so crude and especially when you're talking about something like neural link he's talking about some future potential where you're going to be able to\n\nexpress pure thoughts that get get conveyed through some sort of a universal language with no ambiguity whatsoever versus you know tweets well there'll always be some ambiguity but yeah tweets are it's hard um like the maybe there should be like a sarcasm flag or something you know right right um or i'm not you know just kidding or whatever you know like don't you know it seems like it would take away some of the fun from people that know it's sarcasm like if everybody knew that the onion wasn't real if you sent people articles yeah is something about someone getting angry at an onion article wow that's amazing you know what i mean where they don't realize what it is there's something fun about that for everybody else uh yeah i know it's pretty great\n\nit might be the best news source do you know who titania mcgrath is hilario it's uh andrew boyle he's a uh a british fellow a brilliant guy who's been on the podcast before and he has this uh fictional character this uh pseudonym titania mcgrath who's like this all the ultimate social justice warrior is this like like a female avatar a female avatar that's actually a computer conglomeration of a bunch of faces okay it's not really one person so one person can't be a victim and be angry he's sort of combined these faces to make this one perfect social justice more okay but the thing like i recognized it early on before i met him sure that this was parody this is this was just fun and then i love reading the people that don't recognize that they get angry\n\nsure and then they're really really like there's a lot of people that just get really furious sure about some of some fun to that there's some fun to the not picking up on the the the true nature of the signal i find twitter quite engaging how do you have the time um well i mean it's like five minutes every couple hours type of thing it's not like i'm sitting on an old day but even five minutes every couple hours if those are bad five minutes they might be bouncing around your head for the next 30.\n\nyeah you have to you know like i said take a certain amount of distance from you read this and you're like okay it's bullets being fired by an opposing army you know don't like it it's not like they they like so it's not like they know you it's like don't take it personally um did you feel the same way when when cnn had that stupid about ventilators with you i i found that both confusing and the the the yeah that was annoying it was annoying but what is also annoying as a person who reads cnn and wants to think of them as a responsible conveyor of the facts i would like to think that yeah i don't think cnn is that i think he used to be he used to be yeah um like what do you think's the the best source of just like information out there that's a good question\n\nyou know like let's say you're just like average citizen trying to just get the facts you know figure out what's going on like you know how to live your life and you know just looking for what what's going on in the world that it's hard to find something that that isn't you know that's that that's good yeah you know uh that you know not not trying to push some partisan angle not trying to not not sort of doing sloppy reporting and and just aiming for the most number of clicks and trying to maximize ad dollars and that kind of thing yeah you're just trying to figure out what's going on it's like i'm hard pressed where do you go i don't know i don't think there's any pure form my favorite places are the new york times and the la times and i don't trust\n\nthem 100 percent you know because also there's individuals that are writing these stories exactly and that's seems to be the problems these individual biases and these individual there's purposely distorted perceptions and then there's ignorantly reported facts and there's so many variables and you got to put everything through this filter of where is this person coming from do they have political biases do they have social biases do they are they are they upset because of their own shortcomings and they are they projecting this into the story sure it's so hard yeah i think like maybe just trying to find individual reporters that you think are good and yeah kind of falling down as opposed to the publication i go with whatever matt taibbi says okay i trust\n\nhim more than anybody all right matt taib he's onto something i just he's as far as investigative reporters in particular the way he reported the savings and loan crisis the way he reports everything i just i just listen to him above most above mo he's my go-to guy all right i'll check it out uh it's rolling stone's articles or his stuff on the savings alone crisis just like what in the and you know and he wasn't you know he's not an economist by any stretch of the imagination so he had to really sort of deeply embed himself in that world to try to understand it and to be able to report on it and was also with a humorous flair for now that's nice yeah um yeah but it's not that many of them there's it's hard and not a location where like we are no that's\n\nright you know we are no bullshit.\n\ncom like the one place where you can say this is what we know this is what we don't know this is what we think not this person's wrong and here's why like oh god damn it you know i can't you you don't know there's a lot of stuff that is open to interpretation yeah this this particular coronavirus issue that we're dealing with right now seems to be a great illuminator of that very fact is that there's so much data and there's this so there's so much that's open to interpret there's so many thing because it's all happening in real time right and like particularly right now in california we're in stage two tomorrow or friday two days from now stage two retail stores opening up things are changing like when no one knows the correct process that needs to take\n\nplace to save the most amount of lives but yet ensure that our our culture and that our our our economy survives it's a lot of speculation and guessing but if you go to certain places they'll tell you we know why and we know this and we know uh it's hard yeah i mean i in general i think that's like we should be concerned about um anything that's a massive infringement on our civil civil liberties yes you know so it's like you got to put a lot of weight on that um you know people a lot of people died to you know win independence with the country and and fight for the democracy that we have and uh you know we should treasure that and not and not give up our liberties too easily i think we've we i mean i think we probably did that actually well i like what\n\nyou said when you said that it should be a choice and that to require people to stay home require people to not go to work require and to to arrest people for trying to make a living this all seems wrong and i think it's a wrong approach it's a it's uh you're you're it's an infantilization of the society that daddy's going to tell you what to do fundamentally a violation of the constitution yeah freedom of assembly and you know it's just i mean i don't think these things stand up in court really they're arresting people for protesting yeah yeah because they're protesting and violating social distancing and these mandates that tell people that they have to stay home yeah these these are these would definitely not stand up uh you know if the supreme court\n\nhere i mean it's obviously a complete violation right yeah yeah and again this is not in any way um disrespecting the people who have died from this disease that's certainly a real thing to think of yeah i mean it it it just should be if if you're if you're at risk you should not be compelled to leave your house right um or leave a place of safety but you should also not be uh if you're not at risk or if you are at risk and you wish to take a risk with your life you should have the right to do that and it seems like at this point in time particularly our resources would be best served protecting the people that are at risk versus penalizing the people that are not at high risk for living their life the way they did particularly having a career and and\n\nmaking a living and feeding your family paying your bills keeping your store open keeping your restaurant open yes i mean there's there's a strong a strong downside to this yeah so yeah i just believe like you know if this is a free country you should be you know a lot allowed to do you know what you want as long as it does not endanger others but that's the thing right people this is the argument they will bring up like you are endangering others you should stay home for the people that that you even if you're fine even if you know you're gonna be okay there's certain people that will not be okay because of your actions they might get exposed to this thing that we don't have a vaccine for we don't have universally accepted treatment for and then we need\n\nto ca this is there's two arguments right the one argument is we need to keep going protect the weak protect the sick but let's open up the economy the other argument is stop placing money over human lives and let's shelter in place until we come up with some sort of a decision and let's figure out some way to develop some sort of universal income universal basic income plan or something like that to feed people during the during this time when we make this transition i think there's a yeah um as i said right yeah my opinion is if if somebody wants to stay home they should stay home and say something doesn't want to stay home they should not be compelled to stay home that's my opinion do you think if somebody doesn't like that well that's my opinion um\n\nso the now yeah um the the this notion though that uh you know you can just sort of send checks out everybody and and things will be fine it's not true obviously um the there's some people have this absurd like a view that the economy is like some magic horn of plenty like it it just makes stuff stuff you know whatever it just there's a magic quarter plenty and the goods and services they just come from this magic corner plenty and then if um like if somebody has more stuff than somebody else's because they took more from this magic corner plenty now let me uh just break it to uh the fools out there if you don't make stuff there's no stuff yeah so if you don't make the food if you don't process the food you know transport the food and what the whether\n\nyou know medical treatment getting getting your teeth fixed there's no stuff i become detached from reality you can't just legislate money and solve these things if you don't make stuff there is no stuff obviously we'll run out of the stores run out of the you know it's the whole the machine just grinds to a halt but the the initial thought on this virus the real fear was that this was going to kill hundreds of thousands if not millions of people instantaneously in this country it was going to do it very quickly if we didn't hunker down if we didn't shelter in place if we didn't quarantine ourselves or lock down do you think that the initial thought was a good idea based on the perception that this was going to be far more deadly than it turned out to\n\nbe maybe i think briefly briefly briefly but uh i think if you know any any kind of like sensible examination of what happened in china would lead to the conclusion that that is obviously not going to occur uh this this virus originated in wuhan there's like i don't know hundred thousand people a day leaving on uh so it that that it it uh it went everywhere very fast through throughout china throughout the rest of the world um and the fatality rate was was low don't you think though it's difficult to appreciate it's it's it's difficult to filter what the information is coming out of china to accurately really get a real true representation of what happened the the propaganda machine is very strong sure what the world health organization appears to have\n\nbeen complicit with a lot of their propaganda the thing is that american companies have massive supply chains in china like tesla for example we have hundreds of suppliers like tier one two three four suppliers throughout throughout china so we know if they are able to make stuff or not we know if they if they have issues or not then they they're china is back back at full steam um and until many uh pretty much every u.\n\ns company has some significant number of flies in china so you know you know if they're able to you know provide things or not or if there's you know high mortality rate tesla has seven thousand people in china so zero people died um zero okay so that that's a real statistic that's coming from yeah yeah you know those people yeah we literally we're in payroll do you think there's a danger of this same folks are there yeah do you think there's a danger of politicizing this whereas becomes like opening up the country's uh donald trump's it's his goal it's his and then anything he does is sort of uh there's there's people that are going to oppose it and come up with some reasons why he's wrong particularly in this climate whereas as we're leading up november\n\nand you know the the 2020 elections do you think that this is a real danger in terms of uh public's perception that trump wants to open it up so they knee-jerk oppose it because they oppose trump i i think there has been some politician this has been politicized you know in both directions really so it's um which is not great yeah but like i said separate apart from that i think there's the question of like you know where do several civil liberties fit in this picture you know yeah and uh what what what can the government make you do what can they make you not do and what you know what's what's okay right um and uh yeah i think we went too far do you think it's one of those things where once we've gone in a certain direction it's very difficult to make\n\na correction make a an adjustment to to realize like okay we thought it was one thing it's not it's not good but it's not what we thought it was going to be it's not what we feared so let's let's back up and reconsider let's do this publicly and say we were acting based on the information that we had initially that information appears to be faulty and uh here's how we move forward while protecting civil liberties while protecting what essentially this country was founded on which is a very agreed upon amount of freedom yeah that we respect and appreciate absolutely well i think we're we're rapidly moving towards opening up the country um it's going to happen extremely fast over the next few weeks so yeah something that would be helpful just add from an\n\ninformational level is um when reporting uh sort of covet cases to separate out diagnosed with covert versus uh had covert like symptoms yes because the list of symptoms that could be covered at this point is like a mile long so it's like a hard to if you're ill at all it's like it could be covered so just just to give people better information definitely diagnosed with covert or had covered like symptoms we're conflating those two so that one that it looks bigger than it is then uh if somebody dies is was covert a a primary cause of the death or not uh i mean if i mean if somebody has kova gets eaten by a shark we find their arm their arm has covered it's gonna get recorded as a cover death is that real basically not that bad but heart attacks strokes\n\nyou get hit by a bug cancer if you if you get hit by a bus go to the go to the hospital and die and then find that you have covered you will be recorded as a cover death why would they do that though well right now the so you know the road is hell is the rotel is paid with good intentions i mean he's mostly paid with bad intentions but there's you know some good intentions saving stones in there too um and the the the stimulus bill that was intended to help uh with the hospitals that were being overrun with with with code patients uh created an incentive to record something as covet that is difficult to say no to especially if your hospital is going bankrupt for lack of other patients so the hospitals are in a bind right now there's a bunch of hospitals\n\nare they're following doctors as you were mentioning they're you know they're your is half full you're it's hard hard to make ends meet so now you've got like you know if i just check this box i get eight thousand dollars put on a ventilator for five minutes i get thirty nine thousand dollars back or or i to fire some doctors so what's the what's this this is a tough moral quandary it's like what you can do that's the situation we have no what what's the way out of this what do you think is like if if you had the president's ear or if people wanted to just listen to you openly what do you think is the way out of this so let's let's clear up the data clear up the data so like i said uh something should be required as code but only if it is uh somebody\n\nhas been tested uh has received a positive positive cover test not if they simply have symptoms one of like 100 symptoms and then if if it is a cover death it must be separated or was this was coveted a primary primary reason for death or did they also have stage three cancer heart disease emphysema and got hit by a bus and had covered yeah i've read all this stuff about that about them uh diagnosing people as a covet death despite other variables this is not a this is not a this is not a a question this is what is occurring and where are you reading this from where are you getting this from the public health health officials have literally said this this is not this is not a question mark right but this is never this is unprecedented right like if someone\n\nhad the flu but also had a heart attack they would assume that that person died of a heart attack yes yeah so this is unprecedented is this because this is such a a popular i don't i don't want to use that word the wrong way but that's what i mean a popular subject and financial incentives yes and like so this is not some sort of it a moral indictment of of sort of hospital administrators it's just they're in it they're they're in a in a tough in a tough spot here um they actually don't have enough patience to to pay everyone for it to with without following following doctors and and firing staff and yeah they're running potentially going bankrupt so so then they're like okay well the stimulus bill says if you know we get all this you know money if we\n\nsay if if they if it's a cover death i'm like okay they coughed before they died in fact they're not even diagnosed with cover they simply if you had weakness a cough uh shortness of breath but frankly i'm not sure how you die without those things yeah you yeah but there's so many different things that you could attribute to covet too there's so many symptoms there's diarrhea headaches dehydration yeah cough yes but to be clear you you don't even need to have gotten a cover diagram you simply need to have had one of many symptoms and then have died for some reason and it's covered so then it makes the death count look very high and then we're then stuck in a bind because it looks like the death count's super high and not going down like it should be and\n\nnow so then we we should keep whatever you know keep you know the shelter in place stuff there and and keep people in their home you know confined people to homes so we need to break out of this this we're stuck in a loop yeah and i think the way to break out of this loop is to have clarity of information clarity of information will certainly help but altering perceptions public perception from people that are basically in a panic there's a lot of essentially well at least a month ago we're clearly in a panic i mean right where you know when you look around april 5th april 6th people were really freaking out but here we are may and may people are relaxing a little bit yes they're realizing like hey um i actually know a couple of people that got it it\n\nwas just a cough and i know some people that got it where nothing happened i know a lot of people have got it i know zero people who died that i mean about no yeah a lot of people got it yeah it's it's not what we feared we feared something much worse yeah that's correct so the adjustment's difficult to make so you said first of all we need real data we need just just parse out the data don't don't lump it all together no and then if if you give if you get people just parse out the data better clear clearer information um about uh like i said was this an actual code of a diagnosis or was it a or did they get the test and the test came back positive or do they just have some symptoms just parse those two out um and then parse out just uh if somebody died\n\ndid they die did they did they even have a covet test or or did they just have one of many symptoms like like like how do you die without weakness i don't know right it's impossible basically yeah it's a good point if you're gonna die you're gonna have shortness of breath weakness and you might cough a little um so so was it quantified what was it yeah that person did they actually have a covert test and and the tests come back positive and then um if if they died did they uh die where where covert was um it didn't have to be the main course but it was a significant contributor to their death or was it not a significant contributor to the death right it's not as simple as just because you had covet covet killed you definitely not right yeah yeah i mean\n\npeople die all the time and they have like flu and yes you know other colds and well we don't say that they died of those flu and other colds well that's what's so weird absolutely it's so popular and i use that word in a weird way but it's so popular that we've kind of forgotten people die pneumonia every day yeah people die of the flu didn't take a break oh kovitz got this i'm gonna sit this one out i'm gonna be on the bench i'm gonna wait until kovitz done before i jump back into the game of killing people no the flu is still here killing people i mean ev every year in the world several hundred thousand people die directly of the flu yeah not not tangentially right not every 61 000 in this country last year yeah and we're only five percent of the world\n\nand then there's cigarettes so oh man cigarettes not cigarettes will really kill you that's a weird one right we're terrified of this disease that were projected it could potentially kill 100 if not 200 000 americans this year with cigarettes kill 500 000 and you don't hear a peep out of any politician there's no one running for congress is trying to ban cigarettes there's no one running for senate that wants to put some education plan in place it's going to stop cigarettes in their tracks yeah i mean a long time like several years ago i mean along with 10 10 years ago i helped make a movie cold thank you for smoking oh i saw that yeah um it it yeah um yeah it's crazy uh smoking barbecuing alongside just bad news it's not not good you know you're turning\n\nyour lungs into smoke smoked beef and not great um so um yeah tylenol by the way also kills a lot of people yeah what is the number for tylenol over here um i'm not sure the exact number but i believe it until the opioid crisis i believe tylenol was the number one killer of all drugs um because wow basically it's uh if you have if you get drunk and take a lot of tylenol um acetaminophen essentially it causes liver failure so sevilla would like get get wasted and then like have a headache and then pop a tonic tylenol gardens whoa yeah curtains is a funny word yeah you know so but nobody's like you know raging against tylenol yeah it's weird except acceptable deaths are weird and that's the real the slippery slope about this uh people shaming people for\n\nwanting to go back to work you know other people are gonna die well if you drive do you drive oh well you should stop driving because people die from driving so you know you definitely should fill up all the swimming pools because like 50 people die every day in this country from swimming so let's not swim anymore yeah what is the really dangerous we need to chop down all the coconuts coconuts kill 150 people every year yes cut down all the coconut trees we need those people yes it's at a certain point in time it's like we yeah we're vulnerable and we're also we we're also we have a finite existence no matter what we do nobody lives forever right um i mean the the the i mean i think you want to look at say deaths as like the but for this uh disease whatever\n\nthey would have lived x number of years yeah you know so um you know if somebody dies when they're they're they're 20 and could live till 80 they they lost 60 years but if somebody dies when they're 80 and they might live until 81 they last one year yes so it's it's like how many life years were lost uh is is a probably you know the right metric to use i don't uh read my own comments but i do read other people's comments and i was reading this one little twitter beef that was going on where someone was saying that kovid takes an average of 10 years off people's lives and we should appreciate those 10 years and then someone else said that's not true i'm sure it's not true yeah definitely it's the twitter but someone else said the average age of people\n\nwho die from covid is older than the average age people die it's very let's say just say it's like it's it's about the same that's a beautiful way of looking at it i mean it's it's unfortunate it sucks but it sucks if grandpa dies of alzheimer's or emphysema or leukemia it sucks sure it sucks when someone you love dies yes but i i'm i mean actually if if this uh i think a lesson to be taken here that i think is quite important is that if um if you have you know your great grandparents and their their age and grandparents really be careful with uh with with uh you know any kind of flu or cold or something that that wouldn't is not dangerous to kids or young adults but is dangerous too to help the elderly is um if basically if your kids got a runny nose\n\nthey should stay away from their grandparents no matter what it is it's it's uh the things that are where a young immune system is has no problem and an older one has has a problem yeah and um in fact a lot of the a lot of the deaths are just are literally it's tragic but they're they're intra family um it's the the the little little kid had it had a you know called or flew and give it to grandpa yeah yeah they have the family gathering and they don't know that this is a big deal but it's it's just important to remember when you get older your immune system is just not that strong and uh and and so just be be careful with your with with your you know loved ones or elderly and i think there is some true objective um understanding of the immune system and\n\nthe ways to boost that immune system and i really think that that that information should be that should be distributed in a way a non-judgmental way but like look this is this is a way that we can all like this is a scientifically proven way that we can boost our immune system and it might save your life and it might save the life of your loved ones and maybe we could teach this to our grandparents and our parents and and people that are vulnerable you know vitamin c heat shock proteins all these different variables that we know contribute to a stronger immune system yeah um actually just um a thing that that is is is tough uh if like when you as you get older it's it's hard to be you pretend to put on weight you know i certainly that's happening with\n\nme you know like as the older i get i'm like damn it's harder to stay lean uh that's for sure um and and so actually being being overweight is is a big deal yeah just uh it's a fact uh well yeah the new york hospital said it was the number one factor for severe uh kovid symptoms was obesity that was number one factor it is that that's yes exactly but it's also we live in a world where people want to be sensitive to other people's feelings so yeah absolutely we don't want to bring up the fact that being fat's bad for you it's a judgment on your food's great yeah i do love food yeah and i mean i mean to be totally frank i mean speaking for myself i'd i'd rather eat tasty food and live a shorter life yeah you know yeah those moments of enjoying a great meal\n\nyeah and then even talking about they're valuable they're worth something yeah it's not we don't want to eat soylent green and live to be 160.\n\ntasty if it was great one of the best things about life it really is yeah it's an art form as well it's like fine food it's a it's a it's a it's a delicious sand castle it's temporary it doesn't last very long but there's something about it that's very pleasing yeah yeah um yeah i mean i i don't know what what advice to give like um maybe smaller have tasty food with smaller amounts of it yeah and i think regulated feeding windows really the way to go some sort of an intermittent fasting approach sure when i started doing that i i i i found myself to be quite a bit healthier when i've deviated from that i've gained weight so how what's what's uh 16 hours well 16 hours yeah so like at night or yeah yeah yeah so i get to a certain point and then i count\n\nout i usually uh hit the stopwatch on my phone and then i look at uh 15 hours and i'm like okay got an hour before i can eat yeah and so anything in between that is just water or coffee actually you know like um this may be a useful bit of advice for for people but uh eating before you go to bed is a real bad idea and actually negatively affects your sleep yeah um and it can actually cause uh it heartburn that you don't even know is happening and and that subtle heartburn uh affects your sleep because you're you're horizontal and your body's digesting so if you want to improve the quality of your sleep um and and um you know uh you know be healthier uh it's it's do not eat right before we go to sleep yeah it's like one of the worst things you could do\n\ni had some of the biggest mistakes i've ever met i've i've done that uh particularly after comedy shows i'm starving i'll come home and i'll eat and then i go to bed and i just feel like and i wake up in the middle of the night it's gonna it's gonna crush your sleep and it's gonna it's gonna damage your uh pilot your pyloric sphincter and your esophagus and it's it's it's so in fact drinking and then going to sleep is that's one of the worst things you could yes um so uh just try to avoid drinking and and you know um small amounts of alcohol that evidence suggests it's not it doesn't have a negative effect i put in the same category as delicious food it kind of makes things a little more fun yeah yeah i like it i mean some of the people some of the people\n\nwho have left the longest you know um there's a woman in france who i think maybe has the record or close to it and she had a glass of wine every day every day you know yeah small small amounts is fine um but um yeah this is like a i i learned this like quite late in life it's like just avoid having alcohol and avoid eating at least two or three hours before going to sleep and your quality of life will your quality of sleep will improve and your general health will improve a lot for sure this is a it's a big deal and i think not widely not widely known do you have time to exercise um a little bit um do you train or anything um i do although i haven't seen for a while but um yeah especially yeah from out like uh you know say we're working on starship or\n\nsomething in south texas and i'm just living in my i got a little little house there in bukuchika village um and i don't have much to do so we're like i'm working and i was like dude just lift some weights or something you know um maybe uh i i i like i don't some people love running i don't love running um but what do you like to do exercise wise um too totally frank i wouldn't exercise at all if i could but if if i i'd prefer not to exercise but if i'm going to exercise and you know lift some weights and um and then kind of run on the treadmill and maybe watch a show that you know if there's a compelling show that like pulls you in right right right yeah that's a good thing to do yeah watch a good movie or yeah yeah episode of black mirror or something\n\nlike that that's great man don't watch black mirror before going to bed either well don't watch black mirror today it's too accurate yeah exactly it's like wait this already happened in real life yeah they're too close it's too close well even didn't jamie did you say that the the guy who makes black mirror mics off uh yeah yeah he said he it's not a good time to start season six yeah he wants to hold off because reality he's nailed it is black mirror oh man it's like he's gonna have to like re reassess and and attack it from a different angle yeah you should try something that's fun to do that's not just like like learn a martial art or something like that i did martial arts when i was kid like did you would you um i did taekwondo i did karate uh kaika\n\nshrinkai all right cool and um judo um also you you really branched out yeah um so um and did brazilian jiu jitsu briefly did you yeah where i made in palo alto really yeah oh no i was gonna suggest that that's a great thing for people like that's a thing about jiu jitsu if you look at it from the outside you think oh a bunch of meat heads strangling each other sure but they're some of the smartest people i know or jiu jitsu fiends because they they get they first of all they get introduced to it because usually either they want to exercise or learn some self-defense but then they realize that it's essentially like a language with your body like you're having an argument with someone with some sort of a physical language and it's really complex and the\n\nmore access to vocabulary and the sharper your words are sure the the more you'll succeed in these ventures that's really also an accurate analogy of what jiu jitsu is yeah i mean i kind of i mean probably like a lot of people uh for the the way uh early day uh the first mma fights and joyce gracie and he was like incredible and it was like just like technique yeah yeah it was like you know winning against people way bigger and that kind of thing it's just like oh this is cool it was what martial arts were supposed to be when we were as we were kids yeah when you saw bruce lee up all these big giant guys like wow martial arts allow you to beat someone far bigger and stronger than you right most of the time that's not real especially if they know martial\n\narts too it's like oh no yes but in the ufc when hoist gracie off of his back was strangling dan severin with his legs he was like holy yeah this guy's being pinned by this big giant wrestler and he wraps his legs around his neck and chokes him to the point the guy has to surrender yeah amazing yeah it was amazing i mean horse got beaten up pretty bad in some of those he did well he definitely had some rough fights but he won he won yeah he's a legend and but what it showed in i mean i'm a huge lover of jiu jitsu what it showed is that there is a method for uh for diffusing these situations with technique and and knowledge yeah and i think it's also a great way to exercise too because it's almost like the exercise is secondary to the learning of the thing\n\nthe the exercises like you want like and you want to develop strength and conditioning just so that you could be better at doing the thing and the analogy that i use is like if you imagine if you had a race car and you could actually give the race car better handling and more horsepower just from your own focus and effort sure that's really what it's like yeah totally yeah when am i going to have my my kids i should say i sent my kids to uh jiu jitsu uh since they were like i don't know six oh really yeah oh that's awesome yeah it's it's a great thing to learn it really is seems like a good yes yeah maybe something like i mean even if you just have someone who hits that holds the pads for you like you get a workout in and to be fun um when am i going\n\nto be able to buy one of them roadsters when's that happening well i can't you know say exactly when but uh we got to get you know those this cover thing's kind of throwing us for a loop i'm sure um so um not to blame everything in the code but um it's you know certainly set us back on on progress for you know some number of months um the i mean things we've got to get get done uh ahead of roadster are um you know ramping up model y production um that'll be a great great car it is a great car getting the berlin gigafactory built and and also building y getting expanding the shanghai factory which is going great and um get the you know there's a cyber truck semi truck roadster um roaster is kind of like dessert so like we we gotta get the you know eating\n\npotatoes and greens and stuff you know like but roaster comes before cyber truck i mean i think we should do cyber truck first before before road before started interesting i'm not mad at that some other things for roadster uh they're they're you know the tri-motor uh plaid powertrain we're gonna have that in model s uh so that's like part one of the ingredients that's needed for for roadsters the the plaid powertrain the more advanced bat you know battery vacuum kind of thing i wanted to ask you about this before i forgot what there's a company that's called apex is taking your teslas and they're giving it a wider base and wider tires and a little bit more advanced suspension sure how do you feel about that are you guys do you work with them are you\n\ncool with those people yeah i mean just i'm off yeah go ahead they're jazzing stuff up with carbon fiber and doing a bunch of interior choices you're cool with you can't with that you don't have time so is it good that someone comes along and has a sort of specialty operation yeah i got no problem that's what it's called right it's like jmg is it called apex yeah i gotta unplug performance as apex that's right unplug performance yeah yeah you could for sure um you know lighten the car up and uh improve to tire traction and have you seen that company's stuff what they do i don't know specifically but there's it's pretty dope yeah they make a pretty dope looking they take model s and they they widen it and give it a bunch of carbon fiber that's it right\n\nthere that looks pretty nice yeah it does now the the plaid version of the model s you are you going to widen the track and doing a bunch do a bunch of different i know you guys are testing at the nurburgring can you not talk about that well i think we got to leave that for you know proper sort of product unveil i understand yeah i understand um last time you were here you convinced me to buy a tesla i bought it and it's insane oh great glad you like it um i don't it's not just pretty fun it's like i the way i've described it is it makes other cars seem stupid they just seem dumb like i love dumb things i love dumb cars like i love campfires yeah i love campfires i have a 1993 porsche that's air-cooled sure it's like re it's not that fast it's really\n\nslow compared to the tesla yeah really so it's really quite slow yeah but there's something engaging about the mechanical this is like the the gears and it's very it's very analog but it's so stupid in comparison to the tesla like when i want to go somewhere in the model s i hit the gas and just goes yeah it just it like violates time yeah yeah um yeah you've tried it like ludicrous plus and stuff yeah yeah cool oh yeah we did just did a software update where it'll do it like a cheetah stance so uh yeah so it's it because it's got a dynamic air suspension so it lowers the back oh jesus yeah just like uh like a sprinter basically right like what do you do if you're a sprinter you're going to hunker down and then uh so i shaved like a 10th of a second off\n\nzero six i mean like you know it is pretty fun it's so i've taken so many people and i'm like i take them for the holy moment i'm like you ready like hang on there and then a stomp on the gas i've never felt anything like it it's confusing yeah it really is the the instant torque the instant torque and just the sheer acceleration is baffling it's baffling it's baffling they've never felt it no it's faster than falling it's crazy it's so fast it's a roller coaster yeah and my family yells at me when i stomp the gas like um i tell my kids i'm like you want to feel it you want to feel it like do it do it do it my wife's like don't do it yeah and even if i just do it on the highway for a couple of seconds that's pretty exciting yeah it's very it's like having\n\na roller coaster on tap you know it really is like a roller coaster on top yeah without the loopty loops but it's the the pinning to your seat it seems like you're not supposed to be able to experience that from some sort of a can you know a consumer vehicle that you can just a regular person could buy if you have the money it seems too too crazy and then the idea of this roadster is a half of a second faster than that yeah that's madness well if that roads with a roadster we're going to do some things that are kind of unfair so we're going to take some things from like you know from uh kind of like rock rocket world and put them on the car so oh i read about that explain that like what do you do well like i said we can't oh the product unveiled right\n\nhere but but it's gonna do some things that aren't fair and then the the when we do the unveil of the roadster let me just say that anyone who's been waiting they won't be sorry it's they won't be sorry oh i'm sure well anything that goes zero to sixty what is it one point nine is that the zero 0-60 that's the base model that's good what's the top of the food chain model okay okay faster than that let's just say faster yeah that seems so crazy to me now what was it like when the dude threw the steel balls at the window and they were supposed to not break and it broke well yeah i mean i know any circumstances are you know you know that our demos are authentic [Laughter] so i was not expecting that and i and then i think i muttered under my breath you didn't\n\nget mad though no you didn't steve jobs it um no i i i definitely swore uh but you know i didn't think the mic would pick it up but it did um and uh but so like we practiced this you know behind the scenes yeah i would like it tesla we don't do we don't do like tons of practice for for our demos because we we work we're working on the cars like we you know we're building new technologies and and improving the the fundamental products so we're not spending it like doing like hundreds of you know practice things or anything like that we don't have time for that um but the the just hours before the demo um both franz uh you know uh is a head of design and and i were in the studio throwing steel balls at the window and it's bouncing right off um and like\n\nokay this seems pretty good seems like we got it okay um and then we think what happened was that um when we when when franz hit the the the door with the sledgehammer you know sure like like this is this is like yeah yeah yeah exoskeleton you know high strength hardened steel you can literally take wind up with a sledgehammer you know full double-handed sledgehammer and hit the door and there's not even a dent it's cool but we think that that cracked the corner of the glass at the bottom and then once you crack the corner of the glass that you just came over so uh then when you threw the bowl that that's what cracked the glass so it didn't go through though it didn't go through that's true that's true it didn't shatter the whole thing like a regular\n\nwindow would either which would just dissolve yeah right so in hindsight the ball should have been first sledgehammer second yeah yeah you live you learn yeah exactly listen man uh we've taken up a lot of your time you had a child yeah recently it's amazing that you had the time to come down here and i really appreciate that i appreciate everything you do man i i'm i'm glad you're out there and uh i really appreciate you coming down here and sharing your perspective well i think you got a great show thanks for having me on thank you my pleasure my pleasure elon musk ladies and gentlemen good night all right that should get a little i should get a little play that was great","textByLang":{"en":"welcome back here we go again great to see you and congratulations thank you um you will never forget what is going on in the world when you think about when your child is born you will know for the rest of this child's life you were born during a weird time that's for sure that is for sure they're probably the weirdest that i can remember uh yeah yeah um and he was born on uh may the fourth and yeah that's hilarious too yeah may the fourth be with him yeah exactly it has to be hopefully i sure hope so perfect yes i mean that was the perfect day for you and how do you say the name well uh is it a placeholder first of all my partner is the one that actually mostly came up with the name congratulations to her yeah yeah she's great at names um so i mean\n\nit's just x the letter x um and then the ae is like pronounced ash yeah and then a12 a12 is my contribution oh why a12 uh archangel 12 the precursor to the sr-71 coolest plane ever that's true i i agree with you i don't know i'm not familiar with it i know what the sr-71 is yeah yeah yeah i know what that is so the sr71 came from a cia program uh called archangel oh it's the archangel project and then archangel 12.\n\noh wow what a dope-looking plane yeah oh okay i got it yeah well as a person who's uh very much into uh aerial travel as you are that's uh perfect that's pretty great yeah pretty great um so is it does it feel strange to have a child while this craziness is going does it feel like you've had children before is this any weirder uh it's actually i think it's better uh being older and having a kid i appreciate it more um yeah babies are awesome they are pretty awesome they're awesome yeah when i didn't have my any of my own i would see other people's kids and i didn't not like them sure but i wasn't drawn to them sure but now when i see little people's kids i'm like oh i think of them like these little love packages yeah little love bugs yeah it's just you\n\nyou think of them differently when you see them come out and then grow and then eventually start talking to you like your whole idea what a baby is is very different yeah so now as you you know get older and get to appreciate it as a mature fully formed adult it must be really pretty wonderful yeah wonderful it's great but babies are awesome yeah yeah that's uh that's great um yeah um i mean also i've i've spent a lot of time on ai and neural nets and so you can sort of see the kind of the brain develop which is you know what an ai neural net is trying to simulate what a brain does basically um and you can sort of see the it learning very quickly you know it's just wow see things fire so you're talking about the neural net you're not talking about an\n\nactual baby i don't know about actually an actual baby but both of them yes but the word neural net comes from the the brain it's like a net of neurons so you know it's like the yeah humans are the you know original gangster the neural net that's a great way to put it yeah so when you're programming artificial intelligence where you're working with artificial intelligence art are they specifically trying to mimic the developmental process of a human brain in a lot of ways there's some ways that are different um you know an analogy that's often used is like you know we we don't make a submarine swim like a fish but we take the principles of of how you know what of hydrodynamics and apply them to a submarine i've always wondered as a lay person do you try\n\nto achieve the same results as a human brain but through different methods or do you try to copy the way a human brain achieves results i mean the essential elements of an ai neural net are really very very similar to a human brain neural net yeah it's having the multiple layers of neurons and you know back propagation these all these things are what your brain does you know it's sort of yeah um you have a layer of neurons that goes through a series of intermediate steps to ultimately cognition and that and then it'll reverse those steps and go back and forth and go all over the place um it's um yeah it's it's interesting very interesting yeah i would imagine like the thought of programming something that is eventually going to be smarter than us that\n\none day it's going to be like why did you do it that way like when artificial intelligence becomes sentient they're like oh you tried to mimic yourself like this so much better process cut out all this nonsense but like there are elements that are the same but just almost like like an aircraft does not fly like a bird right yeah it doesn't flap its wings but the wings the way the wings work and generate lift is the same as bird now you're in the middle of this uh this strange time where you're selling your houses you say you don't want any material possessions and i've been seeing all that and i've been really excited to talk to you about this yeah because it's an interesting thing to come from a guy like yourself like why are you doing that i'm slightly\n\nsad about it actually but if you're sad about it why are you doing it i think i think possessions kind of weigh you down then they're kind of an attack vector you know people say hey billionaire you got all this stuff like well and now i don't have stuff now what are you gonna do attack vector meaning like people target it yeah um interesting yeah but you're obviously gonna so you're gonna rent a place yeah okay and get rid of everything except clothes no i said like almost everything so it's like keep a couple teslas yeah sure yeah kind of have to test product and stuff um yeah those things that have sentimental value for sure are keeping those here um yeah so do you feel like what's worse that could happen right you're fine yeah you could always buy\n\nmore stuff if you don't like it especially yeah i mean from the money that you sell all your stuff you could buy new stuff but do you you feel like people define you by the fact that you're you're wealthy and that they define you in a pejorative way for sure i mean not everyone but right you know there's uh for sure in recent like years billionaire has become a per jar like it's in a projective so like it's like that's a bad thing um which i mean i think doesn't make a lot of sense in most cases if you've if you're done if you basically uh organized a company like see like how do how does this wealth arise it's if you organize people in a in a better way to produce products and services that are better than what existed before and you have some ownership\n\nin that company then that that essentially gives you the right to allocate more capital so it's there's a conflation of consumption and capital allocation so let me say warren buffett for example and to get totally frank i'm not his biggest fan but uh you know he does a lot of capital allocation um and he reads a lot of a lot of sort of annual reports of companies and all the accounting and it's pretty boring really um and he's trying to figure out is does coke or pepsi deserve more capital i mean that's i mean it's kind of a boring job if you ask me um but uh you know it's still a thing that's important to figure out like which is a company deserving of more or less capital should that company grow or expand is it making products and services that are\n\nbetter than others or worse and you know should you know if a company is making compelling products and services it should get more capital and if it's not it should get less we'll go out of business well there's a big difference too between someone who's making an incredible amount of money designing and engineering fantastic products versus someone who's making an incredible amount of money by investing in companies or moving money around in the stock market or doing things along those lines it's it's a different thing and to put them all in the same category seems it's it's very simple and as you pointed out it's an attack vector yeah for sure yeah i mean i think it's it's really i i do think they're in the in the united states especially there's an\n\nover allocation of talent uh in finance and law uh basically too many smart people go into finance and law so you know this is both a compliment and a criticism we should have of i think fewer people doing law and fewer people doing finance and more people making stuff yeah yeah well that would certainly be better for all involved if they made better stuff yeah yeah absolutely um and and you know manufacturing used to be highly valued in the united states and these days it's not it's it's often looked down upon which i think is wrong yeah well i think that people are kind of learning that particularly because of this whole pandemic and this relationship that we have with china that it there's a lot of value into making things into making things here yes\n\nsomebody's got to do the the real work yeah you know and um you know like making a car it's an honest days that's not honest day is living that's for sure you know or making anything really or providing valuable service um like providing you know greater entertainment good information but these are all valuable things to do um you know so yeah there should be more more of it did you have a moment where is this something that this idea of getting rid of your material possessions is something that built up over time or did you have a moment of realization where you realize that yeah i've been thinking about it for a while um you know part of it is like i like have a bunch of houses but i don't spend a lot of time in most of them and that doesn't seem like\n\na good use of assets like somebody could probably be enjoying those houses and get better use of them than me so don't you have gene wilder's house i do that's amazing that's awesome wow exactly what you'd expect did you request that the buyer not it up yeah that's a requirement oh a requirement that's that's a good requirement yeah not in that case in that house yeah it'll probably sell for last but still i don't care uh he's a legend yeah he would want his soul he'd want his essence yeah in the building it's and it's there that's a real quirky quirky house yeah what what makes you say it's there like what do you get out of it um i mean all the all the cabinets are like handmade and they're like odd shapes and there's like doors to nowhere and strange\n\nlike car doors and tunnels and really odd odd paintings on the wall and um yeah did you ever live in it it's very quirky i did live in it briefly yeah but why do you buy houses like if you own all these houses do you just get bored and go i think i'd like to have that well i you know had one house and then the junior wilder house right across the road from me from from my main house and it was going to get it was going to get sold and then torn down and turned into you know be a big construction zone for three years and i was like well i think i'll i'll buy it and preserve the spurt of gene water and not have a giant construction zone and then the you know this i started having like some privacy issues where like people would like less people just like\n\ncome to my house and you know start climbing over the walls and stuff i feel like man um so then i saw like what a house some of the houses around my house and then i thought at one point well you know it'd be cool to to build a house so then i acquired some properties at the top of samara road uh and which is got a great view and it's like okay well these some bunch of sort of small older houses they're going to get torn down anyway i was like well you know if i collect these like little little houses then i can build something you know i don't know artistic like a you know dream house type of thing what's a dream house for elon musk like some tony stark type yeah definitely yeah you gotta have the the dome that opens up with the stealth helicopter and\n\nthat kind of thing you know yeah for sure yeah yeah um but but then i was like man do i really want does it really make sense for me to spend time designing and building a house and i'd be real you know get out like ocd on the little details and the design and or should i be allocating that time to getting us to mars i should probably do the latter so you know like what's more important mars or a house i like mars okay is that really how you think like that it'd be better off planning on a trip to mars or getting people to mars yeah yeah definitely i mean you can only do so many things right right so how you can i don't know how you do what you do anyway i don't i don't understand how you can run bull with a boring company tesla spacex all these different\n\nthings you're doing constantly i just i don't understand i mean you explained last time you were here how you sort of allocate your time and and how hectic it is and insane i still don't the the productivity is uh baffling just doesn't make sense how you can get so much done well i think i do have high productivity but even with that there's still some upgraded cost of time and allocating time to building a house even if it was a really great house it still is not a good use of time relative to developing the rockets necessary to get us to mars and helping sell sustainable energy uh spacex and tesla are by far you know by the the most amount of like brain cycles um you know boring company does not take you know like less than one percent of brain cycles\n\nand um and then this neural link which is i don't know maybe it's like five percent and then five percent that's that's a good chunk it's a good chunk yeah yeah we were talking about that last time and you were trying to figure out when it was actually going to go live when it's actually going to be available are you testing on people right now no we're not testing people yet but i i think it won't be too long i think we may be able to implant a neurolink in less than a year in a person i think and when you do this is there any tests that you have to do before you do something like this to to see what percentage of people's bodies are going to reject these things is it put is it there is there a potential for rejection it's a very low potential for rejection\n\ni mean you can think of it like people put in you know heart monitors and um you know things for epileptic seizures and deep brain stimulation um obviously like you know artificial hips and right knees and that kind of thing so the probability of i mean like it's so it's well known like what will cause rejection what what will not um it's definitely harder when you've got something that is sort of reading and writing neurons that's that's generating a current pulse and reading current pulses that's that's a little harder um then then say uh passive device but it's still you know very doable and um yeah there there are people who have primitive devices in in their brains right now what kind of devices i like deep brain stimulation is i think for parkinson's\n\nis like has really changed people's lives in a big way um which is kind of remarkable because it kind of like zaps your brain um it's like kicking the tv type of thing um and you think like man kicking the tv shouldn't work it does sometimes yeah yeah the old old tvs it did my grandpa used to slap the top for sure yeah it would work sometimes yeah so this deep right simulation uh implanted devices in the brain that uh have changed people's lives for the better like fundamentally well let's talk about what you can talk about to what neurolink is because the last time you were here you really couldn't discuss it and then there was a i guess a press release or something that sort of outlined yeah that that happened quite a bit after the last time you were\n\nhere so what exactly is it how do you do what what happens if someone ultimately does get a neurolink installed what will take place well for version one of the device it would be it basically implanted in your skull so but it would be flush with your skull so you basically uh take out a chunk of skull replace put the neurologic device in there um you put the the electrode you'd insert the electrode threads very carefully into the the brain and uh and then you you know stitch it up and um and you wouldn't even know that somebody has it and then and and so then it it can interface basically anywhere in any anywhere in your brain um so it could be something that uh you know helps cure say uh eyesight like give you returns your eyesight even if you've like\n\nlost your optic nerve type of thing uh really yeah yeah absolutely hearing obviously um i mean pretty much anything that where that it could in principle fix almost anything that is wrong with the brain and it could restore uh limb functionality so if you've got uh interface into the motor cortex and then an implant that's say that's like a microcontroller and near muscle groups uh you you could then create a sort of a neural shunt that restores somebody who's a quadriplegic to full functionality like they can walk around be normal whoa yeah so maybe slightly better slightly better over time yes you mean with future iterations like the you know six million dollar man although these days that would that doesn't matter yeah six billion dollars so the the\n\nhole would be small how big would the hole be that you have to drill and then replace with this piece it's only one hole well um yeah the device we're working on right now is about it's about an inch in diameter um and your skull is pretty thick by the way so skulls are mine is for sure it might actually literally um i mean if you're a big if you're a big guy your skull is actually fairly thick um skulls like it's like seven to 14 millimeters um so that's probably a couple inches a half inch you know half inch thick skull ish so um yeah yeah so that's a fair bit of like our we got quite a coconut going on here it's not it's not like some egg shell oh yeah i believe you um so the yeah you basically implant the device uh and so you would be like a one inch\n\nsquare one inch in diameter yeah like so an inch circle like a circular yeah i think like a like a smart watch or something like that okay yeah okay so you take this one-inch diameter like ice fishing right you ever go ice fishing um no but i'd like to it's great yeah it's really fun so you basically take an auger and you you drill through the surface of the ice yeah and you create a small hole and you can dunk your line in there so this is like that you're ice fishing on the top of your skull and then you cork it yeah and you replace that say one inch diameter piece of skull with this neural link device and that has a battery and a and a bluetooth and a inductive charger um and then you and and now then you also got to insert the electrodes uh so the\n\nelectrode is very carefully inserted uh with our with a robot that we developed uh that's you know very carefully putting in the electrodes and avoiding you know and any veins or arteries uh so it's you know doesn't create trauma so through this one-inch diameter device electrodes be inserted and they will find their way like tiny wires basically tiny wires and they'll find their way to specific areas of the brain to stimulate no you literally put them where they're supposed to go oh okay yeah how long will these wires be uh i mean they usually go in like you know depending on where it is like you know two or three millimeters so they just find the spots yeah wow um and then um yeah then you put the device in and that that gets uh that that replaces the\n\nlittle piece of skull that was taken out uh and then you you stitch up the hole and and um and you just have it look like a little scar and that's it well this would be replaceable or reversible yes like if someone can't take it anymore i'm too smart i can't take it yeah you can totally check it out and what is the besides restoring limb function and eyesight and hearing which are all amazing is there are there any cognitive benefits that you anticipate from something like this uh yeah i mean you could for sure um uh i mean basically it's a generalized um sort of uh thing for for fixing any kind of brain injury in in principle like if you or if you've got like like severe epilepsy or something like that it could it could just it could just sort of stop\n\nthe epilepsy from occurring like it could detect it in real time and then fire a counter pulse and stop the epilepsy um if um i mean there's a whole range of brain injuries like if somebody gets a stroke they could lose the ability to speak um you know that that'll stack could also be fixed so if you've got like stroke damage or if you lose say you know muscle control over part of your face or something like that i think and then when when you get old you tend to if you get like you know alzheimer's or something like that then you lose memory and this could help you with you know restoring your memory that kind of thing restoring memory and what what is happening that's allowing it to do that like the wires these small wires stimulating these areas of\n\nthe brain and then is it that the areas of the brain are they're they're losing some sort of electrical force like what it what is happening yeah yeah it's it's like it's like i think it's like a bunch of circuits and there's some like circuits that are broken and we can like uh fix those circuits substitute for those circuit circuits and so a specific frequency will go through this yeah specific in that would is the process figuring out how much or how little has to be how how much these areas of the brain have to be juiced up yeah i mean there's still a lot of work to do so when i say you know we got a shot at probably putting it in in a person in you know a within a year i think that's that's what that's exactly what i mean i think we have a chance\n\nof putting input into one and having them having them be healthy and and restoring some functionality that they've lost the fear is that eventually you're gonna have to cut the whole top of someone's head off and put a new top with a whole bunch of wires if you want to get you know the real turbocharged version the p100d of brain stimulation i mean ultimately if you if you want to go with full ai symbiosis you'll probably want to do something like that symbiosis is a scary word when it comes to ai it's optional [Laughter] i would hope so yeah it's just i mean once you enjoy the dr manhattan lifestyle once you once you become a god seems very very unlikely you're going to want to go back to being stupid again i mean you you literally could fundamentally\n\nchange the way human beings interface with each other yes you wouldn't need to talk i'm so scared of that but so excited about it at the same time is that weird yeah i mean the i think this is one of the paths to um you know i think like what like ai is getting better and better um so now let's assume it's sort of like a benign ai scenario even in a benign scenario we're kind of left behind you know we're we're not we're not along for the ride um we're just too dumb right so so how do you go along for the ride um yeah so you can't beat them join them so um and we're already we're already a cyborg to some degree right because you've got your phone you've got your laptop glasses yeah yeah guitar electronic devices and i mean today if you your phone if you\n\nif you don't bring your phone along it's like you have missing limb syndrome that's like you know it feels like something's really really missing so we're already partly um part you know partly a cyborg um or an ai symbiote essentially um it's just that the data rate to the electronics is slow so especially output like you're just going with your thumbs i don't know like what's your data rate maybe optimistically 100 bits per second that's being generous um and now the computer can communicate at like you know 100 terabits you know so so certainly you know gigabits are a trivial at this point so this this is like you know basically your computer could do a mil do things a million times faster or at a certain point it's like talk they as like talking to\n\na tree okay it's boring you talk to a tree it's very not very entertaining um so um so if you if you can solve the the data rate issue and your especially output but input two then you can improve the symbiosis that is already occurring between mana machine so you you can improve it in what when you said you won't have to talk to each other anymore we used to joke around about that i i've joked around about that a million times in this podcast that one day in the future there's going to come a time where you can read each other's minds and well you'll be able to interface with each other in some sort of a non-verbal non-physical way where you will transfer data back and forth to each other without having to actually use your mouth and make noises exactly\n\nso when you like what happens when you when like let's say you've got some complex idea that you're trying to convey to somebody else and how do you do that well your brain spends a lot of effort compressing a complex concept into words and there's a there's a lot a lot of loss information loss that occurs when compressing a complex concept into words and then you say those words those words are then interpreted then they're decompressed by the person who is listening and they they will at best get a very incomplete understanding of what you're trying to convey it's very difficult to convey a complex concept with precision because you've got compression decompression you may not even have heard all the words correctly and so communication is difficult\n\nyou know what we have here is a failure to communicate cool and luke yes and there's a great movie yeah there's an interpretation factor too like you can choose to interpret certain series of words in in different ways and they're dependent upon tone dependent upon social cues even facial expressions sarcasm there's a lot of variables sarcasm is difficult yes yeah and so one of the things that i i've said is like that there could be potentially a universal language that's created through computers that particularly young kids would pick up very quickly like my kids do tick tock and all this jazz and i don't know what they're doing they just know how to do it and they know how to do it really quickly like they learn really quickly they show me how to edit\n\nthings and yeah it's if you taught a child from first grade on how to use some new universal language i mean essentially like a rosetta stone and something that's done that interprets your thoughts and you can convey your thoughts with no room for interpretation with clear very clear that where you know what a person's saying and you can tell them what you're saying and there's no need for noises no need for mouth noises no need for these sort of accepted ways that we've uh sort of evolved to make sounds that we all agree we through our cultural dictionary right we agree or certainly we could bypass all that yeah we can still do it for for sentimental reasons right like campfires yeah yeah exactly i don't need campfires i don't need to roast marshmallows\n\nkind of fun right um so yeah um yeah i think you would in principle you would be able to communicate very quickly and with far more precision ideas and language would i'm not sure what would happen to language but you could probably within a situation like this that you would be able to just kind of like the matrix you you want to speak a different language in a problem right that's why it just downloaded the program right so at least for the first iterations first few iterations we'll just be able to use like i i know that google has uh their some of their pixel buds have the ability to interpret languages in real time sure yeah you can hear it and they'll it'll play things back to you in whatever language you choose so to be something along those lines\n\nyeah for the first few iterations well the first few iterations are i mean what i'm talking about is like in the limit over time you know with a lot of development um the first few iterations really in the first few versions all we're going to be trying to do is solve brain injuries um so so it's like don't don't worry that that's not going to sneak up on you this this will take a while how many years before you don't have to talk if the if the development continues to accelerate then maybe like five years five to ten years that's quick that's really quick that's the best case scenario no talking anymore in five years best case scenario but i'm 10 10 years more like it i've always speculated that aliens could potentially be us in the future because if\n\nyou look at like the size their heads and the fact that they have very little muscle and then they don't use their mouth anymore they was tiny little i mean the archetypal alien that you see in like closing counters are the third kind they they're like if you went from like uh australopithecus or ancient hominid to us what's the difference less hair less muscle bigger head and then just keep going a thousand a million whatever you or five years whatever whatever happens when neurolink goes on online and then we slowly start to adapt to this new way of being where we don't use our muscles anymore we have this gigantic head we can talk without words you could also save state and save state save state like save your brain state like like a saved game in\n\na video game whoa like like if you want to swap from windows 95 well yeah i think we are windows 95 right now yeah from a future perspective probably um but yeah i mean you you could save state um and restore that state into a biological being if you if you wanted to in the future in principle it's like nothing like from a physics standpoint that prevents us now you'd be a little different but then you're also a little different when you wake up in the morning from yesterday and you're a little different in fact if you say like you five years ago versus you today is quite a big difference yes um so you'd be substantially you i mean you'd be you'd certainly think you're you but the idea of saving yourself and then transforming that into some sort of a\n\nbiological state like you can hang out with 30 year old you i mean the possibilities are endless that's so weird i mean these things think like how your phone can you can record videos on your phone like there's no way you could remember a video right as accurately as your phone or a camera you know could so uh now if you've got like a you know some some you know version 10 hero link whatever and far in the future you could you could remember you could recall everything but just like it's a movie concluding all the entire sensory experience emotions everything everything everything and play it back and you can enjoy it you should edit it edit it yeah so you can change your past you could change what do you think was your past yeah well so if you had like\n\na tremendous thing right now could be a replayed memory it could be yeah it may be what's the odds of this being a replayed memory if you had a guess it's more than 50 there's no way to assign a probability with accuracy here right but roughly if you just had a just gut instinct well i don't have a neural link in my brain so i say right now zero percent but at the point at which you do have a neural link then it rises above zero percent the idea that we're experiencing some sort of a preserved memory is uh even though it's still the same it's not comforting right for some reason when we people talk about simulation theory they talk about the potential for this currently being a simulation it even though your life might be wonderful you might be in love\n\nyou might love your career you might have great friends but it's not comforting to know that this experience somehow or another doesn't exist in a material form that you can knock on it feels real doesn't it feels real but but if it's not but the idea that it's not is for some strange reason disconcerting well yeah i'm sure it should be disconcerting because then if this is not real what is right um but but the you know there's that that old sort of um thought experiment of like how do you know you're not a brain in a vet you know i mean now here's the thing you are a brain an event then that fat is your skull yes and everything you see feel here everything all your senses are electrical signals everything everything is an electrical signal to up to a\n\nbrain in a vat where the vat is called and all your hormones all your neurotransmitters all these things are drugs adrenaline's a drug dopamine's a drug you're a drug factory you're constantly changing your state with love and oxytocin and and beauty sure changes your state great music changes your state absolutely and yet here's another sort of interesting idea which is um because you say like where did consciousness arise well assuming you believe the belief in physics which appears to be true um then you know we the universe started off as basically quarks and leptons and it quickly became hydrogen and of helium lithium like basically elements the periodic table but it was like mostly hydrogen basically and then and then over a long period of time\n\nuh you know 13.\n\n8 billion years later that hydrogen became sentient but so where along the way that conju where is the consciousness what's the line of consciousness and not consciousness right between hydrogen and here right when do we call it when do we call it consciousness i was watching a video today that we played on a podcast earlier of a monkey riding a motorcycle down the street jumps off the motorcycle and tries to steal a baby yeah i saw that one they went apparel what is that monkey conscious it seems like it is it seems like it had a plan it was riding a motorcycle and then jumped off the motorcycle to try to steal a baby seems pretty the one that just strike baby down the street pretty far yeah yeah seems pretty conscious right there's definitely some degree\n\nof consciousness there yeah it's not like it's not a worm it seems to be on another level yeah and it's going to keep going and that that's the real concern when when people think about the potential future versions of human beings especially when you consider symbiotic relationship to artificial intelligence it will be unrecognizable that one day we'll be so far removed from what this is we'll look back on this the way we look back now on you know simple simple organisms that we evolved from and then it won't be that far in the future that we do have this this view back well i hope consciousness propagates into the future and it gets more more sophisticated and complex and and that it understands the questions to ask about the universe do you think that's\n\nthe case as a human being as yourself you're clearly trying to make conscious decisions to be a better version of you right this is the idea of like getting rid of your possessions and realizing that you're trying to like i don't like this i will try to improve this i will try to do a better version of the way i interface with reality that this is always the way things are if you're if you're moving in a some sort of a direction where you're trying to improve things you're always going to move into this new place where you look back in the old place and go i was doing it wrong back then so this is an accelerated version of that super accelerated version of that i mean you don't always improve but you can aspire to improve you can aspire to be less wrong\n\nyeah this is like i think a good the tools of physics are very powerful like just assume you're wrong and you're asking your goals to be less wrong i don't think you're gonna if you succeed every day and being less wrong but you know if you're gonna succeed in being less wrong most of the time you're doing great that's a great way of putting aspire to be less wrong but then when you know people look back at nostalgia about simpler times there's that too it's very romantic and exciting to look back on campfires but you can still have a campfire yes yeah but will you appreciate it when you're a super nerd when you're connected to the grid and you have some uh skull cap in place of the top of your head and it's interfacing with the inter international language\n\nthat the rest of the universe now enjoys communication with people and we're yeah sure i think so yeah i like empires [Laughter] i'm just worried i mean uh everyone's always scared of change but i'm scared of this monumental change where we won't we won't talk anymore i mean that thing will communicate yes but that's there's something about there's something about the beauty of the crudeness of language where when it's done eloquently it's it's it's satisfying and it it it hits us in some sort of a visceral way like ah that person nailed it i love that they nailed it like that it's so hard to capture a real thought and convey it in a way in this articulate way that makes someone except like you read a quote a great quote by a wise person it makes you\n\nexcited that their mind figured something out put the words together in a right way that makes your brain pop like oh yes yeah yes it's clever compression of a concept yeah and a feeling but the fact that a human did it too yeah absolutely do you think that it'll be like electronic music like people won't appreciate it like they appreciate a slide guitar i like electronic music i do too yeah well you make it i know you liked it yeah yeah yeah um yeah i mean i hope the future is more fun and interesting and we should try to make that way i hope it's more fun and interesting too yeah i just you know i just hope you don't lose anything along the way yeah we might at least little but hopefully we'll gain more than lose yeah that's the thing right gaining\n\nmore than we lose like something that makes us interesting is that we're so flawed it's not for sure right yeah i mean you look at civilizations through the ages um most of them uh you know they rose and fell yeah and uh i do think like the globalization uh that that we have at the sort of like the the meme sphere uh is uh there's not enough isolation between countries or regions um it's like if you get up if there's a mind virus that that my virus cannot infect too much of the world uh you know like i actually sort of sympathize with the anti-globalization people because it's it's like man we don't ever want everywhere to be the same for sure and then we we need some kind of like mind viral immunity so that that's it's a bit concerning mind viral immunity\n\nmeaning that once something like neural link gets established the real concern is something that i mean you said it's bluetooth right or some future version of that that the idea is that something could possibly get into it it up no i'm talking about like uh somebody there's some cockeyed concept that um that's happened that happens right right now yeah well i know there's viruses and embedded chips right like people have they've embedded chips and then acquired viruses well when i'm talking about my verse i'm talking about like a a concept that affects people's minds oh okay okay like uh cult thinking or yeah some sort of fundamentalism yeah just wrong-headed idea that yes goes viral in a in an idea sense [Music] well that is that is a problem too right\n\nif someone can manipulate that technology to make something appear logical or rational yeah yeah that would that be an issue too with this is a very have versus have not issue right once this thing if if this really does i mean initially it's going to help people with with injuries and but you you said ultimately it could lead to this spectacular cognitive change yes but the people that first get it should have a massive advantage over people that don't have it yet well i mean it's the kind of thing where your productivity would improve i don't know dramatically maybe by a factor of 10 with it so you could definitely just you know uh i don't know take out a loan and do it and earn earn the money back real fast so you're super smart well in a capitalist\n\nsociety you know you could it seems like you could really get so far ahead that before everybody else could afford this thing and link up and get connected as well you'd be so far ahead they could never catch you is that a concern uh well i think the the it's not a super huge concern i mean there are huge differences in cognitive ability and and resources already yeah um i mean you can think of a corporation as like a cybernetic collective uh that's far smarter than an individual like i i can personally build like a whole rocket and and the engines and launch it and everything that's impossible uh but you know we have eight thousand people with spacex and you might you know piecing it out to different people um and using like you know computers and machines\n\nand stuff we can make lots of rockets launch and all but stuck with the space station that kind of thing you know um so that already exists where this you know where there's a corporations are vastly more capable than an individual um but the the like we should be i think less concerned about like relative capabilities between people and and more like uh having ai be vastly you know beyond us and decoupled from human will decoupled from human so this is the if you can't beat them join them yeah i mean so you feel like it's inevitable like ai sentient ai is essentially inevitable super sentient ai yeah like beyond a level that's difficult to understand and impossible to understand probably and somehow or another us so it's almost like it's a requirement\n\nfor survival to achieve some sort of symbiotic existence with ai it's not a requirement it's just um if you if you want to be along for the ride then you need to do some kind of symbiosis so the the way your brain works right now you've got uh kind of like the animal brain reptile brain kind of let's say it's like the limbic system basically and you've got the the cortex um now the brain purists will argue with this definition but essentially you've got the primitive brain and you've got the the sort of smart brain or the brain that's capable of planning and understanding concepts and different difficult you know things that a monkey can't understand um now the your cortex is much much smarter than your olympic system um nonetheless they work together\n\nwell so i haven't met anyone who wants to delete the olympic system or the cortex that people are quite happy having both um so you can think of the this as being like the computer the ai is like a a third layer a tertiary layer so that is like that could be symbiotic with the cortex it'd be much smarter than the cortex but you'd essentially have three layers and you actually have that right now your phone is capable of things and your computer is capable things that your brain is definitely not you know storing your terabytes of information perfectly um doing incredible calculations that you you know we couldn't even come close to doing you have that with your computer it's just like i said the data rate is slow the connection is weak why is it so disconcerting\n\nor why is it why does it not give me comfort to think about like when i think about a symbiotic connection to ai i always think of this cold emotionless sort of thing that we will become is that a bad way to look at it i don't think that's not that's not quite that's not how it would be like i said you you already are yeah symbiotic with ai or computers phones computers laptops yeah and there's there's quite a bit of ai going on you know near so artificial neural nets um increasingly neural nets are sort of taking over from regular programming more and more so you are connected um you know if you use google voice or alexa or one of those things it's using a neural net to decode your speech and try to understand what you're saying um you know if if you're\n\ntrying to image recognition or improve the quality of photograph it's it's using the neural nets the best way to do that so um you are already uh sort of a sort of a cybernetic symbiote it like said you when that it's just a question of your data rate the the the communication speed between your your phone and your brain is slow when do you think you're gonna do it how long will you wait um like once it starts becoming available yeah if it works i'll do it sure right away i mean let's make sure it works how do we make sure it works we're trying on prisoners like what do you do no no you take rapists no cut holes in your head now like i said if somebody's got a serious brain injury right um and though you know people have like very severe brain injuries\n\num and then and then you can fix those those brain injuries um and you know then you prove out that it works and you expand envelope expand and make more and more brain injuries uh sold more and more um and that you know suddenly at certain age we all are are going to get alzheimer's we're all going to get senile um and then you know moms forget the names of their kids and that kind of thing and so you know it's like you said okay well you know this would allow you to remember your names your kids and and and have a normal a much more normal life where you you you're able to function much later in life um so i think that so essentially that there would almost everyone would find a need at some point if if you get old enough to use your neural link and\n\nand and then it's like okay so we can improve the functionality and improve the communications communication speed so then you will not have to use your thumbs to communicate with the computer do you ever sit down extrapolate do you ever like sit down and think about all the different iterations of this and what this eventually leads to um yeah i mean i think sure think about a lot um there's like i said this is not something that's going to sneak up on you you know there's like getting fda approval for this stuff is not like overnight you know um and this there's i mean we probably have to be on like version 10 or something before you know it it would realistically be um you know a human ai symbiote situation so you'll see it coming you know you see\n\nit coming but what do you think it's going to be like when you sit when you're alone if you have free time i don't know if you have free time but if you just sit down and think about this iteration the next onward keep going and you you drag it out with improvements along the way and leaps and bounds and technological innovations and where do you see it what are we going to be like when 20 25 years from now what are we going to be well assuming civilization is still around um it's looking fragile right now um i think we i think we could have a in 25 years probably something i think like that could be a whole brain interface a whole brain interface sorry pretty close to that yeah how does how do you define what do you mean by whole brain interface um like\n\nalmost all the neurons are connected to uh you're the sort of ai extension of yourself if you want ai extension of yourself yeah what does that mean to you like when you say ai extension of yourself well you like i said you already have a computer extension of yourself in your phone you know and computers and stuff so and now online it's like somebody dies there's this like an online ghost that they're they're still their online stuff yeah it's alive that's a good way to put it it is weird when you read someone's tweets after they're dead yeah yeah instagram and their stories and stuff yeah whatever facebook inside you know like that's a great way to put it it's like an online ghost that's very accurate yeah so yeah so there's it would just be that that\n\nmore of you would be in the cloud i guess than in your body more of it more of you whoa now when you say civilization's fragile do you mean because of this covet 19 that's going on right now what's that i've never heard of it it's this thing yeah no it's like uh some people just get a card other people it gets much worse uh sure yeah well yeah i mean this certainly has taken over the mayan space of the world to a degree that is quite shocking yeah well out of nowhere that's what's crazy it's like you go back to november nothing now here we are december january february march april may six months totally different world so from nothing to everything's locked down there's so much uh conflicting information and conflicting opinions about how to proceed what\n\nwhat has happened you you find things where there was a meat packing plant i believe in missouri where 300 plus people were asymptomatic tested positive or asymptomatic and then in other places it just ravages entire communities and kills people and it's it's so weird it almost appears on the out like if you didn't know any better you'd be like what it seems like there's a bunch of different viruses it doesn't seem like it's the same thing or has a bunch of different reactions to the biological variety of of people yeah um i mean i kind of saw this whole thing play out in china uh before it played out in the us so um it's kind of like watching the same movie again but in english um so yeah um i might i think the the the the mortality rate is much less\n\nthan what is then what say the world health organization said it was it's very much module assets like probably at least order of magnitude less well it seems to be very deadly to very specific kinds of people and people with specific problems yeah i mean if you're you can look at the mortality statistics you know by age and whether they have comorbid comorbidities like do they have like basically existing conditions and um by age um and uh you know if you're below 60 and and have no serious health issues the probability of death is extremely low it's not zero but it's extremely low they didn't think that this was the case though when they first started to lock down the country do you think that it's a situation where once they've proceeded in a certain\n\nway it's very difficult to correct course it's almost like people really wanted a panic that you know quite quite crazy but in some places a panic is deserved right like if you're in the icu in manhattan and people are dying left and right and everyone's on intubators and it's it's it seems like when you see all these people on ventilators and so many of them are dying and you see these nurses are dying and doctors are getting sick in some places that fear is justified but then in other places you're reading these stories about hospitals that are essentially half empty they're they're having to furlough doctors and nurses because there's no work for them most of the hospitals in the united states right now half empty in some cases they're at 30 capacity\n\nand is this because they've decided to forego elective procedures and and normal things that people would have to go to the hospital for yes i mean we're not talking about just some of these elective procedures are quite important like it's like you have about a lot of disease yeah sure and you need a you know triple bypass it's like sort of elective but if you don't get it done in time it's you're gonna die yeah it's elective is a weird word yeah elective it's not like hey i i want to it's not like plastic surgery it's more like like my my hip is i'm in extreme pain because my my hips blown out or my knee and i don't want to go to the hospital i can't go to the hospital to you know people in extreme pain people that need a kidney you know like people\n\nthat have like quite serious issues that are choosing not to go out of fear um so i think it's it's a problem it's not good it seems like the state of public perception is shifting it is like people are taking some deep breaths and relaxing and because of the statistics of i mean and essentially across the board it's being recognized that it's not as fatal as we thought it was still dangerous still worse than the flu but not as bad as we thought or we feared it could be i mean objectively the mortality is is much lower like at least a factor of 10 maybe a factor of 50 lower than initially thought do you think that the current way we're handling this the social distancing the mass the locking down is it does this make sense is it adequate or do you think\n\nthat we should move back to at least closer to where we used to be well i think proper hygiene is a good thing no matter what you know wash your hands and you know and if you're if you're coughing stay home or wear a mask this is not good you know um like they do that in japan that's like normal if you're if you're ill you you wear a face mask and you don't cough on people i think that that would be a great thing to to adopt in general throughout the world um washing your hands is also good well that's the speculation why men get it more than women because men are disgusting and we don't watch that disgusting it's true it's true yeah we're all my men in this room we're all gross yeah let's go to the restroom you can see us yes we're gross my daughter\n\nmy nine-year-old daughter yells at me she goes did you wash your hands she makes me go back and wash my hands hmm she's right nine years old if i had a nine-year-old boy do you think he would care i wouldn't give a if i wash my hands true um so yeah i think that there's definitely some silver linings here than in improved uh you know uh hygiene yeah and an awareness of potential yes and i think this has shaken up the the system uh system is like somewhat more bond with la la's layers of bureaucracy and i think that we've cut through some of that bureaucracy uh and if we you know at some point there probably will be a uh pandemic with with a with a high mortality rate uh debate about like what's high but i mean like someone that's killing a lot of 20 year\n\nolds let's say like it's yeah if you had like ebola type of mortality spanish flu something that uh tax immune systems of healthy people yeah yeah um yeah but it's a yeah like like killing large numbers of young healthy people that that's you know define that as like uh uh high mortality then that this is at least practice for something like that um and i think there's this you know given it's just a matter of time that there will be eventually some some such pandemic do you think that in a sense the one good thing that we might get out of this is the realization that this is a potential reality that we we got lucky in this sense i mean in people that didn't get lucky and died of course i'm not disrespecting their death and their loss but i'm saying overall\n\nas a as a culture as a community as a human race as a community this is not as bad as it could have been this is a good dry run for us to appreciate that we need far more resources dedicated towards the the understanding these diseases what to do in the case of pandemic and much more money that goes to funding treatments and and some preventative measures yeah absolutely um and i think i think there's a good chance it's highly likely i think coming out of this that we will develop uh vaccines that we didn't have before uh for uh quran viruses and other other viruses um and and possibly cures uh for for these and our understanding of uh viruses of this nature has improved dramatically because of the attention that it's received so there's definitely some\n\nyou know a lot of silver linings here um and potentially if we act correctly yeah yeah yeah there's uh i think there will be some amounts of lighting here no matter what um hopefully it can be more professive lighting than less yeah um so yeah this is this is uh it's like kind of like a practice run for something that had that that had a potential that might in the future have a serious uh like a really high mortality rate that and we kind of got to go through this with without without it being something that kills you know vast numbers of young healthy people yeah when you made a series of tweets recently uh you know uh i don't remember the exact wording but essentially you were saying free america now like let's think about that is it thank you but\n\nuh the the you know what was the how much do you pay attention to the response to that stuff and what was the response like did anybody go hey elon what the you doing did anybody pull you aside who does that who gets to do that to you well i mean i certainly get that there's no shortage of negative feedback on twitter you know oh yeah twitter yeah but i don't read that do you read it warzone you do sometimes though right you do read it yeah i mean scroll through the comments like as a meme warzone yeah i mean people knife you're good it's something i i enjoy about that just the there's a something about the the freedom of expression that comes from all these people that do attack you it's like well they if there was no vulnerability whatsoever they wouldn't\n\nattack you and it's like there's something about these millions and millions of perspectives that you you have to you have to appreciate even if it comes your way even if the storm hits you in the face sure you gotta appreciate wow how amazing is it that all these people do have the ability to express themselves you don't don't necessarily want to be there when the hits you sure you might want to get out of the way in anticipation of the storm but the fact that so many people have the ability to reach out and i think it's in a lot of ways it's uh i don't wanna say a misused resource but it's like giving monkeys guns they just start they start gunning down things that in front of them without any realization of what they're doing they have a rock they\n\nsee a window they throw it whoa look at that i got elon madd look at that this guy got mad at me this this i i took this person down on twitter i got this lady fired oh the business is going under because of twitter wars it seems like there's something about it that's this newfound thing that uh i want to say abuse but just i want to say that it's almost like you know you hit the button and things blow up you're like wow this is what else can we blow up sure um i mean i've been in the twitter war zone for for a while here so put your war zone you know take it takes a lot to phase me at this point yeah that's good too right like you develop a thick skin yeah you can't take it personally these people don't like actually know you you know like yeah it's\n\njust like you know so it's like if you're if you're fighting a war and there's like some opposing soldier that that shoots shoots at you it's not like they hate you they don't even know you right yeah yeah so just think of it like that like they're firing bullets or whatever um but they don't know you so don't take it personally there's something interesting about it too it's like uh like when you write something in you know 280 characters and they write something into it it's such a crude way it's like you know someone's saying sending opposing smoke signals that refute your smoke signals it's like it's so crude and especially when you're talking about something like neural link he's talking about some future potential where you're going to be able to\n\nexpress pure thoughts that get get conveyed through some sort of a universal language with no ambiguity whatsoever versus you know tweets well there'll always be some ambiguity but yeah tweets are it's hard um like the maybe there should be like a sarcasm flag or something you know right right um or i'm not you know just kidding or whatever you know like don't you know it seems like it would take away some of the fun from people that know it's sarcasm like if everybody knew that the onion wasn't real if you sent people articles yeah is something about someone getting angry at an onion article wow that's amazing you know what i mean where they don't realize what it is there's something fun about that for everybody else uh yeah i know it's pretty great\n\nit might be the best news source do you know who titania mcgrath is hilario it's uh andrew boyle he's a uh a british fellow a brilliant guy who's been on the podcast before and he has this uh fictional character this uh pseudonym titania mcgrath who's like this all the ultimate social justice warrior is this like like a female avatar a female avatar that's actually a computer conglomeration of a bunch of faces okay it's not really one person so one person can't be a victim and be angry he's sort of combined these faces to make this one perfect social justice more okay but the thing like i recognized it early on before i met him sure that this was parody this is this was just fun and then i love reading the people that don't recognize that they get angry\n\nsure and then they're really really like there's a lot of people that just get really furious sure about some of some fun to that there's some fun to the not picking up on the the the true nature of the signal i find twitter quite engaging how do you have the time um well i mean it's like five minutes every couple hours type of thing it's not like i'm sitting on an old day but even five minutes every couple hours if those are bad five minutes they might be bouncing around your head for the next 30.\n\nyeah you have to you know like i said take a certain amount of distance from you read this and you're like okay it's bullets being fired by an opposing army you know don't like it it's not like they they like so it's not like they know you it's like don't take it personally um did you feel the same way when when cnn had that stupid about ventilators with you i i found that both confusing and the the the yeah that was annoying it was annoying but what is also annoying as a person who reads cnn and wants to think of them as a responsible conveyor of the facts i would like to think that yeah i don't think cnn is that i think he used to be he used to be yeah um like what do you think's the the best source of just like information out there that's a good question\n\nyou know like let's say you're just like average citizen trying to just get the facts you know figure out what's going on like you know how to live your life and you know just looking for what what's going on in the world that it's hard to find something that that isn't you know that's that that's good yeah you know uh that you know not not trying to push some partisan angle not trying to not not sort of doing sloppy reporting and and just aiming for the most number of clicks and trying to maximize ad dollars and that kind of thing yeah you're just trying to figure out what's going on it's like i'm hard pressed where do you go i don't know i don't think there's any pure form my favorite places are the new york times and the la times and i don't trust\n\nthem 100 percent you know because also there's individuals that are writing these stories exactly and that's seems to be the problems these individual biases and these individual there's purposely distorted perceptions and then there's ignorantly reported facts and there's so many variables and you got to put everything through this filter of where is this person coming from do they have political biases do they have social biases do they are they are they upset because of their own shortcomings and they are they projecting this into the story sure it's so hard yeah i think like maybe just trying to find individual reporters that you think are good and yeah kind of falling down as opposed to the publication i go with whatever matt taibbi says okay i trust\n\nhim more than anybody all right matt taib he's onto something i just he's as far as investigative reporters in particular the way he reported the savings and loan crisis the way he reports everything i just i just listen to him above most above mo he's my go-to guy all right i'll check it out uh it's rolling stone's articles or his stuff on the savings alone crisis just like what in the and you know and he wasn't you know he's not an economist by any stretch of the imagination so he had to really sort of deeply embed himself in that world to try to understand it and to be able to report on it and was also with a humorous flair for now that's nice yeah um yeah but it's not that many of them there's it's hard and not a location where like we are no that's\n\nright you know we are no bullshit.\n\ncom like the one place where you can say this is what we know this is what we don't know this is what we think not this person's wrong and here's why like oh god damn it you know i can't you you don't know there's a lot of stuff that is open to interpretation yeah this this particular coronavirus issue that we're dealing with right now seems to be a great illuminator of that very fact is that there's so much data and there's this so there's so much that's open to interpret there's so many thing because it's all happening in real time right and like particularly right now in california we're in stage two tomorrow or friday two days from now stage two retail stores opening up things are changing like when no one knows the correct process that needs to take\n\nplace to save the most amount of lives but yet ensure that our our culture and that our our our economy survives it's a lot of speculation and guessing but if you go to certain places they'll tell you we know why and we know this and we know uh it's hard yeah i mean i in general i think that's like we should be concerned about um anything that's a massive infringement on our civil civil liberties yes you know so it's like you got to put a lot of weight on that um you know people a lot of people died to you know win independence with the country and and fight for the democracy that we have and uh you know we should treasure that and not and not give up our liberties too easily i think we've we i mean i think we probably did that actually well i like what\n\nyou said when you said that it should be a choice and that to require people to stay home require people to not go to work require and to to arrest people for trying to make a living this all seems wrong and i think it's a wrong approach it's a it's uh you're you're it's an infantilization of the society that daddy's going to tell you what to do fundamentally a violation of the constitution yeah freedom of assembly and you know it's just i mean i don't think these things stand up in court really they're arresting people for protesting yeah yeah because they're protesting and violating social distancing and these mandates that tell people that they have to stay home yeah these these are these would definitely not stand up uh you know if the supreme court\n\nhere i mean it's obviously a complete violation right yeah yeah and again this is not in any way um disrespecting the people who have died from this disease that's certainly a real thing to think of yeah i mean it it it just should be if if you're if you're at risk you should not be compelled to leave your house right um or leave a place of safety but you should also not be uh if you're not at risk or if you are at risk and you wish to take a risk with your life you should have the right to do that and it seems like at this point in time particularly our resources would be best served protecting the people that are at risk versus penalizing the people that are not at high risk for living their life the way they did particularly having a career and and\n\nmaking a living and feeding your family paying your bills keeping your store open keeping your restaurant open yes i mean there's there's a strong a strong downside to this yeah so yeah i just believe like you know if this is a free country you should be you know a lot allowed to do you know what you want as long as it does not endanger others but that's the thing right people this is the argument they will bring up like you are endangering others you should stay home for the people that that you even if you're fine even if you know you're gonna be okay there's certain people that will not be okay because of your actions they might get exposed to this thing that we don't have a vaccine for we don't have universally accepted treatment for and then we need\n\nto ca this is there's two arguments right the one argument is we need to keep going protect the weak protect the sick but let's open up the economy the other argument is stop placing money over human lives and let's shelter in place until we come up with some sort of a decision and let's figure out some way to develop some sort of universal income universal basic income plan or something like that to feed people during the during this time when we make this transition i think there's a yeah um as i said right yeah my opinion is if if somebody wants to stay home they should stay home and say something doesn't want to stay home they should not be compelled to stay home that's my opinion do you think if somebody doesn't like that well that's my opinion um\n\nso the now yeah um the the this notion though that uh you know you can just sort of send checks out everybody and and things will be fine it's not true obviously um the there's some people have this absurd like a view that the economy is like some magic horn of plenty like it it just makes stuff stuff you know whatever it just there's a magic quarter plenty and the goods and services they just come from this magic corner plenty and then if um like if somebody has more stuff than somebody else's because they took more from this magic corner plenty now let me uh just break it to uh the fools out there if you don't make stuff there's no stuff yeah so if you don't make the food if you don't process the food you know transport the food and what the whether\n\nyou know medical treatment getting getting your teeth fixed there's no stuff i become detached from reality you can't just legislate money and solve these things if you don't make stuff there is no stuff obviously we'll run out of the stores run out of the you know it's the whole the machine just grinds to a halt but the the initial thought on this virus the real fear was that this was going to kill hundreds of thousands if not millions of people instantaneously in this country it was going to do it very quickly if we didn't hunker down if we didn't shelter in place if we didn't quarantine ourselves or lock down do you think that the initial thought was a good idea based on the perception that this was going to be far more deadly than it turned out to\n\nbe maybe i think briefly briefly briefly but uh i think if you know any any kind of like sensible examination of what happened in china would lead to the conclusion that that is obviously not going to occur uh this this virus originated in wuhan there's like i don't know hundred thousand people a day leaving on uh so it that that it it uh it went everywhere very fast through throughout china throughout the rest of the world um and the fatality rate was was low don't you think though it's difficult to appreciate it's it's it's difficult to filter what the information is coming out of china to accurately really get a real true representation of what happened the the propaganda machine is very strong sure what the world health organization appears to have\n\nbeen complicit with a lot of their propaganda the thing is that american companies have massive supply chains in china like tesla for example we have hundreds of suppliers like tier one two three four suppliers throughout throughout china so we know if they are able to make stuff or not we know if they if they have issues or not then they they're china is back back at full steam um and until many uh pretty much every u.\n\ns company has some significant number of flies in china so you know you know if they're able to you know provide things or not or if there's you know high mortality rate tesla has seven thousand people in china so zero people died um zero okay so that that's a real statistic that's coming from yeah yeah you know those people yeah we literally we're in payroll do you think there's a danger of this same folks are there yeah do you think there's a danger of politicizing this whereas becomes like opening up the country's uh donald trump's it's his goal it's his and then anything he does is sort of uh there's there's people that are going to oppose it and come up with some reasons why he's wrong particularly in this climate whereas as we're leading up november\n\nand you know the the 2020 elections do you think that this is a real danger in terms of uh public's perception that trump wants to open it up so they knee-jerk oppose it because they oppose trump i i think there has been some politician this has been politicized you know in both directions really so it's um which is not great yeah but like i said separate apart from that i think there's the question of like you know where do several civil liberties fit in this picture you know yeah and uh what what what can the government make you do what can they make you not do and what you know what's what's okay right um and uh yeah i think we went too far do you think it's one of those things where once we've gone in a certain direction it's very difficult to make\n\na correction make a an adjustment to to realize like okay we thought it was one thing it's not it's not good but it's not what we thought it was going to be it's not what we feared so let's let's back up and reconsider let's do this publicly and say we were acting based on the information that we had initially that information appears to be faulty and uh here's how we move forward while protecting civil liberties while protecting what essentially this country was founded on which is a very agreed upon amount of freedom yeah that we respect and appreciate absolutely well i think we're we're rapidly moving towards opening up the country um it's going to happen extremely fast over the next few weeks so yeah something that would be helpful just add from an\n\ninformational level is um when reporting uh sort of covet cases to separate out diagnosed with covert versus uh had covert like symptoms yes because the list of symptoms that could be covered at this point is like a mile long so it's like a hard to if you're ill at all it's like it could be covered so just just to give people better information definitely diagnosed with covert or had covered like symptoms we're conflating those two so that one that it looks bigger than it is then uh if somebody dies is was covert a a primary cause of the death or not uh i mean if i mean if somebody has kova gets eaten by a shark we find their arm their arm has covered it's gonna get recorded as a cover death is that real basically not that bad but heart attacks strokes\n\nyou get hit by a bug cancer if you if you get hit by a bus go to the go to the hospital and die and then find that you have covered you will be recorded as a cover death why would they do that though well right now the so you know the road is hell is the rotel is paid with good intentions i mean he's mostly paid with bad intentions but there's you know some good intentions saving stones in there too um and the the the stimulus bill that was intended to help uh with the hospitals that were being overrun with with with code patients uh created an incentive to record something as covet that is difficult to say no to especially if your hospital is going bankrupt for lack of other patients so the hospitals are in a bind right now there's a bunch of hospitals\n\nare they're following doctors as you were mentioning they're you know they're your is half full you're it's hard hard to make ends meet so now you've got like you know if i just check this box i get eight thousand dollars put on a ventilator for five minutes i get thirty nine thousand dollars back or or i to fire some doctors so what's the what's this this is a tough moral quandary it's like what you can do that's the situation we have no what what's the way out of this what do you think is like if if you had the president's ear or if people wanted to just listen to you openly what do you think is the way out of this so let's let's clear up the data clear up the data so like i said uh something should be required as code but only if it is uh somebody\n\nhas been tested uh has received a positive positive cover test not if they simply have symptoms one of like 100 symptoms and then if if it is a cover death it must be separated or was this was coveted a primary primary reason for death or did they also have stage three cancer heart disease emphysema and got hit by a bus and had covered yeah i've read all this stuff about that about them uh diagnosing people as a covet death despite other variables this is not a this is not a this is not a a question this is what is occurring and where are you reading this from where are you getting this from the public health health officials have literally said this this is not this is not a question mark right but this is never this is unprecedented right like if someone\n\nhad the flu but also had a heart attack they would assume that that person died of a heart attack yes yeah so this is unprecedented is this because this is such a a popular i don't i don't want to use that word the wrong way but that's what i mean a popular subject and financial incentives yes and like so this is not some sort of it a moral indictment of of sort of hospital administrators it's just they're in it they're they're in a in a tough in a tough spot here um they actually don't have enough patience to to pay everyone for it to with without following following doctors and and firing staff and yeah they're running potentially going bankrupt so so then they're like okay well the stimulus bill says if you know we get all this you know money if we\n\nsay if if they if it's a cover death i'm like okay they coughed before they died in fact they're not even diagnosed with cover they simply if you had weakness a cough uh shortness of breath but frankly i'm not sure how you die without those things yeah you yeah but there's so many different things that you could attribute to covet too there's so many symptoms there's diarrhea headaches dehydration yeah cough yes but to be clear you you don't even need to have gotten a cover diagram you simply need to have had one of many symptoms and then have died for some reason and it's covered so then it makes the death count look very high and then we're then stuck in a bind because it looks like the death count's super high and not going down like it should be and\n\nnow so then we we should keep whatever you know keep you know the shelter in place stuff there and and keep people in their home you know confined people to homes so we need to break out of this this we're stuck in a loop yeah and i think the way to break out of this loop is to have clarity of information clarity of information will certainly help but altering perceptions public perception from people that are basically in a panic there's a lot of essentially well at least a month ago we're clearly in a panic i mean right where you know when you look around april 5th april 6th people were really freaking out but here we are may and may people are relaxing a little bit yes they're realizing like hey um i actually know a couple of people that got it it\n\nwas just a cough and i know some people that got it where nothing happened i know a lot of people have got it i know zero people who died that i mean about no yeah a lot of people got it yeah it's it's not what we feared we feared something much worse yeah that's correct so the adjustment's difficult to make so you said first of all we need real data we need just just parse out the data don't don't lump it all together no and then if if you give if you get people just parse out the data better clear clearer information um about uh like i said was this an actual code of a diagnosis or was it a or did they get the test and the test came back positive or do they just have some symptoms just parse those two out um and then parse out just uh if somebody died\n\ndid they die did they did they even have a covet test or or did they just have one of many symptoms like like like how do you die without weakness i don't know right it's impossible basically yeah it's a good point if you're gonna die you're gonna have shortness of breath weakness and you might cough a little um so so was it quantified what was it yeah that person did they actually have a covert test and and the tests come back positive and then um if if they died did they uh die where where covert was um it didn't have to be the main course but it was a significant contributor to their death or was it not a significant contributor to the death right it's not as simple as just because you had covet covet killed you definitely not right yeah yeah i mean\n\npeople die all the time and they have like flu and yes you know other colds and well we don't say that they died of those flu and other colds well that's what's so weird absolutely it's so popular and i use that word in a weird way but it's so popular that we've kind of forgotten people die pneumonia every day yeah people die of the flu didn't take a break oh kovitz got this i'm gonna sit this one out i'm gonna be on the bench i'm gonna wait until kovitz done before i jump back into the game of killing people no the flu is still here killing people i mean ev every year in the world several hundred thousand people die directly of the flu yeah not not tangentially right not every 61 000 in this country last year yeah and we're only five percent of the world\n\nand then there's cigarettes so oh man cigarettes not cigarettes will really kill you that's a weird one right we're terrified of this disease that were projected it could potentially kill 100 if not 200 000 americans this year with cigarettes kill 500 000 and you don't hear a peep out of any politician there's no one running for congress is trying to ban cigarettes there's no one running for senate that wants to put some education plan in place it's going to stop cigarettes in their tracks yeah i mean a long time like several years ago i mean along with 10 10 years ago i helped make a movie cold thank you for smoking oh i saw that yeah um it it yeah um yeah it's crazy uh smoking barbecuing alongside just bad news it's not not good you know you're turning\n\nyour lungs into smoke smoked beef and not great um so um yeah tylenol by the way also kills a lot of people yeah what is the number for tylenol over here um i'm not sure the exact number but i believe it until the opioid crisis i believe tylenol was the number one killer of all drugs um because wow basically it's uh if you have if you get drunk and take a lot of tylenol um acetaminophen essentially it causes liver failure so sevilla would like get get wasted and then like have a headache and then pop a tonic tylenol gardens whoa yeah curtains is a funny word yeah you know so but nobody's like you know raging against tylenol yeah it's weird except acceptable deaths are weird and that's the real the slippery slope about this uh people shaming people for\n\nwanting to go back to work you know other people are gonna die well if you drive do you drive oh well you should stop driving because people die from driving so you know you definitely should fill up all the swimming pools because like 50 people die every day in this country from swimming so let's not swim anymore yeah what is the really dangerous we need to chop down all the coconuts coconuts kill 150 people every year yes cut down all the coconut trees we need those people yes it's at a certain point in time it's like we yeah we're vulnerable and we're also we we're also we have a finite existence no matter what we do nobody lives forever right um i mean the the the i mean i think you want to look at say deaths as like the but for this uh disease whatever\n\nthey would have lived x number of years yeah you know so um you know if somebody dies when they're they're they're 20 and could live till 80 they they lost 60 years but if somebody dies when they're 80 and they might live until 81 they last one year yes so it's it's like how many life years were lost uh is is a probably you know the right metric to use i don't uh read my own comments but i do read other people's comments and i was reading this one little twitter beef that was going on where someone was saying that kovid takes an average of 10 years off people's lives and we should appreciate those 10 years and then someone else said that's not true i'm sure it's not true yeah definitely it's the twitter but someone else said the average age of people\n\nwho die from covid is older than the average age people die it's very let's say just say it's like it's it's about the same that's a beautiful way of looking at it i mean it's it's unfortunate it sucks but it sucks if grandpa dies of alzheimer's or emphysema or leukemia it sucks sure it sucks when someone you love dies yes but i i'm i mean actually if if this uh i think a lesson to be taken here that i think is quite important is that if um if you have you know your great grandparents and their their age and grandparents really be careful with uh with with uh you know any kind of flu or cold or something that that wouldn't is not dangerous to kids or young adults but is dangerous too to help the elderly is um if basically if your kids got a runny nose\n\nthey should stay away from their grandparents no matter what it is it's it's uh the things that are where a young immune system is has no problem and an older one has has a problem yeah and um in fact a lot of the a lot of the deaths are just are literally it's tragic but they're they're intra family um it's the the the little little kid had it had a you know called or flew and give it to grandpa yeah yeah they have the family gathering and they don't know that this is a big deal but it's it's just important to remember when you get older your immune system is just not that strong and uh and and so just be be careful with your with with your you know loved ones or elderly and i think there is some true objective um understanding of the immune system and\n\nthe ways to boost that immune system and i really think that that that information should be that should be distributed in a way a non-judgmental way but like look this is this is a way that we can all like this is a scientifically proven way that we can boost our immune system and it might save your life and it might save the life of your loved ones and maybe we could teach this to our grandparents and our parents and and people that are vulnerable you know vitamin c heat shock proteins all these different variables that we know contribute to a stronger immune system yeah um actually just um a thing that that is is is tough uh if like when you as you get older it's it's hard to be you pretend to put on weight you know i certainly that's happening with\n\nme you know like as the older i get i'm like damn it's harder to stay lean uh that's for sure um and and so actually being being overweight is is a big deal yeah just uh it's a fact uh well yeah the new york hospital said it was the number one factor for severe uh kovid symptoms was obesity that was number one factor it is that that's yes exactly but it's also we live in a world where people want to be sensitive to other people's feelings so yeah absolutely we don't want to bring up the fact that being fat's bad for you it's a judgment on your food's great yeah i do love food yeah and i mean i mean to be totally frank i mean speaking for myself i'd i'd rather eat tasty food and live a shorter life yeah you know yeah those moments of enjoying a great meal\n\nyeah and then even talking about they're valuable they're worth something yeah it's not we don't want to eat soylent green and live to be 160.\n\ntasty if it was great one of the best things about life it really is yeah it's an art form as well it's like fine food it's a it's a it's a it's a delicious sand castle it's temporary it doesn't last very long but there's something about it that's very pleasing yeah yeah um yeah i mean i i don't know what what advice to give like um maybe smaller have tasty food with smaller amounts of it yeah and i think regulated feeding windows really the way to go some sort of an intermittent fasting approach sure when i started doing that i i i i found myself to be quite a bit healthier when i've deviated from that i've gained weight so how what's what's uh 16 hours well 16 hours yeah so like at night or yeah yeah yeah so i get to a certain point and then i count\n\nout i usually uh hit the stopwatch on my phone and then i look at uh 15 hours and i'm like okay got an hour before i can eat yeah and so anything in between that is just water or coffee actually you know like um this may be a useful bit of advice for for people but uh eating before you go to bed is a real bad idea and actually negatively affects your sleep yeah um and it can actually cause uh it heartburn that you don't even know is happening and and that subtle heartburn uh affects your sleep because you're you're horizontal and your body's digesting so if you want to improve the quality of your sleep um and and um you know uh you know be healthier uh it's it's do not eat right before we go to sleep yeah it's like one of the worst things you could do\n\ni had some of the biggest mistakes i've ever met i've i've done that uh particularly after comedy shows i'm starving i'll come home and i'll eat and then i go to bed and i just feel like and i wake up in the middle of the night it's gonna it's gonna crush your sleep and it's gonna it's gonna damage your uh pilot your pyloric sphincter and your esophagus and it's it's it's so in fact drinking and then going to sleep is that's one of the worst things you could yes um so uh just try to avoid drinking and and you know um small amounts of alcohol that evidence suggests it's not it doesn't have a negative effect i put in the same category as delicious food it kind of makes things a little more fun yeah yeah i like it i mean some of the people some of the people\n\nwho have left the longest you know um there's a woman in france who i think maybe has the record or close to it and she had a glass of wine every day every day you know yeah small small amounts is fine um but um yeah this is like a i i learned this like quite late in life it's like just avoid having alcohol and avoid eating at least two or three hours before going to sleep and your quality of life will your quality of sleep will improve and your general health will improve a lot for sure this is a it's a big deal and i think not widely not widely known do you have time to exercise um a little bit um do you train or anything um i do although i haven't seen for a while but um yeah especially yeah from out like uh you know say we're working on starship or\n\nsomething in south texas and i'm just living in my i got a little little house there in bukuchika village um and i don't have much to do so we're like i'm working and i was like dude just lift some weights or something you know um maybe uh i i i like i don't some people love running i don't love running um but what do you like to do exercise wise um too totally frank i wouldn't exercise at all if i could but if if i i'd prefer not to exercise but if i'm going to exercise and you know lift some weights and um and then kind of run on the treadmill and maybe watch a show that you know if there's a compelling show that like pulls you in right right right yeah that's a good thing to do yeah watch a good movie or yeah yeah episode of black mirror or something\n\nlike that that's great man don't watch black mirror before going to bed either well don't watch black mirror today it's too accurate yeah exactly it's like wait this already happened in real life yeah they're too close it's too close well even didn't jamie did you say that the the guy who makes black mirror mics off uh yeah yeah he said he it's not a good time to start season six yeah he wants to hold off because reality he's nailed it is black mirror oh man it's like he's gonna have to like re reassess and and attack it from a different angle yeah you should try something that's fun to do that's not just like like learn a martial art or something like that i did martial arts when i was kid like did you would you um i did taekwondo i did karate uh kaika\n\nshrinkai all right cool and um judo um also you you really branched out yeah um so um and did brazilian jiu jitsu briefly did you yeah where i made in palo alto really yeah oh no i was gonna suggest that that's a great thing for people like that's a thing about jiu jitsu if you look at it from the outside you think oh a bunch of meat heads strangling each other sure but they're some of the smartest people i know or jiu jitsu fiends because they they get they first of all they get introduced to it because usually either they want to exercise or learn some self-defense but then they realize that it's essentially like a language with your body like you're having an argument with someone with some sort of a physical language and it's really complex and the\n\nmore access to vocabulary and the sharper your words are sure the the more you'll succeed in these ventures that's really also an accurate analogy of what jiu jitsu is yeah i mean i kind of i mean probably like a lot of people uh for the the way uh early day uh the first mma fights and joyce gracie and he was like incredible and it was like just like technique yeah yeah it was like you know winning against people way bigger and that kind of thing it's just like oh this is cool it was what martial arts were supposed to be when we were as we were kids yeah when you saw bruce lee up all these big giant guys like wow martial arts allow you to beat someone far bigger and stronger than you right most of the time that's not real especially if they know martial\n\narts too it's like oh no yes but in the ufc when hoist gracie off of his back was strangling dan severin with his legs he was like holy yeah this guy's being pinned by this big giant wrestler and he wraps his legs around his neck and chokes him to the point the guy has to surrender yeah amazing yeah it was amazing i mean horse got beaten up pretty bad in some of those he did well he definitely had some rough fights but he won he won yeah he's a legend and but what it showed in i mean i'm a huge lover of jiu jitsu what it showed is that there is a method for uh for diffusing these situations with technique and and knowledge yeah and i think it's also a great way to exercise too because it's almost like the exercise is secondary to the learning of the thing\n\nthe the exercises like you want like and you want to develop strength and conditioning just so that you could be better at doing the thing and the analogy that i use is like if you imagine if you had a race car and you could actually give the race car better handling and more horsepower just from your own focus and effort sure that's really what it's like yeah totally yeah when am i going to have my my kids i should say i sent my kids to uh jiu jitsu uh since they were like i don't know six oh really yeah oh that's awesome yeah it's it's a great thing to learn it really is seems like a good yes yeah maybe something like i mean even if you just have someone who hits that holds the pads for you like you get a workout in and to be fun um when am i going\n\nto be able to buy one of them roadsters when's that happening well i can't you know say exactly when but uh we got to get you know those this cover thing's kind of throwing us for a loop i'm sure um so um not to blame everything in the code but um it's you know certainly set us back on on progress for you know some number of months um the i mean things we've got to get get done uh ahead of roadster are um you know ramping up model y production um that'll be a great great car it is a great car getting the berlin gigafactory built and and also building y getting expanding the shanghai factory which is going great and um get the you know there's a cyber truck semi truck roadster um roaster is kind of like dessert so like we we gotta get the you know eating\n\npotatoes and greens and stuff you know like but roaster comes before cyber truck i mean i think we should do cyber truck first before before road before started interesting i'm not mad at that some other things for roadster uh they're they're you know the tri-motor uh plaid powertrain we're gonna have that in model s uh so that's like part one of the ingredients that's needed for for roadsters the the plaid powertrain the more advanced bat you know battery vacuum kind of thing i wanted to ask you about this before i forgot what there's a company that's called apex is taking your teslas and they're giving it a wider base and wider tires and a little bit more advanced suspension sure how do you feel about that are you guys do you work with them are you\n\ncool with those people yeah i mean just i'm off yeah go ahead they're jazzing stuff up with carbon fiber and doing a bunch of interior choices you're cool with you can't with that you don't have time so is it good that someone comes along and has a sort of specialty operation yeah i got no problem that's what it's called right it's like jmg is it called apex yeah i gotta unplug performance as apex that's right unplug performance yeah yeah you could for sure um you know lighten the car up and uh improve to tire traction and have you seen that company's stuff what they do i don't know specifically but there's it's pretty dope yeah they make a pretty dope looking they take model s and they they widen it and give it a bunch of carbon fiber that's it right\n\nthere that looks pretty nice yeah it does now the the plaid version of the model s you are you going to widen the track and doing a bunch do a bunch of different i know you guys are testing at the nurburgring can you not talk about that well i think we got to leave that for you know proper sort of product unveil i understand yeah i understand um last time you were here you convinced me to buy a tesla i bought it and it's insane oh great glad you like it um i don't it's not just pretty fun it's like i the way i've described it is it makes other cars seem stupid they just seem dumb like i love dumb things i love dumb cars like i love campfires yeah i love campfires i have a 1993 porsche that's air-cooled sure it's like re it's not that fast it's really\n\nslow compared to the tesla yeah really so it's really quite slow yeah but there's something engaging about the mechanical this is like the the gears and it's very it's very analog but it's so stupid in comparison to the tesla like when i want to go somewhere in the model s i hit the gas and just goes yeah it just it like violates time yeah yeah um yeah you've tried it like ludicrous plus and stuff yeah yeah cool oh yeah we did just did a software update where it'll do it like a cheetah stance so uh yeah so it's it because it's got a dynamic air suspension so it lowers the back oh jesus yeah just like uh like a sprinter basically right like what do you do if you're a sprinter you're going to hunker down and then uh so i shaved like a 10th of a second off\n\nzero six i mean like you know it is pretty fun it's so i've taken so many people and i'm like i take them for the holy moment i'm like you ready like hang on there and then a stomp on the gas i've never felt anything like it it's confusing yeah it really is the the instant torque the instant torque and just the sheer acceleration is baffling it's baffling it's baffling they've never felt it no it's faster than falling it's crazy it's so fast it's a roller coaster yeah and my family yells at me when i stomp the gas like um i tell my kids i'm like you want to feel it you want to feel it like do it do it do it my wife's like don't do it yeah and even if i just do it on the highway for a couple of seconds that's pretty exciting yeah it's very it's like having\n\na roller coaster on tap you know it really is like a roller coaster on top yeah without the loopty loops but it's the the pinning to your seat it seems like you're not supposed to be able to experience that from some sort of a can you know a consumer vehicle that you can just a regular person could buy if you have the money it seems too too crazy and then the idea of this roadster is a half of a second faster than that yeah that's madness well if that roads with a roadster we're going to do some things that are kind of unfair so we're going to take some things from like you know from uh kind of like rock rocket world and put them on the car so oh i read about that explain that like what do you do well like i said we can't oh the product unveiled right\n\nhere but but it's gonna do some things that aren't fair and then the the when we do the unveil of the roadster let me just say that anyone who's been waiting they won't be sorry it's they won't be sorry oh i'm sure well anything that goes zero to sixty what is it one point nine is that the zero 0-60 that's the base model that's good what's the top of the food chain model okay okay faster than that let's just say faster yeah that seems so crazy to me now what was it like when the dude threw the steel balls at the window and they were supposed to not break and it broke well yeah i mean i know any circumstances are you know you know that our demos are authentic [Laughter] so i was not expecting that and i and then i think i muttered under my breath you didn't\n\nget mad though no you didn't steve jobs it um no i i i definitely swore uh but you know i didn't think the mic would pick it up but it did um and uh but so like we practiced this you know behind the scenes yeah i would like it tesla we don't do we don't do like tons of practice for for our demos because we we work we're working on the cars like we you know we're building new technologies and and improving the the fundamental products so we're not spending it like doing like hundreds of you know practice things or anything like that we don't have time for that um but the the just hours before the demo um both franz uh you know uh is a head of design and and i were in the studio throwing steel balls at the window and it's bouncing right off um and like\n\nokay this seems pretty good seems like we got it okay um and then we think what happened was that um when we when when franz hit the the the door with the sledgehammer you know sure like like this is this is like yeah yeah yeah exoskeleton you know high strength hardened steel you can literally take wind up with a sledgehammer you know full double-handed sledgehammer and hit the door and there's not even a dent it's cool but we think that that cracked the corner of the glass at the bottom and then once you crack the corner of the glass that you just came over so uh then when you threw the bowl that that's what cracked the glass so it didn't go through though it didn't go through that's true that's true it didn't shatter the whole thing like a regular\n\nwindow would either which would just dissolve yeah right so in hindsight the ball should have been first sledgehammer second yeah yeah you live you learn yeah exactly listen man uh we've taken up a lot of your time you had a child yeah recently it's amazing that you had the time to come down here and i really appreciate that i appreciate everything you do man i i'm i'm glad you're out there and uh i really appreciate you coming down here and sharing your perspective well i think you got a great show thanks for having me on thank you my pleasure my pleasure elon musk ladies and gentlemen good night all right that should get a little i should get a little play that was great"},"languages":["en"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RcYjXbSJBN8"},{"id":"tesla-q1-2020-earnings-call-2020-04-29","type":"interview","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vEvXfHHEdNc","title":"Tesla Q1 2020 Earnings Call","titles":{"en":"Tesla Q1 2020 Earnings Call","de":"Tesla Q1 2020 Earnings Call","fr":"Tesla Q1 2020 Earnings Call"},"date":"2020-04-29","summary":"Musk discusses Tesla's profitable first quarter of 2020 amid the pandemic, factory shutdowns and the push toward full self-driving.","text":"ladies and gentlemen thank you for standing by and welcome to Tesla's q1 2020 financial results and Q&A webcast at this time all participants are in a listen-only mode after the speaker presentation there will be a question and answer session to ask a question during the session you will need to press star 1 on your telephone please be advised that today's conference is being recorded if you require any further assistance please press star 0 I would now like to turn the conference over to your speaker mr.\n\nMartin beocca senior director for investor relations please go ahead sir Thank You Sheri and good afternoon everyone welcome to the first class first quarter 2020 Q&A webcast I'm going today by Elon Musk Zachary Kirk Horne and a number of other executives our human results were announced at about 1:00 p. m.\n\nPacific time in the update deck we publish at the same link as this webcast during this call we'll discuss our business outlook and make forward-looking statements these comments are based on our predictions and expectations as of today actual events or results could differ materially due to a number of risks and uncertainties including those mentioned in our most recent filings with the SEC during the question and answer portion of today's call please limit yourself to one question and one follow-up please press star 1 now if you would like to join the question queue before we jump into Q&A Yvonne has some opening remarks come on thank you so t1 ended up being a strong quarter despite mellichamp many challenges in the final few weeks this was the first\n\ntime we have achieved positive gap net net income in a seasonally weak first quarter even with all the challenges we achieved a 20% automotive gross margin excluding regulatory credits while ramping to major products what we've learned from this is that we watched LED light here after all after the military ramp from 3 years ago a new products different faster and become profitable sooner the q1 reduce more model wise in the first quarter the model 3 is in Fremont in the first two quarters thus one model y ramp has been even faster than the giga shine high rampant more surprisingly in other words we're ahead of the schedule that we were ahead of already most surprisingly model wire was profitable already in this book first quarter of production something\n\nwe haven't achieved for any product in the past regarding autopilot we released a new software update for traffic lights and stop signs to early access users in March and to all US customers with most of the pulsar driving package just last week icons will now automatically stop at each stop sign or traffic lights until the driver gets a confirmation to proceed patience and patience for the car electric vehicle with much more than this but we are your only exposing functionality that we feel quite good about where we feel that it is probably safety improvement we are we are collecting data from over a million intersections every month at this point this one will grow exponentially as more people get the update and as more people start driving again sooner\n\nwe'll be collecting data from over billion intersections per month all of those right all of those confirmations are training our neural net essentially the the driver when driving and taking action is effectively labeling with labeling reality as they drive and making your life better and better I think this was an advantage that no one else has with and we're quite literally orders of magnitude more and everyone else combined maybe this was difficult to to fully appreciate you know it's the reason I'd say it's very difficult to have a search engine that competes with Google because everyone is training Google all the time with this with what their searches so when you search on something and you click on a link your training giggle every time you do\n\nthat it's pretty difficult funny any new search engine to compete on that faces so but what so all those confirmations like hey and roll net 10 cars will be able to drive through an intersection without a confirmation as well as to make turns and it and we really feel where I've worked really hard work if you're confident that were possible to do a drive from your home to your office inverse the time with more interventions by the end of the year so the business with his we can almost do this already with the leading-edge alphabet I'm driving in the car so see on another technology front the front we increased the range of Model S and X yeah gain was time to 291 miles for Model S and 251 miles from our legs attorney said that actually the model but for\n\nthe the real model is range and is is 400 miles but when we did the last EPA test unfortunately APA I left the car door open and the keys in the car so the car and ended this overnight and so the car actually what went into waiting for driver mode and lost 2% of its range and as a result it had at 391 a test as soon as the EPA reopens for testing will redo the test and we're not really confident what we will achieve a 400 mile or greater range with the Model S which we cleared for the lemonis that for the past two months the true range of the Model S composite to two months and has been 400 miles and of course we're not stopping our looking for is continue pushing for improve range over time and improving improving handling acceleration and all the little\n\ndetails that make a Tesla special for model why with we introduced a revolutionary two-piece we're underwater testing that we're going to be making a single piece casting later this year meaning like essentially the rear third of the body is cast into a single piece which is got no casting of the size of complexity as I haven't been done before in fact there isn't it even anything that was on the pond par with the two-piece casting for the motorway so we're really pushing the envelope on the vehicle structural engineering and manufacturing I'm very excited about this approach allows us to reduce both of the weight the cost and improve NVH it's better in every way essentially we also model I also introduced a revolutionary new heat pump which allows the\n\ncar to have a higher range so what the mud why has remarkable range you know on par with the impacts the fun is slightly better than I guess the model 3 and just despite being a bigger car that weighs more and the heat pump is a key contributor to that and it is especially excellent at low temperature driving so and the feedback we're getting from customers who have received the model line thus far has been universally positive and then we're confident this product will be a best selling product ever so a conclusion and just to look at looking at open yes this is a looking statement we we are absolutely continuing our model wide capacity expansion at full speed at both giggle Berlin and Giga Shanghai and and and Stern Fremont when they will let us continue\n\nlocalized production in China and in Europe will bring the cost down they can't cut our parts even more competitive over time well many other companies are cutting back on investment we are doing the opposite we're absolutely pedal to the metal on new products and expanding the and we were looking forward to being in some time next year a truly global manufacturer with major factories in North America China and Europe and a capacity of well over a million units a year so there's a transplant to look forward to and we can't wait to tell you what's gonna happen thank you thank you and now to Zacks opening remarks yes thanks Martin thanks Elon I'm very proud of the accomplishments of the Tesla team this past quarter a few things to highlight and add to what\n\nElon just mentioned we successfully launched ramp and demonstrated profitability at the model Y as the I mentioned significantly ahead of schedule this is our second large-scale product launch since model 3 and 2017 and it's evidence to the progress we've made on cost control and ramp efficiency it's hard to understate the significance of demonstrating profitability of this program in its first quarter of production our shanghai model 3 margins improved dramatically since q4 of last year nearing equivalence of model threes built in Fremont this is despite not yet running at full capacity while also managing through the production shutdown in early February we also announced a long range and performance variant of the model 3 for our roadmap which will\n\npositively impact a SPS in China on order rates we did not experience much of an impact related to the expiration of government incentives at the end of q4 in fact we exited the quarter with our highest ever backlog yet again aided by these accomplishments we're able to achieve our first ever q on profit automotive gross margin excluding the impact of regulatory credits remain strong for all products despite charges taken in q1 associated with production downtime we continue to make progress on effects efficiency as well as our service and other margins our energy business was impacted as well by shut down activities in q1 limiting deployments we also experienced expected launch inefficiencies associated with our third version of the solar roof which\n\nimpacted overall profitability as I've noted before we expect regulatory credit sales which are credits we sell to other carmakers to generally increase with time this can be seen by the increase from q1 relativity q4 and note that most of the credit revenue did not contribute to cash in q1 and it's reflected when the accounts receivable on the balance sheet our free cash flows were impacted by the temporary by the temporary increase in end of quarter inventory for all our products resulting from the abrupt suspension of production and delivery operations have these up interruptions not occurred we were pacing towards a record quarter of deliveries in strong free cash flows hadiyyah-lah I mentioned it is extremely important that we remain on track to\n\nachieve our long term plans on technology roadmap you're taking the near term actions required to continue those investments model why in Shanghai and Berlin are proceeding as planned and we're making progress on improving capacity from auto line Freemont in model 3 in Shanghai in the near term our Shanghai Factory remains operational contributing an increasing level of cash flows and profitability to the company in Fremont were working towards restarting production as soon as that's possible they're also continuing to deliver cars that we were unable to deliver at the end of the first quarter while vehicle inventory balance increased by fourteen thousand units at the end of q1 which was a headwind to free cash flows in q1 but it's helpful in q2 note\n\nthat one of the most important aspects of model line Fremont and model 3 in Shanghai is the dramatically improved cash conversion cycle by locally producing and delivering vehicles while sales and delivery operations have paused in many areas of the world we are still receiving many online orders despite inability for our customers to experience the product prior to ordering however unavoidably the extended shutdown in Fremont will have an impact on our near-term financial performance and we will need to work through how quickly we'll be able to rent production to higher levels more broadly we remain focused on ensuring our cash flows are managed appropriately working capital management in particular raw material inventory is the single most important\n\nlever and managing our cash flows during this time the tesla team has done a great job human we've also taken actions to eliminate or reduce non-critical expenses and optional investments while continuing to drive efficiencies throughout the business overall we've modeled many scenarios into 2021 and remain comfortable that we have sufficient liquidity to proceed fully with our most important long-term investments it's important to note that Tesla remains an extremely agile and dynamic company and this is aided by the substantial work we've done over the last year to improve our cost efficiency and productivity and we have the ability to quickly adjust our spending and planning as required so thank you again for to the Tesla team for success in q1 and\n\nwe will turn to question thank you very much so we'll take the first questions from institutional investors compiled by safe technologies with the first question from institutional investor is most desolate owners have yet to purchase or experience FSD and despite most vehicles having all the necessary hardware what levers could you pull to accelerate adoption and deepen your data advantage for example if you consider offering FSB as a premium subscription I think we will offer also driving as a subscription service better will be towards the end of this year now if I should say if it will still make sense as as to buy FSB as an option as you know in our view it by FST is is an investment in the future and we're confident that it is investment that will\n\npay off to the consumer into a better for the consumer and in my opinion - the option is something people will not regret doing I agree and financially rolling the upfront purchase of your DFS the option into a loan in the vehicle or lease is will be the least expensive way on a monthly basis to own plus you preserve the option value is increased value with time yeah but we do understand that some customers who have ownership or at least their vehicles did not purchase that option upfront so this will enable those customers to spread out the cost of ownership of SD or subscription of the tool absolutely if you later like at a high level our overall goal is to maximize the area under the curve of customer happiness that is our goal and we think that you\n\nknow that that's the kind of thing that all companies should try to do and it's it's what results in long term value creation and look at media and loyalty bagasse loyalty so our goal is always wait to do the best thing for other customers and and we're confident that but if we're behave like that that they've been customers in turn will pool they have its own way to us thank you the second question from investors is Chandler recently announced changes to its nav subsidy program that disqualifies Tesla vehicles from benefiting from the subsidies what extent is there room for Tesla to lower manufacturing cost in China and pass those savings to buyer so they can qualify for the subsidy yeah so we're making rapid progress on lowering the production cost\n\nin China and we're actually excited to announce on this call that we'll be reducing the price of the standard range model 3 basically tomorrow China time so the day after tomorrow California time but tomorrow China time and in that net be a price below of the subsidy limit we feel confident that that will still be a vehicle that delivers good core emotion yep and and on the manufacturing cost portion of the question the cost of vehicles produced in Shanghai in p1 is already lower than the cost to produce the model 3 in Freemont and there's still significant opportunity left take cost out so a fixed cost absorption from higher production volumes which are occurring in q2 and will occur through the rest of the year we're not fully localized on the supply\n\nchain yet and so well a lot of the supply chain is localized it's not complete and there's additional opportunities there and so we'll continue to bring the price down and expand margin cost down and expand margin even with this reduction in price but Elon mentioned on the standard range version of the vehicle thank you the next question is and they grow once said that great companies are improved by crises in which way has best not improved or or is expected to improve coming out of code 19 well as close to look closely at our cost structure and to be more efficient as a company that one always has to do that in crisis and you know to think about our core beliefs and what do we want to do and we you know care conclusion that that the right the right\n\nwave is actually to continue to expand rapidly continue to invest in the future in your technologies will know it is risky and we've talked to it some like investors and they support that approach as well so you know I think this was fully an uncertain you know if your head is a bit of a bumpy road but I think the the long-term prospects are extremely good guys wanna put ideal on on the prioritization on the key projects well enable us to execute more efficiently and faster on them which i think is great that the other one that I would add is it's always been our vision at Tesla to improve the customer experience and and make that as digital as possible yeah please deliver a touchless delivery mobile service the part of the sales has been something that\n\nwe've been very focused on and made a lot of progress on yeah house was the only car that you can really order in in less than five minutes on your phone you can order a car and have it delivered to your doorstep with all the paperwork and everything done that's it effortless and many customers do that and they're doing it yes in fact a big part of it is just trying to communicate to people at this is something you can do because normally buying a car isn't quite a painted for most people they would rather go to the dentist than buy a new car yeah actually my dentist is right with me but it's really like quite an arduous thing you know when the typical retail experience for buying your car it is more painful to people than then having a root canal then\n\nyou have to say well and for Tesla it is completely as easy as ordering something on that Apple App Store or touring something on Amazon and just lipstick are yeah I'm at five minutes if you're really went fast I think you could order a car probably in 90 seconds thank you and the next question from institutional investor is can you give us a brief preview of the battery day by generally highlighting steps test life stating to improve self energy density and time life or introduction yeah so we're just we don't have preempt about today we're when we've been exciting news for for that day there will be a lot of exciting news to tell and I think it's going to be one of the most exciting days in Intel's history and we're just try to forget the right timing\n\nfor that we think probably the right timing will be the your properly the third week of May that's not giving a fun date but we think that probably that's right timing and depending upon what we are allowed to do it will either be in California or Texas [Music] okay well your last question from a traditional investors could you please update on progress towards development and comers that commercially commercialization of full self-driving how much revenue have you recognized so far um so there's a couple things on the financials for full saw strategy and so currently in North America it sold for $7,000 as an option we take roughly half of that as revenue and the other half of it goes into deferred revenue that's associated with features that will be\n\nreleased with time a deferred revenue balance is continuing to grow it's a little bit over six hundred million dollars and so as we release features with time at the end of every quarter we take a look at what features have been released associated value and then we can release that from the deferred revenue into our financials for that quarter and then cars going forward once the features release we can recognize that revenue so we reduce the amount of deferral and we can recognize that revenue within period so this is one of what we think will be one of the most powerful gross margin levers with time it has a feature sweetest robot absolutely there's also a current of untapped potential in but the bit out there that could upgrade to turn on autopilot\n\nbasically palatable for self-driving and that's something that will enable your just important approaches or as we talked about earlier just you know towards the end of the year as a subscription so but that's that's just a lot of untapped potential there and that's not in the deferred revenue line obviously it is certainly a great deal of deferred potential that we think is a large portion which is like too likely to reach coercion thank you and now let's go to questions from the retail investors question number one Elon has mentioned a 50% compound annual growth target for Tesla in the past is this still in line with Tesla's ambitions for the next five to ten years this would be four million vehicles in 2025 and more than 20 million vehicles in 2030\n\nhe's forty percent of more realistic target well it's always difficult to predict what the macro situation is going to be you can a few people would have predicted the other you know but unexpected yeah roundhouse that that covered and came up with it sort of came an hour so I think in the absence of something is some some massive force majeure event but quite massive I think 50 percent it is this the likely number it's possible that is 40% I would be very shocked if it's less than 40% not even with force-majeure short World War 3 ok the next question from retail investors when will you announce next Giga how many gig us the UF client for the next 5 years I think we will announce the next gig app possibly as soon as a month what we made remain outs as\n\nsoon as next month with low friction is just saying it but what could happen for most what maybe within 3 months and possibly one month and that would be in the u.\n\ns.\n\nso as for how many will be in five years I'm not I I don't know right now what that number would be I guess so more than there are today but I'm not sure what would exactly be in five years but so number more than today our gigas have gotten bigger yes and larger vehicles for being cold terror yet with multiple products as well and so you know the absolute number of kata factories we may ultimately build might be less but each one is larger and that's under a belief that just significant efficiencies by having as much as possible and similar product lines under the same roof and as much vertical integration as possible all in one facility yes thank you the next question is can you give us an update on solar roof ram how many are you currently able to\n\ninstall per week what is your installations four weeks target for the end of 2021 we're actually getting at rasma mentum with the solar roof before covered and that covered essentially shut us down both from devoted to install antibody to get permits the department offices requires and do you know a shelter-in-place 11 places so rusty cannot hit though and if you can't get permits and you can't physically do it it's perfectly impossible so but I think the long-term trend for solar roof is extremely good and I'm confident that it would say within the next you know I know you're there maybe even by end of year we should be installing at a rate of a thousand a week that's not in the in the middle of winter or something that's with like taking seasonality\n\nI like for stupor seasonality we it's hard to install on roofs that are covered in snow and ice a bit like you know say spring I think it's installing wood which is the hard part we actually have demonstrated the ability to hit a thousand a week first blood rate for the solar classroom already so that's not that's not a problem but it's building up the install teams building up the third-party channel installers the Richland roofing industry installers and and internally we want to have at least a thousand thousand solar roof and install teams with and taking a week off house no less than a week to do an install which gets you a thousand a week roof installations we see if demand is demand is good production is good especially well about the install and\n\nthen Analects it also building up the to the training the right a diverse group of companies in the roofing industry to also install solar if that I think will scale master scale you have my far beyond a thousand a week we're also seeing a lot of interest outside of North America sort of your expect this to be a product that is international and and actually saying that reminds not of interest from China on the sunroof so we talked about this this would be a very significant product would help me over time thank you the next question is can you elaborate on Tesla's plan to enter the residential and/or commercial HVAC market can you provide some basics of how your system will work will be consider the heat pump water heater market as well well as I said\n\non Twitter I'm personally extremely excited to build a kick-ass HVAC system that also has you know sort of hospital grade particle filtration basically HEPA filtration that filters out viruses bacteria pollen fungi and also neutralizes acidic alkaline gases that is that is quiet and efficient and these are all things we've achieved in in our cars by the way in fact I'm gonna love you realized but the model is next so the only cars in the world that have a hospital operating room braid but HEPA filters bullpen they're very big so we can get to apply a particle camp that is insanely low with our cars and Riaan why I have like Merv 16 or 15 people filters yeah so which is so like model Korean wire burners like there are no slouches multilaterals are ways\n\nthey're way better than any other cars the best of my knowledge they're quite as good as possible operating room but they're extremely good way better than any other normal car very continuing to improve the culture is learned through anyway I guess these actually have a big effect on health even in normal just day-to-day living is reducing particle count and and yeah it has effect on allergies and also something so it's really their quality is incredibly important yeah you're in a non coded situation extremely important so they're taking all those things that are glutes and applying to your home HVAC and it would be an epidural HVAC would be just more exciting and and NH if you've got if you're condensing water minor goals to have it be a water source\n\nif you have water you possibly could then heat the water and have a water heater as well yeah neither does eat source if you need it instead of down so when the outdoors is really cold yeah or the other way around so that's options it could be held a product and then so we just have to wait till we have tens to divide up whether we can cheer on the card front so we're going to make sure we get a lot of using the fire here for gear products with the cyber truck semi road near roadster and to get the gigafactory in various parts of the world it's a possibility a model y and photo pilot and the solar roof and I'm gonna technology yeah slightly power will power power pack mega pack we are seeing tremendous demand for stationary storage more than more than\n\nwe can supply at least least for 2020 thank you and the last question from the retailers when will that left start acquiring utilities like the horns they'll power reserve and Moss Landing instead of selling them battery storage plus it makes sense for Tesla to buy bigger clients and convert them well we hadn't really thought about that yet but it's not out of the question but our brain is full excuse me sir I don't blame you for the question you know what our overarching goal is to help accelerate the advent of sustainable energy and we deal with and the three elements of that or sustainable power generation then you better store the power station in storage and then you'd better have electric transportation so and we don't have like specific market\n\nshare goals or anything like that it's just to agree that we can accelerate their pension sustainable energy we think that's a fundamental good for the world and we want to give a toast fast as possible but it's not you makes it market share growth you know it's gold in and of itself it's just you know fast this happens a bit over the world little did thank you very much and I think now we can move to analyst questions thank you our first question will come from Adam Jonas with Morgan Stanley please go ahead thanks everybody I hope everyone's safe and healthy I got one question one follow-up and I point out I've had a root canal before and I would agree Elan it was less painful than buying a car I mean it really is yeah exactly it's a big problem actually\n\nit's a big decision yes different conversation exact verse for you any real-time update on company liquidity at the end of April some some companies have you know given the circumstances gone out of their way to give a little color on that just want to give you a shot at that I gotta follow yeah it's a fair question I don't have any additional color to provide so 8.\n\n1 billion in cash and cash equivalents at the end of q1 we're managing it very closely as I mentioned in my opening remarks we do have an increase in inventory of vehicles that we were unable to deliver at the end of q1 so we're making progress delivering those to April which is helpful for liquidity and you know as we've been looking at liquidity we've been looking at this over the next 18 months and there's ups and downs to the look to the liquidity you know currently now as we're not producing we still have payables from q1 that we're paying off but then in a couple of months we'll quickly be through that and then we'll have a gap in payables since we don't have any parts coming in so it does go up and down a little bit but you know in looking at the\n\nlong-term horizon which is how we're managing it right now we feel pretty comfortable with the liability position on the company yeah yeah we are a bit worried about I'm gonna be able to resume production in the Bay Area and that should be identified as a serious risk and you know that we really only have to call factories right now one in Shanghai and one in the area and Borya produced with the vast majority of our cars all of SMX and most of the three and all of the why so the the extension of the shelf replace or likely I'll call it in forcibly imprisoning people in their homes against all their constitutional rights with my opinion with raising people's freedoms in ways that are horrible and wrong and not my people came to America or built this country\n\nwhat the excuse me people acted out great systems outrage so that it will cause great harm not just the tassel of its many companies and while Tesla will weather the storm there are many small companies that will not and all peoples everything if you will work for the whole life against going to get is being destroyed in real time and you're going to have many suppliers and I'm having many spiders that having super hard times especially at small ones and it's just causing a lot of strife to a lot of people when you're on on that point you mentioned people that gave their lives to build the country my faults for you on this they've been a lot of comparisons you know drawn to the state of the US economy to the early 1930s when Roosevelt began a series of\n\nnew deals in infrastructure projects for post-world War two when Eisenhower launched the u.\n\ns.\n\nhighway act and when JFK launched the Apollo program which you could say was you know influenced by the Cold War clearly and you've benefited from in our space program benefited from what would be your message to US lawmakers on this call as we in addition to your opinions on shelter in place but you know thinking a longer term your message to US lawmakers coming out of the crisis specifically around the infrastructure and a chance to kind of you know work with taxpayers to support sustainable transport renewable energy I'm wondering to see this you know as a chance to make make the crisis and all the loss and lives lost not be in vain Thanks I think it's high time we invested in infrastructure in this country we have a lot of crumbling highways and bridges\n\nand and frankly you know when I visit China I see their infrastructure as being much better than ours it's great Europe was better infrastructure it's it's it's really quite sad but the u.\n\ns.\n\ninfrastructure is especially so voids in highways this is where it is today and our airports in a lot of cases are an embarrassment so and it's not just a question of money it's fish as well and as soon as we spend a lot of money on these things but what do we gain for it for it so you know and yeah we really need to be taking out what is the transportation of the future not the presentation of that for the past year you know if this was in 1928 do you want to be investing in steam engines or Intel commotions edges obviously most lots of engines so yeah those are the time to think about the future um and also to ask you know I did is it right to your infringe upon people's right but as what is what is happening right now I think the bank but people are\n\ngoing to be very angry about this and are very angry respect somebody should be if somebody wants to stay in a house but that's great they should be allowed to stay in the house initial not be compelled to leave but to say that they cannot leave their house and there will be arrested if they do this was this was fascist this was not democratic this was not freedom give people back their God doing freedom ok let's go to the next question please Thank You our next question comes from Emmanuel Rosner with Deutsche Bank please go ahead hi good evening question on model Y or something you can elaborate a little bit more of the drivers of how the gross margin is already positive at such low volume how much of it is a function of the criminality with the model\n\n3 with other factors should we think about and what does that mean for the ampler for the eventual gross margin of Malwa well sure a couple of thoughts there for why the first is it does carry a higher ASP so on the revenue side it carries a higher ASP than model 3 and the deliveries that we started with were of the higher ASP versions of the cars so we started with deliveries of performance initially and so that helps create some of the margin and that will come down with time as more variants are released and we have more of a steady state mix but it's similar to the ASP trend that we had with model 3 when we launched that product and for two years ago on the cost side and I think you hit on a couple of the book is the commonality is huge it's very\n\nimportant and in addition to that manufacturing processes are very similar to model three as well until we have experience with that both with monitoring Fremont and then as well in Shanghai and it helps to have an existing factory with existing workforce and knowledge here as well so the ecosystem to support and launch of the product is there there remain a lot of opportunities to take continue to take cost out of the car the number of vehicles that we built in the first quarter is is quite limited relative to where Waldo would take hospital out of the car and to make the park better so it's detachment it's not make the park worse it's any people can take cost out of a car make it worse we want to take cut across all the car you're out how to make it\n\nlighter and simpler and and so it's once the car just just incrementally improve as well as incrementally lower in cost but you know for four or five seater model why we briefly we expect you know marginal cost back car to be comparable to the model three once we have reached a path to ten or twenty thousand units or something like that you know ladies and gentlemen please stand by your conference will resume momentarily thank you because you're back online hi sorry we got disconnected for some reason um what was the question again okay now let's go to the next question please the next question comes from Van Keller was there please go ahead hey thank you very much just wondering about the Z cell strategy you know in in Reno you have obviously integrated\n\nthere but you're buying cells I think in Shanghai and what we think is in Germany and so how are you looking at at that going forward and then so they just talk about mr.\n\nLazaro and that border dish is kind of the process with with adding into the board thank you sure from a sales perspective you know with all the partners we've had historically and in the future we're just looking for competitive technology and competitive pricing I think we'll talk a little bit more about this and battery investor day like how we're approaching all of it but but yeah I mean we don't have like one model we're restricting ourselves to pursue we're just trying to find what's best for the products and they can and in the long run and then there's a question about the board so I couldn't we could on here the second part of the question yeah that's give up mr.\n\nwith you know better entering the board and kind of the process behind that what he brings to the fore oh I think we all need a hero and obviously liberation a lot of experience investing at the highest levels in the world and some co-workers at birth and a pension fund which is for the largest funder of any kind in the world and you know generally the conversations of the years just Charlie I think I was fighting to how the disagrees with all three markets work and what he thinks is whether errors for reform just it's like children just trying to force off for anything about how to make the future better and Meshech shares my view about an environment and very sensible smart person who brings a lot to the board and I think is generally recognized as\n\nsuch I find by many people I guess I guess waking in to the Panasonic relationship but maybe just you know how is that relationship going here is there any greed through on pretty big neurology board thank you um I think this is that nicer with the past night lationship I mean I had a great relationship with past nights here we we meet regularly one-on-one and talk whole time and you know so what that relationship is strong and bring more of a broader global strategic view to the board thank you let's go to the next question please our next question will come from Jean monster with loop ventures please go ahead congratulations on the progress and you only talked about full autonomy by the end of the year I would love for you to walk through the rollout\n\nstrategy of the Tesla Network app and how that's gonna look prior to the Robo taxi stage are you going to gradually take over a human routes with autonomous capable routes over time or how do you see that playing out well it's pretty much play out as as it has played out which is will we release more more functionality you know before we release any functionality it goes through extensive testing and of course we run it we have a simulations team that has a very good simulation of the real world so we run any code changes through a battery testing simulation when we have a global rating brush I'm on actually I'm one of on the global create you a team and we test the releases in the real world the real world bad differences cooler world in the simulation\n\nwhich is which are very many because the world was very complex aware and then we release it to a small group of Congress beta testers within the company and to a larger audience including people outside the company and to early access Tesla owners and then finally a broader release and so those are the many stages that these things work for so the by the time something is we're going to wide release into the US there's went to all the first stages and the software that's at the at the very early stage there's much more advanced than what people are saying so there's just going to go through a rigorous lengthy process so essentially we need to figure out you could get very good the complex intersections get very good at like turns in intersections and\n\nlooks like it will be malls in a parking lot or office park or special events and it's working events that kind of thing when those eventually come back we have these doubles opposed or after high places but it will try for a while I feel like the autopilots engineering team is finished a few a talented group and I'm deeply involved with the team really so we talk every week and meet every week run your cash or present a physical meeting it's awful so I have a good fight understanding where we are overhead and I feel like we have transmeta momentum and we'll have the functionality that's right cool for some time anybody out of the year now after that functionality is released this pistol another strap which is to improve the reliability of it once was\n\nreleased to make a pull stop driving with looking into the fish whip it supervised by the driver and then we keep improving a lot reliability to the point where it no longer needs to be supervised by the driver and we provide a vast body of data to regulators to show them about what was the case and then presumably the regulator's which jurisdiction it is working approval for fully autonomous cars that can drive with no humans on board it obviously the regulatory approval process that's before us fear accuracy because it's out of our hands but the progress would I forget about program summarize we want forget owners full autonomy some level that by the end of the year and then a human in a loop tessai network app sometime is it first half of next year\n\nwould that be the whole mm-hmm doing like wait turn the car drives with no first one with a person initially a person observe would that be with the Tesla Network at but that the early part of the year 2021 is at the whole it's just I just hope I would say that that's probably a fair description ok and then you know kind of take it to its end stage the Robo taxi stage any high-level thoughts understand the regulatory is a massive unknown but if you're gonna put a guess on it where would we start moving with certain Robo taxi well I think I think it's quite likely in my view Gannicus it could be wrong on as you suppose with our heads if in some errors and we're behind in others because when I did when I when I get when I give a guest I give the guest but\n\nI think this be the likely midpoint not be the point with lots of margin if this is not a distribution I give you the 50th percentile and not be a few Sigma you know optimistic or pessimistic and so then that naturally means at least have no predictions will be wrong and have the right what might be bright but or set by yeah but if a few weeks to a few months in some cases a few years um but because everything I'd rather said would come true did come true it may come too late but it did come true so punctuality is not my strong suit and I always come through in the end so I mean I think we could see rubber taxis in operation with Network feet next year none nor mark is going to thank you let's go the last question please the last question will come from\n\nPierre from room with new Street please go ahead hey thanks for taking my question one on gross margin first and your impressive performance in q1 so there are three moving parts that they win from creditors of course the mode ly ramping even if it broke even it party took average cost margin down and of course you had like frenum being closed shut down the last week of the quarter I probably was this office an extra person so when I looked at how gross margin evolves sequentially excluding this removing part I said like you're Auto gross margin it has been up like a couple of points sequentially so I wanted to check with you is that estimate would make sense and then I would have a follow-up on energy storage thank you yeah I think the three things that\n\nyou mentioned it's been a little bit of a hard time hearing the full question here because I'm having a bit of Network difficulty in the room well I'll do my best here so when we look at margin we do a salute credit as you have so I agree with that model by ramping bringing down overall gross margin I agree with that as well so it was lower than the overall average and that will increase with time and shutdown and efficiencies in both Shanghai and in Fremont also laid on margin but and the shanghai margin was below the average as well even though it's increasing quickly in approaching model 3 it still is below the average and so I think the sentiment of your question was if you were to remove those factors with the sequential increase in gross margin\n\nI haven't specifically calculated that but I think your intuition is right we saw strength and gross margin across the board as I mentioned and in particular FNX worst margins continue to improve but it despite slightly lower volumes there and higher a fixed cost limitations there's good progress happening both on the ASP sign-in Macross reduction side for our products in production and I think this also lends itself to as the power of the gross profit contribution to the company once we get through these rampant efficiencies we get them on up and running again the increased capacity so we can spread out fixed costs and continue to execute on cost reductions on our products we're very optimistic about that personally thanks and I had a coupon on energy\n\nstorage if you can hear me well I think like I can't remember I think from the very first days I heard you on the course you've always mentioned that demand for energy storage is always out straighting supply and you have more orders and you can make and so I'm kind of thinking there will be there should be an inflection point in that business at some point and it's going to be driven by your ability to add much more manufacturing capacity like battery manufacturing capacity and at a high level how are you thinking about that inflection point in terms of timeline in terms of timeline I think what we've been doing with with both our partners and internally and looking at how to reduce the fundamentally the cost of of investments in new cell capacity because\n\nwhen you look at a car a vehicle product you know there's a lot of things in the vehicle besides the cells when you look at an energy storage project product it's really just the cells and so it really grow the energy storage business it's all about selling business and so that's that's what we've been focused on and and I think yeah not to give too much away but we'll put that'll be one of those things you address in battery and investor day is is how we're focused on that and when we only have that in the place we want it'll be a lot easier to scale that business thank you very much for all your great questions unfortunately this is all the time we have today and we'll speak to you again in three months time thank you very much and have a good day well\n\nladies and gentlemen this concludes today's conference call thank you for your participation you may now disconnect","textByLang":{"en":"ladies and gentlemen thank you for standing by and welcome to Tesla's q1 2020 financial results and Q&A webcast at this time all participants are in a listen-only mode after the speaker presentation there will be a question and answer session to ask a question during the session you will need to press star 1 on your telephone please be advised that today's conference is being recorded if you require any further assistance please press star 0 I would now like to turn the conference over to your speaker mr.\n\nMartin beocca senior director for investor relations please go ahead sir Thank You Sheri and good afternoon everyone welcome to the first class first quarter 2020 Q&A webcast I'm going today by Elon Musk Zachary Kirk Horne and a number of other executives our human results were announced at about 1:00 p. m.\n\nPacific time in the update deck we publish at the same link as this webcast during this call we'll discuss our business outlook and make forward-looking statements these comments are based on our predictions and expectations as of today actual events or results could differ materially due to a number of risks and uncertainties including those mentioned in our most recent filings with the SEC during the question and answer portion of today's call please limit yourself to one question and one follow-up please press star 1 now if you would like to join the question queue before we jump into Q&A Yvonne has some opening remarks come on thank you so t1 ended up being a strong quarter despite mellichamp many challenges in the final few weeks this was the first\n\ntime we have achieved positive gap net net income in a seasonally weak first quarter even with all the challenges we achieved a 20% automotive gross margin excluding regulatory credits while ramping to major products what we've learned from this is that we watched LED light here after all after the military ramp from 3 years ago a new products different faster and become profitable sooner the q1 reduce more model wise in the first quarter the model 3 is in Fremont in the first two quarters thus one model y ramp has been even faster than the giga shine high rampant more surprisingly in other words we're ahead of the schedule that we were ahead of already most surprisingly model wire was profitable already in this book first quarter of production something\n\nwe haven't achieved for any product in the past regarding autopilot we released a new software update for traffic lights and stop signs to early access users in March and to all US customers with most of the pulsar driving package just last week icons will now automatically stop at each stop sign or traffic lights until the driver gets a confirmation to proceed patience and patience for the car electric vehicle with much more than this but we are your only exposing functionality that we feel quite good about where we feel that it is probably safety improvement we are we are collecting data from over a million intersections every month at this point this one will grow exponentially as more people get the update and as more people start driving again sooner\n\nwe'll be collecting data from over billion intersections per month all of those right all of those confirmations are training our neural net essentially the the driver when driving and taking action is effectively labeling with labeling reality as they drive and making your life better and better I think this was an advantage that no one else has with and we're quite literally orders of magnitude more and everyone else combined maybe this was difficult to to fully appreciate you know it's the reason I'd say it's very difficult to have a search engine that competes with Google because everyone is training Google all the time with this with what their searches so when you search on something and you click on a link your training giggle every time you do\n\nthat it's pretty difficult funny any new search engine to compete on that faces so but what so all those confirmations like hey and roll net 10 cars will be able to drive through an intersection without a confirmation as well as to make turns and it and we really feel where I've worked really hard work if you're confident that were possible to do a drive from your home to your office inverse the time with more interventions by the end of the year so the business with his we can almost do this already with the leading-edge alphabet I'm driving in the car so see on another technology front the front we increased the range of Model S and X yeah gain was time to 291 miles for Model S and 251 miles from our legs attorney said that actually the model but for\n\nthe the real model is range and is is 400 miles but when we did the last EPA test unfortunately APA I left the car door open and the keys in the car so the car and ended this overnight and so the car actually what went into waiting for driver mode and lost 2% of its range and as a result it had at 391 a test as soon as the EPA reopens for testing will redo the test and we're not really confident what we will achieve a 400 mile or greater range with the Model S which we cleared for the lemonis that for the past two months the true range of the Model S composite to two months and has been 400 miles and of course we're not stopping our looking for is continue pushing for improve range over time and improving improving handling acceleration and all the little\n\ndetails that make a Tesla special for model why with we introduced a revolutionary two-piece we're underwater testing that we're going to be making a single piece casting later this year meaning like essentially the rear third of the body is cast into a single piece which is got no casting of the size of complexity as I haven't been done before in fact there isn't it even anything that was on the pond par with the two-piece casting for the motorway so we're really pushing the envelope on the vehicle structural engineering and manufacturing I'm very excited about this approach allows us to reduce both of the weight the cost and improve NVH it's better in every way essentially we also model I also introduced a revolutionary new heat pump which allows the\n\ncar to have a higher range so what the mud why has remarkable range you know on par with the impacts the fun is slightly better than I guess the model 3 and just despite being a bigger car that weighs more and the heat pump is a key contributor to that and it is especially excellent at low temperature driving so and the feedback we're getting from customers who have received the model line thus far has been universally positive and then we're confident this product will be a best selling product ever so a conclusion and just to look at looking at open yes this is a looking statement we we are absolutely continuing our model wide capacity expansion at full speed at both giggle Berlin and Giga Shanghai and and and Stern Fremont when they will let us continue\n\nlocalized production in China and in Europe will bring the cost down they can't cut our parts even more competitive over time well many other companies are cutting back on investment we are doing the opposite we're absolutely pedal to the metal on new products and expanding the and we were looking forward to being in some time next year a truly global manufacturer with major factories in North America China and Europe and a capacity of well over a million units a year so there's a transplant to look forward to and we can't wait to tell you what's gonna happen thank you thank you and now to Zacks opening remarks yes thanks Martin thanks Elon I'm very proud of the accomplishments of the Tesla team this past quarter a few things to highlight and add to what\n\nElon just mentioned we successfully launched ramp and demonstrated profitability at the model Y as the I mentioned significantly ahead of schedule this is our second large-scale product launch since model 3 and 2017 and it's evidence to the progress we've made on cost control and ramp efficiency it's hard to understate the significance of demonstrating profitability of this program in its first quarter of production our shanghai model 3 margins improved dramatically since q4 of last year nearing equivalence of model threes built in Fremont this is despite not yet running at full capacity while also managing through the production shutdown in early February we also announced a long range and performance variant of the model 3 for our roadmap which will\n\npositively impact a SPS in China on order rates we did not experience much of an impact related to the expiration of government incentives at the end of q4 in fact we exited the quarter with our highest ever backlog yet again aided by these accomplishments we're able to achieve our first ever q on profit automotive gross margin excluding the impact of regulatory credits remain strong for all products despite charges taken in q1 associated with production downtime we continue to make progress on effects efficiency as well as our service and other margins our energy business was impacted as well by shut down activities in q1 limiting deployments we also experienced expected launch inefficiencies associated with our third version of the solar roof which\n\nimpacted overall profitability as I've noted before we expect regulatory credit sales which are credits we sell to other carmakers to generally increase with time this can be seen by the increase from q1 relativity q4 and note that most of the credit revenue did not contribute to cash in q1 and it's reflected when the accounts receivable on the balance sheet our free cash flows were impacted by the temporary by the temporary increase in end of quarter inventory for all our products resulting from the abrupt suspension of production and delivery operations have these up interruptions not occurred we were pacing towards a record quarter of deliveries in strong free cash flows hadiyyah-lah I mentioned it is extremely important that we remain on track to\n\nachieve our long term plans on technology roadmap you're taking the near term actions required to continue those investments model why in Shanghai and Berlin are proceeding as planned and we're making progress on improving capacity from auto line Freemont in model 3 in Shanghai in the near term our Shanghai Factory remains operational contributing an increasing level of cash flows and profitability to the company in Fremont were working towards restarting production as soon as that's possible they're also continuing to deliver cars that we were unable to deliver at the end of the first quarter while vehicle inventory balance increased by fourteen thousand units at the end of q1 which was a headwind to free cash flows in q1 but it's helpful in q2 note\n\nthat one of the most important aspects of model line Fremont and model 3 in Shanghai is the dramatically improved cash conversion cycle by locally producing and delivering vehicles while sales and delivery operations have paused in many areas of the world we are still receiving many online orders despite inability for our customers to experience the product prior to ordering however unavoidably the extended shutdown in Fremont will have an impact on our near-term financial performance and we will need to work through how quickly we'll be able to rent production to higher levels more broadly we remain focused on ensuring our cash flows are managed appropriately working capital management in particular raw material inventory is the single most important\n\nlever and managing our cash flows during this time the tesla team has done a great job human we've also taken actions to eliminate or reduce non-critical expenses and optional investments while continuing to drive efficiencies throughout the business overall we've modeled many scenarios into 2021 and remain comfortable that we have sufficient liquidity to proceed fully with our most important long-term investments it's important to note that Tesla remains an extremely agile and dynamic company and this is aided by the substantial work we've done over the last year to improve our cost efficiency and productivity and we have the ability to quickly adjust our spending and planning as required so thank you again for to the Tesla team for success in q1 and\n\nwe will turn to question thank you very much so we'll take the first questions from institutional investors compiled by safe technologies with the first question from institutional investor is most desolate owners have yet to purchase or experience FSD and despite most vehicles having all the necessary hardware what levers could you pull to accelerate adoption and deepen your data advantage for example if you consider offering FSB as a premium subscription I think we will offer also driving as a subscription service better will be towards the end of this year now if I should say if it will still make sense as as to buy FSB as an option as you know in our view it by FST is is an investment in the future and we're confident that it is investment that will\n\npay off to the consumer into a better for the consumer and in my opinion - the option is something people will not regret doing I agree and financially rolling the upfront purchase of your DFS the option into a loan in the vehicle or lease is will be the least expensive way on a monthly basis to own plus you preserve the option value is increased value with time yeah but we do understand that some customers who have ownership or at least their vehicles did not purchase that option upfront so this will enable those customers to spread out the cost of ownership of SD or subscription of the tool absolutely if you later like at a high level our overall goal is to maximize the area under the curve of customer happiness that is our goal and we think that you\n\nknow that that's the kind of thing that all companies should try to do and it's it's what results in long term value creation and look at media and loyalty bagasse loyalty so our goal is always wait to do the best thing for other customers and and we're confident that but if we're behave like that that they've been customers in turn will pool they have its own way to us thank you the second question from investors is Chandler recently announced changes to its nav subsidy program that disqualifies Tesla vehicles from benefiting from the subsidies what extent is there room for Tesla to lower manufacturing cost in China and pass those savings to buyer so they can qualify for the subsidy yeah so we're making rapid progress on lowering the production cost\n\nin China and we're actually excited to announce on this call that we'll be reducing the price of the standard range model 3 basically tomorrow China time so the day after tomorrow California time but tomorrow China time and in that net be a price below of the subsidy limit we feel confident that that will still be a vehicle that delivers good core emotion yep and and on the manufacturing cost portion of the question the cost of vehicles produced in Shanghai in p1 is already lower than the cost to produce the model 3 in Freemont and there's still significant opportunity left take cost out so a fixed cost absorption from higher production volumes which are occurring in q2 and will occur through the rest of the year we're not fully localized on the supply\n\nchain yet and so well a lot of the supply chain is localized it's not complete and there's additional opportunities there and so we'll continue to bring the price down and expand margin cost down and expand margin even with this reduction in price but Elon mentioned on the standard range version of the vehicle thank you the next question is and they grow once said that great companies are improved by crises in which way has best not improved or or is expected to improve coming out of code 19 well as close to look closely at our cost structure and to be more efficient as a company that one always has to do that in crisis and you know to think about our core beliefs and what do we want to do and we you know care conclusion that that the right the right\n\nwave is actually to continue to expand rapidly continue to invest in the future in your technologies will know it is risky and we've talked to it some like investors and they support that approach as well so you know I think this was fully an uncertain you know if your head is a bit of a bumpy road but I think the the long-term prospects are extremely good guys wanna put ideal on on the prioritization on the key projects well enable us to execute more efficiently and faster on them which i think is great that the other one that I would add is it's always been our vision at Tesla to improve the customer experience and and make that as digital as possible yeah please deliver a touchless delivery mobile service the part of the sales has been something that\n\nwe've been very focused on and made a lot of progress on yeah house was the only car that you can really order in in less than five minutes on your phone you can order a car and have it delivered to your doorstep with all the paperwork and everything done that's it effortless and many customers do that and they're doing it yes in fact a big part of it is just trying to communicate to people at this is something you can do because normally buying a car isn't quite a painted for most people they would rather go to the dentist than buy a new car yeah actually my dentist is right with me but it's really like quite an arduous thing you know when the typical retail experience for buying your car it is more painful to people than then having a root canal then\n\nyou have to say well and for Tesla it is completely as easy as ordering something on that Apple App Store or touring something on Amazon and just lipstick are yeah I'm at five minutes if you're really went fast I think you could order a car probably in 90 seconds thank you and the next question from institutional investor is can you give us a brief preview of the battery day by generally highlighting steps test life stating to improve self energy density and time life or introduction yeah so we're just we don't have preempt about today we're when we've been exciting news for for that day there will be a lot of exciting news to tell and I think it's going to be one of the most exciting days in Intel's history and we're just try to forget the right timing\n\nfor that we think probably the right timing will be the your properly the third week of May that's not giving a fun date but we think that probably that's right timing and depending upon what we are allowed to do it will either be in California or Texas [Music] okay well your last question from a traditional investors could you please update on progress towards development and comers that commercially commercialization of full self-driving how much revenue have you recognized so far um so there's a couple things on the financials for full saw strategy and so currently in North America it sold for $7,000 as an option we take roughly half of that as revenue and the other half of it goes into deferred revenue that's associated with features that will be\n\nreleased with time a deferred revenue balance is continuing to grow it's a little bit over six hundred million dollars and so as we release features with time at the end of every quarter we take a look at what features have been released associated value and then we can release that from the deferred revenue into our financials for that quarter and then cars going forward once the features release we can recognize that revenue so we reduce the amount of deferral and we can recognize that revenue within period so this is one of what we think will be one of the most powerful gross margin levers with time it has a feature sweetest robot absolutely there's also a current of untapped potential in but the bit out there that could upgrade to turn on autopilot\n\nbasically palatable for self-driving and that's something that will enable your just important approaches or as we talked about earlier just you know towards the end of the year as a subscription so but that's that's just a lot of untapped potential there and that's not in the deferred revenue line obviously it is certainly a great deal of deferred potential that we think is a large portion which is like too likely to reach coercion thank you and now let's go to questions from the retail investors question number one Elon has mentioned a 50% compound annual growth target for Tesla in the past is this still in line with Tesla's ambitions for the next five to ten years this would be four million vehicles in 2025 and more than 20 million vehicles in 2030\n\nhe's forty percent of more realistic target well it's always difficult to predict what the macro situation is going to be you can a few people would have predicted the other you know but unexpected yeah roundhouse that that covered and came up with it sort of came an hour so I think in the absence of something is some some massive force majeure event but quite massive I think 50 percent it is this the likely number it's possible that is 40% I would be very shocked if it's less than 40% not even with force-majeure short World War 3 ok the next question from retail investors when will you announce next Giga how many gig us the UF client for the next 5 years I think we will announce the next gig app possibly as soon as a month what we made remain outs as\n\nsoon as next month with low friction is just saying it but what could happen for most what maybe within 3 months and possibly one month and that would be in the u.\n\ns.\n\nso as for how many will be in five years I'm not I I don't know right now what that number would be I guess so more than there are today but I'm not sure what would exactly be in five years but so number more than today our gigas have gotten bigger yes and larger vehicles for being cold terror yet with multiple products as well and so you know the absolute number of kata factories we may ultimately build might be less but each one is larger and that's under a belief that just significant efficiencies by having as much as possible and similar product lines under the same roof and as much vertical integration as possible all in one facility yes thank you the next question is can you give us an update on solar roof ram how many are you currently able to\n\ninstall per week what is your installations four weeks target for the end of 2021 we're actually getting at rasma mentum with the solar roof before covered and that covered essentially shut us down both from devoted to install antibody to get permits the department offices requires and do you know a shelter-in-place 11 places so rusty cannot hit though and if you can't get permits and you can't physically do it it's perfectly impossible so but I think the long-term trend for solar roof is extremely good and I'm confident that it would say within the next you know I know you're there maybe even by end of year we should be installing at a rate of a thousand a week that's not in the in the middle of winter or something that's with like taking seasonality\n\nI like for stupor seasonality we it's hard to install on roofs that are covered in snow and ice a bit like you know say spring I think it's installing wood which is the hard part we actually have demonstrated the ability to hit a thousand a week first blood rate for the solar classroom already so that's not that's not a problem but it's building up the install teams building up the third-party channel installers the Richland roofing industry installers and and internally we want to have at least a thousand thousand solar roof and install teams with and taking a week off house no less than a week to do an install which gets you a thousand a week roof installations we see if demand is demand is good production is good especially well about the install and\n\nthen Analects it also building up the to the training the right a diverse group of companies in the roofing industry to also install solar if that I think will scale master scale you have my far beyond a thousand a week we're also seeing a lot of interest outside of North America sort of your expect this to be a product that is international and and actually saying that reminds not of interest from China on the sunroof so we talked about this this would be a very significant product would help me over time thank you the next question is can you elaborate on Tesla's plan to enter the residential and/or commercial HVAC market can you provide some basics of how your system will work will be consider the heat pump water heater market as well well as I said\n\non Twitter I'm personally extremely excited to build a kick-ass HVAC system that also has you know sort of hospital grade particle filtration basically HEPA filtration that filters out viruses bacteria pollen fungi and also neutralizes acidic alkaline gases that is that is quiet and efficient and these are all things we've achieved in in our cars by the way in fact I'm gonna love you realized but the model is next so the only cars in the world that have a hospital operating room braid but HEPA filters bullpen they're very big so we can get to apply a particle camp that is insanely low with our cars and Riaan why I have like Merv 16 or 15 people filters yeah so which is so like model Korean wire burners like there are no slouches multilaterals are ways\n\nthey're way better than any other cars the best of my knowledge they're quite as good as possible operating room but they're extremely good way better than any other normal car very continuing to improve the culture is learned through anyway I guess these actually have a big effect on health even in normal just day-to-day living is reducing particle count and and yeah it has effect on allergies and also something so it's really their quality is incredibly important yeah you're in a non coded situation extremely important so they're taking all those things that are glutes and applying to your home HVAC and it would be an epidural HVAC would be just more exciting and and NH if you've got if you're condensing water minor goals to have it be a water source\n\nif you have water you possibly could then heat the water and have a water heater as well yeah neither does eat source if you need it instead of down so when the outdoors is really cold yeah or the other way around so that's options it could be held a product and then so we just have to wait till we have tens to divide up whether we can cheer on the card front so we're going to make sure we get a lot of using the fire here for gear products with the cyber truck semi road near roadster and to get the gigafactory in various parts of the world it's a possibility a model y and photo pilot and the solar roof and I'm gonna technology yeah slightly power will power power pack mega pack we are seeing tremendous demand for stationary storage more than more than\n\nwe can supply at least least for 2020 thank you and the last question from the retailers when will that left start acquiring utilities like the horns they'll power reserve and Moss Landing instead of selling them battery storage plus it makes sense for Tesla to buy bigger clients and convert them well we hadn't really thought about that yet but it's not out of the question but our brain is full excuse me sir I don't blame you for the question you know what our overarching goal is to help accelerate the advent of sustainable energy and we deal with and the three elements of that or sustainable power generation then you better store the power station in storage and then you'd better have electric transportation so and we don't have like specific market\n\nshare goals or anything like that it's just to agree that we can accelerate their pension sustainable energy we think that's a fundamental good for the world and we want to give a toast fast as possible but it's not you makes it market share growth you know it's gold in and of itself it's just you know fast this happens a bit over the world little did thank you very much and I think now we can move to analyst questions thank you our first question will come from Adam Jonas with Morgan Stanley please go ahead thanks everybody I hope everyone's safe and healthy I got one question one follow-up and I point out I've had a root canal before and I would agree Elan it was less painful than buying a car I mean it really is yeah exactly it's a big problem actually\n\nit's a big decision yes different conversation exact verse for you any real-time update on company liquidity at the end of April some some companies have you know given the circumstances gone out of their way to give a little color on that just want to give you a shot at that I gotta follow yeah it's a fair question I don't have any additional color to provide so 8.\n\n1 billion in cash and cash equivalents at the end of q1 we're managing it very closely as I mentioned in my opening remarks we do have an increase in inventory of vehicles that we were unable to deliver at the end of q1 so we're making progress delivering those to April which is helpful for liquidity and you know as we've been looking at liquidity we've been looking at this over the next 18 months and there's ups and downs to the look to the liquidity you know currently now as we're not producing we still have payables from q1 that we're paying off but then in a couple of months we'll quickly be through that and then we'll have a gap in payables since we don't have any parts coming in so it does go up and down a little bit but you know in looking at the\n\nlong-term horizon which is how we're managing it right now we feel pretty comfortable with the liability position on the company yeah yeah we are a bit worried about I'm gonna be able to resume production in the Bay Area and that should be identified as a serious risk and you know that we really only have to call factories right now one in Shanghai and one in the area and Borya produced with the vast majority of our cars all of SMX and most of the three and all of the why so the the extension of the shelf replace or likely I'll call it in forcibly imprisoning people in their homes against all their constitutional rights with my opinion with raising people's freedoms in ways that are horrible and wrong and not my people came to America or built this country\n\nwhat the excuse me people acted out great systems outrage so that it will cause great harm not just the tassel of its many companies and while Tesla will weather the storm there are many small companies that will not and all peoples everything if you will work for the whole life against going to get is being destroyed in real time and you're going to have many suppliers and I'm having many spiders that having super hard times especially at small ones and it's just causing a lot of strife to a lot of people when you're on on that point you mentioned people that gave their lives to build the country my faults for you on this they've been a lot of comparisons you know drawn to the state of the US economy to the early 1930s when Roosevelt began a series of\n\nnew deals in infrastructure projects for post-world War two when Eisenhower launched the u.\n\ns.\n\nhighway act and when JFK launched the Apollo program which you could say was you know influenced by the Cold War clearly and you've benefited from in our space program benefited from what would be your message to US lawmakers on this call as we in addition to your opinions on shelter in place but you know thinking a longer term your message to US lawmakers coming out of the crisis specifically around the infrastructure and a chance to kind of you know work with taxpayers to support sustainable transport renewable energy I'm wondering to see this you know as a chance to make make the crisis and all the loss and lives lost not be in vain Thanks I think it's high time we invested in infrastructure in this country we have a lot of crumbling highways and bridges\n\nand and frankly you know when I visit China I see their infrastructure as being much better than ours it's great Europe was better infrastructure it's it's it's really quite sad but the u.\n\ns.\n\ninfrastructure is especially so voids in highways this is where it is today and our airports in a lot of cases are an embarrassment so and it's not just a question of money it's fish as well and as soon as we spend a lot of money on these things but what do we gain for it for it so you know and yeah we really need to be taking out what is the transportation of the future not the presentation of that for the past year you know if this was in 1928 do you want to be investing in steam engines or Intel commotions edges obviously most lots of engines so yeah those are the time to think about the future um and also to ask you know I did is it right to your infringe upon people's right but as what is what is happening right now I think the bank but people are\n\ngoing to be very angry about this and are very angry respect somebody should be if somebody wants to stay in a house but that's great they should be allowed to stay in the house initial not be compelled to leave but to say that they cannot leave their house and there will be arrested if they do this was this was fascist this was not democratic this was not freedom give people back their God doing freedom ok let's go to the next question please Thank You our next question comes from Emmanuel Rosner with Deutsche Bank please go ahead hi good evening question on model Y or something you can elaborate a little bit more of the drivers of how the gross margin is already positive at such low volume how much of it is a function of the criminality with the model\n\n3 with other factors should we think about and what does that mean for the ampler for the eventual gross margin of Malwa well sure a couple of thoughts there for why the first is it does carry a higher ASP so on the revenue side it carries a higher ASP than model 3 and the deliveries that we started with were of the higher ASP versions of the cars so we started with deliveries of performance initially and so that helps create some of the margin and that will come down with time as more variants are released and we have more of a steady state mix but it's similar to the ASP trend that we had with model 3 when we launched that product and for two years ago on the cost side and I think you hit on a couple of the book is the commonality is huge it's very\n\nimportant and in addition to that manufacturing processes are very similar to model three as well until we have experience with that both with monitoring Fremont and then as well in Shanghai and it helps to have an existing factory with existing workforce and knowledge here as well so the ecosystem to support and launch of the product is there there remain a lot of opportunities to take continue to take cost out of the car the number of vehicles that we built in the first quarter is is quite limited relative to where Waldo would take hospital out of the car and to make the park better so it's detachment it's not make the park worse it's any people can take cost out of a car make it worse we want to take cut across all the car you're out how to make it\n\nlighter and simpler and and so it's once the car just just incrementally improve as well as incrementally lower in cost but you know for four or five seater model why we briefly we expect you know marginal cost back car to be comparable to the model three once we have reached a path to ten or twenty thousand units or something like that you know ladies and gentlemen please stand by your conference will resume momentarily thank you because you're back online hi sorry we got disconnected for some reason um what was the question again okay now let's go to the next question please the next question comes from Van Keller was there please go ahead hey thank you very much just wondering about the Z cell strategy you know in in Reno you have obviously integrated\n\nthere but you're buying cells I think in Shanghai and what we think is in Germany and so how are you looking at at that going forward and then so they just talk about mr.\n\nLazaro and that border dish is kind of the process with with adding into the board thank you sure from a sales perspective you know with all the partners we've had historically and in the future we're just looking for competitive technology and competitive pricing I think we'll talk a little bit more about this and battery investor day like how we're approaching all of it but but yeah I mean we don't have like one model we're restricting ourselves to pursue we're just trying to find what's best for the products and they can and in the long run and then there's a question about the board so I couldn't we could on here the second part of the question yeah that's give up mr.\n\nwith you know better entering the board and kind of the process behind that what he brings to the fore oh I think we all need a hero and obviously liberation a lot of experience investing at the highest levels in the world and some co-workers at birth and a pension fund which is for the largest funder of any kind in the world and you know generally the conversations of the years just Charlie I think I was fighting to how the disagrees with all three markets work and what he thinks is whether errors for reform just it's like children just trying to force off for anything about how to make the future better and Meshech shares my view about an environment and very sensible smart person who brings a lot to the board and I think is generally recognized as\n\nsuch I find by many people I guess I guess waking in to the Panasonic relationship but maybe just you know how is that relationship going here is there any greed through on pretty big neurology board thank you um I think this is that nicer with the past night lationship I mean I had a great relationship with past nights here we we meet regularly one-on-one and talk whole time and you know so what that relationship is strong and bring more of a broader global strategic view to the board thank you let's go to the next question please our next question will come from Jean monster with loop ventures please go ahead congratulations on the progress and you only talked about full autonomy by the end of the year I would love for you to walk through the rollout\n\nstrategy of the Tesla Network app and how that's gonna look prior to the Robo taxi stage are you going to gradually take over a human routes with autonomous capable routes over time or how do you see that playing out well it's pretty much play out as as it has played out which is will we release more more functionality you know before we release any functionality it goes through extensive testing and of course we run it we have a simulations team that has a very good simulation of the real world so we run any code changes through a battery testing simulation when we have a global rating brush I'm on actually I'm one of on the global create you a team and we test the releases in the real world the real world bad differences cooler world in the simulation\n\nwhich is which are very many because the world was very complex aware and then we release it to a small group of Congress beta testers within the company and to a larger audience including people outside the company and to early access Tesla owners and then finally a broader release and so those are the many stages that these things work for so the by the time something is we're going to wide release into the US there's went to all the first stages and the software that's at the at the very early stage there's much more advanced than what people are saying so there's just going to go through a rigorous lengthy process so essentially we need to figure out you could get very good the complex intersections get very good at like turns in intersections and\n\nlooks like it will be malls in a parking lot or office park or special events and it's working events that kind of thing when those eventually come back we have these doubles opposed or after high places but it will try for a while I feel like the autopilots engineering team is finished a few a talented group and I'm deeply involved with the team really so we talk every week and meet every week run your cash or present a physical meeting it's awful so I have a good fight understanding where we are overhead and I feel like we have transmeta momentum and we'll have the functionality that's right cool for some time anybody out of the year now after that functionality is released this pistol another strap which is to improve the reliability of it once was\n\nreleased to make a pull stop driving with looking into the fish whip it supervised by the driver and then we keep improving a lot reliability to the point where it no longer needs to be supervised by the driver and we provide a vast body of data to regulators to show them about what was the case and then presumably the regulator's which jurisdiction it is working approval for fully autonomous cars that can drive with no humans on board it obviously the regulatory approval process that's before us fear accuracy because it's out of our hands but the progress would I forget about program summarize we want forget owners full autonomy some level that by the end of the year and then a human in a loop tessai network app sometime is it first half of next year\n\nwould that be the whole mm-hmm doing like wait turn the car drives with no first one with a person initially a person observe would that be with the Tesla Network at but that the early part of the year 2021 is at the whole it's just I just hope I would say that that's probably a fair description ok and then you know kind of take it to its end stage the Robo taxi stage any high-level thoughts understand the regulatory is a massive unknown but if you're gonna put a guess on it where would we start moving with certain Robo taxi well I think I think it's quite likely in my view Gannicus it could be wrong on as you suppose with our heads if in some errors and we're behind in others because when I did when I when I get when I give a guest I give the guest but\n\nI think this be the likely midpoint not be the point with lots of margin if this is not a distribution I give you the 50th percentile and not be a few Sigma you know optimistic or pessimistic and so then that naturally means at least have no predictions will be wrong and have the right what might be bright but or set by yeah but if a few weeks to a few months in some cases a few years um but because everything I'd rather said would come true did come true it may come too late but it did come true so punctuality is not my strong suit and I always come through in the end so I mean I think we could see rubber taxis in operation with Network feet next year none nor mark is going to thank you let's go the last question please the last question will come from\n\nPierre from room with new Street please go ahead hey thanks for taking my question one on gross margin first and your impressive performance in q1 so there are three moving parts that they win from creditors of course the mode ly ramping even if it broke even it party took average cost margin down and of course you had like frenum being closed shut down the last week of the quarter I probably was this office an extra person so when I looked at how gross margin evolves sequentially excluding this removing part I said like you're Auto gross margin it has been up like a couple of points sequentially so I wanted to check with you is that estimate would make sense and then I would have a follow-up on energy storage thank you yeah I think the three things that\n\nyou mentioned it's been a little bit of a hard time hearing the full question here because I'm having a bit of Network difficulty in the room well I'll do my best here so when we look at margin we do a salute credit as you have so I agree with that model by ramping bringing down overall gross margin I agree with that as well so it was lower than the overall average and that will increase with time and shutdown and efficiencies in both Shanghai and in Fremont also laid on margin but and the shanghai margin was below the average as well even though it's increasing quickly in approaching model 3 it still is below the average and so I think the sentiment of your question was if you were to remove those factors with the sequential increase in gross margin\n\nI haven't specifically calculated that but I think your intuition is right we saw strength and gross margin across the board as I mentioned and in particular FNX worst margins continue to improve but it despite slightly lower volumes there and higher a fixed cost limitations there's good progress happening both on the ASP sign-in Macross reduction side for our products in production and I think this also lends itself to as the power of the gross profit contribution to the company once we get through these rampant efficiencies we get them on up and running again the increased capacity so we can spread out fixed costs and continue to execute on cost reductions on our products we're very optimistic about that personally thanks and I had a coupon on energy\n\nstorage if you can hear me well I think like I can't remember I think from the very first days I heard you on the course you've always mentioned that demand for energy storage is always out straighting supply and you have more orders and you can make and so I'm kind of thinking there will be there should be an inflection point in that business at some point and it's going to be driven by your ability to add much more manufacturing capacity like battery manufacturing capacity and at a high level how are you thinking about that inflection point in terms of timeline in terms of timeline I think what we've been doing with with both our partners and internally and looking at how to reduce the fundamentally the cost of of investments in new cell capacity because\n\nwhen you look at a car a vehicle product you know there's a lot of things in the vehicle besides the cells when you look at an energy storage project product it's really just the cells and so it really grow the energy storage business it's all about selling business and so that's that's what we've been focused on and and I think yeah not to give too much away but we'll put that'll be one of those things you address in battery and investor day is is how we're focused on that and when we only have that in the place we want it'll be a lot easier to scale that business thank you very much for all your great questions unfortunately this is all the time we have today and we'll speak to you again in three months time thank you very much and have a good day well\n\nladies and gentlemen this concludes today's conference call thank you for your participation you may now disconnect"},"languages":["en"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vEvXfHHEdNc"},{"id":"satellite-2020-keynote-2020-03-09","type":"interview","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HPV8Xp3pEpI","title":"SATELLITE 2020 Keynote","titles":{"en":"SATELLITE 2020 Keynote","de":"SATELLITE 2020 Keynote","fr":"SATELLITE 2020 Keynote"},"date":"2020-03-09","summary":"Musk talks Starlink, Starship, the future of human spaceflight and lowering launch costs in a fireside chat at the SATELLITE 2020 conference.","text":"ladies and gentlemen welcome to our satellite 2020 Opening Day keynote sponsored by max are please take your seats the program is about to begin ladies and gentlemen a message from our session sponsor max R for two decades government and commercial organizations have relied on max our satellite imagery to map monitor and provide earth intelligence at a global scale today max R operates the world's most sophisticated commercial imaging constellation but to help customers keep pace with rapid change around the world we are excited to introduce worldview legion our next-generation high-resolution earth imaging constellation designed and built in-house worldview legion will fly in both Sun synchronous and mid inclination orbits to dramatically increase max\n\nARS revisit over the most rapidly changing regions on earth it will triple our high resolution 30 centimeter coverage and overall imaging capacity allowing max R to capture many areas up to 15 times of a single day this enables max R to better support applications that require current and accurate earth intelligence with frequent updates on changing ground conditions for enhanced monitoring foundational and national security and military operations accurate mapping a key component on the road to autonomous vehicle technology and expedited access to post event coverage critical in the wake of natural disasters with worldview Legion max R is shaping the future of what's possible changing the way we detect understand and address change the next era in earth\n\nintelligence begins at launch [Music] all right hi everybody welcome to satellite 2020 sorry we got off to a late start DC traffic is a killer but my name is Jeffrey ill I'm conference chair and I'm here with Elon Musk chief engineer and founder of SpaceX Elon thank you so much for being with us thanks thanks for thanks for having me I guess it was a 11 years ago that we met yeah and when we met 11 years ago we were talking about Falcon 1 Falcon 9 at the time and when I asked you what's what's the point of all this you said to send human beings back into space on a u.\n\ns. built rocket from a u. s.\n\nbuilt facility so that we could permanently reset all other other planets and here we are we're right on the the brink here of sending humans back into space the the crew dragon is in Cape Canaveral how do you feel that you're on the doorstep here yeah it's great that we're about to launch people to orbit it's been a long time a long road 18 years yeah good kid giving kid giving college right now is it like sending your kid off to college well we haven't done it yet but it's a long time you're packing you're packing the bags you're ready to go can you talk about the talk about the the road from the space shuttle to the crew dragon I can talk about the the what are some of the challenges that you faced in creating a human rated space spacecraft for for\n\nhuman spaceflight well where are some of the challenges that you encountered along the way well the thing that the thing that concerns me most right now is that unless we improve our rate of innovation dramatically then there is no chance of a base on the moon or a city on Mars no I'll be low yeah this is my biggest concern crew dragon was real we've already taken it to the space station are back your luck people aren't aware of that we just had like basically a dummy you know so and it's us what then we're done massive amount of testing you know pushing all the corner cases and just a truly ridiculous amount of testing it's like definitely had us off to the dragon engineers and supporting team at NASA for going through a truly staggering number of tests\n\nnow that now that that said dragon really is just a low Earth orbit transport vehicle it's it's really just it's capable of taking a few people at what is still a very high cost to Earth orbit I technically we could send people around the moon on Dragon but I'm not sure we'd want to it's due to small so it it's good good to get this done but it's I think we need to be very careful of getting stuck in a local maximum and you know the the Space Shuttle was something that was really stuck in a local maximum for a long time and yeah we don't want to be that situation I mean frankly what Y is why does so you still fly I'm a car live is probably turning in his grave right now interesting it's this dream quite it was designed in the 50s yeah right right if you\n\ntold I'm gonna just old car live on the other guys that that still reversibly flank Sawyer's in 2020 they'd be like that's crazy yeah we are so we don't want to be that situation you know just solid vehicle it's just like it's time to move on right right and so we you know I know we started late I sourced a lot of these questions from that from the public in the audience we're also going to do a Q&A here so I'm just gonna jump right into the questions that we received so I mean the most popular question we got was like what are the greatest challenges are the biggest challenges we face expanding our presence in space and exploring and eventually resettling new worlds there's really just one thing that matters that is a fully and rapidly reusable rocket\n\nthat that's the one thing that matters and it needs to be reasonably big or your payload to non payload ratio will be kind of whacked you know what would be good so just like you wouldn't want a super tanker growing it like you know container ships you have a container ship with thousands of containers you don't you know have like a bunch of tiny ships with little out ports on them cruising across the Pacific that would be silly so you have big ships when you want to go long distances with the Cirrus cargo so we need a fairly big but definitely rapidly and completely reusable rocket this is the fundamental thing without that we're nowhere and what level of reusability is SpaceX actively pursuing for for Falcon 9 for Dragon for starship I think Falcon\n\ndiner dragon have the there are asymptoting that their their tech their technology architectures asymptoting meaning like it it really would not make sense to have a block six Falcon nine you know from where we are right now it just doesn't make sense that's why we have a big focus in terms of new technology development on starship for Falcon and Falcon and Dragon are kind of like operational vehicles at this point so they're that they're good products they're operational but but there's not really we need to hold in your architecture and that's what starship is about and social needs to be fully and completely reusable and rapidly so I mean it's it's being designed for about you know TV really want relaunched an hour after landing with with zero nominal\n\nwork like it is you could have scheduled maintenance you or you could have like something like a spork issue just like commercial aircraft but you're expected the only thing you expect to change on a regular basis is propellant and it's got to be fast so yeah now that for the ship you gonna wait unless you're launching due east from the equator you better have figure out some way to get get those the ship overall ground track to pass over the landing site otherwise you're too far away so the ship maybe it might take you know three orbit four orbits maybe to get back over the the launch site but it but I think we want to aim for a capability of three flights a day for the show most of which is taken up with getting the orbital you know a ground track to\n\ncome over the launch site and then an hour for everything else and you know everybody's interested in in the the mission to Mars planetary resettlement I'm talking about reusability for the launch vehicle what are your thoughts on in space resource utilization for example water oxygen soil from the moon perhaps may be the go to Mars do you have any plans to utilize resources in space for the mission to Mars nope I mean apart from orbital refilling I think that's very important so you better so there's one exit besides it fully in review fully under Africa rapidly reusable rocket you need to also have orbital refilling or retaking that's got to be that's fundamental because then you can essentially recoup all of your mass fraction Delta be in Earth orbit\n\nyou can leave with full tanks and it could be from immediate low Earth orbit or you know something that's maybe elliptical or something like that if you want to go higher energy but that's that's crucial for getting to to Mars the moon is neither here nor there I mean the using the moon would be like okay if you want to cross the Atlantic maybe you want to go to Iceland probably know that you know but you know to visit sure but you know it's not like a mandatory Saab so and also for the mission to Mars what advancements we talk a lot about hardware and physics problems and then what about advancements in software you know reason I bring this up and recently are you familiar with the game designer Jonathan Blow he referenced you in a keynote he was given\n\nand he said that you you had talked about technology naturally because skills naturally fade and one of the things he identified was a decay in software degredation in software is this something we have to address in doing something like going to Mars and since all of the stuff runs on software well software is an increasing part of any piece of technology I mean Tesla the car is extremely configurable it's basically like a laptop on wheels so software matters enormously there and really for example for full autonomy the only gating factor is software the hardware is all there that's required it has been for last couple years what well the final piece of hardware was upgrading the computer it's have more compute power so software is extremely important\n\nthe point you're relating to which is that you know I was referring to is technology does not automatically improve right people are used to the phone being better every year oh and I mean an iPhone user but I think like some of the recent software updates have been like not great certainly feeding into that point like broke my email system we put the like quite fundamental so yeah there sure is a lot of software out there and some of its like the people that wrote it are retired or maybe dad you know so like now how do you fix it it's gonna be an issue and we're definitely a lot more smart people work in software and not just troubleshooting old problems no just troubleshooting old problems it's actually very important to retire old code bases and and\n\nnot just maintain them forever because the the difficulty of maintaining them becomes extremely high and it's one point you just got to redo the code base so we'll come back to the Mars mission because I know we've got some audience questions on that we're at a satellite conference so I'm gonna ask you some questions about satellites StarLink what's the long-term vision for StarLink how do you see the role of star link as it relates to mobile broadband and 5g sure so I mean the whole purpose of SpaceX is really to help make life multiplanetary and then but the revenue potential of launching rocket launching satellites serves in Space Station why not that's you know type taps out around three billion dollars a year but I think providing broadband is is\n\nmore like an order of magnitude more than that probably thirty billion a year as a rough approximation and we're still like probably below 5% at that point so it's not like I want to be clear like so I'm like stalling I guess I'm a huge threat to telcos I want to be super clear it is not in fact it will be helpful to telcos because start like what will serve the hardest to serve customers that telcos otherwise have trouble doing with with landlines or even with with cell radio stations with itself cell towers 5g is is great for high-density situations like being here in DC or you know New York temperatures call that kind of thing 5g is great for high-density situations but it's actually not great for the the countryside you know for rural areas it's it's\n\nnot it's not great you need you need range and so in any any kind of sparse environment 5 G's is really not not well-suited but it's great great for in it for for City Denton City situations so StarLink will effectively serve the I don't know three or four percent hardest to reach customers for telcos or people who simply have no connectivity right now or the connectivity is really bad so I think it will be actually helpful and take a significant load off the traditional telcos and I was I was gonna ask you what customers you know were ideally suited for StarLink but I guess since you mentioned that it would be it would be these three to four percent at the very like that at the very edge what is the customer experience like then for those people and\n\nwhat's the cost of acquiring the services well it will be attributed good experience because it'll be very low latency and we're targeting latency below 20 milliseconds so somebody could could play a fast response video game at a competitive level like that's the threshold for the latency so then and bam bandwidth the bandwidth is a very complex question but let's just say somebody will be able to watch high-def movies play it play video games and do all the things they want to do without noticing speed right and then the challenge for anything that is space based is that the the size of the cell is gigantic so it's like said it's great for for very low - maybe maybe mediums sort of sparsity situations but it's not it's not good for high density situations\n\nthey will have some small number of customers in LA but we can't do a lot of customers in LA because the bandwidth per cell is simply not high enough what is what is the equipment on the ground look like for this what the ground equipment just looks like well I think it's like sizing it looks like a little you it looks like a UFO on a stake so the at least the version one of the uses terminal will actually have actuators on it so then it can it can improve the pointing accuracy so you don't have to it's very important that you don't need a specialist ourself to install the goal is that this the instructions in the box will there's just two instructions and they can be done in either order a point at sky plug in you do it either order see you it doesn't\n\nmatter and it will work plug and play literally but also point of sky was I can't see the satellites you can't see the satellites you can't see you just wanted to talk about just some of the design concerns that were raised by astronomers you can talk about a little bit about how you working maybe working with astronomers to alleviate these concerns or are you working on the designer altering it or are the concerns overblown I mean how do you feel about what has been raised I I am confident that we will not cause any impact whatsoever in astronomical discoveries zero that's my prediction we'll take corrective action if it's above zero so you're not giving like Orion a hat or anything like things no I mean this there's a so much people get a little excited\n\nbecause when when the satellites are first launched that they're they're tumbling a little bit so they're like they're kind of like they're gonna blink and because they haven't stabilized and then and they're they're raising their orbit so they're they're lower than you'd expect and they're kind of necessarily gonna reflect in ways that it's not the case when they're on orbit but now the other the satellites are on orbit I'll be impressed if if somebody can actually tell me where where all of them are I've not met someone who can tell me where all of them are not even one person yes thing so that I mean it can't be that big of a deal but we are taped there we are actually working with here members of the the the science community and antenor astronomers\n\nto minimize the potential for reflection of the satellites so you know we're and we're running a bunch of experiments too for example just have a paint the phase array antenna black instead of white and we're working on a a sunshade because that there there was like certain angles where if a Sun gets you know just sort of just right and there's not like a little sunshade we're not talking about a lot here then you can get a reflection and so we were launching sunshade changing the color of the satellites and otherwise minimizing the the potential for any impact even like a at least aesthetically this issue should not be an impact I think recently when Shotwell and Bloomberg was quoted as saying that you know you were exploring splitting StarLink from\n\nSpaceX could you talk a little bit about that why that would happen and how you see both of these independent companies functioning and just talk a little bit about that you were thinking about that zero was that we're thinking about that what zero zero zero not thinking about it at all we need to make the thing work it's it's far from obvious that I mean it's real important to just set the stage here for leoch communications constellations guess how many Leo constellations didn't go bankrupt zero alright zero it iridium is doing okay now but the iridium one went bankrupt Volcom went bankrupt Globalstar bankrupt Teledesic bankrupt I'm believing it without this bunch of others that didn't get very far they also went bankrupt anyway the word bankrupt so\n\nyou're focusing on making it work first not bankrupt right I'm not gonna there's a big that'd be a big staff have like more than zero and then not bankrupt category how would you I mean with how does it work then with the the business of SpaceX since you're like I mean you are launching other constellations is that is that a an issue does that cause like a conflict or we're launching out the constellations oh you're launching other satellites that's right oh yeah sure whatever yet no problem of course so there's no like you know even if I can have a good deal of it like no problem you know I won't just constellation on SpaceX sound good to me so I mean I think that you know I think there's there's the world seems to have an insatiable appetite for bandwidth\n\nso we're certainly happy just launched other satellites and you know we don't think star link is gonna destroy all other satellites or something like that or definitely not all right yeah we were just wanting to be in the not bankrupt category that's a goal since you're since you're now the company of SpaceX now you know you're you're building you're launching satellites are you are you looking at expanding the business of SpaceX into other areas of commercial satellite connectivity maybe like we talked a little bit about the you know you're already building like technology on the ground are there other areas that you're looking to get into in terms of commercial space connectivity or satellite services no we really there's just this two major new technology\n\nprograms at SpaceX that's StarLink and starship well like it's kinda has star in the name of a team we were just cool like Lincoln ship if you divide the one by the other it stars net outs and then was just making sure that's it cause I know anyway it would be some secret project that's so secret I even I don't know about it you don't have a business under the chairs I don't think there's anything major so I want to I want to give time for the people in the audience to ask some questions but you know we talked about starship so development at Boca Chica is moving on pretty quickly and yeah actually that was a real reason as ladies because I was at Boca Chica my apologies I was just working on starship with the team there so it's pretty cool out there\n\nactually I like you tell us a little bit about the work that's underway what we can expect in the future for for starship well we're building a production line for production line is the hard part you're making one of something it is well at this point you know like frankly designing rockets is not that hard especially if it's an expandable rocket just not really a hard problem you could literally read books they'll tell you exactly how to do it the hard part is now actually building that thing even once is hard I mean building a production line is a thousand percent harder like at least a thousand percent harder yeah maybe more so just in general production and manufacturing is underappreciated I think especially in the u.\n\ns.\n\nfrankly so we should really pay a lot more attention and care a lot more about manufacturing losses yeah this is an honest day's work let me tell you so what inspired some of the design aesthetics of the space craft and stainless steel it's a it's a striking design first first base graphic what would inspire your vision for the way it looks wave functions like Y stainless steel why well we were going to make it out of advanced composites and the advanced composites that cost like $60 a pound over 60 dollars a kilogram like a little more than that maybe 130 dollars a pound and there was 60 to 120 plies before the the tank it was taking forever you weren't making good progress cost crazy money and I was like okay switching to aluminum lithium is also a\n\npain in the neck we do that that's what we used for the Falcon 9 tanks because it's hard to world because of the reactivity of the lithium so you know what's easy to weld steel Steel's really easy to world and stainless steel doesn't even require paint that sounds great because the paint shops are paying the neck and you want to try painting something that's got a go to drop to cryogenic temperatures and then band a lot it's like forget it I mean that paint wants to come off like there's no tomorrow it does not like to stake so then you could use special paint and then the special paint also can't you get like when you're going vertically at like supersonic you get the basically static electricity build-up quote Triborough electrification although it\n\nreminds me the trouble of troubles but you can basically zap yourself if you have paint that the wrong paint yeah so it was no paint is great yeah because we need a big friggin big-ass paint shop for starship yeah well that's problems I think one less problem and then paint doesn't weigh zero you know they these to paint the the shuttle external tank white didn't like like well we're adding a lot of weight to this thing and it's big pain in the neck so we'll leave just have it stay orange so just not painting it's great so then you know and we're not the first to use steel like they used 301 in the early atlas program Charlie Bossert I think it was you know think was his idea obviously other people involved but Charlie busted by the way that guy's underappreciated\n\nhe kicks ass it's really great to read about his stuff he's awesome so he's 301 so obviously it's not a new alloy I think we're gonna start switching to a different alloy pretty soon and then just treat the alloy constituents because we should be able to better in 2020 then they were they didn't like the 50s you know so I mean come on so I think we'll probably start switching away from 301 maybe the next month or two now the funny thing is that like I actually knew that steel especially 301 full hard steel couldn't be that heavy because the original Atlas had a very good mass fraction right so it can't be that wrong with that and if you look at the normal normal sort of standard material sheet for a 301 it will usually not tell you what that it work hardens\n\ndramatically and improves the strength dramatically with work hardening and also at cryogenic temperatures it improves strength dramatically so then the if you combine the work hardening with the the cryo strength improvement you get an effective strength to weight that is about the same as advanced composite now if you will generally make a mistake with composites because they'll look at the material sheet and not realize that okay with composites you could have a big knockdown because you basically have composite saw string and glue and so you and and you can't just like have like let's say your problem cause for having for pliers of carbon you can't just have four players you need like five or six because in case you damaged one or something like that\n\nand you say what's your worst case allowable for a D bond or something like that so the actual knockdown you end up taking pro composites is more than you would for a metal structure so people often so it's like a classic movie mistake is to overrate carbon fiber because you just you look at the material datasheet and it looks like an obvious move but it's not so area so at cryogenic temperatures the steel is has a de facto strength weight about the same as advanced composite but that doesn't not even counting the fact that you have to paint the composite don't paint this deal then there's a another factor which is if you want to have a reusable vehicle it's gonna get hot composites don't like getting hot so you're typically your your composite maybe\n\nis comfortable up to around 150 200 Celsius something like that you know and things start getting pretty sketchy around 250 C but I mean like you start having to use advanced resins and all that kind of thing so whereas Steel's pretty happy at a thousand see you know no pain no problem with by 500 considered fibre at sea all day and brief periods of a thousand sino ROM so then for a reasonable vehicle you now need zero heat shielding on the leeward side normally you beat some heat shielding just Souter due to radiative heating on the back so you don't have a lot of convective heating at hypersonic we do have radiative heating and then you can thin out the windward side of the the heat shield because the thickness of the of the heat shield tile is driven\n\nby the temperature on the backside of the tile where it mounts the primary structure so if your primary structure can take a high heat that means you can thin out the tile so think of it like these like like oven mitts or something you know if you have like how hot can your hand go and that assets how thick your oven mitt is right so then you can have like I said no no no he chilled on the leeward side on it and then heat shield on the windward side so now your actual total mass of a steel a reasonable Steel's a spacecraft is less than that of the most advanced carbon fiber vehicle you could possibly imagine yeah Wow but this is happen by accident by the way it may sound like some great insight but it actually happened because we're moving too slowly\n\non composite and I was like we cannot move this slowly or we'll go bankrupt so that's good do this for steel so yeah I mean the design has to be focused on problem solving otherwise you're going to spend too much time trying to figure it you don't start with it yeah yeah I'm like sort of taken to management management by rhyming if the schedule is scheduled as long your design is wrong right very true it's good good point yes with that I want to go to some audience questions we asked the audience through the the app to submit us question so I believe we have a few that we've pulled here so we've got some over here can we and can you come closer over here so we can we can see you let's say all right our first question hello I'm Jane zündel I'm a graduate\n\nstudent at Stanford my question for you is as you look back on your career in the space industry what has been the most surprising or unexpected challenge that you faced and along those lines if you were to go back in time and talk to your 20 year old self would you do anything differently go back in time do your 20 year old self I mean I think if I get it I think it would make a far fewer mistakes I would see if I could guard like it here's a list of all the dumb things you're about to do please do not hear them yeah I'd be a very long list and like here let me and you know write it down or something you know I mean it's behind size 2020 so it's hard to say I mean number of I've made so many foolish mistakes I have a lot count honestly I mean some of\n\nthese things I just wish I liked just like that's a simple sort of mantra management by rhyming I mean it worked for Homer okay the management of our rhyming is the thing I'm saying like if but if the schedule is long the design is wrong we've complicated the design many times and I think you should just gone with a simpler design with the acid test being how long will it take to for this to fly and if it's going to take a long time don't do it do something else if you look it's a falcon 9 eye it's got a aluminum lithium tank but then the unpressurized structures are carbon fiber composite and really one of the worst possible things you could do to a joint is takes me with a high coefficient of thermal expansion high CTE put it go take it from room temperature\n\nto cryo and then connect it to something that has zero CTE you know basically zero or like a carbon fiber so now you've got a real pain in the ass joint basically so in order for that to work you've got at the tanks got a shrink radially and you've got these super expensive heavy bolts that are like a beam inventing across you know that I've been taking load into the interstage and they just really want to share off or snap off this is crazy you know really just have a continuous metal structure but that's obvious that should be done that'd be way better you know if things expand to full the available resources so then like sometimes you should say no to things that you that you don't you know like the original thought one team which the the fairing tanks\n\nengines or everything pretty much was maybe a little over a hundred people now SpaceX is like six thousand people I think some like now so it's or it really just is it I simplify your product as much as possible you know and then like with the figure but I think of some of the ways which how does the SWAT engineer make down mistakes included is you know is optimize something that shouldn't exist don't optimize something that shouldn't exist if people are trained to do this in college you can't say no to the professor you know this is gonna give you the exam and you've got to answer all the questions over they will get angry so and give you a bad grade so then you you always optimize the yours answer the question all the times you should say this is the\n\nwrong question all right in fact the question is definitely wrong to some degree just how wrong and I think just generally taking the approach that your design is some degree wrong probably a lot more than you think your goal is to make it less wrong over time we have that it's good right another question hi my name is Julie seven sage and mr.\n\nmonkey have said in the past that you think that college degrees shouldn't be that important and that I've been showed in job listings in places such as Tesla however in places like sis industry including even at SpaceX in the satellite development area many of the job listings say that you need at least a bachelor's degree and prefer at least a master's degree so my question to you is with more jobs asking for higher levels of degrees without scholarships are not changing amounts and that is getting harder and harder every year to pay tuition even with using scholarships how can colleges and industries make it easier to afford college but at the same time being able to pay grad students and employees well and also to make sure that there is a large-scale\n\naccess to good colleges especially to underprivileged communities so that everyone can be a part of the future rebuilding thank you well first of all you don't need college to learn and learn stuff okay everything is available basically for free you can learn anything you want for free it is not a question of learning there there is a value that colleges have which is like you know seeing whether somebody's it is can somebody work hard at something including a bunch of sort of annoying homework assignments and still do their homework assignments and a car soldier through and get it done you know that's that's like the main value of college and then also you you know if you you if you probably want to hang around with a bunch of people you're on edge for\n\na while instead of going drag it right into the work force so I think colleges are basically for fun and to prove you can do your chores but they're not for learning there it is I know we started late and I know wait we we don't have much time left but to build on Julie's question here how does somebody like you with a very long term mission of going to Mars how are you cultivating the next generation of leadership to take you there because I mean this is this is a long-term project you might we might not be around to see us finally resettle on Mars or maybe maybe no I mean I hope I'm not dead by the time I people go to Mars that would be a great great outcome I think I might be you know if we don't improve our pace of progress I'm definitely you know\n\ngonna be dead before we go to Mars so I'm just like would like to not be dead when by the time we go to Mars that's my aspiration here so if it's taking us 18 years just to get ready to do the first people to orbit we better improve our rate of innovation or you know based on past trends I am definitely gonna be dead before Mars so we're going to improve our pace of innovation a lot so yeah it's a you I can tell you can see you how do you communicate that vision you have to that to the somebody who could maybe take over for what you're doing and to see things where you're seeing them in terms of the mission well we have a lot of good good people at SpaceX that a lot of really talented people in fact I wonder like sometimes how we can make use of their\n\ntalents in the best way because it you know I think we're often not using their talents in the best way yeah but you know to the point of the question I was just asked I'm gonna make sure Tesla recruiting does not have anything that says requires University because that's absurd but there is a requirement of evidence of exceptional ability like you just can't if you're trying to do something exceptional they must have evidence of exceptional ability I don't consider going to college evidence of exceptional ability in fact ideally you dropped out and did something I mean obviously you know look at like you know Gates is a pretty smart guy who dropped out job is pretty smart he dropped out you know that re Allison smart guy he dropped out like obviously\n\nnot needed so did Shakespeare even go to college probably not well I'm thank you so much I wish we could take more audience questions I know we have it we have a hard stop but thank you you on for stopping by thank you let's give them a round of applause for stopping by and speaking less did you either message to your evening and thank you very much [Applause] [Music]","textByLang":{"en":"ladies and gentlemen welcome to our satellite 2020 Opening Day keynote sponsored by max are please take your seats the program is about to begin ladies and gentlemen a message from our session sponsor max R for two decades government and commercial organizations have relied on max our satellite imagery to map monitor and provide earth intelligence at a global scale today max R operates the world's most sophisticated commercial imaging constellation but to help customers keep pace with rapid change around the world we are excited to introduce worldview legion our next-generation high-resolution earth imaging constellation designed and built in-house worldview legion will fly in both Sun synchronous and mid inclination orbits to dramatically increase max\n\nARS revisit over the most rapidly changing regions on earth it will triple our high resolution 30 centimeter coverage and overall imaging capacity allowing max R to capture many areas up to 15 times of a single day this enables max R to better support applications that require current and accurate earth intelligence with frequent updates on changing ground conditions for enhanced monitoring foundational and national security and military operations accurate mapping a key component on the road to autonomous vehicle technology and expedited access to post event coverage critical in the wake of natural disasters with worldview Legion max R is shaping the future of what's possible changing the way we detect understand and address change the next era in earth\n\nintelligence begins at launch [Music] all right hi everybody welcome to satellite 2020 sorry we got off to a late start DC traffic is a killer but my name is Jeffrey ill I'm conference chair and I'm here with Elon Musk chief engineer and founder of SpaceX Elon thank you so much for being with us thanks thanks for thanks for having me I guess it was a 11 years ago that we met yeah and when we met 11 years ago we were talking about Falcon 1 Falcon 9 at the time and when I asked you what's what's the point of all this you said to send human beings back into space on a u.\n\ns. built rocket from a u. s.\n\nbuilt facility so that we could permanently reset all other other planets and here we are we're right on the the brink here of sending humans back into space the the crew dragon is in Cape Canaveral how do you feel that you're on the doorstep here yeah it's great that we're about to launch people to orbit it's been a long time a long road 18 years yeah good kid giving kid giving college right now is it like sending your kid off to college well we haven't done it yet but it's a long time you're packing you're packing the bags you're ready to go can you talk about the talk about the the road from the space shuttle to the crew dragon I can talk about the the what are some of the challenges that you faced in creating a human rated space spacecraft for for\n\nhuman spaceflight well where are some of the challenges that you encountered along the way well the thing that the thing that concerns me most right now is that unless we improve our rate of innovation dramatically then there is no chance of a base on the moon or a city on Mars no I'll be low yeah this is my biggest concern crew dragon was real we've already taken it to the space station are back your luck people aren't aware of that we just had like basically a dummy you know so and it's us what then we're done massive amount of testing you know pushing all the corner cases and just a truly ridiculous amount of testing it's like definitely had us off to the dragon engineers and supporting team at NASA for going through a truly staggering number of tests\n\nnow that now that that said dragon really is just a low Earth orbit transport vehicle it's it's really just it's capable of taking a few people at what is still a very high cost to Earth orbit I technically we could send people around the moon on Dragon but I'm not sure we'd want to it's due to small so it it's good good to get this done but it's I think we need to be very careful of getting stuck in a local maximum and you know the the Space Shuttle was something that was really stuck in a local maximum for a long time and yeah we don't want to be that situation I mean frankly what Y is why does so you still fly I'm a car live is probably turning in his grave right now interesting it's this dream quite it was designed in the 50s yeah right right if you\n\ntold I'm gonna just old car live on the other guys that that still reversibly flank Sawyer's in 2020 they'd be like that's crazy yeah we are so we don't want to be that situation you know just solid vehicle it's just like it's time to move on right right and so we you know I know we started late I sourced a lot of these questions from that from the public in the audience we're also going to do a Q&A here so I'm just gonna jump right into the questions that we received so I mean the most popular question we got was like what are the greatest challenges are the biggest challenges we face expanding our presence in space and exploring and eventually resettling new worlds there's really just one thing that matters that is a fully and rapidly reusable rocket\n\nthat that's the one thing that matters and it needs to be reasonably big or your payload to non payload ratio will be kind of whacked you know what would be good so just like you wouldn't want a super tanker growing it like you know container ships you have a container ship with thousands of containers you don't you know have like a bunch of tiny ships with little out ports on them cruising across the Pacific that would be silly so you have big ships when you want to go long distances with the Cirrus cargo so we need a fairly big but definitely rapidly and completely reusable rocket this is the fundamental thing without that we're nowhere and what level of reusability is SpaceX actively pursuing for for Falcon 9 for Dragon for starship I think Falcon\n\ndiner dragon have the there are asymptoting that their their tech their technology architectures asymptoting meaning like it it really would not make sense to have a block six Falcon nine you know from where we are right now it just doesn't make sense that's why we have a big focus in terms of new technology development on starship for Falcon and Falcon and Dragon are kind of like operational vehicles at this point so they're that they're good products they're operational but but there's not really we need to hold in your architecture and that's what starship is about and social needs to be fully and completely reusable and rapidly so I mean it's it's being designed for about you know TV really want relaunched an hour after landing with with zero nominal\n\nwork like it is you could have scheduled maintenance you or you could have like something like a spork issue just like commercial aircraft but you're expected the only thing you expect to change on a regular basis is propellant and it's got to be fast so yeah now that for the ship you gonna wait unless you're launching due east from the equator you better have figure out some way to get get those the ship overall ground track to pass over the landing site otherwise you're too far away so the ship maybe it might take you know three orbit four orbits maybe to get back over the the launch site but it but I think we want to aim for a capability of three flights a day for the show most of which is taken up with getting the orbital you know a ground track to\n\ncome over the launch site and then an hour for everything else and you know everybody's interested in in the the mission to Mars planetary resettlement I'm talking about reusability for the launch vehicle what are your thoughts on in space resource utilization for example water oxygen soil from the moon perhaps may be the go to Mars do you have any plans to utilize resources in space for the mission to Mars nope I mean apart from orbital refilling I think that's very important so you better so there's one exit besides it fully in review fully under Africa rapidly reusable rocket you need to also have orbital refilling or retaking that's got to be that's fundamental because then you can essentially recoup all of your mass fraction Delta be in Earth orbit\n\nyou can leave with full tanks and it could be from immediate low Earth orbit or you know something that's maybe elliptical or something like that if you want to go higher energy but that's that's crucial for getting to to Mars the moon is neither here nor there I mean the using the moon would be like okay if you want to cross the Atlantic maybe you want to go to Iceland probably know that you know but you know to visit sure but you know it's not like a mandatory Saab so and also for the mission to Mars what advancements we talk a lot about hardware and physics problems and then what about advancements in software you know reason I bring this up and recently are you familiar with the game designer Jonathan Blow he referenced you in a keynote he was given\n\nand he said that you you had talked about technology naturally because skills naturally fade and one of the things he identified was a decay in software degredation in software is this something we have to address in doing something like going to Mars and since all of the stuff runs on software well software is an increasing part of any piece of technology I mean Tesla the car is extremely configurable it's basically like a laptop on wheels so software matters enormously there and really for example for full autonomy the only gating factor is software the hardware is all there that's required it has been for last couple years what well the final piece of hardware was upgrading the computer it's have more compute power so software is extremely important\n\nthe point you're relating to which is that you know I was referring to is technology does not automatically improve right people are used to the phone being better every year oh and I mean an iPhone user but I think like some of the recent software updates have been like not great certainly feeding into that point like broke my email system we put the like quite fundamental so yeah there sure is a lot of software out there and some of its like the people that wrote it are retired or maybe dad you know so like now how do you fix it it's gonna be an issue and we're definitely a lot more smart people work in software and not just troubleshooting old problems no just troubleshooting old problems it's actually very important to retire old code bases and and\n\nnot just maintain them forever because the the difficulty of maintaining them becomes extremely high and it's one point you just got to redo the code base so we'll come back to the Mars mission because I know we've got some audience questions on that we're at a satellite conference so I'm gonna ask you some questions about satellites StarLink what's the long-term vision for StarLink how do you see the role of star link as it relates to mobile broadband and 5g sure so I mean the whole purpose of SpaceX is really to help make life multiplanetary and then but the revenue potential of launching rocket launching satellites serves in Space Station why not that's you know type taps out around three billion dollars a year but I think providing broadband is is\n\nmore like an order of magnitude more than that probably thirty billion a year as a rough approximation and we're still like probably below 5% at that point so it's not like I want to be clear like so I'm like stalling I guess I'm a huge threat to telcos I want to be super clear it is not in fact it will be helpful to telcos because start like what will serve the hardest to serve customers that telcos otherwise have trouble doing with with landlines or even with with cell radio stations with itself cell towers 5g is is great for high-density situations like being here in DC or you know New York temperatures call that kind of thing 5g is great for high-density situations but it's actually not great for the the countryside you know for rural areas it's it's\n\nnot it's not great you need you need range and so in any any kind of sparse environment 5 G's is really not not well-suited but it's great great for in it for for City Denton City situations so StarLink will effectively serve the I don't know three or four percent hardest to reach customers for telcos or people who simply have no connectivity right now or the connectivity is really bad so I think it will be actually helpful and take a significant load off the traditional telcos and I was I was gonna ask you what customers you know were ideally suited for StarLink but I guess since you mentioned that it would be it would be these three to four percent at the very like that at the very edge what is the customer experience like then for those people and\n\nwhat's the cost of acquiring the services well it will be attributed good experience because it'll be very low latency and we're targeting latency below 20 milliseconds so somebody could could play a fast response video game at a competitive level like that's the threshold for the latency so then and bam bandwidth the bandwidth is a very complex question but let's just say somebody will be able to watch high-def movies play it play video games and do all the things they want to do without noticing speed right and then the challenge for anything that is space based is that the the size of the cell is gigantic so it's like said it's great for for very low - maybe maybe mediums sort of sparsity situations but it's not it's not good for high density situations\n\nthey will have some small number of customers in LA but we can't do a lot of customers in LA because the bandwidth per cell is simply not high enough what is what is the equipment on the ground look like for this what the ground equipment just looks like well I think it's like sizing it looks like a little you it looks like a UFO on a stake so the at least the version one of the uses terminal will actually have actuators on it so then it can it can improve the pointing accuracy so you don't have to it's very important that you don't need a specialist ourself to install the goal is that this the instructions in the box will there's just two instructions and they can be done in either order a point at sky plug in you do it either order see you it doesn't\n\nmatter and it will work plug and play literally but also point of sky was I can't see the satellites you can't see the satellites you can't see you just wanted to talk about just some of the design concerns that were raised by astronomers you can talk about a little bit about how you working maybe working with astronomers to alleviate these concerns or are you working on the designer altering it or are the concerns overblown I mean how do you feel about what has been raised I I am confident that we will not cause any impact whatsoever in astronomical discoveries zero that's my prediction we'll take corrective action if it's above zero so you're not giving like Orion a hat or anything like things no I mean this there's a so much people get a little excited\n\nbecause when when the satellites are first launched that they're they're tumbling a little bit so they're like they're kind of like they're gonna blink and because they haven't stabilized and then and they're they're raising their orbit so they're they're lower than you'd expect and they're kind of necessarily gonna reflect in ways that it's not the case when they're on orbit but now the other the satellites are on orbit I'll be impressed if if somebody can actually tell me where where all of them are I've not met someone who can tell me where all of them are not even one person yes thing so that I mean it can't be that big of a deal but we are taped there we are actually working with here members of the the the science community and antenor astronomers\n\nto minimize the potential for reflection of the satellites so you know we're and we're running a bunch of experiments too for example just have a paint the phase array antenna black instead of white and we're working on a a sunshade because that there there was like certain angles where if a Sun gets you know just sort of just right and there's not like a little sunshade we're not talking about a lot here then you can get a reflection and so we were launching sunshade changing the color of the satellites and otherwise minimizing the the potential for any impact even like a at least aesthetically this issue should not be an impact I think recently when Shotwell and Bloomberg was quoted as saying that you know you were exploring splitting StarLink from\n\nSpaceX could you talk a little bit about that why that would happen and how you see both of these independent companies functioning and just talk a little bit about that you were thinking about that zero was that we're thinking about that what zero zero zero not thinking about it at all we need to make the thing work it's it's far from obvious that I mean it's real important to just set the stage here for leoch communications constellations guess how many Leo constellations didn't go bankrupt zero alright zero it iridium is doing okay now but the iridium one went bankrupt Volcom went bankrupt Globalstar bankrupt Teledesic bankrupt I'm believing it without this bunch of others that didn't get very far they also went bankrupt anyway the word bankrupt so\n\nyou're focusing on making it work first not bankrupt right I'm not gonna there's a big that'd be a big staff have like more than zero and then not bankrupt category how would you I mean with how does it work then with the the business of SpaceX since you're like I mean you are launching other constellations is that is that a an issue does that cause like a conflict or we're launching out the constellations oh you're launching other satellites that's right oh yeah sure whatever yet no problem of course so there's no like you know even if I can have a good deal of it like no problem you know I won't just constellation on SpaceX sound good to me so I mean I think that you know I think there's there's the world seems to have an insatiable appetite for bandwidth\n\nso we're certainly happy just launched other satellites and you know we don't think star link is gonna destroy all other satellites or something like that or definitely not all right yeah we were just wanting to be in the not bankrupt category that's a goal since you're since you're now the company of SpaceX now you know you're you're building you're launching satellites are you are you looking at expanding the business of SpaceX into other areas of commercial satellite connectivity maybe like we talked a little bit about the you know you're already building like technology on the ground are there other areas that you're looking to get into in terms of commercial space connectivity or satellite services no we really there's just this two major new technology\n\nprograms at SpaceX that's StarLink and starship well like it's kinda has star in the name of a team we were just cool like Lincoln ship if you divide the one by the other it stars net outs and then was just making sure that's it cause I know anyway it would be some secret project that's so secret I even I don't know about it you don't have a business under the chairs I don't think there's anything major so I want to I want to give time for the people in the audience to ask some questions but you know we talked about starship so development at Boca Chica is moving on pretty quickly and yeah actually that was a real reason as ladies because I was at Boca Chica my apologies I was just working on starship with the team there so it's pretty cool out there\n\nactually I like you tell us a little bit about the work that's underway what we can expect in the future for for starship well we're building a production line for production line is the hard part you're making one of something it is well at this point you know like frankly designing rockets is not that hard especially if it's an expandable rocket just not really a hard problem you could literally read books they'll tell you exactly how to do it the hard part is now actually building that thing even once is hard I mean building a production line is a thousand percent harder like at least a thousand percent harder yeah maybe more so just in general production and manufacturing is underappreciated I think especially in the u.\n\ns.\n\nfrankly so we should really pay a lot more attention and care a lot more about manufacturing losses yeah this is an honest day's work let me tell you so what inspired some of the design aesthetics of the space craft and stainless steel it's a it's a striking design first first base graphic what would inspire your vision for the way it looks wave functions like Y stainless steel why well we were going to make it out of advanced composites and the advanced composites that cost like $60 a pound over 60 dollars a kilogram like a little more than that maybe 130 dollars a pound and there was 60 to 120 plies before the the tank it was taking forever you weren't making good progress cost crazy money and I was like okay switching to aluminum lithium is also a\n\npain in the neck we do that that's what we used for the Falcon 9 tanks because it's hard to world because of the reactivity of the lithium so you know what's easy to weld steel Steel's really easy to world and stainless steel doesn't even require paint that sounds great because the paint shops are paying the neck and you want to try painting something that's got a go to drop to cryogenic temperatures and then band a lot it's like forget it I mean that paint wants to come off like there's no tomorrow it does not like to stake so then you could use special paint and then the special paint also can't you get like when you're going vertically at like supersonic you get the basically static electricity build-up quote Triborough electrification although it\n\nreminds me the trouble of troubles but you can basically zap yourself if you have paint that the wrong paint yeah so it was no paint is great yeah because we need a big friggin big-ass paint shop for starship yeah well that's problems I think one less problem and then paint doesn't weigh zero you know they these to paint the the shuttle external tank white didn't like like well we're adding a lot of weight to this thing and it's big pain in the neck so we'll leave just have it stay orange so just not painting it's great so then you know and we're not the first to use steel like they used 301 in the early atlas program Charlie Bossert I think it was you know think was his idea obviously other people involved but Charlie busted by the way that guy's underappreciated\n\nhe kicks ass it's really great to read about his stuff he's awesome so he's 301 so obviously it's not a new alloy I think we're gonna start switching to a different alloy pretty soon and then just treat the alloy constituents because we should be able to better in 2020 then they were they didn't like the 50s you know so I mean come on so I think we'll probably start switching away from 301 maybe the next month or two now the funny thing is that like I actually knew that steel especially 301 full hard steel couldn't be that heavy because the original Atlas had a very good mass fraction right so it can't be that wrong with that and if you look at the normal normal sort of standard material sheet for a 301 it will usually not tell you what that it work hardens\n\ndramatically and improves the strength dramatically with work hardening and also at cryogenic temperatures it improves strength dramatically so then the if you combine the work hardening with the the cryo strength improvement you get an effective strength to weight that is about the same as advanced composite now if you will generally make a mistake with composites because they'll look at the material sheet and not realize that okay with composites you could have a big knockdown because you basically have composite saw string and glue and so you and and you can't just like have like let's say your problem cause for having for pliers of carbon you can't just have four players you need like five or six because in case you damaged one or something like that\n\nand you say what's your worst case allowable for a D bond or something like that so the actual knockdown you end up taking pro composites is more than you would for a metal structure so people often so it's like a classic movie mistake is to overrate carbon fiber because you just you look at the material datasheet and it looks like an obvious move but it's not so area so at cryogenic temperatures the steel is has a de facto strength weight about the same as advanced composite but that doesn't not even counting the fact that you have to paint the composite don't paint this deal then there's a another factor which is if you want to have a reusable vehicle it's gonna get hot composites don't like getting hot so you're typically your your composite maybe\n\nis comfortable up to around 150 200 Celsius something like that you know and things start getting pretty sketchy around 250 C but I mean like you start having to use advanced resins and all that kind of thing so whereas Steel's pretty happy at a thousand see you know no pain no problem with by 500 considered fibre at sea all day and brief periods of a thousand sino ROM so then for a reasonable vehicle you now need zero heat shielding on the leeward side normally you beat some heat shielding just Souter due to radiative heating on the back so you don't have a lot of convective heating at hypersonic we do have radiative heating and then you can thin out the windward side of the the heat shield because the thickness of the of the heat shield tile is driven\n\nby the temperature on the backside of the tile where it mounts the primary structure so if your primary structure can take a high heat that means you can thin out the tile so think of it like these like like oven mitts or something you know if you have like how hot can your hand go and that assets how thick your oven mitt is right so then you can have like I said no no no he chilled on the leeward side on it and then heat shield on the windward side so now your actual total mass of a steel a reasonable Steel's a spacecraft is less than that of the most advanced carbon fiber vehicle you could possibly imagine yeah Wow but this is happen by accident by the way it may sound like some great insight but it actually happened because we're moving too slowly\n\non composite and I was like we cannot move this slowly or we'll go bankrupt so that's good do this for steel so yeah I mean the design has to be focused on problem solving otherwise you're going to spend too much time trying to figure it you don't start with it yeah yeah I'm like sort of taken to management management by rhyming if the schedule is scheduled as long your design is wrong right very true it's good good point yes with that I want to go to some audience questions we asked the audience through the the app to submit us question so I believe we have a few that we've pulled here so we've got some over here can we and can you come closer over here so we can we can see you let's say all right our first question hello I'm Jane zündel I'm a graduate\n\nstudent at Stanford my question for you is as you look back on your career in the space industry what has been the most surprising or unexpected challenge that you faced and along those lines if you were to go back in time and talk to your 20 year old self would you do anything differently go back in time do your 20 year old self I mean I think if I get it I think it would make a far fewer mistakes I would see if I could guard like it here's a list of all the dumb things you're about to do please do not hear them yeah I'd be a very long list and like here let me and you know write it down or something you know I mean it's behind size 2020 so it's hard to say I mean number of I've made so many foolish mistakes I have a lot count honestly I mean some of\n\nthese things I just wish I liked just like that's a simple sort of mantra management by rhyming I mean it worked for Homer okay the management of our rhyming is the thing I'm saying like if but if the schedule is long the design is wrong we've complicated the design many times and I think you should just gone with a simpler design with the acid test being how long will it take to for this to fly and if it's going to take a long time don't do it do something else if you look it's a falcon 9 eye it's got a aluminum lithium tank but then the unpressurized structures are carbon fiber composite and really one of the worst possible things you could do to a joint is takes me with a high coefficient of thermal expansion high CTE put it go take it from room temperature\n\nto cryo and then connect it to something that has zero CTE you know basically zero or like a carbon fiber so now you've got a real pain in the ass joint basically so in order for that to work you've got at the tanks got a shrink radially and you've got these super expensive heavy bolts that are like a beam inventing across you know that I've been taking load into the interstage and they just really want to share off or snap off this is crazy you know really just have a continuous metal structure but that's obvious that should be done that'd be way better you know if things expand to full the available resources so then like sometimes you should say no to things that you that you don't you know like the original thought one team which the the fairing tanks\n\nengines or everything pretty much was maybe a little over a hundred people now SpaceX is like six thousand people I think some like now so it's or it really just is it I simplify your product as much as possible you know and then like with the figure but I think of some of the ways which how does the SWAT engineer make down mistakes included is you know is optimize something that shouldn't exist don't optimize something that shouldn't exist if people are trained to do this in college you can't say no to the professor you know this is gonna give you the exam and you've got to answer all the questions over they will get angry so and give you a bad grade so then you you always optimize the yours answer the question all the times you should say this is the\n\nwrong question all right in fact the question is definitely wrong to some degree just how wrong and I think just generally taking the approach that your design is some degree wrong probably a lot more than you think your goal is to make it less wrong over time we have that it's good right another question hi my name is Julie seven sage and mr.\n\nmonkey have said in the past that you think that college degrees shouldn't be that important and that I've been showed in job listings in places such as Tesla however in places like sis industry including even at SpaceX in the satellite development area many of the job listings say that you need at least a bachelor's degree and prefer at least a master's degree so my question to you is with more jobs asking for higher levels of degrees without scholarships are not changing amounts and that is getting harder and harder every year to pay tuition even with using scholarships how can colleges and industries make it easier to afford college but at the same time being able to pay grad students and employees well and also to make sure that there is a large-scale\n\naccess to good colleges especially to underprivileged communities so that everyone can be a part of the future rebuilding thank you well first of all you don't need college to learn and learn stuff okay everything is available basically for free you can learn anything you want for free it is not a question of learning there there is a value that colleges have which is like you know seeing whether somebody's it is can somebody work hard at something including a bunch of sort of annoying homework assignments and still do their homework assignments and a car soldier through and get it done you know that's that's like the main value of college and then also you you know if you you if you probably want to hang around with a bunch of people you're on edge for\n\na while instead of going drag it right into the work force so I think colleges are basically for fun and to prove you can do your chores but they're not for learning there it is I know we started late and I know wait we we don't have much time left but to build on Julie's question here how does somebody like you with a very long term mission of going to Mars how are you cultivating the next generation of leadership to take you there because I mean this is this is a long-term project you might we might not be around to see us finally resettle on Mars or maybe maybe no I mean I hope I'm not dead by the time I people go to Mars that would be a great great outcome I think I might be you know if we don't improve our pace of progress I'm definitely you know\n\ngonna be dead before we go to Mars so I'm just like would like to not be dead when by the time we go to Mars that's my aspiration here so if it's taking us 18 years just to get ready to do the first people to orbit we better improve our rate of innovation or you know based on past trends I am definitely gonna be dead before Mars so we're going to improve our pace of innovation a lot so yeah it's a you I can tell you can see you how do you communicate that vision you have to that to the somebody who could maybe take over for what you're doing and to see things where you're seeing them in terms of the mission well we have a lot of good good people at SpaceX that a lot of really talented people in fact I wonder like sometimes how we can make use of their\n\ntalents in the best way because it you know I think we're often not using their talents in the best way yeah but you know to the point of the question I was just asked I'm gonna make sure Tesla recruiting does not have anything that says requires University because that's absurd but there is a requirement of evidence of exceptional ability like you just can't if you're trying to do something exceptional they must have evidence of exceptional ability I don't consider going to college evidence of exceptional ability in fact ideally you dropped out and did something I mean obviously you know look at like you know Gates is a pretty smart guy who dropped out job is pretty smart he dropped out you know that re Allison smart guy he dropped out like obviously\n\nnot needed so did Shakespeare even go to college probably not well I'm thank you so much I wish we could take more audience questions I know we have it we have a hard stop but thank you you on for stopping by thank you let's give them a round of applause for stopping by and speaking less did you either message to your evening and thank you very much [Applause] [Music]"},"languages":["en"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HPV8Xp3pEpI"},{"id":"afa-air-warfare-symposium-2020-02-28","type":"interview","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E307nHamdY8","title":"AFA Air Warfare Symposium","titles":{"en":"AFA Air Warfare Symposium","de":"AFA Air Warfare Symposium","fr":"AFA Air Warfare Symposium"},"date":"2020-02-28","summary":"Fireside chat where Musk discusses reusable rockets, the new Space Force and the end of the fighter-jet era with Lt. Gen. John F. Thompson.","text":"foreign [Music] foreign [Music] welcome back please take this opportunity to move to your seats so we may begin the program on time [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] thank you [Music] please welcome afa's Central Florida Martin hap Harris chapter president Todd freeze thank you 36 years ago our chapter established this great Symposium and has been working closely with AFA to keep it one of the premier professional development events for Airmen today is our honor to participate in continuing that great tradition by hosting this session I am pleased introduce our keynote event to include to conclude our symposium Lieutenant General John Thompson is responsible for approximately six thousand Airmen worldwide\n\nHe commands an annual budget of over seven billion dollars to support the research design development launch acquisition and sustainment of satellites and their Associated command and control systems accompanying General Thompson is global innovator Elon Musk in 1980 [Music] in 1983 he taught himself computer programming at the age of 12.\n\nsolve the code for a basic based video game called blaster for approximately five hundred dollars and in 1990 in 1995 he started zip2 a web software company later renamed PayPal in 2001.\n\nbut more recently you might know him for revolutionizing electric cars as CEO and product architect of Tesla Motors development that's all the Tesla owners development and Manufacturing Advanced rockets and spacecraft for Missions to and beyond Earth's orbit as founder of space exploration Technologies SpaceX and conceptualizing high-speed Transportation known as hyperloop and if you haven't heard some of these quotes by Elon Musk or muskisms let me introduce this one here's my first one when I first read it I thought while it applies to Innovation it's also written into the contract of every Airman in this room and every man and woman he was served the quote is if something is important enough even if the odds are against you you should still do it now\n\nlooking back to our speech this morning by Dr Roper when he talked about innovation one of the muskism quotes is failure is an option here if things are not failing you are not innovating enough but my favorite quote I would like to die on Mars just not on impact General Thompson Mr musk over to you thank you welcome well Elon thanks so much for being here today as you know and many people in the audience know we uh we're reprising a uh fireless fireside chat that we did at Air Force Space pitch day back in November uh I ran into General goldfein the chief of staff of the United States Air Force this morning and uh um maybe I was being a little bit too confident but I said hey I I think that we did such a good job together at space pitch day that uh Elon\n\nand I got invited back for a much bigger audience higher stakes and everything like that and general goldfein looked at me and went no JT you guys are going to do it until you get it right so so we're going to talk a little bit today about uh Innovation for those of you uh in the audience that nothing that was introduced about Elon uh uh made it to the prefrontal cortex and you're like I still don't know who this guy is um you may remember him from the movie role in Iron Man 2.\n\nor the TV show uh The Big Bang Theory you may remember him if you're old like me when you used to have to do dial-in modems uh you may remember how PayPal actually worked over a dial-in modem yeah um and if just in case you've had your head in the sand for uh the last decade you absolutely have to know him for space exploration Technologies SpaceX a tremendous partner of the United States Air Force in uh in the space business and for Tesla so for just just for grins this fastest growing Auto Company on the planet most amazing capability and when Elon pulled up he pulled up he and his Entourage in three different Teslas this morning Tesla owners do we have in the audience stand up stand up if you're a test loner all right very nice thank you the secretary\n\nso um Elon you and I have talked about whether the air force uh is the most Innovative service um uh the department of the Air Force now and uh the last time we interviewed it was it was just the Air Force now we're the Air Force and the space force as part of the Department of the Air Force most those people who stood up were in the front row we have a lot of first adopters uh here in the front of the audience apparently or maybe those are the folks that just make the most money who knows okay so um again today's uh today's discussion is about uh Innovation and how we can make the department of the Air Force the most Innovative Department within the Department of Defense and perhaps across the United States government so Elon question number one um when\n\nyou put a weapon system uh or a product into production and you start delivering it to your customers very very frequently there is a a push back within the production organization that you know we don't want to change that product too much it's successful we have a lot of Legacy systems that we're responsible for in the department of the Air Force there is a lot of of reticence at times to incrementally improve or add new capabilities to those systems from the context of Tesla and SpaceX how do you motivate your Workforce how do you work with your customers how do you work with technologists in your ecosystems your various ecosystems to try and make sure that products don't become stagnant and they continue to implement incrementally improve over time\n\nsure well first of all thanks for having me here it's an honor to be here with you and with everyone else from the uh space slash Air Force um and um I've already had a long relationship with the Air Force and very much appreciate the support of the year so I just want to make sure to say that and look forward to doing a lot of interesting things in the future I I think it's actually um it's cool that that there is that the creation of the space forces is happening um I think it there's you know it makes sense that there's a a major Branch for every domain you know with that uh and and uh so the domain of space the domain of error are both important but uh I think space spaces is is certainly a medium of its own sure um and um I think there's some very\n\nexciting things that are possible if I may just say it like what you know what the public wants I think and Perfection pretty confident that the public doesn't want this is uh staff lead Academy in order like yeah like how do we make stock how do we make Star Trek real you know that'd be pretty amazing I'd love that you know um and uh so I think like the fastest we can make sort of Starfleet real then they're just trying to do that well so Elon speaking speaking for uh the United States space force there already is a Starfleet Academy it's the United States Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs Colorado sure I've I've been there I've given a token um you know the the first launch of Falcon one we had a falcon sat from the Air Force Academy but that rocket\n\nblew up but but but then the funny thing is that it blew up like he's this truth is strange Than Fiction um the the satellite uh were shot through the fairing um through the air a couple hundred meters and then plunged through the roof of a tool shed uh and then landed on the floor um and was actually in reasonably good shape I mean for crashing through the ceiling but you know you're like recognizable you know um and and we have to give it back and so we've not lost one of your satellites so so from a SpaceX perspective buff it up a partial Mission success well it's not lost I'm just saying it's a little the worst it's a little worse for wear but you know but then we subsequently launched a future Falcons that's to actual orbit uh that was great um so\n\num so I think there's I think we can make go a long way towards making Starfleet real and making uh these uh sort of um utopian or semi-year semi-autopian future is real but it will definitely require radical innovation um one can't get there by incrementally innovating um Expendable boosters there's just no way yeah so the the I think we we need to push for radical breakthroughs um and if you don't push for radical breakthroughs you're not going to get radical outcomes um and that that does mean taking risks um and and common sense that the the if you take a big risk in order to have a big reward there must be a big risk it's it's most the time you cannot find big reward for small risk that's those are rare so you're going to have some proportionality\n\nof the risk and reward but if the goal is important enough and I think increasingly the goal is important for for many reasons um the the goal of having the best technology in space uh that that is I think going to become increasingly important and it'll be increasingly increasingly important for the United States to use what I think is its greatest attribute which is uh invention and innovation um to to create space technology that is um the best in the world um and in fact I think if the United States does not use uh breakthrough Innovation uh it will provide so I think this is that this is not something that was a risk in times past but I think is a risk now okay um so yeah um do you characterize that risk in terms of peer adversary Comfort competition\n\naround the planet are you are you um are you suggesting that it's our adversaries that require us to be that those radical innovators or is it just we can't become complacent and stay incrementally improving our systems we must take those giant leaps forward as a nation regardless of the competition I think there's those little I've zero doubt that if the United States does not take it does not seek great Innovations in space it will be second in space okay with as sure as Nightfall is day so it is a big deal um but this this is uh I mean a very Innovative that you know there's no country more Innovative and an event of the United States so it's just important to use that attribute that's that's the ace card okay yeah and since uh so since it seems like\n\nwe're going down the geopolitical path here on the on the the questions how does the United States as a nation maintain that Innovative Edge that that um ability to invest in things and take those risks what kind of of governmental policies or processes do we have to encourage the right kinds of behavior in your view well I think having outcome based procurement is is actually very important so you say like this is the outcome that is sought and whoever can achieve this outcome or achieve this outcome to a greater degree that that company will that that's who the Air Force will do business with and we'll procure the thing that is that is radically innovative as measured by the what what is important for leadership in space so um I mean I do think it's\n\nit's absolutely fundamental to achieve full reusability and access to space this is this is the Holy Grail of space at the point at which you have full reusability for orbital Rockets then you have uh a profound advantage over anyone else was profound um it would be like if um in the Air Force if if you if you had planes that could be used once and or if you're if you're at multi-use planes that could be flown over and over again like normal um and all your adversaries had single-use planes that would be no contest it's the same thing in space okay yeah this is extremely fundamental um so the the cost of a propellant is typically on the order of one percent of the cost of the of the vehicle or less so um if you have a vehicle that is say I don't know\n\num blocks kerosene like Falcon eye or something like that um it's it's the the the oxygen and the fuel are yeah maybe half million dollars or something like that but then depending upon the mission the admission price can be anywhere from like 60 to 100 million dollars so um and I thought Falcon 9 is a partially reusable vehicle but not fully um the vehicle we're working on right now uh were quite difficult is Starship and uh yeah that has the potential for full reusability um but but I think it would be great to have other companies as well that are doing full reusability I think competition is a good thing um it may seem at times that you know shouldn't we Focus all our efforts on on one system and rather than divide them and have two competing systems\n\num like you know not to cause controversy or a bit like in my opinion like Joint Strike Fighter this should be a competitor to JSO that that's a controversial subject but um you know I think it's it's not it's not good to have uh one one provider um it's good to have competition where that competition is Meaningful and somebody can actually lose that's like you know so then then um so yeah okay yeah so in radical Innovation obviously the workforce is a really key component of that I mean as I mean during your PayPal days you were actually doing coding right but in SpaceX and Tesla they are so large that Elon can't do everything what sort of things do you think about in terms of motivating a Workforce like um uh like we have in the department of the Air\n\nForce that will help them become more radically Innovative what sort of things do you look for in people or in processes that make the workforce better sure well I think the massive thing that can be done is to make sure your incentive structure is such that Innovation is rewarded and lack of innovation is punished they've got to be a characteristic so if somebody is innovating um and doing making good progress then they should be promoted sooner and if somebody is completely failing to innovate not every role requires Innovation but if they're in a role where Innovation is should be happening and it's not happening then they should either not be promoted or exited and let me tell you you'll get promote you'll get you'll you'll get Innovation real fast\n\nokay let's stick yeah it's like how much do you want yeah so does that does that carrot and stick approach help do you think people be more risk averse or less risk averse well before when when trying different things you got to have some acceptance of failure uh as you were alluding to earlier failure must be an option if failure is not an option it's going to result in extremely conservative choices and you you may not you may get something even worse than lack of innovation things may go backwards um so if what you really want is uh risk risk to you want reward and Punishment to be proportionate to the actions that you seek so if uh if what you're seeking is innovation then you should reward success and Innovation um and only there should be minor\n\nconsequences for lack of minor consequences for trying and failing there should be minor significant rewards for trying and succeeding minor consequences for trying and not succeeding and big and and major negative consequences for not trying Okay so if you have that instead of structure you will get Innovation like you can't believe okay so you've um you've talked at uh Tesla shareholder meetings and in various interviews that you consider um the machine that builds the machine to be just as important if not more important than the machine itself yeah so we talked about the workforce aspects are there processes that you use within your company that are parts of that machine that you think are particularly valuable for Innovative radical change thank\n\nyou well what I mean by the machine that builds the machine is that the the production that designing the production system of a new product is I think at least an order of magnitude or 292 to harder than designing the initial prototype yeah um the I think like in America there's been a lot less of a less important in modern times placed on manufacturing and I think this is this is a mistake um like at this point I was really classified and in fact I sent an email to the to SpaceX just saying this like at this point I think designing a rocket is Trivial which is Trivial there's like tons of books that'll you read them you know you can understand equations you can design a rocket uh it's real real easy uh yeah if you say like two-stage uh two and two percent\n\nof your lift off Master orbit from just to design something like that piece of cake um uh they say you want to go into production with that or if you want you want to actually make let's say the next step is you want to make even one of those things okay now making even one of those things and getting it to orbit is hard um but the designing of it is not hard the making of it of even one is hard the making of a production line that builds and launches many is extremely hard um and then the next level beyond that would be um creating a fully reusable system and having that be in volume production and volume launch that's that's super super hard um so that's so yeah by building machine at building machine I mean I mean creating the production system and\n\nI keep emphasizing to SpaceX the hard part is making it and making lots of them and launching frequently um because reuse must not just be it can't be reused like the shuttle it's got to be rapid and complete reuse so the shuttle was a case where the ReUse was very slow and it was not complete the main tank was lost every time and refurbing the shuttle between flights was extremely expensive uh it's not even clear whether it was worth recovering was the booster shells from the ocean so so just like an aircraft you the the rocket must be rapidly and completely reusable and then you need lots of them um and then I've been sort of just doing back kind of back of the envelope what's needed to establish a self-sustaining City on Mars and these are like big\n\nnumbers but I think you need on the order of a million tons to the surface of Mars useful payload something like that um because we sit on the top of a massive base of infrastructure over you know the economy is uh you think of all the things that are mined and then refined and then and then just many steps in the refinement and in order to produce like your phone or your toast or even those there's a vast base of Industry that was required to produce even a simple household item yeah it's very difficult so so you've got to recreate that on Mars so a million times on Mars means we're just talking orders magnitude here and hopefully it's not 10 million tons and hopefully maybe it's less than a million tons but probably not a hundred thousand tons so that\n\nthat means you need to get about 5 million tons to uh Earth orbit of useful payload so you're talking like the like so essentially unless you have a launch system that is somewhere in the Megaton per year range to orbit it's not it's not relevant okay yeah so um starlink um as you're scaling to build more and more Starling satellites to go on more and more reusable Rockets what are some of the challenges you've had to overcome in starlink production so that you can perfect that machine machine that builds the machine yeah as I started selling production is going well actually the that's the that was a hard that's a hard thing to get right um we made many we had many iterations on the stalling prototypes and then as I said the been building the starlink\n\nproduction line was on a thousand percent harder than designing the satellite to begin with um but but it is important to have like a um to design for manufacturing and have a tight feedback loop between the design of the object and the manufacturing system so as you when people when when you design the object at first you you don't realize all the parts that are really difficult to manufacture uh and so so having the manufacturing system and the design bring those up at the same time so that you're actually in the beginning making a thing that you know is wrong but you're actually figuring out what's hard to manufacture that's the real problem um so we we brought up these the starlink production line before we actually had the design finalized which\n\nwhich is actually the right thing to do and then we discover oh there's all there's all these things that uh in the design that are very difficult to make um and so therefore we must change the design and the the satellite ended up having the same capability but just um was very easy to make and launch so what would say very easy it's it's not it's sort of hard but um but it's but but it's being done and we're the satellites are being produced at a rate now faster than we can launch them so and and the cost of the satellite has dropped below the cost of transporting it to orbit so even when taking the the Falcon 9 in the most reused configuration which is to get the booster back and you get the bearings back um the cost of the trend of transporting the\n\nsatellite to orbit exceeds the cost of the satellite so the satellite's in a good good situation okay and the cost that satellite will keep coming down as we ramp up rates and make design improvements uh but so so we really need Starship to carry starlink in order to get the total delivered cost to orbit to be much better than it is today okay which is still pretty good um when you when you um so in terms of deciding what to build you can take feedback from customers and let customers pull to you what they want or you can be radically Innovative within your company or you know a small set of individuals and develop something and push it into the industrial base so customer pull would be Tesla Tesla owners wanting new features on the existing Fleet push\n\nwould be you know a company push would be something like when Apple pushed the iPad to everybody and nobody knew what an iPad was until they touched it and went wow sure everybody wants an iPad now what do you all think about in terms of that balance between customer pull and Company push well in the beginning nobody wanted a Tesla let me tell you that the the the when we made the original sort of roads to a sports car uh people were like why would I want an electric car that's my gasoline car works fine um like no electric cars better I should try it um and it was you know hard to get people to do a test drive nobody knew who we were I never heard of this company and like yeah we're named after Nikola Tesla you know that guy nope um so for sure we were\n\ndoing push in the beginning because people said there was no one telling us that they wanted an electric car so it was not it was not out of like you know it was like less people coming up to me saying hey I really want an electric car I heard that zero times um some people like it's like man we're gonna make an electric car and show that these things can be good and then people want them um it was like I think it was like Henry Ford said like the you know if we're talking about the Model T it's like if you ask the public what they wanted they'd say a faster horse so if you did like a big survey and say what hey public before automobiles what would you like it's like well I'd like my horse to go three miles an hour faster and eat less food and uh you\n\nknow be stronger and live longer and that kind of thing um that will be basically a bunch of incremental improvements on horse um because people aren't we say like what about an automobile that car that drives itself like what are you talking about that's not that sounds crazy um but when you actually make an automobile and give it to people and say okay now this is a horse where you can keep it in the barn and if you leave for a month it's still alive [Laughter] yeah so carry more like more weight than a horse and go further and that kind of thing so anyway it's like when when it's a radically a new product people don't know that they want it because it's just not in their in their scope I think when they first started making TVs they did a nationwide\n\nsurvey I think this might have been like 46 or 48 it was like a famous Nationwide survey will you ever buy a TV out I was like 96 of respondents said no hmm something some crazy number like basically everyone's like would you buy a TV and maybe they put a price in there or something I don't know but it was famously almost everyone said they would not buy a TV but they didn't know what they're talking about so the big game changing stuff at the beginning is a company push kind of a thing most of the time but then changes to the product over time can be a lot more customer pull kind of a focus yeah Jane changes the product over time can be incremental changes um then the customers can certainly tell you it's good to get customer feedback to say how can\n\nwe improve the product um and once they're using it they can say okay I like this thing about it I don't like this other thing and then we can improve the product over time customer feedback after they they have the fundamental thing is is great okay yeah okay so um in the audience here we have a lot of air and space War Fighters we have uh so people who use systems we have a lot of Developmental teams on both the government and the industry side and we have the the air and space leadership of the nation so I got a little lightning round here for you right to try and influence maybe some of those younger folks in the back who are looking for the for the next big thing so in terms of different kinds of Technology whether it's artificial intelligence or\n\nmedical or batteries or whatever in the next five years what technology do you think will see the most advancement well it's difficult to to assess most in those contexts because they're very different but I think the probably the most transformative most fundamentally transformative will be ai ai okay and if you were recommending to some of the young officers and uh um uh enlisted troops in the room what sort of degrees to pursue uh at college or what sort of Education that they should prioritize for themselves in the modern era what would you recommend um computer science and physics computer science and physics okay how many computer science people do we have out there how many physics people okay we need more apparently okay essentially information\n\nTheory and physical Theory um if you want to understand the nature of the universe um and have these have a very good predictive power physics and computer science okay yeah okay as a nation that is interested in radical Innovation to maintain its Competitive Edge what are the things that the department of the Air Force should be investing more in other than reusable Rockets from your perspective again I can't emphasize enough how important reusable Rockets are yeah you'll love it um it's great um so um and I think that you could actually do point to point on Earth uh with uh you know to go long distances um and be much better than aircraft because I mean basically just think of like ICBM minus the nuke adeland you know so so it's just sort of in the\n\noption package just you know uncheck nuke and then add Landing system check and and that's definitely going to get you wherever you want to go as the fastest um because that's why they made it icbms they get they're the fastest um so and I think that that's going to be pretty exciting um yeah I think uh yeah I mean once you have a dramatically lower cost access to space then then many things are enabled um you can think of like once you've got the Union Pacific Railroad then you know getting to the West Coast was much faster and much less dangerous yeah you're not likely to sort of end up eating your compatriots in a snowy situation uh you know so you can just take the train so so you know at the beginning they thought why the heck are they building that\n\nstupid Railway there's nobody there's nobody there and they're like um but once you build the railway they're like okay now it's easy to get to the West Coast uh and now a huge portion of the US population is on the west coast um and actually California is the most popular state in the nation um but it it used to be well least populous I suppose for pretty low um so many things are possible once you once the transport uh problem is solved so that's why I think it's so fundamental if you can't believe you can't get there or getting there is takes a long time and you can't risk and every mission is going to work then it's very hard to innovate um it's got to be that okay some missions won't work and the cost of running the experiment is low that's why I'm\n\nhot I'm harping so much on the cost of transport um so um you know once you're there I think like say establishing a base on the moon or base on Mars uh there's just a tremendous amount of work work that's needed to create a self-sustaining base on the moon on Mars and it opens up a command's amount of opportunity just as the Union Pacific Railroad did by making access to the West Coast not much easier okay um um yeah I mean outside of the space space realm I think there's a lot of opportunity in tunnels I think I've been saying that for a long time um so our tunnels are great um they're really great um and uh the boring company is about to finish its first tunnel in Vegas I encourage I encourage people to copy please copy the boring company or do better\n\nthat'd be great there's um so in terms of domains you have Subterranean yeah um obviously Tesla Tesla covers the ground domain as capabilities you've got the space domain covered with uh SpaceX and starlink capabilities uh I think this is this is the air Warfare Symposium folks might not in the audience might be interested in if you have any ideas for the air domain specifically for the air domain um I think uh things like things are very definitely going to go into kind of autonomous locally autonomous drone Warfare is where it's at where the future will be now I'm just saying that was not I want the future to be this it's just this is what the future will be okay as autonomous drone Warfare um and at a local local level uh the you know um okay I can't\n\nbelieve I'm saying this because this is this is like dangerous but it's simply what will occur is is sort of a is it drones locally being autonomous um and um but I think we still want to retain sort of like you know that's the authority to damage or destroy uh you know anything that that isn't an autonomous drone keep that Authority back here with the person in the loop okay but it's it's the the fighter jet era has passed that is it's just yeah why did your errors past okay so it's drawings um let's go back to failure for a minute and and the mindset that that you have you and your leadership team at Tesla and SpaceX have on failure I mean the SpaceX blooper reel uh that you guys did in I think it was 2017 time frame um was definitely hey we Embrace\n\nthis learning that occurs more recently with the the Tesla truck and the and the ball through the window also uh that mind crew that foreign that mindset that Embraces failure how do you personally I mean those kinds of failures would drive a lot of us in this room nuts but doesn't seem to drive you nuts seems like you're very comfortable with it can you talk about the mindset that requires for you to be that accepting of that kind of failure uh sure should we roll the video no or should we not no we should not roll a video not yet okay okay um okay um well I think of the these things as just there's a certain amount of time and within that time you want the the best net outcome so for you know all the set of actions that you can do there's going to be\n\nuh and some which will fail some of which will succeed and you want the the the net useful output of your set of actions to be the highest um so um like he's like a baseball analogy like you know baseball they don't let you just sit there and wait for the perfect pitch until you get a real easy one that you're gonna give you three shots third one and they say okay get off the go back to the put somebody else up there um so these three strikes on on baseball um look yeah not on that anymore so you're what you're really looking for is like what's the batting average you know how are you doing on uh on score um and just there's going to be some amount of failure um but you want your net output um that useful output to be maximized failure is essentially\n\nrelevant unless it is catastrophic okay yeah okay um intellectual property obviously uh Tesla SpaceX Solar City have amazing capabilities that they're bringing to the uh to the public and to the government every day how do you protect your intellectual property in a world where it seems like the cloud and servers and things are constantly under attack from people wishing to free you of their your intellectual property yeah well actually at Tesla we just uh open sourced our patents uh some years ago so anyone can use our patents so we really have not been tried to protect intellectual property uh in that sense uh we've tried to actually smooth the path um because the the overarching goal of Tesla is to accelerate the Advent of sustainable energy and so\n\nif we created a pattern portfolio that discouraged other companies from making electric cars they will be inconsistent with our mission so we open sourced all the patterns okay in order to help the other anyone else who wants to make an electric car so I guess that's the opposite of protecting the IP now the real way I think you you actually achieve intellectual property protection right is by innovating fast enough if your rate of innovation is high then you don't need to worry about protecting VIP because other companies will be copying something that you did years ago and that's fine you know um just make sure your rate of innovation is fast speed is really speed of innovation is what is what matters and I do I do say this to my teams like quite a\n\nlot that Innovation per unit time as I go Innovation per year if you want to say it's like is is what matters not Innovation absent time because if you wanted to make say um 100 Improvement in something and that took 100 years or one year that's radically different so um it's like what is your rate of innovation that that matters and is the rate of innovation um is that accelerating or decelerating um and a weird thing happens when companies get big is that most companies um or organizations the bigger they get they tend to get less innovative um not just less Innovative on a per person basis but less Innovative in the absolute um and I think this is probably because data set of structure is not uh it's not there for innovation it's not enough to use\n\nwords to encourage Innovation the incentive structure must be aligned with that that's fundamental so um so um taking that from a business level to a national level in terms of obviously United States largest economy in the world China the second largest economy in the world currently and gaining fast what sort of things that could you share with the audience here that are your thoughts on the competition economic or military between the United States and China sure um well I think China is a real interesting country I have to say the the thing to appreciate about China is just that there's a lot of really smart really hard-working people there and they're going to do a lot of great things um this is sort of you know independent of Chinese government\n\npolicy they're just going to do a lot of interesting things um the thing that will be that will feel pretty strange is that the Chinese economy is going to be probably at least twice as big as the US economy maybe three times but at least twice so and that assumes that GDP per capita still less than the us but uh since they have about four or five times the population uh then it would only require getting to a GDP per capita of half the United States for their economy to be twice the size of ours and as I'm sure people in this room know the foundation of war is economics and so if you if you have half the resources of the counterparty then you better be real Innovative if you're not Innovative you're going to lose I'm not sure whether that's a Cyber attack\n\nthat's uh ongoing or not here so um the clock says I have 11 minutes left is that not true foreign it's coming through the house system we're working to get it shut off okay thank you um yes well um anyway um so so yeah with respect to China China's economy is is going to be two to three times the size of the US economy at least at least double therefore in order for the US to be competitive on uh military level the innovation has to overcome a gigantic Gap in economic output okay so in the absence of radical Innovation the US will be voluntarily uh second okay basic basic math what um from the standpoint of uh uh radical innovation we already talked about Workforce we talked about processes we talked about uh protecting uh intellectual property rights\n\nlet's talk about overall culture that culture that you try and push into your companies that makes them successful any of us and I sat right next to one of your SpaceX employees on the plane here yesterday a young engineer it was motivating for me just to talk to her about what she was doing every day and how important her job was and I just felt like the only other place I've seen that kind of culture is frankly in the department of the Air Force with some of our young folks that are sprinkled around the back of the room how do you create that culture at SpaceX and Tesla to to make employees like that well wow this smooth jazz is just honest with a vengeance uh I feel like we're in a big elevator [Laughter] um so first person when we interview people\n\nwe we do ask for some evidence of exceptional ability which in most cases includes Innovation this is not said everyone needs to be Innovative it's but we certainly need those that are doing Advanced engineering to be Innovative and ideally everyone is at least some to some degree in an Innovative so at the interview point we select for it for people who want to create new technology and then the incentive structure is set up that such that uh Innovation is rewarded making mistakes along the way it does not come with a big penalty um and but but failure to try to innovate at all comes with a big penalty you'll be fired okay yeah all right the carrot and stick yes the stick if you don't even try um or or somebody doesn't even try to invade or their Innovation\n\naspirations are are very are not not very good then yeah they will not be at the company okay okay all right so um we got about five minutes left and what I'd like to do is just turn it over to you Elon to talk about whatever you'd like to talk about if you have a message for the audience here you have uh you know a thousand plus Air and Space professionals and the greatest uh air and space force on the planet so what do you want to tell them we got to make Starfleet happen like so so we were like I don't know real big spaceships that can go far places and uh those probably get me the most trouble of all I think this should be a new uniform that's that you know um that that's like uh I don't know cool uniforms cool spaceships yeah I think that's what\n\nwhen the public hears space force that's what they think it's like okay we're gonna have like some sweet spaceships and like pretty look good uniforms and stuff and that'll be that's what the public wants um so yeah we want the Sci-Fi Futures the the the good Sci-Fi Futures to be real and ideally to become real while we're still alive you know and everyone want to see it happen and so I think we just really need to drive the rate of innovation to be such that we would see uh big big breakthroughs big improvements in space technology and you know in the years to come so yeah so like just trying to make stuffing happen it's as soon as humanly possible and definitely while we're while we're still alive yeah so I'm not sure about wolf drive but other stuff\n\nI think can be done one driving teleportation probably not but big spaceships that can go far places definitely that can be done understood all right ladies and gentlemen Elon Musk [Applause] [Music] ladies and Gentlemen please welcome back to the stage afa's chairman of the board Gerald Murray [Music] all right isn't it exciting just absolutely incredible and so I see a lot of you exiting probably we've got to go someplace I would ask that if you could that you might want to hold on I mean it's not completely at the end right now but I recognize people have flights and everything uh listen as we close out this year's air Warfare Symposium I'd be remiss if I didn't recognize our great Air Force leaders again that are here and especially for a couple that\n\nare here for their last time in the capacity and so for that reason I'd like to ask Orville and if you would and general golfing and chief Master of the Air Force right if you would please join me on stage foreign [Applause] [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] thank you [Music] sir we've had no two greater leaders to lead our Force as a team together sir you came into the air force in 1983.\n\nand so to remember your Air Force and our Air Force Association Orville has a book for you that was the Air Force magazines all put together in this book from 1983.\n\nshe messed her the Air Force right you came in in 1989 and it's my great pleasure to be able to present you also the almanacs of our in magazines of the 1989 for you [Applause] [Music] well what a great two days of Rich discussion of the challenges and issues that are facing our Air Force I hope you have been enjoyed this time as much as I uh the excitement the lessons that we have learned the messages that have been brought by the senior leadership of our air force and today the spark tank just the Innovation that is coming from you our Airmen across this Air Force the future of our forces here one of my former colleagues a master sergeant that is now in Junior ROTC has his class back here in the back that got to witness all of this and and every one\n\nof them said that they plan to join the United States Air Force when they graduate from high school either through their through going on to college in the commission or directly into our Air Force our future that is here and we couldn't be happier and prouder for the opportunity to be supporting you we also want to thank the cadets of the University of Central Florida for their assistance our industry partners and I thank all of you for joining us as well as always we appreciate your continued support we hope you've learned a lot about this press at this professional education program sponsored by your Association if you like what you've seen here I invite you again to be a member of this great Association so we may continue to support our air force\n\nand be the force behind the force now and into the future again thank you for joining us we hope to see you in September the 14th through the 16th put that on your calendar and the National Harbor in Washington D.\n\nC for the afa's air space and cyber space conference safe travels to all of you God bless you ladies and gentlemen this includes afa's 36th air Warfare symposium foreign [Music]","textByLang":{"en":"foreign [Music] foreign [Music] welcome back please take this opportunity to move to your seats so we may begin the program on time [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] thank you [Music] please welcome afa's Central Florida Martin hap Harris chapter president Todd freeze thank you 36 years ago our chapter established this great Symposium and has been working closely with AFA to keep it one of the premier professional development events for Airmen today is our honor to participate in continuing that great tradition by hosting this session I am pleased introduce our keynote event to include to conclude our symposium Lieutenant General John Thompson is responsible for approximately six thousand Airmen worldwide\n\nHe commands an annual budget of over seven billion dollars to support the research design development launch acquisition and sustainment of satellites and their Associated command and control systems accompanying General Thompson is global innovator Elon Musk in 1980 [Music] in 1983 he taught himself computer programming at the age of 12.\n\nsolve the code for a basic based video game called blaster for approximately five hundred dollars and in 1990 in 1995 he started zip2 a web software company later renamed PayPal in 2001.\n\nbut more recently you might know him for revolutionizing electric cars as CEO and product architect of Tesla Motors development that's all the Tesla owners development and Manufacturing Advanced rockets and spacecraft for Missions to and beyond Earth's orbit as founder of space exploration Technologies SpaceX and conceptualizing high-speed Transportation known as hyperloop and if you haven't heard some of these quotes by Elon Musk or muskisms let me introduce this one here's my first one when I first read it I thought while it applies to Innovation it's also written into the contract of every Airman in this room and every man and woman he was served the quote is if something is important enough even if the odds are against you you should still do it now\n\nlooking back to our speech this morning by Dr Roper when he talked about innovation one of the muskism quotes is failure is an option here if things are not failing you are not innovating enough but my favorite quote I would like to die on Mars just not on impact General Thompson Mr musk over to you thank you welcome well Elon thanks so much for being here today as you know and many people in the audience know we uh we're reprising a uh fireless fireside chat that we did at Air Force Space pitch day back in November uh I ran into General goldfein the chief of staff of the United States Air Force this morning and uh um maybe I was being a little bit too confident but I said hey I I think that we did such a good job together at space pitch day that uh Elon\n\nand I got invited back for a much bigger audience higher stakes and everything like that and general goldfein looked at me and went no JT you guys are going to do it until you get it right so so we're going to talk a little bit today about uh Innovation for those of you uh in the audience that nothing that was introduced about Elon uh uh made it to the prefrontal cortex and you're like I still don't know who this guy is um you may remember him from the movie role in Iron Man 2.\n\nor the TV show uh The Big Bang Theory you may remember him if you're old like me when you used to have to do dial-in modems uh you may remember how PayPal actually worked over a dial-in modem yeah um and if just in case you've had your head in the sand for uh the last decade you absolutely have to know him for space exploration Technologies SpaceX a tremendous partner of the United States Air Force in uh in the space business and for Tesla so for just just for grins this fastest growing Auto Company on the planet most amazing capability and when Elon pulled up he pulled up he and his Entourage in three different Teslas this morning Tesla owners do we have in the audience stand up stand up if you're a test loner all right very nice thank you the secretary\n\nso um Elon you and I have talked about whether the air force uh is the most Innovative service um uh the department of the Air Force now and uh the last time we interviewed it was it was just the Air Force now we're the Air Force and the space force as part of the Department of the Air Force most those people who stood up were in the front row we have a lot of first adopters uh here in the front of the audience apparently or maybe those are the folks that just make the most money who knows okay so um again today's uh today's discussion is about uh Innovation and how we can make the department of the Air Force the most Innovative Department within the Department of Defense and perhaps across the United States government so Elon question number one um when\n\nyou put a weapon system uh or a product into production and you start delivering it to your customers very very frequently there is a a push back within the production organization that you know we don't want to change that product too much it's successful we have a lot of Legacy systems that we're responsible for in the department of the Air Force there is a lot of of reticence at times to incrementally improve or add new capabilities to those systems from the context of Tesla and SpaceX how do you motivate your Workforce how do you work with your customers how do you work with technologists in your ecosystems your various ecosystems to try and make sure that products don't become stagnant and they continue to implement incrementally improve over time\n\nsure well first of all thanks for having me here it's an honor to be here with you and with everyone else from the uh space slash Air Force um and um I've already had a long relationship with the Air Force and very much appreciate the support of the year so I just want to make sure to say that and look forward to doing a lot of interesting things in the future I I think it's actually um it's cool that that there is that the creation of the space forces is happening um I think it there's you know it makes sense that there's a a major Branch for every domain you know with that uh and and uh so the domain of space the domain of error are both important but uh I think space spaces is is certainly a medium of its own sure um and um I think there's some very\n\nexciting things that are possible if I may just say it like what you know what the public wants I think and Perfection pretty confident that the public doesn't want this is uh staff lead Academy in order like yeah like how do we make stock how do we make Star Trek real you know that'd be pretty amazing I'd love that you know um and uh so I think like the fastest we can make sort of Starfleet real then they're just trying to do that well so Elon speaking speaking for uh the United States space force there already is a Starfleet Academy it's the United States Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs Colorado sure I've I've been there I've given a token um you know the the first launch of Falcon one we had a falcon sat from the Air Force Academy but that rocket\n\nblew up but but but then the funny thing is that it blew up like he's this truth is strange Than Fiction um the the satellite uh were shot through the fairing um through the air a couple hundred meters and then plunged through the roof of a tool shed uh and then landed on the floor um and was actually in reasonably good shape I mean for crashing through the ceiling but you know you're like recognizable you know um and and we have to give it back and so we've not lost one of your satellites so so from a SpaceX perspective buff it up a partial Mission success well it's not lost I'm just saying it's a little the worst it's a little worse for wear but you know but then we subsequently launched a future Falcons that's to actual orbit uh that was great um so\n\num so I think there's I think we can make go a long way towards making Starfleet real and making uh these uh sort of um utopian or semi-year semi-autopian future is real but it will definitely require radical innovation um one can't get there by incrementally innovating um Expendable boosters there's just no way yeah so the the I think we we need to push for radical breakthroughs um and if you don't push for radical breakthroughs you're not going to get radical outcomes um and that that does mean taking risks um and and common sense that the the if you take a big risk in order to have a big reward there must be a big risk it's it's most the time you cannot find big reward for small risk that's those are rare so you're going to have some proportionality\n\nof the risk and reward but if the goal is important enough and I think increasingly the goal is important for for many reasons um the the goal of having the best technology in space uh that that is I think going to become increasingly important and it'll be increasingly increasingly important for the United States to use what I think is its greatest attribute which is uh invention and innovation um to to create space technology that is um the best in the world um and in fact I think if the United States does not use uh breakthrough Innovation uh it will provide so I think this is that this is not something that was a risk in times past but I think is a risk now okay um so yeah um do you characterize that risk in terms of peer adversary Comfort competition\n\naround the planet are you are you um are you suggesting that it's our adversaries that require us to be that those radical innovators or is it just we can't become complacent and stay incrementally improving our systems we must take those giant leaps forward as a nation regardless of the competition I think there's those little I've zero doubt that if the United States does not take it does not seek great Innovations in space it will be second in space okay with as sure as Nightfall is day so it is a big deal um but this this is uh I mean a very Innovative that you know there's no country more Innovative and an event of the United States so it's just important to use that attribute that's that's the ace card okay yeah and since uh so since it seems like\n\nwe're going down the geopolitical path here on the on the the questions how does the United States as a nation maintain that Innovative Edge that that um ability to invest in things and take those risks what kind of of governmental policies or processes do we have to encourage the right kinds of behavior in your view well I think having outcome based procurement is is actually very important so you say like this is the outcome that is sought and whoever can achieve this outcome or achieve this outcome to a greater degree that that company will that that's who the Air Force will do business with and we'll procure the thing that is that is radically innovative as measured by the what what is important for leadership in space so um I mean I do think it's\n\nit's absolutely fundamental to achieve full reusability and access to space this is this is the Holy Grail of space at the point at which you have full reusability for orbital Rockets then you have uh a profound advantage over anyone else was profound um it would be like if um in the Air Force if if you if you had planes that could be used once and or if you're if you're at multi-use planes that could be flown over and over again like normal um and all your adversaries had single-use planes that would be no contest it's the same thing in space okay yeah this is extremely fundamental um so the the cost of a propellant is typically on the order of one percent of the cost of the of the vehicle or less so um if you have a vehicle that is say I don't know\n\num blocks kerosene like Falcon eye or something like that um it's it's the the the oxygen and the fuel are yeah maybe half million dollars or something like that but then depending upon the mission the admission price can be anywhere from like 60 to 100 million dollars so um and I thought Falcon 9 is a partially reusable vehicle but not fully um the vehicle we're working on right now uh were quite difficult is Starship and uh yeah that has the potential for full reusability um but but I think it would be great to have other companies as well that are doing full reusability I think competition is a good thing um it may seem at times that you know shouldn't we Focus all our efforts on on one system and rather than divide them and have two competing systems\n\num like you know not to cause controversy or a bit like in my opinion like Joint Strike Fighter this should be a competitor to JSO that that's a controversial subject but um you know I think it's it's not it's not good to have uh one one provider um it's good to have competition where that competition is Meaningful and somebody can actually lose that's like you know so then then um so yeah okay yeah so in radical Innovation obviously the workforce is a really key component of that I mean as I mean during your PayPal days you were actually doing coding right but in SpaceX and Tesla they are so large that Elon can't do everything what sort of things do you think about in terms of motivating a Workforce like um uh like we have in the department of the Air\n\nForce that will help them become more radically Innovative what sort of things do you look for in people or in processes that make the workforce better sure well I think the massive thing that can be done is to make sure your incentive structure is such that Innovation is rewarded and lack of innovation is punished they've got to be a characteristic so if somebody is innovating um and doing making good progress then they should be promoted sooner and if somebody is completely failing to innovate not every role requires Innovation but if they're in a role where Innovation is should be happening and it's not happening then they should either not be promoted or exited and let me tell you you'll get promote you'll get you'll you'll get Innovation real fast\n\nokay let's stick yeah it's like how much do you want yeah so does that does that carrot and stick approach help do you think people be more risk averse or less risk averse well before when when trying different things you got to have some acceptance of failure uh as you were alluding to earlier failure must be an option if failure is not an option it's going to result in extremely conservative choices and you you may not you may get something even worse than lack of innovation things may go backwards um so if what you really want is uh risk risk to you want reward and Punishment to be proportionate to the actions that you seek so if uh if what you're seeking is innovation then you should reward success and Innovation um and only there should be minor\n\nconsequences for lack of minor consequences for trying and failing there should be minor significant rewards for trying and succeeding minor consequences for trying and not succeeding and big and and major negative consequences for not trying Okay so if you have that instead of structure you will get Innovation like you can't believe okay so you've um you've talked at uh Tesla shareholder meetings and in various interviews that you consider um the machine that builds the machine to be just as important if not more important than the machine itself yeah so we talked about the workforce aspects are there processes that you use within your company that are parts of that machine that you think are particularly valuable for Innovative radical change thank\n\nyou well what I mean by the machine that builds the machine is that the the production that designing the production system of a new product is I think at least an order of magnitude or 292 to harder than designing the initial prototype yeah um the I think like in America there's been a lot less of a less important in modern times placed on manufacturing and I think this is this is a mistake um like at this point I was really classified and in fact I sent an email to the to SpaceX just saying this like at this point I think designing a rocket is Trivial which is Trivial there's like tons of books that'll you read them you know you can understand equations you can design a rocket uh it's real real easy uh yeah if you say like two-stage uh two and two percent\n\nof your lift off Master orbit from just to design something like that piece of cake um uh they say you want to go into production with that or if you want you want to actually make let's say the next step is you want to make even one of those things okay now making even one of those things and getting it to orbit is hard um but the designing of it is not hard the making of it of even one is hard the making of a production line that builds and launches many is extremely hard um and then the next level beyond that would be um creating a fully reusable system and having that be in volume production and volume launch that's that's super super hard um so that's so yeah by building machine at building machine I mean I mean creating the production system and\n\nI keep emphasizing to SpaceX the hard part is making it and making lots of them and launching frequently um because reuse must not just be it can't be reused like the shuttle it's got to be rapid and complete reuse so the shuttle was a case where the ReUse was very slow and it was not complete the main tank was lost every time and refurbing the shuttle between flights was extremely expensive uh it's not even clear whether it was worth recovering was the booster shells from the ocean so so just like an aircraft you the the rocket must be rapidly and completely reusable and then you need lots of them um and then I've been sort of just doing back kind of back of the envelope what's needed to establish a self-sustaining City on Mars and these are like big\n\nnumbers but I think you need on the order of a million tons to the surface of Mars useful payload something like that um because we sit on the top of a massive base of infrastructure over you know the economy is uh you think of all the things that are mined and then refined and then and then just many steps in the refinement and in order to produce like your phone or your toast or even those there's a vast base of Industry that was required to produce even a simple household item yeah it's very difficult so so you've got to recreate that on Mars so a million times on Mars means we're just talking orders magnitude here and hopefully it's not 10 million tons and hopefully maybe it's less than a million tons but probably not a hundred thousand tons so that\n\nthat means you need to get about 5 million tons to uh Earth orbit of useful payload so you're talking like the like so essentially unless you have a launch system that is somewhere in the Megaton per year range to orbit it's not it's not relevant okay yeah so um starlink um as you're scaling to build more and more Starling satellites to go on more and more reusable Rockets what are some of the challenges you've had to overcome in starlink production so that you can perfect that machine machine that builds the machine yeah as I started selling production is going well actually the that's the that was a hard that's a hard thing to get right um we made many we had many iterations on the stalling prototypes and then as I said the been building the starlink\n\nproduction line was on a thousand percent harder than designing the satellite to begin with um but but it is important to have like a um to design for manufacturing and have a tight feedback loop between the design of the object and the manufacturing system so as you when people when when you design the object at first you you don't realize all the parts that are really difficult to manufacture uh and so so having the manufacturing system and the design bring those up at the same time so that you're actually in the beginning making a thing that you know is wrong but you're actually figuring out what's hard to manufacture that's the real problem um so we we brought up these the starlink production line before we actually had the design finalized which\n\nwhich is actually the right thing to do and then we discover oh there's all there's all these things that uh in the design that are very difficult to make um and so therefore we must change the design and the the satellite ended up having the same capability but just um was very easy to make and launch so what would say very easy it's it's not it's sort of hard but um but it's but but it's being done and we're the satellites are being produced at a rate now faster than we can launch them so and and the cost of the satellite has dropped below the cost of transporting it to orbit so even when taking the the Falcon 9 in the most reused configuration which is to get the booster back and you get the bearings back um the cost of the trend of transporting the\n\nsatellite to orbit exceeds the cost of the satellite so the satellite's in a good good situation okay and the cost that satellite will keep coming down as we ramp up rates and make design improvements uh but so so we really need Starship to carry starlink in order to get the total delivered cost to orbit to be much better than it is today okay which is still pretty good um when you when you um so in terms of deciding what to build you can take feedback from customers and let customers pull to you what they want or you can be radically Innovative within your company or you know a small set of individuals and develop something and push it into the industrial base so customer pull would be Tesla Tesla owners wanting new features on the existing Fleet push\n\nwould be you know a company push would be something like when Apple pushed the iPad to everybody and nobody knew what an iPad was until they touched it and went wow sure everybody wants an iPad now what do you all think about in terms of that balance between customer pull and Company push well in the beginning nobody wanted a Tesla let me tell you that the the the when we made the original sort of roads to a sports car uh people were like why would I want an electric car that's my gasoline car works fine um like no electric cars better I should try it um and it was you know hard to get people to do a test drive nobody knew who we were I never heard of this company and like yeah we're named after Nikola Tesla you know that guy nope um so for sure we were\n\ndoing push in the beginning because people said there was no one telling us that they wanted an electric car so it was not it was not out of like you know it was like less people coming up to me saying hey I really want an electric car I heard that zero times um some people like it's like man we're gonna make an electric car and show that these things can be good and then people want them um it was like I think it was like Henry Ford said like the you know if we're talking about the Model T it's like if you ask the public what they wanted they'd say a faster horse so if you did like a big survey and say what hey public before automobiles what would you like it's like well I'd like my horse to go three miles an hour faster and eat less food and uh you\n\nknow be stronger and live longer and that kind of thing um that will be basically a bunch of incremental improvements on horse um because people aren't we say like what about an automobile that car that drives itself like what are you talking about that's not that sounds crazy um but when you actually make an automobile and give it to people and say okay now this is a horse where you can keep it in the barn and if you leave for a month it's still alive [Laughter] yeah so carry more like more weight than a horse and go further and that kind of thing so anyway it's like when when it's a radically a new product people don't know that they want it because it's just not in their in their scope I think when they first started making TVs they did a nationwide\n\nsurvey I think this might have been like 46 or 48 it was like a famous Nationwide survey will you ever buy a TV out I was like 96 of respondents said no hmm something some crazy number like basically everyone's like would you buy a TV and maybe they put a price in there or something I don't know but it was famously almost everyone said they would not buy a TV but they didn't know what they're talking about so the big game changing stuff at the beginning is a company push kind of a thing most of the time but then changes to the product over time can be a lot more customer pull kind of a focus yeah Jane changes the product over time can be incremental changes um then the customers can certainly tell you it's good to get customer feedback to say how can\n\nwe improve the product um and once they're using it they can say okay I like this thing about it I don't like this other thing and then we can improve the product over time customer feedback after they they have the fundamental thing is is great okay yeah okay so um in the audience here we have a lot of air and space War Fighters we have uh so people who use systems we have a lot of Developmental teams on both the government and the industry side and we have the the air and space leadership of the nation so I got a little lightning round here for you right to try and influence maybe some of those younger folks in the back who are looking for the for the next big thing so in terms of different kinds of Technology whether it's artificial intelligence or\n\nmedical or batteries or whatever in the next five years what technology do you think will see the most advancement well it's difficult to to assess most in those contexts because they're very different but I think the probably the most transformative most fundamentally transformative will be ai ai okay and if you were recommending to some of the young officers and uh um uh enlisted troops in the room what sort of degrees to pursue uh at college or what sort of Education that they should prioritize for themselves in the modern era what would you recommend um computer science and physics computer science and physics okay how many computer science people do we have out there how many physics people okay we need more apparently okay essentially information\n\nTheory and physical Theory um if you want to understand the nature of the universe um and have these have a very good predictive power physics and computer science okay yeah okay as a nation that is interested in radical Innovation to maintain its Competitive Edge what are the things that the department of the Air Force should be investing more in other than reusable Rockets from your perspective again I can't emphasize enough how important reusable Rockets are yeah you'll love it um it's great um so um and I think that you could actually do point to point on Earth uh with uh you know to go long distances um and be much better than aircraft because I mean basically just think of like ICBM minus the nuke adeland you know so so it's just sort of in the\n\noption package just you know uncheck nuke and then add Landing system check and and that's definitely going to get you wherever you want to go as the fastest um because that's why they made it icbms they get they're the fastest um so and I think that that's going to be pretty exciting um yeah I think uh yeah I mean once you have a dramatically lower cost access to space then then many things are enabled um you can think of like once you've got the Union Pacific Railroad then you know getting to the West Coast was much faster and much less dangerous yeah you're not likely to sort of end up eating your compatriots in a snowy situation uh you know so you can just take the train so so you know at the beginning they thought why the heck are they building that\n\nstupid Railway there's nobody there's nobody there and they're like um but once you build the railway they're like okay now it's easy to get to the West Coast uh and now a huge portion of the US population is on the west coast um and actually California is the most popular state in the nation um but it it used to be well least populous I suppose for pretty low um so many things are possible once you once the transport uh problem is solved so that's why I think it's so fundamental if you can't believe you can't get there or getting there is takes a long time and you can't risk and every mission is going to work then it's very hard to innovate um it's got to be that okay some missions won't work and the cost of running the experiment is low that's why I'm\n\nhot I'm harping so much on the cost of transport um so um you know once you're there I think like say establishing a base on the moon or base on Mars uh there's just a tremendous amount of work work that's needed to create a self-sustaining base on the moon on Mars and it opens up a command's amount of opportunity just as the Union Pacific Railroad did by making access to the West Coast not much easier okay um um yeah I mean outside of the space space realm I think there's a lot of opportunity in tunnels I think I've been saying that for a long time um so our tunnels are great um they're really great um and uh the boring company is about to finish its first tunnel in Vegas I encourage I encourage people to copy please copy the boring company or do better\n\nthat'd be great there's um so in terms of domains you have Subterranean yeah um obviously Tesla Tesla covers the ground domain as capabilities you've got the space domain covered with uh SpaceX and starlink capabilities uh I think this is this is the air Warfare Symposium folks might not in the audience might be interested in if you have any ideas for the air domain specifically for the air domain um I think uh things like things are very definitely going to go into kind of autonomous locally autonomous drone Warfare is where it's at where the future will be now I'm just saying that was not I want the future to be this it's just this is what the future will be okay as autonomous drone Warfare um and at a local local level uh the you know um okay I can't\n\nbelieve I'm saying this because this is this is like dangerous but it's simply what will occur is is sort of a is it drones locally being autonomous um and um but I think we still want to retain sort of like you know that's the authority to damage or destroy uh you know anything that that isn't an autonomous drone keep that Authority back here with the person in the loop okay but it's it's the the fighter jet era has passed that is it's just yeah why did your errors past okay so it's drawings um let's go back to failure for a minute and and the mindset that that you have you and your leadership team at Tesla and SpaceX have on failure I mean the SpaceX blooper reel uh that you guys did in I think it was 2017 time frame um was definitely hey we Embrace\n\nthis learning that occurs more recently with the the Tesla truck and the and the ball through the window also uh that mind crew that foreign that mindset that Embraces failure how do you personally I mean those kinds of failures would drive a lot of us in this room nuts but doesn't seem to drive you nuts seems like you're very comfortable with it can you talk about the mindset that requires for you to be that accepting of that kind of failure uh sure should we roll the video no or should we not no we should not roll a video not yet okay okay um okay um well I think of the these things as just there's a certain amount of time and within that time you want the the best net outcome so for you know all the set of actions that you can do there's going to be\n\nuh and some which will fail some of which will succeed and you want the the the net useful output of your set of actions to be the highest um so um like he's like a baseball analogy like you know baseball they don't let you just sit there and wait for the perfect pitch until you get a real easy one that you're gonna give you three shots third one and they say okay get off the go back to the put somebody else up there um so these three strikes on on baseball um look yeah not on that anymore so you're what you're really looking for is like what's the batting average you know how are you doing on uh on score um and just there's going to be some amount of failure um but you want your net output um that useful output to be maximized failure is essentially\n\nrelevant unless it is catastrophic okay yeah okay um intellectual property obviously uh Tesla SpaceX Solar City have amazing capabilities that they're bringing to the uh to the public and to the government every day how do you protect your intellectual property in a world where it seems like the cloud and servers and things are constantly under attack from people wishing to free you of their your intellectual property yeah well actually at Tesla we just uh open sourced our patents uh some years ago so anyone can use our patents so we really have not been tried to protect intellectual property uh in that sense uh we've tried to actually smooth the path um because the the overarching goal of Tesla is to accelerate the Advent of sustainable energy and so\n\nif we created a pattern portfolio that discouraged other companies from making electric cars they will be inconsistent with our mission so we open sourced all the patterns okay in order to help the other anyone else who wants to make an electric car so I guess that's the opposite of protecting the IP now the real way I think you you actually achieve intellectual property protection right is by innovating fast enough if your rate of innovation is high then you don't need to worry about protecting VIP because other companies will be copying something that you did years ago and that's fine you know um just make sure your rate of innovation is fast speed is really speed of innovation is what is what matters and I do I do say this to my teams like quite a\n\nlot that Innovation per unit time as I go Innovation per year if you want to say it's like is is what matters not Innovation absent time because if you wanted to make say um 100 Improvement in something and that took 100 years or one year that's radically different so um it's like what is your rate of innovation that that matters and is the rate of innovation um is that accelerating or decelerating um and a weird thing happens when companies get big is that most companies um or organizations the bigger they get they tend to get less innovative um not just less Innovative on a per person basis but less Innovative in the absolute um and I think this is probably because data set of structure is not uh it's not there for innovation it's not enough to use\n\nwords to encourage Innovation the incentive structure must be aligned with that that's fundamental so um so um taking that from a business level to a national level in terms of obviously United States largest economy in the world China the second largest economy in the world currently and gaining fast what sort of things that could you share with the audience here that are your thoughts on the competition economic or military between the United States and China sure um well I think China is a real interesting country I have to say the the thing to appreciate about China is just that there's a lot of really smart really hard-working people there and they're going to do a lot of great things um this is sort of you know independent of Chinese government\n\npolicy they're just going to do a lot of interesting things um the thing that will be that will feel pretty strange is that the Chinese economy is going to be probably at least twice as big as the US economy maybe three times but at least twice so and that assumes that GDP per capita still less than the us but uh since they have about four or five times the population uh then it would only require getting to a GDP per capita of half the United States for their economy to be twice the size of ours and as I'm sure people in this room know the foundation of war is economics and so if you if you have half the resources of the counterparty then you better be real Innovative if you're not Innovative you're going to lose I'm not sure whether that's a Cyber attack\n\nthat's uh ongoing or not here so um the clock says I have 11 minutes left is that not true foreign it's coming through the house system we're working to get it shut off okay thank you um yes well um anyway um so so yeah with respect to China China's economy is is going to be two to three times the size of the US economy at least at least double therefore in order for the US to be competitive on uh military level the innovation has to overcome a gigantic Gap in economic output okay so in the absence of radical Innovation the US will be voluntarily uh second okay basic basic math what um from the standpoint of uh uh radical innovation we already talked about Workforce we talked about processes we talked about uh protecting uh intellectual property rights\n\nlet's talk about overall culture that culture that you try and push into your companies that makes them successful any of us and I sat right next to one of your SpaceX employees on the plane here yesterday a young engineer it was motivating for me just to talk to her about what she was doing every day and how important her job was and I just felt like the only other place I've seen that kind of culture is frankly in the department of the Air Force with some of our young folks that are sprinkled around the back of the room how do you create that culture at SpaceX and Tesla to to make employees like that well wow this smooth jazz is just honest with a vengeance uh I feel like we're in a big elevator [Laughter] um so first person when we interview people\n\nwe we do ask for some evidence of exceptional ability which in most cases includes Innovation this is not said everyone needs to be Innovative it's but we certainly need those that are doing Advanced engineering to be Innovative and ideally everyone is at least some to some degree in an Innovative so at the interview point we select for it for people who want to create new technology and then the incentive structure is set up that such that uh Innovation is rewarded making mistakes along the way it does not come with a big penalty um and but but failure to try to innovate at all comes with a big penalty you'll be fired okay yeah all right the carrot and stick yes the stick if you don't even try um or or somebody doesn't even try to invade or their Innovation\n\naspirations are are very are not not very good then yeah they will not be at the company okay okay all right so um we got about five minutes left and what I'd like to do is just turn it over to you Elon to talk about whatever you'd like to talk about if you have a message for the audience here you have uh you know a thousand plus Air and Space professionals and the greatest uh air and space force on the planet so what do you want to tell them we got to make Starfleet happen like so so we were like I don't know real big spaceships that can go far places and uh those probably get me the most trouble of all I think this should be a new uniform that's that you know um that that's like uh I don't know cool uniforms cool spaceships yeah I think that's what\n\nwhen the public hears space force that's what they think it's like okay we're gonna have like some sweet spaceships and like pretty look good uniforms and stuff and that'll be that's what the public wants um so yeah we want the Sci-Fi Futures the the the good Sci-Fi Futures to be real and ideally to become real while we're still alive you know and everyone want to see it happen and so I think we just really need to drive the rate of innovation to be such that we would see uh big big breakthroughs big improvements in space technology and you know in the years to come so yeah so like just trying to make stuffing happen it's as soon as humanly possible and definitely while we're while we're still alive yeah so I'm not sure about wolf drive but other stuff\n\nI think can be done one driving teleportation probably not but big spaceships that can go far places definitely that can be done understood all right ladies and gentlemen Elon Musk [Applause] [Music] ladies and Gentlemen please welcome back to the stage afa's chairman of the board Gerald Murray [Music] all right isn't it exciting just absolutely incredible and so I see a lot of you exiting probably we've got to go someplace I would ask that if you could that you might want to hold on I mean it's not completely at the end right now but I recognize people have flights and everything uh listen as we close out this year's air Warfare Symposium I'd be remiss if I didn't recognize our great Air Force leaders again that are here and especially for a couple that\n\nare here for their last time in the capacity and so for that reason I'd like to ask Orville and if you would and general golfing and chief Master of the Air Force right if you would please join me on stage foreign [Applause] [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] thank you [Music] sir we've had no two greater leaders to lead our Force as a team together sir you came into the air force in 1983.\n\nand so to remember your Air Force and our Air Force Association Orville has a book for you that was the Air Force magazines all put together in this book from 1983.\n\nshe messed her the Air Force right you came in in 1989 and it's my great pleasure to be able to present you also the almanacs of our in magazines of the 1989 for you [Applause] [Music] well what a great two days of Rich discussion of the challenges and issues that are facing our Air Force I hope you have been enjoyed this time as much as I uh the excitement the lessons that we have learned the messages that have been brought by the senior leadership of our air force and today the spark tank just the Innovation that is coming from you our Airmen across this Air Force the future of our forces here one of my former colleagues a master sergeant that is now in Junior ROTC has his class back here in the back that got to witness all of this and and every one\n\nof them said that they plan to join the United States Air Force when they graduate from high school either through their through going on to college in the commission or directly into our Air Force our future that is here and we couldn't be happier and prouder for the opportunity to be supporting you we also want to thank the cadets of the University of Central Florida for their assistance our industry partners and I thank all of you for joining us as well as always we appreciate your continued support we hope you've learned a lot about this press at this professional education program sponsored by your Association if you like what you've seen here I invite you again to be a member of this great Association so we may continue to support our air force\n\nand be the force behind the force now and into the future again thank you for joining us we hope to see you in September the 14th through the 16th put that on your calendar and the National Harbor in Washington D.\n\nC for the afa's air space and cyber space conference safe travels to all of you God bless you ladies and gentlemen this includes afa's 36th air Warfare symposium foreign [Music]"},"languages":["en"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E307nHamdY8"},{"id":"tesla-q4-2019-earnings-call-2020-01-29","type":"interview","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTOetiSVJnc","title":"Tesla Q4 2019 Earnings Call","titles":{"en":"Tesla Q4 2019 Earnings Call","de":"Tesla Q4 2019 Earnings Call","fr":"Tesla Q4 2019 Earnings Call"},"date":"2020-01-29","summary":"Musk and CFO Zachary Kirkhorn discuss Tesla's record Q4 2019 results, the Cybertruck and the 2020 outlook on the quarterly investor call.","text":"Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by and welcome to Tesla's Q4 2019 financial results and Q&A webcast. At this time, all participants are on a listenon mode. After the speaker presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star one on your telephone. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded.\n\nIf you require any further assistance, please press star zero. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker, Mr. Martin Viea, senior director of investor relations. Please go ahead, sir. Thank you, Sheree, and good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to Tesla's fourth quarter 2019 Q&A webcast. I'm joined today by Elon Musk, Zachary Kirkorn, and a number of other executives. Our Q4 results were announced at about 1:00 p. m.\n\nPacific time in the update deck we published at the same link as this webcast. During the call, we will discuss our business outlook and make forward-looking statements. These comments are based on our predictions and expectations as of today. Actual events or results could differ materially due to a number of risks and uncertainties, including those mentioned in our most recent filings with the SEC.\n\nDuring the question and answer portion of today's call, please limit yourself to one question and one follow-up. Please press star one now if you'd like to join the question queue. But before we jump into Q&A, Elon has some opening remarks. Elon. Uh, thanks Martin. So, Q4 was another strong quarter for the company. Uh, deliveries reached uh, over 112,000 vehicles in a single quarter.\n\nIt's hard to think of a similar product with such strong demand that it can generate more than $20 billion in revenue with zero advertising spend.\n\nI think that's I think we do say that from time to time and I think it's it's often um overlooked but to have uh the highest demand electric vehicle in the world with no advertising spend is I think quite remarkable and speaks to the the the nature of the product and the fact that the product itself is compelling enough to generate that demand without uh without a bunch of advertising at our Fremont factory.\n\nWe were producing at a rate roughly the same as uh the Numi factory did in its record year of 2006 and uh obviously we expect to to exceed that um significantly this year. Uh this rate of production was achieved before we even started to produce the Model Y out of Fremont. So there's a lot of potential uh to go beyond that number. for the Shanghai factory.\n\nI'd like to say congratulations again to the team in Shanghai on launching Model 3 last quarter and achieving the first deliveries earlier this year. Um I'm really excited and optimistic about the potential for the the Shanghai factory. I think it's it's going to be an incredible asset uh to to the company. Um and we also uh broke ground on the uh Model Y uh factory in in Shanghai. So there a lot of good progress there.\n\nUm, regarding Model Y, uh, it was only 10 months ago that we revealed a Model Y prototype and now in January this year, we started producing Model Y in limited volumes already. This is thanks to a great effort of our engineering team and we managed to achieve by far the highest energy efficiency of any electric SUV ever produced at 4. 1 m per kowatt hour. Um, which means [clears throat] Model Y all-wheel drive got an EPA rating of 315 miles.\n\nAnd this improvement is reflected on the configurator as of today. This [clears throat] is this is above um what we previously stated by pretty significant margin. Um and and just with great acceleration, top speed, it's really just incredible specs all around. Uh for the Cybert truck, uh a few months ago, we revealed the obviously revealed the Cyber Truck um that was that went viral.\n\nUm and we we try to build a product that a product that is superior in every way without any preconceptions of how such a product should look. So it really just from the standpoint of what's the most badass futuristic armored personnel carrier that you know kicks the ass of any pickup truck. Basically that's the goal. Um and uh the you know we wanted to look like something that just came out of a sci-fi movie set from the future.\n\nAnd uh the demand has been incredible. We've never seen actually such a level of demand at this. We've never seen anything like it basically. Um I think we will make as about as many as we can sell for many years. Um so as many Yeah, we'll sell as many as we can make. It's going to be pretty nuts.\n\nUm, so, um, and I think actually the the product is better than people realize even they they don't even have enough information to realize just the awesomeness of it. It's just great. So, um, and then, um, stepping back in 2018, uh, from a financial standpoint, we were free cash flow rate was break even.\n\nUm but in 2019 we managed to generate more than a billion dollars free cash flow while building a factory in Shanghai in record time and while building parts of Model Y production.\n\nSo I think to for us to have this level of free cash flow while making massive investments in capacity while developing new products while improving the core engineering is a testament to the I think incredible performance of the Tesla team and I'm just so proud to work with such a great team.\n\nI'd like to thank the whole test team for their ongoing work on on uh cost control um is what what has has allowed us to get to uh these compelling financial numbers while at the same time growing the company at an incredible pace.\n\nAnd in [clears throat] conclusion, when I think of what we have in front of us the next couple of years, we got Model Y, we got Gigab Berlin, uh Tesla Semi, Solar Glass Roof, Cybertruck, um some very exciting improvements in back factory technology, uh full self-driving, um got the nextG Roadster, and probably, you know, a bunch of other products.\n\nWe'll we'll come up with special numbers while at the same time growing the company at an incredible pace.\n\nAnd in [clears throat] conclusion, when I think of what we have in front of us the next couple of years, we got Model Y, we got Gigab Berlin, uh Tesla Semi, Solar Glass Roof, Cybertruck, um some very exciting improvements in backtory technology, uh full self-driving, um got the nextG Roadster and probably, you know, a bunch of other products we'll we'll come up with, too.\n\nUh it's hard to think of another company that has more exciting product and technology roadmap. So super fired up about where Tesla will be you know in the next uh you know 10 years. Um you know if if you look back 10 years from today to 2010 um we will produce approximately a thousand times more cars in 2020 than we produced in 2010. A thousand.\n\nUm and we have also solar glass and and solar retrofit and uh power wall power pack you know all those other things too. So where will we be in 10 years? Very exciting to consider the prospect. Thank you very much Elon and Zach some opening remarks as well. Yeah thanks Martin. Um this past year was truly trans transformational for Tesla and I want to thank everyone who's been a part of making this happen. on 2019.\n\nA few key points I'd like to highlight on demand. While we've mentioned this a few times, it's worth highlighting once again. Over the course of the year, we've transitioned entirely from generating Model 3 orders from a reservation backlog to generating new and organic demand. We've also seen a stabilization of Model 3 ASPs, even increasing slightly in Q4.\n\nAnd we've seen an increase in ASPs of SNX after the launch of the longer range versions in Q2. With respect to capacity expansion, we've greatly learned from the development and launch of Model 3 in Fremont and Reno. As a result, we've been able to bring new production capacity on board faster and with less cost.\n\nThis is evidenced by the launch of Model 3 in Shanghai as well as Model Y in Fremont, programs that were both launched in under one year. Financially, we have demonstrated multiple quarters of strong cash generation enabled through higher volumes, improvements to capital efficiency, progress on working capital management, and continued improvement in our product and operational costs.\n\nAnd we are able to achieve positive gap net income in both Q3 and Q4 for many of the same reasons that enabled strong cash generation. We've also made progress on recurring and softwarebased revenue with the implementation of premium connectivity and the beginning of upgrades available for purchase via the Tesla mobile app.\n\nFinally, on stock-based compensation, it increased sequentially by 82 million driven almost entirely by an expense related to the next trunch of the CEO grant. This is a result of our improved expected financial performance of the company which the CEO stock grant is tied to. As we look ahead to 2020, this again will be an important year for the company.\n\nOur task ahead is to execute on the the next phase of growth while managing cash flows to support that growth. On Model Y, we expect first deliveries and limited quantities later this quarter and will ramp over subsequent quarters. As mentioned previously, we are forecasting higher gross margins on Model Y compared to the Model 3. This year for the Shanghai built Model 3, we expect to achieve run rate production and delivery rates.\n\nIn addition, we expect to have completed the majority of planned supply chain localization at the factory or in the region. This is one of the most important components to achieve lower production costs for the site. We are also seeing strong order rates for the locally built model 3 and remain focused on continuing the production ramp and managing costs.\n\nWe also anticipate significant progress on factory construction of the Shanghai and Berlin built Model Y, which will result in continued increases in capital spending. On operating expenses, I expect an increase over the course of the year to support our growing product pipeline and international footprint. However, OPEX growth should increase at a lower rate than topline revenue.\n\nOverall, we believe this will set us up for our strongest annual financial performance yet with sufficient forecasted cash flows to support investments related to our growth and further strengthening of our balance sheet. For Q1, please keep in mind that the industry is always impacted by seasonality.\n\nAdditionally, we are in the process of ramping two major products, Model 3 in Shanghai and Model Y in Fremont, which I expect will temporarily weigh on our margins. We are also in the early stages of understanding if and to what extent we may be temporarily impacted by the Corona virus. At this point, we're expecting a 1 to 1 and 1/2 week delay in the ramp of Shanghai built Model 3 due to a government required factory shutdown.\n\nThis may slightly impact profitability for the quarter, but is limited as the profit contribution from Model 3 Shanghai remains in the early stages. We are also closely monitoring whether there will be interruptions in the supply chain for cars built in Fremont. So far, we're not aware of anything material, but it's important to caveat that this is an evolving story.\n\nHowever, we have more than sufficient cash to continue our expansion plans while further strengthening the balance sheet. Thank you again for your support and we will turn to questions. Thank you. Uh we are going to take the first questions from um uh retail investors compiled by say technologies.\n\nSo the first retail uh investor question is uh since solar is required for all new home constructions in California, do you have any substantial orders for solar glass roofs from any of the large California home builders that you can share? What's the 2020 target for the number of solar glass roof installations in California?\n\nWell, I think we we do we are seeing um fromly from a from a small base exponential uh growth in demand and uh output for solar for the solar glass roof. Um so it's difficult to predict what the number will be this year except that the demand is very strong. Um and we are we are working also not just through through Tesla installers but also through new home builders and through um just uh the roofing industry in general.\n\nUh where there's you know in North America on the order of 4 million uh new uh roofs per year. So we see uh a lot of interest um and um so it's it's just a question of uh refining the uh the installation process uh getting um lots of crews trained to do the installation. But uh over time I would expect a significant percentage of of new roofs to beat um something to to use solar glass in one form or another.\n\nUh it's really going to be a choice of do you want a roof that is uh alive with power or or dead without. And I think people will want a live roof uh that that generates power uh and looks good and lasts a long time and it's uh it's the future we want.\n\nSo it will be a significant product but because it is a new and quite revolutionary product and there's a lot of you know challenges to overcome um but they will be overcome and this will be a a major product line of of Tesla and the Buffalo factories doing great. So yeah thank you.\n\nUh second question from retail shareholders is will you release the Tesla wilding network app before full autonomy and change the terms of Tesla insurance to allow owners to be drivers on the network? If so, when will this happen? Might this one to uh might want to target California airports first? Also a good place to add superchargers. Sorry, that sounds like one question in one. Yeah, it's a bit of a bundle. Yeah.\n\nUm, well, I think that it's it probably will make sense to have the to enable car sharing in advance of the kind of sort of giant robo taxi fleet. Um, because the car sharing can be done before uh full self-driving is approved by regulators. Um, so it's it's probably something that we would enable before uh the the full sort of robo taxi fleet is enabled. Um and um I saw like there were some other questions bundled in there.\n\nUh superchargers at airports. Oh, sure. Um yeah. Yeah, probably we'll have superchargers at airports. We'll have supercharges wherever we see that there is a need for superchargers. And then on the insurance part of the question, it is our intent to allow people to put their cars into ride sharing or the FSD network using Tesla insurance.\n\nYeah, that's not currently the case, but by the time that this is available, it's our intent to get that ready. Okay, thank you. Uh the next question from retail investors is how many California owners are currently insured with Tesla insurance? What's the target for Tesla insurance in 2020? When will you start significant uh to significantly leverage the data you have from the fleet to lower the cost of your coverage?\n\nUh will we get premium discount of certain percent? Yeah, I mean go ahead. Yeah. Um so Tesla insurance is currently available in California. Uh a couple things that we're working on on this front. Uh the first is to expand it to other locations and uh we're preparing the regulatory processes preparing our processes to go through the regulatory processes in those locations.\n\nUh we're also working on um the processes to continue to adjust our rates in California which also have to go through regulatory processes as insurance is quite heavily regulated and and that's where we're spending our time focusing on Tesla insurance right now.\n\nThere's a significant amount of innovation as we've discussed before in this space exactly getting to the intent of what the question here is using our technology to reduce rates and this will be rolled in over time. It was the last part of the question was, \"Will there be a discount for using autopilot with our cars?\" Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There won't be. Yeah.\n\nThe the rate card for California Tesla insurance already considers the safety features associated with autopilot, right? But I think I think it would make sense for us to um close the loop on, you know, higher use of autopilot probably reduces the um insurance costs. Um it lowers the probability of of injury. So, I think the insurance is is going to be, I think, quite a major product of Tesla over time.\n\nUm, the amount of money that people spend on car insurance is is like a remarkably big percentage of the cost of a car. Um, like you you can lease a Model 3 uh right now for $400 a month. Um, but a typical uh uh owner in California will be paying, you know, somewhere between a hundred and $200 a month in insurance. So, we're talking about something which is maybe a quarter to half of the cost of the lease of the car is insurance.\n\nUm, and um, a lot of that insurance cost is just because the insurance companies don't have good information about the drivers. um and that that there's no good way to provide feedback where you know it's it's it's a very poor feedback mechanism uh in terms of the insurance rates versus the actual uh way that the car is being driven whereas we can do that in real time. It's a fundamental information advantage that insurance companies don't have.\n\nThank you. Uh the next question is you set expectations that you would be feature complete on FSD by the end of 2019. Can you please provide an update on when will we see this with end users? Uh uh where are you in retrofitting the FSD computer to older models? Well, I mean to be precise I I said I was hoping we'd be future complete with both FSD by the end of last year. Um we we got pretty close.\n\nUm, you know, it's looking like we might be future complete um in a few months. Um, but future complete just means like it it has some chance of of going from your home to work, let's say, with with with no interventions. Um, so that's it doesn't mean the features are working well. Um, but it means it has some, you know, above zero chance. Um, so I think that's looking like maybe it's going to be a couple months from now.\n\nUm and uh the the what what isn't obvious regarding autopilot and full self-driving is just how much uh work has been going into improving the the foundational elements of autonomy. Uh the the core autopilot and Tesla autopilot software and and AI team is just is I think very very strong and making great progress. Um and um we're we're really only for beginning to take full advantage of the autopilot hardware, the FSD hardware.\n\nUm so I I think it's the the the the apparent progress as seen by uh consumers will seem to be extremely rapid. But um but actually um what what's really gone on my head seems like I said is just is having the foundational uh software be very strong having a really strong foundation. Um and then a really fundamental thing is moving to video training.\n\nUh so in terms of labeling uh labeling uh with video um and all all eight cameras simultaneously uh uh this is a really I mean in terms of labeling efficiency arguably like a three order of magnitude improvement in labeling efficiency. Uh for those who know about this it's extremely fundamental. Um so that that's uh made great progress on that. Thank you. And the last retail investor question comes from Kendall.\n\nUh since most retail investors seem to understand Tesla better than analysts and are uh uh risking a larger part of their own personal wealth on Tesla, doesn't it make sense to take mostly questions on these earnings calls uh from us via SE? Uh do you even have to take questions um answer questions from analysts? Well well I guess we we don't have to.\n\nI I do think that a lot of the retail investors actually have uh deeper and more accurate insights than um many of the the big institutional investors and uh and certainly better insights than many of the analysts.\n\nI you know it's it seems like if people really looked at some of the smart retail investor uh analysts or and you know what what some of the smart smaller retail investors predicted about the future of the of Tesla that would you' probably get the highest accuracy and remarkable insight from some of those predictions. Okay. Um so now let's switch to institutional shareholder questions.\n\nUh the number one question is uh you have spoken previously about Shanghai giga being 65% lower capex per unit of capacity. Have you learned to do anything better or differently from an oper O opex perspective? And if yes uh what kind of impact might we expect on the long-term gross margin? Sure. Go ahead. Yeah. Um the Shanghai factory has been a quite remarkable uh cost experience across all line items of cogs for the Model 3.\n\nThere we have talked a lot about the capex per unit of capacity being lower. But I mean you can basically run down the entire list of cogs between labor cost material cost due to localization. So it's opening up suppliers that would not have made economic sense from the states. localizing the supply chain flows into um inbound logistics and outbound logistics costs as well. So we're not shipping cars from California over to China.\n\nUh and then that has a corresponding savings on our lower in import related costs. And uh there's a slide in the shareholder letter that shows a layout comparison between our Fremont facility here in California and also the Model 3 factory in China. And the simplification in terms of the flow is is pretty evident from that layout. And that cascades itself into all sorts of savings to the operations of the facility.\n\nUm, and so, you know, if you add all of this up, our internal estimates are a pretty significant reduction in in the cost of Model 3 in China relative to Fremont. But I think it's also important to keep in mind that the cost of the standard plus in uh that we're selling out of Shanghai is also lower than that of the similar car coming out of Fremont.\n\nRight from price perspective and so uh and I've said this on previous earnings calls, I think it's fair to expect the margin coming out of the Shanghai facility to match the same margin for the vehicle in 3 months. Yeah, there's I think there's there's a pretty big um fundamental efficiency gain that Tesla has uh by just making cars, especially the affordable cars um three and the Y um at least on the continent where the customers are.\n\nUm you know, it kind of makes sense. It's like what we're doing or have been doing in the past was really pretty silly in in making cars in uh in California and then shipping them halfway around the world to uh Asia and and Europe. And uh this created uh a lot of cost cuz you got to ship those cars. So you got a lot lot of finished goods sitting on on the water or waiting at the port or going through customs. You got tariffs.\n\nUm transport it's it's uh and then the factory complexity in in California is very high because you've got different regulatory requirements in in China, uh North America and Europe. So we got three different types of cars that are being built. Uh it's it's very complex. Um and and uh and just having a factory uh in China, a factory in in California, um a factory in China, factory in North America, a factory in in Europe.\n\nUh what um just that alone is a massive improvement in our fundamental operating efficiency that I think is may not be fully appreciated and also on working capital. Yeah, absolutely. We're reducing OPEX here too. So it's not only China. Okay, the next question from institutional investors is given the recent run in the share price, why not raise capital now and substantially accelerate the growth in production, i. e.\n\nbuild a gigafactories investment in supercharger and customer service. Well, we we're actually spending money as quickly as we can spend it uh sensibly. So, if there's any sensible way to spend money, we are spending it. there's no artificial uh hold back on on expenditures. Um anything that I see that is a looks like a it's it's got good value for money, the answer is yes immediately.\n\nAnd so um that we're we're spending money I think efficiently and and we're not artificially limiting our pro progress. Um and then despite all that we are still generating positive uh cash. So um you know in light of that it it doesn't make sense to we you know to raise money because we expect to the back of it. No I completely agree with that.\n\nUh I think some of our learnings um during the model 3 launch period where we grew too quickly and with too much complexity. Yeah. And it held back our ability to continue to scale. And part of the journey that we've been on in 2019 is to unwind a series of unint unintentional bad processes that kind of accumulated in the company over time. And so that's kind of what contributes to the reduction in OPEX over the year as we get smarter about that.\n\nAnd um and now we've laid a a good foundation I think uh and I agree with Elon that we're not holding back on the growth. I mean, we have two products, two vehicle products launching right now and uh and that will consume much of the bandwidth of the company to stabilize those over the course of the year. And then looking into next year, we have even more products launching, more factories. Yeah.\n\nUh and so we want to be smart about how we spend money and grow in a way that's sustainable so we don't uh um uh fall victim to the mistakes I think we made a year and a half or so ago. Yeah, absolutely. Okay, the next question we've already answered regarding autopilot timelines. Uh so the following question would be um can we please talk about cost control and OPEX sustainability in terms of growth versus gross profit growth?\n\nHow did we achieve the recent OPEX trends and how should we think about OPEX needs as we grow both vehicles and geographic workloads? Yeah, I commented briefly on this in my opening remarks. Uh we did see an increase in operating expenses from Q3 to Q4, even excluding the portion of that attributed to stockbased compensation.\n\nAnd when you double click into that growth, it it's supporting the the Model Y program and also uh Shanghai program as well. And so, uh, I I think we as a company are now at the point where we've learned a lot on the cost efficiency, as I've just mentioned, and we've unwwindound a number of the processes that were not in the right place, including automating the things that need to be automated.\n\nAnd we'll continue on that journey, but I think we're at a point now where OPEX will uh start to tick up, at least if you look annually, from 2019 to 2020 to support our international footprint and then the growth of the company. it uh you know our job is to grow that significantly slower than the pace of growth of revenue to improve the operating leverage which we're very very focused on. Okay.\n\nAnd the last question from investors is the sales of model SMX have stayed flat for several quarters. The main reason is that they still use 18650 batteries. Uh when will SMX use 2170 batteries? Manufacturing capacity of 18650 may be used for battery storage systems instead. Sure. Well, actually the the the core chemistry inside the 18650 cell has improved um many times over the years.\n\nSo, it's really just a form factor as opposed to a core technology. Um so, it's you know, I think we're we're pretty happy with where the, you know, where the energy content of the cell and the the the improvements um in uh efficiency of of the vehicle. Um the you know we're we're rapidly approaching a 400 mile range for the Model S for example. Um so this is uh it won't be long before Model S is 400 has 400 mile range.\n\nUm Drew is anything you want to add there? No, other than to say that um uh the 18650 lines, you know, have been running smoothly for a really long time and um in a world where cell supply is is is fueling growth like or part of the the the the fuel of growth, I don't see a reason to turn the cell supply off. So, yeah. Um and actually the the the Model S and X uh actually have more range than we are currently stating on the website.\n\nUm, we just haven't gotten around to updating the the I guess the EPA certified number. Um, but the actual uh range of the Model S next or above what the website says there are. That's true. Yeah. Sorry. Yeah. The existing cars that that are Yeah. They're being made. It's actually been that way for Yeah. Yeah. I think we're Yeah, it must be somewhere in the 380s or something like that. um approach. Yeah. Thank you very much.\n\nAnd Sheree, let's go to the Q&A on the phone. Thank you again, ladies and gentlemen. To ask a question, please press star one. And we ask that you please limit yourself to one question and one followup. Our first question comes from Adam Jonas with Morgan Stanley. Um hi everybody and actually agree that I think the retail questions were were excellent actually.\n\nUm, [clears throat] so Elon, do you see potential for Tesla vehicles to be fitted with user terminals that are compatible with the Starlink constellation in the near or medium-term future? Um, well, it's um it's certainly something that could be happen in coming years. There's no plans through it this year.\n\nUh the focus of Starlink is really for um high bandwidth, low latency connectivity uh for you know homes and businesses and you know I guess aircraft and boats and that kind of thing. Uh but the antenna for that high bandwidth low latency thing is sort of about the size of meat and pizza which you could put on a car but I think uh is more bandwidth than you would really need. I mean technically you could buy one and just stick it on the car.\n\nUh yeah, it'll it'll work phase ray antenna. Maybe just as a followup um for my followup, how would assuming that we get the antenna form factor and cost down to a point where that that could be integrated into the roof of a car, for example, you know, cost effectively and aerodynamically, etc. How would compatibility with a Starlink um uh architecture theoretically improve the Tesla customer experience or the capability of the network?\n\nWell, I think it actually most parts of the world would just use uh the cell connectivity. Just use 5G would be the recommendation certainly in like any cities or something like that, you know. But if if you're out in the countryside and there's not good cell connectivity, then then you could connect with a stallink antenna and you wouldn't need, you know, you don't need to like have like gigabit level or level connectivity.\n\nYou could probably like, you know, 20 30 megabits is probably fine. Um, and you can have a much smaller antenna. So yeah, I guess it could be good for, you know, making sure there's connectivity and outside of major cities and that kind of thing. But I mean that's a yeah sort of I'd say relatively obtuse. Uh it's not you know I'm not thinking about it very much to be honest. Thank you. Let's go to the next question. Thank you.\n\nOur next question comes from Dan Gals with Wolf Research. Hey, good afternoon. Thanks. Um, so hoping you could uh give us some guidance on what capex is going to be this year and and kind of as I look to model out the business long term, is there a rule of thumb that we can use for capital expenditures per per unit of production capacity? Uh, or some some sort of rule of thumb like that? Yeah.\n\nUm uh I don't think we want to tell you I don't think we want to say what our capex is going to be this year necessarily except say that like as I said earlier we're we're uh we're spending money as fast as we can spend money um in sensible ways. So we're not it's definitely not artificially limited um and you know we will spend you know well a lot of money this year for sure.\n\nUm it it's the challenge comes in like finding efficient ways to actually deploy the capital. Um but that's the harder part than than sort of deciding on a capex number really. Yeah. And I think we always find ways to become more capex efficient per unit of of capacity. Yes. So we challenge the teams to always become more efficient and so we see a reduction per cap per unit in terms of capex. Um Absolutely. Um it's definitely the right metric.\n\nYeah, it's it's a good Yeah, I think the there there's so much Tesla where that the core technology is improving radically um that uh maybe you wouldn't necessarily notice as an end customer um or some some of them you'd notice, some you wouldn't, but it's just there are these things that you have a big effect on the efficiency of the company. um like our internal applications team that that kind of builds the Tesla internal operating system.\n\nUm and uh improves the sort of core automation of the company. Uh that makes a big difference to our productivity. Um but you wouldn't necessarily you would see it uh effectively in in healthier financials, but you wouldn't necessarily notice it as an end customer. Okay. Got it. Maybe [clears throat] I could follow up. Um I mean your your kind of operating cash flow IBIDA is is annualizing at 4. 5 billion right now.\n\nUm you know as I look out to the future um you know I'm I'm kind of guessing that that could fund somewhere around you know 200 to 250,000 units of capacity a year which would be maybe a 30% keer over 5 years. I mean I mean is that is that something that's feasible for you guys to um to execute on on a consistent basis? Uh you know a level of capacity building that large I yeah I think we're having for more than 30%. Yeah. Yeah.\n\nI think the math uh I'm not sure the math that you've done but I think our internal plans are for faster and um just back on your first question we will have additional detail on capex in the 10k um but back to the growth rate I mean one thing to keep in mind is that uh the Shanghai facility we do have a loan facility uh in place to support that growth so that helps and then as our production volumes increase that generates more cash from the businesses as well that allows us to to continue to fund additional factories.\n\nSo I I wouldn't necessarily view it as limited as you described it. Yeah, I think um a few years ago I said I Yeah, I think I don't know when it was but few years ago I I said my estimate was is that Tesla would um grow at an average confidential rate of average rate of in excess of 50%. I I saw Holtz I believe. Thank you. Let's go to the next question. Our next question comes from Jean Monster with Loop Ventures.\n\nGood afternoon and congratulations on the progress. Uh first question related to Cybertruck. You mentioned you'll sell as many as you can make. Can you remind me how many you think you can make and any thoughts on the cost of production um for making those Cybert trucks?\n\nI I [clears throat] yeah I think we we don't comment on on those detailed numbers except uh the demand is just far more than we could reasonably make in the space of you know I don't know 3 or four years or something like that.\n\nSo, um the the the thing we're going to be really focused on is uh increasing uh battery uh production capacity because that's very fundamental cuz you know if you don't improve battery production capacity then you end up just shifting uh unit volume from one product to another and you haven't actually produced more electric vehicles.\n\nSo um you know that's that's part of the reason why we uh have not for example really accelerated uh production of the Tesla Semi because it does use a lot of cells and and unless we've got a uh lot of battery cells available then then say like um accelerating production of the Tesla Semi would would then necessarily mean making pure Model 3 or Model Y cars.\n\nUm, so we we got to really make sure we we we get a very steep ramp in battery production um and continue to improve the cost per kilowatt hour of the batteries. This is this is very fundamental um and extremely difficult. Um so that you know I said we're going to do like kind of a battery day um just to kind of explain more about this and what our plans are.\n\nUm I think probably it's going to make sense to do that after the end of this quarter because I think it's going to be at kind of an intense end of quarter as it was last quarter. Um so you know tenatively sort of in the April time frame we'll do do a battery day uh and and kind of go through what the um challenges are. Um you know how do you how do you get from here to I don't know couple thousand gawatt hours a year or something. Great.\n\nI'll look forward to that battery day. Elan, you also mentioned in your prepared comments about other projects that may come up and the only vehicle not announced for master plan part two is a high passenger density vehicle. Any light that you can give us uh regarding that project? Yeah. Um you know going back to what I just said the the we got to improve the total battery capacity.\n\nUm otherwise we add complexity but we do not improve the number of vehicles on the road. So, uh, will we do, you know, some sort of high-capacity vehicle at some point? Probably. Um, but we we need to make sure we got the batteries to, you know, make cars that we already that are already in our plate. Um, and and and it's it's just generally true.\n\nAnd I've seen some some uh I think uh sort of sensible comments by Arch Invest, you know, where they um pointing out that really people do prefer to drive in their cars mostly by themselves. Um and the average Yeah, I mean the the average number of occupants in a car I think is like 1. 2 and maybe with autonomy maybe it'll go to 1. 4 maybe. Um, but I'm not sure if that even it even goes there.\n\nSo, um, you know, will it make sense for us to do sort of a minivan or, you know, sort of sprinter like man at some point? Probably. But like I said, we got to solve this battery. We got to scale battery production to crazy levels that people cannot even fathom today. That's the real problem. Thank you. Let's go to the next question, please. Our next question comes from John Sager with Evercore ISI. Hey guys, thanks for taking my call.\n\nUm, I want to talk about the uh the differences between the Model 3 and the Model Y beyond the uh the sort of 10% rule of thumb just around uh cargo and size. Are there other features that that are going to differentiate the two models? And then um as a as a follow on to that, you've talked in the past about how Model S sales grew uh with the introduction of Model X.\n\nSo, are you planning on setting up your production facilities to align with that thesis that essentially Model 3 sales will expand alongside the uh the introduction of Model Y? You know, we're not we're not quite sure what's going to happen with but but it is true that Model X the introduction Model X actually increased Model S sales.\n\nUm cuz people would come in, they'd look at the Model X and they like decide, okay, you know, I'd prefer the sedan. And and uh we're worried that that X sales would cause S sales to drop, but they actually cause it to increase. Um so, you know, from from our standpoint, I we're not too worried about demand. We're worried about production.\n\nYou know, it's make sure we get that production ramp going and and reach volume production as soon as possible with the Model Y. Um and uh it's hard to it's always hard to predict what that miss that that S the the you know the exponential part of the S-curve of of production. Um but production pretty much always follows this S-curve or it's kind of like a hokey jerky S-curve.\n\nUm and you know you can it's easy to predict what it's going to be like in the beginning cuz it's flow and it's easy to predict what it's going to be like at the end but that intermediate portion of the S curve is very difficult to predict. So that's and it involves a massive amount of hard work and um and and just reacting fast to issues that arise.\n\nUm so you know I think we're just you know going to go as fast we can with the Model Y and make sure it's a great product. I think there are some things that will differentiate it but not um not something we want to talk about on this call. Um, and I think so, you know, when they do when people do a tear down of the Model Y, I think they'll be impressed about some of the things they see.\n\nAnd just to add to that, uh, I think it's important to keep the Model Y launch in context of the next 18 to 24 months that what we're working on here between Berlin and Shanghai and Fremont is to have 3 and Y locally produced in all locations. Yeah. And so, um, Model 3 is expanding. As Model Y is expanding, there may be ups and downs various factories as we get to the journey of having these products on all on the major continents. Yeah.\n\nAlso, the rule of thumb of 10%, I think you need to see it. When you see the car, you'll realize that it's not just a 10% different car. It's it's it's it's not just that there's more change happening like to the customer's perspective as well. Thank you. Let's go to the next question, please. Thank you. Our next question comes from Colin Rush with Oenheimer. Um, thanks so much, guys.\n\nCan you speak to the pricing strategy in light of the China price reductions as well as the mission to increase EV adoption? Is there a target for gross profit or operate profit on a per vehicle basis that we should be thinking about or or how should we really frame that for ourselves? Um, yeah, I mean, we're trying to make the cars as affordable as possible, as fast as possible.\n\n[clears throat] um while maintaining reasonable while while while still being at least a little bit profitable and growing the company like crazy and having good free cash flow and accumulating a a cash balance. Um Beck, anything you want to No, I think that's very fair. Yeah, I mean uh our order rate supports the pricing that we have right now.\n\nWe're working very hard to reduce cost uh and expand production because it I mean we feel from the data it's pretty clear that there's a lot of interest in our products and so as what we're working on is to increase production increase availab availability of the products with time and the price reduction in China kind of the first step towards this global localization more accessible price and we'll continue to work on cost reductions in China as we do in Fremont and grow production.\n\nYeah. Yeah, I mean the thing that's really going to I think probably just have a profound effect on our financials is like is high volume and high margin obviously uh and that high margin part comes from autonomy. So do people buy the the full self driving package or not and do they buy it worldwide or only in certain places? Um for example our autonomy is not as good in China as it is in the US.\n\nSo fewer people a very small percentage of people buy the FSD package in China. But as we as we fix that, then we'll see a much higher people percentage of people buy it. Um, and as we get close to full self-driving, um, that's just going to become more and more compelling. So that that's from a financial standpoint, that's the real mind-blowing situation is high volume, high margin because of autonomy. Okay.\n\nAnd then just shorter term, you know, there's significant discussion in the industry around moving to higher voltage on the powertrain and then, you know, some challenges around the supply chain's preparedness to support that. You know, separate from the battery pack since we'll we'll talk about that in a couple of months.\n\nCan you speak to the areas of focus on powertrain uh technology uh driven cost reduction over the next 12 to 24 months that we should be thinking about? Well, powertrain is pretty damn good. I mean, it's way better than anything else out there by Country Mile. You know, it's worth noting, for example, that the uh the Model S has like 100 kilowatt hour pack. The tan has 100, you know, what like 95 kWh pack.\n\nThe Model S uh is steadily approaching 400 m range. The tan has 200 m of range. So, we must be using that energy pretty efficiently. And the powertrain is a big part of that. Um I I would just say the focus is on cost on the powertrain. Um when we're thinking about technology innovations, it's how do we how do we continue to drive the cost down. Yeah.\n\nAnd and you know that's through voltage is maybe one angle, but there are certainly others that just enable more power density and lower cost. Applied power train is like mind-blowing. I think um yeah, coming out later this year, end of the year probably. That's our goal. get the fly power train app into end of the year and then it's going to be like this is like alien technology. It's insane. It's all about power.\n\nI I didn't even think we could do Yeah. I mean honestly I thought it was no way. Um this kickass engineering team Tesla Tesla is all about hardcore engineering. Great. Let's go to the next question please. Our next question comes from Emmanuel Rosner with Deutsche Bank. Hi, good evening everybody. Uh so in in your slide deck uh you had a comment around um average selling price being uh stable uh or thereabouts in 2020.\n\nCan you maybe walk through some of the puts and take how you see sort of like that uh metric evolve? Obviously you have the Model Y which probably would have initial you know higher pricing and then the China Model 3 is at a lower price. So I guess what are the puts and takes for what you would see as sort of like stable ASP in 2020? Yeah. Make the products better and better. Yeah. Increase the value. I know. Yeah.\n\nWe don't want to really comment on like prices and stuff. I think, you know, we'll adjust according to what the demand looks like. I mean, like right now it looks pretty good. Um maybe that'll change. Who knows? Um yeah, but but I think the way you described it is fair. So, I mean, relative to the current Model 3, uh, China Model 3 pricing is slightly lower. Uh, and our Model Y pricing is public on the website.\n\nSo, you can see that it's clearly slightly higher than than what Model 3 is out of Fremont. How the mix of those three products nets out over the course of the year, we'll see. But, I I think it's probably fair at the moment to assume the mix of those stays fairly stable in terms of ASB when you average them together. Yeah.\n\nYeah, I mean the affordability of our car in China improved radically because of you know not you know very you know tariffs mostly going away purchase tax exemption uh local pot supply not having to spend a bunch of money to transport it over the ocean um so the the affordability is night and day for a car in China. Thank you. Let's go to the next question please. Thank you. Our next question comes from Dan Lady with Credit Swiss. Hi.\n\nUh, good evening. Thank you for for taking the questions. Just want to follow up on the question on capital raise. So, given the cheaper cost of of capital and this is a real competitive advantage for others, why wouldn't it make sense to raise capital to either pay down debt or to pursue acquisitions, especially bolt-ons that could help you accelerate capabilities in autonomous or battery technology?\n\nI mean, if you know of any acquisitions, we'd love to hear about them. Yeah, sure. Sounds great. Who should we acquire? Well, I I given the uh importance of autonomous, I imagine that this is an area that you would want to accelerate if you view it as a as a crucial competitive advantage. We're not a aware of any one that we'd want to acquire and debt debt payown. um polluting the company to pay down debt doesn't sound like a wise move.\n\nI mean I think yeah I think the broader there's been a couple of versions of this question over the course of the call. I think what we're saying more broadly is that as we look forward on the cash generation from the business relative to what our plans are. Um we are not constrained. Yeah. We're going to pay down the debt just, you know, as time goes by. And we paid down half half a million dollars worth of debt last quarter.\n\nUm, so we'll just keep steadily paying it down. Um, and yeah, I so yeah, yeah, I don't think we have anything more to say on that part really. Okay, thank you. Let's go to the next question, please. Thank you. Our next question comes from Pierre Farrau with New Street Research. Hey, thank you sir taking my question.\n\nIan, I I wanted to come back on on open batteries and if I look at the end of this year, you should have 800,000 units in production capacity for car. So that's if you add to that model X and model S and then the energy storage business, it means you need only north of 60 gawatt of battery production capacity. So where do you stand now? You know, how do you get there?\n\n[clears throat] And then it looks like your competitors or those who would like to compete with you seem to be struggling to to to to grow uh battery capacity. Uh so so if you can just take us through what you're doing differently, why you're confident you can do that and it looks like nobody else can.\n\nWell, you know, I guess, you know, a lot of people sort of made fun of us for for not like, you know, being able to grow, you know, build cars and bulk capacity. And it's like now that it turns out actually even the pros have trouble with it, you know, it's pretty hard. Um, so you know, but the fact is we've already demonstrated massive growth in cell production capacity at our Gigafactory Nevada.\n\nUm, and you know, you have to go from the cells to the modules to the pack. So, not just cell capacity, but also module and and pack capacity. Um, so we we've just gotten pretty good at that. Um and we've worked well with key partners like Panasonic Panasonic relationship has been been excellent. Uh they've been a great partner with us for for many years.\n\nUm we've added some some additional uh partners at a at a smaller scale um you know with LG and CL. Um and uh you know um and we'll have more to talk about uh this in detail in battery day. Like I said, probably, you know, probably April and we've got a very compelling strategy. Uh, I mean, we are super deep on cell, super deep and sell cell through battery. It's a cell module battery. I mean, Drew, anything you want to add to that? Thanks.\n\nI think you said it said it all. We are super deep. I mean, it's a it's a rabbit hole. That rabbit hole goes down pretty far. Seven days a week. Yeah, we're doing seven days a week. Yeah. battery production. Um, man, do we know a lot about batteries? Geez. I think I can see that. The only thing I would add is go ahead.\n\nThe only thing that I would add is, you know, we we do have more a decade plus of experience of not just like what a cell should be, but how to integrate it into the product. And that's really helpful. Yeah, absolutely. And how to manage the the cell and the module and the battery and through different weather conditions and different environmental and different charge regimes. And wow, we we really know a lot about batteries. Um, yeah. Mhm.\n\nIt's next level. Okay. Thanks. And Zach, maybe a quick mundane followup for you if that's all right. Can you give us a sense of the impact of the ramp of Shanghai on your in Q4? Yeah, it we were negative gross margin on the products that we built in Q4. Um, but the team in China, I think, did a great job managing costs during the launch. And so there was a slight drag associated with it, but not terribly significant. Okay.\n\nAnd let's go to the last question, please. Thank you. Our last question will come from Joseph OSHA with JMP Securities. Um, further to the conversation around cell technology, I'm just wondering if you can comment on uh what the plans are for the Maxwell technology that that you acquired either as a capacitor or dry cell or what have you. Thanks. Well, like I said, we're going to talk about this in battery day, which is probably April.\n\nUm, and then a lot of these questions will be answered. I think it's going to be a very compelling story that we have to present. Uh, I think it's going to actually blow people's minds. Blows my mind and I am clo, you know, I know it. Uh, so I think it's going to be pretty cool. Um, the Maxwell Maxwell that that Ultra Cap technology is kind of part of the part of the plan. It's a it's it's an important piece of the puzzle. Yes.\n\nUm, I think like some of this this the sort of retail investors have managed to put together several pieces of the puzzle. They seem to have the most insight. I shall have to read the blogs more. Thank you. All right. You're welcome. Thank you very much for everyone for all of your good questions and uh we will speak to you in another 3 months. Thank you. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference call.\n\nThank you for your participation. You may now disconnect. [music]","textByLang":{"en":"Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by and welcome to Tesla's Q4 2019 financial results and Q&A webcast. At this time, all participants are on a listenon mode. After the speaker presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star one on your telephone. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded.\n\nIf you require any further assistance, please press star zero. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker, Mr. Martin Viea, senior director of investor relations. Please go ahead, sir. Thank you, Sheree, and good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to Tesla's fourth quarter 2019 Q&A webcast. I'm joined today by Elon Musk, Zachary Kirkorn, and a number of other executives. Our Q4 results were announced at about 1:00 p. m.\n\nPacific time in the update deck we published at the same link as this webcast. During the call, we will discuss our business outlook and make forward-looking statements. These comments are based on our predictions and expectations as of today. Actual events or results could differ materially due to a number of risks and uncertainties, including those mentioned in our most recent filings with the SEC.\n\nDuring the question and answer portion of today's call, please limit yourself to one question and one follow-up. Please press star one now if you'd like to join the question queue. But before we jump into Q&A, Elon has some opening remarks. Elon. Uh, thanks Martin. So, Q4 was another strong quarter for the company. Uh, deliveries reached uh, over 112,000 vehicles in a single quarter.\n\nIt's hard to think of a similar product with such strong demand that it can generate more than $20 billion in revenue with zero advertising spend.\n\nI think that's I think we do say that from time to time and I think it's it's often um overlooked but to have uh the highest demand electric vehicle in the world with no advertising spend is I think quite remarkable and speaks to the the the nature of the product and the fact that the product itself is compelling enough to generate that demand without uh without a bunch of advertising at our Fremont factory.\n\nWe were producing at a rate roughly the same as uh the Numi factory did in its record year of 2006 and uh obviously we expect to to exceed that um significantly this year. Uh this rate of production was achieved before we even started to produce the Model Y out of Fremont. So there's a lot of potential uh to go beyond that number. for the Shanghai factory.\n\nI'd like to say congratulations again to the team in Shanghai on launching Model 3 last quarter and achieving the first deliveries earlier this year. Um I'm really excited and optimistic about the potential for the the Shanghai factory. I think it's it's going to be an incredible asset uh to to the company. Um and we also uh broke ground on the uh Model Y uh factory in in Shanghai. So there a lot of good progress there.\n\nUm, regarding Model Y, uh, it was only 10 months ago that we revealed a Model Y prototype and now in January this year, we started producing Model Y in limited volumes already. This is thanks to a great effort of our engineering team and we managed to achieve by far the highest energy efficiency of any electric SUV ever produced at 4. 1 m per kowatt hour. Um, which means [clears throat] Model Y all-wheel drive got an EPA rating of 315 miles.\n\nAnd this improvement is reflected on the configurator as of today. This [clears throat] is this is above um what we previously stated by pretty significant margin. Um and and just with great acceleration, top speed, it's really just incredible specs all around. Uh for the Cybert truck, uh a few months ago, we revealed the obviously revealed the Cyber Truck um that was that went viral.\n\nUm and we we try to build a product that a product that is superior in every way without any preconceptions of how such a product should look. So it really just from the standpoint of what's the most badass futuristic armored personnel carrier that you know kicks the ass of any pickup truck. Basically that's the goal. Um and uh the you know we wanted to look like something that just came out of a sci-fi movie set from the future.\n\nAnd uh the demand has been incredible. We've never seen actually such a level of demand at this. We've never seen anything like it basically. Um I think we will make as about as many as we can sell for many years. Um so as many Yeah, we'll sell as many as we can make. It's going to be pretty nuts.\n\nUm, so, um, and I think actually the the product is better than people realize even they they don't even have enough information to realize just the awesomeness of it. It's just great. So, um, and then, um, stepping back in 2018, uh, from a financial standpoint, we were free cash flow rate was break even.\n\nUm but in 2019 we managed to generate more than a billion dollars free cash flow while building a factory in Shanghai in record time and while building parts of Model Y production.\n\nSo I think to for us to have this level of free cash flow while making massive investments in capacity while developing new products while improving the core engineering is a testament to the I think incredible performance of the Tesla team and I'm just so proud to work with such a great team.\n\nI'd like to thank the whole test team for their ongoing work on on uh cost control um is what what has has allowed us to get to uh these compelling financial numbers while at the same time growing the company at an incredible pace.\n\nAnd in [clears throat] conclusion, when I think of what we have in front of us the next couple of years, we got Model Y, we got Gigab Berlin, uh Tesla Semi, Solar Glass Roof, Cybertruck, um some very exciting improvements in back factory technology, uh full self-driving, um got the nextG Roadster, and probably, you know, a bunch of other products.\n\nWe'll we'll come up with special numbers while at the same time growing the company at an incredible pace.\n\nAnd in [clears throat] conclusion, when I think of what we have in front of us the next couple of years, we got Model Y, we got Gigab Berlin, uh Tesla Semi, Solar Glass Roof, Cybertruck, um some very exciting improvements in backtory technology, uh full self-driving, um got the nextG Roadster and probably, you know, a bunch of other products we'll we'll come up with, too.\n\nUh it's hard to think of another company that has more exciting product and technology roadmap. So super fired up about where Tesla will be you know in the next uh you know 10 years. Um you know if if you look back 10 years from today to 2010 um we will produce approximately a thousand times more cars in 2020 than we produced in 2010. A thousand.\n\nUm and we have also solar glass and and solar retrofit and uh power wall power pack you know all those other things too. So where will we be in 10 years? Very exciting to consider the prospect. Thank you very much Elon and Zach some opening remarks as well. Yeah thanks Martin. Um this past year was truly trans transformational for Tesla and I want to thank everyone who's been a part of making this happen. on 2019.\n\nA few key points I'd like to highlight on demand. While we've mentioned this a few times, it's worth highlighting once again. Over the course of the year, we've transitioned entirely from generating Model 3 orders from a reservation backlog to generating new and organic demand. We've also seen a stabilization of Model 3 ASPs, even increasing slightly in Q4.\n\nAnd we've seen an increase in ASPs of SNX after the launch of the longer range versions in Q2. With respect to capacity expansion, we've greatly learned from the development and launch of Model 3 in Fremont and Reno. As a result, we've been able to bring new production capacity on board faster and with less cost.\n\nThis is evidenced by the launch of Model 3 in Shanghai as well as Model Y in Fremont, programs that were both launched in under one year. Financially, we have demonstrated multiple quarters of strong cash generation enabled through higher volumes, improvements to capital efficiency, progress on working capital management, and continued improvement in our product and operational costs.\n\nAnd we are able to achieve positive gap net income in both Q3 and Q4 for many of the same reasons that enabled strong cash generation. We've also made progress on recurring and softwarebased revenue with the implementation of premium connectivity and the beginning of upgrades available for purchase via the Tesla mobile app.\n\nFinally, on stock-based compensation, it increased sequentially by 82 million driven almost entirely by an expense related to the next trunch of the CEO grant. This is a result of our improved expected financial performance of the company which the CEO stock grant is tied to. As we look ahead to 2020, this again will be an important year for the company.\n\nOur task ahead is to execute on the the next phase of growth while managing cash flows to support that growth. On Model Y, we expect first deliveries and limited quantities later this quarter and will ramp over subsequent quarters. As mentioned previously, we are forecasting higher gross margins on Model Y compared to the Model 3. This year for the Shanghai built Model 3, we expect to achieve run rate production and delivery rates.\n\nIn addition, we expect to have completed the majority of planned supply chain localization at the factory or in the region. This is one of the most important components to achieve lower production costs for the site. We are also seeing strong order rates for the locally built model 3 and remain focused on continuing the production ramp and managing costs.\n\nWe also anticipate significant progress on factory construction of the Shanghai and Berlin built Model Y, which will result in continued increases in capital spending. On operating expenses, I expect an increase over the course of the year to support our growing product pipeline and international footprint. However, OPEX growth should increase at a lower rate than topline revenue.\n\nOverall, we believe this will set us up for our strongest annual financial performance yet with sufficient forecasted cash flows to support investments related to our growth and further strengthening of our balance sheet. For Q1, please keep in mind that the industry is always impacted by seasonality.\n\nAdditionally, we are in the process of ramping two major products, Model 3 in Shanghai and Model Y in Fremont, which I expect will temporarily weigh on our margins. We are also in the early stages of understanding if and to what extent we may be temporarily impacted by the Corona virus. At this point, we're expecting a 1 to 1 and 1/2 week delay in the ramp of Shanghai built Model 3 due to a government required factory shutdown.\n\nThis may slightly impact profitability for the quarter, but is limited as the profit contribution from Model 3 Shanghai remains in the early stages. We are also closely monitoring whether there will be interruptions in the supply chain for cars built in Fremont. So far, we're not aware of anything material, but it's important to caveat that this is an evolving story.\n\nHowever, we have more than sufficient cash to continue our expansion plans while further strengthening the balance sheet. Thank you again for your support and we will turn to questions. Thank you. Uh we are going to take the first questions from um uh retail investors compiled by say technologies.\n\nSo the first retail uh investor question is uh since solar is required for all new home constructions in California, do you have any substantial orders for solar glass roofs from any of the large California home builders that you can share? What's the 2020 target for the number of solar glass roof installations in California?\n\nWell, I think we we do we are seeing um fromly from a from a small base exponential uh growth in demand and uh output for solar for the solar glass roof. Um so it's difficult to predict what the number will be this year except that the demand is very strong. Um and we are we are working also not just through through Tesla installers but also through new home builders and through um just uh the roofing industry in general.\n\nUh where there's you know in North America on the order of 4 million uh new uh roofs per year. So we see uh a lot of interest um and um so it's it's just a question of uh refining the uh the installation process uh getting um lots of crews trained to do the installation. But uh over time I would expect a significant percentage of of new roofs to beat um something to to use solar glass in one form or another.\n\nUh it's really going to be a choice of do you want a roof that is uh alive with power or or dead without. And I think people will want a live roof uh that that generates power uh and looks good and lasts a long time and it's uh it's the future we want.\n\nSo it will be a significant product but because it is a new and quite revolutionary product and there's a lot of you know challenges to overcome um but they will be overcome and this will be a a major product line of of Tesla and the Buffalo factories doing great. So yeah thank you.\n\nUh second question from retail shareholders is will you release the Tesla wilding network app before full autonomy and change the terms of Tesla insurance to allow owners to be drivers on the network? If so, when will this happen? Might this one to uh might want to target California airports first? Also a good place to add superchargers. Sorry, that sounds like one question in one. Yeah, it's a bit of a bundle. Yeah.\n\nUm, well, I think that it's it probably will make sense to have the to enable car sharing in advance of the kind of sort of giant robo taxi fleet. Um, because the car sharing can be done before uh full self-driving is approved by regulators. Um, so it's it's probably something that we would enable before uh the the full sort of robo taxi fleet is enabled. Um and um I saw like there were some other questions bundled in there.\n\nUh superchargers at airports. Oh, sure. Um yeah. Yeah, probably we'll have superchargers at airports. We'll have supercharges wherever we see that there is a need for superchargers. And then on the insurance part of the question, it is our intent to allow people to put their cars into ride sharing or the FSD network using Tesla insurance.\n\nYeah, that's not currently the case, but by the time that this is available, it's our intent to get that ready. Okay, thank you. Uh the next question from retail investors is how many California owners are currently insured with Tesla insurance? What's the target for Tesla insurance in 2020? When will you start significant uh to significantly leverage the data you have from the fleet to lower the cost of your coverage?\n\nUh will we get premium discount of certain percent? Yeah, I mean go ahead. Yeah. Um so Tesla insurance is currently available in California. Uh a couple things that we're working on on this front. Uh the first is to expand it to other locations and uh we're preparing the regulatory processes preparing our processes to go through the regulatory processes in those locations.\n\nUh we're also working on um the processes to continue to adjust our rates in California which also have to go through regulatory processes as insurance is quite heavily regulated and and that's where we're spending our time focusing on Tesla insurance right now.\n\nThere's a significant amount of innovation as we've discussed before in this space exactly getting to the intent of what the question here is using our technology to reduce rates and this will be rolled in over time. It was the last part of the question was, \"Will there be a discount for using autopilot with our cars?\" Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There won't be. Yeah.\n\nThe the rate card for California Tesla insurance already considers the safety features associated with autopilot, right? But I think I think it would make sense for us to um close the loop on, you know, higher use of autopilot probably reduces the um insurance costs. Um it lowers the probability of of injury. So, I think the insurance is is going to be, I think, quite a major product of Tesla over time.\n\nUm, the amount of money that people spend on car insurance is is like a remarkably big percentage of the cost of a car. Um, like you you can lease a Model 3 uh right now for $400 a month. Um, but a typical uh uh owner in California will be paying, you know, somewhere between a hundred and $200 a month in insurance. So, we're talking about something which is maybe a quarter to half of the cost of the lease of the car is insurance.\n\nUm, and um, a lot of that insurance cost is just because the insurance companies don't have good information about the drivers. um and that that there's no good way to provide feedback where you know it's it's it's a very poor feedback mechanism uh in terms of the insurance rates versus the actual uh way that the car is being driven whereas we can do that in real time. It's a fundamental information advantage that insurance companies don't have.\n\nThank you. Uh the next question is you set expectations that you would be feature complete on FSD by the end of 2019. Can you please provide an update on when will we see this with end users? Uh uh where are you in retrofitting the FSD computer to older models? Well, I mean to be precise I I said I was hoping we'd be future complete with both FSD by the end of last year. Um we we got pretty close.\n\nUm, you know, it's looking like we might be future complete um in a few months. Um, but future complete just means like it it has some chance of of going from your home to work, let's say, with with with no interventions. Um, so that's it doesn't mean the features are working well. Um, but it means it has some, you know, above zero chance. Um, so I think that's looking like maybe it's going to be a couple months from now.\n\nUm and uh the the what what isn't obvious regarding autopilot and full self-driving is just how much uh work has been going into improving the the foundational elements of autonomy. Uh the the core autopilot and Tesla autopilot software and and AI team is just is I think very very strong and making great progress. Um and um we're we're really only for beginning to take full advantage of the autopilot hardware, the FSD hardware.\n\nUm so I I think it's the the the the apparent progress as seen by uh consumers will seem to be extremely rapid. But um but actually um what what's really gone on my head seems like I said is just is having the foundational uh software be very strong having a really strong foundation. Um and then a really fundamental thing is moving to video training.\n\nUh so in terms of labeling uh labeling uh with video um and all all eight cameras simultaneously uh uh this is a really I mean in terms of labeling efficiency arguably like a three order of magnitude improvement in labeling efficiency. Uh for those who know about this it's extremely fundamental. Um so that that's uh made great progress on that. Thank you. And the last retail investor question comes from Kendall.\n\nUh since most retail investors seem to understand Tesla better than analysts and are uh uh risking a larger part of their own personal wealth on Tesla, doesn't it make sense to take mostly questions on these earnings calls uh from us via SE? Uh do you even have to take questions um answer questions from analysts? Well well I guess we we don't have to.\n\nI I do think that a lot of the retail investors actually have uh deeper and more accurate insights than um many of the the big institutional investors and uh and certainly better insights than many of the analysts.\n\nI you know it's it seems like if people really looked at some of the smart retail investor uh analysts or and you know what what some of the smart smaller retail investors predicted about the future of the of Tesla that would you' probably get the highest accuracy and remarkable insight from some of those predictions. Okay. Um so now let's switch to institutional shareholder questions.\n\nUh the number one question is uh you have spoken previously about Shanghai giga being 65% lower capex per unit of capacity. Have you learned to do anything better or differently from an oper O opex perspective? And if yes uh what kind of impact might we expect on the long-term gross margin? Sure. Go ahead. Yeah. Um the Shanghai factory has been a quite remarkable uh cost experience across all line items of cogs for the Model 3.\n\nThere we have talked a lot about the capex per unit of capacity being lower. But I mean you can basically run down the entire list of cogs between labor cost material cost due to localization. So it's opening up suppliers that would not have made economic sense from the states. localizing the supply chain flows into um inbound logistics and outbound logistics costs as well. So we're not shipping cars from California over to China.\n\nUh and then that has a corresponding savings on our lower in import related costs. And uh there's a slide in the shareholder letter that shows a layout comparison between our Fremont facility here in California and also the Model 3 factory in China. And the simplification in terms of the flow is is pretty evident from that layout. And that cascades itself into all sorts of savings to the operations of the facility.\n\nUm, and so, you know, if you add all of this up, our internal estimates are a pretty significant reduction in in the cost of Model 3 in China relative to Fremont. But I think it's also important to keep in mind that the cost of the standard plus in uh that we're selling out of Shanghai is also lower than that of the similar car coming out of Fremont.\n\nRight from price perspective and so uh and I've said this on previous earnings calls, I think it's fair to expect the margin coming out of the Shanghai facility to match the same margin for the vehicle in 3 months. Yeah, there's I think there's there's a pretty big um fundamental efficiency gain that Tesla has uh by just making cars, especially the affordable cars um three and the Y um at least on the continent where the customers are.\n\nUm you know, it kind of makes sense. It's like what we're doing or have been doing in the past was really pretty silly in in making cars in uh in California and then shipping them halfway around the world to uh Asia and and Europe. And uh this created uh a lot of cost cuz you got to ship those cars. So you got a lot lot of finished goods sitting on on the water or waiting at the port or going through customs. You got tariffs.\n\nUm transport it's it's uh and then the factory complexity in in California is very high because you've got different regulatory requirements in in China, uh North America and Europe. So we got three different types of cars that are being built. Uh it's it's very complex. Um and and uh and just having a factory uh in China, a factory in in California, um a factory in China, factory in North America, a factory in in Europe.\n\nUh what um just that alone is a massive improvement in our fundamental operating efficiency that I think is may not be fully appreciated and also on working capital. Yeah, absolutely. We're reducing OPEX here too. So it's not only China. Okay, the next question from institutional investors is given the recent run in the share price, why not raise capital now and substantially accelerate the growth in production, i. e.\n\nbuild a gigafactories investment in supercharger and customer service. Well, we we're actually spending money as quickly as we can spend it uh sensibly. So, if there's any sensible way to spend money, we are spending it. there's no artificial uh hold back on on expenditures. Um anything that I see that is a looks like a it's it's got good value for money, the answer is yes immediately.\n\nAnd so um that we're we're spending money I think efficiently and and we're not artificially limiting our pro progress. Um and then despite all that we are still generating positive uh cash. So um you know in light of that it it doesn't make sense to we you know to raise money because we expect to the back of it. No I completely agree with that.\n\nUh I think some of our learnings um during the model 3 launch period where we grew too quickly and with too much complexity. Yeah. And it held back our ability to continue to scale. And part of the journey that we've been on in 2019 is to unwind a series of unint unintentional bad processes that kind of accumulated in the company over time. And so that's kind of what contributes to the reduction in OPEX over the year as we get smarter about that.\n\nAnd um and now we've laid a a good foundation I think uh and I agree with Elon that we're not holding back on the growth. I mean, we have two products, two vehicle products launching right now and uh and that will consume much of the bandwidth of the company to stabilize those over the course of the year. And then looking into next year, we have even more products launching, more factories. Yeah.\n\nUh and so we want to be smart about how we spend money and grow in a way that's sustainable so we don't uh um uh fall victim to the mistakes I think we made a year and a half or so ago. Yeah, absolutely. Okay, the next question we've already answered regarding autopilot timelines. Uh so the following question would be um can we please talk about cost control and OPEX sustainability in terms of growth versus gross profit growth?\n\nHow did we achieve the recent OPEX trends and how should we think about OPEX needs as we grow both vehicles and geographic workloads? Yeah, I commented briefly on this in my opening remarks. Uh we did see an increase in operating expenses from Q3 to Q4, even excluding the portion of that attributed to stockbased compensation.\n\nAnd when you double click into that growth, it it's supporting the the Model Y program and also uh Shanghai program as well. And so, uh, I I think we as a company are now at the point where we've learned a lot on the cost efficiency, as I've just mentioned, and we've unwwindound a number of the processes that were not in the right place, including automating the things that need to be automated.\n\nAnd we'll continue on that journey, but I think we're at a point now where OPEX will uh start to tick up, at least if you look annually, from 2019 to 2020 to support our international footprint and then the growth of the company. it uh you know our job is to grow that significantly slower than the pace of growth of revenue to improve the operating leverage which we're very very focused on. Okay.\n\nAnd the last question from investors is the sales of model SMX have stayed flat for several quarters. The main reason is that they still use 18650 batteries. Uh when will SMX use 2170 batteries? Manufacturing capacity of 18650 may be used for battery storage systems instead. Sure. Well, actually the the the core chemistry inside the 18650 cell has improved um many times over the years.\n\nSo, it's really just a form factor as opposed to a core technology. Um so, it's you know, I think we're we're pretty happy with where the, you know, where the energy content of the cell and the the the improvements um in uh efficiency of of the vehicle. Um the you know we're we're rapidly approaching a 400 mile range for the Model S for example. Um so this is uh it won't be long before Model S is 400 has 400 mile range.\n\nUm Drew is anything you want to add there? No, other than to say that um uh the 18650 lines, you know, have been running smoothly for a really long time and um in a world where cell supply is is is fueling growth like or part of the the the the fuel of growth, I don't see a reason to turn the cell supply off. So, yeah. Um and actually the the the Model S and X uh actually have more range than we are currently stating on the website.\n\nUm, we just haven't gotten around to updating the the I guess the EPA certified number. Um, but the actual uh range of the Model S next or above what the website says there are. That's true. Yeah. Sorry. Yeah. The existing cars that that are Yeah. They're being made. It's actually been that way for Yeah. Yeah. I think we're Yeah, it must be somewhere in the 380s or something like that. um approach. Yeah. Thank you very much.\n\nAnd Sheree, let's go to the Q&A on the phone. Thank you again, ladies and gentlemen. To ask a question, please press star one. And we ask that you please limit yourself to one question and one followup. Our first question comes from Adam Jonas with Morgan Stanley. Um hi everybody and actually agree that I think the retail questions were were excellent actually.\n\nUm, [clears throat] so Elon, do you see potential for Tesla vehicles to be fitted with user terminals that are compatible with the Starlink constellation in the near or medium-term future? Um, well, it's um it's certainly something that could be happen in coming years. There's no plans through it this year.\n\nUh the focus of Starlink is really for um high bandwidth, low latency connectivity uh for you know homes and businesses and you know I guess aircraft and boats and that kind of thing. Uh but the antenna for that high bandwidth low latency thing is sort of about the size of meat and pizza which you could put on a car but I think uh is more bandwidth than you would really need. I mean technically you could buy one and just stick it on the car.\n\nUh yeah, it'll it'll work phase ray antenna. Maybe just as a followup um for my followup, how would assuming that we get the antenna form factor and cost down to a point where that that could be integrated into the roof of a car, for example, you know, cost effectively and aerodynamically, etc. How would compatibility with a Starlink um uh architecture theoretically improve the Tesla customer experience or the capability of the network?\n\nWell, I think it actually most parts of the world would just use uh the cell connectivity. Just use 5G would be the recommendation certainly in like any cities or something like that, you know. But if if you're out in the countryside and there's not good cell connectivity, then then you could connect with a stallink antenna and you wouldn't need, you know, you don't need to like have like gigabit level or level connectivity.\n\nYou could probably like, you know, 20 30 megabits is probably fine. Um, and you can have a much smaller antenna. So yeah, I guess it could be good for, you know, making sure there's connectivity and outside of major cities and that kind of thing. But I mean that's a yeah sort of I'd say relatively obtuse. Uh it's not you know I'm not thinking about it very much to be honest. Thank you. Let's go to the next question. Thank you.\n\nOur next question comes from Dan Gals with Wolf Research. Hey, good afternoon. Thanks. Um, so hoping you could uh give us some guidance on what capex is going to be this year and and kind of as I look to model out the business long term, is there a rule of thumb that we can use for capital expenditures per per unit of production capacity? Uh, or some some sort of rule of thumb like that? Yeah.\n\nUm uh I don't think we want to tell you I don't think we want to say what our capex is going to be this year necessarily except say that like as I said earlier we're we're uh we're spending money as fast as we can spend money um in sensible ways. So we're not it's definitely not artificially limited um and you know we will spend you know well a lot of money this year for sure.\n\nUm it it's the challenge comes in like finding efficient ways to actually deploy the capital. Um but that's the harder part than than sort of deciding on a capex number really. Yeah. And I think we always find ways to become more capex efficient per unit of of capacity. Yes. So we challenge the teams to always become more efficient and so we see a reduction per cap per unit in terms of capex. Um Absolutely. Um it's definitely the right metric.\n\nYeah, it's it's a good Yeah, I think the there there's so much Tesla where that the core technology is improving radically um that uh maybe you wouldn't necessarily notice as an end customer um or some some of them you'd notice, some you wouldn't, but it's just there are these things that you have a big effect on the efficiency of the company. um like our internal applications team that that kind of builds the Tesla internal operating system.\n\nUm and uh improves the sort of core automation of the company. Uh that makes a big difference to our productivity. Um but you wouldn't necessarily you would see it uh effectively in in healthier financials, but you wouldn't necessarily notice it as an end customer. Okay. Got it. Maybe [clears throat] I could follow up. Um I mean your your kind of operating cash flow IBIDA is is annualizing at 4. 5 billion right now.\n\nUm you know as I look out to the future um you know I'm I'm kind of guessing that that could fund somewhere around you know 200 to 250,000 units of capacity a year which would be maybe a 30% keer over 5 years. I mean I mean is that is that something that's feasible for you guys to um to execute on on a consistent basis? Uh you know a level of capacity building that large I yeah I think we're having for more than 30%. Yeah. Yeah.\n\nI think the math uh I'm not sure the math that you've done but I think our internal plans are for faster and um just back on your first question we will have additional detail on capex in the 10k um but back to the growth rate I mean one thing to keep in mind is that uh the Shanghai facility we do have a loan facility uh in place to support that growth so that helps and then as our production volumes increase that generates more cash from the businesses as well that allows us to to continue to fund additional factories.\n\nSo I I wouldn't necessarily view it as limited as you described it. Yeah, I think um a few years ago I said I Yeah, I think I don't know when it was but few years ago I I said my estimate was is that Tesla would um grow at an average confidential rate of average rate of in excess of 50%. I I saw Holtz I believe. Thank you. Let's go to the next question. Our next question comes from Jean Monster with Loop Ventures.\n\nGood afternoon and congratulations on the progress. Uh first question related to Cybertruck. You mentioned you'll sell as many as you can make. Can you remind me how many you think you can make and any thoughts on the cost of production um for making those Cybert trucks?\n\nI I [clears throat] yeah I think we we don't comment on on those detailed numbers except uh the demand is just far more than we could reasonably make in the space of you know I don't know 3 or four years or something like that.\n\nSo, um the the the thing we're going to be really focused on is uh increasing uh battery uh production capacity because that's very fundamental cuz you know if you don't improve battery production capacity then you end up just shifting uh unit volume from one product to another and you haven't actually produced more electric vehicles.\n\nSo um you know that's that's part of the reason why we uh have not for example really accelerated uh production of the Tesla Semi because it does use a lot of cells and and unless we've got a uh lot of battery cells available then then say like um accelerating production of the Tesla Semi would would then necessarily mean making pure Model 3 or Model Y cars.\n\nUm, so we we got to really make sure we we we get a very steep ramp in battery production um and continue to improve the cost per kilowatt hour of the batteries. This is this is very fundamental um and extremely difficult. Um so that you know I said we're going to do like kind of a battery day um just to kind of explain more about this and what our plans are.\n\nUm I think probably it's going to make sense to do that after the end of this quarter because I think it's going to be at kind of an intense end of quarter as it was last quarter. Um so you know tenatively sort of in the April time frame we'll do do a battery day uh and and kind of go through what the um challenges are. Um you know how do you how do you get from here to I don't know couple thousand gawatt hours a year or something. Great.\n\nI'll look forward to that battery day. Elan, you also mentioned in your prepared comments about other projects that may come up and the only vehicle not announced for master plan part two is a high passenger density vehicle. Any light that you can give us uh regarding that project? Yeah. Um you know going back to what I just said the the we got to improve the total battery capacity.\n\nUm otherwise we add complexity but we do not improve the number of vehicles on the road. So, uh, will we do, you know, some sort of high-capacity vehicle at some point? Probably. Um, but we we need to make sure we got the batteries to, you know, make cars that we already that are already in our plate. Um, and and and it's it's just generally true.\n\nAnd I've seen some some uh I think uh sort of sensible comments by Arch Invest, you know, where they um pointing out that really people do prefer to drive in their cars mostly by themselves. Um and the average Yeah, I mean the the average number of occupants in a car I think is like 1. 2 and maybe with autonomy maybe it'll go to 1. 4 maybe. Um, but I'm not sure if that even it even goes there.\n\nSo, um, you know, will it make sense for us to do sort of a minivan or, you know, sort of sprinter like man at some point? Probably. But like I said, we got to solve this battery. We got to scale battery production to crazy levels that people cannot even fathom today. That's the real problem. Thank you. Let's go to the next question, please. Our next question comes from John Sager with Evercore ISI. Hey guys, thanks for taking my call.\n\nUm, I want to talk about the uh the differences between the Model 3 and the Model Y beyond the uh the sort of 10% rule of thumb just around uh cargo and size. Are there other features that that are going to differentiate the two models? And then um as a as a follow on to that, you've talked in the past about how Model S sales grew uh with the introduction of Model X.\n\nSo, are you planning on setting up your production facilities to align with that thesis that essentially Model 3 sales will expand alongside the uh the introduction of Model Y? You know, we're not we're not quite sure what's going to happen with but but it is true that Model X the introduction Model X actually increased Model S sales.\n\nUm cuz people would come in, they'd look at the Model X and they like decide, okay, you know, I'd prefer the sedan. And and uh we're worried that that X sales would cause S sales to drop, but they actually cause it to increase. Um so, you know, from from our standpoint, I we're not too worried about demand. We're worried about production.\n\nYou know, it's make sure we get that production ramp going and and reach volume production as soon as possible with the Model Y. Um and uh it's hard to it's always hard to predict what that miss that that S the the you know the exponential part of the S-curve of of production. Um but production pretty much always follows this S-curve or it's kind of like a hokey jerky S-curve.\n\nUm and you know you can it's easy to predict what it's going to be like in the beginning cuz it's flow and it's easy to predict what it's going to be like at the end but that intermediate portion of the S curve is very difficult to predict. So that's and it involves a massive amount of hard work and um and and just reacting fast to issues that arise.\n\nUm so you know I think we're just you know going to go as fast we can with the Model Y and make sure it's a great product. I think there are some things that will differentiate it but not um not something we want to talk about on this call. Um, and I think so, you know, when they do when people do a tear down of the Model Y, I think they'll be impressed about some of the things they see.\n\nAnd just to add to that, uh, I think it's important to keep the Model Y launch in context of the next 18 to 24 months that what we're working on here between Berlin and Shanghai and Fremont is to have 3 and Y locally produced in all locations. Yeah. And so, um, Model 3 is expanding. As Model Y is expanding, there may be ups and downs various factories as we get to the journey of having these products on all on the major continents. Yeah.\n\nAlso, the rule of thumb of 10%, I think you need to see it. When you see the car, you'll realize that it's not just a 10% different car. It's it's it's it's not just that there's more change happening like to the customer's perspective as well. Thank you. Let's go to the next question, please. Thank you. Our next question comes from Colin Rush with Oenheimer. Um, thanks so much, guys.\n\nCan you speak to the pricing strategy in light of the China price reductions as well as the mission to increase EV adoption? Is there a target for gross profit or operate profit on a per vehicle basis that we should be thinking about or or how should we really frame that for ourselves? Um, yeah, I mean, we're trying to make the cars as affordable as possible, as fast as possible.\n\n[clears throat] um while maintaining reasonable while while while still being at least a little bit profitable and growing the company like crazy and having good free cash flow and accumulating a a cash balance. Um Beck, anything you want to No, I think that's very fair. Yeah, I mean uh our order rate supports the pricing that we have right now.\n\nWe're working very hard to reduce cost uh and expand production because it I mean we feel from the data it's pretty clear that there's a lot of interest in our products and so as what we're working on is to increase production increase availab availability of the products with time and the price reduction in China kind of the first step towards this global localization more accessible price and we'll continue to work on cost reductions in China as we do in Fremont and grow production.\n\nYeah. Yeah, I mean the thing that's really going to I think probably just have a profound effect on our financials is like is high volume and high margin obviously uh and that high margin part comes from autonomy. So do people buy the the full self driving package or not and do they buy it worldwide or only in certain places? Um for example our autonomy is not as good in China as it is in the US.\n\nSo fewer people a very small percentage of people buy the FSD package in China. But as we as we fix that, then we'll see a much higher people percentage of people buy it. Um, and as we get close to full self-driving, um, that's just going to become more and more compelling. So that that's from a financial standpoint, that's the real mind-blowing situation is high volume, high margin because of autonomy. Okay.\n\nAnd then just shorter term, you know, there's significant discussion in the industry around moving to higher voltage on the powertrain and then, you know, some challenges around the supply chain's preparedness to support that. You know, separate from the battery pack since we'll we'll talk about that in a couple of months.\n\nCan you speak to the areas of focus on powertrain uh technology uh driven cost reduction over the next 12 to 24 months that we should be thinking about? Well, powertrain is pretty damn good. I mean, it's way better than anything else out there by Country Mile. You know, it's worth noting, for example, that the uh the Model S has like 100 kilowatt hour pack. The tan has 100, you know, what like 95 kWh pack.\n\nThe Model S uh is steadily approaching 400 m range. The tan has 200 m of range. So, we must be using that energy pretty efficiently. And the powertrain is a big part of that. Um I I would just say the focus is on cost on the powertrain. Um when we're thinking about technology innovations, it's how do we how do we continue to drive the cost down. Yeah.\n\nAnd and you know that's through voltage is maybe one angle, but there are certainly others that just enable more power density and lower cost. Applied power train is like mind-blowing. I think um yeah, coming out later this year, end of the year probably. That's our goal. get the fly power train app into end of the year and then it's going to be like this is like alien technology. It's insane. It's all about power.\n\nI I didn't even think we could do Yeah. I mean honestly I thought it was no way. Um this kickass engineering team Tesla Tesla is all about hardcore engineering. Great. Let's go to the next question please. Our next question comes from Emmanuel Rosner with Deutsche Bank. Hi, good evening everybody. Uh so in in your slide deck uh you had a comment around um average selling price being uh stable uh or thereabouts in 2020.\n\nCan you maybe walk through some of the puts and take how you see sort of like that uh metric evolve? Obviously you have the Model Y which probably would have initial you know higher pricing and then the China Model 3 is at a lower price. So I guess what are the puts and takes for what you would see as sort of like stable ASP in 2020? Yeah. Make the products better and better. Yeah. Increase the value. I know. Yeah.\n\nWe don't want to really comment on like prices and stuff. I think, you know, we'll adjust according to what the demand looks like. I mean, like right now it looks pretty good. Um maybe that'll change. Who knows? Um yeah, but but I think the way you described it is fair. So, I mean, relative to the current Model 3, uh, China Model 3 pricing is slightly lower. Uh, and our Model Y pricing is public on the website.\n\nSo, you can see that it's clearly slightly higher than than what Model 3 is out of Fremont. How the mix of those three products nets out over the course of the year, we'll see. But, I I think it's probably fair at the moment to assume the mix of those stays fairly stable in terms of ASB when you average them together. Yeah.\n\nYeah, I mean the affordability of our car in China improved radically because of you know not you know very you know tariffs mostly going away purchase tax exemption uh local pot supply not having to spend a bunch of money to transport it over the ocean um so the the affordability is night and day for a car in China. Thank you. Let's go to the next question please. Thank you. Our next question comes from Dan Lady with Credit Swiss. Hi.\n\nUh, good evening. Thank you for for taking the questions. Just want to follow up on the question on capital raise. So, given the cheaper cost of of capital and this is a real competitive advantage for others, why wouldn't it make sense to raise capital to either pay down debt or to pursue acquisitions, especially bolt-ons that could help you accelerate capabilities in autonomous or battery technology?\n\nI mean, if you know of any acquisitions, we'd love to hear about them. Yeah, sure. Sounds great. Who should we acquire? Well, I I given the uh importance of autonomous, I imagine that this is an area that you would want to accelerate if you view it as a as a crucial competitive advantage. We're not a aware of any one that we'd want to acquire and debt debt payown. um polluting the company to pay down debt doesn't sound like a wise move.\n\nI mean I think yeah I think the broader there's been a couple of versions of this question over the course of the call. I think what we're saying more broadly is that as we look forward on the cash generation from the business relative to what our plans are. Um we are not constrained. Yeah. We're going to pay down the debt just, you know, as time goes by. And we paid down half half a million dollars worth of debt last quarter.\n\nUm, so we'll just keep steadily paying it down. Um, and yeah, I so yeah, yeah, I don't think we have anything more to say on that part really. Okay, thank you. Let's go to the next question, please. Thank you. Our next question comes from Pierre Farrau with New Street Research. Hey, thank you sir taking my question.\n\nIan, I I wanted to come back on on open batteries and if I look at the end of this year, you should have 800,000 units in production capacity for car. So that's if you add to that model X and model S and then the energy storage business, it means you need only north of 60 gawatt of battery production capacity. So where do you stand now? You know, how do you get there?\n\n[clears throat] And then it looks like your competitors or those who would like to compete with you seem to be struggling to to to to grow uh battery capacity. Uh so so if you can just take us through what you're doing differently, why you're confident you can do that and it looks like nobody else can.\n\nWell, you know, I guess, you know, a lot of people sort of made fun of us for for not like, you know, being able to grow, you know, build cars and bulk capacity. And it's like now that it turns out actually even the pros have trouble with it, you know, it's pretty hard. Um, so you know, but the fact is we've already demonstrated massive growth in cell production capacity at our Gigafactory Nevada.\n\nUm, and you know, you have to go from the cells to the modules to the pack. So, not just cell capacity, but also module and and pack capacity. Um, so we we've just gotten pretty good at that. Um and we've worked well with key partners like Panasonic Panasonic relationship has been been excellent. Uh they've been a great partner with us for for many years.\n\nUm we've added some some additional uh partners at a at a smaller scale um you know with LG and CL. Um and uh you know um and we'll have more to talk about uh this in detail in battery day. Like I said, probably, you know, probably April and we've got a very compelling strategy. Uh, I mean, we are super deep on cell, super deep and sell cell through battery. It's a cell module battery. I mean, Drew, anything you want to add to that? Thanks.\n\nI think you said it said it all. We are super deep. I mean, it's a it's a rabbit hole. That rabbit hole goes down pretty far. Seven days a week. Yeah, we're doing seven days a week. Yeah. battery production. Um, man, do we know a lot about batteries? Geez. I think I can see that. The only thing I would add is go ahead.\n\nThe only thing that I would add is, you know, we we do have more a decade plus of experience of not just like what a cell should be, but how to integrate it into the product. And that's really helpful. Yeah, absolutely. And how to manage the the cell and the module and the battery and through different weather conditions and different environmental and different charge regimes. And wow, we we really know a lot about batteries. Um, yeah. Mhm.\n\nIt's next level. Okay. Thanks. And Zach, maybe a quick mundane followup for you if that's all right. Can you give us a sense of the impact of the ramp of Shanghai on your in Q4? Yeah, it we were negative gross margin on the products that we built in Q4. Um, but the team in China, I think, did a great job managing costs during the launch. And so there was a slight drag associated with it, but not terribly significant. Okay.\n\nAnd let's go to the last question, please. Thank you. Our last question will come from Joseph OSHA with JMP Securities. Um, further to the conversation around cell technology, I'm just wondering if you can comment on uh what the plans are for the Maxwell technology that that you acquired either as a capacitor or dry cell or what have you. Thanks. Well, like I said, we're going to talk about this in battery day, which is probably April.\n\nUm, and then a lot of these questions will be answered. I think it's going to be a very compelling story that we have to present. Uh, I think it's going to actually blow people's minds. Blows my mind and I am clo, you know, I know it. Uh, so I think it's going to be pretty cool. Um, the Maxwell Maxwell that that Ultra Cap technology is kind of part of the part of the plan. It's a it's it's an important piece of the puzzle. Yes.\n\nUm, I think like some of this this the sort of retail investors have managed to put together several pieces of the puzzle. They seem to have the most insight. I shall have to read the blogs more. Thank you. All right. You're welcome. Thank you very much for everyone for all of your good questions and uh we will speak to you in another 3 months. Thank you. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference call.\n\nThank you for your participation. You may now disconnect. [music]"},"languages":["en"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTOetiSVJnc"},{"id":"air-force-space-pitch-day-2019-11-05","type":"interview","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lS3nIyetS4I","title":"Air Force Space Pitch Day","titles":{"en":"Air Force Space Pitch Day","de":"Air Force Space Pitch Day","fr":"Air Force Space Pitch Day"},"date":"2019-11-05","summary":"Musk's on-stage talk with Lt. Gen. John Thompson on reusable rockets, Starship and advice for space startups.","text":"we would like to invite general Thompson and Elon Musk to the stage all right well good morning everybody we got about 30 minutes with Elon here I love the soundtrack that we're listening to you throughout the day we've got the theme or the soundtrack to the Martian the soundtrack dinner cellar even the soundtrack to the stranger things so hopefully that has lightened the mood a little and hopefully you all had the opportunity to enjoy the expo some of the public pitches and some of the panel sessions that have occurred throughout the day our guest today needs no introduction in the forbes innovation list for 2019 he was code number one on that list with mr.\n\nJeff Bezos and if you care to comment on that later you'll have the opportunity but I will remain silent on that he's obviously the founder of a few companies you may all be familiar with like Tesla Motors and SpaceX he's also spent time on the board of a non-profit open AI and sponsored innovative competitions like the Hyperloop initiative Ron thank you so much for being with us today so we'll just dive right in unless anybody has any objections to that I just have some questions we're going to be talking about primarily innovation but interspersed amongst some of our questions on innovation would be some questions on leadership some questions on culture and especially in the small business growing to a large business kind of environment and then I myself\n\nnever got these questions until five years ago but I may throw you a couple work-life balance questions quality of life questions so without further ado Ilan a critical question that all businesses face when tackling challenges during product development is do we invest the time and the resources to do this work internally or do we contract it out and have an external partner do it with us can you talk to the audience a little bit about what kind of decision process you go through whether you're deciding to do it in one of your companies or contract it out to somebody else well in the beginning we try to contract those things out but at Tesla and SpaceX we start with with most things contracted out what didn't succeed so we [Music] in space supply chain\n\nis not great ital restricts you to really working with us companies which very difficult work with non-us companies via space rockets or awareness technology so we have a limited set of suppliers and typically that you have legacy parts you inherit the legacy costs and limitations and so that required us to insource most of the rocket this probably only what less than 10% of the rocket is coming from the space my chain at this point the automotive supply chain is better consumer electronics is a lot better whatever this love competition these fly chain is better so it really depends on the part but it's important that lazy components lacing cost limitations if you won't have something revolutionary you can't do catalog engineering yeah catalog engineering\n\nis so the legacy industrial base isn't able to adapt fast enough to Wired what you're trying to do so you in source it are there any special techniques or cultural aspects of that in sourcing that you find we found to be particularly beneficial in Tesla or SpaceX well it wasn't just like if you want to advance technology you've got a recruit the world's best engineers and then create environment which enables them to his innovative as possible so the reward structure you know you need to really reward and encourage innovation and punish lack of innovation so it's got oboz this is the second characteristic [Music] risk reward asymmetry bold moves are if they go wrong punished and but sort of keeping your head down is is not punished but that's not good\n\nthat will result in conservative so it has to be significant advancement and simply the lack of doing something significant feels bad so yeah this is just become really conservative over time and really the government is a company in the limit so company yeah so we have some big companies in the audience but we have a lot of small businesses in the audience so not part of if you will the legacy supply chain for rockets or whatever other innovation you were a company that you're associated with might be producing is there some advice or counsel that you could give to so many small businesses about how to market to growing space partnerships like SpaceX or other companies that might be willing to admit them to the supply chain if they don't have that old\n\nthink or that old process mentality well basics for Tesla I mean if somebody's got a component that's better than what we're making totally love to buy back for sure just reallocate the resources that were working on that component to do something else so I put you up on the landing legs and they were contracted out to Racing racing cars you did a good job today better than us so we working on things so this is by no means like it would be completely insane for us to want to continue to make it part ourselves internally there's a virtual 5 that is available externally that matters so we'd love to do it better than SpaceX then they'd like to talk to you ok Elon given your extensive experience in the nonprofit arena with companies like open AI that I mentioned\n\nin the introduction and your ability to tap into the academic environment that cutting edge innovation in our environment with things like the Hyperloop competition are there smart ways for the folks in the audience this community of space professionals to be engaging with different sources of innovation in the ecosystem how do we better cultivate those sources of innovation so that we can take advantage of them in our nation's space capabilities well yeah in overnight I wouldn't sound like an expert in nonprofits but opening I was really intended to mitigate the risk of artificial general intelligence I hope that it I hope that that's where it does the song chance of me amplified the risk but hopefully it reduces risk now I have foundation that gives\n\naway the ONC an expert on this mostly trying to do is figure out the set of actions that increase the probability of the future is good and take elections okay that's great really okay so is there are there techniques that you personally use to identify sources of information I mean is it is it just reading or seeing what's out there they have the continuous market research going on in your companies or in your private life about what's out there that I should be sponsoring or taking advantage of to make things better than we are I do I do zero market research whatsoever okay just like Carl great rocket you know it's like okay like where's the Platonic idea we've seen the perfect Rockets or car what characteristics would have and then make that and then\n\nto I find that if you do that people buy it okay and it's that's and you know we're gonna come out with the pickup truck or the cool cyber truck I mean it looks like an almond person I'll carry over from you sure yeah it's like other people do too it's gonna look like a cable from movie set okay I look forward to seeing it at some point in the future try to make products that they think others would love they don't love themselves if you don't love the product you should not expect that others will okay great so from a leadership perspective obviously you started as a leader of a small business and grew a number of small businesses into large businesses so from your early days that at zip2 and PayPal leading very very small teams of developers sometimes\n\ndoing a lot of the development yourself hands-on today - today as you need very large companies like Tesla Motors and SpaceX has your leadership approach changed at all or is managing those small teams to try and keep that culture and your leadership style the same throughout well it definitely has to as companies get bigger Tesla's around 45,000 people and SpaceX is almost 7,000 people and you know when a company is little then your skill as is sort of that like an individual engineer can a very big difference one Cafe is large you have to kind of teach a lot of people to do it yet you have to you have to be a force multiplier as opposed to like if you have a little band like if you know if you like a dozen swordsmen or something into your day so it's\n\nokay right you can that's gonna make a difference in a little battle but not if it was 12,000 like you so you have to try to teach people on mass different approaches and just make sure that the right behavior what structure is in setting the right name is incredibly important economics 101 whatever you incent it is likely to happen in fact would be bizarre if it didn't so statistically speaking will definitely be what happens so the entire structure must be sensible and this sounds very obvious but in most organizations they want this means the structure isn't right mm-hmm okay so as businesses grow as your businesses have grown and it becomes less and less about the engineer talking to the program manager one-on-one in a very small team environment\n\nand it becomes conversations between different teams in your enterprise much larger groups of people there's in many organizations there's a tendency that seems will develop and if leaders have to manage those seems how or insist that their teams manage those seems how have you managed the seams and the large businesses that you manage currently in any given product you can see that mistake the organizational errors manifest themselves and the errors in the product so you can see like the you know and I see the scenario products it's like a top cover of the battery and we've got a bottom cover on the car okay that's we should only have one cover no need a box in the box but there's the bathroom team and the chat and the body of chances little and so they\n\nmade a cover you know see sort of flanges and joints and various things did not make sense or things are doubled up and we have subsystem optimization in system optimization so to counteract that which is not easy I actually it insist that teams step on each other's toes so if propulsion to the engine team has to go part way into the airplane and the airplane team has to go part way into the engine it's just but it's hot it's hot if you were to do that now and so essentially they have to basically offend other people in the company and ended themselves ok this is very important to try to propagate is that everyone should be chief engineer like everyone everyone should have at least a inside cursory understanding of the whole rocket the whole car even\n\nthough they may have deep expertise in one arena they make they built to tell if if they're optimizing from for the product as a whole so I finally you can summarize the key characteristics of they have each discipline you can simplify it down to a few principles there's like you're Richard Hyndman needs to say that really know your subject if you can explain it to a smart ten-year-old but if you try to sort of disguise or expertise obscure language then rockets coming back from orbits you have like Sara pressure and center of mass and it sounds very complicated but basically you just have a seesaw of approximately equal dance [Music] it's it's just gonna be if you put mass on one side it's gonna tip that one foot outside and took the other way and just\n\nlike you see so then like we'll see the mass distribution even make sense what doesn't make sense well the flaps are too big on one side or the other plenty of other examples but I think principle is that everyone should kind of have a broader understanding of the particles and that's that's right so other than so other than the culture of broad understanding amongst your teams and the culture of don't worry too much about offending people on other team is to make those difficult kind of discussions to you know not travel risk downstream and identify issues early are there other aspects especially in growing your small businesses into large businesses that have been really important from a culture perspective for either you and your leadership team or\n\nfor your entire workforce I can't say I'm like I'm like good but I'm not sure if it really view myself is so great great expert on your show tonight I will go you know we're doing okay but let's see some just seems like a lot of mistakes was born I can say so you know I try to use the tools of physics as much as possible you know when I was growing up I was actually thinking of a career in physics I'd like the Clyde or something like that and I don't think I've been a best photographer well coming from coming from a culture that values leadership my position is that you don't achieve results and certainly when we have achieved results unless you have that kind of leadership skill yeah mon-sol so don't sell yourself short is what I'm saying [Music] all\n\nright so with that is like you should always assume that you're yourself and your goal is to be less wrong this is very one frame of mind people tend to assume that their rights and there was proof that they're right you're definitely wrong some degree the question is how long and can you be less wrong tomorrow okay so instead of leadership lessons from Abraham Lincoln or somebody else leadership lessons from the world of physics yes the thought constructs of physics can be applied broadly this is the right they're amazing they got all these counterintuitive things like quantum mechanics and general relativity so these these great tools okay all right we'll have a textbook sale later after our session or for those right now just hit Khan Academy up lots\n\nof good stuff on there on physics okay so Elon let's move on a little bit to work-life balance do you have a deliberate approach to how you balance your work and the rest of your life or do you just kind of have a sense of hey I am focusing way too much on work right now I need a break or I need to go do something different well I think I might but that point of view is what I select decision there in my case I actually might get the most amount done possible but if you don't take some breaks then you're sort of not being get done is less [Music] the reason I take breaks in order to get more done basically was what everyone's decision but - actions to a storage inspire - weekend errand as it was lasting they had a vacation region to work for a week and\n\nI was like well like two thousand or two thousand hospital so maybe I should take another break you know yeah but I think it's probably I would not recommend running to companies this is this does not make for the most fun understand I understand yeah I understand so about a year ago you and I had a conversation on a Saturday morning and what the thing that I remember from the Saturday morning telephone conversation was we spent about the first 15 or 20 minutes talking about the workouts that we had just had on that Saturday morning would you care to tell the audience a little bit about how you stay in shape I don't think I'm a good vice chair to be honest but the mentally in shape question is next okay listen why don't become in superbe shape but but\n\nI this is just like it looked rights and run on a treadmill and that's like the one time that I really watched television was like running for 15 to 20 minutes on a trailer I read that said okay watching on television when you're running I just wish watching Space Jam quest for a Space Jam soundtrack later this afternoon okay gotcha gotcha how about I know you're a huge reader but from a a lifelong learning perspective constantly trying to add to your toolkit so that you're you know a better leader a better CEO are there recommendations that you have for the audience about those kinds of things that you to keep yourself mentally sharp well I really like these days and I used to when I was a kid I was read all the time I mean mostly subscribed to scientific\n\nperiodicals like you know they're like the the Daily News I find a lot of noise and just very negative so I generally try to not read the daily news a little that much because they're jelly newspapers try to seem to be trying to answer the question what is the worst thing that happened on earth today [Laughter] something terrible happened every single day guarantee was a big big plant also something great happened but don't answer that question so that's the daily news just tends to make my little robot like scientists science and tech technology periodicals are good quite interesting and usually you know that if there's something something discovering the it'll be in there so and I find Twitter enlightening Italians yeah but there and talking to smart\n\npeople all the time is very helpful because that can be a distillation of a of interesting things that are going on and you know certainly like to try to ask people like for the car like what are we doing wrong when they were coming sex will make better usually one time we all it's right you know like the chart I'm saying but what's wrong with it you're like working way better you know like how do we be less wrong right right yeah okay so it's like don't tell me the good stuff like that's cool but tell me about stuff that's very bored okay bad things okay okay so we we have a similar culture and air force acquisition talking to our operators about well that's great that you love it but tell us what don't you like right now so so this domain the space\n\ndomain this ecosystem that's represented today one of the challenges that it faces every day it would face every day even if the if the stem production system across the United States or across the free world was perfect is a strategic competition for talent are there techniques that as you grow from a small business to a large business they need to change in terms of how you reach out and find that talent in the ecosystem yeah first of all like the things that if you want to get great engineering talent then you it work itself has to be exciting the best engineers want to work on the most innovative things and then as you add goodies just the company they will in turn recruit other great engineers and talents of all kinds so it is very important that\n\nit be that the thing they're working on is intrinsically interesting and and and Joe it that it there's a high energy environment if the work is intrinsically interesting and interesting and the they're making progress then it just you just sort of attract more more green engineers when you stop doing really interesting things then they leave okay and that's that's the they're pretty pretty straightforward but you get what someone out make sure you but a recruiting function that is that is very good and that if if somebody great wants to join the company that they actually get an interview this is actually one of my big wise is I came from a coma teller was alive today in any way if not we're doing something wrong and like I'm not totally sure get it\n\nyou know so if maybe not get it early we should fix that and and make sure we're not like barring the doors from talent yeah or they were we're looking at the right thing so general look for things that are like evidence of exceptional ability I on capsule me graduate from college or high school or whatever what evidence is exceptional ability you just give you three bullet points evidence an exceptional ability from college is not as okay yeah but you know the debate vote some really impressive device and some tough really tough competition come up with some great ideas so some really tough probably you know it's like what they do that just was like clear evidence of exceptional ability it's not necessarily a 4.\n\n0 GPA that's right that's concerning to be a contract occator yeah sometimes okay well right clear evidence of exceptional ability otherwise I like that a lot okay so Ilana I want to give you the the last minute or so for you know for Elon to be Elon right okay so you have which this is an Air Force Space pitch day you have in the audience small businesses developing new and innovative capabilities for the space domain you have Air Force Space Command operators Air Force space acquisition folks you have congressional staffers you have some Media you've got experts in the valley in the audience what is the one thing or two things that you want to tell them all about air force space pitch day and how it is to be successfully growing a small business to\n\na large business okay well I mean if I got I don't think that's like it's intrinsically good to grow a small business to logicals and sometimes the sport business should be a small business sometimes businesses shouldn't exist and micro companies as a group of people I collected together for a purpose which is to create a compelling product or service if that product or service is not compelling that competition exists but that's louvers who forget to it it's it's it's the point is to create a great product or service and then if you're just one person that it's hard to do that more than one person so it's not about growing a business for the sake of growing a business you have to say like what what is this important problem that you're trying to solve\n\nthat really matters and then go try to solve that it with respect to space I think there's really just one problem one problem primarily which is the fully and rapidly reusable rocket over rocket this is the this is the Holy Grail you know it's basics we've made some progress in this direction with the reasonable straw and the fair but it's it's absolutely profound to have a reusable rocket as would be to have it as list as is to have reusable transport Norrell domains their bicycles aircraft cars forces are already usable so and you know if you look at the cost comparison something like a plot plot is pc-12 a single-engine turboprop has a payload of about one time and costs five million dollars a 747 has a payload of over a hundred tongues and you can\n\nlease it for a flight from services go to Sydney and back for half a million dollars so that that is a thousand full difference in cost and cost a ton of transport and actually that flatus can't reach Australia so we didn't get there so what I say is a small a giant reusable craft it costs a small the sensories if you just need to repeal something is that quite easier so you know what when I say like looks like a lot of rockets start absolutely and I think this is one thing that is Aubree's body that's it you know crosstalk shook program which is parsley pretty ambitious that the cost of fuel and oxygen and it's a partisan depressurizes Disney's million which is very is about $900,000 light so thing is going to usable $900,000 before something with tons\n\nto at least a hundred tons probably of time and you should consider our operation costly the opportunity Camargo consequent so but it was much less than even a tiny rocket and so it's the thing is the thing that history made but this is slowly is go rock and still be useful just a smaller buckets like there are only 720 silence there are prophecies you know they're popular sizes they're all reusable and if you stopping that a car company what would wear a single-use a car company yes who would say well that's pretty funny and you know though the plus side is that you need to take off with your landing gear and and you run until your tanks are dry see of extra range plate and then you drop the COG out with a parachute and the plane crashes and that's that's\n\nthat's how Rockets work it was crazy well I'm on on behalf of secretary barracks dr.\n\nRoper and myself and the entire Air Force acquisition team thank you for joining us here today everybody Elon Musk","textByLang":{"en":"we would like to invite general Thompson and Elon Musk to the stage all right well good morning everybody we got about 30 minutes with Elon here I love the soundtrack that we're listening to you throughout the day we've got the theme or the soundtrack to the Martian the soundtrack dinner cellar even the soundtrack to the stranger things so hopefully that has lightened the mood a little and hopefully you all had the opportunity to enjoy the expo some of the public pitches and some of the panel sessions that have occurred throughout the day our guest today needs no introduction in the forbes innovation list for 2019 he was code number one on that list with mr.\n\nJeff Bezos and if you care to comment on that later you'll have the opportunity but I will remain silent on that he's obviously the founder of a few companies you may all be familiar with like Tesla Motors and SpaceX he's also spent time on the board of a non-profit open AI and sponsored innovative competitions like the Hyperloop initiative Ron thank you so much for being with us today so we'll just dive right in unless anybody has any objections to that I just have some questions we're going to be talking about primarily innovation but interspersed amongst some of our questions on innovation would be some questions on leadership some questions on culture and especially in the small business growing to a large business kind of environment and then I myself\n\nnever got these questions until five years ago but I may throw you a couple work-life balance questions quality of life questions so without further ado Ilan a critical question that all businesses face when tackling challenges during product development is do we invest the time and the resources to do this work internally or do we contract it out and have an external partner do it with us can you talk to the audience a little bit about what kind of decision process you go through whether you're deciding to do it in one of your companies or contract it out to somebody else well in the beginning we try to contract those things out but at Tesla and SpaceX we start with with most things contracted out what didn't succeed so we [Music] in space supply chain\n\nis not great ital restricts you to really working with us companies which very difficult work with non-us companies via space rockets or awareness technology so we have a limited set of suppliers and typically that you have legacy parts you inherit the legacy costs and limitations and so that required us to insource most of the rocket this probably only what less than 10% of the rocket is coming from the space my chain at this point the automotive supply chain is better consumer electronics is a lot better whatever this love competition these fly chain is better so it really depends on the part but it's important that lazy components lacing cost limitations if you won't have something revolutionary you can't do catalog engineering yeah catalog engineering\n\nis so the legacy industrial base isn't able to adapt fast enough to Wired what you're trying to do so you in source it are there any special techniques or cultural aspects of that in sourcing that you find we found to be particularly beneficial in Tesla or SpaceX well it wasn't just like if you want to advance technology you've got a recruit the world's best engineers and then create environment which enables them to his innovative as possible so the reward structure you know you need to really reward and encourage innovation and punish lack of innovation so it's got oboz this is the second characteristic [Music] risk reward asymmetry bold moves are if they go wrong punished and but sort of keeping your head down is is not punished but that's not good\n\nthat will result in conservative so it has to be significant advancement and simply the lack of doing something significant feels bad so yeah this is just become really conservative over time and really the government is a company in the limit so company yeah so we have some big companies in the audience but we have a lot of small businesses in the audience so not part of if you will the legacy supply chain for rockets or whatever other innovation you were a company that you're associated with might be producing is there some advice or counsel that you could give to so many small businesses about how to market to growing space partnerships like SpaceX or other companies that might be willing to admit them to the supply chain if they don't have that old\n\nthink or that old process mentality well basics for Tesla I mean if somebody's got a component that's better than what we're making totally love to buy back for sure just reallocate the resources that were working on that component to do something else so I put you up on the landing legs and they were contracted out to Racing racing cars you did a good job today better than us so we working on things so this is by no means like it would be completely insane for us to want to continue to make it part ourselves internally there's a virtual 5 that is available externally that matters so we'd love to do it better than SpaceX then they'd like to talk to you ok Elon given your extensive experience in the nonprofit arena with companies like open AI that I mentioned\n\nin the introduction and your ability to tap into the academic environment that cutting edge innovation in our environment with things like the Hyperloop competition are there smart ways for the folks in the audience this community of space professionals to be engaging with different sources of innovation in the ecosystem how do we better cultivate those sources of innovation so that we can take advantage of them in our nation's space capabilities well yeah in overnight I wouldn't sound like an expert in nonprofits but opening I was really intended to mitigate the risk of artificial general intelligence I hope that it I hope that that's where it does the song chance of me amplified the risk but hopefully it reduces risk now I have foundation that gives\n\naway the ONC an expert on this mostly trying to do is figure out the set of actions that increase the probability of the future is good and take elections okay that's great really okay so is there are there techniques that you personally use to identify sources of information I mean is it is it just reading or seeing what's out there they have the continuous market research going on in your companies or in your private life about what's out there that I should be sponsoring or taking advantage of to make things better than we are I do I do zero market research whatsoever okay just like Carl great rocket you know it's like okay like where's the Platonic idea we've seen the perfect Rockets or car what characteristics would have and then make that and then\n\nto I find that if you do that people buy it okay and it's that's and you know we're gonna come out with the pickup truck or the cool cyber truck I mean it looks like an almond person I'll carry over from you sure yeah it's like other people do too it's gonna look like a cable from movie set okay I look forward to seeing it at some point in the future try to make products that they think others would love they don't love themselves if you don't love the product you should not expect that others will okay great so from a leadership perspective obviously you started as a leader of a small business and grew a number of small businesses into large businesses so from your early days that at zip2 and PayPal leading very very small teams of developers sometimes\n\ndoing a lot of the development yourself hands-on today - today as you need very large companies like Tesla Motors and SpaceX has your leadership approach changed at all or is managing those small teams to try and keep that culture and your leadership style the same throughout well it definitely has to as companies get bigger Tesla's around 45,000 people and SpaceX is almost 7,000 people and you know when a company is little then your skill as is sort of that like an individual engineer can a very big difference one Cafe is large you have to kind of teach a lot of people to do it yet you have to you have to be a force multiplier as opposed to like if you have a little band like if you know if you like a dozen swordsmen or something into your day so it's\n\nokay right you can that's gonna make a difference in a little battle but not if it was 12,000 like you so you have to try to teach people on mass different approaches and just make sure that the right behavior what structure is in setting the right name is incredibly important economics 101 whatever you incent it is likely to happen in fact would be bizarre if it didn't so statistically speaking will definitely be what happens so the entire structure must be sensible and this sounds very obvious but in most organizations they want this means the structure isn't right mm-hmm okay so as businesses grow as your businesses have grown and it becomes less and less about the engineer talking to the program manager one-on-one in a very small team environment\n\nand it becomes conversations between different teams in your enterprise much larger groups of people there's in many organizations there's a tendency that seems will develop and if leaders have to manage those seems how or insist that their teams manage those seems how have you managed the seams and the large businesses that you manage currently in any given product you can see that mistake the organizational errors manifest themselves and the errors in the product so you can see like the you know and I see the scenario products it's like a top cover of the battery and we've got a bottom cover on the car okay that's we should only have one cover no need a box in the box but there's the bathroom team and the chat and the body of chances little and so they\n\nmade a cover you know see sort of flanges and joints and various things did not make sense or things are doubled up and we have subsystem optimization in system optimization so to counteract that which is not easy I actually it insist that teams step on each other's toes so if propulsion to the engine team has to go part way into the airplane and the airplane team has to go part way into the engine it's just but it's hot it's hot if you were to do that now and so essentially they have to basically offend other people in the company and ended themselves ok this is very important to try to propagate is that everyone should be chief engineer like everyone everyone should have at least a inside cursory understanding of the whole rocket the whole car even\n\nthough they may have deep expertise in one arena they make they built to tell if if they're optimizing from for the product as a whole so I finally you can summarize the key characteristics of they have each discipline you can simplify it down to a few principles there's like you're Richard Hyndman needs to say that really know your subject if you can explain it to a smart ten-year-old but if you try to sort of disguise or expertise obscure language then rockets coming back from orbits you have like Sara pressure and center of mass and it sounds very complicated but basically you just have a seesaw of approximately equal dance [Music] it's it's just gonna be if you put mass on one side it's gonna tip that one foot outside and took the other way and just\n\nlike you see so then like we'll see the mass distribution even make sense what doesn't make sense well the flaps are too big on one side or the other plenty of other examples but I think principle is that everyone should kind of have a broader understanding of the particles and that's that's right so other than so other than the culture of broad understanding amongst your teams and the culture of don't worry too much about offending people on other team is to make those difficult kind of discussions to you know not travel risk downstream and identify issues early are there other aspects especially in growing your small businesses into large businesses that have been really important from a culture perspective for either you and your leadership team or\n\nfor your entire workforce I can't say I'm like I'm like good but I'm not sure if it really view myself is so great great expert on your show tonight I will go you know we're doing okay but let's see some just seems like a lot of mistakes was born I can say so you know I try to use the tools of physics as much as possible you know when I was growing up I was actually thinking of a career in physics I'd like the Clyde or something like that and I don't think I've been a best photographer well coming from coming from a culture that values leadership my position is that you don't achieve results and certainly when we have achieved results unless you have that kind of leadership skill yeah mon-sol so don't sell yourself short is what I'm saying [Music] all\n\nright so with that is like you should always assume that you're yourself and your goal is to be less wrong this is very one frame of mind people tend to assume that their rights and there was proof that they're right you're definitely wrong some degree the question is how long and can you be less wrong tomorrow okay so instead of leadership lessons from Abraham Lincoln or somebody else leadership lessons from the world of physics yes the thought constructs of physics can be applied broadly this is the right they're amazing they got all these counterintuitive things like quantum mechanics and general relativity so these these great tools okay all right we'll have a textbook sale later after our session or for those right now just hit Khan Academy up lots\n\nof good stuff on there on physics okay so Elon let's move on a little bit to work-life balance do you have a deliberate approach to how you balance your work and the rest of your life or do you just kind of have a sense of hey I am focusing way too much on work right now I need a break or I need to go do something different well I think I might but that point of view is what I select decision there in my case I actually might get the most amount done possible but if you don't take some breaks then you're sort of not being get done is less [Music] the reason I take breaks in order to get more done basically was what everyone's decision but - actions to a storage inspire - weekend errand as it was lasting they had a vacation region to work for a week and\n\nI was like well like two thousand or two thousand hospital so maybe I should take another break you know yeah but I think it's probably I would not recommend running to companies this is this does not make for the most fun understand I understand yeah I understand so about a year ago you and I had a conversation on a Saturday morning and what the thing that I remember from the Saturday morning telephone conversation was we spent about the first 15 or 20 minutes talking about the workouts that we had just had on that Saturday morning would you care to tell the audience a little bit about how you stay in shape I don't think I'm a good vice chair to be honest but the mentally in shape question is next okay listen why don't become in superbe shape but but\n\nI this is just like it looked rights and run on a treadmill and that's like the one time that I really watched television was like running for 15 to 20 minutes on a trailer I read that said okay watching on television when you're running I just wish watching Space Jam quest for a Space Jam soundtrack later this afternoon okay gotcha gotcha how about I know you're a huge reader but from a a lifelong learning perspective constantly trying to add to your toolkit so that you're you know a better leader a better CEO are there recommendations that you have for the audience about those kinds of things that you to keep yourself mentally sharp well I really like these days and I used to when I was a kid I was read all the time I mean mostly subscribed to scientific\n\nperiodicals like you know they're like the the Daily News I find a lot of noise and just very negative so I generally try to not read the daily news a little that much because they're jelly newspapers try to seem to be trying to answer the question what is the worst thing that happened on earth today [Laughter] something terrible happened every single day guarantee was a big big plant also something great happened but don't answer that question so that's the daily news just tends to make my little robot like scientists science and tech technology periodicals are good quite interesting and usually you know that if there's something something discovering the it'll be in there so and I find Twitter enlightening Italians yeah but there and talking to smart\n\npeople all the time is very helpful because that can be a distillation of a of interesting things that are going on and you know certainly like to try to ask people like for the car like what are we doing wrong when they were coming sex will make better usually one time we all it's right you know like the chart I'm saying but what's wrong with it you're like working way better you know like how do we be less wrong right right yeah okay so it's like don't tell me the good stuff like that's cool but tell me about stuff that's very bored okay bad things okay okay so we we have a similar culture and air force acquisition talking to our operators about well that's great that you love it but tell us what don't you like right now so so this domain the space\n\ndomain this ecosystem that's represented today one of the challenges that it faces every day it would face every day even if the if the stem production system across the United States or across the free world was perfect is a strategic competition for talent are there techniques that as you grow from a small business to a large business they need to change in terms of how you reach out and find that talent in the ecosystem yeah first of all like the things that if you want to get great engineering talent then you it work itself has to be exciting the best engineers want to work on the most innovative things and then as you add goodies just the company they will in turn recruit other great engineers and talents of all kinds so it is very important that\n\nit be that the thing they're working on is intrinsically interesting and and and Joe it that it there's a high energy environment if the work is intrinsically interesting and interesting and the they're making progress then it just you just sort of attract more more green engineers when you stop doing really interesting things then they leave okay and that's that's the they're pretty pretty straightforward but you get what someone out make sure you but a recruiting function that is that is very good and that if if somebody great wants to join the company that they actually get an interview this is actually one of my big wise is I came from a coma teller was alive today in any way if not we're doing something wrong and like I'm not totally sure get it\n\nyou know so if maybe not get it early we should fix that and and make sure we're not like barring the doors from talent yeah or they were we're looking at the right thing so general look for things that are like evidence of exceptional ability I on capsule me graduate from college or high school or whatever what evidence is exceptional ability you just give you three bullet points evidence an exceptional ability from college is not as okay yeah but you know the debate vote some really impressive device and some tough really tough competition come up with some great ideas so some really tough probably you know it's like what they do that just was like clear evidence of exceptional ability it's not necessarily a 4.\n\n0 GPA that's right that's concerning to be a contract occator yeah sometimes okay well right clear evidence of exceptional ability otherwise I like that a lot okay so Ilana I want to give you the the last minute or so for you know for Elon to be Elon right okay so you have which this is an Air Force Space pitch day you have in the audience small businesses developing new and innovative capabilities for the space domain you have Air Force Space Command operators Air Force space acquisition folks you have congressional staffers you have some Media you've got experts in the valley in the audience what is the one thing or two things that you want to tell them all about air force space pitch day and how it is to be successfully growing a small business to\n\na large business okay well I mean if I got I don't think that's like it's intrinsically good to grow a small business to logicals and sometimes the sport business should be a small business sometimes businesses shouldn't exist and micro companies as a group of people I collected together for a purpose which is to create a compelling product or service if that product or service is not compelling that competition exists but that's louvers who forget to it it's it's it's the point is to create a great product or service and then if you're just one person that it's hard to do that more than one person so it's not about growing a business for the sake of growing a business you have to say like what what is this important problem that you're trying to solve\n\nthat really matters and then go try to solve that it with respect to space I think there's really just one problem one problem primarily which is the fully and rapidly reusable rocket over rocket this is the this is the Holy Grail you know it's basics we've made some progress in this direction with the reasonable straw and the fair but it's it's absolutely profound to have a reusable rocket as would be to have it as list as is to have reusable transport Norrell domains their bicycles aircraft cars forces are already usable so and you know if you look at the cost comparison something like a plot plot is pc-12 a single-engine turboprop has a payload of about one time and costs five million dollars a 747 has a payload of over a hundred tongues and you can\n\nlease it for a flight from services go to Sydney and back for half a million dollars so that that is a thousand full difference in cost and cost a ton of transport and actually that flatus can't reach Australia so we didn't get there so what I say is a small a giant reusable craft it costs a small the sensories if you just need to repeal something is that quite easier so you know what when I say like looks like a lot of rockets start absolutely and I think this is one thing that is Aubree's body that's it you know crosstalk shook program which is parsley pretty ambitious that the cost of fuel and oxygen and it's a partisan depressurizes Disney's million which is very is about $900,000 light so thing is going to usable $900,000 before something with tons\n\nto at least a hundred tons probably of time and you should consider our operation costly the opportunity Camargo consequent so but it was much less than even a tiny rocket and so it's the thing is the thing that history made but this is slowly is go rock and still be useful just a smaller buckets like there are only 720 silence there are prophecies you know they're popular sizes they're all reusable and if you stopping that a car company what would wear a single-use a car company yes who would say well that's pretty funny and you know though the plus side is that you need to take off with your landing gear and and you run until your tanks are dry see of extra range plate and then you drop the COG out with a parachute and the plane crashes and that's that's\n\nthat's how Rockets work it was crazy well I'm on on behalf of secretary barracks dr.\n\nRoper and myself and the entire Air Force acquisition team thank you for joining us here today everybody Elon Musk"},"languages":["en"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lS3nIyetS4I"},{"id":"a-conversation-about-starship-2019-10-01","type":"interview","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cIQ36Kt7UVg","title":"A Conversation about Starship","titles":{"en":"A Conversation about Starship","de":"A Conversation about Starship","fr":"A Conversation about Starship"},"date":"2019-10-01","summary":"Tim Dodd interviews Musk one-on-one at Boca Chica about Starship's design, Raptor engines and Mars plans.","text":"Hi, it's me Tim Dodd, the Everyday Astronaut. Last night, Elon Musk updated the world on SpaceX's Starship development. Let me tell ya, the event was amazing. We learned a lot of really cool details. But, I'm still a little baffled by the pace of this program, it's unheard of. If only there was someone that could answer a few more of my questions about this program and about Starship.\n\nThat's a nice shirt.\n\nHow's it going? Thank-you, you know full flow staged conduction not a bad idea Mind mic-ing yourself up there? [Tim Voiceover] After Elon complimented my shirt, we mic-ed him up and let the cameras roll. Now, for those of you new to my channel, we're gonna get into some fairly in-depth rocket science and if it's over your head don't worry.\n\nStick around my channel, and I promise I'll make sense of all the stuff we talk about, like full flow staged combustion cycle and aerospike engines. There were parts of this interview that I wasn't really planning to release at first but, actually think the best thing I can do is just show you the entire thing, un-cut, from a single camera, so you can feel like you're right there with us.\n\nYeah, first off, thank-you so much for, you know, talking to me, I mean, we're underneath your beautiful beast.\n\nYeah it's crazy, can you believe this is even here?\n\nI was here a month ago, literally standing right here, well not, just over the fence, and you know you got a tube and a pointy tube, and now you've got this! I mean, how do you, how do you do that? Is it just sheer will? Is everyone that driven about the goal?\n\nI don't, I think I've learned a lot of lessons about how to make things go fast. And then I've... propagated those lessons to the SpaceX team and there's just like an incredibly talented, hard working team at SpaceX, in fact at times I think, maybe there's too many talented people at SpaceX. We have like... you know, too many talented people, that we're cornering the market, or something.\n\nYou know, but there's like this very talented group that works super hard and... The, and just have taking the general approach of, if a design is taking too long, the design is wrong and therefore, the design must be modified to accelerate progress. And one of the most fundamental errors made in advanced developments is to stick to a design even when it is very complicated, and to not strive to delete parts and processes.\n\nIt's incredibly important. So, this is why the switch to steel was because the advanced carbon fiber was taking too long.\n\nRight, right, well and you're not, you're definitely not a sunk cost fallacist, you're like Mister, \"This is clearly the new path forward, let's hop on it\"\n\nYeah, is it in the future or not? If it's not in the future, who cares?\n\nYeah, yeah, and you did that, I mean look at last year, DearMoon, you guys were kind of in that like, awkward stage of probably figuring this out right here. You know, you had the carbon fiber mandrel...\n\nI think we didn't even have the steel, I think we were still on the path, when was the DearMoon thing?\n\nAlmost exactly a year ago.\n\nThat was before the change to steel.\n\nYeah, you guys, I mean you showed the carbon mandrel and everything and you're, you know, excited about that, but then all of the sudden we see you switch- - I canceled the carbon fiber design in October last year.\n\nYeah, so just after that.\n\nYeah...\n\nYou know, what people don't understand is that you're the lead engineer, you're literally sit- - Literally, this is, I was actually at dinner with some, with a friend and he was like, \"Well, who's the chief engineer at SpaceX?\" Oh I go, \"It's me\", \"No, no\" he's like, \"It's not you, who is it?\"\n\n, like okay it's either someone with a very low ego, or, I don't know, you know, but, you know that said, you know the, like, you know what I actually used to tell the team, I was like, \"Everyone is a chief engineer\", this is extremely important, and that everyone must understand how, the, broadly speaking, all the systems in the vehicle work.\n\nAnd so that, so you don't have self-system optimization, cause this is naturally what happens, you can see the organizational errors, The product errors reflect the organizational errors. So like essentially, you'll see that there's an interface at this particular, like, whatever departments you've got, that will be where your interfaces are.\n\nRight.\n\nInstead of like, getting rid of something, or questioning the constraints, the one department will design to the constraints that the other department has given them without calling into question those constraints and saying, \"Those constraints are wrong\", and you should actually take the approach that the constraints that you are given are guaranteed to be some degree wrong, guaranteed to be some degree wrong, because the counterpoint would be that they are perfect.\n\nRight, which is never.\n\nAs you were saying like, what's the probability that this is a platonic ideal of a perfect part? Zero, okay, basically, so, question your constraints. It does not matter if the person handing you those constraints won a Nobel Prize, they are, even our own standards are wrong some of the time. So, question your constraints, this is extremely important, and, another thing that like, if you say like, \"What are the mistakes that smart engineers make?\", like, one of the most, one of the biggest traps for smart engineers is optimizing a thing that shouldn't exist.\n\nYeah, so they'll just sit there and spin on that thing that's just like, \"Why do we even have this is the first place?\"\n\nAbsolutely, so, When you go through college, and you're like, studying physics or engineering, I studied physics, the, you have to answer the question that the professor gives you, you don't get to say, \"This is the wrong question\".\n\nRight, right, right, yeah.\n\nBut, in reality, we have far more degrees, when you're in reality, you have all the degrees of freedom of reality, and so the first thing you should say is, \"This question is wrong\".\n\nYeah, and that's what you said last year, I mean, you kinda said like, \"It took us a long time to frame the question even, because we didn't necessarily know what it was\".\n\nIt took ages to frame the question, I mean, it's just like The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams, best philosopher ever, maybe, I think, best book in philosophy ever, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, but his book is so deep, people don't even understand. But like, in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, the Earth is a giant computer, and the Earth, it comes up with the answer- 42.\n\nRight, yep.\n\nAnd, to the question, so what's life, the answer to life, the universe and everything? The answer's 42, and they're like, \"What the hell, that doesn't make any sense\". The really, the hard part is the question, the answer is the easy part, you need a much more powerful computer to tell you what the question is, and this is true, at the point in which you can properly frame the question, the answer is comparatively easy.\n\nRight, right. I have one more question for you, I'm working on a video about aerospikes, it's gonna be about an hour long video on aerospikes and, you know, they're like the rotary engine of rocket, you know, rockets, like the rotary was, it's been advantageous in some ways, you know, like your- - Yeah, aerospikes, man, I tell you - They're cool but, what's the biggest, what's your biggest beef on them? 'Cause I'm trying to get as much insight on like, why do you think they, you know, aren't used, and obviously, I assume, you're not ever going to an aerospike for a lot of reasons...\n\nYou know, I've internally asked this question so many times, like, \"Guys, don't we, shouldn't we maybe do an aerospike?\", the... The challenge, so... And you're going to explain to the audience what an aerospike is?\n\nOh yeah, you're gonna be like the end of this thing, I've already set it all up, yeah yeah.\n\nOtherwise you know, \"What the hell are you talking about?\" you know?\n\nYou gotta get your combustion efficiency, so, you know like, there's really two parts to, like, when you have a rocket engine, what're you trying to do? You're trying to shoot things out, as fast as possible, in a straight line.\n\nYes, yep, converting as much thermal and pressure into kinetic energy.\n\nYes, exactly, so you have your combustion efficiency, and so what percentage of max theoretical combustion efficiency are you, and then what's your nozzle efficiency, which is really you know, are you straightening the flow, and shooting the molecules out in a straight line, so that you go in the other direction, Newton's Third Law.\n\nYep.\n\nWith a traditional combustion chamber, you can get to a very high combustion efficiency, cause the molecules are all sort of bouncing around in there, they've got a time to combine and do their thing, and then when you sort of choke it through the throat, you know, it, that gives them sort of more opportunity to combine, so you can Like, we think we can probably get to 90, certainly 98.\n\n5, hopefully 99 percent of theoretical combustion efficiency. This is so if, God himself came and knitted together the molecules, you're one percent better, okay maybe one and a half percent better, that's so, that's very high efficiency.\n\nBecause of full flow staged combustion.\n\nFull flow staged combustion, exactly, you've got a gas-gas interaction, so you've got two hot gases combining - Yeah.\n\nAnd with a relatively simply reaction, the only thing that would be simpler would be hydrogen. But you've got CH4 and O2, that's pretty simple, you don't have any long chain hydrocarbons, you know, with kerosene you've got the long chains, they've gotta break down, they've gotta recombine, it's a total soup, you know. Yeah, it's a part like dinner situation.\n\nIt's very hard to get high combustion efficiency with kerosene, so when you look at the, say like, \"What's the theoretical value of, say a Lox kerosene engine, as compared to a methane engine?\" The kerosene actually looks more compelling than it really is because you can't achieve the high combustion efficiency with kerosene that you can with methane.\n\nSo, you actually want to say, \"What is the actual achievable combustion efficiency times the theoretical chemical energy?\" , that's the real number, and this is where methane starts to look really good.\n\nYeah, yeah.\n\nIt's like, very hard to get to like 96 percent combustion efficiency, or even 95 percent combustion efficiency with kerosene, but with methane you can get 98 easy, 99 with a little bit of difficulty.\n\nAnd, so you don't think, you're just telling me now, spoiler alert, you're probably never gonna see a full flow staged combustion cycle aerospike engine produced by SpaceX?\n\nYou know, if somebody can show that we're wrong, that would be great. If somebody can explain, \"Wow, you've got a, there is a way to make your design better\", this is a gift.\n\nRight, right, right.\n\n\"Thank you for this great gift, wow, this is awesome\". It's definitely like, the worst thing would be like, \"We wanted to do this dumb design, and stick with our dumb design\", that would be insane.\n\nRight.\n\nI would love it if somebody could show how an aerospike is the smart move, in which case, we'll just do an aerospike.\n\nYeah, then just do an aerospike; there's a reason they haven't been used. (chuckles) Period.\n\nBut maybe, that reason is not valid, you know? 'Cause there's also, there hasn't been a methane orbital engine.\n\nRight? Or a flying full flow staged combustion, yeah.\n\nSo, there's been neither a full flow staged combustion engine that's seen flight, nor has there been a methane engine that's seen flight, certainly in a rocket scenario, I think there may have been some like, little test things or whatever, but no actual rockets. So, but I'm very confident that CH4 is the right fuel. Maybe aerospike is, is right, even though it's not been done before, but you just have to show that your combustion efficiency is not affected, and that you're, and that you're straightening the flow sufficiently.\n\nTo get your expansion ratio - Yeah - Yep, awesome.\n\nAlso, if you've got a two-stage rocket, like I think like, this is the other thing like, you've got two-stage rockets where your boost stage is primarily in atmosphere, and your upper stage is primarily in vacuum, then you can specialize the, for a vacuum nozzle and a sea level nozzle, and then you're like, \"Why need the aerospike?\" It's only if you do want, if you want to try to do single stage, reusable, then that's when you start like having to reach for the aerospike.\n\nRight, yep, that's awesome. Aerospikes, with Elon Musk! Thank you so much.\n\nI would love it if somebody could show it like, \"Hey, you're missing the mark, you could do this different thing, and this would be a better move\", that would be, thank you, please.\n\nRight, yeah of course, absolutely. Hey ,thanks for your time again, see you soon, pleasure meeting you. (voices in background) Oh yeah, we might need to steal your mic, I mean, I don't know, I can bill you later. Thanks again for this - Absolutely.\n\nI have to say, I've been to IEC 2016, seeing, that was like, it was almost like awkward back then cause it was like, - \"You're insane\", and now it's like, \"Hey look, I'm not insane.\" (laughs) - Well, you know obviously I'm sane, but you know, I mean... (background chatter) Even when I am exposed to this all day, it's so like \"Holy Smith!\" you know, it's so mad, you know, to see it actually there, and I was up in the nose, and I mean I'm gonna post this later but...\n\nJack Buyer's photo, Beyer he got a photo of you like, I think like peeking out of it.\n\nWell, like this is the, when I was inside there - Oh, shoot, no way! Aw and those are the header tanks?\n\nYeah.\n\nAnd all the batteries got, what six...\n\nThey've got four Tesla 100 kilowatt hour batteries.\n\nYes!\n\nAnd we just like, basically welded it on to the header tanks.\n\nRight.\n\nOh we didn't even talk about that, you're doing model three motors basically, is that?\n\nYeah, for that, I mean, I don't love the, I think we should, we should just have electro-mechanically I think we are going to, probably with Mach three, move to a purely electro-mechanical actuators for the valves. Currently, it's electric motors powered, it's like Tesla motors and batteries that essentially pump hydraulic fluid into the accumulator and then the hydraulic piston moves the valve. But it would be simpler to just have the motors directly- - Just do it - Kind of worm drive the valve.\n\nThat's awesome.\n\nAnd also the way the header tanks are done right now is crazy, we shouldn't be carrying the header tanks like cargo, I mean, we want the header tanks to be integral to the tip, so seriously, like just take the tip, use the tip of the rocket as the half of the header tank, and essentially mirror the main tanks, but in small form, in the nose. So, just have two domes - Yeah.\n\nAnd have the oxygen and fuel in the tip of the rocket, not as, not carrying the tanks like cargo, but having the tanks- - Just integrated, right?\n\nYeah, just a mini version of the big tanks - Right, oh, and then you don't have an extra wall and everything too, it's just integrated into, yeah, yeah, yeah, gotcha.\n\nLike in the early days of rocketry, like V2 or whatever you know, like the fuel and oxygen tanks were carried like cargo in the aeroshell.\n\nOh really?\n\nYeah. In the early days of aircraft and rockets, the propellant tanks were carried like cargo - Right.\n\nnow modern rockets, modern rockets and airplanes, like the wing is just a fuel tank in, in wing shape.\n\nYeah, yeah, yeah.\n\nYeah, we should do the same for the header tanks.\n\nI love it, thanks again .\n\nThank you.\n\nThank you guys. (laughs) Sorry, I didn't mean to keep him so long I guess.\n\n[Man] Why're you looking at me? (laughs) - [Man] Was, was I rushing you out?\n\n(laughs) No, not at all.\n\n[Man] With everything at the end, \"Come on!\"\n\nI'm just trying to kick him outta here, you know? Wasting all my time tonight, just kidding. Uh, so that was awesome!\n\nActually, we've still got a lot more questions to get answered, and stick around 'cause I'll have a lot of content explaining some of the topics we talk about, and sorry about the whole like, thing on aerospikes, I wasn't planning to release all that 'cause that's for a video I've been working on, but whatever, I guess you get an aerospike video spoiler today, my bad.\n\nSorry in the interview I didn't really get much time to talk about like heat shields, or the super heavy booster, or what the interior of Starship might look like, but, maybe if we're lucky Elon will continue to update us on Twitter, or, Elon, you can always come talk to me any time about all the nerdy stuff you want, I love it, I think you did too.\n\nI owe the biggest thank you to my Patreon supporters, you guys have helped take this little passion and hobby, into a career, it wouldn't be a career without you guys, so thank you so much for your support. If you want access to more behind-the-scenes things and exclusive content and access, please consider becoming a Patreon at www. patreon. com/everydayastronaut Thank you guys.\n\nAnd if you want your own full flow staged combustion cycle shirt or other really cool, nerdy, aerospace stuff, I've got you covered, go over to www. everydayastronaut.\n\ncom/shop, and if you work in the aerospace industry, click on the link below in the description of the apparel that you want, click on that, you can get 25 percent off as my thank you to you for inspiring me to do what I do, I wouldn't be doing any of this stuff if you weren't doing crazy things to get humans off this planet, so thank you guys. It's www. everydayastronaut. com/shop.\n\nThanks everybody, that's gonna do it for me, I'm Tim Dodd, the Everyday Astronaut, bringing space down to Earth for everyday people. (upbeat music)","textByLang":{"en":"Hi, it's me Tim Dodd, the Everyday Astronaut. Last night, Elon Musk updated the world on SpaceX's Starship development. Let me tell ya, the event was amazing. We learned a lot of really cool details. But, I'm still a little baffled by the pace of this program, it's unheard of. If only there was someone that could answer a few more of my questions about this program and about Starship.\n\nThat's a nice shirt.\n\nHow's it going? Thank-you, you know full flow staged conduction not a bad idea Mind mic-ing yourself up there? [Tim Voiceover] After Elon complimented my shirt, we mic-ed him up and let the cameras roll. Now, for those of you new to my channel, we're gonna get into some fairly in-depth rocket science and if it's over your head don't worry.\n\nStick around my channel, and I promise I'll make sense of all the stuff we talk about, like full flow staged combustion cycle and aerospike engines. There were parts of this interview that I wasn't really planning to release at first but, actually think the best thing I can do is just show you the entire thing, un-cut, from a single camera, so you can feel like you're right there with us.\n\nYeah, first off, thank-you so much for, you know, talking to me, I mean, we're underneath your beautiful beast.\n\nYeah it's crazy, can you believe this is even here?\n\nI was here a month ago, literally standing right here, well not, just over the fence, and you know you got a tube and a pointy tube, and now you've got this! I mean, how do you, how do you do that? Is it just sheer will? Is everyone that driven about the goal?\n\nI don't, I think I've learned a lot of lessons about how to make things go fast. And then I've... propagated those lessons to the SpaceX team and there's just like an incredibly talented, hard working team at SpaceX, in fact at times I think, maybe there's too many talented people at SpaceX. We have like... you know, too many talented people, that we're cornering the market, or something.\n\nYou know, but there's like this very talented group that works super hard and... The, and just have taking the general approach of, if a design is taking too long, the design is wrong and therefore, the design must be modified to accelerate progress. And one of the most fundamental errors made in advanced developments is to stick to a design even when it is very complicated, and to not strive to delete parts and processes.\n\nIt's incredibly important. So, this is why the switch to steel was because the advanced carbon fiber was taking too long.\n\nRight, right, well and you're not, you're definitely not a sunk cost fallacist, you're like Mister, \"This is clearly the new path forward, let's hop on it\"\n\nYeah, is it in the future or not? If it's not in the future, who cares?\n\nYeah, yeah, and you did that, I mean look at last year, DearMoon, you guys were kind of in that like, awkward stage of probably figuring this out right here. You know, you had the carbon fiber mandrel...\n\nI think we didn't even have the steel, I think we were still on the path, when was the DearMoon thing?\n\nAlmost exactly a year ago.\n\nThat was before the change to steel.\n\nYeah, you guys, I mean you showed the carbon mandrel and everything and you're, you know, excited about that, but then all of the sudden we see you switch- - I canceled the carbon fiber design in October last year.\n\nYeah, so just after that.\n\nYeah...\n\nYou know, what people don't understand is that you're the lead engineer, you're literally sit- - Literally, this is, I was actually at dinner with some, with a friend and he was like, \"Well, who's the chief engineer at SpaceX?\" Oh I go, \"It's me\", \"No, no\" he's like, \"It's not you, who is it?\"\n\n, like okay it's either someone with a very low ego, or, I don't know, you know, but, you know that said, you know the, like, you know what I actually used to tell the team, I was like, \"Everyone is a chief engineer\", this is extremely important, and that everyone must understand how, the, broadly speaking, all the systems in the vehicle work.\n\nAnd so that, so you don't have self-system optimization, cause this is naturally what happens, you can see the organizational errors, The product errors reflect the organizational errors. So like essentially, you'll see that there's an interface at this particular, like, whatever departments you've got, that will be where your interfaces are.\n\nRight.\n\nInstead of like, getting rid of something, or questioning the constraints, the one department will design to the constraints that the other department has given them without calling into question those constraints and saying, \"Those constraints are wrong\", and you should actually take the approach that the constraints that you are given are guaranteed to be some degree wrong, guaranteed to be some degree wrong, because the counterpoint would be that they are perfect.\n\nRight, which is never.\n\nAs you were saying like, what's the probability that this is a platonic ideal of a perfect part? Zero, okay, basically, so, question your constraints. It does not matter if the person handing you those constraints won a Nobel Prize, they are, even our own standards are wrong some of the time. So, question your constraints, this is extremely important, and, another thing that like, if you say like, \"What are the mistakes that smart engineers make?\", like, one of the most, one of the biggest traps for smart engineers is optimizing a thing that shouldn't exist.\n\nYeah, so they'll just sit there and spin on that thing that's just like, \"Why do we even have this is the first place?\"\n\nAbsolutely, so, When you go through college, and you're like, studying physics or engineering, I studied physics, the, you have to answer the question that the professor gives you, you don't get to say, \"This is the wrong question\".\n\nRight, right, right, yeah.\n\nBut, in reality, we have far more degrees, when you're in reality, you have all the degrees of freedom of reality, and so the first thing you should say is, \"This question is wrong\".\n\nYeah, and that's what you said last year, I mean, you kinda said like, \"It took us a long time to frame the question even, because we didn't necessarily know what it was\".\n\nIt took ages to frame the question, I mean, it's just like The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams, best philosopher ever, maybe, I think, best book in philosophy ever, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, but his book is so deep, people don't even understand. But like, in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, the Earth is a giant computer, and the Earth, it comes up with the answer- 42.\n\nRight, yep.\n\nAnd, to the question, so what's life, the answer to life, the universe and everything? The answer's 42, and they're like, \"What the hell, that doesn't make any sense\". The really, the hard part is the question, the answer is the easy part, you need a much more powerful computer to tell you what the question is, and this is true, at the point in which you can properly frame the question, the answer is comparatively easy.\n\nRight, right. I have one more question for you, I'm working on a video about aerospikes, it's gonna be about an hour long video on aerospikes and, you know, they're like the rotary engine of rocket, you know, rockets, like the rotary was, it's been advantageous in some ways, you know, like your- - Yeah, aerospikes, man, I tell you - They're cool but, what's the biggest, what's your biggest beef on them? 'Cause I'm trying to get as much insight on like, why do you think they, you know, aren't used, and obviously, I assume, you're not ever going to an aerospike for a lot of reasons...\n\nYou know, I've internally asked this question so many times, like, \"Guys, don't we, shouldn't we maybe do an aerospike?\", the... The challenge, so... And you're going to explain to the audience what an aerospike is?\n\nOh yeah, you're gonna be like the end of this thing, I've already set it all up, yeah yeah.\n\nOtherwise you know, \"What the hell are you talking about?\" you know?\n\nYou gotta get your combustion efficiency, so, you know like, there's really two parts to, like, when you have a rocket engine, what're you trying to do? You're trying to shoot things out, as fast as possible, in a straight line.\n\nYes, yep, converting as much thermal and pressure into kinetic energy.\n\nYes, exactly, so you have your combustion efficiency, and so what percentage of max theoretical combustion efficiency are you, and then what's your nozzle efficiency, which is really you know, are you straightening the flow, and shooting the molecules out in a straight line, so that you go in the other direction, Newton's Third Law.\n\nYep.\n\nWith a traditional combustion chamber, you can get to a very high combustion efficiency, cause the molecules are all sort of bouncing around in there, they've got a time to combine and do their thing, and then when you sort of choke it through the throat, you know, it, that gives them sort of more opportunity to combine, so you can Like, we think we can probably get to 90, certainly 98.\n\n5, hopefully 99 percent of theoretical combustion efficiency. This is so if, God himself came and knitted together the molecules, you're one percent better, okay maybe one and a half percent better, that's so, that's very high efficiency.\n\nBecause of full flow staged combustion.\n\nFull flow staged combustion, exactly, you've got a gas-gas interaction, so you've got two hot gases combining - Yeah.\n\nAnd with a relatively simply reaction, the only thing that would be simpler would be hydrogen. But you've got CH4 and O2, that's pretty simple, you don't have any long chain hydrocarbons, you know, with kerosene you've got the long chains, they've gotta break down, they've gotta recombine, it's a total soup, you know. Yeah, it's a part like dinner situation.\n\nIt's very hard to get high combustion efficiency with kerosene, so when you look at the, say like, \"What's the theoretical value of, say a Lox kerosene engine, as compared to a methane engine?\" The kerosene actually looks more compelling than it really is because you can't achieve the high combustion efficiency with kerosene that you can with methane.\n\nSo, you actually want to say, \"What is the actual achievable combustion efficiency times the theoretical chemical energy?\" , that's the real number, and this is where methane starts to look really good.\n\nYeah, yeah.\n\nIt's like, very hard to get to like 96 percent combustion efficiency, or even 95 percent combustion efficiency with kerosene, but with methane you can get 98 easy, 99 with a little bit of difficulty.\n\nAnd, so you don't think, you're just telling me now, spoiler alert, you're probably never gonna see a full flow staged combustion cycle aerospike engine produced by SpaceX?\n\nYou know, if somebody can show that we're wrong, that would be great. If somebody can explain, \"Wow, you've got a, there is a way to make your design better\", this is a gift.\n\nRight, right, right.\n\n\"Thank you for this great gift, wow, this is awesome\". It's definitely like, the worst thing would be like, \"We wanted to do this dumb design, and stick with our dumb design\", that would be insane.\n\nRight.\n\nI would love it if somebody could show how an aerospike is the smart move, in which case, we'll just do an aerospike.\n\nYeah, then just do an aerospike; there's a reason they haven't been used. (chuckles) Period.\n\nBut maybe, that reason is not valid, you know? 'Cause there's also, there hasn't been a methane orbital engine.\n\nRight? Or a flying full flow staged combustion, yeah.\n\nSo, there's been neither a full flow staged combustion engine that's seen flight, nor has there been a methane engine that's seen flight, certainly in a rocket scenario, I think there may have been some like, little test things or whatever, but no actual rockets. So, but I'm very confident that CH4 is the right fuel. Maybe aerospike is, is right, even though it's not been done before, but you just have to show that your combustion efficiency is not affected, and that you're, and that you're straightening the flow sufficiently.\n\nTo get your expansion ratio - Yeah - Yep, awesome.\n\nAlso, if you've got a two-stage rocket, like I think like, this is the other thing like, you've got two-stage rockets where your boost stage is primarily in atmosphere, and your upper stage is primarily in vacuum, then you can specialize the, for a vacuum nozzle and a sea level nozzle, and then you're like, \"Why need the aerospike?\" It's only if you do want, if you want to try to do single stage, reusable, then that's when you start like having to reach for the aerospike.\n\nRight, yep, that's awesome. Aerospikes, with Elon Musk! Thank you so much.\n\nI would love it if somebody could show it like, \"Hey, you're missing the mark, you could do this different thing, and this would be a better move\", that would be, thank you, please.\n\nRight, yeah of course, absolutely. Hey ,thanks for your time again, see you soon, pleasure meeting you. (voices in background) Oh yeah, we might need to steal your mic, I mean, I don't know, I can bill you later. Thanks again for this - Absolutely.\n\nI have to say, I've been to IEC 2016, seeing, that was like, it was almost like awkward back then cause it was like, - \"You're insane\", and now it's like, \"Hey look, I'm not insane.\" (laughs) - Well, you know obviously I'm sane, but you know, I mean... (background chatter) Even when I am exposed to this all day, it's so like \"Holy Smith!\" you know, it's so mad, you know, to see it actually there, and I was up in the nose, and I mean I'm gonna post this later but...\n\nJack Buyer's photo, Beyer he got a photo of you like, I think like peeking out of it.\n\nWell, like this is the, when I was inside there - Oh, shoot, no way! Aw and those are the header tanks?\n\nYeah.\n\nAnd all the batteries got, what six...\n\nThey've got four Tesla 100 kilowatt hour batteries.\n\nYes!\n\nAnd we just like, basically welded it on to the header tanks.\n\nRight.\n\nOh we didn't even talk about that, you're doing model three motors basically, is that?\n\nYeah, for that, I mean, I don't love the, I think we should, we should just have electro-mechanically I think we are going to, probably with Mach three, move to a purely electro-mechanical actuators for the valves. Currently, it's electric motors powered, it's like Tesla motors and batteries that essentially pump hydraulic fluid into the accumulator and then the hydraulic piston moves the valve. But it would be simpler to just have the motors directly- - Just do it - Kind of worm drive the valve.\n\nThat's awesome.\n\nAnd also the way the header tanks are done right now is crazy, we shouldn't be carrying the header tanks like cargo, I mean, we want the header tanks to be integral to the tip, so seriously, like just take the tip, use the tip of the rocket as the half of the header tank, and essentially mirror the main tanks, but in small form, in the nose. So, just have two domes - Yeah.\n\nAnd have the oxygen and fuel in the tip of the rocket, not as, not carrying the tanks like cargo, but having the tanks- - Just integrated, right?\n\nYeah, just a mini version of the big tanks - Right, oh, and then you don't have an extra wall and everything too, it's just integrated into, yeah, yeah, yeah, gotcha.\n\nLike in the early days of rocketry, like V2 or whatever you know, like the fuel and oxygen tanks were carried like cargo in the aeroshell.\n\nOh really?\n\nYeah. In the early days of aircraft and rockets, the propellant tanks were carried like cargo - Right.\n\nnow modern rockets, modern rockets and airplanes, like the wing is just a fuel tank in, in wing shape.\n\nYeah, yeah, yeah.\n\nYeah, we should do the same for the header tanks.\n\nI love it, thanks again .\n\nThank you.\n\nThank you guys. (laughs) Sorry, I didn't mean to keep him so long I guess.\n\n[Man] Why're you looking at me? (laughs) - [Man] Was, was I rushing you out?\n\n(laughs) No, not at all.\n\n[Man] With everything at the end, \"Come on!\"\n\nI'm just trying to kick him outta here, you know? Wasting all my time tonight, just kidding. Uh, so that was awesome!\n\nActually, we've still got a lot more questions to get answered, and stick around 'cause I'll have a lot of content explaining some of the topics we talk about, and sorry about the whole like, thing on aerospikes, I wasn't planning to release all that 'cause that's for a video I've been working on, but whatever, I guess you get an aerospike video spoiler today, my bad.\n\nSorry in the interview I didn't really get much time to talk about like heat shields, or the super heavy booster, or what the interior of Starship might look like, but, maybe if we're lucky Elon will continue to update us on Twitter, or, Elon, you can always come talk to me any time about all the nerdy stuff you want, I love it, I think you did too.\n\nI owe the biggest thank you to my Patreon supporters, you guys have helped take this little passion and hobby, into a career, it wouldn't be a career without you guys, so thank you so much for your support. If you want access to more behind-the-scenes things and exclusive content and access, please consider becoming a Patreon at www. patreon. com/everydayastronaut Thank you guys.\n\nAnd if you want your own full flow staged combustion cycle shirt or other really cool, nerdy, aerospace stuff, I've got you covered, go over to www. everydayastronaut.\n\ncom/shop, and if you work in the aerospace industry, click on the link below in the description of the apparel that you want, click on that, you can get 25 percent off as my thank you to you for inspiring me to do what I do, I wouldn't be doing any of this stuff if you weren't doing crazy things to get humans off this planet, so thank you guys. It's www. everydayastronaut. com/shop.\n\nThanks everybody, that's gonna do it for me, I'm Tim Dodd, the Everyday Astronaut, bringing space down to Earth for everyday people. (upbeat music)"},"languages":["en"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cIQ36Kt7UVg"},{"id":"spacex-starship-update-2019","type":"video","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3N7L8Xhkzqo","title":"SpaceX Starship Update","titles":{"en":"SpaceX Starship Update","de":"SpaceX Starship Update","fr":"SpaceX Starship Update"},"date":"2019-09-28","summary":"In front of the assembled Starship Mk1 at Boca Chica, Elon Musk reviews SpaceX's history and presents the stainless-steel, fully reusable Starship.","text":"Elon Musk: (00:21) This is, I think, the most inspiring thing that I’ve ever seen. And I just like to thank the SpaceX team and the suppliers, and the people of Boca Chica and Brownsville. Thank you for your support. And, just like, wow, what an incredible job by such a great team to build this incredible vehicle. First of all I want to start with that. I mean, I’m just so proud to work with such a great team. And it’s really windy here, by the way. If you’re watching this online, it is really windy.\n\nSo, the point of this presentation and this event is really… there are two elements to it. One is to inspire the public, get people excited about our future in space, and get people fired up about the future. There are so many things to worry about, so many things to be concerned about. There are many troubles in the world, of course, and these are important, and we need to solve them. But we also need things that make us excited to be alive, that make us glad to wake up in the morning and be fired up about the future and think, yeah, the future is going to be great.\n\nThis space exploration is one of those things; and becoming a spacefaring civilization being out there among the stars. This is one of the things that I know it makes me glad to be alive; I think it makes many people glad to be alive. It’s one of the best things. We are faced with a choice: Which future do you want? Do you want the future where we become a spacefaring civilization and are in many worlds and are out there among the stars or one where we are forever confined to Earth? And I say it is the first and I hope you agree with me. (02:30)\n\nThe critical breakthrough that’s needed for us to become a spacefaring civilization is to make space travel like air travel. So, with air travel, when you fly a plane, you fly that plane many times. I mean, the risk of stating the obvious, it really almost any motor transport, whether it’s a plane or a car, a horse, a bicycle is reusable. You use that motor transport many times. If you had to get a new plane every time you flew somewhere and even get to have two planes for the return journey, very few people could afford to fly. Or if you could use a car only once, very few people could afford to drive a car. So, the critical breakthrough that’s necessary is a rapidly reusable orbital rocket. This is basically the Holy Grail of space. The fundamental thing that’s required.\n\nAnd it is a very hard thing to do. It’s only barely possible with the physics of Earth. I mean, if Earth’s gravity was a little heavier, it would be impossible. And if Earth’s gravity was a little lighter, it would be quite easy. So, we’re really right on the cusp of what is physically possible. So, in order to create a rapidly reusable rocket and fully reusable orbital rocket, you have to have engines that have incredibly high, specific impulse (Isp), that essentially are extremely efficient.\n\nYou need to have a structure that is also incredibly mass efficient. And then that all needs to come back to the launch pad and be able to be refilled with propellant and flown again very quickly, just like an aircraft. It’s just because of the physics of Earth being quite a deep gravity well and having quite a thick atmosphere; this is a very tough but not impossible thing. But it is the most fundamental thing. With SpaceX, we started out 17 years ago, and the first rocket we designed was the Falcon 1, which was that guy right there. (05:00)\n\nWhen we started off, we were very naive. And in fact, the reason I should say… it’s September 28th; this is the 11th anniversary of the first time SpaceX reached orbit. Eleven years ago today, SpaceX made orbit for the first time. It was actually our fourth launch. And if that launch had not succeeded, that would have been the end of SpaceX. I’d run out of money, there were no more investors, and that would have been it. So, if that fourth launch had not succeeded, that would have been curtains.\n\nBut fortunately, fate smiled on us that day, and we made it to orbit. I have great respect for anyone who makes it to orbit. That is a hard thing. We were very naive, obviously very naive on many levels back then, because we did actually try to recover the first stage. The first stage had a parachute on it, and we thought, okay, we’ll just pop the parachute when it comes back into the atmosphere. Then it’ll land somewhere in the ocean, and we’ll go fish it out of the ocean with a boat. This does not work. I actually remember getting mad at the parachute supplier, like, your parachute doesn’t work. Nah, it wasn’t their fault.\n\nWhen the rocket comes in from space, that first stage is coming in like, you know, Mach 10 to 12, and it hits the atmosphere like it’s a concrete wall and ‘boom’. So, you actually have to orient the rocket carefully. You have to have aerodynamic surfaces, and you have to do an entry burn to slow it down. Then you’ve got to guide it through the atmosphere and then do a propulsive landing. This took us many, many attempts.\n\nWe actually did a video, a blooper reel of all the times we failed, which was a lot. (07:30) I think it might have taken us like 14 attempts or something before we finally successfully landed the rocket. If we’ve gone to the next slide, you can take a look at… – This is Grasshopper, that’s actually Falcon 9. It’s hard to tell the scale, but that’s a Falcon 9 size booster with one engine and big legs with giant shock absorbers; we didn’t know what the heck we were doing.\n\nElon Musk (voice-over): Now amazingly, Grasshopper had zero blessures; Grasshopper is still alive.\n\nElon Musk: They have Falcon1; what you saw there was a Falcon 9 size vehicle. What’s really kind of hard to grasp at a visceral level is that this giant ship will do the same thing that Grasshopper did. This thing is going to take off, fly to 65,000 feet, about 20 kilometers, and come back and land in about one or two months. So that giant thing – it’s really going to be pretty epic to see that thing take off and come back. And then hopefully, yeah, …(applause) – Yeah, it’s wild.\n\nThis is a quite radical… I’ll talk about it later in the presentation; it’s, this is quite a new approach to controlling a rocket – much more akin to a skydiver than a plane. But I’ll talk about that later. (10:00) So, going from Falcon 1 to Falcon 9 to Falcon Heavy, which we launched… actually, the first launch of Falcon Heavy was only February of last year. So, it’s only been about a year and a half since the first Falcon Heavy launch when we did two side-by-side booster landings. And I always liked this video. It was done by my friend Jonah.\n\nYeah. I never thought that would happen, actually. (12:30) I’m glad that it did. Some people were like, wait, why do we have the Roadster with the astronaut, you know, Starman. Actually, this came from a discussion with my friend Jonah. I was at his kitchen, and I was like, you know, normally when they do a rocket launch, there’s a launch of a rock of concrete, but that doesn’t sound very inspiring. So, what do you think the most sort of fun thing is that we could launch? And he was like, well, why don’t you launch your Tesla? And I was like, that’s a great idea.\n\nAnd another friend of mine, she said: “Why don’t you put a tiny Tesla on the dashboard?” So we put a tiny Tesla on the dashboard with a tiny Starman in the tiny Tesla. This is just to confuse the aliens in the future. They’ll be like, what the heck is this? You know, just want something that captures the imagination, gets people excited about space.\n\nSo, let’s see Starship. You can really see it right there, obviously. There’s a picture, more a rendering. It’s about 50 meters, sort of 165 feet or so.\n\nActually, I notice we have an error in our ship dry mass here; my apologies. I wish it was 85 tons. This ship dry mass has to be approximately 120 tons. The initial Mach 1 prototype is closer to 200 tons, and in series production, I think it’ll probably be about 120 tons. If we get really lucky, it might get down to 110; 99 would be super epic. So, in terms of its usefulness, it’ll be able to do about 150 tons with full reusability to orbit and back.\n\nThis is a very big number for full reusability. The very initial versions, we’re confident will do over a 100 tons, but I think there’s a clear path to 150 tons. The cost of a fully reusable system is basically (15:00) the cost of the propellant, which is mostly oxygen. This is three and a half tons of oxygen for every one ton of fuel. So, one of the advantages of this architecture over the Falcon architecture is that we actually use more oxygen per unit of fuel rather than less. Merlin or the Falcon architecture is about two and a half tons of oxygen for every one ton of fuel. This is three and a half tons of oxygen for every one ton of fuel. So when it ascends, it’s really mostly liquid oxygen because when you get to vacuum, there’s no air, basically.\n\nSo, the next slide. Earlier I was talking about how Starship enters and how it’s controlled.\n\nIt’s quite different from anything else. It’s really falling, and so we’re doing a controlled fall. With a rocket you’re actually trying to break as opposed to… you’re trying to create drag instead of lift, it’s really the opposite of an aircraft. You want the most amount of drag that you can produce. And you want some lift, especially when you’re in the upper atmosphere, mostly so that you don’t…  you can control the maximum heating rate. You want enough lift to keep yourself high in the low-density portion of the atmosphere, so you can burn off velocity. Basically, it goes like, if this is the Earth, it goes at about a 60 degree.\n\nMy hand is the rocket – it’s going at about 60 degrees. So when in orbit, you’re actually going at around 25 times the speed of sound horizontal to the ground. This is a very important concept that is counterintuitive to our normal daily life. Being in orbit, being in zero G is not about altitude. It’s about velocity. How fast are you going – horizontally? When something’s in orbit, it’s zooming around the Earth so fast that the outward acceleration, outward radial acceleration, is equal to the inward acceleration of gravity. And then you have zero gravity. This is why you actually have zero gravity.\n\nPeople often think the Space Station is stationary, (17:30) but it’s actually going around the world at 25 times the speed of sound or about 17,000 miles an hour. It always looks stationary in the pictures. And since there’s no air, you don’t have to have an aerodynamic structure. So it can be a totally crazy structure that doesn’t look like it should be able to go 25 times the speed of sound, but it does. And you can only feel the acceleration. You can’t feel velocity. People sometimes wonder, what does it feel like to go 25 times the speed of sound? Actually, it feels like nothing. Only accelerating to there feels like something.\n\nSo, the Starship is coming in – this platform is the Earth – it’s coming in at hypersonic velocity like this, sort of around a 60-degree angle. So, it comes like this and then starts falling and then just falls like a skydiver, and it’s just controlling itself – and then it turns and lands like that. That’s an incredibly elaborate explanation. There you can get a sense for it. This is much better.\n\nThere you go. See, same thing. It’ll look totally nuts to see that thing land. Yeah, that’ll be crazy.\n\nSo let’s talk about the Raptor engine. The ship will have a total of six engines.\n\nThree of the sea-level variety of Raptor, and those are actually on the rocket right now. So, we have the three sea-level… in fact, that’s a picture of just inside – that’s what it looks like. So, we’ve got the three sea-level Raptor engines, and they gimbal, which means that the whole engine moves. So, the way the rocket steers is by moving the entire engine. Whereas an aircraft engine is static, and you move by moving the control surfaces, like the ailerons and rudder and elevator and flaps… – The rocket – when the engines are powered, you moved the entire engine to steer it. The Starship will have three sea-level engines that move up to about 15 degrees angle and three vacuum engines that are optimized for efficiency in orbit that will not move. They will be just fixed it in place.\n\nAnd that allows us to have the biggest bell nozzle (20:00) for the vacuum Raptor engines. Aspirationally, the target is a 380 second Isp for the vacuum engine. This is a very… – In sort of space geek terms, this is like really a great number. And even for the steel alloy engines to get over a 350 second Isp is also really great. So actually… – sorry, I’m looking at the slide here, and you’re not. So, that’s what I meant by ‘it looks like that on the inside’… – go back one slide. That’s the inside of the Starship right now.\n\nThat’s what it looks like in the base. All right. Then heat shield.\n\nI’ve gone through various iterations of heat shield. There’s a lot of ways to skin the cat here.\n\nUltimately, we decided to have heat shield hexagonal tiles, ceramic tiles, basically like a tiny glass vermicelli at a microstructure level. Very light, but very crack resistant – essentially glass tiles. And there, because Starship is a steel construction… – At first, it feels like, “Oh, it’s steel. Does that mean it’s heavy?” No, actually, it’s the lightest construction. I think the best design decision on this whole thing is 301 stainless steel. Because at cryogenic temperatures, a 301 stainless actually has about the same effective strength as an advanced composite or aluminum-lithium. Unlike most steals, which get brittle at low temperatures, 301 stainless gets much stronger.\n\nAnd if it’s in the extra hard condition, meaning it’s cold-rolled to extra hard condition, it also gets way stronger. Actually, its strength-to-weight ratio at cryogenic temperatures is equivalent, or even perhaps slightly better than advanced composites or aluminum-lithium. This is not well appreciated. (22:30) Because if you just look at the materials manual and say like, what is the strength of stainless steel? It looks much weaker than it is. If you say, what is the strength at cryogenic temperature? Oh, much stronger; at very low temperature, almost twice as strong. That’s when it becomes better than carbon fiber or aluminum-lithium.\n\nAnd this is another benefit: It also has a high melting temperature. So, for a reusable ship, you’re coming in like a meteor. You want something that does not melt at a low temperature. You want something that melts at a high temperature. And this is where steel is extremely good as well. Steel has a melting temperature around sort of 1500 degrees centigrade whereas aluminum, you know, maybe 300 or 400 degrees, and same thing for carbon fiber. And that’s really pushing it.\n\nHaving that much higher melting temperature means that you don’t need any shielding on the leeward side of the ship when it comes in for entry. And the shielding you need on the windward side – the hot side – is massively reduced because the thickness of the tile is actually for a reusable system – It’s dependent on what back shell temperature, like how hot does the back of the tile that interfaces with the airframe get. And because the steel can take a much higher temperature, your heat shield, even on the windward side, is much lighter. But the net effect is that a 301 stainless steel rocket is actually the lightest possible reusable architecture.\n\nThen, to come to cost. The carbon fiber we were using was $130 a ton. The steel is $2,500 a ton. Oh, sorry, $130,000 a ton versus $2,500 a ton. That makes much more sense. It’s $130,000 a ton for the carbon fiber and $2,500 a ton for the steel. So, the steel is about 2% of the cost of the carbon fiber. So, this is a good thing we changed from carbon fiber to steel, by far. (25:00) And it’s very easy to weld stainless steel, the evidence being that we welded it outdoors without a factory. Great skills by the team, but with carbon fiber, this is impossible; with aluminum-lithium, also impossible. But steel is easy to weld,  and it is resilient to the elements.\n\nAnd also, actually, (… 25:36), like on Mars, you can cut that up, you can weld it, you can modify it. No problem. Yeah. That’s a good point. You’re out there on the Moon or Mars; you want something that you can modify, that you can cut up and use for other things. That’s like for sure a great thing. So anyway, steel – obviously I’m in love with steel; I had to say it, you know. So, let’s see, going on to the booster.\n\nSo, the booster is designed to take up to 37 Raptor engines. I’m not sure if we’ll go that high, but you can really have 31. I think the minimum number you’d want is maybe around 24. But the booster is designed to be able to take multiple engines out, so you can actually add or subtract engines as you’d like. You basically just need a lot of force pushing up. Over time, I think you probably want around a 7,500 ton force rocket which is about twice the thrust of a Saturn V, a little more than twice the thrust, and on a roughly 5,000 ton gross liftoff mass for roughly one and a half thrust-to-weight.\n\nFor a reusable rocket, you actually want a high thrust-to-weight rather than with an expendable rocket, where you want a low thrust-to-weight, because any thrust-to-weight below one is not useful; like, if you have a less thrust than your weight, you don’t move. So, you actually want a high thrust-to-weight for a reusable rocket. This is a very important (27:30) design optimization change. So that’s why I think more engines are probably good and getting up to around 7,500 tons over time and a one and a half thrust-to-weight ratio, or more.\n\nWe think we’re probably going to adjust the grid fins designed to be kind of like a diamond shape. It looks cooler. It works better too. And then the rear fins are actually just legs. They’re not needed for stabilization or guidance. They’re essentially there for legs.\n\nAll right. So let’s go into some of the development testing. This is a Raptor firing.\n\nAll right. And then, obviously, we had a Raptor fire on the Starhopper. Yeah.\n\nIt’s kind of hard to see it to appreciate scale, but it’s the same diameter as the Starship. And obviously, it’s just right over there. So, it’s kind of hard to tell if it’s the size of a trashcan or, you know, how big it is, but it’s about… the body diameter is about 9 meters or 30 feet and not including the legs span. (30:00) Yeah. So, this gives you a sense of size.\n\nSo the little pixel there… little pixels are a human. And then there’s the Hopper next to it, the Millennium Falcon for comparison, then Starship, which is what you see before you. And then what it will look like with the full stack, which is almost two and a half times as tall as this vehicle. This simulation will give you a sense of the scale of things.\n\nElon Musk (voice-over): It slightly reminds me of a scene from Spaceballs.\n\nElon Musk (voice-over): This is the orbital refilling. Orbital refilling is extremely important for getting to Mars and getting to the Moon to establish a city on Moon or Mars. This is a vital step.\n\nA rapidly reusable orbital launcher rocket is… a rapidly reusable rocket is required for – alliteration – for getting a breakthrough in cost of access to space; that you don’t throw the rockets away every flight. But another key step is refilling on orbit so that Starship can get to orbit with, let’s say, 150 tons of payload for the Moon or Mars or beyond. And then it can get tanked up to fill up its propellant tanks and so that it can depart from low Earth orbit (35:00) with 1,200 tons of propellant. This is a very big thing so that your delta velocity is enough to transport about 150 tons to the surface of the Moon or Mars with full reusability and orbital refilling.\n\nThe orbital refilling is actually a simplified version of what SpaceX does in docking with the Space Station. So it’s actually harder to dock with the Space Station than it is to do orbital refilling, but in practicing docking with the Space Station, SpaceX has also learned how to rendezvous and dock in orbit in a complex environment. So this is one of the other critical pieces of the puzzle needed to establish a base on the Moon and Mars, a city, ultimately. And yeah, so those are the critical ingredients. So, we think it will be very exciting to have a base on the Moon.\n\nEven if it’s just a science base that… – for example, we have a base at Antarctica. Many countries have bases in Antarctica for science research, and this would be an incredible area for research. So whether or not people want to live on the Moon, there’s definitely a lot of science to be done. And I think it’s close as well. So, that would be quite exciting to do. And then, of course, we can go to other places in the solar system like Saturn. But the critical thing that we need to focus on, I think, is the fastest path to a self-sustaining city on Mars. This is the fundamental thing.\n\nAs far as we know, we are the only consciousness or the only life that’s out there. There might be other life, but we’ve seen no signs of it. And people often ask me, what do you know about the aliens and that, and I’m like, man, I tell you, I’m pretty sure I’d know if there were aliens. I have not seen any sign of aliens. And what if the military is hiding aliens in area 51 or something, you know; that’s a popular meme. (37:30) Well, let me tell you: the biggest, the fastest way to increase defense funding would be to bring up like, “Hey, we found an alien.” (…37:40) like, “Ah, there’s more money for defense, definitely”. Guaranteed, there (…37:46) would be like on display in two seconds. The reality is, as far as we know, this is the only place, at least in this part of the galaxy or in the Milky Way, where there is consciousness. And it’s taken a long time for us to get to this point.\n\nYou know, according to the geological records, Earth has been around for about four and a half billion years, although it was mostly molten magma for about half a billion years. So, but still, several billion years with at least bacterial life and multicellular life for several hundred million years. But here’s the interesting part. The sun is gradually getting hotter and bigger, and over time even in the absence of global warming – man-made stuff – the sun will expand, and it will overheat the Earth. My guess is probably… – On human timescales, this is a long time, but there are only several hundred million years left. That’s all, that’s all we got. Okay. Several hundred million years. But sort of from an evolutionary standpoint, basically, if it took an extra 10% longer for conscious life to evolve on Earth, it wouldn’t evolve at all because it would have been incinerated by the sun.\n\nWhat I’m saying is that it appears that consciousness is a very rare and precious thing, and we should take whatever steps we can to preserve the light of consciousness. The window has been opened only now – after four and a half billion years, is that window open. That’s a long time to wait, and it might not stay open for long. I’m pretty optimistic by nature, but there’s some chance, there’s some chance that window will not be open for long. I think we should become a multi-planet civilization while that window is open. And if we do, I think the probable outcome for Earth is even better because then Mars could help Earth one day. And so I think we should really do our very best to become a multi-planet species and to extend consciousness beyond Earth. And we should do it now. Thank you. (40:13)","textByLang":{"en":"Elon Musk: (00:21) This is, I think, the most inspiring thing that I’ve ever seen. And I just like to thank the SpaceX team and the suppliers, and the people of Boca Chica and Brownsville. Thank you for your support. And, just like, wow, what an incredible job by such a great team to build this incredible vehicle. First of all I want to start with that. I mean, I’m just so proud to work with such a great team. And it’s really windy here, by the way. If you’re watching this online, it is really windy.\n\nSo, the point of this presentation and this event is really… there are two elements to it. One is to inspire the public, get people excited about our future in space, and get people fired up about the future. There are so many things to worry about, so many things to be concerned about. There are many troubles in the world, of course, and these are important, and we need to solve them. But we also need things that make us excited to be alive, that make us glad to wake up in the morning and be fired up about the future and think, yeah, the future is going to be great.\n\nThis space exploration is one of those things; and becoming a spacefaring civilization being out there among the stars. This is one of the things that I know it makes me glad to be alive; I think it makes many people glad to be alive. It’s one of the best things. We are faced with a choice: Which future do you want? Do you want the future where we become a spacefaring civilization and are in many worlds and are out there among the stars or one where we are forever confined to Earth? And I say it is the first and I hope you agree with me. (02:30)\n\nThe critical breakthrough that’s needed for us to become a spacefaring civilization is to make space travel like air travel. So, with air travel, when you fly a plane, you fly that plane many times. I mean, the risk of stating the obvious, it really almost any motor transport, whether it’s a plane or a car, a horse, a bicycle is reusable. You use that motor transport many times. If you had to get a new plane every time you flew somewhere and even get to have two planes for the return journey, very few people could afford to fly. Or if you could use a car only once, very few people could afford to drive a car. So, the critical breakthrough that’s necessary is a rapidly reusable orbital rocket. This is basically the Holy Grail of space. The fundamental thing that’s required.\n\nAnd it is a very hard thing to do. It’s only barely possible with the physics of Earth. I mean, if Earth’s gravity was a little heavier, it would be impossible. And if Earth’s gravity was a little lighter, it would be quite easy. So, we’re really right on the cusp of what is physically possible. So, in order to create a rapidly reusable rocket and fully reusable orbital rocket, you have to have engines that have incredibly high, specific impulse (Isp), that essentially are extremely efficient.\n\nYou need to have a structure that is also incredibly mass efficient. And then that all needs to come back to the launch pad and be able to be refilled with propellant and flown again very quickly, just like an aircraft. It’s just because of the physics of Earth being quite a deep gravity well and having quite a thick atmosphere; this is a very tough but not impossible thing. But it is the most fundamental thing. With SpaceX, we started out 17 years ago, and the first rocket we designed was the Falcon 1, which was that guy right there. (05:00)\n\nWhen we started off, we were very naive. And in fact, the reason I should say… it’s September 28th; this is the 11th anniversary of the first time SpaceX reached orbit. Eleven years ago today, SpaceX made orbit for the first time. It was actually our fourth launch. And if that launch had not succeeded, that would have been the end of SpaceX. I’d run out of money, there were no more investors, and that would have been it. So, if that fourth launch had not succeeded, that would have been curtains.\n\nBut fortunately, fate smiled on us that day, and we made it to orbit. I have great respect for anyone who makes it to orbit. That is a hard thing. We were very naive, obviously very naive on many levels back then, because we did actually try to recover the first stage. The first stage had a parachute on it, and we thought, okay, we’ll just pop the parachute when it comes back into the atmosphere. Then it’ll land somewhere in the ocean, and we’ll go fish it out of the ocean with a boat. This does not work. I actually remember getting mad at the parachute supplier, like, your parachute doesn’t work. Nah, it wasn’t their fault.\n\nWhen the rocket comes in from space, that first stage is coming in like, you know, Mach 10 to 12, and it hits the atmosphere like it’s a concrete wall and ‘boom’. So, you actually have to orient the rocket carefully. You have to have aerodynamic surfaces, and you have to do an entry burn to slow it down. Then you’ve got to guide it through the atmosphere and then do a propulsive landing. This took us many, many attempts.\n\nWe actually did a video, a blooper reel of all the times we failed, which was a lot. (07:30) I think it might have taken us like 14 attempts or something before we finally successfully landed the rocket. If we’ve gone to the next slide, you can take a look at… – This is Grasshopper, that’s actually Falcon 9. It’s hard to tell the scale, but that’s a Falcon 9 size booster with one engine and big legs with giant shock absorbers; we didn’t know what the heck we were doing.\n\nElon Musk (voice-over): Now amazingly, Grasshopper had zero blessures; Grasshopper is still alive.\n\nElon Musk: They have Falcon1; what you saw there was a Falcon 9 size vehicle. What’s really kind of hard to grasp at a visceral level is that this giant ship will do the same thing that Grasshopper did. This thing is going to take off, fly to 65,000 feet, about 20 kilometers, and come back and land in about one or two months. So that giant thing – it’s really going to be pretty epic to see that thing take off and come back. And then hopefully, yeah, …(applause) – Yeah, it’s wild.\n\nThis is a quite radical… I’ll talk about it later in the presentation; it’s, this is quite a new approach to controlling a rocket – much more akin to a skydiver than a plane. But I’ll talk about that later. (10:00) So, going from Falcon 1 to Falcon 9 to Falcon Heavy, which we launched… actually, the first launch of Falcon Heavy was only February of last year. So, it’s only been about a year and a half since the first Falcon Heavy launch when we did two side-by-side booster landings. And I always liked this video. It was done by my friend Jonah.\n\nYeah. I never thought that would happen, actually. (12:30) I’m glad that it did. Some people were like, wait, why do we have the Roadster with the astronaut, you know, Starman. Actually, this came from a discussion with my friend Jonah. I was at his kitchen, and I was like, you know, normally when they do a rocket launch, there’s a launch of a rock of concrete, but that doesn’t sound very inspiring. So, what do you think the most sort of fun thing is that we could launch? And he was like, well, why don’t you launch your Tesla? And I was like, that’s a great idea.\n\nAnd another friend of mine, she said: “Why don’t you put a tiny Tesla on the dashboard?” So we put a tiny Tesla on the dashboard with a tiny Starman in the tiny Tesla. This is just to confuse the aliens in the future. They’ll be like, what the heck is this? You know, just want something that captures the imagination, gets people excited about space.\n\nSo, let’s see Starship. You can really see it right there, obviously. There’s a picture, more a rendering. It’s about 50 meters, sort of 165 feet or so.\n\nActually, I notice we have an error in our ship dry mass here; my apologies. I wish it was 85 tons. This ship dry mass has to be approximately 120 tons. The initial Mach 1 prototype is closer to 200 tons, and in series production, I think it’ll probably be about 120 tons. If we get really lucky, it might get down to 110; 99 would be super epic. So, in terms of its usefulness, it’ll be able to do about 150 tons with full reusability to orbit and back.\n\nThis is a very big number for full reusability. The very initial versions, we’re confident will do over a 100 tons, but I think there’s a clear path to 150 tons. The cost of a fully reusable system is basically (15:00) the cost of the propellant, which is mostly oxygen. This is three and a half tons of oxygen for every one ton of fuel. So, one of the advantages of this architecture over the Falcon architecture is that we actually use more oxygen per unit of fuel rather than less. Merlin or the Falcon architecture is about two and a half tons of oxygen for every one ton of fuel. This is three and a half tons of oxygen for every one ton of fuel. So when it ascends, it’s really mostly liquid oxygen because when you get to vacuum, there’s no air, basically.\n\nSo, the next slide. Earlier I was talking about how Starship enters and how it’s controlled.\n\nIt’s quite different from anything else. It’s really falling, and so we’re doing a controlled fall. With a rocket you’re actually trying to break as opposed to… you’re trying to create drag instead of lift, it’s really the opposite of an aircraft. You want the most amount of drag that you can produce. And you want some lift, especially when you’re in the upper atmosphere, mostly so that you don’t…  you can control the maximum heating rate. You want enough lift to keep yourself high in the low-density portion of the atmosphere, so you can burn off velocity. Basically, it goes like, if this is the Earth, it goes at about a 60 degree.\n\nMy hand is the rocket – it’s going at about 60 degrees. So when in orbit, you’re actually going at around 25 times the speed of sound horizontal to the ground. This is a very important concept that is counterintuitive to our normal daily life. Being in orbit, being in zero G is not about altitude. It’s about velocity. How fast are you going – horizontally? When something’s in orbit, it’s zooming around the Earth so fast that the outward acceleration, outward radial acceleration, is equal to the inward acceleration of gravity. And then you have zero gravity. This is why you actually have zero gravity.\n\nPeople often think the Space Station is stationary, (17:30) but it’s actually going around the world at 25 times the speed of sound or about 17,000 miles an hour. It always looks stationary in the pictures. And since there’s no air, you don’t have to have an aerodynamic structure. So it can be a totally crazy structure that doesn’t look like it should be able to go 25 times the speed of sound, but it does. And you can only feel the acceleration. You can’t feel velocity. People sometimes wonder, what does it feel like to go 25 times the speed of sound? Actually, it feels like nothing. Only accelerating to there feels like something.\n\nSo, the Starship is coming in – this platform is the Earth – it’s coming in at hypersonic velocity like this, sort of around a 60-degree angle. So, it comes like this and then starts falling and then just falls like a skydiver, and it’s just controlling itself – and then it turns and lands like that. That’s an incredibly elaborate explanation. There you can get a sense for it. This is much better.\n\nThere you go. See, same thing. It’ll look totally nuts to see that thing land. Yeah, that’ll be crazy.\n\nSo let’s talk about the Raptor engine. The ship will have a total of six engines.\n\nThree of the sea-level variety of Raptor, and those are actually on the rocket right now. So, we have the three sea-level… in fact, that’s a picture of just inside – that’s what it looks like. So, we’ve got the three sea-level Raptor engines, and they gimbal, which means that the whole engine moves. So, the way the rocket steers is by moving the entire engine. Whereas an aircraft engine is static, and you move by moving the control surfaces, like the ailerons and rudder and elevator and flaps… – The rocket – when the engines are powered, you moved the entire engine to steer it. The Starship will have three sea-level engines that move up to about 15 degrees angle and three vacuum engines that are optimized for efficiency in orbit that will not move. They will be just fixed it in place.\n\nAnd that allows us to have the biggest bell nozzle (20:00) for the vacuum Raptor engines. Aspirationally, the target is a 380 second Isp for the vacuum engine. This is a very… – In sort of space geek terms, this is like really a great number. And even for the steel alloy engines to get over a 350 second Isp is also really great. So actually… – sorry, I’m looking at the slide here, and you’re not. So, that’s what I meant by ‘it looks like that on the inside’… – go back one slide. That’s the inside of the Starship right now.\n\nThat’s what it looks like in the base. All right. Then heat shield.\n\nI’ve gone through various iterations of heat shield. There’s a lot of ways to skin the cat here.\n\nUltimately, we decided to have heat shield hexagonal tiles, ceramic tiles, basically like a tiny glass vermicelli at a microstructure level. Very light, but very crack resistant – essentially glass tiles. And there, because Starship is a steel construction… – At first, it feels like, “Oh, it’s steel. Does that mean it’s heavy?” No, actually, it’s the lightest construction. I think the best design decision on this whole thing is 301 stainless steel. Because at cryogenic temperatures, a 301 stainless actually has about the same effective strength as an advanced composite or aluminum-lithium. Unlike most steals, which get brittle at low temperatures, 301 stainless gets much stronger.\n\nAnd if it’s in the extra hard condition, meaning it’s cold-rolled to extra hard condition, it also gets way stronger. Actually, its strength-to-weight ratio at cryogenic temperatures is equivalent, or even perhaps slightly better than advanced composites or aluminum-lithium. This is not well appreciated. (22:30) Because if you just look at the materials manual and say like, what is the strength of stainless steel? It looks much weaker than it is. If you say, what is the strength at cryogenic temperature? Oh, much stronger; at very low temperature, almost twice as strong. That’s when it becomes better than carbon fiber or aluminum-lithium.\n\nAnd this is another benefit: It also has a high melting temperature. So, for a reusable ship, you’re coming in like a meteor. You want something that does not melt at a low temperature. You want something that melts at a high temperature. And this is where steel is extremely good as well. Steel has a melting temperature around sort of 1500 degrees centigrade whereas aluminum, you know, maybe 300 or 400 degrees, and same thing for carbon fiber. And that’s really pushing it.\n\nHaving that much higher melting temperature means that you don’t need any shielding on the leeward side of the ship when it comes in for entry. And the shielding you need on the windward side – the hot side – is massively reduced because the thickness of the tile is actually for a reusable system – It’s dependent on what back shell temperature, like how hot does the back of the tile that interfaces with the airframe get. And because the steel can take a much higher temperature, your heat shield, even on the windward side, is much lighter. But the net effect is that a 301 stainless steel rocket is actually the lightest possible reusable architecture.\n\nThen, to come to cost. The carbon fiber we were using was $130 a ton. The steel is $2,500 a ton. Oh, sorry, $130,000 a ton versus $2,500 a ton. That makes much more sense. It’s $130,000 a ton for the carbon fiber and $2,500 a ton for the steel. So, the steel is about 2% of the cost of the carbon fiber. So, this is a good thing we changed from carbon fiber to steel, by far. (25:00) And it’s very easy to weld stainless steel, the evidence being that we welded it outdoors without a factory. Great skills by the team, but with carbon fiber, this is impossible; with aluminum-lithium, also impossible. But steel is easy to weld,  and it is resilient to the elements.\n\nAnd also, actually, (… 25:36), like on Mars, you can cut that up, you can weld it, you can modify it. No problem. Yeah. That’s a good point. You’re out there on the Moon or Mars; you want something that you can modify, that you can cut up and use for other things. That’s like for sure a great thing. So anyway, steel – obviously I’m in love with steel; I had to say it, you know. So, let’s see, going on to the booster.\n\nSo, the booster is designed to take up to 37 Raptor engines. I’m not sure if we’ll go that high, but you can really have 31. I think the minimum number you’d want is maybe around 24. But the booster is designed to be able to take multiple engines out, so you can actually add or subtract engines as you’d like. You basically just need a lot of force pushing up. Over time, I think you probably want around a 7,500 ton force rocket which is about twice the thrust of a Saturn V, a little more than twice the thrust, and on a roughly 5,000 ton gross liftoff mass for roughly one and a half thrust-to-weight.\n\nFor a reusable rocket, you actually want a high thrust-to-weight rather than with an expendable rocket, where you want a low thrust-to-weight, because any thrust-to-weight below one is not useful; like, if you have a less thrust than your weight, you don’t move. So, you actually want a high thrust-to-weight for a reusable rocket. This is a very important (27:30) design optimization change. So that’s why I think more engines are probably good and getting up to around 7,500 tons over time and a one and a half thrust-to-weight ratio, or more.\n\nWe think we’re probably going to adjust the grid fins designed to be kind of like a diamond shape. It looks cooler. It works better too. And then the rear fins are actually just legs. They’re not needed for stabilization or guidance. They’re essentially there for legs.\n\nAll right. So let’s go into some of the development testing. This is a Raptor firing.\n\nAll right. And then, obviously, we had a Raptor fire on the Starhopper. Yeah.\n\nIt’s kind of hard to see it to appreciate scale, but it’s the same diameter as the Starship. And obviously, it’s just right over there. So, it’s kind of hard to tell if it’s the size of a trashcan or, you know, how big it is, but it’s about… the body diameter is about 9 meters or 30 feet and not including the legs span. (30:00) Yeah. So, this gives you a sense of size.\n\nSo the little pixel there… little pixels are a human. And then there’s the Hopper next to it, the Millennium Falcon for comparison, then Starship, which is what you see before you. And then what it will look like with the full stack, which is almost two and a half times as tall as this vehicle. This simulation will give you a sense of the scale of things.\n\nElon Musk (voice-over): It slightly reminds me of a scene from Spaceballs.\n\nElon Musk (voice-over): This is the orbital refilling. Orbital refilling is extremely important for getting to Mars and getting to the Moon to establish a city on Moon or Mars. This is a vital step.\n\nA rapidly reusable orbital launcher rocket is… a rapidly reusable rocket is required for – alliteration – for getting a breakthrough in cost of access to space; that you don’t throw the rockets away every flight. But another key step is refilling on orbit so that Starship can get to orbit with, let’s say, 150 tons of payload for the Moon or Mars or beyond. And then it can get tanked up to fill up its propellant tanks and so that it can depart from low Earth orbit (35:00) with 1,200 tons of propellant. This is a very big thing so that your delta velocity is enough to transport about 150 tons to the surface of the Moon or Mars with full reusability and orbital refilling.\n\nThe orbital refilling is actually a simplified version of what SpaceX does in docking with the Space Station. So it’s actually harder to dock with the Space Station than it is to do orbital refilling, but in practicing docking with the Space Station, SpaceX has also learned how to rendezvous and dock in orbit in a complex environment. So this is one of the other critical pieces of the puzzle needed to establish a base on the Moon and Mars, a city, ultimately. And yeah, so those are the critical ingredients. So, we think it will be very exciting to have a base on the Moon.\n\nEven if it’s just a science base that… – for example, we have a base at Antarctica. Many countries have bases in Antarctica for science research, and this would be an incredible area for research. So whether or not people want to live on the Moon, there’s definitely a lot of science to be done. And I think it’s close as well. So, that would be quite exciting to do. And then, of course, we can go to other places in the solar system like Saturn. But the critical thing that we need to focus on, I think, is the fastest path to a self-sustaining city on Mars. This is the fundamental thing.\n\nAs far as we know, we are the only consciousness or the only life that’s out there. There might be other life, but we’ve seen no signs of it. And people often ask me, what do you know about the aliens and that, and I’m like, man, I tell you, I’m pretty sure I’d know if there were aliens. I have not seen any sign of aliens. And what if the military is hiding aliens in area 51 or something, you know; that’s a popular meme. (37:30) Well, let me tell you: the biggest, the fastest way to increase defense funding would be to bring up like, “Hey, we found an alien.” (…37:40) like, “Ah, there’s more money for defense, definitely”. Guaranteed, there (…37:46) would be like on display in two seconds. The reality is, as far as we know, this is the only place, at least in this part of the galaxy or in the Milky Way, where there is consciousness. And it’s taken a long time for us to get to this point.\n\nYou know, according to the geological records, Earth has been around for about four and a half billion years, although it was mostly molten magma for about half a billion years. So, but still, several billion years with at least bacterial life and multicellular life for several hundred million years. But here’s the interesting part. The sun is gradually getting hotter and bigger, and over time even in the absence of global warming – man-made stuff – the sun will expand, and it will overheat the Earth. My guess is probably… – On human timescales, this is a long time, but there are only several hundred million years left. That’s all, that’s all we got. Okay. Several hundred million years. But sort of from an evolutionary standpoint, basically, if it took an extra 10% longer for conscious life to evolve on Earth, it wouldn’t evolve at all because it would have been incinerated by the sun.\n\nWhat I’m saying is that it appears that consciousness is a very rare and precious thing, and we should take whatever steps we can to preserve the light of consciousness. The window has been opened only now – after four and a half billion years, is that window open. That’s a long time to wait, and it might not stay open for long. I’m pretty optimistic by nature, but there’s some chance, there’s some chance that window will not be open for long. I think we should become a multi-planet civilization while that window is open. And if we do, I think the probable outcome for Earth is even better because then Mars could help Earth one day. And so I think we should really do our very best to become a multi-planet species and to extend consciousness beyond Earth. And we should do it now. Thank you. (40:13)"},"languages":["en"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":"https://elonmuskinterviews.wordpress.com/2021/03/27/starship-presentation-2019-english/"},{"id":"world-artificial-intelligence-conference-2019-08","type":"interview","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJ5w11Cm3gM","title":"World Artificial Intelligence Conference","titles":{"en":"World Artificial Intelligence Conference","de":"World Artificial Intelligence Conference","fr":"World Artificial Intelligence Conference"},"date":"2019-08-29","summary":"Musk and Jack Ma debate the risks and future of artificial intelligence at the World AI Conference opening.","text":"at Tesla and Jack Ma the co-chair of the UN high-level panel on digital cooperation this gave them a very big applaud welcome great to have both of you here with us today the session is actually much awaited we've already posted some of the key words of the questions on the big screen and later on you can just click the words you're interested in to talk about now the stage is yours what are you supposed to say just things about AI perhaps okay let's see yeah okay great yeah yeah actually I'm told that this AI mean love it looks like a name yeah I I hate the word AI called artificial intelligence I call it Alibaba intelligence yeah might might end up being true you know I think generally people underestimate the the capability of AI they sort of think\n\nlike it's a smart human but it's it's really much it's gonna be much more than that it'll be much smarter than the smartest human maybe like you know if like can a chimpanzee really understand humans not really you know they're just we just seem like strange aliens well they mostly just care about other chimpanzees and this will be how it is more or less in a relative into impact if it's if the difference is only that small that would be amazing it probably it's much much greater so like the biggest mistake that I see artificial intelligence researchers making is assuming that they're intelligent yeah they're not compared to AI and so they cannot of them cannot imagine something smarter than themselves but AI will be vastly smarter vastly so what do you\n\ndo with the situation like that what do you do with situation like that I'm not sure you know hope I hope they're nice I mean I have obviously some you know I think in a situation where you if you you know that old saying if you can't if you can't beat them join them you know that's what neuro-link is about is like can we go be able to go along for the ride with a I I mean I really think that there should be other companies like neuro-link essentially to create a high bandwidth interface to the brain because the right right now we are already a cyborg people don't realize we're already a sidewalk because we are so well integrated with our phones and our computers the phone is almost like an extension of yourself if you forget your phone it's like a missing\n\nlimb but the bandwidth the communication bandwidth to the phone is very low especially input so in fact input bandwidth to computers has actually gone down because of typing with two thumbs as opposed to 10 fingers is a big reduction in bandwidth input bandwidth has gone up because of video and an imagery so input bandwidth as many orders of magnitude greater than output bandwidth that at a certain points if we'll just assume assuming a benign scenario with a I we will just be too slow you know it's like if a millisecond to something let's say a computer that has like an exaflop of or you know many extra flops of computer capability a millisecond is an eternity and to us it's nothing so you know I think I would say like human speech to a computer will\n\nsound like very slow tonal wheezing there's kind of like whale sounds yeah you know because what's our bandwidth like a few hundred bits per second basically maybe a few kilobits per second if you're gonna be generous so whereas a computer can easily communicate at a terabyte level so the computer will just get impatient if nothing else it would be like talking to a tree that's humans yeah and I'm not a great note barely getting any information out basically with speech yeah I'm always amazed by what your vision about the technology I'm not a tech guy I think I'm all about life I think AI is going to open a new chapter of the Society of the world that people try to understand ourselves better rather than the outside world and it's so difficult to predict\n\nthe future 99.\n\n99% of the predictions the human being had in history about the future all wrong including that one oh yeah only you know the the zero point zero zero percent of the prediction are right there right because by accident yeah but it's also true that 80% of statistics are false yeah so my meaning Lauren come on guys buddy I'm happy about the artificial intelligence or alibaba intelligence that's going to understand a human the inside of the human better so when people worry a lot about artificial intelligence people should have more confidence in themselves because I think if that lot of solutions we don't have today but there will be solutions tomorrow we don't have solutions for the young people we have solutions so I'm quite optimistic and I don't think\n\nartificial intelligence is a threat I don't think if fish intelligent is something terrible but human being a smart enough to learn that and to me artificial intelligence is just like people worry a lot about this today are those people I called them called called college smartness people like us street smart we never scared of that we think it's a great fun and we want to change our self to embrace it I don't know man that's like famous last words this is let me tell you AI is I mean you know it's sort of the rate of advancement just in general the rate of investment of computers is insane and like a good example would be video games you know if you go back 40 40 years ago or 50 years ago maybe yet you had pong that was just two rectangles and a square\n\nnow you've got photorealistic real-time simulations with millions of people playing simultaneously if you assume any rate of improvement at all the I mean these games will be complete indistinguishable from reality you will not be able to tell the difference either that or civilization will end those are the two options but even if the rate of technology improvements slowed down by a thousand then okay advance a thousand years you know ten thousand years this is still very tiny I mean civilization civilization has been around for probably you know arguably I think 7000 years or something like that if you counted from the first time there was any any writing any recorded symbols besides cave paintings there's a very tiny amount of time considering the\n\nuniverse is 13.\n\n8 billion years old I mean if civilization lasted for a million years we would would only increment the third decimal point after 13.\n\n8 billion years if we lasted for a million years so I know that seems like a long time given that we've only been around for seven thousand years and it's been pretty it's been kind of a roller coaster on the civilization front so I mean I'm not trying to be I'm a naturally optimistic person to be clear I'm not saying hey doom and gloom I'm just saying the these this is the apparent pattern the the rate of change of Technology is incredibly fast it is outpacing our ability to understand it well I'm not sure is that good or bad I don't know okay I mean it seems to me some time ago that you could sort of think of humanity as a biological bootloader for digital super intelligence if you're those in order bootloader is a very tiny piece of code without which\n\nthe the computer cannot start but it's sort of like the minimal bit of code necessary for a computer to start like you couldn't evolve silicon circuits you knew they needed to be a biology to get there good yeah well let's talk about something fun I am Adam I'd that you want to go on the Mars so we go to the the Mars yeah yes so what will the life look like on Mars are you both moving what do you think about that I actually I'm not interesting on Mars I just came back from there so haha I'm more interesting on the earth that thinks what's going on happening here so what why you're so curious about the Mars well I think the thing about Mars is that I think it's important for us to take the set of actions that are most likely to continue consciousness into\n\nthe future what increases the probability of consciousness of continuing into the future I think we should not take it for granted that consciousness will continue because we have not encountered any aliens where are the aliens this is the Fermi paradox this is one of the most important questions how come we've not found any aliens those people out there think we've got a lian's trust me I would know we have not okay people ask me you've been to area 51 okay please SpaceX actually has area 59 it's even better eight better than 51 so I'm among the set of actions we can take that are likely to increase the scope and scale of consciousness such that we are better able to understand the nature of the universe one of those actions is to become a multi-planet\n\nspecies or ensure that life is multiplanetary not because I think something but it's not it not from from the standpoint of it just being an escape hatch or because I think that earth is doomed but there's a certain probability that is irreducible that something may happen to earth despite our best intentions despite everything we try to do the there's a probability at a certain point that some either external force or some internal unforced error causes civilization to be destroyed or source poor sufficiently impaired such that it can no longer extend to another planet it's hard to say it like that like never put another way this is the first time in the four-and-a-half billion year history of Earth that it's been possible to extend life beyond Earth\n\nbefore this it was not possible how long will this window be open it may be open for a long time or it may be open for a short time I think we should it would be wise to assume that it is open for a short time and and and then let us secure the future secure the future of consciousness such that life of the lights of consciousness is not extinguished and we should you try to do this as quickly as possible that's my view good it's so difficult to secure the future of the earth but we can secure the future of next 100 years I am not the person that I admire your courage for explore the Mars but I admire a lot of people spend efforts on improving the earth it's it's great to send a woman and people to the Mars but we have to care about the seven point four\n\nbillion people on the earth how can we make the world's most sustainable and I'm not that fan of the Mars because I think it's easy to go to the Mars when you go on the top of the hills all the out of the building just a one step you go to Mars but you will never be able to come back yeah that's my team that works there and so I hate to go to the Himalayas - I mean when you climb on them I think someday I will go there when the elevator is ready I would go to have a look but I think people spending more time on the earth think about 1/2 because no matter how long the civilization of the human beings would be like one minute or two million or have many years but we only have 100 years so we cannot solve all the problems for future but we have to be responsible\n\nfor the future but we should care more about how we can enjoy better my view is that by the artificial intelligence or AI when human being understand ourselves better then we can improve the water better last 200 years human being tried to understand the other side war better understand the other people better but I think what I feel excited about a ai is AI is to understand people the inside of the human beings the earth I heard you you're gonna dig eternal in deep in the earth which is amazing I think anyhow every time when I read the news about you are interesting the outside space I look at you it's a great respect we need a heroes like a you but we need more heroes like us working hard on the earth improving things every day that's what I want sure\n\nI mean to be clear I'm very Provos it sounds great weekly are very Pro Earth when I say you know us becoming a multi-planet species or making life multi expanding the scope and scale of consciousness from a resource standpoint I'm talking about less than 1% of Earth's resources should be dedicated to making life multiplanetary Oh making consciousness multiplanetary so you know I think it should be like somewhere in between how much we spend on lipstick and how much we spend on health care like you know things like for the preservation of consciousness we should spend maybe slightly more than we spend on on cosmetics that's my you know and I'm Pro cosmetics I like that great but but you know this probably worth spending I don't know some like at least\n\nhalf a percent of Earth GDP on extending life to be multiplanetary maybe 1% I'd say seems like a good a good use of resources and but in 98 you know we have like towards magnitude more resources spent on earth so it's not like it's you know somehow gonna fundamentally impair earth if likes are just 1% of both resources on that order should be enough to make life multiplanetary seems like a wise investment for the future and obviously I spend a lot of my time on sustainable energy with Tesla with you know electric cars and solar and batteries and that kind of thing and I'm really excited to be here in Shanghai for the the Shanghai Giga factory which is I think that Tesla China team has done an amazing job really mind-blowing like I've just astounded by\n\nhow good the job is and how much progress has been made and I think it's a good story for the world and to say like look look how much progress you can make in China this is extremely impressive like my hat is off you know you guys Rock so I've never seen anything but so fast in my life before to be totally Frank I've seen some crazy things so you know I think it's like I really think China is the future well that's very impressive and there's also some great progress on entrepreneurial rocket companies in China as well I believe to have made orbit it was very difficult very hard to make orbit achieving orbit I have great respect very hard yeah pick up another topic sure yeah job jobs jobs or life jobs sure anything sure so what new jobs will be created\n\nbecause of AI or has the change already stated what do you think I think why we needed that many jobs hahaha right my view is that the jobs actually every technology revolution people start to worry right last 200 years we worry about the new technology gonna take away all the jobs actually we made a lot of jobs second because of the Industrial Revolution job create a lot of jobs what I think is the next 20 30 years human being will live much longer the live science technology is gonna make people live probably a hundred a hundred twenty years that may not be a good thing because you get a grandfather's grandfather still working hard but the challenge is my question why should we have a lot of jobs I think people should work three days a week four hours\n\na day when we have electricity the power of electricity is that we make people more time so you can go to the collar ok in the evening you can go to dancing party in the evening so people because of electricity people have more time I think because of artificial intelligence people will have more time enjoy being human beings in your life in my life I think I visit the problems 300 cities in my life my graph my father visited 30 cities my grandfather will visit only three cities so my grandchildren profit probably will visit the three thousand cities always alive he's always on the Tesla is always on the robots always traveling around so I don't think we need a lot of jobs at that time the jobs we need is make people happier make people is the life enjoy\n\nthe human beings so I don't worry about the job jobs a lot first we're gonna have love jobs second we don't need a lot of jobs third there's a very interesting thing which because we will probably talk about life in the agriculture period average age is like a 3035 years old in the industry period technology revolution people can live 70 years so in the artificial intelligent period people can live a hundred to the years as I think now the problem comes when people's life is getting better people don't want to have children where a grand grandfather is there you don't want have a children at that time we are going to have a lot of jobs with nobody want to do it so we need artificial intelligence the robots to take care of the old guys for sure you will\n\nnot be happy or you were happy because when your grand grandfather said all I need to work tomorrow then that's a disaster so I think we cannot predict the future but we should be ready that we are going to enter into the area that everybody can live 120 years and we have a new more new problems that come up so that's my view about jobs don't worry about it well you will have jobs yeah I I think the yeah over time a I will make jobs kind of work pointless probably the last job that will remain will be doing writing AI software and then eventually the AI will just write its own software so I don't know I suppose I would recommend studying engineering physics that kind of thing or working on something where people just want to interact with other people\n\nand people enjoy fundamentally interacting with other people so if you're working on something that involves people or engineering it's probably a good approach you know art of course yeah like I said I think we're gonna have to figure out this neural link situation otherwise we will be left behind it's very important we do this quickly I think time we don't have much time we don't have much time before what we don't have much time to solve the neural link yeah yeah yeah anything like technology like technology and technology awareness there's like it's like if it was like a topological map of technology awareness it's mostly flat with a few short buildings and then some very tall spires very tall spires and unless you're on that very tall spire it's\n\nnot obvious what the topology is yeah I never worry about the things that I cannot solve I left other people to solve it if nobody can solve it just let it be that's my life oh let's talk about education I'm of quite an interesting about education can we yeah so what knowledge or skills will be useful to master the future do you have any vice for young professionals who want to pursue a career in AI young professionals I don't think we will have professionals on AI in the future well I worry a lot about people worried about jobs but I worry about education all the education systems the things we teach our kids the way we teach our kids are mainly designed for the industry period and I'm sure the Machine will be much cleverer than human beings in the future\n\nhow can human being do better human beings shall be smarter human be shall be wiser so how can we be human beings to be wiser a smarter I think that we should change the way of Education change the things because in the in the past we focus a lot about you know remember things computer can remember better than you are we want to calculate the faster computer can rep can calculus faster we want to run faster computer can run much faster than you are so human beings should have confidence by being more creative more constructive so how can we teach our kids to be more creative and constructive and I think this is the key of the education and I want spend more time on training kids or arts on painting on seeing on dancing you know all these are the creative\n\nthings that make people live like a humans don't worry about machines for sure we should understand one thing that men can never make another men computer is a computer computer is just a toy man cannot even make a mosquito so we should have a confidence computer only have chips men have the heart it's the heart where the wisdom comes from so I think in the next 10 or 20 years human beings or every country every government should focus on reform the education system making sure our kids be able to find jobs in the future being able to live in a life that only working three days a week four hours a day and that is very important if we do not change the education system that we are in we are all in going to being trouble that's my view and don't worry about\n\nit we will change it yeah yeah try learn as much as much as possible that allows you to predict the future or make the future say the thing is the best way to predict the future is to make it just and then assess whether what you are learning is enabling you to predict the future with less error are you less wrong we're all always wrong to some degree but can you reduce the error on your future predictions I think that's the way to look at education as of course but we're both creative create the future and predict the future so that includes art and all those other things but close the loop on being less wrong about future so that's the work right way to think about education I mean down the road with the neuro-link you you can just upload any subject\n\ninstantly so we like the matrix you want to fly a helicopter no problem Oh helicopters will fly themselves but you know if you wanted to do whatever any any given skill you just upload it to instantly I mean the way education works right now it's extremely low bandwidth it's extremely slow lectures are the worst really it's like very slow yeah just try to predict the future with less error this is the heart this is very hard as you were saying I'm not sure it's 99.\n\n9 percent but it's it's not very good generally a prediction of the future but I think often people don't try it the first thing is try if you don't try okay you know got it you gotta try and then and then adjust based on the error of your prior predictions yeah I think just to try is very good we should always have the confidence to try the future and I never worry about the errors and mistakes errors and mistakes that are the best assets of human lives and humans I think that when people worry about the disasters that AI is gonna bringing I think it's not the disasters it's the mistakes that human beings to make and trust human beings will be able to correct the mistakes and improve themselves and that we need education and this is what we think now\n\nChina today we have 1800 new babies born every year which which is not enough we need we need to have like much more than that but I think the best resources of the human beings on the or the best resources on the earth are not the coast not the oil not the electricity it's it's the human brains how can we make the human great brains more creative constructive how can we making sure that the machines are always the toys and tools of humans rather than the control so I'm never in my life and especially last two years where people talk about at AI say human human being will be controlled by machines I never think about it I think it's it's it's it's impossible right it's impossible because because human beings they are different machines invented by human\n\nbeings and according to the size humans can never create another animal that is smart and humans especially where you have so many smart people it's impossible to make another smart people I very much disagree with that ok yeah that's good yeah I mean the first thing you should assume is that we are very dumb and we could we can definitely make things smarter than ourselves I mean the they didn't used to be humans right so the then the our earliest civilization was very primitive we didn't have any technology really we're just like running around you know trying to not get eaten or just want to survive a winter now we have like heating and we grow food this is all new stuff so you know things that have obviously gotten way more smarter than the past way\n\nsmarter so that's going to continue we're not the last step in evolution so the most important thing like I said the most important was the mistake I see smart people making is assuming that they're smart they're not so give me example what the animals or things that a human being made that is smart a human beings well computers actually are already much smarter than people on so many dimensions we just keep moving the goal posts so we used to think like for example being good at chess was an example of a smart human and then Kasparov was crushed by deep blue in 97 that was a long time ago 22 years I mean right now your cell phone could crush the world champion of chess literally go used to be thought of as something that's humans were better at than\n\ncomputers then Lisa Dahl was beaten for before 1 by alpha zero then a new version of alpha zero o icer should say alphago alphago beat at least at all for one then there's alpha 0 alpha zero crushed alphago hundred to zero now it's just pointless because it just keeps playing itself humans are trying to play a computer go is like trying to fight Zeus it's a not going to work a you hopeless we're hopeless hopelessly inadequate in terms of rendering and I think that basically there's just a smaller and smaller corner of what intellectual pursuits that humans are better than computers and that every year it gets smaller and smaller and and soon we will be far far surpassed in every single way guaranteed or civilizational and those the two possibilities okay\n\nyeah my view is that computer may be clever by human being a much smarter yeah every not clever this very academic is knowledge driven smarter is experience driven computer is smart is clever but it's human being we invented a computer I never see a computer invented a human being this is my first point second point is that about a go play chess it's stupid to compete with a computer on play goal just like a hundred years ago where human being created cars so human being said I can run faster than a car it's impossible it's only stupid people to compete with a car who'll run faster go is designed for human to play with human right the chess is designed for human to human why should a human to fight against a computer so I never ever Li play chess or go\n\nwith computer I'll be happy to see two computers fight each other I'm not interested in play golf with chess so I told those guys they are very sad computer will be smart they're human beings because computer can't play chess better I think you are stupid to compete with that don't do that so this is we always do things we are good at sure okay well what be an example of something that humans are better than a computer at and and then let's see if that happens well humans computer is only one of the clever tools that human created and computers us a clever but there will be more tools that human beings will created much cleverer than computers that's my view okay well let me tell you like my view on the on AI is essentially the you can view the advancement\n\nof AI as solving things with increasing numbers of degrees of with the increasing degrees of freedom so the the thing that what the thing with the most most degrees of freedom is reality but AI is steadily advanced solving things that have more and more degrees of freedom so obviously it's something like like checkers was very easy to solve that that we could solve with with classical software classical computing not really all that challenging and in fact there is a complete solution for checkers meaning it is literally literally impossible every every version of checkers is known and then then there's chess which was also was also it had many many more degrees of freedom than checkers many orders 90 or more than checkers but still really I would say\n\na low order of magnitude lower degree of freedom game then there's go which had many orders of magnitude more degrees of freedom than than chess so it's really just stepping through orders of magnitude of degrees of freedom this is the way to I think view the advancement of intelligence yeah it and and it's really gonna get to the point where it just can completely simulate a person in every way possible like many people simultaneously in fact I mean obviously there's a there's a strong argument we're in a simulation right now you know so reminds you that joke of like you know if if life was a video game what would be the review it's like well the graphics are incredible that the plot is confusing the respawn takes a long time that's a video game that's\n\nlife and if life is a video game respawned take takes 20 years disappointing human being and have them be fully conscious I'm worried about the birth rate which which you alluded to earlier the the contrary to like most people think we we have like too many people on the planet but actually this is this is an outdated view this is the assuming that AI is fine or assuming that AI is a there's a benevolent future with AI I think that the biggest problem the world will face in 20 years is population collapse collapse I want to emphasize this the biggest issue in 20 years we'll be population collapse not explosion collapse the it's very easy to see what the world will look like in 20 years because humans have a 20 year boot sequence so like you said okay\n\nwell who is born last year okay now you know what the world look like in 20 years it's that easy I absolutely agree with that the the population problem is going to be facing huge challenge 1.\n\n4 billion people in China it sounds a lot but I think next 20 years we'll see this thing will bring big trouble to China and the population decreasing of the whole the speed of population decreasing is gonna speed up now you call it collapse I actually accelerating close that's the RIC class tolerating collapse and then the commoner rebuttal is like well what about immigration like from where you know you want to go to spay you know the Mars and Mars will emigrate yeah Marceline's here public mars these people these people you know there's no zero people there right now so right now it's the Machine planet there's only some robots there this is something that we should pay special attention that's why the the 18 million new babies born in China which\n\nwas less than I go only like 1% of something we should spend more time to create these people and treat life better but also I think about AI there's another thing which alone I in my company in our company a I would call Alibaba intelligent because we think when things with order with things with logic machine can't always do better hey I can do better but if things with an order without logic human being can do better for example when you love somebody there's no reason normally I just love him or just love her I have no reason but when I hate something body when I want to do bad things on something somebody there's a logic and with when there's a logic hey I can do better what we do on our end financing we you would teach machine all the bad things\n\nthat bad guys want to do machine can learn quickly and arrest all the bad guys immediately but when you want to do good things not necessarily AI means love that's absolutely right so that is why the world the AI if the way I can bring love which I caught in the past if you have the successful person you have to be L and EQ and IQ right in the future if you want to survive in this world you have to be the L Q the Q of love that's important too otherwise you cannot survive in artificial intelligence time my greatest love is the answer yeah many songs about that you want to pick up the final one use me gentlemen teach the time is very limited so we only have five minutes left so last question please yeah I thought you want to pick up the last life or human\n\nbeing machines so you want to talk about your cars ultimately autonomy what do you want to talk this feels like one of those steps in a video game we would like pick a path to choice I choose life okay life so how much longer do you think people can live for with the helper a I can a I help with environment sustainability can you well I think first of all I think humans will solve environmental sustainability I do not mean to suggest complacency or that we just take it easy in fact this is a self fulfilling one fulfilling prophecy we must we must take immediate and traumatic action and we you know we and continue the momentum towards environmental sustainability and China is actually the world leader in this in fact I'm not sure how well it is known outside\n\nof China just how much China is a world leader in environmental sustainability it's extremely impressive I mean I think half of all the electric cars in the world were made in China last year or something like that so you know I so I don't mean to suggest suggest complacency but I do think humans can and will solve sustainability if if we can if we can do the neural lace then I think or the neural link essentially the age will not matter that much you can simply save your state and restore your state like just like a saved game essentially something very close to that I do think we can we can solve biological aging if we really want it to you would have to make DNA changes but it's obviously just on a on a clock all all organisms are I mean you could\n\ntake a fruit fly for example and you could give it yo to sort of have it to daily yoga and I have a very healthy diet and it's still gonna live for three weeks maybe four weeks so environmental factors are a relatively minor for extending life you have to change the DNA and those other like will people be okay with changing the DNA that's the the thing about extending life you know and probably people are a little reticent about that but that's essentially the thing that needs to occur to extend life you've got you've got to stuff the DNA clock somehow I don't know if we should work on this or not I think frankly you know it's it's probably a good thing that we do eventually die you know there's a saying like in physics like even physicists which are\n\ngenerally quite objective is like saying like you know all physicists don't change their mind they just die so then maybe you know there's a it's good to have this life cycle yeah well I think AI can definitely help the environment suspend sustainability and when human beings know themselves better human being will be smarter and will be wiser the difference between clever people and smart people or wise people smart people knows what he wants and how he can get it wise people know what he doesn't want so when human beings using artificial intelligence they will understand themselves better and I think there will be a minutes of ways people will live in a healthy earth and protect the healthy earth the reason why I want I want to stay in this earth I\n\nwant to work on this earth I want to do anything I can to help this earth to better because even in a go to this space is great but if we can spend at resources just to focus on helping pick up the garbage from the oceans that thing is more difficult than to go to the Mars but artificial intelligence can help us achieving that and solve the problems and the second a human being can live better can live longer but what we need is not only lived longer we want to live healthier how can we live healthier it's to understand us better most of the disease are caused by our behavior so I think I'm 100 percent sure people will live longer people will live healthier but may not necessarily live happier if you want to be happier human beings your focus Valley the\n\nvision and the mission and always have the dreams and I don't want people love to technology and put them dreams on the technology I think the technology should be with dreams it's the not technology change of the world is the dreams behind the technology that changed the world so my my hope is that anything we can do to improve this road to helping seven point four billion people live better and live healthier and this is all about our world and I think we will be working very happily because I love your product Tesla you know making work cleaner and you have a de Factory in China and I think we need to do more things to improve this earth improve this world and make sure that people are happier and people care about the family people care about the\n\nhouse that's all we should do and trust us trust a human beings and trust young people let's take responsibility for today but let's not take away all the solutions for tomorrow it's great human being make mistakes it's great human being learn from mistakes it's great to die thank you live long ice is like yeah thank you fight for the light of consciousness thank you you","textByLang":{"en":"at Tesla and Jack Ma the co-chair of the UN high-level panel on digital cooperation this gave them a very big applaud welcome great to have both of you here with us today the session is actually much awaited we've already posted some of the key words of the questions on the big screen and later on you can just click the words you're interested in to talk about now the stage is yours what are you supposed to say just things about AI perhaps okay let's see yeah okay great yeah yeah actually I'm told that this AI mean love it looks like a name yeah I I hate the word AI called artificial intelligence I call it Alibaba intelligence yeah might might end up being true you know I think generally people underestimate the the capability of AI they sort of think\n\nlike it's a smart human but it's it's really much it's gonna be much more than that it'll be much smarter than the smartest human maybe like you know if like can a chimpanzee really understand humans not really you know they're just we just seem like strange aliens well they mostly just care about other chimpanzees and this will be how it is more or less in a relative into impact if it's if the difference is only that small that would be amazing it probably it's much much greater so like the biggest mistake that I see artificial intelligence researchers making is assuming that they're intelligent yeah they're not compared to AI and so they cannot of them cannot imagine something smarter than themselves but AI will be vastly smarter vastly so what do you\n\ndo with the situation like that what do you do with situation like that I'm not sure you know hope I hope they're nice I mean I have obviously some you know I think in a situation where you if you you know that old saying if you can't if you can't beat them join them you know that's what neuro-link is about is like can we go be able to go along for the ride with a I I mean I really think that there should be other companies like neuro-link essentially to create a high bandwidth interface to the brain because the right right now we are already a cyborg people don't realize we're already a sidewalk because we are so well integrated with our phones and our computers the phone is almost like an extension of yourself if you forget your phone it's like a missing\n\nlimb but the bandwidth the communication bandwidth to the phone is very low especially input so in fact input bandwidth to computers has actually gone down because of typing with two thumbs as opposed to 10 fingers is a big reduction in bandwidth input bandwidth has gone up because of video and an imagery so input bandwidth as many orders of magnitude greater than output bandwidth that at a certain points if we'll just assume assuming a benign scenario with a I we will just be too slow you know it's like if a millisecond to something let's say a computer that has like an exaflop of or you know many extra flops of computer capability a millisecond is an eternity and to us it's nothing so you know I think I would say like human speech to a computer will\n\nsound like very slow tonal wheezing there's kind of like whale sounds yeah you know because what's our bandwidth like a few hundred bits per second basically maybe a few kilobits per second if you're gonna be generous so whereas a computer can easily communicate at a terabyte level so the computer will just get impatient if nothing else it would be like talking to a tree that's humans yeah and I'm not a great note barely getting any information out basically with speech yeah I'm always amazed by what your vision about the technology I'm not a tech guy I think I'm all about life I think AI is going to open a new chapter of the Society of the world that people try to understand ourselves better rather than the outside world and it's so difficult to predict\n\nthe future 99.\n\n99% of the predictions the human being had in history about the future all wrong including that one oh yeah only you know the the zero point zero zero percent of the prediction are right there right because by accident yeah but it's also true that 80% of statistics are false yeah so my meaning Lauren come on guys buddy I'm happy about the artificial intelligence or alibaba intelligence that's going to understand a human the inside of the human better so when people worry a lot about artificial intelligence people should have more confidence in themselves because I think if that lot of solutions we don't have today but there will be solutions tomorrow we don't have solutions for the young people we have solutions so I'm quite optimistic and I don't think\n\nartificial intelligence is a threat I don't think if fish intelligent is something terrible but human being a smart enough to learn that and to me artificial intelligence is just like people worry a lot about this today are those people I called them called called college smartness people like us street smart we never scared of that we think it's a great fun and we want to change our self to embrace it I don't know man that's like famous last words this is let me tell you AI is I mean you know it's sort of the rate of advancement just in general the rate of investment of computers is insane and like a good example would be video games you know if you go back 40 40 years ago or 50 years ago maybe yet you had pong that was just two rectangles and a square\n\nnow you've got photorealistic real-time simulations with millions of people playing simultaneously if you assume any rate of improvement at all the I mean these games will be complete indistinguishable from reality you will not be able to tell the difference either that or civilization will end those are the two options but even if the rate of technology improvements slowed down by a thousand then okay advance a thousand years you know ten thousand years this is still very tiny I mean civilization civilization has been around for probably you know arguably I think 7000 years or something like that if you counted from the first time there was any any writing any recorded symbols besides cave paintings there's a very tiny amount of time considering the\n\nuniverse is 13.\n\n8 billion years old I mean if civilization lasted for a million years we would would only increment the third decimal point after 13.\n\n8 billion years if we lasted for a million years so I know that seems like a long time given that we've only been around for seven thousand years and it's been pretty it's been kind of a roller coaster on the civilization front so I mean I'm not trying to be I'm a naturally optimistic person to be clear I'm not saying hey doom and gloom I'm just saying the these this is the apparent pattern the the rate of change of Technology is incredibly fast it is outpacing our ability to understand it well I'm not sure is that good or bad I don't know okay I mean it seems to me some time ago that you could sort of think of humanity as a biological bootloader for digital super intelligence if you're those in order bootloader is a very tiny piece of code without which\n\nthe the computer cannot start but it's sort of like the minimal bit of code necessary for a computer to start like you couldn't evolve silicon circuits you knew they needed to be a biology to get there good yeah well let's talk about something fun I am Adam I'd that you want to go on the Mars so we go to the the Mars yeah yes so what will the life look like on Mars are you both moving what do you think about that I actually I'm not interesting on Mars I just came back from there so haha I'm more interesting on the earth that thinks what's going on happening here so what why you're so curious about the Mars well I think the thing about Mars is that I think it's important for us to take the set of actions that are most likely to continue consciousness into\n\nthe future what increases the probability of consciousness of continuing into the future I think we should not take it for granted that consciousness will continue because we have not encountered any aliens where are the aliens this is the Fermi paradox this is one of the most important questions how come we've not found any aliens those people out there think we've got a lian's trust me I would know we have not okay people ask me you've been to area 51 okay please SpaceX actually has area 59 it's even better eight better than 51 so I'm among the set of actions we can take that are likely to increase the scope and scale of consciousness such that we are better able to understand the nature of the universe one of those actions is to become a multi-planet\n\nspecies or ensure that life is multiplanetary not because I think something but it's not it not from from the standpoint of it just being an escape hatch or because I think that earth is doomed but there's a certain probability that is irreducible that something may happen to earth despite our best intentions despite everything we try to do the there's a probability at a certain point that some either external force or some internal unforced error causes civilization to be destroyed or source poor sufficiently impaired such that it can no longer extend to another planet it's hard to say it like that like never put another way this is the first time in the four-and-a-half billion year history of Earth that it's been possible to extend life beyond Earth\n\nbefore this it was not possible how long will this window be open it may be open for a long time or it may be open for a short time I think we should it would be wise to assume that it is open for a short time and and and then let us secure the future secure the future of consciousness such that life of the lights of consciousness is not extinguished and we should you try to do this as quickly as possible that's my view good it's so difficult to secure the future of the earth but we can secure the future of next 100 years I am not the person that I admire your courage for explore the Mars but I admire a lot of people spend efforts on improving the earth it's it's great to send a woman and people to the Mars but we have to care about the seven point four\n\nbillion people on the earth how can we make the world's most sustainable and I'm not that fan of the Mars because I think it's easy to go to the Mars when you go on the top of the hills all the out of the building just a one step you go to Mars but you will never be able to come back yeah that's my team that works there and so I hate to go to the Himalayas - I mean when you climb on them I think someday I will go there when the elevator is ready I would go to have a look but I think people spending more time on the earth think about 1/2 because no matter how long the civilization of the human beings would be like one minute or two million or have many years but we only have 100 years so we cannot solve all the problems for future but we have to be responsible\n\nfor the future but we should care more about how we can enjoy better my view is that by the artificial intelligence or AI when human being understand ourselves better then we can improve the water better last 200 years human being tried to understand the other side war better understand the other people better but I think what I feel excited about a ai is AI is to understand people the inside of the human beings the earth I heard you you're gonna dig eternal in deep in the earth which is amazing I think anyhow every time when I read the news about you are interesting the outside space I look at you it's a great respect we need a heroes like a you but we need more heroes like us working hard on the earth improving things every day that's what I want sure\n\nI mean to be clear I'm very Provos it sounds great weekly are very Pro Earth when I say you know us becoming a multi-planet species or making life multi expanding the scope and scale of consciousness from a resource standpoint I'm talking about less than 1% of Earth's resources should be dedicated to making life multiplanetary Oh making consciousness multiplanetary so you know I think it should be like somewhere in between how much we spend on lipstick and how much we spend on health care like you know things like for the preservation of consciousness we should spend maybe slightly more than we spend on on cosmetics that's my you know and I'm Pro cosmetics I like that great but but you know this probably worth spending I don't know some like at least\n\nhalf a percent of Earth GDP on extending life to be multiplanetary maybe 1% I'd say seems like a good a good use of resources and but in 98 you know we have like towards magnitude more resources spent on earth so it's not like it's you know somehow gonna fundamentally impair earth if likes are just 1% of both resources on that order should be enough to make life multiplanetary seems like a wise investment for the future and obviously I spend a lot of my time on sustainable energy with Tesla with you know electric cars and solar and batteries and that kind of thing and I'm really excited to be here in Shanghai for the the Shanghai Giga factory which is I think that Tesla China team has done an amazing job really mind-blowing like I've just astounded by\n\nhow good the job is and how much progress has been made and I think it's a good story for the world and to say like look look how much progress you can make in China this is extremely impressive like my hat is off you know you guys Rock so I've never seen anything but so fast in my life before to be totally Frank I've seen some crazy things so you know I think it's like I really think China is the future well that's very impressive and there's also some great progress on entrepreneurial rocket companies in China as well I believe to have made orbit it was very difficult very hard to make orbit achieving orbit I have great respect very hard yeah pick up another topic sure yeah job jobs jobs or life jobs sure anything sure so what new jobs will be created\n\nbecause of AI or has the change already stated what do you think I think why we needed that many jobs hahaha right my view is that the jobs actually every technology revolution people start to worry right last 200 years we worry about the new technology gonna take away all the jobs actually we made a lot of jobs second because of the Industrial Revolution job create a lot of jobs what I think is the next 20 30 years human being will live much longer the live science technology is gonna make people live probably a hundred a hundred twenty years that may not be a good thing because you get a grandfather's grandfather still working hard but the challenge is my question why should we have a lot of jobs I think people should work three days a week four hours\n\na day when we have electricity the power of electricity is that we make people more time so you can go to the collar ok in the evening you can go to dancing party in the evening so people because of electricity people have more time I think because of artificial intelligence people will have more time enjoy being human beings in your life in my life I think I visit the problems 300 cities in my life my graph my father visited 30 cities my grandfather will visit only three cities so my grandchildren profit probably will visit the three thousand cities always alive he's always on the Tesla is always on the robots always traveling around so I don't think we need a lot of jobs at that time the jobs we need is make people happier make people is the life enjoy\n\nthe human beings so I don't worry about the job jobs a lot first we're gonna have love jobs second we don't need a lot of jobs third there's a very interesting thing which because we will probably talk about life in the agriculture period average age is like a 3035 years old in the industry period technology revolution people can live 70 years so in the artificial intelligent period people can live a hundred to the years as I think now the problem comes when people's life is getting better people don't want to have children where a grand grandfather is there you don't want have a children at that time we are going to have a lot of jobs with nobody want to do it so we need artificial intelligence the robots to take care of the old guys for sure you will\n\nnot be happy or you were happy because when your grand grandfather said all I need to work tomorrow then that's a disaster so I think we cannot predict the future but we should be ready that we are going to enter into the area that everybody can live 120 years and we have a new more new problems that come up so that's my view about jobs don't worry about it well you will have jobs yeah I I think the yeah over time a I will make jobs kind of work pointless probably the last job that will remain will be doing writing AI software and then eventually the AI will just write its own software so I don't know I suppose I would recommend studying engineering physics that kind of thing or working on something where people just want to interact with other people\n\nand people enjoy fundamentally interacting with other people so if you're working on something that involves people or engineering it's probably a good approach you know art of course yeah like I said I think we're gonna have to figure out this neural link situation otherwise we will be left behind it's very important we do this quickly I think time we don't have much time we don't have much time before what we don't have much time to solve the neural link yeah yeah yeah anything like technology like technology and technology awareness there's like it's like if it was like a topological map of technology awareness it's mostly flat with a few short buildings and then some very tall spires very tall spires and unless you're on that very tall spire it's\n\nnot obvious what the topology is yeah I never worry about the things that I cannot solve I left other people to solve it if nobody can solve it just let it be that's my life oh let's talk about education I'm of quite an interesting about education can we yeah so what knowledge or skills will be useful to master the future do you have any vice for young professionals who want to pursue a career in AI young professionals I don't think we will have professionals on AI in the future well I worry a lot about people worried about jobs but I worry about education all the education systems the things we teach our kids the way we teach our kids are mainly designed for the industry period and I'm sure the Machine will be much cleverer than human beings in the future\n\nhow can human being do better human beings shall be smarter human be shall be wiser so how can we be human beings to be wiser a smarter I think that we should change the way of Education change the things because in the in the past we focus a lot about you know remember things computer can remember better than you are we want to calculate the faster computer can rep can calculus faster we want to run faster computer can run much faster than you are so human beings should have confidence by being more creative more constructive so how can we teach our kids to be more creative and constructive and I think this is the key of the education and I want spend more time on training kids or arts on painting on seeing on dancing you know all these are the creative\n\nthings that make people live like a humans don't worry about machines for sure we should understand one thing that men can never make another men computer is a computer computer is just a toy man cannot even make a mosquito so we should have a confidence computer only have chips men have the heart it's the heart where the wisdom comes from so I think in the next 10 or 20 years human beings or every country every government should focus on reform the education system making sure our kids be able to find jobs in the future being able to live in a life that only working three days a week four hours a day and that is very important if we do not change the education system that we are in we are all in going to being trouble that's my view and don't worry about\n\nit we will change it yeah yeah try learn as much as much as possible that allows you to predict the future or make the future say the thing is the best way to predict the future is to make it just and then assess whether what you are learning is enabling you to predict the future with less error are you less wrong we're all always wrong to some degree but can you reduce the error on your future predictions I think that's the way to look at education as of course but we're both creative create the future and predict the future so that includes art and all those other things but close the loop on being less wrong about future so that's the work right way to think about education I mean down the road with the neuro-link you you can just upload any subject\n\ninstantly so we like the matrix you want to fly a helicopter no problem Oh helicopters will fly themselves but you know if you wanted to do whatever any any given skill you just upload it to instantly I mean the way education works right now it's extremely low bandwidth it's extremely slow lectures are the worst really it's like very slow yeah just try to predict the future with less error this is the heart this is very hard as you were saying I'm not sure it's 99.\n\n9 percent but it's it's not very good generally a prediction of the future but I think often people don't try it the first thing is try if you don't try okay you know got it you gotta try and then and then adjust based on the error of your prior predictions yeah I think just to try is very good we should always have the confidence to try the future and I never worry about the errors and mistakes errors and mistakes that are the best assets of human lives and humans I think that when people worry about the disasters that AI is gonna bringing I think it's not the disasters it's the mistakes that human beings to make and trust human beings will be able to correct the mistakes and improve themselves and that we need education and this is what we think now\n\nChina today we have 1800 new babies born every year which which is not enough we need we need to have like much more than that but I think the best resources of the human beings on the or the best resources on the earth are not the coast not the oil not the electricity it's it's the human brains how can we make the human great brains more creative constructive how can we making sure that the machines are always the toys and tools of humans rather than the control so I'm never in my life and especially last two years where people talk about at AI say human human being will be controlled by machines I never think about it I think it's it's it's it's impossible right it's impossible because because human beings they are different machines invented by human\n\nbeings and according to the size humans can never create another animal that is smart and humans especially where you have so many smart people it's impossible to make another smart people I very much disagree with that ok yeah that's good yeah I mean the first thing you should assume is that we are very dumb and we could we can definitely make things smarter than ourselves I mean the they didn't used to be humans right so the then the our earliest civilization was very primitive we didn't have any technology really we're just like running around you know trying to not get eaten or just want to survive a winter now we have like heating and we grow food this is all new stuff so you know things that have obviously gotten way more smarter than the past way\n\nsmarter so that's going to continue we're not the last step in evolution so the most important thing like I said the most important was the mistake I see smart people making is assuming that they're smart they're not so give me example what the animals or things that a human being made that is smart a human beings well computers actually are already much smarter than people on so many dimensions we just keep moving the goal posts so we used to think like for example being good at chess was an example of a smart human and then Kasparov was crushed by deep blue in 97 that was a long time ago 22 years I mean right now your cell phone could crush the world champion of chess literally go used to be thought of as something that's humans were better at than\n\ncomputers then Lisa Dahl was beaten for before 1 by alpha zero then a new version of alpha zero o icer should say alphago alphago beat at least at all for one then there's alpha 0 alpha zero crushed alphago hundred to zero now it's just pointless because it just keeps playing itself humans are trying to play a computer go is like trying to fight Zeus it's a not going to work a you hopeless we're hopeless hopelessly inadequate in terms of rendering and I think that basically there's just a smaller and smaller corner of what intellectual pursuits that humans are better than computers and that every year it gets smaller and smaller and and soon we will be far far surpassed in every single way guaranteed or civilizational and those the two possibilities okay\n\nyeah my view is that computer may be clever by human being a much smarter yeah every not clever this very academic is knowledge driven smarter is experience driven computer is smart is clever but it's human being we invented a computer I never see a computer invented a human being this is my first point second point is that about a go play chess it's stupid to compete with a computer on play goal just like a hundred years ago where human being created cars so human being said I can run faster than a car it's impossible it's only stupid people to compete with a car who'll run faster go is designed for human to play with human right the chess is designed for human to human why should a human to fight against a computer so I never ever Li play chess or go\n\nwith computer I'll be happy to see two computers fight each other I'm not interested in play golf with chess so I told those guys they are very sad computer will be smart they're human beings because computer can't play chess better I think you are stupid to compete with that don't do that so this is we always do things we are good at sure okay well what be an example of something that humans are better than a computer at and and then let's see if that happens well humans computer is only one of the clever tools that human created and computers us a clever but there will be more tools that human beings will created much cleverer than computers that's my view okay well let me tell you like my view on the on AI is essentially the you can view the advancement\n\nof AI as solving things with increasing numbers of degrees of with the increasing degrees of freedom so the the thing that what the thing with the most most degrees of freedom is reality but AI is steadily advanced solving things that have more and more degrees of freedom so obviously it's something like like checkers was very easy to solve that that we could solve with with classical software classical computing not really all that challenging and in fact there is a complete solution for checkers meaning it is literally literally impossible every every version of checkers is known and then then there's chess which was also was also it had many many more degrees of freedom than checkers many orders 90 or more than checkers but still really I would say\n\na low order of magnitude lower degree of freedom game then there's go which had many orders of magnitude more degrees of freedom than than chess so it's really just stepping through orders of magnitude of degrees of freedom this is the way to I think view the advancement of intelligence yeah it and and it's really gonna get to the point where it just can completely simulate a person in every way possible like many people simultaneously in fact I mean obviously there's a there's a strong argument we're in a simulation right now you know so reminds you that joke of like you know if if life was a video game what would be the review it's like well the graphics are incredible that the plot is confusing the respawn takes a long time that's a video game that's\n\nlife and if life is a video game respawned take takes 20 years disappointing human being and have them be fully conscious I'm worried about the birth rate which which you alluded to earlier the the contrary to like most people think we we have like too many people on the planet but actually this is this is an outdated view this is the assuming that AI is fine or assuming that AI is a there's a benevolent future with AI I think that the biggest problem the world will face in 20 years is population collapse collapse I want to emphasize this the biggest issue in 20 years we'll be population collapse not explosion collapse the it's very easy to see what the world will look like in 20 years because humans have a 20 year boot sequence so like you said okay\n\nwell who is born last year okay now you know what the world look like in 20 years it's that easy I absolutely agree with that the the population problem is going to be facing huge challenge 1.\n\n4 billion people in China it sounds a lot but I think next 20 years we'll see this thing will bring big trouble to China and the population decreasing of the whole the speed of population decreasing is gonna speed up now you call it collapse I actually accelerating close that's the RIC class tolerating collapse and then the commoner rebuttal is like well what about immigration like from where you know you want to go to spay you know the Mars and Mars will emigrate yeah Marceline's here public mars these people these people you know there's no zero people there right now so right now it's the Machine planet there's only some robots there this is something that we should pay special attention that's why the the 18 million new babies born in China which\n\nwas less than I go only like 1% of something we should spend more time to create these people and treat life better but also I think about AI there's another thing which alone I in my company in our company a I would call Alibaba intelligent because we think when things with order with things with logic machine can't always do better hey I can do better but if things with an order without logic human being can do better for example when you love somebody there's no reason normally I just love him or just love her I have no reason but when I hate something body when I want to do bad things on something somebody there's a logic and with when there's a logic hey I can do better what we do on our end financing we you would teach machine all the bad things\n\nthat bad guys want to do machine can learn quickly and arrest all the bad guys immediately but when you want to do good things not necessarily AI means love that's absolutely right so that is why the world the AI if the way I can bring love which I caught in the past if you have the successful person you have to be L and EQ and IQ right in the future if you want to survive in this world you have to be the L Q the Q of love that's important too otherwise you cannot survive in artificial intelligence time my greatest love is the answer yeah many songs about that you want to pick up the final one use me gentlemen teach the time is very limited so we only have five minutes left so last question please yeah I thought you want to pick up the last life or human\n\nbeing machines so you want to talk about your cars ultimately autonomy what do you want to talk this feels like one of those steps in a video game we would like pick a path to choice I choose life okay life so how much longer do you think people can live for with the helper a I can a I help with environment sustainability can you well I think first of all I think humans will solve environmental sustainability I do not mean to suggest complacency or that we just take it easy in fact this is a self fulfilling one fulfilling prophecy we must we must take immediate and traumatic action and we you know we and continue the momentum towards environmental sustainability and China is actually the world leader in this in fact I'm not sure how well it is known outside\n\nof China just how much China is a world leader in environmental sustainability it's extremely impressive I mean I think half of all the electric cars in the world were made in China last year or something like that so you know I so I don't mean to suggest suggest complacency but I do think humans can and will solve sustainability if if we can if we can do the neural lace then I think or the neural link essentially the age will not matter that much you can simply save your state and restore your state like just like a saved game essentially something very close to that I do think we can we can solve biological aging if we really want it to you would have to make DNA changes but it's obviously just on a on a clock all all organisms are I mean you could\n\ntake a fruit fly for example and you could give it yo to sort of have it to daily yoga and I have a very healthy diet and it's still gonna live for three weeks maybe four weeks so environmental factors are a relatively minor for extending life you have to change the DNA and those other like will people be okay with changing the DNA that's the the thing about extending life you know and probably people are a little reticent about that but that's essentially the thing that needs to occur to extend life you've got you've got to stuff the DNA clock somehow I don't know if we should work on this or not I think frankly you know it's it's probably a good thing that we do eventually die you know there's a saying like in physics like even physicists which are\n\ngenerally quite objective is like saying like you know all physicists don't change their mind they just die so then maybe you know there's a it's good to have this life cycle yeah well I think AI can definitely help the environment suspend sustainability and when human beings know themselves better human being will be smarter and will be wiser the difference between clever people and smart people or wise people smart people knows what he wants and how he can get it wise people know what he doesn't want so when human beings using artificial intelligence they will understand themselves better and I think there will be a minutes of ways people will live in a healthy earth and protect the healthy earth the reason why I want I want to stay in this earth I\n\nwant to work on this earth I want to do anything I can to help this earth to better because even in a go to this space is great but if we can spend at resources just to focus on helping pick up the garbage from the oceans that thing is more difficult than to go to the Mars but artificial intelligence can help us achieving that and solve the problems and the second a human being can live better can live longer but what we need is not only lived longer we want to live healthier how can we live healthier it's to understand us better most of the disease are caused by our behavior so I think I'm 100 percent sure people will live longer people will live healthier but may not necessarily live happier if you want to be happier human beings your focus Valley the\n\nvision and the mission and always have the dreams and I don't want people love to technology and put them dreams on the technology I think the technology should be with dreams it's the not technology change of the world is the dreams behind the technology that changed the world so my my hope is that anything we can do to improve this road to helping seven point four billion people live better and live healthier and this is all about our world and I think we will be working very happily because I love your product Tesla you know making work cleaner and you have a de Factory in China and I think we need to do more things to improve this earth improve this world and make sure that people are happier and people care about the family people care about the\n\nhouse that's all we should do and trust us trust a human beings and trust young people let's take responsibility for today but let's not take away all the solutions for tomorrow it's great human being make mistakes it's great human being learn from mistakes it's great to die thank you live long ice is like yeah thank you fight for the light of consciousness thank you you"},"languages":["en"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJ5w11Cm3gM"},{"id":"cbs-sunday-morning-2019-07-21","type":"interview","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zPvbgDVT17M","title":"CBS Sunday Morning","titles":{"en":"CBS Sunday Morning","de":"CBS Sunday Morning","fr":"CBS Sunday Morning"},"date":"2019-07-21","summary":"Musk talks to CBS about SpaceX, Starship, reusable rockets and his goal of making humanity multiplanetary on the Apollo 11 50th anniversary.","text":"So, test nine of Starship. Yes. If this goes well and all goes well, how soon before we can do a first uncrrewed trip to Mars? If if we're lucky, we probably got about a 50% chance of sending ships from Earth to Mars at the end of next year. So, November, December next year in about 18 months. Wow. Is that realistic or is that Elon time? Um, well, I try to give the 50th percentile. Uh, you should expect half the time I'm wrong.","textByLang":{"en":"So, test nine of Starship. Yes. If this goes well and all goes well, how soon before we can do a first uncrrewed trip to Mars? If if we're lucky, we probably got about a 50% chance of sending ships from Earth to Mars at the end of next year. So, November, December next year in about 18 months. Wow. Is that realistic or is that Elon time? Um, well, I try to give the 50th percentile. Uh, you should expect half the time I'm wrong."},"languages":["en"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zPvbgDVT17M"},{"id":"e3-coliseum-2019-06-13","type":"interview","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WVW50KRaBd8","title":"E3 Coliseum","titles":{"en":"E3 Coliseum","de":"E3 Coliseum","fr":"E3 Coliseum"},"date":"2019-06-13","summary":"Full on-stage conversation with game designer Todd Howard about technology, gaming, cars and space.","text":">> AND NOW, ELON MUSK IN CONVERSATION WITH TODD HOWARD! PLEASE WELCOME YOUR MODERATOR! >> THIS IS GOING TO BE REALLY SPECIAL. E3 I THINK IS A SHOW ABOUT CELEBRATING GAMES BUT IT'S ALSO ABOUT TALKING ABOUT THE IMPACT GAMES HAVE ON THE WORLD AND PEOPLE FROM ALL WALKS OF LIFE TALKING ABOUT WHAT GAMES MEAN TO THEM.\n\nTODAY IT'S MY HONOR TO INTRODUCE ONE OF OUR INDUSTRY'S MOST RENOWNED DESIGNERS WITH AN INDIVIDUAL WHO IS CHARTING THE FUTURE OF THE WORLD IN SO MANY INCREDIBLE WAYS WHO ALSO HAPPENS TO BE A BIG GAMER. PLEASE WELCOME TODD HOWARD AND ELON MUSK! WELCOME TO E3! >> THANK YOU. >> WHEN WE ANNOUNCE THIS, THE BIGGEST QUESTION EVERYONE HAD WAS TO THESE GUYS KNOW EACH OTHER? YOU GUYS ARE FRIENDS, RIGHT? >> YEAH. >> HOW DID YOU GET TO KNOW EACH OTHER?\n\n>> PEOPLE TRIED TO CONNECT US OVER SEVERAL YEARS, WE FINALLY CONNECTED I THINK WHEN I BOUGHT MY TESLA. AND SOMEBODY -- I WENT INTO THE STORE, YOU DON'T BUY TESLA, YOU ORDER THEM ONLINE. I CLICK THAT BUTTON WHEN ORDERING OUR TESLA AND THEN WE CONNECTED. >> I'VE BEEN A BIG FAN OF YOUR GAMES FOR A LONG TIME AND I PLAYED \"FALL OUT 3,\" I PLAYED THAT GAME A LOT. I EXPLORED EVERY CORNER OF THAT GAME. I DID NOT COMPLETE \"SKY ROOM.\"\n\nAND THEN, I ASKED FOR THE DASH CAN I HAVE THAT STATUE OF THAT WEIRD LOOKING GUY WITH THE 1950s GUY? THAT GUY. LIFE-SIZED STATUE OF THIS 1950s JUMPSUIT. DO YOU HAVE THIS AT HOME? IT WAS SO WEIRD HAVING THAT WITH PARTY. TO PARTNER TO MAKE EVERYONE ELSE IS LIKE, THAT'S WEIRD. ROLLING BACK IN TIME, WHEN YOU WERE A KID, YOU PROGRAMMED A GAME, IS THAT TRUE? >> PRIMITIVE.\n\nIT I THINK I WAS PROBABLY TEN OR 11 WHEN I PROGRAMMED THAT GAME, IT'S A SIMPLE GAME. YOU ARE A SPACE FIGHTER, YOU FIGHT ALIENS. YEAH. I WROTE THAT GAME, THE GRAPHICS AND THE SOUND AND EVERYTHING. IT'S A VERY SIMPLE GAME. >> DID YOU EVER ASPIRE TO MAKE GAMES OR GET INTO MAKING GAMES? >> THAT WILL BE FUN. >> THERE WERE A FEW PLACES WHERE YOU KEPT DOING A LITTLE BIT OF GAMING STUFF.\n\n>> I WORKED AT A GAMING START UP WHICH WARILY WAS CALLED ROCKET SCIENCE. FADE TO LOVE'S IRONY. I WORKED AT ROCKET SCIENCE, IT WAS LONG TIME AGO. IT MUST HAVE BEEN '93, '94. IT WAS TRICKY. >> YOU NEVER APPLY TO BETHESDA, THOUGH? >> HE WAS DOING OTHER THINGS. >> MY ORIGINAL PLAN WAS TO GO TO GRAD SCHOOL AND DO STUDY FOR ELECTRIC VEHICLES, I ALWAYS WANTED TO DO ELECTRIC CARS AND WORK ON SUSTAINABLE ENERGY, I CAN SORT OF TALK A LITTLE BIT ABOUT IT.\n\nBASICALLY, WHAT OF THE THINGS I THINK ARE IMPORTANT FOR THE FUTURE, WE HAD TO HAVE SUSTAINABLE ENERGY, SUSTAINABLE CONSUMPTION OF ENERGY. SO THAT MEANS MAKING SOLAR PANELS LOW-COST AND ELECTRIC ELECTRIC CARS APPEALING. AND THEN WE WANT TO BE, MULTI-PLANET SPECIES, ROCKETS, AND THEN -- THERE IS A SOME THINGS I THOUGHT WOULD AFFECT THE FUTURE BUT I'M NOT SURE IF IT'S GOOD OR BAD, LIKE A I. THAT WORRIES ME, THAT ONE.\n\n[LAUGHTER] >> I JUST MADE A VIDEO GAMES. I WAS GOING TO DO ALL THAT. BUT I ACTUALLY DON'T KNOW HOW TO DO THAT. >> THAT AI BASICALLY CAUSED WORLD WAR III, AS I RECALL. >> IS THERE A LINK THERE, YOU TALK ABOUT AI AND VIDEO GAMES AND THE TECHNOLOGY AND VIDEO GAMES, IS THERE ANYTHING THERE THAT SORT OF HELPS PUSH TECHNOLOGY THAT YOU THINK?\n\nYOU LOOK AT SELF-DRIVING CARS OR OTHER THINGS, ARE THERE THINGS FROM VIDEO GAMES YOU THINK HELP PUSH TECHNOLOGY FORWARD? >> PART OF THE REASON I GOT INTERESTED IN TECHNOLOGY, THE REASON WAS VIDEO GAMES. VIDEO GAMES ARE A POWERFUL FORCE FOR GETTING KIDS INTERESTED IN TECHNOLOGY, IT HAS A BIGGER EFFECT THAN PEOPLE REALIZE. IF WE ARE INTERVIEWING SOMEBODY FOR SOFTWARE ENGINEERING, MANY TIMES, HOW DID YOU START PROGRAMMING? \"VIDEO GAMES.\"\n\nI THINK MANY OF THE BEST SOFTWARE ENGINEERS IN THE WORLD ARE AT OR SPENT MUCH OF THEIR CAREER AT VIDEO GAMES HOUSES AND ESPECIALLY IF PEOPLE HAD TO TRY TO CREATE REALISTIC GRAPHICS USING VERY LITTLE COMPUTE POWER, THAT'S A HARD PROBLEM AND SO A LOT OF PEOPLE HAD TO WRITE REALLY TIGHT CODE AND COME UP WITH REALLY CLEVER IDEAS TO DO THAT.\n\nIF YOU LOOK AT SOMEONE, AND AMAZING SOFTWARE ENGINEER AND A REALLY GOOD AEROSPACE ENGINEER, IT SHOWS PROBLEM SOLVING, FIGURE OUT SOFTWARE ENGINEERING, PROBLEM-SOLVING, IT TRANSFERS TO OTHER THINGS. >> THE BEST ANECDOTE BETWEEN VIDEO GAMES AND ROCKETS, GAMING AI IS SO MUCH HARDER. WHEN THE GAME CRASHES, HE PRICES REBOOT AND WHEN THE ROCKET CRASHES, A GIANT MASS SPREAD OVER SEVERAL MILES.\n\n>> THERE'S A JOKE ABOUT, IF REALITY WAS A VIDEO GAME THE GRAPHICS ARE GREAT BUT THE PLOT IS TERRIBLE. AND THE TIME IS REALLY LONG. >> HOW HAS THE STUFF ELON'S DONE INSPIRED OR AFFECTED WHAT YOU DO, TODD, IN YOUR WORLD? >> I MEAN, THE SPACE STUFF, AS WE LOOK AT STARFIELD'S, THAT'S REALLY KIND OF LOOK, OKAY, HOW ARE THESE THINGS GOING TO WORK IN THE FUTURE? GOT TO GO TO SPACE X LAST YEAR, THAT PLACE IS LIKE THE AVENGERS MEETS NASSAU.\n\nWHAT DO THOSE THINGS LOOK LIKE AS WE DO A SCIENCE-FICTION GAME? BUT THE OTHER STUFF, IN THE CARS AND SELF-DRIVING IS SOMETHING I'M PASSIONATE ABOUT BUT THAT DOESN'T AFFECT THE GAME STUFF. AND I KNOW THAT NOW YOU ARE PUTTING GAMES ON THE TESLA SO THAT'S DIFFERENT. >> YEAH. ACTUALLY, THANKS FOR HELPING OUT ON THAT, I APPRECIATE IT. >> WE TALKED ABOUT THAT, WOULDN'T IT BE PRETTY COOL? SO WE ARE WORKING TOGETHER. \"SKYRIM\" ON IT?\n\nWE ARE GOING TO START A LITTLE SMALLER. WE ARE WORKING ON \"FALLOUT SHELTER\" FOR THE CARS. IT WILL BE FREE, YOUR LITTLE DWELLERS ON THE SCREEN, THEY LIVE IN THE CAR IN SOME WAY. IT'S A GREAT STARTING POINT. >> HOW IS THIS GOING TO WORK WITH GAMES, YOU'VE TALKED ABOUT UNITY AND PORTING IT ALL, YOU HAVE TO BE PARKED WHEN YOU PLAY THESE? HOW DOES THIS WORK? >> YEAH, YOU HAVE TO PARK THE CAR. >> [LAUGHS] >> THE FUN POLICE MAKE US PARK THE CAR.\n\nWE WERE ALSO GOING TO ENABLE PEOPLE TO WATCH VIDEOS, STREAMING. THROUGH THE BROWSER, TO WATCH NETFLIX OR WHATEVER. YOUTUBE, IF THE CAR IS PARKED. A CHARGING STATION IF YOU WANT TO WATCH SOMETHING, WATCH IT ON THE SCREEN IN THE CAR. BUT THE GENERAL PRINCIPLE, WHAT CAN WE DO TO MAKE THE CAR THE MOST FUN POSSIBLE? AND WHAT DO OTHER CARS NOT HAVE?\n\nSO IT SEEMS LIKE, WELL, YOU KNOW, IF YOU ARE JUST PARKED SOMEWHERE WAITING FOR SOMEBODY, FINISH AN APPOINTMENT, ON A ROAD TRIP IT WOULD BE PRETTY COOL IF YOU JUST GO TO THE CAR SCREEN AND PLAY SOME FUN GAME. AND WE ARE EXPLORING, HOW DO WE MAKE IT AS MUCH FUN AS POSSIBLE? YOU CAN ALREADY PLAY ALL OF THE OLD ATARI GAMES IN THE CAR, YOU CAN CONNECT AN XBOX OR PS FOR CONTROLLER AND HAVE A PRETTY GOOD CONTROL FEEDBACK.\n\nAND WE HAVE GENIUS MOVES AND -- YOU CAN MAKE THE FART SOUND LIKE IT'S COMING FROM ANY SEAT. >> THAT ACTUALLY IS THE FUNNIEST EASTER EGG. AND THE NAMES OF THE FART. THE FALCON HEAVY IS ONE OF THEM, I BELIEVE. >> EXACTLY. >> WE'VE GOT SOME CLIPS, RIGHT?\n\n>> I CAN SHOW YOU SOME CLIPS OF SOME UPCOMING GAMES IN THE CAR, IT'S MEANT TO BE, WHAT ARE SOME COOL GAMES PEOPLE MIGHT LIKE TO PLAY, HOW MUCH PEOPLE PLAY THEM, ADD THEM TO -- HIGHER ON THE LIST OR MAYBE PUT IT INTO AN ARCHIVE YOU CAN TAP TO DOWNLOAD. THE SCREEN WAS NOT ORIGINALLY MEANT AS A GAME PLAYER, DOESN'T HAVE THAT MUCH STORAGE.\n\nSO IT WOULDN'T HAVE THAT MANY GAMES ON IT AT ONE TIME BUT IT WOULD BE LIKE -- WHAT DO PEOPLE ENJOY PLAYING, A GOOD WAY TO PASS TIME. >> LET'S TAKE A LOOK AT GAMES ON TESLA. ♪ ♪ [APPLAUSE] >> WE'VE GOT A SECOND ONE, TOO? >> WE GOT A RACING GAME, SINGLE PLAYER OR TWO PLAYER. >> GAME TWO, CHECK IT OUT. ♪ ♪ [APPLAUSE] >> THE STEERING WHEEL, I WASN'T PREPARED FOR THAT, THAT'S PRETT.\n\n>> IF YOU HAVE A RACING GAME AND YOU HAVE A STEERING WHEEL SITTING RIGHT THERE, WAITING TO BE STEERED. >> TO GAS AND BRAKE, WILL THAT WORK, TOO? >> YEAH. THE BREAK IS WIRED IN AND I THINK WE WILL PROBABLY HAVE MAYBE THE SCROLL WHEEL FOR THE GAS PEDAL SO WE DON'T ACCIDENTALLY -- STEPPING ON THE BREAK IF YOU ARE STATIONARY IS NOT A PROBLEM. >> THE GAS COULD BE. THAT'S AMAZING. THAT'S SO COOL THAT YOU'RE DOING THAT INSIDE THE CAUSE.\n\nI WANT TO ASK YOU THE IDEA, YOU ARE BOTH CERTAINLY KNOWN FOR A TON OF INCREDIBLE SUCCESSES IN YOUR CAREERS. HE SAID BEFORE, SOMETIMES YOU'RE REALLY ONLY INNOVATING IF YOU'RE READY TO FAIL OR HAVE FAILURE ALONG THE WAY, SHOWS THAT YOU ARE PUSHING RENOVATION. TODD, YOU'VE BEEN THROUGH QUITE A YEAR, CAN YOU GUYS MAY BE RARE LITTLE BIT ON SWORD OUT OF THE FOR INNOVATION AND HOW SOMETIMES FAILURE IS PART OF THAT JOURNEY?\n\n>> USUALLY WHEN YOU GET TO GAMING, THE FIRST TIME YOU SEE IT, YOU'VE GOT SUCCESSFUL AND YOU GOT THERE BY TRYING BIG NEW THINGS AND WE ARE GOING TO KEEP DOING THAT, OTHER GAME MAKERS DO THAT AND I THINK IT'S GOOD THAT THE AUDIENCES ARE WELCOMING TO THAT. THEY ARE GOING TO TRY IT OUT AND SUPPORT US AS WE GO THROUGH THAT PROCESS TO FIGURE OUT, HEY, WHAT'S GOING TO MAKE THIS TAX?\n\nWE HAD OUR UPS AND DOWNS WITH \"FALLOUT 76\" BUT OUR FANS ARE INCREDIBLE AND HAVE REALLY STUCK WITH US AND IT'S TURNED INTO ONE OF THE BEST ONLINE COMMUNITIES WE'VE EVER SEEN, IT'S FANTASTIC. >> THROUGH YOUR CAREER I'M SURE YOU'VE SEEN THAT, TOO, THE PROJECTS THAT TAKE TIME TO EVOLVE BUT THAT'S PART OF WHAT IT TAKES, I GUESS, HAVING THAT VISION AND PUSHING FOR IT.\n\n>> SURE, IF YOU'RE GOING TO TRY SOMETHING INNOVATIVE, YOU ARE IN UNEXPLORED TERRITORY SO THE ODDS THAT SOMETHING WILL GO WRONG ARE PRETTY HIGH. IT'S ONLY IF YOU TRY TO DO SOMETHING THAT'S WELL UNDERSTOOD THAT THERE IS A LITTLE CHANCE OF FAILURE BUT THERE WILL NOT BE INTERESTING OR INNOVATIVE. FOR SURE, UNCHARTED TERRITORY WILL RESULT IN FAILURES NECESSARILY. OR YOU'RE NOT TRYING HARD ENOUG ENOUGH.\n\n>> SPEAKING OF UNCHARTED TERRITORY, YOU MENTIONED \"STARFIELD\" BUT OBVIOUSLY SPACE IS GOING TO BE A PART OF THAT. I'M CURIOUS, I DON'T KNOW HOW MUCH YOU CAN TELL US ABOUT THE GAME -- I SHOULD ASK, WHAT CAN YOU TELL US? >> I DO NOT HAVE A CLIP. EVERYONE NEEDS TO BE PATIENT ON THAT BUT WHAT I CAN SAY IS HOW WE APPROACH IT. THIS COULD HAPPEN. WHAT KIND OF FUEL DO THE SHIPS USE?\n\nUSING HELIUM THREE, WE CAN DEBATE WHETHER THAT IS A GOOD POWER SOURCE FOR SPACESHIPS, HOW DO THE PHYSICS WORK IN SPACE AND GRAVITY AND THOSE KIND OF THING THINGS. WE HAVE TWO A GAME IF I IT SO IT'S NOT AS PUNISHING AS ACTUAL SPACE TRAVEL BUT THAT IT FEELS LIKE TRAVELING IN SPACE IN OUR GAME IS STILL -- AND IT'S DANGEROUS, IT'S STILL DANGEROUS TO GO AND EXPLORE. EVEN THOUGH LOTS OF PEOPLE DO I IT. >> SPACE IS FAR, IS THE THING.\n\nYOU HAVE TO DEFINITELY CUT THAT SHORT. FOUR LIGHT YEARS, MAN. EVEN AT LIGHT SPEED THAT'S PRETTY FAR. I MEAN, IF YOU WANT NORMAL PHYSICS, AND ANTIMATTER DRIVE WOULD BE THE BEST BUT THAT'S GOING TO LIMIT YOU TO LIGHT SPEED WHICH IS A LONG TIME. YEAH. OTHERWISE YOU'RE GOING TO BE STUCK IN ONE STAR SYSTEM. SO -- JUST HONESTLY, I FEEL LIKE WE'RE IN A PRETTY GOOD VIDEO GAME. WHY IS IT JUST POSSIBLE TO GET TO MARS? WHY ARE THE STARS OF SO FAR AWA AWAY?\n\nPUT THOSE STARS, LITTLE POINTS OF LIGHT, DON'T WORRY ABOUT IT. >> ARE YOU LOOKING AT THAT WHEN YOU ARE BUILDING \"STARFIELD\"? I DON'T KNOW HOW FAR IN THE FUTURE IT'S SET. >> GOING BACK TO THAT, RISKING FAILURE AND STUFF, HONESTLY, THE WORLD NEEDS MORE PEOPLE LIKE ELON WHO SAY, I'M NOT SURE HOW THAT WORKS, I'M GOING TO TRY THAT A DIFFERENT WAY. A LOT OF PEOPLE WILL DOUBT THAT.\n\nWHETHER IT'S GOING TO SPACE, SELF-DRIVING CARS, I AM VERY PASSIONATE ABOUT THOSE THINGS AND AS IT COMES TO WHAT'S HAPPENING AT SPACE X, WHAT ARE THE LIMITS OF THE PHYSICS OF THE NEW ENGINES OR THINGS LIKE THAT? TALKING TO ELON, HOW FAR COULD THIS GO IN CURRENT REALITY, HOW WOULD WE MOVE BEYOND THAT IN A FICTIONAL WAY? YEAH.\n\n>> OBVIOUSLY YOU ARE YOU DOING WITH THE REALITY OF TODAY BUT SOMETHING FUTURISTIC LIKE TODD IS DOING, DOES THAT GET YOU EXCITED ABOUT WHERE IT SPACE TRAVEL CAN GO, CAN TODD'S WORLD EXPLORE THAT EVEN FURTHER ON? >> I THINK SCI-FI MOVIES AND VIDEO GAMES, REALLY I THINK IN VIDEO GAMES AND MOVIES THESE DAYS, IT CAN BE PRETTY INSPIRING, TALKING ABOUT THE FUTURE WE WANT, WHAT ARE SOME IMPOSSIBLE SOUNDING TECHNOLOGIES THAT MAY BE COULD WORK SOMEHOW?\n\nTHIS CONCEIVABLY THERE IS A WAY TO DO WORK DRIVE BUT IT'S SUCH ESOTERIC, SUPER OUT ON THE EDGE PHYSICS BECAUSE TECHNICALLY YOU CANNOT GO FASTER THAN THE SPEED OF LIGHT BUT SPACE CAN TRAVEL FASTER THAN THE SPEED OF LIGHT. THAT'S WHAT'S MEANT BY WARP DRIVE. THE AMOUNT OF ENERGY YOU NEED TO WARP SPACES UNBELIEVABLY GIGANTIC. YOU'D HAVE TO BE CONVERTING MATTER AND ENERGY AT A RATE THAT WE CAN'T CONCEIVE, REALLY.\n\nIT CAN'T BE LIKE SOMETHING WHERE IF WE JUST CONVERT ONE JUPITER PER SECOND TO ENERGY, PROBLEM SOLVED. THERE IS A LOT, THERE'S NOT MANY JUPITER'S. YOU KNOW. SO -- THERE MIGHT BE A BIT OF RADIATION AROUND THAT. THERE ARE THINGS, TECHNICALLY THE UNIVERSE DID EXPAND FASTER THAN THE SPEED OF LIGHT, THAT'S WHY WE CAN SEE LIGHT FROM ALL THESE SUPER DISTANT STARS. YEAH. IT'S A PRETTY WILD THAT SPACE EXPANDED FASTER THAN THE SPEED OF LIGHT.\n\nFIGURE OUT SOME STRANGE BREAKTHROUGHS AND COME TO GRIPS BETTER WITH DARK MATTER ESPECIALLY WHICH SEEMS LIKE SOMETHING FISHY IS GOING ON THERE. AND -- >> IT HAS BAD BRANDING. >> YEAH. EXACTLY. THE UNIVERSE IS MOSTLY DARK ENERGY AND DARK MATTER ACCORDING TO CURRENT PHYSICS BUT YOU KIND OF PLUG THEM IN THE EQUATIONS AND THEY SORT OF WORK.\n\nI SORT OF FIGURE, HEY, IF THIS IS A VIDEO GAME AND HAD A BUG IN THEIR SIMULATOR, OH, NO, WE HAVE TO FIGURE OUT A WAY FOR THESE MINIONS TO BELIEVE THEY ARE IN REALITY, INSERT DARK MATTER. >> THE IDEA OF A GAME AS A SIMULATION PREDICTING THINGS, OBVIOUSLY IT'S ENTERTAINMENT ON SOME LEVEL BUT THERE ARE GAMES WHERE IT'S MORE SIMULATION. OR MAYBE NOT. IS THERE VALUE IN THAT? IN TESTING THINGS AND EXPLORING IDEAS INSIDE THE GAME WORLD?\n\n>> YEAH, AT BEST SO WE HAVE A WHOLE TEAM THAT CREATES PHOTOREALISTIC WORLD, TRYING TO BE PHOTOREALISTIC.\n\nCONCRETE CURBS, SHADOWS, FADED LINES, THE REASON SELF-DRIVING IS HARD IS BECAUSE YOU HAVE ALL THESE CORNER CASES AND THINGS WHERE THE ROAD SHOULD BE A CERTAIN WAY ABOUT IT ISN'T, THERE SHOULD BE CERTAIN LINES BUT THERE ARE INTO PAINTED LINES, THEY TOOK THE PAINTED LINES AWAY, MARK THAT'S OFFSET FROM THE PAINTED LINES THAT IF IT JUST LISTENS TO THE LINE AND IT CRASHES INTO STUFF.\n\nIF YOU HAD CLEARLY PAINTED LINE LINES, SELF-DRIVING WOULD BE TRIVIAL. THE WORLD IS FULL OF THINGS THAT ARE NOT THE WAY THEY ARE SUPPOSED TO BE IN THE REAL TRICK WITH SELF-DRIVING AI IS TO FIGURE OUT, WHERE SHOULD I BE ON THIS ROAD THAT HAS NO PAINTED LINES OR THE LINES HAVE BEEN PAINTED WRONG. SKID MARKS AND SCRATCHES AND ROADWORK, ALL SORTS OF THINGS THAT ARE UNEXPECTED. THAT'S THE REALLY HARD PART, OTHERWISE IT WOULD BE CHILD'S PLAY.\n\nWE DO A LOT OF -- GOOD CORRELATIONS, DOES THE CAR DRIVE OFF THE CLIFF? YES. DOES IT DRIVE OFF THE CLIFF IN REALITY? CLOSE. >> I THINK YOU SAID IT ONCE, IT'S NOT THE LINES, IT'S LOOKING FOR DRIVABLE SPACE BECAUSE THAT'S HOW YOUR MIND IS ACTUALLY WORKING EVEN IF THERE'S A LANE. DRIVABLE SPACE IS THE PROBLEM.\n\n>> WE HAVE A PRETTY GOOD RECOGNITION OF LINES AND WANTS TECHNICALLY DRIVABLE SPACE BUT WE NEED, WHAT IS THE ROAD AS OPPOSED TO -- WHAT IS THE MOST PROBABLY THE ROAD AS OPPOSED TO DRIVABLE SPACE AND A WHOLE SUBSET ON CURVES. WE ARE REALLY INTO CURVES RIGHT NOW. SOME CURVES ARE REALLY SUBTLE. SOME YOU SHOULD CARE ABOUT, SOME YOU SHOULDN'T CARE ABOUT, SOMETIMES YOU GO TO A DRIVEWAY AND THERE IS A CURVE, AND THE CAR IS LIKE, CAN'T GO OVER THAT.\n\nGOING THROUGH HER NEIGHBORHOOD AND EVERYONE'S DRIVEWAY IS DRIVE SPACE. TECHNICALLY TRUE BUT YOU DON'T WANT TO GO THROUGH EVERYONE'S DRIVEWAY, IT'S NOT GOOD. >> THINK ABOUT, A LOT OF THAT STUFF STARTED VIDEO GAME WISE, IMAGE PROCESSING AND AI AND WHAT THEY'RE DOING THERE, PEOPLE LOOK AT TECHNOLOGY NOW, THEY ALWAYS UNDERESTIMATE HOW FAST TECHNOLOGY MOVES.\n\nIN THE PRESENT DAY, I THINK THE SELF-DRIVING AND WHAT'S HAPPENING NOW IS GOING TO FUNDAMENTALLY CHANGE THE WORLD IN WAYS PEOPLE CAN'T EVEN EXPECT AND -- OUR CHILDREN MIGHT NOT EVEN LEARN TO DRIVE BECAUSE THE CARS WILL ALL BE DRIVING THEMSELVES AROUND OR HOW IT AFFECTS CITYSCAPES, PARKING LOTS, ALCOHOL CONSUMPTION, ALL THESE STUDIES ARE FASCINATING. THE BEST SELF-DRIVING STOCKS, ALCOHOL COMPANIES. >> MORE GAMES TO PLAY, TOO.\n\n>> VIDEO GAMES, ALL YOU NEED A GPU FOR IS TO HELP THE GAME LOOK BETTER. THOSE SAME GPUs ENDED UP BEING VERY USEFUL, HUGE BOOST TO AI. BETTER GRAPHICS TO AI, THE SAME THING IS QUITE KEY TO SELF-DRIVING. >> I KNOW YOU HAVE OPEN AI, WHERE GAMES ARE GOING. IT YOU HAVE RPGs, SIMULATED WORLDS, EMERGENT BEHAVIOR, THINGS LIKE THAT. CAN YOU TALK ABOUT WHERE GAMES ARE GOING IN THE NEXT FIVE, TEN, PLUS YEARS, WHAT SORT OF HAPPENED THERE.\n\n>> I THINK THAT'S THE PART OF GAMING THAT'S GOING TO MAKE THE BIGGEST JUMP. MOST PEOPLE REACT TO INSTANTLY YOU ARE LOOKING AT A SCREENSHOT OR VIDEO. AS FAR AS HOW A GAME FEELS, A LOT OF PEOPLE, INCLUDING US HAVE STRUGGLED WITH HOW YOU MAKE THAT FEEL REAL. YOU CAN MOVE SOME OF THE PROCESSING TO THE CLOUD, THAT'S THE PART WHERE IT'S GOING TO GET SIGNIFICANTLY BETTER OVER THE NEXT GENERATION.\n\nREACTING TO THINGS YOU DID IN MORE REALISTIC MANNER, THE MORE REACTIVE TO WHAT YOU ARE DOING OR THE SITUATION AROUND THEM IS THAT YOU CAN GET THAT IN A VIDEO GAME ALL THE TIME. >> YOU GET TO A POINT WHERE THESE GAMES BECOME MORE INDISTINGUISHABLE FROM REALITY. WHAT DO YOU THINK, WHERE DO YOU THINK THIS GOES AS THESE GAMES CONTINUE TO IMPROVE, GRAPHICS GET BETTER, SIMULATION GETS BETTER, DO WE REACH THIS POINT WHERE THE WORLD IS THE SAME THING?\n\n>> IMAGINE IF WE WERE TO REACH SUCH A SITUATION, THAT WOULD BE CRAZY. WE SEE THOSE CREATURES IN THE GAME SAYING WOW, IMAGINE, CAN YOU IMAGINE IF THERE IS A SIMULATION? YOU ARE IN A SIMULATION. [LAUGHS] THE SIMULATION IS ALL THE WAY DOWN. A SIMULATION IN SIMULATION, IN A SIMULATION. SEEMS LIKELY. ONE OR TWO THINGS ARE GOING TO HAPPEN, CIVILIZATION WILL END OUR GAMES WILL BE SO REALISTIC THAT YOU CAN'T TELL THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THEM AND REALITY.\n\nI POSTULATE. IS -- DOES THIS SOUND CORRECT OR -- DOESN'T SOUND CORRECT? WE COULD BE SOMEBODY'S VIDEO GAME RIGHT NOW. WHOSE AVATAR ARE YOU? >> WHEN YOU THINK OF, KIND OF, YOU KNOW, WHEN YOU LOOK AT GAMES AND OF THE YOU PLAY NOW, WHATEVER THINGS YOU WANT TO SEE IN GAMES? IS THERE ANYTHING WHEN YOU PLAY A GAME YOU ARE LIKE -- I WISH IT DID THIS?\n\nYOU ARE OBVIOUSLY THINKING ABOUT LOTS OF THINGS BUT ARE YOU SATISFIED, ARE THERE THINGS THAT FRUSTRATE YOU ABOUT GAMES? WHAT DO YOU WANT TO SEE GAMES DO IN THE FUTURE? >> I DON'T KNOW IF I SHOULD SAY. >> YOU WORKING ON A GAME, TOO? >> NO. I DON'T KNOW. A BIT MORE R-RATED, I DON'T KNOW. TRYING TO BE HONEST HERE. [CHEERS AND APPLAUSE] A POPULAR THEME. >> TODD? >> I DON'T KNOW THAT I CAN FOLLOW THAT UP.\n\nI MEAN, WHEN YOU LOOK AT THE STUFF YOU PLAY NOW, YOU TALK ABOUT TODD, YOUR KIDS PLAY GAMES, YOU PLAY GAMES, WHAT EXCITES YOU? WHAT WHAT IF YOU PLAYED RECENT? THERE ARE A LOT OF GAMES OUT THERE, WHAT DOES IT TAKE FOR A GAME TO ATTRACT YOUR INTEREST? >> I HAVEN'T PLAYED A LOT OF GAMES, IT'S BEEN SUPER INTENSE, WORK, GET NOT ENOUGH SLEEP, THAT'S BEEN THE SITUATION FOR A COUPLE YEARS. SO -- JUST HAVEN'T HAD MUCH TIME.\n\nYOU KNOW, THE LAST GAME I PLAYED A LOT WAS PROBABLY \"FALLOUT 4\". THAT WAS A GOOD ONE. >> AND THAT HE WAS LIKE I'M DONE, I'M GOOD. >> \"CYBERPUNK,\" I LIKE THE THEM THEME. THAT WEIRDLY WAS WHAT WE DECIDED TO HAVE OUR PICKUP TRUCK AS CYBERPUNK THEMED PICKUP TRUCK THAT WE WILL BE UNVEILING HOPEFULLY END OF SUMMER. YEAH, YEAH. IT LOOKS WEIRD, IT DOESN'T LOOK NORMAL. >> INSPIRED DIRECTLY BY THE THEME -- THE GAME A LITTLE BIT?\n\n>> I NOTICED ABOUT THE GAME AFTERWARDS, THIS IS SOMETHING OF THEM WORKING ON FOR A WHILE. I LIKE THE GENERAL IDEA. AND YEAH, SO IT'S SORT OF -- YEAH, SORT OF, SORT OF A SLIGHT RUNNER FEEL TO IT. IT DOESN'T LOOK LIKE A NORMAL CAR, LOOKS LIKE IT SHOULD NOT BE ON THE ROADS. BUT -- YOU KNOW, IT WON'T APPEAL TO EVERYONE BUT IT WILL BE SOMETHING THAT'S DIFFERENT AND YOU KNOW, IT WILL BE COMING YOU KNOW, PROBABLY APPEAL TO -- I THINK I WOULD BUY IT.\n\nYOU KNOW, IF YOU'RE TRYING TO WORK ON SOMETHING, IT'S REALLY HARD TO -- TRYING TO FIGURE OUT WHAT OTHERS LOVE BUT YOU DON'T LOVE IT, IT'S REALLY HARD TO MAKE THAT GREAT. WHEN YOU'RE WORKING ON SOMETHING, IF YOU FALL IN LOVE WITH IT, THAT'S A GOOD SIGN. DON'T WORRY ABOUT IF OTHERS DO, IF YOU DO OTHERS WELL. >> ABSOLUTELY TRUE. >> PROBABLY HOW YOU FEEL ABOUT MAKING GAMES, YOU HAVE TO LOVE TO PLAY A?\n\n>> ABSOLUTELY AND IT'S NOT JUST ME, THE WHOLE TEAM. THESE ARE THE KIND OF THINGS WE WOULD LINE UP AT MIDNIGHT TO GO PLAY AND BUY. AND THAT'S WHAT DRIVES YOUR PASSION TO DO IT. YOU HAVE TO BE AROUND TASTE MAKER DAY IN AND DAY OUT, YOU OFTEN MISS THE MARK.\n\n>> ONE THING I WANT TO TALK ABOUT HIS ONLINE PLAY, A LOT IN THE NEWS RECENTLY ABOUT THE SATELLITES AND THE INTERNET AROUND THE WORLD, LOW LATENCY AND GAMING COULD BE ONE OF THE BENEFICIARIES OF THIS. CAN WE TALK A BIT ABOUT THAT PROJECT AND HOW IT WILL TIE AND POTENTIALLY TO GAMING? >> SURE.\n\nONE OF THE CRITERIA FOR STARLIN STARLINK, IMPORTANT FOR REAL-TIME GAMING AND LATER, SORT OF SECOND-GENERATION CONSTELLATIONS ARE AIMING FOR -- THIS WOULD BE REALLY GREAT FOR ANY KIND OF REAL-TIME GAMING, YEAH. >> ACROSS THE WORLD YOU WOULD BE ABLE TO ACCESS THAT? >> ANYWHERE ON EARTH. I SPEAK ARE PRETTY AMAZING. THAT'S EXCITING, WE LOOK AT THESE CLOUD PLATFORMS, STREAMING, FROM A DESIGNER PERSPECTIVE THAT MUCH OPEN UP SO MANY POSSIBILITIES.\n\nWHERE GAMES ARE GOING TO GET IN THE FUTURE. >> I THINK IT'S ABOUT DEMOCRATIZING WHO CAN PLAY, THERE'S A LOT OF BARRIERS TO I WANT TO PLAY THAT GAME, I HAVE TO BUY THIS, BE SOMEWHERE.\n\nHAVING THAT WHERE YOU CAN APPROACH IT LIKE ANY OTHER ENTERTAINMENT, YOU DON'T THINK ABOUT IT AND THAT'S WHERE GAMES NEED TO BE, WHERE IT'S UBIQUITOUS, NOT JUST IN OUR PART OF THE WORLD WHERE PEOPLE ARE CONNECTED WELL, OTHER PARTS OF THE WORLD THAT ARE GROWING AND THESE BILLIONS OF GAMERS COMING INTO THE SCENE WHO DON'T HAVE THE ACCESS WE TAKE FOR GRANTED. >> MAYBE A COUPLE AUDIENCE Q&A, MAYBE RAISE YOUR HAND, COUPLE QUESTIONS FOR THESE GUYS.\n\nA RARE OPPORTUNITY. >> HELLO, HOW ARE YOU DOING? WE ARE STREAMING ON TWITCH RIGHT NOW, BY THE WAY. I HAD A QUESTION ABOUT THE POSSIBILITY OF LIVING IN A SIMULATION. WHEN YOU THINK ABOUT ALL THE QUIRKS, EVERY INDIVIDUAL PERSONALITY, HOW THINGS WORK ON A CELLULAR LEVEL LIKE THE UNIVERSE, EVERYTHING, DOESN'T IT START TO SEE MORE FAR-FETCHED WHEN YOU SEE HOW INTRICATE AND INDIVIDUAL THINGS ARE?\n\n>> OKAY, THE IDEA THAT -- [APPLAUSE] THANK YOU, APPRECIATE IT. NEXT QUESTION, LET'S MAYBE GO OVER HERE. >> HI. BIG FAN. THAT'S LOUD. CHARLES. WHERE ARE YOUR TUSKS? >> I'VE HEARD THAT BEFORE. >> THANKS FOR COMING, THANKS, GUYS. ELON, IF YOU WANT TO GET TO MARS, THAT'S GOING TO TAKE A LONG TIME TO GET ASTRONAUTS OUT THERE. WHAT KIND OF ENTERTAINMENT PLAN DO YOU HAVE? HOPEFULLY VOTED TO PLAY GAMES ON THEIR WAY TO MARS, WHAT YOU THINK ABOUT THAT.\n\n>> ABSOLUTELY, SURE. AWESOME. >> PARTY IN SPACE. >> LET'S DO IT. >> MINE IS SIMPLE, HOW MUCH DO I HAVE TO BEG TO GET A SELFIE WITH YOU? >> SURE, I'LL DO A SELFIE. SURE. ALL RIGHT. NEXT QUESTION. BACK THERE IN THE RED SHIRT. >> IT'S FOR ELON, HOW DO I SIGN UP TO TEST OUT YOUR NEURAL MAP PROGRAM? >> YOU PUT THIS U. S. BC REPORT IN YOUR HEAD. IT WILL BE FINE, MIGHT STING A LITTLE. >> ANOTHER ONE, SURE, RIGHT OVER THERE. >> QUESTION FOR TODD HOWARD.\n\nI LIVE IN ROCKFORD MARYLAND, ARE YOU LOOKING FOR ANY INTERNS BY CHANCE? >> GO TO OUR WEB SITE, THERE'S A LOT OF JOB POSTINGS THERE. >> A COUPLE MORE. SURE, RIGHT OVER THERE. >> HEY, WOW, THIS IS CRAZY. SO RIGHT NOW, I'M TRYING TO BUILD A TOKENIZED GAME ECONOMY FOR GAMERS, MY QUESTION IS, FOR TWO KARMA POINTS, CAN YOU SIGN MY CYBERPUNK HAT? >> WE WILL GET IT UP HERE FOR HIM. >> TWO AND A HALF KARMA POINTS. >> ANOTHER ONE RIGHT HERE.\n\n>> KARMA DOES SEEM REAL. >> ELON, I'M JUST WONDERING, WITH ALL THE NOISE YOU DEAL WITH, LOTS OF CRAZINESS, HOW DO YOU STAY FOCUSED? I CAN'T IMAGINE. >> YEAH, IT'S INSANE. >> HIS PROMISE WAS YOU DO STAY FOCUSED. SO MANY THINGS. >> I FEEL LIKE THE LEVELS, THE LEVEL KEEPS RATCHETING UP, CAN WE TURN THE DIFFICULTY DOWN ONE NOTCH? THAT WOULD BE REALLY HELPFUL. IT KEEPS DIALING UP THE DIFFICULTY. NIGHTMARE LEVEL.\n\n[LAUGHS] >> THIS IS A QUESTION FOR BOTH OF YOU, WHAT'S THE ACTUAL BIGGEST FAILURE YOU'VE GONE THROUGH TO GET TO WHERE YOU ARE? [APPLAUSE] >> WHO GOES FIRST? >> THAT'S A TRICKY QUESTION, IT'S FUNNY, IT'S AN INTERVIEW QUESTION I ASK PEOPLE AND I DON'T -- >> YOU DON'T KNOW YOUR RESPONSE. >> PEOPLE IN THE MILITARY HAVE THE BEST FAILURES, THEY CRASH SATELLITES AND TANKS AND THINGS LIKE THAT. I DO NOT HAVE A GOOD ANSWER FOR THAT.\n\n>> I BLEW UP THREE ROCKETS IN THE BEGINNING. [APPLAUSE] SO THAT WAS, THAT WAS BAD. I ONLY HAD ENOUGH MONEY -- ORIGINALLY, I BASICALLY TOOK ALL THE MONEY I MADE FROM PAYPAL AND PUT IT INTO SPACE X, CREATING SPACE X, TESLA, I FIGURED I'D JUST KEEP HALF OF IT AND SPEND THE OTHER HALF ON THESE CRAZY VENTURES THAT WOULD PROBABLY FAIL AND THEY UNFORTUNATELY NEEDED ALL THE MONEY. SO I HAD TO GIVE THEM ALL THE MONEY.\n\nAND THAT I DIDN'T HAVE A HOUSE OR MONEY FOR RENT, THAT WAS PRETTY DIFFICULT. THAT WAS BACK IN 2008. WE MANAGED TO SCRAPE ENOUGH SPARE PARTS TOGETHER TO A FOURTH LAUNCH AT SPACE X AND THAT WORKED. IF IT HAD NOT WORKED, SPACE X WOULD'VE DIED, PROBABLY WOULD'VE LOCKED THE CREDIBILITY TO RAISE THE REMAINING MONEY FOR TESLA, WE WOULDN'T BE HERE TODAY. NOT THIS ENDING.\n\n[APPLAUSE] >> FOR ME IT WOULD HAD TO BE SIMILAR, THE GAMES WE MADE IN THE PERIOD AFTER -- WE MADE A BUNCH OF GAMES THAT DIDN'T LAND AND THE COMPANY WAS GOING TO GO OUT OF BUSINESS. WE GOT A LIFELINE AND -- LET'S DO THIS GAME, THAT'S WHAT WE SHOULD DO AND THAT SAVED THE COMPANY. [APPLAUSE] >> ONE MORE QUESTION, LAST QUESTION. YOU WANT TO PICK? ELON, TODD? >> EVERYONE UP THERE. I CAN'T SEE THROUGH THE LIGHTS. THE HAND WAY UP THERE, YEAH.\n\nYELL OUT YOUR QUESTION. >> I WAS DRIVING WEST ON BURBANK BOULEVARD THE DAY YOUR ROCKET LAUNCHED, EVERYBODY PULLED OVER. WHEN IS YOUR NEXT LAUNCH? [INAUDIBLE] >> WE LAUNCH ALL THE TIME, WE DO 20-30 LAUNCHES A YEAR, MOST OF THEM ARE FROM CAPE CANAVERAL, SOME OF THEM ARE HERE IN CALIFORNIA. FOR PEOPLE TO REALLY SEE A LAUNCH LIKE THAT SUPER CRAZY VISIBLE, LOOKS LIKE NUCLEAR ALIEN INVASION FROM NORTH KOREA.\n\nSOME OF THE YOUTUBE VIDEOS WERE PRETTY FUNNY. YEAH, 911 LINES WENT BALLISTIC, BURPED ON THE 911 SYSTEM. FOR US, WE KNEW WHAT WAS HAPPENING SO IT WAS LIKE -- THIS LAUNCH. THE NEXT THING IS PROBABLY THE DOG AND HAVING LUNCH AT THE END OF THIS MONTH OUT OF CAPE CANAVERAL, THIS WILL BE THE MOST -- WE ARE PUSHING THE ENVELOPE A LITTLE BIT, SO IT'S MORE SIDE LOAD, HIGHER DYNAMIC PRESSURE. THE AIR PRESSURE WILL BE HIGHER.\n\nTHAT WILL BE AN EXCITING LAUNCH TO SEE IF YOU ARE AT THE CAPE. >> AMAZING. ALL RIGHT, I THINK WE ARE UNFORTUNATELY OUT OF TIME. THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR COMING TO E3 AND BEING A PART OF THIS, THIS IS SO COOL TO HAVE YOU HERE. TODD HOWARD. THANKS, EVERYONE. APPRECIATE IT, GUYS. ♪ ♪","textByLang":{"en":">> AND NOW, ELON MUSK IN CONVERSATION WITH TODD HOWARD! PLEASE WELCOME YOUR MODERATOR! >> THIS IS GOING TO BE REALLY SPECIAL. E3 I THINK IS A SHOW ABOUT CELEBRATING GAMES BUT IT'S ALSO ABOUT TALKING ABOUT THE IMPACT GAMES HAVE ON THE WORLD AND PEOPLE FROM ALL WALKS OF LIFE TALKING ABOUT WHAT GAMES MEAN TO THEM.\n\nTODAY IT'S MY HONOR TO INTRODUCE ONE OF OUR INDUSTRY'S MOST RENOWNED DESIGNERS WITH AN INDIVIDUAL WHO IS CHARTING THE FUTURE OF THE WORLD IN SO MANY INCREDIBLE WAYS WHO ALSO HAPPENS TO BE A BIG GAMER. PLEASE WELCOME TODD HOWARD AND ELON MUSK! WELCOME TO E3! >> THANK YOU. >> WHEN WE ANNOUNCE THIS, THE BIGGEST QUESTION EVERYONE HAD WAS TO THESE GUYS KNOW EACH OTHER? YOU GUYS ARE FRIENDS, RIGHT? >> YEAH. >> HOW DID YOU GET TO KNOW EACH OTHER?\n\n>> PEOPLE TRIED TO CONNECT US OVER SEVERAL YEARS, WE FINALLY CONNECTED I THINK WHEN I BOUGHT MY TESLA. AND SOMEBODY -- I WENT INTO THE STORE, YOU DON'T BUY TESLA, YOU ORDER THEM ONLINE. I CLICK THAT BUTTON WHEN ORDERING OUR TESLA AND THEN WE CONNECTED. >> I'VE BEEN A BIG FAN OF YOUR GAMES FOR A LONG TIME AND I PLAYED \"FALL OUT 3,\" I PLAYED THAT GAME A LOT. I EXPLORED EVERY CORNER OF THAT GAME. I DID NOT COMPLETE \"SKY ROOM.\"\n\nAND THEN, I ASKED FOR THE DASH CAN I HAVE THAT STATUE OF THAT WEIRD LOOKING GUY WITH THE 1950s GUY? THAT GUY. LIFE-SIZED STATUE OF THIS 1950s JUMPSUIT. DO YOU HAVE THIS AT HOME? IT WAS SO WEIRD HAVING THAT WITH PARTY. TO PARTNER TO MAKE EVERYONE ELSE IS LIKE, THAT'S WEIRD. ROLLING BACK IN TIME, WHEN YOU WERE A KID, YOU PROGRAMMED A GAME, IS THAT TRUE? >> PRIMITIVE.\n\nIT I THINK I WAS PROBABLY TEN OR 11 WHEN I PROGRAMMED THAT GAME, IT'S A SIMPLE GAME. YOU ARE A SPACE FIGHTER, YOU FIGHT ALIENS. YEAH. I WROTE THAT GAME, THE GRAPHICS AND THE SOUND AND EVERYTHING. IT'S A VERY SIMPLE GAME. >> DID YOU EVER ASPIRE TO MAKE GAMES OR GET INTO MAKING GAMES? >> THAT WILL BE FUN. >> THERE WERE A FEW PLACES WHERE YOU KEPT DOING A LITTLE BIT OF GAMING STUFF.\n\n>> I WORKED AT A GAMING START UP WHICH WARILY WAS CALLED ROCKET SCIENCE. FADE TO LOVE'S IRONY. I WORKED AT ROCKET SCIENCE, IT WAS LONG TIME AGO. IT MUST HAVE BEEN '93, '94. IT WAS TRICKY. >> YOU NEVER APPLY TO BETHESDA, THOUGH? >> HE WAS DOING OTHER THINGS. >> MY ORIGINAL PLAN WAS TO GO TO GRAD SCHOOL AND DO STUDY FOR ELECTRIC VEHICLES, I ALWAYS WANTED TO DO ELECTRIC CARS AND WORK ON SUSTAINABLE ENERGY, I CAN SORT OF TALK A LITTLE BIT ABOUT IT.\n\nBASICALLY, WHAT OF THE THINGS I THINK ARE IMPORTANT FOR THE FUTURE, WE HAD TO HAVE SUSTAINABLE ENERGY, SUSTAINABLE CONSUMPTION OF ENERGY. SO THAT MEANS MAKING SOLAR PANELS LOW-COST AND ELECTRIC ELECTRIC CARS APPEALING. AND THEN WE WANT TO BE, MULTI-PLANET SPECIES, ROCKETS, AND THEN -- THERE IS A SOME THINGS I THOUGHT WOULD AFFECT THE FUTURE BUT I'M NOT SURE IF IT'S GOOD OR BAD, LIKE A I. THAT WORRIES ME, THAT ONE.\n\n[LAUGHTER] >> I JUST MADE A VIDEO GAMES. I WAS GOING TO DO ALL THAT. BUT I ACTUALLY DON'T KNOW HOW TO DO THAT. >> THAT AI BASICALLY CAUSED WORLD WAR III, AS I RECALL. >> IS THERE A LINK THERE, YOU TALK ABOUT AI AND VIDEO GAMES AND THE TECHNOLOGY AND VIDEO GAMES, IS THERE ANYTHING THERE THAT SORT OF HELPS PUSH TECHNOLOGY THAT YOU THINK?\n\nYOU LOOK AT SELF-DRIVING CARS OR OTHER THINGS, ARE THERE THINGS FROM VIDEO GAMES YOU THINK HELP PUSH TECHNOLOGY FORWARD? >> PART OF THE REASON I GOT INTERESTED IN TECHNOLOGY, THE REASON WAS VIDEO GAMES. VIDEO GAMES ARE A POWERFUL FORCE FOR GETTING KIDS INTERESTED IN TECHNOLOGY, IT HAS A BIGGER EFFECT THAN PEOPLE REALIZE. IF WE ARE INTERVIEWING SOMEBODY FOR SOFTWARE ENGINEERING, MANY TIMES, HOW DID YOU START PROGRAMMING? \"VIDEO GAMES.\"\n\nI THINK MANY OF THE BEST SOFTWARE ENGINEERS IN THE WORLD ARE AT OR SPENT MUCH OF THEIR CAREER AT VIDEO GAMES HOUSES AND ESPECIALLY IF PEOPLE HAD TO TRY TO CREATE REALISTIC GRAPHICS USING VERY LITTLE COMPUTE POWER, THAT'S A HARD PROBLEM AND SO A LOT OF PEOPLE HAD TO WRITE REALLY TIGHT CODE AND COME UP WITH REALLY CLEVER IDEAS TO DO THAT.\n\nIF YOU LOOK AT SOMEONE, AND AMAZING SOFTWARE ENGINEER AND A REALLY GOOD AEROSPACE ENGINEER, IT SHOWS PROBLEM SOLVING, FIGURE OUT SOFTWARE ENGINEERING, PROBLEM-SOLVING, IT TRANSFERS TO OTHER THINGS. >> THE BEST ANECDOTE BETWEEN VIDEO GAMES AND ROCKETS, GAMING AI IS SO MUCH HARDER. WHEN THE GAME CRASHES, HE PRICES REBOOT AND WHEN THE ROCKET CRASHES, A GIANT MASS SPREAD OVER SEVERAL MILES.\n\n>> THERE'S A JOKE ABOUT, IF REALITY WAS A VIDEO GAME THE GRAPHICS ARE GREAT BUT THE PLOT IS TERRIBLE. AND THE TIME IS REALLY LONG. >> HOW HAS THE STUFF ELON'S DONE INSPIRED OR AFFECTED WHAT YOU DO, TODD, IN YOUR WORLD? >> I MEAN, THE SPACE STUFF, AS WE LOOK AT STARFIELD'S, THAT'S REALLY KIND OF LOOK, OKAY, HOW ARE THESE THINGS GOING TO WORK IN THE FUTURE? GOT TO GO TO SPACE X LAST YEAR, THAT PLACE IS LIKE THE AVENGERS MEETS NASSAU.\n\nWHAT DO THOSE THINGS LOOK LIKE AS WE DO A SCIENCE-FICTION GAME? BUT THE OTHER STUFF, IN THE CARS AND SELF-DRIVING IS SOMETHING I'M PASSIONATE ABOUT BUT THAT DOESN'T AFFECT THE GAME STUFF. AND I KNOW THAT NOW YOU ARE PUTTING GAMES ON THE TESLA SO THAT'S DIFFERENT. >> YEAH. ACTUALLY, THANKS FOR HELPING OUT ON THAT, I APPRECIATE IT. >> WE TALKED ABOUT THAT, WOULDN'T IT BE PRETTY COOL? SO WE ARE WORKING TOGETHER. \"SKYRIM\" ON IT?\n\nWE ARE GOING TO START A LITTLE SMALLER. WE ARE WORKING ON \"FALLOUT SHELTER\" FOR THE CARS. IT WILL BE FREE, YOUR LITTLE DWELLERS ON THE SCREEN, THEY LIVE IN THE CAR IN SOME WAY. IT'S A GREAT STARTING POINT. >> HOW IS THIS GOING TO WORK WITH GAMES, YOU'VE TALKED ABOUT UNITY AND PORTING IT ALL, YOU HAVE TO BE PARKED WHEN YOU PLAY THESE? HOW DOES THIS WORK? >> YEAH, YOU HAVE TO PARK THE CAR. >> [LAUGHS] >> THE FUN POLICE MAKE US PARK THE CAR.\n\nWE WERE ALSO GOING TO ENABLE PEOPLE TO WATCH VIDEOS, STREAMING. THROUGH THE BROWSER, TO WATCH NETFLIX OR WHATEVER. YOUTUBE, IF THE CAR IS PARKED. A CHARGING STATION IF YOU WANT TO WATCH SOMETHING, WATCH IT ON THE SCREEN IN THE CAR. BUT THE GENERAL PRINCIPLE, WHAT CAN WE DO TO MAKE THE CAR THE MOST FUN POSSIBLE? AND WHAT DO OTHER CARS NOT HAVE?\n\nSO IT SEEMS LIKE, WELL, YOU KNOW, IF YOU ARE JUST PARKED SOMEWHERE WAITING FOR SOMEBODY, FINISH AN APPOINTMENT, ON A ROAD TRIP IT WOULD BE PRETTY COOL IF YOU JUST GO TO THE CAR SCREEN AND PLAY SOME FUN GAME. AND WE ARE EXPLORING, HOW DO WE MAKE IT AS MUCH FUN AS POSSIBLE? YOU CAN ALREADY PLAY ALL OF THE OLD ATARI GAMES IN THE CAR, YOU CAN CONNECT AN XBOX OR PS FOR CONTROLLER AND HAVE A PRETTY GOOD CONTROL FEEDBACK.\n\nAND WE HAVE GENIUS MOVES AND -- YOU CAN MAKE THE FART SOUND LIKE IT'S COMING FROM ANY SEAT. >> THAT ACTUALLY IS THE FUNNIEST EASTER EGG. AND THE NAMES OF THE FART. THE FALCON HEAVY IS ONE OF THEM, I BELIEVE. >> EXACTLY. >> WE'VE GOT SOME CLIPS, RIGHT?\n\n>> I CAN SHOW YOU SOME CLIPS OF SOME UPCOMING GAMES IN THE CAR, IT'S MEANT TO BE, WHAT ARE SOME COOL GAMES PEOPLE MIGHT LIKE TO PLAY, HOW MUCH PEOPLE PLAY THEM, ADD THEM TO -- HIGHER ON THE LIST OR MAYBE PUT IT INTO AN ARCHIVE YOU CAN TAP TO DOWNLOAD. THE SCREEN WAS NOT ORIGINALLY MEANT AS A GAME PLAYER, DOESN'T HAVE THAT MUCH STORAGE.\n\nSO IT WOULDN'T HAVE THAT MANY GAMES ON IT AT ONE TIME BUT IT WOULD BE LIKE -- WHAT DO PEOPLE ENJOY PLAYING, A GOOD WAY TO PASS TIME. >> LET'S TAKE A LOOK AT GAMES ON TESLA. ♪ ♪ [APPLAUSE] >> WE'VE GOT A SECOND ONE, TOO? >> WE GOT A RACING GAME, SINGLE PLAYER OR TWO PLAYER. >> GAME TWO, CHECK IT OUT. ♪ ♪ [APPLAUSE] >> THE STEERING WHEEL, I WASN'T PREPARED FOR THAT, THAT'S PRETT.\n\n>> IF YOU HAVE A RACING GAME AND YOU HAVE A STEERING WHEEL SITTING RIGHT THERE, WAITING TO BE STEERED. >> TO GAS AND BRAKE, WILL THAT WORK, TOO? >> YEAH. THE BREAK IS WIRED IN AND I THINK WE WILL PROBABLY HAVE MAYBE THE SCROLL WHEEL FOR THE GAS PEDAL SO WE DON'T ACCIDENTALLY -- STEPPING ON THE BREAK IF YOU ARE STATIONARY IS NOT A PROBLEM. >> THE GAS COULD BE. THAT'S AMAZING. THAT'S SO COOL THAT YOU'RE DOING THAT INSIDE THE CAUSE.\n\nI WANT TO ASK YOU THE IDEA, YOU ARE BOTH CERTAINLY KNOWN FOR A TON OF INCREDIBLE SUCCESSES IN YOUR CAREERS. HE SAID BEFORE, SOMETIMES YOU'RE REALLY ONLY INNOVATING IF YOU'RE READY TO FAIL OR HAVE FAILURE ALONG THE WAY, SHOWS THAT YOU ARE PUSHING RENOVATION. TODD, YOU'VE BEEN THROUGH QUITE A YEAR, CAN YOU GUYS MAY BE RARE LITTLE BIT ON SWORD OUT OF THE FOR INNOVATION AND HOW SOMETIMES FAILURE IS PART OF THAT JOURNEY?\n\n>> USUALLY WHEN YOU GET TO GAMING, THE FIRST TIME YOU SEE IT, YOU'VE GOT SUCCESSFUL AND YOU GOT THERE BY TRYING BIG NEW THINGS AND WE ARE GOING TO KEEP DOING THAT, OTHER GAME MAKERS DO THAT AND I THINK IT'S GOOD THAT THE AUDIENCES ARE WELCOMING TO THAT. THEY ARE GOING TO TRY IT OUT AND SUPPORT US AS WE GO THROUGH THAT PROCESS TO FIGURE OUT, HEY, WHAT'S GOING TO MAKE THIS TAX?\n\nWE HAD OUR UPS AND DOWNS WITH \"FALLOUT 76\" BUT OUR FANS ARE INCREDIBLE AND HAVE REALLY STUCK WITH US AND IT'S TURNED INTO ONE OF THE BEST ONLINE COMMUNITIES WE'VE EVER SEEN, IT'S FANTASTIC. >> THROUGH YOUR CAREER I'M SURE YOU'VE SEEN THAT, TOO, THE PROJECTS THAT TAKE TIME TO EVOLVE BUT THAT'S PART OF WHAT IT TAKES, I GUESS, HAVING THAT VISION AND PUSHING FOR IT.\n\n>> SURE, IF YOU'RE GOING TO TRY SOMETHING INNOVATIVE, YOU ARE IN UNEXPLORED TERRITORY SO THE ODDS THAT SOMETHING WILL GO WRONG ARE PRETTY HIGH. IT'S ONLY IF YOU TRY TO DO SOMETHING THAT'S WELL UNDERSTOOD THAT THERE IS A LITTLE CHANCE OF FAILURE BUT THERE WILL NOT BE INTERESTING OR INNOVATIVE. FOR SURE, UNCHARTED TERRITORY WILL RESULT IN FAILURES NECESSARILY. OR YOU'RE NOT TRYING HARD ENOUG ENOUGH.\n\n>> SPEAKING OF UNCHARTED TERRITORY, YOU MENTIONED \"STARFIELD\" BUT OBVIOUSLY SPACE IS GOING TO BE A PART OF THAT. I'M CURIOUS, I DON'T KNOW HOW MUCH YOU CAN TELL US ABOUT THE GAME -- I SHOULD ASK, WHAT CAN YOU TELL US? >> I DO NOT HAVE A CLIP. EVERYONE NEEDS TO BE PATIENT ON THAT BUT WHAT I CAN SAY IS HOW WE APPROACH IT. THIS COULD HAPPEN. WHAT KIND OF FUEL DO THE SHIPS USE?\n\nUSING HELIUM THREE, WE CAN DEBATE WHETHER THAT IS A GOOD POWER SOURCE FOR SPACESHIPS, HOW DO THE PHYSICS WORK IN SPACE AND GRAVITY AND THOSE KIND OF THING THINGS. WE HAVE TWO A GAME IF I IT SO IT'S NOT AS PUNISHING AS ACTUAL SPACE TRAVEL BUT THAT IT FEELS LIKE TRAVELING IN SPACE IN OUR GAME IS STILL -- AND IT'S DANGEROUS, IT'S STILL DANGEROUS TO GO AND EXPLORE. EVEN THOUGH LOTS OF PEOPLE DO I IT. >> SPACE IS FAR, IS THE THING.\n\nYOU HAVE TO DEFINITELY CUT THAT SHORT. FOUR LIGHT YEARS, MAN. EVEN AT LIGHT SPEED THAT'S PRETTY FAR. I MEAN, IF YOU WANT NORMAL PHYSICS, AND ANTIMATTER DRIVE WOULD BE THE BEST BUT THAT'S GOING TO LIMIT YOU TO LIGHT SPEED WHICH IS A LONG TIME. YEAH. OTHERWISE YOU'RE GOING TO BE STUCK IN ONE STAR SYSTEM. SO -- JUST HONESTLY, I FEEL LIKE WE'RE IN A PRETTY GOOD VIDEO GAME. WHY IS IT JUST POSSIBLE TO GET TO MARS? WHY ARE THE STARS OF SO FAR AWA AWAY?\n\nPUT THOSE STARS, LITTLE POINTS OF LIGHT, DON'T WORRY ABOUT IT. >> ARE YOU LOOKING AT THAT WHEN YOU ARE BUILDING \"STARFIELD\"? I DON'T KNOW HOW FAR IN THE FUTURE IT'S SET. >> GOING BACK TO THAT, RISKING FAILURE AND STUFF, HONESTLY, THE WORLD NEEDS MORE PEOPLE LIKE ELON WHO SAY, I'M NOT SURE HOW THAT WORKS, I'M GOING TO TRY THAT A DIFFERENT WAY. A LOT OF PEOPLE WILL DOUBT THAT.\n\nWHETHER IT'S GOING TO SPACE, SELF-DRIVING CARS, I AM VERY PASSIONATE ABOUT THOSE THINGS AND AS IT COMES TO WHAT'S HAPPENING AT SPACE X, WHAT ARE THE LIMITS OF THE PHYSICS OF THE NEW ENGINES OR THINGS LIKE THAT? TALKING TO ELON, HOW FAR COULD THIS GO IN CURRENT REALITY, HOW WOULD WE MOVE BEYOND THAT IN A FICTIONAL WAY? YEAH.\n\n>> OBVIOUSLY YOU ARE YOU DOING WITH THE REALITY OF TODAY BUT SOMETHING FUTURISTIC LIKE TODD IS DOING, DOES THAT GET YOU EXCITED ABOUT WHERE IT SPACE TRAVEL CAN GO, CAN TODD'S WORLD EXPLORE THAT EVEN FURTHER ON? >> I THINK SCI-FI MOVIES AND VIDEO GAMES, REALLY I THINK IN VIDEO GAMES AND MOVIES THESE DAYS, IT CAN BE PRETTY INSPIRING, TALKING ABOUT THE FUTURE WE WANT, WHAT ARE SOME IMPOSSIBLE SOUNDING TECHNOLOGIES THAT MAY BE COULD WORK SOMEHOW?\n\nTHIS CONCEIVABLY THERE IS A WAY TO DO WORK DRIVE BUT IT'S SUCH ESOTERIC, SUPER OUT ON THE EDGE PHYSICS BECAUSE TECHNICALLY YOU CANNOT GO FASTER THAN THE SPEED OF LIGHT BUT SPACE CAN TRAVEL FASTER THAN THE SPEED OF LIGHT. THAT'S WHAT'S MEANT BY WARP DRIVE. THE AMOUNT OF ENERGY YOU NEED TO WARP SPACES UNBELIEVABLY GIGANTIC. YOU'D HAVE TO BE CONVERTING MATTER AND ENERGY AT A RATE THAT WE CAN'T CONCEIVE, REALLY.\n\nIT CAN'T BE LIKE SOMETHING WHERE IF WE JUST CONVERT ONE JUPITER PER SECOND TO ENERGY, PROBLEM SOLVED. THERE IS A LOT, THERE'S NOT MANY JUPITER'S. YOU KNOW. SO -- THERE MIGHT BE A BIT OF RADIATION AROUND THAT. THERE ARE THINGS, TECHNICALLY THE UNIVERSE DID EXPAND FASTER THAN THE SPEED OF LIGHT, THAT'S WHY WE CAN SEE LIGHT FROM ALL THESE SUPER DISTANT STARS. YEAH. IT'S A PRETTY WILD THAT SPACE EXPANDED FASTER THAN THE SPEED OF LIGHT.\n\nFIGURE OUT SOME STRANGE BREAKTHROUGHS AND COME TO GRIPS BETTER WITH DARK MATTER ESPECIALLY WHICH SEEMS LIKE SOMETHING FISHY IS GOING ON THERE. AND -- >> IT HAS BAD BRANDING. >> YEAH. EXACTLY. THE UNIVERSE IS MOSTLY DARK ENERGY AND DARK MATTER ACCORDING TO CURRENT PHYSICS BUT YOU KIND OF PLUG THEM IN THE EQUATIONS AND THEY SORT OF WORK.\n\nI SORT OF FIGURE, HEY, IF THIS IS A VIDEO GAME AND HAD A BUG IN THEIR SIMULATOR, OH, NO, WE HAVE TO FIGURE OUT A WAY FOR THESE MINIONS TO BELIEVE THEY ARE IN REALITY, INSERT DARK MATTER. >> THE IDEA OF A GAME AS A SIMULATION PREDICTING THINGS, OBVIOUSLY IT'S ENTERTAINMENT ON SOME LEVEL BUT THERE ARE GAMES WHERE IT'S MORE SIMULATION. OR MAYBE NOT. IS THERE VALUE IN THAT? IN TESTING THINGS AND EXPLORING IDEAS INSIDE THE GAME WORLD?\n\n>> YEAH, AT BEST SO WE HAVE A WHOLE TEAM THAT CREATES PHOTOREALISTIC WORLD, TRYING TO BE PHOTOREALISTIC.\n\nCONCRETE CURBS, SHADOWS, FADED LINES, THE REASON SELF-DRIVING IS HARD IS BECAUSE YOU HAVE ALL THESE CORNER CASES AND THINGS WHERE THE ROAD SHOULD BE A CERTAIN WAY ABOUT IT ISN'T, THERE SHOULD BE CERTAIN LINES BUT THERE ARE INTO PAINTED LINES, THEY TOOK THE PAINTED LINES AWAY, MARK THAT'S OFFSET FROM THE PAINTED LINES THAT IF IT JUST LISTENS TO THE LINE AND IT CRASHES INTO STUFF.\n\nIF YOU HAD CLEARLY PAINTED LINE LINES, SELF-DRIVING WOULD BE TRIVIAL. THE WORLD IS FULL OF THINGS THAT ARE NOT THE WAY THEY ARE SUPPOSED TO BE IN THE REAL TRICK WITH SELF-DRIVING AI IS TO FIGURE OUT, WHERE SHOULD I BE ON THIS ROAD THAT HAS NO PAINTED LINES OR THE LINES HAVE BEEN PAINTED WRONG. SKID MARKS AND SCRATCHES AND ROADWORK, ALL SORTS OF THINGS THAT ARE UNEXPECTED. THAT'S THE REALLY HARD PART, OTHERWISE IT WOULD BE CHILD'S PLAY.\n\nWE DO A LOT OF -- GOOD CORRELATIONS, DOES THE CAR DRIVE OFF THE CLIFF? YES. DOES IT DRIVE OFF THE CLIFF IN REALITY? CLOSE. >> I THINK YOU SAID IT ONCE, IT'S NOT THE LINES, IT'S LOOKING FOR DRIVABLE SPACE BECAUSE THAT'S HOW YOUR MIND IS ACTUALLY WORKING EVEN IF THERE'S A LANE. DRIVABLE SPACE IS THE PROBLEM.\n\n>> WE HAVE A PRETTY GOOD RECOGNITION OF LINES AND WANTS TECHNICALLY DRIVABLE SPACE BUT WE NEED, WHAT IS THE ROAD AS OPPOSED TO -- WHAT IS THE MOST PROBABLY THE ROAD AS OPPOSED TO DRIVABLE SPACE AND A WHOLE SUBSET ON CURVES. WE ARE REALLY INTO CURVES RIGHT NOW. SOME CURVES ARE REALLY SUBTLE. SOME YOU SHOULD CARE ABOUT, SOME YOU SHOULDN'T CARE ABOUT, SOMETIMES YOU GO TO A DRIVEWAY AND THERE IS A CURVE, AND THE CAR IS LIKE, CAN'T GO OVER THAT.\n\nGOING THROUGH HER NEIGHBORHOOD AND EVERYONE'S DRIVEWAY IS DRIVE SPACE. TECHNICALLY TRUE BUT YOU DON'T WANT TO GO THROUGH EVERYONE'S DRIVEWAY, IT'S NOT GOOD. >> THINK ABOUT, A LOT OF THAT STUFF STARTED VIDEO GAME WISE, IMAGE PROCESSING AND AI AND WHAT THEY'RE DOING THERE, PEOPLE LOOK AT TECHNOLOGY NOW, THEY ALWAYS UNDERESTIMATE HOW FAST TECHNOLOGY MOVES.\n\nIN THE PRESENT DAY, I THINK THE SELF-DRIVING AND WHAT'S HAPPENING NOW IS GOING TO FUNDAMENTALLY CHANGE THE WORLD IN WAYS PEOPLE CAN'T EVEN EXPECT AND -- OUR CHILDREN MIGHT NOT EVEN LEARN TO DRIVE BECAUSE THE CARS WILL ALL BE DRIVING THEMSELVES AROUND OR HOW IT AFFECTS CITYSCAPES, PARKING LOTS, ALCOHOL CONSUMPTION, ALL THESE STUDIES ARE FASCINATING. THE BEST SELF-DRIVING STOCKS, ALCOHOL COMPANIES. >> MORE GAMES TO PLAY, TOO.\n\n>> VIDEO GAMES, ALL YOU NEED A GPU FOR IS TO HELP THE GAME LOOK BETTER. THOSE SAME GPUs ENDED UP BEING VERY USEFUL, HUGE BOOST TO AI. BETTER GRAPHICS TO AI, THE SAME THING IS QUITE KEY TO SELF-DRIVING. >> I KNOW YOU HAVE OPEN AI, WHERE GAMES ARE GOING. IT YOU HAVE RPGs, SIMULATED WORLDS, EMERGENT BEHAVIOR, THINGS LIKE THAT. CAN YOU TALK ABOUT WHERE GAMES ARE GOING IN THE NEXT FIVE, TEN, PLUS YEARS, WHAT SORT OF HAPPENED THERE.\n\n>> I THINK THAT'S THE PART OF GAMING THAT'S GOING TO MAKE THE BIGGEST JUMP. MOST PEOPLE REACT TO INSTANTLY YOU ARE LOOKING AT A SCREENSHOT OR VIDEO. AS FAR AS HOW A GAME FEELS, A LOT OF PEOPLE, INCLUDING US HAVE STRUGGLED WITH HOW YOU MAKE THAT FEEL REAL. YOU CAN MOVE SOME OF THE PROCESSING TO THE CLOUD, THAT'S THE PART WHERE IT'S GOING TO GET SIGNIFICANTLY BETTER OVER THE NEXT GENERATION.\n\nREACTING TO THINGS YOU DID IN MORE REALISTIC MANNER, THE MORE REACTIVE TO WHAT YOU ARE DOING OR THE SITUATION AROUND THEM IS THAT YOU CAN GET THAT IN A VIDEO GAME ALL THE TIME. >> YOU GET TO A POINT WHERE THESE GAMES BECOME MORE INDISTINGUISHABLE FROM REALITY. WHAT DO YOU THINK, WHERE DO YOU THINK THIS GOES AS THESE GAMES CONTINUE TO IMPROVE, GRAPHICS GET BETTER, SIMULATION GETS BETTER, DO WE REACH THIS POINT WHERE THE WORLD IS THE SAME THING?\n\n>> IMAGINE IF WE WERE TO REACH SUCH A SITUATION, THAT WOULD BE CRAZY. WE SEE THOSE CREATURES IN THE GAME SAYING WOW, IMAGINE, CAN YOU IMAGINE IF THERE IS A SIMULATION? YOU ARE IN A SIMULATION. [LAUGHS] THE SIMULATION IS ALL THE WAY DOWN. A SIMULATION IN SIMULATION, IN A SIMULATION. SEEMS LIKELY. ONE OR TWO THINGS ARE GOING TO HAPPEN, CIVILIZATION WILL END OUR GAMES WILL BE SO REALISTIC THAT YOU CAN'T TELL THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THEM AND REALITY.\n\nI POSTULATE. IS -- DOES THIS SOUND CORRECT OR -- DOESN'T SOUND CORRECT? WE COULD BE SOMEBODY'S VIDEO GAME RIGHT NOW. WHOSE AVATAR ARE YOU? >> WHEN YOU THINK OF, KIND OF, YOU KNOW, WHEN YOU LOOK AT GAMES AND OF THE YOU PLAY NOW, WHATEVER THINGS YOU WANT TO SEE IN GAMES? IS THERE ANYTHING WHEN YOU PLAY A GAME YOU ARE LIKE -- I WISH IT DID THIS?\n\nYOU ARE OBVIOUSLY THINKING ABOUT LOTS OF THINGS BUT ARE YOU SATISFIED, ARE THERE THINGS THAT FRUSTRATE YOU ABOUT GAMES? WHAT DO YOU WANT TO SEE GAMES DO IN THE FUTURE? >> I DON'T KNOW IF I SHOULD SAY. >> YOU WORKING ON A GAME, TOO? >> NO. I DON'T KNOW. A BIT MORE R-RATED, I DON'T KNOW. TRYING TO BE HONEST HERE. [CHEERS AND APPLAUSE] A POPULAR THEME. >> TODD? >> I DON'T KNOW THAT I CAN FOLLOW THAT UP.\n\nI MEAN, WHEN YOU LOOK AT THE STUFF YOU PLAY NOW, YOU TALK ABOUT TODD, YOUR KIDS PLAY GAMES, YOU PLAY GAMES, WHAT EXCITES YOU? WHAT WHAT IF YOU PLAYED RECENT? THERE ARE A LOT OF GAMES OUT THERE, WHAT DOES IT TAKE FOR A GAME TO ATTRACT YOUR INTEREST? >> I HAVEN'T PLAYED A LOT OF GAMES, IT'S BEEN SUPER INTENSE, WORK, GET NOT ENOUGH SLEEP, THAT'S BEEN THE SITUATION FOR A COUPLE YEARS. SO -- JUST HAVEN'T HAD MUCH TIME.\n\nYOU KNOW, THE LAST GAME I PLAYED A LOT WAS PROBABLY \"FALLOUT 4\". THAT WAS A GOOD ONE. >> AND THAT HE WAS LIKE I'M DONE, I'M GOOD. >> \"CYBERPUNK,\" I LIKE THE THEM THEME. THAT WEIRDLY WAS WHAT WE DECIDED TO HAVE OUR PICKUP TRUCK AS CYBERPUNK THEMED PICKUP TRUCK THAT WE WILL BE UNVEILING HOPEFULLY END OF SUMMER. YEAH, YEAH. IT LOOKS WEIRD, IT DOESN'T LOOK NORMAL. >> INSPIRED DIRECTLY BY THE THEME -- THE GAME A LITTLE BIT?\n\n>> I NOTICED ABOUT THE GAME AFTERWARDS, THIS IS SOMETHING OF THEM WORKING ON FOR A WHILE. I LIKE THE GENERAL IDEA. AND YEAH, SO IT'S SORT OF -- YEAH, SORT OF, SORT OF A SLIGHT RUNNER FEEL TO IT. IT DOESN'T LOOK LIKE A NORMAL CAR, LOOKS LIKE IT SHOULD NOT BE ON THE ROADS. BUT -- YOU KNOW, IT WON'T APPEAL TO EVERYONE BUT IT WILL BE SOMETHING THAT'S DIFFERENT AND YOU KNOW, IT WILL BE COMING YOU KNOW, PROBABLY APPEAL TO -- I THINK I WOULD BUY IT.\n\nYOU KNOW, IF YOU'RE TRYING TO WORK ON SOMETHING, IT'S REALLY HARD TO -- TRYING TO FIGURE OUT WHAT OTHERS LOVE BUT YOU DON'T LOVE IT, IT'S REALLY HARD TO MAKE THAT GREAT. WHEN YOU'RE WORKING ON SOMETHING, IF YOU FALL IN LOVE WITH IT, THAT'S A GOOD SIGN. DON'T WORRY ABOUT IF OTHERS DO, IF YOU DO OTHERS WELL. >> ABSOLUTELY TRUE. >> PROBABLY HOW YOU FEEL ABOUT MAKING GAMES, YOU HAVE TO LOVE TO PLAY A?\n\n>> ABSOLUTELY AND IT'S NOT JUST ME, THE WHOLE TEAM. THESE ARE THE KIND OF THINGS WE WOULD LINE UP AT MIDNIGHT TO GO PLAY AND BUY. AND THAT'S WHAT DRIVES YOUR PASSION TO DO IT. YOU HAVE TO BE AROUND TASTE MAKER DAY IN AND DAY OUT, YOU OFTEN MISS THE MARK.\n\n>> ONE THING I WANT TO TALK ABOUT HIS ONLINE PLAY, A LOT IN THE NEWS RECENTLY ABOUT THE SATELLITES AND THE INTERNET AROUND THE WORLD, LOW LATENCY AND GAMING COULD BE ONE OF THE BENEFICIARIES OF THIS. CAN WE TALK A BIT ABOUT THAT PROJECT AND HOW IT WILL TIE AND POTENTIALLY TO GAMING? >> SURE.\n\nONE OF THE CRITERIA FOR STARLIN STARLINK, IMPORTANT FOR REAL-TIME GAMING AND LATER, SORT OF SECOND-GENERATION CONSTELLATIONS ARE AIMING FOR -- THIS WOULD BE REALLY GREAT FOR ANY KIND OF REAL-TIME GAMING, YEAH. >> ACROSS THE WORLD YOU WOULD BE ABLE TO ACCESS THAT? >> ANYWHERE ON EARTH. I SPEAK ARE PRETTY AMAZING. THAT'S EXCITING, WE LOOK AT THESE CLOUD PLATFORMS, STREAMING, FROM A DESIGNER PERSPECTIVE THAT MUCH OPEN UP SO MANY POSSIBILITIES.\n\nWHERE GAMES ARE GOING TO GET IN THE FUTURE. >> I THINK IT'S ABOUT DEMOCRATIZING WHO CAN PLAY, THERE'S A LOT OF BARRIERS TO I WANT TO PLAY THAT GAME, I HAVE TO BUY THIS, BE SOMEWHERE.\n\nHAVING THAT WHERE YOU CAN APPROACH IT LIKE ANY OTHER ENTERTAINMENT, YOU DON'T THINK ABOUT IT AND THAT'S WHERE GAMES NEED TO BE, WHERE IT'S UBIQUITOUS, NOT JUST IN OUR PART OF THE WORLD WHERE PEOPLE ARE CONNECTED WELL, OTHER PARTS OF THE WORLD THAT ARE GROWING AND THESE BILLIONS OF GAMERS COMING INTO THE SCENE WHO DON'T HAVE THE ACCESS WE TAKE FOR GRANTED. >> MAYBE A COUPLE AUDIENCE Q&A, MAYBE RAISE YOUR HAND, COUPLE QUESTIONS FOR THESE GUYS.\n\nA RARE OPPORTUNITY. >> HELLO, HOW ARE YOU DOING? WE ARE STREAMING ON TWITCH RIGHT NOW, BY THE WAY. I HAD A QUESTION ABOUT THE POSSIBILITY OF LIVING IN A SIMULATION. WHEN YOU THINK ABOUT ALL THE QUIRKS, EVERY INDIVIDUAL PERSONALITY, HOW THINGS WORK ON A CELLULAR LEVEL LIKE THE UNIVERSE, EVERYTHING, DOESN'T IT START TO SEE MORE FAR-FETCHED WHEN YOU SEE HOW INTRICATE AND INDIVIDUAL THINGS ARE?\n\n>> OKAY, THE IDEA THAT -- [APPLAUSE] THANK YOU, APPRECIATE IT. NEXT QUESTION, LET'S MAYBE GO OVER HERE. >> HI. BIG FAN. THAT'S LOUD. CHARLES. WHERE ARE YOUR TUSKS? >> I'VE HEARD THAT BEFORE. >> THANKS FOR COMING, THANKS, GUYS. ELON, IF YOU WANT TO GET TO MARS, THAT'S GOING TO TAKE A LONG TIME TO GET ASTRONAUTS OUT THERE. WHAT KIND OF ENTERTAINMENT PLAN DO YOU HAVE? HOPEFULLY VOTED TO PLAY GAMES ON THEIR WAY TO MARS, WHAT YOU THINK ABOUT THAT.\n\n>> ABSOLUTELY, SURE. AWESOME. >> PARTY IN SPACE. >> LET'S DO IT. >> MINE IS SIMPLE, HOW MUCH DO I HAVE TO BEG TO GET A SELFIE WITH YOU? >> SURE, I'LL DO A SELFIE. SURE. ALL RIGHT. NEXT QUESTION. BACK THERE IN THE RED SHIRT. >> IT'S FOR ELON, HOW DO I SIGN UP TO TEST OUT YOUR NEURAL MAP PROGRAM? >> YOU PUT THIS U. S. BC REPORT IN YOUR HEAD. IT WILL BE FINE, MIGHT STING A LITTLE. >> ANOTHER ONE, SURE, RIGHT OVER THERE. >> QUESTION FOR TODD HOWARD.\n\nI LIVE IN ROCKFORD MARYLAND, ARE YOU LOOKING FOR ANY INTERNS BY CHANCE? >> GO TO OUR WEB SITE, THERE'S A LOT OF JOB POSTINGS THERE. >> A COUPLE MORE. SURE, RIGHT OVER THERE. >> HEY, WOW, THIS IS CRAZY. SO RIGHT NOW, I'M TRYING TO BUILD A TOKENIZED GAME ECONOMY FOR GAMERS, MY QUESTION IS, FOR TWO KARMA POINTS, CAN YOU SIGN MY CYBERPUNK HAT? >> WE WILL GET IT UP HERE FOR HIM. >> TWO AND A HALF KARMA POINTS. >> ANOTHER ONE RIGHT HERE.\n\n>> KARMA DOES SEEM REAL. >> ELON, I'M JUST WONDERING, WITH ALL THE NOISE YOU DEAL WITH, LOTS OF CRAZINESS, HOW DO YOU STAY FOCUSED? I CAN'T IMAGINE. >> YEAH, IT'S INSANE. >> HIS PROMISE WAS YOU DO STAY FOCUSED. SO MANY THINGS. >> I FEEL LIKE THE LEVELS, THE LEVEL KEEPS RATCHETING UP, CAN WE TURN THE DIFFICULTY DOWN ONE NOTCH? THAT WOULD BE REALLY HELPFUL. IT KEEPS DIALING UP THE DIFFICULTY. NIGHTMARE LEVEL.\n\n[LAUGHS] >> THIS IS A QUESTION FOR BOTH OF YOU, WHAT'S THE ACTUAL BIGGEST FAILURE YOU'VE GONE THROUGH TO GET TO WHERE YOU ARE? [APPLAUSE] >> WHO GOES FIRST? >> THAT'S A TRICKY QUESTION, IT'S FUNNY, IT'S AN INTERVIEW QUESTION I ASK PEOPLE AND I DON'T -- >> YOU DON'T KNOW YOUR RESPONSE. >> PEOPLE IN THE MILITARY HAVE THE BEST FAILURES, THEY CRASH SATELLITES AND TANKS AND THINGS LIKE THAT. I DO NOT HAVE A GOOD ANSWER FOR THAT.\n\n>> I BLEW UP THREE ROCKETS IN THE BEGINNING. [APPLAUSE] SO THAT WAS, THAT WAS BAD. I ONLY HAD ENOUGH MONEY -- ORIGINALLY, I BASICALLY TOOK ALL THE MONEY I MADE FROM PAYPAL AND PUT IT INTO SPACE X, CREATING SPACE X, TESLA, I FIGURED I'D JUST KEEP HALF OF IT AND SPEND THE OTHER HALF ON THESE CRAZY VENTURES THAT WOULD PROBABLY FAIL AND THEY UNFORTUNATELY NEEDED ALL THE MONEY. SO I HAD TO GIVE THEM ALL THE MONEY.\n\nAND THAT I DIDN'T HAVE A HOUSE OR MONEY FOR RENT, THAT WAS PRETTY DIFFICULT. THAT WAS BACK IN 2008. WE MANAGED TO SCRAPE ENOUGH SPARE PARTS TOGETHER TO A FOURTH LAUNCH AT SPACE X AND THAT WORKED. IF IT HAD NOT WORKED, SPACE X WOULD'VE DIED, PROBABLY WOULD'VE LOCKED THE CREDIBILITY TO RAISE THE REMAINING MONEY FOR TESLA, WE WOULDN'T BE HERE TODAY. NOT THIS ENDING.\n\n[APPLAUSE] >> FOR ME IT WOULD HAD TO BE SIMILAR, THE GAMES WE MADE IN THE PERIOD AFTER -- WE MADE A BUNCH OF GAMES THAT DIDN'T LAND AND THE COMPANY WAS GOING TO GO OUT OF BUSINESS. WE GOT A LIFELINE AND -- LET'S DO THIS GAME, THAT'S WHAT WE SHOULD DO AND THAT SAVED THE COMPANY. [APPLAUSE] >> ONE MORE QUESTION, LAST QUESTION. YOU WANT TO PICK? ELON, TODD? >> EVERYONE UP THERE. I CAN'T SEE THROUGH THE LIGHTS. THE HAND WAY UP THERE, YEAH.\n\nYELL OUT YOUR QUESTION. >> I WAS DRIVING WEST ON BURBANK BOULEVARD THE DAY YOUR ROCKET LAUNCHED, EVERYBODY PULLED OVER. WHEN IS YOUR NEXT LAUNCH? [INAUDIBLE] >> WE LAUNCH ALL THE TIME, WE DO 20-30 LAUNCHES A YEAR, MOST OF THEM ARE FROM CAPE CANAVERAL, SOME OF THEM ARE HERE IN CALIFORNIA. FOR PEOPLE TO REALLY SEE A LAUNCH LIKE THAT SUPER CRAZY VISIBLE, LOOKS LIKE NUCLEAR ALIEN INVASION FROM NORTH KOREA.\n\nSOME OF THE YOUTUBE VIDEOS WERE PRETTY FUNNY. YEAH, 911 LINES WENT BALLISTIC, BURPED ON THE 911 SYSTEM. FOR US, WE KNEW WHAT WAS HAPPENING SO IT WAS LIKE -- THIS LAUNCH. THE NEXT THING IS PROBABLY THE DOG AND HAVING LUNCH AT THE END OF THIS MONTH OUT OF CAPE CANAVERAL, THIS WILL BE THE MOST -- WE ARE PUSHING THE ENVELOPE A LITTLE BIT, SO IT'S MORE SIDE LOAD, HIGHER DYNAMIC PRESSURE. THE AIR PRESSURE WILL BE HIGHER.\n\nTHAT WILL BE AN EXCITING LAUNCH TO SEE IF YOU ARE AT THE CAPE. >> AMAZING. ALL RIGHT, I THINK WE ARE UNFORTUNATELY OUT OF TIME. THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR COMING TO E3 AND BEING A PART OF THIS, THIS IS SO COOL TO HAVE YOU HERE. TODD HOWARD. THANKS, EVERYONE. APPRECIATE IT, GUYS. ♪ ♪"},"languages":["en"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WVW50KRaBd8"},{"id":"lex-fridman-18","type":"interview","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dEv99vxKjVI","title":"Lex Fridman Podcast","titles":{"en":"Lex Fridman Podcast","de":"Lex Fridman Podcast","fr":"Lex Fridman Podcast"},"date":"2019-04-12","summary":"Elon Musk's first appearance on Lex Fridman, devoted to Tesla's Autopilot and self-driving.","text":"The following is a conversation with Elon Musk. He's the CEO of Tesla, SpaceX, Neuralink, and a co-founder of several other companies. This conversation is part of the Artificial Intelligence Podcast. This series includes leading researchers in academia and industry, including CEOs and CTOs of automotive, robotics, AI and technology companies.\n\nThis conversation happened after the release of the paper from our group at MIT on driver functional vigilance during use of Tesla's Autopilot. The Tesla team reached out to me offering a podcast conversation with Mr. Musk. I accepted with full control of questions I could ask and the choice of what is released publicly. I ended up editing out nothing of substance. I've never spoken with Elon before this conversation, publicly or privately.\n\nNeither he nor his companies have any influence on my opinion, nor on the rigor and integrity of the scientific method that I practice in my position at MIT. Tesla has never financially supported my research and I've never owned a Tesla vehicle, and I've never owned Tesla stock. This podcast is not a scientific paper, it is a conversation. I respect Elon as I do all other leaders and engineers I've spoken with.\n\nWe agree on some things and disagree on others. My goal, as always with these conversations, is to understand the way the guest sees the world. One particular point of disagreement in this conversation was the extent to which camera-based driver monitoring will improve outcomes and for how long it will remain relevant for AI-assisted driving.\n\nAs someone who works on and is fascinated by human-centered artificial intelligence, I believe that, if implemented and integrated effectively, camera-based driver monitoring is likely to be of benefit in both the short term and the long term. In contrast, Elon and Tesla's focus is on the improvement of Autopilot such that its statistical safety benefits override any concern for human behavior and psychology.\n\nElon and I may not agree on everything, but I deeply respect the engineering and innovation behind the efforts that he leads. My goal here is to catalyze a rigorous, nuanced and objective discussion in industry and academia on AI-assisted driving, one that ultimately makes for a safer and better world. And now, here's my conversation with Elon Musk. What was the vision, the dream, of Autopilot in the beginning?\n\nThe big picture system level when it was first conceived and started being installed in 2014, the hardware in the cars? What was the vision, the dream?\n\nI wouldn't characterize it as a vision or dream, it's simply that there are obviously two massive revolutions in the automobile industry. One is the transition to electrification, and then the other is autonomy. And it became obvious to me that, in the future, any car that does not have autonomy would be about as useful as a horse.\n\nWhich is not to say that there's no use, it's just rare, and somewhat idiosyncratic, if somebody has a horse at this point. It's just obvious that cars will drive themselves completely, it's just a question of time. And if we did not participate in the autonomy revolution, then our cars would not be useful to people, relative to cars that are autonomous.\n\nI mean, an autonomous car is arguably worth five to 10 times more than a car which is not autonomous.\n\nIn the long term.\n\nDepends what you mean by long term but, let's say at least for the next five years, perhaps 10 years.\n\nSo there are a lot of very interesting design choices with Autopilot early on. First is showing on the instrument cluster, or in the Model 3 and the center stack display, what the combined sensor suite sees. What was the thinking behind that choice? Was there a debate, what was the process?\n\nThe whole point of the display is to provide a health check on the vehicle's perception of reality. So the vehicle's taking in information from a bunch of sensors, primarily cameras, but also radar and ultrasonics, GPS and so forth. And then, that information is then rendered into vector space with a bunch of objects, with properties like lane lines and traffic lights and other cars. And then, in vector space, that is re-rendered onto a display so you can confirm whether the car knows what's going on or not, by looking out the window.\n\nRight, I think that's an extremely powerful thing for people to get an understanding, sort of become one with the system and understanding what the system is capable of. Now, have you considered showing more? So if we look at the computer vision, like road segmentation, lane detection, vehicle detection, object detection, underlying the system, there is at the edges, some uncertainty. Have you considered revealing the parts that the uncertainty in the system, the sort of-- - Probabilities associated with say, image recognition or something like that?\n\nYeah, so right now, it shows the vehicles in the vicinity, a very clean crisp image, and people do confirm that there's a car in front of me and the system sees there's a car in front of me, but to help people build an intuition of what computer vision is, by showing some of the uncertainty.\n\nWell, in my car I always look at this with the debug view. And there's two debug views. One is augmented vision, which I'm sure you've seen, where it's basically we draw boxes and labels around objects that are recognized. And then there's we what call the visualizer, which is basically vector space representation, summing up the input from all sensors. That does not show any pictures, which basically shows the car's view of the world in vector space. But I think this is very difficult for normal people to understand, they're would not know what thing they're looking at.\n\nSo it's almost an HMI challenge through the current things that are being displayed is optimized for the general public understanding of what the system's capable of.\n\nIf you have no idea how computer vision works or anything, you can still look at the screen and see if the car knows what's going on. And then if you're a development engineer, or if you have the development build like I do, then you can see all the debug information. But this would just be like total gibberish to most people.\n\nWhat's your view on how to best distribute effort? So there's three, I would say, technical aspects of Autopilot that are really important. So it's the underlying algorithms, like the neural network architecture, there's the data that it's trained on, and then there's the hardware development and maybe others. So, look, algorithm, data, hardware. You only have so much money, only have so much time. What do you think is the most important thing to allocate resources to? Or do you see it as pretty evenly distributed between those three?\n\nWe automatically get vast amounts of data because all of our cars have eight external facing cameras, and radar, and usually 12 ultrasonic sensors, GPS obviously, and IMU. And we've got about 400,000 cars on the road that have that level of data. Actually, I think you keep quite close track of it actually.\n\nYes.\n\nYeah, so we're approaching half a million cars on the road that have the full sensor suite. I'm not sure how many other cars on the road have this sensor suite, but I'd be surprised if it's more than 5,000, which means that we have 99% of all the data.\n\nSo there's this huge inflow of data.\n\nAbsolutely, a massive inflow of data. And then it's taken us about three years, but now we've finally developed our full self-driving computer, which can process an order of magnitude as much as the NVIDIA system that we currently have in the cars, and to use it, you unplug the NVIDIA computer and plug the Tesla computer in and that's it. In fact, we still are exploring the boundaries of its capabilities.\n\nWe're able to run the cameras at full frame-rate, full resolution, not even crop the images, and it's still got headroom even on one of the systems. The full self-driving computer is really two computers, two systems on a chip, that are fully redundant. So you could put a boat through basically any part of that system and it still works.\n\nThe redundancy, are they perfect copies of each other or-- - Yeah.\n\nOh, so it's purely for redundancy as opposed to an arguing machine kind of architecture where they're both making decisions, this is purely for redundancy.\n\nThink of it more like it's a twin-engine commercial aircraft. The system will operate best if both systems are operating, but it's capable of operating safely on one. So, as it is right now, we can just run, we haven't even hit the edge of performance so there's no need to actually distribute functionality across both SOCs. We can actually just run a full duplicate on each one.\n\nSo you haven't really explored or hit the limit of the system.\n\n[Elon] No not yet, the limit, no.\n\nSo the magic of deep learning is that it gets better with data. You said there's a huge inflow of data, but the thing about driving, - Yeah.\n\nthe really valuable data to learn from is the edge cases. I've heard you talk somewhere about Autopilot disengagements being an important moment of time to use. Is there other edge cases or perhaps can you speak to those edge cases, what aspects of them might be valuable, or if you have other ideas, how to discover more and more and more edge cases in driving?\n\nWell there's a lot of things that are learnt. There are certainly edge cases where, say somebody's on Autopilot and they take over, and then that's a trigger that goes out to our system and says, okay, did they take over for convenience, or did they take over because the Autopilot wasn't working properly? There's also, let's say we're trying to figure out, what is the optimal spline for traversing an intersection.\n\nThen the ones where there are no interventions are the right ones. So you then you say, okay, when it looks like this, do the following. And then you get the optimal spline for navigating a complex intersection.\n\nSo there's kind of the common case, So you're trying to capture a huge amount of samples of a particular intersection when things went right, and then there's the edge case where, as you said, not for convenience, but something didn't go exactly right.\n\nSo if somebody started manual control from Autopilot. And really, the way to look at this is view all input as error. If the user had to do input, there's something, all input is error.\n\nThat's a powerful line to think of it that way 'cause it may very well be error, but if you wanna exit the highway, or if it's a navigation decision that Autopilot's not currently designed to do, then the driver takes over, how do you know the difference?\n\nYeah, that's gonna change with Navigate on Autopilot, which we've just released, and without stalk confirm. Assuming control in order to do a lane change, or exit a freeway, or doing a highway interchange, the vast majority of that will go away with the release that just went out.\n\nYeah, so that, I don't think people quite understand how big of a step that is.\n\nYeah, they don't. If you drive the car then you do.\n\nSo you still have to keep your hands on the steering wheel currently when it does the automatic lane change. There's these big leaps through he development of Autopilot, through its history and, what stands out to you as the big leaps? I would say this one, Navigate on Autopilot without having to confirm is a huge leap.\n\nIt is a huge leap.\n\nWhat are the-- It also automatically overtakes slow cars. So it's both navigation and seeking the fastest lane. So it'll overtake slow cars and exit the freeway and take highway interchanges, and then we have traffic light recognition, which introduced initially as a warning. I mean, on the development version that I'm driving, the car fully stops and goes at traffic lights.\n\nSo those are the steps, right? You've just mentioned some things that are an inkling of a step towards full autonomy. What would you say are the biggest technological roadblocks to full self-driving?\n\nActually, the full self-driving computer that we just, the Tesla, what we call, FSD computer that's now in production, so if you order any Model S or X, or any Model 3 that has the full self-driving package, you'll get the FSD computer. That's important to have enough base computation. Then refining the neural net and the control software. All of that can just be provided as an over-the-air update.\n\nThe thing that's really profound, and what I'll be emphasizing at the investor day that we're having focused on autonomy, is that the car is currently being produced, with the hard word currently being produced, is capable of full self-driving.\n\nBut capable is an interesting word because-- - [Elon] The hardware is.\n\nYeah, the hardware.\n\nAnd as we refine the software, the capabilities will increase dramatically, and then the reliability will increase dramatically, and then it will receive regulatory approval. So essentially, buying a car today is an investment in the future. I think the most profound thing is that if you buy a Tesla today, I believe you're buying an appreciating asset, not a depreciating asset.\n\nSo that's a really important statement there because if hardware is capable enough, that's the hard thing to upgrade usually.\n\nYes, exactly.\n\nThen the rest is a software problem-- - Yes, software has no marginal cost really.\n\nBut, what's your intuition on the software side? How hard are the remaining steps to get it to where the experience, not just the safety, but the full experience is something that people would enjoy?\n\nI think people it enjoy it very much so on highways. It's a total game changer for quality of life, for using Tesla Autopilot on the highways. So it's really just extending that functionality to city streets, adding in the traffic light recognition, navigating complex intersections, and then being able to navigate complicated parking lots so the car can exit a parking space and come and find you, even if it's in a complete maze of a parking lot. And, then it can just drop you off and find a parking spot, by itself.\n\nYeah, in terms of enjoyabilty, and something that people would actually find a lotta use from, the parking lot, it's rich of annoyance when you have to do it manually, so there's a lot of benefit to be gained from automation there. So, let me start injecting the human into this discussion a little bit.\n\nSo let's talk about full autonomy, if you look at the current level four vehicles being tested on row like Waymo and so on, they're only technically autonomous, they're really level two systems with just a different design philosophy, because there's always a safety driver in almost all cases, and they're monitoring the system.\n\nRight.\n\nDo you see Tesla's full self-driving as still, for a time to come, requiring supervision of the human being. So its capabilities are powerful enough to drive but nevertheless requires a human to still be supervising, just like a safety driver is in other fully autonomous vehicles?\n\nI think it will require detecting hands on wheel for at least six months or something like that from here. Really it's a question of, from a regulatory standpoint, how much safer than a person does Autopilot need to be, for it to be okay to not monitor the car.\n\nAnd this is a debate that one can have, and then, but you need a large amount of data, so that you can prove, with high confidence, statistically speaking, that the car is dramatically safer than a person. And that adding in the person monitoring does not materially affect the safety. So it might need to be 200 or 300% safer than a person.\n\nAnd how do you prove that?\n\nIncidents per mile.\n\nYeah.\n\nSo crashes and fatalities-- - Yeah, fatalities would be a factor, but there are just not enough fatalities to be statistically significant, at scale. But there are enough crashes, there are far more crashes then there are fatalities. So you can assess what is the probability of a crash. Then there's another step which is probability of injury. And probability of permanent injury, the probability of death. And all of those need to be much better than a person, by at least, perhaps, 200%.\n\nAnd you think there's the ability to have a healthy discourse with the regulatory bodies on this topic?\n\nI mean, there's no question that regulators paid a disproportionate amount of attention to that which generates press, this is just an objective fact. And it also generates a lot of press. So, in the United States there's, I think, almost 40,000 automotive deaths per year. But if there are four in Tesla, they will probably receive a thousand times more press than anyone else.\n\nSo the psychology of that is actually fascinating, I don't think we'll have enough time to talk about that, but I have to talk to you about the human side of things. So, myself and our team at MIT recently released a paper on functional vigilance of drivers while using Autopilot. This is work we've been doing since Autopilot was first released publicly, over three years ago, collecting video of driver faces and driver body. So I saw that you tweeted a quote from the abstract, so I can at least guess that you've glanced at it.\n\nYeah, I read it.\n\nCan I talk you through what we found?\n\nSure.\n\nOkay, it appears that in the data that we've collected, that drivers are maintaining functional vigilance such that, we're looking at 18,000 disengagements from Autopilot, 18,900, and annotating were they able to take over control in a timely manner. So they were there, present, looking at the road to take over control, okay. So this goes against what many would predict from the body of literature on vigilance with automation.\n\nNow the question is, do you think these results hold across the broader population. So, ours is just a small subset. One of the criticism is that, there's a small minority of drivers that may be highly responsible, where their vigilance decrement would increase with Autopilot use.\n\nI think this is all really gonna be swept, I mean, the system's improving so much, so fast, that this is gonna be a moot point very soon. Where vigilance is, if something's many times safer than a person, then adding a person does, the effect on safety is limited. And, in fact, it could be negative.\n\nThat's really interesting, so the fact that a human may, some percent of the population may exhibit a vigilance decrement, will not affect overall statistics, numbers on safety?\n\nNo, in fact, I think it will become, very, very quickly, maybe even towards the end of this year, but I would say, I'd be shocked if it's not next year at the latest, that having a human intervene will decrease safety. Decrease, like imagine if you're in an elevator. Now it used to be that there were elevator operators. And you couldn't go on an elevator by yourself and work the lever to move between floors.\n\nAnd now nobody wants an elevator operator, because the automated elevator that stops at the floors is much safer than the elevator operator. And in fact it would be quite dangerous to have someone with a lever that can move the elevator between floors.\n\nSo, that's a really powerful statement, and a really interesting one, but I also have to ask from a user experience and from a safety perspective, one of the passions for me algorithmically is camera-based detection of just sensing the human, but detecting what the driver's looking at, cognitive load, body pose, on the computer vision side that's a fascinating problem. And there's many in industry who believe you have to have camera-based driver monitoring. Do you think there could be benefit gained from driver monitoring?\n\nIf you have a system that's at or below a human level of reliability, then driver monitoring makes sense. But if your system is dramatically better, more reliable than a human, then driver monitoring does not help much. And, like I said, if you're in an elevator, do you really want someone with a big lever, some random person operating the elevator between floors? I wouldn't trust that. I would rather have the buttons.\n\nOkay, you're optimistic about the pace of improvement of the system, from what you've seen with the full self-driving car computer.\n\nThe rate of improvement is exponential.\n\nSo, one of the other very interesting design choices early on that connects to this, is the operational design domain of Autopilot. So, where Autopilot is able to be turned on. So contrast another vehicle system that we were studying is the Cadillac Super Cruise system that's, in terms of ODD, very constrained to particular kinds of highways, well mapped, tested, but it's much narrower than the ODD of Tesla vehicles.\n\nIt's like ADD (both laugh).\n\nYeah, that's good, that's a good line. What was the design decision in that different philosophy of thinking, where there's pros and cons. What we see with a wide ODD is Tesla drivers are able to explore more the limitations of the system, at least early on, and they understand, together with the instrument cluster display, they start to understand what are the capabilities, so that's a benefit. The con is you're letting drivers use it basically anywhere-- - Anywhere that it can detect lanes with confidence.\n\nLanes, was there a philosophy, design decisions that were challenging, that were being made there? Or from the very beginning was that done on purpose, with intent?\n\nFrankly it's pretty crazy letting people drive a two-ton death machine manually. That's crazy, like, in the future will people be like, I can't believe anyone was just allowed to drive one of these two-ton death machines, and they just drive wherever they wanted. Just like elevators, you could just move that elevator with that lever wherever you wanted, can stop it halfway between floors if you want. It's pretty crazy, so, it's gonna seem like a mad thing in the future that people were driving cars.\n\nSo I have a bunch of questions about the human psychology, about behavior and so on-- - That's moot, it's totally moot.\n\nBecause you have faith in the AI system, not faith but, both on the hardware side and the deep learning approach of learning from data, will make it just far safer than humans.\n\nYeah, exactly.\n\nRecently there were a few hackers, who tricked Autopilot to act in unexpected ways for the adversarial examples. So we all know that neural network systems are very sensitive to minor disturbances, these adversarial examples, on input. Do you think it's possible to defend against something like this, for the industry?\n\nSure (both laugh), yeah.\n\nCan you elaborate on the confidence behind that answer?\n\nA neural net is just basically a bunch of matrix math. But you have to be a very sophisticated, somebody who really understands neural nets and basically reverse-engineer how the matrix is being built, and then create a little thing that's just exactly causes the matrix math to be slightly off. But it's very easy to block that by having, what would basically negative recognition, it's like if the system sees something that looks like a matrix hack, exclude it. It's such a easy thing to do.\n\nSo learn both on the valid data and the invalid data, so basically learn on the adversarial examples to be able to exclude them.\n\nYeah, you like basically wanna both know what is a car and what is definitely not a car. And you train for, this is a car, and this is definitely not a car. Those are two different things. People have no idea of neural nets really, They probably think neural nets involves, a fishing net or something (Lex laughs).\n\nSo, as you know, taking a step beyond just Tesla and Autopilot, current deep learning approaches still seem, in some ways, to be far from general intelligence systems. Do you think the current approaches will take us to general intelligence, or do totally new ideas need to be invented?\n\nI think we're missing a few key ideas for artificial general intelligence. But it's gonna be upon us very quickly, and then we'll need to figure out what shall we do, if we even have that choice. It's amazing how people can't differentiate between, say, the narrow AI that allows a car to figure out what a lane line is, and navigate streets, versus general intelligence. Like these are just very different things. Like your toaster and your computer are both machines, but one's much more sophisticated than another.\n\nYou're confident with Tesla you can create the world's best toaster-- - The world's best toaster, yes. The world's best self-driving... yes, to me right now this seems game, set and match. I mean, I don't want us to be complacent or over-confident, but that's what it, that is just literally how it appears right now, I could be wrong, but it appears to be the case that Tesla is vastly ahead of everyone.\n\nDo you think we will ever create an AI system that we can love, and loves us back in a deep meaningful way, like in the movie Her?\n\nI think AI will capable of convincing you to fall in love with it very well.\n\nAnd that's different than us humans?\n\nYou know, we start getting into a metaphysical question of, do emotions and thoughts exist in a different realm than the physical? And maybe they do, maybe they don't, I don't know. But from a physics standpoint, I tend to think of things, you know, like physics was my main sort of training, and from a physics standpoint, essentially, if it loves you in a way that you can't tell whether it's real or not, it is real.\n\nThat's a physics view of love.\n\nYeah (laughs), if you cannot prove that it does not, if there's no test that you can apply that would make it, allow you to tell the difference, then there is no difference.\n\nRight, and it's similar to seeing our world a simulation, they may not be a test to tell the difference between what the real world - Yes.\n\nand the simulation, and therefore, from a physics perspective, it might as well be the same thing.\n\nYes, and there may be ways to test whether it's a simulation, there might be, I'm not saying there aren't. But you could certainly imagine that a simulation could correct, that once an entity in the simulation found a way to detect the simulation, it could either pause the simulation, start a new simulation, or do one of many other things that then corrects for that error.\n\nSo when, maybe you, or somebody else creates an AGI system, and you get to ask her one question, what would that question be?\n\nWhat's outside the simulation?\n\nElon, thank you so much for talking today, it's a pleasure.\n\nAll right, thank you.","textByLang":{"en":"The following is a conversation with Elon Musk. He's the CEO of Tesla, SpaceX, Neuralink, and a co-founder of several other companies. This conversation is part of the Artificial Intelligence Podcast. This series includes leading researchers in academia and industry, including CEOs and CTOs of automotive, robotics, AI and technology companies.\n\nThis conversation happened after the release of the paper from our group at MIT on driver functional vigilance during use of Tesla's Autopilot. The Tesla team reached out to me offering a podcast conversation with Mr. Musk. I accepted with full control of questions I could ask and the choice of what is released publicly. I ended up editing out nothing of substance. I've never spoken with Elon before this conversation, publicly or privately.\n\nNeither he nor his companies have any influence on my opinion, nor on the rigor and integrity of the scientific method that I practice in my position at MIT. Tesla has never financially supported my research and I've never owned a Tesla vehicle, and I've never owned Tesla stock. This podcast is not a scientific paper, it is a conversation. I respect Elon as I do all other leaders and engineers I've spoken with.\n\nWe agree on some things and disagree on others. My goal, as always with these conversations, is to understand the way the guest sees the world. One particular point of disagreement in this conversation was the extent to which camera-based driver monitoring will improve outcomes and for how long it will remain relevant for AI-assisted driving.\n\nAs someone who works on and is fascinated by human-centered artificial intelligence, I believe that, if implemented and integrated effectively, camera-based driver monitoring is likely to be of benefit in both the short term and the long term. In contrast, Elon and Tesla's focus is on the improvement of Autopilot such that its statistical safety benefits override any concern for human behavior and psychology.\n\nElon and I may not agree on everything, but I deeply respect the engineering and innovation behind the efforts that he leads. My goal here is to catalyze a rigorous, nuanced and objective discussion in industry and academia on AI-assisted driving, one that ultimately makes for a safer and better world. And now, here's my conversation with Elon Musk. What was the vision, the dream, of Autopilot in the beginning?\n\nThe big picture system level when it was first conceived and started being installed in 2014, the hardware in the cars? What was the vision, the dream?\n\nI wouldn't characterize it as a vision or dream, it's simply that there are obviously two massive revolutions in the automobile industry. One is the transition to electrification, and then the other is autonomy. And it became obvious to me that, in the future, any car that does not have autonomy would be about as useful as a horse.\n\nWhich is not to say that there's no use, it's just rare, and somewhat idiosyncratic, if somebody has a horse at this point. It's just obvious that cars will drive themselves completely, it's just a question of time. And if we did not participate in the autonomy revolution, then our cars would not be useful to people, relative to cars that are autonomous.\n\nI mean, an autonomous car is arguably worth five to 10 times more than a car which is not autonomous.\n\nIn the long term.\n\nDepends what you mean by long term but, let's say at least for the next five years, perhaps 10 years.\n\nSo there are a lot of very interesting design choices with Autopilot early on. First is showing on the instrument cluster, or in the Model 3 and the center stack display, what the combined sensor suite sees. What was the thinking behind that choice? Was there a debate, what was the process?\n\nThe whole point of the display is to provide a health check on the vehicle's perception of reality. So the vehicle's taking in information from a bunch of sensors, primarily cameras, but also radar and ultrasonics, GPS and so forth. And then, that information is then rendered into vector space with a bunch of objects, with properties like lane lines and traffic lights and other cars. And then, in vector space, that is re-rendered onto a display so you can confirm whether the car knows what's going on or not, by looking out the window.\n\nRight, I think that's an extremely powerful thing for people to get an understanding, sort of become one with the system and understanding what the system is capable of. Now, have you considered showing more? So if we look at the computer vision, like road segmentation, lane detection, vehicle detection, object detection, underlying the system, there is at the edges, some uncertainty. Have you considered revealing the parts that the uncertainty in the system, the sort of-- - Probabilities associated with say, image recognition or something like that?\n\nYeah, so right now, it shows the vehicles in the vicinity, a very clean crisp image, and people do confirm that there's a car in front of me and the system sees there's a car in front of me, but to help people build an intuition of what computer vision is, by showing some of the uncertainty.\n\nWell, in my car I always look at this with the debug view. And there's two debug views. One is augmented vision, which I'm sure you've seen, where it's basically we draw boxes and labels around objects that are recognized. And then there's we what call the visualizer, which is basically vector space representation, summing up the input from all sensors. That does not show any pictures, which basically shows the car's view of the world in vector space. But I think this is very difficult for normal people to understand, they're would not know what thing they're looking at.\n\nSo it's almost an HMI challenge through the current things that are being displayed is optimized for the general public understanding of what the system's capable of.\n\nIf you have no idea how computer vision works or anything, you can still look at the screen and see if the car knows what's going on. And then if you're a development engineer, or if you have the development build like I do, then you can see all the debug information. But this would just be like total gibberish to most people.\n\nWhat's your view on how to best distribute effort? So there's three, I would say, technical aspects of Autopilot that are really important. So it's the underlying algorithms, like the neural network architecture, there's the data that it's trained on, and then there's the hardware development and maybe others. So, look, algorithm, data, hardware. You only have so much money, only have so much time. What do you think is the most important thing to allocate resources to? Or do you see it as pretty evenly distributed between those three?\n\nWe automatically get vast amounts of data because all of our cars have eight external facing cameras, and radar, and usually 12 ultrasonic sensors, GPS obviously, and IMU. And we've got about 400,000 cars on the road that have that level of data. Actually, I think you keep quite close track of it actually.\n\nYes.\n\nYeah, so we're approaching half a million cars on the road that have the full sensor suite. I'm not sure how many other cars on the road have this sensor suite, but I'd be surprised if it's more than 5,000, which means that we have 99% of all the data.\n\nSo there's this huge inflow of data.\n\nAbsolutely, a massive inflow of data. And then it's taken us about three years, but now we've finally developed our full self-driving computer, which can process an order of magnitude as much as the NVIDIA system that we currently have in the cars, and to use it, you unplug the NVIDIA computer and plug the Tesla computer in and that's it. In fact, we still are exploring the boundaries of its capabilities.\n\nWe're able to run the cameras at full frame-rate, full resolution, not even crop the images, and it's still got headroom even on one of the systems. The full self-driving computer is really two computers, two systems on a chip, that are fully redundant. So you could put a boat through basically any part of that system and it still works.\n\nThe redundancy, are they perfect copies of each other or-- - Yeah.\n\nOh, so it's purely for redundancy as opposed to an arguing machine kind of architecture where they're both making decisions, this is purely for redundancy.\n\nThink of it more like it's a twin-engine commercial aircraft. The system will operate best if both systems are operating, but it's capable of operating safely on one. So, as it is right now, we can just run, we haven't even hit the edge of performance so there's no need to actually distribute functionality across both SOCs. We can actually just run a full duplicate on each one.\n\nSo you haven't really explored or hit the limit of the system.\n\n[Elon] No not yet, the limit, no.\n\nSo the magic of deep learning is that it gets better with data. You said there's a huge inflow of data, but the thing about driving, - Yeah.\n\nthe really valuable data to learn from is the edge cases. I've heard you talk somewhere about Autopilot disengagements being an important moment of time to use. Is there other edge cases or perhaps can you speak to those edge cases, what aspects of them might be valuable, or if you have other ideas, how to discover more and more and more edge cases in driving?\n\nWell there's a lot of things that are learnt. There are certainly edge cases where, say somebody's on Autopilot and they take over, and then that's a trigger that goes out to our system and says, okay, did they take over for convenience, or did they take over because the Autopilot wasn't working properly? There's also, let's say we're trying to figure out, what is the optimal spline for traversing an intersection.\n\nThen the ones where there are no interventions are the right ones. So you then you say, okay, when it looks like this, do the following. And then you get the optimal spline for navigating a complex intersection.\n\nSo there's kind of the common case, So you're trying to capture a huge amount of samples of a particular intersection when things went right, and then there's the edge case where, as you said, not for convenience, but something didn't go exactly right.\n\nSo if somebody started manual control from Autopilot. And really, the way to look at this is view all input as error. If the user had to do input, there's something, all input is error.\n\nThat's a powerful line to think of it that way 'cause it may very well be error, but if you wanna exit the highway, or if it's a navigation decision that Autopilot's not currently designed to do, then the driver takes over, how do you know the difference?\n\nYeah, that's gonna change with Navigate on Autopilot, which we've just released, and without stalk confirm. Assuming control in order to do a lane change, or exit a freeway, or doing a highway interchange, the vast majority of that will go away with the release that just went out.\n\nYeah, so that, I don't think people quite understand how big of a step that is.\n\nYeah, they don't. If you drive the car then you do.\n\nSo you still have to keep your hands on the steering wheel currently when it does the automatic lane change. There's these big leaps through he development of Autopilot, through its history and, what stands out to you as the big leaps? I would say this one, Navigate on Autopilot without having to confirm is a huge leap.\n\nIt is a huge leap.\n\nWhat are the-- It also automatically overtakes slow cars. So it's both navigation and seeking the fastest lane. So it'll overtake slow cars and exit the freeway and take highway interchanges, and then we have traffic light recognition, which introduced initially as a warning. I mean, on the development version that I'm driving, the car fully stops and goes at traffic lights.\n\nSo those are the steps, right? You've just mentioned some things that are an inkling of a step towards full autonomy. What would you say are the biggest technological roadblocks to full self-driving?\n\nActually, the full self-driving computer that we just, the Tesla, what we call, FSD computer that's now in production, so if you order any Model S or X, or any Model 3 that has the full self-driving package, you'll get the FSD computer. That's important to have enough base computation. Then refining the neural net and the control software. All of that can just be provided as an over-the-air update.\n\nThe thing that's really profound, and what I'll be emphasizing at the investor day that we're having focused on autonomy, is that the car is currently being produced, with the hard word currently being produced, is capable of full self-driving.\n\nBut capable is an interesting word because-- - [Elon] The hardware is.\n\nYeah, the hardware.\n\nAnd as we refine the software, the capabilities will increase dramatically, and then the reliability will increase dramatically, and then it will receive regulatory approval. So essentially, buying a car today is an investment in the future. I think the most profound thing is that if you buy a Tesla today, I believe you're buying an appreciating asset, not a depreciating asset.\n\nSo that's a really important statement there because if hardware is capable enough, that's the hard thing to upgrade usually.\n\nYes, exactly.\n\nThen the rest is a software problem-- - Yes, software has no marginal cost really.\n\nBut, what's your intuition on the software side? How hard are the remaining steps to get it to where the experience, not just the safety, but the full experience is something that people would enjoy?\n\nI think people it enjoy it very much so on highways. It's a total game changer for quality of life, for using Tesla Autopilot on the highways. So it's really just extending that functionality to city streets, adding in the traffic light recognition, navigating complex intersections, and then being able to navigate complicated parking lots so the car can exit a parking space and come and find you, even if it's in a complete maze of a parking lot. And, then it can just drop you off and find a parking spot, by itself.\n\nYeah, in terms of enjoyabilty, and something that people would actually find a lotta use from, the parking lot, it's rich of annoyance when you have to do it manually, so there's a lot of benefit to be gained from automation there. So, let me start injecting the human into this discussion a little bit.\n\nSo let's talk about full autonomy, if you look at the current level four vehicles being tested on row like Waymo and so on, they're only technically autonomous, they're really level two systems with just a different design philosophy, because there's always a safety driver in almost all cases, and they're monitoring the system.\n\nRight.\n\nDo you see Tesla's full self-driving as still, for a time to come, requiring supervision of the human being. So its capabilities are powerful enough to drive but nevertheless requires a human to still be supervising, just like a safety driver is in other fully autonomous vehicles?\n\nI think it will require detecting hands on wheel for at least six months or something like that from here. Really it's a question of, from a regulatory standpoint, how much safer than a person does Autopilot need to be, for it to be okay to not monitor the car.\n\nAnd this is a debate that one can have, and then, but you need a large amount of data, so that you can prove, with high confidence, statistically speaking, that the car is dramatically safer than a person. And that adding in the person monitoring does not materially affect the safety. So it might need to be 200 or 300% safer than a person.\n\nAnd how do you prove that?\n\nIncidents per mile.\n\nYeah.\n\nSo crashes and fatalities-- - Yeah, fatalities would be a factor, but there are just not enough fatalities to be statistically significant, at scale. But there are enough crashes, there are far more crashes then there are fatalities. So you can assess what is the probability of a crash. Then there's another step which is probability of injury. And probability of permanent injury, the probability of death. And all of those need to be much better than a person, by at least, perhaps, 200%.\n\nAnd you think there's the ability to have a healthy discourse with the regulatory bodies on this topic?\n\nI mean, there's no question that regulators paid a disproportionate amount of attention to that which generates press, this is just an objective fact. And it also generates a lot of press. So, in the United States there's, I think, almost 40,000 automotive deaths per year. But if there are four in Tesla, they will probably receive a thousand times more press than anyone else.\n\nSo the psychology of that is actually fascinating, I don't think we'll have enough time to talk about that, but I have to talk to you about the human side of things. So, myself and our team at MIT recently released a paper on functional vigilance of drivers while using Autopilot. This is work we've been doing since Autopilot was first released publicly, over three years ago, collecting video of driver faces and driver body. So I saw that you tweeted a quote from the abstract, so I can at least guess that you've glanced at it.\n\nYeah, I read it.\n\nCan I talk you through what we found?\n\nSure.\n\nOkay, it appears that in the data that we've collected, that drivers are maintaining functional vigilance such that, we're looking at 18,000 disengagements from Autopilot, 18,900, and annotating were they able to take over control in a timely manner. So they were there, present, looking at the road to take over control, okay. So this goes against what many would predict from the body of literature on vigilance with automation.\n\nNow the question is, do you think these results hold across the broader population. So, ours is just a small subset. One of the criticism is that, there's a small minority of drivers that may be highly responsible, where their vigilance decrement would increase with Autopilot use.\n\nI think this is all really gonna be swept, I mean, the system's improving so much, so fast, that this is gonna be a moot point very soon. Where vigilance is, if something's many times safer than a person, then adding a person does, the effect on safety is limited. And, in fact, it could be negative.\n\nThat's really interesting, so the fact that a human may, some percent of the population may exhibit a vigilance decrement, will not affect overall statistics, numbers on safety?\n\nNo, in fact, I think it will become, very, very quickly, maybe even towards the end of this year, but I would say, I'd be shocked if it's not next year at the latest, that having a human intervene will decrease safety. Decrease, like imagine if you're in an elevator. Now it used to be that there were elevator operators. And you couldn't go on an elevator by yourself and work the lever to move between floors.\n\nAnd now nobody wants an elevator operator, because the automated elevator that stops at the floors is much safer than the elevator operator. And in fact it would be quite dangerous to have someone with a lever that can move the elevator between floors.\n\nSo, that's a really powerful statement, and a really interesting one, but I also have to ask from a user experience and from a safety perspective, one of the passions for me algorithmically is camera-based detection of just sensing the human, but detecting what the driver's looking at, cognitive load, body pose, on the computer vision side that's a fascinating problem. And there's many in industry who believe you have to have camera-based driver monitoring. Do you think there could be benefit gained from driver monitoring?\n\nIf you have a system that's at or below a human level of reliability, then driver monitoring makes sense. But if your system is dramatically better, more reliable than a human, then driver monitoring does not help much. And, like I said, if you're in an elevator, do you really want someone with a big lever, some random person operating the elevator between floors? I wouldn't trust that. I would rather have the buttons.\n\nOkay, you're optimistic about the pace of improvement of the system, from what you've seen with the full self-driving car computer.\n\nThe rate of improvement is exponential.\n\nSo, one of the other very interesting design choices early on that connects to this, is the operational design domain of Autopilot. So, where Autopilot is able to be turned on. So contrast another vehicle system that we were studying is the Cadillac Super Cruise system that's, in terms of ODD, very constrained to particular kinds of highways, well mapped, tested, but it's much narrower than the ODD of Tesla vehicles.\n\nIt's like ADD (both laugh).\n\nYeah, that's good, that's a good line. What was the design decision in that different philosophy of thinking, where there's pros and cons. What we see with a wide ODD is Tesla drivers are able to explore more the limitations of the system, at least early on, and they understand, together with the instrument cluster display, they start to understand what are the capabilities, so that's a benefit. The con is you're letting drivers use it basically anywhere-- - Anywhere that it can detect lanes with confidence.\n\nLanes, was there a philosophy, design decisions that were challenging, that were being made there? Or from the very beginning was that done on purpose, with intent?\n\nFrankly it's pretty crazy letting people drive a two-ton death machine manually. That's crazy, like, in the future will people be like, I can't believe anyone was just allowed to drive one of these two-ton death machines, and they just drive wherever they wanted. Just like elevators, you could just move that elevator with that lever wherever you wanted, can stop it halfway between floors if you want. It's pretty crazy, so, it's gonna seem like a mad thing in the future that people were driving cars.\n\nSo I have a bunch of questions about the human psychology, about behavior and so on-- - That's moot, it's totally moot.\n\nBecause you have faith in the AI system, not faith but, both on the hardware side and the deep learning approach of learning from data, will make it just far safer than humans.\n\nYeah, exactly.\n\nRecently there were a few hackers, who tricked Autopilot to act in unexpected ways for the adversarial examples. So we all know that neural network systems are very sensitive to minor disturbances, these adversarial examples, on input. Do you think it's possible to defend against something like this, for the industry?\n\nSure (both laugh), yeah.\n\nCan you elaborate on the confidence behind that answer?\n\nA neural net is just basically a bunch of matrix math. But you have to be a very sophisticated, somebody who really understands neural nets and basically reverse-engineer how the matrix is being built, and then create a little thing that's just exactly causes the matrix math to be slightly off. But it's very easy to block that by having, what would basically negative recognition, it's like if the system sees something that looks like a matrix hack, exclude it. It's such a easy thing to do.\n\nSo learn both on the valid data and the invalid data, so basically learn on the adversarial examples to be able to exclude them.\n\nYeah, you like basically wanna both know what is a car and what is definitely not a car. And you train for, this is a car, and this is definitely not a car. Those are two different things. People have no idea of neural nets really, They probably think neural nets involves, a fishing net or something (Lex laughs).\n\nSo, as you know, taking a step beyond just Tesla and Autopilot, current deep learning approaches still seem, in some ways, to be far from general intelligence systems. Do you think the current approaches will take us to general intelligence, or do totally new ideas need to be invented?\n\nI think we're missing a few key ideas for artificial general intelligence. But it's gonna be upon us very quickly, and then we'll need to figure out what shall we do, if we even have that choice. It's amazing how people can't differentiate between, say, the narrow AI that allows a car to figure out what a lane line is, and navigate streets, versus general intelligence. Like these are just very different things. Like your toaster and your computer are both machines, but one's much more sophisticated than another.\n\nYou're confident with Tesla you can create the world's best toaster-- - The world's best toaster, yes. The world's best self-driving... yes, to me right now this seems game, set and match. I mean, I don't want us to be complacent or over-confident, but that's what it, that is just literally how it appears right now, I could be wrong, but it appears to be the case that Tesla is vastly ahead of everyone.\n\nDo you think we will ever create an AI system that we can love, and loves us back in a deep meaningful way, like in the movie Her?\n\nI think AI will capable of convincing you to fall in love with it very well.\n\nAnd that's different than us humans?\n\nYou know, we start getting into a metaphysical question of, do emotions and thoughts exist in a different realm than the physical? And maybe they do, maybe they don't, I don't know. But from a physics standpoint, I tend to think of things, you know, like physics was my main sort of training, and from a physics standpoint, essentially, if it loves you in a way that you can't tell whether it's real or not, it is real.\n\nThat's a physics view of love.\n\nYeah (laughs), if you cannot prove that it does not, if there's no test that you can apply that would make it, allow you to tell the difference, then there is no difference.\n\nRight, and it's similar to seeing our world a simulation, they may not be a test to tell the difference between what the real world - Yes.\n\nand the simulation, and therefore, from a physics perspective, it might as well be the same thing.\n\nYes, and there may be ways to test whether it's a simulation, there might be, I'm not saying there aren't. But you could certainly imagine that a simulation could correct, that once an entity in the simulation found a way to detect the simulation, it could either pause the simulation, start a new simulation, or do one of many other things that then corrects for that error.\n\nSo when, maybe you, or somebody else creates an AGI system, and you get to ask her one question, what would that question be?\n\nWhat's outside the simulation?\n\nElon, thank you so much for talking today, it's a pleasure.\n\nAll right, thank you."},"languages":["en"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dEv99vxKjVI"},{"id":"ark-invest-podcast-2019-02-19","type":"interview","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3tKmF3OYkXI","title":"ARK Invest Podcast","titles":{"en":"ARK Invest Podcast","de":"ARK Invest Podcast","fr":"ARK Invest Podcast"},"date":"2019-02-19","summary":"Musk talks with Cathie Wood and ARK Invest about full self-driving autonomy, exponential growth and Tesla's competitive edge over Waymo.","text":"hey everybody I'm Zack and I'm Jesse and you're watching in-depth on now you know [Music] so Ilan was recently on Cathy woods arc invest podcast called fYI for your innovation episode 11 and we have the link down below because we really urge you to listen to it it's about 30 minutes of brilliant questions and answers Cathy wood she is the CEO founder and CEO of arc invest which is a multi-billion dollar tech investment company just for your information we do invest in our confessed Cathy wants companies to invest aggressively and she thanked Ilan for not going private because Cathy believes Tesla needs the public market to raise the funds to scale quickly to exponential growth in reach elands goals alright so we want to go through kind of a play-by-play\n\nof what was said on this because a lot of people said about this podcast well it was fine we just heard a bunch of stuff we've already heard before no need to listen to it and I feel differently I feel like we got a lot of nuanced answers which if you look at them closely give you a lot of insight into what's going on right because I mean a lot of times when people get Ilan on their show they're just asking like oh what are what are electric cars anyone's like okay electric car is an electric car and they're like oh wow oh that's very interesting and and then it's like yes it is they're like so how do you charge it and he's like okay you plug it into this thing called a supercharger and it works like that and it's like okay great and then the interview\n\nends and you're like oh I I knew everything that I knew beforehand because I follow Elon Musk and I understand what electric car is and you know people don't get into like Oh tell me about autopilot you know they don't get into any of the nitty-gritty details which we're going to get into Kathy was saying that at arc invests they've done their internal projections and they see that in 2018 there was 1.\n\n3 million evie sales what do they projected in 2023 in 2023 they project 26 million evey sales that would be about one third of the total global sales in 2023 would be EVs and they're basing this off of just battery prices just the the estimated drop in battery prices that will lead to a twenty six million car evie sale in 2023 yeah that's a 20 times increase in Elan said sounds about right might be off by a year too but not by much and so cathy has done a bear bull analysis for Tesla stock and so she prices the low end at $700 in the high end at $4,000 based on Tesla sales of 1.\n\n6 million units in 2023 and she thinks she's being conservative being conservative $700 is already double what Tesla is worth today and $4,000 per share is well over 10 times what the stock is worth today so if she's being conservative and she's giving these numbers I my ears are have perked up right and a lot of people say well that can't be you can't be right Kathie and that's because Cathy said people don't understand exponential curves they don't they are linear thinkers and Elon agreed he said they don't understand the area under the curve so for instance if we take their 2017 car sales in terms of production it looked pretty small because no matter what you what line you draw it was very low to zero right but in 2018 Tesla doubled its fleet so in\n\n2018 we made and delivered about as many cars as we had in our entire history zeti long and that is because they're double they're exponential so Elon said small changes in the calendar break point have enormous percentage differences the time difference is small but the percentage difference is enormous and this is really important when you're looking at s curves if you slide one way or you slide the other way if you just sort of slide it and you're and you can't see beyond you know into the into the future right that whole section all over there is unknowable and you're just seeing this little you're gonna be like okay so it's gonna go loop and then it's gonna go okay so in about 30 years Eevee's are gonna take over it's like no it's going well right\n\nit's an exponential growth right we talked about this on the show a lot they are talking about it on their podcast as well and I mean Elon said it took six months longer than we thought it would to reach five thousand cars a week it was perceived as a massive shortfall instead it was just a calendar shift or a short delay wasn't they couldn't do it is that he was off by the timing and you could you remember these stories you know Tesla is never gonna reach that five thousand cars a week number Bloomberg tracker has them down at two thousand cars a week oh no Tesla's going to end it's the end of the way and now they're making like seven thousand cars a week so let's put two points together that didn't get connected here Elon said my guest for 2021 is 1.\n\n5 million cars that's what Tesla will make he thinks and in 2023 just to guess we do three million now remember what Cathy just said her estimates were based on 1.\n\n6 million in 2023 so if Ellen is saying that he thinks they're probably gonna do more like double that and she's thinking his stock is gonna be at 700 to 4,000 it could be almost doubled with the stock moving double again which would be you know so 1,400 to 8,000 for 2 to 4 to 20 times more right in terms of stock price which is crazy not that it would necessarily scale 1 to 1 but why not right um and let's talk about I mean let's talk about this question she just asked him you know what what are your goals what do you think you're going to hit in 2021 in we never got this question asked on the earnings calls no they're only interested in q1 of 2019 right that's ridiculous I mean why are the analysts and why are they on these earning calls if they're\n\nnot going to ask these sorts of questions these sort of forward-looking questions they're only talking about quarter Oh what's gonna happen next quarter we know why next quarter was gonna have it less court last quarter what happened last quarter you know why because Wall Street's not interested in anything beyond the quarter because they do everything based on the quarter that's why you see these huge fluctuations in stock prices because they're not looking any further ahead and then when some news comes out they're like whoa what wow I didn't see that that was it on my radar your radar was like 14 feet dude you're looking you know if you're looking three months into the future you're not gonna see that far look at this long distance thing that me Long's\n\ngot going here he said we think of our cars long-term as carriers of autonomy software who's talking about that now right what analysts is talking about the cars anything more than selling a car he's thinking of it as a completely different thing he's gonna flick a switch someday probably two years from now turn on the the Tesla Network and completely changed his business model right because right now yes every single analyst you know there are some analysts that will talk about way mo and then they'll talk about Tesla but they're not gonna talk about autonomy software in Tesla they just don't bring it up they do they're like oh they're way behind according to our according to our analysis there are way behind because look at the way mo cars they're driving\n\naround cities right now Wow with no drivers in them that's crazy yeah we're gonna get to weigh him on a second salute Leland said I think we will be feature complete full self-driving this year meaning the car will be able to find you in a parking lot pick you up take you all the way to your destination without an intervention this year I would say that I'm certain of that that is not a question mark that is awesome now a lot of people said we've heard this from Elon before he said that model threes and s's Nexus would be able to drive from you know California to New York and that was two years ago hasn't done it so obviously he doesn't know what he's talking about mm-hmm Elon did answer that he said however people sometimes will extrapolate that to mean\n\nnow it works with 100% certainty requiring no observation perfectly this is not the case once it is feature complete then you're sort of the march of nines like how many nines of reliability do you want it to be and then when do regulators agree that it is reliable so you might be saying March of nines what is this is this some new show some new movie like March of nines out this March March 9th the march of the nines it's it's obviously not that but basically if you were to take an elevator right what is the safety factor of the elevator like what is the chance that you're gonna make to the floor that you asked to get to safely you know would you get on an elevator if it was 50% safe no huh no you wouldn't how about 75% safe no 90 no no 99 no 99.\n\n9 mmm no ninety-nine point nine nine maybe ninety-nine point nine nine nine you want so many nines at the end of that number because you want it to be absolutely 100% safe and unfortunately there are no 100% anything's in this world ninety-nine point nine nine nine nine nine is as close as you're basically going to get to it you know with some more nines tacked onto the end of it and so basically what Elan is saying here is that we you're gonna have all these features you're going to be able to get into the car and it'll be able to drive you someplace but will it be able to do that with 100% safety or ninety-nine point nine nine nine nine nine nine nine nine nine nine nine percent safety right and so Ellen said so there's feature complete full self-driving\n\nthis year with certainty this is something that we control and I managed autopilot and engineering directly every week in detail so I'm certain of this right so again he's talking about the features so then the question was asked when will regulators allow with human oversight and when without human oversight Ilana said my guess as to when we would think it's safe for somebody to essentially fall asleep and wake up at their destination probably towards the end of next year that's when I would think it's most likely safe for that I don't know when regulators would agree okay so the end of next year he thinks he's going to be at where he considers to be the end of the nines acceptable that's incredible that's insane that you don't end of 2020 right go to\n\nsleep in your car and it'll drive you to your location because I mean you can sleep in your car now true it's just you're gonna wake up where you left off right unless you park somewhere illegally in which case you're probably gonna end up at the impound lot right yeah that's insane the the end of next year now he's saying he doesn't know when regulators will agree yeah and so who's asked this do you think China would agree first and Nealon said China regulators are good so are the US federal regulators California can be overzealous and Europeans conservative so I think he was kind of hinting if you read between the lines that maybe China would be the first place to allow self-driving because probably they're gonna just look at the data right and the\n\ndata is the most important part here he's you know he's saying that like yes I can say you know oh there's all these features but the regulators are gonna be like I don't believe your features and he needs the data to back it up vielen said people think sometimes that I'm like a business person or finance person or something like that I'm an engineer I do engineering always have I think this is a really good point something that he should bring up more that he's not a business person first he is an engineer first he tackles just about every single problem you know business finance or otherwise like an engineer right in fact that's why he does so much engineering because he's an engineer a lot of people just sort of like to think of him as like a billionaire\n\nlike oh he's just some sort of billionaire like Oh some boy that billionaire guy he's so rich he is rich oh that's true but he is an engineer now a really good question from Tasha one I haven't heard before she said to what degree is consumer use of autopilot important Elon said the advantage that we have that is very difficult to overcome is that we have just a vast amount of data on interventions so effectively the customers are training the system on how to drive and there are millions of corner cases they're so obscure and weird you wouldn't believe it there's different road markings different rules in different countries different expectations you got rain snow sleet hail hurricanes floods fire smoke dust it's insane we've got cars and really all\n\nthose environments and so every time somebody intervenes takes over from AP it saves that information and uploads it to our system we don't know which car it was there's no individual attribution for the car we just know that the intervention took place and then we see what is required to fix that intervention and we're really starting to get quite good at not even requiring human labeling okay this is probably the most important point if we were to be talking about Tesla autopilot and and at full autonomy is this is what Tesla has that no other car manufacturer has okay no other car manufacturer no other basically no other self-driving car start up has way mo doesn't have this they have millions and millions of miles of real-world driving data with real\n\npeople driving real cars and real settings and they're able to basically amass billions and billions of points from billions and billions of billions of miles of data yeah they've got hundreds of thousands of employees I mean as drivers of the cars we are basically employees of Tesla getting them data right we're basically all beta testers right this is a beta software and we're accumulating all of this experience basically you're able to throw that into a neural network and treat it like experience so throughout your life when you've been driving if you're like oh you know you know you know the rules stop at a stop sign and stuff like that but it's like okay stop at the stop sign and then maybe you know try and lean my head forward down the road that\n\nis experience hopefully somebody taught you that but if you didn't you probably instinctively learned it yourself and I mean that's what's so incredible about this podcast cuz that question got to something that's never asked which is you know way mo and crews are always put as like the number one companies when it comes to autonomous driving but they don't have hundreds of thousands of employees or people who bought their cars that can do all this work for them they've just got a small subset of cars getting them a very limited data set which in this next question is pointed out is not even a great data set so Kathy asked way Moe and Cruz are deterministic what's going wrong there versus Tesla is probabilistic in Elon said essentially a heuristics approach\n\nto this will result in a local maximum of capabilities not a global maximum I think you really have to apply a sophisticated neural net to achieve a global maximum and it's why their reliance on lidar is unwise it gets you to a certain point but no further basically a series of if-then-else statements and lidar is not going to solve it forget it game over you have to solve vision perception essentially understanding with vision and then it's solved you don't need anything else no other senses at all I mean we drive cars with basically two cameras that aren't very good on a gimbal that doesn't move very fast and a professional driver will almost never have an accident right this is such an interesting point he's talking about two different very important\n\npoints here you don't need lidar which is huge because essentially you can drive a car now with your slightly evolved ape brain with with - you know pretty crappy cameras like they have pretty good resolution you know right in the center of your vision and then out towards the end you know there's like not a good color so I mean what's the point and then you're on this swiveling head which is like whoa and your reaction time is like well you know and you can get distracted and you during Lee and you detects there's there's all sorts of problems with people you know having a large number of people on the roads with this and and we do it we just we've accepted it we said okay yeah people are sometimes gonna crash into buildings and into other cars a million\n\npeople will die over here right except that we'll accept that here is where we can actually change that and then here's the second part this sort of idea that lidar is not going to cut it in this sort of idea that you know you can program in every edge case is not the way to do it it's as if you were trying to program a robot to respond to people talking to it and so you'd be like oh if somebody says hello it will say hello back you say you know hello and we go hello great excellent awesome all right what else good is what is your name and then it'll say my name is Robo Bob and say my name is Robo Bob but as soon as you're like ask it you know some other question or like what if what if you ask it to what is PI and it would just start at a 3.\n\n14 what you know they that's a trope right you don't program in that concept that idea it didn't learn through experience you programmed in every action that it could take and you do that with a self-driving car and suddenly you know there are four lanes inside of a lane on the highway which has happened to me before like there's just paint everywhere and suddenly what's the car going to do it's gonna go like I must follow our lanes take all lanes that you know and you'll go all over the road would be bad so you need to have a car that can be like okay it's one of these great right that's before I've seen this before driving along I know how to drive prong I could be so angry but you know or New Jersey so New Jersey ish but you know it's gonna you know\n\nit will have tons and tons of experience through the neural net right Natasha said talk about the uniqueness of Tesla's data Elon said that they basically have a hundred times more data than everyone else everyone else is closer to one percent of the data that Tesla have the reason Tesla is making rapid progress is because we have vastly more data and this is increasing exponentially as our fleet is increasing exponentially our data is increasing exponentially that's another huge point so I mean they're already ahead and they're just keep going right every car that they sell is more it's a function of more data that they're going to be getting it's awesome Ilan said although I brought it up before I don't think people really seem to be taking note of\n\nthe fact that the Tesla ap AI computer is about to roll into production anyone who has ordered full self-driving will get that for free I've said it's like an order of magnitude improvement over the Nvidia system that we have but it's really more like a 2,000 percent improvement and Cathy backed that up she said our analysts who spent nine years in Nvidia concluded the Tesla is three years ahead of any auto manufacturer now three years might sound like oh okay just three years but in the technological curve that we're in three years I would argue is game over yeah it's like they're from the future it's like they came out of there time-traveling machine we're like Hello we're from the future Elon talked about the fact that their cars with the new hardware\n\nwill be able to see frame rates of a hundred frames per second with full resolution on all cameras and they still haven't gotten it tapped out just put that in perspective for a second so the normal frame rate that humans see at is what around like you can detect frame rates at around you know 120 but you can't like see a very discernible difference beyond that so I mean you're basically you know you can watch if you're watching this right now at 30 frames per sec right this we're talking about three times more and then 10 more frames plus six more cameras six more cameras imagine if you had six I'm more imagine if you had seven more eyes for a moment just imagine that for six just let that sink in you can't you can't imagine yourself having seven more\n\neyes being able to see out of the side of your head and out of the back of your head you know people will say like oh grandma has eyes in the back of her head she doesn't I think but if she did that would be a lot of data input yeah I mean and that's the point here the point is that that's a lot of data input imagine having to deal with all of that data I mean you can you're only looking at what your two eyes you've two eyes it's really only you know you're only looking at one point at one time as soon as you cross your eyes you're like I can't do anything right because you know one can cross their eyes and be like excellent let's go your brain is only made for looking through two eyes that are looking in the same direction and they have to account for\n\nthat they have to you know account for parallax of like I need to look at this finger so I need to point in and look like an idiot like I'm crossing my eyes and as soon as I do that I realize though I'm crossing my eyes like there's so much that goes into that which is just hardwired into our brains but oh it's just so excited it is so tasha asked is hardware capacity fixed or do you need to upgrade every two years in elan pointed out something really interesting you said we could achieve full autonomy with the nvidia hardware we have now but we have to do all sorts of software tricks but with a 2,000 percent faster computer we don't have to do any kind of software tricks anymore with the current hardware with the nvidia current hardware we could get\n\nfull self-driving with fifty to a hundred percent safer percentages than a human but with their new tesla hardware hardware 3 it would be more like 1,000% safer a thousand percent safer than a human driving yeah can you imagine that for a moment you get in a car and it's a thousand times safer than if you average rain right we're behind the wheel now Cathy said do regulators understand this an Elan said I think they understand hard data billions of miles all the accidents rates that we'll be able to show them with our cars and he said no matter how you slice the data it is unequivocal at this point that it's safer to have autopilot on so just today with the car you have now it's already safer to have autopilot on right that that was but the biggest problem\n\nthere of course is that you can't have autopilot on in all cases right now it's only on you know highway ways and you know roads with clear line markings right now Cathy said after the first Tesla fatality regulators really swung in Tesla's favor and she was surprised that more people haven't taken notice of that and Elon said it's like a phenomenon people get overconfident with the system and that's kind of the problem that they have right now is that everyone gets in the car and there's either I'm not going to trust it at all not gonna turn it on right or there's like oh it's on I don't have to pay attention make a phone call right so Tasha asked about Tesla's wider rollout of AP highways versus way mo is in the cities and Elon said well we started\n\nwith the highways because that's what matters the most it gives you the most benefit there's more miles travel in the highways and you travel faster there so they thought let's go that right faster because that'll save more lives and he said that you know you can stop using Waze because basically you could stay on the highway and use autopilot even though there's tons of traffic because it'll take care of the traffic you don't have to be stressed out about driving in the traffic or taking windy back roads you can just sort of sit there and be like yeah I mean Elon said he's stopped using Waze for just that reason because he doesn't want to get off into the little back streets it's so much easier to stay on the highway like you said he said that intersections\n\nare the next things are working on they're really difficult because there's so much ambiguity when you get to a traffic light I mean we all know this when you get to an intersection they're all different like me am I expected to go through this light right now cuz in some places like when I lived in California there's like this unwritten rule like one car goes through on a left you know and so it sounds like they're gonna try and get it to work in the US first and that after that places like Norway will be a priority because obviously Norway is like one of the biggest Tesla countries in the world this was a really interesting question that Tasha asked she said what do you think of letting other manufacturers build AP on Tesla platform yeah and in Eiland\n\nsaid it's not easy to work with other traditional manufacturers they have had them asked to work with them but then they usually put all these stupid requirements in there and they're like we don't want to waste our engineers time working on that and he said basically nobody's banging down our door at the moment right but some of them have used their patents right Annie lund said if there's an automaker out there that wanted to implement the same hardware system as Tesla and use our software we'd be very open to it but we're not gonna change it and I think one point to that is that he's not saying he'll do it for free right it's not like it'll be like oh of course just pay for the cameras no no no like you're gonna have to pay to license it to put it\n\nin the car right for sure but he's not saying no I'm going to keep it to myself and you'll never be able to get my secret formula like he's not doing that he's he's absolutely you know saying like hey yeah if you're gonna just plop it in plop it in and be well we'll see how much you know you're gonna pay well cuz it ultimately he cares about people's safety more than dollars he already admitted he's not a businessman more than he is an engineer mm-hm and he's I would argue he's a humanitarian first and I would get our engineers I think our by and large more humanitarian than some businesspeople just back away from that one slowly but I'm just saying like in general right now Kathy asked him about crypto currencies because you know she's very interested\n\nin Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies in the yuan said they made a joke basically that you know his account on Twitter got suspended because he jokingly offered you don't want to buy some Bitcoin and well and that's preempted because basically after every single one of his tweets you if you're a long time there yeah like the Bitcoin like scammers would would say like like they would make an Elon Musk account or Elon Musk account or II ion Musk account and and say like hey guys I'm giving away some Bitcoin get in on it just send me some Bitcoin and I'll send you back ten times that much it was just for the longest time it was going on for like a year and then finally I guess Twitter fixed it right though were they ran out of rayon accounts it was about\n\nrageous but basically yeah he made a joke of it and his account got banned and I mean Elon said that the Bitcoin structure and aetherium is really quite a brilliant idea but he's not sure it would be a good use of Tesla's resources and he did say it's quite energy intensive to create incrementally more Bitcoin um and it bypasses currency controls which means that it's better than paper for transferring money but he really didn't seem to want to commit himself he said that a friend of him gave him like a third of a Bitcoin but he's never dealt in it it was interesting at the end of the podcasts are all kind of winding down and in Cathy's saying like you know you you're doing you're making the world a better place and he laughed at that yeah I think it's\n\ntelling I think he watched was the show of Silicon Valley right and the kind of one of the jokes in Silicon Valley is that every company says that they're trying to make the world a better place by like oh we make this social app thing that does you know it determines if the thing is a hotdog and that's supposed to like you know make the world a better place he laughed at that but Cathy was like no you're really doing it yeah we totally agree with you and you're doing the real thing right and I have to agree with Kathy on that like out of all the companies in and out of all the billionaires doing all of the work for making the world a better place Elon is by and large far and away the biggest contributor to making the world a better place especially looking\n\nforward looking into the future as to see what the world could look like in the future what's exciting to me about this podcast is to be reaffirmed by another person that I take you know very seriously what she says Kathy wood gets it she's proven that she gets it her track record proves it we are fan boys on this channel of Elon Musk right everyone comments at all the time well you guys are fanboys so you can't possibly be unbiased I don't think that's true I think that we can look objectively at what is going on because if you look at what Ellen's done in the past he's achieved incredible incredible things in such a short amount of time if we look at his rocket company he's doing things that were completely thought to be impossible just a few years\n\nago and he's going on to do things which people still think are impossible today right so when he says that he'll have a full self-driving car where you can fall asleep in the back and it'll turn up at your destination at the end of next year I know that sounds crazy and I know it sounds like we must be nuts to be like well that probably is going to happen but here's coming from a guy who's been making pretty much everything he said happen happen now maybe it's not always on time but you know it could be that it's in two three years right but how many other companies are going to actually have that in two three years because way mo has said that it's going to be a long time before they actually have fully self autonomous cars that can handle all situations\n\nright and a lot of analysts look at that and then you look over to Tesla and they go you're different what's wrong why is that the case um like it's because they're approaching it in two completely different ways right I hope we we covered pretty darn well and I mean I choose to get up in the morning and be excited about what's coming in in technology and in the future a world where cars are safe where cars get you where you want to go quickly mm-hmm where there's no pollution hmmm that's what I choose to believe in because I'm seeing that it can happen that way it's just that if we don't believe it if we don't get behind it why do you think that's gonna help a lot of what Elon has said is that he wants the world to be exciting he wants there to be a\n\nreason for you to get up in the morning and I think that that is a really really good goal and he's been doing it because it's been exciting and not only do we get up in the morning every morning but we also get up in the morning and then we record this show which takes our entire weekend to script and to you know write and to find all the graphics and the details and then we finished recording it and then you know we have two editors and the two editors they go and they edit the entire show together and they have to fix all of our mistakes and then you know sometimes we forget to record our audio so it wasn't going into our microphones and going into a recorder where you know we had to recorded all again a lot of work goes into this show and I just want\n\nto take a moment to thank our patreon supporters because you know there's a lot of times where it's like maybe forget it yeah such as this show when we got about three-quarters of the way through it and then we noticed we look down and though the recorder wasn't recording any audio and it was like maybe we just don't have an in-depth this week but you know what it's it's the patreon stand make that possible it wouldn't have been worth it for us to sit here for another hour and talk to you about the same things that we would just talk to you about for an hour except you wouldn't been able to hear us but instead know you said you know what we have patrons we can't you know disappoint them that we have a level of we have a level of sessional ISM that we\n\nhave to attend to and so we did we recorded the entire thing so I just want to thank our patrons for that and I want to thank you for watching all the way to the end of this video we hope you enjoyed it we do this every single week so if you're new here we have Tesla time news every Monday we do in depth this show every Tuesday we have our model 3 tip of the week every Wednesday there are there's lots of other content that we come out with from time to time be sure to hit the subscribe button hit the like button if you like this video and we'll see you next week now you know","textByLang":{"en":"hey everybody I'm Zack and I'm Jesse and you're watching in-depth on now you know [Music] so Ilan was recently on Cathy woods arc invest podcast called fYI for your innovation episode 11 and we have the link down below because we really urge you to listen to it it's about 30 minutes of brilliant questions and answers Cathy wood she is the CEO founder and CEO of arc invest which is a multi-billion dollar tech investment company just for your information we do invest in our confessed Cathy wants companies to invest aggressively and she thanked Ilan for not going private because Cathy believes Tesla needs the public market to raise the funds to scale quickly to exponential growth in reach elands goals alright so we want to go through kind of a play-by-play\n\nof what was said on this because a lot of people said about this podcast well it was fine we just heard a bunch of stuff we've already heard before no need to listen to it and I feel differently I feel like we got a lot of nuanced answers which if you look at them closely give you a lot of insight into what's going on right because I mean a lot of times when people get Ilan on their show they're just asking like oh what are what are electric cars anyone's like okay electric car is an electric car and they're like oh wow oh that's very interesting and and then it's like yes it is they're like so how do you charge it and he's like okay you plug it into this thing called a supercharger and it works like that and it's like okay great and then the interview\n\nends and you're like oh I I knew everything that I knew beforehand because I follow Elon Musk and I understand what electric car is and you know people don't get into like Oh tell me about autopilot you know they don't get into any of the nitty-gritty details which we're going to get into Kathy was saying that at arc invests they've done their internal projections and they see that in 2018 there was 1.\n\n3 million evie sales what do they projected in 2023 in 2023 they project 26 million evey sales that would be about one third of the total global sales in 2023 would be EVs and they're basing this off of just battery prices just the the estimated drop in battery prices that will lead to a twenty six million car evie sale in 2023 yeah that's a 20 times increase in Elan said sounds about right might be off by a year too but not by much and so cathy has done a bear bull analysis for Tesla stock and so she prices the low end at $700 in the high end at $4,000 based on Tesla sales of 1.\n\n6 million units in 2023 and she thinks she's being conservative being conservative $700 is already double what Tesla is worth today and $4,000 per share is well over 10 times what the stock is worth today so if she's being conservative and she's giving these numbers I my ears are have perked up right and a lot of people say well that can't be you can't be right Kathie and that's because Cathy said people don't understand exponential curves they don't they are linear thinkers and Elon agreed he said they don't understand the area under the curve so for instance if we take their 2017 car sales in terms of production it looked pretty small because no matter what you what line you draw it was very low to zero right but in 2018 Tesla doubled its fleet so in\n\n2018 we made and delivered about as many cars as we had in our entire history zeti long and that is because they're double they're exponential so Elon said small changes in the calendar break point have enormous percentage differences the time difference is small but the percentage difference is enormous and this is really important when you're looking at s curves if you slide one way or you slide the other way if you just sort of slide it and you're and you can't see beyond you know into the into the future right that whole section all over there is unknowable and you're just seeing this little you're gonna be like okay so it's gonna go loop and then it's gonna go okay so in about 30 years Eevee's are gonna take over it's like no it's going well right\n\nit's an exponential growth right we talked about this on the show a lot they are talking about it on their podcast as well and I mean Elon said it took six months longer than we thought it would to reach five thousand cars a week it was perceived as a massive shortfall instead it was just a calendar shift or a short delay wasn't they couldn't do it is that he was off by the timing and you could you remember these stories you know Tesla is never gonna reach that five thousand cars a week number Bloomberg tracker has them down at two thousand cars a week oh no Tesla's going to end it's the end of the way and now they're making like seven thousand cars a week so let's put two points together that didn't get connected here Elon said my guest for 2021 is 1.\n\n5 million cars that's what Tesla will make he thinks and in 2023 just to guess we do three million now remember what Cathy just said her estimates were based on 1.\n\n6 million in 2023 so if Ellen is saying that he thinks they're probably gonna do more like double that and she's thinking his stock is gonna be at 700 to 4,000 it could be almost doubled with the stock moving double again which would be you know so 1,400 to 8,000 for 2 to 4 to 20 times more right in terms of stock price which is crazy not that it would necessarily scale 1 to 1 but why not right um and let's talk about I mean let's talk about this question she just asked him you know what what are your goals what do you think you're going to hit in 2021 in we never got this question asked on the earnings calls no they're only interested in q1 of 2019 right that's ridiculous I mean why are the analysts and why are they on these earning calls if they're\n\nnot going to ask these sorts of questions these sort of forward-looking questions they're only talking about quarter Oh what's gonna happen next quarter we know why next quarter was gonna have it less court last quarter what happened last quarter you know why because Wall Street's not interested in anything beyond the quarter because they do everything based on the quarter that's why you see these huge fluctuations in stock prices because they're not looking any further ahead and then when some news comes out they're like whoa what wow I didn't see that that was it on my radar your radar was like 14 feet dude you're looking you know if you're looking three months into the future you're not gonna see that far look at this long distance thing that me Long's\n\ngot going here he said we think of our cars long-term as carriers of autonomy software who's talking about that now right what analysts is talking about the cars anything more than selling a car he's thinking of it as a completely different thing he's gonna flick a switch someday probably two years from now turn on the the Tesla Network and completely changed his business model right because right now yes every single analyst you know there are some analysts that will talk about way mo and then they'll talk about Tesla but they're not gonna talk about autonomy software in Tesla they just don't bring it up they do they're like oh they're way behind according to our according to our analysis there are way behind because look at the way mo cars they're driving\n\naround cities right now Wow with no drivers in them that's crazy yeah we're gonna get to weigh him on a second salute Leland said I think we will be feature complete full self-driving this year meaning the car will be able to find you in a parking lot pick you up take you all the way to your destination without an intervention this year I would say that I'm certain of that that is not a question mark that is awesome now a lot of people said we've heard this from Elon before he said that model threes and s's Nexus would be able to drive from you know California to New York and that was two years ago hasn't done it so obviously he doesn't know what he's talking about mm-hmm Elon did answer that he said however people sometimes will extrapolate that to mean\n\nnow it works with 100% certainty requiring no observation perfectly this is not the case once it is feature complete then you're sort of the march of nines like how many nines of reliability do you want it to be and then when do regulators agree that it is reliable so you might be saying March of nines what is this is this some new show some new movie like March of nines out this March March 9th the march of the nines it's it's obviously not that but basically if you were to take an elevator right what is the safety factor of the elevator like what is the chance that you're gonna make to the floor that you asked to get to safely you know would you get on an elevator if it was 50% safe no huh no you wouldn't how about 75% safe no 90 no no 99 no 99.\n\n9 mmm no ninety-nine point nine nine maybe ninety-nine point nine nine nine you want so many nines at the end of that number because you want it to be absolutely 100% safe and unfortunately there are no 100% anything's in this world ninety-nine point nine nine nine nine nine is as close as you're basically going to get to it you know with some more nines tacked onto the end of it and so basically what Elan is saying here is that we you're gonna have all these features you're going to be able to get into the car and it'll be able to drive you someplace but will it be able to do that with 100% safety or ninety-nine point nine nine nine nine nine nine nine nine nine nine nine percent safety right and so Ellen said so there's feature complete full self-driving\n\nthis year with certainty this is something that we control and I managed autopilot and engineering directly every week in detail so I'm certain of this right so again he's talking about the features so then the question was asked when will regulators allow with human oversight and when without human oversight Ilana said my guess as to when we would think it's safe for somebody to essentially fall asleep and wake up at their destination probably towards the end of next year that's when I would think it's most likely safe for that I don't know when regulators would agree okay so the end of next year he thinks he's going to be at where he considers to be the end of the nines acceptable that's incredible that's insane that you don't end of 2020 right go to\n\nsleep in your car and it'll drive you to your location because I mean you can sleep in your car now true it's just you're gonna wake up where you left off right unless you park somewhere illegally in which case you're probably gonna end up at the impound lot right yeah that's insane the the end of next year now he's saying he doesn't know when regulators will agree yeah and so who's asked this do you think China would agree first and Nealon said China regulators are good so are the US federal regulators California can be overzealous and Europeans conservative so I think he was kind of hinting if you read between the lines that maybe China would be the first place to allow self-driving because probably they're gonna just look at the data right and the\n\ndata is the most important part here he's you know he's saying that like yes I can say you know oh there's all these features but the regulators are gonna be like I don't believe your features and he needs the data to back it up vielen said people think sometimes that I'm like a business person or finance person or something like that I'm an engineer I do engineering always have I think this is a really good point something that he should bring up more that he's not a business person first he is an engineer first he tackles just about every single problem you know business finance or otherwise like an engineer right in fact that's why he does so much engineering because he's an engineer a lot of people just sort of like to think of him as like a billionaire\n\nlike oh he's just some sort of billionaire like Oh some boy that billionaire guy he's so rich he is rich oh that's true but he is an engineer now a really good question from Tasha one I haven't heard before she said to what degree is consumer use of autopilot important Elon said the advantage that we have that is very difficult to overcome is that we have just a vast amount of data on interventions so effectively the customers are training the system on how to drive and there are millions of corner cases they're so obscure and weird you wouldn't believe it there's different road markings different rules in different countries different expectations you got rain snow sleet hail hurricanes floods fire smoke dust it's insane we've got cars and really all\n\nthose environments and so every time somebody intervenes takes over from AP it saves that information and uploads it to our system we don't know which car it was there's no individual attribution for the car we just know that the intervention took place and then we see what is required to fix that intervention and we're really starting to get quite good at not even requiring human labeling okay this is probably the most important point if we were to be talking about Tesla autopilot and and at full autonomy is this is what Tesla has that no other car manufacturer has okay no other car manufacturer no other basically no other self-driving car start up has way mo doesn't have this they have millions and millions of miles of real-world driving data with real\n\npeople driving real cars and real settings and they're able to basically amass billions and billions of points from billions and billions of billions of miles of data yeah they've got hundreds of thousands of employees I mean as drivers of the cars we are basically employees of Tesla getting them data right we're basically all beta testers right this is a beta software and we're accumulating all of this experience basically you're able to throw that into a neural network and treat it like experience so throughout your life when you've been driving if you're like oh you know you know you know the rules stop at a stop sign and stuff like that but it's like okay stop at the stop sign and then maybe you know try and lean my head forward down the road that\n\nis experience hopefully somebody taught you that but if you didn't you probably instinctively learned it yourself and I mean that's what's so incredible about this podcast cuz that question got to something that's never asked which is you know way mo and crews are always put as like the number one companies when it comes to autonomous driving but they don't have hundreds of thousands of employees or people who bought their cars that can do all this work for them they've just got a small subset of cars getting them a very limited data set which in this next question is pointed out is not even a great data set so Kathy asked way Moe and Cruz are deterministic what's going wrong there versus Tesla is probabilistic in Elon said essentially a heuristics approach\n\nto this will result in a local maximum of capabilities not a global maximum I think you really have to apply a sophisticated neural net to achieve a global maximum and it's why their reliance on lidar is unwise it gets you to a certain point but no further basically a series of if-then-else statements and lidar is not going to solve it forget it game over you have to solve vision perception essentially understanding with vision and then it's solved you don't need anything else no other senses at all I mean we drive cars with basically two cameras that aren't very good on a gimbal that doesn't move very fast and a professional driver will almost never have an accident right this is such an interesting point he's talking about two different very important\n\npoints here you don't need lidar which is huge because essentially you can drive a car now with your slightly evolved ape brain with with - you know pretty crappy cameras like they have pretty good resolution you know right in the center of your vision and then out towards the end you know there's like not a good color so I mean what's the point and then you're on this swiveling head which is like whoa and your reaction time is like well you know and you can get distracted and you during Lee and you detects there's there's all sorts of problems with people you know having a large number of people on the roads with this and and we do it we just we've accepted it we said okay yeah people are sometimes gonna crash into buildings and into other cars a million\n\npeople will die over here right except that we'll accept that here is where we can actually change that and then here's the second part this sort of idea that lidar is not going to cut it in this sort of idea that you know you can program in every edge case is not the way to do it it's as if you were trying to program a robot to respond to people talking to it and so you'd be like oh if somebody says hello it will say hello back you say you know hello and we go hello great excellent awesome all right what else good is what is your name and then it'll say my name is Robo Bob and say my name is Robo Bob but as soon as you're like ask it you know some other question or like what if what if you ask it to what is PI and it would just start at a 3.\n\n14 what you know they that's a trope right you don't program in that concept that idea it didn't learn through experience you programmed in every action that it could take and you do that with a self-driving car and suddenly you know there are four lanes inside of a lane on the highway which has happened to me before like there's just paint everywhere and suddenly what's the car going to do it's gonna go like I must follow our lanes take all lanes that you know and you'll go all over the road would be bad so you need to have a car that can be like okay it's one of these great right that's before I've seen this before driving along I know how to drive prong I could be so angry but you know or New Jersey so New Jersey ish but you know it's gonna you know\n\nit will have tons and tons of experience through the neural net right Natasha said talk about the uniqueness of Tesla's data Elon said that they basically have a hundred times more data than everyone else everyone else is closer to one percent of the data that Tesla have the reason Tesla is making rapid progress is because we have vastly more data and this is increasing exponentially as our fleet is increasing exponentially our data is increasing exponentially that's another huge point so I mean they're already ahead and they're just keep going right every car that they sell is more it's a function of more data that they're going to be getting it's awesome Ilan said although I brought it up before I don't think people really seem to be taking note of\n\nthe fact that the Tesla ap AI computer is about to roll into production anyone who has ordered full self-driving will get that for free I've said it's like an order of magnitude improvement over the Nvidia system that we have but it's really more like a 2,000 percent improvement and Cathy backed that up she said our analysts who spent nine years in Nvidia concluded the Tesla is three years ahead of any auto manufacturer now three years might sound like oh okay just three years but in the technological curve that we're in three years I would argue is game over yeah it's like they're from the future it's like they came out of there time-traveling machine we're like Hello we're from the future Elon talked about the fact that their cars with the new hardware\n\nwill be able to see frame rates of a hundred frames per second with full resolution on all cameras and they still haven't gotten it tapped out just put that in perspective for a second so the normal frame rate that humans see at is what around like you can detect frame rates at around you know 120 but you can't like see a very discernible difference beyond that so I mean you're basically you know you can watch if you're watching this right now at 30 frames per sec right this we're talking about three times more and then 10 more frames plus six more cameras six more cameras imagine if you had six I'm more imagine if you had seven more eyes for a moment just imagine that for six just let that sink in you can't you can't imagine yourself having seven more\n\neyes being able to see out of the side of your head and out of the back of your head you know people will say like oh grandma has eyes in the back of her head she doesn't I think but if she did that would be a lot of data input yeah I mean and that's the point here the point is that that's a lot of data input imagine having to deal with all of that data I mean you can you're only looking at what your two eyes you've two eyes it's really only you know you're only looking at one point at one time as soon as you cross your eyes you're like I can't do anything right because you know one can cross their eyes and be like excellent let's go your brain is only made for looking through two eyes that are looking in the same direction and they have to account for\n\nthat they have to you know account for parallax of like I need to look at this finger so I need to point in and look like an idiot like I'm crossing my eyes and as soon as I do that I realize though I'm crossing my eyes like there's so much that goes into that which is just hardwired into our brains but oh it's just so excited it is so tasha asked is hardware capacity fixed or do you need to upgrade every two years in elan pointed out something really interesting you said we could achieve full autonomy with the nvidia hardware we have now but we have to do all sorts of software tricks but with a 2,000 percent faster computer we don't have to do any kind of software tricks anymore with the current hardware with the nvidia current hardware we could get\n\nfull self-driving with fifty to a hundred percent safer percentages than a human but with their new tesla hardware hardware 3 it would be more like 1,000% safer a thousand percent safer than a human driving yeah can you imagine that for a moment you get in a car and it's a thousand times safer than if you average rain right we're behind the wheel now Cathy said do regulators understand this an Elan said I think they understand hard data billions of miles all the accidents rates that we'll be able to show them with our cars and he said no matter how you slice the data it is unequivocal at this point that it's safer to have autopilot on so just today with the car you have now it's already safer to have autopilot on right that that was but the biggest problem\n\nthere of course is that you can't have autopilot on in all cases right now it's only on you know highway ways and you know roads with clear line markings right now Cathy said after the first Tesla fatality regulators really swung in Tesla's favor and she was surprised that more people haven't taken notice of that and Elon said it's like a phenomenon people get overconfident with the system and that's kind of the problem that they have right now is that everyone gets in the car and there's either I'm not going to trust it at all not gonna turn it on right or there's like oh it's on I don't have to pay attention make a phone call right so Tasha asked about Tesla's wider rollout of AP highways versus way mo is in the cities and Elon said well we started\n\nwith the highways because that's what matters the most it gives you the most benefit there's more miles travel in the highways and you travel faster there so they thought let's go that right faster because that'll save more lives and he said that you know you can stop using Waze because basically you could stay on the highway and use autopilot even though there's tons of traffic because it'll take care of the traffic you don't have to be stressed out about driving in the traffic or taking windy back roads you can just sort of sit there and be like yeah I mean Elon said he's stopped using Waze for just that reason because he doesn't want to get off into the little back streets it's so much easier to stay on the highway like you said he said that intersections\n\nare the next things are working on they're really difficult because there's so much ambiguity when you get to a traffic light I mean we all know this when you get to an intersection they're all different like me am I expected to go through this light right now cuz in some places like when I lived in California there's like this unwritten rule like one car goes through on a left you know and so it sounds like they're gonna try and get it to work in the US first and that after that places like Norway will be a priority because obviously Norway is like one of the biggest Tesla countries in the world this was a really interesting question that Tasha asked she said what do you think of letting other manufacturers build AP on Tesla platform yeah and in Eiland\n\nsaid it's not easy to work with other traditional manufacturers they have had them asked to work with them but then they usually put all these stupid requirements in there and they're like we don't want to waste our engineers time working on that and he said basically nobody's banging down our door at the moment right but some of them have used their patents right Annie lund said if there's an automaker out there that wanted to implement the same hardware system as Tesla and use our software we'd be very open to it but we're not gonna change it and I think one point to that is that he's not saying he'll do it for free right it's not like it'll be like oh of course just pay for the cameras no no no like you're gonna have to pay to license it to put it\n\nin the car right for sure but he's not saying no I'm going to keep it to myself and you'll never be able to get my secret formula like he's not doing that he's he's absolutely you know saying like hey yeah if you're gonna just plop it in plop it in and be well we'll see how much you know you're gonna pay well cuz it ultimately he cares about people's safety more than dollars he already admitted he's not a businessman more than he is an engineer mm-hm and he's I would argue he's a humanitarian first and I would get our engineers I think our by and large more humanitarian than some businesspeople just back away from that one slowly but I'm just saying like in general right now Kathy asked him about crypto currencies because you know she's very interested\n\nin Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies in the yuan said they made a joke basically that you know his account on Twitter got suspended because he jokingly offered you don't want to buy some Bitcoin and well and that's preempted because basically after every single one of his tweets you if you're a long time there yeah like the Bitcoin like scammers would would say like like they would make an Elon Musk account or Elon Musk account or II ion Musk account and and say like hey guys I'm giving away some Bitcoin get in on it just send me some Bitcoin and I'll send you back ten times that much it was just for the longest time it was going on for like a year and then finally I guess Twitter fixed it right though were they ran out of rayon accounts it was about\n\nrageous but basically yeah he made a joke of it and his account got banned and I mean Elon said that the Bitcoin structure and aetherium is really quite a brilliant idea but he's not sure it would be a good use of Tesla's resources and he did say it's quite energy intensive to create incrementally more Bitcoin um and it bypasses currency controls which means that it's better than paper for transferring money but he really didn't seem to want to commit himself he said that a friend of him gave him like a third of a Bitcoin but he's never dealt in it it was interesting at the end of the podcasts are all kind of winding down and in Cathy's saying like you know you you're doing you're making the world a better place and he laughed at that yeah I think it's\n\ntelling I think he watched was the show of Silicon Valley right and the kind of one of the jokes in Silicon Valley is that every company says that they're trying to make the world a better place by like oh we make this social app thing that does you know it determines if the thing is a hotdog and that's supposed to like you know make the world a better place he laughed at that but Cathy was like no you're really doing it yeah we totally agree with you and you're doing the real thing right and I have to agree with Kathy on that like out of all the companies in and out of all the billionaires doing all of the work for making the world a better place Elon is by and large far and away the biggest contributor to making the world a better place especially looking\n\nforward looking into the future as to see what the world could look like in the future what's exciting to me about this podcast is to be reaffirmed by another person that I take you know very seriously what she says Kathy wood gets it she's proven that she gets it her track record proves it we are fan boys on this channel of Elon Musk right everyone comments at all the time well you guys are fanboys so you can't possibly be unbiased I don't think that's true I think that we can look objectively at what is going on because if you look at what Ellen's done in the past he's achieved incredible incredible things in such a short amount of time if we look at his rocket company he's doing things that were completely thought to be impossible just a few years\n\nago and he's going on to do things which people still think are impossible today right so when he says that he'll have a full self-driving car where you can fall asleep in the back and it'll turn up at your destination at the end of next year I know that sounds crazy and I know it sounds like we must be nuts to be like well that probably is going to happen but here's coming from a guy who's been making pretty much everything he said happen happen now maybe it's not always on time but you know it could be that it's in two three years right but how many other companies are going to actually have that in two three years because way mo has said that it's going to be a long time before they actually have fully self autonomous cars that can handle all situations\n\nright and a lot of analysts look at that and then you look over to Tesla and they go you're different what's wrong why is that the case um like it's because they're approaching it in two completely different ways right I hope we we covered pretty darn well and I mean I choose to get up in the morning and be excited about what's coming in in technology and in the future a world where cars are safe where cars get you where you want to go quickly mm-hmm where there's no pollution hmmm that's what I choose to believe in because I'm seeing that it can happen that way it's just that if we don't believe it if we don't get behind it why do you think that's gonna help a lot of what Elon has said is that he wants the world to be exciting he wants there to be a\n\nreason for you to get up in the morning and I think that that is a really really good goal and he's been doing it because it's been exciting and not only do we get up in the morning every morning but we also get up in the morning and then we record this show which takes our entire weekend to script and to you know write and to find all the graphics and the details and then we finished recording it and then you know we have two editors and the two editors they go and they edit the entire show together and they have to fix all of our mistakes and then you know sometimes we forget to record our audio so it wasn't going into our microphones and going into a recorder where you know we had to recorded all again a lot of work goes into this show and I just want\n\nto take a moment to thank our patreon supporters because you know there's a lot of times where it's like maybe forget it yeah such as this show when we got about three-quarters of the way through it and then we noticed we look down and though the recorder wasn't recording any audio and it was like maybe we just don't have an in-depth this week but you know what it's it's the patreon stand make that possible it wouldn't have been worth it for us to sit here for another hour and talk to you about the same things that we would just talk to you about for an hour except you wouldn't been able to hear us but instead know you said you know what we have patrons we can't you know disappoint them that we have a level of we have a level of sessional ISM that we\n\nhave to attend to and so we did we recorded the entire thing so I just want to thank our patrons for that and I want to thank you for watching all the way to the end of this video we hope you enjoyed it we do this every single week so if you're new here we have Tesla time news every Monday we do in depth this show every Tuesday we have our model 3 tip of the week every Wednesday there are there's lots of other content that we come out with from time to time be sure to hit the subscribe button hit the like button if you like this video and we'll see you next week now you know"},"languages":["en"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3tKmF3OYkXI"},{"id":"60-minutes-2018-12-09","type":"interview","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kM9kwFFhdf8","title":"60 Minutes","titles":{"en":"60 Minutes","de":"60 Minutes","fr":"60 Minutes"},"date":"2018-12-09","summary":"From his 60 Minutes interview with Lesley Stahl, Musk discusses his Twitter use, the SEC and Tesla's hardest year.","text":"you tweet a lot i i use my tweets to express myself some people use their hair i use twitter well but you use your tweeting to to kind of get back at critics rarely you kind of have little wars with the press twitter is a war zone if somebody's gonna jump in the war zone it's like okay you're in the arena let's go his war zone tweeting drew fire when out of the blue in august he tweeted quote am considering taking tesla private at 4 20 funding secured the sec disputed that claim and charged him with securities fraud the case was settled with musk agreeing that his communications relating to the company including twitter would be overseen by his board have you had any of your tweets censored since the settlement no none does someone have to read them before\n\nthey go out no so your tweets are not supervised the the only tweets that would have to be say um reviewed would be if fh wheat had a probability of uh causing a movement in the stock and that's it yeah i mean otherwise it's uh hello first amendment like premium speech is fundamental but but how do they know if it's going to move the market if they're not reading all of them before you send them so i guess we might make some mistakes who knows are you serious you know he's perfect look at you i i i i want to be clear i do not respect the sec i do not respect them but but you're abiding by the settlement aren't you because i respect the justice system","textByLang":{"en":"you tweet a lot i i use my tweets to express myself some people use their hair i use twitter well but you use your tweeting to to kind of get back at critics rarely you kind of have little wars with the press twitter is a war zone if somebody's gonna jump in the war zone it's like okay you're in the arena let's go his war zone tweeting drew fire when out of the blue in august he tweeted quote am considering taking tesla private at 4 20 funding secured the sec disputed that claim and charged him with securities fraud the case was settled with musk agreeing that his communications relating to the company including twitter would be overseen by his board have you had any of your tweets censored since the settlement no none does someone have to read them before\n\nthey go out no so your tweets are not supervised the the only tweets that would have to be say um reviewed would be if fh wheat had a probability of uh causing a movement in the stock and that's it yeah i mean otherwise it's uh hello first amendment like premium speech is fundamental but but how do they know if it's going to move the market if they're not reading all of them before you send them so i guess we might make some mistakes who knows are you serious you know he's perfect look at you i i i i want to be clear i do not respect the sec i do not respect them but but you're abiding by the settlement aren't you because i respect the justice system"},"languages":["en"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kM9kwFFhdf8"},{"id":"recode-decode-with-kara-swisher-2018-11-02","type":"interview","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Kj_3aaeRkc","title":"Recode Decode with Kara Swisher","titles":{"en":"Recode Decode with Kara Swisher","de":"Recode Decode with Kara Swisher","fr":"Recode Decode with Kara Swisher"},"date":"2018-11-02","summary":"Musk talks with Kara Swisher about Tesla's turbulent 2018, Mars timelines, the Boring Company and his Twitter battles.","text":"I've known Ilan for decades actually so I think we have a much more of a rapport I've done a lot of interviews with him so I think that's why he's more comfortable but I wanted to talk about these things and to see if he's moved beyond what was happening to him I don't happen to smoke pot so I didn't have any so I just wanted to have a serious discussion about his products what had happened to him this year and where he's going and I thought he did a good job I thought it was a great interview and he was funny parts I think he was obstreperous it parts and it parts he was really informative about where the the roadmap for Tesla and and SpaceX and the boring company and Elon Musk is going and finally he showed some regret I mean it was only up until recently\n\nwhere he he tweeted that he would do it all over again and people were thinking Oh hasn't he learned his lesson maybe something has finally sunk in yeah I think I was gonna get me and I email quite a bit night we talked about those things but I think I think I wanted him to think about it be reflective about what happened and he obviously calls you know shareholder things that weren't great for shareholders and what's what I think is interesting about Elon Musk is look he's not making a photo app he's he's not making like some software this is hard stuff that he's doing he's doing cars he's doing rockets he's doing all kinds of vehicles he's doing a big giant tunnel digger so this is really substantive stuff that's really difficult to do and I want to\n\nshow that part of him which is very inventive and very forward future looking and at the same time talk about his responsibility as a leader and as a CEO and so I think he roasts the occasion it was glad he apologized and showed regrets I don't know if it'll stick I hope it does he was obviously exhausted over the last year working on the the model 3 which got great reviews and also they've done rather well from a financial point it was a more contrite in the interview and and before we leave I want you to tell us where we can find the podcast but but he was more contrite with respect to journalists but he still does seem to have a chip on his shoulder yeah on that but one of the fascinating areas I thought is where you questioned him about Saudi Arabia\n\nbecause the Saudis were supposedly this is going to be the suppliers of money into his go private effort and you asked him some very pointed questions about how he feels about the leadership there the nation there and the and the money that flows from there into Silicon Valley talk to me well he you know I'm having some trouble with a lot of the Silicon Valley people taking money from people who government and murdered a journalist and and and did so rather blatantly and so I you know this money that's coming into Silicon Valley it's billions and billions of dollars from Saudi Arabia and so you know they had bought into Tesla publicly and they may or may not still own it he didn't know actually but he was looking at money but for them like a lot of people\n\nthat's not unusual and I wanted him to reflect on it I want all of Silicon Valley leadership to reflect on it and think really hard about where their investment money is coming from and so he did and he was very fair and what I liked about Elon is in a lot of the answers including with the journalists he apologized but not completely in the same thing here he said he wouldn't take their money but at the same time the Saudi people shouldn't be attacked necessarily for what their leaders did and so I like that it was honest I think he was honest about what he thought and he didn't give a pat answer just to please and so I kind of I appreciate that in a person if they're being honest and so he was you can see him sort of working it through and I like I like\n\nthat part of the I agree I agree with it yeah getting back to how hard it's been for Tesla and ramping up the model three Kerry you had asked him that you know how do you look at when you when you're going with the model three and others and he said that he thinks Tesla's doing pretty well right now it's not staring death in the face which seems to imply that at one point it had been on the brink is that the impression that you've got what he said he said he's he's he's almost religious about it he's like Tesla cannot die it the future of the world a climate change and thinks he's very passionate about that he thinks that he has moved forward and I agree with him that the development of electric cars by a factor of twenty years and and you know all the\n\nothers are in it because of him and so that's a really interesting you know he's not being an egomaniac saying that and so I think a lot of the things he's doing is including space exploration including tunnels with traffic and things like that he really believes he's he's he's actually changing the world and even though Silicon Valley people say that I kind of think he is in that he's in the zone where you could change the world but he also it was funny throughout this interview the whole thing our whole exchange about scooters you know I love them I think I look fantastic he said I looked undignified he didn't want to make a scooter he wanted to make a pickup truck that's really cool that nobody wants to buy made of titanium it was it was a lot of fun\n\nthere was a lot of fun parts in it you","textByLang":{"en":"I've known Ilan for decades actually so I think we have a much more of a rapport I've done a lot of interviews with him so I think that's why he's more comfortable but I wanted to talk about these things and to see if he's moved beyond what was happening to him I don't happen to smoke pot so I didn't have any so I just wanted to have a serious discussion about his products what had happened to him this year and where he's going and I thought he did a good job I thought it was a great interview and he was funny parts I think he was obstreperous it parts and it parts he was really informative about where the the roadmap for Tesla and and SpaceX and the boring company and Elon Musk is going and finally he showed some regret I mean it was only up until recently\n\nwhere he he tweeted that he would do it all over again and people were thinking Oh hasn't he learned his lesson maybe something has finally sunk in yeah I think I was gonna get me and I email quite a bit night we talked about those things but I think I think I wanted him to think about it be reflective about what happened and he obviously calls you know shareholder things that weren't great for shareholders and what's what I think is interesting about Elon Musk is look he's not making a photo app he's he's not making like some software this is hard stuff that he's doing he's doing cars he's doing rockets he's doing all kinds of vehicles he's doing a big giant tunnel digger so this is really substantive stuff that's really difficult to do and I want to\n\nshow that part of him which is very inventive and very forward future looking and at the same time talk about his responsibility as a leader and as a CEO and so I think he roasts the occasion it was glad he apologized and showed regrets I don't know if it'll stick I hope it does he was obviously exhausted over the last year working on the the model 3 which got great reviews and also they've done rather well from a financial point it was a more contrite in the interview and and before we leave I want you to tell us where we can find the podcast but but he was more contrite with respect to journalists but he still does seem to have a chip on his shoulder yeah on that but one of the fascinating areas I thought is where you questioned him about Saudi Arabia\n\nbecause the Saudis were supposedly this is going to be the suppliers of money into his go private effort and you asked him some very pointed questions about how he feels about the leadership there the nation there and the and the money that flows from there into Silicon Valley talk to me well he you know I'm having some trouble with a lot of the Silicon Valley people taking money from people who government and murdered a journalist and and and did so rather blatantly and so I you know this money that's coming into Silicon Valley it's billions and billions of dollars from Saudi Arabia and so you know they had bought into Tesla publicly and they may or may not still own it he didn't know actually but he was looking at money but for them like a lot of people\n\nthat's not unusual and I wanted him to reflect on it I want all of Silicon Valley leadership to reflect on it and think really hard about where their investment money is coming from and so he did and he was very fair and what I liked about Elon is in a lot of the answers including with the journalists he apologized but not completely in the same thing here he said he wouldn't take their money but at the same time the Saudi people shouldn't be attacked necessarily for what their leaders did and so I like that it was honest I think he was honest about what he thought and he didn't give a pat answer just to please and so I kind of I appreciate that in a person if they're being honest and so he was you can see him sort of working it through and I like I like\n\nthat part of the I agree I agree with it yeah getting back to how hard it's been for Tesla and ramping up the model three Kerry you had asked him that you know how do you look at when you when you're going with the model three and others and he said that he thinks Tesla's doing pretty well right now it's not staring death in the face which seems to imply that at one point it had been on the brink is that the impression that you've got what he said he said he's he's he's almost religious about it he's like Tesla cannot die it the future of the world a climate change and thinks he's very passionate about that he thinks that he has moved forward and I agree with him that the development of electric cars by a factor of twenty years and and you know all the\n\nothers are in it because of him and so that's a really interesting you know he's not being an egomaniac saying that and so I think a lot of the things he's doing is including space exploration including tunnels with traffic and things like that he really believes he's he's he's actually changing the world and even though Silicon Valley people say that I kind of think he is in that he's in the zone where you could change the world but he also it was funny throughout this interview the whole thing our whole exchange about scooters you know I love them I think I look fantastic he said I looked undignified he didn't want to make a scooter he wanted to make a pickup truck that's really cool that nobody wants to buy made of titanium it was it was a lot of fun\n\nthere was a lot of fun parts in it you"},"languages":["en"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Kj_3aaeRkc"},{"id":"talking-tech-with-marques-brownlee-2018-08-15","type":"interview","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MevKTPN4ozw","title":"Talking Tech with Marques Brownlee","titles":{"en":"Talking Tech with Marques Brownlee","de":"Talking Tech with Marques Brownlee","fr":"Talking Tech with Marques Brownlee"},"date":"2018-08-15","summary":"MKBHD sits down with Musk at the Fremont factory to talk Tesla tech, future products and a cheaper car.","text":"[Music] what's up guys i'm qbhd here and just got back from sunny california where we spent some time with possibly the busiest man alive elon musk but he was super generous with his time and we did this sort of a sit-down chat at the tesla factory and then also did a sort of a factory tour which will be a separate video coming soon but a ton of things we could have talked about since we were at tesla at that time basically our topics ranged from talking about tesla products to our love for tesla to tech and the future all wrapped into one so this is that chat thanks for watching enjoy all right first of all thanks for uh taking the time sitting down on your very busy schedule i'm sure good to see you yeah good to see you uh this is a this is a really\n\ninteresting place to be we're kind of in like a bird's eye view of seeing a couple a couple different things happening behind us in the factory these occasionally move which is cool those are empty door carriers so like they were carried doors to cars to get assembled and then they're on their way back to pick up some more doors nice so uh i think most people know you as the boss the face of tesla uh the decision maker for those who just for some context what is your how do you spend time at tesla what do you do uh yeah that's a good question i think probably a lot of people don't realize i'm like basically in the factory in design or engineering meetings or production um so that's like 89 of the time i think sometimes people think i spend a lot of time\n\non twitter sure i don't know what gave why why they would think that that's crazy um but uh actually it's like that's like almost nothing um most of my time spent um at least the last several months especially going around the factory um and then working on say uh the paint shop the body shop where we weld up the body um the uh final assembly where we put all the parts together um and and then if i'm not here i'm either i'm at the gigafactory in nevada okay so p100d owner undefeated in stoplight races for a while now uh rich over here in audio okay model three pre uh pre-order okay waiting for his and brandon behind the camera also waiting for model three okay what what version are you waiting for long range long range and and what color okay that is\n\na that is a good combo i got blue uh rear wheel drive nice nice okay cool so my question is how aside from making great products how do you get people excited about tesla there's a lot of people i know and that i talk to who are just intrigued and interested and excited about tesla as a company the thing i really focus on at tesla is like we really put all of our money into an attention to trying to make the product as compelling as possible so um because i think that really the way to um sell any product is through word of mouth so if one somebody gets the car they really like it they and and actually the key is like to have a product that people love um and and generally people that um if they're party or touring friends or whatever um you'll talk about\n\nthe things that you love but you know if you just like something it's okay you're not gonna care that much but if you get the reactions from the highs and the lows yeah you gotta make sure you really you're gonna you're gonna talk you know and and then that'll generate work turns word of mouth and that's basically how how our sales have have grown like we don't we're not spending money on advertising or endorsements or uh and um so anyone like buys our car they just bought it because they they like the car and you know it's like it's genuine um no discounts i actually even pay full retail price for my own cars okay um yeah and um yeah and we're really focused on trying to make the cars more affordable which is real really tough like in order to make the\n\ncars affordable you really um you need high volume see the economy's a scale and because the other car companies make a lot more cars than we do they got way better economies of scale so as we're gradually able to build up um and do do more cars higher volume then we can volume force progressively like less money and then make um make the cars available to white wide range people but it's super honestly like the car industry is like a super this is like super competitive it's like one of the it's like insanely competitive so far i think i read a really interesting or i think i heard it actually from an earnings call but something interesting you said is one of the top five most frequent trade-ins for model 3 is a prius right yeah uh which starts at you\n\nknow 20 something thousand dollars and they obviously have massive economies of scale do you think there's room i mean tesla has model three model s and road stirring up is there room for possibly an even less expensive quality electric car experience um yeah absolutely um i think i think in order for us to get to like let's say ultimately getting like a 25 000 car um that that's uh that's something we could we could do but it's probably if we really work really hard i think maybe we could do that in three years does it come with time and scale or just yeah it's a bit of both yeah cause like the the key to making things affordable is is like designing it is it's like design and technology improvements as well as scale so if you think of like say um phones\n\num like the very earliest like the earliest cell phones like i'm probably like dating myself here but uh like the original wall street where the guy's like walking down the beach and he's got like the it's like on a giant phone he's carrying like a briefcase kind of thing they're massive like massive massive phone yeah and like all i could do is phone yep yep and like had like 30 minutes of battery life and that kind of thing um now at that time uh in the absence of technology improvements like no amount of money no amount of scale could have made that phone affordable that'd be a lot of engineering iterations a lot of design iterations um and we're probably i don't know on the 30th version of a cell phone or and and with each successive design iteration\n\nuh you can add more capability you can design you can integrate more things you figure out better ways to produce it so it actually gets better and cheaper but it's like it's like a natural progression of any new technology that it takes multiple versions and a large volume in order to make it affordable gotcha is there anything in the near future of tesla that you're really excited about yeah there's a lot of things actually um we're really like we've got definitely way more product ideas than we have resources to execute we're just talking about this uh with with my team uh just like hey guys what you know what should we focus on and now in the past we've only done one car at a time um and but as you know as we go into the future we've got to like basically\n\nfigure out how to walk and chew gum it's like it's like okay how do we do two products at the same time but still have enough resources that both products are great right um and so we're gonna you know we're gonna try to do you know two products um one of them for sure is is like the model y you know sort of compact suv um comparable price point to the to the model three uh then there's uh the semi the pickup truck and the and the next generator yeah like addiction roast is kind of like dessert we got to talk about that yeah yeah it's super exciting but it's like and i think there's definitely some value to doing it to show that an electric car can be faster than a gasoline car in every way yes so i think there's like you know because it's still this\n\nsort of like halo effect of of of the gasoline sports cars because like in terms of top speed they're still have the best top speed yeah so that halo effect that i was gonna basically every metric possible seems like really ambitious like there's a lot of things that people people like me kind of accept that like i love my electric car but i i know it's not going to put down lap times 30 laps in just because there's yeah so rejection exactly we got to work on that yeah in fact i was actually um i was just talking to the team i was like uh you know i think we got some headroom there yeah um oh and are we gonna talk about track mode yeah sure yeah because i had a very short experience with trackman with model 3 yeah so i love so obviously roadster is going\n\nto be yeah that that halo car and if we're confident it's going to be an amazing car i hope it's that car to beat essentially yeah but then bringing track mode down to model 3 brings that fun experience to a lot of more people that involved exactly yeah so so it's kind of like um you know like uh like we're like basically a bunch of nerds here so um um obviously i don't give away yeah but like like the you know so we're tracking we want to uh open up a lot of settings it's like you can adjust settings and it's kind of like an expert user mode and and you can sort of um adjust traction control uh adjust like battery temperature um uh um you know breakthrough like you can basically configure a bunch of things um and we'll tell you like hey you know if you\n\ndo this it's a bit risky like you're gonna wear out your brakes a little sooner it's like you might blow a circuit you know like like but like it'll be clear like you know uh but let's see this is the risk that you're taking yeah it's kind of like if you have a graphics card on your computer you can like go in there and you can change the settings and you can like overclock things yeah and like okay but you know so that's going to be all that will be in track mode and you'll be able to see that and mess with it yeah that's cool yeah be cool and you can like try different things and wait um yeah it'd be fun a little more on roadster because i had a i made a video about it just after the event i was sad i couldn't be there but i'm a day one deposit because\n\ni was that excited okay uh but i was wondering after you made that announcement one you said i think i quote plenty of space what does that mean oh you mean like it's like like it won't be cramped inside like you're like basically um if you're if you're a tall dude you'll be able to sit in there i'll tell you it's six more and a half okay so i feel like if you're comfortable in there a lot of people will be yeah and and then like my brother's six four so is he comfortable in it yeah yeah yeah okay yeah all right and france is like six three i don't know he's pretty tall and then my other question was uh the side mirrors this has been a theme in in the past with prototypes and cars that we've seen before they come out they don't have mirrors regulatory\n\nthey have to have mirrors is there an advantage to not having mirrors or is there is it just aerodynamic or is there more to it now it's it's actually surprisingly um how the mirrors particularly at high speeds can have um quite a big effect on the drag of a car they're like little air brakes basically like typical car uh side mirrors reduce a highway range by around five percent wow yeah that's it's pretty intense you see in a wind tunnel like you can see you know when you see like the sort of smoke trails in the wind tunnel you can see just how much yeah they're like they're just like air brakes to be aerodynamic you actually want kind of like a teardrop uh shape so it's like it's it doesn't end in like a bluff right because it creates a low pressure\n\nzone behind the the mirror and so you'd have like have a kind of a almost like a cone behind the mirror or or blend it with the body or something like that okay so it's like they're actually surprisingly draggy now a manufacturer is required to have side view mirrors but i i believe that a uh the owner is not like you're i think you're like okay you can modify things like at least in the us you can if you uh the owner can modify things the rule is about manufacturing not driving very much about manufacturers are very tightly constrained okay um it's actually one thing that makes it very hard to to make a car that looks good and has a good performance and aerodynamics because it's like you got you got all these constraints and there's so many rules you\n\nneed to follow um so it's very challenging to make a car uh look good my other question about roadster um the specs are insane they're ludicrous some might say yeah uh so the flat either the only thing beyond later course is plaid so so 0 to 60 in 1.\n\n9 seconds but more importantly i was interested in is the 200 kilowatt hour battery and the 600 plus mile range is are these numbers assuming an improvement in available technology by 2020 or are they something you can achieve now but don't have the manufacturing capacity to or is it somewhere in between yeah so um i think it like basically uh it's like two uh model s uh 3100 packs yeah but but you're really just doubling the the internals that the set the cells inside so there's like a lot of stuff that's related to the pack and the packaging and safety and all that sort of stuff that um is uh not related to the cell so you can double the the number of modules inside and at with but it would still be like maybe an 80 increase in the volume of the the\n\npacks like the floor would get four four or five inches higher if if it was current technology so but um but we would we we think we'll probably get um another maybe 20 10 at least 10 maybe 20 improvement because we'll use like think about like an expensive car is we can use the the state-of-the-art the most advanced equipment like it's kind of like with uh with computers like they've come out with a new like graphics card or or cpu it's like initially it's expensive um and so but then over time that that price drops down and people like wonder is it like do you have like automation do you have people it's like we have both um you know it's like a cyborg but like integrated sidewalk thing yeah actually like one of the biggest constraints for us is is\n\nlike being able to hire enough people that's what i was gonna ask so like there's a lot of working man parking there's a lot of parking here yeah if you have a lot of robots and a lot of people in the factory what do people do that robots can't do and obviously there's a lot that robots can do as far as lifting and moving things but as far as precision maybe there's things they can do that humans can't do do you have a ratio off the top of your head maybe as far as people versus machines um you know it varies massively depending upon what part of the production process um right so some parts of it are like 80 to 90 automated and then some parts of it are like uh only 10 to 20 or what are those what are those parts that humans do better than humans are\n\nreally good at adaptation um and rapid evolution and like doing like little like finicky things like like that um like for general assembly like one of the mistakes we made uh that was like pretty pretty big mistake was trying to automate uh general assembly which is where you put the parts together you know like some of the things it's like like trying to connect uh a hose that's like sort of dangling around i see and and you're like the robot's like gonna find the hose grab it like then connect it to another hose at that point it's like really hard yeah like a person can just go all right they're done gotcha yeah that makes a lot of sense yeah and it's like when you see it it's like wow it's super super obvious and then we try to have robots do this\n\nand it's like robots like grabbing the wrong thing and like trying to stick it over here and it's like oh the the the hose was here when the rover threw it was here and so now it like tries to grab air and then like smashes into the car it's like you don't want that we yeah it was a comedy virus uh tragedy of ours like personally you could say like this thing needs to connect to that thing and and then however they they arrive a person can figure it out the robot would be like uh and then as far as uh tesla's overall master plan is what it was originally called so you start with the low volume high priced roadster then you move on model s higher volume lower price to model three as far as i know that's where the master plan ended yeah that was like part\n\none yeah i mean we went model x in there which uh uh you know it was that wasn't that was like that was definitely an exercise in hubris uh the now the x is an amazing car and it's like um but it's like we kind of got carried away with the art i hear it's very difficult to make yeah we could carry it away without the carrier with arden technology it's like obviously you want great art you want great technology but we did get a little distracted from our mission which is to like advance the cores of electric vehicles um and and it probably delayed us a little bit with the model 3 as well so i guess my last question in here would be just as far as the tesla master plan part one coming to an end is it now just a matter of steering the ship towards new opportunities\n\nyou see there's not a lot of companies making a 35 000 electric car and a quarter million dollar supercar and a semi truck and doing them all really well right do you guys see yourself just keeping a tight ship and picking your your choices here and there yeah that's why we um what i'm saying really like it's it's a it's a tough strategic call between focus and like being wanting to do a bunch of different models like we we i think we want to try doing two at the same time um like we've only ever done one at the same time before do two and then and then um if we get got that if you're good with that then we could just try doing three at a time like a lot of the other manufacturers they'll do like you know 12 at a time yeah so if they're way bigger than\n\nus weird awesome yeah i wish you the best of luck with it and thanks for taking the time to sit down yeah thanks thank you all right cool appreciate it","textByLang":{"en":"[Music] what's up guys i'm qbhd here and just got back from sunny california where we spent some time with possibly the busiest man alive elon musk but he was super generous with his time and we did this sort of a sit-down chat at the tesla factory and then also did a sort of a factory tour which will be a separate video coming soon but a ton of things we could have talked about since we were at tesla at that time basically our topics ranged from talking about tesla products to our love for tesla to tech and the future all wrapped into one so this is that chat thanks for watching enjoy all right first of all thanks for uh taking the time sitting down on your very busy schedule i'm sure good to see you yeah good to see you uh this is a this is a really\n\ninteresting place to be we're kind of in like a bird's eye view of seeing a couple a couple different things happening behind us in the factory these occasionally move which is cool those are empty door carriers so like they were carried doors to cars to get assembled and then they're on their way back to pick up some more doors nice so uh i think most people know you as the boss the face of tesla uh the decision maker for those who just for some context what is your how do you spend time at tesla what do you do uh yeah that's a good question i think probably a lot of people don't realize i'm like basically in the factory in design or engineering meetings or production um so that's like 89 of the time i think sometimes people think i spend a lot of time\n\non twitter sure i don't know what gave why why they would think that that's crazy um but uh actually it's like that's like almost nothing um most of my time spent um at least the last several months especially going around the factory um and then working on say uh the paint shop the body shop where we weld up the body um the uh final assembly where we put all the parts together um and and then if i'm not here i'm either i'm at the gigafactory in nevada okay so p100d owner undefeated in stoplight races for a while now uh rich over here in audio okay model three pre uh pre-order okay waiting for his and brandon behind the camera also waiting for model three okay what what version are you waiting for long range long range and and what color okay that is\n\na that is a good combo i got blue uh rear wheel drive nice nice okay cool so my question is how aside from making great products how do you get people excited about tesla there's a lot of people i know and that i talk to who are just intrigued and interested and excited about tesla as a company the thing i really focus on at tesla is like we really put all of our money into an attention to trying to make the product as compelling as possible so um because i think that really the way to um sell any product is through word of mouth so if one somebody gets the car they really like it they and and actually the key is like to have a product that people love um and and generally people that um if they're party or touring friends or whatever um you'll talk about\n\nthe things that you love but you know if you just like something it's okay you're not gonna care that much but if you get the reactions from the highs and the lows yeah you gotta make sure you really you're gonna you're gonna talk you know and and then that'll generate work turns word of mouth and that's basically how how our sales have have grown like we don't we're not spending money on advertising or endorsements or uh and um so anyone like buys our car they just bought it because they they like the car and you know it's like it's genuine um no discounts i actually even pay full retail price for my own cars okay um yeah and um yeah and we're really focused on trying to make the cars more affordable which is real really tough like in order to make the\n\ncars affordable you really um you need high volume see the economy's a scale and because the other car companies make a lot more cars than we do they got way better economies of scale so as we're gradually able to build up um and do do more cars higher volume then we can volume force progressively like less money and then make um make the cars available to white wide range people but it's super honestly like the car industry is like a super this is like super competitive it's like one of the it's like insanely competitive so far i think i read a really interesting or i think i heard it actually from an earnings call but something interesting you said is one of the top five most frequent trade-ins for model 3 is a prius right yeah uh which starts at you\n\nknow 20 something thousand dollars and they obviously have massive economies of scale do you think there's room i mean tesla has model three model s and road stirring up is there room for possibly an even less expensive quality electric car experience um yeah absolutely um i think i think in order for us to get to like let's say ultimately getting like a 25 000 car um that that's uh that's something we could we could do but it's probably if we really work really hard i think maybe we could do that in three years does it come with time and scale or just yeah it's a bit of both yeah cause like the the key to making things affordable is is like designing it is it's like design and technology improvements as well as scale so if you think of like say um phones\n\num like the very earliest like the earliest cell phones like i'm probably like dating myself here but uh like the original wall street where the guy's like walking down the beach and he's got like the it's like on a giant phone he's carrying like a briefcase kind of thing they're massive like massive massive phone yeah and like all i could do is phone yep yep and like had like 30 minutes of battery life and that kind of thing um now at that time uh in the absence of technology improvements like no amount of money no amount of scale could have made that phone affordable that'd be a lot of engineering iterations a lot of design iterations um and we're probably i don't know on the 30th version of a cell phone or and and with each successive design iteration\n\nuh you can add more capability you can design you can integrate more things you figure out better ways to produce it so it actually gets better and cheaper but it's like it's like a natural progression of any new technology that it takes multiple versions and a large volume in order to make it affordable gotcha is there anything in the near future of tesla that you're really excited about yeah there's a lot of things actually um we're really like we've got definitely way more product ideas than we have resources to execute we're just talking about this uh with with my team uh just like hey guys what you know what should we focus on and now in the past we've only done one car at a time um and but as you know as we go into the future we've got to like basically\n\nfigure out how to walk and chew gum it's like it's like okay how do we do two products at the same time but still have enough resources that both products are great right um and so we're gonna you know we're gonna try to do you know two products um one of them for sure is is like the model y you know sort of compact suv um comparable price point to the to the model three uh then there's uh the semi the pickup truck and the and the next generator yeah like addiction roast is kind of like dessert we got to talk about that yeah yeah it's super exciting but it's like and i think there's definitely some value to doing it to show that an electric car can be faster than a gasoline car in every way yes so i think there's like you know because it's still this\n\nsort of like halo effect of of of the gasoline sports cars because like in terms of top speed they're still have the best top speed yeah so that halo effect that i was gonna basically every metric possible seems like really ambitious like there's a lot of things that people people like me kind of accept that like i love my electric car but i i know it's not going to put down lap times 30 laps in just because there's yeah so rejection exactly we got to work on that yeah in fact i was actually um i was just talking to the team i was like uh you know i think we got some headroom there yeah um oh and are we gonna talk about track mode yeah sure yeah because i had a very short experience with trackman with model 3 yeah so i love so obviously roadster is going\n\nto be yeah that that halo car and if we're confident it's going to be an amazing car i hope it's that car to beat essentially yeah but then bringing track mode down to model 3 brings that fun experience to a lot of more people that involved exactly yeah so so it's kind of like um you know like uh like we're like basically a bunch of nerds here so um um obviously i don't give away yeah but like like the you know so we're tracking we want to uh open up a lot of settings it's like you can adjust settings and it's kind of like an expert user mode and and you can sort of um adjust traction control uh adjust like battery temperature um uh um you know breakthrough like you can basically configure a bunch of things um and we'll tell you like hey you know if you\n\ndo this it's a bit risky like you're gonna wear out your brakes a little sooner it's like you might blow a circuit you know like like but like it'll be clear like you know uh but let's see this is the risk that you're taking yeah it's kind of like if you have a graphics card on your computer you can like go in there and you can change the settings and you can like overclock things yeah and like okay but you know so that's going to be all that will be in track mode and you'll be able to see that and mess with it yeah that's cool yeah be cool and you can like try different things and wait um yeah it'd be fun a little more on roadster because i had a i made a video about it just after the event i was sad i couldn't be there but i'm a day one deposit because\n\ni was that excited okay uh but i was wondering after you made that announcement one you said i think i quote plenty of space what does that mean oh you mean like it's like like it won't be cramped inside like you're like basically um if you're if you're a tall dude you'll be able to sit in there i'll tell you it's six more and a half okay so i feel like if you're comfortable in there a lot of people will be yeah and and then like my brother's six four so is he comfortable in it yeah yeah yeah okay yeah all right and france is like six three i don't know he's pretty tall and then my other question was uh the side mirrors this has been a theme in in the past with prototypes and cars that we've seen before they come out they don't have mirrors regulatory\n\nthey have to have mirrors is there an advantage to not having mirrors or is there is it just aerodynamic or is there more to it now it's it's actually surprisingly um how the mirrors particularly at high speeds can have um quite a big effect on the drag of a car they're like little air brakes basically like typical car uh side mirrors reduce a highway range by around five percent wow yeah that's it's pretty intense you see in a wind tunnel like you can see you know when you see like the sort of smoke trails in the wind tunnel you can see just how much yeah they're like they're just like air brakes to be aerodynamic you actually want kind of like a teardrop uh shape so it's like it's it doesn't end in like a bluff right because it creates a low pressure\n\nzone behind the the mirror and so you'd have like have a kind of a almost like a cone behind the mirror or or blend it with the body or something like that okay so it's like they're actually surprisingly draggy now a manufacturer is required to have side view mirrors but i i believe that a uh the owner is not like you're i think you're like okay you can modify things like at least in the us you can if you uh the owner can modify things the rule is about manufacturing not driving very much about manufacturers are very tightly constrained okay um it's actually one thing that makes it very hard to to make a car that looks good and has a good performance and aerodynamics because it's like you got you got all these constraints and there's so many rules you\n\nneed to follow um so it's very challenging to make a car uh look good my other question about roadster um the specs are insane they're ludicrous some might say yeah uh so the flat either the only thing beyond later course is plaid so so 0 to 60 in 1.\n\n9 seconds but more importantly i was interested in is the 200 kilowatt hour battery and the 600 plus mile range is are these numbers assuming an improvement in available technology by 2020 or are they something you can achieve now but don't have the manufacturing capacity to or is it somewhere in between yeah so um i think it like basically uh it's like two uh model s uh 3100 packs yeah but but you're really just doubling the the internals that the set the cells inside so there's like a lot of stuff that's related to the pack and the packaging and safety and all that sort of stuff that um is uh not related to the cell so you can double the the number of modules inside and at with but it would still be like maybe an 80 increase in the volume of the the\n\npacks like the floor would get four four or five inches higher if if it was current technology so but um but we would we we think we'll probably get um another maybe 20 10 at least 10 maybe 20 improvement because we'll use like think about like an expensive car is we can use the the state-of-the-art the most advanced equipment like it's kind of like with uh with computers like they've come out with a new like graphics card or or cpu it's like initially it's expensive um and so but then over time that that price drops down and people like wonder is it like do you have like automation do you have people it's like we have both um you know it's like a cyborg but like integrated sidewalk thing yeah actually like one of the biggest constraints for us is is\n\nlike being able to hire enough people that's what i was gonna ask so like there's a lot of working man parking there's a lot of parking here yeah if you have a lot of robots and a lot of people in the factory what do people do that robots can't do and obviously there's a lot that robots can do as far as lifting and moving things but as far as precision maybe there's things they can do that humans can't do do you have a ratio off the top of your head maybe as far as people versus machines um you know it varies massively depending upon what part of the production process um right so some parts of it are like 80 to 90 automated and then some parts of it are like uh only 10 to 20 or what are those what are those parts that humans do better than humans are\n\nreally good at adaptation um and rapid evolution and like doing like little like finicky things like like that um like for general assembly like one of the mistakes we made uh that was like pretty pretty big mistake was trying to automate uh general assembly which is where you put the parts together you know like some of the things it's like like trying to connect uh a hose that's like sort of dangling around i see and and you're like the robot's like gonna find the hose grab it like then connect it to another hose at that point it's like really hard yeah like a person can just go all right they're done gotcha yeah that makes a lot of sense yeah and it's like when you see it it's like wow it's super super obvious and then we try to have robots do this\n\nand it's like robots like grabbing the wrong thing and like trying to stick it over here and it's like oh the the the hose was here when the rover threw it was here and so now it like tries to grab air and then like smashes into the car it's like you don't want that we yeah it was a comedy virus uh tragedy of ours like personally you could say like this thing needs to connect to that thing and and then however they they arrive a person can figure it out the robot would be like uh and then as far as uh tesla's overall master plan is what it was originally called so you start with the low volume high priced roadster then you move on model s higher volume lower price to model three as far as i know that's where the master plan ended yeah that was like part\n\none yeah i mean we went model x in there which uh uh you know it was that wasn't that was like that was definitely an exercise in hubris uh the now the x is an amazing car and it's like um but it's like we kind of got carried away with the art i hear it's very difficult to make yeah we could carry it away without the carrier with arden technology it's like obviously you want great art you want great technology but we did get a little distracted from our mission which is to like advance the cores of electric vehicles um and and it probably delayed us a little bit with the model 3 as well so i guess my last question in here would be just as far as the tesla master plan part one coming to an end is it now just a matter of steering the ship towards new opportunities\n\nyou see there's not a lot of companies making a 35 000 electric car and a quarter million dollar supercar and a semi truck and doing them all really well right do you guys see yourself just keeping a tight ship and picking your your choices here and there yeah that's why we um what i'm saying really like it's it's a it's a tough strategic call between focus and like being wanting to do a bunch of different models like we we i think we want to try doing two at the same time um like we've only ever done one at the same time before do two and then and then um if we get got that if you're good with that then we could just try doing three at a time like a lot of the other manufacturers they'll do like you know 12 at a time yeah so if they're way bigger than\n\nus weird awesome yeah i wish you the best of luck with it and thanks for taking the time to sit down yeah thanks thank you all right cool appreciate it"},"languages":["en"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MevKTPN4ozw"},{"id":"tesla-q2-2018-earnings-call-2018-08-02","type":"interview","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1I9UtyZMTek","title":"Tesla Q2 2018 Earnings Call","titles":{"en":"Tesla Q2 2018 Earnings Call","de":"Tesla Q2 2018 Earnings Call","fr":"Tesla Q2 2018 Earnings Call"},"date":"2018-08-02","summary":"Tesla's Q2 2018 earnings webcast with Musk and team discussing Model 3 ramp, Autopilot and future plans.","text":"Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Tesla Q2 2018 financial results and Q&A webcast call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later, we will conduct a question-and-answer session, and instructions will follow at that time. As a reminder, this conference may be recorded. I would now like to introduce your host for today's conference, Mr. Martin Viecha, Senior Director of Investor Relations. Mr.\n\nViecha, you may begin. Thank you very much, Shiree, and good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to Tesla's second quarter 2018 Q&A webcast. I'm joined today by Elon Musk, JB Straubel, Deepak Ahuja, Robin Ren, our Head of Sales; Jerome Guillen, our VP of Trucks; and we also have our Autopilot team with us here, Andrej Karpathy, Director of AI; Stuart Bowers, our VP of Engineering; and Pete Bannon, our Director of Silicon Engineering.\n\nOur Q2 results were announced at about 1:00 PM Pacific Time in the Update Letter we published at the same link as this webcast. During this call, we will discuss our business outlook and make forward-looking statements. These comments are based on our predictions and expectations as of today.\n\nActual events or results could differ materially due to a number of risks and uncertainties, including those mentioned in our most recent filings with the SEC. During the question-and-answer portion of today's call, please limit yourself to one question and one follow up. Before we jump into Q&A, Elon has some opening remarks. Elon? Hi. Thank you for joining.\n\nFirst of all, I'd like to say we're incredibly proud of the Tesla team for producing 7,000 Model 3, Model S and Model X vehicles in the last week of June. It was an amazing effort. It's an honor to work with such great team to produce that incredible result. It's like mind-blowing. We continued to achieve 5,000 Model 3s per week, or 7,000 combined S, X and 3, multiple weeks in July, showing that, so we're able to do this on a sustained basis.\n\nAnd we expect to, in the absence of a force majeure or some very unexpected event, be able to achieve an average of 5,000 Model 3s or above for Q3 and 2,000 Model S, Xs or above per week for Q3 as well. So essentially, 7,000 cars a week plus on average for Q3. That's an amazing jump from only a year ago. We were producing 2,000 vehicles a week. It's really kind of a mind-blowing leap forward for a manufacturing company.\n\nSo, yeah, just incredible work by the team to do that. Many, many late nights, weekends, extreme amounts of effort and lots of smart ideas. It's amazing. One of the results you're seeing is that the Model 3 market share has surpassed all competitor premium midsized sedans combined. So, Model 3 market share is now a majority, in July, it was a majority of all premium sedans. That trend is, we think, likely to continue.\n\nWe do not think it will stop there. I have Robin Ren here, who is our worldwide head of sales, to talk about some of the interesting elements that we're seeing in terms of cars that people are trading in, the sales and demand trends, it's looking really positive. We're also getting great feedback on Model 3 from our customers, and we're now delivering Dual Motor and All-Wheel Drive versions and the Model 3 reviews are outstanding.\n\nReally couldn't ask for better reviews from some of the toughest critics in the world. And it's – yeah. The thing that we're really finding is that the more Model 3s we deliver to the field, it's actually causing parallel growth of our sales. So, we deliver a Model 3 to somebody, they love it, they tell all their friends, they're actually – really, our customers are our primary sales force.\n\nThey love their car and take their friends for a drive and that's the thing that fundamentally drives our sales. But not everyone has a Model 3 obviously, so we need to get the cars out there for test drives. As it is right now, not even all stores in North America have Model 3 for test drives.\n\nWe prioritize getting cars to customers, but we're soon going to have Model 3s available for test drives in all stores and both the performance version and the rear-wheel drive version. So because a lot of people, they will not buy a car until they test drive it, which is not unreasonable.\n\nAlthough on Sunday when I delivered it, testing out like direct delivery, which I think is definitely the future, direct delivery from factory to customer's home or work or wherever they are, the guy who bought it had never actually even sat in a Model 3. I was like, wow, okay. I mean I said, well, how do you feel about the car now that you have it and you've driven it? He's like I love it. It's amazing. So, yes.\n\nIt seems to be really well-received. Yeah. So, at a production rate of 7,000 cars a week, we believe we can be sustainably profitable from Q3 onwards. We're going to try to raise that rate of the Model 3 production steadily in the coming quarters and try to get to the 10,000 cars a week number as soon as we can.\n\nAs we spent a lot of time debugging a wide range of manufacturing issues that the potential for our existing lines to be able to produce far more cars is much greater than expected.\n\nThat by simplifying production lines, by speeding them up, by, in some cases, everything is being done manual instead of automatic, and in other cases, having be done automatic instead of manual, we've been able to achieve dramatic improvements to the output of existing lines, which means that our CapEx growing from 5,000 cars a week to 10,000 cars a week is a tiny fraction of the CapEx needed to grow from 0 to 5,000 Model 3s.\n\nThis is, I think, very good news for capital efficiency of the company. And with, that it's going inform future mass market vehicles that we produce. And from an operating plant standpoint, from Q3 onwards, I really want to emphasize our goal is to be profitable and cash-flow positive for every quarter, going forward.\n\nNow obviously, if there's a big recession or there's a severe force majeure event that interrupts the supply chain, that's not always possible, but we're confident that in, provided the economy is roughly where it is today or reasonably good and there's not a big force majeure event that we – I feel comfortable achieving a GAAP income positive and cash flow positive quarter every quarter from here on out.\n\nThat's a – there may be occasional quarters, where we pay back a big loan or something, where there may be just because we paid back a big loan. But absent that, it would be cash flow positive. So, once again, I want to thank the Tesla team for their incredible work and our customers for their support.\n\nWithout the great people we have at Tesla and the customers who put their faith in us by buying our product, we would not be here today and, yeah, really never been more excited about the future of Tesla. We've got super exciting set of products to bring out in the future. And, yeah, I mean, sorry if I sound a little tired. I've been working like crazy in the body shop lately, but it's really going great, super excited.\n\nIt's like, yeah, some good people. And a number of the executive team here. In particular I asked the three key leaders of the Tesla Autopilot team to be here. So, I think to go from here to see if Autopilot leaders of Tesla could introduce themselves and say a bit about what you're working on, what you're excited about in the future. Sorry if I put you guys on the spot or anything.\n\nI think we're making pretty radical advances in the core software technology and the division beyond that. And then very importantly with the Tesla self-driving chip technology that we've been working on for three years is finally coming to fruition. Pete Bannon is going to talk a lot about that.\n\nBut it's a plug-in replacement for the existing computer and enables an order of magnitude improvements in operations per second or frames per second as a way to think about it. And we think this is really the key to Tesla full vehicle autonomy. And like I said, designed to be really easy to replace. I'll let Pete talk about that. So, let me start off like Stuart, Andrej, and then Pete. Okay. Hi. I'm Stuart. You need to talk louder by the way.\n\nYeah, we'll talk extra loud. So I'm Stuart. Yeah, joined the team relatively recently. Incredibly excited to kind of see the foundation the team has built up until this point and we're building on top of that right now.\n\nSo right now, a lot of the focus is on Autopilot v9, which is our sort of on-ramp to off-ramp solution that's going to automatically attempt to change lanes, understand what lane the car is in, understand the route the user wants to travel and take that route for the user and ultimately hand back control to that user which is kind of stay in control. Integrated navigation.\n\nSo, you'd like by the way, a little tip for if you're driving Model S or X or 3, is if you just tap the Navigate button and just drag down, it will automatically navigate you to your home or work, depending upon where you are. That's a pretty cool feature. So, yeah, that's part of the focus right now. We're also kind of digging in on some new safety features.\n\nI think probably the thing which is most exciting for me, coming from the team is just seeing the foundation that's been built out over the last two years. I think Andrej will talk a lot about some of the perception and vision work we've done there with the data engine.\n\nThat has sort of allowed us to build on top of that very, very quickly and I think we're all starting to see a new set of safety features that really only make sense in this world, we have extremely high understanding of what's happening around the vehicle.\n\nSo, I think when I start thinking about like what gets me excited when I come into work, it's like, one, starting to introduce real aspects of kind of not just making the commute kind of reducing the drudgery or kind of the risk of commuting but also really fun and the second is like dramatically improving safety in a way that you really can only do once you have this very nuanced understanding of the world around you with perception.\n\nHello everyone. My name is Andrej Karpathy, and I'm the Director of AI here at Tesla. In particular, I lead the vision team which is responsible for turning the video stream that we receive from all the cameras and the vehicle into an understanding of what is around us and around the vehicle.\n\nI worked with Neural Networks for about 10 years mostly as and what I'm really excited about is really building out this infrastructure for computer vision that underlies all the neural network training, trying to get those networks to work extremely well, and make that a really good foundation on top of which we build out all the features of the Autopilot like the features associated with the v9 release that's going to come up and that Stuart as mentioned.\n\nHi. This is Pete Bannon. My team is leading currently the Hardware 3 development. The chips are up and working, and we have drop-in replacements for S, X and 3, all have been driven in the field. They support the current networks running today in the car at full frame rates with a lot of idle cycles to spare. So, I think we're all really excited about what Andrej and his team will be able to do with this hardware in the future.\n\nI think like one little anecdotal story was I gave a talk to his team on Hardware 3 last month explaining how it worked and what it was capable of, and then afterwards, one of the researchers came up to me. He was really excited, and he said, this is so exciting.\n\nI'm really excited about exploiting this hardware and he said, I think people are going to want to come and work at Tesla, just to have access to this hardware and to try it out because it's so exciting. So as a hardware designer, having excited software developers is the best. And it's a really fun place to work because I do get to work with my two primary customers, Stuart and Andrej, and making them happy is pretty fun.\n\nYeah, actually, Pete, maybe just – some people know about your background, but not everyone does. So if you could just like – Pete's a super humble guy, but it would be great just to – yeah. Talk about the stuff you've done before. Let's see. I started working designing computers at Digital Equipment Corporation in 1984, back when they were refrigerator-sized, and I've been working on smaller and smaller designs ever since.\n\nI was a Intel Fellow working on a team for a little while, then I was VP of Architecture and Verification at PA Semi, which was acquired at Apple. I led the design of the first ARM 32-bit processor that went into the iPhone 5. I built the team that designed the first ARM 64-bit processor in the world which went into the iPhone 5S. And then I worked on performance modeling and performance improvements at Apple for eight years.\n\nAnd then two years later, I came to Tesla and designed the neural network accelerator that's part of Hardware 3 and helped architect the rest of the Hardware 3 solution that will be in the car next year. Yeah, it may be worth articulating some of the details, design principles that explain why the Tesla AI chip, or AI computer, essentially, for the car is able to achieve an order of magnitude better processing than anything else that exists.\n\nYeah. Sure. So, like two years ago when I joined Tesla, we did a survey of all of the solutions that were out there for running neural networks, including GPUs. We went and talked to other people like at ARM that were building embedded solutions for running neural networks. And pretty much everywhere we looked, if somebody had a hammer, whether it was a CPU or a GPU or whatever, they were adding something to accelerate neural networks.\n\nBut nobody was doing a bottoms-up design from scratch, which is what we elected to do.\n\nWe had the benefit of having the insight into seeing what Tesla's neural networks looked like back then and having projections of what they would look like into the future, and we were able to leverage all of that knowledge and our willingness to totally commit to that style of computing to produce a design that's dramatically more efficient and has dramatically more performance than what you can buy today. Cool. Thanks.\n\nYeah, I mean, essentially the key is to be able to run the neural net at a fundamental, at a bare metal level so that it's especially doing the calculations in the circuits itself and not in some sort of emulation mode which is how a GPU or a CPU would operate. So, you want to do basically a massive amount of localized matrix multiplication with the memory right there.\n\nSo, it's a huge number of very simple complications with the memory needed to store the results of those complications right next to the circuits that are doing the matrix calculations. And the net effect is an order of magnitude improvement in the frames per second. Our current hardware, which – I'm a big fan of NVIDIA, they do great stuff. But using a GPU, fundamentally it's an emulation mode, and then you also get choked on the bus.\n\nSo, the transfer between the GPU and the CPU ends up being one of the constraints of the system. So, the net effect is we're able to, with the Tesla computer – and we've been like semi-stealth mode basically for the last two to three years on this, but I think it's probably time to let the cat out of the bag because the cat's going to come out of the bag anyway.\n\nBut it's an incredible job by Pete and his team to create this, the world's most advanced computer designed specifically for autonomous operation. And as a rough sort of whereas the current NVIDIA's hardware can do 200 frames a second, this is able to do over 2,000 frames a second and with full redundancy and fail-over.\n\nSo, it's an amazing design and we're going to be looking to increase the size of our chip team and our investment in that as quickly as possible. I think we have some of the best aces in the world, but I think we want to build on that even more.\n\nAnd it costs the same as our current hardware and we anticipate that this would have to be replaced, this replacement, which is why we made it easy to switch out the computer, and that's all that needs to be done. If we take out one computer and plug in the next. That's it. All the connectors are compatible and you get an order of magnitude, more processing and you can run all the cameras at primary full resolution with the complex neural net.\n\nSo it's super kick-ass. Thank you for doing that. You're welcome. Thanks for making nets and thanks for making the software. Anyway, basically I wanted to introduce three of the key people at Tesla that are doing this. I have huge respect and admiration for you guys and it's because of what you and your team's doing that Tesla will be successful in this arena. Thank you. Thank you, Elon. Shiree, let's go to the first question. Thank you.\n\nOur first question comes from Tony Sacconaghi with Bernstein. Yes. Thank you. I have one question and one follow-up, please. First, just on gross margins, it looks like S & X gross margins were up maybe 500 basis points sequentially and I'm wondering maybe you can articulate what drove that. And then, more importantly, it looks like you're calling for Model 3 gross margins to go from about maybe 3% this quarter to 15% next quarter.\n\nThat's about a $6,000 cost out per car and I'm wondering if you can maybe help us understand what sort of the forces that drive that kind of improvement in a relatively short timeframe. Yeah, absolutely. First of all, I'd like to apologize for being impolite on the prior call. Honestly, I think there's really no excuse for bad manners and I was violating my own rule in that regard. Certainly, I have some excuse.\n\nThere are reasons for it in that I'd gotten no sleep and been working sort of 110-hour, 120-hour weeks. But, nonetheless, there's still no excuse. My apologies for not being polite on the prior call. I appreciate that. Thank you. And let's see. With respect to gross margin, I'll touch on that and then hand the rest to Deepak, but, certainly, when it's filling up the production line, there are a tremendous amount of inefficiencies.\n\nThere's a lot of hurry up and wait, where some parts of the production line move well. Then, one part doesn't and you have associates waiting around with nothing to do. There are parts that we thought were right but then it turns out that they weren't right. We got to send them back to the supplier. It's just like the whole sort of giant machine.\n\nIt just needs to kind of lurch into a high pace and there's a lot of lurching, which is very inefficient. So, you end up having super high labor costs per car and it just takes time to sort of spool up this giant machine. Basically a production system is like a giant cybernetic collector and it moves as fast as the slowest part.\n\nSo, as we address those slow parts and as we improve efficiency, then gross margin and so the profitability per car just improves dramatically. That's sort of at a high level. Deepak, do you want to add to that? Elon, you described it extremely well. So just to sort of summarize, this was a major milestone for us in Q2 that the gross margin in Model 3 turned slightly positive and we feel really good about the path ahead.\n\nAnd as Elon said, it's driven predominantly by manufacturing cost efficiencies. The labor hours that we use to produce each car becomes less. The initial ramp-up costs that we have that are one-time, those inefficiencies disappear. Our fixed costs that are there that gets leveraged to a higher volume. So, all of that.\n\nActually, a thing that can also happen is that if it turns out, let's say, the production part was either designed wrong or built wrong or there's something wrong with it, then on camera, on emergency basis, we have to go with low volume tooling which can be produced quickly. But a part produced off of low volume tooling can easily be 10 times more than a part produced off of production tooling.\n\nAnd so, sometimes where it gets really bad, if you've got a machine something out of a block and has either that or going to make a car, then the cost of using low volume cost of use of low volume tooling can be really nutty. Yeah. And the journey just continues as we stabilize and grow production from these levels we achieve even more efficiencies.\n\nAnd Q3 also benefits with somewhat improved mix as we're going to sell more All-Wheel Drive and performance cars and in the long run as we continue to achieve those efficiencies on cost, our gross margins will continue to increase. Yeah, I don't know if this trend will continue. We're trying to give you essentially all the information that at least we know of.\n\nBut we're seeing roughly half of all customers choose the Dual Motor or All-Wheel Drive option, which is actually quite a good positive surprise. Yeah, it's been heartening to see the mix in terms of what customers want. Robin can probably add more to that. Yeah. So, starting from end of June when we opened the configurator and invited existing reservation orders, we saw tremendous excitement and response from our customers.\n\nAs Deepak just mentioned, we actually see more orders for the All-Wheel Drive Dual Motor car and performance cars combined than the rear wheel drives. Yeah, we don't want to say like this should be assumed to be a continued thing. It's just the thing we are seeing now. Yeah. Correct.\n\nAnother thing I want to point out is that we are actually – since we opened the configurator to the general public in early July, we are seeing an increased demand coming from people who do not currently hold a reservation.\n\nI think that's something that we found super exciting, because these are the people who actually had no idea about Model 3 and they heard about Model 3 is available to order, many of them requested test drives and since early July, we have over 60,000 test drive requests in the U. S. alone and these people come into our stores, do the test drive, and they become super excited and they decide to order the car.\n\nSo, we believe that the strong demand coming from especially the non-reservation orders is going to dramatically increase as we increase our test drive population. To give you an example, three weeks ago, we had only eight stores having test drive cars to Elon's point earlier. Now we have over 90 stores having test drive cars. Okay. It's worth mentioning – just an interesting little bits of information that Robin was telling me.\n\nI'd just like to also Robin on doing a great job running worldwide sales. Nice to have you in this role and the awesome work done in China was really some next level stuff.\n\nAnyway, Robin was born and raised in Shanghai and has been – along with Tom and Grace and other members of our team in China has been sort of instrumental in establishing the China factory and making sure that gets done right and having a great relationship with the government. And so it's nice work in that regard. It's really – I think some of the things people don't expect like what are the top five trading cars for Model 3?\n\nYeah, this is very interesting. So, we looked at what people who are buying Model 3 cars in the United States, what cars they are trading in. What we found is through this year, from January to July, the top five non-Tesla cars people are trading in to get into a Model 3, they are Toyota Prius, BMW 3 Series, Honda Accord, Honda Civic and Nissan Leaf. Really surprising. Yeah. They are surprising because they are not the traditional premium sedans.\n\nThey are actually – many of them are mainstream midsized sedans. Right. And we're obviously at this point not yet selling our $35,000 car, so this is promising for the future. All right. Cool. Next question? Thank you. Our next question comes from Joseph Spak with RBC Capital Markets. Hi. Good afternoon. Thanks. Maybe we could tackle some of the commentary about the Gigafactory coming in China.\n\nWhen you first announced the Gigafactory 1, I think you said that was going to be about a $5 billion investment, and you mentioned some volume numbers associated with what you think you could do in China. So we do some extrapolation, looks like maybe 15 gigawatt hours of initial capacity. I'm wondering if you could also do a linear extrapolation on the costs you think you need for that factory. Sure.\n\nAnd I would also like to apologize for being impolite on the last call with you. It's not right, and hope you accept my apologies. Thanks. So with respect to Gigafactory CapEx, I think we learned a tremendous amount with Gigafactory 1, and we're confident that we can do the Gigafactory in China for a lot less.\n\nI think it's probably closer to – this is just a guess, but probably closer to $2 billion, and that should be at a higher – and that would be sort of at the 250,000 vehicle per year rate. So I think we can be a lot more efficient with CapEx, and that would include at least a factory module and pack production, body shop, paint shop and general assembly. Might even be less than that, but that's about the right number for that.\n\nAnd then cell production is something we're still figuring out with respect to the Shanghai factory. JB, would you like to add to that? Yeah, I'd agree with all that. We found a surprising number of ways to improve efficiency and speed and density as well at Gigafactory 1, and all those lessons will absolutely be shared with Gigafactory 3.\n\nThe teams are already of course beginning to collaborate and start to figure out ways to do this more efficiently and with less CapEx than last time. Yeah. Yeah, I think, we – like less than half is like would be a good estimate. And maybe a lot less than half, but not more than half, would be a fair estimate for CapEx to get to that 250,000 level.\n\nSo it's just – we just learned a tremendous amount about manufacturing, it's like – it's definitely burned out a lot of neurons, yeah, mental scar tissue, it's like next level, but on the plus side we really know a lot about volume manufacturing at this point.\n\nI mean, there are so many specific examples, but even in just recent weeks and months, we found some – certain areas of production that have been very capital intensive that we've been able to speed up with almost no additional CapEx by maybe 20%, even 25% or 30%. Yeah, kind of crazy. Including on the cell – including the cell production.\n\nYeah, just by challenging some of the initial assumptions, the specifications, tweaking the controls and software. Look, what really matters, what actually doesn't matter, things we think matter, and some of it actually ends up not mattering at all. And that's with basically zero CapEx. Yeah. Yes.\n\nSo as you start to add very tactical, strategic CapEx to the existing lines, that's how we can get to something close to double or beyond with a really, really small increment. Yeah, obviously one of the keys to success on the Model 3 production was the GA4 thing, which was led by Jerome.\n\nAnd General Assembly is key, and doing the sort of zone one, two, semiauto lines, which were critical because we had this fundamental failure especially in zone one – zone two of factory module production. Thank you, Jerome. It turns out Jerome was pulling some pretty incredible rabbits out of the hat. That was amazing. Thank you.\n\nAnd people make fun of our tent, but by the way our tent is amazing and this is not like – when people like say tent, they'll think it's like some sort of – something made by REI to go camping. This is a tent that is actually commonly used as a permanent structure.\n\nIt's a giant thing that is very commonly used as a permanent structure and we just had to come up with a creative solution because GA3 was not going to be able to make the rate and so we had to come up with some ideas, and tell people how that all transpired. It's interesting, if you want to... Yeah, thank you. It was a fun project actually. Yes.\n\nSo not only was it producing good results, but a lot of people contributed from different engineering groups and had a lot of fun in the process. We set out... some of the people . It's cool. It's great. It is like this is really satisfying about building a car. We just wanted to create an assembly line that would be very easy and very straightforward. So, it's a straight line. Very simple.\n\nCar enters at one point and it's finished at the other end. Very simple access on all sides. Very simple tooling that we reused for most of – actually, nearly all of it is systems and tools that we discarded from previous SNX or for Model 3. Especially Model 3. Like it was probably we had two weeks to solve this problem, which is like quasi impossible.\n\nSo, we actually didn't have time to order new equipment, because it would have taken too long to arrive. So, we took the conveyors that we'd discarded from the GA3 line, which didn't work or was way too complex to actually do our products. And we amplified, repurposed them, make them sturdy for what was needed. And... Well, I think like the really cool idea was putting them on the 1% grade.\n\nSo it's like technically the conveyors for parts delivery to GA3 were not graded to be able to move something as heavy as a car, so we made it downhill and on a 1%-downward grade with the car at the top. So then, you can actually overcome the transport... Gravity helped. Yeah, gravity. So, basically, even on your slides, you can do – accomplish a lot. Yeah, it's pushing the car. Exactly. No.\n\nAnd something that I'm particularly happy about is that we installed the quality team at the end of the line and we wanted to have at least as high standards on this new line as in the other one, because it is so simple and straightforward, they can run very quickly to any point in the line if there is any potential concern and address very quickly. There is no maze to move around or identify where something happened.\n\nAnd the quality of the cars that come out of this structure is at least as good and we make all the performance cars on this particular line and they seem to be doing quite well. So, this is a very pleasant surprise and the associates seems to be very happy and engaged in that particular area.\n\nSo, this may be a model of how we may want to start general assembly for future vehicles, at least start and we can always add further automation and complexity. And something that's like somewhat counterintuitive is that this actually has fully considered fewer labor hours per car than the GA3 system.\n\nAnd just to elaborate on what Jerome was saying, where we have parts delivery to GA4, the truck literally just backs up to the side of the line, where there is like a door in the tent. And then, that is used to unload parts from suppliers directly to where they are needed on the line. So there's no intermediate assistant.\n\nWhereas for GA3, they're unloaded, they're put in a warehouse, then they're repackaged from the warehouse into these totes, which we actually have 220 people, something like that, across all shifts whose only job it was to repackage parts from the boxes that came in from suppliers to the boxes – to these totes that go into the lifters that go up into GA3.\n\nThat's literally all they do is move things from one box to another box, and we don't need that at all on GA4. All gone. All gone, yeah. And there's a tremendous amount of 24/7 robotics technicians that are constantly trying to make the machines have uptime. That's very expensive and that's where we figured like not having to maintain all these robotic systems, that's a big cost savings as well.\n\nAnd now we're going to be gradually adding simple automation into GA4 to make it easier to build a car and better sort of labor saving devices, but it's just fundamentally – it's already at an efficiency level greater than GA3, which is pretty impressive. Joe, do you have a follow-up question? Our next question comes from James Albertine with Consumer Edge. Good afternoon, and thank you for taking my question.\n\nAnd appreciate all the color you've been providing, wanted to dig a little bit deeper, though, in terms of capital spending plans. Considering your growth you've identified in China with the Model Y, we believe also in the EU, it's been discussed about a factory there. How do you plan to fund all of this growth without going back to the capital markets to raise funds?\n\nAnd can you verify for us whether or not there is a notice from a regulator that would prevent you from raising outside capital? Thanks. We do not – we will not be raising any equity at any point, at least that's – I have no expectation of doing so, do not plan to do so. For China, I think, our default plan will be to use essentially a loan from the local banks in China and fund the Gigafactory in Shanghai with local debt, essentially.\n\nAnd we certainly could raise money, but I think we don't need to and we – yeah, I think, it's better to – it is better discipline not to. Yeah, we're executing on an operating plan that keeps us sufficiently self-funded despite our CapEx needs and our debts maturing, and still keep a very healthy balance on our balance sheet. Yeah, our default plan is we pay – we start paying off our debts. I don't mean refi-ing them, I mean paying them off.\n\nFor example, there's a convert that's coming due soon, a couple hundred million, $900 million, something like that. We expect to pay that off with internally generated cash flow. And still be – still have a healthy cash balance. Yeah. And to answer the other question, there is no such notice from a regulator. Yeah, I'm not sure what you're talking about, but there is no such notice from a regulator. Very good. Thank you very much.\n\nLet's go to the next question, please. Thank you. Our next question comes from George Galliers with Evercore. Hi, George. Are you on the line? Okay. Let's go to the next one. Thank you. Our next question comes from Adam Jonas with Morgan Stanley. Hey, everybody. First, there's so much love and respect for colleagues and Wall Street analysts on this call, it's almost – it is lifting my spirits. What can I say? I got two questions.\n\nThe first is for the Autopilot team. There's an argument that a fully autonomous car is essentially like a terminator that is programmed to save lives in highly complex terrestrial environments and that this same technology with a few tweaks have some pretty obvious military capability. Do you see any risk that U. S. companies will ultimately not be allowed to operate weapons grade AI-based technology in a market like China and vice versa?\n\nWell, this has never come up. I wouldn't call it weapons grade. It's just like the car is trying to drive and if anything, the autonomous cars will be pretty easy to bully because they'll be optimizing so much for avoiding collision. So that'll be more of a challenge than anything else is as soon as somebody sees that the car's autonomous, they know they can like cut them off and the car is going to do everything it can avoid a collision.\n\nSo it's like that'll actually be probably a bigger challenge than anything else, but we've not encountered anything of the nature of what you're saying. So you don't see autonomous cars as a potential germination or training grounds for things that would have a national security or military interest? Okay. Maybe a follow-up, Elon, and my last question, who do you think would be a more formidable competitor over time, BMW or Amazon? For Tesla.\n\nI don't think either of them are likely to be. As far as I know, I'm going to be pretty shocked if Amazon got into the car business, but I think BMW has great engineering. And it's good to see that they're making some investments in electrification. Hopefully, they do more of that. And I'm not sure where they stand on autonomy. It's not on our radar from an autonomy standpoint. Thanks a lot. Okay. Let's go to the next question. Thank you.\n\nOur next question comes from Pierre Ferragu with New Street Research. Thank you for having me on. So I wanted to make sure we understand well how you stop burning cash going forward, in coming quarters. And my understanding is that an important moving part here, probably the most important one is a positive impact of the ramp of the Model 3 on your working capital.\n\nAnd so I did some quick math on the quarter and I see your favorables increased by $430 million, while your risk level didn't move much which makes sense because you get paid on the spot and you pay your suppliers only on a 60 day notice or more. And so if I divide that by the number of incremental cars you've been producing in the quarter, I get to $23,000 per car.\n\nAnd of course my question is whether this is a good way to think about it, which means that going forward when we move into Q3 and Q4 every additional car, every additional Model 3 you're going to produce you're going to bump up payables by something in the region of $20,000 and that's going to be the main driver getting you to breakeven and to stop burning cash. Deepak here. I mean, there are many factors.\n\nClearly, the working capital benefit of the difference in the payable terms versus collecting cash is one of them. But also, it's our gross margin improvement on the business. With the – it's the higher volumes and the higher gross margins, I'm thinking higher gross profit, I'm stating the obvious here on Model 3. Our SNX volumes are increasing too in the second half. That's going to help us significantly.\n\nAnd all of our other businesses are improving their profitability. While our OpEx is staying essentially flat, so massive leverage in the business. So when you combine all of that, that's what is giving us the cash flow from operations to fund the rest of our business and grow cash. I'm stating the obvious, but just sort of summarizing the whole point. Yeah. In terms of follow-up on EP – sorry. Go ahead. Sorry. What was your question?\n\nSorry, can you repeat the follow-up? Sorry Pierre, can you repeat the follow-up? My follow-up was on in terms of order of magnitude, does like $20,000 per car of payables boost over a 60-day period, does that sound like something that makes sense or am I missing other moving part? It's rough order of magnitude correct, yeah. Excellent. Thank you. Okay. Let's go to the next question. Thank you.\n\nOur next question comes from Romit Shah with Nomura Instinet. Yes. Thanks very much. I guess my question is for the Autopilot team. We've been looking forward to this fully autonomous coast-to-coast drive and, Elon, I think you sort of said on previous calls if I can paraphrase that the team has been focused on developing a full self-driving suite that would work basically on all different kinds of road conditions.\n\nAnd I'm just curious, what's holding back that capability today to go coast to coast? And are we closer now that you've strengthened the compute technology? Yeah, we can do a coast to coast drive, especially if we – like if we pick a specific route and then write code to really make that route work, we could do a coast to coast route drive, but that would be kind of gaming the system.\n\nAnd I think it's really important for the autopilot team to be focused on fundamental safety of the existing features. So that's – the focus is really massively on safety of existing features. Then there's an advanced dev role that can do things like recognize traffic lights and stop signs and make hard right turns and that kind of thing, but it's not at the safety level that's considered okay for release.\n\nSo that – yeah, because it really, you want many lines of reliability for anything that's released to end customers. So I don't want to take the team off that until we feel like we've really got everything as best we can for the core functionality. Stuart, you want to add to that? Yeah, I mean, I think the big thing I would say is to reiterate Elon's point. There's no question you can kind of build a demo around this stuff.\n\nThe challenge right now for the team is just increasing the safety and utility of autopilot to over 250,000 cars we have today and pushing more out after that. So I think when we look forward to what the next probably 6 to 12 months look like, it's taking those same kind of features we've been working on, probably deploying them in the form of active safety features.\n\nThat's like a thing we can do already to understand like – use this rich understanding of the environment to actually try to keep you safer, to either beep or brake. And then also, of course like one huge advantage that we have is we can understand what humans actually did in these vehicles and test our software to make sure that we would have made decisions that were similar if not safer.\n\nSo that's going to be a huge part of what we do over the next probably two quarters. Yeah, that said, we might be able to pull off coast-to-coast demo before the end of the year if we – but really like right now Subaru has not focused on the version 9 software release which has got a number of really cool things in it. And we're hoping to get that out to early access program in about four weeks and then broadly in September.\n\nThat's the hardcore focus right now, and that will certainly include some significant advancements in autonomy. And then once that's out and stable, I think that could be a good time to work on the coast-to-coast drive. I don't know if you guys have shared what attach rates are for autopilot. And just as my follow up, I guess I'm curious what you can do to increase the number of cars that have that functionality.\n\nIt would seem like the effects of auto margins and cash flows could be pretty positive. Yeah, I think it's extremely powerful once people are comfortable using the technology and see just how much utility it brings. I think that is a very significant potential for margin gain in the future, but it's contingent on that functionality really making a difference.\n\nI think we will really start to see some of the breakthrough stuff in about a month or so. Okay. Let's go to the next question. Thank you. Thank you. Our next question comes from John Murphy with Bank of America. Good afternoon. Just a first question. Is it fair to assume the GA4 in the tent is now essentially permanent?\n\nAnd if so, is this potentially a new model for capacity and capacity additions that might be much more capital efficient over time? What do you think, Jerome? It's permanent for now until we come up with something different or better, but personally, I think it's a good model to start assembly of any product. Gives a lot of flexibility, and then we can build and iterate over it. Yeah.\n\nLike, necessity is the mother of invention, and when you have to do something quickly, then you just don't have time to spend a lot of capital. So it forces you to be capital efficient. Yeah, it's taught us a lot of lessons on how to be capital efficient in the general assembly area. And so, in that sense, those lessons will carry forward, John. Yeah, I think so, it's still by and large we'll be aiming for steel-frame buildings to be clear.\n\nIt's not like just become tents everywhere. Yeah. I mean the tent itself might be a little bit of a distraction from actually the focus of what's happening inside. And then the methodology... Yes. Exactly.\n\nAnd that's a similar methodology that we've kind of reverted back to and then moved forward from in the module, where we simplified and then did a very, very linear intuitive process that was a bit more manual and then have automated and scaled that up as we understand it and get good control of it.\n\nAnd I think that's a lesson that we're taking to heart broadly across other things that we're going to do in the future and it's an efficient way to scale up. I mean, is that replication of that simplicity why you think Shanghai could be that much less costly and that then Model Y capacity might be that much less costly to add?\n\nYeah, Model Y is sort of a whole separate thing but it's definitely one of the elements that convinced us that we can scale up quickly and at low CapEx in Shanghai, where we do an improved version of GA4. And then, we're also figuring out how to make the paint shop a lot simpler and general assembly a lot simpler. And after this call, I'm headed back out to the... Body shop. The body shop and making the body shop a lot simpler.\n\nMaking it a lot simpler. Yeah, we can really simplify the body shop, man. Wow. And there's a lot that we can really easily improve like design to manufacturing and changing some of the joining approaches that we use and actually making the car lighter, cheaper and better and actually stabler. Yeah, it's really, safe already, but yeah. Maybe one other point, just to follow up quickly.\n\nI think some people have taken this as like a walk back from automation, which is not really accurate. Yeah, exactly. This is basically, I mean, a more thoughtful and focused way to apply automation to the actual issues that matter most. Yes. That's well said. Actually, it's really worth emphasizing JB's point here. Yeah. We're seeing a gain. Yeah, it's not an overall reduction in automation.\n\nIt is a focusing of our efforts automating the processes and the value-add processes that matter the most and I think we got maybe a little bit distracted on this first round automating a lot of things that added complexity that didn't necessarily speed up. And... Way too fancy. And we can save... Start simple and get fancy later. Fancy's going to bite you in the ass. But it's not like we're referring to the dark ages of all manual everything.\n\nThat's not at all the case. Yeah, I mean, Gigafactory is massively automated. It's pretty crazy. And the body production is also heavily automated, almost entirely robots. So it's a mixture of people and automation. There's so much that goes into producing a car going from raw metal and plastic and glass to an actual finished car. And, yeah, as JB was saying, the vast majority of that is highly automated. Okay.\n\nIf I can sneak in one quick follow-up? I mean, when we look at the grosses on the Model 3, you're saying 15% in 3Q, 20% in 4Q and I think the ultimate target is 25%. I mean, what are the average transaction prices you guys are assuming? I mean, it sounds like they are going to be bit higher earlier but is that 25% gross ultimately still built around the low-40,000 ATP? Yes. Okay. The simple answer is yes.\n\nIt'll be lower ASPs than what we have today, clearly, and we are having a richer mix of All-Wheel Drive, as Elon alluded to earlier, so that's going to help, but yeah. 25% is still the target that we have ahead of us. I'm highly confident that it may not be Q1 but I would be shocked if it's not Q2 that we get to 25%. Great. Thank you very much. Thank you. Let's go to the next question. Thank you.\n\nOur next question comes from Alex Haissl with Berenberg. Good evening, everyone, and thanks for taking the question. I would like to come back to the point made on the manufacturing efficiencies. I mean, two main challenges for Tesla but also for the rest of the industry is the manufacturing parts, which has been overcome by a lot of companies already, with the second one being the technology part.\n\nMy question is how would you describe the learning curve of the manufacturing process versus technology and what is really the pace of advancement you're making? Because it looks like on the manufacturing side the curve maybe has meaningfully accelerated here. Thank you. Well, I don't really know actually how others do it to be totally frank.\n\nI just know that the way we – I see the way we are doing it and I'm told that this is how others do it and we're able to find ways to make it much better. I don't know what the delta would be though. We also don't really I think differentiate it quite the way maybe you're implying. I mean, technology and manufacturing are sort of one and the same in many cases and we're treating a lot of the manufacturing problems as a technology problem. Yeah.\n\nExactly. And applying our design teams, our technology teams, if you want to call them that, to solving those issues. So I think the learning curves in some ways are quite similar. Yeah. In fact, it's amazing how much of production is actually software. We're really quite good at software relative to other car companies and manufacturing at volume is mostly a software problem. I think that was not well appreciated.\n\nI think maybe one other lesson learned is that it's obviously not the best approach or best efficiency to outsource some of that development. Yeah. Some of the areas that we struggled the most through the Model 3 ramp were those where we had perhaps less visibility, and less control, and less direct kind of skin in the game on how those production lines were designed and built.\n\nAnd these are cases where we took – we engaged with companies that were supposed to be world class experts in automotive production and we just assumed that they would do stuff that worked but it didn't. So that learning curve often involves Tesla coming directly in, understanding the process intimately, simplifying it, and then essentially doing our own design or changes to the lines that were built.\n\nI think that's a key learning point that we've taken and I think the way that we can do this a lot more efficiently in the future is doing that approach from the start. Just having that very rapid iteration between design and production is incredibly helpful and we understand for example, what are the rate limiters, what makes it hard to produce battery modules.\n\nWe came up with a new design that achieves the same outcome, that's actually lighter, better, cheaper and will be introducing that around the end of this year, probably reach volume production on that in Q1 or something. That will make the car lighter, better, and cheaper and achieve a higher range. That line is under construction, will be active in about six months.\n\nWe did this somewhat the first time around but now there's I think even more exciting understanding of the value of having those – as Elon said, having the design engineers just working intimately with automation and line engineers, simplifying the process as they're designing the product.\n\nYeah, I mean, because we're sort of desperate to try to get the production working, we actually took a design engineering team and had them work in the factory and improve it, work on production and it's given them tremendous insight into how they need to change the designs in the future to make it easier to produce because you feel the pain directly.\n\nOnce you feel the pain, like okay, didn't realize I was torturing people with my terrible design. Now I know. Great. Let's go to the next question. Thank you. Our next question comes from Ben Kallo with Baird. Hello. Douglas Adams. Can we do more Douglas Adams. Sure. And less everything else. Sure. He is one of my favorite authors. And mine too. Deepak, so after July here, how close are you to cash flow positive?\n\nSo your question is after July, how close are we to cash flow positive? Yeah, you have July under the books here, so how close are you to cash flow positive? Yeah, well, we don't have let me tell this point, one, we don't have July results done but it doesn't matter exactly where we are in the month of July. What really matters is over the quarter because it depends on deliveries, depends on production, many factors.\n\nSo we will be significantly cash flow positive for the quarter. I think that's what really matters. And like the logic question is like do we have like a low balance in the bank? The answer is no, we've got – we're in no – we're not in any kind of cash shortage at all. Yeah, that's a simple answer. Are we running low on money? The answer is no. No, no, no. That's not the question.\n\nIt's just as you're here and you have – you're selling your higher priced cars for better margin, how's the third quarter look for what you said, for being cash flow positive? Yeah, I'd say highly confident of being cash flow positive and being GAAP profitable in Q3. We're sitting here today saying that based on what our expectation is. So yes, sitting here on August 1.\n\nIs there anything we know at the end of July, it's one month in, we're highly confident of being cash flow positive and GAAP profitable in Q3 and Q4. Now there could be force majeure like earthquake, touch wood, but something like that or massive recession all of a sudden, but in the absence of that, of really unusual... Straightforward. Macro events, yeah. Thanks, guys. Great. Thank you very much. Let's go to a journalist question. Thank you.\n\nOur next question comes from Tim Higgins with Wall Street Journal. Hi. Thanks for the call. Question for you. Do you still plan to make a total of 1 million vehicles in the calendar year of 2020? I think so, yeah. If it's not a million, it's going to be pretty close. I'd say if it's not a million it'd probably be 750,000 or something like that in 2020.\n\nSo, we're aiming for a million, 2020, but somewhere between half million and a million seems pretty likely. Where do you get the capacity to do that? There's this place called Shanghai. Okay. Shanghai will be important for that, that goal? Yeah. h Okay. Where does the Model Y... I think so.\n\nYeah, I think we can do over half a million vehicles – actually probably more like 600,000 vehicles with current Giga and Fremont, and so they could throw 100,000, 200,000, maybe more, couple hundred thousand from Shanghai. We're probably going to be more than 600,000 with Fremont and Giga, Nevada.\n\nThat's why I think maybe it's not – I think we have a shot at a million but somewhere 700,000, 800,000 seems pretty likely given the current what we know today. Have you made any decisions on where you're going to make the Model Y, anyway you'd like to tell me? Not yet. Do you expect to announce it this year though? Maybe. Maybe. Cool. Let's go to the next question, please. Thank you.\n\nI should say we are hoping to identify a Gigafactory location in Europe before the end of this year. It's not for sure but we are hoping to do that before the end of the year. Got you. Thank you. Our next question comes from Zachary Shahan with CleanTechnica. Hello. First of all, thanks for the recent retweet, Elon.\n\nI was really impressed with the Model 3 after owning a Model S, so I'm really impressed how much you've developed since the early days. My first question was about Conquest sales, actually. Right before the call we published an article that Camry sales were down 22% year-over-year, Prius sales were down 23% year-over-year and we're very curious how much you're pulling from these other cars, other segments.\n\nIt sounds like you sort of answered that question at the beginning, but can you give anything in terms of what percentage those top five are in terms of trade-in sales? And how broad you're pulling? I know you pull from pickup trucks, from sports cars. Can you speak a little more about the diversity you're pulling from? Actually, what we have right now is just the top five.\n\nSo I'm not sure what the allocation is between top five or where it goes beyond top five. We just sort of out of curiosity asked for the top five breakdown. And it's just interesting that people are trading up into a Tesla, so they're choosing to spend more money on a Tesla than their current car, just based on the trade-in values. A Civic is a very inexpensive car compared to particularly the Model 3 today.\n\nSo that's promising from a market access standpoint. But of course, long term, we're going to do the Model Y and compact SUV. We're going to do the pickup truck, the Semi, the next generation bus . We got lots of awesome ideas, and probably the biggest limiter on our growth is like how fast can we grow battery production? And especially cell production and the wholesale supply chain I think will be the fundamental determinant of Tesla's growth.\n\nAnd regarding the... We're super fired up to do the set. I think they're all super cool. I know Jerome's favorite is the Semi, and that's pretty wicked, obviously. And... I love it. Yeah, it's great. And the where we unveiled – we've actually figured – we've made significant improvements to the design since the unveiling that we had, and it's really even better than what we talked about.\n\nProbably my personal favorite for the next product is pickup truck, and we are going to just do an amazing pickup truck. And the Model Y, compact SUV, probably the most popular car category in the world, so that's like obviously going to sell pretty well. So a lot of cool things.\n\nAnd of course, Tesla Energy, getting the – we're kind of cell starved for Powerwall right now, so we actually had to artificially limit the number of Powerwalls because we don't have enough cells. So we're solving for that very rapidly and we expect to ramp up Powerwall and Powerpack production substantially later this year and early next and as well as ramping up retrofit solar and then the Solar Roof.\n\nWe now have several hundred homes with the Solar Roof on them, and that's going well. It takes a while to just confirm that the Solar Roof is going to last for 30 years and all the details work out, and we're working with first responders to make sure it's safe in the event of a fire and that kind of thing.\n\nSo it's quite a long validation program for a roof which has got to last for 30, 40, 50 years, but we also expect to ramp that up next year at our Gigafactory 2 in Buffalo. That's going to be super exciting. If there's a company with a better product roadmap, I'd like to know where it is, because we've got some super awesome stuff coming. Yeah.\n\nAnd regarding the Model Y, there's been a lot of questioning if you're going to have the same process as with Model 3 with reservations, if you're going to shorten the reservation timeline or if you're going to have a different process this time around. We haven't made a final decision on that. So a last question then.\n\nRegarding the daily production, we've been seeing a rise and fall with the daily production of the Model 3 as you incorporate new performance or white seats. Can you speak at all – we always like to get the technical side of what you're doing there. Can you speak at all about what the bottlenecks are right now that you're working through and what we can sort of – how we can picture ourselves in the factory there with you? All right.\n\nAnd actually one of the things I love about your writing is that you really care about getting the details right, and you really understand things well, which is awesome. But I have to be careful I don't have a sound bite that is then for those that don't have a nuanced appreciation of the situation, that sound bite then gets – becomes front page news. So it's like, nope, that's not what I meant. Yeah. We know. Yeah, exactly.\n\nI'm like, oh, man, this is like shooting myself in the foot there. Right now, the biggest constraint on production again, please, do not make a federal case out of this, because it's something that's solved like in a matter of a week or two, is body production. So that's why – you can generally tell what am I personally working on, that's going to be the bottleneck in the company most likely, so reducing Model 3 bodies.\n\nWe've made huge progress in the last few weeks and in fact I was just told that we were able to achieve our first 24 hour period where we made over 800 Model 3 bodies which is pretty great. So sustain that 800 plus per day rate and then doing great, Jay is doing great. Yeah, it's good. Yeah. I've got 47 questions. But I'll end with a quick request. Years ago you... Sorry. Go ahead.\n\nYears ago you warned about a coming short tsunami and it seemed obvious it was coming, but the shorts didn't really seem to recognize it and then sort of attacked you, trolled you for months and then finally, it came. You again, warned very honestly, I think very directly, that there's going to be an epic short squeeze. We have I think the whole community has a little request.\n\nDon't let the trolls get you down, don't see the trolls too much, but we do like it when you tease the trolls a bit. So use your judgment. But thanks a lot for what you're doing. All right. Well, thank you for your in-depth coverage of clean-energy technology. Thank you very much and the very last question comes from Galileo Russell (01:15:44) who represents the retail shareholders. Congrats on an awesome quarter.\n\nReally proud to be a Tesla shareholder with the Model 3 ramping to 5,000 a week. And I think you may have touched on this but I'm curious. Will Tesla ever produce vehicles at Gigafactory 1, maybe the Semi? And then I'm curious on any manufacturing synergies between the Semi and the Model 3. Oh wow. Interesting questions. You always come up with really interesting questions.\n\nReally interesting questions that I cannot actually – the first one I cannot – it gets so much attention, where we put production. So I can't answer any like where we're going to put production questions. Will the Semi use a bunch of Model 3 technology? The answer is yes. Jerome don't know if you want to elaborate on that or – up to you.\n\nWell, I mean you can already see in the prototype that we've leverage a lot of the Model 3 components, the screens... Yeah. the door handles. I mean as much as possible... The motors. Yeah, the motors, yeah, in the prototype, a lot of the cell technology. But there are some changes and I'd rather not make that public. Yeah, obviously it's going to be better than what we showed last year. There is a lot of improvements, yeah. Okay.\n\nSo hopefully you can talk more about this with the battery project, with PG&E that was recently announced. I'm wondering if you could elaborate how you're prioritizing battery pack between auto and energy storage. Because it seems like you ramped auto battery pack to 20 gigawatt hours in the past 12 months, but are only guiding for about 1 gigawatt hour of Tesla Energy installation in the next year.\n\nSo I'm wondering why is Tesla Energy, given its supply constraint, like why not ramp up supply to 10 gigawatts? It seems like the guidance is a little low there. Yeah, as Elon suggested earlier, we are – essentially makes sense for us to prioritize Model 3, but we are adding a ton of capacity, cell capacity and JB can talk more about it that will enable us to dramatically ramp our energy storage business as well in the coming quarters.\n\nYeah, you kind of mentioned only 1 gigawatt hour. But that's a big number in that business. And that's maybe on the order of 300% what we did the prior year and we're still aiming at maybe another 3x to 4x growth for 2019. These are mad – at scale, these are insane growth levels. Crazy growth rate. Yeah, It's not like shipping a software. This is like you actually need to build – it's like a lot of atoms... No offence to software.\n\nYes, no, no, I mean like once you build software, you can obviously have lots of copies, but like when it's like a lot of really complicated atoms, man, hard. Maybe specifically also your cell – to the cell-limitation question. I think this has been mentioned before but we also do use some other vendors. Oh, yeah. Panasonic. Yes. We use Samsung and LG and yeah. Exactly, in our energy products.\n\nSo I've heard people feel like this is kind of a zero-sum game or something with Model 3 but that is not the case. And we do... It's a partial-sum game. We did shut down a Powerwall cell line in favor of Model 3 to be totally honest but we kind of had to do that. But we're adding new cell lines and we'll be able to address that issue very soon. I think to put it in perspective, we are soon tripling our storage. These are mad growth numbers. Mad.\n\nAnd it's one thing to produce, but it's also another thing to install. Yeah, exactly. You need infrastructure and the people to do that. So, it's massive scaling as very few companies grow at that rate. Yeah, and one of the biggest challenges like, we've got a – there needs to be a lot more electricians. So we actually had an electrician training program.\n\nWe're going to actually have to train new people who've never been electricians before to be electricians because otherwise there's not enough electrician capacity in the United States and the most places in the world to install Powerwalls. Yeah. So it's like we have to actually literally train electricians and it takes like two years basically before somebody is certified to be an electrician.\n\nSo it's sort of like, okay, we obviously can't grow faster than the rates, the number of electricians who can physically install a Powerwall. That's like one of the limitations. And that PG&E project you mentioned is an incredibly exciting one. It kind of is indicative... Yeah, it's awesome actually. of the growth rate. It has a... Yeah, can you elaborate on that? We can't say too much. I hope I haven't said anything that's like .\n\nIt is over 1 gigawatt hour. Yeah, gigawatt hour. That's public, right? Fully considered. Okay. It is now. Okay. All right, okay. And just to give you a sense, it took us five years of growing that business to get to 1 gigawatt hour, cumulative deployed. And there were like so many people who had said 1 gigawatt hour is an impossible number for lithium ion. Like that's – yeah.\n\nI mean, the car business is still much bigger as we sit here today but the growth rate on energy is faster. Yeah, if you extrapolate energy growth rate, well, obviously, if you extrapolate anything, when that triples for a year pretty soon becomes the size of the universe, but long-term we would expect the energy business to catch up to the auto business in size. Nice. And then, lastly, I'm really curious, Elon.\n\nDo you have any part of the business that shareholders should be asking or thinking more about? Or what do you wish would have been asked on the call? Good question. We were trying to anticipate – actually, I try and anticipate the questions that are on people's minds, that's why we have the autopilot autopilot team here and much of the executive team of Tesla here to try to be proactive in that regard. And is there anything...\n\nWell, I guess, in terms of... I think we really covered a lot. So if there's any – yeah. Just very last thing. Your very last thing. Go ahead. Yeah, sorry. One last thing. The new fiscal engineering strategy of profits and cash flow and you saying that would last in perpetuity sort of caught me by surprise, personally.\n\nAnd so I'm curious if there's any trade-off to growth with that new strategy or sort of what's the rationale behind the scenes because this seems like the biggest change in Tesla's financial engineering strategy since the IPO. Yeah, being cash flow positive and capping at positive doesn't mean like – doesn't mean we're rolling in money.\n\nThere's definitely going to be cases where we're just barely cash flow positive or barely profitable in some quarters in the future. But I think it's been a long time, almost 15 years now. I think we're at a scale where the amount of time that it takes to actually scale up and do things is – there's a certain – like we're big enough, where we actually can spend money efficiently to make things go faster.\n\nSo we kind of hit scale with volume production of cars. And I think we can – I think this is probably the right thing to do is to be sort of essentially self-funding on a go forward basis and apart from selective situations where there's say some debt – temporary debt for construction of a Gigafactory in China or Europe or something like that.\n\nBut apart from that, I think we – essentially like I don't think we're constraining growth in any significant way by adopting this strategy at this point. It would have been true in times past, but I think it is no longer the case, yeah. Okay, I think that's going to be all the time... Awesome. Thank you so much. Thank you very much. Unfortunately, that's I think all the time we have today.\n\nAppreciate all your questions and looking forward to speaking to you next quarter. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for participating in today's conference. This does conclude the program. You may all disconnect, and have a wonderful day.","textByLang":{"en":"Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Tesla Q2 2018 financial results and Q&A webcast call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later, we will conduct a question-and-answer session, and instructions will follow at that time. As a reminder, this conference may be recorded. I would now like to introduce your host for today's conference, Mr. Martin Viecha, Senior Director of Investor Relations. Mr.\n\nViecha, you may begin. Thank you very much, Shiree, and good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to Tesla's second quarter 2018 Q&A webcast. I'm joined today by Elon Musk, JB Straubel, Deepak Ahuja, Robin Ren, our Head of Sales; Jerome Guillen, our VP of Trucks; and we also have our Autopilot team with us here, Andrej Karpathy, Director of AI; Stuart Bowers, our VP of Engineering; and Pete Bannon, our Director of Silicon Engineering.\n\nOur Q2 results were announced at about 1:00 PM Pacific Time in the Update Letter we published at the same link as this webcast. During this call, we will discuss our business outlook and make forward-looking statements. These comments are based on our predictions and expectations as of today.\n\nActual events or results could differ materially due to a number of risks and uncertainties, including those mentioned in our most recent filings with the SEC. During the question-and-answer portion of today's call, please limit yourself to one question and one follow up. Before we jump into Q&A, Elon has some opening remarks. Elon? Hi. Thank you for joining.\n\nFirst of all, I'd like to say we're incredibly proud of the Tesla team for producing 7,000 Model 3, Model S and Model X vehicles in the last week of June. It was an amazing effort. It's an honor to work with such great team to produce that incredible result. It's like mind-blowing. We continued to achieve 5,000 Model 3s per week, or 7,000 combined S, X and 3, multiple weeks in July, showing that, so we're able to do this on a sustained basis.\n\nAnd we expect to, in the absence of a force majeure or some very unexpected event, be able to achieve an average of 5,000 Model 3s or above for Q3 and 2,000 Model S, Xs or above per week for Q3 as well. So essentially, 7,000 cars a week plus on average for Q3. That's an amazing jump from only a year ago. We were producing 2,000 vehicles a week. It's really kind of a mind-blowing leap forward for a manufacturing company.\n\nSo, yeah, just incredible work by the team to do that. Many, many late nights, weekends, extreme amounts of effort and lots of smart ideas. It's amazing. One of the results you're seeing is that the Model 3 market share has surpassed all competitor premium midsized sedans combined. So, Model 3 market share is now a majority, in July, it was a majority of all premium sedans. That trend is, we think, likely to continue.\n\nWe do not think it will stop there. I have Robin Ren here, who is our worldwide head of sales, to talk about some of the interesting elements that we're seeing in terms of cars that people are trading in, the sales and demand trends, it's looking really positive. We're also getting great feedback on Model 3 from our customers, and we're now delivering Dual Motor and All-Wheel Drive versions and the Model 3 reviews are outstanding.\n\nReally couldn't ask for better reviews from some of the toughest critics in the world. And it's – yeah. The thing that we're really finding is that the more Model 3s we deliver to the field, it's actually causing parallel growth of our sales. So, we deliver a Model 3 to somebody, they love it, they tell all their friends, they're actually – really, our customers are our primary sales force.\n\nThey love their car and take their friends for a drive and that's the thing that fundamentally drives our sales. But not everyone has a Model 3 obviously, so we need to get the cars out there for test drives. As it is right now, not even all stores in North America have Model 3 for test drives.\n\nWe prioritize getting cars to customers, but we're soon going to have Model 3s available for test drives in all stores and both the performance version and the rear-wheel drive version. So because a lot of people, they will not buy a car until they test drive it, which is not unreasonable.\n\nAlthough on Sunday when I delivered it, testing out like direct delivery, which I think is definitely the future, direct delivery from factory to customer's home or work or wherever they are, the guy who bought it had never actually even sat in a Model 3. I was like, wow, okay. I mean I said, well, how do you feel about the car now that you have it and you've driven it? He's like I love it. It's amazing. So, yes.\n\nIt seems to be really well-received. Yeah. So, at a production rate of 7,000 cars a week, we believe we can be sustainably profitable from Q3 onwards. We're going to try to raise that rate of the Model 3 production steadily in the coming quarters and try to get to the 10,000 cars a week number as soon as we can.\n\nAs we spent a lot of time debugging a wide range of manufacturing issues that the potential for our existing lines to be able to produce far more cars is much greater than expected.\n\nThat by simplifying production lines, by speeding them up, by, in some cases, everything is being done manual instead of automatic, and in other cases, having be done automatic instead of manual, we've been able to achieve dramatic improvements to the output of existing lines, which means that our CapEx growing from 5,000 cars a week to 10,000 cars a week is a tiny fraction of the CapEx needed to grow from 0 to 5,000 Model 3s.\n\nThis is, I think, very good news for capital efficiency of the company. And with, that it's going inform future mass market vehicles that we produce. And from an operating plant standpoint, from Q3 onwards, I really want to emphasize our goal is to be profitable and cash-flow positive for every quarter, going forward.\n\nNow obviously, if there's a big recession or there's a severe force majeure event that interrupts the supply chain, that's not always possible, but we're confident that in, provided the economy is roughly where it is today or reasonably good and there's not a big force majeure event that we – I feel comfortable achieving a GAAP income positive and cash flow positive quarter every quarter from here on out.\n\nThat's a – there may be occasional quarters, where we pay back a big loan or something, where there may be just because we paid back a big loan. But absent that, it would be cash flow positive. So, once again, I want to thank the Tesla team for their incredible work and our customers for their support.\n\nWithout the great people we have at Tesla and the customers who put their faith in us by buying our product, we would not be here today and, yeah, really never been more excited about the future of Tesla. We've got super exciting set of products to bring out in the future. And, yeah, I mean, sorry if I sound a little tired. I've been working like crazy in the body shop lately, but it's really going great, super excited.\n\nIt's like, yeah, some good people. And a number of the executive team here. In particular I asked the three key leaders of the Tesla Autopilot team to be here. So, I think to go from here to see if Autopilot leaders of Tesla could introduce themselves and say a bit about what you're working on, what you're excited about in the future. Sorry if I put you guys on the spot or anything.\n\nI think we're making pretty radical advances in the core software technology and the division beyond that. And then very importantly with the Tesla self-driving chip technology that we've been working on for three years is finally coming to fruition. Pete Bannon is going to talk a lot about that.\n\nBut it's a plug-in replacement for the existing computer and enables an order of magnitude improvements in operations per second or frames per second as a way to think about it. And we think this is really the key to Tesla full vehicle autonomy. And like I said, designed to be really easy to replace. I'll let Pete talk about that. So, let me start off like Stuart, Andrej, and then Pete. Okay. Hi. I'm Stuart. You need to talk louder by the way.\n\nYeah, we'll talk extra loud. So I'm Stuart. Yeah, joined the team relatively recently. Incredibly excited to kind of see the foundation the team has built up until this point and we're building on top of that right now.\n\nSo right now, a lot of the focus is on Autopilot v9, which is our sort of on-ramp to off-ramp solution that's going to automatically attempt to change lanes, understand what lane the car is in, understand the route the user wants to travel and take that route for the user and ultimately hand back control to that user which is kind of stay in control. Integrated navigation.\n\nSo, you'd like by the way, a little tip for if you're driving Model S or X or 3, is if you just tap the Navigate button and just drag down, it will automatically navigate you to your home or work, depending upon where you are. That's a pretty cool feature. So, yeah, that's part of the focus right now. We're also kind of digging in on some new safety features.\n\nI think probably the thing which is most exciting for me, coming from the team is just seeing the foundation that's been built out over the last two years. I think Andrej will talk a lot about some of the perception and vision work we've done there with the data engine.\n\nThat has sort of allowed us to build on top of that very, very quickly and I think we're all starting to see a new set of safety features that really only make sense in this world, we have extremely high understanding of what's happening around the vehicle.\n\nSo, I think when I start thinking about like what gets me excited when I come into work, it's like, one, starting to introduce real aspects of kind of not just making the commute kind of reducing the drudgery or kind of the risk of commuting but also really fun and the second is like dramatically improving safety in a way that you really can only do once you have this very nuanced understanding of the world around you with perception.\n\nHello everyone. My name is Andrej Karpathy, and I'm the Director of AI here at Tesla. In particular, I lead the vision team which is responsible for turning the video stream that we receive from all the cameras and the vehicle into an understanding of what is around us and around the vehicle.\n\nI worked with Neural Networks for about 10 years mostly as and what I'm really excited about is really building out this infrastructure for computer vision that underlies all the neural network training, trying to get those networks to work extremely well, and make that a really good foundation on top of which we build out all the features of the Autopilot like the features associated with the v9 release that's going to come up and that Stuart as mentioned.\n\nHi. This is Pete Bannon. My team is leading currently the Hardware 3 development. The chips are up and working, and we have drop-in replacements for S, X and 3, all have been driven in the field. They support the current networks running today in the car at full frame rates with a lot of idle cycles to spare. So, I think we're all really excited about what Andrej and his team will be able to do with this hardware in the future.\n\nI think like one little anecdotal story was I gave a talk to his team on Hardware 3 last month explaining how it worked and what it was capable of, and then afterwards, one of the researchers came up to me. He was really excited, and he said, this is so exciting.\n\nI'm really excited about exploiting this hardware and he said, I think people are going to want to come and work at Tesla, just to have access to this hardware and to try it out because it's so exciting. So as a hardware designer, having excited software developers is the best. And it's a really fun place to work because I do get to work with my two primary customers, Stuart and Andrej, and making them happy is pretty fun.\n\nYeah, actually, Pete, maybe just – some people know about your background, but not everyone does. So if you could just like – Pete's a super humble guy, but it would be great just to – yeah. Talk about the stuff you've done before. Let's see. I started working designing computers at Digital Equipment Corporation in 1984, back when they were refrigerator-sized, and I've been working on smaller and smaller designs ever since.\n\nI was a Intel Fellow working on a team for a little while, then I was VP of Architecture and Verification at PA Semi, which was acquired at Apple. I led the design of the first ARM 32-bit processor that went into the iPhone 5. I built the team that designed the first ARM 64-bit processor in the world which went into the iPhone 5S. And then I worked on performance modeling and performance improvements at Apple for eight years.\n\nAnd then two years later, I came to Tesla and designed the neural network accelerator that's part of Hardware 3 and helped architect the rest of the Hardware 3 solution that will be in the car next year. Yeah, it may be worth articulating some of the details, design principles that explain why the Tesla AI chip, or AI computer, essentially, for the car is able to achieve an order of magnitude better processing than anything else that exists.\n\nYeah. Sure. So, like two years ago when I joined Tesla, we did a survey of all of the solutions that were out there for running neural networks, including GPUs. We went and talked to other people like at ARM that were building embedded solutions for running neural networks. And pretty much everywhere we looked, if somebody had a hammer, whether it was a CPU or a GPU or whatever, they were adding something to accelerate neural networks.\n\nBut nobody was doing a bottoms-up design from scratch, which is what we elected to do.\n\nWe had the benefit of having the insight into seeing what Tesla's neural networks looked like back then and having projections of what they would look like into the future, and we were able to leverage all of that knowledge and our willingness to totally commit to that style of computing to produce a design that's dramatically more efficient and has dramatically more performance than what you can buy today. Cool. Thanks.\n\nYeah, I mean, essentially the key is to be able to run the neural net at a fundamental, at a bare metal level so that it's especially doing the calculations in the circuits itself and not in some sort of emulation mode which is how a GPU or a CPU would operate. So, you want to do basically a massive amount of localized matrix multiplication with the memory right there.\n\nSo, it's a huge number of very simple complications with the memory needed to store the results of those complications right next to the circuits that are doing the matrix calculations. And the net effect is an order of magnitude improvement in the frames per second. Our current hardware, which – I'm a big fan of NVIDIA, they do great stuff. But using a GPU, fundamentally it's an emulation mode, and then you also get choked on the bus.\n\nSo, the transfer between the GPU and the CPU ends up being one of the constraints of the system. So, the net effect is we're able to, with the Tesla computer – and we've been like semi-stealth mode basically for the last two to three years on this, but I think it's probably time to let the cat out of the bag because the cat's going to come out of the bag anyway.\n\nBut it's an incredible job by Pete and his team to create this, the world's most advanced computer designed specifically for autonomous operation. And as a rough sort of whereas the current NVIDIA's hardware can do 200 frames a second, this is able to do over 2,000 frames a second and with full redundancy and fail-over.\n\nSo, it's an amazing design and we're going to be looking to increase the size of our chip team and our investment in that as quickly as possible. I think we have some of the best aces in the world, but I think we want to build on that even more.\n\nAnd it costs the same as our current hardware and we anticipate that this would have to be replaced, this replacement, which is why we made it easy to switch out the computer, and that's all that needs to be done. If we take out one computer and plug in the next. That's it. All the connectors are compatible and you get an order of magnitude, more processing and you can run all the cameras at primary full resolution with the complex neural net.\n\nSo it's super kick-ass. Thank you for doing that. You're welcome. Thanks for making nets and thanks for making the software. Anyway, basically I wanted to introduce three of the key people at Tesla that are doing this. I have huge respect and admiration for you guys and it's because of what you and your team's doing that Tesla will be successful in this arena. Thank you. Thank you, Elon. Shiree, let's go to the first question. Thank you.\n\nOur first question comes from Tony Sacconaghi with Bernstein. Yes. Thank you. I have one question and one follow-up, please. First, just on gross margins, it looks like S & X gross margins were up maybe 500 basis points sequentially and I'm wondering maybe you can articulate what drove that. And then, more importantly, it looks like you're calling for Model 3 gross margins to go from about maybe 3% this quarter to 15% next quarter.\n\nThat's about a $6,000 cost out per car and I'm wondering if you can maybe help us understand what sort of the forces that drive that kind of improvement in a relatively short timeframe. Yeah, absolutely. First of all, I'd like to apologize for being impolite on the prior call. Honestly, I think there's really no excuse for bad manners and I was violating my own rule in that regard. Certainly, I have some excuse.\n\nThere are reasons for it in that I'd gotten no sleep and been working sort of 110-hour, 120-hour weeks. But, nonetheless, there's still no excuse. My apologies for not being polite on the prior call. I appreciate that. Thank you. And let's see. With respect to gross margin, I'll touch on that and then hand the rest to Deepak, but, certainly, when it's filling up the production line, there are a tremendous amount of inefficiencies.\n\nThere's a lot of hurry up and wait, where some parts of the production line move well. Then, one part doesn't and you have associates waiting around with nothing to do. There are parts that we thought were right but then it turns out that they weren't right. We got to send them back to the supplier. It's just like the whole sort of giant machine.\n\nIt just needs to kind of lurch into a high pace and there's a lot of lurching, which is very inefficient. So, you end up having super high labor costs per car and it just takes time to sort of spool up this giant machine. Basically a production system is like a giant cybernetic collector and it moves as fast as the slowest part.\n\nSo, as we address those slow parts and as we improve efficiency, then gross margin and so the profitability per car just improves dramatically. That's sort of at a high level. Deepak, do you want to add to that? Elon, you described it extremely well. So just to sort of summarize, this was a major milestone for us in Q2 that the gross margin in Model 3 turned slightly positive and we feel really good about the path ahead.\n\nAnd as Elon said, it's driven predominantly by manufacturing cost efficiencies. The labor hours that we use to produce each car becomes less. The initial ramp-up costs that we have that are one-time, those inefficiencies disappear. Our fixed costs that are there that gets leveraged to a higher volume. So, all of that.\n\nActually, a thing that can also happen is that if it turns out, let's say, the production part was either designed wrong or built wrong or there's something wrong with it, then on camera, on emergency basis, we have to go with low volume tooling which can be produced quickly. But a part produced off of low volume tooling can easily be 10 times more than a part produced off of production tooling.\n\nAnd so, sometimes where it gets really bad, if you've got a machine something out of a block and has either that or going to make a car, then the cost of using low volume cost of use of low volume tooling can be really nutty. Yeah. And the journey just continues as we stabilize and grow production from these levels we achieve even more efficiencies.\n\nAnd Q3 also benefits with somewhat improved mix as we're going to sell more All-Wheel Drive and performance cars and in the long run as we continue to achieve those efficiencies on cost, our gross margins will continue to increase. Yeah, I don't know if this trend will continue. We're trying to give you essentially all the information that at least we know of.\n\nBut we're seeing roughly half of all customers choose the Dual Motor or All-Wheel Drive option, which is actually quite a good positive surprise. Yeah, it's been heartening to see the mix in terms of what customers want. Robin can probably add more to that. Yeah. So, starting from end of June when we opened the configurator and invited existing reservation orders, we saw tremendous excitement and response from our customers.\n\nAs Deepak just mentioned, we actually see more orders for the All-Wheel Drive Dual Motor car and performance cars combined than the rear wheel drives. Yeah, we don't want to say like this should be assumed to be a continued thing. It's just the thing we are seeing now. Yeah. Correct.\n\nAnother thing I want to point out is that we are actually – since we opened the configurator to the general public in early July, we are seeing an increased demand coming from people who do not currently hold a reservation.\n\nI think that's something that we found super exciting, because these are the people who actually had no idea about Model 3 and they heard about Model 3 is available to order, many of them requested test drives and since early July, we have over 60,000 test drive requests in the U. S. alone and these people come into our stores, do the test drive, and they become super excited and they decide to order the car.\n\nSo, we believe that the strong demand coming from especially the non-reservation orders is going to dramatically increase as we increase our test drive population. To give you an example, three weeks ago, we had only eight stores having test drive cars to Elon's point earlier. Now we have over 90 stores having test drive cars. Okay. It's worth mentioning – just an interesting little bits of information that Robin was telling me.\n\nI'd just like to also Robin on doing a great job running worldwide sales. Nice to have you in this role and the awesome work done in China was really some next level stuff.\n\nAnyway, Robin was born and raised in Shanghai and has been – along with Tom and Grace and other members of our team in China has been sort of instrumental in establishing the China factory and making sure that gets done right and having a great relationship with the government. And so it's nice work in that regard. It's really – I think some of the things people don't expect like what are the top five trading cars for Model 3?\n\nYeah, this is very interesting. So, we looked at what people who are buying Model 3 cars in the United States, what cars they are trading in. What we found is through this year, from January to July, the top five non-Tesla cars people are trading in to get into a Model 3, they are Toyota Prius, BMW 3 Series, Honda Accord, Honda Civic and Nissan Leaf. Really surprising. Yeah. They are surprising because they are not the traditional premium sedans.\n\nThey are actually – many of them are mainstream midsized sedans. Right. And we're obviously at this point not yet selling our $35,000 car, so this is promising for the future. All right. Cool. Next question? Thank you. Our next question comes from Joseph Spak with RBC Capital Markets. Hi. Good afternoon. Thanks. Maybe we could tackle some of the commentary about the Gigafactory coming in China.\n\nWhen you first announced the Gigafactory 1, I think you said that was going to be about a $5 billion investment, and you mentioned some volume numbers associated with what you think you could do in China. So we do some extrapolation, looks like maybe 15 gigawatt hours of initial capacity. I'm wondering if you could also do a linear extrapolation on the costs you think you need for that factory. Sure.\n\nAnd I would also like to apologize for being impolite on the last call with you. It's not right, and hope you accept my apologies. Thanks. So with respect to Gigafactory CapEx, I think we learned a tremendous amount with Gigafactory 1, and we're confident that we can do the Gigafactory in China for a lot less.\n\nI think it's probably closer to – this is just a guess, but probably closer to $2 billion, and that should be at a higher – and that would be sort of at the 250,000 vehicle per year rate. So I think we can be a lot more efficient with CapEx, and that would include at least a factory module and pack production, body shop, paint shop and general assembly. Might even be less than that, but that's about the right number for that.\n\nAnd then cell production is something we're still figuring out with respect to the Shanghai factory. JB, would you like to add to that? Yeah, I'd agree with all that. We found a surprising number of ways to improve efficiency and speed and density as well at Gigafactory 1, and all those lessons will absolutely be shared with Gigafactory 3.\n\nThe teams are already of course beginning to collaborate and start to figure out ways to do this more efficiently and with less CapEx than last time. Yeah. Yeah, I think, we – like less than half is like would be a good estimate. And maybe a lot less than half, but not more than half, would be a fair estimate for CapEx to get to that 250,000 level.\n\nSo it's just – we just learned a tremendous amount about manufacturing, it's like – it's definitely burned out a lot of neurons, yeah, mental scar tissue, it's like next level, but on the plus side we really know a lot about volume manufacturing at this point.\n\nI mean, there are so many specific examples, but even in just recent weeks and months, we found some – certain areas of production that have been very capital intensive that we've been able to speed up with almost no additional CapEx by maybe 20%, even 25% or 30%. Yeah, kind of crazy. Including on the cell – including the cell production.\n\nYeah, just by challenging some of the initial assumptions, the specifications, tweaking the controls and software. Look, what really matters, what actually doesn't matter, things we think matter, and some of it actually ends up not mattering at all. And that's with basically zero CapEx. Yeah. Yes.\n\nSo as you start to add very tactical, strategic CapEx to the existing lines, that's how we can get to something close to double or beyond with a really, really small increment. Yeah, obviously one of the keys to success on the Model 3 production was the GA4 thing, which was led by Jerome.\n\nAnd General Assembly is key, and doing the sort of zone one, two, semiauto lines, which were critical because we had this fundamental failure especially in zone one – zone two of factory module production. Thank you, Jerome. It turns out Jerome was pulling some pretty incredible rabbits out of the hat. That was amazing. Thank you.\n\nAnd people make fun of our tent, but by the way our tent is amazing and this is not like – when people like say tent, they'll think it's like some sort of – something made by REI to go camping. This is a tent that is actually commonly used as a permanent structure.\n\nIt's a giant thing that is very commonly used as a permanent structure and we just had to come up with a creative solution because GA3 was not going to be able to make the rate and so we had to come up with some ideas, and tell people how that all transpired. It's interesting, if you want to... Yeah, thank you. It was a fun project actually. Yes.\n\nSo not only was it producing good results, but a lot of people contributed from different engineering groups and had a lot of fun in the process. We set out... some of the people . It's cool. It's great. It is like this is really satisfying about building a car. We just wanted to create an assembly line that would be very easy and very straightforward. So, it's a straight line. Very simple.\n\nCar enters at one point and it's finished at the other end. Very simple access on all sides. Very simple tooling that we reused for most of – actually, nearly all of it is systems and tools that we discarded from previous SNX or for Model 3. Especially Model 3. Like it was probably we had two weeks to solve this problem, which is like quasi impossible.\n\nSo, we actually didn't have time to order new equipment, because it would have taken too long to arrive. So, we took the conveyors that we'd discarded from the GA3 line, which didn't work or was way too complex to actually do our products. And we amplified, repurposed them, make them sturdy for what was needed. And... Well, I think like the really cool idea was putting them on the 1% grade.\n\nSo it's like technically the conveyors for parts delivery to GA3 were not graded to be able to move something as heavy as a car, so we made it downhill and on a 1%-downward grade with the car at the top. So then, you can actually overcome the transport... Gravity helped. Yeah, gravity. So, basically, even on your slides, you can do – accomplish a lot. Yeah, it's pushing the car. Exactly. No.\n\nAnd something that I'm particularly happy about is that we installed the quality team at the end of the line and we wanted to have at least as high standards on this new line as in the other one, because it is so simple and straightforward, they can run very quickly to any point in the line if there is any potential concern and address very quickly. There is no maze to move around or identify where something happened.\n\nAnd the quality of the cars that come out of this structure is at least as good and we make all the performance cars on this particular line and they seem to be doing quite well. So, this is a very pleasant surprise and the associates seems to be very happy and engaged in that particular area.\n\nSo, this may be a model of how we may want to start general assembly for future vehicles, at least start and we can always add further automation and complexity. And something that's like somewhat counterintuitive is that this actually has fully considered fewer labor hours per car than the GA3 system.\n\nAnd just to elaborate on what Jerome was saying, where we have parts delivery to GA4, the truck literally just backs up to the side of the line, where there is like a door in the tent. And then, that is used to unload parts from suppliers directly to where they are needed on the line. So there's no intermediate assistant.\n\nWhereas for GA3, they're unloaded, they're put in a warehouse, then they're repackaged from the warehouse into these totes, which we actually have 220 people, something like that, across all shifts whose only job it was to repackage parts from the boxes that came in from suppliers to the boxes – to these totes that go into the lifters that go up into GA3.\n\nThat's literally all they do is move things from one box to another box, and we don't need that at all on GA4. All gone. All gone, yeah. And there's a tremendous amount of 24/7 robotics technicians that are constantly trying to make the machines have uptime. That's very expensive and that's where we figured like not having to maintain all these robotic systems, that's a big cost savings as well.\n\nAnd now we're going to be gradually adding simple automation into GA4 to make it easier to build a car and better sort of labor saving devices, but it's just fundamentally – it's already at an efficiency level greater than GA3, which is pretty impressive. Joe, do you have a follow-up question? Our next question comes from James Albertine with Consumer Edge. Good afternoon, and thank you for taking my question.\n\nAnd appreciate all the color you've been providing, wanted to dig a little bit deeper, though, in terms of capital spending plans. Considering your growth you've identified in China with the Model Y, we believe also in the EU, it's been discussed about a factory there. How do you plan to fund all of this growth without going back to the capital markets to raise funds?\n\nAnd can you verify for us whether or not there is a notice from a regulator that would prevent you from raising outside capital? Thanks. We do not – we will not be raising any equity at any point, at least that's – I have no expectation of doing so, do not plan to do so. For China, I think, our default plan will be to use essentially a loan from the local banks in China and fund the Gigafactory in Shanghai with local debt, essentially.\n\nAnd we certainly could raise money, but I think we don't need to and we – yeah, I think, it's better to – it is better discipline not to. Yeah, we're executing on an operating plan that keeps us sufficiently self-funded despite our CapEx needs and our debts maturing, and still keep a very healthy balance on our balance sheet. Yeah, our default plan is we pay – we start paying off our debts. I don't mean refi-ing them, I mean paying them off.\n\nFor example, there's a convert that's coming due soon, a couple hundred million, $900 million, something like that. We expect to pay that off with internally generated cash flow. And still be – still have a healthy cash balance. Yeah. And to answer the other question, there is no such notice from a regulator. Yeah, I'm not sure what you're talking about, but there is no such notice from a regulator. Very good. Thank you very much.\n\nLet's go to the next question, please. Thank you. Our next question comes from George Galliers with Evercore. Hi, George. Are you on the line? Okay. Let's go to the next one. Thank you. Our next question comes from Adam Jonas with Morgan Stanley. Hey, everybody. First, there's so much love and respect for colleagues and Wall Street analysts on this call, it's almost – it is lifting my spirits. What can I say? I got two questions.\n\nThe first is for the Autopilot team. There's an argument that a fully autonomous car is essentially like a terminator that is programmed to save lives in highly complex terrestrial environments and that this same technology with a few tweaks have some pretty obvious military capability. Do you see any risk that U. S. companies will ultimately not be allowed to operate weapons grade AI-based technology in a market like China and vice versa?\n\nWell, this has never come up. I wouldn't call it weapons grade. It's just like the car is trying to drive and if anything, the autonomous cars will be pretty easy to bully because they'll be optimizing so much for avoiding collision. So that'll be more of a challenge than anything else is as soon as somebody sees that the car's autonomous, they know they can like cut them off and the car is going to do everything it can avoid a collision.\n\nSo it's like that'll actually be probably a bigger challenge than anything else, but we've not encountered anything of the nature of what you're saying. So you don't see autonomous cars as a potential germination or training grounds for things that would have a national security or military interest? Okay. Maybe a follow-up, Elon, and my last question, who do you think would be a more formidable competitor over time, BMW or Amazon? For Tesla.\n\nI don't think either of them are likely to be. As far as I know, I'm going to be pretty shocked if Amazon got into the car business, but I think BMW has great engineering. And it's good to see that they're making some investments in electrification. Hopefully, they do more of that. And I'm not sure where they stand on autonomy. It's not on our radar from an autonomy standpoint. Thanks a lot. Okay. Let's go to the next question. Thank you.\n\nOur next question comes from Pierre Ferragu with New Street Research. Thank you for having me on. So I wanted to make sure we understand well how you stop burning cash going forward, in coming quarters. And my understanding is that an important moving part here, probably the most important one is a positive impact of the ramp of the Model 3 on your working capital.\n\nAnd so I did some quick math on the quarter and I see your favorables increased by $430 million, while your risk level didn't move much which makes sense because you get paid on the spot and you pay your suppliers only on a 60 day notice or more. And so if I divide that by the number of incremental cars you've been producing in the quarter, I get to $23,000 per car.\n\nAnd of course my question is whether this is a good way to think about it, which means that going forward when we move into Q3 and Q4 every additional car, every additional Model 3 you're going to produce you're going to bump up payables by something in the region of $20,000 and that's going to be the main driver getting you to breakeven and to stop burning cash. Deepak here. I mean, there are many factors.\n\nClearly, the working capital benefit of the difference in the payable terms versus collecting cash is one of them. But also, it's our gross margin improvement on the business. With the – it's the higher volumes and the higher gross margins, I'm thinking higher gross profit, I'm stating the obvious here on Model 3. Our SNX volumes are increasing too in the second half. That's going to help us significantly.\n\nAnd all of our other businesses are improving their profitability. While our OpEx is staying essentially flat, so massive leverage in the business. So when you combine all of that, that's what is giving us the cash flow from operations to fund the rest of our business and grow cash. I'm stating the obvious, but just sort of summarizing the whole point. Yeah. In terms of follow-up on EP – sorry. Go ahead. Sorry. What was your question?\n\nSorry, can you repeat the follow-up? Sorry Pierre, can you repeat the follow-up? My follow-up was on in terms of order of magnitude, does like $20,000 per car of payables boost over a 60-day period, does that sound like something that makes sense or am I missing other moving part? It's rough order of magnitude correct, yeah. Excellent. Thank you. Okay. Let's go to the next question. Thank you.\n\nOur next question comes from Romit Shah with Nomura Instinet. Yes. Thanks very much. I guess my question is for the Autopilot team. We've been looking forward to this fully autonomous coast-to-coast drive and, Elon, I think you sort of said on previous calls if I can paraphrase that the team has been focused on developing a full self-driving suite that would work basically on all different kinds of road conditions.\n\nAnd I'm just curious, what's holding back that capability today to go coast to coast? And are we closer now that you've strengthened the compute technology? Yeah, we can do a coast to coast drive, especially if we – like if we pick a specific route and then write code to really make that route work, we could do a coast to coast route drive, but that would be kind of gaming the system.\n\nAnd I think it's really important for the autopilot team to be focused on fundamental safety of the existing features. So that's – the focus is really massively on safety of existing features. Then there's an advanced dev role that can do things like recognize traffic lights and stop signs and make hard right turns and that kind of thing, but it's not at the safety level that's considered okay for release.\n\nSo that – yeah, because it really, you want many lines of reliability for anything that's released to end customers. So I don't want to take the team off that until we feel like we've really got everything as best we can for the core functionality. Stuart, you want to add to that? Yeah, I mean, I think the big thing I would say is to reiterate Elon's point. There's no question you can kind of build a demo around this stuff.\n\nThe challenge right now for the team is just increasing the safety and utility of autopilot to over 250,000 cars we have today and pushing more out after that. So I think when we look forward to what the next probably 6 to 12 months look like, it's taking those same kind of features we've been working on, probably deploying them in the form of active safety features.\n\nThat's like a thing we can do already to understand like – use this rich understanding of the environment to actually try to keep you safer, to either beep or brake. And then also, of course like one huge advantage that we have is we can understand what humans actually did in these vehicles and test our software to make sure that we would have made decisions that were similar if not safer.\n\nSo that's going to be a huge part of what we do over the next probably two quarters. Yeah, that said, we might be able to pull off coast-to-coast demo before the end of the year if we – but really like right now Subaru has not focused on the version 9 software release which has got a number of really cool things in it. And we're hoping to get that out to early access program in about four weeks and then broadly in September.\n\nThat's the hardcore focus right now, and that will certainly include some significant advancements in autonomy. And then once that's out and stable, I think that could be a good time to work on the coast-to-coast drive. I don't know if you guys have shared what attach rates are for autopilot. And just as my follow up, I guess I'm curious what you can do to increase the number of cars that have that functionality.\n\nIt would seem like the effects of auto margins and cash flows could be pretty positive. Yeah, I think it's extremely powerful once people are comfortable using the technology and see just how much utility it brings. I think that is a very significant potential for margin gain in the future, but it's contingent on that functionality really making a difference.\n\nI think we will really start to see some of the breakthrough stuff in about a month or so. Okay. Let's go to the next question. Thank you. Thank you. Our next question comes from John Murphy with Bank of America. Good afternoon. Just a first question. Is it fair to assume the GA4 in the tent is now essentially permanent?\n\nAnd if so, is this potentially a new model for capacity and capacity additions that might be much more capital efficient over time? What do you think, Jerome? It's permanent for now until we come up with something different or better, but personally, I think it's a good model to start assembly of any product. Gives a lot of flexibility, and then we can build and iterate over it. Yeah.\n\nLike, necessity is the mother of invention, and when you have to do something quickly, then you just don't have time to spend a lot of capital. So it forces you to be capital efficient. Yeah, it's taught us a lot of lessons on how to be capital efficient in the general assembly area. And so, in that sense, those lessons will carry forward, John. Yeah, I think so, it's still by and large we'll be aiming for steel-frame buildings to be clear.\n\nIt's not like just become tents everywhere. Yeah. I mean the tent itself might be a little bit of a distraction from actually the focus of what's happening inside. And then the methodology... Yes. Exactly.\n\nAnd that's a similar methodology that we've kind of reverted back to and then moved forward from in the module, where we simplified and then did a very, very linear intuitive process that was a bit more manual and then have automated and scaled that up as we understand it and get good control of it.\n\nAnd I think that's a lesson that we're taking to heart broadly across other things that we're going to do in the future and it's an efficient way to scale up. I mean, is that replication of that simplicity why you think Shanghai could be that much less costly and that then Model Y capacity might be that much less costly to add?\n\nYeah, Model Y is sort of a whole separate thing but it's definitely one of the elements that convinced us that we can scale up quickly and at low CapEx in Shanghai, where we do an improved version of GA4. And then, we're also figuring out how to make the paint shop a lot simpler and general assembly a lot simpler. And after this call, I'm headed back out to the... Body shop. The body shop and making the body shop a lot simpler.\n\nMaking it a lot simpler. Yeah, we can really simplify the body shop, man. Wow. And there's a lot that we can really easily improve like design to manufacturing and changing some of the joining approaches that we use and actually making the car lighter, cheaper and better and actually stabler. Yeah, it's really, safe already, but yeah. Maybe one other point, just to follow up quickly.\n\nI think some people have taken this as like a walk back from automation, which is not really accurate. Yeah, exactly. This is basically, I mean, a more thoughtful and focused way to apply automation to the actual issues that matter most. Yes. That's well said. Actually, it's really worth emphasizing JB's point here. Yeah. We're seeing a gain. Yeah, it's not an overall reduction in automation.\n\nIt is a focusing of our efforts automating the processes and the value-add processes that matter the most and I think we got maybe a little bit distracted on this first round automating a lot of things that added complexity that didn't necessarily speed up. And... Way too fancy. And we can save... Start simple and get fancy later. Fancy's going to bite you in the ass. But it's not like we're referring to the dark ages of all manual everything.\n\nThat's not at all the case. Yeah, I mean, Gigafactory is massively automated. It's pretty crazy. And the body production is also heavily automated, almost entirely robots. So it's a mixture of people and automation. There's so much that goes into producing a car going from raw metal and plastic and glass to an actual finished car. And, yeah, as JB was saying, the vast majority of that is highly automated. Okay.\n\nIf I can sneak in one quick follow-up? I mean, when we look at the grosses on the Model 3, you're saying 15% in 3Q, 20% in 4Q and I think the ultimate target is 25%. I mean, what are the average transaction prices you guys are assuming? I mean, it sounds like they are going to be bit higher earlier but is that 25% gross ultimately still built around the low-40,000 ATP? Yes. Okay. The simple answer is yes.\n\nIt'll be lower ASPs than what we have today, clearly, and we are having a richer mix of All-Wheel Drive, as Elon alluded to earlier, so that's going to help, but yeah. 25% is still the target that we have ahead of us. I'm highly confident that it may not be Q1 but I would be shocked if it's not Q2 that we get to 25%. Great. Thank you very much. Thank you. Let's go to the next question. Thank you.\n\nOur next question comes from Alex Haissl with Berenberg. Good evening, everyone, and thanks for taking the question. I would like to come back to the point made on the manufacturing efficiencies. I mean, two main challenges for Tesla but also for the rest of the industry is the manufacturing parts, which has been overcome by a lot of companies already, with the second one being the technology part.\n\nMy question is how would you describe the learning curve of the manufacturing process versus technology and what is really the pace of advancement you're making? Because it looks like on the manufacturing side the curve maybe has meaningfully accelerated here. Thank you. Well, I don't really know actually how others do it to be totally frank.\n\nI just know that the way we – I see the way we are doing it and I'm told that this is how others do it and we're able to find ways to make it much better. I don't know what the delta would be though. We also don't really I think differentiate it quite the way maybe you're implying. I mean, technology and manufacturing are sort of one and the same in many cases and we're treating a lot of the manufacturing problems as a technology problem. Yeah.\n\nExactly. And applying our design teams, our technology teams, if you want to call them that, to solving those issues. So I think the learning curves in some ways are quite similar. Yeah. In fact, it's amazing how much of production is actually software. We're really quite good at software relative to other car companies and manufacturing at volume is mostly a software problem. I think that was not well appreciated.\n\nI think maybe one other lesson learned is that it's obviously not the best approach or best efficiency to outsource some of that development. Yeah. Some of the areas that we struggled the most through the Model 3 ramp were those where we had perhaps less visibility, and less control, and less direct kind of skin in the game on how those production lines were designed and built.\n\nAnd these are cases where we took – we engaged with companies that were supposed to be world class experts in automotive production and we just assumed that they would do stuff that worked but it didn't. So that learning curve often involves Tesla coming directly in, understanding the process intimately, simplifying it, and then essentially doing our own design or changes to the lines that were built.\n\nI think that's a key learning point that we've taken and I think the way that we can do this a lot more efficiently in the future is doing that approach from the start. Just having that very rapid iteration between design and production is incredibly helpful and we understand for example, what are the rate limiters, what makes it hard to produce battery modules.\n\nWe came up with a new design that achieves the same outcome, that's actually lighter, better, cheaper and will be introducing that around the end of this year, probably reach volume production on that in Q1 or something. That will make the car lighter, better, and cheaper and achieve a higher range. That line is under construction, will be active in about six months.\n\nWe did this somewhat the first time around but now there's I think even more exciting understanding of the value of having those – as Elon said, having the design engineers just working intimately with automation and line engineers, simplifying the process as they're designing the product.\n\nYeah, I mean, because we're sort of desperate to try to get the production working, we actually took a design engineering team and had them work in the factory and improve it, work on production and it's given them tremendous insight into how they need to change the designs in the future to make it easier to produce because you feel the pain directly.\n\nOnce you feel the pain, like okay, didn't realize I was torturing people with my terrible design. Now I know. Great. Let's go to the next question. Thank you. Our next question comes from Ben Kallo with Baird. Hello. Douglas Adams. Can we do more Douglas Adams. Sure. And less everything else. Sure. He is one of my favorite authors. And mine too. Deepak, so after July here, how close are you to cash flow positive?\n\nSo your question is after July, how close are we to cash flow positive? Yeah, you have July under the books here, so how close are you to cash flow positive? Yeah, well, we don't have let me tell this point, one, we don't have July results done but it doesn't matter exactly where we are in the month of July. What really matters is over the quarter because it depends on deliveries, depends on production, many factors.\n\nSo we will be significantly cash flow positive for the quarter. I think that's what really matters. And like the logic question is like do we have like a low balance in the bank? The answer is no, we've got – we're in no – we're not in any kind of cash shortage at all. Yeah, that's a simple answer. Are we running low on money? The answer is no. No, no, no. That's not the question.\n\nIt's just as you're here and you have – you're selling your higher priced cars for better margin, how's the third quarter look for what you said, for being cash flow positive? Yeah, I'd say highly confident of being cash flow positive and being GAAP profitable in Q3. We're sitting here today saying that based on what our expectation is. So yes, sitting here on August 1.\n\nIs there anything we know at the end of July, it's one month in, we're highly confident of being cash flow positive and GAAP profitable in Q3 and Q4. Now there could be force majeure like earthquake, touch wood, but something like that or massive recession all of a sudden, but in the absence of that, of really unusual... Straightforward. Macro events, yeah. Thanks, guys. Great. Thank you very much. Let's go to a journalist question. Thank you.\n\nOur next question comes from Tim Higgins with Wall Street Journal. Hi. Thanks for the call. Question for you. Do you still plan to make a total of 1 million vehicles in the calendar year of 2020? I think so, yeah. If it's not a million, it's going to be pretty close. I'd say if it's not a million it'd probably be 750,000 or something like that in 2020.\n\nSo, we're aiming for a million, 2020, but somewhere between half million and a million seems pretty likely. Where do you get the capacity to do that? There's this place called Shanghai. Okay. Shanghai will be important for that, that goal? Yeah. h Okay. Where does the Model Y... I think so.\n\nYeah, I think we can do over half a million vehicles – actually probably more like 600,000 vehicles with current Giga and Fremont, and so they could throw 100,000, 200,000, maybe more, couple hundred thousand from Shanghai. We're probably going to be more than 600,000 with Fremont and Giga, Nevada.\n\nThat's why I think maybe it's not – I think we have a shot at a million but somewhere 700,000, 800,000 seems pretty likely given the current what we know today. Have you made any decisions on where you're going to make the Model Y, anyway you'd like to tell me? Not yet. Do you expect to announce it this year though? Maybe. Maybe. Cool. Let's go to the next question, please. Thank you.\n\nI should say we are hoping to identify a Gigafactory location in Europe before the end of this year. It's not for sure but we are hoping to do that before the end of the year. Got you. Thank you. Our next question comes from Zachary Shahan with CleanTechnica. Hello. First of all, thanks for the recent retweet, Elon.\n\nI was really impressed with the Model 3 after owning a Model S, so I'm really impressed how much you've developed since the early days. My first question was about Conquest sales, actually. Right before the call we published an article that Camry sales were down 22% year-over-year, Prius sales were down 23% year-over-year and we're very curious how much you're pulling from these other cars, other segments.\n\nIt sounds like you sort of answered that question at the beginning, but can you give anything in terms of what percentage those top five are in terms of trade-in sales? And how broad you're pulling? I know you pull from pickup trucks, from sports cars. Can you speak a little more about the diversity you're pulling from? Actually, what we have right now is just the top five.\n\nSo I'm not sure what the allocation is between top five or where it goes beyond top five. We just sort of out of curiosity asked for the top five breakdown. And it's just interesting that people are trading up into a Tesla, so they're choosing to spend more money on a Tesla than their current car, just based on the trade-in values. A Civic is a very inexpensive car compared to particularly the Model 3 today.\n\nSo that's promising from a market access standpoint. But of course, long term, we're going to do the Model Y and compact SUV. We're going to do the pickup truck, the Semi, the next generation bus . We got lots of awesome ideas, and probably the biggest limiter on our growth is like how fast can we grow battery production? And especially cell production and the wholesale supply chain I think will be the fundamental determinant of Tesla's growth.\n\nAnd regarding the... We're super fired up to do the set. I think they're all super cool. I know Jerome's favorite is the Semi, and that's pretty wicked, obviously. And... I love it. Yeah, it's great. And the where we unveiled – we've actually figured – we've made significant improvements to the design since the unveiling that we had, and it's really even better than what we talked about.\n\nProbably my personal favorite for the next product is pickup truck, and we are going to just do an amazing pickup truck. And the Model Y, compact SUV, probably the most popular car category in the world, so that's like obviously going to sell pretty well. So a lot of cool things.\n\nAnd of course, Tesla Energy, getting the – we're kind of cell starved for Powerwall right now, so we actually had to artificially limit the number of Powerwalls because we don't have enough cells. So we're solving for that very rapidly and we expect to ramp up Powerwall and Powerpack production substantially later this year and early next and as well as ramping up retrofit solar and then the Solar Roof.\n\nWe now have several hundred homes with the Solar Roof on them, and that's going well. It takes a while to just confirm that the Solar Roof is going to last for 30 years and all the details work out, and we're working with first responders to make sure it's safe in the event of a fire and that kind of thing.\n\nSo it's quite a long validation program for a roof which has got to last for 30, 40, 50 years, but we also expect to ramp that up next year at our Gigafactory 2 in Buffalo. That's going to be super exciting. If there's a company with a better product roadmap, I'd like to know where it is, because we've got some super awesome stuff coming. Yeah.\n\nAnd regarding the Model Y, there's been a lot of questioning if you're going to have the same process as with Model 3 with reservations, if you're going to shorten the reservation timeline or if you're going to have a different process this time around. We haven't made a final decision on that. So a last question then.\n\nRegarding the daily production, we've been seeing a rise and fall with the daily production of the Model 3 as you incorporate new performance or white seats. Can you speak at all – we always like to get the technical side of what you're doing there. Can you speak at all about what the bottlenecks are right now that you're working through and what we can sort of – how we can picture ourselves in the factory there with you? All right.\n\nAnd actually one of the things I love about your writing is that you really care about getting the details right, and you really understand things well, which is awesome. But I have to be careful I don't have a sound bite that is then for those that don't have a nuanced appreciation of the situation, that sound bite then gets – becomes front page news. So it's like, nope, that's not what I meant. Yeah. We know. Yeah, exactly.\n\nI'm like, oh, man, this is like shooting myself in the foot there. Right now, the biggest constraint on production again, please, do not make a federal case out of this, because it's something that's solved like in a matter of a week or two, is body production. So that's why – you can generally tell what am I personally working on, that's going to be the bottleneck in the company most likely, so reducing Model 3 bodies.\n\nWe've made huge progress in the last few weeks and in fact I was just told that we were able to achieve our first 24 hour period where we made over 800 Model 3 bodies which is pretty great. So sustain that 800 plus per day rate and then doing great, Jay is doing great. Yeah, it's good. Yeah. I've got 47 questions. But I'll end with a quick request. Years ago you... Sorry. Go ahead.\n\nYears ago you warned about a coming short tsunami and it seemed obvious it was coming, but the shorts didn't really seem to recognize it and then sort of attacked you, trolled you for months and then finally, it came. You again, warned very honestly, I think very directly, that there's going to be an epic short squeeze. We have I think the whole community has a little request.\n\nDon't let the trolls get you down, don't see the trolls too much, but we do like it when you tease the trolls a bit. So use your judgment. But thanks a lot for what you're doing. All right. Well, thank you for your in-depth coverage of clean-energy technology. Thank you very much and the very last question comes from Galileo Russell (01:15:44) who represents the retail shareholders. Congrats on an awesome quarter.\n\nReally proud to be a Tesla shareholder with the Model 3 ramping to 5,000 a week. And I think you may have touched on this but I'm curious. Will Tesla ever produce vehicles at Gigafactory 1, maybe the Semi? And then I'm curious on any manufacturing synergies between the Semi and the Model 3. Oh wow. Interesting questions. You always come up with really interesting questions.\n\nReally interesting questions that I cannot actually – the first one I cannot – it gets so much attention, where we put production. So I can't answer any like where we're going to put production questions. Will the Semi use a bunch of Model 3 technology? The answer is yes. Jerome don't know if you want to elaborate on that or – up to you.\n\nWell, I mean you can already see in the prototype that we've leverage a lot of the Model 3 components, the screens... Yeah. the door handles. I mean as much as possible... The motors. Yeah, the motors, yeah, in the prototype, a lot of the cell technology. But there are some changes and I'd rather not make that public. Yeah, obviously it's going to be better than what we showed last year. There is a lot of improvements, yeah. Okay.\n\nSo hopefully you can talk more about this with the battery project, with PG&E that was recently announced. I'm wondering if you could elaborate how you're prioritizing battery pack between auto and energy storage. Because it seems like you ramped auto battery pack to 20 gigawatt hours in the past 12 months, but are only guiding for about 1 gigawatt hour of Tesla Energy installation in the next year.\n\nSo I'm wondering why is Tesla Energy, given its supply constraint, like why not ramp up supply to 10 gigawatts? It seems like the guidance is a little low there. Yeah, as Elon suggested earlier, we are – essentially makes sense for us to prioritize Model 3, but we are adding a ton of capacity, cell capacity and JB can talk more about it that will enable us to dramatically ramp our energy storage business as well in the coming quarters.\n\nYeah, you kind of mentioned only 1 gigawatt hour. But that's a big number in that business. And that's maybe on the order of 300% what we did the prior year and we're still aiming at maybe another 3x to 4x growth for 2019. These are mad – at scale, these are insane growth levels. Crazy growth rate. Yeah, It's not like shipping a software. This is like you actually need to build – it's like a lot of atoms... No offence to software.\n\nYes, no, no, I mean like once you build software, you can obviously have lots of copies, but like when it's like a lot of really complicated atoms, man, hard. Maybe specifically also your cell – to the cell-limitation question. I think this has been mentioned before but we also do use some other vendors. Oh, yeah. Panasonic. Yes. We use Samsung and LG and yeah. Exactly, in our energy products.\n\nSo I've heard people feel like this is kind of a zero-sum game or something with Model 3 but that is not the case. And we do... It's a partial-sum game. We did shut down a Powerwall cell line in favor of Model 3 to be totally honest but we kind of had to do that. But we're adding new cell lines and we'll be able to address that issue very soon. I think to put it in perspective, we are soon tripling our storage. These are mad growth numbers. Mad.\n\nAnd it's one thing to produce, but it's also another thing to install. Yeah, exactly. You need infrastructure and the people to do that. So, it's massive scaling as very few companies grow at that rate. Yeah, and one of the biggest challenges like, we've got a – there needs to be a lot more electricians. So we actually had an electrician training program.\n\nWe're going to actually have to train new people who've never been electricians before to be electricians because otherwise there's not enough electrician capacity in the United States and the most places in the world to install Powerwalls. Yeah. So it's like we have to actually literally train electricians and it takes like two years basically before somebody is certified to be an electrician.\n\nSo it's sort of like, okay, we obviously can't grow faster than the rates, the number of electricians who can physically install a Powerwall. That's like one of the limitations. And that PG&E project you mentioned is an incredibly exciting one. It kind of is indicative... Yeah, it's awesome actually. of the growth rate. It has a... Yeah, can you elaborate on that? We can't say too much. I hope I haven't said anything that's like .\n\nIt is over 1 gigawatt hour. Yeah, gigawatt hour. That's public, right? Fully considered. Okay. It is now. Okay. All right, okay. And just to give you a sense, it took us five years of growing that business to get to 1 gigawatt hour, cumulative deployed. And there were like so many people who had said 1 gigawatt hour is an impossible number for lithium ion. Like that's – yeah.\n\nI mean, the car business is still much bigger as we sit here today but the growth rate on energy is faster. Yeah, if you extrapolate energy growth rate, well, obviously, if you extrapolate anything, when that triples for a year pretty soon becomes the size of the universe, but long-term we would expect the energy business to catch up to the auto business in size. Nice. And then, lastly, I'm really curious, Elon.\n\nDo you have any part of the business that shareholders should be asking or thinking more about? Or what do you wish would have been asked on the call? Good question. We were trying to anticipate – actually, I try and anticipate the questions that are on people's minds, that's why we have the autopilot autopilot team here and much of the executive team of Tesla here to try to be proactive in that regard. And is there anything...\n\nWell, I guess, in terms of... I think we really covered a lot. So if there's any – yeah. Just very last thing. Your very last thing. Go ahead. Yeah, sorry. One last thing. The new fiscal engineering strategy of profits and cash flow and you saying that would last in perpetuity sort of caught me by surprise, personally.\n\nAnd so I'm curious if there's any trade-off to growth with that new strategy or sort of what's the rationale behind the scenes because this seems like the biggest change in Tesla's financial engineering strategy since the IPO. Yeah, being cash flow positive and capping at positive doesn't mean like – doesn't mean we're rolling in money.\n\nThere's definitely going to be cases where we're just barely cash flow positive or barely profitable in some quarters in the future. But I think it's been a long time, almost 15 years now. I think we're at a scale where the amount of time that it takes to actually scale up and do things is – there's a certain – like we're big enough, where we actually can spend money efficiently to make things go faster.\n\nSo we kind of hit scale with volume production of cars. And I think we can – I think this is probably the right thing to do is to be sort of essentially self-funding on a go forward basis and apart from selective situations where there's say some debt – temporary debt for construction of a Gigafactory in China or Europe or something like that.\n\nBut apart from that, I think we – essentially like I don't think we're constraining growth in any significant way by adopting this strategy at this point. It would have been true in times past, but I think it is no longer the case, yeah. Okay, I think that's going to be all the time... Awesome. Thank you so much. Thank you very much. Unfortunately, that's I think all the time we have today.\n\nAppreciate all your questions and looking forward to speaking to you next quarter. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for participating in today's conference. This does conclude the program. You may all disconnect, and have a wonderful day."},"languages":["en"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1I9UtyZMTek"},{"id":"tesla-q1-2018-earnings-call-2018-05-02","type":"interview","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gK3oRIvePJA","title":"Tesla Q1 2018 Earnings Call","titles":{"en":"Tesla Q1 2018 Earnings Call","de":"Tesla Q1 2018 Earnings Call","fr":"Tesla Q1 2018 Earnings Call"},"date":"2018-05-02","summary":"The infamous Q1 2018 call where Musk dismissed analyst questions as boring and took retail-investor questions from YouTube.","text":"Tesla released earnings Wednesday and the stock fell in after-hours trading in the wake of a record loss of almost 785 million dollars on the earnings call Elon Musk expressed irritation with the media ignoring a question from an RBC analyst and decided to mix things up take a listen we're gonna go to YouTube sorry these questions are so dry they're killing me thank you our next question is from Galileo wrestle with hyper change hey great quarter thanks for having me on the call to represent retail investors I was wondering with way Moe's plans to launch an autonomous taxi service in limited markets this year if you could give us an update on the tesla network and any details surrounding the launch date or geographic rollout thanks sure so I mean that's\n\nthank you thank you for an interesting question all right joining us now is Ross Rubin columnist at ZDNet and the reporter of the YouTube Reporter on that call Galileo Russell founder of hyper change TV but great to have you both here with us today Galileo let's start with you you spoke with him for about 25 minutes did he say anything that surprised you in that conversation shocking or surprising but a lot of great insight in terms of the future of let's say the semi truck with platooning and making that more cost competitive with rail more details on the Tesla Network and how they think about you know rolling that out so I think we got a ton of awesome clarity on the call that long-term investors are really valuing and let's go to you as well cross\n\npulling you in here on some of the numbers so Tessa of course reporting it's the biggest loss while also beating on the on the revenue side so I do think investors should be weighing all the information they got yesterday rush they really be feeling about Tesla at this point well this is really the cause for concern on the investor side the cause for the questions about the the fundamental the technical fundamentals and it's must saying that they're going to turn it around they're going to start being profitable in the next few quarters and that's really what investors are trying to get at in terms of nailing him down on that okay Galloway I want to come back to you this you know in in spite of some of the fandom that has spurred and swirled around Tesla\n\nfor so long you've been a very big supporter of Tesla you've got to admit that this Elon that we saw last night was an off the rails Elon it was much far from his traditional or the traditional manner of an exec on a call like this yeah I mean Elon and Tesla are innovative and disruptive and I think that's just what we saw in the earnings call like they realized that the quality of the questions from the analysts and the analysts incentives to ask good questions that long-term investors care about just isn't there and retail investors need a voice and there's a ton of questions that need to be asked and I've gotten like hundreds of tweets and hundreds of emails from shareholders saying that this was the best and most informative conference called I've\n\never heard from Tesla so I think that validates it and I want to bring up one thing on the profitability everyone likes to point at Tesla's losses but doesn't actually look at where they're spending the money Tesla always loses significant capital right before a vehicle launch a right during a vehicle launch because they have to invest in capex Tesla's cash balance only fell 700 million this quarter and they spent 655 million on cap the operating business is actually not that capital intensive and we've literally this is Tesla's business model like it's not that I believe in Elon I believe that history repeats itself and every single time they launch a vehicle it goes cashflow positive the entire company two to three quarters later and then they say okay\n\nwe proved it now let's ramp up and spend on the next vehicle and that's just what we're waiting to see what the hollow Creek a moment to reflect as well on sort of how the earnings call panned out do you agree with Galileo here in that you know it was one of the most informative earnings call that they've had so far and how do you sort of taking on Musk's demeanor during the call well sure you know must clearly an ideas guy has positioned Tesla and many of his other ventures as long-term plays and there was a comment earlier about not Tesla perhaps not being the vehicle for you no pun intended if you are concerned about a volatile business I mean that's the kind of statement that companies make on their s ones but but it's true and you know they're they're\n\nstill ramping up the portfolio they're entering the model 3 model 3 coming to market at a time when when other automakers are retreating from the sedan market so you know obviously just a different stage in the business and they're they're going to be really building out the portfolio and trying to reach a more mainstream consumer market over over the next few years Galileo tests the stock down today about six point six percent seven percent at the open so tape it off with just a bit when we look at that are you buying more Tesla here today we've talked about your bullish sentiment oh yeah I mean I'm all in on Tesla I have no money or free capital or otherwise I would definitely be buying Tesla right now I think a big reason the stock is taking a hit\n\nis because analysts are really frustrated that they sort of got out stood on the conference call like even Adam Jonas is no almost seem to be taking it personally and attacking musk in the company because of that and I think they realized that Tesla really doesn't need to raise capital going forward so their banks are gonna miss out on those fees to raise capital and I think that's really what we're seeing happen there's anybody from Tesla reached out to you since the call took place not after the call I'm sure they're really busy actually that although Elon did retweet my video that recap the conference call yesterday and that was sort of the coverage on the auto pilot and the accident there so he was very angry at the way that it was handled by the\n\nmedia in saying that you know there are fewer accidents and injuries when someone's using auto pilot versus not so give me comments on on some of his reactions about sure I mean this is going to be a really challenging space in terms of the development of self-driving cars and autonomy there's going to unfortunately be accidents there's going to continue to be deaths and the trade-off is that over the long term we're going to wind up with a safer road environment than we have today but you know unfortunately there's there's still going to be collisions and we just have to keep that in mind as the technology keeps developing to avoid this sort of I guess backlash against these sort of events when it comes to autopilot and continuing to test new technologies\n\nI think transparency is important for example after the the uber collision in Arizona you know the company certainly stopped trials immediately and moved to sharing as much information as they could about the investigation which by the way I thought was a you know pretty pretty nice turnaround for uber in terms of how they often handle these kinds of controversies really really the same for Tesla you know as as they continue to develop the technology as they continue to get data on on what's working and where the faults in the system are it's just important to share that with the public I think that's something that musk understands in terms of the the SpaceX work that has a you know a high degree of risk involved with it as well I'm gala you had a response\n\nyeah I think this is an extremely important question and that's why I asked about it on the conference call Elon Musk in response to my question so that they would be releasing quarterly data to make it more transparent on sort of the status of this progress so I think it's a really interesting angle to see the evidence of like these are the things that are being discussed now in the media is evolving Tesla's story and those stem from the questions that ask from the call Galileo Russell joining us here on set he's the founder of hyper change TV and Ross Rubin joining us as well via Skype columnist at ZDNet thank you both for joining us here today","textByLang":{"en":"Tesla released earnings Wednesday and the stock fell in after-hours trading in the wake of a record loss of almost 785 million dollars on the earnings call Elon Musk expressed irritation with the media ignoring a question from an RBC analyst and decided to mix things up take a listen we're gonna go to YouTube sorry these questions are so dry they're killing me thank you our next question is from Galileo wrestle with hyper change hey great quarter thanks for having me on the call to represent retail investors I was wondering with way Moe's plans to launch an autonomous taxi service in limited markets this year if you could give us an update on the tesla network and any details surrounding the launch date or geographic rollout thanks sure so I mean that's\n\nthank you thank you for an interesting question all right joining us now is Ross Rubin columnist at ZDNet and the reporter of the YouTube Reporter on that call Galileo Russell founder of hyper change TV but great to have you both here with us today Galileo let's start with you you spoke with him for about 25 minutes did he say anything that surprised you in that conversation shocking or surprising but a lot of great insight in terms of the future of let's say the semi truck with platooning and making that more cost competitive with rail more details on the Tesla Network and how they think about you know rolling that out so I think we got a ton of awesome clarity on the call that long-term investors are really valuing and let's go to you as well cross\n\npulling you in here on some of the numbers so Tessa of course reporting it's the biggest loss while also beating on the on the revenue side so I do think investors should be weighing all the information they got yesterday rush they really be feeling about Tesla at this point well this is really the cause for concern on the investor side the cause for the questions about the the fundamental the technical fundamentals and it's must saying that they're going to turn it around they're going to start being profitable in the next few quarters and that's really what investors are trying to get at in terms of nailing him down on that okay Galloway I want to come back to you this you know in in spite of some of the fandom that has spurred and swirled around Tesla\n\nfor so long you've been a very big supporter of Tesla you've got to admit that this Elon that we saw last night was an off the rails Elon it was much far from his traditional or the traditional manner of an exec on a call like this yeah I mean Elon and Tesla are innovative and disruptive and I think that's just what we saw in the earnings call like they realized that the quality of the questions from the analysts and the analysts incentives to ask good questions that long-term investors care about just isn't there and retail investors need a voice and there's a ton of questions that need to be asked and I've gotten like hundreds of tweets and hundreds of emails from shareholders saying that this was the best and most informative conference called I've\n\never heard from Tesla so I think that validates it and I want to bring up one thing on the profitability everyone likes to point at Tesla's losses but doesn't actually look at where they're spending the money Tesla always loses significant capital right before a vehicle launch a right during a vehicle launch because they have to invest in capex Tesla's cash balance only fell 700 million this quarter and they spent 655 million on cap the operating business is actually not that capital intensive and we've literally this is Tesla's business model like it's not that I believe in Elon I believe that history repeats itself and every single time they launch a vehicle it goes cashflow positive the entire company two to three quarters later and then they say okay\n\nwe proved it now let's ramp up and spend on the next vehicle and that's just what we're waiting to see what the hollow Creek a moment to reflect as well on sort of how the earnings call panned out do you agree with Galileo here in that you know it was one of the most informative earnings call that they've had so far and how do you sort of taking on Musk's demeanor during the call well sure you know must clearly an ideas guy has positioned Tesla and many of his other ventures as long-term plays and there was a comment earlier about not Tesla perhaps not being the vehicle for you no pun intended if you are concerned about a volatile business I mean that's the kind of statement that companies make on their s ones but but it's true and you know they're they're\n\nstill ramping up the portfolio they're entering the model 3 model 3 coming to market at a time when when other automakers are retreating from the sedan market so you know obviously just a different stage in the business and they're they're going to be really building out the portfolio and trying to reach a more mainstream consumer market over over the next few years Galileo tests the stock down today about six point six percent seven percent at the open so tape it off with just a bit when we look at that are you buying more Tesla here today we've talked about your bullish sentiment oh yeah I mean I'm all in on Tesla I have no money or free capital or otherwise I would definitely be buying Tesla right now I think a big reason the stock is taking a hit\n\nis because analysts are really frustrated that they sort of got out stood on the conference call like even Adam Jonas is no almost seem to be taking it personally and attacking musk in the company because of that and I think they realized that Tesla really doesn't need to raise capital going forward so their banks are gonna miss out on those fees to raise capital and I think that's really what we're seeing happen there's anybody from Tesla reached out to you since the call took place not after the call I'm sure they're really busy actually that although Elon did retweet my video that recap the conference call yesterday and that was sort of the coverage on the auto pilot and the accident there so he was very angry at the way that it was handled by the\n\nmedia in saying that you know there are fewer accidents and injuries when someone's using auto pilot versus not so give me comments on on some of his reactions about sure I mean this is going to be a really challenging space in terms of the development of self-driving cars and autonomy there's going to unfortunately be accidents there's going to continue to be deaths and the trade-off is that over the long term we're going to wind up with a safer road environment than we have today but you know unfortunately there's there's still going to be collisions and we just have to keep that in mind as the technology keeps developing to avoid this sort of I guess backlash against these sort of events when it comes to autopilot and continuing to test new technologies\n\nI think transparency is important for example after the the uber collision in Arizona you know the company certainly stopped trials immediately and moved to sharing as much information as they could about the investigation which by the way I thought was a you know pretty pretty nice turnaround for uber in terms of how they often handle these kinds of controversies really really the same for Tesla you know as as they continue to develop the technology as they continue to get data on on what's working and where the faults in the system are it's just important to share that with the public I think that's something that musk understands in terms of the the SpaceX work that has a you know a high degree of risk involved with it as well I'm gala you had a response\n\nyeah I think this is an extremely important question and that's why I asked about it on the conference call Elon Musk in response to my question so that they would be releasing quarterly data to make it more transparent on sort of the status of this progress so I think it's a really interesting angle to see the evidence of like these are the things that are being discussed now in the media is evolving Tesla's story and those stem from the questions that ask from the call Galileo Russell joining us here on set he's the founder of hyper change TV and Ross Rubin joining us as well via Skype columnist at ZDNet thank you both for joining us here today"},"languages":["en"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gK3oRIvePJA"},{"id":"cbs-this-morning-2018-04-13","type":"interview","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jQMHEXquK9A","title":"CBS This Morning","titles":{"en":"CBS This Morning","de":"CBS This Morning","fr":"CBS This Morning"},"date":"2018-04-13","summary":"Musk discusses Model 3 production struggles, sleeping at the factory and why he sees himself as an engineer rather than a businessman.","text":"I've heard people say listen he's out-of-the-box thinker he's a businessman he's an entrepreneur but people that know this man I wouldn't say you would say I'm normally a business plan you're not a businessman no no what are you I'm gonna show there's probably lots of analyst on Wall Street who agree that I'm not a businessman okay well what do you think you are I'm engineer like engineering in design but you're not a businessman well I mean I don't sort of like look at things from like what's the rank ordered list of priorities or based on a return on investment just a Mac that I don't really do any investments I've been on the own wine in public security and that's Tesla that's it I've no diversity in terms of public securities I've heard you describe\n\nyourself as a technologist yes exactly technologists make new technologies create new technologies is it your is it your dream to conquer the world and make the world a better place to what is your dream technologies like magic you know to put I mean I don't like technologies the closest thing to magic that we have in the real world and so I think like engineering creative engineering is essentially technology development and I just move us when I said I like Lord of the Rings is my favorite book is it yeah that's really like what's the closest thing to being a wizard in the real world and that's like creating new technologies","textByLang":{"en":"I've heard people say listen he's out-of-the-box thinker he's a businessman he's an entrepreneur but people that know this man I wouldn't say you would say I'm normally a business plan you're not a businessman no no what are you I'm gonna show there's probably lots of analyst on Wall Street who agree that I'm not a businessman okay well what do you think you are I'm engineer like engineering in design but you're not a businessman well I mean I don't sort of like look at things from like what's the rank ordered list of priorities or based on a return on investment just a Mac that I don't really do any investments I've been on the own wine in public security and that's Tesla that's it I've no diversity in terms of public securities I've heard you describe\n\nyourself as a technologist yes exactly technologists make new technologies create new technologies is it your is it your dream to conquer the world and make the world a better place to what is your dream technologies like magic you know to put I mean I don't like technologies the closest thing to magic that we have in the real world and so I think like engineering creative engineering is essentially technology development and I just move us when I said I like Lord of the Rings is my favorite book is it yeah that's really like what's the closest thing to being a wizard in the real world and that's like creating new technologies"},"languages":["en"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jQMHEXquK9A"},{"id":"sxsw-2018-03-11","type":"interview","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kzlUyrccbos","title":"SXSW","titles":{"en":"SXSW","de":"SXSW","fr":"SXSW"},"date":"2018-03-11","summary":"Official SXSW Q&A where Musk takes audience questions on Mars colonization, AI risk, Tesla and the Boring Company.","text":"We we met a number of years ago in part I was writing a movie I was going in to pitch a movie called interstellar at the time Steven Spielberg was the director and he wanted to do a grounded Movie about the future of space travel so I came in to my pitch was very short I said the movies gonna be 10 minutes long because it's not happening it was about 10 years ago We're not going there's no money left This is not a priority for us anymore And then in the course of and somehow.\n\nI got the job in the course of Writing the movie working with Kip Thorne a physicist invited me in a physics conference one night And I got seated next to Ilana We've been friends ever since the irony of that being I wound up becoming friends with a guy who I think personally is moving the needle back in the other direction And up by himself at this point More than more than anyone.\n\nI can think of so the net result is I think we are going back to the moon I think we are going to Mars, and I think a lot of it is because of you So one of the questions we got here today One of the questions that you guys have submitted the night that I love is simple Mars how can we help?\n\nWhat see so In the short term Mars is really about getting a spaceship built We're we're making good progress on this on the on the ship and the booster Codenamed PFR What is this tan for again well, it's like sort of a roar shy yes an acronym form And It is very big and I gave a presentation on this at the International Astronautical Congress in Australia last year And that design is evolving rapidly we're actually building that That should but that ship right now The I Think right now that like the biggest thing.\n\nThat would be helpful is just general support and encouragement and a good goodwill I Think once we build it there will be Well it will have a a Point of proof something that the Companies and countries can then go and do like they currently don't think it's possible so if we show them that it is then I think they will Fill up their game, and they will build Interplanetary transport vehicles as well Now once that has been built, and there is a There's a means of getting.\n\nI'll go and people to and from Mars as well as turn from the moon other places in the solar system and I think That's that's really where There's a matter of entrepreneurial entrepreneurial resources that are needed because you got to build out the entire base of Industry everything that allows your human civilization to exist and it's gonna be harder a Lot harder in a place like Mars or the moon We need some volunteers to be colonists do we have any comments pollen tears here?\n\nI'm actually not many hands raised by the way I Mean the moon of Mars often thought of is like is this some escape ski escape hatch for rich people but I it won't be that at all, it's In anyone who look for the only people that go to Better Mars. It'll be far more dangerous.\n\nI mean really it's it kind of reads like Shackleton's ad full Antarctic explorers, you know it's like Difficult dangerous good chance you will die Excitement for those who survive That kind of thing and I think there's not many people who actually want to go in the beginning because all those things I said are true but there'll be some who will for whom the excitement of the frontier and exploration exceeds the concern of danger and And it will start off building the first elementary infrastructure just a base to create propellant a power station Blast domes in which to grow crops All the sort of fundamentals without which we you cannot survive and then and then really there's gonna be an explosion of entrepreneur opportunity because mas will need everything\n\nfrom Iron foundries to pizza joints to like pizza joints Like oh, I should really have great bars The Mars bar right Like I would love dad What do you think the timeline for this is so I'm feeling pretty optimistic about the timeline although I'm I can't be a little sometimes my timelines are a little you know People have told me that My timelines historically have been optimistic and So trying to recalibrate to some degree here But I can tell you what what I know currently this case is that where we are building the first ship the first Mars Orange over interplanetary ship Right now,\n\nand I think we'll be able to be able to do short flights short sort of up and down flights Probably sometime in the first half of next year.\n\nThis is a very big Booster in ship the liftoff thrust of this would be about twice that of a seven-five So it's it's capable of doing 150 metric tons to to orbit it and be fully reusable So the the expendable payload is around around double that number so What it'll what's amazing about the ship assuming we can make Pulling wool and rapid reusability work is that we can reduce the cost marginal cost per flight?\n\nDramatically by orders of magnitude compared to where it is today But this this question of reusability is so fundamental to rocketry it is the it is the fundamental fundamental breakthrough that's needed if you consider aircraft for example the You can Lease a 747 and do a return flight from Cal Bullock.\n\nAh go from California to Australia For half a million dollars, that's what it cost to Lisa 747 fully round trip to Australia which is far To buy a single agent to have a prop plane a good one would Would be about one and a half million dollars, and that can't even reach, Australia and it's and it's tiny compared to a 747 so what that means is like a it cost less to - take it - use a giant plane with huge cargo for a long trip then at Night that costs way less than buying a small plane for a short trip in the aircraft world and the same actually is true of rocketry the be a VFR flight will actually cost less then then our Falcon one flight bit back in today that Was about a five or six million dollar marginal cost per flight they were confident that VFR\n\nwill be less than that So that that's profound and that is what will enable the creation of a affirmative base on the moon any city on Mars And that's the Equality of like the Union Pacific Railroad or or having Ships that work across the oceans Until you can get there, there's no way for all of the entrepreneurial energy to Do you can't you can't do anything there's no way for the flowers to bloom Once you can get there the opportunity is immense and So we're gonna do our best to get you there,\n\nand then make sure that there's an environment in which Entrepreneurs can Laura, SH and And then I think it'll be it'll be amazing a big part of that and we've talked about this is Inspiring people to look again like this.\n\nYou know we talked about this yesterday It was our grandparents who went to the moon, and we have not gone back since you know in my lifetime No one's gone to the moon You and I were having a conversation last year about what to put in Falcon Heavy? and and the kind of What's the cargo?\n\nAnd the idea was to to use that as an opportunity to inspire people again Carl Sagan had a beautiful thought many many years ago there if you just get enough people to look at the Earth from a distance that if we get them to focus on the problems here and on the possibilities of space exploration I Was fortunate enough to be with you at launch control when Falcon Heavy? Launched a few weeks back and we made a little movie.\n\nWe've called it a trailer That that sums up that experience we have it we have it here.\n\nWe thought we'd play it you guys again This is two minutes that that does a pretty good job of giving you the feeling of what it was like To be there when fucking everyone Yeah We really want we wanted to get the public year to warranty of getting excited about the possibility of something new happening in space of the space frontier getting pushed forward the goal of this was to inspire you and Make you believe again.\n\nJust as people believed in the Apollo era that anything is possible That picture at the end is a picture of one of the circuit boards inside the Roadster window But we tried confused the aliens as much as possible As if you look carefully there's also a little Hot Wheels version of the Roadster With a tiny little astronaut in the hot wheels roadster on the dashboard How was just by a basketball Nora Norse just that and so if you guys have any suggestions let us know I Think for me watching those two boosters Come down side by side it felt like a transformative moment it felt like a oh we can do anything and that's the culmination I was really struck there by the culmination of you know a singular vision and hundreds or thousands of very talented people\n\nworking together to make sure Every sitting in launch control and looking at the sheer amount of variables that you guys are clocking in those moments before the launch Wind speed at different altitudes and the status of all the different 27 engines and then How do you manage how do you?\n\nYour very hands on with the details, but you're also looking at the bigger bigger picture How do you manage your time? How do you how do you how do you parse you know? How do you zoom in and zoom out and make sure that all these things are coming together?\n\nWell at at SpaceX almost all my time is spent on Engineering and design, it's probably 80 and 90% And then Gwynne Shotwell who's president chief operating officer takes care of the business operations the company, which is what allows me to do that?\n\nYeah, I think in order to make the right decisions you have to understand something you need to understand something you add a detailed level You cannot make good decision So But I'd like to just probably like the you know where you saw there as a result of an incredible team and that's base X Super talented people who really work like crazy.\n\nThey make that happen you Know I think my role is to make sure that they have an environment where they can they can really where the talents can really come to the floor and You know and but I can't tell you how honored and grateful I am to work with such a great team Everyone in this room is inspired by you. Who are you inspired by what Kanye West obviously? Today Me too fred astaire fred astaire.\n\nYou know you should see my dance moves We may we may see some dance moves unless you love Fred Astaire. He's amazing if you haven't watched his movies. They're amazing.\n\nYeah, I Think for me when I look at all of all of the things you've undertaken to do the the commonality is With Tesla with SpaceX shoulder city now with the boring company It feels like you're seeing a firmly established a mature Industry That is ripe for sort of a quantum shift that there's there's an opportunity there for you know in the case of cars its electrification Which drastically changes?\n\nYou know the complexity of an automobile and potentially down down the line the? Expense of it with rockets it's the usability of it With with solar it's about a firmly established energy system. That's about to be massively disrupted.\n\nThis is having And with the boring company it's about looking at infrastructure projects would typically take decades and billions of dollars and looking to to reduce the Complexity that is that is that how you is that how you? You know is that how you see the world. Do you see the things that don't work and can be made better? No but I mean I Don't like look at things that say. Okay. What's the rank ordered?\n\nYou know business opportunity From a financial standpoint or anything like that It's a it's really just like these are the there's some things that are that don't seem to be working that are important for the You know for our life and for the future to be good and I've said that if If you're before me to say like where is the One way to do or a suggestive rate or return estimate on various industry opportunities I would put Arrows like basically building rockets and cars pretty close to the bottom of the list But there would have to be the dumbest things to do just just because you know look at the auto industry and In the US auto industry the only two companies that haven't gone bankrupt At least at some point are Tesla and Ford every other company got\n\nbankrupt, or was failing and got acquired There's only two companies that have gone bankrupt, and there's a big graveyard of companies that did so and engineering up against entrenched competitors There's no III gave basically both SpaceX and Tesla from the beginning a probability of less than 10% of likely likely to succeed So why do it?\n\nWell in the case of SpaceX I just kept wondering why we were not making progress towards Sending people to Mars Why we didn't have a base on the moon Here where we're at the sort of space hotels that were promised in 2001 the movie It's like You know it's uh. It. Just wasn't happening year after year. Yeah, I was getting me down. I look at the NASA website I was like Does where does it say when we go to Mars isn't?\n\nso Initially for SpaceX for example I thought well The genesis of SpaceX was not to create a company But but really had it how do we get NASA's budget to be bigger that was initially to go so? I came up with this little small philanthropic mission, which would be to send a small greenhouse to the surface of Mars?\n\nIt's called Mars oasis and And they were one landing the seats were being dehydrated nutrient gel Hydrate upon landing, and and then you have this little greenhouse And then the money shot would be you know green plants against the right background Recently learned that money shot has a meaning that That I didn't aware of but The the you know, I think that that would get people excited about Rekindles the spirit of a follower essentially and as I thought it more more into what it would take to do that I learned that The fundamental issue is actually the cost of access to space Rockets were super expensive and the cost has per pound to kilogram to orbit had actually gone up over the years not down and it was like okay,\n\nwell if you it won't matter if we are able to do this philosophic mission and It generates a lot of will to go to Mars.\n\nThat's not going to matter if there's no way So at my second or third trip back from Russia I was like whoa there's got to be a way to build rockets There's gotta be a way to solve the rocket falling I missed our reading a lot of books and rockets and They're better sort of a first principles analysis of a varrock.\n\nIt just broke down the materials that are in a rocket what would it cost to buy those materials what verses the price the rocket and there's a gigantic difference between the Raw material cost the rocket and the finish cost the rocket so there must be something wrong happening in Going from the constituent atoms to the final shape and Found that certainly to be true and then and then why won't people trying to make reusability work It was very difficult to make rocket reusability work and then unfortunately the the Space Shuttle ended up being a counter example of don't don't try to make reusability work because spatial data ended up costing more per flight than an expandable vehicle of equivalent capability So for a long time people used in the space\n\nshuttle as an example of why reusability is dumb You can't take a single case example and make an entire theory out of it so There's no question in my mind that if you could read the Rockets effect It has to be true reuse which means Rapid and complete reuse the problem with the space shows only a portion of the System came back like the big orange tank which was also the primary airframe was discarded every time and the parts that were used were incredibly difficult to refurbish So they kind of reached the only country reuse that matters is if it's rapid and complete It's that the only thing you're changing between flights far from scheduled maintenance is the propellant So we embarked upon that journey to create SpaceX in 2002 and In the beginning I\n\nwouldn't actually wouldn't let my friends invest because I don't want to lose their money.\n\nI thought it was like you Know I really lose my own money, so And then We almost did die at SpaceX actually so we I budgeted four or three flights I mean technically I did have a plan where I had to have the money from PayPal I had like 180 million from PayPal. I thought you know I'll allocate half of that to SpaceX and Tesla and SolarCity and That should be fine. I'll have 90 million Lexus plots.\n\nYou know But but then what happened is Things cost more and took longer than and I thought so I had a choice of either Put the rest of the money in or their companies are going to die and It's like set up putting all the money in and firing money or rent from friends 2008 was brutal if you Yeah, 2008 we had the third consecutive failure of the Falcon rocket for SpaceX Tesla Almost went bankrupt. We closed our financing around 6 p. m..\n\nChristmas Eve 2008 it was the last hour of the last day that it was possible We would have gone back up two days after Christmas otherwise And I've got divorced I was like rough, man Governor Scott yes You do wait it.\n\nIt poses a question or maybe you just answer the question of why is no one else doing these things What's your pain threshold yeah, well, it's real high So yeah SpaceX is alive, but it's kind of at sea so is Tesla If things have just gone a little bit the other way Both companies would be dead, and I'd like one of the most difficult choices.\n\nI have ever faced in life was was in 2008 and I think I had I think Maybe thirty million dollars left thirty or forty one dollars left in 2008 I had two choices I Could put it all into one company, and then the other company would definitely die Or split it between the two companies and but if I split it between two companies then both might die And you know when you put your blood sweat and tears into creating something a bully something.\n\nIt's like a child And so it's like which one am I gonna let one starve to death I Can bring myself to do it surprised. I split the money between two Fortunately, thank goodness they both came through We've got a question for the audience that builds on that. What was your biggest failure, and how did it change you? What was your biggest failure and how did I change you?\n\nHave to really think hard about that failure There's your answer well, there's a ton of failures along the way, that's for sure Like I said as a support for SpaceX the first three launches failed and We were just barely able to scrape together enough Parts and and money to do the fourth launch that both launch should fail who would have been dead so multiple failures along the way I Tried very hard to get the right expertise in for for SpaceX I tried hard to to find a great chief engineer for the rocket but in that the good Chief Engineers wouldn't join and The bad ones well there was no no point in hiring him so I ended up being chief engineer of the rocket So if I could have found somebody better,\n\nthen we would have maybe had less than three failures How do you how do you plan a business where you know?\n\nThe rocket business, you know some of these things are gonna blow up on the launch pad How does the business plan work I?\n\nDon't really have a business plan Yeah, I haven't had it, but I had a business by her way back in the zip two days But but these things are just always wrong so I just just been father's business plans after that Yeah I mean, I think you know wishful thinking for sure is a Source of many problems and in many walks life a Business or personal business or personal wishful thinking Causes a lot of a lot of trouble you really have to ask you know whether something It is true or not that Doesn't make sense and if it ever feels like Too easy it probably is You know the yeah But for the drama of SpaceX I think Tesla's actually Been probably 2,000 might old little problem a dose of overtime Practices drama magnet,\n\nit's crazy How do you I mean a lot of people want to know you know you're managing three or four companies now each of them trying to do something revolutionary each of the a business that has historically been regarded as Impossible to challenge or disrupt.\n\nHow do you how do you prioritize? How do you how do you how do you prioritize between? The different companies how do you prioritize? How do you spend your time?\n\nYeah, absolutely actually could trouble you for a water I've got a bit of a cult my voice is a bit hoarse Too it tells a top priority For business time almost all of it is really dedicated to SpaceX and Tesla it may sound like I've got a lot of different endeavors, but It's overwhelmingly SpaceX and Tesla in terms of try of allocation So it's a and then for non-business stuff, it's Almost entirely kid stuff my kids are here here today actually put them on to South by Southwest everything a good time But they went so the West world Exhibit or it's just really amazing very haven't seen the West world What do you call it exhibit or a I don't know what you just call it.\n\nIt's a theme park It's really incredibly well done, and I took the kids they yesterday to had a great time together I Think probably one the the biggest of us are standing is that I'm actually not an investor I'm so much fielding investor invested things. I don't actually don't miss anything back the only Public security that I would have any kind is Tesla and then the next biggest is SpaceX and and then The boring company Hennis Tata.\n\nIt more as a joke because there will be a funny name for a company You know we put we put the zero and bring I mean it's like Doesn't make any sense When we when we talk about everyone you first told me that you were thinking about tunnels And I must tell you about that years ago, okay, it's like a long time ago.\n\nLike I thought you're joking yeah It was I was joking but It's not because of some epiphany that I had one day Driving on the 405 That's how it gets called translated, so now I was talking four tunnels for years and years for probably five years or four years at least Whenever I'd give a talk and people would ask me about what opportunities you do see in the world I'd say tunnels can someone please build tunnels so after four or five years of begging people to build tunnels and Still no tunnels.\n\nI was like okay. I wanna build a tunnel Have missing something here So Yes, I was like basically talking fuels Arizona for tunnels right for several years, and then said well let's find out what it takes to build a tunnel and Yeah, so started digging a tunnel I wanted to start the tunnel From where I could see it from my office at SpaceX it so stuff.\n\nI said well Let's just cobble for part of the parking lot across the road so I can see if it's if anything's happening or not And then we named our first boring machine Godot because I kept waiting for it no it came Finally did and and we got it going and now we're making good progress and We were finding the company for merchandise sales So, thank you for anyone who's bought a flamethrower You will not be sorry or maybe you will Won't be boring We have a video I think here of the latest vision for the boring company it turns a Howard You know this great Attitude I Think you know when we were first talking about the concept,\n\nyou know tunnels feel like a resolutely old-school Solution to approach that that I invented tunnels And I always tell holding out hope for the flying car that you asked me one simple question that Answered the question for me about flying cars kind of forever Which was would you want your neighbor to have a flying car.\n\nYes, exactly? This is exactly the question Oh you want to fly car how about everyone around you has a flying car too? Oh? That doesn't sound so good Yeah, and I think one of the interesting things about tunneling is it's one of these things that you know there's no a lot of More competition there. It's not a you know. It's it's something that's right for change, so how do you yeah?\n\nYou talked about the philosophy with godot was to just keep running. It basically until you figured out. Why it can't run any faster Yes The point coming to be clear is it's a it's like literally 2 percent of my time. It's probably 20 percent of my tweets The tweets do not correlate to actual time spent The I mean, I sort of just have fun with the boring company But my time allocation is about especially about 2% Talk about your time allocation.\n\nI think one of the things you spend an awful lot of time thinking about I know Is artificial intelligence and something that you and I have a shared interest and it's something that our audience is interested in as well The question here is a lot of experts in AI don't share the same level of concern that you do about the danger off pools What what's yours last words what's what specifically do you believe that they don't?\n\nWell the biggest issue I see with so-called AI experts is that they they think they know more than they do And they think they're smarter than they actually are in general We are all much smarter than we think we are but much less smart dumber than we think you out by a lot so This is this tends to plague plague smart people like you just can't that they define themselves by their intelligence And they they don't like the idea that a machine can be way smarter than them so they discount the idea which is Fundamentally flawed that's the wishful thinking situation I'm really quite close to I'm very close to the cutting edge in AI and it scares the hell out of me It's capable of vastly more than almost anyone knows and the rate of improvement is exponential\n\nBut you can see this in things like alphago which went from in the span of maybe Six to nine months it went from being unable to beat even a reasonably good go player So then beating the European world champion who was ranked 600 then beating Lisa doll for five What been world champion for many years then beating the current world champion, then beating everyone while playing simultaneously then Then there was alpha zero which crushed alphago a hundred to 0 and alpha zero just learnt by playing itself and It can play basically any game that you put the rules in for if you whatever rules you give it Just literally read the rules play the game every superhuman for any game Nobody expected that great of improvement to guess those so those same experts Who\n\nthink AI is not progressing at the rate that I'm saying?\n\nI think you will find that their predictions for things like go and and other AI advancements have Therefore their batting average is quite. Weak.\n\nIt's not good That we'll see this also with with self-driving I think probably by intermixture self-driving will be well encompass essentially all modes driving and be At least a hundred to two hundred percent Safer than a person by the end of next year we're talking like maybe 18 months from now Netsertive study on on Tesla's autopilot version 1 which is relatively primitive and found that it was a 45 percent reduction in highway accidents And that's despite.\n\nWhat a pilot one being just version 1 Version 2. I think will be At least 2 or 3 times better. That's the current version that's running right now So the rate of improvement is really dramatic we have to figure out some way to ensure that The advent of digital super intelligence is one which is Symbiotic with humanity, I think that's the single biggest existential crisis that we face and the most pressing one And how do we do that I?\n\nMean if we take it that it's inevitable at this point that some version of AI is coming down the 1 How do we how do we steer through them well?\n\nI'm not normally an advocate of Regulation and oversight I mean I think it's once you generally go inside minimizing those things But this is a case where you have a very serious danger to the public and it's therefore there needs to be a public body that Has insight and then oocytes on to confirm that everyone is?\n\ndeveloping AI safely This is extremely important I think a danger of AI is much greater than the danger of nuclear warheads landlocked and Nobody would suggest that we allow anyone to just build nuclear warheads if they That would be insane and mock my words AI is far more dangerous than nukes Far so why do we have no regulatory oversight, this is insane Which question you've been asking for a long time.\n\nI think it's a question That's coming to the forefront over the last year where you begin to realize that it doesn't necessarily I think if we we've all been focused in on the idea of artificial superintelligence Right which is clearly a danger, but maybe you know a little further out?\n\nWhat's happened over the last year is you've seen the artificial what I would be calling artificial stupidity You're talking about you know algorithmic manipulation of social media like we're in it now. It's starting. It's starting to happen How do we how do we is it what's the intervention at this point?\n\nI'm not really all that worried about the short-term stuff things that are Like narrow AI is not a species level risk It will it will result in dislocation in lost jobs and You know that sort of better weaponry and that kind of thing, but it is not a fundamental species level risk Whereas digital super intelligence is?\n\nSo it's really all about laying the groundwork to make sure that if humanity collectively your science that Creating digital super intelligence is the right move then? We should do so very very carefully Very very carefully This is the most important thing that we could possibly do Building on that other other than AI and The the other issues that you're you're tackling Transportation energy production aerospace.\n\nWhat issues should our next generation of leaders be focused on solving what else is coming down the line Well I mean there there are other things that are on a longer time scale The obviously the things that I believe in like extending life beyond Earth making life multiplanetary No a big believer in a sort of Asimov's Foundation series or the principle that you you really want to You know I recommend reading the foundation series, but It's like if you if you know that there's a there's likely to be you don't know But there's likely to be another Dark Ages,\n\nwhich It seems my guess is the fall there will be at some point I'm not predicting that we're about to enter a Dark Ages But that there's some probability that we will particularly if there's a third world war Then we want to make sure that there's enough of us of a seed of human civilization somewhere else to bring civilization back and perhaps shorten the length of the dark ages I Think that's why I said that it's important to get a self-sustaining base Ideally on Mars because Mars is far enough away from Earth that I caught that a Warrant earth the Mars base might survive is more likely to survive than a moon base But I think a moon base and a Mars base That That could perhaps Help regenerate life back here on earth.\n\nIt would be really important, and I'd get that done before a possible World War 3 You know that's the century we had two massive world wars three if you count the Cold War I Think it's unlikely that we'll never have another The Poli will be at some point or if we have another one it'll be the last Yeah, it it. Just could be radioactive rubble.\n\nYeah so Again, I'm not predicting This seems like well, if you say given enough time will it be most likely given him of time because this is This is has been our pattern in the past so Like you really believe in the zeroth law of Asimov zeroth law you take the set of actions most likely to support the humanity of the future But I think that sustainable energy is also obviously really important, that's tautological if it's not sustainable its unsustainable Yeah, how close early to solving that problem?\n\nWell, I think that the core technologies are are there with the wind solar with with batteries The the fundamental problem is that there's an unprocessed own allottee in the cost of of co2?\n\nThe the market economics works very well, if things are priced correctly But when there's when things are not priced correctly And something that has it has a real cost that has zero cost then that's where you get distortions in the market that inhibit the progress of of other technologies so Essentially anything that That produces cop, and it will push push cotton into the atmosphere which includes rockets by the way.\n\nI'm not excluding rockets from this It has to be a price and then You sawed off with a low price but then that price and then depending upon whether that price has any effect on the past a million a Possibility of co2 the atmosphere you can adjust that price up for down But in the absence of a price we sort of pretend that digging trillions of tons of Fossil fuels from deep and Under the earth and putting it into the atmosphere who were pretending that that had that that that has no probability of a bad outcome And the entire scientific community is saying obviously It has it's gonna have a bad outcome obviously you just you're changing the chemical constituents in the atmosphere so So it's really up to people and governments to put to put a price on\n\nCarbon, and and then automatically the right thing happens It's really straightforward What do we do with the carbon Center I actually think we can manage with the current carbon level or even a little bit higher It's and this is gonna sound It sound like I'm backtracking, but there's actually an argument that More carbon in the atmosphere is is actually good, but up to a point So We might actually arguably have been a little carbon starved if you go back 200 years ago And say okay,\n\nwell furio's go with like we had like turning 890 parts per million of carbon we're probably a little carbon stuff now we're about 400 just past 400 mark I think somewhere in the 400s probably okay We don't have to worry about to question carbon or anything like that But now if this momentum keeps going and we start going up to six hundred eight hundred a thousand fifteen hundred That's where things get really squirrely and The sheer momentum of the world's energy infrastructure is leading us in that direction It's very so it's just very important that the The public and the governor's pushed to ensure the correct price of carbon is paid So that that will be the thing that matters Yeah our audience is very interested in knowing how many hours of sleep\n\nyou got last night.\n\nOh I don't know about six five or six. I think right I Feel like we know part of the answer this cuz you were trapped in West well for a while But, but how do I mean on a Regular day for you, or you are you are you sleepy you're not sleeping a lot right geez do I look that bad?\n\nYou look great Okay, just imagine with the amount of responsibilities with the amount of you know with what you've got going on to these problems still keep You up at night, or do you think we're on our way to solve it?\n\nWell right now the only things that are really stressing me out in a big way or AI obviously that's like boys there and and working really hard on Tesla Model 3 production and who making good progress, but it's Usually hard work, but those are the two most stressful things my life right now Yeah Our audience really wants to know What do you hope the world will look like for children born today when they're your age Right, what do you hope for the world to look like?\n\nWhat's the best-case scenario say? We solve these problems? What's that world look like? Let's see so I Think the a good picture would look like You know we're really substantially transferred to sustainable generation and consumption of electricity So that the Does the co2 risk and the ocean rising risk is mitigated?\n\nand we're not looking at like you know having, Florida and And sort of large portions to the world underwater, that'd be great that not But to have addressed that risk that'll be there. You know us For us to have a base on the moon face a mirage big out there exploring the solar system so welding industry on it essentially having a human civilization go out there and And and have you such that anyone can?\n\ngo the moon of Mars or the solar system if they want to making it really affordable I Do think it's important that this competition of their multiple companies doing this not just a sex and And that a I risk is that I guess there's the sort of a benign AI and that were able to achieve a symbiosis with that AI Ideally the AI There's somebody who can members name but had a good a suggestion for what the Optimization of the AI should be what's its utility function?\n\nYou have to be careful about this because you say maximize happiness and the AI concludes that happiness is function of dopamine and serotonin So just captures all humans and jacks your brain with large amounts of dopamine serotonin Like okay, so holy mint It sounds pretty good though.\n\nI'll you beloved Well I like the definition of like the I should try to maximize the freedom of action of humanity Maximize the freedom of action maximize freedom essentially I like that definition But we do want to close coupling between collective human intelligence Digital intelligence And a newer link is trying to help in that regard by Creating a an interface between a high bandwidth interface between AI and your and human brain There were already we're already a sidewalk in a sense that That your phone and your computer a kind of extension of you Just low bandwidth input-output exactly.\n\nIt's just low bandwidth Particularly output, I mean two thumbs basically So how do we solve that problem? Give it the bandwidth bandwidth thing it's a bandwidth issue And we've all we've also come to it now We're all we're all cyborgs were just low efficiency cyborgs, so how do we how do we make it better?\n\nI think we've got above a We've got opposed interface Like we didn't evolve to have a communications Jack You know some So there's gonna be essentially the vast numbers of tiny electrodes That are able to read right for your brain of course. You know security is pretty important in the situation say the least I was just saying I'm not coming with I'm keeping my brain air-gapped.\n\nYeah well I think a lot of people will choose to do that But it's a bit like Ian banks is new or lace, but not but in the case of relation sort of that that's there from when you're born or it's sort of it's not a Sort of I'm sorry to back them yackin over back up this would be this there's a digital extension of you That is an AI the AI extension of you a tertiary layer of intelligence So you've got your limbic system your cortex, and and the tertiary layer Which is the digital AI extension of you and that high bandwidth connection is what?\n\nachieves the tights and meiosis I think that's the best outcome I I Hope so if you know he's got better ideas And Talking about another project that you're working on that her audience wants to know a little bit more about sterling.\n\nOh Can you tell us anything Doing Skynet hopefully not Skynet its internet in the sky Well we We don't talk that much about StarLink But essentially it's intended to provide low latency high bandwidth Internet connectivity throughout the world That actually will not be enough cognitive processing car onboard the satellite system to to in any way be a Skynet thing like it's Digital AI requires a lot of super intelligence requires a lot of big servers on the ground just to power intensity But this antenna to be to provide people with Who don't have any internet connectivity with Internet connectivity?\n\nand it's very good for sparse and sparsely populated in moderate moderate least mostly quiet populated areas and forgiving people in cities a choice of in your low-cost choice of internet access But I do think it's gonna be important the Starling system will be important in providing the funding necessary for SpaceX to develop interplanetary spacecraft And at the same time yeah helping people who have even though or super expensive connectivity and giving people in urban areas more of a competitive choice very cool I have to ask you because it's the number one question just Going back to Mars What kind of government do you envision for the first Martian colony?\n\nBlitzer and what's your title yeah? Yeah exactly Emperor Oh goddamn friar?\n\nI don't know Might be too much If you're what I should watch my jokes yeah, not everyone gets irony must remember So I think the I think most likely the the form of government on Mars would be somewhat of a direct democracy where You vote on issues where people vote directly on issues instead of going to representative government in When the United States was formed Representative government was the only thing that was logistically feasible Because people there's no way it was or evil to communicate instantly a lot of people's didn't even have really access to Mail boxes or there wasn't even the post office is very primitive a lot of people couldn't write So you had to have some form of representative democracy Or things just wouldn't work at all.\n\nI think my mas most likely. It's gonna be people at everyone votes on every issue and That's how it goes. I've a few things.\n\nI'd recommend which is keep blowers short long laws it's like that's That's something suspicious is going on if there's long though You know if you if the size of law exceeds the word count of Lord of the Rings Which it does Amazingly, then it's like something's wrong So there should be a limit to the size of the law that I should be able to digest it like how come you can read the Constitution and all of the amendments like you can read those and maybe an hour and And and we govern so much of a civilization by that and yet modern law is this obtuse?\n\nSuper boring tome.\n\nThat's indecipherable to almost anyone so I think direct democracy Lowers lows that are comprehensible I think having some kind of hysteresis on Like it should be easier to remove a law than Create one because things just get to a no-show you have to have something that's gonna come inertia So probably I don't want the right number of you, maybe it's like 60/40 Maybe you require a 60% to get a law in place, but any number above 40% can remove a little Otherwise you just get lowers just accumulate over time they cure their time and it's sort of like Gulliver where you just get trapped by all these tiny strings,\n\nand you can't move You get hardening of the arteries of civilization with law with rules and rules rules rules So it should be just easier to get rid of rule then let's put one in Maybe they should even have like a some kind of sunset clause So that they just automatically expire unless there's enough of an impetus to keep them around I Know I know there's an affirmative, it's just I'm interested in hearing a little bit more about the very early days with Tesla, and how I came together brother Kimble is here,\n\nI thought we'd bring him out you guys could talk a little bit about it You guys might get lucky tonight, I noticed you have a guitar.\n\nI'm gonna ignore that It had some good guitar But I guess there are a fair number of entrepreneurs here today and a fair number of people interested looking at Tesla, which now extraordinary extraordinary success of it You know how did how did this come together and when you in when you guys were looking at I know famously? You know and you guys were you were looking at problems you could solve How those conversations look like?\n\nYeah, so the C2e back in well, thanks coming on About the things that I thought would be most important to work on for a long time. We'll look back to college days and Electric cars are something I've been here since and so is 1819 When do you first recall here when we talk about electric cars that's correct first time was well you talk about a lot We we used to brainstorm a lot randomly even in we were 20 20 years old and the first thing.\n\nI remember us brainstorming was solving connectivity amongst doctors and we were on a road trip from We a lot of doctors in the family so we had the information But the idea was really to solve that problem where we from Silicon Valley to Philadelphia Brainstorming how you do it.\n\nThis is before the internet, so we you know in our minds designing Network computers doctors talking This is all happened of course over 25 years, but it's one of the sort of the first time I remember us Really trying to solve a world problem and unless it was a world problem. That was really important. It.\n\nJust wasn't that interesting to us Electric cars you talked about for a long time, but I remember walking into your house once it this is in Polly 2002 or 2003 and You had these plans laid out that The team of Tesla had or the earlier guys had basically said you know we're gonna take this Lotus Elise We're gonna convert it in electric car and you know we sat down and talked about it for a bit And and it wasn't so much that it Could be done.\n\nI think we all believe it could be done.\n\nIt was more just the attitude that it should be done And then from there Yeah, well the the first internships that I had that were Interesting were on ultra capacitors were used in electric cars, so that's what why I first came out to Silicon Valley in Like 93 or made to something that was to work at a company called political research on advanced ultra capacitors with the idea that this could be a solution to the energy storage problem in electric vehicles and then When I graduated from Penn the I was gonna be doing a PhD at Stanford in material science and and invent physics Try to figure out if there's a way to solve for an ultra high density solid-state capacitor that would have enough range to power an electric vehicle,\n\nso I said impact it so that's that's a that's a 95 and then I Wasn't sure there's one of those things where you could work in it for a long time and discover that there's no Actually, no.\n\nGood solution you you publish a paper and You get a PhD in a lab, but it would be academic in its value so In 95 I had a choice of either work on this energy storage system for electric vehicles or Try to play a role in building the internet But the internet stuff was happening right then and there Whereas the electric electric vehicle technology was going to progress slowly on its own?\n\nWhether I was there or not so I thought well put the rat studies on hold and do something To help out the internet or do something useful on the Internet and that's when I talk to Kimbo You're working in Canada at the time and Said hey, why don't we try to do this this company in Silicon Valley?\n\npretty cool We bought that we were we were the first to see maps and door-to-door direction it had been built by a company Knapp tech they Never burn have never been on the Internet, and it was was so cool to be the first two humans to see it You can draw a map type in an address get directions Things you probably all dead about 50 times today each And we were the first to see that put it on the internet.\n\nIt was really cool She was the first maps and directions Yellow pages and white pages on the internet, yeah so And then we ended up helping bring a lot of publications online So it as investors and customers the New York Times Company knight-ridder or Hearst in a number of others?\n\nand Yeah, but I always wanted to get back to electric vehicles because that that was a primary interest of mine from undergrad and grad days and And so After us up to still took one more Internet company because thought it's up to you had not achieved its its full potential We built this incredible technology, but it wasn't being used by the customers in the right way It's a bit like building you know F-22 fighter jets and then and then you selling to people and they roll them down the hill at each other Not the way to use it, okay, I Think that's that's where decide you really want to go to?\n\nThe end consumer if you've got a great technology you want to go all the way to the end consumer Don't tell it this to to some bonehead legacy company that doesn't understand how to use it So yeah So with with excel comb which became PayPal That's what that's what we try to do something significant with the with the internet And and it got sort of part of the way towards its its objective after a PayPal I Went went public and and they've got bought by eBay in 2002 that actually freed up me and a bunch of other people so you go and create companies and I start debating between Either solar electric car or space I thought space was like the least likely to have somebody,\n\nbut at least likely to attract Entrepreneurial times, I don't like like nobody is gonna.\n\nBe crazy enough to do space so I better do space So I started off with with space first and And Then about a year and a half later in 2003.\n\nI had lunch with JB Straubel and Hal Rosen and It was that it's like fish restaurant in El Segundo And Hal Rosen had been involved in space and electric vehicles and And jb was had just got just graduated from college was working with him and the conversation turned to electric vehicles Because Howard had done something called Rosen Motors, which was like an attempted evie startup, and I said well I've always been super interested in electric vehicles.\n\nI was gonna do my PhD on an advanced and reduced energy storage I Was gonna do grad studies on on advanced energy storage techniques for electric vehicles and And so JB said well have you heard of this company called AC propulsion because they had created It the t zero electric sports car as a prototype I was like wow that's great like lithium-ion batteries had really achieved a level of energy density that For the first time could allow you to have significant range in an electric car And they had a sports car that had zero to 60 in under four seconds at 250 mile range And it's pretty cool,\n\nand that was just made of it's just a kit car so it didn't have a roof or airbags or Thermal control system, and it was extremely unreliable it wasn't productized, but it was a proof of concept So I got the test drive from AC repulsion and I was like wow You guys should really commercialize this this would show people what electric cars can do and I tried for months to get AC propulsion to Go into production with the T 0 and Like they just were not interested in doing that Amazingly they wanted to do an electric Scion,\n\nyou know like that boxy car But the problem is like the electric saundra could cost $70,000 or You could build a sports car for $100,000.\n\nOkay, but like nobody's gonna buy the electric silent But fuel might fight electric sports car So After hounding them for months. I finally said like look if you guys are not going to Commercialize the T zero, would you mind if if I did that? They said no no problem. Go ahead.\n\nIt's like great So I'm gonna do that with JV, and I said, but if you're if you're gonna do If you're gonna go and try to productize t zero there's some other teams you should talk to that also interested in doing that So that's where Whatever hard macht hopping and Ian Wright came in and No, I think that was probably the biggest mistake of my career quite frankly I The I I think whatever you think you can have your cake and eat it, too That's something you're probably wrong So I thought I can keep running SpaceX I'll dedicate 20% of my time to Tesla and that'll be fine but actually It didn't things really melted down Went through hell we're to recapitalize the company the Kimmel was there singing time So Silicon Valley accurate or not accurate that's\n\nthe show yeah The it starts to get very accurate around around Episode four So took a few episodes to kind of get get grounded the first few episodes struck me as Hollywood making fun of Hollywood's idea of Silicon Valley which is like not you know not on point But then by about but the fourth or fifth episode season one it really starts get good and then by season two it's amazing in fact reality But the truth is stranger than fiction all the crazy stuff you see in that show Silicon Valley the reality is way crazier than that Yeah,\n\nyou've seen the two right yeah, I'm just like wow What will have to be a story for another time for says?\n\nWe've been asked to wrap it up I got one last question for the audience. It is what is your favorite song from the movie three amigos? Well we don't need we don't need to do it if if you guys willing to sing along Okay So so Jonah actually is the dancer of the three?\n\nOf Us have been we've been playing and singing and dancing this song since we were kids And so we're gonna do that on the stage and you guys can sing along well We'll do the first verse and then you guys can sing along on the second verse This is gonna be a real bad Yeah, I said terrible I'm mixing the dancing thing Come with me when moombas hits the sky You'll walk with me along the biome bye Okay all together now Bye little boat you Smile my little buttercup, what do you say a while?\n\nBin's me to the sky And you and I walk the wild by well, this is really winning You","textByLang":{"en":"We we met a number of years ago in part I was writing a movie I was going in to pitch a movie called interstellar at the time Steven Spielberg was the director and he wanted to do a grounded Movie about the future of space travel so I came in to my pitch was very short I said the movies gonna be 10 minutes long because it's not happening it was about 10 years ago We're not going there's no money left This is not a priority for us anymore And then in the course of and somehow.\n\nI got the job in the course of Writing the movie working with Kip Thorne a physicist invited me in a physics conference one night And I got seated next to Ilana We've been friends ever since the irony of that being I wound up becoming friends with a guy who I think personally is moving the needle back in the other direction And up by himself at this point More than more than anyone.\n\nI can think of so the net result is I think we are going back to the moon I think we are going to Mars, and I think a lot of it is because of you So one of the questions we got here today One of the questions that you guys have submitted the night that I love is simple Mars how can we help?\n\nWhat see so In the short term Mars is really about getting a spaceship built We're we're making good progress on this on the on the ship and the booster Codenamed PFR What is this tan for again well, it's like sort of a roar shy yes an acronym form And It is very big and I gave a presentation on this at the International Astronautical Congress in Australia last year And that design is evolving rapidly we're actually building that That should but that ship right now The I Think right now that like the biggest thing.\n\nThat would be helpful is just general support and encouragement and a good goodwill I Think once we build it there will be Well it will have a a Point of proof something that the Companies and countries can then go and do like they currently don't think it's possible so if we show them that it is then I think they will Fill up their game, and they will build Interplanetary transport vehicles as well Now once that has been built, and there is a There's a means of getting.\n\nI'll go and people to and from Mars as well as turn from the moon other places in the solar system and I think That's that's really where There's a matter of entrepreneurial entrepreneurial resources that are needed because you got to build out the entire base of Industry everything that allows your human civilization to exist and it's gonna be harder a Lot harder in a place like Mars or the moon We need some volunteers to be colonists do we have any comments pollen tears here?\n\nI'm actually not many hands raised by the way I Mean the moon of Mars often thought of is like is this some escape ski escape hatch for rich people but I it won't be that at all, it's In anyone who look for the only people that go to Better Mars. It'll be far more dangerous.\n\nI mean really it's it kind of reads like Shackleton's ad full Antarctic explorers, you know it's like Difficult dangerous good chance you will die Excitement for those who survive That kind of thing and I think there's not many people who actually want to go in the beginning because all those things I said are true but there'll be some who will for whom the excitement of the frontier and exploration exceeds the concern of danger and And it will start off building the first elementary infrastructure just a base to create propellant a power station Blast domes in which to grow crops All the sort of fundamentals without which we you cannot survive and then and then really there's gonna be an explosion of entrepreneur opportunity because mas will need everything\n\nfrom Iron foundries to pizza joints to like pizza joints Like oh, I should really have great bars The Mars bar right Like I would love dad What do you think the timeline for this is so I'm feeling pretty optimistic about the timeline although I'm I can't be a little sometimes my timelines are a little you know People have told me that My timelines historically have been optimistic and So trying to recalibrate to some degree here But I can tell you what what I know currently this case is that where we are building the first ship the first Mars Orange over interplanetary ship Right now,\n\nand I think we'll be able to be able to do short flights short sort of up and down flights Probably sometime in the first half of next year.\n\nThis is a very big Booster in ship the liftoff thrust of this would be about twice that of a seven-five So it's it's capable of doing 150 metric tons to to orbit it and be fully reusable So the the expendable payload is around around double that number so What it'll what's amazing about the ship assuming we can make Pulling wool and rapid reusability work is that we can reduce the cost marginal cost per flight?\n\nDramatically by orders of magnitude compared to where it is today But this this question of reusability is so fundamental to rocketry it is the it is the fundamental fundamental breakthrough that's needed if you consider aircraft for example the You can Lease a 747 and do a return flight from Cal Bullock.\n\nAh go from California to Australia For half a million dollars, that's what it cost to Lisa 747 fully round trip to Australia which is far To buy a single agent to have a prop plane a good one would Would be about one and a half million dollars, and that can't even reach, Australia and it's and it's tiny compared to a 747 so what that means is like a it cost less to - take it - use a giant plane with huge cargo for a long trip then at Night that costs way less than buying a small plane for a short trip in the aircraft world and the same actually is true of rocketry the be a VFR flight will actually cost less then then our Falcon one flight bit back in today that Was about a five or six million dollar marginal cost per flight they were confident that VFR\n\nwill be less than that So that that's profound and that is what will enable the creation of a affirmative base on the moon any city on Mars And that's the Equality of like the Union Pacific Railroad or or having Ships that work across the oceans Until you can get there, there's no way for all of the entrepreneurial energy to Do you can't you can't do anything there's no way for the flowers to bloom Once you can get there the opportunity is immense and So we're gonna do our best to get you there,\n\nand then make sure that there's an environment in which Entrepreneurs can Laura, SH and And then I think it'll be it'll be amazing a big part of that and we've talked about this is Inspiring people to look again like this.\n\nYou know we talked about this yesterday It was our grandparents who went to the moon, and we have not gone back since you know in my lifetime No one's gone to the moon You and I were having a conversation last year about what to put in Falcon Heavy? and and the kind of What's the cargo?\n\nAnd the idea was to to use that as an opportunity to inspire people again Carl Sagan had a beautiful thought many many years ago there if you just get enough people to look at the Earth from a distance that if we get them to focus on the problems here and on the possibilities of space exploration I Was fortunate enough to be with you at launch control when Falcon Heavy? Launched a few weeks back and we made a little movie.\n\nWe've called it a trailer That that sums up that experience we have it we have it here.\n\nWe thought we'd play it you guys again This is two minutes that that does a pretty good job of giving you the feeling of what it was like To be there when fucking everyone Yeah We really want we wanted to get the public year to warranty of getting excited about the possibility of something new happening in space of the space frontier getting pushed forward the goal of this was to inspire you and Make you believe again.\n\nJust as people believed in the Apollo era that anything is possible That picture at the end is a picture of one of the circuit boards inside the Roadster window But we tried confused the aliens as much as possible As if you look carefully there's also a little Hot Wheels version of the Roadster With a tiny little astronaut in the hot wheels roadster on the dashboard How was just by a basketball Nora Norse just that and so if you guys have any suggestions let us know I Think for me watching those two boosters Come down side by side it felt like a transformative moment it felt like a oh we can do anything and that's the culmination I was really struck there by the culmination of you know a singular vision and hundreds or thousands of very talented people\n\nworking together to make sure Every sitting in launch control and looking at the sheer amount of variables that you guys are clocking in those moments before the launch Wind speed at different altitudes and the status of all the different 27 engines and then How do you manage how do you?\n\nYour very hands on with the details, but you're also looking at the bigger bigger picture How do you manage your time? How do you how do you how do you parse you know? How do you zoom in and zoom out and make sure that all these things are coming together?\n\nWell at at SpaceX almost all my time is spent on Engineering and design, it's probably 80 and 90% And then Gwynne Shotwell who's president chief operating officer takes care of the business operations the company, which is what allows me to do that?\n\nYeah, I think in order to make the right decisions you have to understand something you need to understand something you add a detailed level You cannot make good decision So But I'd like to just probably like the you know where you saw there as a result of an incredible team and that's base X Super talented people who really work like crazy.\n\nThey make that happen you Know I think my role is to make sure that they have an environment where they can they can really where the talents can really come to the floor and You know and but I can't tell you how honored and grateful I am to work with such a great team Everyone in this room is inspired by you. Who are you inspired by what Kanye West obviously? Today Me too fred astaire fred astaire.\n\nYou know you should see my dance moves We may we may see some dance moves unless you love Fred Astaire. He's amazing if you haven't watched his movies. They're amazing.\n\nYeah, I Think for me when I look at all of all of the things you've undertaken to do the the commonality is With Tesla with SpaceX shoulder city now with the boring company It feels like you're seeing a firmly established a mature Industry That is ripe for sort of a quantum shift that there's there's an opportunity there for you know in the case of cars its electrification Which drastically changes?\n\nYou know the complexity of an automobile and potentially down down the line the? Expense of it with rockets it's the usability of it With with solar it's about a firmly established energy system. That's about to be massively disrupted.\n\nThis is having And with the boring company it's about looking at infrastructure projects would typically take decades and billions of dollars and looking to to reduce the Complexity that is that is that how you is that how you? You know is that how you see the world. Do you see the things that don't work and can be made better? No but I mean I Don't like look at things that say. Okay. What's the rank ordered?\n\nYou know business opportunity From a financial standpoint or anything like that It's a it's really just like these are the there's some things that are that don't seem to be working that are important for the You know for our life and for the future to be good and I've said that if If you're before me to say like where is the One way to do or a suggestive rate or return estimate on various industry opportunities I would put Arrows like basically building rockets and cars pretty close to the bottom of the list But there would have to be the dumbest things to do just just because you know look at the auto industry and In the US auto industry the only two companies that haven't gone bankrupt At least at some point are Tesla and Ford every other company got\n\nbankrupt, or was failing and got acquired There's only two companies that have gone bankrupt, and there's a big graveyard of companies that did so and engineering up against entrenched competitors There's no III gave basically both SpaceX and Tesla from the beginning a probability of less than 10% of likely likely to succeed So why do it?\n\nWell in the case of SpaceX I just kept wondering why we were not making progress towards Sending people to Mars Why we didn't have a base on the moon Here where we're at the sort of space hotels that were promised in 2001 the movie It's like You know it's uh. It. Just wasn't happening year after year. Yeah, I was getting me down. I look at the NASA website I was like Does where does it say when we go to Mars isn't?\n\nso Initially for SpaceX for example I thought well The genesis of SpaceX was not to create a company But but really had it how do we get NASA's budget to be bigger that was initially to go so? I came up with this little small philanthropic mission, which would be to send a small greenhouse to the surface of Mars?\n\nIt's called Mars oasis and And they were one landing the seats were being dehydrated nutrient gel Hydrate upon landing, and and then you have this little greenhouse And then the money shot would be you know green plants against the right background Recently learned that money shot has a meaning that That I didn't aware of but The the you know, I think that that would get people excited about Rekindles the spirit of a follower essentially and as I thought it more more into what it would take to do that I learned that The fundamental issue is actually the cost of access to space Rockets were super expensive and the cost has per pound to kilogram to orbit had actually gone up over the years not down and it was like okay,\n\nwell if you it won't matter if we are able to do this philosophic mission and It generates a lot of will to go to Mars.\n\nThat's not going to matter if there's no way So at my second or third trip back from Russia I was like whoa there's got to be a way to build rockets There's gotta be a way to solve the rocket falling I missed our reading a lot of books and rockets and They're better sort of a first principles analysis of a varrock.\n\nIt just broke down the materials that are in a rocket what would it cost to buy those materials what verses the price the rocket and there's a gigantic difference between the Raw material cost the rocket and the finish cost the rocket so there must be something wrong happening in Going from the constituent atoms to the final shape and Found that certainly to be true and then and then why won't people trying to make reusability work It was very difficult to make rocket reusability work and then unfortunately the the Space Shuttle ended up being a counter example of don't don't try to make reusability work because spatial data ended up costing more per flight than an expandable vehicle of equivalent capability So for a long time people used in the space\n\nshuttle as an example of why reusability is dumb You can't take a single case example and make an entire theory out of it so There's no question in my mind that if you could read the Rockets effect It has to be true reuse which means Rapid and complete reuse the problem with the space shows only a portion of the System came back like the big orange tank which was also the primary airframe was discarded every time and the parts that were used were incredibly difficult to refurbish So they kind of reached the only country reuse that matters is if it's rapid and complete It's that the only thing you're changing between flights far from scheduled maintenance is the propellant So we embarked upon that journey to create SpaceX in 2002 and In the beginning I\n\nwouldn't actually wouldn't let my friends invest because I don't want to lose their money.\n\nI thought it was like you Know I really lose my own money, so And then We almost did die at SpaceX actually so we I budgeted four or three flights I mean technically I did have a plan where I had to have the money from PayPal I had like 180 million from PayPal. I thought you know I'll allocate half of that to SpaceX and Tesla and SolarCity and That should be fine. I'll have 90 million Lexus plots.\n\nYou know But but then what happened is Things cost more and took longer than and I thought so I had a choice of either Put the rest of the money in or their companies are going to die and It's like set up putting all the money in and firing money or rent from friends 2008 was brutal if you Yeah, 2008 we had the third consecutive failure of the Falcon rocket for SpaceX Tesla Almost went bankrupt. We closed our financing around 6 p. m..\n\nChristmas Eve 2008 it was the last hour of the last day that it was possible We would have gone back up two days after Christmas otherwise And I've got divorced I was like rough, man Governor Scott yes You do wait it.\n\nIt poses a question or maybe you just answer the question of why is no one else doing these things What's your pain threshold yeah, well, it's real high So yeah SpaceX is alive, but it's kind of at sea so is Tesla If things have just gone a little bit the other way Both companies would be dead, and I'd like one of the most difficult choices.\n\nI have ever faced in life was was in 2008 and I think I had I think Maybe thirty million dollars left thirty or forty one dollars left in 2008 I had two choices I Could put it all into one company, and then the other company would definitely die Or split it between the two companies and but if I split it between two companies then both might die And you know when you put your blood sweat and tears into creating something a bully something.\n\nIt's like a child And so it's like which one am I gonna let one starve to death I Can bring myself to do it surprised. I split the money between two Fortunately, thank goodness they both came through We've got a question for the audience that builds on that. What was your biggest failure, and how did it change you? What was your biggest failure and how did I change you?\n\nHave to really think hard about that failure There's your answer well, there's a ton of failures along the way, that's for sure Like I said as a support for SpaceX the first three launches failed and We were just barely able to scrape together enough Parts and and money to do the fourth launch that both launch should fail who would have been dead so multiple failures along the way I Tried very hard to get the right expertise in for for SpaceX I tried hard to to find a great chief engineer for the rocket but in that the good Chief Engineers wouldn't join and The bad ones well there was no no point in hiring him so I ended up being chief engineer of the rocket So if I could have found somebody better,\n\nthen we would have maybe had less than three failures How do you how do you plan a business where you know?\n\nThe rocket business, you know some of these things are gonna blow up on the launch pad How does the business plan work I?\n\nDon't really have a business plan Yeah, I haven't had it, but I had a business by her way back in the zip two days But but these things are just always wrong so I just just been father's business plans after that Yeah I mean, I think you know wishful thinking for sure is a Source of many problems and in many walks life a Business or personal business or personal wishful thinking Causes a lot of a lot of trouble you really have to ask you know whether something It is true or not that Doesn't make sense and if it ever feels like Too easy it probably is You know the yeah But for the drama of SpaceX I think Tesla's actually Been probably 2,000 might old little problem a dose of overtime Practices drama magnet,\n\nit's crazy How do you I mean a lot of people want to know you know you're managing three or four companies now each of them trying to do something revolutionary each of the a business that has historically been regarded as Impossible to challenge or disrupt.\n\nHow do you how do you prioritize? How do you how do you how do you prioritize between? The different companies how do you prioritize? How do you spend your time?\n\nYeah, absolutely actually could trouble you for a water I've got a bit of a cult my voice is a bit hoarse Too it tells a top priority For business time almost all of it is really dedicated to SpaceX and Tesla it may sound like I've got a lot of different endeavors, but It's overwhelmingly SpaceX and Tesla in terms of try of allocation So it's a and then for non-business stuff, it's Almost entirely kid stuff my kids are here here today actually put them on to South by Southwest everything a good time But they went so the West world Exhibit or it's just really amazing very haven't seen the West world What do you call it exhibit or a I don't know what you just call it.\n\nIt's a theme park It's really incredibly well done, and I took the kids they yesterday to had a great time together I Think probably one the the biggest of us are standing is that I'm actually not an investor I'm so much fielding investor invested things. I don't actually don't miss anything back the only Public security that I would have any kind is Tesla and then the next biggest is SpaceX and and then The boring company Hennis Tata.\n\nIt more as a joke because there will be a funny name for a company You know we put we put the zero and bring I mean it's like Doesn't make any sense When we when we talk about everyone you first told me that you were thinking about tunnels And I must tell you about that years ago, okay, it's like a long time ago.\n\nLike I thought you're joking yeah It was I was joking but It's not because of some epiphany that I had one day Driving on the 405 That's how it gets called translated, so now I was talking four tunnels for years and years for probably five years or four years at least Whenever I'd give a talk and people would ask me about what opportunities you do see in the world I'd say tunnels can someone please build tunnels so after four or five years of begging people to build tunnels and Still no tunnels.\n\nI was like okay. I wanna build a tunnel Have missing something here So Yes, I was like basically talking fuels Arizona for tunnels right for several years, and then said well let's find out what it takes to build a tunnel and Yeah, so started digging a tunnel I wanted to start the tunnel From where I could see it from my office at SpaceX it so stuff.\n\nI said well Let's just cobble for part of the parking lot across the road so I can see if it's if anything's happening or not And then we named our first boring machine Godot because I kept waiting for it no it came Finally did and and we got it going and now we're making good progress and We were finding the company for merchandise sales So, thank you for anyone who's bought a flamethrower You will not be sorry or maybe you will Won't be boring We have a video I think here of the latest vision for the boring company it turns a Howard You know this great Attitude I Think you know when we were first talking about the concept,\n\nyou know tunnels feel like a resolutely old-school Solution to approach that that I invented tunnels And I always tell holding out hope for the flying car that you asked me one simple question that Answered the question for me about flying cars kind of forever Which was would you want your neighbor to have a flying car.\n\nYes, exactly? This is exactly the question Oh you want to fly car how about everyone around you has a flying car too? Oh? That doesn't sound so good Yeah, and I think one of the interesting things about tunneling is it's one of these things that you know there's no a lot of More competition there. It's not a you know. It's it's something that's right for change, so how do you yeah?\n\nYou talked about the philosophy with godot was to just keep running. It basically until you figured out. Why it can't run any faster Yes The point coming to be clear is it's a it's like literally 2 percent of my time. It's probably 20 percent of my tweets The tweets do not correlate to actual time spent The I mean, I sort of just have fun with the boring company But my time allocation is about especially about 2% Talk about your time allocation.\n\nI think one of the things you spend an awful lot of time thinking about I know Is artificial intelligence and something that you and I have a shared interest and it's something that our audience is interested in as well The question here is a lot of experts in AI don't share the same level of concern that you do about the danger off pools What what's yours last words what's what specifically do you believe that they don't?\n\nWell the biggest issue I see with so-called AI experts is that they they think they know more than they do And they think they're smarter than they actually are in general We are all much smarter than we think we are but much less smart dumber than we think you out by a lot so This is this tends to plague plague smart people like you just can't that they define themselves by their intelligence And they they don't like the idea that a machine can be way smarter than them so they discount the idea which is Fundamentally flawed that's the wishful thinking situation I'm really quite close to I'm very close to the cutting edge in AI and it scares the hell out of me It's capable of vastly more than almost anyone knows and the rate of improvement is exponential\n\nBut you can see this in things like alphago which went from in the span of maybe Six to nine months it went from being unable to beat even a reasonably good go player So then beating the European world champion who was ranked 600 then beating Lisa doll for five What been world champion for many years then beating the current world champion, then beating everyone while playing simultaneously then Then there was alpha zero which crushed alphago a hundred to 0 and alpha zero just learnt by playing itself and It can play basically any game that you put the rules in for if you whatever rules you give it Just literally read the rules play the game every superhuman for any game Nobody expected that great of improvement to guess those so those same experts Who\n\nthink AI is not progressing at the rate that I'm saying?\n\nI think you will find that their predictions for things like go and and other AI advancements have Therefore their batting average is quite. Weak.\n\nIt's not good That we'll see this also with with self-driving I think probably by intermixture self-driving will be well encompass essentially all modes driving and be At least a hundred to two hundred percent Safer than a person by the end of next year we're talking like maybe 18 months from now Netsertive study on on Tesla's autopilot version 1 which is relatively primitive and found that it was a 45 percent reduction in highway accidents And that's despite.\n\nWhat a pilot one being just version 1 Version 2. I think will be At least 2 or 3 times better. That's the current version that's running right now So the rate of improvement is really dramatic we have to figure out some way to ensure that The advent of digital super intelligence is one which is Symbiotic with humanity, I think that's the single biggest existential crisis that we face and the most pressing one And how do we do that I?\n\nMean if we take it that it's inevitable at this point that some version of AI is coming down the 1 How do we how do we steer through them well?\n\nI'm not normally an advocate of Regulation and oversight I mean I think it's once you generally go inside minimizing those things But this is a case where you have a very serious danger to the public and it's therefore there needs to be a public body that Has insight and then oocytes on to confirm that everyone is?\n\ndeveloping AI safely This is extremely important I think a danger of AI is much greater than the danger of nuclear warheads landlocked and Nobody would suggest that we allow anyone to just build nuclear warheads if they That would be insane and mock my words AI is far more dangerous than nukes Far so why do we have no regulatory oversight, this is insane Which question you've been asking for a long time.\n\nI think it's a question That's coming to the forefront over the last year where you begin to realize that it doesn't necessarily I think if we we've all been focused in on the idea of artificial superintelligence Right which is clearly a danger, but maybe you know a little further out?\n\nWhat's happened over the last year is you've seen the artificial what I would be calling artificial stupidity You're talking about you know algorithmic manipulation of social media like we're in it now. It's starting. It's starting to happen How do we how do we is it what's the intervention at this point?\n\nI'm not really all that worried about the short-term stuff things that are Like narrow AI is not a species level risk It will it will result in dislocation in lost jobs and You know that sort of better weaponry and that kind of thing, but it is not a fundamental species level risk Whereas digital super intelligence is?\n\nSo it's really all about laying the groundwork to make sure that if humanity collectively your science that Creating digital super intelligence is the right move then? We should do so very very carefully Very very carefully This is the most important thing that we could possibly do Building on that other other than AI and The the other issues that you're you're tackling Transportation energy production aerospace.\n\nWhat issues should our next generation of leaders be focused on solving what else is coming down the line Well I mean there there are other things that are on a longer time scale The obviously the things that I believe in like extending life beyond Earth making life multiplanetary No a big believer in a sort of Asimov's Foundation series or the principle that you you really want to You know I recommend reading the foundation series, but It's like if you if you know that there's a there's likely to be you don't know But there's likely to be another Dark Ages,\n\nwhich It seems my guess is the fall there will be at some point I'm not predicting that we're about to enter a Dark Ages But that there's some probability that we will particularly if there's a third world war Then we want to make sure that there's enough of us of a seed of human civilization somewhere else to bring civilization back and perhaps shorten the length of the dark ages I Think that's why I said that it's important to get a self-sustaining base Ideally on Mars because Mars is far enough away from Earth that I caught that a Warrant earth the Mars base might survive is more likely to survive than a moon base But I think a moon base and a Mars base That That could perhaps Help regenerate life back here on earth.\n\nIt would be really important, and I'd get that done before a possible World War 3 You know that's the century we had two massive world wars three if you count the Cold War I Think it's unlikely that we'll never have another The Poli will be at some point or if we have another one it'll be the last Yeah, it it. Just could be radioactive rubble.\n\nYeah so Again, I'm not predicting This seems like well, if you say given enough time will it be most likely given him of time because this is This is has been our pattern in the past so Like you really believe in the zeroth law of Asimov zeroth law you take the set of actions most likely to support the humanity of the future But I think that sustainable energy is also obviously really important, that's tautological if it's not sustainable its unsustainable Yeah, how close early to solving that problem?\n\nWell, I think that the core technologies are are there with the wind solar with with batteries The the fundamental problem is that there's an unprocessed own allottee in the cost of of co2?\n\nThe the market economics works very well, if things are priced correctly But when there's when things are not priced correctly And something that has it has a real cost that has zero cost then that's where you get distortions in the market that inhibit the progress of of other technologies so Essentially anything that That produces cop, and it will push push cotton into the atmosphere which includes rockets by the way.\n\nI'm not excluding rockets from this It has to be a price and then You sawed off with a low price but then that price and then depending upon whether that price has any effect on the past a million a Possibility of co2 the atmosphere you can adjust that price up for down But in the absence of a price we sort of pretend that digging trillions of tons of Fossil fuels from deep and Under the earth and putting it into the atmosphere who were pretending that that had that that that has no probability of a bad outcome And the entire scientific community is saying obviously It has it's gonna have a bad outcome obviously you just you're changing the chemical constituents in the atmosphere so So it's really up to people and governments to put to put a price on\n\nCarbon, and and then automatically the right thing happens It's really straightforward What do we do with the carbon Center I actually think we can manage with the current carbon level or even a little bit higher It's and this is gonna sound It sound like I'm backtracking, but there's actually an argument that More carbon in the atmosphere is is actually good, but up to a point So We might actually arguably have been a little carbon starved if you go back 200 years ago And say okay,\n\nwell furio's go with like we had like turning 890 parts per million of carbon we're probably a little carbon stuff now we're about 400 just past 400 mark I think somewhere in the 400s probably okay We don't have to worry about to question carbon or anything like that But now if this momentum keeps going and we start going up to six hundred eight hundred a thousand fifteen hundred That's where things get really squirrely and The sheer momentum of the world's energy infrastructure is leading us in that direction It's very so it's just very important that the The public and the governor's pushed to ensure the correct price of carbon is paid So that that will be the thing that matters Yeah our audience is very interested in knowing how many hours of sleep\n\nyou got last night.\n\nOh I don't know about six five or six. I think right I Feel like we know part of the answer this cuz you were trapped in West well for a while But, but how do I mean on a Regular day for you, or you are you are you sleepy you're not sleeping a lot right geez do I look that bad?\n\nYou look great Okay, just imagine with the amount of responsibilities with the amount of you know with what you've got going on to these problems still keep You up at night, or do you think we're on our way to solve it?\n\nWell right now the only things that are really stressing me out in a big way or AI obviously that's like boys there and and working really hard on Tesla Model 3 production and who making good progress, but it's Usually hard work, but those are the two most stressful things my life right now Yeah Our audience really wants to know What do you hope the world will look like for children born today when they're your age Right, what do you hope for the world to look like?\n\nWhat's the best-case scenario say? We solve these problems? What's that world look like? Let's see so I Think the a good picture would look like You know we're really substantially transferred to sustainable generation and consumption of electricity So that the Does the co2 risk and the ocean rising risk is mitigated?\n\nand we're not looking at like you know having, Florida and And sort of large portions to the world underwater, that'd be great that not But to have addressed that risk that'll be there. You know us For us to have a base on the moon face a mirage big out there exploring the solar system so welding industry on it essentially having a human civilization go out there and And and have you such that anyone can?\n\ngo the moon of Mars or the solar system if they want to making it really affordable I Do think it's important that this competition of their multiple companies doing this not just a sex and And that a I risk is that I guess there's the sort of a benign AI and that were able to achieve a symbiosis with that AI Ideally the AI There's somebody who can members name but had a good a suggestion for what the Optimization of the AI should be what's its utility function?\n\nYou have to be careful about this because you say maximize happiness and the AI concludes that happiness is function of dopamine and serotonin So just captures all humans and jacks your brain with large amounts of dopamine serotonin Like okay, so holy mint It sounds pretty good though.\n\nI'll you beloved Well I like the definition of like the I should try to maximize the freedom of action of humanity Maximize the freedom of action maximize freedom essentially I like that definition But we do want to close coupling between collective human intelligence Digital intelligence And a newer link is trying to help in that regard by Creating a an interface between a high bandwidth interface between AI and your and human brain There were already we're already a sidewalk in a sense that That your phone and your computer a kind of extension of you Just low bandwidth input-output exactly.\n\nIt's just low bandwidth Particularly output, I mean two thumbs basically So how do we solve that problem? Give it the bandwidth bandwidth thing it's a bandwidth issue And we've all we've also come to it now We're all we're all cyborgs were just low efficiency cyborgs, so how do we how do we make it better?\n\nI think we've got above a We've got opposed interface Like we didn't evolve to have a communications Jack You know some So there's gonna be essentially the vast numbers of tiny electrodes That are able to read right for your brain of course. You know security is pretty important in the situation say the least I was just saying I'm not coming with I'm keeping my brain air-gapped.\n\nYeah well I think a lot of people will choose to do that But it's a bit like Ian banks is new or lace, but not but in the case of relation sort of that that's there from when you're born or it's sort of it's not a Sort of I'm sorry to back them yackin over back up this would be this there's a digital extension of you That is an AI the AI extension of you a tertiary layer of intelligence So you've got your limbic system your cortex, and and the tertiary layer Which is the digital AI extension of you and that high bandwidth connection is what?\n\nachieves the tights and meiosis I think that's the best outcome I I Hope so if you know he's got better ideas And Talking about another project that you're working on that her audience wants to know a little bit more about sterling.\n\nOh Can you tell us anything Doing Skynet hopefully not Skynet its internet in the sky Well we We don't talk that much about StarLink But essentially it's intended to provide low latency high bandwidth Internet connectivity throughout the world That actually will not be enough cognitive processing car onboard the satellite system to to in any way be a Skynet thing like it's Digital AI requires a lot of super intelligence requires a lot of big servers on the ground just to power intensity But this antenna to be to provide people with Who don't have any internet connectivity with Internet connectivity?\n\nand it's very good for sparse and sparsely populated in moderate moderate least mostly quiet populated areas and forgiving people in cities a choice of in your low-cost choice of internet access But I do think it's gonna be important the Starling system will be important in providing the funding necessary for SpaceX to develop interplanetary spacecraft And at the same time yeah helping people who have even though or super expensive connectivity and giving people in urban areas more of a competitive choice very cool I have to ask you because it's the number one question just Going back to Mars What kind of government do you envision for the first Martian colony?\n\nBlitzer and what's your title yeah? Yeah exactly Emperor Oh goddamn friar?\n\nI don't know Might be too much If you're what I should watch my jokes yeah, not everyone gets irony must remember So I think the I think most likely the the form of government on Mars would be somewhat of a direct democracy where You vote on issues where people vote directly on issues instead of going to representative government in When the United States was formed Representative government was the only thing that was logistically feasible Because people there's no way it was or evil to communicate instantly a lot of people's didn't even have really access to Mail boxes or there wasn't even the post office is very primitive a lot of people couldn't write So you had to have some form of representative democracy Or things just wouldn't work at all.\n\nI think my mas most likely. It's gonna be people at everyone votes on every issue and That's how it goes. I've a few things.\n\nI'd recommend which is keep blowers short long laws it's like that's That's something suspicious is going on if there's long though You know if you if the size of law exceeds the word count of Lord of the Rings Which it does Amazingly, then it's like something's wrong So there should be a limit to the size of the law that I should be able to digest it like how come you can read the Constitution and all of the amendments like you can read those and maybe an hour and And and we govern so much of a civilization by that and yet modern law is this obtuse?\n\nSuper boring tome.\n\nThat's indecipherable to almost anyone so I think direct democracy Lowers lows that are comprehensible I think having some kind of hysteresis on Like it should be easier to remove a law than Create one because things just get to a no-show you have to have something that's gonna come inertia So probably I don't want the right number of you, maybe it's like 60/40 Maybe you require a 60% to get a law in place, but any number above 40% can remove a little Otherwise you just get lowers just accumulate over time they cure their time and it's sort of like Gulliver where you just get trapped by all these tiny strings,\n\nand you can't move You get hardening of the arteries of civilization with law with rules and rules rules rules So it should be just easier to get rid of rule then let's put one in Maybe they should even have like a some kind of sunset clause So that they just automatically expire unless there's enough of an impetus to keep them around I Know I know there's an affirmative, it's just I'm interested in hearing a little bit more about the very early days with Tesla, and how I came together brother Kimble is here,\n\nI thought we'd bring him out you guys could talk a little bit about it You guys might get lucky tonight, I noticed you have a guitar.\n\nI'm gonna ignore that It had some good guitar But I guess there are a fair number of entrepreneurs here today and a fair number of people interested looking at Tesla, which now extraordinary extraordinary success of it You know how did how did this come together and when you in when you guys were looking at I know famously? You know and you guys were you were looking at problems you could solve How those conversations look like?\n\nYeah, so the C2e back in well, thanks coming on About the things that I thought would be most important to work on for a long time. We'll look back to college days and Electric cars are something I've been here since and so is 1819 When do you first recall here when we talk about electric cars that's correct first time was well you talk about a lot We we used to brainstorm a lot randomly even in we were 20 20 years old and the first thing.\n\nI remember us brainstorming was solving connectivity amongst doctors and we were on a road trip from We a lot of doctors in the family so we had the information But the idea was really to solve that problem where we from Silicon Valley to Philadelphia Brainstorming how you do it.\n\nThis is before the internet, so we you know in our minds designing Network computers doctors talking This is all happened of course over 25 years, but it's one of the sort of the first time I remember us Really trying to solve a world problem and unless it was a world problem. That was really important. It.\n\nJust wasn't that interesting to us Electric cars you talked about for a long time, but I remember walking into your house once it this is in Polly 2002 or 2003 and You had these plans laid out that The team of Tesla had or the earlier guys had basically said you know we're gonna take this Lotus Elise We're gonna convert it in electric car and you know we sat down and talked about it for a bit And and it wasn't so much that it Could be done.\n\nI think we all believe it could be done.\n\nIt was more just the attitude that it should be done And then from there Yeah, well the the first internships that I had that were Interesting were on ultra capacitors were used in electric cars, so that's what why I first came out to Silicon Valley in Like 93 or made to something that was to work at a company called political research on advanced ultra capacitors with the idea that this could be a solution to the energy storage problem in electric vehicles and then When I graduated from Penn the I was gonna be doing a PhD at Stanford in material science and and invent physics Try to figure out if there's a way to solve for an ultra high density solid-state capacitor that would have enough range to power an electric vehicle,\n\nso I said impact it so that's that's a that's a 95 and then I Wasn't sure there's one of those things where you could work in it for a long time and discover that there's no Actually, no.\n\nGood solution you you publish a paper and You get a PhD in a lab, but it would be academic in its value so In 95 I had a choice of either work on this energy storage system for electric vehicles or Try to play a role in building the internet But the internet stuff was happening right then and there Whereas the electric electric vehicle technology was going to progress slowly on its own?\n\nWhether I was there or not so I thought well put the rat studies on hold and do something To help out the internet or do something useful on the Internet and that's when I talk to Kimbo You're working in Canada at the time and Said hey, why don't we try to do this this company in Silicon Valley?\n\npretty cool We bought that we were we were the first to see maps and door-to-door direction it had been built by a company Knapp tech they Never burn have never been on the Internet, and it was was so cool to be the first two humans to see it You can draw a map type in an address get directions Things you probably all dead about 50 times today each And we were the first to see that put it on the internet.\n\nIt was really cool She was the first maps and directions Yellow pages and white pages on the internet, yeah so And then we ended up helping bring a lot of publications online So it as investors and customers the New York Times Company knight-ridder or Hearst in a number of others?\n\nand Yeah, but I always wanted to get back to electric vehicles because that that was a primary interest of mine from undergrad and grad days and And so After us up to still took one more Internet company because thought it's up to you had not achieved its its full potential We built this incredible technology, but it wasn't being used by the customers in the right way It's a bit like building you know F-22 fighter jets and then and then you selling to people and they roll them down the hill at each other Not the way to use it, okay, I Think that's that's where decide you really want to go to?\n\nThe end consumer if you've got a great technology you want to go all the way to the end consumer Don't tell it this to to some bonehead legacy company that doesn't understand how to use it So yeah So with with excel comb which became PayPal That's what that's what we try to do something significant with the with the internet And and it got sort of part of the way towards its its objective after a PayPal I Went went public and and they've got bought by eBay in 2002 that actually freed up me and a bunch of other people so you go and create companies and I start debating between Either solar electric car or space I thought space was like the least likely to have somebody,\n\nbut at least likely to attract Entrepreneurial times, I don't like like nobody is gonna.\n\nBe crazy enough to do space so I better do space So I started off with with space first and And Then about a year and a half later in 2003.\n\nI had lunch with JB Straubel and Hal Rosen and It was that it's like fish restaurant in El Segundo And Hal Rosen had been involved in space and electric vehicles and And jb was had just got just graduated from college was working with him and the conversation turned to electric vehicles Because Howard had done something called Rosen Motors, which was like an attempted evie startup, and I said well I've always been super interested in electric vehicles.\n\nI was gonna do my PhD on an advanced and reduced energy storage I Was gonna do grad studies on on advanced energy storage techniques for electric vehicles and And so JB said well have you heard of this company called AC propulsion because they had created It the t zero electric sports car as a prototype I was like wow that's great like lithium-ion batteries had really achieved a level of energy density that For the first time could allow you to have significant range in an electric car And they had a sports car that had zero to 60 in under four seconds at 250 mile range And it's pretty cool,\n\nand that was just made of it's just a kit car so it didn't have a roof or airbags or Thermal control system, and it was extremely unreliable it wasn't productized, but it was a proof of concept So I got the test drive from AC repulsion and I was like wow You guys should really commercialize this this would show people what electric cars can do and I tried for months to get AC propulsion to Go into production with the T 0 and Like they just were not interested in doing that Amazingly they wanted to do an electric Scion,\n\nyou know like that boxy car But the problem is like the electric saundra could cost $70,000 or You could build a sports car for $100,000.\n\nOkay, but like nobody's gonna buy the electric silent But fuel might fight electric sports car So After hounding them for months. I finally said like look if you guys are not going to Commercialize the T zero, would you mind if if I did that? They said no no problem. Go ahead.\n\nIt's like great So I'm gonna do that with JV, and I said, but if you're if you're gonna do If you're gonna go and try to productize t zero there's some other teams you should talk to that also interested in doing that So that's where Whatever hard macht hopping and Ian Wright came in and No, I think that was probably the biggest mistake of my career quite frankly I The I I think whatever you think you can have your cake and eat it, too That's something you're probably wrong So I thought I can keep running SpaceX I'll dedicate 20% of my time to Tesla and that'll be fine but actually It didn't things really melted down Went through hell we're to recapitalize the company the Kimmel was there singing time So Silicon Valley accurate or not accurate that's\n\nthe show yeah The it starts to get very accurate around around Episode four So took a few episodes to kind of get get grounded the first few episodes struck me as Hollywood making fun of Hollywood's idea of Silicon Valley which is like not you know not on point But then by about but the fourth or fifth episode season one it really starts get good and then by season two it's amazing in fact reality But the truth is stranger than fiction all the crazy stuff you see in that show Silicon Valley the reality is way crazier than that Yeah,\n\nyou've seen the two right yeah, I'm just like wow What will have to be a story for another time for says?\n\nWe've been asked to wrap it up I got one last question for the audience. It is what is your favorite song from the movie three amigos? Well we don't need we don't need to do it if if you guys willing to sing along Okay So so Jonah actually is the dancer of the three?\n\nOf Us have been we've been playing and singing and dancing this song since we were kids And so we're gonna do that on the stage and you guys can sing along well We'll do the first verse and then you guys can sing along on the second verse This is gonna be a real bad Yeah, I said terrible I'm mixing the dancing thing Come with me when moombas hits the sky You'll walk with me along the biome bye Okay all together now Bye little boat you Smile my little buttercup, what do you say a while?\n\nBin's me to the sky And you and I walk the wild by well, this is really winning You"},"languages":["en"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kzlUyrccbos"},{"id":"falcon-heavy-post-launch-press-conference-2018-0","type":"interview","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQkAlaZIs1s","title":"Falcon Heavy Post-Launch Press Conference","titles":{"en":"Falcon Heavy Post-Launch Press Conference","de":"Falcon Heavy Post-Launch Press Conference","fr":"Falcon Heavy Post-Launch Press Conference"},"date":"2018-02-06","summary":"Musk fields press questions right after SpaceX's first Falcon Heavy test flight, discussing the Tesla Roadster payload and reusable boosters.","text":"[Music] everyone in the room we're going to be starting momentarily I'd asked that if you have a mobile phone I'm going to get let's eat let's he seated the chef Ginsburg little short I'm gonna try to prove some three [Music] and we've got 30 minutes [Music] spirit [Music] joining us a little surreal to me I had this image [Music] to read the full 300 minutes right enough people to travel to travel for one that sees to like engines so it I think that's a center one that lead the outer to did not and that was to hit the water month now and took out to the end zone foreigner if you've got the footage some pretty fun footage if the cameras didn't get blown up as well for real but that's best baby what we're going to reuse the set but that's our craving look\n\nat you psychic system side pieces will forget something enough it since they're not blocked by the butcher client the power stations that works piece of computerized aggressive and they will see if the upper stage engine is alive quite larger spoke through that house but only there were a stage will prosper quickly two belts here it's essentially well of course first o'clock and then it's gonna do a restart simply just repellent and go to that's awesome the Raghava we'll look at the second round of the upper stage we were 20 26 which is basically right later it has like two propellant to the transpose direction that's everything that fuel doesn't freeze the else that's with my things own took a look at the side boosters they looking a really good condition\n\num so they're they're both reliable although as I said their combination of version 3 in version 4 so we will we're only gonna be reef lying really version 5 at this point that that launches shortly and that that will be on me and stable will stick to version fight for the Falcon architecture we don't expect to have a version 6 all right any questions that I haven't answered I'll do my best to answer them but not sure if I have the information yet but I'll try start in the room and the first question goes to David Kerley from ABC News he launched spectacular what did you learn what did Falcon Heavy teach you I guess taught me like crazy things can come true like because I said like I didn't really think this would work um like when I see the rocket liftoff\n\nI see like a thousand things that that could not work and it's amazing when they do and I was really that seeing the to Bruce's land synchronize really just like the simulation I mean it makes you think like you there really that could be quite a scalable approach you know if you could have imagined large numbers of those just coming in and landing taking off landing doing many flights per day um so it I think gives me a lot of faith for our next architecture the sort of be an interplanetary spaceship you have different names for it but BFRs the county code name and it gives me confidence that bfr um is really quite workable um as i should look at the side boosters and like they're pretty big you know sixteen stories tall 60-foot legs man but you really\n\nwe need to be way bigger than that so so i think it's giving me a lot of confidence that we can make the VFR design work yeah it's a traumatic event so I'm SpaceX team so I think I think we can really do this a lot you know and keep advancing that the cube advancing the technology to achieve full and rapid reusability whichever whatever profound effect on the future and when there's some things about say Falcon Heavy vs Falcon 9 is that Falcon Heavy has the same level of expandability as Falcon line so if you look at say the price of oak line is sixty million dollars Felton he's 90 even though it's got three times as much capability because in both cases the only thing that's expanded is the upper stage we're gonna start recovering with the the fairings\n\nthe big nose cone we're gonna recover that we recover the Boosters and so there's really the cost of us really between a Falcon 9 I felt the henries minor well the next question from marcia done at Associated Press March 10 EP what were yours what was going through your mind how how amazed were you to see your roadster up there what should our man just cruising along with the blue planet and how long will we be getting life views do you think from the car well I think it looks so ridiculous and impossible and you can tell it's real because it looks so fake honestly we'd have way better CGI infamous fake and you know the colors all look like kind of weird in space there's no atmospheric occlusion you know you know it's like everything looks too crisp and\n\nbut we know we didn't really test any of those materials for you know is its space hardened or whatever you know so it just has the same seats that like normal car has it's a slickly a normal car in space which I kind of like the absurdity of that and if you look closely there's on the dashboard there's a tiny roadster with a tiny spaceman the hot wheels made a Hot Wheels roadster and a friend a friend of mine and I suggested hey why you put that wheels roadster with a tiny space man on the you know in the car - like that'd be cool sure mysteries that I mean it's kind of silly and fun but I think I think that's you know silly fun things are important and normally for a new rocket you know they'd launch like a block of concrete or something like that I\n\nmean that's so boring and I think that's just the imagery of it is something that's gonna get people excited around the world and I still tripping me out I mean out tripping balls here yeah congratulations Ilan great launch today where do you see the Falcon Heavy fitting into this launch industry is this something that is going to be for more national security you see this for interplanetary missions what's the future of Falcon Heavy yeah the great thing is like so Falcon Heavy opens up a new class of payload so it can launch more than twice as much payloads any other rocket in the world so it's kind of up to customers what they might want to launch but it can launch things direct to Pluto and beyond you know no stop needed they don't even need like a\n\ngravity assist or anything and won't join satellites it can do anything you want you go back to you could send people back to the moon with a bunch of you know if you did a bunch of motions the Falcon Heavy and did an orbital reef refilling the two or three Falcon heavies you know woody called the payload of a Saturn 5 but I wouldn't recommend doing that cuz I think the new architects should be a for architecture is the way to go but I think it's it's gonna open officers possibility I think it's gonna encourage other companies and countries to say hey if SpaceX which is a commercial company can do this and nobody paid for Falcon Heavy is paid forward and put in total funds then then they thank you Jeff - so things can encourage other countries and companies\n\nto raise their sights and say hey we can do bigger and better which is great we want a new space race face races were exciting kind of talked us through your your thought process as you were watching the launch e you said you were incredibly concerned about it just you know you just wanted to through the pad because it kind of I said expectations low so talk me through as you were watching it yeah I think this is true of anyone who's involved and didn't close in the design or something just you know all the ways they can fail and and that's like the sort of mental checklist that's scrolling through your mind it's all the things that can can can break I mean there's thousands of things that can go wrong and everything has to go right once look once the\n\nrocket lifts off there's nothing there's an opportunity to do a recall or upload a software fix or anything like that it's like you see the passenger grades on Harper sent at least really a sad face and I've seen Rockets Bluff so many different ways so you know it's a big relief when it it actually works at the first you know when they first whoever it is like it was like you know when they're like first launched like a 747 or or dc-3 or like that I bet the chief engineer was like I can't believe that thing flying how about Irene Klotz from Aviation Week hurry we need to have you on Mike first for the folks on the phone to hear ok thanks Irene Klotz with Aviation Week congratulations the can you talk to us a little bit about what needs to happen to certify\n\nFalcon Heavy for the national security missions how far along you are in that process and how many flights you might need to do and also if you're able to say anything about how much your SpaceX is investment to get to the rocket to this point thanks I think we only need I think there's there's a chance on which NASA's national security mission that we'd need to yeah you know how many flights depends on which mission but we have a number of commercial customers for Falcon Heavy and so I think I really don't think it's gonna be in any way an impediment to acceptance of national security missions we'll be doing several Falcon Heavy missions flights per year so let's say if there's a big national security satellite that's due for launch in three or four\n\nyears or we probably have like a dozen or four more launches done by then so what it won't really I think there'll be a launch number that's that's an inhibitor or national security stuff and yeah so and then we've got the STP mission that that's coming up which is another test mission that'll go on full-on a where everything's on black 5 version 5 of the rocket and then we'll be launching version 5.\n\n5 single stick in a couple couple months so I think it's hopefully smooth sailing or qualification for national security missions our investment to date probably a lot more than I'd like to admit you know that we try to cancel the Falcon Heavy program three times at SpaceX because it's like man this is way harder than we thought is there shal idea was just like ah you know you stick on to give to first stages of side boosters how I canopy it's like way hard we had to redesign the center core completely we have to redesign the the grid fins because like what it's a lot long story but if you've got a nose cone on the end of it at the end of the booster instead of a cylinder you lose control Authority because if you if you got a cylinder you can kind of\n\nbounce the air off of the rocket and you get like a 50% or more increased control authority if you've got a cylindrical section instead of a an ogive section at the end of the booster so we have to redesign the grid fins reason to control the control system mass would redesign the thrust structure at the base to take way more load that Center boosters got a deal with over a million pounds of load coming in combined from the side boosters so it's as of being heavier so that the center course basically completely redesigned and and even the side boosters there's a pretty large number of parts that change and then the the launch site itself needs to change a lot I'm guessing our total investment is over half a billion probably more yeah I'd like to take\n\nsome questions from the phone I think the first one up is Dan Fergana from BuzzFeed news is that right that's right dan McGann with BuzzFeed nude news could you talk a little bit about the decision to have the two side cores come down at the same time is it just the way it falls out from the physics or was that actual decision you made we did offset them slightly but but really they're pretty much just come down that that there's no we're off set slightly just to the radars didn't interfere and we actually wanted no communication between the two stages they've both going to point absolute space and we're just worried that the radar reflection of one would be seen by the radar receiver of the other but no it just that's just kind of how it happened it's\n\nactually meant to happen just like that the next question on the phone comes from Keith cowling and that's a watch congratulations you've watched a rather unconventional payload into space one that's generated a lot of buzz and there's a lot of people some of them citizen scientists some of them they're just newbies when it comes to tracking things and space are going to try and track the the test flow and understand what's happening to it you know like that movie dude where's my car and other than the live webcam today what does SpaceX going to do to interact with this community of Tesla trackers once the car leaves orbit you have a plan are you just going to kind of wait and see what bubbles up on the internet and react to it we don't have a plan no\n\nplan the battery's gonna last about 12 hours from launch roughly and after that it's just gonna be out there in deep space for maybe millions or billions of years who knows and yeah maybe discovered by some future alien race thinking what the heck what what were these guys doing did they worship with this car why do they have a little car in the car don't really confuse them I'm not sure what's gonna happen but I think you know it's kind of a fun thing and I sure hope that next burn works by the way yeah well known a few hours that's okay so phase how about Chris Davenport from the Washington Post you could wait until we get you might Thanks so now that you're focusing more on the bfr I wonder if you could talk a little bit about the timeline I know you\n\nsaid it's coming along faster and then what that means for your plans for Mars and the moon well I'm gonna get to off-topic but okay I think we might if we get like you will be able to do short hop our flights with the spaceship part of VFR maybe next year all right one more in the room let's see who's how about bill Harwood from CBS thanks Laura CB I saw when I took on residual Sigma which is like the key it's it's a decent decently long bone there may be a minute or so and yeah that'll be in a few hours hopefully I actually don't have the latest climate reform because I was just added actually that out of the landing zone and have been back to launch control since going to landing zone so I don't have the latest information on the status of the upper\n\nstage Tom Costello from NBC News please well congratulations again I wanted to follow up on Chris's question because Chris asked you what's your timeline potentially to go to the Moon or Mars and you said did you say as soon as next year can you quantify that by the night my real question I'm just doing Chris's water sure yeah [Laughter] well the hopper tests I mean kind of like we have to get grasshopper program for falcon 9 where we just add the rocket take take off and land in Texas I know Texas test site so that would be will either do that at our South Texas floor site near near Brownsville or or do ship-to-ship we're not sure yet whether ship-to-ship or brownsville but most likely it's gonna happen at our brownsville location because we've got a\n\nlot of land with nobody around and so if it was up it's cool but by hover test I mean it'll you know go up you know several miles and then come down the ship will the ship is capable of the single-stage-to-orbit if you fully load the tanks so that will do flights of increasing complexity we want to test the heat shield material something like you know fly out turn around accelerate back real hard and come in hot to test the heat shield because we want to have highly reusable heat shield that's capable of absorbing the heat from interplanetary entry velocities so it's really tricky potential the potential to go to the Moon or Mars what's your timeline daya so a lot of uncertainties on this program but it is gonna be our focus after now that we're almost\n\ndone with with Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy we're gonna level off as I said at block 5 of version 5 best there won't be any more major versions of Falcon 9 or Falcon Heavy Dragon is also going to level off with dragon version 2 there might be like point releases you know point five point one over dragon tube or something like that but most of our engineering resources will be dedicated to VFR and and so I think that that will make things go quite quickly the ship part is by far the hardest because that's going to come in from super order books it's super super orbital velocities like interplanet yeah Mars transfer velocities both moon transfer velocities these these are way harder than coming in from low-earth orbit some others they're some of the heating\n\nthings that scale to the 8th power which which doesn't think relies there's anything that scales to 8th power if it turns out reentry certain elements of reentry heating scale to the at the 8th to the 8th so or just yet testing that ship out is the real tricky part the booster I think I don't want to get you know complacent but I think we understand reasonable boosters reusable spaceships that can land propulsively that's that's harder so we're starting with the hard part first and I think it's conceivable that we do our first test flight in 3 or 4 years of a you know full up overall test flight including the booster oh no a little bit first but it would be capable of going to the moon shortly thereafter it's designed to do that you know we want to be\n\nsensitive to your time how many more questions you want a couple questions ok sure there is a gentleman I came from a retic community that I wanted to definitely call on and I don't know your riddle I don't want to say your name so you can introduce yourself with your name or your handle hi my name is Martin Avenue and I'm with reddit's our SpaceX community I'd like to congratulate it you as well as so many people have done just now I'd like to know about Starman spacesuit is it a production model is it instrumented and/or pressurized and what's holding is what's holding them up well there's a mannequin inside so it's just basically stuffed but yeah that is the actual production design so the real one looks like just like that that in fact that's one\n\nof the qualification articles so that's that's real that's the real deal yeah I figure if you're gonna go you know to I mean it's dangerous this dangerous trip you want to look good man took us three years to design that spit that's basically it was real hard and it's easier to make a spacesuit that looks good see that but doesn't work or that works but doesn't look good it's really difficult to make a spacesuit that looks good and works and you have to make it a multi-part process and it was surprisingly difficult very difficult how about that Dave musher from business insider right I take most sure from Business Insider um thank you so much for doing this by the way and I want to go back to VFR for a second since you were talking about that in also\n\nStarman which is such an inspirational thing that's happening have you thought given any thought to what you might do with bfr and and that way what is the what is the payload and any thoughts of that no a no idea it's gestures are welcome I mean it's a beast so you know the VFR 9 meter diameter 30 feet roughly diameter which is yeah if you put a lot in 30 feet diameter get 110 hundred 20 meters long yeah big although you know I bet it doesn't look that big after a while how about 10 holes from ports hi eman thanks again for doing this two questions for you one just about faring recovery just curious how SpaceX is coming with that and to Jeff Bezos just responded to your tweet congratulating you on your launch today you just mentioned a minute ago that\n\nwe need a new space race I'm just curious if you see yourself in a race with Blue Origin what was the first part of the question yeah so the fairing you're covering is proven surprisingly difficult I think I think I'm pretty sure we're also very recovery in the next six months it turns out like you pop the parachute on the fairing you've got this giant awkward thing it tends to interfere with the air flow on the on the parachute and and miss and gets all twisty and and it obviously was a low priority to also we have varying version two which is the really that's the important one that we want to recover so even if we were faring version one that that wouldn't be we would be flying it in the future suffering too and recovery that's very important and my\n\nguess is next six months we figure out for recovery we've got a special boat to catch the bearing just like a catcher's mitt it's like a giant catcher's mitt in book form run around I can't catch the ferry yeah she's kind of fun you might be able to do the same thing with dragon so unless if NASA wants us to we could try try to catch a dragon meant for the fairing but it would work on dragon two in the room how about that James Dean from Florida today thanks so much Ilan James Dean floor today speaking of those dragons could you give us a status on Commercial Crew and and you know when we might realistically see an astronaut just getting to low-earth orbit much less the Moon or Mars yeah yeah we're making great progress on crew dragon or dragon version\n\ntwo that's yeah if it actually tells the company priorities the obviously mission assurance is always number one as a priority but then the number that the the priority used to be a falcon iron block five and then a month ago I said absolute priority is crew dragon so we're pretty much done with Falcon and block five over five pretty much almost done with Falcon Heavy a few tweaks that would occur with falcon heavy block five but they're minor and so it's all hands on deck for crew dragon and our goal is to we're aspiring to fly crew two over two at the end of this year that's our goal I think that's I think the harder will be ready we have time for one more question in the room and it's just looking at Falcon eyes like yeah kind of swole have to wrap\n\nit and I'd like for Chris Gephardt pleased to have the last question question from in terms of the next falcon heavy which is that arab sad are the one for the Air Force do you have any idea of how pate held up from today's launch and how quickly can it be changed and so yes and I guess my questions are how quickly can the pad be reconfigured between heavy and Falcon 9 since you need that pad for both it's it's it's so problem going back and forth this is it's designed that way and for the block five version of the Falcon 9 or Falcon Heavy are the this is the Falcon Heavy need a dedicated core built for it or the block it does ok if this was the center court needs to be dedicated yeah so that's the center core is a special build the side boosters we can\n\nreuse existing falcon eyes but we need to just replace the interstage with a with a nose cone and a nice use the the upgraded titanium grid fins which are sweet those worked out real well I'm really happy about those in fact I'm glad we got the side boosters back because they have the titanium grid fins in the center core didn't so I first to pick any one I would have picked the side boosters I picked the center court of explode if so that would be like the least yeah those friggin grid fins alright they're super expensive and and awesome but they the production air and they were slow we didn't we didn't back though that like that was those the most important thing to recover were those Griffin's series inside the spacesuit testing like its ability to\n\nvote function no it's just up there yeah no it definitely work so you can just like jump in a in a vacuum chamber with it it's fine [Laughter] [Applause] as well for real but that best day they have we're gonna reduce the set but that's everything over the to Cyprus will subside residual very handsome is one of it says they're not the conversations works - incorrect they'll see if the upper stage engine I survived quite or just use that help us only potential prospects quickly to Van Allen belts here it's essentially well before suppressor left and then it's going to do a restart completed balance and go to class boss took a look at these high boosters they looking a really good condition um so they're they're both reliable although as I said they're\n\ncombination of version three in version 4 so we will we're only gonna be reef lying really version 5 at this point that that launches shortly and that that will be our main stable will stick to version 5 for the Falcon architecture we don't expect to have a version 6 alright any questions that I haven't answered I'll do my best to answer them but not sure if I have the information yet but I'll try start in the room and the first question goes to David Kerley from ABC News he donned spectacular what did you learn what did Falcon Heavy teach you I guess taught me like crazy things can come true like because I said like I didn't really think this would work and like when I see the rocket liftoff I see like a thousand things that that could not work and it's\n\namazing when they do and I was really but seeing the two boosters land synchronize really just like the simulation I mean makes me think like you they're really that could be quite a scalable approach you could imagine fudge names of those just coming in and landing taking you off landing doing many flights per day um so I think gives me a lot of faith for our next architecture the Soviet if planetary spaceship cap different names for it but BFRs County code name and I it gives me confidence that bfr um is really quite workable come as I should look at the side boosters and like they're pretty big you know 16 stories tall 60-foot leg span but you really we need to be way bigger than that so so I think it's giving me a lot of confidence that we can make\n\nthe VFR design work yeah it's I ever have press conference at SpaceX team I think I think we can really do this a lot you know and and keep advancing that the keep advancing the technology to achieve full and rapid reusability whichever whatever profound effect on the future and when there's things about a Falcon Heavy versus Falcon 9 is that Falcon Heavy has the same level of expandability as Falcon light so if you look at say the price of oak line is sixty million dollars Felton heavies ninety even though it's got three times as much capability because in both cases the only thing that's expanded is the upper stage we're gonna start recovering the the fairings the big nose cone we're gonna recover the fat recover the Boosters and so there's really the\n\ncost difference really between a falcon 9 falcon heavy is minor of the next question from Marcia done at Associated Press March 10 EP what were yours but what was going through your mind how how amazed were you to see your roadster up there what should our man just cruising along with the blue planet and how long will we be getting life use do you think from the car well I think it looks so ridiculous than impossible and you can tell it's real because it looks so fake honestly better CGI infamous fake and you know the colors all look like kind of weird in space there's no atmospheric occlusion you know you know like everything looks too crisp and could we know we didn't really test any of those materials for you know as its space hardened or whatever\n\nyou know so it just has the same seats that like normal car has its ass literally a normal car in space which I kind of like the absurdity of that any feel closely there's on the dashboard there's a tiny roadster with a tiny spaceman Hot Wheels made a Hot Wheels roadster and a friend a friend of mine suggested hey why you put that wheels roadster with a tiny spaceman on it you know in the car too like that'd be cool sure let's agree to that I mean it's kind of silly and fun but I think I think that's you know silly fun things are important and normally for a new rocket you know they've launched like a block of concrete or something like that I mean that's so boring and I think that's the imagery of it is something that's gonna get people excited around\n\nthe world and still tripping me out I mean out tripping balls here congratulations on great launch today where do you see the Falcon Heavy fitting into this launch industry is this something that is going to be for more national security you see this for interplanetary missions what's the future of Falcon Heavy yeah the great thing is like so Falcon Heavy offers up a new class of payload so it can launch more than twice as much payloads any other rocket in the world so it's kind of up to customers what they might want to launch but it can launch things direct to Pluto and beyond you know no stop needed didn't even need like a gravity assist or anything and won't strain satellites but I wouldn't wreck and say hey we can do bigger and better which is great\n\nwe want a new space race races were exciting how about Darrell nail from the Fox affiliate Orlando but some others kind of talk us through your your thought process as you were watching the launch e you said you were incredibly concerned about it just you know you just wanted to through the pad because it kind of I said expectations low so talk me through as you were watching it yeah I think this was true of anyone who's involved you","textByLang":{"en":"[Music] everyone in the room we're going to be starting momentarily I'd asked that if you have a mobile phone I'm going to get let's eat let's he seated the chef Ginsburg little short I'm gonna try to prove some three [Music] and we've got 30 minutes [Music] spirit [Music] joining us a little surreal to me I had this image [Music] to read the full 300 minutes right enough people to travel to travel for one that sees to like engines so it I think that's a center one that lead the outer to did not and that was to hit the water month now and took out to the end zone foreigner if you've got the footage some pretty fun footage if the cameras didn't get blown up as well for real but that's best baby what we're going to reuse the set but that's our craving look\n\nat you psychic system side pieces will forget something enough it since they're not blocked by the butcher client the power stations that works piece of computerized aggressive and they will see if the upper stage engine is alive quite larger spoke through that house but only there were a stage will prosper quickly two belts here it's essentially well of course first o'clock and then it's gonna do a restart simply just repellent and go to that's awesome the Raghava we'll look at the second round of the upper stage we were 20 26 which is basically right later it has like two propellant to the transpose direction that's everything that fuel doesn't freeze the else that's with my things own took a look at the side boosters they looking a really good condition\n\num so they're they're both reliable although as I said their combination of version 3 in version 4 so we will we're only gonna be reef lying really version 5 at this point that that launches shortly and that that will be on me and stable will stick to version fight for the Falcon architecture we don't expect to have a version 6 all right any questions that I haven't answered I'll do my best to answer them but not sure if I have the information yet but I'll try start in the room and the first question goes to David Kerley from ABC News he launched spectacular what did you learn what did Falcon Heavy teach you I guess taught me like crazy things can come true like because I said like I didn't really think this would work um like when I see the rocket liftoff\n\nI see like a thousand things that that could not work and it's amazing when they do and I was really that seeing the to Bruce's land synchronize really just like the simulation I mean it makes you think like you there really that could be quite a scalable approach you know if you could have imagined large numbers of those just coming in and landing taking off landing doing many flights per day um so it I think gives me a lot of faith for our next architecture the sort of be an interplanetary spaceship you have different names for it but BFRs the county code name and it gives me confidence that bfr um is really quite workable um as i should look at the side boosters and like they're pretty big you know sixteen stories tall 60-foot legs man but you really\n\nwe need to be way bigger than that so so i think it's giving me a lot of confidence that we can make the VFR design work yeah it's a traumatic event so I'm SpaceX team so I think I think we can really do this a lot you know and keep advancing that the cube advancing the technology to achieve full and rapid reusability whichever whatever profound effect on the future and when there's some things about say Falcon Heavy vs Falcon 9 is that Falcon Heavy has the same level of expandability as Falcon line so if you look at say the price of oak line is sixty million dollars Felton he's 90 even though it's got three times as much capability because in both cases the only thing that's expanded is the upper stage we're gonna start recovering with the the fairings\n\nthe big nose cone we're gonna recover that we recover the Boosters and so there's really the cost of us really between a Falcon 9 I felt the henries minor well the next question from marcia done at Associated Press March 10 EP what were yours what was going through your mind how how amazed were you to see your roadster up there what should our man just cruising along with the blue planet and how long will we be getting life views do you think from the car well I think it looks so ridiculous and impossible and you can tell it's real because it looks so fake honestly we'd have way better CGI infamous fake and you know the colors all look like kind of weird in space there's no atmospheric occlusion you know you know it's like everything looks too crisp and\n\nbut we know we didn't really test any of those materials for you know is its space hardened or whatever you know so it just has the same seats that like normal car has it's a slickly a normal car in space which I kind of like the absurdity of that and if you look closely there's on the dashboard there's a tiny roadster with a tiny spaceman the hot wheels made a Hot Wheels roadster and a friend a friend of mine and I suggested hey why you put that wheels roadster with a tiny space man on the you know in the car - like that'd be cool sure mysteries that I mean it's kind of silly and fun but I think I think that's you know silly fun things are important and normally for a new rocket you know they'd launch like a block of concrete or something like that I\n\nmean that's so boring and I think that's just the imagery of it is something that's gonna get people excited around the world and I still tripping me out I mean out tripping balls here yeah congratulations Ilan great launch today where do you see the Falcon Heavy fitting into this launch industry is this something that is going to be for more national security you see this for interplanetary missions what's the future of Falcon Heavy yeah the great thing is like so Falcon Heavy opens up a new class of payload so it can launch more than twice as much payloads any other rocket in the world so it's kind of up to customers what they might want to launch but it can launch things direct to Pluto and beyond you know no stop needed they don't even need like a\n\ngravity assist or anything and won't join satellites it can do anything you want you go back to you could send people back to the moon with a bunch of you know if you did a bunch of motions the Falcon Heavy and did an orbital reef refilling the two or three Falcon heavies you know woody called the payload of a Saturn 5 but I wouldn't recommend doing that cuz I think the new architects should be a for architecture is the way to go but I think it's it's gonna open officers possibility I think it's gonna encourage other companies and countries to say hey if SpaceX which is a commercial company can do this and nobody paid for Falcon Heavy is paid forward and put in total funds then then they thank you Jeff - so things can encourage other countries and companies\n\nto raise their sights and say hey we can do bigger and better which is great we want a new space race face races were exciting kind of talked us through your your thought process as you were watching the launch e you said you were incredibly concerned about it just you know you just wanted to through the pad because it kind of I said expectations low so talk me through as you were watching it yeah I think this is true of anyone who's involved and didn't close in the design or something just you know all the ways they can fail and and that's like the sort of mental checklist that's scrolling through your mind it's all the things that can can can break I mean there's thousands of things that can go wrong and everything has to go right once look once the\n\nrocket lifts off there's nothing there's an opportunity to do a recall or upload a software fix or anything like that it's like you see the passenger grades on Harper sent at least really a sad face and I've seen Rockets Bluff so many different ways so you know it's a big relief when it it actually works at the first you know when they first whoever it is like it was like you know when they're like first launched like a 747 or or dc-3 or like that I bet the chief engineer was like I can't believe that thing flying how about Irene Klotz from Aviation Week hurry we need to have you on Mike first for the folks on the phone to hear ok thanks Irene Klotz with Aviation Week congratulations the can you talk to us a little bit about what needs to happen to certify\n\nFalcon Heavy for the national security missions how far along you are in that process and how many flights you might need to do and also if you're able to say anything about how much your SpaceX is investment to get to the rocket to this point thanks I think we only need I think there's there's a chance on which NASA's national security mission that we'd need to yeah you know how many flights depends on which mission but we have a number of commercial customers for Falcon Heavy and so I think I really don't think it's gonna be in any way an impediment to acceptance of national security missions we'll be doing several Falcon Heavy missions flights per year so let's say if there's a big national security satellite that's due for launch in three or four\n\nyears or we probably have like a dozen or four more launches done by then so what it won't really I think there'll be a launch number that's that's an inhibitor or national security stuff and yeah so and then we've got the STP mission that that's coming up which is another test mission that'll go on full-on a where everything's on black 5 version 5 of the rocket and then we'll be launching version 5.\n\n5 single stick in a couple couple months so I think it's hopefully smooth sailing or qualification for national security missions our investment to date probably a lot more than I'd like to admit you know that we try to cancel the Falcon Heavy program three times at SpaceX because it's like man this is way harder than we thought is there shal idea was just like ah you know you stick on to give to first stages of side boosters how I canopy it's like way hard we had to redesign the center core completely we have to redesign the the grid fins because like what it's a lot long story but if you've got a nose cone on the end of it at the end of the booster instead of a cylinder you lose control Authority because if you if you got a cylinder you can kind of\n\nbounce the air off of the rocket and you get like a 50% or more increased control authority if you've got a cylindrical section instead of a an ogive section at the end of the booster so we have to redesign the grid fins reason to control the control system mass would redesign the thrust structure at the base to take way more load that Center boosters got a deal with over a million pounds of load coming in combined from the side boosters so it's as of being heavier so that the center course basically completely redesigned and and even the side boosters there's a pretty large number of parts that change and then the the launch site itself needs to change a lot I'm guessing our total investment is over half a billion probably more yeah I'd like to take\n\nsome questions from the phone I think the first one up is Dan Fergana from BuzzFeed news is that right that's right dan McGann with BuzzFeed nude news could you talk a little bit about the decision to have the two side cores come down at the same time is it just the way it falls out from the physics or was that actual decision you made we did offset them slightly but but really they're pretty much just come down that that there's no we're off set slightly just to the radars didn't interfere and we actually wanted no communication between the two stages they've both going to point absolute space and we're just worried that the radar reflection of one would be seen by the radar receiver of the other but no it just that's just kind of how it happened it's\n\nactually meant to happen just like that the next question on the phone comes from Keith cowling and that's a watch congratulations you've watched a rather unconventional payload into space one that's generated a lot of buzz and there's a lot of people some of them citizen scientists some of them they're just newbies when it comes to tracking things and space are going to try and track the the test flow and understand what's happening to it you know like that movie dude where's my car and other than the live webcam today what does SpaceX going to do to interact with this community of Tesla trackers once the car leaves orbit you have a plan are you just going to kind of wait and see what bubbles up on the internet and react to it we don't have a plan no\n\nplan the battery's gonna last about 12 hours from launch roughly and after that it's just gonna be out there in deep space for maybe millions or billions of years who knows and yeah maybe discovered by some future alien race thinking what the heck what what were these guys doing did they worship with this car why do they have a little car in the car don't really confuse them I'm not sure what's gonna happen but I think you know it's kind of a fun thing and I sure hope that next burn works by the way yeah well known a few hours that's okay so phase how about Chris Davenport from the Washington Post you could wait until we get you might Thanks so now that you're focusing more on the bfr I wonder if you could talk a little bit about the timeline I know you\n\nsaid it's coming along faster and then what that means for your plans for Mars and the moon well I'm gonna get to off-topic but okay I think we might if we get like you will be able to do short hop our flights with the spaceship part of VFR maybe next year all right one more in the room let's see who's how about bill Harwood from CBS thanks Laura CB I saw when I took on residual Sigma which is like the key it's it's a decent decently long bone there may be a minute or so and yeah that'll be in a few hours hopefully I actually don't have the latest climate reform because I was just added actually that out of the landing zone and have been back to launch control since going to landing zone so I don't have the latest information on the status of the upper\n\nstage Tom Costello from NBC News please well congratulations again I wanted to follow up on Chris's question because Chris asked you what's your timeline potentially to go to the Moon or Mars and you said did you say as soon as next year can you quantify that by the night my real question I'm just doing Chris's water sure yeah [Laughter] well the hopper tests I mean kind of like we have to get grasshopper program for falcon 9 where we just add the rocket take take off and land in Texas I know Texas test site so that would be will either do that at our South Texas floor site near near Brownsville or or do ship-to-ship we're not sure yet whether ship-to-ship or brownsville but most likely it's gonna happen at our brownsville location because we've got a\n\nlot of land with nobody around and so if it was up it's cool but by hover test I mean it'll you know go up you know several miles and then come down the ship will the ship is capable of the single-stage-to-orbit if you fully load the tanks so that will do flights of increasing complexity we want to test the heat shield material something like you know fly out turn around accelerate back real hard and come in hot to test the heat shield because we want to have highly reusable heat shield that's capable of absorbing the heat from interplanetary entry velocities so it's really tricky potential the potential to go to the Moon or Mars what's your timeline daya so a lot of uncertainties on this program but it is gonna be our focus after now that we're almost\n\ndone with with Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy we're gonna level off as I said at block 5 of version 5 best there won't be any more major versions of Falcon 9 or Falcon Heavy Dragon is also going to level off with dragon version 2 there might be like point releases you know point five point one over dragon tube or something like that but most of our engineering resources will be dedicated to VFR and and so I think that that will make things go quite quickly the ship part is by far the hardest because that's going to come in from super order books it's super super orbital velocities like interplanet yeah Mars transfer velocities both moon transfer velocities these these are way harder than coming in from low-earth orbit some others they're some of the heating\n\nthings that scale to the 8th power which which doesn't think relies there's anything that scales to 8th power if it turns out reentry certain elements of reentry heating scale to the at the 8th to the 8th so or just yet testing that ship out is the real tricky part the booster I think I don't want to get you know complacent but I think we understand reasonable boosters reusable spaceships that can land propulsively that's that's harder so we're starting with the hard part first and I think it's conceivable that we do our first test flight in 3 or 4 years of a you know full up overall test flight including the booster oh no a little bit first but it would be capable of going to the moon shortly thereafter it's designed to do that you know we want to be\n\nsensitive to your time how many more questions you want a couple questions ok sure there is a gentleman I came from a retic community that I wanted to definitely call on and I don't know your riddle I don't want to say your name so you can introduce yourself with your name or your handle hi my name is Martin Avenue and I'm with reddit's our SpaceX community I'd like to congratulate it you as well as so many people have done just now I'd like to know about Starman spacesuit is it a production model is it instrumented and/or pressurized and what's holding is what's holding them up well there's a mannequin inside so it's just basically stuffed but yeah that is the actual production design so the real one looks like just like that that in fact that's one\n\nof the qualification articles so that's that's real that's the real deal yeah I figure if you're gonna go you know to I mean it's dangerous this dangerous trip you want to look good man took us three years to design that spit that's basically it was real hard and it's easier to make a spacesuit that looks good see that but doesn't work or that works but doesn't look good it's really difficult to make a spacesuit that looks good and works and you have to make it a multi-part process and it was surprisingly difficult very difficult how about that Dave musher from business insider right I take most sure from Business Insider um thank you so much for doing this by the way and I want to go back to VFR for a second since you were talking about that in also\n\nStarman which is such an inspirational thing that's happening have you thought given any thought to what you might do with bfr and and that way what is the what is the payload and any thoughts of that no a no idea it's gestures are welcome I mean it's a beast so you know the VFR 9 meter diameter 30 feet roughly diameter which is yeah if you put a lot in 30 feet diameter get 110 hundred 20 meters long yeah big although you know I bet it doesn't look that big after a while how about 10 holes from ports hi eman thanks again for doing this two questions for you one just about faring recovery just curious how SpaceX is coming with that and to Jeff Bezos just responded to your tweet congratulating you on your launch today you just mentioned a minute ago that\n\nwe need a new space race I'm just curious if you see yourself in a race with Blue Origin what was the first part of the question yeah so the fairing you're covering is proven surprisingly difficult I think I think I'm pretty sure we're also very recovery in the next six months it turns out like you pop the parachute on the fairing you've got this giant awkward thing it tends to interfere with the air flow on the on the parachute and and miss and gets all twisty and and it obviously was a low priority to also we have varying version two which is the really that's the important one that we want to recover so even if we were faring version one that that wouldn't be we would be flying it in the future suffering too and recovery that's very important and my\n\nguess is next six months we figure out for recovery we've got a special boat to catch the bearing just like a catcher's mitt it's like a giant catcher's mitt in book form run around I can't catch the ferry yeah she's kind of fun you might be able to do the same thing with dragon so unless if NASA wants us to we could try try to catch a dragon meant for the fairing but it would work on dragon two in the room how about that James Dean from Florida today thanks so much Ilan James Dean floor today speaking of those dragons could you give us a status on Commercial Crew and and you know when we might realistically see an astronaut just getting to low-earth orbit much less the Moon or Mars yeah yeah we're making great progress on crew dragon or dragon version\n\ntwo that's yeah if it actually tells the company priorities the obviously mission assurance is always number one as a priority but then the number that the the priority used to be a falcon iron block five and then a month ago I said absolute priority is crew dragon so we're pretty much done with Falcon and block five over five pretty much almost done with Falcon Heavy a few tweaks that would occur with falcon heavy block five but they're minor and so it's all hands on deck for crew dragon and our goal is to we're aspiring to fly crew two over two at the end of this year that's our goal I think that's I think the harder will be ready we have time for one more question in the room and it's just looking at Falcon eyes like yeah kind of swole have to wrap\n\nit and I'd like for Chris Gephardt pleased to have the last question question from in terms of the next falcon heavy which is that arab sad are the one for the Air Force do you have any idea of how pate held up from today's launch and how quickly can it be changed and so yes and I guess my questions are how quickly can the pad be reconfigured between heavy and Falcon 9 since you need that pad for both it's it's it's so problem going back and forth this is it's designed that way and for the block five version of the Falcon 9 or Falcon Heavy are the this is the Falcon Heavy need a dedicated core built for it or the block it does ok if this was the center court needs to be dedicated yeah so that's the center core is a special build the side boosters we can\n\nreuse existing falcon eyes but we need to just replace the interstage with a with a nose cone and a nice use the the upgraded titanium grid fins which are sweet those worked out real well I'm really happy about those in fact I'm glad we got the side boosters back because they have the titanium grid fins in the center core didn't so I first to pick any one I would have picked the side boosters I picked the center court of explode if so that would be like the least yeah those friggin grid fins alright they're super expensive and and awesome but they the production air and they were slow we didn't we didn't back though that like that was those the most important thing to recover were those Griffin's series inside the spacesuit testing like its ability to\n\nvote function no it's just up there yeah no it definitely work so you can just like jump in a in a vacuum chamber with it it's fine [Laughter] [Applause] as well for real but that best day they have we're gonna reduce the set but that's everything over the to Cyprus will subside residual very handsome is one of it says they're not the conversations works - incorrect they'll see if the upper stage engine I survived quite or just use that help us only potential prospects quickly to Van Allen belts here it's essentially well before suppressor left and then it's going to do a restart completed balance and go to class boss took a look at these high boosters they looking a really good condition um so they're they're both reliable although as I said they're\n\ncombination of version three in version 4 so we will we're only gonna be reef lying really version 5 at this point that that launches shortly and that that will be our main stable will stick to version 5 for the Falcon architecture we don't expect to have a version 6 alright any questions that I haven't answered I'll do my best to answer them but not sure if I have the information yet but I'll try start in the room and the first question goes to David Kerley from ABC News he donned spectacular what did you learn what did Falcon Heavy teach you I guess taught me like crazy things can come true like because I said like I didn't really think this would work and like when I see the rocket liftoff I see like a thousand things that that could not work and it's\n\namazing when they do and I was really but seeing the two boosters land synchronize really just like the simulation I mean makes me think like you they're really that could be quite a scalable approach you could imagine fudge names of those just coming in and landing taking you off landing doing many flights per day um so I think gives me a lot of faith for our next architecture the Soviet if planetary spaceship cap different names for it but BFRs County code name and I it gives me confidence that bfr um is really quite workable come as I should look at the side boosters and like they're pretty big you know 16 stories tall 60-foot leg span but you really we need to be way bigger than that so so I think it's giving me a lot of confidence that we can make\n\nthe VFR design work yeah it's I ever have press conference at SpaceX team I think I think we can really do this a lot you know and and keep advancing that the keep advancing the technology to achieve full and rapid reusability whichever whatever profound effect on the future and when there's things about a Falcon Heavy versus Falcon 9 is that Falcon Heavy has the same level of expandability as Falcon light so if you look at say the price of oak line is sixty million dollars Felton heavies ninety even though it's got three times as much capability because in both cases the only thing that's expanded is the upper stage we're gonna start recovering the the fairings the big nose cone we're gonna recover the fat recover the Boosters and so there's really the\n\ncost difference really between a falcon 9 falcon heavy is minor of the next question from Marcia done at Associated Press March 10 EP what were yours but what was going through your mind how how amazed were you to see your roadster up there what should our man just cruising along with the blue planet and how long will we be getting life use do you think from the car well I think it looks so ridiculous than impossible and you can tell it's real because it looks so fake honestly better CGI infamous fake and you know the colors all look like kind of weird in space there's no atmospheric occlusion you know you know like everything looks too crisp and could we know we didn't really test any of those materials for you know as its space hardened or whatever\n\nyou know so it just has the same seats that like normal car has its ass literally a normal car in space which I kind of like the absurdity of that any feel closely there's on the dashboard there's a tiny roadster with a tiny spaceman Hot Wheels made a Hot Wheels roadster and a friend a friend of mine suggested hey why you put that wheels roadster with a tiny spaceman on it you know in the car too like that'd be cool sure let's agree to that I mean it's kind of silly and fun but I think I think that's you know silly fun things are important and normally for a new rocket you know they've launched like a block of concrete or something like that I mean that's so boring and I think that's the imagery of it is something that's gonna get people excited around\n\nthe world and still tripping me out I mean out tripping balls here congratulations on great launch today where do you see the Falcon Heavy fitting into this launch industry is this something that is going to be for more national security you see this for interplanetary missions what's the future of Falcon Heavy yeah the great thing is like so Falcon Heavy offers up a new class of payload so it can launch more than twice as much payloads any other rocket in the world so it's kind of up to customers what they might want to launch but it can launch things direct to Pluto and beyond you know no stop needed didn't even need like a gravity assist or anything and won't strain satellites but I wouldn't wreck and say hey we can do bigger and better which is great\n\nwe want a new space race races were exciting how about Darrell nail from the Fox affiliate Orlando but some others kind of talk us through your your thought process as you were watching the launch e you said you were incredibly concerned about it just you know you just wanted to through the pad because it kind of I said expectations low so talk me through as you were watching it yeah I think this was true of anyone who's involved you"},"languages":["en"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQkAlaZIs1s"},{"id":"60-minutes-australia-2017-10-29","type":"interview","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PZz2r9j1Lfo","title":"60 Minutes Australia","titles":{"en":"60 Minutes Australia","de":"60 Minutes Australia","fr":"60 Minutes Australia"},"date":"2017-10-29","summary":"In a televised interview Musk argues Australia's energy crisis is easily fixable and predicts a renewable, battery-backed future for its grid.","text":"Who hasn't been shocked by a recent electricity or gas bill? And who isn't infuriated that power prices have risen so sharply? In a country as abundant with resources as ours, it defies logic that now some Australians can't even pay for the energy to cook a simple meal. While our fasttalking but divided politicians scramble to act.\n\nTonight, Elon Musk, the American billionaire with the brilliant mind, wants to explain how he can help fix Australia's energy crisis. And to prove his point, he's prepared to put his money where his mouth is. It's peak hour in Australia. I need a NOS booking. I can't uh they want a record of it. And we'll find out what's happening. Towns and cities are lighting up. Public transport is on the move and family homes are coming to life.\n\nInside a control room in Sydney's west, staff from Trans Grid, the company charged with ensuring the lights stay on, work the phones. The number two tire and number three tire 135, calling in power from generators all over the state. Half the population has dinner at 6:00 irrespective. So they do it. The other half have it dinner when it gets dark. But keeping Australia's massive east coast power grid functioning has never been so hard.\n\nIt's a lot like spinning plates and we move from one to the other solving problems on the power system in real time to keep the lights on. And for so many Australians, power has never cost so much. People are living on Oh, yeah. Yesterday's food. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Well, when I have lunch later, it won't be yesterday's. It'll be Monday's Thursday. Today, Australia is in the grip of a power crisis, crippling costs, and unreliable supply.\n\nBut there's one man who can't understand why Australia is really perfect for for solar power because it's not too far north or too far south. You could have the the the entire country be solar powered or some combination of wind, solar, uh, geothermal, hydro. Shares of the electric car maker Tesla Motors are up.\n\nElon Musk is the Tesla man, an American billionaire whose developments of electric cars, liftoff, and space rockets is seeing technology push the boundaries like never before. And it's all driven by his belief that if we are to survive climate change, we need to develop renewable energy. Australia could actually export power to Asia. There's so much land there uh that that that you could actually power a significant chunk of Asia.\n\nAnd to prove his point, Musk is building a massive lithium ion battery powered by wind turbines in James Town, South Australia. The battery is designed to help stabilize the grid. But Musk is also hoping it will be a light bulb moment for the world. You have to do these things that really get the world's attention. Otherwise, they just don't believe you. Um, they don't think it's possible. What do you want the rest of the world to see?\n\nI really want the rest of the world to see that you can do a very large scale 100 megawatt system is is is really quite enormous. Um this is three times more than the next biggest battery in the world. That that's just a giant giant jump forward. His interest in our energy crisis started last year when South Australia, a state already heavily invested in wind and solar power, was plunged into darkness.\n\nThe result of a massive storm that saw the state lose power. [Music] Elon Musk tweeted head first into a national political brawl when fellow billionaire Australian IT whiz Mike Cannon Brooks questioned Tesla's boast that it could help solve South Australia's energy problems by building the world's biggest battery. Why did you do that? There was no idea of what would happen afterwards. Um just more if people make big claims like that.\n\nI'd like to check if they're real. You thought I was joking. Um cuz I I had to check on it with my team. It's like I I hope I I didn't really say something super crazy. When you get a return tweet from Elon saying, \"Yeah, what did you think?\" Um sweet. Just checking his kosher. You know, he he he says it's going to happen. Make us make it happen. Right. So, um this is these are public tweets. Uh yeah.\n\nAnd but in a way that's that's part of what locks in the guarantee, right? He's putting his reputation online in a public forum there that you know enough noise was then created around it. Enough people saw that that it was like all right that that you know he he better get that done. [Music] Canon Brooks did a crash course in renewable energy and he quickly realized there were plenty of Australians who backed the idea.\n\nI got multiple unsolicited solicited offers for tens of millions. I think we added up to more than hund00 million dollars in offers that came in. It was it was amazing. It was inspiring um as an Australian to see people wanting to solve this problem in a real and meaningful way. And I think they're just sick of the politics on all sides and the the you know the the ridiculous nature of our uh energy situation at the moment.\n\nBut Elon Musk's battery plan was mocked by the federal government. 30,000 South Australian households could not get through watching one episode of Australia's Ninja Warrior with this big battery. Australian treasurer Scott Morrison was particularly dismissive. By all means, have the world's biggest battery. Have the world's biggest banana. Have the world's biggest prawn. I didn't realize there was this big battle going on.\n\nIt's like I didn't know. It was like M Mr. Hollywood's walked into town. Okay. And it was like, well, you know, do I see Mollywood? Maybe, but but our treasurer, Scott Morrison, declared that this was just a shiny, you know, distraction and that and that it was akin to Well, it's shiny. It is shiny and it was it's it's akin to the big pineapple or the big banana. It's just one of those kiche. I'm not sure what Wait, is that a real thing?\n\nThey're a tourist attraction, actually. Oh, look at my Is it like the world's biggest banana or something? something like that. Well, are you disappointed by that? Oh, I think you know that we get that all the time. Um, it can be a little disheartening sometimes. Um, yeah. Yeah, sometimes. Yeah. Why did the government mock Elon Musk? Well, Elon Musk's battery uh was a fraction of the size of the snowy hydro scheme.\n\nIt was sold to the people of South Australia as an answer to their woes by Jay Weatherall. Whereas in reality, it is just a fraction of what that state needs. [Music] Everyone is fair game in what is now a highstakes political power play. Electricity, the supply, but particularly the cost is constantly gnoring away at the federal government and its energy minister, Josh Friedenberg. The fact is that politics has failed Australians, hasn't it?\n\nWe have failed to deliver to Australians for years now um an essential service. Well, the Argie bargi in CRA over the last decade has not helped lower power bills. In fact, it's created the uncertainty in the market which now industry is demanding be fixed. That's why the National Energy Guarantee offers us that opportunity for the first time in more than a decade.\n\nThe National Energy Guarantee aims to make the system more reliable and ultimately ease the nation's financial pain. But the savings for households are predicted to be minuscule. We have what's called power poverty. I'm seeing people who are saying, \"How can it be that, you know, I'm going to get a miserable 50 cents a week perhaps, and I'm supposed to applaud that?\" Well, that's just a Labor Party distraction and distortion. Is that not true?\n\nThat is not true. So, what will they get? They will get up to $115 a year saving. And when they say, um, a couple of hundred truly, you're out of touch. You'd say a couple of hundred dollars reduction in your power bill means a lot to a lot of people and it's just the start of what we are seeking to do. Under the Labor Party, your bills will go up by hundreds of dollars. That's what the modeling shows.\n\nNo longer are we allowing the Labor Party to pursue an ideological approach. You see, they'll hate that politicking. They'll hate you saying that because that's just more politics. Well, the reality is that politics is a battle of ideas. Our idea is a national energy guarantee put forward by the experts. It allows for a greater role for renewables. It keeps coal and gas in the system. It makes up for the mistakes of the past.\n\nAnd importantly, it lowers power bills. For pensioners like Brian and FA Willlet, all this talk doesn't mean much. They still have to tailor their lives around the electricity bill. Thank you, Ellie. Thank you. Mostly, it means meals are basic and require little cooking. Today, it's a bread roll, leftovers salvaged from the local bakery. One thing we need to do is make sure we keep the um curtains shut cuz Yeah. keep the heat out.\n\nKeep the heat out. You live your life around trying to keep that power price down. Yeah. I've never really thought of it like that, but yes, that that that'll be pretty right. What do you do through winter? We did not use the heater once. Uh we tend to use blankets. Um put on two pairs of socks instead of one or wear the Ugg boots. It's stuff I presume that before you took for granted. To some ways it feels like survival rather than living.\n\nU it seems strange that life is becoming much harder as we get older. [Music] More than ever, Australians are struggling to pay for their power. A record number of families are on hardship plans or deferred payments. And the rate of disconnections in most states has risen sharply. For Elon Musk, learning of this growing power poverty is overwhelming. Cost of power is making it almost a luxury item. Wow. Really?\n\nIt's that I didn't realize it's that expensive. Australia has so many natural resources. is I mean even if you go the fossil fuel route the electricity should be very cheap. There are Australians today wondering if they can even turn on their lights. There are Australians today wondering um well should we go without some food? Sure. In in that's just not something you would ever expect. I did not expect that. H we work harder.\n\nFor Musk, it's frustrating because for him, the solution is so simple and in abundance in Australia. The whole point of renewable energy is to make for a cleaner environment and frankly save the planet. The majority of scientists are emphatic that we're witnessing dramatic climate change. and not to fully embrace renewable energy is suicide. [Music] It's necessarily true that we will live on renewables. It's just a question of when.\n\nIn fact, it's it's it's it's in the definition that um if if it's not renewable, that means it's it's going to run out at some point and you will have the choice of collapse of civilization and um into the dark ages we go or find something that is renewable. So all of this is about um saving ourselves. Yeah. Coming up now. Yep. Boring now. The billiondoll energy business in our own backyards. Like hidden gold, isn't it?\n\nThey call it the the new oil. And how to slash your electricity bill. This is it. This is the battery. Will serve as an inspiration really to the whole world. This is possible. That's next on 60 Minutes. [Music] As Australians struggle to keep the lights on, there's a billion dollar energy business buried in our own backyard. Lithium ion batteries and their ability to store renewable energy have emerged as a massive international best seller.\n\nAnd for Australia, that's great news. controller is now armed. If you hold down both of those fire buttons and don't forget to look up, then the shot will initiate now. Yep. Firing now. Well done. Well, Liz, what you just fired in 3 months that'll be in China. In 6 months, that'll be in a battery. That's extraordinary. So that that's that's a boom. Well, that's a bang. That's a bang. But it's all part of what I think might be a boom.\n\nWhile our politicians continue to bicker away about the best way forward, it seems that many investors have already decided where the smart money is. With the insatiable demand for lithium ion batteries has come a new mining boom in Australia. Western Australia is now the world's largest producer of lithium.\n\nWhich means that mines like this one at Mount Marian are not only helping to feed a hungry green energy industry, they're also making a pretty penny. It's not on the scale of iron ore yet, but the lithium industry is creating new wealth and along with it new mining entrepreneurs. So this is the final product. It is and that will get trucked and then on a boat for China.\n\nChris Reed is the managing director of Neo Metals, a large lithium mine outside Calguli. What is the value of the lithium mining industry in Australia? Uh, currently the exports from Western Australia this financial year we predict will be uh over a billion Australian dollars. This is like hitting gold, isn't it? Well, it's uh they call it the the new oil. And it is and it might replace it. Absolutely.\n\nI mean half the world's lithium batteries are are made in China. Uh half the lithium production is in China predominantly off Australian feed stocks. For us the next step is to value add in Australia and make our own batteries. Look I think one day certainly that that can be done. This in your opinion is an electric revolution. Yeah, look, absolutely. And it's really the format of the batteries has got bigger.\n\nThey're going in the phones, they're going in the laptops, now they're in the electric motorbikes, uh the cars, and now we're going to the largest format is is renewable energy storage. [Music] In Nevada, America, Elon Musk has a gigafactory pumping out thousands of lithium batteries in a building that only keeps growing. The batteries are to power his electric cars, but also homes and they're already in use in Australia. So, this is it.\n\nThis is it. This is the battery. And how long does it take to charge? Uh on a nice sunny day from from 0% charge it might take a few hours. [Music] In Salsbury, South Australia, Michael and Melissa Pony installed a battery to store the energy produced from their solar panels as part of a trial with their local energy provider.\n\nand it immediately won them over when their home was one of the few to come through the storm that blacked out most of the state. I suppose I didn't realize the impact of the power cut until we came home and um I think we confused the neighbors because our lights were the only ones on on the street. Michael and Melissa now have a one-year-old son, Theo, and the expanded family means home appliances are in constant use.\n\nusing the heater more to keep um our baby, you know, nice and warm over winter. Um the dryer because it goes through so much more clothes and all those sorts of things. And uh the microwave just heating up meals and yeah, it was just, you know, I'm not working at the moment being on maternity leave. So any savings is beneficial. The couple monitors their power with the latest technology.\n\nWe've earned just in this month $32 which helps them keep a close eye on costs. Your costs you think have been halfed? Absolutely. Um I think since we've had the solar system in we would have saved thousands now. Thousands. Well, I guess you can't imagine what it might be like if you didn't have that battery. Oh, well we we were seeing electricity bills of over $1,000 before we put the solar in.\n\nSo, I can only imagine what those bills would be looking like now if we if we hadn't bit the bullet and tried to nip it in the bud when we did. Yeah. Can you give me an update on that, please? Despite the government's proposed new energy policy, little will change immediately for Australians grappling with their power bills. And with summer looming, Trans Grid CEO Paul Italiano and his staff will also be watching supply.\n\nSo we have a summer peak demand driven by air conditioning. Air conditioning and air conditioning cooling is the biggest driver of electricity demand. So when there is a blackout, do you feel you've failed? Yes. Our role is to keep the lights on. That's what we're here to do. And to keep its customers cool, Transgrid will be depending heavily on coal. We can run it remotely from both regions.\n\nSo on Tuesday, but Paul Italiano believes it is time we addressed our renewable energy options. The amount of sun, wind, and wave energy that we have available to us is the envy of the world. that if we properly configured our power system, we could have a substantially greater amount of renewable energy in it. In fact, we could lead the world in renewable energy engineering. So, you can understand why people feel duted.\n\nWe are experiencing blackouts and we can barely pay the price. No one would argue that what we are doing at the moment is considered successful. Do you have solar panels? I don't. Shame on you. It's It's a big investment and I've got uh other priorities at the moment, but certainly uh I'm watching my power bill regularly. Well, you must be shocked. Yeah. And I I And we've been paying too much.\n\nIf Elon Musk had his way, the world would be totally powered by renewables and he'd be colonizing Mars. He is a big picture man with big plans. But it might be his push for the modest lithium battery will prove to be one of the more significant steps in this electric revolution. You have been seen as a catalyst, somebody that is showing gosh there isn't there is another way. Yeah. And that's that's a great thing.\n\npeople in Australia should should be proud of the fact that Australia has the world's biggest battery. This is pretty great. Um, and that it will serve as an inspiration really to the whole world as well to to say that this is possible. Hello, I'm Liz Hayes. Thanks for watching. To keep up with the latest from 60 Minutes Australia, make sure you subscribe to our channel.\n\nYou can also download the nine Now app for full episodes and other exclusive 60 minutes content.","textByLang":{"en":"Who hasn't been shocked by a recent electricity or gas bill? And who isn't infuriated that power prices have risen so sharply? In a country as abundant with resources as ours, it defies logic that now some Australians can't even pay for the energy to cook a simple meal. While our fasttalking but divided politicians scramble to act.\n\nTonight, Elon Musk, the American billionaire with the brilliant mind, wants to explain how he can help fix Australia's energy crisis. And to prove his point, he's prepared to put his money where his mouth is. It's peak hour in Australia. I need a NOS booking. I can't uh they want a record of it. And we'll find out what's happening. Towns and cities are lighting up. Public transport is on the move and family homes are coming to life.\n\nInside a control room in Sydney's west, staff from Trans Grid, the company charged with ensuring the lights stay on, work the phones. The number two tire and number three tire 135, calling in power from generators all over the state. Half the population has dinner at 6:00 irrespective. So they do it. The other half have it dinner when it gets dark. But keeping Australia's massive east coast power grid functioning has never been so hard.\n\nIt's a lot like spinning plates and we move from one to the other solving problems on the power system in real time to keep the lights on. And for so many Australians, power has never cost so much. People are living on Oh, yeah. Yesterday's food. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Well, when I have lunch later, it won't be yesterday's. It'll be Monday's Thursday. Today, Australia is in the grip of a power crisis, crippling costs, and unreliable supply.\n\nBut there's one man who can't understand why Australia is really perfect for for solar power because it's not too far north or too far south. You could have the the the entire country be solar powered or some combination of wind, solar, uh, geothermal, hydro. Shares of the electric car maker Tesla Motors are up.\n\nElon Musk is the Tesla man, an American billionaire whose developments of electric cars, liftoff, and space rockets is seeing technology push the boundaries like never before. And it's all driven by his belief that if we are to survive climate change, we need to develop renewable energy. Australia could actually export power to Asia. There's so much land there uh that that that you could actually power a significant chunk of Asia.\n\nAnd to prove his point, Musk is building a massive lithium ion battery powered by wind turbines in James Town, South Australia. The battery is designed to help stabilize the grid. But Musk is also hoping it will be a light bulb moment for the world. You have to do these things that really get the world's attention. Otherwise, they just don't believe you. Um, they don't think it's possible. What do you want the rest of the world to see?\n\nI really want the rest of the world to see that you can do a very large scale 100 megawatt system is is is really quite enormous. Um this is three times more than the next biggest battery in the world. That that's just a giant giant jump forward. His interest in our energy crisis started last year when South Australia, a state already heavily invested in wind and solar power, was plunged into darkness.\n\nThe result of a massive storm that saw the state lose power. [Music] Elon Musk tweeted head first into a national political brawl when fellow billionaire Australian IT whiz Mike Cannon Brooks questioned Tesla's boast that it could help solve South Australia's energy problems by building the world's biggest battery. Why did you do that? There was no idea of what would happen afterwards. Um just more if people make big claims like that.\n\nI'd like to check if they're real. You thought I was joking. Um cuz I I had to check on it with my team. It's like I I hope I I didn't really say something super crazy. When you get a return tweet from Elon saying, \"Yeah, what did you think?\" Um sweet. Just checking his kosher. You know, he he he says it's going to happen. Make us make it happen. Right. So, um this is these are public tweets. Uh yeah.\n\nAnd but in a way that's that's part of what locks in the guarantee, right? He's putting his reputation online in a public forum there that you know enough noise was then created around it. Enough people saw that that it was like all right that that you know he he better get that done. [Music] Canon Brooks did a crash course in renewable energy and he quickly realized there were plenty of Australians who backed the idea.\n\nI got multiple unsolicited solicited offers for tens of millions. I think we added up to more than hund00 million dollars in offers that came in. It was it was amazing. It was inspiring um as an Australian to see people wanting to solve this problem in a real and meaningful way. And I think they're just sick of the politics on all sides and the the you know the the ridiculous nature of our uh energy situation at the moment.\n\nBut Elon Musk's battery plan was mocked by the federal government. 30,000 South Australian households could not get through watching one episode of Australia's Ninja Warrior with this big battery. Australian treasurer Scott Morrison was particularly dismissive. By all means, have the world's biggest battery. Have the world's biggest banana. Have the world's biggest prawn. I didn't realize there was this big battle going on.\n\nIt's like I didn't know. It was like M Mr. Hollywood's walked into town. Okay. And it was like, well, you know, do I see Mollywood? Maybe, but but our treasurer, Scott Morrison, declared that this was just a shiny, you know, distraction and that and that it was akin to Well, it's shiny. It is shiny and it was it's it's akin to the big pineapple or the big banana. It's just one of those kiche. I'm not sure what Wait, is that a real thing?\n\nThey're a tourist attraction, actually. Oh, look at my Is it like the world's biggest banana or something? something like that. Well, are you disappointed by that? Oh, I think you know that we get that all the time. Um, it can be a little disheartening sometimes. Um, yeah. Yeah, sometimes. Yeah. Why did the government mock Elon Musk? Well, Elon Musk's battery uh was a fraction of the size of the snowy hydro scheme.\n\nIt was sold to the people of South Australia as an answer to their woes by Jay Weatherall. Whereas in reality, it is just a fraction of what that state needs. [Music] Everyone is fair game in what is now a highstakes political power play. Electricity, the supply, but particularly the cost is constantly gnoring away at the federal government and its energy minister, Josh Friedenberg. The fact is that politics has failed Australians, hasn't it?\n\nWe have failed to deliver to Australians for years now um an essential service. Well, the Argie bargi in CRA over the last decade has not helped lower power bills. In fact, it's created the uncertainty in the market which now industry is demanding be fixed. That's why the National Energy Guarantee offers us that opportunity for the first time in more than a decade.\n\nThe National Energy Guarantee aims to make the system more reliable and ultimately ease the nation's financial pain. But the savings for households are predicted to be minuscule. We have what's called power poverty. I'm seeing people who are saying, \"How can it be that, you know, I'm going to get a miserable 50 cents a week perhaps, and I'm supposed to applaud that?\" Well, that's just a Labor Party distraction and distortion. Is that not true?\n\nThat is not true. So, what will they get? They will get up to $115 a year saving. And when they say, um, a couple of hundred truly, you're out of touch. You'd say a couple of hundred dollars reduction in your power bill means a lot to a lot of people and it's just the start of what we are seeking to do. Under the Labor Party, your bills will go up by hundreds of dollars. That's what the modeling shows.\n\nNo longer are we allowing the Labor Party to pursue an ideological approach. You see, they'll hate that politicking. They'll hate you saying that because that's just more politics. Well, the reality is that politics is a battle of ideas. Our idea is a national energy guarantee put forward by the experts. It allows for a greater role for renewables. It keeps coal and gas in the system. It makes up for the mistakes of the past.\n\nAnd importantly, it lowers power bills. For pensioners like Brian and FA Willlet, all this talk doesn't mean much. They still have to tailor their lives around the electricity bill. Thank you, Ellie. Thank you. Mostly, it means meals are basic and require little cooking. Today, it's a bread roll, leftovers salvaged from the local bakery. One thing we need to do is make sure we keep the um curtains shut cuz Yeah. keep the heat out.\n\nKeep the heat out. You live your life around trying to keep that power price down. Yeah. I've never really thought of it like that, but yes, that that that'll be pretty right. What do you do through winter? We did not use the heater once. Uh we tend to use blankets. Um put on two pairs of socks instead of one or wear the Ugg boots. It's stuff I presume that before you took for granted. To some ways it feels like survival rather than living.\n\nU it seems strange that life is becoming much harder as we get older. [Music] More than ever, Australians are struggling to pay for their power. A record number of families are on hardship plans or deferred payments. And the rate of disconnections in most states has risen sharply. For Elon Musk, learning of this growing power poverty is overwhelming. Cost of power is making it almost a luxury item. Wow. Really?\n\nIt's that I didn't realize it's that expensive. Australia has so many natural resources. is I mean even if you go the fossil fuel route the electricity should be very cheap. There are Australians today wondering if they can even turn on their lights. There are Australians today wondering um well should we go without some food? Sure. In in that's just not something you would ever expect. I did not expect that. H we work harder.\n\nFor Musk, it's frustrating because for him, the solution is so simple and in abundance in Australia. The whole point of renewable energy is to make for a cleaner environment and frankly save the planet. The majority of scientists are emphatic that we're witnessing dramatic climate change. and not to fully embrace renewable energy is suicide. [Music] It's necessarily true that we will live on renewables. It's just a question of when.\n\nIn fact, it's it's it's it's in the definition that um if if it's not renewable, that means it's it's going to run out at some point and you will have the choice of collapse of civilization and um into the dark ages we go or find something that is renewable. So all of this is about um saving ourselves. Yeah. Coming up now. Yep. Boring now. The billiondoll energy business in our own backyards. Like hidden gold, isn't it?\n\nThey call it the the new oil. And how to slash your electricity bill. This is it. This is the battery. Will serve as an inspiration really to the whole world. This is possible. That's next on 60 Minutes. [Music] As Australians struggle to keep the lights on, there's a billion dollar energy business buried in our own backyard. Lithium ion batteries and their ability to store renewable energy have emerged as a massive international best seller.\n\nAnd for Australia, that's great news. controller is now armed. If you hold down both of those fire buttons and don't forget to look up, then the shot will initiate now. Yep. Firing now. Well done. Well, Liz, what you just fired in 3 months that'll be in China. In 6 months, that'll be in a battery. That's extraordinary. So that that's that's a boom. Well, that's a bang. That's a bang. But it's all part of what I think might be a boom.\n\nWhile our politicians continue to bicker away about the best way forward, it seems that many investors have already decided where the smart money is. With the insatiable demand for lithium ion batteries has come a new mining boom in Australia. Western Australia is now the world's largest producer of lithium.\n\nWhich means that mines like this one at Mount Marian are not only helping to feed a hungry green energy industry, they're also making a pretty penny. It's not on the scale of iron ore yet, but the lithium industry is creating new wealth and along with it new mining entrepreneurs. So this is the final product. It is and that will get trucked and then on a boat for China.\n\nChris Reed is the managing director of Neo Metals, a large lithium mine outside Calguli. What is the value of the lithium mining industry in Australia? Uh, currently the exports from Western Australia this financial year we predict will be uh over a billion Australian dollars. This is like hitting gold, isn't it? Well, it's uh they call it the the new oil. And it is and it might replace it. Absolutely.\n\nI mean half the world's lithium batteries are are made in China. Uh half the lithium production is in China predominantly off Australian feed stocks. For us the next step is to value add in Australia and make our own batteries. Look I think one day certainly that that can be done. This in your opinion is an electric revolution. Yeah, look, absolutely. And it's really the format of the batteries has got bigger.\n\nThey're going in the phones, they're going in the laptops, now they're in the electric motorbikes, uh the cars, and now we're going to the largest format is is renewable energy storage. [Music] In Nevada, America, Elon Musk has a gigafactory pumping out thousands of lithium batteries in a building that only keeps growing. The batteries are to power his electric cars, but also homes and they're already in use in Australia. So, this is it.\n\nThis is it. This is the battery. And how long does it take to charge? Uh on a nice sunny day from from 0% charge it might take a few hours. [Music] In Salsbury, South Australia, Michael and Melissa Pony installed a battery to store the energy produced from their solar panels as part of a trial with their local energy provider.\n\nand it immediately won them over when their home was one of the few to come through the storm that blacked out most of the state. I suppose I didn't realize the impact of the power cut until we came home and um I think we confused the neighbors because our lights were the only ones on on the street. Michael and Melissa now have a one-year-old son, Theo, and the expanded family means home appliances are in constant use.\n\nusing the heater more to keep um our baby, you know, nice and warm over winter. Um the dryer because it goes through so much more clothes and all those sorts of things. And uh the microwave just heating up meals and yeah, it was just, you know, I'm not working at the moment being on maternity leave. So any savings is beneficial. The couple monitors their power with the latest technology.\n\nWe've earned just in this month $32 which helps them keep a close eye on costs. Your costs you think have been halfed? Absolutely. Um I think since we've had the solar system in we would have saved thousands now. Thousands. Well, I guess you can't imagine what it might be like if you didn't have that battery. Oh, well we we were seeing electricity bills of over $1,000 before we put the solar in.\n\nSo, I can only imagine what those bills would be looking like now if we if we hadn't bit the bullet and tried to nip it in the bud when we did. Yeah. Can you give me an update on that, please? Despite the government's proposed new energy policy, little will change immediately for Australians grappling with their power bills. And with summer looming, Trans Grid CEO Paul Italiano and his staff will also be watching supply.\n\nSo we have a summer peak demand driven by air conditioning. Air conditioning and air conditioning cooling is the biggest driver of electricity demand. So when there is a blackout, do you feel you've failed? Yes. Our role is to keep the lights on. That's what we're here to do. And to keep its customers cool, Transgrid will be depending heavily on coal. We can run it remotely from both regions.\n\nSo on Tuesday, but Paul Italiano believes it is time we addressed our renewable energy options. The amount of sun, wind, and wave energy that we have available to us is the envy of the world. that if we properly configured our power system, we could have a substantially greater amount of renewable energy in it. In fact, we could lead the world in renewable energy engineering. So, you can understand why people feel duted.\n\nWe are experiencing blackouts and we can barely pay the price. No one would argue that what we are doing at the moment is considered successful. Do you have solar panels? I don't. Shame on you. It's It's a big investment and I've got uh other priorities at the moment, but certainly uh I'm watching my power bill regularly. Well, you must be shocked. Yeah. And I I And we've been paying too much.\n\nIf Elon Musk had his way, the world would be totally powered by renewables and he'd be colonizing Mars. He is a big picture man with big plans. But it might be his push for the modest lithium battery will prove to be one of the more significant steps in this electric revolution. You have been seen as a catalyst, somebody that is showing gosh there isn't there is another way. Yeah. And that's that's a great thing.\n\npeople in Australia should should be proud of the fact that Australia has the world's biggest battery. This is pretty great. Um, and that it will serve as an inspiration really to the whole world as well to to say that this is possible. Hello, I'm Liz Hayes. Thanks for watching. To keep up with the latest from 60 Minutes Australia, make sure you subscribe to our channel.\n\nYou can also download the nine Now app for full episodes and other exclusive 60 minutes content."},"languages":["en"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PZz2r9j1Lfo"},{"id":"iss-r-d-conference-2017-07-19","type":"interview","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jv5LjA62Uw8","title":"ISS R&D Conference","titles":{"en":"ISS R&D Conference","de":"ISS R&D Conference","fr":"ISS R&D Conference"},"date":"2017-07-19","summary":"Wide-ranging talk on SpaceX, NASA, a moon base, rocket reusability, tunnels and solar.","text":"When I think about innovation beyond boundaries, so I cannot think of a better representation of that concept in our generation. Please join me in welcoming Elon Musk and ISS program manager Kirk Shireman to the stage. Very good. So Elon, thanks so much for for being here today. Um Elon commuted from the West Coast this morning. So we appreciate you taking the time and coming out here and talking with us. Absolutely. Thanks for having me.\n\nWe've had we've had a pretty good conference so far at least in my opinion. Over a thousand people signed up for the first time, so a significant increase. And lots of people interested in in in space and lower earth orbit and the International Space Station and work that's going on. So um Anyway, we're very very excited about the work that's going on and excited to have you here today, too. Great. Thanks for having me.\n\nSo you were here a number of years ago in July in 2015. It's not that long ago, I guess, two years ago. And had a had a discussion like this with Mike Suffredini. And a lot of things have happened since 2015 for SpaceX. So can you can you talk about how things have gone, how how they've progressed, how you're feeling about how the industry and and SpaceX in particular progressed? Sure.\n\nWhat I think I think we we are entering a new era of space exploration, which is extremely exciting. Um And it's it's not just SpaceX, but there's a number of other companies that have developed new approaches. NASA is taking new approaches things, which is really exciting in in the way that the the contracting has been done for space station resupply. I think it's a great model that frankly should be adopted throughout government.\n\nI spoke a little bit about this at the governor's conference and was actually using the NASA NASA cargo resupply contracting process as a really great model for government in general. Um You know, it's where you have two competitors fixed price milestone based with a hot milestones are are primarily hardware oriented.\n\nUm and then if one of the two companies that's that's competing does not Um reach their milestones, then the remainder of the milestones are are competed to another company. And that's what happened with cargo resupply. Started off with SpaceX and Kistler. Kistler made some progress, but wasn't going to get across the finishing line.\n\nAnd then Orbital Sciences was competed for the second slot and they did get across the finishing line and now both SpaceX and Orbital are providing NASA with cargo services to the space station. Um And having that competitive dynamic is is I think it's a very powerful powerful function for getting a great outcome for the NASA as the customer.\n\nUm and I think that that's just a great that was a great model really well executed and to the degree that's applicable in other areas of NASA or the government, I think um that's there's the potential for revolutionary progress on that front.\n\nUm so from from a from a technical standpoint the the the biggest thing that's happened in the last couple years, which I'm really excited about and I think makes a difference for access to space is the landing of the uh Falcon 9 rocket booster um and then the that um And if you ever get a chance to go out to the the the the Cape um uh over Vandenberg to see that, I'd really recommend it. It's really pretty fun.\n\nSo um And um there'll be a lot of those flights in the remainder of the year. We've got about a dozen flights still to go this year. Um and then after landing re-flying that same booster with minimal work to the booster. Um and we believe we can get to the point where in the not too distant future, in fact, probably by by next year where the uh the the the um Falcon 9 booster can be re-flown um within 24 hours. Um so yeah.\n\nAnd and and and the key the key to that is that uh all you do is inspections and no hardware is changed not even the paint. And so this is very important. Uh so that's our aspiration for for next year. Um obviously while paying very close attention to mission assurance and reliability. Um But we think we've got at least a technical path to to achieving that. Um and then the I think we're quite close to being able to recover the the fairing.\n\nUm so it's a huge nose cone on the front of nose cone. You can fit a basically a whole sort of city bus in there.\n\nAnd and and that just that that fairing alone with all of its systems and the acoustic damping and qualification all that and separation system, that's about a five or six million dollar um piece of equipment and the analogy I use with my team is like, guys, imagine we had you know, six million dollars in a pallet of cash and that was you know, six million dollars is falling through the sky and would we try to catch it? I say we do.\n\nI say we give it a shot. You know, worst case it ends up at the bottom of the ocean, but maybe we do catch it and then pay six million dollars. Let me know when that pallet of cash is coming back. Yeah. I mean I'd like to give it a shot, too. You know, it might as well be a pallet of cash because it costs six million dollars. So um And but I I think we we got a decent shot of recovering the fairing by the end of the year.\n\nUm and and possibly reflight by either late this this year or early next. Um and that just leaves the the upper stage of the rocket. Upper stage is about 20% of the cost of the mission. Um so if we get booster stage and and fairing, we're right around 80% reasonable. And then um I think I think we for for a lot of missions we can even bring the second stage back. So we're going to try to do that.\n\nUm Although our primary focus will be on our Dragon over the next particular of the next year or so. Our Dragon 2 spacecraft, which is what will which is the crew crew Dragon next generation Dragon spacecraft, which has got all of the equals systems and the but it will allow you to do a launch aboard um all the way to orbit. And um uh and and do an automated docking maneuver. So it's not it does it doesn't need to berth with the aid of the arm.\n\nIt can do a direct docking maneuver. Um and then that will be the what once that's operational the new method of taking both cargo and crew to the space station. Um so if I say what's what's our primary focus, it's making sure we stay on track for um uh getting getting crew to station as we promised NASA around the middle of next year. That's going to be real exciting. I think it's going to be great for getting the public fired up.\n\nYou know, that's really It's been a while since we launched uh astronauts from US soil. So we're we're all looking forward to that. Yeah. Um and I I I just like to to to to to thank um people at NASA for giving SpaceX a chance to to do this and um just want a word of appreciation for the working relationship with NASA, which is great. Um in fact, I told the governors uh last week that, you know, for a long time my password was I love NASA.\n\nThat that is actually true. This is um You know, you've just given you've given all the hackers around the world a chance to go work on that. I I hopefully I don't have like some old email accounts somewhere that still with that. You know, like I've got to I've got to change this. People are going to cotton on. Very good. So how you talked a little bit about commercial crew. How is that going?\n\nI know it's you know, flying flying humans is more systems involved. Of course, the risk is higher. How is that progressing? Um you know, it's it's been way more difficult than cargo for sure. Um Yeah. I mean, as soon as as soon as sort of people enter the picture, it's it's really a giant step up in um making sure things go right, you know, and and for sure the the the oversight the oversight from NASA is much tougher.\n\nIt was not that it wasn't tougher cargo, but it's really intense for crew. Um So coming from the right motivations. Um but uh yeah, it's uh you know, it can be a bit tough on on on my guys you know, what with the women men of SpaceX, but uh but I but I you know, know where it's coming from. It's the right right motivation.\n\nUm And uh and there'll be some debates, you know, going into next year about some of the detailed technical de- de- de- um But I think uh we really want to uh do everything humanly possible to make sure it goes well. Um And um you know, triple check everything. Um and uh O- overall, I think it's going you know, really well.\n\nUm you know, there's getting like these little small technical bones of contention, which um you know, but we're working through those. Um We're engineers. We live We live for that. Exactly. Um Yeah. Um it And and some of these things are really like esoteric.\n\nI mean, unless somebody's really in the weeds on the rocket and spacecraft design, it will just sound like we're talking Greek, but um ancient Greek, you know, but um Yeah, but there's you know, I think it's good to have these debates.\n\nUh and overall, um I'm confident that it's going to be a system that uh that NASA feels good about and that SpaceX feels good about and uh we're looking forward to continuing the partnership into next year and um doing a great job for NASA. Excellent. Thank you. Um and of course we're looking forward to. We're excited about it and and as you mentioned, we're NASA's working hard with you Yep. on uh on Oh, yeah.\n\nUm Uh and and yeah, and we're also all down in the weeds on those technical details. I'm sure you are down. Yep. Let's see. You see down to the little bolt to the little thing and all that. Where's Gerst? Gerst is here somewhere. That's Gerst's uh gravy, too. Gerst, if you can't have a If you can't have a dry lube bolt pitch discussion with Gerst, you know, it's not a good day.\n\nWe We I guess I have a many many just many sort of in the weeds technical discussions. Um I actually love I love talking to Gerst. Uh one of my favorite people in the world, actually. So. Yeah. There you go. Mine, too, but but he's my boss. I I have to say that. Let's see. So, you you talked We talked a little bit about commercial crew.\n\nWe have uh cargo supply resupply one, which you have the Dragon, which of course Dragon one, which is uh birthed. And and in fact, you've done a reflight recently with uh with the Dragon. You know, thanks for bringing that up. You know, um cuz that's kind of important. Yes, it is. And again, thanks for the NASA support on that.\n\nUm God, we we really should uh you know, we should have made a slightly bigger deal out of it because it was the first reflight of a spacecraft since the shuttle. Mhm. Um and uh we kind of forgot to make, you know, let people know to I mean, I guess it was there in the details, but we forgot to you know, let I don't think the public even realizes that it's the first reflight of a spacecraft orbital spacecraft since the shuttle.\n\nUm Which performed very well, too. Very good good clean mission. Yeah, solid. Um I mean, that that now that was a case case where I should in full disclosure say that it cost us almost as much to in fact, probably about as much, maybe more to re- re- negotiating contract here. No, I know. I know. I'm just I'm just being totally honest here.\n\nUm I I Our the SpaceX internal accounting said that it cost us almost as much as building a a Dragon one from scratch. I suspect our internal accounting was probably being um wasn't counting certain things. Um There were some circumstances unusual about this one, right? This one had some water incursions and things like that. Yeah, yeah. The amount of rework on this particular This had a lot of rework, yeah.\n\nBut the next one, we think there's a decent shot of of being maybe sort of 50% the cost of a new one. Um and uh Keep going. My contract is here. Yeah, I'm negotiating against myself here. Yes. Um and um but um yeah, no, I I mean, we want to offer the, you know, best possible uh deal deal for NASA and um it's always tough to get that top line budget to increase. Hope it does.\n\nUm man, I think so much could be could could be accomplished if the NASA top line budget was increased. I think people have no idea, you know. Um So, it's there. So, talk a little bit So, we talked about CRS one and and birthing and CRS two. Are we talking about commercial crew? CRS two, the Dragon is going to its cargo Dragon It's It's the similar Adam old line of It's It's It's It's Dragon two, it's yeah. But it's going to dock.\n\nAnd so, talk about the it could then we'll have good commonality between the two. and and things like that. Yeah. Um so, the I mean, the only thing cargo Dragon won't have is the launch escape system. Uh although it'll still have the logic associated with separating from the vehicle. Uh So, I I think most likely even even cargo Dragon two um would be able to survive uh booster anomaly. Like like that word anomaly.\n\nUm The the We don't like that word. Yeah, well, I got um I guess I don't like it. Yeah, right. Um The the one of the the launch It have everything else on the Dragon crew Dragon two has except the the thrusters, but I think in most cases actually it would still be able to survive re-entry um and and keep the cargo safe. Um But uh but having that commonality is great. Yeah.\n\nYeah, I mean, going forward, it seems like, you know, docking itself and if, you know, even beyond testing of systems and evolutions and things that might be beneficial to test on on the cargo version Yeah, totally. Absolutely. And I know you've already done some things on on CRS one to prepare for CRS two and you're testing some TPS uh repair capability and things like that. So, exactly.\n\nUm actually uh uh I really, you know, just like to uh you know, express some appreciation for the the whole CRS team um because they they've really allowed us to uh update the rocket and you know, add crazy things like landing legs. Um and um and been really fair, I think, in allowing us to iterate with the booster for for the CRS contract.\n\nUm And then uh uh and and then as you're pointing out, um Dragon two being used for both uh cargo and crew allows us to iterate uh uh with a just a slight less little more risk on the cargo version um and prove it out for the screw on board. Yeah, it's really helpful. Excellent. So, let's let's talk about I I I know we got a few more minutes here and then we'll open it up to questions.\n\nBut uh you know, the the theme here is for the conference is innovation. And and of course we talked already about some innovations in the launch business, but what what do you think needs to be Where are the areas or the thrusts for innovation that we really need both uh you know, not not excluding the launch, but but also looking at lower earth orbit. What's in lower earth orbit?\n\nWhere do we Where do you think we as a as a uh you know, space industry need to go and look for our innovation? Yeah. Um Well, you know, I I I think for long I I I I still believe in I think many people do that the the real the key to opening up uh space space or orbit, you know, Leo and beyond is um rapid and complete reusability. Um uh uh near complete reusability. Um Like we have with aircraft.\n\nUm or cars or you know, almost any form of transport. Um Now, it's it's super hard with space cuz this is uh you know, we live on a planet with pretty high gravity. Um so, so, it'd be pretty easy if we're on Mars or something like that.\n\nUm But uh but the earth's gravity is is really pretty pretty high and we've got a thick atmosphere and um so, uh reus- reus- reusability is tough when you're going through, you know, high sort of you you're going to operate in a vacuum, hypersonic, uh supersonic, transonic, subsonic. Um That's just a lot of regimes for um any sort of flying object to go through.\n\nUm Uh but but reusability I think is absolutely fundamental to a breakthrough in uh access to orbit and beyond. Um the Leo Leo and beyond. Um Anything that can be done in that direction, I think is is is good. Mhm. Surely change the economics of transportation to lower earth orbit, right? Really fundamental. You get quick reusability, the economic equation it becomes easier to get to lower earth orbit and do more things. Yeah.\n\nYeah, I mean, it's kind of like, you know, just any mode of transport. Like it's uh And before there was the Union Pacific going across the US to California, and there was like hardly any people in California. People thought building the Union Pacific was just crazy cuz you got like nobody there. So, why are we building a railroad to nowhere? Um Now, you know, California's most populous state in the country.\n\nUm Some people stopped in Texas along the way. Yeah, yeah. Few of us did. Um I love Texas. By the way, by the way. Texas. Uh you know, we we do uh a huge part of our R&D in Texas, in Central Texas. A lot of people don't know about that. Um near Waco. We have Um so Central Central Texas, we do um You did Boca Chica down in the south there. That's right. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So, we've got a lot of activity um uh throughout Texas.\n\nUm we're building yet third launch site um in South Texas near Brownsville. Um I think that'll that'll give us good uh um you know, contingency capability if there's a say a hurricane coming through the cape um and we still need to get to the station, we could, you know, launch out of South Texas and that that'll ensure continuity of service. Um and um yeah. I really I spend a lot of time in Texas. Yeah, it's great. Excellent. All right.\n\nUh traffic's not as bad as in Southern California. Oh man, traffic. So, that's the biggest issue with Southern California, traffic hell. I mean It's like It's like which level of hell are you in? You're in hell. Yeah, Washington's uh trying to catch up. But you know you know what we're I I mean this is I mean um we're digging a tunnel. Have you heard about that? Yeah. Yeah.\n\nUm So so it's like the the and the tunnel starts right across from SpaceX HQ. So, if you're ever out and want to see our tunnel uh Yeah, as long as you promise not to close it in after That's not a problem. Um it would Yeah, we're digging a tunnel. Um and I it's kind of like a So, actually maybe I don't know.\n\nSort of It It's like a little Actually, oddly enough, it's like a little low-stress activity cuz like everyone uh expects it to fail um and um I mean the sort of uh grown-worthy joke that I make about uh tunnels is that they have low expectations. There's nowhere to go but down. Yes. I could keep going. Uh Wow. Um That makes sense. You you're involved in space, you're involved in tunnels, you kind of kind of cover the gamut.\n\nThey used to call me internet guy when I was in startup open space. Um hey, this is internet guy. Uh he's in space. He's obviously going to fail. Um So, then they stopped saying internet guy. Um I think they call me transport guy. He's a transport guy. So, talk Speaking of transports, you know, so today ISS is up there and and really the conference is focused a lot on on some of the research and development that's going on there.\n\nBut and and commercialization, too, by the way. But what and commercialization, at least NASA's strategy is commercialization will will be fostered on ISS and then at some point in the future ISS will go away and and we are we we expect we hope for a vibrant lower earth orbit economy at that point in time. That's cool. And I'm kind of curious what what you see in terms of SpaceX and your transportation relative to that that economy.\n\nWhat's next for commercial crew after after ISS? Sure. Well, first of all, I don't think the public realizes how cool ISS is. Um you know, that is an awesome thing that's up there. Um you know, I I I talked to a lot of people that First of all, some people don't realize we have a space station. Like you can't can't be serious. Uh like we have a gigantic space station. It's huge. Yeah, it's really gigantic.\n\nUm um I mean it's a pretty incredible structure that we have orbiting uh orbiting the earth um and I think just I I I'd recommend like man, we've got to do something to educate the public about the awesomeness of of of the space station cuz it is pretty amazing. Um and and and big. Like people just lose sight of like they think oh, it's like a little thing. You know, it's big. It's real big.\n\nUm and um yeah, so uh and and I was finally getting it to sort of real operational use and um that was great. So, again, amazing technological achievement.\n\nSo, uh but then yeah, uh I I I think the the in terms of lower earth orbit stuff on the commercial side, I think there's a lot of opportunities in um you know, kind of a global internet capability to providing internet to parts of the world that either don't have it or where it's very expensive and not very good.\n\nUm Yeah, so like the the space is really good for providing uh internet connectivity uh for sparsely populated or or low populated regions. Um So, it's not it's not really a threat to telcos. It actually can make um make telcos' lives easier because there are a lot of customers that are very hard to serve where like you're digging a fiber cable for 2 miles, they'll never pay off the investment to you know, to get to one house type of thing. Mhm.\n\nBut um but for space, you can really serve serve those customers um at at at so at economically sensible rates. Um There's earth observation um you're getting better understanding of um of uh uh natural sort of uh nat- any natural disaster uh you know, information. Um and um You know, but I think the If you want to get the the public real fired up, I think we got to we got to have a base on the moon. You know?\n\nUh I don't It's like that'd be pretty cool. Um and then going beyond that, getting people to Mars. Yeah. Certainly sending people further we've ever sent them before, I think it's captivating for the people, so. Yeah, exactly. It's captivating for me, I know that. Yeah, exactly.\n\nUm So, uh yeah, just uh you know, having some permanent presence on another heavenly body um should be the the kind of moon base and then the uh you know, getting getting people to to Mars and beyond. Um and uh you know, it's sort of the That's the that's the continuance of the dream of Apollo that uh I think um people are really looking for. Yeah. Excellent.\n\nYou know, this might be a good time to to go ahead and open it up for a few questions from the audience. Uh we're where the um where they're on the side. I think microphones on the side. I can't tell if people are I don't know where they are. lights are so bright, it's hard to tell. I know this is a risk asking people to ask questions, but uh any uh any questions? Looks like there's a few people signed up lined up over here, so. Go ahead.\n\nUh hi Elon, over here from the UK. Pleasure to ask a question to you. Um my question is how are you managing the risks associated with the Falcon Heavy and particularly the recently announced private launch around the moon. Thank you for your time. Sure. Um so the But first of all, I should say Falcon Heavy that requires the simultaneous uh ignition of 27 orbit class engines. Um It's like, you know, a lot that could go wrong there.\n\nUm and uh I I encourage people to come down to the cape uh and see the first Falcon Heavy mission. Uh it's guaranteed to be exciting. Um But it But it's you know, this is one of those things that's really difficult to test on the ground.\n\nUm I mean we can fire the engines on the ground, but um and we try to simulate the the the dynamic the dynamics of having 27 instead of nine booster engines um and the you know, the airflow as it goes through transonic. Uh it's like it's going to see heavy transonic buffet. Um the max Q or has behavior on a max Q. Um There's a lot of risk associated with Falcon Heavy. Real good chance that that vehicle does not make it to orbit.\n\nUm want to make sure set expectations accordingly. Um I hope I hope it makes it past you know, far enough away from the pad that it does not cause cause pad damage. I would consider even that a win, to be honest. Um um and uh yeah. Um Very exciting. Major pucker factor, really. It's like another way to describe it. Um You know, that dwindles that that dwindles the amount of people who want to ride on that the first time. Yeah.\n\nWell, It gets smaller cap There are still people And full disclosure here, man. Full disclosure. Um Um I you know, I think Falcon Heavy is going to be a great vehicle. Uh just just like so much that's really impossible to test on the ground. Um and we'll do our best. Um and um it it actually ended up being way way harder to do Falcon Heavy than we thought. Uh cuz it's at At first, it sounds real easy.\n\nJust stick two first stages on as strap-on boosters. Yeah, how how hard can that be? But then everything changes. All the loads change. Um Aerodynamics totally change. Uh you've tripled the vibration and acoustics. Um so, if you sort of break the the qual levels on so much of the hardware um the amount of load you're putting through that center core is ins- is crazy um cuz you've got two super powerful boosters also shoving that center core.\n\nAnd it's like So, we had to redesign the the whole center core airframe. Uh it's not like the Falcon 9 cuz it's got to take so much load. Um, then you got the separation systems. Um, and, uh, yeah, it just ended up being really way, way more difficult than we originally thought. Uh, we were pretty naive about that.\n\nUm, but I I but it the nice thing is it's it's, uh, yeah, when it on fully optimized, it's about 2 and 1/2 times the payload capability of a Falcon 9. So, you know, it's um, well over 100,000 lbs to to Leo uh, payload capability, yeah, about 50 tons, could even get up to a little higher than that if, you know, if optimized.\n\nUm, and, um, and then the the nice thing is that does have the throw capability to toss a Dragon 2 in a loop around the moon. Um, and, um, and then Dragon 2 itself, uh, the heat shield is, um, designed with a huge amount of margin. So, it's got enough margin to handle, uh, lunar re-entry. Um, and, uh, particularly if we do initial velocity scrub, um, do sort of at least one pass to scrub velocity, then come in on the second pass.\n\nUm, um, yeah, but, uh, no question, whoever's on the first flight, you know, brave. Yes. Let's see, let's go over here to this side. Here's a question from over here. Uh, hey Elon. Uh, Ted Tagami with, uh, educational company called magnitude. io. I had the good fortune of meeting you, uh, back in September watching your five sons launch their own rockets Black Rock Desert. Oh, yeah, cool. Yeah. That was fun.\n\nAnd since then, we've actually been able uh, had the great fortune of sending students payloads up to the International Space Station. And we're now working with CASIS to extend that. We'd like 50 million students to get on the International Space Station, their experiments on the Space Station by 2014. Uh, so my question to you is more about the innovations in education and your thoughts.\n\nThat same year that I met you and your sons, uh, you announced Ad Astra. Oh, yeah. Uh, and and before the, uh, advent of Neuralink gets fully implemented, what what are your thoughts on the innovations in education today? Thank you. Uh, just the thoughts on education.\n\nUm, well, um, I I think there's maybe a um, there's definitely some good schools out there, um, but I think the some of the the mistakes, at least in my opinion, that I see being made in education is, um, that um, people teachers do not explain why kids are being taught a subject. Um, you know, you just sort of get dumped into math and like, well, why are you learning math? What's the point of this?\n\nIt seems like some, you know, for some people like maybe it's a I don't know why I'm being asked to do these strange problems. Um, but you know, the why of things is extremely important. Um, because, you know, our brain has evolved to not to discard information that it thinks is has no relevance.\n\nSo, then if on the one hand you, uh, you're being asked to memorize or learn, uh, say formulas, um, but you do not know why this is the case, then you have this cognitive dissonance of it seems irrelevant, but I'm being told to remember it, so I'll be punished.\n\nSo, so I better remember it, but so the why of things is very important, and then, uh, being able to and and then pi- picking kind of a a problem, and then, uh, using various educational tools to solve that problem, um, like using math or physics or economics to to solve that problem is far more engaging, um, than teaching the tools.\n\nUm, you know, it's different between if you say, well, we're going to take apart this, uh, this engine, um, and and see how it works and put it back together again.\n\nUm, and then in order to take the engine apart, we need, you know, wrenches and screwdrivers and a winch, um, and Allen keys and and whatnot, um, and and and it's a and then in the course of solving the problem of taking the engine apart and putting it back together, you learn about wrenches and screwdrivers and all the tools that you need. Um, and then now you understand the relevance. Ah, this is why wrenches are important.\n\nI you know, whereas if you had a a class on wrenches, you'd be like, uh, why is this this not seem that great, you know? Um, so ti- tying it to solving a problem is I think very powerful for, um, establishing relevance and getting, um, kids excited about what they're working on. Um, and then and uh, and and having the knowledge stick. Yeah.\n\nAnd so to some extent, fly, you know, building a a a CubeSat or flying an experiment on on ISS is like that, right? You you've got the you've got the why or the relevance and the curiosity and in terms of building that, uh, that device or that experiment. I I think there's some really cool and it ties to the, it gives you a really a concrete example of what, uh, what you're learning and why. Yeah, exactly.\n\nI think like things like CubeSats, uh, exactly. We're we're because say like, okay, w- like what is a solar panel? How does orbital dynamics work? How do we, um, you know, how do we power this thing? You know, how do batteries work? Electronics, co- control systems, um, and you you need to then then you're like, oh, we want to make our satellite work. That's why we need to understand all these disciplines.\n\nUm, so I think it's like like CubeSats students CubeSats are great. Um, like things like design build fly for model airplanes or Formula SAE. Uh, we've got a design and build a, um, kind of a uh, a race car and and then you know, race that against other people. That I think those things are very powerful for uh, learning as learning tools. Yeah, very cool. All right, thank you. I see over here another question.\n\nUh, hi, my name is, uh, Jacob and I actually live near the Cape. So, my question is not much of a tech question, but more of what your prediction is. So, about maybe 100 years after we develop sustainable colonies on Mars, do you think, and of course many other countries will also try to get to Mars, uh, that there would be like a conflict for the best resources on Mars?\n\nUm, like in I guess you could say in sort of like a interplanetary warfare, if you know what I'm trying to get This sounds like a video game, doesn't it? Uh, it's an idea. Mars Attacks or, um, the you know, I think it's some pretty open territory on Mars. Um, so there's I don't think we're going to be there's going to be any kind of scarcity. Uh, there's like a lot of land on Mars. Not many people. Um, so Unless they're hiding on the backside.\n\nYeah, no, I mean, they're they're pretty clever. If there are people on Mars, man, they are way cleverer than us cuz they're hiding well. Um, so, um, yeah, I know, there's plenty of land on Mars. It's I mean, you know, the history of human civilization does contain a lot of war, so I I don't think we you know, we go to Mars and that you you know, be war free forever.\n\nBut, uh, but I think there's certainly not going to be a resource-based conflict due to scarcity of resource on Mars. I think we're going to go to to the Mars as a multinational effort, too, right? So, it's not it's not one country going and another country going and then they're fighting over wars. I think it's countries going together and and so I think we're we're more likely to be peaceful in that in that scenario as well.\n\nYeah, but you know, I I actually advocate for I think it's fine if if if countries get together to form teams, but I think it's actually probably better if there are at least, you know, at least two or three, uh, country coalitions going going to Mars, um, in a friendly way, um, and and competing to see who can make the most progress.\n\nUm, and if you look at like say the Olympics, it would be pretty boring if everyone just linked arms and crossed the finish line at the same time. Um, we're friendly, um, but it would you know, not be More like the opening ceremonies, I guess. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Um, so we I think friendly competition is a good thing. Yeah. Very good.\n\nWell, I I think, you know, NASA wants to be part of one of those kind of coalitions with the United States and and so we're I know we're actually trying to build such a coalition now. Let's see, um, from over here, another question. Hi, I'm, uh, Yotam Ariel, founder and CEO of Bluefield. We're deploying methane tracking microsatellites.\n\nAnd my question to you, I hope to learn your thoughts on advancing remote sensing capabilities of critical gases on Earth and on Mars. Thank you. Well, that's a pretty esoteric question. Um, remote sensing of of gases, um, yeah, I think, um, that that's something that's going to be important. Uh, Mar- Mars has a number of trace gases that are pretty helpful. Um, it's very helpful that that Mars has CO2 and nitrogen and argon.\n\nThose are those are like really helpful gases to have in the atmosphere. Um, it's mostly CO2, but that little bit of nitrogen and argon is really can be pretty helpful. Yeah. And other and whatever other trace gases we can get out of there. know. We we always say Mars has just enough atmosphere to, it's not enough to be really helpful in terms of, uh, aerobraking, but it sure makes it a lot harder. So, it's just enough to be to be difficult.\n\nYeah. of in situ resource utilization, you know, when we get there to be able to build to to to get your oxygen and That's super helpful. have a water and can build a build a hot get hydrogen manufacture hydrogen on on on the planet. So, Yeah. Hopefully there's enough resources that we'll we don't have to carry everything with us. Well, the nice thing having if you got H2O and and CO2, um you can build hydro carbons of of any kind.\n\nUm you can certainly build plastics. Um you can build well, you know, short chain long chain hydrocarbons. Um you know, the the current SpaceX thought for um uh kind of a Mars transport vehicle is a primarily methane based system. Um cuz you get to have a kind of a smaller uh I mean, the tanks are half the size with if with methane.\n\nUm uh so and and and uh yeah, but and and Mars with with a CO2 atmosphere and a lot of water ice is is great for for that. Um uh going beyond Mars, I think there's a lot of merit for hydrogen cuz then you only need water. Um But uh that's that's also our current thinking on that front.\n\nSo, we we speaking of that, last last year at Guadalajara at the IAC conference, you talked about plans to go to the Mars and and and I know you guys have been working on that since then. Yep. You do you so you plan at some point to talk about that work publicly?\n\nYeah, thinking probably the upcoming IAC in Adelaide uh might be a good opportunity to do the updated version of the Mars architecture cuz it's it's evolved quite a bit since uh that last talk. Um Yeah, I'm I'm going to ask for questions to be collected at time and and for that I assume um Good strategy. There was some very enthusiastic people to the mic at the IAC last time.\n\nUm I mean, but but um the You know, the the the key thing that that we figured out is like how do you pay for this whole, you know, something to go to Mars? That's very super expensive. Mhm.\n\nUm and um I kind of think by kind of you know, if we downsize the um the the Mars vehicle, you know, make it capable of doing uh Earth orbit activity as well as uh you know, Mars activity, then um you know, maybe we could pay for it with by using it for Earth orbit activity. Um that's that's one of that's one of the key elements in the new uh architecture.\n\nIt's it's it's similar it's similar to what was at IAC, but it's uh it's it's it's a bit a little bit smaller, still big, but but but but I think it's um I think this one's got a shot at uh uh being real. And and on on the on the economic front, you know, that's the trick. All right, let's see. I think another question from over here. Hi Elon, Eugene Mark. Um I have mostly one important question and one little aside.\n\nUh I Can you talk a little bit about your R&D strategy for your companies and is it all focused on short-term problem solution or how much and in what fashion do you allocate time and money towards R&D spending on some of the long-term goals you're working at?\n\nAnd then just as a little aside for the Boring Company, are you looking at that only as a habit as a transportation, but potentially as a habitat um company uh for not just tunnels, but habitats on Mars or the moon? Yeah, actually so I do think like getting good at digging tunnels um could be really helpful for Mars. Mhm.\n\nUm cuz like once you've got a a kind of a it would be a different optimization for, you know, a Mars boring machine versus a Earth boring machine, but um for sure there's going to be need to be a lot of of ice mining on Mars and mining in general to get raw materials.\n\nUm and then along the way uh building um uh underground habitats where, you know, you get good radiation shielding um and you kind of have you know, as much you can you can build a really an entire city underground if you wanted to. Uh I think people are still going to want to go to the surface, you know, um from time to time, but um you you you can build trans mount underground uh with the with the right boring technology on Mars.\n\nSo, I do think that there's uh some uh overlap in that uh technology development arena. Um And then R&D um you know, I I try to spend as much on R&D as we can at uh my companies. Um So, we really max out R&D. I mean, I spend most of my time on engineering. Um um that's probably 80% of my week is engineering meetings. Um and so as you know, any money that we get in revenue, we we we would put that right back into R&D.\n\nUm And some of it is longer term. Um uh yeah. Um You know, like for example, the you know, Mars vehicle um uh look at some doing some Mars communication stuff potentially with with with the NASA or in part um and um yeah, but one super priority is like engineering's my most fun thing. So, try to follow that to the max. Over here. Hi, my name is Chris LeFlore. Um I work for Congress for Representative John Conyers.\n\nA couple days ago I read about you talking about artificial intelligence and the dangers of it uh and how as a uh as a businessman, you are totally against regulation and stuff like that, but as a you know, a human being, you think it's critical that we get ahead of this issue. Yeah.\n\nUh can you please elaborate on um like why um what are you seeing that we don't get to see and uh what as a policy maker I should be looking to do to sort of I guess protect us all? Sure. Well, um I think it it it is difficult to appreciate just how far um artificial intelligence has advanced and how far it is advancing um because we have a double exponential at work.\n\nUh we have an exponential increase in hardware capability um and we have an exponential increase um in software talent that is going into AI. Um so whenever you have a double exponential, it's very difficult to predict. Um real predictions almost always going to be too conservative in terms of thinking it'll be further out than it is.\n\nUm you know, you start to see things like um I don't know if you've seen like the the videos where you can sort of really quite accurately video simulate uh someone um and put words in their mouth that they never spoke. Um you just Google it. It's really pretty amazing. Um and then they they had something called a generative adversarial network. Uh it had had two of them. Um compete with one another to make the most convincing video.\n\nSo, one would generate the video and then the other one would identify where it it it looked fake and and then that would the other one would fix that. And then and they'd go back and forth to the point where you couldn't tell which one is the real real video, which one is the fake one. Um and um you you actually there've been some very public things like the defeat of AlphaGo or defeat of Go by AlphaGo of the world's best Go champion.\n\nPeople thought defeating Go was either never or 20 years away. That was world's best Go player was defeated. Um and now that same AlphaGo system can defeat the top 50 players simultaneously with 0% of chance of them winning. Yeah. And that's 1 year later. Um so the degrees of freedom to which artificial intelligence is able to apply itself are in really increasing I think by 10 orders of magnitude a year. It's that's really crazy.\n\nUm So, I think and and we're starting and this is on hardware that is really not well suited for neural nets. Um you know, uh like a GPU is maybe an order of magnitude better than a CPU, but something but a um a chip that is designed optimally for neural nets is an order of magnitude better than a GPU. Um and that is there are a whole bunch of neural net optimized chips coming out um either late this year or next year.\n\nUm so, I think we should I think you know, the part of the role of government is to make sure the public is uh safe, like to take care of public safety issues. And I think so, I think the right move is to establish some government regulatory agency, which at first is just there to gain insight. So, um it's not about like shooting from the hip and just putting in rules before anyone knows anything, but you got to set up agency.\n\nIt's got to gain insight. Once that insight is gained, then start applying rules and regulations. Um we have that for the you know, for aircraft, the FAA, we've got that for cars, we've got that for uh, you know, drugs, for food. Um, and I don't think anyone wants the FAA to go away or the FDA to go away or, you know, um, any of those regulatory agencies. Um, I think we would just need to make sure people do not cut corners on AI safety.\n\nIt's going to be a big deal. It's going to be a real big deal. Um, and it's going to come on like a like a tidal wave. All right, thanks. Let's see you. Over here, question. Good afternoon. Um, my name is Anna and I'm a film director and VR producer.\n\nAnd I'm currently working on a on a film, on a documentary film about future scenarios for humanity, which actually brought me to this amazing conference where I can learn and complete my research on the space exploration area.\n\nAnd in the previous few days, there was a lot of talks, uh, which is, I think, an extremely beautiful phenomenon, about this kind of dual philosophy behind space exploration and space solutions, about solutions that are coming back to Earth that can benefit humankind in very, very wide area.\n\nAnd today we've been talking about the commercialization of the of the space area, and it brings a lot of questions to me about social responsibility behind uh, gigantic companies that would actually probably take over how the space industry would develop in the nearest future.\n\nSo, I'm very curious how you see in long term, uh, these kind of benefits for people or social goals for for SpaceX, and especially in the context that uh, you are an entrepreneur that invests in infrastructure and transport, hard solution that would probably change the way most of us live, and the way we communicate with each other.\n\nSo, I'm very, very curious how you see that in terms of long-term mission, long-term philosophy, and what would be your advice or maybe it's kind of security signal for other of your colleagues and for all of us. Phew. I I I'm you know, I'm not sure I I fully understood uh, the question. Um, the uh, yeah, or the answer.\n\nUm, Um, but Yes, I I I think mainly about uh, long-term benefits from the R&D endeavors that your companies would conduct that could actually be also not only serving building a service that can be useful for business or for people, but also benefit the societies in a wider context. And also knowing that it would probably the interest the commercial industry in space would probably develop very quickly and it it will grow.\n\nHow do you see the social responsibility of the companies who actually do that and where are the limits of what can be done, what should be done? The same way as you think about, for example, open AI mission in the area of of of AI development. So, can you try could be translated into space industry endeavors? Well, I think there's a a pretty big social benefit or um, civilizational benefit to being a multi-planet civilization.\n\nUm, you know, that dramatically increases the probable lifespan of human civilization if we are a multi-planet species versus a single-planet species. Um, but sometimes that is misinterpreted as, well, shouldn't we just focus everything on Earth?\n\nIt's like, well, you know, but we should focus almost everything on Earth, but I think that should be maybe 1% or 2% of our resources that um, are applied to making life multi-planetary because there are certain irreducible irreducible risks uh, for you know, for on Earth.\n\nUm, it's it's you know, it's possible in the future that there there's some global war that knocks us back many levels of technology, you know, certainly if it was a major nuclear war it would.\n\nUm, and uh, the there's just so the general decay of societies over time, um, we see this uh, through history, you know, if you look at ancient Egypt or ancient Rome, um, you know, they had reached peak peak technology levels and then for reasons that aren't obvious, just declined.\n\nUm, and uh, you know, so so I think just having being a multi-planet civilization, um, you you know, having human bases throughout the solar system, I think First of all, I think it's very exciting and inspiring and there needs to be things that are exciting and inspiring and and uh, make you look forward to waking up in the morning. Like, it's like, hey, future's exciting. This is underappreciated. You know, like tunnels. Sorry.\n\nI was just saying. All right. Um, and um, you know, but there's got to be things that make you excited about life. Um, like, you know, it can't just be problem solving, you know, one one sort of miserable problem after another. It's got to be like, I'm fired up about the future because and here's why, you know? And and space is one of those things that that does that for people all around the world.\n\nUm, you know, when um, when Apollo 11, you know, when when they landed on the moon, I mean, it was that was something for all of humanity. It really was, you know? And people would you know, if there's like one TV for 50 miles around, people would walk you know, they'd walk 50 miles just to go find that one TV to to watch it happen. Um, so it you know, sometimes people think, what about what about poor nations of the world? Like, you know what?\n\nIt inspires them, too. Um, and um, you know, we need things like that. We don't have we don't have enough of them. All right, thank you. Over here? Hi Elon, quick question. I heard that Dragon is no longer planned to land propulsively. Is that true? Yeah, that was a tough decision. It Dragon is capable of landing propulsively Dragon 2 is capable of landing propulsively. Um, and it technically it still it still is.\n\nUh, although you'd have to land it on some pretty soft landing pad because we we've deleted the little legs that pop out of the heat shield. Um, but it's technically still capable of doing it.\n\nUh, the the reason we decided not to pursue that heavily is it would have taken a a tremendous amount of effort to qualify that um, for for safety, uh, particularly for crew transport, and then um, uh, there was a time when I thought that the Dragon approach to landing on Mars, um, with a base heat shield and side-mounted thrusters would be the right way to land on Mars, but um, now I've I'm pretty confident that is not the right way.\n\nUm, and that there's a there's a there's a far better approach. Um, and um, and that that's what the next generation of uh, SpaceX um, rockets and spacecraft uh, is just going to do. Um, so yeah, so just the difficulty of of of safely qualifying Dragon for propulsive landing and the fact that um, from a technology evolution standpoint, it it was no longer in line with what we were confident was the the optimal way to land on Mars.\n\nUh, that's why we are not pursuing it. It could be something that we bring back later, um, but it's it it doesn't seem like the right way to apply resources right now. Over here. Hi Elon. Um, my name is Elia Overby. I'm a PhD student studying genomics. We've all made we've all together made a lot of technological progress um, on space systems. My question isn't about the technology, it's about the biology.\n\nUm, what are the principal biological concerns you have about human health on long duration missions, such as a mission to Mars? And um, have you identified any solutions to these problems? Um, well, I'd say uh, going to Mars is not for the faint of heart. Um, and it's it's risky, uh, dangerous, uh, uncomfortable, and you might die. Now, do you want to go? Yeah.\n\nUm, you know, and for a lot of people the answer's going to be hell no, and for some it's going to be hell yes. Um, so um, there will you know, there will be issues. Um, I don't think it's like it's it's going to be a case of like you get irradiated to death along the way. I don't think that's the case at all.\n\nUm, you you know, the the radiation levels sort of roughly you you know, in worst case scenario really kind of about equivalent to smoking on the way there. Uh, now smoking's pretty bad. Uh, but um, but I think with um, with some moderate shielding, we we can cut down on um, a large percentage of the incoming radiation.\n\nUm, and that should be enough that um, that the the sort of marginal risk of cancer is not something that is going to be a showstopper. Uh that's that's my best assessment to date. Um something learning a lot about solar winds and um you know, fast particles and what not.\n\nUm And uh you know, one of the things that I learned recently that I wasn't didn't didn't quite understand is that the I I always thought of the particles from the sun the sort of solar wind is going kind of straight up from the sun, but they they follow the magnetic field lines. Um so, you you actually can get the particles coming at you from the side even though you know, it's kind of at a direction orthogonal to the sun.\n\nUm So, you do need some some amount of uh protection um at least on uh yeah, on on on kind of four four or five sides. Um Anyway, but I don't think it's it's it's not a showstopper, but it's um it's it's definitely, you know, if if safety is your top goal, I wouldn't go to Mars. Yeah. You know, there's a there's a bunch of work going on ISS right now to understand the risk to the humans for long duration.\n\nCertainly we're in we're in the Van Allen belts, so the radiation environment's different. But uh and all part of it is understanding what happens to the humans the longer you stay. So, so far we've had humans stay a little bit longer than a year, and that's it. So, in the history of the species they've we've had someone off the planet for a little more than a year, and we're talking 3 years to go to Mars.\n\nWell, you know, I think you can get the Perhaps perhaps shorter, but it's in the years. Uh it's uh you know, it's so there there potential for for things out there that we haven't found yet. Yeah. And uh so, we'll we'll learn more as we go along. Hopefully learn more before ISS is done.\n\nYeah, it's interesting that actually the you know, you know, Mars is only in the same um sort of rough quadrant of the of of Earth six roughly 6 months every 2 years. Um By same, I mean it's sort of trans slightly offset cuz it's like a transfer quadrant, but um but if you can get the ship to and from Mars in inside that 6-month window, then you get to reuse it twice as often.\n\nSo, there's actually a lot of merit to being able to get to Mars uh in under 3 months. If you can get there quick and back, of course it means a bigger bigger vehicle and and resupply. So, anyway, we'll interesting problem that will I'm sure we'll work on here as we go forward. Lot lot lot of lot of Earth orbit refueling or it's not really mostly oxygen, but it's um propellant reload. There's no good word for for propellant for fuel plus oxygen.\n\nUh prop, I guess. Prop prop load. We'll have to We'll have to invent a new word, right? So, that's I guess that's it. Okay, question over here? Demetrios Tseriotis from Los Angeles. First, thank you very much for digging those tunnels. They will be really handy during Olympics. Um my question is uh like with Tesla cars, will we see you riding the crew module to ISS and back? Thank you. Um I would like to at some point. I would like to.\n\nUm Yeah, I would I think um assuming things work out, you know, I I you know, I'd like to yeah, maybe three three or four years, something. Um yeah, be great. All right, we'll put you on the manifest. Okay. Next question over here? Hello, I'm Anna Sophia Bagirayev, and I have kind of a follow-up on the biology question from before.\n\nIt is one thing to say obviously it's not going to be a safe experience to go to Mars, but there are some technologies essential especially if we're looking to putting humans there permanently um that are going to be have that are going to have to be developed with biological capabilities. Speaking of like flight suits, habitats, um eventual artificial biospheres for people to live in.\n\nDo you see your company playing a part in the development of those technologies? Do you see biology having a place in SpaceX's work, or will that be outsourced to other unrelated companies? Hey, and before you answer, you should know that Anna Sophia over here won a Genes in Space competition and flew on a SpaceX Dragon. Anna Sophia was at uh was at SpaceX uh 10? When was that? Eight. SpaceX eight.\n\nSo, um as a yeah, and uh a very smart uh young lady. I think in fact, I think she's smarter than me in high school than uh than than I am now. So, anyway, so good luck with your answer. Sure. Um Uh biology absolutely has a significant role to play in any kind of uh permanent Mars base or city. Um I mean, if if for SpaceX, you know, we're we're we're trying to make sure we can get people there reliably at a at a cost they can afford.\n\nUm and get cargo there at at a at a at the right cost number. You know, cuz there's there's there's kind of a threshold cost per ticket or cost per ton to the surface of Mars um below which uh a self-sustaining city can develop and above which it cannot. Um that that sort of critical um sort of economic and tech technical threshold is um is is what we're is what we're focused on at SpaceX.\n\nUm And then we'll we'll probably also have to do a fair bit of work on propellant depot, uh basically propellant plant on Mars. Um but then our our intent is to uh you know, we we we don't want to get in the way of of what others are doing.\n\nLike we want to make sure that uh let's say if somebody makes an investment or wants to do something on Mars, create a you know, a business or do some scientific endeavor, that SpaceX does not compete with them, you know, cuz they need to feel like okay, they're we're not going to just go in and compete with them arbitrarily.\n\nUm We we we want to make sure that they they they they feel it's going to be a fruitful environment uh to be that you know, to go there and and and um and do something special.\n\nUm So, our focus is going to be on transport, kind of fundamental utilities, survivability, um and you know, we'll we'll and we'll do more if we need to do more, uh but um we want to make sure that that lots of people can go and do all sorts of things on Mars or the moon, um and not feel like SpaceX is going to do anything but try to help them. We don't want We don't want to interfere or compete.\n\nUm you know, they got to feel like the opportunity is there. Next question over here? Hi Elon. Um my name is Tracy, and I'm not here for any reason related to my career or to my area of study. I'm actually here as a very cool and only slightly overbearing mother Okay.\n\nto my 10-year-old daughter Harper and a sister to my 14-year-old brother Ben, who are both in the audience today, and who think of you the way that I guess I thought of Madonna at the same age. Um Wow. Yeah. That's that's that's some That's some high praise there. Thank you. In this spirit of that, I wanted to get um your advice for two kids who are All right. very interested in space and engineering and entrepreneurism. Thank you. I'm sorry.\n\nSpace, engineering, and entrepreneurialism. What's your advice? What's your advice? Yeah, well, you know, there's a lot of uh technical problems to solve. Um so, I guess it would be sort of, you know, start studying kind of engineering and physics and biosciences and that kind of thing would be the um way to go. Um yeah. Um lot of going to be a lot of problems to solve to to make a city work on Mars.\n\nUm You know, we're we're thinking of just as a well, sort of a semi-joke putting a uh job description on our website for urban planner in brackets Mars. Uh Um but um you know, there's there's there's going to be a tremendous amount of problems to solve. There will be There's a lot of building, building and problem solving.\n\nSo, those are like the right you know, skills to work on if if if someone's interested in going beyond Earth or, you know, space in general. Thank you. We're glad you're We're glad you're here. Glad your kids are here, too. They're uh they're the future for all of us. So, thanks for coming. See you over here? Hi.\n\nMy name is Gerard Valle, NASA Johnson Space Center, and my question is uh in your quest to um colonize Mars, do you foresee utilizing expandable spacecraft modules um as a stepping stone or or even a final final utilization? Well, I think there's definitely going to be inflatable things on on Mars itself. Um you know, in the journey there, there might be some amount of inflatable, but um we're not currently baselining that.\n\nOtherwise itself I think there'd be quite a lot. Yeah. Okay, thank you. Inflatable and and perhaps just building it with the materials that's already present that exactly. Local materials are key. You don't have to carry it with you. Yeah, tunnels. Tunnels. You got to get that tunnel that boring machine there though. That's going to be a It's Well, right now the earth ones are really heavy. Like really heavy. Right.\n\nWell, they're not built by aerospace engineers there. You're not worried about weight for earth tunneling machine. You like actually want one that's nice and heavy. Um but for a Mars one you'd have to redesign it to be super light. That's a tricky one. And then just taking into account the different conditions on Mars and everything. So Um yeah.\n\nIt's interesting the um you know, the Curiosity rover and the tires being chewed up by the the sharpness of the of just of the dirt of the gravel there. It's a you know, a very foreign environment to us and even in very subtle ways. So Let's see. A next question over here? Hi Alan. My name is Praful Chandra. I'm a regenerate medicine scientist from Wake Forest University.\n\nMy question is regarding your company Neuralink that makes a brain machine interfaces. So what do you think this technology, how is it useful for humans when they you know, go into low earth orbits or even deep space exploration? And do you have any plans in that direction? Well, the the reason for the reason I wanted to create Neuralink was primarily as an offset to the existential risk associated with artificial intelligence.\n\nUm I think we will human intelligence will be not I mean we will not be able to beat AI. So then if you know, as the saying goes if you can't beat them, join them kind of thing. Um So I think having some some basically way to to link um you know, human will on mass to the outcome of of AI. Having AI be an extension of individual human will. That's really the point of Neuralink.\n\nNow along the way I think there'll be some a lot of good that's achieved in uh addressing uh any any brain damage that's you know, as a result of a stroke or lesion or something congenital. Um or just you know, loss of memory when you get old that kind of thing. Um and you know, that will that will happen well before it it becomes a sort of um you know, brain AI symbiote situation. So if we plan it you'll see it coming.\n\nIt'll be it won't it won't happen all of a sudden. Um Very I I I do think it it it increases the long-term relevance of human exploration. Um and um yeah and I don't think I think it's for for me it increased my motivation long-term that that it doesn't just need to be done by robots. You know, um yeah. I don't know if that answers your question but Does that answer your question? Oh, yes. Okay, okay. All right, let's see.\n\nMaybe we're one more question here and we'll we'll wrap it up on the left here. Okay. Hi. Call it from Space Nation. As we are building the first global astronaut training program for everyone. My question relates what you earlier said to the about International Space Station and how it's a shame that it's not better known around the world as probably compared for example the shuttle program.\n\nSo and thinking that in the future we need thousands and more space pioneers. So how do you see the significance of this public engagement and especially in the time where we have more and more tools to do that and and do you have specific plans on that and how you see that affecting accelerating or does it have in that kind of effect for the whole humanity's transition to space and and the new space era? Sure.\n\nWell, I think just getting more more human space flight is going to automatically engage the public. I just pointed out that space shuttle there was a lot more engagement when the space shuttle was launching.\n\nUm I think um if if the public public sees some some path even if it's long-term where they themselves may be able to go to orbit or beyond or to to the moon or Mars, I think their interest level increases dramatically and it may not be even that that they want to go but they have a son or a daughter brother or a friend that really wants to do it and and and so they want to support this their you know, friends and family uh in in that in that ambition.\n\nUm but it really needs to be something ultimately that looks like it's going to be accessible to uh a large number of people. Um and then I think we'll get a large number of people engaged. Yeah, one of the things about engagement too I think for the for the US anyway will be we have had people launch from the United States. So I can't tell you how many people around the world have said you know, oh you guys are still flying?\n\nWell, absolutely we never stopped flying. We've had people living on board ISS uh you know, for almost 17 years. And but they don't see the smoke and the fire, right? They see that they see they knew they turn on the TV and there's a shuttle going and it's got seven people on board and they see it and nowadays at least in the US it's half a world away. So here in in a week a week from Friday we'll be launching three people. Yeah.\n\nBut it doesn't feel the same as if it was happening in in our backyard in in Florida. Absolutely. So so we're looking forward to to that happening very soon here in in the US and we wish you the best of luck. Thanks very much for being here today. Thanks for for joining the conference. You're a big part of ISS and a big part of of the research and development that goes on on ISS. So so thanks very much.\n\nI'm glad we've been able to help be helpful and thanks for having me. I'd like to to extend my thanks also for a incredibly insightful and frank discussion that you guys have had with the group. So we really truly appreciate it. And tunnels are cool, too.","textByLang":{"en":"When I think about innovation beyond boundaries, so I cannot think of a better representation of that concept in our generation. Please join me in welcoming Elon Musk and ISS program manager Kirk Shireman to the stage. Very good. So Elon, thanks so much for for being here today. Um Elon commuted from the West Coast this morning. So we appreciate you taking the time and coming out here and talking with us. Absolutely. Thanks for having me.\n\nWe've had we've had a pretty good conference so far at least in my opinion. Over a thousand people signed up for the first time, so a significant increase. And lots of people interested in in in space and lower earth orbit and the International Space Station and work that's going on. So um Anyway, we're very very excited about the work that's going on and excited to have you here today, too. Great. Thanks for having me.\n\nSo you were here a number of years ago in July in 2015. It's not that long ago, I guess, two years ago. And had a had a discussion like this with Mike Suffredini. And a lot of things have happened since 2015 for SpaceX. So can you can you talk about how things have gone, how how they've progressed, how you're feeling about how the industry and and SpaceX in particular progressed? Sure.\n\nWhat I think I think we we are entering a new era of space exploration, which is extremely exciting. Um And it's it's not just SpaceX, but there's a number of other companies that have developed new approaches. NASA is taking new approaches things, which is really exciting in in the way that the the contracting has been done for space station resupply. I think it's a great model that frankly should be adopted throughout government.\n\nI spoke a little bit about this at the governor's conference and was actually using the NASA NASA cargo resupply contracting process as a really great model for government in general. Um You know, it's where you have two competitors fixed price milestone based with a hot milestones are are primarily hardware oriented.\n\nUm and then if one of the two companies that's that's competing does not Um reach their milestones, then the remainder of the milestones are are competed to another company. And that's what happened with cargo resupply. Started off with SpaceX and Kistler. Kistler made some progress, but wasn't going to get across the finishing line.\n\nAnd then Orbital Sciences was competed for the second slot and they did get across the finishing line and now both SpaceX and Orbital are providing NASA with cargo services to the space station. Um And having that competitive dynamic is is I think it's a very powerful powerful function for getting a great outcome for the NASA as the customer.\n\nUm and I think that that's just a great that was a great model really well executed and to the degree that's applicable in other areas of NASA or the government, I think um that's there's the potential for revolutionary progress on that front.\n\nUm so from from a from a technical standpoint the the the biggest thing that's happened in the last couple years, which I'm really excited about and I think makes a difference for access to space is the landing of the uh Falcon 9 rocket booster um and then the that um And if you ever get a chance to go out to the the the the Cape um uh over Vandenberg to see that, I'd really recommend it. It's really pretty fun.\n\nSo um And um there'll be a lot of those flights in the remainder of the year. We've got about a dozen flights still to go this year. Um and then after landing re-flying that same booster with minimal work to the booster. Um and we believe we can get to the point where in the not too distant future, in fact, probably by by next year where the uh the the the um Falcon 9 booster can be re-flown um within 24 hours. Um so yeah.\n\nAnd and and and the key the key to that is that uh all you do is inspections and no hardware is changed not even the paint. And so this is very important. Uh so that's our aspiration for for next year. Um obviously while paying very close attention to mission assurance and reliability. Um But we think we've got at least a technical path to to achieving that. Um and then the I think we're quite close to being able to recover the the fairing.\n\nUm so it's a huge nose cone on the front of nose cone. You can fit a basically a whole sort of city bus in there.\n\nAnd and and that just that that fairing alone with all of its systems and the acoustic damping and qualification all that and separation system, that's about a five or six million dollar um piece of equipment and the analogy I use with my team is like, guys, imagine we had you know, six million dollars in a pallet of cash and that was you know, six million dollars is falling through the sky and would we try to catch it? I say we do.\n\nI say we give it a shot. You know, worst case it ends up at the bottom of the ocean, but maybe we do catch it and then pay six million dollars. Let me know when that pallet of cash is coming back. Yeah. I mean I'd like to give it a shot, too. You know, it might as well be a pallet of cash because it costs six million dollars. So um And but I I think we we got a decent shot of recovering the fairing by the end of the year.\n\nUm and and possibly reflight by either late this this year or early next. Um and that just leaves the the upper stage of the rocket. Upper stage is about 20% of the cost of the mission. Um so if we get booster stage and and fairing, we're right around 80% reasonable. And then um I think I think we for for a lot of missions we can even bring the second stage back. So we're going to try to do that.\n\nUm Although our primary focus will be on our Dragon over the next particular of the next year or so. Our Dragon 2 spacecraft, which is what will which is the crew crew Dragon next generation Dragon spacecraft, which has got all of the equals systems and the but it will allow you to do a launch aboard um all the way to orbit. And um uh and and do an automated docking maneuver. So it's not it does it doesn't need to berth with the aid of the arm.\n\nIt can do a direct docking maneuver. Um and then that will be the what once that's operational the new method of taking both cargo and crew to the space station. Um so if I say what's what's our primary focus, it's making sure we stay on track for um uh getting getting crew to station as we promised NASA around the middle of next year. That's going to be real exciting. I think it's going to be great for getting the public fired up.\n\nYou know, that's really It's been a while since we launched uh astronauts from US soil. So we're we're all looking forward to that. Yeah. Um and I I I just like to to to to to thank um people at NASA for giving SpaceX a chance to to do this and um just want a word of appreciation for the working relationship with NASA, which is great. Um in fact, I told the governors uh last week that, you know, for a long time my password was I love NASA.\n\nThat that is actually true. This is um You know, you've just given you've given all the hackers around the world a chance to go work on that. I I hopefully I don't have like some old email accounts somewhere that still with that. You know, like I've got to I've got to change this. People are going to cotton on. Very good. So how you talked a little bit about commercial crew. How is that going?\n\nI know it's you know, flying flying humans is more systems involved. Of course, the risk is higher. How is that progressing? Um you know, it's it's been way more difficult than cargo for sure. Um Yeah. I mean, as soon as as soon as sort of people enter the picture, it's it's really a giant step up in um making sure things go right, you know, and and for sure the the the oversight the oversight from NASA is much tougher.\n\nIt was not that it wasn't tougher cargo, but it's really intense for crew. Um So coming from the right motivations. Um but uh yeah, it's uh you know, it can be a bit tough on on on my guys you know, what with the women men of SpaceX, but uh but I but I you know, know where it's coming from. It's the right right motivation.\n\nUm And uh and there'll be some debates, you know, going into next year about some of the detailed technical de- de- de- um But I think uh we really want to uh do everything humanly possible to make sure it goes well. Um And um you know, triple check everything. Um and uh O- overall, I think it's going you know, really well.\n\nUm you know, there's getting like these little small technical bones of contention, which um you know, but we're working through those. Um We're engineers. We live We live for that. Exactly. Um Yeah. Um it And and some of these things are really like esoteric.\n\nI mean, unless somebody's really in the weeds on the rocket and spacecraft design, it will just sound like we're talking Greek, but um ancient Greek, you know, but um Yeah, but there's you know, I think it's good to have these debates.\n\nUh and overall, um I'm confident that it's going to be a system that uh that NASA feels good about and that SpaceX feels good about and uh we're looking forward to continuing the partnership into next year and um doing a great job for NASA. Excellent. Thank you. Um and of course we're looking forward to. We're excited about it and and as you mentioned, we're NASA's working hard with you Yep. on uh on Oh, yeah.\n\nUm Uh and and yeah, and we're also all down in the weeds on those technical details. I'm sure you are down. Yep. Let's see. You see down to the little bolt to the little thing and all that. Where's Gerst? Gerst is here somewhere. That's Gerst's uh gravy, too. Gerst, if you can't have a If you can't have a dry lube bolt pitch discussion with Gerst, you know, it's not a good day.\n\nWe We I guess I have a many many just many sort of in the weeds technical discussions. Um I actually love I love talking to Gerst. Uh one of my favorite people in the world, actually. So. Yeah. There you go. Mine, too, but but he's my boss. I I have to say that. Let's see. So, you you talked We talked a little bit about commercial crew.\n\nWe have uh cargo supply resupply one, which you have the Dragon, which of course Dragon one, which is uh birthed. And and in fact, you've done a reflight recently with uh with the Dragon. You know, thanks for bringing that up. You know, um cuz that's kind of important. Yes, it is. And again, thanks for the NASA support on that.\n\nUm God, we we really should uh you know, we should have made a slightly bigger deal out of it because it was the first reflight of a spacecraft since the shuttle. Mhm. Um and uh we kind of forgot to make, you know, let people know to I mean, I guess it was there in the details, but we forgot to you know, let I don't think the public even realizes that it's the first reflight of a spacecraft orbital spacecraft since the shuttle.\n\nUm Which performed very well, too. Very good good clean mission. Yeah, solid. Um I mean, that that now that was a case case where I should in full disclosure say that it cost us almost as much to in fact, probably about as much, maybe more to re- re- negotiating contract here. No, I know. I know. I'm just I'm just being totally honest here.\n\nUm I I Our the SpaceX internal accounting said that it cost us almost as much as building a a Dragon one from scratch. I suspect our internal accounting was probably being um wasn't counting certain things. Um There were some circumstances unusual about this one, right? This one had some water incursions and things like that. Yeah, yeah. The amount of rework on this particular This had a lot of rework, yeah.\n\nBut the next one, we think there's a decent shot of of being maybe sort of 50% the cost of a new one. Um and uh Keep going. My contract is here. Yeah, I'm negotiating against myself here. Yes. Um and um but um yeah, no, I I mean, we want to offer the, you know, best possible uh deal deal for NASA and um it's always tough to get that top line budget to increase. Hope it does.\n\nUm man, I think so much could be could could be accomplished if the NASA top line budget was increased. I think people have no idea, you know. Um So, it's there. So, talk a little bit So, we talked about CRS one and and birthing and CRS two. Are we talking about commercial crew? CRS two, the Dragon is going to its cargo Dragon It's It's the similar Adam old line of It's It's It's It's Dragon two, it's yeah. But it's going to dock.\n\nAnd so, talk about the it could then we'll have good commonality between the two. and and things like that. Yeah. Um so, the I mean, the only thing cargo Dragon won't have is the launch escape system. Uh although it'll still have the logic associated with separating from the vehicle. Uh So, I I think most likely even even cargo Dragon two um would be able to survive uh booster anomaly. Like like that word anomaly.\n\nUm The the We don't like that word. Yeah, well, I got um I guess I don't like it. Yeah, right. Um The the one of the the launch It have everything else on the Dragon crew Dragon two has except the the thrusters, but I think in most cases actually it would still be able to survive re-entry um and and keep the cargo safe. Um But uh but having that commonality is great. Yeah.\n\nYeah, I mean, going forward, it seems like, you know, docking itself and if, you know, even beyond testing of systems and evolutions and things that might be beneficial to test on on the cargo version Yeah, totally. Absolutely. And I know you've already done some things on on CRS one to prepare for CRS two and you're testing some TPS uh repair capability and things like that. So, exactly.\n\nUm actually uh uh I really, you know, just like to uh you know, express some appreciation for the the whole CRS team um because they they've really allowed us to uh update the rocket and you know, add crazy things like landing legs. Um and um and been really fair, I think, in allowing us to iterate with the booster for for the CRS contract.\n\nUm And then uh uh and and then as you're pointing out, um Dragon two being used for both uh cargo and crew allows us to iterate uh uh with a just a slight less little more risk on the cargo version um and prove it out for the screw on board. Yeah, it's really helpful. Excellent. So, let's let's talk about I I I know we got a few more minutes here and then we'll open it up to questions.\n\nBut uh you know, the the theme here is for the conference is innovation. And and of course we talked already about some innovations in the launch business, but what what do you think needs to be Where are the areas or the thrusts for innovation that we really need both uh you know, not not excluding the launch, but but also looking at lower earth orbit. What's in lower earth orbit?\n\nWhere do we Where do you think we as a as a uh you know, space industry need to go and look for our innovation? Yeah. Um Well, you know, I I I think for long I I I I still believe in I think many people do that the the real the key to opening up uh space space or orbit, you know, Leo and beyond is um rapid and complete reusability. Um uh uh near complete reusability. Um Like we have with aircraft.\n\nUm or cars or you know, almost any form of transport. Um Now, it's it's super hard with space cuz this is uh you know, we live on a planet with pretty high gravity. Um so, so, it'd be pretty easy if we're on Mars or something like that.\n\nUm But uh but the earth's gravity is is really pretty pretty high and we've got a thick atmosphere and um so, uh reus- reus- reusability is tough when you're going through, you know, high sort of you you're going to operate in a vacuum, hypersonic, uh supersonic, transonic, subsonic. Um That's just a lot of regimes for um any sort of flying object to go through.\n\nUm Uh but but reusability I think is absolutely fundamental to a breakthrough in uh access to orbit and beyond. Um the Leo Leo and beyond. Um Anything that can be done in that direction, I think is is is good. Mhm. Surely change the economics of transportation to lower earth orbit, right? Really fundamental. You get quick reusability, the economic equation it becomes easier to get to lower earth orbit and do more things. Yeah.\n\nYeah, I mean, it's kind of like, you know, just any mode of transport. Like it's uh And before there was the Union Pacific going across the US to California, and there was like hardly any people in California. People thought building the Union Pacific was just crazy cuz you got like nobody there. So, why are we building a railroad to nowhere? Um Now, you know, California's most populous state in the country.\n\nUm Some people stopped in Texas along the way. Yeah, yeah. Few of us did. Um I love Texas. By the way, by the way. Texas. Uh you know, we we do uh a huge part of our R&D in Texas, in Central Texas. A lot of people don't know about that. Um near Waco. We have Um so Central Central Texas, we do um You did Boca Chica down in the south there. That's right. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So, we've got a lot of activity um uh throughout Texas.\n\nUm we're building yet third launch site um in South Texas near Brownsville. Um I think that'll that'll give us good uh um you know, contingency capability if there's a say a hurricane coming through the cape um and we still need to get to the station, we could, you know, launch out of South Texas and that that'll ensure continuity of service. Um and um yeah. I really I spend a lot of time in Texas. Yeah, it's great. Excellent. All right.\n\nUh traffic's not as bad as in Southern California. Oh man, traffic. So, that's the biggest issue with Southern California, traffic hell. I mean It's like It's like which level of hell are you in? You're in hell. Yeah, Washington's uh trying to catch up. But you know you know what we're I I mean this is I mean um we're digging a tunnel. Have you heard about that? Yeah. Yeah.\n\nUm So so it's like the the and the tunnel starts right across from SpaceX HQ. So, if you're ever out and want to see our tunnel uh Yeah, as long as you promise not to close it in after That's not a problem. Um it would Yeah, we're digging a tunnel. Um and I it's kind of like a So, actually maybe I don't know.\n\nSort of It It's like a little Actually, oddly enough, it's like a little low-stress activity cuz like everyone uh expects it to fail um and um I mean the sort of uh grown-worthy joke that I make about uh tunnels is that they have low expectations. There's nowhere to go but down. Yes. I could keep going. Uh Wow. Um That makes sense. You you're involved in space, you're involved in tunnels, you kind of kind of cover the gamut.\n\nThey used to call me internet guy when I was in startup open space. Um hey, this is internet guy. Uh he's in space. He's obviously going to fail. Um So, then they stopped saying internet guy. Um I think they call me transport guy. He's a transport guy. So, talk Speaking of transports, you know, so today ISS is up there and and really the conference is focused a lot on on some of the research and development that's going on there.\n\nBut and and commercialization, too, by the way. But what and commercialization, at least NASA's strategy is commercialization will will be fostered on ISS and then at some point in the future ISS will go away and and we are we we expect we hope for a vibrant lower earth orbit economy at that point in time. That's cool. And I'm kind of curious what what you see in terms of SpaceX and your transportation relative to that that economy.\n\nWhat's next for commercial crew after after ISS? Sure. Well, first of all, I don't think the public realizes how cool ISS is. Um you know, that is an awesome thing that's up there. Um you know, I I I talked to a lot of people that First of all, some people don't realize we have a space station. Like you can't can't be serious. Uh like we have a gigantic space station. It's huge. Yeah, it's really gigantic.\n\nUm um I mean it's a pretty incredible structure that we have orbiting uh orbiting the earth um and I think just I I I'd recommend like man, we've got to do something to educate the public about the awesomeness of of of the space station cuz it is pretty amazing. Um and and and big. Like people just lose sight of like they think oh, it's like a little thing. You know, it's big. It's real big.\n\nUm and um yeah, so uh and and I was finally getting it to sort of real operational use and um that was great. So, again, amazing technological achievement.\n\nSo, uh but then yeah, uh I I I think the the in terms of lower earth orbit stuff on the commercial side, I think there's a lot of opportunities in um you know, kind of a global internet capability to providing internet to parts of the world that either don't have it or where it's very expensive and not very good.\n\nUm Yeah, so like the the space is really good for providing uh internet connectivity uh for sparsely populated or or low populated regions. Um So, it's not it's not really a threat to telcos. It actually can make um make telcos' lives easier because there are a lot of customers that are very hard to serve where like you're digging a fiber cable for 2 miles, they'll never pay off the investment to you know, to get to one house type of thing. Mhm.\n\nBut um but for space, you can really serve serve those customers um at at at so at economically sensible rates. Um There's earth observation um you're getting better understanding of um of uh uh natural sort of uh nat- any natural disaster uh you know, information. Um and um You know, but I think the If you want to get the the public real fired up, I think we got to we got to have a base on the moon. You know?\n\nUh I don't It's like that'd be pretty cool. Um and then going beyond that, getting people to Mars. Yeah. Certainly sending people further we've ever sent them before, I think it's captivating for the people, so. Yeah, exactly. It's captivating for me, I know that. Yeah, exactly.\n\nUm So, uh yeah, just uh you know, having some permanent presence on another heavenly body um should be the the kind of moon base and then the uh you know, getting getting people to to Mars and beyond. Um and uh you know, it's sort of the That's the that's the continuance of the dream of Apollo that uh I think um people are really looking for. Yeah. Excellent.\n\nYou know, this might be a good time to to go ahead and open it up for a few questions from the audience. Uh we're where the um where they're on the side. I think microphones on the side. I can't tell if people are I don't know where they are. lights are so bright, it's hard to tell. I know this is a risk asking people to ask questions, but uh any uh any questions? Looks like there's a few people signed up lined up over here, so. Go ahead.\n\nUh hi Elon, over here from the UK. Pleasure to ask a question to you. Um my question is how are you managing the risks associated with the Falcon Heavy and particularly the recently announced private launch around the moon. Thank you for your time. Sure. Um so the But first of all, I should say Falcon Heavy that requires the simultaneous uh ignition of 27 orbit class engines. Um It's like, you know, a lot that could go wrong there.\n\nUm and uh I I encourage people to come down to the cape uh and see the first Falcon Heavy mission. Uh it's guaranteed to be exciting. Um But it But it's you know, this is one of those things that's really difficult to test on the ground.\n\nUm I mean we can fire the engines on the ground, but um and we try to simulate the the the dynamic the dynamics of having 27 instead of nine booster engines um and the you know, the airflow as it goes through transonic. Uh it's like it's going to see heavy transonic buffet. Um the max Q or has behavior on a max Q. Um There's a lot of risk associated with Falcon Heavy. Real good chance that that vehicle does not make it to orbit.\n\nUm want to make sure set expectations accordingly. Um I hope I hope it makes it past you know, far enough away from the pad that it does not cause cause pad damage. I would consider even that a win, to be honest. Um um and uh yeah. Um Very exciting. Major pucker factor, really. It's like another way to describe it. Um You know, that dwindles that that dwindles the amount of people who want to ride on that the first time. Yeah.\n\nWell, It gets smaller cap There are still people And full disclosure here, man. Full disclosure. Um Um I you know, I think Falcon Heavy is going to be a great vehicle. Uh just just like so much that's really impossible to test on the ground. Um and we'll do our best. Um and um it it actually ended up being way way harder to do Falcon Heavy than we thought. Uh cuz it's at At first, it sounds real easy.\n\nJust stick two first stages on as strap-on boosters. Yeah, how how hard can that be? But then everything changes. All the loads change. Um Aerodynamics totally change. Uh you've tripled the vibration and acoustics. Um so, if you sort of break the the qual levels on so much of the hardware um the amount of load you're putting through that center core is ins- is crazy um cuz you've got two super powerful boosters also shoving that center core.\n\nAnd it's like So, we had to redesign the the whole center core airframe. Uh it's not like the Falcon 9 cuz it's got to take so much load. Um, then you got the separation systems. Um, and, uh, yeah, it just ended up being really way, way more difficult than we originally thought. Uh, we were pretty naive about that.\n\nUm, but I I but it the nice thing is it's it's, uh, yeah, when it on fully optimized, it's about 2 and 1/2 times the payload capability of a Falcon 9. So, you know, it's um, well over 100,000 lbs to to Leo uh, payload capability, yeah, about 50 tons, could even get up to a little higher than that if, you know, if optimized.\n\nUm, and, um, and then the the nice thing is that does have the throw capability to toss a Dragon 2 in a loop around the moon. Um, and, um, and then Dragon 2 itself, uh, the heat shield is, um, designed with a huge amount of margin. So, it's got enough margin to handle, uh, lunar re-entry. Um, and, uh, particularly if we do initial velocity scrub, um, do sort of at least one pass to scrub velocity, then come in on the second pass.\n\nUm, um, yeah, but, uh, no question, whoever's on the first flight, you know, brave. Yes. Let's see, let's go over here to this side. Here's a question from over here. Uh, hey Elon. Uh, Ted Tagami with, uh, educational company called magnitude. io. I had the good fortune of meeting you, uh, back in September watching your five sons launch their own rockets Black Rock Desert. Oh, yeah, cool. Yeah. That was fun.\n\nAnd since then, we've actually been able uh, had the great fortune of sending students payloads up to the International Space Station. And we're now working with CASIS to extend that. We'd like 50 million students to get on the International Space Station, their experiments on the Space Station by 2014. Uh, so my question to you is more about the innovations in education and your thoughts.\n\nThat same year that I met you and your sons, uh, you announced Ad Astra. Oh, yeah. Uh, and and before the, uh, advent of Neuralink gets fully implemented, what what are your thoughts on the innovations in education today? Thank you. Uh, just the thoughts on education.\n\nUm, well, um, I I think there's maybe a um, there's definitely some good schools out there, um, but I think the some of the the mistakes, at least in my opinion, that I see being made in education is, um, that um, people teachers do not explain why kids are being taught a subject. Um, you know, you just sort of get dumped into math and like, well, why are you learning math? What's the point of this?\n\nIt seems like some, you know, for some people like maybe it's a I don't know why I'm being asked to do these strange problems. Um, but you know, the why of things is extremely important. Um, because, you know, our brain has evolved to not to discard information that it thinks is has no relevance.\n\nSo, then if on the one hand you, uh, you're being asked to memorize or learn, uh, say formulas, um, but you do not know why this is the case, then you have this cognitive dissonance of it seems irrelevant, but I'm being told to remember it, so I'll be punished.\n\nSo, so I better remember it, but so the why of things is very important, and then, uh, being able to and and then pi- picking kind of a a problem, and then, uh, using various educational tools to solve that problem, um, like using math or physics or economics to to solve that problem is far more engaging, um, than teaching the tools.\n\nUm, you know, it's different between if you say, well, we're going to take apart this, uh, this engine, um, and and see how it works and put it back together again.\n\nUm, and then in order to take the engine apart, we need, you know, wrenches and screwdrivers and a winch, um, and Allen keys and and whatnot, um, and and and it's a and then in the course of solving the problem of taking the engine apart and putting it back together, you learn about wrenches and screwdrivers and all the tools that you need. Um, and then now you understand the relevance. Ah, this is why wrenches are important.\n\nI you know, whereas if you had a a class on wrenches, you'd be like, uh, why is this this not seem that great, you know? Um, so ti- tying it to solving a problem is I think very powerful for, um, establishing relevance and getting, um, kids excited about what they're working on. Um, and then and uh, and and having the knowledge stick. Yeah.\n\nAnd so to some extent, fly, you know, building a a a CubeSat or flying an experiment on on ISS is like that, right? You you've got the you've got the why or the relevance and the curiosity and in terms of building that, uh, that device or that experiment. I I think there's some really cool and it ties to the, it gives you a really a concrete example of what, uh, what you're learning and why. Yeah, exactly.\n\nI think like things like CubeSats, uh, exactly. We're we're because say like, okay, w- like what is a solar panel? How does orbital dynamics work? How do we, um, you know, how do we power this thing? You know, how do batteries work? Electronics, co- control systems, um, and you you need to then then you're like, oh, we want to make our satellite work. That's why we need to understand all these disciplines.\n\nUm, so I think it's like like CubeSats students CubeSats are great. Um, like things like design build fly for model airplanes or Formula SAE. Uh, we've got a design and build a, um, kind of a uh, a race car and and then you know, race that against other people. That I think those things are very powerful for uh, learning as learning tools. Yeah, very cool. All right, thank you. I see over here another question.\n\nUh, hi, my name is, uh, Jacob and I actually live near the Cape. So, my question is not much of a tech question, but more of what your prediction is. So, about maybe 100 years after we develop sustainable colonies on Mars, do you think, and of course many other countries will also try to get to Mars, uh, that there would be like a conflict for the best resources on Mars?\n\nUm, like in I guess you could say in sort of like a interplanetary warfare, if you know what I'm trying to get This sounds like a video game, doesn't it? Uh, it's an idea. Mars Attacks or, um, the you know, I think it's some pretty open territory on Mars. Um, so there's I don't think we're going to be there's going to be any kind of scarcity. Uh, there's like a lot of land on Mars. Not many people. Um, so Unless they're hiding on the backside.\n\nYeah, no, I mean, they're they're pretty clever. If there are people on Mars, man, they are way cleverer than us cuz they're hiding well. Um, so, um, yeah, I know, there's plenty of land on Mars. It's I mean, you know, the history of human civilization does contain a lot of war, so I I don't think we you know, we go to Mars and that you you know, be war free forever.\n\nBut, uh, but I think there's certainly not going to be a resource-based conflict due to scarcity of resource on Mars. I think we're going to go to to the Mars as a multinational effort, too, right? So, it's not it's not one country going and another country going and then they're fighting over wars. I think it's countries going together and and so I think we're we're more likely to be peaceful in that in that scenario as well.\n\nYeah, but you know, I I actually advocate for I think it's fine if if if countries get together to form teams, but I think it's actually probably better if there are at least, you know, at least two or three, uh, country coalitions going going to Mars, um, in a friendly way, um, and and competing to see who can make the most progress.\n\nUm, and if you look at like say the Olympics, it would be pretty boring if everyone just linked arms and crossed the finish line at the same time. Um, we're friendly, um, but it would you know, not be More like the opening ceremonies, I guess. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Um, so we I think friendly competition is a good thing. Yeah. Very good.\n\nWell, I I think, you know, NASA wants to be part of one of those kind of coalitions with the United States and and so we're I know we're actually trying to build such a coalition now. Let's see, um, from over here, another question. Hi, I'm, uh, Yotam Ariel, founder and CEO of Bluefield. We're deploying methane tracking microsatellites.\n\nAnd my question to you, I hope to learn your thoughts on advancing remote sensing capabilities of critical gases on Earth and on Mars. Thank you. Well, that's a pretty esoteric question. Um, remote sensing of of gases, um, yeah, I think, um, that that's something that's going to be important. Uh, Mar- Mars has a number of trace gases that are pretty helpful. Um, it's very helpful that that Mars has CO2 and nitrogen and argon.\n\nThose are those are like really helpful gases to have in the atmosphere. Um, it's mostly CO2, but that little bit of nitrogen and argon is really can be pretty helpful. Yeah. And other and whatever other trace gases we can get out of there. know. We we always say Mars has just enough atmosphere to, it's not enough to be really helpful in terms of, uh, aerobraking, but it sure makes it a lot harder. So, it's just enough to be to be difficult.\n\nYeah. of in situ resource utilization, you know, when we get there to be able to build to to to get your oxygen and That's super helpful. have a water and can build a build a hot get hydrogen manufacture hydrogen on on on the planet. So, Yeah. Hopefully there's enough resources that we'll we don't have to carry everything with us. Well, the nice thing having if you got H2O and and CO2, um you can build hydro carbons of of any kind.\n\nUm you can certainly build plastics. Um you can build well, you know, short chain long chain hydrocarbons. Um you know, the the current SpaceX thought for um uh kind of a Mars transport vehicle is a primarily methane based system. Um cuz you get to have a kind of a smaller uh I mean, the tanks are half the size with if with methane.\n\nUm uh so and and and uh yeah, but and and Mars with with a CO2 atmosphere and a lot of water ice is is great for for that. Um uh going beyond Mars, I think there's a lot of merit for hydrogen cuz then you only need water. Um But uh that's that's also our current thinking on that front.\n\nSo, we we speaking of that, last last year at Guadalajara at the IAC conference, you talked about plans to go to the Mars and and and I know you guys have been working on that since then. Yep. You do you so you plan at some point to talk about that work publicly?\n\nYeah, thinking probably the upcoming IAC in Adelaide uh might be a good opportunity to do the updated version of the Mars architecture cuz it's it's evolved quite a bit since uh that last talk. Um Yeah, I'm I'm going to ask for questions to be collected at time and and for that I assume um Good strategy. There was some very enthusiastic people to the mic at the IAC last time.\n\nUm I mean, but but um the You know, the the the key thing that that we figured out is like how do you pay for this whole, you know, something to go to Mars? That's very super expensive. Mhm.\n\nUm and um I kind of think by kind of you know, if we downsize the um the the Mars vehicle, you know, make it capable of doing uh Earth orbit activity as well as uh you know, Mars activity, then um you know, maybe we could pay for it with by using it for Earth orbit activity. Um that's that's one of that's one of the key elements in the new uh architecture.\n\nIt's it's it's similar it's similar to what was at IAC, but it's uh it's it's it's a bit a little bit smaller, still big, but but but but I think it's um I think this one's got a shot at uh uh being real. And and on on the on the economic front, you know, that's the trick. All right, let's see. I think another question from over here. Hi Elon, Eugene Mark. Um I have mostly one important question and one little aside.\n\nUh I Can you talk a little bit about your R&D strategy for your companies and is it all focused on short-term problem solution or how much and in what fashion do you allocate time and money towards R&D spending on some of the long-term goals you're working at?\n\nAnd then just as a little aside for the Boring Company, are you looking at that only as a habit as a transportation, but potentially as a habitat um company uh for not just tunnels, but habitats on Mars or the moon? Yeah, actually so I do think like getting good at digging tunnels um could be really helpful for Mars. Mhm.\n\nUm cuz like once you've got a a kind of a it would be a different optimization for, you know, a Mars boring machine versus a Earth boring machine, but um for sure there's going to be need to be a lot of of ice mining on Mars and mining in general to get raw materials.\n\nUm and then along the way uh building um uh underground habitats where, you know, you get good radiation shielding um and you kind of have you know, as much you can you can build a really an entire city underground if you wanted to. Uh I think people are still going to want to go to the surface, you know, um from time to time, but um you you you can build trans mount underground uh with the with the right boring technology on Mars.\n\nSo, I do think that there's uh some uh overlap in that uh technology development arena. Um And then R&D um you know, I I try to spend as much on R&D as we can at uh my companies. Um So, we really max out R&D. I mean, I spend most of my time on engineering. Um um that's probably 80% of my week is engineering meetings. Um and so as you know, any money that we get in revenue, we we we would put that right back into R&D.\n\nUm And some of it is longer term. Um uh yeah. Um You know, like for example, the you know, Mars vehicle um uh look at some doing some Mars communication stuff potentially with with with the NASA or in part um and um yeah, but one super priority is like engineering's my most fun thing. So, try to follow that to the max. Over here. Hi, my name is Chris LeFlore. Um I work for Congress for Representative John Conyers.\n\nA couple days ago I read about you talking about artificial intelligence and the dangers of it uh and how as a uh as a businessman, you are totally against regulation and stuff like that, but as a you know, a human being, you think it's critical that we get ahead of this issue. Yeah.\n\nUh can you please elaborate on um like why um what are you seeing that we don't get to see and uh what as a policy maker I should be looking to do to sort of I guess protect us all? Sure. Well, um I think it it it is difficult to appreciate just how far um artificial intelligence has advanced and how far it is advancing um because we have a double exponential at work.\n\nUh we have an exponential increase in hardware capability um and we have an exponential increase um in software talent that is going into AI. Um so whenever you have a double exponential, it's very difficult to predict. Um real predictions almost always going to be too conservative in terms of thinking it'll be further out than it is.\n\nUm you know, you start to see things like um I don't know if you've seen like the the videos where you can sort of really quite accurately video simulate uh someone um and put words in their mouth that they never spoke. Um you just Google it. It's really pretty amazing. Um and then they they had something called a generative adversarial network. Uh it had had two of them. Um compete with one another to make the most convincing video.\n\nSo, one would generate the video and then the other one would identify where it it it looked fake and and then that would the other one would fix that. And then and they'd go back and forth to the point where you couldn't tell which one is the real real video, which one is the fake one. Um and um you you actually there've been some very public things like the defeat of AlphaGo or defeat of Go by AlphaGo of the world's best Go champion.\n\nPeople thought defeating Go was either never or 20 years away. That was world's best Go player was defeated. Um and now that same AlphaGo system can defeat the top 50 players simultaneously with 0% of chance of them winning. Yeah. And that's 1 year later. Um so the degrees of freedom to which artificial intelligence is able to apply itself are in really increasing I think by 10 orders of magnitude a year. It's that's really crazy.\n\nUm So, I think and and we're starting and this is on hardware that is really not well suited for neural nets. Um you know, uh like a GPU is maybe an order of magnitude better than a CPU, but something but a um a chip that is designed optimally for neural nets is an order of magnitude better than a GPU. Um and that is there are a whole bunch of neural net optimized chips coming out um either late this year or next year.\n\nUm so, I think we should I think you know, the part of the role of government is to make sure the public is uh safe, like to take care of public safety issues. And I think so, I think the right move is to establish some government regulatory agency, which at first is just there to gain insight. So, um it's not about like shooting from the hip and just putting in rules before anyone knows anything, but you got to set up agency.\n\nIt's got to gain insight. Once that insight is gained, then start applying rules and regulations. Um we have that for the you know, for aircraft, the FAA, we've got that for cars, we've got that for uh, you know, drugs, for food. Um, and I don't think anyone wants the FAA to go away or the FDA to go away or, you know, um, any of those regulatory agencies. Um, I think we would just need to make sure people do not cut corners on AI safety.\n\nIt's going to be a big deal. It's going to be a real big deal. Um, and it's going to come on like a like a tidal wave. All right, thanks. Let's see you. Over here, question. Good afternoon. Um, my name is Anna and I'm a film director and VR producer.\n\nAnd I'm currently working on a on a film, on a documentary film about future scenarios for humanity, which actually brought me to this amazing conference where I can learn and complete my research on the space exploration area.\n\nAnd in the previous few days, there was a lot of talks, uh, which is, I think, an extremely beautiful phenomenon, about this kind of dual philosophy behind space exploration and space solutions, about solutions that are coming back to Earth that can benefit humankind in very, very wide area.\n\nAnd today we've been talking about the commercialization of the of the space area, and it brings a lot of questions to me about social responsibility behind uh, gigantic companies that would actually probably take over how the space industry would develop in the nearest future.\n\nSo, I'm very curious how you see in long term, uh, these kind of benefits for people or social goals for for SpaceX, and especially in the context that uh, you are an entrepreneur that invests in infrastructure and transport, hard solution that would probably change the way most of us live, and the way we communicate with each other.\n\nSo, I'm very, very curious how you see that in terms of long-term mission, long-term philosophy, and what would be your advice or maybe it's kind of security signal for other of your colleagues and for all of us. Phew. I I I'm you know, I'm not sure I I fully understood uh, the question. Um, the uh, yeah, or the answer.\n\nUm, Um, but Yes, I I I think mainly about uh, long-term benefits from the R&D endeavors that your companies would conduct that could actually be also not only serving building a service that can be useful for business or for people, but also benefit the societies in a wider context. And also knowing that it would probably the interest the commercial industry in space would probably develop very quickly and it it will grow.\n\nHow do you see the social responsibility of the companies who actually do that and where are the limits of what can be done, what should be done? The same way as you think about, for example, open AI mission in the area of of of AI development. So, can you try could be translated into space industry endeavors? Well, I think there's a a pretty big social benefit or um, civilizational benefit to being a multi-planet civilization.\n\nUm, you know, that dramatically increases the probable lifespan of human civilization if we are a multi-planet species versus a single-planet species. Um, but sometimes that is misinterpreted as, well, shouldn't we just focus everything on Earth?\n\nIt's like, well, you know, but we should focus almost everything on Earth, but I think that should be maybe 1% or 2% of our resources that um, are applied to making life multi-planetary because there are certain irreducible irreducible risks uh, for you know, for on Earth.\n\nUm, it's it's you know, it's possible in the future that there there's some global war that knocks us back many levels of technology, you know, certainly if it was a major nuclear war it would.\n\nUm, and uh, the there's just so the general decay of societies over time, um, we see this uh, through history, you know, if you look at ancient Egypt or ancient Rome, um, you know, they had reached peak peak technology levels and then for reasons that aren't obvious, just declined.\n\nUm, and uh, you know, so so I think just having being a multi-planet civilization, um, you you know, having human bases throughout the solar system, I think First of all, I think it's very exciting and inspiring and there needs to be things that are exciting and inspiring and and uh, make you look forward to waking up in the morning. Like, it's like, hey, future's exciting. This is underappreciated. You know, like tunnels. Sorry.\n\nI was just saying. All right. Um, and um, you know, but there's got to be things that make you excited about life. Um, like, you know, it can't just be problem solving, you know, one one sort of miserable problem after another. It's got to be like, I'm fired up about the future because and here's why, you know? And and space is one of those things that that does that for people all around the world.\n\nUm, you know, when um, when Apollo 11, you know, when when they landed on the moon, I mean, it was that was something for all of humanity. It really was, you know? And people would you know, if there's like one TV for 50 miles around, people would walk you know, they'd walk 50 miles just to go find that one TV to to watch it happen. Um, so it you know, sometimes people think, what about what about poor nations of the world? Like, you know what?\n\nIt inspires them, too. Um, and um, you know, we need things like that. We don't have we don't have enough of them. All right, thank you. Over here? Hi Elon, quick question. I heard that Dragon is no longer planned to land propulsively. Is that true? Yeah, that was a tough decision. It Dragon is capable of landing propulsively Dragon 2 is capable of landing propulsively. Um, and it technically it still it still is.\n\nUh, although you'd have to land it on some pretty soft landing pad because we we've deleted the little legs that pop out of the heat shield. Um, but it's technically still capable of doing it.\n\nUh, the the reason we decided not to pursue that heavily is it would have taken a a tremendous amount of effort to qualify that um, for for safety, uh, particularly for crew transport, and then um, uh, there was a time when I thought that the Dragon approach to landing on Mars, um, with a base heat shield and side-mounted thrusters would be the right way to land on Mars, but um, now I've I'm pretty confident that is not the right way.\n\nUm, and that there's a there's a there's a far better approach. Um, and um, and that that's what the next generation of uh, SpaceX um, rockets and spacecraft uh, is just going to do. Um, so yeah, so just the difficulty of of of safely qualifying Dragon for propulsive landing and the fact that um, from a technology evolution standpoint, it it was no longer in line with what we were confident was the the optimal way to land on Mars.\n\nUh, that's why we are not pursuing it. It could be something that we bring back later, um, but it's it it doesn't seem like the right way to apply resources right now. Over here. Hi Elon. Um, my name is Elia Overby. I'm a PhD student studying genomics. We've all made we've all together made a lot of technological progress um, on space systems. My question isn't about the technology, it's about the biology.\n\nUm, what are the principal biological concerns you have about human health on long duration missions, such as a mission to Mars? And um, have you identified any solutions to these problems? Um, well, I'd say uh, going to Mars is not for the faint of heart. Um, and it's it's risky, uh, dangerous, uh, uncomfortable, and you might die. Now, do you want to go? Yeah.\n\nUm, you know, and for a lot of people the answer's going to be hell no, and for some it's going to be hell yes. Um, so um, there will you know, there will be issues. Um, I don't think it's like it's it's going to be a case of like you get irradiated to death along the way. I don't think that's the case at all.\n\nUm, you you know, the the radiation levels sort of roughly you you know, in worst case scenario really kind of about equivalent to smoking on the way there. Uh, now smoking's pretty bad. Uh, but um, but I think with um, with some moderate shielding, we we can cut down on um, a large percentage of the incoming radiation.\n\nUm, and that should be enough that um, that the the sort of marginal risk of cancer is not something that is going to be a showstopper. Uh that's that's my best assessment to date. Um something learning a lot about solar winds and um you know, fast particles and what not.\n\nUm And uh you know, one of the things that I learned recently that I wasn't didn't didn't quite understand is that the I I always thought of the particles from the sun the sort of solar wind is going kind of straight up from the sun, but they they follow the magnetic field lines. Um so, you you actually can get the particles coming at you from the side even though you know, it's kind of at a direction orthogonal to the sun.\n\nUm So, you do need some some amount of uh protection um at least on uh yeah, on on on kind of four four or five sides. Um Anyway, but I don't think it's it's it's not a showstopper, but it's um it's it's definitely, you know, if if safety is your top goal, I wouldn't go to Mars. Yeah. You know, there's a there's a bunch of work going on ISS right now to understand the risk to the humans for long duration.\n\nCertainly we're in we're in the Van Allen belts, so the radiation environment's different. But uh and all part of it is understanding what happens to the humans the longer you stay. So, so far we've had humans stay a little bit longer than a year, and that's it. So, in the history of the species they've we've had someone off the planet for a little more than a year, and we're talking 3 years to go to Mars.\n\nWell, you know, I think you can get the Perhaps perhaps shorter, but it's in the years. Uh it's uh you know, it's so there there potential for for things out there that we haven't found yet. Yeah. And uh so, we'll we'll learn more as we go along. Hopefully learn more before ISS is done.\n\nYeah, it's interesting that actually the you know, you know, Mars is only in the same um sort of rough quadrant of the of of Earth six roughly 6 months every 2 years. Um By same, I mean it's sort of trans slightly offset cuz it's like a transfer quadrant, but um but if you can get the ship to and from Mars in inside that 6-month window, then you get to reuse it twice as often.\n\nSo, there's actually a lot of merit to being able to get to Mars uh in under 3 months. If you can get there quick and back, of course it means a bigger bigger vehicle and and resupply. So, anyway, we'll interesting problem that will I'm sure we'll work on here as we go forward. Lot lot lot of lot of Earth orbit refueling or it's not really mostly oxygen, but it's um propellant reload. There's no good word for for propellant for fuel plus oxygen.\n\nUh prop, I guess. Prop prop load. We'll have to We'll have to invent a new word, right? So, that's I guess that's it. Okay, question over here? Demetrios Tseriotis from Los Angeles. First, thank you very much for digging those tunnels. They will be really handy during Olympics. Um my question is uh like with Tesla cars, will we see you riding the crew module to ISS and back? Thank you. Um I would like to at some point. I would like to.\n\nUm Yeah, I would I think um assuming things work out, you know, I I you know, I'd like to yeah, maybe three three or four years, something. Um yeah, be great. All right, we'll put you on the manifest. Okay. Next question over here? Hello, I'm Anna Sophia Bagirayev, and I have kind of a follow-up on the biology question from before.\n\nIt is one thing to say obviously it's not going to be a safe experience to go to Mars, but there are some technologies essential especially if we're looking to putting humans there permanently um that are going to be have that are going to have to be developed with biological capabilities. Speaking of like flight suits, habitats, um eventual artificial biospheres for people to live in.\n\nDo you see your company playing a part in the development of those technologies? Do you see biology having a place in SpaceX's work, or will that be outsourced to other unrelated companies? Hey, and before you answer, you should know that Anna Sophia over here won a Genes in Space competition and flew on a SpaceX Dragon. Anna Sophia was at uh was at SpaceX uh 10? When was that? Eight. SpaceX eight.\n\nSo, um as a yeah, and uh a very smart uh young lady. I think in fact, I think she's smarter than me in high school than uh than than I am now. So, anyway, so good luck with your answer. Sure. Um Uh biology absolutely has a significant role to play in any kind of uh permanent Mars base or city. Um I mean, if if for SpaceX, you know, we're we're we're trying to make sure we can get people there reliably at a at a cost they can afford.\n\nUm and get cargo there at at a at a at the right cost number. You know, cuz there's there's there's kind of a threshold cost per ticket or cost per ton to the surface of Mars um below which uh a self-sustaining city can develop and above which it cannot. Um that that sort of critical um sort of economic and tech technical threshold is um is is what we're is what we're focused on at SpaceX.\n\nUm And then we'll we'll probably also have to do a fair bit of work on propellant depot, uh basically propellant plant on Mars. Um but then our our intent is to uh you know, we we we don't want to get in the way of of what others are doing.\n\nLike we want to make sure that uh let's say if somebody makes an investment or wants to do something on Mars, create a you know, a business or do some scientific endeavor, that SpaceX does not compete with them, you know, cuz they need to feel like okay, they're we're not going to just go in and compete with them arbitrarily.\n\nUm We we we want to make sure that they they they they feel it's going to be a fruitful environment uh to be that you know, to go there and and and um and do something special.\n\nUm So, our focus is going to be on transport, kind of fundamental utilities, survivability, um and you know, we'll we'll and we'll do more if we need to do more, uh but um we want to make sure that that lots of people can go and do all sorts of things on Mars or the moon, um and not feel like SpaceX is going to do anything but try to help them. We don't want We don't want to interfere or compete.\n\nUm you know, they got to feel like the opportunity is there. Next question over here? Hi Elon. Um my name is Tracy, and I'm not here for any reason related to my career or to my area of study. I'm actually here as a very cool and only slightly overbearing mother Okay.\n\nto my 10-year-old daughter Harper and a sister to my 14-year-old brother Ben, who are both in the audience today, and who think of you the way that I guess I thought of Madonna at the same age. Um Wow. Yeah. That's that's that's some That's some high praise there. Thank you. In this spirit of that, I wanted to get um your advice for two kids who are All right. very interested in space and engineering and entrepreneurism. Thank you. I'm sorry.\n\nSpace, engineering, and entrepreneurialism. What's your advice? What's your advice? Yeah, well, you know, there's a lot of uh technical problems to solve. Um so, I guess it would be sort of, you know, start studying kind of engineering and physics and biosciences and that kind of thing would be the um way to go. Um yeah. Um lot of going to be a lot of problems to solve to to make a city work on Mars.\n\nUm You know, we're we're thinking of just as a well, sort of a semi-joke putting a uh job description on our website for urban planner in brackets Mars. Uh Um but um you know, there's there's there's going to be a tremendous amount of problems to solve. There will be There's a lot of building, building and problem solving.\n\nSo, those are like the right you know, skills to work on if if if someone's interested in going beyond Earth or, you know, space in general. Thank you. We're glad you're We're glad you're here. Glad your kids are here, too. They're uh they're the future for all of us. So, thanks for coming. See you over here? Hi.\n\nMy name is Gerard Valle, NASA Johnson Space Center, and my question is uh in your quest to um colonize Mars, do you foresee utilizing expandable spacecraft modules um as a stepping stone or or even a final final utilization? Well, I think there's definitely going to be inflatable things on on Mars itself. Um you know, in the journey there, there might be some amount of inflatable, but um we're not currently baselining that.\n\nOtherwise itself I think there'd be quite a lot. Yeah. Okay, thank you. Inflatable and and perhaps just building it with the materials that's already present that exactly. Local materials are key. You don't have to carry it with you. Yeah, tunnels. Tunnels. You got to get that tunnel that boring machine there though. That's going to be a It's Well, right now the earth ones are really heavy. Like really heavy. Right.\n\nWell, they're not built by aerospace engineers there. You're not worried about weight for earth tunneling machine. You like actually want one that's nice and heavy. Um but for a Mars one you'd have to redesign it to be super light. That's a tricky one. And then just taking into account the different conditions on Mars and everything. So Um yeah.\n\nIt's interesting the um you know, the Curiosity rover and the tires being chewed up by the the sharpness of the of just of the dirt of the gravel there. It's a you know, a very foreign environment to us and even in very subtle ways. So Let's see. A next question over here? Hi Alan. My name is Praful Chandra. I'm a regenerate medicine scientist from Wake Forest University.\n\nMy question is regarding your company Neuralink that makes a brain machine interfaces. So what do you think this technology, how is it useful for humans when they you know, go into low earth orbits or even deep space exploration? And do you have any plans in that direction? Well, the the reason for the reason I wanted to create Neuralink was primarily as an offset to the existential risk associated with artificial intelligence.\n\nUm I think we will human intelligence will be not I mean we will not be able to beat AI. So then if you know, as the saying goes if you can't beat them, join them kind of thing. Um So I think having some some basically way to to link um you know, human will on mass to the outcome of of AI. Having AI be an extension of individual human will. That's really the point of Neuralink.\n\nNow along the way I think there'll be some a lot of good that's achieved in uh addressing uh any any brain damage that's you know, as a result of a stroke or lesion or something congenital. Um or just you know, loss of memory when you get old that kind of thing. Um and you know, that will that will happen well before it it becomes a sort of um you know, brain AI symbiote situation. So if we plan it you'll see it coming.\n\nIt'll be it won't it won't happen all of a sudden. Um Very I I I do think it it it increases the long-term relevance of human exploration. Um and um yeah and I don't think I think it's for for me it increased my motivation long-term that that it doesn't just need to be done by robots. You know, um yeah. I don't know if that answers your question but Does that answer your question? Oh, yes. Okay, okay. All right, let's see.\n\nMaybe we're one more question here and we'll we'll wrap it up on the left here. Okay. Hi. Call it from Space Nation. As we are building the first global astronaut training program for everyone. My question relates what you earlier said to the about International Space Station and how it's a shame that it's not better known around the world as probably compared for example the shuttle program.\n\nSo and thinking that in the future we need thousands and more space pioneers. So how do you see the significance of this public engagement and especially in the time where we have more and more tools to do that and and do you have specific plans on that and how you see that affecting accelerating or does it have in that kind of effect for the whole humanity's transition to space and and the new space era? Sure.\n\nWell, I think just getting more more human space flight is going to automatically engage the public. I just pointed out that space shuttle there was a lot more engagement when the space shuttle was launching.\n\nUm I think um if if the public public sees some some path even if it's long-term where they themselves may be able to go to orbit or beyond or to to the moon or Mars, I think their interest level increases dramatically and it may not be even that that they want to go but they have a son or a daughter brother or a friend that really wants to do it and and and so they want to support this their you know, friends and family uh in in that in that ambition.\n\nUm but it really needs to be something ultimately that looks like it's going to be accessible to uh a large number of people. Um and then I think we'll get a large number of people engaged. Yeah, one of the things about engagement too I think for the for the US anyway will be we have had people launch from the United States. So I can't tell you how many people around the world have said you know, oh you guys are still flying?\n\nWell, absolutely we never stopped flying. We've had people living on board ISS uh you know, for almost 17 years. And but they don't see the smoke and the fire, right? They see that they see they knew they turn on the TV and there's a shuttle going and it's got seven people on board and they see it and nowadays at least in the US it's half a world away. So here in in a week a week from Friday we'll be launching three people. Yeah.\n\nBut it doesn't feel the same as if it was happening in in our backyard in in Florida. Absolutely. So so we're looking forward to to that happening very soon here in in the US and we wish you the best of luck. Thanks very much for being here today. Thanks for for joining the conference. You're a big part of ISS and a big part of of the research and development that goes on on ISS. So so thanks very much.\n\nI'm glad we've been able to help be helpful and thanks for having me. I'd like to to extend my thanks also for a incredibly insightful and frank discussion that you guys have had with the group. So we really truly appreciate it. And tunnels are cool, too."},"languages":["en"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jv5LjA62Uw8"},{"id":"national-governors-association-2017-07-15","type":"interview","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PeKqlDURpf8","title":"National Governors Association","titles":{"en":"National Governors Association","de":"National Governors Association","fr":"National Governors Association"},"date":"2017-07-15","summary":"Musk tells U.S. governors that AI is a fundamental existential risk needing proactive regulation, while discussing Tesla, SpaceX and energy.","text":"I know each Governor has a vision for his or her own States and we have a responsibility to enact policies to help our citizens and our states Thrive so I've asked Elon to join us today to share his thoughts on how Governors can not only stay ahead of the curve but become Innovation Governors so with that please join me in welcoming Elon Musk hey good see well good afternoon and welcome Elon oh I was going to take off my tie is that all right if I do that I I came in with a tie but then I was like told there bit a tie so then we'll both be more comfortable sounds good um well thanks thanks having me appreciate your you're being here today I you know it's when I'm with you it's difficult to know where to start um let's start just what drives you what what\n\nis it that when you wake up in the morning do you see a problem and you want to solve it uh I I think the the thing that drives me is that uh I want to be able to think about the future and uh you feel good about that um so uh that uh you know we're doing what we can to uh have the future be be as good as possible um to be inspired by what is likely to happen um and to look forward to the next day um so that's that's what really really drives me is is is trying to figure out uh how do we how do we make sure that things are great and um and going to be so and um that's the underlying principle behind Tesla and SpaceX um is that um I think it's it's it's pretty important that we accelerate the transition to uh sustainable generation and consumption of energy\n\num it's it's inevitable but it's it matters if we have if it happens sooner or later um and then SpaceX is about um helping make life multiplanetary um and doing what we can to continue the the dream of Apollo um and um ultimately make a contribution to life becoming multiplanetary well let's talk a little more about that I think uh everyone very interested that when you say making life multiplanetary that's exciting it is exciting so what's your vision there you know um I think you know particularly for uh Americans you know like think about America is a nation of explorers uh people came here from other parts of the world that you know uh chose to give up the known in favor of the unknown um so I think uh exploration like I think United States is a\n\nis a distillation of the human Spirit of exploration um and uh so that's why it it appeals to Americans so much you know um you can see this when say there was a shuttle tragedy um and seven people died and that's that's terrible but you know a lot of people die all the time um but but why do we care so much because it was the dream of exploration that was dying along with those people that's why no and I'm one of those and probably like many of you remember exactly where you were um when that that tragedy happened so you have 30 plus Governors here today and we're very excited about uh your willingness uh to be with us and you hopefully heard me talk a little bit about U my initiative which is being ahead of the curve what do you tell us as Governors\n\nwhat we what should we be thinking about in terms of of innovation and and developing public policy for the future well um it it sure is important to get the the rules right um and um you know it's sort of uh in in terms of legislative and executive actions um you know it's sort of like um you you think of say like professional sports or something if you if you don't have the rules right if there isn't uh uh you know um if if if if the game isn't set up properly it's not going to be a good game um so it's really important to get the ru the rules right um now I think it's it's worth noting that I think still um in the United States the rules are still better than anywhere else um um but um the you know it's it's very easy to put something in place which\n\nis an inhibitor to to innovation without realizing it um so in terms of um the regulatory environment uh uh it's It's always important to bear in mind that that uh regulations uh are Immortal um and they they they never die unless somebody act actually goes and kills them and then they they get a lot of momentum so a lot of times regulations can be put in place for all the right reasons um but then nobody goes back and gets rid of them afterwards when they no longer make sense um you know that uh and there used to be a rule in the early days when people were concerned about automobiles cuz that was a pretty scary thing see a just going wrong by itself you know you never know what those things might do um so there were like rules where you had to in a\n\nlot of States we had to carry a lantern in front of the automobile um and had to be like 100 Paces ahead of the automobile there had to be someone with a lantern on a pole like okay but you should really get rid of that regulation and they did you know um really be awkward um so um so just regulations is even if done correctly and for and being right at the time it's always important to go back and and scrub those you know periodically to make sure they're still sensible and they're still serving the greater good um I think uh in terms of tax structure what what is what is economically incented and what is what is not economically incented just make sure that the incentive structure is is correct I I think I'm saying just totally Common Sense things here\n\num but um it's economics 101 whatever you whatever you incent will happen um so the if you incent one thing that thing will tend to happen more than the other thing if you send another thing that that thing will happen um and so the the economics should favor Innovation um and um and this is particularly important to uh protect uh small to mediumsized companies um because because it's sort of like trying to grow a tree in a forest like it's real hard for a new company to to grow um when it's just a Seedling or a sapling uh it needs a lot more protection um than if it's a giant Redwood or something like that so uh very important to uh give support to small and and small to mediumsized companies on the Innovation front um and um they're the ones that that\n\nneeded more than the big companies and I I think this point Tesla is almost big company biggish company anyway um so I'd favor you know supporting uh smaller companies in Tesla relatively speaking what would your response be because there are critics out there with regard to incentives and that and you know Tesla has been and I can speak from experience uh the the beneficiary of of incentives economic incentives when with regard to the to the gigafactory sure what would you tell those those people yeah I think well first of all as you know the those incentives were um a little overstated um the um in the case of the gigafactory it's a it's A5 billion investment capital investment to get that factory going um and I I didn't actually know this by the by\n\nway I didn't I didn't know this until we did the press conference actually that that that over 20 years the V incentives added up to 1.\n\n3 billion actually didn't even know this uh but but but it's now he's telling go ahead literally I learned it at the press conference I'm like really um no but I mean it's the the thing is that they they took what added up over 20 years and made it sound like Nevada was writing us a $1.\n\n3 billion check and I'm you know I'm still waiting for that check must did it get lost in the mail I don't know um so uh but you know this is the way the press works of course um so if now if you divide 1.\n\n3 billion by 20 okay then it's it it's like okay Tesla's on average um re receives a sort of a a tax well doesn't it's it's basically sales and use tax abatement is is what it amounts to um so T gets like on the order we get on the order of 50 to 60 million of sales and use tax abatement divided over 20 years um and uh but but this is for something which has a $5 billion Capital cost uh just get going and then um would have to generate about hundred billion doll over that period of time to to achieve a $1.\n\n3 billion uh tax benefit so um so essentially it's it's a little over 1% over that period of time and that's great okay but uh it's not um you know it's not like it's it's not the way it was characterized in the Press um but if because if it's put in the proper context it sounds like okay well that's neat you know it's about five 5% helpful on setting up the factory and about 1% helpful over the next 20 years cool that actually sounds pretty reasonable yeah um and um yeah so so that that that was that was helpful but there are a lot of other factors as well um and uh we actually had slightly bigger incentive packages from from some other states that were offered uh but we factored in um how quickly could we uh uh get the gigafactory into operation um\n\nwhat were the risks associated with uh that progress um uh what would the over what would be the logistics costs over time of transferring battery packs and power trins to a a vehicle Factory in California um and uh you know and all of those factors weighed together um is what made uh is what um led us to make the decision in favor of Nevada um and and working with with with your team was great I was very forward leaning um and um and like a big part was also just like making you know sure you feel really welcome you know uh within within a state um so um that's sort of what would L us to make the decision for the gigafactory um and then um then we have another Factory in in in New York doing uh solar panels um also actually it's will be the biggest solar\n\nuh panel producer in North America when it's St um and then we expect to establish probably at least uh two or three more uh gigafactories in the US in the next several years um as well as uh what a couple overseas um but the overall objective of Tesla it's is is really what what set of actions can we take to accelerate the Advent of sustainable production and consumption of energy um and um I think the the the sort of the way the way I would assess the historic good of Tesla is in terms of of how what that how many years of acceleration was it you know and if we can accelerate sustainable energy by 10 years I would consider that to be a great success hope even if it was only 5 years that would still be pretty good um that that's the that's the that's\n\nthe overarching optimization so you you've talked about interplanetary travel and sustainable energy and the vehicles a little bit what what would you want things to look like and five to 10 years associated with with energy and with autonomous vehicles electric vehicles well I think things are going to be they're going to grow exponentially so there's a big difference between five and 10 years um you know my my guess is uh yeah probably in 10 years more than a half of uh new vehicle um production is Electric in the United States um and China's probably going to be ahead of that because China's been super pro e um I don't think a lot of people know this but like I mean China's environmental policies are way ahead of the US like their mandate for renewable\n\nenergy far exceeds the US I think this sometimes people are under the impression that China is uh either dragging their feet or or somehow behind the US in terms of um sustainable energy promotion but they're they're by far the most aggressive on Earth it's crazy I mean like in fact the a coalition of Chinese car manufacturers Just wrote the Chinese governments to beg for them to slow down the Mandate because like it's like too much they they need to make 8% electric vehicles I think like next year or in two years or something this like they can't physically do it um so China is by far the most aggressive on um electric vehicles and solar um so um but that's a common misperception that they're not um there one Google search way to figure this out by the\n\nway it's really pretty straight pretty easy so and in 10 in 10 yeah 10 years man I think yeah yeah so H half of all production I think will be be EV I think almost all cars produced will be autonomous in years almost all it will be rare to find one that is not in 10 years um that's going to be a huge transformation um now the thing to bear in mind though is that new vehicle production is only about 5% the size of the vehicle Fleet so you think about how long does a car or truck last and they last 15 to 20 years so before they finally scrap so new vehicle production is only roughly one at most 115th of the the fleet size so even when new vehicle production say switches switches over to electric or to autonomous that still means the vast majority of the\n\nfleet on the roads is not it'll take another you know 5 to 10 years before that becomes majority the majority of the fleet becomes EV or uh uh autonomous um but if you were to say go out 20 years overwhelmingly things are electric autonomous overwhelmingly fully autonomous fully autonomous so no one will have to touch the steering wheel if there is one there will not be a steering wheel in 20 years um it will be like having a horse people have horses which is cool um but so so having a regular car will be like having a horse is that what you're saying yeah yeah and there will be people that have that have you know non-autonomous cars like people have horses it's just would be unusual to use that as a motor transport yes all right no let's talk about um\n\nthe energy piece and rooftop cell and storage um yeah um so the uh I mean question it's important to appreciate that the Earth is almost entirely solar powered today um in the sense that the sun is the only thing that keeps us from um being at roughly the temperature of cosmic background radiation which is 3° above absolute zero if it wasn't for a sun we would be a frozen dark uh Ice Bowl um and the uh the amount of so the amount of energy that hits the Sun that reaches us from the Sun is tremendous it's it's over it's the it's 99 % plus of all energy that that Earth has um then there's there's there's this energy we need to use to run civilization which to us is big but compared to the amount of energy that reaches us from the Sun is Tiny um so it it's\n\nvery easy like it actually doesn't take much if if you wanted to power the entire United States with solar panels um it would take um a a fairly small corner of Nevada Texas Utah anywhere uh look you it's you only need about 100 miles by 100 miles of solar panels it's part of the entire United States um and then the the batteries you need to store that energy to make sure you have 24/7 um uh Power is one mile by one mile one one square mile that's that's it um I I I showed the graph the image of this where uh this is what 100 miles by 100 miles looks like it was like you a little square on the US map um and then one there's a little pixel inside there and that's the size of the battery pack that you need to support that real tiny so well you you talked\n\nabout 20 years from now none of us well some people will still be using horses or or be zero yeah but rare so what will the the energy piece look like I mean what will there be transmission lines will there be a need yeah I think the so there use of energy can is roughly divided into three areas um and they're more or less equal um at at a high level um there's about a third of energy is used for transportation of various kinds about a third is used uh for electricity about a third is used for heating so if you want to have uh and of the electricity production call it you know something on the order of 10% depending upon how you count it is renewable maybe 15% um uh today so that means that there's a massive amount of solar that would need be need to\n\nbe produced um and connected in order to to be fully sustainable because fully sustainable means you're tackling transport um non-renewable electricity generation and heating um so that that means that will need to be a combination of utility scale solar and rooftop SC solar combined with uh wind geothermal uh Hydro probably some some nuclear for a while um in order to transition to a sustainable uh situation um which means really for the most part massive massive growth in solar um and it's it's going to be important to have rooftop solar in uh neighborhoods um because otherwise you going there'll need to be uh massive new transmission lines built and people do not like having transmission lines go through the neighborhood I really don't like that I\n\nagree um so you you want to have some localized energy uh production um combined with utility so rooftop solo utility solar um and uh that that's that's really going to be the solution from a physics standpoint that I can't see any other way to really do it um um people talk a lot about fusion and all that but the sun is a giant Fusion reactor in the sky and it's really reliable comes up every day um so if it doesn't we got bigger problems somebody asked me to ask you this we talked about Workforce today but they asked me are robots going to take our jobs everybody's jobs in the future or H how how much do you see Artificial Intelligence coming into the the workplace um well first of all I think on the artificial intelligence front um you know I I have\n\nexposure to the very very most Cutting Edge um AI um uh and I think people should be really concerned about it um I keep sounding the longell but you know until people see like robots going down the street killing people like they don't know how to react you know because it seems so ethereal um and um I think we should be really concerned about Ai and I think we should this is AI is a rare case where I think we need to be proactive in regulation instead of reactive um because I think by the time we are reactive in AI regulation it's too late um and nor normally the way regulations are set up is that a whole bunch of bad things happen there's a public outcry the the and then after many years a regulatory agency is set up to regulate that industry um and\n\nthere's a bunch of opposition from companies who don't like being told what to do by Regulators um anyway it takes forever um that that in the past has been bad but not um something which represented a uh you know a fundamental risk to the existence of civilization AI is a fundamental risk to the existence of human civilization um in a way that car accidents uh airplane crashes um faulty drugs uh or bad food were were not they were not they they were harmful to to uh a set of individuals within Society of course but they were not harmful to society as a whole um AI is a fundamental existential risk for human civilization and I don't think people fully appreciate that um you know it's not it's not fun being regulated it's not you know uh be pretty irksome\n\nbut uh you know in the car business we know we get regulated uh by Department of Transport by EPA and a bunch of others um and and there regulatory agencies in every every country you know in the in space uh we get regulated by FAA um and um but but you know if you ask the average person hey you want to do you want to get rid of the FAA um and just like take a take a chance on manufacturers not cutting corners on the aircraft because you know profits were down that quarter I was like hell no um um that sounds terrible so um you know I think even people who are pretty extremely like libertarian free market they be like yeah we should probably have somebody keeping an eye on the aircraft companies making sure they build a good aircraft um and good cars\n\nand that kind of thing so you know I think there's there's a role for Regulators um that's very important um and I'm against overregulation for sure uh but man we I think we've better get on that with AI Pronto um and uh so there'll certainly be a lot of job disruption um because what's going to happen is robots will be able to do everything better than us I'm in I'm including I mean all of us you know um yeah not sure exactly what to do about this um it's like the it's like this is really like the scariest problem to me I'll tell you um and um yeah so I really think we need government regulation here just to because this is you know ensuring the public good is served because you got companies that are racing that they kind of have to race to build AI\n\nor they're going to be uh made uncompetitive you know like essentially if your competitor is racing Dev World Ai and you don't they will crush you so then you're like ah we don't want to be crushed so uh you know I guess we need to Bull it too um that's where you need The Regulators to come in and say hey guys um you all need to really you know just pause and make sure this is safe and like when when it's cool and we're and regulator convinced that it's safe to proceeded then you can go but otherwise slow down um and but long but you kind of need The Regulators to do that for for all the teams in the game you know uh otherwise the shareholders will be saying like hey why aren't you developing AI faster um because your competitor is like okay we better\n\ndo that um anyway so it's like I mean there's like something like 12% of jobs are transport transport will be one of the first things to go fully autonomous but when I say everything like the Rob us will be able to do everything bar bar nothing let's move back to you're rolling out the model 3 this year right uh and how many orders what what is that going to look like um yeah it's going well on that front um we got uh I don't know more I think like if somebody orders a model 3 today they'd only get it probably late next year um we just actually just started production made the first production unit last week um and uh the thing that is is not well appreciated about um something about about cars and any kind of new technology is how hard it is to do the\n\nmanufacturing is vastly harder to do the manufacturing by a factor of a hundred like a hundred than to to make the to make that car to make one of something W with with maybe 50 or 60 people we could make a prototype of practically anything in 6 months um now to manufacture that thing we need 5,000 people to spend you know 3 years and that's considered really fast so uh manufacturing will does this kind of S curve where it's excruciatingly slow at first and then it it grows exponentially um and then uh but people tend to extrapolate on a straight line so if it's real slow at first they say oh this is real slow look at that they're only going to make five cars a week forever like NOP uh there'll be 10 cars a week then 20 cars a week then you know 40 cars\n\na week then 5,000 cars a week eventually um just grows Crazy Fast uh so we're hoping to get to you know something uh you know like 5,000 cars a week by the end of the year well um I want to give an opportunity for some of the governors to ask questions and perhaps some audience questions um I was told that you'd be willing to to do that great so uh Governors any questions for for Elon governor Scott well thank you very much um we and Vermont have uh partnered with Tesla in uh in terms of a power pack in in our homes and it's for $15 a day uh you can rent this for 15 years and it'll it'll carry power as a back up generation device for 12 hours and it's been really really interesting from my perspective uh but I'm curious about vehicles and and where we're\n\ngoing in the future or how far in the future do the cars themselves become uh the charging device like the the roof and deck lids and and hood or does or do the batteries get so efficient that you don't need that and then you just power up for a week or something like that where are we going in the future with battery storage yeah I think the future is it's there's just there's three legs to the stool uh there's a electric cars there's a stationary battery pack um and solar power uh with those three things you can have a completely sustainable energy future uh that's all that's all it's needed on the Sol on the solar front like I said uh it's going to be a combination of rooftop solar and utility scale solar um you'll need both because of the you know\n\nenormous demand for electricity um and then uh you know one of the things that's that's been missing I think up till now is having rooftop solar that looks good um and isn't uh you know um that's where we got this the solar glass roof that we're developing um and we're doing it in different styles so that it it you know it matches the Aesthetics of a particular house or um so Regional style um that's I think that's actually pretty important um and um the conventional flat panels solers for for flat roofs and for commercial will be uh the way the way to go um but yeah it's and and and putting solar panels on the on the car itself not that uh not that helpful Because the actual surface area of the car is not not very much and cars are very often indoors\n\num and so it's the least efficient place to put solaras on the car just wondering about maybe a wrap of some sort is that does that make any sense in the future a a wrap of solar around either a building made of a solar panel or a wrap of a of a vehicle actually being the solar panel but being the the components of the vehicle itself I I don't think so um I'll scrap that idea no it's just uh it's just way better to put her on the roof uh for sure um and I I really thought about this I mean really and I pushed my team about like isn't there some way we could do it on the car um I mean technically if you have like some sort of Transformer like thing which will pop out of the trunk like like a you know like a hard top convertible and just like like ratchet\n\nsolar panels over the whole surface area of the car extending like for the entire say uh square footage of a parking space um provided you're in the sun uh that would be enough to generate about 20 to 30 m a day of electricity but uh that is for sure the expensive difficult way to do it Governor bergo so thought about maybe we should Elon thank thanks for being here uh with your background in payment systems uh you understand uh the important role of uh security and transactions now that you've got I think security is a huge concern like cyber security yes and you're in a in in the vehicles you're building now are incredibly complex software systems I mean the car is really a rolling piece of software it's like a laptop on Wheels yes so uh share with\n\nus a little bit about uh your thoughts on cyber security and how you how how how we protect uh you talk about protecting society when uh you got a rolling Fleet of um I I think one of the biggest uh risks for autonomous vehicles is somebody achieving um a fleetwide hack um you know in principle if if somebody was able to hack say all of the autonomous Teslas they could say I mean just as a prank they could say like santal to Rhode Island from across the United States and I'll be like well okay that would be the end of Tesla um and there be a lot of angry people in Rhode Island that's for sure um so uh we got to make super sure that uh that a fleet white hack is basically impossible and that if people are in the car that they have uh override Authority\n\non whatever the car is doing so if the car is doing doing something wacky uh you can press a button that no amount of software can override that will ensure that the uh you you you gain control of the vehicle um and kind of cut cut the link to the servers um so that's uh that's pretty fundamental um within the car we actually have even if somebody gains access to the car there are multiple subsystems within the car that that that also have uh specialized encryption so the power Trin for example has specialized encryption so even if some of you were gain access to the car they could gain access to the power train or to the braking system um and um but it is my top TP concern from a security standpoint at Tesla is making sure that fleetwide hack or any\n\nvehicle specific hack can occur the the same the they have the same problem with cell phones um you know we it's kind of crazy today that we live quite uh comfortably in in a in a world that George Orwell would have thought is super crazy um like we all carry um a phone with a with with a microphone that could be turned on really at any time without our knowledge with a GPS that knows our position um and a camera um and uh well kind of all of our personal information um we do this um willingly um and uh it's kind of wild to think that that's the case um so so pH the the phone like apple and and uh Google kind of have the same challenge of making sure that cannot be a fleetwide hack or a systemwide hack of phones um or or a specific hack so that that's\n\nour top our top concern um yeah become it's going to become a bigger and bigger concern like Tesla's um I don't want to Temp fate here but Tesla's Tesla is pretty good at software compared to the other car companies um and um so I do think it's going to be a bit like an even bigger challenge for for the other car companies to ensure security yeah thank you Governor Dugard thank you Governor Mr musk thank you for speaking to all the governors today it's it's an honor to have you here uh one question I had uh we saw when gasoline prices went to $35 a gallon there was a big jump in interest in hybrid vehicles and uh you saw those Vehicles become very much in demand and then as gasoline prices have fallen you've seen a reversal of that and I'm wondering to\n\nwhat extent uh you have a concern about the future of electric vehicles in the face of those very low prices can you speak to that well the economics um uh they they they kind of set set the slope of the the the curve um so there's no question in my mind whatsoever that all transport with the ironic exception of rockets will go fully electric um everything um Planes Trains automobiles well a lot of trains are already electric um all shifts um and um but it's question of what that time frame is and the economic uh incent structure drives that time frame um that's really what it amounts to um you know this there the and the Big Challenge is that there's an unpriced externality in the cost of fossil fuels uh so the unpriced externality is the uh the the\n\nprobability weighted uh harm of changing the chemical constituency of the uh atmosphere and oceans um it's it's since it is not captured in the price of gasoline um it does not uh Drive the right behavior um you know it would be like uh if tossing out garbage was just free and you know there was no penal you just do as much as you want then like trees be full of garbage um so um and we regulated a lot of other things like sulfur emissions and nitrous oxide emissions and that kind of thing it's done done a lot of good on that front um with CO2 it's tough because there's so many vested interest on the sort of fossil fuel side um and sometimes I think I feel like those guys feel like kind of hard done by uh cuz um you know it wasn't obvious like when they\n\nwere creating their oil and gas companies that it would be bad for the environment um and they worked really hard to create those companies and then they feel like well now they're being kind of attacked on moral grounds um when they didn't originally start those oil companies or or build them up on on bad moral grounds um and and and it is true that we cannot instantaneously change to a sustainable situation um but then those guys will also fight pretty hard to slow down the change and that's really where I think is morally wrong go to Governor Bavon and then Governor Hutchinson then we'll take a couple then Governor hickin Looper and then we'll take some audience questions Governor bevon El Elon thank you for being here uh short version of the question\n\nthen slightly longer the short version is do you ever feel pressure by others expectations of you and your endeavors in light of the progress you've made thus far is the short version and and and more specifically when you look just at Tesla alone and you look at a company with a54 billion valuation uh and seemingly by typical Mar Market metrics no justifiable reason for that what are you saying does I'm just saying I'm curious sir I'm just in all seriousness do you feel a a concern ever that your intellect in your intellectual curiosity and your Ingenuity cannot be matched by those that are trying to commercialize it does that ever affect how you think or decisions that you make uh well it it is actually I find it quite uh tough um when there are very\n\nhigh expectations um I try to actually Tamp down those expectations as you know to be possible in fact I've gone a record several times as saying that the stock price is higher than we have any right to deserve um uh and that's for sure true based on you know where we are today and have been in the past so the stock price obviously reflects a lot of optimism about where Tesla will be in the future um and now the the thing that makes that um you know quite a difficult emotional hardship for me uh is is that you know those expectations sometimes get out of out of control and like I hate disappointing people um and so I'm like trying real hard to meet those expectations but that pretty tall order um and uh a lot of times it's really not really not fun I\n\nhave to say a whole lot less fun than it may seem um uh so yeah um I mean I don't ever sell any stock unless I have to for for taxes um so you know I said publicly I'm not going to like take money off the table you know I'll be last I'm going down I'm going down with the ship so uh I'll be the last to do it but um yeah I mean it's I really wouldn't recommend anyone start a card company I really wouldn't recommend it it's not a recipe for happiness and freedom thanks Governor Bon Governor Hutchinson Mr musk ASA Hutchinson from Arkansas thank you for your Frank observations about uh exploration uh you know I look at uh the spirit of in uh invention and the spirit of exploration which is really the Hallmark of America what is your comment on NASA its Mission\n\nI was in Congress I supported NASA but I always feel like it's floundering does not have the support of the American people that's needed uh What uh what's your comment on NASA its Mission and what advice would you give us sure um well first of all I should say I'm a big fan of NASA um in fact at one point my password was I love NASA um literally that was my password um um and um you know I think the um n NASA does a lot of good things for which PE for which it doesn't get enough credit um and that the public I guess doesn't know that much about um like a lot you most members of the public they're not really into hard science you know it's like not it's not the the thing they're tuning in for most of the time um I love hard science you know uh but uh\n\num it's not that popular so uh but there's great things in terms of the the telescopes like the Hubble and the James web and the you know the robers on Mars um and the the pro you prob outer solar system um those are like really great things um but to get the public excited you got to get people in the picture um it just it's just a hundred times different if there are people in the picture um and uh you know if there's some criticism of NASA it's like I it's like important to remember people in the picture you know if you want to get the public support um and um but like if you talk to a scientist about that said like where's the science in that like you're not getting it it's like that's not why people giving you money it's not that's I mean it's a\n\nlittle bit of the reason but uh the like the the the serious scientists or like people just make things more expensive uh like why do we have people like okay well why do we have people at all anywhere um sometimes the scientists are the ones who just don't don't understand um even they're like smart people but like you know um so you got to have something that's going to fire up the you know fire fire people up and get them really excited and like I think if we had a serious goal of having a base on the moon and sending people to Mars um and said okay this is we're going to be outcome oriented how are we going to do this okay we got to changed the way Contracting is done uh you can't do these like Cost Plus contract Cost Plus Soul Source contracts because\n\nthen the incentive structure is all messed up so uh as soon as you don't have any competition well okay there's no the St of urgency goes away and as soon as you make something a Cost Plus contract you're incanting the contractor to maximize the costs of the program because they get a percentage so they never want that gravy train to end and they want to make it and a they become cost maximizers um and then you have good people engaged in cost maximization because you just gave them incentive to do that and told them they'll get punished if they don't essentially that's what happens so it's critically important that we change the Contracting structure to be a um competitive commercial bid make sure there there are always two at least two entities um that\n\nthat are competing to serve NASA um and that the contracts are mil Stone based with with uh concrete Milestones PowerPoint presentations do not count um like everything works on PowerPoint okay you say I have a teleportation device look here's my PowerPoint presentation um so uh Milestone based competitive uh commercial contracts with with competitors and then and then you got to be prepared to fire one of those competitors if they're not if they're not cutting it and and recompete the rest the remainder of that contract and by the way NASA's actually already done this and they did it with the Comm with the uh commercial cargo uh transportation to the space station um and that was a case where NASA you know that NASA actually I'm not if they thought it\n\nwould work or not work but they didn't have the budget to do anything else so they're like okay we're going to try this competitive commercial Milestone based Contracting and it worked great um and they Ed it uh to two companies to to SpaceX and a company called kler and SpaceX managed to meet meet the Milestones kler did not so then they NASA recomed the remainder of the contract to uh orbital Sciences but then obal Sciences got across the finish line so now NASA's got two suppliers for uh taking cargo to the space station um and it's a great situation same thing for commercial crew of the space station now as to competed that um uh in in in the commercial crew case it's space SpaceX and Boeing um and I think that's also a good situation so now um like\n\nI can tell you like the SpaceX team is like we're going to do this before Boeing that's for sure and then like I bet at the Boeing team they're like we're going to do this before SpaceX um that's good it's it's a good forcing function to get things done that that I can't tell you how important that Contracting structure is that is night and day um there's way too much uh in in government which is uh where it's a sou Source uh Cost Plus contract um that that just again economics 101 whatever you incent that will happen and people shouldn't be surprised it's like oh you just you know said Okay if that company manages to find some excuse to double the cost of the contract they're going to get double the profit because they're getting a percentage so they're\n\ngoing to do they're can do exactly that um and and also they're not going to say no to requirements so the government will come up with some set of requirements 90 90% of them could make a lot of sense and 10% of them I'll coam that double the price of the of of the the project but those 10% of cocki requirements in a Cost Plus contract the contractor will always say yes there could be a future for you in in Government Contracting at the state level yeah let's go to Governor hicken Looper and then Governor Ducey so uh I think like most governors find so refreshing to have the unbridled truth but I do suspect every time you say publicly that the stock price is higher than we have any right to believe I I going to guess you probably get some calls from\n\ninvestors suggesting that maybe you don't say that so frequently yeah that's true um I wanted to go back and just just briefly because I think I I wrote this down that you said that uh artificial intelligence is the the fundamental existential risk facing civilization do I get that close enough enough in my opin it is it is the biggest risk that we face as a civilization is artificial intelligence and so to a group of leaders what would you advise that we should how should we be addressing something that's that's such a large landscape and yet obviously so important um I think that the you know one of the roles of government is to ensure the public good um and and to uh that dangers to the public are addressed um so that hence the regulatory thing I think\n\nthe first order of business would be to try to learn as much as possible you know to understand the nature of the issues to um look closely at the progress that is being made um and the remarkable um achievements of artificial intelligence um I mean last year uh uh go which is a quite a difficult game to beat um that people thought would never be beaten with uh um by by a computer that that that computer would either never beat the best human player or that it was 20 years away um and last year um uh alphao which was done by Deep Mind which is a kind of a Google subsidiary um absolutely crushed the world's best player um and now now that now it can crush it can play the top 50 simultaneously in questionable so just like that pace of progress is remarkable\n\num and um and there's you can see more and more coming out like the robotics uh you can see robots that can learn to walk from from nothing um you know within hours like way faster than any biological being um um but the the thing that's uh most dangerous is uh and it's the hottest to kind of wrap um kind of get your arms around because it's not a physical thing is kind of a deep intelligence in the network um he said well what home could a deep intelligence in the network do so well I could start a war um by create by doing fake news and spoofing email accounts and fake press releases and just by you know manipulating information the pen is mighter than the sword um so uh I mean as an example I want to be I want to emphasize I do not think this actually\n\noccurred this is purely a hypothetical that I I'm digging my grave here um um but you know that like that there was that second Malaysian airliner that was shot down uh on the uh Ukrainian Russian border um and that that really Amplified tensions between Russia and the EU um in a massive way well like let's say if you had an AI that was uh where the ai's goal was to maximize the value of a portfolio of stocks um one of the ways to maximize value would be to uh go uh long on defense short on consumer start a war um and then uh how could it do that well you know ha can the Malaysian Airlines uh uh uh R aircraft routing server a route it over a war zone um then send an anonymous tip that an enemy uh aircraft is flying overhead right now let's go to Governor\n\nDucey and then we'll have after Governor Ducey we'll finish our U gubernatorial questions and then two questions then we quick questions or one audience question and then we'll be done we're we're running short on time Governor Ducey thanks Elon I really enjoyed your comments today and as someone who has spent a lot of time in his administration trying to reduce and eliminate regulations uh I was surprised by your suggestion to bring reg regulations before we know exactly what we're dealing with with AI you know and i' I've heard the example used uh if I were to come up with a colorless odorless uh tasteless gas that was explosive people would say well you have to ban that and then we'd have no natural gas so you've given some of these examples of how\n\na AI can be an existential threat but I still don't understand as policy makers what type of regulations beond slow down which typically um policy makers don't get in in front of entrepreneurs or innovators well I think the first order of business would be to gain Insight right now the government does not even have Insight um and I I think the the right order of business would be to stand up regulatory agency initial goal gain insight into the status of um AI activity um uh make sure the situation is understood um once it is then put regulations in place to ensure Public Safety that's it um and for sure the companies doing AI will most of them not mine uh will squark and say hey uh this is really going to stifle Innovation blah blah blah it's going to\n\nmove to China it won't um and uh it won't because like it's like has like has Boeing moved to China nope they bowling aircraft here um uh same on cars um and so it's not it's um the notion that if you establish a regulatory regime that companies will simply move to um countries with with lower regulatory ecomment is is false on the face of it because none of them do and unless it's really overbearing but that's not what I'm talking about here just talking about you know making sure that there is awareness at the government level um I think once there is awareness people will will be extremely afraid as they should be right one audience question we'll take the first hand that came up right here thanks Elon Ena freed with axios early on in this Administration\n\nyou had argued pretty viously that it was best to engage and better to be in the room than not be in the room uh then when the president decided to pull out of Paris you said that was kind of the last draw and you were going to drop off what drove you to that and if you were still speaking to him today what would you say to the president well I I thought it was worth uh doing you know trying hard to um you know to do what worth it was worth trying I got a lot of flank um from multiple fronts for even trying um when some guy ran at Billboards and like uh attacking me and like full page ads in the New York Times and whatnot um just for just for being on the panel um and and you know in every in every meeting I was like just trying to make the arguments\n\num in favor of sustainability um and uh you know sometimes other issues like we need to make sure that our immigration laws are not unkind or unreasonable um and uh you know did my best and I I think in a few cases I did actually make some progress which gave me uh some encouragement to continue um but but then I I just really think that the Paris ACC Court man I I'm I'm if I st on the councils then I'd be essentially saying that that wasn't important but it was super important um because I think the country needs to keep his word um and you know that that's is not even a binding agreement so we could always like slow it down um the argument that there would be job losses well we could see if there are job losses before we exit the agreement and maybe\n\nthere won't be job losses maybe there'll be job gains um but yeah there's just no way I could stay on after that so you know did my best all right all right well everybody if you would please join me in thanking Elon for being here today right thank you thank you well that was a treat wasn't it","textByLang":{"en":"I know each Governor has a vision for his or her own States and we have a responsibility to enact policies to help our citizens and our states Thrive so I've asked Elon to join us today to share his thoughts on how Governors can not only stay ahead of the curve but become Innovation Governors so with that please join me in welcoming Elon Musk hey good see well good afternoon and welcome Elon oh I was going to take off my tie is that all right if I do that I I came in with a tie but then I was like told there bit a tie so then we'll both be more comfortable sounds good um well thanks thanks having me appreciate your you're being here today I you know it's when I'm with you it's difficult to know where to start um let's start just what drives you what what\n\nis it that when you wake up in the morning do you see a problem and you want to solve it uh I I think the the thing that drives me is that uh I want to be able to think about the future and uh you feel good about that um so uh that uh you know we're doing what we can to uh have the future be be as good as possible um to be inspired by what is likely to happen um and to look forward to the next day um so that's that's what really really drives me is is is trying to figure out uh how do we how do we make sure that things are great and um and going to be so and um that's the underlying principle behind Tesla and SpaceX um is that um I think it's it's it's pretty important that we accelerate the transition to uh sustainable generation and consumption of energy\n\num it's it's inevitable but it's it matters if we have if it happens sooner or later um and then SpaceX is about um helping make life multiplanetary um and doing what we can to continue the the dream of Apollo um and um ultimately make a contribution to life becoming multiplanetary well let's talk a little more about that I think uh everyone very interested that when you say making life multiplanetary that's exciting it is exciting so what's your vision there you know um I think you know particularly for uh Americans you know like think about America is a nation of explorers uh people came here from other parts of the world that you know uh chose to give up the known in favor of the unknown um so I think uh exploration like I think United States is a\n\nis a distillation of the human Spirit of exploration um and uh so that's why it it appeals to Americans so much you know um you can see this when say there was a shuttle tragedy um and seven people died and that's that's terrible but you know a lot of people die all the time um but but why do we care so much because it was the dream of exploration that was dying along with those people that's why no and I'm one of those and probably like many of you remember exactly where you were um when that that tragedy happened so you have 30 plus Governors here today and we're very excited about uh your willingness uh to be with us and you hopefully heard me talk a little bit about U my initiative which is being ahead of the curve what do you tell us as Governors\n\nwhat we what should we be thinking about in terms of of innovation and and developing public policy for the future well um it it sure is important to get the the rules right um and um you know it's sort of uh in in terms of legislative and executive actions um you know it's sort of like um you you think of say like professional sports or something if you if you don't have the rules right if there isn't uh uh you know um if if if if the game isn't set up properly it's not going to be a good game um so it's really important to get the ru the rules right um now I think it's it's worth noting that I think still um in the United States the rules are still better than anywhere else um um but um the you know it's it's very easy to put something in place which\n\nis an inhibitor to to innovation without realizing it um so in terms of um the regulatory environment uh uh it's It's always important to bear in mind that that uh regulations uh are Immortal um and they they they never die unless somebody act actually goes and kills them and then they they get a lot of momentum so a lot of times regulations can be put in place for all the right reasons um but then nobody goes back and gets rid of them afterwards when they no longer make sense um you know that uh and there used to be a rule in the early days when people were concerned about automobiles cuz that was a pretty scary thing see a just going wrong by itself you know you never know what those things might do um so there were like rules where you had to in a\n\nlot of States we had to carry a lantern in front of the automobile um and had to be like 100 Paces ahead of the automobile there had to be someone with a lantern on a pole like okay but you should really get rid of that regulation and they did you know um really be awkward um so um so just regulations is even if done correctly and for and being right at the time it's always important to go back and and scrub those you know periodically to make sure they're still sensible and they're still serving the greater good um I think uh in terms of tax structure what what is what is economically incented and what is what is not economically incented just make sure that the incentive structure is is correct I I think I'm saying just totally Common Sense things here\n\num but um it's economics 101 whatever you whatever you incent will happen um so the if you incent one thing that thing will tend to happen more than the other thing if you send another thing that that thing will happen um and so the the economics should favor Innovation um and um and this is particularly important to uh protect uh small to mediumsized companies um because because it's sort of like trying to grow a tree in a forest like it's real hard for a new company to to grow um when it's just a Seedling or a sapling uh it needs a lot more protection um than if it's a giant Redwood or something like that so uh very important to uh give support to small and and small to mediumsized companies on the Innovation front um and um they're the ones that that\n\nneeded more than the big companies and I I think this point Tesla is almost big company biggish company anyway um so I'd favor you know supporting uh smaller companies in Tesla relatively speaking what would your response be because there are critics out there with regard to incentives and that and you know Tesla has been and I can speak from experience uh the the beneficiary of of incentives economic incentives when with regard to the to the gigafactory sure what would you tell those those people yeah I think well first of all as you know the those incentives were um a little overstated um the um in the case of the gigafactory it's a it's A5 billion investment capital investment to get that factory going um and I I didn't actually know this by the by\n\nway I didn't I didn't know this until we did the press conference actually that that that over 20 years the V incentives added up to 1.\n\n3 billion actually didn't even know this uh but but but it's now he's telling go ahead literally I learned it at the press conference I'm like really um no but I mean it's the the thing is that they they took what added up over 20 years and made it sound like Nevada was writing us a $1.\n\n3 billion check and I'm you know I'm still waiting for that check must did it get lost in the mail I don't know um so uh but you know this is the way the press works of course um so if now if you divide 1.\n\n3 billion by 20 okay then it's it it's like okay Tesla's on average um re receives a sort of a a tax well doesn't it's it's basically sales and use tax abatement is is what it amounts to um so T gets like on the order we get on the order of 50 to 60 million of sales and use tax abatement divided over 20 years um and uh but but this is for something which has a $5 billion Capital cost uh just get going and then um would have to generate about hundred billion doll over that period of time to to achieve a $1.\n\n3 billion uh tax benefit so um so essentially it's it's a little over 1% over that period of time and that's great okay but uh it's not um you know it's not like it's it's not the way it was characterized in the Press um but if because if it's put in the proper context it sounds like okay well that's neat you know it's about five 5% helpful on setting up the factory and about 1% helpful over the next 20 years cool that actually sounds pretty reasonable yeah um and um yeah so so that that that was that was helpful but there are a lot of other factors as well um and uh we actually had slightly bigger incentive packages from from some other states that were offered uh but we factored in um how quickly could we uh uh get the gigafactory into operation um\n\nwhat were the risks associated with uh that progress um uh what would the over what would be the logistics costs over time of transferring battery packs and power trins to a a vehicle Factory in California um and uh you know and all of those factors weighed together um is what made uh is what um led us to make the decision in favor of Nevada um and and working with with with your team was great I was very forward leaning um and um and like a big part was also just like making you know sure you feel really welcome you know uh within within a state um so um that's sort of what would L us to make the decision for the gigafactory um and then um then we have another Factory in in in New York doing uh solar panels um also actually it's will be the biggest solar\n\nuh panel producer in North America when it's St um and then we expect to establish probably at least uh two or three more uh gigafactories in the US in the next several years um as well as uh what a couple overseas um but the overall objective of Tesla it's is is really what what set of actions can we take to accelerate the Advent of sustainable production and consumption of energy um and um I think the the the sort of the way the way I would assess the historic good of Tesla is in terms of of how what that how many years of acceleration was it you know and if we can accelerate sustainable energy by 10 years I would consider that to be a great success hope even if it was only 5 years that would still be pretty good um that that's the that's the that's\n\nthe overarching optimization so you you've talked about interplanetary travel and sustainable energy and the vehicles a little bit what what would you want things to look like and five to 10 years associated with with energy and with autonomous vehicles electric vehicles well I think things are going to be they're going to grow exponentially so there's a big difference between five and 10 years um you know my my guess is uh yeah probably in 10 years more than a half of uh new vehicle um production is Electric in the United States um and China's probably going to be ahead of that because China's been super pro e um I don't think a lot of people know this but like I mean China's environmental policies are way ahead of the US like their mandate for renewable\n\nenergy far exceeds the US I think this sometimes people are under the impression that China is uh either dragging their feet or or somehow behind the US in terms of um sustainable energy promotion but they're they're by far the most aggressive on Earth it's crazy I mean like in fact the a coalition of Chinese car manufacturers Just wrote the Chinese governments to beg for them to slow down the Mandate because like it's like too much they they need to make 8% electric vehicles I think like next year or in two years or something this like they can't physically do it um so China is by far the most aggressive on um electric vehicles and solar um so um but that's a common misperception that they're not um there one Google search way to figure this out by the\n\nway it's really pretty straight pretty easy so and in 10 in 10 yeah 10 years man I think yeah yeah so H half of all production I think will be be EV I think almost all cars produced will be autonomous in years almost all it will be rare to find one that is not in 10 years um that's going to be a huge transformation um now the thing to bear in mind though is that new vehicle production is only about 5% the size of the vehicle Fleet so you think about how long does a car or truck last and they last 15 to 20 years so before they finally scrap so new vehicle production is only roughly one at most 115th of the the fleet size so even when new vehicle production say switches switches over to electric or to autonomous that still means the vast majority of the\n\nfleet on the roads is not it'll take another you know 5 to 10 years before that becomes majority the majority of the fleet becomes EV or uh uh autonomous um but if you were to say go out 20 years overwhelmingly things are electric autonomous overwhelmingly fully autonomous fully autonomous so no one will have to touch the steering wheel if there is one there will not be a steering wheel in 20 years um it will be like having a horse people have horses which is cool um but so so having a regular car will be like having a horse is that what you're saying yeah yeah and there will be people that have that have you know non-autonomous cars like people have horses it's just would be unusual to use that as a motor transport yes all right no let's talk about um\n\nthe energy piece and rooftop cell and storage um yeah um so the uh I mean question it's important to appreciate that the Earth is almost entirely solar powered today um in the sense that the sun is the only thing that keeps us from um being at roughly the temperature of cosmic background radiation which is 3° above absolute zero if it wasn't for a sun we would be a frozen dark uh Ice Bowl um and the uh the amount of so the amount of energy that hits the Sun that reaches us from the Sun is tremendous it's it's over it's the it's 99 % plus of all energy that that Earth has um then there's there's there's this energy we need to use to run civilization which to us is big but compared to the amount of energy that reaches us from the Sun is Tiny um so it it's\n\nvery easy like it actually doesn't take much if if you wanted to power the entire United States with solar panels um it would take um a a fairly small corner of Nevada Texas Utah anywhere uh look you it's you only need about 100 miles by 100 miles of solar panels it's part of the entire United States um and then the the batteries you need to store that energy to make sure you have 24/7 um uh Power is one mile by one mile one one square mile that's that's it um I I I showed the graph the image of this where uh this is what 100 miles by 100 miles looks like it was like you a little square on the US map um and then one there's a little pixel inside there and that's the size of the battery pack that you need to support that real tiny so well you you talked\n\nabout 20 years from now none of us well some people will still be using horses or or be zero yeah but rare so what will the the energy piece look like I mean what will there be transmission lines will there be a need yeah I think the so there use of energy can is roughly divided into three areas um and they're more or less equal um at at a high level um there's about a third of energy is used for transportation of various kinds about a third is used uh for electricity about a third is used for heating so if you want to have uh and of the electricity production call it you know something on the order of 10% depending upon how you count it is renewable maybe 15% um uh today so that means that there's a massive amount of solar that would need be need to\n\nbe produced um and connected in order to to be fully sustainable because fully sustainable means you're tackling transport um non-renewable electricity generation and heating um so that that means that will need to be a combination of utility scale solar and rooftop SC solar combined with uh wind geothermal uh Hydro probably some some nuclear for a while um in order to transition to a sustainable uh situation um which means really for the most part massive massive growth in solar um and it's it's going to be important to have rooftop solar in uh neighborhoods um because otherwise you going there'll need to be uh massive new transmission lines built and people do not like having transmission lines go through the neighborhood I really don't like that I\n\nagree um so you you want to have some localized energy uh production um combined with utility so rooftop solo utility solar um and uh that that's that's really going to be the solution from a physics standpoint that I can't see any other way to really do it um um people talk a lot about fusion and all that but the sun is a giant Fusion reactor in the sky and it's really reliable comes up every day um so if it doesn't we got bigger problems somebody asked me to ask you this we talked about Workforce today but they asked me are robots going to take our jobs everybody's jobs in the future or H how how much do you see Artificial Intelligence coming into the the workplace um well first of all I think on the artificial intelligence front um you know I I have\n\nexposure to the very very most Cutting Edge um AI um uh and I think people should be really concerned about it um I keep sounding the longell but you know until people see like robots going down the street killing people like they don't know how to react you know because it seems so ethereal um and um I think we should be really concerned about Ai and I think we should this is AI is a rare case where I think we need to be proactive in regulation instead of reactive um because I think by the time we are reactive in AI regulation it's too late um and nor normally the way regulations are set up is that a whole bunch of bad things happen there's a public outcry the the and then after many years a regulatory agency is set up to regulate that industry um and\n\nthere's a bunch of opposition from companies who don't like being told what to do by Regulators um anyway it takes forever um that that in the past has been bad but not um something which represented a uh you know a fundamental risk to the existence of civilization AI is a fundamental risk to the existence of human civilization um in a way that car accidents uh airplane crashes um faulty drugs uh or bad food were were not they were not they they were harmful to to uh a set of individuals within Society of course but they were not harmful to society as a whole um AI is a fundamental existential risk for human civilization and I don't think people fully appreciate that um you know it's not it's not fun being regulated it's not you know uh be pretty irksome\n\nbut uh you know in the car business we know we get regulated uh by Department of Transport by EPA and a bunch of others um and and there regulatory agencies in every every country you know in the in space uh we get regulated by FAA um and um but but you know if you ask the average person hey you want to do you want to get rid of the FAA um and just like take a take a chance on manufacturers not cutting corners on the aircraft because you know profits were down that quarter I was like hell no um um that sounds terrible so um you know I think even people who are pretty extremely like libertarian free market they be like yeah we should probably have somebody keeping an eye on the aircraft companies making sure they build a good aircraft um and good cars\n\nand that kind of thing so you know I think there's there's a role for Regulators um that's very important um and I'm against overregulation for sure uh but man we I think we've better get on that with AI Pronto um and uh so there'll certainly be a lot of job disruption um because what's going to happen is robots will be able to do everything better than us I'm in I'm including I mean all of us you know um yeah not sure exactly what to do about this um it's like the it's like this is really like the scariest problem to me I'll tell you um and um yeah so I really think we need government regulation here just to because this is you know ensuring the public good is served because you got companies that are racing that they kind of have to race to build AI\n\nor they're going to be uh made uncompetitive you know like essentially if your competitor is racing Dev World Ai and you don't they will crush you so then you're like ah we don't want to be crushed so uh you know I guess we need to Bull it too um that's where you need The Regulators to come in and say hey guys um you all need to really you know just pause and make sure this is safe and like when when it's cool and we're and regulator convinced that it's safe to proceeded then you can go but otherwise slow down um and but long but you kind of need The Regulators to do that for for all the teams in the game you know uh otherwise the shareholders will be saying like hey why aren't you developing AI faster um because your competitor is like okay we better\n\ndo that um anyway so it's like I mean there's like something like 12% of jobs are transport transport will be one of the first things to go fully autonomous but when I say everything like the Rob us will be able to do everything bar bar nothing let's move back to you're rolling out the model 3 this year right uh and how many orders what what is that going to look like um yeah it's going well on that front um we got uh I don't know more I think like if somebody orders a model 3 today they'd only get it probably late next year um we just actually just started production made the first production unit last week um and uh the thing that is is not well appreciated about um something about about cars and any kind of new technology is how hard it is to do the\n\nmanufacturing is vastly harder to do the manufacturing by a factor of a hundred like a hundred than to to make the to make that car to make one of something W with with maybe 50 or 60 people we could make a prototype of practically anything in 6 months um now to manufacture that thing we need 5,000 people to spend you know 3 years and that's considered really fast so uh manufacturing will does this kind of S curve where it's excruciatingly slow at first and then it it grows exponentially um and then uh but people tend to extrapolate on a straight line so if it's real slow at first they say oh this is real slow look at that they're only going to make five cars a week forever like NOP uh there'll be 10 cars a week then 20 cars a week then you know 40 cars\n\na week then 5,000 cars a week eventually um just grows Crazy Fast uh so we're hoping to get to you know something uh you know like 5,000 cars a week by the end of the year well um I want to give an opportunity for some of the governors to ask questions and perhaps some audience questions um I was told that you'd be willing to to do that great so uh Governors any questions for for Elon governor Scott well thank you very much um we and Vermont have uh partnered with Tesla in uh in terms of a power pack in in our homes and it's for $15 a day uh you can rent this for 15 years and it'll it'll carry power as a back up generation device for 12 hours and it's been really really interesting from my perspective uh but I'm curious about vehicles and and where we're\n\ngoing in the future or how far in the future do the cars themselves become uh the charging device like the the roof and deck lids and and hood or does or do the batteries get so efficient that you don't need that and then you just power up for a week or something like that where are we going in the future with battery storage yeah I think the future is it's there's just there's three legs to the stool uh there's a electric cars there's a stationary battery pack um and solar power uh with those three things you can have a completely sustainable energy future uh that's all that's all it's needed on the Sol on the solar front like I said uh it's going to be a combination of rooftop solar and utility scale solar um you'll need both because of the you know\n\nenormous demand for electricity um and then uh you know one of the things that's that's been missing I think up till now is having rooftop solar that looks good um and isn't uh you know um that's where we got this the solar glass roof that we're developing um and we're doing it in different styles so that it it you know it matches the Aesthetics of a particular house or um so Regional style um that's I think that's actually pretty important um and um the conventional flat panels solers for for flat roofs and for commercial will be uh the way the way to go um but yeah it's and and and putting solar panels on the on the car itself not that uh not that helpful Because the actual surface area of the car is not not very much and cars are very often indoors\n\num and so it's the least efficient place to put solaras on the car just wondering about maybe a wrap of some sort is that does that make any sense in the future a a wrap of solar around either a building made of a solar panel or a wrap of a of a vehicle actually being the solar panel but being the the components of the vehicle itself I I don't think so um I'll scrap that idea no it's just uh it's just way better to put her on the roof uh for sure um and I I really thought about this I mean really and I pushed my team about like isn't there some way we could do it on the car um I mean technically if you have like some sort of Transformer like thing which will pop out of the trunk like like a you know like a hard top convertible and just like like ratchet\n\nsolar panels over the whole surface area of the car extending like for the entire say uh square footage of a parking space um provided you're in the sun uh that would be enough to generate about 20 to 30 m a day of electricity but uh that is for sure the expensive difficult way to do it Governor bergo so thought about maybe we should Elon thank thanks for being here uh with your background in payment systems uh you understand uh the important role of uh security and transactions now that you've got I think security is a huge concern like cyber security yes and you're in a in in the vehicles you're building now are incredibly complex software systems I mean the car is really a rolling piece of software it's like a laptop on Wheels yes so uh share with\n\nus a little bit about uh your thoughts on cyber security and how you how how how we protect uh you talk about protecting society when uh you got a rolling Fleet of um I I think one of the biggest uh risks for autonomous vehicles is somebody achieving um a fleetwide hack um you know in principle if if somebody was able to hack say all of the autonomous Teslas they could say I mean just as a prank they could say like santal to Rhode Island from across the United States and I'll be like well okay that would be the end of Tesla um and there be a lot of angry people in Rhode Island that's for sure um so uh we got to make super sure that uh that a fleet white hack is basically impossible and that if people are in the car that they have uh override Authority\n\non whatever the car is doing so if the car is doing doing something wacky uh you can press a button that no amount of software can override that will ensure that the uh you you you gain control of the vehicle um and kind of cut cut the link to the servers um so that's uh that's pretty fundamental um within the car we actually have even if somebody gains access to the car there are multiple subsystems within the car that that that also have uh specialized encryption so the power Trin for example has specialized encryption so even if some of you were gain access to the car they could gain access to the power train or to the braking system um and um but it is my top TP concern from a security standpoint at Tesla is making sure that fleetwide hack or any\n\nvehicle specific hack can occur the the same the they have the same problem with cell phones um you know we it's kind of crazy today that we live quite uh comfortably in in a in a world that George Orwell would have thought is super crazy um like we all carry um a phone with a with with a microphone that could be turned on really at any time without our knowledge with a GPS that knows our position um and a camera um and uh well kind of all of our personal information um we do this um willingly um and uh it's kind of wild to think that that's the case um so so pH the the phone like apple and and uh Google kind of have the same challenge of making sure that cannot be a fleetwide hack or a systemwide hack of phones um or or a specific hack so that that's\n\nour top our top concern um yeah become it's going to become a bigger and bigger concern like Tesla's um I don't want to Temp fate here but Tesla's Tesla is pretty good at software compared to the other car companies um and um so I do think it's going to be a bit like an even bigger challenge for for the other car companies to ensure security yeah thank you Governor Dugard thank you Governor Mr musk thank you for speaking to all the governors today it's it's an honor to have you here uh one question I had uh we saw when gasoline prices went to $35 a gallon there was a big jump in interest in hybrid vehicles and uh you saw those Vehicles become very much in demand and then as gasoline prices have fallen you've seen a reversal of that and I'm wondering to\n\nwhat extent uh you have a concern about the future of electric vehicles in the face of those very low prices can you speak to that well the economics um uh they they they kind of set set the slope of the the the curve um so there's no question in my mind whatsoever that all transport with the ironic exception of rockets will go fully electric um everything um Planes Trains automobiles well a lot of trains are already electric um all shifts um and um but it's question of what that time frame is and the economic uh incent structure drives that time frame um that's really what it amounts to um you know this there the and the Big Challenge is that there's an unpriced externality in the cost of fossil fuels uh so the unpriced externality is the uh the the\n\nprobability weighted uh harm of changing the chemical constituency of the uh atmosphere and oceans um it's it's since it is not captured in the price of gasoline um it does not uh Drive the right behavior um you know it would be like uh if tossing out garbage was just free and you know there was no penal you just do as much as you want then like trees be full of garbage um so um and we regulated a lot of other things like sulfur emissions and nitrous oxide emissions and that kind of thing it's done done a lot of good on that front um with CO2 it's tough because there's so many vested interest on the sort of fossil fuel side um and sometimes I think I feel like those guys feel like kind of hard done by uh cuz um you know it wasn't obvious like when they\n\nwere creating their oil and gas companies that it would be bad for the environment um and they worked really hard to create those companies and then they feel like well now they're being kind of attacked on moral grounds um when they didn't originally start those oil companies or or build them up on on bad moral grounds um and and and it is true that we cannot instantaneously change to a sustainable situation um but then those guys will also fight pretty hard to slow down the change and that's really where I think is morally wrong go to Governor Bavon and then Governor Hutchinson then we'll take a couple then Governor hickin Looper and then we'll take some audience questions Governor bevon El Elon thank you for being here uh short version of the question\n\nthen slightly longer the short version is do you ever feel pressure by others expectations of you and your endeavors in light of the progress you've made thus far is the short version and and and more specifically when you look just at Tesla alone and you look at a company with a54 billion valuation uh and seemingly by typical Mar Market metrics no justifiable reason for that what are you saying does I'm just saying I'm curious sir I'm just in all seriousness do you feel a a concern ever that your intellect in your intellectual curiosity and your Ingenuity cannot be matched by those that are trying to commercialize it does that ever affect how you think or decisions that you make uh well it it is actually I find it quite uh tough um when there are very\n\nhigh expectations um I try to actually Tamp down those expectations as you know to be possible in fact I've gone a record several times as saying that the stock price is higher than we have any right to deserve um uh and that's for sure true based on you know where we are today and have been in the past so the stock price obviously reflects a lot of optimism about where Tesla will be in the future um and now the the thing that makes that um you know quite a difficult emotional hardship for me uh is is that you know those expectations sometimes get out of out of control and like I hate disappointing people um and so I'm like trying real hard to meet those expectations but that pretty tall order um and uh a lot of times it's really not really not fun I\n\nhave to say a whole lot less fun than it may seem um uh so yeah um I mean I don't ever sell any stock unless I have to for for taxes um so you know I said publicly I'm not going to like take money off the table you know I'll be last I'm going down I'm going down with the ship so uh I'll be the last to do it but um yeah I mean it's I really wouldn't recommend anyone start a card company I really wouldn't recommend it it's not a recipe for happiness and freedom thanks Governor Bon Governor Hutchinson Mr musk ASA Hutchinson from Arkansas thank you for your Frank observations about uh exploration uh you know I look at uh the spirit of in uh invention and the spirit of exploration which is really the Hallmark of America what is your comment on NASA its Mission\n\nI was in Congress I supported NASA but I always feel like it's floundering does not have the support of the American people that's needed uh What uh what's your comment on NASA its Mission and what advice would you give us sure um well first of all I should say I'm a big fan of NASA um in fact at one point my password was I love NASA um literally that was my password um um and um you know I think the um n NASA does a lot of good things for which PE for which it doesn't get enough credit um and that the public I guess doesn't know that much about um like a lot you most members of the public they're not really into hard science you know it's like not it's not the the thing they're tuning in for most of the time um I love hard science you know uh but uh\n\num it's not that popular so uh but there's great things in terms of the the telescopes like the Hubble and the James web and the you know the robers on Mars um and the the pro you prob outer solar system um those are like really great things um but to get the public excited you got to get people in the picture um it just it's just a hundred times different if there are people in the picture um and uh you know if there's some criticism of NASA it's like I it's like important to remember people in the picture you know if you want to get the public support um and um but like if you talk to a scientist about that said like where's the science in that like you're not getting it it's like that's not why people giving you money it's not that's I mean it's a\n\nlittle bit of the reason but uh the like the the the serious scientists or like people just make things more expensive uh like why do we have people like okay well why do we have people at all anywhere um sometimes the scientists are the ones who just don't don't understand um even they're like smart people but like you know um so you got to have something that's going to fire up the you know fire fire people up and get them really excited and like I think if we had a serious goal of having a base on the moon and sending people to Mars um and said okay this is we're going to be outcome oriented how are we going to do this okay we got to changed the way Contracting is done uh you can't do these like Cost Plus contract Cost Plus Soul Source contracts because\n\nthen the incentive structure is all messed up so uh as soon as you don't have any competition well okay there's no the St of urgency goes away and as soon as you make something a Cost Plus contract you're incanting the contractor to maximize the costs of the program because they get a percentage so they never want that gravy train to end and they want to make it and a they become cost maximizers um and then you have good people engaged in cost maximization because you just gave them incentive to do that and told them they'll get punished if they don't essentially that's what happens so it's critically important that we change the Contracting structure to be a um competitive commercial bid make sure there there are always two at least two entities um that\n\nthat are competing to serve NASA um and that the contracts are mil Stone based with with uh concrete Milestones PowerPoint presentations do not count um like everything works on PowerPoint okay you say I have a teleportation device look here's my PowerPoint presentation um so uh Milestone based competitive uh commercial contracts with with competitors and then and then you got to be prepared to fire one of those competitors if they're not if they're not cutting it and and recompete the rest the remainder of that contract and by the way NASA's actually already done this and they did it with the Comm with the uh commercial cargo uh transportation to the space station um and that was a case where NASA you know that NASA actually I'm not if they thought it\n\nwould work or not work but they didn't have the budget to do anything else so they're like okay we're going to try this competitive commercial Milestone based Contracting and it worked great um and they Ed it uh to two companies to to SpaceX and a company called kler and SpaceX managed to meet meet the Milestones kler did not so then they NASA recomed the remainder of the contract to uh orbital Sciences but then obal Sciences got across the finish line so now NASA's got two suppliers for uh taking cargo to the space station um and it's a great situation same thing for commercial crew of the space station now as to competed that um uh in in in the commercial crew case it's space SpaceX and Boeing um and I think that's also a good situation so now um like\n\nI can tell you like the SpaceX team is like we're going to do this before Boeing that's for sure and then like I bet at the Boeing team they're like we're going to do this before SpaceX um that's good it's it's a good forcing function to get things done that that I can't tell you how important that Contracting structure is that is night and day um there's way too much uh in in government which is uh where it's a sou Source uh Cost Plus contract um that that just again economics 101 whatever you incent that will happen and people shouldn't be surprised it's like oh you just you know said Okay if that company manages to find some excuse to double the cost of the contract they're going to get double the profit because they're getting a percentage so they're\n\ngoing to do they're can do exactly that um and and also they're not going to say no to requirements so the government will come up with some set of requirements 90 90% of them could make a lot of sense and 10% of them I'll coam that double the price of the of of the the project but those 10% of cocki requirements in a Cost Plus contract the contractor will always say yes there could be a future for you in in Government Contracting at the state level yeah let's go to Governor hicken Looper and then Governor Ducey so uh I think like most governors find so refreshing to have the unbridled truth but I do suspect every time you say publicly that the stock price is higher than we have any right to believe I I going to guess you probably get some calls from\n\ninvestors suggesting that maybe you don't say that so frequently yeah that's true um I wanted to go back and just just briefly because I think I I wrote this down that you said that uh artificial intelligence is the the fundamental existential risk facing civilization do I get that close enough enough in my opin it is it is the biggest risk that we face as a civilization is artificial intelligence and so to a group of leaders what would you advise that we should how should we be addressing something that's that's such a large landscape and yet obviously so important um I think that the you know one of the roles of government is to ensure the public good um and and to uh that dangers to the public are addressed um so that hence the regulatory thing I think\n\nthe first order of business would be to try to learn as much as possible you know to understand the nature of the issues to um look closely at the progress that is being made um and the remarkable um achievements of artificial intelligence um I mean last year uh uh go which is a quite a difficult game to beat um that people thought would never be beaten with uh um by by a computer that that that computer would either never beat the best human player or that it was 20 years away um and last year um uh alphao which was done by Deep Mind which is a kind of a Google subsidiary um absolutely crushed the world's best player um and now now that now it can crush it can play the top 50 simultaneously in questionable so just like that pace of progress is remarkable\n\num and um and there's you can see more and more coming out like the robotics uh you can see robots that can learn to walk from from nothing um you know within hours like way faster than any biological being um um but the the thing that's uh most dangerous is uh and it's the hottest to kind of wrap um kind of get your arms around because it's not a physical thing is kind of a deep intelligence in the network um he said well what home could a deep intelligence in the network do so well I could start a war um by create by doing fake news and spoofing email accounts and fake press releases and just by you know manipulating information the pen is mighter than the sword um so uh I mean as an example I want to be I want to emphasize I do not think this actually\n\noccurred this is purely a hypothetical that I I'm digging my grave here um um but you know that like that there was that second Malaysian airliner that was shot down uh on the uh Ukrainian Russian border um and that that really Amplified tensions between Russia and the EU um in a massive way well like let's say if you had an AI that was uh where the ai's goal was to maximize the value of a portfolio of stocks um one of the ways to maximize value would be to uh go uh long on defense short on consumer start a war um and then uh how could it do that well you know ha can the Malaysian Airlines uh uh uh R aircraft routing server a route it over a war zone um then send an anonymous tip that an enemy uh aircraft is flying overhead right now let's go to Governor\n\nDucey and then we'll have after Governor Ducey we'll finish our U gubernatorial questions and then two questions then we quick questions or one audience question and then we'll be done we're we're running short on time Governor Ducey thanks Elon I really enjoyed your comments today and as someone who has spent a lot of time in his administration trying to reduce and eliminate regulations uh I was surprised by your suggestion to bring reg regulations before we know exactly what we're dealing with with AI you know and i' I've heard the example used uh if I were to come up with a colorless odorless uh tasteless gas that was explosive people would say well you have to ban that and then we'd have no natural gas so you've given some of these examples of how\n\na AI can be an existential threat but I still don't understand as policy makers what type of regulations beond slow down which typically um policy makers don't get in in front of entrepreneurs or innovators well I think the first order of business would be to gain Insight right now the government does not even have Insight um and I I think the the right order of business would be to stand up regulatory agency initial goal gain insight into the status of um AI activity um uh make sure the situation is understood um once it is then put regulations in place to ensure Public Safety that's it um and for sure the companies doing AI will most of them not mine uh will squark and say hey uh this is really going to stifle Innovation blah blah blah it's going to\n\nmove to China it won't um and uh it won't because like it's like has like has Boeing moved to China nope they bowling aircraft here um uh same on cars um and so it's not it's um the notion that if you establish a regulatory regime that companies will simply move to um countries with with lower regulatory ecomment is is false on the face of it because none of them do and unless it's really overbearing but that's not what I'm talking about here just talking about you know making sure that there is awareness at the government level um I think once there is awareness people will will be extremely afraid as they should be right one audience question we'll take the first hand that came up right here thanks Elon Ena freed with axios early on in this Administration\n\nyou had argued pretty viously that it was best to engage and better to be in the room than not be in the room uh then when the president decided to pull out of Paris you said that was kind of the last draw and you were going to drop off what drove you to that and if you were still speaking to him today what would you say to the president well I I thought it was worth uh doing you know trying hard to um you know to do what worth it was worth trying I got a lot of flank um from multiple fronts for even trying um when some guy ran at Billboards and like uh attacking me and like full page ads in the New York Times and whatnot um just for just for being on the panel um and and you know in every in every meeting I was like just trying to make the arguments\n\num in favor of sustainability um and uh you know sometimes other issues like we need to make sure that our immigration laws are not unkind or unreasonable um and uh you know did my best and I I think in a few cases I did actually make some progress which gave me uh some encouragement to continue um but but then I I just really think that the Paris ACC Court man I I'm I'm if I st on the councils then I'd be essentially saying that that wasn't important but it was super important um because I think the country needs to keep his word um and you know that that's is not even a binding agreement so we could always like slow it down um the argument that there would be job losses well we could see if there are job losses before we exit the agreement and maybe\n\nthere won't be job losses maybe there'll be job gains um but yeah there's just no way I could stay on after that so you know did my best all right all right well everybody if you would please join me in thanking Elon for being here today right thank you thank you well that was a treat wasn't it"},"languages":["en"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PeKqlDURpf8"},{"id":"ted-2017-boring","type":"interview","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zIwLWfaAg-8","title":"TED","titles":{"en":"TED","de":"TED","fr":"TED"},"date":"2017-04-28","summary":"On the TED stage, Elon Musk presents The Boring Company, tunnels, solar energy, self-driving cars and the Mars vision.","text":"Chris Anderson:\nElon, hey, welcome back to TED. It's great to have you here.\n\nElon Musk: Thanks for having me.\n\nCA: So, in the next half hour or so, we're going to spend some time exploring your vision for what\nan exciting future might look like, which I guess makes\nthe first question a little ironic: Why are you boring?\n\nEM: Yeah. I ask myself that frequently. We're trying to dig a hole under LA, and this is to create the beginning of what will hopefully\nbe a 3D network of tunnels to alleviate congestion. So right now, one of the most\nsoul-destroying things is traffic. It affects people\nin every part of the world. It takes away so much of your life. It's horrible. It's particularly horrible in LA.\n\n(Laughter)\n\nCA: I think you've brought with you the first visualization\nthat's been shown of this. Can I show this?\n\nEM: Yeah, absolutely.\nSo this is the first time -- Just to show what we're talking about. So a couple of key things\nthat are important in having a 3D tunnel network. First of all, you have to be able to integrate the entrance\nand exit of the tunnel seamlessly into the fabric of the city. So by having an elevator, sort of a car skate,\nthat's on an elevator, you can integrate the entrance\nand exits to the tunnel network just by using two parking spaces. And then the car gets on a skate. There's no speed limit here, so we're designing this to be able\nto operate at 200 kilometers an hour.\n\nCA: How much?\n\nEM: 200 kilometers an hour,\nor about 130 miles per hour. So you should be able\nto get from, say, Westwood to LAX in six minutes -- five, six minutes.\n\n(Applause)\n\nCA: So possibly, initially done, it's like on a sort\nof toll road-type basis.\n\nEM: Yeah.\n\nCA: Which, I guess,\nalleviates some traffic from the surface streets as well.\n\nEM: So, I don't know\nif people noticed it in the video, but there's no real limit\nto how many levels of tunnel you can have. You can go much further deep\nthan you can go up. The deepest mines are much deeper\nthan the tallest buildings are tall, so you can alleviate any arbitrary\nlevel of urban congestion with a 3D tunnel network. This is a very important point. So a key rebuttal to the tunnels\nis that if you add one layer of tunnels, that will simply alleviate congestion,\nit will get used up, and then you'll be back where you started,\nback with congestion. But you can go to any\narbitrary number of tunnels, any number of levels.\n\nCA: But people -- seen traditionally,\nit's incredibly expensive to dig, and that would block this idea.\n\nEM: Yeah. Well, they're right. To give you an example,\nthe LA subway extension, which is -- I think it's\na two-and-a-half mile extension that was just completed\nfor two billion dollars. So it's roughly a billion dollars a mile\nto do the subway extension in LA. And this is not the highest\nutility subway in the world. So yeah, it's quite difficult\nto dig tunnels normally. I think we need to have\nat least a tenfold improvement in the cost per mile of tunneling.\n\nCA: And how could you achieve that?\n\nEM: Actually, if you just do two things, you can get to approximately\nan order of magnitude improvement, and I think you can go beyond that. So the first thing to do\nis to cut the tunnel diameter by a factor of two or more. So a single road lane tunnel\naccording to regulations has to be 26 feet,\nmaybe 28 feet in diameter to allow for crashes\nand emergency vehicles and sufficient ventilation\nfor combustion engine cars. But if you shrink that diameter\nto what we're attempting, which is 12 feet, which is plenty\nto get an electric skate through, you drop the diameter by a factor of two and the cross-sectional area\nby a factor of four, and the tunneling cost scales\nwith the cross-sectional area. So that's roughly a half-order\nof magnitude improvement right there. Then tunneling machines currently tunnel\nfor half the time, then they stop, and then the rest of the time\nis putting in reinforcements for the tunnel wall. So if you design the machine instead to do continuous\ntunneling and reinforcing, that will give you\na factor of two improvement. Combine that and that's a factor of eight. Also these machines are far from being\nat their power or thermal limits, so you can jack up the power\nto the machine substantially. I think you can get\nat least a factor of two, maybe a factor of four or five\nimprovement on top of that. So I think there's a fairly\nstraightforward series of steps to get somewhere in excess\nof an order of magnitude improvement in the cost per mile, and our target actually is -- we've got a pet snail called Gary, this is from Gary the snail\nfrom \"South Park,\" I mean, sorry, \"SpongeBob SquarePants.\"\n\n(Laughter)\n\nSo Gary is capable of -- currently he's capable\nof going 14 times faster than a tunnel-boring machine.\n\n(Laughter)\n\nCA: You want to beat Gary.\n\nEM: We want to beat Gary.\n\n(Laughter)\n\nHe's not a patient little fellow, and that will be victory. Victory is beating the snail.\n\nCA: But a lot of people imagining,\ndreaming about future cities, they imagine that actually\nthe solution is flying cars, drones, etc. You go aboveground. Why isn't that a better solution? You save all that tunneling cost.\n\nEM: Right. I'm in favor of flying things. Obviously, I do rockets,\nso I like things that fly. This is not some inherent bias\nagainst flying things, but there is a challenge with flying cars in that they'll be quite noisy, the wind force generated\nwill be very high. Let's just say that if something's\nflying over your head, a whole bunch of flying cars\ngoing all over the place, that is not an anxiety-reducing situation.\n\n(Laughter)\n\nYou don't think to yourself,\n\"Well, I feel better about today.\" You're thinking,\n\"Did they service their hubcap, or is it going to come off\nand guillotine me?\" Things like that.\n\nCA: So you've got this vision of future cities with these rich,\n3D networks of tunnels underneath. Is there a tie-in here with Hyperloop? Could you apply these tunnels\nto use for this Hyperloop idea you released a few years ago.\n\nEM: Yeah, so we've been\nsort of puttering around with the Hyperloop stuff for a while. We built a Hyperloop test track\nadjacent to SpaceX, just for a student competition, to encourage innovative\nideas in transport. And it actually ends up being\nthe biggest vacuum chamber in the world after the Large Hadron Collider, by volume. So it was quite fun to do that,\nbut it was kind of a hobby thing, and then we think we might -- so we've built a little pusher car\nto push the student pods, but we're going to try seeing\nhow fast we can make the pusher go if it's not pushing something. So we're cautiously optimistic we'll be able to be faster\nthan the world's fastest bullet train even in a .8-mile stretch.\n\nCA: Whoa. Good brakes.\n\nEM: Yeah, I mean, it's -- yeah. It's either going to smash\ninto tiny pieces or go quite fast.\n\nCA: But you can picture,\nthen, a Hyperloop in a tunnel running quite long distances.\n\nEM: Exactly. And looking at tunneling technology, it turns out that\nin order to make a tunnel, you have to -- In order to seal against the water table, you've got to typically design\na tunnel wall to be good to about five or six atmospheres. So to go to vacuum is only one atmosphere, or near-vacuum. So actually, it sort of turns out\nthat automatically, if you build a tunnel that is good enough\nto resist the water table, it is automatically\ncapable of holding vacuum.\n\nCA: Huh.\n\nEM: So, yeah.\n\nCA: And so you could actually picture, what kind of length tunnel\nis in Elon's future to running Hyperloop?\n\nEM: I think there's no real length limit. You could dig as much as you want. I think if you were to do something like a DC-to-New York Hyperloop, I think you'd probably want\nto go underground the entire way because it's a high-density area. You're going under\na lot of buildings and houses, and if you go deep enough, you cannot detect the tunnel. Sometimes people think,\nwell, it's going to be pretty annoying to have a tunnel dug under my house. Like, if that tunnel is dug more than about three or four\ntunnel diameters beneath your house, you will not be able\nto detect it being dug at all. In fact, if you're able\nto detect the tunnel being dug, whatever device you are using, you can get a lot of money\nfor that device from the Israeli military, who is trying to detect\ntunnels from Hamas, and from the US Customs and Border patrol\nthat try and detect drug tunnels. So the reality is that earth is incredibly good\nat absorbing vibrations, and once the tunnel depth\nis below a certain level, it is undetectable. Maybe if you have a very sensitive\nseismic instrument, you might be able to detect it.\n\nCA: So you've started\na new company to do this called The Boring Company. Very nice. Very funny.\n\n(Laughter)\n\nEM: What's funny about that?\n\n(Laughter)\n\nCA: How much of your time is this?\n\nEM: It's maybe ... two or three percent.\n\nCA: You've called it a hobby. This is what an Elon Musk\nhobby looks like.\n\n(Laughter)\n\nEM: I mean, it really is, like -- This is basically interns\nand people doing it part time. We bought some second-hand machinery. It's kind of puttering along,\nbut it's making good progress, so --\n\nCA: So an even bigger part of your time is being spent on electrifying\ncars and transport through Tesla. Is one of the motivations\nfor the tunneling project the realization that actually, in a world where cars are electric\nand where they're self-driving, there may end up being\nmore cars on the roads on any given hour than there are now?\n\nEM: Yeah, exactly. A lot of people think\nthat when you make cars autonomous, they'll be able to go faster\nand that will alleviate congestion. And to some degree that will be true, but once you have shared autonomy\nwhere it's much cheaper to go by car and you can go point to point, the affordability of going in a car\nwill be better than that of a bus. Like, it will cost less than a bus ticket. So the amount of driving that will occur\nwill be much greater with shared autonomy, and actually traffic will get far worse.\n\nCA: You started Tesla\nwith the goal of persuading the world that electrification\nwas the future of cars, and a few years ago,\npeople were laughing at you. Now, not so much.\n\nEM: OK.\n\n(Laughter)\n\nI don't know. I don't know.\n\nCA: But isn't it true that pretty much\nevery auto manufacturer has announced\nserious electrification plans for the short- to medium-term future?\n\nEM: Yeah. Yeah. I think almost every automaker\nhas some electric vehicle program. They vary in seriousness. Some are very serious\nabout transitioning entirely to electric, and some are just dabbling in it. And some, amazingly,\nare still pursuing fuel cells, but I think that won't last much longer.\n\nCA: But isn't there a sense, though, Elon, where you can now just declare victory\nand say, you know, \"We did it.\" Let the world electrify,\nand you go on and focus on other stuff?\n\nEM: Yeah. I intend to stay with Tesla\nas far into the future as I can imagine, and there are a lot of exciting\nthings that we have coming. Obviously the Model 3 is coming soon. We'll be unveiling the Tesla Semi truck.\n\nCA: OK, we're going to come to this. So Model 3, it's supposed\nto be coming in July-ish.\n\nEM: Yeah, it's looking quite good\nfor starting production in July.\n\nCA: Wow. One of the things\nthat people are so excited about is the fact that it's got autopilot. And you put out this video a while back showing what that technology\nwould look like.\n\nEM: Yeah.\n\nCA: There's obviously autopilot\nin Model S right now. What are we seeing here?\n\nEM: Yeah, so this is using\nonly cameras and GPS. So there's no LIDAR\nor radar being used here. This is just using passive optical,\nwhich is essentially what a person uses. The whole road system\nis meant to be navigated with passive optical, or cameras, and so once you solve cameras or vision, then autonomy is solved. If you don't solve vision,\nit's not solved. So that's why our focus is\nso heavily on having a vision neural net that's very effective for road conditions.\n\nCA: Right. Many other people\nare going the LIDAR route. You want cameras plus radar is most of it.\n\nEM: You can absolutely\nbe superhuman with just cameras. Like, you can probably do it\nten times better than humans would, just cameras.\n\nCA: So the new cars being sold right now\nhave eight cameras in them. They can't yet do what that showed. When will they be able to?\n\nEM: I think we're still on track\nfor being able to go cross-country from LA to New York by the end\nof the year, fully autonomous.\n\nCA: OK, so by the end\nof the year, you're saying, someone's going to sit in a Tesla\nwithout touching the steering wheel, tap in \"New York,\" off it goes.\n\nEM: Yeah.\n\nCA: Won't ever have to touch the wheel --\nby the end of 2017.\n\nEM: Yeah. Essentially,\nNovember or December of this year, we should be able to go all the way\nfrom a parking lot in California to a parking lot in New York, no controls touched at any point\nduring the entire journey.\n\n(Applause)\n\nCA: Amazing. But part of that is possible because you've already got a fleet\nof Teslas driving all these roads. You're accumulating a huge amount\nof data of that national road system.\n\nEM: Yes, but the thing\nthat will be interesting is that I'm actually fairly confident\nit will be able to do that route even if you change the route dynamically. So, it's fairly easy -- If you say I'm going to be really good\nat one specific route, that's one thing, but it should be able to go,\nreally be very good, certainly once you enter a highway, to go anywhere on the highway system in a given country. So it's not sort of limited\nto LA to New York. We could change it\nand make it Seattle-Florida, that day, in real time. So you were going from LA to New York. Now go from LA to Toronto.\n\nCA: So leaving aside\nregulation for a second, in terms of the technology alone, the time when someone\nwill be able to buy one of your cars and literally just take the hands\noff the wheel and go to sleep and wake up and find that they've arrived, how far away is that, to do that safely?\n\nEM: I think that's about two years. So the real trick of it\nis not how do you make it work say 99.9 percent of the time, because, like, if a car crashes\none in a thousand times, then you're probably still not going\nto be comfortable falling asleep. You shouldn't be, certainly.\n\n(Laughter)\n\nIt's never going to be perfect. No system is going to be perfect, but if you say it's perhaps -- the car is unlikely to crash in a hundred lifetimes,\nor a thousand lifetimes, then people are like, OK, wow,\nif I were to live a thousand lives, I would still most likely\nnever experience a crash, then that's probably OK.\n\nCA: To sleep. I guess the big concern of yours\nis that people may actually get seduced too early\nto think that this is safe, and that you'll have some horrible\nincident happen that puts things back.\n\nEM: Well, I think that the autonomy system\nis likely to at least mitigate the crash, except in rare circumstances. The thing to appreciate\nabout vehicle safety is this is probabilistic. I mean, there's some chance that any time\na human driver gets in a car, that they will have an accident\nthat is their fault. It's never zero. So really the key threshold for autonomy is how much better does autonomy\nneed to be than a person before you can rely on it?\n\nCA: But once you get\nliterally safe hands-off driving, the power to disrupt\nthe whole industry seems massive, because at that point you've spoken\nof people being able to buy a car, drops you off at work,\nand then you let it go and provide a sort of Uber-like\nservice to other people, earn you money, maybe even cover the cost\nof your lease of that car, so you can kind of get a car for free. Is that really likely?\n\nEM: Yeah. Absolutely\nthis is what will happen. So there will be a shared autonomy fleet where you buy your car and you can choose\nto use that car exclusively, you could choose to have it be used\nonly by friends and family, only by other drivers\nwho are rated five star, you can choose to share it sometimes\nbut not other times. That's 100 percent what will occur. It's just a question of when.\n\nCA: Wow. So you mentioned the Semi and I think you're planning\nto announce this in September, but I'm curious whether there's\nanything you could show us today?\n\nEM: I will show you\na teaser shot of the truck.\n\n(Laughter)\n\nIt's alive.\n\nCA: OK.\n\nEM: That's definitely a case\nwhere we want to be cautious about the autonomy features. Yeah.\n\n(Laughter)\n\nCA: We can't see that much of it, but it doesn't look like\njust a little friendly neighborhood truck. It looks kind of badass. What sort of semi is this?\n\nEM: So this is a heavy duty,\nlong-range semitruck. So it's the highest weight capability and with long range. So essentially it's meant to alleviate\nthe heavy-duty trucking loads. And this is something which\npeople do not today think is possible. They think the truck doesn't have enough\npower or it doesn't have enough range, and then with the Tesla Semi we want to show that no, an electric truck actually can out-torque any diesel semi. And if you had a tug-of-war competition, the Tesla Semi\nwill tug the diesel semi uphill.\n\n(Laughter)\n\n(Applause)\n\nCA: That's pretty cool.\nAnd short term, these aren't driverless. These are going to be trucks\nthat truck drivers want to drive.\n\nEM: Yes. So what will be\nreally fun about this is you have a flat torque RPM curve\nwith an electric motor, whereas with a diesel motor or any kind\nof internal combustion engine car, you've got a torque RPM curve\nthat looks like a hill. So this will be a very spry truck. You can drive this\naround like a sports car. There's no gears.\nIt's, like, single speed.\n\nCA: There's a great movie\nto be made here somewhere. I don't know what it is\nand I don't know that it ends well, but it's a great movie.\n\n(Laughter)\n\nEM: It's quite bizarre test-driving. When I was driving the test prototype\nfor the first truck. It's really weird,\nbecause you're driving around and you're just so nimble,\nand you're in this giant truck.\n\nCA: Wait, you've\nalready driven a prototype?\n\nEM: Yeah, I drove it\naround the parking lot, and I was like, this is crazy.\n\nCA: Wow. This is no vaporware.\n\nEM: It's just like,\ndriving this giant truck and making these mad maneuvers.\n\nCA: This is cool.\nOK, from a really badass picture to a kind of less badass picture. This is just a cute house\nfrom \"Desperate Housewives\" or something. What on earth is going on here?\n\nEM: Well, this illustrates\nthe picture of the future that I think is how things will evolve. You've got an electric car\nin the driveway. If you look in between\nthe electric car and the house, there are actually three Powerwalls\nstacked up against the side of the house, and then that house roof is a solar roof. So that's an actual solar glass roof.\n\nCA: OK.\n\nEM: That's a picture of a real --\nwell, admittedly, it's a real fake house. That's a real fake house.\n\n(Laughter)\n\nCA: So these roof tiles, some of them have in them\nbasically solar power, the ability to --\n\nEM: Yeah. Solar glass tiles where you can adjust\nthe texture and the color to a very fine-grained level, and then there's\nsort of microlouvers in the glass, such that when you're looking\nat the roof from street level or close to street level, all the tiles look the same whether there is a solar cell\nbehind it or not. So you have an even color from the ground level. If you were to look at it\nfrom a helicopter, you would be actually able\nto look through and see that some of the glass tiles have\na solar cell behind them and some do not. You can't tell from street level.\n\nCA: You put them in the ones\nthat are likely to see a lot of sun, and that makes these roofs\nsuper affordable, right? They're not that much more expensive\nthan just tiling the roof.\n\nEM: Yeah. We're very confident\nthat the cost of the roof plus the cost of electricity -- A solar glass roof will be less\nthan the cost of a normal roof plus the cost of electricity. So in other words, this will be economically a no-brainer, we think it will look great, and it will last -- We thought about having\nthe warranty be infinity, but then people thought, well, that might sound\nlike were just talking rubbish, but actually this is toughened glass. Well after the house has collapsed and there's nothing there, the glass tiles will still be there.\n\n(Applause)\n\nCA: I mean, this is cool. So you're rolling this out\nin a couple week's time, I think, with four different roofing types.\n\nEM: Yeah, we're starting off\nwith two, two initially, and the second two\nwill be introduced early next year.\n\nCA: And what's the scale of ambition here? How many houses do you believe\ncould end up having this type of roofing?\n\nEM: I think eventually almost all houses will have a solar roof. The thing is to consider\nthe time scale here to be probably on the order of 40 or 50 years. So on average, a roof\nis replaced every 20 to 25 years. But you don't start replacing\nall roofs immediately. But eventually,\nif you say were to fast-forward to say 15 years from now, it will be unusual to have a roof\nthat does not have solar.\n\nCA: Is there a mental model thing\nthat people don't get here that because of the shift in the cost,\nthe economics of solar power, most houses actually have\nenough sunlight on their roof pretty much to power all of their needs. If you could capture the power, it could pretty much\npower all their needs. You could go off-grid, kind of.\n\nEM: It depends on where you are and what the house size is\nrelative to the roof area, but it's a fair statement to say that most houses in the US\nhave enough roof area to power all the needs of the house.\n\nCA: So the key to the economics of the cars, the Semi, of these houses is the falling price\nof lithium-ion batteries, which you've made a huge bet on as Tesla. In many ways, that's almost\nthe core competency. And you've decided that to really, like, own that competency, you just have to build\nthe world's largest manufacturing plant to double the world's supply\nof lithium-ion batteries, with this guy. What is this?\n\nEM: Yeah, so that's the Gigafactory, progress so far on the Gigafactory. Eventually, you can sort of roughly see that there's sort of\na diamond shape overall, and when it's fully done,\nit'll look like a giant diamond, or that's the idea behind it, and it's aligned on true north. It's a small detail.\n\nCA: And capable of producing, eventually, like a hundred gigawatt hours\nof batteries a year.\n\nEM: A hundred gigawatt hours.\nWe think probably more, but yeah.\n\nCA: And they're actually\nbeing produced right now.\n\nEM: They're in production already.\nCA: You guys put out this video. I mean, is that speeded up?\n\nEM: That's the slowed down version.\n\n(Laughter)\n\nCA: How fast does it actually go?\n\nEM: Well, when it's running at full speed, you can't actually see the cells\nwithout a strobe light. It's just blur.\n\n(Laughter)\n\nCA: One of your core ideas, Elon,\nabout what makes an exciting future is a future where we no longer\nfeel guilty about energy. Help us picture this. How many Gigafactories, if you like,\ndoes it take to get us there?\n\nEM: It's about a hundred, roughly. It's not 10, it's not a thousand. Most likely a hundred.\n\nCA: See, I find this amazing. You can picture what it would take to move the world\noff this vast fossil fuel thing. It's like you're building one, it costs five billion dollars, or whatever, five to 10 billion dollars. Like, it's kind of cool\nthat you can picture that project. And you're planning to do, at Tesla --\nannounce another two this year.\n\nEM: I think we'll announce locations for somewhere between two\nand four Gigafactories later this year. Yeah, probably four.\n\nCA: Whoa.\n\n(Applause) No more teasing from you for here? Like -- where, continent? You can say no.\n\nEM: We need to address a global market.\n\nCA: OK.\n\n(Laughter)\n\nThis is cool. I think we should talk for -- Actually, global market. I'm going to ask you one question\nabout politics, only one. I'm kind of sick of politics,\nbut I do want to ask you this. You're on a body now\ngiving advice to a guy --\n\nEM: Who?\n\nCA: Who has said he doesn't\nreally believe in climate change, and there's a lot of people out there\nwho think you shouldn't be doing that. They'd like you to walk away from that. What would you say to them?\n\nEM: Well, I think that first of all, I'm just on two advisory councils where the format consists\nof going around the room and asking people's opinion on things, and so there's like a meeting\nevery month or two. That's the sum total of my contribution. But I think to the degree\nthat there are people in the room who are arguing in favor\nof doing something about climate change, or social issues, I've used the meetings I've had thus far to argue in favor of immigration\nand in favor of climate change.\n\n(Applause)\n\nAnd if I hadn't done that, that wasn't on the agenda before. So maybe nothing will happen,\nbut at least the words were said.\n\nCA: OK.\n\n(Applause)\n\nSo let's talk SpaceX and Mars. Last time you were here, you spoke about what seemed like\na kind of incredibly ambitious dream to develop rockets\nthat were actually reusable. And you've only gone and done it.\n\nEM: Finally. It took a long time.\n\nCA: Talk us through this.\nWhat are we looking at here?\n\nEM: So this is one of our rocket boosters coming back from\nvery high and fast in space. So just delivered the upper stage at high velocity. I think this might have been\nat sort of Mach 7 or so, delivery of the upper stage.\n\n(Applause)\n\nCA: So that was a sped-up --\n\nEM: That was the slowed down version.\n\n(Laughter)\n\nCA: I thought that was\nthe sped-up version. But I mean, that's amazing, and several of these failed before you finally\nfigured out how to do it, but now you've done this,\nwhat, five or six times?\n\nEM: We're at eight or nine.\n\nCA: And for the first time, you've actually reflown\none of the rockets that landed.\n\nEM: Yeah, so we landed the rocket booster and then prepped it for flight again\nand flew it again, so it's the first reflight\nof an orbital booster where that reflight is relevant. So it's important to appreciate\nthat reusability is only relevant if it is rapid and complete. So like an aircraft or a car, the reusability is rapid and complete. You do not send your aircraft\nto Boeing in-between flights.\n\nCA: Right. So this is allowing you\nto dream of this really ambitious idea of sending many, many, many people to Mars in, what, 10 or 20 years time, I guess.\n\nEM: Yeah.\n\nCA: And you've designed\nthis outrageous rocket to do it. Help us understand\nthe scale of this thing.\n\nEM: Well, visually\nyou can see that's a person. Yeah, and that's the vehicle.\n\n(Laughter)\n\nCA: So if that was a skyscraper, that's like, did I read that,\na 40-story skyscraper?\n\nEM: Probably a little more, yeah. The thrust level of this is really -- This configuration is about four times\nthe thrust of the Saturn V moon rocket.\n\nCA: Four times the thrust of the biggest\nrocket humanity ever created before.\n\nEM: Yeah. Yeah.\n\nCA: As one does.\nEM: Yeah.\n\n(Laughter)\n\nIn units of 747, a 747 is only about\na quarter of a million pounds of thrust, so for every 10 million pounds of thrust, there's 40 747s. So this would be the thrust equivalent\nof 120 747s, with all engines blazing.\n\nCA: And so even with a machine\ndesigned to escape Earth's gravity, I think you told me last time this thing could actually\ntake a fully loaded 747, people, cargo, everything, into orbit.\n\nEM: Exactly. This can take\na fully loaded 747 with maximum fuel, maximum passengers,\nmaximum cargo on the 747 -- this can take it as cargo.\n\nCA: So based on this, you presented recently\nthis Interplanetary Transport System which is visualized this way. This is a scene you picture in, what,\n30 years time? 20 years time? People walking into this rocket.\n\nEM: I'm hopeful it's sort of\nan eight- to 10-year time frame. Aspirationally, that's our target. Our internal targets\nare more aggressive, but I think --\n\n(Laughter)\n\nCA: OK.\n\nEM: While vehicle seems quite large and is large by comparison\nwith other rockets, I think the future spacecraft will make this look like a rowboat. The future spaceships\nwill be truly enormous.\n\nCA: Why, Elon? Why do we need to build a city on Mars with a million people\non it in your lifetime, which I think is kind of\nwhat you've said you'd love to do?\n\nEM: I think it's important to have a future that is inspiring and appealing. I just think there have to be reasons that you get up in the morning\nand you want to live. Like, why do you want to live? What's the point? What inspires you? What do you love about the future? And if we're not out there, if the future does not include\nbeing out there among the stars and being a multiplanet species, I find that it's incredibly depressing if that's not the future\nthat we're going to have.\n\n(Applause)\n\nCA: People want to position this\nas an either or, that there are so many desperate things\nhappening on the planet now from climate to poverty\nto, you know, you pick your issue. And this feels like a distraction. You shouldn't be thinking about this. You should be solving what's here and now. And to be fair, you've done\na fair old bit to actually do that with your work on sustainable energy. But why not just do that?\n\nEM: I think there's -- I look at the future\nfrom the standpoint of probabilities. It's like a branching\nstream of probabilities, and there are actions that we can take\nthat affect those probabilities or that accelerate one thing\nor slow down another thing. I may introduce something new\nto the probability stream. Sustainable energy\nwill happen no matter what. If there was no Tesla,\nif Tesla never existed, it would have to happen out of necessity. It's tautological. If you don't have sustainable energy,\nit means you have unsustainable energy. Eventually you will run out, and the laws of economics\nwill drive civilization towards sustainable energy, inevitably. The fundamental value\nof a company like Tesla is the degree to which it accelerates\nthe advent of sustainable energy, faster than it would otherwise occur.\n\nSo when I think, like, what is the fundamental good\nof a company like Tesla, I would say, hopefully, if it accelerated that by a decade,\npotentially more than a decade, that would be quite a good thing to occur. That's what I consider to be the fundamental\naspirational good of Tesla.\n\nThen there's becoming a multiplanet\nspecies and space-faring civilization. This is not inevitable. It's very important to appreciate\nthis is not inevitable. The sustainable energy future\nI think is largely inevitable, but being a space-faring civilization\nis definitely not inevitable. If you look at the progress in space, in 1969 you were able\nto send somebody to the moon. 1969. Then we had the Space Shuttle. The Space Shuttle could only\ntake people to low Earth orbit. Then the Space Shuttle retired, and the United States\ncould take no one to orbit. So that's the trend. The trend is like down to nothing. People are mistaken when they think that technology\njust automatically improves. It does not automatically improve. It only improves if a lot of people\nwork very hard to make it better, and actually it will, I think,\nby itself degrade, actually. You look at great civilizations\nlike Ancient Egypt, and they were able to make the pyramids, and they forgot how to do that. And then the Romans,\nthey built these incredible aqueducts. They forgot how to do it.\n\nCA: Elon, it almost seems,\nlistening to you and looking at the different\nthings you've done, that you've got this unique\ndouble motivation on everything that I find so interesting. One is this desire to work\nfor humanity's long-term good. The other is the desire\nto do something exciting. And often it feels like you feel\nlike you need the one to drive the other. With Tesla, you want\nto have sustainable energy, so you made these super sexy,\nexciting cars to do it. Solar energy, we need to get there, so we need to make these beautiful roofs. We haven't even spoken\nabout your newest thing, which we don't have time to do, but you want to save humanity from bad AI, and so you're going to create\nthis really cool brain-machine interface to give us all infinite memory\nand telepathy and so forth. And on Mars, it feels\nlike what you're saying is, yeah, we need to save humanity and have a backup plan, but also we need to inspire humanity, and this is a way to inspire.\n\nEM: I think the value\nof beauty and inspiration is very much underrated, no question. But I want to be clear. I'm not trying to be anyone's savior. That is not the -- I'm just trying to think about the future and not be sad.\n\n(Applause)\n\nCA: Beautiful statement. I think everyone here would agree that it is not -- None of this is going\nto happen inevitably. The fact that in your mind,\nyou dream this stuff, you dream stuff that no one else\nwould dare dream, or no one else\nwould be capable of dreaming at the level of complexity that you do. The fact that you do that, Elon Musk,\nis a really remarkable thing. Thank you for helping us all\nto dream a bit bigger.\n\nEM: But you'll tell me if it ever\nstarts getting genuinely insane, right?\n\n(Laughter)\n\nCA: Thank you, Elon Musk.\nThat was really, really fantastic. That was really fantastic.\n\n(Applause)","textByLang":{"en":"Chris Anderson:\nElon, hey, welcome back to TED. It's great to have you here.\n\nElon Musk: Thanks for having me.\n\nCA: So, in the next half hour or so, we're going to spend some time exploring your vision for what\nan exciting future might look like, which I guess makes\nthe first question a little ironic: Why are you boring?\n\nEM: Yeah. I ask myself that frequently. We're trying to dig a hole under LA, and this is to create the beginning of what will hopefully\nbe a 3D network of tunnels to alleviate congestion. So right now, one of the most\nsoul-destroying things is traffic. It affects people\nin every part of the world. It takes away so much of your life. It's horrible. It's particularly horrible in LA.\n\n(Laughter)\n\nCA: I think you've brought with you the first visualization\nthat's been shown of this. Can I show this?\n\nEM: Yeah, absolutely.\nSo this is the first time -- Just to show what we're talking about. So a couple of key things\nthat are important in having a 3D tunnel network. First of all, you have to be able to integrate the entrance\nand exit of the tunnel seamlessly into the fabric of the city. So by having an elevator, sort of a car skate,\nthat's on an elevator, you can integrate the entrance\nand exits to the tunnel network just by using two parking spaces. And then the car gets on a skate. There's no speed limit here, so we're designing this to be able\nto operate at 200 kilometers an hour.\n\nCA: How much?\n\nEM: 200 kilometers an hour,\nor about 130 miles per hour. So you should be able\nto get from, say, Westwood to LAX in six minutes -- five, six minutes.\n\n(Applause)\n\nCA: So possibly, initially done, it's like on a sort\nof toll road-type basis.\n\nEM: Yeah.\n\nCA: Which, I guess,\nalleviates some traffic from the surface streets as well.\n\nEM: So, I don't know\nif people noticed it in the video, but there's no real limit\nto how many levels of tunnel you can have. You can go much further deep\nthan you can go up. The deepest mines are much deeper\nthan the tallest buildings are tall, so you can alleviate any arbitrary\nlevel of urban congestion with a 3D tunnel network. This is a very important point. So a key rebuttal to the tunnels\nis that if you add one layer of tunnels, that will simply alleviate congestion,\nit will get used up, and then you'll be back where you started,\nback with congestion. But you can go to any\narbitrary number of tunnels, any number of levels.\n\nCA: But people -- seen traditionally,\nit's incredibly expensive to dig, and that would block this idea.\n\nEM: Yeah. Well, they're right. To give you an example,\nthe LA subway extension, which is -- I think it's\na two-and-a-half mile extension that was just completed\nfor two billion dollars. So it's roughly a billion dollars a mile\nto do the subway extension in LA. And this is not the highest\nutility subway in the world. So yeah, it's quite difficult\nto dig tunnels normally. I think we need to have\nat least a tenfold improvement in the cost per mile of tunneling.\n\nCA: And how could you achieve that?\n\nEM: Actually, if you just do two things, you can get to approximately\nan order of magnitude improvement, and I think you can go beyond that. So the first thing to do\nis to cut the tunnel diameter by a factor of two or more. So a single road lane tunnel\naccording to regulations has to be 26 feet,\nmaybe 28 feet in diameter to allow for crashes\nand emergency vehicles and sufficient ventilation\nfor combustion engine cars. But if you shrink that diameter\nto what we're attempting, which is 12 feet, which is plenty\nto get an electric skate through, you drop the diameter by a factor of two and the cross-sectional area\nby a factor of four, and the tunneling cost scales\nwith the cross-sectional area. So that's roughly a half-order\nof magnitude improvement right there. Then tunneling machines currently tunnel\nfor half the time, then they stop, and then the rest of the time\nis putting in reinforcements for the tunnel wall. So if you design the machine instead to do continuous\ntunneling and reinforcing, that will give you\na factor of two improvement. Combine that and that's a factor of eight. Also these machines are far from being\nat their power or thermal limits, so you can jack up the power\nto the machine substantially. I think you can get\nat least a factor of two, maybe a factor of four or five\nimprovement on top of that. So I think there's a fairly\nstraightforward series of steps to get somewhere in excess\nof an order of magnitude improvement in the cost per mile, and our target actually is -- we've got a pet snail called Gary, this is from Gary the snail\nfrom \"South Park,\" I mean, sorry, \"SpongeBob SquarePants.\"\n\n(Laughter)\n\nSo Gary is capable of -- currently he's capable\nof going 14 times faster than a tunnel-boring machine.\n\n(Laughter)\n\nCA: You want to beat Gary.\n\nEM: We want to beat Gary.\n\n(Laughter)\n\nHe's not a patient little fellow, and that will be victory. Victory is beating the snail.\n\nCA: But a lot of people imagining,\ndreaming about future cities, they imagine that actually\nthe solution is flying cars, drones, etc. You go aboveground. Why isn't that a better solution? You save all that tunneling cost.\n\nEM: Right. I'm in favor of flying things. Obviously, I do rockets,\nso I like things that fly. This is not some inherent bias\nagainst flying things, but there is a challenge with flying cars in that they'll be quite noisy, the wind force generated\nwill be very high. Let's just say that if something's\nflying over your head, a whole bunch of flying cars\ngoing all over the place, that is not an anxiety-reducing situation.\n\n(Laughter)\n\nYou don't think to yourself,\n\"Well, I feel better about today.\" You're thinking,\n\"Did they service their hubcap, or is it going to come off\nand guillotine me?\" Things like that.\n\nCA: So you've got this vision of future cities with these rich,\n3D networks of tunnels underneath. Is there a tie-in here with Hyperloop? Could you apply these tunnels\nto use for this Hyperloop idea you released a few years ago.\n\nEM: Yeah, so we've been\nsort of puttering around with the Hyperloop stuff for a while. We built a Hyperloop test track\nadjacent to SpaceX, just for a student competition, to encourage innovative\nideas in transport. And it actually ends up being\nthe biggest vacuum chamber in the world after the Large Hadron Collider, by volume. So it was quite fun to do that,\nbut it was kind of a hobby thing, and then we think we might -- so we've built a little pusher car\nto push the student pods, but we're going to try seeing\nhow fast we can make the pusher go if it's not pushing something. So we're cautiously optimistic we'll be able to be faster\nthan the world's fastest bullet train even in a .8-mile stretch.\n\nCA: Whoa. Good brakes.\n\nEM: Yeah, I mean, it's -- yeah. It's either going to smash\ninto tiny pieces or go quite fast.\n\nCA: But you can picture,\nthen, a Hyperloop in a tunnel running quite long distances.\n\nEM: Exactly. And looking at tunneling technology, it turns out that\nin order to make a tunnel, you have to -- In order to seal against the water table, you've got to typically design\na tunnel wall to be good to about five or six atmospheres. So to go to vacuum is only one atmosphere, or near-vacuum. So actually, it sort of turns out\nthat automatically, if you build a tunnel that is good enough\nto resist the water table, it is automatically\ncapable of holding vacuum.\n\nCA: Huh.\n\nEM: So, yeah.\n\nCA: And so you could actually picture, what kind of length tunnel\nis in Elon's future to running Hyperloop?\n\nEM: I think there's no real length limit. You could dig as much as you want. I think if you were to do something like a DC-to-New York Hyperloop, I think you'd probably want\nto go underground the entire way because it's a high-density area. You're going under\na lot of buildings and houses, and if you go deep enough, you cannot detect the tunnel. Sometimes people think,\nwell, it's going to be pretty annoying to have a tunnel dug under my house. Like, if that tunnel is dug more than about three or four\ntunnel diameters beneath your house, you will not be able\nto detect it being dug at all. In fact, if you're able\nto detect the tunnel being dug, whatever device you are using, you can get a lot of money\nfor that device from the Israeli military, who is trying to detect\ntunnels from Hamas, and from the US Customs and Border patrol\nthat try and detect drug tunnels. So the reality is that earth is incredibly good\nat absorbing vibrations, and once the tunnel depth\nis below a certain level, it is undetectable. Maybe if you have a very sensitive\nseismic instrument, you might be able to detect it.\n\nCA: So you've started\na new company to do this called The Boring Company. Very nice. Very funny.\n\n(Laughter)\n\nEM: What's funny about that?\n\n(Laughter)\n\nCA: How much of your time is this?\n\nEM: It's maybe ... two or three percent.\n\nCA: You've called it a hobby. This is what an Elon Musk\nhobby looks like.\n\n(Laughter)\n\nEM: I mean, it really is, like -- This is basically interns\nand people doing it part time. We bought some second-hand machinery. It's kind of puttering along,\nbut it's making good progress, so --\n\nCA: So an even bigger part of your time is being spent on electrifying\ncars and transport through Tesla. Is one of the motivations\nfor the tunneling project the realization that actually, in a world where cars are electric\nand where they're self-driving, there may end up being\nmore cars on the roads on any given hour than there are now?\n\nEM: Yeah, exactly. A lot of people think\nthat when you make cars autonomous, they'll be able to go faster\nand that will alleviate congestion. And to some degree that will be true, but once you have shared autonomy\nwhere it's much cheaper to go by car and you can go point to point, the affordability of going in a car\nwill be better than that of a bus. Like, it will cost less than a bus ticket. So the amount of driving that will occur\nwill be much greater with shared autonomy, and actually traffic will get far worse.\n\nCA: You started Tesla\nwith the goal of persuading the world that electrification\nwas the future of cars, and a few years ago,\npeople were laughing at you. Now, not so much.\n\nEM: OK.\n\n(Laughter)\n\nI don't know. I don't know.\n\nCA: But isn't it true that pretty much\nevery auto manufacturer has announced\nserious electrification plans for the short- to medium-term future?\n\nEM: Yeah. Yeah. I think almost every automaker\nhas some electric vehicle program. They vary in seriousness. Some are very serious\nabout transitioning entirely to electric, and some are just dabbling in it. And some, amazingly,\nare still pursuing fuel cells, but I think that won't last much longer.\n\nCA: But isn't there a sense, though, Elon, where you can now just declare victory\nand say, you know, \"We did it.\" Let the world electrify,\nand you go on and focus on other stuff?\n\nEM: Yeah. I intend to stay with Tesla\nas far into the future as I can imagine, and there are a lot of exciting\nthings that we have coming. Obviously the Model 3 is coming soon. We'll be unveiling the Tesla Semi truck.\n\nCA: OK, we're going to come to this. So Model 3, it's supposed\nto be coming in July-ish.\n\nEM: Yeah, it's looking quite good\nfor starting production in July.\n\nCA: Wow. One of the things\nthat people are so excited about is the fact that it's got autopilot. And you put out this video a while back showing what that technology\nwould look like.\n\nEM: Yeah.\n\nCA: There's obviously autopilot\nin Model S right now. What are we seeing here?\n\nEM: Yeah, so this is using\nonly cameras and GPS. So there's no LIDAR\nor radar being used here. This is just using passive optical,\nwhich is essentially what a person uses. The whole road system\nis meant to be navigated with passive optical, or cameras, and so once you solve cameras or vision, then autonomy is solved. If you don't solve vision,\nit's not solved. So that's why our focus is\nso heavily on having a vision neural net that's very effective for road conditions.\n\nCA: Right. Many other people\nare going the LIDAR route. You want cameras plus radar is most of it.\n\nEM: You can absolutely\nbe superhuman with just cameras. Like, you can probably do it\nten times better than humans would, just cameras.\n\nCA: So the new cars being sold right now\nhave eight cameras in them. They can't yet do what that showed. When will they be able to?\n\nEM: I think we're still on track\nfor being able to go cross-country from LA to New York by the end\nof the year, fully autonomous.\n\nCA: OK, so by the end\nof the year, you're saying, someone's going to sit in a Tesla\nwithout touching the steering wheel, tap in \"New York,\" off it goes.\n\nEM: Yeah.\n\nCA: Won't ever have to touch the wheel --\nby the end of 2017.\n\nEM: Yeah. Essentially,\nNovember or December of this year, we should be able to go all the way\nfrom a parking lot in California to a parking lot in New York, no controls touched at any point\nduring the entire journey.\n\n(Applause)\n\nCA: Amazing. But part of that is possible because you've already got a fleet\nof Teslas driving all these roads. You're accumulating a huge amount\nof data of that national road system.\n\nEM: Yes, but the thing\nthat will be interesting is that I'm actually fairly confident\nit will be able to do that route even if you change the route dynamically. So, it's fairly easy -- If you say I'm going to be really good\nat one specific route, that's one thing, but it should be able to go,\nreally be very good, certainly once you enter a highway, to go anywhere on the highway system in a given country. So it's not sort of limited\nto LA to New York. We could change it\nand make it Seattle-Florida, that day, in real time. So you were going from LA to New York. Now go from LA to Toronto.\n\nCA: So leaving aside\nregulation for a second, in terms of the technology alone, the time when someone\nwill be able to buy one of your cars and literally just take the hands\noff the wheel and go to sleep and wake up and find that they've arrived, how far away is that, to do that safely?\n\nEM: I think that's about two years. So the real trick of it\nis not how do you make it work say 99.9 percent of the time, because, like, if a car crashes\none in a thousand times, then you're probably still not going\nto be comfortable falling asleep. You shouldn't be, certainly.\n\n(Laughter)\n\nIt's never going to be perfect. No system is going to be perfect, but if you say it's perhaps -- the car is unlikely to crash in a hundred lifetimes,\nor a thousand lifetimes, then people are like, OK, wow,\nif I were to live a thousand lives, I would still most likely\nnever experience a crash, then that's probably OK.\n\nCA: To sleep. I guess the big concern of yours\nis that people may actually get seduced too early\nto think that this is safe, and that you'll have some horrible\nincident happen that puts things back.\n\nEM: Well, I think that the autonomy system\nis likely to at least mitigate the crash, except in rare circumstances. The thing to appreciate\nabout vehicle safety is this is probabilistic. I mean, there's some chance that any time\na human driver gets in a car, that they will have an accident\nthat is their fault. It's never zero. So really the key threshold for autonomy is how much better does autonomy\nneed to be than a person before you can rely on it?\n\nCA: But once you get\nliterally safe hands-off driving, the power to disrupt\nthe whole industry seems massive, because at that point you've spoken\nof people being able to buy a car, drops you off at work,\nand then you let it go and provide a sort of Uber-like\nservice to other people, earn you money, maybe even cover the cost\nof your lease of that car, so you can kind of get a car for free. Is that really likely?\n\nEM: Yeah. Absolutely\nthis is what will happen. So there will be a shared autonomy fleet where you buy your car and you can choose\nto use that car exclusively, you could choose to have it be used\nonly by friends and family, only by other drivers\nwho are rated five star, you can choose to share it sometimes\nbut not other times. That's 100 percent what will occur. It's just a question of when.\n\nCA: Wow. So you mentioned the Semi and I think you're planning\nto announce this in September, but I'm curious whether there's\nanything you could show us today?\n\nEM: I will show you\na teaser shot of the truck.\n\n(Laughter)\n\nIt's alive.\n\nCA: OK.\n\nEM: That's definitely a case\nwhere we want to be cautious about the autonomy features. Yeah.\n\n(Laughter)\n\nCA: We can't see that much of it, but it doesn't look like\njust a little friendly neighborhood truck. It looks kind of badass. What sort of semi is this?\n\nEM: So this is a heavy duty,\nlong-range semitruck. So it's the highest weight capability and with long range. So essentially it's meant to alleviate\nthe heavy-duty trucking loads. And this is something which\npeople do not today think is possible. They think the truck doesn't have enough\npower or it doesn't have enough range, and then with the Tesla Semi we want to show that no, an electric truck actually can out-torque any diesel semi. And if you had a tug-of-war competition, the Tesla Semi\nwill tug the diesel semi uphill.\n\n(Laughter)\n\n(Applause)\n\nCA: That's pretty cool.\nAnd short term, these aren't driverless. These are going to be trucks\nthat truck drivers want to drive.\n\nEM: Yes. So what will be\nreally fun about this is you have a flat torque RPM curve\nwith an electric motor, whereas with a diesel motor or any kind\nof internal combustion engine car, you've got a torque RPM curve\nthat looks like a hill. So this will be a very spry truck. You can drive this\naround like a sports car. There's no gears.\nIt's, like, single speed.\n\nCA: There's a great movie\nto be made here somewhere. I don't know what it is\nand I don't know that it ends well, but it's a great movie.\n\n(Laughter)\n\nEM: It's quite bizarre test-driving. When I was driving the test prototype\nfor the first truck. It's really weird,\nbecause you're driving around and you're just so nimble,\nand you're in this giant truck.\n\nCA: Wait, you've\nalready driven a prototype?\n\nEM: Yeah, I drove it\naround the parking lot, and I was like, this is crazy.\n\nCA: Wow. This is no vaporware.\n\nEM: It's just like,\ndriving this giant truck and making these mad maneuvers.\n\nCA: This is cool.\nOK, from a really badass picture to a kind of less badass picture. This is just a cute house\nfrom \"Desperate Housewives\" or something. What on earth is going on here?\n\nEM: Well, this illustrates\nthe picture of the future that I think is how things will evolve. You've got an electric car\nin the driveway. If you look in between\nthe electric car and the house, there are actually three Powerwalls\nstacked up against the side of the house, and then that house roof is a solar roof. So that's an actual solar glass roof.\n\nCA: OK.\n\nEM: That's a picture of a real --\nwell, admittedly, it's a real fake house. That's a real fake house.\n\n(Laughter)\n\nCA: So these roof tiles, some of them have in them\nbasically solar power, the ability to --\n\nEM: Yeah. Solar glass tiles where you can adjust\nthe texture and the color to a very fine-grained level, and then there's\nsort of microlouvers in the glass, such that when you're looking\nat the roof from street level or close to street level, all the tiles look the same whether there is a solar cell\nbehind it or not. So you have an even color from the ground level. If you were to look at it\nfrom a helicopter, you would be actually able\nto look through and see that some of the glass tiles have\na solar cell behind them and some do not. You can't tell from street level.\n\nCA: You put them in the ones\nthat are likely to see a lot of sun, and that makes these roofs\nsuper affordable, right? They're not that much more expensive\nthan just tiling the roof.\n\nEM: Yeah. We're very confident\nthat the cost of the roof plus the cost of electricity -- A solar glass roof will be less\nthan the cost of a normal roof plus the cost of electricity. So in other words, this will be economically a no-brainer, we think it will look great, and it will last -- We thought about having\nthe warranty be infinity, but then people thought, well, that might sound\nlike were just talking rubbish, but actually this is toughened glass. Well after the house has collapsed and there's nothing there, the glass tiles will still be there.\n\n(Applause)\n\nCA: I mean, this is cool. So you're rolling this out\nin a couple week's time, I think, with four different roofing types.\n\nEM: Yeah, we're starting off\nwith two, two initially, and the second two\nwill be introduced early next year.\n\nCA: And what's the scale of ambition here? How many houses do you believe\ncould end up having this type of roofing?\n\nEM: I think eventually almost all houses will have a solar roof. The thing is to consider\nthe time scale here to be probably on the order of 40 or 50 years. So on average, a roof\nis replaced every 20 to 25 years. But you don't start replacing\nall roofs immediately. But eventually,\nif you say were to fast-forward to say 15 years from now, it will be unusual to have a roof\nthat does not have solar.\n\nCA: Is there a mental model thing\nthat people don't get here that because of the shift in the cost,\nthe economics of solar power, most houses actually have\nenough sunlight on their roof pretty much to power all of their needs. If you could capture the power, it could pretty much\npower all their needs. You could go off-grid, kind of.\n\nEM: It depends on where you are and what the house size is\nrelative to the roof area, but it's a fair statement to say that most houses in the US\nhave enough roof area to power all the needs of the house.\n\nCA: So the key to the economics of the cars, the Semi, of these houses is the falling price\nof lithium-ion batteries, which you've made a huge bet on as Tesla. In many ways, that's almost\nthe core competency. And you've decided that to really, like, own that competency, you just have to build\nthe world's largest manufacturing plant to double the world's supply\nof lithium-ion batteries, with this guy. What is this?\n\nEM: Yeah, so that's the Gigafactory, progress so far on the Gigafactory. Eventually, you can sort of roughly see that there's sort of\na diamond shape overall, and when it's fully done,\nit'll look like a giant diamond, or that's the idea behind it, and it's aligned on true north. It's a small detail.\n\nCA: And capable of producing, eventually, like a hundred gigawatt hours\nof batteries a year.\n\nEM: A hundred gigawatt hours.\nWe think probably more, but yeah.\n\nCA: And they're actually\nbeing produced right now.\n\nEM: They're in production already.\nCA: You guys put out this video. I mean, is that speeded up?\n\nEM: That's the slowed down version.\n\n(Laughter)\n\nCA: How fast does it actually go?\n\nEM: Well, when it's running at full speed, you can't actually see the cells\nwithout a strobe light. It's just blur.\n\n(Laughter)\n\nCA: One of your core ideas, Elon,\nabout what makes an exciting future is a future where we no longer\nfeel guilty about energy. Help us picture this. How many Gigafactories, if you like,\ndoes it take to get us there?\n\nEM: It's about a hundred, roughly. It's not 10, it's not a thousand. Most likely a hundred.\n\nCA: See, I find this amazing. You can picture what it would take to move the world\noff this vast fossil fuel thing. It's like you're building one, it costs five billion dollars, or whatever, five to 10 billion dollars. Like, it's kind of cool\nthat you can picture that project. And you're planning to do, at Tesla --\nannounce another two this year.\n\nEM: I think we'll announce locations for somewhere between two\nand four Gigafactories later this year. Yeah, probably four.\n\nCA: Whoa.\n\n(Applause) No more teasing from you for here? Like -- where, continent? You can say no.\n\nEM: We need to address a global market.\n\nCA: OK.\n\n(Laughter)\n\nThis is cool. I think we should talk for -- Actually, global market. I'm going to ask you one question\nabout politics, only one. I'm kind of sick of politics,\nbut I do want to ask you this. You're on a body now\ngiving advice to a guy --\n\nEM: Who?\n\nCA: Who has said he doesn't\nreally believe in climate change, and there's a lot of people out there\nwho think you shouldn't be doing that. They'd like you to walk away from that. What would you say to them?\n\nEM: Well, I think that first of all, I'm just on two advisory councils where the format consists\nof going around the room and asking people's opinion on things, and so there's like a meeting\nevery month or two. That's the sum total of my contribution. But I think to the degree\nthat there are people in the room who are arguing in favor\nof doing something about climate change, or social issues, I've used the meetings I've had thus far to argue in favor of immigration\nand in favor of climate change.\n\n(Applause)\n\nAnd if I hadn't done that, that wasn't on the agenda before. So maybe nothing will happen,\nbut at least the words were said.\n\nCA: OK.\n\n(Applause)\n\nSo let's talk SpaceX and Mars. Last time you were here, you spoke about what seemed like\na kind of incredibly ambitious dream to develop rockets\nthat were actually reusable. And you've only gone and done it.\n\nEM: Finally. It took a long time.\n\nCA: Talk us through this.\nWhat are we looking at here?\n\nEM: So this is one of our rocket boosters coming back from\nvery high and fast in space. So just delivered the upper stage at high velocity. I think this might have been\nat sort of Mach 7 or so, delivery of the upper stage.\n\n(Applause)\n\nCA: So that was a sped-up --\n\nEM: That was the slowed down version.\n\n(Laughter)\n\nCA: I thought that was\nthe sped-up version. But I mean, that's amazing, and several of these failed before you finally\nfigured out how to do it, but now you've done this,\nwhat, five or six times?\n\nEM: We're at eight or nine.\n\nCA: And for the first time, you've actually reflown\none of the rockets that landed.\n\nEM: Yeah, so we landed the rocket booster and then prepped it for flight again\nand flew it again, so it's the first reflight\nof an orbital booster where that reflight is relevant. So it's important to appreciate\nthat reusability is only relevant if it is rapid and complete. So like an aircraft or a car, the reusability is rapid and complete. You do not send your aircraft\nto Boeing in-between flights.\n\nCA: Right. So this is allowing you\nto dream of this really ambitious idea of sending many, many, many people to Mars in, what, 10 or 20 years time, I guess.\n\nEM: Yeah.\n\nCA: And you've designed\nthis outrageous rocket to do it. Help us understand\nthe scale of this thing.\n\nEM: Well, visually\nyou can see that's a person. Yeah, and that's the vehicle.\n\n(Laughter)\n\nCA: So if that was a skyscraper, that's like, did I read that,\na 40-story skyscraper?\n\nEM: Probably a little more, yeah. The thrust level of this is really -- This configuration is about four times\nthe thrust of the Saturn V moon rocket.\n\nCA: Four times the thrust of the biggest\nrocket humanity ever created before.\n\nEM: Yeah. Yeah.\n\nCA: As one does.\nEM: Yeah.\n\n(Laughter)\n\nIn units of 747, a 747 is only about\na quarter of a million pounds of thrust, so for every 10 million pounds of thrust, there's 40 747s. So this would be the thrust equivalent\nof 120 747s, with all engines blazing.\n\nCA: And so even with a machine\ndesigned to escape Earth's gravity, I think you told me last time this thing could actually\ntake a fully loaded 747, people, cargo, everything, into orbit.\n\nEM: Exactly. This can take\na fully loaded 747 with maximum fuel, maximum passengers,\nmaximum cargo on the 747 -- this can take it as cargo.\n\nCA: So based on this, you presented recently\nthis Interplanetary Transport System which is visualized this way. This is a scene you picture in, what,\n30 years time? 20 years time? People walking into this rocket.\n\nEM: I'm hopeful it's sort of\nan eight- to 10-year time frame. Aspirationally, that's our target. Our internal targets\nare more aggressive, but I think --\n\n(Laughter)\n\nCA: OK.\n\nEM: While vehicle seems quite large and is large by comparison\nwith other rockets, I think the future spacecraft will make this look like a rowboat. The future spaceships\nwill be truly enormous.\n\nCA: Why, Elon? Why do we need to build a city on Mars with a million people\non it in your lifetime, which I think is kind of\nwhat you've said you'd love to do?\n\nEM: I think it's important to have a future that is inspiring and appealing. I just think there have to be reasons that you get up in the morning\nand you want to live. Like, why do you want to live? What's the point? What inspires you? What do you love about the future? And if we're not out there, if the future does not include\nbeing out there among the stars and being a multiplanet species, I find that it's incredibly depressing if that's not the future\nthat we're going to have.\n\n(Applause)\n\nCA: People want to position this\nas an either or, that there are so many desperate things\nhappening on the planet now from climate to poverty\nto, you know, you pick your issue. And this feels like a distraction. You shouldn't be thinking about this. You should be solving what's here and now. And to be fair, you've done\na fair old bit to actually do that with your work on sustainable energy. But why not just do that?\n\nEM: I think there's -- I look at the future\nfrom the standpoint of probabilities. It's like a branching\nstream of probabilities, and there are actions that we can take\nthat affect those probabilities or that accelerate one thing\nor slow down another thing. I may introduce something new\nto the probability stream. Sustainable energy\nwill happen no matter what. If there was no Tesla,\nif Tesla never existed, it would have to happen out of necessity. It's tautological. If you don't have sustainable energy,\nit means you have unsustainable energy. Eventually you will run out, and the laws of economics\nwill drive civilization towards sustainable energy, inevitably. The fundamental value\nof a company like Tesla is the degree to which it accelerates\nthe advent of sustainable energy, faster than it would otherwise occur.\n\nSo when I think, like, what is the fundamental good\nof a company like Tesla, I would say, hopefully, if it accelerated that by a decade,\npotentially more than a decade, that would be quite a good thing to occur. That's what I consider to be the fundamental\naspirational good of Tesla.\n\nThen there's becoming a multiplanet\nspecies and space-faring civilization. This is not inevitable. It's very important to appreciate\nthis is not inevitable. The sustainable energy future\nI think is largely inevitable, but being a space-faring civilization\nis definitely not inevitable. If you look at the progress in space, in 1969 you were able\nto send somebody to the moon. 1969. Then we had the Space Shuttle. The Space Shuttle could only\ntake people to low Earth orbit. Then the Space Shuttle retired, and the United States\ncould take no one to orbit. So that's the trend. The trend is like down to nothing. People are mistaken when they think that technology\njust automatically improves. It does not automatically improve. It only improves if a lot of people\nwork very hard to make it better, and actually it will, I think,\nby itself degrade, actually. You look at great civilizations\nlike Ancient Egypt, and they were able to make the pyramids, and they forgot how to do that. And then the Romans,\nthey built these incredible aqueducts. They forgot how to do it.\n\nCA: Elon, it almost seems,\nlistening to you and looking at the different\nthings you've done, that you've got this unique\ndouble motivation on everything that I find so interesting. One is this desire to work\nfor humanity's long-term good. The other is the desire\nto do something exciting. And often it feels like you feel\nlike you need the one to drive the other. With Tesla, you want\nto have sustainable energy, so you made these super sexy,\nexciting cars to do it. Solar energy, we need to get there, so we need to make these beautiful roofs. We haven't even spoken\nabout your newest thing, which we don't have time to do, but you want to save humanity from bad AI, and so you're going to create\nthis really cool brain-machine interface to give us all infinite memory\nand telepathy and so forth. And on Mars, it feels\nlike what you're saying is, yeah, we need to save humanity and have a backup plan, but also we need to inspire humanity, and this is a way to inspire.\n\nEM: I think the value\nof beauty and inspiration is very much underrated, no question. But I want to be clear. I'm not trying to be anyone's savior. That is not the -- I'm just trying to think about the future and not be sad.\n\n(Applause)\n\nCA: Beautiful statement. I think everyone here would agree that it is not -- None of this is going\nto happen inevitably. The fact that in your mind,\nyou dream this stuff, you dream stuff that no one else\nwould dare dream, or no one else\nwould be capable of dreaming at the level of complexity that you do. The fact that you do that, Elon Musk,\nis a really remarkable thing. Thank you for helping us all\nto dream a bit bigger.\n\nEM: But you'll tell me if it ever\nstarts getting genuinely insane, right?\n\n(Laughter)\n\nCA: Thank you, Elon Musk.\nThat was really, really fantastic. That was really fantastic.\n\n(Applause)"},"languages":["en"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":"https://www.ted.com/talks/elon_musk_the_future_we_re_building_and_boring/transcript"},{"id":"ted-2017-04-28","type":"interview","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJOefM3yB_8","title":"TED","titles":{"en":"TED","de":"TED","fr":"TED"},"date":"2017-04-28","summary":"Conversation with Chris Anderson about the Boring Company tunnels, Tesla, autonomy and Mars.","text":"Chris Anderson: Elon, hey, welcome back to TED. It's great to have you here. 0:15 Elon Musk: Thanks for having me. CA: So, in the next half hour or so, we're going to spend some time exploring your vision for what an exciting future might look like, which I guess makes the first question a little ironic: Why are you boring? EM: Yeah. I ask myself that frequently.\n\nWe're trying to dig a hole under LA, and this is to create the beginning of what will hopefully be a 3D network of tunnels to alleviate congestion. So right now, one of the most soul-destroying things is traffic. It affects people in every part of the world. It takes away so much of your life. It's horrible. It's particularly horrible in LA. (Laughter) CA: I think you've brought with you the first visualization that's been shown of this.\n\nCan I show this? EM: Yeah, absolutely. So this is the first time — Just to show what we're talking about. So a couple of key things that are important in having a 3D tunnel network. First of all, you have to be able to integrate the entrance and exit of the tunnel seamlessly into the fabric of the city.\n\nSo by having an elevator, sort of a car skate, that's on an elevator, you can integrate the entrance and exits to the tunnel network just by using two parking spaces. And then the car gets on a skate. There's no speed limit here, so we're designing this to be able to operate at 200 kilometers an hour. CA: How much? EM: 200 kilometers an hour, or about 130 miles per hour.\n\nSo you should be able to get from, say, Westwood to LAX in six minutes — five, six minutes. (Applause) CA: So possibly, initially done, it's like on a sort of toll road-type basis. EM: Yeah. CA: Which, I guess, alleviates some traffic from the surface streets as well. EM: So, I don't know if people noticed it in the video, but there's no real limit to how many levels of tunnel you can have. You can go much further deep than you can go up.\n\nThe deepest mines are much deeper than the tallest buildings are tall, so you can alleviate any arbitrary level of urban congestion with a 3D tunnel network. This is a very important point. So a key rebuttal to the tunnels is that if you add one layer of tunnels, that will simply alleviate congestion, it will get used up, and then you'll be back where you started, back with congestion.\n\nBut you can go to any arbitrary number of tunnels, any number of levels. CA: But people — seen traditionally, it's incredibly expensive to dig, and that would block this idea. EM: Yeah. Well, they're right. To give you an example, the LA subway extension, which is — I think it's a two-and-a-half mile extension that was just completed for two billion dollars. So it's roughly a billion dollars a mile to do the subway extension in LA.\n\nAnd this is not the highest utility subway in the world. So yeah, it's quite difficult to dig tunnels normally. I think we need to have at least a tenfold improvement in the cost per mile of tunneling. CA: And how could you achieve that? 3:47 EM: Actually, if you just do two things, you can get to approximately an order of magnitude improvement, and I think you can go beyond that.\n\nSo the first thing to do is to cut the tunnel diameter by a factor of two or more. So a single road lane tunnel according to regulations has to be 26 feet, maybe 28 feet in diameter to allow for crashes and emergency vehicles and sufficient ventilation for combustion engine cars.\n\nBut if you shrink that diameter to what we're attempting, which is 12 feet, which is plenty to get an electric skate through, you drop the diameter by a factor of two and the cross-sectional area by a factor of four, and the tunneling cost scales with the cross-sectional area. So that's roughly a half-order of magnitude improvement right there.\n\nThen tunneling machines currently tunnel for half the time, then they stop, and then the rest of the time is putting in reinforcements for the tunnel wall. So if you design the machine instead to do continuous tunneling and reinforcing, that will give you a factor of two improvement. Combine that and that's a factor of eight.\n\nAlso these machines are far from being at their power or thermal limits, so you can jack up the power to the machine substantially. I think you can get at least a factor of two, maybe a factor of four or five improvement on top of that.\n\nSo I think there's a fairly straightforward series of steps to get somewhere in excess of an order of magnitude improvement in the cost per mile, and our target actually is — we've got a pet snail called Gary, this is from Gary the snail from \"South Park,\" I mean, sorry, \"SpongeBob SquarePants.\" 5:28 (Laughter) 5:30 So Gary is capable of — currently he's capable of going 14 times faster than a tunnel-boring machine.\n\n5:40 (Laughter) 5:43 CA: You want to beat Gary. 5:45 EM: We want to beat Gary. 5:46 (Laughter) 5:48 He's not a patient little fellow, and that will be victory. Victory is beating the snail. 5:56 CA: But a lot of people imagining, dreaming about future cities, they imagine that actually the solution is flying cars, drones, etc. You go aboveground. Why isn't that a better solution? You save all that tunneling cost. 6:09 EM: Right.\n\nI'm in favor of flying things. Obviously, I do rockets, so I like things that fly. This is not some inherent bias against flying things, but there is a challenge with flying cars in that they'll be quite noisy, the wind force generated will be very high. Let's just say that if something's flying over your head, a whole bunch of flying cars going all over the place, that is not an anxiety-reducing situation.\n\n6:42 (Laughter) 6:44 You don't think to yourself, \"Well, I feel better about today.\" You're thinking, \"Did they service their hubcap, or is it going to come off and guillotine me?\" Things like that. 6:59 CA: So you've got this vision of future cities with these rich, 3D networks of tunnels underneath. Is there a tie-in here with Hyperloop? Could you apply these tunnels to use for this Hyperloop idea you released a few years ago.\n\n7:13 EM: Yeah, so we've been sort of puttering around with the Hyperloop stuff for a while. We built a Hyperloop test track adjacent to SpaceX, just for a student competition, to encourage innovative ideas in transport. And it actually ends up being the biggest vacuum chamber in the world after the Large Hadron Collider, by volume.\n\nSo it was quite fun to do that, but it was kind of a hobby thing, and then we think we might — so we've built a little pusher car to push the student pods, but we're going to try seeing how fast we can make the pusher go if it's not pushing something. So we're cautiously optimistic we'll be able to be faster than the world's fastest bullet train even in a . 8-mile stretch. 8:11 CA: Whoa. Good brakes. 8:13 EM: Yeah, I mean, it's — yeah.\n\nIt's either going to smash into tiny pieces or go quite fast. 8:20 CA: But you can picture, then, a Hyperloop in a tunnel running quite long distances. 8:26 EM: Exactly. And looking at tunneling technology, it turns out that in order to make a tunnel, you have to — In order to seal against the water table, you've got to typically design a tunnel wall to be good to about five or six atmospheres.\n\nSo to go to vacuum is only one atmosphere, or near-vacuum. So actually, it sort of turns out that automatically, if you build a tunnel that is good enough to resist the water table, it is automatically capable of holding vacuum. 9:01 CA: Huh. 9:03 EM: So, yeah. 9:04 CA: And so you could actually picture, what kind of length tunnel is in Elon's future to running Hyperloop? 9:12 EM: I think there's no real length limit.\n\nYou could dig as much as you want. I think if you were to do something like a DC-to-New York Hyperloop, I think you'd probably want to go underground the entire way because it's a high-density area. You're going under a lot of buildings and houses, and if you go deep enough, you cannot detect the tunnel. Sometimes people think, well, it's going to be pretty annoying to have a tunnel dug under my house.\n\nLike, if that tunnel is dug more than about three or four tunnel diameters beneath your house, you will not be able to detect it being dug at all. In fact, if you're able to detect the tunnel being dug, whatever device you are using, you can get a lot of money for that device from the Israeli military, who is trying to detect tunnels from Hamas, and from the US Customs and Border patrol that try and detect drug tunnels.\n\nSo the reality is that earth is incredibly good at absorbing vibrations, and once the tunnel depth is below a certain level, it is undetectable. Maybe if you have a very sensitive seismic instrument, you might be able to detect it. 10:28 CA: So you've started a new company to do this called The Boring Company. Very nice. Very funny. 10:34 (Laughter) 10:35 EM: What's funny about that? 10:37 (Laughter) 10:39 CA: How much of your time is this?\n\n10:42 EM: It's maybe ... two or three percent. 10:48 CA: You've bought a hobby. This is what an Elon Musk hobby looks like. 10:52 (Laughter) 10:53 EM: I mean, it really is, like — This is basically interns and people doing it part time. We bought some second-hand machinery.\n\nIt's kind of puttering along, but it's making good progress, so — 11:11 CA: So an even bigger part of your time is being spent on electrifying cars and transport through Tesla. Is one of the motivations for the tunneling project the realization that actually, in a world where cars are electric and where they're self-driving, there may end up being more cars on the roads on any given hour than there are now? 11:33 EM: Yeah, exactly.\n\nA lot of people think that when you make cars autonomous, they'll be able to go faster and that will alleviate congestion. And to some degree that will be true, but once you have shared autonomy where it's much cheaper to go by car and you can go point to point, the affordability of going in a car will be better than that of a bus. Like, it will cost less than a bus ticket.\n\nSo the amount of driving that will occur will be much greater with shared autonomy, and actually traffic will get far worse. 12:11 CA: You started Tesla with the goal of persuading the world that electrification was the future of cars, and a few years ago, people were laughing at you. Now, not so much. 12:23 EM: OK. 12:24 (Laughter) 12:26 I don't know.\n\n12:29 CA: But isn't it true that pretty much every auto manufacturer has announced serious electrification plans for the short- to medium-term future? 12:39 EM: Yeah. Yeah. I think almost every automaker has some electric vehicle program. They vary in seriousness. Some are very serious about transitioning entirely to electric, and some are just dabbling in it.\n\nAnd some, amazingly, are still pursuing fuel cells, but I think that won't last much longer. 13:00 CA: But isn't there a sense, though, Elon, where you can now just declare victory and say, you know, \"We did it.\" Let the world electrify, and you go on and focus on other stuff? 13:12 EM: Yeah. I intend to stay with Tesla as far into the future as I can imagine, and there are a lot of exciting things that we have coming.\n\nObviously the Model 3 is coming soon. We'll be unveiling the Tesla Semi truck. 13:31 CA: OK, we're going to come to this. So Model 3, it's supposed to be coming in July-ish. 13:38 EM: Yeah, it's looking quite good for starting production in July. 13:42 CA: Wow. One of the things that people are so excited about is the fact that it's got autopilot. And you put out this video a while back showing what that technology would look like.\n\n13:57 EM: Yeah. There's obviously autopilot in Model S right now. What are we seeing here? 14:02 EM: Yeah, so this is using only cameras and GPS. So there's no LIDAR or radar being used here. This is just using passive optical, which is essentially what a person uses. The whole road system is meant to be navigated with passive optical, or cameras, and so once you solve cameras or vision, then autonomy is solved.\n\nIf you don't solve vision, it's not solved. So that's why our focus is so heavily on having a vision neural net that's very effective for road conditions. 14:42 CA: Right. Many other people are going the LIDAR route. You want cameras plus radar is most of it. 14:47 EM: You can absolutely be superhuman with just cameras. Like, you can probably do it ten times better than humans would, just cameras.\n\n14:55 CA: So the new cars being sold right now have eight cameras in them. They can't yet do what that showed. When will they be able to? 15:07 EM: I think we're still on track for being able to go cross-country from LA to New York by the end of the year, fully autonomous. 15:17 CA: OK, so by the end of the year, you're saying, someone's going to sit in a Tesla without touching the steering wheel, tap in \"New York,\" off it goes. 15:27 EM: Yeah.\n\n15:28 CA: Won't ever have to touch the wheel — by the end of 2017. 15:33 EM: Yeah. Essentially, November or December of this year, we should be able to go all the way from a parking lot in California to a parking lot in New York, no controls touched at any point during the entire journey. 15:47 (Applause) 15:49 CA: Amazing. But part of that is possible because you've already got a fleet of Teslas driving all these roads.\n\nYou're accumulating a huge amount of data of that national road system. 16:02 EM: Yes, but the thing that will be interesting is that I'm actually fairly confident it will be able to do that route even if you change the route dynamically.\n\nSo, it's fairly easy — If you say I'm going to be really good at one specific route, that's one thing, but it should be able to go, really be very good, certainly once you enter a highway, to go anywhere on the highway system in a given country. So it's not sort of limited to LA to New York. We could change it and make it Seattle-Florida, that day, in real time. So you were going from LA to New York. Now go from LA to Toronto.\n\n16:49 CA: So leaving aside regulation for a second, in terms of the technology alone, the time when someone will be able to buy one of your cars and literally just take the hands off the wheel and go to sleep and wake up and find that they've arrived, how far away is that, to do that safely? 17:06 EM: I think that's about two years. So the real trick of it is not how do you make it work say 99.\n\n9 percent of the time, because, like, if a car crashes one in a thousand times, then you're probably still not going to be comfortable falling asleep. You shouldn't be, certainly. 17:28 (Laughter) 17:31 It's never going to be perfect.\n\nNo system is going to be perfect, but if you say it's perhaps — the car is unlikely to crash in a hundred lifetimes, or a thousand lifetimes, then people are like, OK, wow, if I were to live a thousand lives, I would still most likely never experience a crash, then that's probably OK. 17:53 CA: To sleep.\n\nI guess the big concern of yours is that people may actually get seduced too early to think that this is safe, and that you'll have some horrible incident happen that puts things back. 18:04 EM: Well, I think that the autonomy system is likely to at least mitigate the crash, except in rare circumstances. The thing to appreciate about vehicle safety is this is probabilistic.\n\nI mean, there's some chance that any time a human driver gets in a car, that they will have an accident that is their fault. It's never zero. So really the key threshold for autonomy is how much better does autonomy need to be than a person before you can rely on it?\n\n18:38 CA: But once you get literally safe hands-off driving, the power to disrupt the whole industry seems massive, because at that point you've spoken of people being able to buy a car, drops you off at work, and then you let it go and provide a sort of Uber-like service to other people, earn you money, maybe even cover the cost of your lease of that car, so you can kind of get a car for free. Is that really likely? 19:02 EM: Yeah.\n\nAbsolutely this is what will happen. So there will be a shared autonomy fleet where you buy your car and you can choose to use that car exclusively, you could choose to have it be used only by friends and family, only by other drivers who are rated five star, you can choose to share it sometimes but not other times. That's 100 percent what will occur. It's just a question of when. 19:32 CA: Wow.\n\nSo you mentioned the Semi and I think you're planning to announce this in September, but I'm curious whether there's anything you could show us today? 19:42 EM: I will show you a teaser shot of the truck. 19:46 (Laughter) 19:48 It's alive. 19:50 CA: OK. 19:51 EM: That's definitely a case where we want to be cautious about the autonomy features. Yeah.\n\n19:58 (Laughter) 20:00 CA: We can't see that much of it, but it doesn't look like just a little friendly neighborhood truck. It looks kind of badass. What sort of semi is this? 20:10 EM: So this is a heavy duty, long-range semitruck. So it's the highest weight capability and with long range. So essentially it's meant to alleviate the heavy-duty trucking loads. And this is something which people do not today think is possible.\n\nThey think the truck doesn't have enough power or it doesn't have enough range, and then with the Tesla Semi we want to show that no, an electric truck actually can out-torque any diesel semi. And if you had a tug-of-war competition, the Tesla Semi will tug the diesel semi uphill. 20:57 (Laughter) 21:00 (Applause) 21:02 CA: That's pretty cool. And short term, these aren't driverless. These are going to be trucks that truck drivers want to drive.\n\n21:09 EM: Yes. So what will be really fun about this is you have a flat torque RPM curve with an electric motor, whereas with a diesel motor or any kind of internal combustion engine car, you've got a torque RPM curve that looks like a hill. So this will be a very spry truck. You can drive this around like a sports car. There's no gears. It's, like, single speed. 21:33 CA: There's a great movie to be made here somewhere.\n\nI don't know what it is and I don't know that it ends well, but it's a great movie. 21:39 (Laughter) 21:40 EM: It's quite bizarre test-driving. When I was driving the test prototype for the first truck. It's really weird, because you're driving around and you're just so nimble, and you're in this giant truck. 21:52 CA: Wait, you've already driven a prototype? 21:56 EM: Yeah, I drove it around the parking lot, and I was like, this is crazy.\n\n21:59 CA: Wow. This is no vaporware. 22:02 EM: It's just like, driving this giant truck and making these mad maneuvers. 22:06 CA: This is cool. OK, from a really badass picture to a kind of less badass picture. This is just a cute house from \"Desperate Housewives\" or something. What on earth is going on here? 22:17 EM: Well, this illustrates the picture of the future that I think is how things will evolve.\n\nYou've got an electric car in the driveway. If you look in between the electric car and the house, there are actually three Powerwalls stacked up against the side of the house, and then that house roof is a solar roof. So that's an actual solar glass roof. 22:38 CA: OK. 22:39 EM: That's a picture of a real — well, admittedly, it's a real fake house. That's a real fake house.\n\n22:45 (Laughter) 22:48 CA: So these roof tiles, some of them have in them basically solar power, the ability to — 22:56 EM: Yeah. Solar glass tiles where you can adjust the texture and the color to a very fine-grained level, and then there's sort of microlouvers in the glass, such that when you're looking at the roof from street level or close to street level, all the tiles look the same whether there is a solar cell behind it or not.\n\nSo you have an even color from the ground level. If you were to look at it from a helicopter, you would be actually able to look through and see that some of the glass tiles have a solar cell behind them and some do not. You can't tell from street level. 23:42 CA: You put them in the ones that are likely to see a lot of sun, and that makes these roofs super affordable, right? They're not that much more expensive than just tiling the roof.\n\n23:50 EM: Yeah. We're very confident that the cost of the roof plus the cost of electricity — A solar glass roof will be less than the cost of a normal roof plus the cost of electricity.\n\nSo in other words, this will be economically a no-brainer, we think it will look great, and it will last — We thought about having the warranty be infinity, but then people thought, well, that might sound like were just talking rubbish, but actually this is toughened glass. Well after the house has collapsed and there's nothing there, the glass tiles will still be there. 24:35 (Applause) 24:37 CA: I mean, this is cool.\n\nSo you're rolling this out in a couple week's time, I think, with four different roofing types. 24:44 EM: Yeah, we're starting off with two, two initially, and the second two will be introduced early next year. 24:50 CA: And what's the scale of ambition here? How many houses do you believe could end up having this type of roofing? 24:58 EM: I think eventually almost all houses will have a solar roof.\n\nThe thing is to consider the time scale here to be probably on the order of 40 or 50 years. So on average, a roof is replaced every 20 to 25 years. But you don't start replacing all roofs immediately. But eventually, if you say were to fast-forward to say 15 years from now, it will be unusual to have a roof that does not have solar.\n\n25:36 CA: Is there a mental model thing that people don't get here that because of the shift in the cost, the economics of solar power, most houses actually have enough sunlight on their roof pretty much to power all of their needs. If you could capture the power, it could pretty much power all their needs. You could go off-grid, kind of.\n\n25:55 EM: It depends on where you are and what the house size is relative to the roof area, but it's a fair statement to say that most houses in the US have enough roof area to power all the needs of the house. 26:10 CA: So the key to the economics of the cars, the Semi, of these houses is the falling price of lithium-ion batteries, which you've made a huge bet on as Tesla. In many ways, that's almost the core competency.\n\nAnd you've decided that to really, like, own that competency, you just have to build the world's largest manufacturing plant to double the world's supply of lithium-ion batteries, with this guy. What is this? 26:43 EM: Yeah, so that's the Gigafactory, progress so far on the Gigafactory.\n\nEventually, you can sort of roughly see that there's sort of a diamond shape overall, and when it's fully done, it'll look like a giant diamond, or that's the idea behind it, and it's aligned on true north. It's a small detail. 27:04 CA: And capable of producing, eventually, like a hundred gigawatt hours of batteries a year. 27:11 EM: A hundred gigawatt hours. We think probably more, but yeah.\n\n27:14 CA: And they're actually being produced right now. 27:17 EM: They're in production already. CA: You guys put out this video. I mean, is that speeded up? 27:21 EM: That's the slowed down version. 27:23 (Laughter) 27:25 CA: How fast does it actually go? 27:27 EM: Well, when it's running at full speed, you can't actually see the cells without a strobe light. It's just blur.\n\n27:35 (Laughter) 27:39 CA: One of your core ideas, Elon, about what makes an exciting future is a future where we no longer feel guilty about energy. Help us picture this. How many Gigafactories, if you like, does it take to get us there? 27:52 EM: It's about a hundred, roughly. It's not 10, it's not a thousand. Most likely a hundred. 27:59 CA: See, I find this amazing.\n\nYou can picture what it would take to move the world off this vast fossil fuel thing. It's like you're building one, it costs five billion dollars, or whatever, five to 10 billion dollars. Like, it's kind of cool that you can picture that project. And you're planning to do, at Tesla — announce another two this year. 28:24 EM: I think we'll announce locations for somewhere between two and four Gigafactories later this year. Yeah, probably four.\n\n28:33 CA: Whoa. 28:34 (Applause) No more teasing from you for here? Like — where, continent? You can say no. 28:48 EM: We need to address a global market. 28:52 CA: OK. 28:53 (Laughter) 28:54 This is cool. I think we should talk for — Actually, double mark it. I'm going to ask you one question about politics, only one. I'm kind of sick of politics, but I do want to ask you this. You're on a body now giving advice to a guy — 29:18 EM: Who?\n\n29:20 CA: Who has said he doesn't really believe in climate change, and there's a lot of people out there who think you shouldn't be doing that. They'd like you to walk away from that. What would you say to them? 29:31 EM: Well, I think that first of all, I'm just on two advisory councils where the format consists of going around the room and asking people's opinion on things, and so there's like a meeting every month or two.\n\nThat's the sum total of my contribution. But I think to the degree that there are people in the room who are arguing in favor of doing something about climate change, or social issues, I've used the meetings I've had thus far to argue in favor of immigration and in favor of climate change. 30:13 (Applause) 30:15 And if I hadn't done that, that wasn't on the agenda before. So maybe nothing will happen, but at least the words were said.\n\n30:25 CA: OK. 30:26 (Applause) 30:30 So let's talk SpaceX and Mars. Last time you were here, you spoke about what seemed like a kind of incredibly ambitious dream to develop rockets that were actually reusable. And you've only gone and done it. 30:46 EM: Finally. It took a long time. 30:47 CA: Talk us through this. What are we looking at here? 30:50 EM: So this is one of our rocket boosters coming back from very high and fast in space.\n\nSo just delivered the upper stage at high velocity. I think this might have been at sort of Mach 7 or so, delivery of the upper stage. 31:09 (Applause) 31:12 CA: So that was a sped-up — 31:14 EM: That was the slowed down version. 31:16 (Laughter) 31:17 CA: I thought that was the sped-up version. But I mean, that's amazing, and several of these failed before you finally figured out how to do it, but now you've done this, what, five or six times?\n\n31:28 EM: We're at eight or nine. 31:31 CA: And for the first time, you've actually reflown one of the rockets that landed. 31:35 EM: Yeah, so we landed the rocket booster and then prepped it for flight again and flew it again, so it's the first reflight of an orbital booster where that reflight is relevant. So it's important to appreciate that reusability is only relevant if it is rapid and complete.\n\nSo like an aircraft or a car, the reusability is rapid and complete. You do not send your aircraft to Boeing in-between flights. 32:07 CA: Right. So this is allowing you to dream of this really ambitious idea of sending many, many, many people to Mars in, what, 10 or 20 years time, I guess. 32:17 EM: Yeah. 32:19 CA: And you've designed this outrageous rocket to do it. Help us understand the scale of this thing.\n\n32:24 EM: Well, visually you can see that's a person. Yeah, and that's the vehicle. 32:33 (Laughter) 32:35 CA: So if that was a skyscraper, that's like, did I read that, a 40-story skyscraper? 32:40 EM: Probably a little more, yeah. The thrust level of this is really — This configuration is about four times the thrust of the Saturn V moon rocket. 32:55 CA: Four times the thrust of the biggest rocket humanity ever created before. 33:00 EM: Yeah.\n\nYeah. 33:03 CA: As one does. EM: Yeah. 33:05 (Laughter) 33:08 In units of 747, a 747 is only about a quarter of a million pounds of thrust, so for every 10 million pounds of thrust, there's 40 747s. So this would be the thrust equivalent of 120 747s, with all engines blazing.\n\n33:25 CA: And so even with a machine designed to escape Earth's gravity, I think you told me last time this thing could actually take a fully loaded 747, people, cargo, everything, into orbit. 33:37 EM: Exactly. This can take a fully loaded 747 with maximum fuel, maximum passengers, maximum cargo on the 747 — this can take it as cargo.\n\n33:51 CA: So based on this, you presented recently this Interplanetary Transport System which is visualized this way. This is a scene you picture in, what, 30 years time? 20 years time? People walking into this rocket. 34:08 EM: I'm hopeful it's sort of an eight- to 10-year time frame. Aspirationally, that's our target. Our internal targets are more aggressive, but I think — 34:18 (Laughter) 34:22 CA: OK.\n\n34:23 EM: While vehicle seems quite large and is large by comparison with other rockets, I think the future spacecraft will make this look like a rowboat. The future spaceships will be truly enormous. 34:42 CA: Why, Elon? Why do we need to build a city on Mars with a million people on it in your lifetime, which I think is kind of what you've said you'd love to do? 34:55 EM: I think it's important to have a future that is inspiring and appealing.\n\nI just think there have to be reasons that you get up in the morning and you want to live. Like, why do you want to live? What's the point? What inspires you? What do you love about the future? And if we're not out there, if the future does not include being out there among the stars and being a multiplanet species, I find that it's incredibly depressing if that's not the future that we're going to have.\n\n35:26 (Applause) 35:31 CA: People want to position this as an either or, that there are so many desperate things happening on the planet now from climate to poverty to, you know, you pick your issue. And this feels like a distraction. You shouldn't be thinking about this. You should be solving what's here and now. And to be fair, you've done a fair old bit to actually do that with your work on sustainable energy. But why not just do that?\n\n35:58 EM: I think there's — I look at the future from the standpoint of probabilities. It's like a branching stream of probabilities, and there are actions that we can take that affect those probabilities or that accelerate one thing or slow down another thing. I may introduce something new to the probability stream. Sustainable energy will happen no matter what.\n\nIf there was no Tesla, if Tesla never existed, it would have to happen out of necessity. It's tautological. If you don't have sustainable energy, it means you have unsustainable energy. Eventually you will run out, and the laws of economics will drive civilization towards sustainable energy, inevitably.\n\nThe fundamental value of a company like Tesla is the degree to which it accelerates the advent of sustainable energy, faster than it would otherwise occur. 37:04 So when I think, like, what is the fundamental good of a company like Tesla, I would say, hopefully, if it accelerated that by a decade, potentially more than a decade, that would be quite a good thing to occur. That's what I consider to be the fundamental aspirational good of Tesla.\n\n37:24 Then there's becoming a multiplanet species and space-faring civilization. This is not inevitable. It's very important to appreciate this is not inevitable. The sustainable energy future I think is largely inevitable, but being a space-faring civilization is definitely not inevitable. If you look at the progress in space, in 1969 you were able to send somebody to the moon. 1969. Then we had the Space Shuttle.\n\nThe Space Shuttle could only take people to low Earth orbit. Then the Space Shuttle retired, and the United States could take no one to orbit. So that's the trend. The trend is like down to nothing. People are mistaken when they think that technology just automatically improves. It does not automatically improve. It only improves if a lot of people work very hard to make it better, and actually it will, I think, by itself degrade, actually.\n\nYou look at great civilizations like Ancient Egypt, and they were able to make the pyramids, and they forgot how to do that. And then the Romans, they built these incredible aqueducts. They forgot how to do it. 38:39 CA: Elon, it almost seems, listening to you and looking at the different things you've done, that you've got this unique double motivation on everything that I find so interesting.\n\nOne is this desire to work for humanity's long-term good. The other is the desire to do something exciting. And often it feels like you feel like you need the one to drive the other. With Tesla, you want to have sustainable energy, so you made these super sexy, exciting cars to do it. Solar energy, we need to get there, so we need to make these beautiful roofs.\n\nWe haven't even spoken about your newest thing, which we don't have time to do, but you want to save humanity from bad AI, and so you're going to create this really cool brain-machine interface to give us all infinite memory and telepathy and so forth. And on Mars, it feels like what you're saying is, yeah, we need to save humanity and have a backup plan, but also we need to inspire humanity, and this is a way to inspire.\n\n39:44 EM: I think the value of beauty and inspiration is very much underrated, no question. But I want to be clear. I'm not trying to be anyone's savior. That is not the — I'm just trying to think about the future and not be sad. 40:03 (Applause) 40:05 CA: Beautiful statement. I think everyone here would agree that it is not — None of this is going to happen inevitably.\n\nThe fact that in your mind, you dream this stuff, you dream stuff that no one else would dare dream, or no one else would be capable of dreaming at the level of complexity that you do. The fact that you do that, Elon Musk, is a really remarkable thing. Thank you for helping us all to dream a bit bigger. 40:33 EM: But you'll tell me if it ever starts getting genuinely insane, right? 40:36 (Laughter) 40:39 CA: Thank you, Elon Musk.\n\nThat was really, really fantastic. That was really fantastic. 40:44 (Applause)","textByLang":{"en":"Chris Anderson: Elon, hey, welcome back to TED. It's great to have you here. 0:15 Elon Musk: Thanks for having me. CA: So, in the next half hour or so, we're going to spend some time exploring your vision for what an exciting future might look like, which I guess makes the first question a little ironic: Why are you boring? EM: Yeah. I ask myself that frequently.\n\nWe're trying to dig a hole under LA, and this is to create the beginning of what will hopefully be a 3D network of tunnels to alleviate congestion. So right now, one of the most soul-destroying things is traffic. It affects people in every part of the world. It takes away so much of your life. It's horrible. It's particularly horrible in LA. (Laughter) CA: I think you've brought with you the first visualization that's been shown of this.\n\nCan I show this? EM: Yeah, absolutely. So this is the first time — Just to show what we're talking about. So a couple of key things that are important in having a 3D tunnel network. First of all, you have to be able to integrate the entrance and exit of the tunnel seamlessly into the fabric of the city.\n\nSo by having an elevator, sort of a car skate, that's on an elevator, you can integrate the entrance and exits to the tunnel network just by using two parking spaces. And then the car gets on a skate. There's no speed limit here, so we're designing this to be able to operate at 200 kilometers an hour. CA: How much? EM: 200 kilometers an hour, or about 130 miles per hour.\n\nSo you should be able to get from, say, Westwood to LAX in six minutes — five, six minutes. (Applause) CA: So possibly, initially done, it's like on a sort of toll road-type basis. EM: Yeah. CA: Which, I guess, alleviates some traffic from the surface streets as well. EM: So, I don't know if people noticed it in the video, but there's no real limit to how many levels of tunnel you can have. You can go much further deep than you can go up.\n\nThe deepest mines are much deeper than the tallest buildings are tall, so you can alleviate any arbitrary level of urban congestion with a 3D tunnel network. This is a very important point. So a key rebuttal to the tunnels is that if you add one layer of tunnels, that will simply alleviate congestion, it will get used up, and then you'll be back where you started, back with congestion.\n\nBut you can go to any arbitrary number of tunnels, any number of levels. CA: But people — seen traditionally, it's incredibly expensive to dig, and that would block this idea. EM: Yeah. Well, they're right. To give you an example, the LA subway extension, which is — I think it's a two-and-a-half mile extension that was just completed for two billion dollars. So it's roughly a billion dollars a mile to do the subway extension in LA.\n\nAnd this is not the highest utility subway in the world. So yeah, it's quite difficult to dig tunnels normally. I think we need to have at least a tenfold improvement in the cost per mile of tunneling. CA: And how could you achieve that? 3:47 EM: Actually, if you just do two things, you can get to approximately an order of magnitude improvement, and I think you can go beyond that.\n\nSo the first thing to do is to cut the tunnel diameter by a factor of two or more. So a single road lane tunnel according to regulations has to be 26 feet, maybe 28 feet in diameter to allow for crashes and emergency vehicles and sufficient ventilation for combustion engine cars.\n\nBut if you shrink that diameter to what we're attempting, which is 12 feet, which is plenty to get an electric skate through, you drop the diameter by a factor of two and the cross-sectional area by a factor of four, and the tunneling cost scales with the cross-sectional area. So that's roughly a half-order of magnitude improvement right there.\n\nThen tunneling machines currently tunnel for half the time, then they stop, and then the rest of the time is putting in reinforcements for the tunnel wall. So if you design the machine instead to do continuous tunneling and reinforcing, that will give you a factor of two improvement. Combine that and that's a factor of eight.\n\nAlso these machines are far from being at their power or thermal limits, so you can jack up the power to the machine substantially. I think you can get at least a factor of two, maybe a factor of four or five improvement on top of that.\n\nSo I think there's a fairly straightforward series of steps to get somewhere in excess of an order of magnitude improvement in the cost per mile, and our target actually is — we've got a pet snail called Gary, this is from Gary the snail from \"South Park,\" I mean, sorry, \"SpongeBob SquarePants.\" 5:28 (Laughter) 5:30 So Gary is capable of — currently he's capable of going 14 times faster than a tunnel-boring machine.\n\n5:40 (Laughter) 5:43 CA: You want to beat Gary. 5:45 EM: We want to beat Gary. 5:46 (Laughter) 5:48 He's not a patient little fellow, and that will be victory. Victory is beating the snail. 5:56 CA: But a lot of people imagining, dreaming about future cities, they imagine that actually the solution is flying cars, drones, etc. You go aboveground. Why isn't that a better solution? You save all that tunneling cost. 6:09 EM: Right.\n\nI'm in favor of flying things. Obviously, I do rockets, so I like things that fly. This is not some inherent bias against flying things, but there is a challenge with flying cars in that they'll be quite noisy, the wind force generated will be very high. Let's just say that if something's flying over your head, a whole bunch of flying cars going all over the place, that is not an anxiety-reducing situation.\n\n6:42 (Laughter) 6:44 You don't think to yourself, \"Well, I feel better about today.\" You're thinking, \"Did they service their hubcap, or is it going to come off and guillotine me?\" Things like that. 6:59 CA: So you've got this vision of future cities with these rich, 3D networks of tunnels underneath. Is there a tie-in here with Hyperloop? Could you apply these tunnels to use for this Hyperloop idea you released a few years ago.\n\n7:13 EM: Yeah, so we've been sort of puttering around with the Hyperloop stuff for a while. We built a Hyperloop test track adjacent to SpaceX, just for a student competition, to encourage innovative ideas in transport. And it actually ends up being the biggest vacuum chamber in the world after the Large Hadron Collider, by volume.\n\nSo it was quite fun to do that, but it was kind of a hobby thing, and then we think we might — so we've built a little pusher car to push the student pods, but we're going to try seeing how fast we can make the pusher go if it's not pushing something. So we're cautiously optimistic we'll be able to be faster than the world's fastest bullet train even in a . 8-mile stretch. 8:11 CA: Whoa. Good brakes. 8:13 EM: Yeah, I mean, it's — yeah.\n\nIt's either going to smash into tiny pieces or go quite fast. 8:20 CA: But you can picture, then, a Hyperloop in a tunnel running quite long distances. 8:26 EM: Exactly. And looking at tunneling technology, it turns out that in order to make a tunnel, you have to — In order to seal against the water table, you've got to typically design a tunnel wall to be good to about five or six atmospheres.\n\nSo to go to vacuum is only one atmosphere, or near-vacuum. So actually, it sort of turns out that automatically, if you build a tunnel that is good enough to resist the water table, it is automatically capable of holding vacuum. 9:01 CA: Huh. 9:03 EM: So, yeah. 9:04 CA: And so you could actually picture, what kind of length tunnel is in Elon's future to running Hyperloop? 9:12 EM: I think there's no real length limit.\n\nYou could dig as much as you want. I think if you were to do something like a DC-to-New York Hyperloop, I think you'd probably want to go underground the entire way because it's a high-density area. You're going under a lot of buildings and houses, and if you go deep enough, you cannot detect the tunnel. Sometimes people think, well, it's going to be pretty annoying to have a tunnel dug under my house.\n\nLike, if that tunnel is dug more than about three or four tunnel diameters beneath your house, you will not be able to detect it being dug at all. In fact, if you're able to detect the tunnel being dug, whatever device you are using, you can get a lot of money for that device from the Israeli military, who is trying to detect tunnels from Hamas, and from the US Customs and Border patrol that try and detect drug tunnels.\n\nSo the reality is that earth is incredibly good at absorbing vibrations, and once the tunnel depth is below a certain level, it is undetectable. Maybe if you have a very sensitive seismic instrument, you might be able to detect it. 10:28 CA: So you've started a new company to do this called The Boring Company. Very nice. Very funny. 10:34 (Laughter) 10:35 EM: What's funny about that? 10:37 (Laughter) 10:39 CA: How much of your time is this?\n\n10:42 EM: It's maybe ... two or three percent. 10:48 CA: You've bought a hobby. This is what an Elon Musk hobby looks like. 10:52 (Laughter) 10:53 EM: I mean, it really is, like — This is basically interns and people doing it part time. We bought some second-hand machinery.\n\nIt's kind of puttering along, but it's making good progress, so — 11:11 CA: So an even bigger part of your time is being spent on electrifying cars and transport through Tesla. Is one of the motivations for the tunneling project the realization that actually, in a world where cars are electric and where they're self-driving, there may end up being more cars on the roads on any given hour than there are now? 11:33 EM: Yeah, exactly.\n\nA lot of people think that when you make cars autonomous, they'll be able to go faster and that will alleviate congestion. And to some degree that will be true, but once you have shared autonomy where it's much cheaper to go by car and you can go point to point, the affordability of going in a car will be better than that of a bus. Like, it will cost less than a bus ticket.\n\nSo the amount of driving that will occur will be much greater with shared autonomy, and actually traffic will get far worse. 12:11 CA: You started Tesla with the goal of persuading the world that electrification was the future of cars, and a few years ago, people were laughing at you. Now, not so much. 12:23 EM: OK. 12:24 (Laughter) 12:26 I don't know.\n\n12:29 CA: But isn't it true that pretty much every auto manufacturer has announced serious electrification plans for the short- to medium-term future? 12:39 EM: Yeah. Yeah. I think almost every automaker has some electric vehicle program. They vary in seriousness. Some are very serious about transitioning entirely to electric, and some are just dabbling in it.\n\nAnd some, amazingly, are still pursuing fuel cells, but I think that won't last much longer. 13:00 CA: But isn't there a sense, though, Elon, where you can now just declare victory and say, you know, \"We did it.\" Let the world electrify, and you go on and focus on other stuff? 13:12 EM: Yeah. I intend to stay with Tesla as far into the future as I can imagine, and there are a lot of exciting things that we have coming.\n\nObviously the Model 3 is coming soon. We'll be unveiling the Tesla Semi truck. 13:31 CA: OK, we're going to come to this. So Model 3, it's supposed to be coming in July-ish. 13:38 EM: Yeah, it's looking quite good for starting production in July. 13:42 CA: Wow. One of the things that people are so excited about is the fact that it's got autopilot. And you put out this video a while back showing what that technology would look like.\n\n13:57 EM: Yeah. There's obviously autopilot in Model S right now. What are we seeing here? 14:02 EM: Yeah, so this is using only cameras and GPS. So there's no LIDAR or radar being used here. This is just using passive optical, which is essentially what a person uses. The whole road system is meant to be navigated with passive optical, or cameras, and so once you solve cameras or vision, then autonomy is solved.\n\nIf you don't solve vision, it's not solved. So that's why our focus is so heavily on having a vision neural net that's very effective for road conditions. 14:42 CA: Right. Many other people are going the LIDAR route. You want cameras plus radar is most of it. 14:47 EM: You can absolutely be superhuman with just cameras. Like, you can probably do it ten times better than humans would, just cameras.\n\n14:55 CA: So the new cars being sold right now have eight cameras in them. They can't yet do what that showed. When will they be able to? 15:07 EM: I think we're still on track for being able to go cross-country from LA to New York by the end of the year, fully autonomous. 15:17 CA: OK, so by the end of the year, you're saying, someone's going to sit in a Tesla without touching the steering wheel, tap in \"New York,\" off it goes. 15:27 EM: Yeah.\n\n15:28 CA: Won't ever have to touch the wheel — by the end of 2017. 15:33 EM: Yeah. Essentially, November or December of this year, we should be able to go all the way from a parking lot in California to a parking lot in New York, no controls touched at any point during the entire journey. 15:47 (Applause) 15:49 CA: Amazing. But part of that is possible because you've already got a fleet of Teslas driving all these roads.\n\nYou're accumulating a huge amount of data of that national road system. 16:02 EM: Yes, but the thing that will be interesting is that I'm actually fairly confident it will be able to do that route even if you change the route dynamically.\n\nSo, it's fairly easy — If you say I'm going to be really good at one specific route, that's one thing, but it should be able to go, really be very good, certainly once you enter a highway, to go anywhere on the highway system in a given country. So it's not sort of limited to LA to New York. We could change it and make it Seattle-Florida, that day, in real time. So you were going from LA to New York. Now go from LA to Toronto.\n\n16:49 CA: So leaving aside regulation for a second, in terms of the technology alone, the time when someone will be able to buy one of your cars and literally just take the hands off the wheel and go to sleep and wake up and find that they've arrived, how far away is that, to do that safely? 17:06 EM: I think that's about two years. So the real trick of it is not how do you make it work say 99.\n\n9 percent of the time, because, like, if a car crashes one in a thousand times, then you're probably still not going to be comfortable falling asleep. You shouldn't be, certainly. 17:28 (Laughter) 17:31 It's never going to be perfect.\n\nNo system is going to be perfect, but if you say it's perhaps — the car is unlikely to crash in a hundred lifetimes, or a thousand lifetimes, then people are like, OK, wow, if I were to live a thousand lives, I would still most likely never experience a crash, then that's probably OK. 17:53 CA: To sleep.\n\nI guess the big concern of yours is that people may actually get seduced too early to think that this is safe, and that you'll have some horrible incident happen that puts things back. 18:04 EM: Well, I think that the autonomy system is likely to at least mitigate the crash, except in rare circumstances. The thing to appreciate about vehicle safety is this is probabilistic.\n\nI mean, there's some chance that any time a human driver gets in a car, that they will have an accident that is their fault. It's never zero. So really the key threshold for autonomy is how much better does autonomy need to be than a person before you can rely on it?\n\n18:38 CA: But once you get literally safe hands-off driving, the power to disrupt the whole industry seems massive, because at that point you've spoken of people being able to buy a car, drops you off at work, and then you let it go and provide a sort of Uber-like service to other people, earn you money, maybe even cover the cost of your lease of that car, so you can kind of get a car for free. Is that really likely? 19:02 EM: Yeah.\n\nAbsolutely this is what will happen. So there will be a shared autonomy fleet where you buy your car and you can choose to use that car exclusively, you could choose to have it be used only by friends and family, only by other drivers who are rated five star, you can choose to share it sometimes but not other times. That's 100 percent what will occur. It's just a question of when. 19:32 CA: Wow.\n\nSo you mentioned the Semi and I think you're planning to announce this in September, but I'm curious whether there's anything you could show us today? 19:42 EM: I will show you a teaser shot of the truck. 19:46 (Laughter) 19:48 It's alive. 19:50 CA: OK. 19:51 EM: That's definitely a case where we want to be cautious about the autonomy features. Yeah.\n\n19:58 (Laughter) 20:00 CA: We can't see that much of it, but it doesn't look like just a little friendly neighborhood truck. It looks kind of badass. What sort of semi is this? 20:10 EM: So this is a heavy duty, long-range semitruck. So it's the highest weight capability and with long range. So essentially it's meant to alleviate the heavy-duty trucking loads. And this is something which people do not today think is possible.\n\nThey think the truck doesn't have enough power or it doesn't have enough range, and then with the Tesla Semi we want to show that no, an electric truck actually can out-torque any diesel semi. And if you had a tug-of-war competition, the Tesla Semi will tug the diesel semi uphill. 20:57 (Laughter) 21:00 (Applause) 21:02 CA: That's pretty cool. And short term, these aren't driverless. These are going to be trucks that truck drivers want to drive.\n\n21:09 EM: Yes. So what will be really fun about this is you have a flat torque RPM curve with an electric motor, whereas with a diesel motor or any kind of internal combustion engine car, you've got a torque RPM curve that looks like a hill. So this will be a very spry truck. You can drive this around like a sports car. There's no gears. It's, like, single speed. 21:33 CA: There's a great movie to be made here somewhere.\n\nI don't know what it is and I don't know that it ends well, but it's a great movie. 21:39 (Laughter) 21:40 EM: It's quite bizarre test-driving. When I was driving the test prototype for the first truck. It's really weird, because you're driving around and you're just so nimble, and you're in this giant truck. 21:52 CA: Wait, you've already driven a prototype? 21:56 EM: Yeah, I drove it around the parking lot, and I was like, this is crazy.\n\n21:59 CA: Wow. This is no vaporware. 22:02 EM: It's just like, driving this giant truck and making these mad maneuvers. 22:06 CA: This is cool. OK, from a really badass picture to a kind of less badass picture. This is just a cute house from \"Desperate Housewives\" or something. What on earth is going on here? 22:17 EM: Well, this illustrates the picture of the future that I think is how things will evolve.\n\nYou've got an electric car in the driveway. If you look in between the electric car and the house, there are actually three Powerwalls stacked up against the side of the house, and then that house roof is a solar roof. So that's an actual solar glass roof. 22:38 CA: OK. 22:39 EM: That's a picture of a real — well, admittedly, it's a real fake house. That's a real fake house.\n\n22:45 (Laughter) 22:48 CA: So these roof tiles, some of them have in them basically solar power, the ability to — 22:56 EM: Yeah. Solar glass tiles where you can adjust the texture and the color to a very fine-grained level, and then there's sort of microlouvers in the glass, such that when you're looking at the roof from street level or close to street level, all the tiles look the same whether there is a solar cell behind it or not.\n\nSo you have an even color from the ground level. If you were to look at it from a helicopter, you would be actually able to look through and see that some of the glass tiles have a solar cell behind them and some do not. You can't tell from street level. 23:42 CA: You put them in the ones that are likely to see a lot of sun, and that makes these roofs super affordable, right? They're not that much more expensive than just tiling the roof.\n\n23:50 EM: Yeah. We're very confident that the cost of the roof plus the cost of electricity — A solar glass roof will be less than the cost of a normal roof plus the cost of electricity.\n\nSo in other words, this will be economically a no-brainer, we think it will look great, and it will last — We thought about having the warranty be infinity, but then people thought, well, that might sound like were just talking rubbish, but actually this is toughened glass. Well after the house has collapsed and there's nothing there, the glass tiles will still be there. 24:35 (Applause) 24:37 CA: I mean, this is cool.\n\nSo you're rolling this out in a couple week's time, I think, with four different roofing types. 24:44 EM: Yeah, we're starting off with two, two initially, and the second two will be introduced early next year. 24:50 CA: And what's the scale of ambition here? How many houses do you believe could end up having this type of roofing? 24:58 EM: I think eventually almost all houses will have a solar roof.\n\nThe thing is to consider the time scale here to be probably on the order of 40 or 50 years. So on average, a roof is replaced every 20 to 25 years. But you don't start replacing all roofs immediately. But eventually, if you say were to fast-forward to say 15 years from now, it will be unusual to have a roof that does not have solar.\n\n25:36 CA: Is there a mental model thing that people don't get here that because of the shift in the cost, the economics of solar power, most houses actually have enough sunlight on their roof pretty much to power all of their needs. If you could capture the power, it could pretty much power all their needs. You could go off-grid, kind of.\n\n25:55 EM: It depends on where you are and what the house size is relative to the roof area, but it's a fair statement to say that most houses in the US have enough roof area to power all the needs of the house. 26:10 CA: So the key to the economics of the cars, the Semi, of these houses is the falling price of lithium-ion batteries, which you've made a huge bet on as Tesla. In many ways, that's almost the core competency.\n\nAnd you've decided that to really, like, own that competency, you just have to build the world's largest manufacturing plant to double the world's supply of lithium-ion batteries, with this guy. What is this? 26:43 EM: Yeah, so that's the Gigafactory, progress so far on the Gigafactory.\n\nEventually, you can sort of roughly see that there's sort of a diamond shape overall, and when it's fully done, it'll look like a giant diamond, or that's the idea behind it, and it's aligned on true north. It's a small detail. 27:04 CA: And capable of producing, eventually, like a hundred gigawatt hours of batteries a year. 27:11 EM: A hundred gigawatt hours. We think probably more, but yeah.\n\n27:14 CA: And they're actually being produced right now. 27:17 EM: They're in production already. CA: You guys put out this video. I mean, is that speeded up? 27:21 EM: That's the slowed down version. 27:23 (Laughter) 27:25 CA: How fast does it actually go? 27:27 EM: Well, when it's running at full speed, you can't actually see the cells without a strobe light. It's just blur.\n\n27:35 (Laughter) 27:39 CA: One of your core ideas, Elon, about what makes an exciting future is a future where we no longer feel guilty about energy. Help us picture this. How many Gigafactories, if you like, does it take to get us there? 27:52 EM: It's about a hundred, roughly. It's not 10, it's not a thousand. Most likely a hundred. 27:59 CA: See, I find this amazing.\n\nYou can picture what it would take to move the world off this vast fossil fuel thing. It's like you're building one, it costs five billion dollars, or whatever, five to 10 billion dollars. Like, it's kind of cool that you can picture that project. And you're planning to do, at Tesla — announce another two this year. 28:24 EM: I think we'll announce locations for somewhere between two and four Gigafactories later this year. Yeah, probably four.\n\n28:33 CA: Whoa. 28:34 (Applause) No more teasing from you for here? Like — where, continent? You can say no. 28:48 EM: We need to address a global market. 28:52 CA: OK. 28:53 (Laughter) 28:54 This is cool. I think we should talk for — Actually, double mark it. I'm going to ask you one question about politics, only one. I'm kind of sick of politics, but I do want to ask you this. You're on a body now giving advice to a guy — 29:18 EM: Who?\n\n29:20 CA: Who has said he doesn't really believe in climate change, and there's a lot of people out there who think you shouldn't be doing that. They'd like you to walk away from that. What would you say to them? 29:31 EM: Well, I think that first of all, I'm just on two advisory councils where the format consists of going around the room and asking people's opinion on things, and so there's like a meeting every month or two.\n\nThat's the sum total of my contribution. But I think to the degree that there are people in the room who are arguing in favor of doing something about climate change, or social issues, I've used the meetings I've had thus far to argue in favor of immigration and in favor of climate change. 30:13 (Applause) 30:15 And if I hadn't done that, that wasn't on the agenda before. So maybe nothing will happen, but at least the words were said.\n\n30:25 CA: OK. 30:26 (Applause) 30:30 So let's talk SpaceX and Mars. Last time you were here, you spoke about what seemed like a kind of incredibly ambitious dream to develop rockets that were actually reusable. And you've only gone and done it. 30:46 EM: Finally. It took a long time. 30:47 CA: Talk us through this. What are we looking at here? 30:50 EM: So this is one of our rocket boosters coming back from very high and fast in space.\n\nSo just delivered the upper stage at high velocity. I think this might have been at sort of Mach 7 or so, delivery of the upper stage. 31:09 (Applause) 31:12 CA: So that was a sped-up — 31:14 EM: That was the slowed down version. 31:16 (Laughter) 31:17 CA: I thought that was the sped-up version. But I mean, that's amazing, and several of these failed before you finally figured out how to do it, but now you've done this, what, five or six times?\n\n31:28 EM: We're at eight or nine. 31:31 CA: And for the first time, you've actually reflown one of the rockets that landed. 31:35 EM: Yeah, so we landed the rocket booster and then prepped it for flight again and flew it again, so it's the first reflight of an orbital booster where that reflight is relevant. So it's important to appreciate that reusability is only relevant if it is rapid and complete.\n\nSo like an aircraft or a car, the reusability is rapid and complete. You do not send your aircraft to Boeing in-between flights. 32:07 CA: Right. So this is allowing you to dream of this really ambitious idea of sending many, many, many people to Mars in, what, 10 or 20 years time, I guess. 32:17 EM: Yeah. 32:19 CA: And you've designed this outrageous rocket to do it. Help us understand the scale of this thing.\n\n32:24 EM: Well, visually you can see that's a person. Yeah, and that's the vehicle. 32:33 (Laughter) 32:35 CA: So if that was a skyscraper, that's like, did I read that, a 40-story skyscraper? 32:40 EM: Probably a little more, yeah. The thrust level of this is really — This configuration is about four times the thrust of the Saturn V moon rocket. 32:55 CA: Four times the thrust of the biggest rocket humanity ever created before. 33:00 EM: Yeah.\n\nYeah. 33:03 CA: As one does. EM: Yeah. 33:05 (Laughter) 33:08 In units of 747, a 747 is only about a quarter of a million pounds of thrust, so for every 10 million pounds of thrust, there's 40 747s. So this would be the thrust equivalent of 120 747s, with all engines blazing.\n\n33:25 CA: And so even with a machine designed to escape Earth's gravity, I think you told me last time this thing could actually take a fully loaded 747, people, cargo, everything, into orbit. 33:37 EM: Exactly. This can take a fully loaded 747 with maximum fuel, maximum passengers, maximum cargo on the 747 — this can take it as cargo.\n\n33:51 CA: So based on this, you presented recently this Interplanetary Transport System which is visualized this way. This is a scene you picture in, what, 30 years time? 20 years time? People walking into this rocket. 34:08 EM: I'm hopeful it's sort of an eight- to 10-year time frame. Aspirationally, that's our target. Our internal targets are more aggressive, but I think — 34:18 (Laughter) 34:22 CA: OK.\n\n34:23 EM: While vehicle seems quite large and is large by comparison with other rockets, I think the future spacecraft will make this look like a rowboat. The future spaceships will be truly enormous. 34:42 CA: Why, Elon? Why do we need to build a city on Mars with a million people on it in your lifetime, which I think is kind of what you've said you'd love to do? 34:55 EM: I think it's important to have a future that is inspiring and appealing.\n\nI just think there have to be reasons that you get up in the morning and you want to live. Like, why do you want to live? What's the point? What inspires you? What do you love about the future? And if we're not out there, if the future does not include being out there among the stars and being a multiplanet species, I find that it's incredibly depressing if that's not the future that we're going to have.\n\n35:26 (Applause) 35:31 CA: People want to position this as an either or, that there are so many desperate things happening on the planet now from climate to poverty to, you know, you pick your issue. And this feels like a distraction. You shouldn't be thinking about this. You should be solving what's here and now. And to be fair, you've done a fair old bit to actually do that with your work on sustainable energy. But why not just do that?\n\n35:58 EM: I think there's — I look at the future from the standpoint of probabilities. It's like a branching stream of probabilities, and there are actions that we can take that affect those probabilities or that accelerate one thing or slow down another thing. I may introduce something new to the probability stream. Sustainable energy will happen no matter what.\n\nIf there was no Tesla, if Tesla never existed, it would have to happen out of necessity. It's tautological. If you don't have sustainable energy, it means you have unsustainable energy. Eventually you will run out, and the laws of economics will drive civilization towards sustainable energy, inevitably.\n\nThe fundamental value of a company like Tesla is the degree to which it accelerates the advent of sustainable energy, faster than it would otherwise occur. 37:04 So when I think, like, what is the fundamental good of a company like Tesla, I would say, hopefully, if it accelerated that by a decade, potentially more than a decade, that would be quite a good thing to occur. That's what I consider to be the fundamental aspirational good of Tesla.\n\n37:24 Then there's becoming a multiplanet species and space-faring civilization. This is not inevitable. It's very important to appreciate this is not inevitable. The sustainable energy future I think is largely inevitable, but being a space-faring civilization is definitely not inevitable. If you look at the progress in space, in 1969 you were able to send somebody to the moon. 1969. Then we had the Space Shuttle.\n\nThe Space Shuttle could only take people to low Earth orbit. Then the Space Shuttle retired, and the United States could take no one to orbit. So that's the trend. The trend is like down to nothing. People are mistaken when they think that technology just automatically improves. It does not automatically improve. It only improves if a lot of people work very hard to make it better, and actually it will, I think, by itself degrade, actually.\n\nYou look at great civilizations like Ancient Egypt, and they were able to make the pyramids, and they forgot how to do that. And then the Romans, they built these incredible aqueducts. They forgot how to do it. 38:39 CA: Elon, it almost seems, listening to you and looking at the different things you've done, that you've got this unique double motivation on everything that I find so interesting.\n\nOne is this desire to work for humanity's long-term good. The other is the desire to do something exciting. And often it feels like you feel like you need the one to drive the other. With Tesla, you want to have sustainable energy, so you made these super sexy, exciting cars to do it. Solar energy, we need to get there, so we need to make these beautiful roofs.\n\nWe haven't even spoken about your newest thing, which we don't have time to do, but you want to save humanity from bad AI, and so you're going to create this really cool brain-machine interface to give us all infinite memory and telepathy and so forth. And on Mars, it feels like what you're saying is, yeah, we need to save humanity and have a backup plan, but also we need to inspire humanity, and this is a way to inspire.\n\n39:44 EM: I think the value of beauty and inspiration is very much underrated, no question. But I want to be clear. I'm not trying to be anyone's savior. That is not the — I'm just trying to think about the future and not be sad. 40:03 (Applause) 40:05 CA: Beautiful statement. I think everyone here would agree that it is not — None of this is going to happen inevitably.\n\nThe fact that in your mind, you dream this stuff, you dream stuff that no one else would dare dream, or no one else would be capable of dreaming at the level of complexity that you do. The fact that you do that, Elon Musk, is a really remarkable thing. Thank you for helping us all to dream a bit bigger. 40:33 EM: But you'll tell me if it ever starts getting genuinely insane, right? 40:36 (Laughter) 40:39 CA: Thank you, Elon Musk.\n\nThat was really, really fantastic. That was really fantastic. 40:44 (Applause)"},"languages":["en"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJOefM3yB_8"},{"id":"world-government-summit-2017-02-13","type":"interview","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rCoFKUJ_8Yo","title":"World Government Summit","titles":{"en":"World Government Summit","de":"World Government Summit","fr":"World Government Summit"},"date":"2017-02-13","summary":"In conversation with Mohammad Al Gergawi about the future, AI, Mars, the Boring Company and his life mission.","text":"What a challenge! To talk to one of the most, in my opinion, in life, we've seen, within this part of the world, great people, like Al-Khawarizmi who invented algorithm. Globally, Newton. Henry Ford, the Wright Brothers, Albert Einstein and Elon Musk. See, you are in rush, You want to go to places that nobody has been. You are re-inventing a certain industry, from the rocket industry with SpaceX to the car industry with Tesla.\n\nWhat's your life mission? Why do you do whatever you do? Sure, first of all, thank you for having me. It's an honor to be here. And I'm having a really great time with my kids in Dubai. It's really been fantastic. I really encourage anyone who hasn't been to visit, what a great city! Thank you. And, in terms of the motivations, I used to like this sort of... kind of a long version of the explanation but...\n\nessentially, when I was a kid I was wondering, what's the meaning of life? Like, why are we here? What is it all about? And I came to the conclusion that what really matters is trying to understand the right questions to ask. And the more that we can increase the scope and scale of human consciousness, the better we're able to ask these questions. And... So, I think there are certain things that are necessary to ensure that the future is good.\n\nAnd... some of those things are in the long term having long term sustainable transport and sustainable energy generation. And to be a space exploring civilization. And for humanity to be out there among the stars. And be a multi-planetary species. I think that being a multi-planetary species and being out there among the stars is important for the long term survival of humanity.\n\nAnd, that's one reason, kind of like life insurance for life collectively. Life as we know it. But then the part that I find personally most motivating is that it creates a sense of adventure, and it makes people excited about the future. If you consider two futures, one where we are forever confined to Earth until eventually something terrible happens.\n\nOr another future where we are out there on many planets, maybe even going beyond the solar system. I think that space invasion is incredibly exciting and inspiring. And there need to be reasons to get up in the morning. You know, life can't just be about solving problems. Otherwise, what's the point? There's got to be things that people find inspiring, and make life worth living. So, what is life for you?\n\nI mean, you look at our life, and I heard you before speaking. Is it a dream? Is it real? Is it a million deal? What is life for Elon Musk? I find that as I get older I find that question to be maybe more and more confusing or troubling or uncertain. Particularly when you see the advancement of something like video games.\n\nYou know, 40 years ago, you had video games, the most advanced video game would be like Pong, when you had two rectangles and a dot. And you're like batting it back and forth.\n\nI played it.\n\nYeah, me too, exactly.\n\nUs all.\n\nIt sort of dates you a little bit. Yeah, we both played the same game. And that was like a pretty fun game at the time. But now, you can see a video game that's photo-realistic, almost photo-realistic, and millions of people playing simultaneously. And, and you see where things are going with virtual reality. And augmented reality and... if you extrapolate that out into the future with any rate of progress at all, like keeping 0.\n\n1% of something like that a year, then eventually those games will be indistinguishable from reality. They'll be so realistic you won't be able to tell the difference between that game and reality as we know it. And then, it seems like, well, how do we know that that didn't happen in the past? And that we're not in one of those games ourselves? Interesting. Interesting. I mean, it could be. Everything is possible in life. I mean there's...\n\nYeah, particularly like things tend to be accelerating to something. Isn't it? I mean, if we look at our life, it seems in the past 100 years life has been accelerating quite fast.\n\nYeah.\n\nIn the past 20 years.\n\nIt's getting faster and faster.\n\nIs it more slow? So, my question is really, how will life be 20, 30, 50 years from now? Our education, our transport. How do you see it? Well, I think this is one of those things that are quite difficult to predict. When you think of, say, the first controlled power flight was in 1903 with the Wright Brothers. And then, 66 years later we put the first people on the moon.\n\nI mean, if you asked people, say, in 1900, what are the odds of landing on the moon they would've said that's ridiculous. If you try to talk to them about the internet they wouldn't know what the heck you're even... What are you talking about? Like, this sounds so crazy. But today, with a hundred-dollar device you can video-conference with anyone in the world.\n\nOn the other side of the world, and if you have a Wi-Fi connection, it's basically free. You're free to have an instant visual communication with anyone, or even with millions of people. You know, with social media you can communicate to millions of people simultaneously. So, and you can google something and ask any question. It's like an oracle of wisdom, that you can ask almost any questions and get an instant response.\n\nIt would be incredibly difficult to predict these things in the past. Even the relatively recent past. So, I think the one thing that we can be quite certain of is that any predictions we make today for what the future will be like in 50 years will be wrong That's for sure. I think directionally, I can tell you what I hope the future has, as opposed to maybe what it will be. This may just be wishful thinking.\n\nI mean I hope we are out there on Mars and maybe beyond Mars, Jupiter. I hope we're traveling frequently throughout the solar system, perhaps preparing for missions to nearby star systems. I think all of that is possible in 50 years. And I think it's going to be very exciting to do that. And, I think we'll see autonomy and artificial intelligence advance tremendously. Like that's actually quite near term.\n\nMy guess is in probably 10 years, it will be very unusual for cars to be built that are not fully autonomous.\n\n10 years.\n\n10 years from now? Yeah. I think almost all cars built will be able of full autonomy in about 10 years. As it is, the Tesla cars that are made today, have the sensor system necessary for full autonomy. And we think probably enough compute power to be safer than a person. So, it's mostly just the question of developing the software and uploading the software.\n\nAnd if it turns out that more compute power is needed, we can easily upgrade the computer. And, so that's all Teslas built since October last year. And other manufacturers will follow and do the same thing. So, getting in a car will be like getting in an elevator. You just tell it where you want to go and it takes you there with extreme levels of safety. And that will be normal, that will just be normal.\n\nLike, for elevators, they used to be elevator operators. You get in, there will be a guy moving a lever. Now, you just get in, you press the button and that's taken for granted. So, autonomy will be wide-spread. I think one of the most troubling questions is artificial intelligence. And I don't mean narrow AI, like, vehicle autonomy I would put in the narrow AI class. It's narrowly trying to achieve a certain function.\n\nBut deep artificial intelligence, or what is sometimes called artificial general intelligence, where you can have AI that is much smarter than the smartest human on Earth. This, I think, is a dangerous situation. Why is it dangerous? I mean, there are two views, one view is that artificial intelligence will help humanity, and there's another school of thought that artificial intelligence is a threat to humanity.\n\nWhy is that?\n\nI think it's both. You know, it's like... one way to think of it is imagine we're going to be visited... imagine you're very confident that we're going to be visited by super intelligent aliens, in let's say 10 years or 20 years at the most.\n\nSuper intelligent.\n\nSo, you think within 20 years...\n\nYeah...\n\nwe'll have aliens on Earth? Well, digital super intelligence will be like an alien.\n\nIt will be like an alien.\n\nYeah. But my question is, do you think there is other intelligent life outside the Earth? It seems probable. I think this is one of the great questions in physics and philosophy, is, where are the aliens? Maybe they are among us, I don't know. Some people think I'm an alien. Not true.\n\nNot true.\n\nBut maybe we are aliens. Maybe we aliens. I mean, if you look at this part of the world. Yeah. They believe that human beings are not from Earth, they came from somewhere else. Eve and Adam came from somewhere else to Earth. So, in a way, human beings are aliens to this land. Do you think we'll make contact with aliens within the next 50 years? Well, that's a really tough one to say.\n\nIf there are super intelligent aliens out there, they're probably already observing us. That would seem quite likely and we're not smart enough to realize it. But I can do some back of the envelope calculations and...\n\nany advanced alien civilization that is at all interested in populating the galaxy, even without exceeding the speed of light, even if you're only moving at, say, 10 or 20 per cent of the speed of light, you could populate the entire galaxy in let's say 10 million years. Maybe 20 million years max. This is nothing in the grand scheme of things. Once you said you wanted to die on Mars. Why? To be clear, I don't want to die on Mars.\n\nIt's like, if... we're all going to die someday, and if you're going to pick some place to die, then why not Mars? You know, if you're born on Earth, why not die on Mars? Seems like may be quite exciting. But, I think given the choice between dying on Earth and dying on Mars, I'd say, yeah, sure, I'll die on Mars. But it's not some kind of Mars death wish. And if I do die on Mars, I just don't want to go on impact.\n\nLet's come back to Earth, actually. You tweeted that you are building a tunnel under Washington D. C. Why? What is it?\n\nIt's a secret plot.\n\nOkay.\n\nJust between us.\n\nNobody helps you? Yeah, exactly, let's keep that a secret. I think this is going to sound a little... I mean, it seems like so much trivial or silly, but... I've been saying this for many years now but I think that the solution to urban congestion is a network of tunnels under cities. And when I say that I don't mean a 2-D plan of tunnels, I mean tunnels that go many levels deep. So, you can always go deeper than you can go up.\n\nLike, the deepest mines are deeper than the tallest buildings. So, you can have a network of tunnels that is 20, 30, 40, 50 levels, as many levels as you want, really. And so, given that, you can overcome the congestion situation in any city in the world. The challenge is how do you build tunnels quickly and at low cost and with high safety?\n\nSo, if tunnel technology can be improved to the point where you can build tunnels fast, cheap and safe, then that would completely get rid of any traffic situations in the cities. And so, that's why I think it's an important technology. And, Washington D. C. , L. A and most of the major American cities, most major cities in the world suffer from severe traffic issues.\n\nAnd it's mostly because you've got these buildings which are, these tall buildings that are 3-D and you have a road network that is one level. And then, people generally want to go in and out of these buildings at the exact same time. So, then, you get the traffic jam. Let's come back to... your year in Dubai. The first time I met you it was the 4th of June 2015, at your office in SpaceX. And, I asked you would you have a presence in UAE?\n\nAnd your answer was: I'm busy with China. Maybe not in the near future, and almost a year and a half later, we are here, seems time goes quite fast. Why now? I think actually things are going really well in China. So, we have some initial challenges figuring out charging and service infrastructure and various other things, but now it's actually going really well, and...\n\nso the timing seems to be good to really make a significant debut in this region, starting in Dubai. In your opinion, what is the new disturbing thing that will come next in technology? What's next in technology?\n\nWhat's next in technology?\n\nThat will disturb the way we live, the way we think, the way we do business. Well, the most near to impact from a technological standpoint is autonomous cars, like fully self-driving cars. I'd say that's going to happen much faster than people realize. so, and that's... it's going to be a great convenience to be in an autonomous car, but there are many people whose job is to drive. So, if...\n\nin fact I think it might be the single largest employer of people is driving in various forms. And so, then we need to figure out new rules for what do these people do. But it will all be very disruptive and very quick. I should characterize what I mean by quick. Because there are... Quick means different things to different people. There are about two billion vehicles in the world. Approaching in fact 2. 5 billion cars and trucks in the world.\n\nThe total new vehicle production capacity is about a hundred million. Which makes sense, because the life of a car or truck before it's finally scraped is about 20-25 years. So, so the point at which we see full autonomy appear will not be the point at which there is massive societal upheaval, because it will take a long time to make enough autonomous vehicles to disrupt employment.\n\nSo, that disruption I'm talking about will take place over about 20 years. Still, 20 years is a short period of time to have I think something like 12 to 15 per cent of the world force be unemployed. Thank you. This is the largest global government summit we have over 139 governments here. If you want to advise government officials to be ready for the future, what three pieces of advice can you give them?\n\nWell, I think the first bit of advice is to really play close attention to... the development of artificial intelligence. I think this is, we need to be just be very careful in... how we adopt artificial intelligence, and to make sure that researchers don't get carried away, because sometimes what happens is that scientists can get so engrossed in their work, they don't necessarily realize the ramifications of what they're doing.\n\nSo, I think it's important for public safety that we... you know, governments keep a close eye on artificial intelligence and make sure that it does not represent a danger to the public. Let's see, secondly I would say we do need to think about transport in general.\n\nAnd, there's the movement towards electric vehicles, sustainable transport, I think that's going to be good for many reasons, but again, not something that happens immediately, that's going to happen slower than the self-driving vehicles. Because that's probably something that happens over 30 or 40 years. The transition to electric vehicles. So, thinking about that in context... the demand for electricity will increase dramatically.\n\nSo, currently, in terms of total energy usage in the world, it's about 1/3, about 1/3 transport, about 1/3 heating. So, over time that will transition to almost all... not all, but predominantly electricity, which means that the demand for electricity will probably triple. So, it's going to be very important to think about how do you make so much more electricity And...\n\nIt seems they'll have an easy job, that's it, there are no more challenges for them. No, well, I think maybe... these things do play into each other a little bit, but what to do about mass unemployment? This is going to be a massive social challenge. And I think ultimately will have to have some kind of universal basic income I don't think we're going to have a choice.\n\nUniversal basic income. I think it's going to be necessary. So, it means that unemployed people will be paid across the globe.\n\nYeah.\n\nBecause there are no jobs. Machines, robots are taking over. There will be fewer and fewer jobs that a robot cannot do better. That's simply... And I want to be clear, these are not things that I wish would happen. These are simply things that I think probably will happen. And so, if my assessment is correct and they probably will happen, then we need to say what are we going to do about it.\n\nAnd I think some kind of universal basic income is going to be necessary. Now, the output of goods and services will be extremely high. So, with automation, there will come abundance. There will be... almost everything will get very cheap. The... So... I think the biggest... I think we'll just end up doing a universal basic income. It's going to be necessary. The harder challenge, much harder challenge, is how do people then have meaning?\n\nLike a lot of people they derive their meaning from their employment, so, if you don't have... if you're not needed, if there's not a need for your labor, how do you... what's the meaning? Do you have meaning? Do you feel useless? That's a much harder problem to deal with. And then how do we ensure that the future is going to be the future that we want? That we so like.\n\nYou know, I mean do think that there's a potential path here which is, I'm really getting into science fiction or sort of advanced science stuff. But, having some sort of merger with biological intelligence, and machine intelligence. To some degree, we are already a cyborg. You think of like the digital tools that you have, your phone and your computer, the applications that you have.\n\nLike the fact that as I mentioned earlier you can ask a question and instantly get an answer from Google or from other things. And, and so you already have a digital touchery layer. I say touchery because you can think of the limbic system, kind of the animal brain or the primal brain and then the cortex, kind of the thinking, planning part of the brain, and then your digital self as a third layer.\n\nSo, you already have that, and I think if somebody dies, their digital ghost is still around. All of their e-mails and the pictures that they posted and their social media. That still lives, even if they died. So, over time I think we'll probably see a closer merger of biological intelligence and digital intelligence. And it's mostly about the bandwidth, the speed of the connection between your brain and your digital...\n\nthe digital extension of yourself. Particularly output, and, if anything is getting worse, you know, we used to have keyboards that we used a lot, now we do most of our input through our thumbs, on a phone. And, that's just very slow. A computer can communicate at a trillion bits per second, but your thumb can maybe do maybe 10 bits per second or a hundred if you're being generous.\n\nSo, some high bandwidth interface to the brain I think will be something that helps achieve symbiosis, between human and machine intelligence and maybe solves the control problem and the usefulness problem. I'm getting pretty esoteric here, I don't know is this is... It's close, we got it. Always you think out of the box. Your ideas are so huge. You want to go to space, you decided to go to space, you did it.\n\nYou decided that you wanted to land your rocket back, - you failed, 7 times, 8 times?\n\nYeah, something like that.\n\nThen it landed.\n\n4 times that I care to count. How do you come with these ideas? Sometimes they are pushing the human limit. You are always pushing the human limit, why? Well, I... I think about what technology solution is necessary in order to achieve that particular goal, and then try to make as much progress in that direction as possible.\n\nSo, in the case of space flight, the critical breakthrough that's necessary in space flight, is rapid incomplete reusability of rockets. Just as we have for air crafts. You can imagine that if an air craft was a single use, almost no one would fly. Because you can buy like, say, 747 might be... 250 million Dollars, 300 million Dollars, something like that. You need two of them for a round trip.\n\nBut nobody is going to pay millions of Dollars for a ticket to fly. To do air travel. So, but because you can re-use the air craft tens of thousands of times, the... Air travel becomes much more affordable. And, the same is true of rockets. Our rocket costs... 60 million Dollars, roughly. So, a capital cost if it can be used once in 60 million Dollars. But if the capital cost if it can be used a thousand times is 60 thousand Dollars.\n\nSo, then if you can carry a lot of people for a flight, then you can get the cost of space flight to be something not far from the cost of air flight. So, it's truly fundamental, because earth gravity is quite deep. Earth has a fairly high gravity. The difficulty of making a rocket reusable is much greater than the difficulty of making an air craft reusable. That's why a fully reusable rocket hasn't been developed that far.\n\nBut if you use the most advanced materials, the most advanced design techniques, and you get everything just right, then I'm confident that you can do a fully reusable rocket. Fortunately, if Earth gravity was even 10 per cent stronger, I would say it wouldn't be impossible. You need a team around you to deliver a lot of ideas. How do you choose your team? Based on what?\n\nWell, I suppose honestly that it tends to be a gut feeling more than anything else. So, when I interview somebody, the main questions are always the same. What do you ask? I say: Tell me the story of your life. And, the decisions that you made along the way and why you made them. And then, and also tell me about some of the most difficult problems you worked on and how you solved them. And, that question I think is very important, because...\n\nthe people that really solved the problem, they know exactly how they solved it. They know the little details. And the people that pretended to solve the problem, they can maybe go one level and then they get stuck. So, what was your biggest challenge in life? Biggest challenge in life?\n\nNo challenge?\n\nWell, no, there's a lot of them. I'm trying to sort which is the worst. I think just thinking about how to spend time. One of the biggest challenges I think is making sure you have a corrective feedback loop, and then maintaining that corrective feedback loop over time, even when people won't to tell you exactly what you want to hear.\n\nThat's very difficult.\n\nYes. Time is over. I'll ask you just one last question. If you allow me. In the World Government Summit we have so many people from... so many young people actually from across the Globe. If you have an advice to them, young people globally who want to be like Elon Musk. What's your advice to them? I think that probably they shouldn't want to be.\n\nYou?\n\nI think it sounds better than it is. Okay. Yeah, it's not as much fun being me as you'd think.\n\nI don't know.\n\nYou don't think so? It could be worse, for sure. But it's... I'm not sure I want to be me. Okay. But... You know, I think my advice is if you want to make progress in things, I think that the best analytical framework for, I'll say in the future is physics. I'd recommend studying the thinking process around physics.\n\nLike, not just the equations, the equations are certainly very helpful, but the way of thinking in physics, it's the best framework for understanding things that are counter–intuitive. And, you know, always take the position that you are to some degree wrong, and your goal is to be less wrong over time. One of the biggest mistakes people generally make and I'm guilty of it too is wishful thinking.\n\nYou know, like you want something to be true, even if it isn't true. And so you ignore the things that... You ignore the real truth, because of what you want to be true. This is a very difficult trap to avoid. And like I said, it's certainly one that I find myself in, having problems with. But, if you just take that approach of that you're always to some degree wrong and your goal is to be less wrong.\n\nAnd solicit critical feedback, particularly from friends. Like, friends, if somebody loves you they want the best for you. They don't want to tell you the bad things. So, you have to ask them and say: I do really want to know. And then they will tell you. Thank you very much. It's been...\n\nIt's great for the World Government Summit to have a legend, who's creating the future for humanity, to share his thoughts, his ideas, his visions, challenges, and his hope for life. Thank you very much. Thanks for having me.","textByLang":{"en":"What a challenge! To talk to one of the most, in my opinion, in life, we've seen, within this part of the world, great people, like Al-Khawarizmi who invented algorithm. Globally, Newton. Henry Ford, the Wright Brothers, Albert Einstein and Elon Musk. See, you are in rush, You want to go to places that nobody has been. You are re-inventing a certain industry, from the rocket industry with SpaceX to the car industry with Tesla.\n\nWhat's your life mission? Why do you do whatever you do? Sure, first of all, thank you for having me. It's an honor to be here. And I'm having a really great time with my kids in Dubai. It's really been fantastic. I really encourage anyone who hasn't been to visit, what a great city! Thank you. And, in terms of the motivations, I used to like this sort of... kind of a long version of the explanation but...\n\nessentially, when I was a kid I was wondering, what's the meaning of life? Like, why are we here? What is it all about? And I came to the conclusion that what really matters is trying to understand the right questions to ask. And the more that we can increase the scope and scale of human consciousness, the better we're able to ask these questions. And... So, I think there are certain things that are necessary to ensure that the future is good.\n\nAnd... some of those things are in the long term having long term sustainable transport and sustainable energy generation. And to be a space exploring civilization. And for humanity to be out there among the stars. And be a multi-planetary species. I think that being a multi-planetary species and being out there among the stars is important for the long term survival of humanity.\n\nAnd, that's one reason, kind of like life insurance for life collectively. Life as we know it. But then the part that I find personally most motivating is that it creates a sense of adventure, and it makes people excited about the future. If you consider two futures, one where we are forever confined to Earth until eventually something terrible happens.\n\nOr another future where we are out there on many planets, maybe even going beyond the solar system. I think that space invasion is incredibly exciting and inspiring. And there need to be reasons to get up in the morning. You know, life can't just be about solving problems. Otherwise, what's the point? There's got to be things that people find inspiring, and make life worth living. So, what is life for you?\n\nI mean, you look at our life, and I heard you before speaking. Is it a dream? Is it real? Is it a million deal? What is life for Elon Musk? I find that as I get older I find that question to be maybe more and more confusing or troubling or uncertain. Particularly when you see the advancement of something like video games.\n\nYou know, 40 years ago, you had video games, the most advanced video game would be like Pong, when you had two rectangles and a dot. And you're like batting it back and forth.\n\nI played it.\n\nYeah, me too, exactly.\n\nUs all.\n\nIt sort of dates you a little bit. Yeah, we both played the same game. And that was like a pretty fun game at the time. But now, you can see a video game that's photo-realistic, almost photo-realistic, and millions of people playing simultaneously. And, and you see where things are going with virtual reality. And augmented reality and... if you extrapolate that out into the future with any rate of progress at all, like keeping 0.\n\n1% of something like that a year, then eventually those games will be indistinguishable from reality. They'll be so realistic you won't be able to tell the difference between that game and reality as we know it. And then, it seems like, well, how do we know that that didn't happen in the past? And that we're not in one of those games ourselves? Interesting. Interesting. I mean, it could be. Everything is possible in life. I mean there's...\n\nYeah, particularly like things tend to be accelerating to something. Isn't it? I mean, if we look at our life, it seems in the past 100 years life has been accelerating quite fast.\n\nYeah.\n\nIn the past 20 years.\n\nIt's getting faster and faster.\n\nIs it more slow? So, my question is really, how will life be 20, 30, 50 years from now? Our education, our transport. How do you see it? Well, I think this is one of those things that are quite difficult to predict. When you think of, say, the first controlled power flight was in 1903 with the Wright Brothers. And then, 66 years later we put the first people on the moon.\n\nI mean, if you asked people, say, in 1900, what are the odds of landing on the moon they would've said that's ridiculous. If you try to talk to them about the internet they wouldn't know what the heck you're even... What are you talking about? Like, this sounds so crazy. But today, with a hundred-dollar device you can video-conference with anyone in the world.\n\nOn the other side of the world, and if you have a Wi-Fi connection, it's basically free. You're free to have an instant visual communication with anyone, or even with millions of people. You know, with social media you can communicate to millions of people simultaneously. So, and you can google something and ask any question. It's like an oracle of wisdom, that you can ask almost any questions and get an instant response.\n\nIt would be incredibly difficult to predict these things in the past. Even the relatively recent past. So, I think the one thing that we can be quite certain of is that any predictions we make today for what the future will be like in 50 years will be wrong That's for sure. I think directionally, I can tell you what I hope the future has, as opposed to maybe what it will be. This may just be wishful thinking.\n\nI mean I hope we are out there on Mars and maybe beyond Mars, Jupiter. I hope we're traveling frequently throughout the solar system, perhaps preparing for missions to nearby star systems. I think all of that is possible in 50 years. And I think it's going to be very exciting to do that. And, I think we'll see autonomy and artificial intelligence advance tremendously. Like that's actually quite near term.\n\nMy guess is in probably 10 years, it will be very unusual for cars to be built that are not fully autonomous.\n\n10 years.\n\n10 years from now? Yeah. I think almost all cars built will be able of full autonomy in about 10 years. As it is, the Tesla cars that are made today, have the sensor system necessary for full autonomy. And we think probably enough compute power to be safer than a person. So, it's mostly just the question of developing the software and uploading the software.\n\nAnd if it turns out that more compute power is needed, we can easily upgrade the computer. And, so that's all Teslas built since October last year. And other manufacturers will follow and do the same thing. So, getting in a car will be like getting in an elevator. You just tell it where you want to go and it takes you there with extreme levels of safety. And that will be normal, that will just be normal.\n\nLike, for elevators, they used to be elevator operators. You get in, there will be a guy moving a lever. Now, you just get in, you press the button and that's taken for granted. So, autonomy will be wide-spread. I think one of the most troubling questions is artificial intelligence. And I don't mean narrow AI, like, vehicle autonomy I would put in the narrow AI class. It's narrowly trying to achieve a certain function.\n\nBut deep artificial intelligence, or what is sometimes called artificial general intelligence, where you can have AI that is much smarter than the smartest human on Earth. This, I think, is a dangerous situation. Why is it dangerous? I mean, there are two views, one view is that artificial intelligence will help humanity, and there's another school of thought that artificial intelligence is a threat to humanity.\n\nWhy is that?\n\nI think it's both. You know, it's like... one way to think of it is imagine we're going to be visited... imagine you're very confident that we're going to be visited by super intelligent aliens, in let's say 10 years or 20 years at the most.\n\nSuper intelligent.\n\nSo, you think within 20 years...\n\nYeah...\n\nwe'll have aliens on Earth? Well, digital super intelligence will be like an alien.\n\nIt will be like an alien.\n\nYeah. But my question is, do you think there is other intelligent life outside the Earth? It seems probable. I think this is one of the great questions in physics and philosophy, is, where are the aliens? Maybe they are among us, I don't know. Some people think I'm an alien. Not true.\n\nNot true.\n\nBut maybe we are aliens. Maybe we aliens. I mean, if you look at this part of the world. Yeah. They believe that human beings are not from Earth, they came from somewhere else. Eve and Adam came from somewhere else to Earth. So, in a way, human beings are aliens to this land. Do you think we'll make contact with aliens within the next 50 years? Well, that's a really tough one to say.\n\nIf there are super intelligent aliens out there, they're probably already observing us. That would seem quite likely and we're not smart enough to realize it. But I can do some back of the envelope calculations and...\n\nany advanced alien civilization that is at all interested in populating the galaxy, even without exceeding the speed of light, even if you're only moving at, say, 10 or 20 per cent of the speed of light, you could populate the entire galaxy in let's say 10 million years. Maybe 20 million years max. This is nothing in the grand scheme of things. Once you said you wanted to die on Mars. Why? To be clear, I don't want to die on Mars.\n\nIt's like, if... we're all going to die someday, and if you're going to pick some place to die, then why not Mars? You know, if you're born on Earth, why not die on Mars? Seems like may be quite exciting. But, I think given the choice between dying on Earth and dying on Mars, I'd say, yeah, sure, I'll die on Mars. But it's not some kind of Mars death wish. And if I do die on Mars, I just don't want to go on impact.\n\nLet's come back to Earth, actually. You tweeted that you are building a tunnel under Washington D. C. Why? What is it?\n\nIt's a secret plot.\n\nOkay.\n\nJust between us.\n\nNobody helps you? Yeah, exactly, let's keep that a secret. I think this is going to sound a little... I mean, it seems like so much trivial or silly, but... I've been saying this for many years now but I think that the solution to urban congestion is a network of tunnels under cities. And when I say that I don't mean a 2-D plan of tunnels, I mean tunnels that go many levels deep. So, you can always go deeper than you can go up.\n\nLike, the deepest mines are deeper than the tallest buildings. So, you can have a network of tunnels that is 20, 30, 40, 50 levels, as many levels as you want, really. And so, given that, you can overcome the congestion situation in any city in the world. The challenge is how do you build tunnels quickly and at low cost and with high safety?\n\nSo, if tunnel technology can be improved to the point where you can build tunnels fast, cheap and safe, then that would completely get rid of any traffic situations in the cities. And so, that's why I think it's an important technology. And, Washington D. C. , L. A and most of the major American cities, most major cities in the world suffer from severe traffic issues.\n\nAnd it's mostly because you've got these buildings which are, these tall buildings that are 3-D and you have a road network that is one level. And then, people generally want to go in and out of these buildings at the exact same time. So, then, you get the traffic jam. Let's come back to... your year in Dubai. The first time I met you it was the 4th of June 2015, at your office in SpaceX. And, I asked you would you have a presence in UAE?\n\nAnd your answer was: I'm busy with China. Maybe not in the near future, and almost a year and a half later, we are here, seems time goes quite fast. Why now? I think actually things are going really well in China. So, we have some initial challenges figuring out charging and service infrastructure and various other things, but now it's actually going really well, and...\n\nso the timing seems to be good to really make a significant debut in this region, starting in Dubai. In your opinion, what is the new disturbing thing that will come next in technology? What's next in technology?\n\nWhat's next in technology?\n\nThat will disturb the way we live, the way we think, the way we do business. Well, the most near to impact from a technological standpoint is autonomous cars, like fully self-driving cars. I'd say that's going to happen much faster than people realize. so, and that's... it's going to be a great convenience to be in an autonomous car, but there are many people whose job is to drive. So, if...\n\nin fact I think it might be the single largest employer of people is driving in various forms. And so, then we need to figure out new rules for what do these people do. But it will all be very disruptive and very quick. I should characterize what I mean by quick. Because there are... Quick means different things to different people. There are about two billion vehicles in the world. Approaching in fact 2. 5 billion cars and trucks in the world.\n\nThe total new vehicle production capacity is about a hundred million. Which makes sense, because the life of a car or truck before it's finally scraped is about 20-25 years. So, so the point at which we see full autonomy appear will not be the point at which there is massive societal upheaval, because it will take a long time to make enough autonomous vehicles to disrupt employment.\n\nSo, that disruption I'm talking about will take place over about 20 years. Still, 20 years is a short period of time to have I think something like 12 to 15 per cent of the world force be unemployed. Thank you. This is the largest global government summit we have over 139 governments here. If you want to advise government officials to be ready for the future, what three pieces of advice can you give them?\n\nWell, I think the first bit of advice is to really play close attention to... the development of artificial intelligence. I think this is, we need to be just be very careful in... how we adopt artificial intelligence, and to make sure that researchers don't get carried away, because sometimes what happens is that scientists can get so engrossed in their work, they don't necessarily realize the ramifications of what they're doing.\n\nSo, I think it's important for public safety that we... you know, governments keep a close eye on artificial intelligence and make sure that it does not represent a danger to the public. Let's see, secondly I would say we do need to think about transport in general.\n\nAnd, there's the movement towards electric vehicles, sustainable transport, I think that's going to be good for many reasons, but again, not something that happens immediately, that's going to happen slower than the self-driving vehicles. Because that's probably something that happens over 30 or 40 years. The transition to electric vehicles. So, thinking about that in context... the demand for electricity will increase dramatically.\n\nSo, currently, in terms of total energy usage in the world, it's about 1/3, about 1/3 transport, about 1/3 heating. So, over time that will transition to almost all... not all, but predominantly electricity, which means that the demand for electricity will probably triple. So, it's going to be very important to think about how do you make so much more electricity And...\n\nIt seems they'll have an easy job, that's it, there are no more challenges for them. No, well, I think maybe... these things do play into each other a little bit, but what to do about mass unemployment? This is going to be a massive social challenge. And I think ultimately will have to have some kind of universal basic income I don't think we're going to have a choice.\n\nUniversal basic income. I think it's going to be necessary. So, it means that unemployed people will be paid across the globe.\n\nYeah.\n\nBecause there are no jobs. Machines, robots are taking over. There will be fewer and fewer jobs that a robot cannot do better. That's simply... And I want to be clear, these are not things that I wish would happen. These are simply things that I think probably will happen. And so, if my assessment is correct and they probably will happen, then we need to say what are we going to do about it.\n\nAnd I think some kind of universal basic income is going to be necessary. Now, the output of goods and services will be extremely high. So, with automation, there will come abundance. There will be... almost everything will get very cheap. The... So... I think the biggest... I think we'll just end up doing a universal basic income. It's going to be necessary. The harder challenge, much harder challenge, is how do people then have meaning?\n\nLike a lot of people they derive their meaning from their employment, so, if you don't have... if you're not needed, if there's not a need for your labor, how do you... what's the meaning? Do you have meaning? Do you feel useless? That's a much harder problem to deal with. And then how do we ensure that the future is going to be the future that we want? That we so like.\n\nYou know, I mean do think that there's a potential path here which is, I'm really getting into science fiction or sort of advanced science stuff. But, having some sort of merger with biological intelligence, and machine intelligence. To some degree, we are already a cyborg. You think of like the digital tools that you have, your phone and your computer, the applications that you have.\n\nLike the fact that as I mentioned earlier you can ask a question and instantly get an answer from Google or from other things. And, and so you already have a digital touchery layer. I say touchery because you can think of the limbic system, kind of the animal brain or the primal brain and then the cortex, kind of the thinking, planning part of the brain, and then your digital self as a third layer.\n\nSo, you already have that, and I think if somebody dies, their digital ghost is still around. All of their e-mails and the pictures that they posted and their social media. That still lives, even if they died. So, over time I think we'll probably see a closer merger of biological intelligence and digital intelligence. And it's mostly about the bandwidth, the speed of the connection between your brain and your digital...\n\nthe digital extension of yourself. Particularly output, and, if anything is getting worse, you know, we used to have keyboards that we used a lot, now we do most of our input through our thumbs, on a phone. And, that's just very slow. A computer can communicate at a trillion bits per second, but your thumb can maybe do maybe 10 bits per second or a hundred if you're being generous.\n\nSo, some high bandwidth interface to the brain I think will be something that helps achieve symbiosis, between human and machine intelligence and maybe solves the control problem and the usefulness problem. I'm getting pretty esoteric here, I don't know is this is... It's close, we got it. Always you think out of the box. Your ideas are so huge. You want to go to space, you decided to go to space, you did it.\n\nYou decided that you wanted to land your rocket back, - you failed, 7 times, 8 times?\n\nYeah, something like that.\n\nThen it landed.\n\n4 times that I care to count. How do you come with these ideas? Sometimes they are pushing the human limit. You are always pushing the human limit, why? Well, I... I think about what technology solution is necessary in order to achieve that particular goal, and then try to make as much progress in that direction as possible.\n\nSo, in the case of space flight, the critical breakthrough that's necessary in space flight, is rapid incomplete reusability of rockets. Just as we have for air crafts. You can imagine that if an air craft was a single use, almost no one would fly. Because you can buy like, say, 747 might be... 250 million Dollars, 300 million Dollars, something like that. You need two of them for a round trip.\n\nBut nobody is going to pay millions of Dollars for a ticket to fly. To do air travel. So, but because you can re-use the air craft tens of thousands of times, the... Air travel becomes much more affordable. And, the same is true of rockets. Our rocket costs... 60 million Dollars, roughly. So, a capital cost if it can be used once in 60 million Dollars. But if the capital cost if it can be used a thousand times is 60 thousand Dollars.\n\nSo, then if you can carry a lot of people for a flight, then you can get the cost of space flight to be something not far from the cost of air flight. So, it's truly fundamental, because earth gravity is quite deep. Earth has a fairly high gravity. The difficulty of making a rocket reusable is much greater than the difficulty of making an air craft reusable. That's why a fully reusable rocket hasn't been developed that far.\n\nBut if you use the most advanced materials, the most advanced design techniques, and you get everything just right, then I'm confident that you can do a fully reusable rocket. Fortunately, if Earth gravity was even 10 per cent stronger, I would say it wouldn't be impossible. You need a team around you to deliver a lot of ideas. How do you choose your team? Based on what?\n\nWell, I suppose honestly that it tends to be a gut feeling more than anything else. So, when I interview somebody, the main questions are always the same. What do you ask? I say: Tell me the story of your life. And, the decisions that you made along the way and why you made them. And then, and also tell me about some of the most difficult problems you worked on and how you solved them. And, that question I think is very important, because...\n\nthe people that really solved the problem, they know exactly how they solved it. They know the little details. And the people that pretended to solve the problem, they can maybe go one level and then they get stuck. So, what was your biggest challenge in life? Biggest challenge in life?\n\nNo challenge?\n\nWell, no, there's a lot of them. I'm trying to sort which is the worst. I think just thinking about how to spend time. One of the biggest challenges I think is making sure you have a corrective feedback loop, and then maintaining that corrective feedback loop over time, even when people won't to tell you exactly what you want to hear.\n\nThat's very difficult.\n\nYes. Time is over. I'll ask you just one last question. If you allow me. In the World Government Summit we have so many people from... so many young people actually from across the Globe. If you have an advice to them, young people globally who want to be like Elon Musk. What's your advice to them? I think that probably they shouldn't want to be.\n\nYou?\n\nI think it sounds better than it is. Okay. Yeah, it's not as much fun being me as you'd think.\n\nI don't know.\n\nYou don't think so? It could be worse, for sure. But it's... I'm not sure I want to be me. Okay. But... You know, I think my advice is if you want to make progress in things, I think that the best analytical framework for, I'll say in the future is physics. I'd recommend studying the thinking process around physics.\n\nLike, not just the equations, the equations are certainly very helpful, but the way of thinking in physics, it's the best framework for understanding things that are counter–intuitive. And, you know, always take the position that you are to some degree wrong, and your goal is to be less wrong over time. One of the biggest mistakes people generally make and I'm guilty of it too is wishful thinking.\n\nYou know, like you want something to be true, even if it isn't true. And so you ignore the things that... You ignore the real truth, because of what you want to be true. This is a very difficult trap to avoid. And like I said, it's certainly one that I find myself in, having problems with. But, if you just take that approach of that you're always to some degree wrong and your goal is to be less wrong.\n\nAnd solicit critical feedback, particularly from friends. Like, friends, if somebody loves you they want the best for you. They don't want to tell you the bad things. So, you have to ask them and say: I do really want to know. And then they will tell you. Thank you very much. It's been...\n\nIt's great for the World Government Summit to have a legend, who's creating the future for humanity, to share his thoughts, his ideas, his visions, challenges, and his hope for life. Thank you very much. Thanks for having me."},"languages":["en"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rCoFKUJ_8Yo"},{"id":"asilomar-ai-superintelligence-panel-2017-01-30","type":"interview","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h0962biiZa4","title":"Asilomar AI: Superintelligence Panel","titles":{"en":"Asilomar AI: Superintelligence Panel","de":"Asilomar AI: Superintelligence Panel","fr":"Asilomar AI: Superintelligence Panel"},"date":"2017-01-30","summary":"Musk joins Bostrom, Hassabis, Kurzweil, Russell and Harris on a Future of Life Institute panel debating the risks and timeline of superintelligent AI.","text":"I'm going to ask a question, but you can only answer by saying either 'yes,' 'no,' or 'it's complicated.' Alright? So, let's start over here. Is some form of superintelligence possible, Jaan? 'Yes,' 'no,' or 'it's complicated.' Yes. Definitely. No. Well, this was disappointing, we didn't find any disagreement. Let's try harder. Just because it's possible doesn't mean that it's actually going to happen.\n\nSo, before I asked if superintelligence was possible at all according to the laws of physics. Now, i'm asking, will it actually happen? A little bit complicated, but yes. Yes, and if it doesn't then something terrible has happened to prevent it. Yes. Probably. Yes. No. Shucks, still haven't found any interesting disagreements. We need to try harder still. OK.\n\nSo, you think it is going to happen, but would you actually like it to happen at some point? Yes, no, or it's complicated? Complicated, leaning towards yes. It's complicated. Yes. It's really complicated. Yes. It's complicated. Very complicated. Well, heck, I don't know. It depends on which kind. Alright, so it's getting a little bit more interesting. When I think, we had a really fascinating... When is it going to happen?\n\nWell, we had a really fascinating discussion already in this morning's panel about when we might get to human level AI. So, that would sort of put a lower bound. In the interest of time, I think we don't need to rehash the question of when going beyond it might start. But, let's ask a very related question to the one that just came up here.\n\nMainly, the question of well if something starts to happen, if you get some sort of recursive self improvement or some other process whereby intelligence and machines start to take off very very rapidly, there is always a timescale associated with this. And there I hope we can finally find some real serious disagreements to argue about here.\n\nSome people have been envisioning this scenario where it goes PHOOM and things happen in days or hours or less. Whereas, others envision that it will happen but it might take thousands of years or decades. So, if you think of some sort of doubling time, some sort of rough timescale on which things get dramatically better, what time scale would you guess at, Jaan? Start now or starting at human level?\n\nNo, no, so once we get human level AI or whatever point beyond there or a little bit before there where things actually start taking off, what is the sort of time scale? Any explosion, as a nerdy physicist, has some sort of time scale, right, on which it happens. Are we talking about seconds, or years, or millennia? I'm thinking of years, but it is important to act as if this timeline was shorter.\n\nYeah, I actually don't really trust my intuitions here. I have intuitions that we are thinking of years, but I also think human level AI is a mirage. It is suddenly going to be better than human, but whether that is going to be a full intelligence explosion quickly, I don't know. I think it partly depends on the architecture that ends up delivering human level AI.\n\nSo, this kind of neuroscience inspired AI that we seem to be building at the moment that needs to be trained and have experience in order for it to gain knowledge that may be, you know, on the order of a few years so possible even a decade. Some numbers of years, but it could also be much less. But, I wouldn't be surprised if it was much more.\n\nPotentially days or shorter, especially if it's AI researchers designing AI researchers Every time there is an advance in AI, we dismiss it as 'oh, well that's not really AI:' chess, go, self-driving cars. An AI, as you know, is the field of things we haven't done yet. That will continue when we actually reach AGI. There will be lots of controversy. By the time the controversy settles down, we will realize that it's been around for a few years.\n\nYeah, so I think we will go beyond human level capabilities in many different areas, but not in all at the same time. So, it will be an uneven process where some areas will be far advanced very soon, already to some extent and other might take much longer. What Bart said.\n\nBut, I think if it reaches a threshold where it's as smart as the smartest most inventive human then, I mean, it really could be only a matter of days before it's smarter than the sum of humanity. So, here we saw quite an interesting range of answers. And this, I find is a very interesting question because for reasons that people here have published a lot of interesting papers about the time scale makes a huge difference.\n\nRight, if it's something that happening on the time scale of the industrial revolution, for example, that's a lot longer than the time scale on which society can adapt and take measures to steer development, borrowing your nice rocket metaphor, Jaan. Whereas, if things happen much quicker than society can respond, it's much harder to steer and you kind of have to hope that you've built in a good steering in advance.\n\nSo, for example in nuclear reactors, we nerdy physicists like to stick graphite sticks in a moderators to slow things down maybe prevent it from going critical. I'm curious if anyone of you feels that it would be nice if this growth of intelligence which you are generally excited about, with some caveats, if any of you would like to have it happen a bit slower so that it becomes easier for society to keep shaping it the way we want it.\n\nAnd, if so, and here's a tough question, is there anything we can do now or later on when it gets closer that might make this intelligence explosion or rapid growth of intelligence simply proceed slower so we can have more influence over it. Does anyone want to take a swing at this? It's not for the whole panel, but anyone who... I'm reminded of the conversation we had with Rich Sutton in Puerto Rico.\n\nLike, we had a lot of disagreements, but definitely could agree about paths slower being better than faster. Any thoughts on how one could make it a little bit slower? I mean, the strategy I suggested in my talk was somewhat tongue and cheek. But, it was also serious. I think this conference is great and as technologists we should do everything we can to keep the technology safe and beneficial.\n\nCertainly, as we do each specific application, like self-driving cars, there's a whole host of ethical issues to address. But, I don't think we can solve the problem just technologically.\n\nImagine that we've done our job perfectly and we've created the most safe, beneficial AI possible, but we've let the political system become totalitarian and evil, either a evil world government or even just a portion of the globe that is that way, it's not going to work out well. And so, part of the struggle is in the area of politics and social policy to have the world reflect the values want to achieve because we are talking about human AI.\n\nHuman AI is by definition at human levels and therefore is human. And so, the issue of how we make humans ethical is the same issue as how we make AIs that are human level ethical.\n\nSo, what i'm hearing you say is that before we reach the point of getting close to human level AI, a very good way to prepare for that is for us humans in our human societies to try and get our act together as much as possible and have the world run with more reason than it, perhaps, is today. Is that fair? That's exactly what I'm saying. Nick?\n\nAlso, I just want to clarify again that when I asked about what you would do to slow things down i'm not talking at all about slowing down AI research now. We're simply talking about if we get to the point where we are getting very near human level AI and think we might get some very fast development, how could one slow that part down?\n\nSo, one method would be to make faster progress now, so you get to that point sooner when hardware is less developed, you get less hardware overhang.\n\nHowever, the current speed of AI progress is a fairly hard variable to change very much because there are very big forces pushing on it, so perhaps the higher elasticity option is what I suggested in the talk to ensure that whoever gets there first has enough of a lead that they are able to slow down for a few months, let us say, to go slow during the transition.\n\nSo, I think one thing you can do, I mean this is almost in the verification area, is to make systems that provably will not recruit additional hardware or resigned their hardware, so that their resources remain fixed. And i'm quite happy to sit there for several years thinking hard about what the next step would be to take. But, it's trivial to copy software.\n\nSoftware is self replicating and always has been and I don't see how you can possibly stop that. I mean, I think it would be great if it went slow, but it's hard to see how it does go slow given the huge first mover advantages and getting to superintelligence. The only scenario that I see where it might go slow is where there is only one potential first mover that can then stop and think.\n\nSo, maybe that speaks to creating a society where, you know, AI is restrictive and unified, but without multiple movers. Yeah, Demis, so your colleague Sean Legg mentioned that the one thing that could help a lot here is if there's things like this industry partnership and a sense of trust and openness between the leaders, so that if there is a point where one wants to...\n\nYeah, I do worry about, you know, that sort of scenario where, you know, I think, I've got quite high belief in human ingenuity to solve these problems given enough time. the control problem and other issues. They're very difficult, but I think we can solve them. The problem is will there, you know, the coordination problem of making sure there is enough time to slow down at the end and, you know, let Stuart think about this for 5 years.\n\nBut, what about, he may do that, but what about all the other teams that are reading the papers and not going to do that while you're thinking. Yeah, this is what I worry about a lot. It seems like that coordination problem is quite difficult.\n\nBut, I think as the first step, may be coordinating things like the Partnership on AI, you know, the most capable teams together to agree, at least agree on a set of protocols or safety procedures, or things, you know, agree that, maybe, you know, you should verify these systems and that is going to take a few years and you should think about that. I think that would be a good thing.\n\nI just want to caveat one thing about slowing versus fast progresses, you know, it could be that, imagine there was a moratorium on AI research for 50 years, but hardware continued to accelerate as it does now.\n\nWe could, you know, this is sort of what Nick's point was is that there could be a massive hardware overhang or something where an AI actually many, many, many different approaches to AI including seed AI, self-improving AI, all these things could be possible. And, you know, maybe one person in their garage could do it.\n\nAnd I think that would be a lot more difficult to coordinate that kind of situation, whereas, so, I think there is some argument to be made where you want to make fast progress when we are at the very hard point of the 's' curve. Where actually, you know, you need quite a large team, you have to be quite visible, you know who the other people are, and, you know, in a sense society can keep tabs on who the major players are and what they're up to.\n\nWhereas, opposed to a scenario where in say 50 or a 100 years time when, you know, someone, a kid in their garage could create a seed AI or something like that. Yeah, Bart, one last comment on this topic. Yeah, I think that this process will be a very irregular process and sometime we will be far advanced and other times we will be going quite slow.\n\nYeah, i'm sort of hoping that when society sees something like fake video creation where you create a video where you have somebody say made up things and that society will actually realize that there are these new capabilities for the machines and we should start taking the problem as a society more seriously before we have full and general AI. We'll use AI to detect that.\n\nSo, you mentioned the word 'worry' there, and you Nick went a bit farther, you had the word 'doom' written on your slides three times. No wonder there was one star on Amazon on that rating and that it was even in red color. I think it's just as important to talk about existential hope and the fantastic upside as downside and I want to do a lot of that here.\n\nSo, let's just get some of those worries out of the way now and then return to the positive things. I just want to go through quickly and give each one of you a chance to just pick one thing that you feel is a challenge that we should overcome and then say something about what you feel is the best thing we can do, right now, to try to mitigate it. Do you want to start Jaan? To mitigate what?\n\nMention one thing that you're worried could go wrong and tell us about something constructive that we can do now that will reduce that risk. I do think that AI arms races, I see like a lot of, like, good. I'm really heartened to see kind of great contacts between OpenAI and DeepMind, but I think this is just like a sort of toy model of what the world at large might come up with in terms of arms races.\n\nAnd for myself I have been spending increasing amount of time in Asia recently just to kind of try to kind of pull in more people elsewhere, what has been so far, just been, kind of like, an Anglo- American discussion mostly. So, like this is, I think, this is one thing that should be done and i'm going to do it.\n\nWell, as someone who is outside this field, I think the challenge i'm really in touch with is how hard it is to take the safety concerns emotionally seriously. And how hard it is for people in the field to do that as well. I can't tell you have many people outside this room who purport to be experts think the control problem is a total non-issue. I mean, it's just flabbergasting to meet these people and just therefore not worth thinking about.\n\nAnd one of the reasons I think is that in one case there is this illusion that the time horizon matters. If you feel that this is 50 or a 100 years away that is totally consoling, but there is an implicit assumption there, the assumption is that you know how long it will take to build this safely. And that 50 or a 100 years is enough time.\n\nThe other issue is, I think, most people feel like intelligence is an intrinsic good and of course we want more of it and it's very easy to be in touch with that assumption because right now there is a cure for cancer, which we have not discovered. Right, how galling is that?\n\nBut for more intelligence, but for knowing which experiments to run, or how to integrate the data we already have in hand, we would have a cure for cancer that was actionable now unless there was some physical law of the universe that prevented us from curing cancer, which seems unlikely.\n\nSo, the pain of not having enough intelligence is really excruciating when you focus on it, but, and I think to your previous question of doing this quickly becomes an intrinsic good provided we have solved the alignment problems and the political problems and the chaos that would follow if we were just, if we did it quickly without solving those problems.\n\nSo, I think, it's the thing that is alarming is how ethereal these concerns are even to those who have no rational argument against them. So, Sam it sounds to me like you're agreeing very strongly with what Shane Legg that there is, in some circles, still this strong taboo that, you know, don't even consider the possibility that we might get AGI because it's just absolutely ridiculous.\n\nAnd he was arguing that the sooner we can get rid of this taboo the sooner people can get to work and find all these really helpful solutions and answers that we need. So, suppose for a moment that I came up to you and said to you \"this idea of super human intelligence just sounds absolutely ridiculous, sounds completely nuts. And by the way i've never seen your ted talk.\"\n\nAnd we're in an elevator and you have only 30 seconds to persuade me to take this more seriously, what would you say? A lot of people who are here will have this exact conversation with colleagues and others in the future. Well, there are very few assumptions you need to make to take this seriously, intellectually. Again, the emotional part is a separate piece.\n\nBut, if you assume that intelligence is just, on some level, the product of information processing in a physical system and there are very few people who dispute that who are scientifically literate at this point and you assume that we will continue to improve our information processing systems, unless something terrible happens to us to prevent that, and that seems like a very safe assumption, then it is just a matter of time before we instantiate something that is human level and beyond in our computers.\n\nAnd, again, the time horizon is only consoling on the assumption that we know we have enough time to solve the alignment problems and the political problems.\n\nThe other thing that is humbling here that Ray brought up at one point is that even if we were handed a perfectly benign, well behaved AI just from god, you know, we are given a perfect oracle we are given a perfect inventor of good technology, given our current political and economic atmosphere that would produce total chaos. We just have not...\n\nwe don't have the ethical or political will to share the wealth, we don't have the political integration to deal with this thing being given to Silicon Valley and not being given at the same moment to China or Iran. So, there is just, it's alarming that the best case scenario currently, basically just ripping out 80% of Nick's book because we've solved all those problems, is still a terrifying one.\n\nAnd so, clearly, that's a near term thing that we have to solve. Thank you, Sam. So, Demis do you want to tell us about one thing that you feel is a challenge and say something about what we should focus on now to tackle it.\n\nYeah, I mean I think it's, you know I agree with both the statements already said that, so I think the coordination problem is one thing where you know we want to avoid this sort of harmful race to the finish where corner cutting starts happening and things like safety are easy things to, you know, will get cut because obviously they don't necessarily contribute to AI capability, in fact they may hold it back a bit by making a safe AI.\n\nSo, I think that's going to be a big issue on a global scale and that seems like it's going to be a hard problem when we are talking about national governments and things. And I think also, you know, we haven't thought enough about the whole governance scenario of how do we want those AIs to be out in the world? How many of them? Who will set their goals? All these kinds of things, I think, need a lot more thought.\n\nYou know, once we've already solved the technical problems. I think it's wonderful that you're not just saying these things, but actually doing these things since you played a leading role in setting up the Partnership on AI here which goes exactly in the direction of what you're advocating here. So, do you want to pass it off to Nick? I'm sure there is nothing at all you're worried about, right?\n\nSo, tell us about one concrete useful thing you would to see us focus on. So, I agree with that, I mean, so fun technical work, bring in top technical talent to work on these technical issues, build these collaborations, build a community, build trust, work some more on figuring out attractive solutions to the governance solutions that could work, but don't rush to implement the first idea you have, but first trial them out a little bit more.\n\nI think a lot about consciousness, so I was really struck by the 'sentience caution' on the list of principles here that said \"avoid overly... avoid strong assumptions about the distribution of consciousness in AIs,\" which I take it entails avoid assuming that any human level or super human level AGI is going to be conscious.\n\nFor me, that raising the possibility of a massive failure mode in the future, the possibility that we create human or super human level AGI and we've got a whole world populated by super human level AGIs, none of whom is conscious. And that would be a world, could potentially be a world of great intelligence, no consciousness no subjective experience at all.\n\nNow, I think many many people, with a wide variety of views, take the view that basically subjective experience or consciousness is required in order to have any meaning or value in your life at all. So therefore, a world without consciousness could not possibly a positive outcome. maybe it wouldn't be a terribly negative outcome, it would just be a 0 outcome, and among the worst possible outcomes. So, I worry about avoiding that outcome.\n\nNow, as a matter of fact, i'm fairly optimistic about the possibilities that AIs of various kinds will be conscious. But, in so far as this community is making this assumption, I think it's important to actually think about the question of 'in creating AGIs, are we actually creating conscious beings?'\n\nI mean, one thing we ought to at least consider doing there is making, given that we don't understand consciousness, we don't have a complete theory of consciousness, maybe we can be most confident about consciousness when it's similar to the case that we know about the best, namely human human consciousness...\n\nSo, therefore maybe there is an imperative to create human-like AGI in order that we can be maximally confident that there is going to be consciousness. So, what I hear you say is that when you have a nightmare about the zombie apocalypse you're not thinking of some terminator movie, but you're thinking about this problem. We create... we upload ourselves and do all these wonderful things, but there's no one home. Is that fair to say?\n\nI mean this is a different kind of existential risk. One kind of existential risk is there's no humans, there's AIs, but some people might say well that's OK they are our successors. A much worse existential risk is there are no conscious beings in our future. So, i'll make a confession, so Shane Legg mentioned that there has been this strong taboo about talking about the possibility of intelligence getting very advanced.\n\nIt's clearly also been a strong taboo for a long time to mention the C-word. In fact, before the conference when we got all these responses on the first round of the principles, guess which one was ranked last? It got huge amounts of minus 1 ratings, that was the one with consciousness, so we changed it to-- it was terribly stated --sentience and stated it better and then it got stated still better at lunch and it's still rated last.\n\nEven though I personally share your interests in this a lot. 88% of people agreed to the sentient caution. But, not 90%, so that one also fell off the list here. So, maybe that is another taboo you can personally help us shatter so that people think about that question more. Ray, anything you're concerned about? This isn't what I was going to say, but just to respond...\n\na converse concern is we create AGIs, everybody assumes that of course it's just a machine and therefore it's not conscious, but actually it is suffering but we don't look out for it's conscious subjective experience because we are making the wrong assumption. But, what I did want to say was, there are three overlapping revolutions that people talk about, GNR, genetics, bio-tech, nano-technology, and robotics, which is AI.\n\nAnd there are proposals, there was the Asilomar conferences done here decades ago for bio-tech that have worked fairly well. There are similar proposals for nano-technology. There is a difference with AI in that there really isn't a full proof technical solution to this. You can have technical controls on, say, nano-technology. One of the guidelines is it shouldn't be self-replicating.\n\nThat's not really realistic because it can't scale to meaningful quantities without being self-replicating, but you can imagine technical protections. If you have an AI that is more intelligent than you and it's out for your destruction and it's out for the world's destruction and there is no other AI that is superior to it, that's a bad situation. So, that's the specter.\n\nAnd partly this is amplified by our observation of what we as humans, the most intelligent species on the planet, have done to other species. If we look at how we treat animals, people, you know, are very friendly, like their dogs and pets, but if you look at factory farming we're not very benign to species that are less intelligent than us.\n\nThat engenders a lot of the concern we see that if we there's a new type of entity that's more intelligent than us it's going to treat us like we've treated other species. So, that's the concern. I do think that what we are doing at this conference is appropriate. I wanted to mention that I think we should publish these guidelines the way the Asilomar guidelines in bio-tech were published decades ago.\n\nAnd then people can and people can, you can have an opt-in, opt-out, but I think we should actually say we had this conference and the AI leadership/community has come up with these guidelines and people can respond to them and debate them and then maybe at the next conference we'll revise them. The Asilomar bio-tech guidelines have been revised many times.\n\nBut, I would advocate that we actually take a stand and put forth these guidelines and then let the whole community at large debate them. And have them be, have them guide our research. It's actually worked quite well in bio-tech. Bart? OK, yeah so let me give a little different perspective.\n\nSo, one concern I have at the high level is these machines become really smart or even in certain areas, can humans still understand, what they, decisions that they suggested, that they make. And I work in the field of automated reasoning where we have significant advance last two decades going from perhaps a few hundred variables to perhaps millions of variables being solved quite routinely.\n\nAnd there was a sense in the community, well we are getting answers from these reasoning engines, mostly hardware/software verification problems, but we cannot, humans can no longer understand these answers. In the last few years, people have actually discovered that you can use the machine to generate explanations for their answers that are, again, human understandable.\n\nSo, I see sort of a glimmer of hope that maybe even if we have much less intelligence we may be able to understand solutions that machines find for us and we could not find these solutions, but they may be able to provide explanations that are accessible to us. So that's a little positive note. Thank you. Stuart? So there are two things that keep me awake at night, other than email. So, one is the problem of misuse and bad actors.\n\nTo take an analogy, it’s as if we were building nuclear weapons and then delivering them by email to everybody on the planet, saying, here’s a toy, do what you want. How do we counter that? I have to say, I don’t really have a good solution. I think one of the things we have to do is to make designs for safe AI very clear and simple, and sort of make it unthinkable to do anything other than that, right?\n\nJust like it’s unthinkable to have a program with an infinite loop that produces a spinning pizza of death on your -- oh sorry. Or it’s unthinkable to have a buffer overflow that allows your software to be hacked into.\n\nThe other thing that keeps me awake is actually the possibility that success would lead to AI as a helicopter parent for the human race that would sort of ossify and gradually enfeeble us, so then there would be no point at which it was obvious to us that this was happening.\n\nAnd I think the mitigation, which you asked for, to look on the bright side, is that in some sense the meta-value of human evolvability, the freedom to change the future, is something that the AI needs to adopt, and in some sense that would result eventually with the AI receding into the background, and saying, OK, now I’ve got you through your adolescence, now it’s time for the human race to grow up, now that we have the capabilities to eliminate scarcity, to eliminate needless conflict and coordination failures and all of those things that we suffer from right now.\n\nSo I can imagine a distant future where, in fact, AI is perhaps even less visible than it is today. Great, finally you, Elon, have as far as I know never ever expressed any concerns about AI, right - I’m just wondering if there is any concerns, in particular any concerns where you see there’s a very clear thing we should be doing now that are going to help.\n\nI’m trying to think of what is an actual good future, what does that actually look like, or least bad, or however you want to characterize it. Because to a point that was made earlier by Sam and maybe made by others, we’re headed towards either superintelligence or civilization ending.\n\nThose are the two things that will happen - intelligence will keep advancing, the only thing that would stop it from advancing is something that puts civilization into stasis or destroys civilization. So, we have to figure out, what is a world that we would like to be in where there is this digital superintelligence? I think, another point that is really important to appreciate is that we are, all of us, already are cyborgs.\n\nSo you have a machine extension of yourself in the form of your phone and your computer and all your applications. You are already superhuman. By far you have more power, more capability, than the President of the United States had 30 years ago. If you have an Internet link you have an article of wisdom, you can communicate to millions of people, you can communicate to the rest of Earth instantly.\n\nI mean, these are magical powers that didn’t exist, not that long ago. So everyone is already superhuman, and a cyborg. The limitation is one of bandwidth. So we’re bandwidth-constrained, particularly on output. Our input is much better but our output is extremely slow. If you want to be generous you could say maybe it’s a few hundred bits per second, or a kilobit or something like that output.\n\nThe way we output is like we have our little meat sticks that we move very slowly and push buttons, or tap a little screen. And that’s extremely slow. Compare that to a computer which can communicate at the terabyte level. These are very big orders of magnitude differences. Our input is much better because of vision, but even that could be enhanced significantly.\n\nSo I think the two things that are needed for a future that we would look at and conclude is good, most likely, is, we have to solve that bandwidth constraint with a direct neural interface. I think a high bandwidth interface to the cortex, so that we can have a digital tertiary layer that’s more fully symbiotic with the rest of us.\n\nWe’ve got the cortex and the limbic system, which seem to work together pretty well - they’ve got good bandwidth, whereas the bandwidth to additional tertiary layer is weak. So I think if we can solve that bandwidth issue and then AI can be widely available.\n\nThe analogy to a nuclear bomb is not exactly correct - it’s not as though it’s going to explode and create a mushroom cloud, it’s more like if there were just a few people that had it they would be able to be essentially dictators of Earth, or whoever acquired it and if it was limited to a small number of people and it was ultra-smart, they would have dominion over Earth.\n\nSo I think it’s extremely important that it be widespread and that we solve the bandwidth issue. And if we do those things, then it will be tied to our consciousness, tied to our will, tied to the sum of individual human will, and everyone would have it so it would be sort of still a relatively even playing field, in fact, it would be probably more egalitarian than today.\n\nGreat, thank you so much, that’s in fact the perfect segue into the last question I want to ask you before we open it up to everybody. Something I have really missed in the discussion about really advanced intelligence, beyond human, is more thought about the upside.\n\nWe have so much talk about existential risk, and not just in the academic context, but just flip on your TV, check out Netflix, what do you see there in these scientific visions of the future? It’s almost always dystopias, right?\n\nFor some reason fear gives more clicks than the positive visions, but if I have a student coming into my office at MIT asking for career advice, the first thing I’m going to ask her is, where will you want to be in 20 years? And if she just says, well maybe I’ll get cancer, maybe I’ll get run over by a bus, that’s a terrible way to think about career planning, right?\n\nI want her to be on fire and say my vision is I want to do this - and here are the things that could go wrong, and then you can plan out how to avoid those problems and get it out - I would love to see more discussion about the upsides, futures we’re really excited about, so we can not just try to avoid problems for the sake of avoiding problems, but to get to something that we’re all really on fire about.\n\nSo to start off I’ll just tell you something that makes me really excited about advanced artificial intelligence. Everything I love about civilization is a product of intelligence. If we for some reason were to say, well, you know, I’m scared about this technology thing, let’s just press pause on it forever, there’s no interesting question about if we’re going to have human extinction, the question is just ‘when?'\n\nIs it going to be a supervolcano, is it going to be the next dinosaur-killing-class asteroid - the last one happened 60 million years ago, so how long is it going to be? Pretty horrible future to just sit and wonder when we’re going to get taken out here without the technology when we know that we totally have the brainpower to solve all of these problems if we proceed forward and develop technology.\n\nSo that was just one thing that makes me very excited about moving forward rather than pressing 'Pause.' I want to just ask the same question to all of you guys in turn. So tell us, just pretty briefly, about something that you are really excited about. Some future vision you imagine with very advanced artificial intelligence that you’re really excited about, that you would like to see.\n\nJaan- So I want to be careful when I imagine concrete fruits of AGI. On a meta-level I think as a first approximation, I think we should just maximize the amount of fun and minimize the amount of suffering.\n\nI think Eliezer [Yudkowsky] has written a sequence called “Fun Theory”, where he points out that people have been horrible imagining, are very unimaginative imagining paradises of various sorts, just like really boring places, actually, when you think about them. I think Eliezer has this sketch where he says, “It was hard to spend like one weekend with my relatives. Imagine spending eternity with your dead relatives.\n\n” So I think we should be concerned about side effects and try to capture dynamics of improvement, and basically go from there - make sure that we’re going to adjust the trajectory as we get smarter and more grown together. Great, thank you, Jaan. Sam, what do you get excited about? Well, strangely, what excites me really just abuts the parts that scare me the most.\n\nI think what is nice about this conversation, in particular about the alignment problem, is that it’s forcing us to realize that there are better and worse answers to questions of human value. And as someone said, perhaps at this last meeting in Puerto Rico, we really have to do philosophy on a deadline, and we have to admit to ourselves that there are better and worse answers and we have to converge on the better ones.\n\nAnd what would excite me about actually the birth of superintelligent AI - one of the things, apart from solving obvious problems like curing disease and energy issues and all the rest, perhaps differs a little bit with what Stuart said. I’m not so worried about idiocracy or all of us just losing our way as apes and living unproductive lives in dialogue with these oracles.\n\nI think actually, I would want a truly value-aligned superintelligence to incrementally show us, not merely conserve what we want, but show us what we should want to keep improving our values so that we can navigate in the space of all possible experiences and converge on better and better ones. Thank you, Sam, and what about you, Demis?\n\nSo obviously this is why I spend my whole career working on this, is that, I think if we do this right, it’s going to be the greatest thing ever to happen to humanity, and in some ways I think unlock our full potential. I mean, I’ve talked to a lot about, in all my talks about using it as a tool to help us make science and medical breakthroughs faster. And so I think that’s an obvious one.\n\nBut taking that longer-term, one reason I got so into AI is that, like probably many of you in this room, I’m interested in the biggest questions of why we’re here, understanding our minds, what is consciousness, what’s the nature of the universe, what’s our purpose - and if we’re going to try and really grapple with any of those questions I think we’re going to need something like AI, perhaps with ourselves enhanced as well.\n\nAnd I think in that future world we’ll have a chance to actually find out about some of these really deep questions in the same way we’re finding out with AlphaGo just about Go, but what if we could do that with all of science and physics and the biggest questions in the universe. And I think that’s going to be the most exhilarating journey of all, to find that out.\n\nTo just carry out on a few other things that people commented on is in terms of us as the most intelligent beings on the planet right now, and treating animals badly and these sorts of things, I think if you think about it though - let’s take tigers or something in India.\n\nThey have huge ranges and those people are very poor and they’re resource-poor, but if they had abundant resources I don’t think they’re intentionally trying to kill off these tigers - in some cases they are - but often it’s just because they need the land for their cattle, and the tiger needs whatever number of kilometers squared to live, one tiger. And it’s just difficult with the number of people that are there.\n\nSo I think if we solve the kind of abundance and scarcity problem, then I think that opens up a lot of conflicts both between humans as well as to do with resource scarcity, at the heart of it. So I see, if we can solve a lot of these problems I can see a much better future. So Nick, you pointed out, the upside part of your book was a little shorter, so now you have a chance to add something positive. What are you excited about?\n\nThere are really two sides to that. So one is getting rid of a lot of the negatives, like the compassionate use to cure diseases and all other kinds of horrible miseries that exist on the planet today. So that is a large chunk of the potential. But then beyond that, if one really wants to see realistically what the positive things are that could be developed, I think one has to think outside the constraints of our current human biological nature.\n\nThat it’s unrealistic to imagine a trajectory stretching hundreds of thousands of years into the future, we have superintelligence, we have material abundance, and yet we are still these bipedal organisms with three pounds of gray tissue matter, with a fixed set of emotional sensitivities and the hedonic set point that is kind of OK-ish for most people but if you get - if something really good happens it lasts for a time and then you’re back to the baseline.\n\nI think all of these basic parameters that sort of define the human game today, I think become up for grabs in this future. And it opens up this much vaster space of post-human modes of beings, some of which I think could be wonderful, literally beyond our ability to imagine, in terms of the mental states, the types of activities, the understanding, the ways of relating.\n\nSo I don’t think we need a detailed blueprint for utopia now, what we need is to get ourselves in a position later on where we can have the ability to use this to realize the values that come into view once we’ve taken steps forward. Thank you, Nick. What about you, David? I’m excited about the possibilities for AI making us humans smarter.\n\nI mean some of it is selfish - I turned 50 last year, my brain is gradually becoming slower and older and dumber, but I’m not sure that I am, and that’s partly because of all of the augmented intelligence technology we’re using. Smartphones, and the Internet, and so on, they’re giving me all kinds of capacities, extended capacities that I didn’t have before. And I’m really looking forward to AI helping with that.\n\nIn ten years or so once everyone is wearing augmented reality glasses with deep learning built into it, then I’m really going to need that around 60.\n\nAnd if you guys really get on the case and by the time I’m 70 or so we've got real genuine AI or AI modules out there which can somehow come to be integrated with my brain processes or maybe eventually we get to upload our entire brains onto AI, then there's a way potentially to get smarter, more intelligent forever.\n\nAnd this is not just selfish, although I can't say that doesn't motivate me, but Demis talked about the AI scientists; I also like to think about the AI philosopher. The problems of philosophy are really hard and many people have speculated that we humans are just too dumb to solve some of them.\n\nBut once we've actually got AIs on the scene, maybe AI-enhanced humans, then maybe we're going to be able to cross those thresholds where the AI-enhanced humans or maybe just the AGIs end up solving some of those hard problems of philosophy for once and for all. Great, Ray, you have been a true pioneer in articulating positive visions of the future in your writing. So if you picked the one that you're most excited about now, what would that be?\n\nSo imagine going back 10,000 years and asking the quintessential caveman and woman, Gee, what is a beneficial future? What would you like to see? And they would say, well I would like this fire to stop going out and I would like a bigger boulder to prevent the animals from getting in the cave. Anything else? Well no I think that would be pretty perfect. Well don't you want a better website and apps and search engines?\n\nImagine going back 2 million years ago and talking to primates - imagine if you could do that, and saying, isn't it great that frontal cortex is coming and we're going to have additional neocortex and and a hierarchy and they say, well what's the point of that? And you say, well you'll have music and humor, and their answer would be, what's music? What's humor?\n\nSo they couldn't imagine concepts that they couldn't imagine, and by analogy I think we will have new phenomena that are as profound as music and humor, you could call it more profound music and we'll be funnier, but I think it'll be as profound as these great leaps that evolution has brought us, because we will become profoundly smarter and if music and humor are up here and we go to even higher levels of the neocortex, we're going to have more profound ways of expressing ourselves and once we have that we would not want to go back.\n\nWhat about you, Bart? Well, I pretty much agree that we can't really predict much in advance, what we would like to have. For myself personally I see the developments in mathematics and science and discovery, and computers are just the hybrids of human computers there is quite incredible and makes the field - makes what we do much more exciting. So I think that will be in the near future the first thing. Great, and what about you, Stuart?\n\nWell, so like Jeffrey Sachs - I think that for many of us, and probably like the cavemen - that for many of us life is pretty amazing, and for many more of us it isn't. And I think the best thing that AI can do, the big upside, is actually to fix the latter problem.\n\nI mean I love Nick's feeling that there are higher states of being that are so far above our current 'pretty good', that that balances out all the 'pretty bad' that a lot of people are suffering.\n\nBut I really think the emphasis should be on the 'pretty bad' and fixing it, and eliminating - so Demis was reading my notes apparently, from across the room - but eliminating the scarcity basically eliminates the need for people to act in a zero-sum fashion where they can only get by, by making it less possible for someone else to get by, and I think that's the source of a lot of the nastiness that Jeffrey mentioned earlier.\n\nSo I think that would be my main upside, and not having to read so much email, that would be the second one. And for you, Elon, you've never articulated any visionary ideas about the future as far as I know, either. What about now? I think I just - I have thought about this a lot, and I think it just really comes down to two things, and it's solving the machine-brain bandwidth constraint and democratization of AI.\n\nI think if we have those two things, the future will be good. There was a great quote by Lord Acton which is that 'freedom consists of the distribution of power and despotism in its concentration.' And I think as long as we have - as long as AI powers, like anyone can get it if they want it, and we've got something faster than meat sticks to communicate with, then I think the future will be good.\n\nFantastic, so let's get - I know your caffeine levels are dropping dangerously low, and we also have another panel after this, which is going to be really exciting to listen to, so let's do a just a few quick questions. Make sure that they are actually questions, and say your name and also say, pick one person on the panel and address it just to them, OK? Yoshua? Yoshua Bengio, Montreal.\n\nAnd it's for Jaan - I found your presentation very inspiring, and one question I have is related to the question of eliciting preferences and values from people. Do you think this line of investigation could lead to better democracy, better society, more direct democracy, and you know, what do you think about this direction to deal with the issue of misuse and things like that. Yes, absolutely.\n\nThere could be one code name for this, even, could be like 'Democracy 2. 0' or 'U. N. 2. 0' or something like that. So, and as I mentioned in my presentation, just a lot of people today basically want to make the world better, but it's kind of hard to distinguish them from people who say they want to make the world better.\n\nSo if there was actually kind of like a very easy measuring, like a metric that basically would work as a Schelling point, focal point, then I think that would be super helpful. And yeah, like democracy was invented like hundreds of years ago so, and clearly we have advanced as a civilization and we have better knowledge about how to aggregate preferences. And Nicolas Berggruen, over there. Thank you, Max.\n\nNicolas Berggruen, so I have a very almost naive question. This is a very well-meaning group in terms of, let's say, intentions, but who sort of, looking at who else is doing, potentially, AGI, it could be well beyond this group, it could be in China, it could be any place. And what happens because we've talked about how powerful AGI is, and if Elon is correct, if it is distributed fairly, fine.\n\nBut if it isn't, is there a way to monitor today or in a year or in 10 years, because once it's out it'll be fast. Who is monitoring it, who has a tab on it? Because this is self-selected, but beyond... Elon or Demis does either one of you want to take a swing at this?\n\nWell I think this sort of relates to my point I said earlier about trying to build AI at the hard part of the 'S' curve, so, which I think is where we sort of are at the moment, as far as we can tell, because, you know, it's not easy to make this kind of progress, so you need quite a lot of people who are quite smart and that community is pretty small, still, even though it's getting rapidly bigger at places like NIPS.\n\nAnd so most people know each other, so this is pretty representative of everyone in the West, at least, obviously it's harder to know what's happening in China or in Russia, maybe. But, you know, I think that you need quite a large footprint of resources, people and very smart people and lots of computers and so on. So I think that narrows down the scope of the number of groups who can do that, and it also means that they're more visible.\n\nSo, you know, I think certainly in the West I think most people around here, someone in this room will have contact with somebody who's in those groups who are capable of making meaningful progress towards AGI. It's harder to know in the East and further apart, but we should try and make links to those Chinese National Academy of Sciences, and so on, to find out more.\n\nBut you know that may change in the future, I think that's the current state of it. Great, it's - the bad news is it's getting later in the day and we only have time for one more question. The good news is there's a coffee break right after this so you can ask all of your questions if you swarm the panel. And the last question goes to you, Erik. Do you want to stand up? Erik Brynjolfsson, MIT.\n\nI'm going to pick up on the thing that Elon said at the end about democratizing the outcome and tie it back to the panel yesterday where Reid Hoffman talked about people caring a lot about not just absolute income but relative income, and I wanted to get the panelists' reactions to the thoughts about whether or not AI had tendencies towards winner-take-all effects, that there's a tendency for concentration, that whoever's ahead can pull further ahead, or whether there's potential for more widespread democratic access to it, and what kinds of mechanisms we can put in place if we want to have the widely shared prosperity that Elon suggested?\n\nElon, do you want to take that? Yeah, well, I mean I have to say that when something is a danger to the public, then there needs to be some - I hate to say government agency, like regulators - I'm not the biggest fan of regulators, 'cause they're a bit of a buzzkill. But the fact is we've got regulators in the aircraft industry, car industry, I deal with them all the time, with drugs, food - and anything that's sort of a public risk.\n\nAnd I think this has to fall into the category of a public risk. So I think that the right thing to do, and I think it will happen, the question is whether the government reaction speed matches the advancement speed of AI. Governments react slowly - or governments move slowly and they tend to be reactive, as opposed to proactive. But you can look at these other industries and say, does anybody really want the FAA to go away?\n\nand it's like people could just be a free for all for aircraft - like, probably not. You know, there's a reason it's there or just people could just do any kind of drugs and maybe they work, maybe the don't. You know, we have that in supplements, kind of ridiculous.\n\nBut I think on balance FDA is good, so I think we probably need some kind of regulatory authority and I think it's, like a rebuttal to that is, well people will just move to Costa Rica or something. That's not true. OK, we don't see Boeing moving to Costa Rica or to Venezuela or wherever it's like free and loose To Demis' point, the AI is overwhelmingly likely to be developed where there is a concentration of AI research talent.\n\nAnd that happens to be in a few places in the world. It's Silicon Valley, London, at Boston, if you sort of figure out a few other places, but it's really just a few places that really regulators could reasonably access. And I want to be clear, it's not because I love regulators, OK? They're a pain in the neck but they're necessary to preserve the public at times. Alright, on that note, let's thank the panel for a fascinating discussion.","textByLang":{"en":"I'm going to ask a question, but you can only answer by saying either 'yes,' 'no,' or 'it's complicated.' Alright? So, let's start over here. Is some form of superintelligence possible, Jaan? 'Yes,' 'no,' or 'it's complicated.' Yes. Definitely. No. Well, this was disappointing, we didn't find any disagreement. Let's try harder. Just because it's possible doesn't mean that it's actually going to happen.\n\nSo, before I asked if superintelligence was possible at all according to the laws of physics. Now, i'm asking, will it actually happen? A little bit complicated, but yes. Yes, and if it doesn't then something terrible has happened to prevent it. Yes. Probably. Yes. No. Shucks, still haven't found any interesting disagreements. We need to try harder still. OK.\n\nSo, you think it is going to happen, but would you actually like it to happen at some point? Yes, no, or it's complicated? Complicated, leaning towards yes. It's complicated. Yes. It's really complicated. Yes. It's complicated. Very complicated. Well, heck, I don't know. It depends on which kind. Alright, so it's getting a little bit more interesting. When I think, we had a really fascinating... When is it going to happen?\n\nWell, we had a really fascinating discussion already in this morning's panel about when we might get to human level AI. So, that would sort of put a lower bound. In the interest of time, I think we don't need to rehash the question of when going beyond it might start. But, let's ask a very related question to the one that just came up here.\n\nMainly, the question of well if something starts to happen, if you get some sort of recursive self improvement or some other process whereby intelligence and machines start to take off very very rapidly, there is always a timescale associated with this. And there I hope we can finally find some real serious disagreements to argue about here.\n\nSome people have been envisioning this scenario where it goes PHOOM and things happen in days or hours or less. Whereas, others envision that it will happen but it might take thousands of years or decades. So, if you think of some sort of doubling time, some sort of rough timescale on which things get dramatically better, what time scale would you guess at, Jaan? Start now or starting at human level?\n\nNo, no, so once we get human level AI or whatever point beyond there or a little bit before there where things actually start taking off, what is the sort of time scale? Any explosion, as a nerdy physicist, has some sort of time scale, right, on which it happens. Are we talking about seconds, or years, or millennia? I'm thinking of years, but it is important to act as if this timeline was shorter.\n\nYeah, I actually don't really trust my intuitions here. I have intuitions that we are thinking of years, but I also think human level AI is a mirage. It is suddenly going to be better than human, but whether that is going to be a full intelligence explosion quickly, I don't know. I think it partly depends on the architecture that ends up delivering human level AI.\n\nSo, this kind of neuroscience inspired AI that we seem to be building at the moment that needs to be trained and have experience in order for it to gain knowledge that may be, you know, on the order of a few years so possible even a decade. Some numbers of years, but it could also be much less. But, I wouldn't be surprised if it was much more.\n\nPotentially days or shorter, especially if it's AI researchers designing AI researchers Every time there is an advance in AI, we dismiss it as 'oh, well that's not really AI:' chess, go, self-driving cars. An AI, as you know, is the field of things we haven't done yet. That will continue when we actually reach AGI. There will be lots of controversy. By the time the controversy settles down, we will realize that it's been around for a few years.\n\nYeah, so I think we will go beyond human level capabilities in many different areas, but not in all at the same time. So, it will be an uneven process where some areas will be far advanced very soon, already to some extent and other might take much longer. What Bart said.\n\nBut, I think if it reaches a threshold where it's as smart as the smartest most inventive human then, I mean, it really could be only a matter of days before it's smarter than the sum of humanity. So, here we saw quite an interesting range of answers. And this, I find is a very interesting question because for reasons that people here have published a lot of interesting papers about the time scale makes a huge difference.\n\nRight, if it's something that happening on the time scale of the industrial revolution, for example, that's a lot longer than the time scale on which society can adapt and take measures to steer development, borrowing your nice rocket metaphor, Jaan. Whereas, if things happen much quicker than society can respond, it's much harder to steer and you kind of have to hope that you've built in a good steering in advance.\n\nSo, for example in nuclear reactors, we nerdy physicists like to stick graphite sticks in a moderators to slow things down maybe prevent it from going critical. I'm curious if anyone of you feels that it would be nice if this growth of intelligence which you are generally excited about, with some caveats, if any of you would like to have it happen a bit slower so that it becomes easier for society to keep shaping it the way we want it.\n\nAnd, if so, and here's a tough question, is there anything we can do now or later on when it gets closer that might make this intelligence explosion or rapid growth of intelligence simply proceed slower so we can have more influence over it. Does anyone want to take a swing at this? It's not for the whole panel, but anyone who... I'm reminded of the conversation we had with Rich Sutton in Puerto Rico.\n\nLike, we had a lot of disagreements, but definitely could agree about paths slower being better than faster. Any thoughts on how one could make it a little bit slower? I mean, the strategy I suggested in my talk was somewhat tongue and cheek. But, it was also serious. I think this conference is great and as technologists we should do everything we can to keep the technology safe and beneficial.\n\nCertainly, as we do each specific application, like self-driving cars, there's a whole host of ethical issues to address. But, I don't think we can solve the problem just technologically.\n\nImagine that we've done our job perfectly and we've created the most safe, beneficial AI possible, but we've let the political system become totalitarian and evil, either a evil world government or even just a portion of the globe that is that way, it's not going to work out well. And so, part of the struggle is in the area of politics and social policy to have the world reflect the values want to achieve because we are talking about human AI.\n\nHuman AI is by definition at human levels and therefore is human. And so, the issue of how we make humans ethical is the same issue as how we make AIs that are human level ethical.\n\nSo, what i'm hearing you say is that before we reach the point of getting close to human level AI, a very good way to prepare for that is for us humans in our human societies to try and get our act together as much as possible and have the world run with more reason than it, perhaps, is today. Is that fair? That's exactly what I'm saying. Nick?\n\nAlso, I just want to clarify again that when I asked about what you would do to slow things down i'm not talking at all about slowing down AI research now. We're simply talking about if we get to the point where we are getting very near human level AI and think we might get some very fast development, how could one slow that part down?\n\nSo, one method would be to make faster progress now, so you get to that point sooner when hardware is less developed, you get less hardware overhang.\n\nHowever, the current speed of AI progress is a fairly hard variable to change very much because there are very big forces pushing on it, so perhaps the higher elasticity option is what I suggested in the talk to ensure that whoever gets there first has enough of a lead that they are able to slow down for a few months, let us say, to go slow during the transition.\n\nSo, I think one thing you can do, I mean this is almost in the verification area, is to make systems that provably will not recruit additional hardware or resigned their hardware, so that their resources remain fixed. And i'm quite happy to sit there for several years thinking hard about what the next step would be to take. But, it's trivial to copy software.\n\nSoftware is self replicating and always has been and I don't see how you can possibly stop that. I mean, I think it would be great if it went slow, but it's hard to see how it does go slow given the huge first mover advantages and getting to superintelligence. The only scenario that I see where it might go slow is where there is only one potential first mover that can then stop and think.\n\nSo, maybe that speaks to creating a society where, you know, AI is restrictive and unified, but without multiple movers. Yeah, Demis, so your colleague Sean Legg mentioned that the one thing that could help a lot here is if there's things like this industry partnership and a sense of trust and openness between the leaders, so that if there is a point where one wants to...\n\nYeah, I do worry about, you know, that sort of scenario where, you know, I think, I've got quite high belief in human ingenuity to solve these problems given enough time. the control problem and other issues. They're very difficult, but I think we can solve them. The problem is will there, you know, the coordination problem of making sure there is enough time to slow down at the end and, you know, let Stuart think about this for 5 years.\n\nBut, what about, he may do that, but what about all the other teams that are reading the papers and not going to do that while you're thinking. Yeah, this is what I worry about a lot. It seems like that coordination problem is quite difficult.\n\nBut, I think as the first step, may be coordinating things like the Partnership on AI, you know, the most capable teams together to agree, at least agree on a set of protocols or safety procedures, or things, you know, agree that, maybe, you know, you should verify these systems and that is going to take a few years and you should think about that. I think that would be a good thing.\n\nI just want to caveat one thing about slowing versus fast progresses, you know, it could be that, imagine there was a moratorium on AI research for 50 years, but hardware continued to accelerate as it does now.\n\nWe could, you know, this is sort of what Nick's point was is that there could be a massive hardware overhang or something where an AI actually many, many, many different approaches to AI including seed AI, self-improving AI, all these things could be possible. And, you know, maybe one person in their garage could do it.\n\nAnd I think that would be a lot more difficult to coordinate that kind of situation, whereas, so, I think there is some argument to be made where you want to make fast progress when we are at the very hard point of the 's' curve. Where actually, you know, you need quite a large team, you have to be quite visible, you know who the other people are, and, you know, in a sense society can keep tabs on who the major players are and what they're up to.\n\nWhereas, opposed to a scenario where in say 50 or a 100 years time when, you know, someone, a kid in their garage could create a seed AI or something like that. Yeah, Bart, one last comment on this topic. Yeah, I think that this process will be a very irregular process and sometime we will be far advanced and other times we will be going quite slow.\n\nYeah, i'm sort of hoping that when society sees something like fake video creation where you create a video where you have somebody say made up things and that society will actually realize that there are these new capabilities for the machines and we should start taking the problem as a society more seriously before we have full and general AI. We'll use AI to detect that.\n\nSo, you mentioned the word 'worry' there, and you Nick went a bit farther, you had the word 'doom' written on your slides three times. No wonder there was one star on Amazon on that rating and that it was even in red color. I think it's just as important to talk about existential hope and the fantastic upside as downside and I want to do a lot of that here.\n\nSo, let's just get some of those worries out of the way now and then return to the positive things. I just want to go through quickly and give each one of you a chance to just pick one thing that you feel is a challenge that we should overcome and then say something about what you feel is the best thing we can do, right now, to try to mitigate it. Do you want to start Jaan? To mitigate what?\n\nMention one thing that you're worried could go wrong and tell us about something constructive that we can do now that will reduce that risk. I do think that AI arms races, I see like a lot of, like, good. I'm really heartened to see kind of great contacts between OpenAI and DeepMind, but I think this is just like a sort of toy model of what the world at large might come up with in terms of arms races.\n\nAnd for myself I have been spending increasing amount of time in Asia recently just to kind of try to kind of pull in more people elsewhere, what has been so far, just been, kind of like, an Anglo- American discussion mostly. So, like this is, I think, this is one thing that should be done and i'm going to do it.\n\nWell, as someone who is outside this field, I think the challenge i'm really in touch with is how hard it is to take the safety concerns emotionally seriously. And how hard it is for people in the field to do that as well. I can't tell you have many people outside this room who purport to be experts think the control problem is a total non-issue. I mean, it's just flabbergasting to meet these people and just therefore not worth thinking about.\n\nAnd one of the reasons I think is that in one case there is this illusion that the time horizon matters. If you feel that this is 50 or a 100 years away that is totally consoling, but there is an implicit assumption there, the assumption is that you know how long it will take to build this safely. And that 50 or a 100 years is enough time.\n\nThe other issue is, I think, most people feel like intelligence is an intrinsic good and of course we want more of it and it's very easy to be in touch with that assumption because right now there is a cure for cancer, which we have not discovered. Right, how galling is that?\n\nBut for more intelligence, but for knowing which experiments to run, or how to integrate the data we already have in hand, we would have a cure for cancer that was actionable now unless there was some physical law of the universe that prevented us from curing cancer, which seems unlikely.\n\nSo, the pain of not having enough intelligence is really excruciating when you focus on it, but, and I think to your previous question of doing this quickly becomes an intrinsic good provided we have solved the alignment problems and the political problems and the chaos that would follow if we were just, if we did it quickly without solving those problems.\n\nSo, I think, it's the thing that is alarming is how ethereal these concerns are even to those who have no rational argument against them. So, Sam it sounds to me like you're agreeing very strongly with what Shane Legg that there is, in some circles, still this strong taboo that, you know, don't even consider the possibility that we might get AGI because it's just absolutely ridiculous.\n\nAnd he was arguing that the sooner we can get rid of this taboo the sooner people can get to work and find all these really helpful solutions and answers that we need. So, suppose for a moment that I came up to you and said to you \"this idea of super human intelligence just sounds absolutely ridiculous, sounds completely nuts. And by the way i've never seen your ted talk.\"\n\nAnd we're in an elevator and you have only 30 seconds to persuade me to take this more seriously, what would you say? A lot of people who are here will have this exact conversation with colleagues and others in the future. Well, there are very few assumptions you need to make to take this seriously, intellectually. Again, the emotional part is a separate piece.\n\nBut, if you assume that intelligence is just, on some level, the product of information processing in a physical system and there are very few people who dispute that who are scientifically literate at this point and you assume that we will continue to improve our information processing systems, unless something terrible happens to us to prevent that, and that seems like a very safe assumption, then it is just a matter of time before we instantiate something that is human level and beyond in our computers.\n\nAnd, again, the time horizon is only consoling on the assumption that we know we have enough time to solve the alignment problems and the political problems.\n\nThe other thing that is humbling here that Ray brought up at one point is that even if we were handed a perfectly benign, well behaved AI just from god, you know, we are given a perfect oracle we are given a perfect inventor of good technology, given our current political and economic atmosphere that would produce total chaos. We just have not...\n\nwe don't have the ethical or political will to share the wealth, we don't have the political integration to deal with this thing being given to Silicon Valley and not being given at the same moment to China or Iran. So, there is just, it's alarming that the best case scenario currently, basically just ripping out 80% of Nick's book because we've solved all those problems, is still a terrifying one.\n\nAnd so, clearly, that's a near term thing that we have to solve. Thank you, Sam. So, Demis do you want to tell us about one thing that you feel is a challenge and say something about what we should focus on now to tackle it.\n\nYeah, I mean I think it's, you know I agree with both the statements already said that, so I think the coordination problem is one thing where you know we want to avoid this sort of harmful race to the finish where corner cutting starts happening and things like safety are easy things to, you know, will get cut because obviously they don't necessarily contribute to AI capability, in fact they may hold it back a bit by making a safe AI.\n\nSo, I think that's going to be a big issue on a global scale and that seems like it's going to be a hard problem when we are talking about national governments and things. And I think also, you know, we haven't thought enough about the whole governance scenario of how do we want those AIs to be out in the world? How many of them? Who will set their goals? All these kinds of things, I think, need a lot more thought.\n\nYou know, once we've already solved the technical problems. I think it's wonderful that you're not just saying these things, but actually doing these things since you played a leading role in setting up the Partnership on AI here which goes exactly in the direction of what you're advocating here. So, do you want to pass it off to Nick? I'm sure there is nothing at all you're worried about, right?\n\nSo, tell us about one concrete useful thing you would to see us focus on. So, I agree with that, I mean, so fun technical work, bring in top technical talent to work on these technical issues, build these collaborations, build a community, build trust, work some more on figuring out attractive solutions to the governance solutions that could work, but don't rush to implement the first idea you have, but first trial them out a little bit more.\n\nI think a lot about consciousness, so I was really struck by the 'sentience caution' on the list of principles here that said \"avoid overly... avoid strong assumptions about the distribution of consciousness in AIs,\" which I take it entails avoid assuming that any human level or super human level AGI is going to be conscious.\n\nFor me, that raising the possibility of a massive failure mode in the future, the possibility that we create human or super human level AGI and we've got a whole world populated by super human level AGIs, none of whom is conscious. And that would be a world, could potentially be a world of great intelligence, no consciousness no subjective experience at all.\n\nNow, I think many many people, with a wide variety of views, take the view that basically subjective experience or consciousness is required in order to have any meaning or value in your life at all. So therefore, a world without consciousness could not possibly a positive outcome. maybe it wouldn't be a terribly negative outcome, it would just be a 0 outcome, and among the worst possible outcomes. So, I worry about avoiding that outcome.\n\nNow, as a matter of fact, i'm fairly optimistic about the possibilities that AIs of various kinds will be conscious. But, in so far as this community is making this assumption, I think it's important to actually think about the question of 'in creating AGIs, are we actually creating conscious beings?'\n\nI mean, one thing we ought to at least consider doing there is making, given that we don't understand consciousness, we don't have a complete theory of consciousness, maybe we can be most confident about consciousness when it's similar to the case that we know about the best, namely human human consciousness...\n\nSo, therefore maybe there is an imperative to create human-like AGI in order that we can be maximally confident that there is going to be consciousness. So, what I hear you say is that when you have a nightmare about the zombie apocalypse you're not thinking of some terminator movie, but you're thinking about this problem. We create... we upload ourselves and do all these wonderful things, but there's no one home. Is that fair to say?\n\nI mean this is a different kind of existential risk. One kind of existential risk is there's no humans, there's AIs, but some people might say well that's OK they are our successors. A much worse existential risk is there are no conscious beings in our future. So, i'll make a confession, so Shane Legg mentioned that there has been this strong taboo about talking about the possibility of intelligence getting very advanced.\n\nIt's clearly also been a strong taboo for a long time to mention the C-word. In fact, before the conference when we got all these responses on the first round of the principles, guess which one was ranked last? It got huge amounts of minus 1 ratings, that was the one with consciousness, so we changed it to-- it was terribly stated --sentience and stated it better and then it got stated still better at lunch and it's still rated last.\n\nEven though I personally share your interests in this a lot. 88% of people agreed to the sentient caution. But, not 90%, so that one also fell off the list here. So, maybe that is another taboo you can personally help us shatter so that people think about that question more. Ray, anything you're concerned about? This isn't what I was going to say, but just to respond...\n\na converse concern is we create AGIs, everybody assumes that of course it's just a machine and therefore it's not conscious, but actually it is suffering but we don't look out for it's conscious subjective experience because we are making the wrong assumption. But, what I did want to say was, there are three overlapping revolutions that people talk about, GNR, genetics, bio-tech, nano-technology, and robotics, which is AI.\n\nAnd there are proposals, there was the Asilomar conferences done here decades ago for bio-tech that have worked fairly well. There are similar proposals for nano-technology. There is a difference with AI in that there really isn't a full proof technical solution to this. You can have technical controls on, say, nano-technology. One of the guidelines is it shouldn't be self-replicating.\n\nThat's not really realistic because it can't scale to meaningful quantities without being self-replicating, but you can imagine technical protections. If you have an AI that is more intelligent than you and it's out for your destruction and it's out for the world's destruction and there is no other AI that is superior to it, that's a bad situation. So, that's the specter.\n\nAnd partly this is amplified by our observation of what we as humans, the most intelligent species on the planet, have done to other species. If we look at how we treat animals, people, you know, are very friendly, like their dogs and pets, but if you look at factory farming we're not very benign to species that are less intelligent than us.\n\nThat engenders a lot of the concern we see that if we there's a new type of entity that's more intelligent than us it's going to treat us like we've treated other species. So, that's the concern. I do think that what we are doing at this conference is appropriate. I wanted to mention that I think we should publish these guidelines the way the Asilomar guidelines in bio-tech were published decades ago.\n\nAnd then people can and people can, you can have an opt-in, opt-out, but I think we should actually say we had this conference and the AI leadership/community has come up with these guidelines and people can respond to them and debate them and then maybe at the next conference we'll revise them. The Asilomar bio-tech guidelines have been revised many times.\n\nBut, I would advocate that we actually take a stand and put forth these guidelines and then let the whole community at large debate them. And have them be, have them guide our research. It's actually worked quite well in bio-tech. Bart? OK, yeah so let me give a little different perspective.\n\nSo, one concern I have at the high level is these machines become really smart or even in certain areas, can humans still understand, what they, decisions that they suggested, that they make. And I work in the field of automated reasoning where we have significant advance last two decades going from perhaps a few hundred variables to perhaps millions of variables being solved quite routinely.\n\nAnd there was a sense in the community, well we are getting answers from these reasoning engines, mostly hardware/software verification problems, but we cannot, humans can no longer understand these answers. In the last few years, people have actually discovered that you can use the machine to generate explanations for their answers that are, again, human understandable.\n\nSo, I see sort of a glimmer of hope that maybe even if we have much less intelligence we may be able to understand solutions that machines find for us and we could not find these solutions, but they may be able to provide explanations that are accessible to us. So that's a little positive note. Thank you. Stuart? So there are two things that keep me awake at night, other than email. So, one is the problem of misuse and bad actors.\n\nTo take an analogy, it’s as if we were building nuclear weapons and then delivering them by email to everybody on the planet, saying, here’s a toy, do what you want. How do we counter that? I have to say, I don’t really have a good solution. I think one of the things we have to do is to make designs for safe AI very clear and simple, and sort of make it unthinkable to do anything other than that, right?\n\nJust like it’s unthinkable to have a program with an infinite loop that produces a spinning pizza of death on your -- oh sorry. Or it’s unthinkable to have a buffer overflow that allows your software to be hacked into.\n\nThe other thing that keeps me awake is actually the possibility that success would lead to AI as a helicopter parent for the human race that would sort of ossify and gradually enfeeble us, so then there would be no point at which it was obvious to us that this was happening.\n\nAnd I think the mitigation, which you asked for, to look on the bright side, is that in some sense the meta-value of human evolvability, the freedom to change the future, is something that the AI needs to adopt, and in some sense that would result eventually with the AI receding into the background, and saying, OK, now I’ve got you through your adolescence, now it’s time for the human race to grow up, now that we have the capabilities to eliminate scarcity, to eliminate needless conflict and coordination failures and all of those things that we suffer from right now.\n\nSo I can imagine a distant future where, in fact, AI is perhaps even less visible than it is today. Great, finally you, Elon, have as far as I know never ever expressed any concerns about AI, right - I’m just wondering if there is any concerns, in particular any concerns where you see there’s a very clear thing we should be doing now that are going to help.\n\nI’m trying to think of what is an actual good future, what does that actually look like, or least bad, or however you want to characterize it. Because to a point that was made earlier by Sam and maybe made by others, we’re headed towards either superintelligence or civilization ending.\n\nThose are the two things that will happen - intelligence will keep advancing, the only thing that would stop it from advancing is something that puts civilization into stasis or destroys civilization. So, we have to figure out, what is a world that we would like to be in where there is this digital superintelligence? I think, another point that is really important to appreciate is that we are, all of us, already are cyborgs.\n\nSo you have a machine extension of yourself in the form of your phone and your computer and all your applications. You are already superhuman. By far you have more power, more capability, than the President of the United States had 30 years ago. If you have an Internet link you have an article of wisdom, you can communicate to millions of people, you can communicate to the rest of Earth instantly.\n\nI mean, these are magical powers that didn’t exist, not that long ago. So everyone is already superhuman, and a cyborg. The limitation is one of bandwidth. So we’re bandwidth-constrained, particularly on output. Our input is much better but our output is extremely slow. If you want to be generous you could say maybe it’s a few hundred bits per second, or a kilobit or something like that output.\n\nThe way we output is like we have our little meat sticks that we move very slowly and push buttons, or tap a little screen. And that’s extremely slow. Compare that to a computer which can communicate at the terabyte level. These are very big orders of magnitude differences. Our input is much better because of vision, but even that could be enhanced significantly.\n\nSo I think the two things that are needed for a future that we would look at and conclude is good, most likely, is, we have to solve that bandwidth constraint with a direct neural interface. I think a high bandwidth interface to the cortex, so that we can have a digital tertiary layer that’s more fully symbiotic with the rest of us.\n\nWe’ve got the cortex and the limbic system, which seem to work together pretty well - they’ve got good bandwidth, whereas the bandwidth to additional tertiary layer is weak. So I think if we can solve that bandwidth issue and then AI can be widely available.\n\nThe analogy to a nuclear bomb is not exactly correct - it’s not as though it’s going to explode and create a mushroom cloud, it’s more like if there were just a few people that had it they would be able to be essentially dictators of Earth, or whoever acquired it and if it was limited to a small number of people and it was ultra-smart, they would have dominion over Earth.\n\nSo I think it’s extremely important that it be widespread and that we solve the bandwidth issue. And if we do those things, then it will be tied to our consciousness, tied to our will, tied to the sum of individual human will, and everyone would have it so it would be sort of still a relatively even playing field, in fact, it would be probably more egalitarian than today.\n\nGreat, thank you so much, that’s in fact the perfect segue into the last question I want to ask you before we open it up to everybody. Something I have really missed in the discussion about really advanced intelligence, beyond human, is more thought about the upside.\n\nWe have so much talk about existential risk, and not just in the academic context, but just flip on your TV, check out Netflix, what do you see there in these scientific visions of the future? It’s almost always dystopias, right?\n\nFor some reason fear gives more clicks than the positive visions, but if I have a student coming into my office at MIT asking for career advice, the first thing I’m going to ask her is, where will you want to be in 20 years? And if she just says, well maybe I’ll get cancer, maybe I’ll get run over by a bus, that’s a terrible way to think about career planning, right?\n\nI want her to be on fire and say my vision is I want to do this - and here are the things that could go wrong, and then you can plan out how to avoid those problems and get it out - I would love to see more discussion about the upsides, futures we’re really excited about, so we can not just try to avoid problems for the sake of avoiding problems, but to get to something that we’re all really on fire about.\n\nSo to start off I’ll just tell you something that makes me really excited about advanced artificial intelligence. Everything I love about civilization is a product of intelligence. If we for some reason were to say, well, you know, I’m scared about this technology thing, let’s just press pause on it forever, there’s no interesting question about if we’re going to have human extinction, the question is just ‘when?'\n\nIs it going to be a supervolcano, is it going to be the next dinosaur-killing-class asteroid - the last one happened 60 million years ago, so how long is it going to be? Pretty horrible future to just sit and wonder when we’re going to get taken out here without the technology when we know that we totally have the brainpower to solve all of these problems if we proceed forward and develop technology.\n\nSo that was just one thing that makes me very excited about moving forward rather than pressing 'Pause.' I want to just ask the same question to all of you guys in turn. So tell us, just pretty briefly, about something that you are really excited about. Some future vision you imagine with very advanced artificial intelligence that you’re really excited about, that you would like to see.\n\nJaan- So I want to be careful when I imagine concrete fruits of AGI. On a meta-level I think as a first approximation, I think we should just maximize the amount of fun and minimize the amount of suffering.\n\nI think Eliezer [Yudkowsky] has written a sequence called “Fun Theory”, where he points out that people have been horrible imagining, are very unimaginative imagining paradises of various sorts, just like really boring places, actually, when you think about them. I think Eliezer has this sketch where he says, “It was hard to spend like one weekend with my relatives. Imagine spending eternity with your dead relatives.\n\n” So I think we should be concerned about side effects and try to capture dynamics of improvement, and basically go from there - make sure that we’re going to adjust the trajectory as we get smarter and more grown together. Great, thank you, Jaan. Sam, what do you get excited about? Well, strangely, what excites me really just abuts the parts that scare me the most.\n\nI think what is nice about this conversation, in particular about the alignment problem, is that it’s forcing us to realize that there are better and worse answers to questions of human value. And as someone said, perhaps at this last meeting in Puerto Rico, we really have to do philosophy on a deadline, and we have to admit to ourselves that there are better and worse answers and we have to converge on the better ones.\n\nAnd what would excite me about actually the birth of superintelligent AI - one of the things, apart from solving obvious problems like curing disease and energy issues and all the rest, perhaps differs a little bit with what Stuart said. I’m not so worried about idiocracy or all of us just losing our way as apes and living unproductive lives in dialogue with these oracles.\n\nI think actually, I would want a truly value-aligned superintelligence to incrementally show us, not merely conserve what we want, but show us what we should want to keep improving our values so that we can navigate in the space of all possible experiences and converge on better and better ones. Thank you, Sam, and what about you, Demis?\n\nSo obviously this is why I spend my whole career working on this, is that, I think if we do this right, it’s going to be the greatest thing ever to happen to humanity, and in some ways I think unlock our full potential. I mean, I’ve talked to a lot about, in all my talks about using it as a tool to help us make science and medical breakthroughs faster. And so I think that’s an obvious one.\n\nBut taking that longer-term, one reason I got so into AI is that, like probably many of you in this room, I’m interested in the biggest questions of why we’re here, understanding our minds, what is consciousness, what’s the nature of the universe, what’s our purpose - and if we’re going to try and really grapple with any of those questions I think we’re going to need something like AI, perhaps with ourselves enhanced as well.\n\nAnd I think in that future world we’ll have a chance to actually find out about some of these really deep questions in the same way we’re finding out with AlphaGo just about Go, but what if we could do that with all of science and physics and the biggest questions in the universe. And I think that’s going to be the most exhilarating journey of all, to find that out.\n\nTo just carry out on a few other things that people commented on is in terms of us as the most intelligent beings on the planet right now, and treating animals badly and these sorts of things, I think if you think about it though - let’s take tigers or something in India.\n\nThey have huge ranges and those people are very poor and they’re resource-poor, but if they had abundant resources I don’t think they’re intentionally trying to kill off these tigers - in some cases they are - but often it’s just because they need the land for their cattle, and the tiger needs whatever number of kilometers squared to live, one tiger. And it’s just difficult with the number of people that are there.\n\nSo I think if we solve the kind of abundance and scarcity problem, then I think that opens up a lot of conflicts both between humans as well as to do with resource scarcity, at the heart of it. So I see, if we can solve a lot of these problems I can see a much better future. So Nick, you pointed out, the upside part of your book was a little shorter, so now you have a chance to add something positive. What are you excited about?\n\nThere are really two sides to that. So one is getting rid of a lot of the negatives, like the compassionate use to cure diseases and all other kinds of horrible miseries that exist on the planet today. So that is a large chunk of the potential. But then beyond that, if one really wants to see realistically what the positive things are that could be developed, I think one has to think outside the constraints of our current human biological nature.\n\nThat it’s unrealistic to imagine a trajectory stretching hundreds of thousands of years into the future, we have superintelligence, we have material abundance, and yet we are still these bipedal organisms with three pounds of gray tissue matter, with a fixed set of emotional sensitivities and the hedonic set point that is kind of OK-ish for most people but if you get - if something really good happens it lasts for a time and then you’re back to the baseline.\n\nI think all of these basic parameters that sort of define the human game today, I think become up for grabs in this future. And it opens up this much vaster space of post-human modes of beings, some of which I think could be wonderful, literally beyond our ability to imagine, in terms of the mental states, the types of activities, the understanding, the ways of relating.\n\nSo I don’t think we need a detailed blueprint for utopia now, what we need is to get ourselves in a position later on where we can have the ability to use this to realize the values that come into view once we’ve taken steps forward. Thank you, Nick. What about you, David? I’m excited about the possibilities for AI making us humans smarter.\n\nI mean some of it is selfish - I turned 50 last year, my brain is gradually becoming slower and older and dumber, but I’m not sure that I am, and that’s partly because of all of the augmented intelligence technology we’re using. Smartphones, and the Internet, and so on, they’re giving me all kinds of capacities, extended capacities that I didn’t have before. And I’m really looking forward to AI helping with that.\n\nIn ten years or so once everyone is wearing augmented reality glasses with deep learning built into it, then I’m really going to need that around 60.\n\nAnd if you guys really get on the case and by the time I’m 70 or so we've got real genuine AI or AI modules out there which can somehow come to be integrated with my brain processes or maybe eventually we get to upload our entire brains onto AI, then there's a way potentially to get smarter, more intelligent forever.\n\nAnd this is not just selfish, although I can't say that doesn't motivate me, but Demis talked about the AI scientists; I also like to think about the AI philosopher. The problems of philosophy are really hard and many people have speculated that we humans are just too dumb to solve some of them.\n\nBut once we've actually got AIs on the scene, maybe AI-enhanced humans, then maybe we're going to be able to cross those thresholds where the AI-enhanced humans or maybe just the AGIs end up solving some of those hard problems of philosophy for once and for all. Great, Ray, you have been a true pioneer in articulating positive visions of the future in your writing. So if you picked the one that you're most excited about now, what would that be?\n\nSo imagine going back 10,000 years and asking the quintessential caveman and woman, Gee, what is a beneficial future? What would you like to see? And they would say, well I would like this fire to stop going out and I would like a bigger boulder to prevent the animals from getting in the cave. Anything else? Well no I think that would be pretty perfect. Well don't you want a better website and apps and search engines?\n\nImagine going back 2 million years ago and talking to primates - imagine if you could do that, and saying, isn't it great that frontal cortex is coming and we're going to have additional neocortex and and a hierarchy and they say, well what's the point of that? And you say, well you'll have music and humor, and their answer would be, what's music? What's humor?\n\nSo they couldn't imagine concepts that they couldn't imagine, and by analogy I think we will have new phenomena that are as profound as music and humor, you could call it more profound music and we'll be funnier, but I think it'll be as profound as these great leaps that evolution has brought us, because we will become profoundly smarter and if music and humor are up here and we go to even higher levels of the neocortex, we're going to have more profound ways of expressing ourselves and once we have that we would not want to go back.\n\nWhat about you, Bart? Well, I pretty much agree that we can't really predict much in advance, what we would like to have. For myself personally I see the developments in mathematics and science and discovery, and computers are just the hybrids of human computers there is quite incredible and makes the field - makes what we do much more exciting. So I think that will be in the near future the first thing. Great, and what about you, Stuart?\n\nWell, so like Jeffrey Sachs - I think that for many of us, and probably like the cavemen - that for many of us life is pretty amazing, and for many more of us it isn't. And I think the best thing that AI can do, the big upside, is actually to fix the latter problem.\n\nI mean I love Nick's feeling that there are higher states of being that are so far above our current 'pretty good', that that balances out all the 'pretty bad' that a lot of people are suffering.\n\nBut I really think the emphasis should be on the 'pretty bad' and fixing it, and eliminating - so Demis was reading my notes apparently, from across the room - but eliminating the scarcity basically eliminates the need for people to act in a zero-sum fashion where they can only get by, by making it less possible for someone else to get by, and I think that's the source of a lot of the nastiness that Jeffrey mentioned earlier.\n\nSo I think that would be my main upside, and not having to read so much email, that would be the second one. And for you, Elon, you've never articulated any visionary ideas about the future as far as I know, either. What about now? I think I just - I have thought about this a lot, and I think it just really comes down to two things, and it's solving the machine-brain bandwidth constraint and democratization of AI.\n\nI think if we have those two things, the future will be good. There was a great quote by Lord Acton which is that 'freedom consists of the distribution of power and despotism in its concentration.' And I think as long as we have - as long as AI powers, like anyone can get it if they want it, and we've got something faster than meat sticks to communicate with, then I think the future will be good.\n\nFantastic, so let's get - I know your caffeine levels are dropping dangerously low, and we also have another panel after this, which is going to be really exciting to listen to, so let's do a just a few quick questions. Make sure that they are actually questions, and say your name and also say, pick one person on the panel and address it just to them, OK? Yoshua? Yoshua Bengio, Montreal.\n\nAnd it's for Jaan - I found your presentation very inspiring, and one question I have is related to the question of eliciting preferences and values from people. Do you think this line of investigation could lead to better democracy, better society, more direct democracy, and you know, what do you think about this direction to deal with the issue of misuse and things like that. Yes, absolutely.\n\nThere could be one code name for this, even, could be like 'Democracy 2. 0' or 'U. N. 2. 0' or something like that. So, and as I mentioned in my presentation, just a lot of people today basically want to make the world better, but it's kind of hard to distinguish them from people who say they want to make the world better.\n\nSo if there was actually kind of like a very easy measuring, like a metric that basically would work as a Schelling point, focal point, then I think that would be super helpful. And yeah, like democracy was invented like hundreds of years ago so, and clearly we have advanced as a civilization and we have better knowledge about how to aggregate preferences. And Nicolas Berggruen, over there. Thank you, Max.\n\nNicolas Berggruen, so I have a very almost naive question. This is a very well-meaning group in terms of, let's say, intentions, but who sort of, looking at who else is doing, potentially, AGI, it could be well beyond this group, it could be in China, it could be any place. And what happens because we've talked about how powerful AGI is, and if Elon is correct, if it is distributed fairly, fine.\n\nBut if it isn't, is there a way to monitor today or in a year or in 10 years, because once it's out it'll be fast. Who is monitoring it, who has a tab on it? Because this is self-selected, but beyond... Elon or Demis does either one of you want to take a swing at this?\n\nWell I think this sort of relates to my point I said earlier about trying to build AI at the hard part of the 'S' curve, so, which I think is where we sort of are at the moment, as far as we can tell, because, you know, it's not easy to make this kind of progress, so you need quite a lot of people who are quite smart and that community is pretty small, still, even though it's getting rapidly bigger at places like NIPS.\n\nAnd so most people know each other, so this is pretty representative of everyone in the West, at least, obviously it's harder to know what's happening in China or in Russia, maybe. But, you know, I think that you need quite a large footprint of resources, people and very smart people and lots of computers and so on. So I think that narrows down the scope of the number of groups who can do that, and it also means that they're more visible.\n\nSo, you know, I think certainly in the West I think most people around here, someone in this room will have contact with somebody who's in those groups who are capable of making meaningful progress towards AGI. It's harder to know in the East and further apart, but we should try and make links to those Chinese National Academy of Sciences, and so on, to find out more.\n\nBut you know that may change in the future, I think that's the current state of it. Great, it's - the bad news is it's getting later in the day and we only have time for one more question. The good news is there's a coffee break right after this so you can ask all of your questions if you swarm the panel. And the last question goes to you, Erik. Do you want to stand up? Erik Brynjolfsson, MIT.\n\nI'm going to pick up on the thing that Elon said at the end about democratizing the outcome and tie it back to the panel yesterday where Reid Hoffman talked about people caring a lot about not just absolute income but relative income, and I wanted to get the panelists' reactions to the thoughts about whether or not AI had tendencies towards winner-take-all effects, that there's a tendency for concentration, that whoever's ahead can pull further ahead, or whether there's potential for more widespread democratic access to it, and what kinds of mechanisms we can put in place if we want to have the widely shared prosperity that Elon suggested?\n\nElon, do you want to take that? Yeah, well, I mean I have to say that when something is a danger to the public, then there needs to be some - I hate to say government agency, like regulators - I'm not the biggest fan of regulators, 'cause they're a bit of a buzzkill. But the fact is we've got regulators in the aircraft industry, car industry, I deal with them all the time, with drugs, food - and anything that's sort of a public risk.\n\nAnd I think this has to fall into the category of a public risk. So I think that the right thing to do, and I think it will happen, the question is whether the government reaction speed matches the advancement speed of AI. Governments react slowly - or governments move slowly and they tend to be reactive, as opposed to proactive. But you can look at these other industries and say, does anybody really want the FAA to go away?\n\nand it's like people could just be a free for all for aircraft - like, probably not. You know, there's a reason it's there or just people could just do any kind of drugs and maybe they work, maybe the don't. You know, we have that in supplements, kind of ridiculous.\n\nBut I think on balance FDA is good, so I think we probably need some kind of regulatory authority and I think it's, like a rebuttal to that is, well people will just move to Costa Rica or something. That's not true. OK, we don't see Boeing moving to Costa Rica or to Venezuela or wherever it's like free and loose To Demis' point, the AI is overwhelmingly likely to be developed where there is a concentration of AI research talent.\n\nAnd that happens to be in a few places in the world. It's Silicon Valley, London, at Boston, if you sort of figure out a few other places, but it's really just a few places that really regulators could reasonably access. And I want to be clear, it's not because I love regulators, OK? They're a pain in the neck but they're necessary to preserve the public at times. Alright, on that note, let's thank the panel for a fascinating discussion."},"languages":["en"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h0962biiZa4"},{"id":"before-the-flood-2016-10-27","type":"interview","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iZm_NohNm6I","title":"Before the Flood","titles":{"en":"Before the Flood","de":"Before the Flood","fr":"Before the Flood"},"date":"2016-10-27","summary":"Musk gives Leonardo DiCaprio a tour of the Gigafactory and explains how renewable energy and storage can replace fossil fuels.","text":"I mean the fossil fuel industry is the biggest industry in the world they have more money and more influence than any other sector so I mean the more that there can be sort of popular Uprising against that the the better but I think the scientific fact of the matter is we are unavoidably headed towards some level of of harm so the sooner we can take action the less harm will result wow holy crap that's a good robot waa what is your Grand Vision for all of this the point of of the gigafactory is to get the cost of batteries down to the point where it's affordable right batteries are critical to a sustainable energy future the sun doesn't shine all the time so got to store it in a battery how is this going to help developing nations that have massive populations\n\nthat need to have power so the advantage of solar and batteries is that you can avoid building electricity plants at all so you could be a remote Village and have solar panels that charge a battery pack that then supplies power to the to the whole village without ever having to run thousands of miles of high voltage cable all over the place it's like what happened with uh landline phones versus cellular phones in a lot of developed countries they just didn't do the landline phones they just went straight to cellula and we actually did the calculations say like what would it take to transition the whole world to uh sustainable energy what kind of throughput would you actually need um and you need 100 Giga factories 100 of these 100 of these yes that would\n\nmake the United States no the whole world the whole world the whole world all energy that's it yeah that sounds it's manageable that sounds manageable yeah the gig Factory when it's complete it'll have the largest footprint of any building in the world counting multiple levels could be as much as 15 million sare ft so Tesla can't build 100 uh gigafactories the thing that's really going to make difference is if companies that are much bigger than Tesla do the same thing if the big industrial companies in China and the US and and Europe the big car companies if they also do this then collectively we can accelerate the transition to sustainable energy and if Government sets the rules to favor sustainable energy we can get there really quickly but it's really\n\nfundamental unless there's a price put on carbon we're never going to be able to make the transition that we need to in time correct yeah the only way to do that is basically with a carbon tax","textByLang":{"en":"I mean the fossil fuel industry is the biggest industry in the world they have more money and more influence than any other sector so I mean the more that there can be sort of popular Uprising against that the the better but I think the scientific fact of the matter is we are unavoidably headed towards some level of of harm so the sooner we can take action the less harm will result wow holy crap that's a good robot waa what is your Grand Vision for all of this the point of of the gigafactory is to get the cost of batteries down to the point where it's affordable right batteries are critical to a sustainable energy future the sun doesn't shine all the time so got to store it in a battery how is this going to help developing nations that have massive populations\n\nthat need to have power so the advantage of solar and batteries is that you can avoid building electricity plants at all so you could be a remote Village and have solar panels that charge a battery pack that then supplies power to the to the whole village without ever having to run thousands of miles of high voltage cable all over the place it's like what happened with uh landline phones versus cellular phones in a lot of developed countries they just didn't do the landline phones they just went straight to cellula and we actually did the calculations say like what would it take to transition the whole world to uh sustainable energy what kind of throughput would you actually need um and you need 100 Giga factories 100 of these 100 of these yes that would\n\nmake the United States no the whole world the whole world the whole world all energy that's it yeah that sounds it's manageable that sounds manageable yeah the gig Factory when it's complete it'll have the largest footprint of any building in the world counting multiple levels could be as much as 15 million sare ft so Tesla can't build 100 uh gigafactories the thing that's really going to make difference is if companies that are much bigger than Tesla do the same thing if the big industrial companies in China and the US and and Europe the big car companies if they also do this then collectively we can accelerate the transition to sustainable energy and if Government sets the rules to favor sustainable energy we can get there really quickly but it's really\n\nfundamental unless there's a price put on carbon we're never going to be able to make the transition that we need to in time correct yeah the only way to do that is basically with a carbon tax"},"languages":["en"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iZm_NohNm6I"},{"id":"how-to-build-the-future-2016-09-15","type":"interview","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tnBQmEqBCY0","title":"How to Build the Future","titles":{"en":"How to Build the Future","de":"How to Build the Future","fr":"How to Build the Future"},"date":"2016-09-15","summary":"Sam Altman interviews Musk on Mars, AI, sustainable energy and how to think about building the future.","text":"today we have Elon Musk Eon thank you for joining us thanks having right so we want to spend the time today talking about your view of the future and what people should work on so to start off could you tell us you famously said when you were younger there were five problems that you thought were most important for you to work on um if you were 22 today what would the five problems that you would think about working on B well first of all is it I think if somebody is doing something that is useful to the rest of society I think that's a good thing like it doesn't have to change the world like you know if you make something that has high value to people and frankly even if it's something if it's like just a little game or you know the some improvement\n\nin photo-sharing or something if it if it has a small amount of good for a large number of people that's I mean I think that's that's fine like stuff doesn't need to be change the world just to be good but you know in terms of things that I think are most likely to affect the the future of humanity I think AI is probably the single biggest item in the near term that's likely to affect humanity so it's very important that we have the advent of AI in a good way but that is something that if you if you could look into a crucible and enter the future you would like you would like that outcome because it is something that could go could go wrong and as we've talked about many times and so we really need to make sure it goes right that's that's I think AI working\n\non ai and making sure it's great future that's that's the most important thing I think right now the most pressing item sec then obviously I think Institute with with genetics if you can actually solve genetic diseases if you can promote dementia or Alzheimer's or something like that that was genetic reprogramming that would be wonderful so I think this genetics it might be the sort of second most important item I think having a high bandwidth interface to the brain like we're currently bandwidth-limited we have a digital tertiary self in the form of our email capabilities like computers phones applications we're effectively superhuman but we're extremely bad with constraint in that interface between the cortex and your sort of that the tertiary digital\n\nform of yourself and helping solve that bandwidth constraint would be I think very important for the future as well so one of the I think most common questions I hear young people and bishops young people ask is I want to be the next to go musk how do I do that um obviously the next Elon Musk will work on very different things then than you did but what have you done or what did you do when you were younger that you think sort of set you up to have a big impact well I think this well I should say that I do not expect to be involved in all these things so the the the five things that I thought about the time in college still quite a long time ago 25 years ago you know being you know making life multiplanetary selling accelerating the transition to sustainable\n\nenergy the the Internet broadly speaking and then genetics and AI I think I didn't expect to be involved in in all of those things I actually at the time in college I sort of thought helping with electrification a bit of cars which was how we start out and that's a that's actually what I worked on as an intern was advanced ultra capacitors with to see thick there would be a breakthrough relative to batteries for energy storage and in cars and then when I came out to go to Stanford that's what I was going to be doing my grad studies on is it was working on her best at energy storage technologies for electric cars and I put that on hold to start an Internet company in 95 because that that does seem to be like a time for particular technologies when there\n\nat a steep point in the inflection code and and I didn't want to you know do a PhD at Stanford and then and what sure will happen and then and I wasn't entirely certain that the technology I'd be working on would actually succeed I can get you can get a you know doctrine on many things that ultimately are not do not have a practical bearing on the world and I wanted to you know just I really was just trying to be useful that's the optimization it's like what do what can I do that would actually be useful do you think people that want to be useful today should get PhDs um mostly not so what what is the best some yes but mostly not how should someone figure out how they can be most useful whatever this thing is that you're trying to create what would what\n\nwould be the utility Delta compared to the current state-of-the-art times how many people it would affect so that's why I think having something that has that that has a mix makes a big difference but effects a sort of small to moderate number of people is great as is something that makes even a small difference but but affects a vast number of people like the area yeah on you know under the yeah exactly the area under the curve is would actually be roughly similar for those two things so it's actually really about yeah just trying to be useful and matter when you're trying to estimate probability of success so you say something will be really useful good area under the curve I guess to use the example of SpaceX mmm-hmm when you made the NGO decision\n\nthat you were actually going to do that this was kind of a very crazy thing at the time very crazy there shortly yeah I'm not shy about saying that but I kind of agree I agreed with them that it was quite crazy crazy if if the objective was to achieve the best risk adjusted return sliding our company is insane but that was not that was not my objective why I I'd totally come to the conclusion that if something didn't happen to improve ROC technology would be stuck on earth forever and and the big aerospace companies had just had no interest in radical innovation all they wanted to do is try to make their old technology slightly better every year and in fact sometimes we would actually get worse and particularly in Rockets is pretty bad like the in 69\n\nwe were able to go to the moon with a Saturn 5 and then the space shuttle could only take people to low-earth orbit and then the Space Shuttle retired and that trend is basically trends to zero it feels I think technology just automatically gets better over year but I actually doesn't it only gets better if smart people work work like crazy to make it better that's how any technology actually gets better and by itself technology if people don't work and it actually will decline you can look at the history of civilizations many civilizations and look at say ancient Egypt were they able to pull these incredible pyramids and then they basically forgot how to hold permit and and then even hieroglyphics they forgot how to read hydrocal hieroglyphics so we\n\nlook at Rome and how they will to look to build these incredible roadways and aqueducts and indoor plumbing and they forgot how to do all of those things and there are many such examples in history so I I think choice bear in mind that you know entropy is not on your side yeah one thing I really like about you is you are unusually fearless and willing to go in the face of other people telling you something that's crazy and I know a lot of pretty crazy people you still stand out where does that come from or how do you think about making a decision when everyone tells you this is a crazy idea where do you get the internal strength to do that well first of all I'd say I actually think I feel feel fair quite strongly so it's not as though I just have the\n\nabsence of fear I've I feel it quite strongly but there are times when something is important enough you believe in it enough that you do it in spite of the fear so speaking of important things like people shouldn't think I I I should if you think well I feel fear about this and therefore I shouldn't do it it's normal to be to feel fair like you'd have to definitely something mentally wrong you should feel fair so you just feel it and let the importance of it drive you to do it anyway yeah you know actually something that can be helpful as fatalism some degree if you just think it's just accept the probabilities then that diminishes fear so my starting SpaceX I thought the odds of success were less than 10% and I just accepted that actually probably I\n\nwould just lose lose everything but that maybe would make some progress if we could just move the ball forward even if we died maybe some other company could pick up the baton and move and keep moving it forward so that were still do some good yeah same with Tesla I thought your odds of a car company succeeding were extremely low what do you think the odds of the Mars colony are at this point today well um oddly enough I actually think they're pretty good so like when can I go okay at this point I am certain there is a way I'm certain that success is one of the possible outcomes for establishing a self-sustaining moss colony in fact growing lost colony I'm certain that that is possible whereas until maybe a few years ago I was not sure that success was\n\neven one of the possible outcomes it's a meaningful number of people going to Mars I think this is potentially something that can be accomplished in about 10 years maybe sooner I mean maybe 9 years I need to make sure that SpaceX doesn't die between now and then and that I don't die or if I do die that someone takes over who will continue that you shouldn't go on the first launch yeah exactly like the first launch will be a robotic anyway so I want to go except for that internet latency yeah they were at latency to be pretty significant I Mars is roughly 12 light minutes from the Sun and Earth is 8 light minutes so closest approach Mazdas 4 light minutes away that furthest approaches 20 a little more because you have to you can't sort of talk directly\n\nthrough the Sun speaking of really important problems um AI so you have been outspoken about AI um could you talk about what you think the positive future for AI looks like and how we get there okay I mean I do want to emphasize that um this is not really something that I advocate or this is not prescriptive this is simply pretty hopefully predictive as you look so I'm Sayla well like this is something that I want to occur instead of so this I mean I think that probably is the best of the available alternatives the best of the available alternatives that I can come up with and maybe somebody else can come up with a better approach or better outcome is that we achieve democratization of AI technology meaning that no one company or small set of individuals\n\nhas control over advanced AI technology like that that's very dangerous it could also get stolen by somebody bad you know like some evil dictator or country could send their intelligence agency to go steal it and gain control it just becomes a very unstable situation I think if you've got any any incredibly powerful AI you just don't know who's who's going to control that so it's not as I think that the risk is that the AI would develop a will of its own right off the bat I think it's more that's the consumers that some someone may use it in a way that is bad or and even if they weren't going to use in a way that's bad but somebody could take it from them and use it in a way that's bad that that I think is quite a big danger so I think we must have democratization\n\nof AI technology make it widely available and that's you know the reason that obviously you mean the rest the team you know created open AI was to help with the democracy our a AI technology so it doesn't get concentrated in the hands of a few and but then that of course that needs to be combined with solving the high bandwidth interface to the cortex humans are so slow humans are so slow yes exactly but you know we already have a situation in our brain where we've got the cortex and limbic system and the limbic system is kind of a mess that's the primitive brain it's kind of like the your instincts and whatnot and then the cortex is thinking of a part of the brain those two seem to work together quite well occasionally your cortex and limbic system may\n\ndisagree but they attending it works pretty generally works pretty well and it's like rare to find someone who I've not found someone who wishes to either get rid of the cortex or get rid of the Olympic system very true yeah it's that's unusual so so I think if we can effectively merge with AI by improving that the neural link between your cortex and the your digital extension yourself which already likes that already exists just has a bandwidth issue and then then effectively you become an AI human symbiote and and if that then is widespread with anyone who wants it can have it then we solve a control problem as well we don't have to worry about some sort of evil dictator AI because kind of we are the AI collectively that seems like the best outcome\n\nI can think of so you've seen other companies in the early days that start small and get really successful um hope I don't regret asking this on camera but how do you think open AI is going as a six month old company I taste you go pretty well I think we've got a really talented group what opening eye and yeah really really talented team and they're working hard open a is structured as see a 501c3 nonprofit but you know many nonprofits do not have a sense of urgency it's fine they don't have to have a sense of urgency but opening ideas is I think people really believe in the mission I think it's important and it's about minimizing the risk of existential harm in the future and so I think it's going well I'm pretty impressed with what people are doing\n\nin the talent level and obviously we're always looking for great people to join we call a mission list of 40 people knots yes well well alright just a few more questions before we we wrap up how do you spend your days now like what what do you allocate most of your time to my time is mostly split what's between SpaceX and Tesla and of course I I try to spend it's a part of every week at opening I so I spend most I spend basically half a day at opening I most weeks and then and then I have some open enough that happens during the week but other than that it's really traceable interlaced like so Tesla like what is your time look like there yeah so it's a good question um I think a lot of people think I must spend a lot of time with media or on business\n\nII things but actually almost almost all my time like 80% of it is spent on engineering design in engineering and design so it's developing next generation product at that's 80% of it you probably remember this a very long time ago many many years you took me on a tour of SpaceX and the most impressive thing was that you knew every detail of the rocket and every piece of engineering that went into it I don't think many people get that about you yeah I think a lot of people think I'm kind of a business person or something it just fine like business is fine but um a guy it really it's you know it was like it SpaceX Gwynne Shotwell was chief operating officer she kind of manages legal finance sales and kind of general business activity and then my time is\n\nalmost entirely with the engineering team working on improving that the Falcon 9 and the Dragon spacecraft and developing the most colonial architecture I mean that Tesla it's working on the model 3 and yes I'm in the design studio to agree up happening a week dealing with its aesthetics and and look and feel things and then most of our week is just going through engineering of the car itself as well as engineering of the factory because the biggest epiphany I've had thus this year is that what really matters is that is the machine that builds the machine the factory and this that is at least towards my to eat harder than the vehicle itself it's amazing to watch the robots go here and these cars just happen yeah now this actually is has a relatively low\n\nlevel of automation compared to what the gigafactory will have and what model 3 will have what's the speed on the line of these cars actually average the line is incredibly slow it's probably about a both X and s it's maybe a 5 you know 5 centimeters per second and what can you go this is very slow or what would you like to get to I'm confident we can get to to at least 1 meter per second so 20-fold increase that would be very fast yeah um at least I mean I think quite a 1 meter per second just put that in perspective is a slow walk or a good medium speed walk a fast walk could be 1 and 1/2 meters per second and and then the fastest humans can run over 10 meters per second so if we're only doing point zero five meters per second that's very slow current\n\ncurrent flow speed and and at 1 meter per second you can still walk faster than the production line","textByLang":{"en":"today we have Elon Musk Eon thank you for joining us thanks having right so we want to spend the time today talking about your view of the future and what people should work on so to start off could you tell us you famously said when you were younger there were five problems that you thought were most important for you to work on um if you were 22 today what would the five problems that you would think about working on B well first of all is it I think if somebody is doing something that is useful to the rest of society I think that's a good thing like it doesn't have to change the world like you know if you make something that has high value to people and frankly even if it's something if it's like just a little game or you know the some improvement\n\nin photo-sharing or something if it if it has a small amount of good for a large number of people that's I mean I think that's that's fine like stuff doesn't need to be change the world just to be good but you know in terms of things that I think are most likely to affect the the future of humanity I think AI is probably the single biggest item in the near term that's likely to affect humanity so it's very important that we have the advent of AI in a good way but that is something that if you if you could look into a crucible and enter the future you would like you would like that outcome because it is something that could go could go wrong and as we've talked about many times and so we really need to make sure it goes right that's that's I think AI working\n\non ai and making sure it's great future that's that's the most important thing I think right now the most pressing item sec then obviously I think Institute with with genetics if you can actually solve genetic diseases if you can promote dementia or Alzheimer's or something like that that was genetic reprogramming that would be wonderful so I think this genetics it might be the sort of second most important item I think having a high bandwidth interface to the brain like we're currently bandwidth-limited we have a digital tertiary self in the form of our email capabilities like computers phones applications we're effectively superhuman but we're extremely bad with constraint in that interface between the cortex and your sort of that the tertiary digital\n\nform of yourself and helping solve that bandwidth constraint would be I think very important for the future as well so one of the I think most common questions I hear young people and bishops young people ask is I want to be the next to go musk how do I do that um obviously the next Elon Musk will work on very different things then than you did but what have you done or what did you do when you were younger that you think sort of set you up to have a big impact well I think this well I should say that I do not expect to be involved in all these things so the the the five things that I thought about the time in college still quite a long time ago 25 years ago you know being you know making life multiplanetary selling accelerating the transition to sustainable\n\nenergy the the Internet broadly speaking and then genetics and AI I think I didn't expect to be involved in in all of those things I actually at the time in college I sort of thought helping with electrification a bit of cars which was how we start out and that's a that's actually what I worked on as an intern was advanced ultra capacitors with to see thick there would be a breakthrough relative to batteries for energy storage and in cars and then when I came out to go to Stanford that's what I was going to be doing my grad studies on is it was working on her best at energy storage technologies for electric cars and I put that on hold to start an Internet company in 95 because that that does seem to be like a time for particular technologies when there\n\nat a steep point in the inflection code and and I didn't want to you know do a PhD at Stanford and then and what sure will happen and then and I wasn't entirely certain that the technology I'd be working on would actually succeed I can get you can get a you know doctrine on many things that ultimately are not do not have a practical bearing on the world and I wanted to you know just I really was just trying to be useful that's the optimization it's like what do what can I do that would actually be useful do you think people that want to be useful today should get PhDs um mostly not so what what is the best some yes but mostly not how should someone figure out how they can be most useful whatever this thing is that you're trying to create what would what\n\nwould be the utility Delta compared to the current state-of-the-art times how many people it would affect so that's why I think having something that has that that has a mix makes a big difference but effects a sort of small to moderate number of people is great as is something that makes even a small difference but but affects a vast number of people like the area yeah on you know under the yeah exactly the area under the curve is would actually be roughly similar for those two things so it's actually really about yeah just trying to be useful and matter when you're trying to estimate probability of success so you say something will be really useful good area under the curve I guess to use the example of SpaceX mmm-hmm when you made the NGO decision\n\nthat you were actually going to do that this was kind of a very crazy thing at the time very crazy there shortly yeah I'm not shy about saying that but I kind of agree I agreed with them that it was quite crazy crazy if if the objective was to achieve the best risk adjusted return sliding our company is insane but that was not that was not my objective why I I'd totally come to the conclusion that if something didn't happen to improve ROC technology would be stuck on earth forever and and the big aerospace companies had just had no interest in radical innovation all they wanted to do is try to make their old technology slightly better every year and in fact sometimes we would actually get worse and particularly in Rockets is pretty bad like the in 69\n\nwe were able to go to the moon with a Saturn 5 and then the space shuttle could only take people to low-earth orbit and then the Space Shuttle retired and that trend is basically trends to zero it feels I think technology just automatically gets better over year but I actually doesn't it only gets better if smart people work work like crazy to make it better that's how any technology actually gets better and by itself technology if people don't work and it actually will decline you can look at the history of civilizations many civilizations and look at say ancient Egypt were they able to pull these incredible pyramids and then they basically forgot how to hold permit and and then even hieroglyphics they forgot how to read hydrocal hieroglyphics so we\n\nlook at Rome and how they will to look to build these incredible roadways and aqueducts and indoor plumbing and they forgot how to do all of those things and there are many such examples in history so I I think choice bear in mind that you know entropy is not on your side yeah one thing I really like about you is you are unusually fearless and willing to go in the face of other people telling you something that's crazy and I know a lot of pretty crazy people you still stand out where does that come from or how do you think about making a decision when everyone tells you this is a crazy idea where do you get the internal strength to do that well first of all I'd say I actually think I feel feel fair quite strongly so it's not as though I just have the\n\nabsence of fear I've I feel it quite strongly but there are times when something is important enough you believe in it enough that you do it in spite of the fear so speaking of important things like people shouldn't think I I I should if you think well I feel fear about this and therefore I shouldn't do it it's normal to be to feel fair like you'd have to definitely something mentally wrong you should feel fair so you just feel it and let the importance of it drive you to do it anyway yeah you know actually something that can be helpful as fatalism some degree if you just think it's just accept the probabilities then that diminishes fear so my starting SpaceX I thought the odds of success were less than 10% and I just accepted that actually probably I\n\nwould just lose lose everything but that maybe would make some progress if we could just move the ball forward even if we died maybe some other company could pick up the baton and move and keep moving it forward so that were still do some good yeah same with Tesla I thought your odds of a car company succeeding were extremely low what do you think the odds of the Mars colony are at this point today well um oddly enough I actually think they're pretty good so like when can I go okay at this point I am certain there is a way I'm certain that success is one of the possible outcomes for establishing a self-sustaining moss colony in fact growing lost colony I'm certain that that is possible whereas until maybe a few years ago I was not sure that success was\n\neven one of the possible outcomes it's a meaningful number of people going to Mars I think this is potentially something that can be accomplished in about 10 years maybe sooner I mean maybe 9 years I need to make sure that SpaceX doesn't die between now and then and that I don't die or if I do die that someone takes over who will continue that you shouldn't go on the first launch yeah exactly like the first launch will be a robotic anyway so I want to go except for that internet latency yeah they were at latency to be pretty significant I Mars is roughly 12 light minutes from the Sun and Earth is 8 light minutes so closest approach Mazdas 4 light minutes away that furthest approaches 20 a little more because you have to you can't sort of talk directly\n\nthrough the Sun speaking of really important problems um AI so you have been outspoken about AI um could you talk about what you think the positive future for AI looks like and how we get there okay I mean I do want to emphasize that um this is not really something that I advocate or this is not prescriptive this is simply pretty hopefully predictive as you look so I'm Sayla well like this is something that I want to occur instead of so this I mean I think that probably is the best of the available alternatives the best of the available alternatives that I can come up with and maybe somebody else can come up with a better approach or better outcome is that we achieve democratization of AI technology meaning that no one company or small set of individuals\n\nhas control over advanced AI technology like that that's very dangerous it could also get stolen by somebody bad you know like some evil dictator or country could send their intelligence agency to go steal it and gain control it just becomes a very unstable situation I think if you've got any any incredibly powerful AI you just don't know who's who's going to control that so it's not as I think that the risk is that the AI would develop a will of its own right off the bat I think it's more that's the consumers that some someone may use it in a way that is bad or and even if they weren't going to use in a way that's bad but somebody could take it from them and use it in a way that's bad that that I think is quite a big danger so I think we must have democratization\n\nof AI technology make it widely available and that's you know the reason that obviously you mean the rest the team you know created open AI was to help with the democracy our a AI technology so it doesn't get concentrated in the hands of a few and but then that of course that needs to be combined with solving the high bandwidth interface to the cortex humans are so slow humans are so slow yes exactly but you know we already have a situation in our brain where we've got the cortex and limbic system and the limbic system is kind of a mess that's the primitive brain it's kind of like the your instincts and whatnot and then the cortex is thinking of a part of the brain those two seem to work together quite well occasionally your cortex and limbic system may\n\ndisagree but they attending it works pretty generally works pretty well and it's like rare to find someone who I've not found someone who wishes to either get rid of the cortex or get rid of the Olympic system very true yeah it's that's unusual so so I think if we can effectively merge with AI by improving that the neural link between your cortex and the your digital extension yourself which already likes that already exists just has a bandwidth issue and then then effectively you become an AI human symbiote and and if that then is widespread with anyone who wants it can have it then we solve a control problem as well we don't have to worry about some sort of evil dictator AI because kind of we are the AI collectively that seems like the best outcome\n\nI can think of so you've seen other companies in the early days that start small and get really successful um hope I don't regret asking this on camera but how do you think open AI is going as a six month old company I taste you go pretty well I think we've got a really talented group what opening eye and yeah really really talented team and they're working hard open a is structured as see a 501c3 nonprofit but you know many nonprofits do not have a sense of urgency it's fine they don't have to have a sense of urgency but opening ideas is I think people really believe in the mission I think it's important and it's about minimizing the risk of existential harm in the future and so I think it's going well I'm pretty impressed with what people are doing\n\nin the talent level and obviously we're always looking for great people to join we call a mission list of 40 people knots yes well well alright just a few more questions before we we wrap up how do you spend your days now like what what do you allocate most of your time to my time is mostly split what's between SpaceX and Tesla and of course I I try to spend it's a part of every week at opening I so I spend most I spend basically half a day at opening I most weeks and then and then I have some open enough that happens during the week but other than that it's really traceable interlaced like so Tesla like what is your time look like there yeah so it's a good question um I think a lot of people think I must spend a lot of time with media or on business\n\nII things but actually almost almost all my time like 80% of it is spent on engineering design in engineering and design so it's developing next generation product at that's 80% of it you probably remember this a very long time ago many many years you took me on a tour of SpaceX and the most impressive thing was that you knew every detail of the rocket and every piece of engineering that went into it I don't think many people get that about you yeah I think a lot of people think I'm kind of a business person or something it just fine like business is fine but um a guy it really it's you know it was like it SpaceX Gwynne Shotwell was chief operating officer she kind of manages legal finance sales and kind of general business activity and then my time is\n\nalmost entirely with the engineering team working on improving that the Falcon 9 and the Dragon spacecraft and developing the most colonial architecture I mean that Tesla it's working on the model 3 and yes I'm in the design studio to agree up happening a week dealing with its aesthetics and and look and feel things and then most of our week is just going through engineering of the car itself as well as engineering of the factory because the biggest epiphany I've had thus this year is that what really matters is that is the machine that builds the machine the factory and this that is at least towards my to eat harder than the vehicle itself it's amazing to watch the robots go here and these cars just happen yeah now this actually is has a relatively low\n\nlevel of automation compared to what the gigafactory will have and what model 3 will have what's the speed on the line of these cars actually average the line is incredibly slow it's probably about a both X and s it's maybe a 5 you know 5 centimeters per second and what can you go this is very slow or what would you like to get to I'm confident we can get to to at least 1 meter per second so 20-fold increase that would be very fast yeah um at least I mean I think quite a 1 meter per second just put that in perspective is a slow walk or a good medium speed walk a fast walk could be 1 and 1/2 meters per second and and then the fastest humans can run over 10 meters per second so if we're only doing point zero five meters per second that's very slow current\n\ncurrent flow speed and and at 1 meter per second you can still walk faster than the production line"},"languages":["en"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tnBQmEqBCY0"},{"id":"code-conference-2016-06-01","type":"interview","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wsixsRI-Sz4","title":"Code Conference","titles":{"en":"Code Conference","de":"Code Conference","fr":"Code Conference"},"date":"2016-06-01","summary":"Full Recode Code Conference interview with Kara Swisher and Walt Mossberg on Mars, Tesla, AI and autonomy.","text":"Elon, let me start by saying we're very glad you're here safe and sound. Uh thanks. I actually had to sorry for being late. I was uh uh flying I flew here with the landing gear down cuz there was like some kind of landing gear issue. Landing gear was stuck? There's some kind of warning light uh my pilot said that if they were to retract the landing gear it may not go back down again. So So this happens to you this even happens to you. Yeah. Yeah.\n\nYeah. Okay. I have landing gear problems of various kinds. Um so um anyway we're happy to wait for you and then we're glad you got here safe. Thanks for having me. It's great to see you guys. Thank you for coming. I really appreciate it. You kept your promise which was nice. I think you were drunk when you promised me but that's okay. I'll take it.\n\nSo you know in the couple of years since you've come you've done some astonishing things in in terms of substance of stuff with your with both of your companies. Um let's start talking about space and what you've been doing there. Um obviously you've had some success uh landing the landing the rocket. You've had you know you've done a bunch of other things that where people thought you weren't going to be successful.\n\nTalk a little bit about sort of the progress you think you've made with SpaceX. Sure well I mean there's a lot of things where I I think I I didn't think we'd be successful. Um so the the um probably and the most significant thing is being able to land an an orbit class rocket uh booster stage um and uh and bring it both back to Cape Canaveral uh land to land and be able to land on a drone ship out in the ocean.\n\nUm the um it it there is a bit of an education process that's needed to understand orbital dynamics um cuz a lot of people can are confused of like why the heck are you landing a ship uh landing a rocket in a on a ship in the ocean? That seems pretty inconvenient. Um and the the reason is because that uh going up and staying up is actually about velocity horizontal to the earth's surface.\n\nSo um there there's a huge difference between space and or space and or and orbit. It like space you can think of as like say being the international waters boundary for the Pacific Ocean. Like if you go you know uh 100 miles offshore you're technically out of Yes. coastal waters now you're in the Pacific. So it's like technically you're in the Pacific but but it's but orbit is like circumnavigating the globe.\n\nIt it's a really giant difference and the the reason that things go up and stay up is because you're you're zooming around the earth so fast that your outward radial acceleration is equal to the inward acceleration of gravity. And so those balance out and you have a net zero gravity.\n\nSo when you see the space station the thing that's little little sort of um counterintuitive is that the space station is actually zooming around the earth at 17,000 miles an hour. Even though it seems like it just really still you know but it's moving really really fast. Um I mean to put that into perspective um a bullet from a 45 um gun you know a handgun um is is is is uh just below the speed of sound.\n\nSo the space station is going more than 25 times faster than that. Um and that's what's needed actually to go up and stay up. Um and that's why that's why there's the term escape velocity not escape altitude. There's no such thing as an escape altitude there's only escape velocity. You need to be a certain speed to escape the gravity of the earth. Yeah you can think of gravity as kind of a funnel in space time.\n\nUm so uh or think of it like a coin funnel.\n\nLike it's it's really it's very much like that in in you know but it's obviously a sort of a four-dimensional coin funnel but uh if if you if you spin a spin a marble or a coin on a coin funnel the when it's when it's far out it sort of spins slowly and then as it gets closer it spins faster and faster and if you want if you want if you were to start at the bottom of the coin funnel and you wanted to to to to to to exit you'd spin it horizontally and it would it would spin out and and and that's really how you how you get to orbit.\n\nUm Yeah so the gravity well is like a funnel. why you want to land on the on a ship in the ocean? Uh because um in order to get to orbit you all that matters is your horizontal velocity. Your altitude is doesn't doesn't really matter. Um in fact the the um the force of gravity at uh say the the nominal um boundary of space 100 km is almost exactly the same as it is on the surface of the earth. Hm.\n\nUm it's it's like if it's a few percent lower than than the surface of the earth. Um uh so in in order to go up and stay up the only thing that matters is how fast are you going horizontal to the earth's surface. So you have that outward radial acceleration or think of it like maybe like tetherball or something like that. It's really that outward acceleration is the thing that matters.\n\nUm and so when the rocket is going to orbit um the only reason it's going up is to get out of the thick part of the atmosphere cuz that at high velocity the atmosphere is thick as molasses. Um and so it goes up very briefly but if you look at a long exposure of the the rocket's uh trajectory you'll see it it goes up but immediately curves over and starts going horizontal.\n\nUm and so the um at at the at the point at which the uh the uh the the point at which the stage is separate those two stages um the the primary booster stage which is the most expensive part of the rocket the point at which that that staging occurs uh can be um as high as uh Mach 10. Um but it's it's so it's going away from the launch site at 10 times the speed of sound.\n\nSo in in in order to get back to the launch site you would have to have enough I fuel and oxygen to reverse out that velocity and and and boost back all the way to the launch site. Um and you just don't have the physics of it don't really allow you to have that much it's it's not about saving money on fuel or anything it's just physically impossible.\n\nUm so um because another sort of thing about uh if you're if you're in space is that there's nothing to react against. So like whereas an aircraft can can circle very easily because it's reacting against air. In vacuum there's nothing to react against.\n\nSo the only way to go back the other direction is to apply just as much energy as it took you to go it we if you want to go backwards you have to apply just as much energy as it took you to go forwards. In fact it would twice as much really cuz you got to zero it out and then you've got to You've got to land elsewhere.\n\nYeah so bottom line is this thing is zinging out to the point it may well be over the ocean cuz the ocean covers most of the ocean covers most of the uh the earth. So that's the point it may Oh it's it's it's actually the point of separation it's not that far away. It's maybe 100 km away from the the launch site but it is going like hell in the opposite you know away from the launch site.\n\nSo the the only way to really land it is to have it continue on that arc that ballistic arc and then land far out to sea on a ship that's that's pre-positioned to a particular latitude and longitude very very precise to within about a meter.\n\nUm and then the the rocket will um then go from vacuum through rarefied air at hypersonic velocity uh um it and and what so when it's when it's in vacuum it has to obviously you can't use air surfaces you have to use um nitrogen jets to control the um the attitude and position.\n\nAnd then um as it starts to encounter uh the air um we use um grid fins because grid fins uh look like sort of like a waffle um they work quite well across a wide regime from both very high velocity um hypersonic through supersonic transonic and subsonic. Um so it's hard to it's it's hard to have air surfaces that work well across that entire regime.\n\nAnd then uh so once the air air forces become high it uses the um the four grid fins to to sort of control its attitude itself. Yeah it's it's controlling its it's it's controlling pitch yaw and roll with with the grid fins.\n\nUm and uh and then once and those grid fins will then position it to where it's fairly close to the ship and then it will light in this case three of the nine engines to arrest the velocity and then drop to one engine for precision right before landing. Right. Okay. So that was a maybe a bit of a long explanation. but okay what we're going to get to is that's super [ __ ] hard. There's a video. So why why is that important?\n\nWhy has that this moment been important for you? Um well so in order to reuse the the booster stage which is about 70% of the cost of the rocket so that Which cost is that? How much is that? Um well I mean it's sort of on the order of 30 to 35 million dollars. Right. So you want to save that.\n\nYeah I mean it's like I try to I tell my team it's like imagine there was a pallet of cash that was falling through the atmosphere and it was going to burn up and smash into tiny pieces. Would you try to save it? Right. Right. Right. Probably yes. Yes. Okay. Yeah that sounds like a good idea. Right. Okay. Uh-huh. Um so so yeah so we we we we want to get it back and that way um we don't have to make another one. Right.\n\nUm and I think it's quite tragic if rockets like get smashed into tiny pieces and land at the bottom of the ocean. a question? We we've been in we've been going to space for uh what, 50 years or something like that? Yeah. Nobody, until you started doing this and Jeff Bezos' company has done it, uh the government never thought of saving the rockets. They never saved the pallet of cash. Why not? And the Russians didn't either.\n\nI mean, what what is the deal there? yeah, I mean there was some attempt uh made to do that with the the space shuttle but there was no um return. It's the first time that that a rocket booster has returned to launch site um from an orbital mission and and certainly the first time that there's been a a landing on a ship out at sea. regular rockets that went up that weren't designed like planes never tried to do this. Right.\n\nUm the plane thing is not not a good idea in my view. Um the so so the the the plane um and the the reason I think it's like intuitively it seems like a plane should work but but actually if you you consider that really every mode of transport has a design that is appropriate to its medium. Um and if you're in space, um wings are not very useful. Um cuz there's no air.\n\nUh and and and then if you want to go somewhere other than Earth, there's also no runways. Uh-huh. So, this is these are important considerations. Um so that's why when they went to the moon, they used propulsive landing. Right. But what I'm saying was when they built the space shuttle, it sort of was like a looked like a kind of bulbous plane. appealed to Congress. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They went cool. It's cool. Yeah, looked like an airplane.\n\nCan you explain the the you know, Jeff Jeff Bezos Good one. Jeff Bezos was here last night and I asked him, what's the difference between what you're doing and what Elon Musk is doing and he said, well, I think we have I think he used the word like-minded in the general sense of it and then he went on to explain some differences.\n\nDo you And then he but he talked about and correct me if I'm misquoting him but I think he was saying, we're this is all about laying the foundations of being able to do greater things by getting the basic infrastructure of being able to reuse these rockets down. Right. Do you Is that correct? Do you have a similar starting point from him in your thinking process? I think there's certainly some similarities of opinion.\n\nUm I think both uh Jeff and I believe that it's important for the future to be a spacefaring civilization um and actually ultimately be out there among the stars and I think that's the that's the exciting, inspiring future that I think I think certainly people in this room are wanting and anyone after seeing that the asteroids are going to destroy this planet.\n\nI mean, Um I mean, I don't view it as um you know, we want we I mean, I I think I think what when I say, you know, multi-planet species, like that's really where we want to be. It's not like, you know, still being a single-planet species with moving planets. It's uh it's really being a multi-planet species um and having civilization and life as we know it extend beyond Earth to the rest of the solar system and ultimately to other star systems.\n\nUm I think that's the thing that that's the that's the future that's exciting and inspiring and I think that's what, you know, I think you know, you you need kind of you need things like that to make to to to be glad to wake up in the morning. You know, the like life life can't be just about solving problems. Like there have to be things that are inspiring and exciting that make you glad to be alive.\n\nSo, what in the immediate time frame, what is what is your goal for SpaceX now that you've done this, which is a huge accomplishment? What is the plan for you in the immediate time and then the longer range? Sure. So, the um so we plan to re-fly uh one of the landed um rocket boosters hopefully in about two or three months, something like that. Um and um and then that that so that'll be an important milestone.\n\nUm so far the the the stages are looking like quite quite good uh even though they come through through quite there's a really difficult entry re-entry situation. Um but they're they're looking in fact they're in they're in good shape. Um we now have four of them.\n\nUm so, we want to start re-flying them um you know, towards the end of summer um and then uh hopefully by the end of this year we'll be launching Falcon Heavy uh which will will be the um the most powerful rocket uh in the world by more than a factor of two. So, Falcon Heavy is will be on the order of 5 million pounds of thrust on lift-off, which is about 2/3 the size of a Saturn V. Oh, really?\n\nYeah, so it's That's the rocket that uh took the astronauts to the moon. Right, exactly. So, In fact, we're launching from the same from the same pad. From Very same pad. from the Apollo 11 pad. Wow. Yeah. That's amazing. So, you you're hoping to launch that Falcon Heavy by the end of this year, you said. Yeah, that's that's our aspiration. Is that Now, that's somewhat of a delay from when you first hoped to launch it, right?\n\nUm yeah, um but uh the I mean, it's not like we had a lot of pressing customers who wanted us to launch it. Uh-huh. Okay. So, the uh in fact, the first launch will will not have any operational satellites. It'll be a demonstration launch. Mhm. Um and the first operational flights where where customers actually want us to launch it are next year. You know, whereas there's there's a lot of customers who want us to launch uh Falcon 9.\n\nUm so, about about a quarter of our launch of our flights are for uh for NASA um but 3/4 are for uh commercial satellites like broadcasting communication satellites um or science missions for other countries.\n\nUm and um and this is there's quite a quite a backlog and we had we had an issue with a rocket last year so that um put about a 6-month hold on our schedule so we're sort of backlogged on our launches and we're trying to get them out as as as quickly as we as we can um and you know, so you know, service our customers. The the uh so we're we're the launches will take place you know, every two to four weeks.\n\nIt's quite a quite a high launch cadence. That's a much faster cadence than NASA had, right? Um yeah, it's I mean, it's it will be more launches than any anything else in the world. Um so, more than Russia, more than Europe, more than well, more than China by now. Sure, certainly. to deliver customers. Satellites. Yeah, it's it's um there's a lot of broadcasting communication satellites that are going to geosynchronous orbit. Mhm.\n\nAnd um and then there's we're we're we'll also be launching the new uh Iridium constellation. So, the Iridium's got a next generation uh constellation of uh satellites, I think 60 or 70 satellites, quite you know, decent-size satellites uh um that that'll be like many orders of magnitude improvement over the current Iridium system.\n\nSo, we'll be able to have global broadband um so that that'll be a whole bunch of launches and um yeah, and then and then next year we'll be flying um Dragon version two, which is the one that's capable of taking up to seven astronauts to the space station. Mhm.\n\nUm in fact, Dragon two really is it's a propulsive lander as well um and it'll be the uh it's it's it's intended to carry astronauts to the space station but it's also capable of being a general science delivery platform to anywhere in the solar system. So, um So, where are you going with it? We're going to we're going to send one to Mars in 2018. Okay. Now, let's talk Wait. Wait. 2018, that's for sure. Yeah, a couple years. Couple years.\n\nNow, will you be on that flight? No. You have talked about this. You said you don't want to you want to die on Mars, just not on landing, right? Is that correct? Well, I mean, I think if you're going to choose a place to die, then Mars is probably you know, not a bad choice. All right. Um But you're not ready it's not some sort of Martian death wish or something. But but yeah, I mean, if you're going to be born on Earth, die on Mars.\n\nSo, sending this up to Mars, 2018, right? Sending this up to Mars, 2018. When will someone like you get there from your plans? Sure. So, so the 2018 mission would be um our Drag- Dragon version two. Right. Um and that um I wouldn't recommend traveling to Mars in in that cuz I mean, it has the interior volume of a large SUV. Okay. Uh the the the trip the trip for Dragon would be on the order of six months. Mhm.\n\nIt's a long time to spend in an SUV, I think. Mhm. Um That's yes, can be done. Can be done but not not probably not ideal. Um and it also doesn't have the capability of getting back to Earth. Right. That's That seems more important than the space is. Hopefully. Yeah, we can put that in the in the fine print, Yeah. Sorry. We were rooting for It's It's like the side effects in a drug ad. By the way, cannot get back to Earth. Yeah.\n\nYeah, we saw the movie. We saw what happened. He got back. Yeah, yeah. Um So, it's good. I I I actually enjoyed the movie. Um So, he could have gotten back like that? That was that plausible? Well, I thought there was some, you know, connection. It was It was mostly It was like 80% scientifically correct. Um but they did connect a series of improbable events. Such as?\n\nWell, I mean, I don't think you can sort of just uh take off from Mars um on an unguided rocket really and and then prick your finger on a space suit and navigate to a to a spaceship. Right? Yeah. Not Not Not impossible, just extremely unlikely. So, the sand storm in the movie if you're Matt Damon maybe. Maybe. You have some mad skills for sure. So so so when will people like yourself get there and I assume you'll be first in line for that?\n\nYeah so later this year in September at the IAC which is the big sort of world space conference industry space conference. I'm going to be presenting the the architecture for Mars colonization. Mhm. So I think what really matters is being able to transport large numbers of people and ultimately millions of tons of cargo to Mars.\n\nAnd and that's what's necessary in order to create a self-sustaining not really self-sustaining but a growing city on Mars. So I'm curious have you been to space yet? No. Why? I mean you could just go up right for a little bit or not? I could I suppose. Yeah. Why haven't you? Like walked around or something? Yeah well yeah probably will. Will you do a moon test before you go to Mars?\n\nYeah I'm going to probably probably I don't know go to orbit in four or five years or something like that. But again space and orbit are very different things. But on the Mars thing would you send up two or three whether it's you or not.\n\nI kind of would prefer if you tried it frankly but because it would be exciting but would you send up some people some people before you do this whole architecture for colonizing Mars just a handful of people to kind of see what I mean the the the basic game plan is like we're going to send um a mission to Mars with every Mars opportunity from 2018 onwards. So and they occur approximately every 26 months.\n\nSo um you know we we're establish we're establishing cargo flights to Mars that people that people can count on for for cargo. Um and it's like I said the the the Earth-Mars orbital rendezvous is only every 26 months. So there's one in 2018 there'll be another one in 2020. Um and I think if things go according to plan we should be able to uh we should be able to launch people probably in 2024 with arrival in 2025.\n\nSo Is that is that a more certain schedule than United Airlines? Well um I don't know. Uh There's certainly some uncertainties associated with that. Um So um let's um I'm going to share Anyway that's the game plan like approximately 2024 to do the first to to to to launch the first um of the Mars colonial transport system with I want to get back to what you said earlier about a multi a very big rocket. Okay. A very big bigger than Saturn V?\n\nTwice as big or what? September. I'll tell you. Not going to say anything till September? Come on. Very big. Come on. Has to be very big. I how big is very big? So big. Um Do you think we should abandon the Earth at some No. No I No I think it's great. But you have said things Why would we abandon Earth? It's really nice here. You've said things about we may have to abandon the Earth so it's good to have a plan B. No I haven't.\n\nOr No that was amazing. That's I think that's maybe maybe I don't know but it wasn't me. All right. Okay. Wasn't me like Jackie you All right. Um So let's move to things on this Earth. Let's move to Hyperloop Tesla other things. Let's talk about Tesla first. Where do you feel like the company is at at this point and there's been lots of activity in self-driving cars and autonomous autonomous.\n\nHow do you look at how everybody's jumped in Google Apple others? Um and all the car manufacturers. Um Yeah I mean there have been so many announcements of like autonomous EV startups. I'm waiting for my mom to announce one. Okay. Um it's like mom you too? Um I mean there's a lot. So um Yeah I mean in in in in the US alone there are there are four I think maybe five China-funded EV startups. At the billion dollar plus level like serious funding.\n\nUm and there's a bunch of startups and then of course the you know the car industry as a whole seems to be moving in that direction. Volkswagen just I think announced a huge battery factory that they're going to build. Um And I think these are all good you know it's good it's good for the industry to be moving towards sustainable transport as as quickly as possible. Um we open sourced our patents to try to be helpful in that regard.\n\nAnd um yeah so it's it's encouraging to see all this activity. Um From a Tesla standpoint you know we're just we want to take the set of actions that are uh likely to accelerate the advent of sustainable energy. Um so um scale up production as fast as we can so we accelerated plans for the Model 3 by two years.\n\nUm and to so we we want to try to get to half a million cars in total in kind of the 2018 timeframe which is an aggressive schedule but I think achievable. Um and and then maybe a million cars a year by 2020. Um and um you know I I can see a I I think a pretty clear path to get there. Uh autonomy is obviously extremely important. Uh people are going to want want autonomy. It's going to be odd to have a car without autonomy in the future.\n\nUm But um yeah so that I think that's So what what what do you How do you look at How do you look at the all these efforts? Not your mother but Yeah my mom's yeah she's She's not going to do it. She may do a rocket situation but um how do you look at each of them? Let's go through them. What Google's doing? How do you assess what they're doing when you're looking at it cuz they'll be competitors at some point.\n\nThese are all Um eventual competitors. Well you know what I think what what Google's I mean Google's done a great job of showing the potential of autonomous transport. Um but they're they're not a they're not a car company so they would potentially you know license their technology to other car companies and I think they announced something with Fiat. Um and so I I wouldn't say you know Google's a competitor because they're not a car company.\n\nThey We would compete with somebody perhaps that they license technology to but not to them directly. Right. Um Apple? Uh Yeah that that'll be more direct. That'll be more direct? Yeah. You can tell that by the hiring pattern and that kind of stuff. So what do you Okay so they're going to be more direct. How do you assess it?\n\nUm I mean I I say like you know I I think it's great that they're doing this and um I um you know I hope they I hope it works out. What's What's the timeframe for them do you think? Um I don't know I mean um I I think they should have embarked upon this project sooner actually.\n\nUh but that uh um but I don't know I don't know when they I mean they have they don't they don't share with me the details of their production plans but um I I I I don't think it's going to be I don't think they'll be in volume production sooner than maybe 2020. That'll be like the soonest. And that's Is that too late?\n\nWhen you say they should have embarked sooner is is that because 2020 will be too late to stop you or beat you or compete with you or No it's just like it's a missed opportunity. It's just a that they it's a it's um It'll be over by 2020? I wouldn't say that. It's It's just like it's it's it's a couple of years. I think they'll they'll probably make a good car and probably be successful.\n\nThe car industry is very big so it's not as though there's um you know one company to the exclusion of others. Um I mean there's like a dozen car companies in the world of of of significance. So uh and the the most that any company has is approximately 10% market share. So it's it's not like um you know somebody comes up with a car and they're suddenly like they kill everyone else. It's not not that way.\n\nUm and and the sheer scale of automotive manufacturing is is is just it's hard to appreciate until you see the plants. I mean that they're gigantic like the industrial Yeah I mean the the the the sheer size of the industrial infrastructure is is staggering. Not just the assembly plant but everything else that goes Yeah the supply chain exactly the supply chain is just a little tip of the iceberg really.\n\nThe supply chain is literally tip of the iceberg. The the supply chain is um you know once you go to tier two tier three tier four suppliers that's uh probably an order of magnitude more uh So okay so you think Google will not be a competitor Apple probably will be a direct competitor. Yeah yeah sure. What about the car companies? The the I think they're all they're all going to be competitors. Yeah sure.\n\nWho do you see out there that has done a nice job so far? Mercedes or GM of of what? Of a competitive car. incumbents. Potentially competitive car, I guess. I mean I don't think anyone's any of the car companies as far as I've made a really great electric car. I mean, you tell me if I'm if you disagree, but I don't think yet that any of them have made a great electric car. Okay.\n\nAnd they, you know, presumably will continue to improve on what they've done so far and and then at some point they may make a car that's that's a you know, but that's a great car, but not they haven't done that yet. Can I ask you about batteries for a second? Yeah, sure. So you're building this gigafactory, right? You've got it's built. It's Well, it's not completely built. Okay, but it part of it's up and running. A chunk of it is built, yeah.\n\nPart of it is up and running. gigantic thing. It's like when the gigafactory is done, it'll be the largest footprint building of any kind in the world. Of any kind, not just factories, it's literally of any What is this? The largest rocket, the largest building. I mean, every Well, I mean, I think this it's not scale for scale's sake.\n\nIt's just like if you say, \"Well, we want to accomplish these goals, then um then you kind of have to be make a big thing.\" Okay. Um You've got this big thing. It's this big giant building. Yeah. It's going to make batteries. The batteries it's going to make are lithium to have an opening. Well, it's not technically an opening party since it's been operating for a little while, but we're going to have a party soon. You guys maybe want to come.\n\nWe can come. Yeah, sure. We'll come to the battery party. But they can't come. What I was saying this is like Right? Just this This is crazy. No. This is like an alien dreadnought. It's really nutty. I love a battery party, but Right. Well, but but but But talk about where it's going. Are these lithium ion batteries? Yeah, sure. So they're the same batteries that's in our phone? No. Explain. Please explain.\n\nYes, so so lithium Have you made a a battery breakthrough is something I'm interested in. Yeah, I mean, generally the I mean, there's there's so much nonsense out there about batteries. Like about you can believe about 1% of what you read. Um on a you know, maybe. Um Uh Lithium ion covers a very broad range of technologies.\n\nUm and you can have an enormous difference in the power density and the energy density and the cycle life um between one chemistry and another. They can be really enormously different. Um So Uh what you really actually want to ask is what is the cathode and what is the anode? Right. Um So in our case That's right. Um I just put it in the The the lithium is actually 2% of the cell mass. So so like it's like the salt in the salad.\n\nIt's it's a very small um amount of the cell mass and a very small amount of the cost. Um But it sounds like it's big because it's called lithium ion, but it it really like our battery should be called nickel graphite cuz it's mostly nickel and graphite. Okay, and Um it's nickel cobalt aluminum But battery little things in graphite with a silicon oxide layer.\n\nBattery efficiency or power you know, the power that you can store in a certain uh mass seems to be move very slowly, at least compared to you know, we're used to Moore's law pushing uh integrated circuits faster. Batteries kind of are always in our consumer devices always lagging behind. In your you've built this giant thing, the biggest building in the world that's ever seen.\n\nnot fully built, but yes, it's Your building a A pretty big chunk of it is built, so yeah. Uh to make batteries. Your whole business depends on batteries in these cars. Have you figured out a way to do some significant uh increase in the yield of energy from a given amount of of space in the battery? Well Yeah, I mean, the the the energy density is increasing sort of maybe on the order of like 5-ish percent per year.\n\nUm And it doesn't sound like much, but you add that up over a number of years with compound interest, it ends up being quite quite a significant number. Um and a lot of people sort of think that, \"Oh, well, we just sort of cobbled together some um laptop batteries and somehow made a great car.\" If it If it was that easy, then I think we would have quite a few competitors who did the same thing.\n\nBut but it's it's it's really quite quite a lot harder than that. Um the it is a cylindrical form form factor, but the internals of the battery are quite different from what you'd find in uh in a laptop. Um And uh and and and it will be increasingly different with the what's built at the gigafactory, which is highly optimized for automotive.\n\nUm And um and with has improved energy density, but but mostly it's not the energy density that's the issue cuz you know, you can buy if you buy a Model S today um the range is um around 300 miles. Um And and yeah, that's quite a lot. Um So it's pretty rare that people really need to go more than 300 miles at a time without stopping. Right. um So I don't think we really have a range issue. And we could make a 400-mile range car today.\n\nLike that wouldn't be too big of a deal. Um The What What really matters is decreasing the cost uh per unit of energy of the battery packs so that you can make the car affordable. That's actually the the the important thing. Um So there's and there's really two main main dimensions along which uh cost optimization and making something available to mass market can be achieved. One is design iteration, going through multiple versions of something.\n\nAnd then the other is economies of scale. Um and you kind of need both of those those things in order to make a compelling mass market uh product. And you look at like cell phones and how many design iterations have we gone through with cell phones? Um and and then and and and what and look at the scale at which they're they're made is enormous. Uh and that's what enables everyone to have a supercomputer in their pocket.\n\nUm So speaking of that, the sales. When you're talking about the sales, you have booked how many orders for It's on the order of 400,000. 400,000. So obviously it's consumer interest in a promise. A lot of it around you, around the idea of you and Tesla and the excitement. Yeah, it's it's quite surprising, actually. I mean, I the um cuz we didn't do any advertising or there was no guerrilla marketing or anything.\n\nIt was just basically like, \"Yeah, we're going to have this webcast.\" There was only there were only about a thousand people in the audience. Um and um it really caught us by surprise. But I think you know, when you have a product that really resonates with with customers, the word of mouth uh grows like wildfire. And that seems to be what it Yeah, but it's a little bit.\n\nI mean, honestly, in some groups of especially men in Silicon Valley, if you show up and read like a label of a peanut jar, they'd be thrilled with the situation. So I mean, you a lot of this does base around you. Like the idea of you and the excitement around this exciting entrepreneur. Is that Is that enough to get it to to to this massive company you've been hoping to?\n\nThe idea of this is the Elon promise or it's the Well, I I think actually it's not so much I mean, I sort of um um I I mean, I'm not sure. I I think I deserve less credit than that, actually. The the I What What Tesla's done with a phenomenal team is like 15,000 people at the company. Um worked super hard to create compelling products, to create great cars. Um and we started off with the roadster and then the Model S.\n\nThe Model S was rated, you know, by Consumer Reports as the best car ever. Um Got the Model X, which you know, had some has had some teething issues, but um I think it's now at the point where it's it's really starting to I think it's really I think quite sublime at this point.\n\nUm And uh and and so people look at that and say, \"Okay, well, if Tesla's made these cars, then probably the next car they make is going to be you know, the less expensive one. also a great car. And Um yeah, but you know, so it'll be a great car, but it'll be affordable. And it's like, \"Great. Okay, that sounds like something I want.\" Um So this car, this next car, the price is the It's starting at 35,000. Okay, affordable.\n\nOkay, when is the When do you get to the When do you get to the When do you get to the really affordable, the way down much lower than that? Yeah, I mean, it's more important that the 35,000, particularly when you're factoring in the lower cost of electricity versus gasoline and that the maintenance cost is much less. You don't have to have oil changes.\n\nYou never need to replace your brakes because the the car uses regenerative braking, so the brakes last as long as the car do at the car does. Um it's basically you just need to replace the tires. Like that's about about all. Um So the operational cost of the car is much lower fundamentally than than a gasoline car.\n\nAnd and so um And and I think I think the the the average price for cars for gasoline cars is around 30, 32, something like that, yeah. Uh I mean, there are starting prices that are lower, but but when people pick pick options, I believe it's in the around 32 or so in the US. So we're pretty close to the that that that But that's your base price, right? I mean, the Yeah, but it's going to be a great car. ASP for the car.\n\nNo, but it's going to be a great car even at 35. So it's like even if you order nothing no options at all, it'll be great. But you're at but you're likely to have a mix where the average car that you actually sell sells for a little more than that. Yes, probably it's probably going to be Yeah, it's probably going to be some higher number.\n\nUm But it's really important to emphasize like the the 35 if if somebody orders the 35,000 car, they'll be very happy. Like it's not like you need to order a bunch of options in order without which the car is is, you know, not not good. That car will have autonomous for 35? Um I have a uh I'm going to do another of Tesla van maybe at the end of the year. Um, talk more about that. And say Well, so you could start here.\n\nUm, it would be real big news if I start here. Um We don't mind that. Let me just say that we're going to do the obvious thing. Okay. Got it. It's really obvious. So cup So So cup holders good. Okay. Um So brilliant brilliant But those things are nuanced. All right, absolutely. Um, let's talk about two more things. I want to talk about AI cuz we've been talking about it a lot here.\n\nUm, which I want to get it clear what your thoughts are because it's mostly Elon's scared of robots. I mean, that kind of thing or what How do you I'm just scared of robots. Um Or artificial intelligence. Can you like clarify exactly what the issue you have now? And and you deserve the background. We've been talking to uh Jeff Bezos, Sundar Pichai. Uh, we talked to Mark Fields from Ford about it. Um it's Microsoft for Uh yeah, the Facebook folks.\n\nUm, there certainly seems to be uh in the I in the tech companies a big tremendous new drive or interest to believing they will be all competing for intelligent assistants and good. It'll make your life better Make your life better. Siri is going to suddenly get smart. Microsoft's one is going to get smart. And Google is going to cream them all. a happy version of this is going to Sometimes technology hurts you, but not as much as it helps you.\n\nThat's really Yeah. So that's there's been a lot of conversation here about that. Um and yet and you've staked out a slightly different position. So can you talk about that? Well, I mean, I think my sort of full position would require quite a long explanation. Um I mean, I I am concerned about um certain directions that AI could take that would be uh not good for the future.\n\nThat the I mean, it I I I think it'd be fair to say that like not all AI futures are benign. Not not all. Okay. Um And and so if you have something if if if there's if we create some digital superintelligence that exceeds us in every way by a lot, um it's very important that that be benign. Um And um and so actually with with the with a few others um I created uh Open AI. Uh which is uh an AI uh It's a nonprofit actually.\n\nIt's so so there's there's no I think the governance structure here is important. Um, so you want to make sure that there was not some fiduciary duty to uh generate um you know, profit or proof of the AI technology that's developed. Um So uh so we created this uh a 501c3 um but it but I think it's it's like quite different from I mean, like a lot of sort of 501c3s are, you know, they have they don't have a high sense of urgency.\n\nUm like they're they're not like um you know, they're not really sort of ex developing technology at at at a fast pace, but Open AI is. Uh so Open AI has a very high sense of urgency and the talent I think that the people that have joined are are really really amazing. Um um and um and the intent with Open AI is to democratize AI power. Um And there's a quote that I love from uh Lord Acton.\n\nHe was the guy that came up with power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Um which is that uh freedom consists of the distribution of power and despotism in its concentration. And so I think it's important if we have this incredible power of AI that it not be concentrated in the hands of a few and potentially lead to a world that we don't want. And what world is that?\n\nWhat is What do you see foresee that when you say It's difficult I mean, it's called the singularity cuz it's it's difficult to predict. Um what exactly what future that might be except um I don't know a lot of people who love the idea of living under a despot. Mhm. Um you know, I don't think people generally choose to live in a democracy over a dictatorship. Mhm. And the despot would be the computer? Well, the people controlling the computer.\n\nMhm. And do you worry specifically about any of these companies I mentioned who've all seemed to now kind of be pivoting toward this as the battleground in the next 10 years? I won't name a name, but there is only one. There's only one you're worried about. And they're not preoccupied with making a car that will compete with you, I assume. There's only one. And what tell tell me This is an interesting competing It's not about competing.\n\nIt's Like like this is sort of like who like what would be the point of competing for you know mutual destruction. It's like there's no It's not about competing. It's really just about um trying to increase the probability that the future will be good. That's all. Mhm. So the the goal of of Open AI is really just to take the set of actions that are most likely to improve the positive futures.\n\nLike if you can think of like the future as a set of of probability streams that that that branch out and then converge collapse down to a particular event and then branch out again. And uh there's a certain set of probability associated with the future being positive and different type flavors of that. And uh at Open AI we want to try to get do do whatever we can to guide to to increase the probability of of the good futures happening.\n\nI think that's that's really what we're trying to do there. worry that by making this open some bad actors may use some of what has been developed to do bad stuff uh with the power of the AI? Yeah, I mean, that that is certainly the the the I mean, a good rebuttal to that. Um however, I think if AI power is widely distributed um then and there is not uh say one entity that has some super AI that is a million times smarter than anything else.\n\nUh you know, if it if instead the AI power is broadly distributed and to the degree that we can link uh AI power to um each individual's will. Um so like you you know, you would have your AI agent and you would like everyone would have their sort of AI agent. And then if somebody did try to do something really terrible, well, then uh the collective will of others could overcome that bad actor.\n\nUm which you can't do if if there's one AI that's you know, a million times better than everything else. and it's proprietary. And it's yeah, it's either has its own will or more likely at least in the beginning is controlled by you know, some small set of people. So um I think that's that's really the the risk. I mean um you know, there's always there's always been these arguments like what's the what's the best form of government?\n\nUm you know, big fan of I think it was Churchill like, you know, democracy is the the worst form of government except for all the others. Right. Um So speaking of that Yeah. this election. You are from Oh, no. No, no, no. Yes, yes, yes. How does that strike you what's happening now? You're you you come to this country or naturalized citizen?\n\nUh you know, I think I'm glad that the framers of the Constitution saw fit to ensure that the president uh was someone who um was captain of a large ship with a small rudder. Okay. And There's a limit to how much harm any given president Are you sure about that? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So you're not worried about Are you backing in either of the candidates at this point? stay out of this situation.\n\nBecause I don't think this is the finest moment in our democracy. Well, given that it's not the finest moment in our democracy, do you think the best thing is to stay out or We'll see. get in I'm not sure what I what I can do to I mean worst. I don't know how much how much influence I could have as as one person on the outcome. Um so um I mean, if I think I could make a difference, I would probably do something.\n\nUm but um like I said, I think I'm just glad that that the pre you know, being the US president is like being captain of a large ship with a small rudder. Mhm. And so like there's just a limit to how much good or bad a president can can can actually do. I mean, obviously if if a president could make the economy great that and there was like a button he could press, they'd be pressing that button at the speed of light. Mhm.\n\nUm So you know, that they they but they they can't. So I can't they can't just magically make the economy good. Um no president wants the economy bad ever. Um but they you know, like there's just a limit to to how much they can do. Um and um yeah. I guess there is the nuclear thing which is Yeah, the nuclear I guess there is the nuclear thing. Yeah, but I I I don't know.\n\nI think you would I think I think I don't think we would like just arbitrarily launch nuclear missiles. Yeah. One would hope. President can do that. Uh I don't think so. Arbitrarily. I mean, I think that He's No, he's the commander-in-chief. but I don't I still I still don't I still don't think that means you can just launch nuclear missiles whenever you want. All right. Yeah.\n\nUm I I think Congress would be like quite upset about that and um They might not be consulted. Yeah, but I think I think like the military would be like, \"Yeah, we really think Congress should be consulted on that before you launch a Yeah, that that might happen. preemptive nuclear strike. Are you willing that you're basing your faith in that though?\n\nI'm quite confident that the military would not just you know, randomly agree to launching nuclear missiles at somebody. Well, that's calming. Um so um we're going to put up just very quickly with and on Hyperloop. You've been involved with it. Your level of involvement is what at this point? Just Yeah, and I know it's a it's a bit it's a bit confusing cuz um I am You talked about it when you were here last time.\n\nYeah, um I I actually came up with the idea um I came up with an initial idea which which turned out to be wrong and wouldn't work um several years ago and and then um but I sort of shot my mouth off and and said I like have an idea that would work and turned out that it didn't work but I with a lot of iteration was able to come up with something that where the physics hangs together.\n\nUm and then published the paper and just said like look anyone who wants to do this is great. Go you know, be my guest. Cuz I'm I sort of have a plate full running Tesla and SpaceX. Yeah, yeah. And so I think it'd be great. I mean I I think it'd be great to have any interesting new transport solutions. Um anything that gets people to their destination um in a way that's safer, costs less, is more convenient. Um that'd be great.\n\nI mean and so I think probably the most valuable thing that the Hyperloop paper that I published um uh has done is is to spur thinking in terms of new transportation systems. So it's not just oh let's you know, have a a fast train. Okay, that's not even as fast as what Japan did in the '80s. Like okay, why would I don't see what the point of that is, you know.\n\nLike we should really be trying to think of some something that's um I think particularly in California like we should be like saying, \"Hey, what is the best Let's invent something new that's way better than anything else. Do you want to shoot your mouth off about that?\n\nUm well um you know, I so so I I mean I'm not an investor in any of the companies uh that that are working on it and I've tried to be neutral cuz I'm like trying to trying not to favor one company over another. Uh but just to encourage anyone that is interested to say like you know, the try try to give them moral support, you know. Um And I I hope they succeed.\n\nUm the only thing that um I am doing on Hyperloop front is like we're we're holding a student competition and the student competition is really just um aimed towards encouraging uh students to think about exciting new transport methods. Um and it's totally cool if they want to like do some architecture that's different from uh what I proposed in Hyperloop.\n\nIn fact, the the winning team at the student competition that we held earlier this year used a different um suspension mechanism uh than what I proposed which is I you know, I I proposed using essentially taking taking the uh air that eventually is that builds up on the nose from the compressor and and flowing that through um air skis. Um So that you simultaneously remove the drag from the nose and provide a a a means of suspending the the pod.\n\nUm and and that's also something that that works well um even at uh super supersonic velocities. You can go it's been demonstrated up to Mach 1. 1 in terms of using air bearings as But they use something different. Uh uh yeah, basically electromagnetic suspension.\n\nUm and and like the the the reason I didn't suggest um uh um sort of any any kind of um um magnetic suspension um is that it's very important that the cost of the of the tube be be minimized. So you really want because the the the pod is cheap, the tube is expensive. Um so if you if you want to go say 400 miles and you and and two in two directions, so you've got 800 miles of tube.\n\nThe the the critical uh economic optimization parameter is the cost of the tube. So you want that tube to be as low cost as possible. Um and so if you if you do anything that that um requires um action on the tube side, it's going to make that tube much more expensive. Um so if you use air bearings, it doesn't change like that's real cheap. Um and um yeah, so Do you think this is going to happen?\n\nYeah, I think something like that I think something will happen in the future. Um You know, it's I think I think if if if the companies that are that are trying that are trying to make it happen now, if if for whatever reason that that doesn't work out, um then you know, I think I I'll you know, I'll I might I might do something myself in the future.\n\nI I don't want to do something I don't want to front I don't want to sort of front run them, you know, and say here's this free idea and then meanwhile I go and do it myself, you know, that wouldn't be nice. So um so so but if I if they if they if they if if much companies don't try and it doesn't work out then then I think I think um I think I'll try to just at least do a demonstration system, you know. Okay, last question.\n\nDo you think tech has gotten more serious? Do you How do you look at the tech landscape as someone who's you know, well known you probably qualify as a visionary. Um the concept What What do you imagine we are right now in the tech space and then we'll get to questions from the audience. I think there's a lot of innovation happening in in many different areas. Um The advancements in AI are I think are quite quite astonishing.\n\nUm the advancements in genetics are amazing. Um The So I I think that there is a lot of innovation going on. Um I think that there's probably a few too many talented entrepreneurs in kind of the internet space and and I think their talent actually would be better served in some other industries. Um But I do think I mean I don't think we're like facing some sort of low innovation period or anything like that.\n\nI think there's a lot of innovation going on. They need to move to other Uh I just think there's like if you had some ideal distribution there probably would be fewer like there's just a lot of talent focused on the internet and probably some of that talent um uh would um be be be better to have some of that talent in other industries. Um that's about all but but there's tremendous amount of innovation that that's happening.\n\nUm It's something that I think is is going to be quite important. Um And and it's there's not I don't know of a company that's working on it seriously is um is a neural lace. Um so you know, going going back to the AI situation. Um this is quite important. Uh quite important debate. Like the if you assume any rate of advancement in AI, um we will be left behind by a lot.\n\nUm and so then we could be in like you know, a benign situation but the even the benign situation if you have some you know, if you have ultra intelligent AI, um we would be you know, so so far below them in intelligence that it would be would be like you know, a pet basically. Cat, that's what I was thinking. Like a pet, a cat, a cat, like a house cat. Yeah, we'd be like a house cat.\n\nUm and um yeah, so that's that's the end of the world, you know. Just sort of pets. Seen the movie, it could be. It could be, could be. Um the Yeah, so that but that honestly that would that would be a benign scenario. Um and So house cat is okay? I mean I don't love the idea of being a house cat. Okay. But but that So what's the solution?\n\nYeah, so I think the um I I think I think it I think it's to essentially I think one of the solutions the solution that seems maybe the best one is to have an AI layer. Um if you think of like you've got your limbic system, um your cortex and then um a digital layer, a sort of a third layer above the cortex um that um could work work well and symbiotically with with you.\n\nI mean just as your cortex works symbiotically with your limbic system, your sort of a third digital layer could work symbiotically with the rest. This is something that's in surgically inserted or bred into the species or what? The the fundamental limitation is input-output. So uh we we already have uh we we're already a cyborg.\n\nUm it's just that I mean you have a digital version of yourself or or partial version of yourself online in the form of your emails and your social media and all the things that you do. Um And and you have basically superpowers in in that with your computer and your phone and and the applications that are there. Um you have more power than the president of the United States had 20 years ago. You can answer any question.\n\nUh you can video conference with anyone um Right. anywhere. You can send a message to millions of people instantly. Um you know, you just do incredible things and um but the constraint is is input out output. So, we're we're IO bound. Um particularly output bound. I mean, like the your output level is so low. It's like the particularly on a phone like your two thumbs are sort of tapping away. Um this is ridiculously slow.\n\nUm our input is much better cuz we have a high bandwidth visual interface with the brain. Like our eyes take in a lot of a lot of data. Um so, there's many orders of magnitude difference between um input and output. Um So, mostly um effectively merging in a symbiotic way with uh digital intelligence revolves around eliminating the IO constraint. Um so, it's with some sort of direct cortical interface. Um And you called it a neural Neural lace.\n\nNeural lace. Yeah. Um It's totally not Google Glass, right? No. I'm talking about something which wear it or No. I mean, it would be uh I mean, I mean, there are a few ways to approach this, but some sort of interface directly with your cortical neurons particularly. But doesn't that imply surgical insertion? Not necessarily. You could go through the veins and arteries cuz that that provides a a complete uh roadway to um all of your neurons.\n\nYour neurons are very heavy users of energy, so they need high blood flow. So, you automatically with your veins and arteries have um a road network to your neurons. Still search some kind of surgery, right?\n\nUm yes, but you could insert something, you know, basically you know, into the jugular and and have It gets my car, but really easy and It It doesn't involve It doesn't It doesn't involve, you know, like chopping your your your skull open or anything like that. Yeah. And plus you're not a house cat anymore, right? Not a house cat. So, Right.\n\num I mean, essentially if if we can figure out how to establish a high bandwidth neural interface with ourselves. with with your digital self effectively. Um then uh then you're no longer a house cat. You know. All right. On that note. Now, on that Uh well, well, I just one closing thing. it's probably the best outcome. That's Are you Are you Are you interested you interested in exploring this possibility that you have just laid got to do it.\n\nI'm not saying that I will, but I'm somebody's got to do it. I mean, I I I I mean, I So, somebody should do it. And I mean, if somebody doesn't do it, then I then I think I should probably do it, but uh And and the goal of this is to prevent there being an external uh AI, particularly one controlled by a small group of people that could Yeah.\n\nbe so much more powerful and intelligent than we are that the house cat would be godlike in its capabilities. Yeah. Well, this has been really cheerful. Thank you. Yeah. But But if we can establish about asteroids at the beginning of this. I mean, ast- asteroids are a low probability existential threat um on the time scale that's relevant to us. Okay. Okay. Um This is different. This requires urgency. So, what do you do for fun?\n\nYes, this is much more do you do for for fun fun? What do you do? Anything? I play video games with my kids. All right. That sounds good. Let's get some questions for Elon. Elon the house cat. I watch movies, you know, that kind of thing. Normal things. Why don't we start over here? Yeah, hi. I I think this last question by uh Carl just just did that.\n\nUh I want to know how do you uh live through the stress that kind of conversations we just heard that you went through and um kind of ambitions that you carry and then how do you adjust to the everyday work-life balance etc. things that in your life. So, a little bit of your personal side, actually. You're very busy. How does that work? Yeah, I mean, um I am sort of in kind of work triage mode um a lot of the time. So, I don't know.\n\nIt seems to be as long as there's not like a crisis simultaneously at SpaceX and Tesla, it's okay. Um but you know, companies are I mean, the situation in any given company, particularly when, you know, if if if it's sort of growing fast and sort of quasi startup, it's it's somewhat sinusoidal. So, that I mean, it's okay if if you don't if the if the waves don't crest together. You know, um when that does happen, it then that's a huge strain.\n\nUm But right now, things are like, you know, motoring along okay. Um and I have like the context loaded for both companies. I can look sort of see a path to a good outcome. So, I feel pretty good right now. Uh but there've been super stressful times in the past. Um and uh and then, you know, and then I I always try to reserve time for my kids cuz I love hanging out with them. Like I mean, kids are really great.\n\nI mean, they're like the 99% um of the time they they they they make you happier. They're kids are awesome, you know. Yeah. Um Then there's that 1%. 1% you know, like yeah, 1%. But But like it's it's of anything in my life, I would say kids by far make me the happiest. I mean, I don't know if you know, I agree. Yeah. It's great. I agree. Yeah.\n\nAt this Um so so I hang out with them like so like now the like things like a lot of times kids are kind of in their own world, so you don't need to like they don't want to like talk to their dad for hours on end generally. I've noticed that. Yeah. Um so like um so I can be in the same room with them. They can talk to me from time to time, but I you know, I can get you know, some emails done. Just get some work done.\n\nAnd then whenever they want to talk to me, they can. Um and then uh we uh we try to do things like um you know, travel places and uh like I said, we we play video games together or uh um actually on Monday, we went to the new Harry Potter land um at Universal. It was quite fun. Yeah. So, I think that Somebody from Universal is clapping. Yeah. I mean, whoever was in charge of Harry Potter land did a great job. It's really good. is good.\n\nI highly recommend it. Yeah. The butter beer is amazing. Yeah, I was just saying the butter The butter beer is amazing. Yeah. Okay. Over here. Hi. Uh my name is Evan Burns and the founder of Odyssey and I hope in to the future to be in something the space industry. And my curiosity is you've talked about SpaceX getting in many different businesses, for example, um global Wi-Fi through launching many satellites.\n\nUm do you hope SpaceX becomes a platform for others to launch businesses or you see SpaceX being a business that launches many business lines? Um well, I mean, the general or strategy of SpaceX is to like we we clearly need a lot of money in order to develop the transport system to establish a city on Mars.\n\nUm So, you know, we're we're like kind of gathering revenue uh like ear- earth-based revenue that's um we're we're we're we're we're we're trying to maximize earth other earth revenue. Well, right now it's only earth. So, we're going to maximize earth revenue as it relates to space, you know, as it relates to rockets and spacecraft.\n\nSo, um but I think like what assuming SpaceX is able to transport large numbers of people and and goods to Mars, it will be an enormous enabler for entrepreneurial activity on Mars. Um because there's going to be so much to do. Um you know, everything from creating like the first iron ore refinery to the first pizza joint to um you know, something that doesn't even exist on earth.\n\nUm you know, it's kind of like when the Union Pacific uh crossed crossed, you know, and like ev- everyone thought Union Pacific, what a stupid idea. You know, like there's nobody living in in California. Well, okay. Now, there's quite a lot of people living in California. Um so so just uh having a You need the transport link.\n\nUm and so what SpaceX is trying to do is is establish a transport link um and then try to create a fertile environment for entrepreneurs on Mars uh to flourish. Um and and I think that will be an amazing um expansion of entrepreneurial would it take to deliver a pizza from Mars? Ha. Well, it's going to be a little cold if it But I mean, we we we can certainly see a way to get to Mars in under three months.\n\nUm and I think ultimately you'll be able to get to Mars in under a month. It does get exponentially difficult as you reduce the time. Um but um but you know, three three months is a is a way to think of it. Um and I think that's probably you know, that's that's really where where SpaceX will I think create a a great environment for entrepreneurial potential. Thanks. Nilay. I hope Domino's does not get to Mars. Please don't let it.\n\nHave a special special Mars pizza. going to be I'm assuming you're going to be king of Mars. Nilay. Yeah. Uh uh so, you're obviously very ambitious. Um that's led to some really ambitious deadlines have been missed. So, Falcon Heavy was originally 2012. Um the Model X was a little bit delayed. The Model 3 The Model X was delayed. The Model 3 seems to be stretching. But the Model 3 in particular is a consumer product.\n\nYou're taking money from people against a really aggressive production schedule and a huge amount of orders. What are you going to do to hit your deadlines on that because it's real consumers this time in a big class of people? Sure. Um the uh I I think the the biggest thing is just designing the car for um for for manufacturing. So, in the case of Model S, like the Model S was the first time we'd really built a car, um a whole car.\n\nLike with the Roadster, Lotus did the body and chassis, we did the powertrain, and we did the sort of final installation of the powertrain to the to the chassis, but the Model S was the first time we made a car. So, we're just trying to make a a great car, um and but we had no idea like what it meant to design something to be manufacturable.\n\nSo, the Model S is super hard to make, and then the Model X is built off of the Model S platform, except it's got a bunch of other wiz-bang technologies that make it even harder to build.\n\nSo, um and uh you know, so um like that I mean, definitely we want to do the opposite of what we did with the with the X, um which is make something that is is going to be a lot simpler, um but still a car that people will love, um and where every design decision is factoring in the manufacturability.\n\nUh in fact, and making sure that when we design something, um that you can manufacture it at volume at an affordable price in the schedule that we're that we're on the schedule that we're that we're targeting. Um One of the things that makes a car very difficult, particularly if it's a new car, uh is is that it's an integrated product with several thousand unique components.\n\nUm so, we are somewhat at the mercy of whatever the slowest component is, whatever basically I mean, if you say go to tier two and three suppliers, they end up being several thousand suppliers. So, so things move as fast as the least lucky and least competent supplier. Um you know, but but just and you can think of like like any natural disaster you care to name, all of those things have happened to our suppliers.\n\nTheir factory has burnt down, there's been an earthquake, there's been a you know, tsunami, there's been uh massive hail, uh there's been a tornado, uh the ship sank, uh there was a shootout at the Mexican border, um no kidding. Um that that delayed trunk carpet at one point. Well, like and we couldn't get and like the and like the border patrol wouldn't give us the truck cuz it had a bullet holes in it. Um We just wanted our trunk carpet.\n\nUm like it's pretty safe. There's like no cocaine or anything. It's just a good. Um but you know, that shut down the production line as an example for several days. Um so, so there's that's the biggest issue is like the supply chain stuff is really tricky. Um We're trying to anticipate as much of that as possible, um increase our optionality so that there's more internal capability at Tesla.\n\nNot that we want to do things internally, but if um if a supplier is unable and unwilling to uh deliver the part, we can quickly make that internally. Um So, I think the whole company is is geared geared geared for that, um and um I mean, right now it looks like, you know, we should be able to do that.\n\nUh we expect to I mean, we we almost all of the Model 3 design is done, um and we're aiming for pencils down basically uh about 6 weeks, complete pencils down. Um And um and we're tabling all, you know, like if there are ideas for future cool things, we'll we'll have it in version two, version three, you know, in future years type of thing. So, um overall, I feel feel pretty good about it.\n\nUm And um our supplier um particularly our major supplier partners have been um very supportive and are are on board. Um But um you know, uh I mean, one thing I I should say is like the like when when I when I sort of cite a schedule, it is actually the schedule I think is true. It's it's not some fake schedule that I don't think is true. Um So, I mean, uh you know, it's never until you know, I it's um maybe delusional.\n\nThat is entirely you know, possible. Maybe it's happened from time to time. Um but it's it's it's never um you know, some knowingly fake deadline ever. So, is there an event in 6 weeks where you're going to announce autonomous driving is included in the pencils down plan for the Model 3? We're We're not expecting any event in 6 weeks. All right. Uh Josh. Hi. Um so, I have a this is a kind of a weird question.\n\nI feel like you would be the guy with the right answer for it. There's a um sort of a philosophic concept that a sufficiently advanced civilization would be able to create uh So, simulation. Yeah. Maybe you've answered this before. A simulation. simulation discussions, it's crazy. Okay.\n\nUm So, cuz cuz In fact, it it got to the point where basically every conversation was was the AI AI/simulation conversation, um and my brother and I finally agreed that um we would ban such conversations if we're ever in a hot tub. That was like Yeah, cuz that really kills the magic. So, So, so the idea is, right, any sufficiently advanced civilization would create could create a simulation that's like our existence.\n\nAnd so, the theory follows that may maybe we're in the simulation. Have you thought about this? A lot. Are we Are we Even in hot tub. So much so it had to be banned from a hot tub. Okay. It's not the sexiest conversation. Are we in Are we in? Um The the the I mean, I think here's in my view, like the the the strongest argument for the for us being in a simulation, probably being in a simulation, I think it's the following.\n\nUm That that 40 called 40 40 years ago, we had Pong, like two rectangles and a dot. That was what games were. Um now, 40 years later, we have photorealistic 3D simulations with millions of people playing simultaneously, and it's getting better every year. And soon we'll have you know, virtual reality, augmented reality. Um If you assume any rate of improvement at all, um then the games will become indistinguishable from reality.\n\nJust in indistinguishable. Um even if that rate of advancement drops by a thousand from what it is right now, um then you just say, \"Okay, well, we'll let's imagine it's a 10,000 years in the future.\" Uh which is nothing in the evolutionary scale.\n\nUm so, um So, so given that we're clearly on a trajectory to have games that are indistinguishable from reality, and those games could be played on any set up box or on a PC or whatever, and they would probably be you know, billions of such uh you know, computers or set up boxes. It would seem to follow that the odds that we're in base reality is one in billions. Tell me what's wrong with that argument. Is the answer yes?\n\nThe argument is probably I just like is there Is there a flaw in that argument? someone but someone sure what the error in All right, no, no. The argument makes sense. So, the assumption then is that some we beat us to it. And this is a game. No, no. There's a one in billions chance that this is base reality. Oh, okay. What do you think? Well, I think it's one in billions. Okay.\n\nI mean, this that seems to be like clearly what the you know, what the what it what it suggests. And and actually, I mean, ideally we should hope that that's true because otherwise, if if civilization stops advancing, then that may be due to some cataclysmic event that erases civilization. So, maybe we should be hopeful that this is a simulation cuz otherwise Cuz they could reboot it.\n\nWell, otherwise ei- either we're going to create simulations that are indistinguishable indistinguishable from reality or civilization will cease to exist. Those are the two options. I like those odds. Okay. All right. We're going to it's it's unlikely to go into some like, you know, multi-million year stasis. So, it's either going to increase or decrease. Hi, I'm Jeetu Patel from Box. Uh two-part question for you.\n\nOne is um if you think about fully autonomous vehicles, um which have passed through regulatory approvals, have passed through in-city driving in traffic conditions, how far do you think from a time frame perspective we are for that hap- that becoming reality?\n\nAnd number two would be the second part of that question is how far before how long before you think it's either illegal or extremely pro- prohibitively expensive for humans to drive on the road? Well, I I mean, I think I mean, I really would consider autonomous driving to be basically a solved problem. Um Even in cities like Beijing and Yeah. Yeah.\n\nActually, there's the There's really only one um area where it's like a little dodgy, and that's basically if you're at roughly the 30 30 to 40 mph um in in urban environments, which is that's difficult to achieve in Beijing. Um It's like heavy traffic. Uh in in in in dense traffic situations, uh autonomy is really easy um cuz you can just maintain a set distance from various cars. It's actually quite quite easy.\n\nUm you're un- very unlikely to drive to run anyone over cuz you're just not moving fast enough, and you can brake in time. Um on highways, particularly highways that are um that that are barriers so that you you don't have pedestrians. That's also relatively easy and like a Model S and Model X at this point can drive autonomously with greater safety than a person. Right now. Last question.\n\nMy my point is when does it get to be where you don't need to be sitting behind a vehicle and it actually the the way that society starts expecting this is I can have my 75-year-old mother who doesn't speak any English or doesn't drive be able to be transported from point A to point B by just sitting in a car by herself and being taken. I know it's technically possible, but how far do you think the regulatory approvals are for that happening?\n\nI I think we're basically um less than 2 years away from complete autonomy. Wow. Wow, complete. Safer than a human. Um however, regulators will take um I think at least another year, at least another year and it I guess it going to depend on which what part of the world you're in.\n\nUm because they'll want to see billions of miles of data to show that it is statistically true that there is a substantial improvement in safety if something's autonomous versus not autonomous. I don't think that regulators will accept something that's close to that's that's that's sort of approximately as good as a person.\n\nI think they'll have to be at least twice as good as a person, maybe five or 10 times um you know, better in terms of uh safety. Um and and and that will have to be have to be a statistically relevant data set. So, like billions of miles over widely differing uh roads and and situations.\n\nUm So, yeah, you know, that So, I think it's like probably 3 years before it's from a regulatory standpoint, but less than two before it is uh technically possible. And do you think there's a day when it's illegal to drive for humans or uh you know, Well, I mean, we live in a democracy, so it's presumably that would be a function of the population deciding. Um I mean, I'm not I I mean, I'm not in favor of banning people from driving cars.\n\nUm like I'm in favor of freedom. Um and and not restricting what people do. Um Yeah, but maybe the requirements for a license will get more stringent. I think that seems like maybe a good move, you know, so you have to demonstrate a higher level of skill to drive in order to be allowed to manually drive. Okay, very last question. Okay, this is the last question. one. Sorry, we you have to go. has to go. You're going to make it a great question.\n\nAll right. Thinking about life on Mars again, how do you how do you think about cultural unification, systems of government, uh rules of law, establishing those uh very early on? Well, I think I'll just declare king of Mars and I'm going to go. Um I like that. Yeah. Take it. Yeah, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Um so, the the uh I I think most likely the form of government on Mars would be a democ- direct democracy, um not representative.\n\nSo, it would be people voting directly on on issues. Um and I think that's probably better cuz like the potential for corruption is substantially diminished in a direct versus a representative democracy. Um so, I think that's probably what will occur. Um the I I think there's some I think so I would recommend like some adjustment for the inertia of laws is what would be wise in that it should probably be easier to remove a law than create one.\n\nUm I think you know, the this is I would just be like let's just I mean, I think I think that's probably probably good cuz just laws laws are have infinite life unless they're taken away. Um so, I think I my recommendation would be like like something like let's say 60% of people need to uh vote in a law, but at any point greater than 40% of people can remove it. Um and any law should come with a sunset with a built-in sunset provision.\n\nIf it's not good enough to be voted back in, maybe it shouldn't be there. So, that's that's the framework for the government on Mars. I mean, those that would be my those would be my recommendations. The democ- direct democracy where where it's slightly harder to to put laws in place than to take them away and where laws don't just automatically live forever. You'll be a good king. Thank you, Elon Musk. Thank you. Thank you so much.","textByLang":{"en":"Elon, let me start by saying we're very glad you're here safe and sound. Uh thanks. I actually had to sorry for being late. I was uh uh flying I flew here with the landing gear down cuz there was like some kind of landing gear issue. Landing gear was stuck? There's some kind of warning light uh my pilot said that if they were to retract the landing gear it may not go back down again. So So this happens to you this even happens to you. Yeah. Yeah.\n\nYeah. Okay. I have landing gear problems of various kinds. Um so um anyway we're happy to wait for you and then we're glad you got here safe. Thanks for having me. It's great to see you guys. Thank you for coming. I really appreciate it. You kept your promise which was nice. I think you were drunk when you promised me but that's okay. I'll take it.\n\nSo you know in the couple of years since you've come you've done some astonishing things in in terms of substance of stuff with your with both of your companies. Um let's start talking about space and what you've been doing there. Um obviously you've had some success uh landing the landing the rocket. You've had you know you've done a bunch of other things that where people thought you weren't going to be successful.\n\nTalk a little bit about sort of the progress you think you've made with SpaceX. Sure well I mean there's a lot of things where I I think I I didn't think we'd be successful. Um so the the um probably and the most significant thing is being able to land an an orbit class rocket uh booster stage um and uh and bring it both back to Cape Canaveral uh land to land and be able to land on a drone ship out in the ocean.\n\nUm the um it it there is a bit of an education process that's needed to understand orbital dynamics um cuz a lot of people can are confused of like why the heck are you landing a ship uh landing a rocket in a on a ship in the ocean? That seems pretty inconvenient. Um and the the reason is because that uh going up and staying up is actually about velocity horizontal to the earth's surface.\n\nSo um there there's a huge difference between space and or space and or and orbit. It like space you can think of as like say being the international waters boundary for the Pacific Ocean. Like if you go you know uh 100 miles offshore you're technically out of Yes. coastal waters now you're in the Pacific. So it's like technically you're in the Pacific but but it's but orbit is like circumnavigating the globe.\n\nIt it's a really giant difference and the the reason that things go up and stay up is because you're you're zooming around the earth so fast that your outward radial acceleration is equal to the inward acceleration of gravity. And so those balance out and you have a net zero gravity.\n\nSo when you see the space station the thing that's little little sort of um counterintuitive is that the space station is actually zooming around the earth at 17,000 miles an hour. Even though it seems like it just really still you know but it's moving really really fast. Um I mean to put that into perspective um a bullet from a 45 um gun you know a handgun um is is is is uh just below the speed of sound.\n\nSo the space station is going more than 25 times faster than that. Um and that's what's needed actually to go up and stay up. Um and that's why that's why there's the term escape velocity not escape altitude. There's no such thing as an escape altitude there's only escape velocity. You need to be a certain speed to escape the gravity of the earth. Yeah you can think of gravity as kind of a funnel in space time.\n\nUm so uh or think of it like a coin funnel.\n\nLike it's it's really it's very much like that in in you know but it's obviously a sort of a four-dimensional coin funnel but uh if if you if you spin a spin a marble or a coin on a coin funnel the when it's when it's far out it sort of spins slowly and then as it gets closer it spins faster and faster and if you want if you want if you were to start at the bottom of the coin funnel and you wanted to to to to to to exit you'd spin it horizontally and it would it would spin out and and and that's really how you how you get to orbit.\n\nUm Yeah so the gravity well is like a funnel. why you want to land on the on a ship in the ocean? Uh because um in order to get to orbit you all that matters is your horizontal velocity. Your altitude is doesn't doesn't really matter. Um in fact the the um the force of gravity at uh say the the nominal um boundary of space 100 km is almost exactly the same as it is on the surface of the earth. Hm.\n\nUm it's it's like if it's a few percent lower than than the surface of the earth. Um uh so in in order to go up and stay up the only thing that matters is how fast are you going horizontal to the earth's surface. So you have that outward radial acceleration or think of it like maybe like tetherball or something like that. It's really that outward acceleration is the thing that matters.\n\nUm and so when the rocket is going to orbit um the only reason it's going up is to get out of the thick part of the atmosphere cuz that at high velocity the atmosphere is thick as molasses. Um and so it goes up very briefly but if you look at a long exposure of the the rocket's uh trajectory you'll see it it goes up but immediately curves over and starts going horizontal.\n\nUm and so the um at at the at the point at which the uh the uh the the point at which the stage is separate those two stages um the the primary booster stage which is the most expensive part of the rocket the point at which that that staging occurs uh can be um as high as uh Mach 10. Um but it's it's so it's going away from the launch site at 10 times the speed of sound.\n\nSo in in in order to get back to the launch site you would have to have enough I fuel and oxygen to reverse out that velocity and and and boost back all the way to the launch site. Um and you just don't have the physics of it don't really allow you to have that much it's it's not about saving money on fuel or anything it's just physically impossible.\n\nUm so um because another sort of thing about uh if you're if you're in space is that there's nothing to react against. So like whereas an aircraft can can circle very easily because it's reacting against air. In vacuum there's nothing to react against.\n\nSo the only way to go back the other direction is to apply just as much energy as it took you to go it we if you want to go backwards you have to apply just as much energy as it took you to go forwards. In fact it would twice as much really cuz you got to zero it out and then you've got to You've got to land elsewhere.\n\nYeah so bottom line is this thing is zinging out to the point it may well be over the ocean cuz the ocean covers most of the ocean covers most of the uh the earth. So that's the point it may Oh it's it's it's actually the point of separation it's not that far away. It's maybe 100 km away from the the launch site but it is going like hell in the opposite you know away from the launch site.\n\nSo the the only way to really land it is to have it continue on that arc that ballistic arc and then land far out to sea on a ship that's that's pre-positioned to a particular latitude and longitude very very precise to within about a meter.\n\nUm and then the the rocket will um then go from vacuum through rarefied air at hypersonic velocity uh um it and and what so when it's when it's in vacuum it has to obviously you can't use air surfaces you have to use um nitrogen jets to control the um the attitude and position.\n\nAnd then um as it starts to encounter uh the air um we use um grid fins because grid fins uh look like sort of like a waffle um they work quite well across a wide regime from both very high velocity um hypersonic through supersonic transonic and subsonic. Um so it's hard to it's it's hard to have air surfaces that work well across that entire regime.\n\nAnd then uh so once the air air forces become high it uses the um the four grid fins to to sort of control its attitude itself. Yeah it's it's controlling its it's it's controlling pitch yaw and roll with with the grid fins.\n\nUm and uh and then once and those grid fins will then position it to where it's fairly close to the ship and then it will light in this case three of the nine engines to arrest the velocity and then drop to one engine for precision right before landing. Right. Okay. So that was a maybe a bit of a long explanation. but okay what we're going to get to is that's super [ __ ] hard. There's a video. So why why is that important?\n\nWhy has that this moment been important for you? Um well so in order to reuse the the booster stage which is about 70% of the cost of the rocket so that Which cost is that? How much is that? Um well I mean it's sort of on the order of 30 to 35 million dollars. Right. So you want to save that.\n\nYeah I mean it's like I try to I tell my team it's like imagine there was a pallet of cash that was falling through the atmosphere and it was going to burn up and smash into tiny pieces. Would you try to save it? Right. Right. Right. Probably yes. Yes. Okay. Yeah that sounds like a good idea. Right. Okay. Uh-huh. Um so so yeah so we we we we want to get it back and that way um we don't have to make another one. Right.\n\nUm and I think it's quite tragic if rockets like get smashed into tiny pieces and land at the bottom of the ocean. a question? We we've been in we've been going to space for uh what, 50 years or something like that? Yeah. Nobody, until you started doing this and Jeff Bezos' company has done it, uh the government never thought of saving the rockets. They never saved the pallet of cash. Why not? And the Russians didn't either.\n\nI mean, what what is the deal there? yeah, I mean there was some attempt uh made to do that with the the space shuttle but there was no um return. It's the first time that that a rocket booster has returned to launch site um from an orbital mission and and certainly the first time that there's been a a landing on a ship out at sea. regular rockets that went up that weren't designed like planes never tried to do this. Right.\n\nUm the plane thing is not not a good idea in my view. Um the so so the the the plane um and the the reason I think it's like intuitively it seems like a plane should work but but actually if you you consider that really every mode of transport has a design that is appropriate to its medium. Um and if you're in space, um wings are not very useful. Um cuz there's no air.\n\nUh and and and then if you want to go somewhere other than Earth, there's also no runways. Uh-huh. So, this is these are important considerations. Um so that's why when they went to the moon, they used propulsive landing. Right. But what I'm saying was when they built the space shuttle, it sort of was like a looked like a kind of bulbous plane. appealed to Congress. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They went cool. It's cool. Yeah, looked like an airplane.\n\nCan you explain the the you know, Jeff Jeff Bezos Good one. Jeff Bezos was here last night and I asked him, what's the difference between what you're doing and what Elon Musk is doing and he said, well, I think we have I think he used the word like-minded in the general sense of it and then he went on to explain some differences.\n\nDo you And then he but he talked about and correct me if I'm misquoting him but I think he was saying, we're this is all about laying the foundations of being able to do greater things by getting the basic infrastructure of being able to reuse these rockets down. Right. Do you Is that correct? Do you have a similar starting point from him in your thinking process? I think there's certainly some similarities of opinion.\n\nUm I think both uh Jeff and I believe that it's important for the future to be a spacefaring civilization um and actually ultimately be out there among the stars and I think that's the that's the exciting, inspiring future that I think I think certainly people in this room are wanting and anyone after seeing that the asteroids are going to destroy this planet.\n\nI mean, Um I mean, I don't view it as um you know, we want we I mean, I I think I think what when I say, you know, multi-planet species, like that's really where we want to be. It's not like, you know, still being a single-planet species with moving planets. It's uh it's really being a multi-planet species um and having civilization and life as we know it extend beyond Earth to the rest of the solar system and ultimately to other star systems.\n\nUm I think that's the thing that that's the that's the future that's exciting and inspiring and I think that's what, you know, I think you know, you you need kind of you need things like that to make to to to be glad to wake up in the morning. You know, the like life life can't be just about solving problems. Like there have to be things that are inspiring and exciting that make you glad to be alive.\n\nSo, what in the immediate time frame, what is what is your goal for SpaceX now that you've done this, which is a huge accomplishment? What is the plan for you in the immediate time and then the longer range? Sure. So, the um so we plan to re-fly uh one of the landed um rocket boosters hopefully in about two or three months, something like that. Um and um and then that that so that'll be an important milestone.\n\nUm so far the the the stages are looking like quite quite good uh even though they come through through quite there's a really difficult entry re-entry situation. Um but they're they're looking in fact they're in they're in good shape. Um we now have four of them.\n\nUm so, we want to start re-flying them um you know, towards the end of summer um and then uh hopefully by the end of this year we'll be launching Falcon Heavy uh which will will be the um the most powerful rocket uh in the world by more than a factor of two. So, Falcon Heavy is will be on the order of 5 million pounds of thrust on lift-off, which is about 2/3 the size of a Saturn V. Oh, really?\n\nYeah, so it's That's the rocket that uh took the astronauts to the moon. Right, exactly. So, In fact, we're launching from the same from the same pad. From Very same pad. from the Apollo 11 pad. Wow. Yeah. That's amazing. So, you you're hoping to launch that Falcon Heavy by the end of this year, you said. Yeah, that's that's our aspiration. Is that Now, that's somewhat of a delay from when you first hoped to launch it, right?\n\nUm yeah, um but uh the I mean, it's not like we had a lot of pressing customers who wanted us to launch it. Uh-huh. Okay. So, the uh in fact, the first launch will will not have any operational satellites. It'll be a demonstration launch. Mhm. Um and the first operational flights where where customers actually want us to launch it are next year. You know, whereas there's there's a lot of customers who want us to launch uh Falcon 9.\n\nUm so, about about a quarter of our launch of our flights are for uh for NASA um but 3/4 are for uh commercial satellites like broadcasting communication satellites um or science missions for other countries.\n\nUm and um and this is there's quite a quite a backlog and we had we had an issue with a rocket last year so that um put about a 6-month hold on our schedule so we're sort of backlogged on our launches and we're trying to get them out as as as quickly as we as we can um and you know, so you know, service our customers. The the uh so we're we're the launches will take place you know, every two to four weeks.\n\nIt's quite a quite a high launch cadence. That's a much faster cadence than NASA had, right? Um yeah, it's I mean, it's it will be more launches than any anything else in the world. Um so, more than Russia, more than Europe, more than well, more than China by now. Sure, certainly. to deliver customers. Satellites. Yeah, it's it's um there's a lot of broadcasting communication satellites that are going to geosynchronous orbit. Mhm.\n\nAnd um and then there's we're we're we'll also be launching the new uh Iridium constellation. So, the Iridium's got a next generation uh constellation of uh satellites, I think 60 or 70 satellites, quite you know, decent-size satellites uh um that that'll be like many orders of magnitude improvement over the current Iridium system.\n\nSo, we'll be able to have global broadband um so that that'll be a whole bunch of launches and um yeah, and then and then next year we'll be flying um Dragon version two, which is the one that's capable of taking up to seven astronauts to the space station. Mhm.\n\nUm in fact, Dragon two really is it's a propulsive lander as well um and it'll be the uh it's it's it's intended to carry astronauts to the space station but it's also capable of being a general science delivery platform to anywhere in the solar system. So, um So, where are you going with it? We're going to we're going to send one to Mars in 2018. Okay. Now, let's talk Wait. Wait. 2018, that's for sure. Yeah, a couple years. Couple years.\n\nNow, will you be on that flight? No. You have talked about this. You said you don't want to you want to die on Mars, just not on landing, right? Is that correct? Well, I mean, I think if you're going to choose a place to die, then Mars is probably you know, not a bad choice. All right. Um But you're not ready it's not some sort of Martian death wish or something. But but yeah, I mean, if you're going to be born on Earth, die on Mars.\n\nSo, sending this up to Mars, 2018, right? Sending this up to Mars, 2018. When will someone like you get there from your plans? Sure. So, so the 2018 mission would be um our Drag- Dragon version two. Right. Um and that um I wouldn't recommend traveling to Mars in in that cuz I mean, it has the interior volume of a large SUV. Okay. Uh the the the trip the trip for Dragon would be on the order of six months. Mhm.\n\nIt's a long time to spend in an SUV, I think. Mhm. Um That's yes, can be done. Can be done but not not probably not ideal. Um and it also doesn't have the capability of getting back to Earth. Right. That's That seems more important than the space is. Hopefully. Yeah, we can put that in the in the fine print, Yeah. Sorry. We were rooting for It's It's like the side effects in a drug ad. By the way, cannot get back to Earth. Yeah.\n\nYeah, we saw the movie. We saw what happened. He got back. Yeah, yeah. Um So, it's good. I I I actually enjoyed the movie. Um So, he could have gotten back like that? That was that plausible? Well, I thought there was some, you know, connection. It was It was mostly It was like 80% scientifically correct. Um but they did connect a series of improbable events. Such as?\n\nWell, I mean, I don't think you can sort of just uh take off from Mars um on an unguided rocket really and and then prick your finger on a space suit and navigate to a to a spaceship. Right? Yeah. Not Not Not impossible, just extremely unlikely. So, the sand storm in the movie if you're Matt Damon maybe. Maybe. You have some mad skills for sure. So so so when will people like yourself get there and I assume you'll be first in line for that?\n\nYeah so later this year in September at the IAC which is the big sort of world space conference industry space conference. I'm going to be presenting the the architecture for Mars colonization. Mhm. So I think what really matters is being able to transport large numbers of people and ultimately millions of tons of cargo to Mars.\n\nAnd and that's what's necessary in order to create a self-sustaining not really self-sustaining but a growing city on Mars. So I'm curious have you been to space yet? No. Why? I mean you could just go up right for a little bit or not? I could I suppose. Yeah. Why haven't you? Like walked around or something? Yeah well yeah probably will. Will you do a moon test before you go to Mars?\n\nYeah I'm going to probably probably I don't know go to orbit in four or five years or something like that. But again space and orbit are very different things. But on the Mars thing would you send up two or three whether it's you or not.\n\nI kind of would prefer if you tried it frankly but because it would be exciting but would you send up some people some people before you do this whole architecture for colonizing Mars just a handful of people to kind of see what I mean the the the basic game plan is like we're going to send um a mission to Mars with every Mars opportunity from 2018 onwards. So and they occur approximately every 26 months.\n\nSo um you know we we're establish we're establishing cargo flights to Mars that people that people can count on for for cargo. Um and it's like I said the the the Earth-Mars orbital rendezvous is only every 26 months. So there's one in 2018 there'll be another one in 2020. Um and I think if things go according to plan we should be able to uh we should be able to launch people probably in 2024 with arrival in 2025.\n\nSo Is that is that a more certain schedule than United Airlines? Well um I don't know. Uh There's certainly some uncertainties associated with that. Um So um let's um I'm going to share Anyway that's the game plan like approximately 2024 to do the first to to to to launch the first um of the Mars colonial transport system with I want to get back to what you said earlier about a multi a very big rocket. Okay. A very big bigger than Saturn V?\n\nTwice as big or what? September. I'll tell you. Not going to say anything till September? Come on. Very big. Come on. Has to be very big. I how big is very big? So big. Um Do you think we should abandon the Earth at some No. No I No I think it's great. But you have said things Why would we abandon Earth? It's really nice here. You've said things about we may have to abandon the Earth so it's good to have a plan B. No I haven't.\n\nOr No that was amazing. That's I think that's maybe maybe I don't know but it wasn't me. All right. Okay. Wasn't me like Jackie you All right. Um So let's move to things on this Earth. Let's move to Hyperloop Tesla other things. Let's talk about Tesla first. Where do you feel like the company is at at this point and there's been lots of activity in self-driving cars and autonomous autonomous.\n\nHow do you look at how everybody's jumped in Google Apple others? Um and all the car manufacturers. Um Yeah I mean there have been so many announcements of like autonomous EV startups. I'm waiting for my mom to announce one. Okay. Um it's like mom you too? Um I mean there's a lot. So um Yeah I mean in in in in the US alone there are there are four I think maybe five China-funded EV startups. At the billion dollar plus level like serious funding.\n\nUm and there's a bunch of startups and then of course the you know the car industry as a whole seems to be moving in that direction. Volkswagen just I think announced a huge battery factory that they're going to build. Um And I think these are all good you know it's good it's good for the industry to be moving towards sustainable transport as as quickly as possible. Um we open sourced our patents to try to be helpful in that regard.\n\nAnd um yeah so it's it's encouraging to see all this activity. Um From a Tesla standpoint you know we're just we want to take the set of actions that are uh likely to accelerate the advent of sustainable energy. Um so um scale up production as fast as we can so we accelerated plans for the Model 3 by two years.\n\nUm and to so we we want to try to get to half a million cars in total in kind of the 2018 timeframe which is an aggressive schedule but I think achievable. Um and and then maybe a million cars a year by 2020. Um and um you know I I can see a I I think a pretty clear path to get there. Uh autonomy is obviously extremely important. Uh people are going to want want autonomy. It's going to be odd to have a car without autonomy in the future.\n\nUm But um yeah so that I think that's So what what what do you How do you look at How do you look at the all these efforts? Not your mother but Yeah my mom's yeah she's She's not going to do it. She may do a rocket situation but um how do you look at each of them? Let's go through them. What Google's doing? How do you assess what they're doing when you're looking at it cuz they'll be competitors at some point.\n\nThese are all Um eventual competitors. Well you know what I think what what Google's I mean Google's done a great job of showing the potential of autonomous transport. Um but they're they're not a they're not a car company so they would potentially you know license their technology to other car companies and I think they announced something with Fiat. Um and so I I wouldn't say you know Google's a competitor because they're not a car company.\n\nThey We would compete with somebody perhaps that they license technology to but not to them directly. Right. Um Apple? Uh Yeah that that'll be more direct. That'll be more direct? Yeah. You can tell that by the hiring pattern and that kind of stuff. So what do you Okay so they're going to be more direct. How do you assess it?\n\nUm I mean I I say like you know I I think it's great that they're doing this and um I um you know I hope they I hope it works out. What's What's the timeframe for them do you think? Um I don't know I mean um I I think they should have embarked upon this project sooner actually.\n\nUh but that uh um but I don't know I don't know when they I mean they have they don't they don't share with me the details of their production plans but um I I I I don't think it's going to be I don't think they'll be in volume production sooner than maybe 2020. That'll be like the soonest. And that's Is that too late?\n\nWhen you say they should have embarked sooner is is that because 2020 will be too late to stop you or beat you or compete with you or No it's just like it's a missed opportunity. It's just a that they it's a it's um It'll be over by 2020? I wouldn't say that. It's It's just like it's it's it's a couple of years. I think they'll they'll probably make a good car and probably be successful.\n\nThe car industry is very big so it's not as though there's um you know one company to the exclusion of others. Um I mean there's like a dozen car companies in the world of of of significance. So uh and the the most that any company has is approximately 10% market share. So it's it's not like um you know somebody comes up with a car and they're suddenly like they kill everyone else. It's not not that way.\n\nUm and and the sheer scale of automotive manufacturing is is is just it's hard to appreciate until you see the plants. I mean that they're gigantic like the industrial Yeah I mean the the the the sheer size of the industrial infrastructure is is staggering. Not just the assembly plant but everything else that goes Yeah the supply chain exactly the supply chain is just a little tip of the iceberg really.\n\nThe supply chain is literally tip of the iceberg. The the supply chain is um you know once you go to tier two tier three tier four suppliers that's uh probably an order of magnitude more uh So okay so you think Google will not be a competitor Apple probably will be a direct competitor. Yeah yeah sure. What about the car companies? The the I think they're all they're all going to be competitors. Yeah sure.\n\nWho do you see out there that has done a nice job so far? Mercedes or GM of of what? Of a competitive car. incumbents. Potentially competitive car, I guess. I mean I don't think anyone's any of the car companies as far as I've made a really great electric car. I mean, you tell me if I'm if you disagree, but I don't think yet that any of them have made a great electric car. Okay.\n\nAnd they, you know, presumably will continue to improve on what they've done so far and and then at some point they may make a car that's that's a you know, but that's a great car, but not they haven't done that yet. Can I ask you about batteries for a second? Yeah, sure. So you're building this gigafactory, right? You've got it's built. It's Well, it's not completely built. Okay, but it part of it's up and running. A chunk of it is built, yeah.\n\nPart of it is up and running. gigantic thing. It's like when the gigafactory is done, it'll be the largest footprint building of any kind in the world. Of any kind, not just factories, it's literally of any What is this? The largest rocket, the largest building. I mean, every Well, I mean, I think this it's not scale for scale's sake.\n\nIt's just like if you say, \"Well, we want to accomplish these goals, then um then you kind of have to be make a big thing.\" Okay. Um You've got this big thing. It's this big giant building. Yeah. It's going to make batteries. The batteries it's going to make are lithium to have an opening. Well, it's not technically an opening party since it's been operating for a little while, but we're going to have a party soon. You guys maybe want to come.\n\nWe can come. Yeah, sure. We'll come to the battery party. But they can't come. What I was saying this is like Right? Just this This is crazy. No. This is like an alien dreadnought. It's really nutty. I love a battery party, but Right. Well, but but but But talk about where it's going. Are these lithium ion batteries? Yeah, sure. So they're the same batteries that's in our phone? No. Explain. Please explain.\n\nYes, so so lithium Have you made a a battery breakthrough is something I'm interested in. Yeah, I mean, generally the I mean, there's there's so much nonsense out there about batteries. Like about you can believe about 1% of what you read. Um on a you know, maybe. Um Uh Lithium ion covers a very broad range of technologies.\n\nUm and you can have an enormous difference in the power density and the energy density and the cycle life um between one chemistry and another. They can be really enormously different. Um So Uh what you really actually want to ask is what is the cathode and what is the anode? Right. Um So in our case That's right. Um I just put it in the The the lithium is actually 2% of the cell mass. So so like it's like the salt in the salad.\n\nIt's it's a very small um amount of the cell mass and a very small amount of the cost. Um But it sounds like it's big because it's called lithium ion, but it it really like our battery should be called nickel graphite cuz it's mostly nickel and graphite. Okay, and Um it's nickel cobalt aluminum But battery little things in graphite with a silicon oxide layer.\n\nBattery efficiency or power you know, the power that you can store in a certain uh mass seems to be move very slowly, at least compared to you know, we're used to Moore's law pushing uh integrated circuits faster. Batteries kind of are always in our consumer devices always lagging behind. In your you've built this giant thing, the biggest building in the world that's ever seen.\n\nnot fully built, but yes, it's Your building a A pretty big chunk of it is built, so yeah. Uh to make batteries. Your whole business depends on batteries in these cars. Have you figured out a way to do some significant uh increase in the yield of energy from a given amount of of space in the battery? Well Yeah, I mean, the the the energy density is increasing sort of maybe on the order of like 5-ish percent per year.\n\nUm And it doesn't sound like much, but you add that up over a number of years with compound interest, it ends up being quite quite a significant number. Um and a lot of people sort of think that, \"Oh, well, we just sort of cobbled together some um laptop batteries and somehow made a great car.\" If it If it was that easy, then I think we would have quite a few competitors who did the same thing.\n\nBut but it's it's it's really quite quite a lot harder than that. Um the it is a cylindrical form form factor, but the internals of the battery are quite different from what you'd find in uh in a laptop. Um And uh and and and it will be increasingly different with the what's built at the gigafactory, which is highly optimized for automotive.\n\nUm And um and with has improved energy density, but but mostly it's not the energy density that's the issue cuz you know, you can buy if you buy a Model S today um the range is um around 300 miles. Um And and yeah, that's quite a lot. Um So it's pretty rare that people really need to go more than 300 miles at a time without stopping. Right. um So I don't think we really have a range issue. And we could make a 400-mile range car today.\n\nLike that wouldn't be too big of a deal. Um The What What really matters is decreasing the cost uh per unit of energy of the battery packs so that you can make the car affordable. That's actually the the the important thing. Um So there's and there's really two main main dimensions along which uh cost optimization and making something available to mass market can be achieved. One is design iteration, going through multiple versions of something.\n\nAnd then the other is economies of scale. Um and you kind of need both of those those things in order to make a compelling mass market uh product. And you look at like cell phones and how many design iterations have we gone through with cell phones? Um and and then and and and what and look at the scale at which they're they're made is enormous. Uh and that's what enables everyone to have a supercomputer in their pocket.\n\nUm So speaking of that, the sales. When you're talking about the sales, you have booked how many orders for It's on the order of 400,000. 400,000. So obviously it's consumer interest in a promise. A lot of it around you, around the idea of you and Tesla and the excitement. Yeah, it's it's quite surprising, actually. I mean, I the um cuz we didn't do any advertising or there was no guerrilla marketing or anything.\n\nIt was just basically like, \"Yeah, we're going to have this webcast.\" There was only there were only about a thousand people in the audience. Um and um it really caught us by surprise. But I think you know, when you have a product that really resonates with with customers, the word of mouth uh grows like wildfire. And that seems to be what it Yeah, but it's a little bit.\n\nI mean, honestly, in some groups of especially men in Silicon Valley, if you show up and read like a label of a peanut jar, they'd be thrilled with the situation. So I mean, you a lot of this does base around you. Like the idea of you and the excitement around this exciting entrepreneur. Is that Is that enough to get it to to to this massive company you've been hoping to?\n\nThe idea of this is the Elon promise or it's the Well, I I think actually it's not so much I mean, I sort of um um I I mean, I'm not sure. I I think I deserve less credit than that, actually. The the I What What Tesla's done with a phenomenal team is like 15,000 people at the company. Um worked super hard to create compelling products, to create great cars. Um and we started off with the roadster and then the Model S.\n\nThe Model S was rated, you know, by Consumer Reports as the best car ever. Um Got the Model X, which you know, had some has had some teething issues, but um I think it's now at the point where it's it's really starting to I think it's really I think quite sublime at this point.\n\nUm And uh and and so people look at that and say, \"Okay, well, if Tesla's made these cars, then probably the next car they make is going to be you know, the less expensive one. also a great car. And Um yeah, but you know, so it'll be a great car, but it'll be affordable. And it's like, \"Great. Okay, that sounds like something I want.\" Um So this car, this next car, the price is the It's starting at 35,000. Okay, affordable.\n\nOkay, when is the When do you get to the When do you get to the When do you get to the really affordable, the way down much lower than that? Yeah, I mean, it's more important that the 35,000, particularly when you're factoring in the lower cost of electricity versus gasoline and that the maintenance cost is much less. You don't have to have oil changes.\n\nYou never need to replace your brakes because the the car uses regenerative braking, so the brakes last as long as the car do at the car does. Um it's basically you just need to replace the tires. Like that's about about all. Um So the operational cost of the car is much lower fundamentally than than a gasoline car.\n\nAnd and so um And and I think I think the the the average price for cars for gasoline cars is around 30, 32, something like that, yeah. Uh I mean, there are starting prices that are lower, but but when people pick pick options, I believe it's in the around 32 or so in the US. So we're pretty close to the that that that But that's your base price, right? I mean, the Yeah, but it's going to be a great car. ASP for the car.\n\nNo, but it's going to be a great car even at 35. So it's like even if you order nothing no options at all, it'll be great. But you're at but you're likely to have a mix where the average car that you actually sell sells for a little more than that. Yes, probably it's probably going to be Yeah, it's probably going to be some higher number.\n\nUm But it's really important to emphasize like the the 35 if if somebody orders the 35,000 car, they'll be very happy. Like it's not like you need to order a bunch of options in order without which the car is is, you know, not not good. That car will have autonomous for 35? Um I have a uh I'm going to do another of Tesla van maybe at the end of the year. Um, talk more about that. And say Well, so you could start here.\n\nUm, it would be real big news if I start here. Um We don't mind that. Let me just say that we're going to do the obvious thing. Okay. Got it. It's really obvious. So cup So So cup holders good. Okay. Um So brilliant brilliant But those things are nuanced. All right, absolutely. Um, let's talk about two more things. I want to talk about AI cuz we've been talking about it a lot here.\n\nUm, which I want to get it clear what your thoughts are because it's mostly Elon's scared of robots. I mean, that kind of thing or what How do you I'm just scared of robots. Um Or artificial intelligence. Can you like clarify exactly what the issue you have now? And and you deserve the background. We've been talking to uh Jeff Bezos, Sundar Pichai. Uh, we talked to Mark Fields from Ford about it. Um it's Microsoft for Uh yeah, the Facebook folks.\n\nUm, there certainly seems to be uh in the I in the tech companies a big tremendous new drive or interest to believing they will be all competing for intelligent assistants and good. It'll make your life better Make your life better. Siri is going to suddenly get smart. Microsoft's one is going to get smart. And Google is going to cream them all. a happy version of this is going to Sometimes technology hurts you, but not as much as it helps you.\n\nThat's really Yeah. So that's there's been a lot of conversation here about that. Um and yet and you've staked out a slightly different position. So can you talk about that? Well, I mean, I think my sort of full position would require quite a long explanation. Um I mean, I I am concerned about um certain directions that AI could take that would be uh not good for the future.\n\nThat the I mean, it I I I think it'd be fair to say that like not all AI futures are benign. Not not all. Okay. Um And and so if you have something if if if there's if we create some digital superintelligence that exceeds us in every way by a lot, um it's very important that that be benign. Um And um and so actually with with the with a few others um I created uh Open AI. Uh which is uh an AI uh It's a nonprofit actually.\n\nIt's so so there's there's no I think the governance structure here is important. Um, so you want to make sure that there was not some fiduciary duty to uh generate um you know, profit or proof of the AI technology that's developed. Um So uh so we created this uh a 501c3 um but it but I think it's it's like quite different from I mean, like a lot of sort of 501c3s are, you know, they have they don't have a high sense of urgency.\n\nUm like they're they're not like um you know, they're not really sort of ex developing technology at at at a fast pace, but Open AI is. Uh so Open AI has a very high sense of urgency and the talent I think that the people that have joined are are really really amazing. Um um and um and the intent with Open AI is to democratize AI power. Um And there's a quote that I love from uh Lord Acton.\n\nHe was the guy that came up with power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Um which is that uh freedom consists of the distribution of power and despotism in its concentration. And so I think it's important if we have this incredible power of AI that it not be concentrated in the hands of a few and potentially lead to a world that we don't want. And what world is that?\n\nWhat is What do you see foresee that when you say It's difficult I mean, it's called the singularity cuz it's it's difficult to predict. Um what exactly what future that might be except um I don't know a lot of people who love the idea of living under a despot. Mhm. Um you know, I don't think people generally choose to live in a democracy over a dictatorship. Mhm. And the despot would be the computer? Well, the people controlling the computer.\n\nMhm. And do you worry specifically about any of these companies I mentioned who've all seemed to now kind of be pivoting toward this as the battleground in the next 10 years? I won't name a name, but there is only one. There's only one you're worried about. And they're not preoccupied with making a car that will compete with you, I assume. There's only one. And what tell tell me This is an interesting competing It's not about competing.\n\nIt's Like like this is sort of like who like what would be the point of competing for you know mutual destruction. It's like there's no It's not about competing. It's really just about um trying to increase the probability that the future will be good. That's all. Mhm. So the the goal of of Open AI is really just to take the set of actions that are most likely to improve the positive futures.\n\nLike if you can think of like the future as a set of of probability streams that that that branch out and then converge collapse down to a particular event and then branch out again. And uh there's a certain set of probability associated with the future being positive and different type flavors of that. And uh at Open AI we want to try to get do do whatever we can to guide to to increase the probability of of the good futures happening.\n\nI think that's that's really what we're trying to do there. worry that by making this open some bad actors may use some of what has been developed to do bad stuff uh with the power of the AI? Yeah, I mean, that that is certainly the the the I mean, a good rebuttal to that. Um however, I think if AI power is widely distributed um then and there is not uh say one entity that has some super AI that is a million times smarter than anything else.\n\nUh you know, if it if instead the AI power is broadly distributed and to the degree that we can link uh AI power to um each individual's will. Um so like you you know, you would have your AI agent and you would like everyone would have their sort of AI agent. And then if somebody did try to do something really terrible, well, then uh the collective will of others could overcome that bad actor.\n\nUm which you can't do if if there's one AI that's you know, a million times better than everything else. and it's proprietary. And it's yeah, it's either has its own will or more likely at least in the beginning is controlled by you know, some small set of people. So um I think that's that's really the the risk. I mean um you know, there's always there's always been these arguments like what's the what's the best form of government?\n\nUm you know, big fan of I think it was Churchill like, you know, democracy is the the worst form of government except for all the others. Right. Um So speaking of that Yeah. this election. You are from Oh, no. No, no, no. Yes, yes, yes. How does that strike you what's happening now? You're you you come to this country or naturalized citizen?\n\nUh you know, I think I'm glad that the framers of the Constitution saw fit to ensure that the president uh was someone who um was captain of a large ship with a small rudder. Okay. And There's a limit to how much harm any given president Are you sure about that? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So you're not worried about Are you backing in either of the candidates at this point? stay out of this situation.\n\nBecause I don't think this is the finest moment in our democracy. Well, given that it's not the finest moment in our democracy, do you think the best thing is to stay out or We'll see. get in I'm not sure what I what I can do to I mean worst. I don't know how much how much influence I could have as as one person on the outcome. Um so um I mean, if I think I could make a difference, I would probably do something.\n\nUm but um like I said, I think I'm just glad that that the pre you know, being the US president is like being captain of a large ship with a small rudder. Mhm. And so like there's just a limit to how much good or bad a president can can can actually do. I mean, obviously if if a president could make the economy great that and there was like a button he could press, they'd be pressing that button at the speed of light. Mhm.\n\nUm So you know, that they they but they they can't. So I can't they can't just magically make the economy good. Um no president wants the economy bad ever. Um but they you know, like there's just a limit to to how much they can do. Um and um yeah. I guess there is the nuclear thing which is Yeah, the nuclear I guess there is the nuclear thing. Yeah, but I I I don't know.\n\nI think you would I think I think I don't think we would like just arbitrarily launch nuclear missiles. Yeah. One would hope. President can do that. Uh I don't think so. Arbitrarily. I mean, I think that He's No, he's the commander-in-chief. but I don't I still I still don't I still don't think that means you can just launch nuclear missiles whenever you want. All right. Yeah.\n\nUm I I think Congress would be like quite upset about that and um They might not be consulted. Yeah, but I think I think like the military would be like, \"Yeah, we really think Congress should be consulted on that before you launch a Yeah, that that might happen. preemptive nuclear strike. Are you willing that you're basing your faith in that though?\n\nI'm quite confident that the military would not just you know, randomly agree to launching nuclear missiles at somebody. Well, that's calming. Um so um we're going to put up just very quickly with and on Hyperloop. You've been involved with it. Your level of involvement is what at this point? Just Yeah, and I know it's a it's a bit it's a bit confusing cuz um I am You talked about it when you were here last time.\n\nYeah, um I I actually came up with the idea um I came up with an initial idea which which turned out to be wrong and wouldn't work um several years ago and and then um but I sort of shot my mouth off and and said I like have an idea that would work and turned out that it didn't work but I with a lot of iteration was able to come up with something that where the physics hangs together.\n\nUm and then published the paper and just said like look anyone who wants to do this is great. Go you know, be my guest. Cuz I'm I sort of have a plate full running Tesla and SpaceX. Yeah, yeah. And so I think it'd be great. I mean I I think it'd be great to have any interesting new transport solutions. Um anything that gets people to their destination um in a way that's safer, costs less, is more convenient. Um that'd be great.\n\nI mean and so I think probably the most valuable thing that the Hyperloop paper that I published um uh has done is is to spur thinking in terms of new transportation systems. So it's not just oh let's you know, have a a fast train. Okay, that's not even as fast as what Japan did in the '80s. Like okay, why would I don't see what the point of that is, you know.\n\nLike we should really be trying to think of some something that's um I think particularly in California like we should be like saying, \"Hey, what is the best Let's invent something new that's way better than anything else. Do you want to shoot your mouth off about that?\n\nUm well um you know, I so so I I mean I'm not an investor in any of the companies uh that that are working on it and I've tried to be neutral cuz I'm like trying to trying not to favor one company over another. Uh but just to encourage anyone that is interested to say like you know, the try try to give them moral support, you know. Um And I I hope they succeed.\n\nUm the only thing that um I am doing on Hyperloop front is like we're we're holding a student competition and the student competition is really just um aimed towards encouraging uh students to think about exciting new transport methods. Um and it's totally cool if they want to like do some architecture that's different from uh what I proposed in Hyperloop.\n\nIn fact, the the winning team at the student competition that we held earlier this year used a different um suspension mechanism uh than what I proposed which is I you know, I I proposed using essentially taking taking the uh air that eventually is that builds up on the nose from the compressor and and flowing that through um air skis. Um So that you simultaneously remove the drag from the nose and provide a a a means of suspending the the pod.\n\nUm and and that's also something that that works well um even at uh super supersonic velocities. You can go it's been demonstrated up to Mach 1. 1 in terms of using air bearings as But they use something different. Uh uh yeah, basically electromagnetic suspension.\n\nUm and and like the the the reason I didn't suggest um uh um sort of any any kind of um um magnetic suspension um is that it's very important that the cost of the of the tube be be minimized. So you really want because the the the pod is cheap, the tube is expensive. Um so if you if you want to go say 400 miles and you and and two in two directions, so you've got 800 miles of tube.\n\nThe the the critical uh economic optimization parameter is the cost of the tube. So you want that tube to be as low cost as possible. Um and so if you if you do anything that that um requires um action on the tube side, it's going to make that tube much more expensive. Um so if you use air bearings, it doesn't change like that's real cheap. Um and um yeah, so Do you think this is going to happen?\n\nYeah, I think something like that I think something will happen in the future. Um You know, it's I think I think if if if the companies that are that are trying that are trying to make it happen now, if if for whatever reason that that doesn't work out, um then you know, I think I I'll you know, I'll I might I might do something myself in the future.\n\nI I don't want to do something I don't want to front I don't want to sort of front run them, you know, and say here's this free idea and then meanwhile I go and do it myself, you know, that wouldn't be nice. So um so so but if I if they if they if they if if much companies don't try and it doesn't work out then then I think I think um I think I'll try to just at least do a demonstration system, you know. Okay, last question.\n\nDo you think tech has gotten more serious? Do you How do you look at the tech landscape as someone who's you know, well known you probably qualify as a visionary. Um the concept What What do you imagine we are right now in the tech space and then we'll get to questions from the audience. I think there's a lot of innovation happening in in many different areas. Um The advancements in AI are I think are quite quite astonishing.\n\nUm the advancements in genetics are amazing. Um The So I I think that there is a lot of innovation going on. Um I think that there's probably a few too many talented entrepreneurs in kind of the internet space and and I think their talent actually would be better served in some other industries. Um But I do think I mean I don't think we're like facing some sort of low innovation period or anything like that.\n\nI think there's a lot of innovation going on. They need to move to other Uh I just think there's like if you had some ideal distribution there probably would be fewer like there's just a lot of talent focused on the internet and probably some of that talent um uh would um be be be better to have some of that talent in other industries. Um that's about all but but there's tremendous amount of innovation that that's happening.\n\nUm It's something that I think is is going to be quite important. Um And and it's there's not I don't know of a company that's working on it seriously is um is a neural lace. Um so you know, going going back to the AI situation. Um this is quite important. Uh quite important debate. Like the if you assume any rate of advancement in AI, um we will be left behind by a lot.\n\nUm and so then we could be in like you know, a benign situation but the even the benign situation if you have some you know, if you have ultra intelligent AI, um we would be you know, so so far below them in intelligence that it would be would be like you know, a pet basically. Cat, that's what I was thinking. Like a pet, a cat, a cat, like a house cat. Yeah, we'd be like a house cat.\n\nUm and um yeah, so that's that's the end of the world, you know. Just sort of pets. Seen the movie, it could be. It could be, could be. Um the Yeah, so that but that honestly that would that would be a benign scenario. Um and So house cat is okay? I mean I don't love the idea of being a house cat. Okay. But but that So what's the solution?\n\nYeah, so I think the um I I think I think it I think it's to essentially I think one of the solutions the solution that seems maybe the best one is to have an AI layer. Um if you think of like you've got your limbic system, um your cortex and then um a digital layer, a sort of a third layer above the cortex um that um could work work well and symbiotically with with you.\n\nI mean just as your cortex works symbiotically with your limbic system, your sort of a third digital layer could work symbiotically with the rest. This is something that's in surgically inserted or bred into the species or what? The the fundamental limitation is input-output. So uh we we already have uh we we're already a cyborg.\n\nUm it's just that I mean you have a digital version of yourself or or partial version of yourself online in the form of your emails and your social media and all the things that you do. Um And and you have basically superpowers in in that with your computer and your phone and and the applications that are there. Um you have more power than the president of the United States had 20 years ago. You can answer any question.\n\nUh you can video conference with anyone um Right. anywhere. You can send a message to millions of people instantly. Um you know, you just do incredible things and um but the constraint is is input out output. So, we're we're IO bound. Um particularly output bound. I mean, like the your output level is so low. It's like the particularly on a phone like your two thumbs are sort of tapping away. Um this is ridiculously slow.\n\nUm our input is much better cuz we have a high bandwidth visual interface with the brain. Like our eyes take in a lot of a lot of data. Um so, there's many orders of magnitude difference between um input and output. Um So, mostly um effectively merging in a symbiotic way with uh digital intelligence revolves around eliminating the IO constraint. Um so, it's with some sort of direct cortical interface. Um And you called it a neural Neural lace.\n\nNeural lace. Yeah. Um It's totally not Google Glass, right? No. I'm talking about something which wear it or No. I mean, it would be uh I mean, I mean, there are a few ways to approach this, but some sort of interface directly with your cortical neurons particularly. But doesn't that imply surgical insertion? Not necessarily. You could go through the veins and arteries cuz that that provides a a complete uh roadway to um all of your neurons.\n\nYour neurons are very heavy users of energy, so they need high blood flow. So, you automatically with your veins and arteries have um a road network to your neurons. Still search some kind of surgery, right?\n\nUm yes, but you could insert something, you know, basically you know, into the jugular and and have It gets my car, but really easy and It It doesn't involve It doesn't It doesn't involve, you know, like chopping your your your skull open or anything like that. Yeah. And plus you're not a house cat anymore, right? Not a house cat. So, Right.\n\num I mean, essentially if if we can figure out how to establish a high bandwidth neural interface with ourselves. with with your digital self effectively. Um then uh then you're no longer a house cat. You know. All right. On that note. Now, on that Uh well, well, I just one closing thing. it's probably the best outcome. That's Are you Are you Are you interested you interested in exploring this possibility that you have just laid got to do it.\n\nI'm not saying that I will, but I'm somebody's got to do it. I mean, I I I I mean, I So, somebody should do it. And I mean, if somebody doesn't do it, then I then I think I should probably do it, but uh And and the goal of this is to prevent there being an external uh AI, particularly one controlled by a small group of people that could Yeah.\n\nbe so much more powerful and intelligent than we are that the house cat would be godlike in its capabilities. Yeah. Well, this has been really cheerful. Thank you. Yeah. But But if we can establish about asteroids at the beginning of this. I mean, ast- asteroids are a low probability existential threat um on the time scale that's relevant to us. Okay. Okay. Um This is different. This requires urgency. So, what do you do for fun?\n\nYes, this is much more do you do for for fun fun? What do you do? Anything? I play video games with my kids. All right. That sounds good. Let's get some questions for Elon. Elon the house cat. I watch movies, you know, that kind of thing. Normal things. Why don't we start over here? Yeah, hi. I I think this last question by uh Carl just just did that.\n\nUh I want to know how do you uh live through the stress that kind of conversations we just heard that you went through and um kind of ambitions that you carry and then how do you adjust to the everyday work-life balance etc. things that in your life. So, a little bit of your personal side, actually. You're very busy. How does that work? Yeah, I mean, um I am sort of in kind of work triage mode um a lot of the time. So, I don't know.\n\nIt seems to be as long as there's not like a crisis simultaneously at SpaceX and Tesla, it's okay. Um but you know, companies are I mean, the situation in any given company, particularly when, you know, if if if it's sort of growing fast and sort of quasi startup, it's it's somewhat sinusoidal. So, that I mean, it's okay if if you don't if the if the waves don't crest together. You know, um when that does happen, it then that's a huge strain.\n\nUm But right now, things are like, you know, motoring along okay. Um and I have like the context loaded for both companies. I can look sort of see a path to a good outcome. So, I feel pretty good right now. Uh but there've been super stressful times in the past. Um and uh and then, you know, and then I I always try to reserve time for my kids cuz I love hanging out with them. Like I mean, kids are really great.\n\nI mean, they're like the 99% um of the time they they they they make you happier. They're kids are awesome, you know. Yeah. Um Then there's that 1%. 1% you know, like yeah, 1%. But But like it's it's of anything in my life, I would say kids by far make me the happiest. I mean, I don't know if you know, I agree. Yeah. It's great. I agree. Yeah.\n\nAt this Um so so I hang out with them like so like now the like things like a lot of times kids are kind of in their own world, so you don't need to like they don't want to like talk to their dad for hours on end generally. I've noticed that. Yeah. Um so like um so I can be in the same room with them. They can talk to me from time to time, but I you know, I can get you know, some emails done. Just get some work done.\n\nAnd then whenever they want to talk to me, they can. Um and then uh we uh we try to do things like um you know, travel places and uh like I said, we we play video games together or uh um actually on Monday, we went to the new Harry Potter land um at Universal. It was quite fun. Yeah. So, I think that Somebody from Universal is clapping. Yeah. I mean, whoever was in charge of Harry Potter land did a great job. It's really good. is good.\n\nI highly recommend it. Yeah. The butter beer is amazing. Yeah, I was just saying the butter The butter beer is amazing. Yeah. Okay. Over here. Hi. Uh my name is Evan Burns and the founder of Odyssey and I hope in to the future to be in something the space industry. And my curiosity is you've talked about SpaceX getting in many different businesses, for example, um global Wi-Fi through launching many satellites.\n\nUm do you hope SpaceX becomes a platform for others to launch businesses or you see SpaceX being a business that launches many business lines? Um well, I mean, the general or strategy of SpaceX is to like we we clearly need a lot of money in order to develop the transport system to establish a city on Mars.\n\nUm So, you know, we're we're like kind of gathering revenue uh like ear- earth-based revenue that's um we're we're we're we're we're we're trying to maximize earth other earth revenue. Well, right now it's only earth. So, we're going to maximize earth revenue as it relates to space, you know, as it relates to rockets and spacecraft.\n\nSo, um but I think like what assuming SpaceX is able to transport large numbers of people and and goods to Mars, it will be an enormous enabler for entrepreneurial activity on Mars. Um because there's going to be so much to do. Um you know, everything from creating like the first iron ore refinery to the first pizza joint to um you know, something that doesn't even exist on earth.\n\nUm you know, it's kind of like when the Union Pacific uh crossed crossed, you know, and like ev- everyone thought Union Pacific, what a stupid idea. You know, like there's nobody living in in California. Well, okay. Now, there's quite a lot of people living in California. Um so so just uh having a You need the transport link.\n\nUm and so what SpaceX is trying to do is is establish a transport link um and then try to create a fertile environment for entrepreneurs on Mars uh to flourish. Um and and I think that will be an amazing um expansion of entrepreneurial would it take to deliver a pizza from Mars? Ha. Well, it's going to be a little cold if it But I mean, we we we can certainly see a way to get to Mars in under three months.\n\nUm and I think ultimately you'll be able to get to Mars in under a month. It does get exponentially difficult as you reduce the time. Um but um but you know, three three months is a is a way to think of it. Um and I think that's probably you know, that's that's really where where SpaceX will I think create a a great environment for entrepreneurial potential. Thanks. Nilay. I hope Domino's does not get to Mars. Please don't let it.\n\nHave a special special Mars pizza. going to be I'm assuming you're going to be king of Mars. Nilay. Yeah. Uh uh so, you're obviously very ambitious. Um that's led to some really ambitious deadlines have been missed. So, Falcon Heavy was originally 2012. Um the Model X was a little bit delayed. The Model 3 The Model X was delayed. The Model 3 seems to be stretching. But the Model 3 in particular is a consumer product.\n\nYou're taking money from people against a really aggressive production schedule and a huge amount of orders. What are you going to do to hit your deadlines on that because it's real consumers this time in a big class of people? Sure. Um the uh I I think the the biggest thing is just designing the car for um for for manufacturing. So, in the case of Model S, like the Model S was the first time we'd really built a car, um a whole car.\n\nLike with the Roadster, Lotus did the body and chassis, we did the powertrain, and we did the sort of final installation of the powertrain to the to the chassis, but the Model S was the first time we made a car. So, we're just trying to make a a great car, um and but we had no idea like what it meant to design something to be manufacturable.\n\nSo, the Model S is super hard to make, and then the Model X is built off of the Model S platform, except it's got a bunch of other wiz-bang technologies that make it even harder to build.\n\nSo, um and uh you know, so um like that I mean, definitely we want to do the opposite of what we did with the with the X, um which is make something that is is going to be a lot simpler, um but still a car that people will love, um and where every design decision is factoring in the manufacturability.\n\nUh in fact, and making sure that when we design something, um that you can manufacture it at volume at an affordable price in the schedule that we're that we're on the schedule that we're that we're targeting. Um One of the things that makes a car very difficult, particularly if it's a new car, uh is is that it's an integrated product with several thousand unique components.\n\nUm so, we are somewhat at the mercy of whatever the slowest component is, whatever basically I mean, if you say go to tier two and three suppliers, they end up being several thousand suppliers. So, so things move as fast as the least lucky and least competent supplier. Um you know, but but just and you can think of like like any natural disaster you care to name, all of those things have happened to our suppliers.\n\nTheir factory has burnt down, there's been an earthquake, there's been a you know, tsunami, there's been uh massive hail, uh there's been a tornado, uh the ship sank, uh there was a shootout at the Mexican border, um no kidding. Um that that delayed trunk carpet at one point. Well, like and we couldn't get and like the and like the border patrol wouldn't give us the truck cuz it had a bullet holes in it. Um We just wanted our trunk carpet.\n\nUm like it's pretty safe. There's like no cocaine or anything. It's just a good. Um but you know, that shut down the production line as an example for several days. Um so, so there's that's the biggest issue is like the supply chain stuff is really tricky. Um We're trying to anticipate as much of that as possible, um increase our optionality so that there's more internal capability at Tesla.\n\nNot that we want to do things internally, but if um if a supplier is unable and unwilling to uh deliver the part, we can quickly make that internally. Um So, I think the whole company is is geared geared geared for that, um and um I mean, right now it looks like, you know, we should be able to do that.\n\nUh we expect to I mean, we we almost all of the Model 3 design is done, um and we're aiming for pencils down basically uh about 6 weeks, complete pencils down. Um And um and we're tabling all, you know, like if there are ideas for future cool things, we'll we'll have it in version two, version three, you know, in future years type of thing. So, um overall, I feel feel pretty good about it.\n\nUm And um our supplier um particularly our major supplier partners have been um very supportive and are are on board. Um But um you know, uh I mean, one thing I I should say is like the like when when I when I sort of cite a schedule, it is actually the schedule I think is true. It's it's not some fake schedule that I don't think is true. Um So, I mean, uh you know, it's never until you know, I it's um maybe delusional.\n\nThat is entirely you know, possible. Maybe it's happened from time to time. Um but it's it's it's never um you know, some knowingly fake deadline ever. So, is there an event in 6 weeks where you're going to announce autonomous driving is included in the pencils down plan for the Model 3? We're We're not expecting any event in 6 weeks. All right. Uh Josh. Hi. Um so, I have a this is a kind of a weird question.\n\nI feel like you would be the guy with the right answer for it. There's a um sort of a philosophic concept that a sufficiently advanced civilization would be able to create uh So, simulation. Yeah. Maybe you've answered this before. A simulation. simulation discussions, it's crazy. Okay.\n\nUm So, cuz cuz In fact, it it got to the point where basically every conversation was was the AI AI/simulation conversation, um and my brother and I finally agreed that um we would ban such conversations if we're ever in a hot tub. That was like Yeah, cuz that really kills the magic. So, So, so the idea is, right, any sufficiently advanced civilization would create could create a simulation that's like our existence.\n\nAnd so, the theory follows that may maybe we're in the simulation. Have you thought about this? A lot. Are we Are we Even in hot tub. So much so it had to be banned from a hot tub. Okay. It's not the sexiest conversation. Are we in Are we in? Um The the the I mean, I think here's in my view, like the the the strongest argument for the for us being in a simulation, probably being in a simulation, I think it's the following.\n\nUm That that 40 called 40 40 years ago, we had Pong, like two rectangles and a dot. That was what games were. Um now, 40 years later, we have photorealistic 3D simulations with millions of people playing simultaneously, and it's getting better every year. And soon we'll have you know, virtual reality, augmented reality. Um If you assume any rate of improvement at all, um then the games will become indistinguishable from reality.\n\nJust in indistinguishable. Um even if that rate of advancement drops by a thousand from what it is right now, um then you just say, \"Okay, well, we'll let's imagine it's a 10,000 years in the future.\" Uh which is nothing in the evolutionary scale.\n\nUm so, um So, so given that we're clearly on a trajectory to have games that are indistinguishable from reality, and those games could be played on any set up box or on a PC or whatever, and they would probably be you know, billions of such uh you know, computers or set up boxes. It would seem to follow that the odds that we're in base reality is one in billions. Tell me what's wrong with that argument. Is the answer yes?\n\nThe argument is probably I just like is there Is there a flaw in that argument? someone but someone sure what the error in All right, no, no. The argument makes sense. So, the assumption then is that some we beat us to it. And this is a game. No, no. There's a one in billions chance that this is base reality. Oh, okay. What do you think? Well, I think it's one in billions. Okay.\n\nI mean, this that seems to be like clearly what the you know, what the what it what it suggests. And and actually, I mean, ideally we should hope that that's true because otherwise, if if civilization stops advancing, then that may be due to some cataclysmic event that erases civilization. So, maybe we should be hopeful that this is a simulation cuz otherwise Cuz they could reboot it.\n\nWell, otherwise ei- either we're going to create simulations that are indistinguishable indistinguishable from reality or civilization will cease to exist. Those are the two options. I like those odds. Okay. All right. We're going to it's it's unlikely to go into some like, you know, multi-million year stasis. So, it's either going to increase or decrease. Hi, I'm Jeetu Patel from Box. Uh two-part question for you.\n\nOne is um if you think about fully autonomous vehicles, um which have passed through regulatory approvals, have passed through in-city driving in traffic conditions, how far do you think from a time frame perspective we are for that hap- that becoming reality?\n\nAnd number two would be the second part of that question is how far before how long before you think it's either illegal or extremely pro- prohibitively expensive for humans to drive on the road? Well, I I mean, I think I mean, I really would consider autonomous driving to be basically a solved problem. Um Even in cities like Beijing and Yeah. Yeah.\n\nActually, there's the There's really only one um area where it's like a little dodgy, and that's basically if you're at roughly the 30 30 to 40 mph um in in urban environments, which is that's difficult to achieve in Beijing. Um It's like heavy traffic. Uh in in in in dense traffic situations, uh autonomy is really easy um cuz you can just maintain a set distance from various cars. It's actually quite quite easy.\n\nUm you're un- very unlikely to drive to run anyone over cuz you're just not moving fast enough, and you can brake in time. Um on highways, particularly highways that are um that that are barriers so that you you don't have pedestrians. That's also relatively easy and like a Model S and Model X at this point can drive autonomously with greater safety than a person. Right now. Last question.\n\nMy my point is when does it get to be where you don't need to be sitting behind a vehicle and it actually the the way that society starts expecting this is I can have my 75-year-old mother who doesn't speak any English or doesn't drive be able to be transported from point A to point B by just sitting in a car by herself and being taken. I know it's technically possible, but how far do you think the regulatory approvals are for that happening?\n\nI I think we're basically um less than 2 years away from complete autonomy. Wow. Wow, complete. Safer than a human. Um however, regulators will take um I think at least another year, at least another year and it I guess it going to depend on which what part of the world you're in.\n\nUm because they'll want to see billions of miles of data to show that it is statistically true that there is a substantial improvement in safety if something's autonomous versus not autonomous. I don't think that regulators will accept something that's close to that's that's that's sort of approximately as good as a person.\n\nI think they'll have to be at least twice as good as a person, maybe five or 10 times um you know, better in terms of uh safety. Um and and and that will have to be have to be a statistically relevant data set. So, like billions of miles over widely differing uh roads and and situations.\n\nUm So, yeah, you know, that So, I think it's like probably 3 years before it's from a regulatory standpoint, but less than two before it is uh technically possible. And do you think there's a day when it's illegal to drive for humans or uh you know, Well, I mean, we live in a democracy, so it's presumably that would be a function of the population deciding. Um I mean, I'm not I I mean, I'm not in favor of banning people from driving cars.\n\nUm like I'm in favor of freedom. Um and and not restricting what people do. Um Yeah, but maybe the requirements for a license will get more stringent. I think that seems like maybe a good move, you know, so you have to demonstrate a higher level of skill to drive in order to be allowed to manually drive. Okay, very last question. Okay, this is the last question. one. Sorry, we you have to go. has to go. You're going to make it a great question.\n\nAll right. Thinking about life on Mars again, how do you how do you think about cultural unification, systems of government, uh rules of law, establishing those uh very early on? Well, I think I'll just declare king of Mars and I'm going to go. Um I like that. Yeah. Take it. Yeah, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Um so, the the uh I I think most likely the form of government on Mars would be a democ- direct democracy, um not representative.\n\nSo, it would be people voting directly on on issues. Um and I think that's probably better cuz like the potential for corruption is substantially diminished in a direct versus a representative democracy. Um so, I think that's probably what will occur. Um the I I think there's some I think so I would recommend like some adjustment for the inertia of laws is what would be wise in that it should probably be easier to remove a law than create one.\n\nUm I think you know, the this is I would just be like let's just I mean, I think I think that's probably probably good cuz just laws laws are have infinite life unless they're taken away. Um so, I think I my recommendation would be like like something like let's say 60% of people need to uh vote in a law, but at any point greater than 40% of people can remove it. Um and any law should come with a sunset with a built-in sunset provision.\n\nIf it's not good enough to be voted back in, maybe it shouldn't be there. So, that's that's the framework for the government on Mars. I mean, those that would be my those would be my recommendations. The democ- direct democracy where where it's slightly harder to to put laws in place than to take them away and where laws don't just automatically live forever. You'll be a good king. Thank you, Elon Musk. Thank you. Thank you so much."},"languages":["en"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wsixsRI-Sz4"},{"id":"norwegian-ev-association-2016-05-20","type":"interview","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jXBph31lxtU","title":"Norwegian EV Association","titles":{"en":"Norwegian EV Association","de":"Norwegian EV Association","fr":"Norwegian EV Association"},"date":"2016-05-20","summary":"Musk discusses Norway's world-leading electric-vehicle adoption and the role of incentives in an interview with the Norwegian EV Association.","text":"our politicians decided that these cars should not cost more than than ice cars and remove the taxes so we tax ice cars heavily and we don't tax these cars to say differently we we taxed what we don't want and we promote what we want and this make makes it possible for consumers to choose electric and they do and now assume the majority is doing so so far this year almost 50% of new car sales have been electric cars so now more and more people are buying these cars just like any other car as a regular car so we're in an early mass market and if people are not just still early adopters anymore and the challenge now is getting enough Chargers up and running because people are using this more and more as the number one car are they using it for longer trips\n\nthey used to do if they want to go to the mountains on the weekends or and then you get a challenge with capacity at the Chargers so you have more and more situations where people actually have to queue and wait in line to use a fast charger and that's quite annoying when you're actually on your way to somewhere and and want this to be quick so we are now working together with the industry the different charging operators and trying also to get the politicians to understand that we we now have to plan plan for a whole different infrastructure to to get enough capacity and not enough Accardo charging capacity and of course it's also helped with here that we're staying at in this Ayane tea station that they're also putting up chargers that can can charge\n\nat where cars can charge and higher speeds but we also need more reliable Chargers and we need more or more chargers really in Norway back in 2012 the market share was 3% so 3% of new car sales were electric so far this year it's close to 50 so it's happened very very fast in Norway but that is not because we as in regions are more environmentally friendly anything like that it's because these cars can compete price-wise and this will happen on a global basis pretty soon because we will get a situation where these cars get cheaper to produce because volume volume Rises and you get also you have had the batteries car price coming down so Bloomberg for example say that before 2025 electric cars will be cheaper to produce and so OEM so somehow I am saying\n\nit will happen even further so we will have a paradigm shift and a total disruption on a global level because Norway did this even though the technology was not really mature we have mostly been the in the beginning of that when the sales started running there were still cars with low low range with lack charging stations in other countries you will be helped with better technology cars that can go with long range and and better charging infrastructure so that's why I'm saying this will probably happen faster in many other markets as should as soon as we reach this tipping point where the price levels out and of course it will happen even sooner in markets where the politicians are helping with incentives and trying to push this to happen faster","textByLang":{"en":"our politicians decided that these cars should not cost more than than ice cars and remove the taxes so we tax ice cars heavily and we don't tax these cars to say differently we we taxed what we don't want and we promote what we want and this make makes it possible for consumers to choose electric and they do and now assume the majority is doing so so far this year almost 50% of new car sales have been electric cars so now more and more people are buying these cars just like any other car as a regular car so we're in an early mass market and if people are not just still early adopters anymore and the challenge now is getting enough Chargers up and running because people are using this more and more as the number one car are they using it for longer trips\n\nthey used to do if they want to go to the mountains on the weekends or and then you get a challenge with capacity at the Chargers so you have more and more situations where people actually have to queue and wait in line to use a fast charger and that's quite annoying when you're actually on your way to somewhere and and want this to be quick so we are now working together with the industry the different charging operators and trying also to get the politicians to understand that we we now have to plan plan for a whole different infrastructure to to get enough capacity and not enough Accardo charging capacity and of course it's also helped with here that we're staying at in this Ayane tea station that they're also putting up chargers that can can charge\n\nat where cars can charge and higher speeds but we also need more reliable Chargers and we need more or more chargers really in Norway back in 2012 the market share was 3% so 3% of new car sales were electric so far this year it's close to 50 so it's happened very very fast in Norway but that is not because we as in regions are more environmentally friendly anything like that it's because these cars can compete price-wise and this will happen on a global basis pretty soon because we will get a situation where these cars get cheaper to produce because volume volume Rises and you get also you have had the batteries car price coming down so Bloomberg for example say that before 2025 electric cars will be cheaper to produce and so OEM so somehow I am saying\n\nit will happen even further so we will have a paradigm shift and a total disruption on a global level because Norway did this even though the technology was not really mature we have mostly been the in the beginning of that when the sales started running there were still cars with low low range with lack charging stations in other countries you will be helped with better technology cars that can go with long range and and better charging infrastructure so that's why I'm saying this will probably happen faster in many other markets as should as soon as we reach this tipping point where the price levels out and of course it will happen even sooner in markets where the politicians are helping with incentives and trying to push this to happen faster"},"languages":["en"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jXBph31lxtU"},{"id":"startmeuphk-venture-forum-2016-01-26","type":"interview","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pIRqB5iqWA8","title":"StartmeupHK Venture Forum","titles":{"en":"StartmeupHK Venture Forum","de":"StartmeupHK Venture Forum","fr":"StartmeupHK Venture Forum"},"date":"2016-01-26","summary":"Fireside chat where Musk discusses entrepreneurship, innovation and the pain of building startups at InvestHK's forum.","text":"Good morning everyone. I think our next guest really doesn't need an introduction. We are going to be hearing from this serial entrepreneur behind a range of companies, PayPal, Tesla Motors, SolarCity, SpaceX. He is a Titan of industry who has disrupted and transformed entire industries we're talking about automotive, aerospace, energy, internet finance. And these are sectors that are really tough to operate in as a startup.\n\nIn the next 40 minutes we are going to hear from Elon Musk and we're going to learn more about Tesla Motors in Hong Kong. In China, we are going to hear about sustainable energy solutions. We're going to talk about Mars and we're also going to touch on the fate and future of humankind pretty big stuff. So in this icy cold day here in Hong Kong, let's give a very warm welcome to Elon Musk. You can pick any mic on the table.\n\nThere're so many to choose from. Elon Musk, welcome to Hong Kong. I talked to your people at Tesla here in Hong Kong. Tesla opened up here in 2010. The Model S has been selling pretty well. Good build-up. First general question. How's the business doing here in Hong Kong? Actually I mean at Tesla we're super appreciative of Hong Kong. It's the city with the, I believe at this point, the most number of Tesla per capita.\n\nAnd it's very exciting model in Hong Kong I think Hong Kong will have over time the highest percentage of electric vehicles of any city in the world and can therefore serve as a model for how other high-density cities around the world can transform to a sustainable transport future so I think that's very exciting so we plan to work closely with the Hong Kong government and take lessons learned and see what we can do so then propagate that to cities around the world.\n\nSo we're very excited about the partnership with Hong Kong. Because Hong Kong is such a densely packed city, there's no range anxiety in Hong Kong but that's not the only factor behind the popularity of Tesla. What are the other factors? Sure. Certainly the range not being an issue is one factor, although that is counterbalanced by challenges with charging.\n\nSo one of the things that we need to work through, and this is a challenge that any other dense city in the world has is, as you have more and more electric vehicles on the road, you have to find someplace to charge them.\n\nThe ideal place to charge the car is at your home or office, certainly the same place that you charge your phone But that is challenging because a lot of apartment buildings or most apartment buildings don't anticipate having that level of power in the garage and sometimes it's the parking spots floated around that are not consistent so it's going to be quite important to get the power to the buildings that need it and then figure out a convenient way for people to charge at home.\n\nWe are deploying a lot of super-charges and of course that's gonna be important but those are really meant for when you have an unusually long trip you've been away from your home or office for a while, or you need to top up and you're out and about. But by far the most convenient is home and office charging and that the thing that we're really working closely with Hong Kong government on.\n\nWe were talking about this earlier about the impact of falling oil prices because high oil prices was a major selling point for getting into hybrid or electric vehicles. Now that oil prices are in free fall. What does that mean for the industry? Well, it definitely makes the transition to sustainable energy more difficult. I think it's no doubt that is going to dampen interest in electric vehicles in general.\n\nWith our cars, what we aspired to do is to make the car so compelling that even with low gasoline prices it's still the car you want to buy. That's the only thing I can think of. I don't know what else we could do, really. You have to make it compelling. And this is really the key at Tesla is to create an electric car that's not worthy it's going to help the environment but it is a car that you will cover it, that you want to drive.\n\nThat happens to be very good for the climate change, very good very good for the environment. Exactly, I think this is sort of general advice I would give to people starting companies, entrepreneurs in general, is really focused on making a product that your customers love. It's so rare that you can buy a product and you love the product when you bought it.\n\nThere are very few things that fit into that category and if you can come up with something like that your business will be successful for sure. Let's talk about China. China is the world's largest auto market. China is also a growing electric vehicle market too. It's soon to be the world's largest.\n\nThey're world's largest carbon emitter We've seen the return of the so-called apocalypse, increasing bad-air days in places like Shenyang and Beijing especially during the winter time. China needs your technology. Is China really aware that? Do you get that sense? And if you don't mind, you could hold the mic a little bit closer. Sorry, absolutely. I think it is very high gain. Yes, China is apparently aware of.\n\nTesla had a number of high-level meetings with the Chinese Government and in fact the Minister of Finance recently mentioned Tesla in a speech that he gave as a good example. So he likes what we are doing. which is a good thing Yeah, absolutely, and in the last year we are in an effort to help the rest of industry and, sort of, be a good neighbor.\n\nWe opened source of our patents so any companies in China or elsewhere can use our patents to create electric vehicles. (Applause from the floor) And what you are doing just underscores a theme that emerged at the latest climate change conference in Paris the debate on whether developed countries should be doing more to help developing countries when the goal is a general shared goal.\n\nAnd you are saying a company from a developed country should be doing that a little bit more in a market like China. China is quite well developed. I think China has better highways and definitely better trains than in the United States, by far In fact I had a great experience taking the bullet train from Beijing to Xian to see the Terracotta Warriors. It was a great experience. So I think there are lots of opportunities there.\n\nI think the challenge for Tesla is that in China. we need to establish sort of a local partnership and so we're going to kind of figure that out. There is an issue of pollution in China, the need for sustainable energy solutions in China. Gridlock is a huge issue in places like Beijing. I don't know if you've been stuck in Beijing traffic. I've been stuck in Beijing. Everyone here used to travel to China, you've been stuck. It's pretty crazy.\n\nCan Tesla auto-pilot provide some service solutions to that? I think auto-pilot can certainly take the edge off. Our auto-pilot capability right now is really good in two scenarios. It either works on a highway where there is no traffic and the lines are quite clear or in heavy traffic so it's super good in heavy traffic, and not that I recommended it, but you know you can read a book or do an email as what I found. I heard people say.\n\nSo you can really take the edge off the traffic but I'm actually quite a big fan of tunnels. Tunnels are so underappreciated. Please elaborate. Well the fundamental problem of cities is that we built cities in 3D and you see that we got these tall buildings with lots of people on each floor but then you got roads which are 2D, so that obviously just doesn't work.\n\nYou're guaranteed to have gridlock but you can go 3D if you have tunnels and you can have many tunnels crisscrossing each other with maybe a few metres vertical distance between them and completely get rid of traffic problems. And as my understanding that actually Hong Kong is in the process of building some tunnels. I was very pleased to hear that. But that really is the solution for solving traffic in major cities.\n\nYeah, you can also go 3D with flying cars. You can But that's not going to happen for a long time. Well, flying cars sound cool but then they do make a lot of wind and they are quite noisy. And the probability of something falling on your head is much higher. Got you. We talked about charging stations in the challenge for rolling out more charging stations in Hong Kong.\n\nThe challenge is exponentially greater in China, especially in the rural areas to connect the big cities. What are your plans on that? So actually we have a supercharging network throughout China. You can go at this point almost anywhere in China using it as a supercharger network and then we got that whole bunch of third party affiliate destination chargers. And we've actually had people drive all the way from Beijing to Tibet in a Model S.\n\nThat's incredible. Have you driven a Tesla in rural China? No. I know people who have. The model 3. What can you tell us about the model 3? What's it going to look like and I know that you've mentioned to me...\n\nI can tell you what it's gonna look like but I mean I can tell you just generally some characteristics about it which is it meant to be a slightly smaller version of the Model S and it won't have quite as many bells and whistles but it'll be at a much lower price point. So the intent is to roughly cut the price in half for smaller vehicle. And I think really that's gonna be probably the most profound car that we make.\n\nThat'll be a very compelling car at an affordable price. Yeah, this is with the model 3 the electric vehicle could go fully mainstream. Other car manufacturers, you have GM in mind with the Bolt doing the same thing and you welcome your rivals doing this? Yeah, the goal has been to accelerate the advent of sustainable transport so we actually did some partnerships, one with Mercedes and one with Toyota.\n\nWe open-sourced our IP and everything so the whole purpose of it was really to accelerate the advent of sustainable transport so it's always great to hear when the other car companies are making electric cars Including car companies inside China? Yea, absolute. Are there any Chinese electric car vehicle makers that are capturing your attention?\n\nWell, we don't think too much about what competitors are doing Just because I think it's important to be just focused on making the best possible products You know, a sort of maybe analogous to what's ever if you were in a race Don't worry about what other runners are doing, just run But, you know, to push that metaphor even more.\n\nAre you afraid that whoever's hosting the race could tilt the race in favor of the Chinese racer I am trying to figure out if there's any way to answer a question and not lose. You get one pass during this interview. If you would like to take the pass, you can take that pass. I will pass on that one. Okay. (Applause from the floor) We've talked about innovation in China and I thought your answer was really interesting.\n\nWe quote the share with the audience in here. What is the example of \"Made in China\" innovation that you thought, wow, that's pretty cool. I think actually a lot of the social media services in China, you know, Weibo, WeChat are pretty impressive, is better than what's in the US Oh, you are on WeChat. I am, actually. Really? I only use WeChat when I'm in Mainland China in business. Do you use WeChat in LA Silicon Valley?\n\nOccasionally to respond to the people in China. But it's pretty good. I think Alibaba is pretty impressive. Do you use Alibaba? Have you used it to purchase... No. It is very very impressive. Wechat, how do you use it? Which messaging functions do you like to use on it? I wouldn't call myself a WeChat expert. I basically just message people and send pictures. Pictures and text. Can you do other things?\n\nRecently I did a panel discussion in Beijing with a group of technologists and this subject came up Or I brought up the question. Can there be a Elon Musk in China and the answer was no And it was because of... this is according to Kai-fu Lee, former Head of Google China who started Microsoft Research in Beijing and he said it's because of the education system in China. It emphasizes too much role learning. You are Elon Musk.\n\nWhat do you make of that? I mean obviously there are a number of very successful entrepreneurs in China Jack Ma, Pony Ma. That's right? Yea, exactly. So I think, I'm not sure I would entirely agree with that... but it is generally true that innovation comes from questioning the way things have been done before.\n\nAnd if in the education system you're taught not to do that, that will inhibit entrepreneurship Being able to question what you're being taught, being able to... Yeah, I mean, just saying \"is there a better way?\" to ask a question. Let's talk about innovation at Tesla for more questions there. We talked about Tesla autopilot. There's also Tesla Summon with your mobile phone and we did talk about this earlier.\n\nI know that there's a big gap between those two programmes and self driving cars But is Tesla on its way to a driverless model? Yeah, I think the whole industry ultimately will be producing autonomous cars. And if you fast forward, let's say 10 or certainly not more than 15 years, I think almost all cars produced will be autonomous All cars produced will be autonomous? All new cars, yes.\n\nBut that's not same as all cars on road cause there's roughly 2 billion cars and trucks on the road and just under a hundred million produced every year so the production rate is only 5% of the fleet size. But if you say of new cars produced, I will be surprised if a majority of them are not self-driving in let's say 10 to 15 years.\n\nAnd of all those new self-driving cars on the road how many of them will have, you know, it's like, will have a steering wheel versus not having a steering wheel. It's like the ruin of the past. The steering wheel thing I am not sure. I think there may be some perhaps auxiliary steering wheel that only pops out when you need to take manual control for whatever reason. But probably if you go a long long term.\n\nMy guess is that there isn't a steering wheel in most cars, it would be something that you would have to special order. In most cars, not all cars, and I do want to clear that predictions are not endorsements, you know. I am not saying that this would be a good or bad thing. I am just saying that this is probably what would occur. This is pattern recognition and anticipating what's going to happen next.\n\nIt's likely, I mean, I think it's sort of like elevators used to have a manual elevator operator and you have somebody who would be sort of moving the lever and be able to fine-tune adjustments the elevator for each floor. Now there's no manual controller for elevators. I think it's gonna seen the same way for cars.\n\nAnd how about the way consumers interact with driverless cars How many consumers will choose to own their own car vs signing into a network fleet of driverless cars?\n\nProbably still most people will own their own cars but it is hard to predict the exact percentage, but I think probably roughly 60-70 percent of people probably want to own their cars about two-third or one-third share and this is a complete shooting-in-the-dark guess, but I think still most people will want to own their own cars. But they also may choose to add it to the shared fleet and then take it out of shared fleet at will.\n\nYou don't see that as a threat to your business model? No, I think just as long as we make great autonomous cars. It's just additional options for the consumer. Yeah it's just adding functionality that I think who will consider quite important in the car in the future. I actually talked about this before. In the long term owning a car that does not have the autonomous capability will be a bit like owning a horse.\n\nYou sort of own a horse for sentimental reasons but not... but not for actual transport Let's talk about the futuristic-looking Model X A question that many Hong Kongers have is, can I park this thing in my parking garage because of those falcon wing doors. What's your answer to that? Actually the falcon wing doors are double hinged.\n\nwe call them 'Falcon Wing' instead of 'gull-wing' because they have a dual acting hinge so they can actually opened in a tighter space than almost any door. And certainly a tighter space than a conventional door. If you can physically fit between your car and a Model X, then you'll be able to get in the falcon wing door. And it looks beautiful and I love the...\n\nI mentioned this yesterday I love the Back to the Future series, remind you the DeLorean which I know, it should not compare to... It looks sci-fi, it looks cool but it also, this is important, it serves a design purpose. What is that purpose? Yes, so the falcon wing door is designed to improve accessibility of the third row. Typically in a three-row car and SUV, it's quite difficult to access the third row directly.\n\nYou have to fold up the second row seat. You somehow have to move the seat back of the second row which if you've got sort of a child or child seat in the second row can make it really inconvenient to access the third row. So by having the falcon wing door, we have much bigger opening that allows you to directly step to the third row quite conveniently even if their baby sits in the second row.\n\nAnd then if you're a mother putting your child in the child seat in the second row, it's very easy because you have such a big opening. And you can step into the car and put the child in the child seat instead of cantilevering your child over through a hole over the baby seat, sort of armrest.\n\nSo it's meant to improve accessibility and really there are only two ways to achieve the level of accessibility: One is the sliding door of a minivan and the other is have something like a falcon wing door The reason we did't go for a sliding door like a minivan is that it fundamentally constrains the aesthetics of the exterior of the car and you have to have three support rails which also negatively affect aesthetics and that's why all minivans pretty much look the same.\n\nAnd we wanted to have something that had that level of accessibility and actually has greater accessibility than the minivan door but also looks good. This is classic user-centered design and can I just say thank you for designing for moms and thank you for designing for parents. It's pretty cool. I think parents will really enjoy the Model X.\n\nAnd we are also taking good feedback from customers and for example one of the things that was asked some of the Hong Kong customers who have ordered the Model X is to have a partial open function of the falcon wing door so if it's a really heavy rain. Oh, yeah, so it can be an umbrella.\n\nYeah, so you want sort of maybe a 50, 60 percent open level so you have a good shield from the rain and people would be pleased know that actually it's already in the works. Oh, very good, very cool. just a software update. And something that is also potentially in the works but only first selects few a submersible Tesla.\n\nThat will be not in anytime soon but just to be a fun side project to have a submersible Tesla, but I think the market for submarine car is quite small. But you don't have to use the cross-harbour tunnel in Hong Kong, you can just go through the Victoria Harbour. That's true. That would be pretty epic. Cause it drives right off the edge of the pier. That's right, be James Bond everyday in your commute. A Tesla truck? Could that ever happen?\n\nYeah, I think it's quite likely that we will do a truck in the future. Yeah, any more details on that? No, I think it is sort of logical thing for us to do in the future.\n\nOkay, with Tesla your goal's been to make a better car and you've done that with an electric vehicle that people love it that has quite a cult following that's upgradable but you also want to achieve in your turn of phrase is very nice Or try to achieve this platonic ideal of a car to reach perfection so what does the perfect car .\n\nlooks like I do use that phrase with our engineering and design team aspirationally that we were in pursuit of platonic ideal of perfect car and who knows what that looks like actually. But you wanna try to make every element of the car as flawless as possible.\n\nThere's always be some degree of imperfection, but try to minimize that and create a car that is just delightful in every way and I think if you do that then the rest can take care of itself.\n\nYou are also the chairman of SolarCity, building a network of solar panels and solar systems and I can see what solar can make sense in the place like California where it's sunny all the time homes are big, a lot of roof space, you can lay out the solar panels. But in the place like Hong Kong, densely packed, vertical cities, how can solar makes sense here? I think it's true that in dense cities, rooftop solar is not gonna solve the energy need.\n\nWhat you can do is have ground mount solar power near Hong Kong tapping into the existing power lines that are coming in and so you can supply Hong Kong with solar power which is needed to be coming from a land area that's not too far away. China has actually enormous land area, much which is hardly occupied at all.\n\nGiven that the Chinese population is so concentrated on the coast, once you go inland, the population is remarkably tiny so you can easily power all of China with solar. All of China with solar? Easily. The world's most populous country. Yeah, definitely. (Applause from the floor) Let's go even more way out there and talk about SpaceX. You are CEO of SpaceX and you've said that your ultimate goal is to get humankind to Mars.\n\nI've heard your response to the question but these guys didn't hear it. Why is Mars important? Whys does Mars matter? It is really fundamental as we need to make as civilisation... What kind of future do we want? Do we want a future where we are forever confined to one Planet? Until some eventual extinction events, however far in the future that might occur.\n\nOr do we want to become a multi-planet species and then ultimately be out there among the stars, being among many planets, many star systems I think the latter is far more exciting and inspiring future than the former and Mars is the next natural step. In fact it's the only planet that we really have a shot at establishing our self-sustaining city on.\n\nAnd I think once we do establish such a city, there will be strong forcing function for the improvement of space flight technology that will enable us to establish colonies elsewhere in the solar system and ultimately extend beyond our solar system.\n\nAnd so there's the defensive reason of protecting the future of humanity ensuring that the light of consciousness is not extinguised should some calamities befall Earth that's the fancy reason but personally I found what gets me more excited is the fact that it would be an incredible adventure like the greatest adventure ever. It will be exciting and inspiring and there need to be things that excite and inspire people.\n\nReasons why you get up in the morning can't just be solving problems, it's gonna be something great gonna happen in the future. We talked about this at length yesterday. It's not an exit strategy or backup plan for humankind when Earth fails, it's also to inspire people on Earth and to transcend to go beyond or mental limits of what we think we can achieve. I think how incredible the Apollo programme was.\n\nIf you ask anyone to name some of humanity's greatest achievements in the 20th Century, the Apollo programme landing on the moon would in many if not most places be no. 1 When will there be a manned SpaceX mission and when will you go to Mars? Pretty close to do it to sending co-op to the space station. That's currently scheduled for the end of the next year.\n\nSo that'll be exciting with the Dragon 2 spacecraft and then we'll have a next-generation rocket and spacecraft beyond the Falcon Dragon series, and I'm hoping to describe that architecture later this year at the International Astronautical Congress which is like the big international space event every year so that would be quite exciting. And in terms of me going, I don't know..\n\nmaybe four or five years from now, maybe going to the space station would be nice. And in terms of the first flight to Mars, we hope to do that in around 2025. In the Year 2025? Nine years from now thereabouts. Oh my goodness, it's just around the corner. Well, nine years. So are you doing zero gravity training? I've done the parabolic flights, those are kind of fun.\n\nYou must be reading up and doing the physical testing to get ready for this ultimate flight of your life. I don't think it's that hard honestly, float around. It's not that hard to float around. But I know you've seen the Martian. We talked about the Martianm and it looks like the hardest thing anyone could ever do is getting there and also surviving and trying to anticipate everything that could go wrong and make sure it doesn't happen.\n\nYou can tell I'm not gonna be signing up for your manned space flight when it takes place. Going to Mars is definitely gonna be hard and dangerous and difficult in probably every way you can imagine. Certainly wouldn't be, if you care about the sort of things safe and comfortable going to mars would be a terrible choice. And this is at the heart of who you are because you to quote Pink Floyd - you do not like to live a comfortably numb life.\n\nYou take on incredible risk to take on entrenched big established industries and to shake and rattle them up to introduce something new and it's so cool to watch and I think that's why everybody here signed up to come here to listen to you just to hear more about that. People want to be more like you. And for the fate of humankind I think it would be great to have more Elon Musks. So what do we need to do to become more like Elon?\n\nI think maybe sounds better than it is.\n\nHonestly, there is a friend of mine who's got a good saying about creating a company which is trying to build a company and have it succeeded is like eating glass and staring into the abyss so what tends to happen is it's sort of quite exciting for the first several months of starting a company and then reality sets in, things don't go as well as planned, customers aren't signing up, the technology or the product isn't working as well as you thought and then conduct concern has been compounded by a recession and it can be very painful for several years.\n\nSo I think starting a company, I would advise some people to have a high pain tolerance. And thanks for reminding us of the very harsh and brutal reality of launching a startup. There is that Elon Musk/ Tony Stark mystique, people think you were Robert Downey Jr. model, his character, Tony Stark, iron man on you. It's easy. It's fun.\n\nYou are a super hero type of industry but it's really hard, it's really difficult and it's something that requires perseverance and greed. Do you fear that maybe in this generation or the younger generation that they don't have that perseverance and greed to take on these really tough challenges? I think some people will do. It is definitely true that...\n\nmaybe there are occassionally companies that get created where there's not an extend a period of extreme pain but I'm not aware of many of such instances. But I do think that new great entrepreneurs are born everyday and we will continue to see amazing companies get built, but I would definitely advise people starting a company to expect a long period of difficulty.\n\nBut as long as people stay super focused on creating absolute best part of service that really delight their end customer if they stay focused on that. then if you get a sense that your customers want you to succeed then you probably will. You have to focus on the customer, delivering for them. If your customers love you, your odds of success are dramatically higher. All the entrepreneurs in this room, they are listening to that message.\n\nRunning out of time, so this is the final question: This is for the budding entrepreneurs in the room who can take an Elon Musk idea and run with it. Quite famously Hyperloop idea that you had to give away because you just don't have enough time to deal with it What are the other ideas that you have that you would love to see another entrepreneur take on and go? I think there's a lot of opportunity in general in electrification in transport.\n\nSo electric aircraft I think there is lots of opportunity there. And genetics, so that's sort of a thorny area, but in terms of solving some of the more intransigent diseases, genetics is really key to solving those. Something that people may be only beginning to look at is establishing some kind of brain-computer interface. A brain-computer interface? Yes, at the neuron level.\n\nSo this is sort of intelligent augmentation as opposed to artificial intelligence that has a lot of potential. You mentioned this to me yesterday, I really had no idea what you're talking about and then I looked up Iain Banks, Neuralynx. So it is the concept of wiring the brain so it's either...\n\nSo there could be a brain internet and it could also mean that we could upload our thoughts to the cloud You will never forget anything and you wouldn't need to take photographs. It's incredible. You will never forget anything. You will expand your ability to process information to remember information but then where the denial of service attack happens. You know, watch out for hacking, that could really be...\n\nBut also I read that it could be used to fight the degenerative diseases like Parkinson's too. Absolutely. And I think actually it would be quite an equaliser as well cause I think the the delta between it would just even things out. You mean, for humankind, people would be no education disadvantage, everyone would be starting at the same level so there would be no meritocracy... no, there would be new meritocracy.\n\nThere will be but the differences will be smaller. The delta will be smaller probably. And you really welcome that kind of world? Well, You asked for predictions. Predictions are not the same as preferences. So do I think something like that is likely to occur? I think probably. It's incredible. We can go on and on. Unfortunately we have to wrap and leave it that. Let's give it for Elon Musk. That is really awesome. Thank you so much.\n\nThank you Kristie from CNN and the de facto game changer, Elon Musk In fact I invite both of you to stand on the stage for a moment, we are going to do a group photo. I'd like to please invite to join us on stage. Mr Greg So, Hong Kong Secretary for the Commerce and Economic Development along with all our distinguished speakers and vertical champions as well as venue partners for StartmeupHK Festival.\n\nCome up onto the stage, we are going to take a group photo together. I believe we are going to move the furniture briefly. Can I also please just make sure that we include these individuals - Matt, Julie, Renue, Bhatti, Anson Falie, Irene Chiu, Andy Liu, Steve Monaghan, Angie Ohn and the Brinc team Mickey, Christine and Manav. We have to get it nice and close to each other.","textByLang":{"en":"Good morning everyone. I think our next guest really doesn't need an introduction. We are going to be hearing from this serial entrepreneur behind a range of companies, PayPal, Tesla Motors, SolarCity, SpaceX. He is a Titan of industry who has disrupted and transformed entire industries we're talking about automotive, aerospace, energy, internet finance. And these are sectors that are really tough to operate in as a startup.\n\nIn the next 40 minutes we are going to hear from Elon Musk and we're going to learn more about Tesla Motors in Hong Kong. In China, we are going to hear about sustainable energy solutions. We're going to talk about Mars and we're also going to touch on the fate and future of humankind pretty big stuff. So in this icy cold day here in Hong Kong, let's give a very warm welcome to Elon Musk. You can pick any mic on the table.\n\nThere're so many to choose from. Elon Musk, welcome to Hong Kong. I talked to your people at Tesla here in Hong Kong. Tesla opened up here in 2010. The Model S has been selling pretty well. Good build-up. First general question. How's the business doing here in Hong Kong? Actually I mean at Tesla we're super appreciative of Hong Kong. It's the city with the, I believe at this point, the most number of Tesla per capita.\n\nAnd it's very exciting model in Hong Kong I think Hong Kong will have over time the highest percentage of electric vehicles of any city in the world and can therefore serve as a model for how other high-density cities around the world can transform to a sustainable transport future so I think that's very exciting so we plan to work closely with the Hong Kong government and take lessons learned and see what we can do so then propagate that to cities around the world.\n\nSo we're very excited about the partnership with Hong Kong. Because Hong Kong is such a densely packed city, there's no range anxiety in Hong Kong but that's not the only factor behind the popularity of Tesla. What are the other factors? Sure. Certainly the range not being an issue is one factor, although that is counterbalanced by challenges with charging.\n\nSo one of the things that we need to work through, and this is a challenge that any other dense city in the world has is, as you have more and more electric vehicles on the road, you have to find someplace to charge them.\n\nThe ideal place to charge the car is at your home or office, certainly the same place that you charge your phone But that is challenging because a lot of apartment buildings or most apartment buildings don't anticipate having that level of power in the garage and sometimes it's the parking spots floated around that are not consistent so it's going to be quite important to get the power to the buildings that need it and then figure out a convenient way for people to charge at home.\n\nWe are deploying a lot of super-charges and of course that's gonna be important but those are really meant for when you have an unusually long trip you've been away from your home or office for a while, or you need to top up and you're out and about. But by far the most convenient is home and office charging and that the thing that we're really working closely with Hong Kong government on.\n\nWe were talking about this earlier about the impact of falling oil prices because high oil prices was a major selling point for getting into hybrid or electric vehicles. Now that oil prices are in free fall. What does that mean for the industry? Well, it definitely makes the transition to sustainable energy more difficult. I think it's no doubt that is going to dampen interest in electric vehicles in general.\n\nWith our cars, what we aspired to do is to make the car so compelling that even with low gasoline prices it's still the car you want to buy. That's the only thing I can think of. I don't know what else we could do, really. You have to make it compelling. And this is really the key at Tesla is to create an electric car that's not worthy it's going to help the environment but it is a car that you will cover it, that you want to drive.\n\nThat happens to be very good for the climate change, very good very good for the environment. Exactly, I think this is sort of general advice I would give to people starting companies, entrepreneurs in general, is really focused on making a product that your customers love. It's so rare that you can buy a product and you love the product when you bought it.\n\nThere are very few things that fit into that category and if you can come up with something like that your business will be successful for sure. Let's talk about China. China is the world's largest auto market. China is also a growing electric vehicle market too. It's soon to be the world's largest.\n\nThey're world's largest carbon emitter We've seen the return of the so-called apocalypse, increasing bad-air days in places like Shenyang and Beijing especially during the winter time. China needs your technology. Is China really aware that? Do you get that sense? And if you don't mind, you could hold the mic a little bit closer. Sorry, absolutely. I think it is very high gain. Yes, China is apparently aware of.\n\nTesla had a number of high-level meetings with the Chinese Government and in fact the Minister of Finance recently mentioned Tesla in a speech that he gave as a good example. So he likes what we are doing. which is a good thing Yeah, absolutely, and in the last year we are in an effort to help the rest of industry and, sort of, be a good neighbor.\n\nWe opened source of our patents so any companies in China or elsewhere can use our patents to create electric vehicles. (Applause from the floor) And what you are doing just underscores a theme that emerged at the latest climate change conference in Paris the debate on whether developed countries should be doing more to help developing countries when the goal is a general shared goal.\n\nAnd you are saying a company from a developed country should be doing that a little bit more in a market like China. China is quite well developed. I think China has better highways and definitely better trains than in the United States, by far In fact I had a great experience taking the bullet train from Beijing to Xian to see the Terracotta Warriors. It was a great experience. So I think there are lots of opportunities there.\n\nI think the challenge for Tesla is that in China. we need to establish sort of a local partnership and so we're going to kind of figure that out. There is an issue of pollution in China, the need for sustainable energy solutions in China. Gridlock is a huge issue in places like Beijing. I don't know if you've been stuck in Beijing traffic. I've been stuck in Beijing. Everyone here used to travel to China, you've been stuck. It's pretty crazy.\n\nCan Tesla auto-pilot provide some service solutions to that? I think auto-pilot can certainly take the edge off. Our auto-pilot capability right now is really good in two scenarios. It either works on a highway where there is no traffic and the lines are quite clear or in heavy traffic so it's super good in heavy traffic, and not that I recommended it, but you know you can read a book or do an email as what I found. I heard people say.\n\nSo you can really take the edge off the traffic but I'm actually quite a big fan of tunnels. Tunnels are so underappreciated. Please elaborate. Well the fundamental problem of cities is that we built cities in 3D and you see that we got these tall buildings with lots of people on each floor but then you got roads which are 2D, so that obviously just doesn't work.\n\nYou're guaranteed to have gridlock but you can go 3D if you have tunnels and you can have many tunnels crisscrossing each other with maybe a few metres vertical distance between them and completely get rid of traffic problems. And as my understanding that actually Hong Kong is in the process of building some tunnels. I was very pleased to hear that. But that really is the solution for solving traffic in major cities.\n\nYeah, you can also go 3D with flying cars. You can But that's not going to happen for a long time. Well, flying cars sound cool but then they do make a lot of wind and they are quite noisy. And the probability of something falling on your head is much higher. Got you. We talked about charging stations in the challenge for rolling out more charging stations in Hong Kong.\n\nThe challenge is exponentially greater in China, especially in the rural areas to connect the big cities. What are your plans on that? So actually we have a supercharging network throughout China. You can go at this point almost anywhere in China using it as a supercharger network and then we got that whole bunch of third party affiliate destination chargers. And we've actually had people drive all the way from Beijing to Tibet in a Model S.\n\nThat's incredible. Have you driven a Tesla in rural China? No. I know people who have. The model 3. What can you tell us about the model 3? What's it going to look like and I know that you've mentioned to me...\n\nI can tell you what it's gonna look like but I mean I can tell you just generally some characteristics about it which is it meant to be a slightly smaller version of the Model S and it won't have quite as many bells and whistles but it'll be at a much lower price point. So the intent is to roughly cut the price in half for smaller vehicle. And I think really that's gonna be probably the most profound car that we make.\n\nThat'll be a very compelling car at an affordable price. Yeah, this is with the model 3 the electric vehicle could go fully mainstream. Other car manufacturers, you have GM in mind with the Bolt doing the same thing and you welcome your rivals doing this? Yeah, the goal has been to accelerate the advent of sustainable transport so we actually did some partnerships, one with Mercedes and one with Toyota.\n\nWe open-sourced our IP and everything so the whole purpose of it was really to accelerate the advent of sustainable transport so it's always great to hear when the other car companies are making electric cars Including car companies inside China? Yea, absolute. Are there any Chinese electric car vehicle makers that are capturing your attention?\n\nWell, we don't think too much about what competitors are doing Just because I think it's important to be just focused on making the best possible products You know, a sort of maybe analogous to what's ever if you were in a race Don't worry about what other runners are doing, just run But, you know, to push that metaphor even more.\n\nAre you afraid that whoever's hosting the race could tilt the race in favor of the Chinese racer I am trying to figure out if there's any way to answer a question and not lose. You get one pass during this interview. If you would like to take the pass, you can take that pass. I will pass on that one. Okay. (Applause from the floor) We've talked about innovation in China and I thought your answer was really interesting.\n\nWe quote the share with the audience in here. What is the example of \"Made in China\" innovation that you thought, wow, that's pretty cool. I think actually a lot of the social media services in China, you know, Weibo, WeChat are pretty impressive, is better than what's in the US Oh, you are on WeChat. I am, actually. Really? I only use WeChat when I'm in Mainland China in business. Do you use WeChat in LA Silicon Valley?\n\nOccasionally to respond to the people in China. But it's pretty good. I think Alibaba is pretty impressive. Do you use Alibaba? Have you used it to purchase... No. It is very very impressive. Wechat, how do you use it? Which messaging functions do you like to use on it? I wouldn't call myself a WeChat expert. I basically just message people and send pictures. Pictures and text. Can you do other things?\n\nRecently I did a panel discussion in Beijing with a group of technologists and this subject came up Or I brought up the question. Can there be a Elon Musk in China and the answer was no And it was because of... this is according to Kai-fu Lee, former Head of Google China who started Microsoft Research in Beijing and he said it's because of the education system in China. It emphasizes too much role learning. You are Elon Musk.\n\nWhat do you make of that? I mean obviously there are a number of very successful entrepreneurs in China Jack Ma, Pony Ma. That's right? Yea, exactly. So I think, I'm not sure I would entirely agree with that... but it is generally true that innovation comes from questioning the way things have been done before.\n\nAnd if in the education system you're taught not to do that, that will inhibit entrepreneurship Being able to question what you're being taught, being able to... Yeah, I mean, just saying \"is there a better way?\" to ask a question. Let's talk about innovation at Tesla for more questions there. We talked about Tesla autopilot. There's also Tesla Summon with your mobile phone and we did talk about this earlier.\n\nI know that there's a big gap between those two programmes and self driving cars But is Tesla on its way to a driverless model? Yeah, I think the whole industry ultimately will be producing autonomous cars. And if you fast forward, let's say 10 or certainly not more than 15 years, I think almost all cars produced will be autonomous All cars produced will be autonomous? All new cars, yes.\n\nBut that's not same as all cars on road cause there's roughly 2 billion cars and trucks on the road and just under a hundred million produced every year so the production rate is only 5% of the fleet size. But if you say of new cars produced, I will be surprised if a majority of them are not self-driving in let's say 10 to 15 years.\n\nAnd of all those new self-driving cars on the road how many of them will have, you know, it's like, will have a steering wheel versus not having a steering wheel. It's like the ruin of the past. The steering wheel thing I am not sure. I think there may be some perhaps auxiliary steering wheel that only pops out when you need to take manual control for whatever reason. But probably if you go a long long term.\n\nMy guess is that there isn't a steering wheel in most cars, it would be something that you would have to special order. In most cars, not all cars, and I do want to clear that predictions are not endorsements, you know. I am not saying that this would be a good or bad thing. I am just saying that this is probably what would occur. This is pattern recognition and anticipating what's going to happen next.\n\nIt's likely, I mean, I think it's sort of like elevators used to have a manual elevator operator and you have somebody who would be sort of moving the lever and be able to fine-tune adjustments the elevator for each floor. Now there's no manual controller for elevators. I think it's gonna seen the same way for cars.\n\nAnd how about the way consumers interact with driverless cars How many consumers will choose to own their own car vs signing into a network fleet of driverless cars?\n\nProbably still most people will own their own cars but it is hard to predict the exact percentage, but I think probably roughly 60-70 percent of people probably want to own their cars about two-third or one-third share and this is a complete shooting-in-the-dark guess, but I think still most people will want to own their own cars. But they also may choose to add it to the shared fleet and then take it out of shared fleet at will.\n\nYou don't see that as a threat to your business model? No, I think just as long as we make great autonomous cars. It's just additional options for the consumer. Yeah it's just adding functionality that I think who will consider quite important in the car in the future. I actually talked about this before. In the long term owning a car that does not have the autonomous capability will be a bit like owning a horse.\n\nYou sort of own a horse for sentimental reasons but not... but not for actual transport Let's talk about the futuristic-looking Model X A question that many Hong Kongers have is, can I park this thing in my parking garage because of those falcon wing doors. What's your answer to that? Actually the falcon wing doors are double hinged.\n\nwe call them 'Falcon Wing' instead of 'gull-wing' because they have a dual acting hinge so they can actually opened in a tighter space than almost any door. And certainly a tighter space than a conventional door. If you can physically fit between your car and a Model X, then you'll be able to get in the falcon wing door. And it looks beautiful and I love the...\n\nI mentioned this yesterday I love the Back to the Future series, remind you the DeLorean which I know, it should not compare to... It looks sci-fi, it looks cool but it also, this is important, it serves a design purpose. What is that purpose? Yes, so the falcon wing door is designed to improve accessibility of the third row. Typically in a three-row car and SUV, it's quite difficult to access the third row directly.\n\nYou have to fold up the second row seat. You somehow have to move the seat back of the second row which if you've got sort of a child or child seat in the second row can make it really inconvenient to access the third row. So by having the falcon wing door, we have much bigger opening that allows you to directly step to the third row quite conveniently even if their baby sits in the second row.\n\nAnd then if you're a mother putting your child in the child seat in the second row, it's very easy because you have such a big opening. And you can step into the car and put the child in the child seat instead of cantilevering your child over through a hole over the baby seat, sort of armrest.\n\nSo it's meant to improve accessibility and really there are only two ways to achieve the level of accessibility: One is the sliding door of a minivan and the other is have something like a falcon wing door The reason we did't go for a sliding door like a minivan is that it fundamentally constrains the aesthetics of the exterior of the car and you have to have three support rails which also negatively affect aesthetics and that's why all minivans pretty much look the same.\n\nAnd we wanted to have something that had that level of accessibility and actually has greater accessibility than the minivan door but also looks good. This is classic user-centered design and can I just say thank you for designing for moms and thank you for designing for parents. It's pretty cool. I think parents will really enjoy the Model X.\n\nAnd we are also taking good feedback from customers and for example one of the things that was asked some of the Hong Kong customers who have ordered the Model X is to have a partial open function of the falcon wing door so if it's a really heavy rain. Oh, yeah, so it can be an umbrella.\n\nYeah, so you want sort of maybe a 50, 60 percent open level so you have a good shield from the rain and people would be pleased know that actually it's already in the works. Oh, very good, very cool. just a software update. And something that is also potentially in the works but only first selects few a submersible Tesla.\n\nThat will be not in anytime soon but just to be a fun side project to have a submersible Tesla, but I think the market for submarine car is quite small. But you don't have to use the cross-harbour tunnel in Hong Kong, you can just go through the Victoria Harbour. That's true. That would be pretty epic. Cause it drives right off the edge of the pier. That's right, be James Bond everyday in your commute. A Tesla truck? Could that ever happen?\n\nYeah, I think it's quite likely that we will do a truck in the future. Yeah, any more details on that? No, I think it is sort of logical thing for us to do in the future.\n\nOkay, with Tesla your goal's been to make a better car and you've done that with an electric vehicle that people love it that has quite a cult following that's upgradable but you also want to achieve in your turn of phrase is very nice Or try to achieve this platonic ideal of a car to reach perfection so what does the perfect car .\n\nlooks like I do use that phrase with our engineering and design team aspirationally that we were in pursuit of platonic ideal of perfect car and who knows what that looks like actually. But you wanna try to make every element of the car as flawless as possible.\n\nThere's always be some degree of imperfection, but try to minimize that and create a car that is just delightful in every way and I think if you do that then the rest can take care of itself.\n\nYou are also the chairman of SolarCity, building a network of solar panels and solar systems and I can see what solar can make sense in the place like California where it's sunny all the time homes are big, a lot of roof space, you can lay out the solar panels. But in the place like Hong Kong, densely packed, vertical cities, how can solar makes sense here? I think it's true that in dense cities, rooftop solar is not gonna solve the energy need.\n\nWhat you can do is have ground mount solar power near Hong Kong tapping into the existing power lines that are coming in and so you can supply Hong Kong with solar power which is needed to be coming from a land area that's not too far away. China has actually enormous land area, much which is hardly occupied at all.\n\nGiven that the Chinese population is so concentrated on the coast, once you go inland, the population is remarkably tiny so you can easily power all of China with solar. All of China with solar? Easily. The world's most populous country. Yeah, definitely. (Applause from the floor) Let's go even more way out there and talk about SpaceX. You are CEO of SpaceX and you've said that your ultimate goal is to get humankind to Mars.\n\nI've heard your response to the question but these guys didn't hear it. Why is Mars important? Whys does Mars matter? It is really fundamental as we need to make as civilisation... What kind of future do we want? Do we want a future where we are forever confined to one Planet? Until some eventual extinction events, however far in the future that might occur.\n\nOr do we want to become a multi-planet species and then ultimately be out there among the stars, being among many planets, many star systems I think the latter is far more exciting and inspiring future than the former and Mars is the next natural step. In fact it's the only planet that we really have a shot at establishing our self-sustaining city on.\n\nAnd I think once we do establish such a city, there will be strong forcing function for the improvement of space flight technology that will enable us to establish colonies elsewhere in the solar system and ultimately extend beyond our solar system.\n\nAnd so there's the defensive reason of protecting the future of humanity ensuring that the light of consciousness is not extinguised should some calamities befall Earth that's the fancy reason but personally I found what gets me more excited is the fact that it would be an incredible adventure like the greatest adventure ever. It will be exciting and inspiring and there need to be things that excite and inspire people.\n\nReasons why you get up in the morning can't just be solving problems, it's gonna be something great gonna happen in the future. We talked about this at length yesterday. It's not an exit strategy or backup plan for humankind when Earth fails, it's also to inspire people on Earth and to transcend to go beyond or mental limits of what we think we can achieve. I think how incredible the Apollo programme was.\n\nIf you ask anyone to name some of humanity's greatest achievements in the 20th Century, the Apollo programme landing on the moon would in many if not most places be no. 1 When will there be a manned SpaceX mission and when will you go to Mars? Pretty close to do it to sending co-op to the space station. That's currently scheduled for the end of the next year.\n\nSo that'll be exciting with the Dragon 2 spacecraft and then we'll have a next-generation rocket and spacecraft beyond the Falcon Dragon series, and I'm hoping to describe that architecture later this year at the International Astronautical Congress which is like the big international space event every year so that would be quite exciting. And in terms of me going, I don't know..\n\nmaybe four or five years from now, maybe going to the space station would be nice. And in terms of the first flight to Mars, we hope to do that in around 2025. In the Year 2025? Nine years from now thereabouts. Oh my goodness, it's just around the corner. Well, nine years. So are you doing zero gravity training? I've done the parabolic flights, those are kind of fun.\n\nYou must be reading up and doing the physical testing to get ready for this ultimate flight of your life. I don't think it's that hard honestly, float around. It's not that hard to float around. But I know you've seen the Martian. We talked about the Martianm and it looks like the hardest thing anyone could ever do is getting there and also surviving and trying to anticipate everything that could go wrong and make sure it doesn't happen.\n\nYou can tell I'm not gonna be signing up for your manned space flight when it takes place. Going to Mars is definitely gonna be hard and dangerous and difficult in probably every way you can imagine. Certainly wouldn't be, if you care about the sort of things safe and comfortable going to mars would be a terrible choice. And this is at the heart of who you are because you to quote Pink Floyd - you do not like to live a comfortably numb life.\n\nYou take on incredible risk to take on entrenched big established industries and to shake and rattle them up to introduce something new and it's so cool to watch and I think that's why everybody here signed up to come here to listen to you just to hear more about that. People want to be more like you. And for the fate of humankind I think it would be great to have more Elon Musks. So what do we need to do to become more like Elon?\n\nI think maybe sounds better than it is.\n\nHonestly, there is a friend of mine who's got a good saying about creating a company which is trying to build a company and have it succeeded is like eating glass and staring into the abyss so what tends to happen is it's sort of quite exciting for the first several months of starting a company and then reality sets in, things don't go as well as planned, customers aren't signing up, the technology or the product isn't working as well as you thought and then conduct concern has been compounded by a recession and it can be very painful for several years.\n\nSo I think starting a company, I would advise some people to have a high pain tolerance. And thanks for reminding us of the very harsh and brutal reality of launching a startup. There is that Elon Musk/ Tony Stark mystique, people think you were Robert Downey Jr. model, his character, Tony Stark, iron man on you. It's easy. It's fun.\n\nYou are a super hero type of industry but it's really hard, it's really difficult and it's something that requires perseverance and greed. Do you fear that maybe in this generation or the younger generation that they don't have that perseverance and greed to take on these really tough challenges? I think some people will do. It is definitely true that...\n\nmaybe there are occassionally companies that get created where there's not an extend a period of extreme pain but I'm not aware of many of such instances. But I do think that new great entrepreneurs are born everyday and we will continue to see amazing companies get built, but I would definitely advise people starting a company to expect a long period of difficulty.\n\nBut as long as people stay super focused on creating absolute best part of service that really delight their end customer if they stay focused on that. then if you get a sense that your customers want you to succeed then you probably will. You have to focus on the customer, delivering for them. If your customers love you, your odds of success are dramatically higher. All the entrepreneurs in this room, they are listening to that message.\n\nRunning out of time, so this is the final question: This is for the budding entrepreneurs in the room who can take an Elon Musk idea and run with it. Quite famously Hyperloop idea that you had to give away because you just don't have enough time to deal with it What are the other ideas that you have that you would love to see another entrepreneur take on and go? I think there's a lot of opportunity in general in electrification in transport.\n\nSo electric aircraft I think there is lots of opportunity there. And genetics, so that's sort of a thorny area, but in terms of solving some of the more intransigent diseases, genetics is really key to solving those. Something that people may be only beginning to look at is establishing some kind of brain-computer interface. A brain-computer interface? Yes, at the neuron level.\n\nSo this is sort of intelligent augmentation as opposed to artificial intelligence that has a lot of potential. You mentioned this to me yesterday, I really had no idea what you're talking about and then I looked up Iain Banks, Neuralynx. So it is the concept of wiring the brain so it's either...\n\nSo there could be a brain internet and it could also mean that we could upload our thoughts to the cloud You will never forget anything and you wouldn't need to take photographs. It's incredible. You will never forget anything. You will expand your ability to process information to remember information but then where the denial of service attack happens. You know, watch out for hacking, that could really be...\n\nBut also I read that it could be used to fight the degenerative diseases like Parkinson's too. Absolutely. And I think actually it would be quite an equaliser as well cause I think the the delta between it would just even things out. You mean, for humankind, people would be no education disadvantage, everyone would be starting at the same level so there would be no meritocracy... no, there would be new meritocracy.\n\nThere will be but the differences will be smaller. The delta will be smaller probably. And you really welcome that kind of world? Well, You asked for predictions. Predictions are not the same as preferences. So do I think something like that is likely to occur? I think probably. It's incredible. We can go on and on. Unfortunately we have to wrap and leave it that. Let's give it for Elon Musk. That is really awesome. Thank you so much.\n\nThank you Kristie from CNN and the de facto game changer, Elon Musk In fact I invite both of you to stand on the stage for a moment, we are going to do a group photo. I'd like to please invite to join us on stage. Mr Greg So, Hong Kong Secretary for the Commerce and Economic Development along with all our distinguished speakers and vertical champions as well as venue partners for StartmeupHK Festival.\n\nCome up onto the stage, we are going to take a group photo together. I believe we are going to move the furniture briefly. Can I also please just make sure that we include these individuals - Matt, Julie, Renue, Bhatti, Anson Falie, Irene Chiu, Andy Liu, Steve Monaghan, Angie Ohn and the Brinc team Mickey, Christine and Manav. We have to get it nice and close to each other."},"languages":["en"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pIRqB5iqWA8"},{"id":"tesla-hong-kong-event-2016-01-25","type":"interview","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z7KRZnsHLM0","title":"Tesla Hong Kong Event","titles":{"en":"Tesla Hong Kong Event","de":"Tesla Hong Kong Event","fr":"Tesla Hong Kong Event"},"date":"2016-01-25","summary":"Elon Musk speaks and takes audience questions at a Tesla owners event in Hong Kong about EVs and the China market.","text":"Mr owners in the crowd tonight is that right yes all right great uh thank you thanks for your long time support of Tesla and also some Model S owners thank you for your support Hong Kong one of the fastest expanding markets uh for Tesla worldwide so I'm John McNeal the president of worldwide sales and I know that you came here to see uh Elon Musk so let me without any further delay about this month hey welcome everybody so thanks for coming um and uh I know this number of long-time pairs of supporters in the card so thanks for your face from the beginning um you know from Roadster Model S and everything and um so it's going to tell you about uh what our plans are in in Hong Kong and um uh and yeah it's we got big plans so uh as as I think you may know\n\nthe the goal of Tesla is to accelerate the Advent of sustainable transport so to do whatever we can to uh to have the have a sustainable future happen sooner rather than later so uh we started off with the Roadster back in 2008 it's a low volume obviously high price now with the model S and X which are mid price mid volume and then in about two years we expect to have the model 3 which is a lower price higher volume car so that the overarching goal though is just to accelerate the Advent of sustainable transport and uh you know and to help other companies do that as well which is why we open source our patents last year [Music] we tried very hard to make an electric car be the best car it was really important because the previously people had the idea\n\nof electric cars being like a golf cart like something that was slow and ugly and low range we had to show that electric car could actually be the best car that could be fast it could be a great have great handling look good have long range this was very important to break them all to get rid of the idea that an electric car is not a good car and the results were quite quite good 98 of owners would buy the model S again there were one car of the year and the consumer report said it was the best car that they've ever tested the um [Applause] so we start off with with safety and achieving five stars across the board the model S this still has the highest safety rating of any car ever tested it's a very well in that front we have a longer crumple Zone than\n\nany car in any gasoline car because there's no engine in the front a very rigid cabin and a low center of gravity because of the battery pack being in the floor pattern and then it's also all-wheel drive it can make it to 100 kilometers in 103 seconds it has a range of almost 500 kilometers so these were really really important characteristics to achieve in an electric car to show that electric car could be a real substitute for a gasoline car and then with over there updates the car keeps improving over time so instead of buying a car and having the software be static and unchanging that this would actually improve over time then with autopilot which come on [Music] we haven't meeting with the government tomorrow hopefully [Applause] well um we're gonna\n\nhave some conversations and hopefully they will consider allowing us to release autopilities um so anyway but i'm cautiously optimistic that it'll be a good good meetings tomorrow um anyway this is going to keep getting better over time with the software updates and and we'll take it as far as the sensor Suite will allow so I think which is actually pretty far and that's combining the the camera the radar the sonar and GPS it's with maybe showing like some of the key statistics in in 2004 Tesla was just five people and now we're almost 15 000.\n\nand five years ago we're making about 600 cars a year and now it's 50 000 cars a year so it's it's good progress I think um and uh and and as part of the fact that we were saved over 150 million liters of gasoline [Applause] [Music] so it is where we are in Greater China the we have 15 stores and in seven major cities uh several hundred superchargers um and even more destination charges and we're opening up in Macau towards the end of this year um I actually think um Hong Kong will probably be the leading study in the world for electric cars wow [Applause] um and um and yeah so I think it's going to be really um a Leading Light uh because uh I I think it'll actually have more EVS per capita than any any other uh City uh which means we'll Pioneer figuring\n\nout how to do charging um how to handle the large number of electric cars on the grid one of these issues which will then be a good example for the rest of the world yeah I think Hong Kong's the perfect City for electric vehicles it's that sense of movement that sense of dynamism the Hong Kong people they want to go everywhere fast [Music] Tesla's really taken off me it just they make sense [Music] the number of Tesla is on the street I'm seeing are just you know that bowl triple now you see easily dozen Teslas on the roads every single day [Music] when I test drove it I just couldn't stop thinking about the car afterwards It's a combination of the practicality of it the performance all the cut connection technology inside the vehicle we've got a five-person\n\nfamily every day I feel comfortable abstract and safe is coming cars on today if not the safest [Music] the moment you put your thought on the paddle is off a very good sports car Tesla has installed superchargers in Union locations so people can charge while they're out shopping I love it when you have this you know Tesla only sign you don't have to worry about running out of battery [Music] convert 100 to electric transportation we do want to reduce the carbon footprint especially here in Hong Kong we need to preserve the air quality and really where electric car that roadside pollution driving a Tesla and it's entirely quiet and there's just no emissions it's so smooth they're so quiet you're almost in this your own little bubble when you're inside\n\nthe car amidst all this noise around [Music] [Applause] thanks to the customers that were part of the video um 2016 coming up uh the second half the year we've got model X so that'll be coming to Hong Kong I've got a huge new service center that we're building so it should help reduce some of the service time challenges and they're also expanding the the charge networks substantially um but it's always important to remember that this is just the beginning as uh over 90 million new cars and trucks produced every year and less than 0.\n\n2 percent are electric vehicles so there's still a huge um huge way to go to transition um the world to sustainable energy so um I think that's that's something with with bearing in mind it's really just the very beginning so um but I we do expect that Hong Kong will be the leader of any city in the world for sustainable transport all right um that's the introductory remarks I'm going to answer a few questions you know that like uh Tesla is a huge success in Hong Kong but however like most of our car owners cannot install their own charges and we don't have a very good public charging infrastructure the pace of the super trading Network expansion cannot keep up with the growth system will become the an obstacle course in Hong Kong so how do you think\n\nyou can also become this challenge thank you sure what so that's a great point so in my meetings tomorrow with the government I'm actually going to be discussing this exact subject we want to try to upgrade uh some of the the public charging stations to higher power and and make them available to other part companies as well but we really want to work with the government and offer our technology for upgrading the public charging spots because my understanding is that there's maybe as many as 800 or even a thousand public charging spots but they're low power so we're better I think the right solution is to upgrade them to higher power and also to have the regulations the building regulations um ideally require that if somebody requests charging and they're\n\nbuilding you've got the this obligation to provide it because in the long run the best way to charge your car is to charge at the same place you charge your phone um if you have to go to a third third location that's generally undesirable most convenient is where your phone is charged that's where your car should be charged except for long distance driving of course but that's that's the basic idea so regulatory changes and then and then providing whatever technology and support that we can have from a Tesla standpoint to the government to upgrade the public charging state um firstly before my question I'd just like to say in the last five years we've had George okay we've had Jerome come and but today's really special thank you so much well thank you\n\nfor supporting president so um as well as the Roadster Model S I've got a model X on reservation so of course the question is what is the plan for right hand drive model X and when are we going to see it um well the plan is to vote for X's is we should be selling production of those around the middle of this year so hopefully this summer is when we should be delivering the right hand drive axes hello I'm sorry it's always hard to stop by the sign all right I'm here with charged Hong Kong which is Hong Kong's charity represent EVS again thank you for coming specific question about autopilot one of the most successful campaigns online for in the last couple of years was for Blendtec I don't know if you saw that one can you blend it there's simple demonstrations\n\nof the technology I've been sort of waiting with basic breath to see uh Cascade of good news about autopilot and the situations that saved and all we've seen has been the disaster movies is there something to share or because for every bad news we need five times more good news to balance it psychologically is there anything that Tesla could be sharing well I mean there is there are a lot of um sort of interventions that occur that we're aware of but we we haven't really asked customers if we could share their share their information um I'm sure many of them would agree actually it's a good point you know we can we don't want to put any pressure like no pressure If you want to share it um yeah maybe that if we can sort of ask people in kind of a really\n\nlow pressure way each of us I think has had us all repeat playback for at least a week yeah and there are many I mean there are thousands more so that's a good idea maybe we should just ask that's the point I mean whether there were case studies or if you could do aggregated statistics and I'm sure I for one would volunteer if I was ever saved by my models actually the statistics bring something out that I think is um brand in a statistical way maybe the right move and I've just actually recently saw um a um just a histogram of of for example the lane position for autopilot versus non-order pilot and the the probability of distribution is much tighter if you're if you're an autopilot then then for if it's manual driving um it's actually remarkable how\n\nmuch people bury in their Lane if it's manual driving um quite a lot actually um so it's I think maybe releasing that would be a good idea just to show like look it's it's actually a tighter approach position Distribution on autopilot than not autopilot but what I can share on the record is in the few short weeks that we had autopilot I was arriving much more refreshed yeah it is it I mean like the reason we called water apart was to have people think of it in the same way that people think of an air an airplane autopilot which is not to say that the pilot can abdicate responsibility or go to sleep um that would be concerning um but but uh but rather that it's a workload reduction um so just it it um it eventually makes you makes it easier to fly the\n\nplane and and to drive the car with the orders to your function Plus on a personal note I did complete the police class one driving test back for safety and and I can absolutely say that it requires much less concentration and I'm much more aware of the situation around me I'm much less stressed by traffic jams and so on so I want it back we're doing our best all right I'll take one more question then hand it over to John okay we're right sure I really want to go okay sure um just to repeat the comments the preface was you have an uncle in Australia a father-in-law sorry in Australia yeah and it likes that you said yeah okay so he he loves using autopilot in Australia yeah and so he um it wasn't all the things the autopilot is a better driver than he\n\nis so that's that's a good compliment and the question was um with respect to apps will we um when we'll be able to download apps and whatnot into the Model S [Music] um you know and as we've sort of thought about it more the logical thing to do from an app standpoint is to maybe allow apps on your iPhone or Android to project onto the center display as opposed to trying to create a new app ecosystem so that's that's probably going to be our Focus uh in the future is is enable you to project apps from your phone onto the center screen that's the it seems like logical move um all right well once again thanks everyone for coming and I hope you have a great night [Applause]","textByLang":{"en":"Mr owners in the crowd tonight is that right yes all right great uh thank you thanks for your long time support of Tesla and also some Model S owners thank you for your support Hong Kong one of the fastest expanding markets uh for Tesla worldwide so I'm John McNeal the president of worldwide sales and I know that you came here to see uh Elon Musk so let me without any further delay about this month hey welcome everybody so thanks for coming um and uh I know this number of long-time pairs of supporters in the card so thanks for your face from the beginning um you know from Roadster Model S and everything and um so it's going to tell you about uh what our plans are in in Hong Kong and um uh and yeah it's we got big plans so uh as as I think you may know\n\nthe the goal of Tesla is to accelerate the Advent of sustainable transport so to do whatever we can to uh to have the have a sustainable future happen sooner rather than later so uh we started off with the Roadster back in 2008 it's a low volume obviously high price now with the model S and X which are mid price mid volume and then in about two years we expect to have the model 3 which is a lower price higher volume car so that the overarching goal though is just to accelerate the Advent of sustainable transport and uh you know and to help other companies do that as well which is why we open source our patents last year [Music] we tried very hard to make an electric car be the best car it was really important because the previously people had the idea\n\nof electric cars being like a golf cart like something that was slow and ugly and low range we had to show that electric car could actually be the best car that could be fast it could be a great have great handling look good have long range this was very important to break them all to get rid of the idea that an electric car is not a good car and the results were quite quite good 98 of owners would buy the model S again there were one car of the year and the consumer report said it was the best car that they've ever tested the um [Applause] so we start off with with safety and achieving five stars across the board the model S this still has the highest safety rating of any car ever tested it's a very well in that front we have a longer crumple Zone than\n\nany car in any gasoline car because there's no engine in the front a very rigid cabin and a low center of gravity because of the battery pack being in the floor pattern and then it's also all-wheel drive it can make it to 100 kilometers in 103 seconds it has a range of almost 500 kilometers so these were really really important characteristics to achieve in an electric car to show that electric car could be a real substitute for a gasoline car and then with over there updates the car keeps improving over time so instead of buying a car and having the software be static and unchanging that this would actually improve over time then with autopilot which come on [Music] we haven't meeting with the government tomorrow hopefully [Applause] well um we're gonna\n\nhave some conversations and hopefully they will consider allowing us to release autopilities um so anyway but i'm cautiously optimistic that it'll be a good good meetings tomorrow um anyway this is going to keep getting better over time with the software updates and and we'll take it as far as the sensor Suite will allow so I think which is actually pretty far and that's combining the the camera the radar the sonar and GPS it's with maybe showing like some of the key statistics in in 2004 Tesla was just five people and now we're almost 15 000.\n\nand five years ago we're making about 600 cars a year and now it's 50 000 cars a year so it's it's good progress I think um and uh and and as part of the fact that we were saved over 150 million liters of gasoline [Applause] [Music] so it is where we are in Greater China the we have 15 stores and in seven major cities uh several hundred superchargers um and even more destination charges and we're opening up in Macau towards the end of this year um I actually think um Hong Kong will probably be the leading study in the world for electric cars wow [Applause] um and um and yeah so I think it's going to be really um a Leading Light uh because uh I I think it'll actually have more EVS per capita than any any other uh City uh which means we'll Pioneer figuring\n\nout how to do charging um how to handle the large number of electric cars on the grid one of these issues which will then be a good example for the rest of the world yeah I think Hong Kong's the perfect City for electric vehicles it's that sense of movement that sense of dynamism the Hong Kong people they want to go everywhere fast [Music] Tesla's really taken off me it just they make sense [Music] the number of Tesla is on the street I'm seeing are just you know that bowl triple now you see easily dozen Teslas on the roads every single day [Music] when I test drove it I just couldn't stop thinking about the car afterwards It's a combination of the practicality of it the performance all the cut connection technology inside the vehicle we've got a five-person\n\nfamily every day I feel comfortable abstract and safe is coming cars on today if not the safest [Music] the moment you put your thought on the paddle is off a very good sports car Tesla has installed superchargers in Union locations so people can charge while they're out shopping I love it when you have this you know Tesla only sign you don't have to worry about running out of battery [Music] convert 100 to electric transportation we do want to reduce the carbon footprint especially here in Hong Kong we need to preserve the air quality and really where electric car that roadside pollution driving a Tesla and it's entirely quiet and there's just no emissions it's so smooth they're so quiet you're almost in this your own little bubble when you're inside\n\nthe car amidst all this noise around [Music] [Applause] thanks to the customers that were part of the video um 2016 coming up uh the second half the year we've got model X so that'll be coming to Hong Kong I've got a huge new service center that we're building so it should help reduce some of the service time challenges and they're also expanding the the charge networks substantially um but it's always important to remember that this is just the beginning as uh over 90 million new cars and trucks produced every year and less than 0.\n\n2 percent are electric vehicles so there's still a huge um huge way to go to transition um the world to sustainable energy so um I think that's that's something with with bearing in mind it's really just the very beginning so um but I we do expect that Hong Kong will be the leader of any city in the world for sustainable transport all right um that's the introductory remarks I'm going to answer a few questions you know that like uh Tesla is a huge success in Hong Kong but however like most of our car owners cannot install their own charges and we don't have a very good public charging infrastructure the pace of the super trading Network expansion cannot keep up with the growth system will become the an obstacle course in Hong Kong so how do you think\n\nyou can also become this challenge thank you sure what so that's a great point so in my meetings tomorrow with the government I'm actually going to be discussing this exact subject we want to try to upgrade uh some of the the public charging stations to higher power and and make them available to other part companies as well but we really want to work with the government and offer our technology for upgrading the public charging spots because my understanding is that there's maybe as many as 800 or even a thousand public charging spots but they're low power so we're better I think the right solution is to upgrade them to higher power and also to have the regulations the building regulations um ideally require that if somebody requests charging and they're\n\nbuilding you've got the this obligation to provide it because in the long run the best way to charge your car is to charge at the same place you charge your phone um if you have to go to a third third location that's generally undesirable most convenient is where your phone is charged that's where your car should be charged except for long distance driving of course but that's that's the basic idea so regulatory changes and then and then providing whatever technology and support that we can have from a Tesla standpoint to the government to upgrade the public charging state um firstly before my question I'd just like to say in the last five years we've had George okay we've had Jerome come and but today's really special thank you so much well thank you\n\nfor supporting president so um as well as the Roadster Model S I've got a model X on reservation so of course the question is what is the plan for right hand drive model X and when are we going to see it um well the plan is to vote for X's is we should be selling production of those around the middle of this year so hopefully this summer is when we should be delivering the right hand drive axes hello I'm sorry it's always hard to stop by the sign all right I'm here with charged Hong Kong which is Hong Kong's charity represent EVS again thank you for coming specific question about autopilot one of the most successful campaigns online for in the last couple of years was for Blendtec I don't know if you saw that one can you blend it there's simple demonstrations\n\nof the technology I've been sort of waiting with basic breath to see uh Cascade of good news about autopilot and the situations that saved and all we've seen has been the disaster movies is there something to share or because for every bad news we need five times more good news to balance it psychologically is there anything that Tesla could be sharing well I mean there is there are a lot of um sort of interventions that occur that we're aware of but we we haven't really asked customers if we could share their share their information um I'm sure many of them would agree actually it's a good point you know we can we don't want to put any pressure like no pressure If you want to share it um yeah maybe that if we can sort of ask people in kind of a really\n\nlow pressure way each of us I think has had us all repeat playback for at least a week yeah and there are many I mean there are thousands more so that's a good idea maybe we should just ask that's the point I mean whether there were case studies or if you could do aggregated statistics and I'm sure I for one would volunteer if I was ever saved by my models actually the statistics bring something out that I think is um brand in a statistical way maybe the right move and I've just actually recently saw um a um just a histogram of of for example the lane position for autopilot versus non-order pilot and the the probability of distribution is much tighter if you're if you're an autopilot then then for if it's manual driving um it's actually remarkable how\n\nmuch people bury in their Lane if it's manual driving um quite a lot actually um so it's I think maybe releasing that would be a good idea just to show like look it's it's actually a tighter approach position Distribution on autopilot than not autopilot but what I can share on the record is in the few short weeks that we had autopilot I was arriving much more refreshed yeah it is it I mean like the reason we called water apart was to have people think of it in the same way that people think of an air an airplane autopilot which is not to say that the pilot can abdicate responsibility or go to sleep um that would be concerning um but but uh but rather that it's a workload reduction um so just it it um it eventually makes you makes it easier to fly the\n\nplane and and to drive the car with the orders to your function Plus on a personal note I did complete the police class one driving test back for safety and and I can absolutely say that it requires much less concentration and I'm much more aware of the situation around me I'm much less stressed by traffic jams and so on so I want it back we're doing our best all right I'll take one more question then hand it over to John okay we're right sure I really want to go okay sure um just to repeat the comments the preface was you have an uncle in Australia a father-in-law sorry in Australia yeah and it likes that you said yeah okay so he he loves using autopilot in Australia yeah and so he um it wasn't all the things the autopilot is a better driver than he\n\nis so that's that's a good compliment and the question was um with respect to apps will we um when we'll be able to download apps and whatnot into the Model S [Music] um you know and as we've sort of thought about it more the logical thing to do from an app standpoint is to maybe allow apps on your iPhone or Android to project onto the center display as opposed to trying to create a new app ecosystem so that's that's probably going to be our Focus uh in the future is is enable you to project apps from your phone onto the center screen that's the it seems like logical move um all right well once again thanks everyone for coming and I hope you have a great night [Applause]"},"languages":["en"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z7KRZnsHLM0"},{"id":"bbc-interview-2016-01-13","type":"interview","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0871VJfvD1c","title":"BBC Interview","titles":{"en":"BBC Interview","de":"BBC Interview","fr":"BBC Interview"},"date":"2016-01-13","summary":"Musk talks to the BBC's Rory Cellan-Jones about electric cars and the future of autonomous driving at Tesla's design studio.","text":"Elon Musk what's their Vision here what are you trying to do to the car industry well I'm trying to accelerate the Advent of sustainable transport so try to get uh try to get the econ industry to move towards um electrification um faster than they would otherwise move so the the the fundamental value long-term value that I see for Tesla is serving as a catalyst to accelerate the transition to sustainable transport why electric cars what why why is that important well electric car is um are zero emission at the car level so they're not um producing CO2 or nitrous oxide or sulfur oxides or any of the um sort of the noxious gases that uh any kind of combustion engine car would produce um and so if if we can have sustainable energy production and combine\n\nthat with electric cars we have a long-term sustainable future and how how's that going I mean you've made made a deal of progress but do you see us all having electric cars in 10 years time or is it going to be always a minority Pursuit no I think uh All Transport with the exception of rockets will go fully electric um so that's why I mean I see the the value of of Tesla um as an as an accelerant as a catalyst in that transition um I think Tesla maybe when one looks back on it from an historical perspective it it might accelerate that transition by a decade maybe maybe more now this is a a great car it's an exciting drive but at the moment it's just for the rich isn't it is this really going to mean anything for the mass Market yeah I mean the the the\n\nTesla strategy from the beginning has been to start off with a low volume high- price car that was the sports car that we first uh did in partnership with lotus um and then we have the model S which is kind of a mid-priced mid volume C car um and and actually when you when you look at the the price of the model S um inclusive of the cost of petrol uh it it actually is a lot more competitive than it would than you'd think I'm not going to be able to afford one of these and nobody I know is um well I think um uh it's it's certainly not um a low pric car U I'm just saying that if you were to lease or Finance the car and compare the the lease or Finance cost with a much lower cost of operation of an electric car your monthly cost of Transport um is a lot\n\nmore competitive than it may seem at first glance just looking at the price of the car but are you on the road to producing a model that far more people could uh so the the model 3 uh that's the third part of our strategy uh which is produce a high volume uh lowcost car and uh we expect to be in production with that at the end of next year is that all on schedule and what what are the Ambitions for that car is is that the one that will really make this revolution that you've been talking about happen I no question in in order to um have a a substantial effect on on transportation we have to make the cars affordable um so I think the model 3 is extremely important as part of that strategy um unless there's an affordable car um we will as you alluded to\n\nearlier only have a small impact on the world so it it needs we need to make a car that most people can afford in order to have um a really substantial impact how important is it for you that people's lives are changed in this way obviously it's important for this business because you've lost a lot of money so far you need to have a mass market car but is it important for you uh as a thinker that that people have electric cars that that that sustainable Vision comes true yeah absolutely mean the like I said the whole point of Tesla is to accelerate the transition to sustainable transport um if we could have made an affordable car right off the the bat we definitely would have um it's just that it takes time to refine the technology when you think of any\n\nnew technology it takes multiple versions um and economies of scale in order to make the technology um accessible to the general public you can look at say cell phones when the early days of cell phones they were very big and heavy and very expensive um but with successive uh design iterations and scaling up the production um we've brought it to the point where um for $100 you can buy um basically a supercomputer in your pocket how soon will most people have an electric car is this a very long-term Vision or is it going to happen soon well I think it's going to happen um sooner than people think I mean the typical curve of new technology adoption um it it's is like an S curve so it starts off quite slow um and uh generally people tend to predict to base\n\ntheir predictions on a straight line as opposed to a curve fit um and but when you have an an S curve of adoption if you make a straight line extrapolation at the beginning of that S curve it's always going to underestimate the actual adoption rate um so um but if you look at say what Tesla is doing um every year we are doubling our total cumulative production so um at the of last year we had 50,000 cars in total on the roads worldwide and then last year we produced another 50,000 cars so the total Fleet of Tesla vehicles doubled last year it will approximately double again this year meanwhile Detroit the traditional motor makers seem to have woken up um is is it not true that the likes of BMW are eventually more likely to bring electric vehicles to the\n\nmasses than Tesla well I say say more power to them if they I mean I would certainly encourage uh their actions on electric vehicles um and and for all um all manufacturers I hope they uh produce as many electric vehicles as soon as possible that's the the right thing for the world what do you think their record has been like so far has has has Detroit and the traditional motor industry been caught napping well they they didn't really believe in electric cars they didn't think that it was technologically possible to create a a compelling electric car and they felt that even if um even if someone did create an electric car with long range and high performance that people wouldn't want to buy it because they have some deep love of gasoline um and and that\n\nit's vital to be able to refuel in 5 minutes um so with with Tesla we were able to disprove those um axiomatic errors um so with the the Tesla Roadster we're able to show that you can in fact create uh a very fast attractive high performance um great handling electric car um and that if you made such a car with with long range and if you were if you make such a car people would buy it um so with with the um with the Tesla roader in fact the that's really what got General Motors to do the Chevy Vault um and Nissan to do the leaf um so we we announced the uh Tesla rooster in mid2 2007 um and blah BL um he's told the story many times uh took the took out press release to his engineers and said if a little company in California can do this why can't we um\n\nand that's what got General Motors to do their electric vehicle program which in turn encouraged the other manufacturers to do through electric vehicle programs as well um but uh but those programs for the most part have been uh or really I'd say almost entirely with the exception of maybe the leaf um have been of quite low volume um and uh more more more inclined towards um uh satisfying Regulators um um but but now I think we are seeing a change because people are seeing that Tesla is able to sell quite a few um quite a few electric cars in a normal car segment in in in the premium sedan segment um in in fact we were the the bestselling car in the in our segments in the United States last year so more than you know I miss more than Mercedes or BMW or\n\nAudi in in our segment the technology industry generally suddenly seems incredibly enthusiastic about getting into the motor industry we've obviously had Google with it self-driving car do you see uh that continuing and do you do you see apple building a car and that maybe being a threat to you well um I I think I I I would encourage uh more participation um by whoever it is to create electric vehicles um it it's it's quite hard to do um but I think uh companies like apple will probably make a compelling electric car it seems like the obvious thing to do are you betting that that's going to happen have you heard anything well it's pretty hard to hide something if you hire over a thousand Engineers to do it so you think apple is serious about it yeah I\n\ndo this is an Open Secret and will that be a threat to you or will that just expand the industry I I think that I mean I think it will expand the industry um certainly Tesla would aspire to still make the most compelling electric vehicles and that would be our goal um while at the same time trying to help other companies make electric cars as well um so for example last year we open sourced all of our patents so anyone can use any of our patents for free you've also been a leader in autonomous driving in this road to the self-driving car how far do you think that's going to go I mean I think the two biggest Revolutions in transport are electrification and autonomy th those are the and it's you those are the two biggest Innovations since the moving production\n\nline and they're both happening at about the same time um I think autonomy is extremely important um and I think in the long term nobody will buy a car unless it is autonomous it would be like having a manually operated uh elevator or something like that so it's a strange agonism in 10 years time what will I be driving or will I be driving at all will I just be pressing a button on an app uh a car will drive up and and take me where I want it yeah you will you will only drive if you you want to drive um it'll be like owning a owning a car that is not self-driving in in the long term um will be like owning a horse you would own it for and you would use it for sentimental reasons but not for you know not for daily use really unlikely now you uh you've taken\n\na lot of interest in artificial intelligence uh H this is becoming an artificially intelligent car well I would quote narrowly narrow artificial intelligence um you've also expressed concern about where that's heading is that because you've looked at what that car can do and have thought what happens if it develops a mind of its own why why are you wor we don't need to be concerned about the cars the car this is I mean car a car is not deep AI it's a it's a narrow use case um you know we're not trying to build sentients into the car um it's just trying to look at the lines on the road and steer correct um and I would consider that to be essentially a solved problem um it's just a question of um refining the details of the technology and bringing that\n\nto Market um and then improving um the nines of reliability so um in order to have a self-driving car you really have to have many nines of reliability so it's 99.\n\n9999% something like that is is is how good it needs to be um or you know if let's say to First approximation um you would want a self-driving car to be in order of magnitude uh safer than a human driven car and if if if you're like okay it's 10 times safer than it's like there's no more doubt there's no more debate um about which one is safer um but it's it's still a narrow use case um the the cars not going to develop uh Consciousness um or decide that they want to take over the world or something like that um I think we really need to be more concerned about uh D yeah and why do we need to be concerned about that well I mean because there are I think scenarios where um if there's some vast intelligence that um uh either develops the will of its own\n\nor is subject to the will of a small number of people um then we could have an undesirable future if you want to read a real scary one I'd say uh uh Haren Ellison's I have no mouth and I must scream we'll give you nightmares you read a lot of Science Fiction is it giving you nightmares at the moment this it has given me nightmares yeah and are you genuinely what when you you've been one of the Prime movers about AI I interviewed Steven Hawking last year right had similar concerns um is that a a short-term concern or is it something way off that we don't need to worry about for a long time it's going to come faster than anyone appreciates I think it's with with each passing year the sophistication of of computer intelligence is is growing dramatically\n\nI I mean I really think we're on an exponential uh Improvement path of um artificial intelligence and and the number of smart humans that are developing AI is also increasing dramatically I mean if you look at like the attendance at the um AI conferences they're they're doubling every year um they're getting full um I have a a sort of a young cousin of mine who's graduating from Berkeley um in computer science and physics and I asked him like well how many of the smart smart students are studying AI in computer science and the answer is all of them now you're in three extraordinary Industries you're in electric cars you're in uh Rockets uh and you're in uh solar energy what unites you uh what unites those those three interests well the what I'm trying\n\nto do is to um um minimize uh existent future existential threats or to take whatever action I can to ensure the future is good um I didn't expect these companies to succeed uh I thought they would most likely fail uh particularly Tesla and facex I thought Sol City had a higher probability of success um but um I in the beginning I thought SpaceX and Tesla maybe had a 10% chance of success um and so I'm quite surprised really to see that they're not that we're alive um it's great I wasn't expecting that and are you now more confident that they each of them will be a success I I I do feel it's though they've reached um a level of progress that makes it unlikely that they will unlikely that will they will die in the near term um both Tesla and SpaceX have\n\na lot of customers um sort of built really earn the trust of a large number of customers and um and these are really solid organization or or like really you know I think thoughtful end customers for the car and um I and I think like whenever your customers really want you to succeed then you then you you will succeed finally uh you're obviously a very competitive person you're competing with the likes of Jeff Bezos uh in uh Jeff who in rocket you're competing with Detroit in the motor industry you're competing with regulator when ites to Solar City uh what drives you is it just I am right and they're all wrong um well no I mean I I actually really take the position that I'm always to some degree wrong um and the aspiration is to be less wrong we're always\n\nto some degree wrong all it doesn't matter who you are um and I think Trying to minimize um the wrongheadedness over time is that I believe in that philosophy um and um and I mean I I I think these there's some things that are important for the future sustainable energy obviously sustainable transport um ultimately ultimately becoming a multi-planet species and um and traveling out there Among the Stars I think those are those are great things those are things that make me like the future and or be inspired about the future um whereas if those things don't happen the future I think looks quite dim um and um and I I just feel quite fortunate that we've made the progress that we have on on those fronts and we'll aspire to make more progress in the future\n\nyou don't know","textByLang":{"en":"Elon Musk what's their Vision here what are you trying to do to the car industry well I'm trying to accelerate the Advent of sustainable transport so try to get uh try to get the econ industry to move towards um electrification um faster than they would otherwise move so the the the fundamental value long-term value that I see for Tesla is serving as a catalyst to accelerate the transition to sustainable transport why electric cars what why why is that important well electric car is um are zero emission at the car level so they're not um producing CO2 or nitrous oxide or sulfur oxides or any of the um sort of the noxious gases that uh any kind of combustion engine car would produce um and so if if we can have sustainable energy production and combine\n\nthat with electric cars we have a long-term sustainable future and how how's that going I mean you've made made a deal of progress but do you see us all having electric cars in 10 years time or is it going to be always a minority Pursuit no I think uh All Transport with the exception of rockets will go fully electric um so that's why I mean I see the the value of of Tesla um as an as an accelerant as a catalyst in that transition um I think Tesla maybe when one looks back on it from an historical perspective it it might accelerate that transition by a decade maybe maybe more now this is a a great car it's an exciting drive but at the moment it's just for the rich isn't it is this really going to mean anything for the mass Market yeah I mean the the the\n\nTesla strategy from the beginning has been to start off with a low volume high- price car that was the sports car that we first uh did in partnership with lotus um and then we have the model S which is kind of a mid-priced mid volume C car um and and actually when you when you look at the the price of the model S um inclusive of the cost of petrol uh it it actually is a lot more competitive than it would than you'd think I'm not going to be able to afford one of these and nobody I know is um well I think um uh it's it's certainly not um a low pric car U I'm just saying that if you were to lease or Finance the car and compare the the lease or Finance cost with a much lower cost of operation of an electric car your monthly cost of Transport um is a lot\n\nmore competitive than it may seem at first glance just looking at the price of the car but are you on the road to producing a model that far more people could uh so the the model 3 uh that's the third part of our strategy uh which is produce a high volume uh lowcost car and uh we expect to be in production with that at the end of next year is that all on schedule and what what are the Ambitions for that car is is that the one that will really make this revolution that you've been talking about happen I no question in in order to um have a a substantial effect on on transportation we have to make the cars affordable um so I think the model 3 is extremely important as part of that strategy um unless there's an affordable car um we will as you alluded to\n\nearlier only have a small impact on the world so it it needs we need to make a car that most people can afford in order to have um a really substantial impact how important is it for you that people's lives are changed in this way obviously it's important for this business because you've lost a lot of money so far you need to have a mass market car but is it important for you uh as a thinker that that people have electric cars that that that sustainable Vision comes true yeah absolutely mean the like I said the whole point of Tesla is to accelerate the transition to sustainable transport um if we could have made an affordable car right off the the bat we definitely would have um it's just that it takes time to refine the technology when you think of any\n\nnew technology it takes multiple versions um and economies of scale in order to make the technology um accessible to the general public you can look at say cell phones when the early days of cell phones they were very big and heavy and very expensive um but with successive uh design iterations and scaling up the production um we've brought it to the point where um for $100 you can buy um basically a supercomputer in your pocket how soon will most people have an electric car is this a very long-term Vision or is it going to happen soon well I think it's going to happen um sooner than people think I mean the typical curve of new technology adoption um it it's is like an S curve so it starts off quite slow um and uh generally people tend to predict to base\n\ntheir predictions on a straight line as opposed to a curve fit um and but when you have an an S curve of adoption if you make a straight line extrapolation at the beginning of that S curve it's always going to underestimate the actual adoption rate um so um but if you look at say what Tesla is doing um every year we are doubling our total cumulative production so um at the of last year we had 50,000 cars in total on the roads worldwide and then last year we produced another 50,000 cars so the total Fleet of Tesla vehicles doubled last year it will approximately double again this year meanwhile Detroit the traditional motor makers seem to have woken up um is is it not true that the likes of BMW are eventually more likely to bring electric vehicles to the\n\nmasses than Tesla well I say say more power to them if they I mean I would certainly encourage uh their actions on electric vehicles um and and for all um all manufacturers I hope they uh produce as many electric vehicles as soon as possible that's the the right thing for the world what do you think their record has been like so far has has has Detroit and the traditional motor industry been caught napping well they they didn't really believe in electric cars they didn't think that it was technologically possible to create a a compelling electric car and they felt that even if um even if someone did create an electric car with long range and high performance that people wouldn't want to buy it because they have some deep love of gasoline um and and that\n\nit's vital to be able to refuel in 5 minutes um so with with Tesla we were able to disprove those um axiomatic errors um so with the the Tesla Roadster we're able to show that you can in fact create uh a very fast attractive high performance um great handling electric car um and that if you made such a car with with long range and if you were if you make such a car people would buy it um so with with the um with the Tesla roader in fact the that's really what got General Motors to do the Chevy Vault um and Nissan to do the leaf um so we we announced the uh Tesla rooster in mid2 2007 um and blah BL um he's told the story many times uh took the took out press release to his engineers and said if a little company in California can do this why can't we um\n\nand that's what got General Motors to do their electric vehicle program which in turn encouraged the other manufacturers to do through electric vehicle programs as well um but uh but those programs for the most part have been uh or really I'd say almost entirely with the exception of maybe the leaf um have been of quite low volume um and uh more more more inclined towards um uh satisfying Regulators um um but but now I think we are seeing a change because people are seeing that Tesla is able to sell quite a few um quite a few electric cars in a normal car segment in in in the premium sedan segment um in in fact we were the the bestselling car in the in our segments in the United States last year so more than you know I miss more than Mercedes or BMW or\n\nAudi in in our segment the technology industry generally suddenly seems incredibly enthusiastic about getting into the motor industry we've obviously had Google with it self-driving car do you see uh that continuing and do you do you see apple building a car and that maybe being a threat to you well um I I think I I I would encourage uh more participation um by whoever it is to create electric vehicles um it it's it's quite hard to do um but I think uh companies like apple will probably make a compelling electric car it seems like the obvious thing to do are you betting that that's going to happen have you heard anything well it's pretty hard to hide something if you hire over a thousand Engineers to do it so you think apple is serious about it yeah I\n\ndo this is an Open Secret and will that be a threat to you or will that just expand the industry I I think that I mean I think it will expand the industry um certainly Tesla would aspire to still make the most compelling electric vehicles and that would be our goal um while at the same time trying to help other companies make electric cars as well um so for example last year we open sourced all of our patents so anyone can use any of our patents for free you've also been a leader in autonomous driving in this road to the self-driving car how far do you think that's going to go I mean I think the two biggest Revolutions in transport are electrification and autonomy th those are the and it's you those are the two biggest Innovations since the moving production\n\nline and they're both happening at about the same time um I think autonomy is extremely important um and I think in the long term nobody will buy a car unless it is autonomous it would be like having a manually operated uh elevator or something like that so it's a strange agonism in 10 years time what will I be driving or will I be driving at all will I just be pressing a button on an app uh a car will drive up and and take me where I want it yeah you will you will only drive if you you want to drive um it'll be like owning a owning a car that is not self-driving in in the long term um will be like owning a horse you would own it for and you would use it for sentimental reasons but not for you know not for daily use really unlikely now you uh you've taken\n\na lot of interest in artificial intelligence uh H this is becoming an artificially intelligent car well I would quote narrowly narrow artificial intelligence um you've also expressed concern about where that's heading is that because you've looked at what that car can do and have thought what happens if it develops a mind of its own why why are you wor we don't need to be concerned about the cars the car this is I mean car a car is not deep AI it's a it's a narrow use case um you know we're not trying to build sentients into the car um it's just trying to look at the lines on the road and steer correct um and I would consider that to be essentially a solved problem um it's just a question of um refining the details of the technology and bringing that\n\nto Market um and then improving um the nines of reliability so um in order to have a self-driving car you really have to have many nines of reliability so it's 99.\n\n9999% something like that is is is how good it needs to be um or you know if let's say to First approximation um you would want a self-driving car to be in order of magnitude uh safer than a human driven car and if if if you're like okay it's 10 times safer than it's like there's no more doubt there's no more debate um about which one is safer um but it's it's still a narrow use case um the the cars not going to develop uh Consciousness um or decide that they want to take over the world or something like that um I think we really need to be more concerned about uh D yeah and why do we need to be concerned about that well I mean because there are I think scenarios where um if there's some vast intelligence that um uh either develops the will of its own\n\nor is subject to the will of a small number of people um then we could have an undesirable future if you want to read a real scary one I'd say uh uh Haren Ellison's I have no mouth and I must scream we'll give you nightmares you read a lot of Science Fiction is it giving you nightmares at the moment this it has given me nightmares yeah and are you genuinely what when you you've been one of the Prime movers about AI I interviewed Steven Hawking last year right had similar concerns um is that a a short-term concern or is it something way off that we don't need to worry about for a long time it's going to come faster than anyone appreciates I think it's with with each passing year the sophistication of of computer intelligence is is growing dramatically\n\nI I mean I really think we're on an exponential uh Improvement path of um artificial intelligence and and the number of smart humans that are developing AI is also increasing dramatically I mean if you look at like the attendance at the um AI conferences they're they're doubling every year um they're getting full um I have a a sort of a young cousin of mine who's graduating from Berkeley um in computer science and physics and I asked him like well how many of the smart smart students are studying AI in computer science and the answer is all of them now you're in three extraordinary Industries you're in electric cars you're in uh Rockets uh and you're in uh solar energy what unites you uh what unites those those three interests well the what I'm trying\n\nto do is to um um minimize uh existent future existential threats or to take whatever action I can to ensure the future is good um I didn't expect these companies to succeed uh I thought they would most likely fail uh particularly Tesla and facex I thought Sol City had a higher probability of success um but um I in the beginning I thought SpaceX and Tesla maybe had a 10% chance of success um and so I'm quite surprised really to see that they're not that we're alive um it's great I wasn't expecting that and are you now more confident that they each of them will be a success I I I do feel it's though they've reached um a level of progress that makes it unlikely that they will unlikely that will they will die in the near term um both Tesla and SpaceX have\n\na lot of customers um sort of built really earn the trust of a large number of customers and um and these are really solid organization or or like really you know I think thoughtful end customers for the car and um I and I think like whenever your customers really want you to succeed then you then you you will succeed finally uh you're obviously a very competitive person you're competing with the likes of Jeff Bezos uh in uh Jeff who in rocket you're competing with Detroit in the motor industry you're competing with regulator when ites to Solar City uh what drives you is it just I am right and they're all wrong um well no I mean I I actually really take the position that I'm always to some degree wrong um and the aspiration is to be less wrong we're always\n\nto some degree wrong all it doesn't matter who you are um and I think Trying to minimize um the wrongheadedness over time is that I believe in that philosophy um and um and I mean I I I think these there's some things that are important for the future sustainable energy obviously sustainable transport um ultimately ultimately becoming a multi-planet species and um and traveling out there Among the Stars I think those are those are great things those are things that make me like the future and or be inspired about the future um whereas if those things don't happen the future I think looks quite dim um and um and I I just feel quite fortunate that we've made the progress that we have on on those fronts and we'll aspire to make more progress in the future\n\nyou don't know"},"languages":["en"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0871VJfvD1c"},{"id":"agu-fall-meeting-2015-12-16","type":"interview","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WwFa3nk1V0I","title":"AGU Fall Meeting","titles":{"en":"AGU Fall Meeting","de":"AGU Fall Meeting","fr":"AGU Fall Meeting"},"date":"2015-12-16","summary":"Presidential Forum fireside chat at the American Geophysical Union on climate, carbon fees, education and Mars.","text":"have clearly blown through those so how do you think about that and and how do you focus on getting by those obstacles well I'm a big believer in um in the sort of uh science or physics framework of trying to analyze problem particularly if if they're new um so if something's new then analogies don't don't work very well um because it's it's it's it's new I mean the way we get through daily life is most by analogy or by sort of copying things with minor variations um because it's a computational shortcut uh but if you want to do something that's that's fundamentally new uh or particularly it's counterintuitive then you have to do a first principles analysis um and you know take things from from the what appear to be as fundamental sort of simple fundamental\n\ntruths and then reason up from there um and uh I mean that that requires a lot more thinking and you can't you can't do that for everything but um but if you trying to figure out something new I think it's it's really the only way to go so um I mentioned that that I was in Paris and I know that you were there too and um as I listened to presentations uh first there was a real sense of optimism at this cop that I don't think was there before but there was still an overwhelming sense of a lot of of work that we have to do and I was struck by um some comments that you made when you were talking to a group of students at the surbone um and they were talking about sustainability and you said regarding the carbon cycle this is analogous to not paying for garbage\n\ncollection it's not as though we should say in the case of garbage have a garbage free Society it's very difficult to have a garbage free Society but it's it's just important that people pay for the garbage collection so we need to go from having an untaxed negative externality which is effectively a hidden carbon sub subsidy of enormous size 5.\n\n3 million trillion a year and we need to move away from this and have a carbon tax so can you talk a little bit about that especially from the standpoint of being in price yeah I mean essentially price are just information um they they the primary information um to allow for labor labor allocation um and they sort of tell people what what to do and what thing should be favored or another thing um and and so when the prices are wrong then the wrong thing happens in the economy um so when you have a sort of a tragedy of Commons um like the CO2 capacity of the oceans in atmosphere um and it's it's un price or the price is is much lower than it than it should be um then the wrong Behavior happens so effectively uh we're we're incenting bad behavior um and\n\num I mean I just talked about how analogies are imperfect but but um you know it's kind of like if if we had uh high taxes on on fruits and vegetables and low taxes on on cigarettes and alcohol that would that wouldn't make sense um that that's sort of what we have um right now with respect to energy um and and um and we're very powerful forces trying to keep it that way um so um now it will eventually um correct but and we are seeing some good movement in that direction with the Paris climate talks it sounds like it's direct directionally correct and um and there will be some movement not as much as there should be but it's it's encouraging um and um I think that it's worth noting that like generally when when when the government interferes in the economy\n\nit's it's it's it's that usually results in a in a a pricing error increase um but in this case uh I think it would it would be it's hard to miss like any any sort of C text would reduce the effect of error in the system of prices in the economy um i' like to shift directions uh while we are a research Community we're also an education community and uh we have crowdsourced and questions for today's event and one of them comes uh from the education community so this came to us uh on Twitter from Regina Brinker uh at Brinker science if you want to follow her and she says I teach Middle School stem what should students be learning to be prepared for and contribute to the Future Workforce um well I think um I mean software engineering is um probably the single\n\nbiggest area that that people should learn um and um and and I think I think I'm always sort of a fan of physics and uh General economics and critical thinking I think those are we really should teach critical thinking a lot more um me seem like a simple thing but it's it's just um like you need to just tell people like this is how you know whether you should believe something or [Laughter] not yeah you you can tell how much everybody resat I think I'm preaching to the convered here yeah but yeah it's um yeah you know just teaching people these are the general types of fallacies and this is how people will generally trick you and how to avoid being trick and I think it be really great let's do it uh at the fall meeting here uh we also try to uh stress\n\nthe importance of transdisciplinary research and how science informs other areas like uh policy and so forth so another question we received from Twitter uh came from Lori xowski she's at extra neutrons um who asked so you didn't mention geoscience in that list of things that people should know about I do think J is very important um yeah what do the engineers of the future need to know from geosciences and how can uh how do we influence that and work together um well I mean I think in general I think that it would be good in general for people to know about geosciences and um to know how um our actions um as a civilization will affect the future um or and how we can possibly affect it how we might be negatively affecting it um you know on the assumption\n\nthat we want the future to be good uh we want to direct our actions to um you know with respect to to geosciences to to a good outcome um so so I generally it's it's it's sort of quite surprising how little actually people know about about geosciences I mean even like pretty straightforward stuff like the carbon cycle you know sort of um I mean I've had conversations with with quite quite smart and well people who um who who don't understand that there's like a surface carbon cycle and and then but if you did Stu up from deep underground and add it to the surface carbon that that that fundamentally changes the chemical like liing of the of the surface of the Earth um and they're like wow really [Music] yeah and um you know like there's just conservation\n\nof mass is not totally obvious to people you know like you can't just create new carbon from nothing um you have and you can't just disappear yeah it doesn't disappear um yeah exactly so uh you know just like basic stuff like that be like wa to keep people on ter um I we s bouncing around but I have some you know I we got great input from all of you uh when we ask for questions and I want to make sure we try to uh touch on a lot of different topics so um I want to talk about the gools of the private and public sector in ensuring the advancement of scientific research and Innovation and where do you see um the roles of the private sector versus the public sector are there places where they overlap are they totally separate yeah I think the public sector\n\nis when when you have something that's um kind of a small amount of good for the whole population U or for you know the whole country or even the whole the whole world um but it would be really difficult to go and collect like $10 from everyone um to understand um you know more about the nature of the Earth or the solar system the Universe um so you it's it's sort of it's not efficient to go to try and sort of you know collect service if if you got say A you know a$3 billion project to go and get $10 from everyone in the United States it's like it's it's better to do that by the public sector um and um and then you know you have great things like like the Hubble um and I think what people would say like that's that's quite a quite a good thing um or the\n\nMars missions um so I think um you know where where you have these things which are a small amount of good for for a lot of people it makes sense for public sector to to you know for government to do that um where you can um more concretely close the economic Loop um uh that that's where the private sector makes sense um so for example at SpaceX we do a lot of launches of communications and broadcast satellites um and and that that can sort of close the economic Loop because uh then people can uh listen to X and radio or get Direct TV or something like that um and and that kind of makes sense um but then we'll also do missions for NASA to re resupply the space station um so we can sort of learn more about space that makes sense as a as a public sector\n\nthing um so I think that's the basic basic difference so in that public sector um not only geoscience but a lot of Sciences seen very flat funding at a time when uh other nations are investing uh at a time when there's a tremendous opportunity uh how do you think that the private sector can help us uh turn that around and focus on you know what the benefits will be for Society for uh public sector investment in research um well I'm certainly a proponent of increasing um investment in in science in general uh from you know both the public and private sector um and um I'm a super pro science so I um and it is um interesting to see like um the lar collider you know that was that was really a great effort there there in Europe um and uh you know we sort of\n\ncanel the superc conducting to glider here in the US um I thought that was that was sort of a sort of a sad thing that we did there um you know I I really think we should we should increase funding for science absolutely um you across the world really great uh we have the director of the National Science Foundation in the front row here I'm sure she's uh yeah in violent yeah definitely so you mentioned Mars and um uh in your interview with stepen coar you said that Mars is a fixer uper Planet yeah but you've also been a proponent of colonizing U Mars uh what are some of the challenges that you think we would face in traveling to Mars I know you're very interested in this how do how do you think about that sure um well I think first of all I should say\n\nyou know why do I think this is important um and and that's uh if I sort of unpack the sort of philosophical basis for that as far as I'm concerned it's the reason I came to that conclusion was that um you know I think that um we don't there there's so much more to understand and learn about the nature of the universe um and that understanding will will grow kind of proportion to the scope and scale of of human civilization um and um the probability of the probable lifespan of human civilization is is much greater if we are a multipl species as opposed to a single plan species um if we're a single plan species then eventually there will be some Extinction event either um you know either from humans or or some natural uh so um so I think and now it's the\n\nfirst time in the history of Earth that the the window is opened where it's possible for us to extend life to another planets I mean it's been one and a half billion years so it's a long time and and that that window may be open for a long time and hopefully it is uh but it may also be open for a short time and so I think the the wise move is to make life multiplanetary while we can um and and um and and this ultimately uh is what will lead to um a huge amount of of new science um and in sure that uh that we have the highest probability of of understanding the nature of the universe um so that that's actually the the reason that I think it's important um and and I also think it would be a great adventure um and you know there need to be things that um\n\npeople look forward to very in the morning like it's it's exciting inspiring um and um you know we we need those things yeah I'm old enough to remember the uh landing on the moon and uh getting up that day and about that and just the change yeah exactly point so um but but it it will be super hard to do this um and it will take a long time and um I I suspect I probably would't live to see it become self-sustaining um but um if we had to aim for that objective then you know they important technological steps that are needed um to to get there um one of them for example being uh reusable Rockets um if we reusable Rockets we can reduce the the cost of of um of access to space by probably two magnitude um and worting that for the the Falcon n um which is\n\na about a $6 million rocket to B the the cost of the propellent is only um about $200,000 so you know it's much like U refilling um think it's 747 something like that um so it's it's really a massive difference if we can make rity work um and then we also need scale um need to have really big Rockets um and um and you need to do uh local propelling production on Mars um so if we can do those things then I think we can establish a self sustaining civilization on R so I understand that you're going to be launching your uh newest rocket next week and uh this is the first launch since the Falcon 9 uh back in June and uh I've lost some scientific year that was pretty expensive in the ocean and I know what that feels like Maybe not maybe I don't know how it\n\nscales but um uh you know if this is successful it's it's clearly historic and uh um how do you think about uh that issue of uh you know uh failing forward um well I think uh I think I success forward but um yeah it's it's it's quite emotionally traumatic actually um and uh yeah the the last fight which failed actually did so on my birthday which of a doubt yeah so yeah I me it's it's Rockets are hard the uh I mean if if gravity was just a little lighter much easier actually If gravity was a little little stronger on Earth it would be basically impossible to do with chemical Rockets it's amazing how much uh gravity effects things like this small change in G and it's like wow um you look at say the Saturn 5 which was like the size of like an basically\n\nan office building uh to take off from Earth and and yet to take off from the moon was just the top half of the eagle Lander so it's wow it's like a crazy difference so anyway the so for for in order to make things work on Earth for Rockets you have to really push everything to the maximum um so you have to have really Advanced Materials um really optimize the design um everything's got to you can't have huge amounts of margin in in the rocket otherwise it just won't get to open at all um and um and it's really hard to test everything in the ground in the exact circumstances that you're would experiencing life because there's just no there's no test facility that can do that um exactly so you do you make it close but not exact um but for for this upcoming\n\nflight um there are number of improvements in the rocket um and one of the things we're doing for the first time um the first time I think anyone's done it is uh deep deeply cryogenic propellant so we're subcooling the propellant particularly particularly the liquid oxygen because it's 23 liquid oxygen um close to its freezing point um which increases the density quite quite significantly um and um and then the thrust is higher we're going to improve uh stage separation system we stretched the upper stage of the rocket um to add more propellent to that and there are a number of other improvements in electronics so it's I think a um significantly improved rocket from the last one um and then I should say what is important about reusability as far as the\n\nBoost stage is concerned um what the key sort of figure of marit is is the transfer um transfer energy um so if you take the potential energy and the kinetic energy um and say how much has been transferred to the the alha stage by the Boost stage um and and and what's the mass that so basically yeah basically connecting to potential energy transport that that's the thing that that's the figure of marit um so the the boo stage of falcine is is capable of of transfer of a transfer velocity to the opp stage of 8,000 km an hour so it's really that's pretty fast um a bullet from an assault rifle it goes at 2,000 km hour so it's four times fast than a bull from an assault rifle um that's a transfer velocity of roughly 100 kilomet um and uh to to a mass of about\n\n120 tons so it's accelerating 120 tons to four times FAS than than a bullet I loved the way that you just compared something that people wouldn't have any uh conception of to something that they would and that they would be really impressed by I mean was that amazing communication that was terrific um I wanted to ask you one last question and then we're going to throw things open for the the audience when you talked about Mars you said I don't think I'll ever get there well and yeah um you talk a little about you know a lot of us get involved in projects that we don't know if we'll see the realization and can you talk a little bit about how you think about that and and uh trading off you know I get to do it versus it'll come later well you know going\n\nback to the sort of UNL mindl sort of philosophical rationale for doing the first you know doing in the first place um the you know basically I sort of was thinking about this when I when I was a kid and um trying to find some meaning in life like what's the meaning of life and um I quite sort of sad about it actually when I was a teenager um and um and then um I read the HED guide thexy which basically said like the real the you know basically universe is the answer and you need figure out the questions so I think um you know that that's if I can help kind of figure out the questions uh then that I consider that to be very absolutely maybe we can 's a b fish right exactly okay uh now it's time for you and uh I'm going to go um we're going to alternate\n\nbetween questions from the audience and questions from the the U no Joan we're not we we won't okay just the audience okay um so it's your turn questions for youone um please come to the microphones that are in the uh in the aisles and there's somebody at this microphone go ahead thank you very much for appearing today uh two weeks ago the Los Angeles Times featured prominently on its front page a story in which it described many self-described Venture capitalists from this area who were enamored by a new and as yet unspecified technique of power generation it did not uh it was promised in the article I think was different than those demonstrated at three m Island chyl and Fukushima uh the uh I'd like to ask if you had uh what your critical thinking skills\n\nwould be when approached by people offering uh you to invest or become involved in uh new and undefined nuclear power techniques you know what they're talking about and two uh what you see as a future for nuclear power in our efforts to restore the Earth to the conditions that it might have existed more closely at the start of the you had to proceed sure um well I I actually am um I I I mean I think there's nothing wrong with nuclear power whether Vision or Fusion I think if a properly designed uh Vision power system is actually fine particularly if it's in an area that's not subject to natural disasters um so you know for example France has a lot of fion power um and that can that I think makes lot of s for um um but but for California it's more questionable\n\num or Japan um so then then um then then fusion um I I definitely think Fusion is a solvable problem um the the reason I sort of haven't done anything in um direct Fusion is that I I currently think and I may be wrong about this that that indirect fusion um from the big Fusion explosion in the sky called the sun is uh you know and having portable takes is is probably going to make the most things economically um and in the in the Norther in the high high latitudes in nor Northern Hemisphere you tend to have a lot of Hydro power so um that that that really helps solve the um you know how do you make power when it's dark problem or or in the middle of winter type thing so um I don't want to discarge people from pursuing Fusion but person thing I think the\n\neconomics are going to favor indirect Fusion of multiple pable Tes um at least to an overwhelming degree particularly when combined with uh batteries and um high voltage lines running East West and L South um I mean you can completely solve Earth's all the power need on Earth um with a with a fairly small uh percentage of the surface area um I mean for the United States you could take basically little a corner of Utah Nevada and power the entire United States um with solar power so I I think that's that's mostly how it will get solved the next so this is a bit of a followup on that uh solar power has been doubling um basically every 2 years and we all know that exponential growth is a powerful thing so we're only what seven doublings away from everything\n\nbeing powered by solar power and do you think that that doubling rate will will keep Pace I mean I I think it'll probably slow down um but but it's still going to be a high percentage growth rate every year um once you reach a certain percentage of solar into the grid you really need to add batteries in order to load level um and uh kind of cash power but um but solar combined with with batter is really you kind of like I said you can completely solve all of this power with just those those two things great that Victor yeah it's it's worth noting I think probably people aware of this but you get um it's there's one Gatt per square km of solar um energy solar power I'm Victor massive F ofio work um particularly fighting the carbon pollution and actually\n\nfull up on this battery question uh we tend to start understanding how powerful the carbon pollution is but uh the battery related technology and F takes has its own production c i was Wonder you could maybe share your thoughts on what the consequences and maybe a radiation recyle if that would be yeah well um all of the battery packs for Tesla are currently recycled um so the recycling centers in North America and Europe and and Asia um and it kind of makes sense because you can just think of the battery packs as really high quality ore um it's way better to mine a battery pack than rocks um so uh so it kind of makes sense to to recycle them economically um yeah um and that obviously reduces the the cost of production quite a bit um for the G Factory\n\nthat that we're building in Nevada uh that will have recycling built in so they we uh completely sort of you know close that cycle um and it will be um in the long term fully sustainably powered so solar wind and geothermal yeah and microphone hi I'm Jim croll from Arizona State University uh I was um listening to Dr Chris McKay another advocate of humans to Mars and he was talking about um when we do go to Mars uh if we find life either currently there or extinct we should uh consider removing human presence so we can allow that life to thrive um I was wondering what thoughts on that were well I it really doesn't seem like there's any life on on Mars I mean if they're on the surface at least um we're not seeing any sign of that um I think if we do find\n\nsome sign of it then we sure we need to understand um you know what it is and and try I try to Ure that we we don't extinguish it I mean that's uh that's important but I think um I think the reality is that there isn't any life on the surface of Mars um there may be uh microbial life deep underground uh where it's sort of shielded um from radiation and um from the cold um and uh yeah so that that's that's a possibility but in in that case I think anything we do on the surfice is really not going to have a big impact on the sub tring life um yeah thank you here again hi um with a decision coming out of cop 21 just a few days ago with the world now appearing to be on track to decarbonize the Energy System renewable energy and of course storage is going\n\nto become increasingly important and um likely the development will accelerate I'm really interested in what Tesla's doing on batteries that will help smooth the intermittent of um the renewable generation and would really like to hear your discussion of where you see Tesla going on battery storage for Renewables and generally the whole issue of storage for Renewables yeah well definitely this um B technology is super important to sustainable energy um what what we're doing with the the the big Factory and that we're buling in Nevada is is really trying to take uh economies of scale to the liit um so it's like the biggest Factory we could conceive of um in order to to maximize economies of scale um and then obviously there's the underlying technology\n\nitself um which there there will be I would say moderate improvements in the underlying technology um not giant but not not small but kind of medium um but then over time I would expect those those technology improvements to get better and better um from Tesla standpoint we're always interested in trying to figure out how to how to make it better um I I do think that batteries are one of the hottest technology problems out there um because there's so many constraints on creating a useful batter um it's it's really I mean so many super smart people have broken their pick on improving batteries uh so so usually ends up being on average like about a 5 to 8% Improvement per year in energy density um and economics um although I think we'll be able to improve\n\nthe economic element a lot more just by the economies of scale um but I anyone who's interested in in doing batteries I'd certainly encourage them to uh to research better batteries it's it's a super hard problem and a critical one to solve um what do you think are the main steps in a low carbon energy transition and in that vein what technologies um out there What technological developments do you find very interesting that you're not already working on things that aren't batteries or electric vehicles but that you think are cool areas for people to go into well I think electrification of Transport in general is important um so aircraft and boats um that that's very important um and um and then Heating and Cooling electrification of that um yeah I me\n\nI think um I mean the nucleus stuff could be could be quite interesting um but it would just have to sort of see how it competes against uh solar um but yeah and any anything which any form of energy generation or consumption which if you extrapolate into future um goes on for a very long time and still has the world being good I think we should just do that over here good morning Pisha Hoover from Purdue University um my question pertains to uh science access and energy within the global context um and I was wondering how you see any or all of your your companies and Ventures um trying to address the the inequity of science access or access to energy um or or what types of things that you're hoping to do um within that context to try and really expand\n\nthose resources um and make it accessible to everyone sure well um I mean as was mentioned earlier um Tesla just made all the patents open um and um uh Solar City is um actually uh going even a step further than that uh which is uh they're making the technology available um to um uh developing countries and and they're offering to have people come from those countries and actually sit in the factory and see how it's done so I think you know trying to be helpful in that respect um and uh but but I I do think that you know the internet is a great equalizer of access to information um the um you know this is this is maybe not talk about as much as it should be but you can learn anything if you have a $100 internet device you can just learn anything which\n\nis amazing compared to the Past um you don't need you don't need to access to a library um in just you can learn whatever you want for free really that's that's a pretty great part of the future that we're in right now on the end hi uh ke Park from T national uh Tesla has done a great job creating an infrastructure for electric cars in the country so far but I don't think electric cars themselves solve green greenhouse gas problems because we're still generating greenhouse gases from and natural power plant natural gas power plants which are not as efficient as U gasoline cars so how did you originally Envision the future source of electricity and how do you envision it now yeah actually um it's it's worth noting that uh even if the grid was completely\n\npowered by uh coal and natural gas um electric cars uh would still generate less CO2 um even when you extra when you take it all the way to the power plant level um the the reason for that is that uh when you're not constrained by mass and volume you can make the um the efficiency of energy extraction much better um in a power plant than you can in a car um so if you take say um like natural gas power plant from from G it's it's over 60% efficient um so take the s 60% efficient in generating electricity so it's really good um whereas typically a gasoline powered car over the drive cycle will be less than 20% efficient um and um and that's because you know the the big um natural gas turbine is it it can be really heavy it can be really bulky um and you\n\ncan take the the waste heat and then run a steam turbine um and uh you know get even more energy out so your efficiency is just fundamentally much better and so even when you take into account the transmission losses and the charging losses uh you're still way far ahead with electric cars than you are with gasline cars so even you can take this do this with any Source fuel coal uh anything um you're you're just always going to win um even if everything's um powered by by CO2 sources um then then of course everything isn't powered by two sources uh you have hydro ummal uh solar wind um and as was pointed out by one of the earlier question is the um growth of solar is very dramatic um so the you know the percentage of the grid that is sustainable energy\n\nis increasing over time um and when we add batteries to the mix uh that will that will further increase the rate so I think I think we're we're on a we're headed in a positive direction it's just a question of how long it will take to get there in fact like one of the things I really emphasized in the par tool was that uh it it is a certainty that we will move to a sustainable energy economy um because the alternative would be would be able to mine all of the carbon based fuels from the ground burn them um and then you either move to a sustainable economy or the entire economy collapses because then it doesn't have any energy so we know for sure that we will move to a sustainable energy economy the question is just when and and how many you know billions\n\nof tons of of CO2 are uh in the atmosphere versus in the ground that that's really the only question is is um what what what PPM number will we you know yeah exctly so you know so given that we know we will end up uh which is the sustainable energy economy it seems like we should we should terminate this experiment as soon as possible why not I'm sorry but we don't have time for any more questions um when I was walking in one of my friends uh was telling me how excited he was to be here and I wrote down what he said um because I think it's something we all share he said it's such a rare thing to see a person devote themselves to coming up with real solutions to the biggest problems and then doing it thank you so much thanks time thank all of you for joining\n\nus today please come back later on uh in in about an hour uh to hear from France Cordova the um the uh head of the National Science Foundation","textByLang":{"en":"have clearly blown through those so how do you think about that and and how do you focus on getting by those obstacles well I'm a big believer in um in the sort of uh science or physics framework of trying to analyze problem particularly if if they're new um so if something's new then analogies don't don't work very well um because it's it's it's it's new I mean the way we get through daily life is most by analogy or by sort of copying things with minor variations um because it's a computational shortcut uh but if you want to do something that's that's fundamentally new uh or particularly it's counterintuitive then you have to do a first principles analysis um and you know take things from from the what appear to be as fundamental sort of simple fundamental\n\ntruths and then reason up from there um and uh I mean that that requires a lot more thinking and you can't you can't do that for everything but um but if you trying to figure out something new I think it's it's really the only way to go so um I mentioned that that I was in Paris and I know that you were there too and um as I listened to presentations uh first there was a real sense of optimism at this cop that I don't think was there before but there was still an overwhelming sense of a lot of of work that we have to do and I was struck by um some comments that you made when you were talking to a group of students at the surbone um and they were talking about sustainability and you said regarding the carbon cycle this is analogous to not paying for garbage\n\ncollection it's not as though we should say in the case of garbage have a garbage free Society it's very difficult to have a garbage free Society but it's it's just important that people pay for the garbage collection so we need to go from having an untaxed negative externality which is effectively a hidden carbon sub subsidy of enormous size 5.\n\n3 million trillion a year and we need to move away from this and have a carbon tax so can you talk a little bit about that especially from the standpoint of being in price yeah I mean essentially price are just information um they they the primary information um to allow for labor labor allocation um and they sort of tell people what what to do and what thing should be favored or another thing um and and so when the prices are wrong then the wrong thing happens in the economy um so when you have a sort of a tragedy of Commons um like the CO2 capacity of the oceans in atmosphere um and it's it's un price or the price is is much lower than it than it should be um then the wrong Behavior happens so effectively uh we're we're incenting bad behavior um and\n\num I mean I just talked about how analogies are imperfect but but um you know it's kind of like if if we had uh high taxes on on fruits and vegetables and low taxes on on cigarettes and alcohol that would that wouldn't make sense um that that's sort of what we have um right now with respect to energy um and and um and we're very powerful forces trying to keep it that way um so um now it will eventually um correct but and we are seeing some good movement in that direction with the Paris climate talks it sounds like it's direct directionally correct and um and there will be some movement not as much as there should be but it's it's encouraging um and um I think that it's worth noting that like generally when when when the government interferes in the economy\n\nit's it's it's it's that usually results in a in a a pricing error increase um but in this case uh I think it would it would be it's hard to miss like any any sort of C text would reduce the effect of error in the system of prices in the economy um i' like to shift directions uh while we are a research Community we're also an education community and uh we have crowdsourced and questions for today's event and one of them comes uh from the education community so this came to us uh on Twitter from Regina Brinker uh at Brinker science if you want to follow her and she says I teach Middle School stem what should students be learning to be prepared for and contribute to the Future Workforce um well I think um I mean software engineering is um probably the single\n\nbiggest area that that people should learn um and um and and I think I think I'm always sort of a fan of physics and uh General economics and critical thinking I think those are we really should teach critical thinking a lot more um me seem like a simple thing but it's it's just um like you need to just tell people like this is how you know whether you should believe something or [Laughter] not yeah you you can tell how much everybody resat I think I'm preaching to the convered here yeah but yeah it's um yeah you know just teaching people these are the general types of fallacies and this is how people will generally trick you and how to avoid being trick and I think it be really great let's do it uh at the fall meeting here uh we also try to uh stress\n\nthe importance of transdisciplinary research and how science informs other areas like uh policy and so forth so another question we received from Twitter uh came from Lori xowski she's at extra neutrons um who asked so you didn't mention geoscience in that list of things that people should know about I do think J is very important um yeah what do the engineers of the future need to know from geosciences and how can uh how do we influence that and work together um well I mean I think in general I think that it would be good in general for people to know about geosciences and um to know how um our actions um as a civilization will affect the future um or and how we can possibly affect it how we might be negatively affecting it um you know on the assumption\n\nthat we want the future to be good uh we want to direct our actions to um you know with respect to to geosciences to to a good outcome um so so I generally it's it's it's sort of quite surprising how little actually people know about about geosciences I mean even like pretty straightforward stuff like the carbon cycle you know sort of um I mean I've had conversations with with quite quite smart and well people who um who who don't understand that there's like a surface carbon cycle and and then but if you did Stu up from deep underground and add it to the surface carbon that that that fundamentally changes the chemical like liing of the of the surface of the Earth um and they're like wow really [Music] yeah and um you know like there's just conservation\n\nof mass is not totally obvious to people you know like you can't just create new carbon from nothing um you have and you can't just disappear yeah it doesn't disappear um yeah exactly so uh you know just like basic stuff like that be like wa to keep people on ter um I we s bouncing around but I have some you know I we got great input from all of you uh when we ask for questions and I want to make sure we try to uh touch on a lot of different topics so um I want to talk about the gools of the private and public sector in ensuring the advancement of scientific research and Innovation and where do you see um the roles of the private sector versus the public sector are there places where they overlap are they totally separate yeah I think the public sector\n\nis when when you have something that's um kind of a small amount of good for the whole population U or for you know the whole country or even the whole the whole world um but it would be really difficult to go and collect like $10 from everyone um to understand um you know more about the nature of the Earth or the solar system the Universe um so you it's it's sort of it's not efficient to go to try and sort of you know collect service if if you got say A you know a$3 billion project to go and get $10 from everyone in the United States it's like it's it's better to do that by the public sector um and um and then you know you have great things like like the Hubble um and I think what people would say like that's that's quite a quite a good thing um or the\n\nMars missions um so I think um you know where where you have these things which are a small amount of good for for a lot of people it makes sense for public sector to to you know for government to do that um where you can um more concretely close the economic Loop um uh that that's where the private sector makes sense um so for example at SpaceX we do a lot of launches of communications and broadcast satellites um and and that that can sort of close the economic Loop because uh then people can uh listen to X and radio or get Direct TV or something like that um and and that kind of makes sense um but then we'll also do missions for NASA to re resupply the space station um so we can sort of learn more about space that makes sense as a as a public sector\n\nthing um so I think that's the basic basic difference so in that public sector um not only geoscience but a lot of Sciences seen very flat funding at a time when uh other nations are investing uh at a time when there's a tremendous opportunity uh how do you think that the private sector can help us uh turn that around and focus on you know what the benefits will be for Society for uh public sector investment in research um well I'm certainly a proponent of increasing um investment in in science in general uh from you know both the public and private sector um and um I'm a super pro science so I um and it is um interesting to see like um the lar collider you know that was that was really a great effort there there in Europe um and uh you know we sort of\n\ncanel the superc conducting to glider here in the US um I thought that was that was sort of a sort of a sad thing that we did there um you know I I really think we should we should increase funding for science absolutely um you across the world really great uh we have the director of the National Science Foundation in the front row here I'm sure she's uh yeah in violent yeah definitely so you mentioned Mars and um uh in your interview with stepen coar you said that Mars is a fixer uper Planet yeah but you've also been a proponent of colonizing U Mars uh what are some of the challenges that you think we would face in traveling to Mars I know you're very interested in this how do how do you think about that sure um well I think first of all I should say\n\nyou know why do I think this is important um and and that's uh if I sort of unpack the sort of philosophical basis for that as far as I'm concerned it's the reason I came to that conclusion was that um you know I think that um we don't there there's so much more to understand and learn about the nature of the universe um and that understanding will will grow kind of proportion to the scope and scale of of human civilization um and um the probability of the probable lifespan of human civilization is is much greater if we are a multipl species as opposed to a single plan species um if we're a single plan species then eventually there will be some Extinction event either um you know either from humans or or some natural uh so um so I think and now it's the\n\nfirst time in the history of Earth that the the window is opened where it's possible for us to extend life to another planets I mean it's been one and a half billion years so it's a long time and and that that window may be open for a long time and hopefully it is uh but it may also be open for a short time and so I think the the wise move is to make life multiplanetary while we can um and and um and and this ultimately uh is what will lead to um a huge amount of of new science um and in sure that uh that we have the highest probability of of understanding the nature of the universe um so that that's actually the the reason that I think it's important um and and I also think it would be a great adventure um and you know there need to be things that um\n\npeople look forward to very in the morning like it's it's exciting inspiring um and um you know we we need those things yeah I'm old enough to remember the uh landing on the moon and uh getting up that day and about that and just the change yeah exactly point so um but but it it will be super hard to do this um and it will take a long time and um I I suspect I probably would't live to see it become self-sustaining um but um if we had to aim for that objective then you know they important technological steps that are needed um to to get there um one of them for example being uh reusable Rockets um if we reusable Rockets we can reduce the the cost of of um of access to space by probably two magnitude um and worting that for the the Falcon n um which is\n\na about a $6 million rocket to B the the cost of the propellent is only um about $200,000 so you know it's much like U refilling um think it's 747 something like that um so it's it's really a massive difference if we can make rity work um and then we also need scale um need to have really big Rockets um and um and you need to do uh local propelling production on Mars um so if we can do those things then I think we can establish a self sustaining civilization on R so I understand that you're going to be launching your uh newest rocket next week and uh this is the first launch since the Falcon 9 uh back in June and uh I've lost some scientific year that was pretty expensive in the ocean and I know what that feels like Maybe not maybe I don't know how it\n\nscales but um uh you know if this is successful it's it's clearly historic and uh um how do you think about uh that issue of uh you know uh failing forward um well I think uh I think I success forward but um yeah it's it's it's quite emotionally traumatic actually um and uh yeah the the last fight which failed actually did so on my birthday which of a doubt yeah so yeah I me it's it's Rockets are hard the uh I mean if if gravity was just a little lighter much easier actually If gravity was a little little stronger on Earth it would be basically impossible to do with chemical Rockets it's amazing how much uh gravity effects things like this small change in G and it's like wow um you look at say the Saturn 5 which was like the size of like an basically\n\nan office building uh to take off from Earth and and yet to take off from the moon was just the top half of the eagle Lander so it's wow it's like a crazy difference so anyway the so for for in order to make things work on Earth for Rockets you have to really push everything to the maximum um so you have to have really Advanced Materials um really optimize the design um everything's got to you can't have huge amounts of margin in in the rocket otherwise it just won't get to open at all um and um and it's really hard to test everything in the ground in the exact circumstances that you're would experiencing life because there's just no there's no test facility that can do that um exactly so you do you make it close but not exact um but for for this upcoming\n\nflight um there are number of improvements in the rocket um and one of the things we're doing for the first time um the first time I think anyone's done it is uh deep deeply cryogenic propellant so we're subcooling the propellant particularly particularly the liquid oxygen because it's 23 liquid oxygen um close to its freezing point um which increases the density quite quite significantly um and um and then the thrust is higher we're going to improve uh stage separation system we stretched the upper stage of the rocket um to add more propellent to that and there are a number of other improvements in electronics so it's I think a um significantly improved rocket from the last one um and then I should say what is important about reusability as far as the\n\nBoost stage is concerned um what the key sort of figure of marit is is the transfer um transfer energy um so if you take the potential energy and the kinetic energy um and say how much has been transferred to the the alha stage by the Boost stage um and and and what's the mass that so basically yeah basically connecting to potential energy transport that that's the thing that that's the figure of marit um so the the boo stage of falcine is is capable of of transfer of a transfer velocity to the opp stage of 8,000 km an hour so it's really that's pretty fast um a bullet from an assault rifle it goes at 2,000 km hour so it's four times fast than a bull from an assault rifle um that's a transfer velocity of roughly 100 kilomet um and uh to to a mass of about\n\n120 tons so it's accelerating 120 tons to four times FAS than than a bullet I loved the way that you just compared something that people wouldn't have any uh conception of to something that they would and that they would be really impressed by I mean was that amazing communication that was terrific um I wanted to ask you one last question and then we're going to throw things open for the the audience when you talked about Mars you said I don't think I'll ever get there well and yeah um you talk a little about you know a lot of us get involved in projects that we don't know if we'll see the realization and can you talk a little bit about how you think about that and and uh trading off you know I get to do it versus it'll come later well you know going\n\nback to the sort of UNL mindl sort of philosophical rationale for doing the first you know doing in the first place um the you know basically I sort of was thinking about this when I when I was a kid and um trying to find some meaning in life like what's the meaning of life and um I quite sort of sad about it actually when I was a teenager um and um and then um I read the HED guide thexy which basically said like the real the you know basically universe is the answer and you need figure out the questions so I think um you know that that's if I can help kind of figure out the questions uh then that I consider that to be very absolutely maybe we can 's a b fish right exactly okay uh now it's time for you and uh I'm going to go um we're going to alternate\n\nbetween questions from the audience and questions from the the U no Joan we're not we we won't okay just the audience okay um so it's your turn questions for youone um please come to the microphones that are in the uh in the aisles and there's somebody at this microphone go ahead thank you very much for appearing today uh two weeks ago the Los Angeles Times featured prominently on its front page a story in which it described many self-described Venture capitalists from this area who were enamored by a new and as yet unspecified technique of power generation it did not uh it was promised in the article I think was different than those demonstrated at three m Island chyl and Fukushima uh the uh I'd like to ask if you had uh what your critical thinking skills\n\nwould be when approached by people offering uh you to invest or become involved in uh new and undefined nuclear power techniques you know what they're talking about and two uh what you see as a future for nuclear power in our efforts to restore the Earth to the conditions that it might have existed more closely at the start of the you had to proceed sure um well I I actually am um I I I mean I think there's nothing wrong with nuclear power whether Vision or Fusion I think if a properly designed uh Vision power system is actually fine particularly if it's in an area that's not subject to natural disasters um so you know for example France has a lot of fion power um and that can that I think makes lot of s for um um but but for California it's more questionable\n\num or Japan um so then then um then then fusion um I I definitely think Fusion is a solvable problem um the the reason I sort of haven't done anything in um direct Fusion is that I I currently think and I may be wrong about this that that indirect fusion um from the big Fusion explosion in the sky called the sun is uh you know and having portable takes is is probably going to make the most things economically um and in the in the Norther in the high high latitudes in nor Northern Hemisphere you tend to have a lot of Hydro power so um that that that really helps solve the um you know how do you make power when it's dark problem or or in the middle of winter type thing so um I don't want to discarge people from pursuing Fusion but person thing I think the\n\neconomics are going to favor indirect Fusion of multiple pable Tes um at least to an overwhelming degree particularly when combined with uh batteries and um high voltage lines running East West and L South um I mean you can completely solve Earth's all the power need on Earth um with a with a fairly small uh percentage of the surface area um I mean for the United States you could take basically little a corner of Utah Nevada and power the entire United States um with solar power so I I think that's that's mostly how it will get solved the next so this is a bit of a followup on that uh solar power has been doubling um basically every 2 years and we all know that exponential growth is a powerful thing so we're only what seven doublings away from everything\n\nbeing powered by solar power and do you think that that doubling rate will will keep Pace I mean I I think it'll probably slow down um but but it's still going to be a high percentage growth rate every year um once you reach a certain percentage of solar into the grid you really need to add batteries in order to load level um and uh kind of cash power but um but solar combined with with batter is really you kind of like I said you can completely solve all of this power with just those those two things great that Victor yeah it's it's worth noting I think probably people aware of this but you get um it's there's one Gatt per square km of solar um energy solar power I'm Victor massive F ofio work um particularly fighting the carbon pollution and actually\n\nfull up on this battery question uh we tend to start understanding how powerful the carbon pollution is but uh the battery related technology and F takes has its own production c i was Wonder you could maybe share your thoughts on what the consequences and maybe a radiation recyle if that would be yeah well um all of the battery packs for Tesla are currently recycled um so the recycling centers in North America and Europe and and Asia um and it kind of makes sense because you can just think of the battery packs as really high quality ore um it's way better to mine a battery pack than rocks um so uh so it kind of makes sense to to recycle them economically um yeah um and that obviously reduces the the cost of production quite a bit um for the G Factory\n\nthat that we're building in Nevada uh that will have recycling built in so they we uh completely sort of you know close that cycle um and it will be um in the long term fully sustainably powered so solar wind and geothermal yeah and microphone hi I'm Jim croll from Arizona State University uh I was um listening to Dr Chris McKay another advocate of humans to Mars and he was talking about um when we do go to Mars uh if we find life either currently there or extinct we should uh consider removing human presence so we can allow that life to thrive um I was wondering what thoughts on that were well I it really doesn't seem like there's any life on on Mars I mean if they're on the surface at least um we're not seeing any sign of that um I think if we do find\n\nsome sign of it then we sure we need to understand um you know what it is and and try I try to Ure that we we don't extinguish it I mean that's uh that's important but I think um I think the reality is that there isn't any life on the surface of Mars um there may be uh microbial life deep underground uh where it's sort of shielded um from radiation and um from the cold um and uh yeah so that that's that's a possibility but in in that case I think anything we do on the surfice is really not going to have a big impact on the sub tring life um yeah thank you here again hi um with a decision coming out of cop 21 just a few days ago with the world now appearing to be on track to decarbonize the Energy System renewable energy and of course storage is going\n\nto become increasingly important and um likely the development will accelerate I'm really interested in what Tesla's doing on batteries that will help smooth the intermittent of um the renewable generation and would really like to hear your discussion of where you see Tesla going on battery storage for Renewables and generally the whole issue of storage for Renewables yeah well definitely this um B technology is super important to sustainable energy um what what we're doing with the the the big Factory and that we're buling in Nevada is is really trying to take uh economies of scale to the liit um so it's like the biggest Factory we could conceive of um in order to to maximize economies of scale um and then obviously there's the underlying technology\n\nitself um which there there will be I would say moderate improvements in the underlying technology um not giant but not not small but kind of medium um but then over time I would expect those those technology improvements to get better and better um from Tesla standpoint we're always interested in trying to figure out how to how to make it better um I I do think that batteries are one of the hottest technology problems out there um because there's so many constraints on creating a useful batter um it's it's really I mean so many super smart people have broken their pick on improving batteries uh so so usually ends up being on average like about a 5 to 8% Improvement per year in energy density um and economics um although I think we'll be able to improve\n\nthe economic element a lot more just by the economies of scale um but I anyone who's interested in in doing batteries I'd certainly encourage them to uh to research better batteries it's it's a super hard problem and a critical one to solve um what do you think are the main steps in a low carbon energy transition and in that vein what technologies um out there What technological developments do you find very interesting that you're not already working on things that aren't batteries or electric vehicles but that you think are cool areas for people to go into well I think electrification of Transport in general is important um so aircraft and boats um that that's very important um and um and then Heating and Cooling electrification of that um yeah I me\n\nI think um I mean the nucleus stuff could be could be quite interesting um but it would just have to sort of see how it competes against uh solar um but yeah and any anything which any form of energy generation or consumption which if you extrapolate into future um goes on for a very long time and still has the world being good I think we should just do that over here good morning Pisha Hoover from Purdue University um my question pertains to uh science access and energy within the global context um and I was wondering how you see any or all of your your companies and Ventures um trying to address the the inequity of science access or access to energy um or or what types of things that you're hoping to do um within that context to try and really expand\n\nthose resources um and make it accessible to everyone sure well um I mean as was mentioned earlier um Tesla just made all the patents open um and um uh Solar City is um actually uh going even a step further than that uh which is uh they're making the technology available um to um uh developing countries and and they're offering to have people come from those countries and actually sit in the factory and see how it's done so I think you know trying to be helpful in that respect um and uh but but I I do think that you know the internet is a great equalizer of access to information um the um you know this is this is maybe not talk about as much as it should be but you can learn anything if you have a $100 internet device you can just learn anything which\n\nis amazing compared to the Past um you don't need you don't need to access to a library um in just you can learn whatever you want for free really that's that's a pretty great part of the future that we're in right now on the end hi uh ke Park from T national uh Tesla has done a great job creating an infrastructure for electric cars in the country so far but I don't think electric cars themselves solve green greenhouse gas problems because we're still generating greenhouse gases from and natural power plant natural gas power plants which are not as efficient as U gasoline cars so how did you originally Envision the future source of electricity and how do you envision it now yeah actually um it's it's worth noting that uh even if the grid was completely\n\npowered by uh coal and natural gas um electric cars uh would still generate less CO2 um even when you extra when you take it all the way to the power plant level um the the reason for that is that uh when you're not constrained by mass and volume you can make the um the efficiency of energy extraction much better um in a power plant than you can in a car um so if you take say um like natural gas power plant from from G it's it's over 60% efficient um so take the s 60% efficient in generating electricity so it's really good um whereas typically a gasoline powered car over the drive cycle will be less than 20% efficient um and um and that's because you know the the big um natural gas turbine is it it can be really heavy it can be really bulky um and you\n\ncan take the the waste heat and then run a steam turbine um and uh you know get even more energy out so your efficiency is just fundamentally much better and so even when you take into account the transmission losses and the charging losses uh you're still way far ahead with electric cars than you are with gasline cars so even you can take this do this with any Source fuel coal uh anything um you're you're just always going to win um even if everything's um powered by by CO2 sources um then then of course everything isn't powered by two sources uh you have hydro ummal uh solar wind um and as was pointed out by one of the earlier question is the um growth of solar is very dramatic um so the you know the percentage of the grid that is sustainable energy\n\nis increasing over time um and when we add batteries to the mix uh that will that will further increase the rate so I think I think we're we're on a we're headed in a positive direction it's just a question of how long it will take to get there in fact like one of the things I really emphasized in the par tool was that uh it it is a certainty that we will move to a sustainable energy economy um because the alternative would be would be able to mine all of the carbon based fuels from the ground burn them um and then you either move to a sustainable economy or the entire economy collapses because then it doesn't have any energy so we know for sure that we will move to a sustainable energy economy the question is just when and and how many you know billions\n\nof tons of of CO2 are uh in the atmosphere versus in the ground that that's really the only question is is um what what what PPM number will we you know yeah exctly so you know so given that we know we will end up uh which is the sustainable energy economy it seems like we should we should terminate this experiment as soon as possible why not I'm sorry but we don't have time for any more questions um when I was walking in one of my friends uh was telling me how excited he was to be here and I wrote down what he said um because I think it's something we all share he said it's such a rare thing to see a person devote themselves to coming up with real solutions to the biggest problems and then doing it thank you so much thanks time thank all of you for joining\n\nus today please come back later on uh in in about an hour uh to hear from France Cordova the um the uh head of the National Science Foundation"},"languages":["en"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WwFa3nk1V0I"},{"id":"universite-paris-1-pantheon-sorbonne-2015-12-02","type":"interview","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BMskI6G9ty0","title":"Universite Paris 1 Pantheon-Sorbonne","titles":{"en":"Universite Paris 1 Pantheon-Sorbonne","de":"Universite Paris 1 Pantheon-Sorbonne","fr":"Universite Paris 1 Pantheon-Sorbonne"},"date":"2015-12-02","summary":"A conversation with students on sustainability, climate and the future of transport during the COP21 conference.","text":"hi good evening everybody first of all uh I'm Nadia jakobi I'm the vice president of this university ponon soan university and first of all I would like to thank you all for joining us for coming here and also to apologize to uh the others who couldn't join because we were fully booked very quickly actually when we launched the invitation uh they can follow uh the live stream if they are not here and you can find the video tomorrow morning on YouTube so we are pretty well organized actually well uh actually today is a very special day for our University uh we are extremely proud and I'm particularly very proud to welcome tonight someone very special someone who is probably one of the most influential person of the 20th and 21st centuries someone who is\n\ndefinitely the most creative mind of his generation he is the co-founder and CEO of a revolutionary car manufacturer challenging the mainstream car industry but is is also the founder and CEO of a tremendously Innovative company actually the first private company to launch and return a spacecraft from orbit and last but not least also the chairman of the larger solar energy provider in the US through his different activities he is uh facing environmental social and economic challenges it deals with breaking projects on diverse issues like green Mobility clean and renewable sources of energy space exploration so on and so forth by the way among the latest news here done here in France in Europe you probably heard that yesterday was inaugurated a new solar\n\nfirm in the Sou France something which is definitely or actually the biggest of Europe now selling power at a cost well below the cost of power from the new generation of nuclear reactors and able to provide energy power for more than 50,000 households but also and moreover currently Paris is uh welcoming the UN climate change conference which faces the high take of how to manage with the climatic disruption the aim of the cup 21 is keeping warming below the two degrees Celsius compar with the pre-industrial Hera and for that the objective of the cup is to build a Paris climate alliens a universal climate agreement committing everyone so in that context who better than Elan mask for conversation with you please welcome Elon Musk thank you all right all\n\nright well it's thank you for having me it's great to be here um uh Paris is one of my favorite places in the world and and it's actually the uh on the first trip that I went out of South Africa uh Paris that that was where I went and when I when I was a little kid well my my parents brought me when I was like six years old um so I've L Paris ever since um so thank you for having me what I'm going to talk about today is just in general terms uh what is needed to address the the the climate crisis um and this is a thing that if if if we if we do what actions can we take that that will accelerate the transition out of uh the fossil fuel era um so where we are today is U let's see if this thing's working maybe not okay all right we have the we have the present\n\nera where we have the the carbon cycle and my apologies if if some of you already know all about this but I think some of these things are maybe not as obvious as they may seem so there's a certain amount of carbon that is circulating through the environment so it's going into the air being absorbed by and then getting absorbed by plants and animals um and then going back into the air and this this carbon is just circulating on the surface um and this this is fine and it's been doing that for Millions hundreds of millions of years uh the the thing that's changed is that we've added something to the mix so this is what I would call the the sort of the turd in the punch ball um so the we added all this extra carbon to to the Caron cycle and the net result\n\nis that uh the the Caron in the ocean's atmosphere is growing over time it's much more than can be absorbed by the ecosystem it's it's really it's really quite simple we're taking uh billions of tons of carbon that's been buried for hundreds of millions of years years um and is not part of the Caron cycle taking it from deep underground and adding it to the Caron cycle the result is that a steady increase in the the Caron in the atmosphere and in the Ocean Oceans which doesn't look like much if you look at it on this chart but when looked at in the context of of History it actually looks like this so the the carbon P million has really been bouncing around the 300 level for around 10 million years um and then the last few hundred years it went into a\n\nvertical climb this this is the the essence of the problem this is very unusual um and and a and a very very extreme threat as you can see from from this rate of growth then this is accompanied by a temperature increase as one would expect and uh and and and this temperature increase you people talk about two degrees or or 3 degrees it's important to appreciate just how sensitive the the climate actually is to uh to temperature and it's important to look at it in terms of absolute temperature not um in degrees celsius relative to zero we need to say what is the temperature change relative to absolute zero that's how the universe thinks about temperature that's how physics thinks about temperature it's it's relative to absolute zero so for small changes\n\nresult in in huge effects uh so New York City Under Ice would be minus 5° New York city under water would be plus 5° but looked at in in a as a percentage relative to absolute zero it's only a plusus 2% change so the the sensitivity of the climate is extremely extremely high um we've Amplified this sensitivity by building our cities right on the on the coastline and most most people live very close to to the ocean some countries of course that are they're very low Ling and would be completely uh underwater in in a in a climate crisis so the the we've essentially designed civilization to be super sensitive to climate change um and the the the important thing to appreciate is that we are going to exit the fossil fuels era so it it is it is inevitable that\n\nwe will exit the phosph era because at a certain point we will simply run out of uh carbon to mine and burn so the question is really when when do we exit the era not not if the goal is to exit the era as quickly as possible that means we need to move from from the old goal uh with a pre-industrial go goal which was to move from uh choing down forests and uh killing lots of whales um that the old goal was to move from from chopping wood and and killing whales to uh fossil fuels which actually in that context was a good thing but the new goal is to move to a sustainable energy future and we want to use things like uh Hydro solar wind geothermal nucleus is also a good option in um places like France which don't aren't subject to natural disasters um and\n\nand we want to use energy sources that will be good for for a billion years so how do we accelerate this transition away from fossil fuels to a sustainable era and and and and what happens if we don't so if we if we wait uh and if we delay the change um the best case the best case is is is simply delaying that inevitable transition to sustainable energy so this is the this is the best case if we don't take action now um at the risk of being repetitive it's there's going to be no choice in the long term to move to sustainable energy it's it's tological we have to have sustainable energy or we'll simply run out of the other one so the the only thing we gain by slowing down the transition is is is just slowing it down it doesn't doesn't make it not occur\n\nit just slows it down the worst case however is more displacement and destruction than all the wars in history combined okay this is these are these are the best worst case scenarios so then we have you about 3% of scientists that believe in the best case about 97% that believe in the worst case this is why I call it the dumbest experiment in history ever why would you do this so the the reason that the the the transition is delayed or or or is happening slowly is because there is a hidden subsidy on all carbon producing activity in a healthy Market if you have say 10 EUR of benefit and four of har to societ the profit would be6 just sort of you know makes OB obvious sense this is where the incentives are aligned with a good future this is not this is\n\nnot the case today um but if you have the incentives aligned then the forcing function towards a a good future towards a sustainable energy future will be powerful in an unhealthy Market you have your 10 of benefit you have your four years but the four doesn't isn't t so you have untaxed negative externality this is basically economics 101 so you have basically unreasonable profit and a forcing function to uh to do carbon emitting activity because this this this cost to society is not being paid the net result is 35 gigatons of carbon per year into the atmosphere so the this is analogous to not paying for garbage collection um and it's it's not as though we we should say in the case of garbage have a garbage-free society it's very difficult to have a\n\ngarbage free Society but it's just important that people pay for the garbage collection so we need to go from having untaxed negative externality and which is effectively a hidden carbon subsidy of enormous size uh 5.\n\n3 trillion dollar a year according to the IMF every year um we need to move away from this uh and and and and have a carbon tax so but this is being this is being fought quite hard by the uh the carbon producers um and they're using tactics that are very similar to what the uh cigarette industry or the toac industry used for many years um they would they would take the approach of having of of even though the overwhelming scientific consensus was that uh smoking cigarettes was bad for you uh they would find a few scientists that would disagree and then they would say look scientists disagree so that that's essentially how they would try to trick the public into thinking that smoking is not that bad the solution obviously is to remove the subsidy U so\n\nthat means we need to have a a Caron tax and to make it sort of something which is neither a left nor a right issue we should make it probably a revenue neutral carbon tax so this would be a case of increasing taxes on carbon but then reducing taxes in in other places so maybe there would be a reduction in sales tax or vat and an increase in carbon tax so that uh only those using high levels of carbon would pay an increased tax and moreover this I mean in order to give uh industry time to react uh this could be a phased in approach so that maybe it takes 5 years before the the carbon taxes are very high so that means that only companies that don't take action today will suffer in 5 years but there needs to be a clear message from from government in this\n\nregard the the because the fundamental problem is the rules today incent people to create carbon and this is madness and what have you incent will happen that that's why you know we we're seeing little very little effect uh thus far and depending upon how what what action we take will will will drive the the Caron number to either extreme or or moderate levels um I I think it's pretty much a given that that the two degree C increase will occur the question is whether it's going to be much more than that not if there will be a two degree increase um so the then the question is so what can you do I would say whenever you have the opportunity talk to your politicians ask them to enact a carbon tax we we have to fix the unpriced externality I talk to your\n\nfriends about it and fight the propaganda from the carbon industry so that that's the basic message I have and I'm happy to take questions so we have we have some mics in the audience being passed around do you want to raise your hand and we'll give you a mic hi sir I'm pass from the master of inter Innovation and Technology man management and my question is what do you say to those who think there are more important concerns right now than climate change and global warming sure um I mean there's definitely there are many important issues in the world um this is not the only important issue um but it is I think the thing that will have the biggest um negative effect on Humanity if we do not address it um I mean based on on the the projections that we're\n\nseeing right now these are like I'd say arguably best case projections we're going to see significant rises in temperature and sea level um the the net result is if if we don't take action uh we could see you know anywhere from 5 to 10% maybe maybe more of the land mass absorbed by water uh which would which is maybe not doesn't sound like that much but about a third of humanity lives right on the on the Coastline or in lowline countries so we' be talking about maybe 2 billion people being displaced um and and their home is being destroyed and their country is being gone so I think we should take action hello sir thank you for coming here uh my question is um I'm PhD student in marketing and what I study is what motivates people to participate in challenges\n\nnow you have created a company which creates challenges which brought which brought a rocket to moon and back if I if I'm not wrong my question would be do you think a challenge um maybe not moon and back right yeah not quite getting there getting there my question to you would be do you think that incentives which is the biggest incentive to use monetary incentives are the best possible incentive to get people to participate and solve the world's biggest problems or do you think people can do it um in order to just help everyone on the planet and make it better so is money the only way to um ask people to get in and solve challenges or do you have other ways to actually motivate people to participate um I I I think there there's definitely a philanthropic\n\nelement um and there's the you know I think there's I think in general uh people want to do the right thing and they want to do what's good um the uh the issue we have right now is that the the rules fundamentally favor the bad outcome so when you're fighting for the good outcome and it's an uphill battle um it it it's just it's just slower um so with respect to to climate change it's just critical that the government and the government is the setter of rules the government decides what rules companies will will play by and if we currently have a system which uh massively incense bad behavior so e even if most people don't do the bad behavior some people will still do the bad behavior yeah I mean money and prices are prices are basically just an information\n\nmechanism they're just they're just basically they tell you that it's it I mean money's mostly um an information mechanism for lab labor allocation and for you know to and sort of tells companies what to do so it's just critical this is why it's so critical to be that action be taken at a government level because the government is the one they're setting the rules of the game and and it's just crazy to have the rules of the game favor uh a bad outcome question up top there there's a question here hi el musk uh my name is Michelle I'm an undergrad in economics here at peris sbon uh P sban my question is um there are some new studies on um removing um carbon dioxide dioxide from the atmosphere and burrowing deep uh in the ocean do you think it's um a sustainable\n\nsolution and why thank you you know I'm I'm not aware of any uh carbon sequestration or carbon storage system that is that that that works um and works economically um and and I definitely wouldn't want to I we wouldn't want to store the carbon in the ocean because of possible acidification um you know as the as the carbon as the CO2 levels rise in the atmosphere uh some of that is absorbed um into the ocean becomes carbonic acid um and a lot of the shellfish in particular are super sensitive to changes in in pH level um so I I would definitely or against uh trying to store it in the ocean there potentially you could try to store some of it in giant underground Caverns but the the sheer quantity we're talking about I I don't think can be stored anywhere\n\num there's just there's just no nowhere to store it yeah question hello sir uh I'm studying management at paron and I would know how long do you do Tesla Motors intends to use lithium batteries knowing that it is not a limited resource um well actually I think so so lithium in terms of energy storage lithium I think is is definitely the future and will be for a long time um there's actually not a shortage of lithium on Earth uh so lithium is you know number three on the periodic table it's actually extremely common any salty water has has lithium um so there definitely won't be a lithium constraint on um energy storage for batteries um so I feel pretty confident that um one could make enough batteries to store all the energy that the world needs with\n\nthe current resources that are that are available yeah hello my name is idin vadi I am PhD student in project and infrastructure Finance in sbon first of all I would like to thank you for your latest product uh po wall which to me it gives to the citizens to have the power to select the way they can uh consumed energy I can spend few thousand dollars to buy a uh some solar panel and the power wall and uh to be free of uh uh any offer in the market my question is uh about the the larg scale storage systems you have designed have you received any serious involvement from governments and uh large companies to develop such uh uh such infrastructure or do you have any serious plans within within the United States or maybe in other countries uh for for large\n\nenergy storage yeah we do actually we've got a number of um uh very very big storage um projects underway with utilities around the world um so both in the US and outside um the the thing that's interesting about the energy storage uh situation is that even even without uh Renewables there's a there's a huge potential to make the energy grid more efficient and to be able to shut down the the the heaviest polluting power plants um because the the energy consumption through the day usually uh changes by a factor of two or more so and since with the exception of of hydroelectric you can't store the power it has to be available in real time the world has somewhere between two to three times as many power plants as it actually needs so if you can buffer the\n\npower with uh big big stationary battery packs um then uh you can actually shut down the the the worst half of the uh power plants in the world so I think that's that's sort of a very exciting thing that I think a lot of people don't appreciate um and I think it's it's going to make make a big difference you hi sir I'm Camy from the master degree Innovation and Technology man management and uh my question is do you believe that in the ability of government international government to prevent climate change and what would you suggest um yeah absolutely I think I think this fundamentally is a government issue um so it's it's it's the as as mentioned the government is the one that sets the rules of the game that they set um you know how companies are rewarded\n\nfinancially and so in the absence of government uh actually establishing some kind of a common TX or potentially a CA trade on carbon um which I was very excited to see that China announced earlier this year that they were going to do that um unless the government does something to fix the market mechanism um the it it's it's we're fundamentally going to have a very slow transition um out of the fossil fuel era so it's it's critical that um government action changed the incentive structure um yeah and and that that' be very clear and so it's like I think hopefully what comes out of this out of these the climate talks in Paris is uh that that the governments of the world say that they put their foot down and they say 5 years from now let's say there has\n\nto be a huge change um and um and and that companies know for sure that this is going to happen um and if they if they do then the the investment decisions they make today will will will bear fruit in five years so the um for for heavy industrial applications or or for heavy industry you you kind of know what the world's going to look like in 5 years if you know what PL what what uh What factories are being built today because if you build a really big Factory to get to full production takes about 5 Years From from the start and so since we know that today there are very few uh sustainable energy projects at large scale that are that are being built um we know that unless something changes very quickly um the sustainable energy will still be in a bad\n\nsituation 5 years from now so um you know I mean there there are companies like you know at Tesla and Solar City were quite ideologically motivated um but um but that's that's relatively unusual so hian my name is Thomas um what do you think about people who are saying then rather than trying to save the Earth we should try to colonize other planets well I think we should do both yeah yeah I think we um you know the I mean my sort of personal ideology is is kind of split right now between trying to be helpful on earth related stuff which is sustainable energy and then trying to you know Advance space technology so we can establish a self- sustaining City on Mars but I do think it's important to be a multiplet not just one planet but another planet um\n\nso the and and the overarching goal is to minimize existential risk you know so if we look out look out into the future um and say what are the things that pose a risk to to humanity to what what what what's what is going to make the future good versus bad um and I think if obviously if we have a sustainable energy future that's good um and the faster that comes the better and then if we're a multiplet species that gives us much more resilience um against Extinction event um and also would be a really great and fun adventure hi um my name is jeda and U I wanted to know in your opinion what would the future will look like in term in energy sources and how soon could we use nuclear fusion efficiently thank you sure um well the the thing to appreciate about\n\nthe um indust the sort of installed industrial base uh is that it's it's really enormous like the number of um petrol and diesel cars on the road um and trucks is about two billion um you know there are sort of hundreds of thousands of of of power plants using fossil fuels so the the even if we if today we went super hard in the direction of Renewables it would still take a long time um so I think we we it's before we see significant change is probably 10 or 20 years um and uh and that's there's a lot that can happen in 10 or 20 years of course um so uh the the faster we can bring that date forward the better yeah um hi uh my name is Natasha I'm from the master program of sustainable development I have two questions first one because I want to be optimistic\n\nthat we are going to switch um at some point to be completely sustainable and to use renewable energies um do you think that there are going to be a gap between developing in developed countries that and When developing countries will be able to reach developed ones switching into sustainable and renewable energies and second one would be uh sustainability of nuclear energy in your opinion thank you sure um and I actually I should answer the nuclear question because that was posed just just before this um I actually think that uh like nuclear fision um um if it's in a location that is not subject to natural disasters um like like in the case of France there's a very high percentage of nuclear I think that's actually a good thing um obviously you don't\n\nwant to have nuclear fision power plants in places that are subject to natural disasters um because that obviously can go wrong um so um and and so I think fision is a good is a good approach uh Fusion is also interesting um and it's exciting to see what's happening with the iter project uh which is a fusion plant that's being built in France um I I I do think Fusion is is a is a feasible technology I think we can definitely make fusion work um the but but it is it is a it is kind of a far off technology so to to make fusion at the power plant level work is probably I don't know 30 years away um and um and a lot of lot of effort um so the that's why in in at least you know for now and I think maybe even in the long term I'm a proponent of using the big\n\nfusion power plant in the sky called the Sun so that the sun is a giant Fusion explosion and it it shows up every day and if we have uh photov voltaics for solar panels we can capture that Fusion Energy um it also needs to be stored um in batteries so we can use it at night um and then we we want to have um high power lines to transfer uh solar energy from one place to another so um but the important thing to appreciate is like if if let's say the only thing we had was was solar energy that that was the only power source uh you could if you just took a small section of of Spain you could power all of Europe it's it's a very small amount of area that's actually needed to generate the um electricity we need to power civilization or in the case of the US\n\nlike a little corner of Nevada or Utah Power the entire United States so good evening uh you you do have a very impressive and uh stimulating career uh you succeeded in business while staying true to yourself and beliefs so I would like to know what advice you would give to a young entrepreneur uh who is aware of climate change issues and maybe uh what was the best and the worst advice you are given about that thank you okay um well I think if somebody's um wants to do something entrepreneurial in energy um I mean either either you want to start a company or you want to join a company that's doing something um sustainable um and it could be you know there's there's obviously wind solar um and uh the geothermal there's tidal power um so I would just say\n\nlook at companies that are trying to do sustainable energy and decide if you want to join them or or if you want to start one um so um I I generally wouldn't you know starting companies in in either the automotive Arena or the energ like Energy Arena is like quite a tricky business I mean when when when we first started uh Tesla and Solar City uh we thought they would fail we thought and Tesla in particular we thought probably we have uh maybe 10% chance of success so it's um you know particularly particularly cars uh the you know it's it's it's hard to stay alive as a car company honestly I was like it must be one of the worst risk adjusted returns um yeah hi uh my name is Benjamin and I was wondering what do you wish for in terms of international uh\n\nrules and politics uh to facilitate the implementation of your power wall battery well um it's really the what I've been saying here is that the that um the governance of the world need to price the the externality they need to put put a profer price on carbon and then automatically the right Behavior will occur so this is by by putting a price on carbon we we're essentially fixing um a pricing error in the market market system so I mean most of the times when government governments intervene in markets it's usually increases the pricing error um but in but when when the pricing error is a huge um tragedy the common issue like we have with carbon capacity uh it's critical that the government put a price on it because you just can't go wrong by put it\n\nby you and any price you put on it will be more right than than close to zero which it is right now um so this is this is by far the most important thing if we want to accelerate the transition uh to sustainable energy um there are other less effective ways by providing incentives and subsidies to say electric cars or or solar um that that is that is a sometimes more politically expedient way to do it but the best way is just to directly fix the pricing error by tax and carbon and and this is I like if you ask most economists they would say the same thing so this is sort of um well well known in obviously in the economics World um elen uh could you say a few words on artificial intelligence because you know I think I I read or you you you know you were\n\nquoted among with others Bill Gates and Peter T and so forth saying that you know you were afraid of the that one day an hyper you know intelligent machine would destroy humanity and uh you know are you investing a lot into artificial intelligence with you know because are we wasting a lot of energy because we're using you know with not being smart or with not having smart objects and so forth and how do you reconcile the two if you know there's a there's long time you know longterm major risk for us um yeah I mean definitely want to stay stay on the uh you know sustainable energy topic um because it's it's easy to get get derailed on too many other things but um yeah I mean I think I just think we should be cautious about the Advent of AI um and um a\n\nlot of the people that I know that are developing AI are too convinced that that the only outcome is good um and we need to consider potentially uh less good outcomes um and to you know to be careful and and and and really to monitor what's happening and make sure the public is aware of what's happening okay uh I'm Gabrielle Ron from uh we I stood Innovation here in serbon I have a question about fundraising specifically about the fundraising process regarding what Tesla does uh what is the most difficult thing to uh raise funds in the beginning not now because now you you have a welldeveloped project and the worldwide knows you and knows Tesla also but in the beginning about uh the the the industry that you are working about the this kind of energy what\n\nis the most difficult thing to uh find uh investors and also to convince investors and keep what you thought in the beginning uh throughout the development of the company um sure um well in in the beginning um in the beginning of Tesla and and Sol City I mean I thought the the probability of success was was so low that I I provided all of the money so all of the money was just came from me personally um because I didn't want to ask people other investors for money if I thought we were going to die because I thought I thought we would so um so I invested um you know entirely the money that I got from PayPal um all of all of that got invested into Tesla Soul City and and SpaceX um and and even then we we only narrowly survived so um you know in 200 2008\n\nfor Tesla we actually closed the financing round on Christmas Eve uh 2008 um it was the last hour of the last day that it was possible um and um you know this is one of the tricky things with with something like a car company is like there there there are good times and bad times and and and when the economy goes south then that's when things get really really tricky for a Manufacturing Company um so yeah I mean in in the US for example like the only two car companies that haven't gone bankrupt in history are Ford and Tesla that's it um everybody else is bankrupt or in bankrupt at some point you know General motives Chrysler and and others so um so I think we we just made it by the skin of our teeth these days last few years it's really i' say you the\n\nlast two years is is when Tesla's achieved a level where um it's not facing uh imminent death um I mean even as recently as as early 2013 we were operating with maybe one to two weeks of money uh hi uh my name is Pascal and I would uh like to ask you uh don't you think that we need a deeper reflection um about uh our Dynamic of society um because um all the solution that you talking talking about is about uh efficiency but don't you think that we need to think differently and consume less because right now AIC is about uh confronting problems and going always in the um same direction and trying to find the technological innovation to save us yeah I mean I I do think we we should be um watch our consumption we shouldn't be wasteful um but um but but even\n\nif we um are re really uh conservative in our use of energy and are very effective with Recycling and all sorts of things um that that that delays the TR the need to move to a sustainable future but it doesn't eliminate it um like if if we don't have sustainable energy Generation Um that that there's no way that we can conserve our way to to a good future um we we have to fundamentally make uh sustainable energy available um I mean on the on the plus side that there's actually an enormous amount of of sustainable energy um and the um the energy from the Sun per per square kilometer is a gwatt so if you just had a 1 kilometer by 1 kilm um array of solar panels it would be generating well it would be receiving a gwatt of solar energy then at at a 20% efficiency\n\nyou'd be generating 200 megawatts um so uh we can actually generate way more energy like probably I don't know 100 times more energy than we actually need to operate civilization just with solar panels so we just we just need to fix the incentive structure of the world to make sure that that that that companies are are incented towards sustainable versus unsustainable technology this is fundamentally the problem hello my name is Lily and I'm a PhD physics student a year University but I graduated here so I have three questions so the first one is sort of political because because you mentioned it you said that uh scientists sometimes they uh diverge they have different opinions and it's probably yes on anything yeah and that's also probably because sometimes\n\nthey are financed by different corporations sure and uh so you said we should stop the propaganda we should uh uh try to ask the politicians to set the rules so that uh we will go in a better Direction you know not climate you know global warming um but uh so that probably goes against uh the interest of oil companies but as well probably the governments themselves when they have a financial interest so I was thinking perhaps your uh own um I mean perhaps we could have lobbyists ourselves so that would be uh perhaps an efficient way to to have uh those rules put into uh you know so the these rules the carbon tax would be applied so that's my first question uh because also you know France is one of the U main importer of nuclear energy so you know trying\n\nto ask them for a tax car uh carbon tax when themselves uh are the the people who are making the most money from importing you know nuclear energy from power plants that are in France we li to one question per person for now I thinkk so so the other question was you know renewable energy that' be great but it's kind kind of intermittent you know like solar uh sure solar energy um okay that's great but perhaps we need to store it with perhaps with lithium batteries but uh we we want we want to use like uh um sure yeah I see the last one was the fossil fuel area I mean yeah I mean is it not going to go to an end on its own because it's not an unlimited resource right maybe pick one out of the three questions Elon sure um yeah um I mean I I I think it's\n\nyou each government should just they they should do the right thing without waiting without depending upon what other governments are doing like the I think that's you know there's too much in these CL climate talks of of countries like trying to only do things if another country does it um I mean if some if it's if it's the right if it's the right thing for the future a country should just do it and don't worry about what other countries are doing just do the right thing um and many of the countries are so it's it's really just you know we just want to encourage as many governments as possible to change the rules to incent a good future that this is fundamentally what what what has to happen or we will substantially delay the transition away from cin\n\nso um and and yeah so that that's that's what has to happen um and um and and you know Tesla and so study that my companies are very tiny like we're tiny tiny companies so the in order for there to be a big move uh towards sustainability um the the the giant companies have to know that that that that is what the governments are demanding for the future and that's what the people are demanding for the future so at the end of the day if you know the governments respond to to to to to popular pressure like if if you tell politicians that that your vote depends on them doing the right thing with climate change that that makes a difference so if if they're having sort of a a fundraising event or a den of party or whatever and at every fundraising event and\n\nevery den of party somebody's asking them hey what are you doing about the climate then they will take action so I think you have tremendous power you you have the power to make the change we can't we we can't let me tell you we definitely can't beat the oil and gas industry on lobbyists okay this is that that would be a losing battle um you know the you know uh Exxon makes more profit in a year than the value of the entire solar industry in the United States so it's it's like if you take every Solar Company in the United States it's less than exxon's profit in one year there's no way you can win on money it's impossible good evening sir I have just one small question but very actual uh do you think the cup 21 will be a success you know I I am I I have\n\nI don't have any real basis for this but I have a good feeling about it um I I do have a good feeling about it so I I think well it's going to be degrees of success so it's sort of like um like for example like the Copenhagen was was terrible like nothing nothing came out of Copenhagen the Copenhagen CL climate talks I mean it was basically I think there was a net increase in global warming as a result of that one um unfortunately um in the case of the Paris talks I I think there will be some positive movement and it's a question of what degree um and I think we need to send a clear message to the the negotiating teams and to the politicians that this time there needs to be significant change this time it something needs to happen there's a question all\n\nthe way up on the top hello and thank you for coming my name is Maria and I'm a student of international relations here my question to you is this we know that climate is a global a common good so how do we get countries with economies relying heavily on fossil fuels on board with climate change which uh like how do we get those who have the most to lose on board thank you um I I think I think we just need to turn that argument around and say like look this this is a common good um and uh if if if we if if countries don't take action that they all will share in in a bad future so uh that they need that everyone needs to take action and and care about what what the future is going to hold um and lead by example um so and even countries that that are quite\n\ndependent on on fossil fuels um if they just change their tax structure they can they can move away from that in in a in a way that's not super disruptive to the economy um it's really just a question of collecting like the same amount of taxes but but weighted towards uh things that we that's that U people believe are most likely to be bad instead of things that are most likely to be good um and we do this already in you know in in uh in our tax code we we tax alcohol and cigarettes much more than we tax fruits and vegetables it's just sort of the sensible things sensible thing to do and nobody you know you don't and you don't hear you know countries saying well we make lots of fruit you know we make lots of fruits and vegetables so like we we want low\n\ntaxes or we make lots of Alcohol Tobacco we want you know lower taxes like that's a silly debate that it's gone um and and I think the same thing applies to to carbon emissions just just adjust the tax code and the right thing will happen over time and if if it's graduated over time and you know it starts off small and become significant in the future then even if you're heavily dependent on cin today the that that that that message of of seeing what's going to happen in the future will have a huge impact on uh on the way that that any given country's economy works so um so so they will then become not dependent on cin because of the incentive structure so I really don't think they have anything to lose here and anything to lose by taking action and a\n\nlot to lose by not taking action we have time for maybe two or three more questions so there's one right here hi uh my question is about batteries so electric B batteries today especially lithium ion have a significant carbon footprint and potential impact on both the environment and our health and the environmental impact moves away from consumables and to how the way how we produce and how we store the waste that comes from it so uh the Gap with fossil fuels might not be as wide as we think so my question how do you respond to this and how do you see this evolving in the next years um so I'm not sure I totally understand that question could you say that again yeah basically uh the the impact on the environment of uh today our ways of electrical batteries\n\nlithium the production of lithium ion batteries and how you equate this with fossil fuel and its impact as it's more about the production and how we use the waste and how we store the waste and so how do you see this how is this going to be optimized in the next years or is this going to change yeah well the important thing is like once you once you've built a battery um then at the end of life of the battery you can recycle those components so it's it's a it's it's something that um you know has no long-term or negligible long-term impact on the carbon cycle um because you you essentially um you get the sort of the lithium nickel Cobalt um and um and you create create the battery you create essentially get those materials once and then you recycle them\n\nforever um so uh I I think the the it's really a negligible impact for for for batteries on the environment um and uh yeah um and and as compared to carbon producing Mining and buring um billions of tons of carbon every year uh which which um effectively permanently from from a human standpoint affects the carbon the carbon uh content of the oceans and atmosphere so yeah um it's it's really we're talking orders of magnitude difference between uh fossil fuels and batteries like not not even on the same scale okay then the last one uh hello so my question is um taking into consideration that technology now is at some of a Breaking Point uh it is Advanced but not so Advanced to pass uh to the sustainable clean energy how do you see this integration of clean\n\nenergy in for long term in the future step by step maybe how do I see the integration how do I see us getting to a sustainable energy future yes yes how uh will uh will the clean energy integrate into into a society thinking into consideration that technology isn't Advanced uh sure well I mean I I I expect um you know all transport to go fully electric over time with the ironic exception of rockets um and uh and then all uh energy production to go sustainable over time um this will take this will take a long time many decades um but um you know the way it'll manif itself is by people having batteries in their homes or at the utility substation um and by driving um you know electric vehicles um and having electric planes but um as I said that this is this\n\nis going to be quite a very slow transition um because the incentive structure is so biased against sustainable energy so um in fact even I think even if there's quite a strong action by government uh as a result of of the the climate talks in Paris I think it's still going to be um a transition that's measured in decades so it will be it will be a slow a slow transition um and um and and the fundamental question is H how do we accelerate that transition that that's the real question here um what actions can we take that would accelerate a transition to a good future um and that's why I'm so so harping on this notion of a a revenue neutral carbon tax I think that's something that that every country can Implement um and it can be graduated and phased in\n\nover time and this is this will be by far the most effective thing uh for accelerating that transition to a good future okay please all right well thank you everyone all right","textByLang":{"en":"hi good evening everybody first of all uh I'm Nadia jakobi I'm the vice president of this university ponon soan university and first of all I would like to thank you all for joining us for coming here and also to apologize to uh the others who couldn't join because we were fully booked very quickly actually when we launched the invitation uh they can follow uh the live stream if they are not here and you can find the video tomorrow morning on YouTube so we are pretty well organized actually well uh actually today is a very special day for our University uh we are extremely proud and I'm particularly very proud to welcome tonight someone very special someone who is probably one of the most influential person of the 20th and 21st centuries someone who is\n\ndefinitely the most creative mind of his generation he is the co-founder and CEO of a revolutionary car manufacturer challenging the mainstream car industry but is is also the founder and CEO of a tremendously Innovative company actually the first private company to launch and return a spacecraft from orbit and last but not least also the chairman of the larger solar energy provider in the US through his different activities he is uh facing environmental social and economic challenges it deals with breaking projects on diverse issues like green Mobility clean and renewable sources of energy space exploration so on and so forth by the way among the latest news here done here in France in Europe you probably heard that yesterday was inaugurated a new solar\n\nfirm in the Sou France something which is definitely or actually the biggest of Europe now selling power at a cost well below the cost of power from the new generation of nuclear reactors and able to provide energy power for more than 50,000 households but also and moreover currently Paris is uh welcoming the UN climate change conference which faces the high take of how to manage with the climatic disruption the aim of the cup 21 is keeping warming below the two degrees Celsius compar with the pre-industrial Hera and for that the objective of the cup is to build a Paris climate alliens a universal climate agreement committing everyone so in that context who better than Elan mask for conversation with you please welcome Elon Musk thank you all right all\n\nright well it's thank you for having me it's great to be here um uh Paris is one of my favorite places in the world and and it's actually the uh on the first trip that I went out of South Africa uh Paris that that was where I went and when I when I was a little kid well my my parents brought me when I was like six years old um so I've L Paris ever since um so thank you for having me what I'm going to talk about today is just in general terms uh what is needed to address the the the climate crisis um and this is a thing that if if if we if we do what actions can we take that that will accelerate the transition out of uh the fossil fuel era um so where we are today is U let's see if this thing's working maybe not okay all right we have the we have the present\n\nera where we have the the carbon cycle and my apologies if if some of you already know all about this but I think some of these things are maybe not as obvious as they may seem so there's a certain amount of carbon that is circulating through the environment so it's going into the air being absorbed by and then getting absorbed by plants and animals um and then going back into the air and this this carbon is just circulating on the surface um and this this is fine and it's been doing that for Millions hundreds of millions of years uh the the thing that's changed is that we've added something to the mix so this is what I would call the the sort of the turd in the punch ball um so the we added all this extra carbon to to the Caron cycle and the net result\n\nis that uh the the Caron in the ocean's atmosphere is growing over time it's much more than can be absorbed by the ecosystem it's it's really it's really quite simple we're taking uh billions of tons of carbon that's been buried for hundreds of millions of years years um and is not part of the Caron cycle taking it from deep underground and adding it to the Caron cycle the result is that a steady increase in the the Caron in the atmosphere and in the Ocean Oceans which doesn't look like much if you look at it on this chart but when looked at in the context of of History it actually looks like this so the the carbon P million has really been bouncing around the 300 level for around 10 million years um and then the last few hundred years it went into a\n\nvertical climb this this is the the essence of the problem this is very unusual um and and a and a very very extreme threat as you can see from from this rate of growth then this is accompanied by a temperature increase as one would expect and uh and and and this temperature increase you people talk about two degrees or or 3 degrees it's important to appreciate just how sensitive the the climate actually is to uh to temperature and it's important to look at it in terms of absolute temperature not um in degrees celsius relative to zero we need to say what is the temperature change relative to absolute zero that's how the universe thinks about temperature that's how physics thinks about temperature it's it's relative to absolute zero so for small changes\n\nresult in in huge effects uh so New York City Under Ice would be minus 5° New York city under water would be plus 5° but looked at in in a as a percentage relative to absolute zero it's only a plusus 2% change so the the sensitivity of the climate is extremely extremely high um we've Amplified this sensitivity by building our cities right on the on the coastline and most most people live very close to to the ocean some countries of course that are they're very low Ling and would be completely uh underwater in in a in a climate crisis so the the we've essentially designed civilization to be super sensitive to climate change um and the the the important thing to appreciate is that we are going to exit the fossil fuels era so it it is it is inevitable that\n\nwe will exit the phosph era because at a certain point we will simply run out of uh carbon to mine and burn so the question is really when when do we exit the era not not if the goal is to exit the era as quickly as possible that means we need to move from from the old goal uh with a pre-industrial go goal which was to move from uh choing down forests and uh killing lots of whales um that the old goal was to move from from chopping wood and and killing whales to uh fossil fuels which actually in that context was a good thing but the new goal is to move to a sustainable energy future and we want to use things like uh Hydro solar wind geothermal nucleus is also a good option in um places like France which don't aren't subject to natural disasters um and\n\nand we want to use energy sources that will be good for for a billion years so how do we accelerate this transition away from fossil fuels to a sustainable era and and and and what happens if we don't so if we if we wait uh and if we delay the change um the best case the best case is is is simply delaying that inevitable transition to sustainable energy so this is the this is the best case if we don't take action now um at the risk of being repetitive it's there's going to be no choice in the long term to move to sustainable energy it's it's tological we have to have sustainable energy or we'll simply run out of the other one so the the only thing we gain by slowing down the transition is is is just slowing it down it doesn't doesn't make it not occur\n\nit just slows it down the worst case however is more displacement and destruction than all the wars in history combined okay this is these are these are the best worst case scenarios so then we have you about 3% of scientists that believe in the best case about 97% that believe in the worst case this is why I call it the dumbest experiment in history ever why would you do this so the the reason that the the the transition is delayed or or or is happening slowly is because there is a hidden subsidy on all carbon producing activity in a healthy Market if you have say 10 EUR of benefit and four of har to societ the profit would be6 just sort of you know makes OB obvious sense this is where the incentives are aligned with a good future this is not this is\n\nnot the case today um but if you have the incentives aligned then the forcing function towards a a good future towards a sustainable energy future will be powerful in an unhealthy Market you have your 10 of benefit you have your four years but the four doesn't isn't t so you have untaxed negative externality this is basically economics 101 so you have basically unreasonable profit and a forcing function to uh to do carbon emitting activity because this this this cost to society is not being paid the net result is 35 gigatons of carbon per year into the atmosphere so the this is analogous to not paying for garbage collection um and it's it's not as though we we should say in the case of garbage have a garbage-free society it's very difficult to have a\n\ngarbage free Society but it's just important that people pay for the garbage collection so we need to go from having untaxed negative externality and which is effectively a hidden carbon subsidy of enormous size uh 5.\n\n3 trillion dollar a year according to the IMF every year um we need to move away from this uh and and and and have a carbon tax so but this is being this is being fought quite hard by the uh the carbon producers um and they're using tactics that are very similar to what the uh cigarette industry or the toac industry used for many years um they would they would take the approach of having of of even though the overwhelming scientific consensus was that uh smoking cigarettes was bad for you uh they would find a few scientists that would disagree and then they would say look scientists disagree so that that's essentially how they would try to trick the public into thinking that smoking is not that bad the solution obviously is to remove the subsidy U so\n\nthat means we need to have a a Caron tax and to make it sort of something which is neither a left nor a right issue we should make it probably a revenue neutral carbon tax so this would be a case of increasing taxes on carbon but then reducing taxes in in other places so maybe there would be a reduction in sales tax or vat and an increase in carbon tax so that uh only those using high levels of carbon would pay an increased tax and moreover this I mean in order to give uh industry time to react uh this could be a phased in approach so that maybe it takes 5 years before the the carbon taxes are very high so that means that only companies that don't take action today will suffer in 5 years but there needs to be a clear message from from government in this\n\nregard the the because the fundamental problem is the rules today incent people to create carbon and this is madness and what have you incent will happen that that's why you know we we're seeing little very little effect uh thus far and depending upon how what what action we take will will will drive the the Caron number to either extreme or or moderate levels um I I think it's pretty much a given that that the two degree C increase will occur the question is whether it's going to be much more than that not if there will be a two degree increase um so the then the question is so what can you do I would say whenever you have the opportunity talk to your politicians ask them to enact a carbon tax we we have to fix the unpriced externality I talk to your\n\nfriends about it and fight the propaganda from the carbon industry so that that's the basic message I have and I'm happy to take questions so we have we have some mics in the audience being passed around do you want to raise your hand and we'll give you a mic hi sir I'm pass from the master of inter Innovation and Technology man management and my question is what do you say to those who think there are more important concerns right now than climate change and global warming sure um I mean there's definitely there are many important issues in the world um this is not the only important issue um but it is I think the thing that will have the biggest um negative effect on Humanity if we do not address it um I mean based on on the the projections that we're\n\nseeing right now these are like I'd say arguably best case projections we're going to see significant rises in temperature and sea level um the the net result is if if we don't take action uh we could see you know anywhere from 5 to 10% maybe maybe more of the land mass absorbed by water uh which would which is maybe not doesn't sound like that much but about a third of humanity lives right on the on the Coastline or in lowline countries so we' be talking about maybe 2 billion people being displaced um and and their home is being destroyed and their country is being gone so I think we should take action hello sir thank you for coming here uh my question is um I'm PhD student in marketing and what I study is what motivates people to participate in challenges\n\nnow you have created a company which creates challenges which brought which brought a rocket to moon and back if I if I'm not wrong my question would be do you think a challenge um maybe not moon and back right yeah not quite getting there getting there my question to you would be do you think that incentives which is the biggest incentive to use monetary incentives are the best possible incentive to get people to participate and solve the world's biggest problems or do you think people can do it um in order to just help everyone on the planet and make it better so is money the only way to um ask people to get in and solve challenges or do you have other ways to actually motivate people to participate um I I I think there there's definitely a philanthropic\n\nelement um and there's the you know I think there's I think in general uh people want to do the right thing and they want to do what's good um the uh the issue we have right now is that the the rules fundamentally favor the bad outcome so when you're fighting for the good outcome and it's an uphill battle um it it it's just it's just slower um so with respect to to climate change it's just critical that the government and the government is the setter of rules the government decides what rules companies will will play by and if we currently have a system which uh massively incense bad behavior so e even if most people don't do the bad behavior some people will still do the bad behavior yeah I mean money and prices are prices are basically just an information\n\nmechanism they're just they're just basically they tell you that it's it I mean money's mostly um an information mechanism for lab labor allocation and for you know to and sort of tells companies what to do so it's just critical this is why it's so critical to be that action be taken at a government level because the government is the one they're setting the rules of the game and and it's just crazy to have the rules of the game favor uh a bad outcome question up top there there's a question here hi el musk uh my name is Michelle I'm an undergrad in economics here at peris sbon uh P sban my question is um there are some new studies on um removing um carbon dioxide dioxide from the atmosphere and burrowing deep uh in the ocean do you think it's um a sustainable\n\nsolution and why thank you you know I'm I'm not aware of any uh carbon sequestration or carbon storage system that is that that that works um and works economically um and and I definitely wouldn't want to I we wouldn't want to store the carbon in the ocean because of possible acidification um you know as the as the carbon as the CO2 levels rise in the atmosphere uh some of that is absorbed um into the ocean becomes carbonic acid um and a lot of the shellfish in particular are super sensitive to changes in in pH level um so I I would definitely or against uh trying to store it in the ocean there potentially you could try to store some of it in giant underground Caverns but the the sheer quantity we're talking about I I don't think can be stored anywhere\n\num there's just there's just no nowhere to store it yeah question hello sir uh I'm studying management at paron and I would know how long do you do Tesla Motors intends to use lithium batteries knowing that it is not a limited resource um well actually I think so so lithium in terms of energy storage lithium I think is is definitely the future and will be for a long time um there's actually not a shortage of lithium on Earth uh so lithium is you know number three on the periodic table it's actually extremely common any salty water has has lithium um so there definitely won't be a lithium constraint on um energy storage for batteries um so I feel pretty confident that um one could make enough batteries to store all the energy that the world needs with\n\nthe current resources that are that are available yeah hello my name is idin vadi I am PhD student in project and infrastructure Finance in sbon first of all I would like to thank you for your latest product uh po wall which to me it gives to the citizens to have the power to select the way they can uh consumed energy I can spend few thousand dollars to buy a uh some solar panel and the power wall and uh to be free of uh uh any offer in the market my question is uh about the the larg scale storage systems you have designed have you received any serious involvement from governments and uh large companies to develop such uh uh such infrastructure or do you have any serious plans within within the United States or maybe in other countries uh for for large\n\nenergy storage yeah we do actually we've got a number of um uh very very big storage um projects underway with utilities around the world um so both in the US and outside um the the thing that's interesting about the energy storage uh situation is that even even without uh Renewables there's a there's a huge potential to make the energy grid more efficient and to be able to shut down the the the heaviest polluting power plants um because the the energy consumption through the day usually uh changes by a factor of two or more so and since with the exception of of hydroelectric you can't store the power it has to be available in real time the world has somewhere between two to three times as many power plants as it actually needs so if you can buffer the\n\npower with uh big big stationary battery packs um then uh you can actually shut down the the the worst half of the uh power plants in the world so I think that's that's sort of a very exciting thing that I think a lot of people don't appreciate um and I think it's it's going to make make a big difference you hi sir I'm Camy from the master degree Innovation and Technology man management and uh my question is do you believe that in the ability of government international government to prevent climate change and what would you suggest um yeah absolutely I think I think this fundamentally is a government issue um so it's it's it's the as as mentioned the government is the one that sets the rules of the game that they set um you know how companies are rewarded\n\nfinancially and so in the absence of government uh actually establishing some kind of a common TX or potentially a CA trade on carbon um which I was very excited to see that China announced earlier this year that they were going to do that um unless the government does something to fix the market mechanism um the it it's it's we're fundamentally going to have a very slow transition um out of the fossil fuel era so it's it's critical that um government action changed the incentive structure um yeah and and that that' be very clear and so it's like I think hopefully what comes out of this out of these the climate talks in Paris is uh that that the governments of the world say that they put their foot down and they say 5 years from now let's say there has\n\nto be a huge change um and um and and that companies know for sure that this is going to happen um and if they if they do then the the investment decisions they make today will will will bear fruit in five years so the um for for heavy industrial applications or or for heavy industry you you kind of know what the world's going to look like in 5 years if you know what PL what what uh What factories are being built today because if you build a really big Factory to get to full production takes about 5 Years From from the start and so since we know that today there are very few uh sustainable energy projects at large scale that are that are being built um we know that unless something changes very quickly um the sustainable energy will still be in a bad\n\nsituation 5 years from now so um you know I mean there there are companies like you know at Tesla and Solar City were quite ideologically motivated um but um but that's that's relatively unusual so hian my name is Thomas um what do you think about people who are saying then rather than trying to save the Earth we should try to colonize other planets well I think we should do both yeah yeah I think we um you know the I mean my sort of personal ideology is is kind of split right now between trying to be helpful on earth related stuff which is sustainable energy and then trying to you know Advance space technology so we can establish a self- sustaining City on Mars but I do think it's important to be a multiplet not just one planet but another planet um\n\nso the and and the overarching goal is to minimize existential risk you know so if we look out look out into the future um and say what are the things that pose a risk to to humanity to what what what what's what is going to make the future good versus bad um and I think if obviously if we have a sustainable energy future that's good um and the faster that comes the better and then if we're a multiplet species that gives us much more resilience um against Extinction event um and also would be a really great and fun adventure hi um my name is jeda and U I wanted to know in your opinion what would the future will look like in term in energy sources and how soon could we use nuclear fusion efficiently thank you sure um well the the thing to appreciate about\n\nthe um indust the sort of installed industrial base uh is that it's it's really enormous like the number of um petrol and diesel cars on the road um and trucks is about two billion um you know there are sort of hundreds of thousands of of of power plants using fossil fuels so the the even if we if today we went super hard in the direction of Renewables it would still take a long time um so I think we we it's before we see significant change is probably 10 or 20 years um and uh and that's there's a lot that can happen in 10 or 20 years of course um so uh the the faster we can bring that date forward the better yeah um hi uh my name is Natasha I'm from the master program of sustainable development I have two questions first one because I want to be optimistic\n\nthat we are going to switch um at some point to be completely sustainable and to use renewable energies um do you think that there are going to be a gap between developing in developed countries that and When developing countries will be able to reach developed ones switching into sustainable and renewable energies and second one would be uh sustainability of nuclear energy in your opinion thank you sure um and I actually I should answer the nuclear question because that was posed just just before this um I actually think that uh like nuclear fision um um if it's in a location that is not subject to natural disasters um like like in the case of France there's a very high percentage of nuclear I think that's actually a good thing um obviously you don't\n\nwant to have nuclear fision power plants in places that are subject to natural disasters um because that obviously can go wrong um so um and and so I think fision is a good is a good approach uh Fusion is also interesting um and it's exciting to see what's happening with the iter project uh which is a fusion plant that's being built in France um I I I do think Fusion is is a is a feasible technology I think we can definitely make fusion work um the but but it is it is a it is kind of a far off technology so to to make fusion at the power plant level work is probably I don't know 30 years away um and um and a lot of lot of effort um so the that's why in in at least you know for now and I think maybe even in the long term I'm a proponent of using the big\n\nfusion power plant in the sky called the Sun so that the sun is a giant Fusion explosion and it it shows up every day and if we have uh photov voltaics for solar panels we can capture that Fusion Energy um it also needs to be stored um in batteries so we can use it at night um and then we we want to have um high power lines to transfer uh solar energy from one place to another so um but the important thing to appreciate is like if if let's say the only thing we had was was solar energy that that was the only power source uh you could if you just took a small section of of Spain you could power all of Europe it's it's a very small amount of area that's actually needed to generate the um electricity we need to power civilization or in the case of the US\n\nlike a little corner of Nevada or Utah Power the entire United States so good evening uh you you do have a very impressive and uh stimulating career uh you succeeded in business while staying true to yourself and beliefs so I would like to know what advice you would give to a young entrepreneur uh who is aware of climate change issues and maybe uh what was the best and the worst advice you are given about that thank you okay um well I think if somebody's um wants to do something entrepreneurial in energy um I mean either either you want to start a company or you want to join a company that's doing something um sustainable um and it could be you know there's there's obviously wind solar um and uh the geothermal there's tidal power um so I would just say\n\nlook at companies that are trying to do sustainable energy and decide if you want to join them or or if you want to start one um so um I I generally wouldn't you know starting companies in in either the automotive Arena or the energ like Energy Arena is like quite a tricky business I mean when when when we first started uh Tesla and Solar City uh we thought they would fail we thought and Tesla in particular we thought probably we have uh maybe 10% chance of success so it's um you know particularly particularly cars uh the you know it's it's it's hard to stay alive as a car company honestly I was like it must be one of the worst risk adjusted returns um yeah hi uh my name is Benjamin and I was wondering what do you wish for in terms of international uh\n\nrules and politics uh to facilitate the implementation of your power wall battery well um it's really the what I've been saying here is that the that um the governance of the world need to price the the externality they need to put put a profer price on carbon and then automatically the right Behavior will occur so this is by by putting a price on carbon we we're essentially fixing um a pricing error in the market market system so I mean most of the times when government governments intervene in markets it's usually increases the pricing error um but in but when when the pricing error is a huge um tragedy the common issue like we have with carbon capacity uh it's critical that the government put a price on it because you just can't go wrong by put it\n\nby you and any price you put on it will be more right than than close to zero which it is right now um so this is this is by far the most important thing if we want to accelerate the transition uh to sustainable energy um there are other less effective ways by providing incentives and subsidies to say electric cars or or solar um that that is that is a sometimes more politically expedient way to do it but the best way is just to directly fix the pricing error by tax and carbon and and this is I like if you ask most economists they would say the same thing so this is sort of um well well known in obviously in the economics World um elen uh could you say a few words on artificial intelligence because you know I think I I read or you you you know you were\n\nquoted among with others Bill Gates and Peter T and so forth saying that you know you were afraid of the that one day an hyper you know intelligent machine would destroy humanity and uh you know are you investing a lot into artificial intelligence with you know because are we wasting a lot of energy because we're using you know with not being smart or with not having smart objects and so forth and how do you reconcile the two if you know there's a there's long time you know longterm major risk for us um yeah I mean definitely want to stay stay on the uh you know sustainable energy topic um because it's it's easy to get get derailed on too many other things but um yeah I mean I think I just think we should be cautious about the Advent of AI um and um a\n\nlot of the people that I know that are developing AI are too convinced that that the only outcome is good um and we need to consider potentially uh less good outcomes um and to you know to be careful and and and and really to monitor what's happening and make sure the public is aware of what's happening okay uh I'm Gabrielle Ron from uh we I stood Innovation here in serbon I have a question about fundraising specifically about the fundraising process regarding what Tesla does uh what is the most difficult thing to uh raise funds in the beginning not now because now you you have a welldeveloped project and the worldwide knows you and knows Tesla also but in the beginning about uh the the the industry that you are working about the this kind of energy what\n\nis the most difficult thing to uh find uh investors and also to convince investors and keep what you thought in the beginning uh throughout the development of the company um sure um well in in the beginning um in the beginning of Tesla and and Sol City I mean I thought the the probability of success was was so low that I I provided all of the money so all of the money was just came from me personally um because I didn't want to ask people other investors for money if I thought we were going to die because I thought I thought we would so um so I invested um you know entirely the money that I got from PayPal um all of all of that got invested into Tesla Soul City and and SpaceX um and and even then we we only narrowly survived so um you know in 200 2008\n\nfor Tesla we actually closed the financing round on Christmas Eve uh 2008 um it was the last hour of the last day that it was possible um and um you know this is one of the tricky things with with something like a car company is like there there there are good times and bad times and and and when the economy goes south then that's when things get really really tricky for a Manufacturing Company um so yeah I mean in in the US for example like the only two car companies that haven't gone bankrupt in history are Ford and Tesla that's it um everybody else is bankrupt or in bankrupt at some point you know General motives Chrysler and and others so um so I think we we just made it by the skin of our teeth these days last few years it's really i' say you the\n\nlast two years is is when Tesla's achieved a level where um it's not facing uh imminent death um I mean even as recently as as early 2013 we were operating with maybe one to two weeks of money uh hi uh my name is Pascal and I would uh like to ask you uh don't you think that we need a deeper reflection um about uh our Dynamic of society um because um all the solution that you talking talking about is about uh efficiency but don't you think that we need to think differently and consume less because right now AIC is about uh confronting problems and going always in the um same direction and trying to find the technological innovation to save us yeah I mean I I do think we we should be um watch our consumption we shouldn't be wasteful um but um but but even\n\nif we um are re really uh conservative in our use of energy and are very effective with Recycling and all sorts of things um that that that delays the TR the need to move to a sustainable future but it doesn't eliminate it um like if if we don't have sustainable energy Generation Um that that there's no way that we can conserve our way to to a good future um we we have to fundamentally make uh sustainable energy available um I mean on the on the plus side that there's actually an enormous amount of of sustainable energy um and the um the energy from the Sun per per square kilometer is a gwatt so if you just had a 1 kilometer by 1 kilm um array of solar panels it would be generating well it would be receiving a gwatt of solar energy then at at a 20% efficiency\n\nyou'd be generating 200 megawatts um so uh we can actually generate way more energy like probably I don't know 100 times more energy than we actually need to operate civilization just with solar panels so we just we just need to fix the incentive structure of the world to make sure that that that that companies are are incented towards sustainable versus unsustainable technology this is fundamentally the problem hello my name is Lily and I'm a PhD physics student a year University but I graduated here so I have three questions so the first one is sort of political because because you mentioned it you said that uh scientists sometimes they uh diverge they have different opinions and it's probably yes on anything yeah and that's also probably because sometimes\n\nthey are financed by different corporations sure and uh so you said we should stop the propaganda we should uh uh try to ask the politicians to set the rules so that uh we will go in a better Direction you know not climate you know global warming um but uh so that probably goes against uh the interest of oil companies but as well probably the governments themselves when they have a financial interest so I was thinking perhaps your uh own um I mean perhaps we could have lobbyists ourselves so that would be uh perhaps an efficient way to to have uh those rules put into uh you know so the these rules the carbon tax would be applied so that's my first question uh because also you know France is one of the U main importer of nuclear energy so you know trying\n\nto ask them for a tax car uh carbon tax when themselves uh are the the people who are making the most money from importing you know nuclear energy from power plants that are in France we li to one question per person for now I thinkk so so the other question was you know renewable energy that' be great but it's kind kind of intermittent you know like solar uh sure solar energy um okay that's great but perhaps we need to store it with perhaps with lithium batteries but uh we we want we want to use like uh um sure yeah I see the last one was the fossil fuel area I mean yeah I mean is it not going to go to an end on its own because it's not an unlimited resource right maybe pick one out of the three questions Elon sure um yeah um I mean I I I think it's\n\nyou each government should just they they should do the right thing without waiting without depending upon what other governments are doing like the I think that's you know there's too much in these CL climate talks of of countries like trying to only do things if another country does it um I mean if some if it's if it's the right if it's the right thing for the future a country should just do it and don't worry about what other countries are doing just do the right thing um and many of the countries are so it's it's really just you know we just want to encourage as many governments as possible to change the rules to incent a good future that this is fundamentally what what what has to happen or we will substantially delay the transition away from cin\n\nso um and and yeah so that that's that's what has to happen um and um and and you know Tesla and so study that my companies are very tiny like we're tiny tiny companies so the in order for there to be a big move uh towards sustainability um the the the giant companies have to know that that that that is what the governments are demanding for the future and that's what the people are demanding for the future so at the end of the day if you know the governments respond to to to to to popular pressure like if if you tell politicians that that your vote depends on them doing the right thing with climate change that that makes a difference so if if they're having sort of a a fundraising event or a den of party or whatever and at every fundraising event and\n\nevery den of party somebody's asking them hey what are you doing about the climate then they will take action so I think you have tremendous power you you have the power to make the change we can't we we can't let me tell you we definitely can't beat the oil and gas industry on lobbyists okay this is that that would be a losing battle um you know the you know uh Exxon makes more profit in a year than the value of the entire solar industry in the United States so it's it's like if you take every Solar Company in the United States it's less than exxon's profit in one year there's no way you can win on money it's impossible good evening sir I have just one small question but very actual uh do you think the cup 21 will be a success you know I I am I I have\n\nI don't have any real basis for this but I have a good feeling about it um I I do have a good feeling about it so I I think well it's going to be degrees of success so it's sort of like um like for example like the Copenhagen was was terrible like nothing nothing came out of Copenhagen the Copenhagen CL climate talks I mean it was basically I think there was a net increase in global warming as a result of that one um unfortunately um in the case of the Paris talks I I think there will be some positive movement and it's a question of what degree um and I think we need to send a clear message to the the negotiating teams and to the politicians that this time there needs to be significant change this time it something needs to happen there's a question all\n\nthe way up on the top hello and thank you for coming my name is Maria and I'm a student of international relations here my question to you is this we know that climate is a global a common good so how do we get countries with economies relying heavily on fossil fuels on board with climate change which uh like how do we get those who have the most to lose on board thank you um I I think I think we just need to turn that argument around and say like look this this is a common good um and uh if if if we if if countries don't take action that they all will share in in a bad future so uh that they need that everyone needs to take action and and care about what what the future is going to hold um and lead by example um so and even countries that that are quite\n\ndependent on on fossil fuels um if they just change their tax structure they can they can move away from that in in a in a way that's not super disruptive to the economy um it's really just a question of collecting like the same amount of taxes but but weighted towards uh things that we that's that U people believe are most likely to be bad instead of things that are most likely to be good um and we do this already in you know in in uh in our tax code we we tax alcohol and cigarettes much more than we tax fruits and vegetables it's just sort of the sensible things sensible thing to do and nobody you know you don't and you don't hear you know countries saying well we make lots of fruit you know we make lots of fruits and vegetables so like we we want low\n\ntaxes or we make lots of Alcohol Tobacco we want you know lower taxes like that's a silly debate that it's gone um and and I think the same thing applies to to carbon emissions just just adjust the tax code and the right thing will happen over time and if if it's graduated over time and you know it starts off small and become significant in the future then even if you're heavily dependent on cin today the that that that that message of of seeing what's going to happen in the future will have a huge impact on uh on the way that that any given country's economy works so um so so they will then become not dependent on cin because of the incentive structure so I really don't think they have anything to lose here and anything to lose by taking action and a\n\nlot to lose by not taking action we have time for maybe two or three more questions so there's one right here hi uh my question is about batteries so electric B batteries today especially lithium ion have a significant carbon footprint and potential impact on both the environment and our health and the environmental impact moves away from consumables and to how the way how we produce and how we store the waste that comes from it so uh the Gap with fossil fuels might not be as wide as we think so my question how do you respond to this and how do you see this evolving in the next years um so I'm not sure I totally understand that question could you say that again yeah basically uh the the impact on the environment of uh today our ways of electrical batteries\n\nlithium the production of lithium ion batteries and how you equate this with fossil fuel and its impact as it's more about the production and how we use the waste and how we store the waste and so how do you see this how is this going to be optimized in the next years or is this going to change yeah well the important thing is like once you once you've built a battery um then at the end of life of the battery you can recycle those components so it's it's a it's it's something that um you know has no long-term or negligible long-term impact on the carbon cycle um because you you essentially um you get the sort of the lithium nickel Cobalt um and um and you create create the battery you create essentially get those materials once and then you recycle them\n\nforever um so uh I I think the the it's really a negligible impact for for for batteries on the environment um and uh yeah um and and as compared to carbon producing Mining and buring um billions of tons of carbon every year uh which which um effectively permanently from from a human standpoint affects the carbon the carbon uh content of the oceans and atmosphere so yeah um it's it's really we're talking orders of magnitude difference between uh fossil fuels and batteries like not not even on the same scale okay then the last one uh hello so my question is um taking into consideration that technology now is at some of a Breaking Point uh it is Advanced but not so Advanced to pass uh to the sustainable clean energy how do you see this integration of clean\n\nenergy in for long term in the future step by step maybe how do I see the integration how do I see us getting to a sustainable energy future yes yes how uh will uh will the clean energy integrate into into a society thinking into consideration that technology isn't Advanced uh sure well I mean I I I expect um you know all transport to go fully electric over time with the ironic exception of rockets um and uh and then all uh energy production to go sustainable over time um this will take this will take a long time many decades um but um you know the way it'll manif itself is by people having batteries in their homes or at the utility substation um and by driving um you know electric vehicles um and having electric planes but um as I said that this is this\n\nis going to be quite a very slow transition um because the incentive structure is so biased against sustainable energy so um in fact even I think even if there's quite a strong action by government uh as a result of of the the climate talks in Paris I think it's still going to be um a transition that's measured in decades so it will be it will be a slow a slow transition um and um and and the fundamental question is H how do we accelerate that transition that that's the real question here um what actions can we take that would accelerate a transition to a good future um and that's why I'm so so harping on this notion of a a revenue neutral carbon tax I think that's something that that every country can Implement um and it can be graduated and phased in\n\nover time and this is this will be by far the most effective thing uh for accelerating that transition to a good future okay please all right well thank you everyone all right"},"languages":["en"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BMskI6G9ty0"},{"id":"baron-investment-conference-2015-11-06","type":"interview","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsIbGKosY1E","title":"Baron Investment Conference","titles":{"en":"Baron Investment Conference","de":"Baron Investment Conference","fr":"Baron Investment Conference"},"date":"2015-11-06","summary":"Ron Baron interviews Musk about Tesla, autopilot, SolarCity and his long-term futurist outlook at the annual Baron conference.","text":"Good morning. My name is Gilad Shani and I'm a research analyst at Baron Capital following the tech and energy infrastructure sectors. It is my distinct pleasure to introduce our next guest. He is a man who has been identified as everything from a super villain to a superhero. He doesn't stop at changing our world as we know it. He's on a mission to change our galaxy.\n\nElon Musk is the CEO of Tesla, a company whose mission is to accelerate the world's transition to sustainable transport. In 2004, Elon was a lead investor in Tesla's first financing ground. And in 2008, when the company was near bankruptcy, Elon became CEO and led its growth to over $5 billion of revenue today. The company developed three electric vehicles, the Roadster, Model S, and Model X.\n\nThe Model S has been described as a remarkable car that paves a new unorthodox course and it's a powerful statement of American startup ingenuity. Model X, which was recently launched, has a weight time of over a year. Tesla sold almost a 100,000 vehicles, electric vehicles to date. Tesla is building a battery manufacturing plant called Gigafactory that will be 10 times bigger than the largest Boeing facility producing Dreamlininers.\n\nInterestingly, Tesla is the largest battery consumer in the world, surpassing consumer electronic companies like Samsung and Apple. Elon is a scientist, an inventor, a designer, and one of the world's most innovative minds. He is helping to advance some of the world's most disruptive technologies. Tesla in the auto industry, SpaceX in the aerospace industry, and Solar City in the power industry.\n\nNow, please welcome Elon and Ron for a conversation. That's pretty cool. So when I started my career, one of my first clients told me that what was most important uh was finding someone uh who could realize a dream, make it happen. Uh and that's been my whole career, finding people in which to invest in whom to invest. Uh I was with Eric Schmidt recently. He's a chairman of Google and he's one of uh Elon's best friends.\n\nand uh he was telling me that he regards Elon as a combination of Walter Chrysler and Thomas Edison. And I didn't really know very much about Walter Chrysler until I looked him up on Google and and pretty interesting to be compared to those two guys. So, uh so, so again, keeping with the theory about investing in people, uh so we're investing in you and uh and and I think we're talking about $5 billion in revenues.\n\nUh, I'm sure you believe this is just the very beginning. So, so I'd like to touch a little bit before we get into the business on your background. We just started to talk about that before. So, you came from South Africa. Your dad was an engineer. And your mother? Um, my mother's a model and a nutritionist. And one of your brothers worked with you. Yeah. We co-founded the post company together.\n\nAnd so so Elon uh was also a founder of you know he's had these games and uh electronic games and then he was a founder of PayPal uh sold his business PayPal and PayPal got sold went public 7 $800 million sold it for a billion too. eBay bought it ultimately 50 billion. So presumably that has some impact on the way you think about things. Yeah, absolutely. Um I I actually I I actually was against the sale.\n\nI wasn't in favor of the sale, but um I was um I I I I was largest, you know, owner of of PayPal at the time, but I only had like 12% and so everybody else really wanted to sell, so we went forward with that. Um but I think um I think we probably shouldn't have. Yeah. Um so so I was reading about your history and and we've spoken before obviously and about uh your interest in space and uh sustainable transport and solar energy.\n\nWhere did all this come from? Well, uh, when I was in college, I thought about, um, what would most affect the future of humanity and, uh, I wanted to be involved in in those at least some of those areas and and I I thought there would be there were five things that I that I came up with that I thought would really affect our our future as a civilization. Um, one of them was the internet. Um, and then uh, the other was uh, sustainable energy.\n\nboth production and consumption of of that. And the third was um making life multilanetary. Um and then fourth and fifth were uh genetics and uh and AI. Um and I didn't think I'd be involved in in those areas, but I just those sort of more in in the abstract of what I thought would would affect things.\n\nUm and um but I mean going going back a little further, I actually didn't really expect to be uh involved in creating companies when I was like uh in high school or you know uh middle school. Um I actually was going to going to um pursue sort of physics and a career in physics and try to sort of understand more about the nature of the universe.\n\nUm but um you know then things like the superconducting super collider got cancelled and I thought well you know like what if I'm stuck in some situation like that and then there's like some active government basically stops things and then uh then then I I would it would all be a waste.\n\nSo, so when I when I think about it's a cars and so obviously, you know, if you're using hydrocarbons and burning them and wrecking the environment, it makes it tough to live on Earth and it's viewpointed out unless we adapt and can start to breathe carbon dioxide. And so, so, so, so that's your effort there.\n\nBut yeah, actually the thing is that um in in college um my interest in sustainable energy was purely at the time was was really from the standpoint of of of us eventually running out of hydrocarbons to mine and burn. So there's there's there's obviously limited supply of oil in the ground um and and eventually we would have to transition to something that's sustainable.\n\nUm because when we're drawing oil from the ground, we're we're essentially taking the accumulated uh solar energy that was bound up in plants and animals and then over hundreds of millions of years uh was turned into oil. Um and and and that's that's obviously finite. And if uh we if we if we run out of that and don't have a good solution, then there would be economic collapse uh independent of any environmental concerns.\n\nUm and so that was actually what what sort of initiated my interest in sustainable energy. U and it's sort of toological. I mean if if you know it energy needs to be sustainable if it's going to last for the long term. Um and then over time it became apparent that there there was actually an even more pressing concern which is that we're quite materially changing the chemical constituency of the oceans and atmosphere.\n\nUm, and the way that humanity has kind of grown up around the world is that, um, you know, we've put so much of our so many of our cities and settlements and towns right along the coastline. Um, and, uh, you know, and and that the world is quite sort of delicate in in in these sort of chemical balance.\n\nAnd so the if if we do take trillions of tons of uh CO2 that was buried deep underground and has been since in a lot of cases since the pre-Camrian era um you know when the most sophisticated thing was like a sponge then that would be would be a bad experiment to run. So, so it seems so obvious and we have all these car companies that make all these cars every year that burn gasoline and nobody wanted to do anything. But why? Why? Why?\n\nSo, it's so obvious, you know, you read in evidence and Exon was in the paper about the impact that they're having on the environment and they hit it just like the cigarette companies in 196. Same exact thing, right? It's it's the same same playbook.\n\nIn fact, the crazy thing is um I'd recommend reading the book Merchants of Doubt um because they actually explored um some scientists at JPL and and and elsewhere sort of explored like well what's going on here? And they actually found that the uh I mean the oil and gas industry is actually using literally the same lobbyists as the tobacco industry. Like by name, not even the firm. Amazing. Like some of those guys still they're still going.\n\nAmazing. Um, yeah. So, I mean, and and just like when they learned how to do it. Yeah, absolutely. Um, and and then, uh, oddly enough, the one movie I was involved with making was a movie called Thank You for Smoking, uh, which I recommend watching. It's kind of a fun movie.\n\nUm, and and you but but it it's sort of um it's it's based on on Buckley's book and it's uh it's it's it's it really gets to the truth of the matter of like how how all this happens. Um and what they do is essentially exploit doubt.\n\nUm, and so even when you've got a situation where virtually every scientist uh on Earth agrees that this is, you know, that that that global warming is real, that adding um billions of tons of carbon to the atmosphere and oceans is is a bad idea.\n\nThen you have a few percent of who who descent and and then the way that is it is presented to the public is is not that you know 97 or 98% of scientists think what we're doing is crazy but that but simply that scientists disagree. Now scientists disagree about everything. Okay? You will not find 100% of scientists who agree about anything. Um so but but this is a very disingenuous argument.\n\nSo, so, so I understand that and then I go to visit your plant and I've been there go every three or four months now and I guess not very many people who are analysts on Wall Street even though 22 guys publish about Tesla. I think very few have actually been there and hardly anyone's spoken to you.\n\nBut then when I go into the plant and I see and I've been to other automobile plants also and there's a lot of people, not that many machines and I see our plant in Tesla and I see a lot of machines and not that many people. Uh and I look at it and it appears to me so herculean. How do you build such a thing? And how could you ever think you're going to be successful? Why how would you do such a thing?\n\nAnd then to start up you're a poor immigrant kid. You come here and you do how do you do that? How'd that work? Uh sure. Well, I mean, at the beginning of Tesla, um, I didn't think we would be successful. I thought we would almost certainly fail. Um, and you put all the money you had in PayPal to to invest in this and you thought you'd fail. Yeah.\n\nUm I mean I I could I could walk you through the basic logic of I mean how so um coming out of PayPal I was fortunate enough to have about $180 million. Um and I thought well that's that's a lot of money. Um, you know, if if if I I'm going to assign half of this to SpaceX, Tesla, and Solar City, and I'll still have the other half, and I'll be fine.\n\nUm, and Yeah, but you told your wife if it doesn't work when you live in your in her parents' basement. I did. Yeah. I was Yeah. Hopefully kidding cuz it's like it's not it's not great in her parents' basement. It's really not great. U Yeah. So, uh, yeah. Yeah, she didn't like that.\n\nUm but but I mean the way things so I thought yeah, you know, so I figure I'd probably lose the money, but we're you know, a good try and it's kind of important and um worth doing, but but then as time went by and the companies needed more money and then we hit that really tough recession of 0809, um which was super bad for the car industry. I mean, you had GM and Chrysler go bankrupt.\n\nUh, so I was like, man, uh, if if I don't invest everything, if if I invest everything, there's a there's a chance um and that we'll we'll survive. If I don't invest everything, there was no chance. So, if it wasn't for that recession, there's no way this could have existed. Being able to buy a billion dollar plant for $50 million. Oh, that's true. But that came that came a bit later. But yeah, um, but the the real key thing was was 2008.\n\nWell, even maybe if you go from mid 2007 to mid 2009, those that 2-year period was super bad. Um, and we'd made so many mistakes in the beginning of Tesla that we basically had to recapitalize the company almost completely in 2007. Um, cuz I mean almost every decision we' made was wrong.\n\nUm so and and when we created the company and and I got to give credit here for the beginning for um uh AC Propulsion which is a little little company in uh Southern California who created an electric sports car. Um, and it was actually based on on on AC Propulsion sort of idea, but I was trying to convince AC Propulsion to commercialize an electric sports car.\n\nUh, commercialize this sort of prototype that they done, but they had no interest in doing that. Um, and uh, after a while I got tired of trying to convince them. And so I said, \"Look, I'm just going to do this myself.\" And then they said, \"Well, you know, there's some other people that also want to do it. Do you want to join in with them?\" I said, \"Okay, let's let's do that.\" Um, and uh, but those guys don't get enough credit.\n\nThey they uh they did some cool stuff with an electric sports car before Tesla did. So, that's was that's when you were thinking about should we use an engine and electric or should we just use electric? Oh, no. That that was that was pure electric sports car. Um, I mean the whole sort of saga of Tesla is quite complex and there's like many soap opera episodes that you could make out of it.\n\nUm but but no that that AC Propulsion had created a um a pure electric sports car uh called the T0 um as kind of just a demo. Uh but they were just not interested in commercializing their stuff. And um so I said, \"Okay, look, this really needs to we need to show people broadly what electric cars can do.\" So um ended getting getting together with a bunch of guys and trying to commercialize that idea.\n\nSo again, so we go back to this plant, this massive plant that we have out in Fremont, California today. Yeah. I never expected that we'd have this plant, but it's amazing place. Yeah. And the amazing thing is like it's kind of full, which is I mean it when I when we got in there, we thought like when we first got that that plant, it's this one of the biggest plants in the world. Um I think it's sort of like by footprint.\n\nI mean, I think it's like maybe the third or fourth biggest how many how many square feet? It's five and a half million square feet. Five and a half million. Yeah. So that's whatund how many acres? You mean under roof? 150 acres. Yeah, exactly. Um it's a General Motors building. Just to give you perspective, General Motors building, which is where the Apple store is, that one block, that's one acre. This 150 acres. Yeah, it's crazy.\n\nYou could go camping in there. Um and um like it takes you a long time to work walk from one side to the other. Um we have bikes in the factory so you can just get around a bit faster. Um and like when we first got this um which was actually it was a little bit later. It was in um early 2010. Um and uh we thought, man, there's no way we'd ever get that that that awesome plant because um you know, it just cost too much.\n\nUm and we didn't have much we didn't have much money. But then as a result of the recession, um the plant which was joint owned by uh GM and Toyota, um the they decided to close it down. Um and the story behind that is sort of a long story independent of Tesla. So they were going to shut it down and it was just going to be empty and they was like maybe going to turn it into like a mall or something like that.\n\nUm and but it was going to be empty for a long time and um and and anyway so so we sort of approached uh Toyota and said like look um you know we'll take it off your hands you know uh and um and and then uh and we also did a bunch of other strategic elements that the strategic elements we did with Toyota were actually independent. We also did a electric RAV 4 program and then Toyota also um did an investment at the IPO.\n\nUm so and they invested at the IPO of $50 million at $50 million at a $17 share price. So it worked out for them. Um but um but we were amazed that that they were willing to move forward uh and and do it. Um and uh but for us at Tesla was so tiny at the time.\n\nI mean, it was like imagine like you're like this little band, this little group, and this like somebody says, \"Well, there's this giant like alien dreadnaugh that you can, you know, you can have for pennies on the dollar, and you have no idea how it works.\" And you're like, like, where do the where are the controls? How do how do you use this thing?\n\nUm, and that that's what we um we were fortunate enough to to to buy it at a point where automotive plants were not worth much. So, this plan ultimately is going to be able to do a half a million cars a year. I think I think half a million cars and, you know, we could conceivably go beyond half a million cars, though, but that's not really the dream. I mean, long term, I think I think we want to try to do several million cars.\n\nUm, yeah, I mean, from volume standpoint, but we're now doing 50,000 this year and 75,000 next year. We're talking about several million. And but we think about Volkswagen 10 million, Toyota 10 million, General Motors eight or nine million. Profit margins a fraction of what we think we can do. Why can't we be bigger than them? Well, I mean I guess I mean that's pretty possibly. It's not out of the question.\n\nUm I think over time if we continue to if we build great products um and we keep our cost structure uh competitive um then I think uh you know who knows what the ultimate So we're going to need a lot of these plants. Yes. Many plants in fact many auto plants and many gigafactories I think are needed. So the gigafactory let's do that one. to gigafactories in Nevada. Yeah. And they and this is four billion, five billion.\n\nIt's we're expecting it to be roughly a5 billion dollar uh capital investment to get to full production. Um although te Tesla's providing you roughly 50 60% of that um over time and then our strategic partners like Panasonic and a number of others are providing the other half roughly and then Nevada gave us a billion or in tax credits or savings or something. Um the whole tax credit thing drives me crazy.\n\nUm it sounds we're gonna have to turn it back. Yeah, it sounds much better than it is. Um so actually the first time I heard that the the amount was 1. 3 billion was at the press conference announcing the deal and I was like really how do we get to 1. 3? Um the what we actually got was um Nevada gave us uh some free land. Um but but the state of Nevada has a lot of land. So this is not a this is not in short supply like the desert.\n\nUm yeah, there's a lot of land in Nevada. Nevada um as I said. Um and then they also agreed to build a connecting highway on the southbound uh to that connects to Carson City, but they were going to do that anyway, so I don't think like that should be included in our in what they gave us.\n\num like um and then they repurposed um I think uh I don't know $80 million of tax credits that was going to the like insurance comp insurance companies or something. They repurposed that to us. U but uh that that's the only sort of thing that we can actually monetize. Um and then um and and then they also gave us uh relief on um sales and use tax for equipment in the factory.\n\nUh and depending upon what type of uh situation, it's either 10 or 20 years for the sales and use tax abatement. Um so but so if you assume that we we fully use the sales and use tax debatement which requires building which requires actually capital equipment in excess of $5 billion over 20 years and you add all of that up it adds to 1. 3 billion 1.\n\n3 yeah know actually in effect the contribution the initial contribution to the factory um the gigafactory by state of Nevada is less than 5%. And then they're and then they have roughly a 1% contribution over 20 years. So So presumably for them this a great deal because they're getting a lot of jobs. Oh, it's a no- loss proposition for the state.\n\nI mean, uh, you know, as the saying goes, the house always wins and like Nevada understands the house. Okay, Nevada is the house.\n\nSo it's like the only way for us to actually have have the sales use tax credits be meaningful is uh if for us to have enormous numbers of machines and enormous numbers of people operating those machines and which is good for Nevada's calculation was that they that they would that their return on their tax credits would be somewhere between 80 and 100 not percent times times So it's like it's a it's a good deal for a state.\n\nSo um so so the the battery plant that's what the giga plant is uh is being done uh without a lot of without any I I understand uh public viewing of what we're doing inside of that factory. And there were some reporters Yeah, there will be some but so far Yeah. Yeah. And there had been some reporters, I guess a couple or three weeks ago, uh, that snuck into our property. Yeah. And like ran over two of our people, tried to kill us, kill our guys.\n\nUm, yeah, that was pretty crazy. Um kind of, um, why? Well, I think they just got a bit overzealous and then and then I I assume that they panicked and weren't actually trying to kill our employees, but but they they did run over two of two of our employees, which is what, you know, while they were trying to they're trying to get away.\n\nUm uh and so they ran over two of our guys and like fortunately like the injuries aren't too serious but um but yeah that's that's like not cool. Um, so, so you know, so so we think it's important enough to not let anyone see what we're doing inside and other people trying to figure out what's going on and obviously not a nightclub.\n\nAnd uh, so so what is so what I think about is not knowing very much about technology and how things work is that so we're making that kind of a battery. Lithium. Lithium. Yeah. Although the the general rubric of lithium covers many types of chemistries. I mean um there's a really broad range of things of batteries that use lithium as the ion transport. So whatever you describe here is going to go over my head.\n\nBut my question is how do we know when we're making such an investments that what we're building in that factory is going to persist? And why is it that in a hundred years so we do all sorts of things. are sending things out of the atmosphere, out of the galaxy, out of the universe, planes, and and uh and yet for 100 years, we haven't been able to build a battery that goes for more than 300 miles. So, how can that be?\n\nHow how is it possible that we haven't been able to spend money on that? And if that's the case, because no one's paid attention to it, and all of a sudden, we come along and pay attention, we're going to try to reduce the weight in the existing batteries and use maybe silicon and having a 300 mile battery going to a thousand. Oh, yeah. So how do we worry that what we're building isn't going to get obsolete also?\n\nUm well the reason is that at this point I think we we have quite a good understanding of all the veterary technologies uh in the world. Um like there could be some small laboratory that's being super secret. Um but uh but generally what people inventing battery technologies try to do is they approach Tesla first and foremost because we're the biggest lithium ion consumer in the world.\n\nSo anyone who wants to build a battery has new ideas, they're going to come to us before they go anywhere. Like we'd be their biggest customer. So if somebody invents something, the the obvious choice to license it to or is is Tesla. Um and so um and and and we try to take things, you know, as seriously as possible, but I mean we we track uh right now about 60 different uh efforts around the world to develop improved batteries.\n\nUm and you know some of them hold some long-term promise but uh we and but we rate all of them on from a one to five. Um where five is we should be doing business with them and one is complete BS. Um how many fives are there? There's no fives. Um there's some there's some threes. Uh currently there's no no one in the there's no one even in the four. Like there's some that might go from a three to a four.\n\nFour means we should we should be in like preliminary discussions. So what's what's going to change in the technology that's going to enable us to have this different are we going to have something in 10 years that's going to be an unusual battery that's going to be able to do a thousand miles and going to weigh less than it does presently? I don't think we'll have quite that much of an improvement.\n\nUm and and and actually I think most likely we would not like like technically right now for us to do say a 500 mile range car we could absolutely do that right now uh with current current batteries but but the the cost would be too high and the useful load impact on the vehicle would be too high. So you have we have to fill up part of the trunk and the front and the front trunk and the rear trunk uh with batteries.\n\nUm we'd have to impinch a little bit on passenger room. But for us to do a 500 mile range car right now be no problem. Um a 500 mile range car in the current uh form factor um I think that's you know probably less than 10 years away you know with in the same volume and roughly the same mass. And the way we're going to drive the cost of the kilowatt hours from 250 to 100. That's because we're doing what?\n\nThat's just because we're doing scale because we're using different materials. because we're changing chemistry. How do we do that? Yeah. So, we we're making quite substantial improvements in the total pack energy density. So, there's there's the cell energy density and then as you put those cells together in a pack and you have to figure out how to do that safely. Um, we're able to reduce the pack energy density.\n\nSo, we'll make I think quite significant improvements in the in the pack energy density. Um but but the thing that's most important really is the cost. Um because I mean for a lot of people that are driving Model S um you know the model the current say uh dual motor Model S will do over 300 m right now at 65 mph. Um so that's that's more than enough range for most people.\n\nIt's and then you got the supercharger where you can recharge very you know very quickly. Uh we have supercharge network that's now ubiquitous throughout the country. You can that lots of our customers do cross-country trips LA New York um whatnot uh using a supercharge network.\n\nSo there's really have you have freedom of travel at this point um and certainly incremental improvements to the battery pack range are important but the thing that's really important is reducing the cost per kilowatt hour.\n\nUm so the and we can do that with existing we could yes yes yes we are going to make some uh technology improvements as well to the fundamental cell chemistry um and certainly to the way that the uh battery modules and packs are organized but uh the fundamental focus is on um cost per unit of energy and uh that that's so so that that's what the gigafactory is about It's it's it's taking economies of scale um as as far as we can we can possibly imagine to to a very extreme level as far as we can.\n\nThat's what gets it to 100 or that's what gets it lower than 100 to sorry 100 what $100 a kilowatt. Oh. Um, we um can't comment on exact price numbers, but but but I mean that's not that that's that's approximately, you know, it's that's in the ballpark of what we're aiming for. Um, and and and that's it's important to cut the essentially the cost per kilowatt hour at least by 30% with the gigafactory.\n\nAnd our aspiration of course is to do better than a 30% cost per kilowatt hour reduction.\n\nin in order to achieve the 50% cost reduction for the model 3 which is about a 20% smaller car um and so would require for the same range 20% pure you know less energy that that means to get to the full 50% we need another 30 points coming from economies of scale um which I'm I'm actually very confident we'll achieve um and and at the gigafactory what we're doing is consolidating the production of the pack all the way from the the raw materials so there's literally cars cars coming in from from the mines like rail cars of raw materials from the mines and then out come completely finished battery packs.\n\nUm and this has actually never been done before. Uh so this it for batteries at least. Um and uh what we're able to to to to do in this process is massively improve the the cost of the of the of the cells and the packs.\n\nUm because today if you were to trace the movement of the raw materials from when they're mined and and they go through the various refining steps around the world and eventually are put in a cell and then that cell eventually is put into a module and a pack and then put into a car and then delivered to somebody. The the the raw material that molecule from the mine is doing an around the world trip like three times. It's it's really crazy.\n\nUm and there are even steps in the process where um it is converted first into one. So that's a big opportunity for yeah huge huge.\n\nSo, so one of the things, so Jeffrey Katzenberg is someone who I'm friendly with and he had a well publicized accident uh in in his Tesla car a week ago or two weeks ago or a month ago when someone went through a stoplight and a big SUV and hit him at u 40 miles an hour and he says that uh the Tesla car saved his life and he said because of the crush zones I guess and and he said it was just the most amazing thing.\n\nSo, so here this guy well-known great publicity. Then there's something on the internet that says that uh someone was just driving a car along and the car was about to smash into them and the car and he didn't see it and the car saw it and stopped turned around and stopped. Right. And and so so here we have this safety much safer car than the other cars. Yes. And uh Tom Prrisker, I presume you know him.\n\nAnd uh his mom Cindy uh Tom goes Tom Tom is in his 60s and uh his mom Cindy I I don't know how I guess she won't say how old she is, but she's more than 60s. And so he drove his car to her house and she said, \"I like this car.\" And so she kept the car. And so, so one of the things that's interesting to me is that just you talk about safety, but you don't really say, you know, your promotion isn't this is the safest car ever.\n\nI mean, I know you say it, but isn't that an unbelievable opportunity to uh to promote to change the demographic of who's buying our car and to get more Cindy's buying Cindy Prriskers instead of Tom's or instead of Tom's children? Um, yeah, it's glad you mentioned that. In fact, um, in designing the the Model S and the Model X, uh, safety was our absolute paramount goal.\n\nUm, and you know, I mean, my my I mean, I felt like obviously my family will be in the car, my friends. Um, if if if I didn't do everything possible to maximize safety and something went wrong, I couldn't live with myself. So um so we we spent enormous amounts of time on safety um and and and and the whole car is architected for for maximum safety. Um and and and we have we have physics on our side here which is very very important.\n\nUh so the there and I'll just go briefly like why exactly is the car safe because you hear things like cars are five stars and all that but I mean this this five stars that's not an actual statistical number like statist you know safety statistics are not measured really in stars they um there's an actual probability uh of of injury which is that that's the number that's most important. and and the probability of injury.\n\nUm, you you can look it up. It's sort of varied in the in the the Department of Transport website, but they have this for each individual car. Yeah. Every every car has a a combined probability of injury. Um, and the Model S um is still uh even though we did it three years ago, it still has the lowest probability of injury of any car ever tested. Um, and that's just on passive safety. And then we have the active safety as well.\n\nUm, and the um, the reasons basically are that because the the car does not have a big steel engine block in the front, we have a front trunk as well as a rear trunk because the electric motors are so small that they're actually coaxial with the with the axles. So, when you have a high-speed frontal collision, uh, what really matters is force of a distance.\n\nYou know, it's just like jumping into a pool from a from a high if you you know, if you jump from from a high diving board or something into a pool, um you'd want a deep pool and one without rocks in it. Um and and it's really not that complicated. It's the same thing for a car.\n\nAnd what people don't realize is like they think you think of like having a steel engine block is protecting you except that if when you hit something, you're going 60 m hour. So it's stopping you that is important. And so that deceleration distance is incredibly important. Um or or described another way, the the length of the crumple zone is extremely important.\n\nAnd the crumple zone on the front of a Model S is two to three times greater than that of any other premium sedan, which means that the uh impact attenuation is two to three times greater. Um and then anyone with their family, they want to buy one of these cars instead of a gasoline car. Absolutely. Definitely. Um, if I mean if this is um if if safety is of concern, I would for sure I mean it's just objectively true.\n\nIt it is the safest car by far. The the accident that um uh Jeffrey was in where he was he was sort of um t-boned by an SUV. Um it's so that's a side impact collision. The the reason the side impact collision on the the S is so much better than another car is because the the main structural component is the battery pack in the floor pan.\n\nSo the battery pack in the floor plan effectively acts as a big shear plate uh to transfer load uh from a side impact into the rest of the car. So so the whole car moves moves sideways uh in in a in a side impact collision. Um the but what happens in a in a gasoline car again because you've got the big steel engine block in the front you've got a huge portion of the mass in the front.\n\nSo you've got um and and and the rest of the car is is relatively weak. You essentially have um just uh thin sheet metal in in the on the on the side of the car and in the floor pan of the car. So uh the the the effect of side impact the load transfer um for a gasoline car um to the rest of the mass of the car is weak and as a result the side impact distance is dramatically greater.\n\nUm the the net net result is that you are much safer in a side impact. Um so so I'll just do a couple more questions then I'll open it up for everyone else.\n\nBut with so uh safety SpaceX and Uber so so safety with all these other automobile companies having one safety issue after another not just this emission problem but also about brakes and about IGN uh I'm sorry uh yeah the emissions not not just about brakes and about batteries and I'm sorry uh gasoline tanks um why so when we have a car that's uh existing that is spoiling the atmosphere in addition that's not as safe.\n\nWhy don't you think people have moved more rapidly to adopt our technology which we've offered to give them for free? Oh, you mean with the patents everything? Yeah. Um I think actually that there are a number of companies using the patents. So it's starting. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. So that's one. Question number two is uh uh space SpaceX and we'll come back to Uber. So SpaceX.\n\nSo, when I was a kid, there was a television program called Captain Video and uh Channel 5. And the rocket would go up and it would fly around and come back and and then in the 1960s we started going to out you know to orbit and go to the moon and uh and and the rockets as they would take off the stage one after another would fall off like you know and and my first thought when that was happening I didn't really understand why that would happen.\n\nSure. And now your idea is that hey this rocket ship is going to stay together and we could do 99 trips instead of one or something like that and therefore we can do it for one or two or 3% as expensively as we did it before. Why didn't anyone think of that before? Uh well actually the in the um rocket industry people have thought about uh reusability for for a very long time.\n\nUm and um it it it just happens that Earth's gravity is quite strong and um it it's just barely possible to get um reasonable payload to orbit um with an expendable rocket. Um so then if you add reusability um then that tends to give it negative payload to orbit. So you can't So how do you do it? So you've got to do two things.\n\nUm you've got to uh really advance the the core rocket technology itself as far as the engines, the airframe, um the avionics, um the recovery systems, um like the landing legs, uh and uh the the the boost back capability. um you you've got to um make make the rocket such that if it was uh in a pure expendable mode, it would get approximately four or slightly more than 4% of its payload mass to orbit.\n\nAnd and and to put this in perspective, normally a rocket gets about 2% of its payload mass orbit. So it's a very small number. Um but but if if so if you can push that two two-ish% to more like uh 4% on an expendable basis and then be really efficient in the way that the uh reuse takes place such that the reuse penalty is only maybe half of that so you still have a net payload to orbit of 2%.\n\nThat that's essentially the what's needed to achieve reusability. Um and um and it I mean SpaceX has been at it now for 13 years. Um and we haven't yet achieved it. So um and I so I think what we've done thus far is evolutionary, not revolutionary, but I think we're within sort of shooting distance of this. I think within um I think within the next year we'll be able to uh land the rocket intact. We'll be able to land the rocket just not intact.\n\nIt's like there's some exciting videos on YouTube if you want to watch them. Um, and uh, but but I think we're we're close to letting it intact. Um, and then we need to examine the rocket once we get it back to see what needs to be strengthened. Where do we overstrengthen things that we don't need to add as much mass and then we'll be able to do reusability uh, with the uh, with the rocket.\n\nUm, and the and and just like some of these things are maybe not they're not obvious to to people aren't who aren't familiar with the rocket industry, but the cost of our rocket is to to build it um is $60 million. And the but the cost of the propellant, the fuel and oxygen and so forth is only about uh $250,000. Wow. Um or maybe $300,000 thereabouts. But it's basically uh um yeah it's it's only about as expensive as say fueling up a 747. Okay.\n\nMy last question uh is Uber. So I listened to your conference call and uh someone asked whether we could be like Uber and I won't ask you that but but been asked that a lot. Yeah. Because you always say can't comment on that. Not ready to make any announcements in that area.\n\nBut my question is so there's another company it's much smaller than Uber called Lyft and uh I guess it's Carl Icon is an investor in that and I think Len Botnik is too and so my question is that what is it about Uber's business uh that will make them immune from being an attacked by Lyft? Does Lyft have a chance against Uber? Oh wow. I'm not really an expert in that arena.\n\nI is there some kind of scale that they have that makes it impossible for someone to compete against them is really my question. I I I think there's probably uh I think pro I mean this is I'm I've spent no time thinking about it but my impression this is of impression with like low confidence is that there's there's room for both Uber andyft. Yeah, that's what I I can see. Uh okay. So so Elon will take some questions now. Is that okay?\n\nYeah, sure. No problem. And uh and then afterwards uh I'm sure that you know you there's a couple of Teslas out on the mall and I'm not getting a commission to sell them but but uh if you sign up for a uh a test drive then and we know about it then we will send you a a present so you can get that afterwards. But in the meantime questions.\n\nOh, I should mention I I guess just got reminded um that that there's actually um for for anyone that isn't able to do a test drive today, uh we've actually arranged a a special uh VIP uh URL um just just for you guys, uh which is uh tesla. com/baron. Wow. Cool. Yeah. So, it's just uh Yeah. Thank you. Number six. Hi. Um, I had the pleasure of test driving a sick um an S just the other night.\n\nSo, uh, it was 5 minutes in New York City traffic, but sweet. Yay. Um, I know you're not saying a whole lot about the Model 3 at this point, but I'm just curious what you're willing to say about the experience of driving a $35,000 or so Model 3 as compared to driving a Model S. Sure. Well, our intent is the Model S and the X will be a kind of premium sort of high-end cars. Um and we will try to lead with new technologies um in the S and the X.\n\nUm so uh that that will be the the advantage of the S and the X. Uh but the the the three will be um a smaller version. So maybe about 20% smaller uh comparable in size to say a 3 series BMW or an Audi A4. Um and um but it's it's going to have a very similar feel uh to to to the S. Um, and so it'll it'll be sort of have great acceleration, um, good driving feel, good handling, um, and for the size of the vehicle, uh, great cargo space.\n\nUm, yeah, I should mention like the the the S because it's got uh a trunk in the front and a trunk in the back. Um the the the actual cargo space of of the S is anywhere from 50 to 100% more than a typic than a than a gasoline car of the same external dimensions. Am I? You're the one. Thank you so much for joining us. I think that is fantastic.\n\nI think uh I as well everybody else here enjoyed hearing, you know, from you and you were indeed a visionary. I have one observation. Uh we have a favorite restaurant that has installed about six uh Tesla charging stations right outside the door. Okay, it's a good restaurant, but I notice they're always full. All those charging stations are full.\n\nAnd thinking of the great synergy of, you know, having a restaurant, I've got charging stations and now I get extra business. So, I hope they're paying you to put in these these stations. But I I have, you know, what I want to get to is a technical question. Read an interesting article about inroad charging. You know, take your pick. It can be inductive. It could be RF. Is there any potential for that? Okay.\n\nIn terms of in, you know, if there is, is Tesla involved or engaged in looking or doing something with that? Thank you. Sure. I I actually don't I think that's unlikely to occur. Um, I think it's it's really going to be just long range batteries. Um, and then and then and then most charging tends to occur at people's home or business. Um, and and then that's really 80 90% of charging.\n\nUh, 10% of charging is long distance, which is what we have the the superchargers, so you can travel anywhere in the country. Um, actually did this great road trip with with my kids uh from uh LA to Mount Rushmore in South Dakota. Um, so you can travel anywhere in the country, complete freedom.\n\nUm, and um, uh, but but I think in locations that are not home or business and not long distance that there will be a small amount of charging that occurs, but it's in the sub 5% category. So, it's nice to have, but it's not it's not needed for full utility of the car. Put the stations near. Okay. Sure.\n\nSo we that's our that's our that's our aspiration actually is to put the supercharging stations um somewhere where you can you can immediately then go and um have a a nice meal and um grab a coffee and be on your way. So or and do some shopping if you want. So so so I apologize to everyone. I hogged the time and I didn't realize that we were running over.\n\nI thought that this was the amount of time we could talk and then there were more time for questions. Would you be able to answer some questions a little bit longer? Yeah, no problem. Sure. So, so Elon can stay here uh for a bit. There's entertainment that's now starting in three venues. Uh in the left venue, uh we have Steve Martin and Martin Short for comedy. Uh on the right venue, uh we have Michael Boué.\n\nAnd in the center, there's uh Tony Bennett and Lady Gaga. Not bad. Pretty cool, right?","textByLang":{"en":"Good morning. My name is Gilad Shani and I'm a research analyst at Baron Capital following the tech and energy infrastructure sectors. It is my distinct pleasure to introduce our next guest. He is a man who has been identified as everything from a super villain to a superhero. He doesn't stop at changing our world as we know it. He's on a mission to change our galaxy.\n\nElon Musk is the CEO of Tesla, a company whose mission is to accelerate the world's transition to sustainable transport. In 2004, Elon was a lead investor in Tesla's first financing ground. And in 2008, when the company was near bankruptcy, Elon became CEO and led its growth to over $5 billion of revenue today. The company developed three electric vehicles, the Roadster, Model S, and Model X.\n\nThe Model S has been described as a remarkable car that paves a new unorthodox course and it's a powerful statement of American startup ingenuity. Model X, which was recently launched, has a weight time of over a year. Tesla sold almost a 100,000 vehicles, electric vehicles to date. Tesla is building a battery manufacturing plant called Gigafactory that will be 10 times bigger than the largest Boeing facility producing Dreamlininers.\n\nInterestingly, Tesla is the largest battery consumer in the world, surpassing consumer electronic companies like Samsung and Apple. Elon is a scientist, an inventor, a designer, and one of the world's most innovative minds. He is helping to advance some of the world's most disruptive technologies. Tesla in the auto industry, SpaceX in the aerospace industry, and Solar City in the power industry.\n\nNow, please welcome Elon and Ron for a conversation. That's pretty cool. So when I started my career, one of my first clients told me that what was most important uh was finding someone uh who could realize a dream, make it happen. Uh and that's been my whole career, finding people in which to invest in whom to invest. Uh I was with Eric Schmidt recently. He's a chairman of Google and he's one of uh Elon's best friends.\n\nand uh he was telling me that he regards Elon as a combination of Walter Chrysler and Thomas Edison. And I didn't really know very much about Walter Chrysler until I looked him up on Google and and pretty interesting to be compared to those two guys. So, uh so, so again, keeping with the theory about investing in people, uh so we're investing in you and uh and and I think we're talking about $5 billion in revenues.\n\nUh, I'm sure you believe this is just the very beginning. So, so I'd like to touch a little bit before we get into the business on your background. We just started to talk about that before. So, you came from South Africa. Your dad was an engineer. And your mother? Um, my mother's a model and a nutritionist. And one of your brothers worked with you. Yeah. We co-founded the post company together.\n\nAnd so so Elon uh was also a founder of you know he's had these games and uh electronic games and then he was a founder of PayPal uh sold his business PayPal and PayPal got sold went public 7 $800 million sold it for a billion too. eBay bought it ultimately 50 billion. So presumably that has some impact on the way you think about things. Yeah, absolutely. Um I I actually I I actually was against the sale.\n\nI wasn't in favor of the sale, but um I was um I I I I was largest, you know, owner of of PayPal at the time, but I only had like 12% and so everybody else really wanted to sell, so we went forward with that. Um but I think um I think we probably shouldn't have. Yeah. Um so so I was reading about your history and and we've spoken before obviously and about uh your interest in space and uh sustainable transport and solar energy.\n\nWhere did all this come from? Well, uh, when I was in college, I thought about, um, what would most affect the future of humanity and, uh, I wanted to be involved in in those at least some of those areas and and I I thought there would be there were five things that I that I came up with that I thought would really affect our our future as a civilization. Um, one of them was the internet. Um, and then uh, the other was uh, sustainable energy.\n\nboth production and consumption of of that. And the third was um making life multilanetary. Um and then fourth and fifth were uh genetics and uh and AI. Um and I didn't think I'd be involved in in those areas, but I just those sort of more in in the abstract of what I thought would would affect things.\n\nUm and um but I mean going going back a little further, I actually didn't really expect to be uh involved in creating companies when I was like uh in high school or you know uh middle school. Um I actually was going to going to um pursue sort of physics and a career in physics and try to sort of understand more about the nature of the universe.\n\nUm but um you know then things like the superconducting super collider got cancelled and I thought well you know like what if I'm stuck in some situation like that and then there's like some active government basically stops things and then uh then then I I would it would all be a waste.\n\nSo, so when I when I think about it's a cars and so obviously, you know, if you're using hydrocarbons and burning them and wrecking the environment, it makes it tough to live on Earth and it's viewpointed out unless we adapt and can start to breathe carbon dioxide. And so, so, so, so that's your effort there.\n\nBut yeah, actually the thing is that um in in college um my interest in sustainable energy was purely at the time was was really from the standpoint of of of us eventually running out of hydrocarbons to mine and burn. So there's there's there's obviously limited supply of oil in the ground um and and eventually we would have to transition to something that's sustainable.\n\nUm because when we're drawing oil from the ground, we're we're essentially taking the accumulated uh solar energy that was bound up in plants and animals and then over hundreds of millions of years uh was turned into oil. Um and and and that's that's obviously finite. And if uh we if we if we run out of that and don't have a good solution, then there would be economic collapse uh independent of any environmental concerns.\n\nUm and so that was actually what what sort of initiated my interest in sustainable energy. U and it's sort of toological. I mean if if you know it energy needs to be sustainable if it's going to last for the long term. Um and then over time it became apparent that there there was actually an even more pressing concern which is that we're quite materially changing the chemical constituency of the oceans and atmosphere.\n\nUm, and the way that humanity has kind of grown up around the world is that, um, you know, we've put so much of our so many of our cities and settlements and towns right along the coastline. Um, and, uh, you know, and and that the world is quite sort of delicate in in in these sort of chemical balance.\n\nAnd so the if if we do take trillions of tons of uh CO2 that was buried deep underground and has been since in a lot of cases since the pre-Camrian era um you know when the most sophisticated thing was like a sponge then that would be would be a bad experiment to run. So, so it seems so obvious and we have all these car companies that make all these cars every year that burn gasoline and nobody wanted to do anything. But why? Why? Why?\n\nSo, it's so obvious, you know, you read in evidence and Exon was in the paper about the impact that they're having on the environment and they hit it just like the cigarette companies in 196. Same exact thing, right? It's it's the same same playbook.\n\nIn fact, the crazy thing is um I'd recommend reading the book Merchants of Doubt um because they actually explored um some scientists at JPL and and and elsewhere sort of explored like well what's going on here? And they actually found that the uh I mean the oil and gas industry is actually using literally the same lobbyists as the tobacco industry. Like by name, not even the firm. Amazing. Like some of those guys still they're still going.\n\nAmazing. Um, yeah. So, I mean, and and just like when they learned how to do it. Yeah, absolutely. Um, and and then, uh, oddly enough, the one movie I was involved with making was a movie called Thank You for Smoking, uh, which I recommend watching. It's kind of a fun movie.\n\nUm, and and you but but it it's sort of um it's it's based on on Buckley's book and it's uh it's it's it's it really gets to the truth of the matter of like how how all this happens. Um and what they do is essentially exploit doubt.\n\nUm, and so even when you've got a situation where virtually every scientist uh on Earth agrees that this is, you know, that that that global warming is real, that adding um billions of tons of carbon to the atmosphere and oceans is is a bad idea.\n\nThen you have a few percent of who who descent and and then the way that is it is presented to the public is is not that you know 97 or 98% of scientists think what we're doing is crazy but that but simply that scientists disagree. Now scientists disagree about everything. Okay? You will not find 100% of scientists who agree about anything. Um so but but this is a very disingenuous argument.\n\nSo, so, so I understand that and then I go to visit your plant and I've been there go every three or four months now and I guess not very many people who are analysts on Wall Street even though 22 guys publish about Tesla. I think very few have actually been there and hardly anyone's spoken to you.\n\nBut then when I go into the plant and I see and I've been to other automobile plants also and there's a lot of people, not that many machines and I see our plant in Tesla and I see a lot of machines and not that many people. Uh and I look at it and it appears to me so herculean. How do you build such a thing? And how could you ever think you're going to be successful? Why how would you do such a thing?\n\nAnd then to start up you're a poor immigrant kid. You come here and you do how do you do that? How'd that work? Uh sure. Well, I mean, at the beginning of Tesla, um, I didn't think we would be successful. I thought we would almost certainly fail. Um, and you put all the money you had in PayPal to to invest in this and you thought you'd fail. Yeah.\n\nUm I mean I I could I could walk you through the basic logic of I mean how so um coming out of PayPal I was fortunate enough to have about $180 million. Um and I thought well that's that's a lot of money. Um, you know, if if if I I'm going to assign half of this to SpaceX, Tesla, and Solar City, and I'll still have the other half, and I'll be fine.\n\nUm, and Yeah, but you told your wife if it doesn't work when you live in your in her parents' basement. I did. Yeah. I was Yeah. Hopefully kidding cuz it's like it's not it's not great in her parents' basement. It's really not great. U Yeah. So, uh, yeah. Yeah, she didn't like that.\n\nUm but but I mean the way things so I thought yeah, you know, so I figure I'd probably lose the money, but we're you know, a good try and it's kind of important and um worth doing, but but then as time went by and the companies needed more money and then we hit that really tough recession of 0809, um which was super bad for the car industry. I mean, you had GM and Chrysler go bankrupt.\n\nUh, so I was like, man, uh, if if I don't invest everything, if if I invest everything, there's a there's a chance um and that we'll we'll survive. If I don't invest everything, there was no chance. So, if it wasn't for that recession, there's no way this could have existed. Being able to buy a billion dollar plant for $50 million. Oh, that's true. But that came that came a bit later. But yeah, um, but the the real key thing was was 2008.\n\nWell, even maybe if you go from mid 2007 to mid 2009, those that 2-year period was super bad. Um, and we'd made so many mistakes in the beginning of Tesla that we basically had to recapitalize the company almost completely in 2007. Um, cuz I mean almost every decision we' made was wrong.\n\nUm so and and when we created the company and and I got to give credit here for the beginning for um uh AC Propulsion which is a little little company in uh Southern California who created an electric sports car. Um, and it was actually based on on on AC Propulsion sort of idea, but I was trying to convince AC Propulsion to commercialize an electric sports car.\n\nUh, commercialize this sort of prototype that they done, but they had no interest in doing that. Um, and uh, after a while I got tired of trying to convince them. And so I said, \"Look, I'm just going to do this myself.\" And then they said, \"Well, you know, there's some other people that also want to do it. Do you want to join in with them?\" I said, \"Okay, let's let's do that.\" Um, and uh, but those guys don't get enough credit.\n\nThey they uh they did some cool stuff with an electric sports car before Tesla did. So, that's was that's when you were thinking about should we use an engine and electric or should we just use electric? Oh, no. That that was that was pure electric sports car. Um, I mean the whole sort of saga of Tesla is quite complex and there's like many soap opera episodes that you could make out of it.\n\nUm but but no that that AC Propulsion had created a um a pure electric sports car uh called the T0 um as kind of just a demo. Uh but they were just not interested in commercializing their stuff. And um so I said, \"Okay, look, this really needs to we need to show people broadly what electric cars can do.\" So um ended getting getting together with a bunch of guys and trying to commercialize that idea.\n\nSo again, so we go back to this plant, this massive plant that we have out in Fremont, California today. Yeah. I never expected that we'd have this plant, but it's amazing place. Yeah. And the amazing thing is like it's kind of full, which is I mean it when I when we got in there, we thought like when we first got that that plant, it's this one of the biggest plants in the world. Um I think it's sort of like by footprint.\n\nI mean, I think it's like maybe the third or fourth biggest how many how many square feet? It's five and a half million square feet. Five and a half million. Yeah. So that's whatund how many acres? You mean under roof? 150 acres. Yeah, exactly. Um it's a General Motors building. Just to give you perspective, General Motors building, which is where the Apple store is, that one block, that's one acre. This 150 acres. Yeah, it's crazy.\n\nYou could go camping in there. Um and um like it takes you a long time to work walk from one side to the other. Um we have bikes in the factory so you can just get around a bit faster. Um and like when we first got this um which was actually it was a little bit later. It was in um early 2010. Um and uh we thought, man, there's no way we'd ever get that that that awesome plant because um you know, it just cost too much.\n\nUm and we didn't have much we didn't have much money. But then as a result of the recession, um the plant which was joint owned by uh GM and Toyota, um the they decided to close it down. Um and the story behind that is sort of a long story independent of Tesla. So they were going to shut it down and it was just going to be empty and they was like maybe going to turn it into like a mall or something like that.\n\nUm and but it was going to be empty for a long time and um and and anyway so so we sort of approached uh Toyota and said like look um you know we'll take it off your hands you know uh and um and and then uh and we also did a bunch of other strategic elements that the strategic elements we did with Toyota were actually independent. We also did a electric RAV 4 program and then Toyota also um did an investment at the IPO.\n\nUm so and they invested at the IPO of $50 million at $50 million at a $17 share price. So it worked out for them. Um but um but we were amazed that that they were willing to move forward uh and and do it. Um and uh but for us at Tesla was so tiny at the time.\n\nI mean, it was like imagine like you're like this little band, this little group, and this like somebody says, \"Well, there's this giant like alien dreadnaugh that you can, you know, you can have for pennies on the dollar, and you have no idea how it works.\" And you're like, like, where do the where are the controls? How do how do you use this thing?\n\nUm, and that that's what we um we were fortunate enough to to to buy it at a point where automotive plants were not worth much. So, this plan ultimately is going to be able to do a half a million cars a year. I think I think half a million cars and, you know, we could conceivably go beyond half a million cars, though, but that's not really the dream. I mean, long term, I think I think we want to try to do several million cars.\n\nUm, yeah, I mean, from volume standpoint, but we're now doing 50,000 this year and 75,000 next year. We're talking about several million. And but we think about Volkswagen 10 million, Toyota 10 million, General Motors eight or nine million. Profit margins a fraction of what we think we can do. Why can't we be bigger than them? Well, I mean I guess I mean that's pretty possibly. It's not out of the question.\n\nUm I think over time if we continue to if we build great products um and we keep our cost structure uh competitive um then I think uh you know who knows what the ultimate So we're going to need a lot of these plants. Yes. Many plants in fact many auto plants and many gigafactories I think are needed. So the gigafactory let's do that one. to gigafactories in Nevada. Yeah. And they and this is four billion, five billion.\n\nIt's we're expecting it to be roughly a5 billion dollar uh capital investment to get to full production. Um although te Tesla's providing you roughly 50 60% of that um over time and then our strategic partners like Panasonic and a number of others are providing the other half roughly and then Nevada gave us a billion or in tax credits or savings or something. Um the whole tax credit thing drives me crazy.\n\nUm it sounds we're gonna have to turn it back. Yeah, it sounds much better than it is. Um so actually the first time I heard that the the amount was 1. 3 billion was at the press conference announcing the deal and I was like really how do we get to 1. 3? Um the what we actually got was um Nevada gave us uh some free land. Um but but the state of Nevada has a lot of land. So this is not a this is not in short supply like the desert.\n\nUm yeah, there's a lot of land in Nevada. Nevada um as I said. Um and then they also agreed to build a connecting highway on the southbound uh to that connects to Carson City, but they were going to do that anyway, so I don't think like that should be included in our in what they gave us.\n\num like um and then they repurposed um I think uh I don't know $80 million of tax credits that was going to the like insurance comp insurance companies or something. They repurposed that to us. U but uh that that's the only sort of thing that we can actually monetize. Um and then um and and then they also gave us uh relief on um sales and use tax for equipment in the factory.\n\nUh and depending upon what type of uh situation, it's either 10 or 20 years for the sales and use tax abatement. Um so but so if you assume that we we fully use the sales and use tax debatement which requires building which requires actually capital equipment in excess of $5 billion over 20 years and you add all of that up it adds to 1. 3 billion 1.\n\n3 yeah know actually in effect the contribution the initial contribution to the factory um the gigafactory by state of Nevada is less than 5%. And then they're and then they have roughly a 1% contribution over 20 years. So So presumably for them this a great deal because they're getting a lot of jobs. Oh, it's a no- loss proposition for the state.\n\nI mean, uh, you know, as the saying goes, the house always wins and like Nevada understands the house. Okay, Nevada is the house.\n\nSo it's like the only way for us to actually have have the sales use tax credits be meaningful is uh if for us to have enormous numbers of machines and enormous numbers of people operating those machines and which is good for Nevada's calculation was that they that they would that their return on their tax credits would be somewhere between 80 and 100 not percent times times So it's like it's a it's a good deal for a state.\n\nSo um so so the the battery plant that's what the giga plant is uh is being done uh without a lot of without any I I understand uh public viewing of what we're doing inside of that factory. And there were some reporters Yeah, there will be some but so far Yeah. Yeah. And there had been some reporters, I guess a couple or three weeks ago, uh, that snuck into our property. Yeah. And like ran over two of our people, tried to kill us, kill our guys.\n\nUm, yeah, that was pretty crazy. Um kind of, um, why? Well, I think they just got a bit overzealous and then and then I I assume that they panicked and weren't actually trying to kill our employees, but but they they did run over two of two of our employees, which is what, you know, while they were trying to they're trying to get away.\n\nUm uh and so they ran over two of our guys and like fortunately like the injuries aren't too serious but um but yeah that's that's like not cool. Um, so, so you know, so so we think it's important enough to not let anyone see what we're doing inside and other people trying to figure out what's going on and obviously not a nightclub.\n\nAnd uh, so so what is so what I think about is not knowing very much about technology and how things work is that so we're making that kind of a battery. Lithium. Lithium. Yeah. Although the the general rubric of lithium covers many types of chemistries. I mean um there's a really broad range of things of batteries that use lithium as the ion transport. So whatever you describe here is going to go over my head.\n\nBut my question is how do we know when we're making such an investments that what we're building in that factory is going to persist? And why is it that in a hundred years so we do all sorts of things. are sending things out of the atmosphere, out of the galaxy, out of the universe, planes, and and uh and yet for 100 years, we haven't been able to build a battery that goes for more than 300 miles. So, how can that be?\n\nHow how is it possible that we haven't been able to spend money on that? And if that's the case, because no one's paid attention to it, and all of a sudden, we come along and pay attention, we're going to try to reduce the weight in the existing batteries and use maybe silicon and having a 300 mile battery going to a thousand. Oh, yeah. So how do we worry that what we're building isn't going to get obsolete also?\n\nUm well the reason is that at this point I think we we have quite a good understanding of all the veterary technologies uh in the world. Um like there could be some small laboratory that's being super secret. Um but uh but generally what people inventing battery technologies try to do is they approach Tesla first and foremost because we're the biggest lithium ion consumer in the world.\n\nSo anyone who wants to build a battery has new ideas, they're going to come to us before they go anywhere. Like we'd be their biggest customer. So if somebody invents something, the the obvious choice to license it to or is is Tesla. Um and so um and and and we try to take things, you know, as seriously as possible, but I mean we we track uh right now about 60 different uh efforts around the world to develop improved batteries.\n\nUm and you know some of them hold some long-term promise but uh we and but we rate all of them on from a one to five. Um where five is we should be doing business with them and one is complete BS. Um how many fives are there? There's no fives. Um there's some there's some threes. Uh currently there's no no one in the there's no one even in the four. Like there's some that might go from a three to a four.\n\nFour means we should we should be in like preliminary discussions. So what's what's going to change in the technology that's going to enable us to have this different are we going to have something in 10 years that's going to be an unusual battery that's going to be able to do a thousand miles and going to weigh less than it does presently? I don't think we'll have quite that much of an improvement.\n\nUm and and and actually I think most likely we would not like like technically right now for us to do say a 500 mile range car we could absolutely do that right now uh with current current batteries but but the the cost would be too high and the useful load impact on the vehicle would be too high. So you have we have to fill up part of the trunk and the front and the front trunk and the rear trunk uh with batteries.\n\nUm we'd have to impinch a little bit on passenger room. But for us to do a 500 mile range car right now be no problem. Um a 500 mile range car in the current uh form factor um I think that's you know probably less than 10 years away you know with in the same volume and roughly the same mass. And the way we're going to drive the cost of the kilowatt hours from 250 to 100. That's because we're doing what?\n\nThat's just because we're doing scale because we're using different materials. because we're changing chemistry. How do we do that? Yeah. So, we we're making quite substantial improvements in the total pack energy density. So, there's there's the cell energy density and then as you put those cells together in a pack and you have to figure out how to do that safely. Um, we're able to reduce the pack energy density.\n\nSo, we'll make I think quite significant improvements in the in the pack energy density. Um but but the thing that's most important really is the cost. Um because I mean for a lot of people that are driving Model S um you know the model the current say uh dual motor Model S will do over 300 m right now at 65 mph. Um so that's that's more than enough range for most people.\n\nIt's and then you got the supercharger where you can recharge very you know very quickly. Uh we have supercharge network that's now ubiquitous throughout the country. You can that lots of our customers do cross-country trips LA New York um whatnot uh using a supercharge network.\n\nSo there's really have you have freedom of travel at this point um and certainly incremental improvements to the battery pack range are important but the thing that's really important is reducing the cost per kilowatt hour.\n\nUm so the and we can do that with existing we could yes yes yes we are going to make some uh technology improvements as well to the fundamental cell chemistry um and certainly to the way that the uh battery modules and packs are organized but uh the fundamental focus is on um cost per unit of energy and uh that that's so so that that's what the gigafactory is about It's it's it's taking economies of scale um as as far as we can we can possibly imagine to to a very extreme level as far as we can.\n\nThat's what gets it to 100 or that's what gets it lower than 100 to sorry 100 what $100 a kilowatt. Oh. Um, we um can't comment on exact price numbers, but but but I mean that's not that that's that's approximately, you know, it's that's in the ballpark of what we're aiming for. Um, and and and that's it's important to cut the essentially the cost per kilowatt hour at least by 30% with the gigafactory.\n\nAnd our aspiration of course is to do better than a 30% cost per kilowatt hour reduction.\n\nin in order to achieve the 50% cost reduction for the model 3 which is about a 20% smaller car um and so would require for the same range 20% pure you know less energy that that means to get to the full 50% we need another 30 points coming from economies of scale um which I'm I'm actually very confident we'll achieve um and and at the gigafactory what we're doing is consolidating the production of the pack all the way from the the raw materials so there's literally cars cars coming in from from the mines like rail cars of raw materials from the mines and then out come completely finished battery packs.\n\nUm and this has actually never been done before. Uh so this it for batteries at least. Um and uh what we're able to to to to do in this process is massively improve the the cost of the of the of the cells and the packs.\n\nUm because today if you were to trace the movement of the raw materials from when they're mined and and they go through the various refining steps around the world and eventually are put in a cell and then that cell eventually is put into a module and a pack and then put into a car and then delivered to somebody. The the the raw material that molecule from the mine is doing an around the world trip like three times. It's it's really crazy.\n\nUm and there are even steps in the process where um it is converted first into one. So that's a big opportunity for yeah huge huge.\n\nSo, so one of the things, so Jeffrey Katzenberg is someone who I'm friendly with and he had a well publicized accident uh in in his Tesla car a week ago or two weeks ago or a month ago when someone went through a stoplight and a big SUV and hit him at u 40 miles an hour and he says that uh the Tesla car saved his life and he said because of the crush zones I guess and and he said it was just the most amazing thing.\n\nSo, so here this guy well-known great publicity. Then there's something on the internet that says that uh someone was just driving a car along and the car was about to smash into them and the car and he didn't see it and the car saw it and stopped turned around and stopped. Right. And and so so here we have this safety much safer car than the other cars. Yes. And uh Tom Prrisker, I presume you know him.\n\nAnd uh his mom Cindy uh Tom goes Tom Tom is in his 60s and uh his mom Cindy I I don't know how I guess she won't say how old she is, but she's more than 60s. And so he drove his car to her house and she said, \"I like this car.\" And so she kept the car. And so, so one of the things that's interesting to me is that just you talk about safety, but you don't really say, you know, your promotion isn't this is the safest car ever.\n\nI mean, I know you say it, but isn't that an unbelievable opportunity to uh to promote to change the demographic of who's buying our car and to get more Cindy's buying Cindy Prriskers instead of Tom's or instead of Tom's children? Um, yeah, it's glad you mentioned that. In fact, um, in designing the the Model S and the Model X, uh, safety was our absolute paramount goal.\n\nUm, and you know, I mean, my my I mean, I felt like obviously my family will be in the car, my friends. Um, if if if I didn't do everything possible to maximize safety and something went wrong, I couldn't live with myself. So um so we we spent enormous amounts of time on safety um and and and and the whole car is architected for for maximum safety. Um and and and we have we have physics on our side here which is very very important.\n\nUh so the there and I'll just go briefly like why exactly is the car safe because you hear things like cars are five stars and all that but I mean this this five stars that's not an actual statistical number like statist you know safety statistics are not measured really in stars they um there's an actual probability uh of of injury which is that that's the number that's most important. and and the probability of injury.\n\nUm, you you can look it up. It's sort of varied in the in the the Department of Transport website, but they have this for each individual car. Yeah. Every every car has a a combined probability of injury. Um, and the Model S um is still uh even though we did it three years ago, it still has the lowest probability of injury of any car ever tested. Um, and that's just on passive safety. And then we have the active safety as well.\n\nUm, and the um, the reasons basically are that because the the car does not have a big steel engine block in the front, we have a front trunk as well as a rear trunk because the electric motors are so small that they're actually coaxial with the with the axles. So, when you have a high-speed frontal collision, uh, what really matters is force of a distance.\n\nYou know, it's just like jumping into a pool from a from a high if you you know, if you jump from from a high diving board or something into a pool, um you'd want a deep pool and one without rocks in it. Um and and it's really not that complicated. It's the same thing for a car.\n\nAnd what people don't realize is like they think you think of like having a steel engine block is protecting you except that if when you hit something, you're going 60 m hour. So it's stopping you that is important. And so that deceleration distance is incredibly important. Um or or described another way, the the length of the crumple zone is extremely important.\n\nAnd the crumple zone on the front of a Model S is two to three times greater than that of any other premium sedan, which means that the uh impact attenuation is two to three times greater. Um and then anyone with their family, they want to buy one of these cars instead of a gasoline car. Absolutely. Definitely. Um, if I mean if this is um if if safety is of concern, I would for sure I mean it's just objectively true.\n\nIt it is the safest car by far. The the accident that um uh Jeffrey was in where he was he was sort of um t-boned by an SUV. Um it's so that's a side impact collision. The the reason the side impact collision on the the S is so much better than another car is because the the main structural component is the battery pack in the floor pan.\n\nSo the battery pack in the floor plan effectively acts as a big shear plate uh to transfer load uh from a side impact into the rest of the car. So so the whole car moves moves sideways uh in in a in a side impact collision. Um the but what happens in a in a gasoline car again because you've got the big steel engine block in the front you've got a huge portion of the mass in the front.\n\nSo you've got um and and and the rest of the car is is relatively weak. You essentially have um just uh thin sheet metal in in the on the on the side of the car and in the floor pan of the car. So uh the the the effect of side impact the load transfer um for a gasoline car um to the rest of the mass of the car is weak and as a result the side impact distance is dramatically greater.\n\nUm the the net net result is that you are much safer in a side impact. Um so so I'll just do a couple more questions then I'll open it up for everyone else.\n\nBut with so uh safety SpaceX and Uber so so safety with all these other automobile companies having one safety issue after another not just this emission problem but also about brakes and about IGN uh I'm sorry uh yeah the emissions not not just about brakes and about batteries and I'm sorry uh gasoline tanks um why so when we have a car that's uh existing that is spoiling the atmosphere in addition that's not as safe.\n\nWhy don't you think people have moved more rapidly to adopt our technology which we've offered to give them for free? Oh, you mean with the patents everything? Yeah. Um I think actually that there are a number of companies using the patents. So it's starting. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. So that's one. Question number two is uh uh space SpaceX and we'll come back to Uber. So SpaceX.\n\nSo, when I was a kid, there was a television program called Captain Video and uh Channel 5. And the rocket would go up and it would fly around and come back and and then in the 1960s we started going to out you know to orbit and go to the moon and uh and and the rockets as they would take off the stage one after another would fall off like you know and and my first thought when that was happening I didn't really understand why that would happen.\n\nSure. And now your idea is that hey this rocket ship is going to stay together and we could do 99 trips instead of one or something like that and therefore we can do it for one or two or 3% as expensively as we did it before. Why didn't anyone think of that before? Uh well actually the in the um rocket industry people have thought about uh reusability for for a very long time.\n\nUm and um it it it just happens that Earth's gravity is quite strong and um it it's just barely possible to get um reasonable payload to orbit um with an expendable rocket. Um so then if you add reusability um then that tends to give it negative payload to orbit. So you can't So how do you do it? So you've got to do two things.\n\nUm you've got to uh really advance the the core rocket technology itself as far as the engines, the airframe, um the avionics, um the recovery systems, um like the landing legs, uh and uh the the the boost back capability. um you you've got to um make make the rocket such that if it was uh in a pure expendable mode, it would get approximately four or slightly more than 4% of its payload mass to orbit.\n\nAnd and and to put this in perspective, normally a rocket gets about 2% of its payload mass orbit. So it's a very small number. Um but but if if so if you can push that two two-ish% to more like uh 4% on an expendable basis and then be really efficient in the way that the uh reuse takes place such that the reuse penalty is only maybe half of that so you still have a net payload to orbit of 2%.\n\nThat that's essentially the what's needed to achieve reusability. Um and um and it I mean SpaceX has been at it now for 13 years. Um and we haven't yet achieved it. So um and I so I think what we've done thus far is evolutionary, not revolutionary, but I think we're within sort of shooting distance of this. I think within um I think within the next year we'll be able to uh land the rocket intact. We'll be able to land the rocket just not intact.\n\nIt's like there's some exciting videos on YouTube if you want to watch them. Um, and uh, but but I think we're we're close to letting it intact. Um, and then we need to examine the rocket once we get it back to see what needs to be strengthened. Where do we overstrengthen things that we don't need to add as much mass and then we'll be able to do reusability uh, with the uh, with the rocket.\n\nUm, and the and and just like some of these things are maybe not they're not obvious to to people aren't who aren't familiar with the rocket industry, but the cost of our rocket is to to build it um is $60 million. And the but the cost of the propellant, the fuel and oxygen and so forth is only about uh $250,000. Wow. Um or maybe $300,000 thereabouts. But it's basically uh um yeah it's it's only about as expensive as say fueling up a 747. Okay.\n\nMy last question uh is Uber. So I listened to your conference call and uh someone asked whether we could be like Uber and I won't ask you that but but been asked that a lot. Yeah. Because you always say can't comment on that. Not ready to make any announcements in that area.\n\nBut my question is so there's another company it's much smaller than Uber called Lyft and uh I guess it's Carl Icon is an investor in that and I think Len Botnik is too and so my question is that what is it about Uber's business uh that will make them immune from being an attacked by Lyft? Does Lyft have a chance against Uber? Oh wow. I'm not really an expert in that arena.\n\nI is there some kind of scale that they have that makes it impossible for someone to compete against them is really my question. I I I think there's probably uh I think pro I mean this is I'm I've spent no time thinking about it but my impression this is of impression with like low confidence is that there's there's room for both Uber andyft. Yeah, that's what I I can see. Uh okay. So so Elon will take some questions now. Is that okay?\n\nYeah, sure. No problem. And uh and then afterwards uh I'm sure that you know you there's a couple of Teslas out on the mall and I'm not getting a commission to sell them but but uh if you sign up for a uh a test drive then and we know about it then we will send you a a present so you can get that afterwards. But in the meantime questions.\n\nOh, I should mention I I guess just got reminded um that that there's actually um for for anyone that isn't able to do a test drive today, uh we've actually arranged a a special uh VIP uh URL um just just for you guys, uh which is uh tesla. com/baron. Wow. Cool. Yeah. So, it's just uh Yeah. Thank you. Number six. Hi. Um, I had the pleasure of test driving a sick um an S just the other night.\n\nSo, uh, it was 5 minutes in New York City traffic, but sweet. Yay. Um, I know you're not saying a whole lot about the Model 3 at this point, but I'm just curious what you're willing to say about the experience of driving a $35,000 or so Model 3 as compared to driving a Model S. Sure. Well, our intent is the Model S and the X will be a kind of premium sort of high-end cars. Um and we will try to lead with new technologies um in the S and the X.\n\nUm so uh that that will be the the advantage of the S and the X. Uh but the the the three will be um a smaller version. So maybe about 20% smaller uh comparable in size to say a 3 series BMW or an Audi A4. Um and um but it's it's going to have a very similar feel uh to to to the S. Um, and so it'll it'll be sort of have great acceleration, um, good driving feel, good handling, um, and for the size of the vehicle, uh, great cargo space.\n\nUm, yeah, I should mention like the the the S because it's got uh a trunk in the front and a trunk in the back. Um the the the actual cargo space of of the S is anywhere from 50 to 100% more than a typic than a than a gasoline car of the same external dimensions. Am I? You're the one. Thank you so much for joining us. I think that is fantastic.\n\nI think uh I as well everybody else here enjoyed hearing, you know, from you and you were indeed a visionary. I have one observation. Uh we have a favorite restaurant that has installed about six uh Tesla charging stations right outside the door. Okay, it's a good restaurant, but I notice they're always full. All those charging stations are full.\n\nAnd thinking of the great synergy of, you know, having a restaurant, I've got charging stations and now I get extra business. So, I hope they're paying you to put in these these stations. But I I have, you know, what I want to get to is a technical question. Read an interesting article about inroad charging. You know, take your pick. It can be inductive. It could be RF. Is there any potential for that? Okay.\n\nIn terms of in, you know, if there is, is Tesla involved or engaged in looking or doing something with that? Thank you. Sure. I I actually don't I think that's unlikely to occur. Um, I think it's it's really going to be just long range batteries. Um, and then and then and then most charging tends to occur at people's home or business. Um, and and then that's really 80 90% of charging.\n\nUh, 10% of charging is long distance, which is what we have the the superchargers, so you can travel anywhere in the country. Um, actually did this great road trip with with my kids uh from uh LA to Mount Rushmore in South Dakota. Um, so you can travel anywhere in the country, complete freedom.\n\nUm, and um, uh, but but I think in locations that are not home or business and not long distance that there will be a small amount of charging that occurs, but it's in the sub 5% category. So, it's nice to have, but it's not it's not needed for full utility of the car. Put the stations near. Okay. Sure.\n\nSo we that's our that's our that's our aspiration actually is to put the supercharging stations um somewhere where you can you can immediately then go and um have a a nice meal and um grab a coffee and be on your way. So or and do some shopping if you want. So so so I apologize to everyone. I hogged the time and I didn't realize that we were running over.\n\nI thought that this was the amount of time we could talk and then there were more time for questions. Would you be able to answer some questions a little bit longer? Yeah, no problem. Sure. So, so Elon can stay here uh for a bit. There's entertainment that's now starting in three venues. Uh in the left venue, uh we have Steve Martin and Martin Short for comedy. Uh on the right venue, uh we have Michael Boué.\n\nAnd in the center, there's uh Tony Bennett and Lady Gaga. Not bad. Pretty cool, right?"},"languages":["en"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsIbGKosY1E"},{"id":"startalk-with-neil-degrasse-tyson-2015-11-06","type":"interview","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cfXzMjVFDBk","title":"StarTalk with Neil deGrasse Tyson","titles":{"en":"StarTalk with Neil deGrasse Tyson","de":"StarTalk with Neil deGrasse Tyson","fr":"StarTalk with Neil deGrasse Tyson"},"date":"2015-11-06","summary":"Tyson explores the future of humanity with Musk, covering NASA funding, Mars colonization and SpaceX, with Bill Nye.","text":"Eva would egg hatched you into this world where were you before you well I was born in South Africa wouldn't South Africa and you come to America and make a billion dollars yeah I mean I didn't expect it would make a billion dollars I suppose I grew up in South Africa honestly seeing a lot of the same TV and movies and reading comic books and and it really didn't feel all that different from say Southern California honestly so you had a kind of baptism into American pop culture at the time yeah yeah you know a lot of have ogres and when steakhouses and read like every comic book you know so my father brought me on a trip to the United States when I was about 10 I remember it was really awesome experience because the hotels all had arcades so my number\n\none thing was when we went to new hotel the motel or whatever it is go to the arcades and so that they have got any other services for that whether they had bedbugs you're looking for arcade games yeah what did video games do for you and that they're incredibly engaging and they maybe want to learn how to program computers cuz then I thought well I could make my own games and then I could also I want to see how the games work like how did you create a video game that's what led me to learn how to program computers to be a programmer yeah so I had one of the first video game consoles didn't have any have cartridges you had like four games that you could play and you could like pick one one of the four games you could play that was it and then it went from\n\nthere to the original Atari and then in television and then I was in a store and saw at the Commodore vic-20 and I was like holy crow you can actually have a computer and make your own games I thought this was just one of the most incredible things possible took all of my saved allowance and and then hounded my father until we got the Commodore vic-20 and there came with this manual on how to program in basic search I spent all night over days in a row just observing that and on your own no one forced you know this is self-motivated I got to know this this is good for me I'm spend like nine nine or ten or something so your performance in basic at age nine or ten yeah I kind of went got OCD on the thing maybe so technically OCD is but still II get obsessive\n\nlet me put that at least the o clock so programming anything else you get to control something construct a little universe and when you first do it you're like this is incredible you can actually make things happen like you type these commands and then something happens on the screen that's pretty amazing when I was in college I saw one of the things that are most going to affect the future of humanity and the electric cars solar power essentially sustainable most people thinking I just want a job when I get out and you're trying to reshape humanity as an undergraduate I mean it's pretty in America it's pretty easy to keep yourself a lot so I mean my threshold for existing is pretty low I mean I figured I could like be in some dingy apartment with my\n\ncomputer and be okay and not stalled mm-hmm in fact when I first came to North America I was in Canada when I seventeen and just to sort of see what it takes to live I'd try to live on one dollar a day which was it do you still just buy food in bulk at this yeah rice and beans and yeah I would go for the hot dogs okay my dogs and oranges you get really tired of hot dogs and oranges after a while and we closely like you know pasta and a green pepper and a big thing of sauce and that can go pretty far too so it's like okay you know if I can live for a dollar a day then at least from a food cost standpoint well it's pretty easy to earn like thirty dollars in a month you know yeah thing so probably be okay okay so that allowed you to not have to worry about\n\nmoney because you did the experiment did the experiment exactly so this was an important psychological philosophical anchor for you let me put words in your mouth but that's a starting point to launch anywhere you want to go yeah absolutely and so so now you've got a baseline a life baseline from which to go new places intellectually psychologically financially so what came first thoughts of an electric car or thoughts of space hmm you know when you're starting out in college like can you push men sophomore year like you've these sort of sophomoric philosophical wanderings and I try to think of okay what are the things that it will seem to me would most affect the future of humanity there were really five things three of which I thought would be interesting\n\nto be involved in the three that I thought were were definitely positive would be the Internet sustainable energy both production and consumption and space exploration more specifically the extension of life beyond Earth on a permanent basis and then although I never thought I'd actually be involved in that that's that was way something I thought that was important in the abstract but not something I thought I would ever have an opportunity to be involved in and then the fourth one was artificial intelligence and the first one was rewriting human genetics these were just the five things that I thought would most effective future of humanity when I started out my goal was to do a phone traffic mission with the intent of increasing NASA's budget that was\n\nmy goal I was confused as to why I would not yet sent a person to Mars it seemed like this was obviously the goal after the moon and we'd not made progress on that and when it began clearly that paper was gonna get sold after I might ask me what I'm gonna do next and I said well I mean I don't know what we do next but I'm always curious about what's going on with space and why every made progress I just wonder when we're gonna send a person to Mars so I wouldn't go in on the NASA website and I couldn't find a date I was like well maybe it's here somewhere and I just can't find it the date that NASA wants to land on Mars yeah this is gonna be like some schedule or something and we're looking over the game plan or it's the state even if it's far in the\n\nfuture and there was not to be found anywhere and anyways I started learning about that back history and I thought well okay maybe there's something that I can do to send a small mission to the surface of Mars that would get the public excited and as a result of that public excitement NASA's budget will be increased and we could resume process of sending people to Mars essentially so you thought you can do that with your lousy billion dollars no I didn't have a billion dollars at that time I had about a 180 million slot and and I figured well you know maybe I could spend half of that on a mission to Mars so it's been ever try investigating the space industry and provincially decided on this idea of sending a small greenhouse surface of Mars we were called\n\nthe Mars Oasis mission and so you have seeds in dehydrated jello would land your hydrate jump on landing and you have this great shot of green plant so on a red background and the public responds to questions and supporters so this would be the first life on another planet furthest that life's ever traveled George we know and that's how you get a headline yes exactly it's very something new or something superlative mmm-hmm and I thought well and that would maybe reinvigorate excitement and the result would be NASA's budget gets increased so the whole goal in the beginning was just how do we get more money for NASA but after staying up every time on this I came in conclusion that I was actually incorrect my initial assumption is wrong because I thought\n\nthat where there's a will there's a way and that we just sort of lost our will that was that's false but there's plenty of will people needed to believe that there was a way in a way that would not bankrupt the country or mean that they'd have to sacrifice something of critical importance like health care so it became clear that the space transport problem had to be solved unless there was dramatic improvement in the cost of space transport then none of it would matter so in your first successful launch what was the cost per pound to orbit about 6,000 dollars 6,000 yeah not $100 a panel no she gets $100 pound you need a big rocket that's fully reusable are you there yet no we're making progress though spend 12 years so far we've not recovered a stage\n\nbut I think we'll recover a stage within the next year and be able to refight is there a date on your website the where someone can say oh he's gonna land vishay a good point it's not like an oh well I mean I've said it publicly many times although maybe we should put something on the website which is that I think we've got a decent shot of being able to send a person to Mars in about 11 or 12 years from a terrestrial standpoint the biggest problem we need to solve it at the century is sustainable production and consumption of energy this really is quite a serious problem people really should take this quite seriously even if you put the environmental consequences of dramatically changing the chemical composition of the oceans and atmosphere aside we\n\nwill eventually run out of oil only that's not well if we don't find a solution to burning oil or transport and we then run out of oil the economy will collapse and civilizations will come tune it over as we know it with or without global one yeah we still that work exactly I mean and so if we know that we have to ultimately get off oil no matter what we know that that is an inescapable outcome it's simply a question of when not if then why would you run this crazy experiment of changing the chemical composition of the atmosphere oceans by adding enormous amounts of co2 that have been buried since the Precambrian era that's crazy that is the dumbest experiment in history by far but I promise it's not even I think of a dumber experiment I honestly cannot\n\nwhat good could possibly come of it so therefore we need another solution here but of course electric cars still uses coal that's why you need sustainable power production like solar and wind which can still charge your your car yes of course what we all really want are flying cars do you yeah actually let me ask so are you sure you want applying car no but it was a wall this look cool I mean you know whenever you see sort of cities in like some futuristic concept those throughout the flying car in there and you can't tell me you never thought of it no I put a lot about yeah yeah okay and there's some people I know that are working on flying cars or flying coastal transport devices if you hover boards don't have a voice but I mean I sort of wonder to\n\nthe interview you can show me your hover board room okay I won't tell anybody the microphone is on mute now okay you can just between and just with me knows I'm debating like should every fly cars for shooting to be flying cause I'm of two minds on that you know because if there are flying cars then well obviously you have added this additional dimension our car could potentially fall in your head and will be susceptible to weather and of course you'd have to have flying car where it would be like an autopilot because I mean otherwise forget it you want people navigating yes that's why it's got to go to pilot mm-hmm but even in order paths marry this and even if you've got redundant murders and blades you're still gone from near zero chance of something\n\nfalling on your head to something greater than that and there's also a noise challenge so I see we don't know how to fly quietly right ok so I'll wait it out someone something that I do think would definitely help a lot in cities is more tunnels essentially with flying cars from that going 3d and there's a fundamental flaw with cities where you've got dense office buildings and apartment buildings and duplexes and they were operating on three dimensions but then you go to the street and suddenly you're two dimensional because it's a flight as a surface yeah this is how the New York City solve this with the subway go right underneath multiple layers of subway right so we are actually traveling in three dimensions but below the ground rather than in the\n\nair but I think if you were to extrapolate that to cars and have more car tunnels then you would alleviate congestion completely and you wouldn't need the flying car you would not need a flying car in that case and it would always work even if the weather's bad and would never ice up and we're never ice up and we're no fall on your head so we're gonna get started on that right away I mean I'm quite worried about artificial superintelligence these days I think and I've said this publicly I think it's maybe something more dangerous than nuclear weapons so we should be really careful about that if there was a very deep super digital super intelligence that was created that could go into rapid recursive self-improvement in a non logarithmic way then you know\n\nthat was its software yes so like it just could reprogram itself to be smarter and iterate very quickly and do that 24 hours a day on millions of computers well then that's all she wrote that's all she wrote I mean we won't be like you're Pat Labrador if you're lucky I'll elaborate over I knew their pets it's like the friendliest creature no no they'll domesticate us yeah we will be exactly lap pets to them yes I mean or something strange is gonna happen they'll keep the docile humans and get rid of the violent ones and they read the docile humans yeah I mean the utility function of the digital super intelligence is of stupendous important this what does it try to optimize and we need to be really careful with saying oh oh how about human happiness because\n\nit you know made conclude that all unhappy humans should be terminated and you know that we should always just be captured and with dopamine and serotonin directly injected into our brains to maximize happiness happiness because it's concluded that dopamine and serotonin are what cause happiness therefore therefore maximize them I'm just saying I'm saying we should exercise caution I'm quite optimistic about the future I mean I don't think we're about to enter a dark age it could happen but it's not I think not likely anytime soon enough where you get to Mars hopefully not before gets Mars but bear in mind that part of the act of trying to get to Mars is a force to keep us out of the dark ages I mean this always a chance that something calamitous could\n\nhappen to us either natural man-made catastrophe suddenly we see that in the fossil record and we've invented all sorts of ways of doing ourselves in that the dinosaurs didn't have and we haven't managed to stall off the asteroid problem so therefore our risk is higher okay sure people realize this if you haven't solved the problems that of course the prior extinctions and you've added new ones you've not improved the situation and that's sort of where we are right now and any other people better some really smart people that are a lot more pessimistic than I am like you know the Stephen Hawking's of the world and Martin Rees the Royal astronomer they're all quite pessimistic I'm a naturally optimistic person but I do think that there's value in establishing\n\nlife insurance which if life as we know does on more than one planet then the light of consciousness as we know it is likely preserved into the future for much longer","textByLang":{"en":"Eva would egg hatched you into this world where were you before you well I was born in South Africa wouldn't South Africa and you come to America and make a billion dollars yeah I mean I didn't expect it would make a billion dollars I suppose I grew up in South Africa honestly seeing a lot of the same TV and movies and reading comic books and and it really didn't feel all that different from say Southern California honestly so you had a kind of baptism into American pop culture at the time yeah yeah you know a lot of have ogres and when steakhouses and read like every comic book you know so my father brought me on a trip to the United States when I was about 10 I remember it was really awesome experience because the hotels all had arcades so my number\n\none thing was when we went to new hotel the motel or whatever it is go to the arcades and so that they have got any other services for that whether they had bedbugs you're looking for arcade games yeah what did video games do for you and that they're incredibly engaging and they maybe want to learn how to program computers cuz then I thought well I could make my own games and then I could also I want to see how the games work like how did you create a video game that's what led me to learn how to program computers to be a programmer yeah so I had one of the first video game consoles didn't have any have cartridges you had like four games that you could play and you could like pick one one of the four games you could play that was it and then it went from\n\nthere to the original Atari and then in television and then I was in a store and saw at the Commodore vic-20 and I was like holy crow you can actually have a computer and make your own games I thought this was just one of the most incredible things possible took all of my saved allowance and and then hounded my father until we got the Commodore vic-20 and there came with this manual on how to program in basic search I spent all night over days in a row just observing that and on your own no one forced you know this is self-motivated I got to know this this is good for me I'm spend like nine nine or ten or something so your performance in basic at age nine or ten yeah I kind of went got OCD on the thing maybe so technically OCD is but still II get obsessive\n\nlet me put that at least the o clock so programming anything else you get to control something construct a little universe and when you first do it you're like this is incredible you can actually make things happen like you type these commands and then something happens on the screen that's pretty amazing when I was in college I saw one of the things that are most going to affect the future of humanity and the electric cars solar power essentially sustainable most people thinking I just want a job when I get out and you're trying to reshape humanity as an undergraduate I mean it's pretty in America it's pretty easy to keep yourself a lot so I mean my threshold for existing is pretty low I mean I figured I could like be in some dingy apartment with my\n\ncomputer and be okay and not stalled mm-hmm in fact when I first came to North America I was in Canada when I seventeen and just to sort of see what it takes to live I'd try to live on one dollar a day which was it do you still just buy food in bulk at this yeah rice and beans and yeah I would go for the hot dogs okay my dogs and oranges you get really tired of hot dogs and oranges after a while and we closely like you know pasta and a green pepper and a big thing of sauce and that can go pretty far too so it's like okay you know if I can live for a dollar a day then at least from a food cost standpoint well it's pretty easy to earn like thirty dollars in a month you know yeah thing so probably be okay okay so that allowed you to not have to worry about\n\nmoney because you did the experiment did the experiment exactly so this was an important psychological philosophical anchor for you let me put words in your mouth but that's a starting point to launch anywhere you want to go yeah absolutely and so so now you've got a baseline a life baseline from which to go new places intellectually psychologically financially so what came first thoughts of an electric car or thoughts of space hmm you know when you're starting out in college like can you push men sophomore year like you've these sort of sophomoric philosophical wanderings and I try to think of okay what are the things that it will seem to me would most affect the future of humanity there were really five things three of which I thought would be interesting\n\nto be involved in the three that I thought were were definitely positive would be the Internet sustainable energy both production and consumption and space exploration more specifically the extension of life beyond Earth on a permanent basis and then although I never thought I'd actually be involved in that that's that was way something I thought that was important in the abstract but not something I thought I would ever have an opportunity to be involved in and then the fourth one was artificial intelligence and the first one was rewriting human genetics these were just the five things that I thought would most effective future of humanity when I started out my goal was to do a phone traffic mission with the intent of increasing NASA's budget that was\n\nmy goal I was confused as to why I would not yet sent a person to Mars it seemed like this was obviously the goal after the moon and we'd not made progress on that and when it began clearly that paper was gonna get sold after I might ask me what I'm gonna do next and I said well I mean I don't know what we do next but I'm always curious about what's going on with space and why every made progress I just wonder when we're gonna send a person to Mars so I wouldn't go in on the NASA website and I couldn't find a date I was like well maybe it's here somewhere and I just can't find it the date that NASA wants to land on Mars yeah this is gonna be like some schedule or something and we're looking over the game plan or it's the state even if it's far in the\n\nfuture and there was not to be found anywhere and anyways I started learning about that back history and I thought well okay maybe there's something that I can do to send a small mission to the surface of Mars that would get the public excited and as a result of that public excitement NASA's budget will be increased and we could resume process of sending people to Mars essentially so you thought you can do that with your lousy billion dollars no I didn't have a billion dollars at that time I had about a 180 million slot and and I figured well you know maybe I could spend half of that on a mission to Mars so it's been ever try investigating the space industry and provincially decided on this idea of sending a small greenhouse surface of Mars we were called\n\nthe Mars Oasis mission and so you have seeds in dehydrated jello would land your hydrate jump on landing and you have this great shot of green plant so on a red background and the public responds to questions and supporters so this would be the first life on another planet furthest that life's ever traveled George we know and that's how you get a headline yes exactly it's very something new or something superlative mmm-hmm and I thought well and that would maybe reinvigorate excitement and the result would be NASA's budget gets increased so the whole goal in the beginning was just how do we get more money for NASA but after staying up every time on this I came in conclusion that I was actually incorrect my initial assumption is wrong because I thought\n\nthat where there's a will there's a way and that we just sort of lost our will that was that's false but there's plenty of will people needed to believe that there was a way in a way that would not bankrupt the country or mean that they'd have to sacrifice something of critical importance like health care so it became clear that the space transport problem had to be solved unless there was dramatic improvement in the cost of space transport then none of it would matter so in your first successful launch what was the cost per pound to orbit about 6,000 dollars 6,000 yeah not $100 a panel no she gets $100 pound you need a big rocket that's fully reusable are you there yet no we're making progress though spend 12 years so far we've not recovered a stage\n\nbut I think we'll recover a stage within the next year and be able to refight is there a date on your website the where someone can say oh he's gonna land vishay a good point it's not like an oh well I mean I've said it publicly many times although maybe we should put something on the website which is that I think we've got a decent shot of being able to send a person to Mars in about 11 or 12 years from a terrestrial standpoint the biggest problem we need to solve it at the century is sustainable production and consumption of energy this really is quite a serious problem people really should take this quite seriously even if you put the environmental consequences of dramatically changing the chemical composition of the oceans and atmosphere aside we\n\nwill eventually run out of oil only that's not well if we don't find a solution to burning oil or transport and we then run out of oil the economy will collapse and civilizations will come tune it over as we know it with or without global one yeah we still that work exactly I mean and so if we know that we have to ultimately get off oil no matter what we know that that is an inescapable outcome it's simply a question of when not if then why would you run this crazy experiment of changing the chemical composition of the atmosphere oceans by adding enormous amounts of co2 that have been buried since the Precambrian era that's crazy that is the dumbest experiment in history by far but I promise it's not even I think of a dumber experiment I honestly cannot\n\nwhat good could possibly come of it so therefore we need another solution here but of course electric cars still uses coal that's why you need sustainable power production like solar and wind which can still charge your your car yes of course what we all really want are flying cars do you yeah actually let me ask so are you sure you want applying car no but it was a wall this look cool I mean you know whenever you see sort of cities in like some futuristic concept those throughout the flying car in there and you can't tell me you never thought of it no I put a lot about yeah yeah okay and there's some people I know that are working on flying cars or flying coastal transport devices if you hover boards don't have a voice but I mean I sort of wonder to\n\nthe interview you can show me your hover board room okay I won't tell anybody the microphone is on mute now okay you can just between and just with me knows I'm debating like should every fly cars for shooting to be flying cause I'm of two minds on that you know because if there are flying cars then well obviously you have added this additional dimension our car could potentially fall in your head and will be susceptible to weather and of course you'd have to have flying car where it would be like an autopilot because I mean otherwise forget it you want people navigating yes that's why it's got to go to pilot mm-hmm but even in order paths marry this and even if you've got redundant murders and blades you're still gone from near zero chance of something\n\nfalling on your head to something greater than that and there's also a noise challenge so I see we don't know how to fly quietly right ok so I'll wait it out someone something that I do think would definitely help a lot in cities is more tunnels essentially with flying cars from that going 3d and there's a fundamental flaw with cities where you've got dense office buildings and apartment buildings and duplexes and they were operating on three dimensions but then you go to the street and suddenly you're two dimensional because it's a flight as a surface yeah this is how the New York City solve this with the subway go right underneath multiple layers of subway right so we are actually traveling in three dimensions but below the ground rather than in the\n\nair but I think if you were to extrapolate that to cars and have more car tunnels then you would alleviate congestion completely and you wouldn't need the flying car you would not need a flying car in that case and it would always work even if the weather's bad and would never ice up and we're never ice up and we're no fall on your head so we're gonna get started on that right away I mean I'm quite worried about artificial superintelligence these days I think and I've said this publicly I think it's maybe something more dangerous than nuclear weapons so we should be really careful about that if there was a very deep super digital super intelligence that was created that could go into rapid recursive self-improvement in a non logarithmic way then you know\n\nthat was its software yes so like it just could reprogram itself to be smarter and iterate very quickly and do that 24 hours a day on millions of computers well then that's all she wrote that's all she wrote I mean we won't be like you're Pat Labrador if you're lucky I'll elaborate over I knew their pets it's like the friendliest creature no no they'll domesticate us yeah we will be exactly lap pets to them yes I mean or something strange is gonna happen they'll keep the docile humans and get rid of the violent ones and they read the docile humans yeah I mean the utility function of the digital super intelligence is of stupendous important this what does it try to optimize and we need to be really careful with saying oh oh how about human happiness because\n\nit you know made conclude that all unhappy humans should be terminated and you know that we should always just be captured and with dopamine and serotonin directly injected into our brains to maximize happiness happiness because it's concluded that dopamine and serotonin are what cause happiness therefore therefore maximize them I'm just saying I'm saying we should exercise caution I'm quite optimistic about the future I mean I don't think we're about to enter a dark age it could happen but it's not I think not likely anytime soon enough where you get to Mars hopefully not before gets Mars but bear in mind that part of the act of trying to get to Mars is a force to keep us out of the dark ages I mean this always a chance that something calamitous could\n\nhappen to us either natural man-made catastrophe suddenly we see that in the fossil record and we've invented all sorts of ways of doing ourselves in that the dinosaurs didn't have and we haven't managed to stall off the asteroid problem so therefore our risk is higher okay sure people realize this if you haven't solved the problems that of course the prior extinctions and you've added new ones you've not improved the situation and that's sort of where we are right now and any other people better some really smart people that are a lot more pessimistic than I am like you know the Stephen Hawking's of the world and Martin Rees the Royal astronomer they're all quite pessimistic I'm a naturally optimistic person but I do think that there's value in establishing\n\nlife insurance which if life as we know does on more than one planet then the light of consciousness as we know it is likely preserved into the future for much longer"},"languages":["en"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cfXzMjVFDBk"},{"id":"vanity-fair-new-establishment-summit-2015-10-08","type":"interview","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SqEo107j-uw","title":"Vanity Fair New Establishment Summit","titles":{"en":"Vanity Fair New Establishment Summit","de":"Vanity Fair New Establishment Summit","fr":"Vanity Fair New Establishment Summit"},"date":"2015-10-08","summary":"Musk and Y Combinator's Sam Altman discuss sustainable energy and artificial intelligence with Andrew Ross Sorkin.","text":"thank you all for uh sticking around this afternoon we had some great conversations and we're hoping to have another great one uh I it is my pleasure an honor or privilege really to have this conversation about the future uh with two gentlemen who know uh probably more about it than most uh the fellow all the way to my right to your left does not need any introduction Elon Musk uh you all know from Tesla and SpaceX of course from Solar City um Sam Alman I would say you don't need too much introduction either but I'm going to give it to you just in case you don't uh he runs ycombinator ycombinator has investments in over a thousand companies at this point they're investing in about 250 companies every single year those companies collectively are worth\n\nabout $65 billion dollar in total that's with a b and to give you just a a sort of a sense of the the kind of names we're talking about we're talking about Airbnb Dropbox stripe zenitz instacart Etc so both both uh folks uh with an amazing pedigree and an amazing sense of what's going on here's where I want to start the conversation with both of you and I think we're going to probably go to outer space very quickly um but we're going to try to keep it uh on Earth at least for the moment when you think about Innovation and you think about where we are going to be 10 15 20 years and what to invest in and what to make I'm going to make it hard for you Elon if you took Tesla out of it took Solar City out of it took SpaceX out of it and you said I could go\n\nstart a new company tomorrow it would be what it would be in what area where would you start thinking about well I think I think there's some uh fairly like there's a fairly obvious opportunity in electric aircraft um because all transport will Electrify over time with the exception of rockets um ironically um and um you know but but um I there's I mean there's I think there there's two areas which I mean they're fraught with issues but uh you know it's one of those things where if you if you don't do something maybe not doing something is worse like on the AI front or um on uh genetics you know so like the like the the those are the two things I think besides sustainable transport the internet um and making life multiplanetary uh rewriting genetics uh\n\nand uh AI uh the latter two are the ones that can most change uh Destiny of humanity um but but they're they're really dodgy so I mean maybe I'd try to do something in one of those two areas but they're yeah fro with difficulty Elizabeth Holmes was here earlier spoke during uh the lunch hour do you think about genetics and Longevity and trying to sort of avoid your friend Larry pagee is investing in a business hoping to end death I I don't I mean the the I mean I'm not actually a huge proponent of longevity I mean I do think that um having a good life for longer is better like you you'd want to uh address the you know the things that that happen to you when when you're older um like dementia and so forth th those are pretty important um but um I'm not\n\nI'm not sure it's sort of actually you know want to do that want to get into the genetics thing but it is something that's going to fundamentally change uh humanity and um uh along with AI so you don't want to live forever so that you can actually get to Mars I definitely don't want to live forever how how many years do you want to live um I don't know 100 good ones 100 good ones or 100 more good ones you're 44 um I mean 100 good ones in total I think is probably fine and maybe a bit longer um Sam what where where would you put your money you're you're the investor here well I mean we we try to invest in a very broad range of technology so um we funded an electric airplane or funding electric airplane company um we've done AI companies we've done uh how\n\nwe the electric airplane by the way I think it should work I think it like it makes it it makes sense the math should work um I think I I actually I I no huge surprise but I'll I'll agree with Elon on those two areas I think if you could pick uh two things that I'm not already working really hard on um uh AI having ai go in the positive direction which I really think it can and I I think thinking about sort of genetic technology genetic technology um I I made it unfair for you because I I said we had to take Solar City out and we had to take the cars out so we didn't get to really talk about energy but I imagine how big how big how big a thing do you think energy all in and when you think about both your Investments and what you're doing is something\n\nthat is one of the things that you need to tackle well I think sustainable energy is the most important problem that we face this Century um that's like a known difficult thing that we have to solve um like if if we if we continue to rely on burning hydrocarbons it the future is going to be quite bad and the vast majority of the scientific establishment believes that and the evidence I think is well I mean anyone with a scientific uh background is um you know unequivocal so um so so we got to solve sustainable energy uh I'm a big fan of solar because we got this big uh Fusion ball in the sky um called the Sun and TOS up every day so if we can you know use solar energy plus batteries we can actually have a complete solution for sustainable energy gener\n\ngeneration and then we need to use in a sustainable way which is uh you know where where you need the electric transport um yeah so the thing I would add I I think um getting the cost of sustainable energy Down super low is probably uh you know short of AI like the most important thing we can do for sort of quality of life of the poorest half of the world I think that uh you know every time I I look into this it's it's really amazing how much the cost of energy and the quality of life correlate what about nuclear energy you have you have some investments in nuclear energy yeah I mean what I've always said is I think the end state of the world is a combination of nuclear and solar um probably 8020 one way or the other sort of terrestrial based nuclear\n\nI I think Fusion is likely to work at some point in the next couple of decades and and that's a really big deal uh I think that it's good to have a backup option uh it's good to have two sources um but you know like it's all sort of fusion when you think about it yeah I I I mean I'm big I mean I think Fusion I think it's definitely possible to make fusion work um the but I think the and I used to be a big fan of of like having of that as the long-term energy source um but I'm inclined to think like indirect Fusion uh from the Sun essentially is going to be the primary source and then to some degree there will be uh Fusion reactors for you know maybe whatever yeah if you're really far north or really far south or something what about the risks of of nuclear\n\nenergy a fusion a fusion yeah I assume there's some risk there's no risk not really zero I'm an idiot I don't uh no um no mean with Fusion the difficulty is keeping it going uh not uh you know with with with fision uh you you have some meltdown risk although there's you know there's new technology on the fion front that makes meltdown risk extremely low um but um but with Fusion the great difficulty is is keeping the reaction from is keeping it the fire from going out it it's quite hard to sustain a fusion reaction uh unless you have something very big like the sun and you have the sun has gravitational confinement of the fusion reaction um so since you you can't do gravitational confinement on Earth you have to do some sort of uh electromagnetic confinement\n\none form or another uh or or a kinetic confinement by slamming things into each other um so it's it's quite tricky to prevent a fusion explosion from not immediately extinguishing got it so Fusion is like uh um I mean probably what you do is just repeat it every second or whatever so I mean just just a sort of you know I Fusion is like when you when you take uh say two hydrogen atoms or or two hydrogen Isotopes technically and slam them together and form helium that's that's fusion and then vision is like when you've got um like a heavy atom that is decaying at a at a you know relatively like a noticeable rate like uranium or plutonium and decays into smaller um atoms then uh that that's that's Vision okay I didn't do so well in science so we're going\n\nto try to uh move along but you recently said that you wanted to Nuke Mars um I I didn't really understand then you guys in the back were doing some science talk about how nuking Mars would work uh yeah um yeah so so nuking Mars I I I sort of was a little flippant about that um I think it's a really decent idea thank you thank you um so yeah the what is really getting at but it's hard to you know convey that in like 30 seconds you know on on The Late Show with s was was that the the sun is a a nuclear explosion a fusion explosion that's what the sun is it's an ongoing Fusion explosion so if you wanted to uh add energy to Mars like warm up Mars the really the source of almost all energy in the universe is fusion um you know even fision is um originally\n\nthere was fusion and then that that that then later resulted in fishion um but what I was really talking about is creating two little Suns uh two pulsing Suns above the North and South Pole of Mars that would warm the the poles up enough so that the Frozen CO2 would would gasify and densify the atmosphere some of the water would also um heat up and and you'd have sort of water more water vapor and um CO2 in the in the Martian atmosphere which in that case is good because the the CO2 ends up warming warming Mars up and so you get a positive um sort of reaction like it's a positive cycle of of warming on Mars like you want to warm Mars up but you don't want to warm Earth up you know so why would you ever want to live on Mars um it looks like a great adventure\n\nto me Beyond The Adventure do you actually both of you you you're investing in stuff uh that hopefully one day will go to Mars nothing for Mars but excuse me I nothing for Mars but I but I hope El Longos I think that would be cool but is that just for one person tell what what's going to happen no really I want to yeah well I mean the the Mars thing is is really like if you say what is going to be really important to the preservation of uh of civilization or Life as we know it more than just you know Humanity because of course we bring Life as we know it to Mars um and that there's no life that we can detect on the surface of Mars there may be some Subterranean bacterial life but there's it's on on the surface there there isn't anything um so this would\n\nbe the extension of life to another planet um or Life as we know it to another planet um and um I think would be make a huge difference to the prob lifespan of human civilization and um and Life as we know it so it's sort of like an insurance policy a life insurance policy for Life collectively and um you know so it's yeah probable because you because you think global warming what do you what do you think is going to happen here that's I don't want to be clear this is this is a I mean I I think it's important that we become a multiplet species not a single planet species but on another planet um so this is if if we it's like really it's like what kind of future do you want to have do you want to have a future Where We Are Forever confined to one planet\n\nor one where we are out there exploring the stars and and on on many planets and I think the the latter one is far more exciting and inspiring because the former is basically waiting around until some some Extinction event so because eventually there will be one um and um it might be quite far in the future but it also might not be far in the future um so there's so there's the there's really two main reasons I think to make life multiplanetary and to establish a self-sustaining civilization on Mars one is the defensive reason to to ensure that the light of Consciousness as we know it is not extinguished uh or or lasts much longer and the second is that it would be an an amazing adventure that uh that we could all enjoy uh vicariously uh if not uh personally\n\nI think it's really uh important to establish multiplanetary life I agree with with that I think my concern is that the uh I think the AI question is likely to become pressing uh and important to deal with before we can establish a full Colony on Mars that's true you guys and I think even if not then the AI can like go to Mars on a laser beam the AI goes does that mean it's like justs itself there yeah I mean it's very hard to send through space but the AI is going to go like 20 minutes you know on a laser beam it's easy do you guys believe in uh life forms outside of Earth you think there are I I mean I think there's there's quite a high chance of microbial life um that's there's a much that then as you get more advanced in life that there's less and\n\nless likelihood of of um like sophisticated life but you don't think do you think there's sophist you think there aliens out there that we can talk to you mean as opposed to like bacteria yeah yeah um there's a great onion article recently about like you know uh like like NASA should only hold a press conference if they find aliens that we can talk [Laughter] to um but but I I think so um I mean it's it's an interesting Confluence of events like it's not just that there has to be life intelligent life that evolves somewhere but that that life has to last for a long time for us to be Co for us to exist at the same time as that um so what it suggests is there's this great questions called the like sort of the firmy Paradox like where are the aliens like\n\nif there are so many planets out there um and the universe is almost 14 billion years old why why aren't the aliens everywhere um and um this is a one of the most perplexing questions um because um you know you could basically bicycle to Alpa centor in a few hundred thousand years like meaning at that's at bicycle speed so it's sort of like you know uh in 100 million years like even at a very slow speed you could completely blanket the Galaxy so why why not where are they it's very hard for me to get now um well we were we were talking in the back and we've had this conversation before you please weigh in on this and I think it's a thought experiment that you have suggested that we are all collectively right now uh living in a simulation what does that\n\nmean um yeah it's it's a probabilistic thing um so they really if you look at uh at say the advancement of video games uh from say 40 years ago when we started out with pong and you had like you know rectangles Bing a rectangle to each other um and uh and now we've got photorealistic 3D simulations with millions of people playing simultaneously or 3D games with millions of people playing simultaneously um that are just getting better now we've got uh virtual reality headsets so you can just put it on and it feels like you're right there um you'll have um haptic feedback meaning force feedback uh sticks so you can actually pick up something and feel like you're picking up something like you know have haptic gloves um and if if you extrapolate that advancement\n\num at at any rate at all like if you say okay let's say it's it slows down by a factor of 100 starting right now okay so then then then I mean the video games will be distinguishable from reality in let's say you know 200 years instead of 20 years or something like that uh but you don't think that we're in a game right now okay well that's this is this like we all somebody has a joystick somewhere else in some other you know where I'm going with it certainly doesn't feel like that I mean I don't I don't I don't think I'm being played by somebody in a video game but then people in video games don't generally think that I I certainly think if you talk to people who use the latest virtual reality equipment in sort of a big space where they sort of map like\n\nbenches in the space to benches in the game and the environment you know they have this experience when they do that for the first time and they take it off and then they just fre freeze for 10 seconds and and you can and then you talk to them and it's clear that like they their belief that this is actual reality has been shaken because they were so convinced in virtual reality that that was real and so if I can take this off like why aren't there other layers I also think it ties interestingly back to to the fmy Paradox yeah um exactly you know if if it is a simulation sort of that would be a pretty good answer for why there are no aliens how far are we away from sort of virtual reality being a thing all of us sort of live in to some degree we would\n\ngo to this conference we would go to this conference uh from our VR sets I mean I do think there there's still something to actually really being there in person um that that we probably won't lose for for a long time hopefully never uh but um I mean with with what uh Oculus and valve are coming out with um and I believe some of that that like the first VR headsets are doe out um early next year yeah like in the next several months um and and the demos that that I've seen and I think Sam's probably seen too are incredibly compelling um and there is that strange feeling because you you you put the headset on in like a very nondescript Bland room and and you you put the headset on and suddenly you're in anywhere like you could be yeah you know I got this\n\ndemo where they would like blow air on you when you like got near a cliff Edge and when you walk near a fire they would turn on a heater and you don't see any of this cuz you're just wearing it and then and it's it's really quite quite compelling um I want to talk about something else that's compelling which is Tesla it's really nice talk about the X it's an SUV um it's an SUV but here's what I was going to say $132,000 how many people really going to buy this thing um yeah so the the the F the first cars that are produced are fully the sort of fully optioned version so it's not like a base price of you know 132,000 it's um and we'll have a version that's still expensive on the expensive side but before any incentives would be about 75k next year um and\n\num you know with incentives and whatnot it's you know maybe 65 so it's it's it's still expensive but it's not as crazy as 132 um the and and then in in a couple years we should have the uh model 3 um and that'll be starting price of um $35,000 so it's a smaller car but it's you know um a lot more affordable okay so for the Tesla uh sort of real efficient AOS who follow you on Twitter you need to you need to answer one thing which is last week somebody tweeted at you I think about the X and then you put out a tweet that mentioned uh the Y and the three and then you deleted the Tweet yes this and everybody wants to know why you deleted the tweet and what the Tweet actually said um I no I think I think it was it just said something like the there'll be the\n\nmodel 3 and the model y um and that one of them will have like a faling door which is like pretty obviously the model y um so um the but I I I deleted that and like I don't know a dozen other tweets because I S it had like kind of a rambling Twitter history um but it was had no significance the delete has no significance like I don't think deleting a tweet like makes it go away from the Internet or something so why why delete the tweet I just didn't like what the way my Twitter history looked it was uh it was like too rambling you've invested in Twitter I'm I'm in Twitter in Tesla yeah you own a Tesla yeah make the case for those who are out there you I make it harder because he has to do it now why what what is this going to become in your mind you sure\n\nyou don't want him to answer yeah we know what he's going to say look I mean I think as most people who own one think it's the best car like out there uh I had a roadster before a Tesla Roadster which was not the best car um but the model S really is like it's just it's the best car on the market and I think that uh people think of this like existing car companies uh but actually this is like a software company with a car attached to it and it's you know you just like you sort of point and click you like point the wheel somewhere you push the thing down and it just kind of gets there it doesn't make noise it like it's very reliable the software actually works it's the only car with good software so I think people really like it now yeah it's like really\n\nexpensive still but uh I think uh well I'm confident that a mass Market Tesla will do very well and I also think the other electric cars I've driven feel like many years behind right uh you talked about this being a software company do you think of yourself as a software company I think we're software and a hardware company um but but the software component does become increasingly important um so you got to get both right um because it's you know it's a holistic product experience but um uh it it softwares increasingly the you know an increasing proportion of the problem particularly as you get to autonomy um and um yeah so so there is a view I don't know if it's a conspiracy theory that you are building autonomous functionality and other driverless\n\nlike functionality into the car without advertising that it's in there and that one day you going to flip a switch and the car is going to start just driving um well uh no not quite like that but we are going to upload new software soon and and we this is not actually a secret or anything um we we have version seven of our software which turns on um Highway autopilot so the car will be able to steer by itself on on highways or or any kind of um any kind of road that doesn't have really steep sharp curve curves on it um and um and then also it'll steer quite well in in traffic so those are the two scenarios where it'll it's think going to be quite good at steering um and and and we'll that that's in public beta right now so we have um I don't know 600\n\nor 700 uh Tesla drivers owners that are um testing the uh aut steer software and and yeah go ahead I think full self-driving cars and not Tesla specifically just in general are are likely to get here much more quickly than people realize yeah I absolutely you ask most people they'd still say it's 10 to 20 years away uh and I actually think we'll have sort of like full point too autonomous driving uh in a in a few years it won't be uncomon few years like two or three years three or four maybe know better I agree I think that's something on the on the two to three year time frame is likely for for it to be technologically I mean you you'll be able to demonstrate it um but it you won't be able to go to fully autonomous until you get reg regulatory approval\n\nso there's there's a there's a time difference between when it is technologically possible um in a general sense um you know so that you know not not just like in a very tightly mapped situation like say Mountain View or paloalto right but in the general sense of like you know can it can it do point to point virtually anywhere right um I think that's that's only you know two to three years away um but but then approval of from Regulators of of uh having it be autonomous is anywhere from I don't know one to 5 years after that depending upon the location because The regul Regulators have to be convinced that it is substantial I think they'll they'll want to see that it's significantly more uh sign significantly safer than than cars that are driven by people\n\nI want to open it up in about 5 minutes so I just have a couple more questions uh to get to you and so if you guys have a question in the audience uh get your shot on goal in just a second I want to talk about entrepreneurship because both of you are entrepreneurs you invest in them you are one and you think about this a lot uh your old pal Peter teal likes to say that he would not invest in somebody who's over the age of 30 years old that that it should be the cut off you're 44 now he's invested in you yeah I guess make some exception but you may be the exception to the rule as some as somebody who invests in companies every day do you think there's a cut off there's a lot of people out here who are over the age of 30 are we done uh I mean we've said\n\nthis before but when we've looked at our data uh the the mean age of entrepreneurs we fund is just around 29 or 30 um so there's obviously lots of over 30 entrepreneurs that we fund um some of which have gone on to create multi-billion dollar companies so I think certainly you can't say it's impossible for people over 30 to create companies that's that's ridiculous uh and we plan to continue to invest in people of all ages um the correlation that we've noticed is that uh if you look at the really successful companies we've had the multi-billion dollar companies the the average for those average age for those Founders does skew significantly younger but the success rate of founders of you know this binary is the company a success or not excuse older than\n\n30 so you know younger entrepreneurs I think tend to take bigger risks uh maybe they're willing to work on these very longtime Horizon projects but that's the only correlation we see I think it would be a crazy strategy to say I'm never going to invest in anyone over 30 yeah no I mean I think I think it's I don't think Peter meant that either yeah I mean you you can definitely start a company at any age and be successful I mean it's really just question of like do you you know do you have a good idea are you working really hard are you able to attract a great team and motivate the team um and that uh I mean that that's sort of really what what matters but you've had multiple ideas and there's there's another view by the way which is that you can only\n\nreally have one great idea right that everybody sort of has maybe maybe one great idea it's not really the idea you know I mean like there's that old saying it's 1% inspiration I I think and 99% postp spiration I think it's generally true I mean a lot of times like companies start out with with with uh an idea that's actually wrong um but they they adapt uh quickly enough to get it to something that that's right right um and I can say like at the beginning of Tesla we started out with uh we started the company with two false premises like that would turn out to be like really dumb um uh one was that uh we'd be able to uh license the drivetrain uh technology from a company called AC propulsion in Southern California and that it would just work that didn't\n\nthat totally didn't work um and then we also thought we'd be able to adapt the Lotus Elise chassis at low cost um and be able to essentially put the AC propulsion drivetrain technology in a Lotus at leas chassis and then just build that quickly and um and sell it and that it would that that would be okay um but but like I said the AC propulsion technology did not lend itself to uh any any kind of cost-effective reliable car um it was okay for like a small prototype but not not for a commercial product and and the uh and then the Lotus Elise um that that ended up worse than if we had designed a car from from the beginning um because we ended up uh changing like 96% of the components in the car um and invalidating all of the crash results and all the safety\n\nstuff the car ended up being 30% heavier had to be longer um and it ended up being like like if you if you want if you had a house in mind and instead of actually building that house from scratch you got some existing house and ended up knocking everything except one wall in the basement out um and and it would have been better to just build the house from the beginning the the house you wanted so so so basically Tesla was started on the basis of two dumb ideas um and um but we managed to you know it was a tough one to overcome those two two issues but we we managed to get get past them that's so that's I think the more important thing is like start somewhere and then you know really be prepared to question your assumptions fix what you did wrong and\n\nuh adapt to reality how did you run two companies at the same time Jack dorsy is about to take this on in a meaningful way what is what does a day in the life of Elon Musk actually look like yeah I wouldn't recommend running two companies uh this is um it really it decreases your freedom um quite a lot so um and and I'll tell you what so my day is probably a bit different than people think it is I me most of my time is actually spent on um engineering and design so that's probably I don't know like 70% of my time um like press stuff like this is maybe two or 3% of my time it's really really tiny um and I'm going to reduce it even further it's probably like 1% of my time so uh real quick and then we'll go to the audience politics I want to ask you two\n\npolitical questions one is innovation in politics when when do you think there'll ever be a day where we actually vote on our phone um we stupidly seem to still go and vote uh you know in our local District often times at a local school and I also wanted to get your sense of uh who out there you may or may not like right now in terms of what you guys do and who who you think might do the best all right I'll take the first question Elon can answer the second um Trump's amazing uh I I think that yes we will someday vote on our phones I think it it like and it will have a significant impact because it'll really change people who vote so I think that may take a while because there are a lot of people who don't want to see the electorate change but uh you\n\nknow over a 20year time frame I always try to think about things over these sort of you know 10 or 20 year time frames I think you can get so caught up in the what's happening this month or next year are we in a bubble are we buying at a low tick or a high tick but but eventually it's going to happen and I take soless in that anyway Elon on Donald Trump yeah he asked you um I mean and I don't really have uh strong feelings except that I you know hopefully Trump doesn't foret the nomination of you know the Republican party that's because I think that's um yeah that wouldn't be good um so but I mean bar Diller said he would move out of the country what about you really no I would move I mean I think like at most he would get the Republican nomination but\n\nI think that was still be a bit embarrassing so um I think that could happen yeah um you think it will happen it could it won't surprise me if it does yeah um I honestly don't have strong feelings about the do you get involved in politics um I get involved in politics to the as little as possible yeah there sometime I have there's some amount that I have to get involved in um mostly because SpaceX has to battle Boeing and locked um you know for National Security and and civil space launch contra s so if we don't if we don't battle them then you know then they will we'll lose how corrupt is that whole thing yeah um well I mean the the I mean actually would say that on on balance I guess it's it's not that corrupt because if if it was corrupt then SpaceX\n\nwould have no chance um because SpaceX um I mean it's got it's gotten a bit bigger these days but it was very tiny um when when we won our first govern contract and if if it had been like deeply corrupt then we would not have won anything um so you know I think you know I think actually at the the the greater the level of visibility politically the the the less corruption occurs so um I think there's actually probably like the least corruption at the presidential level than at the Senate level in the house and then that there can be a bit more corruption at the state level U it's like basically how much attention are people paying that that that defines how much corruption occurs right um yeah you know perhaps and we'll open up to but it got me thinking\n\nthe only real big critique of some of your businesses is that they are subsidized to some degree by the government could these businesses succeed without government help um yeah absolutely the the the um and I should at some point I should probably write a rebuttal because there was like nonsensical LA Times article from which a lot of this stems um because what what the LA Times article did was add up um all incentives that Tesla has received and all inent incentives that Tesla will receive so like over a 30-year period and made it made it sound like a big number um but it's you know um like if somebody's earning $50,000 a year you don't say you don't call them a millionaire because over the next 20 years they will cumulatively earn a million do but\n\nthat's effectively what that article uh did um the incentives I think for for Tesla and Solar City what they really do is balance out the um the the the actual and de facto incentives that carbon producing um activities have so and I don't think they actually balance it out so the carbon producing activities still sort of overwhelm um the incentives that electric cars and solar receivers I mean for example there's a 20% um tax incentive for stripper oil well um like and the the incentive for solar is currently 30% but dropping to 10% uh in two years right so the you know two years the incentive for solar power will be half that of a stripper oil well right so you know uh and and SpaceX made it in in in spite of boing lock receiving a billion dollar plus\n\nuh subsidy for the launch activities so I think in the case of SpaceX it was sort of success in spite of incentives uh and in the case of Solar City and Tesla it was the incentives were you know moderately helpful but not not the deciding factor they they're they're Catalyst they made things happen a little FAS than they would otherwise happen but um you know you look at something like the like the there's a $7,500 tax credit for uh EVS um Okay so that ends up being a 10% uh discount that the consumer receives for buying the car it's it's not like night and day difference okay we got a lot of people uh who are standing and we want to get to all the questions we're going to sort of try to do this rapid fire so I'd ask you to keep your question short and\n\nthese guys are going to keep their answers short uh as well at least we're going to Hope goad hi my name is uh Bruce Gman I'm a private investor in Toronto Canada and Elon if you're not happy with the next election you're more than welcome to come back to Canada um question is about artificial intelligence like any good good new technology people always fear the change and things that can go wrong I was wondering if Sam and Elon could share with us their positive vision of ai's impact on our coming life right we didn't even get to AI in this whole conversation yeah I I think look there is a really positive Vision here right I think there are the science fiction version is either that we enslave it or it enslaves us but there's this uh Happy symbiotic\n\nVision which I don't think is the default case but what we should work towards I think already um humans and AI are Co evolving and no one's paid attention to this yet but I don't think there's any human left that understands all of how Google search results are ranked on that first page it really is machine learning algorithm so when we search on Google it's an AI deciding what we should see um when a dating site matches two people together there's a machine learning algorithm that no human understands how it works that is getting people together that then have babies and so in in effect you know you have this like machine learning algorithm breeding humans and so really I mean you do um and so there's this and then you know those people like work on\n\nthe algorithms later and so I think the happy vision of the future is sort of humans in Ai and a symbiotic relationship distributed AI where it sort of empowers a lot of different individuals not this single AI that kind of governs everything that we all do that's you know a million times smarter a million times smarter than any other entity so I think that's what we should work towards I agree with what Sam said um I mean we are effectively already um a human machine Collective symbiote um like there's like we're like a like a giant cyborg um that that's actually what Society is today um you know but but I'm going to sort of obviously I mean have an affinity for the human portion of that cyborg Collective um and um I think I do think we need to be careful\n\nabout the development of AI and make sure it is ultimately beneficial to humanity that it's uh that that the future is good question over here okay uh so not too long ago oh my name is Jessica sing by the way but not too long ago on the nightly show with Larry Wilmore they had Bill n the Science Guy on there discussing the new uh Mars Discovery and the other P panelists basically said that our society doesn't care about the scientific discoveries of NASA and how does uh Innovation uh what does that mean in a society that only values the results like the final products like a car or like finally going to space and not really valuing the process proc of getting there well I mean I do I do think that there is I'm not sure I agree with that I me I think we\n\ndo value Discovery and and new things um and and learning about the Universe um I mean there was quite a bit of attention paid to the discovery of of water flowing on Mars um I mean I'd certainly say that it should be more but um I think it's okay I think it's not bad I think we're I think we're better off than than that the show would suggest okay yeah okay we're going to try to get everybody up there if we can so go ahead question for Elon I I understand that the hyperloop was inspired by your opinions about California's High-Speed Rail uh and could you share those opinions as well as a bit about the hyperloop um yeah just um if if if we're to have a um some new form of Transport in California which I think is would be good to have then we want to we\n\nwant to Aspire to have something that is um Cutting Edge technology um and um when when I was reading about the highspeed rail plan um it's it's a lot of money for something which isn't obviously compelling relative to a car or a plane um in terms of the time it would take to complete the journey um and and it will will settle California taxpayers with a pretty significant amount of money that they got to pay so um so it's like if you pay if you pay a high price you should have a a great outcome like that should be the sensible thing um and that that doesn't seem to be what what is happening from what I can tell um and so I was trying to think well what what would be the the fastest way you could get from say LA to San Francisco or cities in between um\n\nand um uh ended up mentioning that I had the an idea actually had a toour not unlike this and then and then discovered my initial idea didn't work and then kept iterating um with a with a bunch of other people and uh came up with a hyperloop so that's sort of where where it actually it finally did work from a technical standpoint um and now there are some companies pursuing that which is awesome and I hope we see some I hope we see it come to fruition um SpaceX is is um doing a a hyperloop student comp ition um that um where where uh teams will compete to see who can make the best pod um and um and so we're doing a sort of a mile long uh hyperloop uh section uh in La um just right near SpaceX really whone technically but LA County um and um and so I think\n\nthat's going to be pretty exciting to see what the students can come up with and here can come up with the most advanced pod design um and uh I I think we're going to set it so that like like like the winner would be who can get their pod to go the fastest within a on M section and like then have like a big crash area at the end um like so if the pod doesn't slow down in time can sort of get into the crash area you know I think that'll be quite an exciting competition we had a couple more seconds we'll grab it thank you hello my name is Bish I'm a computer science student at Stanford and so far west majority of startups we heard here today or the ones we hear on the news are brilliant Innovations on business models that are supported by technology but\n\non the other hand the ones that are based on true Technical Innovations are kind of limited that we have a few examples here I want to ask Sam why do you think that might be the case and as a followup to that to Elon do you think you'll be able to successfully build Tesla or SpaceX if there if they were your first Ventures and if you were looking funding for them out there so I I I think that a lot of people talk about how you know no one's working on anything interesting we're all just doing software the world is like really shitty it's getting worse it's the end of progress and I've never agreed with this I think so two-part answer one I I actually think we're on an incredible pace of innovation what's happening as what happens historically is that\n\nwhen there's a great opportunity sort of talent sashes around and finds that and there's been incredible progress in software in the last couple of decades there will be more and so a lot of talented people are choosing to work on it but that doesn't mean we're not making press it just means this one area is like transforming the world incredibly quickly people are doing other things as well as you mentioned and you know at y combinator we fund companies doing a lot of things here's the issue the Press loves to write about the software companies and they have very little interest in writing about the other stuff and so as an outsider you would say well there's only software um but that just doesn't reflect reality you know we fund companies doing all\n\nsorts of things and I think we love funding Tech we love funding technological innovation on a long time scale the Press does not love covering it um and also I think there's nothing wrong with working on software um yeah I think for SpaceX and Tesla are probably not the the ideal companies to have as the first uh thing um I mean generally because like um if something is capital intensive um it's really hard to get going um because is it true that you totally ran out of money supporting those two companies yeah wow so I guess that would not have been a good first no um I mean the the thought I had in the beginning was um I'm like I'm not really an investor I just like basically invest in the companies that I help create and I thought you know coming out\n\nof PayPal um I sort of I said I thought I'd invest like half the money in SpaceX and Tesla and Solar City and um and then I still have the other half left over except that doesn't really work out cuz then the recession of 2008 and 2009 came along and it was a choice of either invest everything um or the companies would definitely die so it's like if I invest everything then they might live um and if I don't invest everything then they're definitely going to die so ended up investing any investing everything and it was real tight actually um in fact like the the Tesla financing round at the end of 2008 um I remember quite well because that we we closed that financing round on the last hour of the last day that was possible it was 6:00 p.\n\nm.\n\nChristmas Eve 2008 um and we would have gone bankrupt like 2 days after Christmas if we hadn't closed that round um yeah that was hard okay uh we got to wrap up final question for both of you but I'm going to start with Elon with this uh your pal Larry Page once said that uh rather than give all of his money to charity he would prefer to give all of his money to you he might have changed his mind so my question for both of you is where do you want to where who would you give all of your money to or what would you give all of your money to um well I mean my expectation is uh I mean I I want to sort of continue the um the path of establishing a self-sustaining City on Mars I think that's an important thing that needs to happen um and um and then also sustainable\n\nenergy sustainable transport uh and then education uh and um Pediatric Healthcare those are like the areas that I mean that's essentially where all all my money is going sort of the good thing about why combinator is I get to pour all of my money back into the Technologies I believe in uh so I I would keep doing that and Larry Page will give your money to you uh Elon Musk Sam Sam Alman thank you guys","textByLang":{"en":"thank you all for uh sticking around this afternoon we had some great conversations and we're hoping to have another great one uh I it is my pleasure an honor or privilege really to have this conversation about the future uh with two gentlemen who know uh probably more about it than most uh the fellow all the way to my right to your left does not need any introduction Elon Musk uh you all know from Tesla and SpaceX of course from Solar City um Sam Alman I would say you don't need too much introduction either but I'm going to give it to you just in case you don't uh he runs ycombinator ycombinator has investments in over a thousand companies at this point they're investing in about 250 companies every single year those companies collectively are worth\n\nabout $65 billion dollar in total that's with a b and to give you just a a sort of a sense of the the kind of names we're talking about we're talking about Airbnb Dropbox stripe zenitz instacart Etc so both both uh folks uh with an amazing pedigree and an amazing sense of what's going on here's where I want to start the conversation with both of you and I think we're going to probably go to outer space very quickly um but we're going to try to keep it uh on Earth at least for the moment when you think about Innovation and you think about where we are going to be 10 15 20 years and what to invest in and what to make I'm going to make it hard for you Elon if you took Tesla out of it took Solar City out of it took SpaceX out of it and you said I could go\n\nstart a new company tomorrow it would be what it would be in what area where would you start thinking about well I think I think there's some uh fairly like there's a fairly obvious opportunity in electric aircraft um because all transport will Electrify over time with the exception of rockets um ironically um and um you know but but um I there's I mean there's I think there there's two areas which I mean they're fraught with issues but uh you know it's one of those things where if you if you don't do something maybe not doing something is worse like on the AI front or um on uh genetics you know so like the like the the those are the two things I think besides sustainable transport the internet um and making life multiplanetary uh rewriting genetics uh\n\nand uh AI uh the latter two are the ones that can most change uh Destiny of humanity um but but they're they're really dodgy so I mean maybe I'd try to do something in one of those two areas but they're yeah fro with difficulty Elizabeth Holmes was here earlier spoke during uh the lunch hour do you think about genetics and Longevity and trying to sort of avoid your friend Larry pagee is investing in a business hoping to end death I I don't I mean the the I mean I'm not actually a huge proponent of longevity I mean I do think that um having a good life for longer is better like you you'd want to uh address the you know the things that that happen to you when when you're older um like dementia and so forth th those are pretty important um but um I'm not\n\nI'm not sure it's sort of actually you know want to do that want to get into the genetics thing but it is something that's going to fundamentally change uh humanity and um uh along with AI so you don't want to live forever so that you can actually get to Mars I definitely don't want to live forever how how many years do you want to live um I don't know 100 good ones 100 good ones or 100 more good ones you're 44 um I mean 100 good ones in total I think is probably fine and maybe a bit longer um Sam what where where would you put your money you're you're the investor here well I mean we we try to invest in a very broad range of technology so um we funded an electric airplane or funding electric airplane company um we've done AI companies we've done uh how\n\nwe the electric airplane by the way I think it should work I think it like it makes it it makes sense the math should work um I think I I actually I I no huge surprise but I'll I'll agree with Elon on those two areas I think if you could pick uh two things that I'm not already working really hard on um uh AI having ai go in the positive direction which I really think it can and I I think thinking about sort of genetic technology genetic technology um I I made it unfair for you because I I said we had to take Solar City out and we had to take the cars out so we didn't get to really talk about energy but I imagine how big how big how big a thing do you think energy all in and when you think about both your Investments and what you're doing is something\n\nthat is one of the things that you need to tackle well I think sustainable energy is the most important problem that we face this Century um that's like a known difficult thing that we have to solve um like if if we if we continue to rely on burning hydrocarbons it the future is going to be quite bad and the vast majority of the scientific establishment believes that and the evidence I think is well I mean anyone with a scientific uh background is um you know unequivocal so um so so we got to solve sustainable energy uh I'm a big fan of solar because we got this big uh Fusion ball in the sky um called the Sun and TOS up every day so if we can you know use solar energy plus batteries we can actually have a complete solution for sustainable energy gener\n\ngeneration and then we need to use in a sustainable way which is uh you know where where you need the electric transport um yeah so the thing I would add I I think um getting the cost of sustainable energy Down super low is probably uh you know short of AI like the most important thing we can do for sort of quality of life of the poorest half of the world I think that uh you know every time I I look into this it's it's really amazing how much the cost of energy and the quality of life correlate what about nuclear energy you have you have some investments in nuclear energy yeah I mean what I've always said is I think the end state of the world is a combination of nuclear and solar um probably 8020 one way or the other sort of terrestrial based nuclear\n\nI I think Fusion is likely to work at some point in the next couple of decades and and that's a really big deal uh I think that it's good to have a backup option uh it's good to have two sources um but you know like it's all sort of fusion when you think about it yeah I I I mean I'm big I mean I think Fusion I think it's definitely possible to make fusion work um the but I think the and I used to be a big fan of of like having of that as the long-term energy source um but I'm inclined to think like indirect Fusion uh from the Sun essentially is going to be the primary source and then to some degree there will be uh Fusion reactors for you know maybe whatever yeah if you're really far north or really far south or something what about the risks of of nuclear\n\nenergy a fusion a fusion yeah I assume there's some risk there's no risk not really zero I'm an idiot I don't uh no um no mean with Fusion the difficulty is keeping it going uh not uh you know with with with fision uh you you have some meltdown risk although there's you know there's new technology on the fion front that makes meltdown risk extremely low um but um but with Fusion the great difficulty is is keeping the reaction from is keeping it the fire from going out it it's quite hard to sustain a fusion reaction uh unless you have something very big like the sun and you have the sun has gravitational confinement of the fusion reaction um so since you you can't do gravitational confinement on Earth you have to do some sort of uh electromagnetic confinement\n\none form or another uh or or a kinetic confinement by slamming things into each other um so it's it's quite tricky to prevent a fusion explosion from not immediately extinguishing got it so Fusion is like uh um I mean probably what you do is just repeat it every second or whatever so I mean just just a sort of you know I Fusion is like when you when you take uh say two hydrogen atoms or or two hydrogen Isotopes technically and slam them together and form helium that's that's fusion and then vision is like when you've got um like a heavy atom that is decaying at a at a you know relatively like a noticeable rate like uranium or plutonium and decays into smaller um atoms then uh that that's that's Vision okay I didn't do so well in science so we're going\n\nto try to uh move along but you recently said that you wanted to Nuke Mars um I I didn't really understand then you guys in the back were doing some science talk about how nuking Mars would work uh yeah um yeah so so nuking Mars I I I sort of was a little flippant about that um I think it's a really decent idea thank you thank you um so yeah the what is really getting at but it's hard to you know convey that in like 30 seconds you know on on The Late Show with s was was that the the sun is a a nuclear explosion a fusion explosion that's what the sun is it's an ongoing Fusion explosion so if you wanted to uh add energy to Mars like warm up Mars the really the source of almost all energy in the universe is fusion um you know even fision is um originally\n\nthere was fusion and then that that that then later resulted in fishion um but what I was really talking about is creating two little Suns uh two pulsing Suns above the North and South Pole of Mars that would warm the the poles up enough so that the Frozen CO2 would would gasify and densify the atmosphere some of the water would also um heat up and and you'd have sort of water more water vapor and um CO2 in the in the Martian atmosphere which in that case is good because the the CO2 ends up warming warming Mars up and so you get a positive um sort of reaction like it's a positive cycle of of warming on Mars like you want to warm Mars up but you don't want to warm Earth up you know so why would you ever want to live on Mars um it looks like a great adventure\n\nto me Beyond The Adventure do you actually both of you you you're investing in stuff uh that hopefully one day will go to Mars nothing for Mars but excuse me I nothing for Mars but I but I hope El Longos I think that would be cool but is that just for one person tell what what's going to happen no really I want to yeah well I mean the the Mars thing is is really like if you say what is going to be really important to the preservation of uh of civilization or Life as we know it more than just you know Humanity because of course we bring Life as we know it to Mars um and that there's no life that we can detect on the surface of Mars there may be some Subterranean bacterial life but there's it's on on the surface there there isn't anything um so this would\n\nbe the extension of life to another planet um or Life as we know it to another planet um and um I think would be make a huge difference to the prob lifespan of human civilization and um and Life as we know it so it's sort of like an insurance policy a life insurance policy for Life collectively and um you know so it's yeah probable because you because you think global warming what do you what do you think is going to happen here that's I don't want to be clear this is this is a I mean I I think it's important that we become a multiplet species not a single planet species but on another planet um so this is if if we it's like really it's like what kind of future do you want to have do you want to have a future Where We Are Forever confined to one planet\n\nor one where we are out there exploring the stars and and on on many planets and I think the the latter one is far more exciting and inspiring because the former is basically waiting around until some some Extinction event so because eventually there will be one um and um it might be quite far in the future but it also might not be far in the future um so there's so there's the there's really two main reasons I think to make life multiplanetary and to establish a self-sustaining civilization on Mars one is the defensive reason to to ensure that the light of Consciousness as we know it is not extinguished uh or or lasts much longer and the second is that it would be an an amazing adventure that uh that we could all enjoy uh vicariously uh if not uh personally\n\nI think it's really uh important to establish multiplanetary life I agree with with that I think my concern is that the uh I think the AI question is likely to become pressing uh and important to deal with before we can establish a full Colony on Mars that's true you guys and I think even if not then the AI can like go to Mars on a laser beam the AI goes does that mean it's like justs itself there yeah I mean it's very hard to send through space but the AI is going to go like 20 minutes you know on a laser beam it's easy do you guys believe in uh life forms outside of Earth you think there are I I mean I think there's there's quite a high chance of microbial life um that's there's a much that then as you get more advanced in life that there's less and\n\nless likelihood of of um like sophisticated life but you don't think do you think there's sophist you think there aliens out there that we can talk to you mean as opposed to like bacteria yeah yeah um there's a great onion article recently about like you know uh like like NASA should only hold a press conference if they find aliens that we can talk [Laughter] to um but but I I think so um I mean it's it's an interesting Confluence of events like it's not just that there has to be life intelligent life that evolves somewhere but that that life has to last for a long time for us to be Co for us to exist at the same time as that um so what it suggests is there's this great questions called the like sort of the firmy Paradox like where are the aliens like\n\nif there are so many planets out there um and the universe is almost 14 billion years old why why aren't the aliens everywhere um and um this is a one of the most perplexing questions um because um you know you could basically bicycle to Alpa centor in a few hundred thousand years like meaning at that's at bicycle speed so it's sort of like you know uh in 100 million years like even at a very slow speed you could completely blanket the Galaxy so why why not where are they it's very hard for me to get now um well we were we were talking in the back and we've had this conversation before you please weigh in on this and I think it's a thought experiment that you have suggested that we are all collectively right now uh living in a simulation what does that\n\nmean um yeah it's it's a probabilistic thing um so they really if you look at uh at say the advancement of video games uh from say 40 years ago when we started out with pong and you had like you know rectangles Bing a rectangle to each other um and uh and now we've got photorealistic 3D simulations with millions of people playing simultaneously or 3D games with millions of people playing simultaneously um that are just getting better now we've got uh virtual reality headsets so you can just put it on and it feels like you're right there um you'll have um haptic feedback meaning force feedback uh sticks so you can actually pick up something and feel like you're picking up something like you know have haptic gloves um and if if you extrapolate that advancement\n\num at at any rate at all like if you say okay let's say it's it slows down by a factor of 100 starting right now okay so then then then I mean the video games will be distinguishable from reality in let's say you know 200 years instead of 20 years or something like that uh but you don't think that we're in a game right now okay well that's this is this like we all somebody has a joystick somewhere else in some other you know where I'm going with it certainly doesn't feel like that I mean I don't I don't I don't think I'm being played by somebody in a video game but then people in video games don't generally think that I I certainly think if you talk to people who use the latest virtual reality equipment in sort of a big space where they sort of map like\n\nbenches in the space to benches in the game and the environment you know they have this experience when they do that for the first time and they take it off and then they just fre freeze for 10 seconds and and you can and then you talk to them and it's clear that like they their belief that this is actual reality has been shaken because they were so convinced in virtual reality that that was real and so if I can take this off like why aren't there other layers I also think it ties interestingly back to to the fmy Paradox yeah um exactly you know if if it is a simulation sort of that would be a pretty good answer for why there are no aliens how far are we away from sort of virtual reality being a thing all of us sort of live in to some degree we would\n\ngo to this conference we would go to this conference uh from our VR sets I mean I do think there there's still something to actually really being there in person um that that we probably won't lose for for a long time hopefully never uh but um I mean with with what uh Oculus and valve are coming out with um and I believe some of that that like the first VR headsets are doe out um early next year yeah like in the next several months um and and the demos that that I've seen and I think Sam's probably seen too are incredibly compelling um and there is that strange feeling because you you you put the headset on in like a very nondescript Bland room and and you you put the headset on and suddenly you're in anywhere like you could be yeah you know I got this\n\ndemo where they would like blow air on you when you like got near a cliff Edge and when you walk near a fire they would turn on a heater and you don't see any of this cuz you're just wearing it and then and it's it's really quite quite compelling um I want to talk about something else that's compelling which is Tesla it's really nice talk about the X it's an SUV um it's an SUV but here's what I was going to say $132,000 how many people really going to buy this thing um yeah so the the the F the first cars that are produced are fully the sort of fully optioned version so it's not like a base price of you know 132,000 it's um and we'll have a version that's still expensive on the expensive side but before any incentives would be about 75k next year um and\n\num you know with incentives and whatnot it's you know maybe 65 so it's it's it's still expensive but it's not as crazy as 132 um the and and then in in a couple years we should have the uh model 3 um and that'll be starting price of um $35,000 so it's a smaller car but it's you know um a lot more affordable okay so for the Tesla uh sort of real efficient AOS who follow you on Twitter you need to you need to answer one thing which is last week somebody tweeted at you I think about the X and then you put out a tweet that mentioned uh the Y and the three and then you deleted the Tweet yes this and everybody wants to know why you deleted the tweet and what the Tweet actually said um I no I think I think it was it just said something like the there'll be the\n\nmodel 3 and the model y um and that one of them will have like a faling door which is like pretty obviously the model y um so um the but I I I deleted that and like I don't know a dozen other tweets because I S it had like kind of a rambling Twitter history um but it was had no significance the delete has no significance like I don't think deleting a tweet like makes it go away from the Internet or something so why why delete the tweet I just didn't like what the way my Twitter history looked it was uh it was like too rambling you've invested in Twitter I'm I'm in Twitter in Tesla yeah you own a Tesla yeah make the case for those who are out there you I make it harder because he has to do it now why what what is this going to become in your mind you sure\n\nyou don't want him to answer yeah we know what he's going to say look I mean I think as most people who own one think it's the best car like out there uh I had a roadster before a Tesla Roadster which was not the best car um but the model S really is like it's just it's the best car on the market and I think that uh people think of this like existing car companies uh but actually this is like a software company with a car attached to it and it's you know you just like you sort of point and click you like point the wheel somewhere you push the thing down and it just kind of gets there it doesn't make noise it like it's very reliable the software actually works it's the only car with good software so I think people really like it now yeah it's like really\n\nexpensive still but uh I think uh well I'm confident that a mass Market Tesla will do very well and I also think the other electric cars I've driven feel like many years behind right uh you talked about this being a software company do you think of yourself as a software company I think we're software and a hardware company um but but the software component does become increasingly important um so you got to get both right um because it's you know it's a holistic product experience but um uh it it softwares increasingly the you know an increasing proportion of the problem particularly as you get to autonomy um and um yeah so so there is a view I don't know if it's a conspiracy theory that you are building autonomous functionality and other driverless\n\nlike functionality into the car without advertising that it's in there and that one day you going to flip a switch and the car is going to start just driving um well uh no not quite like that but we are going to upload new software soon and and we this is not actually a secret or anything um we we have version seven of our software which turns on um Highway autopilot so the car will be able to steer by itself on on highways or or any kind of um any kind of road that doesn't have really steep sharp curve curves on it um and um and then also it'll steer quite well in in traffic so those are the two scenarios where it'll it's think going to be quite good at steering um and and and we'll that that's in public beta right now so we have um I don't know 600\n\nor 700 uh Tesla drivers owners that are um testing the uh aut steer software and and yeah go ahead I think full self-driving cars and not Tesla specifically just in general are are likely to get here much more quickly than people realize yeah I absolutely you ask most people they'd still say it's 10 to 20 years away uh and I actually think we'll have sort of like full point too autonomous driving uh in a in a few years it won't be uncomon few years like two or three years three or four maybe know better I agree I think that's something on the on the two to three year time frame is likely for for it to be technologically I mean you you'll be able to demonstrate it um but it you won't be able to go to fully autonomous until you get reg regulatory approval\n\nso there's there's a there's a time difference between when it is technologically possible um in a general sense um you know so that you know not not just like in a very tightly mapped situation like say Mountain View or paloalto right but in the general sense of like you know can it can it do point to point virtually anywhere right um I think that's that's only you know two to three years away um but but then approval of from Regulators of of uh having it be autonomous is anywhere from I don't know one to 5 years after that depending upon the location because The regul Regulators have to be convinced that it is substantial I think they'll they'll want to see that it's significantly more uh sign significantly safer than than cars that are driven by people\n\nI want to open it up in about 5 minutes so I just have a couple more questions uh to get to you and so if you guys have a question in the audience uh get your shot on goal in just a second I want to talk about entrepreneurship because both of you are entrepreneurs you invest in them you are one and you think about this a lot uh your old pal Peter teal likes to say that he would not invest in somebody who's over the age of 30 years old that that it should be the cut off you're 44 now he's invested in you yeah I guess make some exception but you may be the exception to the rule as some as somebody who invests in companies every day do you think there's a cut off there's a lot of people out here who are over the age of 30 are we done uh I mean we've said\n\nthis before but when we've looked at our data uh the the mean age of entrepreneurs we fund is just around 29 or 30 um so there's obviously lots of over 30 entrepreneurs that we fund um some of which have gone on to create multi-billion dollar companies so I think certainly you can't say it's impossible for people over 30 to create companies that's that's ridiculous uh and we plan to continue to invest in people of all ages um the correlation that we've noticed is that uh if you look at the really successful companies we've had the multi-billion dollar companies the the average for those average age for those Founders does skew significantly younger but the success rate of founders of you know this binary is the company a success or not excuse older than\n\n30 so you know younger entrepreneurs I think tend to take bigger risks uh maybe they're willing to work on these very longtime Horizon projects but that's the only correlation we see I think it would be a crazy strategy to say I'm never going to invest in anyone over 30 yeah no I mean I think I think it's I don't think Peter meant that either yeah I mean you you can definitely start a company at any age and be successful I mean it's really just question of like do you you know do you have a good idea are you working really hard are you able to attract a great team and motivate the team um and that uh I mean that that's sort of really what what matters but you've had multiple ideas and there's there's another view by the way which is that you can only\n\nreally have one great idea right that everybody sort of has maybe maybe one great idea it's not really the idea you know I mean like there's that old saying it's 1% inspiration I I think and 99% postp spiration I think it's generally true I mean a lot of times like companies start out with with with uh an idea that's actually wrong um but they they adapt uh quickly enough to get it to something that that's right right um and I can say like at the beginning of Tesla we started out with uh we started the company with two false premises like that would turn out to be like really dumb um uh one was that uh we'd be able to uh license the drivetrain uh technology from a company called AC propulsion in Southern California and that it would just work that didn't\n\nthat totally didn't work um and then we also thought we'd be able to adapt the Lotus Elise chassis at low cost um and be able to essentially put the AC propulsion drivetrain technology in a Lotus at leas chassis and then just build that quickly and um and sell it and that it would that that would be okay um but but like I said the AC propulsion technology did not lend itself to uh any any kind of cost-effective reliable car um it was okay for like a small prototype but not not for a commercial product and and the uh and then the Lotus Elise um that that ended up worse than if we had designed a car from from the beginning um because we ended up uh changing like 96% of the components in the car um and invalidating all of the crash results and all the safety\n\nstuff the car ended up being 30% heavier had to be longer um and it ended up being like like if you if you want if you had a house in mind and instead of actually building that house from scratch you got some existing house and ended up knocking everything except one wall in the basement out um and and it would have been better to just build the house from the beginning the the house you wanted so so so basically Tesla was started on the basis of two dumb ideas um and um but we managed to you know it was a tough one to overcome those two two issues but we we managed to get get past them that's so that's I think the more important thing is like start somewhere and then you know really be prepared to question your assumptions fix what you did wrong and\n\nuh adapt to reality how did you run two companies at the same time Jack dorsy is about to take this on in a meaningful way what is what does a day in the life of Elon Musk actually look like yeah I wouldn't recommend running two companies uh this is um it really it decreases your freedom um quite a lot so um and and I'll tell you what so my day is probably a bit different than people think it is I me most of my time is actually spent on um engineering and design so that's probably I don't know like 70% of my time um like press stuff like this is maybe two or 3% of my time it's really really tiny um and I'm going to reduce it even further it's probably like 1% of my time so uh real quick and then we'll go to the audience politics I want to ask you two\n\npolitical questions one is innovation in politics when when do you think there'll ever be a day where we actually vote on our phone um we stupidly seem to still go and vote uh you know in our local District often times at a local school and I also wanted to get your sense of uh who out there you may or may not like right now in terms of what you guys do and who who you think might do the best all right I'll take the first question Elon can answer the second um Trump's amazing uh I I think that yes we will someday vote on our phones I think it it like and it will have a significant impact because it'll really change people who vote so I think that may take a while because there are a lot of people who don't want to see the electorate change but uh you\n\nknow over a 20year time frame I always try to think about things over these sort of you know 10 or 20 year time frames I think you can get so caught up in the what's happening this month or next year are we in a bubble are we buying at a low tick or a high tick but but eventually it's going to happen and I take soless in that anyway Elon on Donald Trump yeah he asked you um I mean and I don't really have uh strong feelings except that I you know hopefully Trump doesn't foret the nomination of you know the Republican party that's because I think that's um yeah that wouldn't be good um so but I mean bar Diller said he would move out of the country what about you really no I would move I mean I think like at most he would get the Republican nomination but\n\nI think that was still be a bit embarrassing so um I think that could happen yeah um you think it will happen it could it won't surprise me if it does yeah um I honestly don't have strong feelings about the do you get involved in politics um I get involved in politics to the as little as possible yeah there sometime I have there's some amount that I have to get involved in um mostly because SpaceX has to battle Boeing and locked um you know for National Security and and civil space launch contra s so if we don't if we don't battle them then you know then they will we'll lose how corrupt is that whole thing yeah um well I mean the the I mean actually would say that on on balance I guess it's it's not that corrupt because if if it was corrupt then SpaceX\n\nwould have no chance um because SpaceX um I mean it's got it's gotten a bit bigger these days but it was very tiny um when when we won our first govern contract and if if it had been like deeply corrupt then we would not have won anything um so you know I think you know I think actually at the the the greater the level of visibility politically the the the less corruption occurs so um I think there's actually probably like the least corruption at the presidential level than at the Senate level in the house and then that there can be a bit more corruption at the state level U it's like basically how much attention are people paying that that that defines how much corruption occurs right um yeah you know perhaps and we'll open up to but it got me thinking\n\nthe only real big critique of some of your businesses is that they are subsidized to some degree by the government could these businesses succeed without government help um yeah absolutely the the the um and I should at some point I should probably write a rebuttal because there was like nonsensical LA Times article from which a lot of this stems um because what what the LA Times article did was add up um all incentives that Tesla has received and all inent incentives that Tesla will receive so like over a 30-year period and made it made it sound like a big number um but it's you know um like if somebody's earning $50,000 a year you don't say you don't call them a millionaire because over the next 20 years they will cumulatively earn a million do but\n\nthat's effectively what that article uh did um the incentives I think for for Tesla and Solar City what they really do is balance out the um the the the actual and de facto incentives that carbon producing um activities have so and I don't think they actually balance it out so the carbon producing activities still sort of overwhelm um the incentives that electric cars and solar receivers I mean for example there's a 20% um tax incentive for stripper oil well um like and the the incentive for solar is currently 30% but dropping to 10% uh in two years right so the you know two years the incentive for solar power will be half that of a stripper oil well right so you know uh and and SpaceX made it in in in spite of boing lock receiving a billion dollar plus\n\nuh subsidy for the launch activities so I think in the case of SpaceX it was sort of success in spite of incentives uh and in the case of Solar City and Tesla it was the incentives were you know moderately helpful but not not the deciding factor they they're they're Catalyst they made things happen a little FAS than they would otherwise happen but um you know you look at something like the like the there's a $7,500 tax credit for uh EVS um Okay so that ends up being a 10% uh discount that the consumer receives for buying the car it's it's not like night and day difference okay we got a lot of people uh who are standing and we want to get to all the questions we're going to sort of try to do this rapid fire so I'd ask you to keep your question short and\n\nthese guys are going to keep their answers short uh as well at least we're going to Hope goad hi my name is uh Bruce Gman I'm a private investor in Toronto Canada and Elon if you're not happy with the next election you're more than welcome to come back to Canada um question is about artificial intelligence like any good good new technology people always fear the change and things that can go wrong I was wondering if Sam and Elon could share with us their positive vision of ai's impact on our coming life right we didn't even get to AI in this whole conversation yeah I I think look there is a really positive Vision here right I think there are the science fiction version is either that we enslave it or it enslaves us but there's this uh Happy symbiotic\n\nVision which I don't think is the default case but what we should work towards I think already um humans and AI are Co evolving and no one's paid attention to this yet but I don't think there's any human left that understands all of how Google search results are ranked on that first page it really is machine learning algorithm so when we search on Google it's an AI deciding what we should see um when a dating site matches two people together there's a machine learning algorithm that no human understands how it works that is getting people together that then have babies and so in in effect you know you have this like machine learning algorithm breeding humans and so really I mean you do um and so there's this and then you know those people like work on\n\nthe algorithms later and so I think the happy vision of the future is sort of humans in Ai and a symbiotic relationship distributed AI where it sort of empowers a lot of different individuals not this single AI that kind of governs everything that we all do that's you know a million times smarter a million times smarter than any other entity so I think that's what we should work towards I agree with what Sam said um I mean we are effectively already um a human machine Collective symbiote um like there's like we're like a like a giant cyborg um that that's actually what Society is today um you know but but I'm going to sort of obviously I mean have an affinity for the human portion of that cyborg Collective um and um I think I do think we need to be careful\n\nabout the development of AI and make sure it is ultimately beneficial to humanity that it's uh that that the future is good question over here okay uh so not too long ago oh my name is Jessica sing by the way but not too long ago on the nightly show with Larry Wilmore they had Bill n the Science Guy on there discussing the new uh Mars Discovery and the other P panelists basically said that our society doesn't care about the scientific discoveries of NASA and how does uh Innovation uh what does that mean in a society that only values the results like the final products like a car or like finally going to space and not really valuing the process proc of getting there well I mean I do I do think that there is I'm not sure I agree with that I me I think we\n\ndo value Discovery and and new things um and and learning about the Universe um I mean there was quite a bit of attention paid to the discovery of of water flowing on Mars um I mean I'd certainly say that it should be more but um I think it's okay I think it's not bad I think we're I think we're better off than than that the show would suggest okay yeah okay we're going to try to get everybody up there if we can so go ahead question for Elon I I understand that the hyperloop was inspired by your opinions about California's High-Speed Rail uh and could you share those opinions as well as a bit about the hyperloop um yeah just um if if if we're to have a um some new form of Transport in California which I think is would be good to have then we want to we\n\nwant to Aspire to have something that is um Cutting Edge technology um and um when when I was reading about the highspeed rail plan um it's it's a lot of money for something which isn't obviously compelling relative to a car or a plane um in terms of the time it would take to complete the journey um and and it will will settle California taxpayers with a pretty significant amount of money that they got to pay so um so it's like if you pay if you pay a high price you should have a a great outcome like that should be the sensible thing um and that that doesn't seem to be what what is happening from what I can tell um and so I was trying to think well what what would be the the fastest way you could get from say LA to San Francisco or cities in between um\n\nand um uh ended up mentioning that I had the an idea actually had a toour not unlike this and then and then discovered my initial idea didn't work and then kept iterating um with a with a bunch of other people and uh came up with a hyperloop so that's sort of where where it actually it finally did work from a technical standpoint um and now there are some companies pursuing that which is awesome and I hope we see some I hope we see it come to fruition um SpaceX is is um doing a a hyperloop student comp ition um that um where where uh teams will compete to see who can make the best pod um and um and so we're doing a sort of a mile long uh hyperloop uh section uh in La um just right near SpaceX really whone technically but LA County um and um and so I think\n\nthat's going to be pretty exciting to see what the students can come up with and here can come up with the most advanced pod design um and uh I I think we're going to set it so that like like like the winner would be who can get their pod to go the fastest within a on M section and like then have like a big crash area at the end um like so if the pod doesn't slow down in time can sort of get into the crash area you know I think that'll be quite an exciting competition we had a couple more seconds we'll grab it thank you hello my name is Bish I'm a computer science student at Stanford and so far west majority of startups we heard here today or the ones we hear on the news are brilliant Innovations on business models that are supported by technology but\n\non the other hand the ones that are based on true Technical Innovations are kind of limited that we have a few examples here I want to ask Sam why do you think that might be the case and as a followup to that to Elon do you think you'll be able to successfully build Tesla or SpaceX if there if they were your first Ventures and if you were looking funding for them out there so I I I think that a lot of people talk about how you know no one's working on anything interesting we're all just doing software the world is like really shitty it's getting worse it's the end of progress and I've never agreed with this I think so two-part answer one I I actually think we're on an incredible pace of innovation what's happening as what happens historically is that\n\nwhen there's a great opportunity sort of talent sashes around and finds that and there's been incredible progress in software in the last couple of decades there will be more and so a lot of talented people are choosing to work on it but that doesn't mean we're not making press it just means this one area is like transforming the world incredibly quickly people are doing other things as well as you mentioned and you know at y combinator we fund companies doing a lot of things here's the issue the Press loves to write about the software companies and they have very little interest in writing about the other stuff and so as an outsider you would say well there's only software um but that just doesn't reflect reality you know we fund companies doing all\n\nsorts of things and I think we love funding Tech we love funding technological innovation on a long time scale the Press does not love covering it um and also I think there's nothing wrong with working on software um yeah I think for SpaceX and Tesla are probably not the the ideal companies to have as the first uh thing um I mean generally because like um if something is capital intensive um it's really hard to get going um because is it true that you totally ran out of money supporting those two companies yeah wow so I guess that would not have been a good first no um I mean the the thought I had in the beginning was um I'm like I'm not really an investor I just like basically invest in the companies that I help create and I thought you know coming out\n\nof PayPal um I sort of I said I thought I'd invest like half the money in SpaceX and Tesla and Solar City and um and then I still have the other half left over except that doesn't really work out cuz then the recession of 2008 and 2009 came along and it was a choice of either invest everything um or the companies would definitely die so it's like if I invest everything then they might live um and if I don't invest everything then they're definitely going to die so ended up investing any investing everything and it was real tight actually um in fact like the the Tesla financing round at the end of 2008 um I remember quite well because that we we closed that financing round on the last hour of the last day that was possible it was 6:00 p.\n\nm.\n\nChristmas Eve 2008 um and we would have gone bankrupt like 2 days after Christmas if we hadn't closed that round um yeah that was hard okay uh we got to wrap up final question for both of you but I'm going to start with Elon with this uh your pal Larry Page once said that uh rather than give all of his money to charity he would prefer to give all of his money to you he might have changed his mind so my question for both of you is where do you want to where who would you give all of your money to or what would you give all of your money to um well I mean my expectation is uh I mean I I want to sort of continue the um the path of establishing a self-sustaining City on Mars I think that's an important thing that needs to happen um and um and then also sustainable\n\nenergy sustainable transport uh and then education uh and um Pediatric Healthcare those are like the areas that I mean that's essentially where all all my money is going sort of the good thing about why combinator is I get to pour all of my money back into the Technologies I believe in uh so I I would keep doing that and Larry Page will give your money to you uh Elon Musk Sam Sam Alman thank you guys"},"languages":["en"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SqEo107j-uw"},{"id":"stanford-ecorner-2015-10-07","type":"interview","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SVk1hb0ZOrE","title":"Stanford eCorner","titles":{"en":"Stanford eCorner","de":"Stanford eCorner","fr":"Stanford eCorner"},"date":"2015-10-07","summary":"In conversation with Steve Jurvetson, Musk shares his predictions on AI, renewable energy, space exploration and entrepreneurship.","text":"[Music] good morning Stanford I'll tell you seeing so many students up this early in the morning is really a great experience for the president of the university and I'm so delighted you're able to join us here and I can tell you're going to be in for a fascinating discussion this morning if you think about our University and what makes it unique it is that bold entrepreneurial spirit that pioneering spirit that Jane and Leland brought to us when they marched across the country to come to the West Coast and help found this University today we remain committed to pursuing opportunities that will change the world to using our knowledge in important ways to work on the grand challenges we face but that entrepreneurial spirit is about more than just launching\n\nthe next startup it's also about training and educating people who will go out and make our world better and those Innovations come in all war Walks from the medical care we do and new ways of dealing with health problems to Energy Efficiency to robotics to Art to everything we do but every Innovation begins with an idea and every idea began with somebody who imagined it and that's what today is about the Stanford technology Venture program's future Fest is an opportunity to examine and celebrate the impact of breakthroughs and pioneering Technologies on our world and I'm delighted you could all join us this morning this is organized by stvp in collaboration with Stanford Arts the future Fest will be the place where discussions about futuristic Technologies\n\noccur and today we'll hear from two far thinkinking individuals Alon musk and Steve jersson Steve is a Stanford Alum and a partner at Draper Fisher jinson he was recently hail in the New York Times as a space investor and Rocket maker his firm has invested both in SpaceX and a satellite company Planet Labs Steve is a Stanford alumnist three times over and he also has the important characteristic that he was once my adviser despite that disadvantage he completed his bachelor's degree in electrical engineering in two and a half years was the Henry Ford scholar went on to earn his Ms and despite my attempts to convince him to pursue a PhD went off and got his MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business where he was an RJ Miller scholar he's recognized\n\nwidely for being forward-thinking the San Francisco Chronicle and examiner named him as one of the 10 people expected to have the greatest impact on the bay area in the early part of the 21st century now Alon musk I think is a name known to everybody who thinks about the future he is a Serial entrepreneur inventor engineer and investor he was born in South Africa attended Queens University in Canada before moving to the US where he earned his undergraduate degrees in economics and physics from the University of Pennsylvania he arrived at Stanford to pursue his PhD in physics but left after two days I said what was wrong along was the food the water the weather no he left to launch his first startup zip 2 a successful internet-based City gu and then he\n\nwent on to launch PayPal he founded his third company SpaceX in 2002 and six years later NASA awarded him a contract for cargo transport to the International Space Station he was an early investor in Tesla Moda and now leads the company as its CEO and product architect but Alon dreams big as he told CNN a few years ago we should not be afraid of doing something just because some amount of tragedy is likely to occur if our forefathers had taken that approach the United States wouldn't exist Amen to that I think when you see the kind of work that Alan's doing and I still remember my first trip down to Los Angeles to visit SpaceX and to see the first Tesla prototype before came out I realized he was going to change the world this will be a wonderful exchange\n\nafter stepen Alan's discussion Matt Harvey executive director of stvp will close the program but now please join me in giving a warm Stanford welcome to Alon musk and Steve jersson [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] thank you president Hennessy and uh this is a daunting venue I feel like we should sing or something dance perhaps wow okay so uh future Fest uh today is all about the future and uh I can't imagine a better person to speak with about that than Elon Musk he is forging the future as you all know across multiple Industries repeatedly in the most spectacular way in a way that others have failed before him and uh perhaps unprecedented in history so I'm a big Fanboy future Fest originally I think bounced around and why this month because this\n\nis a special month for future Fest is that uh for those of you old enough and it looks like maybe five or six of you in the audience to have been around when Back to the Future the movie came out they had this vision of the future in the second edition of that Series where they fast forwarded in a Time Warp to the Future and it was October 2015 and uh they had flying cars and hoverboards and Biometrics and video calls and what looked like Google Glass a lot of the times and a lot of other stuff that was completely cockamamy but um some of those dreams were true some were not and as a framework for future Fest we can think to the past and our dreams that did or didn't come true I think that's what we'll start and then move to the Future we're sitting here\n\ntoday what do we think the future may Bode so turn Elon maybe as a as as a starting point as you think back to your high school days 30 years ago when we were both there and dreaming of that future what about today is or isn't in accordance to what you thought back then I mean where where have your dreams the future the Bold Visions met or not met reality today I think the the most remarkable thing that we we do have today is the the internet um and access to all the world's information from anywhere so that that's having a superc computer in your pocket is I think something people wouldn't have predicted um you know in Back to the Future yeah um so that that's the that's the biggest thing um and uh and probably the the what they would be most surprised\n\nat is that we haven't progressed more in space um so the people would have expected I think to have a space hotel in fact oy Clark 2001 should yeah exactly um thought 2010 was really crazy you know space advancement so it would like be going to Jupiter and that kind of thing so that that's probably like the most surprising thing like particularly if you go back even further if you say in ' 69 when um people first landed on the moon um if You' asked people if You' asked the the public what uh what would the situation be in 2015 I think they would imagine that we're we would have a base on the moon a base on Mars and be you know all over the solar system by now mhm that's probably V what happened I mean is there any pattern you can sense for where our dreams\n\nand science fiction realities Drift from reality and where they are reality is there is there some reason you think like as you because because we have dreams today of where that you know that we're going to have these Mars colonies in the near future and uh yeah well unless something jumps to mind let me let me I have a bunch of questions by the way from the audience as well here I want to I want to move to something a little more current as we move forward in time 20 years ago when we first met you were starting your first internet company of two the one before PayPal U zip 2 and I know that in your youth you envisioned a variety of industries that needed to change um when you were pursuing your first one did you imagine you would get to the next one\n\nand the next one no I mean when I was in college I just thought well what are the things that are most lik to affect the future of humanity just in you know at a macro level and um it just seemed like it would be like the internet and sustainable energy uh making like multiplanetary um and then genetics and Ai and I thought the first three if you worked on those there were like almost certainly going to be good and then the the last two a little more dodgy in terms of the net benefit yeah for the double-edged sword and you're not sure which Edge is the worse interesting so it would it seems like begging the question are genetics and AI the ones that are right for students today to be thinking about as they look I mean they are yeah um my my cousin I a\n\nyounger cousin who's just finishing up um uh sort of physics and computer science degree uh actually Berkeley um we we know and um and he's uh he says everyone there is in the computer science department is working on AI so I mean I think we're going to see some crazy breakthroughs in the next few years on that front yeah I want to come back to that later as we look more to your vision of the future as you as you think back though to your younger self but you know many of the people in the audience are themselves college students and either under atrad programs and are thinking about the world they're entering and I'm curious this may be an odd question but one that I find fascinating as you think here today back to your younger self is there any advice\n\nyou wish you could have given your younger self in with hindsight given what you know now well I mean I give like a lot of advice I yeah dating a whole bunch of things like that yeah I got got you but just in terms of how to how to think about a life trajectory perhaps or um how to pursue your passions I mean I I'm reasonably happy with how things turned out um so it's like touche not terrible um yeah that's a good point uh I I think if there's anything um I'll let you if something jumps to mind let me know but let me uh I mean apart from the obvious like just telling telling my younger self exactly how the future will unfold which is right but but that that you know wouldn't be that that that's not exactly advising more has been encapsulated into non\n\ntime warping wisdom yeah yeah exactly like wisdom um um I mean I mean there there there's a lot of things I mean it's sort of I mean certainly um yeah I mean uh you know listen listen more to critical feedback um know uh I mean like a lot of things I learned in college actually were pretty helpful I mean I think the physics approach to thinking is very good like the first principles approach um and you applied that broadly yeah appli applying the first principles approach to thinking um is I think a good way to figure out a counterintuitive um situations um and um you know so thought that was that was really a helpful thing to learn um that's good yeah I mean yeah right go ah no no feel free to jump in because I don't know how I'd answer that question\n\nI mean other yeah what would you do what would you tell your in yourself it'll be all right you weren't as dorky as you think advice like that nothing really too actionable don't worry about it well just don't be so insecure about everything you're insecure about yeah we'll probably be advice to myself but uh but let's move on this more I'm not used to thinking about me um so you I I may be roughly overgeneralizing here but it seems to me that there's some often a trigger problem that generates in your mind a great solution for when you come up with new company so for example when trying to negotiate with the Russians for launch capacity the the AHA that we should just build a better rocket to solve this problem comes forth or when you uh deal with the\n\ncommute on the 405 or whatever in La it's like my God what is wrong with mass transit and and perhaps hyperloop and then you know with with uh with a variety of ideas there seems to be some trigger something that's broken in the world that and you have an idea of how to fix it and I guess what I'm curious about is not how you've picked the areas of interest and the solutions but how have you decided what not to per fix and other words there's many things that need fixing in the world and students here probably could think of a long list many of which you could probably imagine solutions to using the physics first principal approach but has there been any framework or idea you've used to filter out what you don't do what you don't pursue um yeah I mean\n\nwell if if sort follow the what I did initially was um you know well you go back to like college times I was working on um energy storage Technologies for electric vehicles um and that's what I was going to pursue at Stanford actually was work on um like Advanced capacitors and batteries to improve uh the energy density for electric vehicles um and then the internet was kind of happening it was clear like the internet was happening like back in like ' 9495 and uh and I wasn't sure if what I worked on in the PHD would actually be useful so I was like I was really concerned that if I timing or what was your intuition meaning I think like it could be academically useful but not practically useful um like I think it could result in a PhD and adding some Leaf\n\nto the tree of knowledge um but then then discovering that well it's not really going to going to matter like that's you know is it is it going to be a a good enough thing to actually be used in an electric vehicle I wasn't sure I mean so there was like I was uncertain as to whether success was one of the possible outcomes like I thought maybe it was but I wasn't sure and and then I thought well if I watch the internet get built while I'm doing this um that that that would be really frustrating there's a sense of that eminent timing that like that was the time for the internet and maybe the other stuff could wait or be on the back back burner of your mind was it always there as like one day I'll get back to that or was it um yeah I thought probably I'd\n\nget back to it and did end up doing that um but yeah I thought sort of the the the internet was was happening like really taking off um although most people weren't aware of it in '95 um and uh and so I figured like electric vehicle Technology Energy stor technology will there will be some sort of natural progression in that and I could come back to it later um but the internet you know was was really that was the moment to to really do something um Al although in '95 it wasn't obvious that you could actually make any money on the internet this was like no Nobody Until Netscape went public I think at the end of 95 um nobody even thought there was like uh you could make a valuable company on the internet wasn't as obvious as it seems now yeah like now\n\nit seems really obvious but back then it was not at all um so it was really from the perspective of it wasn't like oh I want to make a bunch of money it was actually from it's like I want to just be part of fing this thing that I thought it was like like a nervous system it was like previously people had communicated effectively via osmosis and um you know you'd have to like basically physically you know connect with somebody to to really communicate um you like a letter like you send letters like on paper um and with the internet anyone who had a connection anywhere in the world would have access to all the world's information just like sort of a nervous system in a so like so Humanity was effectively becoming a superorganism um and and qualitatively\n\ndifferent than uh what it had been before and so I wanted to be part of that and uh um yeah so but but initially the goal was just to make enough money to pay the rent it wasn't um you know to do anything beyond that interesting and then as many know that much of that capital got ploted back into your next businesses right right EXA exactly so then they and and then the Internet it's also helpful because it's anything to do with software is a low Capital Endeavor so I didn't have any money um I just had a bunch of student debt and um so but but software you can just write like by yourself um and you don't need a lot of atoms like you don't need a lot of tooling and equipment and um so it's not Capital intensive um so the ability to start a company um\n\nif it's software related and it's the first company is much much easier right right and it seems obvious now but of course the easier place to start and then as you gain more of a personal reputation and have more personal Capital as some Mar I know SpaceX was almost was entirely funded by Elon for its first period partially from you know and in an era when others probably wouldn't have funded it right and those are right and actually I mean the precursor to to SpaceX was not the the idea wasn't really to create a company it was um it was to to try to figure out why we hadn't um gone send people to Mars so um so so we went from sub2 to to PayPal and then um and then going from PayPal to sort of the next thing I was sort of thinking well um is there some\n\nway to reignite the dream of Apollo um and I thought well it was maybe a question of like we'd lost the will to explore it um but actually think that that that my original premise was wrong we had not lost the will to explore but people did not think there was a way and if people don't think there's a way then they they just they won't bash their head against the wall continuously they'll you know they'll sort of give up so um but but but in the beginning I thought it was a question of will so so if we can send a small Greenhouse to the surface of Mars and you and you have seeds and uh nutrient gel and you hydrated upon landing and then you'd have this little green house on the surface of Mars and people tend to respond to precedents and superlatives\n\nand this would be the first life on Mars as far as we knew for this that life's ever traveled you have this great shot of green plants on a red background and I thought well that maybe that would get people excited about sending people to Mars so the headlines were clear in your mind once you had success on what that would lead to to catalyze action and and actually the goal was was to get the public excited about that and get um NASA's budget increased so that that was actually the the original goal and um so I went to Russia to try to buy some icbms in 2001 um it's interesting experience a lot of vodka yeah a lot of vodka yeah it's crazy um and uh I couldn't afford the regular Rockets like the Boeing and lock heed Rockets are too expensive and uh still\n\nare yeah still pretty expensive that's true I had to sorry wait may I jump in here for a sec because the anecdote you brought up of wanted to change government policy and Inspire the world to have a Mars program if you will whether it's popular Uprising or or space programs at the government level I think it's a fascinating anecdote because in a sense what you were saying is I as an individual want to start a entity business or otherwise that will catalyze change even beyond the company level or the industry level and I see a parallel in other initiatives you've taken on in that if you look at uh the goal of Tesla under your leadership it is to assure the transition to all vehicles being electric not just the cars that currently are produced by Tesla\n\nand uh with power wall and Solar City arguably the the description is one of ushering in a a wholesale shift to renewable energy many of the solutions required wouldn't be provided by the companies you're starting and so as I as I deal in entrepreneurship as a venture capitalist every day we we see this incredible scope of ambition here that is breathtaking like change the world with Steve Jobs and others talk about in a company maybe shifting an industry but we're talking about shifting like the entire Zeitgeist of the world in a sense and maybe eventually other worlds so my question is do you do you start always in your mind with that as a like I where's the starting point is it okay I see this Arc of a story like like the Mars example or renewable\n\nenergy and then do you pull back to where's the best product to un get it unstuck like why isn't this happening and like if I solve that problem then it unlocks value like how does that happen in your mind um sure so um I mean I should say like the when when we started SpaceX and Tesla I I mean I really thought the probability of success was very low I mean it wasn't like I think oh we'll definitely be successful I thought I thought we' be like maybe 10% likely who uh yeah um and and they we came very close to both companies not succeeding in 2008 you know we had the we had three failures of the SpaceX rocket um so we were zero for three um we had the crazy Financial recession like the Great Recession um the Tesla financing round have fallen apart because\n\nlike pretty hard to raise money for the startup car company FGM and chry are going bankrupt um like people it's poly for the upside yeah it's that was tricky one um and um you know unfortunately at the end of 2008 the the fourth launch which was that was the last launch we had money for uh worked for SpaceX and um and then we we closed the Tesla financing round as you know uh Christmas Eve 2008 last hour of the last day that it was possible yeah and thanks to you for those who don't know it's the most extraordinary Act of entrepreneurial Zeal and commitment I've ever seen where El un personally saved Tesla in those hours like when no one else would write a check he spoke for it all and that flipped the mentality from Fear to Greed and everyone joined\n\nthe bandwagon and and everything changed from you know dividing into the ground to success but you were willing to go like net negative personally of of his entire net worth and it's it's un remarkable story um oh thanks for supporting by the way that was much much appreciated yeah we were happy to fall right behind in line but but it was all him um so I guess on this this aide though of the big picture I'm curious in the way I heard you just now described the greenhouse and the headlines is interesting do the marketing headlines flash through your mind as you introduce new products that are a step to a much grander Vision I'm curious because it seems like it has two purposes like getting employees customers everyone really gung-ho about the vision but\n\nit also makes it larger than life in so many ways well I if you're trying to convince the public to do something you have to say okay how's this going to read um and what message are we going to try to convey um what will people respond to what would I respond to if I was you know sort of an objective member of the public and um so that's that that's really you know if you're trying to change people's minds or get people fired up about something um then you got to think okay what's that message what what's going to get them really excited um I think that's really good advice by the way for all the engineering students here yeah that's I was wi as well I'm I'm curious there's a as an adjunct sometimes to these Grand Visions like making it a multiplanetary\n\nspecies or shifting us to renewable energy or making all vehicles electric that has a purpose-driven element to it there's a higher calling than the quarterly bottom line in fact there was a Tesla quarterly report I remember famously where the opening the literally opening line was uh while profits are not a priority comma you know never nevertheless exactly and it occurred I was struck by it at first and it did occur to me that it's not like a Mis some sort of misdirected fiduciary question to me it seems like how could you lead an industry transition if your business model was worse than what's already there I meaning like if you weren't more profitable in the long term and a better business why would anyone shift right so it almost seems like with\n\nthe right purpose profits follow yeah well if if if you make a if the you know if the output is more valuable than the inputs which is really that's that's that's profit like the output is more valuable than the input um that that that says you you have a use company um so but you know in a high growth scenario you have a lot more inputs for for future outputs so that you have negative cash flow and lack of profitability and which we currently have at Tesla um but in the in the long term of course that has to be that that has to be fixed that there can't be negative cash flow in the long term um and that there needs to be um a net positive output um which is sort of profits in in the long term um but in the short term when this high growth that that that\n\ndoesn't it isn't the most sensible thing and then there's also related things like open sourcing patents and acts that to me relate to the purpose let's let the whole Auto industry do this and so I'm curious what do you see from your Vantage Point as the benefits of a Purpose Driven company meaning when you have this thing that every employee and customer knows is the purpose of the company how do you see that flowing through the benefits for the company well I think I think having a propose certainly is going to attract the the very best talent in the world because um if if people can if there's something that's intrinsically enjoyable and the financial rewards are good but then also it's something that's going to genuinely change the world then that's\n\nI think that's a pretty powerful motivator um and um but I don't think like everything needs to change the world you know I mean honestly like there's lots of like useful things that people do and I mean I think really it should be like a usefulness optimization like just say like is what I'm doing as useful as it could be you're talking about the the goal of an organization or goal in general yeah and um you know just even if something isn't changing the world if it's Mak making people's lives better I think that's that's great and uh you know if even if something's like making all people's lives only slightly better but it's a large number of people then kind of like the area under the curve sure is is quite good um is that mathematical first principles\n\nPoint utility and number yeah okay like I mean so like one could say like say like is like some app really making people's lives better it's but if it's affecting a lot of people uh even in a small way then yeah the sort of area is good interesting so let's shift gears a little bit since it is future Fest um looking to the Future right we we started 30 years in the past but the future keeps accelerating so let's maybe look 20 years in the future for an equivalent leap arguably five years in the future might be equivalent to the past 30 but let's say 20 so the year 2035 what does the future look like as far as you can tell what would you uh 20 20 years yeah 20 35 yeah 20 years um it's always really tricky to predict the future um um I mean some of it's\n\npretty obvious like computing power is going to be just crazy um the really the big change is the c cost of computing power um not so much the sort of circuit density sort of the M law thing but if you if you look at say what is the actual um you know dollars per you know per instruction um and and that that is Dr I mean that that that cost is is dropping exponentially I you think about it like like if you're making a computer just you're rearranging silicon and copper you know so if on on a little chip and once the capital cost of the development and the the chip plant is paid for uh the ACT I mean the marginal cost of a chip is very very tiny um so I think we'll see massively parallel computers um and and computing power and storage being you know as\n\nreally as much as you want MH um and it's interesting I too start with that like if I I don't know what else to predict but as a foundational thing this seems like the safest starting you know premise but then what does that Ripple through to in fields like genetics and AI which you mentioned autonomous driving space related topics I mean just ubiquitous Computing everywhere um I think I think AI is going to be incredibly sophisticated in 20 years um the when does the first W up it like it seems to be accelerating and the tricky thing about predicting things when there's an exponential is that an exponential looks like looks linear close up that's right um and and but it's actually it's not linear so uh and AI appears to be accelerating um from what I\n\ncan see um and do you for that do you look at autonomous driving and point AIS like the Siri like functionality as your guide post um well I had sort of debate about someone like is AI accelerating or not and the like he was saying well what's the Y AIS you know if if it's accelerating um you got T on the X AIS but what's what's the y axis is well thought about that I think you could have a recursive y- axis so that uh if if if at any point in time your your predictions for AI are coming sooner or later um that that actually would help find whether it's U accelerating or not whatever that access was so you might just look at the recursive access like so if if in any given year if you if you find your predictions are are um going further out or coming\n\nfurther or coming closer in that that actually you know is one way to think of acceleration cuz like cuz otherwise what's the what's the qualitative or quantitive measure of of AI um saying like if a given technology is always 20 years in the future yeah if it's always 20 years in the future it's like more logarithmic um so does AI seem like it's one of the most fastly accelerating things that you're aware of yes um and I I can certainly see that with with autonomous driving where um you know 3 years ago I thought it was 10 years away and then two years ago I thought it was 5 years away now I think it's 3 years away or less than three years away wow so and when you say away like like like release to Market available for Consumer adoption because as opposed\n\nto prototyping no I mean like like the technology works there's a sort of second question as to when Regulators would approve it yeah yeah yeah yeah um but but like i' like with that the technology works and in a technology works as a general solution so like autonomous driving like basically anywhere so it could be sooner for Point things Highway only or I mean Highway only we're already in public beta with this at Tesla so um we'll be hopefully in the next several weeks releasing to to all of the cars that have the autopilot Hardware which is all cars buil in like roughly the last 12 months wow wow and so it this seems like one of those things that once you've experienced it the inevit ility of it becomes more apparent kind of like first time I sat\n\nin an electric vehicle it's just so clear and same with autonomous vehicles um do you think that will help persuade public opinion and like like that the regulatory question is an interesting one because as technology continues to accelerate human nature doesn't and acceptance of change I'm just not sure if there's like as we look out in the future should we assume that no matter how fast something like mors law accelerates there's always the counterbalancing force of human nature and habit that um yeah I mean yeah I think yeah there's always going to be the sort of um there's always going to be human nature um and it's difficult to predict I think what what what that will how that will affect things um but um I I'm not sure if I fully answer your question\n\nso in terms of what what I think 20 please um so for for sure you was Computing um AI that's beyond anything uh like the public appreciat today um I think we'll have um most of the new vehicles being produced uh being electric um and we'll be probably have a super majority of energy being produced being uh sustainable so I think I think we're on headed solar primarily in your mind primarily solar yeah um and um so I think those I think those are sort of some good things like I think we'll be on hopefully on a good path for sustainable energy um sooner is always better but I think by 2035 I think we'll be substantially um like most of Transport most of new energy being produced will be sustainable um Broadband everywhere Broadband everywhere y um Mars\n\ncolony and hopefully hopefully a small base on Mars a small City on Mars in 20 years yeah I city did I hear well okay fine Town Village Hamlet I mean that's exciting I mean that could get people fired up about the future yeah I do I I agree exactly I I think that uh the idea of being multi Fant of species and getting out there and exploring the stars is one of those really inspiring exciting things I mean just as Apollo was incredibly inspiring um to everyone around the world and even those I mean only a very tiny number of people went there but I mean vicariously we all went there and and I think that's true of of if we have a Mars base as well um and it's very important that we have things that are exciting and inspiring in the future because otherwise\n\nwhy get up in the morning you know if it's just about one sort of sad problem after another it's like life life's not worth living are there are there any other things that excites you a lot about the future beyond the multiplanetary species perhaps AI uh UL May Scare You as well as excite you um the autonomous vehicles are there any other planks that you think looking for 20 years like this is what I really get excited about well um I mean for sure for sure Mars and sustainable transport like those items I think are really sustainable energy those are I think really cool things um and uh I mean in terms of getting excited about I mean it's like uh I I think we'll probably start seeing like more like truly cyborg activity like human brain inter like like\n\nbrain computer interfaces okay um like there's alongside the AIS that are purely pathetic yeah I think so it's the only way we can relate I think you know and have a conversation and there were amazing things happen like happening these days like this um they've been able to figure out how to do an artificial hippocampus um in in rats and monkeys and um and now they're looking at uh doing that to solve severe epilepsy uh about half of severe epilepsy cases originate in the H um s hippocampus and uh and by having sort of an artificially augmented hi hippocampus they can actually solve um the severe epilepsy cases wow that's amazing so it's like I'm like wow and you can you can write read and write information back to the chip from your brain at the individual\n\nneuron level like today pretty exciting yeah the whole field of biology and things inspired by biology and the information systems biology fascinate me personally as a as a computer science oriented person um before I go to the student questions um which I'm about to do there was one last story I wanted to share that we experienced together and ask your thoughts about it we were in Hawthorne Texas when the grasshopper vehicle oh yeah occur happened I mean yeah spectacular explosion right in front of us and right exact I like I brought the SpaceX board out to take a look at one of the vertical takeoff and Landing tests and of course that's the one that blows off we're all in a tent you know with a glass of water like whoa I mean you feel the repercussions\n\nand then walking call that a rud it's a rapid unscheduled disassembly that's right a rud yes rapid unscheduled disassembly anyone rocketry like a hobbyist or or professionally knows what that one is every component part is just strewn strewn across and as we walked one of the other board members asked maybe in a cheering up kind of method was some quoting Bill Gates or somebody that said you know if you haven't failed and you're not learning that's a paraphrase of the quote and I remember your reply and I have it written as a quote cuz I want to put it on a placard given the options I prefer to learn from success which I think is a great comeback and so I guess I was curious in general what do you think of the silon valley Mantra fail fast fail often\n\nor as Esther Dyson says always make new mistakes as as if failure is The Crucible of learning I'm curious if you had any further thoughts on that and that maybe off the cuff comment you made out there I mean there there are many that sort of I mean I think there sort of there's like some entropic basis for this like there are many more ways to fail than to succeed so you I me you have to explore I mean particular like for a rocket there's like a thousand ways that thing can fail and like one way it can work so uh you could you could have a lot of Rocket failures to explore all the ways in which it could fail um so but I do think that one great thing about silic Valley is that failure is not a not a big stigma so it's like if you if you try hard and it\n\ndoesn't work out account uh that's okay like you can um learn from that and you know do another company and it's not a big deal and I think that's that's really one of the great things about Silicon Valley interesting do you also I'm curious if either on the well it seems to me that on the system design side you can accommodate a a likely failure of subcomponents and and so much of the Elegance of let's say a falcon 9 or a falcon 9 heavy as as an ultimate incarnation of this vision of how the rocket should be built to say hey parts will fail thing but here's how the system can succeed and I'm curious if there's any other thoughts along that how to how to accommodate anticipated failure and then also maybe inter like managerially is there ways that you\n\nmotivate the team either in advance a failure to to coach them on hey this is going to happen or in the aftermath of failure to get them fired up to solve it and and move forward when it might be dark times and like for example when you Notions like Failure to Launch uh uh you know exploding on the pad you know there's all these it's a very visual it's public spectacle when you have a setback in the rocket industry and I'm curious how you manage round failure uh I mean I think it's it's like quite quite painful and difficult honestly um and it's it feels terrible um uh but uh yeah I mean the the company's sort of looking to you know me to you know rally them and so I do um but I honestly feel super bad like a punch in the gut yeah yeah um remember it's\n\nalmost like a time like the stages of grief I remember in Texas is kind like sort of denial and it sort of hits as at dinner it's like oh my God what just happened yeah I mean it's just I mean it it's particularly with rockets it's it's just a really like rockets Rockets space is hard and Rockets tend to fail unfortunately um and even when you've got like a lot of really smart people working super hard to minimize the probability of failure it's still still there and it's uh um and it's you know it's it's quite significant um and um you know people have asked me like well why why a Rockets you know especially hard um and and you know part of it is like everything has to work the the first time like there's there's no you can't do a recall you can't patch\n\nit it's got It's like 9 minutes to orbit or it's over um and uh and then the you never you can't you can never test the rocket completely in the environment that it's actually going to experience you can't fully recreate something that's moving super fast in a vacuum um on the surface of Earth like you can only really recreate that on in space so that a limit of the simulation tools what me is that a limit of the simulation tools today or is that a absolutely the if if there's any error between the simulation and reality and there's always some amount of error um then then that that can result in a failure y um so it's a really really tricky one it's like um in a soft software analogy it would be like if you had to write a whole bunch of software modules\n\num and you could never run them together um and you couldn't run them on the target computer like like when you're testing them you'd have to test them individually and not in the actual computer that they're going to run on gotcha then you put them put all the modules together run it for the first time in a in a completely different or very different computer and it has to run with no bugs that is difficult the software analogies to Rocket design are deep the modular reuse I mean there's many of these for those who aren't familiar with it's not like this is an aerospace engineer by traditional training coming but but is in fact radically changing the industry I think applying a CS perspective to Industry after industry and like how would how would you\n\nknow a computer scientist or a physicist approach the problem which oftentimes is a solution very unlike the industry incumbents there's there's a certain Elegance to it um at least from the outside outside Observer like myself um let me switch if I may to some student questions which will be completely in a different direction um first one comes from NIU in uh an architectural design c-term so this will be switching more to the other side of our brain for a moment what do you look for in design and related if you'd like what do you look for in art design might be more immediately relevant but that's where he's coming from sure um I mean I I think there's um I mean you you want to make something beautiful I mean you want to to trigger what whatever fundamental\n\nesthetic algorithms are like like in your brain there's you have I think some intrinsic uh elements that that represent beauty um and and that that trigger the the emotion of appreciation of Beauty in in your in your mind um and I think that these are these are actually relatively consistent among people I mean not not completely um some people like not Everyone likes the same thing but there are there's a lot of commonality um and and and and there yeah and there there but but I think it it is important to com to combine aesthetic design with functionality like the the thing that's like if you say like what was really hard about say the model S or the model X um was to combine Aesthetics and um utility so to to balance the two um you can make a car look\n\nvery good by giving it sort of um certain proportions like making it sort of low and slim and and and um uh but if you uh if you do that the the utility is is significantly affected um so the big challenge with the say the model S was trying to figure out how do we get five adults plus two kids cuz I want to have seven seater it seems like the dragon and every Tesla has room for seven seven five children I can see that might be important the N perimeter I definely don't think we should take the whole family on the spacecraft um but but uh but like the big challenge with the like with with the S was having a car that had high utility and look good um and the same with the X um so like like with the to make a sports car look good is relatively easy um but\n\nto make a sedan look good or an SUV look good is is quite difficult um and um and I think another principle is you want to have it feel bigger on the inside than it looks on the outside um and that's also a really hard thing to do um and then really pay attention to the little details the that the nuances of of design and shape and form function and um the you know just the the way it looks in different lights and when something's off the little thing how do you experience that it it drives me bananas yeah um I mean it's and it the problem is like if you you can train yourself to to pay attention to the tiny details I think almost anyone can um although it it it this is a very much double-edged sword because then you you see all the little details um\n\nand then little things drive you crazy um so but like most people don't they don't see they don't consciously see the small details but they they do subconsciously see them like you you you sort of your mind takes in a result of the overall you know the an overall impression and and you you know if something is appealing or not even though you may not be able to point out exactly why um and it's it's a summation of of these many small details so most of us experience it as a oh I think that's ugly or I think that's beautiful or like wow that's elegant but can't break it down you mentioned something in passing like you can train yourself in this though yeah you can train yourself I think you can make yourself pay attention to to why um you essentially\n\nbring the subconscious awareness into conscious awareness I wish I could do that how do you do that just just pay really close attention almost like a meditation on the object and trying to find the details like why do I not like this is that what yeah just look look closely and carefully mhm um and you know for any given object it's that it's geometry it's uh um I heard someone whisper Steve Jobs and that thought occurred to me as well I worked briefly with him and I I could only experience it as a visceral agitation with imperfection and and like that's just wrong like that has to be fixed I I I have to turn it off otherwise it's I can't go through life it just yeah it's yeah it's the world around you or even in yeah yeah if you because there's there's\n\nalways something wrong somewhere all the time and so um it you really have to turn it off otherwise you know God you just get the like the list of the mental list of things that are wrong just drives you crazy I just wish there was way you could just like record it for everyone else to go fix cuz like this running tally right oh my god um so uh let me go to one other question I I found that one interesting I I had no idea where that was going to go so I really appreciate that question Nick thank you um let's see which one of these do there's some combination of questions let me mention both and you can pick which one you like more because they both relate to colonizing Mars one comes from Henning rodo a PhD candidate in civil and environmental engineering\n\nwhich just asks Elon given your plan to bring a bring a million colonists to Mars what are the pressing future technologies that need to be developed in order to support a robust and thriving surface Colony so technology for I guess survival and then maybe related from the Stanford space initiative students how do you envision humans governing a separate Planet I'm not sure if you had to think about that yet thought a little bit about those things I mean the obiously like the first challenge is just getting there at all and like that's you know so SpaceX is working super hard on figuring out just how to get large numbers of people and cargo to Mars um and I think know we've got something that I think works at a sort of fundamental physics and economics\n\nlevel so it's like a question of figuring out the detailed design um which we're working on we're only spending like half an hour a week on it because we like pressing near 10 priorities but I'm kind of excited about how it's coming together um so so getting just getting that transport thing solved I think will will then open up a tremendous number of opportunities for people on Mars you know just like you know having the Union Pacific Railroad to California um and the you know and look at what what you know resulted after whole ecosystem of other companies figured out like get there then you get then the opportunities for entrepreneurs are are tremendous um that ranges everything from you know everything you can imagine like starting the fir you know\n\nlike the first Italian restaurant or something on Mars you know it's like somebody's got to do it and it'll be kind of cool um you know like a iron iron Refinery you know like found you know the like the the entire base of Industry um and um and then there probably be things like that are just unique to Mars um but but we we got to we got to get that you know effectively that Union Pacific Railroad there in order to get get the entrepreneurs there that and and and then create a fertile environment for them to U create uh companies um so that that's that's MH so so once you're there it's it's going to be I think a lot of exciting things that can be done um and and in the beginning you know people would live in kind of glass domes uh but but over time it\n\nwould ter for Mars and make it like Earth um and uh so so I think there just be a lot of super exciting things that are hard to predict just like when they're building you in Pacific they it would hard nobody would have predicted Silicon Valley in Hollywood right you know that that's would have been like and urbanization in general yeah yeah well that California would be like the most popul state in the country like they like that sounds crazy for them gold was discovered right yeah um so and so the yeah that I think like it's it's really in common on SpaceX or you know maybe other organizations to figure out how to get there otherwise nothing else matters right U and then once you get there there's a lot of sort of yeah a a lot that can be done um from\n\na governance standpoint um I mean obviously ultimately the governance of Mars will be up to the Martians but the um cool that we have a name for him now you become a martian when you go there um but but I I think if you said like how would you do drop democracy 2.\n\n0 you know or like some new new version I think we' probably have more of a direct democracy than a representative democracy um and you know when the when the United States was formed it was really it was impossible to have a direct democracy like like you even sending a letter took weeks um so there was no way that people could like vote directly on issues you had to have Representatives interesting so I think um I think probably there would be more direct democracy and is this thing about the latency of communication fromation latencies and just communication errors and communication latency uh when you have letters that that take weeks to get anywhere uh would would have made um governance almost impossible I think if if it hadn't been a representative\n\ndemocracy you had a lot of people who couldn't even read or or right you know so H that's fascinating I was just wondering if if you were to start over with a clean sheet of paper on governance is there do you think a framework that could be envisioned that encompasses other sentin beings to come meaning the AIS and others who might clamor for their rights along um yeah it's difficult to predict but I can say think probably we would would aim for a more direct democracy um and then and I was talking to Larry Page about this and he had a like a good suggestion like we should limit the number of words in a law um because like we have these like thousand page laws that get passed and like nobody's read them Twitter equivalent of parsimony yeah like I don't\n\nknow thousand word letter count or something like that like if you can't if you can't write the law in a th words then probably it shouldn't be there um um and you know just we shouldn't have you know a single law passed that's like the size of Lord of the Rings that's right and and like literally not a single person in Congress has read the whole thing like a tax code it's unscrewable yes exactly so so there's that and then I think um laws also have an infinite lifespan unless they're given some sort of you know Sunset period so probably be good to Def laws to to have a a sunset period like and if it's not if it's not good enough to be renewed then it then it goes away um and uh and maybe some hysteresis um in that in making it easier to remove a law\n\nthan to put one in place um you can just imagine cuz like over time like the the body of LW just gets bigger and bigger and bigger so like you like how do you avoid that um and and you have inertia associated with lws and and so maybe you know would take 60% to create a LW but only 40% to remove a LW um how interesting how fascinating yeah something like that those are like the the the rules of a constitutional democracy have such a profound impact and uh to have a a new playground would be fantastic um there there's something embedded in what you said a moment ago that that I want to highlight on a transition to perhaps a closing question uh I heard in passing you know I think about some of these things about a half hour a week if I heard you right and\n\num this is I think a profound thing to to to dwell on is that you know he's changing the world in so many areas and not many entrepreneurs I see get and myself and included enamored with all of the possibilities of a future Mars base of the terraforming of the every aspect of it that might need to come into being and and I find myself often distracted by those future questions that are a little less relevant today what you just heard was we got to solve the railway first like let me put 90% 95% of my effort into that and not get distracted by all the other interesting questions that need to come later and I remember a few years ago maybe three or four years ago trying to get you to brainstorm with Craig Venter about you know doing a sample return from\n\nMars and sending a genetic sequencer there to help understand life there that might exist Etc and I remember profoundly that the response was that is a really interesting topic but I got to get these Rockets to work first before that's going to be relevant to me and let me hunker down on what's important here and that ability to prioritize it uh on the Stepping Stones to a huge vision it's this it's this interesting dichotomy like not just pure Visionary scattered across many things alone it's clear sense of where we're heading chaining back to the present and making sure we're taking the right steps to not in a fumble to future if you will I think I wish we could all do that uh in the way we try to implement change um so let me move if I may to one last\n\nquestion which could be broad or not which is there's a lot of people here from all kinds of parts of the world and I think everyone who hears your story uh you know an immigrant from South Africa AFC through Canada to the US taking on four or five different Industries with great a plum and success um is inspiring uh but it's not just that you've had business success or technology success it's that you really are changing the world for the better in these areas um and so I guess maybe for as a closing question again looking from the present to the Future what do you see as the sort of the biggest pressing problems that need to be addressed this may in fact require you pull that filter off for a moment on the things of the world that are broken and if\n\nif everyone here in the audience could be a change agent themselves in their area of passion what would you hope to catalyze today if you can say guys go solve this big hairy problem and figure out why it's broken um I you know I say I don't think everyone needs to go you know try to solve like some big big world changing problem I mean I think that like if I really think like we should just think like are we doing something that's useful mhm um to the world like if you're doing something useful that's great imagine it's like animal some things are more useful sure um sure but but maybe your personal P like I just think that like sort of a usefulness optimization is is like that's like a really good thing um you know if you if you've done something that's\n\nuseful to your fellow human beings that's you've done a really good thing um and uh people should feel proud of doing that um you know it doesn't doesn't always have to be something that's going to change the world I mean sometimes the world should just keep going in a particular direction help the world um yeah might people might be going in the right direction in and I mean in a lot of ways the the world is in we're we are in in great shape and that if you look at say violent crimes um you know um per capita in the world it's at an like alltime low um uh we're actually quite prosperous uh uh and you know compared to history um and um you know I think there's a lot of things to feel good about in terms of how the world is today um access to information\n\nis incredible I mean uh anyone with like a $100 device could has access to basically all the worlds of information which is an incredible thing um and um yeah so I I honestly I just think like the best thing for to try to do is say like hey what is something I can do that would really be be useful uh to the world and just do that you know and it's great well fantastic thank you so much for being with us today and future Fest and forun your [Applause] future so just very quickly uh on behalf of all the faculty and staff affiliated with stvp uh we'd like to thank president Hennessy uh the School of Engineering and our home Department of management science and engineering uh Matthew tw's Stanford arts and the amazing staff here at Bing that was so helpful\n\nto us this morning uh dfj obviously for your incredible sponsorship of futurefest and also for your continued long-term support of stvp and our hope to create entrepreneurship education opportunities for Stanford students and of course we offer our most sincere thanks please help me in thanking again Elon Musk and Steve jinson [Music] [Applause]","textByLang":{"en":"[Music] good morning Stanford I'll tell you seeing so many students up this early in the morning is really a great experience for the president of the university and I'm so delighted you're able to join us here and I can tell you're going to be in for a fascinating discussion this morning if you think about our University and what makes it unique it is that bold entrepreneurial spirit that pioneering spirit that Jane and Leland brought to us when they marched across the country to come to the West Coast and help found this University today we remain committed to pursuing opportunities that will change the world to using our knowledge in important ways to work on the grand challenges we face but that entrepreneurial spirit is about more than just launching\n\nthe next startup it's also about training and educating people who will go out and make our world better and those Innovations come in all war Walks from the medical care we do and new ways of dealing with health problems to Energy Efficiency to robotics to Art to everything we do but every Innovation begins with an idea and every idea began with somebody who imagined it and that's what today is about the Stanford technology Venture program's future Fest is an opportunity to examine and celebrate the impact of breakthroughs and pioneering Technologies on our world and I'm delighted you could all join us this morning this is organized by stvp in collaboration with Stanford Arts the future Fest will be the place where discussions about futuristic Technologies\n\noccur and today we'll hear from two far thinkinking individuals Alon musk and Steve jersson Steve is a Stanford Alum and a partner at Draper Fisher jinson he was recently hail in the New York Times as a space investor and Rocket maker his firm has invested both in SpaceX and a satellite company Planet Labs Steve is a Stanford alumnist three times over and he also has the important characteristic that he was once my adviser despite that disadvantage he completed his bachelor's degree in electrical engineering in two and a half years was the Henry Ford scholar went on to earn his Ms and despite my attempts to convince him to pursue a PhD went off and got his MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business where he was an RJ Miller scholar he's recognized\n\nwidely for being forward-thinking the San Francisco Chronicle and examiner named him as one of the 10 people expected to have the greatest impact on the bay area in the early part of the 21st century now Alon musk I think is a name known to everybody who thinks about the future he is a Serial entrepreneur inventor engineer and investor he was born in South Africa attended Queens University in Canada before moving to the US where he earned his undergraduate degrees in economics and physics from the University of Pennsylvania he arrived at Stanford to pursue his PhD in physics but left after two days I said what was wrong along was the food the water the weather no he left to launch his first startup zip 2 a successful internet-based City gu and then he\n\nwent on to launch PayPal he founded his third company SpaceX in 2002 and six years later NASA awarded him a contract for cargo transport to the International Space Station he was an early investor in Tesla Moda and now leads the company as its CEO and product architect but Alon dreams big as he told CNN a few years ago we should not be afraid of doing something just because some amount of tragedy is likely to occur if our forefathers had taken that approach the United States wouldn't exist Amen to that I think when you see the kind of work that Alan's doing and I still remember my first trip down to Los Angeles to visit SpaceX and to see the first Tesla prototype before came out I realized he was going to change the world this will be a wonderful exchange\n\nafter stepen Alan's discussion Matt Harvey executive director of stvp will close the program but now please join me in giving a warm Stanford welcome to Alon musk and Steve jersson [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] thank you president Hennessy and uh this is a daunting venue I feel like we should sing or something dance perhaps wow okay so uh future Fest uh today is all about the future and uh I can't imagine a better person to speak with about that than Elon Musk he is forging the future as you all know across multiple Industries repeatedly in the most spectacular way in a way that others have failed before him and uh perhaps unprecedented in history so I'm a big Fanboy future Fest originally I think bounced around and why this month because this\n\nis a special month for future Fest is that uh for those of you old enough and it looks like maybe five or six of you in the audience to have been around when Back to the Future the movie came out they had this vision of the future in the second edition of that Series where they fast forwarded in a Time Warp to the Future and it was October 2015 and uh they had flying cars and hoverboards and Biometrics and video calls and what looked like Google Glass a lot of the times and a lot of other stuff that was completely cockamamy but um some of those dreams were true some were not and as a framework for future Fest we can think to the past and our dreams that did or didn't come true I think that's what we'll start and then move to the Future we're sitting here\n\ntoday what do we think the future may Bode so turn Elon maybe as a as as a starting point as you think back to your high school days 30 years ago when we were both there and dreaming of that future what about today is or isn't in accordance to what you thought back then I mean where where have your dreams the future the Bold Visions met or not met reality today I think the the most remarkable thing that we we do have today is the the internet um and access to all the world's information from anywhere so that that's having a superc computer in your pocket is I think something people wouldn't have predicted um you know in Back to the Future yeah um so that that's the that's the biggest thing um and uh and probably the the what they would be most surprised\n\nat is that we haven't progressed more in space um so the people would have expected I think to have a space hotel in fact oy Clark 2001 should yeah exactly um thought 2010 was really crazy you know space advancement so it would like be going to Jupiter and that kind of thing so that that's probably like the most surprising thing like particularly if you go back even further if you say in ' 69 when um people first landed on the moon um if You' asked people if You' asked the the public what uh what would the situation be in 2015 I think they would imagine that we're we would have a base on the moon a base on Mars and be you know all over the solar system by now mhm that's probably V what happened I mean is there any pattern you can sense for where our dreams\n\nand science fiction realities Drift from reality and where they are reality is there is there some reason you think like as you because because we have dreams today of where that you know that we're going to have these Mars colonies in the near future and uh yeah well unless something jumps to mind let me let me I have a bunch of questions by the way from the audience as well here I want to I want to move to something a little more current as we move forward in time 20 years ago when we first met you were starting your first internet company of two the one before PayPal U zip 2 and I know that in your youth you envisioned a variety of industries that needed to change um when you were pursuing your first one did you imagine you would get to the next one\n\nand the next one no I mean when I was in college I just thought well what are the things that are most lik to affect the future of humanity just in you know at a macro level and um it just seemed like it would be like the internet and sustainable energy uh making like multiplanetary um and then genetics and Ai and I thought the first three if you worked on those there were like almost certainly going to be good and then the the last two a little more dodgy in terms of the net benefit yeah for the double-edged sword and you're not sure which Edge is the worse interesting so it would it seems like begging the question are genetics and AI the ones that are right for students today to be thinking about as they look I mean they are yeah um my my cousin I a\n\nyounger cousin who's just finishing up um uh sort of physics and computer science degree uh actually Berkeley um we we know and um and he's uh he says everyone there is in the computer science department is working on AI so I mean I think we're going to see some crazy breakthroughs in the next few years on that front yeah I want to come back to that later as we look more to your vision of the future as you as you think back though to your younger self but you know many of the people in the audience are themselves college students and either under atrad programs and are thinking about the world they're entering and I'm curious this may be an odd question but one that I find fascinating as you think here today back to your younger self is there any advice\n\nyou wish you could have given your younger self in with hindsight given what you know now well I mean I give like a lot of advice I yeah dating a whole bunch of things like that yeah I got got you but just in terms of how to how to think about a life trajectory perhaps or um how to pursue your passions I mean I I'm reasonably happy with how things turned out um so it's like touche not terrible um yeah that's a good point uh I I think if there's anything um I'll let you if something jumps to mind let me know but let me uh I mean apart from the obvious like just telling telling my younger self exactly how the future will unfold which is right but but that that you know wouldn't be that that that's not exactly advising more has been encapsulated into non\n\ntime warping wisdom yeah yeah exactly like wisdom um um I mean I mean there there there's a lot of things I mean it's sort of I mean certainly um yeah I mean uh you know listen listen more to critical feedback um know uh I mean like a lot of things I learned in college actually were pretty helpful I mean I think the physics approach to thinking is very good like the first principles approach um and you applied that broadly yeah appli applying the first principles approach to thinking um is I think a good way to figure out a counterintuitive um situations um and um you know so thought that was that was really a helpful thing to learn um that's good yeah I mean yeah right go ah no no feel free to jump in because I don't know how I'd answer that question\n\nI mean other yeah what would you do what would you tell your in yourself it'll be all right you weren't as dorky as you think advice like that nothing really too actionable don't worry about it well just don't be so insecure about everything you're insecure about yeah we'll probably be advice to myself but uh but let's move on this more I'm not used to thinking about me um so you I I may be roughly overgeneralizing here but it seems to me that there's some often a trigger problem that generates in your mind a great solution for when you come up with new company so for example when trying to negotiate with the Russians for launch capacity the the AHA that we should just build a better rocket to solve this problem comes forth or when you uh deal with the\n\ncommute on the 405 or whatever in La it's like my God what is wrong with mass transit and and perhaps hyperloop and then you know with with uh with a variety of ideas there seems to be some trigger something that's broken in the world that and you have an idea of how to fix it and I guess what I'm curious about is not how you've picked the areas of interest and the solutions but how have you decided what not to per fix and other words there's many things that need fixing in the world and students here probably could think of a long list many of which you could probably imagine solutions to using the physics first principal approach but has there been any framework or idea you've used to filter out what you don't do what you don't pursue um yeah I mean\n\nwell if if sort follow the what I did initially was um you know well you go back to like college times I was working on um energy storage Technologies for electric vehicles um and that's what I was going to pursue at Stanford actually was work on um like Advanced capacitors and batteries to improve uh the energy density for electric vehicles um and then the internet was kind of happening it was clear like the internet was happening like back in like ' 9495 and uh and I wasn't sure if what I worked on in the PHD would actually be useful so I was like I was really concerned that if I timing or what was your intuition meaning I think like it could be academically useful but not practically useful um like I think it could result in a PhD and adding some Leaf\n\nto the tree of knowledge um but then then discovering that well it's not really going to going to matter like that's you know is it is it going to be a a good enough thing to actually be used in an electric vehicle I wasn't sure I mean so there was like I was uncertain as to whether success was one of the possible outcomes like I thought maybe it was but I wasn't sure and and then I thought well if I watch the internet get built while I'm doing this um that that that would be really frustrating there's a sense of that eminent timing that like that was the time for the internet and maybe the other stuff could wait or be on the back back burner of your mind was it always there as like one day I'll get back to that or was it um yeah I thought probably I'd\n\nget back to it and did end up doing that um but yeah I thought sort of the the the internet was was happening like really taking off um although most people weren't aware of it in '95 um and uh and so I figured like electric vehicle Technology Energy stor technology will there will be some sort of natural progression in that and I could come back to it later um but the internet you know was was really that was the moment to to really do something um Al although in '95 it wasn't obvious that you could actually make any money on the internet this was like no Nobody Until Netscape went public I think at the end of 95 um nobody even thought there was like uh you could make a valuable company on the internet wasn't as obvious as it seems now yeah like now\n\nit seems really obvious but back then it was not at all um so it was really from the perspective of it wasn't like oh I want to make a bunch of money it was actually from it's like I want to just be part of fing this thing that I thought it was like like a nervous system it was like previously people had communicated effectively via osmosis and um you know you'd have to like basically physically you know connect with somebody to to really communicate um you like a letter like you send letters like on paper um and with the internet anyone who had a connection anywhere in the world would have access to all the world's information just like sort of a nervous system in a so like so Humanity was effectively becoming a superorganism um and and qualitatively\n\ndifferent than uh what it had been before and so I wanted to be part of that and uh um yeah so but but initially the goal was just to make enough money to pay the rent it wasn't um you know to do anything beyond that interesting and then as many know that much of that capital got ploted back into your next businesses right right EXA exactly so then they and and then the Internet it's also helpful because it's anything to do with software is a low Capital Endeavor so I didn't have any money um I just had a bunch of student debt and um so but but software you can just write like by yourself um and you don't need a lot of atoms like you don't need a lot of tooling and equipment and um so it's not Capital intensive um so the ability to start a company um\n\nif it's software related and it's the first company is much much easier right right and it seems obvious now but of course the easier place to start and then as you gain more of a personal reputation and have more personal Capital as some Mar I know SpaceX was almost was entirely funded by Elon for its first period partially from you know and in an era when others probably wouldn't have funded it right and those are right and actually I mean the precursor to to SpaceX was not the the idea wasn't really to create a company it was um it was to to try to figure out why we hadn't um gone send people to Mars so um so so we went from sub2 to to PayPal and then um and then going from PayPal to sort of the next thing I was sort of thinking well um is there some\n\nway to reignite the dream of Apollo um and I thought well it was maybe a question of like we'd lost the will to explore it um but actually think that that that my original premise was wrong we had not lost the will to explore but people did not think there was a way and if people don't think there's a way then they they just they won't bash their head against the wall continuously they'll you know they'll sort of give up so um but but but in the beginning I thought it was a question of will so so if we can send a small Greenhouse to the surface of Mars and you and you have seeds and uh nutrient gel and you hydrated upon landing and then you'd have this little green house on the surface of Mars and people tend to respond to precedents and superlatives\n\nand this would be the first life on Mars as far as we knew for this that life's ever traveled you have this great shot of green plants on a red background and I thought well that maybe that would get people excited about sending people to Mars so the headlines were clear in your mind once you had success on what that would lead to to catalyze action and and actually the goal was was to get the public excited about that and get um NASA's budget increased so that that was actually the the original goal and um so I went to Russia to try to buy some icbms in 2001 um it's interesting experience a lot of vodka yeah a lot of vodka yeah it's crazy um and uh I couldn't afford the regular Rockets like the Boeing and lock heed Rockets are too expensive and uh still\n\nare yeah still pretty expensive that's true I had to sorry wait may I jump in here for a sec because the anecdote you brought up of wanted to change government policy and Inspire the world to have a Mars program if you will whether it's popular Uprising or or space programs at the government level I think it's a fascinating anecdote because in a sense what you were saying is I as an individual want to start a entity business or otherwise that will catalyze change even beyond the company level or the industry level and I see a parallel in other initiatives you've taken on in that if you look at uh the goal of Tesla under your leadership it is to assure the transition to all vehicles being electric not just the cars that currently are produced by Tesla\n\nand uh with power wall and Solar City arguably the the description is one of ushering in a a wholesale shift to renewable energy many of the solutions required wouldn't be provided by the companies you're starting and so as I as I deal in entrepreneurship as a venture capitalist every day we we see this incredible scope of ambition here that is breathtaking like change the world with Steve Jobs and others talk about in a company maybe shifting an industry but we're talking about shifting like the entire Zeitgeist of the world in a sense and maybe eventually other worlds so my question is do you do you start always in your mind with that as a like I where's the starting point is it okay I see this Arc of a story like like the Mars example or renewable\n\nenergy and then do you pull back to where's the best product to un get it unstuck like why isn't this happening and like if I solve that problem then it unlocks value like how does that happen in your mind um sure so um I mean I should say like the when when we started SpaceX and Tesla I I mean I really thought the probability of success was very low I mean it wasn't like I think oh we'll definitely be successful I thought I thought we' be like maybe 10% likely who uh yeah um and and they we came very close to both companies not succeeding in 2008 you know we had the we had three failures of the SpaceX rocket um so we were zero for three um we had the crazy Financial recession like the Great Recession um the Tesla financing round have fallen apart because\n\nlike pretty hard to raise money for the startup car company FGM and chry are going bankrupt um like people it's poly for the upside yeah it's that was tricky one um and um you know unfortunately at the end of 2008 the the fourth launch which was that was the last launch we had money for uh worked for SpaceX and um and then we we closed the Tesla financing round as you know uh Christmas Eve 2008 last hour of the last day that it was possible yeah and thanks to you for those who don't know it's the most extraordinary Act of entrepreneurial Zeal and commitment I've ever seen where El un personally saved Tesla in those hours like when no one else would write a check he spoke for it all and that flipped the mentality from Fear to Greed and everyone joined\n\nthe bandwagon and and everything changed from you know dividing into the ground to success but you were willing to go like net negative personally of of his entire net worth and it's it's un remarkable story um oh thanks for supporting by the way that was much much appreciated yeah we were happy to fall right behind in line but but it was all him um so I guess on this this aide though of the big picture I'm curious in the way I heard you just now described the greenhouse and the headlines is interesting do the marketing headlines flash through your mind as you introduce new products that are a step to a much grander Vision I'm curious because it seems like it has two purposes like getting employees customers everyone really gung-ho about the vision but\n\nit also makes it larger than life in so many ways well I if you're trying to convince the public to do something you have to say okay how's this going to read um and what message are we going to try to convey um what will people respond to what would I respond to if I was you know sort of an objective member of the public and um so that's that that's really you know if you're trying to change people's minds or get people fired up about something um then you got to think okay what's that message what what's going to get them really excited um I think that's really good advice by the way for all the engineering students here yeah that's I was wi as well I'm I'm curious there's a as an adjunct sometimes to these Grand Visions like making it a multiplanetary\n\nspecies or shifting us to renewable energy or making all vehicles electric that has a purpose-driven element to it there's a higher calling than the quarterly bottom line in fact there was a Tesla quarterly report I remember famously where the opening the literally opening line was uh while profits are not a priority comma you know never nevertheless exactly and it occurred I was struck by it at first and it did occur to me that it's not like a Mis some sort of misdirected fiduciary question to me it seems like how could you lead an industry transition if your business model was worse than what's already there I meaning like if you weren't more profitable in the long term and a better business why would anyone shift right so it almost seems like with\n\nthe right purpose profits follow yeah well if if if you make a if the you know if the output is more valuable than the inputs which is really that's that's that's profit like the output is more valuable than the input um that that that says you you have a use company um so but you know in a high growth scenario you have a lot more inputs for for future outputs so that you have negative cash flow and lack of profitability and which we currently have at Tesla um but in the in the long term of course that has to be that that has to be fixed that there can't be negative cash flow in the long term um and that there needs to be um a net positive output um which is sort of profits in in the long term um but in the short term when this high growth that that that\n\ndoesn't it isn't the most sensible thing and then there's also related things like open sourcing patents and acts that to me relate to the purpose let's let the whole Auto industry do this and so I'm curious what do you see from your Vantage Point as the benefits of a Purpose Driven company meaning when you have this thing that every employee and customer knows is the purpose of the company how do you see that flowing through the benefits for the company well I think I think having a propose certainly is going to attract the the very best talent in the world because um if if people can if there's something that's intrinsically enjoyable and the financial rewards are good but then also it's something that's going to genuinely change the world then that's\n\nI think that's a pretty powerful motivator um and um but I don't think like everything needs to change the world you know I mean honestly like there's lots of like useful things that people do and I mean I think really it should be like a usefulness optimization like just say like is what I'm doing as useful as it could be you're talking about the the goal of an organization or goal in general yeah and um you know just even if something isn't changing the world if it's Mak making people's lives better I think that's that's great and uh you know if even if something's like making all people's lives only slightly better but it's a large number of people then kind of like the area under the curve sure is is quite good um is that mathematical first principles\n\nPoint utility and number yeah okay like I mean so like one could say like say like is like some app really making people's lives better it's but if it's affecting a lot of people uh even in a small way then yeah the sort of area is good interesting so let's shift gears a little bit since it is future Fest um looking to the Future right we we started 30 years in the past but the future keeps accelerating so let's maybe look 20 years in the future for an equivalent leap arguably five years in the future might be equivalent to the past 30 but let's say 20 so the year 2035 what does the future look like as far as you can tell what would you uh 20 20 years yeah 20 35 yeah 20 years um it's always really tricky to predict the future um um I mean some of it's\n\npretty obvious like computing power is going to be just crazy um the really the big change is the c cost of computing power um not so much the sort of circuit density sort of the M law thing but if you if you look at say what is the actual um you know dollars per you know per instruction um and and that that is Dr I mean that that that cost is is dropping exponentially I you think about it like like if you're making a computer just you're rearranging silicon and copper you know so if on on a little chip and once the capital cost of the development and the the chip plant is paid for uh the ACT I mean the marginal cost of a chip is very very tiny um so I think we'll see massively parallel computers um and and computing power and storage being you know as\n\nreally as much as you want MH um and it's interesting I too start with that like if I I don't know what else to predict but as a foundational thing this seems like the safest starting you know premise but then what does that Ripple through to in fields like genetics and AI which you mentioned autonomous driving space related topics I mean just ubiquitous Computing everywhere um I think I think AI is going to be incredibly sophisticated in 20 years um the when does the first W up it like it seems to be accelerating and the tricky thing about predicting things when there's an exponential is that an exponential looks like looks linear close up that's right um and and but it's actually it's not linear so uh and AI appears to be accelerating um from what I\n\ncan see um and do you for that do you look at autonomous driving and point AIS like the Siri like functionality as your guide post um well I had sort of debate about someone like is AI accelerating or not and the like he was saying well what's the Y AIS you know if if it's accelerating um you got T on the X AIS but what's what's the y axis is well thought about that I think you could have a recursive y- axis so that uh if if if at any point in time your your predictions for AI are coming sooner or later um that that actually would help find whether it's U accelerating or not whatever that access was so you might just look at the recursive access like so if if in any given year if you if you find your predictions are are um going further out or coming\n\nfurther or coming closer in that that actually you know is one way to think of acceleration cuz like cuz otherwise what's the what's the qualitative or quantitive measure of of AI um saying like if a given technology is always 20 years in the future yeah if it's always 20 years in the future it's like more logarithmic um so does AI seem like it's one of the most fastly accelerating things that you're aware of yes um and I I can certainly see that with with autonomous driving where um you know 3 years ago I thought it was 10 years away and then two years ago I thought it was 5 years away now I think it's 3 years away or less than three years away wow so and when you say away like like like release to Market available for Consumer adoption because as opposed\n\nto prototyping no I mean like like the technology works there's a sort of second question as to when Regulators would approve it yeah yeah yeah yeah um but but like i' like with that the technology works and in a technology works as a general solution so like autonomous driving like basically anywhere so it could be sooner for Point things Highway only or I mean Highway only we're already in public beta with this at Tesla so um we'll be hopefully in the next several weeks releasing to to all of the cars that have the autopilot Hardware which is all cars buil in like roughly the last 12 months wow wow and so it this seems like one of those things that once you've experienced it the inevit ility of it becomes more apparent kind of like first time I sat\n\nin an electric vehicle it's just so clear and same with autonomous vehicles um do you think that will help persuade public opinion and like like that the regulatory question is an interesting one because as technology continues to accelerate human nature doesn't and acceptance of change I'm just not sure if there's like as we look out in the future should we assume that no matter how fast something like mors law accelerates there's always the counterbalancing force of human nature and habit that um yeah I mean yeah I think yeah there's always going to be the sort of um there's always going to be human nature um and it's difficult to predict I think what what what that will how that will affect things um but um I I'm not sure if I fully answer your question\n\nso in terms of what what I think 20 please um so for for sure you was Computing um AI that's beyond anything uh like the public appreciat today um I think we'll have um most of the new vehicles being produced uh being electric um and we'll be probably have a super majority of energy being produced being uh sustainable so I think I think we're on headed solar primarily in your mind primarily solar yeah um and um so I think those I think those are sort of some good things like I think we'll be on hopefully on a good path for sustainable energy um sooner is always better but I think by 2035 I think we'll be substantially um like most of Transport most of new energy being produced will be sustainable um Broadband everywhere Broadband everywhere y um Mars\n\ncolony and hopefully hopefully a small base on Mars a small City on Mars in 20 years yeah I city did I hear well okay fine Town Village Hamlet I mean that's exciting I mean that could get people fired up about the future yeah I do I I agree exactly I I think that uh the idea of being multi Fant of species and getting out there and exploring the stars is one of those really inspiring exciting things I mean just as Apollo was incredibly inspiring um to everyone around the world and even those I mean only a very tiny number of people went there but I mean vicariously we all went there and and I think that's true of of if we have a Mars base as well um and it's very important that we have things that are exciting and inspiring in the future because otherwise\n\nwhy get up in the morning you know if it's just about one sort of sad problem after another it's like life life's not worth living are there are there any other things that excites you a lot about the future beyond the multiplanetary species perhaps AI uh UL May Scare You as well as excite you um the autonomous vehicles are there any other planks that you think looking for 20 years like this is what I really get excited about well um I mean for sure for sure Mars and sustainable transport like those items I think are really sustainable energy those are I think really cool things um and uh I mean in terms of getting excited about I mean it's like uh I I think we'll probably start seeing like more like truly cyborg activity like human brain inter like like\n\nbrain computer interfaces okay um like there's alongside the AIS that are purely pathetic yeah I think so it's the only way we can relate I think you know and have a conversation and there were amazing things happen like happening these days like this um they've been able to figure out how to do an artificial hippocampus um in in rats and monkeys and um and now they're looking at uh doing that to solve severe epilepsy uh about half of severe epilepsy cases originate in the H um s hippocampus and uh and by having sort of an artificially augmented hi hippocampus they can actually solve um the severe epilepsy cases wow that's amazing so it's like I'm like wow and you can you can write read and write information back to the chip from your brain at the individual\n\nneuron level like today pretty exciting yeah the whole field of biology and things inspired by biology and the information systems biology fascinate me personally as a as a computer science oriented person um before I go to the student questions um which I'm about to do there was one last story I wanted to share that we experienced together and ask your thoughts about it we were in Hawthorne Texas when the grasshopper vehicle oh yeah occur happened I mean yeah spectacular explosion right in front of us and right exact I like I brought the SpaceX board out to take a look at one of the vertical takeoff and Landing tests and of course that's the one that blows off we're all in a tent you know with a glass of water like whoa I mean you feel the repercussions\n\nand then walking call that a rud it's a rapid unscheduled disassembly that's right a rud yes rapid unscheduled disassembly anyone rocketry like a hobbyist or or professionally knows what that one is every component part is just strewn strewn across and as we walked one of the other board members asked maybe in a cheering up kind of method was some quoting Bill Gates or somebody that said you know if you haven't failed and you're not learning that's a paraphrase of the quote and I remember your reply and I have it written as a quote cuz I want to put it on a placard given the options I prefer to learn from success which I think is a great comeback and so I guess I was curious in general what do you think of the silon valley Mantra fail fast fail often\n\nor as Esther Dyson says always make new mistakes as as if failure is The Crucible of learning I'm curious if you had any further thoughts on that and that maybe off the cuff comment you made out there I mean there there are many that sort of I mean I think there sort of there's like some entropic basis for this like there are many more ways to fail than to succeed so you I me you have to explore I mean particular like for a rocket there's like a thousand ways that thing can fail and like one way it can work so uh you could you could have a lot of Rocket failures to explore all the ways in which it could fail um so but I do think that one great thing about silic Valley is that failure is not a not a big stigma so it's like if you if you try hard and it\n\ndoesn't work out account uh that's okay like you can um learn from that and you know do another company and it's not a big deal and I think that's that's really one of the great things about Silicon Valley interesting do you also I'm curious if either on the well it seems to me that on the system design side you can accommodate a a likely failure of subcomponents and and so much of the Elegance of let's say a falcon 9 or a falcon 9 heavy as as an ultimate incarnation of this vision of how the rocket should be built to say hey parts will fail thing but here's how the system can succeed and I'm curious if there's any other thoughts along that how to how to accommodate anticipated failure and then also maybe inter like managerially is there ways that you\n\nmotivate the team either in advance a failure to to coach them on hey this is going to happen or in the aftermath of failure to get them fired up to solve it and and move forward when it might be dark times and like for example when you Notions like Failure to Launch uh uh you know exploding on the pad you know there's all these it's a very visual it's public spectacle when you have a setback in the rocket industry and I'm curious how you manage round failure uh I mean I think it's it's like quite quite painful and difficult honestly um and it's it feels terrible um uh but uh yeah I mean the the company's sort of looking to you know me to you know rally them and so I do um but I honestly feel super bad like a punch in the gut yeah yeah um remember it's\n\nalmost like a time like the stages of grief I remember in Texas is kind like sort of denial and it sort of hits as at dinner it's like oh my God what just happened yeah I mean it's just I mean it it's particularly with rockets it's it's just a really like rockets Rockets space is hard and Rockets tend to fail unfortunately um and even when you've got like a lot of really smart people working super hard to minimize the probability of failure it's still still there and it's uh um and it's you know it's it's quite significant um and um you know people have asked me like well why why a Rockets you know especially hard um and and you know part of it is like everything has to work the the first time like there's there's no you can't do a recall you can't patch\n\nit it's got It's like 9 minutes to orbit or it's over um and uh and then the you never you can't you can never test the rocket completely in the environment that it's actually going to experience you can't fully recreate something that's moving super fast in a vacuum um on the surface of Earth like you can only really recreate that on in space so that a limit of the simulation tools what me is that a limit of the simulation tools today or is that a absolutely the if if there's any error between the simulation and reality and there's always some amount of error um then then that that can result in a failure y um so it's a really really tricky one it's like um in a soft software analogy it would be like if you had to write a whole bunch of software modules\n\num and you could never run them together um and you couldn't run them on the target computer like like when you're testing them you'd have to test them individually and not in the actual computer that they're going to run on gotcha then you put them put all the modules together run it for the first time in a in a completely different or very different computer and it has to run with no bugs that is difficult the software analogies to Rocket design are deep the modular reuse I mean there's many of these for those who aren't familiar with it's not like this is an aerospace engineer by traditional training coming but but is in fact radically changing the industry I think applying a CS perspective to Industry after industry and like how would how would you\n\nknow a computer scientist or a physicist approach the problem which oftentimes is a solution very unlike the industry incumbents there's there's a certain Elegance to it um at least from the outside outside Observer like myself um let me switch if I may to some student questions which will be completely in a different direction um first one comes from NIU in uh an architectural design c-term so this will be switching more to the other side of our brain for a moment what do you look for in design and related if you'd like what do you look for in art design might be more immediately relevant but that's where he's coming from sure um I mean I I think there's um I mean you you want to make something beautiful I mean you want to to trigger what whatever fundamental\n\nesthetic algorithms are like like in your brain there's you have I think some intrinsic uh elements that that represent beauty um and and that that trigger the the emotion of appreciation of Beauty in in your in your mind um and I think that these are these are actually relatively consistent among people I mean not not completely um some people like not Everyone likes the same thing but there are there's a lot of commonality um and and and and there yeah and there there but but I think it it is important to com to combine aesthetic design with functionality like the the thing that's like if you say like what was really hard about say the model S or the model X um was to combine Aesthetics and um utility so to to balance the two um you can make a car look\n\nvery good by giving it sort of um certain proportions like making it sort of low and slim and and and um uh but if you uh if you do that the the utility is is significantly affected um so the big challenge with the say the model S was trying to figure out how do we get five adults plus two kids cuz I want to have seven seater it seems like the dragon and every Tesla has room for seven seven five children I can see that might be important the N perimeter I definely don't think we should take the whole family on the spacecraft um but but uh but like the big challenge with the like with with the S was having a car that had high utility and look good um and the same with the X um so like like with the to make a sports car look good is relatively easy um but\n\nto make a sedan look good or an SUV look good is is quite difficult um and um and I think another principle is you want to have it feel bigger on the inside than it looks on the outside um and that's also a really hard thing to do um and then really pay attention to the little details the that the nuances of of design and shape and form function and um the you know just the the way it looks in different lights and when something's off the little thing how do you experience that it it drives me bananas yeah um I mean it's and it the problem is like if you you can train yourself to to pay attention to the tiny details I think almost anyone can um although it it it this is a very much double-edged sword because then you you see all the little details um\n\nand then little things drive you crazy um so but like most people don't they don't see they don't consciously see the small details but they they do subconsciously see them like you you you sort of your mind takes in a result of the overall you know the an overall impression and and you you know if something is appealing or not even though you may not be able to point out exactly why um and it's it's a summation of of these many small details so most of us experience it as a oh I think that's ugly or I think that's beautiful or like wow that's elegant but can't break it down you mentioned something in passing like you can train yourself in this though yeah you can train yourself I think you can make yourself pay attention to to why um you essentially\n\nbring the subconscious awareness into conscious awareness I wish I could do that how do you do that just just pay really close attention almost like a meditation on the object and trying to find the details like why do I not like this is that what yeah just look look closely and carefully mhm um and you know for any given object it's that it's geometry it's uh um I heard someone whisper Steve Jobs and that thought occurred to me as well I worked briefly with him and I I could only experience it as a visceral agitation with imperfection and and like that's just wrong like that has to be fixed I I I have to turn it off otherwise it's I can't go through life it just yeah it's yeah it's the world around you or even in yeah yeah if you because there's there's\n\nalways something wrong somewhere all the time and so um it you really have to turn it off otherwise you know God you just get the like the list of the mental list of things that are wrong just drives you crazy I just wish there was way you could just like record it for everyone else to go fix cuz like this running tally right oh my god um so uh let me go to one other question I I found that one interesting I I had no idea where that was going to go so I really appreciate that question Nick thank you um let's see which one of these do there's some combination of questions let me mention both and you can pick which one you like more because they both relate to colonizing Mars one comes from Henning rodo a PhD candidate in civil and environmental engineering\n\nwhich just asks Elon given your plan to bring a bring a million colonists to Mars what are the pressing future technologies that need to be developed in order to support a robust and thriving surface Colony so technology for I guess survival and then maybe related from the Stanford space initiative students how do you envision humans governing a separate Planet I'm not sure if you had to think about that yet thought a little bit about those things I mean the obiously like the first challenge is just getting there at all and like that's you know so SpaceX is working super hard on figuring out just how to get large numbers of people and cargo to Mars um and I think know we've got something that I think works at a sort of fundamental physics and economics\n\nlevel so it's like a question of figuring out the detailed design um which we're working on we're only spending like half an hour a week on it because we like pressing near 10 priorities but I'm kind of excited about how it's coming together um so so getting just getting that transport thing solved I think will will then open up a tremendous number of opportunities for people on Mars you know just like you know having the Union Pacific Railroad to California um and the you know and look at what what you know resulted after whole ecosystem of other companies figured out like get there then you get then the opportunities for entrepreneurs are are tremendous um that ranges everything from you know everything you can imagine like starting the fir you know\n\nlike the first Italian restaurant or something on Mars you know it's like somebody's got to do it and it'll be kind of cool um you know like a iron iron Refinery you know like found you know the like the the entire base of Industry um and um and then there probably be things like that are just unique to Mars um but but we we got to we got to get that you know effectively that Union Pacific Railroad there in order to get get the entrepreneurs there that and and and then create a fertile environment for them to U create uh companies um so that that's that's MH so so once you're there it's it's going to be I think a lot of exciting things that can be done um and and in the beginning you know people would live in kind of glass domes uh but but over time it\n\nwould ter for Mars and make it like Earth um and uh so so I think there just be a lot of super exciting things that are hard to predict just like when they're building you in Pacific they it would hard nobody would have predicted Silicon Valley in Hollywood right you know that that's would have been like and urbanization in general yeah yeah well that California would be like the most popul state in the country like they like that sounds crazy for them gold was discovered right yeah um so and so the yeah that I think like it's it's really in common on SpaceX or you know maybe other organizations to figure out how to get there otherwise nothing else matters right U and then once you get there there's a lot of sort of yeah a a lot that can be done um from\n\na governance standpoint um I mean obviously ultimately the governance of Mars will be up to the Martians but the um cool that we have a name for him now you become a martian when you go there um but but I I think if you said like how would you do drop democracy 2.\n\n0 you know or like some new new version I think we' probably have more of a direct democracy than a representative democracy um and you know when the when the United States was formed it was really it was impossible to have a direct democracy like like you even sending a letter took weeks um so there was no way that people could like vote directly on issues you had to have Representatives interesting so I think um I think probably there would be more direct democracy and is this thing about the latency of communication fromation latencies and just communication errors and communication latency uh when you have letters that that take weeks to get anywhere uh would would have made um governance almost impossible I think if if it hadn't been a representative\n\ndemocracy you had a lot of people who couldn't even read or or right you know so H that's fascinating I was just wondering if if you were to start over with a clean sheet of paper on governance is there do you think a framework that could be envisioned that encompasses other sentin beings to come meaning the AIS and others who might clamor for their rights along um yeah it's difficult to predict but I can say think probably we would would aim for a more direct democracy um and then and I was talking to Larry Page about this and he had a like a good suggestion like we should limit the number of words in a law um because like we have these like thousand page laws that get passed and like nobody's read them Twitter equivalent of parsimony yeah like I don't\n\nknow thousand word letter count or something like that like if you can't if you can't write the law in a th words then probably it shouldn't be there um um and you know just we shouldn't have you know a single law passed that's like the size of Lord of the Rings that's right and and like literally not a single person in Congress has read the whole thing like a tax code it's unscrewable yes exactly so so there's that and then I think um laws also have an infinite lifespan unless they're given some sort of you know Sunset period so probably be good to Def laws to to have a a sunset period like and if it's not if it's not good enough to be renewed then it then it goes away um and uh and maybe some hysteresis um in that in making it easier to remove a law\n\nthan to put one in place um you can just imagine cuz like over time like the the body of LW just gets bigger and bigger and bigger so like you like how do you avoid that um and and you have inertia associated with lws and and so maybe you know would take 60% to create a LW but only 40% to remove a LW um how interesting how fascinating yeah something like that those are like the the the rules of a constitutional democracy have such a profound impact and uh to have a a new playground would be fantastic um there there's something embedded in what you said a moment ago that that I want to highlight on a transition to perhaps a closing question uh I heard in passing you know I think about some of these things about a half hour a week if I heard you right and\n\num this is I think a profound thing to to to dwell on is that you know he's changing the world in so many areas and not many entrepreneurs I see get and myself and included enamored with all of the possibilities of a future Mars base of the terraforming of the every aspect of it that might need to come into being and and I find myself often distracted by those future questions that are a little less relevant today what you just heard was we got to solve the railway first like let me put 90% 95% of my effort into that and not get distracted by all the other interesting questions that need to come later and I remember a few years ago maybe three or four years ago trying to get you to brainstorm with Craig Venter about you know doing a sample return from\n\nMars and sending a genetic sequencer there to help understand life there that might exist Etc and I remember profoundly that the response was that is a really interesting topic but I got to get these Rockets to work first before that's going to be relevant to me and let me hunker down on what's important here and that ability to prioritize it uh on the Stepping Stones to a huge vision it's this it's this interesting dichotomy like not just pure Visionary scattered across many things alone it's clear sense of where we're heading chaining back to the present and making sure we're taking the right steps to not in a fumble to future if you will I think I wish we could all do that uh in the way we try to implement change um so let me move if I may to one last\n\nquestion which could be broad or not which is there's a lot of people here from all kinds of parts of the world and I think everyone who hears your story uh you know an immigrant from South Africa AFC through Canada to the US taking on four or five different Industries with great a plum and success um is inspiring uh but it's not just that you've had business success or technology success it's that you really are changing the world for the better in these areas um and so I guess maybe for as a closing question again looking from the present to the Future what do you see as the sort of the biggest pressing problems that need to be addressed this may in fact require you pull that filter off for a moment on the things of the world that are broken and if\n\nif everyone here in the audience could be a change agent themselves in their area of passion what would you hope to catalyze today if you can say guys go solve this big hairy problem and figure out why it's broken um I you know I say I don't think everyone needs to go you know try to solve like some big big world changing problem I mean I think that like if I really think like we should just think like are we doing something that's useful mhm um to the world like if you're doing something useful that's great imagine it's like animal some things are more useful sure um sure but but maybe your personal P like I just think that like sort of a usefulness optimization is is like that's like a really good thing um you know if you if you've done something that's\n\nuseful to your fellow human beings that's you've done a really good thing um and uh people should feel proud of doing that um you know it doesn't doesn't always have to be something that's going to change the world I mean sometimes the world should just keep going in a particular direction help the world um yeah might people might be going in the right direction in and I mean in a lot of ways the the world is in we're we are in in great shape and that if you look at say violent crimes um you know um per capita in the world it's at an like alltime low um uh we're actually quite prosperous uh uh and you know compared to history um and um you know I think there's a lot of things to feel good about in terms of how the world is today um access to information\n\nis incredible I mean uh anyone with like a $100 device could has access to basically all the worlds of information which is an incredible thing um and um yeah so I I honestly I just think like the best thing for to try to do is say like hey what is something I can do that would really be be useful uh to the world and just do that you know and it's great well fantastic thank you so much for being with us today and future Fest and forun your [Applause] future so just very quickly uh on behalf of all the faculty and staff affiliated with stvp uh we'd like to thank president Hennessy uh the School of Engineering and our home Department of management science and engineering uh Matthew tw's Stanford arts and the amazing staff here at Bing that was so helpful\n\nto us this morning uh dfj obviously for your incredible sponsorship of futurefest and also for your continued long-term support of stvp and our hope to create entrepreneurship education opportunities for Stanford students and of course we offer our most sincere thanks please help me in thanking again Elon Musk and Steve jinson [Music] [Applause]"},"languages":["en"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SVk1hb0ZOrE"},{"id":"big-think-2015-10-02","type":"interview","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jpcJ3jX-2DA","title":"Big Think","titles":{"en":"Big Think","de":"Big Think","fr":"Big Think"},"date":"2015-10-02","summary":"Musk explains how Tesla and SolarCity together accelerate an integrated sustainable-energy solution.","text":"The reason I put so much time and effort into creating Tesla was because, it's always said to me that the transportation won't go electric and should go electric, but we have an unpriced externality in the negative effects of gasoline and on the environment and also in the wars that we fight and national security and that kind of thing. Whenever you have an unpriced externality you can't quite rely on the market to do the right thing.\n\nSo in order to have electric vehicles come sooner than they otherwise would... electric vehicles were always going to be the long-term transportation mechanism, but to make that day come sooner, you have to bridge the gap with innovation. That was the goal with Tesla is to try to serve as a catalyst to accelerate the day, the day of electric vehicles.\n\nAnd I think when all is said and done, I am hopeful that historians will look back on Tesla and say that Tesla advanced that by at least 10 years, which that would be a huge victory of mine... in my mind. SolarCity, of course, is on the energy production side of things because it doesn't help if we have sustainable consumption of energy, but then that energy isn't produced in a sustainable way.\n\nI feel quite strongly that solar power will be the single largest source of electricity generation by midpoint of the century. In fact, just a simple extrapolation of the growth of solar power would for sure, that that's obviously going to be the case. And also when you consider that the earth is almost entirely solar powered today and that the fact that we're not a frozen ice ball at say 4 degrees kelvin and it's just due to the sun.\n\nAnd the whole ecosystem is powered by the sun. There's just an itty bitty amount of energy that we need to do complicated human things. It's a tiny amount of energy really compared to what the sun puts on the earth every day. And we just need to capture a little bit of that and turn it into electricity. So we have to try to accelerate that with innovation. And that's what SolarCity is about.","textByLang":{"en":"The reason I put so much time and effort into creating Tesla was because, it's always said to me that the transportation won't go electric and should go electric, but we have an unpriced externality in the negative effects of gasoline and on the environment and also in the wars that we fight and national security and that kind of thing. Whenever you have an unpriced externality you can't quite rely on the market to do the right thing.\n\nSo in order to have electric vehicles come sooner than they otherwise would... electric vehicles were always going to be the long-term transportation mechanism, but to make that day come sooner, you have to bridge the gap with innovation. That was the goal with Tesla is to try to serve as a catalyst to accelerate the day, the day of electric vehicles.\n\nAnd I think when all is said and done, I am hopeful that historians will look back on Tesla and say that Tesla advanced that by at least 10 years, which that would be a huge victory of mine... in my mind. SolarCity, of course, is on the energy production side of things because it doesn't help if we have sustainable consumption of energy, but then that energy isn't produced in a sustainable way.\n\nI feel quite strongly that solar power will be the single largest source of electricity generation by midpoint of the century. In fact, just a simple extrapolation of the growth of solar power would for sure, that that's obviously going to be the case. And also when you consider that the earth is almost entirely solar powered today and that the fact that we're not a frozen ice ball at say 4 degrees kelvin and it's just due to the sun.\n\nAnd the whole ecosystem is powered by the sun. There's just an itty bitty amount of energy that we need to do complicated human things. It's a tiny amount of energy really compared to what the sun puts on the earth every day. And we just need to capture a little bit of that and turn it into electricity. So we have to try to accelerate that with innovation. And that's what SolarCity is about."},"languages":["en"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jpcJ3jX-2DA"},{"id":"interview-in-denmark-2015-09-15","type":"interview","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bl5vLC3Xlgc","title":"Interview in Denmark","titles":{"en":"Interview in Denmark","de":"Interview in Denmark","fr":"Interview in Denmark"},"date":"2015-09-15","summary":"During a Copenhagen visit Musk shares his vision for Tesla, increasing range and self-driving cars.","text":"he is one of the most talked-about CEOs in the world right now the main behind companies such as SpaceX and Tesla mr.\n\nmusk it's a great pleasure to have you in Copenhagen yeah thanks for having me I'm glad to be back what brings you to Denmark well I'm here to see the Tesla Danish team I'm actually visiting a number of countries on this visit I just came from Luxembourg and I'm headed to Germany and Netherlands and Belgium so here here to see the team so you could see how things are going talk to some of the people in government and so forth what message do you bring to show Denmark oh well I think the most important message is that is that Denmark is a great leader in renewable energy with wind and I think that there's an opportunity to be a leader in sustainable transport as well but although Denmark is doing incredibly well on on wind that if you look at how many\n\ncars going down the road or electric there's very few well under 1% so I think it's it's very important that government policy continue to support electric vehicles and and you know as more wind energy is generated it didn't make sense to put that into sustainable transport I think it's but there's sort of two very important halves of the same problem so I think it's it's a Denmark an interesting and market for for Tesla a small country like Denmark yeah I think the Forte for Denmark I think they're more conserve as an example to the rest of the world to say what can be done with the sustainable transport so with with larger countries it's difficult to make a big impact but with smaller countries you can say hey this this is what it can be like to to\n\nother countries to say you know with the right policies you can have a significant number of electric vehicles on the road so I think demo can be an important leader in the world as an example in this regard you mentioned when Denmark has the world's largest windmill maker Vesta large production of sustainable energy right but we do have trouble storing the wind energy yeah can you help us with that absolutely so the electric vehicles themselves can be obviously a great recipient to buffer a wind energy so depending upon where what level of wind energies is being generated you can actually have the pricing of electricity very so that people can charge their electric cars depending upon if there's a large amount or small amount of energy being generated\n\nfrom the wind then in addition Tesla has a battery pack a stationary battery pack that is under development or going to significant production later this year and so combining wind energy with a stationary storage is very powerful because that provides a complete solution would you consider setting up a facility in Denmark even yeah that that is that is certainly something under consideration yeah Tesla is improving battery technology really fast how do you expect your battery technology will change the auto sector as well as the energy sector in the coming years well for the battery technology both for for electric vehicles and for stationary storage is a critical piece of the equation for a long-term future of sustainable energy so you need to have\n\nsustainable energy generation which i think is going to be primarily as wind and solar and then you combine that with stationary storage which is needed because of the intermittent nature of renewable energy generation and then you can and then the third piece of the equation is electric transport so if you have all three of those pieces sustainable generation storage and electric vehicles then you have a complete solution for the future and then we have a good future but how do you feel about taking on such large industries as the audience industry and the energy industry well it's definitely it can be quite difficult at times the you know the big car companies and the big energy companies have quite sharp elbows so they try to you know first times they\n\ntry to squash small companies like Tesla but I think we you know we have the support generally of of where the popular support and everywhere a team at Tesla so man it's hard but I think you know we're making good progress Tesla is really getting sales going really getting cars out there you've been able to get a head start on other electric car makers but they're really coming along now what I think is great yeah yeah what what is yours response to to the new competing electric sports car such as Porsches new electric car yeah well you know the reason that we're doing Tesla is to try to accelerate the advent of sustainable transport to have there be more electric cars in the road and and to that end we actually open sourced all of our patents so we said\n\nyou know any car company can use our technology it's no problem that I didn't have to pay a fee to us so so for us you know we're very philosophically motivated you know we care about at the advancement of electric vehicles because we think you're and unless there's sustainable transport it's going to be the future is going to be terrible so so I'm glad to see these announcements of these other companies I hope they they move even faster than they announced but don't you expect you may be your investors to expect you to fight off these competition rather than embracing it well yeah I mean I did say that when we were in public even I said look your Tesla has a strong ideological motivation so they shouldn't invest if they disagree with that so they know\n\nfrom the beginning I've always been very clear about that but as long as we make compelling products I think Tesla will do ok so it's it's not you we shouldn't do ok just because the competition failed I mean we should do okay because we make good cars that's the only reason I want to get into your vision for missions for electric cars musk am when will we break the thousand kilometer range you mark for an electric car a thousand kilometers hmm well it depends under what circumstances for a thousand kilometers as it is the record right now for Model S is 800 kilometers that's the furthest that anyone has driven a Model S so we could be close yeah we're pretty close now in order to do that they did drive at a relatively slow speed so you know we're talking\n\nI think they drove maybe at 40 or 50 kilometers an hour or something like that but I I think my guess is probably we could break a thousand kilometers within a year or two okay yeah so within 2016 maybe even I say if you say 2017 I'd say 2017 for sure.\n\nHow far can a Tesla drive on a single charge in 2020?\n\nIn 2020 we could probably make a car go 1,200 kilometres okay it's that kind of the pace going forward moving battery so yeah if you think maybe um you know five to ten percent a year something like that okay yeah do you have any current plans for a self-driving Tesla we do I mean the they can tell me about that yeah sure so the the Tesla that is currently in production has the the ability to do automatic steering or order pilot on highways and that's currently being but beta tested and we'll go into wide release hopefully next month so we're probably only a month away from having autonomous driving at least for highways and for relatively simple roads I mean my guess for when we will have full autonomy is about three years three years approximately three\n\nyears however regulators will probably not allow full autonomy for maybe at least one to two years may 1 to 3 years after that so it depends on this on the particular market some markets will be the regulators will be more forward-leaning than others but in terms of technic winner will be technologically possible I think three years what kind of costs are we driving twenty years from now I hope civilization is still around in 20 years if it is yeah exactly I think in 20 years I think you will see hopefully a very long percentage of cars being electric probably all cars being built will have full autonomy in 20 years but it but it is important to bear in mind like sometimes people think I think of cars like consumer products like a phone or something like\n\nthat but in the case of a phone the the average ownership time for a phone is is 2 or 3 years but for a car a car typically lasts 20 years before it is finally scrapped so the the total fleet of cars and trucks in the world is about 2 billion and that fleet is increasing probably to two and a half billion and the new car production is is about a hundred new cars and trucks about a hundred million per year so in order to change the fleet if if all cars become electric say immediately then it would take more probably more than 20 years to change the fleet for autonomous driving that may be less because if a town was driving means that fewer cars and trucks are needed then it's a probably a smaller period of time but it's probably still at least 10 to 15\n\nyears okay so that's an important consideration we think when thinking about how fast can things changing in cars and as I mentioned earlier the if you want to say how how we're doing in terms of electric cars in terms of sustainable transport you know I'd say just look at the cost going down the road count how many electric cars out of a hundred and that's that tells you how many how much progress has been made been made and even in a place like Denmark which is relatively forward-leaning less than one percent what can we do here in Denmark - - well help you reach the goal of the sustainable future sure well I think it's it's it's it's formerly for for all electric all companies making electric cars Tesla being one of them it's really important particularly\n\nin the early days of electric cars to have the incentives remain in place they don't have to be there forever but but if the if the rug is pulled too quickly for electric cars then you have a industry which is just a baby it's just a little tiny tiny thing and it's it's I think too early to sort of pull pull incentives for a industry that isn't in its infancy and in the future no problem but now would be difficult","textByLang":{"en":"he is one of the most talked-about CEOs in the world right now the main behind companies such as SpaceX and Tesla mr.\n\nmusk it's a great pleasure to have you in Copenhagen yeah thanks for having me I'm glad to be back what brings you to Denmark well I'm here to see the Tesla Danish team I'm actually visiting a number of countries on this visit I just came from Luxembourg and I'm headed to Germany and Netherlands and Belgium so here here to see the team so you could see how things are going talk to some of the people in government and so forth what message do you bring to show Denmark oh well I think the most important message is that is that Denmark is a great leader in renewable energy with wind and I think that there's an opportunity to be a leader in sustainable transport as well but although Denmark is doing incredibly well on on wind that if you look at how many\n\ncars going down the road or electric there's very few well under 1% so I think it's it's very important that government policy continue to support electric vehicles and and you know as more wind energy is generated it didn't make sense to put that into sustainable transport I think it's but there's sort of two very important halves of the same problem so I think it's it's a Denmark an interesting and market for for Tesla a small country like Denmark yeah I think the Forte for Denmark I think they're more conserve as an example to the rest of the world to say what can be done with the sustainable transport so with with larger countries it's difficult to make a big impact but with smaller countries you can say hey this this is what it can be like to to\n\nother countries to say you know with the right policies you can have a significant number of electric vehicles on the road so I think demo can be an important leader in the world as an example in this regard you mentioned when Denmark has the world's largest windmill maker Vesta large production of sustainable energy right but we do have trouble storing the wind energy yeah can you help us with that absolutely so the electric vehicles themselves can be obviously a great recipient to buffer a wind energy so depending upon where what level of wind energies is being generated you can actually have the pricing of electricity very so that people can charge their electric cars depending upon if there's a large amount or small amount of energy being generated\n\nfrom the wind then in addition Tesla has a battery pack a stationary battery pack that is under development or going to significant production later this year and so combining wind energy with a stationary storage is very powerful because that provides a complete solution would you consider setting up a facility in Denmark even yeah that that is that is certainly something under consideration yeah Tesla is improving battery technology really fast how do you expect your battery technology will change the auto sector as well as the energy sector in the coming years well for the battery technology both for for electric vehicles and for stationary storage is a critical piece of the equation for a long-term future of sustainable energy so you need to have\n\nsustainable energy generation which i think is going to be primarily as wind and solar and then you combine that with stationary storage which is needed because of the intermittent nature of renewable energy generation and then you can and then the third piece of the equation is electric transport so if you have all three of those pieces sustainable generation storage and electric vehicles then you have a complete solution for the future and then we have a good future but how do you feel about taking on such large industries as the audience industry and the energy industry well it's definitely it can be quite difficult at times the you know the big car companies and the big energy companies have quite sharp elbows so they try to you know first times they\n\ntry to squash small companies like Tesla but I think we you know we have the support generally of of where the popular support and everywhere a team at Tesla so man it's hard but I think you know we're making good progress Tesla is really getting sales going really getting cars out there you've been able to get a head start on other electric car makers but they're really coming along now what I think is great yeah yeah what what is yours response to to the new competing electric sports car such as Porsches new electric car yeah well you know the reason that we're doing Tesla is to try to accelerate the advent of sustainable transport to have there be more electric cars in the road and and to that end we actually open sourced all of our patents so we said\n\nyou know any car company can use our technology it's no problem that I didn't have to pay a fee to us so so for us you know we're very philosophically motivated you know we care about at the advancement of electric vehicles because we think you're and unless there's sustainable transport it's going to be the future is going to be terrible so so I'm glad to see these announcements of these other companies I hope they they move even faster than they announced but don't you expect you may be your investors to expect you to fight off these competition rather than embracing it well yeah I mean I did say that when we were in public even I said look your Tesla has a strong ideological motivation so they shouldn't invest if they disagree with that so they know\n\nfrom the beginning I've always been very clear about that but as long as we make compelling products I think Tesla will do ok so it's it's not you we shouldn't do ok just because the competition failed I mean we should do okay because we make good cars that's the only reason I want to get into your vision for missions for electric cars musk am when will we break the thousand kilometer range you mark for an electric car a thousand kilometers hmm well it depends under what circumstances for a thousand kilometers as it is the record right now for Model S is 800 kilometers that's the furthest that anyone has driven a Model S so we could be close yeah we're pretty close now in order to do that they did drive at a relatively slow speed so you know we're talking\n\nI think they drove maybe at 40 or 50 kilometers an hour or something like that but I I think my guess is probably we could break a thousand kilometers within a year or two okay yeah so within 2016 maybe even I say if you say 2017 I'd say 2017 for sure.\n\nHow far can a Tesla drive on a single charge in 2020?\n\nIn 2020 we could probably make a car go 1,200 kilometres okay it's that kind of the pace going forward moving battery so yeah if you think maybe um you know five to ten percent a year something like that okay yeah do you have any current plans for a self-driving Tesla we do I mean the they can tell me about that yeah sure so the the Tesla that is currently in production has the the ability to do automatic steering or order pilot on highways and that's currently being but beta tested and we'll go into wide release hopefully next month so we're probably only a month away from having autonomous driving at least for highways and for relatively simple roads I mean my guess for when we will have full autonomy is about three years three years approximately three\n\nyears however regulators will probably not allow full autonomy for maybe at least one to two years may 1 to 3 years after that so it depends on this on the particular market some markets will be the regulators will be more forward-leaning than others but in terms of technic winner will be technologically possible I think three years what kind of costs are we driving twenty years from now I hope civilization is still around in 20 years if it is yeah exactly I think in 20 years I think you will see hopefully a very long percentage of cars being electric probably all cars being built will have full autonomy in 20 years but it but it is important to bear in mind like sometimes people think I think of cars like consumer products like a phone or something like\n\nthat but in the case of a phone the the average ownership time for a phone is is 2 or 3 years but for a car a car typically lasts 20 years before it is finally scrapped so the the total fleet of cars and trucks in the world is about 2 billion and that fleet is increasing probably to two and a half billion and the new car production is is about a hundred new cars and trucks about a hundred million per year so in order to change the fleet if if all cars become electric say immediately then it would take more probably more than 20 years to change the fleet for autonomous driving that may be less because if a town was driving means that fewer cars and trucks are needed then it's a probably a smaller period of time but it's probably still at least 10 to 15\n\nyears okay so that's an important consideration we think when thinking about how fast can things changing in cars and as I mentioned earlier the if you want to say how how we're doing in terms of electric cars in terms of sustainable transport you know I'd say just look at the cost going down the road count how many electric cars out of a hundred and that's that tells you how many how much progress has been made been made and even in a place like Denmark which is relatively forward-leaning less than one percent what can we do here in Denmark - - well help you reach the goal of the sustainable future sure well I think it's it's it's it's formerly for for all electric all companies making electric cars Tesla being one of them it's really important particularly\n\nin the early days of electric cars to have the incentives remain in place they don't have to be there forever but but if the if the rug is pulled too quickly for electric cars then you have a industry which is just a baby it's just a little tiny tiny thing and it's it's I think too early to sort of pull pull incentives for a industry that isn't in its infancy and in the future no problem but now would be difficult"},"languages":["en"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bl5vLC3Xlgc"},{"id":"60-minutes-australia-2015-07-26","type":"interview","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ippYts_JvUk","title":"60 Minutes Australia","titles":{"en":"60 Minutes Australia","de":"60 Minutes Australia","fr":"60 Minutes Australia"},"date":"2015-07-26","summary":"Musk talks about his life, Tesla, SpaceX and his ambition to colonize Mars in a profile interview.","text":"The story of Elon Musk is almost too incredible to believe. He's an engineer and entrepreneur worth more than $15 billion. He backs himself on high-risk ventures, which invariably lead to huge profits. First, there was PayPal, the way to buy and sell on the internet. Then Tesla, the electric supercar he built, and SpaceX, the rocket company NASA uses. Now, his sights are set even further a field, colonizing Mars.\n\nAnd if he reminds you of Tony Stark, Iron Man, you're right, because he's also the inspiration behind the Hollywood superhero. [Applause] How are you? Congratulations on the promotion. Thank you very much. Exactly like Elon Musk. Yeah. Good idea for an electric jet. You do. Yeah. And if you spend any time with the real life Tony Stark, thank you all for coming tonight and you be prepared to move quickly.\n\nBut this is where our mission control and launch control will be. One moment. He's a rocket man. liftoff of the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. Proudly boasting his $2 billion contract with NASA, varying supplies to the International Space Station. It's just a giant kick in the ball from the people that said we couldn't do it. Next minute, he's perfecting another rocket, his electric superfast supercar, the Tesla. It is a beast. It's a monster.\n\n691 horsepower. Uh, yeah. And it'll go to 0 to 100 km in 3. 1 seconds. Whatever he does. And at whatever speed he's doing it, [Music] there's always a legion of adoring musketeers on hand. [Applause] What really strikes me about your staff is everyone is almost messianic with their vision. They're true believers in Elon Musk's vision of the world. Sure. Um, well, I mean, generally I try to discourage cultlike behavior, by the way.\n\n[Music] Elon Musk grew up in South Africa, studied in Canada, but then moved to California and became a Silicon Valley superstar by creating the online commerce business PayPal. A few years later, Musk sold PayPal for a packet. He then bravely or stupidly poured his great fortune into Tesla, an electric car startup company that aimed to beat petrol-powered vehicles. Well, so far this is a very expensive car. Call this the $50 million car.\n\nIf ever there was a way to blow a billion bucks, this was it. You know, this is really just the beginning of the beginning. All right. So when people were telling you this is insane, what did you say? Well, I don't want to give the impression that I thought Tesla would be successful from the beginning. I actually thought we would fail. You did? Really? Oh, yeah. Yeah. I thought would maybe have a I don't know 10 20% chance of success.\n\nI mean, startups in general fail and auto startups especially fail. Sure. In the early days, Tesla was a hugely expensive money pit and his prediction of failure and personal bankruptcy came perilously close to true. You know, each month that passes is literally cost us tens of millions of dollars. I mean, we need to appreciate that. It didn't help that the traditional car industry treated Elon Musk as a joke.\n\nRight now we're facing an issue which is that it's a sort of a crisis of confidence among our customers. We should be expecting it this basically saying ah well this proves it. You know here's this cheeky bloke from Silicon Valley who thinks he can make a car. He's going to fail. Right. Sure. How did you feel at that stage? Well I felt pretty miserable honestly. Um it did honestly look like we were going to fail. It almost ran out of money.\n\nIn fact at the end of 2008 so I had to invest the last money that I had in the company. You staked your fortune, didn't you? Everything. Yeah. I would have ended up owing money if if if Tesla had gone bankrupt. And we managed to close the financing round on the last hour of the last day that it was possible. So, it was Christmas Eve 2008 6 p. m. Shares of the electric car maker Tesla Motors are up.\n\nAt the 11th hour, Musk convinced investors to give him a second chance and set out to build a completely new type of electric car. Yeah. This is a full-size model. Can you show us which part? All of it. The whole thing. I don't think we can show you the whole thing, right? The death of Australia's car manufacturing industry was Elon Musk's gain. So you've been here from the very beginning. From the very beginning.\n\nAustralian Ben Bernett, that's him on the right, used to work for Holden in Melbourne. He now manages clay modeling of new Tesla cars. We should be doing it in our own country. Fellow Aussie Ron Palonsky used to work at Ford. I can imagine that there's a huge attraction in designing an electric vehicle from the ground up and that that allows us to to kind of rethink how the cars designed and manufactured.\n\nYou know, we challenge everything and then we change. [Music] Can I be the Australian data for a moment? This country is a nation of petrol heads. They love their big trucks, their big cars, their throbbing V8s. They love their gasoline. I don't see them getting rid of oil anytime soon. Why would an electric car work in that market? Well, I mean, I think uh Australians also appreciate advanced technology and great engineering.\n\nUm, and this car is uh regarded by by the most difficult critics in the world as the best car. [Music] Three years ago, Tesla really took off with the launch of the Model S. [Music] It's a four-door sedan that looks nothing like what most people would assume an electric vehicle to be. [Music] We wanted to create an electric car that was beautiful, had incredible handling, great acceleration.\n\nIn fact, the the Model S has got the the highest acceleration of any four-door car ever. It's a beautiful car to drive. As if playing up to his credentials as an automotive renegade, Musk ensured there were plenty of idiosyncratic quirks in his new car. The stereo does go up to 11. Thanks, Spinal Tap. And in the performance Tesla, there's a curious selector, appropriately called the insane button.\n\nIt immediately unleashes an eyewatering 691 horsepower to the car's four wheels. And if you push it and put your foot on the accelerator, it does amazing things. Wow. My god, that's amazing. It just pushes you back into the back of your seat. When I was trying the car out, it it the acceleration felt insane. So was like, well, we should probably have a button there so that people could decide if they want to have insane acceleration or not.\n\nSo it has the speed, the looks, and the gadgetry. But the issues that have always held electric cars back have been price and range. [Music] Most owners talk about range anxiety, but this car can travel around 400 km before it needs recharging. So, here we are on route from LA to San Francisco. And this being an electric car, on that sort of journey, you've got to top it up probably a couple of times to be safe.\n\nThe nice thing about this though is they've got these supercharging stations all along the way. Couple of clicks on that, it opens it up, plugs it in. In 15 minutes, the car's energy is all topped up. And better still, it's free, [Music] which helps ease the pain of the car's high cost. Although the boss and chief salesman says like all evolving technology, it will get cheaper.\n\nOur third generation car, the Model 3, which is it'll be a smaller car um and at much higher volume, we're we're aiming to approximately have the price of the car um and be able to produce something for $35,000 instead of for $75,000. Now you're talking. Yeah. Lift off of the Falcon 9. Having Tesla's fortunes improving gives Elon Musk the chance to pursue his other great vision, space.\n\nHis company, SpaceX, builds unmanned rockets which resupply the International Space Station more economically and efficiently than NASA. Liftoff of the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. It's a risky business as Musk discovered last month. And we appear to have had a launch vehicle failure. But even this is just a stepping stone to his most ambitious dream of all. Standing by for some information. SpaceX is an astonishing achievement.\n\nBut uh you've also got your plans for Mars. Think about the future is just if if we're out there exploring stars, it's so much more exciting and inspiring than one where we are forever confined to Earth. and a Mars mission. Yeah. So, uh, in order to make Mars work, we we need kind of the next generation of of rockets and spacecraft. And we think we've got something that will enable people to move to Mars for approximately half a million dollars.\n\nHalf a million dollars. Yeah. And you can get a free return ticket with that, by the way. So, the thing that most people say about you is the vision of the future that you have is quite breathtaking. And so many times along the way, people have naysayed, haven't they? I guess there's certainly been a lot of attacks.\n\nUm, one thing I've I've noticed in recent months and years is that it's become uh obvious to a lot of the entrenched interests that that Tesla and SpaceX are not going to die. Um, and previously they thought, well, they just basically ignored us or laughed at us. Now we're actually starting to make real inroads and they're treating us as a real threat. Um and so the it is it is quite daunting.\n\nThis is actually within the power of humanity to do and and I think it's something that that it's we must do. Elon Musk strives for what others might think impossible. Thinking ahead of the curve, he wants technology to improve the way we live for generations to come. Do you get the feeling that there's a lot of dystopian writing about the world at the moment? The future. It's very bleak the way the future's cast, isn't it? Yeah.\n\nI guess bleak stories make for better drama. But you're an optimist, aren't you? You're hopeful. I am hopeful. What I'm trying to do is maximize the probability that the future will be better. So, it's sort of altruistic, but I think why wouldn't you try to make the future better if you're going to be part of it? Hello, I'm Tom Steinford. Thanks for watching 60 Minutes Australia.\n\nSubscribe to our channel now for brand new stories and exclusive clips every week. And don't miss out on our extra minute segments and full episodes of 60 Minutes on 9ow. com. au as well as the N now app.","textByLang":{"en":"The story of Elon Musk is almost too incredible to believe. He's an engineer and entrepreneur worth more than $15 billion. He backs himself on high-risk ventures, which invariably lead to huge profits. First, there was PayPal, the way to buy and sell on the internet. Then Tesla, the electric supercar he built, and SpaceX, the rocket company NASA uses. Now, his sights are set even further a field, colonizing Mars.\n\nAnd if he reminds you of Tony Stark, Iron Man, you're right, because he's also the inspiration behind the Hollywood superhero. [Applause] How are you? Congratulations on the promotion. Thank you very much. Exactly like Elon Musk. Yeah. Good idea for an electric jet. You do. Yeah. And if you spend any time with the real life Tony Stark, thank you all for coming tonight and you be prepared to move quickly.\n\nBut this is where our mission control and launch control will be. One moment. He's a rocket man. liftoff of the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. Proudly boasting his $2 billion contract with NASA, varying supplies to the International Space Station. It's just a giant kick in the ball from the people that said we couldn't do it. Next minute, he's perfecting another rocket, his electric superfast supercar, the Tesla. It is a beast. It's a monster.\n\n691 horsepower. Uh, yeah. And it'll go to 0 to 100 km in 3. 1 seconds. Whatever he does. And at whatever speed he's doing it, [Music] there's always a legion of adoring musketeers on hand. [Applause] What really strikes me about your staff is everyone is almost messianic with their vision. They're true believers in Elon Musk's vision of the world. Sure. Um, well, I mean, generally I try to discourage cultlike behavior, by the way.\n\n[Music] Elon Musk grew up in South Africa, studied in Canada, but then moved to California and became a Silicon Valley superstar by creating the online commerce business PayPal. A few years later, Musk sold PayPal for a packet. He then bravely or stupidly poured his great fortune into Tesla, an electric car startup company that aimed to beat petrol-powered vehicles. Well, so far this is a very expensive car. Call this the $50 million car.\n\nIf ever there was a way to blow a billion bucks, this was it. You know, this is really just the beginning of the beginning. All right. So when people were telling you this is insane, what did you say? Well, I don't want to give the impression that I thought Tesla would be successful from the beginning. I actually thought we would fail. You did? Really? Oh, yeah. Yeah. I thought would maybe have a I don't know 10 20% chance of success.\n\nI mean, startups in general fail and auto startups especially fail. Sure. In the early days, Tesla was a hugely expensive money pit and his prediction of failure and personal bankruptcy came perilously close to true. You know, each month that passes is literally cost us tens of millions of dollars. I mean, we need to appreciate that. It didn't help that the traditional car industry treated Elon Musk as a joke.\n\nRight now we're facing an issue which is that it's a sort of a crisis of confidence among our customers. We should be expecting it this basically saying ah well this proves it. You know here's this cheeky bloke from Silicon Valley who thinks he can make a car. He's going to fail. Right. Sure. How did you feel at that stage? Well I felt pretty miserable honestly. Um it did honestly look like we were going to fail. It almost ran out of money.\n\nIn fact at the end of 2008 so I had to invest the last money that I had in the company. You staked your fortune, didn't you? Everything. Yeah. I would have ended up owing money if if if Tesla had gone bankrupt. And we managed to close the financing round on the last hour of the last day that it was possible. So, it was Christmas Eve 2008 6 p. m. Shares of the electric car maker Tesla Motors are up.\n\nAt the 11th hour, Musk convinced investors to give him a second chance and set out to build a completely new type of electric car. Yeah. This is a full-size model. Can you show us which part? All of it. The whole thing. I don't think we can show you the whole thing, right? The death of Australia's car manufacturing industry was Elon Musk's gain. So you've been here from the very beginning. From the very beginning.\n\nAustralian Ben Bernett, that's him on the right, used to work for Holden in Melbourne. He now manages clay modeling of new Tesla cars. We should be doing it in our own country. Fellow Aussie Ron Palonsky used to work at Ford. I can imagine that there's a huge attraction in designing an electric vehicle from the ground up and that that allows us to to kind of rethink how the cars designed and manufactured.\n\nYou know, we challenge everything and then we change. [Music] Can I be the Australian data for a moment? This country is a nation of petrol heads. They love their big trucks, their big cars, their throbbing V8s. They love their gasoline. I don't see them getting rid of oil anytime soon. Why would an electric car work in that market? Well, I mean, I think uh Australians also appreciate advanced technology and great engineering.\n\nUm, and this car is uh regarded by by the most difficult critics in the world as the best car. [Music] Three years ago, Tesla really took off with the launch of the Model S. [Music] It's a four-door sedan that looks nothing like what most people would assume an electric vehicle to be. [Music] We wanted to create an electric car that was beautiful, had incredible handling, great acceleration.\n\nIn fact, the the Model S has got the the highest acceleration of any four-door car ever. It's a beautiful car to drive. As if playing up to his credentials as an automotive renegade, Musk ensured there were plenty of idiosyncratic quirks in his new car. The stereo does go up to 11. Thanks, Spinal Tap. And in the performance Tesla, there's a curious selector, appropriately called the insane button.\n\nIt immediately unleashes an eyewatering 691 horsepower to the car's four wheels. And if you push it and put your foot on the accelerator, it does amazing things. Wow. My god, that's amazing. It just pushes you back into the back of your seat. When I was trying the car out, it it the acceleration felt insane. So was like, well, we should probably have a button there so that people could decide if they want to have insane acceleration or not.\n\nSo it has the speed, the looks, and the gadgetry. But the issues that have always held electric cars back have been price and range. [Music] Most owners talk about range anxiety, but this car can travel around 400 km before it needs recharging. So, here we are on route from LA to San Francisco. And this being an electric car, on that sort of journey, you've got to top it up probably a couple of times to be safe.\n\nThe nice thing about this though is they've got these supercharging stations all along the way. Couple of clicks on that, it opens it up, plugs it in. In 15 minutes, the car's energy is all topped up. And better still, it's free, [Music] which helps ease the pain of the car's high cost. Although the boss and chief salesman says like all evolving technology, it will get cheaper.\n\nOur third generation car, the Model 3, which is it'll be a smaller car um and at much higher volume, we're we're aiming to approximately have the price of the car um and be able to produce something for $35,000 instead of for $75,000. Now you're talking. Yeah. Lift off of the Falcon 9. Having Tesla's fortunes improving gives Elon Musk the chance to pursue his other great vision, space.\n\nHis company, SpaceX, builds unmanned rockets which resupply the International Space Station more economically and efficiently than NASA. Liftoff of the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. It's a risky business as Musk discovered last month. And we appear to have had a launch vehicle failure. But even this is just a stepping stone to his most ambitious dream of all. Standing by for some information. SpaceX is an astonishing achievement.\n\nBut uh you've also got your plans for Mars. Think about the future is just if if we're out there exploring stars, it's so much more exciting and inspiring than one where we are forever confined to Earth. and a Mars mission. Yeah. So, uh, in order to make Mars work, we we need kind of the next generation of of rockets and spacecraft. And we think we've got something that will enable people to move to Mars for approximately half a million dollars.\n\nHalf a million dollars. Yeah. And you can get a free return ticket with that, by the way. So, the thing that most people say about you is the vision of the future that you have is quite breathtaking. And so many times along the way, people have naysayed, haven't they? I guess there's certainly been a lot of attacks.\n\nUm, one thing I've I've noticed in recent months and years is that it's become uh obvious to a lot of the entrenched interests that that Tesla and SpaceX are not going to die. Um, and previously they thought, well, they just basically ignored us or laughed at us. Now we're actually starting to make real inroads and they're treating us as a real threat. Um and so the it is it is quite daunting.\n\nThis is actually within the power of humanity to do and and I think it's something that that it's we must do. Elon Musk strives for what others might think impossible. Thinking ahead of the curve, he wants technology to improve the way we live for generations to come. Do you get the feeling that there's a lot of dystopian writing about the world at the moment? The future. It's very bleak the way the future's cast, isn't it? Yeah.\n\nI guess bleak stories make for better drama. But you're an optimist, aren't you? You're hopeful. I am hopeful. What I'm trying to do is maximize the probability that the future will be better. So, it's sort of altruistic, but I think why wouldn't you try to make the future better if you're going to be part of it? Hello, I'm Tom Steinford. Thanks for watching 60 Minutes Australia.\n\nSubscribe to our channel now for brand new stories and exclusive clips every week. And don't miss out on our extra minute segments and full episodes of 60 Minutes on 9ow. com. au as well as the N now app."},"languages":["en"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ippYts_JvUk"},{"id":"iss-r-d-conference-2015-07-07","type":"interview","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZmEg95wPiVU","title":"ISS R&D Conference","titles":{"en":"ISS R&D Conference","de":"ISS R&D Conference","fr":"ISS R&D Conference"},"date":"2015-07-07","summary":"Keynote conversation with NASA's Mike Suffredini where Musk discusses the CRS-7 failure, the ISS as a research platform and SpaceX's future.","text":"uh so it is my great honor to uh introduce a man who needs no introduction I'm not sure where he's at but I'm sure he's going to come in here somewhere where is he oh okay there you go um uh a gentleman who we can call Elon and everybody at least in this country I know exactly who you're talking about uh but Mr Elon Musk he's the uh CEO lead designer of SpaceX uh everyone I think knows this um SpaceX is an amazing um uh commercial company it's the first company to to launch uh commercial rocket into low earth orbit uh with their Falcon 1 launch uh then in 2008 they were one of the winners of a contract to uh bring services to the International Space Station they're the first commercial company to birth with the International Space Station bringing supplies\n\nthey're also the first commercial company to return a sizable return vehicle uh with the all the components still intact which is very important to us uh back to uh to the surface of the Earth and so it's an amazing company has done a great job um and continues to push the boundaries you you'll hear from Elon but his Interest really is not so much in low earth orbit as it is going Beyond low earth orbit and and making sure Humanity will continue to live uh by exploring beyond beyond Earth um Elon has a a varied uh history of things that he's been involved in this was this is one of the things that makes it so exciting to have this conversation with him today you he's not one-dimensional space guy he's involved in Tesla motors which he is a co-founder\n\nand CEO uh and also a a major player in the design efforts and what they choose to go build and and how um of course he was a co-founder of PayPal and zip 2 uh he's deeply involved in uh a number of other Industries as well and so it's my great honor to welcome Elon Musk to the stage thanks for coming appreciate it okay well these are great chairs you guys look at those chairs you're in um let's see so Elon you've uh you and I were going to have a little chat this morning we said it was going to be a fireside chat so minus the Fireside I guess we're ready um again I've as you heard I've encouraged folks to ask a few questions along the way but I have a few uh a few questions I thought to get us started so the first one which is probably on everybody's\n\nmind is perhaps you want to discuss a little bit about the the recent loss of the dragon and the in the Falcon 9 here on SpaceX 7 sure well I mean I think it's OB it's a huge um load to to SpaceX and um and or we take these missions incredibly seriously um the invest the everyone that can engage in the investigation at SpaceX is um very very focused on that and um in this case the the data does seem to be quite um difficult to interpret like whatever happened is is clearly not not a sort of simple straightforward thing um so we want to spend as much time as possible just reviewing the data obviously going over it with with NASA and with fa and with um number of other customers and just sort of seeing um what feedback everyone has based on their prior\n\nexperience um to see if we can get to what the uh most likely root cause is um look at look at both what we think most likely happened um and then anything that's a close call and try to address all of those things and maximize the probability of success for future missions any hints on where you think the problem lies you well I know the this there's media and the audience so they yeah so you have to be careful you're right I never really learned that but clearly that is a lesson now working on so so it's yeah I mean I um you know the I I think I think I think we'll be able to say something um more definitive towards the end of the week um at this point really the only thing that's really clear is that there was some kind of over pressure event in the\n\nupper stage liquid oxygen tank um but the the exact cause and the sequence of events there's there's still no uh clear uh theory that fits with all the data um so we have to determine if some of the data is u a measurement error of some kind or whether uh there is actually a theory that matches the the sort of what what appear to be conflicting data points okay very good I I'll just make a comment the tweets you put out regularly uh particularly when events like this happen uh are really useful to everybody we really do appreciate it you you'd be amazed at how many folks quote what you said and and and how how glad they are that you just step right out and at least give some sign about what's going on and that you know we'll get through it things are\n\ngoing well so we appreciate that absolutely and for sure um as soon as we we think we've got a clear line on on what what happened and we've sort of crosschecked it with as many experts as we can um and we certainly appreciate the the feedback from from NASA on this front very very much appreciated um the we'll certainly quite a put out that story my only reticence about saying something quite yet is I don't want to say something that subsequently turns out to be a Mis um misunderstanding of the situation oh yeah absolutely understand that so um one of the questions that I ask myself regularly is um at what point does all this government help hurt um so this event occurred and we have uh you have NASA folks uh there uh from from about three different\n\nprograms that intend to use your services ISS being one of them you have the FAA that's uh that's involved um the range uh folks are there um without feeling like you're giving your customers a hard time how is that interaction and uh what what should we consider doing differently so that we in those areas where we can help we are helpful and in those those areas where we're really keeping you from getting your job done we we can modify ourselves yeah actually I think the interaction with NASA has been great thus far um the the the biggest challenge is there there are um a lot of inquiries coming in simultaneously so uh it's it's hard to sort of keep you know respond respond to everyone right away but but actually it seems to have gone fairly well the\n\nthe biggest thing that's needed in the in the sort of short term is the ability to sort of gather all the data um create create a very precise timeline so you know by by the millisecond we know what each sensor was reading um and we can um correlate that with ground video and actually like one of the biggest challenges is matching the the things to the exact time you know because when you're talking about you know a matter of milliseconds um you know being able to say what is the ground track video compared to the data as received by the um you know by by the station from the rocket and then taking into account for exact the the actual time taken to generate a packet of information um when was that sensor read when was it encoded into a packet and when\n\nwas that packet sent to the ground um when when you're dealing in in milliseconds that all that stuff actually makes quite a big difference yeah sure um so the that's the the the biggest sort of effort we've um been engaged in thus far is just putting together super detailed uh timeline um and then just making sure that they have the sequence of of events down as precisely as possible that's what we' working on and um but but actually certainly uh with with um the interaction we've had with with NASA and with us it's actually been quite good thus far um and we've explained that this is what we're doing and um and then we we very much welcome any uh feedback or input or review of the data that would lead us to a better understanding of the circumstances\n\nI thought we had a very uh productive discussion back when we had the engine one anomaly and so I found it to be very useful uh but that's a perspective from from a NASA perspective so it's always interesting to know your perspective of that yeah it seems to be quite quite good actually right now yeah so um You're Building um in the last couple launches you've had Landing legs and you've uh been working on Landing um the first stage back uh eventually to shore can you talk a little bit about that and what your vision is for that and for SpaceX in general as you go forward sure well the the overarching uh goal of SpaceX is to try to advance the state of uh space transport um Advanced space transport technology to the point where um well it get as far along\n\nthe path as we can to to where uh space travel is hopefully common place at some point in the future and and where we can send large numbers of people cargo to other planets and you know it's like that's the sort of thing that that needs to happen for Humanity to have a great future in space so we want to keep pushing that and I think like key to uh to that future is reusability um so that's why we've worked quite hard on reusability unfortunately we we haven't um succeeded yet and in fact the last launch ironically was uh we we we actually had the best chance of Landing uh the vehicle on the on the this sort of drone ship that's keeping station in the Atlantic um so we're actually quite sort of geared up for for hopefully this would be a really great\n\nlaunch and unfortunately ended up being the the opposite on my birthday of all things um a real Downer you'll remember it though definitely low Point um but um but but I do think in in the future launches that that we've got a decent chance of landing on on the ship and then bringing the Boost AG back to land um and then the next challenge of course is trying to figure out how to efficiently effectively reuse it um and it is designed for easy reuse in theory um but we got to see what the stage looks looks like when it comes back in one piece MH um we we have been able to over the last few years do a number of vertical takeoff and Landing tests um of uh Hardware that's essentially in the flight configuration so we know we can we can handle the the the\n\nterminal phase if um you know if things go right we can take off the land no problem so it's just a question of uh completing all the the pieces and um hopefully later this year we'll be able to do that but that that that's key so but of course that doesn't address upper stage reuse but IT addresses boost age reuse which is sort of 70% to 80% of the of the of the cost um and um and but I think would be a great step towards uh uh lowering the the cost of space transport so you know if you look at your history uh I guess zip 2 payal these are um largely software type efforts now you've got Tesla electric uh cars uh you're building a battery plant um Solar City I guess you're involved in Solar City so why space this seems um space to me and just what I rate\n\nwe with you seems to be more of a passion than the others or our businesses but I I I can't tell why space why are you why do you think it's important for us to be sure have quick access to L orbit well the uh I mean actually technically I mean with with the uh Tesla and Solar City they're about helping to solve the sustainable energy problem um and uh so we're trying to make progress on that front on the with those companies um with with SpaceX it's uh trying to help um solve the kind of space bearing problem um I mean I I think that a a future where we're space spring civilization um and a multiplet species is very exciting inspiring awesome future um and in order for that to happen um we've got to um dramatically improve the cost of space flight um\n\nand uh and that's that's why why SpaceX exists is to try to try to lower the cost of space flight uh which we've made some progress in doing but still I would call a improvements thus far um evolutionary not revolutionary um and um but with with a lot of continued work I mean I think there's the potential for for um order of magnitude or greater improvements reusability being key to to all of that of course um and uh yeah and then hopefully you know we want to if if we can keep improving the the cost of space flight um then eventually if that trend is in the right direction it could be uh leading to a city on Mars and certainly along the way a lot of activity in lowth orbit and um the moon and you know lots of other exciting things so one of the things\n\nwe're trying to do with the International Space Station is um try to figure out which Industries will prosper from the use of low earth orbit to try to understand or or help grow the Eon an economy essentially in low earth orbit um and folks who are doing that are all taking risks today um our job is to try to reduce the risk as much as we can near term um so that they can get the information they need to really have a business case for the future but everyone's trying to to calculate a risk so is there an Elon Musk philosophy of risk vered benefit and when you when you think is the right time to jump in Ian what is your thought on on how to approach new Industries Innovative areas and when's the right time to jump in or not or do you just may is there\n\nno crystal ball or is it a crystal ball or Ouija board I mean how do you how do you figure out what you should go after well definitely the Ouija board of quot um much more reliable than the crystal ball um so uh the yeah I mean I I don't really like risk for risk seek or or anything it's and and I do think that um lot the things are are very risky uh with a low chance of success but if you want to try to come up with an Innovative breakthrough um that's kind of that's going to be how it is um anything which is significantly Innovative is going to come with a significant risk of failure um and um but you know if you've got to take big chances in order for the potential for a big positive outcome um and um you know just and if I mean if the outcome is\n\nexciting enough then then taking a big risk is worthwhile yeah it's really how I approach it but but then once executing down a path I actually do my absolute best to reduce uh risk you know because or or to improve the another way of saying to improve the probability of success because uh when you're trying to do something that is very um very risky uh that you you you have to spend a lot of effort trying to reduce that risk as you and walk down that path I mean when um when I saw basx the I thought the odds of success were very low um I thought we most likely fail um but I thought well we should give it a try nonetheless um and um then I'm not sure if you know what what what preceded SpaceX cuz the why I got into the space well I you I remember you\n\ntrying to purchase the a vehicle to from our Russian col you're talking about um well actually it was um the reason I got into space was to try to increase NASA's budget well God bless you then um the the and but so I'll tell you so the roundabout way I thought we that might be accomplished was um I thought well if if NASA's budget was more was larger than we could do more in space exploration and I thought well what work particularly if we could get the public excited about sending people to Mars and I thought well if I could do a small greenhouse and and send that to the surface of Mars with seeds and in um nutrient gel and you hydrate the gel and Landing you have a little miniature greenhouse and then you you'd have the public tends to get excited\n\nabout precedents and superlatives so be like the you know sort of first life on Mars the furthest life ever traveled and and get people sort of excited about well maybe we should send people there like the hell with plants we should people you know right right um and um and then um I thought well that could if if that could get the public really excited about sending fuel to Mars then that would translate into Congressional support for a bigger NASA budget that was the goal um and then I I didn't have enough money to buy uh and I thought that that outcome would have 100% chance of no no no commercial success so 100% chance of of losing all the money so um so compared to that SpaceX which I thought maybe had a 10 % chance of success that was an improvement\n\nthere you go well that makes that makes good sense so are you still thinking about that I do remember that conversation this was the idea where you used Martian reguli you send these self-contained habitats not habitats chamber kind of things and grow small yeah like a meter across or something but but just to prove the concept yeah just to get I mean the real goal was to get the public excited um you get some engineering data about what does it take to maintain a little habitat on Mars type of thing um but the main thing would be to get the public excited and you know get people to be you know the public to be in favor of a big an Assa budget that was the goal well again God Bless you that's a worthy goal I hope you don't stop so um commercial crew so\n\nyou've been selected as one of the providers for the commercial crew can you tell us a little bit about um where that's headed for you as a company and perhaps maybe how it's affected your company if it has if it's changed anything and how you approach space um I think things seem to be going fairly well on the commercial Crew front um I mean the I mean overall I think I mean like there are small disagreements here and there but overall I like I think we very much agree with the way it's being done um and um yeah I think it's it's it's pretty pretty good I mean there are a few things where the like it seems like the amount of of sort of mass and volume reserved for poop is too high like sorry I don't know that's like but that's you know there like little\n\nthings like that we're like well are they really going to do that much poop but um it's it's quite it's quite a large volume really is um so um I could really they're pretty small uh disagreement so I think that it seems to be pretty pretty sensible um and um and then we did the the launch a board test earlier this year which at the cape which um actually went went uh pretty well um and uh yeah so things are going going along getting pretty exciting um and um yeah I think there's also some potential use for Dragon 2 as um uh as a science delivery platform uh you know going to sort of delivering uh payloads to to Mars or other places um we're in discussion uh with other parts of NASA about some of those ideas because the propulsive landing uh you know\n\nit could really lower the cost of getting science instruments to various places in the solar system uh so it's kind of exciting so I'm going to come back to that in just a second but commercial the the crew vehicle versus the the dragon cargo vehicle clearly there are some significant differences um fairly Innovative approach I think to abort uh testing where traditionally you've seen the the jessen rocket on top that it's a puller versus The Pusher technique where you utilize fuel that you otherwise would use for the on orbit but of course you're not going in there so very Innovative approach are there other areas where you feel like you're um from an innovation standpoint you're making some significant strides with the crew vehicle yeah I think the\n\nthe the big items for well the the biggest item really for um Dragon 2 is the ability to do a propulsive landing um and it's basically H having heavy thrusters on board so those same heavy thrusters um can then do the abort but retain the the engines so instead of in a normal um sort of crude Mission like say take the soos for example they'd have a uh a tractor motor on the nose of the vehicle that would have to be basically a rocket engine on the nose that would have to be discarded on every flight um which is a potential reliability issue and it uh and then you have obviously unable to reuse the the the the abort system and um yeah and it adds you know adds bunch bunch of mass um but but then in addition those same thrusters can be used for propulsive\n\nlanding so you can achieve a precise pulsive Landing um which on on land or water um which is um I think a significant Improvement uh and um I mean it's sort of also it's sort of like really I think feels feels more like the future to to have that that capability um and then as I mentioned it for it can be extended to uh do payload delivery to to the moon or Mars or other places because of the the the generalized capability of propulsive Landing to to land land almost anywhere very good so uh let's go back to Dragon at one point you had a conversation talked a little bit about something I think was referred to as Dragon lab where you go to low earth orbit and do what I assumed was sorty kind of research and then and bring the vehicle back are you still\n\npursuing that or something like that is this an area where you think that there is a potential um I think that that there there is some potential for to essentially just take things to Lo orbit and then bring them bring them back you know after a few weeks or something like that um it's it's not a huge area of attention at at SpaceX but I think we might do a few missions like that um but uh yeah I mean dragon is is very much sort of its primary optim optimization is as a transport vehicle to in front the space station um and uh and so things like Dragon lab and then the science delivery platform I think are interesting extensions of that um and I think as as Dragon 2 um first flies and then gets into regular flight I think there'll probably will be some\n\nyou know more applications that that people can think of uh particularly since with Dragon 2 the reusability of the vehicle should be quite high so if we have reusability of the Dragon spacecraft and reusability of the the the the booster um and somebody's willing to sort of um do do a bunch of flights uh with with with the fully reused system there's the potential for for much lower cost uh access to space the the there is a bit of a chicken and egg challenge because like the there's a certain amount of fixed cost that have to be um carried no matter what so the the the marginal cost of launch or the cost of each subsequent launch can drop quite significantly so long as the launch rate per year is is High it stays up yeah of course that adds other challenges\n\nto the system yeah trying to fly as often as you as you need to to make that yep well let's see I I don't want to bore everybody with all my questions and we had talked about if folks had any questions in the audience let's see this oh wow they're not bashful that's good so I don't know if we're going to need microphones but but I'll I'll start here and I would like to ask you a question which is I'm coming from the solar energy so my question because uh you are like a kind of mentor and of visionary and you give hope to a lot of people around the globe because when they see you they realize that they can realize their dreams but my question is different uh when you are a dreamer when you are uh when you are a dreamer when you are a Visionary of course\n\nyou have your vision but there are moments that sometimes maybe you stop believing in this Vision especially in the moments of um some problems or failure so could you tell me and could you tell also to thousands of people who maybe will be motivated by your answer what keeps you fighting for your vision what helps you to well I mean I I think I'm kind of constitutionally just geared to to just keep going I don't know um it's uh um yeah I mean it just I I I don't know I mean it certainly there are times when you know things don't go well and then uh that's quite despera for sure um and so then it's it's difficult to proceed with the same level of enthusiasm um but um but I do think like I do think the things that we're doing are are you know pretty important\n\nto the Future um and if we don't succeed then you know there's well there's there's not it's not clear what other things would succeed um and if if we don't succeed then we will be certainly pointed to as a reason why people shouldn't even try for these things so uh I think it's important that we do whatever is necessary to keep going okay and uh last question last question you so in 2004 when you are going to Bary man with uh your cousin you were thinking there is a sun and let's make energy out of it yeah and I would like to ask you uh why uh do you believe uh so in solar energy and in and CLE Tech energies and also in sustainable energy and the last question I will not ask any more questions what will be the role of solar in the exploration of Mars\n\nsure um I think solar energy is probably fairly significant uh for Mars um and what's going to be quite important is having um a very lightweight solar system um that um you know both volumetrically and gravimetrically dance um so actually you were sort of playing with different concepts like um you know that like thing that potty thing where you inflate it and it rolls out the thing like what one of the solid Concepts is is to have like a big roll that you just basically inflate and it rolls out um with with with like really thin uh solar panels on it um but but it's it's going to be pretty important because really you either got to do that or nuclear um and um you know nuclear has has its challenges but but for solar it's it's pretty straightforward\n\num so I think I think solo is very important to the Future exploration of Mars for sure so thank you and I wish you that your next birthday is very successful thank you so much okay let's go let's go okay go ahead valtin okay my name is Valentino I am from the United rocket and space corporation uh which uh shortly will become a part of uh State Corporation Ros Cosmos uh so uh I made this long quest to the West because I'd like to ask one question of Elon Musk what is his secret to become a successful businessman in space industry and then coming back to Russia to tell Russian businessmen there is a way to become a tycoon in space industry so uh serious seriously speaking I'd like to ask you uh when you started your business was the government your partner\n\nwas it useful in what areas and so there are always two sides of the coin sure uh as there uh there were times when you uh had to fight bureaucracy thank you sure uh well um well I should say with respect to starting a space business it's definitely not the easiest environment to start a business um I think if most people were to rank order what's the highest uh return on investment I I mean space would not be very good um I mean it's I I I'm very Pro space so it's like I you know but it's um uh I mean it's just true that like if you you know start a hedge fund or if if you're in like many other Industries then you it's much easier to make money than the space industry this is not the easiest one to make money in um it's yeah um car industry also quite\n\n[Applause] difficult so um so the uh in fact I mean when starting SpaceX the the joke I I heard the joke this this joke so often it was ridiculous um the joke was how do you make a small fortune in the space industry and the punch line of course being start with a large [Applause] one yeah I I got I point i' heard the joke so many times that I would just get to the punchline and say like well I wanted to figure out how to turn a large Fortune into a small one that was my goal and they're like wow how did he know that um so um yeah that I mean I do think there's there is opportunity in space but but it is is it's it's a it's it's tough goinging I think if um but I think if if if SpaceX and other companies can can lower the cost of transport to to orbit\n\nand perhaps Beyond um then there's a lot of potential for entrepreneurship at the destination I mean you can think of it like the like the Union Pacific Railway you know uh before there was the UN Pacific Railway was real hard to have commerce between the west coast and the East Coast um if go buy a wagon or a really long sailing Journey uh but once there was the transport then there were huge opportunities and now look at sort of you know California and Washington State and and and all the industries that have been created in Silicon Valley and Hollywood um but you you got to have that fundamental transport element otherwise there's just it's really tricky um so we're trying to establish that transport element um make it easier to get to lowth orbit\n\num and hopefully in the future make it easier to get to the moon or Mars um and I I do have this long-term vision of like if if there was affordable transport to to a place like Mars I think the entrepreneurial opportunities would be phenomenal you know because there'd be people that would want to create everything from the first pizza joint to the first Iron or factory to be like just a enormous amount of opportunity for people to create things on Mars and there' be different things on some of the things on Mars would be different that we don't even imagine uh on Earth um be very exciting um so I think that's that's really key to um making things happen in space is you got to have some place you got to have some place to go and some place and some way\n\nto get there so yeah so so along those lines did you you read Andy wear's book The the Martian yeah yeah it was good what did you think um I thought it was it was pretty excellent certainly one of the most realistic books on Mars that um that I've read I mean like there were a few things like the wind force on Mars is not really that high well there um it's not going to knock you over or anything um it's high obviously High Velocity but low Force um but overall um I thought it was pretty cool and apparently it's been made into a movie and everything so um you don't you don't have a cameo on that one too I don't have a cameo on that one I'm I'm a little worried that it might not make people too keen on going to Mars U was like this is looks really hard\n\nI think we need a show about AAS is awesome and it's like the wild west and you got the Gunslingers and like the cool Cowboys and that kind of thing all all right maybe you got to write a book too let's see there's a question over here go ahead hi there my name is Anita goell I'm here at uh out of Harvard MIT run a company called nanobio Sim so uh in your vision and dream to achieve lowcost space travel how do you allocate your Investments between engineering and essentially driving down the cost of existing technology versus investing in new breakthrough physics uh things like Breakthrough propulsion physics anti-gravity what's your vision in the bifurcation of those two kinds of portfolios well we don't spend a ton of time on U physics um I the I think\n\nwith with current physics there the huge potential um so rather than rely on a breakthrough which we you know really it's difficult to Invision what that breakthrough would exactly be um or even inexactly be um the I'm quite confident that with what we know of current physics sort of just going with kind of you know where the standard model of physics is today that there are dramatic improvements possible in space light um and I think with the you know certainly with with Falcon 9 I think we can make improvements and then with our next Generation rocket system which is still you know many years away that'll be um a deep cryo methalox system um I think I think we can achieve full reusability um and that that's really that's a that's a huge potential for\n\num you know like maybe a two order of magnitude reduction in the cost of space flight um so um as far as R&D is concerned like we we we we we hire grade Engineers as fast as we can find them um so it's like the it's not that easy to find I should say great Engine with the sort of like the right mindset and everything um we we hire at at the at the maximum rate that we can find people that we think would would really be an asset to the team so there's no limitation on that okay over here hi my name is Zachary malt I'm a student from uh Babson College I just want to say it's an honor to be here um I read Ashley V's biography about you one thing that really was intriguing to me was the um super Draco engine for the dragon V2 that was um used printed out\n\nof a 3D technology do you envision using that technology more in the future and um when you first SP exploration and do you think that'll um how will that affect the costs in terms of getting to Mars everything like that yeah Absol absolutely so um as you alluded to we we um we actually print the super Draco engines um so they they're printed out of titanum inel um and um and that actually allows us to uh reduce the cost of those engines quite a bit uh in particular because we can print integral cooling channels so when you've got an hour glass chamber um and you've got cooling channels in in the wall of the chamber where the whole wall can consist of cooling channels um it's normally quite difficult to create that uh thrust chamber or nozzle um because\n\nyou got to create an inner jacket outer jacket kind of machine the the inner jacket it's and then bra the whole thing together it's real pain um and you got a bunch of joints in there to make it all work so with printing you can print something that you can't make by any other means so it's actually ends up being lighter and cheaper than if we built it by traditional methods um for our next Generation engine which we call the the Raptor which which as I mentioned is sort of a um it's it's a it's a deep cryome methyls so what I mean by that is the the methane and oxygen are cooled to close to their freezing points so not not far from the freezing point as opposed to close to their boiling point um which is more which is normally the case uh the uh you\n\nknow with that engine uh we're trying to print as much as possible it's it's a bit the biggest limitation on 3D printing right now is the the size envelope so there's a limit on how big we can print something um but we're able to print the the turbo pump components and much of the injector not the whole thing but but many of the critical parts we can print um so that actually helps us in speeding up the development so instead of waiting for castings to be developed which can take several months um and then if the cast is wrong you've got to iterate on the casting and each iteration can take several months um with printing we can those iterations can be reduced to a matter of weeks or months so that that actually helps with the the speed of development\n\nas well see over here hi uh I'm Ross Spong rock with a company called high orbit I wondered if you give could give us a little bit of an update on uh what's going on with the hyperloop and is there any over between the worker Doom with SpaceX and hyperloop Technology yeah SpaceX is not neither I nor SpaceX are doing anything to try to commercialize the hyper Loop um there are I think at least two maybe more than two companies that have formed that are completely independent of me or SpaceX that are working towards commercializing the hyperloop um techn or hyperloop idea or design um what what SpaceX is doing is we're we're we're going to just create a little uh Student Competition uh for for h Loop ideas so kind of like around the the way that Formula\n\nSAE Works where students um come up with a design and compete against each other to design the best pod so what what SpaceX will do is just construct about a mile long um uh uh low pressure tube near nearly vacuum tube basically um in which students can kind kind of race their pods um so we're it's just basically to support uh get get students excited about uh engineering that's the that's the only involvement to space Tex myself with the hyperloop at this point okay over here hello I'm paa castano I'm a sociologist and I'm writing a book about the International Space Station um how would you describe the scientific value of the International Space Station and where would you draw the line between luxury and need when it comes to space exploration well\n\nI mean I for space I mean I really spend all of my time thinking about just how to get to the space station um to be honest I I um I actually hadn't even really seen a proper movie of the inside of the space station until I went to see the a preview of the new IMX thing that's coming out and it's amazing like when that space station IMAX movie comes out people are going it blown away it's awesome um I actually brought my whole team at at SpaceX to go uh go see the preview of the of the IMX movie um and um I mean it it's like it is a very unique uh Laboratory um because this the only thing that's in sort of microgravity um that's above the Earth's atmosphere um um and you can learn a lot about basically human physiology uh and do experiments that you can't\n\nreally do any any other lab um and um you know and you can have bring scientists up and they can actually work in this incredibly unique lab so I think that there's a lot to to to be gained there um and um and I think it just you can't sort of you know ignore the coolness factor of it like that's like people think it's pretty cool so I think it's pretty cool um and you know the the public want to have something going on in space that that involves people and um yeah and it's it's just um I don't know it's the coolest thing going on in space so like there's a lot of value to that you know we try to um to who um sell's the wrong word it's the word we use but sell's really the wrong word we're trying to get people to recognize that there's a platform in\n\nlow earth orbit and that uh this is important What's Done In Low Earth orbit has benefit to to uh those of us on Earth that will never actually go to space but in doing that you're trying to get their interest level and part of their interest level is the cool factor that you talked about and um and I've always kind of struggled with that being sort of a black and white I I understand the purpose in my head that's why I joined NASA right but um over the years this is one of the things that I've started to recognize as important so my question to you is um did we I've heard a rumor that for the suits for commercial crew that you wanted to play a role in that um and so is that true and and is there some reason behind the design of the suit that you want\n\nto personally be involved in other than crew safety yeah I think we' actually spent um a lot of effort on the space suit design um on the both the functionality and the Aesthetics but I I think just just getting um it's actually really hard because if you just sort of optimize functionality it's one thing if you optimize for Aesthetics it doesn't work like you know those things that you see movies they don't work so uh the the so so it's like okay how do we make something that looks cool and works um and um with with a key uh goal here of being being that um you know when people see that uh space suit they they we want them to think yeah I want to wear that thing one day yeah that looks awesome um so that that's uh that's the reason for it very good let's\n\nsee we'll do a couple more questions and then uh let's let's can we get back into in the back here or do we have somebody else here already with the microphone all right go ahead thank you and we'll do one more after that I'm Alex Pearlman um I'm with Boston magazine and I'm writing for vice today I was hoping uh that you could give us a little bit of an update on the most recent news with the idea of putting satellites um to provide internet to um developing countries and unconnected people thanks uh sure so we're still at the early stages of um sort of a big Leo constellation communication idea um and we're hopeful hopefully going to launch I get a test satellite next year um and but but I I I think the long-term potential of it is is pretty pretty\n\ngreat but I don't want to uh overplay or overstate you know things quite you know this you know or any stage of the game really but the the the the long-term goal is to to create a comprehensive Global Communication System um that's that provides high bandwidth low latency connectivity anywhere in the world um and provides cross links through the satellites so that you can uh have um improved long distance internet uh one of the things that um sort of you realize when you look at this is that um you can actually have a a more direct path uh through space and you can and photons move faster I mean depending upon what fiberoptic material they're running through uh photons actually move about 40 to 50% faster in in vacuum than they do in fiber optic cables\n\num and if you look at the the way that the fiberoptic cagles go they trace the outlines of the continents and they go through many repeaters and routers and everything so if you want to say communicate from a server in California to one in South Africa it's a very very long route and sort of very roundabout path um and it's high latency low photonic speed um and you could actually have that communication be quite a bit faster if it's in space um so I think there's there's the potential for for doing a fair bit of longdistance uh internet activity as well as providing um bandwidth broadly um but it's also withth saying that a lot of companies have uh tried this and kind of broken their pick on it um and I think we we want to be really careful about how\n\nwe deliberate about trying to make this thing work um and not not overextend ourselves so we're being we're being you know fairly careful about it but I I'm I do think this is something that should be built and would be quite good to have are you well in our case the the communications technology would be substantially more advanced um in the past with say um attempts like tadic uh the the the electronics of the day were um very low bandwidth I mean they're really analog or barely digital um and they weren't very high bandwidth so so it really didn't compete with say with terrestrial phones in the case of t they were looking to compete with or or to address cellular needs the system we're talking about would not attempt to compete with sell needs so for\n\nexample it wouldn't compete directly with say aridium which is which which can talk directly to a handset our system would seem to would seek to talk to a small uh user terminal that's about the size of a pizza box um or or much like uh you know current um dishes that I satellite dishes but but it will be flat cuz we have phased Ray antenna that's tracking the satellites um but you could mount it in a window or just anywhere outside as long as you can see the sky it would work see back here we'll take our last question back here hey Elon thanks for coming out um I would like to show you we brought a virtual reality camera here to record for the first time um we have a small startup in San Francisco called space VR and we believe that virtual reality is\n\nthe future of space exploration because you can put people on the very cutting the very front of every um every exploration mission is that something that you've given much thought or have any opinions on well I've I've gone I've received the virtual reality demos at uh Oculus and at valve um and it's pretty impressive um you can sort of imagine if that's extrapolated into the future it's really going to Super feel like you're there um and I wonder if some people are never going to want to take that off honestly um it's like it's pretty I mean it's pretty entrancing um but I I I do think it be quite exciting to do that for a space as well yeah uh do you have a setup here yeah okay it's right there wow okay um cool you have time launch the last one so\n\nyou want to come see okay um where are you based in where you based San Francisco okay um I think maybe today is going to be tricky but uh but but maybe uh since you're based in California uh I could we could arrange something um in you know in the coming weeks all right let's see Elon we'll uh we'll call it a a conference I wanted to first uh thank you very much you've been very generous with your time and we um you know from the moment I called you you were all in and uh it's really this open conversation and your your thoughts on uh on the on what's in front of us that uh really excites us all in this room so thank you very much for your time we really appreciate it yeah thank you thanks for having me all right right thanks again appreciate see you\n\nsoon","textByLang":{"en":"uh so it is my great honor to uh introduce a man who needs no introduction I'm not sure where he's at but I'm sure he's going to come in here somewhere where is he oh okay there you go um uh a gentleman who we can call Elon and everybody at least in this country I know exactly who you're talking about uh but Mr Elon Musk he's the uh CEO lead designer of SpaceX uh everyone I think knows this um SpaceX is an amazing um uh commercial company it's the first company to to launch uh commercial rocket into low earth orbit uh with their Falcon 1 launch uh then in 2008 they were one of the winners of a contract to uh bring services to the International Space Station they're the first commercial company to birth with the International Space Station bringing supplies\n\nthey're also the first commercial company to return a sizable return vehicle uh with the all the components still intact which is very important to us uh back to uh to the surface of the Earth and so it's an amazing company has done a great job um and continues to push the boundaries you you'll hear from Elon but his Interest really is not so much in low earth orbit as it is going Beyond low earth orbit and and making sure Humanity will continue to live uh by exploring beyond beyond Earth um Elon has a a varied uh history of things that he's been involved in this was this is one of the things that makes it so exciting to have this conversation with him today you he's not one-dimensional space guy he's involved in Tesla motors which he is a co-founder\n\nand CEO uh and also a a major player in the design efforts and what they choose to go build and and how um of course he was a co-founder of PayPal and zip 2 uh he's deeply involved in uh a number of other Industries as well and so it's my great honor to welcome Elon Musk to the stage thanks for coming appreciate it okay well these are great chairs you guys look at those chairs you're in um let's see so Elon you've uh you and I were going to have a little chat this morning we said it was going to be a fireside chat so minus the Fireside I guess we're ready um again I've as you heard I've encouraged folks to ask a few questions along the way but I have a few uh a few questions I thought to get us started so the first one which is probably on everybody's\n\nmind is perhaps you want to discuss a little bit about the the recent loss of the dragon and the in the Falcon 9 here on SpaceX 7 sure well I mean I think it's OB it's a huge um load to to SpaceX and um and or we take these missions incredibly seriously um the invest the everyone that can engage in the investigation at SpaceX is um very very focused on that and um in this case the the data does seem to be quite um difficult to interpret like whatever happened is is clearly not not a sort of simple straightforward thing um so we want to spend as much time as possible just reviewing the data obviously going over it with with NASA and with fa and with um number of other customers and just sort of seeing um what feedback everyone has based on their prior\n\nexperience um to see if we can get to what the uh most likely root cause is um look at look at both what we think most likely happened um and then anything that's a close call and try to address all of those things and maximize the probability of success for future missions any hints on where you think the problem lies you well I know the this there's media and the audience so they yeah so you have to be careful you're right I never really learned that but clearly that is a lesson now working on so so it's yeah I mean I um you know the I I think I think I think we'll be able to say something um more definitive towards the end of the week um at this point really the only thing that's really clear is that there was some kind of over pressure event in the\n\nupper stage liquid oxygen tank um but the the exact cause and the sequence of events there's there's still no uh clear uh theory that fits with all the data um so we have to determine if some of the data is u a measurement error of some kind or whether uh there is actually a theory that matches the the sort of what what appear to be conflicting data points okay very good I I'll just make a comment the tweets you put out regularly uh particularly when events like this happen uh are really useful to everybody we really do appreciate it you you'd be amazed at how many folks quote what you said and and and how how glad they are that you just step right out and at least give some sign about what's going on and that you know we'll get through it things are\n\ngoing well so we appreciate that absolutely and for sure um as soon as we we think we've got a clear line on on what what happened and we've sort of crosschecked it with as many experts as we can um and we certainly appreciate the the feedback from from NASA on this front very very much appreciated um the we'll certainly quite a put out that story my only reticence about saying something quite yet is I don't want to say something that subsequently turns out to be a Mis um misunderstanding of the situation oh yeah absolutely understand that so um one of the questions that I ask myself regularly is um at what point does all this government help hurt um so this event occurred and we have uh you have NASA folks uh there uh from from about three different\n\nprograms that intend to use your services ISS being one of them you have the FAA that's uh that's involved um the range uh folks are there um without feeling like you're giving your customers a hard time how is that interaction and uh what what should we consider doing differently so that we in those areas where we can help we are helpful and in those those areas where we're really keeping you from getting your job done we we can modify ourselves yeah actually I think the interaction with NASA has been great thus far um the the the biggest challenge is there there are um a lot of inquiries coming in simultaneously so uh it's it's hard to sort of keep you know respond respond to everyone right away but but actually it seems to have gone fairly well the\n\nthe biggest thing that's needed in the in the sort of short term is the ability to sort of gather all the data um create create a very precise timeline so you know by by the millisecond we know what each sensor was reading um and we can um correlate that with ground video and actually like one of the biggest challenges is matching the the things to the exact time you know because when you're talking about you know a matter of milliseconds um you know being able to say what is the ground track video compared to the data as received by the um you know by by the station from the rocket and then taking into account for exact the the actual time taken to generate a packet of information um when was that sensor read when was it encoded into a packet and when\n\nwas that packet sent to the ground um when when you're dealing in in milliseconds that all that stuff actually makes quite a big difference yeah sure um so the that's the the the biggest sort of effort we've um been engaged in thus far is just putting together super detailed uh timeline um and then just making sure that they have the sequence of of events down as precisely as possible that's what we' working on and um but but actually certainly uh with with um the interaction we've had with with NASA and with us it's actually been quite good thus far um and we've explained that this is what we're doing and um and then we we very much welcome any uh feedback or input or review of the data that would lead us to a better understanding of the circumstances\n\nI thought we had a very uh productive discussion back when we had the engine one anomaly and so I found it to be very useful uh but that's a perspective from from a NASA perspective so it's always interesting to know your perspective of that yeah it seems to be quite quite good actually right now yeah so um You're Building um in the last couple launches you've had Landing legs and you've uh been working on Landing um the first stage back uh eventually to shore can you talk a little bit about that and what your vision is for that and for SpaceX in general as you go forward sure well the the overarching uh goal of SpaceX is to try to advance the state of uh space transport um Advanced space transport technology to the point where um well it get as far along\n\nthe path as we can to to where uh space travel is hopefully common place at some point in the future and and where we can send large numbers of people cargo to other planets and you know it's like that's the sort of thing that that needs to happen for Humanity to have a great future in space so we want to keep pushing that and I think like key to uh to that future is reusability um so that's why we've worked quite hard on reusability unfortunately we we haven't um succeeded yet and in fact the last launch ironically was uh we we we actually had the best chance of Landing uh the vehicle on the on the this sort of drone ship that's keeping station in the Atlantic um so we're actually quite sort of geared up for for hopefully this would be a really great\n\nlaunch and unfortunately ended up being the the opposite on my birthday of all things um a real Downer you'll remember it though definitely low Point um but um but but I do think in in the future launches that that we've got a decent chance of landing on on the ship and then bringing the Boost AG back to land um and then the next challenge of course is trying to figure out how to efficiently effectively reuse it um and it is designed for easy reuse in theory um but we got to see what the stage looks looks like when it comes back in one piece MH um we we have been able to over the last few years do a number of vertical takeoff and Landing tests um of uh Hardware that's essentially in the flight configuration so we know we can we can handle the the the\n\nterminal phase if um you know if things go right we can take off the land no problem so it's just a question of uh completing all the the pieces and um hopefully later this year we'll be able to do that but that that that's key so but of course that doesn't address upper stage reuse but IT addresses boost age reuse which is sort of 70% to 80% of the of the of the cost um and um and but I think would be a great step towards uh uh lowering the the cost of space transport so you know if you look at your history uh I guess zip 2 payal these are um largely software type efforts now you've got Tesla electric uh cars uh you're building a battery plant um Solar City I guess you're involved in Solar City so why space this seems um space to me and just what I rate\n\nwe with you seems to be more of a passion than the others or our businesses but I I I can't tell why space why are you why do you think it's important for us to be sure have quick access to L orbit well the uh I mean actually technically I mean with with the uh Tesla and Solar City they're about helping to solve the sustainable energy problem um and uh so we're trying to make progress on that front on the with those companies um with with SpaceX it's uh trying to help um solve the kind of space bearing problem um I mean I I think that a a future where we're space spring civilization um and a multiplet species is very exciting inspiring awesome future um and in order for that to happen um we've got to um dramatically improve the cost of space flight um\n\nand uh and that's that's why why SpaceX exists is to try to try to lower the cost of space flight uh which we've made some progress in doing but still I would call a improvements thus far um evolutionary not revolutionary um and um but with with a lot of continued work I mean I think there's the potential for for um order of magnitude or greater improvements reusability being key to to all of that of course um and uh yeah and then hopefully you know we want to if if we can keep improving the the cost of space flight um then eventually if that trend is in the right direction it could be uh leading to a city on Mars and certainly along the way a lot of activity in lowth orbit and um the moon and you know lots of other exciting things so one of the things\n\nwe're trying to do with the International Space Station is um try to figure out which Industries will prosper from the use of low earth orbit to try to understand or or help grow the Eon an economy essentially in low earth orbit um and folks who are doing that are all taking risks today um our job is to try to reduce the risk as much as we can near term um so that they can get the information they need to really have a business case for the future but everyone's trying to to calculate a risk so is there an Elon Musk philosophy of risk vered benefit and when you when you think is the right time to jump in Ian what is your thought on on how to approach new Industries Innovative areas and when's the right time to jump in or not or do you just may is there\n\nno crystal ball or is it a crystal ball or Ouija board I mean how do you how do you figure out what you should go after well definitely the Ouija board of quot um much more reliable than the crystal ball um so uh the yeah I mean I I don't really like risk for risk seek or or anything it's and and I do think that um lot the things are are very risky uh with a low chance of success but if you want to try to come up with an Innovative breakthrough um that's kind of that's going to be how it is um anything which is significantly Innovative is going to come with a significant risk of failure um and um but you know if you've got to take big chances in order for the potential for a big positive outcome um and um you know just and if I mean if the outcome is\n\nexciting enough then then taking a big risk is worthwhile yeah it's really how I approach it but but then once executing down a path I actually do my absolute best to reduce uh risk you know because or or to improve the another way of saying to improve the probability of success because uh when you're trying to do something that is very um very risky uh that you you you have to spend a lot of effort trying to reduce that risk as you and walk down that path I mean when um when I saw basx the I thought the odds of success were very low um I thought we most likely fail um but I thought well we should give it a try nonetheless um and um then I'm not sure if you know what what what preceded SpaceX cuz the why I got into the space well I you I remember you\n\ntrying to purchase the a vehicle to from our Russian col you're talking about um well actually it was um the reason I got into space was to try to increase NASA's budget well God bless you then um the the and but so I'll tell you so the roundabout way I thought we that might be accomplished was um I thought well if if NASA's budget was more was larger than we could do more in space exploration and I thought well what work particularly if we could get the public excited about sending people to Mars and I thought well if I could do a small greenhouse and and send that to the surface of Mars with seeds and in um nutrient gel and you hydrate the gel and Landing you have a little miniature greenhouse and then you you'd have the public tends to get excited\n\nabout precedents and superlatives so be like the you know sort of first life on Mars the furthest life ever traveled and and get people sort of excited about well maybe we should send people there like the hell with plants we should people you know right right um and um and then um I thought well that could if if that could get the public really excited about sending fuel to Mars then that would translate into Congressional support for a bigger NASA budget that was the goal um and then I I didn't have enough money to buy uh and I thought that that outcome would have 100% chance of no no no commercial success so 100% chance of of losing all the money so um so compared to that SpaceX which I thought maybe had a 10 % chance of success that was an improvement\n\nthere you go well that makes that makes good sense so are you still thinking about that I do remember that conversation this was the idea where you used Martian reguli you send these self-contained habitats not habitats chamber kind of things and grow small yeah like a meter across or something but but just to prove the concept yeah just to get I mean the real goal was to get the public excited um you get some engineering data about what does it take to maintain a little habitat on Mars type of thing um but the main thing would be to get the public excited and you know get people to be you know the public to be in favor of a big an Assa budget that was the goal well again God Bless you that's a worthy goal I hope you don't stop so um commercial crew so\n\nyou've been selected as one of the providers for the commercial crew can you tell us a little bit about um where that's headed for you as a company and perhaps maybe how it's affected your company if it has if it's changed anything and how you approach space um I think things seem to be going fairly well on the commercial Crew front um I mean the I mean overall I think I mean like there are small disagreements here and there but overall I like I think we very much agree with the way it's being done um and um yeah I think it's it's it's pretty pretty good I mean there are a few things where the like it seems like the amount of of sort of mass and volume reserved for poop is too high like sorry I don't know that's like but that's you know there like little\n\nthings like that we're like well are they really going to do that much poop but um it's it's quite it's quite a large volume really is um so um I could really they're pretty small uh disagreement so I think that it seems to be pretty pretty sensible um and um and then we did the the launch a board test earlier this year which at the cape which um actually went went uh pretty well um and uh yeah so things are going going along getting pretty exciting um and um yeah I think there's also some potential use for Dragon 2 as um uh as a science delivery platform uh you know going to sort of delivering uh payloads to to Mars or other places um we're in discussion uh with other parts of NASA about some of those ideas because the propulsive landing uh you know\n\nit could really lower the cost of getting science instruments to various places in the solar system uh so it's kind of exciting so I'm going to come back to that in just a second but commercial the the crew vehicle versus the the dragon cargo vehicle clearly there are some significant differences um fairly Innovative approach I think to abort uh testing where traditionally you've seen the the jessen rocket on top that it's a puller versus The Pusher technique where you utilize fuel that you otherwise would use for the on orbit but of course you're not going in there so very Innovative approach are there other areas where you feel like you're um from an innovation standpoint you're making some significant strides with the crew vehicle yeah I think the\n\nthe the big items for well the the biggest item really for um Dragon 2 is the ability to do a propulsive landing um and it's basically H having heavy thrusters on board so those same heavy thrusters um can then do the abort but retain the the engines so instead of in a normal um sort of crude Mission like say take the soos for example they'd have a uh a tractor motor on the nose of the vehicle that would have to be basically a rocket engine on the nose that would have to be discarded on every flight um which is a potential reliability issue and it uh and then you have obviously unable to reuse the the the the abort system and um yeah and it adds you know adds bunch bunch of mass um but but then in addition those same thrusters can be used for propulsive\n\nlanding so you can achieve a precise pulsive Landing um which on on land or water um which is um I think a significant Improvement uh and um I mean it's sort of also it's sort of like really I think feels feels more like the future to to have that that capability um and then as I mentioned it for it can be extended to uh do payload delivery to to the moon or Mars or other places because of the the the generalized capability of propulsive Landing to to land land almost anywhere very good so uh let's go back to Dragon at one point you had a conversation talked a little bit about something I think was referred to as Dragon lab where you go to low earth orbit and do what I assumed was sorty kind of research and then and bring the vehicle back are you still\n\npursuing that or something like that is this an area where you think that there is a potential um I think that that there there is some potential for to essentially just take things to Lo orbit and then bring them bring them back you know after a few weeks or something like that um it's it's not a huge area of attention at at SpaceX but I think we might do a few missions like that um but uh yeah I mean dragon is is very much sort of its primary optim optimization is as a transport vehicle to in front the space station um and uh and so things like Dragon lab and then the science delivery platform I think are interesting extensions of that um and I think as as Dragon 2 um first flies and then gets into regular flight I think there'll probably will be some\n\nyou know more applications that that people can think of uh particularly since with Dragon 2 the reusability of the vehicle should be quite high so if we have reusability of the Dragon spacecraft and reusability of the the the the booster um and somebody's willing to sort of um do do a bunch of flights uh with with with the fully reused system there's the potential for for much lower cost uh access to space the the there is a bit of a chicken and egg challenge because like the there's a certain amount of fixed cost that have to be um carried no matter what so the the the marginal cost of launch or the cost of each subsequent launch can drop quite significantly so long as the launch rate per year is is High it stays up yeah of course that adds other challenges\n\nto the system yeah trying to fly as often as you as you need to to make that yep well let's see I I don't want to bore everybody with all my questions and we had talked about if folks had any questions in the audience let's see this oh wow they're not bashful that's good so I don't know if we're going to need microphones but but I'll I'll start here and I would like to ask you a question which is I'm coming from the solar energy so my question because uh you are like a kind of mentor and of visionary and you give hope to a lot of people around the globe because when they see you they realize that they can realize their dreams but my question is different uh when you are a dreamer when you are uh when you are a dreamer when you are a Visionary of course\n\nyou have your vision but there are moments that sometimes maybe you stop believing in this Vision especially in the moments of um some problems or failure so could you tell me and could you tell also to thousands of people who maybe will be motivated by your answer what keeps you fighting for your vision what helps you to well I mean I I think I'm kind of constitutionally just geared to to just keep going I don't know um it's uh um yeah I mean it just I I I don't know I mean it certainly there are times when you know things don't go well and then uh that's quite despera for sure um and so then it's it's difficult to proceed with the same level of enthusiasm um but um but I do think like I do think the things that we're doing are are you know pretty important\n\nto the Future um and if we don't succeed then you know there's well there's there's not it's not clear what other things would succeed um and if if we don't succeed then we will be certainly pointed to as a reason why people shouldn't even try for these things so uh I think it's important that we do whatever is necessary to keep going okay and uh last question last question you so in 2004 when you are going to Bary man with uh your cousin you were thinking there is a sun and let's make energy out of it yeah and I would like to ask you uh why uh do you believe uh so in solar energy and in and CLE Tech energies and also in sustainable energy and the last question I will not ask any more questions what will be the role of solar in the exploration of Mars\n\nsure um I think solar energy is probably fairly significant uh for Mars um and what's going to be quite important is having um a very lightweight solar system um that um you know both volumetrically and gravimetrically dance um so actually you were sort of playing with different concepts like um you know that like thing that potty thing where you inflate it and it rolls out the thing like what one of the solid Concepts is is to have like a big roll that you just basically inflate and it rolls out um with with with like really thin uh solar panels on it um but but it's it's going to be pretty important because really you either got to do that or nuclear um and um you know nuclear has has its challenges but but for solar it's it's pretty straightforward\n\num so I think I think solo is very important to the Future exploration of Mars for sure so thank you and I wish you that your next birthday is very successful thank you so much okay let's go let's go okay go ahead valtin okay my name is Valentino I am from the United rocket and space corporation uh which uh shortly will become a part of uh State Corporation Ros Cosmos uh so uh I made this long quest to the West because I'd like to ask one question of Elon Musk what is his secret to become a successful businessman in space industry and then coming back to Russia to tell Russian businessmen there is a way to become a tycoon in space industry so uh serious seriously speaking I'd like to ask you uh when you started your business was the government your partner\n\nwas it useful in what areas and so there are always two sides of the coin sure uh as there uh there were times when you uh had to fight bureaucracy thank you sure uh well um well I should say with respect to starting a space business it's definitely not the easiest environment to start a business um I think if most people were to rank order what's the highest uh return on investment I I mean space would not be very good um I mean it's I I I'm very Pro space so it's like I you know but it's um uh I mean it's just true that like if you you know start a hedge fund or if if you're in like many other Industries then you it's much easier to make money than the space industry this is not the easiest one to make money in um it's yeah um car industry also quite\n\n[Applause] difficult so um so the uh in fact I mean when starting SpaceX the the joke I I heard the joke this this joke so often it was ridiculous um the joke was how do you make a small fortune in the space industry and the punch line of course being start with a large [Applause] one yeah I I got I point i' heard the joke so many times that I would just get to the punchline and say like well I wanted to figure out how to turn a large Fortune into a small one that was my goal and they're like wow how did he know that um so um yeah that I mean I do think there's there is opportunity in space but but it is is it's it's a it's it's tough goinging I think if um but I think if if if SpaceX and other companies can can lower the cost of transport to to orbit\n\nand perhaps Beyond um then there's a lot of potential for entrepreneurship at the destination I mean you can think of it like the like the Union Pacific Railway you know uh before there was the UN Pacific Railway was real hard to have commerce between the west coast and the East Coast um if go buy a wagon or a really long sailing Journey uh but once there was the transport then there were huge opportunities and now look at sort of you know California and Washington State and and and all the industries that have been created in Silicon Valley and Hollywood um but you you got to have that fundamental transport element otherwise there's just it's really tricky um so we're trying to establish that transport element um make it easier to get to lowth orbit\n\num and hopefully in the future make it easier to get to the moon or Mars um and I I do have this long-term vision of like if if there was affordable transport to to a place like Mars I think the entrepreneurial opportunities would be phenomenal you know because there'd be people that would want to create everything from the first pizza joint to the first Iron or factory to be like just a enormous amount of opportunity for people to create things on Mars and there' be different things on some of the things on Mars would be different that we don't even imagine uh on Earth um be very exciting um so I think that's that's really key to um making things happen in space is you got to have some place you got to have some place to go and some place and some way\n\nto get there so yeah so so along those lines did you you read Andy wear's book The the Martian yeah yeah it was good what did you think um I thought it was it was pretty excellent certainly one of the most realistic books on Mars that um that I've read I mean like there were a few things like the wind force on Mars is not really that high well there um it's not going to knock you over or anything um it's high obviously High Velocity but low Force um but overall um I thought it was pretty cool and apparently it's been made into a movie and everything so um you don't you don't have a cameo on that one too I don't have a cameo on that one I'm I'm a little worried that it might not make people too keen on going to Mars U was like this is looks really hard\n\nI think we need a show about AAS is awesome and it's like the wild west and you got the Gunslingers and like the cool Cowboys and that kind of thing all all right maybe you got to write a book too let's see there's a question over here go ahead hi there my name is Anita goell I'm here at uh out of Harvard MIT run a company called nanobio Sim so uh in your vision and dream to achieve lowcost space travel how do you allocate your Investments between engineering and essentially driving down the cost of existing technology versus investing in new breakthrough physics uh things like Breakthrough propulsion physics anti-gravity what's your vision in the bifurcation of those two kinds of portfolios well we don't spend a ton of time on U physics um I the I think\n\nwith with current physics there the huge potential um so rather than rely on a breakthrough which we you know really it's difficult to Invision what that breakthrough would exactly be um or even inexactly be um the I'm quite confident that with what we know of current physics sort of just going with kind of you know where the standard model of physics is today that there are dramatic improvements possible in space light um and I think with the you know certainly with with Falcon 9 I think we can make improvements and then with our next Generation rocket system which is still you know many years away that'll be um a deep cryo methalox system um I think I think we can achieve full reusability um and that that's really that's a that's a huge potential for\n\num you know like maybe a two order of magnitude reduction in the cost of space flight um so um as far as R&D is concerned like we we we we we hire grade Engineers as fast as we can find them um so it's like the it's not that easy to find I should say great Engine with the sort of like the right mindset and everything um we we hire at at the at the maximum rate that we can find people that we think would would really be an asset to the team so there's no limitation on that okay over here hi my name is Zachary malt I'm a student from uh Babson College I just want to say it's an honor to be here um I read Ashley V's biography about you one thing that really was intriguing to me was the um super Draco engine for the dragon V2 that was um used printed out\n\nof a 3D technology do you envision using that technology more in the future and um when you first SP exploration and do you think that'll um how will that affect the costs in terms of getting to Mars everything like that yeah Absol absolutely so um as you alluded to we we um we actually print the super Draco engines um so they they're printed out of titanum inel um and um and that actually allows us to uh reduce the cost of those engines quite a bit uh in particular because we can print integral cooling channels so when you've got an hour glass chamber um and you've got cooling channels in in the wall of the chamber where the whole wall can consist of cooling channels um it's normally quite difficult to create that uh thrust chamber or nozzle um because\n\nyou got to create an inner jacket outer jacket kind of machine the the inner jacket it's and then bra the whole thing together it's real pain um and you got a bunch of joints in there to make it all work so with printing you can print something that you can't make by any other means so it's actually ends up being lighter and cheaper than if we built it by traditional methods um for our next Generation engine which we call the the Raptor which which as I mentioned is sort of a um it's it's a it's a deep cryome methyls so what I mean by that is the the methane and oxygen are cooled to close to their freezing points so not not far from the freezing point as opposed to close to their boiling point um which is more which is normally the case uh the uh you\n\nknow with that engine uh we're trying to print as much as possible it's it's a bit the biggest limitation on 3D printing right now is the the size envelope so there's a limit on how big we can print something um but we're able to print the the turbo pump components and much of the injector not the whole thing but but many of the critical parts we can print um so that actually helps us in speeding up the development so instead of waiting for castings to be developed which can take several months um and then if the cast is wrong you've got to iterate on the casting and each iteration can take several months um with printing we can those iterations can be reduced to a matter of weeks or months so that that actually helps with the the speed of development\n\nas well see over here hi uh I'm Ross Spong rock with a company called high orbit I wondered if you give could give us a little bit of an update on uh what's going on with the hyperloop and is there any over between the worker Doom with SpaceX and hyperloop Technology yeah SpaceX is not neither I nor SpaceX are doing anything to try to commercialize the hyper Loop um there are I think at least two maybe more than two companies that have formed that are completely independent of me or SpaceX that are working towards commercializing the hyperloop um techn or hyperloop idea or design um what what SpaceX is doing is we're we're we're going to just create a little uh Student Competition uh for for h Loop ideas so kind of like around the the way that Formula\n\nSAE Works where students um come up with a design and compete against each other to design the best pod so what what SpaceX will do is just construct about a mile long um uh uh low pressure tube near nearly vacuum tube basically um in which students can kind kind of race their pods um so we're it's just basically to support uh get get students excited about uh engineering that's the that's the only involvement to space Tex myself with the hyperloop at this point okay over here hello I'm paa castano I'm a sociologist and I'm writing a book about the International Space Station um how would you describe the scientific value of the International Space Station and where would you draw the line between luxury and need when it comes to space exploration well\n\nI mean I for space I mean I really spend all of my time thinking about just how to get to the space station um to be honest I I um I actually hadn't even really seen a proper movie of the inside of the space station until I went to see the a preview of the new IMX thing that's coming out and it's amazing like when that space station IMAX movie comes out people are going it blown away it's awesome um I actually brought my whole team at at SpaceX to go uh go see the preview of the of the IMX movie um and um I mean it it's like it is a very unique uh Laboratory um because this the only thing that's in sort of microgravity um that's above the Earth's atmosphere um um and you can learn a lot about basically human physiology uh and do experiments that you can't\n\nreally do any any other lab um and um you know and you can have bring scientists up and they can actually work in this incredibly unique lab so I think that there's a lot to to to be gained there um and um and I think it just you can't sort of you know ignore the coolness factor of it like that's like people think it's pretty cool so I think it's pretty cool um and you know the the public want to have something going on in space that that involves people and um yeah and it's it's just um I don't know it's the coolest thing going on in space so like there's a lot of value to that you know we try to um to who um sell's the wrong word it's the word we use but sell's really the wrong word we're trying to get people to recognize that there's a platform in\n\nlow earth orbit and that uh this is important What's Done In Low Earth orbit has benefit to to uh those of us on Earth that will never actually go to space but in doing that you're trying to get their interest level and part of their interest level is the cool factor that you talked about and um and I've always kind of struggled with that being sort of a black and white I I understand the purpose in my head that's why I joined NASA right but um over the years this is one of the things that I've started to recognize as important so my question to you is um did we I've heard a rumor that for the suits for commercial crew that you wanted to play a role in that um and so is that true and and is there some reason behind the design of the suit that you want\n\nto personally be involved in other than crew safety yeah I think we' actually spent um a lot of effort on the space suit design um on the both the functionality and the Aesthetics but I I think just just getting um it's actually really hard because if you just sort of optimize functionality it's one thing if you optimize for Aesthetics it doesn't work like you know those things that you see movies they don't work so uh the the so so it's like okay how do we make something that looks cool and works um and um with with a key uh goal here of being being that um you know when people see that uh space suit they they we want them to think yeah I want to wear that thing one day yeah that looks awesome um so that that's uh that's the reason for it very good let's\n\nsee we'll do a couple more questions and then uh let's let's can we get back into in the back here or do we have somebody else here already with the microphone all right go ahead thank you and we'll do one more after that I'm Alex Pearlman um I'm with Boston magazine and I'm writing for vice today I was hoping uh that you could give us a little bit of an update on the most recent news with the idea of putting satellites um to provide internet to um developing countries and unconnected people thanks uh sure so we're still at the early stages of um sort of a big Leo constellation communication idea um and we're hopeful hopefully going to launch I get a test satellite next year um and but but I I I think the long-term potential of it is is pretty pretty\n\ngreat but I don't want to uh overplay or overstate you know things quite you know this you know or any stage of the game really but the the the the long-term goal is to to create a comprehensive Global Communication System um that's that provides high bandwidth low latency connectivity anywhere in the world um and provides cross links through the satellites so that you can uh have um improved long distance internet uh one of the things that um sort of you realize when you look at this is that um you can actually have a a more direct path uh through space and you can and photons move faster I mean depending upon what fiberoptic material they're running through uh photons actually move about 40 to 50% faster in in vacuum than they do in fiber optic cables\n\num and if you look at the the way that the fiberoptic cagles go they trace the outlines of the continents and they go through many repeaters and routers and everything so if you want to say communicate from a server in California to one in South Africa it's a very very long route and sort of very roundabout path um and it's high latency low photonic speed um and you could actually have that communication be quite a bit faster if it's in space um so I think there's there's the potential for for doing a fair bit of longdistance uh internet activity as well as providing um bandwidth broadly um but it's also withth saying that a lot of companies have uh tried this and kind of broken their pick on it um and I think we we want to be really careful about how\n\nwe deliberate about trying to make this thing work um and not not overextend ourselves so we're being we're being you know fairly careful about it but I I'm I do think this is something that should be built and would be quite good to have are you well in our case the the communications technology would be substantially more advanced um in the past with say um attempts like tadic uh the the the electronics of the day were um very low bandwidth I mean they're really analog or barely digital um and they weren't very high bandwidth so so it really didn't compete with say with terrestrial phones in the case of t they were looking to compete with or or to address cellular needs the system we're talking about would not attempt to compete with sell needs so for\n\nexample it wouldn't compete directly with say aridium which is which which can talk directly to a handset our system would seem to would seek to talk to a small uh user terminal that's about the size of a pizza box um or or much like uh you know current um dishes that I satellite dishes but but it will be flat cuz we have phased Ray antenna that's tracking the satellites um but you could mount it in a window or just anywhere outside as long as you can see the sky it would work see back here we'll take our last question back here hey Elon thanks for coming out um I would like to show you we brought a virtual reality camera here to record for the first time um we have a small startup in San Francisco called space VR and we believe that virtual reality is\n\nthe future of space exploration because you can put people on the very cutting the very front of every um every exploration mission is that something that you've given much thought or have any opinions on well I've I've gone I've received the virtual reality demos at uh Oculus and at valve um and it's pretty impressive um you can sort of imagine if that's extrapolated into the future it's really going to Super feel like you're there um and I wonder if some people are never going to want to take that off honestly um it's like it's pretty I mean it's pretty entrancing um but I I I do think it be quite exciting to do that for a space as well yeah uh do you have a setup here yeah okay it's right there wow okay um cool you have time launch the last one so\n\nyou want to come see okay um where are you based in where you based San Francisco okay um I think maybe today is going to be tricky but uh but but maybe uh since you're based in California uh I could we could arrange something um in you know in the coming weeks all right let's see Elon we'll uh we'll call it a a conference I wanted to first uh thank you very much you've been very generous with your time and we um you know from the moment I called you you were all in and uh it's really this open conversation and your your thoughts on uh on the on what's in front of us that uh really excites us all in this room so thank you very much for your time we really appreciate it yeah thank you thanks for having me all right right thanks again appreciate see you\n\nsoon"},"languages":["en"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZmEg95wPiVU"},{"id":"ft-future-of-the-car-summit-2015-05-12","type":"interview","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VfyrQVhfGZc","title":"FT Future of the Car Summit","titles":{"en":"FT Future of the Car Summit","de":"FT Future of the Car Summit","fr":"FT Future of the Car Summit"},"date":"2015-05-12","summary":"Financial Times keynote interview with Musk on autonomy, Tesla's roadmap and the future of the automobile.","text":"2022 we're very glad you can be with us whether you're here in the room in central London or joining us on our Global live stream my name is Peter Campbell I'm the Global Motor industry correspondent at the ft and it is a great pleasure to introduce and share this session for you let me tell you how this is going to work in a few minutes we're going to have JB Straubel back on stage and Elon Musk joining us remotely but it's going to spend the first 10 to 15 minutes of the session talking about the history of Tesla now these two guys were Central to the company and its growth and everything it has achieved to date and they have never before appeared on stage together to talk about the origins of the business so this is a unique chance to ask them about\n\nthat and hear about that and then for the rest of the session we're going to have time just with Elon on his own where we'll have questions about Tesla today and tomorrow and maybe one or two questions about some other projects He has going on just a reminder to you please do ask your questions on the chat box or if you're in the room using slido but with no further Ado because of all our guests here's the one who needs least introduction I'd like you to welcome back to the stage JB straable and joining us remotely Elon Musk thank you good evening thank you so much for being with us both of you I want to go back to something that was alluded to earlier in the session and the lunch that changed the world as Patrick called us when the two of you sat down\n\nand came up with a plan that led to Tesla take us through that who started it whose idea was the lunch where did it go Elon we'd love you to start I'm sure well actually and JB uh completely I think we could hear maybe his perspective as well um but uh uh yeah I got a call uh someone out of the blue uh from uh JV and um uh Rosen um uh and I I think once I'm not sure exactly what the subject matter was but it was it's something involving space or maybe hydrogen airplanes or something and um so we got together for lunch and at some point the conversation turned to electric vehicles and um uh had uh JB and and Rosner both worked on an electric vehicle company um that I guess ultimately wasn't successful and I mentioned that uh the I I'd actually had a strong\n\ninterest in electric vehicles for a long time and I thought electric vehicles were the future of transport and um and in fact I had worked at a company developing high-ended density capacitors uh Ultra capacitors for potential use in electric vehicles and that was going to be my area of study during Graduate Studies at Stanford which ultimately uh dropped out of but um anyway that led to jba suggesting that I get a test drive in the the t0 Prototype from AC propulsion which is a small company in Southern California and um because that sort of had a proof of concept uh electric sports car and um I said that'd be great I'd love to get a test drive and that was in 2003 and um and and then I I did I get it got a test drive in the the t0 um and I tried to\n\nconvince them to commercialize the t0 I tried very hard actually to to get AC propulsion to commercialize the the t0 electric sports car um and then after they um they they said they really did not want to do that um I I said well do you mind if uh then I do that if you mind if I I create a commercial uh electric sports car and they said yeah no problem and so uh my you know that my intent was to basically create and uh company to commercialize the the t0 with JB um and uh and then the uh to engage AC propulsion said well you know there's some other uh groups that also want to commercialize the t0 uh concept and uh what do you what do you think about teaming up with them and um and one of the groups that was introduced to me uh was uh uh Mark toppening\n\nat Ian Wright and what never had uh that but but it's very important to emphasize that there was no actual company of the that existed in any meaningful form at that point so it was really just three guys and then JB and me and and then we decided to team up and create a an exploration create a commercial version of the t0 electric sports car um yeah I mean JB at any uh what's what's your perspective no that that's a pretty uh pretty close history of how I remember it as well and and uh I mean my perspective on the thing was us trying to to chat with you about this electric hydrogen airplane concept that we were uh you know I was at the time trying to work on and and uh I do recall that not going extremely well actually for the first part of the lunch\n\nI think uh I can't remember the color colorful adjectives you used but they weren't they weren't very uh you weren't very excited about the hydrogen airplane for good reason um so yeah then I think our our topics our conversation completely turned to talking about Lithium-ion batteries you know state of the art of Lithium-ion batteries and what was possible potentially possible you know stringing together you know at the time large numbers of small Lithium-ion batteries which were you know not very mature in those days but but could be potentially connected into really big battery packs to make make an EV that could potentially have hundreds of miles of range which you know today seems kind of you know commonplace but in 2003 it was absolutely unheard\n\nof it would literally set World Records you know for range and uh yeah I mean you you uh you understood that concept I think in the potential of it better than anyone else that uh that we'd ever talk to about it and were immediately enthused about it and excited so that was I mean shortly after as you said you know we met up with AC propulsion and uh uh kind of We're Off to the Races and then what there were a lot of early rejections when you talked to some car makers obviously you settled on Lotus for the first Roadster um but you went around some others was there ever a point you know between the lunch and and getting the Roadster off the ground where you almost gave up you thought that actually you couldn't make it work not from a chemistry point of\n\nview but commercially I mean I can jump in maybe first on that you know there were a lot of challenges in those early days I mean the the technology was not um it was not a sure thing that all those pieces would work together and and uh you know some of the the safety aspects around the battery were pretty thorny in the early days and uh it was before I think most people had figured out how to you know manage that and um I think in at Tesla I think we had an early you know chance to really you know figure that out in a very robust way and you know make them far far safer than internal combustion actually has proved out to be through the statistics and through data um but that was not the common perception so so that was that was hard and that was risky\n\nuh obviously there were a lot of financial turns and tribulations it wasn't exactly smooth sailing from idea of an electric Roadster through into commercialization uh it was it was a insane nightmare basically um and uh we screwed the pooch six ways to Sunday um and made so many mistakes it's embarrassing um basically the almost everything about the first design of the Tesla Roadster was wrong um and wouldn't work um but uh and the we didn't first of all we had no idea how to build a car uh so uh and and then no one really knew how to build a you know a a commercial uh lithium-ion battery car uh no one had ever done it um so um so like the original idea sort of uh which sounds appealing but was fundamentally flawed was to um use the Lotus Elise chassis\n\num and then combine that with AC propulsions drivetrain technology and and boom you've got like very the two pieces necessary to create a car it should be straightforward uh and um just do that and and and uh great uh unfortunately uh those were uh two fundamentally flawed uh premises the um the Lotus Elise chassis did not work uh meaning that so the car ended up being 40 heavier and we couldn't fit the battery pack in the Elise it was a very tiny car so we had to change basically everything about the Elise I think we kept maybe six percent of the parts were in common uh all crash tests were invalidated the structure was invalidated because of the the the greater mass and the mass distribution being fundamentally different from a gasoline car and um yeah\n\nuh if right it in retrospect it would have actually been much smarter to start from with a clean sheet design and not try to modify the Elise because we ended up with a lot of the limitations of the Elise but almost nothing to gain in terms of reuse of parts so that was a staggeringly dumb decision um and then uh on the on the drivetrain side it turned out that I think almost none of the AC propulsion Technologies were viable in a uh production car um I mean JB did we end up using any of the AC propulsion stuff pretty much nothing by the time it went to the first customer yes it was a very it was a very helpful first proof of concept that uh maybe pointed the way that was what might be possible but none of it was uh I mean the commercial commercializing\n\nall of it as Elon said was uh was a lot of mistakes and trials and tribulations and uh it was very hard to build more than two of those motor controllers in the first days with analog components those were still analog motor control I mean it would get hot and the motor would perform differently you know the throttle would respond differently in a hot day versus a cold day so yeah everything pretty much had to be redone from scratch So Gone so so what we're saying is that we're huge idiots and we're totally wrong about the the fundamental premises of creating the Tesla Roadster um uh uh and you ended up not being able to use any of the AC propulsion drivetrain technology uh using essentially almost none of the original Lotus lease um but we're still left\n\nwith a lot of the limitations of the Elise being a car that was a bit too small very difficult to get in and out of um and very Bare Bones um and an independent on Lotus to make it and then every time Lotus would have financial difficulties they would increase the price on us and uh and charge us more money um so uh that made it very difficult to um control the price of the car uh so um and then the supply chain was also a complete mess the initial idea was to basically Outsource everything and uh then uh almost none of the companies to which we outsourced the various parts of the cars were able to succeed in making those parts so we had to find a new supplier for the car body um because or Cyrus Supply originally picked was flat out unable to do it um\n\nthis was not a decision that I was building but the we had outsourced making the battery to a barbecue uh company in in Thailand um this is a bit silly uh to say okay we're going to make the most sophisticated battery ever made um and the Barbecue Company is going to make it um that obviously they did not know how to make uh um it was pretty silly um so we're at the end Source battery production to California we made it basically ended up making the battery ourselves um uh yeah it's one thing after another basically uh just a flat out uh running dumpster fire of stupidity I would say was the beginning of the company um and uh and then we had to recover from there and it was very difficult so there are lots of other EV startups out there potentially in\n\nthe hundreds today all wanting to do what you did you guys uh you blazed the trail 10 years before the industry really caught up with you you had the advantage of having no one else playing in the same area but the disadvantage that all the time you were trying to break through Virgin Snow was it more difficult to do it 10 years ago than you think it is today and if if there's one piece of advice that you could offer to the various EV startups what would it be well I I mean I I think most of them just completely forget about the first like eight to ten years of Tesla that's the kind of amazing part to me you know they kind of see success and then they're like oh that looks good let's do that let's let's be one let's do you know copy that but um I mean\n\nit was it was brutal confusion and tons of mistakes and a lot of money invested for a lot of years um I personally think it's a lot actually harder today even still for a startup to compete because the first question is so what is the niche that even makes sense to have a new startup EV company relative to all the products from other oems or to Tesla you know what are they going to do better than Tesla Tesla didn't exist there was no Tesla in the world 17 years ago so that that was sort of the imperative and gave a Runway to to make a lot of mistakes and still make it work you know yeah I think just it's very important to uh emphasize here the you know I think um something I wouldn't uh JB would have wanted to go through the extreme pain of creating electric\n\nan electric car company if the traditional automakers were going to make an electric make electric cars um and you know just an important thing for the world that needs to happen to move to a sustainable technology future and but but if at the time that we created Tesla uh the there were no startups doing electric cars and the uh the big car companies had uh really no electric car programs going and the few tiny tiny electric car programs the head guard they were shutting down so therefore unless we try to create an electric car there was not one going to be created um it's not from the standpoint of thinking hey uh here's a super lucrative idea let's make start a car company the history of Cart Company startups is horrific um that and they've almost\n\nall gone bankrupt it's an incredibly big grave Rock great graveyard of car startups that all died um you've only heard a tiny number of them you know sort of the tacos and Deloreans of the world but there are hundreds of others that people didn't hear about um so and and at this point in the United States the only two American card companies that have not gone bankrupt are Ford and Tesla and Tesla went back almost went bankrupt so many times I lost count so basically it's a world of hurt to start a car company is Mega pain it is not easy money it's the furthest thing for easy money you could possibly imagine um so uh and what I see with some of these new car companies is that they are they're jumping in at the defend and trying to create a high volume\n\nvehicle that when they have never made a vehicle before this is um but you know not practicing your athletic Sport and then going to the Olympics you're not going to win this is crazy um you really need to start out small make your mistakes at a small scale um and make sure you've got a lot of reserved capital and then gradually build up from the dumb things that you do at the beginning and be less dumb over time otherwise what will happen is a vast uh losses of money um the car industry is very competitive it's it's it's the opposite of a natural monopoly you have sort of national monopolies in things like social media or say Google search um by card companies so naturally uh I'm not monopolies they're hyper competitive and they're used to being hyper\n\ncompetitive uh throughout the world they have entrenched customers dealers service actories uh existing expertise these are these are veteran veteran armies like in in fortresses so it's like it's yeah I mean it's extremely difficult now you happen to mention in that answer the word social media which brings us very neatly onto the question of uh Twitter so JB I'm going to say thank you so much that was fascinating a brief history there of Tesla and the early years and the mistakes that you made um so thank you very much for being with us on stage thank you well the Twitter friend is not a lot that I can say uh because you know this is that Twitter's publicly traded company and um you know there are a lot of constraints in what I can say so not sure what\n\nyou would like to ask but most of the questions the answer is going to be no comment that's all right I can have a go let me ask you to put your product development hat on and if you pair Twitter all the way back what is it and what do you think it can be in 10 years time well what I said is that I think Twitter um is currently the the best or looked at another way the least bad uh Public Square um if a forum for the exchange of ideas uh nationally and internationally and and but I think it could be a lot better at that in order to be better at that it needs to really get rid of the the Bots and the the scams and spammers and you know basically and and anyone trying to uh create sort of fake influence on the side pipe whereas one person or one entity\n\noperating 100 000 accounts um or you know obviously scammers are not good um and and Twitter really uh at least do a much better job at that um the it also needs to build trust more trust with users I think the way to do that is by open sourcing the algorithm so everyone can see how the algorithm works and can uh suggest improvements and changes I would literally literally just put the uh the Twitter algorithm on on GitHub and say like hey anyone want to suggest changes to this please go ahead um and and just you really want transparency to build trust and then any any change any sort of adjustments to tweets or uh in any human intervention uh with any account on Twitter should be highlighted as a Twitter person took of the following action with your\n\naccount or with this tweet so that you're not sort of sitting there in the dock wondering why did this tweet not get any attention or why did this one get a lot of attention um it's far too random um and um you know and then I think Twitter needs to be much more even-handed it currently has a strong left bias uh because it's based in San Francisco I don't think people that they're necessarily intent I or at least have some of them don't attend to to have a left bias they're just from their perspective uh it seems moderate but they're just coming at it from an environment that is that is very far left so uh but but then this this fails to build trust into in the rest of the United States and and also perhaps in other parts of the world uh because uh Twitter\n\nneeds to be even-handed and and be um you know I think I said publicly uh Victory would be that the um the most far right 10 and the most part left 10 percent are equally upset um like I don't think this is a situation where you're going to get necessarily of Praise you're just gonna you're just gonna balance the anger so how how do you because people well people and will automatically associate you with Tesla and you with Twitter is there any risk in your mind that the actions that you're going to take at Twitter which you've admitted freely will upset some people um potentially lead to a commercial impact on Tesla um I'm confident that we will be able to sell all the cars we can make I mean currently the the lead time for ordering a Tesla is ridiculously\n\nso our issue is not demand it is production but that's at the moment because of the global Supply chains and the chip shortages that's less around electric car demand which we are expecting to go absolutely through the roof and you obviously have very ambitious targets for that at Tesla yeah I mean even before there was uh the supply chain issues Tesla uh demand exceeded production so um now now it's Advantage exceeding production to a ridiculous degree um uh we're actually probably going to limit uh just stop taking orders for for anything beyond uh a certain period of time because you know some of the timing is like a year away uh so um anyway uh the the frustration that we're seeing from customers is uh under being unable to to get them a car um not\n\nuh are they willing or interested in buying a car um so our basically I think zero about demand generation and a lot about production and engineering and supply chain I I have two more questions on Twitter if I may before we turn for the rest of the session um to Tesla how confident are you the deal will happen and is there a risk this is all one question and is there a risk um because you're putting a lot of your personal stake up for this to fund it is there a risk that if it all goes south you're imperiling your stake in Tesla potentially hurting Tesla financially and maybe even SpaceX um if it all goes to pod that's the technical term sure um so I mean I think there's still a lot of things that need to get done before the steal concludes obviously\n\nthere's not yet even been a shareholder vote um and and Twitter has not yet filed the proxy for a shareholder vote um so there are still you know some outstanding questions that need to be resolved um and uh so it is certainly not a done deal that just objectively it is not a gonna deal um you know the best case scenario is that this would be yeah I think perhaps done in in uh two or three months um yeah and the final question and this is this is really the two paid elephant in the room are you planning to let Donald Trump back on well I I think there's there's a general question of should was it Twitter have women at bands um and you know I've talked with Jack Dorsey about this and uh he and I are of the same mind which is that uh permanent fans should\n\nbe uh extremely rare and really reserved for uh people where they're trying to uh for for accounts that are uh Bots or spam scam accounts where there's just no legitimacy to the account at all um I I do think that uh it was not correct to ban Donald Trump I think that was that was a mistake um because it uh it alienated a large part of the country and did not ultimately result in Donald Trump not having a voice he is not going to be on Truth social um as will a large part of the sort of the the right in the in the United States um and so I think this could end up being frankly worse than having a you know a single form where everyone can debate um so um I guess the answer is that I I I would reverse the Perma ban I would say I'm not I don't own Twitter\n\nyet so this is not like a thing that will definitely happen because what if I don't own Twitter uh but my opinion and Jack Dorsey I want to be clear shares this opinion uh is that we should not have permabads um now now that doesn't mean that somebody gets to say whatever they wanted to say if they say something that is uh illegal or um otherwise you know uh just you know just destructive to the world then then that there should be perhaps a timeout a temporary suspension or that particular tweet uh should be uh uh made invisible or or have very limited uh traction um but I think pro events just fundamentally undermine trust in Twitter as a Town Square uh where everyone can voice their opinion it was a fun I think it was a morally bad decision to be clear\n\nand and foolish in the extreme even even after he egged on the crowd who went to the U.\n\nS Capitol some of them carrying nooses you still think it was a mistake to remove him I think the if there are tweets that are wrong they should and bad those should be uh uh either deleted or made it visible and a suspension uh a temporary suspension is appropriate but not a permanent ban so if the deal completes he might potentially come back on but with the understanding that if he does something similar again he'll be back in the Simpson uh he has publicly stated that he will not be coming back to Twitter and that he will only be on true social and this is the point that I'm trying to make which is perhaps not getting across is that there is that banning Trump from Twitter didn't end Trump's voice it will amplify it among the rights and this is why\n\nit is morally wrong and flat out stupid okay thank you we will um let's turn uh to Tesla again I'd like to ask you about your Ambitions for the future you've said you want the company to be able to make 20 million cars a year by 2030 which would make it the same size as Toyota and Volkswagen combined today um give us a sense what does the business look like by 2030 to make 20 million cars plants for prints models yes well this is not a form for announcing new product is new Tesla products um the uh the 20 million by 2030 is an aspiration not a promise um and the the reason for uh aiming for something like that is there are approximately two billion uh cars and trucks in the world and for us to really make a dent in sustainable energy and electrification\n\nuh I think we need to to replace at least one percent of the fleet per year uh to really be meaningful um and and that's that's where the 20 million units comes from uh is is let's let's try to replace one percent of the global wage of two billion cars and trucks per year and um that's our aspiration it's not a promise it's an aspiration uh I think we've got a good chance of getting there and uh people will see based on the products that we unveil uh we'll be able to judge for themselves whether that goal is realistic or not now you've gone from zero plants to four plants that would require you to get to possibly about 20 plants depending how they're wrapped up is that phase more difficult what you've got ahead of you by 2030 than what's gone behind given\n\nyou've already done it or do you still think it's more difficult to ramp to that level foreign I think it's close it's roughly [Music] um the sheer amount of stuff that tails is done is I think quite mind-boggling uh we have an incredible team at Tesla and um executing very well and our annual growth rates are faster than any large manufacturer product in the history of Earth but I think the next fastest was the growth of the Model T and we're faster than the Model T so you know if that growth rate continues then obviously we will reach 20 million Vehicles a year but we may stumble and and uh and uh not reach that goal so um but I'd say on roughly it's roughly equally difficult to have gotten to this point as will be to get to 20 million and what's the\n\nbiggest uncertainty with getting to 2030 is it manufacturing ramping is it the raw materials is it something else um there are some raw material constraints that we see coming um in the theme production probably in about three years um and in cathode production the cathode the two main cathode choices are nickel and uh iron phosphate um obviously iron is extremely plentiful the Earth is uh 32 Iron by composition so uh if a little bit of trivia if someone says what is Earth made of the single biggest element that Earth is made of is iron the second biggest element that Earth is made of is oxygen which is about 30 30 of Earth Mass so clearly is not not in short supply um uh the the phosphate is slightly more of a challenge but still quite common um so I\n\ndo not see any fundamental scaling constraints and lithium is also quite common so lithium is practically everywhere uh the so so this is not a question of a shortage of of like as though it's some Rare Element it's really just that the um the lithium Mining and especially the refining capacity and and that of the of taking iron or phosphorus and turning it into battery grade iron phosphate um or or nickel and turning it into battery grade nickel uh is it's really the the equipment I think this the single exist right would be the equipment necessary to convert the ore into battery grade materials we're working on that with suppliers so I'm not saying that this is an impossible thing to address it is simply uh one of the problems along the way to getting\n\n20 million vehicles lfp batteries are much less recyclable than the other batteries you use how much of that is an issue in terms of overall environmental impact of what the company does if you end up using lots and lots of them uh no the word she said is not true uh iron phosphate batteries are fully recyclable I'm not sure we're getting your information but iron phosphate is equally recyclable and so is that store nickel base batteries um thank you I stand corrected um can I ask why you think Tesla needs to grow so much by 2030 because the what you set out when you in the early years was that you wanted Tesla to help um tilt the world away from fossil fuels and to some extent it looks like it's already succeeded um yes I I think you're sort of putting\n\ntoo much emphasis on this 20 million Vehicles by 20 30 as though this is some Grand promise uh some heal upon which we will die um that is it is simply an aspiration um and we may we may achieve it or we may not um uh we our goal is to accelerate the Advent of sustainable energy and and so that's why we want to make a lot of cars and also a lot of stationary battery packs because the three pillars of a sustainable energy future are electric transport uh stationary battery packs and solar and wind and geothermal and hydro basically sustainable energy sources but solar and wind particularly are intermittent and so you need stationary battery packs to store the energy when the sun doesn't shine as you you know you have your constant uh electricity provision\n\nor when the wind doesn't blow so um but you can have a you can completely convert I want to be very clear about this all of Earth all of Earth can can easily be powered by solar and wind stationary battery packs and electric transport well you could power several if even if Earth's economy were to you could you could do 10 times what Earth economy is with with solar wind batteries and early transport not it's not a close thing that that I think most people just have not done the basic math of just how much energy hits the earth from the sun it's a kilowatt per square meter or is it another way a gigawatt per square kilometer so if you have a 20 efficient solar system uh that's 200 megawatts per square kilometer um it's a lot basically uh you could power\n\nall of Europe with a section of Spain uh section of Spain um you could uh Power all of um the United States with a a corner of Utah or Texas now obviously it would make more sense to spread this out and not I'm just using this as a figure of speech or to show that it is a small amount of area that is necessary uh to power the United States or or Europe uh it is not some vast area um and I invite anyone to do the basic math it's it's not hard um 200 megawatts per square kilometer okay so how many what's the power needed um how many that'll tell you how many square kilometers uh then you will need uh batteries to store that um the um I think our calculation of the automatic area of the batteries needed to store all the energy to power the United States\n\nwas roughly one square mile literally so do you think do you think Tesla has succeeded in its goal then or do you think there's still much more to do you know I think you know we we've not succeeded in the goal if you consider the goal to be uh getting the automotive industry to move strongly towards electric vehicles I think that part of the goal we have succeeded in that and that was explicitly part of our goal is to to get the industry moving towards electric vehicles because they they were doing nothing in that direction when we started um and for the longest time they were uh dismissing the concept of electric vehicles um and then uh Tesla started taking market share away from them and that changed their mind how long do you think you're likely to\n\nstay at Tesla as long as they can be useful and what are the what else is there in terms of potential future projects that piques your interest you're obviously going to be quite involved in Twitter if the deal goes through but you've got Tesla you've got SpaceX you've got boring you've got neuralink as you're looking around thinking you potentially have capacity um what else is there in terms of the kind of I don't know betterment of The Human Condition or improving Earth that you feel you might want to turn your attention to in future well I I'm trying to take the set of actions that I think most likely make the future good um and hopefully you know pave the road to hell with good intentions so um so I think Tesla's about accelerating sustainable energy\n\nbecause we're obviously a sustainable energy future on Earth for us to be good then SpaceX is about extending life beyond Earth to so that we may become a multi-planetary species and with starlink providing internet coverage to the the least served in the world um that those are that they're into rural communities or places that just don't have good internet or it's very expensive um and um but I think it's important that we become a multi-flatant species and a space-faring civilization um because eventually the sun will expand and destroy our life on Earth so if if one is an environment a true environmentalist or cares about the future of life it is obviously important that life become multi-planetary and ultimately a multi-stellar so we must make that\n\nfirst step um what do you think the next goals are then for SpaceX and do you have a date in mind for when you think they will get to Mars foreign I think I think we should be able to [Music] maybe get Starship to Mars uh on crude in um three to five years um and then I think if that successful then we may be able to send a crude Mission to Mars uh before the end of the decade um the the the windows for going tomorrow as a career every two years so the planets are align for a orbital transfer uh every every 26 months so that that's you get a a kick at the can every 20 seconds so we're making a lot of progress with Starship We will hopefully have our first uh launch attempt uh this summer um or it basically the next next two or three months um and we're\n\nbuilding up the we've got a factory for selling ships so there's a whole bunch of Starships coming behind the one that will attempt launch uh soon so if that one doesn't work we have um we'll have many more behind that and we're continuously improving the design so each one is better than the last um and Starship really is a a game changer to an extraordinary degree with respect to access to space because it will be it's the first a little rocket that is designed to be fully and rapidly reusable um there's never been a fully reusable over the rocket um Falcon 9 is the most reusable rocket since we're able to fairly rapidly reuse the Boost stage and the fairing um and that's maybe 70 percent of the other cost a permission is saved um but we still lose\n\nthe upper stage on every Mission so with with Starship both the booster and the upper stage both the ship and the booster will be recovered um and they'll be recovered very rapidly and uh in theory you could launch the booster I don't know 10 or 12 times a day and the ship because of over the limitations maybe you could launch it three times a day um and it's also a very big vehicle so on the order of roughly 100 tons 100 tons of useful Earth to orbits so it's Saturn V scale uh payload orbit but fully reusable um if it was Expendable it would probably do I don't know 250 tons to orbit um and I think with further improvements even with full reusability we can probably get it to 150 tons two of it um but to put this into perspective if you have a fleet\n\nof Starships uh launching with the ability to launch uh every day or multiple times a day um Starship will do more than a thousand times the payload to orbit of all other rockets on Earth combined can I thank you that was fascinating can I bring us down to earth gently um and ask you about China in relation to Tesla where do you how important is the market for you do you think China contributes most of your growth in the future um no I think China is obviously a very significant Market that it is um you know it says probably 25 to 30 of our Market uh long term um the rest of the world is probably three quarters of it do you see I promised I didn't have any more Twitter questions but I had this is sort of a Twitter question do you um do you see any risk\n\nat all that China uses your ownership of Twitter potentially to interfere or block Tesla's operations in the country because obviously China has has banned Twitter I've seen no indication to that effect okay how um how close would you say you are personally to the Chinese government because when you set up the factory in Shanghai the walls were Rewritten around joint ventures to allow you to do that well um yeah I was suddenly asked many times by the government attorney to to do a factory in China I said well we we're not going to do one which is 51 locally owned um and so if they're willing to to change rules not just for us but for everyone um then then we would move forward and so they did um and I think it's been very successful so far and the guy\n\nwas very happy about it and so I don't know things are proceeding fairly well how many other plants are you expecting to open in China in the near future um well we're not expecting to open uh any any additional plants in China in the near future we will we will be expanding our Shanghai Factory um but we are our focused on production is going to be on the two new factories that we've recently completed uh in Berlin and in Austin Texas and US getting those to high volume production is the is the near-term challenge now we had Herbert Des Volkswagen chief executive who you know well at the summit yesterday and we asked him what his big question was for you and it was how do you scale production in China Germany and Texas simultaneously because for any\n\nexperienced OEM even the ones with 100 Years of doing this that's a challenge yes I think generally the difficulty of manufacturing and scaling manufacturing is very much underappreciated uh I've said many times that prototypes are easy production is hard um and we can easily whip out a prototype of any kind of car you could possibly imagine with a small team in six months now you know we have a team of 100 people in six months now to bring that to fruition with high volume or direction is 10 000 people in two years and that's three times faster than the rest of Industry um so overwhelmingly the problem with with cars is production overwhelmingly it's you know 99 of the difficulty um so he's certainly correct that that the difficulty is scaling um but\n\nif you look if you look at our track record thus far in scaling production uh We've scaled production at like I said a rate faster than any car company in the on the history of Earth or any company making a large sophisticated product of any kind so provided we continue to execute at that rate um we'll do fine um and even if that rate slows down a little it'll still be faster than any other company on Earth now what I want to ask you about two specific rumors that have swirled around future production plants for you um are you going to build a plant in Indonesia um as I said this is not the forum for us to make a major company announcements and finally have you looked at building a plant in the UK do you think you might ever build a plant in the UK in\n\nthe future I refer back to my prayer answer it was worth a try right mm-hmm can I can I ask um can I ask about autonomy right so you have this way that you think about autonomy using cameras on the vehicles and you want to get to almost a kind of human level AI to get the the cars to drive themselves fully in the real world um but a lot of people who work in AI I think human level AI is a long long way off how do you square that Circle about the approach that you're taking and the speed at which you want to deploy full self-driving technology well I don't think you need full human level intelligence to drive a car um you need sufficient human level intelligence to drive a car but not uh you know you're not you don't need like deep conceptual understanding\n\nof you know esoteric Concepts or anything like that uh you need sufficient intelligence to um match what human neural Nets do when driving a car and I think you know anyone who's driven a car for any length of time once you're you you know once you have some years of experience driving a car the cognitive load on driving a car is not high you're able to think about other things listen to music have a conversation and still drive safely so it's not like matching everything a human does um but it is still matching enough of the the neural Nets to what you know to look at the Silicon neural Nets need to at least be on par with the biological neural Nets uh to uh enable safe driving and I think we're quite close to achieving that um and but I recommend that\n\nuh don't take my word for it just sign up for our beta program and try it out uh we'll look at the videos that people are posting um who are in our beta program we have like I think at this point about hundred thousand people in our beta program so it's not exactly top secret how how hard is it as a problem to solve because you've made predictions in the past about autonomy um you know some of those haven't come to fruition at the same time as your understanding of the problem of autonomy changed over the last few years uh yes the I'd say that self-driving is one of those things where um there are a lot of false stones or you know where um you think you're getting there but then you end up asymptoting um your your progress is initially linear and then\n\nand it looks logarithmic and sort of tapers off um because you're in a like in a local maximum that you do not realize you were in now at this point I think we are no longer in trapped in a local maximum and uh obviously I could be wrong but I I think we are actually quite close to achieving self-driving at a safety level that is uh better than human and it appears my best guess is that we will get there this year um but we're really not far from it um and like I said the best way to assess this is to be in our beta program or look at the videos of those who are in the beta program and and look at the the progress that has had that has occurred and if the progress is dramatic um and I'm confident we will not really get to the safety level of a human we'll\n\nget far in excess of the safety level of a human um so I think ultimately probably a factor of 10 uh is safer than a human as measured by the probability of injury like given where you're trying to get to with this the you know the factor above human driving the potential lives that could be saved with that I need to ask you about some of the accidents and fatalities that have happened with vehicles previously um the people who died do you consider that that was a price worth paying to get to the level where we want to be to save more human lives in the future well it's important to note that uh and and we have never said ever that Tesla uh the Tesla autopilot does not require attention we have always made that extremely clear repeatedly you can't even\n\nturn it on without acknowledging that it requires a supervision um we remind you of that every time you turn it on to to ad nauseam so this was not a case of setting expectations that the card could simply drive itself in the past and then not meeting those expectations that is completely untrue um now I it is also the case however and and I knew this would be true from the beginning that um people don't the the people who are whose lives are saved with autopilot or autonomy don't know that the lives were saved um and and so you know if you look at say death's annual Automotive deaths every year it's about around a million people per year die from Automotive accidents of maybe 10 million uh per year are severely injured um and so with autonomy you um\n\nyou know the cause you know driving or it's a sister driving right now but it will be fully autonomous in the future um like I said those who who didn't realize they would have crashed or hit a pedestrian or a cyclist they don't know that um but but the so see basically even if you if you um let's say save 90 of the people that uh would otherwise have died the remaining 10 percent who did die will still sue you now but I think it is I say like in the grand scheme of things what is the morally right decision is and I'm a strong believer in the in during the reality of good over the perception of good and utter contempt for those who simply who prefer the perception of good over the reality of it and so so we're just going to take the Heat but if we believe\n\nthat uh that that quality of injury is reduced and we have very very confident with that uh and and but we also know that we're going to be sued despite doing the right thing we will do the right thing and get sued thank you we have it will not necessarily surprise you to hear a lot of audience questions that have come in um in the last few minutes I'm going to try and rattle through as many as we can what is Tesla's approach to smaller and more affordable end of the market you're going to go smaller than the model of three but could you get into a scooter micro Mobility something else uh scooters are very dangerous I would not recommend anyone drive a scooter if there's ever an argument between a scooter and a car the scooter will always what about smaller\n\nthan a model three what do you how far can you go down the entry level of the market [Music] well I said this is not some forum for roundabout product announcements no matter how no matter how cleverly the question is asked um so uh you know well we that there's some probability that Tesla will do a smaller cloud in the middle three um I would say more than that okay that's fine that wasn't my question that was an audience question um does Tesla would you ever consider licensing your platform to other oems presumably that would help switch the industry towards uh Electric Mobility in your opinion well we've already open sourced all our patents anyone can use our pads for free so uh all right um you know we we only patent things in order to prevent others\n\nfrom creating this Minefield of patents that that inhibit progress with electric vehicles um but several years ago uh you know I came from conclusion we're never going to really prosecute anyone for using our patents so let's just say um you can use any Tesla patterns for free um so I think hopefully that's helpful to others um and uh but but I think the you know the regular car industry the traditional car makers um will solve electrification it's not fundamentally difficult at this point to make electric cars um the thing that I think they may be interested in licensing is Tesla uh autopilot full self-driving um and I think that would save a lot of lives um but but I think we still have we have to prove prove ourselves for I don't know maybe another\n\nyear or so um and and then perhaps there will be some um other carmakers who uh may wish to license Tesla autopilot um and we'd be very open to that thank you um of all the other EV startups which one has impressed you the most well I think the company making the most progress besides Tesla is actually VW which is not a startup but could be viewed in some ways as a startup from an electric vehicle standpoint so VW is doing the most uh on on the electric vehicle front um I think there will be some very strong companies uh coming out of China um there's just like a lot of super talented hard-working people in China that are um strongly believe in in manufacturing and and they will they go they'll they won't just be voting the Midnight Oil they'll be burning\n\nthe 3am oil so um they won't even leave the leave the factory type of thing whereas in America people are trying to avoid going to work at all we've got a question on the Cyber truck um is it a is there a risk um that you you lose the pickup segment to Ford GM and rivien if you don't launch the Cyber truck or get it to Market soon no good um we've had another question coming what is the first cyber truck then we could possibly fulfill for three years after the start of production okay thank you we've had a question coming about China um you've been critical of lockdowns in the past uh uh particularly when it happened in the U.\n\nS Shanghai is currently locked down most of the western world is able to carry on functioning at the moment because of vaccines but China is is going towards a zero covert approach what do you make of the Chinese government's actions well um the you know had some conversations with the Chinese government um in in recent days and it's uh clear that the uh lockdowns are are being lifted rapidly so I would not expect this to be um a significant issue in in the coming weeks um you know the in the past where I was sort of upset with lockdowns is where those lockdowns differentially affected Tesla but not others um so in the case of California and the Bay Area County specifically um every other car factory in North America was allowed to start but not Tesla\n\neven though we there was no basis for that it was simply because we were located in Alameda County in California um and but they had no rational it was arbitrary and and uh unfair and and um you know that's that's the reason for why we're quite upset about uh kind of Tesla being singled out as the only car company in America that was allowed to start even though I think our health care practices are probably better than anyone else thank you we've had a question on software at what point did you realize that software was going to be key to Tesla's success and particularly as others are coming into software how do you maintain leadership in it well Tesla is I think as much a software company as it is a hardware company you know I personally wrote software\n\nfor 20 years so um I have great respect and admiration for software engineering um I think it's incredibly important and um I think that's why Tesla's been able to recruit uh some of the world's best software Engineers is because we we value software engineering so highly and do not regard it as an afterthought um uh so you know our autopilot for self-driving AI team is uh incredibly talented and and some of the most the smartest software engineers in the world um so and I do not give compliments lightly so we have an incredible team we have the best real world AI team in the world the the best real world AI team that on Earth um and um and we're seeing more and more uh incredibly talented people join our team so um and we're really not seeing anyone\n\nelse being close to solving real world AI um they may exist but if so they're being very subtle about it and that periodically pull our team and say like do we know anyone who is doing this because you know we know who a lot of the the top people are in Ai and what they're doing and and we just don't see anyone else that we're aware of making any significant progress in real world AI apart from Tesla um so yeah I I do I am quite confident that we'll not merely maintain our software lead but increase it thank you um we've had a question come in on the supercharger Network what are your thoughts about opening it to other motorists who don't drive Teslas and doesn't that risk what is currently one of your great competitive advantages uh we've already opened\n\nTesla superchargers to um other uh electric cars in Europe and we intend to roll that out uh worldwide um it's a little trickier in the us because we have a different connector than the the rest of the industry but we will be adding the rest of Industry connectors as an option to superchargers in us so we'll be fully we're trying as best as possible to do the right thing for the advancement of electrification even if that diminishes our competitive advantage do you uh do you think you'll ever wrap all your various operations Tesla SpaceX Etc under one umbrella group or do you want to keep them separate for the time being I think they're they're sort of separate objectives with uh different shareable devices and I think you know I don't see a ton of merits\n\nin combining them um at times there are people um you know where we have some say very talented people who who actually are willing to join but they they want to do things both at SpaceX and Tesla uh so for example we've got um one of the best Advanced Materials teams in the world it might be the best but it's certainly one of the best um and uh a lot of people on that team were willing to join but only if they could work on both rockets and cars it was like great um let's do that and and so we can sort of share some of the ideas uh between rockets and cars which are obviously not competitive you know they're they're not different competitive segments um so you know if you say like if somebody's a really incredible uh technologist innovator engineer they\n\nwant to work on interesting things so the more interesting you know like sure like money is you know they can get money from you know anyone would hire them for a lot of money so um then it's it's not a money thing it's really just how interesting are the projects and so there are just a few cases where um we can recruit some of the smartest you know Engineers scientists technologists in the world but they they want to work on both rockets and cars and there's a few cases like that thank you what do you I know we've I know we've run over time but it's one more I'm going to try and get in and then if you need to go go but if you're happy to keep talking we'll we'll keep you um what is the uh what do you think's the next big innovation in personal transportation\n\nwell I think tunnels are underrated underappreciated tunnels Will Never Let You Down here's the question here's the question on tunnels right so if you look at say for instance Robert Moses in New York built loads of Highways they were supposed to solve congestion and all they did was led to more congestion how do you avoid tunnels doing exactly the same but just being very expensive in the process foreign I have to say the this this notion of induced demand is one of the single dumbest Notions I have ever heard my entire life um if if you know if adding roads just increases traffic why don't we delete them and decrease traffic and I think you'd have an uproar if you did that the the real problem is that we have not if you take say congested cities which\n\nreally almost all large cities are congested you have a fundamental dimensional problem you have say these tall buildings or multi-level buildings where you've got uh you know people people you know living in 3D and then you want to take them in and out of those buildings on a 2d Road Network like how would you possibly expect that to work um so uh especially if they want to all to you know arrive and depart at roughly the same time this is just a recipe for traffic obviously so now if you go 3D which you go 3D up or you go 3D down now you have you're matching the dimensionality of the buildings um the buildings are 3D that the the and if the road Network or you could potentially have flying cars uh is 3D then you will completely alleviate the traffic\n\nproblem um so think of titles not as a single layer of tunnels but as as many layers as you want um as whatever layer count isn't is necessary to drop traffic to landline that people wouldn't think it would work um and we've already we have a proof of concept list in Las Vegas with the tunnel uh going from the convention center to the strip and that will soon be connecting all of the hotels and the airport uh in in Las Vegas um and Phil will just try it out for themselves it's working really well uh already in Vegas and there was some skepticism um among the county in the city as weather would be effective um and I think the the test tunnel just barely succeeded in in a vote with the the you know the with the local government in Clark County and and Las\n\nVegas but uh once they saw the initial test tunnel and wrote in it themselves uh we got a unanimous vote in favor of expanding it to the whole city so that should tell you something could you ever potentially go in the other direction three-dimensionally and look at vetoles and potentially flying vehicles well I like the idea of details but um you know we already have vetoes in the form of a helicopter so but the problem with with going 3D in the air um is is that um you you now have things that make a lot of noise uh that uh and the wind force that they generate when taking over Landing is very high um I mean if you just say like look at a little drone and say and I imagine that that thing was big what a record it would make and how much wind force would\n\nit generate and now they're going all over the place like a giant beehive of super noisy bees um I don't think people is what people want and most cities uh helicopters are actually banned except for emergency purposes because of this reason so um then there's also the weather dependency so if if it's if there's if there are high winds or or heavy snow rain sleet uh now the you can't fly um so but now you're shut down and and can't go anywhere um then there's the the probability of something falling on your head is much higher if there are all these uh you know vetoes flying all over the city right I mean I think people's Comfort level would be quite reduced uh you know should someone have perhaps not properly serviced their you know flying car and drops\n\na wheel on your head um I know that that I think would be discomforting to most people um and and also having them fly over your backyard and and having a strangers stare at you all day is probably also discomforting so I think these are all uh reasons why I have I think vitals will not succeed perfect I deliberately avoided calling them flying cars because they don't most of them don't drive on the road but no you're right but apart from that they're great um uh you told Kara Swisher in 2020 um that if Tesla investors knew what you you knew they would Panic about the state of the company that was two years ago so what were you referring to at the time I'm not sure what I was referring to at the time uh 2020 um I mean I think it's it's not that uh tells\n\nthe investors should should Panic it's just that the sheer number of problems being sold behind the scenes I think would would blow their minds and uh it's it what you know it's like that analogy of of you see that the duck serenely moving along the pond but the meanwhile the legs are patterning like crazy underneath this is really what's happening pretty much all the time um so the there there are a Non-Stop series of issues that need to be solved uh with um Tesla or with SpaceX really with most companies I suspect um and uh now we do solve them um but I think it would be very scary to most people to realize just how many things have to get solved on a real-time basis for the company to function well just last night I I basically got no sleep uh I was\n\nup on Sunday night until well I really just didn't get any sleep until until last night you know so what is I was literally working all night uh just a Sunday through Monday what is paddling under the water at the moment is there something going on that makes you worry about the future of Tesla or do you think the company is now completely secure no it it's it's I think the future of Tesla is extremely strong um so Tesla is uh has no debt it has a lot of cash and uh you know there's there's a sort of a short-term um hiccup with the covert restrictions in in Shanghai uh but I I as for the rest of my knowledge the future of Tesla is incredibly bright um and I think we will uh throw off uh a tremendous amount of free cash flow do you think with your cash\n\nand obviously your market cap at the moment you would ever consider buying another car maker whether an established OEM or a new business um uh well I think it's highly unlikely now great finally we've had a couple of questions coming on super capacitors do you think they might be potential have potential as an alternative energy storage solution to lithium-ion batteries what's interesting uh specific capacitors or Ultra capacitors are um oddly enough uh and I did research in that for a couple years uh while doing my Physics degree um I had a company in uh Silicon Valley called political research which at the time at least made the highest energy highest energy density capacitors in the world um now they used a ruthenium tantalum uh alloy which is um\n\nvery rare with him especially is very rare so um the that that would not scale to to high volume um because it simply isn't not enough enough ruthenium um so that and but I thought about the problem quite a lot and in fact my primary goal um had I continued as a graduate student and done a PhD at Stanford um would have been to try to figure out uh how to build ultra high energy density capacitors um and the the sort of theory I had at the time was to use Advanced chip making equipment uh to build a solid state capacitors uh that would be accurate at the molecular level um and um that this this uh a little bit of we're not new physics but explore exploring some some areas of of quantum quantum mechanics because you have to minimize the probability that\n\nelectrons can sort of tunnel from uh one you know essentially a tunnel across the insulator from the conductor to the insulator so um I guess make things get get quite complicated and rather weird at the sort of single or or when you when you get to get to a small number of atoms um but anyway it belongs to kind of long story short I think the capacitors are not needed at all for electrification of the entire Auto industry thank you we've got a question on money and again I know what I'm talking about so I know that don't worry um could um we've had a question on mining you've obviously done a number of mining deals trying to secure raw materials do you think you could ever go a step further and actually buy a mining company in the future it's not out\n\nof the question we will address whatever the limitations are on accelerating the world's transition to sustainable energy it's not that we wish to buy mining companies but if that's the only way to accelerate uh transition then we will that that will do that there are no arbitrary limitations on uh what's needed to accelerate sustainable energy we'll just tackle whatever set of things are needed to accelerate sustainable energy and doing Mining and refining or buying a mining company provided we think we can do we can change that mining company's trajectory significantly our possibilities yeah do you this is a slightly personal one do you ever think your children could end up working at Tesla obviously not the new one she's only a few months old but the\n\nolder ones yeah um well my Elder uh children have said that they were to do their own thing which I support um that none of them have said that they wish to work at Tesla or SpaceX uh they they want to do their own thing and um obviously I support them doing that um uh I think they want to do something for themselves and uh you know you know make their own way in the world and that's fine and it's possible at some point in the future that they um perhaps they do something of themselves and then and then decide that they'd like to do something a Tesla SpaceX and I'd support that too but but currently they they want to do their own thing perfect if I were to judge by it by a little x uh I know seeing a kid level Rockets more than than he does it's next\n\nlevel he likes it I mean it's really Next Level so if if his level of rockets continues from H2 and to when he's older then then he may be interested he will be interested in working on Rockets perfect thank you um do you have time for time for one more question sure um excellent good um you talked uh earlier about things that are abundant in the world irons abundant Oxygen's abundant and hydrogen is also very abundant in the universe in the universe but not on Earth not on earth have you ever considered do you think that it has a role to play if we really want to accelerate the transition away from fossil fuels no there we go I I really can't emphasize this enough the number of times I've been asked about hydrogen it might be like well over 100 times\n\nmaybe 200 times um it's important to understand that uh if if you want a means of energy storage hydrogen is a bad choice it is has extremely low energy density sorry it's extreme extremely low density and so it's actually it's volumetric energy density is poor","textByLang":{"en":"2022 we're very glad you can be with us whether you're here in the room in central London or joining us on our Global live stream my name is Peter Campbell I'm the Global Motor industry correspondent at the ft and it is a great pleasure to introduce and share this session for you let me tell you how this is going to work in a few minutes we're going to have JB Straubel back on stage and Elon Musk joining us remotely but it's going to spend the first 10 to 15 minutes of the session talking about the history of Tesla now these two guys were Central to the company and its growth and everything it has achieved to date and they have never before appeared on stage together to talk about the origins of the business so this is a unique chance to ask them about\n\nthat and hear about that and then for the rest of the session we're going to have time just with Elon on his own where we'll have questions about Tesla today and tomorrow and maybe one or two questions about some other projects He has going on just a reminder to you please do ask your questions on the chat box or if you're in the room using slido but with no further Ado because of all our guests here's the one who needs least introduction I'd like you to welcome back to the stage JB straable and joining us remotely Elon Musk thank you good evening thank you so much for being with us both of you I want to go back to something that was alluded to earlier in the session and the lunch that changed the world as Patrick called us when the two of you sat down\n\nand came up with a plan that led to Tesla take us through that who started it whose idea was the lunch where did it go Elon we'd love you to start I'm sure well actually and JB uh completely I think we could hear maybe his perspective as well um but uh uh yeah I got a call uh someone out of the blue uh from uh JV and um uh Rosen um uh and I I think once I'm not sure exactly what the subject matter was but it was it's something involving space or maybe hydrogen airplanes or something and um so we got together for lunch and at some point the conversation turned to electric vehicles and um uh had uh JB and and Rosner both worked on an electric vehicle company um that I guess ultimately wasn't successful and I mentioned that uh the I I'd actually had a strong\n\ninterest in electric vehicles for a long time and I thought electric vehicles were the future of transport and um and in fact I had worked at a company developing high-ended density capacitors uh Ultra capacitors for potential use in electric vehicles and that was going to be my area of study during Graduate Studies at Stanford which ultimately uh dropped out of but um anyway that led to jba suggesting that I get a test drive in the the t0 Prototype from AC propulsion which is a small company in Southern California and um because that sort of had a proof of concept uh electric sports car and um I said that'd be great I'd love to get a test drive and that was in 2003 and um and and then I I did I get it got a test drive in the the t0 um and I tried to\n\nconvince them to commercialize the t0 I tried very hard actually to to get AC propulsion to commercialize the the t0 electric sports car um and then after they um they they said they really did not want to do that um I I said well do you mind if uh then I do that if you mind if I I create a commercial uh electric sports car and they said yeah no problem and so uh my you know that my intent was to basically create and uh company to commercialize the the t0 with JB um and uh and then the uh to engage AC propulsion said well you know there's some other uh groups that also want to commercialize the t0 uh concept and uh what do you what do you think about teaming up with them and um and one of the groups that was introduced to me uh was uh uh Mark toppening\n\nat Ian Wright and what never had uh that but but it's very important to emphasize that there was no actual company of the that existed in any meaningful form at that point so it was really just three guys and then JB and me and and then we decided to team up and create a an exploration create a commercial version of the t0 electric sports car um yeah I mean JB at any uh what's what's your perspective no that that's a pretty uh pretty close history of how I remember it as well and and uh I mean my perspective on the thing was us trying to to chat with you about this electric hydrogen airplane concept that we were uh you know I was at the time trying to work on and and uh I do recall that not going extremely well actually for the first part of the lunch\n\nI think uh I can't remember the color colorful adjectives you used but they weren't they weren't very uh you weren't very excited about the hydrogen airplane for good reason um so yeah then I think our our topics our conversation completely turned to talking about Lithium-ion batteries you know state of the art of Lithium-ion batteries and what was possible potentially possible you know stringing together you know at the time large numbers of small Lithium-ion batteries which were you know not very mature in those days but but could be potentially connected into really big battery packs to make make an EV that could potentially have hundreds of miles of range which you know today seems kind of you know commonplace but in 2003 it was absolutely unheard\n\nof it would literally set World Records you know for range and uh yeah I mean you you uh you understood that concept I think in the potential of it better than anyone else that uh that we'd ever talk to about it and were immediately enthused about it and excited so that was I mean shortly after as you said you know we met up with AC propulsion and uh uh kind of We're Off to the Races and then what there were a lot of early rejections when you talked to some car makers obviously you settled on Lotus for the first Roadster um but you went around some others was there ever a point you know between the lunch and and getting the Roadster off the ground where you almost gave up you thought that actually you couldn't make it work not from a chemistry point of\n\nview but commercially I mean I can jump in maybe first on that you know there were a lot of challenges in those early days I mean the the technology was not um it was not a sure thing that all those pieces would work together and and uh you know some of the the safety aspects around the battery were pretty thorny in the early days and uh it was before I think most people had figured out how to you know manage that and um I think in at Tesla I think we had an early you know chance to really you know figure that out in a very robust way and you know make them far far safer than internal combustion actually has proved out to be through the statistics and through data um but that was not the common perception so so that was that was hard and that was risky\n\nuh obviously there were a lot of financial turns and tribulations it wasn't exactly smooth sailing from idea of an electric Roadster through into commercialization uh it was it was a insane nightmare basically um and uh we screwed the pooch six ways to Sunday um and made so many mistakes it's embarrassing um basically the almost everything about the first design of the Tesla Roadster was wrong um and wouldn't work um but uh and the we didn't first of all we had no idea how to build a car uh so uh and and then no one really knew how to build a you know a a commercial uh lithium-ion battery car uh no one had ever done it um so um so like the original idea sort of uh which sounds appealing but was fundamentally flawed was to um use the Lotus Elise chassis\n\num and then combine that with AC propulsions drivetrain technology and and boom you've got like very the two pieces necessary to create a car it should be straightforward uh and um just do that and and and uh great uh unfortunately uh those were uh two fundamentally flawed uh premises the um the Lotus Elise chassis did not work uh meaning that so the car ended up being 40 heavier and we couldn't fit the battery pack in the Elise it was a very tiny car so we had to change basically everything about the Elise I think we kept maybe six percent of the parts were in common uh all crash tests were invalidated the structure was invalidated because of the the the greater mass and the mass distribution being fundamentally different from a gasoline car and um yeah\n\nuh if right it in retrospect it would have actually been much smarter to start from with a clean sheet design and not try to modify the Elise because we ended up with a lot of the limitations of the Elise but almost nothing to gain in terms of reuse of parts so that was a staggeringly dumb decision um and then uh on the on the drivetrain side it turned out that I think almost none of the AC propulsion Technologies were viable in a uh production car um I mean JB did we end up using any of the AC propulsion stuff pretty much nothing by the time it went to the first customer yes it was a very it was a very helpful first proof of concept that uh maybe pointed the way that was what might be possible but none of it was uh I mean the commercial commercializing\n\nall of it as Elon said was uh was a lot of mistakes and trials and tribulations and uh it was very hard to build more than two of those motor controllers in the first days with analog components those were still analog motor control I mean it would get hot and the motor would perform differently you know the throttle would respond differently in a hot day versus a cold day so yeah everything pretty much had to be redone from scratch So Gone so so what we're saying is that we're huge idiots and we're totally wrong about the the fundamental premises of creating the Tesla Roadster um uh uh and you ended up not being able to use any of the AC propulsion drivetrain technology uh using essentially almost none of the original Lotus lease um but we're still left\n\nwith a lot of the limitations of the Elise being a car that was a bit too small very difficult to get in and out of um and very Bare Bones um and an independent on Lotus to make it and then every time Lotus would have financial difficulties they would increase the price on us and uh and charge us more money um so uh that made it very difficult to um control the price of the car uh so um and then the supply chain was also a complete mess the initial idea was to basically Outsource everything and uh then uh almost none of the companies to which we outsourced the various parts of the cars were able to succeed in making those parts so we had to find a new supplier for the car body um because or Cyrus Supply originally picked was flat out unable to do it um\n\nthis was not a decision that I was building but the we had outsourced making the battery to a barbecue uh company in in Thailand um this is a bit silly uh to say okay we're going to make the most sophisticated battery ever made um and the Barbecue Company is going to make it um that obviously they did not know how to make uh um it was pretty silly um so we're at the end Source battery production to California we made it basically ended up making the battery ourselves um uh yeah it's one thing after another basically uh just a flat out uh running dumpster fire of stupidity I would say was the beginning of the company um and uh and then we had to recover from there and it was very difficult so there are lots of other EV startups out there potentially in\n\nthe hundreds today all wanting to do what you did you guys uh you blazed the trail 10 years before the industry really caught up with you you had the advantage of having no one else playing in the same area but the disadvantage that all the time you were trying to break through Virgin Snow was it more difficult to do it 10 years ago than you think it is today and if if there's one piece of advice that you could offer to the various EV startups what would it be well I I mean I I think most of them just completely forget about the first like eight to ten years of Tesla that's the kind of amazing part to me you know they kind of see success and then they're like oh that looks good let's do that let's let's be one let's do you know copy that but um I mean\n\nit was it was brutal confusion and tons of mistakes and a lot of money invested for a lot of years um I personally think it's a lot actually harder today even still for a startup to compete because the first question is so what is the niche that even makes sense to have a new startup EV company relative to all the products from other oems or to Tesla you know what are they going to do better than Tesla Tesla didn't exist there was no Tesla in the world 17 years ago so that that was sort of the imperative and gave a Runway to to make a lot of mistakes and still make it work you know yeah I think just it's very important to uh emphasize here the you know I think um something I wouldn't uh JB would have wanted to go through the extreme pain of creating electric\n\nan electric car company if the traditional automakers were going to make an electric make electric cars um and you know just an important thing for the world that needs to happen to move to a sustainable technology future and but but if at the time that we created Tesla uh the there were no startups doing electric cars and the uh the big car companies had uh really no electric car programs going and the few tiny tiny electric car programs the head guard they were shutting down so therefore unless we try to create an electric car there was not one going to be created um it's not from the standpoint of thinking hey uh here's a super lucrative idea let's make start a car company the history of Cart Company startups is horrific um that and they've almost\n\nall gone bankrupt it's an incredibly big grave Rock great graveyard of car startups that all died um you've only heard a tiny number of them you know sort of the tacos and Deloreans of the world but there are hundreds of others that people didn't hear about um so and and at this point in the United States the only two American card companies that have not gone bankrupt are Ford and Tesla and Tesla went back almost went bankrupt so many times I lost count so basically it's a world of hurt to start a car company is Mega pain it is not easy money it's the furthest thing for easy money you could possibly imagine um so uh and what I see with some of these new car companies is that they are they're jumping in at the defend and trying to create a high volume\n\nvehicle that when they have never made a vehicle before this is um but you know not practicing your athletic Sport and then going to the Olympics you're not going to win this is crazy um you really need to start out small make your mistakes at a small scale um and make sure you've got a lot of reserved capital and then gradually build up from the dumb things that you do at the beginning and be less dumb over time otherwise what will happen is a vast uh losses of money um the car industry is very competitive it's it's it's the opposite of a natural monopoly you have sort of national monopolies in things like social media or say Google search um by card companies so naturally uh I'm not monopolies they're hyper competitive and they're used to being hyper\n\ncompetitive uh throughout the world they have entrenched customers dealers service actories uh existing expertise these are these are veteran veteran armies like in in fortresses so it's like it's yeah I mean it's extremely difficult now you happen to mention in that answer the word social media which brings us very neatly onto the question of uh Twitter so JB I'm going to say thank you so much that was fascinating a brief history there of Tesla and the early years and the mistakes that you made um so thank you very much for being with us on stage thank you well the Twitter friend is not a lot that I can say uh because you know this is that Twitter's publicly traded company and um you know there are a lot of constraints in what I can say so not sure what\n\nyou would like to ask but most of the questions the answer is going to be no comment that's all right I can have a go let me ask you to put your product development hat on and if you pair Twitter all the way back what is it and what do you think it can be in 10 years time well what I said is that I think Twitter um is currently the the best or looked at another way the least bad uh Public Square um if a forum for the exchange of ideas uh nationally and internationally and and but I think it could be a lot better at that in order to be better at that it needs to really get rid of the the Bots and the the scams and spammers and you know basically and and anyone trying to uh create sort of fake influence on the side pipe whereas one person or one entity\n\noperating 100 000 accounts um or you know obviously scammers are not good um and and Twitter really uh at least do a much better job at that um the it also needs to build trust more trust with users I think the way to do that is by open sourcing the algorithm so everyone can see how the algorithm works and can uh suggest improvements and changes I would literally literally just put the uh the Twitter algorithm on on GitHub and say like hey anyone want to suggest changes to this please go ahead um and and just you really want transparency to build trust and then any any change any sort of adjustments to tweets or uh in any human intervention uh with any account on Twitter should be highlighted as a Twitter person took of the following action with your\n\naccount or with this tweet so that you're not sort of sitting there in the dock wondering why did this tweet not get any attention or why did this one get a lot of attention um it's far too random um and um you know and then I think Twitter needs to be much more even-handed it currently has a strong left bias uh because it's based in San Francisco I don't think people that they're necessarily intent I or at least have some of them don't attend to to have a left bias they're just from their perspective uh it seems moderate but they're just coming at it from an environment that is that is very far left so uh but but then this this fails to build trust into in the rest of the United States and and also perhaps in other parts of the world uh because uh Twitter\n\nneeds to be even-handed and and be um you know I think I said publicly uh Victory would be that the um the most far right 10 and the most part left 10 percent are equally upset um like I don't think this is a situation where you're going to get necessarily of Praise you're just gonna you're just gonna balance the anger so how how do you because people well people and will automatically associate you with Tesla and you with Twitter is there any risk in your mind that the actions that you're going to take at Twitter which you've admitted freely will upset some people um potentially lead to a commercial impact on Tesla um I'm confident that we will be able to sell all the cars we can make I mean currently the the lead time for ordering a Tesla is ridiculously\n\nso our issue is not demand it is production but that's at the moment because of the global Supply chains and the chip shortages that's less around electric car demand which we are expecting to go absolutely through the roof and you obviously have very ambitious targets for that at Tesla yeah I mean even before there was uh the supply chain issues Tesla uh demand exceeded production so um now now it's Advantage exceeding production to a ridiculous degree um uh we're actually probably going to limit uh just stop taking orders for for anything beyond uh a certain period of time because you know some of the timing is like a year away uh so um anyway uh the the frustration that we're seeing from customers is uh under being unable to to get them a car um not\n\nuh are they willing or interested in buying a car um so our basically I think zero about demand generation and a lot about production and engineering and supply chain I I have two more questions on Twitter if I may before we turn for the rest of the session um to Tesla how confident are you the deal will happen and is there a risk this is all one question and is there a risk um because you're putting a lot of your personal stake up for this to fund it is there a risk that if it all goes south you're imperiling your stake in Tesla potentially hurting Tesla financially and maybe even SpaceX um if it all goes to pod that's the technical term sure um so I mean I think there's still a lot of things that need to get done before the steal concludes obviously\n\nthere's not yet even been a shareholder vote um and and Twitter has not yet filed the proxy for a shareholder vote um so there are still you know some outstanding questions that need to be resolved um and uh so it is certainly not a done deal that just objectively it is not a gonna deal um you know the best case scenario is that this would be yeah I think perhaps done in in uh two or three months um yeah and the final question and this is this is really the two paid elephant in the room are you planning to let Donald Trump back on well I I think there's there's a general question of should was it Twitter have women at bands um and you know I've talked with Jack Dorsey about this and uh he and I are of the same mind which is that uh permanent fans should\n\nbe uh extremely rare and really reserved for uh people where they're trying to uh for for accounts that are uh Bots or spam scam accounts where there's just no legitimacy to the account at all um I I do think that uh it was not correct to ban Donald Trump I think that was that was a mistake um because it uh it alienated a large part of the country and did not ultimately result in Donald Trump not having a voice he is not going to be on Truth social um as will a large part of the sort of the the right in the in the United States um and so I think this could end up being frankly worse than having a you know a single form where everyone can debate um so um I guess the answer is that I I I would reverse the Perma ban I would say I'm not I don't own Twitter\n\nyet so this is not like a thing that will definitely happen because what if I don't own Twitter uh but my opinion and Jack Dorsey I want to be clear shares this opinion uh is that we should not have permabads um now now that doesn't mean that somebody gets to say whatever they wanted to say if they say something that is uh illegal or um otherwise you know uh just you know just destructive to the world then then that there should be perhaps a timeout a temporary suspension or that particular tweet uh should be uh uh made invisible or or have very limited uh traction um but I think pro events just fundamentally undermine trust in Twitter as a Town Square uh where everyone can voice their opinion it was a fun I think it was a morally bad decision to be clear\n\nand and foolish in the extreme even even after he egged on the crowd who went to the U.\n\nS Capitol some of them carrying nooses you still think it was a mistake to remove him I think the if there are tweets that are wrong they should and bad those should be uh uh either deleted or made it visible and a suspension uh a temporary suspension is appropriate but not a permanent ban so if the deal completes he might potentially come back on but with the understanding that if he does something similar again he'll be back in the Simpson uh he has publicly stated that he will not be coming back to Twitter and that he will only be on true social and this is the point that I'm trying to make which is perhaps not getting across is that there is that banning Trump from Twitter didn't end Trump's voice it will amplify it among the rights and this is why\n\nit is morally wrong and flat out stupid okay thank you we will um let's turn uh to Tesla again I'd like to ask you about your Ambitions for the future you've said you want the company to be able to make 20 million cars a year by 2030 which would make it the same size as Toyota and Volkswagen combined today um give us a sense what does the business look like by 2030 to make 20 million cars plants for prints models yes well this is not a form for announcing new product is new Tesla products um the uh the 20 million by 2030 is an aspiration not a promise um and the the reason for uh aiming for something like that is there are approximately two billion uh cars and trucks in the world and for us to really make a dent in sustainable energy and electrification\n\nuh I think we need to to replace at least one percent of the fleet per year uh to really be meaningful um and and that's that's where the 20 million units comes from uh is is let's let's try to replace one percent of the global wage of two billion cars and trucks per year and um that's our aspiration it's not a promise it's an aspiration uh I think we've got a good chance of getting there and uh people will see based on the products that we unveil uh we'll be able to judge for themselves whether that goal is realistic or not now you've gone from zero plants to four plants that would require you to get to possibly about 20 plants depending how they're wrapped up is that phase more difficult what you've got ahead of you by 2030 than what's gone behind given\n\nyou've already done it or do you still think it's more difficult to ramp to that level foreign I think it's close it's roughly [Music] um the sheer amount of stuff that tails is done is I think quite mind-boggling uh we have an incredible team at Tesla and um executing very well and our annual growth rates are faster than any large manufacturer product in the history of Earth but I think the next fastest was the growth of the Model T and we're faster than the Model T so you know if that growth rate continues then obviously we will reach 20 million Vehicles a year but we may stumble and and uh and uh not reach that goal so um but I'd say on roughly it's roughly equally difficult to have gotten to this point as will be to get to 20 million and what's the\n\nbiggest uncertainty with getting to 2030 is it manufacturing ramping is it the raw materials is it something else um there are some raw material constraints that we see coming um in the theme production probably in about three years um and in cathode production the cathode the two main cathode choices are nickel and uh iron phosphate um obviously iron is extremely plentiful the Earth is uh 32 Iron by composition so uh if a little bit of trivia if someone says what is Earth made of the single biggest element that Earth is made of is iron the second biggest element that Earth is made of is oxygen which is about 30 30 of Earth Mass so clearly is not not in short supply um uh the the phosphate is slightly more of a challenge but still quite common um so I\n\ndo not see any fundamental scaling constraints and lithium is also quite common so lithium is practically everywhere uh the so so this is not a question of a shortage of of like as though it's some Rare Element it's really just that the um the lithium Mining and especially the refining capacity and and that of the of taking iron or phosphorus and turning it into battery grade iron phosphate um or or nickel and turning it into battery grade nickel uh is it's really the the equipment I think this the single exist right would be the equipment necessary to convert the ore into battery grade materials we're working on that with suppliers so I'm not saying that this is an impossible thing to address it is simply uh one of the problems along the way to getting\n\n20 million vehicles lfp batteries are much less recyclable than the other batteries you use how much of that is an issue in terms of overall environmental impact of what the company does if you end up using lots and lots of them uh no the word she said is not true uh iron phosphate batteries are fully recyclable I'm not sure we're getting your information but iron phosphate is equally recyclable and so is that store nickel base batteries um thank you I stand corrected um can I ask why you think Tesla needs to grow so much by 2030 because the what you set out when you in the early years was that you wanted Tesla to help um tilt the world away from fossil fuels and to some extent it looks like it's already succeeded um yes I I think you're sort of putting\n\ntoo much emphasis on this 20 million Vehicles by 20 30 as though this is some Grand promise uh some heal upon which we will die um that is it is simply an aspiration um and we may we may achieve it or we may not um uh we our goal is to accelerate the Advent of sustainable energy and and so that's why we want to make a lot of cars and also a lot of stationary battery packs because the three pillars of a sustainable energy future are electric transport uh stationary battery packs and solar and wind and geothermal and hydro basically sustainable energy sources but solar and wind particularly are intermittent and so you need stationary battery packs to store the energy when the sun doesn't shine as you you know you have your constant uh electricity provision\n\nor when the wind doesn't blow so um but you can have a you can completely convert I want to be very clear about this all of Earth all of Earth can can easily be powered by solar and wind stationary battery packs and electric transport well you could power several if even if Earth's economy were to you could you could do 10 times what Earth economy is with with solar wind batteries and early transport not it's not a close thing that that I think most people just have not done the basic math of just how much energy hits the earth from the sun it's a kilowatt per square meter or is it another way a gigawatt per square kilometer so if you have a 20 efficient solar system uh that's 200 megawatts per square kilometer um it's a lot basically uh you could power\n\nall of Europe with a section of Spain uh section of Spain um you could uh Power all of um the United States with a a corner of Utah or Texas now obviously it would make more sense to spread this out and not I'm just using this as a figure of speech or to show that it is a small amount of area that is necessary uh to power the United States or or Europe uh it is not some vast area um and I invite anyone to do the basic math it's it's not hard um 200 megawatts per square kilometer okay so how many what's the power needed um how many that'll tell you how many square kilometers uh then you will need uh batteries to store that um the um I think our calculation of the automatic area of the batteries needed to store all the energy to power the United States\n\nwas roughly one square mile literally so do you think do you think Tesla has succeeded in its goal then or do you think there's still much more to do you know I think you know we we've not succeeded in the goal if you consider the goal to be uh getting the automotive industry to move strongly towards electric vehicles I think that part of the goal we have succeeded in that and that was explicitly part of our goal is to to get the industry moving towards electric vehicles because they they were doing nothing in that direction when we started um and for the longest time they were uh dismissing the concept of electric vehicles um and then uh Tesla started taking market share away from them and that changed their mind how long do you think you're likely to\n\nstay at Tesla as long as they can be useful and what are the what else is there in terms of potential future projects that piques your interest you're obviously going to be quite involved in Twitter if the deal goes through but you've got Tesla you've got SpaceX you've got boring you've got neuralink as you're looking around thinking you potentially have capacity um what else is there in terms of the kind of I don't know betterment of The Human Condition or improving Earth that you feel you might want to turn your attention to in future well I I'm trying to take the set of actions that I think most likely make the future good um and hopefully you know pave the road to hell with good intentions so um so I think Tesla's about accelerating sustainable energy\n\nbecause we're obviously a sustainable energy future on Earth for us to be good then SpaceX is about extending life beyond Earth to so that we may become a multi-planetary species and with starlink providing internet coverage to the the least served in the world um that those are that they're into rural communities or places that just don't have good internet or it's very expensive um and um but I think it's important that we become a multi-flatant species and a space-faring civilization um because eventually the sun will expand and destroy our life on Earth so if if one is an environment a true environmentalist or cares about the future of life it is obviously important that life become multi-planetary and ultimately a multi-stellar so we must make that\n\nfirst step um what do you think the next goals are then for SpaceX and do you have a date in mind for when you think they will get to Mars foreign I think I think we should be able to [Music] maybe get Starship to Mars uh on crude in um three to five years um and then I think if that successful then we may be able to send a crude Mission to Mars uh before the end of the decade um the the the windows for going tomorrow as a career every two years so the planets are align for a orbital transfer uh every every 26 months so that that's you get a a kick at the can every 20 seconds so we're making a lot of progress with Starship We will hopefully have our first uh launch attempt uh this summer um or it basically the next next two or three months um and we're\n\nbuilding up the we've got a factory for selling ships so there's a whole bunch of Starships coming behind the one that will attempt launch uh soon so if that one doesn't work we have um we'll have many more behind that and we're continuously improving the design so each one is better than the last um and Starship really is a a game changer to an extraordinary degree with respect to access to space because it will be it's the first a little rocket that is designed to be fully and rapidly reusable um there's never been a fully reusable over the rocket um Falcon 9 is the most reusable rocket since we're able to fairly rapidly reuse the Boost stage and the fairing um and that's maybe 70 percent of the other cost a permission is saved um but we still lose\n\nthe upper stage on every Mission so with with Starship both the booster and the upper stage both the ship and the booster will be recovered um and they'll be recovered very rapidly and uh in theory you could launch the booster I don't know 10 or 12 times a day and the ship because of over the limitations maybe you could launch it three times a day um and it's also a very big vehicle so on the order of roughly 100 tons 100 tons of useful Earth to orbits so it's Saturn V scale uh payload orbit but fully reusable um if it was Expendable it would probably do I don't know 250 tons to orbit um and I think with further improvements even with full reusability we can probably get it to 150 tons two of it um but to put this into perspective if you have a fleet\n\nof Starships uh launching with the ability to launch uh every day or multiple times a day um Starship will do more than a thousand times the payload to orbit of all other rockets on Earth combined can I thank you that was fascinating can I bring us down to earth gently um and ask you about China in relation to Tesla where do you how important is the market for you do you think China contributes most of your growth in the future um no I think China is obviously a very significant Market that it is um you know it says probably 25 to 30 of our Market uh long term um the rest of the world is probably three quarters of it do you see I promised I didn't have any more Twitter questions but I had this is sort of a Twitter question do you um do you see any risk\n\nat all that China uses your ownership of Twitter potentially to interfere or block Tesla's operations in the country because obviously China has has banned Twitter I've seen no indication to that effect okay how um how close would you say you are personally to the Chinese government because when you set up the factory in Shanghai the walls were Rewritten around joint ventures to allow you to do that well um yeah I was suddenly asked many times by the government attorney to to do a factory in China I said well we we're not going to do one which is 51 locally owned um and so if they're willing to to change rules not just for us but for everyone um then then we would move forward and so they did um and I think it's been very successful so far and the guy\n\nwas very happy about it and so I don't know things are proceeding fairly well how many other plants are you expecting to open in China in the near future um well we're not expecting to open uh any any additional plants in China in the near future we will we will be expanding our Shanghai Factory um but we are our focused on production is going to be on the two new factories that we've recently completed uh in Berlin and in Austin Texas and US getting those to high volume production is the is the near-term challenge now we had Herbert Des Volkswagen chief executive who you know well at the summit yesterday and we asked him what his big question was for you and it was how do you scale production in China Germany and Texas simultaneously because for any\n\nexperienced OEM even the ones with 100 Years of doing this that's a challenge yes I think generally the difficulty of manufacturing and scaling manufacturing is very much underappreciated uh I've said many times that prototypes are easy production is hard um and we can easily whip out a prototype of any kind of car you could possibly imagine with a small team in six months now you know we have a team of 100 people in six months now to bring that to fruition with high volume or direction is 10 000 people in two years and that's three times faster than the rest of Industry um so overwhelmingly the problem with with cars is production overwhelmingly it's you know 99 of the difficulty um so he's certainly correct that that the difficulty is scaling um but\n\nif you look if you look at our track record thus far in scaling production uh We've scaled production at like I said a rate faster than any car company in the on the history of Earth or any company making a large sophisticated product of any kind so provided we continue to execute at that rate um we'll do fine um and even if that rate slows down a little it'll still be faster than any other company on Earth now what I want to ask you about two specific rumors that have swirled around future production plants for you um are you going to build a plant in Indonesia um as I said this is not the forum for us to make a major company announcements and finally have you looked at building a plant in the UK do you think you might ever build a plant in the UK in\n\nthe future I refer back to my prayer answer it was worth a try right mm-hmm can I can I ask um can I ask about autonomy right so you have this way that you think about autonomy using cameras on the vehicles and you want to get to almost a kind of human level AI to get the the cars to drive themselves fully in the real world um but a lot of people who work in AI I think human level AI is a long long way off how do you square that Circle about the approach that you're taking and the speed at which you want to deploy full self-driving technology well I don't think you need full human level intelligence to drive a car um you need sufficient human level intelligence to drive a car but not uh you know you're not you don't need like deep conceptual understanding\n\nof you know esoteric Concepts or anything like that uh you need sufficient intelligence to um match what human neural Nets do when driving a car and I think you know anyone who's driven a car for any length of time once you're you you know once you have some years of experience driving a car the cognitive load on driving a car is not high you're able to think about other things listen to music have a conversation and still drive safely so it's not like matching everything a human does um but it is still matching enough of the the neural Nets to what you know to look at the Silicon neural Nets need to at least be on par with the biological neural Nets uh to uh enable safe driving and I think we're quite close to achieving that um and but I recommend that\n\nuh don't take my word for it just sign up for our beta program and try it out uh we'll look at the videos that people are posting um who are in our beta program we have like I think at this point about hundred thousand people in our beta program so it's not exactly top secret how how hard is it as a problem to solve because you've made predictions in the past about autonomy um you know some of those haven't come to fruition at the same time as your understanding of the problem of autonomy changed over the last few years uh yes the I'd say that self-driving is one of those things where um there are a lot of false stones or you know where um you think you're getting there but then you end up asymptoting um your your progress is initially linear and then\n\nand it looks logarithmic and sort of tapers off um because you're in a like in a local maximum that you do not realize you were in now at this point I think we are no longer in trapped in a local maximum and uh obviously I could be wrong but I I think we are actually quite close to achieving self-driving at a safety level that is uh better than human and it appears my best guess is that we will get there this year um but we're really not far from it um and like I said the best way to assess this is to be in our beta program or look at the videos of those who are in the beta program and and look at the the progress that has had that has occurred and if the progress is dramatic um and I'm confident we will not really get to the safety level of a human we'll\n\nget far in excess of the safety level of a human um so I think ultimately probably a factor of 10 uh is safer than a human as measured by the probability of injury like given where you're trying to get to with this the you know the factor above human driving the potential lives that could be saved with that I need to ask you about some of the accidents and fatalities that have happened with vehicles previously um the people who died do you consider that that was a price worth paying to get to the level where we want to be to save more human lives in the future well it's important to note that uh and and we have never said ever that Tesla uh the Tesla autopilot does not require attention we have always made that extremely clear repeatedly you can't even\n\nturn it on without acknowledging that it requires a supervision um we remind you of that every time you turn it on to to ad nauseam so this was not a case of setting expectations that the card could simply drive itself in the past and then not meeting those expectations that is completely untrue um now I it is also the case however and and I knew this would be true from the beginning that um people don't the the people who are whose lives are saved with autopilot or autonomy don't know that the lives were saved um and and so you know if you look at say death's annual Automotive deaths every year it's about around a million people per year die from Automotive accidents of maybe 10 million uh per year are severely injured um and so with autonomy you um\n\nyou know the cause you know driving or it's a sister driving right now but it will be fully autonomous in the future um like I said those who who didn't realize they would have crashed or hit a pedestrian or a cyclist they don't know that um but but the so see basically even if you if you um let's say save 90 of the people that uh would otherwise have died the remaining 10 percent who did die will still sue you now but I think it is I say like in the grand scheme of things what is the morally right decision is and I'm a strong believer in the in during the reality of good over the perception of good and utter contempt for those who simply who prefer the perception of good over the reality of it and so so we're just going to take the Heat but if we believe\n\nthat uh that that quality of injury is reduced and we have very very confident with that uh and and but we also know that we're going to be sued despite doing the right thing we will do the right thing and get sued thank you we have it will not necessarily surprise you to hear a lot of audience questions that have come in um in the last few minutes I'm going to try and rattle through as many as we can what is Tesla's approach to smaller and more affordable end of the market you're going to go smaller than the model of three but could you get into a scooter micro Mobility something else uh scooters are very dangerous I would not recommend anyone drive a scooter if there's ever an argument between a scooter and a car the scooter will always what about smaller\n\nthan a model three what do you how far can you go down the entry level of the market [Music] well I said this is not some forum for roundabout product announcements no matter how no matter how cleverly the question is asked um so uh you know well we that there's some probability that Tesla will do a smaller cloud in the middle three um I would say more than that okay that's fine that wasn't my question that was an audience question um does Tesla would you ever consider licensing your platform to other oems presumably that would help switch the industry towards uh Electric Mobility in your opinion well we've already open sourced all our patents anyone can use our pads for free so uh all right um you know we we only patent things in order to prevent others\n\nfrom creating this Minefield of patents that that inhibit progress with electric vehicles um but several years ago uh you know I came from conclusion we're never going to really prosecute anyone for using our patents so let's just say um you can use any Tesla patterns for free um so I think hopefully that's helpful to others um and uh but but I think the you know the regular car industry the traditional car makers um will solve electrification it's not fundamentally difficult at this point to make electric cars um the thing that I think they may be interested in licensing is Tesla uh autopilot full self-driving um and I think that would save a lot of lives um but but I think we still have we have to prove prove ourselves for I don't know maybe another\n\nyear or so um and and then perhaps there will be some um other carmakers who uh may wish to license Tesla autopilot um and we'd be very open to that thank you um of all the other EV startups which one has impressed you the most well I think the company making the most progress besides Tesla is actually VW which is not a startup but could be viewed in some ways as a startup from an electric vehicle standpoint so VW is doing the most uh on on the electric vehicle front um I think there will be some very strong companies uh coming out of China um there's just like a lot of super talented hard-working people in China that are um strongly believe in in manufacturing and and they will they go they'll they won't just be voting the Midnight Oil they'll be burning\n\nthe 3am oil so um they won't even leave the leave the factory type of thing whereas in America people are trying to avoid going to work at all we've got a question on the Cyber truck um is it a is there a risk um that you you lose the pickup segment to Ford GM and rivien if you don't launch the Cyber truck or get it to Market soon no good um we've had another question coming what is the first cyber truck then we could possibly fulfill for three years after the start of production okay thank you we've had a question coming about China um you've been critical of lockdowns in the past uh uh particularly when it happened in the U.\n\nS Shanghai is currently locked down most of the western world is able to carry on functioning at the moment because of vaccines but China is is going towards a zero covert approach what do you make of the Chinese government's actions well um the you know had some conversations with the Chinese government um in in recent days and it's uh clear that the uh lockdowns are are being lifted rapidly so I would not expect this to be um a significant issue in in the coming weeks um you know the in the past where I was sort of upset with lockdowns is where those lockdowns differentially affected Tesla but not others um so in the case of California and the Bay Area County specifically um every other car factory in North America was allowed to start but not Tesla\n\neven though we there was no basis for that it was simply because we were located in Alameda County in California um and but they had no rational it was arbitrary and and uh unfair and and um you know that's that's the reason for why we're quite upset about uh kind of Tesla being singled out as the only car company in America that was allowed to start even though I think our health care practices are probably better than anyone else thank you we've had a question on software at what point did you realize that software was going to be key to Tesla's success and particularly as others are coming into software how do you maintain leadership in it well Tesla is I think as much a software company as it is a hardware company you know I personally wrote software\n\nfor 20 years so um I have great respect and admiration for software engineering um I think it's incredibly important and um I think that's why Tesla's been able to recruit uh some of the world's best software Engineers is because we we value software engineering so highly and do not regard it as an afterthought um uh so you know our autopilot for self-driving AI team is uh incredibly talented and and some of the most the smartest software engineers in the world um so and I do not give compliments lightly so we have an incredible team we have the best real world AI team in the world the the best real world AI team that on Earth um and um and we're seeing more and more uh incredibly talented people join our team so um and we're really not seeing anyone\n\nelse being close to solving real world AI um they may exist but if so they're being very subtle about it and that periodically pull our team and say like do we know anyone who is doing this because you know we know who a lot of the the top people are in Ai and what they're doing and and we just don't see anyone else that we're aware of making any significant progress in real world AI apart from Tesla um so yeah I I do I am quite confident that we'll not merely maintain our software lead but increase it thank you um we've had a question come in on the supercharger Network what are your thoughts about opening it to other motorists who don't drive Teslas and doesn't that risk what is currently one of your great competitive advantages uh we've already opened\n\nTesla superchargers to um other uh electric cars in Europe and we intend to roll that out uh worldwide um it's a little trickier in the us because we have a different connector than the the rest of the industry but we will be adding the rest of Industry connectors as an option to superchargers in us so we'll be fully we're trying as best as possible to do the right thing for the advancement of electrification even if that diminishes our competitive advantage do you uh do you think you'll ever wrap all your various operations Tesla SpaceX Etc under one umbrella group or do you want to keep them separate for the time being I think they're they're sort of separate objectives with uh different shareable devices and I think you know I don't see a ton of merits\n\nin combining them um at times there are people um you know where we have some say very talented people who who actually are willing to join but they they want to do things both at SpaceX and Tesla uh so for example we've got um one of the best Advanced Materials teams in the world it might be the best but it's certainly one of the best um and uh a lot of people on that team were willing to join but only if they could work on both rockets and cars it was like great um let's do that and and so we can sort of share some of the ideas uh between rockets and cars which are obviously not competitive you know they're they're not different competitive segments um so you know if you say like if somebody's a really incredible uh technologist innovator engineer they\n\nwant to work on interesting things so the more interesting you know like sure like money is you know they can get money from you know anyone would hire them for a lot of money so um then it's it's not a money thing it's really just how interesting are the projects and so there are just a few cases where um we can recruit some of the smartest you know Engineers scientists technologists in the world but they they want to work on both rockets and cars and there's a few cases like that thank you what do you I know we've I know we've run over time but it's one more I'm going to try and get in and then if you need to go go but if you're happy to keep talking we'll we'll keep you um what is the uh what do you think's the next big innovation in personal transportation\n\nwell I think tunnels are underrated underappreciated tunnels Will Never Let You Down here's the question here's the question on tunnels right so if you look at say for instance Robert Moses in New York built loads of Highways they were supposed to solve congestion and all they did was led to more congestion how do you avoid tunnels doing exactly the same but just being very expensive in the process foreign I have to say the this this notion of induced demand is one of the single dumbest Notions I have ever heard my entire life um if if you know if adding roads just increases traffic why don't we delete them and decrease traffic and I think you'd have an uproar if you did that the the real problem is that we have not if you take say congested cities which\n\nreally almost all large cities are congested you have a fundamental dimensional problem you have say these tall buildings or multi-level buildings where you've got uh you know people people you know living in 3D and then you want to take them in and out of those buildings on a 2d Road Network like how would you possibly expect that to work um so uh especially if they want to all to you know arrive and depart at roughly the same time this is just a recipe for traffic obviously so now if you go 3D which you go 3D up or you go 3D down now you have you're matching the dimensionality of the buildings um the buildings are 3D that the the and if the road Network or you could potentially have flying cars uh is 3D then you will completely alleviate the traffic\n\nproblem um so think of titles not as a single layer of tunnels but as as many layers as you want um as whatever layer count isn't is necessary to drop traffic to landline that people wouldn't think it would work um and we've already we have a proof of concept list in Las Vegas with the tunnel uh going from the convention center to the strip and that will soon be connecting all of the hotels and the airport uh in in Las Vegas um and Phil will just try it out for themselves it's working really well uh already in Vegas and there was some skepticism um among the county in the city as weather would be effective um and I think the the test tunnel just barely succeeded in in a vote with the the you know the with the local government in Clark County and and Las\n\nVegas but uh once they saw the initial test tunnel and wrote in it themselves uh we got a unanimous vote in favor of expanding it to the whole city so that should tell you something could you ever potentially go in the other direction three-dimensionally and look at vetoles and potentially flying vehicles well I like the idea of details but um you know we already have vetoes in the form of a helicopter so but the problem with with going 3D in the air um is is that um you you now have things that make a lot of noise uh that uh and the wind force that they generate when taking over Landing is very high um I mean if you just say like look at a little drone and say and I imagine that that thing was big what a record it would make and how much wind force would\n\nit generate and now they're going all over the place like a giant beehive of super noisy bees um I don't think people is what people want and most cities uh helicopters are actually banned except for emergency purposes because of this reason so um then there's also the weather dependency so if if it's if there's if there are high winds or or heavy snow rain sleet uh now the you can't fly um so but now you're shut down and and can't go anywhere um then there's the the probability of something falling on your head is much higher if there are all these uh you know vetoes flying all over the city right I mean I think people's Comfort level would be quite reduced uh you know should someone have perhaps not properly serviced their you know flying car and drops\n\na wheel on your head um I know that that I think would be discomforting to most people um and and also having them fly over your backyard and and having a strangers stare at you all day is probably also discomforting so I think these are all uh reasons why I have I think vitals will not succeed perfect I deliberately avoided calling them flying cars because they don't most of them don't drive on the road but no you're right but apart from that they're great um uh you told Kara Swisher in 2020 um that if Tesla investors knew what you you knew they would Panic about the state of the company that was two years ago so what were you referring to at the time I'm not sure what I was referring to at the time uh 2020 um I mean I think it's it's not that uh tells\n\nthe investors should should Panic it's just that the sheer number of problems being sold behind the scenes I think would would blow their minds and uh it's it what you know it's like that analogy of of you see that the duck serenely moving along the pond but the meanwhile the legs are patterning like crazy underneath this is really what's happening pretty much all the time um so the there there are a Non-Stop series of issues that need to be solved uh with um Tesla or with SpaceX really with most companies I suspect um and uh now we do solve them um but I think it would be very scary to most people to realize just how many things have to get solved on a real-time basis for the company to function well just last night I I basically got no sleep uh I was\n\nup on Sunday night until well I really just didn't get any sleep until until last night you know so what is I was literally working all night uh just a Sunday through Monday what is paddling under the water at the moment is there something going on that makes you worry about the future of Tesla or do you think the company is now completely secure no it it's it's I think the future of Tesla is extremely strong um so Tesla is uh has no debt it has a lot of cash and uh you know there's there's a sort of a short-term um hiccup with the covert restrictions in in Shanghai uh but I I as for the rest of my knowledge the future of Tesla is incredibly bright um and I think we will uh throw off uh a tremendous amount of free cash flow do you think with your cash\n\nand obviously your market cap at the moment you would ever consider buying another car maker whether an established OEM or a new business um uh well I think it's highly unlikely now great finally we've had a couple of questions coming on super capacitors do you think they might be potential have potential as an alternative energy storage solution to lithium-ion batteries what's interesting uh specific capacitors or Ultra capacitors are um oddly enough uh and I did research in that for a couple years uh while doing my Physics degree um I had a company in uh Silicon Valley called political research which at the time at least made the highest energy highest energy density capacitors in the world um now they used a ruthenium tantalum uh alloy which is um\n\nvery rare with him especially is very rare so um the that that would not scale to to high volume um because it simply isn't not enough enough ruthenium um so that and but I thought about the problem quite a lot and in fact my primary goal um had I continued as a graduate student and done a PhD at Stanford um would have been to try to figure out uh how to build ultra high energy density capacitors um and the the sort of theory I had at the time was to use Advanced chip making equipment uh to build a solid state capacitors uh that would be accurate at the molecular level um and um that this this uh a little bit of we're not new physics but explore exploring some some areas of of quantum quantum mechanics because you have to minimize the probability that\n\nelectrons can sort of tunnel from uh one you know essentially a tunnel across the insulator from the conductor to the insulator so um I guess make things get get quite complicated and rather weird at the sort of single or or when you when you get to get to a small number of atoms um but anyway it belongs to kind of long story short I think the capacitors are not needed at all for electrification of the entire Auto industry thank you we've got a question on money and again I know what I'm talking about so I know that don't worry um could um we've had a question on mining you've obviously done a number of mining deals trying to secure raw materials do you think you could ever go a step further and actually buy a mining company in the future it's not out\n\nof the question we will address whatever the limitations are on accelerating the world's transition to sustainable energy it's not that we wish to buy mining companies but if that's the only way to accelerate uh transition then we will that that will do that there are no arbitrary limitations on uh what's needed to accelerate sustainable energy we'll just tackle whatever set of things are needed to accelerate sustainable energy and doing Mining and refining or buying a mining company provided we think we can do we can change that mining company's trajectory significantly our possibilities yeah do you this is a slightly personal one do you ever think your children could end up working at Tesla obviously not the new one she's only a few months old but the\n\nolder ones yeah um well my Elder uh children have said that they were to do their own thing which I support um that none of them have said that they wish to work at Tesla or SpaceX uh they they want to do their own thing and um obviously I support them doing that um uh I think they want to do something for themselves and uh you know you know make their own way in the world and that's fine and it's possible at some point in the future that they um perhaps they do something of themselves and then and then decide that they'd like to do something a Tesla SpaceX and I'd support that too but but currently they they want to do their own thing perfect if I were to judge by it by a little x uh I know seeing a kid level Rockets more than than he does it's next\n\nlevel he likes it I mean it's really Next Level so if if his level of rockets continues from H2 and to when he's older then then he may be interested he will be interested in working on Rockets perfect thank you um do you have time for time for one more question sure um excellent good um you talked uh earlier about things that are abundant in the world irons abundant Oxygen's abundant and hydrogen is also very abundant in the universe in the universe but not on Earth not on earth have you ever considered do you think that it has a role to play if we really want to accelerate the transition away from fossil fuels no there we go I I really can't emphasize this enough the number of times I've been asked about hydrogen it might be like well over 100 times\n\nmaybe 200 times um it's important to understand that uh if if you want a means of energy storage hydrogen is a bad choice it is has extremely low energy density sorry it's extreme extremely low density and so it's actually it's volumetric energy density is poor"},"languages":["en"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VfyrQVhfGZc"},{"id":"gtc-2015-03-17","type":"interview","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TDm6Snkle70","title":"GTC","titles":{"en":"GTC","de":"GTC","fr":"GTC"},"date":"2015-03-17","summary":"NVIDIA's Jen-Hsun Huang interviews Musk about deep learning, autonomous driving and the future of self-driving cars at the GPU Technology Conference.","text":"foreign I can't imagine someone who enjoys cars and building cars and building self-driving cars and figuring out where the future of cars is going to go and has broken every rule in building cars and somehow managed to have created just an amazing company I still remember the first car I bought from him my only question for Elon at the time was are you going to be around to service this car if something happened to it and he says no trust me and look what happened what an amazing achievement I have all three versions of his cars it just gets better and better not only does it get better and better each version gets better and better it just Delights me to no end when I get an OTA in the morning you know and and I read it and oh wow all these features\n\nI didn't even pay for it I'm not suggesting that I'm willing to pay more for it but ladies and gentlemen ladies and Gentlemen please welcome Tesla CEO founder Elon Musk foreign I've never seen anybody walk the slope how are you welcome welcome guys Elon Musk now now uh you know we made it a point not to not to rehearse anything and so as I just want to just as a as a as a just a reminder you're you're my last thing okay okay could you not ruin the whole thing all right all right so remember now speaking of that speaking of that I think everybody would like to before we get into all of the good stuff okay um and they want to go directly to the juicy stuff okay okay and the juicy stuff is this uh look you know um uh you were quote as a saying that that\n\nartificial intelligence is more dangerous than nuclear weapons and I said potentially and and well it goes on it goes on and just go on you say you say that it's like summoning the demon could be how do you consolidate rationalize the the conflict between artificial intelligence of course deep learning that that obviously is going to be very important to self-driving cars how do you think through that well I don't think we have a tour about uh autonomous cars because that's sort of like a narrow form of AI um and instantly not something I think is very difficult actually I think the to to do autonomous driving to a degree that's much safer than a person is much easier than people think yeah right um and uh yeah I I think it can just become normal like\n\nit'd be like an elevator like no they used to have elevator operators um and then we you know we developed some simple circuitry to have elevators just automatically come to the floor that you you're at and you can just press the button nobody needs to operate the elevator um if the car is just going to be like that and the elevators these days are even smart I mean it knows it knows where to position an elevator so so that if you were to need an elevator it's pretty close to you cars in the future will be pretty smart about that too yeah you'll be able to tell your car like take me home uh go here go there anything and it'll just do it yeah at an order of magnitude safer than a person in fact in the in the distant future I think it's probably going to\n\nbe people may outlaw driving cars because it's too dangerous like you can't have a person driving a two-ton death machine if we if we have the right type of intelligence in a car we we also don't have to make the cars that heavy I would think you know cars are getting heavier and heavier and it's got more and more stuff in it because it needs to survive all these incredible collisions and things like that if I wonder if if we were to to design cars that that just simply don't Collide as much I wonder if we could we could relax on some of those laws and and make cars more fuel efficient and lighter and better to drive you could definitely do that if you could count on not not having an accident then you can get get rid of a huge amount of the crash structure\n\nand the airbags and uh it'll be we're a long way from that because there's always going to be some for a very long time there'll be some amount of Legacy cars on the road um and I think it is important to just appreciate uh the size of the automotive industrial base like it's not as though like when somebody makes an autonomous car that suddenly all the cars will be autonomous it's like there's two billion of them okay so the the total total number of cars and trucks on the road is 2 billion in climbing the capacity of of car and truck production is about 100 million a year so if tomorrow all cars were autonomous it would take 20 years to replace the fleet assuming the fleet stayed the same size arguably it could get smaller if things are autonomous but\n\nstill it's it it's still you know maybe 15 years or something and it's not all gonna transition immediately it'll take quite a while so I mean and it's the same for electrification of cars um changing that industrial base to be electric I mean if if all cars were suddenly or fall cars produced were electric tomorrow it would still take 20 years to replace the fleet and right now it's less than one percent so now you you um you're you mentioned just now about about self-driving cars being easier than people think now you have your vision of how to go from where we are today now my model my p85d has Lane detection and and so it gets a little you know when I get close to a to a lane it detects the the uh the speed signs and it uses a uses a computer vision\n\ntechnology to do that and but and that's today's Adas what is your what is your roadmap you know how is that different than other people's roadmap how do you think about how to get to self-driving cars yeah well um you you kind of need the the hardware Foundation the sort of sensor and Computing foundation and then you can keep uploading new software at least you can with the Tesla because it's always connected um so the car that you have you'll notice like it it's the features are steadily improving um we now you know have uh active cruise control so it'll it'll use a radar and Camera Fusion to track the car in front of you um it's also looking at with a some things that are coming out it looks at the brake lights so it anticipates that the car's got\n\nthe brake lights are active it's going to get basically smarter and smarter even with the current Hardware Suite so the car Hardware Suite is 360 degree ultrasonic sensors that go up to about just over five meters it's a forward camera and a Ford radar so we'll we'll make even with just just that sensor Suite we can actually make a huge progress in autonomy we can certainly make the car steer itself on on a freeway and you know do Lane changes um it's really autonomy is about what level of reliability and safety uh do you want um even with the current census wheat we could make the cargo fully autonomous but only to but but not to a level of reliability that would be safe in say um a uh complex uh Urban environment at 30 miles an hour with the lane markings\n\nout there and children could be playing and things could be coming at you from the side so in order to solve that you need a a bigger sensor suite and you need more computing power um and I think what you're doing actually with the the tegres in the future is super interesting and will really be a big enabler for autonomous driving so I think you know Nvidia is doing really great stuff on that front I appreciate that yeah and so some of the challenges that you see what are the what are some of the technological hurdles that and there's all kinds of researchers in the room there all kinds of engineers in the room what are some what are some of the technological hurdles that you think are really important for us to go tackle um surely surely uh we're going\n\nto get to some better cruise controls on highways but beyond that what are some of the things that you would like us to go focus on the tackle for the car industry um well it's it your work gets tricky is is just the um is is that sort of urban environment around 30 or 40 miles an hour so like right right now it's fairly easy to deal with say things that are sub five to ten miles an hour because we can do that do that with the Ultrasonics we just make sure it doesn't hit anything right you know because you can always this is the right thing to do largely why would you want to hit anything with you yeah exactly so at five to ten miles an hour you can stop uh within the range of the Ultrasonics um and then then uh from let's say 10 miles an hour to um they're\n\ncalled sort of 50 miles an hour that that area in in complex um Suburban environments that's that's where uh you can get a lot of um unexpected things happening like let's say there's a like a road closure or a manhole cover open children playing as a big issue bicycles um once you get above 50 miles an hour and you're in kind of a freeway environment then it also gets easier again like the the the the set of possibilities is much reduced um so like so Highway cruise is easy low speed is easy intermediate is hard um and so being able to recognize what you're seeing and make the right decision in in the Suburban environment in that 10 10 miles an hour to 50 mile an hour zone is is the challenging portion um but but I really think like it's I mean I almost\n\nthis may sound a little complacent but I almost view it as like a solved problem like we know exactly what to do and we'll be there in a few years right just just like Mars that's kind of the the the the the spirit of of innovators I mean in a lot of ways in your mind you kind of you kind of see things solvable or arguably arguably solved and and a lot of it is is really about getting there yeah we'll take autonomous cars for granted in in quite a short period of time it's amazing how comfortable you get and how quickly you get comfortable with it um so now what about government government policies like one of the things that I would like to do is I would I would just like to keep working on my email as I'm driving to work sure you know there's there's\n\na 30.\n\nsomebody will do that already like I said I would like to do it without without uh without breaking the law yeah yeah so so where where where do you where do you think government intervention Falls in in some of this stuff because you know obviously if your car drives by itself and it does it even better than people you would like it to drive by itself but largely the laws don't allow you to do that today right absolutely so how do we cross that bridge and and how do you think about government intervention regulations right so I think um it'll be from the point at which a car is definitely safer than a person um that there's probably at least another two or three years after that before Regulators will allow that to be the case because they will want\n\nto see a large amount of statistical proof that is not merely as safe as a person but much safer so I think what you can do is you can run run it in Shadow mode and essentially say okay this is this is what the computer would have done in all these circumstances and was there a crash or was there not like what are the false positives about false negatives and then it's you know it's achieve a large population group and then and then make a really clear statistical argument with the regulators and then they're going to digest that observe it for a while see if they agree with it and and then I think they will because the evidence will be overwhelming yeah and the evidence is actually already quite overwhelming that if you if you uh if you uh would just\n\nwould have noticed a brake light in front of you in the highway and you didn't you didn't crash into a rear end collision right so a lot of laser safe you know ideally ideally hopefully people don't don't overreact with this with this unknown technology um and uh and prematurely regulate no premature regulations oh I think when it comes to Public Safety I think there's there's an argument for being you know quite cautious and and making sure that things are okay before before there's a change and um I mean I don't think it's the case that right now there's a fully autonomous system and Regulators I'm not approving it that that could really be a substitute for people but they will be in a few years now as we get more computerized technology into these\n\ncars and this car becomes really a software-defined car I mean a lot of your engineers are software Engineers I mean absolutely one of the great things about Tesla you guys right here in Silicon Valley you're rich with software engineers and and you have that that computer sensibility about architecting a computer properly designing the software properly designing the software for many generations of car so it refines and gets better and better and it has been getting better I mean the software from the first time you sent me my Tesla to the now it's just like it's unrecognizable software right big improvements I mean that's why the first thing we try to do is establish the the hardware platform make sure that we have the the sensors and compute power\n\num and and so we do that first even though the software is only taking advantage of a small percentage of the sensor was in compute power and then we do continuous updates to make the car more and more capable and we're going to see a lot of that happen later this year if I didn't have an announcement on Thursday morning I would be saying a lot more of it yeah the audience doesn't understand why they have to wait until Thursday morning you tweeted it already you're announcing you're going to do an OTA what kind of announcement is that I'm going to do an OTA on on Thursday that's like a new product announcement these days it's just it's just that well it's just saying that there's going to be a call on Thursday morning and I'll describe what it's going\n\nto be in version 6.\n\n2 for anyone who's interested that's so awesome though I'm interested I get excited every time I get an OTA and it's you know one of the things that was really interesting is in the beginning when we first built the first Tesla together the Tegra in it we thought was more than enough and recently you said can we just squeeze more performance out of that platform and it just happened in literally two years you know several versions of your software updates all of a sudden the Computing platform is not powerful enough right and and it's because you want to add more features and a lot of features these days are based on software true yeah and so so um one last question and it's it has to do with I guess uh something that that a lot of people are very concerned\n\nabout which is your card becomes a software platform and software platforms get hacked how do you think about that how do you think about security and what are some of the things that we could do to try to make make uh make the car more resilient to to uh security attacks yeah I think that that becomes really important when the cars are fully autonomous I mean the way the cars work right now um every system in the car it's assumed could actually have a mechanical failure of some kind or a logic failure a fundamental logic failure so you can always overwhelm the the breaking of the car with your foot and you can overwhelm the steering wheel with your hands so uh but but when when there isn't a steering wheel there isn't you know brake pedal or something\n\nin the like you know many years from now then it's really really dangerous you know because uh but I bet even as it is right now where we spend most of our time on is making sure that it's it's very difficult to do um a multi-car hack like if you have direct access to a car just like if you've got direct access to a computer or any even a conventional car you can do a lot of things to it um but that that's less of a concern than somebody being able to hack an arbitrary car or multiple cars so that's what we focus our energy on is making sure that that in that way it's it's a lot like a like a cell phone or a laptop uh you know you you focus on making sure that they they can't or that it's very difficult for there to be any kind of system-wide hack so\n\nwe put a lot of effort into that and we have third parties try to attack it um and then certain parts of the the car at the very fundamental level like the Drive Unit controller uh or the steering controller have an additional level of security so somebody may be able to uh you know hack something that's uh cosmetic but it's much harder to hack something that's that's actually physically dangerous there's multiple levels of security yeah and so this way if you if you weren't able to penetrate maybe the infotainment system it doesn't allow you quickly as a result of that right I may display a funny message or something but it would not you would not be able to then control the steering or the the motor yeah well the future of cars is so exciting and the\n\nwork that you guys are doing are so exciting and it's it's it's great to see you guys pioneering these computerized cars I mean a lot of people think about think about Tesla as the electric car and I but I think it's obviously more than that it's an electric car but it's a whole computer platform on top of that yeah I think I think Tesla's I mean Tes is sort of the leader in electric cars but I think will also sort of be the leader of an autonomous cars at least autonomous cars that people can buy and and we're so we're I mean if there's anybody's interested in working on autonomous cars we'd love to have you work at Tesla by the way so we're going to put a lot of effort into Automotive uh or autonomous driving because it's going to be the default thing\n\nyeah um and it could save a lot of lives yeah to save a lot of lives and hopefully hopefully one of these days I could it would be nice if nvidia's campus has no parking lot yeah right that it drops us off and it meanders off to a place where the land's a little cheaper and you know and Parks a whole bunch of cars there and and when it's time to go home yeah someone had to come it will be extremely transformative that's for sure um but yeah I mean when it comes to AI I'm not really worried about sort of narrow AI like like autonomous cars or like you know a smart air conditioning unit at the house or something it's more like sort of the deep intelligent stuff that is where we need to be cautious like I actually think there's many potential flavors of\n\nAI um and you know it's odd that we're at we're so close to the Advent of AI like it's it seems strange that we would be alive in this in this time um well come back every year come back every year and you'll see the the work that this this group is going to do I mean there's so much deep learning work being done here you have a lot of Engineers here as well and I they're they're uh it's fantastic to see the the whole Community focused on advancing this field and along the way we're going to spin off a whole bunch of new capabilities as you know that's going to make cars just safer and more fun to drive long before we have to get to to essentially a self-driving car right there's going to be a lot of versions along the way that's just going to bring joy\n\nto a lot of people yeah absolutely I just hope there's something left for us humans to do well I'm not gonna let let go of my steering wheel you know I've got none on craziness mode and the sports story mode is that the way you have it you you get driven to work now no I well I I drive half the time actually and which mode do you have it in I always have it insane mode yeah all right all right thank you all right foreign the engineer of Engineers Elon Musk okay let me summarize very quickly we announced four things today we had really exciting show really exciting event a lot of it's going to focus on deep learning you guys know why now deep learning is so important deep learning is so important to us and the tools that we're going to create so that we\n\ncan create the future together first I announced Titan X the world's fastest GPU I announced digits def box a GPU deep learning platform so that data scientists could plug it in Get Right to Work Pascal is going to be 10 times faster than Maxwell in deep learning as a result of three fundamental Technologies on top of the Pascal architecture 3D memory mixed mode precision and MV link those three capabilities in on top of the Pascal architecture will give us a 10x boost and then I talked about the Nvidia Drive PX a developers platform that enjoys the ability to bring deep learning to augment today's Adas and start us down the Journey of creating more exciting cars in the future a deep learning platform for self-driving cars everybody have a great GTC thank\n\nyou thank you","textByLang":{"en":"foreign I can't imagine someone who enjoys cars and building cars and building self-driving cars and figuring out where the future of cars is going to go and has broken every rule in building cars and somehow managed to have created just an amazing company I still remember the first car I bought from him my only question for Elon at the time was are you going to be around to service this car if something happened to it and he says no trust me and look what happened what an amazing achievement I have all three versions of his cars it just gets better and better not only does it get better and better each version gets better and better it just Delights me to no end when I get an OTA in the morning you know and and I read it and oh wow all these features\n\nI didn't even pay for it I'm not suggesting that I'm willing to pay more for it but ladies and gentlemen ladies and Gentlemen please welcome Tesla CEO founder Elon Musk foreign I've never seen anybody walk the slope how are you welcome welcome guys Elon Musk now now uh you know we made it a point not to not to rehearse anything and so as I just want to just as a as a as a just a reminder you're you're my last thing okay okay could you not ruin the whole thing all right all right so remember now speaking of that speaking of that I think everybody would like to before we get into all of the good stuff okay um and they want to go directly to the juicy stuff okay okay and the juicy stuff is this uh look you know um uh you were quote as a saying that that\n\nartificial intelligence is more dangerous than nuclear weapons and I said potentially and and well it goes on it goes on and just go on you say you say that it's like summoning the demon could be how do you consolidate rationalize the the conflict between artificial intelligence of course deep learning that that obviously is going to be very important to self-driving cars how do you think through that well I don't think we have a tour about uh autonomous cars because that's sort of like a narrow form of AI um and instantly not something I think is very difficult actually I think the to to do autonomous driving to a degree that's much safer than a person is much easier than people think yeah right um and uh yeah I I think it can just become normal like\n\nit'd be like an elevator like no they used to have elevator operators um and then we you know we developed some simple circuitry to have elevators just automatically come to the floor that you you're at and you can just press the button nobody needs to operate the elevator um if the car is just going to be like that and the elevators these days are even smart I mean it knows it knows where to position an elevator so so that if you were to need an elevator it's pretty close to you cars in the future will be pretty smart about that too yeah you'll be able to tell your car like take me home uh go here go there anything and it'll just do it yeah at an order of magnitude safer than a person in fact in the in the distant future I think it's probably going to\n\nbe people may outlaw driving cars because it's too dangerous like you can't have a person driving a two-ton death machine if we if we have the right type of intelligence in a car we we also don't have to make the cars that heavy I would think you know cars are getting heavier and heavier and it's got more and more stuff in it because it needs to survive all these incredible collisions and things like that if I wonder if if we were to to design cars that that just simply don't Collide as much I wonder if we could we could relax on some of those laws and and make cars more fuel efficient and lighter and better to drive you could definitely do that if you could count on not not having an accident then you can get get rid of a huge amount of the crash structure\n\nand the airbags and uh it'll be we're a long way from that because there's always going to be some for a very long time there'll be some amount of Legacy cars on the road um and I think it is important to just appreciate uh the size of the automotive industrial base like it's not as though like when somebody makes an autonomous car that suddenly all the cars will be autonomous it's like there's two billion of them okay so the the total total number of cars and trucks on the road is 2 billion in climbing the capacity of of car and truck production is about 100 million a year so if tomorrow all cars were autonomous it would take 20 years to replace the fleet assuming the fleet stayed the same size arguably it could get smaller if things are autonomous but\n\nstill it's it it's still you know maybe 15 years or something and it's not all gonna transition immediately it'll take quite a while so I mean and it's the same for electrification of cars um changing that industrial base to be electric I mean if if all cars were suddenly or fall cars produced were electric tomorrow it would still take 20 years to replace the fleet and right now it's less than one percent so now you you um you're you mentioned just now about about self-driving cars being easier than people think now you have your vision of how to go from where we are today now my model my p85d has Lane detection and and so it gets a little you know when I get close to a to a lane it detects the the uh the speed signs and it uses a uses a computer vision\n\ntechnology to do that and but and that's today's Adas what is your what is your roadmap you know how is that different than other people's roadmap how do you think about how to get to self-driving cars yeah well um you you kind of need the the hardware Foundation the sort of sensor and Computing foundation and then you can keep uploading new software at least you can with the Tesla because it's always connected um so the car that you have you'll notice like it it's the features are steadily improving um we now you know have uh active cruise control so it'll it'll use a radar and Camera Fusion to track the car in front of you um it's also looking at with a some things that are coming out it looks at the brake lights so it anticipates that the car's got\n\nthe brake lights are active it's going to get basically smarter and smarter even with the current Hardware Suite so the car Hardware Suite is 360 degree ultrasonic sensors that go up to about just over five meters it's a forward camera and a Ford radar so we'll we'll make even with just just that sensor Suite we can actually make a huge progress in autonomy we can certainly make the car steer itself on on a freeway and you know do Lane changes um it's really autonomy is about what level of reliability and safety uh do you want um even with the current census wheat we could make the cargo fully autonomous but only to but but not to a level of reliability that would be safe in say um a uh complex uh Urban environment at 30 miles an hour with the lane markings\n\nout there and children could be playing and things could be coming at you from the side so in order to solve that you need a a bigger sensor suite and you need more computing power um and I think what you're doing actually with the the tegres in the future is super interesting and will really be a big enabler for autonomous driving so I think you know Nvidia is doing really great stuff on that front I appreciate that yeah and so some of the challenges that you see what are the what are some of the technological hurdles that and there's all kinds of researchers in the room there all kinds of engineers in the room what are some what are some of the technological hurdles that you think are really important for us to go tackle um surely surely uh we're going\n\nto get to some better cruise controls on highways but beyond that what are some of the things that you would like us to go focus on the tackle for the car industry um well it's it your work gets tricky is is just the um is is that sort of urban environment around 30 or 40 miles an hour so like right right now it's fairly easy to deal with say things that are sub five to ten miles an hour because we can do that do that with the Ultrasonics we just make sure it doesn't hit anything right you know because you can always this is the right thing to do largely why would you want to hit anything with you yeah exactly so at five to ten miles an hour you can stop uh within the range of the Ultrasonics um and then then uh from let's say 10 miles an hour to um they're\n\ncalled sort of 50 miles an hour that that area in in complex um Suburban environments that's that's where uh you can get a lot of um unexpected things happening like let's say there's a like a road closure or a manhole cover open children playing as a big issue bicycles um once you get above 50 miles an hour and you're in kind of a freeway environment then it also gets easier again like the the the the set of possibilities is much reduced um so like so Highway cruise is easy low speed is easy intermediate is hard um and so being able to recognize what you're seeing and make the right decision in in the Suburban environment in that 10 10 miles an hour to 50 mile an hour zone is is the challenging portion um but but I really think like it's I mean I almost\n\nthis may sound a little complacent but I almost view it as like a solved problem like we know exactly what to do and we'll be there in a few years right just just like Mars that's kind of the the the the the spirit of of innovators I mean in a lot of ways in your mind you kind of you kind of see things solvable or arguably arguably solved and and a lot of it is is really about getting there yeah we'll take autonomous cars for granted in in quite a short period of time it's amazing how comfortable you get and how quickly you get comfortable with it um so now what about government government policies like one of the things that I would like to do is I would I would just like to keep working on my email as I'm driving to work sure you know there's there's\n\na 30.\n\nsomebody will do that already like I said I would like to do it without without uh without breaking the law yeah yeah so so where where where do you where do you think government intervention Falls in in some of this stuff because you know obviously if your car drives by itself and it does it even better than people you would like it to drive by itself but largely the laws don't allow you to do that today right absolutely so how do we cross that bridge and and how do you think about government intervention regulations right so I think um it'll be from the point at which a car is definitely safer than a person um that there's probably at least another two or three years after that before Regulators will allow that to be the case because they will want\n\nto see a large amount of statistical proof that is not merely as safe as a person but much safer so I think what you can do is you can run run it in Shadow mode and essentially say okay this is this is what the computer would have done in all these circumstances and was there a crash or was there not like what are the false positives about false negatives and then it's you know it's achieve a large population group and then and then make a really clear statistical argument with the regulators and then they're going to digest that observe it for a while see if they agree with it and and then I think they will because the evidence will be overwhelming yeah and the evidence is actually already quite overwhelming that if you if you uh if you uh would just\n\nwould have noticed a brake light in front of you in the highway and you didn't you didn't crash into a rear end collision right so a lot of laser safe you know ideally ideally hopefully people don't don't overreact with this with this unknown technology um and uh and prematurely regulate no premature regulations oh I think when it comes to Public Safety I think there's there's an argument for being you know quite cautious and and making sure that things are okay before before there's a change and um I mean I don't think it's the case that right now there's a fully autonomous system and Regulators I'm not approving it that that could really be a substitute for people but they will be in a few years now as we get more computerized technology into these\n\ncars and this car becomes really a software-defined car I mean a lot of your engineers are software Engineers I mean absolutely one of the great things about Tesla you guys right here in Silicon Valley you're rich with software engineers and and you have that that computer sensibility about architecting a computer properly designing the software properly designing the software for many generations of car so it refines and gets better and better and it has been getting better I mean the software from the first time you sent me my Tesla to the now it's just like it's unrecognizable software right big improvements I mean that's why the first thing we try to do is establish the the hardware platform make sure that we have the the sensors and compute power\n\num and and so we do that first even though the software is only taking advantage of a small percentage of the sensor was in compute power and then we do continuous updates to make the car more and more capable and we're going to see a lot of that happen later this year if I didn't have an announcement on Thursday morning I would be saying a lot more of it yeah the audience doesn't understand why they have to wait until Thursday morning you tweeted it already you're announcing you're going to do an OTA what kind of announcement is that I'm going to do an OTA on on Thursday that's like a new product announcement these days it's just it's just that well it's just saying that there's going to be a call on Thursday morning and I'll describe what it's going\n\nto be in version 6.\n\n2 for anyone who's interested that's so awesome though I'm interested I get excited every time I get an OTA and it's you know one of the things that was really interesting is in the beginning when we first built the first Tesla together the Tegra in it we thought was more than enough and recently you said can we just squeeze more performance out of that platform and it just happened in literally two years you know several versions of your software updates all of a sudden the Computing platform is not powerful enough right and and it's because you want to add more features and a lot of features these days are based on software true yeah and so so um one last question and it's it has to do with I guess uh something that that a lot of people are very concerned\n\nabout which is your card becomes a software platform and software platforms get hacked how do you think about that how do you think about security and what are some of the things that we could do to try to make make uh make the car more resilient to to uh security attacks yeah I think that that becomes really important when the cars are fully autonomous I mean the way the cars work right now um every system in the car it's assumed could actually have a mechanical failure of some kind or a logic failure a fundamental logic failure so you can always overwhelm the the breaking of the car with your foot and you can overwhelm the steering wheel with your hands so uh but but when when there isn't a steering wheel there isn't you know brake pedal or something\n\nin the like you know many years from now then it's really really dangerous you know because uh but I bet even as it is right now where we spend most of our time on is making sure that it's it's very difficult to do um a multi-car hack like if you have direct access to a car just like if you've got direct access to a computer or any even a conventional car you can do a lot of things to it um but that that's less of a concern than somebody being able to hack an arbitrary car or multiple cars so that's what we focus our energy on is making sure that that in that way it's it's a lot like a like a cell phone or a laptop uh you know you you focus on making sure that they they can't or that it's very difficult for there to be any kind of system-wide hack so\n\nwe put a lot of effort into that and we have third parties try to attack it um and then certain parts of the the car at the very fundamental level like the Drive Unit controller uh or the steering controller have an additional level of security so somebody may be able to uh you know hack something that's uh cosmetic but it's much harder to hack something that's that's actually physically dangerous there's multiple levels of security yeah and so this way if you if you weren't able to penetrate maybe the infotainment system it doesn't allow you quickly as a result of that right I may display a funny message or something but it would not you would not be able to then control the steering or the the motor yeah well the future of cars is so exciting and the\n\nwork that you guys are doing are so exciting and it's it's it's great to see you guys pioneering these computerized cars I mean a lot of people think about think about Tesla as the electric car and I but I think it's obviously more than that it's an electric car but it's a whole computer platform on top of that yeah I think I think Tesla's I mean Tes is sort of the leader in electric cars but I think will also sort of be the leader of an autonomous cars at least autonomous cars that people can buy and and we're so we're I mean if there's anybody's interested in working on autonomous cars we'd love to have you work at Tesla by the way so we're going to put a lot of effort into Automotive uh or autonomous driving because it's going to be the default thing\n\nyeah um and it could save a lot of lives yeah to save a lot of lives and hopefully hopefully one of these days I could it would be nice if nvidia's campus has no parking lot yeah right that it drops us off and it meanders off to a place where the land's a little cheaper and you know and Parks a whole bunch of cars there and and when it's time to go home yeah someone had to come it will be extremely transformative that's for sure um but yeah I mean when it comes to AI I'm not really worried about sort of narrow AI like like autonomous cars or like you know a smart air conditioning unit at the house or something it's more like sort of the deep intelligent stuff that is where we need to be cautious like I actually think there's many potential flavors of\n\nAI um and you know it's odd that we're at we're so close to the Advent of AI like it's it seems strange that we would be alive in this in this time um well come back every year come back every year and you'll see the the work that this this group is going to do I mean there's so much deep learning work being done here you have a lot of Engineers here as well and I they're they're uh it's fantastic to see the the whole Community focused on advancing this field and along the way we're going to spin off a whole bunch of new capabilities as you know that's going to make cars just safer and more fun to drive long before we have to get to to essentially a self-driving car right there's going to be a lot of versions along the way that's just going to bring joy\n\nto a lot of people yeah absolutely I just hope there's something left for us humans to do well I'm not gonna let let go of my steering wheel you know I've got none on craziness mode and the sports story mode is that the way you have it you you get driven to work now no I well I I drive half the time actually and which mode do you have it in I always have it insane mode yeah all right all right thank you all right foreign the engineer of Engineers Elon Musk okay let me summarize very quickly we announced four things today we had really exciting show really exciting event a lot of it's going to focus on deep learning you guys know why now deep learning is so important deep learning is so important to us and the tools that we're going to create so that we\n\ncan create the future together first I announced Titan X the world's fastest GPU I announced digits def box a GPU deep learning platform so that data scientists could plug it in Get Right to Work Pascal is going to be 10 times faster than Maxwell in deep learning as a result of three fundamental Technologies on top of the Pascal architecture 3D memory mixed mode precision and MV link those three capabilities in on top of the Pascal architecture will give us a 10x boost and then I talked about the Nvidia Drive PX a developers platform that enjoys the ability to bring deep learning to augment today's Adas and start us down the Journey of creating more exciting cars in the future a deep learning platform for self-driving cars everybody have a great GTC thank\n\nyou thank you"},"languages":["en"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TDm6Snkle70"},{"id":"detroit-auto-show-2015-01-13","type":"interview","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c-rWEC90Cjk","title":"Detroit Auto Show","titles":{"en":"Detroit Auto Show","de":"Detroit Auto Show","fr":"Detroit Auto Show"},"date":"2015-01-13","summary":"Musk speaks to press at the 2015 Detroit Auto Show, urging other automakers to accelerate electric-vehicle programs as gas prices fall.","text":"the need for sustainable transport is incredibly High um I mean even in the face of uh massively declining oil prices I think it actually becomes more urgent that uh that the auto manufacturers uh transition to electric and put a put a huge amount of effort behind their electric vehicle programs uh as uh as you know we've uh at Tesla we've open sourced our patents so we're trying to be as helpful as possible uh for the Advent of electric vehicles um we've also said that our supercharge Network we're happy to have other car makers uh use that supercharge Network um and um we're really doing doing everything we can to accelerate the Advent of sustainable cars well we're working very hard to to grow grow the rates as I said our our weekly production rate\n\nuh year-over-year is has increased 100% And for for for a manufacturer of a large complex object that that is a huge percentage growth um and we're going to try to increase It Again by 100% year-over-year in terms of the the weekly production rate beginning start of the year to the end of the year you have like a 10 to 20 year Horizon here where you want to I mean you want to go to Mars I want to enable I want to enable uh large numbers of people in cargo to go to Mars so it's not sort of about me personally want to make a journey back to Mars I mean that would be nice on a personal level but I do think it is important um that we as a species of civilization are on a path to become a true space a true space fairing civilization and a multiplet species","textByLang":{"en":"the need for sustainable transport is incredibly High um I mean even in the face of uh massively declining oil prices I think it actually becomes more urgent that uh that the auto manufacturers uh transition to electric and put a put a huge amount of effort behind their electric vehicle programs uh as uh as you know we've uh at Tesla we've open sourced our patents so we're trying to be as helpful as possible uh for the Advent of electric vehicles um we've also said that our supercharge Network we're happy to have other car makers uh use that supercharge Network um and um we're really doing doing everything we can to accelerate the Advent of sustainable cars well we're working very hard to to grow grow the rates as I said our our weekly production rate\n\nuh year-over-year is has increased 100% And for for for a manufacturer of a large complex object that that is a huge percentage growth um and we're going to try to increase It Again by 100% year-over-year in terms of the the weekly production rate beginning start of the year to the end of the year you have like a 10 to 20 year Horizon here where you want to I mean you want to go to Mars I want to enable I want to enable uh large numbers of people in cargo to go to Mars so it's not sort of about me personally want to make a journey back to Mars I mean that would be nice on a personal level but I do think it is important um that we as a species of civilization are on a path to become a true space a true space fairing civilization and a multiplet species"},"languages":["en"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c-rWEC90Cjk"},{"id":"automotive-news-world-congress-2015-01-13","type":"interview","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ea9LoOnMTiE","title":"Automotive News World Congress","titles":{"en":"Automotive News World Congress","de":"Automotive News World Congress","fr":"Automotive News World Congress"},"date":"2015-01-13","summary":"Musk speaks to auto-industry executives about Tesla, electric vehicles and the future of the car at the Automotive News World Congress.","text":"Jason ridlo reporting for americ jr.\n\ncom see Jason ridlo reporting from the Detroit Marriott at the Renaissance Center for the 2015 Automotive news World Congress stay tuned for remarks from Mr Elon Musk CEO and co-founder of Tesla Motors and so I think I'm hopeful that you know by coming here maybe answering some questions I can explain why I think the opportunity for electric cars is tremendous and why I think think that all transport with the ironic exception of rockets will go fully electric um and uh and so it's really just a question of when it goes fully electric and if we can make it go electric sooner then that will be much better for the world and and we do have significant danger with fracking technology which is I think really still uh at at a an early stage because I I think\n\nfracking probably increases the accessible um oil and gas in the world by perhaps a factor of 10 we don't really know what what the full extent of it is but it's probably something like Northern magnitude uh which which means the potential harm to the to the climate is is really much much greater than it was before um and and we can't rely on scarcity to drive the price of oil and gas high um and and have that be an adequate forcing function uh to move electric so we have to figure out how to make electric cars themselves compelling um without without that economic forcing function of high gas prices thank you we against a couple of uh Canadian boys talking fast cars and Rockets could be better if you were going to launch two businesses I'm guessing the\n\nnatural place to start would probably not be rockets and cars yeah um uh I think for sure if you were to rank order companies to start and say what is the uh what is likely to succeed um and what you know what what has the best risk adjusted return pretty sure starting a car company a rocket company will be at the bottom of the list so so why cars in why space uh well because in the case of cars uh it was very important for there to be an example of an electric car that that was great like there were no great electric cars so people thought electric cars were like a golf cart so they were slow and didn't maneuver well and had low range or ugly didn't have as much functionality um and that's that's the picture that people had in their minds and we had\n\nto show people that an electric car could be fast sexy handle well long range and be a great car and that's what we do with Tesla Roadster so it's really important to sort of just break the mold to break the m to address that misperception that uh one couldn't make a great electric car and and then uh and then to show that if you made electric car with all those attributes that lots of people would buy it because even after we made the car you know a lot of people said well yeah you've made this electric sports car but nobody's going to buy it then so we had to show yes there is demand for it and the same for the model S um and then with our model three down the road showing that it's possible to compelling long range Mass Market electric car that's um\n\nI think that's that's the the third uh part of the strategy that I outlined with my first blog post about Tesla now almost 10 years ago um so that that's you had a few people doubting you I mean when when you go back to a few just a few just a few people right every you know here and there if we go back to 2008 you've had a couple of failed rocket launches you've got a lot of Teslas sitting around in the garage it's it's there are some issues there in an instant you receive funding from NASA a huge contract from NASA for $1.\n\n5 billion and then you also get funding for the car company but you were at the bottom correct I mean you were yeah I think this is important to to to emphasize because if you look at say Tesla and SpaceX now and they think they sort of think well maybe it was always they were always in a healthy position but it wasn't no for the beginning we were in in really Dire Straits um no one would take it seriously either the rocket company or the car company um they they just thought well he's sort of an eccentric rich guy and he's going to lose all his money um you know they told me that several times um I me the most common joke I heard was you know how do you make a small fortune in in the car car business or the rocket business and the punch line is you start\n\nwith a large one right um so I was like I'd heard that J so many times I would just hit them with the punchline before they uh had a chance to say it um the the yeah so and you nearly had a nervous breakdown around I mean this a personal I'm that that close to nervous breakdown but um the the but I did think to myself um on the Sunday before Christmas in 2008 waking up this Sunday morning thinking I never thought I would I was someone who was capable of having to a break down but this is about as close as I've ever come um because things were so were really so dire um as you to uh earlier that year after the first three rockets had failed of our Falcon one vehicle uh and and I don't really uh allowed for enough money for three flights so we had to desperately\n\ntry to scrape together enough money for a fourth flight um and the and then with Tesla the financing round 12 in the summer of8 because the whole financial markets were crashing and jam and tri going bankrupt and nobody wanted to give us money not an ideal time to start a car company definitely not uh I mean try to raise money for a startup car company that's making electric cars to boot which is like like that sounded like stupidity Square um the you know investors would be angry that we even asked them like that that we that we even ask them that would be angry about that and and in fact the only way we were able to raise money to keep Tesla going was uh from uh is that that most of the existing investors uh agre to to fund the company and I put all\n\nof all the money that I had remaining uh into Tesla so um it still wasn't it was it was you know amounted to about in total about $40 million 20 of which came from me um and then and and I was Tapped Out head to borrow money rant after that um and and that tied us over into uh for about about six months uh to May of 2009 when um dler invested in in Tesla um and that diam investment was really fundamental to to the survival of of Tesla in fact a lot of people think like somehow the government failed us out or anything that is actually not not true um it it was the dam investment that saved Tesla not not not Government funding um the first money we got from the government ever was in um March of 2010 and that was after the crisis have passed um and it wasn't\n\nyour intention to even that this would be profitable I mean you thought it was actually going to fail at some point right well when or you weren't sure it was going to be that successful at this at the start of Tesla when it was just me and a few guys um I thought I thought we maybe had a 10% chance of success okay how do you feel now uh well now I I think we've got now now I think this some degree of success is assured but it's a question of the magnitude um so does Tesla does Tesla become sort of a a niche car maker making maybe 100,000 cars a year or something like that which is always super super tiny you know that that would be um yeah I mean 0.\n\n1% of market share is I think that's the definition of a niche if you're 0.\n\n1% you have to at least get past decimal point to not be a niche um so so that that's one that's one possible F 100,000 or yeah or your stated goals of 500,000 by 2020 yeah I I think we'll probably um aim to do more cars than than thanat I'm not necessarily by by 2020 show 500,000 but I think we'll probably continue past that you'll continue past the 500,000 yes okay within which time within what kind of time frame um let's say I don't know I think I think should we should be able to get to probably at least a few million cars in 10 years a year so by 2030 by well by 2025 Oh by 2025 okay we can probably get to a few million cars a year um we just I think we're just going to keep driving our our volume um as as as as high as we can because our mission\n\nis fundamentally to uh transition the world to electric cars so if we don't make a lot of electric cars then we're not doing as much as we can um now I mean that that being said I think most of the good that Tesla will accomplish is by um sort of cutting a path through the jungle to to to to show uh what can be done with M cars like so I think so you think that that the industry as a whole will adopt a greater yes I think","textByLang":{"en":"Jason ridlo reporting for americ jr.\n\ncom see Jason ridlo reporting from the Detroit Marriott at the Renaissance Center for the 2015 Automotive news World Congress stay tuned for remarks from Mr Elon Musk CEO and co-founder of Tesla Motors and so I think I'm hopeful that you know by coming here maybe answering some questions I can explain why I think the opportunity for electric cars is tremendous and why I think think that all transport with the ironic exception of rockets will go fully electric um and uh and so it's really just a question of when it goes fully electric and if we can make it go electric sooner then that will be much better for the world and and we do have significant danger with fracking technology which is I think really still uh at at a an early stage because I I think\n\nfracking probably increases the accessible um oil and gas in the world by perhaps a factor of 10 we don't really know what what the full extent of it is but it's probably something like Northern magnitude uh which which means the potential harm to the to the climate is is really much much greater than it was before um and and we can't rely on scarcity to drive the price of oil and gas high um and and have that be an adequate forcing function uh to move electric so we have to figure out how to make electric cars themselves compelling um without without that economic forcing function of high gas prices thank you we against a couple of uh Canadian boys talking fast cars and Rockets could be better if you were going to launch two businesses I'm guessing the\n\nnatural place to start would probably not be rockets and cars yeah um uh I think for sure if you were to rank order companies to start and say what is the uh what is likely to succeed um and what you know what what has the best risk adjusted return pretty sure starting a car company a rocket company will be at the bottom of the list so so why cars in why space uh well because in the case of cars uh it was very important for there to be an example of an electric car that that was great like there were no great electric cars so people thought electric cars were like a golf cart so they were slow and didn't maneuver well and had low range or ugly didn't have as much functionality um and that's that's the picture that people had in their minds and we had\n\nto show people that an electric car could be fast sexy handle well long range and be a great car and that's what we do with Tesla Roadster so it's really important to sort of just break the mold to break the m to address that misperception that uh one couldn't make a great electric car and and then uh and then to show that if you made electric car with all those attributes that lots of people would buy it because even after we made the car you know a lot of people said well yeah you've made this electric sports car but nobody's going to buy it then so we had to show yes there is demand for it and the same for the model S um and then with our model three down the road showing that it's possible to compelling long range Mass Market electric car that's um\n\nI think that's that's the the third uh part of the strategy that I outlined with my first blog post about Tesla now almost 10 years ago um so that that's you had a few people doubting you I mean when when you go back to a few just a few just a few people right every you know here and there if we go back to 2008 you've had a couple of failed rocket launches you've got a lot of Teslas sitting around in the garage it's it's there are some issues there in an instant you receive funding from NASA a huge contract from NASA for $1.\n\n5 billion and then you also get funding for the car company but you were at the bottom correct I mean you were yeah I think this is important to to to emphasize because if you look at say Tesla and SpaceX now and they think they sort of think well maybe it was always they were always in a healthy position but it wasn't no for the beginning we were in in really Dire Straits um no one would take it seriously either the rocket company or the car company um they they just thought well he's sort of an eccentric rich guy and he's going to lose all his money um you know they told me that several times um I me the most common joke I heard was you know how do you make a small fortune in in the car car business or the rocket business and the punch line is you start\n\nwith a large one right um so I was like I'd heard that J so many times I would just hit them with the punchline before they uh had a chance to say it um the the yeah so and you nearly had a nervous breakdown around I mean this a personal I'm that that close to nervous breakdown but um the the but I did think to myself um on the Sunday before Christmas in 2008 waking up this Sunday morning thinking I never thought I would I was someone who was capable of having to a break down but this is about as close as I've ever come um because things were so were really so dire um as you to uh earlier that year after the first three rockets had failed of our Falcon one vehicle uh and and I don't really uh allowed for enough money for three flights so we had to desperately\n\ntry to scrape together enough money for a fourth flight um and the and then with Tesla the financing round 12 in the summer of8 because the whole financial markets were crashing and jam and tri going bankrupt and nobody wanted to give us money not an ideal time to start a car company definitely not uh I mean try to raise money for a startup car company that's making electric cars to boot which is like like that sounded like stupidity Square um the you know investors would be angry that we even asked them like that that we that we even ask them that would be angry about that and and in fact the only way we were able to raise money to keep Tesla going was uh from uh is that that most of the existing investors uh agre to to fund the company and I put all\n\nof all the money that I had remaining uh into Tesla so um it still wasn't it was it was you know amounted to about in total about $40 million 20 of which came from me um and then and and I was Tapped Out head to borrow money rant after that um and and that tied us over into uh for about about six months uh to May of 2009 when um dler invested in in Tesla um and that diam investment was really fundamental to to the survival of of Tesla in fact a lot of people think like somehow the government failed us out or anything that is actually not not true um it it was the dam investment that saved Tesla not not not Government funding um the first money we got from the government ever was in um March of 2010 and that was after the crisis have passed um and it wasn't\n\nyour intention to even that this would be profitable I mean you thought it was actually going to fail at some point right well when or you weren't sure it was going to be that successful at this at the start of Tesla when it was just me and a few guys um I thought I thought we maybe had a 10% chance of success okay how do you feel now uh well now I I think we've got now now I think this some degree of success is assured but it's a question of the magnitude um so does Tesla does Tesla become sort of a a niche car maker making maybe 100,000 cars a year or something like that which is always super super tiny you know that that would be um yeah I mean 0.\n\n1% of market share is I think that's the definition of a niche if you're 0.\n\n1% you have to at least get past decimal point to not be a niche um so so that that's one that's one possible F 100,000 or yeah or your stated goals of 500,000 by 2020 yeah I I think we'll probably um aim to do more cars than than thanat I'm not necessarily by by 2020 show 500,000 but I think we'll probably continue past that you'll continue past the 500,000 yes okay within which time within what kind of time frame um let's say I don't know I think I think should we should be able to get to probably at least a few million cars in 10 years a year so by 2030 by well by 2025 Oh by 2025 okay we can probably get to a few million cars a year um we just I think we're just going to keep driving our our volume um as as as as high as we can because our mission\n\nis fundamentally to uh transition the world to electric cars so if we don't make a lot of electric cars then we're not doing as much as we can um now I mean that that being said I think most of the good that Tesla will accomplish is by um sort of cutting a path through the jungle to to to to show uh what can be done with M cars like so I think so you think that that the industry as a whole will adopt a greater yes I think"},"languages":["en"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ea9LoOnMTiE"},{"id":"summoning-the-demon-2014","type":"interview","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tzb_CSRO-0g","title":"MIT AeroAstro Symposium","titles":{"en":"MIT AeroAstro Symposium","de":"MIT AeroAstro Symposium","fr":"MIT AeroAstro Symposium"},"date":"2014-10-27","summary":"At MIT's AeroAstro Centennial Symposium, Elon Musk compares developing AI to \"summoning the demon.\"","text":"and a warning from Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk it has nothing to do with cars instead musk warns about artificial intelligence which he has called more dangerous than nuclear weapons must spoke at a symposium at MIT I with artificial intelligence we are summoning the demon you know you know those stories where there's the guy with the pentagram and the holy water and he's like yeah you sure you can control the demon didn't work out I take it there will be no hell 9,000 going up to Mars hell 9,000 would be easy it's way more complex and I mean it would put hell ,000 to shame yeah I like a puppy dog of course referencing Space Odyssey following his next question musk blanked out and apologize saying he was thinking about the AI thing the AI thing for a second\n\nso engrossed was he in that idea","textByLang":{"en":"and a warning from Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk it has nothing to do with cars instead musk warns about artificial intelligence which he has called more dangerous than nuclear weapons must spoke at a symposium at MIT I with artificial intelligence we are summoning the demon you know you know those stories where there's the guy with the pentagram and the holy water and he's like yeah you sure you can control the demon didn't work out I take it there will be no hell 9,000 going up to Mars hell 9,000 would be easy it's way more complex and I mean it would put hell ,000 to shame yeah I like a puppy dog of course referencing Space Odyssey following his next question musk blanked out and apologize saying he was thinking about the AI thing the AI thing for a second\n\nso engrossed was he in that idea"},"languages":["en"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tzb_CSRO-0g"},{"id":"mit-aeroastro-centennial-symposium-2014-10-24","type":"interview","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4DUbiCQpw_4","title":"MIT AeroAstro Centennial Symposium","titles":{"en":"MIT AeroAstro Centennial Symposium","de":"MIT AeroAstro Centennial Symposium","fr":"MIT AeroAstro Centennial Symposium"},"date":"2014-10-24","summary":"Musk discusses SpaceX rockets, reusability and Mars at MIT's AeroAstro centennial event.","text":"I good afternoon good afternoon it's a pleasure to welcome you all to this capstone of what has been a truly outstanding celebration of a hundred years of aerospace at MIT I'll be brief as I'm certain that you didn't come here to listen to me before I start I want to reflect briefly on the significance of this week symposium over the last few days we have welcomed to our campus a who's who of aerospace Scholars innovators and legions more than 500 alumni and guests from all over the world have join us to honor the past century of aerospace achievement and MIT central role in the development of Earth transportation the celebration has also provided an opportunity to look ahead to imagine for instance what the rise of autonomous systems will mean for air\n\ntravel commerce and space exploration and it's breathtaking truly to recognize and realize the magnitude of the impact that the faculty students staff and alumni of this department have had on earth travel as I look around at the aerospace pioneers who have taken the time to join us this to these events this week the thought that keeps coming back to mine is the realization that core 16 has been involved in every major achievement in the history of aerospace and that is truly remarkable and that reflects the leadership division and brilliance of the faculty administrators and more than 6,000 aeronautical engineers who have earned an MIT degree over the last century as we have seen over the last few days that department remains committed to excellence\n\nand to pushing the boundaries of what is and what might be and there is no question in my mind that MIT is aryl astra the party will continue to be a leading force in aerospace for the next 100 years at least I want to take a moment to recognize professor Jaime Puri Jaime and his team of faculty staff and students have done a truly remarkable job of planning and executing this week's activities they've created a program for which all of us at MIT are very proud of and my deepest thanks go to him and to the department on his team before we begin the Q&A I'd like to direct your attention to a short video produced by a tremendously innovative company SpaceX it shows some of the company's recent successes in advancing private space exploration if you can\n\npromise by computers in start-up second stage pressing thanks for a flight pressure 59 switching to internal power t-minus 5 4 3 2 1 look at the Dragon capsule making its way with international space station station on to be dragging a coin meters and capture is confirmed as they say in Venezuela that's a cool video it is my pleasure to welcome the stars of today show professor Jaime / re is the hn Slater professor and the head of department of aaron astro at MIT and will serve as the interviewer for the afternoon and he'll be guiding a conversation with someone were absolutely thrilled to welcome to our campus one of the most creative minds of his generation Elon Musk Elam is an engineer and entrepreneur who builds and operates companies to solve environmental\n\nsocial and economic challenges he co-founded paypal and currently dry strategy development and design at two companies he created the space exploration technologies of SpaceX and Tesla Motors is also chairman of SolarCity America's largest solar power provider and Alette SpaceX efforts to be the first private company to successfully launch undock a spacecraft with the International Space Station and for his brilliance as an entrepreneur is impressive creativity as an engineer he is a folk hero to all of us here at MIT please welcome professor hamid / re and mr.\n\nElon Musk good afternoon over the last three days we have been celebrating a century of MIT aerospace innovation we've looked at the lessons learned from the past the excitement of the present and a speculated about the future the common thing underlined is incredible hundred years has been the passion of the visionaries people like ham soccer do Leto Gardner Draper and Simmons who better than Elon Musk to add to this roster of visionaries and culminate this symposium and join us as we launch our second century of aerospace at MIT Ellen is an innovator and an inspiration to a new generation of engineers and entrepreneurs first of all alone thank you very much for coming it's a pleasure to have you here and welcome to MIT so we'll have a light to start\n\nand ask you if you could elaborate a little bit on what we've seen on the video okay that's quite a lot well I mean what we're staying there is and and I just like like our communications team put it together so I just like sword for the first time in the back there like probably a bit too much slow-mo so the you know what we're seeing there is our Falcon 9 rocket and out Dragon spacecraft and we're seeing some of the initial tests of the reusable version of Falcon 9 that is capable of taking open landing which is reusability is relating the critical breakthrough needed in rocketry to take things to the next level what do you think you'll might be able to fly an operational the usual force the stage well we've been able to soft land boost the rocket booster\n\nin the ocean twice so far unfortunately you know sort of SAT there for several seconds then tipped over and exploded much yeah just quite difficult to reuse the point but the unfortunately the unit circle it support it's as tall as a 14-story building so you know when a 14-story building pulls over is quite a quite a belly flop and so what we need to do is to be able to eat the land on a floating platform or ideally boost back to the launch site and land back to the launch site but before we Bruce back to the launch site and try to land there we need to show that we can land with precision over and over again otherwise you're bad could happen but if it doesn't prove back to where it's where we intended so we put it for the upcoming launch I think we've\n\ngot a chance of landing on on a floating landing platform we actually have a huge platform that's being constructed at a shipyard in Louisiana right now which is plus huge huge issue I mean it's about 300 feet long by 170 feet wide that looks very tiny from space and and the leg span of the rocket is 60 feet so you know you've got and this is going to be positioning itself up in the ocean with you know with with with engines that'll keep it and it will try to keep it in a particular position but it's tricky you got these big rollers and you know and GPS errors so but you know such compliments it's it's not anchored because it's like out in the bloody Atlantic so so that that's that's where we're going to put we're going to try to land on that on the next\n\nflight and if we land on that then I think we'll be able to reply that Brewster but I it's probably maybe not more than a fifty percent chance or less of landing it on the platform for the first time but there's a lot of launches that will occur over the next year so there's at least a dozen launches that will occur over the next 12 months and I think I think it's quite likely probably eighty ninety percent likely that one of those flights will be able to land and refi so I think we're quite close I'm curious to know why you chose to go with the retro thrust rocket for landing as opposed to jazz wings and wheels and run or London or run away like like the chapel see yeah there's a couple reasons the if you like the long-term ambition of SpaceX is to develop\n\ntechnologies necessary to establish a self-sustaining a city on Mars or civilization on Mars and wings and a runway don't really work if you're going somewhere other than earth if the moon doesn't have an atmosphere so wings in a wheel with wings and wheels are you know there's no run there's no runways in there's no atmosphere not a good choice for the moon and then on Mars there are also no runways and the atmosphere is very thin and so unless you you know like you know try to land something at supersonic velocity so unlike it's just not a good choice for Mars either so so you really have to get good after pulse of landing if you want to go someplace other than Earth which which is why you have rockets because obviously aircraft work quite well on earth\n\nso and then but even put worth recovery you know when you really look at it even if other planets had atmospheres the definitely the penalty for propulsive landing is quite low like you can just do it is easy calculation of what's the terminal velocity and then how identifier the engine at water level to get 200 velocity and and then if you do some interesting things like if you look at our landing gear they're essentially like giant body flaps so the drag of where we deploy the line and give a trap drank massively increases and so we have dual use of landing gear as dried body flaps and as Len as landing gear and it actually cuts the terminal velocity in half and therefore the fuel go with propellant that we need to stop this vehicle in half and actually\n\nit's quite an efficient method of of landing precisely that you can use less mass if you want to do parachutes or water landing but then reasonability is negatively affected and any near-term plans for the reusable second stage product the the the next generation vehicles after that the Falcon architecture will be designed for full reusability I don't expect the Falcon line two have a reasonable upper stage just just because the with with with a kerosene based system the specific impulse isn't really high enough to do that and a lot of the missions we do for commercial satellite deployment are just geostationary missions so that we're really going very far out these are high Delta blessed emissions so to try to get something back from that is really difficult\n\nbut with the next generation of vehicles which is it sub cooled methane oxygen system where the propellants are cool too close to the freezing temperature to increase the density we can definitely do a full reusability and that system is intended to be a fully reusable Mars transportation system so not merely to low-earth orbit but all the way to Mars and back I thought we thought over useful at eight years huh I'm an optimistic person but always I I think we could start to see some test flights in the five or six year time frame but we're talking about a much bigger vehicle vehicle together yeah and that we're also going to be upgrading to sort of a new generation of a harder engine cycle which is a full flow staged combustion so what we have right now\n\nas an open cycle engine so I mean right now say like engines are our weakest point that's basics but there will be become as strong as the as the structures and avionics in the next generation okay thank you app so let me a SpaceX is only 12 years old and you have shown that in some aspects you can compete head-to-head with much more established launch service providers like locket and Boeing and the you viens to what do you ascribe disability of a young and conventional company to take on the establishment sure and actually was clarified point like like right now our weakest point is engines with respect to specific impulse but not with respect to thrust to weight we actually have the highest thrust to weight of any engine I think to maybe ever but but\n\nour specific animals the efficiency of the engine is about ten percent worse than the Dennis stage combustion engine of was using the same propellant the it tells about competitiveness I think the I think it most comes down to a pace of innovation our pace of innovation is much much faster than that the big aerospace companies or the sort of country driven systems and this is generally true if you look at innovation from large companies from smaller companies smaller companies generally better at innovating than larger companies and it has to be that way from a Darwinian standpoint because you sort companies would would just die if they didn't try innovating because otherwise people just keep buying the product from the big company so but I mean sir then\n\nwhy is basics more innovative I think it's probably because we've got I could as a super engineering driven culture I mean it's it's really good we're running kind of the Silicon Valley operating system this is little it's kind of hard to describe like it's like how do you describe Linux like like you know like Linux is more efficient than some other operating systems good enough to remain very less like it could exactly why is like you really have to get into the weeds and but reddit units you have a fairly flat hierarchy you promote rapid communication the best ideas when my best ideas when's culture as opposed to this you know they're having the seniority of the person decide the solution which I mean that should never be the case of engineering choice\n\nbe you know a rational basis and and I also believe that the in terms of leadership level I'd much rather for it someone who has strong engineering ability then so-called management ability and you know like we we do hire some MBAs you know but but I would you agree it's usually in spite of the ambien or because of it I think that deserves on a blog you're really pushing the concept of reusability as a way to affordability but would you agree that the only way you justify making a more expensive reusable vehicle is if you can guarantee a minimum frequency of flights and is the market there what how are ending them say five years ten year period who is going to provide that demand where is it going to come from well it is a check in an excerpt situation\n\nI mean the reason that there's low demand for spaceflight is because it's ridiculously expensive and and you know so somebody at some point somebody has Sarah we're going to make something that's much more affordable and and then see what application was developed the yeah that's that's what has happened i mean the situation in rocketry is it's like if an aircraft the imaginative aircraft were single use then how many people would fly I mean local fire we really low you buy a 747 it's like 250 million dollars only three hundred million dollars and need two of them for a roundtrip so nobody's paying like half a billion dollars to fly it from Boston to London and and if that were the case there'd be like a very small number of lights like scientific and\n\nmilitary purposes and people like Hoover say wow that the market for aircraft is so tiny people really love going by boat it was sponsors so you wear if we have brackets that are reusable we could reduce the fully reusable and can get to a decent flight rate the potential is that to get at order of magnitude reduction in the cost of space transport which is vital for establishment establishing a self-sustaining civilization on another planet or even on you know on the moon or some sort of l5 colony or whatever but you really need to get the cost we need a tour of magnitude improvement at least in the class transport in fact I mean relative to the estimates of what it costs do a Mars mission and Mars mission work I think like the some of the lower estimates\n\nare at the 100 to 200 billion dollar level you know for a four-person mission we need we do more like a ten thousand fold reduction I don't to make it viable yeah but well I mean so people can afford to go deuces space tourism as a the customer and people wanting to just pay to be in orbit in that I mean it is some sort of people your privates place private spaceflight is going to be some some amount of market yeah I i don't know i mean really good just we're trying to advanced rocket technology and I mean on one hand if we are even if we get even slightly towards the overarching goal of Mars colonization level technology like we just get slightly there we we certainly have a viable business in launching satellites and service in the space station that\n\nkind of thing because like yeah I mean you're here for like five percent you know so it's not like there's this still a very viable business doing with orbit of this event and it was enough any flight 45 to support calls echo we're like fasting more competitive than the other rocket companies so we do have a lot of people gang up against us these days okay nice time I on this planet let's talk about Mars that's what really excites a lot of the people in the audience a lot of sites many of us how are we gonna get there first of all what are in your mind say to three top technologies that we need to develop the new we need to improve to get this closer to where we want to be true and second I also like some commenters to what would be useful intermediate\n\nmissions are we going to use the moon is the moon yeah things I necessary step on our way to Mars other than the moon is necessary stuff but it i think if you've got a rocket and spacecraft capable going to Mars you might as well go to the moon slung along the way I mean it's like I mean it's like crossing the English Channel relatives going to Mars yeah so it's like if you have these ships that can cross the Atlantic would you cross the English Channel probably baidu them to necessary from a logistics perspective no definitely not it's certainly not necessary but you probably end up having a moon base just because by why not yeah so but in terms of the key technology yeah Keith key technologies it obviously be great to have some sort of fundamental new\n\nthing that has never existed before and like pushes the boundaries of physics that would be great but as far as you know the physics that we know today I think I actually think we've got the basic ingredients are there I could I mean if we if you do densified identified methyl ox rocket with on orbit refueling earth orbit refueling so you like load the spacecraft spray spacecraft into orbit you sent a bunch of refueling missions to fill up the tanks and you have the Mars colonial fleet essentially that gets built up during the time between the earth ma's synchronizations which occur every 26 months and then that in the fleet sort of all the pots at the optimal transfer point I think I think we have we don't need anything like so we don't need any any\n\nsort of thing that people don't already know about I believe it but we've got the building blocks but but the mass efficiency is extremely important so having better heat shields that thoroughly usable is radiation on humans or me radiation on humans I country yeah I mean things that can mitigate the radiation effects certainly i mean i think the radiation effects are generally way overblown because if you went to the moon like two weeks in deep space Buzz Aldrin's around many other folks that went that also in the audience yeah great I mean so like obviously didn't course like they're so alive and it you know there yeah they seem ok they're people have been up in the space station for like a year or more they're ok so it's i don't i don't know i mean\n\nthe things we can do to mitigate the radiation on roots you know pipe effective placement of the water so let's say the what are you bringing their like tax would ya put that in the direction of the Sun and yeah but I mean I really think about the the substantial appearance that every we do need an efficient of pallet depot on Mars so that's but I mean it really I think this is like there's a lot of I mean obviously a lot of hard work in the engineering that needs to be done but but it's there like the pieces are there you will see robotic missions ahead of human missions going to Mars and to be better around for four people yeah yes I think that be yeah I mean we have like you know the with Rovers on the mall on varsity or not already so I think what\n\nwe see more robots on Mars and we probably want to make sure the propellant depot works to be an automated propellant depot and there's some questions as to what do you do for power generation on Mars do you have a nuclear reactor you know if then you got to carry the nuclear fuel their directives are really heavy do you do some lightweight solar power system it's sort of maybe a big inflatable solar arrays or something like that so just power generation on laws and it gives an interesting problem and then just figuring out like how to get all of the bits of efficiency right before creating say methane and oxygen on Mars Mars is go to co2 atmosphere and there's there's a lot of water sort of bearing us oil give me answer question that has been discussed\n\nover the past couple of days should we be considering one trips one way only trips to Mars what's the best approach to colonize the planet is it but what you review it's not socially acceptable you think people will sign up to do it I think it's plenty of people are signed up for a warrior to Mars but maybe if I could have a show of hands who would consider such an option I see some not many or perhaps enough for a couple of missions so it's certainly certainly been up I think it's sort of like is it a one-way mission and then you die or is it one of my mission and you get resupplied that's a big difference we're from the second option yeah exactly but I mean I think it's so it is a big moot point because you want to bring the spaceship back like these\n\nspaceships are expensive okay if they're hard to bulls can't just leave them there so whether or not people want to come back or not is kind of like they can jump on if they want but do you need the space you're back thank you I'm your kind of weird like it was like huge collection of spaceships on Mars over time really well if it's like we're just in the back and of course we're just in the back so that i think that's that's for sure like if necessary it particularly say we want to have a colony of some time that's of significant size yeah that's one question looking at the at the Apollo experience are you concerned that say we land humans in Mars and they in say 10 15 years and they don't know southern the excitement is done we've done it and just go\n\nand dress for the next 50 years like we did with the Polo it's not something that concerns you yeah well that's why I think we should really be setting the goal as the creation of a self-sustaining civilization on Mars not simply a mission to Mars because then we risk you know it would be awesome and cool and would be a new high altitude record and you know great pictures its up but I mean it would be it's it just it's just not the thing that fundamentally changes the future of humanity and this I mean I should sort of explain perhaps the rationale for you know why I think is important to establish a self-sustaining colony on Mars because I think some people are aware of that but probably most people aren't and you're hit you hear all these rebuttals\n\nlike under all these problems on earth that we need to deal with and should refocus on that and an answer is yes I mean our primary focus your palms on earth but I think that there should be some small amount that's given over to the establishment of of a colony on Mars and making life multiplanetary my small amount I mean some number less than 1 percent of our resources so you know it's not as important as as say health care but it's more important than likes a cosmetics I mean I can propel me know i'm in favor of cosmetics i like them they're great but you know lipstick or calling on Mars so feel may have different opinions but I so I so I think I think we should we should have that and it because the future humanity will fundamentally bifurcate along\n\nthe lines of either single planet species or multi-planet species and a multi-planet version of humanity of humanity's future is going to last a lot longer we will propagate civilizations future far longer if we are multi-planet species than ever we are single plant species and and so it's like planetary redundancy backing up the biosphere it's you know it's a we've got all of our eggs in one basket here we should try to protect that basket and do everything we can but but there are some risks that are just extremely difficult to mitigate and some which we will ultimately not be able to mini game so it just seems like the right thing to do and then the question is the expression is what should we do it now or should we just which we wait for some point\n\nin the future and I think I think it's the wise move is to do it now because the window of technology for this is open and it's the first time that window has been open in the four and a half billion year history of Earth we have a long time and and I hope I certainly hope that the window will be open here for you know forever but it may also close and if you look at the history of technology in various civilizations you could say ancient Egypt were they're able to build these incredible giant pyramids and then they've got how to build permit and then they couldn't read hieroglyphics or you look at say Roman civilization and they were able to pull these incredible aqueducts and roads and then they forgot how to do that and then in that indoor plumbing\n\nbut if quite how to input plumbing you know it's like you know it's just that there's clearly been a cycle with with technology and you know hopefully but that's an upward-sloping sine wave that you know continues on to be really great in the future but maybe it doesn't yeah maybe there's some bad thing that happens and and so for one percent of our resources we could buy life insurance for life collectively and I think that would be a good thing to this idea thank you thank you AB you know I'm sure the topic of of Martha's going to come again because in a few minutes I like to open the floor for questions but I have a couple more questions I really like to to get your opinion on a related to your association about your involvement with Tesla and solar\n\ncity could you tell us a little bit about your nouns plans to construct a battery in the factory and can you elaborate in this watch the driver is it satisfy demands reduce costs improve efficiencies or all of the above look for the pure gigafactory yes so the you know the gigafactory is like the least bad solution we can come up with honestly I mean I think it's actually pretty cool or it's worked out but we're just based with a simple problem of if we want to make electric cars we need enough batteries for the electric cars and and say well last year all lithium iron production combined with 30 gigawatt hours approximately that's nothing okay or these it's nothing when you consider like if you want to make half a million electric cars a year that's\n\nhow much you need and there are 100 million new cars made every year there are two billion gasoline or diesel cars on the road worldwide so just do the basic math you don't just need one gigafactory you need like 200 Giga factories just for new car production and that assumes you're only going to replace the fleet at the existing rate which has a refreshed every 20 years so yeah so the given that we want to try to get to full capacity at our premont plant in California of half million vehicles year we need happening vehicles a year of batteries and obviously we can't use all of the other factories in the world combined because people want cell phones and laptops and other things therefore we have to build this factory and when we found we have a great\n\npartner in panasonic Panasonic's taking care of the kind of a cell formation part of it they're actually many aspects to this because it sort of anode cathode separator electrolyte can at the precursor level you've got sort of raw materials coming in from the mines that that sort of beat into a variety of other companies like Sumer top of each other metals and mining and itachi and others and that they do the precursor processing and then how that Panasonic takes the anode and cathode material separate or not does create puts out into a cell then it goes into a tesla section which creates the module which is all the electronics and the packaging and the conductors the safety mechanisms and the cooling loops then the modules go into the pack which then\n\nyou know create has a lot of crash structure associated with it the Packers in the car and then and then obviously Tesla is kind of the the landlord of the whole thing as well anyway that's it short of doing that there was no no way to scale so that's why we did it there is no why I brought that app is because as much as we love Tesla's we are in aerospace department where we are really interested in the potential for electric aircraft sure i love i love daily electrical practice everything will go electric pull everything will be really electric except for rockets if we ironic we think that in terms of energy density to make transport aircraft feasible you wouldn't need improvements in of the order of 10 to 100 Wow no that's okay wait when you say 10\n\nto 100 or fourth base line what would even cotton I only film oh no no definitely not vote I so to my opinion please but you are right now is at roughly for a SL that doesn't have like lots of other drawbacks which people always forget to mention when they talk about battery breakthroughs if there's many parameters that are important for a battery and they'll you know hardly a week goes by with us are some huge breakthrough allegedly in batteries but like the factor is outrageous so but for real cells that actually work and don't have like some huge drawback that you except they're currently at about 300 watt hours per kilogram and if you your to have a compelling aircraft you only really need about 400 watt hours per kilogram provided your the percentage\n\nof cell on the craft on the aircraft is high you just need to be anywhere near as high as it is on a rocket but if it's sort of at the seventy percent level at 400 watts per kilogram you can do very decent range and if you sort of move it up to the sort of mid mid to high 70s you can go transcontinental but with you know intercontinental but some sort of west coast to east coast so you need an efficient aircraft but but that's that's approximately by my calculations that the gnomish need 400 watts per kilogram mid to high 70s cell mass fraction which i think is achievable number because I aircraft have all these like unnecessary things like tails and like rudders and elevators like it's not needed okay okay that just just that just gimbal you know its\n\nair using gimbal gimbal the electric fan like some weird reason like gambling murders is normal in rockets and not in aircraft why not okay well it definite plans to get into this business because we love to to see the calcium's develop in that particular area certainly very interesting domain do you have a specific plans I mean I've been toying with the design for an electric supersonic vertical takeoff and landing electric aircraft for a while I'd love to do it but I think my mind would explode it's like brains worn out you know pretty saturated working on electric cars and and rockets so okay okay good tapas so let me the last question i will ask is about our students you hire dozens of MIT grad ins for your company's the first question is how are\n\nthey doing oh well let bella drink they're doing great so yeah I fact we want to hire a lot more people from MIT that's good news and I'm sure a lot of people in the audience yeah this definitely you know apply to SpaceX applied it to Tesla and like yell at me on twitter if there's something wrong with our admissions process or something it seems to be like I mean it's not the most efficient way to get get to that that is one way excited I don't know if like our you know recruiting and and frying I know processor firing people is is good or I think it's good but I'm not sure so but we want to hire lots of really smart engineers because that's that's how these problems get solved I read the quote which I hope it's true from you tell me that's not the case\n\nthat you say that the most common mistake hiring mistake was weighing too much on someone Stalin and not in someone's personality and I think it matters whether someone has a good heart it does yes absolutely so it that's that's generally where if I say words of the hiring mistakes that I've made in the past it's been it's been just as I said it's looking too much at their intellectual capability alone and not on how they affect those around them and it would really matters is before someone's contribution to a company is how they are as individual and how they affect others around them or you could say it's also analogous to a sports team you know if someone the best person on the team is not necessarily the one who scores the most goals it could be\n\nthe person who assists in the most goals and and if somebody is if there's one person a team who's just just wants the ball all the time it just wants to kick it at the goal that can actually be detrimental and so it's it is important to two-way personality and just you know they can be a good person and what you like working with them and I kind of think it's didn't just make a difference thank you I like to invite the audience to us some questions I'm particularly like students to ask questions but others are also invited and one thing I will ask is that we keep the questions short so we can't have a few of those okay come up I'm so chaplain what I'd like to ask you Ilan is it looks as if the next decade or two human space flight will be dominated by\n\nyou and Bob Bigelow another actually acts Oprah NORs the question is what do you think the proper role of NASA human spaceflight should be in that context other than just giving your contracts well mass has been really helpful to SpaceX you're not not just in terms of giving us contracts but also technically in a number of areas and and a lot of things that we've done its base X have been dependent on things that NASA's done in the past so you know I think we're certainly incredibly grateful for everything that's done in the past and and and for the ongoing support they received from NASA so I'm a huge fan of NASA and but and I think NASA is actually doing the right thing given all of the constraints that they have like if if you know within the context\n\nof being with large government entity that's getting pushed in all sorts of different directions and and has a lot of limitations on what it can do I've been pretty impressed with what NASA has done given all of those constraints and yeah so I think it's you know if NASA continues it continues to sort of expand upon the support of competitive commercial space that's as probably what we'll have the most positive effect on the future of space development thank you so I'm Jordan and I didn't quick question about manufacturing so Obama has had a large question to really get high technology manufacturers in the United States and I think above everything SpaceX and Tesla or excellent examples of that I was wondering one you have a commitment going forward to\n\nhave all your manufacturing or majority of it done in the US and then how can other companies really learn from this experience at SpaceX has had and Tesla's has to really do your own manufacturing and house as much as possible sure well I should say that before SpaceX and Tesla our goal was not initially to do your huge amounts of internal manufacturing so we actually tried to do as little manufacturing as possible at first but we found that we had to insource more and more of a time and so I did it with the better start really not from the standpoint of like we really believe in enforcing or outsourcing is just given you know if there's a great supplier that then we would love to use a great supplier and if there's not then we need to you know do it\n\nourselves like we need to find a way or make away to a good solution and just over time we'd have to we have we've had to make a way more often than not and an open up for for rocketry there's also there are so I to our limitations which is that Rockets are considered advanced weapons technology so we can't just your outsource it to some other country and yeah so and but then I think you're for manufacturing I that very often people think of manufacturing as kind of just some roach process of making copies which it is which actually it isn't Manufacturing is building the machine that makes the machine and if you think the machine is important well folding the machine that makes the machine is also extremely important and more often than not and what I\n\nfound is the is the manufacturing is hotter than the original product like for example Tesla we can make like one of a car very easily but to make thousands of a car with high reliability and quality and where the cost is affordable is extremely hard i'd say maybe 10 times hotter than designing than just making one prototype but maybe more and then at SpaceX also there may be approaching an order of magnitude hotter too many packs or rockets and launch that launched a lot of them thing to design one in the first place so I really think a lot more smart people should be getting into me back shirring and it's kind of fun so it's like I don't know how to sort of got a bad name for a while but it's really interesting yeah thank you I've got a question about\n\nthe Tesla automobile I understand the drive motor is on the order of 250 horsepower and only weighs 70 pounds which is multiple horsepower per pound I've never seen I've worked in the transit industry never seen and looked in other sources never seen a motor other than one that weighs multiple pounds per horsepower the opposite way so you have an advantage of like an order of magnitude some of it can be explained by high-speed can you explain how you achieve that actually if power-to-weight ratio is of interest to you rocket turbo pumps really take the cake you know that the to a pump on the merlin engine generates 10,000 horsepower and weighs 150 pounds now yeah fuel efficiencies sort of separate question I'm pet power-to-weight is I mean it's at the\n\nragged edge of like pulling those molecules apart you know it's kind of amazing that I need like you can get 10,000 horsepower in this thing you can basically pick up but for electric motors you know if you have a properly designed you know electric motor AC induction motor getting a high-powered weight ratio and like you know a really great response rate like a low latency and all that extremely low ripple current and we're not in it it's just it just kind of comes naturally to an AC induction motor that the bigger challenge is actually cooling it effectively and then particularly cooling the the rotor because you've got a throat or going it like 18 thousand rpm so the model s we Rico actually cool the rotor in order to have high steady state so also\n\nfor electric motor you can have it's easy to get a peak power for a short period of time it's hard to have sustained p power and because you overheat and then it's hard to get high efficiency over a complicated drive cycle but those tend to be the the problem to wrestle with more than say the the peak power like we can get people are pretty easily but sustained power and efficiency of the drive cycle are hard thank you I named sherry I'm a PhD student in course 16 and when you hear about the founding of SpaceX a popular story is that you started it partly because you yourself want to go to space this is true in what sort of timeframe with the current program do you see for you yourself being able to have that opportunity actually that bad that's not that's\n\nnot why I sought his face x but and the I mean the easiest thing for me to do would have been to buy a ride on the Soyuz and you know that I would have been able to go to the space station as a number of other people have done but the the thing that I was trying to figure out was how to get us back on on the track of extending life beyond Earth that that's what the that's the reason for starting SpaceX and and I expected it to fail and people sometimes think like well why would you even start that in the first place but the reason with your back before i started SpaceX I expected to I want to do this philanthropic mission to send a small greenhouse the surface of Mars and try get the public excited about sending life to Mars because people respond to\n\nquestions as positives let's read the first life on another planet the furthest the life that have traveled and I thought well that would get people excited and that would result in NASA's budget getting increased and then we could resume the dream of Apollo so you know that was my initial goal was just to figure out how to get NASA's budget higher the butt but then I came to conclusion that if we don't make if we don't make rockets way better then it won't matter like we can get a budget increase but then we just send one mission to Mars and and then maybe never go there again so so that the Gulf basics really was to make as much progress as possible to advanced rocket technology to the point where hopefully we can establish a colony on Mars or and get\n\nus all these get as far along that way as we can't we'll just try to go as far as we can hi I'm Justin I'm a freshman now that SpaceX has unveiled the dragon v2 which is a man rated capsule I was wondering if you were planning on forming in your own astronaut corps or you're relying on NASA astronauts from here oh well yeah I you know I mean we're probably it's we're building a ship that that NASA is going to use and that other people will use it tows a national corps i mean i kind of think like like this really look what we should be transporting our scientists and engineers you know not it's not in our pilots really you know it's like dragon doesn't need pilots like it you know obviously goes there with just cargo you know we just send up 40 mice they\n\nwere not piloting that the crap so it's so it's really it's a means of transporting people to like the sort of earth moon orbit region in order to you know do science basically have been a potentially to the moon to do some exploration there but but but it I kind of think it should be easy to go on a spacecraft you like like you just just be able to get on with no training and go Justin beep you can be hard hi I'm Scarlett I'm a junior in aerospace at MIT as you can tell and I was just wondering now SpaceX and Boeing have both been awarded contracts to build a space taxi and how do you think SpaceX's approach will differ from Boeing's and which one do you think is likely to be most successful Oh Boeing is a fine company of course so yeah I mean what we're\n\ntrying to do with dragon dragon 2 is both in your crude crude dragon design is be able to land propulsive ly with precision which i think is kind of the next generation like you consider the first generation always parachutes to a water landing then you know arguably sort of wings and gear landing legs over landing gear then like the sort of third generation is propulsive landing with precision I mean if if you saw a movie about the future with aliens landing how do they land like that okay obviously like I'm gonna be kind of weird if the aliens landed in the ocean with parachutes and like nothing to fear and I like Boeing stick trying to like slightly improve because it's got airbags but it's still an empress ice landing you know it's somewhere in a\n\nhuge expansive desert and it's basically landing on air bags and kind of crashing in the desert you know like okay let's so guess one way to land but i but i think the future has to be precise propulsive landing because that's what you need to go to the moon or tomorrow's or anywhere else in the solar system and that's the thing we should be focusing on and yeah we're already going to the space station back by the way like Boeing isn't doing man sorry so comic books are the future well I think a lot of things that are envisioned in sci-fi books returns attached to the wide range of course yeah but a lot of things that are envisioned to do do make sense and yeah I mean it's like okay and like sit so good there isn't some other way to land on the moon you\n\ncan't fly clown the moon with parachutes and our bags let's do the lack of atmosphere over there yeah thank you hello there my name is Johannes I'm a junior in core 16 and I'm also international and i was wondering from international perspective how's this trip to Mars going to look like is it going to be an American colony on Mars and that's it or is because of course basic is mainly based here in the US or is it just like everybody join in please well I mean I I don't think it's I mean I'm hopeful there will be multiple colonies on Mars it's this certainly probably spacek standpoint there's nothing you know we don't aim to do anything sort of on an exclusionary basis we're just trying to get there and and then I think then you know we'd love to have\n\nthat debate you'll be like oh there's a two American you know like okay baby okay but we've got the source of base on Mars who cares and and I think if there was you know American basin was it would certainly prompt other countries to want to establish their you know based on Mars too but I do think we better to have competition than the cooperation it's not like you encourage companies each in other countries to start their own and Daver to go to Mars as well yes I think I think we're very would be better off with competition route rather than insisting like I'd like in the space station you've got the International Space Station but would we like when when governments all sort of forced to go in lockstep it tends to not make things go faster and yeah\n\nwe want some sort of positive competitive element I think so we don't like people going to war or anything but just like some positive competitive element like the Olympics you know something if people compete hard and it's sort of good sportsmanship and everything and the net result is better than if like there was no competition like Olympics with no competition would make any sense and yeah so I think some positive competitive thing would be would be better and we should definitely not insist that everyone all countries go at the same pace or some collection of countries that's a pace that would slow things down dramatically and maybe not even happen just encourage iza to invest in Mars yeah absolutely ISA yeah Chinese Chris I can see over here thank\n\nyou all right hi my name is Vasant and my question is are there any natural resources on Mars right now that a colony would be able to use and if so how would SpaceX go about extracting those natural resources when the time comes wedding any natural resource extraction laws would be the output would be for Mars definitely wouldn't make sense to transport more as several 200 million miles back to earth you know honestly like if you had like crack cocaine on Mars like in prepackaged you know pallets it still wouldn't make sense to transport it back here very good times for the Martians but not back here these would be the colony to use yeah for the colony to use exactly hello my name is Alexander Brooke you Larry I'm a recent PhD in course 16 and I recently\n\nstarted up aerospace research and development company and one thing that I'm working on is something called themed energy propulsion where we use external energy to power rockets microwaves or lasers the idea being that you can get very high specific impulse is with very high power I'm curious where space X stands on this kind of technology which are thoughts or if you could comment a little bit yeah the beamed energy thing is interesting I mean I I think it I think it is a worthy area of research so I think its wits with trying to make I'm trying to make something work try to get something to two or 'but or really high delta velocity with with being banerjee and see how how well does it work in practice but I mean I do think there's yeah I'll state some\n\nconcerns but these concerns are not meant to say that we shouldn't work in the mic preface it by saying we should work on it the i think that there's there are some scaling challenges with beamed energy if to say what's the actual power output you need to send say a falcon 9 class vehicle to orbit and it's a very very big number like you start meeting like whoa we need like the power of like the eastern seaboard you know to sort of send something falcon the cold falcon heavy class you know what do you need to send something like that or is really a huge amount of energy or a huge amount of power to be precise like actually the power level you need is noisier need you like argument that much on an energy basis but you can't like tell everyone to turn the\n\nlights off in florida so then you need like a huge power plant or a huge capacitor bank or a huge high power density battery array so I'd like to see how this at you know how well does it scale and then and then you say what will help what's the cost of that the huge power power plant and the huge laser array and that kind of thing and how does that compare to the cost per unit mass if you just carry your own oxygen with you and have a lower ISP and don't do any of those things hello my name is Elliot Owen I'm a freshman here I'm very interested in the Hyperloop I made a small working model from my senior project law school and one of the major problems I ran into was tube tolerances so I'm wondering if you can comment on you no problems with tube colleges\n\nand thermal expansion if you're building a 350 mile long steel tube what was the ratio of the pod to tube diameter here two and a half inch internal diameter and about 20 feet long right but have the pod pod diameter to tube ammeter the pod was only a few hundred seven inch smaller than the inside that's the problem so you actually want the pod to you want to sort of a a ratio of the code pod area to you know to vinton tube tube cross-section to pod cross-section of about two you know so so the pot only is like half the cross-sectional area of the tube and because you're still going to want to have some some flow of air over the the pot did you have the cancerous limit yeah well yeah you probably deal with the counter words limit by having a compressor\n\non the nose but it only partly addresses it and then the rest is airflow around the pod but you definitely you definitely want to have something that's that's really a tight fit and and it cause it also gives start hitting tolerance limitations like that the yeah you and just you just need you need some some play and that's in that system like a tricky thing also for what if you really fast it's just even small imperfections in the surface of the tube which I think I think can be dealt with by essentially having it once the tubes done you did actually need to run something that's going to smooth it out like if you basically need to run a grinder through the through the tube that's going to polish the surface and make sure that there aren't undulations\n\nbut in the proposal and I believe like we had the air skis were sprung so that yeah but that's also important okay add thermal expansion if you heat it up 20 degrees this 300c mile long pipe will get 450 feet longer how do you maintain a vacuum seal with expansion joints so you actually have you have to allow expansion at the terminals so it's wherever the terminals are you but you've got to have that that length of expansion and then in the on in the pylons that are supporting it you actually need to allow the each pile on to stretch in X so it's you can't you can't hard constrain it at the pylons we've gotten past the hour now would you be able to take a couple more questions yeah good person like 10 or 15 more minutes perfect alright my name is John\n\nand I was wondering since there's always a growing need for more resources here on earth if like say sometime in the future SpaceX would look more towards obtaining resources from the Moon or Mars or even out farther on asteroids is that like in a plan for SpaceX well we're not really going to try to get resources on the moon because that's you know that would be useful if you're on the moon but not for bring it back to earth so if there's a moon base I suspect that they would extract resources yeah but for themselves I'll try to get through a bunch of question someone answered make make my wife answer a short hi my name is Bob in view of its potential to be possibly the biggest game change or ever do you have any plans to enter the field of artificial\n\nintelligence and in general what are your thoughts on it do you think it's even close to being ready for prime time I think we should be very careful about artificial intelligence if I were guess at what our biggest existential threat is it's probably that so we need to be very careful with the artificial hudgens increasing client to think that there should be some regulatory oversight at the internet bigger the national and international level just make sure that we don't do something very foolish I mean with artificial intelligence we are summoning the demon you know you know all those stories where is the guy with the pentagram and holy water and he's like yeah sure you can control the demon then work out I think that there will be no Hal 9000 going\n\nup to Mars Hal 9000 would be easy it's way more complex and I mean put howl 9000 a shame yeah I was like puppy dog thank you all right hi my name is Rochelle aniceto and I'm a junior in the arrow Astra Department my question aligns with how a lot of the work toward the mission to Mars is focused on rockets with SpaceX obviously but where do you see the role of telecommunications and communication satellites since there's a lot of traction in this field and this will be very crucial to I guess the overall mission to colonizing Mars so I can repeat the question I just sort of give up the AI thing for seconds absolutely so a lot of the focus with the mission to Mars aligns with rocket SpaceX but a key aspect to eventually colonizing Mars allies with telecommunications\n\nand communication satellites so where do you see this as a viable aspect along with your goals your communications are certainly very important we're going to need turbit level communication between Earth and Mars which necessarily means that you want to have a type being like a laser communication system something like that and and relays you know sort of satellites that relate because sometimes Maz is on the other side of the Sun so you go to bounce the photons around the Sun not through and you know so I think communications get definitely to be important also see I think that on earth is there's a lot of potential for space-based communications like that there's a huge amount of room to grow for having satellite communication systems that provide\n\nhigh bandwidth global coverage and we'll need the same famas hi I'm Eric Ward I'm a graduate student in the system design and management program and I was reading recently a Japanese construction company i think it's obayashi just announced plans to make a space a space elevator by think 2050 haha and i'm wondering i'm wondering if its base response a Bravo might affect your vision and goals as well I mean I think every awesome if there was a space elevator I wouldn't hold my breath I don't think it's realistic but you know luxury proven wrong so I always think of like charlie and the chocolate factory when I have a space elevator you know but because people sort of manners like an elevator you press up and you just like not yours base this is like a\n\nreal is extremely complicated yeah I'm not I don't think it's really realistic to have a space elevator you know and I mean let me this way like at the point of which we have like a bridge from LA to Tokyo yeah which i think is much easier problem then then we or you know about across the Atlantic you know like it some sort of 2,000 mile long bridge to 3011 bridge you know something like that would be you know made of like carbon nanotubes like we I don't think we've got a carbon nanotube footbridge so far let alone some enormous 60,000 mile long space elevator anyway so i think i think we're it's it's it wouldn't be it's not the thing that i think makes sense right now but if so we can prove me wrong and they'll be great thank you all right hi my name\n\nis coach hijo I'm a PhD student here I wonder how you think about Mars one project which try to send crew to Mars one way every two years for reality TV show I think they claim they want to use the modified Dragon capsule for landing and I wonder how you think about their philosophy and that they are technical feasibility thank you well I think there could i mean the illustrations that I've seen basically has them using a bunch of SpaceX rockets and Dragon spacecraft I'm like okay I mean if they want to buy a bunch of dragons and Falcon 9 rocket that's cool we'll set we're senior will certainly sell them Fitz I mean I don't think they've got you know anywhere near the funding to buy even one so I think their ports unrealistic and I think trying to go\n\nto Mars in Dragon is less than ideal here because it's at least as it wants to put it if you go real fast it's maybe a three-month journey and normally everyone like a six to eight months journey that's a long time to spend in something with the interior volume of an SUV so I'd recommend waiting for the next generation technology hi my name is Benson I'm a recent graduate I had another space elevator question actually what do you think would be the difference in public perception if instead of building rockets you were building space elevators how the promo video have changed well I you know I think it would not work it would just be an illustration on a page that doesn't actually have real hardware that would be the difference yeah that mean I just don't\n\nI don't think space elevator is like a very sensible thing hi I'm Evan I'm a sophomore I just a question about the future the supercharger network will renewable energy sources play a big role in the source for that for the network yeah absolutely order plans to overtime is go to a hundred percent renewable power generation for our solar truck supercharged stations we've sort of temporarily going to not not added solar power because in the interest of just having national and international coverage that you can drive anywhere in the US Europe or Asia using supercharges we haven't we haven't constrained that so that every supercharger has to have solar panels there are a few that have solar panels most don't but in a long time all of them will either have\n\nsolar panels or otherwise get their power from renewable sources and in long term expected to be solar panels to a stationary battery pack so that the solar panels can sort of charge the stationary battery pack of the course of the week and then the pet that socially record back in the buff of the buff of the energy and release it during peak times because what we see with soup charges is huge differences in usage and you can imagine like you when people go away for the weekend like friday nights and Saturday night as a Friday and Sunday Friday nights and sunday nights huge peak usage people are going somewhere like on a family trip for the weekend but say you know wednesday at 11am low usage so you want to have about gestation about your pack solar panels\n\nand then and there could work even if the power grid goes down you know so that's like I think like that would be cool to have something like even post apocalypse you know you can still drive around okay but how do I can take a couple more if they are quick hello my name is Rita I'm a sophomore in course to some mechanical engineering I'm so I'm more of a car buff myself so concerning Tesla what is your approach to dealing with new companies trying to make it in the EV world like ativa and others is it more of a collaborative approach in terms of sharing technology so we can see more electric vehicles on the roads in the near future or maintaining a competitive edge well I think they're given that we opens post our patents earlier this year I think yeah\n\ni think that suggests that we're trying to be helpful so it certainly you know if there's anything that Tesla can do that's helpful and doesn't distract us from making cars then we're happy to do that and you've also done battery packs and powertrains for mercedes and for toyota we're right right now the fundamental constraint is on battery production so we have to solve that constraint in order for there to be any scaling up of electric cars and that's why we've got the gigafactory and you know and things have to be affordable basically people need a compelling and affordable electric vehicle that is the Holy Grail so that's really what we're trying to get there as fast as we can thank you hi so um I'm Daniel and I'm a junior at MIT and so here's a decidedly\n\nnon technical question so I understand that you have consumed lots of science fiction literature films etc yeah that's what you're doing yeah so I was just wondering what kind of works of art that you've that you think have contributed to your zeal for a good future for Humanity whether by kind of influencing your fear like cyberpunk stuff or like making you see something that's awesome like Star Trek or yeah I'm sure well I mean I mean I love technology and so I yeah I mean particularly when I was a kid I just consumed like all science fiction and fantasy you know movies books anything at all even if it's like really schlocky so everybody end in terms of sort of key influences I mean I certainly like Star Trek because that actually shows like more of\n\na utopian future like it's not like things like on horrible in the future like so many bloody post-apocalyptic future is like okay can we have one that's nice just just a few it's like so I think like that about Star Trek and you're in terms of some sort of key key books and movies I mean obviously Star Wars likes always was the first movie I ever saw so that's going to be fairly influential like I never seen a movie in a theater before it was sort of like just so it was like super oh great and yeah and then tick in terms of books we lower the Rings pulling my favorite book there's already excited by like like are they enough like Jo telcos kind of anti-technology by fantasy are lost in like that so myself yeah yeah it is but it like it's funny at Lauren's\n\nwheeler rings it's awesome book but it's kind of anti-technology so great and I think like the foundation series from Asimov is I could really like one of the best ever and yeah the books you know odyssey clock and hyndland and others like sort of the 2003 best sci-fi with those and recently somebody is recommending to be that you and banks novels as being picked you know fairly good yeah what what do you think is good one of my favorite books is let's see the moon is a harsh mistress it's funny you mention that yeah exact thats highlands best book honestly it's really fun yeah right so thank you thank you the last question all of us busted hi um my name is Ellie Simonson I'm a sophomore here in core 16 um I was just wondering so I know that NASA is working\n\non the SLS um which I believe after a couple iterations are several iterations they're hoping we'll be able to land on Mars and so I'm wondering if that happens before um you guys develop a rocket that can do that how will that change your focus at SpaceX haha well I I I mean I don't think that you I mean our behavior is gonna we're just going to keep trying to make rocket technology better and better and I mean I think the time frame forward the SLS they are sending people to Mars is pretty pretty far out there so and if it does that's great but it's really it's we are what we need is a technology system that's capable of sending large numbers of people and cargo to Mars it's it's it's cool to send you know one mission sure but that's not the thing that\n\nchanges humanity's future the thing that really matters is being able to establish a self-sustaining civilization on Mars and and for that I don't I don't see anything being done except SpaceX honestly and and that's not to say SpaceX will be successful but I don't see anyone even trying so okay alone thank you very much thank you very much for sharing your time and salt with us we love to have you back anytime at MIT thank you thank you alright this one","textByLang":{"en":"I good afternoon good afternoon it's a pleasure to welcome you all to this capstone of what has been a truly outstanding celebration of a hundred years of aerospace at MIT I'll be brief as I'm certain that you didn't come here to listen to me before I start I want to reflect briefly on the significance of this week symposium over the last few days we have welcomed to our campus a who's who of aerospace Scholars innovators and legions more than 500 alumni and guests from all over the world have join us to honor the past century of aerospace achievement and MIT central role in the development of Earth transportation the celebration has also provided an opportunity to look ahead to imagine for instance what the rise of autonomous systems will mean for air\n\ntravel commerce and space exploration and it's breathtaking truly to recognize and realize the magnitude of the impact that the faculty students staff and alumni of this department have had on earth travel as I look around at the aerospace pioneers who have taken the time to join us this to these events this week the thought that keeps coming back to mine is the realization that core 16 has been involved in every major achievement in the history of aerospace and that is truly remarkable and that reflects the leadership division and brilliance of the faculty administrators and more than 6,000 aeronautical engineers who have earned an MIT degree over the last century as we have seen over the last few days that department remains committed to excellence\n\nand to pushing the boundaries of what is and what might be and there is no question in my mind that MIT is aryl astra the party will continue to be a leading force in aerospace for the next 100 years at least I want to take a moment to recognize professor Jaime Puri Jaime and his team of faculty staff and students have done a truly remarkable job of planning and executing this week's activities they've created a program for which all of us at MIT are very proud of and my deepest thanks go to him and to the department on his team before we begin the Q&A I'd like to direct your attention to a short video produced by a tremendously innovative company SpaceX it shows some of the company's recent successes in advancing private space exploration if you can\n\npromise by computers in start-up second stage pressing thanks for a flight pressure 59 switching to internal power t-minus 5 4 3 2 1 look at the Dragon capsule making its way with international space station station on to be dragging a coin meters and capture is confirmed as they say in Venezuela that's a cool video it is my pleasure to welcome the stars of today show professor Jaime / re is the hn Slater professor and the head of department of aaron astro at MIT and will serve as the interviewer for the afternoon and he'll be guiding a conversation with someone were absolutely thrilled to welcome to our campus one of the most creative minds of his generation Elon Musk Elam is an engineer and entrepreneur who builds and operates companies to solve environmental\n\nsocial and economic challenges he co-founded paypal and currently dry strategy development and design at two companies he created the space exploration technologies of SpaceX and Tesla Motors is also chairman of SolarCity America's largest solar power provider and Alette SpaceX efforts to be the first private company to successfully launch undock a spacecraft with the International Space Station and for his brilliance as an entrepreneur is impressive creativity as an engineer he is a folk hero to all of us here at MIT please welcome professor hamid / re and mr.\n\nElon Musk good afternoon over the last three days we have been celebrating a century of MIT aerospace innovation we've looked at the lessons learned from the past the excitement of the present and a speculated about the future the common thing underlined is incredible hundred years has been the passion of the visionaries people like ham soccer do Leto Gardner Draper and Simmons who better than Elon Musk to add to this roster of visionaries and culminate this symposium and join us as we launch our second century of aerospace at MIT Ellen is an innovator and an inspiration to a new generation of engineers and entrepreneurs first of all alone thank you very much for coming it's a pleasure to have you here and welcome to MIT so we'll have a light to start\n\nand ask you if you could elaborate a little bit on what we've seen on the video okay that's quite a lot well I mean what we're staying there is and and I just like like our communications team put it together so I just like sword for the first time in the back there like probably a bit too much slow-mo so the you know what we're seeing there is our Falcon 9 rocket and out Dragon spacecraft and we're seeing some of the initial tests of the reusable version of Falcon 9 that is capable of taking open landing which is reusability is relating the critical breakthrough needed in rocketry to take things to the next level what do you think you'll might be able to fly an operational the usual force the stage well we've been able to soft land boost the rocket booster\n\nin the ocean twice so far unfortunately you know sort of SAT there for several seconds then tipped over and exploded much yeah just quite difficult to reuse the point but the unfortunately the unit circle it support it's as tall as a 14-story building so you know when a 14-story building pulls over is quite a quite a belly flop and so what we need to do is to be able to eat the land on a floating platform or ideally boost back to the launch site and land back to the launch site but before we Bruce back to the launch site and try to land there we need to show that we can land with precision over and over again otherwise you're bad could happen but if it doesn't prove back to where it's where we intended so we put it for the upcoming launch I think we've\n\ngot a chance of landing on on a floating landing platform we actually have a huge platform that's being constructed at a shipyard in Louisiana right now which is plus huge huge issue I mean it's about 300 feet long by 170 feet wide that looks very tiny from space and and the leg span of the rocket is 60 feet so you know you've got and this is going to be positioning itself up in the ocean with you know with with with engines that'll keep it and it will try to keep it in a particular position but it's tricky you got these big rollers and you know and GPS errors so but you know such compliments it's it's not anchored because it's like out in the bloody Atlantic so so that that's that's where we're going to put we're going to try to land on that on the next\n\nflight and if we land on that then I think we'll be able to reply that Brewster but I it's probably maybe not more than a fifty percent chance or less of landing it on the platform for the first time but there's a lot of launches that will occur over the next year so there's at least a dozen launches that will occur over the next 12 months and I think I think it's quite likely probably eighty ninety percent likely that one of those flights will be able to land and refi so I think we're quite close I'm curious to know why you chose to go with the retro thrust rocket for landing as opposed to jazz wings and wheels and run or London or run away like like the chapel see yeah there's a couple reasons the if you like the long-term ambition of SpaceX is to develop\n\ntechnologies necessary to establish a self-sustaining a city on Mars or civilization on Mars and wings and a runway don't really work if you're going somewhere other than earth if the moon doesn't have an atmosphere so wings in a wheel with wings and wheels are you know there's no run there's no runways in there's no atmosphere not a good choice for the moon and then on Mars there are also no runways and the atmosphere is very thin and so unless you you know like you know try to land something at supersonic velocity so unlike it's just not a good choice for Mars either so so you really have to get good after pulse of landing if you want to go someplace other than Earth which which is why you have rockets because obviously aircraft work quite well on earth\n\nso and then but even put worth recovery you know when you really look at it even if other planets had atmospheres the definitely the penalty for propulsive landing is quite low like you can just do it is easy calculation of what's the terminal velocity and then how identifier the engine at water level to get 200 velocity and and then if you do some interesting things like if you look at our landing gear they're essentially like giant body flaps so the drag of where we deploy the line and give a trap drank massively increases and so we have dual use of landing gear as dried body flaps and as Len as landing gear and it actually cuts the terminal velocity in half and therefore the fuel go with propellant that we need to stop this vehicle in half and actually\n\nit's quite an efficient method of of landing precisely that you can use less mass if you want to do parachutes or water landing but then reasonability is negatively affected and any near-term plans for the reusable second stage product the the the next generation vehicles after that the Falcon architecture will be designed for full reusability I don't expect the Falcon line two have a reasonable upper stage just just because the with with with a kerosene based system the specific impulse isn't really high enough to do that and a lot of the missions we do for commercial satellite deployment are just geostationary missions so that we're really going very far out these are high Delta blessed emissions so to try to get something back from that is really difficult\n\nbut with the next generation of vehicles which is it sub cooled methane oxygen system where the propellants are cool too close to the freezing temperature to increase the density we can definitely do a full reusability and that system is intended to be a fully reusable Mars transportation system so not merely to low-earth orbit but all the way to Mars and back I thought we thought over useful at eight years huh I'm an optimistic person but always I I think we could start to see some test flights in the five or six year time frame but we're talking about a much bigger vehicle vehicle together yeah and that we're also going to be upgrading to sort of a new generation of a harder engine cycle which is a full flow staged combustion so what we have right now\n\nas an open cycle engine so I mean right now say like engines are our weakest point that's basics but there will be become as strong as the as the structures and avionics in the next generation okay thank you app so let me a SpaceX is only 12 years old and you have shown that in some aspects you can compete head-to-head with much more established launch service providers like locket and Boeing and the you viens to what do you ascribe disability of a young and conventional company to take on the establishment sure and actually was clarified point like like right now our weakest point is engines with respect to specific impulse but not with respect to thrust to weight we actually have the highest thrust to weight of any engine I think to maybe ever but but\n\nour specific animals the efficiency of the engine is about ten percent worse than the Dennis stage combustion engine of was using the same propellant the it tells about competitiveness I think the I think it most comes down to a pace of innovation our pace of innovation is much much faster than that the big aerospace companies or the sort of country driven systems and this is generally true if you look at innovation from large companies from smaller companies smaller companies generally better at innovating than larger companies and it has to be that way from a Darwinian standpoint because you sort companies would would just die if they didn't try innovating because otherwise people just keep buying the product from the big company so but I mean sir then\n\nwhy is basics more innovative I think it's probably because we've got I could as a super engineering driven culture I mean it's it's really good we're running kind of the Silicon Valley operating system this is little it's kind of hard to describe like it's like how do you describe Linux like like you know like Linux is more efficient than some other operating systems good enough to remain very less like it could exactly why is like you really have to get into the weeds and but reddit units you have a fairly flat hierarchy you promote rapid communication the best ideas when my best ideas when's culture as opposed to this you know they're having the seniority of the person decide the solution which I mean that should never be the case of engineering choice\n\nbe you know a rational basis and and I also believe that the in terms of leadership level I'd much rather for it someone who has strong engineering ability then so-called management ability and you know like we we do hire some MBAs you know but but I would you agree it's usually in spite of the ambien or because of it I think that deserves on a blog you're really pushing the concept of reusability as a way to affordability but would you agree that the only way you justify making a more expensive reusable vehicle is if you can guarantee a minimum frequency of flights and is the market there what how are ending them say five years ten year period who is going to provide that demand where is it going to come from well it is a check in an excerpt situation\n\nI mean the reason that there's low demand for spaceflight is because it's ridiculously expensive and and you know so somebody at some point somebody has Sarah we're going to make something that's much more affordable and and then see what application was developed the yeah that's that's what has happened i mean the situation in rocketry is it's like if an aircraft the imaginative aircraft were single use then how many people would fly I mean local fire we really low you buy a 747 it's like 250 million dollars only three hundred million dollars and need two of them for a roundtrip so nobody's paying like half a billion dollars to fly it from Boston to London and and if that were the case there'd be like a very small number of lights like scientific and\n\nmilitary purposes and people like Hoover say wow that the market for aircraft is so tiny people really love going by boat it was sponsors so you wear if we have brackets that are reusable we could reduce the fully reusable and can get to a decent flight rate the potential is that to get at order of magnitude reduction in the cost of space transport which is vital for establishment establishing a self-sustaining civilization on another planet or even on you know on the moon or some sort of l5 colony or whatever but you really need to get the cost we need a tour of magnitude improvement at least in the class transport in fact I mean relative to the estimates of what it costs do a Mars mission and Mars mission work I think like the some of the lower estimates\n\nare at the 100 to 200 billion dollar level you know for a four-person mission we need we do more like a ten thousand fold reduction I don't to make it viable yeah but well I mean so people can afford to go deuces space tourism as a the customer and people wanting to just pay to be in orbit in that I mean it is some sort of people your privates place private spaceflight is going to be some some amount of market yeah I i don't know i mean really good just we're trying to advanced rocket technology and I mean on one hand if we are even if we get even slightly towards the overarching goal of Mars colonization level technology like we just get slightly there we we certainly have a viable business in launching satellites and service in the space station that\n\nkind of thing because like yeah I mean you're here for like five percent you know so it's not like there's this still a very viable business doing with orbit of this event and it was enough any flight 45 to support calls echo we're like fasting more competitive than the other rocket companies so we do have a lot of people gang up against us these days okay nice time I on this planet let's talk about Mars that's what really excites a lot of the people in the audience a lot of sites many of us how are we gonna get there first of all what are in your mind say to three top technologies that we need to develop the new we need to improve to get this closer to where we want to be true and second I also like some commenters to what would be useful intermediate\n\nmissions are we going to use the moon is the moon yeah things I necessary step on our way to Mars other than the moon is necessary stuff but it i think if you've got a rocket and spacecraft capable going to Mars you might as well go to the moon slung along the way I mean it's like I mean it's like crossing the English Channel relatives going to Mars yeah so it's like if you have these ships that can cross the Atlantic would you cross the English Channel probably baidu them to necessary from a logistics perspective no definitely not it's certainly not necessary but you probably end up having a moon base just because by why not yeah so but in terms of the key technology yeah Keith key technologies it obviously be great to have some sort of fundamental new\n\nthing that has never existed before and like pushes the boundaries of physics that would be great but as far as you know the physics that we know today I think I actually think we've got the basic ingredients are there I could I mean if we if you do densified identified methyl ox rocket with on orbit refueling earth orbit refueling so you like load the spacecraft spray spacecraft into orbit you sent a bunch of refueling missions to fill up the tanks and you have the Mars colonial fleet essentially that gets built up during the time between the earth ma's synchronizations which occur every 26 months and then that in the fleet sort of all the pots at the optimal transfer point I think I think we have we don't need anything like so we don't need any any\n\nsort of thing that people don't already know about I believe it but we've got the building blocks but but the mass efficiency is extremely important so having better heat shields that thoroughly usable is radiation on humans or me radiation on humans I country yeah I mean things that can mitigate the radiation effects certainly i mean i think the radiation effects are generally way overblown because if you went to the moon like two weeks in deep space Buzz Aldrin's around many other folks that went that also in the audience yeah great I mean so like obviously didn't course like they're so alive and it you know there yeah they seem ok they're people have been up in the space station for like a year or more they're ok so it's i don't i don't know i mean\n\nthe things we can do to mitigate the radiation on roots you know pipe effective placement of the water so let's say the what are you bringing their like tax would ya put that in the direction of the Sun and yeah but I mean I really think about the the substantial appearance that every we do need an efficient of pallet depot on Mars so that's but I mean it really I think this is like there's a lot of I mean obviously a lot of hard work in the engineering that needs to be done but but it's there like the pieces are there you will see robotic missions ahead of human missions going to Mars and to be better around for four people yeah yes I think that be yeah I mean we have like you know the with Rovers on the mall on varsity or not already so I think what\n\nwe see more robots on Mars and we probably want to make sure the propellant depot works to be an automated propellant depot and there's some questions as to what do you do for power generation on Mars do you have a nuclear reactor you know if then you got to carry the nuclear fuel their directives are really heavy do you do some lightweight solar power system it's sort of maybe a big inflatable solar arrays or something like that so just power generation on laws and it gives an interesting problem and then just figuring out like how to get all of the bits of efficiency right before creating say methane and oxygen on Mars Mars is go to co2 atmosphere and there's there's a lot of water sort of bearing us oil give me answer question that has been discussed\n\nover the past couple of days should we be considering one trips one way only trips to Mars what's the best approach to colonize the planet is it but what you review it's not socially acceptable you think people will sign up to do it I think it's plenty of people are signed up for a warrior to Mars but maybe if I could have a show of hands who would consider such an option I see some not many or perhaps enough for a couple of missions so it's certainly certainly been up I think it's sort of like is it a one-way mission and then you die or is it one of my mission and you get resupplied that's a big difference we're from the second option yeah exactly but I mean I think it's so it is a big moot point because you want to bring the spaceship back like these\n\nspaceships are expensive okay if they're hard to bulls can't just leave them there so whether or not people want to come back or not is kind of like they can jump on if they want but do you need the space you're back thank you I'm your kind of weird like it was like huge collection of spaceships on Mars over time really well if it's like we're just in the back and of course we're just in the back so that i think that's that's for sure like if necessary it particularly say we want to have a colony of some time that's of significant size yeah that's one question looking at the at the Apollo experience are you concerned that say we land humans in Mars and they in say 10 15 years and they don't know southern the excitement is done we've done it and just go\n\nand dress for the next 50 years like we did with the Polo it's not something that concerns you yeah well that's why I think we should really be setting the goal as the creation of a self-sustaining civilization on Mars not simply a mission to Mars because then we risk you know it would be awesome and cool and would be a new high altitude record and you know great pictures its up but I mean it would be it's it just it's just not the thing that fundamentally changes the future of humanity and this I mean I should sort of explain perhaps the rationale for you know why I think is important to establish a self-sustaining colony on Mars because I think some people are aware of that but probably most people aren't and you're hit you hear all these rebuttals\n\nlike under all these problems on earth that we need to deal with and should refocus on that and an answer is yes I mean our primary focus your palms on earth but I think that there should be some small amount that's given over to the establishment of of a colony on Mars and making life multiplanetary my small amount I mean some number less than 1 percent of our resources so you know it's not as important as as say health care but it's more important than likes a cosmetics I mean I can propel me know i'm in favor of cosmetics i like them they're great but you know lipstick or calling on Mars so feel may have different opinions but I so I so I think I think we should we should have that and it because the future humanity will fundamentally bifurcate along\n\nthe lines of either single planet species or multi-planet species and a multi-planet version of humanity of humanity's future is going to last a lot longer we will propagate civilizations future far longer if we are multi-planet species than ever we are single plant species and and so it's like planetary redundancy backing up the biosphere it's you know it's a we've got all of our eggs in one basket here we should try to protect that basket and do everything we can but but there are some risks that are just extremely difficult to mitigate and some which we will ultimately not be able to mini game so it just seems like the right thing to do and then the question is the expression is what should we do it now or should we just which we wait for some point\n\nin the future and I think I think it's the wise move is to do it now because the window of technology for this is open and it's the first time that window has been open in the four and a half billion year history of Earth we have a long time and and I hope I certainly hope that the window will be open here for you know forever but it may also close and if you look at the history of technology in various civilizations you could say ancient Egypt were they're able to build these incredible giant pyramids and then they've got how to build permit and then they couldn't read hieroglyphics or you look at say Roman civilization and they were able to pull these incredible aqueducts and roads and then they forgot how to do that and then in that indoor plumbing\n\nbut if quite how to input plumbing you know it's like you know it's just that there's clearly been a cycle with with technology and you know hopefully but that's an upward-sloping sine wave that you know continues on to be really great in the future but maybe it doesn't yeah maybe there's some bad thing that happens and and so for one percent of our resources we could buy life insurance for life collectively and I think that would be a good thing to this idea thank you thank you AB you know I'm sure the topic of of Martha's going to come again because in a few minutes I like to open the floor for questions but I have a couple more questions I really like to to get your opinion on a related to your association about your involvement with Tesla and solar\n\ncity could you tell us a little bit about your nouns plans to construct a battery in the factory and can you elaborate in this watch the driver is it satisfy demands reduce costs improve efficiencies or all of the above look for the pure gigafactory yes so the you know the gigafactory is like the least bad solution we can come up with honestly I mean I think it's actually pretty cool or it's worked out but we're just based with a simple problem of if we want to make electric cars we need enough batteries for the electric cars and and say well last year all lithium iron production combined with 30 gigawatt hours approximately that's nothing okay or these it's nothing when you consider like if you want to make half a million electric cars a year that's\n\nhow much you need and there are 100 million new cars made every year there are two billion gasoline or diesel cars on the road worldwide so just do the basic math you don't just need one gigafactory you need like 200 Giga factories just for new car production and that assumes you're only going to replace the fleet at the existing rate which has a refreshed every 20 years so yeah so the given that we want to try to get to full capacity at our premont plant in California of half million vehicles year we need happening vehicles a year of batteries and obviously we can't use all of the other factories in the world combined because people want cell phones and laptops and other things therefore we have to build this factory and when we found we have a great\n\npartner in panasonic Panasonic's taking care of the kind of a cell formation part of it they're actually many aspects to this because it sort of anode cathode separator electrolyte can at the precursor level you've got sort of raw materials coming in from the mines that that sort of beat into a variety of other companies like Sumer top of each other metals and mining and itachi and others and that they do the precursor processing and then how that Panasonic takes the anode and cathode material separate or not does create puts out into a cell then it goes into a tesla section which creates the module which is all the electronics and the packaging and the conductors the safety mechanisms and the cooling loops then the modules go into the pack which then\n\nyou know create has a lot of crash structure associated with it the Packers in the car and then and then obviously Tesla is kind of the the landlord of the whole thing as well anyway that's it short of doing that there was no no way to scale so that's why we did it there is no why I brought that app is because as much as we love Tesla's we are in aerospace department where we are really interested in the potential for electric aircraft sure i love i love daily electrical practice everything will go electric pull everything will be really electric except for rockets if we ironic we think that in terms of energy density to make transport aircraft feasible you wouldn't need improvements in of the order of 10 to 100 Wow no that's okay wait when you say 10\n\nto 100 or fourth base line what would even cotton I only film oh no no definitely not vote I so to my opinion please but you are right now is at roughly for a SL that doesn't have like lots of other drawbacks which people always forget to mention when they talk about battery breakthroughs if there's many parameters that are important for a battery and they'll you know hardly a week goes by with us are some huge breakthrough allegedly in batteries but like the factor is outrageous so but for real cells that actually work and don't have like some huge drawback that you except they're currently at about 300 watt hours per kilogram and if you your to have a compelling aircraft you only really need about 400 watt hours per kilogram provided your the percentage\n\nof cell on the craft on the aircraft is high you just need to be anywhere near as high as it is on a rocket but if it's sort of at the seventy percent level at 400 watts per kilogram you can do very decent range and if you sort of move it up to the sort of mid mid to high 70s you can go transcontinental but with you know intercontinental but some sort of west coast to east coast so you need an efficient aircraft but but that's that's approximately by my calculations that the gnomish need 400 watts per kilogram mid to high 70s cell mass fraction which i think is achievable number because I aircraft have all these like unnecessary things like tails and like rudders and elevators like it's not needed okay okay that just just that just gimbal you know its\n\nair using gimbal gimbal the electric fan like some weird reason like gambling murders is normal in rockets and not in aircraft why not okay well it definite plans to get into this business because we love to to see the calcium's develop in that particular area certainly very interesting domain do you have a specific plans I mean I've been toying with the design for an electric supersonic vertical takeoff and landing electric aircraft for a while I'd love to do it but I think my mind would explode it's like brains worn out you know pretty saturated working on electric cars and and rockets so okay okay good tapas so let me the last question i will ask is about our students you hire dozens of MIT grad ins for your company's the first question is how are\n\nthey doing oh well let bella drink they're doing great so yeah I fact we want to hire a lot more people from MIT that's good news and I'm sure a lot of people in the audience yeah this definitely you know apply to SpaceX applied it to Tesla and like yell at me on twitter if there's something wrong with our admissions process or something it seems to be like I mean it's not the most efficient way to get get to that that is one way excited I don't know if like our you know recruiting and and frying I know processor firing people is is good or I think it's good but I'm not sure so but we want to hire lots of really smart engineers because that's that's how these problems get solved I read the quote which I hope it's true from you tell me that's not the case\n\nthat you say that the most common mistake hiring mistake was weighing too much on someone Stalin and not in someone's personality and I think it matters whether someone has a good heart it does yes absolutely so it that's that's generally where if I say words of the hiring mistakes that I've made in the past it's been it's been just as I said it's looking too much at their intellectual capability alone and not on how they affect those around them and it would really matters is before someone's contribution to a company is how they are as individual and how they affect others around them or you could say it's also analogous to a sports team you know if someone the best person on the team is not necessarily the one who scores the most goals it could be\n\nthe person who assists in the most goals and and if somebody is if there's one person a team who's just just wants the ball all the time it just wants to kick it at the goal that can actually be detrimental and so it's it is important to two-way personality and just you know they can be a good person and what you like working with them and I kind of think it's didn't just make a difference thank you I like to invite the audience to us some questions I'm particularly like students to ask questions but others are also invited and one thing I will ask is that we keep the questions short so we can't have a few of those okay come up I'm so chaplain what I'd like to ask you Ilan is it looks as if the next decade or two human space flight will be dominated by\n\nyou and Bob Bigelow another actually acts Oprah NORs the question is what do you think the proper role of NASA human spaceflight should be in that context other than just giving your contracts well mass has been really helpful to SpaceX you're not not just in terms of giving us contracts but also technically in a number of areas and and a lot of things that we've done its base X have been dependent on things that NASA's done in the past so you know I think we're certainly incredibly grateful for everything that's done in the past and and and for the ongoing support they received from NASA so I'm a huge fan of NASA and but and I think NASA is actually doing the right thing given all of the constraints that they have like if if you know within the context\n\nof being with large government entity that's getting pushed in all sorts of different directions and and has a lot of limitations on what it can do I've been pretty impressed with what NASA has done given all of those constraints and yeah so I think it's you know if NASA continues it continues to sort of expand upon the support of competitive commercial space that's as probably what we'll have the most positive effect on the future of space development thank you so I'm Jordan and I didn't quick question about manufacturing so Obama has had a large question to really get high technology manufacturers in the United States and I think above everything SpaceX and Tesla or excellent examples of that I was wondering one you have a commitment going forward to\n\nhave all your manufacturing or majority of it done in the US and then how can other companies really learn from this experience at SpaceX has had and Tesla's has to really do your own manufacturing and house as much as possible sure well I should say that before SpaceX and Tesla our goal was not initially to do your huge amounts of internal manufacturing so we actually tried to do as little manufacturing as possible at first but we found that we had to insource more and more of a time and so I did it with the better start really not from the standpoint of like we really believe in enforcing or outsourcing is just given you know if there's a great supplier that then we would love to use a great supplier and if there's not then we need to you know do it\n\nourselves like we need to find a way or make away to a good solution and just over time we'd have to we have we've had to make a way more often than not and an open up for for rocketry there's also there are so I to our limitations which is that Rockets are considered advanced weapons technology so we can't just your outsource it to some other country and yeah so and but then I think you're for manufacturing I that very often people think of manufacturing as kind of just some roach process of making copies which it is which actually it isn't Manufacturing is building the machine that makes the machine and if you think the machine is important well folding the machine that makes the machine is also extremely important and more often than not and what I\n\nfound is the is the manufacturing is hotter than the original product like for example Tesla we can make like one of a car very easily but to make thousands of a car with high reliability and quality and where the cost is affordable is extremely hard i'd say maybe 10 times hotter than designing than just making one prototype but maybe more and then at SpaceX also there may be approaching an order of magnitude hotter too many packs or rockets and launch that launched a lot of them thing to design one in the first place so I really think a lot more smart people should be getting into me back shirring and it's kind of fun so it's like I don't know how to sort of got a bad name for a while but it's really interesting yeah thank you I've got a question about\n\nthe Tesla automobile I understand the drive motor is on the order of 250 horsepower and only weighs 70 pounds which is multiple horsepower per pound I've never seen I've worked in the transit industry never seen and looked in other sources never seen a motor other than one that weighs multiple pounds per horsepower the opposite way so you have an advantage of like an order of magnitude some of it can be explained by high-speed can you explain how you achieve that actually if power-to-weight ratio is of interest to you rocket turbo pumps really take the cake you know that the to a pump on the merlin engine generates 10,000 horsepower and weighs 150 pounds now yeah fuel efficiencies sort of separate question I'm pet power-to-weight is I mean it's at the\n\nragged edge of like pulling those molecules apart you know it's kind of amazing that I need like you can get 10,000 horsepower in this thing you can basically pick up but for electric motors you know if you have a properly designed you know electric motor AC induction motor getting a high-powered weight ratio and like you know a really great response rate like a low latency and all that extremely low ripple current and we're not in it it's just it just kind of comes naturally to an AC induction motor that the bigger challenge is actually cooling it effectively and then particularly cooling the the rotor because you've got a throat or going it like 18 thousand rpm so the model s we Rico actually cool the rotor in order to have high steady state so also\n\nfor electric motor you can have it's easy to get a peak power for a short period of time it's hard to have sustained p power and because you overheat and then it's hard to get high efficiency over a complicated drive cycle but those tend to be the the problem to wrestle with more than say the the peak power like we can get people are pretty easily but sustained power and efficiency of the drive cycle are hard thank you I named sherry I'm a PhD student in course 16 and when you hear about the founding of SpaceX a popular story is that you started it partly because you yourself want to go to space this is true in what sort of timeframe with the current program do you see for you yourself being able to have that opportunity actually that bad that's not that's\n\nnot why I sought his face x but and the I mean the easiest thing for me to do would have been to buy a ride on the Soyuz and you know that I would have been able to go to the space station as a number of other people have done but the the thing that I was trying to figure out was how to get us back on on the track of extending life beyond Earth that that's what the that's the reason for starting SpaceX and and I expected it to fail and people sometimes think like well why would you even start that in the first place but the reason with your back before i started SpaceX I expected to I want to do this philanthropic mission to send a small greenhouse the surface of Mars and try get the public excited about sending life to Mars because people respond to\n\nquestions as positives let's read the first life on another planet the furthest the life that have traveled and I thought well that would get people excited and that would result in NASA's budget getting increased and then we could resume the dream of Apollo so you know that was my initial goal was just to figure out how to get NASA's budget higher the butt but then I came to conclusion that if we don't make if we don't make rockets way better then it won't matter like we can get a budget increase but then we just send one mission to Mars and and then maybe never go there again so so that the Gulf basics really was to make as much progress as possible to advanced rocket technology to the point where hopefully we can establish a colony on Mars or and get\n\nus all these get as far along that way as we can't we'll just try to go as far as we can hi I'm Justin I'm a freshman now that SpaceX has unveiled the dragon v2 which is a man rated capsule I was wondering if you were planning on forming in your own astronaut corps or you're relying on NASA astronauts from here oh well yeah I you know I mean we're probably it's we're building a ship that that NASA is going to use and that other people will use it tows a national corps i mean i kind of think like like this really look what we should be transporting our scientists and engineers you know not it's not in our pilots really you know it's like dragon doesn't need pilots like it you know obviously goes there with just cargo you know we just send up 40 mice they\n\nwere not piloting that the crap so it's so it's really it's a means of transporting people to like the sort of earth moon orbit region in order to you know do science basically have been a potentially to the moon to do some exploration there but but but it I kind of think it should be easy to go on a spacecraft you like like you just just be able to get on with no training and go Justin beep you can be hard hi I'm Scarlett I'm a junior in aerospace at MIT as you can tell and I was just wondering now SpaceX and Boeing have both been awarded contracts to build a space taxi and how do you think SpaceX's approach will differ from Boeing's and which one do you think is likely to be most successful Oh Boeing is a fine company of course so yeah I mean what we're\n\ntrying to do with dragon dragon 2 is both in your crude crude dragon design is be able to land propulsive ly with precision which i think is kind of the next generation like you consider the first generation always parachutes to a water landing then you know arguably sort of wings and gear landing legs over landing gear then like the sort of third generation is propulsive landing with precision I mean if if you saw a movie about the future with aliens landing how do they land like that okay obviously like I'm gonna be kind of weird if the aliens landed in the ocean with parachutes and like nothing to fear and I like Boeing stick trying to like slightly improve because it's got airbags but it's still an empress ice landing you know it's somewhere in a\n\nhuge expansive desert and it's basically landing on air bags and kind of crashing in the desert you know like okay let's so guess one way to land but i but i think the future has to be precise propulsive landing because that's what you need to go to the moon or tomorrow's or anywhere else in the solar system and that's the thing we should be focusing on and yeah we're already going to the space station back by the way like Boeing isn't doing man sorry so comic books are the future well I think a lot of things that are envisioned in sci-fi books returns attached to the wide range of course yeah but a lot of things that are envisioned to do do make sense and yeah I mean it's like okay and like sit so good there isn't some other way to land on the moon you\n\ncan't fly clown the moon with parachutes and our bags let's do the lack of atmosphere over there yeah thank you hello there my name is Johannes I'm a junior in core 16 and I'm also international and i was wondering from international perspective how's this trip to Mars going to look like is it going to be an American colony on Mars and that's it or is because of course basic is mainly based here in the US or is it just like everybody join in please well I mean I I don't think it's I mean I'm hopeful there will be multiple colonies on Mars it's this certainly probably spacek standpoint there's nothing you know we don't aim to do anything sort of on an exclusionary basis we're just trying to get there and and then I think then you know we'd love to have\n\nthat debate you'll be like oh there's a two American you know like okay baby okay but we've got the source of base on Mars who cares and and I think if there was you know American basin was it would certainly prompt other countries to want to establish their you know based on Mars too but I do think we better to have competition than the cooperation it's not like you encourage companies each in other countries to start their own and Daver to go to Mars as well yes I think I think we're very would be better off with competition route rather than insisting like I'd like in the space station you've got the International Space Station but would we like when when governments all sort of forced to go in lockstep it tends to not make things go faster and yeah\n\nwe want some sort of positive competitive element I think so we don't like people going to war or anything but just like some positive competitive element like the Olympics you know something if people compete hard and it's sort of good sportsmanship and everything and the net result is better than if like there was no competition like Olympics with no competition would make any sense and yeah so I think some positive competitive thing would be would be better and we should definitely not insist that everyone all countries go at the same pace or some collection of countries that's a pace that would slow things down dramatically and maybe not even happen just encourage iza to invest in Mars yeah absolutely ISA yeah Chinese Chris I can see over here thank\n\nyou all right hi my name is Vasant and my question is are there any natural resources on Mars right now that a colony would be able to use and if so how would SpaceX go about extracting those natural resources when the time comes wedding any natural resource extraction laws would be the output would be for Mars definitely wouldn't make sense to transport more as several 200 million miles back to earth you know honestly like if you had like crack cocaine on Mars like in prepackaged you know pallets it still wouldn't make sense to transport it back here very good times for the Martians but not back here these would be the colony to use yeah for the colony to use exactly hello my name is Alexander Brooke you Larry I'm a recent PhD in course 16 and I recently\n\nstarted up aerospace research and development company and one thing that I'm working on is something called themed energy propulsion where we use external energy to power rockets microwaves or lasers the idea being that you can get very high specific impulse is with very high power I'm curious where space X stands on this kind of technology which are thoughts or if you could comment a little bit yeah the beamed energy thing is interesting I mean I I think it I think it is a worthy area of research so I think its wits with trying to make I'm trying to make something work try to get something to two or 'but or really high delta velocity with with being banerjee and see how how well does it work in practice but I mean I do think there's yeah I'll state some\n\nconcerns but these concerns are not meant to say that we shouldn't work in the mic preface it by saying we should work on it the i think that there's there are some scaling challenges with beamed energy if to say what's the actual power output you need to send say a falcon 9 class vehicle to orbit and it's a very very big number like you start meeting like whoa we need like the power of like the eastern seaboard you know to sort of send something falcon the cold falcon heavy class you know what do you need to send something like that or is really a huge amount of energy or a huge amount of power to be precise like actually the power level you need is noisier need you like argument that much on an energy basis but you can't like tell everyone to turn the\n\nlights off in florida so then you need like a huge power plant or a huge capacitor bank or a huge high power density battery array so I'd like to see how this at you know how well does it scale and then and then you say what will help what's the cost of that the huge power power plant and the huge laser array and that kind of thing and how does that compare to the cost per unit mass if you just carry your own oxygen with you and have a lower ISP and don't do any of those things hello my name is Elliot Owen I'm a freshman here I'm very interested in the Hyperloop I made a small working model from my senior project law school and one of the major problems I ran into was tube tolerances so I'm wondering if you can comment on you no problems with tube colleges\n\nand thermal expansion if you're building a 350 mile long steel tube what was the ratio of the pod to tube diameter here two and a half inch internal diameter and about 20 feet long right but have the pod pod diameter to tube ammeter the pod was only a few hundred seven inch smaller than the inside that's the problem so you actually want the pod to you want to sort of a a ratio of the code pod area to you know to vinton tube tube cross-section to pod cross-section of about two you know so so the pot only is like half the cross-sectional area of the tube and because you're still going to want to have some some flow of air over the the pot did you have the cancerous limit yeah well yeah you probably deal with the counter words limit by having a compressor\n\non the nose but it only partly addresses it and then the rest is airflow around the pod but you definitely you definitely want to have something that's that's really a tight fit and and it cause it also gives start hitting tolerance limitations like that the yeah you and just you just need you need some some play and that's in that system like a tricky thing also for what if you really fast it's just even small imperfections in the surface of the tube which I think I think can be dealt with by essentially having it once the tubes done you did actually need to run something that's going to smooth it out like if you basically need to run a grinder through the through the tube that's going to polish the surface and make sure that there aren't undulations\n\nbut in the proposal and I believe like we had the air skis were sprung so that yeah but that's also important okay add thermal expansion if you heat it up 20 degrees this 300c mile long pipe will get 450 feet longer how do you maintain a vacuum seal with expansion joints so you actually have you have to allow expansion at the terminals so it's wherever the terminals are you but you've got to have that that length of expansion and then in the on in the pylons that are supporting it you actually need to allow the each pile on to stretch in X so it's you can't you can't hard constrain it at the pylons we've gotten past the hour now would you be able to take a couple more questions yeah good person like 10 or 15 more minutes perfect alright my name is John\n\nand I was wondering since there's always a growing need for more resources here on earth if like say sometime in the future SpaceX would look more towards obtaining resources from the Moon or Mars or even out farther on asteroids is that like in a plan for SpaceX well we're not really going to try to get resources on the moon because that's you know that would be useful if you're on the moon but not for bring it back to earth so if there's a moon base I suspect that they would extract resources yeah but for themselves I'll try to get through a bunch of question someone answered make make my wife answer a short hi my name is Bob in view of its potential to be possibly the biggest game change or ever do you have any plans to enter the field of artificial\n\nintelligence and in general what are your thoughts on it do you think it's even close to being ready for prime time I think we should be very careful about artificial intelligence if I were guess at what our biggest existential threat is it's probably that so we need to be very careful with the artificial hudgens increasing client to think that there should be some regulatory oversight at the internet bigger the national and international level just make sure that we don't do something very foolish I mean with artificial intelligence we are summoning the demon you know you know all those stories where is the guy with the pentagram and holy water and he's like yeah sure you can control the demon then work out I think that there will be no Hal 9000 going\n\nup to Mars Hal 9000 would be easy it's way more complex and I mean put howl 9000 a shame yeah I was like puppy dog thank you all right hi my name is Rochelle aniceto and I'm a junior in the arrow Astra Department my question aligns with how a lot of the work toward the mission to Mars is focused on rockets with SpaceX obviously but where do you see the role of telecommunications and communication satellites since there's a lot of traction in this field and this will be very crucial to I guess the overall mission to colonizing Mars so I can repeat the question I just sort of give up the AI thing for seconds absolutely so a lot of the focus with the mission to Mars aligns with rocket SpaceX but a key aspect to eventually colonizing Mars allies with telecommunications\n\nand communication satellites so where do you see this as a viable aspect along with your goals your communications are certainly very important we're going to need turbit level communication between Earth and Mars which necessarily means that you want to have a type being like a laser communication system something like that and and relays you know sort of satellites that relate because sometimes Maz is on the other side of the Sun so you go to bounce the photons around the Sun not through and you know so I think communications get definitely to be important also see I think that on earth is there's a lot of potential for space-based communications like that there's a huge amount of room to grow for having satellite communication systems that provide\n\nhigh bandwidth global coverage and we'll need the same famas hi I'm Eric Ward I'm a graduate student in the system design and management program and I was reading recently a Japanese construction company i think it's obayashi just announced plans to make a space a space elevator by think 2050 haha and i'm wondering i'm wondering if its base response a Bravo might affect your vision and goals as well I mean I think every awesome if there was a space elevator I wouldn't hold my breath I don't think it's realistic but you know luxury proven wrong so I always think of like charlie and the chocolate factory when I have a space elevator you know but because people sort of manners like an elevator you press up and you just like not yours base this is like a\n\nreal is extremely complicated yeah I'm not I don't think it's really realistic to have a space elevator you know and I mean let me this way like at the point of which we have like a bridge from LA to Tokyo yeah which i think is much easier problem then then we or you know about across the Atlantic you know like it some sort of 2,000 mile long bridge to 3011 bridge you know something like that would be you know made of like carbon nanotubes like we I don't think we've got a carbon nanotube footbridge so far let alone some enormous 60,000 mile long space elevator anyway so i think i think we're it's it's it wouldn't be it's not the thing that i think makes sense right now but if so we can prove me wrong and they'll be great thank you all right hi my name\n\nis coach hijo I'm a PhD student here I wonder how you think about Mars one project which try to send crew to Mars one way every two years for reality TV show I think they claim they want to use the modified Dragon capsule for landing and I wonder how you think about their philosophy and that they are technical feasibility thank you well I think there could i mean the illustrations that I've seen basically has them using a bunch of SpaceX rockets and Dragon spacecraft I'm like okay I mean if they want to buy a bunch of dragons and Falcon 9 rocket that's cool we'll set we're senior will certainly sell them Fitz I mean I don't think they've got you know anywhere near the funding to buy even one so I think their ports unrealistic and I think trying to go\n\nto Mars in Dragon is less than ideal here because it's at least as it wants to put it if you go real fast it's maybe a three-month journey and normally everyone like a six to eight months journey that's a long time to spend in something with the interior volume of an SUV so I'd recommend waiting for the next generation technology hi my name is Benson I'm a recent graduate I had another space elevator question actually what do you think would be the difference in public perception if instead of building rockets you were building space elevators how the promo video have changed well I you know I think it would not work it would just be an illustration on a page that doesn't actually have real hardware that would be the difference yeah that mean I just don't\n\nI don't think space elevator is like a very sensible thing hi I'm Evan I'm a sophomore I just a question about the future the supercharger network will renewable energy sources play a big role in the source for that for the network yeah absolutely order plans to overtime is go to a hundred percent renewable power generation for our solar truck supercharged stations we've sort of temporarily going to not not added solar power because in the interest of just having national and international coverage that you can drive anywhere in the US Europe or Asia using supercharges we haven't we haven't constrained that so that every supercharger has to have solar panels there are a few that have solar panels most don't but in a long time all of them will either have\n\nsolar panels or otherwise get their power from renewable sources and in long term expected to be solar panels to a stationary battery pack so that the solar panels can sort of charge the stationary battery pack of the course of the week and then the pet that socially record back in the buff of the buff of the energy and release it during peak times because what we see with soup charges is huge differences in usage and you can imagine like you when people go away for the weekend like friday nights and Saturday night as a Friday and Sunday Friday nights and sunday nights huge peak usage people are going somewhere like on a family trip for the weekend but say you know wednesday at 11am low usage so you want to have about gestation about your pack solar panels\n\nand then and there could work even if the power grid goes down you know so that's like I think like that would be cool to have something like even post apocalypse you know you can still drive around okay but how do I can take a couple more if they are quick hello my name is Rita I'm a sophomore in course to some mechanical engineering I'm so I'm more of a car buff myself so concerning Tesla what is your approach to dealing with new companies trying to make it in the EV world like ativa and others is it more of a collaborative approach in terms of sharing technology so we can see more electric vehicles on the roads in the near future or maintaining a competitive edge well I think they're given that we opens post our patents earlier this year I think yeah\n\ni think that suggests that we're trying to be helpful so it certainly you know if there's anything that Tesla can do that's helpful and doesn't distract us from making cars then we're happy to do that and you've also done battery packs and powertrains for mercedes and for toyota we're right right now the fundamental constraint is on battery production so we have to solve that constraint in order for there to be any scaling up of electric cars and that's why we've got the gigafactory and you know and things have to be affordable basically people need a compelling and affordable electric vehicle that is the Holy Grail so that's really what we're trying to get there as fast as we can thank you hi so um I'm Daniel and I'm a junior at MIT and so here's a decidedly\n\nnon technical question so I understand that you have consumed lots of science fiction literature films etc yeah that's what you're doing yeah so I was just wondering what kind of works of art that you've that you think have contributed to your zeal for a good future for Humanity whether by kind of influencing your fear like cyberpunk stuff or like making you see something that's awesome like Star Trek or yeah I'm sure well I mean I mean I love technology and so I yeah I mean particularly when I was a kid I just consumed like all science fiction and fantasy you know movies books anything at all even if it's like really schlocky so everybody end in terms of sort of key influences I mean I certainly like Star Trek because that actually shows like more of\n\na utopian future like it's not like things like on horrible in the future like so many bloody post-apocalyptic future is like okay can we have one that's nice just just a few it's like so I think like that about Star Trek and you're in terms of some sort of key key books and movies I mean obviously Star Wars likes always was the first movie I ever saw so that's going to be fairly influential like I never seen a movie in a theater before it was sort of like just so it was like super oh great and yeah and then tick in terms of books we lower the Rings pulling my favorite book there's already excited by like like are they enough like Jo telcos kind of anti-technology by fantasy are lost in like that so myself yeah yeah it is but it like it's funny at Lauren's\n\nwheeler rings it's awesome book but it's kind of anti-technology so great and I think like the foundation series from Asimov is I could really like one of the best ever and yeah the books you know odyssey clock and hyndland and others like sort of the 2003 best sci-fi with those and recently somebody is recommending to be that you and banks novels as being picked you know fairly good yeah what what do you think is good one of my favorite books is let's see the moon is a harsh mistress it's funny you mention that yeah exact thats highlands best book honestly it's really fun yeah right so thank you thank you the last question all of us busted hi um my name is Ellie Simonson I'm a sophomore here in core 16 um I was just wondering so I know that NASA is working\n\non the SLS um which I believe after a couple iterations are several iterations they're hoping we'll be able to land on Mars and so I'm wondering if that happens before um you guys develop a rocket that can do that how will that change your focus at SpaceX haha well I I I mean I don't think that you I mean our behavior is gonna we're just going to keep trying to make rocket technology better and better and I mean I think the time frame forward the SLS they are sending people to Mars is pretty pretty far out there so and if it does that's great but it's really it's we are what we need is a technology system that's capable of sending large numbers of people and cargo to Mars it's it's it's cool to send you know one mission sure but that's not the thing that\n\nchanges humanity's future the thing that really matters is being able to establish a self-sustaining civilization on Mars and and for that I don't I don't see anything being done except SpaceX honestly and and that's not to say SpaceX will be successful but I don't see anyone even trying so okay alone thank you very much thank you very much for sharing your time and salt with us we love to have you back anytime at MIT thank you thank you alright this one"},"languages":["en"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4DUbiCQpw_4"},{"id":"interview-with-bloomberg-2014-10-10","type":"interview","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bjq6tXRKfUQ","title":"Interview with Bloomberg","titles":{"en":"Interview with Bloomberg","de":"Interview mit Bloomberg","fr":"Entretien avec Bloomberg"},"date":"2014-10-10","summary":"Bloomberg interview where Musk discusses the new dual-motor Model S and downplays Tesla's stock price.","text":"it's really taking the technology to the next level um people were able to guess of course that uh we're unveiling the dual motor Model S but um what what they'll learn uh tonight is just how much of improvement it is this whole tweet that you sent out less than what 10 days ago you sent this tweet out uh were you surprised by how the internet pretty much got it right with what you were going to unveil um you know I think the internet is very good at figuring out Secrets at this point so like there's no privacy anymore um but I think we were able to keep a few of the the the important details a little bit of a surprise yes uh and your stock went up Elon by something like8 n% just based on that tweet alone you earned about $3 billion in market cap on that\n\nis that is that a surprise to you um yes I mean that that seems like an unlikely thing to happen just based on a tweet but um I I don't know maybe I I don't know yeah maybe it's surprising um I I don't really follow the stock that much I'm you know um because I think sometimes the stock moves for random reasons and um you know if that ends up being a mood barometer then it's you know it's not a happy life well because a few weeks ago you had said yourself look you thought the stock was a little bit high and it then fell about 10% after that so do you still think the stock is a little high well it depends on how people uh if somebody's a long-term holder of the stock I think uh there's a lot of appreciation uh that will occur in the long term um you know\n\nin the short term it's difficult to predict these fluctuations um but it does seem as though you know for a company that had a few billion dollars in Revenue last year to have a 30 plus billion doll market cap is on the high side um and I think that's uh I think certainly lot lots of people on the internet who who say that and you know so you still feel that way then about your stock um no I mean I I just I feel like it's um it's it's it's always difficult to predict the short-term fluctuations um so if someone a long-term holder of the stock I I don't think they should sell the stock I think it will appreciate and ultimately be much higher than it is today um but in terms of short-term fluctuations uh it's that that's impossible to say now we'll go through\n\nthe features of uh of the model D essentially in a moment but I'm interested about the legal implications of having autopilot in the Model S's right um what happens Elon if the car does in fact crash who is going to be responsible when that car is on autopilot yeah so I think it's important for us to differentiate autonomous driving um versus autopilot autopilot is what they have an airplanes uh for example we we use the same term that they use in airplanes where there's still an expectation that there'll be a pilot so the so if if the the onus is on the pilot to make sure that the autopilot is doing the right thing um it's it's not we're not yet at the stage where uh you can go to sleep and wake up at your destination um uh if we would have called it\n\nautonomous instead of autopilot if if that was the case right right um but what what we are doing is making it a lot uh easier and more comfortable to drive the car um and incorporating uh a lot of active safety features so the car will um stay in its Lane will automatically break will maintain a distance to other cars uh will uh avoid like Highway barriers and other obstacles um but that doesn't still address the question though Elon which is let's say it's on autopilot so it's not autonomous uh but if it's on a autopilot and a driver says hey you know this was supposed to change lanes for me and instead it hit this barrier I want you know I want Tesla to be responsible for this yeah um I think we're going to be quite clear with customers that the responsibility\n\nremains with the driver okay um we're not asserting that the car is capable of driving um in the absence of driver oversight um that that will be the case in at some point in the future like maybe five or six years from now I think we'll be able to achieve true autonomous driving where you could literally get in the car go to sleep and wake up at your destination um but in order to do that you have to have fully redundant systems everything's got to be redundant so that any one system braking does not result in an accident um and you also have to prove that out over you know millions of miles of driving and then and then of course the then we have to prove that to The Regulators to convince them that it's safe and and so I think from the point of which\n\ntrue autonomous uh driving is as possible which which I I now think is probably in the five or six year time frame um you said that before though five to six years yeah um if a couple years ago I thought it was more like 10 years but based on the rate of improvement uh that I'm seeing and the progress we're making I think we'll probably able to do it in five or six years um and then but but it's probably still going to take two or 3 years after that before The regul Regulators approve it because I want to make sure that it's truly um a lot safer than driving with a person this the standard for fully autonomous driving is going to be much greater than for a person right um cuz if it's just equivalent that wouldn't be enough there's no change at all in\n\nthe battery right there's no change at all in what you're doing with and how you're how you're okay but is there going to be a change at all in the driving range given some of these improvements yeah so uh the way we're doing dual motor uh it actually enables a range increase because we're able to balance the efficiency of the motors a lot more um so if you just have one motor it's always uh on on a particular power versus efficiency curve but if you got two Motors you can optimize between them um and actually have uh have the motors operate in their their more efficient regime more of the time and the net result is that we're able to get 10 miles more Highway range just just by going to dual motors whereas in every other all-wheel drive system uh you\n\nyou lose range this when you gain it","textByLang":{"en":"it's really taking the technology to the next level um people were able to guess of course that uh we're unveiling the dual motor Model S but um what what they'll learn uh tonight is just how much of improvement it is this whole tweet that you sent out less than what 10 days ago you sent this tweet out uh were you surprised by how the internet pretty much got it right with what you were going to unveil um you know I think the internet is very good at figuring out Secrets at this point so like there's no privacy anymore um but I think we were able to keep a few of the the the important details a little bit of a surprise yes uh and your stock went up Elon by something like8 n% just based on that tweet alone you earned about $3 billion in market cap on that\n\nis that is that a surprise to you um yes I mean that that seems like an unlikely thing to happen just based on a tweet but um I I don't know maybe I I don't know yeah maybe it's surprising um I I don't really follow the stock that much I'm you know um because I think sometimes the stock moves for random reasons and um you know if that ends up being a mood barometer then it's you know it's not a happy life well because a few weeks ago you had said yourself look you thought the stock was a little bit high and it then fell about 10% after that so do you still think the stock is a little high well it depends on how people uh if somebody's a long-term holder of the stock I think uh there's a lot of appreciation uh that will occur in the long term um you know\n\nin the short term it's difficult to predict these fluctuations um but it does seem as though you know for a company that had a few billion dollars in Revenue last year to have a 30 plus billion doll market cap is on the high side um and I think that's uh I think certainly lot lots of people on the internet who who say that and you know so you still feel that way then about your stock um no I mean I I just I feel like it's um it's it's it's always difficult to predict the short-term fluctuations um so if someone a long-term holder of the stock I I don't think they should sell the stock I think it will appreciate and ultimately be much higher than it is today um but in terms of short-term fluctuations uh it's that that's impossible to say now we'll go through\n\nthe features of uh of the model D essentially in a moment but I'm interested about the legal implications of having autopilot in the Model S's right um what happens Elon if the car does in fact crash who is going to be responsible when that car is on autopilot yeah so I think it's important for us to differentiate autonomous driving um versus autopilot autopilot is what they have an airplanes uh for example we we use the same term that they use in airplanes where there's still an expectation that there'll be a pilot so the so if if the the onus is on the pilot to make sure that the autopilot is doing the right thing um it's it's not we're not yet at the stage where uh you can go to sleep and wake up at your destination um uh if we would have called it\n\nautonomous instead of autopilot if if that was the case right right um but what what we are doing is making it a lot uh easier and more comfortable to drive the car um and incorporating uh a lot of active safety features so the car will um stay in its Lane will automatically break will maintain a distance to other cars uh will uh avoid like Highway barriers and other obstacles um but that doesn't still address the question though Elon which is let's say it's on autopilot so it's not autonomous uh but if it's on a autopilot and a driver says hey you know this was supposed to change lanes for me and instead it hit this barrier I want you know I want Tesla to be responsible for this yeah um I think we're going to be quite clear with customers that the responsibility\n\nremains with the driver okay um we're not asserting that the car is capable of driving um in the absence of driver oversight um that that will be the case in at some point in the future like maybe five or six years from now I think we'll be able to achieve true autonomous driving where you could literally get in the car go to sleep and wake up at your destination um but in order to do that you have to have fully redundant systems everything's got to be redundant so that any one system braking does not result in an accident um and you also have to prove that out over you know millions of miles of driving and then and then of course the then we have to prove that to The Regulators to convince them that it's safe and and so I think from the point of which\n\ntrue autonomous uh driving is as possible which which I I now think is probably in the five or six year time frame um you said that before though five to six years yeah um if a couple years ago I thought it was more like 10 years but based on the rate of improvement uh that I'm seeing and the progress we're making I think we'll probably able to do it in five or six years um and then but but it's probably still going to take two or 3 years after that before The regul Regulators approve it because I want to make sure that it's truly um a lot safer than driving with a person this the standard for fully autonomous driving is going to be much greater than for a person right um cuz if it's just equivalent that wouldn't be enough there's no change at all in\n\nthe battery right there's no change at all in what you're doing with and how you're how you're okay but is there going to be a change at all in the driving range given some of these improvements yeah so uh the way we're doing dual motor uh it actually enables a range increase because we're able to balance the efficiency of the motors a lot more um so if you just have one motor it's always uh on on a particular power versus efficiency curve but if you got two Motors you can optimize between them um and actually have uh have the motors operate in their their more efficient regime more of the time and the net result is that we're able to get 10 miles more Highway range just just by going to dual motors whereas in every other all-wheel drive system uh you\n\nyou lose range this when you gain it"},"languages":["en"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bjq6tXRKfUQ"},{"id":"vanity-fair-new-establishment-summit-2014-10-08","type":"interview","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fPsHN1KyRQ8","title":"Vanity Fair New Establishment Summit","titles":{"en":"Vanity Fair New Establishment Summit","de":"Vanity Fair New Establishment Summit","fr":"Vanity Fair New Establishment Summit"},"date":"2014-10-08","summary":"On-stage conversation with Walter Isaacson about Tesla, SpaceX and innovation at the VF summit.","text":"[Music] she a man who needs no introduction but uh welcome thanks for being here number one on the Vanity Fair New establishment list is that the highest honor you've ever had of course that's right the nobels are announced you're doing an announcement tomorrow and the next day is a Nobel Prize so if if you get all three that's a great Trifecta let's talk about your announcement tomorrow yeah what is it you're going to announce I'm glad you asked um well uh I I think I can give maybe uh one clue which is that one of the things is already there um and people don't realize it so we just need to turn it on yeah wow cool and it'll be part of a new car okay I used to be a journalist I used to be good at this um yeah I I it's um it'll be it'll be a different\n\nit'll be different from the current one uh the some part of I announce will be different from things in the past obviously it's an announcement um but uh I can't say it's it's we're not going to talk about the model 3 um or the model X the model 3 would be the $35,000 uh electric vehicle you're going to talk about something that's labeled D yeah D and then there's another thing which is um actually would have said the other thing except it would have been too obvious and that's the reason I didn't say now I can't say what the letter is because okay and what does d stand for um I think the internet is very good at guessing these things so they're they understand directionally it's it's directionally correct but um the magnitude is uh not well appreciated\n\nyet and the magnitude of the something else too yeah um that's the really big one the something else I kind of got myself in trouble by because I you know we we had the model s and the X and then just for fun we try to trademark the model e um and and then then Ford suit us um or said they were going to Su us so we had to change it to the model 3 so it's s3x you know um totally different uh and um uh so I kind of I guess when I say that that we're about to unveil the D and something else then it's uh I kind of dug my own grave on that front yeah yeah well we look forward to why in the world are you doing this I mean what's impelling you to make an electric special car I think it's important that we accelerate the Advent of a sustainable transport future\n\nso it's it it's better if we move towards electric cars sooner rather than later um and then we can get away from burning oil and obviously that needs to be paired with sustainable generation of power um that's where solar City comes in and um but in order for us in order for Humanity to have a good future the century we have to figure out a way to sustainably produce and consume um energy and uh that's what Tesla and Solar City are trying to be helpful uh in that regard um so that's that's really the the purpose of it it's not it's not as though I think that there's a need for another car company uh there's plenty of you know good car companies very competitive industry um but but there is a need to show that electric cars can be uh better than gasoline\n\ncars otherwise people will continue to buy gasoline cars when you say better uh I'm going to push you back to where you didn't want to go which is what you're announcing better means that it would be faster and stronger than a gas car which we think electric cars cannot be yeah um will'll be bigger and faster oh cool um yeah can I have one I can't wait for that quot to be out there yeah it's about to unveil the D it's bigger and faster yeah I know there have been a lot of jokes that Cara swisser started today that yeah I know we have to steer away conference called All Things D you know yeah um uh why did you give away or open up the intellectual property oh um the patter yeah yeah to we sort of Open Source pents in order to accelerate the Advent of electric\n\nvehicles that's the main reason I think people think um that maybe there was some competitive reason or or or that that this would um somehow be helpful to Tesla you know because um more people would enter electric cars and somehow that would be you know Rising tide lift but actually I think I think the open sourcing of patents does slightly impair our competitive uh position um on balance but I I'm hopeful that it generates enough Goodwill to overcome that uh competitive impairment but um I mean I came to the conclusion at least on a personal level that patents were kind of like buying a lottery ticket to a lawsuit um you know and so why would you want to do that um what drove you into the electric car our business was it really sustainability for the\n\nplanet or was it just the intellectual curiosity of it all actually so if if if you go back to like when I was first thinking about electric cars was in college um and it was really more from the standpoint uh of the the need to transition to to some uh transport means that was s sustainable independent whether there was environmental impact or not because if if we're burning oil you know to move and that's not a renewable resource then um then independent of any environmental impact we must find some alternative or there will be economic collapse um so and civilization would would sort of crumble because we have to or revert you know so the so that that was actually originally why I was very interested in it is just because it's it I mean I think you\n\nknow from a physics standpoint it's really obviously the way to go is electric motors I mean kind of crazy to do something else honestly um and and then the the environmental thing grew over time and became it became evident that the environmental impact was quite significant because we're putting so much carbon into the atmosphere that were fundamentally changing the chemical makeup of of Earth's atmosphere and then and and the oceans too because because of the CO2 that gets uh absorbed into the into the water and creates carbonic acid so um if if we don't take corrective action uh we that that the probability of of a catastrophe will increase over time eventually there's like certainty of of a catastrophic outcome and the longer it takes us to to make\n\nthat transition the greater the probability of something bad happening um and uh so you know so that when I think of Tesla what's the fundamental good that Tesla can achieve it would be to accelerate the Advent of electric vehicles perhaps by you know for fortunate a decade or something like that because it it'll happen anyway independent got even Tesla was not not around so that's I would say that that's a really fundamental good and since we're making cars I mean it seems like we should try to make really good cars um and uh and you know maybe make the buying buying experience a lot more pleasant there's a Peter teal line as you know about you we were promised flying cars but we got 140 characters uh do you think that other innovators people not like\n\nyourself aren't really shooting as high as they should be when you're doing things from you know space shots to electric cars do you think there should be flying cars um yeah okay yeah I'm am I missing something um gosh I think that would be fun don't you I'm not sure I mean I think I think there should be vertical takeover Landing supersonic Air transport yeah that that's obviously should be the case we had that 30 years ago and now we don't meaning suic sure yeah no it's kind of innovation for big things has actually slowed down it seems is that true I think whenever you have a large industry that is a monopoly or duopoly um the forcing function for Innovation is weak um because uh Innovation tends to come from new entrance to an industry and if the\n\nbarriers are like Tesla into the auto model yeah yeah um when there are huge Capital barriers to entry then it's very difficult for new entrance to enter that that industry it's like being in a forest of giant redwoods um and in that in that situation The Innovation is is weak because if you sort of it's I think it's fairly easy to understand this because if you're say the a senior executive in that company or CEO let's say um if you do something incremental uh you very unlikely to be fired um if you do something bold and it doesn't work out you're very likely to be fired um so that's then they do incremental things you mentioned a moment ago uh the environmental sustainability thing that's really big that you worry about your other big thing that you\n\nworry about is sort of machines getting out of control explain that or the artificial intelligence Singularity yeah I don't think most people understand just how quickly machine intelligence is advancing it's much faster than almost anyone realizes even within Silicon Valley and certainly outside Silicon Valley people really have no idea um so why is that dangerous I mean if if there's if there's a super intelligent particularly if it's engaged in recursive self-improvement if there's some digital super intelligence um and its optimization or utility function um is something that's detrimental to humanity then it will have a very bad effect um you know it could be just something like getting rid of spam email or something and it's like concludes well\n\nthe best way to get R spam is to get rid of humans you know but uh why would we lose sour of spam I I know we've all watched Cal in 2001 but why would we lose control over our machines there no data point showing that that that our connection to machine has ever been loosened uh actually I think the thing to do would be to plot the progress of digital intelligence versus time and and then to to maybe curve fit or extrapolate that progress uh and see where that leads um but you're talking about machines that are not just intelligent but have intentionality is that right they have the intention of their utility function um which we programmed in right yes okay but it can have unen unintended consequences um is that uh propelling no pun intended your uh\n\nMars mission ideas no I think it's quite it's more likely than not that if if there's some digital super intelligence apocalypse scenario um it would probably follow people to Mars um not necessarily because because of that utility function if it simply has utility function that is arbitrarily confined to Earth it it would be totally fine doing that I mean it's this is um like it's just it's a so what what is uh let's get to the Mars mission why you feel that is something we should be aiming at I think the reason for M there there's two main reasons for Ms or becoming a multiplanetary um I think one one is the defense of reason it's life insurance for Life as a whole um and there there's some value to to having that um you know in terms of a small percentage\n\nof our economic output like let's say half a percent or maybe even less of our economic output to ensure that that the light of Consciousness As We Know know it propagates into the future um to for a much longer period of time um and uh you know so there's that that defensive reason um and and this is the first time in 4 and a half billion years in the since Earth you know was first formed that it's been possible for life to move to another planet to become multiplanetary um and that window may be open for a long time or it may be open for a short time I'm actually quite an optimistic person um so I'm hopeing that will be open for a long time but maybe it'll be open for a short time in which case we should take action now and and not delay um um you've\n\nbeen a fan of science fiction books uh have they actually influenced you sure I I'll just say The other reason which I actually find personally more motivating with respect to Mars uh which is that um it would just be the greatest Adventure uh ever um and very exciting and I think we need things in life that are exciting and inspiring it can't just be about solving some awful problem um there have to be re reasons to get up in the morning and I was talking about the books you've read and the science fiction I noticed you're a science fiction F do you think maybe you've read too much science fiction maybe have that's certainly certainly possible um so the the uh yeah I mean where we are right now is we've I think at on the SpaceX front we've made evolutionary\n\nbut not revolutionary progress we're hoping to make revolutionary progress in the coming years um but the key break that we aim for was or they were aiming for is to be able to uh have the the the rocket booster come back and land and be able to refly it again why is that important because that's not the way we've been doing it right yeah it's been Expendable Rockets up till now really except for the space shuttle was partly reusable um but but it was extremely difficult to refurbish for flight you needed 10,000 people needed to work 9 months to refurbish this SP shuttle um so what we really need is uh rapid and complete reusability uh like an aircraft or a car or really any mode of Transport is besides Rockets is um reusable you know Horse bicycle you\n\ncan think of almost anything um but imagine if that mode of Transport was not reusable very unfortunate in the case of the horse um and but but even like in cars like if you could use a car once um and you have to buy a new car every time you took a journey odsa you would not buy many cars um because it would be very expensive so reusability essentially U opens the door for reducing the cost of space flight by a factor of 100 or more and uh if you uh do this how much of it will be government funded in a way aren't you under a lot of contracts with government yeah in the beginning there was no government um I funded SpaceX uh entirely with the proceeds from PayPal um uh and but and we got off S first government contract about five or six years after starting\n\nthe company from NASA um and um but I should say about NASA's maybe a quarter of our flights uh 34s are commercial but the way we have been doing innovation in this country especially starting with world War II has always been a combination of government private Enterprise universities and that is now dissipated the government is not doing as much basic research do you think that's going to be a problem for the United States um well I I think I think it govern us quite a lot um that I'm not exactly sure whether we're at the right number for basic research I mean I'm a fan of research so i' probably I'd be in favor of spending more money on on that all allocating more resour resources to to to basic research um but um but I think the government's doing\n\ndoing quite a bit I mean NASA is doing doing a lot of things we've obviously got the The Rovers on Mars um we've got the Hub things like the Hubble telescope the upcoming James Webb Telescope uh there planetary probes uh and Earth Science missions launching all the time so NASA is doing doing quite a lot actually what other big things like electric cars space shots whatever uh do you dream of well I think it's face and cars a lot obviously um we've eliminated flying cars so well I'm not I mean I I'm I'm not sure about the flying cars I not that's not say I don't think there should be flying cars I mean but if the sky was full of cars flying all over the place and it was you it would affect how this how things look it would affect the skyline and and uh\n\nit would be noisier um and there would be a greater probability of something falling in your head yes right um good arguments you know those are those are not good things on the other hand um that you could be able to go from one place to another faster but I think actually if at least for If you eliminate the choke points in cities then there's really not that much traffic outside of the CH points so you look at sort of in Suburban streets you don't see a lot of uh I mean you don't the traffic doesn't doesn't choke things um it's really on the highways and major arteries and it's because the the the cities grew way bigger than the major a and how would we fix that tunnels tunnels what about autonomously driving cars would that help that would help certainly\n\nyeahh I'm going to open it up but I have one frivolous question while they bring the lights up everybody so far today has been touting how much they love Silicon Valley the HBO show and you said some bad things about it why don't you like like it um well first of all I I should say that the I mean the article was not very accurate that was written it was just one article which was it was simply not an accurate article um so I the I I I thought it was okay um the but I think like Mike Judge did an amazing job with office base like that's one of my favorite movies ever um and he may be here so be nice great he was here a few minutes ago no problem um anyway so so a movie like office space just really nailed it um I don't think Silicon Valley the show quite\n\nNails it it's not it's not quite it's not quite right uh so that's you know that that's my objection to it it doesn't it doesn't quite get it right in my opinion but I've heard that the later episodes are better I saw the first two so yes UC Berkeley hi um I used to work in large scale renewable energy mostly solar and I was wondering that given all the the release of the patents uh of the batteries and and and and all the knowledge on small scale Renewables like Solar City if uh if um is there uh something coming about like large renewable uh energy storage from the from all the batteries uh patents in in Tesla what Tesla is going to do a stationary storage of you know in a very large scale way because it's it's very important to pair battery packs with\n\nsolar power and and for wind it's even more important uh so with with the gigafactory that we're creating in Nevada we're going to create uh many well probably tens of gwatt hours per year of stationary storage um on the battery front so that yeah there's a light coming for sure hi my name is Tina I'm Mar from China so my questions is relevant to China Market how would you in your perspectives how would you forecast about the electric vehicles the demand in China and how's the Tesla strategies in the coming year uh yeah sure I think things seem to going you know fairly well in in China we've had a very enthusiastic response and um yeah I think I think longterm it seems likely that China would be the biggest market for Tesla um so uh yeah I'm really really\n\noptimistic about things over there is it going to be bigger than the North America it seems likely that um it you know it would likely be bigger than North America yeah in the long term and how about the government regulations and the local competitors there um the government's been pretty good I mean there's there is certainly um in terms of the incentive structure it does favor local production but overall it's um you know I I think it's not been too too much of an issue um the government's been been great so far yeah thank you uh hi I'm Manu I'm a sophore at Stanford and U all of your work has been uh bringing uh people from Place A to B in the in the fastest and the most environmentally friendly uh manner there's also another kind of research happening\n\nin the valley where people are trying to avoid Transportation at all we call it virtual reality right so I can be in my dor and I can see you speaking with the same level of contact on my Oculus Rift as I am here right now taking the calra or the Tesla or even a SpaceX rocket in the future uh how do you think will virtual reality tie in the future of Transportation which you are working on thank you well maybe we're in a simulation right now yeah yeah yeah [Laughter] seriously um some feels like that um yeah I mean I think it is going to from what I've heard of IUS Rift and and some of the other immersive technologies that it's quite transformative uh you really feel like you're there um and and then when you come out of it it feels like reality isn't\n\nreal um so I think we'll see probably less physical movement in the future as a result of the virtual reality stuff um yeah and when we come out of what we're here now into this virtual reality we'll think it's real I mean it's like well I mean there's some interesting things here on the virtual reality front um and I mean just on the whole notion of a simulation which is that if if you just if you extrapolate into the future and say well how good let's say will video games be in in 100 or 200 or 1,000 years from now if if there's continued Improvement um and you know you're in a full body haptic suit with a sort of surround vision and you know you it's it's it becomes Beyond a certain resolution indistinguishable from reality um if and and there will\n\nlikely to be there likely to be Millions maybe maybe billions of such simulations so then what are the odds that we're actually in base reality isn't it one in billions is it I mean gives I can give the counter argument but I'd rather you give the counter argument uh it obviously this feels real but but it it it may I mean it seems unlikely to be real uh my name is Danielle I'm an architect uh from paloalto I just completed a net zero passive house and I'm now a fellow at the Stanford Business School and I'm working with a group of students on a project to um come up with the most innovative ways to solve big problems in cities and we've identified Detroit as our prime target two questions uh what do you see as city-wide Innovation um and since women\n\ndon't ask as we're taught I'm going to ask would you come down to Stanford and bring M storm on this with us um this may sound Tri but I I think I honestly think tunnels should be given a lot more consideration um so I mean if you look at a city you have you look at I can you have all these apartment buildings and Office Buildings and there are many levels like they're you know be like an average of in Manhattan I don't know what is an average of like 30 stories or something like that but then you've got a street which is one story this is an obvious issue like you have a 30 to1 ratio of you know so you should have multi-layered highways yeah underground stacked up yeah and you can have tunnels to the tunnels don't have to follow the the buildings they\n\ncan they can be they can go diagonally through the basement yeah yeah and you can have as many levels as you want M so it's really just the cost of building the tunnels um and um but really it's tunnel is a hole in the ground like how hard can it really be I mean just so it seems like if if some Ur put their effort into building tunnels you know effectively be transformative to cities around the world um I'll certainly consider coming giving a talk I mean I'm in paloalto every week so certain be open to it sure um what other things besides you know tunnels hyper Loops you've talked about other things that are great visions that could transform a daily what we call reality which I assume is reality for the moment um yeah I mean it's with within cities\n\nit's sort of tunnels tunnels and tunnels and tubes uh and I mean for longdistance travel I really think that the vertical tequ of Landing electric supersonic aircraft is the way to go um and um I think it's it's very doable uh so that that that would be the way to go for long distance transation like for for if you're going more than like 500 Miles because then you have any to any uh you solve the any to any problem of a long distance for shorter distances because you have a time to climb and a time to descend uh penalty below 500 Miles um aircraft are not as good um so um that's why I think sort of some sort of evacu evacuated tube is is a better way to to travel what is an evacuated tube well you know just something where you've reduced the air density\n\nso the drag is dramatically reduced then it's like it's as though you got got teleported to altitude right um and you can grow much faster um and and not have to have the climb and descend issues hi I'm Lawrence I'm a sophomore at Stanford and I run a music startup um we all know that you have all those really crazy ideas in the best way possible uh but how do you come up with those ideas could you tell me more about your creative process and also uh once you have those great ideas how do you go about uh capitalizing uh those really ambitious ideas if you have very few limited Financial Resources well I think the the great thing about sort of software or anything which just involves uh intellectual capital of a capital of you and you friends you and a\n\nfew friends is that you can just do it so that's why you know doing some sort of internet thing or software thing is is great as an initial um company to create that's why it's zip2 and PayPal they they gave me the capital to attempt to do more Capital intense activities um I mean in as far as idea generation I think um when I tend to think of things from a sort of physics standpoint like from a first principal standpoint what would be the best way to accomplish something um and then pursue that um so and that's also a good way to determine if there's a if if something's far from its Optimum um and um like on on rockets for example um one could say oh you know that you could Reason by analogy and say the Rocket's going to cost a certain amount because\n\nthat's what prior Rockets have cost or you can say well what is a rocket made of what the material constituents what are those M what do they weigh what what's the cost per unit mass and that that sets the limit ASM totically for what a rocket can be so if you can figure out some creative way to rearrange those elements into a rocket shape then you can uh achieve a much better outcome that's the first principles approach um and I think also just combining um ideas from different Industries is really helpful for Innovation so you what what have people discovered in one industry and can that be applied to other Industries that's um I think also a great source of ideas um but but you usually just struggle on a solution and um you try try a bunch of things\n\nsome of them don't work and some of them and you most of them don't work and occasionally one does you mentioned the startup of PayPal which is a great Innovation that happened in sort of how we pay for things that seems to me an area in which it hasn't been as much subsequent Innovation other than Bitcoin as it should be in other words quickly transferring money especially to people you don't know or whatever uh is to Me Maybe I'm Wrong far more difficult than it seems like it should be are you somewhat disappointed with the way PayPal then proceeded or are you disappointed with the lack of innovation in the digital currency and and um environment yeah Pap has definitely I mean it hasn't moved much since from when when it was sort of um bought by eBay\n\num the the longterm Vision that I had for PayPal or sort of in in in in sort of Finance was to to to well it sounds a bit strange like to to convert the financial system from a series of heterogeneous uh insecure databases to one database or well not one database but maybe there'd be like a few more um the the money is just a number in a database that's what it is um and it's primarily an information mechanism for labor allocation and the current databases are not very efficient like there you know there are these old Legacy main frames that don't talk to each other very well have post security and uh only do their and do bash processing once a day are you glad PayPal is being spun off it's probably the right move and what would you do with it um well\n\nI think I think I convert it into more of a full service financial institution so you just you you want to do um all the things that uh a consumer you want to have like all the financial services that somebody needs in one place seamlessly integrated together and easy to use um and I think really really care about the consumer I think a lot of banks don't seem to care that much about the customer so um I I think there's an opportunity to be like a really good bank effectively but but but much more than what people think of it do you think Bitcoin will be disruptive in that way I mean now it's a speculative currency will it be something that will be what normal consumers will use and will disrupt the banking industry my opinion B point is that I mean I\n\nthink Bitcoin is probably a good thing um but it's it's essentially uh it its main thing thing will be I this probably get quoted here and there but the it it it's it's I think it's primarily going to be a means of of doing illegal transactions um but that's not necessarily entirely bad CU you know you know some things should be maybe shouldn't be illegal U so um but the combination of Silk Road and Bitcoin will save us well it will be used for for legal and illegal transactions otherwise it would have no value as a use of for for legal transaction because you have to have a legal to Illegal Bridge yeah um I don't own any Bitcoin by way we uh I let you get the last word sir I promise it'll be fast you on Bob shiky from Tom Reuters India just launched\n\na uh a mission to Mars $75 million to get that thing was it as Astro Teller said a miracle or is there something fundamental about the Indian space industry that allowed them to do a mission like that for so cheap and if so is there something that we can pick up and learn from that I think it's a very impressive Mission um given that it was executed by um a government entity that's like really really impressive um I mean impressive no matter who's doing but from a c standpoint impressive because it's being done by a government entity um ultimately we have to be able to do missions to Mars for much less than that um otherwise it'll be impossible to establish a self-sustaining civilization on Mars um you because we'll have to transport millions of tons\n\nof cargo millions of people um and the the cost of moving to Mars has to be affordable otherwise people won't be able to go uh so it has to ultimately come down by couple orders of magnitude from from that level sub million sub a million dollars then a couple orders of magnitude I'd say below well below a million yeah Elon Musk great innovator thank you very much and good luck tomorrow we'll we'll we'll be looking to see what was right under our nose uh when you announce it tomorrow sir right good thank you [Music]","textByLang":{"en":"[Music] she a man who needs no introduction but uh welcome thanks for being here number one on the Vanity Fair New establishment list is that the highest honor you've ever had of course that's right the nobels are announced you're doing an announcement tomorrow and the next day is a Nobel Prize so if if you get all three that's a great Trifecta let's talk about your announcement tomorrow yeah what is it you're going to announce I'm glad you asked um well uh I I think I can give maybe uh one clue which is that one of the things is already there um and people don't realize it so we just need to turn it on yeah wow cool and it'll be part of a new car okay I used to be a journalist I used to be good at this um yeah I I it's um it'll be it'll be a different\n\nit'll be different from the current one uh the some part of I announce will be different from things in the past obviously it's an announcement um but uh I can't say it's it's we're not going to talk about the model 3 um or the model X the model 3 would be the $35,000 uh electric vehicle you're going to talk about something that's labeled D yeah D and then there's another thing which is um actually would have said the other thing except it would have been too obvious and that's the reason I didn't say now I can't say what the letter is because okay and what does d stand for um I think the internet is very good at guessing these things so they're they understand directionally it's it's directionally correct but um the magnitude is uh not well appreciated\n\nyet and the magnitude of the something else too yeah um that's the really big one the something else I kind of got myself in trouble by because I you know we we had the model s and the X and then just for fun we try to trademark the model e um and and then then Ford suit us um or said they were going to Su us so we had to change it to the model 3 so it's s3x you know um totally different uh and um uh so I kind of I guess when I say that that we're about to unveil the D and something else then it's uh I kind of dug my own grave on that front yeah yeah well we look forward to why in the world are you doing this I mean what's impelling you to make an electric special car I think it's important that we accelerate the Advent of a sustainable transport future\n\nso it's it it's better if we move towards electric cars sooner rather than later um and then we can get away from burning oil and obviously that needs to be paired with sustainable generation of power um that's where solar City comes in and um but in order for us in order for Humanity to have a good future the century we have to figure out a way to sustainably produce and consume um energy and uh that's what Tesla and Solar City are trying to be helpful uh in that regard um so that's that's really the the purpose of it it's not it's not as though I think that there's a need for another car company uh there's plenty of you know good car companies very competitive industry um but but there is a need to show that electric cars can be uh better than gasoline\n\ncars otherwise people will continue to buy gasoline cars when you say better uh I'm going to push you back to where you didn't want to go which is what you're announcing better means that it would be faster and stronger than a gas car which we think electric cars cannot be yeah um will'll be bigger and faster oh cool um yeah can I have one I can't wait for that quot to be out there yeah it's about to unveil the D it's bigger and faster yeah I know there have been a lot of jokes that Cara swisser started today that yeah I know we have to steer away conference called All Things D you know yeah um uh why did you give away or open up the intellectual property oh um the patter yeah yeah to we sort of Open Source pents in order to accelerate the Advent of electric\n\nvehicles that's the main reason I think people think um that maybe there was some competitive reason or or or that that this would um somehow be helpful to Tesla you know because um more people would enter electric cars and somehow that would be you know Rising tide lift but actually I think I think the open sourcing of patents does slightly impair our competitive uh position um on balance but I I'm hopeful that it generates enough Goodwill to overcome that uh competitive impairment but um I mean I came to the conclusion at least on a personal level that patents were kind of like buying a lottery ticket to a lawsuit um you know and so why would you want to do that um what drove you into the electric car our business was it really sustainability for the\n\nplanet or was it just the intellectual curiosity of it all actually so if if if you go back to like when I was first thinking about electric cars was in college um and it was really more from the standpoint uh of the the need to transition to to some uh transport means that was s sustainable independent whether there was environmental impact or not because if if we're burning oil you know to move and that's not a renewable resource then um then independent of any environmental impact we must find some alternative or there will be economic collapse um so and civilization would would sort of crumble because we have to or revert you know so the so that that was actually originally why I was very interested in it is just because it's it I mean I think you\n\nknow from a physics standpoint it's really obviously the way to go is electric motors I mean kind of crazy to do something else honestly um and and then the the environmental thing grew over time and became it became evident that the environmental impact was quite significant because we're putting so much carbon into the atmosphere that were fundamentally changing the chemical makeup of of Earth's atmosphere and then and and the oceans too because because of the CO2 that gets uh absorbed into the into the water and creates carbonic acid so um if if we don't take corrective action uh we that that the probability of of a catastrophe will increase over time eventually there's like certainty of of a catastrophic outcome and the longer it takes us to to make\n\nthat transition the greater the probability of something bad happening um and uh so you know so that when I think of Tesla what's the fundamental good that Tesla can achieve it would be to accelerate the Advent of electric vehicles perhaps by you know for fortunate a decade or something like that because it it'll happen anyway independent got even Tesla was not not around so that's I would say that that's a really fundamental good and since we're making cars I mean it seems like we should try to make really good cars um and uh and you know maybe make the buying buying experience a lot more pleasant there's a Peter teal line as you know about you we were promised flying cars but we got 140 characters uh do you think that other innovators people not like\n\nyourself aren't really shooting as high as they should be when you're doing things from you know space shots to electric cars do you think there should be flying cars um yeah okay yeah I'm am I missing something um gosh I think that would be fun don't you I'm not sure I mean I think I think there should be vertical takeover Landing supersonic Air transport yeah that that's obviously should be the case we had that 30 years ago and now we don't meaning suic sure yeah no it's kind of innovation for big things has actually slowed down it seems is that true I think whenever you have a large industry that is a monopoly or duopoly um the forcing function for Innovation is weak um because uh Innovation tends to come from new entrance to an industry and if the\n\nbarriers are like Tesla into the auto model yeah yeah um when there are huge Capital barriers to entry then it's very difficult for new entrance to enter that that industry it's like being in a forest of giant redwoods um and in that in that situation The Innovation is is weak because if you sort of it's I think it's fairly easy to understand this because if you're say the a senior executive in that company or CEO let's say um if you do something incremental uh you very unlikely to be fired um if you do something bold and it doesn't work out you're very likely to be fired um so that's then they do incremental things you mentioned a moment ago uh the environmental sustainability thing that's really big that you worry about your other big thing that you\n\nworry about is sort of machines getting out of control explain that or the artificial intelligence Singularity yeah I don't think most people understand just how quickly machine intelligence is advancing it's much faster than almost anyone realizes even within Silicon Valley and certainly outside Silicon Valley people really have no idea um so why is that dangerous I mean if if there's if there's a super intelligent particularly if it's engaged in recursive self-improvement if there's some digital super intelligence um and its optimization or utility function um is something that's detrimental to humanity then it will have a very bad effect um you know it could be just something like getting rid of spam email or something and it's like concludes well\n\nthe best way to get R spam is to get rid of humans you know but uh why would we lose sour of spam I I know we've all watched Cal in 2001 but why would we lose control over our machines there no data point showing that that that our connection to machine has ever been loosened uh actually I think the thing to do would be to plot the progress of digital intelligence versus time and and then to to maybe curve fit or extrapolate that progress uh and see where that leads um but you're talking about machines that are not just intelligent but have intentionality is that right they have the intention of their utility function um which we programmed in right yes okay but it can have unen unintended consequences um is that uh propelling no pun intended your uh\n\nMars mission ideas no I think it's quite it's more likely than not that if if there's some digital super intelligence apocalypse scenario um it would probably follow people to Mars um not necessarily because because of that utility function if it simply has utility function that is arbitrarily confined to Earth it it would be totally fine doing that I mean it's this is um like it's just it's a so what what is uh let's get to the Mars mission why you feel that is something we should be aiming at I think the reason for M there there's two main reasons for Ms or becoming a multiplanetary um I think one one is the defense of reason it's life insurance for Life as a whole um and there there's some value to to having that um you know in terms of a small percentage\n\nof our economic output like let's say half a percent or maybe even less of our economic output to ensure that that the light of Consciousness As We Know know it propagates into the future um to for a much longer period of time um and uh you know so there's that that defensive reason um and and this is the first time in 4 and a half billion years in the since Earth you know was first formed that it's been possible for life to move to another planet to become multiplanetary um and that window may be open for a long time or it may be open for a short time I'm actually quite an optimistic person um so I'm hopeing that will be open for a long time but maybe it'll be open for a short time in which case we should take action now and and not delay um um you've\n\nbeen a fan of science fiction books uh have they actually influenced you sure I I'll just say The other reason which I actually find personally more motivating with respect to Mars uh which is that um it would just be the greatest Adventure uh ever um and very exciting and I think we need things in life that are exciting and inspiring it can't just be about solving some awful problem um there have to be re reasons to get up in the morning and I was talking about the books you've read and the science fiction I noticed you're a science fiction F do you think maybe you've read too much science fiction maybe have that's certainly certainly possible um so the the uh yeah I mean where we are right now is we've I think at on the SpaceX front we've made evolutionary\n\nbut not revolutionary progress we're hoping to make revolutionary progress in the coming years um but the key break that we aim for was or they were aiming for is to be able to uh have the the the rocket booster come back and land and be able to refly it again why is that important because that's not the way we've been doing it right yeah it's been Expendable Rockets up till now really except for the space shuttle was partly reusable um but but it was extremely difficult to refurbish for flight you needed 10,000 people needed to work 9 months to refurbish this SP shuttle um so what we really need is uh rapid and complete reusability uh like an aircraft or a car or really any mode of Transport is besides Rockets is um reusable you know Horse bicycle you\n\ncan think of almost anything um but imagine if that mode of Transport was not reusable very unfortunate in the case of the horse um and but but even like in cars like if you could use a car once um and you have to buy a new car every time you took a journey odsa you would not buy many cars um because it would be very expensive so reusability essentially U opens the door for reducing the cost of space flight by a factor of 100 or more and uh if you uh do this how much of it will be government funded in a way aren't you under a lot of contracts with government yeah in the beginning there was no government um I funded SpaceX uh entirely with the proceeds from PayPal um uh and but and we got off S first government contract about five or six years after starting\n\nthe company from NASA um and um but I should say about NASA's maybe a quarter of our flights uh 34s are commercial but the way we have been doing innovation in this country especially starting with world War II has always been a combination of government private Enterprise universities and that is now dissipated the government is not doing as much basic research do you think that's going to be a problem for the United States um well I I think I think it govern us quite a lot um that I'm not exactly sure whether we're at the right number for basic research I mean I'm a fan of research so i' probably I'd be in favor of spending more money on on that all allocating more resour resources to to to basic research um but um but I think the government's doing\n\ndoing quite a bit I mean NASA is doing doing a lot of things we've obviously got the The Rovers on Mars um we've got the Hub things like the Hubble telescope the upcoming James Webb Telescope uh there planetary probes uh and Earth Science missions launching all the time so NASA is doing doing quite a lot actually what other big things like electric cars space shots whatever uh do you dream of well I think it's face and cars a lot obviously um we've eliminated flying cars so well I'm not I mean I I'm I'm not sure about the flying cars I not that's not say I don't think there should be flying cars I mean but if the sky was full of cars flying all over the place and it was you it would affect how this how things look it would affect the skyline and and uh\n\nit would be noisier um and there would be a greater probability of something falling in your head yes right um good arguments you know those are those are not good things on the other hand um that you could be able to go from one place to another faster but I think actually if at least for If you eliminate the choke points in cities then there's really not that much traffic outside of the CH points so you look at sort of in Suburban streets you don't see a lot of uh I mean you don't the traffic doesn't doesn't choke things um it's really on the highways and major arteries and it's because the the the cities grew way bigger than the major a and how would we fix that tunnels tunnels what about autonomously driving cars would that help that would help certainly\n\nyeahh I'm going to open it up but I have one frivolous question while they bring the lights up everybody so far today has been touting how much they love Silicon Valley the HBO show and you said some bad things about it why don't you like like it um well first of all I I should say that the I mean the article was not very accurate that was written it was just one article which was it was simply not an accurate article um so I the I I I thought it was okay um the but I think like Mike Judge did an amazing job with office base like that's one of my favorite movies ever um and he may be here so be nice great he was here a few minutes ago no problem um anyway so so a movie like office space just really nailed it um I don't think Silicon Valley the show quite\n\nNails it it's not it's not quite it's not quite right uh so that's you know that that's my objection to it it doesn't it doesn't quite get it right in my opinion but I've heard that the later episodes are better I saw the first two so yes UC Berkeley hi um I used to work in large scale renewable energy mostly solar and I was wondering that given all the the release of the patents uh of the batteries and and and and all the knowledge on small scale Renewables like Solar City if uh if um is there uh something coming about like large renewable uh energy storage from the from all the batteries uh patents in in Tesla what Tesla is going to do a stationary storage of you know in a very large scale way because it's it's very important to pair battery packs with\n\nsolar power and and for wind it's even more important uh so with with the gigafactory that we're creating in Nevada we're going to create uh many well probably tens of gwatt hours per year of stationary storage um on the battery front so that yeah there's a light coming for sure hi my name is Tina I'm Mar from China so my questions is relevant to China Market how would you in your perspectives how would you forecast about the electric vehicles the demand in China and how's the Tesla strategies in the coming year uh yeah sure I think things seem to going you know fairly well in in China we've had a very enthusiastic response and um yeah I think I think longterm it seems likely that China would be the biggest market for Tesla um so uh yeah I'm really really\n\noptimistic about things over there is it going to be bigger than the North America it seems likely that um it you know it would likely be bigger than North America yeah in the long term and how about the government regulations and the local competitors there um the government's been pretty good I mean there's there is certainly um in terms of the incentive structure it does favor local production but overall it's um you know I I think it's not been too too much of an issue um the government's been been great so far yeah thank you uh hi I'm Manu I'm a sophore at Stanford and U all of your work has been uh bringing uh people from Place A to B in the in the fastest and the most environmentally friendly uh manner there's also another kind of research happening\n\nin the valley where people are trying to avoid Transportation at all we call it virtual reality right so I can be in my dor and I can see you speaking with the same level of contact on my Oculus Rift as I am here right now taking the calra or the Tesla or even a SpaceX rocket in the future uh how do you think will virtual reality tie in the future of Transportation which you are working on thank you well maybe we're in a simulation right now yeah yeah yeah [Laughter] seriously um some feels like that um yeah I mean I think it is going to from what I've heard of IUS Rift and and some of the other immersive technologies that it's quite transformative uh you really feel like you're there um and and then when you come out of it it feels like reality isn't\n\nreal um so I think we'll see probably less physical movement in the future as a result of the virtual reality stuff um yeah and when we come out of what we're here now into this virtual reality we'll think it's real I mean it's like well I mean there's some interesting things here on the virtual reality front um and I mean just on the whole notion of a simulation which is that if if you just if you extrapolate into the future and say well how good let's say will video games be in in 100 or 200 or 1,000 years from now if if there's continued Improvement um and you know you're in a full body haptic suit with a sort of surround vision and you know you it's it's it becomes Beyond a certain resolution indistinguishable from reality um if and and there will\n\nlikely to be there likely to be Millions maybe maybe billions of such simulations so then what are the odds that we're actually in base reality isn't it one in billions is it I mean gives I can give the counter argument but I'd rather you give the counter argument uh it obviously this feels real but but it it it may I mean it seems unlikely to be real uh my name is Danielle I'm an architect uh from paloalto I just completed a net zero passive house and I'm now a fellow at the Stanford Business School and I'm working with a group of students on a project to um come up with the most innovative ways to solve big problems in cities and we've identified Detroit as our prime target two questions uh what do you see as city-wide Innovation um and since women\n\ndon't ask as we're taught I'm going to ask would you come down to Stanford and bring M storm on this with us um this may sound Tri but I I think I honestly think tunnels should be given a lot more consideration um so I mean if you look at a city you have you look at I can you have all these apartment buildings and Office Buildings and there are many levels like they're you know be like an average of in Manhattan I don't know what is an average of like 30 stories or something like that but then you've got a street which is one story this is an obvious issue like you have a 30 to1 ratio of you know so you should have multi-layered highways yeah underground stacked up yeah and you can have tunnels to the tunnels don't have to follow the the buildings they\n\ncan they can be they can go diagonally through the basement yeah yeah and you can have as many levels as you want M so it's really just the cost of building the tunnels um and um but really it's tunnel is a hole in the ground like how hard can it really be I mean just so it seems like if if some Ur put their effort into building tunnels you know effectively be transformative to cities around the world um I'll certainly consider coming giving a talk I mean I'm in paloalto every week so certain be open to it sure um what other things besides you know tunnels hyper Loops you've talked about other things that are great visions that could transform a daily what we call reality which I assume is reality for the moment um yeah I mean it's with within cities\n\nit's sort of tunnels tunnels and tunnels and tubes uh and I mean for longdistance travel I really think that the vertical tequ of Landing electric supersonic aircraft is the way to go um and um I think it's it's very doable uh so that that that would be the way to go for long distance transation like for for if you're going more than like 500 Miles because then you have any to any uh you solve the any to any problem of a long distance for shorter distances because you have a time to climb and a time to descend uh penalty below 500 Miles um aircraft are not as good um so um that's why I think sort of some sort of evacu evacuated tube is is a better way to to travel what is an evacuated tube well you know just something where you've reduced the air density\n\nso the drag is dramatically reduced then it's like it's as though you got got teleported to altitude right um and you can grow much faster um and and not have to have the climb and descend issues hi I'm Lawrence I'm a sophomore at Stanford and I run a music startup um we all know that you have all those really crazy ideas in the best way possible uh but how do you come up with those ideas could you tell me more about your creative process and also uh once you have those great ideas how do you go about uh capitalizing uh those really ambitious ideas if you have very few limited Financial Resources well I think the the great thing about sort of software or anything which just involves uh intellectual capital of a capital of you and you friends you and a\n\nfew friends is that you can just do it so that's why you know doing some sort of internet thing or software thing is is great as an initial um company to create that's why it's zip2 and PayPal they they gave me the capital to attempt to do more Capital intense activities um I mean in as far as idea generation I think um when I tend to think of things from a sort of physics standpoint like from a first principal standpoint what would be the best way to accomplish something um and then pursue that um so and that's also a good way to determine if there's a if if something's far from its Optimum um and um like on on rockets for example um one could say oh you know that you could Reason by analogy and say the Rocket's going to cost a certain amount because\n\nthat's what prior Rockets have cost or you can say well what is a rocket made of what the material constituents what are those M what do they weigh what what's the cost per unit mass and that that sets the limit ASM totically for what a rocket can be so if you can figure out some creative way to rearrange those elements into a rocket shape then you can uh achieve a much better outcome that's the first principles approach um and I think also just combining um ideas from different Industries is really helpful for Innovation so you what what have people discovered in one industry and can that be applied to other Industries that's um I think also a great source of ideas um but but you usually just struggle on a solution and um you try try a bunch of things\n\nsome of them don't work and some of them and you most of them don't work and occasionally one does you mentioned the startup of PayPal which is a great Innovation that happened in sort of how we pay for things that seems to me an area in which it hasn't been as much subsequent Innovation other than Bitcoin as it should be in other words quickly transferring money especially to people you don't know or whatever uh is to Me Maybe I'm Wrong far more difficult than it seems like it should be are you somewhat disappointed with the way PayPal then proceeded or are you disappointed with the lack of innovation in the digital currency and and um environment yeah Pap has definitely I mean it hasn't moved much since from when when it was sort of um bought by eBay\n\num the the longterm Vision that I had for PayPal or sort of in in in in sort of Finance was to to to well it sounds a bit strange like to to convert the financial system from a series of heterogeneous uh insecure databases to one database or well not one database but maybe there'd be like a few more um the the money is just a number in a database that's what it is um and it's primarily an information mechanism for labor allocation and the current databases are not very efficient like there you know there are these old Legacy main frames that don't talk to each other very well have post security and uh only do their and do bash processing once a day are you glad PayPal is being spun off it's probably the right move and what would you do with it um well\n\nI think I think I convert it into more of a full service financial institution so you just you you want to do um all the things that uh a consumer you want to have like all the financial services that somebody needs in one place seamlessly integrated together and easy to use um and I think really really care about the consumer I think a lot of banks don't seem to care that much about the customer so um I I think there's an opportunity to be like a really good bank effectively but but but much more than what people think of it do you think Bitcoin will be disruptive in that way I mean now it's a speculative currency will it be something that will be what normal consumers will use and will disrupt the banking industry my opinion B point is that I mean I\n\nthink Bitcoin is probably a good thing um but it's it's essentially uh it its main thing thing will be I this probably get quoted here and there but the it it it's it's I think it's primarily going to be a means of of doing illegal transactions um but that's not necessarily entirely bad CU you know you know some things should be maybe shouldn't be illegal U so um but the combination of Silk Road and Bitcoin will save us well it will be used for for legal and illegal transactions otherwise it would have no value as a use of for for legal transaction because you have to have a legal to Illegal Bridge yeah um I don't own any Bitcoin by way we uh I let you get the last word sir I promise it'll be fast you on Bob shiky from Tom Reuters India just launched\n\na uh a mission to Mars $75 million to get that thing was it as Astro Teller said a miracle or is there something fundamental about the Indian space industry that allowed them to do a mission like that for so cheap and if so is there something that we can pick up and learn from that I think it's a very impressive Mission um given that it was executed by um a government entity that's like really really impressive um I mean impressive no matter who's doing but from a c standpoint impressive because it's being done by a government entity um ultimately we have to be able to do missions to Mars for much less than that um otherwise it'll be impossible to establish a self-sustaining civilization on Mars um you because we'll have to transport millions of tons\n\nof cargo millions of people um and the the cost of moving to Mars has to be affordable otherwise people won't be able to go uh so it has to ultimately come down by couple orders of magnitude from from that level sub million sub a million dollars then a couple orders of magnitude I'd say below well below a million yeah Elon Musk great innovator thank you very much and good luck tomorrow we'll we'll we'll be looking to see what was right under our nose uh when you announce it tomorrow sir right good thank you [Music]"},"languages":["en"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fPsHN1KyRQ8"},{"id":"code-conference-2014-09-25","type":"interview","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eWtabW_j0kQ","title":"Code Conference","titles":{"en":"Code Conference","de":"Code Conference","fr":"Code Conference"},"date":"2014-09-25","summary":"Full Code Conference fireside interview covering Tesla, SpaceX and the future of technology.","text":"elon let me start by saying we're very glad you're here safe and sound yeah uh thanks uh unfortunately i had to circumvent late i was uh flying i flew here with the landing gear down because it was like some kind of landing gear issue landing gear was stuck there's some kind of warning light and my pilot said that if they were attracted to the landing gear it may not go back down again so that's all so this is probably best this even happens to you yeah yeah okay outlining your problems of various kinds um so um anyway we're happy to wait for you and we're glad you got here safe thanks for having me it's great to see you guys thank you for coming i really appreciate it you kept your promise which was nice i think you were drunk when you promised me but\n\nthat's okay i'll take it so you know in a couple of years since you've come you've done some astonishing things in in terms of substantive stuff with your with both your companies um let's start talking about space and what you've been doing there um obviously you've had some success uh landing the landing the rocket you've had you know you've done a bunch of other things where people thought you weren't going to be successful talk a little bit about sort of the progress you think you've made with spacex sure well i mean there's a lot of things where i think i didn't think we'd be successful so the the um and the most significant thing is being able to land in an orbit class rocket uh brew stage um and uh and bring it both back to cape canaveral land\n\non land and be able to land on a drone ship out in the ocean the there is a bit of an education process that's needed to understand orbital dynamics um because a lot of people are confused of like why the heck are you landing a ship landing a rocket in a on a ship in the ocean that seems pretty inconvenient and the reason is because that going up and staying up is actually about velocity horizontal to the earth's surface so um there's a huge difference between space and or space and or and orbit like space you could think of as like say being the international waters boundary for the pacific ocean like if you go you know uh 100 miles offshore you're technically out of coastal waters now you're in the pacific so it's like technically you're in the pacific\n\nbut but it's but orbit is like circumnavigating the globe it's a really giant difference and the the reason that things go up and stay up is because you're zooming around the earth so fast that your outward radial acceleration is equal to the inward acceleration of gravity and so those balance out and you have a net zero gravity so when you see the space station the thing this little little sort of um counterintuitive is that the space station is actually zooming around the earth at 17 000 miles an hour even though it seems like it seems really still you know but it's moving really really fast um i mean to put that into perspective um a bullet from a 45 gun in a handgun is is is just below the speed of sound so the space station is going more than 25\n\ntimes faster than that and that's what's needed actually to go up and stay up and that's why that's why there's the term escape velocity not escape altitude there's no such thing as an escape altitude there's only an escape velocity you need to be a certain speed to escape the gravity of the earth yeah you can think of gravity as kind of a funnel in space-time um so think of it like a coin funnel like it really it's very much like that in in you know but it's obviously a sort of a four-dimensional coin funnel but uh if you if you spin a spin a marble or a coin on a coin funnel the when it's when it's far out it sort of spins slowly and then as it gets closer it spins faster and faster and if you want if you want if you were to start at the bottom of the\n\ncoin funnel and you wanted to to to to to exit you'd spin it horizontally and it would it would spin out and and and that's really how you how you get to orbit um yeah so how does the gravity well there's like a funnel why you want to land on the on a ship in the ocean because in order to get to orbit you all that matters is your horizontal velocity your altitude is just doesn't really matter um in fact the the um the force of gravity at i say the nominal um boundary of space 100 kilometers is almost exactly the same as it is on the surface of the earth um is it like if it's a few percent lower than the surface of the earth um uh so in order to go up and stay up the only thing that matters is how fast are you going horizontal to the earth's surface so\n\nyou have that outward radial acceleration or think of it like maybe like tetherball or something like that it's really that outward acceleration is the thing that matters and so when the rocket is going to orbit um the only reason it's going up is to get out of the thick part of the atmosphere because that at high velocity the atmosphere is thick as molasses and so it goes up very briefly but if you look at a long exposure of the the rocket's trajectory you'll see it it goes up but immediately curves over and starts going horizontal and so the um at the at the point at which the uh the uh at the point which the stages separate those two stages um the primary boost stage which is the most expensive part of the rocket the point which that that staging occurs\n\nuh can be um as high as uh mach 10 but it's so it's going away from the launch site at 10 times the speed of sound so in order to get back to the launch site you would have to have enough uh fuel and oxygen to reverse out that velocity and and and boost back all the way to the launch site and you just don't have the physics of it don't really allow you to have that much it's not about saving money on fuel or anything it's just physically impossible so because another sort of thing about uh if you're if you're in space is that there's nothing to react against so like whereas an aircraft can can circle very easily because it's reacting against air in vacuum there's nothing to react against so the only way to go back the other direction is to apply just\n\nas much energy as it took you to go if you want to go backwards you have to apply just as much energy as it took you to go forwards in fact or twice as much really because you've got to zero it out and then you've got to you've got to land elsewhere yeah so bottom line is this thing is zinging out just zinging out yeah it's super at ten times faster than the foot it may well be over the ocean because the ocean covers most of the oh it's it's actually at the point of separation it's not that far away it's maybe 100 kilometers away from the launch site but it is going like hell in the opposite you know away from the launch site so the the only way to really land it is to have it continue on that arc that ballistic arc and then land far out to sea on a ship\n\nthat's that's pre-positioned to a particulate uh latitude and longitude very very precise to within about a meter um and then the rocket will um then go from vacuum through rarefied air at hypersonic velocity uh um and what so what is it when it's in vacuum it has to obviously you can't use aerosurfaces you have to use nitrogen jets to control the the attitude and position and then as it starts to encounter the air we use grid fins because grid fins look like sort of like a waffle they work quite well across a wide regime from both very high velocity hypersonics through supersonic transonic and subsonic so it's hard it's hard to have arrow surfaces that work well across that entire regime and then uh so once the error forces become high it uses the um\n\nthe four grid fins to to sort of control its attitude to land itself yeah it's controlling its it's controlling picture and roll with with the grid fins um and uh and then once and those griffins will then position it to where it's fairly close to the ship and then it will light in this case three of the nine engines to arrest the velocity and then drop to one engine for precision right before landing right okay so that's super [ __ ] hard there's a video so why why is that important why has that this moment been important for you um well so in order to reuse the the boost stage which is about 70 percent of the cost of rockets so that what cost is that how much is that um well i mean it's sort of on the order of 30 to 35 million right so you want to save\n\nthat yeah i mean it's like i try to i tell my team it's like imagine there was a pallet of cash that was vomiting through the atmosphere and it was going to burn up and smash into tiny pieces would you try to save it right right right probably yes yes okay yeah that sounds like a good idea right okay um so so yeah so we we want to get it back and that way um we don't have to make another one right um and i think it's quite tragic if rockets like get smashed into tiny pieces and land can i ask you a question we've been in we've been going to space for uh what 50 years or something like that nobody until you started doing this and jeff bezos company has done it uh the government never sort of saved the rockets they never saved the pallet of cash why not\n\nand the russians didn't either i mean what was the deal there yeah i mean there was some attempt uh made to do that with the space shuttle but there was no um return it's the first time that that a rocket boost has returned to launch site right um from an orbital mission and and certainly the first time that there's been a landing on a ship but the regular rockets that went up that weren't designed like planes never tried to do this right um the plane thing is not not a good idea in my view so the the plane um and the reason i think it's like intuitively it seems like a plane should work but but actually if you consider that really every mode of transport has a design that is appropriate to its medium and if you're in space wings are not very useful because\n\nthere's no air and and and then if you want to go somewhere other than earth there's also no runways so this is these are important considerations so that's why when they went to the moon they used propulsive landing right but what i'm saying was when they built the space shuttle it sort of was like a looked like a kind of bulb i think that appealed to congress yeah yeah it went cool that's cool yeah looks like an airplane can you explain that you know jeff jeff good one jeff bezos was here last night and i asked him what's the difference between what you're doing and what elon musk is doing and he said well i think we have uh i think use the word like-minded in the general sense of it and then he went on to explain some differences do you and then he\n\nbut he talked about and correct me if i'm misquoting him but i think he was saying where this is all about laying the foundations of being able to do greater things by getting the basic infrastructure of being able to reuse these rockets down right do you is that correct do you have a similar starting point from him and you're thinking i mean i think there's certainly some similarities of opinion um i think both jeff and i believe that it's important for the future to be a space faring civilization um and not to ultimately be out there among the stars and i think that's the that's the exciting inspiring future that i think i think certainly people in this room want and anyway particularly after seeing that the asteroids are going to destroy the planet\n\ni mean um i mean i don't view it as um you know we want we i mean i think i think what when i say you know multi-planets species like that's really where we want to be it's not like you know solving a single planet species but moving planets it's it's really being a multi-planet species um and having civilization and life as we know it extend beyond earth to the rest of the solar system and ultimately to other star systems um i think that's the thing that that's that's the future that's exciting and inspiring and i think that's what you know i think you know any kind of you need things like that to make to to to be glad to wake up in the morning you know like life like life can't be just about solving problems like they have to be things that are inspiring\n\nand exciting that make you glad to be alive so what in the immediate time frame what is what is your goal for spacex now that you've done this which is a huge accomplishment what is the plan for you in the immediate time and then the longer range sure so the um so we plan to refly uh one of the landed rocket boosters hopefully in about two or three months something like that and and then that that so that'll be an important milestone um so far the the stages are looking like quite quite good um even though they come through through quite there's a really difficult entry reentry situation um but they're looking like they're in good shape um we now have four of them so we want to start re-flying them you know towards the end of summer and then hopefully\n\nby the end of this year we'll be launching falcon heavy uh which will be the um the most powerful rocket uh in the world by more than a factor of two so falcon heavy is will be on the order of five million pounds of thrust on liftoff which is about two-thirds the size of a saturn v oh really yeah so that's the rocket that took the astronauts to the moon right exactly so in fact we're launching from the same from the same pad from very same pattern the apollo 11 pad wow yeah that's amazing so i'm hoping to launch that falcon heavy by the end of this year yeah that's that's our aspiration is that now that's somewhat of a delay from when you first hoped to launch it right um yeah um but uh the i mean it's not like we had a lot of pressing customers who wanted\n\nus to launch it okay so the in fact the first launch will will not have any operational satellites it'll be a demonstration launch and the the first operational flights where customers actually want us to launch it or next year you know whereas there's there's a lot of customers who want us to launch uh falcon 9 so about about a quarter of our launch of our flights are for uh for nasa but three quarters or commercial satellites like broadcasting communications satellites um or science missions for other countries um and um and this is there's quite a quite a backlog and we had we had an issue with the rocket last year so that put about a six month hole in our schedule so we're sort of backlogged on on our launches and we're trying to get them out as as\n\nquickly as we as we can um and you know you know service our customers the the uh so the launches will take place you know every two to four weeks there's quite quite a high launch cable that's a much faster cadence than nasa had right um yeah it's i mean it's it'll be more launches than any anything else in the world um so more than russia more than europe more than well more than china by next year certainly and largely to deliver customers exactly yeah it's um there's a lot of broadcasting communication satellites that are going to geosynchronous orbit um and um and then there's we're we'll also be launching the new uh iridium constellation so that iridium's got a next generation uh constellation of uh satellites i think 60 or 70 satellites quite you\n\nknow decent-sized satellites that that'll be like many orders of magnitude improvement over the current iridium system so you'll be able to have global broadband um so that'll be a whole bunch of launches and um yeah and then and then next year we'll be flying um dragon version two which is the one that's capable of taking up to seven astronauts to the space station in fact dragon 2 really is it's a propulsive lander as well um and it'll be the uh it's it's intended to carry astronauts to the space station but it's also capable of being a general science delivery platform to anywhere in the solar system so um so where are you going with it we're going to we're going to send one to mars in 2018.\n\nnow let's 2018 that's for sure a couple years a couple years now will you be on that flight no you have talked about this you said you don't want to you want to die on mars just not on landing right is that correct well i mean i think if you're going to choose a place to die then mars is probably you know not a bad choice all right um but you're not right it's not some sort of martian death wish or something but but uh yeah i mean you're gonna be born on earth on mars so sending this up to mars 2018 right setting this up to mars 2018 when will someone like you get there from your plans sure so so the 2018 mission would be a drag dragon version 2 right and that um i wouldn't recommend traveling to mars in in that because i mean it has the interior volume\n\nof a large suv okay uh the trip the trip for dragon would be on the order of six months it's a long time to spend in an suv i think it's it can be done can be done but not not probably not ideal um and it also doesn't have the capability of getting back to us right that's that seems more important than the space system yeah we can put that in the fine print you know yeah sorry yeah it's it's like the side effects and a drug ad by the way we cannot get back to earth yeah we saw the movie we didn't know what happened he got back yeah yeah um so it was good i actually enjoyed the movie um so do you think he could have gotten back like that was that plausible i thought there was some you know connection though it was it was mostly it was like 80 percent scientifically\n\ncorrect um but that did connect a series of improbable events such as well i mean i don't think you can sort of just uh take off from oz um on an unguided rocket really and and then hook your finger on the space suit and navigate to us to a spaceship right yeah not not impossible just extremely unlikely so the sandwich but if you're matt damon maybe maybe you have some mad skills yeah for sure so so so when will people like yourself get there and i assume you'll be first in line for that yeah so uh later this year in september at the um iac which is the big uh sort of world space conference industry space conference i'm going to be presenting the uh the architecture for mars colonization so i think what really matters is being able to transport uh large\n\nnumbers of people and um ultimately millions and tons of cargo to mars um and that's what's necessary in order to create a self-sustaining and and not really self-sustaining but a growing uh city on mars i'm curious have you been to space yet no why i mean you could just go up right for a little bit or not oh i could i suppose yeah why haven't you like walked through well at some point or something or yeah yeah probably will will you do a moon test before you go to mars um yeah i mean probably probably i don't know go to orbit in four or five years or something like that but again space and orbit are very different things but on the mars thing would you send up two or three whether it's you or not i kind of would prefer if you tried it frankly but um\n\nbecause it would be exciting but um would you send up some people some people before you do this whole architecture for colonizing mars just a handful of people to kind of see what i mean the basic game plan is like we're gonna uh send um a mission to mars with every mars opportunity from 2018 onwards so and they occur approximately every 26 months so um you know we we're establishing cargo flights to mars that people can count on uh for cargo and it's like said the the earth moths opel rendezvous is only every 26 months so there's one in 2018 there'll be another one 2020 and i think if things go according to plan we should be able to uh we should be able to launch people probably in 2024 with arrival in 2025.\n\nis that is that a more certain schedule than united airlines well um i don't know there's certainly some uncertainties associated with that so um let's um i'm going to show you anyway that's the game plan like approximately 2024 to do the first uh to to launch the first um of the mars and on your transport system i want to get back to what you said earlier about a multiple this will be a very big rocket okay very big bigger than 75 yes 20 twice as big or what september i'll tell you you're not going to say anything till september come on very big come on has to be very big like how big is very big so big [Laughter] do you think we should abandon the earth at some point no that way no i think that's great but you have said things why would we have bound\n\non earth it's really nice here you've said things about we may have to abandon the earth so it's good to have a plan b you've seen what happened before no that was amazing that's like that's amazing i don't know but it wasn't me all right okay it wasn't me like shaggy so let's move to things on this earth let's move to uh hyperloop tesla uh other things let's talk about tesla first um where do you feel like the company is at at this point and there's been lots of activity in self-driving cars in autonomous autonomous how do you look at how everybody's jumped in google apple others um and all the car manufacturers um yeah i mean there have been so many announcements of like autonomous ev start-ups i'm waiting for my mom to announce one okay it's like mom\n\nyou too um i mean there's a lot so um yeah i mean in in yeah in the us alone there there are four i think maybe five china funded eb startups at the billion dollar plus level like cirrus funding and there's a bunch of startups and then of course the you know the car industry as a whole seems to be moving that direction volkswagen just i think announced a huge battery factory that they're going to build and i think these are all good you know it's good it's good for the industry to moving towards sustainable transport as as quickly as possible um we open sourced our patents to try to be helpful in that regard and um yeah so it's it's encouraging to see all this activity um from a tesla's standpoint you know we're just trying we want to take a set of actions\n\nthat are uh likely to accelerate the advent of sustainable energy um so um scale up production as fast as we can so we accelerated plans for the model 3 by two years and so we want to try to get to half a million cars in total in kind of the 2018 time frame which is an aggressive schedule but i think achievable and then maybe a million cars a year by 2020 and um you know i can see it like i think a pretty clear path to get there [Music] autonomy is obviously extremely important people are going to want watch autonomy it's going to be odd to have a car without autonomy in the future but um yeah so i think that's so what we're scaling up how do you look at the all these efforts not your mother but yeah my mom's she's not gonna do it she may do a rocket\n\nsituation but um how do you look at each of them let's go through them what google is doing how do you assess what they're doing when you're looking at it because they'll be competitors at some point these are all um eventual competitors well you know i think what what google's i mean google's done a great job of showing the potential of autonomous transport um but they're they're not a they're not a car company so they would potentially you know license their technology to other car companies i think they announced something with the fiat and so i i wouldn't say you know google's a competitor um because they're not a car company that we would compete with somebody perhaps what they licensed technology to but not to them directly right um apple um yeah\n\nthat'll be more direct that'll be more direct yeah you can tell that by the hiring pattern and yeah that kind of stuff so what are you okay so they're going to be more direct how do you assess it um i mean i i say like you know i i i think it's great that they're doing this and um i um you know i hope they hope it works out what's what's the time frame for them do you think um i don't know i mean um i think they should have embarked upon this project sooner actually um uh that that uh um but i don't know i don't know when they i mean you know they don't share with me the details of their production plans but um i i i don't think it's going to be i don't think they'll be in volume production sooner than maybe 2020 that'll be like the soonest and that's\n\nis that too late we say they should have embarked sooner is that because 2020 will be too late to stop you or beat you or compete with you or whatever it's just like it's a missed opportunity it's just a that they it's it's um it'll be over by 2020.\n\ni wouldn't just say it's just like it's it's a couple of years i think they'll they'll probably make a good car and probably be successful the car industry is very big so it's not as though there's um you know one company to the exclusion of others i mean it's like a dozen car companies in the world of significance so and the the most that any company has is approximately 10 market share so it's not like um you know somebody comes up with a car and they're suddenly like they kill everyone else it's not not that way um and and the sheer scale of automotive manufacturing is is is just it's hard to appreciate until you see the plants i mean they're gigantic like the industries yeah i mean the the the sheer size of the industrial infrastructure is is staggering\n\nnot just the assembly plant but everything else that goes yeah the supply chain exactly the symptoms just a little engine tip of the iceberg really yeah the service plan is literally took the iceberg phenomenal the the supply chain is um you know once you go to tier two tier three two or four suppliers um that's uh probably an order magnitude more uh than that okay so so you think google will not be a competitor probably will be a direct competitor yeah yeah sure what about the car companies the exactly i think they'll all be competitors yeah sure who do you see out there that has done a nice job so far mercedes of what a competitive car of the incumbents potentially competitive car i guess i mean i don't think anyone's any of the car companies thus far\n\nhave made um a really great electric car i mean you tell me if i'm if you disagree um but uh i don't think yet that any of them have made a great electric car okay they you know presumably will continue to improve on what they've done so far and and then at some point they may make a car that's that that's uh you know that's a great car but no they haven't done that yet can i ask you about batteries for a second oh yeah sure so you're building this gigafactory right you've got it's built it's well it's not completely both okay but it's part of it's running yeah part of it's a really gigantic thing it's like when the gigafactory is done it'll be the largest footprint building of any kind in the world of any kind not just factories it literally event what\n\nis this the largest rocket the largest building i mean well i mean i think this it's not scale for scale sake it's just like if you say well we want to accomplish these goals then um then you kind of have to be make a big thing okay you've got this big thing it's this big giant building yeah it's going to make batteries the batteries it's going to we're make have an opening we'll start taking the opening party since it's been operating for a little while but we're gonna have a party soon you guys maybe want to come okay numb all right we'll come to the beginning but they can't i love we're seeing this thing come right just this is crazy no this is like an alien dreadnought it's really nutty because i love a battery party but yeah um right but but talk\n\nabout where it's going are these lithium-ion batteries yeah sure so they're the same batteries that's in our phone no explain please explain yeah so have you made a battery breakthrough is something i'm interested in um yeah i mean generally the i mean there's there's so much nonsense out there about batteries like about you can believe about one percent of what you read you know maybe lithium ion covers a very broad range of technologies and you can have an enormous difference in the power density and the energy density and the cycle life between one chemistry and another they can be really enormously different so what you really actually want to ask is what is the cathode and what is the anode right um so in our case that's right okay um let's put it\n\nin the but the lithium is actually two percent of the cell mass so it's like the salt in the salad it's it's a very small amount of the cell mass and a fairly small amount of the cost but it sounds like it's big because it's called lithium ion but it it really like i've actually should be called nickel graphite because it's mostly nickel and graphite okay and um it's nickel cobalt aluminum but battery little things and graphite with a silicon oxide layer battery efficiency or power that you know the power that you can store in a certain mass seems to be moved very slowly at least compared to you know we're used to moore's law pushing uh integrated circuits faster batteries kind of are always in our consumer devices always lagging behind in your you've\n\nbuilt this giant thing the biggest building in the world it's ever seen it's not fully built but yes it's you're building a pretty big chunk yeah uh to make batteries your whole business depends on batteries in these cars have you figured out a way to do some significant uh increase in the yield of energy from a given amount of of space in the battery well yeah i mean the the the energy density is increasing sort of maybe on the order of like five-ish percent per year um and it doesn't sound like much but you add that up over a number of years with compound interest it ends up being quite quite a significant number um and a lot of people sort of think that oh well we just sort of cobbled together some laptop batteries and somehow made a great car but\n\nif it was that easy then i think we would have quite a few competitors who did the same thing but but it's it's it's really quite quite a lot harder than that um the it's a cylindrical form form factor but the internals of the battery are quite different from what you would find in uh in a laptop and uh and and will be increasingly different with the what's built at the gigafactory which is highly optimized for automotive um and um and with has improved energy density but but mostly it's not the energy i see that's the issue because we you know you can buy if you buy a model s today um the range is um around 300 miles um and and that's quite a lot um so it's pretty rare that people really need to go more than 300 miles at a time without stopping right\n\nyou know um so i don't think we really have a range issue and we could make a 400 mile range car today like that wouldn't be too big of a deal um what really matters is decreasing the cost uh per unit of energy of the battery packs okay so you can make the car affordable that's actually the important thing so there's and there's really two main main dimensions along which uh cost optimization and making something available to the national market can be achieved one is design iteration going through multiple versions of something and then the other is economies of scale you kind of need both of those those things in order to make a compelling mass-market uh product and you look at like cell phones and how many design iterations have we gone through with\n\ncell phones um and and then and and look at the scale at which that they're made which is enormous uh and that's what enables everyone to have a super computer in their pocket um so speaking of that the sales when you're talking about the sales you have booked how many orders for it's on the order of four hundred thousand four hundred thousand four hundred yeah consumer interest and a promise a lot of it around you around the idea of you and tesla and the excitement they're not booking it was quite surprising actually i mean the um because we didn't do any advertising or there was no guerrilla marketing or anything it was just basically like yeah we're gonna have this webcast there was only there were only about a thousand people in the audience um and\n\num i really caught us by surprise but i think you know when you have a product that really resonates with with customers the word of mouth uh grows like wildfire and that seems to be what yeah but it's a little bit i mean honestly in some groups of especially men in silicon valley if you show up and read like a label of a peanut jar they'd be thrilled with the situation so i mean you a lot of this does base around you like the idea of you and the excitement around this exciting entrepreneur is that is that enough to get it to to this massive company you've been hoping to the idea of this is the elon promise or it's the well i think actually it's not so much i mean sort of um um i i'm not sure i i think i just deserve less credit than that actually the\n\nthe uh i mean what what tesla's done with a phenomenal team is like 15 000 people at the company um worked super hard to create compelling products to create great cars um and we start off with the roadster and then the model s and the model s was rated you know by consumer reports as the best car ever got the model x which you know had some has had some teething issues but um i think it's now at the point where it's it's really starting to i think it's really i think quite sublime at this point um and uh and and so people look at that and say okay well if tesla's made these cars then probably the next car they make is going to be you know the less expensive one also a great car and um yeah but you know so it'll be a great car but it'll be affordable\n\nit's like great okay that sounds like something i want so this car this next car the price is it's starting at 35 000 okay affordable okay when do you get to the really affordable then way down much lower than that yeah i mean it's important to point out that the 35 000 particularly when factoring in the lower cost of electricity versus gasoline and that the maintenance cost is much less you don't have to have oil changes you never need to replace your brakes because the car uses regenerative braking so the brakes last as long as the car do that the car does it's basically you just need to replace the tires like that's about about all um so the operational cost of the car is much lower fundamentally than than a gasoline car and and so um and the i think\n\nthe the uh average price for cars for gasoline cars is around 30 32 something like that yeah i mean there are starting prices that are lower but but when people pick pick options i believe it's in the around 32 or so in the us so we're pretty close to the that that but that's your base price right i mean though yeah but it's absolutely great may not be the asp for the car no but it's gonna be a great car even at 35.\n\nso it's like even if you order nothing no options at all it'll be great but you're at but you're likely to have a mix where the average car that you actually sell sells for a little more than that yes probably it's probably going to be yeah it's probably going to be some higher number um but it's really important size like the 35 if somebody orders the 35 000 car they'll be very happy like it's not like you need to order a bunch of options in order without which the car is is you know not good that car will have autonomous for 35.\n\num i have a uh i'm going to do another tesla event maybe at the end of the year um talk more about that and so you could start here um it will be real big news if i start here um we don't mind that let me just say that we're gonna do the obvious thing okay okay got it it's really obvious it's so cool so so cupholders good okay um so really those things are nuanced all right absolutely let's talk about two more things i want to talk about ai because we've been talking about it a lot here um which i want to get it clear what your thoughts are because it's mostly elon scared of robots i mean that kind of thing or what how do you i'm scared of robots um artificial intelligence can you like clarify exactly what the issue you have now and you deserve the background\n\nwe've been talking to uh jeff bezos sundar chai uh we talked to mark fields from ford about it um uh yeah the facebook folks um there certainly seems to be uh in the i in the tech companies a big tremendous new drive or interest to believing that we'll be all good for intelligent assistance and it's good it'll make your life better make your life better siri is going to suddenly get smart microsoft one is going to get smart and google is going to cream them all largely a happy version of this is going to sometimes technology hurts you but not as much as it helps you that's really yeah so that's there's been a lot of conversation here about that sure and yet and you've staked out a slightly different position so can you talk about that well i mean i think\n\nmy sort of full position would require quite a long explanation um i mean i i am concerned about um certain directions that ai could take that would be uh not good for the future that the i mean it i i think it'd be fair to say that like not all ai futures are benign not not all okay um and and so if you have something if if this if we create some digital super intelligence that exceeds us in every way by a lot um it's very important that that be benign um and um and so actually with with uh with a few others um i created uh openai uh which is uh an ai uh it's a non-profit actually it's so there's no i think the governor's structure here is important um so you want to make sure that there was not some fiduciary duty to uh generate um you know profit off\n\nof the ai technology that's developed um so uh so we created this uh 51c3 um but but i think it's quite different from i mean a lot of sort of five one c3s are you know they've they don't have a high sense of urgency um like they're not like um you know they're not really sort of developing technology at a fast pace but openai is so openi has a very high sense of urgency and the talent i think that the people that have joined are are really really amazing and and the intent with openai is to democratize ai power um there's a quote that i love from lord acton he was the guy that came up with power corrupts and absolute power crafts absolutely um which is that uh freedom consists of the distribution of power and despotism in its concentration and so i think\n\nit's important if we have this incredible power of ai that it not be concentrated in the hands of a few and potentially lead to a world that we don't want and what world is that what is what do you see for see that when you sit it's difficult i mean it's called the singularity because it's it's difficult to predict um what exactly what future that might be except i don't know a lot of people who love the idea of living under a despot um you know i don't think people generally choose to live in a democracy over a dictatorship and the despot would be the computer or the people controlling the and do you worry specifically about any of these companies i mentioned who've all seemed to now kind of be pivoting toward this is the battleground in the next 10\n\nyears i wouldn't name a name but there is only one there's only one you're worried about and they're not preoccupied with making a car that will compete with you i assume there's only one competing for you know mutual destruction it's like there's no it's not about competing it's really just about trying to increase the probability that the future will be good that's all so the the goal of open ai is really just to take the set of actions that are most likely to improve the positive futures like if you can think of like the future as a set of of probability streams that branch out and then converge collapse down to a particular event and then branch out again and uh there's a certain set of probabilities associated with the future being positive and different\n\ntype flavors of that and uh at open ai we want to try to do do whatever we can to guide to increase the probability of the good futures happening i think that's that's really what we're trying to do you worry that by making this open some bad actors may use some of what has been developed to do bad stuff uh with the power yeah i mean that is certainly the the i mean a good remodel to that however i think if ai power is widely distributed then and there's not say one entity that has some super ai that is a million times smarter than anything else you know if instead the ai power is broadly distributed and to the degree that we can link ai power to each individual's will it's like you know you would have your ai agent you knew it like everyone would have\n\ntheir sort of ai agent and then if somebody did try to do something really terrible well then the collective will of others could overcome that bad actor um which you can't do if if there's one ai that's you know a million times better than ever and it's proprietary and it's yeah it's either has its own world or more likely at least in the beginning is controlled by you know some small set of people so um i think that's that's really the the risk i mean um you know there's always these arguments like what's what's the best form of government um i'm a big fan of i think it's churchill like you know democracy is the worst form of government except for all the others right um so speaking of that yeah this election you are no no no yes yes yes how does that\n\nstrike you what's happening now you're you you've come to this country you're naturalized you know i think uh i'm glad that the frame is the constitution saw fit to ensure that the president uh was someone who um was captain of a lodge ship with a small writer okay and there's a limit to how much harm any given president are you sure about that oh yeah yeah yeah so you're not worried about are you backing in either of the candidates at this point try to stay out of this situation because i don't think that's the finest moment in our democracy well given that it's not the finest moment in our democracy do you think the best thing is to stay out or we'll see i'm not sure what what i can do to head off the worst i'm sure how much influence i could have as\n\nas one person on the outcome so i mean if i think i could make a difference i would probably do something um but um like i said i think i'm just glad that the pres you know being the us president is like being captain of a large ship with a small rudder and so there's just a limit to how much good or bad a president can can actually do i mean obviously if a president could make the economy great that and there was like a button he could press they'd be pressing that button at the speed of light so you know that they just but they could they can't like can't they can't just magically make the economy good um no president wants the economy bad ever um but they you know like there's just a limit to how much they can do um and um yeah i guess there is the\n\nnuclear thing which is yeah the new thing i guess there is the nuclear thing yeah but i i don't know i think i think i think i don't think we would like just arbitrarily launch nuclear missiles yeah one would have president can do that uh i don't think so i mean i think that he's no he's the commander-in-chief i still don't think that means you can just launch nuclear missiles whenever you want right yeah um i think congress would be like quite upset about that and they might not be consulted yeah but i think i think like the military would be like yeah we really think congress should be consulted on before we launch uh yeah that that might happen preemptively are you willing you're basing your faith in that though i'm quite confident that the military\n\nwould not just you know randomly agree to launching nuclear missiles at somebody well that's calming this is right so um uh we're going to put up just very quickly we'll and on hyperloop you've been involved with it your level involvement is what at this point just yeah i know it's a bit confusing because um i um you talked about it when you were here last time yeah i actually came up with the idea um i came up with an initial idea which was turned out to be wrong it wouldn't work several years ago and and then um but i sort of shot my mouth off and and said i look like i have an idea that would work and turned out that didn't work but with a lot of iteration i was able to come up with something that where the physics hangs together and then published\n\nthe paper and just said like look anyone who wants to do this is great go you know be my guest because i'm i sort of have a plate full running tesla and spacex yeah yeah and so i think it'd be great i mean it'd be great to have any interesting new transport solutions um anything that gets people to their destination um in a way that's safer costs less it's more convenient um that'd be great i mean and so i think probably the most valuable thing that the hyperloop paper that i published has done is to spur thinking in terms of new transportation system so it's not just oh let's you know have a fast train um okay that's not even as fast as what japan did in the 80s like okay i don't see what the point of that is you know like we should really be trying\n\nto think of some something that's um i think particularly in california like we should be like saying hey what is the best let's invent something new that's way better than anything else do you want to shoot your mouth off about that um well um you know i so so i i'm not an investor in any of the companies uh that that are working on and i've tried to be neutral because i'm like i'm trying not to favor one company over another but just to encourage anyone that is interested to say that you know try to give them moral support you know um and i hope they succeed um the only thing that um i am doing a half blue front is like we're holding a student competition and the student competition is really just aimed towards encouraging uh students to think about\n\nexciting new transport methods and it's totally cool if they want to like do some architecture that's different from what i propose in hyperloop and in fact the the winning team at the student competition that we held earlier this year used a different um suspension mechanism than what i proposed which is i you know i propose using essentially taking taking the uh air that eventually that builds up on the nose from the compressor and and flowing that through air skis so that you simultaneously remove the drag from the nose and provide a a means of suspending the the pod um and that's also something that that works well um even at uh super supersonic velocities you can go it's been demonstrated up to mach 1.\n\n1 in terms of using air bearings as but they use something different i like uh yeah basically electromagnetic suspension um and like the the reason i didn't suggest um sort of any kind of magnetic system suspension is that it's very important that the cost of the of the tube be minimized so if you really want because the the part is cheap the tube is expensive so if you if you want to go say 400 miles and you've and two in two directions you've got 800 miles of tube the the critical uh economic optimization parameter is the cost of the tube so you want that tube to be as low cost as possible and so if you if you do anything that that requires action on the tube side it's going to make that tube much more expensive so if you use air bearings it doesn't\n\nchange like that's real cheap and yeah so you think this is going to happen yeah i think something like that i think something will happen in the future um you know it's i think i think if if the companies that are that are trying that are trying to make it happen now if if for whatever reason that that doesn't work out um then you know i think i i'll you know i'll i might i might do something myself in the future i don't want to do something i don't know if i don't want to sort of front run them you know it's like say here's this free idea and then meanwhile i go and do it myself you know that wouldn't be nice so um so but if they if a bunch of people if companies don't try and it doesn't work out then i think i think um i think i'll try to just at least\n\ndo a demonstration system you know okay last question do you think tech has gotten more serious do you how do you look at the tech landscape as someone who's you know well-known you probably qualify as a visionary um the concept what do you imagine we are right now in the tech space and then we'll get to questions from the audience i think there's a lot of innovation happening in in many different areas um the advancements in ai i think are quite quite astonishing the advancements in genetics are amazing so i think that there is a lot of innovation going on i think there's probably a few too many talented entrepreneurs in kind of the internet space and and i think their talent actually would be better served in some other industries um but i do think\n\ni mean i don't think we're like facing some sort of low innovation period or anything like that i think there's a lot of innovation going on they need to move to other i just think that like if you had some ideal distribution would probably be fewer like there's just a lot of talent focused on the internet and probably some of that talent would be better to have some of that talent in other industries that's about all but there's tremendous amount of innovation that that's happening um it's something that i think is is going to be quite important um and and it's there's not i don't know of a company that's working on it seriously is um is a neural lace um so you know going back to the ai situation um this is quite an important uh quite important debate\n\nlike that if you assume any rate of advancement in ai um we will be left behind by a lot um and so then we could be in you know benign but even the benign situation if you have some you know if you have ultra intelligent ai um we would be you know so so far below them in intelligence that it would be would be like you know a pet that's what it was like a pet a cat a cat like a house yeah we like the house cat right um and um yeah so that's it's not the end of the world you know it's just not sort of you've seen the movie it could be it could be it could be um the you know so that but that honestly that would be the benign scenario um and so house cat is okay i mean i don't love the idea of being a house guy okay but what's the solution yeah so i think\n\nthe um i think i think it i think it's to essentially i think one of the solutions the solution that seems maybe the best one is to have an ai layer um if you think of like you've got your limbic system your cortex and then a digital layer a sort of a third layer above the cortex that could work work well and symbiotically with with you i mean just as your cortex works somewhat spiritically with the olympic system your did sort of a third digital layer could work symbolically with the rest this is something that's surgically inserted or bred into the species or what the fundamental limitation is input output so we already have uh we're already a cyborg um it's just that i mean you have a digital version of yourself or a partial version of yourself online\n\nin the form of your emails and your social media and all the things that you do and and you have basically superpowers in that with your computer and your phone and and the applications that are there you have more power than the president united states had 20 years ago that you can answer any question you can video conference with anyone anywhere you can send a message to millions of people instantly you know you just do incredible things and um but the constraint is is input output so we're i o bound um particularly output bound i mean like the your output level is so low it's like particularly on a phone like your two thumbs are sort of tapping away um this is ridiculously slow our input is much better because we have a high bandwidth visual interface\n\ninto the brain like our eyes taking a lot of a lot of data so there's many orders magnitude difference between input and output so mostly effectively merging in a symbiotic way with uh digital intelligence revolves around eliminating the i o constraint so it's be some sort of direct cortical interface and you called it a neural neural lace yeah um it's totally not google glass right no i i'm talking about something would you wear it or no i mean it would be uh i mean i mean there are a few ways to approach this but some sort of interface directly with your cortical neurons particularly but doesn't that apply surgical insertion not necessarily you could go through the veins and arteries because that provides a complete roadway to all of your neurons your\n\nneurons are very heavy users of energy so they need high blood flow so you automatically with your veins and arteries have a road network to your neurons still some kind of surgery right um yes but you could insert something you know basically you know into the jugular and and have it gets macabre but it sounds really easy and it doesn't involve it it doesn't it doesn't involve you know like chopping your just your skull up or anything like that yeah and plus you're not a house cat anymore right a house cat so um i mean essentially if if we can figure out how to establish a high bandwidth neural interface with ourselves with with your digital self effectively um then uh then you're no longer a house cat you know all right on that note no on that yeah\n\nwell i do just one closing thing i mean i think it's probably are you in are you into that part of the best outcome i think are you interested in exploring this possibility that you have just laid somebody's got to do it i'm not saying that i will but i'm somebody's got to do it i mean i i i mean somebody should do it and i mean if somebody doesn't do it then i then i think i should probably do it but uh and and the goal of this is to prevent there being an external uh ai particularly one controlled by a small group of people that could yeah be so much more powerful and intelligent than we are that the house will be god-like in situations yeah well this has been really cheerful thank you yeah but if but if we can establish i was worried about asteroids\n\nat the beginning of this i mean asteroids are a low probability existential threat um on the time scale that's relevant to us okay okay this is different this requires urgency so what do you do for fun yes this is much elon what do you do for fun fun what do you do anything i play video games with my kids all right that sounds good let's get some questions come on elon the house cat i watch movies yeah i kind of think normal things okay why don't we start over here yeah hi i think this last question by uh carl just just did that i want to know how do you live through the stress that kind of conversations we just heard that you went through and kind of ambitions that you carry and then how do you adjust to the everyday work life balance etc things that\n\nin your life it's a little bit of your personal side actually so you're very busy how does that work yeah i mean i am sort of in kind of work triage mode um a lot of the time so i know it seems to be uh as long as there's not like a crisis simultaneously at spacex and tesla it's okay um but you know companies are i mean the situation in any given company particularly one you know if it's sort of growing fast and sort of quasi startup it's it's somewhat sinusoidal so that i mean it's okay if if you don't if the if the waves don't crest together you know um when that does happen it then that's a huge strain right now things are like you know motoring along okay um and i have like the contacts loaded for both companies and i can look sort of see a path to\n\na good outcome so i feel pretty good right now but they've been super stressful times in the past and and then you know and then i always try to reserve time for my kids because i love hanging out with them like i mean kids are really great i mean like the um of the time they're they're they make you happier their kids are awesome you know yeah um then there's that one percent one percent you know like yeah one percent but but like it's it's like of anything in my life i would say kids by far make me the happiest i mean i don't know you know i agree yeah that's great i agree yeah um so hang out with them like so like no like things like a lot of times kids are kind of in their own world so you don't need to like they don't want to like talk to their dad\n\nfor hours on end generally i've noticed that yeah um so like um so i can be in the same room with them they can talk to me from time time but like you know i can get you know some emails done just get some work done and then whenever they want to talk to me they can um and then we try to do things like um you know travel places and uh like i said we play video games together or actually on monday we went to the new harry potter land um at universal it was quite fun yeah so i think that somebody from universal just clapped yeah whoever was in charge of harry potter land did a great job it's really good yeah that's good i highly recommend it yeah the butter beer is amazing yeah i was just saying the butter beer is amazing yeah okay over here hi my name\n\nis evan burns and the founder of odyssey and i hope into the future to be in something in the space industry and my curiosity is you've talked about spacex getting into many different businesses for example global wi-fi through launching many satellites do you hope spacex becomes a platform for others to launch businesses or you see spacex being a business that launches many business lines um well i mean the general strategy of spacex is to like we clearly need a lot of money in order to develop the transport system to establish a city on mars so you know we're like kind of gathering revenue like earth-based revenue that's we're trying to maximize there's some other earth revenue well right now is only earth so we've got to maximize earth revenue as it\n\nrelates to space you know as it relates to rockets and spacecraft so um but i think like what assuming spacex is able to transport large numbers of people and and goods to mars it will be an enormous enabler for entrepreneurial activity on mars um because there's gonna be so much to do um you know everything from creating like the first iron ore refinery to the first pizza joint to um you know it was something that doesn't even exist on earth um it was kind of like when the union pacific uh crossed crushed you know and like everyone thought you know it's like what a stupid idea you know like there's nobody living in california well okay now there's quite a lot of people living in california so so just uh having it you need the transport link and so what\n\nspacex is trying to do is establish transport link um and then try to create a fertile environment for entrepreneurs on mars uh to flourish um and and i think that will be an amazing um expansion of entrepreneurial how long would it take to deliver a pizza from mars well it's going to be a little cold i think but i mean we we could certainly see a way to get to mars in under three months and i think ultimately you'll be able to get to mars in under a month it does get exponentially difficult as you reduce the time um but um but you know three months is a way to think of it um and i think that's probably you know that's that's really where spacex will i think create a a great environment for entrepreneurial potential thanks neelac i hope dominos does not\n\nget to mars please don't let it have a special special mars uh so you're obviously very ambitious um that's led to some really ambitious deadlines that have been missed so falcon heavy was originally 2012.\n\num the model x was a little bit delayed the model 3 the model x was delayed the model 3 seems to be stretching but the model 3 in particular is a consumer product you're taking money from people against a really aggressive production schedule and a huge amount of orders what are you going to do to hit your deadlines on that because it's real consumers this time in a big class of people sure the i think the biggest thing is just designing the car for um for for manufacturing so in the case of model s like models was the first time we'd really built a car uh a whole car like with the roadster lotus did the body and chassis we did the powertrain then we did the sort of final installation of the powertrain to the chassis but the model s was the first time\n\nwe made a car so we were just trying to make a great car and but we had no idea like what it meant to design something to be manufacturable so the model s is super hard to make and then the model x is built off of the model s platform except it's got a bunch of other whiz-bang technologies that make it even harder to build so um and uh you know so like i mean definitely we want to do the opposite of what we do with the with the x um which is make something that is is going to be a lot simpler um but still a car that people will love and where every design decision is factoring in the manufacturability uh in fact and making sure that when we designed something um that you can manufacture at volume at an affordable price uh in the schedule that would that\n\nwere on the schedule that we're targeting um one of the things that makes a car very difficult particularly if it's a new car uh is is that it's an integrated product with several thousand unique components so we are somewhat at the mercy of whatever the slowest component is whatever basically i mean if you say go to tier 2 and 3 suppliers they end up being several thousand suppliers so so things move as fast as the least lucky and least competent supplier um you know but but just and you can think of like like any natural disaster you care to name all of those things have happened to our suppliers their factory has burnt down there's been an earthquake there's been a you know tsunami there's been uh massive hail uh there's been a tornado uh the ship\n\nsank there was a shootout at the mexican border um no kidding um that delayed trunk carpet at one point well like and we couldn't get and like then like the border patrol wouldn't give us the truck because it had like bullet holes in it um we just wanted our trunk carpet um like it's pretty safe there's like no cocaine or anything so good um but you know that shut down the production line as an example for several days um so so there's that's the biggest issue is like the supply chain stuff is really tricky um we're trying to anticipate as much that as possible increase our optionality so that there's more internal capability at tesla not that we want to do things internally but if if a supplier is unable or unwilling to uh deliver the part we can quickly\n\nmake that internally so i think the whole company is geared geared for that um and um i mean right now it looks like you know we should be able to do that we expect to i mean almost all of the model 3 design is done um and we're aiming for pencils down basically [Music] in about six weeks complete pencils down and um and we're tabling all you know like if they're ideas for future cool things we'll we'll have it in version two version three in future years type of thing so um overall i feel pretty good about it um and our supply particularly our major supplier partners have been um very supportive and are are on board um but um you know uh i mean one thing i i should say like the like when i when i sort of cite a schedule it is actually the schedule i\n\nthink is true it's it's not some fake schedule that i don't think is true um so i mean uh you know it's never you know i it's um i may be delusional that is entirely you know possible maybe it's happened from time to time but it's it's it's never um you know some knowingly fake deadline ever so is there an event in six weeks we're going to announce autonomous driving is included in the pencil down plan for the model 3.\n\nwe're not expecting any event in six weeks uh josh hi um i have a this is kind of a weird question i feel like you'd would be the guy with the right answer for it there's a um sort of a philosophic concept that a sufficiently advanced civilization will be able to create uh sort of a simulation yeah maybe you've answered this before a simulation i've had so many simulation discussions it's crazy okay so because in fact it got to the point where basically every conversation was was the ai ai slash simulation conversation um and my brother and i finally agreed that um we would ban such conversations if we were ever in a hot tub that was like here because that really kills them so so so the idea is right any sufficiently advanced civilization would create\n\ncould create a simulation that's like our existence and so the theory follows that maybe we're in the simulation have you thought about this and a lot are we are we even in hot tubs so much so it had to be banned from a hot tub [Laughter] okay it's not the sexiest conversation are we in are we in um the the i mean i think here's remember like the the strongest argument for the for us being in a simulation probably being assimilation i think is the following um that that 40 40 40 years ago we had pong like two rectangles and a dot that was what games were now 40 years later we have photorealistic 3d simulations with millions of people playing simultaneously and it's getting better every year and soon we'll have you know virtual reality of augmented reality\n\nif you assume any rate of improvement at all then the games will become indistinguishable from reality just instinctual um even if that rate of advancement drops by a thousand from what it is right now um then you just say okay well let's mention it's a ten thousand years in the future which is nothing in the evolutionary scale so um so so given that we're clearly on a trajectory to have games that are indistinguishable from reality and those games could be played on any set-top box or on a pc or whatever and there would probably be you know billions of such uh you know computers or set-top boxes it would seem to follow that the odds that we're in based reality is one in billions so tell me what's wrong with that argument is the answer yes the argument\n\nis probably like is there is there a flow in that argument i mean but someone i'm not sure what the error no no the argument makes sense so the assumption then is that somebody beat us to it and this is a game no no there's a one in billions chance that this is based reality oh okay what do you think well i think it's one in billions okay i mean this that seems to be like clearly what the you know what what what it suggests right and actually i mean arguably we should hope that that's true because otherwise if if civilization stops advancing then that may be due to some calamitous event that erases civilization so maybe we should be hopeful that this is a simulation because otherwise so they could reboot it well otherwise either we're going to create\n\nsimulations that are industrial indistinguishable from reality or civilization will cease to exist those are the two options yeah i like those odds okay okay we're going to it's unlikely to go into some like you know multi-millionaire stasis so it's either going to increase or decrease hi i'm g2 patel from box uh two-part question for you one is um if you think about fully autonomous vehicles um which have passed through regulatory approvals have passed through in-city driving and traffic conditions how far do you think from a time frame perspective we are for that that becoming reality and number two would be the second part of that question is how far before how long before you think it's either illegal or extremely prohibitively expensive for humans\n\nto drive on the road well i i mean i think i mean i really would consider autonomous driving to be basically a solved problem um even in cities like beijing and yeah yeah actually it is the there's really only one um area where it's like a little dodgy and that's basically if you're at roughly the 30 30 to 40 miles an hour in in urban environments which is that's difficult to achieve in beijing um it's like heavy traffic in in in dense traffic situations autonomy is really easy um because you can just maintain a set distance from various cars it's actually quite quite easy um you're very unlikely to drop to run anyone over because you're not moving fast enough and you can break in time on highways particularly highways that are um that have barriers so\n\nthat you you don't have pedestrians that's also relatively easy and like a model s and model x at this point uh can drive autonomously with greater safety than a person right now my point is when does it get to be where you don't need to be sitting behind a vehicle and it actually the way that society starts expecting this is i can have my 75 year old mother who doesn't speak any english or doesn't drive be able to be transported from point a to point b by just sitting in a car by ourself and being taken i know it's technically possible but how far do you think the regulatory approvals are for that happening i think we're basically um less than two years away from complete autonomy wow well complete safer than a human um however regulators will take um\n\ni think at least another year at least another year and to pick it's going to depend on which what part of the world you're in because they'll want to see billions of miles of data to show that it is statistically true that there is a substantial improvement in safety if something's autonomous versus not autonomous i don't think that regulators will accept something that's close to that's that's that's sort of approximately as good as a person i think they'll have to be at least twice as good as a person maybe five or ten times um you know better in terms of uh safety um and and that will have to be have to be a statistically relevant data set so like billions of miles over widely differing roads and situations so yeah you know that's i think it's like\n\nprobably three years before it's right through from a regulatory standpoint but less than two before it is uh technically possible and do you think there's a day when it's illegal to drive for humans or um you know well i mean we live in a democracy so presumably that would be a function of the population deciding um i mean i i mean i'm not in favor of banning people from driving cars um like i'm in favor of freedom um and and not restricting what people do um yeah but maybe the requirements for a license will get more stringent i think that seems like maybe a good move you know so you have to demonstrate a higher level of skill to drive in order to be allowed to manually drive okay very last question this is the last make it a good one sorry because\n\nelon has to go gotta make it a great question uh thinking about life on mars again how do you how do you think about cultural unification systems of government uh rules of law establishing those uh very early on well i think i've just declared king of moss a moment ago i like that yeah take it yeah thank you thank you thank you um so the the uh i think most likely the form of government on mars would be a direct direct democracy um not representative so would be people voting directly on on issues um and i think that's probably better because like the potential for corruption is substantially diminished in a direct versus a representative democracy so i think that's probably what will occur um the i i think there's some i think so i would recommend like\n\nsome adjustment for the inertia of laws is would be wise in that it should probably be easier to remove a law than create one um i think you know that this is i would just be like let's just i mean i think i think that's probably probably good because just laws have infinite life unless they're taken away um so i think my recommendation would be like like something like let's say 60 of people need to uh vote in a law but at any point greater than 40 percent of people can remove it um and any law should come with a sunset with a built-in sunset provision if it's not good enough to be voted back in maybe it shouldn't be there so that's that's the framework for the government on mars i mean that'll be my those would be my recommendations direct democracy\n\nwhere where it's slightly harder to put laws in place than to take them away and where laws don't just automatically live forever you'll be a good king thank you elon musk thank you","textByLang":{"en":"elon let me start by saying we're very glad you're here safe and sound yeah uh thanks uh unfortunately i had to circumvent late i was uh flying i flew here with the landing gear down because it was like some kind of landing gear issue landing gear was stuck there's some kind of warning light and my pilot said that if they were attracted to the landing gear it may not go back down again so that's all so this is probably best this even happens to you yeah yeah okay outlining your problems of various kinds um so um anyway we're happy to wait for you and we're glad you got here safe thanks for having me it's great to see you guys thank you for coming i really appreciate it you kept your promise which was nice i think you were drunk when you promised me but\n\nthat's okay i'll take it so you know in a couple of years since you've come you've done some astonishing things in in terms of substantive stuff with your with both your companies um let's start talking about space and what you've been doing there um obviously you've had some success uh landing the landing the rocket you've had you know you've done a bunch of other things where people thought you weren't going to be successful talk a little bit about sort of the progress you think you've made with spacex sure well i mean there's a lot of things where i think i didn't think we'd be successful so the the um and the most significant thing is being able to land in an orbit class rocket uh brew stage um and uh and bring it both back to cape canaveral land\n\non land and be able to land on a drone ship out in the ocean the there is a bit of an education process that's needed to understand orbital dynamics um because a lot of people are confused of like why the heck are you landing a ship landing a rocket in a on a ship in the ocean that seems pretty inconvenient and the reason is because that going up and staying up is actually about velocity horizontal to the earth's surface so um there's a huge difference between space and or space and or and orbit like space you could think of as like say being the international waters boundary for the pacific ocean like if you go you know uh 100 miles offshore you're technically out of coastal waters now you're in the pacific so it's like technically you're in the pacific\n\nbut but it's but orbit is like circumnavigating the globe it's a really giant difference and the the reason that things go up and stay up is because you're zooming around the earth so fast that your outward radial acceleration is equal to the inward acceleration of gravity and so those balance out and you have a net zero gravity so when you see the space station the thing this little little sort of um counterintuitive is that the space station is actually zooming around the earth at 17 000 miles an hour even though it seems like it seems really still you know but it's moving really really fast um i mean to put that into perspective um a bullet from a 45 gun in a handgun is is is just below the speed of sound so the space station is going more than 25\n\ntimes faster than that and that's what's needed actually to go up and stay up and that's why that's why there's the term escape velocity not escape altitude there's no such thing as an escape altitude there's only an escape velocity you need to be a certain speed to escape the gravity of the earth yeah you can think of gravity as kind of a funnel in space-time um so think of it like a coin funnel like it really it's very much like that in in you know but it's obviously a sort of a four-dimensional coin funnel but uh if you if you spin a spin a marble or a coin on a coin funnel the when it's when it's far out it sort of spins slowly and then as it gets closer it spins faster and faster and if you want if you want if you were to start at the bottom of the\n\ncoin funnel and you wanted to to to to to exit you'd spin it horizontally and it would it would spin out and and and that's really how you how you get to orbit um yeah so how does the gravity well there's like a funnel why you want to land on the on a ship in the ocean because in order to get to orbit you all that matters is your horizontal velocity your altitude is just doesn't really matter um in fact the the um the force of gravity at i say the nominal um boundary of space 100 kilometers is almost exactly the same as it is on the surface of the earth um is it like if it's a few percent lower than the surface of the earth um uh so in order to go up and stay up the only thing that matters is how fast are you going horizontal to the earth's surface so\n\nyou have that outward radial acceleration or think of it like maybe like tetherball or something like that it's really that outward acceleration is the thing that matters and so when the rocket is going to orbit um the only reason it's going up is to get out of the thick part of the atmosphere because that at high velocity the atmosphere is thick as molasses and so it goes up very briefly but if you look at a long exposure of the the rocket's trajectory you'll see it it goes up but immediately curves over and starts going horizontal and so the um at the at the point at which the uh the uh at the point which the stages separate those two stages um the primary boost stage which is the most expensive part of the rocket the point which that that staging occurs\n\nuh can be um as high as uh mach 10 but it's so it's going away from the launch site at 10 times the speed of sound so in order to get back to the launch site you would have to have enough uh fuel and oxygen to reverse out that velocity and and and boost back all the way to the launch site and you just don't have the physics of it don't really allow you to have that much it's not about saving money on fuel or anything it's just physically impossible so because another sort of thing about uh if you're if you're in space is that there's nothing to react against so like whereas an aircraft can can circle very easily because it's reacting against air in vacuum there's nothing to react against so the only way to go back the other direction is to apply just\n\nas much energy as it took you to go if you want to go backwards you have to apply just as much energy as it took you to go forwards in fact or twice as much really because you've got to zero it out and then you've got to you've got to land elsewhere yeah so bottom line is this thing is zinging out just zinging out yeah it's super at ten times faster than the foot it may well be over the ocean because the ocean covers most of the oh it's it's actually at the point of separation it's not that far away it's maybe 100 kilometers away from the launch site but it is going like hell in the opposite you know away from the launch site so the the only way to really land it is to have it continue on that arc that ballistic arc and then land far out to sea on a ship\n\nthat's that's pre-positioned to a particulate uh latitude and longitude very very precise to within about a meter um and then the rocket will um then go from vacuum through rarefied air at hypersonic velocity uh um and what so what is it when it's in vacuum it has to obviously you can't use aerosurfaces you have to use nitrogen jets to control the the attitude and position and then as it starts to encounter the air we use grid fins because grid fins look like sort of like a waffle they work quite well across a wide regime from both very high velocity hypersonics through supersonic transonic and subsonic so it's hard it's hard to have arrow surfaces that work well across that entire regime and then uh so once the error forces become high it uses the um\n\nthe four grid fins to to sort of control its attitude to land itself yeah it's controlling its it's controlling picture and roll with with the grid fins um and uh and then once and those griffins will then position it to where it's fairly close to the ship and then it will light in this case three of the nine engines to arrest the velocity and then drop to one engine for precision right before landing right okay so that's super [ __ ] hard there's a video so why why is that important why has that this moment been important for you um well so in order to reuse the the boost stage which is about 70 percent of the cost of rockets so that what cost is that how much is that um well i mean it's sort of on the order of 30 to 35 million right so you want to save\n\nthat yeah i mean it's like i try to i tell my team it's like imagine there was a pallet of cash that was vomiting through the atmosphere and it was going to burn up and smash into tiny pieces would you try to save it right right right probably yes yes okay yeah that sounds like a good idea right okay um so so yeah so we we want to get it back and that way um we don't have to make another one right um and i think it's quite tragic if rockets like get smashed into tiny pieces and land can i ask you a question we've been in we've been going to space for uh what 50 years or something like that nobody until you started doing this and jeff bezos company has done it uh the government never sort of saved the rockets they never saved the pallet of cash why not\n\nand the russians didn't either i mean what was the deal there yeah i mean there was some attempt uh made to do that with the space shuttle but there was no um return it's the first time that that a rocket boost has returned to launch site right um from an orbital mission and and certainly the first time that there's been a landing on a ship but the regular rockets that went up that weren't designed like planes never tried to do this right um the plane thing is not not a good idea in my view so the the plane um and the reason i think it's like intuitively it seems like a plane should work but but actually if you consider that really every mode of transport has a design that is appropriate to its medium and if you're in space wings are not very useful because\n\nthere's no air and and and then if you want to go somewhere other than earth there's also no runways so this is these are important considerations so that's why when they went to the moon they used propulsive landing right but what i'm saying was when they built the space shuttle it sort of was like a looked like a kind of bulb i think that appealed to congress yeah yeah it went cool that's cool yeah looks like an airplane can you explain that you know jeff jeff good one jeff bezos was here last night and i asked him what's the difference between what you're doing and what elon musk is doing and he said well i think we have uh i think use the word like-minded in the general sense of it and then he went on to explain some differences do you and then he\n\nbut he talked about and correct me if i'm misquoting him but i think he was saying where this is all about laying the foundations of being able to do greater things by getting the basic infrastructure of being able to reuse these rockets down right do you is that correct do you have a similar starting point from him and you're thinking i mean i think there's certainly some similarities of opinion um i think both jeff and i believe that it's important for the future to be a space faring civilization um and not to ultimately be out there among the stars and i think that's the that's the exciting inspiring future that i think i think certainly people in this room want and anyway particularly after seeing that the asteroids are going to destroy the planet\n\ni mean um i mean i don't view it as um you know we want we i mean i think i think what when i say you know multi-planets species like that's really where we want to be it's not like you know solving a single planet species but moving planets it's it's really being a multi-planet species um and having civilization and life as we know it extend beyond earth to the rest of the solar system and ultimately to other star systems um i think that's the thing that that's that's the future that's exciting and inspiring and i think that's what you know i think you know any kind of you need things like that to make to to to be glad to wake up in the morning you know like life like life can't be just about solving problems like they have to be things that are inspiring\n\nand exciting that make you glad to be alive so what in the immediate time frame what is what is your goal for spacex now that you've done this which is a huge accomplishment what is the plan for you in the immediate time and then the longer range sure so the um so we plan to refly uh one of the landed rocket boosters hopefully in about two or three months something like that and and then that that so that'll be an important milestone um so far the the stages are looking like quite quite good um even though they come through through quite there's a really difficult entry reentry situation um but they're looking like they're in good shape um we now have four of them so we want to start re-flying them you know towards the end of summer and then hopefully\n\nby the end of this year we'll be launching falcon heavy uh which will be the um the most powerful rocket uh in the world by more than a factor of two so falcon heavy is will be on the order of five million pounds of thrust on liftoff which is about two-thirds the size of a saturn v oh really yeah so that's the rocket that took the astronauts to the moon right exactly so in fact we're launching from the same from the same pad from very same pattern the apollo 11 pad wow yeah that's amazing so i'm hoping to launch that falcon heavy by the end of this year yeah that's that's our aspiration is that now that's somewhat of a delay from when you first hoped to launch it right um yeah um but uh the i mean it's not like we had a lot of pressing customers who wanted\n\nus to launch it okay so the in fact the first launch will will not have any operational satellites it'll be a demonstration launch and the the first operational flights where customers actually want us to launch it or next year you know whereas there's there's a lot of customers who want us to launch uh falcon 9 so about about a quarter of our launch of our flights are for uh for nasa but three quarters or commercial satellites like broadcasting communications satellites um or science missions for other countries um and um and this is there's quite a quite a backlog and we had we had an issue with the rocket last year so that put about a six month hole in our schedule so we're sort of backlogged on on our launches and we're trying to get them out as as\n\nquickly as we as we can um and you know you know service our customers the the uh so the launches will take place you know every two to four weeks there's quite quite a high launch cable that's a much faster cadence than nasa had right um yeah it's i mean it's it'll be more launches than any anything else in the world um so more than russia more than europe more than well more than china by next year certainly and largely to deliver customers exactly yeah it's um there's a lot of broadcasting communication satellites that are going to geosynchronous orbit um and um and then there's we're we'll also be launching the new uh iridium constellation so that iridium's got a next generation uh constellation of uh satellites i think 60 or 70 satellites quite you\n\nknow decent-sized satellites that that'll be like many orders of magnitude improvement over the current iridium system so you'll be able to have global broadband um so that'll be a whole bunch of launches and um yeah and then and then next year we'll be flying um dragon version two which is the one that's capable of taking up to seven astronauts to the space station in fact dragon 2 really is it's a propulsive lander as well um and it'll be the uh it's it's intended to carry astronauts to the space station but it's also capable of being a general science delivery platform to anywhere in the solar system so um so where are you going with it we're going to we're going to send one to mars in 2018.\n\nnow let's 2018 that's for sure a couple years a couple years now will you be on that flight no you have talked about this you said you don't want to you want to die on mars just not on landing right is that correct well i mean i think if you're going to choose a place to die then mars is probably you know not a bad choice all right um but you're not right it's not some sort of martian death wish or something but but uh yeah i mean you're gonna be born on earth on mars so sending this up to mars 2018 right setting this up to mars 2018 when will someone like you get there from your plans sure so so the 2018 mission would be a drag dragon version 2 right and that um i wouldn't recommend traveling to mars in in that because i mean it has the interior volume\n\nof a large suv okay uh the trip the trip for dragon would be on the order of six months it's a long time to spend in an suv i think it's it can be done can be done but not not probably not ideal um and it also doesn't have the capability of getting back to us right that's that seems more important than the space system yeah we can put that in the fine print you know yeah sorry yeah it's it's like the side effects and a drug ad by the way we cannot get back to earth yeah we saw the movie we didn't know what happened he got back yeah yeah um so it was good i actually enjoyed the movie um so do you think he could have gotten back like that was that plausible i thought there was some you know connection though it was it was mostly it was like 80 percent scientifically\n\ncorrect um but that did connect a series of improbable events such as well i mean i don't think you can sort of just uh take off from oz um on an unguided rocket really and and then hook your finger on the space suit and navigate to us to a spaceship right yeah not not impossible just extremely unlikely so the sandwich but if you're matt damon maybe maybe you have some mad skills yeah for sure so so so when will people like yourself get there and i assume you'll be first in line for that yeah so uh later this year in september at the um iac which is the big uh sort of world space conference industry space conference i'm going to be presenting the uh the architecture for mars colonization so i think what really matters is being able to transport uh large\n\nnumbers of people and um ultimately millions and tons of cargo to mars um and that's what's necessary in order to create a self-sustaining and and not really self-sustaining but a growing uh city on mars i'm curious have you been to space yet no why i mean you could just go up right for a little bit or not oh i could i suppose yeah why haven't you like walked through well at some point or something or yeah yeah probably will will you do a moon test before you go to mars um yeah i mean probably probably i don't know go to orbit in four or five years or something like that but again space and orbit are very different things but on the mars thing would you send up two or three whether it's you or not i kind of would prefer if you tried it frankly but um\n\nbecause it would be exciting but um would you send up some people some people before you do this whole architecture for colonizing mars just a handful of people to kind of see what i mean the basic game plan is like we're gonna uh send um a mission to mars with every mars opportunity from 2018 onwards so and they occur approximately every 26 months so um you know we we're establishing cargo flights to mars that people can count on uh for cargo and it's like said the the earth moths opel rendezvous is only every 26 months so there's one in 2018 there'll be another one 2020 and i think if things go according to plan we should be able to uh we should be able to launch people probably in 2024 with arrival in 2025.\n\nis that is that a more certain schedule than united airlines well um i don't know there's certainly some uncertainties associated with that so um let's um i'm going to show you anyway that's the game plan like approximately 2024 to do the first uh to to launch the first um of the mars and on your transport system i want to get back to what you said earlier about a multiple this will be a very big rocket okay very big bigger than 75 yes 20 twice as big or what september i'll tell you you're not going to say anything till september come on very big come on has to be very big like how big is very big so big [Laughter] do you think we should abandon the earth at some point no that way no i think that's great but you have said things why would we have bound\n\non earth it's really nice here you've said things about we may have to abandon the earth so it's good to have a plan b you've seen what happened before no that was amazing that's like that's amazing i don't know but it wasn't me all right okay it wasn't me like shaggy so let's move to things on this earth let's move to uh hyperloop tesla uh other things let's talk about tesla first um where do you feel like the company is at at this point and there's been lots of activity in self-driving cars in autonomous autonomous how do you look at how everybody's jumped in google apple others um and all the car manufacturers um yeah i mean there have been so many announcements of like autonomous ev start-ups i'm waiting for my mom to announce one okay it's like mom\n\nyou too um i mean there's a lot so um yeah i mean in in yeah in the us alone there there are four i think maybe five china funded eb startups at the billion dollar plus level like cirrus funding and there's a bunch of startups and then of course the you know the car industry as a whole seems to be moving that direction volkswagen just i think announced a huge battery factory that they're going to build and i think these are all good you know it's good it's good for the industry to moving towards sustainable transport as as quickly as possible um we open sourced our patents to try to be helpful in that regard and um yeah so it's it's encouraging to see all this activity um from a tesla's standpoint you know we're just trying we want to take a set of actions\n\nthat are uh likely to accelerate the advent of sustainable energy um so um scale up production as fast as we can so we accelerated plans for the model 3 by two years and so we want to try to get to half a million cars in total in kind of the 2018 time frame which is an aggressive schedule but i think achievable and then maybe a million cars a year by 2020 and um you know i can see it like i think a pretty clear path to get there [Music] autonomy is obviously extremely important people are going to want watch autonomy it's going to be odd to have a car without autonomy in the future but um yeah so i think that's so what we're scaling up how do you look at the all these efforts not your mother but yeah my mom's she's not gonna do it she may do a rocket\n\nsituation but um how do you look at each of them let's go through them what google is doing how do you assess what they're doing when you're looking at it because they'll be competitors at some point these are all um eventual competitors well you know i think what what google's i mean google's done a great job of showing the potential of autonomous transport um but they're they're not a they're not a car company so they would potentially you know license their technology to other car companies i think they announced something with the fiat and so i i wouldn't say you know google's a competitor um because they're not a car company that we would compete with somebody perhaps what they licensed technology to but not to them directly right um apple um yeah\n\nthat'll be more direct that'll be more direct yeah you can tell that by the hiring pattern and yeah that kind of stuff so what are you okay so they're going to be more direct how do you assess it um i mean i i say like you know i i i think it's great that they're doing this and um i um you know i hope they hope it works out what's what's the time frame for them do you think um i don't know i mean um i think they should have embarked upon this project sooner actually um uh that that uh um but i don't know i don't know when they i mean you know they don't share with me the details of their production plans but um i i i don't think it's going to be i don't think they'll be in volume production sooner than maybe 2020 that'll be like the soonest and that's\n\nis that too late we say they should have embarked sooner is that because 2020 will be too late to stop you or beat you or compete with you or whatever it's just like it's a missed opportunity it's just a that they it's it's um it'll be over by 2020.\n\ni wouldn't just say it's just like it's it's a couple of years i think they'll they'll probably make a good car and probably be successful the car industry is very big so it's not as though there's um you know one company to the exclusion of others i mean it's like a dozen car companies in the world of significance so and the the most that any company has is approximately 10 market share so it's not like um you know somebody comes up with a car and they're suddenly like they kill everyone else it's not not that way um and and the sheer scale of automotive manufacturing is is is just it's hard to appreciate until you see the plants i mean they're gigantic like the industries yeah i mean the the the sheer size of the industrial infrastructure is is staggering\n\nnot just the assembly plant but everything else that goes yeah the supply chain exactly the symptoms just a little engine tip of the iceberg really yeah the service plan is literally took the iceberg phenomenal the the supply chain is um you know once you go to tier two tier three two or four suppliers um that's uh probably an order magnitude more uh than that okay so so you think google will not be a competitor probably will be a direct competitor yeah yeah sure what about the car companies the exactly i think they'll all be competitors yeah sure who do you see out there that has done a nice job so far mercedes of what a competitive car of the incumbents potentially competitive car i guess i mean i don't think anyone's any of the car companies thus far\n\nhave made um a really great electric car i mean you tell me if i'm if you disagree um but uh i don't think yet that any of them have made a great electric car okay they you know presumably will continue to improve on what they've done so far and and then at some point they may make a car that's that that's uh you know that's a great car but no they haven't done that yet can i ask you about batteries for a second oh yeah sure so you're building this gigafactory right you've got it's built it's well it's not completely both okay but it's part of it's running yeah part of it's a really gigantic thing it's like when the gigafactory is done it'll be the largest footprint building of any kind in the world of any kind not just factories it literally event what\n\nis this the largest rocket the largest building i mean well i mean i think this it's not scale for scale sake it's just like if you say well we want to accomplish these goals then um then you kind of have to be make a big thing okay you've got this big thing it's this big giant building yeah it's going to make batteries the batteries it's going to we're make have an opening we'll start taking the opening party since it's been operating for a little while but we're gonna have a party soon you guys maybe want to come okay numb all right we'll come to the beginning but they can't i love we're seeing this thing come right just this is crazy no this is like an alien dreadnought it's really nutty because i love a battery party but yeah um right but but talk\n\nabout where it's going are these lithium-ion batteries yeah sure so they're the same batteries that's in our phone no explain please explain yeah so have you made a battery breakthrough is something i'm interested in um yeah i mean generally the i mean there's there's so much nonsense out there about batteries like about you can believe about one percent of what you read you know maybe lithium ion covers a very broad range of technologies and you can have an enormous difference in the power density and the energy density and the cycle life between one chemistry and another they can be really enormously different so what you really actually want to ask is what is the cathode and what is the anode right um so in our case that's right okay um let's put it\n\nin the but the lithium is actually two percent of the cell mass so it's like the salt in the salad it's it's a very small amount of the cell mass and a fairly small amount of the cost but it sounds like it's big because it's called lithium ion but it it really like i've actually should be called nickel graphite because it's mostly nickel and graphite okay and um it's nickel cobalt aluminum but battery little things and graphite with a silicon oxide layer battery efficiency or power that you know the power that you can store in a certain mass seems to be moved very slowly at least compared to you know we're used to moore's law pushing uh integrated circuits faster batteries kind of are always in our consumer devices always lagging behind in your you've\n\nbuilt this giant thing the biggest building in the world it's ever seen it's not fully built but yes it's you're building a pretty big chunk yeah uh to make batteries your whole business depends on batteries in these cars have you figured out a way to do some significant uh increase in the yield of energy from a given amount of of space in the battery well yeah i mean the the the energy density is increasing sort of maybe on the order of like five-ish percent per year um and it doesn't sound like much but you add that up over a number of years with compound interest it ends up being quite quite a significant number um and a lot of people sort of think that oh well we just sort of cobbled together some laptop batteries and somehow made a great car but\n\nif it was that easy then i think we would have quite a few competitors who did the same thing but but it's it's it's really quite quite a lot harder than that um the it's a cylindrical form form factor but the internals of the battery are quite different from what you would find in uh in a laptop and uh and and will be increasingly different with the what's built at the gigafactory which is highly optimized for automotive um and um and with has improved energy density but but mostly it's not the energy i see that's the issue because we you know you can buy if you buy a model s today um the range is um around 300 miles um and and that's quite a lot um so it's pretty rare that people really need to go more than 300 miles at a time without stopping right\n\nyou know um so i don't think we really have a range issue and we could make a 400 mile range car today like that wouldn't be too big of a deal um what really matters is decreasing the cost uh per unit of energy of the battery packs okay so you can make the car affordable that's actually the important thing so there's and there's really two main main dimensions along which uh cost optimization and making something available to the national market can be achieved one is design iteration going through multiple versions of something and then the other is economies of scale you kind of need both of those those things in order to make a compelling mass-market uh product and you look at like cell phones and how many design iterations have we gone through with\n\ncell phones um and and then and and look at the scale at which that they're made which is enormous uh and that's what enables everyone to have a super computer in their pocket um so speaking of that the sales when you're talking about the sales you have booked how many orders for it's on the order of four hundred thousand four hundred thousand four hundred yeah consumer interest and a promise a lot of it around you around the idea of you and tesla and the excitement they're not booking it was quite surprising actually i mean the um because we didn't do any advertising or there was no guerrilla marketing or anything it was just basically like yeah we're gonna have this webcast there was only there were only about a thousand people in the audience um and\n\num i really caught us by surprise but i think you know when you have a product that really resonates with with customers the word of mouth uh grows like wildfire and that seems to be what yeah but it's a little bit i mean honestly in some groups of especially men in silicon valley if you show up and read like a label of a peanut jar they'd be thrilled with the situation so i mean you a lot of this does base around you like the idea of you and the excitement around this exciting entrepreneur is that is that enough to get it to to this massive company you've been hoping to the idea of this is the elon promise or it's the well i think actually it's not so much i mean sort of um um i i'm not sure i i think i just deserve less credit than that actually the\n\nthe uh i mean what what tesla's done with a phenomenal team is like 15 000 people at the company um worked super hard to create compelling products to create great cars um and we start off with the roadster and then the model s and the model s was rated you know by consumer reports as the best car ever got the model x which you know had some has had some teething issues but um i think it's now at the point where it's it's really starting to i think it's really i think quite sublime at this point um and uh and and so people look at that and say okay well if tesla's made these cars then probably the next car they make is going to be you know the less expensive one also a great car and um yeah but you know so it'll be a great car but it'll be affordable\n\nit's like great okay that sounds like something i want so this car this next car the price is it's starting at 35 000 okay affordable okay when do you get to the really affordable then way down much lower than that yeah i mean it's important to point out that the 35 000 particularly when factoring in the lower cost of electricity versus gasoline and that the maintenance cost is much less you don't have to have oil changes you never need to replace your brakes because the car uses regenerative braking so the brakes last as long as the car do that the car does it's basically you just need to replace the tires like that's about about all um so the operational cost of the car is much lower fundamentally than than a gasoline car and and so um and the i think\n\nthe the uh average price for cars for gasoline cars is around 30 32 something like that yeah i mean there are starting prices that are lower but but when people pick pick options i believe it's in the around 32 or so in the us so we're pretty close to the that that but that's your base price right i mean though yeah but it's absolutely great may not be the asp for the car no but it's gonna be a great car even at 35.\n\nso it's like even if you order nothing no options at all it'll be great but you're at but you're likely to have a mix where the average car that you actually sell sells for a little more than that yes probably it's probably going to be yeah it's probably going to be some higher number um but it's really important size like the 35 if somebody orders the 35 000 car they'll be very happy like it's not like you need to order a bunch of options in order without which the car is is you know not good that car will have autonomous for 35.\n\num i have a uh i'm going to do another tesla event maybe at the end of the year um talk more about that and so you could start here um it will be real big news if i start here um we don't mind that let me just say that we're gonna do the obvious thing okay okay got it it's really obvious it's so cool so so cupholders good okay um so really those things are nuanced all right absolutely let's talk about two more things i want to talk about ai because we've been talking about it a lot here um which i want to get it clear what your thoughts are because it's mostly elon scared of robots i mean that kind of thing or what how do you i'm scared of robots um artificial intelligence can you like clarify exactly what the issue you have now and you deserve the background\n\nwe've been talking to uh jeff bezos sundar chai uh we talked to mark fields from ford about it um uh yeah the facebook folks um there certainly seems to be uh in the i in the tech companies a big tremendous new drive or interest to believing that we'll be all good for intelligent assistance and it's good it'll make your life better make your life better siri is going to suddenly get smart microsoft one is going to get smart and google is going to cream them all largely a happy version of this is going to sometimes technology hurts you but not as much as it helps you that's really yeah so that's there's been a lot of conversation here about that sure and yet and you've staked out a slightly different position so can you talk about that well i mean i think\n\nmy sort of full position would require quite a long explanation um i mean i i am concerned about um certain directions that ai could take that would be uh not good for the future that the i mean it i i think it'd be fair to say that like not all ai futures are benign not not all okay um and and so if you have something if if this if we create some digital super intelligence that exceeds us in every way by a lot um it's very important that that be benign um and um and so actually with with uh with a few others um i created uh openai uh which is uh an ai uh it's a non-profit actually it's so there's no i think the governor's structure here is important um so you want to make sure that there was not some fiduciary duty to uh generate um you know profit off\n\nof the ai technology that's developed um so uh so we created this uh 51c3 um but but i think it's quite different from i mean a lot of sort of five one c3s are you know they've they don't have a high sense of urgency um like they're not like um you know they're not really sort of developing technology at a fast pace but openai is so openi has a very high sense of urgency and the talent i think that the people that have joined are are really really amazing and and the intent with openai is to democratize ai power um there's a quote that i love from lord acton he was the guy that came up with power corrupts and absolute power crafts absolutely um which is that uh freedom consists of the distribution of power and despotism in its concentration and so i think\n\nit's important if we have this incredible power of ai that it not be concentrated in the hands of a few and potentially lead to a world that we don't want and what world is that what is what do you see for see that when you sit it's difficult i mean it's called the singularity because it's it's difficult to predict um what exactly what future that might be except i don't know a lot of people who love the idea of living under a despot um you know i don't think people generally choose to live in a democracy over a dictatorship and the despot would be the computer or the people controlling the and do you worry specifically about any of these companies i mentioned who've all seemed to now kind of be pivoting toward this is the battleground in the next 10\n\nyears i wouldn't name a name but there is only one there's only one you're worried about and they're not preoccupied with making a car that will compete with you i assume there's only one competing for you know mutual destruction it's like there's no it's not about competing it's really just about trying to increase the probability that the future will be good that's all so the the goal of open ai is really just to take the set of actions that are most likely to improve the positive futures like if you can think of like the future as a set of of probability streams that branch out and then converge collapse down to a particular event and then branch out again and uh there's a certain set of probabilities associated with the future being positive and different\n\ntype flavors of that and uh at open ai we want to try to do do whatever we can to guide to increase the probability of the good futures happening i think that's that's really what we're trying to do you worry that by making this open some bad actors may use some of what has been developed to do bad stuff uh with the power yeah i mean that is certainly the the i mean a good remodel to that however i think if ai power is widely distributed then and there's not say one entity that has some super ai that is a million times smarter than anything else you know if instead the ai power is broadly distributed and to the degree that we can link ai power to each individual's will it's like you know you would have your ai agent you knew it like everyone would have\n\ntheir sort of ai agent and then if somebody did try to do something really terrible well then the collective will of others could overcome that bad actor um which you can't do if if there's one ai that's you know a million times better than ever and it's proprietary and it's yeah it's either has its own world or more likely at least in the beginning is controlled by you know some small set of people so um i think that's that's really the the risk i mean um you know there's always these arguments like what's what's the best form of government um i'm a big fan of i think it's churchill like you know democracy is the worst form of government except for all the others right um so speaking of that yeah this election you are no no no yes yes yes how does that\n\nstrike you what's happening now you're you you've come to this country you're naturalized you know i think uh i'm glad that the frame is the constitution saw fit to ensure that the president uh was someone who um was captain of a lodge ship with a small writer okay and there's a limit to how much harm any given president are you sure about that oh yeah yeah yeah so you're not worried about are you backing in either of the candidates at this point try to stay out of this situation because i don't think that's the finest moment in our democracy well given that it's not the finest moment in our democracy do you think the best thing is to stay out or we'll see i'm not sure what what i can do to head off the worst i'm sure how much influence i could have as\n\nas one person on the outcome so i mean if i think i could make a difference i would probably do something um but um like i said i think i'm just glad that the pres you know being the us president is like being captain of a large ship with a small rudder and so there's just a limit to how much good or bad a president can can actually do i mean obviously if a president could make the economy great that and there was like a button he could press they'd be pressing that button at the speed of light so you know that they just but they could they can't like can't they can't just magically make the economy good um no president wants the economy bad ever um but they you know like there's just a limit to how much they can do um and um yeah i guess there is the\n\nnuclear thing which is yeah the new thing i guess there is the nuclear thing yeah but i i don't know i think i think i think i don't think we would like just arbitrarily launch nuclear missiles yeah one would have president can do that uh i don't think so i mean i think that he's no he's the commander-in-chief i still don't think that means you can just launch nuclear missiles whenever you want right yeah um i think congress would be like quite upset about that and they might not be consulted yeah but i think i think like the military would be like yeah we really think congress should be consulted on before we launch uh yeah that that might happen preemptively are you willing you're basing your faith in that though i'm quite confident that the military\n\nwould not just you know randomly agree to launching nuclear missiles at somebody well that's calming this is right so um uh we're going to put up just very quickly we'll and on hyperloop you've been involved with it your level involvement is what at this point just yeah i know it's a bit confusing because um i um you talked about it when you were here last time yeah i actually came up with the idea um i came up with an initial idea which was turned out to be wrong it wouldn't work several years ago and and then um but i sort of shot my mouth off and and said i look like i have an idea that would work and turned out that didn't work but with a lot of iteration i was able to come up with something that where the physics hangs together and then published\n\nthe paper and just said like look anyone who wants to do this is great go you know be my guest because i'm i sort of have a plate full running tesla and spacex yeah yeah and so i think it'd be great i mean it'd be great to have any interesting new transport solutions um anything that gets people to their destination um in a way that's safer costs less it's more convenient um that'd be great i mean and so i think probably the most valuable thing that the hyperloop paper that i published has done is to spur thinking in terms of new transportation system so it's not just oh let's you know have a fast train um okay that's not even as fast as what japan did in the 80s like okay i don't see what the point of that is you know like we should really be trying\n\nto think of some something that's um i think particularly in california like we should be like saying hey what is the best let's invent something new that's way better than anything else do you want to shoot your mouth off about that um well um you know i so so i i'm not an investor in any of the companies uh that that are working on and i've tried to be neutral because i'm like i'm trying not to favor one company over another but just to encourage anyone that is interested to say that you know try to give them moral support you know um and i hope they succeed um the only thing that um i am doing a half blue front is like we're holding a student competition and the student competition is really just aimed towards encouraging uh students to think about\n\nexciting new transport methods and it's totally cool if they want to like do some architecture that's different from what i propose in hyperloop and in fact the the winning team at the student competition that we held earlier this year used a different um suspension mechanism than what i proposed which is i you know i propose using essentially taking taking the uh air that eventually that builds up on the nose from the compressor and and flowing that through air skis so that you simultaneously remove the drag from the nose and provide a a means of suspending the the pod um and that's also something that that works well um even at uh super supersonic velocities you can go it's been demonstrated up to mach 1.\n\n1 in terms of using air bearings as but they use something different i like uh yeah basically electromagnetic suspension um and like the the reason i didn't suggest um sort of any kind of magnetic system suspension is that it's very important that the cost of the of the tube be minimized so if you really want because the the part is cheap the tube is expensive so if you if you want to go say 400 miles and you've and two in two directions you've got 800 miles of tube the the critical uh economic optimization parameter is the cost of the tube so you want that tube to be as low cost as possible and so if you if you do anything that that requires action on the tube side it's going to make that tube much more expensive so if you use air bearings it doesn't\n\nchange like that's real cheap and yeah so you think this is going to happen yeah i think something like that i think something will happen in the future um you know it's i think i think if if the companies that are that are trying that are trying to make it happen now if if for whatever reason that that doesn't work out um then you know i think i i'll you know i'll i might i might do something myself in the future i don't want to do something i don't know if i don't want to sort of front run them you know it's like say here's this free idea and then meanwhile i go and do it myself you know that wouldn't be nice so um so but if they if a bunch of people if companies don't try and it doesn't work out then i think i think um i think i'll try to just at least\n\ndo a demonstration system you know okay last question do you think tech has gotten more serious do you how do you look at the tech landscape as someone who's you know well-known you probably qualify as a visionary um the concept what do you imagine we are right now in the tech space and then we'll get to questions from the audience i think there's a lot of innovation happening in in many different areas um the advancements in ai i think are quite quite astonishing the advancements in genetics are amazing so i think that there is a lot of innovation going on i think there's probably a few too many talented entrepreneurs in kind of the internet space and and i think their talent actually would be better served in some other industries um but i do think\n\ni mean i don't think we're like facing some sort of low innovation period or anything like that i think there's a lot of innovation going on they need to move to other i just think that like if you had some ideal distribution would probably be fewer like there's just a lot of talent focused on the internet and probably some of that talent would be better to have some of that talent in other industries that's about all but there's tremendous amount of innovation that that's happening um it's something that i think is is going to be quite important um and and it's there's not i don't know of a company that's working on it seriously is um is a neural lace um so you know going back to the ai situation um this is quite an important uh quite important debate\n\nlike that if you assume any rate of advancement in ai um we will be left behind by a lot um and so then we could be in you know benign but even the benign situation if you have some you know if you have ultra intelligent ai um we would be you know so so far below them in intelligence that it would be would be like you know a pet that's what it was like a pet a cat a cat like a house yeah we like the house cat right um and um yeah so that's it's not the end of the world you know it's just not sort of you've seen the movie it could be it could be it could be um the you know so that but that honestly that would be the benign scenario um and so house cat is okay i mean i don't love the idea of being a house guy okay but what's the solution yeah so i think\n\nthe um i think i think it i think it's to essentially i think one of the solutions the solution that seems maybe the best one is to have an ai layer um if you think of like you've got your limbic system your cortex and then a digital layer a sort of a third layer above the cortex that could work work well and symbiotically with with you i mean just as your cortex works somewhat spiritically with the olympic system your did sort of a third digital layer could work symbolically with the rest this is something that's surgically inserted or bred into the species or what the fundamental limitation is input output so we already have uh we're already a cyborg um it's just that i mean you have a digital version of yourself or a partial version of yourself online\n\nin the form of your emails and your social media and all the things that you do and and you have basically superpowers in that with your computer and your phone and and the applications that are there you have more power than the president united states had 20 years ago that you can answer any question you can video conference with anyone anywhere you can send a message to millions of people instantly you know you just do incredible things and um but the constraint is is input output so we're i o bound um particularly output bound i mean like the your output level is so low it's like particularly on a phone like your two thumbs are sort of tapping away um this is ridiculously slow our input is much better because we have a high bandwidth visual interface\n\ninto the brain like our eyes taking a lot of a lot of data so there's many orders magnitude difference between input and output so mostly effectively merging in a symbiotic way with uh digital intelligence revolves around eliminating the i o constraint so it's be some sort of direct cortical interface and you called it a neural neural lace yeah um it's totally not google glass right no i i'm talking about something would you wear it or no i mean it would be uh i mean i mean there are a few ways to approach this but some sort of interface directly with your cortical neurons particularly but doesn't that apply surgical insertion not necessarily you could go through the veins and arteries because that provides a complete roadway to all of your neurons your\n\nneurons are very heavy users of energy so they need high blood flow so you automatically with your veins and arteries have a road network to your neurons still some kind of surgery right um yes but you could insert something you know basically you know into the jugular and and have it gets macabre but it sounds really easy and it doesn't involve it it doesn't it doesn't involve you know like chopping your just your skull up or anything like that yeah and plus you're not a house cat anymore right a house cat so um i mean essentially if if we can figure out how to establish a high bandwidth neural interface with ourselves with with your digital self effectively um then uh then you're no longer a house cat you know all right on that note no on that yeah\n\nwell i do just one closing thing i mean i think it's probably are you in are you into that part of the best outcome i think are you interested in exploring this possibility that you have just laid somebody's got to do it i'm not saying that i will but i'm somebody's got to do it i mean i i i mean somebody should do it and i mean if somebody doesn't do it then i then i think i should probably do it but uh and and the goal of this is to prevent there being an external uh ai particularly one controlled by a small group of people that could yeah be so much more powerful and intelligent than we are that the house will be god-like in situations yeah well this has been really cheerful thank you yeah but if but if we can establish i was worried about asteroids\n\nat the beginning of this i mean asteroids are a low probability existential threat um on the time scale that's relevant to us okay okay this is different this requires urgency so what do you do for fun yes this is much elon what do you do for fun fun what do you do anything i play video games with my kids all right that sounds good let's get some questions come on elon the house cat i watch movies yeah i kind of think normal things okay why don't we start over here yeah hi i think this last question by uh carl just just did that i want to know how do you live through the stress that kind of conversations we just heard that you went through and kind of ambitions that you carry and then how do you adjust to the everyday work life balance etc things that\n\nin your life it's a little bit of your personal side actually so you're very busy how does that work yeah i mean i am sort of in kind of work triage mode um a lot of the time so i know it seems to be uh as long as there's not like a crisis simultaneously at spacex and tesla it's okay um but you know companies are i mean the situation in any given company particularly one you know if it's sort of growing fast and sort of quasi startup it's it's somewhat sinusoidal so that i mean it's okay if if you don't if the if the waves don't crest together you know um when that does happen it then that's a huge strain right now things are like you know motoring along okay um and i have like the contacts loaded for both companies and i can look sort of see a path to\n\na good outcome so i feel pretty good right now but they've been super stressful times in the past and and then you know and then i always try to reserve time for my kids because i love hanging out with them like i mean kids are really great i mean like the um of the time they're they're they make you happier their kids are awesome you know yeah um then there's that one percent one percent you know like yeah one percent but but like it's it's like of anything in my life i would say kids by far make me the happiest i mean i don't know you know i agree yeah that's great i agree yeah um so hang out with them like so like no like things like a lot of times kids are kind of in their own world so you don't need to like they don't want to like talk to their dad\n\nfor hours on end generally i've noticed that yeah um so like um so i can be in the same room with them they can talk to me from time time but like you know i can get you know some emails done just get some work done and then whenever they want to talk to me they can um and then we try to do things like um you know travel places and uh like i said we play video games together or actually on monday we went to the new harry potter land um at universal it was quite fun yeah so i think that somebody from universal just clapped yeah whoever was in charge of harry potter land did a great job it's really good yeah that's good i highly recommend it yeah the butter beer is amazing yeah i was just saying the butter beer is amazing yeah okay over here hi my name\n\nis evan burns and the founder of odyssey and i hope into the future to be in something in the space industry and my curiosity is you've talked about spacex getting into many different businesses for example global wi-fi through launching many satellites do you hope spacex becomes a platform for others to launch businesses or you see spacex being a business that launches many business lines um well i mean the general strategy of spacex is to like we clearly need a lot of money in order to develop the transport system to establish a city on mars so you know we're like kind of gathering revenue like earth-based revenue that's we're trying to maximize there's some other earth revenue well right now is only earth so we've got to maximize earth revenue as it\n\nrelates to space you know as it relates to rockets and spacecraft so um but i think like what assuming spacex is able to transport large numbers of people and and goods to mars it will be an enormous enabler for entrepreneurial activity on mars um because there's gonna be so much to do um you know everything from creating like the first iron ore refinery to the first pizza joint to um you know it was something that doesn't even exist on earth um it was kind of like when the union pacific uh crossed crushed you know and like everyone thought you know it's like what a stupid idea you know like there's nobody living in california well okay now there's quite a lot of people living in california so so just uh having it you need the transport link and so what\n\nspacex is trying to do is establish transport link um and then try to create a fertile environment for entrepreneurs on mars uh to flourish um and and i think that will be an amazing um expansion of entrepreneurial how long would it take to deliver a pizza from mars well it's going to be a little cold i think but i mean we we could certainly see a way to get to mars in under three months and i think ultimately you'll be able to get to mars in under a month it does get exponentially difficult as you reduce the time um but um but you know three months is a way to think of it um and i think that's probably you know that's that's really where spacex will i think create a a great environment for entrepreneurial potential thanks neelac i hope dominos does not\n\nget to mars please don't let it have a special special mars uh so you're obviously very ambitious um that's led to some really ambitious deadlines that have been missed so falcon heavy was originally 2012.\n\num the model x was a little bit delayed the model 3 the model x was delayed the model 3 seems to be stretching but the model 3 in particular is a consumer product you're taking money from people against a really aggressive production schedule and a huge amount of orders what are you going to do to hit your deadlines on that because it's real consumers this time in a big class of people sure the i think the biggest thing is just designing the car for um for for manufacturing so in the case of model s like models was the first time we'd really built a car uh a whole car like with the roadster lotus did the body and chassis we did the powertrain then we did the sort of final installation of the powertrain to the chassis but the model s was the first time\n\nwe made a car so we were just trying to make a great car and but we had no idea like what it meant to design something to be manufacturable so the model s is super hard to make and then the model x is built off of the model s platform except it's got a bunch of other whiz-bang technologies that make it even harder to build so um and uh you know so like i mean definitely we want to do the opposite of what we do with the with the x um which is make something that is is going to be a lot simpler um but still a car that people will love and where every design decision is factoring in the manufacturability uh in fact and making sure that when we designed something um that you can manufacture at volume at an affordable price uh in the schedule that would that\n\nwere on the schedule that we're targeting um one of the things that makes a car very difficult particularly if it's a new car uh is is that it's an integrated product with several thousand unique components so we are somewhat at the mercy of whatever the slowest component is whatever basically i mean if you say go to tier 2 and 3 suppliers they end up being several thousand suppliers so so things move as fast as the least lucky and least competent supplier um you know but but just and you can think of like like any natural disaster you care to name all of those things have happened to our suppliers their factory has burnt down there's been an earthquake there's been a you know tsunami there's been uh massive hail uh there's been a tornado uh the ship\n\nsank there was a shootout at the mexican border um no kidding um that delayed trunk carpet at one point well like and we couldn't get and like then like the border patrol wouldn't give us the truck because it had like bullet holes in it um we just wanted our trunk carpet um like it's pretty safe there's like no cocaine or anything so good um but you know that shut down the production line as an example for several days um so so there's that's the biggest issue is like the supply chain stuff is really tricky um we're trying to anticipate as much that as possible increase our optionality so that there's more internal capability at tesla not that we want to do things internally but if if a supplier is unable or unwilling to uh deliver the part we can quickly\n\nmake that internally so i think the whole company is geared geared for that um and um i mean right now it looks like you know we should be able to do that we expect to i mean almost all of the model 3 design is done um and we're aiming for pencils down basically [Music] in about six weeks complete pencils down and um and we're tabling all you know like if they're ideas for future cool things we'll we'll have it in version two version three in future years type of thing so um overall i feel pretty good about it um and our supply particularly our major supplier partners have been um very supportive and are are on board um but um you know uh i mean one thing i i should say like the like when i when i sort of cite a schedule it is actually the schedule i\n\nthink is true it's it's not some fake schedule that i don't think is true um so i mean uh you know it's never you know i it's um i may be delusional that is entirely you know possible maybe it's happened from time to time but it's it's it's never um you know some knowingly fake deadline ever so is there an event in six weeks we're going to announce autonomous driving is included in the pencil down plan for the model 3.\n\nwe're not expecting any event in six weeks uh josh hi um i have a this is kind of a weird question i feel like you'd would be the guy with the right answer for it there's a um sort of a philosophic concept that a sufficiently advanced civilization will be able to create uh sort of a simulation yeah maybe you've answered this before a simulation i've had so many simulation discussions it's crazy okay so because in fact it got to the point where basically every conversation was was the ai ai slash simulation conversation um and my brother and i finally agreed that um we would ban such conversations if we were ever in a hot tub that was like here because that really kills them so so so the idea is right any sufficiently advanced civilization would create\n\ncould create a simulation that's like our existence and so the theory follows that maybe we're in the simulation have you thought about this and a lot are we are we even in hot tubs so much so it had to be banned from a hot tub [Laughter] okay it's not the sexiest conversation are we in are we in um the the i mean i think here's remember like the the strongest argument for the for us being in a simulation probably being assimilation i think is the following um that that 40 40 40 years ago we had pong like two rectangles and a dot that was what games were now 40 years later we have photorealistic 3d simulations with millions of people playing simultaneously and it's getting better every year and soon we'll have you know virtual reality of augmented reality\n\nif you assume any rate of improvement at all then the games will become indistinguishable from reality just instinctual um even if that rate of advancement drops by a thousand from what it is right now um then you just say okay well let's mention it's a ten thousand years in the future which is nothing in the evolutionary scale so um so so given that we're clearly on a trajectory to have games that are indistinguishable from reality and those games could be played on any set-top box or on a pc or whatever and there would probably be you know billions of such uh you know computers or set-top boxes it would seem to follow that the odds that we're in based reality is one in billions so tell me what's wrong with that argument is the answer yes the argument\n\nis probably like is there is there a flow in that argument i mean but someone i'm not sure what the error no no the argument makes sense so the assumption then is that somebody beat us to it and this is a game no no there's a one in billions chance that this is based reality oh okay what do you think well i think it's one in billions okay i mean this that seems to be like clearly what the you know what what what it suggests right and actually i mean arguably we should hope that that's true because otherwise if if civilization stops advancing then that may be due to some calamitous event that erases civilization so maybe we should be hopeful that this is a simulation because otherwise so they could reboot it well otherwise either we're going to create\n\nsimulations that are industrial indistinguishable from reality or civilization will cease to exist those are the two options yeah i like those odds okay okay we're going to it's unlikely to go into some like you know multi-millionaire stasis so it's either going to increase or decrease hi i'm g2 patel from box uh two-part question for you one is um if you think about fully autonomous vehicles um which have passed through regulatory approvals have passed through in-city driving and traffic conditions how far do you think from a time frame perspective we are for that that becoming reality and number two would be the second part of that question is how far before how long before you think it's either illegal or extremely prohibitively expensive for humans\n\nto drive on the road well i i mean i think i mean i really would consider autonomous driving to be basically a solved problem um even in cities like beijing and yeah yeah actually it is the there's really only one um area where it's like a little dodgy and that's basically if you're at roughly the 30 30 to 40 miles an hour in in urban environments which is that's difficult to achieve in beijing um it's like heavy traffic in in in dense traffic situations autonomy is really easy um because you can just maintain a set distance from various cars it's actually quite quite easy um you're very unlikely to drop to run anyone over because you're not moving fast enough and you can break in time on highways particularly highways that are um that have barriers so\n\nthat you you don't have pedestrians that's also relatively easy and like a model s and model x at this point uh can drive autonomously with greater safety than a person right now my point is when does it get to be where you don't need to be sitting behind a vehicle and it actually the way that society starts expecting this is i can have my 75 year old mother who doesn't speak any english or doesn't drive be able to be transported from point a to point b by just sitting in a car by ourself and being taken i know it's technically possible but how far do you think the regulatory approvals are for that happening i think we're basically um less than two years away from complete autonomy wow well complete safer than a human um however regulators will take um\n\ni think at least another year at least another year and to pick it's going to depend on which what part of the world you're in because they'll want to see billions of miles of data to show that it is statistically true that there is a substantial improvement in safety if something's autonomous versus not autonomous i don't think that regulators will accept something that's close to that's that's that's sort of approximately as good as a person i think they'll have to be at least twice as good as a person maybe five or ten times um you know better in terms of uh safety um and and that will have to be have to be a statistically relevant data set so like billions of miles over widely differing roads and situations so yeah you know that's i think it's like\n\nprobably three years before it's right through from a regulatory standpoint but less than two before it is uh technically possible and do you think there's a day when it's illegal to drive for humans or um you know well i mean we live in a democracy so presumably that would be a function of the population deciding um i mean i i mean i'm not in favor of banning people from driving cars um like i'm in favor of freedom um and and not restricting what people do um yeah but maybe the requirements for a license will get more stringent i think that seems like maybe a good move you know so you have to demonstrate a higher level of skill to drive in order to be allowed to manually drive okay very last question this is the last make it a good one sorry because\n\nelon has to go gotta make it a great question uh thinking about life on mars again how do you how do you think about cultural unification systems of government uh rules of law establishing those uh very early on well i think i've just declared king of moss a moment ago i like that yeah take it yeah thank you thank you thank you um so the the uh i think most likely the form of government on mars would be a direct direct democracy um not representative so would be people voting directly on on issues um and i think that's probably better because like the potential for corruption is substantially diminished in a direct versus a representative democracy so i think that's probably what will occur um the i i think there's some i think so i would recommend like\n\nsome adjustment for the inertia of laws is would be wise in that it should probably be easier to remove a law than create one um i think you know that this is i would just be like let's just i mean i think i think that's probably probably good because just laws have infinite life unless they're taken away um so i think my recommendation would be like like something like let's say 60 of people need to uh vote in a law but at any point greater than 40 percent of people can remove it um and any law should come with a sunset with a built-in sunset provision if it's not good enough to be voted back in maybe it shouldn't be there so that's that's the framework for the government on mars i mean that'll be my those would be my recommendations direct democracy\n\nwhere where it's slightly harder to put laws in place than to take them away and where laws don't just automatically live forever you'll be a good king thank you elon musk thank you"},"languages":["en"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eWtabW_j0kQ"},{"id":"the-colbert-report-2014-07-24","type":"interview","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EVCkmNbhkvM","title":"The Colbert Report","titles":{"en":"The Colbert Report","de":"The Colbert Report","fr":"The Colbert Report"},"date":"2014-07-24","summary":"Musk talks Tesla patents, naming cars and SpaceX reusable rockets with Stephen Colbert.","text":"For villain. That's what a super villain does. Superman doesn't say it will drop thermonuclear bombs. That's Lex Luthor, man. The slow way would be to release greenhouse gases like we're doing on Earth. We've gotten a lot of experience releasing greenhouse gases. We could export some of our green gases from Earth to Mars. Now you also have ways for us to get there. Because, as I said, you're one of the CEOs of SpaceX and I'm incredibly excited.\n\nYou're the CEO? I'm sorry. Okay, sorry. Struck a raw nerve. Again, super villain. Now, the thing that says SpaceX is that you want to have rockets like the sci-fi rockets. I was promised when I was a kid. Yeah, absolutely. You can reuse them. Yeah. This is the key to getting life to be multi-planetary is to have reusable rockets. If you throw the rockets away every time, it's crazy expensive to go to space.\n\nBut if you can re-fly the rockets, it could be comparable to air flight in its costs. And you've got a rocket call. Is it called the Falcon? Yeah. Okay. The Falcon rocket. And your goal is to try to land the Falcon rocket. on a barge at sea. So you use a ship? A ship? A pilot? It has an entrance. Everything I say seems to be insulting you this year. Well, if it's got an entrance, it's a ship. Okay, good. Okay. And is anybody driving the ship?\n\nNo, it's a drone ship. Okay. We have a footage of this is the last attempt, I think, to land the rocket after it successfully delivered a payload. Here it goes. And come on, baby. Yeah. Come on. You can do it. It broke a leg on landing. So it took over. It broke more than that. Yeah. Oh, how heartbreaking is that? To see that when you get that close. Definitely heartbreaking. Yeah. You don't seem heartbroken.\n\nWell, that happened several months ago. So I think the get off. You can shake it off. I think we're actually feeling sad, but happy at the same time because if we could reduce the landing velocity, we could get it to land and stay upright and not explode. That is one of the goals of rockets is not to explode. Yes. How long before that's going to be safe enough that my wife would be okay with me getting on a rocket and going someplace?\n\nWell, I'm not sure if I don't know your wife, but just right out there. Okay. Yeah. But I think in terms of when it will be safe enough for people, it's probably about two to three years. You're kidding. Yeah. That's nothing. Seriously. So two to three years from now, so two to three years now, it could be the beginning of like, here's George Jettin and yeah, Steve Colbert.\n\nWell, in approximately two years, we'll be transporting NASA astronauts to the space station. What's the next thing that you want to do that is a hopeful future? So one of the things I like about what you do is that your vision of the future is very hopeful. That is, it is fixable. That the world, there's so much to spare. There's people throwing up their hands, the problems of the world that can't be solved.\n\nYou think that we can put our minds to it and actually make the world a better place? What do you think we need more than anything else? Well, I think the most important thing we need to solve this century is sustainable energy. Well, you seem like the guy to do it. Thank you so much for being here and thank you for trying to make the future a better place. you you you","textByLang":{"en":"For villain. That's what a super villain does. Superman doesn't say it will drop thermonuclear bombs. That's Lex Luthor, man. The slow way would be to release greenhouse gases like we're doing on Earth. We've gotten a lot of experience releasing greenhouse gases. We could export some of our green gases from Earth to Mars. Now you also have ways for us to get there. Because, as I said, you're one of the CEOs of SpaceX and I'm incredibly excited.\n\nYou're the CEO? I'm sorry. Okay, sorry. Struck a raw nerve. Again, super villain. Now, the thing that says SpaceX is that you want to have rockets like the sci-fi rockets. I was promised when I was a kid. Yeah, absolutely. You can reuse them. Yeah. This is the key to getting life to be multi-planetary is to have reusable rockets. If you throw the rockets away every time, it's crazy expensive to go to space.\n\nBut if you can re-fly the rockets, it could be comparable to air flight in its costs. And you've got a rocket call. Is it called the Falcon? Yeah. Okay. The Falcon rocket. And your goal is to try to land the Falcon rocket. on a barge at sea. So you use a ship? A ship? A pilot? It has an entrance. Everything I say seems to be insulting you this year. Well, if it's got an entrance, it's a ship. Okay, good. Okay. And is anybody driving the ship?\n\nNo, it's a drone ship. Okay. We have a footage of this is the last attempt, I think, to land the rocket after it successfully delivered a payload. Here it goes. And come on, baby. Yeah. Come on. You can do it. It broke a leg on landing. So it took over. It broke more than that. Yeah. Oh, how heartbreaking is that? To see that when you get that close. Definitely heartbreaking. Yeah. You don't seem heartbroken.\n\nWell, that happened several months ago. So I think the get off. You can shake it off. I think we're actually feeling sad, but happy at the same time because if we could reduce the landing velocity, we could get it to land and stay upright and not explode. That is one of the goals of rockets is not to explode. Yes. How long before that's going to be safe enough that my wife would be okay with me getting on a rocket and going someplace?\n\nWell, I'm not sure if I don't know your wife, but just right out there. Okay. Yeah. But I think in terms of when it will be safe enough for people, it's probably about two to three years. You're kidding. Yeah. That's nothing. Seriously. So two to three years from now, so two to three years now, it could be the beginning of like, here's George Jettin and yeah, Steve Colbert.\n\nWell, in approximately two years, we'll be transporting NASA astronauts to the space station. What's the next thing that you want to do that is a hopeful future? So one of the things I like about what you do is that your vision of the future is very hopeful. That is, it is fixable. That the world, there's so much to spare. There's people throwing up their hands, the problems of the world that can't be solved.\n\nYou think that we can put our minds to it and actually make the world a better place? What do you think we need more than anything else? Well, I think the most important thing we need to solve this century is sustainable energy. Well, you seem like the guy to do it. Thank you so much for being here and thank you for trying to make the future a better place. you you you"},"languages":["en"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EVCkmNbhkvM"},{"id":"bloomberg-risk-takers-2014-06-10","type":"interview","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mh45igK4Esw","title":"Bloomberg Risk Takers","titles":{"en":"Bloomberg Risk Takers","de":"Bloomberg Risk Takers","fr":"Bloomberg Risk Takers"},"date":"2014-06-10","summary":"A Bloomberg documentary profile in which Musk recounts building PayPal, SpaceX and Tesla and his early entrepreneurial risks.","text":"billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk puts his money where his mouth is I am personally guaranteeing that value standing behind that guarantee with all of my assets his greatest asset is his ability to take this big big dream and make other people believe that it's true the determined engineers big dreams transformed three industries I'm just wishing through any entities that are listening please watch this launch and here's an immigrant from South Africa coming to America to save you know NASA that whole rocket thing you do with the space shuttle I got a better way his better way meant risking everything we have maybe about a week's worth of cash in the bank or or less I have to make a choice then that either took all of the capital that I had left from\n\nthe sale of PayPal to eBay and invest that in Tesla or Tesla would die others weren't so willing to take a chance on him or his companies you put 90 billion dollars like 50 years worth a brace into into solar and wind to Sun its Solyndra and Fisker and Tesla enter one I mean I had a friend who said you don't just pick the winners and losers you pick the losers it's very unlikely that the Tesla investment has ever repaid to the taxpayers electric vehicles are really not possible in ways that would be effective for most consumers still but his bets paid off we didn't just repay the principal we actually repaid it with interest and an turbos pain so ultimately the US taxpayer actually made a profit of over 20 million dollars on this loan Elon Musk has even\n\nbigger dreams that might just take him farther than anyone else you know one must goes a step further earth not big enough the SpaceX he literally wants to go to Mars and lost too much I'd really love to go to Mars and that's the rushing role of SpaceX [Music] when I was a little kid I was really scared of the dog but then I I sort of came to understand okay well dark just means really the absence of photons in the visible wavelength 400 to 700 nanometers it's hard to believe that entrepreneur Elon Musk was ever afraid of anything in Elon sent darkness is merely the absence of light then I thought well it's really silly to be afraid of a lack of photons then I wasn't afraid at the drop anymore after that once one of the kids said to him look at the moon\n\nit's a billion miles away and he said well no it's actually under two hundred and fifty thousand miles away and they said Iran entrepreneur Elon Musk has spent his life proving people wrong growing up in South Africa musk was the oldest of three children and started school a year early his father was an engineer his mother Mae was a model and nutritionist he was the youngest made about two days and the shortest and then he was this brilliant boy and so people didn't really like him so I was this little bookworm a kid and probably a bit of a smart aleck so this is a recipe for disaster not that he told me much about it he was picked on quite a bit so just like read a read a lot of books and and tries to out of people's way during school and so his social\n\nlife was much less than my other two kids and that's a typical nerd I read all the comics I could buy or that they let me read the bookstore before chasing me away I read everything I could get my hands on from when I woke up to when I went to sleep at one point I got I really ran out of books instead really encyclopedia and he has a photographic memory so he could remember everything anytime I had a question my daughter Tosca would say hole genius boy his brother Kimball musk when he Louis was ten years old he got tested by IBM and he was found to have one of the highest aptitudes they'd ever seen a full computer programming I tried to take some computer classes but I was way ahead of the teacher so it didn't really help so I saw her doing space game\n\ncalled blastaar musk already thinking like an entrepreneur figured out how to sell his game I realized I was 12 we decided we were gonna open an arcade outcome here near our high school we were in big into video games we figured that it was gonna be a huge hit we got a lease on a building we got the arcade provider to deliver the equipment and the only thing we needed to do by the end of it was get the city to approve what we were doing but an adult had to apply for a city permit and they hadn't told their parents what they were up to but of course they told us we were not gonna be opening up an arcade max chaff Caen is a technology and business journalist who has profiled Elon Musk several times really the most amazing thing about his childhood is his\n\nescape from from South Africa I remember thinking and saying that America is where we're great things are possible more than any other country in the world it's a little cliche but it's true america is the land of opportunity by moving musk would also avoid mandatory service in South Africa's army growing up in apartheid South Africa was pretty surreal I mean we didn't support that government we didn't believe in it and so the idea of actually going to the military service was really part of the question I told my parents I was going to to Canada and they tried convince me not to leave and off he flew and I thought wow he's so independent of course as soon as he lands he calls me he says what do I do now except water bus safe from Montreal to Vancouver\n\nand that allowed me kind of see Canada at least from the highway he worked at odd jobs across the country before settling at Queens College in Toronto back when I went to college I rarely went to class I just read the textbook and then show up for exams the bigger pills the University was being able to date girls my own age actually met my first wife their mas got an engineering and business degree from the University of Pennsylvania and a scholarship to go to Stanford Silicon Valley was the promised land I really wanted to just kind of go where where the really exciting breakthroughs were occurring Elon had this ability to to look at the world go this is a real problem that's going to in 20 years he looked around and he saw that the world changing stuff\n\nwas not happening at Stanford I didn't even go to class I called the chair of the department and said I'd like to try selling this Internet company if probably won't succeed and so when it fails I want to make sure that technics still come back my kids do funny things and I'm never too concerned about them because you know if you no one wanted to drop out of college he could always go back my brother was in Canada at the time and I said look I think we should try to create an Internet company so he came down and joined me he had you know $2,000 no friends barely enough money for an apartment I think he told me he was showering at the gym because they didn't have a shower he was living we just got some few times that there were couches during the day and\n\nthen turned into beds at night Steve Jurvetson is a venture capitalist in Silicon Valley I first met Elan and Kimball musk his brother back in the mid 90s when they first set foot in California I think they'd been here for about a week and they were pitching a new company called zip to Silicon Valley in the mid 90s in late 90s was a gold rush people were flocking to the region to find riches to make it in the internet business must came up with an idea to bring newspapers into the digital age he took a cd-rom yellow pages some mapping software wrote a little code and put it all together to create the first online city listings you know was more the business mastermind I was more than sales guy I still had my my core programming skills I was able to write\n\nthe was the software needed for for the first company now when yuan was starting to keep in mind you know the internet was just a couple of years old most local businesses were not on the internet the way you found a local business was you open up the Yellow Pages they thought it was the media campaigns the newspapers are gonna need help coming online and building lots of functionality into their websites we had someone literally throw a Yellow Pages book at us and tell us do you think she will ever replace this and we put the guy who's crazy because not only were we gonna replace this but that's not where it ended keep going from there it wasn't long before media companies across the country were signing up and so we were able to get as investors with\n\ncustomers the new york times company Hearst knight-ridder and a number of other companies in 1999 the AltaVista division of Compaq bought zip2 for 307 million dollars in cash and 34 million in stock options musk was just 28 years old I hope that's crazy well I would somebody pay such a huge amount of money for this little company that we have it actually also turned out very well for them to actually so stuff there were a lot more about it than I did when the kid solves it - it was the most exciting day we couldn't believe it because you don't know in the internet world if you're going to you know make a million or die tomorrow [Music] in February 1999 Elon Musk sold his first company at 28 he joined the ranks of Silicon Valley millionaires since it was\n\nacquired by Compaq for a little over two million dollars and I made a play about 21 or 22 million dollars as a result of that which was a phenomenal amount of money for me it was obviously a financial windfall it was super fun to go out buy some toys one of his first things to do is go out and get a big sports car he's comes from a family that really enjoys racing in vehicles and he got one of the highest performance cars money could buy at the time it was a McLaren f1 and proceeded to enjoy that around the Bay Area let's say there's a number of adventures and respecting news with with his driving well I'm sure it felt you know wonderful to have all this money and and have people recognizing success I think he was also frustrated that this company hadn't\n\nbecome as great as he wanted to be it hadn't it hadn't changed the world it had just slightly altered the course of newspaper history which I think from his point of view is you know kind of piddling accomplishment so I certainly have a choice at that point of retiring and you know buying an island somewhere and sipping mai-tais but there was not of interest to me at all there really wasn't a choice of we weren't gonna do anything it was just really what we were gonna do next any landscapes in particular it was really just stepping stones the goal with in doing my second area company was to create something that would have a profound effect and it seems to me that the financial sector had not seen a lot of innovation on the Internet and money is really\n\njust an entry in a database and and it's so it's low bandwidth it seems like something I should lend itself to innovation he was very rich I mean just more money than most people could dream and he took almost no time in-between that sale and starting the company that became PayPal Musk's new company created something we take for granted today it changed the way the world buys things the way money is transferred from one person to another at the time transactions were very slow people would have to mail checks to each other so it could take weeks just to complete a single transaction with his windfall from the sale of zip to must quickly turned around and founded XCOM to make electronic cash transfer as possible but his new company collided with a rival\n\nmobile payment company called con Finity and they were really competing against each other and the real enemy at the end of the day was eBay we combined our efforts in order to compete effectively against eBay's built-in system they called the new company PayPal when he looked at PayPal that his goal was not to create a place you could do person-to-person payments his goal was good to transform the financial industry were able to become the the leading payment system in the world and then they finally threw in the towel and acquired PayPal in early 2002 musk and his partners sold PayPal for 1.\n\n5 billion dollars musk was the largest shareholder and walked away with 180 million he was 30 years old I could abort probably a chain of islands but but that big a no it's not it's just not a lot of interest to me Islands weren't of interest but outer space was it's just a much more exciting inspiring future for out that are exploring the Stars as opposed to the future where we are forever confined to earth I was thinking well I wonder when when we're going to Mars you know when is when is naphthenic go to Mars and I went to the NASA website and there was no plan to go to Mars and no plan to really even take the next step in space exploration this is he was saying he wants to go and enable the human civilization to leave the planet Earth I said it's\n\nabout a big as big a vision as you could possibly imagine and that's gonna require funds and he has enough funds to go do it so he's gonna go do it musk had the outrageous idea that private enterprise could actually reenergize space travel and in June 2002 he founded Space Exploration Technologies or SpaceX Elon was the only funder of the company for this early years another incredibly risky move to say nobody on the planet thinks this idea is financeable I'm gonna fund all of it myself to the tune of almost a hundred million dollars which was the majority of his net worth at the time into a dream to take on the military-industrial complex now here's an immigrant from South Africa coming to America to say you know NASA that whole rocket thing you do with\n\nthe space shuttle I got a better way actually travelled to Russia three times look at buying a refurbished ICBM without the nuke and I Kim's conclusion that the real thing that was really holding us back from making much more progress in space it was really that Rockets had not evolved since the 60s so the trick isn't figuring out how to get to orbit it's figuring out how to get to orbit cheaply so I had to come up with low-cost ways to produce engines the primary structure the electronics to the launch operation as well as run the company with very little overhead and to some of inventions in all those areas is what has led us to a roughly three to fourfold improvement over the cost of of other rockets in the United States what SpaceX has been very successful\n\nat is taking basically off-the-shelf technology stuff that was developed by NASA 50 years ago and streamlining it so in that way he's kind of the Henry Ford of of space because Henry Ford didn't invent the automobile he just figured out how to make the automobile you know commercially viable musk was more than just an entrepreneur if you ask yuan how he managed to teach himself rocket science he'll just look at you very seriously and just say very quietly read a lot of books thirty two-year-old Elon Musk had his next big idea at his family's annual visit to Burning Man the counterculture desert happening although still fascinated by rockets and fast cars he wanted to find a way to end Earth's addiction to fossil fuels I was one that the idea of going\n\ninto the solar power arena to Lyndon and Peter I of my cousins he's basically hands this idea to his cousins and says if you want to start this I will I will fund you and it'll be your company but I'll be the Chairman and they say okay and it works almost perfectly what they've figured out is that if you sort of do a hundred things ten percent better in the area of solar cell installation for homeowners you can dramatically consolidate an industry that's currently a bunch of mom-and-pop shops so it Solar City instead was they say how about no money done you want solar cells we'll just put it in you don't pay a cent right it's like leasing a car but even better Solar City started in five western states and soon grew into the largest solar service provider\n\nin the US the solar cells keep going solar city that only goes up at the end at least so the fascinating business model were in the long run they may become the largest energy generator in America all of these but renewable energy was just one part of a much bigger goal musk had a more ambitious plan for a sustainable future he had this idea that he wanted to make electric cars help humanity get off fossil fuels and so cities about sustainable energy creation whereas Tesla's but sustainable energy consumption in April 2004 musk helped launch Tesla with six point three million dollars of his own money it was the first auto industry start-up in decades and the only one born in Silicon Valley and it's really pretty simple it's you know make a high-priced\n\ncar at low volume because that's essentially the only thing we could afford to do and then step 2 is a medium priced car at medium volume since f3 is a low priced car at high volumes Tesla's plan to introduce a high-end high-performance product to first attract outliers then make an affordable car for the masses teslascope founder and first CEO Martin Eberhard we expect to to change the way people think about electric cars with this car and that we hope to open the market for us to sell other electric cars but we also know that if you start off by saying let's first change human nature and make everybody Drive crummy little cars that doesn't work so instead let's build a car that people want to drive let's build a car this is hot and desirable and beautiful\n\nand convince people that driving you know electric car is not a compromise its idea of actually going in and putting it in a high-end car and breaking the mold of what an electric car wars was exciting this is no longer gonna be a golf cart this is gonna be a Ferrari any cops watching when we first saw Tesla it had a good explanation for how they get to market without having to spend exorbitant amount of money how they would create a brand and the object of desire and consumers and it's part of the story clicked together he talked about Silicon Valley smarts being able to show Detroit how to do something that Detroit didn't think was possible its batteries its Drive electronics it's electric motors those are skills that are present in Silicon Valley and\n\nour president Detroit Tesla's revolutionary technology for the Roadster started with a computer battery as the power source for the automobile JB Straubel Tesla's chief technology officer was the main designer of the electric powertrain for the first time it was possible to drive over 200 miles and have performance that was directly comparable competitive with what a gasoline car could do and Tesla was the first company to to take those principles and put that into practice and try it California Governor Schwarzenegger showed up for the roadsters 2006 coming-out party a test of this one it's hot he bought one so did Leonardo DiCaprio and George Clooney but could must sell regular customers on his idea at that time there was very little activity in the\n\nauto industry in electric vehicles we were in the age of the large SUV so it was a little unusual to hear about this company in California that was planning to come to market with a high-end all-electric sports car we were very passionate about trying to make sure that this car was going to just throw down the gauntlet on what the technology could do and really prove to the world that electric vehicles you know could be incredibly fast and could have incredibly long range there was kind of a sense of adventure you know doing these things for the first time and doing it in a really scrappy way you know we did some of the very first battery packs in my garage in Menlo Park before we actually were able to rent a real office the big issue for Tesla as with\n\nall electric cars has been the batteries their cost and how long they last Eric Noble is president of car lab an automotive consulting firm that evaluates new cars and trucks American consumers are very ready for battery electric vehicles unfortunately battery electric vehicles aren't ready for American consumers the first results at Tesla seemed to support this gloomy forecast when we first started out the thought was simple and really obviously in retrospect quite naive which was to make use of some technology that we developed ourselves but also some technology that would license from AC propulsion put that together and create an electric sports car that would be compelling so let's see where did that fall apart it fell apart when the teen told musk\n\nthat the projected cost had skyrocketed from $65,000 to 140,000 as the problems mounted musk faced a do-or-die decision at Tesla he would have to choose between investing his paypal pay off or let his new company collapse and Elon was looking at this and saying the dream is still there but oh my gosh what do I got I got to get this under control by 2007 Tesla was running out of money fast no one wanted to step up to save the unproven automobile startup Elon Musk had to take the leap alone with make some pretty dramatic changes essentially recapitalized the business and invest about twice what we originally expected what we really expected as the outer limit basically Tesla got to this point where they only had enough money in the bank for a couple of\n\nmonths and there's nobody around who are willing to put more money in I take all of my reserve capital and invested in Tesla which was very scary because you know it would actually be quite sad to have the fruits of my labor with subduer and PayPal not amount to anything but there was no question that I would do that in my mind because tells it was too important to till I die I'm available 24/7 just to help solve issues right I call me 3:00 a.\n\nm.\n\nin of Sunday morning I don't care we had to go in and make some really hard decisions on on personnel changes and even really had to dedicate his time to the company I want I want I want names named so if someone's always on the hot seat and it's always the root cause for problems they will not be positive organization long term it's not okay to be unhappy and part of this company and if somebody can't get happy right musk and his board replaced Martin Eberhard one of the co-founders who had been running Tesla and I think we kind of really really exceeded the level that Everhart could handle and they're freaking apparent in 2007 we either were gonna have to shut the company down or you know wasn't have to take over as CEO it was actually a process of\n\nbuilding a company as well as building a car you know a lot of people that fit in very well with a company when it was extremely small you didn't end up you know fitting in as well when it was larger Everhard didn't go quietly he sued musk for libel slander and breach of contract I believe that I was scapegoated to take the blame for the programs that were not run well must resolve the disputes through mediation but his company was in serious financial trouble in September 2007 musk flew to Germany with a scheme to raise extra cash by forging an alliance with Daimler Mercedes it down is the company that invented the internal combustion engine car the maker of Mercedes smart and their endorsement carries great deal of weight so that was a just a very important\n\nmoment he had to convince the company that Tesla could supply battery packs for its cars they were skeptical really the key thing was to demonstrate a hardware that worked you know if they can't touch it they can't drive it it's not particularly real he pushed his team to retrofit a Daimler smart car with Tesla's electric motor but first they had to find one the Challenger converting a smart card to electric was doubly difficult because we couldn't find a smart card the small cone for sale in the United States we had to send somebody down to Mexico to buy a smart car bring-bring 1/2 to the US and then the smoke is really tiny so we had to fit up a motor how electronics of charger and everything in the squad car the challenge was daunting to replace the\n\nsmart cars gas engine with a Tesla drivetrain and battery fitted in the tiny space under the hood and do it all in less than 4 weeks we didn't have much time at all we knew that from the beginning and we kind of prepared for almost battle and you know setup war room in the shop they worked around the clock stealing maps on the factory floor right up to the deadline the Daimler executives arrived and nut it all convinced that it made any sense to work with an American car company let alone a little tiny American car company in Silicon Valley while waiting for Daimler's decision must brought in one of the world's leading automobile designers to help create his next project a modern and sexy family sedan what she called the Model S originally with Model\n\nS I thought well let's let's have Kerry Kiska who was had a design studio do the styling we paid him up pretty good sum of money to do that curiously enough the designs that he worked on that he came up with for us were terrible and what he didn't tell us was that he was actually working on a competing car company Tesla officials claimed that perhaps Henrik had come in to learn what Tesla was doing well all along he was planning to form his own company do his own vehicle we were pretty upset with him for basically taking what we're at the time the original specifications for the Model S and then going and shopping a business plan to create that same car Tesla sued him he sued Tesla and there was all kinds of you know infighting Henrik Fisker wouldn't\n\ngrant Bloomberg an interview but he told us that I believe there is enough space in the market for several new car companies that pursue a new type of electrified powertrain with different philosophies in November 2008 the court ruled in Fiskars favor it was a setback for musk who was also going through a tough time personally after eight years of marriage and five children Elon and Justine musk divorced I got divorced personal life in somewhat of a shambles and in addition getting you know attacked by some in the media my ex-wife every bad thing you could imagine there was more bad news when his bold space transport company SpaceX again failed to get a rocket in support the First Lord didn't get very far got about a minute up and then it was that there\n\nwas an engine fire and that was it the second flight actually did make it to space but not too overt and then also flight 3 we didn't get all the way to orbit he started saying I've got enough money for three cracks at it he put a hundred million dollars of his own money and he sort of hinted that the idea that after three he didn't make it it would be over SpaceX would would die must burn through the 100 million he had sunk into SpaceX now he was on his way back to the drawing board three days after the failure he announced like first that he knew what was wrong he announced that they raised money to finance a fourth and the fourth launch was gonna happen in a matter of months which in the rocket industry was a crazy announcement we were able to sell\n\nthe palms and then just as we'd solve those problems where you ran smack into the the worst economic recession since the Great Depression it's been one of the darkest days on Wall Street and recent memory stock markets falling the most since 9/11 the Dow off more than 500 points this is what financial Armageddon looks like red screams that scream sell sell sell it was a week that shook Wall Street and indeed the world and a realization that the economy may still head into a deeper downturn as 2008 drew to a close Elon Musk faced the worst crisis of his career all three of his companies appear to be in freefall the worst point was probably just the weekend before Christmas in 2008 we had the economic tsunami take place and made things even worse if it\n\nwasn't needed we had to shut it down and and just figure out what's how do we get through this the stock period and not go bankrupt General Motors shares falling to more than a 20-year low after Goldman cut the automakers rating to sell on a worsening sales outlook that was tough it was obviously an economic period that swore the bankruptcy of General Motors and Chrysler and there we were a young company selling a very very optional car I mean it was really you'd people don't need $100,000 sports car and they certainly wouldn't want one getting poor reviews the popular BBC programme Top Gear took the Tesla Roadster on a test drive in December 2008 this car then really was shaping up to be something wonderful [Music] although Tesla say it'll do 200 miles\n\nwe worked out that on our track it would run out after just 55 miles and if it does run out it's not a quick job to charge it up again the combative CEO charged the incident was faked and said he had proof that the Roadster had not run out of power he sued the BBC to block reruns of the show the case was later dismissed but things would get even tougher his energy company Solar City founder the bank that had backed their leases pulled out of the deal I certainly did not anticipate that we would have the worst economic climate since the Great Depression and and one which was disproportionately bad for cars I mean General Motors went bankrupt I mean general general effing motors you know musk was in the fight of his life we had maybe about a week's worth\n\nof cash in the bank all or less and there was just very little time left in the year to resolve these these things I mean they were like two or three business days left in the year I never thought I was hot it was possible for me to have a nervous breakdown but if it was possible for me to have a nice break down there that was about as good as that's going to come when Eden was going through his sad period I was so sad I felt like I had a hole in my heart and there's nothing you can do you just hurt so much and I just didn't see him getting out of it he was just so sad and then the next thing I get this call saying wow you have made a wonderful woman the one bright spot was meeting Talulah Riley a British actress who had never heard of Tesla SpaceX or\n\nElon Musk they married in 2010 I could be some sort of hapless engineer that had wandered into a London club and he just looked so forlorn he was just sat in the corner on his Blackberry cific he was really out of place and sad I was you know trying to be very sweet to him and instead of humoring him going oh yes when he was gay this is my rocket and this is my Musk's personal life was looking up and the future of SpaceX was finally taking off the fourth attempt to launch the Falcon 1 was a huge success and three months later NASA rewarded SpaceX with a 1.\n\n6 billion dollar contract to resupply the International Space Station but musk had no time to celebrate Tesla was on the verge of financial disaster I had to make a choice then that either took all of the capital that I had left from the sale of PayPal to eBay and invest that in Tesla or Tesla would die the company is really teetering on the brink of failure and there's this board meeting late in 2008 where they're discussing what's gonna happen and Elon just says well I'm gonna raise a 40 million dollar round to keep the company going and the board members are kind of wondering well how is he gonna do that and he says I'm gonna put it all in myself and that incredible braggadocio confidence catalyzed a change in people's opinion and we and everyone else\n\naround the table is like oh my gosh we want to be part of this want to get as much of this investment as we can he saved the company in its darkest hour with an act of heroism that is hard to describe there's nothing quite like spending your last remaining dollar on a project you believe in it was thankfully they could a good week but it definitely took its toll from the mental strain standpoint handicapped man play just burned out a few circuits just after his emergency cash infusion came the news they desperately needed a 40 million dollar deal with Daimler for smart car batteries Daimler later added 50 million for 10% of the company determined not to repeat past mistakes musk focused on bringing his family car to life so I said look we really we need\n\nto have our own design studio and that's when I hired fronts from the host housing to design the Model S his green agenda was irresistible to van Holt thousand a legendary figure in car design who had already revolutionized the looks of the wgm and Mazda he's completely passionate to really rid the world of this addiction to fossil fuel and that that was something that he talked about from the very first sentence first conversation that we had with a new team in place must completely revamp the look of the Model S a sedan doesn't have to be a brick doesn't have to be a big blocky car we wanted to bring this kind of passion and feeling back to this marketplace the architecture of monoliths is really similar to escape word the floor of the vehicle is the\n\nbattery pack and the motors between the rear wheels and everything above that is the opportunity's base in March 2009 musk unveiled the prototype for the Model S it could hold seven passengers and as much luggage as a station wagon but to build it he knew he needed a piece of the US government's new 7.\n\n5 billion dollar loan program to support alternative energy vehicles in order for Model S to truly be successful you know it was important that the the loan come through the government funding was controversial the New York Times writer Randy Stross called the program the bailout of very very high net worth individuals who invested in Tesla Motors act musk struck back Randy's cross is a huge douche bag and an idiot okay it wasn't a bailout but alone the Obama administration agreed to lend Tesla four hundred and sixty five million dollars to mass-produced the Model S a move that astounded many in the industry it's very unlikely that the Tesla investment has ever repaid to the taxpayers electric vehicles are really not possible in ways that would be effective\n\nfor most consumers still this is just the religion of electric vehicles and like Jonestown that religion will come to an end there are most certain people who want to see Tesla fail because it is an attack on the mainstream car industry of course the biggest impact that test will have is not the cause that we make ourselves but the fact that we show that you can make compelling electric cars that people really want to buy the government loan came with a challenging condition to get the money he had to first find a place to build his electric car Tesla burned through 300 million dollars since 2003 Elon Musk needed to get his model s into production fast ever the risk-taker he took another giant gamble purchasing a plant in Fremont California abandoned\n\nby Toyota The Dream Factory location where Tesla was always the new me factory which was a 50-percent Toyota factory sent General Motors factory it's one of the biggest car plants in the world it's a great location close to Tesla headquarters the reality is for very little money Toyota got an albatraoz off its books from an industry perspective it looked incredibly savvy on Toyotas part and incredibly naive on Tesla's part car factories are big pieces of sunk capital to retool a factory it takes a tremendous incremental investment the acquisition released the government funds to begin production despite the fact that Tesla had posted a profit just once since its founding musk took his company public in June 2010 the smartest money in the world is is betting\n\non Tesla not everyone was as upbeat about the company's future Tesla stock voted by Wall Street as the least likely to succeed you don't want on this stock you don't want you shouldn't even write the darn thing there hasn't been an IPO of a car company in America since Henry Ford and that caught people's attention investors ignored the skeptics Tesla raised 226 million dollars in its IPO must now had the capital to get rolling on the Model S you just saw on his face this sort of just relation and this feeling like all of this suffering is worth it and it's anger and it's real now in 2010 after winning the 1.\n\n6 billion dollar contract from NASA SpaceX became the first private company to successfully launch and return a spacecraft from orbit so SpaceX was the first purely commercial ground-up development to reach orbit the first successful launch at SpaceX was I'm just wishing through any entities that are listening please bless this launch and two years later in May 2012 it made history as the first privately held company to send a cargo payload to the International Space Station back on earth the long-awaited launch of Tesla's new sedan was also taking off its time delivery model s the Model S started rolling off the production line although questions about range and service remained not everyone was cheering in a 2012 presidential debate Republican candidate\n\nMitt Romney blasted President Obama for the government loan to Tesla lumping Tesla in with other financially troubled green companies you put 90 billion dollars like 50 years worth of breaks into into solar and wind to suck it Solyndra and Fisker and Tesla and enter one I mean I add a friend who said you don't just pick the winners and losers he picked the losers but Tesla was no loser in the eyes of the automotive industry the Model S was the first electric sedan to win motor trends Car of the Year musk didn't have much time to celebrate a few months later the New York Times delivered a devastating review of the Model S it reported the battery died on its test drive from Washington to Boston and published an image no CEO would want there was a sad shot\n\nof about car owner on a flatbed as though that was the only outcome possible for for such a drive and that's just that's just not true musk went on the offensive unless people said oh you know should it doesn't matter if you're right or wrong you don't battle the New York Times and it's like the hell with that the battle between the reporter and the renegade CEO ended when the New York Times public editor concluded the reporting was imprecise but not done in bad faith but the story didn't affect his bottom line remember that loser comment from a presidential candidate about the 465 million dollar government loan it really feels good to have have repaid the US taxpayer that's that's really what's important here and and we're not we didn't just repay the\n\nprincipal we actually repaid it with interest and and a bonus pay and so ultimately the the US taxpayer actually made a profit of over 20 million dollars on this Tesla repaid the loan nine years ahead of schedule never short on optimism or confidence musk made a stunning promise for the nearly $70,000 car we're guaranteeing that the value of the Model S will be no less than that of a Mercedes s-class after three years I am personally guaranteeing that value and standing behind that guarantee with all of my assets not just with with Tesla he has guaranteed free charging for the life of the car and has expanded the charging system across the country you'll be able to travel all the way from LA to New York just using the Tesla supercharger network and supercharger\n\nsystem is free so it's not just free now it's get free forever that's the Tesla commitment his commitment to customers has paid off since its IPO Tesla shares were up more than fivefold SpaceX and Solar City were also turning profits and this is a biggest and most important customer but almost three quarters of our customers are commercial SpaceX says it has more than four billion dollars in revenue under contract but of all his companies perhaps the greatest success was the one addressing the world's energy need Solar City is now the largest solar service provider in the US and has more than quadrupled in value since its initial public offering in December 2012 Solar City has been very very impressive I mean there are you know thousands of people with\n\npanels on their roofs and and lots of big offices I believe eBay has solar city panels so it's it's having a very big very visible impact on the world he really wants to change the world and in my vision of the future that you'll have clean and renewable sources of energy feeding the grid and our all of our vehicles will run off that this is really the future it's something wonderful stories about Iran has a self-confidence that is just it's breathtaking and it's especially breathtaking when you think about the things he's confident about the idea that Humanity is gonna get to Mars that not just humanity is gonna get to Mars that but that he in his lifetime Elon Musk will get to Mars Crusader or canny businessman named one of Time Magazine's most influential\n\npeople in the world the risk-taking multitasking CEOs estimated net worth was six billion dollars in June 2013 divorced for the second time musk splits his time between his five sons his companies and thinking about the future just is it significant it really is question is all things I'm working on are they really gonna matter or do they have the potential for really matter [Music]","textByLang":{"en":"billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk puts his money where his mouth is I am personally guaranteeing that value standing behind that guarantee with all of my assets his greatest asset is his ability to take this big big dream and make other people believe that it's true the determined engineers big dreams transformed three industries I'm just wishing through any entities that are listening please watch this launch and here's an immigrant from South Africa coming to America to save you know NASA that whole rocket thing you do with the space shuttle I got a better way his better way meant risking everything we have maybe about a week's worth of cash in the bank or or less I have to make a choice then that either took all of the capital that I had left from\n\nthe sale of PayPal to eBay and invest that in Tesla or Tesla would die others weren't so willing to take a chance on him or his companies you put 90 billion dollars like 50 years worth a brace into into solar and wind to Sun its Solyndra and Fisker and Tesla enter one I mean I had a friend who said you don't just pick the winners and losers you pick the losers it's very unlikely that the Tesla investment has ever repaid to the taxpayers electric vehicles are really not possible in ways that would be effective for most consumers still but his bets paid off we didn't just repay the principal we actually repaid it with interest and an turbos pain so ultimately the US taxpayer actually made a profit of over 20 million dollars on this loan Elon Musk has even\n\nbigger dreams that might just take him farther than anyone else you know one must goes a step further earth not big enough the SpaceX he literally wants to go to Mars and lost too much I'd really love to go to Mars and that's the rushing role of SpaceX [Music] when I was a little kid I was really scared of the dog but then I I sort of came to understand okay well dark just means really the absence of photons in the visible wavelength 400 to 700 nanometers it's hard to believe that entrepreneur Elon Musk was ever afraid of anything in Elon sent darkness is merely the absence of light then I thought well it's really silly to be afraid of a lack of photons then I wasn't afraid at the drop anymore after that once one of the kids said to him look at the moon\n\nit's a billion miles away and he said well no it's actually under two hundred and fifty thousand miles away and they said Iran entrepreneur Elon Musk has spent his life proving people wrong growing up in South Africa musk was the oldest of three children and started school a year early his father was an engineer his mother Mae was a model and nutritionist he was the youngest made about two days and the shortest and then he was this brilliant boy and so people didn't really like him so I was this little bookworm a kid and probably a bit of a smart aleck so this is a recipe for disaster not that he told me much about it he was picked on quite a bit so just like read a read a lot of books and and tries to out of people's way during school and so his social\n\nlife was much less than my other two kids and that's a typical nerd I read all the comics I could buy or that they let me read the bookstore before chasing me away I read everything I could get my hands on from when I woke up to when I went to sleep at one point I got I really ran out of books instead really encyclopedia and he has a photographic memory so he could remember everything anytime I had a question my daughter Tosca would say hole genius boy his brother Kimball musk when he Louis was ten years old he got tested by IBM and he was found to have one of the highest aptitudes they'd ever seen a full computer programming I tried to take some computer classes but I was way ahead of the teacher so it didn't really help so I saw her doing space game\n\ncalled blastaar musk already thinking like an entrepreneur figured out how to sell his game I realized I was 12 we decided we were gonna open an arcade outcome here near our high school we were in big into video games we figured that it was gonna be a huge hit we got a lease on a building we got the arcade provider to deliver the equipment and the only thing we needed to do by the end of it was get the city to approve what we were doing but an adult had to apply for a city permit and they hadn't told their parents what they were up to but of course they told us we were not gonna be opening up an arcade max chaff Caen is a technology and business journalist who has profiled Elon Musk several times really the most amazing thing about his childhood is his\n\nescape from from South Africa I remember thinking and saying that America is where we're great things are possible more than any other country in the world it's a little cliche but it's true america is the land of opportunity by moving musk would also avoid mandatory service in South Africa's army growing up in apartheid South Africa was pretty surreal I mean we didn't support that government we didn't believe in it and so the idea of actually going to the military service was really part of the question I told my parents I was going to to Canada and they tried convince me not to leave and off he flew and I thought wow he's so independent of course as soon as he lands he calls me he says what do I do now except water bus safe from Montreal to Vancouver\n\nand that allowed me kind of see Canada at least from the highway he worked at odd jobs across the country before settling at Queens College in Toronto back when I went to college I rarely went to class I just read the textbook and then show up for exams the bigger pills the University was being able to date girls my own age actually met my first wife their mas got an engineering and business degree from the University of Pennsylvania and a scholarship to go to Stanford Silicon Valley was the promised land I really wanted to just kind of go where where the really exciting breakthroughs were occurring Elon had this ability to to look at the world go this is a real problem that's going to in 20 years he looked around and he saw that the world changing stuff\n\nwas not happening at Stanford I didn't even go to class I called the chair of the department and said I'd like to try selling this Internet company if probably won't succeed and so when it fails I want to make sure that technics still come back my kids do funny things and I'm never too concerned about them because you know if you no one wanted to drop out of college he could always go back my brother was in Canada at the time and I said look I think we should try to create an Internet company so he came down and joined me he had you know $2,000 no friends barely enough money for an apartment I think he told me he was showering at the gym because they didn't have a shower he was living we just got some few times that there were couches during the day and\n\nthen turned into beds at night Steve Jurvetson is a venture capitalist in Silicon Valley I first met Elan and Kimball musk his brother back in the mid 90s when they first set foot in California I think they'd been here for about a week and they were pitching a new company called zip to Silicon Valley in the mid 90s in late 90s was a gold rush people were flocking to the region to find riches to make it in the internet business must came up with an idea to bring newspapers into the digital age he took a cd-rom yellow pages some mapping software wrote a little code and put it all together to create the first online city listings you know was more the business mastermind I was more than sales guy I still had my my core programming skills I was able to write\n\nthe was the software needed for for the first company now when yuan was starting to keep in mind you know the internet was just a couple of years old most local businesses were not on the internet the way you found a local business was you open up the Yellow Pages they thought it was the media campaigns the newspapers are gonna need help coming online and building lots of functionality into their websites we had someone literally throw a Yellow Pages book at us and tell us do you think she will ever replace this and we put the guy who's crazy because not only were we gonna replace this but that's not where it ended keep going from there it wasn't long before media companies across the country were signing up and so we were able to get as investors with\n\ncustomers the new york times company Hearst knight-ridder and a number of other companies in 1999 the AltaVista division of Compaq bought zip2 for 307 million dollars in cash and 34 million in stock options musk was just 28 years old I hope that's crazy well I would somebody pay such a huge amount of money for this little company that we have it actually also turned out very well for them to actually so stuff there were a lot more about it than I did when the kid solves it - it was the most exciting day we couldn't believe it because you don't know in the internet world if you're going to you know make a million or die tomorrow [Music] in February 1999 Elon Musk sold his first company at 28 he joined the ranks of Silicon Valley millionaires since it was\n\nacquired by Compaq for a little over two million dollars and I made a play about 21 or 22 million dollars as a result of that which was a phenomenal amount of money for me it was obviously a financial windfall it was super fun to go out buy some toys one of his first things to do is go out and get a big sports car he's comes from a family that really enjoys racing in vehicles and he got one of the highest performance cars money could buy at the time it was a McLaren f1 and proceeded to enjoy that around the Bay Area let's say there's a number of adventures and respecting news with with his driving well I'm sure it felt you know wonderful to have all this money and and have people recognizing success I think he was also frustrated that this company hadn't\n\nbecome as great as he wanted to be it hadn't it hadn't changed the world it had just slightly altered the course of newspaper history which I think from his point of view is you know kind of piddling accomplishment so I certainly have a choice at that point of retiring and you know buying an island somewhere and sipping mai-tais but there was not of interest to me at all there really wasn't a choice of we weren't gonna do anything it was just really what we were gonna do next any landscapes in particular it was really just stepping stones the goal with in doing my second area company was to create something that would have a profound effect and it seems to me that the financial sector had not seen a lot of innovation on the Internet and money is really\n\njust an entry in a database and and it's so it's low bandwidth it seems like something I should lend itself to innovation he was very rich I mean just more money than most people could dream and he took almost no time in-between that sale and starting the company that became PayPal Musk's new company created something we take for granted today it changed the way the world buys things the way money is transferred from one person to another at the time transactions were very slow people would have to mail checks to each other so it could take weeks just to complete a single transaction with his windfall from the sale of zip to must quickly turned around and founded XCOM to make electronic cash transfer as possible but his new company collided with a rival\n\nmobile payment company called con Finity and they were really competing against each other and the real enemy at the end of the day was eBay we combined our efforts in order to compete effectively against eBay's built-in system they called the new company PayPal when he looked at PayPal that his goal was not to create a place you could do person-to-person payments his goal was good to transform the financial industry were able to become the the leading payment system in the world and then they finally threw in the towel and acquired PayPal in early 2002 musk and his partners sold PayPal for 1.\n\n5 billion dollars musk was the largest shareholder and walked away with 180 million he was 30 years old I could abort probably a chain of islands but but that big a no it's not it's just not a lot of interest to me Islands weren't of interest but outer space was it's just a much more exciting inspiring future for out that are exploring the Stars as opposed to the future where we are forever confined to earth I was thinking well I wonder when when we're going to Mars you know when is when is naphthenic go to Mars and I went to the NASA website and there was no plan to go to Mars and no plan to really even take the next step in space exploration this is he was saying he wants to go and enable the human civilization to leave the planet Earth I said it's\n\nabout a big as big a vision as you could possibly imagine and that's gonna require funds and he has enough funds to go do it so he's gonna go do it musk had the outrageous idea that private enterprise could actually reenergize space travel and in June 2002 he founded Space Exploration Technologies or SpaceX Elon was the only funder of the company for this early years another incredibly risky move to say nobody on the planet thinks this idea is financeable I'm gonna fund all of it myself to the tune of almost a hundred million dollars which was the majority of his net worth at the time into a dream to take on the military-industrial complex now here's an immigrant from South Africa coming to America to say you know NASA that whole rocket thing you do with\n\nthe space shuttle I got a better way actually travelled to Russia three times look at buying a refurbished ICBM without the nuke and I Kim's conclusion that the real thing that was really holding us back from making much more progress in space it was really that Rockets had not evolved since the 60s so the trick isn't figuring out how to get to orbit it's figuring out how to get to orbit cheaply so I had to come up with low-cost ways to produce engines the primary structure the electronics to the launch operation as well as run the company with very little overhead and to some of inventions in all those areas is what has led us to a roughly three to fourfold improvement over the cost of of other rockets in the United States what SpaceX has been very successful\n\nat is taking basically off-the-shelf technology stuff that was developed by NASA 50 years ago and streamlining it so in that way he's kind of the Henry Ford of of space because Henry Ford didn't invent the automobile he just figured out how to make the automobile you know commercially viable musk was more than just an entrepreneur if you ask yuan how he managed to teach himself rocket science he'll just look at you very seriously and just say very quietly read a lot of books thirty two-year-old Elon Musk had his next big idea at his family's annual visit to Burning Man the counterculture desert happening although still fascinated by rockets and fast cars he wanted to find a way to end Earth's addiction to fossil fuels I was one that the idea of going\n\ninto the solar power arena to Lyndon and Peter I of my cousins he's basically hands this idea to his cousins and says if you want to start this I will I will fund you and it'll be your company but I'll be the Chairman and they say okay and it works almost perfectly what they've figured out is that if you sort of do a hundred things ten percent better in the area of solar cell installation for homeowners you can dramatically consolidate an industry that's currently a bunch of mom-and-pop shops so it Solar City instead was they say how about no money done you want solar cells we'll just put it in you don't pay a cent right it's like leasing a car but even better Solar City started in five western states and soon grew into the largest solar service provider\n\nin the US the solar cells keep going solar city that only goes up at the end at least so the fascinating business model were in the long run they may become the largest energy generator in America all of these but renewable energy was just one part of a much bigger goal musk had a more ambitious plan for a sustainable future he had this idea that he wanted to make electric cars help humanity get off fossil fuels and so cities about sustainable energy creation whereas Tesla's but sustainable energy consumption in April 2004 musk helped launch Tesla with six point three million dollars of his own money it was the first auto industry start-up in decades and the only one born in Silicon Valley and it's really pretty simple it's you know make a high-priced\n\ncar at low volume because that's essentially the only thing we could afford to do and then step 2 is a medium priced car at medium volume since f3 is a low priced car at high volumes Tesla's plan to introduce a high-end high-performance product to first attract outliers then make an affordable car for the masses teslascope founder and first CEO Martin Eberhard we expect to to change the way people think about electric cars with this car and that we hope to open the market for us to sell other electric cars but we also know that if you start off by saying let's first change human nature and make everybody Drive crummy little cars that doesn't work so instead let's build a car that people want to drive let's build a car this is hot and desirable and beautiful\n\nand convince people that driving you know electric car is not a compromise its idea of actually going in and putting it in a high-end car and breaking the mold of what an electric car wars was exciting this is no longer gonna be a golf cart this is gonna be a Ferrari any cops watching when we first saw Tesla it had a good explanation for how they get to market without having to spend exorbitant amount of money how they would create a brand and the object of desire and consumers and it's part of the story clicked together he talked about Silicon Valley smarts being able to show Detroit how to do something that Detroit didn't think was possible its batteries its Drive electronics it's electric motors those are skills that are present in Silicon Valley and\n\nour president Detroit Tesla's revolutionary technology for the Roadster started with a computer battery as the power source for the automobile JB Straubel Tesla's chief technology officer was the main designer of the electric powertrain for the first time it was possible to drive over 200 miles and have performance that was directly comparable competitive with what a gasoline car could do and Tesla was the first company to to take those principles and put that into practice and try it California Governor Schwarzenegger showed up for the roadsters 2006 coming-out party a test of this one it's hot he bought one so did Leonardo DiCaprio and George Clooney but could must sell regular customers on his idea at that time there was very little activity in the\n\nauto industry in electric vehicles we were in the age of the large SUV so it was a little unusual to hear about this company in California that was planning to come to market with a high-end all-electric sports car we were very passionate about trying to make sure that this car was going to just throw down the gauntlet on what the technology could do and really prove to the world that electric vehicles you know could be incredibly fast and could have incredibly long range there was kind of a sense of adventure you know doing these things for the first time and doing it in a really scrappy way you know we did some of the very first battery packs in my garage in Menlo Park before we actually were able to rent a real office the big issue for Tesla as with\n\nall electric cars has been the batteries their cost and how long they last Eric Noble is president of car lab an automotive consulting firm that evaluates new cars and trucks American consumers are very ready for battery electric vehicles unfortunately battery electric vehicles aren't ready for American consumers the first results at Tesla seemed to support this gloomy forecast when we first started out the thought was simple and really obviously in retrospect quite naive which was to make use of some technology that we developed ourselves but also some technology that would license from AC propulsion put that together and create an electric sports car that would be compelling so let's see where did that fall apart it fell apart when the teen told musk\n\nthat the projected cost had skyrocketed from $65,000 to 140,000 as the problems mounted musk faced a do-or-die decision at Tesla he would have to choose between investing his paypal pay off or let his new company collapse and Elon was looking at this and saying the dream is still there but oh my gosh what do I got I got to get this under control by 2007 Tesla was running out of money fast no one wanted to step up to save the unproven automobile startup Elon Musk had to take the leap alone with make some pretty dramatic changes essentially recapitalized the business and invest about twice what we originally expected what we really expected as the outer limit basically Tesla got to this point where they only had enough money in the bank for a couple of\n\nmonths and there's nobody around who are willing to put more money in I take all of my reserve capital and invested in Tesla which was very scary because you know it would actually be quite sad to have the fruits of my labor with subduer and PayPal not amount to anything but there was no question that I would do that in my mind because tells it was too important to till I die I'm available 24/7 just to help solve issues right I call me 3:00 a.\n\nm.\n\nin of Sunday morning I don't care we had to go in and make some really hard decisions on on personnel changes and even really had to dedicate his time to the company I want I want I want names named so if someone's always on the hot seat and it's always the root cause for problems they will not be positive organization long term it's not okay to be unhappy and part of this company and if somebody can't get happy right musk and his board replaced Martin Eberhard one of the co-founders who had been running Tesla and I think we kind of really really exceeded the level that Everhart could handle and they're freaking apparent in 2007 we either were gonna have to shut the company down or you know wasn't have to take over as CEO it was actually a process of\n\nbuilding a company as well as building a car you know a lot of people that fit in very well with a company when it was extremely small you didn't end up you know fitting in as well when it was larger Everhard didn't go quietly he sued musk for libel slander and breach of contract I believe that I was scapegoated to take the blame for the programs that were not run well must resolve the disputes through mediation but his company was in serious financial trouble in September 2007 musk flew to Germany with a scheme to raise extra cash by forging an alliance with Daimler Mercedes it down is the company that invented the internal combustion engine car the maker of Mercedes smart and their endorsement carries great deal of weight so that was a just a very important\n\nmoment he had to convince the company that Tesla could supply battery packs for its cars they were skeptical really the key thing was to demonstrate a hardware that worked you know if they can't touch it they can't drive it it's not particularly real he pushed his team to retrofit a Daimler smart car with Tesla's electric motor but first they had to find one the Challenger converting a smart card to electric was doubly difficult because we couldn't find a smart card the small cone for sale in the United States we had to send somebody down to Mexico to buy a smart car bring-bring 1/2 to the US and then the smoke is really tiny so we had to fit up a motor how electronics of charger and everything in the squad car the challenge was daunting to replace the\n\nsmart cars gas engine with a Tesla drivetrain and battery fitted in the tiny space under the hood and do it all in less than 4 weeks we didn't have much time at all we knew that from the beginning and we kind of prepared for almost battle and you know setup war room in the shop they worked around the clock stealing maps on the factory floor right up to the deadline the Daimler executives arrived and nut it all convinced that it made any sense to work with an American car company let alone a little tiny American car company in Silicon Valley while waiting for Daimler's decision must brought in one of the world's leading automobile designers to help create his next project a modern and sexy family sedan what she called the Model S originally with Model\n\nS I thought well let's let's have Kerry Kiska who was had a design studio do the styling we paid him up pretty good sum of money to do that curiously enough the designs that he worked on that he came up with for us were terrible and what he didn't tell us was that he was actually working on a competing car company Tesla officials claimed that perhaps Henrik had come in to learn what Tesla was doing well all along he was planning to form his own company do his own vehicle we were pretty upset with him for basically taking what we're at the time the original specifications for the Model S and then going and shopping a business plan to create that same car Tesla sued him he sued Tesla and there was all kinds of you know infighting Henrik Fisker wouldn't\n\ngrant Bloomberg an interview but he told us that I believe there is enough space in the market for several new car companies that pursue a new type of electrified powertrain with different philosophies in November 2008 the court ruled in Fiskars favor it was a setback for musk who was also going through a tough time personally after eight years of marriage and five children Elon and Justine musk divorced I got divorced personal life in somewhat of a shambles and in addition getting you know attacked by some in the media my ex-wife every bad thing you could imagine there was more bad news when his bold space transport company SpaceX again failed to get a rocket in support the First Lord didn't get very far got about a minute up and then it was that there\n\nwas an engine fire and that was it the second flight actually did make it to space but not too overt and then also flight 3 we didn't get all the way to orbit he started saying I've got enough money for three cracks at it he put a hundred million dollars of his own money and he sort of hinted that the idea that after three he didn't make it it would be over SpaceX would would die must burn through the 100 million he had sunk into SpaceX now he was on his way back to the drawing board three days after the failure he announced like first that he knew what was wrong he announced that they raised money to finance a fourth and the fourth launch was gonna happen in a matter of months which in the rocket industry was a crazy announcement we were able to sell\n\nthe palms and then just as we'd solve those problems where you ran smack into the the worst economic recession since the Great Depression it's been one of the darkest days on Wall Street and recent memory stock markets falling the most since 9/11 the Dow off more than 500 points this is what financial Armageddon looks like red screams that scream sell sell sell it was a week that shook Wall Street and indeed the world and a realization that the economy may still head into a deeper downturn as 2008 drew to a close Elon Musk faced the worst crisis of his career all three of his companies appear to be in freefall the worst point was probably just the weekend before Christmas in 2008 we had the economic tsunami take place and made things even worse if it\n\nwasn't needed we had to shut it down and and just figure out what's how do we get through this the stock period and not go bankrupt General Motors shares falling to more than a 20-year low after Goldman cut the automakers rating to sell on a worsening sales outlook that was tough it was obviously an economic period that swore the bankruptcy of General Motors and Chrysler and there we were a young company selling a very very optional car I mean it was really you'd people don't need $100,000 sports car and they certainly wouldn't want one getting poor reviews the popular BBC programme Top Gear took the Tesla Roadster on a test drive in December 2008 this car then really was shaping up to be something wonderful [Music] although Tesla say it'll do 200 miles\n\nwe worked out that on our track it would run out after just 55 miles and if it does run out it's not a quick job to charge it up again the combative CEO charged the incident was faked and said he had proof that the Roadster had not run out of power he sued the BBC to block reruns of the show the case was later dismissed but things would get even tougher his energy company Solar City founder the bank that had backed their leases pulled out of the deal I certainly did not anticipate that we would have the worst economic climate since the Great Depression and and one which was disproportionately bad for cars I mean General Motors went bankrupt I mean general general effing motors you know musk was in the fight of his life we had maybe about a week's worth\n\nof cash in the bank all or less and there was just very little time left in the year to resolve these these things I mean they were like two or three business days left in the year I never thought I was hot it was possible for me to have a nervous breakdown but if it was possible for me to have a nice break down there that was about as good as that's going to come when Eden was going through his sad period I was so sad I felt like I had a hole in my heart and there's nothing you can do you just hurt so much and I just didn't see him getting out of it he was just so sad and then the next thing I get this call saying wow you have made a wonderful woman the one bright spot was meeting Talulah Riley a British actress who had never heard of Tesla SpaceX or\n\nElon Musk they married in 2010 I could be some sort of hapless engineer that had wandered into a London club and he just looked so forlorn he was just sat in the corner on his Blackberry cific he was really out of place and sad I was you know trying to be very sweet to him and instead of humoring him going oh yes when he was gay this is my rocket and this is my Musk's personal life was looking up and the future of SpaceX was finally taking off the fourth attempt to launch the Falcon 1 was a huge success and three months later NASA rewarded SpaceX with a 1.\n\n6 billion dollar contract to resupply the International Space Station but musk had no time to celebrate Tesla was on the verge of financial disaster I had to make a choice then that either took all of the capital that I had left from the sale of PayPal to eBay and invest that in Tesla or Tesla would die the company is really teetering on the brink of failure and there's this board meeting late in 2008 where they're discussing what's gonna happen and Elon just says well I'm gonna raise a 40 million dollar round to keep the company going and the board members are kind of wondering well how is he gonna do that and he says I'm gonna put it all in myself and that incredible braggadocio confidence catalyzed a change in people's opinion and we and everyone else\n\naround the table is like oh my gosh we want to be part of this want to get as much of this investment as we can he saved the company in its darkest hour with an act of heroism that is hard to describe there's nothing quite like spending your last remaining dollar on a project you believe in it was thankfully they could a good week but it definitely took its toll from the mental strain standpoint handicapped man play just burned out a few circuits just after his emergency cash infusion came the news they desperately needed a 40 million dollar deal with Daimler for smart car batteries Daimler later added 50 million for 10% of the company determined not to repeat past mistakes musk focused on bringing his family car to life so I said look we really we need\n\nto have our own design studio and that's when I hired fronts from the host housing to design the Model S his green agenda was irresistible to van Holt thousand a legendary figure in car design who had already revolutionized the looks of the wgm and Mazda he's completely passionate to really rid the world of this addiction to fossil fuel and that that was something that he talked about from the very first sentence first conversation that we had with a new team in place must completely revamp the look of the Model S a sedan doesn't have to be a brick doesn't have to be a big blocky car we wanted to bring this kind of passion and feeling back to this marketplace the architecture of monoliths is really similar to escape word the floor of the vehicle is the\n\nbattery pack and the motors between the rear wheels and everything above that is the opportunity's base in March 2009 musk unveiled the prototype for the Model S it could hold seven passengers and as much luggage as a station wagon but to build it he knew he needed a piece of the US government's new 7.\n\n5 billion dollar loan program to support alternative energy vehicles in order for Model S to truly be successful you know it was important that the the loan come through the government funding was controversial the New York Times writer Randy Stross called the program the bailout of very very high net worth individuals who invested in Tesla Motors act musk struck back Randy's cross is a huge douche bag and an idiot okay it wasn't a bailout but alone the Obama administration agreed to lend Tesla four hundred and sixty five million dollars to mass-produced the Model S a move that astounded many in the industry it's very unlikely that the Tesla investment has ever repaid to the taxpayers electric vehicles are really not possible in ways that would be effective\n\nfor most consumers still this is just the religion of electric vehicles and like Jonestown that religion will come to an end there are most certain people who want to see Tesla fail because it is an attack on the mainstream car industry of course the biggest impact that test will have is not the cause that we make ourselves but the fact that we show that you can make compelling electric cars that people really want to buy the government loan came with a challenging condition to get the money he had to first find a place to build his electric car Tesla burned through 300 million dollars since 2003 Elon Musk needed to get his model s into production fast ever the risk-taker he took another giant gamble purchasing a plant in Fremont California abandoned\n\nby Toyota The Dream Factory location where Tesla was always the new me factory which was a 50-percent Toyota factory sent General Motors factory it's one of the biggest car plants in the world it's a great location close to Tesla headquarters the reality is for very little money Toyota got an albatraoz off its books from an industry perspective it looked incredibly savvy on Toyotas part and incredibly naive on Tesla's part car factories are big pieces of sunk capital to retool a factory it takes a tremendous incremental investment the acquisition released the government funds to begin production despite the fact that Tesla had posted a profit just once since its founding musk took his company public in June 2010 the smartest money in the world is is betting\n\non Tesla not everyone was as upbeat about the company's future Tesla stock voted by Wall Street as the least likely to succeed you don't want on this stock you don't want you shouldn't even write the darn thing there hasn't been an IPO of a car company in America since Henry Ford and that caught people's attention investors ignored the skeptics Tesla raised 226 million dollars in its IPO must now had the capital to get rolling on the Model S you just saw on his face this sort of just relation and this feeling like all of this suffering is worth it and it's anger and it's real now in 2010 after winning the 1.\n\n6 billion dollar contract from NASA SpaceX became the first private company to successfully launch and return a spacecraft from orbit so SpaceX was the first purely commercial ground-up development to reach orbit the first successful launch at SpaceX was I'm just wishing through any entities that are listening please bless this launch and two years later in May 2012 it made history as the first privately held company to send a cargo payload to the International Space Station back on earth the long-awaited launch of Tesla's new sedan was also taking off its time delivery model s the Model S started rolling off the production line although questions about range and service remained not everyone was cheering in a 2012 presidential debate Republican candidate\n\nMitt Romney blasted President Obama for the government loan to Tesla lumping Tesla in with other financially troubled green companies you put 90 billion dollars like 50 years worth of breaks into into solar and wind to suck it Solyndra and Fisker and Tesla and enter one I mean I add a friend who said you don't just pick the winners and losers he picked the losers but Tesla was no loser in the eyes of the automotive industry the Model S was the first electric sedan to win motor trends Car of the Year musk didn't have much time to celebrate a few months later the New York Times delivered a devastating review of the Model S it reported the battery died on its test drive from Washington to Boston and published an image no CEO would want there was a sad shot\n\nof about car owner on a flatbed as though that was the only outcome possible for for such a drive and that's just that's just not true musk went on the offensive unless people said oh you know should it doesn't matter if you're right or wrong you don't battle the New York Times and it's like the hell with that the battle between the reporter and the renegade CEO ended when the New York Times public editor concluded the reporting was imprecise but not done in bad faith but the story didn't affect his bottom line remember that loser comment from a presidential candidate about the 465 million dollar government loan it really feels good to have have repaid the US taxpayer that's that's really what's important here and and we're not we didn't just repay the\n\nprincipal we actually repaid it with interest and and a bonus pay and so ultimately the the US taxpayer actually made a profit of over 20 million dollars on this Tesla repaid the loan nine years ahead of schedule never short on optimism or confidence musk made a stunning promise for the nearly $70,000 car we're guaranteeing that the value of the Model S will be no less than that of a Mercedes s-class after three years I am personally guaranteeing that value and standing behind that guarantee with all of my assets not just with with Tesla he has guaranteed free charging for the life of the car and has expanded the charging system across the country you'll be able to travel all the way from LA to New York just using the Tesla supercharger network and supercharger\n\nsystem is free so it's not just free now it's get free forever that's the Tesla commitment his commitment to customers has paid off since its IPO Tesla shares were up more than fivefold SpaceX and Solar City were also turning profits and this is a biggest and most important customer but almost three quarters of our customers are commercial SpaceX says it has more than four billion dollars in revenue under contract but of all his companies perhaps the greatest success was the one addressing the world's energy need Solar City is now the largest solar service provider in the US and has more than quadrupled in value since its initial public offering in December 2012 Solar City has been very very impressive I mean there are you know thousands of people with\n\npanels on their roofs and and lots of big offices I believe eBay has solar city panels so it's it's having a very big very visible impact on the world he really wants to change the world and in my vision of the future that you'll have clean and renewable sources of energy feeding the grid and our all of our vehicles will run off that this is really the future it's something wonderful stories about Iran has a self-confidence that is just it's breathtaking and it's especially breathtaking when you think about the things he's confident about the idea that Humanity is gonna get to Mars that not just humanity is gonna get to Mars that but that he in his lifetime Elon Musk will get to Mars Crusader or canny businessman named one of Time Magazine's most influential\n\npeople in the world the risk-taking multitasking CEOs estimated net worth was six billion dollars in June 2013 divorced for the second time musk splits his time between his five sons his companies and thinking about the future just is it significant it really is question is all things I'm working on are they really gonna matter or do they have the potential for really matter [Music]"},"languages":["en"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mh45igK4Esw"},{"id":"world-energy-innovation-forum-2014-05-16","type":"interview","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pxS9mlZ7n8s","title":"World Energy Innovation Forum","titles":{"en":"World Energy Innovation Forum","de":"World Energy Innovation Forum","fr":"World Energy Innovation Forum"},"date":"2014-05-16","summary":"Musk discusses electric vehicles, batteries and the planned Gigafactory in a fireside chat at Tesla's Fremont plant.","text":"foreign it's beyond extraordinary to see what elon's accomplished already I know there is so much more to come from him as he continues to re-engineer our way of life on this planet or should I say in this universe ladies and Gentlemen please welcome me joining Elon Musk [Music] well first of all as I said this morning thanks for allowing us into your home and I particularly have such a busy time our goal over this next period of discussion is really quite a bit more about where you came from how you actually developed the person you came into to learn about some of the ups and downs and Tesla and its energy and autonomous vehicle aspects and then beyond that trying to figure out your thoughts on where the world's going it's prognostication so so you've\n\nbeen called a lot of things you've been called a Visionary an innovator the real Iron Man and I love the the world's raddest man um less collaboration take us back uh it's your Early Childhood how did you develop South Africa the college and the U.\n\nS and Canada to having this just bold and big ambition and what were some of the particularly influential moments where people at Jacobs um well actually I actually didn't expect to be doing this when I was I'll try to talk loudly so it's a good Factory it's okay no problem um so the uh I mean something to expect that any of this would happen um South Africa I noticed I just read a lot of comics played video games program computers created a video game with a young man yeah um wrote some games and sold them so I could get better computers um and uh yeah sort of both little rockets and um that did some circuitry all radios and everything um but um yeah I mean I just wanted to be involved in The Cutting Edge of technology in a book that whenever there's\n\nsomething new that's invented it's very often against Silicon Valley so when I was a kid I knew I wanted to Ultimate up here and we have the the Forefront of trying to create technologies that make it all better well a lot of people don't know this but actually when you started your first company you and Kimball actually slept at the company actually used in this house and business in those early days a true entrepreneur yeah we only had a uh between us I think maybe I think I had like two thousand dollars and people had like five thousand dollars so which make it lasts a long time that was like a total capital um and it was cheaper to just sleep in the office than rent an apartment so we we just sent me out this and went to the the showered at the YMCA\n\non page building El Camino yeah that for a few months so after that success you went on to another success with uh with PayPal and sold the company in eBay for about a million and a half dollars pocketed about 165 million dollars and uh for a lot of people the beach would have been attractive but instead he decided to tackle the world's most pressing challenges you know how did that unfold how did you decide to go into energy and space yeah so actually the it kind of goes back to when I was in college the there were I thought I think one of the things that were most affect the future of humanity and I still came out with like five days one was sustainable energy both production and consumption and the other was making life healthy planetary then there's\n\nthe internet of course and and then the other two items were rewriting chemogenetics and AI and I wasn't too sure about the latter two you know sort of a double-edged sword where it's not clear which Ed with a positive Edge I'm going to put a feedback from Netflix um it wasn't there was a positive Edge or the Negative Edge is stronger so um and I was originally going to start off working on the vector vehicle problem that's what brought me on to Silicon Valley I was going to go to um Stanford to do PhD and applied physics and Material Science to try to figure out Advanced Energy storage techniques for electric vehicles and then hold to we'll try to do something on the Internet because I figured the internet was you know it was really that the time was\n\nright for the internet prices like 95.\n\num I knew it would be something really transformative and I didn't want to watch that happen while I was in grad school right um I figured I could always go back so we're not different at Stanford and I think I'm still on the phone so I actually said I could come back and I don't have to pay tuition there's a lot of Stanford folks here maybe we can figure out a way to get you back in at some point yeah um so anyway so um so I kind of took a break from pursuing the the untributical thing to do a couple internet companies that you mentioned right and I think after PayPal decided to return to working on the electric vehicle problem um football tags and space exploration right um and yeah so you know and and didn't didn't sort of really plan on being CEO\n\nof two companies but it kind of worked out that way it is let's say quite quite a difficult thing I wouldn't recommend it well you know people always ask me to describe you what kind of the characteristics I observe and you just touched on perhaps the one that I was lead with which is you are the hardest working person I know that's been true from the dad had you and all the way through today um Elon Elon sleeps less than anyone I know and works harder than anyone I know you know when you think about this this doesn't just happen you have just you have literally put your blood sweat materials and that's not in the rear view mirror that's today um yeah um I mean I think it's sort of my obligations kind of require putting in a huge amount of time um and\n\nI mean I would like to reduce it by a little bit uh 20 or so um but like I mean if you say like a 90 hour week that's only 45 hours before SpaceX and Tesla it's not that much really important company basis so yeah but it ends up being quite a blood for on a personal basis um and um I mean I think that the first quiet part of it almost like like the thing about like the car industry um I mean the only two car American car companies that haven't gone bankrupt um are Ford and Tesla so the net the net here a car company is sort of you know the furthest thing from a national Monopoly yeah well you know it's interesting it's not just that when when you started getting involved in Tesla it was just at the beginning of people saying hybrid electric cars were\n\nactually going to be the wave of the future and so in so many ways you know what seems so obvious today wasn't at all in areas of all three of the companies you're involved with today and in Tesla's case clearly the people weren't championing electric cars but you saw that yeah um I mean I think probably the company uh at annual meeting will go through just recap in like the history of Tesla and how we started out and what makes the next um because I think this I love this opportunities to get like less than the list of time or um the uh I mean the Genesis sport for Tesla is actually a lunch in 2003 with um me and Jerry's travel right um one of the other co-founders and um and it was actually we were talking about like electric planes um and space stuff\n\nand then and then the population turned to electric vehicles as I mentioned that was like a bunch of interest of mine and um and it was what I was going to be working on at Stanford um and the JB had also worked on electric vehicles and he mentioned like a little company in Southern California called AC proposal yeah which created a t0 which is a like a prototype sports car um and so I got a good test drive with a t-0 and then I tried to convince AC propulsion to commercialize in t0 because it was it was a cool concept but it like didn't have a room for any safety systems or anything um quite primitive um but it's some of the basic fundamentals of what electric sports car could do so they deserve a lot of credit actually for um for Tesla like without\n\nAC propulsion I'm not sure I'm going to tell somebody who started but it would have been later yeah and then um after I said well okay well if you're not going to do that then I'd like to do it and they said well okay well there's some other people that also want to do it if it's maybe you want to you know join up with them and so we created Tesla and I mean interesting sort of little factoid like the in the beginning we didn't actually own the trademark Tesla Motors it was owned by some dude in Sacramento it's right um so we were like okay we're gonna have to change the company name because we don't own the trademark um you know about it around various names and one of the names was actually parody like that Clarity would have been my sort of second\n\nchoice wow no ironically there's a competitor company called faradays right um and the parody was the guy in advance and then Tesla invented the AC induction motor which is the type of motor we use in the the model 3 oh sorry about the the Roadster you know people don't often talk about the the history of Tesla people don't talk about it a lot today but actually we started out as fellow board members and the investors together and we were actually the fourth CEO of Tesla and we talk about some of the hard work those early days were uh for ones that actually you probably put as much work in as in those days to transition finally decided to take it over um yeah um yeah my initial goal when we created Tesla was I I was was just going to be kind of working\n\non the product design because I'm engineering and uh I figured it would allocate 20 of my time because Tesla and then um sort of tried as succession of CEOs that didn't work out and then I was like well either in 2008 it was basically the choice of either Tesla's going to go bankrupt before I put all of my remaining capital in Tesla before I'm sorry and more yeah it's borrowing money from friends and stuff so um so at that point I was like man I got like every all my ships on the table so I better you know if you've got all the chips in the table you've got to play the hand yourself right so it's like so it's like okay I got a BCU so you've come a long way uh since that time when you talk when I think about some of the homeworks of your success so a lot\n\nof things come to mind you know I think fiercely independent that you don't follow the herd and actually um I think one of the underappreciated characteristics is you're actually one of the best listeners of anyone I work with and take inputs uh from a wide variety of sources and ultimately make your decision based on it but incredible listeners that people tend not to talk about as much yeah the other thing about you is uh you've managed to recruit your grow table you have a knack for hiring phenomenal people sometimes unconventional hires you know think about your fear of recruiting philosophy sometimes these are people who didn't actually have those roles before I can think of a number of our Executives here accessing been hugely successful but they\n\ndidn't have a history of having done it as many times before but you saw the success of them well I think the the fundamental properties of um there's somebody uh really driven and smart and on it do they have a good feedback loop like do they um do they adjust their course of action based on their experiences or or do they you know think that they're right even when they're wrong so I think just um those are really I think the three things that are important like sort of driven fundamentally fundamental sort of brain power and um and then being self-critical and if those if somebody has those three characteristics they can pick something else up very quickly it's a great advice let's talk more about Tesla where we are today we need to think we think\n\nabout you referenced it there just haven't been successfully us car companies I remember when the company went public and the big news was first U.\n\nS auto OEM IPO in more than 50 years right of course you described the trend that's continued since then um you know what's what's the enabled Tesla it's such a young company really young in the in this with the spectrum of car companies so a little over a decade plus so um yeah um what do you think's enable Tesla to compete against incumbency um I think the main thing is that the incumbents are resistant to new technology and I mean generally There's an opportunity for new companies when there's this when there's a significant technology discontinuity some sort of Step change in technology is what um opens up an opportunity for a startup I mean certainly the world wouldn't need another card company that made gasoline cars or plenty of those um but uh\n\nbut no one was doing electric cars um so the I mean the reason we started as a put all the effort into it was that um not because we thought there was this huge opportunity in electric vehicles but actually because no one was doing electric I mean it was like everyone thought it was stupid um and the big company sort of was Dumb and it weren't really any startups doing it so so it's like a big company's not going to do electric vehicles then it has to come from a startup and yeah so that's the only option I remember at dinner you and I had with an unnamed very large Auto OEM CEO who's promoting that he couldn't actually create an electric car because it would cannibalize his business and would upset his employees dealer base um yeah um I mean I think\n\nbecause I mean some of them later did I mean I mean after we demonstrated the because the Roadster then Bob Labs kicked off The Vault program yeah which then also enabled the Nissan Leaf program so even though the Roadster was a very low production vehicle we didn't make very many of them it had a very leveraged effect in forcing GM and Nissan to do Ed programs yeah um and actually robots was kind of prepared us with the inspiration for the ball program so researchers are an outsized effect on the industry even in the early days which is one of the goals you've had since the early days yeah absolutely and I always thought that the biggest effect that Tesla would have would not be the cause that we've made directly but because we induced others to me So\n\nspeaking what's the transportation industry is actually undergoing massive change and perhaps nothing more important than autonomous driving and ultimately self-driving and talk about the impact that's having and going ahead on Transportation particularly given an unutilized asset base of the automobile insurance um yeah I think it's going to become common for cause to be autonomous a lot faster than people think um I mean well we I guess I don't know seven or eight years from now half of all cars produced will be fully autonomous wow something like that yeah 10 years for sure um and um it will just be like something that would be odd if it's not in your park right it's like not having GPS in a card yeah and I know your GPS um but but even bigger um it'll\n\njust be normal and what kind of impact does that have to the uh to the asset base I will certainly have higher utilization of the of cars I still think most people are going to want to have their own bar it's like most people want to have their own house and they don't want to sort of I mean in theory you could you know just do Airbnb and live in somebody else's house right full time but that would people don't like that um and I think I think there's this I mean there's a sharing this sort of whole sharing economy is significant but not the not available yeah um well I mean in order to solve a sort of energy problem you have to get the cost to be competitive with fossil fuels or post-conomically competitive inclusive incentives um I mean the fundamental\n\nissue with fossil fuels is that there's there's effectively implied in sense that there's there's no every use of fossil fuels comes actually with a subsidy yeah this is what people don't totally appreciate yes it is um whenever you're not paying the true cost of of a of an unpriced externality you're effectively subsidizing something it would be like if you could just dump garbage in the street and not pay for garbage pickup right um although that's obviously a substitute so every gasoline car on the road every one of them has a subsidy it's a subsidy of the public good um and so now the the right way to address that um gas gasoline car subsidy is with a common tax a show to any Economist they will tell you of course that's the right way to fix the feisty\n\nmechanism but passing a carbon tax is usually politically difficult particularly when you have um enormous loving power on a part of the fossil fuel industry and preventing that from occurring so then politicians usually choose the easier path of providing subsidies to electric vehicles which are usually um don't don't equal the implied subsidy of gasoline vehicles and then of course get attacked like what as though Evie is being subsidized but gasoline cars or not when your bad gasoline cars are receiving a bigger subsidy right of the public good than EVS are yeah this is a fundamental conceptual misunderstanding um so um you know at DBL we think we got to embrace policy maybe I'll do an extraordinary white paper on the subsidy of fossil fuels and works\n\nvery hard to focus on on the important policy objectives in addition to the technology that's been something you and Tesla and Solar City and have really taken seriously and spent a significant amount of time as you're advising our community and thinking about how we actually can push the agenda forward forward you know people talk about how great the cars are but we actually need policy initiatives to push the agenda to hit the kind of vision that you have yeah I mean it's the I mean the tough thing is that because uh gasoline is when oil is like so cheap in a crackling technology it's really driven the costs down dramatically what this effectively does is weaken the economic forcing function to transition to sustainable transport and to sustainable\n\nenergy in general so [Music] I mean it's really quite bad for the world I was I was encouraged by the Paris talks at least uh countries that have committed you know verbally to do to do something to sort of address the unpriced externality of changing the chemical composition of the oceans and atmosphere um but but it is happening slowly and um and then unfortunately technology technology advancements in the extraction of fossil fuels have improved tremendously driving the cost down so it is it is quite worrying for the future of the world um I think the the only thing that we don't hear is to try to appeal appeal to the people yeah educate people to sort of revolt against this right and to to sort of fight the propaganda of the Foster School industry\n\nwhich is unrelenting um one thing that happened was like after the IMF came out with their study showing them fossil fuels and subsides to the tune of six trillion dollars a year like Six Trillion per year um yeah then um some representative of the oil and gas industry um added up all the incentives that Tesla has received and will receive in the future which happens to coincide to with 6 billion but this this increase if you count everything Tesla will receive over the next 20 years okay it's like pulling somebody who has stuff and I think the loan that was paid back yeah including the loan that was paid back that was added in there as well right like what the pay that back so um with interest and I was like you know if your taxes went down as a result\n\nof that not up so the but it it they they wanted it to sound to start with a six so then so basically roughly multiple IMF study they started chopping that story around to journalists um you know Tesla's getting a six billion subsidy and it sounds a bit like the six trillion dollar subsidy because it has a 60 it's got a six Dimension and billion trillion you know it's kind of close by the same level and except I was a six billion over 20 years there's a Six Trillion per year [Music] and I got the LA Times to buy it on a says run that was totally nonsensical um and unfortunately that you know so that's like just one example of the sort of propaganda War it's important you keep fighting back and everyone needs to do their approach to do the same they'll\n\nswitch gears before we wrap up to just some of your other things about how you think and one of them you referenced it earlier you talked a bit about AI you know Ray Kurzweil talked about the law of accelerating returns where the notion that analysis of the history of technology is exponential not linear and over time the potential of machines actually to take over human life give us your thoughts on AI that's was a that's a complicated answer um I mean I think it's pretty obvious that machine intelligence is on a track to match the AC here at intelligence yeah I mean and uh you know one of the things about an exponential is that close up and exponential looks learning so zoom in it looks linear but actually if you plot the points on a curve it's it's\n\nthat obviously it's Financial um and there's some argument of I can say it's exponential what's the y-axis and I think you can arguably say it's a recursive y-axis so if in any given year if you think that AI is going to happen sooner rather than if if your predictions for the investment AI are converging with each passing era right then um it's fair to say that it is an exponential growth and that certainly is I think really the case facility Marine so so it's a really interesting question like I think there's even in the benign scenario there is tremendous upheaval in terms of employment yeah you have self-driving cars then what happens to the you know 12 of the population whose job it is to drive a car or drive a truck or something um I mean I think\n\nthese are really profound profound questions we're going to face in the future but it's going to go beyond your self-driving cars that's a case of narrowing on car's not going to take over the world what would do anything you know it's something it's going to feel like an elevator I used to have like elevator operators um and yes we'd like to train the elevator expert to um operate the elevator and now your scanner press button and we don't worry about it um it's gonna be the same thing for cars they feel just like that um but other other eventually if digital intelligence becomes superhuman which it's like I said it's on track TV then it will be able to do everything that we can do better at least let me asking to go back to SpaceX room because since\n\nwe gathered here two years ago what space sessions accomplished in the last few years it's not nothing short of Staggering uh the recent Landing has been described as perhaps the most significant event in the Airing space in decades but what's interesting is if you look out over the coming year the coming years perhaps even more exciting just get sort of a bit of a preview as to what's coming down the pipe September and what's going on at SpaceX yeah so we're aiming to to refine one of the land boosters later this year yeah and it uh so that that'll be significant we've got uh Falcon heavy which will be the biggest rocket the highest payload to orbits and Saturn 5.\n\num and um yeah that'll be that'll be a fun one to watch if you take them from Cape Canaveral I'd recommend recommend coming um you won't need to be close to really experience what it's like I don't need to be preempting um and uh and then actually we're gonna try to bring back all three boosters all three you know the side racers in the center core so it's gonna be like this or you know orbital gymnastics um synchronized gymnastics it's gonna be like I mean we'll see what happens is a tricky um that then next year if if schedules hold we'll be transporting astronauts to the space station for the first time and apparently the U.\n\nS assistant on Russia or transporting us towards to the space station so we're looking forward to doing doing that mission and then uh recent military contract when yeah we we finally won um Air Force launch which was a tough battle going and Lockheed had been fighting for years to prevent us from being able to compete so they kept getting these exclusive socialist contracts with DOD and finally it was opened up to competition no not the whole contract but just a few of them and um and everyone our first sort of um you're a serious outboard storage contract Subspace looking forward to doing a lot of launches with the airports in the future um and then we also announced that we're going to be doing our first mission to Mars and probably on the 2018 it's\n\nonly a couple years of working now so we send one of our Dragon 2 spacecraft to the surface of Mars using a heavy rocket and Dragon 2 is designed to land propulsively and it's it's got a heavy duty heat shield so in order to randomize do you really need a powerful heat shield that can withstand extreme heat and then be able to land repulsively so this doesn't be an important Pathfinder for ultimately the most Colonial architecture so I began by describing you as engineering our future and you've heard a lot of examples the way you're doing it but I think what's what's most interesting to me about watching what you and Tesla have done is what I talked about before is debunking this notion of trade-off debunking this notion that you have to compromise what\n\nyou want to accomplish with the world and what you want to accomplish from a business perspective and you know Tesla was clearly founded as a Purpose Driven company as with SolarCity SpaceX and you know a DBL we it's been built on the premise of mission-driven companies and backing the kind of impact entrepreneurs that you and Tesla represent talk about that that's such an important theme of your leadership and your philosophy about how you marry the two and how you're actually showing both with the products as well as the kind of companies you're involved with that it is not about trade-off or compromise but the first and second bottom line go hand in hand sure um well I mean I think generally I mean I consider sort of any any product that other people\n\nand Society find useful I mean I think that's a great thing too so um you know I wouldn't want to sort of you know claim some great morality or anything so I think anything that's done that's useful to other people is good so I mean I think that's like one of the hardest things is just being doing something that is useful in that maybe makes a difference it makes people's lives better also some products do that but you know the I mean the Apple battle for Tesla and SolarCity the real cool battle there is because of you know the reason amount of help like reading needed a lot of sort of entrepreneurial skills and part of civil you know linen and even others at SolarCity and the team we have here at Tesla um was that it's just fundamentally an economic\n\nuphill battle because you have um because carbon is not priced correctly it fundamentally makes the problem much harder it's like you're just competing against something which get you know which has a six trillion dollar a year subsidy the public good um and so that's just that's just really difficult [Music] um and um yeah so in order to overcome that Tesla we we were trying to make the car as compelling as possible even though you know it's a little more expensive than a gasoline car or equivalent capability or at least a little bit more expensive so um but we can overcome that much to make the car very compelling um and then still there's sort of harder because it's hard to get harder to get product differentiation on solar and um this whole industry\n\nit's been it's been a difficult really helpful industry um but but nonetheless I mean with a lot about it uh we get to uh you can make a viable company but it's it's just considerably hotter when the rules of the game um do not favor sustainable energy that's like a fundamental problem is that the way the rules are set up they do not favor sustainable energy and uh yeah that's that's something that we really need to fix collectively of news a few people won't need to fix that collectively and I I I'm sort of excited by what I see like the level of energy about this um with Millennials yeah younger people is I mean everyone can get it yeah so I do think it's it's a matter it's just a matter of time before um before this happens and the question is just\n\nhow long and in fact in terms of thinking of say the fundamental good of of Tesla's home City I would characterize it sort of fundamental good into what degree how many years did it accelerates uh yeah like electric vehicles and solar energy all that stuff would happen no matter what but it is but the fundamental good in historical context context can be measured by to what degree the the Tesla accelerate the admins in sustainable transport right now it's like if we were able to accelerate and find like a decade that would be they'll be amazing that'd be great","textByLang":{"en":"foreign it's beyond extraordinary to see what elon's accomplished already I know there is so much more to come from him as he continues to re-engineer our way of life on this planet or should I say in this universe ladies and Gentlemen please welcome me joining Elon Musk [Music] well first of all as I said this morning thanks for allowing us into your home and I particularly have such a busy time our goal over this next period of discussion is really quite a bit more about where you came from how you actually developed the person you came into to learn about some of the ups and downs and Tesla and its energy and autonomous vehicle aspects and then beyond that trying to figure out your thoughts on where the world's going it's prognostication so so you've\n\nbeen called a lot of things you've been called a Visionary an innovator the real Iron Man and I love the the world's raddest man um less collaboration take us back uh it's your Early Childhood how did you develop South Africa the college and the U.\n\nS and Canada to having this just bold and big ambition and what were some of the particularly influential moments where people at Jacobs um well actually I actually didn't expect to be doing this when I was I'll try to talk loudly so it's a good Factory it's okay no problem um so the uh I mean something to expect that any of this would happen um South Africa I noticed I just read a lot of comics played video games program computers created a video game with a young man yeah um wrote some games and sold them so I could get better computers um and uh yeah sort of both little rockets and um that did some circuitry all radios and everything um but um yeah I mean I just wanted to be involved in The Cutting Edge of technology in a book that whenever there's\n\nsomething new that's invented it's very often against Silicon Valley so when I was a kid I knew I wanted to Ultimate up here and we have the the Forefront of trying to create technologies that make it all better well a lot of people don't know this but actually when you started your first company you and Kimball actually slept at the company actually used in this house and business in those early days a true entrepreneur yeah we only had a uh between us I think maybe I think I had like two thousand dollars and people had like five thousand dollars so which make it lasts a long time that was like a total capital um and it was cheaper to just sleep in the office than rent an apartment so we we just sent me out this and went to the the showered at the YMCA\n\non page building El Camino yeah that for a few months so after that success you went on to another success with uh with PayPal and sold the company in eBay for about a million and a half dollars pocketed about 165 million dollars and uh for a lot of people the beach would have been attractive but instead he decided to tackle the world's most pressing challenges you know how did that unfold how did you decide to go into energy and space yeah so actually the it kind of goes back to when I was in college the there were I thought I think one of the things that were most affect the future of humanity and I still came out with like five days one was sustainable energy both production and consumption and the other was making life healthy planetary then there's\n\nthe internet of course and and then the other two items were rewriting chemogenetics and AI and I wasn't too sure about the latter two you know sort of a double-edged sword where it's not clear which Ed with a positive Edge I'm going to put a feedback from Netflix um it wasn't there was a positive Edge or the Negative Edge is stronger so um and I was originally going to start off working on the vector vehicle problem that's what brought me on to Silicon Valley I was going to go to um Stanford to do PhD and applied physics and Material Science to try to figure out Advanced Energy storage techniques for electric vehicles and then hold to we'll try to do something on the Internet because I figured the internet was you know it was really that the time was\n\nright for the internet prices like 95.\n\num I knew it would be something really transformative and I didn't want to watch that happen while I was in grad school right um I figured I could always go back so we're not different at Stanford and I think I'm still on the phone so I actually said I could come back and I don't have to pay tuition there's a lot of Stanford folks here maybe we can figure out a way to get you back in at some point yeah um so anyway so um so I kind of took a break from pursuing the the untributical thing to do a couple internet companies that you mentioned right and I think after PayPal decided to return to working on the electric vehicle problem um football tags and space exploration right um and yeah so you know and and didn't didn't sort of really plan on being CEO\n\nof two companies but it kind of worked out that way it is let's say quite quite a difficult thing I wouldn't recommend it well you know people always ask me to describe you what kind of the characteristics I observe and you just touched on perhaps the one that I was lead with which is you are the hardest working person I know that's been true from the dad had you and all the way through today um Elon Elon sleeps less than anyone I know and works harder than anyone I know you know when you think about this this doesn't just happen you have just you have literally put your blood sweat materials and that's not in the rear view mirror that's today um yeah um I mean I think it's sort of my obligations kind of require putting in a huge amount of time um and\n\nI mean I would like to reduce it by a little bit uh 20 or so um but like I mean if you say like a 90 hour week that's only 45 hours before SpaceX and Tesla it's not that much really important company basis so yeah but it ends up being quite a blood for on a personal basis um and um I mean I think that the first quiet part of it almost like like the thing about like the car industry um I mean the only two car American car companies that haven't gone bankrupt um are Ford and Tesla so the net the net here a car company is sort of you know the furthest thing from a national Monopoly yeah well you know it's interesting it's not just that when when you started getting involved in Tesla it was just at the beginning of people saying hybrid electric cars were\n\nactually going to be the wave of the future and so in so many ways you know what seems so obvious today wasn't at all in areas of all three of the companies you're involved with today and in Tesla's case clearly the people weren't championing electric cars but you saw that yeah um I mean I think probably the company uh at annual meeting will go through just recap in like the history of Tesla and how we started out and what makes the next um because I think this I love this opportunities to get like less than the list of time or um the uh I mean the Genesis sport for Tesla is actually a lunch in 2003 with um me and Jerry's travel right um one of the other co-founders and um and it was actually we were talking about like electric planes um and space stuff\n\nand then and then the population turned to electric vehicles as I mentioned that was like a bunch of interest of mine and um and it was what I was going to be working on at Stanford um and the JB had also worked on electric vehicles and he mentioned like a little company in Southern California called AC proposal yeah which created a t0 which is a like a prototype sports car um and so I got a good test drive with a t-0 and then I tried to convince AC propulsion to commercialize in t0 because it was it was a cool concept but it like didn't have a room for any safety systems or anything um quite primitive um but it's some of the basic fundamentals of what electric sports car could do so they deserve a lot of credit actually for um for Tesla like without\n\nAC propulsion I'm not sure I'm going to tell somebody who started but it would have been later yeah and then um after I said well okay well if you're not going to do that then I'd like to do it and they said well okay well there's some other people that also want to do it if it's maybe you want to you know join up with them and so we created Tesla and I mean interesting sort of little factoid like the in the beginning we didn't actually own the trademark Tesla Motors it was owned by some dude in Sacramento it's right um so we were like okay we're gonna have to change the company name because we don't own the trademark um you know about it around various names and one of the names was actually parody like that Clarity would have been my sort of second\n\nchoice wow no ironically there's a competitor company called faradays right um and the parody was the guy in advance and then Tesla invented the AC induction motor which is the type of motor we use in the the model 3 oh sorry about the the Roadster you know people don't often talk about the the history of Tesla people don't talk about it a lot today but actually we started out as fellow board members and the investors together and we were actually the fourth CEO of Tesla and we talk about some of the hard work those early days were uh for ones that actually you probably put as much work in as in those days to transition finally decided to take it over um yeah um yeah my initial goal when we created Tesla was I I was was just going to be kind of working\n\non the product design because I'm engineering and uh I figured it would allocate 20 of my time because Tesla and then um sort of tried as succession of CEOs that didn't work out and then I was like well either in 2008 it was basically the choice of either Tesla's going to go bankrupt before I put all of my remaining capital in Tesla before I'm sorry and more yeah it's borrowing money from friends and stuff so um so at that point I was like man I got like every all my ships on the table so I better you know if you've got all the chips in the table you've got to play the hand yourself right so it's like so it's like okay I got a BCU so you've come a long way uh since that time when you talk when I think about some of the homeworks of your success so a lot\n\nof things come to mind you know I think fiercely independent that you don't follow the herd and actually um I think one of the underappreciated characteristics is you're actually one of the best listeners of anyone I work with and take inputs uh from a wide variety of sources and ultimately make your decision based on it but incredible listeners that people tend not to talk about as much yeah the other thing about you is uh you've managed to recruit your grow table you have a knack for hiring phenomenal people sometimes unconventional hires you know think about your fear of recruiting philosophy sometimes these are people who didn't actually have those roles before I can think of a number of our Executives here accessing been hugely successful but they\n\ndidn't have a history of having done it as many times before but you saw the success of them well I think the the fundamental properties of um there's somebody uh really driven and smart and on it do they have a good feedback loop like do they um do they adjust their course of action based on their experiences or or do they you know think that they're right even when they're wrong so I think just um those are really I think the three things that are important like sort of driven fundamentally fundamental sort of brain power and um and then being self-critical and if those if somebody has those three characteristics they can pick something else up very quickly it's a great advice let's talk more about Tesla where we are today we need to think we think\n\nabout you referenced it there just haven't been successfully us car companies I remember when the company went public and the big news was first U.\n\nS auto OEM IPO in more than 50 years right of course you described the trend that's continued since then um you know what's what's the enabled Tesla it's such a young company really young in the in this with the spectrum of car companies so a little over a decade plus so um yeah um what do you think's enable Tesla to compete against incumbency um I think the main thing is that the incumbents are resistant to new technology and I mean generally There's an opportunity for new companies when there's this when there's a significant technology discontinuity some sort of Step change in technology is what um opens up an opportunity for a startup I mean certainly the world wouldn't need another card company that made gasoline cars or plenty of those um but uh\n\nbut no one was doing electric cars um so the I mean the reason we started as a put all the effort into it was that um not because we thought there was this huge opportunity in electric vehicles but actually because no one was doing electric I mean it was like everyone thought it was stupid um and the big company sort of was Dumb and it weren't really any startups doing it so so it's like a big company's not going to do electric vehicles then it has to come from a startup and yeah so that's the only option I remember at dinner you and I had with an unnamed very large Auto OEM CEO who's promoting that he couldn't actually create an electric car because it would cannibalize his business and would upset his employees dealer base um yeah um I mean I think\n\nbecause I mean some of them later did I mean I mean after we demonstrated the because the Roadster then Bob Labs kicked off The Vault program yeah which then also enabled the Nissan Leaf program so even though the Roadster was a very low production vehicle we didn't make very many of them it had a very leveraged effect in forcing GM and Nissan to do Ed programs yeah um and actually robots was kind of prepared us with the inspiration for the ball program so researchers are an outsized effect on the industry even in the early days which is one of the goals you've had since the early days yeah absolutely and I always thought that the biggest effect that Tesla would have would not be the cause that we've made directly but because we induced others to me So\n\nspeaking what's the transportation industry is actually undergoing massive change and perhaps nothing more important than autonomous driving and ultimately self-driving and talk about the impact that's having and going ahead on Transportation particularly given an unutilized asset base of the automobile insurance um yeah I think it's going to become common for cause to be autonomous a lot faster than people think um I mean well we I guess I don't know seven or eight years from now half of all cars produced will be fully autonomous wow something like that yeah 10 years for sure um and um it will just be like something that would be odd if it's not in your park right it's like not having GPS in a card yeah and I know your GPS um but but even bigger um it'll\n\njust be normal and what kind of impact does that have to the uh to the asset base I will certainly have higher utilization of the of cars I still think most people are going to want to have their own bar it's like most people want to have their own house and they don't want to sort of I mean in theory you could you know just do Airbnb and live in somebody else's house right full time but that would people don't like that um and I think I think there's this I mean there's a sharing this sort of whole sharing economy is significant but not the not available yeah um well I mean in order to solve a sort of energy problem you have to get the cost to be competitive with fossil fuels or post-conomically competitive inclusive incentives um I mean the fundamental\n\nissue with fossil fuels is that there's there's effectively implied in sense that there's there's no every use of fossil fuels comes actually with a subsidy yeah this is what people don't totally appreciate yes it is um whenever you're not paying the true cost of of a of an unpriced externality you're effectively subsidizing something it would be like if you could just dump garbage in the street and not pay for garbage pickup right um although that's obviously a substitute so every gasoline car on the road every one of them has a subsidy it's a subsidy of the public good um and so now the the right way to address that um gas gasoline car subsidy is with a common tax a show to any Economist they will tell you of course that's the right way to fix the feisty\n\nmechanism but passing a carbon tax is usually politically difficult particularly when you have um enormous loving power on a part of the fossil fuel industry and preventing that from occurring so then politicians usually choose the easier path of providing subsidies to electric vehicles which are usually um don't don't equal the implied subsidy of gasoline vehicles and then of course get attacked like what as though Evie is being subsidized but gasoline cars or not when your bad gasoline cars are receiving a bigger subsidy right of the public good than EVS are yeah this is a fundamental conceptual misunderstanding um so um you know at DBL we think we got to embrace policy maybe I'll do an extraordinary white paper on the subsidy of fossil fuels and works\n\nvery hard to focus on on the important policy objectives in addition to the technology that's been something you and Tesla and Solar City and have really taken seriously and spent a significant amount of time as you're advising our community and thinking about how we actually can push the agenda forward forward you know people talk about how great the cars are but we actually need policy initiatives to push the agenda to hit the kind of vision that you have yeah I mean it's the I mean the tough thing is that because uh gasoline is when oil is like so cheap in a crackling technology it's really driven the costs down dramatically what this effectively does is weaken the economic forcing function to transition to sustainable transport and to sustainable\n\nenergy in general so [Music] I mean it's really quite bad for the world I was I was encouraged by the Paris talks at least uh countries that have committed you know verbally to do to do something to sort of address the unpriced externality of changing the chemical composition of the oceans and atmosphere um but but it is happening slowly and um and then unfortunately technology technology advancements in the extraction of fossil fuels have improved tremendously driving the cost down so it is it is quite worrying for the future of the world um I think the the only thing that we don't hear is to try to appeal appeal to the people yeah educate people to sort of revolt against this right and to to sort of fight the propaganda of the Foster School industry\n\nwhich is unrelenting um one thing that happened was like after the IMF came out with their study showing them fossil fuels and subsides to the tune of six trillion dollars a year like Six Trillion per year um yeah then um some representative of the oil and gas industry um added up all the incentives that Tesla has received and will receive in the future which happens to coincide to with 6 billion but this this increase if you count everything Tesla will receive over the next 20 years okay it's like pulling somebody who has stuff and I think the loan that was paid back yeah including the loan that was paid back that was added in there as well right like what the pay that back so um with interest and I was like you know if your taxes went down as a result\n\nof that not up so the but it it they they wanted it to sound to start with a six so then so basically roughly multiple IMF study they started chopping that story around to journalists um you know Tesla's getting a six billion subsidy and it sounds a bit like the six trillion dollar subsidy because it has a 60 it's got a six Dimension and billion trillion you know it's kind of close by the same level and except I was a six billion over 20 years there's a Six Trillion per year [Music] and I got the LA Times to buy it on a says run that was totally nonsensical um and unfortunately that you know so that's like just one example of the sort of propaganda War it's important you keep fighting back and everyone needs to do their approach to do the same they'll\n\nswitch gears before we wrap up to just some of your other things about how you think and one of them you referenced it earlier you talked a bit about AI you know Ray Kurzweil talked about the law of accelerating returns where the notion that analysis of the history of technology is exponential not linear and over time the potential of machines actually to take over human life give us your thoughts on AI that's was a that's a complicated answer um I mean I think it's pretty obvious that machine intelligence is on a track to match the AC here at intelligence yeah I mean and uh you know one of the things about an exponential is that close up and exponential looks learning so zoom in it looks linear but actually if you plot the points on a curve it's it's\n\nthat obviously it's Financial um and there's some argument of I can say it's exponential what's the y-axis and I think you can arguably say it's a recursive y-axis so if in any given year if you think that AI is going to happen sooner rather than if if your predictions for the investment AI are converging with each passing era right then um it's fair to say that it is an exponential growth and that certainly is I think really the case facility Marine so so it's a really interesting question like I think there's even in the benign scenario there is tremendous upheaval in terms of employment yeah you have self-driving cars then what happens to the you know 12 of the population whose job it is to drive a car or drive a truck or something um I mean I think\n\nthese are really profound profound questions we're going to face in the future but it's going to go beyond your self-driving cars that's a case of narrowing on car's not going to take over the world what would do anything you know it's something it's going to feel like an elevator I used to have like elevator operators um and yes we'd like to train the elevator expert to um operate the elevator and now your scanner press button and we don't worry about it um it's gonna be the same thing for cars they feel just like that um but other other eventually if digital intelligence becomes superhuman which it's like I said it's on track TV then it will be able to do everything that we can do better at least let me asking to go back to SpaceX room because since\n\nwe gathered here two years ago what space sessions accomplished in the last few years it's not nothing short of Staggering uh the recent Landing has been described as perhaps the most significant event in the Airing space in decades but what's interesting is if you look out over the coming year the coming years perhaps even more exciting just get sort of a bit of a preview as to what's coming down the pipe September and what's going on at SpaceX yeah so we're aiming to to refine one of the land boosters later this year yeah and it uh so that that'll be significant we've got uh Falcon heavy which will be the biggest rocket the highest payload to orbits and Saturn 5.\n\num and um yeah that'll be that'll be a fun one to watch if you take them from Cape Canaveral I'd recommend recommend coming um you won't need to be close to really experience what it's like I don't need to be preempting um and uh and then actually we're gonna try to bring back all three boosters all three you know the side racers in the center core so it's gonna be like this or you know orbital gymnastics um synchronized gymnastics it's gonna be like I mean we'll see what happens is a tricky um that then next year if if schedules hold we'll be transporting astronauts to the space station for the first time and apparently the U.\n\nS assistant on Russia or transporting us towards to the space station so we're looking forward to doing doing that mission and then uh recent military contract when yeah we we finally won um Air Force launch which was a tough battle going and Lockheed had been fighting for years to prevent us from being able to compete so they kept getting these exclusive socialist contracts with DOD and finally it was opened up to competition no not the whole contract but just a few of them and um and everyone our first sort of um you're a serious outboard storage contract Subspace looking forward to doing a lot of launches with the airports in the future um and then we also announced that we're going to be doing our first mission to Mars and probably on the 2018 it's\n\nonly a couple years of working now so we send one of our Dragon 2 spacecraft to the surface of Mars using a heavy rocket and Dragon 2 is designed to land propulsively and it's it's got a heavy duty heat shield so in order to randomize do you really need a powerful heat shield that can withstand extreme heat and then be able to land repulsively so this doesn't be an important Pathfinder for ultimately the most Colonial architecture so I began by describing you as engineering our future and you've heard a lot of examples the way you're doing it but I think what's what's most interesting to me about watching what you and Tesla have done is what I talked about before is debunking this notion of trade-off debunking this notion that you have to compromise what\n\nyou want to accomplish with the world and what you want to accomplish from a business perspective and you know Tesla was clearly founded as a Purpose Driven company as with SolarCity SpaceX and you know a DBL we it's been built on the premise of mission-driven companies and backing the kind of impact entrepreneurs that you and Tesla represent talk about that that's such an important theme of your leadership and your philosophy about how you marry the two and how you're actually showing both with the products as well as the kind of companies you're involved with that it is not about trade-off or compromise but the first and second bottom line go hand in hand sure um well I mean I think generally I mean I consider sort of any any product that other people\n\nand Society find useful I mean I think that's a great thing too so um you know I wouldn't want to sort of you know claim some great morality or anything so I think anything that's done that's useful to other people is good so I mean I think that's like one of the hardest things is just being doing something that is useful in that maybe makes a difference it makes people's lives better also some products do that but you know the I mean the Apple battle for Tesla and SolarCity the real cool battle there is because of you know the reason amount of help like reading needed a lot of sort of entrepreneurial skills and part of civil you know linen and even others at SolarCity and the team we have here at Tesla um was that it's just fundamentally an economic\n\nuphill battle because you have um because carbon is not priced correctly it fundamentally makes the problem much harder it's like you're just competing against something which get you know which has a six trillion dollar a year subsidy the public good um and so that's just that's just really difficult [Music] um and um yeah so in order to overcome that Tesla we we were trying to make the car as compelling as possible even though you know it's a little more expensive than a gasoline car or equivalent capability or at least a little bit more expensive so um but we can overcome that much to make the car very compelling um and then still there's sort of harder because it's hard to get harder to get product differentiation on solar and um this whole industry\n\nit's been it's been a difficult really helpful industry um but but nonetheless I mean with a lot about it uh we get to uh you can make a viable company but it's it's just considerably hotter when the rules of the game um do not favor sustainable energy that's like a fundamental problem is that the way the rules are set up they do not favor sustainable energy and uh yeah that's that's something that we really need to fix collectively of news a few people won't need to fix that collectively and I I I'm sort of excited by what I see like the level of energy about this um with Millennials yeah younger people is I mean everyone can get it yeah so I do think it's it's a matter it's just a matter of time before um before this happens and the question is just\n\nhow long and in fact in terms of thinking of say the fundamental good of of Tesla's home City I would characterize it sort of fundamental good into what degree how many years did it accelerates uh yeah like electric vehicles and solar energy all that stuff would happen no matter what but it is but the fundamental good in historical context context can be measured by to what degree the the Tesla accelerate the admins in sustainable transport right now it's like if we were able to accelerate and find like a decade that would be they'll be amazing that'd be great"},"languages":["en"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pxS9mlZ7n8s"},{"id":"interview-with-auto-bild-2014-04-15","type":"interview","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FE4iFYqi4QU","title":"Interview with AUTO BILD","titles":{"en":"Interview with AUTO BILD","de":"Interview mit AUTO BILD","fr":"Entretien avec AUTO BILD"},"date":"2014-04-15","summary":"German auto outlet AUTO BILD interviews the Tesla CEO about electric cars and the company's future.","text":"get that water that is water I mean that side but you taste like water but your favorite drink is well I mean die coke is good is that if there's something that they put in that stuff that is you know you never get sick of it for some reason you know I have you account it's some infernal ingredient how many cones you your bottle - you have a day um well I mean I'm trying to cut down these days so maybe blech away from I mean there was probably times when I had like eight a day or something ridiculous like but I think these days is probably one or two so it's not too crazy okay and coffee I usually cut a two a day watch it so much I mean not really so but yeah I used to have but so much coffee and and you know died coke that it I get really wired and then\n\nit gets over caffeinated and it wouldn't be good okay yeah so yeah I'm kind of glad so I think more reasonable portions these days and I think you bring some so much coffee or Diet Coke because you work so many hours every day yeah how many hours do you work how looks a normal day in the life of elam must like well it's really varied quite a bit over time so the you know these days it's probably eighty eighty five hours a week for a while there was over 100 hours a week and that's just it's just - that's a very high amount of pain so it's you know the the difficulty in pain of of work hours really increases exponentially it's not linear so but when you know the financial crisis hit in 2008 2009 you know it was just every day seven days a week what you\n\nknow morning till night and dream about work yeah his host was terrible at the time there were bad dreams I guess bad dreams from days 8 yes yeah and at what time do you get up normally in the morning me it's usually about 2 7 7 okay but I go to bed late so usually it's I go to bed around 1 a.\n\nm.\n\nor so well yeah and you start day with a real breakfast or just with a coffee or with the water you know that also varies a lot I think it's probably true that if you that having a good breakfast is is a good idea but usually I don't have time for that so sometimes sometimes it's it's made for me but probably half the time I don't have any breakfast I had to also have like coffee or something like that one spot sure well I'm trying to cut down on the on sweet stuff so but I think I mean I think I probably should have like a an omelet and a coffee or something like that that seems like probably the right thing and sometimes that you have that and for lunch eat their lunch yeah yeah a lot lunch is usually served to me during a meeting and I finish it in\n\nfive minutes yeah that's a bad habit jitter I didn't that dinner is where the calories really come into play because there's you know if I have dinner meetings like dinner meetings are the worst because then you you know eat enough for like two people know those things because you have the appetizer main course and light stuff so business dinners are like the thing that really um you know where I probably eat way too much but you don't have problem with your problems with your weight I certainly could be slimmer I think what do you work out then um I know I work out once or twice a week I mean I said well yeah yeah what's or twice you should I should get more often for sure and what are you doing you run through the forest or and run through the forest\n\nno usually just uh like a little bit on the treadmill or on the end lifting some weights I suppose and let's come to my questions I have here is just 122 I guess and how much musk is in Tesla and hahaha and I believe is hundred percent you or of course definitely not I mean I certainly have a strong influence but I mean there are many people at the companies so SpaceX has 4,000 people now Tesla we just passed 10,000 people today so there's there's a lot of people that have had a huge influence on bullying company or companies more of an influence than anyone else but it is a big team effort from a lot of talented people yes you look for a CEO in former times for Tesla and force bags also I don't know for SpaceX but um you know the the plan I had when\n\nwe created Tesla was I wish I thought I would allocate maybe 20 or 30 percent of my time to Tesla and and then for SolarCity I figured 5% 10% of my time that kind of thing so Louis City turned out to be true in fact even better than that probably takes me less than 5% of my time on Silver City Tesla ended up being much more and unfortunately like the the first CEO didn't didn't work out and then I got sort of a temporary I mean I really tried pretty hard not to be the CEO like I could have been the CEO from day one because like people maybe sometimes don't realize that and but I you know if I did I just wasn't able to find the right person in the case of Solar City there's like a great team that runs it but it's really hard to find someone who who can\n\ngrow a company you know it's like running a company in steady state is much easier than growing a company and and then with Tesla it has people joined the team and investors were kind of dead they've been a few people during the team investors we're asking okay well how long am I going to be CEO and so I said oh well I'm committed to be CEO through the high volume production vehicle so two more years at least probably three or four three or four years yeah but at that point I would then have to consider what makes sense and I I would I mean I will never leave Tesla ever but I'm I you know may may not be CEO forever I'm just one nobody should be CEO friend if somebody in mind who could do the job already know worldwide that there's no nope no plans or\n\nanything like that uh right now I plan is just to you know for sure a PCO through the model 3at volume production of model 3 and the gigafactory and then evaluate yes and what else we is still the price you want to study found some donor that's a chapter 13 I three $5,000 and the same at Euro I guess for the European market um well it might be less if yeah for depends what the exchange rate is of course okay so yeah it's always a bit tricky like in the in the u.\n\ns.\n\nthe prices are quoted before sales tax and of course in Europe it's with v80 and it was like twenty five eighty and all that stuff so probably would be more like thirty thousand euros a little bit less than that and it should be on the market in two years time or through I'd say three to thirty from now yeah okay yeah I'm coming back to you looking for CEO when apart from CEOs when you hire people what kind of skills do you want them to do you look at listing people how do you started well I mean though that the when I interview somebody I really just asked them to tell me the story of their career and what they you know what are some of the tougher problems that they dealt with how they dealt with those and how they made decisions at key transition points\n\nand and usually that's enough for me to get a very good gut feel about someone and and what I'm really looking for is evidence of exceptional ability so that they face really difficult problems and overcome them and and then of course you want to make sure that that if there was some significant accomplishment were they really responsible with somebody else more responsible and usually the person who's had to struggle with the problem they really understand it you know they don't they don't forget you know if it was very difficult so you can ask them detailed very detailed questions about it and they will they'll know the answer whereas the person who was not truly responsible for that accomplishment will not know the details know a the it's not it's\n\nit there's no need even to have a college degree at all or even high school the I mean if somebody graduated from a great university that maybe in indeed that may be an indication that they will be capable of great things but it's not necessarily the case you know if you look at say people like Bill Gates or Larry Ellison Steve Jobs these guys didn't graduate from college but if you had a chance to hire them of course that would be a good idea so you know just looking just for evidence of exceptional ability and if there's a track record of exceptional achievement then it's likely that that will continue into the future what does like people like you and Steve Jobs have in common although gays of people like that what is it you have in common with them\n\nwell I mean those are pretty different personalities you know between gates and jobs and Ellison's and success well I think you know all all three of those work technologists but with different types of skills and their jobs was obviously very good with aesthetics and you know eat you even answer technology of course any really answer where people want it even when they didn't know themselves and he was not afraid to break boundaries but next say like gates would probably be better at you know sort of raw engineering and technology than jobs but not as good on aesthetics but I mean for these guys of the obviously very driven and they're very talented and yeah and they're able to attract great people to buy the company but any it did that like the the\n\nability to attract and motivate great people is critical to the success of a company because the company is just that's a group of people that are assembled to create a product or service that's the purpose of a company if your son wants forget this elementary truth and so if you know if you're able to get great people to join the company work together towards a common goal and and you sort of have a relentless sense of perfection about that goal then you will end up with a great product and give a great product let's if you will buy it and then the comedy will be successful yeah really it's pretty straightforward really yeah I mean yeah that's the reason for it you have a lot of talents if there any tell you would like to have you don't have singing\n\ndancing you see oh I know what you well I suppose I'd like to play a musical instrument that'd be cool I can whistle good whistling I can whistle what is your favorite song to whistle I don't I can I have like a whole bunch of songs that kind of randomly I just run around whistle randomly please ask me to whistle because it's like you know I mean I can whistle but like it's this is like yeah maybe not the coolest instrument to play yeah like I can whistle pakka bells cannon which is a tricky one really yeah if I'm not gonna whistle for a refit for you now because I'll be too embarrassing okay it's good time Neverland something for bowling all right oh man don't worry we want you we want you and how would you describe yourself what are the main attributes\n\nyou have um how I describe myself well I mean I seem to have a high innate drive and that's been true even since I was a little kid you know really had a very strong Drive sort of did all sorts of risky things for his kid that I like why do I do those things are crazy but so I think that's very helpful and I care a lot about the truth of things and trying to understand the truth of things I think so I think that's important if you're going to come up with some solution then the truth is really really important I think and yeah I try to think of I mean it's it's difficult obviously come up with like things that are praised for oneself you know or like it there's there's bad and good here but I think like sometimes they're just like the things that seem\n\nquite clear and obvious to me and I I I don't understand why they aren't so obvious to everyone so will you describe yourself as fearless I mean other areas when you seek people for advice and you do people with asthma I wouldn't say I'm fearless in fact I think I fear I feel fear quite strongly but I am if the if what we're doing isn't you know what I'm doing is I think it's important enough then I just override the fear so but it's not as that I don't feel I feel like more stronger than I would like what do you never go for risk uh well it really depends on the stakes if the stakes are high if it's really important then what should then I know we'll overcome the fear and just do it anyway essentially I mean it's Drive override sphere but I feel the\n\nfear it's kind of annoying I wish Asians Osia felt it less so yeah these all these introspective questions are interesting I get the ask these very often and then like I try to think like what is like an evident and accurate reply and somebody's a it's like it's hard to evaluate yourself on these things yeah which member you found it was the most risky nice dog well probably SpaceX I thought it had the lowest chance of success I mean I thought both Tesla and SpaceX would fail at the beginning you thought yeah sure really of course but nevertheless you put all your money in that I expected to lose it well technically what I thought was well I'll take half the money from PayPal and if I lose half of it that's okay but then of course the companies encounter\n\ndifficulties and then have a choice so that you like let the company die or put you know all the money into the companies and so really during where the companies to die so I put all the money in the companies yeah and then I had to borrow money for friends should pay living expenses yes and what went through your mind of 2008 when they last the forced back and the last it started what we assorted it was a terrible time yeah everything was going wrong at once three rocket failures in a row beginning and Tesla financing around was falling apart or fell apart the Solar City was having difficulties getting divorced it was really terrible yeah so I was I was very sad about that everything was perfect well took a while its base yeah at the end of 2008 the\n\nfourth launch worked yes which is really that was all the money we had but nothing more you know in fact originally I budgeted I thought okay we can do three survived three failures so take like we just barely barely scrape together enough to do a fourth launch and and then at the end of 2008 we got a big NASA contract really literally on December 23rd I think it was yeah so it went from like really terrible - I remember that Sunday before Christmas in 2008 thinking like that I could this is the closest I've ever come to a nervous breakdown I can never thought I would ever be someone who could have a nervous breakdown and I did I mean it was like I was I could I could see it like I could I was in within sight of it it's like this Lux this is terrible\n\nand then and then the next morning NASA called and said that weird one this one happened alternates next more yeah the next morning like literally I was at home and I thought I thought they'd all gone home for the holidays I didn't think if you would have said there was no chance of a call a few days before Christmas some people you know be on vacation and I kind of think so Wow in five billion yeah so what went through your mind when I called you a few um that was awesome I was like I actually said to the NASA guys that I love you that they've gotten that response before so so that was yeah the Monday morning and then I think it was the Tuesday night or the Wednesday night was the which when we closed the financing round for Tesla and that was like 6:00\n\np.\n\nm.\n\non Christmas Eve was the last hour of the last day when it was possible and we would have gone bankrupt a few hours after a few days after Christmas if if that grounded are closed at you flew for for the Nasser and for other yeah we've lost the satellites for commercial operators so SES in Europe and sorry of calm in the US and a number of other companies we've got a alarm here it seemed quite dull in the car maybe they stole our Dodge hopefully okay what was your best idea ever my best idea ever yeah this is tricky I suppose coming to North America was my best idea okay because I think these things would not have been accomplished you know almost anywhere else it's really hard to start a company but you know in particularly California Silicon Valley\n\nis very conducive to startup companies and yeah and so yeah you know whenever I read books in South Africa it would seem like the cutting edge of technology was in Silicon Valley and so that that's what I wanted to come and I wanted to move move to this mythical place okay and are there things you regret having done off I'm not having done so far well there's there's lots of things when life is short and there's lots of things that could be done that one can't necessarily do and these really are introspective questions I think it no I mean I'm overall I think I'm pretty pretty happy with what wait you know where things are it's hard not to be honestly I'd be yeah if things are in a good place right now and I mean I'd like to it looking ahead make like\n\nto see humanity go beyond Earth and have people on Mars that would be really great and to see widespread adoption of electric vehicles and renewable energy these are great things and yeah that I thought would be really really cool but is there like a business decision which you regret like what in retrospect I should have I should have bitten the bullet and been CEO Tesla from the beginning then that would have been you know that that would have been the smart move you know because we ended up having to essentially recapitalize the company you know and we went through a lot of grief so there would have been wise move I mean a some things are better with your with hindsight course you can say this decision on that decision tells it was essentially built\n\non to false ideas or started run for to false ideas one of which was that we would be able to use the Lotus Elise chassis to minimize the cost of creating electric vehicle and the other words that we used the technology from AC Propulsion a small company in California for the electric powertrain so you won't do the same mistake again so you start from from zero with this well we're I mean we actually use a lot of components from other companies so it's like the you know Bosch is a supplier of the ultra-long range ultrasonics and the radar and then the whole camera assembly and everything we do the camera assembly which we use a mobile ID chip and but with all of the software for integrating that we do at Tesla we met each other last year for the interviews\n\nand then you told me that you wanted to die on Mars not Warren haha after anything there I mean well it's not as though I'm dying to die on Mars but it's like if you're gonna die somewhere what I mean you know choice a choice be everything what should happen to ashes then like what do you do with you ashes I with my ashes I don't know I don't actually I'm gone I didn't care they do anything yeah I mean I guess maybe scatter the ashes on Mars that would be cool you know I can sure but I mean the the whole route sort of retired Maj thing was like it was like an reporter asking a question six years ago or something it's like we're gonna retire and actually said well I'm not sure I'll ever retire completely but if I were to retire somewhere then Mars would\n\nbe a you know a good good way to go I mean it in ideal circumstance I'd make one trip to Mars come back to earth and then and then when it's time to you know where you get really old then like ya go back to Mars when I'm like 75 or something and then you know you die there and good you know seems like yeah you're gonna die anywhere why not Don watts Yeah right go to space a red no yep and you want to sure I mean I'll probably go there and yeah like maybe three or four years yes yeah you would test it yeah okay what will happen first the tube from San Francisco to LA the Hyperloop or the first men on Mars I think the Hyperloop is more likely to happen for well you know it's a good question it well if you say that particular route I'm not sure because there\n\nare all sorts of constraints in getting permits to build a big thing but I think I would be I think there's going to be some company a group that creates a Hyperloop but it may be a different route and I know there's one company that's looking closely at the Los Angeles to Las Vegas because that's quite a popular trip to this and it's much easier to make that trip yeah make that route work okay what makes you happy well if I think if things are going well with family and things going well at work then I'm happy if either one of them is not going well then I'm well either half unhappy your facility unhappy but that's like I mean I think that's generally true you know if if things are going well on person life and work life then if you have been then one\n\nis happy talk about happiness I was good yeah I mean it's my 14th time so yeah so it's always good I can't catch people to come and check it out so I've been there this year so much oh you did go okay great what do you think to do yeah that's crazy it's like life-changing exactly see have you have you ever thought about fitting an art car I'd be built yeah yeah sure I've done three art cars one was actually both bolts on lip this is probably ten years ago was built on an Oldsmobile and it went by an old ultimate feel with a big wraparound couch over the hood until you're sitting on top of the engine driving backwards and so that was kind of a fun fun our car broke down a lot of course also feeling really improved a lot James Bond cars submarine transformational\n\ncar to the diamond um no I'm the James Bond car the Lotus Esprit submarine is it's in the Tesla design studio and no it's just it's it's currently just sitting there the what I'm hopefully gonna do at some point is we're going to create a sort of a replica but not quite because like if you look at the James Bond car it's not it's not technically possible to make that a submarine because at a transformative thing because the fins are right where the wheels are okay so like there's just that doesn't fit like it's not physically possible to the transmission but if you make the car about ten if you scale it up by about 10% and you move the fins just a little bit more towards the outer edges so that they're not like sitting right in front of the wheels then\n\nyou can make a work yeah so n+ site is probably good to preserve the original you know movie art essentially of the of the original car so yeah talk to my guys and we think we can make it work as a transformation car with those constraints yeah so it actually looked very similar like you'd have to look closely to see if it's different but yeah I think we fund to be able to you know drive up on the beach view that submarine car do you own other old cars you know I tell you that so there's two cos like these two gasoline cars that I that I own and not that many people know know about these but what one is a series 167 e type Jaguar roadster and that was the first car I bought when I actually had any money in fact when the my first company received an investment\n\nthe venture capitalists gave us a $40,000 me and my brother of $40,000 bonus and I spent thirty five thousand dollars on this car and it broke down on the way on the way back it was very sad like damn it I didn't even bake it home but that was a car when I was about 17 I was given for my birthday book of classic convertibles and I thought well you know if I could have reported a car one of these cars a book like there were there were two that I liked the most one was the Gullwing Mercedes but there's no way I could you know that was like millions of dollars and then the other was the series that the e-type Jaguar the serious one yeah I know you put it for the Mercedes and that you haven't voted yet I haven't I think it's a great design really great in\n\nthe you know and you know it's partly inspires the Model X so the now that might be a good one to buy at some point and the Patiala car that I've got is a Model T that a friend of my important gave me those things are hard to drive if you ever try to drive a metal Model T it's like not easy I really would be really were the controls are all totally different - yes the you know the like the there's no gas pedal it's like there's a gas that means you change the throttle it's other a stick on the steering wheel","textByLang":{"en":"get that water that is water I mean that side but you taste like water but your favorite drink is well I mean die coke is good is that if there's something that they put in that stuff that is you know you never get sick of it for some reason you know I have you account it's some infernal ingredient how many cones you your bottle - you have a day um well I mean I'm trying to cut down these days so maybe blech away from I mean there was probably times when I had like eight a day or something ridiculous like but I think these days is probably one or two so it's not too crazy okay and coffee I usually cut a two a day watch it so much I mean not really so but yeah I used to have but so much coffee and and you know died coke that it I get really wired and then\n\nit gets over caffeinated and it wouldn't be good okay yeah so yeah I'm kind of glad so I think more reasonable portions these days and I think you bring some so much coffee or Diet Coke because you work so many hours every day yeah how many hours do you work how looks a normal day in the life of elam must like well it's really varied quite a bit over time so the you know these days it's probably eighty eighty five hours a week for a while there was over 100 hours a week and that's just it's just - that's a very high amount of pain so it's you know the the difficulty in pain of of work hours really increases exponentially it's not linear so but when you know the financial crisis hit in 2008 2009 you know it was just every day seven days a week what you\n\nknow morning till night and dream about work yeah his host was terrible at the time there were bad dreams I guess bad dreams from days 8 yes yeah and at what time do you get up normally in the morning me it's usually about 2 7 7 okay but I go to bed late so usually it's I go to bed around 1 a.\n\nm.\n\nor so well yeah and you start day with a real breakfast or just with a coffee or with the water you know that also varies a lot I think it's probably true that if you that having a good breakfast is is a good idea but usually I don't have time for that so sometimes sometimes it's it's made for me but probably half the time I don't have any breakfast I had to also have like coffee or something like that one spot sure well I'm trying to cut down on the on sweet stuff so but I think I mean I think I probably should have like a an omelet and a coffee or something like that that seems like probably the right thing and sometimes that you have that and for lunch eat their lunch yeah yeah a lot lunch is usually served to me during a meeting and I finish it in\n\nfive minutes yeah that's a bad habit jitter I didn't that dinner is where the calories really come into play because there's you know if I have dinner meetings like dinner meetings are the worst because then you you know eat enough for like two people know those things because you have the appetizer main course and light stuff so business dinners are like the thing that really um you know where I probably eat way too much but you don't have problem with your problems with your weight I certainly could be slimmer I think what do you work out then um I know I work out once or twice a week I mean I said well yeah yeah what's or twice you should I should get more often for sure and what are you doing you run through the forest or and run through the forest\n\nno usually just uh like a little bit on the treadmill or on the end lifting some weights I suppose and let's come to my questions I have here is just 122 I guess and how much musk is in Tesla and hahaha and I believe is hundred percent you or of course definitely not I mean I certainly have a strong influence but I mean there are many people at the companies so SpaceX has 4,000 people now Tesla we just passed 10,000 people today so there's there's a lot of people that have had a huge influence on bullying company or companies more of an influence than anyone else but it is a big team effort from a lot of talented people yes you look for a CEO in former times for Tesla and force bags also I don't know for SpaceX but um you know the the plan I had when\n\nwe created Tesla was I wish I thought I would allocate maybe 20 or 30 percent of my time to Tesla and and then for SolarCity I figured 5% 10% of my time that kind of thing so Louis City turned out to be true in fact even better than that probably takes me less than 5% of my time on Silver City Tesla ended up being much more and unfortunately like the the first CEO didn't didn't work out and then I got sort of a temporary I mean I really tried pretty hard not to be the CEO like I could have been the CEO from day one because like people maybe sometimes don't realize that and but I you know if I did I just wasn't able to find the right person in the case of Solar City there's like a great team that runs it but it's really hard to find someone who who can\n\ngrow a company you know it's like running a company in steady state is much easier than growing a company and and then with Tesla it has people joined the team and investors were kind of dead they've been a few people during the team investors we're asking okay well how long am I going to be CEO and so I said oh well I'm committed to be CEO through the high volume production vehicle so two more years at least probably three or four three or four years yeah but at that point I would then have to consider what makes sense and I I would I mean I will never leave Tesla ever but I'm I you know may may not be CEO forever I'm just one nobody should be CEO friend if somebody in mind who could do the job already know worldwide that there's no nope no plans or\n\nanything like that uh right now I plan is just to you know for sure a PCO through the model 3at volume production of model 3 and the gigafactory and then evaluate yes and what else we is still the price you want to study found some donor that's a chapter 13 I three $5,000 and the same at Euro I guess for the European market um well it might be less if yeah for depends what the exchange rate is of course okay so yeah it's always a bit tricky like in the in the u.\n\ns.\n\nthe prices are quoted before sales tax and of course in Europe it's with v80 and it was like twenty five eighty and all that stuff so probably would be more like thirty thousand euros a little bit less than that and it should be on the market in two years time or through I'd say three to thirty from now yeah okay yeah I'm coming back to you looking for CEO when apart from CEOs when you hire people what kind of skills do you want them to do you look at listing people how do you started well I mean though that the when I interview somebody I really just asked them to tell me the story of their career and what they you know what are some of the tougher problems that they dealt with how they dealt with those and how they made decisions at key transition points\n\nand and usually that's enough for me to get a very good gut feel about someone and and what I'm really looking for is evidence of exceptional ability so that they face really difficult problems and overcome them and and then of course you want to make sure that that if there was some significant accomplishment were they really responsible with somebody else more responsible and usually the person who's had to struggle with the problem they really understand it you know they don't they don't forget you know if it was very difficult so you can ask them detailed very detailed questions about it and they will they'll know the answer whereas the person who was not truly responsible for that accomplishment will not know the details know a the it's not it's\n\nit there's no need even to have a college degree at all or even high school the I mean if somebody graduated from a great university that maybe in indeed that may be an indication that they will be capable of great things but it's not necessarily the case you know if you look at say people like Bill Gates or Larry Ellison Steve Jobs these guys didn't graduate from college but if you had a chance to hire them of course that would be a good idea so you know just looking just for evidence of exceptional ability and if there's a track record of exceptional achievement then it's likely that that will continue into the future what does like people like you and Steve Jobs have in common although gays of people like that what is it you have in common with them\n\nwell I mean those are pretty different personalities you know between gates and jobs and Ellison's and success well I think you know all all three of those work technologists but with different types of skills and their jobs was obviously very good with aesthetics and you know eat you even answer technology of course any really answer where people want it even when they didn't know themselves and he was not afraid to break boundaries but next say like gates would probably be better at you know sort of raw engineering and technology than jobs but not as good on aesthetics but I mean for these guys of the obviously very driven and they're very talented and yeah and they're able to attract great people to buy the company but any it did that like the the\n\nability to attract and motivate great people is critical to the success of a company because the company is just that's a group of people that are assembled to create a product or service that's the purpose of a company if your son wants forget this elementary truth and so if you know if you're able to get great people to join the company work together towards a common goal and and you sort of have a relentless sense of perfection about that goal then you will end up with a great product and give a great product let's if you will buy it and then the comedy will be successful yeah really it's pretty straightforward really yeah I mean yeah that's the reason for it you have a lot of talents if there any tell you would like to have you don't have singing\n\ndancing you see oh I know what you well I suppose I'd like to play a musical instrument that'd be cool I can whistle good whistling I can whistle what is your favorite song to whistle I don't I can I have like a whole bunch of songs that kind of randomly I just run around whistle randomly please ask me to whistle because it's like you know I mean I can whistle but like it's this is like yeah maybe not the coolest instrument to play yeah like I can whistle pakka bells cannon which is a tricky one really yeah if I'm not gonna whistle for a refit for you now because I'll be too embarrassing okay it's good time Neverland something for bowling all right oh man don't worry we want you we want you and how would you describe yourself what are the main attributes\n\nyou have um how I describe myself well I mean I seem to have a high innate drive and that's been true even since I was a little kid you know really had a very strong Drive sort of did all sorts of risky things for his kid that I like why do I do those things are crazy but so I think that's very helpful and I care a lot about the truth of things and trying to understand the truth of things I think so I think that's important if you're going to come up with some solution then the truth is really really important I think and yeah I try to think of I mean it's it's difficult obviously come up with like things that are praised for oneself you know or like it there's there's bad and good here but I think like sometimes they're just like the things that seem\n\nquite clear and obvious to me and I I I don't understand why they aren't so obvious to everyone so will you describe yourself as fearless I mean other areas when you seek people for advice and you do people with asthma I wouldn't say I'm fearless in fact I think I fear I feel fear quite strongly but I am if the if what we're doing isn't you know what I'm doing is I think it's important enough then I just override the fear so but it's not as that I don't feel I feel like more stronger than I would like what do you never go for risk uh well it really depends on the stakes if the stakes are high if it's really important then what should then I know we'll overcome the fear and just do it anyway essentially I mean it's Drive override sphere but I feel the\n\nfear it's kind of annoying I wish Asians Osia felt it less so yeah these all these introspective questions are interesting I get the ask these very often and then like I try to think like what is like an evident and accurate reply and somebody's a it's like it's hard to evaluate yourself on these things yeah which member you found it was the most risky nice dog well probably SpaceX I thought it had the lowest chance of success I mean I thought both Tesla and SpaceX would fail at the beginning you thought yeah sure really of course but nevertheless you put all your money in that I expected to lose it well technically what I thought was well I'll take half the money from PayPal and if I lose half of it that's okay but then of course the companies encounter\n\ndifficulties and then have a choice so that you like let the company die or put you know all the money into the companies and so really during where the companies to die so I put all the money in the companies yeah and then I had to borrow money for friends should pay living expenses yes and what went through your mind of 2008 when they last the forced back and the last it started what we assorted it was a terrible time yeah everything was going wrong at once three rocket failures in a row beginning and Tesla financing around was falling apart or fell apart the Solar City was having difficulties getting divorced it was really terrible yeah so I was I was very sad about that everything was perfect well took a while its base yeah at the end of 2008 the\n\nfourth launch worked yes which is really that was all the money we had but nothing more you know in fact originally I budgeted I thought okay we can do three survived three failures so take like we just barely barely scrape together enough to do a fourth launch and and then at the end of 2008 we got a big NASA contract really literally on December 23rd I think it was yeah so it went from like really terrible - I remember that Sunday before Christmas in 2008 thinking like that I could this is the closest I've ever come to a nervous breakdown I can never thought I would ever be someone who could have a nervous breakdown and I did I mean it was like I was I could I could see it like I could I was in within sight of it it's like this Lux this is terrible\n\nand then and then the next morning NASA called and said that weird one this one happened alternates next more yeah the next morning like literally I was at home and I thought I thought they'd all gone home for the holidays I didn't think if you would have said there was no chance of a call a few days before Christmas some people you know be on vacation and I kind of think so Wow in five billion yeah so what went through your mind when I called you a few um that was awesome I was like I actually said to the NASA guys that I love you that they've gotten that response before so so that was yeah the Monday morning and then I think it was the Tuesday night or the Wednesday night was the which when we closed the financing round for Tesla and that was like 6:00\n\np.\n\nm.\n\non Christmas Eve was the last hour of the last day when it was possible and we would have gone bankrupt a few hours after a few days after Christmas if if that grounded are closed at you flew for for the Nasser and for other yeah we've lost the satellites for commercial operators so SES in Europe and sorry of calm in the US and a number of other companies we've got a alarm here it seemed quite dull in the car maybe they stole our Dodge hopefully okay what was your best idea ever my best idea ever yeah this is tricky I suppose coming to North America was my best idea okay because I think these things would not have been accomplished you know almost anywhere else it's really hard to start a company but you know in particularly California Silicon Valley\n\nis very conducive to startup companies and yeah and so yeah you know whenever I read books in South Africa it would seem like the cutting edge of technology was in Silicon Valley and so that that's what I wanted to come and I wanted to move move to this mythical place okay and are there things you regret having done off I'm not having done so far well there's there's lots of things when life is short and there's lots of things that could be done that one can't necessarily do and these really are introspective questions I think it no I mean I'm overall I think I'm pretty pretty happy with what wait you know where things are it's hard not to be honestly I'd be yeah if things are in a good place right now and I mean I'd like to it looking ahead make like\n\nto see humanity go beyond Earth and have people on Mars that would be really great and to see widespread adoption of electric vehicles and renewable energy these are great things and yeah that I thought would be really really cool but is there like a business decision which you regret like what in retrospect I should have I should have bitten the bullet and been CEO Tesla from the beginning then that would have been you know that that would have been the smart move you know because we ended up having to essentially recapitalize the company you know and we went through a lot of grief so there would have been wise move I mean a some things are better with your with hindsight course you can say this decision on that decision tells it was essentially built\n\non to false ideas or started run for to false ideas one of which was that we would be able to use the Lotus Elise chassis to minimize the cost of creating electric vehicle and the other words that we used the technology from AC Propulsion a small company in California for the electric powertrain so you won't do the same mistake again so you start from from zero with this well we're I mean we actually use a lot of components from other companies so it's like the you know Bosch is a supplier of the ultra-long range ultrasonics and the radar and then the whole camera assembly and everything we do the camera assembly which we use a mobile ID chip and but with all of the software for integrating that we do at Tesla we met each other last year for the interviews\n\nand then you told me that you wanted to die on Mars not Warren haha after anything there I mean well it's not as though I'm dying to die on Mars but it's like if you're gonna die somewhere what I mean you know choice a choice be everything what should happen to ashes then like what do you do with you ashes I with my ashes I don't know I don't actually I'm gone I didn't care they do anything yeah I mean I guess maybe scatter the ashes on Mars that would be cool you know I can sure but I mean the the whole route sort of retired Maj thing was like it was like an reporter asking a question six years ago or something it's like we're gonna retire and actually said well I'm not sure I'll ever retire completely but if I were to retire somewhere then Mars would\n\nbe a you know a good good way to go I mean it in ideal circumstance I'd make one trip to Mars come back to earth and then and then when it's time to you know where you get really old then like ya go back to Mars when I'm like 75 or something and then you know you die there and good you know seems like yeah you're gonna die anywhere why not Don watts Yeah right go to space a red no yep and you want to sure I mean I'll probably go there and yeah like maybe three or four years yes yeah you would test it yeah okay what will happen first the tube from San Francisco to LA the Hyperloop or the first men on Mars I think the Hyperloop is more likely to happen for well you know it's a good question it well if you say that particular route I'm not sure because there\n\nare all sorts of constraints in getting permits to build a big thing but I think I would be I think there's going to be some company a group that creates a Hyperloop but it may be a different route and I know there's one company that's looking closely at the Los Angeles to Las Vegas because that's quite a popular trip to this and it's much easier to make that trip yeah make that route work okay what makes you happy well if I think if things are going well with family and things going well at work then I'm happy if either one of them is not going well then I'm well either half unhappy your facility unhappy but that's like I mean I think that's generally true you know if if things are going well on person life and work life then if you have been then one\n\nis happy talk about happiness I was good yeah I mean it's my 14th time so yeah so it's always good I can't catch people to come and check it out so I've been there this year so much oh you did go okay great what do you think to do yeah that's crazy it's like life-changing exactly see have you have you ever thought about fitting an art car I'd be built yeah yeah sure I've done three art cars one was actually both bolts on lip this is probably ten years ago was built on an Oldsmobile and it went by an old ultimate feel with a big wraparound couch over the hood until you're sitting on top of the engine driving backwards and so that was kind of a fun fun our car broke down a lot of course also feeling really improved a lot James Bond cars submarine transformational\n\ncar to the diamond um no I'm the James Bond car the Lotus Esprit submarine is it's in the Tesla design studio and no it's just it's it's currently just sitting there the what I'm hopefully gonna do at some point is we're going to create a sort of a replica but not quite because like if you look at the James Bond car it's not it's not technically possible to make that a submarine because at a transformative thing because the fins are right where the wheels are okay so like there's just that doesn't fit like it's not physically possible to the transmission but if you make the car about ten if you scale it up by about 10% and you move the fins just a little bit more towards the outer edges so that they're not like sitting right in front of the wheels then\n\nyou can make a work yeah so n+ site is probably good to preserve the original you know movie art essentially of the of the original car so yeah talk to my guys and we think we can make it work as a transformation car with those constraints yeah so it actually looked very similar like you'd have to look closely to see if it's different but yeah I think we fund to be able to you know drive up on the beach view that submarine car do you own other old cars you know I tell you that so there's two cos like these two gasoline cars that I that I own and not that many people know know about these but what one is a series 167 e type Jaguar roadster and that was the first car I bought when I actually had any money in fact when the my first company received an investment\n\nthe venture capitalists gave us a $40,000 me and my brother of $40,000 bonus and I spent thirty five thousand dollars on this car and it broke down on the way on the way back it was very sad like damn it I didn't even bake it home but that was a car when I was about 17 I was given for my birthday book of classic convertibles and I thought well you know if I could have reported a car one of these cars a book like there were there were two that I liked the most one was the Gullwing Mercedes but there's no way I could you know that was like millions of dollars and then the other was the series that the e-type Jaguar the serious one yeah I know you put it for the Mercedes and that you haven't voted yet I haven't I think it's a great design really great in\n\nthe you know and you know it's partly inspires the Model X so the now that might be a good one to buy at some point and the Patiala car that I've got is a Model T that a friend of my important gave me those things are hard to drive if you ever try to drive a metal Model T it's like not easy I really would be really were the controls are all totally different - yes the you know the like the there's no gas pedal it's like there's a gas that means you change the throttle it's other a stick on the steering wheel"},"languages":["en"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FE4iFYqi4QU"},{"id":"60-minutes-2014-03-30","type":"interview","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=52x0ukhE2Vo","title":"60 Minutes","titles":{"en":"60 Minutes","de":"60 Minutes","fr":"60 Minutes"},"date":"2014-03-30","summary":"CBS 60 Minutes profile with Scott Pelley on Musk's industrial empire spanning Tesla and SpaceX.","text":"60 minutes rewind comparing the Tesla Model S to other cars is like comparing an iPhone to a desk phone it is a technological marvel that scorches the pavement zero to 60 in four seconds Tesla is another revolutionary idea from the mind of Elon Musk a 42 year-old Silicon Valley entrepreneur who built an industrial empire from the stuff of little boy dreams fast cars and rocket ships musk is an idealist who told us he had to start his companies so that man could colonize Mars and save the earth his sister says it's like her brother traveled into the future and came back to tell us all about it so what is the future like apparently it's fast and smoke free the Tesla Model S is powered by 7,000 battery cells linked to an electric motor no engine no transmission\n\nno tailpipe as this company video shows the dash is dominated by a computer that's constantly connected to the Internet it has a fanatical following there's a waiting list that Elon Musk is trying to shorten building 600 Model S's a week in this high-tech plant in Northern California I have heard a lot of people describe you okay okay good I mean hopefully unbalanced hopefully mostly good how do you describe yourself I usually describe myself as an engineer that's basically what I've been doing since I was a kid I'm interested in things that that changed the world or that affect the future and wondrous new technology where you see it and you're like wow how that even happened how how's that possible how is it possible that Elon Musk could launch to impossible\n\nbusinesses SpaceX a builder of rocket ships and Tesla which could be the first successful car company startup in America in 90 years how did you figure you were going to start a car company and be successfully well I didn't really think Tesla would be successful I thought we were most likely failed but I thought that we at least could address the false perception that people had that an electric car had to be ugly and slow and and boring like a golf cart but you say you didn't expect the company to be successful then why try if something is important enough used to try even if you probably outcome is failure what's important to musk is reducing greenhouse gases which he believes threaten the world the Tesla will go about 250 miles on a charge and musk\n\nis building a network of charging stations where the driver pays nothing for a fill-up he hopes to make the stations largely solar-powered one day you can drive for free forever on pure sunlight that's the you know message we're trying to convey so even if like this is on the apocalypse and the grid breaks down you'll still be able to charge your car so there's a zombie apocalypse warranty yes and if you're running from zombies it's good to know the Model S one the highest quality rating in the history of Consumer Reports and has the government's highest safety rating musk maybe changing the car the way Steve Jobs changed the phone like jobs he's a perfectionist in the art of engineering his goal wasn't to show a profit but to reveal the possibilities\n\nit is a desire to discover that's also behind Musk's other line of vehicles only four entities have launched a space capsule into orbit and successfully brought it back the United States Russia China and Elon Musk this Buck Rogers dream started years ago when he had a nutty idea to fly an experimental greenhouse to Mars but he couldn't he discovered that the price of rockets was astronomical so now he builds his own I had so many people try to talk me out of starting her art company it was it was crazy what did they tell you one good friend of mine collected a whole series of videos of rockets blowing up and made me watch those just didn't want me to lose all my money he never did launch that greenhouse but now musk is lofting commercial satellites and\n\nflying cargo to the space station for NASA at a fraction of the former cost Musk's fascination with technology dates to his childhood in South Africa he was just found everything interesting he wanted to explore everything you know and knocked his teeth out because he was just falling off stuff came book two actually we spoke with his mother may sister Tosca and brother Kimball he's a guy with unlimited ambition ambition to do what not a typical type of ambition it's it's more he just needs to be constantly his mind just needs to be constantly fulfilled and the problems problems that he takes on therefore need to be can become more and more complex over time in order to keep him interested he was interested in computers early at the age of 12 he wrote\n\nthe software for a videogame and sold it against his parents wishes he set his sights on the software capital of the world it seemed like the vast majority of such things came from the United States I also like read a lot of comic books and they will seem to be set in the United States it's like well this is a good place I was where I gotta go this place he earned degrees in business and physics at the University of Pennsylvania and asked his brother to join him in California when we moved to Silicon Valley we had nothing so we actually lived in the office and we would sleep on the floor in the evening and go shower at the YMCA the next morning and then we would be ready to go before thee before some of our employees would arrive so they wouldn't think\n\nwe were actually sleeping any others in that office musk invented a program that gave step-by-step directions between addresses that's common today in cars and phones but in 1995 it was magic in four years he made 22 million dollars only in America right only in America I agree absolutely next he started an online banking firm that he grew into PayPal a system for making purchases on the Internet and you sold PayPal to eBay for what I was about one billion dollars so that that was it was good outcome a good outcome yes his share was a hundred and eighty million and he bet it all on Tesla and SpaceX but at the age of 37 he hit rock bottom his first rockets failed to reach orbit and an early model Tesla Roadster had quality problems in 2008 the rocket company\n\nis not going well you know had three failures great the car company is hemorrhaging money yeah and the American economy has tanked in the worst recession since the Great Depression right what was that you're like for you and I'm getting a boost by the way add to that that was that was definitely at the worst year of my life that terrible year was captured in a documentary called revenge of the electric car his plant was filled with flawed cars that couldn't be delivered holy mackerel Jesus we have like an army of cars here like Jesus this is frightening it's really pedal to the metal here I mean you know each month that passes is literally costs us tens of millions of dollars I mean we need to appreciate that to save Tesla must needed millions more from\n\ninvestors his fortune was gone when we'd call people and say hey would you like to invest they'd be angry that we just called it's like no it's lonely no no and knowing you know various expletives he was essentially broke oh yeah in debt more than broke more than broke yep I remember waking up the Sunday before Christmas on in 2008 and thinking to myself and I never thought I was someone who could ever be capable of a nervous breakdown and but I felt this was the closest I've ever come because it seemed pretty pretty dark the story will continue after this mark toward the end of 2008 SpaceX prepared its fourth attempt we were running on fumes at that point we had virtually no money so a fourth failure the fourth failure would have been absolutely game\n\nof a done done SpaceX bankrupt yes it's bad enough to have three strikes having four strikes it's really kaput but flight four was flawless in Musk's world it lit the darkness [Applause] then as often the week of Christmas became a time when little boy dreams are answered NASA called and told us that weird one a one and a half billion dollar contract and I couldn't even hold the components like I just look I just blurt it out I love you guys they saved you yeah they did financially and maybe even emotionally I'll tell you what that was that that was definitely helpful yeah two days later on Christmas Eve Tesla's investors decided to pour in more money so you were saved in the period of three days yeah by two completely unexpected events yeah Merry Christmas\n\nyeah absolutely that's for sure the Rockets haven't failed since his cargo capsule has docked three times with the space station capture is confirmed and in the California plant they're fitting seats for what they hope will be eventual manned missions SpaceX is also testing a rocket that can be reused softly landing on a column of flame another step on a longer journey I'd love to have SpaceX be the company that brings humanity to Mars and I see it while I'm still alive he's at SpaceX three days a week two days at Tesla and weekends are at home with his five sons from his first marriage and his second wife to Lula whom he met in London it all happened very fast we were we were engaged after I think sort of two teen weeks and knowing each other and I was\n\n22 and it was there were all these boys and it was which was the best part and it was it was fast and then we were in it you knew each other two weeks something before you got engaged what was so attractive he's very charming and definitely the most interesting and eccentric person I have ever met [Music] Tesla's stock has rocketed up nearly 500 percent but that's not based on the cars he's selling today that price is counting on the hope that Tesla will create an electric car at one-third the cost of the Model S which runs about a hundred thousand dollars this is what stands in the way this slab covered in plastic is the battery so this is essentially the bottom of the car the front wheels would be there the rear wheels would be right here it fills up\n\nthe entire bottom of the car that's right this is how it fits into the bottom of the chassis trouble is the batteries so expensive must can't build a $35,000 car with acceptable range to make Tesla successful he must reinvent battery manufacturing musk has just announced a five billion dollar factory to be built in the US which he says will make more lithium-ion batteries than all the other plants on earth combined Gamble's like that have led a lot of people on Wall Street to bet against it taking investment positions that count on Tesla's stock to fail but so far those pessimistic investors have lost a lot of money what is it about you that seems to invite skepticism well I think it's because we're doing these things that seem unlikely to succeed and\n\nwe've been fortunate and these thus far they have succeeded","textByLang":{"en":"60 minutes rewind comparing the Tesla Model S to other cars is like comparing an iPhone to a desk phone it is a technological marvel that scorches the pavement zero to 60 in four seconds Tesla is another revolutionary idea from the mind of Elon Musk a 42 year-old Silicon Valley entrepreneur who built an industrial empire from the stuff of little boy dreams fast cars and rocket ships musk is an idealist who told us he had to start his companies so that man could colonize Mars and save the earth his sister says it's like her brother traveled into the future and came back to tell us all about it so what is the future like apparently it's fast and smoke free the Tesla Model S is powered by 7,000 battery cells linked to an electric motor no engine no transmission\n\nno tailpipe as this company video shows the dash is dominated by a computer that's constantly connected to the Internet it has a fanatical following there's a waiting list that Elon Musk is trying to shorten building 600 Model S's a week in this high-tech plant in Northern California I have heard a lot of people describe you okay okay good I mean hopefully unbalanced hopefully mostly good how do you describe yourself I usually describe myself as an engineer that's basically what I've been doing since I was a kid I'm interested in things that that changed the world or that affect the future and wondrous new technology where you see it and you're like wow how that even happened how how's that possible how is it possible that Elon Musk could launch to impossible\n\nbusinesses SpaceX a builder of rocket ships and Tesla which could be the first successful car company startup in America in 90 years how did you figure you were going to start a car company and be successfully well I didn't really think Tesla would be successful I thought we were most likely failed but I thought that we at least could address the false perception that people had that an electric car had to be ugly and slow and and boring like a golf cart but you say you didn't expect the company to be successful then why try if something is important enough used to try even if you probably outcome is failure what's important to musk is reducing greenhouse gases which he believes threaten the world the Tesla will go about 250 miles on a charge and musk\n\nis building a network of charging stations where the driver pays nothing for a fill-up he hopes to make the stations largely solar-powered one day you can drive for free forever on pure sunlight that's the you know message we're trying to convey so even if like this is on the apocalypse and the grid breaks down you'll still be able to charge your car so there's a zombie apocalypse warranty yes and if you're running from zombies it's good to know the Model S one the highest quality rating in the history of Consumer Reports and has the government's highest safety rating musk maybe changing the car the way Steve Jobs changed the phone like jobs he's a perfectionist in the art of engineering his goal wasn't to show a profit but to reveal the possibilities\n\nit is a desire to discover that's also behind Musk's other line of vehicles only four entities have launched a space capsule into orbit and successfully brought it back the United States Russia China and Elon Musk this Buck Rogers dream started years ago when he had a nutty idea to fly an experimental greenhouse to Mars but he couldn't he discovered that the price of rockets was astronomical so now he builds his own I had so many people try to talk me out of starting her art company it was it was crazy what did they tell you one good friend of mine collected a whole series of videos of rockets blowing up and made me watch those just didn't want me to lose all my money he never did launch that greenhouse but now musk is lofting commercial satellites and\n\nflying cargo to the space station for NASA at a fraction of the former cost Musk's fascination with technology dates to his childhood in South Africa he was just found everything interesting he wanted to explore everything you know and knocked his teeth out because he was just falling off stuff came book two actually we spoke with his mother may sister Tosca and brother Kimball he's a guy with unlimited ambition ambition to do what not a typical type of ambition it's it's more he just needs to be constantly his mind just needs to be constantly fulfilled and the problems problems that he takes on therefore need to be can become more and more complex over time in order to keep him interested he was interested in computers early at the age of 12 he wrote\n\nthe software for a videogame and sold it against his parents wishes he set his sights on the software capital of the world it seemed like the vast majority of such things came from the United States I also like read a lot of comic books and they will seem to be set in the United States it's like well this is a good place I was where I gotta go this place he earned degrees in business and physics at the University of Pennsylvania and asked his brother to join him in California when we moved to Silicon Valley we had nothing so we actually lived in the office and we would sleep on the floor in the evening and go shower at the YMCA the next morning and then we would be ready to go before thee before some of our employees would arrive so they wouldn't think\n\nwe were actually sleeping any others in that office musk invented a program that gave step-by-step directions between addresses that's common today in cars and phones but in 1995 it was magic in four years he made 22 million dollars only in America right only in America I agree absolutely next he started an online banking firm that he grew into PayPal a system for making purchases on the Internet and you sold PayPal to eBay for what I was about one billion dollars so that that was it was good outcome a good outcome yes his share was a hundred and eighty million and he bet it all on Tesla and SpaceX but at the age of 37 he hit rock bottom his first rockets failed to reach orbit and an early model Tesla Roadster had quality problems in 2008 the rocket company\n\nis not going well you know had three failures great the car company is hemorrhaging money yeah and the American economy has tanked in the worst recession since the Great Depression right what was that you're like for you and I'm getting a boost by the way add to that that was that was definitely at the worst year of my life that terrible year was captured in a documentary called revenge of the electric car his plant was filled with flawed cars that couldn't be delivered holy mackerel Jesus we have like an army of cars here like Jesus this is frightening it's really pedal to the metal here I mean you know each month that passes is literally costs us tens of millions of dollars I mean we need to appreciate that to save Tesla must needed millions more from\n\ninvestors his fortune was gone when we'd call people and say hey would you like to invest they'd be angry that we just called it's like no it's lonely no no and knowing you know various expletives he was essentially broke oh yeah in debt more than broke more than broke yep I remember waking up the Sunday before Christmas on in 2008 and thinking to myself and I never thought I was someone who could ever be capable of a nervous breakdown and but I felt this was the closest I've ever come because it seemed pretty pretty dark the story will continue after this mark toward the end of 2008 SpaceX prepared its fourth attempt we were running on fumes at that point we had virtually no money so a fourth failure the fourth failure would have been absolutely game\n\nof a done done SpaceX bankrupt yes it's bad enough to have three strikes having four strikes it's really kaput but flight four was flawless in Musk's world it lit the darkness [Applause] then as often the week of Christmas became a time when little boy dreams are answered NASA called and told us that weird one a one and a half billion dollar contract and I couldn't even hold the components like I just look I just blurt it out I love you guys they saved you yeah they did financially and maybe even emotionally I'll tell you what that was that that was definitely helpful yeah two days later on Christmas Eve Tesla's investors decided to pour in more money so you were saved in the period of three days yeah by two completely unexpected events yeah Merry Christmas\n\nyeah absolutely that's for sure the Rockets haven't failed since his cargo capsule has docked three times with the space station capture is confirmed and in the California plant they're fitting seats for what they hope will be eventual manned missions SpaceX is also testing a rocket that can be reused softly landing on a column of flame another step on a longer journey I'd love to have SpaceX be the company that brings humanity to Mars and I see it while I'm still alive he's at SpaceX three days a week two days at Tesla and weekends are at home with his five sons from his first marriage and his second wife to Lula whom he met in London it all happened very fast we were we were engaged after I think sort of two teen weeks and knowing each other and I was\n\n22 and it was there were all these boys and it was which was the best part and it was it was fast and then we were in it you knew each other two weeks something before you got engaged what was so attractive he's very charming and definitely the most interesting and eccentric person I have ever met [Music] Tesla's stock has rocketed up nearly 500 percent but that's not based on the cars he's selling today that price is counting on the hope that Tesla will create an electric car at one-third the cost of the Model S which runs about a hundred thousand dollars this is what stands in the way this slab covered in plastic is the battery so this is essentially the bottom of the car the front wheels would be there the rear wheels would be right here it fills up\n\nthe entire bottom of the car that's right this is how it fits into the bottom of the chassis trouble is the batteries so expensive must can't build a $35,000 car with acceptable range to make Tesla successful he must reinvent battery manufacturing musk has just announced a five billion dollar factory to be built in the US which he says will make more lithium-ion batteries than all the other plants on earth combined Gamble's like that have led a lot of people on Wall Street to bet against it taking investment positions that count on Tesla's stock to fail but so far those pessimistic investors have lost a lot of money what is it about you that seems to invite skepticism well I think it's because we're doing these things that seem unlikely to succeed and\n\nwe've been fortunate and these thus far they have succeeded"},"languages":["en"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=52x0ukhE2Vo"},{"id":"los-angeles-world-affairs-council-2013-11-18","type":"interview","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ODpuYSG4eQc","title":"Los Angeles World Affairs Council","titles":{"en":"Los Angeles World Affairs Council","de":"Los Angeles World Affairs Council","fr":"Los Angeles World Affairs Council"},"date":"2013-11-18","summary":"Onstage conversation on inventing the future across SpaceX, Tesla and energy.","text":"[Music] thank you for doing this I know today was a busy day at the office yeah I guess every day is a busy day at the office when you're running to big companies some are more intense than others this is on the more intense side um let's let's talk about Tesla and if one were to believe everything one reads in the Press which I don't as a former journalist the recent fires in the Tesla cars sound like the Hindenberg disaster in 1937 right the humanity um reality is somewhat different tell us tell us what really happened there uh yeah um so I mean I think first of all that it's fair for uh a new technology to uh receive more scrutiny than than than older Technologies because it should be held to a higher standard but there's some reasonable limit to to\n\nwhat that uh increased standard should be and I mean since since the model S went into production about a year and a half ago there've been about a quarter million gasoline carf fires in the us um about 400 deaths 1,200 serious injuries um our Three Fires which caused no injury um received more headline news than the other quarter million combined that seems like an unreasonable ratio and I believe all three owners of those cars who crashed wanted to get another one yes right exactly it's like don't take my word for it like they they that that was like I said well how how soon can they get a loaner car until the insurance thing gets figured out and you so it was we gave him one right away but um yeah I mean that's the asset test like do does the guy that\n\nwas that experienced the fire does he want to have that same car again you feel safe in um stock price down again today 10% do you care about that I mean it's it kind of sucks running a public company um yeah yeah I mean the stock goes through these huge gations um and uh yeah for for like seemingly arbitrary reasons uh and then I'm asked to explain why it changed I'm like I have no idea which should be pointed out it's up 300% on the year yeah right I mean on balance that's still still good um but I mean when the stock price is way higher and people ask me what I think think of valuation I said well I think it's probably more than we have a right to deserve we'll try to get there in the long term and I think we will and probably exceed it but uh I would\n\nnot try to justify that a company with a little over $2 billion Revenue should be worth $22 billion in market cap that does seem pretty high to me you know it's so yeah and it's fair to say you wouldn't be there without government subsidy well I think it would have taken longer so the Ian there's a slight misperception about the history of Tesla which is that that the the government funding was pivotal it was an accelerant but it was not pivotal the the really pivotal thing uh point was an investment from Daimler in 2009 early 2009 when there was I I I basically spent all the money I had and we had one company that was willing to in invest or one entity that was willing to invest period and that was dla and if they hadn't come in with that investment\n\nwe would definitely be dead um fortunately bankrupt finished yeah gone um and uh fortunately they they did and we've done a number of vehicle programs that Dio there the uh Mercedes bclass which is uh not currently produced in the US but it's very popular in Europe and other parts of the world will be coming to the US and that'll have a Tesla battery pack and power train it'll be the largest electric vehicle program in down the history uh so that uh you know so got a great relationship they they've been a great great supporter um how about self-drive version of Tesla um I do think that's an important technology although uh the the difficulty increases exponentially to get to fully self-driving um to cover all the corner cases um so I think we can get\n\nto maybe 90% of miles driven being autopilot as we call it because using the sort of aircraft analogy um I think we'll get there pretty soon maybe in a few years but uh then covering that last 10% is really difficult and and so getting from 90% to 99 then to 99.\n\n9 and then I mean ultimately to be truly self-driving like you can fall asleep and the car arrives at your destination uh which would be really great some people do already by the way yeah exactly um they die yeah um that that that's that just it just I think you probably need like 69 Z liability um like the standard would be actually way higher than a than the safety of of a person probably by a factor of 10 or 100 you in order for people to be comfortable uh or otherwise well like this fire thing you know just like a car is basically the safest car you could possibly drive if you care about fires um and and that that's not the impression one would have reading the headlines you would have sort of the opposite impression and so for self self-driving\n\nor autopilot um yeah hopefully the media doesn't do do the same thing same like Mega disproportionate response but uh but I do think that it should be held to a standard that's maybe like 10 times better than a person and I know Google is working on this too 10 years more or less yeah um I I mean I think that the the right path is probably a little different from what Google is pursuing um and uh Larry Page is a all friend of mine I've known him this before he got Venture funing for Google um and I think he's a really brilliant guy but uh I mean it's it's not Google is isn't focusing on on on autonomous cars whereas it it's going to be a pretty significant Focus for Tesla and from our standpoint it it only matters if the autopilot capability is does not\n\nresult in in a substantial cost increase to the car and the the way the Google sensor Suite is set up it's like it like 60 Grand you know I mean that's like a lot I want to ask you about risk-taking um because there's a theory that entrepreneurs who hit it out of the park one time make that Billion Dollar Plus company work right they reluctant to do it again not because they're afraid of losing their money but because they feel if they were to to fail a second time round then in their own minds maybe they would think well the first time it was just luck it wasn't really my own skill or my own sense of how to run a business but not only did you well you Rose PayPal came up to 1.\n\n5 billion you got out of that not only did you invest again you invest again twice not only that but you chose probably two of the most risky Capital intensive Industries to go with rocket technology which is basically a bomb right directed up yeah and then cars which are you know we know what's happening Detroit yeah um so what is it that that motivates there to do that to go through The Crucible again two times again yeah I'm not sure it was the right decision but um so far so good yeah um it's it's it's much less fun than it than it may appear uh but um I mean the case of what I thought of I would do was start and run SpaceX then and then create a electric car company with with a few other people work just but just like apply 20% of my time and work\n\non the product design um because I'm like my main thing is is engineering and design so um that yeah that was um an illusion uh so uh yeah and um and then I I don't really have any choice but just to to apply a ton of time to Tesla or the company would be you know definitely dead so um but the other way to do it you could have stayed in Silicon Valley started another few internet companies made oh yeah billion dollars and then you could have bought krysler and probably bought NASA too and you wouldn't have to start from scratch that seems too easy yeah um all right we'll move on I don't I don't really want to it's not point is not to sort of own a car company it but rather to accelerate the Advent of sustainable transport and um it seemed like it would\n\nbe difficult let's talk about SpaceX SpaceX you have said you started with the specific intention of getting to Mars uh yeah it well the Argin of SpaceX uh was was actually not or it my interest in Spa my inial thought in space was that uh it wasn't possible to create a company um and I mistakenly thought that uh the reason that we had not sent people to Ms was because we' lost the will to explore or something or like May that and I thought well maybe that needs to be reignited and so came with this idea to do a basically a philanthropic mission to M with with a 100% probability of losing all the money um in order to reignite interest in that goal um but after after a while I realized that's that was actually that was a mistake I mean United States is\n\nis a nation of explorers you know came here from other parts of the world um I think more than any other country is a distillation of the human Spirit of exploration there there's no lack of will the but people need to believe that there's a way uh that that a way that's feasible and and that it's not going to bankrupt the country and their living standard will be won't be materially affected you know if and then I think they're super super keen on on that that goal now as you look out whatever we're talking 10 15 20 years to get to Mars it's not just rocket technology and and you've talked about reusable rocket technology it's also how you Shield people from radiation it's a 10 12 month trip what you do when they arrive you know how are they going to\n\nlive there are you is that something that you want to work on too or will you partner with other companies how do you how do you see that playing out over the next decade well I actually think the the the technology required to live on M is not not particularly difficult um but but but getting there is is really difficult uh uh I mean it's like hundreds of millions of miles um to get to Death Valley yeah exactly to get to a place that kind of looks like Arizona you know uh like a cold version of Arizona with not quite as much water um so um I mean at least that that's that's my best my my guess is I I think if we can if we can get there the technology required to live there will is is not a not a not a really big challenge I mean U Mars has some advantages\n\nit's got a it's it's quite sort of earthlike in in some ways it's got a rotational period of 24 and 1 half hours by far the closest of any other planet um the atmosphere is carbon dioxide uh now it's it's not it's at a low pressure but if you were to have a transparent Dome uh you you all you'd need is a is a pump uh and some and some fertilizer and you could grow plants on Ms the plants would convert the CO2 to oxygen um the other thing that's been big in the news recently is the hyperloop um which you have sketched out you estimate from LA to San Francisco in 35 minutes yeah you could push that a little bit but well I'd be happy if I could get from Santa Monica to downtown I know I know you have your personal issues with the 405 the 405 is like this\n\nis like the most brutal construction project I've ever personally witnessed I mean it's like mindboggling um but I I also know that so you sketch this out but I know that your your your plans for the hyperloop have been put into some pretty sophisticated simulation technology yeah and it looks like it actually might work am I right yeah um and and we did run simulations at SpaceX and Tesla uh so you know we you know we thought it would work but I mean I actually don't think it's particularly like I mean I I think I think it's like the the engineering of it that that it would work is is actually pretty pretty obvious honestly but I mean it's so I think the larger issues are political you know getting the political support to do something like that and\n\nuh and then uh you know making sure the economics pan out um and uh yeah I hope someone does it because I think it would be cool I mean it' be great to to have something like that it's just like it doesn't seem like our mass transportation is getting better it seems to be kind of getting worse so that's that's not a good future you said something you hope somebody else would do it I'm curious what makes you really so unique is not only your ability to dream big but to execute there are lots of utopian thinkers out there but they cannot execute um but there are some other people who can do good things and I'm wondering what seems to motivate you you see things that frustrate you or you think are are not as good as you like and then you try and fix them\n\nyou've worked on on solar power you've worked on electric cars and and on interplanetary space travel um I'm wondering what are the things about America and about the world for that matter would you like to see fixed either by a company you might do yourself or by some of a smart entrepreneur what what what else out there is feasible you know we all want to get rid of world poverty and and get rid of childhood diseases but but what what problems out there can feasibly be fix say in our lifetimes well I mean I think first of all um the world's actually pretty great right now uh I mean arguably better than any point in history um and this this is sometimes uh lost if you read the newspapers they're they're like a a ification of all the world's problemes\n\nlike I mean newspapers seem to be attempting to answer the question what was the worst thing that happened on Earth today yeah and it's right if it bleeds it leads yeah and and it's like okay I mean and I think there's there is kind of a evolutionary reason for that because it makes more sense to like you want to prioritize danger over reward or or or because it's you if you get eaten by the lion it's game over but you know if you if you forget where you left some snack that's that's okay I mean you you know so so there's a it's it's it's not quite the same in terms of the risk reward balance but we didn't evolve with newspapers uh and and and Global media so like our brains sort of having a fear response to a lot a bunch of dangers that are extremely\n\nunlikely to ever affect us on but yeah just yeah you have uh I believe about 3,000 people at Tesla we have six 6,000 yeah 6,000 I'm my I'm well informed and SpaceX is uh is 3500 so that's a massive a glomeration of engineering Talent huge yeah if if if if I could take the metaphor of a ship how much time do you have to go down into the engine room roll up your sleeves get your hands dirty and fix stuff as an engineer and how much time do you spend on the bridge steering and looking at the at the distant Horizon well not a lot on that last Point uh I mean it's uh I mean there there's a constant flurry of executional challenges um and so I try to triage my time according to what would be best for the companies uh and and still you know have some time to\n\nsee my kids you know because I want to miss them growing up so you know it can vary from big issues to things that seem small but actually could have a really big impact um so I mean it's it's all the way from design Aesthetics to uh the details of of say the vehicle functionality or in the case of the rocket uh the you know the avionics propulsion system and uh airframe I mean the rocket is kind of a has has more more of a concentrated pucker Factor um because of you got it's you got these launches and and um least of the car you can do a recoil or like do a software update that's not going to happen with the rocket so it's like passing grade is 100% uh which is induces anxiety you know how do you handle launch anxiety when you're actually waiting the\n\ncountdown we we saw one here well the the these ones actually I mean they're this this I have quite a lot of anxiety uh because always think oh there must be something that we did wrong and is there anything I could have done to prevent this hypothetical thing from from Bad Thing from occurring um I mean the last um roughly 10 launchers have have have worked uh but the but the the three launchers we started off with did not so the the by far the worst uh emotional stress was the the fourth launch of Falcon 1 because the first three launchers did not make it to orbit they got they got to sort of space on launches two and three but they didn't get to full overal velocity and uh and I I when I started out I figured I would have enough money for three three\n\nlaunches oops Yeah oops so I was it was we squeaked by on the fourth fourth one um we sent out a link today I don't know if how many of you saw it but it's of you using a your hands uh as 3D molding sort of tools for stuff you're doing on a computer screen and it's a rocket engine that you're able to manipulate with your hands um and I know that you have told John favro who produced or directed Iron Man that that was the inspiration because we see Tony Stark doing this the movie absolutely um and I know also you know I've read a bit Isaac azimoff's Foundation series you've also said it's been inspiration so I'm wondering fan of azimov actually when when you're on The Cutting Edge of technology today in the fields that you're in do you feel you've almost\n\ngot one foot in science fiction is that is do you do you have to be that far ahead well well you have to um imagine and outcome in order to head in that direction um and science fiction explores a lot of different ideas so um it can be you know helpful as a source of inspiration um and and you know like books TV shows movies I they're all uh I think sources of inspiration um I mean most of the movies and TV shows that space are totally wrong uh but uh but they have interesting ideas like the Star Trek Communicator um was uh an inspiration for the cell phone yeah with the flip right right yeah exactly um I'm GNA in fact the weird thing is like like the like the phones we have in our pocket vastly exceed what was on stock Trek we're going to go to ask some\n\nof our students um some questions but first one more um I saw I'm a big James Bond fan he just bought the Lotus s spre that they used in um the spy who love me which goes underwater yeah and you're going to make that work so it's it's definitely a backround of project okay but my question is when do we get to see a functioning version of the Millennium Falcon that's a tricky one because it's it's not actually the right shape um uh oh it's I mean not to George Lucas yeah I mean the Falcon 9 our Falcon roer was uh named after the Millennium Falcon even though it looks nothing like it um and uh yeah I mean yeah you that's not the shape you'd want for Miss B ship really okay so if we can swing the camera to our student tables we get a couple of questions\n\nfrom there and then I'll go to the written questions from the rest of the audience so here we go good evening sir my name's Ariel Haus I'm from vonck century referring to Merlin 9 does basx have a working prototype and when will it be ready to launch uh well Merin is the the name of our our engine um so and falcon9 is the name of the rocket um and we uh we've done um several launches of of falcon9 um and an important Milestone happened a few months ago which was the the launch of the next generation Falcon line which is designed to be able to return uh and land at the Launchpad um and um came we came close on the initial Mission but not didn't quite get there uh we need to make a few few corrections but I think we we've got a good chance of getting there\n\nnext year okay let's go for another one there hi I'm Kennedy Green from Harvard weslake so I've seen you speak at a TED Talk and I remember you spoke pretty emphatically about the success of your Innovations and how you kind of take a physics approach where you take the idea and boil it down to its Basics and from there start to build up so can you talk about an example where you use that process um well I think you know an important thing in in uh Innovation or trying to create new things is is is to try really hard to to do that um which may sound incredibly obvious but uh that's what I find is is most often what people don't do they actually didn't didn't try super hard to come up with something new um and and it is helpful to have cross-pollination\n\nof Industries um I mean it's been quite difficult to run SpaceX and Tesla but there has been good ideas you know if since I got both in my mind space this this good ideaas is going back and forth the um for example on the car with respect to the car the model S is the only all aluminum body en Chanty car made in North America and very few cars are are all aluminum in the airspace industry it's that that's the default um so it seemed like like obviously the right move in order to minimize the the non battery packed mass of the car so in order in order to offset you know a fairly heavy battery pack we had to make the rest of the car light but but still achieve uh a festar safety rating um I don't think it would have been possible to do that if we had used\n\nsteel which is the traditional method um and and what's helped SpaceX has been that the car industry is really good at making complicated objects at a low cost I mean it's actually quite incredible that like one can buy a decent car for $20,000 I mean all the stuff that's in that car is I mean it's nutty how much stuff is in a car um so uh that at SpaceX uh I hired a bunch of people from the order industry to uh run manufacturing which has worked out reasonably well let's take two more student questions please and then we'll come to the other written ones hello um I'm Natalie Watson from marbor school and we have a sort of two-part question that builds so um why do you think Tesla succeeded whereas other companies um car companies have failed in their\n\nmethods um of electric cars and is the location in Silicon Valley an important part of this yeah I think I think being in Silicon Valley is is pretty important uh because what's really Critical with electric cars is electrical engineering software and electronics uh and Silicon Valley has the best concentration of talent in those areas in the world um and yeah sorry what was the first father the question why did you succeed oh why do we succeed oh yeah right suc I'm sorry what was your question oh the first part okay um why do you think Tesla succeeded whereas other car companies failed in their methods of electric of electric cars like why do you think Tesla is the leader in this idea well um there haven't been that many car company startups uh Ian there\n\nwas sort of Fisker uh and Kota um and and then a few smaller ones um and and then the rest has sort of been some some fairly small scale efforts by the big companies um uh I I I I think if if we say what was the difference between say Fisker and Tesla that's maybe the bit most direct comparison uh Tesla is a hardcore engineering company and visker is kind of a was based on kind of on styling you know it's like styling is good important but it's that's not the reason we don't have electric cars so it's not you know but for styling we we would have electric cars that's not the reason um so in the case of fisa they made a car that uh a lot of people think looked really good but didn't work properly so then people don't want to buy the car um that's like\n\na pretty reasonable thing I think um and yeah um yeah I mean if you think like like what what what's the point of a company existing the the point is that it's it's a group of people that have gathered together to create a product if the product is good the company should exist and if it is not good the company should not exist um that seems like fundamental to the nature of companies so the I mean clearly then one should focus on making the absolute best product you can otherwise you reduce the probability of success but a lot of companies focus on things that aren't really to do with the product um as though a company has any basis for existing apart from doing useful things that's kind of strange take one more student question please uh good evening\n\nsir my name is Eric pelo from uh Von Next Century and regarding the Mars uh the proposed Mars Expedition um what how exactly do you plan on making it coste efficient sure um well now that is that is indeed a tricky problem um I mean I feel reasonably possible that um that success is at least one of the possible outcomes um like this is a I mean this is pretty important when you're trying to do something it's like well can can that be one of the outcomes I wasn't actually confident about that until a few years ago um now I'm not saying we will get there but I I I I I'm confident that it is at least possible um and the key to that is having a fully reusable MOS transportation system so that all you're all you are placing between flights maybe apart from\n\nminor maintenance is the propellant um I mean this is this like reusability is so fundamental to uh to having a a a a a a major change in space flight it's would be difficult to overstate its importance um but I mean with analogy to other modes of Transport you can imag imagine that if airplanes could only be used once um they would very few people would fly um because it would be super crazy expensive um you know guess like a 747 costs a quarter billion dollars You' need two of them just for a round trip but people are not paying half a billion dollars to fly back and forth to London um and that's because you can use 747 like 20,000 times um and for a rocket you a falcon9 rocket costs about $60 million to build and so if you can be used once obviously\n\nthat's a $60 million Capital cost but if you can be used a thousand times then it's only a $60,000 Capital cost um and I mean that is you it's it is it is the fundamental difference so you have to have fully useable then you have to make sure that the propellant used is as low cost as possible so our next Generation Rockets will be using methane as a fuel which methane is the is the lowest cost Source fuel on the planet um by by a good margin so uh and so I think if if if your propellent cost is low and the system is fully reusable then I think it I think it should be possible to to move to Mars for less than half a million dollars which I think is is an important threshold because if people can sell all this stuff on Earth and move to Mars well uh and\n\nthere's enough people who who can do that um combined with those who actually want to do that uh then that then that that's that's the the fundamental thing needed to uh have a a growing Colony on Mars I mean kind of like the way that the US was like the early English colonies of America um you when it became affordable for people to sell all their stuff in England and um move to America it grew really fast um in the absence of that it's it would just require humongous amounts of government support and and I think probably wouldn't be wouldn't result in a self-sustaining civilization so the economics of it are extremely fundamental no thanks yeah okay um I'm going to go through some questions that we got from the floor um and the first one I want to ask\n\nis um what is what do you think is the next Battery Technology after lithium ion I guess lithium ion has sort of reached its ceiling more or less or no no I think there's I think there are substantial improvements uh that will occur with lithiumion batteries um without any no Miracles required um the the thing uh with lithion technology in terms of the costant energy density uh is that the the sort of average Improvement per year is about 8% which isn't that noticeable on a one-ear basis but but your compound interest is a very powerful force uh and so after say four or five years the cost is cut in half assuming there's a forcing function for a strong forcing function for improvement which I think electric cars provide so you know I feel pretty good\n\nabout achieving um a substantial reduction of the cost of the battery pack uh say in in kind of the the three or four year time Horizon it's still way behind M's law for micro dou nothing nothing I mean M the only thing that uh operates at M's LW speed is M's law um you know semiconductors just had this incredible advantage that as you made them tinier they got way more efficient um for something with like that's that's a large like a macro structure like a battery pack you just don't have or really almost anything essentially I say in fact anything except microprocessors and memory um that that does does not improve at that pace um yeah um another question here um it's about medical technology is there a medical application or technology that you you\n\nwould like to change or see somebody else change work on Well Medical Technology um well I think the thing that would s most profoundly affect people uh would be uh to to be able to recode genetics which is obviously a dodgy situation um uh but that that's the thing like we're we're close to saturation on on lifespan I mean it's sort of pretty much leveled out um and uh and so even if you solve say any one particular disease you maybe slightly improve life expectancy but but not a lot um you know it's just like you you kind of have a genetic programming any given species for a certain lifespan like the like you cannot make a fruit fly live for 10 years no matter what you do I mean no amount of Healthy Living vitamins or anything um it's just like you\n\nknow can so while fruit flies live for 20 years that would be that would be a a truly astounding achievement um but yeah so I mean it's a really tricky subject uh you know it's Frau with with all sorts of moral issues but um that's the thing that would most affect people's lives but it's I mean it certainly is double-edged sword so here's another question um from a Tesla owner why is there no coat hook in the back yeah he says he or she says you can design a rocket but you forgot the coat hooks well I didn't actually forget it I just I intentionally didn't like it so I didn't put it there um like the Aesthetics of it really bothered me but um I know you know obviously some people disagree with that decision um but I think I think we might have um a retroactive\n\nfix for that if somebody has the panoramic roof uh which is to to basically have hook on the the bow section in the middle of the roof um and then the then the your code could hang down in the second row passenger footwall which is actually slightly better than having a coat hook uh that's stuck on the side of the car um so I think we'll probably do that um yeah wherever that question came from hold on this not the first time I've heard that question I'm sure I'm sure is there a future in hydrogen fueled engines uh yeah actually I'll mention one little anecdote which is oh yeah uh in in in the beginning of mod production I also didn't have um reading lights in the second row uh CU like well people I thought people were really going towards uh your ebooks\n\num the Kindle and iPad and that kind of thing it's like so they have like their own light they don't need like an actual light in the back um uh and uh then I was driving with one of my kids and he and he was trying to read his book Daddy yeah I he he said uh this is a stest car in the world like all right we'll put the light back in um hydrogen fuel engines they have a future I I you know I don't think so uh hydrogen is a very difficult uh energy storage mechanism I mean essentially it's a means of storing energy chemically uh but there are way better if you want to do that there are way better materials than than hydrogen like I go with methane or propane way before hydrogen um in fact the way that they make the hydrogen is by taking methane and and\n\nchopping the the carbon atom off so of like well that seems like a waste um or they'll do electrolysis which is even worse uh so so it's a really energy intensive it's either like either taking either still mining hydrocarbons on a large scale or um you're you're applying massive amounts of electricity to separate uh H2O um and then some will say oh well hydrogen is the most common element in the universe yes but not on Earth which is important consideration um you know it's it's yeah it's one of those things that sort of always sounds like it's like it's one of those things like it's the future and it always will be like and then there's the Hindenburg issue yeah I mean in in the case of Hindenberg my understanding is that that the main issue was the\n\nthe paint on the outer surface uh as opposed to the hydrogen itself but but hydrogen does combust extremely well um like it hyren has a has a there's a good AR argument for hydrogen is a fuel in the upper stage of a rocket um say curn 5 in the second and third stages had hydrogen um and particularly for the upstage of a rocket where you're not volumetrically constrained um uh or or rather you you're Mass constrained rather than volumetrically constrained uh hydrogen is good if you care about mass and terrible if you care about volume uh and and it's also harble from uh a handling standpoint because it's a really tiny molecule and it goes all over the place um you look at Apple after Steve Jobs and Microsoft after Bill Gates struggle to keep up the momentum\n\nI wonder have you thought about the future of your companies Tesla and SpaceX um I know you've you've talked about giving away a lot of your money um but then I know you've had some other thoughts about that and you looked at Ford and wondered if you want to give I mean what's where where you at on that succession issue now well I I I don't know if like I'm not sure about the whole sort of family dasty from a wealth standpoint thing I mean that seems to work you know often work out worse than if if if if the kid wasn't given a huge sum of money um I mean unless unless they've actually demonstrated a high ability to be a good Steward of capital then um it you know it's not not going to work out I think to give them a huge sum of money um now that said\n\nI mean that I'm wavering a little bit on that cuz if you look at the example of Ford and GM like GM went bankrupt Ford did not Ford had the Ford family as a stabilizing influence so there could be some Merit to to having a family stabilizing influence but but maybe not necessarily complete control um we're going to end with two questions on the hyperloop which is clearly aroused a lot of emotion in Los Angeles and one is from UCLA Anderson I know that Gene block is here who runs UCLA um but they want to know how do you envision the hyperloop as an open-source project to be run in traditional Enterprise fashion which would make profits does that make sense uh yeah I guess it the I mean I think it's going be quite difficult for for someone to execute uh\n\nthe hyperloop and the thing that will really matter is how good is that company at executing as opposed to the basic sort of ideas of of the system um so I wouldn't I don't think a company has to worry too much about um creating value if they're really good at execution um and uh I like probably the best example of Open Source is Linux um and there's lots of companies that that um quite valuable even though Linux is open source and the followup to that is from somebody else who wants to know when will the hyper hyperloop potentially be ready and can we get to Australia that would be I would not recommend it uh for for going to Australia because Australia is really far um so like where where something like the hyp loop would work best is for distances\n\nthat are maybe five about 500 miles but probably not more than a thousand um and that's because if um if you compare to say an alternative being supersonic Air transport um in order to go really fast on the plane you have to climb pretty pretty high because the atmosphere just looks like molasses when you're going fast uh so you for distances certainly under 500 miles you spend all your time just ascending and descending and you don't really get an opportunity to spend time at Cruise uh so something like a hyperloop can complete really well in that Arena because uh you you instantly or very almost instantly enter a low pressure environment and so the tube contains a low low pressure environment that's you know like the cruising altitude of well it's it's\n\nlike very high altitude atmosphere basically uh and and so you don't have to spend any time ascending uh or descending um so so there's no way for it would be well extremely difficult for for for a plane to uh be faster than hyp Loop for distances under 500 Miles um because of that sent descent thing um however once you get to long distances then the cost of the tube starts to become a big factor and and uh and so then I'd say it's probably the right mve is to go to Super Sonic transport because then you're spending a a large percentage of your time at Cruise and and you you could probably get there faster with a super sonic aircraft interesting so no kangaroos in the hyber loop um I know you have an insane schedule I know that you have to go from here\n\nback to your office tonight yeah I apologize for not being at my best this is has been I was like working most last night so um we are deeply grateful you came you gave us some time thank you so much thank you so much for [Music] on","textByLang":{"en":"[Music] thank you for doing this I know today was a busy day at the office yeah I guess every day is a busy day at the office when you're running to big companies some are more intense than others this is on the more intense side um let's let's talk about Tesla and if one were to believe everything one reads in the Press which I don't as a former journalist the recent fires in the Tesla cars sound like the Hindenberg disaster in 1937 right the humanity um reality is somewhat different tell us tell us what really happened there uh yeah um so I mean I think first of all that it's fair for uh a new technology to uh receive more scrutiny than than than older Technologies because it should be held to a higher standard but there's some reasonable limit to to\n\nwhat that uh increased standard should be and I mean since since the model S went into production about a year and a half ago there've been about a quarter million gasoline carf fires in the us um about 400 deaths 1,200 serious injuries um our Three Fires which caused no injury um received more headline news than the other quarter million combined that seems like an unreasonable ratio and I believe all three owners of those cars who crashed wanted to get another one yes right exactly it's like don't take my word for it like they they that that was like I said well how how soon can they get a loaner car until the insurance thing gets figured out and you so it was we gave him one right away but um yeah I mean that's the asset test like do does the guy that\n\nwas that experienced the fire does he want to have that same car again you feel safe in um stock price down again today 10% do you care about that I mean it's it kind of sucks running a public company um yeah yeah I mean the stock goes through these huge gations um and uh yeah for for like seemingly arbitrary reasons uh and then I'm asked to explain why it changed I'm like I have no idea which should be pointed out it's up 300% on the year yeah right I mean on balance that's still still good um but I mean when the stock price is way higher and people ask me what I think think of valuation I said well I think it's probably more than we have a right to deserve we'll try to get there in the long term and I think we will and probably exceed it but uh I would\n\nnot try to justify that a company with a little over $2 billion Revenue should be worth $22 billion in market cap that does seem pretty high to me you know it's so yeah and it's fair to say you wouldn't be there without government subsidy well I think it would have taken longer so the Ian there's a slight misperception about the history of Tesla which is that that the the government funding was pivotal it was an accelerant but it was not pivotal the the really pivotal thing uh point was an investment from Daimler in 2009 early 2009 when there was I I I basically spent all the money I had and we had one company that was willing to in invest or one entity that was willing to invest period and that was dla and if they hadn't come in with that investment\n\nwe would definitely be dead um fortunately bankrupt finished yeah gone um and uh fortunately they they did and we've done a number of vehicle programs that Dio there the uh Mercedes bclass which is uh not currently produced in the US but it's very popular in Europe and other parts of the world will be coming to the US and that'll have a Tesla battery pack and power train it'll be the largest electric vehicle program in down the history uh so that uh you know so got a great relationship they they've been a great great supporter um how about self-drive version of Tesla um I do think that's an important technology although uh the the difficulty increases exponentially to get to fully self-driving um to cover all the corner cases um so I think we can get\n\nto maybe 90% of miles driven being autopilot as we call it because using the sort of aircraft analogy um I think we'll get there pretty soon maybe in a few years but uh then covering that last 10% is really difficult and and so getting from 90% to 99 then to 99.\n\n9 and then I mean ultimately to be truly self-driving like you can fall asleep and the car arrives at your destination uh which would be really great some people do already by the way yeah exactly um they die yeah um that that that's that just it just I think you probably need like 69 Z liability um like the standard would be actually way higher than a than the safety of of a person probably by a factor of 10 or 100 you in order for people to be comfortable uh or otherwise well like this fire thing you know just like a car is basically the safest car you could possibly drive if you care about fires um and and that that's not the impression one would have reading the headlines you would have sort of the opposite impression and so for self self-driving\n\nor autopilot um yeah hopefully the media doesn't do do the same thing same like Mega disproportionate response but uh but I do think that it should be held to a standard that's maybe like 10 times better than a person and I know Google is working on this too 10 years more or less yeah um I I mean I think that the the right path is probably a little different from what Google is pursuing um and uh Larry Page is a all friend of mine I've known him this before he got Venture funing for Google um and I think he's a really brilliant guy but uh I mean it's it's not Google is isn't focusing on on on autonomous cars whereas it it's going to be a pretty significant Focus for Tesla and from our standpoint it it only matters if the autopilot capability is does not\n\nresult in in a substantial cost increase to the car and the the way the Google sensor Suite is set up it's like it like 60 Grand you know I mean that's like a lot I want to ask you about risk-taking um because there's a theory that entrepreneurs who hit it out of the park one time make that Billion Dollar Plus company work right they reluctant to do it again not because they're afraid of losing their money but because they feel if they were to to fail a second time round then in their own minds maybe they would think well the first time it was just luck it wasn't really my own skill or my own sense of how to run a business but not only did you well you Rose PayPal came up to 1.\n\n5 billion you got out of that not only did you invest again you invest again twice not only that but you chose probably two of the most risky Capital intensive Industries to go with rocket technology which is basically a bomb right directed up yeah and then cars which are you know we know what's happening Detroit yeah um so what is it that that motivates there to do that to go through The Crucible again two times again yeah I'm not sure it was the right decision but um so far so good yeah um it's it's it's much less fun than it than it may appear uh but um I mean the case of what I thought of I would do was start and run SpaceX then and then create a electric car company with with a few other people work just but just like apply 20% of my time and work\n\non the product design um because I'm like my main thing is is engineering and design so um that yeah that was um an illusion uh so uh yeah and um and then I I don't really have any choice but just to to apply a ton of time to Tesla or the company would be you know definitely dead so um but the other way to do it you could have stayed in Silicon Valley started another few internet companies made oh yeah billion dollars and then you could have bought krysler and probably bought NASA too and you wouldn't have to start from scratch that seems too easy yeah um all right we'll move on I don't I don't really want to it's not point is not to sort of own a car company it but rather to accelerate the Advent of sustainable transport and um it seemed like it would\n\nbe difficult let's talk about SpaceX SpaceX you have said you started with the specific intention of getting to Mars uh yeah it well the Argin of SpaceX uh was was actually not or it my interest in Spa my inial thought in space was that uh it wasn't possible to create a company um and I mistakenly thought that uh the reason that we had not sent people to Ms was because we' lost the will to explore or something or like May that and I thought well maybe that needs to be reignited and so came with this idea to do a basically a philanthropic mission to M with with a 100% probability of losing all the money um in order to reignite interest in that goal um but after after a while I realized that's that was actually that was a mistake I mean United States is\n\nis a nation of explorers you know came here from other parts of the world um I think more than any other country is a distillation of the human Spirit of exploration there there's no lack of will the but people need to believe that there's a way uh that that a way that's feasible and and that it's not going to bankrupt the country and their living standard will be won't be materially affected you know if and then I think they're super super keen on on that that goal now as you look out whatever we're talking 10 15 20 years to get to Mars it's not just rocket technology and and you've talked about reusable rocket technology it's also how you Shield people from radiation it's a 10 12 month trip what you do when they arrive you know how are they going to\n\nlive there are you is that something that you want to work on too or will you partner with other companies how do you how do you see that playing out over the next decade well I actually think the the the technology required to live on M is not not particularly difficult um but but but getting there is is really difficult uh uh I mean it's like hundreds of millions of miles um to get to Death Valley yeah exactly to get to a place that kind of looks like Arizona you know uh like a cold version of Arizona with not quite as much water um so um I mean at least that that's that's my best my my guess is I I think if we can if we can get there the technology required to live there will is is not a not a not a really big challenge I mean U Mars has some advantages\n\nit's got a it's it's quite sort of earthlike in in some ways it's got a rotational period of 24 and 1 half hours by far the closest of any other planet um the atmosphere is carbon dioxide uh now it's it's not it's at a low pressure but if you were to have a transparent Dome uh you you all you'd need is a is a pump uh and some and some fertilizer and you could grow plants on Ms the plants would convert the CO2 to oxygen um the other thing that's been big in the news recently is the hyperloop um which you have sketched out you estimate from LA to San Francisco in 35 minutes yeah you could push that a little bit but well I'd be happy if I could get from Santa Monica to downtown I know I know you have your personal issues with the 405 the 405 is like this\n\nis like the most brutal construction project I've ever personally witnessed I mean it's like mindboggling um but I I also know that so you sketch this out but I know that your your your plans for the hyperloop have been put into some pretty sophisticated simulation technology yeah and it looks like it actually might work am I right yeah um and and we did run simulations at SpaceX and Tesla uh so you know we you know we thought it would work but I mean I actually don't think it's particularly like I mean I I think I think it's like the the engineering of it that that it would work is is actually pretty pretty obvious honestly but I mean it's so I think the larger issues are political you know getting the political support to do something like that and\n\nuh and then uh you know making sure the economics pan out um and uh yeah I hope someone does it because I think it would be cool I mean it' be great to to have something like that it's just like it doesn't seem like our mass transportation is getting better it seems to be kind of getting worse so that's that's not a good future you said something you hope somebody else would do it I'm curious what makes you really so unique is not only your ability to dream big but to execute there are lots of utopian thinkers out there but they cannot execute um but there are some other people who can do good things and I'm wondering what seems to motivate you you see things that frustrate you or you think are are not as good as you like and then you try and fix them\n\nyou've worked on on solar power you've worked on electric cars and and on interplanetary space travel um I'm wondering what are the things about America and about the world for that matter would you like to see fixed either by a company you might do yourself or by some of a smart entrepreneur what what what else out there is feasible you know we all want to get rid of world poverty and and get rid of childhood diseases but but what what problems out there can feasibly be fix say in our lifetimes well I mean I think first of all um the world's actually pretty great right now uh I mean arguably better than any point in history um and this this is sometimes uh lost if you read the newspapers they're they're like a a ification of all the world's problemes\n\nlike I mean newspapers seem to be attempting to answer the question what was the worst thing that happened on Earth today yeah and it's right if it bleeds it leads yeah and and it's like okay I mean and I think there's there is kind of a evolutionary reason for that because it makes more sense to like you want to prioritize danger over reward or or or because it's you if you get eaten by the lion it's game over but you know if you if you forget where you left some snack that's that's okay I mean you you know so so there's a it's it's it's not quite the same in terms of the risk reward balance but we didn't evolve with newspapers uh and and and Global media so like our brains sort of having a fear response to a lot a bunch of dangers that are extremely\n\nunlikely to ever affect us on but yeah just yeah you have uh I believe about 3,000 people at Tesla we have six 6,000 yeah 6,000 I'm my I'm well informed and SpaceX is uh is 3500 so that's a massive a glomeration of engineering Talent huge yeah if if if if I could take the metaphor of a ship how much time do you have to go down into the engine room roll up your sleeves get your hands dirty and fix stuff as an engineer and how much time do you spend on the bridge steering and looking at the at the distant Horizon well not a lot on that last Point uh I mean it's uh I mean there there's a constant flurry of executional challenges um and so I try to triage my time according to what would be best for the companies uh and and still you know have some time to\n\nsee my kids you know because I want to miss them growing up so you know it can vary from big issues to things that seem small but actually could have a really big impact um so I mean it's it's all the way from design Aesthetics to uh the details of of say the vehicle functionality or in the case of the rocket uh the you know the avionics propulsion system and uh airframe I mean the rocket is kind of a has has more more of a concentrated pucker Factor um because of you got it's you got these launches and and um least of the car you can do a recoil or like do a software update that's not going to happen with the rocket so it's like passing grade is 100% uh which is induces anxiety you know how do you handle launch anxiety when you're actually waiting the\n\ncountdown we we saw one here well the the these ones actually I mean they're this this I have quite a lot of anxiety uh because always think oh there must be something that we did wrong and is there anything I could have done to prevent this hypothetical thing from from Bad Thing from occurring um I mean the last um roughly 10 launchers have have have worked uh but the but the the three launchers we started off with did not so the the by far the worst uh emotional stress was the the fourth launch of Falcon 1 because the first three launchers did not make it to orbit they got they got to sort of space on launches two and three but they didn't get to full overal velocity and uh and I I when I started out I figured I would have enough money for three three\n\nlaunches oops Yeah oops so I was it was we squeaked by on the fourth fourth one um we sent out a link today I don't know if how many of you saw it but it's of you using a your hands uh as 3D molding sort of tools for stuff you're doing on a computer screen and it's a rocket engine that you're able to manipulate with your hands um and I know that you have told John favro who produced or directed Iron Man that that was the inspiration because we see Tony Stark doing this the movie absolutely um and I know also you know I've read a bit Isaac azimoff's Foundation series you've also said it's been inspiration so I'm wondering fan of azimov actually when when you're on The Cutting Edge of technology today in the fields that you're in do you feel you've almost\n\ngot one foot in science fiction is that is do you do you have to be that far ahead well well you have to um imagine and outcome in order to head in that direction um and science fiction explores a lot of different ideas so um it can be you know helpful as a source of inspiration um and and you know like books TV shows movies I they're all uh I think sources of inspiration um I mean most of the movies and TV shows that space are totally wrong uh but uh but they have interesting ideas like the Star Trek Communicator um was uh an inspiration for the cell phone yeah with the flip right right yeah exactly um I'm GNA in fact the weird thing is like like the like the phones we have in our pocket vastly exceed what was on stock Trek we're going to go to ask some\n\nof our students um some questions but first one more um I saw I'm a big James Bond fan he just bought the Lotus s spre that they used in um the spy who love me which goes underwater yeah and you're going to make that work so it's it's definitely a backround of project okay but my question is when do we get to see a functioning version of the Millennium Falcon that's a tricky one because it's it's not actually the right shape um uh oh it's I mean not to George Lucas yeah I mean the Falcon 9 our Falcon roer was uh named after the Millennium Falcon even though it looks nothing like it um and uh yeah I mean yeah you that's not the shape you'd want for Miss B ship really okay so if we can swing the camera to our student tables we get a couple of questions\n\nfrom there and then I'll go to the written questions from the rest of the audience so here we go good evening sir my name's Ariel Haus I'm from vonck century referring to Merlin 9 does basx have a working prototype and when will it be ready to launch uh well Merin is the the name of our our engine um so and falcon9 is the name of the rocket um and we uh we've done um several launches of of falcon9 um and an important Milestone happened a few months ago which was the the launch of the next generation Falcon line which is designed to be able to return uh and land at the Launchpad um and um came we came close on the initial Mission but not didn't quite get there uh we need to make a few few corrections but I think we we've got a good chance of getting there\n\nnext year okay let's go for another one there hi I'm Kennedy Green from Harvard weslake so I've seen you speak at a TED Talk and I remember you spoke pretty emphatically about the success of your Innovations and how you kind of take a physics approach where you take the idea and boil it down to its Basics and from there start to build up so can you talk about an example where you use that process um well I think you know an important thing in in uh Innovation or trying to create new things is is is to try really hard to to do that um which may sound incredibly obvious but uh that's what I find is is most often what people don't do they actually didn't didn't try super hard to come up with something new um and and it is helpful to have cross-pollination\n\nof Industries um I mean it's been quite difficult to run SpaceX and Tesla but there has been good ideas you know if since I got both in my mind space this this good ideaas is going back and forth the um for example on the car with respect to the car the model S is the only all aluminum body en Chanty car made in North America and very few cars are are all aluminum in the airspace industry it's that that's the default um so it seemed like like obviously the right move in order to minimize the the non battery packed mass of the car so in order in order to offset you know a fairly heavy battery pack we had to make the rest of the car light but but still achieve uh a festar safety rating um I don't think it would have been possible to do that if we had used\n\nsteel which is the traditional method um and and what's helped SpaceX has been that the car industry is really good at making complicated objects at a low cost I mean it's actually quite incredible that like one can buy a decent car for $20,000 I mean all the stuff that's in that car is I mean it's nutty how much stuff is in a car um so uh that at SpaceX uh I hired a bunch of people from the order industry to uh run manufacturing which has worked out reasonably well let's take two more student questions please and then we'll come to the other written ones hello um I'm Natalie Watson from marbor school and we have a sort of two-part question that builds so um why do you think Tesla succeeded whereas other companies um car companies have failed in their\n\nmethods um of electric cars and is the location in Silicon Valley an important part of this yeah I think I think being in Silicon Valley is is pretty important uh because what's really Critical with electric cars is electrical engineering software and electronics uh and Silicon Valley has the best concentration of talent in those areas in the world um and yeah sorry what was the first father the question why did you succeed oh why do we succeed oh yeah right suc I'm sorry what was your question oh the first part okay um why do you think Tesla succeeded whereas other car companies failed in their methods of electric of electric cars like why do you think Tesla is the leader in this idea well um there haven't been that many car company startups uh Ian there\n\nwas sort of Fisker uh and Kota um and and then a few smaller ones um and and then the rest has sort of been some some fairly small scale efforts by the big companies um uh I I I I think if if we say what was the difference between say Fisker and Tesla that's maybe the bit most direct comparison uh Tesla is a hardcore engineering company and visker is kind of a was based on kind of on styling you know it's like styling is good important but it's that's not the reason we don't have electric cars so it's not you know but for styling we we would have electric cars that's not the reason um so in the case of fisa they made a car that uh a lot of people think looked really good but didn't work properly so then people don't want to buy the car um that's like\n\na pretty reasonable thing I think um and yeah um yeah I mean if you think like like what what what's the point of a company existing the the point is that it's it's a group of people that have gathered together to create a product if the product is good the company should exist and if it is not good the company should not exist um that seems like fundamental to the nature of companies so the I mean clearly then one should focus on making the absolute best product you can otherwise you reduce the probability of success but a lot of companies focus on things that aren't really to do with the product um as though a company has any basis for existing apart from doing useful things that's kind of strange take one more student question please uh good evening\n\nsir my name is Eric pelo from uh Von Next Century and regarding the Mars uh the proposed Mars Expedition um what how exactly do you plan on making it coste efficient sure um well now that is that is indeed a tricky problem um I mean I feel reasonably possible that um that success is at least one of the possible outcomes um like this is a I mean this is pretty important when you're trying to do something it's like well can can that be one of the outcomes I wasn't actually confident about that until a few years ago um now I'm not saying we will get there but I I I I I'm confident that it is at least possible um and the key to that is having a fully reusable MOS transportation system so that all you're all you are placing between flights maybe apart from\n\nminor maintenance is the propellant um I mean this is this like reusability is so fundamental to uh to having a a a a a a major change in space flight it's would be difficult to overstate its importance um but I mean with analogy to other modes of Transport you can imag imagine that if airplanes could only be used once um they would very few people would fly um because it would be super crazy expensive um you know guess like a 747 costs a quarter billion dollars You' need two of them just for a round trip but people are not paying half a billion dollars to fly back and forth to London um and that's because you can use 747 like 20,000 times um and for a rocket you a falcon9 rocket costs about $60 million to build and so if you can be used once obviously\n\nthat's a $60 million Capital cost but if you can be used a thousand times then it's only a $60,000 Capital cost um and I mean that is you it's it is it is the fundamental difference so you have to have fully useable then you have to make sure that the propellant used is as low cost as possible so our next Generation Rockets will be using methane as a fuel which methane is the is the lowest cost Source fuel on the planet um by by a good margin so uh and so I think if if if your propellent cost is low and the system is fully reusable then I think it I think it should be possible to to move to Mars for less than half a million dollars which I think is is an important threshold because if people can sell all this stuff on Earth and move to Mars well uh and\n\nthere's enough people who who can do that um combined with those who actually want to do that uh then that then that that's that's the the fundamental thing needed to uh have a a growing Colony on Mars I mean kind of like the way that the US was like the early English colonies of America um you when it became affordable for people to sell all their stuff in England and um move to America it grew really fast um in the absence of that it's it would just require humongous amounts of government support and and I think probably wouldn't be wouldn't result in a self-sustaining civilization so the economics of it are extremely fundamental no thanks yeah okay um I'm going to go through some questions that we got from the floor um and the first one I want to ask\n\nis um what is what do you think is the next Battery Technology after lithium ion I guess lithium ion has sort of reached its ceiling more or less or no no I think there's I think there are substantial improvements uh that will occur with lithiumion batteries um without any no Miracles required um the the thing uh with lithion technology in terms of the costant energy density uh is that the the sort of average Improvement per year is about 8% which isn't that noticeable on a one-ear basis but but your compound interest is a very powerful force uh and so after say four or five years the cost is cut in half assuming there's a forcing function for a strong forcing function for improvement which I think electric cars provide so you know I feel pretty good\n\nabout achieving um a substantial reduction of the cost of the battery pack uh say in in kind of the the three or four year time Horizon it's still way behind M's law for micro dou nothing nothing I mean M the only thing that uh operates at M's LW speed is M's law um you know semiconductors just had this incredible advantage that as you made them tinier they got way more efficient um for something with like that's that's a large like a macro structure like a battery pack you just don't have or really almost anything essentially I say in fact anything except microprocessors and memory um that that does does not improve at that pace um yeah um another question here um it's about medical technology is there a medical application or technology that you you\n\nwould like to change or see somebody else change work on Well Medical Technology um well I think the thing that would s most profoundly affect people uh would be uh to to be able to recode genetics which is obviously a dodgy situation um uh but that that's the thing like we're we're close to saturation on on lifespan I mean it's sort of pretty much leveled out um and uh and so even if you solve say any one particular disease you maybe slightly improve life expectancy but but not a lot um you know it's just like you you kind of have a genetic programming any given species for a certain lifespan like the like you cannot make a fruit fly live for 10 years no matter what you do I mean no amount of Healthy Living vitamins or anything um it's just like you\n\nknow can so while fruit flies live for 20 years that would be that would be a a truly astounding achievement um but yeah so I mean it's a really tricky subject uh you know it's Frau with with all sorts of moral issues but um that's the thing that would most affect people's lives but it's I mean it certainly is double-edged sword so here's another question um from a Tesla owner why is there no coat hook in the back yeah he says he or she says you can design a rocket but you forgot the coat hooks well I didn't actually forget it I just I intentionally didn't like it so I didn't put it there um like the Aesthetics of it really bothered me but um I know you know obviously some people disagree with that decision um but I think I think we might have um a retroactive\n\nfix for that if somebody has the panoramic roof uh which is to to basically have hook on the the bow section in the middle of the roof um and then the then the your code could hang down in the second row passenger footwall which is actually slightly better than having a coat hook uh that's stuck on the side of the car um so I think we'll probably do that um yeah wherever that question came from hold on this not the first time I've heard that question I'm sure I'm sure is there a future in hydrogen fueled engines uh yeah actually I'll mention one little anecdote which is oh yeah uh in in in the beginning of mod production I also didn't have um reading lights in the second row uh CU like well people I thought people were really going towards uh your ebooks\n\num the Kindle and iPad and that kind of thing it's like so they have like their own light they don't need like an actual light in the back um uh and uh then I was driving with one of my kids and he and he was trying to read his book Daddy yeah I he he said uh this is a stest car in the world like all right we'll put the light back in um hydrogen fuel engines they have a future I I you know I don't think so uh hydrogen is a very difficult uh energy storage mechanism I mean essentially it's a means of storing energy chemically uh but there are way better if you want to do that there are way better materials than than hydrogen like I go with methane or propane way before hydrogen um in fact the way that they make the hydrogen is by taking methane and and\n\nchopping the the carbon atom off so of like well that seems like a waste um or they'll do electrolysis which is even worse uh so so it's a really energy intensive it's either like either taking either still mining hydrocarbons on a large scale or um you're you're applying massive amounts of electricity to separate uh H2O um and then some will say oh well hydrogen is the most common element in the universe yes but not on Earth which is important consideration um you know it's it's yeah it's one of those things that sort of always sounds like it's like it's one of those things like it's the future and it always will be like and then there's the Hindenburg issue yeah I mean in in the case of Hindenberg my understanding is that that the main issue was the\n\nthe paint on the outer surface uh as opposed to the hydrogen itself but but hydrogen does combust extremely well um like it hyren has a has a there's a good AR argument for hydrogen is a fuel in the upper stage of a rocket um say curn 5 in the second and third stages had hydrogen um and particularly for the upstage of a rocket where you're not volumetrically constrained um uh or or rather you you're Mass constrained rather than volumetrically constrained uh hydrogen is good if you care about mass and terrible if you care about volume uh and and it's also harble from uh a handling standpoint because it's a really tiny molecule and it goes all over the place um you look at Apple after Steve Jobs and Microsoft after Bill Gates struggle to keep up the momentum\n\nI wonder have you thought about the future of your companies Tesla and SpaceX um I know you've you've talked about giving away a lot of your money um but then I know you've had some other thoughts about that and you looked at Ford and wondered if you want to give I mean what's where where you at on that succession issue now well I I I don't know if like I'm not sure about the whole sort of family dasty from a wealth standpoint thing I mean that seems to work you know often work out worse than if if if if the kid wasn't given a huge sum of money um I mean unless unless they've actually demonstrated a high ability to be a good Steward of capital then um it you know it's not not going to work out I think to give them a huge sum of money um now that said\n\nI mean that I'm wavering a little bit on that cuz if you look at the example of Ford and GM like GM went bankrupt Ford did not Ford had the Ford family as a stabilizing influence so there could be some Merit to to having a family stabilizing influence but but maybe not necessarily complete control um we're going to end with two questions on the hyperloop which is clearly aroused a lot of emotion in Los Angeles and one is from UCLA Anderson I know that Gene block is here who runs UCLA um but they want to know how do you envision the hyperloop as an open-source project to be run in traditional Enterprise fashion which would make profits does that make sense uh yeah I guess it the I mean I think it's going be quite difficult for for someone to execute uh\n\nthe hyperloop and the thing that will really matter is how good is that company at executing as opposed to the basic sort of ideas of of the system um so I wouldn't I don't think a company has to worry too much about um creating value if they're really good at execution um and uh I like probably the best example of Open Source is Linux um and there's lots of companies that that um quite valuable even though Linux is open source and the followup to that is from somebody else who wants to know when will the hyper hyperloop potentially be ready and can we get to Australia that would be I would not recommend it uh for for going to Australia because Australia is really far um so like where where something like the hyp loop would work best is for distances\n\nthat are maybe five about 500 miles but probably not more than a thousand um and that's because if um if you compare to say an alternative being supersonic Air transport um in order to go really fast on the plane you have to climb pretty pretty high because the atmosphere just looks like molasses when you're going fast uh so you for distances certainly under 500 miles you spend all your time just ascending and descending and you don't really get an opportunity to spend time at Cruise uh so something like a hyperloop can complete really well in that Arena because uh you you instantly or very almost instantly enter a low pressure environment and so the tube contains a low low pressure environment that's you know like the cruising altitude of well it's it's\n\nlike very high altitude atmosphere basically uh and and so you don't have to spend any time ascending uh or descending um so so there's no way for it would be well extremely difficult for for for a plane to uh be faster than hyp Loop for distances under 500 Miles um because of that sent descent thing um however once you get to long distances then the cost of the tube starts to become a big factor and and uh and so then I'd say it's probably the right mve is to go to Super Sonic transport because then you're spending a a large percentage of your time at Cruise and and you you could probably get there faster with a super sonic aircraft interesting so no kangaroos in the hyber loop um I know you have an insane schedule I know that you have to go from here\n\nback to your office tonight yeah I apologize for not being at my best this is has been I was like working most last night so um we are deeply grateful you came you gave us some time thank you so much thank you so much for [Music] on"},"languages":["en"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ODpuYSG4eQc"},{"id":"bbc-newsnight-2013-10-24","type":"interview","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K-uLAFb7GOg","title":"BBC Newsnight","titles":{"en":"BBC Newsnight","de":"BBC Newsnight","fr":"BBC Newsnight"},"date":"2013-10-24","summary":"Gavin Esler interviews Musk on electric cars, space travel and his broader motivations.","text":"now there was a very peculiar car launch in Britain today it's the Tesla S Electric Car which claims to be able to reach 60 M hour in just over 4 seconds finally putting an end to the idea that electric cars are basically milk floats without the raw power of a lawnmower engine while the Tesla S is the brainchild of the American billionaire Elon Musk he made his fortune in PayPal and other Ventures and is now spending it on the Tesla project and sending Rock kids into space I went to meet him in West London what we really tried to achieve with the the model S um was to to create a compelling electric car something that was really different from people's prior experience CU most people last time they drove an electric car it was probably a golf cart or\n\nor maybe a milk mil flat milk float um so um so they they're used to their idea of an electric car is something that doesn't look good isn't fast doesn't have high performance has low range we wanted to break the mold of all of that and so produc something that was beautiful uh had high acceleration incredible handling uh had tons of capability lots of room um and really was better than any gasoline car that's what we sought to achieve this this is the um the front trunk with nothing yeah with nothing in it now if somebody buys this car in the United Kingdom now how many places are there where you can plug it in well uh anywhere an electrical outlet anywhere yes it the charg there's nothing special about the electrical outet the charger is built into\n\nthe car so you can you can plug it in anywhere you go uh you can plug it in um if you're traveling somewhere if you're at a cottage at a hotel um in addition to that however we're going to be uh creating supercharge locations throughout the UK so you'll be able to charge anywhere uh at a Tesla supercharge location um and one of the things that we do with with these supercharge locations is that they're they're free so if you buy a Tesla you could you'll be able to travel for free anywhere in Britain um and and it's free forever and I'll add one more thing to that which is we're going to be installing solar panels at all of the supercharged locations which are intended to develop or or or generate more electricity in the course of the year then the cars\n\nconsume that that that charge there so the the net result is that you'll not only be able to travel for free forever but on pure sunlight well on this question of our energy bills which is the huge Pol huge political topic here now have we got it wrong in terms of where we are sourcing our energy um mark my words solar will be the single largest producer of energy in the UK long term and you may say well isn't it rather maybe cloudy around here I was going to say have you ever been outside um yes and even though it's cloudy you still get probably 80 to 90% of the energy coming through the clouds it's just that you don't have that bright point source of of a of a sun um and a way to appreciate this perhaps is to look at the fact that uh plants are essentially\n\na solar powered chemical reaction and the UK is a very Green Country now you you live in Southern California and Los Angeles you travel a lot to San Francisco and you're also interested as a as a big thought in whether it's possible to travel by what's called a hyperloop in other words you go at 800 mil hour on the ground essentially like a kind of like a train from Los Angeles to San Francisco do we suffer from generally a kind of um low level of ambition should we think bigger than hs2 and think about something like this I I I think so I mean um for reasons Beyond The Objective oh we'll get there faster or it's it's like you want to do projects that are inspiring and that make people excited about the future um life's got to be about more than just\n\nsolving problems you want to get up in the morning and say yes I'm looking forward to that thing happening um and and I guess that was my Essential disappointment with the California so-called highspeed rail it's like I was looking at that while and it's like well they've got better things they did better things in Japan 30 years ago um they got something way better in China why are we doing this and and spending so much money on it and it's going to take 20 years and by that time we'll be 50 years behind what they've got in Japan I mean this just doesn't make sense we that was my reaction that was your reaction to what's happening in California we are behind California oh my god really difficult though maybe to imagine so so I mean you most unfortunate\n\nthe other big part of musk's life is with his company SpaceX which is committed to improving rocket technology and even getting the human race to other planets do you see really the future must be in space for the human race you really see this this is not science fiction this is actually going to be a fact abely absolutely I think history fundamentally Bates um in in one of two directions either we um are a multiplet species and out there exploring the stars or we are a single planet species waiting around for some eventual Extinction event it's really that that I personally I find more motivating which is um you know going and setting up a base on Mars would just be the greatest advanture ever not everyone's a fan back on Earth Tesla sued the program\n\nTop Gear after it rubb the Tesla Roadster Tesla lost so what does musk think about Jeremy Clarkson um I think well clarkon claron show is much more about entertainment than is about truth um and uh I think most people realize that but not everyone um and I've actually enjoyed a lot of his shows it's not as though uh I just hate Top Gear or anything um he can be very funny um and and irreverent um but he does have a strong bias against electric cars and he particularly seems to hate American like his two pet peeves are Americans American cars and electric cars and we're an American electric car so we're we're in the worst possible situation for someone like claron so do you see this as a as missionary activity you're over here trying to convert Germany\n\nClarks I don't think there'll be any converting of Jeremy Clarkson that seems quite unlikely","textByLang":{"en":"now there was a very peculiar car launch in Britain today it's the Tesla S Electric Car which claims to be able to reach 60 M hour in just over 4 seconds finally putting an end to the idea that electric cars are basically milk floats without the raw power of a lawnmower engine while the Tesla S is the brainchild of the American billionaire Elon Musk he made his fortune in PayPal and other Ventures and is now spending it on the Tesla project and sending Rock kids into space I went to meet him in West London what we really tried to achieve with the the model S um was to to create a compelling electric car something that was really different from people's prior experience CU most people last time they drove an electric car it was probably a golf cart or\n\nor maybe a milk mil flat milk float um so um so they they're used to their idea of an electric car is something that doesn't look good isn't fast doesn't have high performance has low range we wanted to break the mold of all of that and so produc something that was beautiful uh had high acceleration incredible handling uh had tons of capability lots of room um and really was better than any gasoline car that's what we sought to achieve this this is the um the front trunk with nothing yeah with nothing in it now if somebody buys this car in the United Kingdom now how many places are there where you can plug it in well uh anywhere an electrical outlet anywhere yes it the charg there's nothing special about the electrical outet the charger is built into\n\nthe car so you can you can plug it in anywhere you go uh you can plug it in um if you're traveling somewhere if you're at a cottage at a hotel um in addition to that however we're going to be uh creating supercharge locations throughout the UK so you'll be able to charge anywhere uh at a Tesla supercharge location um and one of the things that we do with with these supercharge locations is that they're they're free so if you buy a Tesla you could you'll be able to travel for free anywhere in Britain um and and it's free forever and I'll add one more thing to that which is we're going to be installing solar panels at all of the supercharged locations which are intended to develop or or or generate more electricity in the course of the year then the cars\n\nconsume that that that charge there so the the net result is that you'll not only be able to travel for free forever but on pure sunlight well on this question of our energy bills which is the huge Pol huge political topic here now have we got it wrong in terms of where we are sourcing our energy um mark my words solar will be the single largest producer of energy in the UK long term and you may say well isn't it rather maybe cloudy around here I was going to say have you ever been outside um yes and even though it's cloudy you still get probably 80 to 90% of the energy coming through the clouds it's just that you don't have that bright point source of of a of a sun um and a way to appreciate this perhaps is to look at the fact that uh plants are essentially\n\na solar powered chemical reaction and the UK is a very Green Country now you you live in Southern California and Los Angeles you travel a lot to San Francisco and you're also interested as a as a big thought in whether it's possible to travel by what's called a hyperloop in other words you go at 800 mil hour on the ground essentially like a kind of like a train from Los Angeles to San Francisco do we suffer from generally a kind of um low level of ambition should we think bigger than hs2 and think about something like this I I I think so I mean um for reasons Beyond The Objective oh we'll get there faster or it's it's like you want to do projects that are inspiring and that make people excited about the future um life's got to be about more than just\n\nsolving problems you want to get up in the morning and say yes I'm looking forward to that thing happening um and and I guess that was my Essential disappointment with the California so-called highspeed rail it's like I was looking at that while and it's like well they've got better things they did better things in Japan 30 years ago um they got something way better in China why are we doing this and and spending so much money on it and it's going to take 20 years and by that time we'll be 50 years behind what they've got in Japan I mean this just doesn't make sense we that was my reaction that was your reaction to what's happening in California we are behind California oh my god really difficult though maybe to imagine so so I mean you most unfortunate\n\nthe other big part of musk's life is with his company SpaceX which is committed to improving rocket technology and even getting the human race to other planets do you see really the future must be in space for the human race you really see this this is not science fiction this is actually going to be a fact abely absolutely I think history fundamentally Bates um in in one of two directions either we um are a multiplet species and out there exploring the stars or we are a single planet species waiting around for some eventual Extinction event it's really that that I personally I find more motivating which is um you know going and setting up a base on Mars would just be the greatest advanture ever not everyone's a fan back on Earth Tesla sued the program\n\nTop Gear after it rubb the Tesla Roadster Tesla lost so what does musk think about Jeremy Clarkson um I think well clarkon claron show is much more about entertainment than is about truth um and uh I think most people realize that but not everyone um and I've actually enjoyed a lot of his shows it's not as though uh I just hate Top Gear or anything um he can be very funny um and and irreverent um but he does have a strong bias against electric cars and he particularly seems to hate American like his two pet peeves are Americans American cars and electric cars and we're an American electric car so we're we're in the worst possible situation for someone like claron so do you see this as a as missionary activity you're over here trying to convert Germany\n\nClarks I don't think there'll be any converting of Jeremy Clarkson that seems quite unlikely"},"languages":["en"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K-uLAFb7GOg"},{"id":"stanford-gsb-encore-award-2013-10-02","type":"interview","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MBItc_QAUUM","title":"Stanford GSB ENCORE Award","titles":{"en":"Stanford GSB ENCORE Award","de":"Stanford GSB ENCORE Award","fr":"Stanford GSB ENCORE Award"},"date":"2013-10-02","summary":"Fireside chat with Steve Jurvetson on sustainable energy, the internet and making life multi-planetary.","text":"[SOUND]. >> Good evening and, Welcome to the Stanford Graduate School of Business. I'm Garth Saloner. I'm the dean here, at the GSB and it's my privilege to welcome you all, To this wonderful event, I want to thank, The award selection committee for. This really fantastic selection. As well as all of the companies who have supported us by sponsoring the event. This is the 36th event of its kind.\n\nThe 36th annual encore award reception and each of the award is given... To an entre, entrepreneurial company that embodies the spirit, innovation and unique culture of the companies that we're familiar with in in Silicon Valley. And so let me be the first to congratulate Tesla and Elon Musk for. The award this evening. [SOUND] I'm going, be brief before handing you over to, to Jeff.\n\nBut I did want to just spend a few minutes saying a little bit about the things that we've been doing here, at the Graduate School of Business. In the area of entrepreneurship and I'm very quickly gonna reference three innovations this year.\n\nThe first is we have an entrepreneurship course and have had for many years in which we put our students together in multi-disciplinary teams from across the university and they work on projects together and this year.\n\nAs a harbinger of technology to come we have for the first time flipped the classroom to Stephanos Xenios who teaches the class recorded what would have been the lectures and instead the students got to use the class time to be mentored and to work together on the projects and I think that's very much a sign of the times and, and the future.\n\nThe second is many of you will be familiar with a program that we offered here at Stanford in the summer and during the year which we used to called the Summer Institute for Entrepreneurship. We now call it Stanford Ignite. This is a, a program that at Stanford was aimed at graduate students at Stanford not in the business schools so it's students and engineering medicine, and life sciences, and so on who.\n\nMight be starting a company or be working for companies that were innovating. And we'd give them a general management education. With an entrepreneurial spin. And this year we started to take that that program globally. So we offered a version of it in Bangalore, India this summer, and are in the midst of teaching one in Paris right now in a partnership with their called Politechnique. And that program too, makes heavy use of technology.\n\nMost of the classes are actually, faculty being from the Snite Management Center... To those locations. The final thing I wanna, I wanna reference is again, many of you are familiar with SIIDE which is the Stanford Institute for Innovatiion and Developing Economies, an institution that we launched here at the business school about two years ago, it had a landmark event this summer.\n\nWhen we opened our first Innovation Center in Accra, Ghana where we have in the first cohort, 29 local entrepreneurs who we are working with to help them to scale their businesses and it's a, it's a regional, a regional hub and a regional program with participants from, from five neighboring countries. So, lots going on at the GSB while we're. Helping to make entrepreneurial awards.\n\nWe're trying to do our bit to simulate the entrepreneurial ecosystem and in that vein, let me just say that in everything we do, we rely very very heavily on this community. You come into our classes to help teach and mentor our students... And and help us in a, in a whole variety of ways and, and we're extremely grateful. And and delighted to have you all with us this evening, thank you very much. [SOUND] [COUGH]. I'm Geoff Yang.\n\nAnd I have the privilege of chairing the Stanford ENCORE Award Committee. So, you may ask, you know, how do we pick a particular company to win the award. And I'll tell you, we look at four things. You know, the first is companies that embody the entrepreneurial spirit. We look for companies that are doing something big, bold, and important.\n\nI look for companies where the founder has or continues to play a very important role in the company's success. And we look at companies that have interesting stories, or who've, or whose founders are interesting personalities. So you might say, well how'd you get Tesla, then? It isn't quite. So. So the story of Tesla, you know, the so, you look how it stacks up.\n\nAnd you say well Tesla was started by two engineers, Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning who believed that electric vehicles could change the world. Okay, check. Tesla has succeeded in an industry where start-ups aren't supposed to succeed by incorporating novel design approaches to little things like concept design, and battery design, and body design, and drivetrain design, and manufacturing design, supply chain management, mass production.\n\nTesla is attempting to disrupt, disrupt an industry in which its competitors have massive scale and long histories. Okay check. Elan Musk, this is a company series, they are lead investor and now and chairman continues as its CEO and product architect, check. And finally an interesting story, will test those practically gone out of business, my understanding is a couple times and is now runaway success of the market cap of over $23 billion.\n\nIt's CEO was the inspiration for Tony Stark in the Iron Man series according to it's director. Check, check kind of an interesting personality. You get the picture. Tesla was the first US auto company to go public since Ford Auto Company in 1956. And despite having approximately 1% of the revenues of GM and Ford and BMW, its market cap is roughly a third to a half of these venerable brands. It's my pleasure to introduce Elon Musk.\n\nElon was a native of South Africa and studied at Queens University, University of Pennsylvania. And ultimately Stanford to pursue a PhD in physics. He started Zip2, a software provider, which was sold to Compaq, he co-founded X. com which was later renamed to something called PayPal which was acquired by eBay. He founded his third company SpaceX in 2002 and continues as its CEO and CTO. Which I hope he'll tell us a little bit about.\n\nHe's also the founder and chairman of Solar City and then in his spare time earlier this year he announced a proposal to form a new form of transportation he's working on called Hyperloop. But most importantly for the purposes of tonight's program he's CEO of Tesla Motors.\n\nTonight Telsa, I mean sorry, tonight Elan will be interviewed by my friend and fellow Standford encore award committee colleague, Steve Jervison, managing director of Draper Fisher Jervison. Please join me welcoming Steve Jervison and Elan Musk. [NOISE]. >> Someone will yell if we got this wrong.\n\nI think they told us five times he sits there I sit here, and that just [INAUDIBLE] So before we start we're going to try to keep this a little casual and interesting as well as trying to get into the mind of musk a little tonight. It's a marvelous place to delve. You all have a chance to ask some questions later. So, you can start thinking about that now, I'll start with a few. But, as a warm-up.\n\nAnd, I think this might be something you wanna, might like to see, About a year and a half ago, about Model-S ships, I remember him saying, sort of with a gleam in his eye, that he relishes the day that he'll be driving around somewhere around in Silicon Valley and see the Model-S on the road that's not. Like an employee car that's in testing, but like a real customer, like, that he doesn't know.\n\nAnd so as a quick survey of hands, how many people saw a Tesla driving around Silicon Valley. And I don't mean the one sitting out there, that means you've seen multiple Teslas, right? I saw ten, I counted today, just. Now I have a short community, so that dream has become a reality, but what Tesla has done has become a marvel to watch.\n\n>> So I think a lot of folks here, you know business students, students, friends of the firm, are really curious on how this all works and so if we could, start with some design questions and then some organizational people kinds of questions, but starting with design, as you think about the big problems in the world that you are addressing, do you start with.\n\nA particular product in mind like there could be this Model S, there could be this Falcon 9. And then think How do I get there? Or do you start with saying There's something broken in the world and I'm gonna fix it. And I'm gonna commit to do it. Even if I don't know how to get there. >> sure. So, let's see. >> Is that on? >> Yeah. It seems, seems to be good. >> [UNKNOWN] when I was in college [UNKNOWN] in a positive way. So,.\n\nBut the three areas where, where I was quite sure we we're positive were sustainable energy, internet, and making life multiplanetary. And then there were a couple other areas where there's maybe a question mark, like the A. I. and writing genetics. [UNKNOWN] lesson? >> Yeah, rewriting genetics. >> Rewriting genetics. [UNKNOWN] [CROSSTALK]. >> Potentially negative consequences, hopefully positive. Something could go wrong. [CROSSTALK].\n\n>> Top three and a couple contenders, or were they always kinda jumbling around? Speaker 1: Waiting for the right moment. Speaker 2: No, I just thought that, looking ahead, what's really going to have an important effect on the future of humanity as a whole, those were the five areas that I could come up with standing in the shower, basically, you know.\n\nSpeaker 1: So there' this moment of epiphany that you held onto for awhile because you didn't pursue those right away, because this was an early vision that you then got opportunities to execute on. >> Yeah.\n\n>> So when you, maybe if we pick an example like Tesla going towards the Model S or SpaceX going towards the Falcon 9, do you commit the team yourself, your resources to that endeavor, you know, now a little farther along, when you have the end point in mind? Or. Just let's say the cost of goods analysis for the rocket or the cash ev should be better than internal combustion engines, just in general I'll commit. I'll believe that should be done.\n\n>> I didn't really get into any of the swift with the expectation of success. Or at least... Yeah, I started out thinking okay, when I do something in the electrical vehicle space, and that's why I originally came to Stanford was to work on advanced energy storage technologies and take ultra capacitors. So that was continuing on research that I'd done as an intern in Silicon Valley the summer prior.\n\nso, so that's, that's why I originally came out in '95. And then during that summer I read some internet software and I thought okay, I can either work on electric vehicle technology, or, or I could sup, support on internet stuff. try, try to do something with the internet. I thought the internet would be something that would. Dramatically affect the future of humanity be like, like acquiring a nervous system.\n\nAnd whereas previously, communication would have to occur almost by osmosis, you know, from one person to another or slowly through telephone or mail or something like that. But now, if you have a nervous system, any part of the.\n\nSo human collective know, can know about any other part instantly and previously you'd have to be at the, sort of library of congress even to have the library of congress' sort of information but, with everything digitized and accessed anywhere you can be in a jungle in South America and. And if you had just narrow that link somehow, you could, you'd have access to all of humanities information.\n\nSo it actually, effectively create a super organism and, and fundamentally change the nature of humanity itself. So I was kind of, just wanna be kind of part of that, >> Is that the path to AI that you might see? >> It's, its actually not exactly AI, its, some sort of. >> human machine collective intelligence, so different, different from AI, although AI may not turn out to be exactly what, hopefully not.\n\nIts not exactly what's, you know, like, described in Terminator or something, you know. >> No. >> [LAUGH] >> Quick pause for those who haven't been to Space 6. The data center has got to be the coolest thing you've ever seen. It's, you know, SkyNode on the door, Cyberdyne systems branding and what have you. [LAUGH] The most badass set of lights coming from all the little blinking servers. So these are the own it. >> Exactly. >> Yeah.\n\n>> Our FEA and CFD clusters is, is called Cyberdyne Systems. >> [LAUGH] >> We'll get back to influences, later on, but I wanna try to see if I understand what you were saying about this, this you see the long arc of. And what's important is humanity not little problems, but huge problems that could be solved. A lot of us go around and we see something frustrating like traffic on the 405. And we just take it as, well, crap.\n\nThe governments screwed or behind it, right? You have this incredible, sort of scope of ambition, right, planetary scope, interplanetary scope, right? A little more than just changing the world. Let's change some other worlds too, right, and this is big stuff. Was that always in your mind or did that, did you become more involved in it over time that this is available. We can do these things. It definitely emboldened over time.\n\nI mean, at the, you know, when, when I started the first, internet company. It was '02, with my brother and an, another person, Gregg Curry. The, it wasn't really with the thought of being wealthy. It, you know, I've got nothing against being wealthy, but, [LAUGH] [LAUGH] >> We'll get back to that later, too. [LAUGH]. >> [LAUGH] But, but it's just, it, it was just from the standpoint of been wanting to be a part of the, the internet.\n\nAnd I, I, I figured if we could make enough money to just get by, it will be, that'll be okay. and, and, and when we started off, we had, we had, we actually only had, like, one computer, and so it'll be our web server during the day, and our code at night. And we, we just got a, a small office in Palo Alto back when rent was not insane. and. it, it costs us like $450 a month.\n\nIt was cheaper than an apartment, so we actually just slept in the office and then showe, and then showered at the YMCA. [UNKNOWN] So we'd walk over there and, and shower and and that was actually I think that was when I fir, we fir, I first met you by the way. And so, [UNKNOWN] probably not many people know this, but we actually pitched Steve in like January 96 on the, the zip 2 business plan.\n\nAnd actually I thought, Steve was actually one of the most up to speed on, on, on what was actually was in our business plan. Most, most people we met did not actually read our business plan. In fact, a lot of people [UNKNOWN] time, didn't even know what the internet was. They had never used it, [CROSSTALK] they didn't think it would amount to anything. >> I'm sure, I'm not sure if they still do. [LAUGH]. >> Yeah, right.\n\nYeah, I'm sorta like you know, sort of like well known people in San Hill. I was like wow, okay. But at, at the time nobody made any, any money on the internet so I guess that's you know there wasn't any clear evidence that there, there was, was a business. And yeah, >> Those were fun times, I remember Kemball and you coming in. Very young looking guys. [LAUGH] I think I was on my first four months on the job too.\n\n>> Yeah, yeah, exactly, so >> So, let's just [UNKNOWN] for a second. I've I've also had the great honor to work with Steve Jobs briefly. But enough and as a business school student to study him with as much scrutiny as I could during that period. And there's some obvious parallels. And so let's start with the most obvious. But, just must be like elephant in the room. Is the secret to your success to be the CEO of two companies at the same time?\n\n>> No, I think it's >> Because look at the correlation. >> Yeah. >> Struggling companies, everything's in the crap can in December 2008, so let's take on a new CEO gig, [CROSSTALK] and same for Steve coming back to Apple. >> No, def, definitely it was not my intention to be CEO of two companies. I mean [INAUDIBLE] there are certain things that I kind of wanted to, that I thought were important to happen, and I thought it was important that.\n\nThat there was. The, the, an electric vehicle happened. That there was success in the electric vehicle arena. Because the, it, the encumbered companies were convinced that it was not possible to create a electric car that looked good. That had a good range and performance and so forth, And that even if you did make such a car it would not sell.\n\nBecause people had this love of gasoline, and so we had to show that it was possible to create a compelling electric car. Long range, good looking, you know, tho, those things, that was the Tesla Roadster. And if you created, if, if you made such a thing, people would buy it. And so that, that's what we, we tried to do with, with, with NASA. In, in fact I should try to say, one minor sort of correction on the introduction.\n\nI'm not a, I'm not co-founder of Solar City, but I am a co-founder of Tesla. [LAUGH]. >> It's okay, that's a good point. And [CROSSTALK] of many of it's key features. >> Yeah. >> Very much like Jobs. Both handled some of the detail as well as the long arc of what's important for the company. >> Right. >> [UNKNOWN] CEO is, is more than just a joke in that I wonder if in ways that are hard to predict and you wouldn't set out.\n\nFor this amount of work, it seems insane. But inevitably, both companies can not expect more than half your time at most. It's sort of naturally forces a delegation upon you and an expectation that you have to rise up for partial awareness at best, right? >> Yes. >> And I just wonder if that helps drive prioritization and really focusing on what's important a bit more than you otherwise might have to.\n\n>> That probably does, yeah, I think I probably do, yeah, I mean [UNKNOWN] the things that I do, at each company and constantly think about what is the most useful thing that I, that I could do. But even with that it still actually does take an enormous amount of time for a while there I was just doing constant 100 hour weeks. And that's, that's definitely weary. And, and now I'm kind of the in the 80 to 90 which is more manageable.\n\nbut, but you know that if you divide that by two, it's only like, you know like 45 hours per company which is not, is not much if you with a lot of things going on. >> You're like a slacker. I mean. [LAUGH]. >> Yeah. >> So you know, it is interesting also how you have a love for certain aspects of the product, so at space X, the whole concept and the vision of going to mars, and back into features and stuff. It's a wonderful thing to see.\n\nI think what should obviously strike the folks in the room as remarkable is the diversity of industries that you've tackled, right, from commercial banking to, industrial complex to the automotive industry these are heavily regulated industries. The general investor [INAUDIBLE].\n\nSo, there might not be a, an obvious pattern in which industry you tend to strive in but I wonder if there's a pattern process like do you, approach each of these perhaps the way a software architect might. To think of, a different way to bring innovation. A different way to reset you know, from first principles perhaps instead of iterating from the past. A breakthrough. And is there a reason you end up in these otherwise really tough industries?\n\nI mean, I don't have [INAUDIBLE]. Even on solar city going up against regulated utilities. These are places that you'd normally find entrepreneurs? >> yeah, like I said, it was not from the stand point of like what's the best risk adjusted rate of return or you know, what I think if things could be successful. Just like I think these things need to happen. Try to make them happen, and so then when we started space X which has the.\n\nI, I thought that the probability of success was less than the property percent, They were probably up there, but less than, a few percent. In the case that's on the study, I thought the probability of success was probably greater than 50%, but it wasn't clear what lying true to success would be, you know. >> Mm-hm. >> It could just be small, And, Yeah, but, but it was I mean just thought these were things that needed to get done.\n\nAnd even if the money's lost, okay, it's a little worth trying >> See conviction, but it didn't mean certainty. Right? >> You knew that all vehicles would be electric in your heart, >> Ultimately, ultimately yes. >> but not that the [UNKNOWN] necessarily succeed. >> I mean I think there's a fundamental good that Tesla. What can accomplish is acceleration of the, of the inevitable, which is electrotransportation. >> Mm-hm.\n\n>> But I think there's, there's a lot of value to, to accelerating, even though I think it's somewhat inevitable, there's value to accelerating to minimize the environmental and economic damage that would otherwise occur. >> Mm-hm. >> So. You know, it's better if, if we transit, transition to sustainable transport ten years or wha, what may be 20 years sooner than might otherwise be the case.\n\nAnd I think the Tesla's effect has been much greater than the cars made, that's been made internally because when we announced that Tesla roadster, then above lights. Who's [UNKNOWN] leader of GM at the time. So, are press released, I said, if a small company in California can do it, then, and so can GM. They took it to his engineers who told him that, that you couldn't build electric car. And, told them that they need to get going.\n\nThat's what got the boat rolling. And that in turn got Nissan to believe. And, and so, it's, kind of, got the, got, got things going. and, and ultimately it's like it's what we induce other companies to do that will have a greater impact on the cars we make ourselves.\n\n>> You know, it's an interesting point I'm gonna come back to later this idea that Tesla's founding missioners as [INAUDIBLE] particularly from the very beginning through the most recent reports to the public is to catalyze an industry shift that Tesla will be some part of, but at some part will help others in that shift as well. Which is remarkable from. And so. >> Yeah. >> We supply power trains to Toyota and to Mercedes and that type of thing.\n\n>> So what could you give to your biggest competitors one day. Eh, you know. >> Yeah. Absolutely I can accelerate that. >> Before we get to that sort of purpose driven mission I do wanna ask, or at least make sure the audience realizes how cool this car is, and so [UNKNOWN] doesn't have to do this. In case you haven't been as much of a fan as the two of us it's a bit unprecedented the reviews it's received.\n\nIt's a bit unperson the reviews received is saying it's the best car they've ever tested, [INAUDIBLE] saying it's the most important car in America's history. Um,the safety testing shows it's the most safe car ever manufactured. By far including vans and SUVs. And so it's pretty remarkable to peg performance, desirability, safety, and all these parameters.\n\nSo, is it luck or is it something particularly unique about the EV design space that let it be possible to build the best car? >> Well I like to think it plays some roll here. But I think we, I think electric vehicles have a fundamental [INAUDIBLE] advantage. If, if one designs an electrical from the ground up, and takes advantage of, of what's possible.\n\nLike if you just were to convert a gasoline car, you would not you would not achieve these advantages. But if it's properly done you can actually. Package the battery pack in a full pan and achieve a low center of mass and, and have a very compact motor and, and a motor and cable box so that the actual useable space in the car is significantly greater than a gassing car of the same overlook ex, excel dimensions. and.\n\nAnd then if you do a few other things, we try [UNKNOWN] necessarily specifically related to an electric car like using aluminum body and chest is helpful because you can absorb more energy per unit mass essentially in a crash. >> Like a [UNKNOWN] >> Yeah exactly. well, so it, yeah, quite part of it is related to [UNKNOWN] and part of it is related to other technical decisions that,that we made in the design of the model S.\n\nAnd so, yeah, that's what leads to sort of having a high safety is, I mean I don't want to go into too much because it might take up too much time, but. >> Did you know some of those things at the get go or did they unveil themselves as you went along? I'm just curious... How the vision materializes. For example, either the product dimensions, like it will have all these great features, like, like at the get go did they all gel?\n\nAnd the second thing, am also curious when did you first know that all vehicles would be electric? Like, was that early? >> That was probably 22 years ago, something like that. >> Before you met Tesla? >> Before there was Tesla. >> Before there was, way before there was Tesla. Oh yeah. Well like I said, You know, when I originally came out. When I, I mean when I was studying physics and That's probably when I, I thought it was the case.\n\nOr maybe, no sooner than that. Probably when I was in my. Sophomore year in college. >> Did you have certainty in your heart? >> Yeah, absolutely. It's super obvious. >> Yes! Yes! [LAUGH] Now, yes, now it is. [UNKNOWN] >> I think it was super obvious then, but >> Yeah, this is what blows my mind, because even like three years ago, most people probably didn't agree with this point of view.\n\nAnd if I could be confident of any prediction I could make it's that within 10 years, all people. What were the others' point of view? But we want to make the transition yet, but we realize that this is a ridiculous debate to be having. >> Yeah. >> You were along voice of sorts back then, probably amongst your cohort and friends, and you know, social factions [CROSSTALK]. >> Yeah I used to talk to, like dates about electric cars.\n\n>> How did that go? >> It wasn't, wasn't helpful. [LAUGH]. >> It got better? >> [LAUGH] yes [UNKNOWN] and [UNKNOWN]. And she said no, I don't. [LAUGH] So yeah, that's a while back. I mean, it's pretty, i mean almost everything is electric that we have in our daily lives. >> Well, from the physics of it, the heat loss of an internal combustion engine. Pretty amazing, it's pretty amazing. >> Yeah. >> So.\n\nI want to share a little story that leads to a question along a different angle. I don't think you've heard this before, but I find it fascinating. I was at a lunch at a Google event, and out of the blue, with no expectation that this would be a topic, and Larry Page turned to me, knowing a little bit about our connection and said, you know...\n\n>> How much money do I have and he mentioned a number, I thought that was cute that he was trying to recall that. He goes you know if I were to get hit by a bus today, I should leave all of it to Elon Musk. >> Really? >> Yeah. >> He said that? [SOUND]. >> Yeah. And so I'm like, paper, pen. Please get this down on. Yes, so he likes zingers. >> I love that actually. He's a good friend of mine. >> Context is important.\n\n>> I met Larry before he got venture funding. So that's like 90. >> Back in the [INAUDIBLE] days? >> Yeah. Wow. >> Well he's a remarkable guy. Obviously also an underachiever and you know, has a company that wants to do good in the world.\n\nAnd I think he looks at you with a bit of envy because what he then proceeded to say was, you know, I could give my money to a non profit and a lot less would get done than a cooperation that's pursuing things that are directly aligned with things I care about. Like, getting of, of oil and colonizing other planets. He believes in those missions. And thinks.\n\nThat a corporation with endowed with the right to do that as its business purpose is the best vehicle out there and he wishes he could do more of that in his own life. He compared poignantly, I think, to some other software companies in the pacific Northwest who might have executives who do evil for their first part of their career then do good for the second half. And then the sad story of others who never got to the second half of their life.\n\n>> Right. >> Like, like Steve Jobs. I mean not in a joking way I mean seriously and, and it was a very deep moment so you've heard already that [UNKNOWN]. [CROSSTALK]. >> [UNKNOWN] in fact, I [UNKNOWN]. And then I, I got a little bit of, some of the board members to question that segment [LAUGH]. And I was like, well it's true, you know. >> You mean like, for now or like just, just like we are growing. But no, it's just not the priority.\n\nwhich I think in a business school really a good point to dwell on for a moment. [LAUGH]. >> Yeah, it's not that, that I think they're unimportant or anything. It's just not the primary goal. >> Sure. >> And actually I've told that to people [UNKNOWN]. And so it's not like new information, or at least you know, if you're, if you're people who watch the [UNKNOWN] information and yeah and actually amazing the stock went up after that.\n\n[LAUGH] [INAUDIBLE] >> I th, I think there's a profound reason. I mean, you, you see the benefits on being focused on something that's a higher calling as your primary motivation. Your employees love it, the customers love it, [CROSSTALK] others love it, and you feel better about your job.\n\nThe interesting thing, irony perhaps, is that at least within our portfolio, the companies that have that kind of a founding principal actually make more profit and grow their revenue more quickly than the ones that don't. And now there's this little sample set, but the handful that had taken this bowl to the step, to say no, no, no, that we will not make that our number one priority. Actually do a great job.\n\nAnd it occurred to me, and I don't know if this was conscious in your head at some point. That if you weren't widely profitable, the auto industry wouldn't follow you. In other words, this whole mission of catalyzing a shift to new electric vehicle isn't gonna work if the business model's worse than the current business model. And so,. >> Yeah. >> You know, it's, it's the obvious byproduct of what you're focusing on.\n\nThey're not obvious, but it occurs to me that it's a byproduct. It wasn't obvious at first at all. [LAUGH] But and I'm curious that that thought occurred to you, that oh yeah, the other profits will come, or eh. >> Yeah. well, we have to generate flows of cash flow, or, or we have to generate enough cash flow to fund future developments, which requires having a good gross margin.\n\nand, and so I guess one could just say okay, well we're gonna stop developing your product and then you'd be really profitable. So at any given point, you could sort of say we'll, we could be profitable you know at this point in, in a significant way but, but we've got these great things that we wanna develop for the future and they're a good investment and that's what we're doing.\n\nAnd similarly, at Spacex the, you know, the founding vision was to colonize Mars. >> Yeah. >> indirectly. Again, interestingly catalyzing others to move. >> Yeah. >> And then you realize hey, I've gotta actually lead this charge. >> Yeah, well, I mean when Spacex, originally, I started off just thinking, well, how do I, increase NASA's budget? Actually, that was my goal. >> [LAUGH].\n\n>> so, it was, it was like, 2001 I was just, just talking to a friend of mine, and the guy asked me, he asked me what I was gonna do after Paypal, and I thought well, you know, I was wondering like, I'd like to get involved in space, but I, I just didn't think there's anything I could do as an individual.\n\nAnd, but I was curious as to when we, when we, NASA would be sending a, a team to Mars, 'cuz that was always gonna be the thing to do after the moon. I figured that, that there'd be some plan and I'd just go to the website and I could read, you know, the schedule [LAUGH] and then [CROSSTALK].\n\nOh yeah, it's like okay, 2017 good, okay, [LAUGH] but it, but actually there wasn't actually on, on the website and [LAUGH] at least I thought like, can I not find it, like what's going on in here. And is a secret, I don't know.\n\nso, but it turned out that that NASA had done a study on what it would cost to send, to do a manned Mars mission and I, this was under Bush the first and I, he in his, in his first he asked for a 90 day study shortly after taking office. And NASA came back with a $500 billion price tag. And he said, okay maybe not. [CROSSTALK]. >> [INAUDIBLE]. >> That's when $500 billion was serious money [LAUGH] for the government.\n\nSo so, so then that got totally shelved, and it was like you were not allowed to talk about any kind of crewed mission to Mars at NASA and anyway, so I, I, but I thought well, if I can do something that would galvanize public interest, that, and and then that public interest would translate to, additional appropriations for NASA, increase their, their budget, then, then maybe they could do it.\n\nSo the fir, so actually, what I sort of thinking I, I would do is send out a small greenhouse to the surface of Mars with seeds and dehydrated gel and then up, upon landing, hydrate the gel and grow the plants, and the public test respond to precedence and superlatives. So this would be the furthest that life's ever traveled.\n\nThe first life on Mars, and you're gonna have this great shot of green plants on a red background and I thought okay maybe that would get [INAUDIBLE]. >> The money shot. >> That would be the money shot, yeah. I, I'm never quite sure if that's a sort of a word you can use or not. >> [LAUGH]. >> Yeah, I, I, I don't, I don't know it's origins until somebody pointed it out to me, but. [LAUGH] so. [LAUGH].\n\n>> Okay, moving back to that green house on Mars. Yes, the photo is out there, and it is. >> Yeah, see the photo is out there. >> Yes, loved it. It was a great photo. and, and Okay, we'll make this happen and it will be good. At best, they'll get the money and we could do the, they could sort of send a, a team to Mars and it would be great. So I try, try and figure out how to do this with the proceeds that I had from, from PayPal.\n\nAnd I was able to figure out how to get the cost of the, the spacecraft down and the communications and, and, and the little greenhouse and everything. But the one thing I couldn't compress was the cost to launch. 'Cuz here're only a few options and the US options are way too expensive, and so I ended up going to Russia three times to try to buy the, the biggest ICBM in the Russian nuclear fleet. [LAUGH]. >> That's where I'd start, yeah. >> Yeah.\n\n>> Go big or go home. >> That was I mean, okay, [LAUGH] you know. The, the, it was, it was there was some strange trips that's for sure. [LAUGH] But you know, there's like virtually, like you buy any, it's a very capitalist society [LAUGH] in some ways. So, so I actually did negotiate a deal to [LAUGH] to buy two of the ICBMs minus the nukes. And [LAUGH] but, but I came to the conclusion that that third trip that it, it wouldn't really matter.\n\nLike, if we, if we, I actually came to the conclusion that my initial premise was, was, was wrong. >> Hm. >> Because I actually think there's, there's tremendous amount of will in, in the American population particularly to explore United States you know maybe more than any other country is a distillation of the human spirit of exploration.\n\nAnd it's really fundamental to psyche so, if he will think there's a way, I think we'd actually get a lot of support. >> Mm-hm. >> but, but, then it, it can't be just banging your head against the wall. You gotta believe that this can be done without breaking the federal budget. so, that's where I said okay, well, is there some way to affect the cost of space transport?\n\nAnd and, is going and, and so I, I, I got together with a group of people over a series of Saturdays just to, just trying out [UNKNOWN] there's something super, ex, fundamentally super expensive about rockets? Or, or, can the class be, substantially improved?\n\nand, I had, we had a bunch of those at our brainstorming sessions and I couldn't see, I couldn't see any fundamental obstacles to improving the cost of rockets, so, that, that's when I started SpaceX. >> I think I'll just build 'em myself. [CROSSTALK]. >> Yeah. >> And then, all [CROSSTALK]. >> But I'd said, at that point I would say the, the probability of success was definitely less than 40%. I thought it would most likely not succeed.\n\nBut was worth a try. >> But it's fascinating the, the parallels are, are so many between these companies. As again, probability is low. >> Yeah. >> Certainty that it needs to be done, >> Yeah. Certainty that it could be done by [INAUDIBLE] physics and first principles that it's success is an option, right? It's one of the possibilities. And interestingly starting with a Roadster and a Falcon 1 as a proof point to a larger design. >> Yeah.\n\n>> You know as I look at the falcon 9, and, it looks like the product of a software engineer. >> [LAUGH] right. >> Modular reuse, like let's build one engine and step and repeat. And building all kinds of elegance into the system design to obstruct away, you know, almost from the hardware into the software, into the design, the beauty of the system.\n\nAnd, and I wonder if that's why incumbents don't see that sort of re-engineering of the, of the car or the rocket or the what have you. The hyper loop is this, they don't approach it in that kind of blank sheet of paper. How would you do this if you didn't have to create jobs across districts? >> Yeah. >> Or you didn't have some other ulterior motive. Interesting.\n\nLooking at the time, I wanna give a, I'm gonna ask one last question, but I give a heads up on if there's mics to start getting them ready for the audience. Cuz I don't wanna monopolize, people's time here. Actually there's so many questions I wanna ask. But, but I'll, what I'll start with [INAUDIBLE] and here for at least [UNKNOWN] some of the quirky one about influences.\n\nSo you [INAUDIBLE] we've heard about the, the iron man reference and your childhood interest in comic books and [UNKNOWN] the galaxy and [INAUDIBLE], but there's all kinds of things woven into like Cymbeline systems that, that SpaceX that we heard and then some Easter eggs. So, Some of us noticed that the story goes to 11. >> Right. Yeah. >> On the, on the Tesla. This is a Spinal type reference for those who know [UNKNOWN].\n\nThis one goes to 11 and we just, just one more. >> It's louder than loud. >> That's right. >> Exactly. >> That's right. But noone seems to have noticed the product line-ups. You got the Model-S. You got the Model-X. >> Oh yeah. >> You've just trademarked the Model-E. >> Yeah. >> No one's been in that. [CROSSTALK]. >> Well what do you. >> And the model, and the model [CROSSTALK] Y. >> Yeah. >> Now, what's behind this? >> [LAUGH] I know, exactly.\n\nWell this, I guess there's a lot of humor in trademark, the trademark law, you know? [LAUGH] 'cuz yeah, obviously we just trademarked \"sexy\". So and, and then we're having this, this discussion with the, like Ford, 'cuz they the fourth council, they also didn't get it. Like, 'cuz, 'cuz, they're, they're sort of slightly opposing us using model E. >> Mmh. >> And then they saw that we registered model Y.\n\nAnd they said, oh, you're planning to use model Y instead of model E. Like no, it was just a joke. [LAUGH]. >> Right, we don't do that. [LAUGH]. >> We're like, what is this bell? Come on. [LAUGH]. >> Fantastic. Well do we, I'll keep going if we don't, but do we have microphones for folks if they wanna ask questions? Okay, let's do a quick see if anyone. Oh my gosh, yes. We have some, why don't we that?\n\nLet's take a couple of questions from the audience. [BLANK_AUDIO] And I'll let you guys figure out how to do the allocations. >> [COUGH] thank you very much. I have heard you talk about, supersonic aircraft. [COUGH] you guys have done some beautiful work at Space-X on [UNKNOWN] clearly Tesla is, is focused on electric. Have you thought about the, the synergies of electric MVTOL and aircraft for solving the 405 challenge? [LAUGH].\n\n>> For solving the 405 foam, well I mean, I do think there's, there's a [CROSSTALK]. >> And VTOL, Vertical Take Off and Landing. >> Yeah, right, sorry. Vertical take off and landing is VTOL. And yeah, I do think there's, there's a really, like the, I think the optimal sort of air transport solution is a, a VTOL, electric, supersonic plane. and, and actually works together quite well for a bunch of reasons.\n\nYou in, in particular, the higher you go, the, the better the electric. The more efficient the electric aircraft is. Whereas if you have a combustion aircraft as you, as you get higher it gets, it tends to get worse. 'Cuz you have kind of a fixed aperture and air scoop. >> Yeah.\n\n>> The, the engine is the hull and the front of the engine is, is, is, is a thick size and so you have to pick a particular cruising altitude and so you've gotta figure out how do you, get the right amount of air at sea level all the way through really high altitude? And then you've got this issue of supersonic combustion. That, you know, you see having to slow the air down and it ends up being not, not that efficient.\n\nBut an electric aircraft would just get better and better as, as it got higher. And the electric motors have a higher part of weight ratio than a combustion engine. So you're gonna have, you can actually have the power to do the vertical take off and landing part with a fairly small motor. Compared to combustion. And then you could get rid of the elevator and and rudder.\n\nSo you, you don't need the rear control services if you gimballed in, if you gimbal the motor. >> Gotcha. So it starts to look podcraft, like a. >> Yeah. >> Oblivion or something. >> [LAUGH] Right. And it's it's yeah. It's not something, not quite, the, the real trick of it is like how do you make it really long range, and at least as safe as existing aircraft? Those are really the only 2 questions on that front I think.\n\n[LAUGH] But they're, they're tricky. They're certainly tricky. >> Don't underestimate those two questions. [LAUGH] >> [LAUGH] >> Great, let's go to the next one or whoever has a mic however we're doing the allocation fairly and efficiently. Can we give him a hand? Okay no, we have someone, great. >> Hi, yan kua jsv94. Hi Steve [LAUGH] long time no see. One question, are you, is Tesla going to expand worldwide?\n\nAnd i think jsv is going to ho, host China 2. 0 tomorrow, and do you have any plans to go into the biggest car market today? But I know you were a little concerned through another friend of mine. I actually asked you indirectly a few years ago, that you were concerned about the the secret and the parroting in the Chinese market. Are you still concerned about that or you have a strategy?\n\n>> yeah, so, so Tesla's definitely gonna shift world wide, in fact the Tesla roadster is like in 31 countries right now and we, we expect to, to ship the, the Model S to, to China starting next year, as well as to Japan and Hong Kong and, and Singapore and, and Australia. So, sp really it's gonna be quite widely distributed next year. And certainly China is an extremely important market.\n\nIn fact, for premium Sedans, it China's bought half of the world market, for, for premium Sedans. so. [CROSSTALK]. >> And growing. >> Yeah. Take some of that Mercedes S Class. But last year 54% of Mercedes' S class' were sold in China. So pretty important market. and, so, so, we're gonna definitely do a major portion in, in, in China. And then actually some of the most enthusiastic potential customers we've seen are people from China.\n\nSo we, so we actually wanna make sure that the car actually has features which are specific to the Chinese market and, and make sure that it's not just, you know, taking an American product and you know just sort of sending it to China without any, any changes. So we wanna make sure it's tailored to the market. And Japan as well.\n\nI don't wanna [UNKNOWN] you know, a lot, not many American cars sell in Japan but I think that would be [COUGH] like, we [CROSSTALK]. >> Good symbolism. Yeah, I mean like, I think we should take the Japanese market seriously, and I think if we do things right, we should have reasonable sales there. So, yeah, so that's going to be next year. [COUGH] I mean as far as copying stuff, I think that's certainly a risk.\n\nI think China's actually getting a lot better these days and I, and I think the, the new government is taking, taking intellectual property a lot more seriously. So I'm actually starting to feel more and more confident about the, the, the technology not, actually not being copied in Ch, China, or at least you know, it, it getting much better. and, and I don't think it's going to be too much of an issue until we want to establish local production.\n\nAnd, that, that's where we need to make sure that we do it right, and it's not an incentive for the factory team that we established there to sort of, go across the road and create a competing factory. But that concern is a few years away. >> Do we have another one? Oh, yeah. Up here. The students are largely upstairs. Is that right? >> Yap. >> Yeah, up here. >> Hi, Allan [LAUGH]. This is [INAUDIBLE], a NVA student. First of all, thank you.\n\nThis is very inspiring, to hear an experience about actually, you know, changing the world. Using our, an organizational pulse. The, the organizations that you created. hopefully, we'll inspire. I know, already, I remember the movie as well. And, I was wondering if you can tell us more about your experience about, like, you know, how to balance, you know? The trade-off between your profits and, you know, following.\n\nPurpose that goes further than just make money. You know, you are trying to change the world. You know, or for the humanity rather than just make profits in the short term. >> What was the question. I'm not sure if I got? >> How, how do, how do you balance? >> Okay, how do you balance. Right.\n\n>> Well, Yeah well I mean first of all I should say you know with with, with, with all of the companies but, but I think particularly space x and Tesla although they're in a, in a good position today they, they went through some super tough times And, and in fact, for SpaceX, I reserved a capital to do, to have three launch failures, or to withstand two launch failures, and have the third one be a success.\n\nAnd actually we had three launch failures, we were just able to scrape enough money together for a fourth flight that succeeded. In 2008, and also in 2008, Steve knows, we, we got the Teslar planeting round done on the last hour of the last day. It was like 6 pm, December 24, 2008. If we hadn't gotten it done then, the county would have gone bankrupt a few days after Christmas. So, these are, this, this.\n\n>> What he's not mentioning is, the only reason that happened is he wrote a check for the remainder of his wealth to save the company [UNKNOWN] the car had a negative gross margin, and its not pretty. Oh and you had, you know, your large issue owners. >> That we pissed off, and you know, going AWOL. You know. >> Yeah. This is ugly. >> Yeah. [LAUGH] It was a stressful period. >> [LAUGH] And that was just at work. >> Yeah.\n\nSo, so, so for awhile there really wasn't a question of profit or non-profit. [LAUGH] It was like, we need to live. How do we live? I always look for the main challenge. and, and, and now I mean, now we're at this stage where we can say okay, we, we can shut the dial between, we, we could make, let's say at this point a medium amount of profit or a small amount.\n\nSo, we chose to make a small amount, because we can reinvest the cash flow into future products. So, you know, right now we're reinvesting the cash flow into developing the Model X which is an SUV, and into increasing the production capacity of the factory, and doing a little bit of advance planning on the third-generation vehicle that'll be.\n\nA mass market a, it's a reportable compelling electric car, so, so that's, that's really I guess what, what's meant by, in, in this case, not, not, concerning, we're not trying to maximize profit at this point, because it, it, it would constrain the business, the growth of the business and. Constrain the overall objective of transitioning the world towards electric cars.\n\nso, I got nothing against profit in, in general, but it's just, it's just, it's not I mean I actually don't think it's the smart move. If, if one were to take net present value of future cash flows, I think maximizing profit at this stage is actually not the smart move. >> Mm-hm. >> You know, and it's interesting, because earlier I said we would get back to it.\n\n>> You mentioned that, your goal was not to start a company that has a, you know, the chance of making the most money for you the quickest. >> Yeah. >> And that the wealth personally is almost a byproduct, of these activities of passion. And by analogy like in the investment field in capital. You know, you could look for the thing that will make the most money the quickest, right? Like a new ad network for social media. But who cares?\n\n>> [LAUGH] >> I mean, it really just doesn't help the world in any meaningful, and there are much, over the longer, if you take a longer term perspective, there are things you could do that don't answer the short term question of what's gonna make me the most money this year, or this five year period, but over 20 years.\n\nFolks don't know, ironically, he may make the most money, right, of any entrepreneur, or these companies might be more profitable than their cohort that doesn't follow the same purpose driven, kind of, almost messianic zeal. So, though the balance question most implies a dichotomy that may not be opposed, but may be aligned if you orchestrate it right. >> Yeah, maybe of a short time of a short term versus a long term approach. >> Yep exactly.\n\nGreat, we have, we have a hand up here? >> Up here? >> Another one up here? Sure. >> Up here. This will be the last question. >> Oh, is this the last question? Okay. >> yes, from your current car marketing strategy you could say that your cars are directed towards the luxury car market place, so. That's a fairly well-defined, market.\n\nDo you have any plans for expanding it to the general marketplace, to, say, make a car for the masses, which might be, may be in the $25 to $35,000 range? >> yeah, absolutely. >> Keep pushing it, huh? >> In fact, the, the fi, first blog piece I wrote it has, was the test master plan, is to start off with an expensive, low volume vehicle, then go to a mid priced, mid volume, and then sort of low price, high volume. So we're kind of in phase two.\n\nAnd without their generation vehicle, we expect to be somewhere in the $30-$35,000 range for the car. Which when you take into the account from the savings from the use of electricity instead of gasoline, is more like comparing it in the U. S. to about a $28,000 car, or in Europe to a $22,000 car. >> And the maintenance is much less, the fuel costs are much lower? >> Yeah, absolutely. Well great. I want to thank you very much for this.\n\nAnd transition to the second closing segment of our minion. >> Thank you. [SOUND] Well Elon, congratulations on behalf of the Stanford Graduate School of Business and the Stanford, Alumni Association, Business School Alumni Association. Dean Sloan would like to present you with this year's Entrepreneurial Cup of the Year. >> Thanks, thank you very much [SOUND]. [MUSIC]","textByLang":{"en":"[SOUND]. >> Good evening and, Welcome to the Stanford Graduate School of Business. I'm Garth Saloner. I'm the dean here, at the GSB and it's my privilege to welcome you all, To this wonderful event, I want to thank, The award selection committee for. This really fantastic selection. As well as all of the companies who have supported us by sponsoring the event. This is the 36th event of its kind.\n\nThe 36th annual encore award reception and each of the award is given... To an entre, entrepreneurial company that embodies the spirit, innovation and unique culture of the companies that we're familiar with in in Silicon Valley. And so let me be the first to congratulate Tesla and Elon Musk for. The award this evening. [SOUND] I'm going, be brief before handing you over to, to Jeff.\n\nBut I did want to just spend a few minutes saying a little bit about the things that we've been doing here, at the Graduate School of Business. In the area of entrepreneurship and I'm very quickly gonna reference three innovations this year.\n\nThe first is we have an entrepreneurship course and have had for many years in which we put our students together in multi-disciplinary teams from across the university and they work on projects together and this year.\n\nAs a harbinger of technology to come we have for the first time flipped the classroom to Stephanos Xenios who teaches the class recorded what would have been the lectures and instead the students got to use the class time to be mentored and to work together on the projects and I think that's very much a sign of the times and, and the future.\n\nThe second is many of you will be familiar with a program that we offered here at Stanford in the summer and during the year which we used to called the Summer Institute for Entrepreneurship. We now call it Stanford Ignite. This is a, a program that at Stanford was aimed at graduate students at Stanford not in the business schools so it's students and engineering medicine, and life sciences, and so on who.\n\nMight be starting a company or be working for companies that were innovating. And we'd give them a general management education. With an entrepreneurial spin. And this year we started to take that that program globally. So we offered a version of it in Bangalore, India this summer, and are in the midst of teaching one in Paris right now in a partnership with their called Politechnique. And that program too, makes heavy use of technology.\n\nMost of the classes are actually, faculty being from the Snite Management Center... To those locations. The final thing I wanna, I wanna reference is again, many of you are familiar with SIIDE which is the Stanford Institute for Innovatiion and Developing Economies, an institution that we launched here at the business school about two years ago, it had a landmark event this summer.\n\nWhen we opened our first Innovation Center in Accra, Ghana where we have in the first cohort, 29 local entrepreneurs who we are working with to help them to scale their businesses and it's a, it's a regional, a regional hub and a regional program with participants from, from five neighboring countries. So, lots going on at the GSB while we're. Helping to make entrepreneurial awards.\n\nWe're trying to do our bit to simulate the entrepreneurial ecosystem and in that vein, let me just say that in everything we do, we rely very very heavily on this community. You come into our classes to help teach and mentor our students... And and help us in a, in a whole variety of ways and, and we're extremely grateful. And and delighted to have you all with us this evening, thank you very much. [SOUND] [COUGH]. I'm Geoff Yang.\n\nAnd I have the privilege of chairing the Stanford ENCORE Award Committee. So, you may ask, you know, how do we pick a particular company to win the award. And I'll tell you, we look at four things. You know, the first is companies that embody the entrepreneurial spirit. We look for companies that are doing something big, bold, and important.\n\nI look for companies where the founder has or continues to play a very important role in the company's success. And we look at companies that have interesting stories, or who've, or whose founders are interesting personalities. So you might say, well how'd you get Tesla, then? It isn't quite. So. So the story of Tesla, you know, the so, you look how it stacks up.\n\nAnd you say well Tesla was started by two engineers, Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning who believed that electric vehicles could change the world. Okay, check. Tesla has succeeded in an industry where start-ups aren't supposed to succeed by incorporating novel design approaches to little things like concept design, and battery design, and body design, and drivetrain design, and manufacturing design, supply chain management, mass production.\n\nTesla is attempting to disrupt, disrupt an industry in which its competitors have massive scale and long histories. Okay check. Elan Musk, this is a company series, they are lead investor and now and chairman continues as its CEO and product architect, check. And finally an interesting story, will test those practically gone out of business, my understanding is a couple times and is now runaway success of the market cap of over $23 billion.\n\nIt's CEO was the inspiration for Tony Stark in the Iron Man series according to it's director. Check, check kind of an interesting personality. You get the picture. Tesla was the first US auto company to go public since Ford Auto Company in 1956. And despite having approximately 1% of the revenues of GM and Ford and BMW, its market cap is roughly a third to a half of these venerable brands. It's my pleasure to introduce Elon Musk.\n\nElon was a native of South Africa and studied at Queens University, University of Pennsylvania. And ultimately Stanford to pursue a PhD in physics. He started Zip2, a software provider, which was sold to Compaq, he co-founded X. com which was later renamed to something called PayPal which was acquired by eBay. He founded his third company SpaceX in 2002 and continues as its CEO and CTO. Which I hope he'll tell us a little bit about.\n\nHe's also the founder and chairman of Solar City and then in his spare time earlier this year he announced a proposal to form a new form of transportation he's working on called Hyperloop. But most importantly for the purposes of tonight's program he's CEO of Tesla Motors.\n\nTonight Telsa, I mean sorry, tonight Elan will be interviewed by my friend and fellow Standford encore award committee colleague, Steve Jervison, managing director of Draper Fisher Jervison. Please join me welcoming Steve Jervison and Elan Musk. [NOISE]. >> Someone will yell if we got this wrong.\n\nI think they told us five times he sits there I sit here, and that just [INAUDIBLE] So before we start we're going to try to keep this a little casual and interesting as well as trying to get into the mind of musk a little tonight. It's a marvelous place to delve. You all have a chance to ask some questions later. So, you can start thinking about that now, I'll start with a few. But, as a warm-up.\n\nAnd, I think this might be something you wanna, might like to see, About a year and a half ago, about Model-S ships, I remember him saying, sort of with a gleam in his eye, that he relishes the day that he'll be driving around somewhere around in Silicon Valley and see the Model-S on the road that's not. Like an employee car that's in testing, but like a real customer, like, that he doesn't know.\n\nAnd so as a quick survey of hands, how many people saw a Tesla driving around Silicon Valley. And I don't mean the one sitting out there, that means you've seen multiple Teslas, right? I saw ten, I counted today, just. Now I have a short community, so that dream has become a reality, but what Tesla has done has become a marvel to watch.\n\n>> So I think a lot of folks here, you know business students, students, friends of the firm, are really curious on how this all works and so if we could, start with some design questions and then some organizational people kinds of questions, but starting with design, as you think about the big problems in the world that you are addressing, do you start with.\n\nA particular product in mind like there could be this Model S, there could be this Falcon 9. And then think How do I get there? Or do you start with saying There's something broken in the world and I'm gonna fix it. And I'm gonna commit to do it. Even if I don't know how to get there. >> sure. So, let's see. >> Is that on? >> Yeah. It seems, seems to be good. >> [UNKNOWN] when I was in college [UNKNOWN] in a positive way. So,.\n\nBut the three areas where, where I was quite sure we we're positive were sustainable energy, internet, and making life multiplanetary. And then there were a couple other areas where there's maybe a question mark, like the A. I. and writing genetics. [UNKNOWN] lesson? >> Yeah, rewriting genetics. >> Rewriting genetics. [UNKNOWN] [CROSSTALK]. >> Potentially negative consequences, hopefully positive. Something could go wrong. [CROSSTALK].\n\n>> Top three and a couple contenders, or were they always kinda jumbling around? Speaker 1: Waiting for the right moment. Speaker 2: No, I just thought that, looking ahead, what's really going to have an important effect on the future of humanity as a whole, those were the five areas that I could come up with standing in the shower, basically, you know.\n\nSpeaker 1: So there' this moment of epiphany that you held onto for awhile because you didn't pursue those right away, because this was an early vision that you then got opportunities to execute on. >> Yeah.\n\n>> So when you, maybe if we pick an example like Tesla going towards the Model S or SpaceX going towards the Falcon 9, do you commit the team yourself, your resources to that endeavor, you know, now a little farther along, when you have the end point in mind? Or. Just let's say the cost of goods analysis for the rocket or the cash ev should be better than internal combustion engines, just in general I'll commit. I'll believe that should be done.\n\n>> I didn't really get into any of the swift with the expectation of success. Or at least... Yeah, I started out thinking okay, when I do something in the electrical vehicle space, and that's why I originally came to Stanford was to work on advanced energy storage technologies and take ultra capacitors. So that was continuing on research that I'd done as an intern in Silicon Valley the summer prior.\n\nso, so that's, that's why I originally came out in '95. And then during that summer I read some internet software and I thought okay, I can either work on electric vehicle technology, or, or I could sup, support on internet stuff. try, try to do something with the internet. I thought the internet would be something that would. Dramatically affect the future of humanity be like, like acquiring a nervous system.\n\nAnd whereas previously, communication would have to occur almost by osmosis, you know, from one person to another or slowly through telephone or mail or something like that. But now, if you have a nervous system, any part of the.\n\nSo human collective know, can know about any other part instantly and previously you'd have to be at the, sort of library of congress even to have the library of congress' sort of information but, with everything digitized and accessed anywhere you can be in a jungle in South America and. And if you had just narrow that link somehow, you could, you'd have access to all of humanities information.\n\nSo it actually, effectively create a super organism and, and fundamentally change the nature of humanity itself. So I was kind of, just wanna be kind of part of that, >> Is that the path to AI that you might see? >> It's, its actually not exactly AI, its, some sort of. >> human machine collective intelligence, so different, different from AI, although AI may not turn out to be exactly what, hopefully not.\n\nIts not exactly what's, you know, like, described in Terminator or something, you know. >> No. >> [LAUGH] >> Quick pause for those who haven't been to Space 6. The data center has got to be the coolest thing you've ever seen. It's, you know, SkyNode on the door, Cyberdyne systems branding and what have you. [LAUGH] The most badass set of lights coming from all the little blinking servers. So these are the own it. >> Exactly. >> Yeah.\n\n>> Our FEA and CFD clusters is, is called Cyberdyne Systems. >> [LAUGH] >> We'll get back to influences, later on, but I wanna try to see if I understand what you were saying about this, this you see the long arc of. And what's important is humanity not little problems, but huge problems that could be solved. A lot of us go around and we see something frustrating like traffic on the 405. And we just take it as, well, crap.\n\nThe governments screwed or behind it, right? You have this incredible, sort of scope of ambition, right, planetary scope, interplanetary scope, right? A little more than just changing the world. Let's change some other worlds too, right, and this is big stuff. Was that always in your mind or did that, did you become more involved in it over time that this is available. We can do these things. It definitely emboldened over time.\n\nI mean, at the, you know, when, when I started the first, internet company. It was '02, with my brother and an, another person, Gregg Curry. The, it wasn't really with the thought of being wealthy. It, you know, I've got nothing against being wealthy, but, [LAUGH] [LAUGH] >> We'll get back to that later, too. [LAUGH]. >> [LAUGH] But, but it's just, it, it was just from the standpoint of been wanting to be a part of the, the internet.\n\nAnd I, I, I figured if we could make enough money to just get by, it will be, that'll be okay. and, and, and when we started off, we had, we had, we actually only had, like, one computer, and so it'll be our web server during the day, and our code at night. And we, we just got a, a small office in Palo Alto back when rent was not insane. and. it, it costs us like $450 a month.\n\nIt was cheaper than an apartment, so we actually just slept in the office and then showe, and then showered at the YMCA. [UNKNOWN] So we'd walk over there and, and shower and and that was actually I think that was when I fir, we fir, I first met you by the way. And so, [UNKNOWN] probably not many people know this, but we actually pitched Steve in like January 96 on the, the zip 2 business plan.\n\nAnd actually I thought, Steve was actually one of the most up to speed on, on, on what was actually was in our business plan. Most, most people we met did not actually read our business plan. In fact, a lot of people [UNKNOWN] time, didn't even know what the internet was. They had never used it, [CROSSTALK] they didn't think it would amount to anything. >> I'm sure, I'm not sure if they still do. [LAUGH]. >> Yeah, right.\n\nYeah, I'm sorta like you know, sort of like well known people in San Hill. I was like wow, okay. But at, at the time nobody made any, any money on the internet so I guess that's you know there wasn't any clear evidence that there, there was, was a business. And yeah, >> Those were fun times, I remember Kemball and you coming in. Very young looking guys. [LAUGH] I think I was on my first four months on the job too.\n\n>> Yeah, yeah, exactly, so >> So, let's just [UNKNOWN] for a second. I've I've also had the great honor to work with Steve Jobs briefly. But enough and as a business school student to study him with as much scrutiny as I could during that period. And there's some obvious parallels. And so let's start with the most obvious. But, just must be like elephant in the room. Is the secret to your success to be the CEO of two companies at the same time?\n\n>> No, I think it's >> Because look at the correlation. >> Yeah. >> Struggling companies, everything's in the crap can in December 2008, so let's take on a new CEO gig, [CROSSTALK] and same for Steve coming back to Apple. >> No, def, definitely it was not my intention to be CEO of two companies. I mean [INAUDIBLE] there are certain things that I kind of wanted to, that I thought were important to happen, and I thought it was important that.\n\nThat there was. The, the, an electric vehicle happened. That there was success in the electric vehicle arena. Because the, it, the encumbered companies were convinced that it was not possible to create a electric car that looked good. That had a good range and performance and so forth, And that even if you did make such a car it would not sell.\n\nBecause people had this love of gasoline, and so we had to show that it was possible to create a compelling electric car. Long range, good looking, you know, tho, those things, that was the Tesla Roadster. And if you created, if, if you made such a thing, people would buy it. And so that, that's what we, we tried to do with, with, with NASA. In, in fact I should try to say, one minor sort of correction on the introduction.\n\nI'm not a, I'm not co-founder of Solar City, but I am a co-founder of Tesla. [LAUGH]. >> It's okay, that's a good point. And [CROSSTALK] of many of it's key features. >> Yeah. >> Very much like Jobs. Both handled some of the detail as well as the long arc of what's important for the company. >> Right. >> [UNKNOWN] CEO is, is more than just a joke in that I wonder if in ways that are hard to predict and you wouldn't set out.\n\nFor this amount of work, it seems insane. But inevitably, both companies can not expect more than half your time at most. It's sort of naturally forces a delegation upon you and an expectation that you have to rise up for partial awareness at best, right? >> Yes. >> And I just wonder if that helps drive prioritization and really focusing on what's important a bit more than you otherwise might have to.\n\n>> That probably does, yeah, I think I probably do, yeah, I mean [UNKNOWN] the things that I do, at each company and constantly think about what is the most useful thing that I, that I could do. But even with that it still actually does take an enormous amount of time for a while there I was just doing constant 100 hour weeks. And that's, that's definitely weary. And, and now I'm kind of the in the 80 to 90 which is more manageable.\n\nbut, but you know that if you divide that by two, it's only like, you know like 45 hours per company which is not, is not much if you with a lot of things going on. >> You're like a slacker. I mean. [LAUGH]. >> Yeah. >> So you know, it is interesting also how you have a love for certain aspects of the product, so at space X, the whole concept and the vision of going to mars, and back into features and stuff. It's a wonderful thing to see.\n\nI think what should obviously strike the folks in the room as remarkable is the diversity of industries that you've tackled, right, from commercial banking to, industrial complex to the automotive industry these are heavily regulated industries. The general investor [INAUDIBLE].\n\nSo, there might not be a, an obvious pattern in which industry you tend to strive in but I wonder if there's a pattern process like do you, approach each of these perhaps the way a software architect might. To think of, a different way to bring innovation. A different way to reset you know, from first principles perhaps instead of iterating from the past. A breakthrough. And is there a reason you end up in these otherwise really tough industries?\n\nI mean, I don't have [INAUDIBLE]. Even on solar city going up against regulated utilities. These are places that you'd normally find entrepreneurs? >> yeah, like I said, it was not from the stand point of like what's the best risk adjusted rate of return or you know, what I think if things could be successful. Just like I think these things need to happen. Try to make them happen, and so then when we started space X which has the.\n\nI, I thought that the probability of success was less than the property percent, They were probably up there, but less than, a few percent. In the case that's on the study, I thought the probability of success was probably greater than 50%, but it wasn't clear what lying true to success would be, you know. >> Mm-hm. >> It could just be small, And, Yeah, but, but it was I mean just thought these were things that needed to get done.\n\nAnd even if the money's lost, okay, it's a little worth trying >> See conviction, but it didn't mean certainty. Right? >> You knew that all vehicles would be electric in your heart, >> Ultimately, ultimately yes. >> but not that the [UNKNOWN] necessarily succeed. >> I mean I think there's a fundamental good that Tesla. What can accomplish is acceleration of the, of the inevitable, which is electrotransportation. >> Mm-hm.\n\n>> But I think there's, there's a lot of value to, to accelerating, even though I think it's somewhat inevitable, there's value to accelerating to minimize the environmental and economic damage that would otherwise occur. >> Mm-hm. >> So. You know, it's better if, if we transit, transition to sustainable transport ten years or wha, what may be 20 years sooner than might otherwise be the case.\n\nAnd I think the Tesla's effect has been much greater than the cars made, that's been made internally because when we announced that Tesla roadster, then above lights. Who's [UNKNOWN] leader of GM at the time. So, are press released, I said, if a small company in California can do it, then, and so can GM. They took it to his engineers who told him that, that you couldn't build electric car. And, told them that they need to get going.\n\nThat's what got the boat rolling. And that in turn got Nissan to believe. And, and so, it's, kind of, got the, got, got things going. and, and ultimately it's like it's what we induce other companies to do that will have a greater impact on the cars we make ourselves.\n\n>> You know, it's an interesting point I'm gonna come back to later this idea that Tesla's founding missioners as [INAUDIBLE] particularly from the very beginning through the most recent reports to the public is to catalyze an industry shift that Tesla will be some part of, but at some part will help others in that shift as well. Which is remarkable from. And so. >> Yeah. >> We supply power trains to Toyota and to Mercedes and that type of thing.\n\n>> So what could you give to your biggest competitors one day. Eh, you know. >> Yeah. Absolutely I can accelerate that. >> Before we get to that sort of purpose driven mission I do wanna ask, or at least make sure the audience realizes how cool this car is, and so [UNKNOWN] doesn't have to do this. In case you haven't been as much of a fan as the two of us it's a bit unprecedented the reviews it's received.\n\nIt's a bit unperson the reviews received is saying it's the best car they've ever tested, [INAUDIBLE] saying it's the most important car in America's history. Um,the safety testing shows it's the most safe car ever manufactured. By far including vans and SUVs. And so it's pretty remarkable to peg performance, desirability, safety, and all these parameters.\n\nSo, is it luck or is it something particularly unique about the EV design space that let it be possible to build the best car? >> Well I like to think it plays some roll here. But I think we, I think electric vehicles have a fundamental [INAUDIBLE] advantage. If, if one designs an electrical from the ground up, and takes advantage of, of what's possible.\n\nLike if you just were to convert a gasoline car, you would not you would not achieve these advantages. But if it's properly done you can actually. Package the battery pack in a full pan and achieve a low center of mass and, and have a very compact motor and, and a motor and cable box so that the actual useable space in the car is significantly greater than a gassing car of the same overlook ex, excel dimensions. and.\n\nAnd then if you do a few other things, we try [UNKNOWN] necessarily specifically related to an electric car like using aluminum body and chest is helpful because you can absorb more energy per unit mass essentially in a crash. >> Like a [UNKNOWN] >> Yeah exactly. well, so it, yeah, quite part of it is related to [UNKNOWN] and part of it is related to other technical decisions that,that we made in the design of the model S.\n\nAnd so, yeah, that's what leads to sort of having a high safety is, I mean I don't want to go into too much because it might take up too much time, but. >> Did you know some of those things at the get go or did they unveil themselves as you went along? I'm just curious... How the vision materializes. For example, either the product dimensions, like it will have all these great features, like, like at the get go did they all gel?\n\nAnd the second thing, am also curious when did you first know that all vehicles would be electric? Like, was that early? >> That was probably 22 years ago, something like that. >> Before you met Tesla? >> Before there was Tesla. >> Before there was, way before there was Tesla. Oh yeah. Well like I said, You know, when I originally came out. When I, I mean when I was studying physics and That's probably when I, I thought it was the case.\n\nOr maybe, no sooner than that. Probably when I was in my. Sophomore year in college. >> Did you have certainty in your heart? >> Yeah, absolutely. It's super obvious. >> Yes! Yes! [LAUGH] Now, yes, now it is. [UNKNOWN] >> I think it was super obvious then, but >> Yeah, this is what blows my mind, because even like three years ago, most people probably didn't agree with this point of view.\n\nAnd if I could be confident of any prediction I could make it's that within 10 years, all people. What were the others' point of view? But we want to make the transition yet, but we realize that this is a ridiculous debate to be having. >> Yeah. >> You were along voice of sorts back then, probably amongst your cohort and friends, and you know, social factions [CROSSTALK]. >> Yeah I used to talk to, like dates about electric cars.\n\n>> How did that go? >> It wasn't, wasn't helpful. [LAUGH]. >> It got better? >> [LAUGH] yes [UNKNOWN] and [UNKNOWN]. And she said no, I don't. [LAUGH] So yeah, that's a while back. I mean, it's pretty, i mean almost everything is electric that we have in our daily lives. >> Well, from the physics of it, the heat loss of an internal combustion engine. Pretty amazing, it's pretty amazing. >> Yeah. >> So.\n\nI want to share a little story that leads to a question along a different angle. I don't think you've heard this before, but I find it fascinating. I was at a lunch at a Google event, and out of the blue, with no expectation that this would be a topic, and Larry Page turned to me, knowing a little bit about our connection and said, you know...\n\n>> How much money do I have and he mentioned a number, I thought that was cute that he was trying to recall that. He goes you know if I were to get hit by a bus today, I should leave all of it to Elon Musk. >> Really? >> Yeah. >> He said that? [SOUND]. >> Yeah. And so I'm like, paper, pen. Please get this down on. Yes, so he likes zingers. >> I love that actually. He's a good friend of mine. >> Context is important.\n\n>> I met Larry before he got venture funding. So that's like 90. >> Back in the [INAUDIBLE] days? >> Yeah. Wow. >> Well he's a remarkable guy. Obviously also an underachiever and you know, has a company that wants to do good in the world.\n\nAnd I think he looks at you with a bit of envy because what he then proceeded to say was, you know, I could give my money to a non profit and a lot less would get done than a cooperation that's pursuing things that are directly aligned with things I care about. Like, getting of, of oil and colonizing other planets. He believes in those missions. And thinks.\n\nThat a corporation with endowed with the right to do that as its business purpose is the best vehicle out there and he wishes he could do more of that in his own life. He compared poignantly, I think, to some other software companies in the pacific Northwest who might have executives who do evil for their first part of their career then do good for the second half. And then the sad story of others who never got to the second half of their life.\n\n>> Right. >> Like, like Steve Jobs. I mean not in a joking way I mean seriously and, and it was a very deep moment so you've heard already that [UNKNOWN]. [CROSSTALK]. >> [UNKNOWN] in fact, I [UNKNOWN]. And then I, I got a little bit of, some of the board members to question that segment [LAUGH]. And I was like, well it's true, you know. >> You mean like, for now or like just, just like we are growing. But no, it's just not the priority.\n\nwhich I think in a business school really a good point to dwell on for a moment. [LAUGH]. >> Yeah, it's not that, that I think they're unimportant or anything. It's just not the primary goal. >> Sure. >> And actually I've told that to people [UNKNOWN]. And so it's not like new information, or at least you know, if you're, if you're people who watch the [UNKNOWN] information and yeah and actually amazing the stock went up after that.\n\n[LAUGH] [INAUDIBLE] >> I th, I think there's a profound reason. I mean, you, you see the benefits on being focused on something that's a higher calling as your primary motivation. Your employees love it, the customers love it, [CROSSTALK] others love it, and you feel better about your job.\n\nThe interesting thing, irony perhaps, is that at least within our portfolio, the companies that have that kind of a founding principal actually make more profit and grow their revenue more quickly than the ones that don't. And now there's this little sample set, but the handful that had taken this bowl to the step, to say no, no, no, that we will not make that our number one priority. Actually do a great job.\n\nAnd it occurred to me, and I don't know if this was conscious in your head at some point. That if you weren't widely profitable, the auto industry wouldn't follow you. In other words, this whole mission of catalyzing a shift to new electric vehicle isn't gonna work if the business model's worse than the current business model. And so,. >> Yeah. >> You know, it's, it's the obvious byproduct of what you're focusing on.\n\nThey're not obvious, but it occurs to me that it's a byproduct. It wasn't obvious at first at all. [LAUGH] But and I'm curious that that thought occurred to you, that oh yeah, the other profits will come, or eh. >> Yeah. well, we have to generate flows of cash flow, or, or we have to generate enough cash flow to fund future developments, which requires having a good gross margin.\n\nand, and so I guess one could just say okay, well we're gonna stop developing your product and then you'd be really profitable. So at any given point, you could sort of say we'll, we could be profitable you know at this point in, in a significant way but, but we've got these great things that we wanna develop for the future and they're a good investment and that's what we're doing.\n\nAnd similarly, at Spacex the, you know, the founding vision was to colonize Mars. >> Yeah. >> indirectly. Again, interestingly catalyzing others to move. >> Yeah. >> And then you realize hey, I've gotta actually lead this charge. >> Yeah, well, I mean when Spacex, originally, I started off just thinking, well, how do I, increase NASA's budget? Actually, that was my goal. >> [LAUGH].\n\n>> so, it was, it was like, 2001 I was just, just talking to a friend of mine, and the guy asked me, he asked me what I was gonna do after Paypal, and I thought well, you know, I was wondering like, I'd like to get involved in space, but I, I just didn't think there's anything I could do as an individual.\n\nAnd, but I was curious as to when we, when we, NASA would be sending a, a team to Mars, 'cuz that was always gonna be the thing to do after the moon. I figured that, that there'd be some plan and I'd just go to the website and I could read, you know, the schedule [LAUGH] and then [CROSSTALK].\n\nOh yeah, it's like okay, 2017 good, okay, [LAUGH] but it, but actually there wasn't actually on, on the website and [LAUGH] at least I thought like, can I not find it, like what's going on in here. And is a secret, I don't know.\n\nso, but it turned out that that NASA had done a study on what it would cost to send, to do a manned Mars mission and I, this was under Bush the first and I, he in his, in his first he asked for a 90 day study shortly after taking office. And NASA came back with a $500 billion price tag. And he said, okay maybe not. [CROSSTALK]. >> [INAUDIBLE]. >> That's when $500 billion was serious money [LAUGH] for the government.\n\nSo so, so then that got totally shelved, and it was like you were not allowed to talk about any kind of crewed mission to Mars at NASA and anyway, so I, I, but I thought well, if I can do something that would galvanize public interest, that, and and then that public interest would translate to, additional appropriations for NASA, increase their, their budget, then, then maybe they could do it.\n\nSo the fir, so actually, what I sort of thinking I, I would do is send out a small greenhouse to the surface of Mars with seeds and dehydrated gel and then up, upon landing, hydrate the gel and grow the plants, and the public test respond to precedence and superlatives. So this would be the furthest that life's ever traveled.\n\nThe first life on Mars, and you're gonna have this great shot of green plants on a red background and I thought okay maybe that would get [INAUDIBLE]. >> The money shot. >> That would be the money shot, yeah. I, I'm never quite sure if that's a sort of a word you can use or not. >> [LAUGH]. >> Yeah, I, I, I don't, I don't know it's origins until somebody pointed it out to me, but. [LAUGH] so. [LAUGH].\n\n>> Okay, moving back to that green house on Mars. Yes, the photo is out there, and it is. >> Yeah, see the photo is out there. >> Yes, loved it. It was a great photo. and, and Okay, we'll make this happen and it will be good. At best, they'll get the money and we could do the, they could sort of send a, a team to Mars and it would be great. So I try, try and figure out how to do this with the proceeds that I had from, from PayPal.\n\nAnd I was able to figure out how to get the cost of the, the spacecraft down and the communications and, and, and the little greenhouse and everything. But the one thing I couldn't compress was the cost to launch. 'Cuz here're only a few options and the US options are way too expensive, and so I ended up going to Russia three times to try to buy the, the biggest ICBM in the Russian nuclear fleet. [LAUGH]. >> That's where I'd start, yeah. >> Yeah.\n\n>> Go big or go home. >> That was I mean, okay, [LAUGH] you know. The, the, it was, it was there was some strange trips that's for sure. [LAUGH] But you know, there's like virtually, like you buy any, it's a very capitalist society [LAUGH] in some ways. So, so I actually did negotiate a deal to [LAUGH] to buy two of the ICBMs minus the nukes. And [LAUGH] but, but I came to the conclusion that that third trip that it, it wouldn't really matter.\n\nLike, if we, if we, I actually came to the conclusion that my initial premise was, was, was wrong. >> Hm. >> Because I actually think there's, there's tremendous amount of will in, in the American population particularly to explore United States you know maybe more than any other country is a distillation of the human spirit of exploration.\n\nAnd it's really fundamental to psyche so, if he will think there's a way, I think we'd actually get a lot of support. >> Mm-hm. >> but, but, then it, it can't be just banging your head against the wall. You gotta believe that this can be done without breaking the federal budget. so, that's where I said okay, well, is there some way to affect the cost of space transport?\n\nAnd and, is going and, and so I, I, I got together with a group of people over a series of Saturdays just to, just trying out [UNKNOWN] there's something super, ex, fundamentally super expensive about rockets? Or, or, can the class be, substantially improved?\n\nand, I had, we had a bunch of those at our brainstorming sessions and I couldn't see, I couldn't see any fundamental obstacles to improving the cost of rockets, so, that, that's when I started SpaceX. >> I think I'll just build 'em myself. [CROSSTALK]. >> Yeah. >> And then, all [CROSSTALK]. >> But I'd said, at that point I would say the, the probability of success was definitely less than 40%. I thought it would most likely not succeed.\n\nBut was worth a try. >> But it's fascinating the, the parallels are, are so many between these companies. As again, probability is low. >> Yeah. >> Certainty that it needs to be done, >> Yeah. Certainty that it could be done by [INAUDIBLE] physics and first principles that it's success is an option, right? It's one of the possibilities. And interestingly starting with a Roadster and a Falcon 1 as a proof point to a larger design. >> Yeah.\n\n>> You know as I look at the falcon 9, and, it looks like the product of a software engineer. >> [LAUGH] right. >> Modular reuse, like let's build one engine and step and repeat. And building all kinds of elegance into the system design to obstruct away, you know, almost from the hardware into the software, into the design, the beauty of the system.\n\nAnd, and I wonder if that's why incumbents don't see that sort of re-engineering of the, of the car or the rocket or the what have you. The hyper loop is this, they don't approach it in that kind of blank sheet of paper. How would you do this if you didn't have to create jobs across districts? >> Yeah. >> Or you didn't have some other ulterior motive. Interesting.\n\nLooking at the time, I wanna give a, I'm gonna ask one last question, but I give a heads up on if there's mics to start getting them ready for the audience. Cuz I don't wanna monopolize, people's time here. Actually there's so many questions I wanna ask. But, but I'll, what I'll start with [INAUDIBLE] and here for at least [UNKNOWN] some of the quirky one about influences.\n\nSo you [INAUDIBLE] we've heard about the, the iron man reference and your childhood interest in comic books and [UNKNOWN] the galaxy and [INAUDIBLE], but there's all kinds of things woven into like Cymbeline systems that, that SpaceX that we heard and then some Easter eggs. So, Some of us noticed that the story goes to 11. >> Right. Yeah. >> On the, on the Tesla. This is a Spinal type reference for those who know [UNKNOWN].\n\nThis one goes to 11 and we just, just one more. >> It's louder than loud. >> That's right. >> Exactly. >> That's right. But noone seems to have noticed the product line-ups. You got the Model-S. You got the Model-X. >> Oh yeah. >> You've just trademarked the Model-E. >> Yeah. >> No one's been in that. [CROSSTALK]. >> Well what do you. >> And the model, and the model [CROSSTALK] Y. >> Yeah. >> Now, what's behind this? >> [LAUGH] I know, exactly.\n\nWell this, I guess there's a lot of humor in trademark, the trademark law, you know? [LAUGH] 'cuz yeah, obviously we just trademarked \"sexy\". So and, and then we're having this, this discussion with the, like Ford, 'cuz they the fourth council, they also didn't get it. Like, 'cuz, 'cuz, they're, they're sort of slightly opposing us using model E. >> Mmh. >> And then they saw that we registered model Y.\n\nAnd they said, oh, you're planning to use model Y instead of model E. Like no, it was just a joke. [LAUGH]. >> Right, we don't do that. [LAUGH]. >> We're like, what is this bell? Come on. [LAUGH]. >> Fantastic. Well do we, I'll keep going if we don't, but do we have microphones for folks if they wanna ask questions? Okay, let's do a quick see if anyone. Oh my gosh, yes. We have some, why don't we that?\n\nLet's take a couple of questions from the audience. [BLANK_AUDIO] And I'll let you guys figure out how to do the allocations. >> [COUGH] thank you very much. I have heard you talk about, supersonic aircraft. [COUGH] you guys have done some beautiful work at Space-X on [UNKNOWN] clearly Tesla is, is focused on electric. Have you thought about the, the synergies of electric MVTOL and aircraft for solving the 405 challenge? [LAUGH].\n\n>> For solving the 405 foam, well I mean, I do think there's, there's a [CROSSTALK]. >> And VTOL, Vertical Take Off and Landing. >> Yeah, right, sorry. Vertical take off and landing is VTOL. And yeah, I do think there's, there's a really, like the, I think the optimal sort of air transport solution is a, a VTOL, electric, supersonic plane. and, and actually works together quite well for a bunch of reasons.\n\nYou in, in particular, the higher you go, the, the better the electric. The more efficient the electric aircraft is. Whereas if you have a combustion aircraft as you, as you get higher it gets, it tends to get worse. 'Cuz you have kind of a fixed aperture and air scoop. >> Yeah.\n\n>> The, the engine is the hull and the front of the engine is, is, is, is a thick size and so you have to pick a particular cruising altitude and so you've gotta figure out how do you, get the right amount of air at sea level all the way through really high altitude? And then you've got this issue of supersonic combustion. That, you know, you see having to slow the air down and it ends up being not, not that efficient.\n\nBut an electric aircraft would just get better and better as, as it got higher. And the electric motors have a higher part of weight ratio than a combustion engine. So you're gonna have, you can actually have the power to do the vertical take off and landing part with a fairly small motor. Compared to combustion. And then you could get rid of the elevator and and rudder.\n\nSo you, you don't need the rear control services if you gimballed in, if you gimbal the motor. >> Gotcha. So it starts to look podcraft, like a. >> Yeah. >> Oblivion or something. >> [LAUGH] Right. And it's it's yeah. It's not something, not quite, the, the real trick of it is like how do you make it really long range, and at least as safe as existing aircraft? Those are really the only 2 questions on that front I think.\n\n[LAUGH] But they're, they're tricky. They're certainly tricky. >> Don't underestimate those two questions. [LAUGH] >> [LAUGH] >> Great, let's go to the next one or whoever has a mic however we're doing the allocation fairly and efficiently. Can we give him a hand? Okay no, we have someone, great. >> Hi, yan kua jsv94. Hi Steve [LAUGH] long time no see. One question, are you, is Tesla going to expand worldwide?\n\nAnd i think jsv is going to ho, host China 2. 0 tomorrow, and do you have any plans to go into the biggest car market today? But I know you were a little concerned through another friend of mine. I actually asked you indirectly a few years ago, that you were concerned about the the secret and the parroting in the Chinese market. Are you still concerned about that or you have a strategy?\n\n>> yeah, so, so Tesla's definitely gonna shift world wide, in fact the Tesla roadster is like in 31 countries right now and we, we expect to, to ship the, the Model S to, to China starting next year, as well as to Japan and Hong Kong and, and Singapore and, and Australia. So, sp really it's gonna be quite widely distributed next year. And certainly China is an extremely important market.\n\nIn fact, for premium Sedans, it China's bought half of the world market, for, for premium Sedans. so. [CROSSTALK]. >> And growing. >> Yeah. Take some of that Mercedes S Class. But last year 54% of Mercedes' S class' were sold in China. So pretty important market. and, so, so, we're gonna definitely do a major portion in, in, in China. And then actually some of the most enthusiastic potential customers we've seen are people from China.\n\nSo we, so we actually wanna make sure that the car actually has features which are specific to the Chinese market and, and make sure that it's not just, you know, taking an American product and you know just sort of sending it to China without any, any changes. So we wanna make sure it's tailored to the market. And Japan as well.\n\nI don't wanna [UNKNOWN] you know, a lot, not many American cars sell in Japan but I think that would be [COUGH] like, we [CROSSTALK]. >> Good symbolism. Yeah, I mean like, I think we should take the Japanese market seriously, and I think if we do things right, we should have reasonable sales there. So, yeah, so that's going to be next year. [COUGH] I mean as far as copying stuff, I think that's certainly a risk.\n\nI think China's actually getting a lot better these days and I, and I think the, the new government is taking, taking intellectual property a lot more seriously. So I'm actually starting to feel more and more confident about the, the, the technology not, actually not being copied in Ch, China, or at least you know, it, it getting much better. and, and I don't think it's going to be too much of an issue until we want to establish local production.\n\nAnd, that, that's where we need to make sure that we do it right, and it's not an incentive for the factory team that we established there to sort of, go across the road and create a competing factory. But that concern is a few years away. >> Do we have another one? Oh, yeah. Up here. The students are largely upstairs. Is that right? >> Yap. >> Yeah, up here. >> Hi, Allan [LAUGH]. This is [INAUDIBLE], a NVA student. First of all, thank you.\n\nThis is very inspiring, to hear an experience about actually, you know, changing the world. Using our, an organizational pulse. The, the organizations that you created. hopefully, we'll inspire. I know, already, I remember the movie as well. And, I was wondering if you can tell us more about your experience about, like, you know, how to balance, you know? The trade-off between your profits and, you know, following.\n\nPurpose that goes further than just make money. You know, you are trying to change the world. You know, or for the humanity rather than just make profits in the short term. >> What was the question. I'm not sure if I got? >> How, how do, how do you balance? >> Okay, how do you balance. Right.\n\n>> Well, Yeah well I mean first of all I should say you know with with, with, with all of the companies but, but I think particularly space x and Tesla although they're in a, in a good position today they, they went through some super tough times And, and in fact, for SpaceX, I reserved a capital to do, to have three launch failures, or to withstand two launch failures, and have the third one be a success.\n\nAnd actually we had three launch failures, we were just able to scrape enough money together for a fourth flight that succeeded. In 2008, and also in 2008, Steve knows, we, we got the Teslar planeting round done on the last hour of the last day. It was like 6 pm, December 24, 2008. If we hadn't gotten it done then, the county would have gone bankrupt a few days after Christmas. So, these are, this, this.\n\n>> What he's not mentioning is, the only reason that happened is he wrote a check for the remainder of his wealth to save the company [UNKNOWN] the car had a negative gross margin, and its not pretty. Oh and you had, you know, your large issue owners. >> That we pissed off, and you know, going AWOL. You know. >> Yeah. This is ugly. >> Yeah. [LAUGH] It was a stressful period. >> [LAUGH] And that was just at work. >> Yeah.\n\nSo, so, so for awhile there really wasn't a question of profit or non-profit. [LAUGH] It was like, we need to live. How do we live? I always look for the main challenge. and, and, and now I mean, now we're at this stage where we can say okay, we, we can shut the dial between, we, we could make, let's say at this point a medium amount of profit or a small amount.\n\nSo, we chose to make a small amount, because we can reinvest the cash flow into future products. So, you know, right now we're reinvesting the cash flow into developing the Model X which is an SUV, and into increasing the production capacity of the factory, and doing a little bit of advance planning on the third-generation vehicle that'll be.\n\nA mass market a, it's a reportable compelling electric car, so, so that's, that's really I guess what, what's meant by, in, in this case, not, not, concerning, we're not trying to maximize profit at this point, because it, it, it would constrain the business, the growth of the business and. Constrain the overall objective of transitioning the world towards electric cars.\n\nso, I got nothing against profit in, in general, but it's just, it's just, it's not I mean I actually don't think it's the smart move. If, if one were to take net present value of future cash flows, I think maximizing profit at this stage is actually not the smart move. >> Mm-hm. >> You know, and it's interesting, because earlier I said we would get back to it.\n\n>> You mentioned that, your goal was not to start a company that has a, you know, the chance of making the most money for you the quickest. >> Yeah. >> And that the wealth personally is almost a byproduct, of these activities of passion. And by analogy like in the investment field in capital. You know, you could look for the thing that will make the most money the quickest, right? Like a new ad network for social media. But who cares?\n\n>> [LAUGH] >> I mean, it really just doesn't help the world in any meaningful, and there are much, over the longer, if you take a longer term perspective, there are things you could do that don't answer the short term question of what's gonna make me the most money this year, or this five year period, but over 20 years.\n\nFolks don't know, ironically, he may make the most money, right, of any entrepreneur, or these companies might be more profitable than their cohort that doesn't follow the same purpose driven, kind of, almost messianic zeal. So, though the balance question most implies a dichotomy that may not be opposed, but may be aligned if you orchestrate it right. >> Yeah, maybe of a short time of a short term versus a long term approach. >> Yep exactly.\n\nGreat, we have, we have a hand up here? >> Up here? >> Another one up here? Sure. >> Up here. This will be the last question. >> Oh, is this the last question? Okay. >> yes, from your current car marketing strategy you could say that your cars are directed towards the luxury car market place, so. That's a fairly well-defined, market.\n\nDo you have any plans for expanding it to the general marketplace, to, say, make a car for the masses, which might be, may be in the $25 to $35,000 range? >> yeah, absolutely. >> Keep pushing it, huh? >> In fact, the, the fi, first blog piece I wrote it has, was the test master plan, is to start off with an expensive, low volume vehicle, then go to a mid priced, mid volume, and then sort of low price, high volume. So we're kind of in phase two.\n\nAnd without their generation vehicle, we expect to be somewhere in the $30-$35,000 range for the car. Which when you take into the account from the savings from the use of electricity instead of gasoline, is more like comparing it in the U. S. to about a $28,000 car, or in Europe to a $22,000 car. >> And the maintenance is much less, the fuel costs are much lower? >> Yeah, absolutely. Well great. I want to thank you very much for this.\n\nAnd transition to the second closing segment of our minion. >> Thank you. [SOUND] Well Elon, congratulations on behalf of the Stanford Graduate School of Business and the Stanford, Alumni Association, Business School Alumni Association. Dean Sloan would like to present you with this year's Entrepreneurial Cup of the Year. >> Thanks, thank you very much [SOUND]. [MUSIC]"},"languages":["en"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MBItc_QAUUM"},{"id":"interview-with-cnn-2013-08-15","type":"interview","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQcfi8HK1i8","title":"Interview with CNN","titles":{"en":"Interview with CNN","de":"Interview mit CNN","fr":"Entretien avec CNN"},"date":"2013-08-15","summary":"Musk discusses the just-released Hyperloop white paper and high-speed inter-city transport.","text":"In the beginning, it was about instinct, moving from place to place. Initially for survival, then to pioneer. Today, we travel because we can. On vacation, to business meetings, from point A to point B isn't just a car ride. It's a train, it's a plane, and soon even a space flight away. But what about efficiency? There's a gap between imagination and actualization. Anywhere on earth. Anywhere. But you can actually go to the top of Mount Everest.\n\nThere's no place you can't go anywhere. So I think we've explored the boundaries, at least the physical boundaries, of earth quite thoroughly. You're describing how we can go anywhere on earth now. But the methods with which we use to get there. Do you think they're efficient? The most important thing that needs to happen is the transition of transportation to electric.\n\nThe ideal long distance transportation mechanism is a supersonic vertical takeoff and landing electric jet. There's a special case of cities which have a lot of travel between them below about 500 miles of distance where I think the Hyperloop would be useful.\n\nIt is a special case solution because once the distances get long, then the amount of time that an aircraft takes to ascend and land, which is most of what it does in a 500 mile trip, that percentage declines. And then it's better to just use aircraft. The blueprints are pretty complicated. Well, blueprints are always kind of complicated. And I mean, yes, there's math, but it's really not that hard. It still sounds pretty complicated, Elon.\n\nIt's like a tube with an air hockey table. It's just a low pressure tube with a pod in it that runs on air bearings, on air skis. With an air compressor on the front that's taking the high pressure air build up on the nose and pumping it through the air skis, it's really square. It's not that hard.","textByLang":{"en":"In the beginning, it was about instinct, moving from place to place. Initially for survival, then to pioneer. Today, we travel because we can. On vacation, to business meetings, from point A to point B isn't just a car ride. It's a train, it's a plane, and soon even a space flight away. But what about efficiency? There's a gap between imagination and actualization. Anywhere on earth. Anywhere. But you can actually go to the top of Mount Everest.\n\nThere's no place you can't go anywhere. So I think we've explored the boundaries, at least the physical boundaries, of earth quite thoroughly. You're describing how we can go anywhere on earth now. But the methods with which we use to get there. Do you think they're efficient? The most important thing that needs to happen is the transition of transportation to electric.\n\nThe ideal long distance transportation mechanism is a supersonic vertical takeoff and landing electric jet. There's a special case of cities which have a lot of travel between them below about 500 miles of distance where I think the Hyperloop would be useful.\n\nIt is a special case solution because once the distances get long, then the amount of time that an aircraft takes to ascend and land, which is most of what it does in a 500 mile trip, that percentage declines. And then it's better to just use aircraft. The blueprints are pretty complicated. Well, blueprints are always kind of complicated. And I mean, yes, there's math, but it's really not that hard. It still sounds pretty complicated, Elon.\n\nIt's like a tube with an air hockey table. It's just a low pressure tube with a pod in it that runs on air bearings, on air skis. With an air compressor on the front that's taking the high pressure air build up on the nose and pumping it through the air skis, it's really square. It's not that hard."},"languages":["en"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQcfi8HK1i8"},{"id":"allthingsd-d11-2013-05-29","type":"interview","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UiPO4BUfov8","title":"AllThingsD D11","titles":{"en":"AllThingsD D11","de":"AllThingsD D11","fr":"AllThingsD D11"},"date":"2013-05-29","summary":"Full Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher interview where Musk announces cross-country Superchargers and reusable rockets.","text":"So, without further ado, we're going to thank you for coming back. We know it's been a really long day, but this is this guy's a real treat. And uh it took me a while to get him to come here, but we we got him to we actually went back and forth a lot. We actually had to corner him at South by Southwest and PLA and everything else. But he's a really interesting entrepreneur, very much a visionary, many people think.\n\num uh in space and in cars and in all solar all kinds of things. So, first of all, thank you so much for coming and we are sorry for having cornered you at South by Southwest. No worries. Not that sorry, but okay. Great shoes, by the way. Thank you. Do you like those?\n\n[laughter] Um, I'd like to start by I mean, you're involved in several really cutting edge kinds of things that are cool, but let's talk for a minute about this uh the electric car, which is really an old concept in the car industry, right? It is actually. And but you know, there's a modern take on it.\n\nUm why are you in that business and do you agree with what has been written about you that it's fair to say that you have proven this is uh uh this can be sold at a profit in in market conditions? Sure. Um, so the the reason for Tesla was not because I thought that the uh there was some huge opportunity in in electric cars or or that I thought it was some rankordered best way to uh get a return on investment or something like that.\n\nUm, in fact, I think uh starting at a car company, particularly electric car company, would have to rank as one of the dumbest things you could possibly do on that scale. Okay. Um, and it it may seem like I mean today obviously we we've got quite a quite a high market cap. [laughter] Let's just call it that. Yes, you do.\n\nUm and uh uh so it may seem oh well this is sort of obviously a good thing to have done but um for for many years uh people would people regarded this in fact mo most people almost all people regarded it as uh stupid or insane or both you know to to have done that. So it's not the the but so the reason for doing it was was not uh because I thought it was some you know great opportunity.\n\nUm the easiest thing for me to have done after PayPal would have been to start a new internet company. That would have been like falling off a log. I mean it quite really easy. Um and uh and so the the reason I did it was because it was clear that we were not going to see electric cars from the incumbent manufacturers.\n\nUm, for for a while there I thought that we potentially would because you had the uh EV1 from General Motors, for example, and it seemed like the obvious thing to do would then be to do the EV2, EV3. Frankly, if General Motors had done that, they would be in a far better position today. Um, and but then instead what what General Motors did was as soon as California changed the regulations, they recalled the EV1s.\n\nUm, and just to make sure that nobody could get them back, they took them to a junkyard and crushed them. Um, and uh, and and and if you've seen the movie Who Killed the Electric Car, you you'll see that they actually those customers tried their best to keep the cars. And when the cars were were taken to the junk and crushed, uh, they held a candle at Vigil. Yeah. Because the cars were leased. They were not ever sold outright. Yeah. Yeah.\n\nUm, they held a candle at Vigil as though it was someone dying. Um, and I think that should be a pretty big wakeup call if people are holding a candle of visual for your product. Um, maybe you shouldn't cancel it as you're killing. Yeah, maybe you shouldn't cancel it. Um, you know, and yeah, so but but they did and and so they canned all electric vehicle activity.\n\nSo the the reason for for Tesla was to uh show that it actually is possible to create a compelling electric car or you know long range car electric car and if you did that that people would buy it because the the car industry was operating on what I believe to be two false premises. One was that you could not make um an a compelling electric car. One that was aesthetically appealing, long range, high performance, all these things.\n\nand and that even if you did all those things, the car industry's opinion was that people would still not buy it because it was electric and they had some partners for for burning gasoline. People had what what moved you into it? What what was the starting you said internet company like falling off a log? Easy easy to do. Why that area then? Why electric cars? Oh.\n\nUh so um because I think it's I think it's important that we transition to sustainable transport.\n\num if we don't transition to sustainable transport obviously toologically it's unsustainable and even if there were not an environmental uh issue in fact even if you were to say hypothetically that emitting carbon was good for the environment um because of the scarcity uh of of of oil and natural gas and so forth the we would eventually face extremely high gasoline costs and uh the economy would grind to a halt if we did not find some sustainable means of transport.\n\nDo you worry that the electricity that is generated and and used when the cars are recharged and plugged in is a lot of it is generated from coal. Does that bother you? Yeah, I mean depending on where you are in the country, you know, say roughly half of it is uh is not coal, but so roughly half of it is hydrocarbon based. Um and uh however that's that's there there are two obvious rebuttals to that.\n\nOne is that if you take the same source fuel and you burn it at the power plant level, you will get two to three times the efficiency uh than than if you burnt it in the car itself. Uh because at the power plant level, you're not constrained by mass and volume. So you can have something that's big and heavy. Um and you can also take the waste heat and generate a steam and and use it to turn a steam turbine. So you get what's called co-generation.\n\nSo you your maximum extractable energy is much greater with a stationary power plant than if you burnt that same fuel in a in a in a mobile transport where you you have form more constraints. Um and then the other factor is that we we have to find sustainable means of electricity production anyway.\n\nUm so if you believe in that predicate you can write that predicate and say uh given that we must have sustainable electricity production the obvious move for transport is is electric.\n\nSo when you're talking about these ideas of getting in doing this particular thing, one of the things that's I think struck a lot of people about you is the scale of the vision um that it's not one that it's very difficult, two that it's a little crazy um going along with SpaceX at the same time. Um what what what do you imagine is you you've had many years doing this, many critics, you're not going to make it.\n\nYou're getting a lot of Walt was going to ask about subsidies. I think that you get We'll talk about that. Yeah. What is the why why these kind of projects?\n\nThis is sort of a bigger question I want you to think about, but the idea of the bigness of the project because there's been this the industry has been littered with electric car funerals essentially and not as many candlelight visuals obviously, but right um yeah, there have been many car company failures, not just electric.\n\nUm, and uh, honestly, if I had like a dollar for every every time somebody brought up Delorean or or Tucker, I wouldn't need an IPO. Mhm. You know, it would have been perfectly financed just on that alone. Um, so but but the I don't know. I when I was in college, I wanted to be involved in things that I thought would affect the world. Um, and there were three areas that I thought would would most affect the world.\n\nand one of them was the internet. Um, so did a couple of companies in that, but then it seemed like uh after PayPal it was like there's a lot of really talented entrepreneurs and a lot of capital doing internet ventures. So it didn't seem like I could necessarily be all that incrementally useful in the internet arena. And so it was time to then go to two other the other two areas which were sustainable energy and space exploration.\n\nuh in particular uh developing a technology necessary to make life multilanetary. So multilanetary life is might be more interesting than cars. We'll get into that shortly. But I do have to ask you, you know, there this is an it's an important it's very important that you've made an attractive car with longer range than I think than you're right than people thought possible. That's electric all electric.\n\nUm but um it's fairly expensive I think uh at least upfront. Yeah. And what does it cost your most successful one? Well uh be before uh uh tax credits it's about $70,000. After tax credits it's like 60. All right. Now we're getting to t to tax credits. So um you there's like a there's some kind of federal tax credit, right? That's right. For buying a pure electric $7,500. Yeah.\n\nAnd then you were telling me backstage I a whole bunch of states 15 states or something have these right there's different types of credits. So um the I mean the first thing I should say is that um people think of like electric cars as receiving a subsidy but but in fact what's occurring is that they're receiving less of a subsidy than gasoline cars. Okay.\n\nUm if you were to actually look at the the subsidy in gly gasoline cars um and and particularly if you price in the economic or the inventory sorry the environmental uh damages uh the what's really occurring is that every time you buy a gasoline car there are huge subsidies occurring and you can actually tell that these subsidies are are higher than they than than the subsidies for electric cars because people are not buying electric cars except I mean ours in not not huge these are upstream subsidies to the oil companies and so forth for the for the gas.\n\nThey're both direct the whole the whole tax. Yeah. This this there's some enormous number. It's like half a trillion dollars in subsidies to Okay. But you do get you also get some federal and state subsidies, right? Yes. And then there's this these credits that you are able to sell to the other car companies. Can you explain what that is? Sure. Sure.\n\nUm although just to emphasize again it's it's pretty obvious that that the the credit whatever subsidies are occurring for electric cars are are less than for gasoline cars. Otherwise things like the Chevy Volt or the Nissan Leaf would sell in large quantities but they are not and so that that's like an an obvious test.\n\nUm then with respect to uh zero emission vehicle credits or ZEV credits, these apply to about 40% of the of the US population and they were actually put in place quite a while ago to deal with uh pollution in air pollution in um uh in in in in places like LA and the Bay Area and New York and so forth.\n\nSo, whenever you're driving cars in a dense of an area, you're essentially emitting a bunch of toxic gases that negatively affect people's health and obviously the quality of the air and it's pretty obvious in in you know LA during the summer.\n\nUm so in order to motivate manufacturers to move away from that the um the states enacted the ZEV credit mandate which was that a small number of electric or zero emission vehicles have to be made by all large scale manufacturers and if if they don't make those vehicles then they have to try to purchase ZEV credits from someone who who has but when we sell a ZEV credit we sell it at at 65 cents on the dollar so the best thing that another manufacturer could could make would be electric cars because then they get 100 cents on the dollar for every tax credit.\n\nSo why don't they? Um well I'm hopeful that they will. Um I think to some degree at least some of the manufacturers were hoping that no one would come up with an electric vehicle that anyone wanted to buy and that that California other Zev states would repeal their ZEV mandate because they they've lobbied for that outcome many times and have thus far been unsuccessful.\n\nIf Tesla if Tesla was unsuccessful then I think they would have been able to repeal the ZEV mandate. So when you're getting into the the the concept of these cars the these prices are still along with subsidies and everything else is still a high price tag. What is your goal is to bring in I mean you have there's lots of people here who own Teslas. Yeah. Thank you everyone. Thank you for for buying Tesla by the way.\n\nsort of say all of you guys who bought Teslas, you guys are awesome. Some significant percentage of your your customers are here. But but there is there's a larger country far-sighted awesome individuals who bought Teslas. [laughter] Um where do you actually I'd like to say a special shout out to Tony Tony Se who has the largest bought the made the the largest number of Tesla orders in the US of 100 cars for his project in in downtown Vegas.\n\nVegas. Yeah. Um so thanks Tony. Yeah. Yeah. So, so that's a very it's a super interesting project, but how do you get it down to levels that Tony of Zapos, No, we don't have to be Tony of Zapos, right? Um, so Tesla, you know, when we first started out, um, I actually wrote a a blog piece to outlining the Tesla strategy. Um, and it's been out there for a long time.\n\nUm, and it really just outlined the the sort of three-step process that Tesla's going through to get to mass market compelling electric cars. And step one was making the Tesla road. So, so high price, low volume, then mid price, midv volume, and then low price, uh, high volume. So, those are, you know, we're in step two.\n\nThe price of the Model S is actually less than it may seem at first because the cost of gasoline is so much more than the cost of of electricity that you save a lot of money uh buying gas. Yeah, exactly. Um, and you know that that depending upon how you count it is, you know, somewhere in the 15 to$20,000 uh dollar region over the lifetime of the car over the over over sort of seven years.\n\nFig figure it's you know roughly $2,000 a year depending upon what your assumptions for gas uh prices are. Um yeah, but when will there be a 30,000 or $35,000 Tesla? Yeah. So step three I'm expecting in about three to four years. Um this and what's required to get you from here to there? Is it got to do with design and technology or does it have to do with scale or what?\n\nWell um the [clears throat] uh I I think any any new technology needs at least three major iterations to get to um the mass market. I mean certainly cell phones have gone through you know many more than that. Um, and uh, I'm sure people remember like the, you know, Wall Street one where he's walking down the the beach on the giant brick of a cell phone on his ear. Um, and that thing was super expensive and like lasted for 30 minutes.\n\nYou couldn't even this audio quality was terrible. Now you can have a super computer in your pocket for 100 bucks. Um, and uh, so so with electric vehicles similar, you trying to compete with gasoline cars that have had 150 years and trillions of dollars spent on them. So I think if we can make it there by our third generation that's pretty awesome.\n\nUm so I think there's there's certainly design optimization is is one factor and then the other is the car will be a little bit smaller so maybe 20% smaller than the Model S. Uh and we'll have an order of magnitude greater production. So we have the economy scale to help us out. I think those three factors will take us to 50%.\n\nand and when will you be at a point where if even if you didn't have subsidies or and credit sales you would be profitable? Um yeah, so I think uh we're anticipating being profitable or or I should say even better well better than slightly profitable in the fourth quarter this year. Uh we're we're projecting 25% gross margins absent of credits absent absence of credits. So not getting this extra sub money but not absent the tax subs. Right. Yeah.\n\nI there's a consumer sort of tax credit um which is effectively something that improves the level of demand for the product uh but doesn't directly affect our gross margins um and uh so so we don't get that Tesla doesn't get the tax credit the consumer does. Why haven't many car companies raced to you and you're showing that there are cars people there is an audience for this? Where are the rest of these companies now?\n\nWell, I'm hopeful that our results from the first quarter will cause u the the other car companies to enter the electric car arena in a significant way. Uh but until now they didn't really have a good uh basis for that. Uh because they they would look at um you know you say what are the examples of successful electric cars?\n\nI mean, we did have our Tesla Roadster out there, but they wrote that off as being something that's really low volume, kind of a niche product for techno geeks type of thing. And and so they um they wrote that off, right? Um and um yeah, it's actually funny because before we were able to get the Roadster out, then then they they'd say, \"Well, you couldn't possibly make that car work.\"\n\nAnd then when we made the car work, they'd say, \"Well, nobody's going to buy it.\" And then people bought it. Um, and then we announced the Model S and so many people called on that it was ridiculous.\n\nUm, and and and yet actually the uh we were able to bring it to market and then when we brought it to market they said well you're never going to be able to produce it volume and we did that and then they would said you will never be able to make a profit and then we did that in Q1.\n\nSo I'm hopeful that uh there's a you know people will observe that there's a trend here [laughter] and [applause] And if so, so so now that we we have been profitable, I think uh other manufacturers are more likely to embark on electric vehicle projects. Um and um and it should also be mentioned that we do make electric powertrains for Daimler and Toyota. So for the electric RAV 4, we make the battery pack and powertrain.\n\nFor the Mercedes B-Classes coming out later this year, we will be making that whole um petrol. they open to that? Do you feel as if they're open? I mean, a lot of the, you know, you can paint the car companies any way you want, but are they, do you feel as if they're open or thinking about that? Yeah. Um, I I think so.\n\nThe the challenge, uh, is to convince them that it should be more than just a little niche product or a hybrid or something like that. Yeah. Um, well, they may I mean, Tur obviously makes is quite big on hybrids, but the to convince them that electric cars should be a mainstream item. Um there's still a bit of work to do on that front and until they're a mainstream item in terms of having enough of an infrastructure of charging.\n\nObviously you've done a lot to help that problem with range but still people want to feel like they're not going to be stranded that there are going to be charging stations and I know Yeah. Yeah. We've got an announcement about that tomorrow in fact. Oh, [clears throat] you do? Yeah. You want to announce it here now? Um well for No, you've just sort of let the cat out of the bag.\n\nMight as well just Well, [applause] um [laughter] because you're so quiet and retiring mostly. That's why. Exactly. You never do anything just mouth off at a New York Times reporter, for example. Right. Um Yeah, exactly. All right. Um well so so we have something called the supercharger right which is an advanced charging technology that we developed um and uh yeah I guess I might as well let the cat out of the bag. Why not?\n\n[cheering] Um the so the supercharger techn supercharging technology um is um something we developed because obviously uh traditional charging has been way too slow u and and it's not been affect it's not effective for long-distance travel.\n\nSo it's it is very important to address this issue of long-distance travel because um when people buy a car that there's they're also buying something which is a sense of freedom, an ability to go anywhere that they want and not feel fettered. Um so so we had to make something that was really quick to charge.\n\nSo, so that's what we developed and um there are actually a bunch of them out there now in California and on the east coast from allowing you to go from Boston to DC and travel throughout California and Nevada. And what we what we were going to announce tomorrow [laughter] um is is that there's there's going to be a dramatic acceleration of the supercharging network. Um and by the end of next month, we will triple the supercharger coverage area.\n\nWow. Um, where where is it going? [applause] Um, so it it'll it'll be um uh there's actually a map that will be go live tomorrow obviously. Um, but people will be quite surprised to learn learn this, but um at at Tesla uh [laughter] blame it on the CEO of SpaceX. Yeah, exactly. Um or if you want you could blame it on me. It's all right. Believe it or not, it's Walt's fault. Yeah.\n\nUm cuz you know, you like tangling with reviewers and I'm a reviewer. Yeah, but but you do good reviews. [laughter] I haven't reviewed your car. Well, I mean, I should say accurate reviews. Um [laughter] Thank you. Uh so, the Supercharge Network by the end of this year will will have covered um most of the major uh metro areas of u the US and southern Canada.\n\nUm, and in fact, you'll be able to drive all the way from LA to New York just using the Supercharger network. [applause] And does that does that also does that include not only putting it in places where it doesn't exist today, but also increasing the density on the two coasts? Absolutely. Exactly. Good point. The the density is not quite as good as it should be.\n\nSo we're incre both improving the density of the supercharger stations along welltraveled routes as well as increasing the geographic scope of the of the network. That's hugely important. It is absolutely because even tell me if you think I'm nuts, but I I think that it's like in the old days people would go and buy a desktop tower computer and they would not buy one unless it had five slots for cards in it, right?\n\nBut they would never open the computer and put a card in it. Well, I I do. Yeah, you did. But I mean, a lot of people would be told by their techie friend, you have to have, you know, three empty slots or five empty slots, but they never opened and put the slots in.\n\nEven if you only drive your car, [clears throat] commuting to work well within the range of the car and a few errands and stuff, you always want that sense of freedom that if I had to, I could get in this car. Exactly. And go from Boston to DC or something. Yep. That's right. I mean, psychologically, it's really very very important to people. It's extremely important.\n\nUm and and uh so and and on Tesla because all Teslas are wirelessly updated via by the cell networks. Um we actually update the supercharger locations in the car. So on the Tesla map, if you just tap the little lightning button, it'll actually direct you to the nearest supercharger. So as you're driving, you can go uh wherever you want.\n\nAnd uh with the release later this year, you'll be able to navigate anywhere in the country, and the car will automatically route you to the superchargers along the way. Fantastic. So, one question before he is that why you hit back so hard at the times? I mean, we joke about it and stuff like that, but many people don't do that. What was the reasoning? I know you've said a lot about this, but Oh, brother. Yeah. What was your reasoning?\n\nIs like, you're not going to take this or you Yeah. Um, well, I mean, I thought I thought about it a fair bit before actually responding. So, it wasn't sort of just an totally off the cuff thing. Um but but when the the articles was was published, we saw a significant decrease in sales particularly in in the New York Times sort of main readership area sort of northn northeast particularly in cold areas.\n\nUm and the the article it really sort of played to people's biggest fear about electric cars um that that that you'll run out um and that they don't work in the cold, which is actually completely false. they they they do work really well in the cold. In fact, our highest sales per capita are in Norway. Mhm. Um and the the single person who's bought the single largest number as an individual of of Teslas literally lives above this Arctic Circle.\n\nUm why he's an opthalmologist in a uh J Coll is his name. He's a great guy. Um wait, he's an opthalmologist. He lives above the Arctic Circle and he has a whole bunch of electric cars. Yeah. I just wanted to get I mean what are the odds? I just wanted to get the picture scenario but true. It's amazing. Yeah. Um and he and every day he takes an electronic pill also. Yeah. Exactly.\n\nUh but you like drove them through like the you know winter which is permanent midnight. Um and uh so obviously they work pretty well. Um and uh in fact after that article we we had since it was still sort of winter in Norway uh we actually had um someone do a Model S test drive from I think almost near the Arctic Circle uh to Oslo. Okay.\n\nBut you know as I'm a reviewer as we've already discussed and some people in the room know but um uh so part of a review is factual. This is actually what part of the review is that factual? No no no.\n\n[laughter] which okay no let me let me explain part of the re a review is opinion in the end sure so but you have to state if you're doing specs if you're doing like in my case it's it's a battery test on something I have to explain this is how I did the battery test this is what the result is right I can then have an opinion you might have a different you might say well even if I accept Mossberg's battery test I don't agree with him that this is good enough battery life I need better battery life, so I think he's too easy on this product or the other way around, you know, whatever.\n\nSo, part of it is the facts and part of it is what opinions you draw from that. Sure. You know, the screen is this big, the camera has this those are facts. So, was it was it the facts were the guys? No, it was it was it was a fact thing. Um, in fact, in fact, so when when we got the car back, um, we we looked at the at the data logs, um, as compared to the article that that was written, um, and the the article was factually incorrect.\n\nUm, and in in multiple places in in fact and and one could perhaps ascribe that to um to error on on his part, but by the 10th mistake in a row that is interpreted in the wrong direction, that that lacks credibility. Um, and so, you know, if we're it's like if you did that battery test on on something and and and you've and you you said factual information that was was untrue in a very important way. I mean, that that that's that's a big deal.\n\nUm, and so if if we didn't speak out against that, that article would live forever and and people would have this this really wrong impression of the car. Um, and they would think that what he said if we did not oppose it was the Times didn't back down, did they? Actually, the the public editor of the Times did an investigation and concluded that that he that the the article was was wrong.\n\nWe we disagreed I disagree with public editor over the motivation. Uh, in other words, the public editor said the article was wrong, uh, but didn't agree that it was intentional, whereas in my opinion, it's difficult to interpret that as anything but intentional. And then what then, just to close this off, wasn't there some controversy about the fact that you had put sensors on the car that aren't normally sold on the car? No, the same sensors.\n\nOkay. All right. So, uh, this is this is really important, but space the final frontier. Sure. Um, are you what is your ultimate plan or goal for SpaceX? What is it you want to do with it? Is it just to prove that a private company can deliver stuff to the space station or what is not all?\n\nNow, like I said, it's the the the goal with SpaceX is to um improve rocket technology and spacecraft technology and and keep keep improving it every year until ultimately we're able to send people to to Mars and establish a self-sustaining base on Mars. That's the Mars. Yeah. Okay. To make make life multilanetary as they're saying. Um it's not as though I I expect that this will necessarily occur.\n\nI mean I I agree that this is an unlikely outcome. But if we do not keep improving um space technology every year, then that that will never happen. Didn't George W. Bush want to go to Mars? He did actually. Not many people know that. Um yeah. So that's kind of put you and George W. Bush in the same category as George uh is his dad. Oh H one of them wanted a a space program get us to Mars, right?\n\nUm yeah actually uh the uh uh George HW Bush uh shortly after gaining office actually asked NASA to come up with a plan in 90 days uh for sending um people to Mars and NASA did come up with that plan but um it was half a trillion dollars. So he decided that maybe wasn't such a great idea and that was obviously 20 years ago whatever it was you know so so why why Mars? explain what half a trillion really meant. What what's attractive?\n\n[laughter] Yeah, that was that was really was a half a trillion dollar. Yeah, it's cheap, right? Yeah. No, it's Well, the defense budget's bigger than that. So, so why Mars? Why Mars over? Now, just to preface this, Elon went to Space Camp many years ago with Sergey, Larry, Megan, James Ween, Pier Media, a bunch of you very strange shortly after I started SpaceX. Yeah. Right. Yeah. What? Why?\n\nAnd you know, were you in a Star Trek mode or what was the what was the space camp? I know you guys did that, but but what they had out before when you was what does it got you interested? Because you said a few minutes ago that that there were three things that you were you know interested in. One was the internet, one was the electric car and the other was space. So why what got you into space? Right.\n\nSo if you if you think about the future of humanity, it's going to fundamentally bifocate in two directions or life as we know it. Either it's going to become multilanetary or it's going to be confined to one planet until some eventual extinction event. So I think it's much more put it that way. Let's go to Mars. [laughter] I'm And by the way, I'm optimistic about life on Earth. It's not as though I'm like I think we're human.\n\nBut you're convinced there will be an extinction event. Well, I mean that's pretty obvious from the fossil record. Yeah, I mean it's for sure um we we face dangers that the uh the dinosaurs didn't face because it could be um us. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, we could. Yeah. So, we could do ourselves in they actually had better diets.\n\nThe dinosaurs a lot of things they um so so the I I just think you know we want to have a future ultimately where humanity is out there exploring the stars um or space fairing civilization and the things that we read about in science fiction books and and see in movies becomes true. We don't want that always to be a fiction of the future. So, if we don't improve space technology every year, we're never going to get there.\n\nAnd so, the goal of SpaceX is to make as much improvement as possible. Um, and uh and hopefully we'll we'll see people land on Mars in our in our lifetime. I have to ask you, have you I just have to ask you, have you literally looked into or had someone look into or are they still looking into for you whether you could do warp drive?\n\nI mean really does that crush there actually is a well you know this there actually does seem to be oddly enough some breakthrough on the whole war drive thing um because you can't exceed the speed of light but technically it is poss well theoretically possible to warp space itself so that even on your in your in your local space-time continuum you're not traveling faster than speed of light but you're you're warping space such that space is moving uh and and that's what okay got that is that a now wait a I actually kind of that's because you like Star Trek.\n\nHe goes to the Star Trek Museum in Las Vegas, so let's not talk. Is that like in the fourth quarter or next year?\n\nUm, well, I'm not sure if if war drives ultimately I mean, war drive may or may not uh come to come to fruition, but I think if we at least have a base on on Mars, that's going to create a forcing function for the improvement in space transport technology um and gives us the best chance of ever achieving something like a warp drive that would enable uh travel easily. Yeah. But listen, Scotty Spock, let's talk about now. Okay. All right.\n\nRight this second. Sure. Good movie, by the way. Yeah. It's it's recommended seeing the new Star Trek. Terrific movie. By the way, Larry Ellson's son produced it, which is oddly enough. Um, what's happening now? What's available now for us? Not Warp Drive, not transporter beams or whatever. The the big breakthrough that's needed in in rocketry is to achieve a a fully and rapidly reusable rocket.\n\nUm and it's important to have those uh that those are important qualifications because um if you think of any other mode of transport like a a plane or bike, car, anything of course that they are um reusable. Yeah. And and you can they're reusable quickly and you know fairly completely apart from maintenance schedules. And the only one we have the United States at least built and or anybody built I think was the shuttle, right?\n\nAnd that was usable, but not quickly. And it was only partly reusable. So the main uh tank, the the big orange thing was um not reusable. That was guaranteed to be expandable every time. It wasn't just the tank that that big orange thing was actually the primary airframe to which the the orbiter, the plane pot, and the side boosters attached. Um so even in a best case scenario, it would not have been uh reusable in in a substantial way.\n\nUm, and then it it took an an army of 10,000 people nine months to refurbish a shuttle for flight. Um, which is obviously not not rapidly reusable. Um, so in order to to have a breakthrough, we you have to have fully and rapidly reusable rocket. And we're making progress in that direction.\n\nAnd I'm hopeful that sometime in the next couple years, we'll be able to achieve full and rapid reusability of the first stage, which is about 3/4 of the cost of the rocket. Um and then with a future uh design architecture achieve full reusability. And how long does it take to get to Mars with with whatever the technologies you plan with with relatively sort of standard rockets? A low energy trajectory would be about 6 months.\n\nWell, you can compress it down to 3 months without too much trouble. And you're not and and there's no and you're talking about a a humans on this rocket going to Mars. So know are there any dangers? I have read that there are radiation. What could possibly go wrong? That's that's ridiculous. Come on. [laughter] U I don't even like to drive with you. I mean, [laughter] yeah. Vice versa, by the way. Um Yeah.\n\nSo, it's it's a there's probably some challenges along the way, but um but I think it's I think it's possible. I think we can make it work. um like doing it this way. There's no we're not violating any laws of physics. Um it's all it's all do it's it's difficult but achievable and and I think we should really try our hardest to to make it happen. And why Mars?\n\nWell, Mars is the only place where we could really um create a self-sustaining civilization of on a on a planet scale. Can you explain this for people who don't know like myself? Okay. Well, uh, so, um, uh, if you look at, you know, various planets, we've got, um, Mercury's too close to the sun. Venus is Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the the the rocks melt on Mercury. So, um, that's a no. Yeah. [laughter] Toasty.\n\nUm, and then and then Venus is still pretty pretty hot. Uh, it's several hundred degrees. Uh, and it's high and the atmosphere is high pressure and it's acidic. So, it's a high pressure hot acid bath. So we actually thought of having a deconference on Venus. It's not going to work. Yeah. Say that Venus would be very challenging.\n\nUm and then Mars obviously is on the other side of Earth and it's uh it's it's colder than Earth, but it's it's uh the the temperature on Mars actually gets above room temperature on Earth on a hot day in the summer. Um and we you could warm Mars up over time with greenhouse gases and kind of the opposite of what we're doing on Earth. [laughter] Yeah, this is great. Export our greenhouse gas and we're good at that. You can bring all the gas.\n\nYou can bring all the all all the GM cars there. Yeah. Um I [applause] mean Mars' atmosphere is is primarily carbon dioxide which shows you how long I mean it's been there for 4 billion years. Shows you how long carbon dioxide lasts. It's hangs around how slowly it warms up a planet. Yeah. Well, it's quite a thin carbon dioxide atmosphere. But if you would But we could bulk it up. We could buck it up. We know. We have practice.\n\nWe know how to do that. Exactly. So, Mars is um you know is a sort of it's a fixer upper of a planet, but we could we could make [laughter] it work. We could make it work. Now, do you So, do you do you do you want to go there yourself? I know you said you didn't want to die in a rocket accident. You'd rather just die on die on impact. Yeah. Right. You don't want to die in impact, but you don't mind dying there. Yeah.\n\nI think I mean all things considered I mean if one's going to die anywhere it'd be kind of cool you know cool to die on Mars I mean um I'm going with Hawaii but okay um so I think that yeah that would be that'd be neat um but I just think the the things that kind of get me going are like I think it's just really important to to to me to and I think to probably a lot of people in this room that if you look to the future that it's an inspiring exciting thing that you know the future is a better better than the present or these has a good chance of being better than the present.\n\nAnd I think that's that's that's the the main driver. Uh for me, it's it's it's like, okay, will we have will we be a space fair civilization? Um or or will we be confined to Earth? I point I think it would be so much better if if it was the former. Right. Now, your rockets though are for doing payloads. And it's a business. You're trying to make a business out of it too. Correct. I mean, yeah. Absolutely. So, we got to keep SpaceX.\n\nWe got to pay the bills, right? Um, and so the what SpaceX does is is uh launch satellites for commercial customers and do space station uh servicing for NASA. So we we won the primary contract to do space station transporter cargo to and from the space station. In fact, we're the the only craft capable of bringing significant cargo back from uh the space station, but it's not uh readily reusable yet. Correct. It's not it's not.\n\nSo you're in a your breakthrough in a sense has been to do what NASA and the Soviets used to do or still do to some extent. The Soviets still do it. Uh but to do it in a p through via a private company. Yeah. I I'd say you know our breakthroughs thus far on the SpaceX side are are um incremental in nature not revolutionary. Uh and and the aspiration is to to have a revolutionary breakthrough.\n\nAnd I I should point out that the cost of the propellant in the rocket is only about. 3% of the cost of the of the vehicle. So it's it's maybe a couple hundred thousand to refuel the rocket. Um and whereas cost sort of $60 million. Um and which is it makes sense if you think about planes like how much does a plane cost versus refueling a plane, right? Big big difference. Um we nobody would be flying if you had to buy a new plane every flight.\n\nMhm. Um no. No. Yeah. Right. Although although United should, right? Exactly. There's come a time when you have to retire those players and some of those United along in the tooth. That's when you're thinking of these things, you're doing a lot of stuff. You're kind of a busy fellow. Um what who are your heroes? Who are you what inspired you to be this? Sure.\n\nUm well, I think uh generally um lot of people that I admire in history certainly um scientists and engineers and sort of technologists in general. Obviously I'm a big admire of Tesla, Nicola Tesla. Um and um and you know many others I mean all the obvious people you can imagine. I say I like I like Tesla Edison too although people sometimes are surprised to hear that since we have a company called Tesla.\n\nUm and uh you know Einstein Newton um uh just like Darwin um a big fan um of of Ben Franklin. And I think he's just, you know, an awesome example of a great human being in history, you know. So I'd say that people like that. And are are there obviously you uh were one of the pioneers of a an important internet company, uh, PayPal? Um, did did anybody else in the kind of IT area inspire you?\n\nI mean obviously all those people you mentioned are really great geniuses but they were kind of well before the they're more scientists and they and inventors well before the IT era or is it just too early in the IT? Um no absolutely um I admire anyone who's who's worked hard to accomplish some great thing. I mean it's it's worthy of admiration.\n\nSo um you know obviously it's hard not to admire someone like Steve Jobs uh um you know Bill Gates or um you know in sort of present day um big fan of Larry Page good friend of mine is you know what him and Serge have done there is is pretty awesome um so yeah and then probably many many journalists I'm not against journalists honestly look you're here yeah exactly [laughter] But but when you talk about the the internet of today, how do you look at it?\n\nYou were in a very clear part of the internet that was you know and you I remember you and you were Mr. Web 1. 0 like there was you know and you did in fact pose in front of cars. I remember there was some car picture that you Yeah. Um yeah Porsche or a Fiat. It was a McLaren F1. Right. Exactly. So So you weren't close. No. Well I Yeah. So I don't know what that is. It's a man.\n\nAnd I actually I'll tell you, I actually do um uh haven't haven't told anyone in a while, but the I do actually still own one gasoline car, which is a a 67 series 1E type Jag. Oh, I don't know what. Great. I know exactly what it says. Some of us know. I have a Mazda 5. I like it a lot. Okay. Um great. But um when I when I was uh sort of in college there were I was reading about the McLaren F1 and it's just an engineering work of art.\n\nI mean it's just really really done right and and so I thought if if I ever made enough money that I' I'd buy the McLaren F1. So I was actually living in an apartment in Palo Alto um that that cost significantly less than the car. Um I remember that picture. Yeah. And it was either upgrade to a house or buy the car and I bought the car. Uh [laughter] yeah. Were you married at the time? I was actually. Yeah. And you posed in front of it.\n\nIt was quite a symbol of the time, I remember. Yeah. You know, um yeah, exactly. I mean, I wasn't really It probably wasn't the best idea, but um there was in fact it was it was kind of funny. It was this show um which is like if if there was ever sort of a show on hubris, it would probably be it was called Silicon Valley Gold Rush. Um and it was literally filmed in 99 in 1999.\n\nUm and um and so they fold me getting the McLaren and uh and a number of other people as well. Um it fortunately PayPal worked out otherwise it would have been extremely embarrassing. Right. Did you go like I got one or something. Uh no I didn't do that but I was pretty excited about getting it. Right. So why when you look at the internet of today and then we're going to get to questions from lots of questions from the audience I'm sure.\n\nUm what do you think of the rest of the space the photo sharing? Is it meaningless given you're going to Mars and everything or is it what what's the I mean people are like Vine I can you know do a selfie which is animated and a lot of people you know are kind of excited but I love them. Cara did some great ones. Absolutely. But it's not going it's not having two planetary habitats.\n\nIt's like a different thing you know or even being able to drive from New York to LA on electric power. on electric power. What do you think of when you look at the internet right now? What do you about what's developing and what's happening? Um, well, no, I mean, I I think I actually I'm I'm not dismissive of of things like like photo sharing apps and that kind of thing.\n\nI think the the the I mean, there's a lot of things where where it provides say a small amount of value to a lot of people and that, you know, sums up to some large value and that's that's still good. Um, I mean, if people are able to share photos of their friends and family in in a better way, I think that makes their lives better. And, um, if you know, if that puts a high value on the company, so so be it. I think that's not that bad.\n\nUm, and, uh, I mean, I think we've got an enormously a lot of talented people, uh, a lot of talented entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, and others in the internet arena. Um, and I think it'd be great if if some of those people would would actually go to other arenas that that could use their talent.\n\nI mean, that's the only thing that I would say is well, there is this concept someone someone the other day when I was asking him what's going on in Silicon Valley and he said very smart guy, he said, you know, there's a lot of big minds chasing small ideas, right? And I I sometimes, you know, the ninth kind of silly little thing, you're like, wow, these are fantastic and yet like everyone's making Twinkies, right? Kind of thing some level.\n\nYeah, I mean, yeah. Um, I think there's there's probably I mean, I' I'd recommend that that people consider arenas outside of the the internet. Um, because there's there's there's a lot of, like I said, there's a lot of um industries that could use that entrepreneurial talent and the the skills that people have learned in creating companies.\n\nUm and uh you know then there's actually a lot of opportunity uh in in these industries particularly ones where the they've been kind of dominated by an oligopolistic uh set of companies for a long time. Oligoples are not or duopies or monopolies are not great at innovation. Innovation comes from new entrance to an arena. And so when an industry has had the absence of new entrance, it tends to to have very limited innovation.\n\nUm, which also means that if you do get a you break on through the other side, then you there is a lot of opportunity for a company that's that's created there. Um, so what are you doing next? Because you're you know, we're kind of bored with these last two. Well, I think I'll be occupied with Tesla and SpaceX for a long time. But is there one other arena you don't you have a solar thing? Solar? Yeah.\n\nUm, in fact, but I should clarify that a lot of times people uh ascribe the success of Solo City to me, but I really should be ascribed to the the my cousins, the co-founders, uh, Lynon and Peter Ry. I mean, I provide some strategic advice. Um, and I suggested that they do a company in the solar arena. Um, but but they deserve the vast majority of the credit for for that outcome. And uh, it it should certainly shouldn't be ascribed to me. Okay.\n\nAll right. Well, we're gonna take some by the way. And by the way, Elon said to me he wasn't Why would we want him here? He's not a technologist, just so you know. Well, no. And I just was like, I don't know what you're talking about. Well, I'm a technologist, but I'm not an internet. So, I'm not like digital. That's the thing. It's like I was like, okay, all things digital. Well, there's nothing digital.\n\nI'm not exactly digital, but there's nothing digital in the Tesla. There are digital things. Um, but it's Yeah. Um, it didn't say all things digital and physical be like more sense. [laughter] All right, let's get to the question. Shervin, it just be called all things. All things. That's our new name. May need one. Oh, you want to start over there? Okay. Hi, Shervin Pishvar from Sherpa. Hi, Elon.\n\nUm, I've been coming here for many years and all of us who have been here for many years have we're always inspired to see Steve Jobs here and obviously we all miss him deeply, but somehow your presence here and your inspiration really uh eases that pain. So, thank you for coming. Oh, wow. What do you say? [applause] Elon, there there is one idea you have that we've discussed before, which is Hyperloop, and Right.\n\nI I would love for you to tell this audience what that is and how it could change our world. Again, thank you. Yeah, I would actually love to to to answer that question, but if I do, uh it it will that will be the news tomorrow. Um whereas I need to do the Tesla news. Um, you did that too late. Yeah. Um, so, uh, yeah, I I I think probably I'll be able to talk about the Hyperloop idea in pretty soon.\n\nThere's there's a Tesla announcement we've got next month or so around June 20th or so. And I think um I think at some point after that I I to that should hopefully that that that that will be a good time to talk about the uh the Hyperloop idea.\n\nBut for those that aren't aware, the basic thought is um is is there a better way to travel quickly from uh say downtown LA to downtown San Francisco or LA to San Francisco that's better than the highspeed rail that's being proposed? Because the highspeed rail, that's what originally got me to think about, you know, is there some better way to do it?\n\nbecause the highspeed rail that's being proposed would actually be the slowest of slowest bullet train in the world and the most expensive per mile in the world, which is these are not the superlatives we're looking for. Kind of like our internet here. Yeah. Um but it's it you know I think this it's a little depressing to sort of have uh something that's like the slowest bullet train in the world in in California at enormous cost.\n\nUh and isn't there something better that we could come up with? And that something better is the hyperloop. Well, I think so. Probably, but I don't know what that is. Yeah. Um, the But I want to ride on it. Yeah. [laughter] I I think, you know, even even if even if I'm sort of wrong about the economic assumptions behind the Hyperloop, it would still be a really fun ride. Uh, even if only one of it ever existed, it would be a really fun ride.\n\nWhat it is? [laughter] Um, is it a train? A plane, not a mobile. It's It's um transporter machine. It's a cross between a Concord and a rail gun. A Concord and a rail gun. Okay. Yeah. But you're not you you don't I throw something else in there just to to make it sound even more even even more bizarre. Um it it's cross between a Concord, a rail gun, and an air hockey table. [laughter] But you did the freeway and had a baby somehow.\n\nYou [laughter] You wouldn't want to go a little bit beyond that or Oh my god. Okay, let's go. Let's go. I mean, San Francisco is in. Okay, three-way and a baby. We love it. Esther. Esther, thank you. And Max will help that. Since you're feeling so loquacious tonight. Okay. When are you planning to take the first people up into orbit, whether it's the space station or Bigalow or whatever? She wants to go. Yeah, absolutely.\n\nWell, we're actually we're working on um working on version two of our Dragon spacecraft and um uh in partnership with with with NASA. So, this is uh NASA's NASA is our biggest customer. Um although we also expect to to transport uh private citizens and and we think we'll probably see this the first flights in of of people in two to three years. So, thank you. Bye, sir. Nice knowing. [laughter] No, no. I'm retiring on Mars, but not yet. Okay.\n\nYes. Over here. Allison Sheridan from Rathan and I am behind the camera. Now I know why everybody's been saying that. Looking right through the camera. Um, thanks for your presence at All Things D. A couple years ago, I did get a chance to drive the Tesla Roadster. That was so much fun. I scared the guy though. He got a little nervous.\n\nBut, um, what I actually wanted to ask you about was we've talked a lot here about the importance of STEM education and trying to encourage that. And it's been suggested that part of our strategy really should be immigrant STEM type people. And I'm just guessing that with your background, maybe you have some interesting perspective on that. Oh, we forgot that question. Yeah. Oh, you're welcome. Great. Well, I do think Zuckerberg. Yeah.\n\nI I do think we we we should be we I mean, if there's some really talented grad students at American colleges, it's crazy to send them home or force them to go home in a lot of cases. So I think we should have some reform of immigration policy that um actually has has us you know arguably recruiting.\n\nI mean we should think of like like if you if if this was a company if the United States was a company you'd be working hard to recruit top people and and you certainly wouldn't be expelling them. Um that would be that would be crazy. So we should definitely have some reform on that front. Um and it does endure to the benefit of other countries but but um but I should try to have them stay here I think.\n\nUm and but with respect to to STEM in general I mean to to the degree that there are exciting technology projects that kids in school can read about and and and say okay I' I'd like to be I'd like to work work on that or be part of that. Um that is what draws people into the science and technology. Um and like the biggest thing I think in history that is on on that front has been the was the Apollo program.\n\nUm that's I think there's probably not been any single thing that's been more powerful in in drawing kids in because they're they're like like wow we sent something. I want to help make that happen or or or you know and and and go beyond that. So, I think I think it's it's really important to have th those projects that that kids can can read about and want to be part of in school and and that will really draw them.\n\nSince we just touched on immigration, can you explain what happened with the uh political lobbying effort started by Mark Zuckerberg that you were you were supporter of, but then you withdrew along with some others. What was that all about? Yeah. Um so initially when I was uh you know I joined agreed to be part of uh forward uh US um because the I I I do believe in immigration reform.\n\nI think we need to you know we've got some really antiquated laws change them [clears throat] and uh and there are some you know other things that that also need to be on on the agenda. Um, so I thought, okay, I'll support that.\n\nAnd um, uh, but but I I think the the the the methods that were employed, I mean, it was a little too much of the sort of Kissinger-esque real politic, you know, and that wasn't I mean, I think we should try to make things happen for like the right reason and and and uh and we shouldn't we shouldn't give into the cynicism of politics. I mean, we should be we should fight the cynicism.\n\nUm, and if and if we if we don't if we do anything to encourage that, then we'll get the political system that we deserve. Okay. [applause] Uh, I think maybe Dan Dan Simon with CNN. Elon, given the runaway success and reviews of the Model S, you have to believe that the other car makers are going to be gunning for you. So I I'm wondering how the company is going to keep its competitive edge because you know that success can be a fleeting moment.\n\nAlso, when do you think that u electric vehicles will overtake gasoline vehicles? And and finally wondering if you have a message for the nation's oil companies. Sure. Um well, I I really hope that the large car companies make a concerted effort to create electric vehicles. Uh, and ultimately if if Tesla makes competitive electric cars, then we'll deserve to be around. And if we don't, then we don't deserve to be around.\n\nI mean, um, you know, I'm optimistic that we'll be able to make good products. Um, and, uh, and so far from being concerned about other car companies coming in, we're actually doing our best to convince them to to make electric cars and in fact to make power trays for them, um, you know, um, where they will allow us to do so.\n\nSo I I hope they I hope they look at the success of the Model S and and that encourages them to make a big move into electric cars. Um you know as for the oil companies you know the the the tricky thing is uh the way the system is set up because we have an unpriced externality. We have this tragedy of the commons problem with the CO2 capacity of the oceans and atmosphere.\n\nthe incentive structure is such that the the the the oil companies have uh you know it's hard to ask ask the CEO of an oil company to act against their best interests. That that's the thing. Uh in fact if they do that they might get fired by their by their shareholders. So the the right thing for us to do is to change the rules of the game so that it in a sense the right behavior.\n\nUm, and that's why I'm a big believer of of a carbon tax is is the right way to to go. And uh, you know, we don't even have to necessarily change the amount of money that that that we collect from from the tax base. But I do think it's it's sensible to pro disproportionately tax things that at least have a likelihood of being bad.\n\nSo just as we on a personal level will tax tobacco and alcohol um and tobacco particularly is is is bad and that's well established u fact we should disproportionately tax CO2 emissions um and uh and then I think the right behavior will occur. So I I mean I have a I have a hard time condemning the oil and gas companies uh because we're the the the current system insense them to do bad behavior.\n\nUm that tax that tax gets passed along though to consumers and ultimately hurts the economy. No. Um see it if if if the if the amount of revenue uh being generated is the same um it's it's not going to the you know the we need to collect a certain amount of money to pay for the federal government.\n\nAnd how how we collect that is you know there's you collect that in a wide range of wide range of ways but but effectively what we're doing is we're saying a portion of somebody's labor has to go to federal government activities. Um, and it doesn't, you know, it's not going to negatively affect the economy really how how we collect that money. People may think it has negative effect, but it really doesn't. It's it's the same.\n\nIt's a certain amount of uh money collected to pay for the federal government. Um, it's like say we don't actually need to change the amount of money raised, but we need to weight it towards the things that are more likely to be bad than than things that are more likely to be good.\n\nUm I I guess I mean where I have an issue with oil and gas guys is when they you know this sometimes engage in nefarious tactics um and uh u or or things that are sort of somewhat somewhat insidious uh like like funding academic studies that people can then point to as though they have some credibility um and and and it's some prominent professor somewhere.\n\nUm but but that person is act has been paid off by by the oil industry to to write that that study.\n\nIt's uh um so that kind of thing obviously should be condemn condemned in the strongest words and um and I'd recommend people read uh a book called Merchants of Doubt uh that that actually spells it out in in in detail how um some of these things are going on where I mean it's oil and gas industry is all they need to do is to create doubt and that that's what they've done.\n\nIn fact, they've actually employed uh a lot of pe of of individuals and firms that were employed by the tobacco industry. Like literally the same people. Um you're like surprised that some of these people are still around because they're like, you know, they're quite old. Um [laughter] uh but but in some cases, literally the same people have been employed by the oil and gas industry. Okay, get to this. Thanks.\n\nUh we only have a couple of more questions. Hi uh Jared from Scribb. Uh thank you so much for coming Elon. Um my question is about SpaceX. So uh even without a fully and rapidly reusable rocket, you've still managed to reduce the cost to orbit by an order of uh magnitude or more just with more incremental improvements. And so uh uh firstly, at what point did you realize that such an opportunity existed in the space field?\n\nAnd uh secondly, are there other parallel opportunities and other areas that you wish somebody else would chase even if you don't personally have time to do them all? Sure. Um so when when I started SpaceX, it was actually I thought the most likely outcome was that we would fail. Um in fact, I thought that was really likely that that SpaceX would fail. Um so uh it wasn't really with expectation of success that I started the company obviously.\n\num the the but what gave me a clue that we could make a significant breakthrough was looking at the uh the cost of a rocket and instead of looking at it um with reference to what other rockets had cost in the past I said okay what is a rocket made of what are the material constituents um what what metals you know carbon fiber what what what are the various materials that constitute a rocket and if you had a pile of those materials arrayed before you and you could wave a magic wand what would that rocket cost to build.\n\nUm, and that is a remarkably small number. Um, you know, was maybe a few percent or one or two% of what rockets actually cost. So, clearly people were doing something silly in how they were putting those materials together. Um, and so just by eliminating those those sort of foolish things, we were able to make a rocket for much less.\n\nUm and uh and and then um I wasn't it wasn't obvious to me that you one could achieve uh full and rapid reusability. Um because Earth's gravity is right on the cusp of where that's possible or not possible. In order to achieve that really everything has got to be done super super well, every aspect of the vehicle. Um, so it was only maybe 2 or 3 years ago or maybe 3 years ago that I thought it was actually uh achievable.\n\nUm, and u now I'm fairly certain it's achievable but uh but there's still a long way to go between here and there and as mentioned before uh we've not yet recovered a single rocket stage so we have a long way to go. Okay, I think this has to be the last question. Yeah. Hi Alan, Greg Tar from Cross Pacific Capital up in Palo Alto. Uh question for you.\n\nI used to work for Toyota's uh US headquarters and when we in 1990 scaled up the Lexus dealership network, it was pretty tough and I wanted to get an understanding of what kind of innovation you're going to bring in terms of the service area.\n\nUh it generally takes 300 dealerships to support about 100,000 units and you're doing a tremendous job which I admire and I want to understand what your plans are because eventually the middle part of the country will begin to understand uh the revolution happening on the east and west coast. How will you um make it happen in the dealership network and service? Yeah.\n\nWell, service in fact for the last uh three or four months has been uh my main focus at Tesla.\n\nuh and uh it was three or four months ago it was our service was okay and uh in some cases quite quite bad in particular someone asked me about that the weird service of Tesla but go ahead yeah we we I'd say we had some pretty nightmarish service situations probably in the January February time frame things have gotten steadily better um and uh but like for example LA was was a problem for a huge for a really long time because we we were supposed to have three service centers open and permits were delayed on two of them.\n\nSo we were operating at one/3 capacity. Um so as long as your your model S didn't break down, you had an awesome experience. If it broke down, it was brutal. Um so now now we've got all three open things are a lot better. Um but but it is going to take an enormous amount of work to to scale service uh across the country and then internationally. We start delivering in Europe in July.\n\nUm, so yeah, I don't know if we've got any I've got any brilliant insights that you probably you probably know all all the things that I would would say, but uh you we've got to have really good diagnostics tools. Um, and we do have an advantage in that the car uh has so much intelligence in it. It can do a lot of self diagnostics. Um, and and we can query, you know, what what parts need to be fixed on the car before it even comes in.\n\num so that so we can be more efficient in our service. Um and and then something we announced recently was that uh we're building um this fleet and or largely have built at this point this fleet of service loaners so that when if your car breaks down um what we'll do is and we also have valet service. So, if your car breaks down or you need service, uh we will um go to wherever your car is and replace it with uh one of our top-of-the-line cars.\n\nSo, our service loaners are not um sort of the standard cars. They're actually the top-of-the-line cars. Um and and we so we'll just valet a service loaner to wherever you are, pick your car up, take it get serviced, and then and then return your car when it's done. So, the experience should be really seamless.\n\nUm and uh you should really feel like uh like you should you got actually an even better car than the one that you had serviced for some period of time and it was no interruption to your life. I think that's the most important thing. Lexus did did this to some degree. I'm not sure if Lexus does the full valet thing or not but uh certainly did the service loaner program which was done done really well actually. Elon thank you so much.\n\nWe really appreciate it. Thank you. [applause] [music]","textByLang":{"en":"So, without further ado, we're going to thank you for coming back. We know it's been a really long day, but this is this guy's a real treat. And uh it took me a while to get him to come here, but we we got him to we actually went back and forth a lot. We actually had to corner him at South by Southwest and PLA and everything else. But he's a really interesting entrepreneur, very much a visionary, many people think.\n\num uh in space and in cars and in all solar all kinds of things. So, first of all, thank you so much for coming and we are sorry for having cornered you at South by Southwest. No worries. Not that sorry, but okay. Great shoes, by the way. Thank you. Do you like those?\n\n[laughter] Um, I'd like to start by I mean, you're involved in several really cutting edge kinds of things that are cool, but let's talk for a minute about this uh the electric car, which is really an old concept in the car industry, right? It is actually. And but you know, there's a modern take on it.\n\nUm why are you in that business and do you agree with what has been written about you that it's fair to say that you have proven this is uh uh this can be sold at a profit in in market conditions? Sure. Um, so the the reason for Tesla was not because I thought that the uh there was some huge opportunity in in electric cars or or that I thought it was some rankordered best way to uh get a return on investment or something like that.\n\nUm, in fact, I think uh starting at a car company, particularly electric car company, would have to rank as one of the dumbest things you could possibly do on that scale. Okay. Um, and it it may seem like I mean today obviously we we've got quite a quite a high market cap. [laughter] Let's just call it that. Yes, you do.\n\nUm and uh uh so it may seem oh well this is sort of obviously a good thing to have done but um for for many years uh people would people regarded this in fact mo most people almost all people regarded it as uh stupid or insane or both you know to to have done that. So it's not the the but so the reason for doing it was was not uh because I thought it was some you know great opportunity.\n\nUm the easiest thing for me to have done after PayPal would have been to start a new internet company. That would have been like falling off a log. I mean it quite really easy. Um and uh and so the the reason I did it was because it was clear that we were not going to see electric cars from the incumbent manufacturers.\n\nUm, for for a while there I thought that we potentially would because you had the uh EV1 from General Motors, for example, and it seemed like the obvious thing to do would then be to do the EV2, EV3. Frankly, if General Motors had done that, they would be in a far better position today. Um, and but then instead what what General Motors did was as soon as California changed the regulations, they recalled the EV1s.\n\nUm, and just to make sure that nobody could get them back, they took them to a junkyard and crushed them. Um, and uh, and and and if you've seen the movie Who Killed the Electric Car, you you'll see that they actually those customers tried their best to keep the cars. And when the cars were were taken to the junk and crushed, uh, they held a candle at Vigil. Yeah. Because the cars were leased. They were not ever sold outright. Yeah. Yeah.\n\nUm, they held a candle at Vigil as though it was someone dying. Um, and I think that should be a pretty big wakeup call if people are holding a candle of visual for your product. Um, maybe you shouldn't cancel it as you're killing. Yeah, maybe you shouldn't cancel it. Um, you know, and yeah, so but but they did and and so they canned all electric vehicle activity.\n\nSo the the reason for for Tesla was to uh show that it actually is possible to create a compelling electric car or you know long range car electric car and if you did that that people would buy it because the the car industry was operating on what I believe to be two false premises. One was that you could not make um an a compelling electric car. One that was aesthetically appealing, long range, high performance, all these things.\n\nand and that even if you did all those things, the car industry's opinion was that people would still not buy it because it was electric and they had some partners for for burning gasoline. People had what what moved you into it? What what was the starting you said internet company like falling off a log? Easy easy to do. Why that area then? Why electric cars? Oh.\n\nUh so um because I think it's I think it's important that we transition to sustainable transport.\n\num if we don't transition to sustainable transport obviously toologically it's unsustainable and even if there were not an environmental uh issue in fact even if you were to say hypothetically that emitting carbon was good for the environment um because of the scarcity uh of of of oil and natural gas and so forth the we would eventually face extremely high gasoline costs and uh the economy would grind to a halt if we did not find some sustainable means of transport.\n\nDo you worry that the electricity that is generated and and used when the cars are recharged and plugged in is a lot of it is generated from coal. Does that bother you? Yeah, I mean depending on where you are in the country, you know, say roughly half of it is uh is not coal, but so roughly half of it is hydrocarbon based. Um and uh however that's that's there there are two obvious rebuttals to that.\n\nOne is that if you take the same source fuel and you burn it at the power plant level, you will get two to three times the efficiency uh than than if you burnt it in the car itself. Uh because at the power plant level, you're not constrained by mass and volume. So you can have something that's big and heavy. Um and you can also take the waste heat and generate a steam and and use it to turn a steam turbine. So you get what's called co-generation.\n\nSo you your maximum extractable energy is much greater with a stationary power plant than if you burnt that same fuel in a in a in a mobile transport where you you have form more constraints. Um and then the other factor is that we we have to find sustainable means of electricity production anyway.\n\nUm so if you believe in that predicate you can write that predicate and say uh given that we must have sustainable electricity production the obvious move for transport is is electric.\n\nSo when you're talking about these ideas of getting in doing this particular thing, one of the things that's I think struck a lot of people about you is the scale of the vision um that it's not one that it's very difficult, two that it's a little crazy um going along with SpaceX at the same time. Um what what what do you imagine is you you've had many years doing this, many critics, you're not going to make it.\n\nYou're getting a lot of Walt was going to ask about subsidies. I think that you get We'll talk about that. Yeah. What is the why why these kind of projects?\n\nThis is sort of a bigger question I want you to think about, but the idea of the bigness of the project because there's been this the industry has been littered with electric car funerals essentially and not as many candlelight visuals obviously, but right um yeah, there have been many car company failures, not just electric.\n\nUm, and uh, honestly, if I had like a dollar for every every time somebody brought up Delorean or or Tucker, I wouldn't need an IPO. Mhm. You know, it would have been perfectly financed just on that alone. Um, so but but the I don't know. I when I was in college, I wanted to be involved in things that I thought would affect the world. Um, and there were three areas that I thought would would most affect the world.\n\nand one of them was the internet. Um, so did a couple of companies in that, but then it seemed like uh after PayPal it was like there's a lot of really talented entrepreneurs and a lot of capital doing internet ventures. So it didn't seem like I could necessarily be all that incrementally useful in the internet arena. And so it was time to then go to two other the other two areas which were sustainable energy and space exploration.\n\nuh in particular uh developing a technology necessary to make life multilanetary. So multilanetary life is might be more interesting than cars. We'll get into that shortly. But I do have to ask you, you know, there this is an it's an important it's very important that you've made an attractive car with longer range than I think than you're right than people thought possible. That's electric all electric.\n\nUm but um it's fairly expensive I think uh at least upfront. Yeah. And what does it cost your most successful one? Well uh be before uh uh tax credits it's about $70,000. After tax credits it's like 60. All right. Now we're getting to t to tax credits. So um you there's like a there's some kind of federal tax credit, right? That's right. For buying a pure electric $7,500. Yeah.\n\nAnd then you were telling me backstage I a whole bunch of states 15 states or something have these right there's different types of credits. So um the I mean the first thing I should say is that um people think of like electric cars as receiving a subsidy but but in fact what's occurring is that they're receiving less of a subsidy than gasoline cars. Okay.\n\nUm if you were to actually look at the the subsidy in gly gasoline cars um and and particularly if you price in the economic or the inventory sorry the environmental uh damages uh the what's really occurring is that every time you buy a gasoline car there are huge subsidies occurring and you can actually tell that these subsidies are are higher than they than than the subsidies for electric cars because people are not buying electric cars except I mean ours in not not huge these are upstream subsidies to the oil companies and so forth for the for the gas.\n\nThey're both direct the whole the whole tax. Yeah. This this there's some enormous number. It's like half a trillion dollars in subsidies to Okay. But you do get you also get some federal and state subsidies, right? Yes. And then there's this these credits that you are able to sell to the other car companies. Can you explain what that is? Sure. Sure.\n\nUm although just to emphasize again it's it's pretty obvious that that the the credit whatever subsidies are occurring for electric cars are are less than for gasoline cars. Otherwise things like the Chevy Volt or the Nissan Leaf would sell in large quantities but they are not and so that that's like an an obvious test.\n\nUm then with respect to uh zero emission vehicle credits or ZEV credits, these apply to about 40% of the of the US population and they were actually put in place quite a while ago to deal with uh pollution in air pollution in um uh in in in in places like LA and the Bay Area and New York and so forth.\n\nSo, whenever you're driving cars in a dense of an area, you're essentially emitting a bunch of toxic gases that negatively affect people's health and obviously the quality of the air and it's pretty obvious in in you know LA during the summer.\n\nUm so in order to motivate manufacturers to move away from that the um the states enacted the ZEV credit mandate which was that a small number of electric or zero emission vehicles have to be made by all large scale manufacturers and if if they don't make those vehicles then they have to try to purchase ZEV credits from someone who who has but when we sell a ZEV credit we sell it at at 65 cents on the dollar so the best thing that another manufacturer could could make would be electric cars because then they get 100 cents on the dollar for every tax credit.\n\nSo why don't they? Um well I'm hopeful that they will. Um I think to some degree at least some of the manufacturers were hoping that no one would come up with an electric vehicle that anyone wanted to buy and that that California other Zev states would repeal their ZEV mandate because they they've lobbied for that outcome many times and have thus far been unsuccessful.\n\nIf Tesla if Tesla was unsuccessful then I think they would have been able to repeal the ZEV mandate. So when you're getting into the the the concept of these cars the these prices are still along with subsidies and everything else is still a high price tag. What is your goal is to bring in I mean you have there's lots of people here who own Teslas. Yeah. Thank you everyone. Thank you for for buying Tesla by the way.\n\nsort of say all of you guys who bought Teslas, you guys are awesome. Some significant percentage of your your customers are here. But but there is there's a larger country far-sighted awesome individuals who bought Teslas. [laughter] Um where do you actually I'd like to say a special shout out to Tony Tony Se who has the largest bought the made the the largest number of Tesla orders in the US of 100 cars for his project in in downtown Vegas.\n\nVegas. Yeah. Um so thanks Tony. Yeah. Yeah. So, so that's a very it's a super interesting project, but how do you get it down to levels that Tony of Zapos, No, we don't have to be Tony of Zapos, right? Um, so Tesla, you know, when we first started out, um, I actually wrote a a blog piece to outlining the Tesla strategy. Um, and it's been out there for a long time.\n\nUm, and it really just outlined the the sort of three-step process that Tesla's going through to get to mass market compelling electric cars. And step one was making the Tesla road. So, so high price, low volume, then mid price, midv volume, and then low price, uh, high volume. So, those are, you know, we're in step two.\n\nThe price of the Model S is actually less than it may seem at first because the cost of gasoline is so much more than the cost of of electricity that you save a lot of money uh buying gas. Yeah, exactly. Um, and you know that that depending upon how you count it is, you know, somewhere in the 15 to$20,000 uh dollar region over the lifetime of the car over the over over sort of seven years.\n\nFig figure it's you know roughly $2,000 a year depending upon what your assumptions for gas uh prices are. Um yeah, but when will there be a 30,000 or $35,000 Tesla? Yeah. So step three I'm expecting in about three to four years. Um this and what's required to get you from here to there? Is it got to do with design and technology or does it have to do with scale or what?\n\nWell um the [clears throat] uh I I think any any new technology needs at least three major iterations to get to um the mass market. I mean certainly cell phones have gone through you know many more than that. Um, and uh, I'm sure people remember like the, you know, Wall Street one where he's walking down the the beach on the giant brick of a cell phone on his ear. Um, and that thing was super expensive and like lasted for 30 minutes.\n\nYou couldn't even this audio quality was terrible. Now you can have a super computer in your pocket for 100 bucks. Um, and uh, so so with electric vehicles similar, you trying to compete with gasoline cars that have had 150 years and trillions of dollars spent on them. So I think if we can make it there by our third generation that's pretty awesome.\n\nUm so I think there's there's certainly design optimization is is one factor and then the other is the car will be a little bit smaller so maybe 20% smaller than the Model S. Uh and we'll have an order of magnitude greater production. So we have the economy scale to help us out. I think those three factors will take us to 50%.\n\nand and when will you be at a point where if even if you didn't have subsidies or and credit sales you would be profitable? Um yeah, so I think uh we're anticipating being profitable or or I should say even better well better than slightly profitable in the fourth quarter this year. Uh we're we're projecting 25% gross margins absent of credits absent absence of credits. So not getting this extra sub money but not absent the tax subs. Right. Yeah.\n\nI there's a consumer sort of tax credit um which is effectively something that improves the level of demand for the product uh but doesn't directly affect our gross margins um and uh so so we don't get that Tesla doesn't get the tax credit the consumer does. Why haven't many car companies raced to you and you're showing that there are cars people there is an audience for this? Where are the rest of these companies now?\n\nWell, I'm hopeful that our results from the first quarter will cause u the the other car companies to enter the electric car arena in a significant way. Uh but until now they didn't really have a good uh basis for that. Uh because they they would look at um you know you say what are the examples of successful electric cars?\n\nI mean, we did have our Tesla Roadster out there, but they wrote that off as being something that's really low volume, kind of a niche product for techno geeks type of thing. And and so they um they wrote that off, right? Um and um yeah, it's actually funny because before we were able to get the Roadster out, then then they they'd say, \"Well, you couldn't possibly make that car work.\"\n\nAnd then when we made the car work, they'd say, \"Well, nobody's going to buy it.\" And then people bought it. Um, and then we announced the Model S and so many people called on that it was ridiculous.\n\nUm, and and and yet actually the uh we were able to bring it to market and then when we brought it to market they said well you're never going to be able to produce it volume and we did that and then they would said you will never be able to make a profit and then we did that in Q1.\n\nSo I'm hopeful that uh there's a you know people will observe that there's a trend here [laughter] and [applause] And if so, so so now that we we have been profitable, I think uh other manufacturers are more likely to embark on electric vehicle projects. Um and um and it should also be mentioned that we do make electric powertrains for Daimler and Toyota. So for the electric RAV 4, we make the battery pack and powertrain.\n\nFor the Mercedes B-Classes coming out later this year, we will be making that whole um petrol. they open to that? Do you feel as if they're open? I mean, a lot of the, you know, you can paint the car companies any way you want, but are they, do you feel as if they're open or thinking about that? Yeah. Um, I I think so.\n\nThe the challenge, uh, is to convince them that it should be more than just a little niche product or a hybrid or something like that. Yeah. Um, well, they may I mean, Tur obviously makes is quite big on hybrids, but the to convince them that electric cars should be a mainstream item. Um there's still a bit of work to do on that front and until they're a mainstream item in terms of having enough of an infrastructure of charging.\n\nObviously you've done a lot to help that problem with range but still people want to feel like they're not going to be stranded that there are going to be charging stations and I know Yeah. Yeah. We've got an announcement about that tomorrow in fact. Oh, [clears throat] you do? Yeah. You want to announce it here now? Um well for No, you've just sort of let the cat out of the bag.\n\nMight as well just Well, [applause] um [laughter] because you're so quiet and retiring mostly. That's why. Exactly. You never do anything just mouth off at a New York Times reporter, for example. Right. Um Yeah, exactly. All right. Um well so so we have something called the supercharger right which is an advanced charging technology that we developed um and uh yeah I guess I might as well let the cat out of the bag. Why not?\n\n[cheering] Um the so the supercharger techn supercharging technology um is um something we developed because obviously uh traditional charging has been way too slow u and and it's not been affect it's not effective for long-distance travel.\n\nSo it's it is very important to address this issue of long-distance travel because um when people buy a car that there's they're also buying something which is a sense of freedom, an ability to go anywhere that they want and not feel fettered. Um so so we had to make something that was really quick to charge.\n\nSo, so that's what we developed and um there are actually a bunch of them out there now in California and on the east coast from allowing you to go from Boston to DC and travel throughout California and Nevada. And what we what we were going to announce tomorrow [laughter] um is is that there's there's going to be a dramatic acceleration of the supercharging network. Um and by the end of next month, we will triple the supercharger coverage area.\n\nWow. Um, where where is it going? [applause] Um, so it it'll it'll be um uh there's actually a map that will be go live tomorrow obviously. Um, but people will be quite surprised to learn learn this, but um at at Tesla uh [laughter] blame it on the CEO of SpaceX. Yeah, exactly. Um or if you want you could blame it on me. It's all right. Believe it or not, it's Walt's fault. Yeah.\n\nUm cuz you know, you like tangling with reviewers and I'm a reviewer. Yeah, but but you do good reviews. [laughter] I haven't reviewed your car. Well, I mean, I should say accurate reviews. Um [laughter] Thank you. Uh so, the Supercharge Network by the end of this year will will have covered um most of the major uh metro areas of u the US and southern Canada.\n\nUm, and in fact, you'll be able to drive all the way from LA to New York just using the Supercharger network. [applause] And does that does that also does that include not only putting it in places where it doesn't exist today, but also increasing the density on the two coasts? Absolutely. Exactly. Good point. The the density is not quite as good as it should be.\n\nSo we're incre both improving the density of the supercharger stations along welltraveled routes as well as increasing the geographic scope of the of the network. That's hugely important. It is absolutely because even tell me if you think I'm nuts, but I I think that it's like in the old days people would go and buy a desktop tower computer and they would not buy one unless it had five slots for cards in it, right?\n\nBut they would never open the computer and put a card in it. Well, I I do. Yeah, you did. But I mean, a lot of people would be told by their techie friend, you have to have, you know, three empty slots or five empty slots, but they never opened and put the slots in.\n\nEven if you only drive your car, [clears throat] commuting to work well within the range of the car and a few errands and stuff, you always want that sense of freedom that if I had to, I could get in this car. Exactly. And go from Boston to DC or something. Yep. That's right. I mean, psychologically, it's really very very important to people. It's extremely important.\n\nUm and and uh so and and on Tesla because all Teslas are wirelessly updated via by the cell networks. Um we actually update the supercharger locations in the car. So on the Tesla map, if you just tap the little lightning button, it'll actually direct you to the nearest supercharger. So as you're driving, you can go uh wherever you want.\n\nAnd uh with the release later this year, you'll be able to navigate anywhere in the country, and the car will automatically route you to the superchargers along the way. Fantastic. So, one question before he is that why you hit back so hard at the times? I mean, we joke about it and stuff like that, but many people don't do that. What was the reasoning? I know you've said a lot about this, but Oh, brother. Yeah. What was your reasoning?\n\nIs like, you're not going to take this or you Yeah. Um, well, I mean, I thought I thought about it a fair bit before actually responding. So, it wasn't sort of just an totally off the cuff thing. Um but but when the the articles was was published, we saw a significant decrease in sales particularly in in the New York Times sort of main readership area sort of northn northeast particularly in cold areas.\n\nUm and the the article it really sort of played to people's biggest fear about electric cars um that that that you'll run out um and that they don't work in the cold, which is actually completely false. they they they do work really well in the cold. In fact, our highest sales per capita are in Norway. Mhm. Um and the the single person who's bought the single largest number as an individual of of Teslas literally lives above this Arctic Circle.\n\nUm why he's an opthalmologist in a uh J Coll is his name. He's a great guy. Um wait, he's an opthalmologist. He lives above the Arctic Circle and he has a whole bunch of electric cars. Yeah. I just wanted to get I mean what are the odds? I just wanted to get the picture scenario but true. It's amazing. Yeah. Um and he and every day he takes an electronic pill also. Yeah. Exactly.\n\nUh but you like drove them through like the you know winter which is permanent midnight. Um and uh so obviously they work pretty well. Um and uh in fact after that article we we had since it was still sort of winter in Norway uh we actually had um someone do a Model S test drive from I think almost near the Arctic Circle uh to Oslo. Okay.\n\nBut you know as I'm a reviewer as we've already discussed and some people in the room know but um uh so part of a review is factual. This is actually what part of the review is that factual? No no no.\n\n[laughter] which okay no let me let me explain part of the re a review is opinion in the end sure so but you have to state if you're doing specs if you're doing like in my case it's it's a battery test on something I have to explain this is how I did the battery test this is what the result is right I can then have an opinion you might have a different you might say well even if I accept Mossberg's battery test I don't agree with him that this is good enough battery life I need better battery life, so I think he's too easy on this product or the other way around, you know, whatever.\n\nSo, part of it is the facts and part of it is what opinions you draw from that. Sure. You know, the screen is this big, the camera has this those are facts. So, was it was it the facts were the guys? No, it was it was it was a fact thing. Um, in fact, in fact, so when when we got the car back, um, we we looked at the at the data logs, um, as compared to the article that that was written, um, and the the article was factually incorrect.\n\nUm, and in in multiple places in in fact and and one could perhaps ascribe that to um to error on on his part, but by the 10th mistake in a row that is interpreted in the wrong direction, that that lacks credibility. Um, and so, you know, if we're it's like if you did that battery test on on something and and and you've and you you said factual information that was was untrue in a very important way. I mean, that that that's that's a big deal.\n\nUm, and so if if we didn't speak out against that, that article would live forever and and people would have this this really wrong impression of the car. Um, and they would think that what he said if we did not oppose it was the Times didn't back down, did they? Actually, the the public editor of the Times did an investigation and concluded that that he that the the article was was wrong.\n\nWe we disagreed I disagree with public editor over the motivation. Uh, in other words, the public editor said the article was wrong, uh, but didn't agree that it was intentional, whereas in my opinion, it's difficult to interpret that as anything but intentional. And then what then, just to close this off, wasn't there some controversy about the fact that you had put sensors on the car that aren't normally sold on the car? No, the same sensors.\n\nOkay. All right. So, uh, this is this is really important, but space the final frontier. Sure. Um, are you what is your ultimate plan or goal for SpaceX? What is it you want to do with it? Is it just to prove that a private company can deliver stuff to the space station or what is not all?\n\nNow, like I said, it's the the the goal with SpaceX is to um improve rocket technology and spacecraft technology and and keep keep improving it every year until ultimately we're able to send people to to Mars and establish a self-sustaining base on Mars. That's the Mars. Yeah. Okay. To make make life multilanetary as they're saying. Um it's not as though I I expect that this will necessarily occur.\n\nI mean I I agree that this is an unlikely outcome. But if we do not keep improving um space technology every year, then that that will never happen. Didn't George W. Bush want to go to Mars? He did actually. Not many people know that. Um yeah. So that's kind of put you and George W. Bush in the same category as George uh is his dad. Oh H one of them wanted a a space program get us to Mars, right?\n\nUm yeah actually uh the uh uh George HW Bush uh shortly after gaining office actually asked NASA to come up with a plan in 90 days uh for sending um people to Mars and NASA did come up with that plan but um it was half a trillion dollars. So he decided that maybe wasn't such a great idea and that was obviously 20 years ago whatever it was you know so so why why Mars? explain what half a trillion really meant. What what's attractive?\n\n[laughter] Yeah, that was that was really was a half a trillion dollar. Yeah, it's cheap, right? Yeah. No, it's Well, the defense budget's bigger than that. So, so why Mars? Why Mars over? Now, just to preface this, Elon went to Space Camp many years ago with Sergey, Larry, Megan, James Ween, Pier Media, a bunch of you very strange shortly after I started SpaceX. Yeah. Right. Yeah. What? Why?\n\nAnd you know, were you in a Star Trek mode or what was the what was the space camp? I know you guys did that, but but what they had out before when you was what does it got you interested? Because you said a few minutes ago that that there were three things that you were you know interested in. One was the internet, one was the electric car and the other was space. So why what got you into space? Right.\n\nSo if you if you think about the future of humanity, it's going to fundamentally bifocate in two directions or life as we know it. Either it's going to become multilanetary or it's going to be confined to one planet until some eventual extinction event. So I think it's much more put it that way. Let's go to Mars. [laughter] I'm And by the way, I'm optimistic about life on Earth. It's not as though I'm like I think we're human.\n\nBut you're convinced there will be an extinction event. Well, I mean that's pretty obvious from the fossil record. Yeah, I mean it's for sure um we we face dangers that the uh the dinosaurs didn't face because it could be um us. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, we could. Yeah. So, we could do ourselves in they actually had better diets.\n\nThe dinosaurs a lot of things they um so so the I I just think you know we want to have a future ultimately where humanity is out there exploring the stars um or space fairing civilization and the things that we read about in science fiction books and and see in movies becomes true. We don't want that always to be a fiction of the future. So, if we don't improve space technology every year, we're never going to get there.\n\nAnd so, the goal of SpaceX is to make as much improvement as possible. Um, and uh and hopefully we'll we'll see people land on Mars in our in our lifetime. I have to ask you, have you I just have to ask you, have you literally looked into or had someone look into or are they still looking into for you whether you could do warp drive?\n\nI mean really does that crush there actually is a well you know this there actually does seem to be oddly enough some breakthrough on the whole war drive thing um because you can't exceed the speed of light but technically it is poss well theoretically possible to warp space itself so that even on your in your in your local space-time continuum you're not traveling faster than speed of light but you're you're warping space such that space is moving uh and and that's what okay got that is that a now wait a I actually kind of that's because you like Star Trek.\n\nHe goes to the Star Trek Museum in Las Vegas, so let's not talk. Is that like in the fourth quarter or next year?\n\nUm, well, I'm not sure if if war drives ultimately I mean, war drive may or may not uh come to come to fruition, but I think if we at least have a base on on Mars, that's going to create a forcing function for the improvement in space transport technology um and gives us the best chance of ever achieving something like a warp drive that would enable uh travel easily. Yeah. But listen, Scotty Spock, let's talk about now. Okay. All right.\n\nRight this second. Sure. Good movie, by the way. Yeah. It's it's recommended seeing the new Star Trek. Terrific movie. By the way, Larry Ellson's son produced it, which is oddly enough. Um, what's happening now? What's available now for us? Not Warp Drive, not transporter beams or whatever. The the big breakthrough that's needed in in rocketry is to achieve a a fully and rapidly reusable rocket.\n\nUm and it's important to have those uh that those are important qualifications because um if you think of any other mode of transport like a a plane or bike, car, anything of course that they are um reusable. Yeah. And and you can they're reusable quickly and you know fairly completely apart from maintenance schedules. And the only one we have the United States at least built and or anybody built I think was the shuttle, right?\n\nAnd that was usable, but not quickly. And it was only partly reusable. So the main uh tank, the the big orange thing was um not reusable. That was guaranteed to be expandable every time. It wasn't just the tank that that big orange thing was actually the primary airframe to which the the orbiter, the plane pot, and the side boosters attached. Um so even in a best case scenario, it would not have been uh reusable in in a substantial way.\n\nUm, and then it it took an an army of 10,000 people nine months to refurbish a shuttle for flight. Um, which is obviously not not rapidly reusable. Um, so in order to to have a breakthrough, we you have to have fully and rapidly reusable rocket. And we're making progress in that direction.\n\nAnd I'm hopeful that sometime in the next couple years, we'll be able to achieve full and rapid reusability of the first stage, which is about 3/4 of the cost of the rocket. Um and then with a future uh design architecture achieve full reusability. And how long does it take to get to Mars with with whatever the technologies you plan with with relatively sort of standard rockets? A low energy trajectory would be about 6 months.\n\nWell, you can compress it down to 3 months without too much trouble. And you're not and and there's no and you're talking about a a humans on this rocket going to Mars. So know are there any dangers? I have read that there are radiation. What could possibly go wrong? That's that's ridiculous. Come on. [laughter] U I don't even like to drive with you. I mean, [laughter] yeah. Vice versa, by the way. Um Yeah.\n\nSo, it's it's a there's probably some challenges along the way, but um but I think it's I think it's possible. I think we can make it work. um like doing it this way. There's no we're not violating any laws of physics. Um it's all it's all do it's it's difficult but achievable and and I think we should really try our hardest to to make it happen. And why Mars?\n\nWell, Mars is the only place where we could really um create a self-sustaining civilization of on a on a planet scale. Can you explain this for people who don't know like myself? Okay. Well, uh, so, um, uh, if you look at, you know, various planets, we've got, um, Mercury's too close to the sun. Venus is Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the the the rocks melt on Mercury. So, um, that's a no. Yeah. [laughter] Toasty.\n\nUm, and then and then Venus is still pretty pretty hot. Uh, it's several hundred degrees. Uh, and it's high and the atmosphere is high pressure and it's acidic. So, it's a high pressure hot acid bath. So we actually thought of having a deconference on Venus. It's not going to work. Yeah. Say that Venus would be very challenging.\n\nUm and then Mars obviously is on the other side of Earth and it's uh it's it's colder than Earth, but it's it's uh the the temperature on Mars actually gets above room temperature on Earth on a hot day in the summer. Um and we you could warm Mars up over time with greenhouse gases and kind of the opposite of what we're doing on Earth. [laughter] Yeah, this is great. Export our greenhouse gas and we're good at that. You can bring all the gas.\n\nYou can bring all the all all the GM cars there. Yeah. Um I [applause] mean Mars' atmosphere is is primarily carbon dioxide which shows you how long I mean it's been there for 4 billion years. Shows you how long carbon dioxide lasts. It's hangs around how slowly it warms up a planet. Yeah. Well, it's quite a thin carbon dioxide atmosphere. But if you would But we could bulk it up. We could buck it up. We know. We have practice.\n\nWe know how to do that. Exactly. So, Mars is um you know is a sort of it's a fixer upper of a planet, but we could we could make [laughter] it work. We could make it work. Now, do you So, do you do you do you want to go there yourself? I know you said you didn't want to die in a rocket accident. You'd rather just die on die on impact. Yeah. Right. You don't want to die in impact, but you don't mind dying there. Yeah.\n\nI think I mean all things considered I mean if one's going to die anywhere it'd be kind of cool you know cool to die on Mars I mean um I'm going with Hawaii but okay um so I think that yeah that would be that'd be neat um but I just think the the things that kind of get me going are like I think it's just really important to to to me to and I think to probably a lot of people in this room that if you look to the future that it's an inspiring exciting thing that you know the future is a better better than the present or these has a good chance of being better than the present.\n\nAnd I think that's that's that's the the main driver. Uh for me, it's it's it's like, okay, will we have will we be a space fair civilization? Um or or will we be confined to Earth? I point I think it would be so much better if if it was the former. Right. Now, your rockets though are for doing payloads. And it's a business. You're trying to make a business out of it too. Correct. I mean, yeah. Absolutely. So, we got to keep SpaceX.\n\nWe got to pay the bills, right? Um, and so the what SpaceX does is is uh launch satellites for commercial customers and do space station uh servicing for NASA. So we we won the primary contract to do space station transporter cargo to and from the space station. In fact, we're the the only craft capable of bringing significant cargo back from uh the space station, but it's not uh readily reusable yet. Correct. It's not it's not.\n\nSo you're in a your breakthrough in a sense has been to do what NASA and the Soviets used to do or still do to some extent. The Soviets still do it. Uh but to do it in a p through via a private company. Yeah. I I'd say you know our breakthroughs thus far on the SpaceX side are are um incremental in nature not revolutionary. Uh and and the aspiration is to to have a revolutionary breakthrough.\n\nAnd I I should point out that the cost of the propellant in the rocket is only about. 3% of the cost of the of the vehicle. So it's it's maybe a couple hundred thousand to refuel the rocket. Um and whereas cost sort of $60 million. Um and which is it makes sense if you think about planes like how much does a plane cost versus refueling a plane, right? Big big difference. Um we nobody would be flying if you had to buy a new plane every flight.\n\nMhm. Um no. No. Yeah. Right. Although although United should, right? Exactly. There's come a time when you have to retire those players and some of those United along in the tooth. That's when you're thinking of these things, you're doing a lot of stuff. You're kind of a busy fellow. Um what who are your heroes? Who are you what inspired you to be this? Sure.\n\nUm well, I think uh generally um lot of people that I admire in history certainly um scientists and engineers and sort of technologists in general. Obviously I'm a big admire of Tesla, Nicola Tesla. Um and um and you know many others I mean all the obvious people you can imagine. I say I like I like Tesla Edison too although people sometimes are surprised to hear that since we have a company called Tesla.\n\nUm and uh you know Einstein Newton um uh just like Darwin um a big fan um of of Ben Franklin. And I think he's just, you know, an awesome example of a great human being in history, you know. So I'd say that people like that. And are are there obviously you uh were one of the pioneers of a an important internet company, uh, PayPal? Um, did did anybody else in the kind of IT area inspire you?\n\nI mean obviously all those people you mentioned are really great geniuses but they were kind of well before the they're more scientists and they and inventors well before the IT era or is it just too early in the IT? Um no absolutely um I admire anyone who's who's worked hard to accomplish some great thing. I mean it's it's worthy of admiration.\n\nSo um you know obviously it's hard not to admire someone like Steve Jobs uh um you know Bill Gates or um you know in sort of present day um big fan of Larry Page good friend of mine is you know what him and Serge have done there is is pretty awesome um so yeah and then probably many many journalists I'm not against journalists honestly look you're here yeah exactly [laughter] But but when you talk about the the internet of today, how do you look at it?\n\nYou were in a very clear part of the internet that was you know and you I remember you and you were Mr. Web 1. 0 like there was you know and you did in fact pose in front of cars. I remember there was some car picture that you Yeah. Um yeah Porsche or a Fiat. It was a McLaren F1. Right. Exactly. So So you weren't close. No. Well I Yeah. So I don't know what that is. It's a man.\n\nAnd I actually I'll tell you, I actually do um uh haven't haven't told anyone in a while, but the I do actually still own one gasoline car, which is a a 67 series 1E type Jag. Oh, I don't know what. Great. I know exactly what it says. Some of us know. I have a Mazda 5. I like it a lot. Okay. Um great. But um when I when I was uh sort of in college there were I was reading about the McLaren F1 and it's just an engineering work of art.\n\nI mean it's just really really done right and and so I thought if if I ever made enough money that I' I'd buy the McLaren F1. So I was actually living in an apartment in Palo Alto um that that cost significantly less than the car. Um I remember that picture. Yeah. And it was either upgrade to a house or buy the car and I bought the car. Uh [laughter] yeah. Were you married at the time? I was actually. Yeah. And you posed in front of it.\n\nIt was quite a symbol of the time, I remember. Yeah. You know, um yeah, exactly. I mean, I wasn't really It probably wasn't the best idea, but um there was in fact it was it was kind of funny. It was this show um which is like if if there was ever sort of a show on hubris, it would probably be it was called Silicon Valley Gold Rush. Um and it was literally filmed in 99 in 1999.\n\nUm and um and so they fold me getting the McLaren and uh and a number of other people as well. Um it fortunately PayPal worked out otherwise it would have been extremely embarrassing. Right. Did you go like I got one or something. Uh no I didn't do that but I was pretty excited about getting it. Right. So why when you look at the internet of today and then we're going to get to questions from lots of questions from the audience I'm sure.\n\nUm what do you think of the rest of the space the photo sharing? Is it meaningless given you're going to Mars and everything or is it what what's the I mean people are like Vine I can you know do a selfie which is animated and a lot of people you know are kind of excited but I love them. Cara did some great ones. Absolutely. But it's not going it's not having two planetary habitats.\n\nIt's like a different thing you know or even being able to drive from New York to LA on electric power. on electric power. What do you think of when you look at the internet right now? What do you about what's developing and what's happening? Um, well, no, I mean, I I think I actually I'm I'm not dismissive of of things like like photo sharing apps and that kind of thing.\n\nI think the the the I mean, there's a lot of things where where it provides say a small amount of value to a lot of people and that, you know, sums up to some large value and that's that's still good. Um, I mean, if people are able to share photos of their friends and family in in a better way, I think that makes their lives better. And, um, if you know, if that puts a high value on the company, so so be it. I think that's not that bad.\n\nUm, and, uh, I mean, I think we've got an enormously a lot of talented people, uh, a lot of talented entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, and others in the internet arena. Um, and I think it'd be great if if some of those people would would actually go to other arenas that that could use their talent.\n\nI mean, that's the only thing that I would say is well, there is this concept someone someone the other day when I was asking him what's going on in Silicon Valley and he said very smart guy, he said, you know, there's a lot of big minds chasing small ideas, right? And I I sometimes, you know, the ninth kind of silly little thing, you're like, wow, these are fantastic and yet like everyone's making Twinkies, right? Kind of thing some level.\n\nYeah, I mean, yeah. Um, I think there's there's probably I mean, I' I'd recommend that that people consider arenas outside of the the internet. Um, because there's there's there's a lot of, like I said, there's a lot of um industries that could use that entrepreneurial talent and the the skills that people have learned in creating companies.\n\nUm and uh you know then there's actually a lot of opportunity uh in in these industries particularly ones where the they've been kind of dominated by an oligopolistic uh set of companies for a long time. Oligoples are not or duopies or monopolies are not great at innovation. Innovation comes from new entrance to an arena. And so when an industry has had the absence of new entrance, it tends to to have very limited innovation.\n\nUm, which also means that if you do get a you break on through the other side, then you there is a lot of opportunity for a company that's that's created there. Um, so what are you doing next? Because you're you know, we're kind of bored with these last two. Well, I think I'll be occupied with Tesla and SpaceX for a long time. But is there one other arena you don't you have a solar thing? Solar? Yeah.\n\nUm, in fact, but I should clarify that a lot of times people uh ascribe the success of Solo City to me, but I really should be ascribed to the the my cousins, the co-founders, uh, Lynon and Peter Ry. I mean, I provide some strategic advice. Um, and I suggested that they do a company in the solar arena. Um, but but they deserve the vast majority of the credit for for that outcome. And uh, it it should certainly shouldn't be ascribed to me. Okay.\n\nAll right. Well, we're gonna take some by the way. And by the way, Elon said to me he wasn't Why would we want him here? He's not a technologist, just so you know. Well, no. And I just was like, I don't know what you're talking about. Well, I'm a technologist, but I'm not an internet. So, I'm not like digital. That's the thing. It's like I was like, okay, all things digital. Well, there's nothing digital.\n\nI'm not exactly digital, but there's nothing digital in the Tesla. There are digital things. Um, but it's Yeah. Um, it didn't say all things digital and physical be like more sense. [laughter] All right, let's get to the question. Shervin, it just be called all things. All things. That's our new name. May need one. Oh, you want to start over there? Okay. Hi, Shervin Pishvar from Sherpa. Hi, Elon.\n\nUm, I've been coming here for many years and all of us who have been here for many years have we're always inspired to see Steve Jobs here and obviously we all miss him deeply, but somehow your presence here and your inspiration really uh eases that pain. So, thank you for coming. Oh, wow. What do you say? [applause] Elon, there there is one idea you have that we've discussed before, which is Hyperloop, and Right.\n\nI I would love for you to tell this audience what that is and how it could change our world. Again, thank you. Yeah, I would actually love to to to answer that question, but if I do, uh it it will that will be the news tomorrow. Um whereas I need to do the Tesla news. Um, you did that too late. Yeah. Um, so, uh, yeah, I I I think probably I'll be able to talk about the Hyperloop idea in pretty soon.\n\nThere's there's a Tesla announcement we've got next month or so around June 20th or so. And I think um I think at some point after that I I to that should hopefully that that that that will be a good time to talk about the uh the Hyperloop idea.\n\nBut for those that aren't aware, the basic thought is um is is there a better way to travel quickly from uh say downtown LA to downtown San Francisco or LA to San Francisco that's better than the highspeed rail that's being proposed? Because the highspeed rail, that's what originally got me to think about, you know, is there some better way to do it?\n\nbecause the highspeed rail that's being proposed would actually be the slowest of slowest bullet train in the world and the most expensive per mile in the world, which is these are not the superlatives we're looking for. Kind of like our internet here. Yeah. Um but it's it you know I think this it's a little depressing to sort of have uh something that's like the slowest bullet train in the world in in California at enormous cost.\n\nUh and isn't there something better that we could come up with? And that something better is the hyperloop. Well, I think so. Probably, but I don't know what that is. Yeah. Um, the But I want to ride on it. Yeah. [laughter] I I think, you know, even even if even if I'm sort of wrong about the economic assumptions behind the Hyperloop, it would still be a really fun ride. Uh, even if only one of it ever existed, it would be a really fun ride.\n\nWhat it is? [laughter] Um, is it a train? A plane, not a mobile. It's It's um transporter machine. It's a cross between a Concord and a rail gun. A Concord and a rail gun. Okay. Yeah. But you're not you you don't I throw something else in there just to to make it sound even more even even more bizarre. Um it it's cross between a Concord, a rail gun, and an air hockey table. [laughter] But you did the freeway and had a baby somehow.\n\nYou [laughter] You wouldn't want to go a little bit beyond that or Oh my god. Okay, let's go. Let's go. I mean, San Francisco is in. Okay, three-way and a baby. We love it. Esther. Esther, thank you. And Max will help that. Since you're feeling so loquacious tonight. Okay. When are you planning to take the first people up into orbit, whether it's the space station or Bigalow or whatever? She wants to go. Yeah, absolutely.\n\nWell, we're actually we're working on um working on version two of our Dragon spacecraft and um uh in partnership with with with NASA. So, this is uh NASA's NASA is our biggest customer. Um although we also expect to to transport uh private citizens and and we think we'll probably see this the first flights in of of people in two to three years. So, thank you. Bye, sir. Nice knowing. [laughter] No, no. I'm retiring on Mars, but not yet. Okay.\n\nYes. Over here. Allison Sheridan from Rathan and I am behind the camera. Now I know why everybody's been saying that. Looking right through the camera. Um, thanks for your presence at All Things D. A couple years ago, I did get a chance to drive the Tesla Roadster. That was so much fun. I scared the guy though. He got a little nervous.\n\nBut, um, what I actually wanted to ask you about was we've talked a lot here about the importance of STEM education and trying to encourage that. And it's been suggested that part of our strategy really should be immigrant STEM type people. And I'm just guessing that with your background, maybe you have some interesting perspective on that. Oh, we forgot that question. Yeah. Oh, you're welcome. Great. Well, I do think Zuckerberg. Yeah.\n\nI I do think we we we should be we I mean, if there's some really talented grad students at American colleges, it's crazy to send them home or force them to go home in a lot of cases. So I think we should have some reform of immigration policy that um actually has has us you know arguably recruiting.\n\nI mean we should think of like like if you if if this was a company if the United States was a company you'd be working hard to recruit top people and and you certainly wouldn't be expelling them. Um that would be that would be crazy. So we should definitely have some reform on that front. Um and it does endure to the benefit of other countries but but um but I should try to have them stay here I think.\n\nUm and but with respect to to STEM in general I mean to to the degree that there are exciting technology projects that kids in school can read about and and and say okay I' I'd like to be I'd like to work work on that or be part of that. Um that is what draws people into the science and technology. Um and like the biggest thing I think in history that is on on that front has been the was the Apollo program.\n\nUm that's I think there's probably not been any single thing that's been more powerful in in drawing kids in because they're they're like like wow we sent something. I want to help make that happen or or or you know and and and go beyond that. So, I think I think it's it's really important to have th those projects that that kids can can read about and want to be part of in school and and that will really draw them.\n\nSince we just touched on immigration, can you explain what happened with the uh political lobbying effort started by Mark Zuckerberg that you were you were supporter of, but then you withdrew along with some others. What was that all about? Yeah. Um so initially when I was uh you know I joined agreed to be part of uh forward uh US um because the I I I do believe in immigration reform.\n\nI think we need to you know we've got some really antiquated laws change them [clears throat] and uh and there are some you know other things that that also need to be on on the agenda. Um, so I thought, okay, I'll support that.\n\nAnd um, uh, but but I I think the the the the methods that were employed, I mean, it was a little too much of the sort of Kissinger-esque real politic, you know, and that wasn't I mean, I think we should try to make things happen for like the right reason and and and uh and we shouldn't we shouldn't give into the cynicism of politics. I mean, we should be we should fight the cynicism.\n\nUm, and if and if we if we don't if we do anything to encourage that, then we'll get the political system that we deserve. Okay. [applause] Uh, I think maybe Dan Dan Simon with CNN. Elon, given the runaway success and reviews of the Model S, you have to believe that the other car makers are going to be gunning for you. So I I'm wondering how the company is going to keep its competitive edge because you know that success can be a fleeting moment.\n\nAlso, when do you think that u electric vehicles will overtake gasoline vehicles? And and finally wondering if you have a message for the nation's oil companies. Sure. Um well, I I really hope that the large car companies make a concerted effort to create electric vehicles. Uh, and ultimately if if Tesla makes competitive electric cars, then we'll deserve to be around. And if we don't, then we don't deserve to be around.\n\nI mean, um, you know, I'm optimistic that we'll be able to make good products. Um, and, uh, and so far from being concerned about other car companies coming in, we're actually doing our best to convince them to to make electric cars and in fact to make power trays for them, um, you know, um, where they will allow us to do so.\n\nSo I I hope they I hope they look at the success of the Model S and and that encourages them to make a big move into electric cars. Um you know as for the oil companies you know the the the tricky thing is uh the way the system is set up because we have an unpriced externality. We have this tragedy of the commons problem with the CO2 capacity of the oceans and atmosphere.\n\nthe incentive structure is such that the the the the oil companies have uh you know it's hard to ask ask the CEO of an oil company to act against their best interests. That that's the thing. Uh in fact if they do that they might get fired by their by their shareholders. So the the right thing for us to do is to change the rules of the game so that it in a sense the right behavior.\n\nUm, and that's why I'm a big believer of of a carbon tax is is the right way to to go. And uh, you know, we don't even have to necessarily change the amount of money that that that we collect from from the tax base. But I do think it's it's sensible to pro disproportionately tax things that at least have a likelihood of being bad.\n\nSo just as we on a personal level will tax tobacco and alcohol um and tobacco particularly is is is bad and that's well established u fact we should disproportionately tax CO2 emissions um and uh and then I think the right behavior will occur. So I I mean I have a I have a hard time condemning the oil and gas companies uh because we're the the the current system insense them to do bad behavior.\n\nUm that tax that tax gets passed along though to consumers and ultimately hurts the economy. No. Um see it if if if the if the amount of revenue uh being generated is the same um it's it's not going to the you know the we need to collect a certain amount of money to pay for the federal government.\n\nAnd how how we collect that is you know there's you collect that in a wide range of wide range of ways but but effectively what we're doing is we're saying a portion of somebody's labor has to go to federal government activities. Um, and it doesn't, you know, it's not going to negatively affect the economy really how how we collect that money. People may think it has negative effect, but it really doesn't. It's it's the same.\n\nIt's a certain amount of uh money collected to pay for the federal government. Um, it's like say we don't actually need to change the amount of money raised, but we need to weight it towards the things that are more likely to be bad than than things that are more likely to be good.\n\nUm I I guess I mean where I have an issue with oil and gas guys is when they you know this sometimes engage in nefarious tactics um and uh u or or things that are sort of somewhat somewhat insidious uh like like funding academic studies that people can then point to as though they have some credibility um and and and it's some prominent professor somewhere.\n\nUm but but that person is act has been paid off by by the oil industry to to write that that study.\n\nIt's uh um so that kind of thing obviously should be condemn condemned in the strongest words and um and I'd recommend people read uh a book called Merchants of Doubt uh that that actually spells it out in in in detail how um some of these things are going on where I mean it's oil and gas industry is all they need to do is to create doubt and that that's what they've done.\n\nIn fact, they've actually employed uh a lot of pe of of individuals and firms that were employed by the tobacco industry. Like literally the same people. Um you're like surprised that some of these people are still around because they're like, you know, they're quite old. Um [laughter] uh but but in some cases, literally the same people have been employed by the oil and gas industry. Okay, get to this. Thanks.\n\nUh we only have a couple of more questions. Hi uh Jared from Scribb. Uh thank you so much for coming Elon. Um my question is about SpaceX. So uh even without a fully and rapidly reusable rocket, you've still managed to reduce the cost to orbit by an order of uh magnitude or more just with more incremental improvements. And so uh uh firstly, at what point did you realize that such an opportunity existed in the space field?\n\nAnd uh secondly, are there other parallel opportunities and other areas that you wish somebody else would chase even if you don't personally have time to do them all? Sure. Um so when when I started SpaceX, it was actually I thought the most likely outcome was that we would fail. Um in fact, I thought that was really likely that that SpaceX would fail. Um so uh it wasn't really with expectation of success that I started the company obviously.\n\num the the but what gave me a clue that we could make a significant breakthrough was looking at the uh the cost of a rocket and instead of looking at it um with reference to what other rockets had cost in the past I said okay what is a rocket made of what are the material constituents um what what metals you know carbon fiber what what what are the various materials that constitute a rocket and if you had a pile of those materials arrayed before you and you could wave a magic wand what would that rocket cost to build.\n\nUm, and that is a remarkably small number. Um, you know, was maybe a few percent or one or two% of what rockets actually cost. So, clearly people were doing something silly in how they were putting those materials together. Um, and so just by eliminating those those sort of foolish things, we were able to make a rocket for much less.\n\nUm and uh and and then um I wasn't it wasn't obvious to me that you one could achieve uh full and rapid reusability. Um because Earth's gravity is right on the cusp of where that's possible or not possible. In order to achieve that really everything has got to be done super super well, every aspect of the vehicle. Um, so it was only maybe 2 or 3 years ago or maybe 3 years ago that I thought it was actually uh achievable.\n\nUm, and u now I'm fairly certain it's achievable but uh but there's still a long way to go between here and there and as mentioned before uh we've not yet recovered a single rocket stage so we have a long way to go. Okay, I think this has to be the last question. Yeah. Hi Alan, Greg Tar from Cross Pacific Capital up in Palo Alto. Uh question for you.\n\nI used to work for Toyota's uh US headquarters and when we in 1990 scaled up the Lexus dealership network, it was pretty tough and I wanted to get an understanding of what kind of innovation you're going to bring in terms of the service area.\n\nUh it generally takes 300 dealerships to support about 100,000 units and you're doing a tremendous job which I admire and I want to understand what your plans are because eventually the middle part of the country will begin to understand uh the revolution happening on the east and west coast. How will you um make it happen in the dealership network and service? Yeah.\n\nWell, service in fact for the last uh three or four months has been uh my main focus at Tesla.\n\nuh and uh it was three or four months ago it was our service was okay and uh in some cases quite quite bad in particular someone asked me about that the weird service of Tesla but go ahead yeah we we I'd say we had some pretty nightmarish service situations probably in the January February time frame things have gotten steadily better um and uh but like for example LA was was a problem for a huge for a really long time because we we were supposed to have three service centers open and permits were delayed on two of them.\n\nSo we were operating at one/3 capacity. Um so as long as your your model S didn't break down, you had an awesome experience. If it broke down, it was brutal. Um so now now we've got all three open things are a lot better. Um but but it is going to take an enormous amount of work to to scale service uh across the country and then internationally. We start delivering in Europe in July.\n\nUm, so yeah, I don't know if we've got any I've got any brilliant insights that you probably you probably know all all the things that I would would say, but uh you we've got to have really good diagnostics tools. Um, and we do have an advantage in that the car uh has so much intelligence in it. It can do a lot of self diagnostics. Um, and and we can query, you know, what what parts need to be fixed on the car before it even comes in.\n\num so that so we can be more efficient in our service. Um and and then something we announced recently was that uh we're building um this fleet and or largely have built at this point this fleet of service loaners so that when if your car breaks down um what we'll do is and we also have valet service. So, if your car breaks down or you need service, uh we will um go to wherever your car is and replace it with uh one of our top-of-the-line cars.\n\nSo, our service loaners are not um sort of the standard cars. They're actually the top-of-the-line cars. Um and and we so we'll just valet a service loaner to wherever you are, pick your car up, take it get serviced, and then and then return your car when it's done. So, the experience should be really seamless.\n\nUm and uh you should really feel like uh like you should you got actually an even better car than the one that you had serviced for some period of time and it was no interruption to your life. I think that's the most important thing. Lexus did did this to some degree. I'm not sure if Lexus does the full valet thing or not but uh certainly did the service loaner program which was done done really well actually. Elon thank you so much.\n\nWe really appreciate it. Thank you. [applause] [music]"},"languages":["en"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UiPO4BUfov8"},{"id":"milken-institute-global-conference-2013-04-29","type":"interview","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T55CcN5c5as","title":"Milken Institute Global Conference","titles":{"en":"Milken Institute Global Conference","de":"Milken Institute Global Conference","fr":"Milken Institute Global Conference"},"date":"2013-04-29","summary":"Jeff Skoll talks with Elon and Kimbal Musk about SpaceX, Tesla and using business to solve big global problems.","text":"their accomplishments are a study in opposites out of this world down to earth High-Tech high touch but while Elon and Kimble musk's means May differ their end is the same to push Humanity forward to greener pastures and Beyond they were born and raised in South Africa but Elon came to America First earning undergraduate degrees in both business and physics before briefly attending Stanford in 1995 my brother was in Canada at the time and I said look I think we should try to create an internet company so he came down and joined me Elon was more the the business Mastermind I was more the sales guy their first Venture zip 2 sold to compact in 1999 Kimble was an early investor in elon's next company which would eventually become PayPal and sell to eBay in\n\n2002 in the Years following Kimble pursued the culinary arts eventually Landing in Colorado I'm one of the founders of the kitchen which is a restaurant in Boulder Colorado it's a nationally recognized restaurant while Kimble was pioneering local Farm totable cuisine at what would become a family of four renowned restaurants brother Elon was charting a different course when I was in in University I thought about what what are the problems that are most likely to affect the future of the world in 2002 Elon founded SP space exploration Technologies SpaceX continues America's mission to resupply the international Space Station from us soil I'm talking about sending ultimately tens of thousands eventually millions of people to Mars and then going out there\n\nand exploring the stars in 2003 he founded Tesla Motors to build all electric cars so we had a $100,000 sports car which was the Roadster then we've got the model S which starts at around $50,000 and our third generation car which will hopefully be at in about 3 or 4 years uh will be a $330,000 car the winner by unanimous decision to a Model S in 2006 he became chairman of Solar City the largest fullservice provider of solar power in the country meanwhile Kimble while also serving on the boards of SpaceX and Tesla found another cause obesity is the epidemic of our day so I created a nonprofit called the kitchen community and what we do is we help put Learning Gardens in schools around the country to fight childhood obesity and to improve test scores when\n\nyou teach kids in the garden you can increase scores by over 15 points on a 100 point scale restur literally means restorers let's energize and connect our community let's do it with kids let's do it with real food with their unique forms of disruptive innovation the musk brothers are creating the future while holding fast to the ideals of family teamwork and service that got Humanity this far in the first place pretty amazing you you you think their mom's proud so leading the conversation with Alon and Jeff Alon and Kimble is is Jeff skull as you as you all know Jeff is one of the planet's true Visionary leaders in a number of fields as a business innovator he was the first full-time employee of eBay and he led the company's emergence into a transformative\n\ntrading platform The democratized Economic Opportunity throughout the world in 1999 Jeff founded the skull Foundation which quickly became the world's largest foundation for social entrepreneurship and in 2004 he founded participant media with the belief that a well- told story has the power to inspire change Jeff has been the executive producer now in over 39 films which have garnered five Oscars and 35 nominations in 2009 Jeff founded the skull Global threats fund with a focus on the five issues that if unchecked could endanger the future of our planet his many awards in include Time magazine's 100 most influential people business week's 50 most generous philanthropists and the John W Gardner leadership award we're honored and delighted truly delighted\n\nto welcome Jeff skull and his conversation with Lon and Kimble Musk thanks very much thank you very much Paul for the uh the very generous introduction um my name is Jeff skull and I'm delighted to be here with my good friends Elon and Kimo musk uh in fact we're in for a I'm I'm not I'm usually the one that gets asked the question so this uh is is a chance for me to put the shoe on the other foot and it's also the first time Elon and Kimble have been on a panel together uh I first met Elon in 1995 when he was dating a classmate of mine um not long after that I I dated the same girl and and I realized then that Elon always likes to be first uh I've known Kimble for about a decade uh Kimble runs four restaurants in Colorado and he's invested heavily in\n\nLearning Gardens which I hope he'll talk about uh at length tonight uh Elon is the CEO of both Tesla Motors and SpaceX and he's the chairman of Solar City but the first question for both of you what what do you admire about each other I do it first um so I I uh you know knows this but the um the advantage of being his younger brother is is I kind of used to get what he wanted and he wanted a lot of stuff and so uh the one time I remember we we we he wanted motorbikes I was too young I was he was seven I think and I was six or something like that which in this country it's not very common to get motorbikes but one of the one of the great things I admire about Elon is when he when he wants something he really wants it and he goes and gets it and it's amazing\n\nto watch him do that as his as his brother and and he's done it throughout his life interesting um well I think um Kimble uh is just one of the the the the nicest people I I know in the world um i' I've never in all um all my life seen Kimble intentionally do a mean thing um so I admire that a great deal uh the the the two of you as I understand it I mean on entrepreneurs are interesting because they often get started at a young age uh doing entrepreneurial ventures of some kind and uh I understand that when you were still in South Africa you had a a venture of some kind yeah the uh the video arcade yeah the yeah we This brilliant idea to start a video arcade um because we really knew what games were popular yeah um and also we were video experts uh at\n\n14 and 15 and the reason we had to stop was because we went to the city to get a a code variance and you need to be 18 to sign and we had never told our parents and uh we already had a lease we had games coming and now when the parents found out they put a stop to it which is a real bummer because it would have been very successful yeah well uh I'm glad that wasn't the uh the the fin barrier to success um but you you that that was the first time that you worked together uh as brothers and um eventually that led to a company called zip 2 uh I I I wonder if you wouldn't mind talking about zip 2 how did it come about uh what was the idea what was the what was the whole process like for you uh sure um well and Kimble do you want to do you want to start off\n\nor should I well I mean I would start with the road trip the road trip yeah yeah okay so a year before this is 94 we took Elon was working at some video game company in uh there's a theme Here what D I actually working assuming two jobs one was at a video company a video game company that was ironically called rocket science um and and then working on Ultra Ultra capacitors during the day for electric cars and so uh we went on a road trip from Silicon Valley to Philadelphia and it was in '94 and we were both I'm younger than Elon but we were both finishing school at the same time because I'm much smarter than him um um Elon actually was doing a double major so that's why but anyway so uh we ended up doing that and um the uh uh we went we started with\n\na medical Network medical database remember that yeah well there bunch of iterations uh but um I think the the the the thought in 95 was that the internet was going to be something really that fundamentally changed Humanity it was like Humanity acquiring a nervous system you know previously uh people would communicate information almost by osmosis relative to how the internet works um you know if you wanted to have access to a lot of information like you go to like the Library of Congress but um unless you're a physic where the books were you you didn't have access to that information but with the internet um you could be anywhere in the world and if you connected to the internet you have access to all the world's information so it was really just like\n\nthe humanity was almost becoming like a super organism with um a nervous system so we wanted to be part of you know building some elements of that and it was a funny time because it made so much sense to us but we had literally had a guy throw us throw a Yellow Pages book at us he was a very senior executive and um tell us do you ever really think the internet is going to replace this yeah and literally and you're kind of looking at them going this guy's screwed yeah yeah he didn't and people didn't know what the internet was yeah including in Silicon Valley yeah yeah there was like something that universities and like the government used and nobody was really doing anything on it and you certainly couldn't make money yeah yeah so did did you know that\n\nyou were on to something right away or did people just think you were crazy and pursuing some bizarre dream uh when when did it occur to you that zip 2 might be a success well I mean when we first started out I think our Ambitions were really quite quite low um it was really to make enough money to pay the rent yeah we we we got a v give us money that was yay we thought it was all over then yeah it was pretty crazy I mean when we started out at 95 we literally at the beginning we had one computer which um would be the web server during the day and and then at night I'd program on it um and and we'd sleep in the office we couldn't afford to to yeah an apartment it was cheaper to rent the office than to rent an apartment so we just rented the office and\n\nstepped in the office and showered YCA and for me the worst part was eating a Jack In The Box three times yeah man this this like it's really diff difficult get food at paloalto after like 10: p.\n\nm.\n\num it's like Jack In The Box and a few other options so we rotated through the Jack in the Box menu I remember the one time I was literally at Jack In The Box hopefully you guys aren whoever's from the companies not here and it was it was one of those like 3: in the morning things and it was I took a milkshake and I was so tired and there was something in the milkshake and I Lear like this yeah that's your standard just dropped to to nothing yeah so so uh yeah in through through the end of 95 where're that's essentially we're just sleeping in the office and Ching at the YMCA and then um and around the end of 95 is when net skate went public and and then whether or not somebody knew what the internet was they knew that you could make money on the internet\n\nsomehow um or even if it's only on the greater fool Theory so uh when we went and talked to VCH capitalist in uh early 96 there was a much greater um interest in what we were doing um in fact the round closed in like maybe a week or something it crazy yeah we went from sleeping in the office to people throwing I mean at again this is a financial crowd so you guys see these numbers every day but for us to hear we'll give you $3 million yeah sound extremely we thought they were crazy like why would they do that it was literally like these people are insane they obviously do not realize we're sleeping in the office in fact when they when they did fund us they they realized that we were illegal immigrants well I mean yes we were i' say it was a great area\n\nyeah yes we were I was we were illegal immigrants we were sleeping in the office we didn't have a car we had one car where the wheel kept falling off well actually yeah the the the wheel did actually fall off the car yes exactly um and and the Venture capitals actually bought us cars yeah well they they gave us 40 Grand it was 40 Grand to go buy cars which was at the time was more money than we ever seen yeah and and I bought a uh I spent 35k on a series 167 um Jager e type um which didn't drive but but he got what he wanted yeah it looked really great by the side of the road um he he he got it he was driving it home from the dealer and it and it broke down and he had to actually come to the house with on a flatbed truck right it didn't and it didn't\n\nimprove from there I mean it was really BR should have kept the truck yeah it it it reminds me in some ways of uh you know eBay went public 1998 and we had kind of the scrappy startup mentality as well and uh the first time I ever saw Elon on on TV was uh when you took delivery of um McLaren Supercar that's right um so yeah um right so so so presumably somewhere between sleeping on the floor of the office and the McLaren uh something happened yeah um yeah so at sub2 we basically created uh software to help bring the media companies online so we um it was sort of Internet publishing software it was the Yellow Pages White Pages uh maps and directions that kind of thing and um and we helped bring some of the major media companies online or at least a portion\n\nof what their online presence was and so we had as customers and investors uh New York Times company night rder host and most of the major media companies um and then in fact the guy that threw the telephone book at us eventually became an investor yeah right and then the company sold uh to compact uh for a little over 300 million yeah uh Circa 1999 late late '90s yeah that's right it was uh yeah think the deal was sort of struck late 98s and then it concluded early 999 and so so then what happens to you guys I mean at that point you're 23 24 years old give or take and you you've gone from uh being barely able to pay the rent to having uh substantial resources how how did that influence your paths in what you did next the way I I like to think about it\n\nis I was like a dog in a cage getting beaten for four years and then they let me out and hear all the T-Bones you can eat uh so it was a very weird experience actually because you don't think I I thought I was building that company for life and then boom they you know they give you lots and lots of money and easy to carry bags and you leave it was totally surreal and and what did you do so I went to New York so I I I was done with Silicon Valley I think technology is is my brother's thing he loves it and I I enjoy it too but but honestly for me food is what I've always been passionate since I was a kid I was a cook in a family and it's ironic he's much thinner than I am you know it's true I can eat anything although I'm finding out as you get older it\n\ndoesn't work out that way yeah uh but no so I went to New York uh and I learned to cook I went to the uh you know I was young and I I figured you know what what else do you do when you have enough financial resources to do whatever you want uh and I always wanted to learn to cook so I enrolled in at a cooking school is one of the top schools in the country in New York City and had this incredible experience of uh cooking with some of the best most talented chefs in the world and um it was a unique circumstance for me personally because I was there in New York during 911 and and I graduated from cooking school just before 911 and I lived right by the World Trade Center so I saw the everything happened it was a very big event in my life uh but what the\n\nrare opportunity it gave me uh was the opportunity to cook for the firefighters so I spent six weeks at Ground Zero cooking for the firefighters and that's when I kind of my I always loved food but my passion for community and connecting uh people to to each other through food was just an I mean I literally couldn't even describe how incredible this experience was and so I came out of that with a very strong intention to to start a restaurant and uh having been part of a company that just sold for 300 million and investing in PayPal which at the time is worth billions of dollars doing a was a weird decision but for me it was the right decision so for you it unlocked uh a path to dreams that maybe you had beforehand or just opportunistically you just said\n\nthis is what I want to do and and you you still uh not only run the the restaurant you began but there's more to it uh yeah well uh you mean the nonprofit or do you mean no I mean just in terms of there are more than one restaurant oh yeah sure so you know uh I I um turns out I'm actually pretty good at cooking I didn't I didn't really know I was good at cooking but but when I opened the restaurant with I had two partners uh Hugo and Jen opened the restaurant we were supposed to do 60 people a night and it was just going to be the SL project for me because I was still involved in elon's companies Tesla and SpaceX and uh you know today we serve 10,000 people a week you know and it's just just continues to grow um uh Elon for you uh ZIP 2 happened you sold\n\nit and it and bought the McLaren yeah um and if I'm not mistaken you you invested most of that money into your next uh your next venture uh x.\n\ncom that's right um so uh yeah most the most of the funds went into x.\n\ncom which was later renamed PayPal um and uh uh yeah and that worked out pretty well it worked out pretty well but looking looking back on it um would because you put a lot of your eggs in in that basket would you would you advise entrepreneurs to roll the bones quite the way you do yeah absolutely I think so um I think I think I think it's worth investing your own capital in what you do I I don't believe in the sort of other people's money thing um you know I think if you're not willing to to put your own um assets at stake then you shouldn't ask other people to do to do that um so eBay comes along buys PayPal um and then I I I remember 2003 give or take uh meeting Elon at a at a coffee shop in paloalto this was not long after the PayPal uh deal had\n\nclosed and I said to Elon what would you like to do next and and you had three things to say right do you remember what they were well um yeah but yeah uh I mean there basically you know space solar and electric cars space solar and electric cars yes two point yeah um wait space electric cars what was the middle one uh well so uh I asked you on what he wanted to do and he um he he said he wanted to do something in solar power he wanted to uh colonize Mars eventually uh but to but to get there by uh building a rocket business a sustainable business and and building electric cars and uh let's talk a little bit about uh about Mars uh so where did where did this come from when when did you have that dream how did that come to be um well um I guess you know\n\nwhen I was in college that I thought about things that would most affect the future of humanity and and there were three areas that I thought would have the biggest impact and those were the internet sustainable energy of which uh solar power is the production side and um electric cars is the consumption side and then um Humanity becoming a multiplet species I think our future will fundamentally bate to one where we are space breing civilization or one where we are confined to Earth until some eventual Extinction event although I'm quite optimistic about life on Earth I should point out I want to people think that that by that uh I expect some imminent uh catastrophe but um I I think that the probable probable outcome for civilization on Earth is is quite\n\nquite good for a long time um but I still think that we should uh try to extend life beyond Earth and have a and the thing to do is to establish a base on Mars and ultim and try to make that a self- sustaining base as soon as possible um so uh I don't expect that SpaceX is going to do that sort of single-handedly but I think we're we're going to try to advance the technology of space travel to the point where um we can at least send some number of people to Mars which is not currently possible um as recall uh when followup question Jeff uh when when SpaceX started I think the first three rocket launches weren't successful and and the and the fourth one was um what would have happened if the fourth one hadn't worked we would have failed yeah but but let's\n\ntalk about the one of the the failures were spectacular so I mean I so I would go out to the island quajon with El and seeing giant exploding Rockets is quite an amazing site uh and I was one of the early investors in SpaceX and I said you know what if all I get to do is to see these rockets explode well worth every dime I put into this there there's something to be said about brotherly support but it was an amazing thing to watch uh what Elon would had built with those rockets in I mean on a Sho string in the middle of nowhere and literally the middle of the Pacific 2,000 miles from Hawaii uh and uh that exper we'd fly in these these what are they called the what are those helicopters Hues you're flying the Hues you feel like you're right out of out\n\nof Apocalypse Now flying to Dr Evil's Island uh really amazing I mean and again with every penny still to this day I'd say so uh I I think the failures were actually unbelievably exciting to be part of yeah yeah thank you Eli you're welcome um I mean the the the the point the point being that um these Ventures now seem to have a wonderful momentum and things are going well but I I remember well there was a point in time when when each of them uh had their their Tipping Point and could have gone either way I wonder I wonder if you could talk a little bit about the origins of Tesla sure um so with the um I as mentioned I was quite interested in electric cars from when I was doing my undergrad physics and um in fact I originally came out to California to\n\ndo PhD at Stanford and applied physics and Material Science to work on Ultra capacitors and electric cars um so it was a a longstanding interest of mine and um and the internet kind of put that on hold for a few few years but then once after PayPal icid I want to get back into um electric vehicles and um make something happen in that Arena particularly since um GM had come out with the ev1 and and I thought okay well there's not really a need for a startup company to develop electric cars because obviously GM is going to create the ev2 and the EV3 that's logical sequence and um it we get increasingly you get better and better with each iteration um and so not really need for for for a new company in that Arena um but but actually what happened was that\n\nafter California changed the regulations to no longer acquire electric cars uh GM recalled all the ev1s and then just to make sure that nobody could get them back they crushed them in a in a in a lot somewhere um and and in fact um while they were being crushed the the people who had been the ev1 owners who did not want those CS recalled actually held a candle at vigil as though somebody was getting executed basically um and it's like that just seemed extremely crazy that GM would ignore this because um you know it's quite rare for people to hold a candle at digital about a product um and particularly a GM product so so if if if people are doing that you should really pay attention um but but they they they wanted to just sort of erase all that and uh\n\nso I thought okay well we got to try to create an electric car company but it wasn't as though in creating these companies that we thought that we would be successful um I thought that the most likely outcome was failure um but but it was still worth doing even though the the odds of success were low in fact even for for for SpaceX the originally what I started doing was not creating a rocket company but but actually was going to do um a small mission to M which was just a philanthropic mission where you we would send a small Greenhouse with seeds and dehydrated gel and the would um upon Landing hydrate the gel and you'd have this cool picture of green plants on a red background and the public tends to respond to precedents and superlative so this would\n\nbe the first life on Mars furthest the life have traveled um and you'd have this great money shot of green plants on a red background so um yeah I thought that would that would get people's attention so so um but but the expectation for that was was no return so I I thought we wouldn't get any uh you know just spend the money on that and it wouldn't wouldn't happen and um it was in the process of trying to do that mission that I concluded that um I'd made a mistake with respect to uh my assumptions about why uh why why why are there no people on Mars um CU I I started off thinking that it was because was a lack of will um and that if you could reignite the will then then it would happen so my initial thing with with even with the space side was was really\n\nto get the public excited and to to get people to um uh essentially vote NASA to have a bigger budget that was my goal initially um and um but as I try to do try to do that mission was able to compress the costs of the uh the satellite or the spacecraft and and the um the greenhouse and everything and the communication costs but I wasn't able to compress the the rocket the rocket costs and I actually tried uh had some Adventures along the way trying to trying to get a good deal on Rockets I actually flew to Russia three times to try to buy some icbms and I negotiated a deal too actually um but um after the third trip to to Russia uh uh which is it was very very strange I was like there in 2001 2002 um and uh I I thought well if if we do this well it's\n\nit's going to generate a lot of interest but um if the if there's still a fundamental technology issue with rocket transport then it's not going to solve the problem so I decided that um it was it was not a question of well it was a question of of way and if if people thought there was a way to do it without it fundamentally affecting their standard of living then they would support such an Endeavor particularly in the United States which United States is a um is a nation of explorers I mean it's a distillation of the human Spirit of exploration people came here from other places and uh and so that I think that that that exploratory spirit is is actually very strong um but people need to know that that it's possible this this can be done without materially\n\naffecting their standard of living so uh I mean what what you've accomplished uh is is amazing um between linking up with the with the space station on launches and uh the model S winning carve the year and and and being just a phenomenon um but good yes so um I mean it's it's amazing it's amazing and and we'll come back and talk about Solar City in a second but you you mentioned uh Gardens and I think that's a a natural segue we're surrounded by some uh beautiful gardens here on on stage and kimle I wonder if you might want to talk a little bit about about these sure um so uh the restaurants that we do in Colorado are uh before Farm to Table was a turn we we' work with local farmers and bring local food to the tables and we really considered ourselves\n\na community restaurant and one of the things we did as part of the community was to reach out to kids in the community and schools and get them connected to food through school Gardens and we you know we bring them into to the restaurant and we you know do everything from give them chicken liver pate without telling them what it was and they would you know thoroughly enjoy it and and then you tell them then they spit it out of their mouth and you know like fun things like that that we would we just did as a as a as a great way to connect into the community and then um I I had a personal accident um a very severe accident I was paralyzed my left and horizontal for two months after breaking my neck and uh just it really helped me focus on well let me go\n\nback to having more of an impact on society and I know there's a lot of philanthropists in the crowd and I have a lot of respect for that but for me it was very much about how can I give back but in a way that really I understood and and could could really see the see the impact and I'd been working with these School Gardens for many years and so I came up with this idea called The Learning Garden which you you see beautifully presented thank you very much Nancy for for for doing this uh and what we do is it's a nonprofit uh we go to schools around the country and we install these Outdoor Learning environments that are School Gardens and they're very different to Traditional School Gardens the Traditional School Gardens being in the corner of the schoolyard\n\nwith a fence around it these are designed to be in the schoolyard on the playground where the kids will see it every day they hundreds of kids will enjoy it and and and play with every day and it's made out of the same material as playground equipment so it will last for decades unlike Traditional School Gardens which are very temporary uh we also came up with this idea to make it more modular so that you could fit it in any schoolyard uh rooftops asphalt there's a lot of toxic soil sadly in our cities where you literally couldn't put a garden there if you wanted to and these are all were designed to be FDA approved just for food for growing food and so what I did was um really look at the problem based on the experience that I had uh working with Elon\n\nand working in whether it's manufacturing or operations or uh uh uh politics frankly which is is a very big political problem and you know what what could I add and uh there are lots of great gardeners out there and I'll be first tell you I'm not a gardener uh but I but I really believed in the impact that these were having and and the data is amazing I mean we we see a doubling of vegetable intake when kids have a learning Garden on their schoolyard literally a doubling from Two and a half to five portions a day uh we see test Tes scores particularly in science go up by 15 points on 100 point scale when they get taught the same science lesson in The Learning Garden versus in the in the classroom this incredible impact on their lives and the challenge\n\nwas not a question of school Gardens that had already been proven the challenge was how do you scale how do you get something that will reach a 100,000 schools within a few years because that's the problem we have childhood obesity is today's problem it is not tomorrow's problem 20% of underserved kids go are going into kindergarten obese uh it's an awful tragedy we have these poor children that are not only obese but they're actually starving because the food we're giving them has no nutrients it has calories but no nutrients and it's just this awful awful situation a real tragedy that we've that we're creating and so for me what I wanted to do was how do I come in and say okay I know what I know uh I know what I think I can do well let me see what I\n\ncan create that could actually go into a 100,000 schools within a few years and so so I created The Learning Garden with this idea to by the end of this decade to to reach every child that want one or every school that wants one um and we have that we have the capacity now what we need is the political will to to go do it and so we'll have about 200 installed this year and we started two years ago and uh we did One two years ago we did 50 last year we'll do about 20000 this year hopefully a thousand next year and then many thousands after that uh Kim Kimble if people are interested in finding more out about the learning Gardens um where would they go uh the kitchen community.\n\norg please go if you're a superintendent and I know there's some superintendents in this room because I had a some heated conversations with you guys earlier uh please go learn about it because there's no better way to teach kids about science which we all understand is a massive problem in this country getting our kids to love science is so important and childhood obesity is so important we need to fix this problem we are creating expensive unproductive people let's just stop that let's fix the problem let's fix it now AB absolutely um I I I think we'll we'll talk a little bit about uh Solar City uh and then maybe open up uh to questions uh from the audience um Solar City uh I mean your your family is a remarkable um maybe you want to talk a little bit\n\nabout how Solar City got going and your your role as and and uh sure that so well uh So Sol city was founded by two cousin of ours lynon and Peter RI who were really great guys um and before Sol City they did a company called everdream which did large scale management of computers and and other assets electronic assets which was sold to Dell um and that that did pretty well so uh and the Genesis of of Sol city was actually um you know we were bu winning man with our cousins and and and uh they they were thinking about what to do next and I said well I think there's um a real need for um for great entrepreneurs in the Solar industry and um and I said if if if they were willing to start a solar power company then uh I would completely back them on that\n\nso they they took me up on the offer and uh created Solar City which um what Solar City is essentially is a giant giant distributed utility uh or it's I'd say right now it's a small distributed utility but it will be hopefully a giant distributed utility um and uh and it's obviously one that's based on on the Sun that giant Fusion reactor in the sky um so it's it's something that'll last for for a very long time um I ultimately think that uh we will generate uh more energy from solar power than from any other source in fact it's worth noting that the the planet is already almost entirely solar powered um in that we would be a frozen ice ball at 3 Kelvin if not for the sun and the sun Powers our whole system of precipitation and the the ecosystem so um\n\nso really we're just talking about a little bit of extra power that um Humanity uses for to to run civilization essentially but it's really quite a small amount um relative to the amount that actually hits the Earth right and and Solar City went public uh a few months back yeah went public in in December it was quite a difficult IPO um and uh were able to get it through um and now it's doing doing reasonbly well well they are amazing successes uh on on both your parts um we're going to go to questions from the audience assuming uh these monitors work um as as of the moment they're not and if not then uh I will oh I I I see a monitor coming on here um all right what what are the key traits skills or circumstances that have allowed you to be so successful\n\nuh I don't know why don't you answer for me or do you what do you I'll that's a great idea so the uh I live in a small town in Colorado called Boulder and uh my my joke is I grew up in South Africa during the collapse of AP parite very very difficult time then I went to California during the rise of the internet exciting but difficult time then I was in New York City during 911 difficult time now I'm in this little small town of Boulder waiting for some serious to go down uh so I think those had very big impact on me and I think the the impact personally is constant uh uh paranoia I guess maybe better I hate to say that not in a negative way but it's uh you're just kind of you know you're waiting for something really intense to happen all the time so\n\nI think that just keeps you on your toes and and keeps you moving forward um yeah I think uh just a ob being being tenacious and um uh being well I I think just being super focused on on the truth is extremely important and looking for uh feedback from all sources um I think those those are really key yeah yeah uh I I'd also add know knowing both of you is that you're very detail oriented uh there there's no small part uh of the experience that doesn't get attention from you um so uh uh another question that I had you know uh Elon you've you've been compared to Henry Ford Richard Branson um you know Steve Jobs uh who do you compare yourself to um I I don't really compare myself to anyone um I mean it's not um I mean there's certain people that I admire\n\nfrom history that I think are you know I think are great um so of certainly many of the scientists and engineers and literary figures and so forth um and uh like I'm I'm a big big fan of Ben Franklin you know who was a scientist and sort of thinker and I mean he was kind of guy who who did did did what needed to be done you know so guys like that I right I wouldn't say I compare myself in any way but I certainly admire them are are there people you you look up to I I think the the two that I look up to in my way I look the same thing as you know kind of look back uh I love Winston Churchill yeah he's cool he's the that guy I think is was one of the greatest gifts to Mankind and I think Steve Jobs right yeah and I think the thing that that makes me like\n\nto these people is that they put their passion into their work and it's not about the job it's not about coming to work it's about creating making a difference in in your society and I think that that's what what I have always admired with my brother and with anyone else you know one one thing I've observed from my own entrepreneurial history is that uh people that start out building a company to make a lot of money uh almost invariably fail it's it's people that start out uh with with a a dream or something that they're passionate about and they care about and the money just kind of comes as as I think if you think about it you can get money both ways but if uh we have a mutual friend of ours Bill Lee who has this phrase that doing starting a business\n\nfrom scratch is like chewing gloss and looking into the abyss it is really really hard and if you don't like like your glass sandwich you're going to have a miserable miserable life and so it's a very important lesson do what you're passionate about because no matter what you do if it's making a difference it's super hard to do it and so you better enjoy you better be passionate about it Le let's see if we have any other questions uh from from the audience yeah uh next next question please for Kimble uh what role and impact do you see impact investing and social Ventures having and solving the world's major problems um so I actually get this question asked to me a lot I was literally had this conversation with a major social investor a week ago u i really\n\nstruggle with it to be honest um I think the idea of uh obviously investing as a philanthropist I love I think that's really great but if you're looking for a financial return it is super hard to not have that as your key driver uh I get the idea of double bottom line or triple bottom line and I I live that life all day long but it's a personal decision of mine and um I I really do struggle with the right answer because the more money you make the more difference you can make in philanthropy and you can separate the two and you can be quite impactful as a philanthropist if you're a financier on Wall Street you can choose to I me I'm sure once you reach a certain point everything you do will be for philanthropy after that and that makes a big difference\n\nin the world if you chose to invest in Social Ventures and get a smaller return I think you you struggle you actually success is very important and so I really believe in isolating uh the the problem focus on success getting it done and in the case of investing that means focusing on investing and getting the highest possible return within reason you know human rights and all that stuff but but um social investing I think is a very difficult space to to uh make work and actually maybe Jeff you should answer that question because you you do that all the time uh yeah um except I'm sitting in this chair um well I I I I agree with you I I think you know so social investing has all the rigor and challenges of uh for-profit investing but added into that is\n\nthe qualitative sometimes unmeasurable uh aspects of dealing with some sort of social change or or social good uh so one of the things I actually I mean on the nonprofit side I was specifically referring to for-profit social Adventures which but on the nonprofit side I get really frustrated because there is no measuring stick it's how are you doing you get to measure yourself that's you need to have you need to have some measuring some some common grounded measuring stick and in the in in the for-profit world you've got profit and in the nonprofit world it's very weird it's my first nonprofit so I'm I'm learning as I go I don't know what the answer is you Lear anything to add on that um well um I mean um but I think generally anything that that if it's\n\npossible to solve a problem um with a with a profitable Venture then it's that's the best thing to do so it's only when like the there's some failure in the market um and and there are some but actually aren't that many but grand scheme things there are some failures in the market that have to be addressed with with a with a nonprofit um and uh but but generally I'd say are on the side of I mean I do have a small Foundation no no as not as I against giving stuff I do El's the biggest donor to the nonprofit yeah I mean yeah generally if there's a way to fix the market system that's the better way to do it um but sometimes there isn't or the complications in doing it how how is the Elon of 2013 different from the Elon of the zip 2 days uh what have you\n\nlearned uh well we learned I think well quite quite a lot a lot of scar tissue between now between then and now um I think you I've mentioned this at uh at when I was gave my talk at sou by Southwest but um I think the uh I I I've made several hiring decisions in the past which where I I valued um intellect over heart and I I think that was a mistake um and so I've try to try to adjust accordingly um you know it actually matters whether somebody's a good person Beyond just you know goodness itself it right yeah uh Kimble same question the Kimble of 2013 uh how are you different from the zip two days yeah as I say as said that is a long time time ago um the um uh I I would I would say I'm uh much more comfortable with myself I'm much more able to say no\n\nyou know so if there's an opportunity in front of me that is very financially attractive or whatever and it's not what I want to do I just I know to say no you know in the past I I I would always say yes and I would get involved in things that that weren't what I was passionate about so I think that's probably the most valuable thing I've learned I think I I've have a lot to learn so that's uh I think we have time for for one last question uh if we got anything please wrap up um in that case um my last question is are are uh are are you uh are you guys going to go to Mars together we might uh I think we I mean when we're 95 what the hell else are we going to do yeah exactly I think that'll be fun um I don't think I would want to go before that but well\n\nElon has has a famous line uh about going to Mars right would you mind repeating it uh okay I mean so yeah I mean I think um I would like to die on Mars but just not on impact all right I I I think on on that note I'd like to thank Elon and Kimble for a wonderful panel thank thank you to the mil pretty extraordinary let's have one more time for Elana and Kimble and Jeff thank you all right before before you all all leave we have a great late night show for you in the Beverly Hills Ballroom Lionel Richie David Foster and Paul Anka I'm reliving my childhood uh and and a series of special guests so it's gonna be a lot of fun Beverly Hills ball room right down the hall thank you so much","textByLang":{"en":"their accomplishments are a study in opposites out of this world down to earth High-Tech high touch but while Elon and Kimble musk's means May differ their end is the same to push Humanity forward to greener pastures and Beyond they were born and raised in South Africa but Elon came to America First earning undergraduate degrees in both business and physics before briefly attending Stanford in 1995 my brother was in Canada at the time and I said look I think we should try to create an internet company so he came down and joined me Elon was more the the business Mastermind I was more the sales guy their first Venture zip 2 sold to compact in 1999 Kimble was an early investor in elon's next company which would eventually become PayPal and sell to eBay in\n\n2002 in the Years following Kimble pursued the culinary arts eventually Landing in Colorado I'm one of the founders of the kitchen which is a restaurant in Boulder Colorado it's a nationally recognized restaurant while Kimble was pioneering local Farm totable cuisine at what would become a family of four renowned restaurants brother Elon was charting a different course when I was in in University I thought about what what are the problems that are most likely to affect the future of the world in 2002 Elon founded SP space exploration Technologies SpaceX continues America's mission to resupply the international Space Station from us soil I'm talking about sending ultimately tens of thousands eventually millions of people to Mars and then going out there\n\nand exploring the stars in 2003 he founded Tesla Motors to build all electric cars so we had a $100,000 sports car which was the Roadster then we've got the model S which starts at around $50,000 and our third generation car which will hopefully be at in about 3 or 4 years uh will be a $330,000 car the winner by unanimous decision to a Model S in 2006 he became chairman of Solar City the largest fullservice provider of solar power in the country meanwhile Kimble while also serving on the boards of SpaceX and Tesla found another cause obesity is the epidemic of our day so I created a nonprofit called the kitchen community and what we do is we help put Learning Gardens in schools around the country to fight childhood obesity and to improve test scores when\n\nyou teach kids in the garden you can increase scores by over 15 points on a 100 point scale restur literally means restorers let's energize and connect our community let's do it with kids let's do it with real food with their unique forms of disruptive innovation the musk brothers are creating the future while holding fast to the ideals of family teamwork and service that got Humanity this far in the first place pretty amazing you you you think their mom's proud so leading the conversation with Alon and Jeff Alon and Kimble is is Jeff skull as you as you all know Jeff is one of the planet's true Visionary leaders in a number of fields as a business innovator he was the first full-time employee of eBay and he led the company's emergence into a transformative\n\ntrading platform The democratized Economic Opportunity throughout the world in 1999 Jeff founded the skull Foundation which quickly became the world's largest foundation for social entrepreneurship and in 2004 he founded participant media with the belief that a well- told story has the power to inspire change Jeff has been the executive producer now in over 39 films which have garnered five Oscars and 35 nominations in 2009 Jeff founded the skull Global threats fund with a focus on the five issues that if unchecked could endanger the future of our planet his many awards in include Time magazine's 100 most influential people business week's 50 most generous philanthropists and the John W Gardner leadership award we're honored and delighted truly delighted\n\nto welcome Jeff skull and his conversation with Lon and Kimble Musk thanks very much thank you very much Paul for the uh the very generous introduction um my name is Jeff skull and I'm delighted to be here with my good friends Elon and Kimo musk uh in fact we're in for a I'm I'm not I'm usually the one that gets asked the question so this uh is is a chance for me to put the shoe on the other foot and it's also the first time Elon and Kimble have been on a panel together uh I first met Elon in 1995 when he was dating a classmate of mine um not long after that I I dated the same girl and and I realized then that Elon always likes to be first uh I've known Kimble for about a decade uh Kimble runs four restaurants in Colorado and he's invested heavily in\n\nLearning Gardens which I hope he'll talk about uh at length tonight uh Elon is the CEO of both Tesla Motors and SpaceX and he's the chairman of Solar City but the first question for both of you what what do you admire about each other I do it first um so I I uh you know knows this but the um the advantage of being his younger brother is is I kind of used to get what he wanted and he wanted a lot of stuff and so uh the one time I remember we we we he wanted motorbikes I was too young I was he was seven I think and I was six or something like that which in this country it's not very common to get motorbikes but one of the one of the great things I admire about Elon is when he when he wants something he really wants it and he goes and gets it and it's amazing\n\nto watch him do that as his as his brother and and he's done it throughout his life interesting um well I think um Kimble uh is just one of the the the the nicest people I I know in the world um i' I've never in all um all my life seen Kimble intentionally do a mean thing um so I admire that a great deal uh the the the two of you as I understand it I mean on entrepreneurs are interesting because they often get started at a young age uh doing entrepreneurial ventures of some kind and uh I understand that when you were still in South Africa you had a a venture of some kind yeah the uh the video arcade yeah the yeah we This brilliant idea to start a video arcade um because we really knew what games were popular yeah um and also we were video experts uh at\n\n14 and 15 and the reason we had to stop was because we went to the city to get a a code variance and you need to be 18 to sign and we had never told our parents and uh we already had a lease we had games coming and now when the parents found out they put a stop to it which is a real bummer because it would have been very successful yeah well uh I'm glad that wasn't the uh the the fin barrier to success um but you you that that was the first time that you worked together uh as brothers and um eventually that led to a company called zip 2 uh I I I wonder if you wouldn't mind talking about zip 2 how did it come about uh what was the idea what was the what was the whole process like for you uh sure um well and Kimble do you want to do you want to start off\n\nor should I well I mean I would start with the road trip the road trip yeah yeah okay so a year before this is 94 we took Elon was working at some video game company in uh there's a theme Here what D I actually working assuming two jobs one was at a video company a video game company that was ironically called rocket science um and and then working on Ultra Ultra capacitors during the day for electric cars and so uh we went on a road trip from Silicon Valley to Philadelphia and it was in '94 and we were both I'm younger than Elon but we were both finishing school at the same time because I'm much smarter than him um um Elon actually was doing a double major so that's why but anyway so uh we ended up doing that and um the uh uh we went we started with\n\na medical Network medical database remember that yeah well there bunch of iterations uh but um I think the the the the thought in 95 was that the internet was going to be something really that fundamentally changed Humanity it was like Humanity acquiring a nervous system you know previously uh people would communicate information almost by osmosis relative to how the internet works um you know if you wanted to have access to a lot of information like you go to like the Library of Congress but um unless you're a physic where the books were you you didn't have access to that information but with the internet um you could be anywhere in the world and if you connected to the internet you have access to all the world's information so it was really just like\n\nthe humanity was almost becoming like a super organism with um a nervous system so we wanted to be part of you know building some elements of that and it was a funny time because it made so much sense to us but we had literally had a guy throw us throw a Yellow Pages book at us he was a very senior executive and um tell us do you ever really think the internet is going to replace this yeah and literally and you're kind of looking at them going this guy's screwed yeah yeah he didn't and people didn't know what the internet was yeah including in Silicon Valley yeah yeah there was like something that universities and like the government used and nobody was really doing anything on it and you certainly couldn't make money yeah yeah so did did you know that\n\nyou were on to something right away or did people just think you were crazy and pursuing some bizarre dream uh when when did it occur to you that zip 2 might be a success well I mean when we first started out I think our Ambitions were really quite quite low um it was really to make enough money to pay the rent yeah we we we got a v give us money that was yay we thought it was all over then yeah it was pretty crazy I mean when we started out at 95 we literally at the beginning we had one computer which um would be the web server during the day and and then at night I'd program on it um and and we'd sleep in the office we couldn't afford to to yeah an apartment it was cheaper to rent the office than to rent an apartment so we just rented the office and\n\nstepped in the office and showered YCA and for me the worst part was eating a Jack In The Box three times yeah man this this like it's really diff difficult get food at paloalto after like 10: p.\n\nm.\n\num it's like Jack In The Box and a few other options so we rotated through the Jack in the Box menu I remember the one time I was literally at Jack In The Box hopefully you guys aren whoever's from the companies not here and it was it was one of those like 3: in the morning things and it was I took a milkshake and I was so tired and there was something in the milkshake and I Lear like this yeah that's your standard just dropped to to nothing yeah so so uh yeah in through through the end of 95 where're that's essentially we're just sleeping in the office and Ching at the YMCA and then um and around the end of 95 is when net skate went public and and then whether or not somebody knew what the internet was they knew that you could make money on the internet\n\nsomehow um or even if it's only on the greater fool Theory so uh when we went and talked to VCH capitalist in uh early 96 there was a much greater um interest in what we were doing um in fact the round closed in like maybe a week or something it crazy yeah we went from sleeping in the office to people throwing I mean at again this is a financial crowd so you guys see these numbers every day but for us to hear we'll give you $3 million yeah sound extremely we thought they were crazy like why would they do that it was literally like these people are insane they obviously do not realize we're sleeping in the office in fact when they when they did fund us they they realized that we were illegal immigrants well I mean yes we were i' say it was a great area\n\nyeah yes we were I was we were illegal immigrants we were sleeping in the office we didn't have a car we had one car where the wheel kept falling off well actually yeah the the the wheel did actually fall off the car yes exactly um and and the Venture capitals actually bought us cars yeah well they they gave us 40 Grand it was 40 Grand to go buy cars which was at the time was more money than we ever seen yeah and and I bought a uh I spent 35k on a series 167 um Jager e type um which didn't drive but but he got what he wanted yeah it looked really great by the side of the road um he he he got it he was driving it home from the dealer and it and it broke down and he had to actually come to the house with on a flatbed truck right it didn't and it didn't\n\nimprove from there I mean it was really BR should have kept the truck yeah it it it reminds me in some ways of uh you know eBay went public 1998 and we had kind of the scrappy startup mentality as well and uh the first time I ever saw Elon on on TV was uh when you took delivery of um McLaren Supercar that's right um so yeah um right so so so presumably somewhere between sleeping on the floor of the office and the McLaren uh something happened yeah um yeah so at sub2 we basically created uh software to help bring the media companies online so we um it was sort of Internet publishing software it was the Yellow Pages White Pages uh maps and directions that kind of thing and um and we helped bring some of the major media companies online or at least a portion\n\nof what their online presence was and so we had as customers and investors uh New York Times company night rder host and most of the major media companies um and then in fact the guy that threw the telephone book at us eventually became an investor yeah right and then the company sold uh to compact uh for a little over 300 million yeah uh Circa 1999 late late '90s yeah that's right it was uh yeah think the deal was sort of struck late 98s and then it concluded early 999 and so so then what happens to you guys I mean at that point you're 23 24 years old give or take and you you've gone from uh being barely able to pay the rent to having uh substantial resources how how did that influence your paths in what you did next the way I I like to think about it\n\nis I was like a dog in a cage getting beaten for four years and then they let me out and hear all the T-Bones you can eat uh so it was a very weird experience actually because you don't think I I thought I was building that company for life and then boom they you know they give you lots and lots of money and easy to carry bags and you leave it was totally surreal and and what did you do so I went to New York so I I I was done with Silicon Valley I think technology is is my brother's thing he loves it and I I enjoy it too but but honestly for me food is what I've always been passionate since I was a kid I was a cook in a family and it's ironic he's much thinner than I am you know it's true I can eat anything although I'm finding out as you get older it\n\ndoesn't work out that way yeah uh but no so I went to New York uh and I learned to cook I went to the uh you know I was young and I I figured you know what what else do you do when you have enough financial resources to do whatever you want uh and I always wanted to learn to cook so I enrolled in at a cooking school is one of the top schools in the country in New York City and had this incredible experience of uh cooking with some of the best most talented chefs in the world and um it was a unique circumstance for me personally because I was there in New York during 911 and and I graduated from cooking school just before 911 and I lived right by the World Trade Center so I saw the everything happened it was a very big event in my life uh but what the\n\nrare opportunity it gave me uh was the opportunity to cook for the firefighters so I spent six weeks at Ground Zero cooking for the firefighters and that's when I kind of my I always loved food but my passion for community and connecting uh people to to each other through food was just an I mean I literally couldn't even describe how incredible this experience was and so I came out of that with a very strong intention to to start a restaurant and uh having been part of a company that just sold for 300 million and investing in PayPal which at the time is worth billions of dollars doing a was a weird decision but for me it was the right decision so for you it unlocked uh a path to dreams that maybe you had beforehand or just opportunistically you just said\n\nthis is what I want to do and and you you still uh not only run the the restaurant you began but there's more to it uh yeah well uh you mean the nonprofit or do you mean no I mean just in terms of there are more than one restaurant oh yeah sure so you know uh I I um turns out I'm actually pretty good at cooking I didn't I didn't really know I was good at cooking but but when I opened the restaurant with I had two partners uh Hugo and Jen opened the restaurant we were supposed to do 60 people a night and it was just going to be the SL project for me because I was still involved in elon's companies Tesla and SpaceX and uh you know today we serve 10,000 people a week you know and it's just just continues to grow um uh Elon for you uh ZIP 2 happened you sold\n\nit and it and bought the McLaren yeah um and if I'm not mistaken you you invested most of that money into your next uh your next venture uh x.\n\ncom that's right um so uh yeah most the most of the funds went into x.\n\ncom which was later renamed PayPal um and uh uh yeah and that worked out pretty well it worked out pretty well but looking looking back on it um would because you put a lot of your eggs in in that basket would you would you advise entrepreneurs to roll the bones quite the way you do yeah absolutely I think so um I think I think I think it's worth investing your own capital in what you do I I don't believe in the sort of other people's money thing um you know I think if you're not willing to to put your own um assets at stake then you shouldn't ask other people to do to do that um so eBay comes along buys PayPal um and then I I I remember 2003 give or take uh meeting Elon at a at a coffee shop in paloalto this was not long after the PayPal uh deal had\n\nclosed and I said to Elon what would you like to do next and and you had three things to say right do you remember what they were well um yeah but yeah uh I mean there basically you know space solar and electric cars space solar and electric cars yes two point yeah um wait space electric cars what was the middle one uh well so uh I asked you on what he wanted to do and he um he he said he wanted to do something in solar power he wanted to uh colonize Mars eventually uh but to but to get there by uh building a rocket business a sustainable business and and building electric cars and uh let's talk a little bit about uh about Mars uh so where did where did this come from when when did you have that dream how did that come to be um well um I guess you know\n\nwhen I was in college that I thought about things that would most affect the future of humanity and and there were three areas that I thought would have the biggest impact and those were the internet sustainable energy of which uh solar power is the production side and um electric cars is the consumption side and then um Humanity becoming a multiplet species I think our future will fundamentally bate to one where we are space breing civilization or one where we are confined to Earth until some eventual Extinction event although I'm quite optimistic about life on Earth I should point out I want to people think that that by that uh I expect some imminent uh catastrophe but um I I think that the probable probable outcome for civilization on Earth is is quite\n\nquite good for a long time um but I still think that we should uh try to extend life beyond Earth and have a and the thing to do is to establish a base on Mars and ultim and try to make that a self- sustaining base as soon as possible um so uh I don't expect that SpaceX is going to do that sort of single-handedly but I think we're we're going to try to advance the technology of space travel to the point where um we can at least send some number of people to Mars which is not currently possible um as recall uh when followup question Jeff uh when when SpaceX started I think the first three rocket launches weren't successful and and the and the fourth one was um what would have happened if the fourth one hadn't worked we would have failed yeah but but let's\n\ntalk about the one of the the failures were spectacular so I mean I so I would go out to the island quajon with El and seeing giant exploding Rockets is quite an amazing site uh and I was one of the early investors in SpaceX and I said you know what if all I get to do is to see these rockets explode well worth every dime I put into this there there's something to be said about brotherly support but it was an amazing thing to watch uh what Elon would had built with those rockets in I mean on a Sho string in the middle of nowhere and literally the middle of the Pacific 2,000 miles from Hawaii uh and uh that exper we'd fly in these these what are they called the what are those helicopters Hues you're flying the Hues you feel like you're right out of out\n\nof Apocalypse Now flying to Dr Evil's Island uh really amazing I mean and again with every penny still to this day I'd say so uh I I think the failures were actually unbelievably exciting to be part of yeah yeah thank you Eli you're welcome um I mean the the the the point the point being that um these Ventures now seem to have a wonderful momentum and things are going well but I I remember well there was a point in time when when each of them uh had their their Tipping Point and could have gone either way I wonder I wonder if you could talk a little bit about the origins of Tesla sure um so with the um I as mentioned I was quite interested in electric cars from when I was doing my undergrad physics and um in fact I originally came out to California to\n\ndo PhD at Stanford and applied physics and Material Science to work on Ultra capacitors and electric cars um so it was a a longstanding interest of mine and um and the internet kind of put that on hold for a few few years but then once after PayPal icid I want to get back into um electric vehicles and um make something happen in that Arena particularly since um GM had come out with the ev1 and and I thought okay well there's not really a need for a startup company to develop electric cars because obviously GM is going to create the ev2 and the EV3 that's logical sequence and um it we get increasingly you get better and better with each iteration um and so not really need for for for a new company in that Arena um but but actually what happened was that\n\nafter California changed the regulations to no longer acquire electric cars uh GM recalled all the ev1s and then just to make sure that nobody could get them back they crushed them in a in a in a lot somewhere um and and in fact um while they were being crushed the the people who had been the ev1 owners who did not want those CS recalled actually held a candle at vigil as though somebody was getting executed basically um and it's like that just seemed extremely crazy that GM would ignore this because um you know it's quite rare for people to hold a candle at digital about a product um and particularly a GM product so so if if if people are doing that you should really pay attention um but but they they they wanted to just sort of erase all that and uh\n\nso I thought okay well we got to try to create an electric car company but it wasn't as though in creating these companies that we thought that we would be successful um I thought that the most likely outcome was failure um but but it was still worth doing even though the the odds of success were low in fact even for for for SpaceX the originally what I started doing was not creating a rocket company but but actually was going to do um a small mission to M which was just a philanthropic mission where you we would send a small Greenhouse with seeds and dehydrated gel and the would um upon Landing hydrate the gel and you'd have this cool picture of green plants on a red background and the public tends to respond to precedents and superlative so this would\n\nbe the first life on Mars furthest the life have traveled um and you'd have this great money shot of green plants on a red background so um yeah I thought that would that would get people's attention so so um but but the expectation for that was was no return so I I thought we wouldn't get any uh you know just spend the money on that and it wouldn't wouldn't happen and um it was in the process of trying to do that mission that I concluded that um I'd made a mistake with respect to uh my assumptions about why uh why why why are there no people on Mars um CU I I started off thinking that it was because was a lack of will um and that if you could reignite the will then then it would happen so my initial thing with with even with the space side was was really\n\nto get the public excited and to to get people to um uh essentially vote NASA to have a bigger budget that was my goal initially um and um but as I try to do try to do that mission was able to compress the costs of the uh the satellite or the spacecraft and and the um the greenhouse and everything and the communication costs but I wasn't able to compress the the rocket the rocket costs and I actually tried uh had some Adventures along the way trying to trying to get a good deal on Rockets I actually flew to Russia three times to try to buy some icbms and I negotiated a deal too actually um but um after the third trip to to Russia uh uh which is it was very very strange I was like there in 2001 2002 um and uh I I thought well if if we do this well it's\n\nit's going to generate a lot of interest but um if the if there's still a fundamental technology issue with rocket transport then it's not going to solve the problem so I decided that um it was it was not a question of well it was a question of of way and if if people thought there was a way to do it without it fundamentally affecting their standard of living then they would support such an Endeavor particularly in the United States which United States is a um is a nation of explorers I mean it's a distillation of the human Spirit of exploration people came here from other places and uh and so that I think that that that exploratory spirit is is actually very strong um but people need to know that that it's possible this this can be done without materially\n\naffecting their standard of living so uh I mean what what you've accomplished uh is is amazing um between linking up with the with the space station on launches and uh the model S winning carve the year and and and being just a phenomenon um but good yes so um I mean it's it's amazing it's amazing and and we'll come back and talk about Solar City in a second but you you mentioned uh Gardens and I think that's a a natural segue we're surrounded by some uh beautiful gardens here on on stage and kimle I wonder if you might want to talk a little bit about about these sure um so uh the restaurants that we do in Colorado are uh before Farm to Table was a turn we we' work with local farmers and bring local food to the tables and we really considered ourselves\n\na community restaurant and one of the things we did as part of the community was to reach out to kids in the community and schools and get them connected to food through school Gardens and we you know we bring them into to the restaurant and we you know do everything from give them chicken liver pate without telling them what it was and they would you know thoroughly enjoy it and and then you tell them then they spit it out of their mouth and you know like fun things like that that we would we just did as a as a as a great way to connect into the community and then um I I had a personal accident um a very severe accident I was paralyzed my left and horizontal for two months after breaking my neck and uh just it really helped me focus on well let me go\n\nback to having more of an impact on society and I know there's a lot of philanthropists in the crowd and I have a lot of respect for that but for me it was very much about how can I give back but in a way that really I understood and and could could really see the see the impact and I'd been working with these School Gardens for many years and so I came up with this idea called The Learning Garden which you you see beautifully presented thank you very much Nancy for for for doing this uh and what we do is it's a nonprofit uh we go to schools around the country and we install these Outdoor Learning environments that are School Gardens and they're very different to Traditional School Gardens the Traditional School Gardens being in the corner of the schoolyard\n\nwith a fence around it these are designed to be in the schoolyard on the playground where the kids will see it every day they hundreds of kids will enjoy it and and and play with every day and it's made out of the same material as playground equipment so it will last for decades unlike Traditional School Gardens which are very temporary uh we also came up with this idea to make it more modular so that you could fit it in any schoolyard uh rooftops asphalt there's a lot of toxic soil sadly in our cities where you literally couldn't put a garden there if you wanted to and these are all were designed to be FDA approved just for food for growing food and so what I did was um really look at the problem based on the experience that I had uh working with Elon\n\nand working in whether it's manufacturing or operations or uh uh uh politics frankly which is is a very big political problem and you know what what could I add and uh there are lots of great gardeners out there and I'll be first tell you I'm not a gardener uh but I but I really believed in the impact that these were having and and the data is amazing I mean we we see a doubling of vegetable intake when kids have a learning Garden on their schoolyard literally a doubling from Two and a half to five portions a day uh we see test Tes scores particularly in science go up by 15 points on 100 point scale when they get taught the same science lesson in The Learning Garden versus in the in the classroom this incredible impact on their lives and the challenge\n\nwas not a question of school Gardens that had already been proven the challenge was how do you scale how do you get something that will reach a 100,000 schools within a few years because that's the problem we have childhood obesity is today's problem it is not tomorrow's problem 20% of underserved kids go are going into kindergarten obese uh it's an awful tragedy we have these poor children that are not only obese but they're actually starving because the food we're giving them has no nutrients it has calories but no nutrients and it's just this awful awful situation a real tragedy that we've that we're creating and so for me what I wanted to do was how do I come in and say okay I know what I know uh I know what I think I can do well let me see what I\n\ncan create that could actually go into a 100,000 schools within a few years and so so I created The Learning Garden with this idea to by the end of this decade to to reach every child that want one or every school that wants one um and we have that we have the capacity now what we need is the political will to to go do it and so we'll have about 200 installed this year and we started two years ago and uh we did One two years ago we did 50 last year we'll do about 20000 this year hopefully a thousand next year and then many thousands after that uh Kim Kimble if people are interested in finding more out about the learning Gardens um where would they go uh the kitchen community.\n\norg please go if you're a superintendent and I know there's some superintendents in this room because I had a some heated conversations with you guys earlier uh please go learn about it because there's no better way to teach kids about science which we all understand is a massive problem in this country getting our kids to love science is so important and childhood obesity is so important we need to fix this problem we are creating expensive unproductive people let's just stop that let's fix the problem let's fix it now AB absolutely um I I I think we'll we'll talk a little bit about uh Solar City uh and then maybe open up uh to questions uh from the audience um Solar City uh I mean your your family is a remarkable um maybe you want to talk a little bit\n\nabout how Solar City got going and your your role as and and uh sure that so well uh So Sol city was founded by two cousin of ours lynon and Peter RI who were really great guys um and before Sol City they did a company called everdream which did large scale management of computers and and other assets electronic assets which was sold to Dell um and that that did pretty well so uh and the Genesis of of Sol city was actually um you know we were bu winning man with our cousins and and and uh they they were thinking about what to do next and I said well I think there's um a real need for um for great entrepreneurs in the Solar industry and um and I said if if if they were willing to start a solar power company then uh I would completely back them on that\n\nso they they took me up on the offer and uh created Solar City which um what Solar City is essentially is a giant giant distributed utility uh or it's I'd say right now it's a small distributed utility but it will be hopefully a giant distributed utility um and uh and it's obviously one that's based on on the Sun that giant Fusion reactor in the sky um so it's it's something that'll last for for a very long time um I ultimately think that uh we will generate uh more energy from solar power than from any other source in fact it's worth noting that the the planet is already almost entirely solar powered um in that we would be a frozen ice ball at 3 Kelvin if not for the sun and the sun Powers our whole system of precipitation and the the ecosystem so um\n\nso really we're just talking about a little bit of extra power that um Humanity uses for to to run civilization essentially but it's really quite a small amount um relative to the amount that actually hits the Earth right and and Solar City went public uh a few months back yeah went public in in December it was quite a difficult IPO um and uh were able to get it through um and now it's doing doing reasonbly well well they are amazing successes uh on on both your parts um we're going to go to questions from the audience assuming uh these monitors work um as as of the moment they're not and if not then uh I will oh I I I see a monitor coming on here um all right what what are the key traits skills or circumstances that have allowed you to be so successful\n\nuh I don't know why don't you answer for me or do you what do you I'll that's a great idea so the uh I live in a small town in Colorado called Boulder and uh my my joke is I grew up in South Africa during the collapse of AP parite very very difficult time then I went to California during the rise of the internet exciting but difficult time then I was in New York City during 911 difficult time now I'm in this little small town of Boulder waiting for some serious to go down uh so I think those had very big impact on me and I think the the impact personally is constant uh uh paranoia I guess maybe better I hate to say that not in a negative way but it's uh you're just kind of you know you're waiting for something really intense to happen all the time so\n\nI think that just keeps you on your toes and and keeps you moving forward um yeah I think uh just a ob being being tenacious and um uh being well I I think just being super focused on on the truth is extremely important and looking for uh feedback from all sources um I think those those are really key yeah yeah uh I I'd also add know knowing both of you is that you're very detail oriented uh there there's no small part uh of the experience that doesn't get attention from you um so uh uh another question that I had you know uh Elon you've you've been compared to Henry Ford Richard Branson um you know Steve Jobs uh who do you compare yourself to um I I don't really compare myself to anyone um I mean it's not um I mean there's certain people that I admire\n\nfrom history that I think are you know I think are great um so of certainly many of the scientists and engineers and literary figures and so forth um and uh like I'm I'm a big big fan of Ben Franklin you know who was a scientist and sort of thinker and I mean he was kind of guy who who did did did what needed to be done you know so guys like that I right I wouldn't say I compare myself in any way but I certainly admire them are are there people you you look up to I I think the the two that I look up to in my way I look the same thing as you know kind of look back uh I love Winston Churchill yeah he's cool he's the that guy I think is was one of the greatest gifts to Mankind and I think Steve Jobs right yeah and I think the thing that that makes me like\n\nto these people is that they put their passion into their work and it's not about the job it's not about coming to work it's about creating making a difference in in your society and I think that that's what what I have always admired with my brother and with anyone else you know one one thing I've observed from my own entrepreneurial history is that uh people that start out building a company to make a lot of money uh almost invariably fail it's it's people that start out uh with with a a dream or something that they're passionate about and they care about and the money just kind of comes as as I think if you think about it you can get money both ways but if uh we have a mutual friend of ours Bill Lee who has this phrase that doing starting a business\n\nfrom scratch is like chewing gloss and looking into the abyss it is really really hard and if you don't like like your glass sandwich you're going to have a miserable miserable life and so it's a very important lesson do what you're passionate about because no matter what you do if it's making a difference it's super hard to do it and so you better enjoy you better be passionate about it Le let's see if we have any other questions uh from from the audience yeah uh next next question please for Kimble uh what role and impact do you see impact investing and social Ventures having and solving the world's major problems um so I actually get this question asked to me a lot I was literally had this conversation with a major social investor a week ago u i really\n\nstruggle with it to be honest um I think the idea of uh obviously investing as a philanthropist I love I think that's really great but if you're looking for a financial return it is super hard to not have that as your key driver uh I get the idea of double bottom line or triple bottom line and I I live that life all day long but it's a personal decision of mine and um I I really do struggle with the right answer because the more money you make the more difference you can make in philanthropy and you can separate the two and you can be quite impactful as a philanthropist if you're a financier on Wall Street you can choose to I me I'm sure once you reach a certain point everything you do will be for philanthropy after that and that makes a big difference\n\nin the world if you chose to invest in Social Ventures and get a smaller return I think you you struggle you actually success is very important and so I really believe in isolating uh the the problem focus on success getting it done and in the case of investing that means focusing on investing and getting the highest possible return within reason you know human rights and all that stuff but but um social investing I think is a very difficult space to to uh make work and actually maybe Jeff you should answer that question because you you do that all the time uh yeah um except I'm sitting in this chair um well I I I I agree with you I I think you know so social investing has all the rigor and challenges of uh for-profit investing but added into that is\n\nthe qualitative sometimes unmeasurable uh aspects of dealing with some sort of social change or or social good uh so one of the things I actually I mean on the nonprofit side I was specifically referring to for-profit social Adventures which but on the nonprofit side I get really frustrated because there is no measuring stick it's how are you doing you get to measure yourself that's you need to have you need to have some measuring some some common grounded measuring stick and in the in in the for-profit world you've got profit and in the nonprofit world it's very weird it's my first nonprofit so I'm I'm learning as I go I don't know what the answer is you Lear anything to add on that um well um I mean um but I think generally anything that that if it's\n\npossible to solve a problem um with a with a profitable Venture then it's that's the best thing to do so it's only when like the there's some failure in the market um and and there are some but actually aren't that many but grand scheme things there are some failures in the market that have to be addressed with with a with a nonprofit um and uh but but generally I'd say are on the side of I mean I do have a small Foundation no no as not as I against giving stuff I do El's the biggest donor to the nonprofit yeah I mean yeah generally if there's a way to fix the market system that's the better way to do it um but sometimes there isn't or the complications in doing it how how is the Elon of 2013 different from the Elon of the zip 2 days uh what have you\n\nlearned uh well we learned I think well quite quite a lot a lot of scar tissue between now between then and now um I think you I've mentioned this at uh at when I was gave my talk at sou by Southwest but um I think the uh I I I've made several hiring decisions in the past which where I I valued um intellect over heart and I I think that was a mistake um and so I've try to try to adjust accordingly um you know it actually matters whether somebody's a good person Beyond just you know goodness itself it right yeah uh Kimble same question the Kimble of 2013 uh how are you different from the zip two days yeah as I say as said that is a long time time ago um the um uh I I would I would say I'm uh much more comfortable with myself I'm much more able to say no\n\nyou know so if there's an opportunity in front of me that is very financially attractive or whatever and it's not what I want to do I just I know to say no you know in the past I I I would always say yes and I would get involved in things that that weren't what I was passionate about so I think that's probably the most valuable thing I've learned I think I I've have a lot to learn so that's uh I think we have time for for one last question uh if we got anything please wrap up um in that case um my last question is are are uh are are you uh are you guys going to go to Mars together we might uh I think we I mean when we're 95 what the hell else are we going to do yeah exactly I think that'll be fun um I don't think I would want to go before that but well\n\nElon has has a famous line uh about going to Mars right would you mind repeating it uh okay I mean so yeah I mean I think um I would like to die on Mars but just not on impact all right I I I think on on that note I'd like to thank Elon and Kimble for a wonderful panel thank thank you to the mil pretty extraordinary let's have one more time for Elana and Kimble and Jeff thank you all right before before you all all leave we have a great late night show for you in the Beverly Hills Ballroom Lionel Richie David Foster and Paul Anka I'm reliving my childhood uh and and a series of special guests so it's gonna be a lot of fun Beverly Hills ball room right down the hall thank you so much"},"languages":["en"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T55CcN5c5as"},{"id":"khan-academy-2013","type":"interview","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vDwzmJpI4io","title":"Interview with Sal Khan","titles":{"en":"Interview with Sal Khan","de":"Interview mit Sal Khan","fr":"Entretien avec Sal Khan"},"date":"2013-04-22","summary":"Elon Musk recounts his journey as an entrepreneur, the founding of SpaceX and Tesla, and his engineering philosophy.","text":"SAL KHAN: So first of all, I just want to thank Elon for coming-- hungry. You didn't even have dinner. And we didn't even feed you properly. ELON MUSK: No, sorry to be a bit late. I just came from the Tesla factory in Fremont. SAL KHAN: Yes. Was something wrong? ELON MUSK: There's always something. SAL KHAN: Did you have to like-- ELON MUSK: At any given point, there's always something wrong. SAL KHAN: Yes.\n\nELON MUSK: Because there's just too many things going on. So one of the trickiest things about a car is that there's thousands of individual components-- there are thousands of unique components-- and even if one of those things is missing, you can't make cars. So today's fiasco was-- I kid you not-- we were missing a $3 USB cable. OK. So we could not complete cars, because-- SAL KHAN: So the whole line was stopped? ELON MUSK: Yeah.\n\nSo essentially, because it's part of the wiring harness. So you can't put the interior in without this cable. And so we could either make a whole bunch of cars minus the interior, which means that you've got to stack them up in the yard. SAL KHAN: The resale value would be no good. ELON MUSK: Well, it can be done, but if then things go out of sequence, and it's way more inefficient-- you don't have a moving production line.\n\nThen you have to send people out to hundreds of cars that are sitting in the storage yard. And so this happens to be a particularly pernicious cable. It's kind of routed under the carpet, in a difficult place. And it's literally $3. And so we basically had to send people throughout the Bay Area to go and buy USB cables. SAL KHAN: Like, literally, Radio Shack? ELON MUSK: Like Fry's. SAL KHAN: Oh, Fry's. That's better.\n\nELON MUSK: You're going to have a hard time getting a USB cable right now at Fry's, because we bought every one of them. SAL KHAN: That's good. ELON MUSK: And so we're able to continue production. And I don't want to belabor the anecdote, but essentially the supplier is in China. And we had plan A and plan B. And plan A was like the normal supply chain process.\n\nBut what the supplier did was instead of sending our parts in their own package, they grouped it together with a bunch of other stuff for other companies and sent that all via some extremely slow boat from China to LA. And when it got to LA, the other stuff didn't pass customs. And so they wouldn't let our stuff through, because-- SAL KHAN: They put it like a barrel fruit or something.\n\nELON MUSK: I don't what they put it, but something that customs didn't like. And the paperwork wasn't in order or whatever. So it got stuck there for like a couple weeks. And then we had plan B. So we called and said, look you've got to air freight some of these cables-- cause they're just little cables-- to us. And we talked to their US subsidiary and ordered from the US subsidiary, who then communicated to China.\n\nBut then because this was another batch of parts, so it was kind of double the order, it exceeded the credit limit that we had. So it bounced off the credit limit, so they didn't ship it. SAL KHAN: Fascinating. So someone's losing their job now. This is-- no, I'm kidding. You shouldn't fire anyone. ELON MUSK: I mean, it's pretty farcical. And, anyway, so, it's coming like tonight at 11:00 PM or something. SAL KHAN: Wow.\n\nAnd these things are happening like all the time? This was an unusual circumstance? ELON MUSK: Yeah. That's like one example, but there's many things like that. SAL KHAN: I guess, I mean, that's actually a really good example, because that leads into what I've always been fascinated by a lot of what you're doing. Well, I'll start with, how did you get into this? ELON MUSK: Into cars? SAL KHAN: Into cars. Into taking over NASA.\n\nWell, not taking over NASA-- being a contractor for NASA. ELON MUSK: Just for the record, we are not taking over NASA. SAL KHAN: You're not taking over NASA. They are an independent organization. But you are becoming a major provider of services for NASA. Obviously, kind of internet payments and payments generally. I mean these are three completely different spaces.\n\nI think a lot of people would not take someone seriously, if they had a business plan in one of these. ELON MUSK: Right. Sorry to eat. SAL KHAN: Oh, yeah, take your time. What was your-- did you always think you were going to be doing this or-- when did it dawn on you that you would try to revolutionize three industries? ELON MUSK: Well, when I was in college-- I didn't actually expect to do it.\n\nSo it was not like this is some long-fulfilled expectation. But when I was in college, I thought about what were the areas that would most effect the future of humanity, in my opinion. And the three areas were the internet, sustainable energy, and space exploration, particularly if humanity becomes a multi-planet species.\n\nYou know, there's kind of like a pretty substantial bifurcation in our future, if we're either out there among stars on multiple planets, or if we're confined to Earth until some obviously eventual extinction. Not Not that I'm pessimistic about live on Earth. I mean, things are likely to be good. More likely to be good by far than bad. SAL KHAN: Yellowstone's due for an explosion every several hundred thousand-- Shandra knows about that.\n\nIt's been 700,000, ELON MUSK: Right. Right. Yeah. SAL KHAN: Super volcano for those of you who don't know. It would envelop, but well-- ELON MUSK: Yeah. Exactly. I know exactly what you're talking about. So-- SAL KHAN: We read the same books. I can tell. ELON MUSK: Absolutely. I mean something bad is bound to happen if you give it enough time.\n\nAnd civilization has been around for such a very short period of time that these time scales seem like very long, but on an evolutionary time scale, they're very short. A million years on an evolutionary time scale is really not very much. And Earth's been around for four and a half billion years, so that's a very tiny, tiny amount of time, really.\n\nBut for us that would be-- can you can imagine if human civilization continued at anything remotely like the current pace of technology ad advancement for a million years? Where would we be? I think we're either extinct or on a lot of planets. SAL KHAN: Yes. We should-- ELON MUSK: Those are the two options. SAL KHAN: But given that-- I mean, one, that's kind of as epic as one can think about things, literally. How did you make that concrete?\n\nHow does that turn into SpaceX, Tesla and Paypal? ELON MUSK: Well, so I thought about these things kind of in the abstract. Not from the expectation that I would actually have careers in those arenas. But, I wanted to be involved in at least one of them. And at first I thought the best bet was going to be electric cars. And so the area that I was studying was advanced capacitors.\n\nSo essentially capacitors that have an engine density exceeding that of batteries. Because they have a very high power density, but a low energy density. Maybe you have lecture to that effect, I don't know. SAL KHAN: Oh, yes, no. We should do that. We'll get to it later. ELON MUSK: Exactly.\n\nSo obviously, if you could make a capacitor that had anywhere near the energy density of a battery with this incredibly high power density and this quasi-infinite cycle and calendar life, then you'd have an awesome solution for energy storage and mobile applications.\n\nSo I was going to try to work on that and try to leverage the equipment that was developed for advanced chip making and photonics to create ultra-precise capacitors at the molecular level. SAL KHAN: And this was when you were going to go into grad school? You had a brief stint at Stanford? ELON MUSK: That's right. SAL KHAN: At a PhD in applied physics? ELON MUSK: Applied physics, material science. SAL KHAN: Right.\n\nSo even then you were thinking of trying to do something in the space? ELON MUSK: Actually, this was d to work on energy storage solutions for electric cars. And I'd actually worked at a company in Silicon Valley called Pinnacle Research, which did advanced capacitors. There were electrolytic capacitors. And they actually were pretty good. They had like the energy density of a lead-acid battery, which for a capacitor, that's a big deal.\n\nBut they used ruthenium tantalum oxide. And I think at the time, there was maybe like one or two tons of ruthenium mined per year in the world. So it's not a scalable solution. But I thought there could be some solid-state solution, like just using chip-making equipment. That was going to be the basic idea. But it was one of those things where I wasn't sure if success was one of possible outcomes.\n\nIt's difficult to bound that problem exactly and say, OK-- SAL KHAN: So you're saying, I felt like this was a destined failure is another way to parse that sentence. But anyway, sorry. ELON MUSK: No. I didn't think it would fail, but I wasn't sure that success was a possibility. SAL KHAN: OK. Yes. ELON MUSK: And generally you want to embark on something-- it's desirable to figure out if success is at least one of the possibilities.\n\nSAL KHAN: Right, exactly. ELON MUSK: Because for sure failure is one of the possibilities. But, ideally, you want to try to bracket it and say success is in the envelope of outcomes. And I wasn't quite sure if that was the case. I think success on an academic level would have been quite likely, because you can publish some useless paper-- and most papers are pretty useless-- SAL KHAN: We have a few-- don't take offense.\n\nELON MUSK: I mean, how many PhD papers are actually used by someone ever? SAL KHAN: That's a good point. ELON MUSK: Percentagewise it's not good. And so it could have been one of those outcomes where you add some leaves to the tree of knowledge. And that leaf is, nope, it's not possible. And there goes seven years of my life. So that was one path. And I was prepared to do that. But then the internet came along.\n\nAnd it was like, oh, OK, the Internet, I'm pretty sure success is one of the outcomes, and it seemed like I could either do a PhD and watch the Internet happen, or I could participate and help build in some fashion. Like, I was just concerned with the idea of watching it happen. So I decided to put things on hold and start an Internet company. And we worked on internet publishing software, maps and directions, yellow pages, those kind of things.\n\nAnd we had as investors and customers the media companies. So like the New York Times Company, Knight Ridder. SAL KHAN: And this is just at the early stages. I mean this was like-- ELON MUSK: '95. SAL KHAN: '95. So it's really early stages, so it's really out the gate. ELON MUSK: Yeah. Absolutely. And so then we-- the reason we worked with the media companies was because we needed to have money. There was no advertising money in '95.\n\nIn fact, the idea of advertising on the internet seemed like a ridiculous idea to people. Obviously, not so ridiculous anymore. But, at the time, it seemed like a very unlikely proposition. And a lot of the media companies weren't even sure that they should be online. Like, what's the point of that?\n\nSAL KHAN: And did you all think that PayPal was just going to be a simple, little internet way to-- or did you think it was going to turn into the major kind of transaction processing engine that it is right now? ELON MUSK: I didn't expect PayPal's growth rate to be what it was. And that actually created major problems. So we started Paypal on University Avenue. After the first month or so of the website being active, we 100,000 customers.\n\nSAL KHAN: Really? That fast. Wow, I didn't realize it was-- ELON MUSK: Yeah, it was nutty. SAL KHAN: And how did it start? How did people just even know to use it? I mean, obviously, both buyer and seller have to be involved. ELON MUSK: Yeah. Well, we started off first by offering people $20 if they opened an account. And $20 if they referred anyone. And then we dropped it to $10. And we dropped it to $5.\n\nAs the network got bigger and bigger, the value of the network itself exceeded any sort of carrot that we could offer. SAL KHAN: So much money did you all spend with that kind of $5, $10, $20 incentive to get that critical mass going? ELON MUSK: It was a fair amount. I think it was probably $60 or $70 million. SAL KHAN: Oh, wow, OK. So it was substantial. OK. So we're not talking peanuts here. ELON MUSK: It depends on your relative scale.\n\nIt's a peanut to Google. SAL KHAN: Yeah, no, that's right. That's right. ELON MUSK: Here's a peanut. I mean, Google's got $50 billion. Apple's got $150 billion, some crazy amount of money. That's just cash. SAL KHAN: Yeah. So it's not an outlandish-- I didn't realize that was so core. ELON MUSK: Like 1% of Google's cash would be $500 million. So, you know, that's 0. 1% percent of Google's cash. SAL KHAN: That's true.\n\nYou're right, that's inexpensive. It's nothing. ELON MUSK: Relative to them, it's pretty inexpensive. SAL KHAN: That's right. ELON MUSK: And then we did a bunch of things to decrease the friction. It's just like bacteria in a Petri dish. So what you want to do is try to have one customer generate like two customers. OK? Or something like that. Maybe three customers, ideally. And then you want that to happen really fast.\n\nAnd you could probably model it just like bacteria growth in a Petri dish. And then it'll just expand very quickly until it hits the side of the Petri dish and then it slows down. SAL KHAN: And then after Paypal, then I mean-- to some degree, especially us in Silicon Valley, we kind of understand the Internet. We know people.\n\nPayPal's obviously of the scale that is noteworthy, but then SpaceX just seems really, you know-- well, one, how did you decide that I'm definitely going to do that? And then like what's the first thing that you do? How do you even go out-- I don't even know how to start trying to make a rocket company. ELON MUSK: Well, neither did I really. And in fact, the first three launches failed. So it's not as though it was like spot on.\n\nIt's like, did not hit the bull's eye. But SAL KHAN: But even getting to the point where you're launching rockets. I don't even how do you get there? One, how did you decide? And then what did you do on day one? Like, who did you call? Did you write a plan? Did you start-- I don't even know. ELON MUSK: Actually, the origin of SpaceX is that I was trying to figure out why we'd not sent any people to Mars.\n\nBecause the obvious next step after Apollo was to send people to Mars. But what in fact happened was that we sent a few people to the moon and then we didn't send anyone after that to the moon or Mars or anything. But if you'd asked people in 1969, what would 2013 look like, they would have said, there will be a base on the moon. We would have least sent some people to Mars. And maybe there'd even be a base on Mars.\n\nThere'd be like orbiting space hotels. And there'd be all this awesome stuff in space. And that's what people expected. And if you said, well, actually, the United States in 2013 will not be able to send anyone to orbit. But I'll tell you what will exist is that there'll be this device in your pocket that's like the size of-- smaller than a deck of cards that has access to all the world's information, and you can talk to any one on planet Earth.\n\nAnd even if you're like in some remote village somewhere so long as there's something called the Internet-- they wouldn't know what that means, of course-- then you would you be able to communicate with anyone instantly and have access to all of humanity's knowledge. They would have said, like bullshit. There's no way that that's going to be true. SAL KHAN: Right. Right. ELON MUSK: And yet we all have that. And space is not happening.\n\nSo I was trying to figure out like what was the deal here. And this was 2001. And it was just a friend of mine asked me, what am I going to do after Paypal. And I said, well, you know, I've always been interested in space, but I don't think there's anything that an individual could do in space, because it's the province of government, and usually a large government. But, I am curious as to when we're going to send some one to Mars.\n\nSo I went to the NASA website to try to figure out where is the place that tells you that. And I couldn't find that. So I was like, either I'm bad at looking at the website, or they have a terrible website, because surely there must be a date. SAL KHAN: That should be a big date. ELON MUSK: Yeah. This should be on the front page. And then I discovered actually that NASA had no plans to send people to Mars, or even really back to the moon.\n\nSo this was really was disappointing. I thought well, maybe this is a question of national will. Like do we to get people excited about space again? And try to get NASA a bigger budget, and then we would send people to Mars. And so I started researching the area, becoming more familiar with space, reading lots of books.\n\nAnd I came up with this idea to do so-called Mars oasis, which was to send a small greenhouse with seeds in dehydrated gel that upon landing, you hydrate the gel. You have green plants on a red background. The public responses to precedents and superlatives. So it would be the first life on Mars. The furthest that life's ever traveled. And you'd have this money shot of green plants on a red background.\n\nSo that seemed like it would get people pretty excited. So I started getting into this. And trying to figure out, OK, well can I afford to build a spacecraft? Because I had some money as a result of PayPal, but it had to fit within that budget. And I figured we had to do two missions, because if we only did one and it failed, then it might have like the opposite effect. SAL KHAN: But you were willing to bet the farm, so to speak, on this?\n\nELON MUSK: Yeah. Well, I figured I was willing to spend half the money that I got from PayPal with no expectation of return. Because I thought this was just something that was pretty important and yeah, it seemed like I could spend half the money I made on PayPal on this, and if that got NASA a bigger budget and resulted in us going to Mars, that would be a pretty good outcome.\n\nSAL KHAN: And when your friends or your family came up to you and said, look there's nations that can't do this. You're a guy, I mean you have some resources, what did you say or do or think? ELON MUSK: Well, so I had a lot of friends of mine try to talk me out of starting a rocket company, because they thought it was crazy. And one friend of mine made me watch a video of rockets blowing up.\n\nAnd there were just lots of people that thought it was a really crazy idea. And there was some people that had tried to start rocket companies, not succeeded. And they tried to talk me out of it. But the thing is that-- their premise for talking me out of it was, well, we think you're going to lose the money that you invest.\n\nI was like, well, that was my expectation anyway, so I don't really mind if I lose-- you I mean, I mind, but I mean it's not like I was trying to figure out the rank-ordered best way to invest money and on that basis chose space. It's not like that's-- I thought, wow-- SAL KHAN: You weren't looking at like money-market bonds, AAA bonds, rocket company. You weren't like-- ELON MUSK: I could do real estate. I could invest in shoe making. Anything.\n\nAnd, whoa, space is the highest ROI. That is not what-- it wasn't the premise. I just thought that it was important that humanity expand beyond Earth, and we weren't doing that, so maybe there was something I could do to spur that on. And then I was able to compress the costs of the spacecraft and everything down to a relatively manageable number. And I got stuck on the rocket. The US rockets were way too expensive.\n\nI ended up going to Russia-- I flew to Russia three times to negotiate a purchase of an ICBM. I tried to buy two of the biggest ICBMs in the Russian fleet in 2001 and 2002. And I actually negotiated a price. SAL KHAN: I'll just let that statement stand. I'm not even going to-- Well, actually, I have to-- like who did you call? ELON MUSK: You open the yellow pages. Go to ICBMs. Oh!\n\nSAL KHAN: How does this-- I don't want to get too much in to it but I'm curious about this one particular thing. You decide at some point you need to buy an ICBM? ELON MUSK: Yeah. Well, actually at first I tried to buy just a normal launch program that they use to launch satellites, but those are too expensive. SAL KHAN: I see. I see. ELON MUSK: The Boeing Delta II would have cost $65 million each, so two would have been $130 million.\n\nAnd then I was like, woah, OK, that breaks my budget right there. And I tried to negotiate with them. And that was not-- I did not make progress. SAL KHAN: How much does an ICBM go for? I'm curious what's the market rate for one of those? ELON MUSK: Well-- SAL KHAN: This is right after the fall, it might have gone up. ELON MUSK: Yeah, it's gone up a lot since then. But in 2001, it would've been about $10 million each.\n\nSo two would have been $20 million. And then I thought I could get the rest of the mission down to also around $10 million per, so we'd have a dual mission with like two identical launches, two identical spacecraft for roughly $40 million. And so I thought, OK, I can do that. SAL KHAN: But you must have had some like rocket scientists advising you at this point? This sounds like you were serious. I mean you were-- ELON MUSK: Yeah.\n\nI engaged a bunch of consultants and started to get familiar with the space industry. But then after the third trip to Russia, I came to realize that I was actually wrong about my first premise, that there was a lack of will. In fact, I think that there's a tremendous amount of will in the United States for space exploration. Because the United States is essentially a nation of explorers.\n\nI mean, it's a distillation of the human spirit of exploration. So of course it was quite silly of me to think that people lacked motivation. But what people don't want to think is that, OK, sending people to Mars is going to be so expensive that they'll have to give up health care or something. They're not going to do that. So it's got to be that going to Mars is not going to cause some meaningful drop in their standard of living.\n\nSo if it's like maybe a quarter of a percent or half a percent of GDP-- something like that is palatable. Anyways, so I thought, OK, it's not really going to maybe matter that much if I do this mission, because what really matters is having a way. So I was wrong-- I thought there wasn't enough will, but there actually was plenty of will, if people thought there was a way. So then I said, OK, well, I need to work on the way.\n\nHow hard is it really to make a rocket? Historically, all rockets have been expensive, so therefore, in the future, all rockets will be expensive. But actually that's not true. If you say, what is a rocket made of. And say, OK, it's made of aluminum, titanium, copper, carbon fiber, if you want to go that direction. And you can break down and say, what is the raw material cost of all these components.\n\nAnd if you have them stacked on the floor and could wave a magic wand so that the cost of rearranging the atoms was zero, then what would the cost of the rocket be. And I was like, wow, OK, it's really small. It's like 2% of what a rocket costs. So clearly it would be in how the atoms are arranged. So you've got to figure out to OK, how can we get the atoms in the right shape much more efficiently.\n\nAnd so I had a series of meetings on Saturdays with people some of whom were still working at the big aerospace companies, just to try to figure out is the some catch here that I'm not appreciating. And I couldn't figure it out. There doesn't seem to be any catch. So I started SpaceX. SAL KHAN: And you ended up-- you had some failures, but obviously some huge successes.\n\nWhat was the cost that you were able to build this rocket for relative to what they were being built for before? ELON MUSK: So let's see. For the Falcon 1, which is the first rocket we built. And the first three flights did not make it. In fact, we got progressively further. But like the first rocket came in and landed maybe a couple hundred yards away from the launch site, and tiny fragments.\n\nSo, yeah, anyway, that rocketed ended up costing around $6 million compared to other rockets in that class, which were about to $25 million. SAL KHAN: Wow. So significant? ELON MUSK: Yeah, like a quarter. But there's an even better step beyond that which is to make rockets reusable. Right now that is around what our comparison price is-- excluding the refurbished ICBMs.\n\nSo, if you say building a rocket from new, how does the SpaceX rocket compare to a rocket from Boeing or Lockheed? It's about a quarter of the price. However, if we make it reusable, then it can be two orders of magnitude cheaper. SAL KHAN: Two orders of magnitude cheaper. A 100th of the price? ELON MUSK: That's right. For you. SAL KHAN: Only today. Memorial day sale.\n\nAnd I've seen some-- you all are doing these vertical landings, like literally out of like the 1950s Sci-Fi movies. And that's what you're talking about? ELON MUSK: Yeah. Essentially, the rocket needs to come back and land at the launch site, and then reload propellant and take off again. Like an airplane in its reusability. SAL KHAN: How far do you think we are from that?\n\nWhen do you think-- your best guess, when we'll actually see that happening? ELON MUSK: Well, I'm hopeful we can do it next year. SAL KHAN: Oh, OK. Yeah. That's-- we've got some ambitious stuff at Khan Academy for the next year, too. So we can compare. We're redesigning the site. ELON MUSK: Right. We've been working on it for a long time. I should say, SpaceX has been around for 11 years, and thus far we have not recovered any rockets.\n\nWe recovered the spacecraft from orbit. So that was great. But none of our attempts to recover the rocket stages have been successful. The rocket stages have always blown up essentially on reentry. Now, we think we've figured out why that was the case. And it's a tricky thing, because Earth's gravity is really quite strong. And with an advanced rocket, you can do maybe 2% to 3% of your lift-off mass to orbit, typically.\n\nAnd then reusability subtracts 2% to 3% So then you've got like nothing to orbit or negative. And that's obviously not helpful. And so the trick is to try to shift that from say 2%, 3% in an expendable configuration to make the rocket mass efficiency, engine efficiency, and so forth, so much better that it moves to maybe around 3. 5% to 4% in expendable configuration.\n\nAnd then try to get clever about the reusability elements and try to drop that to around the 1. 5% to 2% level. So you have a net payload to orbit of about 2%. SAL KHAN: But you're doing it at one, two orders of magnitude cheaper. ELON MUSK: Yeah. Absolutely, because our Falcon 9 rocket cost about $60 million. But the propellant cost-- which is mostly oxygen-- it's two-thirds oxygen, one-third fuel-- is only about $200,000. SAL KHAN: Wow.\n\nELON MUSK: And it's much like a 747. It costs about as much to refuel our rocket as it does to refuel a 747 within-- well, pretty close, essentially. SAL KHAN: So assuming you all are successful, and you all have proven yourself to be successful on these audacious things in the past, I mean, what happens? I mean that seems like it's-- what happens in the next 5, 10 years in the space industry, if you all are successful there?\n\nI mean do we get to Mars? Do we have kind of market forces, commercialization of space starting to happen? ELON MUSK: Yeah. Let's see. Well, the first step is that we need to earn enough money to keep going as a company. So we have to make sure that we're launching satellites. Commercial satellites like broadcast communications, mapping, government satellites that do scientific missions. Earth-based or space-based missions. GPS satellites.\n\nThat kind of thing. And then also servicing the space station. Transferring cargo to and from the space station, which we've done a few times. And then taking people to and from the space station. So we've got to service the sort of Earth-based needs to launch satellites and that pays the bills. But in doing that keep improving the technology to a point where we can make full reusability work.\n\nAnd we have sufficient scale and sophistication to be able to take people to Mars. SAL KHAN: Wow. So you think this is going to be a reality? What's your best guess of when we're going to have someone on Mars? ELON MUSK: I think probably about 12 years. SAL KHAN: That's nothing. And you think it'll be a round trip? It won't just be some type of permanent colony on Mars? ELON MUSK: I think it's probably a round trip. It's not for sure.\n\nSAL KHAN: I could talk about this for-- people know, I'm-- ELON MUSK: Aspirational it'd be a round trip. SAL KHAN: This is mind blowing. And then on Tesla. I mean Tesla's obviously, from my vantage, it's a huge success. What do you think in that industry-- well, one, I'll ask kind of the same question. What did you think-- this is something that GM and Toyota and these massive multi-billion dollar organizations have been trying.\n\nWhat gave you the confidence to pursue it? And now that it seems to be a huge success, where do you think this industry's going to be the next 5, 10 years? ELON MUSK: Yes. So with Tesla, the goal is try to accelerate the advent of sustainable transport. I think it would happen anyway, just out of necessity. But because we have an un-priced externality in the cost of gasoline.\n\nWe weren't pricing in the environmental effects of CO2 in the oceans and atmosphere. That's causing the normal market forces to not function properly. And so the goal of Tesla is to try to act as a catalyst to accelerate those sort of normal forces. The normal sort of market reaction that would occur. We're trying to have a catalytic effect on that. And try to make it happen, I don't know, maybe 10 years sooner than it would otherwise occur.\n\nThat's the goal of Tesla. So that's the reason we're making electric cars and not any other kind of car. And we also supply powertrains to Toyota and to Mercedes and maybe to other car companies in the future to accelerate their production of electric vehicles. So that's the goal there. And so far, it's working out pretty well.\n\nSAL KHAN: I mean, I just saw a news report earlier today that you all sold more Model S's than-- you all are leading that segment of the industry. The Mercedes S class, the BMW 7 Series, or the Lexus LS400, or whatever it is. ELON MUSK: Yeah, actually, that seems to be the case. I didn't realize they sold so few cars in that segment. Because we don't sell that many cars.\n\nWe sell 5,000 a quarter, or 12,000-- SAL KHAN: Well, out here they seem like you know every-- ELON MUSK: Well, this is our home team. So it's-- we better sell a lot in the Bay Area. Because otherwise we're like-- SAL KHAN: And, well, I mean, similar thing. How did you start? What gave you the confidence?\n\nAnd do you see yourselves as kind of a major automotive, mainstream brand in 5,10 years, all the way down to competing with the Honda Accords and Civics? ELON MUSK: I mean, yeah. Our goal-- it's not to become a brand big brand or to compete with Honda Civics, rather to advance the cause of electric vehicles.\n\nAnd so we're just going to keep making more and more electric cars and driving the price point down until the industry is very firmly electric. Like maybe half of all cars made are electric or something like that. Which is not to say that we expect to make half of all cars. We want to just have that catalytic effect until at least that occurs.\n\nAnd I think the point at which we're approaching half of all new cars made are electric, then I think I would consider that to be the victory condition. And so the faster we can bring that day, the better. SAL KHAN: When would be your guess when that happens? ELON MUSK: Well, I made a bet with someone about three years ago that it would be sooner than 20 years. So it's 17 years from now. But that's conservative.\n\nI think it's probably maybe 13 or 14 years. SAL KHAN: Wow. Right when we're going to Mars. ELON MUSK: Right. SAL KHAN: It'll be exciting times. ELON MUSK: True. Exactly. I was just thinking about that. It was like, oh, those time frames are kind of coincident. The nature of new technology adoption is it tends to follow an S-curve.\n\nSo what usually happens is people under-predict it in in the beginning, because people tend to extrapolate in a straight line. And then they'll over-predict it at the midpoint, because there's late adopters. And then it'll actually take longer than people think at the mid-point, but much shorter than people think at the beginning. But I'm pretty excited about how things are going.\n\nAnd, in fact, I think that the pace of technology improvement in electric energy storage is really moving faster than anyone thinks. SAL KHAN: Wow. I got one more-- how are we doing on time? Where's Ester? Oh, 9 o'clock. So how much time do you have? I want to make sure we don't go over. ELON MUSK: Well, I guess maybe another 15 minutes. SAL KHAN: OK. So I'll finish with one last question and then we'll open it up.\n\nWhat advice do you have for us at Khan Academy? ELON MUSK: I don't know. You guys seem to be doing really great. So I was wondering if you had advice for me. SAL KHAN: Oh, no, well. ELON MUSK: Yeah. It seems like you're doing an amazing job of-- really super leveraged. I mean, obviously, a small team, and you're having a dramatic effect-- SAL KHAN: Yeah, half these people don't even work here.\n\nThere just like-- so it's like it's even-- ELON MUSK: Right. So it's, I think very impressive thing you're doing to spread knowledge and understanding throughout the world. SAL KHAN: The universe soon, if you hold up your end of the bargain. ELON MUSK: It's actually kind of funny. If you think, what is education? Like you're basically downloading data and algorithms into your brain. And it's actually amazingly bad in conventional education.\n\nBecause like it shouldn't be like this huge chore. So you're making it way, way better. But I think a lot of things that I would say, you've probably heard 100 times. And, in fact, are if not doing. The more you can game-ify the process of learning, the better. For my kids, I do not have to encourage them to play video games. I have to like pry them from their hands, like crack. SAL KHAN: Yes. ELON MUSK: It's like, drop that crack needle.\n\nSAL KHAN: You have that problem at your house, too. The crack is addictive. ELON MUSK: So to the degree that you can make somehow learning like a game, then it's better. And I think, unfortunately, a lot of education is very vaudevillian. You've got someone standing up there kind of lecturing at people. And they've done the same lecture 20 years in a row, and they're not very excited about it.\n\nAnd that lack of enthusiasm is conveyed to the students. They're not very excited about it. They don't know why they're there. Like why are we letting this stuff. We don't even know why. In fact, I think a lot of things that people learn that probably there's no point in learning them. Because they never use them in the future. SAL KHAN: Because who's going to launch a rocket into space? I mean, that's just like-- exactly, that never happens.\n\nELON MUSK: Well, you have to say-- people don't stand back and say, well, why are we teaching people these things. And we should tell them, probably, why we're teaching these things. Because a lot of kids are probably just in school, probably puzzled as to why they're there. I think if you can explain the why of things, then that makes a huge difference to people's motivation. Then they understand purpose. So I think that's pretty important.\n\nAnd just make it entertaining. But I think just in general conventional education should be massively overhauled. And I'm sure you pretty much agree with that. I mean the analogy I sometimes use is, have you seen like Batman, the Chris Nolan movie, the recent one. And it's pretty freaking awesome. And you've got incredible special effects, great script, multiple takes, amazing actors, and great sound, and it's very engaging.\n\nBut if you were to instead say, OK-- even if you had the same script, so at least it's same script. And you said, OK, now that script, instead of having movies, we're going to have that script performed by the local town troop. OK, and so in every small town in America, if movies didn't exist, they'd have to recreate The Dark Night. With like home-sewn costumes and like jumping across the stage. And not really getting their lines quite right.\n\nAnd not really looking like the people in the movie. And no special effects. And I mean that would suck. It would be terrible. SAL KHAN: That's right. Very-- ELON MUSK: That's education. SAL KHAN: So with that-- and I apologize to all of you guys for hogging up all of the time, because, obviously, I could talk for hours about this stuff. But we do have time, probably 5 or 10 minutes for a handful of questions.\n\nIf none of you all have any, I have about nine more. But, yes. SPEAKER 1: So I noticed-- I picked up two kind of themes from what you were discussing. One was somewhat audacious goals. And the other was I don't think I heard you use the word profit in anything that you spoke about. You seem to be-- each thing is pointed at like re-invigorating an industry or bringing back space missions.\n\nHow much of your success do you attribute to having really audacious goals or versus just not being focused on the short term, money coming in, or I don't know, investors? ELON MUSK: Unfortunately, one does have to be focused on the short time and money coming in when creating a company, because otherwise the company will die. So I think that a lot of times people think like creating company is going to be fun.\n\nI would say it's really not that fun. I mean there are periods of fun. And there are periods where it's just awful. And, particularly, if you're the CEO of the company, you actually have a distillation of all the worst problems in the company. There's no point in spending your time on things that are going right. So you're only spending your time on things that are going wrong.\n\nAnd there are things that are going wrong that other people can't take care of. So you have like the worst-- you have a filter for the crappest problems in the company. The most pernicious and painful problem. So I think you have to feel quite compelled to do it. And have a fairly high pain threshold. There's a friend of mine who says, starting a company is like starting into the abyss and eating glass. And there's some truth to that.\n\nThe staring into the abyss part is that you're going to be constantly facing the extermination of the company. Because most start ups fail. It's like 90% percent-- it could be 99% of start ups fail. So that's the staring into the abyss part. You're constantly saying, OK, if I don't get this right, the company will die, which can be quite stressful.\n\nAnd then the eating glass part is you've got to work on the problems that the company needs you to work on and not the problems you want to work on. And so you end up working on problems that you really wish you weren't working on. And so that's the eating glass part. And that goes on for a long time. SPEAKER 1: So how do you keep your focus on the big picture when you're constantly faced with, we could be out of business in a month?\n\nELON MUSK: Well, it's just a very small percentage of mental energy is on the big picture. Like you know where you're generally heading for and the actual path is going to be some sort of zigzaggy thing in that direction. You're trying not to deviate too far from the path that you want to be on, but you're going to have to that to some degree.\n\nBut I don't want to diminish the-- I think the profit motive is a good one, if the rules of an industry are properly set up. So there's nothing fundamentally wrong with profit. In fact, profit just means that people are paying you more for whatever you're doing than you're spending to create it. That's a good thing. And if that's not the case, then you'll be out of business. And rightfully so. Because you're not adding enough value.\n\nNow there are cases, of course, where people will do bad things in order to achieve profit, but that's actually quite unusual. Because usually the rules are set up mostly correctly. Like not completely, but mostly correctly. SAL KHAN: I think we have time for one more question. Joel. JOEL: Yeah, I have an important one. SAL KHAN: OK, very good. Yes, please. SPEAKER 3: No.\n\nJOEL: OK, so few months ago, you teased Hyperloop, and we haven't heard anything since. So, first of all, a few of us engineers were talking about it, and I think we have a few ideas, if you need help. But, if you feel comfortable, maybe you could tell us a little bit more. ELON MUSK: I was reading about the California high-speed rail, and it was quite depressing.\n\nBecause California taxpayers are going to be on the hook to build the most expensive high-speed rail per mile in the world-- and the slowest. Those are not the superlatives you want. And, it's like, damn, we're in California, we make super high-tech stuff. Why are we going to be spending-- now the estimates are around $100 billion-- for something that will take two hours to go from LA to San Francisco?\n\nI'm like, OK, well, I can get on a plane and do that it 45 minutes. It doesn't make much sense. And isn't there some better way to do it than that. So if you just say, OK, well what would you ideally want in a transportation system?\n\nYou'd say, OK, well you'd want something that relative to existing modes of transportation is faster-- let's say twice as fast-- costs half as much per ticket, can't crash, is immune to weather, and is-- you can make the whole thing like self-powering with like solar panels or something like that. That would be pretty-- SAL KHAN: That would be great, yes. ELON MUSK: --a good outcome. And so what would do that?\n\nAnd what's the fastest way short of inventing teleportation that you could do something like that? And some of the elements of that solution are fairly obvious, and some of them are not so obvious. And then the details-- the devil's in the details of actually making something like that work. But I came to the conclusion that there is something like that that could work. And would be practical. SAL KHAN: Is this around the evacuated tubes?\n\nThe vacuum tubes? Like the old bank-- ELON MUSK: It's something like that. SAL KHAN: But you haven't been more public with what this is? ELON MUSK: No. Although I did say that once Tesla was profitable that I would talk more about it. But, we haven't done our earnings call yet. So I think I'll probably do it after the earnings call. And the thing is I'm kind of strung out on things that I'm already doing.\n\nSo adding another thing-- it's like doesn't-- it's a lot SAL KHAN: Learning the guitar You could pick up all sorts of things. ELON MUSK: Right. I tried learning the violin. That's, by the way, a hard thing to learn. SAL KHAN: Yeah. Launching rockets, electric cars, revolutionizing transportation. Yeah, it's easy. ELON MUSK: I cannot play the violin at all. Very horrible.\n\nIf you think about the future, you want a future that's better than the past, and so if we had something like the Hyperloop, I think that would be like cool. You'd look forward to the day that was working. And if something like that, even if it was only in one place-- from LA to San Francisco, or New York to DC or something like that-- then it would be cool enough that it would be like a tourist attraction. It would be like a ride or something.\n\nSo even if some of the initial assumptions didn't work out, the economics didn't work out quite as one expected, it would be cool enough that like, I want to journey to that place just to ride on that thing. That would be pretty cool. And so that's I think how-- if you come with a new technology, it should feel like that.\n\nYou should really-- if you told it to an objective person, would they look forward to the day that that thing became available. And it would be pretty exciting to do something like that. Or an aircraft. Like I thought it was really disappointing when the Concorde was taking out of commission, and there was no supersonic transport available. And of course the 787 has had some issues.\n\nBut the thing is, the 787 even in the best case scenario is only a slightly better version of the 777. And it's like, OK, not that exciting. SAL KHAN: So this is something that you are working on? ELON MUSK: I wouldn't say working on it. SAL KHAN: And one day in the not-too-far future-- or there's some plans or consultants involved or something? SPEAKER 4: You called Russia. SAL KHAN: You made some phone calls to Russia.\n\nELON MUSK: No, every now and then, it's percolating away. I'm not actually thinking about it. But then they'll be some new element of that I'll think of. Oh, this would make it better. SAL KHAN: Fascinating. Well, I think I'm speaking for everyone. This is like the most epic possible conversation one could have over about the course of an hour. And I think all of us would love to chat with you for hours on end, but thank you so much.\n\nI know you have a lot of free time, so it probably wasn't that big of a deal for you to come here. But, it was a huge honor. And I think it's inspired all of us to go out and change the world and the universe. ELON MUSK: Cool. All right. SAL KHAN: Thank you very much. [APPLAUSE]","textByLang":{"en":"SAL KHAN: So first of all, I just want to thank Elon for coming-- hungry. You didn't even have dinner. And we didn't even feed you properly. ELON MUSK: No, sorry to be a bit late. I just came from the Tesla factory in Fremont. SAL KHAN: Yes. Was something wrong? ELON MUSK: There's always something. SAL KHAN: Did you have to like-- ELON MUSK: At any given point, there's always something wrong. SAL KHAN: Yes.\n\nELON MUSK: Because there's just too many things going on. So one of the trickiest things about a car is that there's thousands of individual components-- there are thousands of unique components-- and even if one of those things is missing, you can't make cars. So today's fiasco was-- I kid you not-- we were missing a $3 USB cable. OK. So we could not complete cars, because-- SAL KHAN: So the whole line was stopped? ELON MUSK: Yeah.\n\nSo essentially, because it's part of the wiring harness. So you can't put the interior in without this cable. And so we could either make a whole bunch of cars minus the interior, which means that you've got to stack them up in the yard. SAL KHAN: The resale value would be no good. ELON MUSK: Well, it can be done, but if then things go out of sequence, and it's way more inefficient-- you don't have a moving production line.\n\nThen you have to send people out to hundreds of cars that are sitting in the storage yard. And so this happens to be a particularly pernicious cable. It's kind of routed under the carpet, in a difficult place. And it's literally $3. And so we basically had to send people throughout the Bay Area to go and buy USB cables. SAL KHAN: Like, literally, Radio Shack? ELON MUSK: Like Fry's. SAL KHAN: Oh, Fry's. That's better.\n\nELON MUSK: You're going to have a hard time getting a USB cable right now at Fry's, because we bought every one of them. SAL KHAN: That's good. ELON MUSK: And so we're able to continue production. And I don't want to belabor the anecdote, but essentially the supplier is in China. And we had plan A and plan B. And plan A was like the normal supply chain process.\n\nBut what the supplier did was instead of sending our parts in their own package, they grouped it together with a bunch of other stuff for other companies and sent that all via some extremely slow boat from China to LA. And when it got to LA, the other stuff didn't pass customs. And so they wouldn't let our stuff through, because-- SAL KHAN: They put it like a barrel fruit or something.\n\nELON MUSK: I don't what they put it, but something that customs didn't like. And the paperwork wasn't in order or whatever. So it got stuck there for like a couple weeks. And then we had plan B. So we called and said, look you've got to air freight some of these cables-- cause they're just little cables-- to us. And we talked to their US subsidiary and ordered from the US subsidiary, who then communicated to China.\n\nBut then because this was another batch of parts, so it was kind of double the order, it exceeded the credit limit that we had. So it bounced off the credit limit, so they didn't ship it. SAL KHAN: Fascinating. So someone's losing their job now. This is-- no, I'm kidding. You shouldn't fire anyone. ELON MUSK: I mean, it's pretty farcical. And, anyway, so, it's coming like tonight at 11:00 PM or something. SAL KHAN: Wow.\n\nAnd these things are happening like all the time? This was an unusual circumstance? ELON MUSK: Yeah. That's like one example, but there's many things like that. SAL KHAN: I guess, I mean, that's actually a really good example, because that leads into what I've always been fascinated by a lot of what you're doing. Well, I'll start with, how did you get into this? ELON MUSK: Into cars? SAL KHAN: Into cars. Into taking over NASA.\n\nWell, not taking over NASA-- being a contractor for NASA. ELON MUSK: Just for the record, we are not taking over NASA. SAL KHAN: You're not taking over NASA. They are an independent organization. But you are becoming a major provider of services for NASA. Obviously, kind of internet payments and payments generally. I mean these are three completely different spaces.\n\nI think a lot of people would not take someone seriously, if they had a business plan in one of these. ELON MUSK: Right. Sorry to eat. SAL KHAN: Oh, yeah, take your time. What was your-- did you always think you were going to be doing this or-- when did it dawn on you that you would try to revolutionize three industries? ELON MUSK: Well, when I was in college-- I didn't actually expect to do it.\n\nSo it was not like this is some long-fulfilled expectation. But when I was in college, I thought about what were the areas that would most effect the future of humanity, in my opinion. And the three areas were the internet, sustainable energy, and space exploration, particularly if humanity becomes a multi-planet species.\n\nYou know, there's kind of like a pretty substantial bifurcation in our future, if we're either out there among stars on multiple planets, or if we're confined to Earth until some obviously eventual extinction. Not Not that I'm pessimistic about live on Earth. I mean, things are likely to be good. More likely to be good by far than bad. SAL KHAN: Yellowstone's due for an explosion every several hundred thousand-- Shandra knows about that.\n\nIt's been 700,000, ELON MUSK: Right. Right. Yeah. SAL KHAN: Super volcano for those of you who don't know. It would envelop, but well-- ELON MUSK: Yeah. Exactly. I know exactly what you're talking about. So-- SAL KHAN: We read the same books. I can tell. ELON MUSK: Absolutely. I mean something bad is bound to happen if you give it enough time.\n\nAnd civilization has been around for such a very short period of time that these time scales seem like very long, but on an evolutionary time scale, they're very short. A million years on an evolutionary time scale is really not very much. And Earth's been around for four and a half billion years, so that's a very tiny, tiny amount of time, really.\n\nBut for us that would be-- can you can imagine if human civilization continued at anything remotely like the current pace of technology ad advancement for a million years? Where would we be? I think we're either extinct or on a lot of planets. SAL KHAN: Yes. We should-- ELON MUSK: Those are the two options. SAL KHAN: But given that-- I mean, one, that's kind of as epic as one can think about things, literally. How did you make that concrete?\n\nHow does that turn into SpaceX, Tesla and Paypal? ELON MUSK: Well, so I thought about these things kind of in the abstract. Not from the expectation that I would actually have careers in those arenas. But, I wanted to be involved in at least one of them. And at first I thought the best bet was going to be electric cars. And so the area that I was studying was advanced capacitors.\n\nSo essentially capacitors that have an engine density exceeding that of batteries. Because they have a very high power density, but a low energy density. Maybe you have lecture to that effect, I don't know. SAL KHAN: Oh, yes, no. We should do that. We'll get to it later. ELON MUSK: Exactly.\n\nSo obviously, if you could make a capacitor that had anywhere near the energy density of a battery with this incredibly high power density and this quasi-infinite cycle and calendar life, then you'd have an awesome solution for energy storage and mobile applications.\n\nSo I was going to try to work on that and try to leverage the equipment that was developed for advanced chip making and photonics to create ultra-precise capacitors at the molecular level. SAL KHAN: And this was when you were going to go into grad school? You had a brief stint at Stanford? ELON MUSK: That's right. SAL KHAN: At a PhD in applied physics? ELON MUSK: Applied physics, material science. SAL KHAN: Right.\n\nSo even then you were thinking of trying to do something in the space? ELON MUSK: Actually, this was d to work on energy storage solutions for electric cars. And I'd actually worked at a company in Silicon Valley called Pinnacle Research, which did advanced capacitors. There were electrolytic capacitors. And they actually were pretty good. They had like the energy density of a lead-acid battery, which for a capacitor, that's a big deal.\n\nBut they used ruthenium tantalum oxide. And I think at the time, there was maybe like one or two tons of ruthenium mined per year in the world. So it's not a scalable solution. But I thought there could be some solid-state solution, like just using chip-making equipment. That was going to be the basic idea. But it was one of those things where I wasn't sure if success was one of possible outcomes.\n\nIt's difficult to bound that problem exactly and say, OK-- SAL KHAN: So you're saying, I felt like this was a destined failure is another way to parse that sentence. But anyway, sorry. ELON MUSK: No. I didn't think it would fail, but I wasn't sure that success was a possibility. SAL KHAN: OK. Yes. ELON MUSK: And generally you want to embark on something-- it's desirable to figure out if success is at least one of the possibilities.\n\nSAL KHAN: Right, exactly. ELON MUSK: Because for sure failure is one of the possibilities. But, ideally, you want to try to bracket it and say success is in the envelope of outcomes. And I wasn't quite sure if that was the case. I think success on an academic level would have been quite likely, because you can publish some useless paper-- and most papers are pretty useless-- SAL KHAN: We have a few-- don't take offense.\n\nELON MUSK: I mean, how many PhD papers are actually used by someone ever? SAL KHAN: That's a good point. ELON MUSK: Percentagewise it's not good. And so it could have been one of those outcomes where you add some leaves to the tree of knowledge. And that leaf is, nope, it's not possible. And there goes seven years of my life. So that was one path. And I was prepared to do that. But then the internet came along.\n\nAnd it was like, oh, OK, the Internet, I'm pretty sure success is one of the outcomes, and it seemed like I could either do a PhD and watch the Internet happen, or I could participate and help build in some fashion. Like, I was just concerned with the idea of watching it happen. So I decided to put things on hold and start an Internet company. And we worked on internet publishing software, maps and directions, yellow pages, those kind of things.\n\nAnd we had as investors and customers the media companies. So like the New York Times Company, Knight Ridder. SAL KHAN: And this is just at the early stages. I mean this was like-- ELON MUSK: '95. SAL KHAN: '95. So it's really early stages, so it's really out the gate. ELON MUSK: Yeah. Absolutely. And so then we-- the reason we worked with the media companies was because we needed to have money. There was no advertising money in '95.\n\nIn fact, the idea of advertising on the internet seemed like a ridiculous idea to people. Obviously, not so ridiculous anymore. But, at the time, it seemed like a very unlikely proposition. And a lot of the media companies weren't even sure that they should be online. Like, what's the point of that?\n\nSAL KHAN: And did you all think that PayPal was just going to be a simple, little internet way to-- or did you think it was going to turn into the major kind of transaction processing engine that it is right now? ELON MUSK: I didn't expect PayPal's growth rate to be what it was. And that actually created major problems. So we started Paypal on University Avenue. After the first month or so of the website being active, we 100,000 customers.\n\nSAL KHAN: Really? That fast. Wow, I didn't realize it was-- ELON MUSK: Yeah, it was nutty. SAL KHAN: And how did it start? How did people just even know to use it? I mean, obviously, both buyer and seller have to be involved. ELON MUSK: Yeah. Well, we started off first by offering people $20 if they opened an account. And $20 if they referred anyone. And then we dropped it to $10. And we dropped it to $5.\n\nAs the network got bigger and bigger, the value of the network itself exceeded any sort of carrot that we could offer. SAL KHAN: So much money did you all spend with that kind of $5, $10, $20 incentive to get that critical mass going? ELON MUSK: It was a fair amount. I think it was probably $60 or $70 million. SAL KHAN: Oh, wow, OK. So it was substantial. OK. So we're not talking peanuts here. ELON MUSK: It depends on your relative scale.\n\nIt's a peanut to Google. SAL KHAN: Yeah, no, that's right. That's right. ELON MUSK: Here's a peanut. I mean, Google's got $50 billion. Apple's got $150 billion, some crazy amount of money. That's just cash. SAL KHAN: Yeah. So it's not an outlandish-- I didn't realize that was so core. ELON MUSK: Like 1% of Google's cash would be $500 million. So, you know, that's 0. 1% percent of Google's cash. SAL KHAN: That's true.\n\nYou're right, that's inexpensive. It's nothing. ELON MUSK: Relative to them, it's pretty inexpensive. SAL KHAN: That's right. ELON MUSK: And then we did a bunch of things to decrease the friction. It's just like bacteria in a Petri dish. So what you want to do is try to have one customer generate like two customers. OK? Or something like that. Maybe three customers, ideally. And then you want that to happen really fast.\n\nAnd you could probably model it just like bacteria growth in a Petri dish. And then it'll just expand very quickly until it hits the side of the Petri dish and then it slows down. SAL KHAN: And then after Paypal, then I mean-- to some degree, especially us in Silicon Valley, we kind of understand the Internet. We know people.\n\nPayPal's obviously of the scale that is noteworthy, but then SpaceX just seems really, you know-- well, one, how did you decide that I'm definitely going to do that? And then like what's the first thing that you do? How do you even go out-- I don't even know how to start trying to make a rocket company. ELON MUSK: Well, neither did I really. And in fact, the first three launches failed. So it's not as though it was like spot on.\n\nIt's like, did not hit the bull's eye. But SAL KHAN: But even getting to the point where you're launching rockets. I don't even how do you get there? One, how did you decide? And then what did you do on day one? Like, who did you call? Did you write a plan? Did you start-- I don't even know. ELON MUSK: Actually, the origin of SpaceX is that I was trying to figure out why we'd not sent any people to Mars.\n\nBecause the obvious next step after Apollo was to send people to Mars. But what in fact happened was that we sent a few people to the moon and then we didn't send anyone after that to the moon or Mars or anything. But if you'd asked people in 1969, what would 2013 look like, they would have said, there will be a base on the moon. We would have least sent some people to Mars. And maybe there'd even be a base on Mars.\n\nThere'd be like orbiting space hotels. And there'd be all this awesome stuff in space. And that's what people expected. And if you said, well, actually, the United States in 2013 will not be able to send anyone to orbit. But I'll tell you what will exist is that there'll be this device in your pocket that's like the size of-- smaller than a deck of cards that has access to all the world's information, and you can talk to any one on planet Earth.\n\nAnd even if you're like in some remote village somewhere so long as there's something called the Internet-- they wouldn't know what that means, of course-- then you would you be able to communicate with anyone instantly and have access to all of humanity's knowledge. They would have said, like bullshit. There's no way that that's going to be true. SAL KHAN: Right. Right. ELON MUSK: And yet we all have that. And space is not happening.\n\nSo I was trying to figure out like what was the deal here. And this was 2001. And it was just a friend of mine asked me, what am I going to do after Paypal. And I said, well, you know, I've always been interested in space, but I don't think there's anything that an individual could do in space, because it's the province of government, and usually a large government. But, I am curious as to when we're going to send some one to Mars.\n\nSo I went to the NASA website to try to figure out where is the place that tells you that. And I couldn't find that. So I was like, either I'm bad at looking at the website, or they have a terrible website, because surely there must be a date. SAL KHAN: That should be a big date. ELON MUSK: Yeah. This should be on the front page. And then I discovered actually that NASA had no plans to send people to Mars, or even really back to the moon.\n\nSo this was really was disappointing. I thought well, maybe this is a question of national will. Like do we to get people excited about space again? And try to get NASA a bigger budget, and then we would send people to Mars. And so I started researching the area, becoming more familiar with space, reading lots of books.\n\nAnd I came up with this idea to do so-called Mars oasis, which was to send a small greenhouse with seeds in dehydrated gel that upon landing, you hydrate the gel. You have green plants on a red background. The public responses to precedents and superlatives. So it would be the first life on Mars. The furthest that life's ever traveled. And you'd have this money shot of green plants on a red background.\n\nSo that seemed like it would get people pretty excited. So I started getting into this. And trying to figure out, OK, well can I afford to build a spacecraft? Because I had some money as a result of PayPal, but it had to fit within that budget. And I figured we had to do two missions, because if we only did one and it failed, then it might have like the opposite effect. SAL KHAN: But you were willing to bet the farm, so to speak, on this?\n\nELON MUSK: Yeah. Well, I figured I was willing to spend half the money that I got from PayPal with no expectation of return. Because I thought this was just something that was pretty important and yeah, it seemed like I could spend half the money I made on PayPal on this, and if that got NASA a bigger budget and resulted in us going to Mars, that would be a pretty good outcome.\n\nSAL KHAN: And when your friends or your family came up to you and said, look there's nations that can't do this. You're a guy, I mean you have some resources, what did you say or do or think? ELON MUSK: Well, so I had a lot of friends of mine try to talk me out of starting a rocket company, because they thought it was crazy. And one friend of mine made me watch a video of rockets blowing up.\n\nAnd there were just lots of people that thought it was a really crazy idea. And there was some people that had tried to start rocket companies, not succeeded. And they tried to talk me out of it. But the thing is that-- their premise for talking me out of it was, well, we think you're going to lose the money that you invest.\n\nI was like, well, that was my expectation anyway, so I don't really mind if I lose-- you I mean, I mind, but I mean it's not like I was trying to figure out the rank-ordered best way to invest money and on that basis chose space. It's not like that's-- I thought, wow-- SAL KHAN: You weren't looking at like money-market bonds, AAA bonds, rocket company. You weren't like-- ELON MUSK: I could do real estate. I could invest in shoe making. Anything.\n\nAnd, whoa, space is the highest ROI. That is not what-- it wasn't the premise. I just thought that it was important that humanity expand beyond Earth, and we weren't doing that, so maybe there was something I could do to spur that on. And then I was able to compress the costs of the spacecraft and everything down to a relatively manageable number. And I got stuck on the rocket. The US rockets were way too expensive.\n\nI ended up going to Russia-- I flew to Russia three times to negotiate a purchase of an ICBM. I tried to buy two of the biggest ICBMs in the Russian fleet in 2001 and 2002. And I actually negotiated a price. SAL KHAN: I'll just let that statement stand. I'm not even going to-- Well, actually, I have to-- like who did you call? ELON MUSK: You open the yellow pages. Go to ICBMs. Oh!\n\nSAL KHAN: How does this-- I don't want to get too much in to it but I'm curious about this one particular thing. You decide at some point you need to buy an ICBM? ELON MUSK: Yeah. Well, actually at first I tried to buy just a normal launch program that they use to launch satellites, but those are too expensive. SAL KHAN: I see. I see. ELON MUSK: The Boeing Delta II would have cost $65 million each, so two would have been $130 million.\n\nAnd then I was like, woah, OK, that breaks my budget right there. And I tried to negotiate with them. And that was not-- I did not make progress. SAL KHAN: How much does an ICBM go for? I'm curious what's the market rate for one of those? ELON MUSK: Well-- SAL KHAN: This is right after the fall, it might have gone up. ELON MUSK: Yeah, it's gone up a lot since then. But in 2001, it would've been about $10 million each.\n\nSo two would have been $20 million. And then I thought I could get the rest of the mission down to also around $10 million per, so we'd have a dual mission with like two identical launches, two identical spacecraft for roughly $40 million. And so I thought, OK, I can do that. SAL KHAN: But you must have had some like rocket scientists advising you at this point? This sounds like you were serious. I mean you were-- ELON MUSK: Yeah.\n\nI engaged a bunch of consultants and started to get familiar with the space industry. But then after the third trip to Russia, I came to realize that I was actually wrong about my first premise, that there was a lack of will. In fact, I think that there's a tremendous amount of will in the United States for space exploration. Because the United States is essentially a nation of explorers.\n\nI mean, it's a distillation of the human spirit of exploration. So of course it was quite silly of me to think that people lacked motivation. But what people don't want to think is that, OK, sending people to Mars is going to be so expensive that they'll have to give up health care or something. They're not going to do that. So it's got to be that going to Mars is not going to cause some meaningful drop in their standard of living.\n\nSo if it's like maybe a quarter of a percent or half a percent of GDP-- something like that is palatable. Anyways, so I thought, OK, it's not really going to maybe matter that much if I do this mission, because what really matters is having a way. So I was wrong-- I thought there wasn't enough will, but there actually was plenty of will, if people thought there was a way. So then I said, OK, well, I need to work on the way.\n\nHow hard is it really to make a rocket? Historically, all rockets have been expensive, so therefore, in the future, all rockets will be expensive. But actually that's not true. If you say, what is a rocket made of. And say, OK, it's made of aluminum, titanium, copper, carbon fiber, if you want to go that direction. And you can break down and say, what is the raw material cost of all these components.\n\nAnd if you have them stacked on the floor and could wave a magic wand so that the cost of rearranging the atoms was zero, then what would the cost of the rocket be. And I was like, wow, OK, it's really small. It's like 2% of what a rocket costs. So clearly it would be in how the atoms are arranged. So you've got to figure out to OK, how can we get the atoms in the right shape much more efficiently.\n\nAnd so I had a series of meetings on Saturdays with people some of whom were still working at the big aerospace companies, just to try to figure out is the some catch here that I'm not appreciating. And I couldn't figure it out. There doesn't seem to be any catch. So I started SpaceX. SAL KHAN: And you ended up-- you had some failures, but obviously some huge successes.\n\nWhat was the cost that you were able to build this rocket for relative to what they were being built for before? ELON MUSK: So let's see. For the Falcon 1, which is the first rocket we built. And the first three flights did not make it. In fact, we got progressively further. But like the first rocket came in and landed maybe a couple hundred yards away from the launch site, and tiny fragments.\n\nSo, yeah, anyway, that rocketed ended up costing around $6 million compared to other rockets in that class, which were about to $25 million. SAL KHAN: Wow. So significant? ELON MUSK: Yeah, like a quarter. But there's an even better step beyond that which is to make rockets reusable. Right now that is around what our comparison price is-- excluding the refurbished ICBMs.\n\nSo, if you say building a rocket from new, how does the SpaceX rocket compare to a rocket from Boeing or Lockheed? It's about a quarter of the price. However, if we make it reusable, then it can be two orders of magnitude cheaper. SAL KHAN: Two orders of magnitude cheaper. A 100th of the price? ELON MUSK: That's right. For you. SAL KHAN: Only today. Memorial day sale.\n\nAnd I've seen some-- you all are doing these vertical landings, like literally out of like the 1950s Sci-Fi movies. And that's what you're talking about? ELON MUSK: Yeah. Essentially, the rocket needs to come back and land at the launch site, and then reload propellant and take off again. Like an airplane in its reusability. SAL KHAN: How far do you think we are from that?\n\nWhen do you think-- your best guess, when we'll actually see that happening? ELON MUSK: Well, I'm hopeful we can do it next year. SAL KHAN: Oh, OK. Yeah. That's-- we've got some ambitious stuff at Khan Academy for the next year, too. So we can compare. We're redesigning the site. ELON MUSK: Right. We've been working on it for a long time. I should say, SpaceX has been around for 11 years, and thus far we have not recovered any rockets.\n\nWe recovered the spacecraft from orbit. So that was great. But none of our attempts to recover the rocket stages have been successful. The rocket stages have always blown up essentially on reentry. Now, we think we've figured out why that was the case. And it's a tricky thing, because Earth's gravity is really quite strong. And with an advanced rocket, you can do maybe 2% to 3% of your lift-off mass to orbit, typically.\n\nAnd then reusability subtracts 2% to 3% So then you've got like nothing to orbit or negative. And that's obviously not helpful. And so the trick is to try to shift that from say 2%, 3% in an expendable configuration to make the rocket mass efficiency, engine efficiency, and so forth, so much better that it moves to maybe around 3. 5% to 4% in expendable configuration.\n\nAnd then try to get clever about the reusability elements and try to drop that to around the 1. 5% to 2% level. So you have a net payload to orbit of about 2%. SAL KHAN: But you're doing it at one, two orders of magnitude cheaper. ELON MUSK: Yeah. Absolutely, because our Falcon 9 rocket cost about $60 million. But the propellant cost-- which is mostly oxygen-- it's two-thirds oxygen, one-third fuel-- is only about $200,000. SAL KHAN: Wow.\n\nELON MUSK: And it's much like a 747. It costs about as much to refuel our rocket as it does to refuel a 747 within-- well, pretty close, essentially. SAL KHAN: So assuming you all are successful, and you all have proven yourself to be successful on these audacious things in the past, I mean, what happens? I mean that seems like it's-- what happens in the next 5, 10 years in the space industry, if you all are successful there?\n\nI mean do we get to Mars? Do we have kind of market forces, commercialization of space starting to happen? ELON MUSK: Yeah. Let's see. Well, the first step is that we need to earn enough money to keep going as a company. So we have to make sure that we're launching satellites. Commercial satellites like broadcast communications, mapping, government satellites that do scientific missions. Earth-based or space-based missions. GPS satellites.\n\nThat kind of thing. And then also servicing the space station. Transferring cargo to and from the space station, which we've done a few times. And then taking people to and from the space station. So we've got to service the sort of Earth-based needs to launch satellites and that pays the bills. But in doing that keep improving the technology to a point where we can make full reusability work.\n\nAnd we have sufficient scale and sophistication to be able to take people to Mars. SAL KHAN: Wow. So you think this is going to be a reality? What's your best guess of when we're going to have someone on Mars? ELON MUSK: I think probably about 12 years. SAL KHAN: That's nothing. And you think it'll be a round trip? It won't just be some type of permanent colony on Mars? ELON MUSK: I think it's probably a round trip. It's not for sure.\n\nSAL KHAN: I could talk about this for-- people know, I'm-- ELON MUSK: Aspirational it'd be a round trip. SAL KHAN: This is mind blowing. And then on Tesla. I mean Tesla's obviously, from my vantage, it's a huge success. What do you think in that industry-- well, one, I'll ask kind of the same question. What did you think-- this is something that GM and Toyota and these massive multi-billion dollar organizations have been trying.\n\nWhat gave you the confidence to pursue it? And now that it seems to be a huge success, where do you think this industry's going to be the next 5, 10 years? ELON MUSK: Yes. So with Tesla, the goal is try to accelerate the advent of sustainable transport. I think it would happen anyway, just out of necessity. But because we have an un-priced externality in the cost of gasoline.\n\nWe weren't pricing in the environmental effects of CO2 in the oceans and atmosphere. That's causing the normal market forces to not function properly. And so the goal of Tesla is to try to act as a catalyst to accelerate those sort of normal forces. The normal sort of market reaction that would occur. We're trying to have a catalytic effect on that. And try to make it happen, I don't know, maybe 10 years sooner than it would otherwise occur.\n\nThat's the goal of Tesla. So that's the reason we're making electric cars and not any other kind of car. And we also supply powertrains to Toyota and to Mercedes and maybe to other car companies in the future to accelerate their production of electric vehicles. So that's the goal there. And so far, it's working out pretty well.\n\nSAL KHAN: I mean, I just saw a news report earlier today that you all sold more Model S's than-- you all are leading that segment of the industry. The Mercedes S class, the BMW 7 Series, or the Lexus LS400, or whatever it is. ELON MUSK: Yeah, actually, that seems to be the case. I didn't realize they sold so few cars in that segment. Because we don't sell that many cars.\n\nWe sell 5,000 a quarter, or 12,000-- SAL KHAN: Well, out here they seem like you know every-- ELON MUSK: Well, this is our home team. So it's-- we better sell a lot in the Bay Area. Because otherwise we're like-- SAL KHAN: And, well, I mean, similar thing. How did you start? What gave you the confidence?\n\nAnd do you see yourselves as kind of a major automotive, mainstream brand in 5,10 years, all the way down to competing with the Honda Accords and Civics? ELON MUSK: I mean, yeah. Our goal-- it's not to become a brand big brand or to compete with Honda Civics, rather to advance the cause of electric vehicles.\n\nAnd so we're just going to keep making more and more electric cars and driving the price point down until the industry is very firmly electric. Like maybe half of all cars made are electric or something like that. Which is not to say that we expect to make half of all cars. We want to just have that catalytic effect until at least that occurs.\n\nAnd I think the point at which we're approaching half of all new cars made are electric, then I think I would consider that to be the victory condition. And so the faster we can bring that day, the better. SAL KHAN: When would be your guess when that happens? ELON MUSK: Well, I made a bet with someone about three years ago that it would be sooner than 20 years. So it's 17 years from now. But that's conservative.\n\nI think it's probably maybe 13 or 14 years. SAL KHAN: Wow. Right when we're going to Mars. ELON MUSK: Right. SAL KHAN: It'll be exciting times. ELON MUSK: True. Exactly. I was just thinking about that. It was like, oh, those time frames are kind of coincident. The nature of new technology adoption is it tends to follow an S-curve.\n\nSo what usually happens is people under-predict it in in the beginning, because people tend to extrapolate in a straight line. And then they'll over-predict it at the midpoint, because there's late adopters. And then it'll actually take longer than people think at the mid-point, but much shorter than people think at the beginning. But I'm pretty excited about how things are going.\n\nAnd, in fact, I think that the pace of technology improvement in electric energy storage is really moving faster than anyone thinks. SAL KHAN: Wow. I got one more-- how are we doing on time? Where's Ester? Oh, 9 o'clock. So how much time do you have? I want to make sure we don't go over. ELON MUSK: Well, I guess maybe another 15 minutes. SAL KHAN: OK. So I'll finish with one last question and then we'll open it up.\n\nWhat advice do you have for us at Khan Academy? ELON MUSK: I don't know. You guys seem to be doing really great. So I was wondering if you had advice for me. SAL KHAN: Oh, no, well. ELON MUSK: Yeah. It seems like you're doing an amazing job of-- really super leveraged. I mean, obviously, a small team, and you're having a dramatic effect-- SAL KHAN: Yeah, half these people don't even work here.\n\nThere just like-- so it's like it's even-- ELON MUSK: Right. So it's, I think very impressive thing you're doing to spread knowledge and understanding throughout the world. SAL KHAN: The universe soon, if you hold up your end of the bargain. ELON MUSK: It's actually kind of funny. If you think, what is education? Like you're basically downloading data and algorithms into your brain. And it's actually amazingly bad in conventional education.\n\nBecause like it shouldn't be like this huge chore. So you're making it way, way better. But I think a lot of things that I would say, you've probably heard 100 times. And, in fact, are if not doing. The more you can game-ify the process of learning, the better. For my kids, I do not have to encourage them to play video games. I have to like pry them from their hands, like crack. SAL KHAN: Yes. ELON MUSK: It's like, drop that crack needle.\n\nSAL KHAN: You have that problem at your house, too. The crack is addictive. ELON MUSK: So to the degree that you can make somehow learning like a game, then it's better. And I think, unfortunately, a lot of education is very vaudevillian. You've got someone standing up there kind of lecturing at people. And they've done the same lecture 20 years in a row, and they're not very excited about it.\n\nAnd that lack of enthusiasm is conveyed to the students. They're not very excited about it. They don't know why they're there. Like why are we letting this stuff. We don't even know why. In fact, I think a lot of things that people learn that probably there's no point in learning them. Because they never use them in the future. SAL KHAN: Because who's going to launch a rocket into space? I mean, that's just like-- exactly, that never happens.\n\nELON MUSK: Well, you have to say-- people don't stand back and say, well, why are we teaching people these things. And we should tell them, probably, why we're teaching these things. Because a lot of kids are probably just in school, probably puzzled as to why they're there. I think if you can explain the why of things, then that makes a huge difference to people's motivation. Then they understand purpose. So I think that's pretty important.\n\nAnd just make it entertaining. But I think just in general conventional education should be massively overhauled. And I'm sure you pretty much agree with that. I mean the analogy I sometimes use is, have you seen like Batman, the Chris Nolan movie, the recent one. And it's pretty freaking awesome. And you've got incredible special effects, great script, multiple takes, amazing actors, and great sound, and it's very engaging.\n\nBut if you were to instead say, OK-- even if you had the same script, so at least it's same script. And you said, OK, now that script, instead of having movies, we're going to have that script performed by the local town troop. OK, and so in every small town in America, if movies didn't exist, they'd have to recreate The Dark Night. With like home-sewn costumes and like jumping across the stage. And not really getting their lines quite right.\n\nAnd not really looking like the people in the movie. And no special effects. And I mean that would suck. It would be terrible. SAL KHAN: That's right. Very-- ELON MUSK: That's education. SAL KHAN: So with that-- and I apologize to all of you guys for hogging up all of the time, because, obviously, I could talk for hours about this stuff. But we do have time, probably 5 or 10 minutes for a handful of questions.\n\nIf none of you all have any, I have about nine more. But, yes. SPEAKER 1: So I noticed-- I picked up two kind of themes from what you were discussing. One was somewhat audacious goals. And the other was I don't think I heard you use the word profit in anything that you spoke about. You seem to be-- each thing is pointed at like re-invigorating an industry or bringing back space missions.\n\nHow much of your success do you attribute to having really audacious goals or versus just not being focused on the short term, money coming in, or I don't know, investors? ELON MUSK: Unfortunately, one does have to be focused on the short time and money coming in when creating a company, because otherwise the company will die. So I think that a lot of times people think like creating company is going to be fun.\n\nI would say it's really not that fun. I mean there are periods of fun. And there are periods where it's just awful. And, particularly, if you're the CEO of the company, you actually have a distillation of all the worst problems in the company. There's no point in spending your time on things that are going right. So you're only spending your time on things that are going wrong.\n\nAnd there are things that are going wrong that other people can't take care of. So you have like the worst-- you have a filter for the crappest problems in the company. The most pernicious and painful problem. So I think you have to feel quite compelled to do it. And have a fairly high pain threshold. There's a friend of mine who says, starting a company is like starting into the abyss and eating glass. And there's some truth to that.\n\nThe staring into the abyss part is that you're going to be constantly facing the extermination of the company. Because most start ups fail. It's like 90% percent-- it could be 99% of start ups fail. So that's the staring into the abyss part. You're constantly saying, OK, if I don't get this right, the company will die, which can be quite stressful.\n\nAnd then the eating glass part is you've got to work on the problems that the company needs you to work on and not the problems you want to work on. And so you end up working on problems that you really wish you weren't working on. And so that's the eating glass part. And that goes on for a long time. SPEAKER 1: So how do you keep your focus on the big picture when you're constantly faced with, we could be out of business in a month?\n\nELON MUSK: Well, it's just a very small percentage of mental energy is on the big picture. Like you know where you're generally heading for and the actual path is going to be some sort of zigzaggy thing in that direction. You're trying not to deviate too far from the path that you want to be on, but you're going to have to that to some degree.\n\nBut I don't want to diminish the-- I think the profit motive is a good one, if the rules of an industry are properly set up. So there's nothing fundamentally wrong with profit. In fact, profit just means that people are paying you more for whatever you're doing than you're spending to create it. That's a good thing. And if that's not the case, then you'll be out of business. And rightfully so. Because you're not adding enough value.\n\nNow there are cases, of course, where people will do bad things in order to achieve profit, but that's actually quite unusual. Because usually the rules are set up mostly correctly. Like not completely, but mostly correctly. SAL KHAN: I think we have time for one more question. Joel. JOEL: Yeah, I have an important one. SAL KHAN: OK, very good. Yes, please. SPEAKER 3: No.\n\nJOEL: OK, so few months ago, you teased Hyperloop, and we haven't heard anything since. So, first of all, a few of us engineers were talking about it, and I think we have a few ideas, if you need help. But, if you feel comfortable, maybe you could tell us a little bit more. ELON MUSK: I was reading about the California high-speed rail, and it was quite depressing.\n\nBecause California taxpayers are going to be on the hook to build the most expensive high-speed rail per mile in the world-- and the slowest. Those are not the superlatives you want. And, it's like, damn, we're in California, we make super high-tech stuff. Why are we going to be spending-- now the estimates are around $100 billion-- for something that will take two hours to go from LA to San Francisco?\n\nI'm like, OK, well, I can get on a plane and do that it 45 minutes. It doesn't make much sense. And isn't there some better way to do it than that. So if you just say, OK, well what would you ideally want in a transportation system?\n\nYou'd say, OK, well you'd want something that relative to existing modes of transportation is faster-- let's say twice as fast-- costs half as much per ticket, can't crash, is immune to weather, and is-- you can make the whole thing like self-powering with like solar panels or something like that. That would be pretty-- SAL KHAN: That would be great, yes. ELON MUSK: --a good outcome. And so what would do that?\n\nAnd what's the fastest way short of inventing teleportation that you could do something like that? And some of the elements of that solution are fairly obvious, and some of them are not so obvious. And then the details-- the devil's in the details of actually making something like that work. But I came to the conclusion that there is something like that that could work. And would be practical. SAL KHAN: Is this around the evacuated tubes?\n\nThe vacuum tubes? Like the old bank-- ELON MUSK: It's something like that. SAL KHAN: But you haven't been more public with what this is? ELON MUSK: No. Although I did say that once Tesla was profitable that I would talk more about it. But, we haven't done our earnings call yet. So I think I'll probably do it after the earnings call. And the thing is I'm kind of strung out on things that I'm already doing.\n\nSo adding another thing-- it's like doesn't-- it's a lot SAL KHAN: Learning the guitar You could pick up all sorts of things. ELON MUSK: Right. I tried learning the violin. That's, by the way, a hard thing to learn. SAL KHAN: Yeah. Launching rockets, electric cars, revolutionizing transportation. Yeah, it's easy. ELON MUSK: I cannot play the violin at all. Very horrible.\n\nIf you think about the future, you want a future that's better than the past, and so if we had something like the Hyperloop, I think that would be like cool. You'd look forward to the day that was working. And if something like that, even if it was only in one place-- from LA to San Francisco, or New York to DC or something like that-- then it would be cool enough that it would be like a tourist attraction. It would be like a ride or something.\n\nSo even if some of the initial assumptions didn't work out, the economics didn't work out quite as one expected, it would be cool enough that like, I want to journey to that place just to ride on that thing. That would be pretty cool. And so that's I think how-- if you come with a new technology, it should feel like that.\n\nYou should really-- if you told it to an objective person, would they look forward to the day that that thing became available. And it would be pretty exciting to do something like that. Or an aircraft. Like I thought it was really disappointing when the Concorde was taking out of commission, and there was no supersonic transport available. And of course the 787 has had some issues.\n\nBut the thing is, the 787 even in the best case scenario is only a slightly better version of the 777. And it's like, OK, not that exciting. SAL KHAN: So this is something that you are working on? ELON MUSK: I wouldn't say working on it. SAL KHAN: And one day in the not-too-far future-- or there's some plans or consultants involved or something? SPEAKER 4: You called Russia. SAL KHAN: You made some phone calls to Russia.\n\nELON MUSK: No, every now and then, it's percolating away. I'm not actually thinking about it. But then they'll be some new element of that I'll think of. Oh, this would make it better. SAL KHAN: Fascinating. Well, I think I'm speaking for everyone. This is like the most epic possible conversation one could have over about the course of an hour. And I think all of us would love to chat with you for hours on end, but thank you so much.\n\nI know you have a lot of free time, so it probably wasn't that big of a deal for you to come here. But, it was a huge honor. And I think it's inspired all of us to go out and change the world and the universe. ELON MUSK: Cool. All right. SAL KHAN: Thank you very much. [APPLAUSE]"},"languages":["en"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vDwzmJpI4io"},{"id":"interview-with-bloomberg-2013-04-02","type":"interview","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LS2BCL6SWYI","title":"Interview with Bloomberg","titles":{"en":"Interview with Bloomberg","de":"Interview mit Bloomberg","fr":"Entretien avec Bloomberg"},"date":"2013-04-02","summary":"Betty Liu interviews Musk on Bloomberg TV about the Tesla Model S resale-value guarantee and financing.","text":"I want to first ask you I mean you've been working on this for several weeks as as you just explained to me uh earlier why do this now with the model S well I I thought it was important to to get a financing product out there that broadened the marketplace uh because with uh what we saw with with Solar City we had an incredibly good experience when we're able to offer a compelling easy to use accessible financing program we saw a dramatic increase in the in in the market the accessible market for for uh for solar and I think we'll see something similar to that with the with the model S so it's about it's about improving um and highlighting the true affordability of an electric car and then providing that residual value guarantee which is probably the\n\nnext question you're going to ask me um the uh the fact that the uh the model S we're we're guaranteeing that the value of the model S will be no less than that of a Mercedes S-Class after 3 years so a lot of people are worried about the residual value is it going to hold up what's going to happen to electric cars Tesla is guaranteeing that value and then as a as a further back stop I am personally guaranteeing that value and standing behind it well and you had you know I was listening on the conference call you had quite a few questions on what that personal guarantee exactly meant what does it exactly mean Elon what it means is that no matter what happens obviously I'm very optimistic about the future of Tesla I think it's going to do very well and\n\nI also think that the residual value of the model less will be be greater than the number we're guaranteeing that that's just a floor uh so uh so so it's I think it actually be more than that um but I'm stand I'm standing behind that guarantee with all of my assets not not just with with Tesla so no matter what um I will make sure that you have nothing to worry about if you buy a Model S right so so the idea is that look you're you're you have plenty of confidence in the future of Tesla but let's say Tesla went under then you would buy back all the Model S's out that have been done under this program that's exactly right okay why did you pick the Mercedes S-Class to be the compar you know the comparable car in terms of depreciation for the model S well\n\num daima is actually a partner of ours so dla is an investor we have a some um uh deals with da over the years many deals with da over the years we're providing the battery packing power Trin for the Mercedes bclass that's coming out uh I have a great deal of respect for the Mercedes S-Class many people consider it to be the the best uh premium sedan on the market and so I think that that makes for a good reference point uh in the case of the model S Elon you and I were talking a little bit uh ahead of this and and I know you were talking about how you really wanted uh the people that are covering this company to really look at this new deal from a consumer perspective so I got on your website and I clicked on Tesla and I looked at the financing options\n\nthat you were talking about with uh with Wells Fargo and US Bank One of the things I noticed though is that in the calculations that you have for the monthly payments uh you add in sort of cost benefits from things that other car companies might not you know you've got the savings coming out from electricity versus gas I get that uh but you also have sort of a you have something called a uh a business tax benefit I can get that as well perhaps however you have other things called a commuting benefit which is that you you know you make the argument on your website that uh electric vehicles are are allowed to use uh you know HOV lanes essentially and so that can save you $160 $7 a month you have avoid the gas station benefit that could save uh customers\n\n$100 a month that I'm not sure if I buy that Elon as a way to calculate what your overall payment will be at the end of the month yeah and and and you don't have to in the fact that's why we we provide the calculator so you can you can check or uncheck any of those options um and so if you if you don't think something applies to you then you can just um uncheck it and and see what the the cost is without that um and but but I mean the key thing is that if you buy this the 60 KW hour uh version of the car I think you may have clicked into the 85 which is the more expensive one both um if you okay yeah um but if you if you uh uh look at the 60 Kow car which is um essentially our mid-range car since we we canceled the 40 KW version um the the monthly payment\n\ntaking into account the cost of gasoline and just basically the the tax incentives that you're sure to get um gets you to around the the $5 or $600 a month payment option okay so even if you're saying even if you discounted some of those benefits I just talked to you about I mean I still I still got exactly uh I I didn't quite get $1,000 dollar but I I got a little bit under that so I see I see where you're coming from uh Elon now you're you're doing the you're doing this financing because you want to open this up to uh to more and more consumers so is it possible that you might see more demand than for 2013 and therefore you might exceed this 20,000 Target that you've been talking about well we always have to be cautious about forward-looking statements\n\nbut the things that I've I've made sort of hard commitments on um were the start of production of the model S the fact that we would do at least 20,000 units this year of deliveries and the third that we would achieve at least a 25% gross margin by the end of the year um and I'm very confident that that we will we will meet or exceed all of those promises obiously our goal is going to be to exceed right you would always want to do that of course uh Elon the the what puzzles me a little bit though is that uh you mentioned how you want to make this affordable for the uh you know for the average consumer but you also had to cancel the 40 kilowatt uh battery powered modeless because you didn't see as much Demand on that lower end as you saw in the higher\n\nend so how do you reconcile the two yeah that that's actually a really good question because we had an intense debate at Tesla about the 40 K Kow hour car and um and you know we we we we test drove some initial units and it just wasn't it wasn't a good product and one of the commitments I made at Tesla is that we will never produce a bad product just never I I don't care even if we could make money on it uh on on on a bad product we will not we will just not do it and and and I I just don't think the 40 Kow hour was was was a good product it was it was it felt hobbled like a hobbled horse um and and you'd always need to really have another car if you wanted to do longdistance trips and this I think what people don't don't quite understand about something\n\nlike say the leaf I mean I'm glad that that that uh that Nissan is doing electric cars and I encourage them to do Furs to to do more but if you've got an if you got an electric car that can only do short distances it means you need to have another car anytime you want to do long distances so you've actually got to buy two cars so that that like double to doubles the price of it it it it makes it sounds like you're like a lower cost car but it but it it really isn't but was but then but I'm I'm confused then Elon what was the problem was the problem was that it was it was too short of a range and that's why it wasn't appealing to consumers or was it because just mechanically technically it just wasn't uh up to par as the 85 kilowatt car well it it it's\n\nuh no mechanically it's I mean from a reliability standpoint it's fine the fundamental issue is that at 40 you just don't have enough range to make it a um a useful longdistance car okay um so it's it's like I said it's like a it's like a horse that's been HED and um and so it it just it it just wasn't a it just wasn't a compelling product um and it was also clear to us that customers were recognizing that because no hardly anyone was choosing it we only had 4% of our customers ever choose that that car um because the vast majority of customers recognized that it's not a good product and that they're voting with their wallet and so we thought well this is this is just silly we should not make a product that that we don't 100% believe in and neither do\n\nour customers well talking about that and kind of addressing that issue of trying to make electric cars more longer range you know vehicles that can go longer ranges a lot of people actually speculated that your announcement today was actually going to be about the supercharger Network so what can we what can we expect on that well um we we've actually got a number of announcements coming out in in the future we're going to probably put them out um with a Cadence of of every one to two weeks um and one of those announcements is going to be a very exciting super supercharger announcement um we've made a lot more progress on that front than I think most people realize we're also going to do um what I think is a very exciting announcement about um re-engineering\n\nof Tesla's service MH uh because just just as we we make the best car in the world we really want to have the best service in the world and um we need to do a few things to get there um and then there's then there's a third announcement that I won't quite talk about but I think is is pretty cool um except to say that if you're driving a Model S it's right under your nose are you going to a tweet about it though first uh maybe SEC just gave me just gave approval for such things which is comforting I can imagine uh Elon just quickly just on a few more notes this financing option that you've got for the for the model S will you eventually extend that out to the next model the model X absolutely yeah we're going to um extend and refine this financing product\n\nover the years for the model X and for for all of our future cars uh our goal with our goal is to make the most consumer friendly the to make the best financing product um and and we're going to um I I think we I think what we've debut today is is that thing um but we're going to keep making it even better over time","textByLang":{"en":"I want to first ask you I mean you've been working on this for several weeks as as you just explained to me uh earlier why do this now with the model S well I I thought it was important to to get a financing product out there that broadened the marketplace uh because with uh what we saw with with Solar City we had an incredibly good experience when we're able to offer a compelling easy to use accessible financing program we saw a dramatic increase in the in in the market the accessible market for for uh for solar and I think we'll see something similar to that with the with the model S so it's about it's about improving um and highlighting the true affordability of an electric car and then providing that residual value guarantee which is probably the\n\nnext question you're going to ask me um the uh the fact that the uh the model S we're we're guaranteeing that the value of the model S will be no less than that of a Mercedes S-Class after 3 years so a lot of people are worried about the residual value is it going to hold up what's going to happen to electric cars Tesla is guaranteeing that value and then as a as a further back stop I am personally guaranteeing that value and standing behind it well and you had you know I was listening on the conference call you had quite a few questions on what that personal guarantee exactly meant what does it exactly mean Elon what it means is that no matter what happens obviously I'm very optimistic about the future of Tesla I think it's going to do very well and\n\nI also think that the residual value of the model less will be be greater than the number we're guaranteeing that that's just a floor uh so uh so so it's I think it actually be more than that um but I'm stand I'm standing behind that guarantee with all of my assets not not just with with Tesla so no matter what um I will make sure that you have nothing to worry about if you buy a Model S right so so the idea is that look you're you're you have plenty of confidence in the future of Tesla but let's say Tesla went under then you would buy back all the Model S's out that have been done under this program that's exactly right okay why did you pick the Mercedes S-Class to be the compar you know the comparable car in terms of depreciation for the model S well\n\num daima is actually a partner of ours so dla is an investor we have a some um uh deals with da over the years many deals with da over the years we're providing the battery packing power Trin for the Mercedes bclass that's coming out uh I have a great deal of respect for the Mercedes S-Class many people consider it to be the the best uh premium sedan on the market and so I think that that makes for a good reference point uh in the case of the model S Elon you and I were talking a little bit uh ahead of this and and I know you were talking about how you really wanted uh the people that are covering this company to really look at this new deal from a consumer perspective so I got on your website and I clicked on Tesla and I looked at the financing options\n\nthat you were talking about with uh with Wells Fargo and US Bank One of the things I noticed though is that in the calculations that you have for the monthly payments uh you add in sort of cost benefits from things that other car companies might not you know you've got the savings coming out from electricity versus gas I get that uh but you also have sort of a you have something called a uh a business tax benefit I can get that as well perhaps however you have other things called a commuting benefit which is that you you know you make the argument on your website that uh electric vehicles are are allowed to use uh you know HOV lanes essentially and so that can save you $160 $7 a month you have avoid the gas station benefit that could save uh customers\n\n$100 a month that I'm not sure if I buy that Elon as a way to calculate what your overall payment will be at the end of the month yeah and and and you don't have to in the fact that's why we we provide the calculator so you can you can check or uncheck any of those options um and so if you if you don't think something applies to you then you can just um uncheck it and and see what the the cost is without that um and but but I mean the key thing is that if you buy this the 60 KW hour uh version of the car I think you may have clicked into the 85 which is the more expensive one both um if you okay yeah um but if you if you uh uh look at the 60 Kow car which is um essentially our mid-range car since we we canceled the 40 KW version um the the monthly payment\n\ntaking into account the cost of gasoline and just basically the the tax incentives that you're sure to get um gets you to around the the $5 or $600 a month payment option okay so even if you're saying even if you discounted some of those benefits I just talked to you about I mean I still I still got exactly uh I I didn't quite get $1,000 dollar but I I got a little bit under that so I see I see where you're coming from uh Elon now you're you're doing the you're doing this financing because you want to open this up to uh to more and more consumers so is it possible that you might see more demand than for 2013 and therefore you might exceed this 20,000 Target that you've been talking about well we always have to be cautious about forward-looking statements\n\nbut the things that I've I've made sort of hard commitments on um were the start of production of the model S the fact that we would do at least 20,000 units this year of deliveries and the third that we would achieve at least a 25% gross margin by the end of the year um and I'm very confident that that we will we will meet or exceed all of those promises obiously our goal is going to be to exceed right you would always want to do that of course uh Elon the the what puzzles me a little bit though is that uh you mentioned how you want to make this affordable for the uh you know for the average consumer but you also had to cancel the 40 kilowatt uh battery powered modeless because you didn't see as much Demand on that lower end as you saw in the higher\n\nend so how do you reconcile the two yeah that that's actually a really good question because we had an intense debate at Tesla about the 40 K Kow hour car and um and you know we we we we test drove some initial units and it just wasn't it wasn't a good product and one of the commitments I made at Tesla is that we will never produce a bad product just never I I don't care even if we could make money on it uh on on on a bad product we will not we will just not do it and and and I I just don't think the 40 Kow hour was was was a good product it was it was it felt hobbled like a hobbled horse um and and you'd always need to really have another car if you wanted to do longdistance trips and this I think what people don't don't quite understand about something\n\nlike say the leaf I mean I'm glad that that that uh that Nissan is doing electric cars and I encourage them to do Furs to to do more but if you've got an if you got an electric car that can only do short distances it means you need to have another car anytime you want to do long distances so you've actually got to buy two cars so that that like double to doubles the price of it it it it makes it sounds like you're like a lower cost car but it but it it really isn't but was but then but I'm I'm confused then Elon what was the problem was the problem was that it was it was too short of a range and that's why it wasn't appealing to consumers or was it because just mechanically technically it just wasn't uh up to par as the 85 kilowatt car well it it it's\n\nuh no mechanically it's I mean from a reliability standpoint it's fine the fundamental issue is that at 40 you just don't have enough range to make it a um a useful longdistance car okay um so it's it's like I said it's like a it's like a horse that's been HED and um and so it it just it it just wasn't a it just wasn't a compelling product um and it was also clear to us that customers were recognizing that because no hardly anyone was choosing it we only had 4% of our customers ever choose that that car um because the vast majority of customers recognized that it's not a good product and that they're voting with their wallet and so we thought well this is this is just silly we should not make a product that that we don't 100% believe in and neither do\n\nour customers well talking about that and kind of addressing that issue of trying to make electric cars more longer range you know vehicles that can go longer ranges a lot of people actually speculated that your announcement today was actually going to be about the supercharger Network so what can we what can we expect on that well um we we've actually got a number of announcements coming out in in the future we're going to probably put them out um with a Cadence of of every one to two weeks um and one of those announcements is going to be a very exciting super supercharger announcement um we've made a lot more progress on that front than I think most people realize we're also going to do um what I think is a very exciting announcement about um re-engineering\n\nof Tesla's service MH uh because just just as we we make the best car in the world we really want to have the best service in the world and um we need to do a few things to get there um and then there's then there's a third announcement that I won't quite talk about but I think is is pretty cool um except to say that if you're driving a Model S it's right under your nose are you going to a tweet about it though first uh maybe SEC just gave me just gave approval for such things which is comforting I can imagine uh Elon just quickly just on a few more notes this financing option that you've got for the for the model S will you eventually extend that out to the next model the model X absolutely yeah we're going to um extend and refine this financing product\n\nover the years for the model X and for for all of our future cars uh our goal with our goal is to make the most consumer friendly the to make the best financing product um and and we're going to um I I think we I think what we've debut today is is that thing um but we're going to keep making it even better over time"},"languages":["en"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LS2BCL6SWYI"},{"id":"metaphysical-milkshake-2013-03-18","type":"interview","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ns0IHCj2q-E","title":"Metaphysical Milkshake","titles":{"en":"Metaphysical Milkshake","de":"Metaphysical Milkshake","fr":"Metaphysical Milkshake"},"date":"2013-03-18","summary":"Rainn Wilson interviews Musk on becoming a multi-planet species, Mars colonization and life's big questions.","text":"[ Explosion ] -Aah! -Well, well, well. Welcome to my talk show. -Aaaaaaaaaaah! -[ Chuckles ] -Take a sip from your soul On a metaphysical milkshake -[ Chuckles ] Tasty chicken burger. [ Laughs ] Sure. [ Laughs ] -You may be a billionaire... -Yeah. -... entrepreneur, inventor... man extraordinaire. You're not getting any of my chicken burger. -All right. No problem. I can do without the chicken burger. -It's so good. -[ Laughs ] -Mr.\n\nMusk -- Can I call you \"Mr. Musk\"? -Yeah, sure. -Mr. Musk invented -- helped co-create PayPal and then Tesla Motors, and then -- if that's not enough -- SpaceX. And now you're in Solar -- What's it called, SolarCity? -Right. SolarCity, yeah. -You may be the first billionaire that has ever been in the back of a van before. So, as you know, this van has some very special, peculiar qualities. Where do you want to go? Anywhere.\n\nAnywhere in the universe. -Mars. Wow, we're there. -Why did you want to go to Mars? -Because I think that's the best place where humanity can become a multi-planet species and a spacefaring civilization because I think that's one of the most important things that we could accomplish. In fact, I think it's important enough that it would actually fit on the scale of evolution itself.\n\nYou know, I think it's perhaps at least as important as life going from the oceans to land. The probability of consciousness existing for a long time would be much greater if we're on two planets. -Why would consciousness exist for a long time if we're on two planets? -Well, because if something catastrophic were to happen to Earth, then life would still exist on another planet. -You are much smarter than I am.\n\n-[ Laughs ] -So, I just want to say that for the record. Now, how would that work for people to go Mars? Like, what would happen? -Well, you need to have a big spaceship that takes you to Mars, and then you have to land on Mars. -And then, what do the humans do when they're there? -Well, I think initially -- -Volleyball or what? -Initially, people would work on creating a Mars base.\n\nWe would have to live in pressurized domes, but over time you could terraform the planet and make it like earth. -But it's cold over there on Mars, isn't it? -Right, so you have to warm it up. -You'd need a lot of down comforters over there. -You would actually heat the planet up by emitting greenhouse gases, kind of what we're doing on Earth. We're learning a lot about that here on Earth.\n\nSo, we just do that on Mars, and that would warm the planet up. It would thicken the atmosphere. And then, the atmosphere on Mars is carbon dioxide, so as you grow plants the plants would convert the carbon dioxide into oxygen. -You can grow Earth plants in Mars soil? -That's correct. -Now, does this ship come back? -Yeah.\n\n-When you go to Mars, are you all going to go, like, \"I'm going to die on Mars,\" so you take healthy people that are just gonna plan on living the rest of their 30 to 40 years on Mars or something like that? -I think most people would go to Mars to move to Mars, but the spaceships would come back because otherwise it would be way too expensive to travel to Mars. -Could you imagine the first baby born on Mars? -Right, that would be huge.\n\n-That would be freaky, right? -Yeah. A lot of pressure for that poor kid. -Right. -He'd be a Martian. -The first Martian. -The first Martian! -That's right. -What is it like to be named after the scent of an animal? -It certainly led to a lot of mocking in junior high. That's for sure. -I know what that feels like. My name is Rainn. -[ Chuckling ] Right, right. -So, I totally believe in science/ I mean science isn't something you believe in.\n\nIt's something that just is. But you had referenced kind of the reverse climate change. But what drives me crazy is the climate change deniers. And what is up with that? Has it just become so politicized that they have just stopped believing scientists? -I think often that it's phrased in the wrong way. Because they'll often say, \"Well, how do we know for certain that CO2 emissions cause global warming?\"\n\nIf you ask a scientist, \"Do you know anything for certain,\" they will generally say, \"Well, no, we don't know for certain. We know hardly anything for certain.\" -Right. -But the overwhelming opinion among the scientific community is that CO2 is causing global warming.\n\nAnd given that we will run out of oil anyway, it doesn't make any sense to put trillions of tons of CO2 in the atmosphere and see what happens, which could be catastrophic, when we have to find a non-hydrocarbon-based way of generating and consuming energy anyway. So, it's just a dumb experiment. -Can I borrow $1. 3 billion -- just for a month. I'll pay you back. -All right. -You got started as an entrepreneur when you were really young.\n\nWhat would you say to young people that want to change the world, that have big ideas? What advice could you give? -I mean, the biggest thing I think people fail to do is that they're too afraid to try things -- that they shouldn't be afraid of failing, and they should just go and do it. -Lightning round -- boom. What do you worship? -Well, I don't really worship anything, but I do devote myself to the advancement of humanity using technology.\n\n-What can technology never replace? -I think human feeling. -What fuels your creativity? -Pressure, necessity. -What do you do to unplug and relax? -I go to Burning Man. That's pretty fun. -You go to Burning Man? -Sure. -What do you do there? -[ Chuckles ] -It's just like a crazy, sort of \"Mad Max\" meets Vegas meets \"Alice in Wonderland.\" -Do you put on a hippie wig? -No, I usually have some kind of costume. I went as Darth Vader once.\n\n-Do you believe there's life on other planets? -I think there's a good chance that there's simple life on other planets. It's much more of a question as to whether there's complex life like consciousness. -With all the trillions of stars and all those trillions of planets, you don't think that -- Isn't that an arrogant statement to say, \"We're probably the most evolved in all of the universe? -Um, well, no, I'm not saying that we probably are.\n\nJust I think that the chances of consciousness are much, much lower, particularly in our galaxy. -Can science and religion coexist? -Probably not. -Okay. -[ Laughs ] -Do you pray? -I didn't even pray when I almost died of malaria. -Wow, that's really not praying. -Right. -What's your life's big question? What's the big question you personally wrestle with?\n\n-The question of what is the question, you know, like from \"The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.\" The answer is \"the universe.\" What's the question? -One of the world's greatest entrepreneurs is here in the back of my van talking about how he had these dreams -- space travel, new energy sources, building cars, being a real-life Tony Stark. What's your big ideas? How do you want to be an entrepreneur?\n\nWhat kind of passion or dream do you want to pursue to make the world a better place to take humanity to the next level? Can you upload it on a video or write it down on the comments below? Elon, would you look at the videos and the comments? -Sure, absolutely. -Great. I'll tell you what -- I'll give you a bite. -[ Chuckles ] -You give me a Tesla. -Sounds like a good deal. -Deal? -Deal. [ Laughs ] -Yes! -[ Laughs ] -Score! -SoulPancake Subscribe","textByLang":{"en":"[ Explosion ] -Aah! -Well, well, well. Welcome to my talk show. -Aaaaaaaaaaah! -[ Chuckles ] -Take a sip from your soul On a metaphysical milkshake -[ Chuckles ] Tasty chicken burger. [ Laughs ] Sure. [ Laughs ] -You may be a billionaire... -Yeah. -... entrepreneur, inventor... man extraordinaire. You're not getting any of my chicken burger. -All right. No problem. I can do without the chicken burger. -It's so good. -[ Laughs ] -Mr.\n\nMusk -- Can I call you \"Mr. Musk\"? -Yeah, sure. -Mr. Musk invented -- helped co-create PayPal and then Tesla Motors, and then -- if that's not enough -- SpaceX. And now you're in Solar -- What's it called, SolarCity? -Right. SolarCity, yeah. -You may be the first billionaire that has ever been in the back of a van before. So, as you know, this van has some very special, peculiar qualities. Where do you want to go? Anywhere.\n\nAnywhere in the universe. -Mars. Wow, we're there. -Why did you want to go to Mars? -Because I think that's the best place where humanity can become a multi-planet species and a spacefaring civilization because I think that's one of the most important things that we could accomplish. In fact, I think it's important enough that it would actually fit on the scale of evolution itself.\n\nYou know, I think it's perhaps at least as important as life going from the oceans to land. The probability of consciousness existing for a long time would be much greater if we're on two planets. -Why would consciousness exist for a long time if we're on two planets? -Well, because if something catastrophic were to happen to Earth, then life would still exist on another planet. -You are much smarter than I am.\n\n-[ Laughs ] -So, I just want to say that for the record. Now, how would that work for people to go Mars? Like, what would happen? -Well, you need to have a big spaceship that takes you to Mars, and then you have to land on Mars. -And then, what do the humans do when they're there? -Well, I think initially -- -Volleyball or what? -Initially, people would work on creating a Mars base.\n\nWe would have to live in pressurized domes, but over time you could terraform the planet and make it like earth. -But it's cold over there on Mars, isn't it? -Right, so you have to warm it up. -You'd need a lot of down comforters over there. -You would actually heat the planet up by emitting greenhouse gases, kind of what we're doing on Earth. We're learning a lot about that here on Earth.\n\nSo, we just do that on Mars, and that would warm the planet up. It would thicken the atmosphere. And then, the atmosphere on Mars is carbon dioxide, so as you grow plants the plants would convert the carbon dioxide into oxygen. -You can grow Earth plants in Mars soil? -That's correct. -Now, does this ship come back? -Yeah.\n\n-When you go to Mars, are you all going to go, like, \"I'm going to die on Mars,\" so you take healthy people that are just gonna plan on living the rest of their 30 to 40 years on Mars or something like that? -I think most people would go to Mars to move to Mars, but the spaceships would come back because otherwise it would be way too expensive to travel to Mars. -Could you imagine the first baby born on Mars? -Right, that would be huge.\n\n-That would be freaky, right? -Yeah. A lot of pressure for that poor kid. -Right. -He'd be a Martian. -The first Martian. -The first Martian! -That's right. -What is it like to be named after the scent of an animal? -It certainly led to a lot of mocking in junior high. That's for sure. -I know what that feels like. My name is Rainn. -[ Chuckling ] Right, right. -So, I totally believe in science/ I mean science isn't something you believe in.\n\nIt's something that just is. But you had referenced kind of the reverse climate change. But what drives me crazy is the climate change deniers. And what is up with that? Has it just become so politicized that they have just stopped believing scientists? -I think often that it's phrased in the wrong way. Because they'll often say, \"Well, how do we know for certain that CO2 emissions cause global warming?\"\n\nIf you ask a scientist, \"Do you know anything for certain,\" they will generally say, \"Well, no, we don't know for certain. We know hardly anything for certain.\" -Right. -But the overwhelming opinion among the scientific community is that CO2 is causing global warming.\n\nAnd given that we will run out of oil anyway, it doesn't make any sense to put trillions of tons of CO2 in the atmosphere and see what happens, which could be catastrophic, when we have to find a non-hydrocarbon-based way of generating and consuming energy anyway. So, it's just a dumb experiment. -Can I borrow $1. 3 billion -- just for a month. I'll pay you back. -All right. -You got started as an entrepreneur when you were really young.\n\nWhat would you say to young people that want to change the world, that have big ideas? What advice could you give? -I mean, the biggest thing I think people fail to do is that they're too afraid to try things -- that they shouldn't be afraid of failing, and they should just go and do it. -Lightning round -- boom. What do you worship? -Well, I don't really worship anything, but I do devote myself to the advancement of humanity using technology.\n\n-What can technology never replace? -I think human feeling. -What fuels your creativity? -Pressure, necessity. -What do you do to unplug and relax? -I go to Burning Man. That's pretty fun. -You go to Burning Man? -Sure. -What do you do there? -[ Chuckles ] -It's just like a crazy, sort of \"Mad Max\" meets Vegas meets \"Alice in Wonderland.\" -Do you put on a hippie wig? -No, I usually have some kind of costume. I went as Darth Vader once.\n\n-Do you believe there's life on other planets? -I think there's a good chance that there's simple life on other planets. It's much more of a question as to whether there's complex life like consciousness. -With all the trillions of stars and all those trillions of planets, you don't think that -- Isn't that an arrogant statement to say, \"We're probably the most evolved in all of the universe? -Um, well, no, I'm not saying that we probably are.\n\nJust I think that the chances of consciousness are much, much lower, particularly in our galaxy. -Can science and religion coexist? -Probably not. -Okay. -[ Laughs ] -Do you pray? -I didn't even pray when I almost died of malaria. -Wow, that's really not praying. -Right. -What's your life's big question? What's the big question you personally wrestle with?\n\n-The question of what is the question, you know, like from \"The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.\" The answer is \"the universe.\" What's the question? -One of the world's greatest entrepreneurs is here in the back of my van talking about how he had these dreams -- space travel, new energy sources, building cars, being a real-life Tony Stark. What's your big ideas? How do you want to be an entrepreneur?\n\nWhat kind of passion or dream do you want to pursue to make the world a better place to take humanity to the next level? Can you upload it on a video or write it down on the comments below? Elon, would you look at the videos and the comments? -Sure, absolutely. -Great. I'll tell you what -- I'll give you a bite. -[ Chuckles ] -You give me a Tesla. -Sounds like a good deal. -Deal? -Deal. [ Laughs ] -Yes! -[ Laughs ] -Score! -SoulPancake Subscribe"},"languages":["en"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ns0IHCj2q-E"},{"id":"sxsw-2013-03-09","type":"interview","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LeQMWdOMa-A","title":"SXSW","titles":{"en":"SXSW","de":"SXSW","fr":"SXSW"},"date":"2013-03-09","summary":"SXSW Interactive keynote interview where Musk shows reusable rocket footage and discusses Tesla and space.","text":"thank you and good afternoon so we have a lot to cover Elon does a lot of things um there is at the moment one of his spaceships docked to this the space station uh the dragon spaceship this is the third time uh that it's been docked second commercial one it was launched last week many of you may have followed the launch but there was drama you know there were solar panels and all this kind of stuff we could follow it on your Twitter feed yeah Rock drama what's it can you just tell us what it's like to be Elon Musk in the control room during a launch when something happens when there's an issue uh well it's I mean it's extremely nerve-wracking I mean it's the thing about rocket launch is that all of your work is distilled into these few minutes particularly\n\nthe the first several seconds around uh the the liftoff because the worst thing that could happen with a rocket in touch word is uh if if if if you have an engine failure or some some huge failure right above the Launchpad and the whole thing can come down with about a million pounds of TNT equivalent and destroy the whole Launchpad that would be that that's what's going through my mind if case you're wondering that's actually what I'm thinking about [ __ ] um so when it clears the lightning towers and it's gotten further enough away from uh not actually destroying the Launchpad then uh then it's that's one sort of go down a notch on on um you know know uh the fear and anxiety and then after first stage separation that's another one when the second stage\n\nlights up so it's sort of you going down um in intensity as the rocket is going up uh and the the thing is that the first three rocket launchers that we had failed okay and then the first one failed quite close to the Launchpad almost destroyed launch pad in fact I SP that day picking up rocket pieces off the reef uh which is which sucks so I think like there's a pretty powerfully ingrained fear response um as a result of that because three in a row just you know and uh the the image of those rocket failures kind of going through my mind as I'm seeing the rocket launch so that's what's going on and then in this case um you made it through the the stage separation but then there was an issue with the solar cells um tell me a little bit how you sort of\n\nspotted the problem diagnosed it what does the team do I mean you got there in the end but um how's it work yeah so uh the solar panels were actually okay but uh and the rocket launch went went really well so that was not a problem uh where things kind of went AR right was after spacecraft separation we try to initialize the four threr pods so there there four threr pods with a combined total of 18 engines and uh the system is designed with a huge amount of redundancy so it can take all sorts of failures and still complete its Mission that's that's the whole way it's been made um in fact it can it can work with even if it has only two of the four Thruster pods working you know they can still do a mission um so three weren't working wow um and uh that\n\nwhich was a huge puzzle like why are three not working because these things are cross strapped so you'd kind of think that either maybe one wouldn't work or a cross strap pair wouldn't work but not three it was really really strange so um so so we had the spacecraft just going through kind of free drift in space like we're just tumbling um and and which makes also difficult to to communicate with because the antennas are like pointing you know every which way you can imagine so we had all we had was was a a very slight 2 kilobit uh occasional two 2 kilobit Link that would go in and out um and and that was an omnidirectional signal beaming off the NASA tedra satellite system um so in order to actually improve the the we first had to improve the bandwidth\n\nso we we actually asked the Air Force if we could have some of their longrange Camry scanners can can would they give us access and we have this um communication system that we call the mega proxy so we had to uh recode the mega proxy to go through the air force longrange dishes to to blast the the spacecraft with enough intensity to be able to upload new code uh to try to fix the problem and uh so so we wrote some new some new software to um essentially pressure slam the uh two of the three oxidizer tanks that were um refusing to pressurize um and it turned out I think we've figured out the problem which is that there's a there was a slight change made to a check valve that was in three of the tanks and on the other and we're able to replicate that problem\n\nin the ground later um and and we're able to to to basically have the have the system build up pressure Upstream then release that pressure and slam the valve um so we're trying to give it the sort of the spacecraft equivalent of the heck maneuver basically um and and then we got one of the pods to that looked like it was making progress and uh we we didn't want to unfill the solar panels until we had at least two pods active so we could we could go from sort of drifting to to an active hold uh but then the the the temperatures of the solar panels which are in these protective covers was dropping uh and it can drop to like almost absolute zero if it's pointing in at dark space uh so uh so it was dropping dropping dropping and we're like okay [ __ ] we\n\nbetter release the solar panels um otherwise they could literally freeze in place um and so we ran a simulation to see what what would what would happen um and it's actually slightly beneficial and it's kind of like when a skater you know when a skater uh puts her arms out um it slows down pull them in it speeds up so when actually when the the arms went out when the solar pan arrays went out it slowed down the rate of rotation actually slightly helped us with um maintaining communication with the spacecraft and um so then we're able to uh with with that precious lamp thing get get get a part uh active then then then a third one and then a fourth one then we got all four working and we're able to continue the mission duck with the space station in fact\n\ndragon is currently ducked with the space station right now and um if if all goes well we'll return uh to Earth in about a week or two that sounds terrifying yeah wow that was that was Hardcore I don't want to go through that again okay um you are not just here in in in Austin for South by Southwest but also to meet with the Texas legislature to talk about possibly a launch base here in Texas tell us more about that um yeah so right now we've got uh two main launch locations one is Cape Canaveral in Florida and the other is uh venberg Air Force Base in California um and so they cap naral is good for kind of Eastward launches uh vanderberg for southernly launches and we figure we need a a third launch site that's kind of a commercial launch site you know\n\nit's not um because cape nille and vur got Air Force baces um which is cool and it's obviously there's an important need for air force space launch bases as there is for Air Force uh airports um but then there's also a need for commercial airports and just like you wouldn't expect commercial airliners to land um at an Air Force Base in a normal course of events um it makes sense to have a commercial space port um and we need to be able to launch Eastward um and we want to be close to the equator um so that basically means uh the potential states are Virginia through Texas um going you're going south um Hawaii and Puerto Rico because the other things we need to stay on on US Territory because um rocket technology like we're doing is considered an advanced\n\nweapons technology so it's very difficult to uh export that if you will to other countries um and uh anyway so those are our options right right now Texas is arguably the leading candidate um but uh we need certain legislation passed that's supportive of space launch um I don't think it's particularly controversial um but one of the things we need for example is we need to be able to close the beach when we're doing a launch and Texas has the open beaches act it's like okay you know we we we can't launch if there's someone right right next to the rocket you know on the beach um so that's I don't like I said I don't think it's a particularly uh controversial thing it's pretty straightforward um and and then and then we we we kind of need a littleit of\n\nprotection for kind of the the one in 10,000 person case who who complains about the thing like we had this dude who filed a lawsuit against us for our rocket development site in in Central Texas near Waco he's like not even in the same county um he's in a neighboring County and he like also thinks like the ca is listening to his brain waves um so we need like just a little bit of protection for for people like that so we're not like spending a ton of time in court um so that's basically what we're asking for it's nothing nothing major um and uh I I think it's likely to to move forward so I think you know if if things go as expected there's this it's likely that we'll have a l site in Texas which I think be really cool around when um so it depends on\n\nhow the environmental approvals go and all that but I think um I think we if if things go well I mean not all not all of it's in our hands so but assuming that things go as expected you know there'd be a decision this year and then we start construction next year and then and probably the first launches would take place in uh from there in 2 to three years terrific yeah um so um Falcon 9 or the the rocket that launched dragon is a traditional rocket which is to say it's disposable bits but you're essentially you're ultimately focused on reusable rockets and grasshopper is the name of that can you talk a little bit about what's why reusable what's different about reusable and I think you probably have some things to show as well yeah absolutely so reusability\n\nis extremely important um if you think it's important that Humanity extend beyond Earth um and become multiplet species and all that um and I mean it's super important I thought I think it's also incredibly obvious common sense like you can imagine watching like Star Trek and then they they got a new starship after every every trip that would be pretty silly um and and and every uh motor transport that we're used to like cars Planes Trains automobiles horses bikes they're all reusable um and but but not rockets and if if we can't make rockets reusable the cost is just prohibitive the the uh like the cost of the fuel and oxygen on a falcon9 is 0.\n\n3% of the cost of the rocket wow so it's basically it's a very tiny number it's it's very similar to uh to an airplane so it's how much does it cost to fuel up an airplane um and how much the cost of buy an airplane they're very different things so if if we're if humanity is ever to expand beyond Earth and establish a self-sustaining base on another planet it's critical that we solve this problem whether it's SpaceX or someone else someone has to solve the problem um and we can have a 100-fold reduction in the cost of space flight um so so that's what SpaceX has been trying to do um and really that's been the goal since the beginning of the company so so far I've not been very successful uh in that in that regard so but I I think we kind of have a handle\n\non it I think I think we've got a we've got a design that in the simulations in and in CAD and so forth it it it closes like it should work if we can build that thing it should work and uh in fact it may be worth just rolling the reusability videoos so people have a sense of what I'm talking about I don't know where that plays but behind us in front of us can people in the audience see that oh there we go right all right so what you're seeing here is that the the first stage after stage separation the first stage turns around boosts back to the Launchpad um and then lands propulsively with landing gear it's kind of how rocket should land that's that's the upper stage this is the this is the quick version of the video obviously and then you seeing Dragon\n\nversion two so Dragon version 2 will land on thrusters with landing gear with the as accurately as a helicopter so it can land anywhere on Earth as with with the accuracy of a helicopter one last question about space before we turn to to cars um you've talked before about how you decideed to get into this you were you founded you co-founded PayPal um you don't really I mean you have a Physics degree you know something about about you know the underlying mechanics but you didn't have any space experience right you decided I think on a train to go to Mars and decided that you could out compete NASA or that you could get to Mars you could get to space faster cheaper better than the one of the largest well the largest space agency in the world how did you\n\nget that confidence uh so um well I think first of all I should say maybe give some of a preface to um what happened before starting SpaceX um in fact the way I sort of got into space was um to do I I was really disappointed that we had not sent anyone to M that we had not progressed Beyond Apollo um and I kept waiting for when we would and it just didn't happen uh year after year and and so a friend of mine asked me about what I wanted to do after PayPal and I said well you know I was always curious about space but I didn't think about that there was anything I could do do in space and and I went to the NASA website to just see when are we going to Mars and I couldn't find find that out uh I thought maybe I it was there but I well hidden or something\n\nbut um so so then I thought well perhaps this is a question of of will is there sufficient will to do this and and the first idea I came up with was actually to do a philanthropic mission to send a small Greenhouse to the surface of Mars with seeds in dehydrated gel that would hydrate upon landing and you'd have this cool Greenhouse with these green plants on a red background that would be the money shot um and and and then uh you know people like precedents and superlatives so it would be the first PL first life on another planet furthest the life's ever traveled and uh and that would get people excited and you also learn about a lot about what it to support Earth PLS Earth plants in a greenhouse on Mars um the the whole purpose of that was to get people\n\nexcited about sending people to Mars and increase NASA's budget so that was my whole goal I was going to basically torch yeah it it was not had nothing to do with competing with NASA in fact my goal was to increase their budget um and uh and and I should say that today NASA is our biggest customer um I mean um we've got almost 50 launches and uh about a quarter of those are finesse that but 34 34 commercial but one quarter NASA um and NASA's been incredibly supportive and helpful and we wouldn't be where we are today without without the help of NASA so it's not it's really got nothing to do with competing with NASA it's really just about what do we need to do to have an exciting inspiring future in space that that's that's what I think really matters\n\nbut at the end of the day you didn't end up raising the fun the money to pay NASA to do the mission you end up doing building your own company and and ideally to do it cheaper than government's good yeah um the I so I was able to to figure out how to get the cost of the spacecraft and the greenhouse and the communication system way less than it normally would cost for such a thing I got stuck on the rocket um and I went to to Russia three times to try to buy a couple of their biggest icbms um this is about this is in 2001 late 2001 and 2002 um there was definitely in interesting experience uh and uh I I sort of got the feeling I could have bought the nuke too but don't want to go there um and then when I when I got back on from the third trip to Russia\n\num that that's when I thought okay look uh even if we do even if we buy these these icbms from Russia um I I I I I thought it I thought my initial supposition was wrong um and so what what I thought really was that we'd lost the world to explore that we'd lost the world to push the the boundary and and and in retrospect that was actually a very foolish error uh because the United States is a nation of explorers United States is a distillation of the human Spirit of exploration it's ludicrous to to to actually in retrospect to have made such an assumption um but people need to believe that it's possible and that it's not going to it's not going to bankrupt them it's not they're not going to have to give up something important like healthcare uh you know\n\nit's going to be a cost that isn't going to meaningfully affect their their standard of living and I think the United States would absolutely be super super excited uh about uh sending people to Mars and people I think a lot of people really wish that that would occur anyway so that was um that was what I uh came to the conclusion of and and I thought well if if we don't make a difference in the cost of the rocket of the transport system it's all it doesn't matter um it's it's not like I said it's not a question of will it's a question of way um and so that's when I came back and started the SpaceX but when I started SpaceX there wasn't with the perspective of like oh we'll just you know take over the world and with with awesome Rockets I don't know what\n\nthe pr gu is doing I was like clueless um I I thought the most likely outcome was that we would fail and and the first three rockets did fail so and you put all your money into it between Tesla SpaceX and Solar City all in yeah that wasn't the plan at the beginning by the way and Peter Tails says we don't think big anymore he must have interesting conversations with him about that uh well you know Peter's been a big supporter actually so he's uh um he invested in in uh SpaceX at at a very important time in 2008 uh before we reached orbit so after our third failure but before our first success so you know big credit to Peter and um Luke NOK and the other guys at Founders spond basically my my my buddies from PayPal my buddies from PayPal saved my butt\n\nyou know it was really really good so so let's talk about cars um uh many many in the audience May recollect the notorious New York Times review of the model S yes exactly of the model S um earlier this year yeah and your reaction to that review and the times reaction to your reaction and and and the effect on your share price and on orders and all that and without rehashing the review or the facts I'd like you just to postmortem the entire experience wait how do I not do I do postmortem without any facts or anything post postmortem postmortem your reaction okay to the review and what you know put you on the couch and what would you do differently today having seen the way it all played out um well I think um I think there's one thing I didn't do maybe\n\nstill should which is to to to post the the rebuttal to the rebuttal CU I I withheld that and waited for the public editor I sent that information to the public editor waited for her to do her sort of thing and she came down kind of on the side of Tesla with respect to the fact that the article was an error but but disagreed on the motive on the ethics yes um and um cuz you you impune both facts and ethics I I did yes um and and and I think it was I I think it was I would call it a low- grade uh ethics violation not not like a big one I don't think he thought he was doing anything particularly terrible but I I would call it a low grade low grade violation and not not not of the Jason Blair you know crazy fabrication variety but I I would call it a low\n\ngrade it was not in good faith if that that that's that's that's an important important Point um and uh and I I probably should have posted that rebuttal to make that clear but I didn't do it that's what I regret so the only change you would make is that the very last bit the rebuttal that you wrote but that has not been published you would get maybe I should you would get out there yeah so you would continue to use the same language in the same way in your I don't think the language was in accurate I really don't you've often you've often said that one of your management techniques one of the secrets of your success is that you listen to NE negative feedback yes was a times forev youw not didn't fall into the category of negative feedback I have no problem\n\nwith negative feedback I have a problem with nor do I have a problem with critical reviews if I had a problem with critical reviews I would spend all my time battling critical reviews um there have been hundreds of of negative articles hundreds and yet I've only spoken out a few times I I don't have a problem with critical reviews I have a problem with false reviews all right um one of the technologies that you had to um um you know basically develop to near Perfection or at least or at least work on hardest with lithium batteries um for the electric cars or run on lithium batteries safety has always been an issue accidents Etc um recently Boeing had uh fires with their lithium batteries and and the and the Dreamliner is now out of service because of\n\nthat um you volunteer to help the Boeing Executives I guess diagnose and redesign yeah can you talk a little bit about what they did wrong what you would have done differently and and what do you think that the the future of you know Boeing and others Airline batteries are going to be sure um well first of all on on the Boeing front I mean obviously even though SpaceX and Bo compete on the space side we have no competition on the commercial airliner side um and some of the comments that I made about Boeing have somehow been interpreted as an attack on Boeing when it is in fact not an attack on Boeing um the the only reason I actually uh I mean the main reason I I should say I offered help was that there's a friend of mine Richard Branson who's whose aine\n\nis suffering as a result of this lithium ion fire and he he was mentioning that you know he's losing hundreds of millions or his Aline is um as a result of this this problem I said well I think we could probably help and then he so he said oh great well let me connect you with the the chief engineer um of the 787 I said cool we're happy to help so uh you know provided some some advice and hopefully that'll be helpful um and I said we're also happy to actually do the solution if you want um and uh they haven't taken us up on that offer um but we're happy to help either you an advisory capacity or or to do the solution whatever would result in the 787 getting back to flight sooner um we're just trying to be you know productive and helpful so um I mean I\n\nthink the in the case of the VY uh Boeing doesn't have a ton of In-House battery expertise so they they outsourced the the battery and then you had a whole bunch of kind of nested Outsourcing where they outsourced the battery system and then and then that got outsourced to another company then to another company and then to a whole bunch of other companies and and you're like four layers deep before you actually got to um any hardware um and so that resulted in I think in a kind of a breakdown of communication um I mean from an architectural standpoint the fundamental issue is that the is that I I I think um is that the the cells are too big the battery cells are too big and the gaps between the battery cells are are not big enough um and the problem\n\nwith a with a big battery cell is that the the thermal path pathway is is in a worst case scenario is very long so you have to say well if there's a hot spot in the battery can it get its heat out yeah and if it's deep in a Cell it can't it can't do that um and it's also hard to thermally condition the cells um the life of the pack will be will be dependent upon on the temperature the average not the average temperature but the worst temperature at any point in any cell so you want to really even that temperature out that's why Tesla is a fan of having lots of small cells yeah um and then actively cooling each cell to keep the temperature even um and make sure that if if if um Hotpot does develop it's a very short pathway to the cooling system and it\n\nand it can you know take care of it and you also want to make sure that it's it's I'm getting quite technical here sorry um it's it's um passive propagation proof so so if you even if your active cooling system fails um and you get thermal runway in a cell that thermal Runway event can Cascade into a neighboring cell so and you get the thermal do domino effect right I mean it's not it's not super complicated um so so um you know it just if if if you have big cells you want big gaps and ideally you want you don't want big cells but if you do you want big gaps small cells small gaps yeah I mean so I mean this is this is really important because because um the the whole thing about this new generation of airplanes is that they're light they use composits\n\nthey use Electronics rather than mechanical systems and so electricity drives the whole thing so basically my understanding is that you need lithium batteries in the sky it just doesn't work any other way and your point is it can be done oh it totally can be done yeah like lithium's getting a bit of a bad name here um lithium is obviously the way to go I mean people have lithium ion batteries in their cell phones and their laptops I mean I don't think anyone's panicking here with the fact that they got a lithium ion battery you know next to a sense a region probably of their body you know got it well so just staying on on on power for one last set of questions before we um well before I return to your life which seems insane um it is insane um you're\n\nalso a chairman of Solar City which I believe is America's largest solar installer um you know so space Transportation energy just picking off the big ones there um now you know solar got a bad name over the last few years because of the cylinder meltdown Etc but you know my sense that people different are not differentiating between the making of solar cells and the using of solar cells and and the Chinese competition and the glutting of the market on the supply side is what cylinder what got cylinder in trouble they couldn't compete with the fallowing prices but you're a consumer of solar cells right so how do you see you know the Chinese Chinese competition and sort of the glut of solar of of solar cells on the market what's that good view um I mean\n\nI think what China is doing in the solar panel arena is awesome because they're lowering the cost of solar power for the world and they have these huge gigafactories that they created out in the in the Chinese desert um and with with a ton of funding from the Chinese government so it's like a giant donation from the tiny Chinese government like thanks that's awesome you know um and uh you know people sort of complain about Sindra but I mean obviously anyone who's been involved in the Venture world knows that you about a thousand there's some companies that die the only reason we know about slender is because became of political football right um and uh I mean there are other solar panel manufacturers that are still doing reasonably well um but but but\n\nit is tough when you're competing um I mean I think good rule of thumb was don't is don't compete with China with a commodity product yeah um you know you're really asking for for travel in that in that scenario um and and it's really super easy to make 15% efficient or standard efficiency solar panels it's super easy it's like easier than making freaking drywall at this point um so it's like does anybody think we should be competing with China in drywall manufacturing okay probably not so um so so that's the thing so and and the the the hard part of solar power is not the panel it's it's actually the whole system it's basically designing something that's going to fit on a particular rooftop CU all you have all these heterogeneous rooftops um then you've\n\ngot to you've got to mount the system you've got to wire it up you got to Connected the inverters connected to the grid you got to do all the permitting I mean it's a bunch of like thorny unglamorous stupid problems but if somebody doesn't optimize them they're still going to cost a ton of money um and and a lot of them are really not they're not fun problems they're not you know exciting problems to to optimize but but but they are the problems that actually matter in the cost of of solar power so it's it's really more like you know like a like a a roofing contractor than it is a Semiconductor Company I mean what what you're doing is you're putting a second roof on a building yeah okay so and you got to do it at scale and then you got to manage all these\n\nsystems because there's still some I mean even though the after sales service is small when you've got like hundreds of thousands of systems that's still a lot to manage um and and so what Solar City really is is a giant distributed utility um and it's working in partnership with the the house and business um and in competition with the the big sort of Monopoly utility I mean I think it's like literally power to the people okay it's like literally so I think it's really awesome CU utility just never had any competition before yeah um and and now they're like they have to actually think about the cost of power and and figure out better ways to do it and that kind of thing I think it's really great um and and the credit there is really due to lyen and Peter\n\nRI co-founders uh I mean I throw in a few ideas every now and then but mostly it's just about showing up at the board meeting to hear the good news it's those guys are just doing such an awesome job so you are CEO and CTO of SpaceX so not just running the company but you're actually Chief technology officer as well you are CEO and chief product designer for Tesla so not just running the company but designing the cars yeah and you're chairman of Solar City right what is your life like it's it's it's very busy uh and uh I'd actually like to take it down just a scooch honestly um because there there all these I mean these these things that the last few years have been really really great um but then there were a number of years that sucked horribly um and\n\nuh I'd like to just just not have it be so extreme um uh and like last year was a year of great achievement but honestly I didn't have that much fun it sucked I didn't have that much fun um my newest resolution was to have a little bit more fun this year so hey I'm at South by Southwest you know and you have five children do they're awesome kids are awesome by the way you guys should all have kids kids are great uh how much do you see them I I don't see them enough actually but but I uh uh what what I find is that I'm able to be with them and uh still be on email because I don't need like constant interaction except when we're talking directly so um I find I can be with them and still be you know working at the same time um but wait wait are you saying\n\nyou can do email while you're with your children yeah absolutely sure um wow I mean not all the time but a lot of the time um that's that's why it's tny to have a phone you can sort of you do email in in interstitial moments um in the absence of that I would not be able to get my job done wow that's uh impressive um we [Music] are I have five children I can't do email while I'm with my children it's not good for the children and it's really not good for the email well I I do have to have a nanny there otherwise they'll kill each other so um yeah um we are going to turn to audience questions at this point um just a reminder that um if you tweet your questions hash askm musk there's a team in the back that will be selecting the um the ones that we haven't\n\nalready covered and seem interesting and I get them in front maybe you can see them as well so as the first one from David soless um he asked when it comes to researching analyzing entrepreneurial opportunity how do you go about qualifying or legitimizing presumably the idea sure um well um I'm not sure I'm the best guide here because things that I've chosen have not been um op I've not been trying to optimize on a risk adjusted return basis so there are uh like I I would not say that I went to The Rocker business the car business uh or the solar business thinking that it's a it's a great opportunity I just thought that that something needed to be done in in these uh Industries in order to make a difference and that's why I did it so um but but in general\n\nI do think it's worth thinking about like what whether what you're doing is going to result in disruptive change or not if it's just incremental it's unlikely to to be something major it it's it's got to be something that's substantially better than than what's gone on before that cues up to our next question really well um this is from uh Craig lre um space Automotive Finance energy you've disrupted major industries what would you do if you had a free Reign Over education um well I I think that the way that we currently do education is is is wrong and and we're when you see something like the KH Academy and so forth I think that's probably going in the right direction Direction I mean generally you want education to be like as close to a video game as\n\npossible like a good video game like you do not need to tell your kid to play video games they will play video games on autopilot all day so if you can make it interactive and engaging uh then then you can make education far more compelling and and far easier to do um so I think that's how it should be and it shouldn't be that you've got like these grades where people move in lock step um and so everyone goes through you know goes like normally you will go through English math uh science and so forth from like fifth grade to sixth grade to seventh grade like it's an assembly line U but but people are not objects on an assembly line that's a ridiculous notion um people learn and are interested in different things at different Paces so you really want to\n\num disconnect the whole grade level thing from the the subjects allow people to progress at the fastest Pace that they can or are interested in in each subject um it seems like a really obvious thing um I mean I think like most teaching today is is a lot like fordville where um and it's and as a result just not not that compelling it's like somebody standing up there and lecturing to you and they've done the same lecture several years in a row they're not necessarily all that engaged or or in doing it um and you compare that to say Batman The Dark Knight okay um and then you've got like the world's best special effects You' got the world's best director screenwriter multiple cuts um amazing you know editing and um and and and and and that's amazing but\n\nbut like imagine if instead you had like the local Town um aspiring actor do uh the a oneperson Play version of that yeah that would not be compelling yeah do do you agree with Peter te about the classmates um because you can always buy the textbooks and just read them like nobody stopping you from doing that or go online or go online um so uh now now for a lot of companies they they they do want to see the completion of the degree because they're looking for um someone who's going to persevere and see it through to the end and and that's actually what what what's important to them so it really depends on on what somebody's goal is if the goal is to start a company I would say no point in finishing uh College um in my case I had to otherwise i' get kicked\n\nout of the country yeah um so uh that was important but although you went on and got a master's degree as well right um I I came out silic valy to do a PhD at Stanford and applied physics and Material Science to work on um Ultra capacitors for use in electric cars and that's what I was going to do and then I started put that on hold to start a company but since I already had my under undergrad I could then get H1B visa and that kind of thing so H1B Visa requires uh a degree um but other than that I I would have if what that wasn't the case I probably would have stopped education sooner did you not go to Wharton for yeah yeah they did dual undergrading physics and and business at Wharton I see yeah but it was undergrad not not Masters understood um another\n\nquestion from the audience from Dan Griffith um fill in the blank you will be disappointed if blank does not happen in your lifetime um um well probably the most thing I just pointed out is if if Humanity doesn't land on Mars in my lifetime I'd be really disappointed that would be you know that that would probably be my biggest disappointment um and uh yeah I think I think that's the thing I'm most concerned about because because we're at this obviously that's what SpaceX is working on um so I'm not trying to be self- serving here but it's just I kind of worry that we've hit this if I I don't know whether our technology level will keep going or subside and for the first time in 4 and a half billion years the technology level is at the point where we can\n\nextend life to another planet make life multiplanetary and um I I think it's too easy to take for granted that it's going to stay above that level um and if it doesn't and it falls below that will it return who who knows um uh you know the the sun is gradually expanding and in about you know roughly 500 million years maybe a billion years the outside um uh the oceans will boil and and there will be no no meaningful life on Earth I mean it might be like some you know chatres or or ultra high temperature bacteria or something but nothing that can make a spaceship um and and that's like if you think of like maybe it's a 500 million year time frame that's only a 10% increase in the life of lifespan of Earth so if if if um Humanity had taken an extra 10% longer\n\nto get here it wouldn't have gotten here at all yeah um and so far we haven't seen any signs of life from other worlds that we we haven't detected anything I hope you know hopefully we do and hopefully it's not a warship coming towards us um uh but uh I I just think that's the thing that really concerns me we we we we need to get this done um and and then that is the best thing we can do to ensure the continued existence of humanity um so that's why I would say that's the most important thing do you personally do you do you personally want to step foot on Mars I I do personally want to step foot on Mars um but honestly I would be doing this even if there was no even if I knew there was no chance of me going to Mars it's because I think like I said I think\n\nit's just important that we are on a path to getting there um so um I I would like to go at some point I I'll go if I'm certain that SpaceX will be fine without me um and that that path will continue um cuz that you may have heard me uh some may have heard the joke I've made before which is like you know I I I I would I think be I would like to die on Mars just not on impact you know so another question uh from the um audience so we just we just lost lost that one there was I don't remember um who had asked this question but the question was um uh which um when when which do you think is going to have more impact on the world SpaceX or Tesla well I I think if we look back or if historians if I would look back on the impact of Tesla many years from now\n\nI think uh it would be that Tesla hopefully the Tesla Advanced the Advent of sustainable transport by something like a decade maybe maybe two decades um but I do think electric cars are inevitable in fact I think all modes of Transport will go fully electric with the ironic exception of rockets um so that's uh that's what I think and then for for Solar City perhaps something similar on the energy production site sustainable energy production then uh for SpaceX hopefully SpaceX deel develops the technology necessary to transport large numbers of people in Caro to Mars um and um I mean I think that's um you know a bigger impact but rather the what what Solar City and Tesla are about are solving what I think is the most pressing terrestrial concern which\n\nis the sustainable production and consumption of energy or helping solve it I mean there's many people solving it um and then what SpaceX is about is helping solve the biggest non-terrestrial problem which is the extension of life beyond Earth so th those are how I see it we have two related questions one that's no longer on the screen but uh and another one that is um the first was what was the best advice you ever got and the second you maybe can join them in your answer is you mentioned working with your friends Peter teal and Richard Branson who influences and inspires you sure um well I I'm inspired by a lot of historical figures like one of my favorite guys is Ben Franklin you know I just think he's you know he's a really guy I mean he was a scientist\n\nand he also I mean worked in um obviously publishing and the political sphere but he kind of like he just thought about like what are the what are the problems that need to get solved and and worked on those um and he was just a seemed like a good guy all around um so really I like him and um and I like just the historical figures like in science and um literature and I mean uh F found of Churchill um and uh and obviously like Tesla we named Tesla after Nicola Tesla better than musk Motors you know um and actually haven't named any product or company after myself uh but but that maybe gives a sense of like I think like Tesla is someone who deserves a lot of recognition um and uh sorry what was the well they're all dead any figures um yeah I mean I think\n\num there's a friend of mine uh Like Larry Page I think what Larry's doing uh and Sergey at Google I'm um really admire what they've done um I think uh obviously he's recently dead but Steve Jobs who doesn't admire Steve Jobs um I think Jeff Bezos is doing some some great things and among others competing with you uh yes but that's a good thing in fact every time I see Jeff bezas I say why aren't you doing more in space yeah the other half of the question was the best advice you ever got best advice I ever got um well I I think the uh you know the physics training is a very good Training where uh it's a good framework for reasoning where you're trained to think about first principles and reason from there and that means boiling things down to the most\n\nfundamental truths and then connecting those truths in a way to to try to understand how reality is because you know physics has this problem where they're trying to figure out things that are totally counterintuitive and so they had to have a framework for for getting there like quantum mechanics is incredibly counterintuitive uh but it's true um and so you had so so physics developed a framework for for figuring out uh things that aren't obvious and that's why I think it's it's not it's it's a lot of advice but it's it's it's the right framework um and then um you know just in general critical thinking is is good you know examining whether you have the correct axioms other the most applicable axioms uh does the logic necessarily connect um and then\n\nwhat are the what are the range of probable outcomes um outcomes are usually not deterministic they're they're they're a range um and so you want to figure out what those Pro probabilities are and make sure ideally that you're the house you know it's it's fine to take it's it's fine to it's fine to gamble as long as you're the house yes um and uh you know and a subset of that is is to to um listen to critical feedback which you alluded to uh earlier voice solicit critical feedback particularly from friends um because generally they will be thinking it but they won't tell you yeah um a question here um from Jal um any news or development on your hyperloop idea and you might explain what your hyperloop idea is is well um what I've said is that I'm I'm putting\n\nthe hyperloop stuff on hold until I get Tesla to profitability U because I think if I was an investor in Tesla and they heard me sort of spouting off about the hyperloop before I got the company profitable they were like hey you know go do go do your job so that's what I'm doing um I think once Tesla is in a in a has been profitable maybe for at least for a quarter maybe two quarters then then I'll I'll talk about the hyperloop um but I think it could be an interesting way to uh I mean I think it would be an interesting way to travel really quickly from one city to the next quickly explain just in one sentence what a hyperloop is well um it it would be something that would be say twice as fast as a plane at least in terms of total Transit time um maybe\n\na little faster uh it would be immune to weather uh and capable of crashing um pretty much unless it was like a terrorist attack um and um the ticket price would be like let's say half that of a plane um so it' be better in every way um train of some sort though it's kind of it's not exactly a train it would be a different it would be a new mode of transportation that doesn't currently exist terrestrial terrestrial yeah okay underground above ground could go either a kind of Subway perhaps I I think it's I think it's the capital cost would be less if it's mostly above ground but you can go underground too all right maybe the last question um what's the biggest mistake you've ever made and this is from Alexi Hill what's the biggest mistake you've ever\n\nmade and how did you move forward looking back was it really that big a deal biggest mistake I've made lots of mistakes some of them some are pretty big um um I mean it's hard to say CU things have worked out pretty well in the end so how how big of a mistake could it have been as the as the question is really really asking um uh you know I did lots of dumb things at my first company and at PayPal um and uh you know I think I think sometimes yeah I don't know there's so many I like I'm hard pressed to say this is this is the biggest one you know give this one or two okay um personal okay sure um so there the biggest mistake in general that I've made and I'm trying to correct for that is uh to put too much of a waiting on somebody's talent and not enough\n\non their personality um and I've made that mistake several times in fact then i' would say I'm not going to make that mistake again then I would make it again um and and I think it actually matters uh whether some somebody has a good heart it really does and and I've made them I've made the mistake if they K that sometimes it's just about the brain on that heartfelt note we're done thank please join me in thanking L thank you [Music] oh [Music]","textByLang":{"en":"thank you and good afternoon so we have a lot to cover Elon does a lot of things um there is at the moment one of his spaceships docked to this the space station uh the dragon spaceship this is the third time uh that it's been docked second commercial one it was launched last week many of you may have followed the launch but there was drama you know there were solar panels and all this kind of stuff we could follow it on your Twitter feed yeah Rock drama what's it can you just tell us what it's like to be Elon Musk in the control room during a launch when something happens when there's an issue uh well it's I mean it's extremely nerve-wracking I mean it's the thing about rocket launch is that all of your work is distilled into these few minutes particularly\n\nthe the first several seconds around uh the the liftoff because the worst thing that could happen with a rocket in touch word is uh if if if if you have an engine failure or some some huge failure right above the Launchpad and the whole thing can come down with about a million pounds of TNT equivalent and destroy the whole Launchpad that would be that that's what's going through my mind if case you're wondering that's actually what I'm thinking about [ __ ] um so when it clears the lightning towers and it's gotten further enough away from uh not actually destroying the Launchpad then uh then it's that's one sort of go down a notch on on um you know know uh the fear and anxiety and then after first stage separation that's another one when the second stage\n\nlights up so it's sort of you going down um in intensity as the rocket is going up uh and the the thing is that the first three rocket launchers that we had failed okay and then the first one failed quite close to the Launchpad almost destroyed launch pad in fact I SP that day picking up rocket pieces off the reef uh which is which sucks so I think like there's a pretty powerfully ingrained fear response um as a result of that because three in a row just you know and uh the the image of those rocket failures kind of going through my mind as I'm seeing the rocket launch so that's what's going on and then in this case um you made it through the the stage separation but then there was an issue with the solar cells um tell me a little bit how you sort of\n\nspotted the problem diagnosed it what does the team do I mean you got there in the end but um how's it work yeah so uh the solar panels were actually okay but uh and the rocket launch went went really well so that was not a problem uh where things kind of went AR right was after spacecraft separation we try to initialize the four threr pods so there there four threr pods with a combined total of 18 engines and uh the system is designed with a huge amount of redundancy so it can take all sorts of failures and still complete its Mission that's that's the whole way it's been made um in fact it can it can work with even if it has only two of the four Thruster pods working you know they can still do a mission um so three weren't working wow um and uh that\n\nwhich was a huge puzzle like why are three not working because these things are cross strapped so you'd kind of think that either maybe one wouldn't work or a cross strap pair wouldn't work but not three it was really really strange so um so so we had the spacecraft just going through kind of free drift in space like we're just tumbling um and and which makes also difficult to to communicate with because the antennas are like pointing you know every which way you can imagine so we had all we had was was a a very slight 2 kilobit uh occasional two 2 kilobit Link that would go in and out um and and that was an omnidirectional signal beaming off the NASA tedra satellite system um so in order to actually improve the the we first had to improve the bandwidth\n\nso we we actually asked the Air Force if we could have some of their longrange Camry scanners can can would they give us access and we have this um communication system that we call the mega proxy so we had to uh recode the mega proxy to go through the air force longrange dishes to to blast the the spacecraft with enough intensity to be able to upload new code uh to try to fix the problem and uh so so we wrote some new some new software to um essentially pressure slam the uh two of the three oxidizer tanks that were um refusing to pressurize um and it turned out I think we've figured out the problem which is that there's a there was a slight change made to a check valve that was in three of the tanks and on the other and we're able to replicate that problem\n\nin the ground later um and and we're able to to to basically have the have the system build up pressure Upstream then release that pressure and slam the valve um so we're trying to give it the sort of the spacecraft equivalent of the heck maneuver basically um and and then we got one of the pods to that looked like it was making progress and uh we we didn't want to unfill the solar panels until we had at least two pods active so we could we could go from sort of drifting to to an active hold uh but then the the the temperatures of the solar panels which are in these protective covers was dropping uh and it can drop to like almost absolute zero if it's pointing in at dark space uh so uh so it was dropping dropping dropping and we're like okay [ __ ] we\n\nbetter release the solar panels um otherwise they could literally freeze in place um and so we ran a simulation to see what what would what would happen um and it's actually slightly beneficial and it's kind of like when a skater you know when a skater uh puts her arms out um it slows down pull them in it speeds up so when actually when the the arms went out when the solar pan arrays went out it slowed down the rate of rotation actually slightly helped us with um maintaining communication with the spacecraft and um so then we're able to uh with with that precious lamp thing get get get a part uh active then then then a third one and then a fourth one then we got all four working and we're able to continue the mission duck with the space station in fact\n\ndragon is currently ducked with the space station right now and um if if all goes well we'll return uh to Earth in about a week or two that sounds terrifying yeah wow that was that was Hardcore I don't want to go through that again okay um you are not just here in in in Austin for South by Southwest but also to meet with the Texas legislature to talk about possibly a launch base here in Texas tell us more about that um yeah so right now we've got uh two main launch locations one is Cape Canaveral in Florida and the other is uh venberg Air Force Base in California um and so they cap naral is good for kind of Eastward launches uh vanderberg for southernly launches and we figure we need a a third launch site that's kind of a commercial launch site you know\n\nit's not um because cape nille and vur got Air Force baces um which is cool and it's obviously there's an important need for air force space launch bases as there is for Air Force uh airports um but then there's also a need for commercial airports and just like you wouldn't expect commercial airliners to land um at an Air Force Base in a normal course of events um it makes sense to have a commercial space port um and we need to be able to launch Eastward um and we want to be close to the equator um so that basically means uh the potential states are Virginia through Texas um going you're going south um Hawaii and Puerto Rico because the other things we need to stay on on US Territory because um rocket technology like we're doing is considered an advanced\n\nweapons technology so it's very difficult to uh export that if you will to other countries um and uh anyway so those are our options right right now Texas is arguably the leading candidate um but uh we need certain legislation passed that's supportive of space launch um I don't think it's particularly controversial um but one of the things we need for example is we need to be able to close the beach when we're doing a launch and Texas has the open beaches act it's like okay you know we we we can't launch if there's someone right right next to the rocket you know on the beach um so that's I don't like I said I don't think it's a particularly uh controversial thing it's pretty straightforward um and and then and then we we we kind of need a littleit of\n\nprotection for kind of the the one in 10,000 person case who who complains about the thing like we had this dude who filed a lawsuit against us for our rocket development site in in Central Texas near Waco he's like not even in the same county um he's in a neighboring County and he like also thinks like the ca is listening to his brain waves um so we need like just a little bit of protection for for people like that so we're not like spending a ton of time in court um so that's basically what we're asking for it's nothing nothing major um and uh I I think it's likely to to move forward so I think you know if if things go as expected there's this it's likely that we'll have a l site in Texas which I think be really cool around when um so it depends on\n\nhow the environmental approvals go and all that but I think um I think we if if things go well I mean not all not all of it's in our hands so but assuming that things go as expected you know there'd be a decision this year and then we start construction next year and then and probably the first launches would take place in uh from there in 2 to three years terrific yeah um so um Falcon 9 or the the rocket that launched dragon is a traditional rocket which is to say it's disposable bits but you're essentially you're ultimately focused on reusable rockets and grasshopper is the name of that can you talk a little bit about what's why reusable what's different about reusable and I think you probably have some things to show as well yeah absolutely so reusability\n\nis extremely important um if you think it's important that Humanity extend beyond Earth um and become multiplet species and all that um and I mean it's super important I thought I think it's also incredibly obvious common sense like you can imagine watching like Star Trek and then they they got a new starship after every every trip that would be pretty silly um and and and every uh motor transport that we're used to like cars Planes Trains automobiles horses bikes they're all reusable um and but but not rockets and if if we can't make rockets reusable the cost is just prohibitive the the uh like the cost of the fuel and oxygen on a falcon9 is 0.\n\n3% of the cost of the rocket wow so it's basically it's a very tiny number it's it's very similar to uh to an airplane so it's how much does it cost to fuel up an airplane um and how much the cost of buy an airplane they're very different things so if if we're if humanity is ever to expand beyond Earth and establish a self-sustaining base on another planet it's critical that we solve this problem whether it's SpaceX or someone else someone has to solve the problem um and we can have a 100-fold reduction in the cost of space flight um so so that's what SpaceX has been trying to do um and really that's been the goal since the beginning of the company so so far I've not been very successful uh in that in that regard so but I I think we kind of have a handle\n\non it I think I think we've got a we've got a design that in the simulations in and in CAD and so forth it it it closes like it should work if we can build that thing it should work and uh in fact it may be worth just rolling the reusability videoos so people have a sense of what I'm talking about I don't know where that plays but behind us in front of us can people in the audience see that oh there we go right all right so what you're seeing here is that the the first stage after stage separation the first stage turns around boosts back to the Launchpad um and then lands propulsively with landing gear it's kind of how rocket should land that's that's the upper stage this is the this is the quick version of the video obviously and then you seeing Dragon\n\nversion two so Dragon version 2 will land on thrusters with landing gear with the as accurately as a helicopter so it can land anywhere on Earth as with with the accuracy of a helicopter one last question about space before we turn to to cars um you've talked before about how you decideed to get into this you were you founded you co-founded PayPal um you don't really I mean you have a Physics degree you know something about about you know the underlying mechanics but you didn't have any space experience right you decided I think on a train to go to Mars and decided that you could out compete NASA or that you could get to Mars you could get to space faster cheaper better than the one of the largest well the largest space agency in the world how did you\n\nget that confidence uh so um well I think first of all I should say maybe give some of a preface to um what happened before starting SpaceX um in fact the way I sort of got into space was um to do I I was really disappointed that we had not sent anyone to M that we had not progressed Beyond Apollo um and I kept waiting for when we would and it just didn't happen uh year after year and and so a friend of mine asked me about what I wanted to do after PayPal and I said well you know I was always curious about space but I didn't think about that there was anything I could do do in space and and I went to the NASA website to just see when are we going to Mars and I couldn't find find that out uh I thought maybe I it was there but I well hidden or something\n\nbut um so so then I thought well perhaps this is a question of of will is there sufficient will to do this and and the first idea I came up with was actually to do a philanthropic mission to send a small Greenhouse to the surface of Mars with seeds in dehydrated gel that would hydrate upon landing and you'd have this cool Greenhouse with these green plants on a red background that would be the money shot um and and and then uh you know people like precedents and superlatives so it would be the first PL first life on another planet furthest the life's ever traveled and uh and that would get people excited and you also learn about a lot about what it to support Earth PLS Earth plants in a greenhouse on Mars um the the whole purpose of that was to get people\n\nexcited about sending people to Mars and increase NASA's budget so that was my whole goal I was going to basically torch yeah it it was not had nothing to do with competing with NASA in fact my goal was to increase their budget um and uh and and I should say that today NASA is our biggest customer um I mean um we've got almost 50 launches and uh about a quarter of those are finesse that but 34 34 commercial but one quarter NASA um and NASA's been incredibly supportive and helpful and we wouldn't be where we are today without without the help of NASA so it's not it's really got nothing to do with competing with NASA it's really just about what do we need to do to have an exciting inspiring future in space that that's that's what I think really matters\n\nbut at the end of the day you didn't end up raising the fun the money to pay NASA to do the mission you end up doing building your own company and and ideally to do it cheaper than government's good yeah um the I so I was able to to figure out how to get the cost of the spacecraft and the greenhouse and the communication system way less than it normally would cost for such a thing I got stuck on the rocket um and I went to to Russia three times to try to buy a couple of their biggest icbms um this is about this is in 2001 late 2001 and 2002 um there was definitely in interesting experience uh and uh I I sort of got the feeling I could have bought the nuke too but don't want to go there um and then when I when I got back on from the third trip to Russia\n\num that that's when I thought okay look uh even if we do even if we buy these these icbms from Russia um I I I I I thought it I thought my initial supposition was wrong um and so what what I thought really was that we'd lost the world to explore that we'd lost the world to push the the boundary and and and in retrospect that was actually a very foolish error uh because the United States is a nation of explorers United States is a distillation of the human Spirit of exploration it's ludicrous to to to actually in retrospect to have made such an assumption um but people need to believe that it's possible and that it's not going to it's not going to bankrupt them it's not they're not going to have to give up something important like healthcare uh you know\n\nit's going to be a cost that isn't going to meaningfully affect their their standard of living and I think the United States would absolutely be super super excited uh about uh sending people to Mars and people I think a lot of people really wish that that would occur anyway so that was um that was what I uh came to the conclusion of and and I thought well if if we don't make a difference in the cost of the rocket of the transport system it's all it doesn't matter um it's it's not like I said it's not a question of will it's a question of way um and so that's when I came back and started the SpaceX but when I started SpaceX there wasn't with the perspective of like oh we'll just you know take over the world and with with awesome Rockets I don't know what\n\nthe pr gu is doing I was like clueless um I I thought the most likely outcome was that we would fail and and the first three rockets did fail so and you put all your money into it between Tesla SpaceX and Solar City all in yeah that wasn't the plan at the beginning by the way and Peter Tails says we don't think big anymore he must have interesting conversations with him about that uh well you know Peter's been a big supporter actually so he's uh um he invested in in uh SpaceX at at a very important time in 2008 uh before we reached orbit so after our third failure but before our first success so you know big credit to Peter and um Luke NOK and the other guys at Founders spond basically my my my buddies from PayPal my buddies from PayPal saved my butt\n\nyou know it was really really good so so let's talk about cars um uh many many in the audience May recollect the notorious New York Times review of the model S yes exactly of the model S um earlier this year yeah and your reaction to that review and the times reaction to your reaction and and and the effect on your share price and on orders and all that and without rehashing the review or the facts I'd like you just to postmortem the entire experience wait how do I not do I do postmortem without any facts or anything post postmortem postmortem your reaction okay to the review and what you know put you on the couch and what would you do differently today having seen the way it all played out um well I think um I think there's one thing I didn't do maybe\n\nstill should which is to to to post the the rebuttal to the rebuttal CU I I withheld that and waited for the public editor I sent that information to the public editor waited for her to do her sort of thing and she came down kind of on the side of Tesla with respect to the fact that the article was an error but but disagreed on the motive on the ethics yes um and um cuz you you impune both facts and ethics I I did yes um and and and I think it was I I think it was I would call it a low- grade uh ethics violation not not like a big one I don't think he thought he was doing anything particularly terrible but I I would call it a low grade low grade violation and not not not of the Jason Blair you know crazy fabrication variety but I I would call it a low\n\ngrade it was not in good faith if that that that's that's that's an important important Point um and uh and I I probably should have posted that rebuttal to make that clear but I didn't do it that's what I regret so the only change you would make is that the very last bit the rebuttal that you wrote but that has not been published you would get maybe I should you would get out there yeah so you would continue to use the same language in the same way in your I don't think the language was in accurate I really don't you've often you've often said that one of your management techniques one of the secrets of your success is that you listen to NE negative feedback yes was a times forev youw not didn't fall into the category of negative feedback I have no problem\n\nwith negative feedback I have a problem with nor do I have a problem with critical reviews if I had a problem with critical reviews I would spend all my time battling critical reviews um there have been hundreds of of negative articles hundreds and yet I've only spoken out a few times I I don't have a problem with critical reviews I have a problem with false reviews all right um one of the technologies that you had to um um you know basically develop to near Perfection or at least or at least work on hardest with lithium batteries um for the electric cars or run on lithium batteries safety has always been an issue accidents Etc um recently Boeing had uh fires with their lithium batteries and and the and the Dreamliner is now out of service because of\n\nthat um you volunteer to help the Boeing Executives I guess diagnose and redesign yeah can you talk a little bit about what they did wrong what you would have done differently and and what do you think that the the future of you know Boeing and others Airline batteries are going to be sure um well first of all on on the Boeing front I mean obviously even though SpaceX and Bo compete on the space side we have no competition on the commercial airliner side um and some of the comments that I made about Boeing have somehow been interpreted as an attack on Boeing when it is in fact not an attack on Boeing um the the only reason I actually uh I mean the main reason I I should say I offered help was that there's a friend of mine Richard Branson who's whose aine\n\nis suffering as a result of this lithium ion fire and he he was mentioning that you know he's losing hundreds of millions or his Aline is um as a result of this this problem I said well I think we could probably help and then he so he said oh great well let me connect you with the the chief engineer um of the 787 I said cool we're happy to help so uh you know provided some some advice and hopefully that'll be helpful um and I said we're also happy to actually do the solution if you want um and uh they haven't taken us up on that offer um but we're happy to help either you an advisory capacity or or to do the solution whatever would result in the 787 getting back to flight sooner um we're just trying to be you know productive and helpful so um I mean I\n\nthink the in the case of the VY uh Boeing doesn't have a ton of In-House battery expertise so they they outsourced the the battery and then you had a whole bunch of kind of nested Outsourcing where they outsourced the battery system and then and then that got outsourced to another company then to another company and then to a whole bunch of other companies and and you're like four layers deep before you actually got to um any hardware um and so that resulted in I think in a kind of a breakdown of communication um I mean from an architectural standpoint the fundamental issue is that the is that I I I think um is that the the cells are too big the battery cells are too big and the gaps between the battery cells are are not big enough um and the problem\n\nwith a with a big battery cell is that the the thermal path pathway is is in a worst case scenario is very long so you have to say well if there's a hot spot in the battery can it get its heat out yeah and if it's deep in a Cell it can't it can't do that um and it's also hard to thermally condition the cells um the life of the pack will be will be dependent upon on the temperature the average not the average temperature but the worst temperature at any point in any cell so you want to really even that temperature out that's why Tesla is a fan of having lots of small cells yeah um and then actively cooling each cell to keep the temperature even um and make sure that if if if um Hotpot does develop it's a very short pathway to the cooling system and it\n\nand it can you know take care of it and you also want to make sure that it's it's I'm getting quite technical here sorry um it's it's um passive propagation proof so so if you even if your active cooling system fails um and you get thermal runway in a cell that thermal Runway event can Cascade into a neighboring cell so and you get the thermal do domino effect right I mean it's not it's not super complicated um so so um you know it just if if if you have big cells you want big gaps and ideally you want you don't want big cells but if you do you want big gaps small cells small gaps yeah I mean so I mean this is this is really important because because um the the whole thing about this new generation of airplanes is that they're light they use composits\n\nthey use Electronics rather than mechanical systems and so electricity drives the whole thing so basically my understanding is that you need lithium batteries in the sky it just doesn't work any other way and your point is it can be done oh it totally can be done yeah like lithium's getting a bit of a bad name here um lithium is obviously the way to go I mean people have lithium ion batteries in their cell phones and their laptops I mean I don't think anyone's panicking here with the fact that they got a lithium ion battery you know next to a sense a region probably of their body you know got it well so just staying on on on power for one last set of questions before we um well before I return to your life which seems insane um it is insane um you're\n\nalso a chairman of Solar City which I believe is America's largest solar installer um you know so space Transportation energy just picking off the big ones there um now you know solar got a bad name over the last few years because of the cylinder meltdown Etc but you know my sense that people different are not differentiating between the making of solar cells and the using of solar cells and and the Chinese competition and the glutting of the market on the supply side is what cylinder what got cylinder in trouble they couldn't compete with the fallowing prices but you're a consumer of solar cells right so how do you see you know the Chinese Chinese competition and sort of the glut of solar of of solar cells on the market what's that good view um I mean\n\nI think what China is doing in the solar panel arena is awesome because they're lowering the cost of solar power for the world and they have these huge gigafactories that they created out in the in the Chinese desert um and with with a ton of funding from the Chinese government so it's like a giant donation from the tiny Chinese government like thanks that's awesome you know um and uh you know people sort of complain about Sindra but I mean obviously anyone who's been involved in the Venture world knows that you about a thousand there's some companies that die the only reason we know about slender is because became of political football right um and uh I mean there are other solar panel manufacturers that are still doing reasonably well um but but but\n\nit is tough when you're competing um I mean I think good rule of thumb was don't is don't compete with China with a commodity product yeah um you know you're really asking for for travel in that in that scenario um and and it's really super easy to make 15% efficient or standard efficiency solar panels it's super easy it's like easier than making freaking drywall at this point um so it's like does anybody think we should be competing with China in drywall manufacturing okay probably not so um so so that's the thing so and and the the the hard part of solar power is not the panel it's it's actually the whole system it's basically designing something that's going to fit on a particular rooftop CU all you have all these heterogeneous rooftops um then you've\n\ngot to you've got to mount the system you've got to wire it up you got to Connected the inverters connected to the grid you got to do all the permitting I mean it's a bunch of like thorny unglamorous stupid problems but if somebody doesn't optimize them they're still going to cost a ton of money um and and a lot of them are really not they're not fun problems they're not you know exciting problems to to optimize but but but they are the problems that actually matter in the cost of of solar power so it's it's really more like you know like a like a a roofing contractor than it is a Semiconductor Company I mean what what you're doing is you're putting a second roof on a building yeah okay so and you got to do it at scale and then you got to manage all these\n\nsystems because there's still some I mean even though the after sales service is small when you've got like hundreds of thousands of systems that's still a lot to manage um and and so what Solar City really is is a giant distributed utility um and it's working in partnership with the the house and business um and in competition with the the big sort of Monopoly utility I mean I think it's like literally power to the people okay it's like literally so I think it's really awesome CU utility just never had any competition before yeah um and and now they're like they have to actually think about the cost of power and and figure out better ways to do it and that kind of thing I think it's really great um and and the credit there is really due to lyen and Peter\n\nRI co-founders uh I mean I throw in a few ideas every now and then but mostly it's just about showing up at the board meeting to hear the good news it's those guys are just doing such an awesome job so you are CEO and CTO of SpaceX so not just running the company but you're actually Chief technology officer as well you are CEO and chief product designer for Tesla so not just running the company but designing the cars yeah and you're chairman of Solar City right what is your life like it's it's it's very busy uh and uh I'd actually like to take it down just a scooch honestly um because there there all these I mean these these things that the last few years have been really really great um but then there were a number of years that sucked horribly um and\n\nuh I'd like to just just not have it be so extreme um uh and like last year was a year of great achievement but honestly I didn't have that much fun it sucked I didn't have that much fun um my newest resolution was to have a little bit more fun this year so hey I'm at South by Southwest you know and you have five children do they're awesome kids are awesome by the way you guys should all have kids kids are great uh how much do you see them I I don't see them enough actually but but I uh uh what what I find is that I'm able to be with them and uh still be on email because I don't need like constant interaction except when we're talking directly so um I find I can be with them and still be you know working at the same time um but wait wait are you saying\n\nyou can do email while you're with your children yeah absolutely sure um wow I mean not all the time but a lot of the time um that's that's why it's tny to have a phone you can sort of you do email in in interstitial moments um in the absence of that I would not be able to get my job done wow that's uh impressive um we [Music] are I have five children I can't do email while I'm with my children it's not good for the children and it's really not good for the email well I I do have to have a nanny there otherwise they'll kill each other so um yeah um we are going to turn to audience questions at this point um just a reminder that um if you tweet your questions hash askm musk there's a team in the back that will be selecting the um the ones that we haven't\n\nalready covered and seem interesting and I get them in front maybe you can see them as well so as the first one from David soless um he asked when it comes to researching analyzing entrepreneurial opportunity how do you go about qualifying or legitimizing presumably the idea sure um well um I'm not sure I'm the best guide here because things that I've chosen have not been um op I've not been trying to optimize on a risk adjusted return basis so there are uh like I I would not say that I went to The Rocker business the car business uh or the solar business thinking that it's a it's a great opportunity I just thought that that something needed to be done in in these uh Industries in order to make a difference and that's why I did it so um but but in general\n\nI do think it's worth thinking about like what whether what you're doing is going to result in disruptive change or not if it's just incremental it's unlikely to to be something major it it's it's got to be something that's substantially better than than what's gone on before that cues up to our next question really well um this is from uh Craig lre um space Automotive Finance energy you've disrupted major industries what would you do if you had a free Reign Over education um well I I think that the way that we currently do education is is is wrong and and we're when you see something like the KH Academy and so forth I think that's probably going in the right direction Direction I mean generally you want education to be like as close to a video game as\n\npossible like a good video game like you do not need to tell your kid to play video games they will play video games on autopilot all day so if you can make it interactive and engaging uh then then you can make education far more compelling and and far easier to do um so I think that's how it should be and it shouldn't be that you've got like these grades where people move in lock step um and so everyone goes through you know goes like normally you will go through English math uh science and so forth from like fifth grade to sixth grade to seventh grade like it's an assembly line U but but people are not objects on an assembly line that's a ridiculous notion um people learn and are interested in different things at different Paces so you really want to\n\num disconnect the whole grade level thing from the the subjects allow people to progress at the fastest Pace that they can or are interested in in each subject um it seems like a really obvious thing um I mean I think like most teaching today is is a lot like fordville where um and it's and as a result just not not that compelling it's like somebody standing up there and lecturing to you and they've done the same lecture several years in a row they're not necessarily all that engaged or or in doing it um and you compare that to say Batman The Dark Knight okay um and then you've got like the world's best special effects You' got the world's best director screenwriter multiple cuts um amazing you know editing and um and and and and and that's amazing but\n\nbut like imagine if instead you had like the local Town um aspiring actor do uh the a oneperson Play version of that yeah that would not be compelling yeah do do you agree with Peter te about the classmates um because you can always buy the textbooks and just read them like nobody stopping you from doing that or go online or go online um so uh now now for a lot of companies they they they do want to see the completion of the degree because they're looking for um someone who's going to persevere and see it through to the end and and that's actually what what what's important to them so it really depends on on what somebody's goal is if the goal is to start a company I would say no point in finishing uh College um in my case I had to otherwise i' get kicked\n\nout of the country yeah um so uh that was important but although you went on and got a master's degree as well right um I I came out silic valy to do a PhD at Stanford and applied physics and Material Science to work on um Ultra capacitors for use in electric cars and that's what I was going to do and then I started put that on hold to start a company but since I already had my under undergrad I could then get H1B visa and that kind of thing so H1B Visa requires uh a degree um but other than that I I would have if what that wasn't the case I probably would have stopped education sooner did you not go to Wharton for yeah yeah they did dual undergrading physics and and business at Wharton I see yeah but it was undergrad not not Masters understood um another\n\nquestion from the audience from Dan Griffith um fill in the blank you will be disappointed if blank does not happen in your lifetime um um well probably the most thing I just pointed out is if if Humanity doesn't land on Mars in my lifetime I'd be really disappointed that would be you know that that would probably be my biggest disappointment um and uh yeah I think I think that's the thing I'm most concerned about because because we're at this obviously that's what SpaceX is working on um so I'm not trying to be self- serving here but it's just I kind of worry that we've hit this if I I don't know whether our technology level will keep going or subside and for the first time in 4 and a half billion years the technology level is at the point where we can\n\nextend life to another planet make life multiplanetary and um I I think it's too easy to take for granted that it's going to stay above that level um and if it doesn't and it falls below that will it return who who knows um uh you know the the sun is gradually expanding and in about you know roughly 500 million years maybe a billion years the outside um uh the oceans will boil and and there will be no no meaningful life on Earth I mean it might be like some you know chatres or or ultra high temperature bacteria or something but nothing that can make a spaceship um and and that's like if you think of like maybe it's a 500 million year time frame that's only a 10% increase in the life of lifespan of Earth so if if if um Humanity had taken an extra 10% longer\n\nto get here it wouldn't have gotten here at all yeah um and so far we haven't seen any signs of life from other worlds that we we haven't detected anything I hope you know hopefully we do and hopefully it's not a warship coming towards us um uh but uh I I just think that's the thing that really concerns me we we we we need to get this done um and and then that is the best thing we can do to ensure the continued existence of humanity um so that's why I would say that's the most important thing do you personally do you do you personally want to step foot on Mars I I do personally want to step foot on Mars um but honestly I would be doing this even if there was no even if I knew there was no chance of me going to Mars it's because I think like I said I think\n\nit's just important that we are on a path to getting there um so um I I would like to go at some point I I'll go if I'm certain that SpaceX will be fine without me um and that that path will continue um cuz that you may have heard me uh some may have heard the joke I've made before which is like you know I I I I would I think be I would like to die on Mars just not on impact you know so another question uh from the um audience so we just we just lost lost that one there was I don't remember um who had asked this question but the question was um uh which um when when which do you think is going to have more impact on the world SpaceX or Tesla well I I think if we look back or if historians if I would look back on the impact of Tesla many years from now\n\nI think uh it would be that Tesla hopefully the Tesla Advanced the Advent of sustainable transport by something like a decade maybe maybe two decades um but I do think electric cars are inevitable in fact I think all modes of Transport will go fully electric with the ironic exception of rockets um so that's uh that's what I think and then for for Solar City perhaps something similar on the energy production site sustainable energy production then uh for SpaceX hopefully SpaceX deel develops the technology necessary to transport large numbers of people in Caro to Mars um and um I mean I think that's um you know a bigger impact but rather the what what Solar City and Tesla are about are solving what I think is the most pressing terrestrial concern which\n\nis the sustainable production and consumption of energy or helping solve it I mean there's many people solving it um and then what SpaceX is about is helping solve the biggest non-terrestrial problem which is the extension of life beyond Earth so th those are how I see it we have two related questions one that's no longer on the screen but uh and another one that is um the first was what was the best advice you ever got and the second you maybe can join them in your answer is you mentioned working with your friends Peter teal and Richard Branson who influences and inspires you sure um well I I'm inspired by a lot of historical figures like one of my favorite guys is Ben Franklin you know I just think he's you know he's a really guy I mean he was a scientist\n\nand he also I mean worked in um obviously publishing and the political sphere but he kind of like he just thought about like what are the what are the problems that need to get solved and and worked on those um and he was just a seemed like a good guy all around um so really I like him and um and I like just the historical figures like in science and um literature and I mean uh F found of Churchill um and uh and obviously like Tesla we named Tesla after Nicola Tesla better than musk Motors you know um and actually haven't named any product or company after myself uh but but that maybe gives a sense of like I think like Tesla is someone who deserves a lot of recognition um and uh sorry what was the well they're all dead any figures um yeah I mean I think\n\num there's a friend of mine uh Like Larry Page I think what Larry's doing uh and Sergey at Google I'm um really admire what they've done um I think uh obviously he's recently dead but Steve Jobs who doesn't admire Steve Jobs um I think Jeff Bezos is doing some some great things and among others competing with you uh yes but that's a good thing in fact every time I see Jeff bezas I say why aren't you doing more in space yeah the other half of the question was the best advice you ever got best advice I ever got um well I I think the uh you know the physics training is a very good Training where uh it's a good framework for reasoning where you're trained to think about first principles and reason from there and that means boiling things down to the most\n\nfundamental truths and then connecting those truths in a way to to try to understand how reality is because you know physics has this problem where they're trying to figure out things that are totally counterintuitive and so they had to have a framework for for getting there like quantum mechanics is incredibly counterintuitive uh but it's true um and so you had so so physics developed a framework for for figuring out uh things that aren't obvious and that's why I think it's it's not it's it's a lot of advice but it's it's it's the right framework um and then um you know just in general critical thinking is is good you know examining whether you have the correct axioms other the most applicable axioms uh does the logic necessarily connect um and then\n\nwhat are the what are the range of probable outcomes um outcomes are usually not deterministic they're they're they're a range um and so you want to figure out what those Pro probabilities are and make sure ideally that you're the house you know it's it's fine to take it's it's fine to it's fine to gamble as long as you're the house yes um and uh you know and a subset of that is is to to um listen to critical feedback which you alluded to uh earlier voice solicit critical feedback particularly from friends um because generally they will be thinking it but they won't tell you yeah um a question here um from Jal um any news or development on your hyperloop idea and you might explain what your hyperloop idea is is well um what I've said is that I'm I'm putting\n\nthe hyperloop stuff on hold until I get Tesla to profitability U because I think if I was an investor in Tesla and they heard me sort of spouting off about the hyperloop before I got the company profitable they were like hey you know go do go do your job so that's what I'm doing um I think once Tesla is in a in a has been profitable maybe for at least for a quarter maybe two quarters then then I'll I'll talk about the hyperloop um but I think it could be an interesting way to uh I mean I think it would be an interesting way to travel really quickly from one city to the next quickly explain just in one sentence what a hyperloop is well um it it would be something that would be say twice as fast as a plane at least in terms of total Transit time um maybe\n\na little faster uh it would be immune to weather uh and capable of crashing um pretty much unless it was like a terrorist attack um and um the ticket price would be like let's say half that of a plane um so it' be better in every way um train of some sort though it's kind of it's not exactly a train it would be a different it would be a new mode of transportation that doesn't currently exist terrestrial terrestrial yeah okay underground above ground could go either a kind of Subway perhaps I I think it's I think it's the capital cost would be less if it's mostly above ground but you can go underground too all right maybe the last question um what's the biggest mistake you've ever made and this is from Alexi Hill what's the biggest mistake you've ever\n\nmade and how did you move forward looking back was it really that big a deal biggest mistake I've made lots of mistakes some of them some are pretty big um um I mean it's hard to say CU things have worked out pretty well in the end so how how big of a mistake could it have been as the as the question is really really asking um uh you know I did lots of dumb things at my first company and at PayPal um and uh you know I think I think sometimes yeah I don't know there's so many I like I'm hard pressed to say this is this is the biggest one you know give this one or two okay um personal okay sure um so there the biggest mistake in general that I've made and I'm trying to correct for that is uh to put too much of a waiting on somebody's talent and not enough\n\non their personality um and I've made that mistake several times in fact then i' would say I'm not going to make that mistake again then I would make it again um and and I think it actually matters uh whether some somebody has a good heart it really does and and I've made them I've made the mistake if they K that sometimes it's just about the brain on that heartfelt note we're done thank please join me in thanking L thank you [Music] oh [Music]"},"languages":["en"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LeQMWdOMa-A"},{"id":"ted-2013-02-27","type":"interview","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IgKWPdJWuBQ","title":"TED","titles":{"en":"TED","de":"TED","fr":"TED"},"date":"2013-02-27","summary":"Chris Anderson interviews Musk at TED2013 about electric cars, reusable rockets and solar energy.","text":"Translator: Joseph Geni Reviewer: Morton Bast Chris Anderson: Elon, what kind of crazy dream would persuade you to think of trying to take on the auto industry and build an all-electric car? Elon Musk: Well, it goes back to when I was in university. I thought about, what are the problems that are most likely to affect the future of the world or the future of humanity?\n\nI think it's extremely important that we have sustainable transport and sustainable energy production. That sort of overall sustainable energy problem is the biggest problem that we have to solve this century, independent of environmental concerns. In fact, even if producing CO2 was good for the environment, given that we're going to run out of hydrocarbons, we need to find some sustainable means of operating.\n\nCA: Most of American electricity comes from burning fossil fuels. How can an electric car that plugs into that electricity help? EM: Right. There's two elements to that answer. One is that, even if you take the same source fuel and produce power at the power plant and use it to charge electric cars, you're still better off.\n\nSo if you take, say, natural gas, which is the most prevalent hydrocarbon source fuel, if you burn that in a modern General Electric natural gas turbine, you'll get about 60 percent efficiency. If you put that same fuel in an internal combustion engine car, you get about 20 percent efficiency.\n\nAnd the reason is, in the stationary power plant, you can afford to have something that weighs a lot more, is voluminous, and you can take the waste heat and run a steam turbine and generate a secondary power source. So in effect, even after you've taken transmission loss into account and everything, even using the same source fuel, you're at least twice as better off charging an electric car, then burning it at the power plant.\n\nCA: That scale delivers efficiency. EM: Yes, it does. And then the other point is, we have to have sustainable means of power generation anyway, electricity generation. So given that we have to solve sustainable electricity generation, then it makes sense for us to have electric cars as the mode of transport.\n\nCA: So we've got some video here of the Tesla being assembled, which, if we could play that first video -- So what is innovative about this process in this vehicle? EM: Sure. So, in order to accelerate the advent of electric transport, and I should say that I think, actually, all modes of transport will become fully electric with the ironic exception of rockets. There's just no way around Newton's third law.\n\nThe question is how do you accelerate the advent of electric transport? And in order to do that for cars, you have to come up with a really energy efficient car, so that means making it incredibly light, and so what you're seeing here is the only all-aluminum body and chassis car made in North America. In fact, we applied a lot of rocket design techniques to make the car light despite having a very large battery pack.\n\nAnd then it also has the lowest drag coefficient of any car of its size. So as a result, the energy usage is very low, and it has the most advanced battery pack, and that's what gives it the range that's competitive, so you can actually have on the order of a 250-mile range.\n\nCA: I mean, those battery packs are incredibly heavy, but you think the math can still work out intelligently -- by combining light body, heavy battery, you can still gain spectacular efficiency. EM: Exactly. The rest of the car has to be very light to offset the mass of the pack, and then you have to have a low drag coefficient so that you have good highway range.\n\nAnd in fact, customers of the Model S are sort of competing with each other to try to get the highest possible range. I think somebody recently got 420 miles out of a single charge. CA: Bruno Bowden, who's here, did that, broke the world record. EM: Congratulations. CA: That was the good news. The bad news was that to do it, he had to drive at 18 miles an hour constant speed and got pulled over by the cops.\n\n(Laughter) EM: I mean, you can certainly drive -- if you drive it 65 miles an hour, under normal conditions, 250 miles is a reasonable number. CA: Let's show that second video showing the Tesla in action on ice. Not at all a dig at The New York Times, this, by the way. What is the most surprising thing about the experience of driving the car? EM: In creating an electric car, the responsiveness of the car is really incredible.\n\nSo we wanted really to have people feel as though they've almost got to mind meld with the car, so you just feel like you and the car are kind of one, and as you corner and accelerate, it just happens, like the car has ESP. You can do that with an electric car because of its responsiveness. You can't do that with a gasoline car. I think that's really a profound difference, and people only experience that when they have a test drive.\n\nCA: I mean, this is a beautiful but expensive car. Is there a road map where this becomes a mass-market vehicle? EM: Yeah. The goal of Tesla has always been to have a sort of three-step process, where version one was an expensive car at low volume, version two is medium priced and medium volume, and then version three would be low price, high volume. So we're at step two at this point. So we had a $100,000 sports car, which was the Roadster.\n\nThen we've got the Model S, which starts at around 50,000 dollars. And our third generation car, which should hopefully be out in about three or four years will be a $30,000 car. But whenever you've got really new technology, it generally takes about three major versions in order to make it a compelling mass-market product. And so I think we're making progress in that direction, and I feel confident that we'll get there.\n\nCA: I mean, right now, if you've got a short commute, you can drive, you can get back, you can charge it at home. There isn't a huge nationwide network of charging stations now that are fast. Do you see that coming, really, truly, or just on a few key routes?\n\nEM: There actually are far more charging stations than people realize, and at Tesla we developed something called a Supercharging technology, and we're offering that if you buy a Model S for free, forever. And so this is something that maybe a lot of people don't realize. We actually have California and Nevada covered, and we've got the Eastern seaboard from Boston to D. C. covered. By the end of this year, you'll be able to drive from L. A.\n\nto New York just using the Supercharger network, which charges at five times the rate of anything else. And the key thing is to have a ratio of drive to stop, to stop time, of about six or seven. So if you drive for three hours, you want to stop for 20 or 30 minutes, because that's normally what people will stop for. So if you start a trip at 9 a. m. , by noon you want to stop to have a bite to eat, hit the restroom, coffee, and keep going.\n\nCA: So your proposition to consumers is, for the full charge, it could take an hour. So it's common -- don't expect to be out of here in 10 minutes. Wait for an hour, but the good news is, you're helping save the planet, and by the way, the electricity is free. You don't pay anything. EM: Actually, what we're expecting is for people to stop for about 20 to 30 minutes, not for an hour.\n\nIt's actually better to drive for about maybe 160, 170 miles and then stop for half an hour and then keep going. That's the natural cadence of a trip. CA: All right. So this is only one string to your energy bow. You've been working on this solar company SolarCity. What's unusual about that?\n\nEM: Well, as I mentioned earlier, we have to have sustainable electricity production as well as consumption, so I'm quite confident that the primary means of power generation will be solar. I mean, it's really indirect fusion, is what it is. We've got this giant fusion generator in the sky called the sun, and we just need to tap a little bit of that energy for purposes of human civilization.\n\nWhat most people know but don't realize they know is that the world is almost entirely solar-powered already. If the sun wasn't there, we'd be a frozen ice ball at three degrees Kelvin, and the sun powers the entire system of precipitation. The whole ecosystem is solar-powered.\n\nCA: But in a gallon of gasoline, you have, effectively, thousands of years of sun power compressed into a small space, so it's hard to make the numbers work right now on solar, and to remotely compete with, for example, natural gas, fracked natural gas. How are you going to build a business here? EM: Well actually, I'm confident that solar will beat everything, hands down, including natural gas. (Applause)CA: How? EM: It must, actually.\n\nIf it doesn't, we're in deep trouble. CA: But you're not selling solar panels to consumers. What are you doing? EM: No, we actually are. You can buy a solar system or you can lease a solar system. Most people choose to lease. And the thing about solar power is that it doesn't have any feed stock or operational costs, so once it's installed, it's just there. It works for decades. It'll work for probably a century.\n\nSo therefore, the key thing to do is to get the cost of that initial installation low, and then get the cost of the financing low, because that interest -- those are the two factors that drive the cost of solar. And we've made huge progress in that direction, and that's why I'm confident we'll actually beat natural gas. CA: So your current proposition to consumers is, don't pay so much up front. EM: Zero. CA: Pay zero up front.\n\nWe will install panels on your roof. You will then pay, how long is a typical lease? EM: Typical leases are 20 years, but the value proposition is, as you're sort of alluding to, quite straightforward. It's no money down, and your utility bill decreases. Pretty good deal. CA: So that seems like a win for the consumer. No risk, you'll pay less than you're paying now.\n\nFor you, the dream here then is that -- I mean, who owns the electricity from those panels for the longer term? I mean, how do you, the company, benefit? EM: Well, essentially, SolarCity raises a chunk of capital from say, a company or a bank. Google is one of our big partners here. And they have an expected return on that capital.\n\nWith that capital, SolarCity purchases and installs the panel on the roof and then charges the homeowner or business owner a monthly lease payment, which is less than the utility bill. CA: But you yourself get a long-term commercial benefit from that power. You're kind of building a new type of distributed utility. EM: Exactly. What it amounts to is a giant distributed utility.\n\nI think it's a good thing, because utilities have been this monopoly, and people haven't had any choice. So effectively it's the first time there's been competition for this monopoly, because the utilities have been the only ones that owned those power distribution lines, but now it's on your roof. So I think it's actually very empowering for homeowners and businesses.\n\nCA: And you really picture a future where a majority of power in America, within a decade or two, or within your lifetime, it goes solar? EM: I'm extremely confident that solar will be at least a plurality of power, and most likely a majority, and I predict it will be a plurality in less than 20 years. I made that bet with someone —CA: Definition of plurality is? EM: More from solar than any other source. CA: Ah. Who did you make the bet with?\n\nEM: With a friend who will remain nameless. CA: Just between us. (Laughter) EM: I made that bet, I think, two or three years ago, so in roughly 18 years, I think we'll see more power from solar than any other source. CA: All right, so let's go back to another bet that you made with yourself, I guess, a kind of crazy bet. You'd made some money from the sale of PayPal. You decided to build a space company. Why on Earth would someone do that?\n\n(Laughter) EM: I got that question a lot, that's true. People would say, \"Did you hear the joke about the guy who made a small fortune in the space industry?\" Obviously, \"He started with a large one,\" is the punchline. And so I tell people, well, I was trying to figure out the fastest way to turn a large fortune into a small one. And they'd look at me, like, \"Is he serious?\" CA: And strangely, you were. So what happened? EM: It was a close call.\n\nThings almost didn't work out. We came very close to failure, but we managed to get through that point in 2008. The goal of SpaceX is to try to advance rocket technology, and in particular to try to crack a problem that I think is vital for humanity to become a space-faring civilization, which is to have a rapidly and fully reusable rocket. CA: Would humanity become a space-faring civilization?\n\nSo that was a dream of yours, in a way, from a young age? You've dreamed of Mars and beyond? EM: I did build rockets when I was a kid, but I didn't think I'd be involved in this. It was really more from the standpoint of what are the things that need to happen in order for the future to be an exciting and inspiring one?\n\nAnd I really think there's a fundamental difference, if you sort of look into the future, between a humanity that is a space-faring civilization, that's out there exploring the stars, on multiple planets, and I think that's really exciting, compared with one where we are forever confined to Earth until some eventual extinction event. CA: So you've somehow slashed the cost of building a rocket by 75 percent, depending on how you calculate it.\n\nHow on Earth have you done that? NASA has been doing this for years. How have you done this? EM: Well, we've made significant advances in the technology of the airframe, the engines, the electronics and the launch operation. There's a long list of innovations that we've come up with there that are a little difficult to communicate in this talk, but -- CA: Not least because you could still get copied, right? You haven't patented this stuff.\n\nIt's really interesting to me. EM: No, we don't patent. CA: You didn't patent because you think it's more dangerous to patent than not to patent. EM: Since our primary competitors are national governments, the enforceability of patents is questionable. (Laughter) (Applause) CA: That's really, really interesting. But the big innovation is still ahead, and you're working on it now. Tell us about this.\n\nEM: Right, so the big innovation— CA: In fact, let's roll that video and you can talk us through it, what's happening here. EM: Absolutely. So the thing about rockets is that they're all expendable. All rockets that fly today are fully expendable.\n\nThe space shuttle was an attempt at a reusable rocket, but even the main tank of the space shuttle was thrown away every time, and the parts that were reusable took a 10,000-person group nine months to refurbish for flight. So the space shuttle ended up costing a billion dollars per flight. Obviously that doesn't work very well for — CA: What just happened there? We just saw something land? EM: That's right.\n\nSo it's important that the rocket stages be able to come back, to be able to return to the launch site and be ready to launch again within a matter of hours. CA: Wow. Reusable rockets. EM: Yes. (Applause) And so what a lot of people don't realize is, the cost of the fuel, of the propellant, is very small. It's much like on a jet. So the cost of the propellant is about . 3 percent of the cost of the rocket.\n\nSo it's possible to achieve, let's say, roughly 100-fold improvement in the cost of spaceflight if you can effectively reuse the rocket. That's why it's so important. Every mode of transport that we use, whether it's planes, trains, automobiles, bikes, horses, is reusable, but not rockets. So we must solve this problem in order to become a space-faring civilization.\n\nCA: You asked me the question earlier of how popular traveling on cruises would be if you had to burn your ships afterward. EM: Certain cruises are apparently highly problematic. CA: Definitely more expensive. So that's potentially absolutely disruptive technology, and, I guess, paves the way for your dream to actually take, at some point, to take humanity to Mars at scale. You'd like to see a colony on Mars. EM: Yeah, exactly.\n\nSpaceX, or some combination of companies and governments, needs to make progress in the direction of making life multi-planetary, of establishing a base on another planet, on Mars -- being the only realistic option -- and then building that base up until we're a true multi-planet species. CA: So progress on this \"let's make it reusable,\" how is that going? That was just a simulation video we saw. How's it going?\n\nEM: We're actually, we've been making some good progress recently with something we call the Grasshopper Test Project, where we're testing the vertical landing portion of the flight, the sort of terminal portion which is quite tricky. And we've had some good tests. CA: Can we see that? EM: Yeah. So that's just to give a sense of scale. We dressed a cowboy as Johnny Cash and bolted the mannequin to the rocket.\n\n(Laughter) CA: All right, let's see that video then, because this is actually amazing when you think about it. You've never seen this before. A rocket blasting off and then -- EM: Yeah, so that rocket is about the size of a 12-story building. (Rocket launch) So now it's hovering at about 40 meters, and it's constantly adjusting the angle, the pitch and yaw of the main engine, and maintaining roll with cold gas thrusters. CA: How cool is that?\n\n(Applause) Elon, how have you done this? These projects are so -- Paypal, SolarCity, Tesla, SpaceX, they're so spectacularly different, they're such ambitious projects at scale. How on Earth has one person been able to innovate in this way? What is it about you? EM: I don't know, actually. I don't have a good answer for you. I work a lot. I mean, a lot. CA: Well, I have a theory. EM: Okay. All right.\n\nCA: My theory is that you have an ability to think at a system level of design that pulls together design, technology and business, so if TED was TBD, design, technology and business, into one package, synthesize it in a way that very few people can and -- and this is the critical thing -- feel so damn confident in that clicked-together package that you take crazy risks. You bet your fortune on it, and you seem to have done that multiple times.\n\nI mean, almost no one can do that. Is that -- could we have some of that secret sauce? Can we put it into our education system? Can someone learn from you? It is truly amazing what you've done. EM: Well, thanks. Thank you. Well, I do think there's a good framework for thinking. It is physics. You know, the sort of first principles reasoning.\n\nGenerally I think there are -- what I mean by that is, boil things down to their fundamental truths and reason up from there, as opposed to reasoning by analogy. Through most of our life, we get through life by reasoning by analogy, which essentially means copying what other people do with slight variations. And you have to do that. Otherwise, mentally, you wouldn't be able to get through the day.\n\nBut when you want to do something new, you have to apply the physics approach. Physics is really figuring out how to discover new things that are counterintuitive, like quantum mechanics. It's really counterintuitive. So I think that's an important thing to do, and then also to really pay attention to negative feedback, and solicit it, particularly from friends.\n\nThis may sound like simple advice, but hardly anyone does that, and it's incredibly helpful. CA: Boys and girls watching, study physics. Learn from this man. Elon Musk, I wish we had all day, but thank you so much for coming to TED. EM: Thank you. CA: That was awesome. That was really, really cool. Look at that. (Applause) Just take a bow. That was fantastic. Thank you so much.","textByLang":{"en":"Translator: Joseph Geni Reviewer: Morton Bast Chris Anderson: Elon, what kind of crazy dream would persuade you to think of trying to take on the auto industry and build an all-electric car? Elon Musk: Well, it goes back to when I was in university. I thought about, what are the problems that are most likely to affect the future of the world or the future of humanity?\n\nI think it's extremely important that we have sustainable transport and sustainable energy production. That sort of overall sustainable energy problem is the biggest problem that we have to solve this century, independent of environmental concerns. In fact, even if producing CO2 was good for the environment, given that we're going to run out of hydrocarbons, we need to find some sustainable means of operating.\n\nCA: Most of American electricity comes from burning fossil fuels. How can an electric car that plugs into that electricity help? EM: Right. There's two elements to that answer. One is that, even if you take the same source fuel and produce power at the power plant and use it to charge electric cars, you're still better off.\n\nSo if you take, say, natural gas, which is the most prevalent hydrocarbon source fuel, if you burn that in a modern General Electric natural gas turbine, you'll get about 60 percent efficiency. If you put that same fuel in an internal combustion engine car, you get about 20 percent efficiency.\n\nAnd the reason is, in the stationary power plant, you can afford to have something that weighs a lot more, is voluminous, and you can take the waste heat and run a steam turbine and generate a secondary power source. So in effect, even after you've taken transmission loss into account and everything, even using the same source fuel, you're at least twice as better off charging an electric car, then burning it at the power plant.\n\nCA: That scale delivers efficiency. EM: Yes, it does. And then the other point is, we have to have sustainable means of power generation anyway, electricity generation. So given that we have to solve sustainable electricity generation, then it makes sense for us to have electric cars as the mode of transport.\n\nCA: So we've got some video here of the Tesla being assembled, which, if we could play that first video -- So what is innovative about this process in this vehicle? EM: Sure. So, in order to accelerate the advent of electric transport, and I should say that I think, actually, all modes of transport will become fully electric with the ironic exception of rockets. There's just no way around Newton's third law.\n\nThe question is how do you accelerate the advent of electric transport? And in order to do that for cars, you have to come up with a really energy efficient car, so that means making it incredibly light, and so what you're seeing here is the only all-aluminum body and chassis car made in North America. In fact, we applied a lot of rocket design techniques to make the car light despite having a very large battery pack.\n\nAnd then it also has the lowest drag coefficient of any car of its size. So as a result, the energy usage is very low, and it has the most advanced battery pack, and that's what gives it the range that's competitive, so you can actually have on the order of a 250-mile range.\n\nCA: I mean, those battery packs are incredibly heavy, but you think the math can still work out intelligently -- by combining light body, heavy battery, you can still gain spectacular efficiency. EM: Exactly. The rest of the car has to be very light to offset the mass of the pack, and then you have to have a low drag coefficient so that you have good highway range.\n\nAnd in fact, customers of the Model S are sort of competing with each other to try to get the highest possible range. I think somebody recently got 420 miles out of a single charge. CA: Bruno Bowden, who's here, did that, broke the world record. EM: Congratulations. CA: That was the good news. The bad news was that to do it, he had to drive at 18 miles an hour constant speed and got pulled over by the cops.\n\n(Laughter) EM: I mean, you can certainly drive -- if you drive it 65 miles an hour, under normal conditions, 250 miles is a reasonable number. CA: Let's show that second video showing the Tesla in action on ice. Not at all a dig at The New York Times, this, by the way. What is the most surprising thing about the experience of driving the car? EM: In creating an electric car, the responsiveness of the car is really incredible.\n\nSo we wanted really to have people feel as though they've almost got to mind meld with the car, so you just feel like you and the car are kind of one, and as you corner and accelerate, it just happens, like the car has ESP. You can do that with an electric car because of its responsiveness. You can't do that with a gasoline car. I think that's really a profound difference, and people only experience that when they have a test drive.\n\nCA: I mean, this is a beautiful but expensive car. Is there a road map where this becomes a mass-market vehicle? EM: Yeah. The goal of Tesla has always been to have a sort of three-step process, where version one was an expensive car at low volume, version two is medium priced and medium volume, and then version three would be low price, high volume. So we're at step two at this point. So we had a $100,000 sports car, which was the Roadster.\n\nThen we've got the Model S, which starts at around 50,000 dollars. And our third generation car, which should hopefully be out in about three or four years will be a $30,000 car. But whenever you've got really new technology, it generally takes about three major versions in order to make it a compelling mass-market product. And so I think we're making progress in that direction, and I feel confident that we'll get there.\n\nCA: I mean, right now, if you've got a short commute, you can drive, you can get back, you can charge it at home. There isn't a huge nationwide network of charging stations now that are fast. Do you see that coming, really, truly, or just on a few key routes?\n\nEM: There actually are far more charging stations than people realize, and at Tesla we developed something called a Supercharging technology, and we're offering that if you buy a Model S for free, forever. And so this is something that maybe a lot of people don't realize. We actually have California and Nevada covered, and we've got the Eastern seaboard from Boston to D. C. covered. By the end of this year, you'll be able to drive from L. A.\n\nto New York just using the Supercharger network, which charges at five times the rate of anything else. And the key thing is to have a ratio of drive to stop, to stop time, of about six or seven. So if you drive for three hours, you want to stop for 20 or 30 minutes, because that's normally what people will stop for. So if you start a trip at 9 a. m. , by noon you want to stop to have a bite to eat, hit the restroom, coffee, and keep going.\n\nCA: So your proposition to consumers is, for the full charge, it could take an hour. So it's common -- don't expect to be out of here in 10 minutes. Wait for an hour, but the good news is, you're helping save the planet, and by the way, the electricity is free. You don't pay anything. EM: Actually, what we're expecting is for people to stop for about 20 to 30 minutes, not for an hour.\n\nIt's actually better to drive for about maybe 160, 170 miles and then stop for half an hour and then keep going. That's the natural cadence of a trip. CA: All right. So this is only one string to your energy bow. You've been working on this solar company SolarCity. What's unusual about that?\n\nEM: Well, as I mentioned earlier, we have to have sustainable electricity production as well as consumption, so I'm quite confident that the primary means of power generation will be solar. I mean, it's really indirect fusion, is what it is. We've got this giant fusion generator in the sky called the sun, and we just need to tap a little bit of that energy for purposes of human civilization.\n\nWhat most people know but don't realize they know is that the world is almost entirely solar-powered already. If the sun wasn't there, we'd be a frozen ice ball at three degrees Kelvin, and the sun powers the entire system of precipitation. The whole ecosystem is solar-powered.\n\nCA: But in a gallon of gasoline, you have, effectively, thousands of years of sun power compressed into a small space, so it's hard to make the numbers work right now on solar, and to remotely compete with, for example, natural gas, fracked natural gas. How are you going to build a business here? EM: Well actually, I'm confident that solar will beat everything, hands down, including natural gas. (Applause)CA: How? EM: It must, actually.\n\nIf it doesn't, we're in deep trouble. CA: But you're not selling solar panels to consumers. What are you doing? EM: No, we actually are. You can buy a solar system or you can lease a solar system. Most people choose to lease. And the thing about solar power is that it doesn't have any feed stock or operational costs, so once it's installed, it's just there. It works for decades. It'll work for probably a century.\n\nSo therefore, the key thing to do is to get the cost of that initial installation low, and then get the cost of the financing low, because that interest -- those are the two factors that drive the cost of solar. And we've made huge progress in that direction, and that's why I'm confident we'll actually beat natural gas. CA: So your current proposition to consumers is, don't pay so much up front. EM: Zero. CA: Pay zero up front.\n\nWe will install panels on your roof. You will then pay, how long is a typical lease? EM: Typical leases are 20 years, but the value proposition is, as you're sort of alluding to, quite straightforward. It's no money down, and your utility bill decreases. Pretty good deal. CA: So that seems like a win for the consumer. No risk, you'll pay less than you're paying now.\n\nFor you, the dream here then is that -- I mean, who owns the electricity from those panels for the longer term? I mean, how do you, the company, benefit? EM: Well, essentially, SolarCity raises a chunk of capital from say, a company or a bank. Google is one of our big partners here. And they have an expected return on that capital.\n\nWith that capital, SolarCity purchases and installs the panel on the roof and then charges the homeowner or business owner a monthly lease payment, which is less than the utility bill. CA: But you yourself get a long-term commercial benefit from that power. You're kind of building a new type of distributed utility. EM: Exactly. What it amounts to is a giant distributed utility.\n\nI think it's a good thing, because utilities have been this monopoly, and people haven't had any choice. So effectively it's the first time there's been competition for this monopoly, because the utilities have been the only ones that owned those power distribution lines, but now it's on your roof. So I think it's actually very empowering for homeowners and businesses.\n\nCA: And you really picture a future where a majority of power in America, within a decade or two, or within your lifetime, it goes solar? EM: I'm extremely confident that solar will be at least a plurality of power, and most likely a majority, and I predict it will be a plurality in less than 20 years. I made that bet with someone —CA: Definition of plurality is? EM: More from solar than any other source. CA: Ah. Who did you make the bet with?\n\nEM: With a friend who will remain nameless. CA: Just between us. (Laughter) EM: I made that bet, I think, two or three years ago, so in roughly 18 years, I think we'll see more power from solar than any other source. CA: All right, so let's go back to another bet that you made with yourself, I guess, a kind of crazy bet. You'd made some money from the sale of PayPal. You decided to build a space company. Why on Earth would someone do that?\n\n(Laughter) EM: I got that question a lot, that's true. People would say, \"Did you hear the joke about the guy who made a small fortune in the space industry?\" Obviously, \"He started with a large one,\" is the punchline. And so I tell people, well, I was trying to figure out the fastest way to turn a large fortune into a small one. And they'd look at me, like, \"Is he serious?\" CA: And strangely, you were. So what happened? EM: It was a close call.\n\nThings almost didn't work out. We came very close to failure, but we managed to get through that point in 2008. The goal of SpaceX is to try to advance rocket technology, and in particular to try to crack a problem that I think is vital for humanity to become a space-faring civilization, which is to have a rapidly and fully reusable rocket. CA: Would humanity become a space-faring civilization?\n\nSo that was a dream of yours, in a way, from a young age? You've dreamed of Mars and beyond? EM: I did build rockets when I was a kid, but I didn't think I'd be involved in this. It was really more from the standpoint of what are the things that need to happen in order for the future to be an exciting and inspiring one?\n\nAnd I really think there's a fundamental difference, if you sort of look into the future, between a humanity that is a space-faring civilization, that's out there exploring the stars, on multiple planets, and I think that's really exciting, compared with one where we are forever confined to Earth until some eventual extinction event. CA: So you've somehow slashed the cost of building a rocket by 75 percent, depending on how you calculate it.\n\nHow on Earth have you done that? NASA has been doing this for years. How have you done this? EM: Well, we've made significant advances in the technology of the airframe, the engines, the electronics and the launch operation. There's a long list of innovations that we've come up with there that are a little difficult to communicate in this talk, but -- CA: Not least because you could still get copied, right? You haven't patented this stuff.\n\nIt's really interesting to me. EM: No, we don't patent. CA: You didn't patent because you think it's more dangerous to patent than not to patent. EM: Since our primary competitors are national governments, the enforceability of patents is questionable. (Laughter) (Applause) CA: That's really, really interesting. But the big innovation is still ahead, and you're working on it now. Tell us about this.\n\nEM: Right, so the big innovation— CA: In fact, let's roll that video and you can talk us through it, what's happening here. EM: Absolutely. So the thing about rockets is that they're all expendable. All rockets that fly today are fully expendable.\n\nThe space shuttle was an attempt at a reusable rocket, but even the main tank of the space shuttle was thrown away every time, and the parts that were reusable took a 10,000-person group nine months to refurbish for flight. So the space shuttle ended up costing a billion dollars per flight. Obviously that doesn't work very well for — CA: What just happened there? We just saw something land? EM: That's right.\n\nSo it's important that the rocket stages be able to come back, to be able to return to the launch site and be ready to launch again within a matter of hours. CA: Wow. Reusable rockets. EM: Yes. (Applause) And so what a lot of people don't realize is, the cost of the fuel, of the propellant, is very small. It's much like on a jet. So the cost of the propellant is about . 3 percent of the cost of the rocket.\n\nSo it's possible to achieve, let's say, roughly 100-fold improvement in the cost of spaceflight if you can effectively reuse the rocket. That's why it's so important. Every mode of transport that we use, whether it's planes, trains, automobiles, bikes, horses, is reusable, but not rockets. So we must solve this problem in order to become a space-faring civilization.\n\nCA: You asked me the question earlier of how popular traveling on cruises would be if you had to burn your ships afterward. EM: Certain cruises are apparently highly problematic. CA: Definitely more expensive. So that's potentially absolutely disruptive technology, and, I guess, paves the way for your dream to actually take, at some point, to take humanity to Mars at scale. You'd like to see a colony on Mars. EM: Yeah, exactly.\n\nSpaceX, or some combination of companies and governments, needs to make progress in the direction of making life multi-planetary, of establishing a base on another planet, on Mars -- being the only realistic option -- and then building that base up until we're a true multi-planet species. CA: So progress on this \"let's make it reusable,\" how is that going? That was just a simulation video we saw. How's it going?\n\nEM: We're actually, we've been making some good progress recently with something we call the Grasshopper Test Project, where we're testing the vertical landing portion of the flight, the sort of terminal portion which is quite tricky. And we've had some good tests. CA: Can we see that? EM: Yeah. So that's just to give a sense of scale. We dressed a cowboy as Johnny Cash and bolted the mannequin to the rocket.\n\n(Laughter) CA: All right, let's see that video then, because this is actually amazing when you think about it. You've never seen this before. A rocket blasting off and then -- EM: Yeah, so that rocket is about the size of a 12-story building. (Rocket launch) So now it's hovering at about 40 meters, and it's constantly adjusting the angle, the pitch and yaw of the main engine, and maintaining roll with cold gas thrusters. CA: How cool is that?\n\n(Applause) Elon, how have you done this? These projects are so -- Paypal, SolarCity, Tesla, SpaceX, they're so spectacularly different, they're such ambitious projects at scale. How on Earth has one person been able to innovate in this way? What is it about you? EM: I don't know, actually. I don't have a good answer for you. I work a lot. I mean, a lot. CA: Well, I have a theory. EM: Okay. All right.\n\nCA: My theory is that you have an ability to think at a system level of design that pulls together design, technology and business, so if TED was TBD, design, technology and business, into one package, synthesize it in a way that very few people can and -- and this is the critical thing -- feel so damn confident in that clicked-together package that you take crazy risks. You bet your fortune on it, and you seem to have done that multiple times.\n\nI mean, almost no one can do that. Is that -- could we have some of that secret sauce? Can we put it into our education system? Can someone learn from you? It is truly amazing what you've done. EM: Well, thanks. Thank you. Well, I do think there's a good framework for thinking. It is physics. You know, the sort of first principles reasoning.\n\nGenerally I think there are -- what I mean by that is, boil things down to their fundamental truths and reason up from there, as opposed to reasoning by analogy. Through most of our life, we get through life by reasoning by analogy, which essentially means copying what other people do with slight variations. And you have to do that. Otherwise, mentally, you wouldn't be able to get through the day.\n\nBut when you want to do something new, you have to apply the physics approach. Physics is really figuring out how to discover new things that are counterintuitive, like quantum mechanics. It's really counterintuitive. So I think that's an important thing to do, and then also to really pay attention to negative feedback, and solicit it, particularly from friends.\n\nThis may sound like simple advice, but hardly anyone does that, and it's incredibly helpful. CA: Boys and girls watching, study physics. Learn from this man. Elon Musk, I wish we had all day, but thank you so much for coming to TED. EM: Thank you. CA: That was awesome. That was really, really cool. Look at that. (Applause) Just take a bow. That was fantastic. Thank you so much."},"languages":["en"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IgKWPdJWuBQ"},{"id":"arpa-e-energy-innovation-summit-2013-02-26","type":"interview","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NMPRcBN4K20","title":"ARPA-E Energy Innovation Summit","titles":{"en":"ARPA-E Energy Innovation Summit","de":"ARPA-E Energy Innovation Summit","fr":"ARPA-E Energy Innovation Summit"},"date":"2013-02-26","summary":"Fireside chat with U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu on how radical innovation happens in energy and transportation.","text":"now we have the Secretary of Energy Steven Chu and innovator Galore CEO and product architect at Tesla CEO of SpaceX and creator of PayPal Alon musk alen thank you for joining us joining us we'll put alen here and Stephen there it'll be great so we're going to have uh again have some fun have a bit of a an informal chat with with two giants um and I thought I would started off a little bit fun maybe a little bit uh risque that I understand uh uh Stephen that you have a Nobel Prize on your wall uh and that some people have said hey when you're dealing with Congress and talking about sequesters maybe you should take it on off the wall and when you're having a meeting with that cator and say hey here's what I've got what do you have bad idea bad idea hasn't\n\nworked for you um I also heard at the one of the inaugural dinners Will I Am came up to you and said you know Stephen you're really really cool but one way to get uh even cooler is to change your name to MC energy taking it on is that true uh it's true and you did go around that night and and and thought well we have I thought we'd start aen it's great to have you with us um out from California I thought we'd start the conversation uh in an interesting way because Stephen you're known for um investing and thinking about the transition from non- fossil fuel energy to renewable energy trying to think about how you systematically do that bring science and innovators uh and government resources to together to do it you're going to be leaving uh fairly shortly\n\nI assume you've announced that you're going to be leaving your post um Alon musk is here he's quite an Innovative guy uh he's gotten a lot of awards and I'm just sort of interested in starting off conversation by asking you should you President Obama call you and say would you like his job uh how would you do it differently wow um well I I I think Steve's done a pretty awesome job actually I think I've had of a hard time doing a better job so um and I think being Secretary of anything is is a really tough tough role to hold uh and and one where you you tend to get I think a lot more criticism than praise um no matter what job you do so um well when you speak drill down a little it's not a role to to which I would Aspire you're a young man you you've revolutionized\n\npayments you've done a lot of revolution in cars and batteries you're now revolutionizing our access to space and you're doing this in in in part on on the the backs of scientists and other innovators and some government Investments but you're outpacing what government has been able to do and so my my question was not a factious one it was if you were able to not have the the the environment if you were able to basically jump ahead and you know Stephen is is also a brilliant innovator a Nobel La of course in physics but what makes makes you who you are how do you how are you able to do these things which government has found itself less able to accomplish as quickly well I I mean I think one way to think of government is is to think of it as essentially\n\na large corporation or the largest corporation um and generally uh large corporations have a harder time with radical Innovation than than small smaller companies there are some exceptions to that rule like apple but but it's generally true that the larger a company is the the harder it is to to to execute Innovation um now there there are ways to to get around that by in in the private sector by acquiring smaller companies that that that that do do the radical Innovation or or by having someone uh like say Steve Jobs who who is just relentlessly hardcore about uh pushing um radical Innovation um but uh but I think it is just generally true that the large of the corporation or Lodge The Entity the the harder it is to to uh uh engage radical Innovation\n\nwell Stephen it seems to me sitting here at an arpa conference that arpa is a very Innovative notion of how do you move from the very large maybe I I would argue risk avoiding of uh environment of government and here you've got rpe which really is about encouraging you know maybe not risk but investment Innovation and we love you to reflect for a moment on on how you think this experiment is going and what more needs to be done uh particularly in the in the energy area of of Next Generation energy well it um you know going to the uh Corporation analogy um I've got a CEO uh the president uh I got uh a very diverse board of directors 535 of them it's a big board in Congress but but within that you there's many things you can do within the agency um certainly\n\ngetting RP going that was of course voted on by Congress proposed by the president you know lots of bipartisan support but once you have the funding to say let's get started within the agency you can then say how can it be different and so we went in there thinking this could be a new example of how we want to get a lot of Department of energy programs and it's uh yes you're going to have to take risks that was designed into the program it was written into uh the American comp act that philosophy it was written into Rising Above The Gather storm that um it's it's research its development and it's very we didn't we don't expect all those things to work but they're short hits this is not a long-term thing this is a short hit get in there see if it's going\n\nto work it's going to be a home run we wanted home runs now after 3 years have there been home runs well maybe not but there's a people rounding second and third base so it's looking good uh and so and then the culture in RP is something else that is very different you had a bunch of program managers who sit around and instead of politely presenting their program and advocating for their program they would listen to what everyone else said and they would start to say well I'm not so sure that I believe that what about this what about that it was described as constructive confrontation that was exactly the thing we got at about Laboratories uh that you know you're not going to completly wait your turn you're going to old discuss is the combin intellect\n\nof the group would develop those ideas and that is very different and of course then there's a spirit that my gosh this is going to be something special and so far it has been very special so much grew out of bell abs and and of course you were at Bell Labs is arpa essentially taking there is no Bell Labs today so is and I'm I'm interested in whether that is a very harmful thing for the US economy is that what RP is now replicating and what you think is important to sort of institutionalize that sort of constructive confrontation how do you look at the future of that kind of big investment in basic research that that would drive the country uh forward well to be fair they're very very different Bell lab's research and development ultimately was to serve\n\nthe company and they had a financial bottom line RP is we are funders of other innovators and but the baps bear I was talking about uh can be exactly the same the the quality of the people people we got into the program were truly outstanding and so that part of the Bell Spirit was there but but you know we're not we're not there in business to to to do something we're there to uh sponsor very sponsor Innovation that the private sector will pick up and run with you know Alon to think a little bit about the agenda for today which is essentially about Innovation you shared a while back actually in a forum um that was organized by the Atlantic this was done in San Diego um at a forum we call the Atlantic meets Pacific and you spoke there and said you know\n\nyou had three real spheres that drove your interest one was the internet uh the other was sustainable energy and the other was making life multiplanetary right um would you like to share a little bit about the making life multiplanetary bit uh that might be slightly off topic uh but but I guess I can talk about a little bit um not NE but about getting there you know here's about the Innovation with rockets with space with batteries and cars which I assume are are are are somehow in your mind integrated as component pieces of changing the way we live creating sustainability and thinking about moving you know moving into other spheres well the thing that really I mean when when I was in in University I try to think about what were the things that would\n\nmost likely affect the future of humanity in at least as far as I could see and the three things seem to be the internet sustainable energy uh which requires both producing it in a sustainable Manner and and consuming it in a sustainable manner um and and then the third being extending life beyond Earth on a permanent basis so become a true space bring civilization of multiplet species and I thought as one sort of thinks about the the future history of humanity those if if we don't take those paths then it would be really very different if if there was no internet if there was uh if we were unable to sell sustainable energy obviously there would be economic collapse um if we were unable to a space Fring civilization then eventually some something would\n\nhappen on Earth that would would eliminate civilization as we know it so uh I thought those those three things needed to be addressed um and not that I expected actually in college that I would address them U or have but I think it's not as though I thought this would I'd have have an opportunity to do it uh but but that that's essentially what connects them there's not there's not any other connection um with respect to you know obviously the internet has happened and it's it's amazing it's transformed our life and I think it's actually made Humanity much more of a superorganism than we ever were before um and it's like it's given Humanity a nervous system so it's like every cell in the body can knows what the rest of the cells are doing essentially\n\nwhereas previously that would occur bya some sort of process almost like more like osmosis as opposed to um you know your your your brain knowing what your toe knows right um when you can be in the middle of a of a the Brazilian jungle if you have a satellite phone connection you connected to all of Humanity's knowledge which is pretty amazing so um but but I think as far as Earth is concerned I think the biggest problem that Humanity faces is one of sustainable energy if we don't solve that problem this Century um independent of any environmental concerns we will face economic collapse um this is obvious it's tological really uh you know it's either sustainable you brought into Tesla that your concern about energy batteries and it brings us you know\n\nreally to sector 82 um you have a robust AR uh uh you're one of the recipients of a large Grant from the Department of energy or Grant no not a grant loan yes if if if if if we'd like to change those terms of course this would be a good opportunity you know we're back in the green room and I I could tell a deal had just been done it's it's with interest I should say with interest okay in DC everything's a grant good good try yeah but in sustainable energy I assume that that the the the loan that you have with interest is really built around a partnership and looking at you know next Generation uh batteries and and opportunity creating this and so I'm interested in how you see your own product in this and Stephen i' love to draw your thought and why this\n\ninvestment well not investment uh loan uh makes sense um sure well first of all I think it's it's worth just um talking a bit about the um the program under which we received the the loan um it's it's called the advanced technology vehicle manufacturing program uh it was actually signed into law by President Bush um although people people think it was signed by Obama no it was it was actually signed by President Bush um the and and and then there was I think quite a a careful uh consideration of uh the the applications that that that came in um and and one of the requirements actually of that loan was that you had to be a viable company um and as a result uh uh General Motors and Chrysler were ineligible at the time because of they were going through\n\nbankruptcy proceedings um unfortunately that so are they back the viability now in terms of the grant makers or the yeah I think they're they're more or less back to being viable um that required obviously dramatic restructure ing but because the uh the bailout of GM and Chrysler occurred roughly the same time as the announcements for the um advanced technology vehicle man manufacturing program were announced people conflated those two and thought they were the same thing they were very different things um and in fact in order for us to uh be the program is Milestone based as well so um in order for us to receive portions of the loan we must make progress um along along with concrete Milestones uh and that's I think that's a very sensible way to structure\n\na program um and that's uh that's why for example one of the participants in the program that the the dispos stopped when that that participant was unable to complete the Milestones so I I think that's a very sensible way I think it's I think it's it's really structured very well um uh are you are you hitting your milestones we we've hit all of our Milestones yeah Sten um how do you feel about this program are are the other car companies uh going to apply and try and move this forward is this something that Tesla's the the the single um loan recipient of right now or you no okay first first they're not uh We've um as Elon said GM GM and uh chestler were not eligible Ford was Ford applied for loan uh our largest loan uh we think that uh that loan will\n\nbe paid we have confidence full confidence for it Nissan makes cars in Tennessee including Nissan Leaf uh and they wanted a loan to start uh you know making cars in Tennessee like the leave uh we think that loan is going to be repaid those are the two biggest loans to car companies uh there are others which may be at risk but but I would say in know any new car company even but in those days even even uh Ford uh Nan time was not considered risk but even Ford was considered risky but um but what it did is it preserved over 35,000 jobs just for that one loan Ford and and allowed them to retool to go to uh higher stage robotic automation so that they can program on the line instead of programming to generate just one type of car the line could be reprogrammed\n\nU very very quickly uh you know in months weeks so that they can produce something else so it gave them a manufacturing capability in the US uh that would keep the jobs in the US so so there were so now with Tesla uh you know this is a very Innovative campan any new company uh bear some risk but on the other hand uh its way of innovation the way it's pushing this it's a totally different approach to an old electric vehicle they are an incredibly vertically integrated company um meaning that they not only designed the entire platform the drive the motor train the electronics they even designed a test equipment for the acceptance of the of the parts and and they work with the suppliers and I don't want to sound like an ad for Tesla but but I'm just saying\n\nthat it's gone but this is but this is the Innovative the most it's the best of American innovation in the sense that it's it's a totally different approach it's a radical approach and if successful it's it's going to be the wave of the future you know one of the reasons why I like arpa e so much and I've met many of the people who attend this this this meeting uh from last year and this year is that uh there are real innovators and business people out there struggling trying to kind of you know fix whatever puzzle they're dealing with they're not only dealing with it within the US context they're dealing it with it with the realities of a of a globalized world and you know when you think about the kinds of you're from South Africa you're you're uh you're\n\nwhether it's SpaceX or you're dealing with you know technology you're now dealing with a global format you emphasizing us jobs us technology which I think is also important because there's a sense that stewardship here is something we need to get back to thinking about and we may have lost that track do you get a sense and let me ask you as a businessman do you get a sense that the United States you cited the Bush Administration for signing but you think we're beginning to shift I remember a McKenzie report saying you know that America benefited uh tremendously from every offshore job uh I remember uh in earlier presidential administrations advisor to the president said it didn't matter what we made in the United States a a potato chip and a semiconductor\n\nchip are the are the same uh and and do you get a sense that there you know some people call it industrial policy but let's just call it you know A A A Renewed sense that manufacturing and that creating things in the US economy is back and that takes smart policy and I'd love to get your thoughts on this Stephen just you're leaving your job soon but you've been at this yeah um and it's a hard nut to get people to believe that the government can really make a positive impact well it is smart policy but let me you know it's a great question here's here's the thing there are some who say it a job is a job is a job um and uh service jobs are the same as manufacturing jobs um I strongly disagree if you look at how the United States is embedded and how we got\n\nto where we are uh and this is looking back but also looking forward the the jobs in manufacturing that you invent in America you manufacture in America you produce here uh have all the other secondary service jobs associated with so it's greatly leveraged the other more important thing to realize is if you looked over there was um uh Michael Spence the Nobel prize winning Economist a friend of mine U happens to be from Stanford uh he and a colleague of his published uh a paper about 6 Months 8 months ago that looked at jobs and all the new jobs were created in the United States over 20e period and they divided it into service jobs into manufacturing of tier one tier two tier three all these things and but he really divided between what would be called\n\nthings that you do that are tradable and things that are not tradable uh let me give you an example if you're a farmer and you grow wheat or corn that's tradable you can ship it abroad uh cars are tradable you know things of that nature are tradable what's not tradable the US Secretary of energy is not tradable it's the US sector of energy uh restaurant jobs are not tradable right it's serving that uh most hospital jobs are not tradable okay the job growth in the United States remarkably grew a lot very healthy time in the period of the United States 1980 to 90 uh to 2000 20 years only in the non-tradable sector think about that all the jobs were in the non-tradable sector the job growth in the tradable sector was flat right so now think about this in\n\nareas where the United States has to compete globally we didn't grow now what you take that to its natural limit you're in a very bad place because you still need to import things into the us but we're not exporting things you get to a very bad Pace if I sell you pizza and you sell me Blue Jeans that's okay but eventually we're going to need something else from outside the US and so on this larger context uh this notion that you can give up manufacturing as a root Foundation of yan State's wealth is I think deeply flawed uh it is part of you know yes most of our jobs are today service jobs but manufacturing is a root Foundation because those are tradable things and not only that in terms of the wide diversity and talents in the American public you want\n\nyou know not everyone's going to be a stock broker or something like that and so um so that's another thing where yes good sensible policy to actually get forces back to look at in the long term what will be good for our citizens actually if I may comment on that with respect to Tesla um uh we have as customers Mercedes uh and Toyota uh so we Supply electric power trins to them um much of that being exported um and uh we have Tesla roads is have been exported now to 31 different countries uh longterm we expect probably uh some something in the order of 60 to 65% of the cars that we manufacture will be exported to Europe and Asia and and then other parts of the world as well so I do think that that to to just king of your point that that isn't if if if\n\nthe if other countries can export their cars to us why can't we make cars that are good enough to export to them MH yes can I add to that and what I'm seeing for the first time it's actually stimulated by the higher mileage standards uh that EPA and transportation put out all of a sudden cars being manufactured in the United States are now exportable because they're they're small they liable more fuel efficient and so so what you think would be uh a quote regulation telling us how to do our business is actually stimulating uh this thing in a very subtle way where if you know if you know except from a few exceptions if if you're only making cars to get 15 20 mil to a gallon that's not mass Market exportable if you're making cars to get 35 40 45 mil a gallon\n\nthat is uh and so that's another thing that's you see beginning to happen the the car manufactur are beginning to say you know what we can build the onit states and Export rather than you know build in another country well I I remember I I worked for Senator bingaman in the 1990s I remember at that time in this Arena U we had San National Laboratories um there and they had Cooperative research and development agreements with very large firms like Intel General Motors and others and the guys that were running the GM CR uh were very explicit and overt that they had the agreement to try and take all the Dual use or you know non-national security technology they could get out of the agreement and to apply it to their facilities in China and they said if we\n\ndidn't do that we won't be there in 30 years so this was raised interesting ethical questions for me as a you know taxpayer supported National Security research but it's hard to get these equations right because technology flows phds flow and and and you have it but while we have just a few minutes left I'd like to ask you you're both such um Giants in in the world of innovation and Alon you you've not just done I mean it's ironic because you've had some tough media recently in the New York Times uh I was just uh reminded that uh this was entirely your fault not because of bad car uh but alon's um first foray into business was a company called zip 2 uh which the New York Times was an investor in and you actually helped take the New York Times online uh\n\nso any that was years ago I realiz I think that's called being called host on your own petard yeah so um but from that and and PayPal and Tesla of course Solar City um where I've interviewed a number of U your friends and colleagues that have helped put that together and and Stephen with you in your um in in your research work at Berkeley and others you know forget yourself as a powerful Secretary of Energy but just in terms of of innovating thinking out of the box and doing things that no other people have done before we have 3,000 people in the room uh who are struggling to find that kind of those what are the right ingredients to make Innovation work not just Innovation but then disrupting incumbents getting finance and capital partnering in the right\n\nways and I I'd love to just get two or three important lessons from you that this crowd should hear as they struggle with their own aspirations okay yeah um well uh I I think uh so you're looking for S suggestions that people for executing on on IDE wants to do what you've done but maybe in different areas I think I'm not sure they really knew what the that they would want that actually um yeah it's Never As Good As It Seems um I think things are better these days but but for many years there it was it was very painful um and we almost lost everything back in 2008 um so at Tesla yeah actually all three companies almost died in 2008 um because uh that SpaceX and you're still running two of the companies full-time right as CEO right how's that going for\n\nyou I don't recommend it yeah yeah um it's uh it's it's not I I'm doing this because I think I have to not because I want to okay so that's that's maybe an important consideration so doing what you have to do I also remember in our San Diego meeting was fascinating you uh conveyed that uh uh the only limits on you and your aspirations were physical I thought it was a really great line that's that's well that's I'm not saying that I can do anything within the limits of physics but I'm saying if if physics says you can't do it then you probably can't um yeah or you should get a you should get a really big Nobel Prize one of the two yeah um yeah you know generally important to observe the laws of the thermodynamics and conservation of energy momentum and\n\nthat kind of thing I see Stephen um yes I would agree I want to direct this yeah okay we're we're we're straight on loss of physics but thoughts for innovators in the in the room um I think when I look at both what I've done you know certain what Yan's done whether number of people done you cast around and you look for areas that you begin to see either a glimmer of a new breakthrough type of thinking uh or the some technology in this sector has been left alone and not applied to that sector and or there's a just a need based on an Emerging Market uh and those are the things that actually are can be real drivers for success in Innovation uh when you see a glimmer of a breakthrough I mean Elon was telling me when he was a graduate student he was into energy\n\nstorage and super Capac things like that uh and I think many of us saw 8 10 years ago battery techn ology before that was crawling along crawling along crawling along and all of a sudden you see wait a minute there's beginning to see something that will uh take a different slope and if you think that it could take a different slope do those things to develop that technology and Surround you with people that help you develop that technology so you become the leader okay but but but there's something behind you that's building wave that you're going to ride and so that's very important uh and and so and in in the things I did in my research career when I was a graduate student lasers had been demonstrated in the early 60s the tunable laser was invented\n\nby 1970 by 1972 even though my thesis advisor had not been in lasers didn't know lasers and I told them you know what we got to get into this technology but you get into it not by purchasing a laser you get into it by building the next best thing that keeps you ahead of the pack and then you can do signs no one else could do yeah I I can make two two recommendations which actually do slightly K physics which is I think a lot of times if if you want to do something really Innovative you have to apply a sort of first principles analysis not not and don't don't Reason by analogy analogies are referencing the past um so first principles means you you you look at the most fundamental truths in in a particular Arena uh um and and the things that really are\n\nalmost indisputably correct um and you reason up from there to a conclusion um and and if you if you see that that conclusion is at is at odds with with what people generally believe then you have an opportunity um now you can't operate like that on all things because it takes too much mental horsepower so most of your life you have to operate by reasoning by analogy but if you really want invate you must reason for first principles to identify the problem um and then you also should seek negative get a feedback this this sounds like a strange thing and see from from from your friends and from people who are knowledgeable people will not give you the negative feedback be cruel to be kind no it's not it's you just want you need to understand where you're\n\nwrong it's got It's got nothing and and put feelings aside and a lot of times people can look at what you're doing and they know that's wrong but you have but but they don't want to hurt your feelings and that's why they don't tell you um so yeah yeah Stephen yeah we we're right at the end go ahead um I agree with for few more days um it'll be longer than that but but uh I think uh I agree with everything Elon said uh when you look at new technologies and you look there could be you know St called wild claims um but you what is the quote theoretical limitations but not theoretical Allah Heisenberg on Ser principle you know there's a lower theory that is beyond this it's just you know it's not going to make it and then you where is the technology and then\n\nyou say how much space is there between that that realistically you can get there in 5 years okay and and that actually helps Define things and and focuses the mind on what you should be thinking about what you shouldn't be thinking about so there are many things like that that I think successful innovators do all the time the constructive feedback the honest feedback is exactly what we were establishing in RP that's now being infected in the rest of the Departments of energy uh you know if you hear an idea that you don't really agree with instead of politely sitting there and being polite you say no you know that I don't think that's right you know this is why you know you're wrong and then and then you sit at a table and you talk about it and that's\n\nwhere you figure out are you right are you wrong and then you have a deeper understanding of what's going on and that's the type of culture that we want to that start started in RP it certainly has to be continued in RP but to infect the rest of the Department of energy yeah ladies and gentlem we've come oh last last word I can make an announcement that maybe would be interesting um so uh everybody get Twitter out yeah exactly um so I I I really think that that the the Dee loan to to Tesla should be viewed as as a pretty significant success I mean we're we're we're we're exporting cars uh we're we're selling power trins to two of the most respected brands in the world Mercedes and and and Toyota uh we won electric car went car of the year last year I\n\nmean this this is pretty good stuff I mean so if people are going to um you know attack the doe for floody cylindra for God's sake honestly um uh you know if then then there should be some praise for the doe when there is a success um I think you just help doe stock go up yeah and and and and so actually I want to make a public commitment and we're going to codify it that Tesla is going to cut the payment time in half of the loan so we have 10 years ahead of us the loan half or less great well we are uh we we are uh 2 minutes and 47 seconds over but I think when you're sitting with two of the most brilliant innovators in the United States they can lend us that that little extra time I want to uh thank you both for for sharing your insights into how make\n\nthis work uh I know I teased you a little bit about the government private sector thing but what we're doing here and I think what arpa is doing is so important of essentially creating a platform raising aspirationally where we need to go as a nation bringing uh participants into this so that they can get constructive feedback negative and positive uh and that they've got real world examples to see what you've done over and over and over again if we had another hour or two you know it's interesting I've had an opportunity in my position to interview a lot of geniuses and when you're around genius it gives you an opportunity because people organize the way they see the world these guys are slowing down a little bit for us right now when you're having a\n\nbeer with them late at night you can sort of see how they see the the future and how they're operating and it is really incredibly um valuable to all of us into people in room that you take the time uh to share with us and give us some on-ramps into how you see Innovation and how it works so thank you so much [Applause] [Music]","textByLang":{"en":"now we have the Secretary of Energy Steven Chu and innovator Galore CEO and product architect at Tesla CEO of SpaceX and creator of PayPal Alon musk alen thank you for joining us joining us we'll put alen here and Stephen there it'll be great so we're going to have uh again have some fun have a bit of a an informal chat with with two giants um and I thought I would started off a little bit fun maybe a little bit uh risque that I understand uh uh Stephen that you have a Nobel Prize on your wall uh and that some people have said hey when you're dealing with Congress and talking about sequesters maybe you should take it on off the wall and when you're having a meeting with that cator and say hey here's what I've got what do you have bad idea bad idea hasn't\n\nworked for you um I also heard at the one of the inaugural dinners Will I Am came up to you and said you know Stephen you're really really cool but one way to get uh even cooler is to change your name to MC energy taking it on is that true uh it's true and you did go around that night and and and thought well we have I thought we'd start aen it's great to have you with us um out from California I thought we'd start the conversation uh in an interesting way because Stephen you're known for um investing and thinking about the transition from non- fossil fuel energy to renewable energy trying to think about how you systematically do that bring science and innovators uh and government resources to together to do it you're going to be leaving uh fairly shortly\n\nI assume you've announced that you're going to be leaving your post um Alon musk is here he's quite an Innovative guy uh he's gotten a lot of awards and I'm just sort of interested in starting off conversation by asking you should you President Obama call you and say would you like his job uh how would you do it differently wow um well I I I think Steve's done a pretty awesome job actually I think I've had of a hard time doing a better job so um and I think being Secretary of anything is is a really tough tough role to hold uh and and one where you you tend to get I think a lot more criticism than praise um no matter what job you do so um well when you speak drill down a little it's not a role to to which I would Aspire you're a young man you you've revolutionized\n\npayments you've done a lot of revolution in cars and batteries you're now revolutionizing our access to space and you're doing this in in in part on on the the backs of scientists and other innovators and some government Investments but you're outpacing what government has been able to do and so my my question was not a factious one it was if you were able to not have the the the environment if you were able to basically jump ahead and you know Stephen is is also a brilliant innovator a Nobel La of course in physics but what makes makes you who you are how do you how are you able to do these things which government has found itself less able to accomplish as quickly well I I mean I think one way to think of government is is to think of it as essentially\n\na large corporation or the largest corporation um and generally uh large corporations have a harder time with radical Innovation than than small smaller companies there are some exceptions to that rule like apple but but it's generally true that the larger a company is the the harder it is to to to execute Innovation um now there there are ways to to get around that by in in the private sector by acquiring smaller companies that that that that do do the radical Innovation or or by having someone uh like say Steve Jobs who who is just relentlessly hardcore about uh pushing um radical Innovation um but uh but I think it is just generally true that the large of the corporation or Lodge The Entity the the harder it is to to uh uh engage radical Innovation\n\nwell Stephen it seems to me sitting here at an arpa conference that arpa is a very Innovative notion of how do you move from the very large maybe I I would argue risk avoiding of uh environment of government and here you've got rpe which really is about encouraging you know maybe not risk but investment Innovation and we love you to reflect for a moment on on how you think this experiment is going and what more needs to be done uh particularly in the in the energy area of of Next Generation energy well it um you know going to the uh Corporation analogy um I've got a CEO uh the president uh I got uh a very diverse board of directors 535 of them it's a big board in Congress but but within that you there's many things you can do within the agency um certainly\n\ngetting RP going that was of course voted on by Congress proposed by the president you know lots of bipartisan support but once you have the funding to say let's get started within the agency you can then say how can it be different and so we went in there thinking this could be a new example of how we want to get a lot of Department of energy programs and it's uh yes you're going to have to take risks that was designed into the program it was written into uh the American comp act that philosophy it was written into Rising Above The Gather storm that um it's it's research its development and it's very we didn't we don't expect all those things to work but they're short hits this is not a long-term thing this is a short hit get in there see if it's going\n\nto work it's going to be a home run we wanted home runs now after 3 years have there been home runs well maybe not but there's a people rounding second and third base so it's looking good uh and so and then the culture in RP is something else that is very different you had a bunch of program managers who sit around and instead of politely presenting their program and advocating for their program they would listen to what everyone else said and they would start to say well I'm not so sure that I believe that what about this what about that it was described as constructive confrontation that was exactly the thing we got at about Laboratories uh that you know you're not going to completly wait your turn you're going to old discuss is the combin intellect\n\nof the group would develop those ideas and that is very different and of course then there's a spirit that my gosh this is going to be something special and so far it has been very special so much grew out of bell abs and and of course you were at Bell Labs is arpa essentially taking there is no Bell Labs today so is and I'm I'm interested in whether that is a very harmful thing for the US economy is that what RP is now replicating and what you think is important to sort of institutionalize that sort of constructive confrontation how do you look at the future of that kind of big investment in basic research that that would drive the country uh forward well to be fair they're very very different Bell lab's research and development ultimately was to serve\n\nthe company and they had a financial bottom line RP is we are funders of other innovators and but the baps bear I was talking about uh can be exactly the same the the quality of the people people we got into the program were truly outstanding and so that part of the Bell Spirit was there but but you know we're not we're not there in business to to to do something we're there to uh sponsor very sponsor Innovation that the private sector will pick up and run with you know Alon to think a little bit about the agenda for today which is essentially about Innovation you shared a while back actually in a forum um that was organized by the Atlantic this was done in San Diego um at a forum we call the Atlantic meets Pacific and you spoke there and said you know\n\nyou had three real spheres that drove your interest one was the internet uh the other was sustainable energy and the other was making life multiplanetary right um would you like to share a little bit about the making life multiplanetary bit uh that might be slightly off topic uh but but I guess I can talk about a little bit um not NE but about getting there you know here's about the Innovation with rockets with space with batteries and cars which I assume are are are are somehow in your mind integrated as component pieces of changing the way we live creating sustainability and thinking about moving you know moving into other spheres well the thing that really I mean when when I was in in University I try to think about what were the things that would\n\nmost likely affect the future of humanity in at least as far as I could see and the three things seem to be the internet sustainable energy uh which requires both producing it in a sustainable Manner and and consuming it in a sustainable manner um and and then the third being extending life beyond Earth on a permanent basis so become a true space bring civilization of multiplet species and I thought as one sort of thinks about the the future history of humanity those if if we don't take those paths then it would be really very different if if there was no internet if there was uh if we were unable to sell sustainable energy obviously there would be economic collapse um if we were unable to a space Fring civilization then eventually some something would\n\nhappen on Earth that would would eliminate civilization as we know it so uh I thought those those three things needed to be addressed um and not that I expected actually in college that I would address them U or have but I think it's not as though I thought this would I'd have have an opportunity to do it uh but but that that's essentially what connects them there's not there's not any other connection um with respect to you know obviously the internet has happened and it's it's amazing it's transformed our life and I think it's actually made Humanity much more of a superorganism than we ever were before um and it's like it's given Humanity a nervous system so it's like every cell in the body can knows what the rest of the cells are doing essentially\n\nwhereas previously that would occur bya some sort of process almost like more like osmosis as opposed to um you know your your your brain knowing what your toe knows right um when you can be in the middle of a of a the Brazilian jungle if you have a satellite phone connection you connected to all of Humanity's knowledge which is pretty amazing so um but but I think as far as Earth is concerned I think the biggest problem that Humanity faces is one of sustainable energy if we don't solve that problem this Century um independent of any environmental concerns we will face economic collapse um this is obvious it's tological really uh you know it's either sustainable you brought into Tesla that your concern about energy batteries and it brings us you know\n\nreally to sector 82 um you have a robust AR uh uh you're one of the recipients of a large Grant from the Department of energy or Grant no not a grant loan yes if if if if if we'd like to change those terms of course this would be a good opportunity you know we're back in the green room and I I could tell a deal had just been done it's it's with interest I should say with interest okay in DC everything's a grant good good try yeah but in sustainable energy I assume that that the the the loan that you have with interest is really built around a partnership and looking at you know next Generation uh batteries and and opportunity creating this and so I'm interested in how you see your own product in this and Stephen i' love to draw your thought and why this\n\ninvestment well not investment uh loan uh makes sense um sure well first of all I think it's it's worth just um talking a bit about the um the program under which we received the the loan um it's it's called the advanced technology vehicle manufacturing program uh it was actually signed into law by President Bush um although people people think it was signed by Obama no it was it was actually signed by President Bush um the and and and then there was I think quite a a careful uh consideration of uh the the applications that that that came in um and and one of the requirements actually of that loan was that you had to be a viable company um and as a result uh uh General Motors and Chrysler were ineligible at the time because of they were going through\n\nbankruptcy proceedings um unfortunately that so are they back the viability now in terms of the grant makers or the yeah I think they're they're more or less back to being viable um that required obviously dramatic restructure ing but because the uh the bailout of GM and Chrysler occurred roughly the same time as the announcements for the um advanced technology vehicle man manufacturing program were announced people conflated those two and thought they were the same thing they were very different things um and in fact in order for us to uh be the program is Milestone based as well so um in order for us to receive portions of the loan we must make progress um along along with concrete Milestones uh and that's I think that's a very sensible way to structure\n\na program um and that's uh that's why for example one of the participants in the program that the the dispos stopped when that that participant was unable to complete the Milestones so I I think that's a very sensible way I think it's I think it's it's really structured very well um uh are you are you hitting your milestones we we've hit all of our Milestones yeah Sten um how do you feel about this program are are the other car companies uh going to apply and try and move this forward is this something that Tesla's the the the single um loan recipient of right now or you no okay first first they're not uh We've um as Elon said GM GM and uh chestler were not eligible Ford was Ford applied for loan uh our largest loan uh we think that uh that loan will\n\nbe paid we have confidence full confidence for it Nissan makes cars in Tennessee including Nissan Leaf uh and they wanted a loan to start uh you know making cars in Tennessee like the leave uh we think that loan is going to be repaid those are the two biggest loans to car companies uh there are others which may be at risk but but I would say in know any new car company even but in those days even even uh Ford uh Nan time was not considered risk but even Ford was considered risky but um but what it did is it preserved over 35,000 jobs just for that one loan Ford and and allowed them to retool to go to uh higher stage robotic automation so that they can program on the line instead of programming to generate just one type of car the line could be reprogrammed\n\nU very very quickly uh you know in months weeks so that they can produce something else so it gave them a manufacturing capability in the US uh that would keep the jobs in the US so so there were so now with Tesla uh you know this is a very Innovative campan any new company uh bear some risk but on the other hand uh its way of innovation the way it's pushing this it's a totally different approach to an old electric vehicle they are an incredibly vertically integrated company um meaning that they not only designed the entire platform the drive the motor train the electronics they even designed a test equipment for the acceptance of the of the parts and and they work with the suppliers and I don't want to sound like an ad for Tesla but but I'm just saying\n\nthat it's gone but this is but this is the Innovative the most it's the best of American innovation in the sense that it's it's a totally different approach it's a radical approach and if successful it's it's going to be the wave of the future you know one of the reasons why I like arpa e so much and I've met many of the people who attend this this this meeting uh from last year and this year is that uh there are real innovators and business people out there struggling trying to kind of you know fix whatever puzzle they're dealing with they're not only dealing with it within the US context they're dealing it with it with the realities of a of a globalized world and you know when you think about the kinds of you're from South Africa you're you're uh you're\n\nwhether it's SpaceX or you're dealing with you know technology you're now dealing with a global format you emphasizing us jobs us technology which I think is also important because there's a sense that stewardship here is something we need to get back to thinking about and we may have lost that track do you get a sense and let me ask you as a businessman do you get a sense that the United States you cited the Bush Administration for signing but you think we're beginning to shift I remember a McKenzie report saying you know that America benefited uh tremendously from every offshore job uh I remember uh in earlier presidential administrations advisor to the president said it didn't matter what we made in the United States a a potato chip and a semiconductor\n\nchip are the are the same uh and and do you get a sense that there you know some people call it industrial policy but let's just call it you know A A A Renewed sense that manufacturing and that creating things in the US economy is back and that takes smart policy and I'd love to get your thoughts on this Stephen just you're leaving your job soon but you've been at this yeah um and it's a hard nut to get people to believe that the government can really make a positive impact well it is smart policy but let me you know it's a great question here's here's the thing there are some who say it a job is a job is a job um and uh service jobs are the same as manufacturing jobs um I strongly disagree if you look at how the United States is embedded and how we got\n\nto where we are uh and this is looking back but also looking forward the the jobs in manufacturing that you invent in America you manufacture in America you produce here uh have all the other secondary service jobs associated with so it's greatly leveraged the other more important thing to realize is if you looked over there was um uh Michael Spence the Nobel prize winning Economist a friend of mine U happens to be from Stanford uh he and a colleague of his published uh a paper about 6 Months 8 months ago that looked at jobs and all the new jobs were created in the United States over 20e period and they divided it into service jobs into manufacturing of tier one tier two tier three all these things and but he really divided between what would be called\n\nthings that you do that are tradable and things that are not tradable uh let me give you an example if you're a farmer and you grow wheat or corn that's tradable you can ship it abroad uh cars are tradable you know things of that nature are tradable what's not tradable the US Secretary of energy is not tradable it's the US sector of energy uh restaurant jobs are not tradable right it's serving that uh most hospital jobs are not tradable okay the job growth in the United States remarkably grew a lot very healthy time in the period of the United States 1980 to 90 uh to 2000 20 years only in the non-tradable sector think about that all the jobs were in the non-tradable sector the job growth in the tradable sector was flat right so now think about this in\n\nareas where the United States has to compete globally we didn't grow now what you take that to its natural limit you're in a very bad place because you still need to import things into the us but we're not exporting things you get to a very bad Pace if I sell you pizza and you sell me Blue Jeans that's okay but eventually we're going to need something else from outside the US and so on this larger context uh this notion that you can give up manufacturing as a root Foundation of yan State's wealth is I think deeply flawed uh it is part of you know yes most of our jobs are today service jobs but manufacturing is a root Foundation because those are tradable things and not only that in terms of the wide diversity and talents in the American public you want\n\nyou know not everyone's going to be a stock broker or something like that and so um so that's another thing where yes good sensible policy to actually get forces back to look at in the long term what will be good for our citizens actually if I may comment on that with respect to Tesla um uh we have as customers Mercedes uh and Toyota uh so we Supply electric power trins to them um much of that being exported um and uh we have Tesla roads is have been exported now to 31 different countries uh longterm we expect probably uh some something in the order of 60 to 65% of the cars that we manufacture will be exported to Europe and Asia and and then other parts of the world as well so I do think that that to to just king of your point that that isn't if if if\n\nthe if other countries can export their cars to us why can't we make cars that are good enough to export to them MH yes can I add to that and what I'm seeing for the first time it's actually stimulated by the higher mileage standards uh that EPA and transportation put out all of a sudden cars being manufactured in the United States are now exportable because they're they're small they liable more fuel efficient and so so what you think would be uh a quote regulation telling us how to do our business is actually stimulating uh this thing in a very subtle way where if you know if you know except from a few exceptions if if you're only making cars to get 15 20 mil to a gallon that's not mass Market exportable if you're making cars to get 35 40 45 mil a gallon\n\nthat is uh and so that's another thing that's you see beginning to happen the the car manufactur are beginning to say you know what we can build the onit states and Export rather than you know build in another country well I I remember I I worked for Senator bingaman in the 1990s I remember at that time in this Arena U we had San National Laboratories um there and they had Cooperative research and development agreements with very large firms like Intel General Motors and others and the guys that were running the GM CR uh were very explicit and overt that they had the agreement to try and take all the Dual use or you know non-national security technology they could get out of the agreement and to apply it to their facilities in China and they said if we\n\ndidn't do that we won't be there in 30 years so this was raised interesting ethical questions for me as a you know taxpayer supported National Security research but it's hard to get these equations right because technology flows phds flow and and and you have it but while we have just a few minutes left I'd like to ask you you're both such um Giants in in the world of innovation and Alon you you've not just done I mean it's ironic because you've had some tough media recently in the New York Times uh I was just uh reminded that uh this was entirely your fault not because of bad car uh but alon's um first foray into business was a company called zip 2 uh which the New York Times was an investor in and you actually helped take the New York Times online uh\n\nso any that was years ago I realiz I think that's called being called host on your own petard yeah so um but from that and and PayPal and Tesla of course Solar City um where I've interviewed a number of U your friends and colleagues that have helped put that together and and Stephen with you in your um in in your research work at Berkeley and others you know forget yourself as a powerful Secretary of Energy but just in terms of of innovating thinking out of the box and doing things that no other people have done before we have 3,000 people in the room uh who are struggling to find that kind of those what are the right ingredients to make Innovation work not just Innovation but then disrupting incumbents getting finance and capital partnering in the right\n\nways and I I'd love to just get two or three important lessons from you that this crowd should hear as they struggle with their own aspirations okay yeah um well uh I I think uh so you're looking for S suggestions that people for executing on on IDE wants to do what you've done but maybe in different areas I think I'm not sure they really knew what the that they would want that actually um yeah it's Never As Good As It Seems um I think things are better these days but but for many years there it was it was very painful um and we almost lost everything back in 2008 um so at Tesla yeah actually all three companies almost died in 2008 um because uh that SpaceX and you're still running two of the companies full-time right as CEO right how's that going for\n\nyou I don't recommend it yeah yeah um it's uh it's it's not I I'm doing this because I think I have to not because I want to okay so that's that's maybe an important consideration so doing what you have to do I also remember in our San Diego meeting was fascinating you uh conveyed that uh uh the only limits on you and your aspirations were physical I thought it was a really great line that's that's well that's I'm not saying that I can do anything within the limits of physics but I'm saying if if physics says you can't do it then you probably can't um yeah or you should get a you should get a really big Nobel Prize one of the two yeah um yeah you know generally important to observe the laws of the thermodynamics and conservation of energy momentum and\n\nthat kind of thing I see Stephen um yes I would agree I want to direct this yeah okay we're we're we're straight on loss of physics but thoughts for innovators in the in the room um I think when I look at both what I've done you know certain what Yan's done whether number of people done you cast around and you look for areas that you begin to see either a glimmer of a new breakthrough type of thinking uh or the some technology in this sector has been left alone and not applied to that sector and or there's a just a need based on an Emerging Market uh and those are the things that actually are can be real drivers for success in Innovation uh when you see a glimmer of a breakthrough I mean Elon was telling me when he was a graduate student he was into energy\n\nstorage and super Capac things like that uh and I think many of us saw 8 10 years ago battery techn ology before that was crawling along crawling along crawling along and all of a sudden you see wait a minute there's beginning to see something that will uh take a different slope and if you think that it could take a different slope do those things to develop that technology and Surround you with people that help you develop that technology so you become the leader okay but but but there's something behind you that's building wave that you're going to ride and so that's very important uh and and so and in in the things I did in my research career when I was a graduate student lasers had been demonstrated in the early 60s the tunable laser was invented\n\nby 1970 by 1972 even though my thesis advisor had not been in lasers didn't know lasers and I told them you know what we got to get into this technology but you get into it not by purchasing a laser you get into it by building the next best thing that keeps you ahead of the pack and then you can do signs no one else could do yeah I I can make two two recommendations which actually do slightly K physics which is I think a lot of times if if you want to do something really Innovative you have to apply a sort of first principles analysis not not and don't don't Reason by analogy analogies are referencing the past um so first principles means you you you look at the most fundamental truths in in a particular Arena uh um and and the things that really are\n\nalmost indisputably correct um and you reason up from there to a conclusion um and and if you if you see that that conclusion is at is at odds with with what people generally believe then you have an opportunity um now you can't operate like that on all things because it takes too much mental horsepower so most of your life you have to operate by reasoning by analogy but if you really want invate you must reason for first principles to identify the problem um and then you also should seek negative get a feedback this this sounds like a strange thing and see from from from your friends and from people who are knowledgeable people will not give you the negative feedback be cruel to be kind no it's not it's you just want you need to understand where you're\n\nwrong it's got It's got nothing and and put feelings aside and a lot of times people can look at what you're doing and they know that's wrong but you have but but they don't want to hurt your feelings and that's why they don't tell you um so yeah yeah Stephen yeah we we're right at the end go ahead um I agree with for few more days um it'll be longer than that but but uh I think uh I agree with everything Elon said uh when you look at new technologies and you look there could be you know St called wild claims um but you what is the quote theoretical limitations but not theoretical Allah Heisenberg on Ser principle you know there's a lower theory that is beyond this it's just you know it's not going to make it and then you where is the technology and then\n\nyou say how much space is there between that that realistically you can get there in 5 years okay and and that actually helps Define things and and focuses the mind on what you should be thinking about what you shouldn't be thinking about so there are many things like that that I think successful innovators do all the time the constructive feedback the honest feedback is exactly what we were establishing in RP that's now being infected in the rest of the Departments of energy uh you know if you hear an idea that you don't really agree with instead of politely sitting there and being polite you say no you know that I don't think that's right you know this is why you know you're wrong and then and then you sit at a table and you talk about it and that's\n\nwhere you figure out are you right are you wrong and then you have a deeper understanding of what's going on and that's the type of culture that we want to that start started in RP it certainly has to be continued in RP but to infect the rest of the Department of energy yeah ladies and gentlem we've come oh last last word I can make an announcement that maybe would be interesting um so uh everybody get Twitter out yeah exactly um so I I I really think that that the the Dee loan to to Tesla should be viewed as as a pretty significant success I mean we're we're we're we're exporting cars uh we're we're selling power trins to two of the most respected brands in the world Mercedes and and and Toyota uh we won electric car went car of the year last year I\n\nmean this this is pretty good stuff I mean so if people are going to um you know attack the doe for floody cylindra for God's sake honestly um uh you know if then then there should be some praise for the doe when there is a success um I think you just help doe stock go up yeah and and and and so actually I want to make a public commitment and we're going to codify it that Tesla is going to cut the payment time in half of the loan so we have 10 years ahead of us the loan half or less great well we are uh we we are uh 2 minutes and 47 seconds over but I think when you're sitting with two of the most brilliant innovators in the United States they can lend us that that little extra time I want to uh thank you both for for sharing your insights into how make\n\nthis work uh I know I teased you a little bit about the government private sector thing but what we're doing here and I think what arpa is doing is so important of essentially creating a platform raising aspirationally where we need to go as a nation bringing uh participants into this so that they can get constructive feedback negative and positive uh and that they've got real world examples to see what you've done over and over and over again if we had another hour or two you know it's interesting I've had an opportunity in my position to interview a lot of geniuses and when you're around genius it gives you an opportunity because people organize the way they see the world these guys are slowing down a little bit for us right now when you're having a\n\nbeer with them late at night you can sort of see how they see the the future and how they're operating and it is really incredibly um valuable to all of us into people in room that you take the time uh to share with us and give us some on-ramps into how you see Innovation and how it works so thank you so much [Applause] [Music]"},"languages":["en"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NMPRcBN4K20"},{"id":"interview-with-bloomberg-2013-02-25","type":"interview","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dg04f_nGlzo","title":"Interview with Bloomberg","titles":{"en":"Interview with Bloomberg","de":"Interview mit Bloomberg","fr":"Entretien avec Bloomberg"},"date":"2013-02-25","summary":"Musk tells Bloomberg's Betty Liu the New York Times Model S review likely cost Tesla hundreds of orders and tens of millions in value.","text":"the thing that really uh I thought was wrong was was we're looking at the data from this test drive and it doesn't correlate at all to the article that was written and the result was that the the car ran out of range it had to be towed yeah exactly and so there was this sad shot of of our car on a on a flatbed as though that was the only outcome possible for for such a drive and and that's just that's just not true and lots of people said oh you know you should doesn't matter if you're right or wrong you don't the New York Times um and it's like the hell with that I'd rather tell the truth and and the consequences even if they're negative I don't think he it should be the end of his career I don't even think necessarily should be fired um but I I I I\n\ndo think he he he fudged he fudged an article so what did you hear in the middle of all of this well we we did actually get a lot of cancellations as a result of the New York Times article so it wasn't I mean it probably affected us to the tune of tens of millions if not maybe on the order of 100 Millions so it's not it's not trivial 100 million probably something on that order yeah so we're talking about probably a thousand cancellations based on this no sorry in terms of 100 million I'd say that that refers more to the valuation of the company I see you're not talking about orders no orders are talking about orders but you're not talking about the amount of the orders equals 100 million no we it wasn't as a th000 cancellations just due to the New York\n\nTimes article um there there were probably a few hundred now El you and I talked a lot about production targets so you're pretty much at 400 cars per week right for for the for the model S and you are going to hit it seems like you're going to hit 20,000 um for this year now some might say okay you're going to hit 20,000 this year but what about next year and the year after that perhaps the 20,000 are just the early adopters and that's where the demand's coming from for the in terms of modelist demand we've seen um more new reservations every successive quarter so the demand appears to be growing if one is to extrapolate that trend and we're also seeing that when a Model S is when a lot of Model S's are delivered to a particular area of the country uh\n\nwe actually get increased reservations so if it were just the early adopter what you'd see is that when you deliver model Ence to a particular region of the country that you you sales decline dramatically because you've satisfied the early adopters but actually we see the opposite uh we actually see increased sales the more Model S's are delivered to a particular area which means that the word of mouth is very positive for every customer's car that we deliver we seem to to sell an incremental two or three cars okay as a function of that customer um on average and some some customers has been like 20 cars now I know in the fourth quarter um you had issue you you reported a loss in the fourth quarter and part of that had to do with the increase in expenses\n\num I think it was up 29% to $115 million you also though promise for the coming year that you're going to boost production you're going to as I mentioned you're going to hit 500 cars per week so how are you going to get cost down and boost production the Big Challenge in the fourth quarter was going from um low production rate to to that 20,000 unit a year production rate which was really difficult because I mean that's basically over 400 cars a week in the past with the road stuff we only made 600 cars a year wow so we have to manufacture uh and deliver and Service as many cars almost in a week as we did in a year um so that took you know that's a steep learning curve yeah um and question we made some mistakes along the way and it's not not optimal um\n\nI don't know what more we could have done but there's no question we we weren't perfect there Yan do you think you'd have the same amount of demand for your cars without the government subsidy oh the $7,500 mhm no I think I think it would be a little little less demand I mean there' probably be I don't know 10 to 20% less demand so and you mentioned in your shareholder letter cuz you have this loan from the Department of energy that helps you with Tesla you mentioned that eventually you want to be able to get rid of you know essentially this government help and be a standalone business and be a standalone commercial Enterprise when will that happen we we have actually been paying off interest and principle on the loan on time and that one thing that was\n\nsort of um I think not quite reported uh in in in some of the media last year was it sounded like at one point that Tesla was trying to delay the repayment loan or something but actually nothing could be furthered from the truth we've always paid the loan off um either on time or ahead of time so we've got I think about 10 years we want to pay it off in in five 5 years or less are you learning more though about how to deal with Washington first of all I'd say My overall impression of washing Washington is that it's much less corrupt than people think it is um and and thank goodness for it because if it was corrupt we would be screwed it's not to say that there isn't some some amount of that that that that goes on um but there actually are I think a preponderance\n\nof of the leading um house members and Senators uh actually are quite idealistic and do care about doing the the right thing Elan I was looking through a recent article was actually Huffington Post article where uh it it seemed to portray you as kind of a peculiarity in Washington people don't really know who is this billionaire entrepreneur who's come in and and developed the electric car market he's got this private Spaceship Company one aid for a Congressman Tom DeLay said you show showed up to a meeting with a congressman in a tight black T-shirt I don't remember doing that by the way I I I don't think that's accurate when I'm in DC I always wear a suit in a tie so I believe that is an inaccurate statement why do you think people have that reaction\n\nto you I don't think that's what most people in DC think of me and and I've been I've literally made maybe 200 trips to DC um and I've met with um probably at this point half the Senate maybe 150 Plus members in the house um and they haven't just seen me once they've seen me several times yeah exactly and all the interactions have been like what they've been quite positive actually um and and I I mean I I contrary to the sentiment of that article I mean I believe in being quite respectful in in DC and and I always wear a suit in a tie even though I don't wear it one at SpaceX","textByLang":{"en":"the thing that really uh I thought was wrong was was we're looking at the data from this test drive and it doesn't correlate at all to the article that was written and the result was that the the car ran out of range it had to be towed yeah exactly and so there was this sad shot of of our car on a on a flatbed as though that was the only outcome possible for for such a drive and and that's just that's just not true and lots of people said oh you know you should doesn't matter if you're right or wrong you don't the New York Times um and it's like the hell with that I'd rather tell the truth and and the consequences even if they're negative I don't think he it should be the end of his career I don't even think necessarily should be fired um but I I I I\n\ndo think he he he fudged he fudged an article so what did you hear in the middle of all of this well we we did actually get a lot of cancellations as a result of the New York Times article so it wasn't I mean it probably affected us to the tune of tens of millions if not maybe on the order of 100 Millions so it's not it's not trivial 100 million probably something on that order yeah so we're talking about probably a thousand cancellations based on this no sorry in terms of 100 million I'd say that that refers more to the valuation of the company I see you're not talking about orders no orders are talking about orders but you're not talking about the amount of the orders equals 100 million no we it wasn't as a th000 cancellations just due to the New York\n\nTimes article um there there were probably a few hundred now El you and I talked a lot about production targets so you're pretty much at 400 cars per week right for for the for the model S and you are going to hit it seems like you're going to hit 20,000 um for this year now some might say okay you're going to hit 20,000 this year but what about next year and the year after that perhaps the 20,000 are just the early adopters and that's where the demand's coming from for the in terms of modelist demand we've seen um more new reservations every successive quarter so the demand appears to be growing if one is to extrapolate that trend and we're also seeing that when a Model S is when a lot of Model S's are delivered to a particular area of the country uh\n\nwe actually get increased reservations so if it were just the early adopter what you'd see is that when you deliver model Ence to a particular region of the country that you you sales decline dramatically because you've satisfied the early adopters but actually we see the opposite uh we actually see increased sales the more Model S's are delivered to a particular area which means that the word of mouth is very positive for every customer's car that we deliver we seem to to sell an incremental two or three cars okay as a function of that customer um on average and some some customers has been like 20 cars now I know in the fourth quarter um you had issue you you reported a loss in the fourth quarter and part of that had to do with the increase in expenses\n\num I think it was up 29% to $115 million you also though promise for the coming year that you're going to boost production you're going to as I mentioned you're going to hit 500 cars per week so how are you going to get cost down and boost production the Big Challenge in the fourth quarter was going from um low production rate to to that 20,000 unit a year production rate which was really difficult because I mean that's basically over 400 cars a week in the past with the road stuff we only made 600 cars a year wow so we have to manufacture uh and deliver and Service as many cars almost in a week as we did in a year um so that took you know that's a steep learning curve yeah um and question we made some mistakes along the way and it's not not optimal um\n\nI don't know what more we could have done but there's no question we we weren't perfect there Yan do you think you'd have the same amount of demand for your cars without the government subsidy oh the $7,500 mhm no I think I think it would be a little little less demand I mean there' probably be I don't know 10 to 20% less demand so and you mentioned in your shareholder letter cuz you have this loan from the Department of energy that helps you with Tesla you mentioned that eventually you want to be able to get rid of you know essentially this government help and be a standalone business and be a standalone commercial Enterprise when will that happen we we have actually been paying off interest and principle on the loan on time and that one thing that was\n\nsort of um I think not quite reported uh in in in some of the media last year was it sounded like at one point that Tesla was trying to delay the repayment loan or something but actually nothing could be furthered from the truth we've always paid the loan off um either on time or ahead of time so we've got I think about 10 years we want to pay it off in in five 5 years or less are you learning more though about how to deal with Washington first of all I'd say My overall impression of washing Washington is that it's much less corrupt than people think it is um and and thank goodness for it because if it was corrupt we would be screwed it's not to say that there isn't some some amount of that that that that goes on um but there actually are I think a preponderance\n\nof of the leading um house members and Senators uh actually are quite idealistic and do care about doing the the right thing Elan I was looking through a recent article was actually Huffington Post article where uh it it seemed to portray you as kind of a peculiarity in Washington people don't really know who is this billionaire entrepreneur who's come in and and developed the electric car market he's got this private Spaceship Company one aid for a Congressman Tom DeLay said you show showed up to a meeting with a congressman in a tight black T-shirt I don't remember doing that by the way I I I don't think that's accurate when I'm in DC I always wear a suit in a tie so I believe that is an inaccurate statement why do you think people have that reaction\n\nto you I don't think that's what most people in DC think of me and and I've been I've literally made maybe 200 trips to DC um and I've met with um probably at this point half the Senate maybe 150 Plus members in the house um and they haven't just seen me once they've seen me several times yeah exactly and all the interactions have been like what they've been quite positive actually um and and I I mean I I contrary to the sentiment of that article I mean I believe in being quite respectful in in DC and and I always wear a suit in a tie even though I don't wear it one at SpaceX"},"languages":["en"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dg04f_nGlzo"},{"id":"chm-revolutionaries-2013-01-22","type":"interview","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AHHwXUm3iIg","title":"CHM Revolutionaries","titles":{"en":"CHM Revolutionaries","de":"CHM Revolutionaries","fr":"CHM Revolutionaries"},"date":"2013-01-22","summary":"Onstage conversation about Musk's journey from South Africa to Silicon Valley and the founding of PayPal, Tesla, SpaceX and SolarCity.","text":"welcome ladies and gentlemen to the Computer History Museum I'm John holler the CEO and it's my pleasure to welcome you tonight on behalf of our trustees our staff our members our amazing volunteers all the people involved in making the museum a great place uh thank you thank you for being here tonight for the kickoff of our revolutionaries speaker series for 2013 we have major funding for the Revolutionary speaker series from Intel we're delighted to have Intel support for the fourth year running now and it's just it's fantastic because it enables everything that we do to make these revolutionaries programs possible we also also get additional funding from the William K Bose Foundation I want to say a special thank you to Tesla for arranging to have\n\na Model S here this evening I hope you had a chance to see the Model S downstairs we've been looking forward for years to an event when we could have the Motor Trend Car of the Year at the Museum and we have it here tonight so thank you to Tesla we asked SpaceX for a rocket that proved to be a little more challenging but maybe someday and now for tonight's program Here's a thought exercise if you compiled a list of the 75 most influential people of the 20th Cent Century who would be on your list or if you compile perhaps a list of the hundred people who most affected the world in the 20th century who would be on that list now think of the same list that you might start compiling for the 21st century so far and if all of that proves to be a little too\n\nmuch I can offer some help Elon Musk has been on every single one of those lists that has been compiled for the 20th century to date no matter who seems to be drawing the lists up few scientists entrepreneurs or industrialists of the last century could stake a claim to a career as boldly ambitious as the one Elon Musk is fashioning now transforming a large measure of the world's Commerce and payment systems as co-founder and chairman of PayPal in 1999 might be enough for anyone for one lifetime but Elon Musk has gone on from there to pursue his passion for solving business environmental and scientific problem problems on a global scale he may be best known for his work at Tesla where he serves as CEO and head of product design the path breaking Tesla\n\nRoadster and now the model S have changed almost all of the assumptions that the automotive world has made about what the styling performance and future of a new generation of electric cars might be simultaneously he serves as chairman and principal shareholder of Solar City the nation's leading provider of solar power systems but perhaps his most ambitious and intriguing work is taking place at SpaceX where he is CEO and chief designer SpaceX is erasing the boundaries between space flight and private Enterprise it has a multi-billion dollar multi-year agreement with NASA to be a Workhorse for cargo flights to and from the International Space Station and in 2015 that is the company's stated goal it will begin man space FL what is the source of Elon musk's\n\nrevolutionary thinking how has he been able to do what he's done with the investors he's attracted and the teams that he's built exploring these questions and more tonight with Elon is Allison van digan who is a very notable and noteworthy journalist here in Silicon Valley a contributor to KQED in The Huffington Post and one of the best interviewers in the field through her series fresh dialogues we're delighted to have Allison here tonight this is her first time on stage she's going to be terrific as will Elon please join me in welcoming Elon Musk and Allison van [Applause] digan so I'd like to start uh you grew up in South Africa right and I heard a wonderful story of when you were six years old and you started breaking the rules even then so you were\n\nsix years old and you were invited by your cousin to a birthday party but there was only there were two problems with that one you were grounded and two it was on the other side of toone yeah so can you explain tell tell the audience how you got there uh all right well I mean this was when I was six so the memories are a little fuzzy at this point um but um as I recall uh yeah I I I was grounded for some reason I don't I don't know why but I think I felt that was unjust um and and um and I really wanted to go to this party my cousin's party uh who was five you know so this like kids party but um so uh I I I um I at first I was going to take my bike um but then and I told my mom this um which is a mistake um and and and she she told me some story about\n\nhow you needed a license for a bike and and the police would stop me so I wasn't 100% sure if she was that was true or not but I thought I'd better walk just in case um so yeah just I I I sort of thought I knew the way and uh but it was clear across town so I don't know it was 10 or 12 miles away it's really really quite far um further than I realized actually and uh so I just started walking to to my cousin's house I think it took me about 4 hours and um and just as my mom was leaving that party with my brother and sister she saw me walking down the road um and freaked out um and then I I saw I saw she saw me so I I then sprinted to my cousin's house and I was just just about two blocks away and then climbed a tree and refused to come down oh so the\n\nfirst of many rule breaking Adventures for Elon Musk so by the by the time you were 12 you're already an entrepreneur and making a profit I understand you you you earn $500 equivalent in Rand uh for creating a video game can you tell us about that and what the inspiration was uh yeah sure um so I uh when when I was about 10 I walked into a computer store in in South Africa and um saw an actual computer um I previously had um some some early sort of precursors to to the the Atari uh system and then I got the Atari system which I'm sure a lot of people here have played um and uh and and but then I saw you could actually have a computer where you can make your own games and it was a Commodore Vic 20 um so that was the first computer I bought and um and then\n\nand then I got some uh books on how to teach yourself programming and um and this was like the coolest thing um I'd ever seen so I was just like this is super awesome um and uh so started programming games uh and uh and then selling games in order to actually buy more games so bit of a circular thing so and more games and better computers and that kind of thing so right so the money wasn't the the end goal for you it was more a means to an end uh yeah um basically I'd spend money on um yeah better better computers and uh Dungeons and Dragons modules and things like that we nerd Master 3000 basically uh yeah so I understand at that time you were heavily into Comics I'm curious to know um did you love Iron Man the comic Iron Man I did kind of like Iron\n\nMan yeah you did did you ever did you ever imagine that you would be the inspiration for the movie version I did not no that would that was that was pretty that was pretty much I would say 0% I would have said 0% chance what kind of kid were you I mean can you can you look back and see yourself were you were you a bit of a lunar kid bookish kid uh I certainly I wasn't all that much of a loner um at least not willingly um so um but but I I certainly was uh quite um I was very very bookish I was reading all the time so I was either reading uh working on my computer reading comics playing dungeons dragons that kind of thing and um I understand Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy that wonderful book by Douglas Adams that was a that was a key book for you what\n\nwhat was it about that book that that fired your imagination um yeah so uh I guess when I was in the around 12 or 13 I had compan existential crisis and I was reading various books um on trying to figure out the meaning of life and well like what does it all mean because uh it starts seeming quite meaningless and then um uh my we happen to have like some some books by n and schopenhauer in the house which you should not read at age 14 is bad it's really negative um so so uh but but then I then I read hit is gu the Galaxy which like quite positive I think and um and sort of highlighted the the an important point which is that a lot of times the question is harder than the answer and if you can properly phrase the question then the answer is the easy part\n\num and so uh the if to the degree that we can um better uh understand the universe then we better know what questions to ask and um then whatever the question is that most appro approximates what's the meaning of life you know that that that's that's the question we could ultimately get closer to understanding um and so I thought well to the degree that we can expand the scope and scale of Consciousness and and knowledge um human knowledge then that would be a good thing wow so you're having these deep thoughts at what age 10 14 yeah sort of in the puberty I guess was 13 13 through 15 probably the most traumatic years right and so by the time you were 17 you were you were ready you were actually left right I assume you hatched the plan earlier when you\n\nwere around 14 15 I did hatch the plan earlier actually I I tried to hatch several plans uh which they did not hatch right um but by 17 you were on a plane from South Africa you you had enough of South Africa you were ready to seek new pastures now why was it the United States was your destination why not Europe or somewhere else in the world well just whenever I'd read about cool technology it would tend to be in the United States you know or more broadly North America or including Canada so um uh so I kind of wanted to be where The Cutting Edge of Technology was um and of course within the United States uh Silicon Valley is is the is where the the heart of things is so um although at the time I didn't know where Sil Valley was it sounded like a mythical\n\nPlace really great um so yeah so I I I wanted to come to the to the US I try to convince my um my mother or father who were divorced if either one of them would move to the United States then I could then I could get there at one point I convinced my father but then he renaged unfortunately um so you had him convinced and then he changed his mind he did say yes and then and then he changed his mind why I don't know I guess um he was sort he was fairly established he's an engineer he was sort of established in South Africa and didn't want to have to go through that again in another country right so you got on that plane all by yourself at 17 uh yeah so um I I actually got um my my mother was born in Canada and actually her her father was uh American U\n\nbut unfortunately she didn't get her American citizenship so then that broke the link and I couldn't get my American citizenship but she was born in Canada so I could get uh I actually filled up the forms for her and got her a Canadian passport and me too um and then as soon as within 3 weeks of my getting my Canadian passport I was in Canada right and then you ended up at University of Pennsylvania yeah you did degree in physics and business yeah so I I I was in Canada for a few years at Queens University got a scholarship to go down to uh University of Pennsylvania um because one of the downsides of of coming to University of North America was that my my parents said they would not would not pay for college if it was well my father said he would not\n\npay for college unless it was in South Africa so so it was either so I could have free college in or or find some way to pay it here and uh fortunately I got a scholarship at at upen and um and so did uh did he U business under dual undergraduate uh business and and physics at upan Wharton and it was there that you came up with this idea of three main areas that you felt were most important to humanity can you describe how You Came Upon them was it just one day you had a flash of inspiration these are the three areas that are important and I want to concentrate on or how did did that how did that inspiration come to you now I think I was thinking about it for a couple years um and during sort of freshman and sophore year at queens and then also at upen\n\num and I was trying to think what would most influence the future uh you know what the problems that we that we have to solve um and um and I I actually talked a lot to friends and and my housemates and that kind of thing and dates which is not maybe not the best thing so yeah um actually met uh met a woman I dated briefly in in college um who now works at Scientific American as a writer and uh and and she she related the anecdote that uh we went on a date I was all I was talking about was electric cars um that was not a big a winning conversation so it was a bit of a monologue was it yeah she said she said the first question I asked her was do you ever think about electric cars no she never does so you learn from that that wasn't the best shout out L\n\nwasn't wasn't great it has recently it's been more effective there you go I know this man that's wonderful we'll get on to Tesla soon but I want to I want to um go from from University of Pennsylvania you ended up in Silicon Valley and you've described Silicon Valley as darwinian can you talk about what it was the most positive sense really and was positive um can you elaborate on what that means and why it had to be Silicon Valley what what Drew you to Silicon Valley um well uh well I was at I was at pen and um there was a professor who um who was chairman of a company in Sil Valley that was working on Advanced capacitors for use in electric cars or potentially for use in electric cars uh as it turns out they they're way too expensive but um but I thought\n\nwell this is this is really awesome because then I asked if I could get a summer job because it was in Silicon Valley and working on technology for electric cars I thought well that's that's pretty much as good as it gets um so I got a summer job here was in Las Godus actually um at at Pinnacle research uh doing um uh electrolytic uh Ultra capacitors which were um but they had a the problem was that they they used the ruthenium tantalum oxide um and there was I think only a few tons of ruthenium mined in the world um so not very scalable um and they you know they'd sell it to you by the sort of milligram so you know that's you know there's a problem um but but it had a pretty high energy density it's sort of roughly equivalent to a Le acid battery which\n\nfor capacitor is huge mhm but you ended up then after that at at Stanford yeah so then um I I thought well uh Stanford is in Silicon Valley sort of epicenter and so that's where I wanted to come um you Stanford or Berkeley and Stanford sort of Sunny air so I like to Sun air that's great and you I understand you were at Stanford University for a whole two days before you decided no it's time I'm going to do my first startup yeah I figured well um so this is a summer of '95 and uh uh and I've been working on some internet software so because the three things I thought were pick the world with internet um sustainable energy and and uh space exploration making life multiplanetary so uh the um but but on the internet thing I just couldn't figure out how to\n\nmake enough money to to feed myself you know cuz like uh if I didn't makes make make money then I would like run out of food and die so that was that was not good uh so basic needs right yeah literally um so whereas uh you know if I was a student then I could be teaching assistant and do you do various things and and and do research on um electric vehicle Tech technologies that that was my default plan but but then I also thought that if I if I did a PhD at Stanford then um I could I would spent several years watching the internet go through this incredibly rapid growth phase and that would be really difficult to to handle like it's like it really wanted to be doing something so you saw the wave growing it sort of really seemed like things were going\n\nto take off um although nobody made any money on the internet at the time in '95 there was really nobody was making any money on the internet and in fact even on Sand Hill Road people were like what's the internet they amazingly um when we tried to get funding for a company in I think it was November or something of9 there about October November um more than half of the bench capitalists we met with did not know what the internet was and had not used it that's amazing yeah literally I like it's like isn't that they literally ask isn't that something that the government and universities use like uh for now but you know yeah uh but then then uh netgate went public in late 95 I think it was and then after that even though lot of vure capitalist still didn't\n\nunderstand it and still hadn't used it they they somebody had made on it so now that was on the radar yeah so when we went to get funding the second time we tried to get funding um everyone was interested right so this company was zip 2 that's right and terrible name yeah what what what was the reason for that name um well we were just incredibly stupid at the time I think that was that's the the main reason for that name um and uh because we got some Ad Agency because we thought well we don't know anything about names so we'll get some add in to suggest a bunch of options and then zip two seemed kind of Speedy I don't know what the hell why the hell we chose that stupid name um and it has a digit it's like why would you pick it because it could be zip\n\nto could be Zip T wo it could be zip t oo so like people like literally spelled the name every variation um which is bad if you got a URL and you don't have the other ones um so so um so is up to started off um as basically uh like said we're trying to figure out how to how to make enough money to exist as a company and the so so since there wasn't really any advertising money being made uh we thought we could um help existing companies get online bring their stuff online so we developed software that helped bring um lot of the newspapers and media companies online CU a lot of them just didn't they also didn't know what the internet was big customers didn't you yeah mhm um and and even the ones that were aware of the internet didn't have a software team\n\nso they they weren't very good at developing functionality um and uh so we had as um investors and customers uh the New York Times company night rder H and and so we were able to get them to pay us to develop software for them to bring them online so online publishing stuff and we did maps and directions and yellow pages and white pages and uh various other things um and uh we developed quite sophisticated technology actually but um I it wasn't actually being employed super well by the media companies like we we would suggest ways to use it and then it would not be used as effectively as it could be it was very frustrating right but you did sell that company successfully to compact yeah right and that allowed you to go on and uh create x.\n\ncom that's right yeah exactly so um the yeah compac had uh had alter Vista so their their thought was combine alista and a bunch of other technology companies and see if that would if that would work which it did not um but but nonetheless they they they were pretty nice guys and bought the company and and that gave me the capital to to do another company and I want I want to do another company in the internet because I thought we haden't really reached the potential that we could have with with sub2 um because we had really sophisticated softare our software was sort of at least comparable to what Yahoo or excite or others had in fact I mean I thought in some ways it was better so uh but it wasn't because it was all filtered through these Partners it\n\nwasn't getting properly used uh so I thought we um I I want to do something that could be more a more significant contrib contribution to the internet and um and so the initial thought was with financial services because um money is digital um it's low band with at the time there was you know most people were on modems still on modems and um because this was uh late 98 early 99 so this was x.\n\ncom was a precursor to PayPal basically you merged with confinity and it became PayPal major success yeah so it worked out better than we expected um yeah um so yeah uh confinity so initially confinity and EXO com started out with from slightly different directions and then converged to the same point um with with x the thought was to create integrated set of financial services um so you could go to one place and do all of your financial anything um and and then as a feature we had the ability to transfer money or Securities or anything simply by enter entering a unique identifier so like a you know email address or phone number or something like that um and uh but when we demo the system the hard stuff which was the integration of all the financial services\n\nuh people would not be interested in but they'd be really interested in in being able to transfer money using an email address even though that was actually quite easy um and so we focused our our energy on that um and although it's easy in principle it uh what gets really hard is is adding um security while still keeping it easy to use that so because you know it's like the Willie lurman quote like why do people why do you rub Banks because that's where the money is so why do people rub PayPal the same reason um and and so you can e you can dial up the security to a really high level but then you're going to make it very hard to use um and and so that that that was was one of the toughest things we wrestled with um and then confinity originally started\n\nas kind of um software for Palm pilots and and then they had a demonstration application which was the ability to beam money from one Palm Pilot to another using the infrared Port yeah people remember that one yes um that was big at one point um and and then they they had a website uh sort of parallel to that where you because once you beam the infrared tokens you had to still then um synchronize your P pilot and do the transfer via the website so but then people weren't that interested in the PM pilot stuff but they were interested in the website so we kind of converge to the same point um and we're quite close together so we we decided to merge the companies um and uh in I think January or so of 2000 was very toing period um and the the the growth in\n\nthe company was was pretty pretty crazy like we had at at the end of the first sort of four or five weeks we had 100,000 customers it's incredible incredible growth um did you anticipate that when you started definitely did not and and it wasn't all good because uh we had some bugs in the software uh and you know what even if the bug only occurs one in a thousand times still have, customers you have 100 very angry customers like where's my money that would be you know reasonable a reasonable concern that people would have and and then we we we had customer service on University and Avenue and paloalto uh there were five people um so when something went wrong customer service phones were basically explode oh my goodness um and uh so we we had many challenges\n\nand then the various Financial Regulatory Agencies were trying to shut us down visa and mascard were trying to shut us down eBay was trying to shut us down uh FTC was trying to shut us down um there were a lot of battles there wow it's quite incredible with all that adversity you you conquered and you came out with hundred million right yeah it was a close call um we definitely I mean came very close to dying there in 2000 and 2001 um and what was the reason for that success what would you put it down to in that case how did you overcome uh well you know I think we had a really talented group of people at PayPal um and a lot of those people have actually gone on to start many other companies yes um you know YouTube LinkedIn Yelp uh Yammer um it's like\n\nquite a long list actually um and so for you personally there you were with several hundred million were you not tempted just to go on buy an island um really what was it that drove you what I'm getting at because I I know you didn't but what I'm getting at is why were you so driven to jump into the next thing well I was um did you take any time off I I did take a bit of time off uh because um after PayPal um I did reasonbly well for PayPal I was the largest shareholder in the company so um and we required for about a billion and a half in stock and then the stock doubled so um so you know it did did reasonably reason well but the the idea of of like lying on a beach as my main thing uh just sounds like the worst that sounds horrible to me uh just boredom\n\nfactor I would go Bonkers I would you know um I would have to be on serious drugs I mean just or serious P coladas right exactly I mean it's just I'd be super duper bored um so that uh I mean I like I like high intensity um I mean I like going to beach for a short period of time uh but but not much longer than like you know a few days or something like that right so let's talk about the seeds of SpaceX I understand it started not as the idea of let's let's start start a rocket ship company uh you had a philanthropic idea you were really surprised when you found out that NASA didn't have any plans to go to Mars and you came up with this idea of let's put a greenhouse on Mars so can you explain how that whole idea came into being for for SpaceX sure well\n\num so so when I was thinking of like what I thought would would affect the world uh as a student it wasn't really from the standpoint of those are the things I'll get involved in it was kind of more in the abstract these are the things I think will happen that will affect the world um but but not that I will be involved in them as it turns out I have but uh I I always thought that we would make much more progress in space um and it just it just didn't happen it was it was really disappointing so um uh yeah I was I was was really quite bothered by it MH um so you know when we went to the moon um we were supposed to have a base on the moon we're supposed to send people to Mars and that stuff just it just didn't happen it we went backwards um you we got\n\nthe space shuttle but the space shuttle could only go to lowth orbit where a Saturn 5 could go to the moon now the space shuttle is gone and so that just seemed like a a really bad thing so uh I thought um well maybe it was a question of of um there not being enough attention or will to to do this um but this I this was was this was a wrong assumption so I um so but that that's the reason for the greenhouse idea was to the thought was if if um if there could be sort of a small philanthropic Mission to Mars you know so I wasn't I was expecting to lose all all the money that I invested in in that um but if we could send a small Greenhouse to the surface of Mars with with seeds in in dehydrated nutrient Deale and hydrated Point Landing and you'd have this\n\ngreat shot of you know little Greenhouse with with little green plants with on on a red background um I thought that would get people excited so you literally imagined a photograph inspiring a new generation yeah you got to sort of imagine the money shot if you will um so so yeah I think I think you know green plants in red background would be that um and and people tend to get interested and excited about precedents and superlatives so this would be the furthest that life's ever traveled the F the first life on Mars um as far as we know um and uh and I thought well maybe that would result in in a in a bigger budget for NASA and and um and then we could sort of resume the journey that was the basic idea and and I I spent several months on this actually\n\nand uh went to Russia three times um because I was able to to figure out how to get the cost of the spacecraft low and the communications and the the the greenhouse and all that to a reasonable number reasonable meaning several million dollars um and did you have did you actually physically draw out a greenhouse of how you imagine yeah yeah actually I hope we got that somewhere um that would be amazing to see yeah um I mean I'm sure it looks pretty goofy in retrospect but but that's the that's the idea that we had and it's um so and I I spent several hundred,\n\njust kind of getting the design worked out and engaging some companies to um come up with the design specifications for the subsystems um and uh and then but then it came to buying the rocket and the problem was that the the cost of rockets is really high uh and the lowest cost rocket in the us at the time was the uh the Delta 2 Boeing Delta 2 and and that would have been about $50 million um yeah and then you need still need to have like an upper stage from so probably 60 million all in and that was uh and I wanted to do two of these missions because I thought if if it did just one and and it didn't work then that could have like the the opposite of effect like look how dumb it is to do to to try a same all this money down the drain right what an idiot\n\nso so I wanted to do two and I just didn't have enough money to to do two complete missions so you had a budget of about 100 million something like that well I was hoping it would be less than that but uh but not more than I mean not more than that um but but then yeah I guess roughly on that order is about most I'd be I mean I couldn't I couldn't spend much more than that uh so um so the Russians didn't help you out yeah had three three quite interesting trips to Russia to try to uh negotiate purchase of two Russian icbms yeah and did they think you had evil inent no they just thought I was crazy uh but I mean that's not good either U if you're buying icbms um but minus the nuke I mean I think that would have been a lot more so so you didn't talk nukon\n\nno I I mean I didn't I I got slightly got the feeling that that was on the table if I which which was very alarming um but but yeah that that was uh those are very weird meetings um with with the the Russian military and whatnot um I mean I think they they thought I was bit crazy but then they thought they read about PayPal and okay it was crazy he's got money uh he did something right yeah well and more importantly I could pay him um right yes so so that's that's really I mean there yeah it was remarkably capitalist was was my impression of the Russians yeah right right i' I have heard that before yep um so tell me how what was the turning point from you know talking with the Russians and then deciding okay I'm going to do this I'm going to set up a\n\ncompany what was that turning point for you well um I I I guess I I I had I came conclusion that um my initial premise was was wrong uh that in fact the um there's there's a great deal of will uh you know that there there's there was not such a shortage um but people don't think there's a way um and and that if people thought there was there was a way or at least something that wouldn't you know break the federal budget um then then people would support it um which in retrospect I think is actually kind of obvious because um the the United States is a distillation of the human Spirit of exploration um people came here from other places um I mean it's you know there's no n there's no I mean there's no nation that that's more a nation of explorers than\n\nun United States but but people need to believe that it's possible and it's that it's not you know it's they don't have to give up like healthcare or something important you know it's just it's got to be that that that's that's important so so I thought okay well then it's not a question of will it's it's a question of showing that there's a way um and and the and I started reading quite a bit about Rockets to try to understand why they're so so freaking expensive um um you know is there something you know where does this the $60 million go for the Delta 2 um and that's subsequently Now Delta 2 I think is1 $100 million even some crazy number um and Delta 2 is I mean that's a relatively smaller rocket um so if you go to like a really you know one of the\n\nbigger Rockets it's anywhere from $200 to $400 million um anyway so so I came conclusion that there there wasn't really a good reason for Rockets to be so expensive um and and and that there could be a lot less and even in in Expendable format uh there could be less and uh and and that in if one could make them reusable like airplanes then the cost of rocketry would go would drop dramatically cost of space travel would drop dramatically because the the cost of the fuel was maybe anywhere from 0.\n\n2 to .\n\n5% of the cost of the rocket right um you know it's kind of like a plane I mean how much is the cost of the fuel in the plane versus the plane itself it's a at least a two of magnitude difference um but nobody had really been able to make a reusable rocket work so that that but I thought okay that if we can do that then that would that would really be the the key breakthrough for space travel right but you also said that so far we have not succeeded I should point out um you've also said that failure was the most likely outcome can you talk about failure in that sense and in a broader sense of being an entrepreneur and an innovator why is failure so important uh well I I mean I I think I think failure is bad um I don't think it's good um but if if if\n\nis important enough then you you do it even though the risk of failure is high MH um and and so I think my advice if somebody is wants to start a company is they should bear in mind that the most likely outcome is is that it's not going to work and they should reconcile themselves to that POS strong possibility um and they should only do it if they feel that they they they are really compelled to do it you know right um because it's it's it's going to the way starting company works is like usually in the beginning it's the very beginning it's kind of fun um and then it's really hellish for for a number of years you talked about chewing glass yeah there's there's a a friend of mine who's uh successful entrepreneur um and uh started actually his career\n\naround the same time as I did and he he has a good good good phrase his name's bully uh um he said yeah your starting a company is like eating glass and staring into the abyss um and and you agree with that generally true um yeah and and and and if you don't eat the glass you're not going to be successful that's that's yeah tough medicine tough medicine so let's move along and we're going to get down into Innovation and motivation shortly but I want to just go through your whole business career first so shortly after founding SpaceX you then got interested in electric vehicles and I understand you watched the visuals for the death of the ev1 when they were all smashed talk about that and and why you felt even after founding SpaceX I have to get involved\n\nwith Tesla yeah um well um as I said like my interest in electric vehicles goes back a long time to you know goes back 20 plus years scene yeah EXC exactly um and and in fact the the original reason I came silen Valley was to work on electric vehicle energy storage technology right um and and I I thought that um that the big car companies would develop electric cars because obviously the right move um and and and and I thought that was Vindicated when General Motors and uh Toyota announced their General Motors was doing the ev1 Electric Vehicle One Toyota did the electric R 4 the original one um and they made those announcements and then and they brought those to Market and I thought okay well this is this is great um you we're going to have electric\n\ncars GM's going to obviously do the ev2 and three and then you know they just get keep getting better and everything would be cool um and uh and then uh when when California relaxed its regulations on electric cars GM recalled all of the ev1s uh and crushed them into little cubes you know which is seems kind of nutty um so in fact uh the people didn't want their EV ones recalled yeah and in fact they they tried they tried court orders to stop the cars from being recalled they they held a candle it vigil okay at the yard where the cars were crushed did you attend that vigil no I I did I did not you moved by it well certainly I mean it's it's crazy if if I mean when is the last time you heard about any company customers holding a candle it viil for the\n\ndemise of that that product um particularly AGM product okay I mean I mean what bigger wake up call do you need it's like it's like hello the customers are really upset about this they would really prer it if it didn't get recalled um so that that that kind of blew my mind so I was like wow okay um and then uh and we had the Advent of lithium ion batteries which really helps helps the it makes you know that that's one of the key things for making electric cars work it's still nothing and so um in 2003 uh actually had lunch with one of the other co-founders of the company JB strael who um was actually working I think on like a hydrogen airplane or something um and um he mentioned to me uh the um t0 car that was done by AC propulsion um AC propulsion I\n\nthink consist of guys some of who had actually been on the ev1 program and they uh they took an a gasoline sports car kind of a kit car and outfitted it with uh with lithiumion batteries sort of consumer great cells and they um uh created a car which was which is essentially the preaster of the Roadster um and uh and in fact it had very similar specifications um so subz sub4 second 0 to 60 milph um 250 mile range and um also two-seater sort of sports car but but it had but it was quite primitive um it didn't have a roof one thing at all um and in fact I don't know if it had doors uh but it didn't have any Safety Systems no airbags it wasn't homologated so you couldn't sell it um so in order to sell that car in order to create a commercial version of the\n\ncar something that a manufacturer could produce and sell to people there was a fabit of work that was required and uh but anyway I kept trying to get AC propulsion to commercialize the the t0 and I said look I'm going to I'll fund the whole effort can you know you really need to do this um and they they just they just sort of refused to do it um they didn't want to do it they they wanted to make uh I think the what's that uh oh they want to make like an electric Scion um which in principle sounds good except that it would have cost $75,000 and nobody wants to buy $75,000 iion um and and uh the technology just was not ready there was just no way to to make um a good value for money proposition um and what was what was it that compelled you to say I have\n\nto be CEO here and Lead this company why not say you know I'll help you JB get this get this ruling well I really didn't want to be CEO of two companies uh if I tried super really hard not to be actually uh and um yeah so anyway so AC repulsion finally said Okay I I actually told AC repulsion look if you're not going to do this I'm going to create a company to to do do this um and they said well there's some other guys who are also interested in doing that um and you guys should combine efforts and and and create a company um and that's basically how Tesla uh came together um and uh and then we had like a lot of drama um and uh but but I mean I I had um since I was the you I provided like 95% of the money so I could have been the CEO from day one but\n\nI really you know the idea of being CEO of two startups at the same time was not uh appealing and shouldn't be appealing by the way if anyone's thinking that's a good idea it's really terrible idea but then again you know going back to your um trajectory here not only did you take on two you took on three you had a an epiphany at Burning Man I understand and decided you have to watch those epiph burning not necessarily what you should pursue um and you came up with the idea um yeah it's it's uh well um you know solar is kind of part of the whole sustainable energy thing so sustainable energy you have to have sustainable means of of producing and consuming uh energy and so even if you have electric cars you have to have the other side of the equation say\n\nhow do you produce energy in a sustainable way way um and I think solar is the obvious primary means of sustainable energy generation u in fact the Earth is almost entirely solar power today um the the uh the only reason we're not a frozen ice ball at sort of 3° Calvin is because of the Sun and and the Sun is responsible for all precipitation it's it's responsible for the vast majority of the ecosystem apart from sort of chatres the bottom of the ocean so uh the the there's just a tiny amount of energy that people that people consume to to power civilization it's actually a very tiny amount of energy relative to the amount of energy that the sun sends in our general direction um and so in order to deal with that we couldn't in fact power the entire world\n\nwith solar power quite easily this is maybe not super obvious to people B so was that the Epiphany you had at Burning Man was it a vision no I knew that long long I knew that in college but what what was the the key Vision that came to you at Burning Man we all want to imagine you there Vision um the uh no it was it was more um the the uh I wouldn't say it was a a particular Epiphany it was more that I was at Burning Man with um with with my cousins or to my cousins uh ly Lyon and Peter Lyon and Peter R uh who are awesome guys and they and and they were sort of trying to think what should they do after their um after their first startup so they did company called everdream which did um large scale management of of computers so if you've got like 60,000\n\ncomputers it's kind of hard to manage them so they wrote this they create a software that enables people companies to do that um and that company actually got sold to Dell uh um so they were looking for a new Venture and looking for your ideas well I would initially looking for my ideas but I actually was trying to convince them that they should do solo um uh and uh because I just thought I just thought it was an area that needed people like them uh who really good good entrepreneurs so uh and and since I was like somewhat overcommitted I thought to say the least yeah uh I thought well and and I said like look if if you guys will will do a solo company I'll I'll find you you know F all the funding and um you know whatever guidance I can or help I can\n\nprovide uh i' do that that's and I thought it was really important that there be uh you know good entrepreneurs like them in in Sol solar because just wasn't wasn't doing very well as an industry so um and I thought people were kind of focusing on not the they weren't focusing on the right problem um the everybody sort of thought that the uh the panel was the problem but actually it's it's not it's it's a problem but it's not it's not the it's not the most important problem um the and and the panel is somewhat commoditized at this point so it's you know making standard efficiency solar panels is about as hard as making drywall it's really easy in fact i' say drywall is probably harder um and um but but what what is a thorny problem is trying to figure\n\nout how to get um solar on tens of thousands eventually hundreds of thousands of rooftops right the logistics part yeah it's it's kind of like you got to re-roof um millions of buildings right um and and then figure out how the grid interconnects work and then manage all those systems like so if You' got hundreds of thousands or maybe millions of systems eventually you've got to manage all these distributed systems you have this really complex distributed utility effectively um which I think actually plays to two their strengths in creating their price strength in creating uh really scalable software for managing you know hundreds of thousands of computers um in a distributed fashion right um and uh and that's that's kind of what they did and did an awesome\n\njob it was just like I basically would show up at the board meetings to hear what's the good news this time you know it's like really you know we had like maybe a couple of bad news board meetings well late 2008 there were some bad news board board meetings but um for the most part apart from a few a few times when the macroeconomic conditions were really terrible um they just did an amazing job with you know almost no help from me so you've been able to leave it in their good hands yeah it's uh they deserve the vast majority of the credit for for the success of that company awesome so I'd like to move on to Innovation and motivation there's been a lot of talk lately about the fact that Innovation is leveling off we're not making the dramatic increases\n\nor improvements in Innovation like we did when the plane was invented do you do you agree with that and uh no I don't agree with that I don't think that's true um okay uh I think we've we've seen well and I'm not sure what time period that is exactly but we've seen um huge improvements in um the in the internet and new new things uh I mean in you even in recent years Twitter and Facebook being being pretty huge when people kind of thought the internet was done MH um and uh you know I think there there are some of the things that we're doing like you know electric cars or or a new thing uh and uh uh I I I do think there's there's a pretty significant break through I mean in genomics um we're getting better and better at decoding genomes and and being able\n\nto write genetics I think that's going to be a huge huge area I think there's likely to be some breakthroughs in artificial intelligence um and um I suspect we will even see the flying car all right is that is that going to be an El on musk production no you're going to let someone else do that uh yeah I well I think someone else I think someone else is doing that all right okay that's another conversation do you feel uh the government is standing in the way of innovation at all well sometimes um the government I I don't think the government tends to stand the way Innovation but sometimes it can overregulation becomes very difficult um I mean in the the order industry used to be a great hot bed of innovation at the beginning of the 20th century but uh\n\nbut now there's so many regulations that are intended to protect consumers um I mean the body of regulation for cars could like full you know this room it's just crazy how much uh regulation there is down to like what the T the head lamps are supposed to be like and the they even specify the some of the elements of the user interface on the dashboard which and some of these are completely anachronistic um because they're they're relating back to the days when you had like a little light that would illuminate an image um so like we have to reserve space on the instrument panel the model S for where all of the the indicators like that a car would have you know you got like these little lights like check engine or whatever yeah like all these little little\n\nthings there's like a whole bunch of them and we can't have anything else in that space like uh well how would it create one space and render a different graphic like oh no because people are expecting to see it in that space like nobody is expecting to see it in that [Music] space yeah so you feel you can't argue with these regulations you just have to well you can argue with them but not with great success uh and and you you can actually get these things changed but it takes ages um like one of the things we're trying to get is like like why should you have side mirrors if you can have say little video cameras tiny video cameras and have them you know display an image inside the car um but there are all these regulations saying you have to have side\n\nmirrors and I went and met with the secretary of Transport like can you change this regulation still nothing has happened that was like two years ago um you know so your head against a wall here a little bit it's not easy to get these regulations changed so talking of government uh President Obama is obviously trying to do what he can if you had five minutes with President Obama what would you advise him for one stimulating the economy and an entrepreneurship and creating jobs is there one thing that if he could successfully get through that would be a big stimulus do you think well I think actually um I I think the reality of being president is that you're actually like the captain of a very huge ship and have a small Rudder um because because obviously\n\nif I mean if there was a button that a president could push that said economic Prosperity you'd be like they're hitting that button real fast full steam ahead you measure the speed of light by how fast they me they press that button because that would be that's called like the re-election button um so so so I'm not sure how much the president can really do but um but I think I think uh uh you know I'm I'm generally a fan of like minimal government interference in the economy um like the government should be kind of a like the referee but not the player um and there shouldn't be too many referees um but but um there is an exception which is when there's uh an unpriced externality um such as the CO2 capacity of the oceans in atmosphere so when you have\n\nan unpriced externality then the normal Market mechanisms do not work and then government is government's role to to intervene in a in a way that's sensible um and the best way to intervene is to is to put is to assign a proper price to whatever the the common good is that's being consumed um and then and then so you're saying there should be a tax on gas there should be a tax on carbon you know if if the bad thing is uh carbon accumulation in the atmosphere then then needs to be attacks on on that um and then we can that will and then you get rid of all subsidies and all everything else um and it seems like logical that you should tax things that that are most likely to be bad rather than you know like like that's why we tax cigarettes and alcohol um\n\nbecause those those are probably bad for you um certainly cigarettes are um and um so so uh you so so you want to ER on the side of taxing things that are probably bad and and not tax things that are that are good um and so I think given that there is a need to gather tax for the um you know to pay for the federal government we should shift the tax bur to to bad things and then adjust that that tax of that bad thing according to whatever is going to result in in the behavior that we think is beneficial for the future I mean I I think currently that you know what we're doing right now which is Mining and burning trillions of tons of hydrocarbons that that used to be buried very deep underground and now we're sticking them in the atmosphere and running\n\nthis crazy chemical experiment on the atmosphere um and then you've got the oil and gas companies which have ungodly amounts of money um and you can't expect them to just roll over and die like they don't do that um so actually what they much prefer to do is spend enormous amounts of money lobbying and running bogus ad campaigns and that kind of thing to preserve their their situation um you know it's a lot it's a lot like uh tobacco companies in the old days I mean they used to run these ads with doctors like well guy with a doctor you know a pretending he's a doctor uh you know essentially implying that smoking is good for you and like having pregnant mothers on ad smoking um do you have a message for the climate change Skeptics and and the the Big\n\nOil people well as far as climate change skeptic I me like I'm you know I like to I believe in the scientific method and one should be one should have a healthy skepticism of things in general and you know as if if you're first things from a scientific standpoint you always look at things probabilistically not definitively and so I think a lot lot of times if somebody's a skeptic in the science Community what they're really saying is that they're not sure that it's 100% certain that that this is the case but that's that's that's not the point the point point is um that is is is is look it from the other side see what what do you think the percentage chance is of of this being catastrophic for some meaningful percentage of the Earth's population um is\n\nit greater than 1% is it even 1% um if it is even 1% why are we running this experiment right you called it a Russian Roulette we're playing Russian roulette with the atmosphere we're playing Russian roulette and then and and as each year goes by we're loading more rounds in the chamber it's not it's not wise um so so that's and and and what makes it super insane is that we're going to run out of oil anyway like it's not like there some infinite oil supply we're going to run out of it so we know we have to get to a sustainable means of of of Transportation no matter what so why even run the experiment right it's the world's dumbest experiment right yeah [Applause] so let's move on to focus on Silicon Valley Steve Jobs is was and is a wonderful Silicon\n\nValley icon is he someone that you've admired and what have you learned from Steve's life and work U well he's certainly someone i' I've admired um although I did try to talk to him once at a party and it was super rude to me uh but I don't think it was me I think it was sort of you know po the course I think you weren't the first yeah not the first no it was um but but uh yeah and I was actually there with like Larry Page is an old friend of mine I've known Larry since before he got Venture funding for Google and Larry was the guy that introduced me to Steve jop so it's not as like I'm I'm going like and tugging on his coat like you know please talk to me um but you know so was introduced by Larry pig is not bad so um but uh I mean he obviously he was\n\nan incredible guy and made fantastic products uh that that um you know and I know there was like a a certain um the guy had a certain magic about him you know to sort of that was kind of that was really inspiring so I mean I think that's that's really great is there is there that magic that you try and emulate uh no I I think Steve Jobs is way cooler than than I am so oh okay so I'd like to get inside your head a little bit about you know when you come up with an idea do you doodle it you know on a pad of paper or do you get your iPad out and and take notes I mean when you come up with something new you know a new rocket design or whatever it is how does that manifest itself could we see you being creative um I mean it's somewhat cliched but it's it happens\n\na lot in the shower um I don't know what it is about showers or yeah exactly get the camera um like y um no I'm just no I do I just kind of stand there in the shower um so you have long showers I do actually long showers sounds wrong um but yeah I do um and so there's not to mention the Burning Man epiphanies um right that those are those are huge um so yeah I think that's uh yeah and and and then um there there are sometimes like late at night uh if I've been thinking about something then I can't sleep and I'll be up for you know for several hours um thinking about sort of pacing around the house and thinking about things and um occasionally I'll I'll sketch something or send myself an email or something like that right so we have a question from the\n\naudience um who inspires you or do you have a mentor um well um I I don't have a mantro per se although I try to I try to get feedback from as many people as possible um and um so I have I have like friends and I ask them to you know what they think of this that that and the other thing and um you know as mentioned you know lar Larry's a good Larry p is a good friend of mine value his advice a lot um and um have many other good friends and uh so so I think it's good to feedback in particularly negative feedback actually because you know obviously people aren't don't love the idea of giving you negative feedback um unless unless it's like some you know on on on blogs they they do that um yeah how do you deal with negative feedback because you got some\n\ntough um criticism especially with SpaceX you had incumbents like Neil Armstrong even U speaking out and saying this is wrong we don't want you know commercial companies in space it's not a place for Commerce so how did you deal with that and how do you deal with in general cuz you've had a lot yeah that was kind of troubling uh because uh you know growing up NE is kind of a hero so it's like it kind of sucks to you know back that's a bit of a blow yeah um so yeah but I I think in his case he was somewhat manipulated you know by by other interests so I think he quite knew what he was saying in those in those Congressional hearings so yeah okay and um talk about you know it's one thing to have these wonderful ideas in the shower at Burning Man but there's\n\nanother thing to build motivate and retain a team of excellent people can you talk about some tips and some things you've learned that obviously work for you yeah um well I mean if you think about a company a company is is a group of people that are organized to create a product or service that's uh that's what a company is so so in order to um create such a thing you have to convince others to join you in in your effort um and and and so they have to be convinced that that that it's a sensible thing that it's like that there's at least some some good some reasonable chance of success uh and if if there is Success that the reward will be commensurate with the effort involved um and uh you know so so I think that's getting people to to believe in what\n\nyou're doing uh and in in you is is is important um so in in the beginning there will be there will be uh few people who who do who believe in you or what you're doing um and uh but then over time as you make progress the the evidence will build and and more more people will believe in in what you're doing so um I think it's a good idea when creating a company to to um to create it to have a demonstration or you know if it's a product to have like a a good markup or if even if if it's software to have good demo Weare or to be able to sketch something so people can really Envision what it's about um think that that's a try to get to that point as soon as possible and then iterate to make it as as real as possible as fast as possible um yeah I if that makes\n\nsense but okay so you're running you're CEO of two companies you're chairman of Solar City talk about time management how on Earth do you do this well do you get any sleep uh sometimes not enough sleep is is really great uh because because if I find if I don't get enough sleep then I'm I'm quite grumpy um I mean obviously I think most people are that way um and and and also um like I try to sort of figure out what's the right amount of sleep because I I found I could have I could drop AOW a certain threshold of sleep and although I'd be awake more hours and I could sustain it I would get less done because um mental acurity would be affected um so I found generally the right number for me is around 6 to six and a half hours on average per night um that's\n\nnot too bad yeah right and any other tips on average though any other tips on on just managing to run two companies simultaneously I mean do you do you find I mean I know you're up here Monday Tuesday is it all Tesla when you're up in Silicon Valley and all SpaceX Wednesday Thursday it's having a sort of um having a smartphone is incredibly helpful because that means you can do email during um interstitial periods like if you're in a car you're walking in the bathroom everywhere you can do email practically when you're awake um and uh and so that's really helpful to have email for space and Tesla integrated on on my phone um and then uh and then it's just you have to apply a lot of hours to actual working actually working so the way I generally do it\n\nis I'll be uh working at SpaceX on Monday and then Monday night fly to the Bay Area uh spent Tuesday and Wednesday at the Bara then at at Tesla and then fly back on Wednesday night it's spend Thursday and Friday at SpaceX um in in in the last several months then I would fly back here on a Saturday um and either spend Saturday and Sunday at Tesla uh or spend Saturday at Tesla and Sunday at SpaceX um and and where do the boys fit in you have five Sons um yeah did they tag along with Dad on some of these trips I do drag them along on a lot of things actually um they're remarkably unimpressed by yeah I wish they would be sort of more interested but I mean they're only the twins are are eight and the triplets are six so maybe they'll get more more interested\n\nlater but do you see one day grooming one of them or several of them to take over your companies well I I mean I think if if if they're inclined to I mean if they're really interested in working at teslo SpaceX then I you know help them do that um I'm not sure want to necessarily try to insert them into the CEO role at some point you know it's kind of like if if uh if the rest of the team and the board kind of felt that they were the right person then that would be that would be fine but uh I wouldn't want people to feel like I kind of you know installed you know my my kid there um and I don't think that would be good for either the companies or the kid really um uh but but I have I I I was actually at one point over school thought that um you know it's\n\nbest to give away kind of like 99% or more of one's assets um kind of like the buffet school ofth and um I'm still mostly of that incline in that direction but after seeing what happened with Ford and GM and Chrysler where GM and chryler went went bankrupt but Ford did not and and Ford seemed to make better long-term choices than than the other two companies and that's in part because of the influence of the Ford family um and I thought well okay there may be some Merit in having some longer term family ownership at least at least a portion of it so it's it acts as a positive influence uh this is still something I'm think about but acting as a positive influence in in the long term so the company kind of does do proper long-term things um and like I'm\n\nyou know if look at what happened also in in silic Valley with with HP I I think it's quite quite quite sad um and um and that that that to some degree is because there was um much diminished uh influence by the the the huet and Packard families right um I think they should have prevailed in in in their you know where they were opposed to the the merger that took place at one point and I think they were right actually right and keeping and looking to the Future for SpaceX is there an IPO plan for this year no there's no IPO plan no um let say running a public company does does have its drawback um so you're not in a hurry no okay um I mean in the case of Tesla and SpaceX uh we we had to raise Capital um and and we had kind of a complex Equity structure\n\nthat needed to be resolved by by going public um and um and so so I thought we we kind of needed to do that in those two cases we don't have to do that in SpaceX I think think there's a good chance we will at some point in the future but but spacex's objectives are are super longterm and and the market is is not so I'm a bit worried that if we did go public certainly if we're in public too soon that it the that market pressure would would force us to do uh short-term things and abandon kind of long-term projects like going to Mars right going to Mars very longterm yes that's an important one so you do have other projects on the back burner you've talked about the hyperloop uh a way of getting people from downtown LA to downtown San Francisco in under\n\nhalf an hour an electric supersonic airplane yeah which of those two are bubbling up that we might hear more about in the near future well I I did promise that I'd um do some paper on on the hyperloop idea um and uh things got a little a little hectic towards the end of last year uh because had I had these had committed to to make these milestones at Tesla to to the public markets and um I had to stay true to that obligation um which required just a just an insane level of work and attention um and uh and then we also had the solar City IPO which was a very difficult IPO to to get done I mean that IPO occurred just by the skin of its teeth I mean that was so so such a tough one were you just determined it had to be in December well um if it wasn't in\n\nDecember it would mean pushing it out you know quite a bit um and uh and the problem is that we' already pushed it out quite a bit so if we didn't go public we'd have to do a private round and then um and it just the whole thing wouldn't feel right you know it's like you're sitting at the it's like you're you're you know at the at the altar and you don't do the do the wedding it's like what a bit awkward you know um to say the least yeah uh so so we really need we really needed to do it um and and uh and I think if we hadn't done it people would have looked at it as a failure and it wouldn't have been good um because there's just been too many failures in the Solar or too many not enough success let's say in the Solar Arena they needed to be sort of we\n\nneed to choke up the success in the it's a rare piece of sunshine for the solar year ironically for a solar industry does not have a lot of that yes so it's time unfortunately for the last question you come a long way since you were that six-year-old little boy breaking the rules um you turned 42 this year right what is on the cards where do you where do you see yourself in 10 years time 20 years time 40 years time because you famously said you want to die on Mars just not on impact right exactly tell us about that dream um yeah well actually was asked by journalist do you want to die on Maus and I said yes and I was like but wait not not impact just to be clear that's one of the possibilities um so um yeah so I uh I guess um I I mean I'd like to be able\n\nto go to Mars while I'm still able to manage the journey reasonably well so I think like I don't want to be like 75 and go to Mars you don't want to take your Zimmer frame with you right U you know it it it could be at least in the beginning could be you know mildly uous so um wanted to I'd like to I'd like to get there um I don't know I mean ideally in my 50s that would be that would be kind of cool so you see that happening in the next well I mean I I aspire to make that happen and I I can see the potential for that happening um and um I'm not saying it will happen but I I I I I think it can happen um I'll try to make it happen great ladies and gentlemen Elon Musk thank you very","textByLang":{"en":"welcome ladies and gentlemen to the Computer History Museum I'm John holler the CEO and it's my pleasure to welcome you tonight on behalf of our trustees our staff our members our amazing volunteers all the people involved in making the museum a great place uh thank you thank you for being here tonight for the kickoff of our revolutionaries speaker series for 2013 we have major funding for the Revolutionary speaker series from Intel we're delighted to have Intel support for the fourth year running now and it's just it's fantastic because it enables everything that we do to make these revolutionaries programs possible we also also get additional funding from the William K Bose Foundation I want to say a special thank you to Tesla for arranging to have\n\na Model S here this evening I hope you had a chance to see the Model S downstairs we've been looking forward for years to an event when we could have the Motor Trend Car of the Year at the Museum and we have it here tonight so thank you to Tesla we asked SpaceX for a rocket that proved to be a little more challenging but maybe someday and now for tonight's program Here's a thought exercise if you compiled a list of the 75 most influential people of the 20th Cent Century who would be on your list or if you compile perhaps a list of the hundred people who most affected the world in the 20th century who would be on that list now think of the same list that you might start compiling for the 21st century so far and if all of that proves to be a little too\n\nmuch I can offer some help Elon Musk has been on every single one of those lists that has been compiled for the 20th century to date no matter who seems to be drawing the lists up few scientists entrepreneurs or industrialists of the last century could stake a claim to a career as boldly ambitious as the one Elon Musk is fashioning now transforming a large measure of the world's Commerce and payment systems as co-founder and chairman of PayPal in 1999 might be enough for anyone for one lifetime but Elon Musk has gone on from there to pursue his passion for solving business environmental and scientific problem problems on a global scale he may be best known for his work at Tesla where he serves as CEO and head of product design the path breaking Tesla\n\nRoadster and now the model S have changed almost all of the assumptions that the automotive world has made about what the styling performance and future of a new generation of electric cars might be simultaneously he serves as chairman and principal shareholder of Solar City the nation's leading provider of solar power systems but perhaps his most ambitious and intriguing work is taking place at SpaceX where he is CEO and chief designer SpaceX is erasing the boundaries between space flight and private Enterprise it has a multi-billion dollar multi-year agreement with NASA to be a Workhorse for cargo flights to and from the International Space Station and in 2015 that is the company's stated goal it will begin man space FL what is the source of Elon musk's\n\nrevolutionary thinking how has he been able to do what he's done with the investors he's attracted and the teams that he's built exploring these questions and more tonight with Elon is Allison van digan who is a very notable and noteworthy journalist here in Silicon Valley a contributor to KQED in The Huffington Post and one of the best interviewers in the field through her series fresh dialogues we're delighted to have Allison here tonight this is her first time on stage she's going to be terrific as will Elon please join me in welcoming Elon Musk and Allison van [Applause] digan so I'd like to start uh you grew up in South Africa right and I heard a wonderful story of when you were six years old and you started breaking the rules even then so you were\n\nsix years old and you were invited by your cousin to a birthday party but there was only there were two problems with that one you were grounded and two it was on the other side of toone yeah so can you explain tell tell the audience how you got there uh all right well I mean this was when I was six so the memories are a little fuzzy at this point um but um as I recall uh yeah I I I was grounded for some reason I don't I don't know why but I think I felt that was unjust um and and um and I really wanted to go to this party my cousin's party uh who was five you know so this like kids party but um so uh I I I um I at first I was going to take my bike um but then and I told my mom this um which is a mistake um and and and she she told me some story about\n\nhow you needed a license for a bike and and the police would stop me so I wasn't 100% sure if she was that was true or not but I thought I'd better walk just in case um so yeah just I I I sort of thought I knew the way and uh but it was clear across town so I don't know it was 10 or 12 miles away it's really really quite far um further than I realized actually and uh so I just started walking to to my cousin's house I think it took me about 4 hours and um and just as my mom was leaving that party with my brother and sister she saw me walking down the road um and freaked out um and then I I saw I saw she saw me so I I then sprinted to my cousin's house and I was just just about two blocks away and then climbed a tree and refused to come down oh so the\n\nfirst of many rule breaking Adventures for Elon Musk so by the by the time you were 12 you're already an entrepreneur and making a profit I understand you you you earn $500 equivalent in Rand uh for creating a video game can you tell us about that and what the inspiration was uh yeah sure um so I uh when when I was about 10 I walked into a computer store in in South Africa and um saw an actual computer um I previously had um some some early sort of precursors to to the the Atari uh system and then I got the Atari system which I'm sure a lot of people here have played um and uh and and but then I saw you could actually have a computer where you can make your own games and it was a Commodore Vic 20 um so that was the first computer I bought and um and then\n\nand then I got some uh books on how to teach yourself programming and um and this was like the coolest thing um I'd ever seen so I was just like this is super awesome um and uh so started programming games uh and uh and then selling games in order to actually buy more games so bit of a circular thing so and more games and better computers and that kind of thing so right so the money wasn't the the end goal for you it was more a means to an end uh yeah um basically I'd spend money on um yeah better better computers and uh Dungeons and Dragons modules and things like that we nerd Master 3000 basically uh yeah so I understand at that time you were heavily into Comics I'm curious to know um did you love Iron Man the comic Iron Man I did kind of like Iron\n\nMan yeah you did did you ever did you ever imagine that you would be the inspiration for the movie version I did not no that would that was that was pretty that was pretty much I would say 0% I would have said 0% chance what kind of kid were you I mean can you can you look back and see yourself were you were you a bit of a lunar kid bookish kid uh I certainly I wasn't all that much of a loner um at least not willingly um so um but but I I certainly was uh quite um I was very very bookish I was reading all the time so I was either reading uh working on my computer reading comics playing dungeons dragons that kind of thing and um I understand Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy that wonderful book by Douglas Adams that was a that was a key book for you what\n\nwhat was it about that book that that fired your imagination um yeah so uh I guess when I was in the around 12 or 13 I had compan existential crisis and I was reading various books um on trying to figure out the meaning of life and well like what does it all mean because uh it starts seeming quite meaningless and then um uh my we happen to have like some some books by n and schopenhauer in the house which you should not read at age 14 is bad it's really negative um so so uh but but then I then I read hit is gu the Galaxy which like quite positive I think and um and sort of highlighted the the an important point which is that a lot of times the question is harder than the answer and if you can properly phrase the question then the answer is the easy part\n\num and so uh the if to the degree that we can um better uh understand the universe then we better know what questions to ask and um then whatever the question is that most appro approximates what's the meaning of life you know that that that's that's the question we could ultimately get closer to understanding um and so I thought well to the degree that we can expand the scope and scale of Consciousness and and knowledge um human knowledge then that would be a good thing wow so you're having these deep thoughts at what age 10 14 yeah sort of in the puberty I guess was 13 13 through 15 probably the most traumatic years right and so by the time you were 17 you were you were ready you were actually left right I assume you hatched the plan earlier when you\n\nwere around 14 15 I did hatch the plan earlier actually I I tried to hatch several plans uh which they did not hatch right um but by 17 you were on a plane from South Africa you you had enough of South Africa you were ready to seek new pastures now why was it the United States was your destination why not Europe or somewhere else in the world well just whenever I'd read about cool technology it would tend to be in the United States you know or more broadly North America or including Canada so um uh so I kind of wanted to be where The Cutting Edge of Technology was um and of course within the United States uh Silicon Valley is is the is where the the heart of things is so um although at the time I didn't know where Sil Valley was it sounded like a mythical\n\nPlace really great um so yeah so I I I wanted to come to the to the US I try to convince my um my mother or father who were divorced if either one of them would move to the United States then I could then I could get there at one point I convinced my father but then he renaged unfortunately um so you had him convinced and then he changed his mind he did say yes and then and then he changed his mind why I don't know I guess um he was sort he was fairly established he's an engineer he was sort of established in South Africa and didn't want to have to go through that again in another country right so you got on that plane all by yourself at 17 uh yeah so um I I actually got um my my mother was born in Canada and actually her her father was uh American U\n\nbut unfortunately she didn't get her American citizenship so then that broke the link and I couldn't get my American citizenship but she was born in Canada so I could get uh I actually filled up the forms for her and got her a Canadian passport and me too um and then as soon as within 3 weeks of my getting my Canadian passport I was in Canada right and then you ended up at University of Pennsylvania yeah you did degree in physics and business yeah so I I I was in Canada for a few years at Queens University got a scholarship to go down to uh University of Pennsylvania um because one of the downsides of of coming to University of North America was that my my parents said they would not would not pay for college if it was well my father said he would not\n\npay for college unless it was in South Africa so so it was either so I could have free college in or or find some way to pay it here and uh fortunately I got a scholarship at at upen and um and so did uh did he U business under dual undergraduate uh business and and physics at upan Wharton and it was there that you came up with this idea of three main areas that you felt were most important to humanity can you describe how You Came Upon them was it just one day you had a flash of inspiration these are the three areas that are important and I want to concentrate on or how did did that how did that inspiration come to you now I think I was thinking about it for a couple years um and during sort of freshman and sophore year at queens and then also at upen\n\num and I was trying to think what would most influence the future uh you know what the problems that we that we have to solve um and um and I I actually talked a lot to friends and and my housemates and that kind of thing and dates which is not maybe not the best thing so yeah um actually met uh met a woman I dated briefly in in college um who now works at Scientific American as a writer and uh and and she she related the anecdote that uh we went on a date I was all I was talking about was electric cars um that was not a big a winning conversation so it was a bit of a monologue was it yeah she said she said the first question I asked her was do you ever think about electric cars no she never does so you learn from that that wasn't the best shout out L\n\nwasn't wasn't great it has recently it's been more effective there you go I know this man that's wonderful we'll get on to Tesla soon but I want to I want to um go from from University of Pennsylvania you ended up in Silicon Valley and you've described Silicon Valley as darwinian can you talk about what it was the most positive sense really and was positive um can you elaborate on what that means and why it had to be Silicon Valley what what Drew you to Silicon Valley um well uh well I was at I was at pen and um there was a professor who um who was chairman of a company in Sil Valley that was working on Advanced capacitors for use in electric cars or potentially for use in electric cars uh as it turns out they they're way too expensive but um but I thought\n\nwell this is this is really awesome because then I asked if I could get a summer job because it was in Silicon Valley and working on technology for electric cars I thought well that's that's pretty much as good as it gets um so I got a summer job here was in Las Godus actually um at at Pinnacle research uh doing um uh electrolytic uh Ultra capacitors which were um but they had a the problem was that they they used the ruthenium tantalum oxide um and there was I think only a few tons of ruthenium mined in the world um so not very scalable um and they you know they'd sell it to you by the sort of milligram so you know that's you know there's a problem um but but it had a pretty high energy density it's sort of roughly equivalent to a Le acid battery which\n\nfor capacitor is huge mhm but you ended up then after that at at Stanford yeah so then um I I thought well uh Stanford is in Silicon Valley sort of epicenter and so that's where I wanted to come um you Stanford or Berkeley and Stanford sort of Sunny air so I like to Sun air that's great and you I understand you were at Stanford University for a whole two days before you decided no it's time I'm going to do my first startup yeah I figured well um so this is a summer of '95 and uh uh and I've been working on some internet software so because the three things I thought were pick the world with internet um sustainable energy and and uh space exploration making life multiplanetary so uh the um but but on the internet thing I just couldn't figure out how to\n\nmake enough money to to feed myself you know cuz like uh if I didn't makes make make money then I would like run out of food and die so that was that was not good uh so basic needs right yeah literally um so whereas uh you know if I was a student then I could be teaching assistant and do you do various things and and and do research on um electric vehicle Tech technologies that that was my default plan but but then I also thought that if I if I did a PhD at Stanford then um I could I would spent several years watching the internet go through this incredibly rapid growth phase and that would be really difficult to to handle like it's like it really wanted to be doing something so you saw the wave growing it sort of really seemed like things were going\n\nto take off um although nobody made any money on the internet at the time in '95 there was really nobody was making any money on the internet and in fact even on Sand Hill Road people were like what's the internet they amazingly um when we tried to get funding for a company in I think it was November or something of9 there about October November um more than half of the bench capitalists we met with did not know what the internet was and had not used it that's amazing yeah literally I like it's like isn't that they literally ask isn't that something that the government and universities use like uh for now but you know yeah uh but then then uh netgate went public in late 95 I think it was and then after that even though lot of vure capitalist still didn't\n\nunderstand it and still hadn't used it they they somebody had made on it so now that was on the radar yeah so when we went to get funding the second time we tried to get funding um everyone was interested right so this company was zip 2 that's right and terrible name yeah what what what was the reason for that name um well we were just incredibly stupid at the time I think that was that's the the main reason for that name um and uh because we got some Ad Agency because we thought well we don't know anything about names so we'll get some add in to suggest a bunch of options and then zip two seemed kind of Speedy I don't know what the hell why the hell we chose that stupid name um and it has a digit it's like why would you pick it because it could be zip\n\nto could be Zip T wo it could be zip t oo so like people like literally spelled the name every variation um which is bad if you got a URL and you don't have the other ones um so so um so is up to started off um as basically uh like said we're trying to figure out how to how to make enough money to exist as a company and the so so since there wasn't really any advertising money being made uh we thought we could um help existing companies get online bring their stuff online so we developed software that helped bring um lot of the newspapers and media companies online CU a lot of them just didn't they also didn't know what the internet was big customers didn't you yeah mhm um and and even the ones that were aware of the internet didn't have a software team\n\nso they they weren't very good at developing functionality um and uh so we had as um investors and customers uh the New York Times company night rder H and and so we were able to get them to pay us to develop software for them to bring them online so online publishing stuff and we did maps and directions and yellow pages and white pages and uh various other things um and uh we developed quite sophisticated technology actually but um I it wasn't actually being employed super well by the media companies like we we would suggest ways to use it and then it would not be used as effectively as it could be it was very frustrating right but you did sell that company successfully to compact yeah right and that allowed you to go on and uh create x.\n\ncom that's right yeah exactly so um the yeah compac had uh had alter Vista so their their thought was combine alista and a bunch of other technology companies and see if that would if that would work which it did not um but but nonetheless they they they were pretty nice guys and bought the company and and that gave me the capital to to do another company and I want I want to do another company in the internet because I thought we haden't really reached the potential that we could have with with sub2 um because we had really sophisticated softare our software was sort of at least comparable to what Yahoo or excite or others had in fact I mean I thought in some ways it was better so uh but it wasn't because it was all filtered through these Partners it\n\nwasn't getting properly used uh so I thought we um I I want to do something that could be more a more significant contrib contribution to the internet and um and so the initial thought was with financial services because um money is digital um it's low band with at the time there was you know most people were on modems still on modems and um because this was uh late 98 early 99 so this was x.\n\ncom was a precursor to PayPal basically you merged with confinity and it became PayPal major success yeah so it worked out better than we expected um yeah um so yeah uh confinity so initially confinity and EXO com started out with from slightly different directions and then converged to the same point um with with x the thought was to create integrated set of financial services um so you could go to one place and do all of your financial anything um and and then as a feature we had the ability to transfer money or Securities or anything simply by enter entering a unique identifier so like a you know email address or phone number or something like that um and uh but when we demo the system the hard stuff which was the integration of all the financial services\n\nuh people would not be interested in but they'd be really interested in in being able to transfer money using an email address even though that was actually quite easy um and so we focused our our energy on that um and although it's easy in principle it uh what gets really hard is is adding um security while still keeping it easy to use that so because you know it's like the Willie lurman quote like why do people why do you rub Banks because that's where the money is so why do people rub PayPal the same reason um and and so you can e you can dial up the security to a really high level but then you're going to make it very hard to use um and and so that that that was was one of the toughest things we wrestled with um and then confinity originally started\n\nas kind of um software for Palm pilots and and then they had a demonstration application which was the ability to beam money from one Palm Pilot to another using the infrared Port yeah people remember that one yes um that was big at one point um and and then they they had a website uh sort of parallel to that where you because once you beam the infrared tokens you had to still then um synchronize your P pilot and do the transfer via the website so but then people weren't that interested in the PM pilot stuff but they were interested in the website so we kind of converge to the same point um and we're quite close together so we we decided to merge the companies um and uh in I think January or so of 2000 was very toing period um and the the the growth in\n\nthe company was was pretty pretty crazy like we had at at the end of the first sort of four or five weeks we had 100,000 customers it's incredible incredible growth um did you anticipate that when you started definitely did not and and it wasn't all good because uh we had some bugs in the software uh and you know what even if the bug only occurs one in a thousand times still have, customers you have 100 very angry customers like where's my money that would be you know reasonable a reasonable concern that people would have and and then we we we had customer service on University and Avenue and paloalto uh there were five people um so when something went wrong customer service phones were basically explode oh my goodness um and uh so we we had many challenges\n\nand then the various Financial Regulatory Agencies were trying to shut us down visa and mascard were trying to shut us down eBay was trying to shut us down uh FTC was trying to shut us down um there were a lot of battles there wow it's quite incredible with all that adversity you you conquered and you came out with hundred million right yeah it was a close call um we definitely I mean came very close to dying there in 2000 and 2001 um and what was the reason for that success what would you put it down to in that case how did you overcome uh well you know I think we had a really talented group of people at PayPal um and a lot of those people have actually gone on to start many other companies yes um you know YouTube LinkedIn Yelp uh Yammer um it's like\n\nquite a long list actually um and so for you personally there you were with several hundred million were you not tempted just to go on buy an island um really what was it that drove you what I'm getting at because I I know you didn't but what I'm getting at is why were you so driven to jump into the next thing well I was um did you take any time off I I did take a bit of time off uh because um after PayPal um I did reasonbly well for PayPal I was the largest shareholder in the company so um and we required for about a billion and a half in stock and then the stock doubled so um so you know it did did reasonably reason well but the the idea of of like lying on a beach as my main thing uh just sounds like the worst that sounds horrible to me uh just boredom\n\nfactor I would go Bonkers I would you know um I would have to be on serious drugs I mean just or serious P coladas right exactly I mean it's just I'd be super duper bored um so that uh I mean I like I like high intensity um I mean I like going to beach for a short period of time uh but but not much longer than like you know a few days or something like that right so let's talk about the seeds of SpaceX I understand it started not as the idea of let's let's start start a rocket ship company uh you had a philanthropic idea you were really surprised when you found out that NASA didn't have any plans to go to Mars and you came up with this idea of let's put a greenhouse on Mars so can you explain how that whole idea came into being for for SpaceX sure well\n\num so so when I was thinking of like what I thought would would affect the world uh as a student it wasn't really from the standpoint of those are the things I'll get involved in it was kind of more in the abstract these are the things I think will happen that will affect the world um but but not that I will be involved in them as it turns out I have but uh I I always thought that we would make much more progress in space um and it just it just didn't happen it was it was really disappointing so um uh yeah I was I was was really quite bothered by it MH um so you know when we went to the moon um we were supposed to have a base on the moon we're supposed to send people to Mars and that stuff just it just didn't happen it we went backwards um you we got\n\nthe space shuttle but the space shuttle could only go to lowth orbit where a Saturn 5 could go to the moon now the space shuttle is gone and so that just seemed like a a really bad thing so uh I thought um well maybe it was a question of of um there not being enough attention or will to to do this um but this I this was was this was a wrong assumption so I um so but that that's the reason for the greenhouse idea was to the thought was if if um if there could be sort of a small philanthropic Mission to Mars you know so I wasn't I was expecting to lose all all the money that I invested in in that um but if we could send a small Greenhouse to the surface of Mars with with seeds in in dehydrated nutrient Deale and hydrated Point Landing and you'd have this\n\ngreat shot of you know little Greenhouse with with little green plants with on on a red background um I thought that would get people excited so you literally imagined a photograph inspiring a new generation yeah you got to sort of imagine the money shot if you will um so so yeah I think I think you know green plants in red background would be that um and and people tend to get interested and excited about precedents and superlatives so this would be the furthest that life's ever traveled the F the first life on Mars um as far as we know um and uh and I thought well maybe that would result in in a in a bigger budget for NASA and and um and then we could sort of resume the journey that was the basic idea and and I I spent several months on this actually\n\nand uh went to Russia three times um because I was able to to figure out how to get the cost of the spacecraft low and the communications and the the the greenhouse and all that to a reasonable number reasonable meaning several million dollars um and did you have did you actually physically draw out a greenhouse of how you imagine yeah yeah actually I hope we got that somewhere um that would be amazing to see yeah um I mean I'm sure it looks pretty goofy in retrospect but but that's the that's the idea that we had and it's um so and I I spent several hundred,\n\njust kind of getting the design worked out and engaging some companies to um come up with the design specifications for the subsystems um and uh and then but then it came to buying the rocket and the problem was that the the cost of rockets is really high uh and the lowest cost rocket in the us at the time was the uh the Delta 2 Boeing Delta 2 and and that would have been about $50 million um yeah and then you need still need to have like an upper stage from so probably 60 million all in and that was uh and I wanted to do two of these missions because I thought if if it did just one and and it didn't work then that could have like the the opposite of effect like look how dumb it is to do to to try a same all this money down the drain right what an idiot\n\nso so I wanted to do two and I just didn't have enough money to to do two complete missions so you had a budget of about 100 million something like that well I was hoping it would be less than that but uh but not more than I mean not more than that um but but then yeah I guess roughly on that order is about most I'd be I mean I couldn't I couldn't spend much more than that uh so um so the Russians didn't help you out yeah had three three quite interesting trips to Russia to try to uh negotiate purchase of two Russian icbms yeah and did they think you had evil inent no they just thought I was crazy uh but I mean that's not good either U if you're buying icbms um but minus the nuke I mean I think that would have been a lot more so so you didn't talk nukon\n\nno I I mean I didn't I I got slightly got the feeling that that was on the table if I which which was very alarming um but but yeah that that was uh those are very weird meetings um with with the the Russian military and whatnot um I mean I think they they thought I was bit crazy but then they thought they read about PayPal and okay it was crazy he's got money uh he did something right yeah well and more importantly I could pay him um right yes so so that's that's really I mean there yeah it was remarkably capitalist was was my impression of the Russians yeah right right i' I have heard that before yep um so tell me how what was the turning point from you know talking with the Russians and then deciding okay I'm going to do this I'm going to set up a\n\ncompany what was that turning point for you well um I I I guess I I I had I came conclusion that um my initial premise was was wrong uh that in fact the um there's there's a great deal of will uh you know that there there's there was not such a shortage um but people don't think there's a way um and and that if people thought there was there was a way or at least something that wouldn't you know break the federal budget um then then people would support it um which in retrospect I think is actually kind of obvious because um the the United States is a distillation of the human Spirit of exploration um people came here from other places um I mean it's you know there's no n there's no I mean there's no nation that that's more a nation of explorers than\n\nun United States but but people need to believe that it's possible and it's that it's not you know it's they don't have to give up like healthcare or something important you know it's just it's got to be that that that's that's important so so I thought okay well then it's not a question of will it's it's a question of showing that there's a way um and and the and I started reading quite a bit about Rockets to try to understand why they're so so freaking expensive um um you know is there something you know where does this the $60 million go for the Delta 2 um and that's subsequently Now Delta 2 I think is1 $100 million even some crazy number um and Delta 2 is I mean that's a relatively smaller rocket um so if you go to like a really you know one of the\n\nbigger Rockets it's anywhere from $200 to $400 million um anyway so so I came conclusion that there there wasn't really a good reason for Rockets to be so expensive um and and and that there could be a lot less and even in in Expendable format uh there could be less and uh and and that in if one could make them reusable like airplanes then the cost of rocketry would go would drop dramatically cost of space travel would drop dramatically because the the cost of the fuel was maybe anywhere from 0.\n\n2 to .\n\n5% of the cost of the rocket right um you know it's kind of like a plane I mean how much is the cost of the fuel in the plane versus the plane itself it's a at least a two of magnitude difference um but nobody had really been able to make a reusable rocket work so that that but I thought okay that if we can do that then that would that would really be the the key breakthrough for space travel right but you also said that so far we have not succeeded I should point out um you've also said that failure was the most likely outcome can you talk about failure in that sense and in a broader sense of being an entrepreneur and an innovator why is failure so important uh well I I mean I I think I think failure is bad um I don't think it's good um but if if if\n\nis important enough then you you do it even though the risk of failure is high MH um and and so I think my advice if somebody is wants to start a company is they should bear in mind that the most likely outcome is is that it's not going to work and they should reconcile themselves to that POS strong possibility um and they should only do it if they feel that they they they are really compelled to do it you know right um because it's it's it's going to the way starting company works is like usually in the beginning it's the very beginning it's kind of fun um and then it's really hellish for for a number of years you talked about chewing glass yeah there's there's a a friend of mine who's uh successful entrepreneur um and uh started actually his career\n\naround the same time as I did and he he has a good good good phrase his name's bully uh um he said yeah your starting a company is like eating glass and staring into the abyss um and and you agree with that generally true um yeah and and and and if you don't eat the glass you're not going to be successful that's that's yeah tough medicine tough medicine so let's move along and we're going to get down into Innovation and motivation shortly but I want to just go through your whole business career first so shortly after founding SpaceX you then got interested in electric vehicles and I understand you watched the visuals for the death of the ev1 when they were all smashed talk about that and and why you felt even after founding SpaceX I have to get involved\n\nwith Tesla yeah um well um as I said like my interest in electric vehicles goes back a long time to you know goes back 20 plus years scene yeah EXC exactly um and and in fact the the original reason I came silen Valley was to work on electric vehicle energy storage technology right um and and I I thought that um that the big car companies would develop electric cars because obviously the right move um and and and and I thought that was Vindicated when General Motors and uh Toyota announced their General Motors was doing the ev1 Electric Vehicle One Toyota did the electric R 4 the original one um and they made those announcements and then and they brought those to Market and I thought okay well this is this is great um you we're going to have electric\n\ncars GM's going to obviously do the ev2 and three and then you know they just get keep getting better and everything would be cool um and uh and then uh when when California relaxed its regulations on electric cars GM recalled all of the ev1s uh and crushed them into little cubes you know which is seems kind of nutty um so in fact uh the people didn't want their EV ones recalled yeah and in fact they they tried they tried court orders to stop the cars from being recalled they they held a candle it vigil okay at the yard where the cars were crushed did you attend that vigil no I I did I did not you moved by it well certainly I mean it's it's crazy if if I mean when is the last time you heard about any company customers holding a candle it viil for the\n\ndemise of that that product um particularly AGM product okay I mean I mean what bigger wake up call do you need it's like it's like hello the customers are really upset about this they would really prer it if it didn't get recalled um so that that that kind of blew my mind so I was like wow okay um and then uh and we had the Advent of lithium ion batteries which really helps helps the it makes you know that that's one of the key things for making electric cars work it's still nothing and so um in 2003 uh actually had lunch with one of the other co-founders of the company JB strael who um was actually working I think on like a hydrogen airplane or something um and um he mentioned to me uh the um t0 car that was done by AC propulsion um AC propulsion I\n\nthink consist of guys some of who had actually been on the ev1 program and they uh they took an a gasoline sports car kind of a kit car and outfitted it with uh with lithiumion batteries sort of consumer great cells and they um uh created a car which was which is essentially the preaster of the Roadster um and uh and in fact it had very similar specifications um so subz sub4 second 0 to 60 milph um 250 mile range and um also two-seater sort of sports car but but it had but it was quite primitive um it didn't have a roof one thing at all um and in fact I don't know if it had doors uh but it didn't have any Safety Systems no airbags it wasn't homologated so you couldn't sell it um so in order to sell that car in order to create a commercial version of the\n\ncar something that a manufacturer could produce and sell to people there was a fabit of work that was required and uh but anyway I kept trying to get AC propulsion to commercialize the the t0 and I said look I'm going to I'll fund the whole effort can you know you really need to do this um and they they just they just sort of refused to do it um they didn't want to do it they they wanted to make uh I think the what's that uh oh they want to make like an electric Scion um which in principle sounds good except that it would have cost $75,000 and nobody wants to buy $75,000 iion um and and uh the technology just was not ready there was just no way to to make um a good value for money proposition um and what was what was it that compelled you to say I have\n\nto be CEO here and Lead this company why not say you know I'll help you JB get this get this ruling well I really didn't want to be CEO of two companies uh if I tried super really hard not to be actually uh and um yeah so anyway so AC repulsion finally said Okay I I actually told AC repulsion look if you're not going to do this I'm going to create a company to to do do this um and they said well there's some other guys who are also interested in doing that um and you guys should combine efforts and and and create a company um and that's basically how Tesla uh came together um and uh and then we had like a lot of drama um and uh but but I mean I I had um since I was the you I provided like 95% of the money so I could have been the CEO from day one but\n\nI really you know the idea of being CEO of two startups at the same time was not uh appealing and shouldn't be appealing by the way if anyone's thinking that's a good idea it's really terrible idea but then again you know going back to your um trajectory here not only did you take on two you took on three you had a an epiphany at Burning Man I understand and decided you have to watch those epiph burning not necessarily what you should pursue um and you came up with the idea um yeah it's it's uh well um you know solar is kind of part of the whole sustainable energy thing so sustainable energy you have to have sustainable means of of producing and consuming uh energy and so even if you have electric cars you have to have the other side of the equation say\n\nhow do you produce energy in a sustainable way way um and I think solar is the obvious primary means of sustainable energy generation u in fact the Earth is almost entirely solar power today um the the uh the only reason we're not a frozen ice ball at sort of 3° Calvin is because of the Sun and and the Sun is responsible for all precipitation it's it's responsible for the vast majority of the ecosystem apart from sort of chatres the bottom of the ocean so uh the the there's just a tiny amount of energy that people that people consume to to power civilization it's actually a very tiny amount of energy relative to the amount of energy that the sun sends in our general direction um and so in order to deal with that we couldn't in fact power the entire world\n\nwith solar power quite easily this is maybe not super obvious to people B so was that the Epiphany you had at Burning Man was it a vision no I knew that long long I knew that in college but what what was the the key Vision that came to you at Burning Man we all want to imagine you there Vision um the uh no it was it was more um the the uh I wouldn't say it was a a particular Epiphany it was more that I was at Burning Man with um with with my cousins or to my cousins uh ly Lyon and Peter Lyon and Peter R uh who are awesome guys and they and and they were sort of trying to think what should they do after their um after their first startup so they did company called everdream which did um large scale management of of computers so if you've got like 60,000\n\ncomputers it's kind of hard to manage them so they wrote this they create a software that enables people companies to do that um and that company actually got sold to Dell uh um so they were looking for a new Venture and looking for your ideas well I would initially looking for my ideas but I actually was trying to convince them that they should do solo um uh and uh because I just thought I just thought it was an area that needed people like them uh who really good good entrepreneurs so uh and and since I was like somewhat overcommitted I thought to say the least yeah uh I thought well and and I said like look if if you guys will will do a solo company I'll I'll find you you know F all the funding and um you know whatever guidance I can or help I can\n\nprovide uh i' do that that's and I thought it was really important that there be uh you know good entrepreneurs like them in in Sol solar because just wasn't wasn't doing very well as an industry so um and I thought people were kind of focusing on not the they weren't focusing on the right problem um the everybody sort of thought that the uh the panel was the problem but actually it's it's not it's it's a problem but it's not it's not the it's not the most important problem um the and and the panel is somewhat commoditized at this point so it's you know making standard efficiency solar panels is about as hard as making drywall it's really easy in fact i' say drywall is probably harder um and um but but what what is a thorny problem is trying to figure\n\nout how to get um solar on tens of thousands eventually hundreds of thousands of rooftops right the logistics part yeah it's it's kind of like you got to re-roof um millions of buildings right um and and then figure out how the grid interconnects work and then manage all those systems like so if You' got hundreds of thousands or maybe millions of systems eventually you've got to manage all these distributed systems you have this really complex distributed utility effectively um which I think actually plays to two their strengths in creating their price strength in creating uh really scalable software for managing you know hundreds of thousands of computers um in a distributed fashion right um and uh and that's that's kind of what they did and did an awesome\n\njob it was just like I basically would show up at the board meetings to hear what's the good news this time you know it's like really you know we had like maybe a couple of bad news board meetings well late 2008 there were some bad news board board meetings but um for the most part apart from a few a few times when the macroeconomic conditions were really terrible um they just did an amazing job with you know almost no help from me so you've been able to leave it in their good hands yeah it's uh they deserve the vast majority of the credit for for the success of that company awesome so I'd like to move on to Innovation and motivation there's been a lot of talk lately about the fact that Innovation is leveling off we're not making the dramatic increases\n\nor improvements in Innovation like we did when the plane was invented do you do you agree with that and uh no I don't agree with that I don't think that's true um okay uh I think we've we've seen well and I'm not sure what time period that is exactly but we've seen um huge improvements in um the in the internet and new new things uh I mean in you even in recent years Twitter and Facebook being being pretty huge when people kind of thought the internet was done MH um and uh you know I think there there are some of the things that we're doing like you know electric cars or or a new thing uh and uh uh I I I do think there's there's a pretty significant break through I mean in genomics um we're getting better and better at decoding genomes and and being able\n\nto write genetics I think that's going to be a huge huge area I think there's likely to be some breakthroughs in artificial intelligence um and um I suspect we will even see the flying car all right is that is that going to be an El on musk production no you're going to let someone else do that uh yeah I well I think someone else I think someone else is doing that all right okay that's another conversation do you feel uh the government is standing in the way of innovation at all well sometimes um the government I I don't think the government tends to stand the way Innovation but sometimes it can overregulation becomes very difficult um I mean in the the order industry used to be a great hot bed of innovation at the beginning of the 20th century but uh\n\nbut now there's so many regulations that are intended to protect consumers um I mean the body of regulation for cars could like full you know this room it's just crazy how much uh regulation there is down to like what the T the head lamps are supposed to be like and the they even specify the some of the elements of the user interface on the dashboard which and some of these are completely anachronistic um because they're they're relating back to the days when you had like a little light that would illuminate an image um so like we have to reserve space on the instrument panel the model S for where all of the the indicators like that a car would have you know you got like these little lights like check engine or whatever yeah like all these little little\n\nthings there's like a whole bunch of them and we can't have anything else in that space like uh well how would it create one space and render a different graphic like oh no because people are expecting to see it in that space like nobody is expecting to see it in that [Music] space yeah so you feel you can't argue with these regulations you just have to well you can argue with them but not with great success uh and and you you can actually get these things changed but it takes ages um like one of the things we're trying to get is like like why should you have side mirrors if you can have say little video cameras tiny video cameras and have them you know display an image inside the car um but there are all these regulations saying you have to have side\n\nmirrors and I went and met with the secretary of Transport like can you change this regulation still nothing has happened that was like two years ago um you know so your head against a wall here a little bit it's not easy to get these regulations changed so talking of government uh President Obama is obviously trying to do what he can if you had five minutes with President Obama what would you advise him for one stimulating the economy and an entrepreneurship and creating jobs is there one thing that if he could successfully get through that would be a big stimulus do you think well I think actually um I I think the reality of being president is that you're actually like the captain of a very huge ship and have a small Rudder um because because obviously\n\nif I mean if there was a button that a president could push that said economic Prosperity you'd be like they're hitting that button real fast full steam ahead you measure the speed of light by how fast they me they press that button because that would be that's called like the re-election button um so so so I'm not sure how much the president can really do but um but I think I think uh uh you know I'm I'm generally a fan of like minimal government interference in the economy um like the government should be kind of a like the referee but not the player um and there shouldn't be too many referees um but but um there is an exception which is when there's uh an unpriced externality um such as the CO2 capacity of the oceans in atmosphere so when you have\n\nan unpriced externality then the normal Market mechanisms do not work and then government is government's role to to intervene in a in a way that's sensible um and the best way to intervene is to is to put is to assign a proper price to whatever the the common good is that's being consumed um and then and then so you're saying there should be a tax on gas there should be a tax on carbon you know if if the bad thing is uh carbon accumulation in the atmosphere then then needs to be attacks on on that um and then we can that will and then you get rid of all subsidies and all everything else um and it seems like logical that you should tax things that that are most likely to be bad rather than you know like like that's why we tax cigarettes and alcohol um\n\nbecause those those are probably bad for you um certainly cigarettes are um and um so so uh you so so you want to ER on the side of taxing things that are probably bad and and not tax things that are that are good um and so I think given that there is a need to gather tax for the um you know to pay for the federal government we should shift the tax bur to to bad things and then adjust that that tax of that bad thing according to whatever is going to result in in the behavior that we think is beneficial for the future I mean I I think currently that you know what we're doing right now which is Mining and burning trillions of tons of hydrocarbons that that used to be buried very deep underground and now we're sticking them in the atmosphere and running\n\nthis crazy chemical experiment on the atmosphere um and then you've got the oil and gas companies which have ungodly amounts of money um and you can't expect them to just roll over and die like they don't do that um so actually what they much prefer to do is spend enormous amounts of money lobbying and running bogus ad campaigns and that kind of thing to preserve their their situation um you know it's a lot it's a lot like uh tobacco companies in the old days I mean they used to run these ads with doctors like well guy with a doctor you know a pretending he's a doctor uh you know essentially implying that smoking is good for you and like having pregnant mothers on ad smoking um do you have a message for the climate change Skeptics and and the the Big\n\nOil people well as far as climate change skeptic I me like I'm you know I like to I believe in the scientific method and one should be one should have a healthy skepticism of things in general and you know as if if you're first things from a scientific standpoint you always look at things probabilistically not definitively and so I think a lot lot of times if somebody's a skeptic in the science Community what they're really saying is that they're not sure that it's 100% certain that that this is the case but that's that's that's not the point the point point is um that is is is is look it from the other side see what what do you think the percentage chance is of of this being catastrophic for some meaningful percentage of the Earth's population um is\n\nit greater than 1% is it even 1% um if it is even 1% why are we running this experiment right you called it a Russian Roulette we're playing Russian roulette with the atmosphere we're playing Russian roulette and then and and as each year goes by we're loading more rounds in the chamber it's not it's not wise um so so that's and and and what makes it super insane is that we're going to run out of oil anyway like it's not like there some infinite oil supply we're going to run out of it so we know we have to get to a sustainable means of of of Transportation no matter what so why even run the experiment right it's the world's dumbest experiment right yeah [Applause] so let's move on to focus on Silicon Valley Steve Jobs is was and is a wonderful Silicon\n\nValley icon is he someone that you've admired and what have you learned from Steve's life and work U well he's certainly someone i' I've admired um although I did try to talk to him once at a party and it was super rude to me uh but I don't think it was me I think it was sort of you know po the course I think you weren't the first yeah not the first no it was um but but uh yeah and I was actually there with like Larry Page is an old friend of mine I've known Larry since before he got Venture funding for Google and Larry was the guy that introduced me to Steve jop so it's not as like I'm I'm going like and tugging on his coat like you know please talk to me um but you know so was introduced by Larry pig is not bad so um but uh I mean he obviously he was\n\nan incredible guy and made fantastic products uh that that um you know and I know there was like a a certain um the guy had a certain magic about him you know to sort of that was kind of that was really inspiring so I mean I think that's that's really great is there is there that magic that you try and emulate uh no I I think Steve Jobs is way cooler than than I am so oh okay so I'd like to get inside your head a little bit about you know when you come up with an idea do you doodle it you know on a pad of paper or do you get your iPad out and and take notes I mean when you come up with something new you know a new rocket design or whatever it is how does that manifest itself could we see you being creative um I mean it's somewhat cliched but it's it happens\n\na lot in the shower um I don't know what it is about showers or yeah exactly get the camera um like y um no I'm just no I do I just kind of stand there in the shower um so you have long showers I do actually long showers sounds wrong um but yeah I do um and so there's not to mention the Burning Man epiphanies um right that those are those are huge um so yeah I think that's uh yeah and and and then um there there are sometimes like late at night uh if I've been thinking about something then I can't sleep and I'll be up for you know for several hours um thinking about sort of pacing around the house and thinking about things and um occasionally I'll I'll sketch something or send myself an email or something like that right so we have a question from the\n\naudience um who inspires you or do you have a mentor um well um I I don't have a mantro per se although I try to I try to get feedback from as many people as possible um and um so I have I have like friends and I ask them to you know what they think of this that that and the other thing and um you know as mentioned you know lar Larry's a good Larry p is a good friend of mine value his advice a lot um and um have many other good friends and uh so so I think it's good to feedback in particularly negative feedback actually because you know obviously people aren't don't love the idea of giving you negative feedback um unless unless it's like some you know on on on blogs they they do that um yeah how do you deal with negative feedback because you got some\n\ntough um criticism especially with SpaceX you had incumbents like Neil Armstrong even U speaking out and saying this is wrong we don't want you know commercial companies in space it's not a place for Commerce so how did you deal with that and how do you deal with in general cuz you've had a lot yeah that was kind of troubling uh because uh you know growing up NE is kind of a hero so it's like it kind of sucks to you know back that's a bit of a blow yeah um so yeah but I I think in his case he was somewhat manipulated you know by by other interests so I think he quite knew what he was saying in those in those Congressional hearings so yeah okay and um talk about you know it's one thing to have these wonderful ideas in the shower at Burning Man but there's\n\nanother thing to build motivate and retain a team of excellent people can you talk about some tips and some things you've learned that obviously work for you yeah um well I mean if you think about a company a company is is a group of people that are organized to create a product or service that's uh that's what a company is so so in order to um create such a thing you have to convince others to join you in in your effort um and and and so they have to be convinced that that that it's a sensible thing that it's like that there's at least some some good some reasonable chance of success uh and if if there is Success that the reward will be commensurate with the effort involved um and uh you know so so I think that's getting people to to believe in what\n\nyou're doing uh and in in you is is is important um so in in the beginning there will be there will be uh few people who who do who believe in you or what you're doing um and uh but then over time as you make progress the the evidence will build and and more more people will believe in in what you're doing so um I think it's a good idea when creating a company to to um to create it to have a demonstration or you know if it's a product to have like a a good markup or if even if if it's software to have good demo Weare or to be able to sketch something so people can really Envision what it's about um think that that's a try to get to that point as soon as possible and then iterate to make it as as real as possible as fast as possible um yeah I if that makes\n\nsense but okay so you're running you're CEO of two companies you're chairman of Solar City talk about time management how on Earth do you do this well do you get any sleep uh sometimes not enough sleep is is really great uh because because if I find if I don't get enough sleep then I'm I'm quite grumpy um I mean obviously I think most people are that way um and and and also um like I try to sort of figure out what's the right amount of sleep because I I found I could have I could drop AOW a certain threshold of sleep and although I'd be awake more hours and I could sustain it I would get less done because um mental acurity would be affected um so I found generally the right number for me is around 6 to six and a half hours on average per night um that's\n\nnot too bad yeah right and any other tips on average though any other tips on on just managing to run two companies simultaneously I mean do you do you find I mean I know you're up here Monday Tuesday is it all Tesla when you're up in Silicon Valley and all SpaceX Wednesday Thursday it's having a sort of um having a smartphone is incredibly helpful because that means you can do email during um interstitial periods like if you're in a car you're walking in the bathroom everywhere you can do email practically when you're awake um and uh and so that's really helpful to have email for space and Tesla integrated on on my phone um and then uh and then it's just you have to apply a lot of hours to actual working actually working so the way I generally do it\n\nis I'll be uh working at SpaceX on Monday and then Monday night fly to the Bay Area uh spent Tuesday and Wednesday at the Bara then at at Tesla and then fly back on Wednesday night it's spend Thursday and Friday at SpaceX um in in in the last several months then I would fly back here on a Saturday um and either spend Saturday and Sunday at Tesla uh or spend Saturday at Tesla and Sunday at SpaceX um and and where do the boys fit in you have five Sons um yeah did they tag along with Dad on some of these trips I do drag them along on a lot of things actually um they're remarkably unimpressed by yeah I wish they would be sort of more interested but I mean they're only the twins are are eight and the triplets are six so maybe they'll get more more interested\n\nlater but do you see one day grooming one of them or several of them to take over your companies well I I mean I think if if if they're inclined to I mean if they're really interested in working at teslo SpaceX then I you know help them do that um I'm not sure want to necessarily try to insert them into the CEO role at some point you know it's kind of like if if uh if the rest of the team and the board kind of felt that they were the right person then that would be that would be fine but uh I wouldn't want people to feel like I kind of you know installed you know my my kid there um and I don't think that would be good for either the companies or the kid really um uh but but I have I I I was actually at one point over school thought that um you know it's\n\nbest to give away kind of like 99% or more of one's assets um kind of like the buffet school ofth and um I'm still mostly of that incline in that direction but after seeing what happened with Ford and GM and Chrysler where GM and chryler went went bankrupt but Ford did not and and Ford seemed to make better long-term choices than than the other two companies and that's in part because of the influence of the Ford family um and I thought well okay there may be some Merit in having some longer term family ownership at least at least a portion of it so it's it acts as a positive influence uh this is still something I'm think about but acting as a positive influence in in the long term so the company kind of does do proper long-term things um and like I'm\n\nyou know if look at what happened also in in silic Valley with with HP I I think it's quite quite quite sad um and um and that that that to some degree is because there was um much diminished uh influence by the the the huet and Packard families right um I think they should have prevailed in in in their you know where they were opposed to the the merger that took place at one point and I think they were right actually right and keeping and looking to the Future for SpaceX is there an IPO plan for this year no there's no IPO plan no um let say running a public company does does have its drawback um so you're not in a hurry no okay um I mean in the case of Tesla and SpaceX uh we we had to raise Capital um and and we had kind of a complex Equity structure\n\nthat needed to be resolved by by going public um and um and so so I thought we we kind of needed to do that in those two cases we don't have to do that in SpaceX I think think there's a good chance we will at some point in the future but but spacex's objectives are are super longterm and and the market is is not so I'm a bit worried that if we did go public certainly if we're in public too soon that it the that market pressure would would force us to do uh short-term things and abandon kind of long-term projects like going to Mars right going to Mars very longterm yes that's an important one so you do have other projects on the back burner you've talked about the hyperloop uh a way of getting people from downtown LA to downtown San Francisco in under\n\nhalf an hour an electric supersonic airplane yeah which of those two are bubbling up that we might hear more about in the near future well I I did promise that I'd um do some paper on on the hyperloop idea um and uh things got a little a little hectic towards the end of last year uh because had I had these had committed to to make these milestones at Tesla to to the public markets and um I had to stay true to that obligation um which required just a just an insane level of work and attention um and uh and then we also had the solar City IPO which was a very difficult IPO to to get done I mean that IPO occurred just by the skin of its teeth I mean that was so so such a tough one were you just determined it had to be in December well um if it wasn't in\n\nDecember it would mean pushing it out you know quite a bit um and uh and the problem is that we' already pushed it out quite a bit so if we didn't go public we'd have to do a private round and then um and it just the whole thing wouldn't feel right you know it's like you're sitting at the it's like you're you're you know at the at the altar and you don't do the do the wedding it's like what a bit awkward you know um to say the least yeah uh so so we really need we really needed to do it um and and uh and I think if we hadn't done it people would have looked at it as a failure and it wouldn't have been good um because there's just been too many failures in the Solar or too many not enough success let's say in the Solar Arena they needed to be sort of we\n\nneed to choke up the success in the it's a rare piece of sunshine for the solar year ironically for a solar industry does not have a lot of that yes so it's time unfortunately for the last question you come a long way since you were that six-year-old little boy breaking the rules um you turned 42 this year right what is on the cards where do you where do you see yourself in 10 years time 20 years time 40 years time because you famously said you want to die on Mars just not on impact right exactly tell us about that dream um yeah well actually was asked by journalist do you want to die on Maus and I said yes and I was like but wait not not impact just to be clear that's one of the possibilities um so um yeah so I uh I guess um I I mean I'd like to be able\n\nto go to Mars while I'm still able to manage the journey reasonably well so I think like I don't want to be like 75 and go to Mars you don't want to take your Zimmer frame with you right U you know it it it could be at least in the beginning could be you know mildly uous so um wanted to I'd like to I'd like to get there um I don't know I mean ideally in my 50s that would be that would be kind of cool so you see that happening in the next well I mean I I aspire to make that happen and I I can see the potential for that happening um and um I'm not saying it will happen but I I I I I think it can happen um I'll try to make it happen great ladies and gentlemen Elon Musk thank you very"},"languages":["en"],"lang":"en","transcriptSource":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AHHwXUm3iIg"}]}